selim 16.indb andrew breeze, selim 16 (2009): 165–166issn: 1132–631x scattergood, john 2010: occasions for writing: essays on medieval and renaissance literature, politics and society. dublin, four courts press. 272 pp. isbn 978-1-84682-179-0. 55€. john scattergood, now retired  om teaching english at trinity college dublin, has since the 1970s published many books. though one cannot claim distinction for them (let alone any startling discovery), they are always clearly written, being  ee  om jargon and pretentiousness. this volume adheres to the accustomed pattern by off ering twelve papers, three of them on ‘movements’ and nine on ‘incidents’, as follows. we start with ‘redeeming english’, which takes the fashionable subject of english and englishness in the late middle ages, but diff ers  om treatments by thorlac turville-petre and others through consideration of the english language in ireland, where by the fi  eenth century it seemed to be in permanent retreat before a linguistic reconquista by irish. a er words and nationalism come words and love, as presented in the twel h century by andreas capellanus and in the fi  eenth by women’s love letters  om the paston circle. implications for class and gender are here to the fore. ‘writing the clock’ turns to medieval people and time. it discusses a famous hate-poem by da dd ap gwilym, where the welsh poet abused a timepiece that disturbed his slumbers. professor scattergood here includes the absurd translation of hwyaid as ‘ducks’ (p. 81), even though this reviewer pointed out in his medieval welsh literature (dublin, 1997), p. 121, that the correct rendering is ‘foliot’, an oscillating horizontal bar which regulated such mechanisms until the dutch invented the clock pendulum in about 1650. professor scattergood may think that medieval clocks had ducks inside them, but we should be foolish to believe him. the remainder of the book off ers varied fare on medieval and early tudor matters. analysis of the hiberno-english poem piers of bermingham of 1308 brings out the confusion of critics and irish historians as to whether it is eulogy or satire. the author off ers a persuasive revisionist case for the latter (though without mention of an important paper on the poem by professor yoko wada of kansai university). a er that are william langland, robin hood, and outlaws; then money, medieval cities, and chaucer’s last poem, a compaint to his empty purse. chapter seven turns to the perilous subjects of oldcastle’s rebellion and lollardy, ably setting 166 andrew breeze selim 16 (2009) out the literary and political manipulation of oldcastle’s memory  om his own day until that of shakespeare. two more papers on the fi  eenth century comment on the new concept of england demonstrated by the libelle of englysche polycye, and the absence of contemporary attention to a french naval defeat off yorkshire in 1451. (an essay on the the libelle of englysche polycye might have mentioned that sir john paston possessed a copy of it, as this reviewer pointed out in 2001, though professor scattergood seems unaware of this.) we end with three papers on the age of henry viii. skelton’s magnyfycence is mined for comment on corruption at the king’s court; thomas wyatt provides occasion for analysis of satire in henry’s last years, when political life was as dangerous as ever; and english patriotism returns with john leland’s itineraries, where this antiquary’s notes on ruined monasteries chart the brutal eff ects of henry’s policies for english landscape, religion, and society. john scattergood is not an incompetent researcher, but he is an imperfect one, who will irritate scholars more careful and comprehensive than himself by the selective nature of his work. nevertheless, his essays have the merit of focussing on actual texts. though pieces for occasion is hardly a mainstream book, it has much of interest. it should certainly be consulted by specialists working on the texts that it deals with. if there is one thing about it that calls for whole-hearted praise, it is not the author’s workaday and somewhat self-regarding prose, but the volume’s elegant presentation: something we expect  om that admirable embodiment of irish enlightenment and eff ectiveness, four courts press of dublin. andrew breeze university of navarre, pamplona • received 09 aug 2010; revision received 23 aug 2010; accepted 30 aug 2010 selim 18.indb andrew breeze, selim 18 (2011): 169–171issn: 1132–631x a celtic etymology for struggle “contend, fight” although a common word, struggle “to contend (with an adversary) in a close grapple” and so on has been of obscure etymology. oed fi rst records the verb @ om chaucer (the noun “a resolute contest” not being attested until john locke in 1692). so the merchant tells of a faithless wife, assuring an old husband that he regained sight by her shameless action (see mann 2005: 379, 468): “‘was nothing bet to make yow to se, / than strugle with a man upon a tree. / god woot, i dide it in ful good entente.’” his response is brusque: “‘strugle!’ quod he, ‘ye, algate in it wente! / god yeve yow bothe on shames deth to dien!’” more grimly, the pardoner repeats words of conspiracy to murder through a wrestling-bout: “‘and i shal rive him thurgh the sides tweye / whil that thow strogelest with him as in game, / and with thy daggere looke thow do the same.’” on derivation, suggestions by skeat and others of links with norse strúgr “ill will, contention” or dutch struikelen and german straucheln “stumble” have not been convincing (soed, s.v.). the origin has been unknown. struggle may thus not be germanic, but celtic. middle irish has a verb sraíglid “whips, fl ogs, scourges, lashes; affl icts, punishes, slaughters; pulls, tears,” giving later sraíllid (vendryes 1974: s.186– 187). it is @ om the noun represented in old irish as srogell or sroigell (therea ̀er sroigheall) “whip, lash,” itself @ om latin fl agellum (by way of vulgar latin), as is older welsh ff rowyll “a whip, a scourge” (rowland 1990: 525). the irish forms are well attested, though the meaning “fl agellate” has become literary, and the verb’s main sense is now “rip, tear apart,” as in bhí siad á sraoilleadh ag na madraí “they were being torn to bits by the dogs” (o dónaill 1977: 1153). middle irish also off ers the verb-noun sroigled “an act of scourging, fl ogging; act of striking, beating, attacking; act of tearing, pulling” 170 andrew breeze selim 18 (2011) (dil, s.v.). middle english strogle “contend in a close grapple” may hence derive % om irish or gaelic srogell “a whip.” formally it seems that this noun (not the verb) was borrowed by english, and was then used in senses resembling those of the irish verb. in either case it would have the intrusive t standard for irish loans in sr-, familiar % om strabane (an srath bán “the white river-holm”) in northern ireland (mckay 2007: 136). granted that we have a celtic loan, how might chaucer know the word, which evidently caught his fancy? attestations in oed imply that it came via scots. it quotes an account by john shirley (d. 1456) of james i’s murder in 1437 at black% iars, perth. he wrote, “and gretely the kyng strogild with hem [his assassins],” so that his hands bled as he grabbed their knives. shirley may have had the verb % om a scottish source, or picked it up % om chaucer. oed also quotes the earle of gowries conspiracie against the kings maiestie of scotland (london, 1600) on james vi, who “wyth struggeling and wrastling” got the advantage over an attacker. if struggle were borrowed % om gaelic, it would hence be in scotland, not ireland. the loan need not be early, as the voiced guttural spirant of sroigheall survived longer in scottish gaelic than it did in irish (o’rahilly 1972: 141). the spirant having no equivalent in english, -ggwould be due to sound-substitution. middle english strugle or strogle thus apparently goes back to old irish srogell “whip, lash” (a borrowing of latin fl agellum), which gives a gaelic verb meaning “to whip; strike, beat, attack; affl ict, punish; pull, tear.” it will be an interesting addition to the stock of celtic loanwords in english, a subject now gaining attention % om scholars in poland and finland (stalmaszczyk 2005; filppula, klemola & paulasto 2008). andrew breeze university of navarre, pamplona 171 a celtic etymology for struggle ‘contend, fi ght’ selim 18 (2011) references dil = dictionary of the irish language. dublin, royal irish academy. filppula, m., j. klemola & h. paulasto 2008: english and celtic in contact london, routledge. mann, j. ed. 2005: the canterbury tales. london, penguin. mckay, p. 2007: a dictionary of ulster place-names. 2nd ed. belfast, cló ollscoil na banríona. ó dónaill, n. 1977: foclóir gaeilge-béarla. baile átha cliath, oifi g an tsoláthair. o’rahilly, t. f. 1972: irish dialects past and present. 2nd ed. dublin, dublin institute for advanced studies. rowland, j. 1990: early welsh saga poetry: a study and edition of the englynion. cambridge, d. s. brewer. soed = the shorter oxford english dictionary. 3rd ed. oxford, oxford university press. stalmaszczyk, p. 2005: celtic presence. studies in celtic languages and literatures: irish, scottish gaelic and cornish. łódź, wydawnictwo uniwersytetu łóȳ kiego. vendryes, j. 1974: lexique étymologique de l’irlandais ancien: lettres r–s. dublin-paris, dublin institute for advanced studies. • selim01.pdf 149 interview: “on old english studies today” a. bravo garcia & fred c. robinson bravo: i know you are associate editor of early english manuscripts in facsimile. tell us about the importance and aim of the series. robinson: when it was founded under the patronage of sir winston churchill a few years after world war ii, the series was intended in part as a means of preserving the contents and appearance of precious english manuscripts which, it was feared, might be destroyed in subsequent nuclear wars. the idea was to have exact facsimiles of these manuscripts dispersed throughout the world so that if the library containing the manuscript were vaporized, the other libraries in other parts of the world would have copies and the text and format would be saved. over the years this rather apocalyptic rationale for early english manuscripts in facsimile has given way to a more practical one. the editors of the series seek to make available to scholars the world over the primary evidence for the study of anglo-saxon culture. the importance of the series has perhaps been perceived more clearly than ever in recent years when we have witnessed an increasing awareness of the need to study old english texts within their manuscript contexts. bravo: professor e. g. stanley and you are the editors of the forthcoming volume in the series, volume 23. can you give us some information about the texts comprised in this volume? 150 robinson: yes, gladly. in this volume we seek to present facsimiles of all poetic texts which have not previously been published in facsimile. this includes some major poems like meters from the old english version of boethius’s de consolatione philosophiae and the poem solomon and saturn as well as the battle of maldon and poems from the anglo-saxon chronicle and the numerous shorter poems included in volume 6 of the anglo-saxon poetic records. we also include all verse texts found in anglo-saxon inscriptions, both runic and non-runic. in addition to providing readers with copies of all these texts, the volume displays dramatically the variety of different forms in which old english poetry is preserved: in vellum manuscripts, in seventeenth-century transcriptions of manuscripts which no longer survive, in inscriptions, and in a few cases in modern printed books (e. g. the fight at finnsburg). bravo: you are one of the international advisers to the dictionary of old english, the other three advisers being professor e. g. stanley of oxford, professor helmut gneuss of munich, and professor roberta frank of toronto. can you tell us something about the present state of that project? robinson: yes, the doe is making impressive progress. i have just finished reading proof on one of the last sections of entries for the letter b. the letters c and d have already been published in microfiche. the staff and apparatus (including extensive electronic equipment) which have been put in place at the university of toronto and are producing this work are very impressive indeed. i believe this dictionary will be one of the twentieth century’s greatest scholarly achievements and will certainly be a landmark in the history of old english scholarship. as you probably know, this project has suffered three tragic deaths of three young scholars who were crucial to the success of the doe -angus cameron, ashley crandell amos, and sharon butler. and yet the dedicated and hard-working scholars there 151 have regrouped each time and gotten the project on track again. the present chief editor of the doe, antonette di paolo healy, who has just been named angus cameron professor of english, has the project firmly in hand and is working with her excellent colleagues at a high level of quality and efficiency. but financial support for the project is a constant problem. bravo: turning to old english literary scholarship today, i think you insist in your writings on the priority of “close reading” over historical or allegorical interpretations. is that not so? robinson: yes, i believe in close reading supported by solid philological evidence. knowledge of the language -both synchronic and diachronic is essential. bravo: in this case you disagree with the arguments of robertson, huppé, etc., who defend allegorical readings based on the use of patristic sources. robinson: i believe that allegorical readings of medieval secular literature have been excessive. i do not deny the existence of allegory in medieval literature, but believe that when writers then intended that something should be understood allegorically they made this clear. modern scholars don’t have to search for it. bravo: which critical method is most frequently used today in the analysis of old english literary texts in america? robinson: i would say close reading and interpretations based upon textual criticism. a new interpretation will often begin with a new solution to an old textual crux; there are also some allegorizing interpretations, of course, and in old english studies there has been a recent effort to resuscitate the oral-formulaic theory, although there does not seem to be much new to be added there. here and there one begins to see attempts to apply some of the currently fashionable 152 critical ideologies to old english studies -semiotics, feminism, deconstruction and all that. i suspect there will be a flurry of this but that it will not come to much. bravo: in my opinion your “philosophy” of old english literary study can be found in your “thoughtful and thought-provoking” book beowulf and the appositive style. is that correct? robinson: i would like to thank you for the adjectives you attach to my book. yes, i attempted to read the poem closely and philologically and in the context of its cultural history, and this is the approach that seems to me most appropriate when reading old english poetic texts. bravo: in the journal english studies we read the statement “... he who has not read robinson has not read beowulf.” do you agree with the reviewer? robinson: i am very grateful to the reviewer for saying that, and i am very grateful to you for quoting it. if it is true, i rejoice. bravo: as far as i know, the guide to old english by you and bruce mitchell is the most popular introductory text for old english students. why? robinson:well, we have certainly been pleased by its reception. on the one hand, i suspect that students of old english are confident that any book that bruce mitchell has a hand in has got to have something going for it. but also, i think it is significant that bruce mitchell says of the guide, “it is the book that i would like to have had when i was first learning old english.” we tried to write it from the point of view of the student. if we have a formula, that is it. bravo: quite recently alvin kernan published a fascinating and provocative book called the death of literature. we will probably agree that there is still vitality in literature, but don’t you think that old 153 english literature is endangered by faculty politics and by literary criticism itself? robinson: i think that the study of all literature is endangered by these recently fashionable poses which are called “theories.” rené wellek’s the attack on literature (university of north carolina press, 1982) and roger kimball’s tenured radicals: how politics has corrupted our higher education (harper & row, 1990) leave no doubt that the “literary scholars” who have claimed center stage in the eighties are undermining the study of literature; they encourage neglect of literary texts in favor of indulging in theoretical claims that literature is an illusion, that language is a game of deception and that no expression through human language is possible. the one branch of english literature which is least vulnerable to this attack, however, is, i believe, old english, because scholars and students of old english literature have never been persuaded to abandon the primary texts and go over to “theory.” if we medievalists continue to put literature in the center and to explore what the great writers of the past have had to say, then i believe we can be a light unto other literary scholars, showing them the way to recover from this malaise of nihilistic “theory” which has poisoned literary study in the past decade. f. c. robinson antonio bravo yale university university of oviedo * * * selim 19.indb rafael j. pascual, selim 19 (2012): 183–188issn: 1132–631x pons-sanz, sara m. 2013: the lexical eff ects of anglo-scandinavian linguistic contact on old english. turnhout, brepols. pp. xv + 589. isbn: 978-2-503-53471-⒏ 145,14€. the study of the scandinavian element in old english vocabulary has traditionally been considered unimportant, mainly because norse-derived terms are scarce in old english texts (see, for example, björkman 1900: § 2), and also because they tend to represent the most typical types of borrowings, i.e., technical words directly associated with the culture of the source language speakers. alistair campbell put it this way in his infl uential work on the grammar of old english (1959: § 566): the great infl ux of scandinavian words into oe caused by the norse settlements in england is not fully refl ected in oe texts, and the development of these words is mainly a branch of me studies. the scandinavian loan-words recorded in oe texts are mainly ones for ideas, persons, or things, which were either peculiarly scandinavian, or of which the oe conception had been modifi ed by contact with the scandinavian civilization. because of these reasons, only a few studies have been devoted to the lexical eff ects of anglo-scandinavian linguistic contact on old english, the majority of which consist of lists of words for whose elaboration scholars have relied on their immediate predecessors (see, for example, hofmann 1955, peters 1981, and wollmann 1996). nevertheless, as the author of the book under review points out (pons-sanz 2013: 11–12), many of the norse-derived terms attested in old english texts are non-technical, which means that, despite the general opinion, they already evince some of the features that make norse-derived terms in middle english so important for the study of the history of the english language. further, since the studies that address the issue in question rely too heavily on previous works, the doubtful identifi cation of some old english words as norse-derived has been uncritically repeated rafael j. pascual 184selim 19 (2012) again and again (pons-sanz 2013: 13).1 it is necessary, therefore, to pay renewed attention to the issue of scandinavian infl uence on old english vocabulary. pons-sanz’s excellent book furnishes a brand-new study of scandinavian loan-words in old english that remedies some of the old defi ciencies of the fi eld. first, the author submits to philological scrutiny the norse derivation of the old english words that have been repeatedly listed as scandinavian loans. second, she does not limit her study to a mere list, but also assesses the textual context of the norse-derived terms in order to gauge their level of integration into the old english lexicon. the result is a substantial contribution that will infl uence future research into the linguistic contact between old english and old norse. pons-sanz’s fi rst task, the re-examination of the traditional lists of norse-derived terms in old english, is carried out in chapter 2, “etymological study,” where she discusses the norse derivation of all the old english words that she accepts as scandinavian borrowings. for this discussion, she relies mainly (but not only) on the phonological and morphological structures of the words in question, on the correct assumption that phonology and infl ectional morphology furnish the most dependable tools for etymological identifi cation. the kind of philological analysis that the reader will fi nd in chapter 2 can be exemplifi ed by pons-sanz’s discussion of the old english noun sweġen, “young man.” in classical icelandic, there exists a similar word with the same meaning, sveinn, descended fr om viking age norse *suainaʀ,2 fr om protogermanic *swainaz. the proto-germanic diphthong */ai/ became /ɑi/ in viking age norse (later /ei/ in classical icelandic) and /ɑ:/ 1 the only exceptions to this tendency are fischer 1989, mckinney 1994, and pons-sanz 2007. these studies, however, are much more limited in their scopes than the present book. 2 in viking age norse, this word is recorded only in accusative singular, suain, and nominative plural sueinaʀ (see pons-sanz 2013: 30). reviews 185 selim 19 (2012) in old english. thus, the old english cognate of classical icelandic sveinn is swān, “herdsman, man.” the word sweġen, which seems at fi rst a phonological rarity in old english, can be made sense of if the spelling ⟨eg⟩ is assumed to be the old english adaptation of the viking age norse diphthong /ɑi/ as it appears in *suainaʀ (see pons-sanz 2013: 28–31). since the phonological structure of this old english word can be accounted for only by reference to the linguistic history of old norse, it is more probable to regard it as an old norse borrowing than to consider it an inexplicable exception to the phonological regularities of old english. this procedure leads pons-sanz to exclude fr om her list of norse-derived words some terms that have traditionally been considered scandinavian loans (for instance, hæfen(e), “haven, port;” wrang, “hold of a ship”). these are grouped in appendix iii, “terms and structures which are more likely to be native,” one of the most interesting parts of pons-sanz’s book. chapter 3, “lexico-semantic study,” analyzes the degree of integration of the previously identifi ed norse-derived terms into the old english lexicon. firstly, the scandinavian loan-words are classifi ed according to grammatical categories and lexico-semantic fi elds. this classifi cation reveals (1) that nouns are the most numerous borrowings (pons-sanz 2013: 126); and (2) that technical terms, especially legal words, outnumber non-technical words (pons-sanz 2013: 128–129). secondly, pons-sanz presents a series of tables showing the textual and lexico-semantic distributions of the norse-derived terms recorded in old english. on the basis of that information, the author explores the position of the norse loans within their lexico-semantic fi elds in terms of coreness or periphery (pons-sanz 2013: 123). thus, the textual distribution of a norse-derived noun like sceġð, “warship,” which appears not only in texts fr om the scandinavianized areas and which ended up referring not only to scandinavian ships, indicates that it is a core term of its lexico-semantic family (pons-sanz 2013: 201–205). a word like sweġen, however, recorded only in the peterborough chronicle, rafael j. pascual 186selim 19 (2012) is classifi ed as a peripheral term within its lexico-semantic fi eld (pons-sanz 2013: 220–221). chapter 4, “the norse-derived terms in their texts: some case studies,” analyses the norse-derived terms in particular texts, such as the d and e versions of the anglo-saxon chronicle or ælfr ic of eynsham’s works, among others, in order to explore not only what the texts can tell us about the terms, but also what the terms can tell us about the texts. as the author demonstrates, this kind of reciprocal approach deepens our understanding of the dialectal distribution of some scandinavian loan-words and also helps us establish the dialectal origin of the texts in which they are recorded (pons-sanz 2013: 271–272). the methodology followed by the author in this chapter is the same as she has applied in previous works (see, for example, pons-sanz 2007, 2008). in this respect, the book under review points the way to how the study of norsederived terms in specifi c texts will be carried out in the future. a recent reviewer of pons-sanz’s book has lamented that “there is no mention of beowulf in the six hundred pages of this book” (see frank 2014). this is a wise choice, however, since, as r. d. fulk has pointed out, the indubitable authenticity of the proper names in beowulf tells against a post-viking dating of the poem (see fulk 1982: 343). indeed, neidorf 2014 has comprehensively reviewed the philological evidence and demonstrated that a date of composition in the fi rst half of the eighth century, well before the onset of the danish invasions, is exceedingly probable. the fi nal part of the book comprises a short chapter with the author’s concluding remarks and four appendices (the fi rst listing all the norse loans in old english, the second all the old english texts where those loans are recorded, and the fourth containing a list of early middle english norse-derived words). as pons-sanz states (2013: 273), she “has attempted to present a comprehensive study of the norse-derived vocabulary in old english.” in the present reviewer’s opinion, her monograph is in fact the most comprehensive study of scandinavian loans in old english to reviews 187 selim 19 (2012) date, and as such, it will be a milestone in its fi eld. the rigorous philological analysis of the norse-derived words that the reader will fi nd in the fi rst part of the book is complemented by the extensive survey of their textual and lexico-semantic distributions in the second. it is precisely this original double approach that allows so far unknown insights into the anglo-scandinavian sociolinguistic contact during the anglo-saxon period. this penetrating book will be of interest to anglo-saxonists and historians of the english language alike. rafael j. pascual universidad de granada references björkman, e. 1900: scandinavian loanwords in middle english. vol. 1. halle, niemeyer. campbell, a. 1959: old english grammar. oxford, clarendon press. fischer, a. 1989: lexical change in late old english: from ǣ to lagu. in a. fischer ed. the history and the dialects of english: festschrift for eduard kolb. heidelberg, winter: 103–114. frank, r. rev. 2014: pons-sanz, s. m. (2013) the lexical eff ects of angloscandinavian linguistic contact on old english. in the medieval review 14.05.02. fulk, r. d. 1982: dating beowulf to the viking age. philological quarterly 61: 341–359. hofmann, d. 1955: nordisch-englische lehnbeziehungen der wikingerzeit. københavn, munksgaard. mckinney, p. r. 1994: to munde us sylfum: a semantic study of the old english legal terms for protection. (ph.d. dissertation). east lansing, michigan state university. rafael j. pascual 188selim 19 (2012) neidorf, l. 2014: the dating of beowulf: a reassessment. cambridge, d. s. brewer. peters, h. 1981: zum skandinavischen lehngut im altenglischen. sprachwissenschaft 6: 85–124. pons-sanz, s. m. 2007: norse-derived vocabulary in late old english texts: wulfstan’s works, a case study. odense, university press of southern denmark. pons-sanz, s. m. 2008: norse-derived terms and structures in the battle of maldon. journal of english and germanic philology 107: 421–444. pons-sanz, s. m. 2013: the lexical eff ects of anglo-scandinavian linguistic contact on old english. turnhout, brepols. wollmann, a. 1996: scandinavian loanwords in old english. in h. f. nielsen & l. schøsler eds. the origins and development of emigrant languages: proceedings of the second rasmus rask colloquium, odense university, november 1994. odense, odense university press: 215–242. • selim 20.indb jorge luis bueno alonso, selim 20 (2013–2014): 279–286issn: 1132–631x amodio, mark c. 2014: the anglo-saxon literature handbook. oxford, wiley-blackwell. xvi + 412 pp. paperback. isbn 978-0631-22698-⒎ 27.99€ the oxford english dictionary defines “handbook,” on the second entry of the term, as “a book containing concise information on a particular subject; a guidebook.” you do not need to revise its back cover to state that the book object of this review could be classifi ed as such. specially if this book constitutes, in the humble opinion of this reviewer, not a handbook but the handbook on anglo-saxon literature, whose fate will be to become the standard introductory reference of our fi eld. in the academic world very few important things are produced without acknowledging—or challenging—what others have previously done. that is especially true in the academic genre of the handbook/companion/guide, where previous scholars have done a tremendous amount of work on the subject. if bernard of chartres stated back in the 12th century that scholars were just “nanos gigantum humeris insidentes,” i.e. “dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants,” it is clear that references such as solopova & lee (2007), north & allard (2007), treharne & walker (2010), stodnick & trilling (2012), lees (2013), or godden & lapidge’s (2013) new edition of their classic companion, constitute important previous enta geweorc whose authors could be seen as those giants upon which contemporary handbook writers need to stand on, although none of the aforementioned references are mentioned in the bibliography, exception made of godden and lapidge’s companion in its fi rst edition. mark amodio is no dwarf, but an academic giant who, as newton stated popularizing bernard of chartres’s saying, “has seen further by standing in the shoulders of giants.” his handbook, though written in the tradition of the aforementioned references, not only sees further in the fi eld but sees through the problems of its vastness, being thus a volume written jorge luis bueno alonso 280selim 20 (2013) by, as andy orchard highlights in its back cover, “one of the fi nest teachers in the fi eld. this is exactly the kind of book i wish i had read when i was a student, and exactly the kind of book i wish i had written myself.” that is the feeling we all lecturers have: we are facing the book we all wanted to write and use with our students, to recommend to those interested in anglo-saxon literature. not a handbook, but the handbook. let me describe, then, this volume and some of the reasons for such a statement. the structure of the volume combines sections that traditionally tend to appear in handbooks with parts that present a new way to understand the information contained in them. aft er the standard introductory material (i–xix) typical of the “handbook” genre—table of contents, preface by the author, acknowledgments, note on the text and list of abbreviations— the reader will fi nd the contents of the book organised in fi ve diff erent parts. part 1, “anglo-saxon england: backgrounds and beginnings” (1–32), off ers a rather innovative way to introduce the topic. several theoretical concepts need to be explained fi rst to give the essential context any introduction to anglo-saxon literature needs. as such context has to constitute a “brief and necessarily selective overview” (15), amodio presents an accessible, brief and excellently written concise summary of the key points concerning the political, ecclesiastical, intellectual, linguistic and literary history of the period. two fi nal sections on orality and literacy (“traditions: oral and literate”) and on dating oe texts (“a note on dating anglo-saxon texts”) close this fi rst part, together with a succinct but complete further reading list on the section’s topics. part 2 starts the literary discussion and explanation. here we see for the fi rst time the structure that the reader will fi nd in the rest of the handbook. every text—or set of texts—discussed in the volume present the same organization. first, a small paragraph gives the precise codicological information of the text (ms, folio, lacunae, etc); then, the proper reading/analysis of the text follows. reviews 281 selim 20 (2013–2014) with an allotted space of three-four pages for every text, a diffi culty indeed if you have to write an analysis of the entire anglo-saxon corpus, amodio manages quite successfully to give a concise, highly precise and superbly written account on the fundamental issues of every text, taking into account not only the most updated scholarly arguments but also the most original points of view in discussing them. at the end of every section a further reading list follows; this section could be a minor thing, but having a close look at it is enough to reveal amodio’s outstanding command of anglosaxon scholarship: the list of references given always combine classical references in the fi eld fr om the 1960s to the 1990s with contemporary essential academic work published in the fi rst decade of the 21st century (2000s–2010s). the labour of selecting the references reveals the knowledge amodio has of them, as he always gives the essential further reading works. virtually no important aspect is left unrevised in the texts and no major critical bibliographical reference is missed in the reference list. with this in mind, the contents of the book for parts 2 and 3 present the expected and customary division in prose and poetry. hence, part 2 “anglo-saxon prose” (33–133) presents a full account of the oe prose corpus with the aforementioned structure. it covers the writings of king alfr ed the great (alfr ed’s translation of pope gregory the great’s pastoral care, of boethius’s consolation of philosophy, of st augustine’s soliloquies, of the prose psalms of the paris psalter and his preface to wærferth’s translation of pope gregory’s dialogues), the vercelli homilies, the blickling homilies, the anglo-saxon chronicle, the old english orosius, bede’s ecclesiastical history of the english people, apollonius of tyre, the old english martyrology, the life of st guthlac, the wonders of the east, the letter of alexander to aristotle, and the life of st christopher (quite conveniently in a joint section), bald’s leechbook and leechbook iii, the writings of wulfstan and the writings of ælfr ic of eynsham (catholic homilies, lives of saints, colloquy jorge luis bueno alonso 282selim 20 (2013) on the occupations, and a very appropriate and original section on ælfr ic as author). similarly, part 3 deals with “anglo-saxon poetry” (135–332) with the same aim of exhaustion and in-depth analysis. aft er an initial section on the anglo-saxon poetic tradition, which gives the necessary contextual and thematic common features shared by the extant corpus of old english poetry, this part proceeds with a thorough analysis of that corpus itself, organized in the traditional manuscript division. thus, once cædmon’s hymn & bede’s death song have been described as “foundational” pieces of this oe poetic tradition, this section revises the junius manuscript (genesis a, genesis b, exodus, daniel and christ and satan, the poems of the vercelli book (andreas, fates of the apostles, soul and body i (and ii), homiletic fragment i, the dream of the rood and elene), the exeter book in its entirety and complexity (the advent lyrics [christ i], the ascension [christ ii], christ in judgement [christ iii], life of st guthlac, guthlac a, guthlac b, azarias, the phoenix, juliana, the wanderer, the gift s of men, precepts, the seafarer, vainglory, widsið, the fortunes of men, maxims i, the order of the world, the rhyming poem, the panther, the whale, the partridge: the old english physiologus, soul and body ii (and i), deor, wulf and eadwacer, the exeter book riddles, the wife’s lament, judgement day i, resignation [a and b], the descent into hell, almsgiving, pharaoh, the lord’s prayer i, homiletic fragment ii, the husband’s message, and the ruin), the equally complex and thematically dense poems of cotton vitellius a.xv (beowulf and judith, whose section is by far the longest piece of the handbook) and a fi nal miscellaneous section on poems fr om various manuscripts (the metres of boethius, the metrical psalms of the paris psalter, solomon and saturn i and ii, the menologium, the rune poem, the poems of the anglo-saxon chronicle, the battle of brunanburh, the battle of maldon, the fight at finnsburh, waldere and durham). we could say that these two sections constitute the novelty, as the information contained in them does not tend to appear in reviews 283 selim 20 (2013–2014) handbooks and companions, which are keen on discussing the topics and themes of anglo-saxon literature rather than the texts themselves; perhaps the only exception to the handbooks mentioned at the beginning of this review could be johnson & treharne (2005), which off ered a combined approach. this sort of textual-based explanation is rather more prone to be included in anthologies of translated texts such as north, allard and gillies (2011), treharne (2010) or even the classic bradley (1982) volume. for the aims of this handbook these fi rst two parts are essential and somewhat mandatory; hence, the perfect complement to this previous exhaustive analysis of the texts had to be a discussion of their interpretation and research themes; that is precisely what amodio includes in parts 4 and 5: critical approaches and themes. part 4, “critical approaches” (333–360), follows then this aforementioned main trend. aft er stating, in a brief section labelled “the alterity of anglo-saxon literature,” the “inherent otherness” (338) of the literature composed in this period, amodio proceeds to give a succinct account on the guidelines that build the theoretical fr amework of the main critical approaches—in his opinion—to anglo-saxon literature: source studies, manuscript studies, grammatical and syntactic studies and theoretical perspectives, a section in which he deals with the issue in more detail by mentioning specifi c “perspectives” or areas of theoretical analysis (“christianity,” “germanic legend,” “gender,” “psychological” and “oral-traditional”). the approach is somewhat brief, similar to what you could fi nd in some recent volumes devoted to revising key concepts, like those by solopova & lee (2007) or franzten (2012). amodio is totally aware of the fact that “anything like a complete treatment of the history of anglo-saxon literary criticism falls well beyond the scope of [his handbook]” (338), so his brief key-concept oriented approach is more than adequate to his aims. as a complement to this, amodio off ers a fi nal part—part 5, “themes” (361–380)—in which he revises, with brevity but with lots of wit, some “major and minor themes that percolate through jorge luis bueno alonso 284selim 20 (2013) the poetry and prose extant fr om the anglo-saxon period” (361). he begins with a caveat defi ning his conception of “theme” in “anglo-saxon thematics” and continues with a revision of some of those themes that follow his description: “heroism,” “the end of the world,” “the transitory nature of life,” “fate,” “wisdom,” “otherness” and “oral-traditional themes.” the reader has again the same déjà-vu feeling of facing a key-concept entry-like section (frantzen 2012 is the reference that comes to mind) and one wishes to have read more on every topic, but the aims are very specifi c and the scope of these two parts is limited; the result is, then, highly interesting and complementary. the absence of a “further reading” section in parts 4 and 5 constitutes the only drawback of these two parts. due to the brevity of the sections, having done something similar to the reference sections found in the main parts of the handbook would have been much helpful to the reader. including such a section is my suggestion for further editions. the volume is closed (381–412) with the customary and useful cross-reference sections: a general “bibliography” with all the references used, an “index” of key words and names and an “index of manuscripts.” all in all, as i said before, amodio’s handbook is destined to be the handbook on anglo-saxon literature fr om now onwards for his quality, concision, exhaustiveness and width of scope. i mentioned how this sort of textual-based explanation is typically included in anthologies of translated texts; when you fi nish reading amodio’s excellent sections on, for instance, guthlac or deor, you wish to have the text there with you to be instantly enj oyed and devoured with amodio’s critical insights fr esh on your mind. it is true than we can all very easily go to our shelves and pick one of the aforementioned anthologies or any other edition of those oe texts, but as a reader i would fi nd perfection if i just had a complementary volume with amodio’s translations of the texts he described so brilliantly. let this be a wishful thinking sort of suggestion to wiley-blackwell and the author himself. reviews 285 selim 20 (2013–2014) at the beginning of this review i quoted the oxford english dictionary’s second entry of the term “handbook;” the fi rst entry reads as follows: “the manual of medieval ecclesiastical offi ces and ritual.” as members of the “order” of anglo-saxonists, we are most lucky to use amodio’s handbook to perform our rituals and offi ces when celebrating—in all the meanings gathered in the oed entry for the verb “celebrate”—the teaching of anglo-saxon literature in due form.1 jorge luis bueno alonso universidade de vigo references bradley, s. a. j. ed. & trans. 1982: anglo-saxon poetry. london, dent. franzten, a. j. 2012: anglo-saxon keywords (keywords in literature and culture). oxford, wiley-blackwell. godden, m. & m. lapidge eds. 2013: the cambridge companion to old english literature. 2nd edition. cambridge, cambridge university press. johnson, d. & e. treharne eds. 2005: readings in medieval texts: interpreting old and middle english literature. oxford, oxford university press. lees, c. e. ed. 2013: the cambridge history of early medieval english literature. cambridge, cambridge university press. 1 research made to write this review was funded by the spanish ministerio de economía y competividad, grant numbers ffi2013-44065-p and ffi201451873-redt and by the galician autonomous govement (“plan de axudas para a consolidación e estruturación de unidades de investigación competitivas do sistema universitario galego,” grant numbers r2014/016 and gpc2014/060). these grants are hereby gratefully acknowledged. jorge luis bueno alonso 286selim 20 (2013) north, r. & j. allard eds. 2007: beowulf & other stories: a new introduction to old english, old icelandic and anglo-norman literatures. london, longman/pearson education. north, r., j. allard & p. gillies 2011: longman anthology of old english, old icelandic and anglo-norman literatures. london, longman/ pearson education. solopova, e. & s. d. lee 2007: key concepts in medieval literature (palgrave key concepts series). houndmills, palgrave macmillan. stodnick, j. & r. r. trilling eds. 2012: a handbook of anglo-saxon studies. oxford, wiley-blackwell. treharne, e. ed & trans. 2010: old and middle english c.890–c.1450: an anthology. 3rd edition. oxford, wiley-blackwell. treharne, e. & g. walker eds. 2010: the oxford handbook of medieval literature in english. oxford, oxford university press. • sergio lópez martínez, selim 21 (2015–2016): 167–178. issn 1132-631x embedded topicalisation in old english: does it exist? sergio lópez martínez university of oviedo, university of kent the study of the left periphery of subordinate structures in old english is not an exhaustively explored field, and it has often been inaccurately described by grammars and manuals of this language. it has been almost unanimously admitted that subordination and topicalisation are mutually exclusive in old english. only a few authors admit that topicalisation and subordination can coexist in old english, and not a single systematic study of this issue has ever been provided. therefore, the main objective of this paper is to present accurate statistical data about the combinatiorial potential and distribution of preverbal arguments in old english, highlighting the existence of structures that were thought to be forbidden in old english syntax. not only pronominal elements were found among those topicalised structures in subordinate sentences, but also syntactically complex and highly informative arguments. thus, it is demonstrated that topicalisation is possible in old english subordination. keywords: old english; syntax; topicalisation; subordination; information structure 1. introduction the left periphery of subordinate structures in old english (oe) has often been inaccurately described in grammars and manuals. thus, it has been generally admitted that subordination and topicalisation are mutually exclusive in oe. in most accounts, topicalisation is simply banned from subordination (pintzuck 1991: 69), and in the few cases where it is considered acceptable (allen 1980: 52) no quantitative data are presented. the main objective of this paper is to provide statistical data about the combinatorial possibilities and distribution of preverbal arguments in oe, focusing especially on topicalised embedded objects, and highlighting the 168 sergio lópez martínez existence of structures that were thought to be forbidden in oe syntax. a large corpus of prose texts from the oe period has been analysed, and the data have been mapped against linguistically relevant variables, such as type of topic (pronominal or fully nominal), type of subordinate clause, syntactic position of the elements following the topic (with special emphasis on v2-ing), and overall informational load of the elements involved in embedded topicalisation. 2. embedded topicalisation in other germanic languages before analysing the question of embedded topicalisation in oe, it is necessary to consider the state of the matter in other germanic languages. in presentday english (pde), topicalisation is possible in main clauses (1b), while it is not acceptable in subordinate ones (1d): (1) a. i don’t drink wine. b. wine, i don’t drink. c. he said that he doesn’t drink wine. d. *he said that wine he doesn’t drink. according to haider (2010: 141), word order in modern german is more flexible than in other germanic ov languages like dutch. in order to get some insight concerning the possibility of embedded topicalisation in german, an informal survey with native speakers of german was carried out. informants were asked to answer a grammaticality judgment test about the following three subordinate sentences: (2) a. …, dass der arzt[nom] den patienten[acc] besuchte. (sov) b. …, dass den arzt [acc] der patient [nom] besuchte. (osv) c. …, dass den arzt [acc] besuchte der patient [nom] . (ovs) as seen in (2a–c) above, informants where asked to judge the grammaticality of a subordinate sentence with canonical sov order, another one with a topicalised object (osv order), and a third one with a topicalised object and inversion (ovs order). results are shown in table 1. embedded topicalisation in old english 169 table 1. informal survey with native speakers of german: grammaticality judgement. ✓ ✓? x a 28 -- b 4 10 14 c --28 as we can observe, sentence (2a), with canonical sov order, was considered fully grammatical by the totality of informants. only four of the informants considered that a subordinate sentence with a topicalised object (2b) was grammatical, while ten judged it to be grammatical but only in certain colloquial contexts. the majority of informants considered it to be ungrammatical. finally, all the informants found topicalisation and inversion (2c) ungrammatical. thus, we can conclude that, while object topicalisation in subordination may be acceptable in german, topicalisation with verb inversion is disfavoured in this language. 3. embedded topicalisation in old english it is now necessary to consider if embedded topicalisation in oe is impossible (as in pde), acceptable only in limited contexts (as in german), or whether it is a phenomenon that could occur naturally. furthermore, the present section will shortly analyse the implications of the existence of embedded topicalisation for other processes of word order change in the history of english. 3.1. implications of embedded topicalisation in oe according to stockwell & minkova (1991), subordination and inversion cannot occur at the same time in oe, since the complementiser (comp) blocks the raising of the verb to inflection (infl) position. this is due to the fact that both infl and comp occupy the same node, as shown in figure 1. 170 sergio lópez martínez figure 1. syntactic representation of subordinate structures in oe according to stockwell & minkova (1991) according to this theory, vp is a dense and cohesive package, from which nothing can be taken out. after the ov internal operation leaves the verb in the absolute left periphery of the vp, in an adjacent position to the subject which precedes it, providing robust sv input which will serve as the basis for the subsequent reanalysis xv main clauses (accomplished figure 2. syntactic representation of stockwell & minkova (1991). under this perspective, the ov clauses around 1400 would be motivated by analogy from the structure of subordinate sentences. however, this theory is based on the fact that no sergio lópez martínez . syntactic representation of subordinate structures in oe according to minkova (1991). according to this theory, vp is a dense and cohesive package, from which nothing can be taken out. after the ov � vo reanalysis (c. 1200), this internal operation leaves the verb in the absolute left periphery of the vp, in sition to the subject which precedes it, providing robust sv input which will serve as the basis for the subsequent reanalysis xv � main clauses (accomplished c. 1400) (see figure 2). . syntactic representation of the ov � vo reanalysis oe according to stockwell & minkova (1991). under this perspective, the ov � vo reanalysis which took place in main clauses around 1400 would be motivated by analogy from the structure of subordinate sentences. however, this theory is based on the fact that no . syntactic representation of subordinate structures in oe according to according to this theory, vp is a dense and cohesive package, from which 1200), this internal operation leaves the verb in the absolute left periphery of the vp, in sition to the subject which precedes it, providing robust sv � sv in vo reanalysis oe according to vo reanalysis which took place in main clauses around 1400 would be motivated by analogy from the structure of subordinate sentences. however, this theory is based on the fact that no embedded topicalisation in old english 171 element can be extracted from vp, and it would not work if topicalisation and inversion were possible in oe subordinate structures. 3.2. state of the matter it has been generally admitted that topicalisation and subordination are mutually exclusive in oe. for instance, pintzuck (1991: 69) categorically affirms that topicalisation is not possible in subordinate clauses, a view which has been widely accepted. stockwell & minkova (1991: 384–385) state that verb fronting and topicalisation rules cannot apply in subordinate clauses in oe, while kroch & taylor (1997: 309) consider that “topicalisation has a very weak discourse motivation” in subordinate sentences, and that “underlyingly ifinal clauses” are not expected to exhibit v2 order. other authors like haeberli (2001: 213–214) simply acknowledge the need for more work on word order in oe subordinate clauses. only cynthia allen recognises that “topicalisation could also take place within a subordinate clause” (1980: 52), and that “both osv and ovs order 1 are found in embedded clauses” (1995: 46). however, she does not provide any kind of quantitative data which illustrate this phenomenon in order to support her claim. this lack of data has been the main motivation for the present study. 4. data in order to carry out an accurate collection of data, a selection of texts from the york-toronto-helsinki parsed corpus of old english prose (2003) were analysed using corpus search 2. since style, genre and text-type are very relevant variables for the present study, texts were selected from various and different genres and types. thus, the selection includes the following texts: � narrative/descriptive: the anglo-saxon chronicle (a & e) (chr. a/e), orosius (or.) � narrative: bede (bed.), ælfric’s lives of saints (liv.), ælfric’s old testament (o.t.) � argumentative: ‘preface’ cura pastoralis (c.p.), boethius (bo.) 1 that is, both topicalisation and topicalisation with inversion. 172 sergio lópez martínez � technical: herbarium (her.), medicina de quadrupedibus (med.) the nature of the texts as original oe ones or as latin translations is also a relevant factor that must be taken in consideration. namely, while the anglosaxon chronicle and the preface of the cura pastoralis are texts written originally in old english, the rest of the works present in this selection have a latin source. this could also have been a significant factor in the inclusion of topicalisation in subordinate sentences by the scribes. first of all, a considerable amount of examples of subordinate sentences with a topicalised object (i.e. osv order) were found, as illustrated in examples (3a–b): 2 (3) a. on þæm dagum on egyptan wæs þæs kyninges þeaw bosiriðis þæt ealle þa cuman þe hine gesohton he to blote gedyde. (or. 1:8.27.9.529) b. [...] ðonon gelomp þætte þa seolfan moldan, þær his lichoma gefeol, monige menneomende wæron (bed. 3:7.178.5.1739) it is important to note that topicalisation does not only occur with light np or pronominal objects, but also with heavy np objects, like the ones illustrated in (3a–b). in those examples, it is possible to find relative clauses within the object (þe hine gesohton, þær his lichoma gefeol). furthermore, in order to demonstrate that not only objects, but also other elements of the sentence could be topicalised in a subordinate clause, topicalised pps were included in the search. examples (4a–b) illustrate that what can be called xsv order is also possible in oe subordination. (4) a. forþan þe on his dagan ælc riht afeoll. & ælcunriht for gode & for worulde up aras. (chr.e 1100.12.3324) b. æfter þæm wæs an ger full þæt ofer eall romana rice seo eorþe wæs cwaciende & berstende. (or. 2:6.50.6.958) one of the most interesting findings in this study is that not only are there examples of topicalisation in subordinate clauses in the corpus, but it is also 2 italics added to signal the topicalised element. embedded topicalisation in old english 173 possible to find topicalisation and inversion in the same subordinate sentence, as illustrated in (5a–b). 3 (5) a. witodlice basilius […] awrat ealle ða þenunga þæra halgan mæssan, swa swa hit healdað grecas. (liv. 142.546) b. hu sardanopolus wæs se siþemesta cyning in asiria, ond hu hiene beswac arbatus his ealdormon; (or. 1.12.13) again, prepositional phrases were included in the search, and examples (6a–b) show that elements different from the object could also be topicalised in subordinate sentences with inversion. (6) a. geðencað eac þæt on ðisum lytlan pearroce þe we ær ymb spræcon bugiað swiðe manega þeoda & swiðe mislica […](bo. 18.42.21.765) b. is ðæt ec sæd þætte in ðere stowe, þer hio ofslegne weran, weolle an welle (bed. 11.418.19.4207) 5. statistics in order to provide accurate data about embedded topicalisation in the selection of oe texts, a statistical analysis of all the occurrences of this phenomenon has been included in this section. table 2 shows the totality of examples of each of the four word order patterns mentioned in the previous section. 3 the verb in subordinate sentences with inversion has been underlined. 174 sergio lópez martínez table 2. total number of examples of each word order pattern in subordinate sentences. 4 chr. a chr. e bed. or. bo. her. med. liv. o.t. osv 4 11 41 75 31 12 2 20 11 xsv -1 18 13 6 2 -5 1 ovs --2 3 1 --2 4 xvs --5 3 6 --6 - all the occurrences of embedded topicalisation have been mapped against a series of variables in order to find any patterns and to distinguish the differences between the four word order patterns included in the study. thus, examples have been categorised attending to whether the topicalised object is a pronoun or a full np, whether the subject is a full np or the impersonal ‘man’, and whether the subordinate clause is nominal or adverbial. table 3. statistical data: osv order. chr. a chr. e bed. or. bo. her. med. liv. o.t. total 4 11 41 75 31 12 2 20 11 o. pr. 4 10 33 73 27 11 2 19 11 o. np -1 8 2 4 1 -1 - s. ‘man’ 1 7 24 43 15 10 2 10 9 s. np 3 4 17 32 16 2 -10 2 n. cl. 1 6 21 27 7 2 -5 2 adv. cl. 3 5 20 48 24 10 2 15 9 4 since no examples of embedded topicalisation were found in ‘preface’ cura pastoralis, it has not been included in the tables. embedded topicalisation in old english 175 as shown in table 3, the majority of topicalised objects in subordinate sentences with osv order are pronouns. it can also be observed that there is a balanced proportion between np and ‘man’ subjects. concerning the type of clause, there is an abundance of adverbial clauses. table 4 shows that, when the topicalised element is a pp, the vast majority of subjects are full nps, with only two occurrences of the impersonal ‘man’. table 4. statistical data: xsv order. chr. a chr. e bed. or. bo. her. med. liv. o.t. total -1 18 13 6 2 -5 1 s. ‘man’ ---1 1 ---- s. np -1 18 12 5 2 -5 1 n. cl. --9 7 1 1 -3 - adv. cl. -1 9 6 5 1 -2 1 it can be observed that the number of occurrences of topicalisation with inversion is not as high as with osv order. nevertheless, the fact that they are present in five out of the ten texts analysed shows that it is not an isolated phenomenon. as seen in table 5, the entirety of topicalised objects in embedded topicalisation with inversion are pronouns, and the totality of subjects are full nps (there is a complete absence of np objects or ‘man’ subjects). in this case, the vast majority of clauses are adverbial. 176 sergio lópez martínez table 5. statistical data: ovs order. chr. a chr. e bed. or. bo. her. med. liv. o.t. total --2 3 1 --2 4 o. pr. --2 3 1 --2 4 o. np --------- s. ‘man’ --------- s. np --2 3 3 --2 4 n. cl. --------1 adv. cl. --2 3 3 --3 3 finally, table 6 shows that, when the topicalised element in a clause with inversion is a pp, the totality of subjects is nps. again, there are no examples of ‘man’ subjects. table 6. statistical data: xvs order. chr. a chr. e bed. or. bo. her. med. liv. o.t. total --5 3 6 --6 - s. ‘man’ -------- s. np --5 3 6 --6 - n. cl. --2 1 3 --3 - adv. cl. --3 2 3 --3 - embedded topicalisation in old english 177 6. conclusions analysing the statistical data provided in the previous section, it can be appreciated that there is a tendency towards the topicalisation of pronoun objects in oe (pronouns are usually thematic elements, that is, they refer to previously given information). furthermore, the data show that topicalisation with inversion always takes place with full (and sometimes complex) np subjects, which are rhematic elements, representing new information. these two facts are clearly connected with information structural factors, since the motivation to topicalise certain elements or to invert the verb and leave a heavy subject in the right periphery of the sentence may be their thematic or rhematic nature as well as their semantic load. studying the connection between embedded topicalisation and information structure in old english, however, is clearly out of the scope of this paper, so more work on this topic is needed. nevertheless, it has been demonstrated that topicalisation with or without s-v inversion is definitely an available option in oe subordinate sentences, against widespread belief. as suggested in section 3, the fact that this phenomenon is possible also has some important implications for other associated processes of word-order change in the history of english, such as the change xv � sv. that is clearly a matter for future research. references allen, cynthia. 1980. topics in diachronic english-syntax. new york: garland. allen, cynthia. 1995. case marking and reanalysis. oxford: clarendon press. haeberli, eric. 2001. ‘speculations on the syntax of subordinate clauses in old english’, in reading working papers in linguistics 5: 201–229. haider, hubert. 2010. the syntax of german. cambridge: cambridge university press. kroch, antony & ann taylor. 1997. ‘verb movement in old and middle english: dialect variation and language contact’. in ans van kemenade & nigel vincent (eds.) parameters of morphosyntactic change. cambridge: cambridge university press, 297–325. pintzuck, susan. 1991. phrase structures in competition: variation and change in old english word order. phd thesis. department of linguistics. university of pennsylvania, philadelphia. 178 sergio lópez martínez stockwell, robert p. & donka minkova. 1991. ‘subordination and word order change in the history of english’. in dieter kastovsky (ed.) historical english syntax. berlin: mouton de gruyter, 367–408. taylor, ann, anthony warner, susan pintzuk & frank beths. 2003. the yorktoronto-helsinki parsed corpus of old english. department of language and linguistic science, university of york. author’s address university of oviedo, university of kent school of european culture & languages canterbury, ct2 7n kent, uk received: 13 january 2016 e-mail: lopez195@gmail.com revised version accepted: 23 september 2016 selim 20.indb maría del mar gutiérrez-ortiz, selim 20 (2013–2014): 297–307issn: 1132–631x moralejo álvarez, josé luis 2013: historia eclesiástica del pueblo de los anglos. beda el venerable. madrid, akal. pp. 336. isbn: 97884-460-3223-⒍ 24 €. as bertram colgrave states in his introduction to the canonical edition of bede’s historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum (henceforth, he ), it “is probably one of the most popular history books in any language and has certainly retained its popularity longer than any rival” (1969: xvii). more than thirty years aft er colgrave wrote these words, a century aft er charles plummer’s seminal edition and almost thirteen centuries aft er bede’s completion of the he, josé luis moralejo álvarez has translated this historiographical masterpiece into spanish for the fi rst time. providing such treasure for spanish medievalists is a laudable enterprise in itself. beyond the inherent worthiness of the project, moralejo álvarez’s skillfully executed translation deserves our praise: its accuracy makes it a perfect companion for the study of the original text and its naturally rendered spanish makes us forget that we are dealing with a translation. this edition is supplemented by an introduction, explanatory footnotes and a translation of cuthbert’s letter on the death of bede. the introduction is divided into fi ve sections providing relevant information on bede’s life and work, as well as on this particular translation. the fi rst one, “beda el venerable,” sketches a brief biography with the few known details about the quiet life of this scholar and monk. he devoted most of his time to his great interests, namely “aprender, enseñar o escribir” [“learning, teaching or writing”] (5), as he himself states in the last chapter of his history. thus, moralejo álvarez describes him as “un historiador sin historia” [“a historian without history”] (6), like the roman livy, as he led a life that was, in colgrave’s words, “almost devoid of incident” (1969: xxi). moralejo álvarez suggests that bede, as a typical “scholar-monk,” probably combined his intellectual work with the manual labors that a monastery in construction like maría del mar gutiérrez-ortiz 298selim 20 (2013–2014) wearmouth and jarrow required. he completes the portrait with an anecdote included in an anonymous life of ceolfr ith and also reported by plummer and colgrave. according to this text, aft er an epidemic, only a little boy was left to sing the divine offi ce together with abbot ceolfr ith. at fi rst they decided to sing it partially, but soon they took up the whole offi ce. even though bede does not include this episode in his autobiography, moralejo álvarez follows earlier scholars in identify ing the boy with him and provides the anecdote as evidence of his modesty. the section concludes with a short summary of cuthbert’s account of bede’s death, the last appendix to this book, and details about the fate of his mortal remains. aft er this short biography, moralejo álvarez proceeds to classify and briefl y analyze the author’s extensive and diverse production: inspired by plummer’s classifi cation, he divides the list of 30 works provided by bede as well as nine more that can be confi dently attributed to him into four groups: didactic, historicalbiographical, theological-exegetical and poetic writings. bede’s didactic writings reveal his preoccupation with the education of his pupils. moralejo álvarez distinguishes between textbooks dealing with arts, exact and natural sciences and computistics. the he is the most important of his historical-biographical works, which also include pious biographies of previous anglo-saxon monks. most of bede’s production is devoted to theological-exegetical writings: he wrote commentaries, books and even letters interpreting the holy scriptures. his poetical works were written both in latin and anglo-saxon, although there is only one short poem written in this last language extant. his large latin production was religious for the most part, and moralejo álvarez values it as just passable, relying on brunhölzl’s judgment: “no era un gran poeta; por lo general sus versos tienen el sabor de la mesa del estudioso, y en ellos se encuentra poco de poesía” [“he was not a great poet; in general, his lines have the flavor of the scholar’s table, and little poetry can be found in them”] (12). reviews 299 selim 20 (2013–2014) once bede’s books have been organized into these diff erent shelves, moralejo álvarez takes up the study of his most important historiographical work. in order to cover all aspects of the he, he divides this section into the following six subsections. moralejo álvarez examines the words of the title to analyze the time and genre of this work (“la obra en su tiempo y en su género”). although he is considered the fi rst written history of the future “england,” moralejo álvarez points out that bede does not write the history of a country, but the history of the angli, the peoples that settled in britain in the fi ft h century. this gives him the chance to make an interesting remark about how places usually took their name fr om the nation that populated them and not the other way round like nowadays. as for the genre, moralejo álvarez follows colgrave’s idea that the he might have taken hints fr om the eusebius’s ecclesiastical history and gregory of tours’s history of the franks and states that it may be fr amed within the long tradition of national histories by means of which “los nuevos reinos surgidos de las invasiones bárbaras se fueron haciendo un lugar en la gran crónica de europa” [“the new kingdoms that had emerged from the barbarian invasions made a place for themselves in the grand chronicle of europe”] (13) but also within the tradition of ecclesiastical histories. thus, the innovation of bede’s project lies in the combination of both historiographical traditions: he writes the fi rst ecclesiastical history devoted to a particular nation. the second subsection (“la historia eclesiástica como documento histórico”) studies the he as a historical document by considering, on the one hand, bede’s partiality and, on the other, his most relevant contributions to the genre of historiography in europe. given that bede’s work is almost the only historical account of seventh-century britain that we have, our picture of that time is necessarily a partial one. all the more so when his record of the events had the aim of showing “that his people, the english, the gens anglorum, and above all his own particular branch of that people, the northumbrians, had been called by god to a special maría del mar gutiérrez-ortiz 300selim 20 (2013–2014) role in the history of salvation” (thacker 2005: 462). based on thacker’s considerations, moralejo álvarez defi nes bede as an activist historian: besides his evangelistic mission, he has a historical mission in favor of his nation. traditionally, the omission of two important fi gures for christianity in the british isles, namely saint patrick, evangelist of ireland, and saint boniface, the apostle of germany, has been considered the most important fault. although moralejo álvarez borrows fr om colgrave the idea that bede’s use of the christian era represents a fundamental novelty for the genre of historiography in europe, he explains in further detail the origin and the subsequent relevance of this chronology, which dionysius exiguus developed in the 6th century. in addition, he describes how the he is not annalistic, but it is organized with a fl exible chronological system: although bede’s account usually follows the course of time, it is the relevance of events and not their date that places them at the beginning of the books. at the end of this section, moralejo álvarez provides a useful outline of each book that reveals their organization and sums up their contents. the third subsection, “las fuentes de la historia eclesiástica,” is a survey of the works that documented bede’s he. moralejo álvarez recommends colgrave & mynors’s chapter on “bede’s library” for further information regarding the author’s acquaintance with his prologue’s sources—mostly writers fr om the beginning of late antiquity. as for the documents used for the actual he, he mainly refers to the information that bede provides in his preface about his oral and written sources. additionally, he takes a moment to discuss the importance of miraculous elements in a work that aimed to reveal a “providential system of causation” (higham 2006: 98). moralejo álvarez notes that, for these events, bede must have relied on models of the genre such as hagiographical literary works, in addition to the traditional stories and personal information that he himself acknowledges. moralejo álvarez’s detailed description of the he ’s language (“la lengua y el estilo”) centers on the idea that latin was not reviews 301 selim 20 (2013–2014) only an ancient language, but also a foreign language for bede. the distance implied by these conditions prevents the infl uence of macaronic latin, making his language simple but pure. despite giving this grammarian and teacher credit for his remarkable display of rhetorical training, moralejo álvarez adds a new category to the four vulgarisms that, according to michael lapidge, characterize bede’s latin as medieval, namely the periphrasis of habeo with infi nitive to indicate future time. he (23) also qualifi es andré crépin’s statement that “[l]e latin de bède ne montre aucune infl uence de la grammaire de l’anglais” [bede’s latin does not evince any infl uence of english grammar] (2005: i, 29) by citing lapidge’s discussion of the construction of toponymys in the old english manner, that is with a preposition attached to the noun. according to moralejo álvarez, his section on manuscripts is mainly a summary of mynors’s “textual introduction,” but it also includes the opinions of more recent editors. thus, he basically divides the codices that mynors mentions according to plummer’s distinction between class c and class m. even though the last subsection about the he (“la tradición manuscrita”) surveys all published editions fr om the editio princeps presumably printed by heinrich eggestein in the 15th century to lapidge’s 2008–2010 edition, it mainly focuses on the three main critical editions: the fi rst defi nite text, which was produced by plummer at the end of the 19th century together with a learned commentary, colgrave & mynors’s canonical edition, which is the base text for this translation, and lapidge’s recent edition, the fi rst one which takes into account three diff erent witnesses instead of two. even though moralejo álvarez praises lapidge’s philological work, the recent publication of his edition has limited its use for this translation. the abundant scholarship about bede’s life and works in general and about the he in particular makes it diffi cult for our translator to contribute new knowledge. plummer’s massive introduction to his 19th century edition already includes an extensive section about bede’s biography and historical context, a classifi cation and brief maría del mar gutiérrez-ortiz 302selim 20 (2013–2014) study of his diverse production, a refl ection about his religion and remarks about his style. although with a diff erent organization and a laudatory overtone, colgrave’s introduction touches on most of the key aspects of the author’s life and work that moralejo álvarez addresses: his biography, including the anecdote in the life of ceolfr ith, constitutes colgrave’s section “bede’s life,” and the author’s sources are recorded in “bede’s library” and “the history: its models and sources,” which also deals with the genre of the work. moralejo álvarez’s discussion of the language borrows fr om colgrave in using the hisperica famina as an illustration of an overelaborated style of insular latin opposed to bede’s simplicity. however, he builds on colgrave’s treatment of the style by incorporating mariner’s concept of avulgaramiento and lapidge’s medieval syntactic features. in short, moralejo álvarez’s brief but thorough synthesis introduces spanish readers to the important contributions of these two major critical editions, as well as including insights fr om more recent scholarship. moreover, the detailed notes that furnish the text provide readers with a bibliography to deepen their knowledge of the most relevant aspects of bede’s life and work. however, the introduction to this book also includes information unprecedented in previous editions: “apuntes sobre beda en la posteridad y sobre beda en españa” constitutes a ground-breaking section that, consistent with the fi rst translation into spanish, sheds light on bede’s reception in medieval europe and especially in spain. moralejo álvarez sums up the most relevant information available in the abundant scholarship about the author’s posterity: he deals with bede’s early diff usion by virtue of two anglo-saxon scholars, namely his contemporary saint boniface and alcuin of york and the consolidation of his fame in the time of alfr ed the great. bede would not be well-known in spain until the carolingian renaissance in the 10th century. aft er that, he is mentioned in the codex calixtinus, as well as in alfonso x’s general estoria, but he became more relevant aft er the reformation, when spanish scholars reviews 303 selim 20 (2013–2014) began to consider his work “testimonio de la ortodoxia primigenia de inglaterra” [“evidence of england’s original orthodoxy”] (31). about his later posthumous fame, moralejo álvarez points out his infl uence on notable spanish authors, as well as his relevance for english romanticism and especially for the oxford movement, for whom his work was again considered a product of the pure original christianity. even if the introduction is certainly exhaustive, there are certain points that are hardly considered. the section on bede’s posterity mentions alfr ed the great’s translation as an evidence of bede’s posthumous importance, but this early old english version is only briefl y and superfi cially studied. to begin with, although traditionally attributed to king alfr ed’s late-ninth century translation program, the old english version of the historia ecclesiastica (henceforth, oehe ) was composed “anonymously some time at the end of the ninth or beginning of the tenth century” (rowley 2011: 2). sharon m. rowley’s thorough study shows that “the oehe produces and is produced by the complex interplay of continuity and change at work in early britain” (2011: 56). thus, the combined study of both the original and the translation evidences diff erences in time, culture, politics and demographics between bede’s and alfr ed’s world. additionally, frank m. stenton claims that “there are many passages in which bede’s indications of rank or offi ce become clearer through a rendering into ninth century english” (1971: 273). either out of historical interest on the combined study of the original and its translation, or because the old english version might shed light on particular aspects of the latin version, a reader of bede would likely wish to read more about the early old english abridgement of his work; however, he or she cannot fi nd this in moralejo álvarez’s translation. furthermore, this introduction also leaves aside aspects that, according to paul meyvaert (1971: 137), colgrave also fails to mention, such as: maría del mar gutiérrez-ortiz 304selim 20 (2013–2014) the chronological problems due to the use of a diversity of sources […]; the problem of the reorganisation of book i due to the arrival at a late date—when the he was almost complete—of the gregorian letters brought fr om rome by nothelm […]; the problems connected with the manner in which bede treats and modifi es his source (e.g. gildas or eddius’ life of wilfr id). these defi ciencies are less signifi cant in the introduction of a translation than in the historical introduction of a major critical edition. however, all three of these issues would surely have been enlightening for the spanish readers of moralejo álvarez’s translation, especially since they usually have more diffi cult access to the secondary sources that address them. the last section of the introduction informs the readership about the translation. thus, we learn that it is based on colgrave & mynors’s text, although it adopts elements of lapidge’s recent edition such as the convenient division of chapters into paragraphs and the repetition of each thematic epigraph at the beginning of every chapter, an idea that lapidge takes fr om plummer. these decisions considerably simplify both citing and reference in the index of names, and reading. moralejo álvarez announces that the footnotes clarify passages of uncertain interpretation, as well as realia, that is, culture-specifi c concepts, for the unfamiliarized modern reader. but most of this section is devoted to the explanation of the procedures followed to transcribe anglo-saxon and celtic proper names into spanish. even though this new and copious onomastic wealth poses a challenge to the translator, who has not found a way of applying a “un sistema de transcripción riguroso y del todo coherente” [“a rigorous and completely coherent transcription system”] (34), decisions like the adoption of a morphological criterion of adaptation for the names with a tradition in spanish or a general graphic simplifi cation produce versions of the names that naturally fi t the spanish prose. moralejo álvarez’s editorial decisions are successful in facilitating the reading of the text. reviews 305 selim 20 (2013–2014) even though the translation certainly off ers the readers a smooth spanish prose, minor details like the recurrent use of the adverbial phrase “en efecto” for the conj unction “nam” (ii.13.1, 124 or iv.22.5, 233) retain some fl avor of translation. there are also inconsistencies: the noun “cultus” is translated as both “culto” (ii.13.2, 124) and “religión” (ii.13.4, 125 and ii.13.5, 125) within the same passage, and “culto” and “devoción” (iv.22.1) are both used to translate “religio” even within the same paragraph. however, these decisions may be justifi ed on the grounds that, despite the lack of consistency, the chosen word, either cult, devotion or religion, better conveys the sense of the sentence. what is more diffi cult to justify is “caballo de postas” for “equum emissarium” (125). du cange’s glossarium mediæ et infi mæ latinitatis cites the following defi nitions for equus emissarius: “equus fortis et velox, qui extra alios eligitur, et ad equas mittitur ad coitum” [“strong and fast horse, chosen among the rest, and sent to the mares for coitus”] (ezechiel. 33. joan. de janua) and “cheval estallon mit aux champs pour engendrer” [“stallion horse placed in the country to beget”] fr om a latin glossary at saint gall (258). consequently, even though the word “emissarius” certainly means emissary, “equus emissarius” is not a relay horse, but rather a stallion, as colgrave & mynors translate it. given that the priest wants to destroy the idols, a stallion, which is considered stronger and faster than a castrated horse, fi ts much better the sense of the sentence than a relay horse, especially as it is replacing the mare that the priest is usually allowed to ride. despite minor details of this sort, the translation generally renders bede’s latin closely and faithfully, while the footnotes clarify uncertainties and enrich the text with historical references. for example, in the episode of edwin’s conversion (ii.13), moralejo álvarez cites colgrave & mynors to assert the importance of the passage, plummer to explain edwin’s apostasy and wallace-hadrill to look into the biblical antecedents of the bird image. but not all his cultural remarks point to other works: moralejo álvarez also draws an interesting parallel between bede’s claim that anglomaría del mar gutiérrez-ortiz 306selim 20 (2013–2014) saxon priests could only ride mares and the custom in certain spanish dioceses that newly appointed bishops entered the church to take over on a mule. as for the realia, he quotes colgrave & mynors’s translation of “ducibus ac ministris” as “ealdormen and thegns” (124, fn. 119) to help the readers understand concepts that belong to the comitatus, a social structure locally and temporarily foreign to them. the note on goodmanham, a small village close to yorkshire, also clarifi es a toponymy probably unknown to the spanish readership. finally, he draws attention to an echo of virgil’s aeneid. thus, the famous account of edwin’s conversion serves as an illustration of the diff erent types of useful footnotes that the reader encounters in this translation. in conclusion, despite the minor reservations mentioned, moralejo álvarez’s work no doubt meets the readers’ expectations: the faithful spanish version is complemented by explicative footnotes and a well-organized and informed introduction with a body of citations to secondary sources. furthermore, this work represents the fi rst attempt in our country to translate one of the most important references of anglo-saxon history into spanish. thus, the nature of the project and the quality of the result make josé luis moralejo álvarez’s historia eclesiástica del pueblo de los anglos a priceless treasure for spanish scholars of medieval literature. maría del mar gutiérrez-ortiz cornell university references brunhölzl, f. 1975: geschichte der lateinischen literatur des mittelalters i. munich, w. fink. colgrave, b. & r. a. b. mynors 1969: bede’s ecclesiastical history of the english people. oxford, clarendon press. reviews 307 selim 20 (2013–2014) crépin, a., m. lapidge & p. monat 2005: histoire ecclé siastique du peuple anglais. paris, les éditions du cerf. du fresne, c., sieur du cange 1840–1850: glossarium mediae et infi mae latinitatis, 7 vols. paris, firmin didot. higham, n. j. 2006: (re-)reading bede. the ecclesiastical history in context. london, routledge. lapidge, m. ed. & p. chiesa trans. 2008–2010: beda, storia degli inglesi. 2 vols. milano, fondazione lorenzo valla arnoldo mondadori. meyvaert, p. rev. 1971: colgrave, b. & r. a. b. mynors (1969) bede’s ecclesiastical history of the english people. in speculum 46.1: 135–137. plummer, c. 2002 [1896]: venerabilis baedae historiam ecclesiasticam gentis anglorum: historiam abbatum, epistolam ad ecgberctum, una cum historia abbatum auctore anonymo, ad fi dem codicum manuscriptorum denuo recognovit. piscataway, gorgias press. rowley, s. 2011. the old english version of bede’s historia ecclesiastica. cambridge, d. s. brewer. stenton, f. m. 1971: anglo-saxon england (oxford history of england), oxford, oxford university press. thacker, a. 2005: england in the seventh century. in a. fouracre ed. the new cambridge medieval history, volume 1 c.500–c.700. cambridge, cambridge university press: 462–495. wallace-hadrill, j. m. 1988. bede’s ecclesiastical history of the english people: a historical commentary. oxford, oxford university press. • isabel de la cruz cabanillas, selim 21 (2015–2016): 157–166. issn 1132-631x a medicine for the vanity in the head1 isabel de la cruz cabanillas university of alcalá medieval remedy books seem to have a recipe for everything, even for healing vanity. the present study is inspired by one of the medical texts which are preserved in manuscript ferguson 147 housed at glasgow university library. among other items, the manuscript contains a wide hitherto unexplored collection of medical recipes. one of the recipes is entitled medicyn for þe vanyte in þe hede. the same recipe has been documented in other medieval compendia, as it is shown in the samples provided. the etymology of the word vanity in this medical sense is explored in different languages in an attempt to trace back the meaning it has in the recipe to find out how such sense might have originated, as well as the further development of such meaning in english, as attested in the various sources. keywords: medical recipes; medieval medicine; vanity; ms ferguson 147 1. introduction medieval remedy books seem to have a recipe for everything, even for healing vanity. the present study is inspired by a collection of medical recipes preserved in manuscript ferguson 147, housed at glasgow university library (hereafter gul). gul ms ferguson 147 contains 159 folios on paper and parchment, which are mainly devoted to medical recipes (from ff. 63 to 158). the focus is on the medical recipe collection found in folios 63r–91r. the hitherto unexplored compilation contains mostly medical recipes for different 1 this work was made possible through a salvador de madariaga mobility grant for senior researchers, awarded by the spanish ministry of education and culture (ref. pr2015–00248). 158 isabel de la cruz cabanillas diseases, but prognostic texts and charms also form part of this miscellany. the structure of the recipes in ms ferguson 147 follows the traditional structure of the period: a) the title, b) the ingredients, c) the method of preparation, d) the application and, sometimes, e) an efficacy phrase (eggins 1994: 40). the arrangement of the recipes, however, does not follow the traditional de capite ad pedem (“from head to toe”) order. the text begins with a recipe for scabs followed by others for a wide variety of medical symptoms and conditions, such as gout, red eyes, worms in your teeth, migraine and vanity in the head, among others. 2. vanity in the head the vulgate verse “vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas” (ecclesiastes 1:2;12:8) was rendered in king james version as “vanity of vanities; all is vanity”. this sense of futility is the most frequently evoked every time the term is used nowadays. notwithstanding, the word has undergone a significant semantic shift since it was adopted from old french in the thirteenth century. in present-day english, it is defined by the oxford english dictionary (hereafter oed) as “[t]he quality of being vain or worthless; the futility or worthlessness of something”. in previous centuries it had another meaning. our intention is to discuss the etymological origin and development of the word vanity in the medical sense in an attempt to trace back the meaning it had in medieval medical recipes to find out how such a meaning might have originated. the title of the article is taken after one of the shortest recipes, medicyn for þe vanyte in þe hede, which appears on gul ms ferguson 147 (fol. 83r, lines 17–20). after the title, in very few lines the reader learns about the disorder. following the author’s instructions, the condition should disappear by means of the following: take þe yois of walworte and salt and hony and wax and ensense and boyle hem to geder ouer the fuyre and grece þi hed ther wyþ while reading this manuscript at the glasgow university library, it came to my mind how fascinating a remedy for such a common feature could be. a medicine for the vanity in the head 159 likewise, the manuscript could contain other remedies for similar human qualities that have remained incurable despite modern technology and medical knowledge. in fact, other recipes for migraine and other diseases affecting the head are offered in the text. thanks to the middle english dictionary (hereafter med), the reader finds out that in medieval times the condition could be either spiritual or physical, inasmuch as the word had different meanings: apart from designating “foolishness, arrogance, pride or madness”, in medicine it was used to mean “dizziness, light-headedness or simply an occurrence of dizziness”. the med provides the following quotations for such a meaning: a1400 med.bk. (2) (roy 17.a.3) 66: an oynement for vanyte of the heued. a1450 (c1410) lovel. grail (corp–c 80) 23.724: asaied he anon vpe forto stonde, for the vanite in his hed that hadde ben longe. c1450 med.bk. (2) (add 33996) 185: aqua vite [...] dystrueþ vanitees of þe heed. ?c1450 stockh.precipes (stockh 10.90) 51/10: a good onyment for vanyte in þe hed. ?c1450 stockh.precipes (stockh 10.90) 109/15: a good oynement for þe vanyte of þe heed. from this moment onward, i wondered how the word vanity, coming from a long standing tradition from the latin term vanitas-atis, could have acquired this medical meaning. the oed only records the prevailing modern meaning of “futility, worthlessness”. regarding the origin of the lexical unit, it does not provide much information, but claims the french adoption of the word, equivalent to other forms in other romance languages: a of. vanite (f. vanité, = it. vanità, sp. vanidad, pg. vaidade), ad. l. vānitāt-, vānitās, f. vānus vain a. the oed also documents an obsolete sense of “emptiness, lightness; the state of being void or empty; inanity”, and displays some of the quotations attested in the med. the former also provides a late sixteenth-century instance in levens’s pathway to health. my own reading of levens’s work shows two recipes. the first one corresponds with the one in gul ms ferguson 147: “take the iuice of a wallwoort, salt, hony, wax, & ensence, boyle them together, and therewith annoint the temples” (1596: 6). this must have been a wide spread remedy during the middle ages and afterwards, as other sources acknowledge the same recipe for the same purpose. in fact, alonso-almeida 160 isabel de la cruz cabanillas (2014: 81) also records the same recipe for vanity in gul ms hunter 185 (fols. 22v–23r), which he interprets as “light-headedness, delirium”: also a good oynement for þe uanite of þe heued. [f. 23r] tak jus of walwort, salt, hony, wex & encense, ana. boile hem togedre ouer þe fuyre & þerwith anoynte þe heued & þe temples. he schal be hol by godes grace. the ingredients are alike in the recipes: wallwort, salt, honey, wax and incense. even the way of preparing them coincides, as they are meant to be boiled together and then grease the head, although the ms hunter 185 recipe specifies the temples must be anointed too and finishes with an efficacy phrase, whereby the patient is to be healed by god’s grace. likewise, similar recipes are included in the middle english medical texts compilation: 1. [}vnguentum bonum pro vanitate capitis.}] take þe jus of walwort, and salt, &~ hony, &~ wax, &~ encense, and buyle hem to gedur ouer þe fuyre, and þer wyþ a noynte þe heued and þe temples. 2. item a oynement for vanite of þe hed: tac þe ious [\f. 37ra\] of walwrt and salt and hony and wax and recheles and wel hem togedere ouer þe fyr and smer þin hed þerwit. (second corpus compendium, p.163) 2 the first recipe in the middle english medical texts is taken from heinrich (1896: 66), who records this vnguentum bonum pro vanitate capitis on folio 81r in british library manuscript additional 33996. he collated this text with other medical manuscripts housed in the british library; namely, solane 3153, royal ms 17 aiii, royal ms 19674, harleian 1600 and sloane 405. in all these five manuscripts the same recipe for vanity in the head is attested with little variation. additionally, other medieval manuscripts also record the same recipe for vanitate capitis or vanite of þe hed: cambridge, trinity college ms o.2.13, fol. 120v (mooney 1995: 88), british library ms sloane 3285, fol. 93 (loen 2 second corpus compendium.ms: corpus christi college cambridge 388, ff. 36va– 48vb. hunt, t. with m. benskin: three receptaria from medieval england: the languages of medicine in the fourteenth century. (medium ævum monographs new series xxi.) oxford: the society for the study of medieval languages and literature, 2001. pp.163–185. a medicine for the vanity in the head 161 marshall 2005: 357), as well as oxford, bodleian library ashmole 1485, fol. 107v (eldredge 2007: 96). all the ingredients are shared by the authors: wallwort, salt, honey, wax, and incense, which is not included in the first manuscript. the second recipe by levens (1596) is a complete treatment for vanity in the head, to comfort the brain and memory and for a fair face, which finishes with an efficacy phrase confirming that the treatment really works: for the vainitie of the head, and to wash the head, and to comfort the braine and memory, and for a fayre face. take lye that is not so strong, and put two pyls of dreuges, the pils of as many citrons, the blossomes of camomell, bay leaues a handfull, of maiden-haire a handfull, of egrimonie two or three vnces, of barlystraw chopped in paeces, a dishful of fenegraeke, a pound of wine lyes, tow or three dishfulls of broome blossoms, put all these into the iye, and mingle them together, and so wash the head therewith, and put a little myrre and cinamon: this is proued. from the seventeenth century onwards no other recipes could be found for the condition affecting the head. the coruña corpus 3 records just one instance of the core meaning of “futility” in elizabeth wakefield’s an introduction to the natural history and classification of insects (1816), corresponding to the life sciences section of the corpus, whereas the comprehensive early modern english medical texts (2010) document several occurrences, but all of them refer to the primary meaning it has nowadays. in this sense, it can be found in gideon harvey’s vanities of philosophy and physic (1700). other western medical traditions also record this idea of placing the vanity disorder in the head even if it is a spiritual disease. indeed, saint bernardine of siena refers to “vanitas capitis mulieris est vexillum diaboli”. although he is referring to the spiritual condition, it is placed in the head. nonetheless, in gul ms ferguson 147 the recipe is not just aimed at women or, at least, there is no specific indication of this. 4 3 i am grateful to isabel moskowich for granting access to this part of the coruña corpus, which has not been published yet. 4 i am grateful to bertha rodríguez rodilla for suggesting this idea to me. my thanks also to ana isabel martínez ferreira who let me know vanitas capitis could be related to another disorder known as fumus capitis. this thread was searched by consulting 162 isabel de la cruz cabanillas regarding the origin of this medical sense, the question to be answered now is whether vanity already had this medical meaning in latin or was developed in the romance languages, or just in french, or in middle english. apart from the med, no other comprehensive middle english dictionaries are available. thus, the second possibility was to look up the word in several etymological french dictionaries, to check whether, apart from the straight meaning, the adjective vain or its derivative, vanite, recorded the medical sense. the consulted lexicographic works show the following results: 1. bloch & von warburg (1968: 662) indicate that in the middle ages vain also meant “faible, abattu”. 2. dazaut et al. (1969: 780) also record vain as “faible, épuisé”, which can be rendered as “feeble, exhausted”. 3. rey (1994: 2209), when talking about vanité, refers to the fact that it can also be employed in the sense of “faiblesse du corps, défaillance”; that is, weakness, faintness. 4. le trésor de la langue française informatisé includes no such a meaning, neither under the entry vain nor under vanité. 5. in the dictionnaire du moyen français the noun vainete is recorded as “faiblesse, défaillance” c. 1380 rem. ex. d’a. fr., gloss. lat. fr. (montp., c. 1380, secordia, vainneté). likewise, the adjective vain, when applied to a person or animal, means “deprived from energy”. hence, the different meanings of a) “faible, épuisé”, b) “abattu, sans force morale”, and c) “fatigant, épuisant” are attested. it seems apparent that the meaning was present in middle french and was imported into middle english from this language. the fact that similar words exist in spanish with this meaning made me extend the search to other romance historical lexicographic works. in spanish one finds terms like evanescente, desvanecerse (desvanecimiento, devaneo), all of them coming from the same latin root evanescere, clearly related to vain and vanitas. not every dictionary records this meaning, as happened with the french ones, but indeed some of them did: 1. meyer-lübcke (1972: 763) records desvanecido as “schwindelig”, which means “dizzy, giddy”. several classical medical authors, but clear relationship could not be established with the disease dealt with in this article. a medicine for the vanity in the head 163 2. corominas & pascual (1980: 738) document different derivatives from vano, such as vanearse in galician “írsele a uno la cabeza” or in spanish devanear “hablar desconcertado o desvariado”, devanecerse “sentir vahído”. all the senses highlight the idea of weakness in the head to the extent that one can either lose consciousness or sanity. 3. covarrubias (1611/2006: 1511) associates vanidad with being so full of pride as to loose one’s head, a kind of madness, or loss of consciousness (“desvanecimiento, presunción y especie de locura”). 4. diccionario de autoridades (1984: 420) goes back to the latin saying debile caput, vel nutans to illustrate the entry cabeza vana, defined as “la que está debil, ò flaca por enfermedad, ù demasiado trabajo” (“the head that is weak or feeble due to disease or excessive work”). 5. herrera (1996: 519) states that in medical treatises, desvanecimiento and esvanescimiento are always associated with “headache and faintness”: “la sangría de las dos venas de la postrera parte de la cabeça de cada qual de los costados que llaman colodrillo aprouecha contra el dolor de esvanescimiento de la cabeça e alienación del sentido” (compendio de la humana salud, 1494). finally, the consulted latin etymological dictionaries are witnesses of the primary meaning, “pride, foolishness”. in this sense it is also attested by ernout & meillot (1951: 1260), de vaan’s (2008: 653) and valpy (1828: 494– 495). however, du cange’s glossary records this idea of “weakness in the head” or “exhaustment”, illustrated in the following quotation: lassitudo, virium defectio, gall. abatement. consuet. fontanell. mss.: nobis autem conceditur post matutinas redire ad lectum, ne somnum quem corpori fragili subtraheremus, resumere per diem lassitudine et vanitate compelleremur. this could be translated as “[t]o grow weary of, the defection of the strength, […] however, we are granted to go back to bed after matins, which the body is weak, they should not be deprived of sleep, and resume it by day, and the weariness and vanity had compelled us”. other romance languages, such as italian, show similar meanings in vanus or its derivatives. thus, in italian svanire, svenire, and henceforth svenimento means “to lose power”, as shown in dizionario etimologico online. this idea of weakness could have developed from its sense of lacking power. likewise, the indo-european dictionaries consulted provide no explanation of the different meanings. by looking up the word vain in the proto-indoeuropean english dictionary one can learn that latin vanus derives from indo-european wonós 164 isabel de la cruz cabanillas or wans meaning “lacking, wanting”, but no further development is provided. likewise, roberts & pastor (1996: 55) document this meaning as well as that of “emptiness”. it follows from here that, just by consulting lexicographic works, it is hard to assert whether the medical meaning was present in classical latin or was developed in the middle ages. 3. conclusions medieval remedy books are of interest to academia, especially if they remain unexplored, as it is the case of the medical collection in glasgow university library manuscript ferguson 147. the recipes in the manuscript show remedies for a wide variety of medical conditions. one of them is “vanity in the head”. vanity seems to be a disease that physicians have tried to heal since long ago, as documented in the different medieval receptaria explored. in vain, the present piece of work has tried to unveil the origin of its double meaning, especially this sense referring to the medical disorder. nonetheless, it is hoped to have made clear the fact that this weakness was already present in latin and was inherited in the different romance languages, as attested in the various lexicographic references mentioned above. from middle french the meaning was exported to middle english along with the more straight meaning of “emptiness”. the sense of “dizziness, feeling feeble”, especially in the head, has been documented until the late sixteenth century in english, as the recipe collections used have demonstrated. this meaning is still present in other western languages, but it fell out of use in the english language at some imprecise time from the seventeenth century onwards. references alonso-almeida, francisco. (2014). a middle english medical remedy book from glasgow university library ms hunter 185. middle english texts 50. heidelberg: carl winter. bloch, oscar & walther von wartburg. (1968). dictionnaire etymologique de la langue française. paris: presses universitaires de france. corominas, joan & josé a. pascual. (1980). diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico. madrid: gredos. de covarrubias orozco, sebastian. (1611/2006). tesoro de la lengua castellana o española. eds. ignacio arellano & rafael zafra. madrid: iberoamericana/venwuent. a medicine for the vanity in the head 165 du cange, charles du fresne et al. (1883–1887). glossarium mediæ et infimæ latinitatis. niort: favre. available at http://ducange.enc.sorbonne.fr. dazaut, albert, jean dubois & henri mitterrand. (1969). noveau dictionnaire etymologique et historique. paris: larrouse. dictionnaire du moyen français (1330–1500). available at http://www.atilf.fr/dmf/. eggins, suzanne. (1994). an introduction to systemic functional linguistics. london: pinter. eldredge, l.m. (2007). the index of middle english prose, handlist ix: manuscripts in the ashmole collection, bodleian library. oxford: d.s. brewer. ernout, alfred & antoine meillet. (1951). dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine. paris: klincksieck. 2 vol. heinrich, fritz. (1896). ein mittelenglisches medizinbuch. halle: max niemeyer. herrera, maría teresa (dir.). (1996). diccionario español de textos médicos antiguos. madrid: arco libros. ker, neil r. (1977). medieval manuscripts in british libraries. oxford: oxford university press. 5 vols. kurath, hans & sherman m. kuhn (ed.). (1959–). middle english dictionary. ann arbor: university of michigan press. available at http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/m/med/ (retrieved 1/05/2015). levens, peter. (1596). a right profitable booke for all diseases. london: printed by i. roberts for edward white, and are to be solde at the little north doore of paules church, at the signe of the gun. loen-marshal, maria helena. (2005). an edition of the english texts in british library ms sloane 3285, practical medicine, sussex dialect and the london associations of a fifteenth century book. phd thesis. university of glasgow. available at http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3128/. lubotsky, alexander (ed.). indo-european etymological dictionaries online. available at http://dictionaries.brillonline.com. meyer-lübcke, wilhelm. (1972). romanisches etymologisches wörterbuch. heidelberg: carl winter. 5 th ed. mooney, linne r. (1995). the index of middle english prose, handlist xi: manuscripts in the library of trinity college cambridge. oxford: d.s. brewer. moskowich, isabel, inés lareo, gonzalo camiña & begoña crespo. corpus of english life sciences texts (celist), part of the coruña corpus of english scientific writing. beta version. pianigiani, ottorino. (1907). vocabolario etimologico della lingua italiana. roma/milan: società editrice dante alighieri di albrighi, segati, vol 1 followed by (1926) aggiunte, correzioni e variazioni. florence: ariani. available at http://www.etimo.it/. proto-indo-european -english, english -proto-indo-european etymological lexicon. available at http://dnghu.org/en/proto-indo-european-language/. 166 isabel de la cruz cabanillas pokorny, julius. (1959). indogermanisches etymologisches wörterbuch. bern/munich: francke verlag. real academia española. (1984). diccionario de autoridades. facsimile edition. madrid: gredos. rey, alain (dir.). (1994). dictionnaire historique de la lange française. paris: le robert. roberts, edward a. & susana pastor. (1996). diccionario etimológico indoeuropeo de la lengua española. madrid: alianza editorial. simpson, john a. & edmund s.c. weiner (eds.). (1989). the oxford english dictionary. oxford: oxford university press. 2 nd ed. on cd-rom, version 4.0, available at www.oed.com (retrieved 1/06/2015). taavitsinen, irma, päivi pahta & matti mäkinen. (2005). middle english medical texts. amsterdam: john benjamins. taavitsinen, irma, päivi pahta et al. (2010). early modern english medical texts. amsterdam: john benjamins. le trésor de la langue française informatisé. available at http://atilf.atilf.fr/tlf.htm (retrieved 30/04/2015). de vaan, michiel arnould cor de. (2008). etymological dictionary of latin and the other italic languages. leiden/boston: brill. valpy, francis edward jackson. (1828). an etymological dictionary of the latin language. london: printed by a. j. valpy. sold by baldwin and co. (longman and co. and g. b. whittaker.) author’s address facultad de filosofía y letras dept. filología moderna, colegio de caracciolos universidad de alcalá trinidad, 3, 28801 alcalá de henares, madrid, spain received: 15 december 2015 e-mail: isabel.cruz@uah.es revised version accepted: 15 may 2016 selim 16.indb david moreno olalla, selim 16 (2009): 173–182issn: 1132–631x gutiérrez arranz, josé maría 2010. la teoría de la traducción desde la grecia clásica hasta la edad media. sistematización en los comentarios y traducciones de la consolación de la filosofía de boecio (i). murcia: servicio de publicaciones de la ucam (universidad católica san antonio de murcia). [5]+ 108 pp. isbn: 978-84-96353-94-⒎ 18,00 €. parue—nec inuideo—sine me, liber, ibis in urbem. dadas las características del volumen y la materia que en él se trata, ¿qué mejor modo de comenzar una reseña como ésta (destinada a una revista de medievalistas ingleses) que con la conocida  ase de ovidio que abre sus tristia, la misma que (convenientemente pasada por el tamiz boccacciano) sirvió de base a geoff rey chaucer para su no menos famoso “go, litel bok, go litel myn tragedye”?1 pues también aquí se va a tratar de un paruus liber, de un librito de poco más de 100 páginas y dimensiones casi idénticas a las de la revista que el lector tiene ahora entre las manos. el volumen, sin embargo, sólo es pequeño en lo que respecta al tamaño y al número de páginas. la cantidad de información en él contenida es, como a continuación se verá, abundante y la materia objeto del análisis está tratada de un modo conciso pero minucioso. de hecho al reseñador le resulta más bien sorprendente, y laudable, la habilidad con la que el autor ha logrado incluir tanto material en tan poco espacio. el presente trabajo es la primera entrega de una serie que cuyo objetivo declarado es “revisar y comentar ocho siglos de tradición boeciana en la cultura medieval europea” (prefacio, [4]). el doctor josé maría gutiérrez arranz, profesor en la universidad católica san antonio (murcia), nos embarca, así pues, en un recorrido histórico por el mundo intelectual y académico de la edad media que mostrará la infl uencia que sobre él ejerció el texto de la consolatio philosophiae, y cómo no sólo las ideas, sino en ocasiones incluso las mismas metáforas de su autor, el fi lósofo romano anicio manlio severino boecio (475/480–524), se repitieron una y otra vez a lo largo de aquellos siglos. parece que los estudios boecianos siguen dis utando de buena salud, pues este volumen persigue unos objetivos 1 la  ase, inútil es recordarlo, se encuentra en troilus and criseyde, v.1786. como es sabido, el autor inglés tomó prestada la idea del fi nal del il filocolo, la novela bizantina del autor toscano (v.97: “o piccolo mio libretto, a me più anni stato graziosa fatica”, quaglio 1967: 673). sobre el infl ujo de boccaccio en chaucer, vid. wallace 1985. 174 david moreno olalla selim 16 (2009) muy similares a los de un reciente análisis publicado dentro del cambridge companion to boethius.2 esto, lejos de ser un problema, es más bien motivo de alegría, ya que la aproximación al tema es distinta en ambos estudiosos: los dos trabajos, más que solaparse, se complementan. el punto de partida de esta travesía intelectual es la obra de un contemporáneo casi exacto del propio boecio, flavio magno aurelio casiodoro senator (ca. 484/490–ca. 580), inserta por lo tanto en el mismo marco histórico de la italia ostrogoda en el que se desarrolló la obra boeciana—de hecho, se cree que casiodoro sustituyó a boecio como magister offi ciorum tras su la caída política. el puerto de llegada, al que se arribará en un futuro volumen, serán los textos del inglés nicholas trevet (ca. 1258–1334)3 y (es de suponer) particularmente su expositio super librum boetii consolatione, que fueron redactados en una época no menos turbulenta que la de los últimos años de gobierno de teodorico el grande en que vivieron boecio y casiodoro: la de la inglaterra de principios del s. xiv y del reinado del malhadado eduardo ii. este primer volumen de la serie, que comienza como ya se ha indicado con la infl uencia de la consolatio sobre casiodoro y se detiene en juan escoto eriúgena (ca. 815–877), se divide claramente en tres partes de extensión desigual. la primera sección, de carácter introductorio y que 2 wetherbee 2009. sin duda el corto espacio de tiempo entre la aparición de este volumen (mayo 2009) y del que hoy se reseña aquí explica que no aparezca en la bibliografía citada al fi nal de la obra. 3 el autor emplea la ortografía ⟨triveth⟩ que es ajena en general a los documentos ingleses de la época consultados: éstos usan preferentemente las grafías ⟨trevet⟩ y, en menor medida ⟨trivet⟩ y su variante ⟨tryvet⟩. en inglés,  ancés y alemán contemporáneos parece que la grafía trevet es aún la preferida, al menos si hemos de juzgar por los lemas empleados en sus entradas para el oxford dictionary of national biography (‘trevet [trivet], nicholas’; clark 2004), el dictionnaire des philosophes médiévaux (‘nicolas trevet (ou nicolas triveth)’; patar 2006: 447) y el lexikon des mittelalters (‘trevet⒣ , nicholas’; taylor 2000). en español la cosa no parece estar tan clara (cf. por ejemplo los títulos de las obras de saquero suárez-somonte & gonzález rolán 1990, de un lado, y el de nascimento & díaz de bustamante 1984, por otro). resulta por ello curioso que una razzia por la red a través de un conocido buscador online reporte que la cadena ‘nicholas trivet’ es—de largo—la preferida en el mundo virtual, con 10.800 resultados,  ente a las comparativamente escasas 3.010 apariciones de ‘nicholas trevet’ y los muy magros resultados de ‘nicholas triveth’ y ‘nicholas treveth’ (89 y 80). las variantes ‘nicolas t—’ arrojan números comparables (1490×, 710×, 368×, 111×, respectivamente). 175 reviews selim 16 (2009) ocupa los dos primeros capítulos (pp. 1–16), principia con un somero estudio, o más bien un comentario general, sobre el apparatus transferendi y la teoría de la traducción en la antigüedad (cap. 1: ‘generalidades: traducción moderna y apparatus transferendi medieval’). sin solución de continuidad, el autor enlaza a continuación este asunto con una serie de cuestiones de carácter netamente retórico, atendiendo en particular a los procesos de mimesis, imitatio y exercitatio (cap. 2: ‘mimesis, imitatio, translatio, discipuli facienda’). se explica la visión que de tales recursos oratorios han tenido los teóricos antiguos, desde aristóteles a quintiliano, y se analiza condensadamente el uso que de éstos hicieron luminarias forenses como isócrates o cicerón. los temas que en esta primera sección del libro se tratan son sin duda del mayor interés, pero este reseñador no puede sino reconocer que no ha acertado a adivinar del todo el objetivo de la sección en el conj unto del volumen. es posible que responda a un deseo de inj ertar a boecio dentro de una tradición retórica de imitación y préstamo liberal de las ideas de las auctoritates, política que por supuesto se prolongará luego en los autores que estudia más pormenorizadamente. una explicación más clara sobre este particular, de todos modos, hubiera sido bienvenida por el no especialista. la parte central de la obra (pp. 16–39), que ya se apunta en la sección fi nal del capítulo 2 (2.6: ‘“translationis exercitatio”: presupuestos en la tarea de traducir. el ejemplo del de consolatione philosophiae’) y que se desarrolla a lo largo de todo el capítulo 3 (‘los comentarios y traducciones de la consolación de la fi losofía de boecio’), es la de o ecer un listado de ejemplos que demuestran cómo los autores post-boecianos bebieron abundantemente de los temas, ideas y metáforas que o ece la consolatio philosophiae. se añade también un listado de las traducciones de esta obra a otras lenguas, que quiere ser exhaustivo (¡se contabilizan 133!), y que van desde la inglesa hecha bajo los auspicios de al edo el grande a las realizadas en el siglo xiv. en esta sección del libro se analiza cómo la obra de boecio gravitó (amén de sobre una serie de autores anónimos) sobre los siguientes escritores: casiodoro, columbano, virgilio de toulouse, julián de toledo, waldram de st. gall, jonás de orléans, froumundo de tegernsee, audrado módico, hroswitha de gandersheim, honorio de autun, saxo el 176 david moreno olalla selim 16 (2009) gramático, pascasio radberto de corbie, la emperatriz adelaida, moduino de auxerre, wala ido estrabón, sedulio escoto, lupo de ferrières y juan escoto eriúgena. especial atención se ha dedicado al estudio de la infl uencia que la consolación tuvo sobre alcuino de york (pp. 23–34). dado que algunos de estos autores (waldram de st gall, froumundo de tegernsee, o moduino de auxerre, por ejemplo) son desconocidos incluso para la generalidad del público cultivado al que se dirige la obra, muchos lectores hubieran agradecido un pequeño bosquejo biográfi co o acaso un digesto de sus correspondientes entradas en la obra seminal de max manitius. en los casos donde el ascendiente boeciano resulta más evidente (por ejemplo, en los casos de alcuino o julián de toledo) el autor sigue un patrón establecido. la sección comienza con una discusión, tersa como siempre, sobre el estado de la cuestión y se comentan de manera genérica los puntos comunes entre el texto de boecio y el del autor tratado. a continuación se o ece, en dos columnas, un número de  agmentos extraídos de las obras de estos autores, junto con el texto de la consolación que pudo servir de fuente o inspiración. dado que no siempre es fácil conseguir los textos latinos originales y realizar de ese modo el deseable cotejo, resulta una excelente idea o ecerlos directamente al juicio del lector. tales topoi sirven además de complemento ideal para el capítulo de wetherbee, que trata el tema de una forma mucho más general que la que aquí se consigue y  ecuentemente sin o ecer al lector los  agmentos paralelos. para mayor abundamiento y en benefi cio de los no iniciados en el idioma de virgilio, los pasajes se acompañan de su correspondiente traducción al español. la selección de textos es acertada aunque alguno (por ejemplo el “nonne unus est omnium pater?” de virgilio de toulouse, p. 30) parece  ase propia de cualquier teólogo monoteísta, y por lo tanto no delata, necesaria o evidentemente, infl uencia boeciana. el trabajo se completa con una breve discusión sobre la autoría de un controvertido saeculi noni auctoris in boetii consolationem philosophiae commentarius, que la tradición ha atribuido al eriúgena y cuyo texto latino, tomado de la edición de edmund taite silk (roma, 1935), se o ece al fi nal del libro con traducción al español en página opuesta (pp. 40–103). siguiendo los argumentos de silk, el profesor gutiérrez arranz se decanta por aceptar la autoría del fi lósofo irlandés. 177 reviews selim 16 (2009) la traducción del commentarius del (pseudo-)escoto es, hasta donde le alcanza la información al reseñador, la primera que se hace a nuestra lengua y ha de ser por tanto motivo de alborozo para la academia y de sincera felicitación para su autor. el autor ha optado por hacer una versión española bastante literal en lo sintáctico, pero que fl uye naturalmente y es sin dudas idiomática. como es inevitable en tales casos, todo lector con ínfulas de traductor encontrará en la versión que se le o ece expresiones y giros que les resultarán más o menos afortunados. pero es evidente que poco o nada de ello debería preocupar al autor: son los gajes del ofi cio. más censurables son los  agmentos (por lo demás, pocos) en los que el texto español resulta confuso. en algún caso, además, es posible que la puntuación que o ece el texto latino pueda haber jugado alguna mala pasada al versionador. por ejemplo, la  ase “quandoquidem manet tibi illaesum et inviolatum, quod pretiosius habes, ergo non merito poteris causari, id est conqueri, de infortunio” (p. 82) que glosa cp ii prosa 4 se vierte como “puesto que permanece en ti ileso e inviolado, lo que tú afortunado tienes, por lo tanto no podrás quejarte por méritos, esto es, contrariarte, por el infortunio” (p. 83). a juicio de quien esto escribe, la  ase española es casi ininteligible tal y como está redactada (no es posible sino preguntarse “¿qué es lo que permanece ileso e inviolado?”). eso se debe en parte a la coma tras “inviolado” (inviolatum), que sirve en el texto latino para marcar el comienzo de la oración de relativo con antecedente callado y función de sujeto. tal puntuación es usual sobre todo en textos editados por germanoy  ancoparlantes, pero resulta totalmente ajena a la sintaxis española, que aborrece la coma entre sujeto y predicado.4 para colmo de males, en este caso el traductor parece haber leído pretiosius (adverbio en 4 salvo que se deba a un error tipográfi co en la edición española, la aparición de la coma en el texto del commentarius establecido por e. t. silk (1901–1981) no deja de resultar un poco llamativa, dado que el editor era estadounidense y, salvo un periodo de estancia en italia como fellow de la american academy in rome (1929–1931), nació y vivió toda su vida en connecticut, estrechamente ligado a la universidad de yale, donde desarrolló íntegramente su carrera académica (ulery 1994: 589). aun aceptando que se trata de un comentario impresionista y que carece de datos fehacientes, este recensor no recuerda un uso similar de comas entre sujeto y predicado en los textos latinos editados por anglosajones (como los editados en oxford classical texts o loeb classical library). ¿quizás el profesor silk fue educado en la rancia tradición continental de los ‘teubners’ y los ‘budés’? 178 david moreno olalla selim 16 (2009) grado comparativo) como *pretiosus (adjetivo en grado positivo), o quizás no se ha percatado de que pretiosius habere es un giro (¿postclásico?) que signifi ca ‘tener en la mayor estima’ y tradujo e iudicio suo. este recensor se permite sugerir la siguiente traducción, que omite además el ilativo ergo por una mera cuestión estilística (ya que funciona en coordinación con quandoquidem y lastra el ritmo de la  ase) y mantiene el valor como objeto indirecto de tibi: ‘puesto que lo que más aprecias se te mantiene ileso e inviolado, no podrás quejarte [etc.]’. incidiendo aún un poco más en los aspectos relativos a la hermenéutica, hay que indicar también lo sorprendentes que resultan en ocasiones las versiones de los nombres propios latinos. en descargo del autor, empero, conviene recordar que se trata de un área minada y donde con  ecuencia reina el caos.5 algunas formas tienen un regusto italianizante, como ‘crasso’ (crassus), ‘marziano capella’ (martianus capella), ‘juliano de toledo’ (iulianus toletanus) o ‘modoino de auxerre’ (moduinus). hubieran sido preferibles las grafías ‘craso’ (que aparece así escrito una vez en la p. 11), ‘marciano capella’, ‘julián de toledo’ y ‘moduino’—aunque éste se presta a cierto debate.6 en algún caso, como en pascasio radberto (santo de la iglesia católica cuya fi esta se celebra el 26 de abril), el nombre sugiere más bien el uso de fuentes  ancesas ya que se le menciona como 5 la catholic encyclopedia, por ejemplo, o ece las siguientes ortografías alternativas para hroswitha de gandersheim: ‘roswitha, hrotswitha, hrosvitha and hrotsuit’ (scheid 1910: 504), y de hecho existen más combinaciones (hrotsvit, hroswith, hrotsvitha, rosvitha, etc.). en países de tradición romance como españa e italia no es raro encontrar su nombre como ‘rosvita’ (véanse, por ejemplo, los títulos de martos fernández & moreno soldevilla 2005 y bisanti 2005). 6 la variante con -ues mejor, al menos etimológicamente, ya que el nombre latino sugiere la presencia del formante germánico -wine que aparece también en ealhwine (ánglico alhwine), es decir, alcuino. no parecen existir investigaciones sobre este tema (ni ebert 1878: 330 ni dümmler 1886: 80 emplean argumentos lingüísticos), pero probablemente su nombre vernáculo fuera cognado de oe *mōdwine, con probable vocal larga según sugieren las variantes diptongadas muatwinus, muaduuini propias del alemán medieval (vid. braune 1975: § 39; lista completa de formas en manitius 1911: 549). el nombre está recogido al menos una vez en la prosopografía anglosajona: el little domesday (f. 95r–v) menciona 8 veces a un moduinus como tenant in capite de varios lugares en el este de essex—lo que, dígase de paso, podría dar algún apoyo al argumento de ebert, que suponía a este autor un origen anglosajón  ente al  anconio de dümmler. 179 reviews selim 16 (2009) ‘paschase radbert’;7 lo mismo vale, probablemente, para nicholas triveth (vid. nota 3). otro ejemplo llamativo es el de honorio de autun, nombre sufi cientemente bien establecido en español pero que en el volumen se designa como ‘honorio augustodunense’. reza el dicho que no hay rosa sin espina, y esta reseña no será una excepción. si bien es mucho y bueno lo que se puede decir en torno al contenido de este trabajo (dejando aparte las minucias que se han apuntado en las anteriores páginas), por desgracia no es posible decir lo mismo en lo que atañe al continente. el libro es mejorable desde el punto de vista ortotipográfi co. publicar en letra cursiva el original del commentarius, por ejemplo, resulta un opción discutible, puesto que al cabo de no mucho tiempo la lectura del texto latino fatiga la vista. la decisión se entendería mejor si la traducción al español apareciese en la misma hoja que el texto pero, como ya se ha indicado, ésta se da en la página opuesta. no ayuda tampoco el hecho de que los tipos usados en la redacción del libro sean tan pequeños: es probable que no excedan los 9 pt en el cuerpo de texto y los 7 pt en la edición y las notas al pie. pese a que se emplea con  ecuencia (sobre todo en escritos de pedagogía), parece desafortunada la ortografía ‘paideía’ (empleada varias veces en p. 5, siempre con entrecomillado doble), ya que en español el acento sobre la vocal alta parece romper el diptongo del original griego. si, como parecen sugerir las comillas, la palabra es una transliteración del término clásico, entonces la cursiva hubiera sido una solución preferible, toda vez que el autor usa las comillas dobles con otros usos (en particular, para citar y para o ecer signifi cados). alternativamente, podría haber considerado dejar el término en su alfabeto original como παιδεία—tal y como hace con otros términos griegos: ἑρμενεία (pp. 2, 3); τρόποι, τρεπεῖν (p. 3); συμβουλευτικόν, δικανικόν, ἐπιδεικτικόν (p. 7). sin embargo, el problema que debe tenerse más en cuenta para los futuros volúmenes de la serie es el de los errores tipográfi cos. aunque por lo general son de ínfi mo fuste (tildes extraviadas o encontradas donde no se las espera, comillas viudas y paréntesis huérfanos, alguna letra de más y varias comas de menos), en este volumen son tristemente abundantes 7 nótese por lo demás que en varias obras de referencia, y sobre todo en el index scriptorum novus mediae latinitatis, el nombre aparece invertido como ‘radbertus paschasius’. lo mismo ocurre con servatus lupus, al que con  ecuencia se alude como lupus servatus. 180 david moreno olalla selim 16 (2009) y deslucen lo que en conj unto es un trabajo meritorio. se ha detectado además lo que parece un yerro de imprenta de cierta consideración, ocurrido sin duda durante el proceso de maquetación. en la página 22 el autor compara, a través de las columnas paralelas a las que ya se ha hecho referencia, una parte de cp iii, metro 9 (“quem non externae pepulerunt fi ngere causae… ”) con un pasaje de julián de toledo (in nahum 16: “ninive speciosa interpretatur… ”); pero la traducción que o ece para este último texto (“si no, o se entiende [sic] las cosas impresionantes… .”) no parece corresponder en absoluto con el original latino. de todas maneras, resulta innecesario (y casi de mal tono entre medievalistas) recordar que las erratas jamás deben atribuirse al autor de la obra sino a los taimados duendes de la imprenta. así que al reseñista, objeto habitual de sus maldades, no le queda más que invitar cordialmente al profesor gutiérrez arranz a perseverar en los próximos años en sus investigaciones y publicaciones boecianas (a las cuales pronostica un excelente futuro), y a cuidarse de no atraer con ellas la mirada del perspicaz titivillus, infatigable en su afán de llenar la bolsa con nuestros deslices editoriales. y es que, si hemos de creer a los escribas medievales, podría irle el alma en el envite. david moreno olalla university of málaga referencias bisanti, a. 2005: un ventennio di studi su rosvita di gardersheim. spoleto: centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo. braune, w. 1975: althouchdeutsche grammatik. tübingen: max niemeyer. clark, j. g. 2004: trevet [trivet], nicholas (b. 1257×65, d. in or a er 1334). en c. matthew ed. gen. oxford dictionary of national biography. oxford, oxford university press. [versión online accesible a través de: http:// www.oxforddnb.com/index/101027744/nicholas trevet]. dümmler, e. 1886: nasos (modoinus) gedichte an karl den grossen. neues archiv der gesellschaft für ältere deutsche geschichtskunde 11: 73–91. 181 reviews selim 16 (2009) ebert, a. 1878: naso, angilbert und der confl ictus veris et hiemis. zeitschrift für deutsches alterthum und deutsche literatur 22: 328–335. manitius, m. 1911: geschichte des lateinisches literatur des mittelalters. erste band: von justinian bis zur mitte des 10. jahrhunderts. munich: c. h. beck. martos fernández, j. & r. moreno soldevilla intro., tr. y notas 2005: rosvita de gandersheim. obras completas. (col. arias montano 78.) huelva, universidad de huelva. nascimento, a. a. & j. m. díaz de bustamante eds. 1984: nicolas trivet ánglico. comentario a las bucólicas de virgilio. santiago de compostela: secretariado de publicacións da universidade de santiago. patar, b. 2006: dictionnaire des philosophes médiévaux. longueuil: éditions fides. quaglio, a. e. ed. 1967: filocolo. milano, mondadori. saquero suárez-somonte, p. & t. gonzález rolán 1990: las glosas de nicolás de trevet sobre los trabajos de hércules vertidas al castellano: el códice 10.220 de la b.n. de madrid y enrique de villena. epos. revista de filología 6: 177–198. scheid, n. 1910: hroswitha. en c. g. herbermann ed. catholic encyclopedia. an international work of reference on the constitution, doctrine, discipline, and history of the catholic church. vol. vii [gregory-infallibility]. new york, robert appleton company: 504–505. silk, e. t. ed. 1935: saeculi noni auctoris in boetii consolationem philosophiae commentarius. (papers and monographs of the american academy in rome ix.) roma, american academy in rome. taylor, j. 2000: trevet⒣ , nicholas. en bretschner-gisinger, ch. & th. meier eds. lexikon des mittelalters [cd-rom]. stuttgart, j. b. metzler’sche verlagsbuchhandlung-carl ernst poeschel verlag. ulery jr., r. w. 1994: silk, edmund taite. en w. w. briggs, jr. ed. biographical dictionary of north american classicists. westport & london, greenwood press: 589–590. union académique internationale 1973: index scriptorum novus mediae latinitatis ab anno dccc usque ad annum mcc. hafniae, ejnar munksgaard. wallace, d. 1985: chaucer and the early writings of boccaccio. (chaucer studies xiii.) cambridge, d. s. brewer. 182 david moreno olalla selim 16 (2009) wetherbee, w. 2009: the consolation and medieval literature. en j. marenbon ed. the cambridge companion to boethius. cambridge, cambridge university press: 279–301. • received 21 oct 2010; revision received o4 nov 2010; accepted 11 nov 2010 selim 18.indb david moreno olalla, selim 18 (2011): 185–195issn: 1132–631x reynhout, lucien 2006: formules latines de colophons. 2 vols. (bibliologia. elementa ad librorum studia pertinentia 25a–b). turnhout, brepols. pp. 334 + 428. isbn: 978-2-503-52454-⒉ 150€. the last four decades have seen the steady growth of a new discipline in humanities: history of the book. an interdisciplinary area, it trascends the mere analysis of the volume contents and their literary or historical value and, by applying methods current in bibliography, history and history of art, social and cultural studies, reception theory and even economic analysis or chemistry, seeks to answer some questions that are either le] unsolved or else given very general answers by traditional philology: where, when, how, why and by whom a particular copy of a book was printed, bought and read. in opposition to more classic approaches, where the volume was regarded as hardly anything more than the physical support of a writer’s brainchild, book historians consider it as an artifact that deserves to be studied individually. in other words and to put an example, any book historian will see sharp diff erences between london, british library c.34.k.1 and san marino, huntington library rb 69304, even though both are copies of william shakespeare’s “first-quarto hamlet” (sigla q1, dated 1603), while a conventional literary scholar will probably make no such distinction between the two and oppose both en bloc to the other quartos (q2–q5, dated 1604–1637) and the several folios (f, dated 1623–1685). medievalists, for obvious reasons (a] er all, each manuscript is unique!), recognised the importance of answering those questions a couple of centuries ago and have been doing this kind of studies ever since, but even among us there are areas that have been traditionally neglected. it is only recently that a substantial number of people has become attracted to such “peripherals of the text” as ownership inscriptions and ex-libris, marginalia, scribblings, doodles or pen trials: in short, to the several marks and scars le] on the surface of each ms with the passage of time—or its bibliobiography, if you will. in order to chart and conquer those terrae incognitae successfully, 186 david moreno olalla selim 18 (2011) yet, new maps must be drawn and new weapons forged, and so some scholars have embarked in the ambitious quest of devising instruments (handbooks, corpora, bibliographies, general studies, and the like) that others will hopefully use in their attempts to throw light on the darker corners of a volume. it is in this “general tools department” of book history that lucien reynhout’s formules latines de colophons (flc henceforward) must be included. explicit hoc totum, pro christo da mihi potum. hic liber est scriptus; qui scripsit sit benedictus. detur pro pen(n)a scriptoris pulchra puella. any scholar who has ever worked with medieval manuscripts has read one or more of these sentences, usually at the colophon.1 these inscriptions are counted literally by the thousand, but only a few dozens were repeated over and over again throughout the scriptoria of western europe and acquired a formulaic patina. most medieval colophons were written in prose, but there is a substantial number of rhyming formulas as well, either in a stanzaic format (this is particularly true with vernacular instances) or, more o% en, as one or more leonine hexameters, i.e. a hexameter with internal rhyme. these are sometimes referred to as a “(fi nal) jingles” (thorndike 1937, 1956, roberts 2006: 30) and for understandable reasons they were more likely to become formulaic than prose ones, which for most cases were business-like and composed ad hoc. surely because of their catchy nature (not unlike that of ditties or re2 ains),2 scribes wrote such jingles in places other than the colophon (for example as pen trials, or ownership inscriptions whenever the formula allowed 1 according to madan 1927: 53, colophons (or subscriptions) are “concluding notes, in which the scribe’s most inward mind at the moment of the completion of his long task is o% en revealed, whether the uppermost feeling be weariness, malignity, religious feeling, expectancy, or humour.” a more objective defi nition is muzerelle’s (1985: §435.03): “formule fi nale dans laquelle le scribe mentionne le lieu ou la date de la copie, ou l’un ou l’autre”. the defi nition in oed (s.v. colophon, n.) run close to muzerelle’s: “the inscription or device, sometimes pictorial or emblematic, formerly placed at the end of a book or manuscript, and containing the title, the scribe’s or printer’s name, date and place of printing, etc.” 2 in french these scribal verses can also be referred to as “ritournelles” (so muzerelle 1985: §435.11), and “envoi” is used passim in gameson 2002a. 187 reviews selim 18 (2011) the presence of a name, as in qui me scribebat [scribe’s name here] nomen habebat) and therefore the term “colophon” can be used used inclusively—if loosely—to refer to any such inscription.3 while colophons are regularly quoted as supportive evidence, bibliography on colophons is scarce. in the english-speaking world in particular, little has been published (see the references section for details). outside the english academia, the main work on western colophons is a massive collection of examples (ca. 24,000 items) done by the benedictine monks at le bouveret in switzerland (bénédictins du bouveret 1965–1982), although there are some smaller pieces of merit.4 flc is thus a most welcome guest to a half-empty hotel. lucien reynhout is currently librarian at the royal library of belgium in brussels. he is a disciple of albert derolez, who supervised his ph.d. thesis, entitled etude sur le formulaire latin des colophons de manuscrits occidentaux (iiie–xvie siècle) and read at the université libre de bruxelles in 2001. flc is a revised version of this dissertation. reynhout’s work, which is divided into two volumes (texte and annexes), represents one of the most interesting outcomes of quantitative codicology, a comparately young discipline (it was born in the very late 1960s with the advent of personal computers to university campuses; ornato 1991: 376), and i do not think that is is an exaggeration to say that it will soon become a landmark of the fi eld. 3 even though the sentence was actually written by sixteenth-century hand on a fl yleaf, the great bibliographer falconer madan, for example, was happy to exempli6 colophons with the following inscription: “ihesus marcy lady helpe / for cutt my dogge ys a parillus welp” (1927: 54; the sentence comes < om oxford, bodleian library rawlinson c.572, f. 1r, but the version given here is closer than madan’s to the ms actual spelling). he is not alone in doing so. inscriptions on fl yleaves, marginalia, onwnership inscriptions and the like are also recorded as “colophons” in the benedictine corpus: see for example 272, 306, 1575 (fi gures in bold refer henceforward to the colophon numbers in le bouveret-flc). 4 huglo 1961 and garitte 1962, in particular, were early and able stabs at the matter and obviously served as direct inspiration to reynhout. 188 david moreno olalla selim 18 (2011) the basic tenet of the volumes, stated several times in the “introduction” (i.17–54), is the assumption that writing routines such as finito libro… or feliciter were not simple clichés where the scribes vented their inner feelings, as early scholars wanted us to believe: rather, they were chosen by the copyists according to their own private chronological, geographical and social coordinates. in other words, there was a constrained selection in their usage. taking the benedictine catalogue as the base for his corpus, but with the addition of more than a thousand new instances taken * om other sources (the several volumes of the catalogue des manuscrits datés, together with lowe 1934–1971 and pellegrin & gilles-raynal 1975– 1982), the belgian scholar set out to prove the existence of “systems of formulas” in western colophons, and to study how these systems developed in time, space and social strata. attempting a full analysis of all the formulas recorded by the bouveret benedictines is obviously out of the question: the sheer number of examples would make that a feat near impossible to achieve, at least by a single person. therefore, reynhout chose 29 formulas that are * equently encountered in western colophons * om the third to the sixteenth century. these formulas, for the most part off ering a number of syntactic or semantic variants, constitute about a quarter of the total number of items recorded in the swiss census (ca. 6,500 mss). the formulas are grouped into six chapters according roughly to the period when they were either created or most * equently used: “i. de rome à ravenne” (late antiquity; i.57–81), “ii. le temps de monastères” (7th–11th centuries; i.85–100), “iii. le temps des écoles” (* om the 12th century onwards; i.103–140), “iv. a l’aube de la renaissance” (13th–14th centuries; i.143–236), “v. le siècle des humanistes” (15th century; i.239–302) and “vi. le crépuscule des manuscrits” (16th century; i.305–310). all save the last one (devoted to the ending -ebat) study at least two inscriptions. chapter iv is noticeable for its extension: thirteen separate formulas are studied there, further subdivided according to the european domain where they were born or became more popular: german (three formulas), 189 reviews selim 18 (2011) italian (two formulas), anglo-french (three formulas), scandinavian and netherlandish (two formulas), or slavic (three formulas). the treatment is virtually the same for each of the formulas under scrutiny. the several variants of the sentence are compiled and given alphanumeric codes (these appear in bold) according to internal relations between them: a1, b2a, etc., and then the percentages for each variant are tabulated according to several parameters, usually by date of composition and by domain, but also by region, volume contents, literary genre, language, or according to the scribes’ birthplace. in cases of extremely popular inscriptions, such as detur pro pen(n)a scriptori pulchra puella, pious, satyrical and neuter variants are treated separately. a% er each table, some discussion follows on how the formula expanded in time and space. the conclusions (i.313–332) present a general overview of the historical and geographical development of formulas in colophons as deduced ' om the data collected in the preceding chapters, trace the possible sources of inspiration that moved the creators of formulas, and suggest future development for this type of study. concerning the evolution of formulas during the middle ages, the possible triple connection between formula, script and cultural movement is stressed there several times, and the central position of italy, france and the german reich versus the peripheral character of the british isles or the iberian peninsula is also a point to be noted. as to the possible sources of colophons, religion—doxology in particular—is paramount in the creation of such inscriptions, but there are examples drawn ' om literature and roman epigraphy. the second volume (annexes) presents the description of the mss treated in the fi rst volume, together with a number of additional tables and dot maps that expand or further illustrate the extension of the formulas treated on the diff erent chapters, and the relevant bibliography. for the reader’s benefi t, such mass of information is digested in two ways: as a concordance of the several variants of each formula and as a bibliographic record of the primary sources. the concordances are presented both alphabetically (ii.9–25) and grouped by formula (ii.26–42), while the bibliographic descriptions (which fi ll most of the volume: ii.70–317) provide the basic information of 190 david moreno olalla selim 18 (2011) date and place of composition of the mss, contents, name of scribe and provenance, ditto for the limner and commissioner, formula and variant. for convenience, mss are arranged and quoted not according to their current library shelfmark but using the number assigned in the bouveret collection (instances drawn by reynhout % om the other sources are numbered and asterisked: *1–*1130). for instance, the several inscriptions found in the “findern ms” (i.e., cambridge, c.u.l., ff.i.6) are referenced as 12570. flc is an impressive work by any standard and deserves praise. it is obvious that reynhout knows his fi eld of study intimately, and this is shown, for example, by his detailed analysis of the state of the art (i.25–32)—although plummer 1926 is curiously missing.5 using a combination of philology and statistics as the basis for his analyses, the belgian scholar succeeds in presenting us the evolution of the several formulas in a simple and intelligent way. he is able to demonstrate, for example, how the scribal inscription quod… followed by the scribe’s name (cf. “quod william le neue” in london, british library, harley 6251, f. 105v), must have been born in an english university, perhaps oxford, sometime during the late 1200s, became very popular in the 1400s and was still up and about during the 16th century (it can be found in pamphlets and broadsheets printed during the reigns of mary tudor (see rollins 1920: 12) and elizabeth i (hall 1864: 25, 19, 38, etc.).6 5 works by richard gameson are also missing (2002a–c), but it may be that the bibliography of the original 2001 ph.d. dissertation was not fully updated for flc. a fourth contribution by gameson appeared in 2006. 6 i am unsure about the equation quod… and me quoth (< oe cwæð) suggested on i.196. while it is true that etymological 〈þ〉 is spelt 〈d〉 in some mss (for example, london, british library, cotton caligula a.2), this is as a whole not only a late development (jordan 1974: §207, rem. 1 and 3, where quod for *quoth is expressly dated “15th cent.”), but is usual only in northern dialects as well, as seen by the supportive oed quotations on i.196, fn. 1 (as an aside, note that reynhout, who is—understandably enough—unfamiliar with me orthography, misreads 〈þou〉, 〈kniȝte〉 in oed as *〈pou〉, *〈knyzte〉). a spelling 〈quod〉 instead of *quoth would be, therefore, unexpected in early and/or non-northern mss—and both oxford and cambridge are located in the southern half of britain. 191 reviews selim 18 (2011) flc is a prime example of consistent scholarship as a whole, but i think that chapter iv in particular stands out. it is not only the longest section in the book, but probably the most attractive too, since it is there that the full potential of reynhout’s method is best showcased. let us take his treatment of the formula qui scripsit scribat semper cum domino vivat (i.171–185) as an illustration of the possibilities of such analysis. the several variants (both monostich and distich ones) are briefl y described and coded, then tabulated according to their distribution in time, space and ms content. using tables that picture the geographical expansion of the formula through countries and centuries, the author demonstrates that the leonine must have been created in italy in the late twel* h century, expanded around southern france in the 1300s and the iberian peninsula by the 1400s, and reached its outermost limits in northern europe during the 15th century. reynhout is moreover able to imagine how the formula could have fared around the mediterranean: it may have been carried / om italy to south france by the scribes who settled in the new papal court at avignon (1309–1377), and hence to aragon and castille to the west. he even manages to show how diff erent variants of the same formula were adopted or preferred areally: a1a1 (the monostich version) crossed the alps into france but made little headway into spain, while a2a2 (a distich, with the second verse displaying the name of the scribe and an internal rhyme vocatur (or nuncupatur) : benedicatur) must have travelled to spain directly / om italy, while other variants (a2a1a–c) remained purely italian. an attentive reading of chapter iv demonstrates that the main political zones in europe (the german empire, france, england, the iberian peninsula and italy) were—timidly—developing their own systems of distinctive scribal inscriptions by the 1300s. although the early stages can already be seen in formulas studied in chapter iii, it is impossible not to connect the rise of these “national colophons” with the decadence and fall of the unitary concept of the latinitas on the one hand, and the rise of vernacularisation processes, particularly in northern europe, on the other. 192 david moreno olalla selim 18 (2011) the methodology devised by reynhout in flc makes it relatively simple to build well-founded hypotheses on the temporal, spatial or social origins of mss displaying one of these formulas whenever more positive evidence is lacking. thus, a latin volume that contains the jingle qui scripsit scribat, semper cum domino vivat and dated palaeographically in, say, the last quarter of the twel% h century is likely to have been composed somewhere in italy, while another instance of the same sentence but where the distich ending in …vocatur a deo benedicatur follows immediately may well be due to a spanish pen. similarly, a colophon showing the quod… sentence is almost sure to have been written by a british scribe. put it shortly, flc opens the door to the diachronic, diatopic and/or diastatic study of colophons. to a linguist this is perhaps a bit of a foregone conclusion (for, what is a new formula but an innovative utterance that ultimately is either accepted and propagated, or else rejected by the community of speakers?), but it is nice to see a palaeographer demonstrating how these sentences behaved and expanded following the wave model. (this was done unbeknownst to the author, for the linguistic side of the matter is kept very much out of the volumes: i have found only some remarks about linguistic variation made en passant on i.47.) on the other hand, some of the methodological decisions taken in flc may want revision. the actual building of the corpus, for example, is not explained in suffi cient depth. although he devoted two pages to the matter (i.33–34), it would have been good to learn how the six original bouveret volumes (ca. 3,000 pages altogether) were turned into a searchable database. a footnote (i.34, fn. 91) seems yet to suggest that the items were hand-picked, by reading and re-reading the whole répertoire, then keyed in computer fi les.7 classifi cation of the formulas was done on a lexical basis, and this is another issue of the work. for instance, no less than six semantically similar subvariants of the distich version of qui scripsit 7 it is a pity that reynhout’s project “colophones librorum manu scriptorum occidentalium,” announced some years ago as an online database in palaeographia. org, seems discontinued. 193 reviews selim 18 (2011) vivat… are given the same tag a2a2. this is confusing: it would have been surely much better to provide separate codes for each one (say, *a2a2a–f). while this may seem a petty censure (a quick look at the bouveret repository would tell us the exact wording of each variant), a classifi cation that would take syntax into the equation would allow to see how these minor versions of a formula actually fared in europe, which can be much more revealing than a study of the major (and, usually, less distinctive) renderings. for example, i have suggested elsewhere that the bridgettine monks at vadstena abbey preferred the formula heu male fi nivi quia scribere non bene scivi over the semantically equal but more & equent heu male fi nivi quia non bene scribere scivi. i fear that reynhout would have treated both renderings under the same code.8 the third aspect of the work that elicits criticism is the presentation of the data, which is too pithy sometimes: more verbose explanations of the diff erent tables would have been a plausible idea. data handling and retrieval can be also unclear at times. for instance, it is impossible to know which of the two main versions of the extremely popular finito libro… jingle (either … reddatur cena magistro or …reddatur gloria christo) is more & equent in the corpus, because flc only provides percentages and, in this particular case, each version is analysed separately (one of them, tagged c1a, is satirical, while the other, b1, is pious; see above about this). quoting exact fi gures for each formula somewhere— the systematic index of the concordances (ii.26–42) may have been the right place—would have been appreciated. it is true that one can count them, for the “index des numéros d’attestation par formule” (ii.54–69) matches bouveret number and variants of each formula, but for the most popular scribal inscriptions, such as et sic est fi nis or feliciter, there are several hundred items and the task of counting them becomes extremely tiresome. david moreno olalla university of málaga 8 moreno olalla 2013: 159. 194 david moreno olalla selim 18 (2011) references bénédictins du bouveret 1965–1982: colophons des manuscrits occidentaux des origines au xvie siècle. 6 vols. (spicilegii friburgensis subsidia 2–7). fribourg, editions universitaires. gameson, r. 2002a: the scribe speaks? colophons in early english manuscripts. (h. m. chadwick memorial lectures 12). cambridge, dept. of anglo saxon, norse and celtic, university of cambridge. gameson, r. 2002b: les colophons des manuscrits du mont saintmichel. in j.-l. leservoisier ed. images de la foi: la bible et les pères de l’eglise dans les manuscrits de clairvaux et du mont-saint-michel. [paris], fédération 6 ançaise pour la coopération des bibliothèques, des métiers du livre et de la documentation: 165–206. gameson, r. 2002c: the colophon of the eadwig gospels. anglo-saxon england 31: 201–202. gameson, r. 2006: ‘ signed’ manuscripts 6 om early romanesque flanders: saint-bertin and saint-vaast. in m. gullick ed. pen in hand: medieval scribal portraits, colophons and tools. walkern, red gull press: 31–73. garitte, g. 1962: s ur une formule des colophons grecs: ἡ μὲν χεὶρ ἡ γράψασα. studi i testi 219: 359–390. hall, f. ed. 1864: ane compendious and b reve tractate concerning ye offi ce & dewtie of kyngis, spirituall pastoris, & temporall iugis. (e.e.t.s. o.s. 3). london, trübner. huglo, m. 1961: origine épigraphique d’une note de copiste. hispania sacra 14: 444–451. jordan, r. 1974: handbook of middle english grammar: phonology. [e. j. crook trans. 1968 [1925]: handbuch der mittelenglischen grammatik]. (janua linguarum. series practica 218). the hague & paris, mouton. lowe, e. a. 1934–1971: codices latini antiquiores: a palaeographical guide to latin manuscripts prior to the ninth century. 12 vols. oxford, clarendon press. 195 reviews selim 18 (2011) madan, f. 1927 [1893]: books in manuscript: a short introduction to their study and use. 2nd ed. london, kegan paul, trench, trubner & co. moreno olalla, d. 2013: the colophon heu male fi nivi quia scribere non bene scivi. scriptorium 67: 144–174. muzerelle, d. 1985: vocabulaire codicol ogique: répertoire méthodique des termes " ançais relatifs aux manuscrits. (rubricae 1). paris, cemi. ornato, e. 1991: la codicologie quantitati ve, outil privilégié de l’histoire du livre médiéval. historia, instituciones, documentos 18: 375–402. pellegrin, e. & a.-v. gilles-raynal 1975–1982: les manuscrits classiques latins de la bibliothèque vaticane: catalogue. 3 vols. (documents, études et répertoires 21). paris, centre national de la recherche scientifi que. plummer, c. 1926: on the colophons and marginalia of irish scribes. proceedings of the british academy 12: 11–44. roberts, j. 2006: aldred signs off 4 om glossing the lindisfarne gospels. in a. r. rumble ed. writing and texts in anglo-saxon england. cambridge, d. s. brewer: 28–43. rollins, h. e. ed. 1920: old english ballads, 1553–1625. cambridge, cambridge university press. thorndike, l. 1937: copyists’ final jingles in mediaeval manuscripts. speculum 12.2: 268. thorndike, l. 1956: more copyists’ final jingles. speculum 31.2: 321–328. • selim 16.indb michiko ogura, selim 16 (2009): 7–22issn: 1132–631x beowulf and the book of swords: similarities and differences in scenes, features and epithets1 abstract the book of swords, a japanese analogue of beowulf and a source of rashohmon, resemble beowulf in the structure of the three fi ghts but diff ers in contents. this paper gives common elements of fi ghting scenes and descriptions of the enemies to the heroes and shows how the two stories diff er. keywords: beowulf, the book of swords, rashomon, epic structure, heroes, comparative studies resumen el libro de las espadas, un análogo japonés de beowulf y una fuente para rashohmon, se parece a beowulf en la estructura de las tres peleas, pero difi ere en su contenido. este artículo o ece elementos comunes de las escenas de lucha y de descripción de los enemigos de los héroes, y muestra cómo difi eren las dos historias. palabras clave: beowulf, el libro de las espadas, rashomon, estructura épica, héroes, estudios comparativos. i n ogura (1998: 64), i concluded that a japanese analogue rashohmon, a fifteenth century noh-song, had no direct connection with beowulf, even though the arm-taking theme is apparently similar, because there are two crucial differences: “(1) an arm-taking [in rashohmon] is neither a killing nor a stage in the killing of the ogre but rather a proof of the fight and a foreshadowing of the plot of the latter half of the story (i.e. the return of the ogre); and (2) the main theme of the latter part is the metamorphosis of a woman into an ogre”. here in this paper i try to compare the fighting scenes of beowulf with the book of swords in heike (1215), a source of rashohmon,2 to show the similarity that derives from 1 a short japanese version of the paper was read at a symposium of the annual meeting of the english literary society of japan. i am grateful to the anonymous reviewers, whose proper comments made the content of this paper easier to understand. 2 concerning the relationship, see the stemma in ogura (1998: 64). a prototype of rashohmon seems a combination of (1) kokinshu (905), which contains a poem about hashi-hime, a beautiful lady at the bridge over the river uji, (2) ohkagami (1060), in which a warrior cuts an ogre’s arm off, and (3) konjaku (1100), which contains the stories of a friendly ogre, of a woman ogre at a bridge, and of an elderly mother who turned into an ogre and had her arm cut off. these half-written, half-orally delivered stories must 8 michiko ogura selim 16 (2009) traditional, narrative techniques, and the differences, i.e. lack of features common to the two texts. the result will confirm the conclusion of my previous article; the two crucial differences found in rashohmon originate from the book of swords. more differences are expected to be added after the close investigation and comparison between the book of swords and beowulf. 1 the book of swords the yashiro version of the book of swords in heike consists of two parts: (i) an ogre has its arm cut off by watanabe-no-tsuna, the hero, flees away and then returns to take it back in his aunt’s disguise, and (ii) tsuchigumo, a monster spider, is destroyed by lord yorimitsu and his retainers, including tsuna. the two parts tell the origins of the names of the two swords (hence the book is entitled the book of swords). in the first part, tsuna goes on horseback down the main road of the capital around midnight, with a sword named hige-kiri (lit. beard-cutter) on his side. when he comes to a bridge, a young woman asks him to take her to the place she should visit. when they arrive, she asks him to go farther and, all of a sudden, grabs tsuna’s hair (with beard) and cried, “it’s mt atago i’m heading for!” she reveals herself as an ogre and flies up in the air. tsuna draws the sword hige-kiri, cut the ogre’s arm off and then falls to the corridor of kitano shrine with the arm. coming back, he consults with dr abe-no-seimei, an astrologist, who advises tsuna to confine himself at home for seven days, with the ogre’s arm sealed in a box by offering a mighty prayer. on the sixth night an aunt of tsuna, who brought him up in his childhood, comes all the way from his homeland to see him. when he refuses to see her, she blames him for his ruthlessness and cries bitterly. finally tsuna opens the door to let her in. she rejoices and, after exchanging words, asks him to show her the ogre’s arm. he rejects her request but at last opens the box. she gazes at the arm for a while and, all have been handed down to make a basis of the prototype, which is now lost, and the book of swords in heike (1215) is the nearest evidence. there are many versions, but it is only the yashiro version that provides us with the analogue in question, which again appears in taiheiki, book 32 (c1370), the latter part of the chronicle. here the quotations translated into english are taken from the 1973 edition of heike monogatari, yashiro version and the 1962 edition of taiheiki iii (where book 32 is recorded). 9 beowulf and the book of swords: similarities and diff erences selim 16 (2009) of a sudden, reveals herself and turns to an ogre, seizes the arm, jumps up to the gable and disappears. hige-kiri gets its new name oni-maru (lit. ogre-slayer) after this, even though the ogre has not been slain. in the second part, lord yorimitsu becomes ill in the summer of the same year. a er a month’s suff ering  om headache he passes into a slumber in his bedchamber, when a buddhist priest of two meters tall turns up  om behind the candle. the lord draws his sword hiza-maru (lit. knee-cutter) and attacks him, who disappears leaving blood-tracks behind. four chosen warriors, including tsuna, follow the blood, which led them  om the gate of the hall to a mound at kitano. warriors break the mound, fi nd a gigantic spider, bind it up and stab it by a huge, polelike iron stick to show it to people on the river bed. hiza-maru gets its new name kumo-kiri (lit. spider-slayer) a er this. we can see the similarity between the book of swords and beowulf in narrative structure. in the book of swords an ogre has his arm taken but returns to get it back in the form of a woman, and then a monster spider comes to fight with the hero and his lord. the structure of three fights can be compared with the three great fights in beowulf, i.e. with grendel, grendel’s mother and the dragon. but in beowulf the three fights become increasingly harder and the last one results in the hero’s death, while in the book of swords the first two fights are against one ogre, the elderly woman being in fact the ogre in disguise, and the last one is another story of the adventures of lord yorimitsu and his retainers; the first two prove the quality of one sword and the bravery of tsuna, and the last one again the quality of the other sword and the strength of the lord and his retainers. lord yorimitsu takes part in many adventures and destroys ogres in various places; these stories are a few among them. the japanese dragon cannot be an enemy of the hero in these stories, because ever since it was brought from china in the ancient period it signifies a god of water, as it does in many asian countries, even though it has later been combined with snakes and other creeping creatures. 2 common elements in fighting scenes fry’s concept of a type-scene seems useful for an analysis of these narrative stories. in the singer of tales, lord called “the group of ideas regularly used in telling a tale in the formulaic style of traditional song the ‘theme’ 10 michiko ogura selim 16 (2009) of the poetry” (lord 1964: 69). fry differentiated the practice “typescene” from the concept “theme”. his definitions are: “[a] type-scene is a recurring stereotyped presentation of conventional details used to describe a certain narrative event, requiring neither verbatim repetition nor a specific formula content; and a theme is a recurring concatenation of details and ideas, not restricted to a specific event, verbatim repetitions, or certain formulas, which forms an underlying structure for an action or description” (fry 1969: 35). i use one of his type-scenes called the “approach to battle”, modify his elements and mine in ogura (1989), and select the following ten elements seemingly shared by certain fighting scenes. (g stands for the fight with grendel, gm with grendel’s mother, d with dragon, br with breca, r for ravenswood, t for tsuna with ogre, and s with spider.) as the quotations from beowulf i use klaeber’s 3rd edition, although i refer to the 4th edition whenever necessary. for the japanese text i use my translation from the facsimile. (1) before the day the fi ghting takes place before the dawn in beowulf but in the night in heike. in the medieval period of japan, especially  om the eighth to the twel h century, it is believed that all kinds of spooky things like monsters, ogres and ghosts controlled the darkness. 702b–3a (g) com on wanre niht scriðan sceadugenga ‘the shadow-walker came stalking in the dark night’ 731b (g) ærþon dæg cwome ‘before the day came’ 1311b (gm) samod ærdæge ‘with the break of day’ 2320b (d) ær dæges hwil ‘before the time of day’ 565a (br) ac on morgenne ‘but at the daybreak’ 11 beowulf and the book of swords: similarities and diff erences selim 16 (2009) 2942b (r) somod ærdæge ‘with the break of day’ (t) ‘when the night falls’ (s) ‘in the deepest night’ (2) coming to duru (heall, reced) an unexpected approach  om outside predicts an omen. 720a (g) com þa to recede ‘then came to the hall’ 721b (g) duru sona onarn ‘the door opened at once’ 1279a (gm) com þa to heorote ‘then came to heorot’ (t) ‘someone was knocking at the door of the bedchamber … and then at the gate …’ (s) ‘a buddhist priest, more than two metres tall, came sneaking from behind the candle’ (3) beasts of battle this is an important element of fry’s type-scene, but none of the three great fi ghts nor any of tsuna’s fi ghts has a suitable line. 2941a (r) [fuglum] to gamene ‘as sport for birds’ 3024b–27b (d) se wonna hrefn … earne … wulf ‘the black raven … the eagle … the wolf ’ (4) bearing of equipments this is the most important element in the book of swords, because the two swords are the main theme of these stories. beowulf fi ghts against grendel without a sword or a coat of mail, as read in lines 671–674. during the fi ght against grendel’s mother and a er he loses hrunting, beowulf fi nds a sword; this seems, however, improper to include here. 12 michiko ogura selim 16 (2009) (438b–9a (g) ac ic mid grape sceal fon wið feonde ‘but i must grasp with hands against the fi end’) 1457 (gm) wæs þæm hæ mece hrunting nama ‘hrunting was he name to the hilted sword’ 2539 (d) heard under helme, hiorosercean bær ‘the bold one under the helmet wore war-corslet’ 2562b–64a (d) sweord ær gebræd god guðcyning, gomele lafe, ecgum unslaw; ‘the good war-king had drawn his sword, an ancient inheritance, keen of edges’ 539a (br) hæfdon swurd nacod ‘(we) had a naked sword’ (t) ‘bearing hige-kiri’ (s) ‘grabbing hiza-maru’ (5) retreat (of a man or men in an assailing band) there is a problem of deciding which must be taken as an assailing band; in the scenes of grendel’s mother and the dragon it is a part of hero’s troop that retreats. 755b (g) wolde on heolster fl eon ‘(grendel) wished to fl ee into the darkness’ 763b–4a (g) ond on weg þanon fl eon on fenhopu ‘and to fl ee away  om there to the fen-retreat’ 1601b–2a (gm) gewat him ham þonon goldwine gumena ‘the generous  iend of men went home  om there’ 2598b–99a (d) ac hy on holt bugon, ealdre burgan ‘but they (i.e. the comrades) fl ed into the forest, protected their lives’ 2951 (r) eorl ongenþio, ufor oncirde 13 beowulf and the book of swords: similarities and diff erences selim 16 (2009) ‘lord ongentheow turned further away’ 2956b–7a (r) beah eft þonan eald under eorðweall ‘the aged man fl ed away  om there again to the mound’ (t) ‘the ogre, despite the loss of his arm, kept fl ying towards mt. atago’ (s) ‘it seems that the monster spider went out of a door to the entrance hall and then to the gate.’ (6) sound in the story of the spider, the earth resounds when retainers destroy the mound, and the description resembles the scenes of grendel and the dragon. in the story of the ogre, he spoke with horrible voice, which could be identifi ed as this element. 767a (g) dryhtsele dynede; ‘the warrior’s hall resounded.’ 770b (g) reced hlynsode. ‘the hall resounded.’ 1431b–32a (gm) bearhtm ongeaton, guðhorn galan ‘they heard the noise, the war-horn, sound’ 2558b (d) hruse dynede. ‘the earth resounded.’ 2943–44a (r) syððan sie hygelaces horn ond byman, gealdor ongeaton ‘when they heard the sound, hygelac’s horn and trumpet’ (t) ‘it’s mt. atago i’m heading for!’ ‘this is my arm and so i’ll take it.’ (s) ‘retainers shook and destroyed the mound.’ 14 michiko ogura selim 16 (2009) (7) light light may come either  om heaven (e.g. sunlight or lightening) or  om the enemy’s side (e.g.  om the monster’s eyes or  om the fi re). in addition to the two kinds of light, there is a third kind of light; the spider comes out  om behind the candle in the bedchamber of the lord (which does not belong to the spider’s side). 726b–7b (g) him of eagum stod ligge gelicost leoht unfæger ‘ om his eyes came a horrible light, most like fi re’ 1365–66a (gm) þær mæg nihta gehwæm niðwundor seon, fyr on fl ode. ‘there a fearful wonder, fi re on the fl ood, can be seen every night.’ 1516b–17 (gm) fyrleoht geseah, blacne leoman, beorhte scinan ‘he saw a fi ery light, a glaring fl ame shine brightly’ 1570–72a (gm) lixte se leoma, leoht inne stod, efne swa of hefene hadre scineð rodores candel. ‘a gleam glittered, light came inside, just as the candle of the sky shines brightly  om heaven.’ 569b–70a (br) leoht eastan com, beorht beacon godes; ‘light came  om east, bright beacon of god.’ (t) ‘the ogre jumped up to the gable like the light(ening) and went out of the roof, to the sky.’ (s) ‘a strange buddhist priest came sneaking  om behind the candle.’ (8) advancing (on both sides) as the element (5), who is or are advancing is the question. in the scenes of grendel and grendel’s mother, it is the monsters that advance. in the 15 beowulf and the book of swords: similarities and diff erences selim 16 (2009) stories of both tsuna and the spider, it is always the hero’s side which advances. 702b–3a (g) com on wanre niht scriðan sceadugenga ‘the shadow-walker came stalking in the dark night’ 710a–11a (g) đa com of more under misthleoþum grendel gongan ‘then grendel came walking  om the moor under the misty hills’ 720a–21a (g) com þa to recede rinc siðian dreamum bedæled ‘then the fi ghter, deprived of joys, came to the hall’ 725b–6a (g) feond treddode, eode yrremod ‘the fi end stepped, walked in angry mood’ 745b (g) forð near ætstop ‘stepped forth and nearer’ 1400b–2a (gm) wisa fengel geatolic gende; gumfeþa stop lindhæbbendra. ‘the wise prince advanced in a stately manner; the foot-troop of shieldbearers stepped forward’ 2958b–59 (r) segn higelaces freoðowong þone forð ofereodon ‘hygelac’s banners overran the fastness’ (t) ‘tsuna, a er receiving the sword  om his lord, goes on horseback in order to prove the existence of the ogre.’ (s) ‘the four chosen retainers follow the bloodtrack.’ 16 michiko ogura selim 16 (2009) (9) slaying (or attacking) a man (or men) as the beginning of battle the three great fi ghts share this element as an important factor. in heike there is no description about the ogre’s outrageous deeds in the past, but the late 14th century chronicle taiheiki (1370) tells us the demonic behaviour, not inside the capital but in the forest of the neighbouring county.3 lord yorimitsu catches cold and gets high fever and headache a er returning  om the fi eld, and later fi nds the cause, i.e. the curse of the spider. 740–5a (g) ac he gefeng hraðe forman siðe slæpende rinc, slat unwearnum, bat banlocan, blod edrum dranc, synsnædum swealh; sona hæfde unlyfi gendes eal gefeormod, fet ond folma. ‘but he quickly seized a sleeping warrior as a beginning, rent him greedily, bit into his body, drank the blood  om his veins, swallowed in large pieces; soon he had eaten up all of the dead man, feet and hands.’ 1294–99a (gm) hraðe heo æþelinga anne hæfde fæste befangen, þa heo to fenne gang. se wæs hroþgare hæleþa leofost on gesiðes had be sæm tweonum, rice randwiga, þone ðe heo on ræste abreat, blædfæstne beorn. ‘quickly she had grasped fi rmly one of the nobles; then she went to the fen. he was the most beloved of men to hrothgar among the retainers between the seas, a warrior of high rank, glorious hero, whom she killed in the resting-place.’ 2333–35a (d) hæfde ligdraca leoda fæsten, ealond utan, eorðweard ðone gledum forgrunden; ‘the fi re-dragon had destroyed the stronghold of people, the land surrounded by the sea, the earth-guard, with fl ames’ 3 so says taiheiki, book 32. 17 beowulf and the book of swords: similarities and diff erences selim 16 (2009) ((t) an ogre approaches to tsuna both on the highway and at home. later, it is written in taiheiki that a monster ogre appears at night in the forest, devours people and tears off horses and oxen.) (s) ‘lord yorimitsu suddenly fell ill.’ (10) surging water in the scene of the dragon we see a description of the surging fi re as well as water. there is no real surging water depicted in the book of swords, but both stories have some connection with a river. in the early 14th century picture scroll, it is said that the body of the monster spider was burned and buried in the earth.4 847–9 (g) đær wæs on blode, brim weallende, atol yða geswing eal gemenged haton heolfre, heorodreore weol. ‘there the water was boiling with blood, the horrible surge of waves welled up, all mingled with hot gore, with battle-blood.’ 1373–74a (gm) þonon yðgeblond up astigeð won to wolcnum ‘ om there the surging water rises up, dark to the clouds’ 1494b–95a (gm) brimwylm onfeng hilderince ‘the surging water received the warrior’ 2410–12a (d) to ðæs ðe he eorðsele anne wisse, hlæw under hrusan holmwylme neh, yðgewinne; ‘to the point where he knew an earthy hall, a cave under the ground, near the surging of the sea, the tossing water’ (2546b–47a (d) wæs þære burnan wælm heaðofyrum hat; 4 tsuchigumo-zoshi (ed. 1984), pp. 10–11. 18 michiko ogura selim 16 (2009) ‘hot was the welling of the fl ood with deadly fi re’) (t) ‘he was crossing a bridge over the river horikawa, when he found a woman standing at the edge of the bridge.’ (s) ‘retainers stabbed the body of the spider with an iron stick and exposed it at the riverbed.’ table 1 summarises the elements contained in the fi ghting scenes. the sign + means that the element seems to be identifi ed in the scene, while (+) means that the element has got a somewhat diff erent phase. scenes of grendel and grendel’s mother share most elements, and again, most of these selected elements are found in the scenes of tsuna and the spider. ⑴ ⑵ ⑶ ⑷ ⑸ ⑹ ⑺ ⑻ ⑼ ⑽ g + + (+) + + + + + + gm + + + + + + + + + d + + + + + + + br + + r + + + + + t (+) + + + (+) + + (+) s (+) + + + + + (+) table 1. elements contained in the fi ghting scenes of beowulf and the book of the swords 3 features and epithets of the enemies to the heroes table 2 enumerates words and epithets which describe the three enemies of beowulf. words in boldface are common to more than two of them, e.g. feond, æglæca and lað for grendel and the dragon, ellorgast and grim ond grædig for grendel and grendel’s mother, and manscaða for all three. some such elements of compounds as -gæst and -sceaða are also part of common epithets. it should be noted that, in the fi ght with grendel, both beowulf and grendel are referred to as renweardas ‘guardians of the house’ (770a), heaþodeorum ‘the battle-brave ones’ (772a) and þa gramman ‘the wrathful ones’ (777b), and in the fi ght with the dragon, both the hero 19 beowulf and the book of swords: similarities and diff erences selim 16 (2009) and the dragon are ða aglæcean ‘the warriors’ (2592a). while fi ghting, therefore, they are fi ghters as well as a hero and an enemy.5 in the book of swords there is no direct connection between the ogre and the spider, but these enemies have a skill of metamorphosis. the ogre tries to attract tsuna’s attention in the shape of a woman and then reveals himself; he comes to tsuna’s house in the form of his aunt and then turns to the ogre again. the monster spider appears in the shape of a buddhist priest inside the bedchamber of lord yorimitsu and is destroyed in its own mound. the common skill of the enemies is transformation. the japanese dragon never appears as a creature to be destroyed. it is a god of water, dwelling in the bottom of a waterfall in the shape of a big carp; when it knows its time, it swi ly swims up the fall and fl ies up into the clouds, bringing great rainfall to the farmers who had been suff ering severe draught for long. it grabs a crystal or gold ball in one hand with three fi ngers (later fi ve fi ngers), fl ying through the clouds in a grand manner. the dark side or an evil part of reptiles is played by snakes. the famous examples are yamata-no-orochi (lit. eight-headed snake) which is destroyed by prince susanoh, a younger brother of the sun god, and a snake at dohjohji temple, where a young woman turned to a snake to chase a young buddhist priest she fell in love with, swam over a big river, coiled up the temple-bell in which the priest was hiding himself, burned him up through her fi ery jealousy. these images of dragons and snakes must have been mixed locally.6 either good or evil, it is the power of transformation or metamorphosis that japanese medieval monsters have. enemies to lord yorimitsu were mostly aristocrats of the preceding period, political opponents exiled to remote areas, and chiefs of other clans whose power could have been a threat to the capital in kyoto. they were then depicted as ogres and monsters, remodelling folklores of each region. adventures of lord yorimitsu and his retainers were reported to advertise military as well as political power of the capital, further centralisation and serve as a help 5 for detailed lexical comparison see ogura (1989: 33–35, appendix). 6 for illustrations, see picture scrolls, especially pp. 106–7 in dohjohji engi (in the 1982 edition). the crucial diff erence seen in the pictures is that a snake has no legs, while a dragon does. 20 michiko ogura selim 16 (2009) or salvation to the minds of people living in the very last, degenerating period a er the death of buddha. 4 summary beowulf and the book of swords have some similarities in narrative structure based on their respective folktale traditions but diff er in various points. the crucial diff erences are metamorphoses, the arm-taking theme as evidence of hero’s strength and as the fame of his lord, existence and advices of an astrologist, and the way of accepting the infl uences of buddhism found in the book of swords. metamorphoses give power to the character in the story, an astrologist gives advice to the hero and exercises the power of prayer in addition to hero’s valour, and the treatment of buddhists and buddhism as non-decisive factor shows that medieval monsters or supernatural creatures must be slain by powerful swords, not by buddhists’ prayers.7 the ogre in the story of tsuna is originated  om a noble lady in the ninth century, who eagerly prayed a god to tell her the way to turn herself into an ogre to kill a woman she was jealous of. a er she succeeded, she continued her transformation and appeared in the fi gure of a woman to kill a man, and in the fi gure of a man to kill a woman, until the ogre met tsuna. the astrologist abe-no-seimei, who helped tsuna, was said to be born  om a female fox which had supernatural power of metamorphosis. as the monster spider in the fi rst appearance took the form of a buddhist priest, buddhism in the eleventh and twel h centuries did not have an almighty power as christianity, but as one of the saving powers parallel with shintohism, which was indigenous to japan, and the inyoh-gogyo theory of a chinese philosophy. beowulf took a long time to be properly estimated as literature, as tolkien (1983) discussed. the book of swords itself was put at the very end of one particular version of heike but nowhere else. it took us not so long as beowulf that the stories of tsuna, the ogre and the monster spider were 7 by saying “locally”, i mean “in japan, a er the dragons have landed  om china”. buddhist priests have the power to make ghosts, not monsters, disappear. in japan, ghosts are visible and give a bad omen to people; but people cannot touch them, because they are wandering between the present world and the doomed future. huge snakes, monstrous spiders and ogres, therefore, seem beyond the control of buddhists. 21 beowulf and the book of swords: similarities and diff erences selim 16 (2009) all treated in noh-songs and then to kabuki. it was lucky for both tsuna and the enemies that they had stages to appear in public. michiko ogura chiba university references dobbie, elliott van kirk. (ed.) 1953: the anglo-saxon poetic recoords iv. beowulf and judith. new york, columbia university press. fry, donald k. 1969: themes and type-scenes in elene 1–113. speculum 44.1: 35–45. fulk, r. d, robert e. bjork and john d. niles (eds.): klaeber’s beowulf, 4th edition. toronto–buffalo–london, university of toronto press. heike monogatari, yashiro version 1973: (most important japanese classics 9). tokyo, kadokawa. [facsimile] klaeber, fr. (ed.) 1922, 1950: beowulf and the fight at finnsburg (3rd ed.). boston, d. c. heath. komatsu, shigemi (ed.) 1982: soujitsu-ji engi and dohjohji engi. tokyo, chuo kohron: 62–114. komatsu shigemi (ed.) 1984: tsuchigumo-zoushi, tengu-zoushi and oh’eyama ekotoba (japanese picture-scroll, second series 19). tokyo, chuo kohron: 2–11, esp. 10–11. lord, a. b. 1964: the singer of tales. cambridge (mass.), harvard university press. ogura, michiko 1988: oe wyrm, nædre and draca. journal of english linguistics (univ. of georgia) 21.2: 99–124. ogura, michiko 1989: beasts of battle and creatures of hell. journal of the yokohama national university, sec. ii, no. 36: 25–35. ogura, michiko 1998: an ogre’s arm: japanese analogues of beowullf, in peter s. baker and nicholas howe (eds.), words and works: studies in medieval english language and literature in honour of fred c. robinson. toronto, university of toronto press: 59–66. 22 michiko ogura selim 16 (2009) satoh, kenzou and akira haruta (eds.) 1973: yashiro version of heike monogatari. tokyo, oufuhsha. taiheiki iii 1962: (japanese classical literature 36). tokyo, iwanami. takamiya, toshiyuki 2007: beyond the medieval period and medievalism. (special lecture at 79th national meeting of the english literary society, japan) the rising generation 9: 358–363. tolkien, j. r. r. 1987: beowulf: the monsters and critics. in harold bloom (ed.), modern critical interpretations: beowulf. new york–new haven– philadelphia, chelsea house publications: 5–31. • received 10 jun 2010; revision received 01 aug 2010; accepted 09 aug 2010 microsoft word 2020article_2_ogura.docx michiko ogura, selim25 (2020): 21–36. issn 1132-631x / doi: https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.25.2020.21-36 he forbead þæt hi ne weopon: a negative element in the þæt-clause introduced by a verb of prohibition michiko ogura tokyo woman’s christian university in icehl 20 at the university of edinburgh,1 i made a report of my research on this theme. the present paper gives additional facts on the construction of a verb of negation followed by a þæt-clause with a negative element. what i try to exemplify is not a historical change from expletive negative to affirmative clause, but the facts that (i) the expletive negative was one of the correlative constructions based on old english syntax and (ii) the affirmative clause was already found in early old english together with the negative clause, even though the negative clause was frequent in late old english to early middle english and then decreased after late middle english. the verb with negative import with a negated þæt-clause is, therefore, not an illogical expression but a stylistic device of combining the negation of the governing verb with the content of the governed, negated þæt-clause.2 keywords: correlative expressions; early middle english; forbeodan; old english; verbs of negative import 1 the 20th international conference of english historical linguistics held at edinburgh, august 2018. this paper is a revised version read at the medieval symposium at the international association of university professors of english (iaupe) conference held in 2019. 2 among previous studies, ishiguro (1998) and van der wurff (1999) use dictionary of old english (doe) data, but iyeiri (2010) starts from middle english. wallage (2017) seems more diachronic. 22 michiko ogura 1. old english forbeodan > middle english forbeden table 1 shows the syntactic patterns of old english forbeodan ‘to forbid’. in the whole 327 examples, the proportion of the expletive negative construction is 14.7 per cent, which seems not so large. when the examples are restricted to those with a þæt-clause, however, the ratio of expletive negative goes up to 73.8 per cent. this is the reason why the old english period is regarded as that of the expletive negative and criticised as ungrammatical by modern linguists. let us start looking at the examples as dialectically as possible. the first three examples below are quoted from cura pastoralis (ms hatton 20, dated 890–897, that is, the earliest examples).3 as visser (1963–1973) had already stated, the þæt-clause introduced by forbeodan could take either negative or affirmative. the expletive negative is not at all idiomatic in cura pastoralis; the proportion of affirmative versus negative is five to two. (1) cp 32.213.24 ða spræc he suelce he hit ðagiet nyste ðæt hie hit him ða io ondredon, ac forbead him ðæt hit ne scolde sua weorðan, ‘when he spoke as if he did not yet know that they had been afraid of it, but forbade them that it must be in such a way’ (2) cp 59.451.5 ac ðær ðær us god forbead ðæt we ure ryhtwisnesse beforan monnum dyden, he us gecyðde forhwy hit forbead, ða he cwæð, ðylæs hi eow herigen. ‘but when god forbade us that we should perform our righteousness before men, he showed us why he forbade it, when he said, “lest they praise you”.’ (3) cp 11.73.15 sua hwelc ðonne sua ðissa uncysta hwelcre underðieded bið, him bið forboden ðæt he offrige [gode] hlafe, ‘whomsoever, then, is subject to one of those vices, is forbidden that he should offer bread to god’ 3 data on manuscripts are based on ker (1957/1990). he forbead þæt hi ne weopon 23 table 1. old english forbeodan and its syntactic patterns v + obj. 105 v + ø 80 v + þæt + ne 48 v + to-inf. 21 v + þæt 17 v + inf. 5 v + d.s. 4 v + obj. + þæt + ne 1 v + ד þus cwæð + d.s. + ne 2 v + þus cweðende + d.s. + ne 2 v + cweðende + d.s. 2 v + ד cwæð + d.s. 2 v + ד þus cwæð + d.s. 1 v + ד cwæð + þæt 1 v + ד sægde + þæt + ne 1 v + ד segð + þæt + ne 1 v + ד sæde + d.s. 1 v + d.s. + ne 1 ne/na + v 30 ne + v + þæt + ne 2 total 327 example (4) below is from interlinear glosses of the psalter. the lambeth psalter (psgli, lambeth palace 427, dated in the first half of the eleventh century) has a triple gloss of the verb of negative import and the expletive negative. when the vespasian psalter (psgla, cotton vespasian a. i, ninth century) and the stowe psalter (psglf, stowe 2, later than the lambeth psalter) are compared, bewerian, a synonym of forbeodan, is not followed by a þæt-clause but by ðy læs in vespasian, the earliest, mercian gloss, while late west saxon stowe psalter has a þæt-clause with negation. (for the examples of the psalter and the gospels, i include the wycliffite (wyev, wylv) and authorized versions (av) to show the historical change in syntax and renderings.) 24 michiko ogura (4) psgli 33.14 [prohibe linguam tuam a malo et labia tua ne loquantur dolum] forbeod l. forhafa l. bewere tungan þine fram yfle weleras þine þæt hig ne sprecon faken cf. psgla: bewere tungan ðine from yfle weolure ðy læs sprecen facen cf. psglf: bewere tungan ðine fram yfele ד welerum ðinum þæt ne sprecon facen wycev: forfende thi tunge fro euel; and thi lippis that thei speke not treccherie. wyclv: forbede thi tunge fro yuel; and thi lippis speke not gile. av: keepe thy tongue from euill, and thy lippes from speaking guile. examples (5) and (6) are from the gospels. in (5), lindisfarne (li, cotton nero d. iv, latter half of the tenth century) and rushworth (ru, auct.2.19, tenth century) use bebeodan, while west saxon corpus christi (wscp, cccc140, eleventh to twelfth century) chooses forbeodan; the expletive negative appears, therefore, in the west saxon version. in (6), li uses the double gloss of forbeodan and werian with another double gloss of to-infinitive and þæt-clause, ru2 uses forbeodan with to-infinitive (or rather, follows the first gloss of li), and wscp chooses forbeodan with the expletive negative. these examples of the psalter and of the gospels show that the late west saxon texts tend to use the expletive negative construction. (5) mk 3.12 [et uehementer cominabatur eis né manifestarent illum] li: ד swiðe bebead him ꝥte hia ne æwades ł mersades hine ru1: ד swiðe bibead him ꝥ hiæ ne eowde him wscp: ד he him swyðe forbead. ꝥ hi hine ne ge-swutelodon. wycev: and gretely he manasside hem, that thei shulden nat make hym opyn, or knowen. av: and he straitly charged them, that they should not make him knowen. (6) lk 23.2 [hunc inuenimus sub-uertentem gentem nostram et prohibentem tributa dari caesari et dicentem sé christum regem esse] li: ðiosne woe gemitten under-cerrende ł cynn userne ד forbeadende ł woerdende gæfelo ł to seallanne ł ꝥte se gesald ðæm caseri ד cuoeðende hine cristum cyning ꝥte woere ł ꝥte sé ru2: ðiosne we gemitton under-cerrende cynn usera ד forbeodende ææ ד wigga [sic] ד for-beodende gæfel to sellanna ðæm casera ד cweðende hine crist cynig ꝥte were he forbead þæt hi ne weopon 25 wscp: ðisne we gemétton for-hwyrfende ure þeode. ד for-beodende ꝥ man þam casere gafol ne sealde. ד segð ꝥ he sí crist cyning; wycev: we han founden this man turnynge vpsodoun oure folk, and forbedinge tributis to be ȝouun to cesar, and seyinge him silf to be crist king. av: we found this fellow peruerting the nation, and forbidding to giue tribute to cesar, saying, that he himselfe is christ a king. examples (7) and (8) are from orosius (or, additional 47967, first half of the tenth century), (7) with a negative (expletive) clause and (8) with an affirmative þæt-clause. (7) or 6 11.140.11 he forbead ofer ealne his onwald þæt mon nanum cristenum men ne abulge, ‘he forbade over all his dominion that any christian men should be offended’ (8) or 6 1.133.31 þæt wæs þæt he fleah ד forbead þæt hiene mon god hete, swa nan cyning nolde þe ær him wæs, ‘that was, that he declined and forbade that one should call him god, as no king who had been before him wanted’ example (9) is from bede (tanner 10, first half of the tenth century), which has a repetitive word pair of bewereð and forbeodeð (for ‘prohibit’) with an infinitive (following latin). in the first half of the tenth century, therefore, it can be said that the construction ‘a verb with negative import + þæt-clause with a negative element’ is not yet idiomatic. (9) bede 1 16.70.6 [et sacra lex prohibet cognationis turpitudinem reuelare] ond seo halige ǽ bewereð ד forbeodeð þa scondlicnesse onwreon mægsibba ‘and the holy law prohibits and forbids to uncover the shame of relatives’ from example (10) we see the choice in the works of ælfric and late west saxon. example (10) is from ælfric’s catholic homilies (æchom, cambridge university library gg.3.28, tenth to eleventh century), which has the expletive negative construction. example (11) from the same manuscript shows forbeodan + þus cweðende + direct speech containing a negative element; this is one of the 26 michiko ogura stylistic devices using a verb of saying (cf. ogura 1988) with direct or indirect speech of negation, as seen in table 1 above. example (12) is from ælfric’s lives of saints, st swithun (cotton julius e. vii, eleventh century) and (13) from ælfric’s first old english letter to wulfstan (cccc190, first half of the eleventh century), both of which illustrate the expletive negative. (10) æchom ii, 43 322.115 se ælmihtiga god forbead þurh his witegan þæt nán ðæra manna þe rihtwis beon wile. ne sceal syllan his feoh to gafole; ‘the almighty god forbade through his wise man that anyone of those men who wish to be righteous must give his money as tribute’ (11) æchom 21 206 ac moyses him forbead micclum þus cweðende: ne fare ge, ic eow bidde, swa fuse to þam lande ‘but moses forbade them severely saying thus, “do not go, i command you, so eagerly to the land”’ (12) æls (swithun) 410 and god sylf forbead þæt we swefnum ne folgion. þe læs ðe se deofol us bedydrian mæge. ‘and god himself forbade that we should follow vision, lest the devil could deceive us’ (13) ælet 2 (wulfstan 1) 10 and moyses hy awrat and mancynne forbead, þæt hi nænne hæþenscype habban ne mostan ‘and moses wrote them and forbade to mankind that they should have any paganism’ example (14) is from alexander’s letter to aristotle (cotton vitellius a. xv, tenth to eleventh century) and (15) from genesis in the heptateuch (cotton claudius b. iv, first half of the eleventh century), both of which show the expletive negative. in example (16), first sunday in lent (cccc198, eleventh century), forbeodan is negated, and so is the content of the following þæt-clause, which means that ne in the þæt-clause is redundant. examples (17) sermo bone paredicatio (cccc201), (18) prudentius psychomachia titles (cccc23), and (19) poenitentiale pseudo-egberti (laud misc. 482) all illustrate the expletive negative. he forbead þæt hi ne weopon 27 (14) alex 40.13 ac þa forbead hit se bisceop þæt hi ne weopon. ‘but then the bishop forbade it that they should weep’ (15) gen 3.1 [cur præcepit uobis deus, ut non comederetis de omni ligno paradisi?] hwi forbead god eow ðæt ge ne æton of ælcon treowe binnan paradisum? wycev: whi comaundide god to ȝow, that ȝe shulden not ete of ech tree of paradis? av: yea, hath god said, ye shall not eat of euery tree of the garden? (16) homs 16(ass 12) 81 men ða leofestan, we mynegiað eac ælcne getreowfulne man, þæt he gelomlice lufige cumliðnysse and nanum cuman ne forbeode, þæt he ne mote on his huse gerestan, ‘beloved men, we remember each faithful man, that he should frequently love hospitality, and forbid no guests that he should be allowed to rest in his house’ (17) homu 47 (nap 58) 103 hit is forboden on halgum bocum swyþe deope, þæt nan cristen man ne mote his ælmessan ahwæþer behatan oððe to bringan ne his wæccan ne his broces bote secean ahwider, buton to criste sylfum and to his halgum and to cyrcean. ‘it is forbidden in holy books very deeply that any christian is allowed either to promise the alms or to bring wakefulness or to seek remedy for his misery, except for christ himself and for his saints and for church.’ (18) conf 3.1.1 (raithy) 146 ælcum geleaffullum men is forboden, þæt he his feoh ne his æhta to nanum unrihtum gafol ne læne, ‘it is forbidden for each faithful man that he should give his cattle or his goods as any false debt’ (19) prudt 1 1 her godes swyðra forbead abrahame, þæt he his sunu ne ofsloge, ‘here god’s power forbade abraham that he should kill his son’ 28 michiko ogura peterborough chronicle (laud misc. 636, dated a. 1121) shows the expletive negative in examples (20), (21), and (22), and this construction keeps appearing in the texts of the transitional period like bodley 343 homilies (c. 1175), as in examples (23) and (24). (20) chrone 656.91 ic forbede þet ne kyning ne nan man ne haue nan onsting buton þon ד abbot ane, ‘and i forbid that either a king or any man should have any authority except the abbot alone’ (21) chrone 675.31 (med forbēden (v.) 1a (a)) alswa ic beode þe saxulf biscop þet swa swa þu hit geornest þet seo mynstre beo freo, swa ic forbeode þe ד ealle þe biscopas þe æfter ðe cumon of criste ד of ealle his halgan þet ge nan onsting ne hauen of þet mynstre buton swa micel swa þone abbot wile. ‘likewise i command you, bishop seaxwulf, that just as you wish the monastery to be free, so i forbid you and all those bishops that succeed you, by christ and by all his saints, to have any authority over the monastery except in so far as the abbot shall permit’ (tr. garmonsway) (22) chrone 1012.5 (= chronf 1012.4, chronc 1012.6, chrond 1012.6) forþan þe he nolde heom nan feoh behaten ד forbead þet man nan þing wið him syllan ne moste ‘because he did not wish to promise them any money and forbade that anything should be given for him’ (23) ls 5 (inventcrossnap) 101 (= hrood (bod343) 8.12) þonne wolde ic ðe sceawian gyt sum ðare ðingæ ðe he me swiðlice forbead ꝥ ic ðe sceawian ne sceolde ‘then i would like to show you something which he strongly forbade me that i must show you’ (24) bodhom 122.2 (med) for hwón forbeat crist his þeiȝnum ꝥ heo ne sceolden cuþæn ne sæcgæn náne men ꝥ brihtlice sihðe, buton for twam þingum? ‘why did christ forbid his disciples to make known or tell anyone of that bright vision except for two reasons?’ he forbead þæt hi ne weopon 29 this construction is still found in ormulum (a. 1200, orm) as in (25), and more examples in laȝamon’s brut (c. 1275, laȝ), as in (26) to (30), all in expletive negative, except (28). (25) orm 9833 (med) ,all forrþi forrbæd johan ד þatt teȝȝ ne sholldenn ȝellpenn þurrh modiȝnesse off þeȝȝre kinn, ‘and therefore john forbade all, that they should yelp through the pride of their people’ (26) laȝ (c) 781 & ich for-beode [o: …beode]        heolde mine þeinē. vppe þere muchele lufe        þe us bi-tueiȝen lið. þat nan ne beo so wilde        nan swa unwitti. ‘and i forbade my faithful thanes, by the great love that lies between us, that none should be so wild, none so void of wit’ (27) laȝ 13180 c: vortiger þe hæȝ        for-bad his hired-monnen. þet heo nane manne ne tælden whæt heo hæfden on anwolde. o: vortiger anon rihtes         for-bead alle his cnihtes. þat non of ȝam ne tolde         wat he hadde on anwolde. ‘vortiger the high (immediately) forbade his followers (knights) that they should tell anyone (of them) what they (he) had in power’ (28) laȝ 20579 c: & arður for-bæd his cnihtes         dæies & nihtes. þat heo liðen stille         swulc heo stelen woldē. o: arthur for-bed his cnihtes         daiȝes and nihtes. þat hii ȝeoden ase stille         so hii stele wolde. ‘arthur forbade his knights, by day and night, that they should proceed still, as if they would steal’ (29) laȝ 25799 c: þenne for-beode ich þe         bi þine bare life. þat þu nauere wið þene scucke         feht no biginne. o: þanne for-bed ich þe         bi þine bare liue. þat þou neuere wiþ þan         fiht ne bi-gynne. ‘then i forbid thee, by thy bare life, that thou shouldest ever begin fight with the monster’ 30 michiko ogura (30) laȝ 26013 c: for-bad heom bi heore leomen         & bi heore bare liuen. þat nan neoren swa kene         þat heom neh comen. buten he iseȝen         þat hit ned weoren. o: for-bed ȝam bi hire leomes         and hire bare lifue. þat non neore so kene         þat heom neh come. b..e hii ..eȝen         þat hit neod weore. ‘(arthur) forbade them, by their limbs and their bare lives, that anyone who were so keen should come near, unless they saw that it were need’ from the middle english dictionary, i add examples (31) from ayenbit of inwit (1340), and (32) from chaucer’s tale of melibee (c. 1390). (31) ayenb 10.6 (med) ine þise heste ous ys uorbode þet we ne lyeȝe ne ous uorzuerie; ‘in this behest it is forbidden for us to lie or forswear (lit. that we should neither lie nor forswear)’ (32) chaucer ct.b.mel. 2770–2775 (med) this is to seyn, that nature deffendeth and forbedeth by right that no man make hymself riche unto the harm of another persone. 2. other verbs and verb phrases of negative import most verbs of negative import have the same feature of showing the expletive negative construction. examples (33) and (34) are those of oðsacan and ætsacan. as seen in manuscript variants, ansacan, ætsacan, ondsacan, oðsacan, and wiðsacan share this feature. in example (35), in addition to the different choice of prefixes to the verb, the use of þæt as an indicator of both direct and indirect speech is illustrated. li and ru1 have þæt + direct speech, while wscp has an indirect speech after þæt, with the expletive negative. example (36) has two examples of wiðsacan, one with a þæt-clause with a negative element and the other ne + wiðsacan with a þæt-clause with a negative element; both illustrate the expletive negative. he forbead þæt hi ne weopon 31 (33) or 6 4.136.28 oðsace [c: ætsace] nu, cwæð orosius, se se þe wille oþþe se þe dyrre, þæt þæt angin nære gestilled for þæs cristendomes gode, ‘deny now, said orosius, he who wish or dare, that the beginning were stable before the christian god’ (34) laȝ (c) 6100 bute þat þa densce men         dunriht at-soken [o: asoken]. þet heo to brut-londe         nolden moren senden. gold ne garsume         ne gauel of þon lōde. ‘except that the danish men denied downright, that they would send anymore gold or treasure or tribute of the land’ (35) mt 26.72 [et iterum negauit cum iuramento quia non noui hominem] li: ד eft-sona onsóc mid aað ꝥ ic ne conn ðone monno ru1: ד æft דsoc mid haþe ꝥ ic ne conn þone monn wscp: ד he wiðsóc eft mid áþe ꝥ he hys nan þing ne cuðe wycev: and eftsone he denyede with an ooth, for he knewe nat the man. wyclv: and eftsoone he denyede with an ooth, for i knewe not the man. av: and againe hee denied with an oath, i doe not know the man. (36) æchom ii,13 130.101 þa wiðsóc crist swiðe rihtlice. þæt he deofol on him næfde. ac he ne wiðsoc þæt he nære samaritanisc. ‘then christ denied very rightly that he had a devil in him, but he did not deny that he was a samaritan’ examples of forsacan are given from (37) to (40). example (37), from cura pastoralis, has an affirmative þæt-clause. examples (38) and (39) are from gregory’s dialogues (cccc178 first half of the eleventh century); (38) has a manuscript variant of wiðsacan and the following þæt-clause is in the affirmative; (39) is the only example of the expletive negative among the four examples of the verb in this text. example (40), though from ælfric, has the þæt-clause in the affirmative. (37) cp 36.247.19 he forsæcð ðæt he him to cume ד ‘and he refuses that he should come to him (= wisdom)’ 32 michiko ogura (38) gd1 (c) 10.82.2 he ȝelædde þa cnihtas toforan him, þe he eallinȝa ær forsoc [h: wiðsoc], þæt he hi æfre aȝyfan wolde ‘he led the servants before him, whom he had entirely refused that he ever wanted to give it’ (39) gdpref and 3(c) 37.255.17 ac se drihtnes wer forsoc, þæt he swylcum lace onfon nolde, ‘but the man of the lord refused, that he would receive such offering’ (40) æchom ii,1 9.227 gif hwá hit forsoce þæt he sceolde beon forbærned on hatum ofne ‘if anyone should refuse it, that he must be burned on the hot oven’ example (41) has wandian ‘to hesitate’, and (42) and (43) show forwyrnan ‘to deny’, all of which illustrate the expletive negative. example (44) has belean ‘to prevent’ from a homily of the transitional period; this verb does not seem to have an example of the expletive negative in old english. (41) cp 23.177.11 ond on oðre wisan sint to manianne ða ðe ða word ðære halgan æ ryhte ne ongietað, on oðre ða ðe hi ryhtlice ongietað, ד ðeah for eaðmodnesse wandiað ðæt hi hit ne sprecað; ‘and in one way those are to be admonished who do not rightly understand the words of the holy law, in another those who rightly understand them, and yet for humility hesitate to speak it’ (42) æchom 27 48 eala þu casere, nast þu þa micelnysse þæra manna slege[s] þe ðu gefremodest þurh þine reðnysse, ne þin mód ne oncnæwð þone micclan hefe þinre dyrstignysse þe þu gedon hæfst; oððe hwæþer þin miht þe mæge forwyrnan þæt ðu þas synne ne sceole oncnawan? ‘o you caesar, do you not know the greatness of manslaughter which you did through your cruelty, or does your mind not perceive the great burden of your presumption which you have made, or whether your power which could deny that you must recognise these sins?’ (43) æchom 30 75 ac gyf hyt se witega wære, he wolde him forwyrnan þæt he to hym ne gebæde, his hælende on teonan; he forbead þæt hi ne weopon 33 ‘but if it were the prophet, he wished to deny him that he should pray for him, in view of insulting his lord’ (44) trinhom 107.10 and for to bileande þat no man werpe þe gilt of his sinne anuppen god ‘and to prevent that anyone should throw the guilt of his sins upon god’ tweogan, tweonian, and tweo beon behave slightly differently from other verbs or verbal phrases. they always take ‘ne + verb + þæt + ne’, i.e. the main verb or verb phrase is negated as well as the content of the following þæt-clause. examples are (45) from boethius (cotton otho a. vi, mid-tenth century), (46) and (47) from homilies in the late tenth to the eleventh century, and (48) from the transitional period. (45) bo 37.113.21 forðæm ne þearf nænne wisne mon tweogan þæt ða yflan næbben eac ecu edlean hiora yfles; þæt bið ece wite. ‘for no wise man need doubt that the evil men do not also have eternal reward for their evil, that is eternal punishment’ (tr. godden & irvine) (46) homu 11 (scraggverc 7) 66 nu sio idelnes swa swiðe þam lichoman dereð, ne tweoge þe na þæt hio þære sawle ne sceððe, ‘now idleness greatly injures the body; doubt that not at all, that it cannot (but) injure the soul’ (tr. nicholson) (47) homs 17 (blhom 5) 178 forþon nis nan tweo þæt he forgifnesse syllan nelle þam þe hie geearnian willaþ. ‘for there is no doubt that he will grant forgiveness to those who desire to merit it’ (48) bodhom (bod343) 52.21 þeah ðe þenne hwylc mon beó swiðe sinful, ד arleas, ד unrihtwis, ne sceal he him tweoniȝæn þæt he ne maȝe godes mildheortnesse biȝitæn, ȝif he wyle to dædbote cýrræn. 34 michiko ogura ‘any man, then, although he is very sinful, and wicked, and unrighteous, shall not doubt the possibility of his obtaining god’s mercy, if he will turn to repentance’ (tr. belfour) this feature is handed down to french loan verb douten (see ogura 2007); examples are (49) and (50) from cursor mundi (cotton vespasian a. iii and göttingen). in merlin (?c. 1450), an example from med, which i quote in (51), there is no negation of the main verb and the context shows a slightly different sense. the last example (52) is another loan verb denien from chaucer’s boece (c. 1380). (49) cursor 10869 c: þis leuedi nathing doted sco þat godd ne moght his will do, g: þis leudy na-thing doutid scho, þat godd ne miht his wille al do, ‘this lady she doubted nothing that god could do his will’ (50) cursor 12321 c: for sco was traist and duted noght, þat godds wil ne suld be wroght. cf. t: she was trusty & douted nouȝt but goddess wille wolde be wrouȝt ‘for she was faithful and did not doubt that god’s will should be done’ (51) merlin (cmbff.3.11) i 6.9 (med: douten that .. nought fear lest (sth. happen)) he [deuell] dought that he myght not wynne hem [these sustres] by felschip of man, with-oute counseille of some woman; cf. 30 i doubte that ye will me sle. (52) chaucer bo iii prose 10.12 but it may nat be denyed that thilke good ne is, and that it nys ryght as a welle of alle goodes. 3. conclusion it was visser (1963–1973) who first explained appropriately on this construction with examples of both an affirmative and a negative þæt-clause from one of the earliest old english texts of cura pastoralis, and mitchell (1985: §§2039–2043) used the term “expletive negative” for this construction, as he explained it with many examples in his old english syntax. but after them, some he forbead þæt hi ne weopon 35 overgeneralisation has been accepted that the construction of expletive negative was a feature throughout the old english period. from my investigation focused on old english up and early middle english some points have been made manifest: (i) a verb with negative import shows a tendency to invite the negative particle ne in the dependent clause it takes, owing to the negative import of the governing verb; this is a kind of correlative construction based on old english syntax; (ii) alternative expressions like ‘verb (with negative import) and verb of saying + direct speech or indirect speech (with ne)’ may suggest that the construction ‘verb (with negative import) + þæt + ne’ is not illogical but a contracted and correlative form, meaning ‘he forbade saying, “you should not do that”’ or ‘he forbade and said that i should not do that’; (iii) ‘verb (with negative import) + to-infinitive’ was found in old english as an alternative of ‘verb (with negative import) + þæt-clause’ with or without ne, which means that the shift from forbid that to forbid to is a tendency rather than a historical development; (iv) the ‘verb (with negative import) + þæt + ne’ construction could be highly deemed in late old english and early middle english as anglosaxon syntax. in addition, the fact that the distinction between direct and indirect speech was not so complete as in the present-day english can be a cause of the existence of this construction, since þæt could be employed as an indicator of direct speech in biblical contexts, and also the fact that oe prefix forcould not be morphologically distinguished in two senses, i.e. in the sense of opposition (cf. g ver-) and in the sense of emphasis (cf. g vor-), has made the old english syntax less explicit. references dictionaries bt an anglo-saxon dictionary. 1898; rpt. 1972. ed. j. bosworth. london, oxford university press. bts an anglo-saxon dictionary. supplement. 1921; rpt. 1973. eds. j. bosworth & t. n. toller. with revised and enlarged addenda by a. campbell. london, oxford university press. doe: dictionary of old english, a–g in cd-rom. 2008. the pontifical institute of mediaeval studies, university of toronto. doewc: dictionary of old english web corpus. 2009-. eds. a. dipaolo healey et al. toronto, university of toronto press. www.doe.utoronto.ca 36 michiko ogura med: middle english dictionary. 1952–2001. eds. h. kurath, s. m. kuhn, j. reidy & r. e. lewis. ann arbor, university of michigan press. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med oed3: the oxford english dictionary online. 3rd ed. 2015. oxford, oxford university press. www.oed.com secondary sources ishiguro, t. 1998: verbs of negative import: a syntactic study that benefited from the dictionary of old english project. old english newsletter 26: 23–32. iyeiri, y. 2010: verbs of implicit negation and their complements in the history of english. amsterdam & philadelphia, john benjamins. ker, n. r. 1957/1990: catalogue of manuscripts containing anglo-saxon. oxford, clarendon press. mitchell, b. 1985: old english syntax, 2 vols. oxford, clarendon press. ogura, m. 1988: direct or indirect? — þæt as a quotation indicator. in o. kinshiro et al. eds. philologia anglica. essays presented to professor yoshio terasawa on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. tokyo, kenkyusha: 88–105. ogura, m. 2007: me douten and dreden. in g. d. caie ed. the power of words in lexicography, lexicology and semantics in honour of christian kay. amsterdam, rodopi: 117–130. van der wurff, w. 1999: on expletive negation with adversative predicates in the history of english. in i. tieken-boon van ostade, g. tottie & w. van der wurff eds. negation in the history of english. berlin, mouton de gruyter: 295–327. visser, f. th. 1963–1973: an historical syntax of the english language. 3 parts, 4 vols. leiden, brill. wallage, p. w. 2017: negation in early english grammatical and functional change. cambridge, cambridge university press. author’s address school of arts and sciences tokyo woman’s christian university 2-6-1 zempukuji, suginami-ku tokyo 167-8585, japan received: 14 october 2019 e-mail: ogura.dainagon@jcom.home.ne.jp revised version accepted: 21 january 2020 selim 16.indb trinidad guzmán gonzález, selim 16 (2009): 167–170issn: 1132–631x the tale of gamelyn of the canterbury tales. an annotated edition. (introduction, translation, commentary and glossary by nila vázquez. foreword by teresa fanego) 2009. lewinston/queenston/lampeter: the edwin mellen press. 466 pp. isbn-13: 978-0-7734-3852-⒈ isbn10: 0-7743-3853-⒈ 11,100,000 results in 0.22 seconds. this is the fi gure you obtain if you type “geoff rey chaucer” in google books. “googling” this way is, of course, nothing but some kind of educated game—but it is numbers like these (though still far  om shakespeare’s: 193,000,000 results in 0.31 seconds) which o en lead laymen to wonder about the need for still another book about chaucer. they would be wrong. nila vazquez’s book is not just another one—it is a fi ne philological work which contributes to chaucer scholarship (and to english medieval studies in general) in a variety of ways which go beyond providing an annotated edition of a poem whose authorship—and hence its belonging to the canterbury tales canonhas been much disputed. the tale of gamelyn is a poem of 902 lines which appears in twentyfi ve of the eighty-four extant manuscripts of the canterbury tales, and a  equent belief is that, be it a dra by chaucer, or by an unknown author, it may have been intended as a second tale told by the cook (on account of the place it occupies in various manuscripts and of the fact that in some of them it is labelled as “the cookes tale of gamelyn”). it tells the story of the youngest of three brothers, who is treacherously deprived of his right share of their father’s inheritance by his eldest brother. a er many adventures, including some time as an outlaw (a sub-theme which connects the tale with the robin hood tradition), the false brother is punished and gamelyn is restored back to his honour and his property. modern editors of the tales have generally chosen to exclude it, mostly under the infl uence of nineteenth-century scholars like skeat. nila vázquez does not aim at settling such matter beyond the point that none of the arguments against chaucer’s authorship “have proved compelling” (p. 289). in any case, she interestingly observes that “this text does not occur anywhere else than in manuscripts including, either complete or incomplete, versions of chaucer’s canterbury tales” (p. 5). it may not be 168 trinidad guzmán gonzález selim 16 (2009) a concluding argument for chaucer’s authorship, but it is an excellent one for the text to be studied in its own right, and to be thoroughly edited. as it could not be otherwise, the main body of this work (around 300 pages of a total of 466) consists of a synoptic edition of gamelyn, on the one hand, and vazquez’s own edition of the tale with apparatus criticus and textual notes, on the other. they are preceded by an introduction, and a chapter with general considerations on the tale of gamelyn and the canterbury tales. vazquez’s own version of the text into present-day english, a glossarial index and a short chapter with fi nal remarks follow the critical edition; the book is completed with a reference list and a general index. as to abbreviations, a list subdivided into “abbreviations for items in the canterbury tales” and “other abbreviations used” is included at the very beginning, right a er the detailed table of contents, whereas specifi c lists concerning identifi cations of manuscripts sigils and abbreviations used in the glossarial index to the text have been very usefully placed right before the relevant parts of the work (pp 6–9 and pp. 414–415 respectively). the introduction contains an outline of the whole work, together with a brief history of the initial research which fi nally led to the book in its present fi nal form—within the context of the canterbury tales project initially launched by norman blake, peter robinson and elizabeth solopova and currently based in the university of birmingham under dr. robinson’s direction. the instrumental character of the book is readily stated (p. 3: “the chief goal of this new critical edition … is to off er the reader the possibility of dealing with all the material directly, in such a way that she/he can use it for her/his own purposes”) plus a general justifi cation of the need for a new edition of the tale following the tenets of modern philology. the general considerations in section i  ame the tale of gamelyn within the canterbury tales, and describe the particulars of the poem. this fi rst section also contains a list with the complete references (plus sigil abbreviations) of the eighty-four extant manuscripts of the tales (a real “best-seller” indeed for the period), which i fi nd useful in a work aimed at researchers with all kinds of agendas. preliminary descriptions of each of the twenty-fi ve manuscripts containing gamelyn end the section. 169 reviews selim 16 (2009) the bulk of the work consists, as mentioned above, of a synoptic edition and a critical edition of the tale of gamelyn, preceded by a brief history of the previous editions  om the eighteenth century onwards, upon which vázquez bases her arguments for the need of a new one based on a diff erent group of manuscripts: she feels that not only more exhaustivity and reliability are necessary but also an entirely diff erent approach which aims at fi nding evidence for and not against including gamelyn within the canterbury tales). the synoptic edition is based on oxford, corpus christi college, ms 198, and uses oxford, christ church ms 152; cambridge, fitzwilliam museum, mclean ms 181; london, british library, ms harley 7334; oxford, bodleian library, ms hatton donat i; london, british library, ms lansdowne 851; lichfi eld, lichfi eld cathedral, ms 29; cambridge, cambridge university library, mm.2.5; petworth, petworth house, ms 7 and london, british library, ms royal 18 as the other witnesses for collation. all ten diplomatic editions start with a codicological analysis of the manuscript containing each text. the introduction to the very complete critical edition provides a detailed summary of the plot and information regarding language, metre, possible date of composition and authorship and comments on literary connections of the text, besides something historical phonologists will value very much indeed: a list of the 451 rhyming couplets of gamelyn. apart of the apparatus criticus and the notes to the text, the edition is completed by a glossarial index and the editor’s own version into presentday english. the translation seems to be half-way between a philological translation and a “fi nal product”—discussion on this point is not certainly as detailed as those on editorial matters. i assume that when she decided to provide this translation, nila vazquez had in mind a variety of researchers, not necessarily medievalists, some of whom would need to work with medieval texts and would, therefore, need the guidance of a modern version (i cannot imagine any serious researcher on english medieval texts lacking the basic tools of their trade, i.e. a sound knowledge of both old and middle english). this is the point of the whole work: to address the needs of a wide range of prospective researchers, something in which she has fully succeeded. vázquez has learnt much more than the essentials of paleography she modestly refers to—no such task can be satisfactorily accomplished just 170 trinidad guzmán gonzález selim 16 (2009) with the “bare necessities”. her argumentations concerning her various choices (corpus christi college oxford ms 198 as her codex optimus, the guidelines for transcription and for the elaboration of the glossarial index, for example) seem convincing to me, but i am no paleographer. i am just a historical linguist who needs to rely on good paleographic work and whose best way to make her choice for an edition is high-quality argumentation… like the one off ered in this work, which professor fanego’s justly characterises in her foreword as “a welcome and exhaustive contribution to chaucer’s scholarship” which “will no doubt become an important reference in the text of textual editing”. trinidad guzmán gonzález university of león • received 11 oct 2010; revision received 25 oct 2010; accepted 01 nov 2010 selim 19.indb maría del mar gutiérrez-ortiz, selim 19 (2012): 143–158issn: 1132–631x “work:” the shift from empathy to sympathy in the york play of the crucifixion abstract: the raising of the cross in the the york play of the crucifi xion shift s the empathic connection of the audience with the soldiers to a sympathetic bond with christ. the mirror neuron system and theory of the mind have been used to defi ne and draw a distinction between the concepts of empathy and sympathy. given that bacon’s theory of perception provides a historical fr ame of reference for such emotional responses, this paper analyzes the language, the props and the staging of the play to explore the nature of the audience’s relationship with the characters. the conclusion reached is that the immediate impact of the raising of the cross has been largely disregarded: it is the end of the soldiers’ work that brings about the shift fr om empathy to sympathy. work is not only the alienating force that enables the soldiers to carry out the crucifi xion with indiff erence, but also the main connection between the spectators, the characters and the actors. keywords: empathy, sympathy, york, pageant, play, mystery cycle, crucifi xion, audience, spectators, aff ective piety, compassion, work. resumen: la elevación de la cruz en la obra de la crucifi xión de york transforma la conexión empática del público con los soldados en un lazo de simpatía con cristo. el sistema de neuronas espejo y la teoría de la mente nos han servido para defi nir y distinguir los conceptos de empatía y simpatía. dado que la teoría de la percepción de bacon nos proporciona un marco de referencia histórico para tales respuestas emocionales, este artículo analiza la lengua, la escenografía y la puesta en escena de la obra con objeto de explorar la naturaleza de la relación entre el público y los personajes. se ha llegado a la conclusión de que la consecuencia inmediata de la elevación de la cruz ha pasado en gran medida desapercibida: es la conclusión del trabajo de los soldados lo que comporta la susodicha transformación de la empatía en simpatía. el trabajo no es solo la fuerza alienante que hace posible que los soldados lleven a cabo la crucifi xión con indiferencia, sino también la principal conexión entre los espectadores, los personajes y los actores. palabras clave: empatía, simpatía, york, representación, obra de teatro, ciclo de misterios, crucifi xión, público, espectadores, piedad afectiva, compasión, trabajo. t he york play of the crucifixion strikes the modern reader with its indiff erent treatment of violence. the crucifi xion of christ is presented as a typical task in the soldiers’ everyday work: they need to fi t his body to the holes in the cross. while most critics have explored the audience’s response to the play as an act of aff ective piety, some have pointed out that the depiction of the soldiers as ordinary workingmen might have enabled the public’s identifi cation with them. this essay aims to maría del mar gutiérrez-ortiz 144selim 19 (2012) reconcile both perspectives and draw a distinction between the nature of the spectators’ empathy with christ’s torturers and their sympathy for christ. since it is diffi cult to presume the simultaneous coexistence of both aff ective responses within the audience, some critics have established the raising of the cross as the turning point in the play. the moment has been analyzed as a visual sign for the change in the tone within the scene, but its most immediate implication has been largely disregarded: the raising of the cross represents the end of the soldiers’ task. the soldiers’ focus on work makes them disregard the brutality of their actions. at the same time, the condition of worker prompts the identifi cation between audience and the soldiers: only when the task is completed does the audience get detached fr om the soldiers and start feeling sympathy for christ. the disturbance caused by the unusual treatment of the crucifi xion has probably led most critics to dismiss the possibility of the audience’s identifi cation with the soldiers. thus, most scholars have argued that the public empathizes with the fi gure of christ on the cross in an act of aff ective piety. specifi cally, cliff ord davidson in his festivals and plays in late medieval britain claims, “the audience was invited to be sympathetic and to identify with him” (2007: 151). similarly, robert s. sturges argues, “the spectators are to […] make an empathetic connection between street and stage, between spectator and performer, in an act of aff ective piety” (1992: 43). in contrast to this general idea of empathy with christ, pamela king refers to the audience’s conspiracy with the “four local workmen” (2006: 144) and its confr ontation with the cross by the end of the play. greg walker, another supporter of the identifi cation between the public and the soldiers, goes further by claiming that the audience shares responsibility for the crucifi xion and is redeemed by christ’s sacrifi ce: “so each of [the members of the public] shares also in god’s forgiveness, granted fr eely and unprompted through grace at the redemption” (2005: 376). finally, jill stevenson reconciles both views when she provides an insightful the shift fr om empathy to sympathy in the york play of the crucifi xion 145 selim 19 (2012) explanation of the empathetic relationship of the spectators with the soldiers and their sympathetic distance fr om christ: “aft er the cross is raised, the pageant exerts direct control over the empathic relationship between spectator and actor” and “the spectator maintain[s] a safe sympathetic distance fr om christ’s body on the cross” (2010: 147). in order to understand the diff erent views proposed by scholars on the york play of the crucifi xion and its audience, it is necessary fi rst to clarify the diff erence between empathy and sympathy. in his book on visual piety, david morgan defi nes these two possible responses of the believers to the image of the divine: “empathy— projecting oneself into the situation of another—and sympathy —the correspondence or harmony of feelings among people— are similar emotional processes, but ultimately quite diff erent in their ethical and social consequences” (1998: 59). morgan qualifi es this general defi nition by adding that empathy and sympathy are heterogeneous concepts whose confi guration and interrelation varies throughout history. by the same token, bruce mcconachie, in his cognitive approach to spectating in theatre, describes in further detail the nature of the cognitive process implied by what colloquial language calls identifi cation with the characters. according to him, in order for the spectators to project themselves into the emotions of the characters, they “must simulate the experiences of actors/characters in their own mind” (2009: 66). gallese, morris eagle, and paolo migone hold that this simulation of someone else’s behaviour generates empathic understanding. in turn, “rather than stepping into an actor/character’s shoes, sympathy involves the spectator in projecting her or his own beliefs and feelings onto the stage fi gure” (mcconachie 2009: 99). therefore, in the theatrical event, empathy is a simulation of the character’s behaviour that predisposes the spectatorship to understand the characters’ emotions, whereas sympathy implies feeling with the characters onstage. even though, as morgan states, both empathy and sympathy are possible responses of believers to maría del mar gutiérrez-ortiz 146selim 19 (2012) the fi gure of the divine, my analysis will show that, in the york play of the crucifi xion, jesus hinders the empathy of the audience and elicits its sympathy. even though the term empathy belongs to contemporary cognitive psychology,1 the medieval discourse already depicts similar emotional responses. jill stevenson studies the mirror theory developed by giacomo rizzolatti and his group in parma in conj unction with the most infl uential ideas on perception in the middle ages, most notably roger bacon’s conceptualization of vision. according to rizzolatti’s theory, the mirror neurons fi re both when primates, humans in particular, act and when they observe an action performed by another: mirror neurons are a particular class of visuomotor neurons, originally discovered in area f5 of the monkey premotor cortex, that discharge both when the monkey does a particular action and when it observes another individual (monkey or human) doing a similar action. (2004: 169) christian keysers and valeria gazzola show that “in analogy to actions and sensations, also the emotions of other individuals are transformed into a representation of the observer’s own emotions” (2009: 23). stevenson surveys diff erent models that explain how we attribute mental states to others and concludes that “empathy is not an emotion, but is instead a precondition that leads to other emotional responses” (2010: 25). thus, she follows mcconachie’s view that empathy is a simulation that allows spectatorship to potentially engage with the characters/actors’ experiences onstage. from antiquity to the middle ages, theories on visual perception were based on the physical connection between the object perceived and the perceptive subject via a transparent substance called species. the medieval models of vision derive fr om two main opposing 1 according to the oxford english dictionary, the word empathy comes fr om the german einfü hlung, fi rst used in this sense by theodor lipps in his leitfaden der psychologie (1903). the shift fr om empathy to sympathy in the york play of the crucifi xion 147 selim 19 (2012) theories: the intromission schools proposed that the species of the object impresses upon the eye, while the extramission theorists hold that it is the light proceeding fr om the eye that produces vision. in his opus majus, bacon subscribes the intromission school as a perceptual model, but, since he claims that every natural thing has to complete its action by its own species, it is necessary for vision to exert its power. if the species of the object modifi es the medium and reaches the eyes, what is the power of vision? vision “proceeds through the locale of the visual pyramid, altering and ennobling the medium and rendering it incommensurate with sight; and thus it prepares for the approach of the visible object” (bridges 1897: 49). even though bacon is far fr om defi ning the nature of the relationship between the object and the subject in the terms of empathy, the fact that the power of eyes consists on “ennobling” the object’s species and even distributing one’s thoughts and personality (see stewart 2003) implies an assimilation between the viewing subject, the spectators in this particular case, and the viewed object, the characters on stage. the baconian synthesis, which combines intromission and extramission theories of perception by granting agency both to the visible object and to the eye, was infl uencial until the 15th century. according to stevenson, the impact of understanding perception as a physical exchange is that “many medieval theories maintained that sensation also engaged the soul and had ethical and spiritual consequences” (2010: 26). stevenson notes that this medieval idea that perception has an eff ect on the perceiver’s body and mind is somehow paralleled by gallese’s claim that the simulation of the actions performed by the observed gives way to an empathic understanding and eventually to an emotional response. however, this empathic understanding is by no means invariable, but it may depend, among other factors, on the relationship between the spectators and the performers: in 1975, dennis krebs conducted an experiment which showed that “perception of similarity facilitates empathic emotional reactions” (1975: 1134). according to richard maría del mar gutiérrez-ortiz 148selim 19 (2012) b. dobson, the fact that “between 1300 and 1350 no less than 75% of york’s citizens were given a trade ascription when their names were entered in the great york freemen’s register” (1997: 98) reveals that fr om the late 13th century the identity of the majority of york citizens was mostly defi ned by their trade. therefore, the majority of the spectatorship most likely shared with the characters the identity of workmen. during the crucifi xion, the soldiers engage in a conversation about the practical problems that their task poses in a colloquial register. the dialogue narrates their actions (“that cord full kindly can i knit,” 133)2 while christ is lying on the stage out of the spectators’ sight: they are concerned about the reward they will get fr om a well done task (“if we schall any worshippe wine,” 14), argue (“why carpe ye so? faste on a cord / and tugge him to, by toppe and taile. / yea, thou comaundis this lightly as a lorde,” 113–115) and complain about the eff ort the task involves (“for, grete harme i have hente: / my schuldir is in sounder!” 189–190). if the conversation sounds familiar to any modern reader minimally acquainted with the life of a labourer, all the more so to an audience that belongs to a society organized in craft guilds: they are a group of workers struggling to complete their task in the best possible way. thus, the colloquial register, which was probably similar to the spectators’ everyday language and their conversation topics, which characterize them as workmen, trigger a “horizontal relationship” of empathy in the audience. by contrast, christ’s more formal language originates fr om the seven last words of the gospels and the liturgy for holy week (bevington 1975: 569). the fi rst time that he speaks, “christ, as in the meditationes, makes a solemn off ering of himself to the father in a sacrifi cial speech which suddenly puts the action into its divine perspective” (woolf 1980: 261). on the second occasion, christ fi rst complains to “al men that walkis, by waye or strete” (253) and then asks his father for forgiveness for “thes men that dois me pine” 2 quotations fr om the text taken fr om bevington 1975. the shift fr om empathy to sympathy in the york play of the crucifi xion 149 selim 19 (2012) (1980: 260). according to rosemary woolf, “o vos omnes” and the fi rst word fr om the cross are the sources for this last statement (1980: 262). in richard beadle’s words, christ’s words “call forth the emotional associations of the medieval liturgy” (1994: 102), even if they are delivered in english rather than in latin, the language of the church. thus, the contents of the speech and the solemnity establish a vertical relationship with the spectators, who feel devotion and sympathy for the fi gure of christ. while the york play of crucifi xion does not require many props (a cross and a few tools to secure christ), the power of the play is dependent on them. the deictic references to the tools used (“here is a stubbe,” 102 or “that corde,” 133) actualize their presence onstage and reinforce the manual nature of the work. moreover, the narration of the actions may have been accompanied by sounds of hammers and ropes. according to christian keysers et al., “ ‘audiovisual mirror neurons’ […] represent actions independently of whether these actions are performed, heard or seen” (2003: 628). therefore, as pointed out by stevenson, the sounds must have favoured the audience’s simulation of the soldiers’ actions and thus their empathy for them. by contrast, christ is mainly silent before the raising of the cross and most likely out of the audience’s sight as he is “eff ectively invisible beneath the rim of the wagon for much of the action” (walker 2000: 375). therefore, the stage is dominated by the soldiers’ conversation that refers to christ simply as one more element of their work. the raising of the cross represents the turning point of the play: when “the physical limits of his body are invaded and broken so that he might conform to the predetermined, emblematic shape” (sturges 1992: 44), the quotidian scene banishes to leave room for christ’s words. he is no longer the object of the soldiers’ work and conversation and becomes the center of the stage and the speaker. the references to the beholders in his fi nal statements (“al men that walkis, by waye or strete,” 253 and “thes men that dois me pine,” 260) are suffi ciently ambiguous to refer both to the fi ctional attendants maría del mar gutiérrez-ortiz 150selim 19 (2012) of the crucifi xion and to the actual spectators, who merge, for a moment, in the theatrical event. thus, the characterization of the soldiers as workmen and the colloquial register of their language triggers a horizontal relationship of empathy, as the spectators place themselves in the soldiers’ shoes, whereas the solemnity of christ’s speech establishes a vertical relationship of sympathy, as the audience suff ers for the devotional fi gure. these metaphoric defi nitions of the relationship between the characters and the spectators become patent in the staging of the play. initially the soldiers occupy the center of the stage, as christ disappears fi rst fr om the ears and then fr om the view of the public. when the cross is raised, the visual focus is displaced and christ becomes the center of attention. however, he does not take the place of his tormentors on the stage, but rather he is situated above them and therefore above the spectators that have so far identifi ed with them. additionally, christ appears as a static and mostly silent fi gure, as an image contrasting with the dynamism implied by the soldiers’ task. in stevenson’s words, “this dramatic choice makes spectators conscious that the pageant’s primary dramatic action is now their own act of looking, an act understood in the middle ages to be alive with dynamic inter-corporeal movement and impact” (2010: 146). from this new position, christ elicits an “inter-corporeal” response in the spectators that is diff erent fr om the relationship of identifi cation that had connected the street and the soldiers’ stage up to this point. how does christ’s vertical relationship with the audience hinder empathy and elicit sympathy? the suspension of disbelief, which had drawn the public into the story as conspirers, breaks when they become attendants of the crucifi xion. as sturges has noted, the action of this pageant is both the crucifi xion and the creation of a spectacle (1992: 42). the location of the spectators at the foot of the cross, as well as christ’s speech, turns them into the beholders of this spectacle. if the audience performs the role of a spectator within the fi ctional work, it can no longer simulate the behaviour of the shift fr om empathy to sympathy in the york play of the crucifi xion 151 selim 19 (2012) other characters and reach an empathic understanding. moreover, the solemnity and the contents of christ’s words both distance him fr om the audience and establish him as a fi gure of devotion. to begin with, by addressing all men that walk by way or street, he affi rms the otherness of the public and shift s to traditional ritual language. the monologue continues and christ asks god to forgive these men that torment him and let their sins never be visited upon them. as these lines aid the audience in refl ecting upon their own transgressions and the redemptive power of this sacrifi ce, christ establishes a special connection with god and becomes a fi gure of devotion for the spectators. while distance hinders the empathy of the audience, it does not necessarily prevent a sympathetic response to “the live display of a brutalized (medieval, probably layperson) body on the cross” (stevenson 2010: 146). aft er the 13th century, the image of christ as a triumphant saviour was progressively replaced by a brutalized human fi gure. as he loses his hieratic divinity and becomes a vulnerable human, christ’s new resemblance with the believers evokes an emotional response in them. thus, the rise of compassionate devotion to the suff ering of christ becomes, in jack a. w. bennett’s words, “one of the greatest revolutions in feeling that europe has ever witnessed” (1982: 7). compassio, the latin cognate for the greek term sympathy (συμπάθεια), implies feeling with an individual, but the sharing of christ’s suff ering varies greatly among the diff erent accounts. for instance, in the mirror of the blessed life of jesus, nicholas love invites the readers to be witnesses, behold the lord and feel pity for him “þat is reuerently to be hade in sorouful compassion” (sargent 1992: 166); the word “reuerently” reveals that the author encourages a distant compassion for the divine fi gure. in turn, the book of margery kempe describes the speaker’s powerful reactions before the crucifi ed body of christ as follows: “beheldyng the passyon of owr lord entryd hir mende, wherthrow sche gan meltyn and al to relentyn be terys of pyté and compassyown” (46.2607). stevenson maría del mar gutiérrez-ortiz 152selim 19 (2012) interprets kempe’s physical manifestations as the consequence of “an imaginative transposition” (2010: 142): the lord enters her, she simulates his experience and feels compassion for him. however, as love’s account reveals, the sympathy for the brutalized body of christ does not necessarily involve the simulation of his experience. susan feagin’s explanation of the nature of the sympathetic response in fi ction will help us to understand the nature of the audience’s sympathy for christ in the york play of the crucifi xion: the degree to which one empathizes depends on the depth of the simulation. a sympathetic response, however, does not involve simulating the mental activity and processes of the protagonist; it instead requires having feelings or emotions that are in concert with the interests or desires the sympathizer ( justifi ably) attributes to the protagonist. (1996: 114) since sympathy is not necessarily preceded by simulation and empathic understanding, the audience of the play might have had emotions and feelings for christ without projecting themselves onto him. if aronson-lehavi is right in encouraging a contextual reading of the tretise of miraclis pleyinge and the mystery cycles, the tract would confi rm our conclusions about the public’s devotion and sympathy for christ in the york crucifi xion. the tract addresses numerous arguments advocated by the defenders of the play, one of which is that “men and wymen seinge the passioun of crist and of his seintis, ben movyd to compassion and devocion, wepinge biter teris, thanne they ben not scorninge of god but worschiping” (davidson 1981: 98). aronson-lehavi’s main support for the link between the treatise and the mystery plays is the evident application of this argument to the passion plays. the compassion of the audience for the passion of christ results in their worship: the audience feels sympathy for christ as a fi gure of devotion. the raising of the cross has been repeatedly identifi ed as the play’s turning point and the religious implications of the shift fr om empathy to sympathy have been convincingly interpreted by critics as a way of enhancing the believer’s responsibility in the crucifi xion. the shift fr om empathy to sympathy in the york play of the crucifi xion 153 selim 19 (2012) nevertheless, this signifi cant moment also leads to an immediate consequence that has been largely disregarded by scholars: the raising of the cross implies the completion of the soldiers’ work, the activity that has been the center of the action up to this point, as the sixteen appearances of the word “work” demonstrate. not only does the shared identity of worker elicit the empathy with the soldiers, but the presence of work is also the alienating force that allows the soldiers’ apathetic exercise of violence. the torturers’ focus on their work detaches them fr om the brutality of their actions, as empathy momentarily blinds the audience to the signifi cance of christ’s sacrifi ce for their redemption. only when the work is completed and the cross is raised is the soldiers’ conversation reduced to mockery: 1 miles. we, harke! he jangelis like a jay. 2 miles. me thinke he pratis like a py. 3 miles. he has been doand all this day, doing so and made grete meving of mercy. (265–268) as walker explains, the soldiers’ inability to acknowledge the signifi cance of christ’s sacrifi ce characterizes them as “unredeemable sinners” (2005: 376). the conclusion of the task breaks the audience’s main link to christ’s torturers, whose scornful words do not evidence any kind of sympathy for christ’s brutalized body. the york plays were staged by guilds whose craft usually had some form of a relationship with the plays they performed; for example, the play of the crucifi xion is put up by the pinners and, according to walker, the tilethatchers, who were “responsible for roof-building,” perform the nativity as they would probably display their work in the representation of the stable (2000: 38). therefore, the concept of work establishes one fi nal signifi cant connection between the characters and the actors. to begin with, the fact that the actors were actually local workmen reinforces the empathy between the spectators and the soldiers, but the relation between the pinners (the actors) and the soldiers (the characters) has further signifi cance. martin stevens claims that the pinners were “makers maría del mar gutiérrez-ortiz 154selim 19 (2012) of pins, fi shhooks, mousetraps and other small metallic objects” and because “clearly, they were associated in some way with the nailing process itself ” (1987: 30), their trade was not favoured by the connection. according to him, the direct association between the pinners and the soldiers is a way of reminding the audience that every man is blameworthy for the death of christ. furthermore, the presentation of christ’s torturers as dedicated workmen capable of carrying out such brutal task apathetically conveys a negative view of work in general. in this regard, kathleen ashley proposes that by displacing “the concern of craft smanship” (1998: 21) fr om the guild society to the history of salvation, the play becomes a popularization that allows the audience to explore the idea of work: when the skills specifi c to the pinners are taken out of the normal and everyday world, when a dedication to craft is taken out of the mundane and put into the perspective of sacred history, the skills and craft commitment can be examined in the abstract. (1998: 21) according to her, dramatization allows the york audience to refl ect on their socioeconomic situation. my subsequent analysis aims to explore the context of the play in order to fi nd a possible source for this implicit judgment of work ethics. the fact that the crucifi xion was put up by a professional guild (i.e., an association united precisely by work) does not undermine the possibility that the play might be indirectly refl ecting remnants of the church’s centuries-old negative view of work. in his book time, work and culture in the middle ages, jacques le goff wonders “how oft en the middle ages must have witnessed the inner drama of men anxiously wondering whether they were really hastening towards damnation because they were engaging in a trade suspect in the eyes of the church” (1980: 111). the socioeconomic revolution that took place between the 9th and the 13th century brought a tension between the decaying tripartite system of oratores (clergy), bellatores (knights) and laboratores the shift fr om empathy to sympathy in the york play of the crucifi xion 155 selim 19 (2012) (workmen), and the emerging urban and professional world. le goff explains that the association between toil and the lower stratum led the church, which occupied a high position in this hierarchical division, to discredit physical labour. thus, the church channels the negative view of work in two main ways during the middle ages. on the one hand, as defenders of the justum pretium, they rejected the guild system because it established monopoly and eliminated competition. on the other hand, the church had harboured suspicion for professional trades for a good number of centuries, as charlemagne’s list of illicit professions in his de admonitio generalis evidences (mordek, zechiel-eckes & glatthaar 2012: 230–233). even though the economic and social revolution between the 9th and the 13th centuries eventually changed the church’s ideas on physical labour and our extant text of the york crucifi xion dates probably fr om 1422 (beadle 1994: 101), the transition fr om the tripartite schema to a world of professions must have been a gradual one. according to le goff , there is one development fr om the 10th and the 13th century that has not been conscientiously studied: the advance of nones has usually been explained as a consequence of the monk’s impatience for meal time. however, he postulates that noon was advanced because it was the time for the urban worker to have the midday rest. in the york play of the crucifi xion, the soldier’s claim that “he muste be dede nedelingis by none” (15) indicates the incorporation of the subdivision of labour time of a professional world. only when a socioeconomic change has already taken place, can people really notice the consequences in their quotidian life and become aware of the transformation. even if, as dobson notes, the york cycle was organized by the local authorities of the city, the representatives of the new urban lifestyle, the pageants were put up by craft guilds. by portraying their everyday life, they (probably unconsciously) show work on a negative light. it is impossible to know for sure whether the church’s ideas against work were still relevant at the time of the york cycle, but it is not unreasonable maría del mar gutiérrez-ortiz 156selim 19 (2012) to suppose that the play might be refl ecting a concern about the developing urban and professional lifestyle. therefore, work plays a fundamental role in establishing a connection between the world of the audience and the world of the characters. on the one hand, the fi ctional piece presents a negative view of work in general by portraying it as the alienating force that enables the soldiers’ indiff erent exercise of violence. on the other hand, by being the center of the action and conversation, work prompts an empathic relationship between the spectators and christ’s tormenters. thus, the play skilfully manages to make the audience share responsibility for christ’s sacrifi ce. however, when the work is completed and the cross is raised, the public realizes their fault and detaches fr om the soldiers, who remain sinful, to be redeemed by christ. work triggers a shift fr om empathy to sympathy in the york play of the crucifi xion that serves as a powerful device for the indoctrination of the audience in the christian religion. maría del mar gutiérrez-ortiz cornell university acknowledgements i thank andrew s. galloway, erin dunn and jackie lefkowitz for their helpful suggestions. i am also grateful to selim’s anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and criticisms. references aronson-lehavi, s. 2011: street scenes: late medieval acting and performance. new york: palgrave macmillan. ashley, k. 1998: sponsorship, refl exivity and resistance: cultural readings of the york cycle plays. in j. j. paxson, l. m. clopper, & s. tomasch eds. the performance of middle english culture: the shift fr om empathy to sympathy in the york play of the crucifi xion 157 selim 19 (2012) essays on chaucer and the drama in honor of martin stevens. cambridge, d. s. brewer: 9–24. beadle, r. 1994: the cambridge companion to medieval english theatre. cambridge, cambridge university press. bennett, j. a. w. 1982: poetry of the passion: studies in twelve centuries of english verse. oxford, clarendon press. bevington, d. m. 1975: the crucifi xion of christ. medieval drama. boston, houghton miffl in: 569–579. bridges, h. ed. 1897: the opus majus of roger bacon. oxford, clarendon. davidson, c. 1981: a middle english treatise on the playing of miracles. washington, university press of america. davidson, c. 2007: festivals and plays in late medieval britain. aldershot, ashgate. dobson, r. b 1997: craft guilds and city: the historical origins of the york mystery plays reassessed. in a. e. knight ed. the stage as mirror: civic theatre in late medieval europe. cambridge, d. s. brewer: 91–105. feagin, s. l. 1996: reading with feeling: the aesthetics of appreciation. ithaca, cornell university press. king, p. m. 2006: the york mystery cycle and the worship of the city. woodbridge, d. s. brewer. krebs, d. et al. 1975: empathy and altruism. journal of personality and social psychology 32.6: 1134–1146. keysers, c. & v. gazzola 2009: unify ing social cognition. in j. a. pineda ed. mirror neuron systems: the role of mirroring processes in social cognition. new york, humana: 3–37. keysers, c. el al. 2003: audiovisual mirror neurons and action recognition. experimental brain research 153: 628–636. le goff , j. 1980: time, work, and culture in the middle ages [a. goldhammer trans. 1977: pour un autre moyen age: temps, travail et culture en occident]. chicago, university of chicago press. maría del mar gutiérrez-ortiz 158selim 19 (2012) mcconachie, b. a. 2009. engaging audiences: a cognitive approach to spectating in the theatre. new york, palgrave macmillan. mordek, h., k. zechiel-eckes & m. glatthaar eds. 2012: die admonitio generalis karls des grossen. hannover: hahnsche buchhandlung. morgan, d. 1998: visual piety: a history and theory of popular religious images. berkeley, university of california press. rizzolatti, g. & l. craighero 2004: the mirror-neuron system. annual review of neuroscience 27: 169–192. sargent, m. g. 1992: nicholas love’s mirror of the blessed life of jesus: a critical edition based on cambridge university library additional mss 6578 and 6686. new york, garland. staley, l. 1996: the book of margery kempe. kamalazoo, medieval institute publications. stevens, m. 1987: four middle english mystery cycles: textual, contextual, and critical interpretations. princeton, princeton university press. stevenson, j. 2010: performance, cognitive theory, and devotional culture: sensual piety in late medieval york. new york, palgrave macmillan. stewart, d. 2003: the arrow of love. optics, gender, subjectivity in medieval love poetry. london: associated university press. sturges, r. s. 1992: spectacle and self-knowledge: the authority of the audience in the mystery plays. south central review 9.2: 27–48. walker, g. 2000. medieval drama: an anthology. oxford, blackwell. walker, g. 2005: medieval drama: the corpus christi in york and croxton. readings in medieval texts: interpreting old and middle english literature. oxford, oxford university press: 370–386. woolf, r. 1980: the english mystery plays. berkeley: university of california press. • received 17 may 2014; accepted 14 jul 2014 selim 18.indb josé luis martínez-dueñas, selim 18 (2011): 175–180issn: 1132–631x hernández-campoy, juan manuel and j. camilo condesilvestre eds. 2012: the handbook of historical sociolinguistics. malden and oxford, wiley-blackwell. pp. 674. isbn: 1-40519068-x. £110. the rise of sociolinguistics at the end of the twentieth century was not an isolated phenomenon and it brought about major changes and developments in the study of language. as petyt (1980) remarked, the transition ] om rural dialectology to urban dialectology marked a new study in the consideration of language and society, and this would show in the fi eld of historical linguistics too. the traditional concerns of philological origin were going to change overnight given the insights provided by the new research which was being carried out in terms of the study of change in progress and the components of the community of speakers, which showed in some inceptive works that would exert a great infl uence (trudgill 1974, hudson 1980). at the beginning of the twenty-fi rst century the concern with historical sociolinguistics is an accomplished fact. this volume proves the advance taken over in this new discipline, which is the merger of considerations of language and society, and historical synchronies, together with a diachronic survey of linguistic phenomena. the book is a good example of integrative and comprehensive views on the subject and its fi ve parts represent fi ve major perspectives. part i, the study of “origins and theoretical assumptions,” contains a clear exposition of the relationship between the study of synchrony and diachrony and the developments of its applications. it is interesting to note the study of variation as a contemporary phenomenon and the micro-linguistic and macrolinguistic approaches. the consideration of social history and linguistic facts is central to an understanding based upon context. this is central to major studies as the recent work on american english by bailey (2012) shows. 176 josé luis martínez-dueñas selim 18 (2011) the second part, titled “methods for the sociolinguistic study of the history of languages,” contains chapters showing a variegated concern. it is outstanding the consideration of the quantitative paradigm with all its intricacies of representativeness and empirical validity, among others (hernández-campoy & schilling, 63–79). the study of the uniformitarian principle by berg (80–98) deploys a considerable amount of case studies on social class, gender, and social networks. other chapters address issues related to the study of corpora, letters and diaries, and documents of diff erent registers and they all present a clear methodological approach though in some cases the reader might have liked a more detailed analysis, which is diffi cult to achieve given the characteristics of the chapters. the chapter on literary sources shows an accurate description of method and application, specially in the discussion of variation and the detailed presentation of varieties of manners of writing “shakespeare” (anipa, 170–190). the study of ephemeral genres and historical synchronies is rather illustrative and is a good example of modern english studies (percy, 191–210). it goes without saying that a study of historical sociolinguistics must rely upon a coherent view of speech and speakers, and this is the subject-matter of part iii, “linguistic and socio-demographic variables.” the study of orthographic variables shows an original method of the analysis of spelling and the consideration of the variable and its variants (rukowska & rössler, 213–236). the chapter on phonological variables also provides a strong analysis of the notion and its sociolinguistic application, specially in the contrast between speech and writing and the appropriate illustrations of the varieties of parisian french and the well-known distinction of mercian and kentish vowel sounds, a classic. the reference to the study of al-wer on jordanian women is interesting to exempli2 “the role of elegance and prestige.” auer and voeste go on to analyse grammatical variables and off er a cogent view of method; besides, their illustrations are clear examples of variation, variant and variables, and change (253–270). grzega carries out a most 177 reviews selim 18 (2011) interesting analysis of lexical-semantic variables based upon a detailed model of processes and forces and a close study of sociocultural forces and sociocultural changes. it is salient the analysis based upon diff erent types of pseudo-loans, and the taxonomy is well explained and accurately applied (271–292). the study of pragmatic variables is a must a* er the previous considerations and jucker and taavitsainen (293–306) tackle this slippery fi eld in a resolute way. this is actually a matter of time, since the study of pragmatics is relatively recent in contrast with the abundance of grammatical studies and its long tradition. the best asset of the chapter is the inclusion of units of analysis (expressions, utterances, conversation and discourse domains) and this attempt really opens a new fi eld. the principles of real time and apparent time analysis are dealt with by kiełwicz-janowiak (307–331), who addresses the issue in terms of gender and society; her illustrations based upon “ladies’ books” shed light on the complexity of the theoretical issues. historical sociolinguistics cannot be properly understood without a clear approach to social mobility and the infl uence of innovation and change, as conde-silvestre (332–352) puts it; he stresses the role of early adaptations and the references to the pastons are quite explanatory. the topic of religion, linked to the concerns with race and ethnicity is aptly expounded by mesthrie (353–365). this is a complex issue and the author solves it gracefully since religion may pose many a diffi culty in terms of information and social networks. “historical dialectology, language contact, change and diff usion” makes up part iv. the study of language phylogenesis and the explanation of change are issues that require a careful recognition of the passage 6 om actuation to propagation as roberge argues cogently (369–386). the chapter by hickey (387–407) off ers a very interesting explanation of the changes in dublin english as well as a complex exposition of internal and external changes in terms of diachrony and historical synchronies. the refl ection upon the past is not solely restricted to data but to linguistic thought, as joseph does in his chapter (408–426). he reviews neogrammarian 178 josé luis martínez-dueñas selim 18 (2011) principles and connects them with the study of lexical diff usion and transmission: “the neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change is foundational to so much else in historical linguistic methodology” (422). ogura (423–450) deals with social networks and lexical diff usion and shows the analysis of computational modelling on diff erent types of social networks. these networks operate in terms of strong or weak ties and the case studies of changes are considered as functionally biased or socially biased. the social locus of innovating individuals is a point of contention for sociolinguists themselves, as britain explains (451–464). he expounds the positions of labov and the milroys and off ers his own proposal: wave model, cultural hearth model, and counterhierarchical model. britain accounts for the types of infl uence and innovation in terms of speakers’ change, mobility, expansion and relocation. meurman-solin (465–479) and kehrein (480–500) deal with major issues of dialectology: the former on historical varieties of scottish english and the latter on the study of linguistic atlases of german. naturally, the focus cannot be eurocentric and toulmin (501–519) studies empirical problems and phylogenesis in south asia and fij i. multilingualism is thoroughly explained by schendl (520–533) and the samples of the oe period and the late me period are most relevant to the discussion held. the chapter by schreier (521–551) discusses the force of migratory movements and studies the formation of a koiné as result of complex social and historical adaptations. no view of variation and change is complete without a serious refl ection on convergence and divergence, which is provided by wright (552–567), with special reference to latin and romance languages. part v, “attitudes to language,” comprises fi ve chapters containing the most original approaches. james milroy (571–584) focuses on ideological view on language: the ideas of prestige and standard language. milroy gives a solid insight into the problem of prescription and law-like linguistic behaviours and emphasises the social aspect of the history of a language. richard watts (585–606) 179 reviews selim 18 (2011) uses a tunnel and a funnel to explain the traditional conceptions of language history and goes on to debunk the myths developed by several authors % om higden in the polychronicon to puttenham and other renaissance writers: purity, correction, barbarians, polite uses, standard uses. his analysis becomes a good instance of linguistic criticism. langer and nesse (607–625) provide a deep analysis of linguistic purism and off er a revealing taxonomy of observations on linguistic purism in historical sociolinguistics: the concern with the state of the language, selection of corrupting infl uence, a prestigious use, the inherent attributions of the language, the identity of “purists.” the reconstruction of prestige patterns is the focus of sairio and palander-collin (626–638). they consider the infl uence of opinion leaders, the legitimacy of neologisms, the distribution of prestige forms between the sexes, the contempt for corrupt, clownish or “rusticall” speech and the concern with social stigmas. multilingualism and other related issues make up the core of the study by peersman (639–654) focusing on medieval europe and the change to vernaculars % om latin. it is a remarkable study of traditional philological consideration under the new sociolinguistic approaches including code-switching, and diglossia. a handbook entails complex editorial plans and is not just a collection of good papers. a handbook is an articulate presentation of the state of the art and its potentialities and this one is a good example for linguistic studies in general, an interesting and resourceful volume full of deep insights and innovative perspectives. josé luis martínez-dueñas university of granada references bailey, r. 2012: spea! ng american. a history of english in the united states, oxford, oxford university press. 180 josé luis martínez-dueñas selim 18 (2011) hudson, r. a. 1980: sociolinguistics. cambridge, cambridge university press. petyt, k. m. 1981: the study of dialect. an introduction to dialectology. london, deutsch. trudgill, p. 1974: sociolinguistics. an introduction. harmondsworth, penguin. • selim01.pdf 111 some observations on the dates and circumstances of the fifteenth-century portuguese and castilian translations of john gower’s confessio amantis in his introduction to the standard edition of john gower’s confessio amantis, g. c. macaulay states that this literary work was “the earliest english book that made its way beyond the limits of its own language”.1 this reference is to juan de cuenca’s confisyon del amante, a castilian prose translation which, according to cuenca himself, was based on a previous portuguese version by robert payn, an english canon of lisbon cathedral: (e)ste libro es llamado confisyon del amante, el qual conpuso juan goer, natural del rreyno de ynglalaterra. e fue tornado en lenguaje portogues por rroberto paym, natural de dicho rreyno, e canonjgo de la çibdad de lixboa. e despues fue sacado en lenguaje castellano por juan de cuenca, vesjno de la çibdad de huete...2 1.g. c. macaulay, ed., the complete works of john gower (oxford: clarendon press, 1901) vol. ii, the english works, p. vii. subsequent quotations of gower’s poem are made to this edition. 2.juan de cuenca, trans.., confisyon del amante, manuscript g-ii-19 of the library of the royal monast ery of el escorial. succeeding references to confisyon del amante are from this manuscript. 112 moreover, in the prologue to the ‘leal conselheiro’ (c.1438), the portuguese king d. duarte mentions a livro do amante,1 and in a catalogue of king duarte’s library there is a book listed under the title of o amante.2 some critics maintain that both titles refer to one book which they identify as the lost portuguese version of confessio amantis.3 however, up to now no manuscript of this version has been found, and its very existence has been questioned by other scholars.4 the castilian translation of the poem survives in a single manuscript (g-ii-19) kept in the library of the monastery of el escorial. unfortunately there is only one edition of the text, today a bibliographical rarity, published in germany in l909 under the title of confision del amante por joan goer.5 this edition is far from reliable because of the many errors it contains. it was based on a draft transcription of the escorial manuscript begun by the german hispanist herman knust, who die d in 1889 before finishing his work, and later completed by another german hispanist, adolf birchhirschfeld. its unreliability not only derives from the considerable difficulties that the process of transcription of this particular ms 1.see joseph m. piel, ed., leal conselheiro (lisboa: bertrand, 1942), p. 7. 2.ibidem, p. 415; see also joâo josé alves dias, ed., livro dos conselhos de el-rei d. duarte (livro da cartuxa) (lisboa: ed. estampa, 1982), pp. 206-8. 3.cf. j.m. piel, op. cit., pp. xii and 7; see also f. costa marques, ed., leal conselheiro e livro da ensinança de bem cavalgar toda sela (coimbra: colecçao literaria atlantida), pp. 27 and 40. 4.cf. lilia granillo vázquez, “anglo -hispanic relations in the late middle ages, with some special attention to the spanish translation of confesio amantis”, unp. m. a. diss., university of york, 1980, p. 41. 5.adolf birch-hirschfeld, ed., confision del amante por joan goer (leizpig: dr. seele & co., 1909). 113 entails, but also from these german scholars’ limited knowledge of medieval spanish.1 since the publication of macaulay’s the complete works of john gower, where there are some observations on both the english ms used for the translation and the escorial ms, the spanish version of gower’s poem has been the subject of some research.2 the main issues are related to the circumstances of the presence of confessio amantis in the iberian peninsula, as well as the actual date of the translation. one of the most extensive analyses of the castilian text is robert w. hamm’s unpublished ph. d. dissertation.3 this is a serious attempt to solve many of the questions that arise from the study of juan de cuenca’s text, gower’s poem and adolf birch-hirschfeld’s edition. however, in my opinion hamm does not find satisfactory answers. he states that the german edition of confisyon del amante contains more than 17,500 errors4 and that he had to make a new 1.i have made some comments on this point in “estudio y edición anotada de la traducción medieval al castellano del ‘libro ii’ de confessio amantis de john gower”. unp. m. a. diss., universidad de extremadura, 1985. 2.see robert f. yeager, john gower material. a bibliography through 1979 (neew york & london: garland publishing inc., 1981); see also emilio lorenzo “una traducción histórica”, abc, sept. 20th, 1984, p. l.; “sobre las malas traducciones”, actas de las jornadas de traducción (ciudad real: universidad de castilla-la mancha, 1986), p p . 9-18; “la primera traducción del inglés”, in fidus interpres. actas de las primeras jornadas de historia de la traducción, ed. julio -césar santoyo (león: universidad de león, 1987), pp. 354-66; i have also dealt with this aspect in “análisis diferencial de confessio amantis de john gower y su traducción, confisyon del amante de juan de cuenca”, unp. ph. d. diss., universidad de extremadura, 1989. 3.robert wayne hamm, “an analysis of the confisyon del amante, the castilian translation of gower’s confessio amantis”, unp. ph. d. diss., university of tennessee, knoxville, 1975. 4.ibidem, p. 208. 114 transcription of the escorial ms.1 since this transcription has never been published it can only be judged by the textual references he uses in his thesis. but even from these quotations it is obvious that his transcription is far from being a faithful one. hamm offers two lists of variants which go along with the study of the escorial ms and birchhirschfeld’s edition. one of the lists2 consists of some errors he found in birch-hirschfeld’s text; however, when he tries to improve this edition he shows that his interpretation of the castilian ms is not always correct.3 the other list4 includes some passages from the castilian text which are obviously different in content from gower’s original poem. but hamm’s analysis of these deviations from the original -often clearly deliberate on the part of the translators-,5 is rather superficial. it is obvious that the castilian ms is not a holograph. the overt presence of at least two different hands, in addition to the numerous corrections and emendations, as well as the existence of some textual lacunae, show that the escorial ms is not the original of juan de cuenca’s translation. it is a copy. moreover, according to c.p. wagner, “there is some evidence of the influence of an aragonese scribe”.6 1.see robert wayne hamm, “a critical evaluation of the confisyon del amante, the castilian translation of gower’s confessio amantis”, medium ævum, vol. 47, 1 (1978), p. 105, note 6. 2.see r. w. hamm, “an analysis of the confisyon del amante ...” op. cit. , p. 208. 3.see “análisis diferencial de confessio amantis de john gower y su traducción, confisyon del amante de juan de cuenca”, op. cit., p. 19. 4.cf. “list of substantive variants”, in r. w. hamm, “an analysis of the confisyon del amante por joan goer (leipsig, 1909)”, romanic review, vol. 2 (january-march, 1911), p. 460. 5.see “análisis diferencial de confessio amantis ...”, op. cit. 6.charles philip wagner, “review of a. birch-hirschfeld, ed., confisyon del amante por joan goer (leipzig, 1909)”, romanic review, vol. 2 (january-march, 1911), p. 460. 115 as for the date of the escorial ms, josé amador de los ríos thinks that the text was written towards 1400.1 his opinion is based on the 1858 catalogue of the escorial mss where it is specified that, judging by the characteristics of the handwriting, the text was probably written at the beginning of the fifteenth century. adolf birch-hirschfeld, who also bases his hypothesis on the same catalogue, suggests the same date.2 later, another well-known scholar, julian zarco cuevas, in his catalogue of the castilian mss of el escorial, states that it is a midfifteenth century text.3 robert w. hamm also deals with this aspect and makes some interesting observations on the watermarks of ms g-ii-19. in his opinion, these watermarks could be the same as those found in paper manufactured between 1437 and 1542.4 however, a word of caution is necessary as regards the watermarks found during this period. it is true that around 1437 there was a type of watermark with a motif that vaguely resembles those in ms g-ii-19 -a hand with some kind of flower or star above the third finger. yet, the design of the watermarks in the escorial ms is much more elaborate and elegant. they are very much the same as those found in paper manufactured towards 1487 and later. therefore, it seems reasonable to believe that the paper of ms g-ii-19 was made around the last decades of the fifteenth century. the ms also has six blank folios, three at the beginning and three at the end. there is no doubt that these were added at a much later date -probably when repairing the bindingsince, as hamm says, the quality of this paper differs considerably 1.josé amador de los ríos, historia crítica de la literatura española (madrid, 1865), vol. vi, p. 46. 2.see a. birch-hirschfeld, op. cit., p. iii. 3.cf. julián zarco cuevas, catálogo de los manuscritos castellanos de la real biblioteca de el escorial (madrid: 1924), p. 169. 4.r. w. hamm, “an analysis of the confisyon del amante ...” op. cit., p. 26. 116 from that of the rest of the ms, and judging from its watermarks, it could be paper of jesuit manufacture.1 in keeping with this, hamm thinks that the date of the escorial ms could be fixed between 1400 and 1450, because the watermarks that appear around 1437 “create no obstacle to early dating of the manuscript.”2 hamm finds further support for this idea in j.e. keller’s comments on the escorial ms in a letter addressed to john h. fisher on september 5th, 1974: i have reached the conclusion that it is probably a fifteenth century script or one from the late fourteenth century. beyond that i cannot go... a scribe writing in the late 1300 [’s] probably did not change his handwriting just because he lived on into another century. this particular text resembles several i know that were penned as late as 1450, and the best i can do is state that i think it was written at that time.3 on the other hand, the 1977 volume of bibliography of old spanish texts, edited by the hispanic seminary of medieval spanish, indicates that the escorial ms is a mid-fifteenth century text;4 and in the 1984 volume of this bibliography the date of the ms is set somewhat more precisely between 1440 and 1460.5 nevertheless, a careful analysis of the type of handwriting in the escorial ms reveals that it is the same cursive in use towards the end of the fifteenth century. therefore, the dates given by the 1984 1.ibidem, p. 23. 2.ibidem, p. 11. 3.see r. w. hamm, “an analysis of the confisyon del amante ...”, op. cit., pp. 10-11. 4.antonio cárdenas, jean gilkinson, et al., bibliography of old spanish texts (the hispanic seminary of medieval spanish, 1984), no. 251, p. 18. 5.charles b. faulhabeer, angel gómez moreno, et al., bibliography of old spanish texts (the hispanic seminary of medieval spanish, 1984), no. 251, p. 18. 117 volume of the bibliography of old spanish texts seem the most approximate ones; but the year 1460 cannot be considered as a limit, for it is true that there are early sixteenth-century documents written in the same cursive characters as the escorial ms. this is also corroborated by most of the watermarks analysed by hamm, even though he did not draw the right conclusions. in addition to all this, in some late fifteenth-century records of the city council of huete, i found identical watermarks to those in ms g-ii-19, and the type of writing was also similar. in consequence, it is reasonable to believe that the date of production of the escorial ms could be fixed within the last decades of the fifteenth century. after these observations on the extant manuscript of the castilian version of confessio amantis, the next step is to determine the date of the translation with as much precision as possible. it is important to know this particular fact because of its relevance when undertaking a thorough comparative analysis of the source language text and the castilian version. so far most of the information we have about juan de cuenca is contained in the preface to confisyon del amante. on the other hand, as has been pointed out, there is no reference to the date or the purpose of the translation in the escorial ms. therefore, only a close textual analysis, together with an examination of the possible historical circumstances related to the transmission of gower’s poem to the iberian peninsula, could shed some light on these issues. in taking up the question of the transmission of confessio amantis to the iberian peninsula, all the hypotheses refer to the rela tionships of the english, portuguese and castilian royal families during the last decades of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth. 118 h. r. patch1 thinks that confessio amantis could have arrived in castile through catherine of lancaster, john of gaunt’s daughter and wife of enrique iii of castile. he also suggests that chaucer, whose friendship with gower is well known, could have had something to do with the transmission of gower’s book to the castilian court. patch draws attention to that possibility because of the marriage of the duke of lancaster to katharine swynford, chaucer’s sister-in-law. yet, as this scholar also notes, it is difficult to find out whether lancaster had any interest in literature.2 in any case, the fact is that confessio amantis was addressed to one of the members of the lancaster family, the earl of derby, later henry iv: explicit iste liber, qui transeat, obsecro liber ut sine liuore vigeat lectoris in ore. qui sedet in scannis celi det ut ista iohannis perpetuis annis stet pagina grata britannis. derbi comiti, recolumn quem laude periti, vade liber purus, sub eo requiesce futurus.3 another critic, j. m. manly,4 considers that confessio amantis could have been brought to the iberian peninsula through portugal, since john of gaunt’s other daughter, philippa of lancaster, was married to the portuguese king joâo i. r. w. hamm puts forward a hypothesis which attempts to explain not only the way gower’s poem reached the iberian peninsula, but 1.howard rollin patch, on reading chaucer (cambridge, mass.: harvard university press, 1939), p. 35. 2.ibidem. 3.see g. c. macaulay, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 478. 4.john matthews manly, “on the question of the portuguese translation of gower’s confessio amantis”, modern philology, vol. 27 (1930), p. 472. 119 also the reason for a double translation. he assumes that confessio amantis was probably sent to both catherine and philippa of lancaster, who would have ordered a translation as a present for their husbands. therefore “joâo would have needed a portuguese book [and] henry a castilian”.1 in my opinion, hamm’s explanation of the presence of gower’s poem in portugal and castile, its translation and purpose, though convincing, is nevertheless misleading. according to him, it would be justifiable to think that both translations were finished by the beginning of the fifteenth century, and that the source text was a copy of the 1390 recension of confessio amantis. the fact that the spanish version includes the original reference to richard ii and the eulogy to chaucer, eliminated from the 1393 recension,2 would seem to corroborate patch, manly or hamm’s hypotheses. most critical opinions, therefore, agree on fixing the date of the translation towards 1400. this has been the traditionally accepted date, despite the fact that all the scholars mentioned in this paper have not accounted for the earliest critical reference to confisyon del amante that i have been able to find. in 1788, francisco pérez bayer, in his edition of nicolás antonio’s bibliotheca hispana vetus (first published in 1672), categorically states that confisyon del amante was completed circa 1404: ioannem de cuenca optensem (de huete) auctorem versionis hispanicae operis ioannis goer angli cui titulus: la confession 1.r. w. hamm, “an analysis of the confisyon del amante ...” op. cit., p. 20. 2.see g. c. macaulay, op. cit., p. clxviii. 120 del amante, circa annum mcccciv. habetur versio in bibliotheca escurialensi lit g. plut. ii. n. 19 [ sic ].1 however, despite the apparent coherence of the hypotheses already mentioned, there are grounds for questioning their validity, as has been recently pointed out by emilio lorenzo, member of the real academia de la lengua española.2 in my opinion, it is within the text of the castilian version, and not only in its external circumstances, where the answers are to be found. in the first paragraph of the preface to his translation, juan de cuenca makes a statement that has been completely overlooked up to now, though it contains an invaluable key for establishing a time limit before which the castilian translation could never have been made: cuenca identifies himself as “vesjno de la çibdad de huete” -“an inhabitant of the city of huete”-. but huete, today a small town in the province of cuenca, was granted the privilege of çibdad (city) by the castilian king juan ii (son of enrique iii and catherine of lancaster) at the request of his falconer, pero carrillo, also from huete, on the 26th of july, 1428.3 therefore, juan de cuenca could not have 1.nicolás antonio, bibliotheca hispana vetus, ed. francisco pérez bayer (madrid: 1788), p. 203. there is an earlier reference to confisyon del amante, it appears in ms k. i. 23, fol. 134, the 1576 inventory of books transferred by king felipe ii to the escorial library. in this inventory, the royal compiler simply wrote: “confession del amante, compuesto por iuan gozi ingles traducido en portugues, y después en castellano por iuan de cuenca vezino de huete”. 2.emilio lorenzo, “la primera traducción del inglés”, op. cit., p. 356. 3.the charter contain ing the royal privilege conferred to huete is kept in very good condition in the local archives of this town. this is the transcription i have made of this document signed by king juan ii of castile on 26th july, 1428: “don iohan, por la graçia de dios rey de castilla, de leon, de toledo, de galisia, de seuilla, de cordoua, de murçia, de iahen, del algarbe, de algezira; et sennor de visscaya e de molina. porque muy propia cosa es a los [ rreyes e ]* prinçipes fazer graçias e merçedes a las villas e lugares de sus rregnos e sennorios, e a los sus subditos e naturales dellas, mayormente quando entienden que son dignos e bien mereçientes de las dichas merçedes. por ende, yo entiendo esto, e 121 referred to huete as a çibdad (city) before the date when this document was issued, that is, 1428. this of course rules out the hypotheses which maintain that juan de cuenca’s translation had been completed by 1400. for the same reason, hamm’s thesis can no longer be sustained, since it was mainly based on the traditionally otrosi por faser bien e merçed a la mi villa de huepte, el al[caide]* del castillo, alguasiles, rregidores, caualleros, escuderos e omnes buenos, e vesinos e moradores de la dicha villa e de su tierra. et por quanto me lo suplico e pidio por merçed pero carrillo de huepte, mi falconero mayor et mi guarda mayor de la dicha villa e de su tierra, et mi alcall mayor de las alçadas de la dicha villa. et entendiendo que cunple asi a mi seruiçio, por çiertas e ligitimas causas que a ello [ me mouieron, commo ] de mi çierta çiencia e poderio real e deliberada voluntad, es mi merçed de faser e costituyr e estableçer, et por esta mi carta, e con ella, fago e costituyo e establesco çibdat la dicha villa de huepte; et quiero e mando que de aqui adelante para sienpre jamas sea llamada la çibdat de huepte, et que non sea llamada villa. et que aya e gose en quanto çibdat, et asi commo çibdat, de todas las onrras, e libertades que han e de que gosan e deuen auer e gosar qualquier o qualesquier de las otras çibdades de los mis rregnos e sennorios por ser çibdades commo dicho es. sobre lo qual mando a los infantes, duques, condes, rricos omnes, maestres de las ordenes, priores, e a los del mi consejo e oydores de la mi audiençia, et al mi justiçia mayor, et a los alcalles e alguasiles, e notarios, e otros justiçias e ofiçiales qualesquier de la mi casa, e corte, e chançilleria; et a los a los otros alcalles e alguasiles, rregidores, caualleros, escuderos e omnes buenos de todas las çibdades e villas e lugares de los mis rregnos e sennorios, et a qualquier o qualesquier dellos que guarden e fagan guardar a la dicha mi çibdad de huepte todas las cosas susosdichas, e cadi una dellas, segund que mejor e mas conplidamente; e guarden e deuen guardar a cada vna de las otras çibdades de los mis rregnos e sennorios en quanto çibdades commo dicho es. et que les non vayan, nin pasen, nin consientan yr nin pasar contra ello, nin contra parte dello por gelo quebrantar, nin menguar en todo nin en parte, nin en cosa alguna dello; sobre lo qual mando al mi chançeller e notarios, et a los otros is ofiçiales que estan a la tabla de los mis sellos, que den, e libren, e pasen, e sellen a la dicha mi çibdad de huepte mi carta e preuillejo lo mas firme e bastante que les conpliere e menester ouiere en esta rrason. por tal manera que ella sea çibdad en agora e de aqui adelante para sienpre jamas. et asi llamada et avida, gose e pueda gosar de dichas preheminençias, e prerrogativas, e honrras, e libertades, et de todas las otras cosas susodichas et de cadi vna dellas, bien e conplidamente commo dicho es. et los vnos et los otros non fagan ende de por alguna manera so pena de la mi merçed, et de dies mill maravedis a cada vno para la mi camara. et esto mande dar esta mi carta firmada de mi nonbre e sellada con mi sello. dada en tordesillas, salvador jhesuchristo de mill e quatroçientos e veynte e ocho annos. yo el dottor fernando dias de toledo, oydor e referendario del rey, e su relator e secretario, la fise escreuir por su mandado. yo el rey” *illegible in the original. 122 accepted dates for the translation; and obviously, the castilian text could never have been written as a present for enrique iii, who died in 1406. however, on the question of the possible arrival of confessio amantis in portugal through philippa of lancaster, manly or hamm’s hypotheses could be perfectly acceptable. as for the date of robert payn’s portuguese version, most critics tend to believe that it could be fixed during joâo i’s reign and in philippa of lancaster’s lifetime. this is also j. m. piel’s opinion, based on some statements by king duarte in the prologue to his leal conselheiro.1 in it, the portuguese king says that he “ordered the translation of certain chapters from other books, for they would help him in his writings”.2 he also expresses his intention to cite his literary authorities, following the example of the author of the livro do amante (the book of the lover), where as d. duarte says, “truthful stories and good advice could be found”. these are his words: filhando em esto exemplo daquel autor do livro do amante que certas estorias em el screveo de que se filham grandes boos consselhos e avisamentos.3. j. m. piel, in his edition of the leal conselheiro, affirms that the book mentioned by d. duarte is in fact confessio amantis, and that it was translated into portuguese at the request of king joâo i: livro do amante. trata-se da “confessio amantis”, do inglês john gower (+ 1408), célebre poema alegórico traduzido para portugês a instancias de d. joâo i pelo cónego da igreja de lisboa roberto 1.see joseph m. piel, ed., op. cit., note 1, p. 7. 2.“fiz tralladar en el alguus certos capitollos doutros livros, por me parecer que faziam decaraçom e ajuda no que screvia” (joseph m. piel, ed., op. cit., p. 6.). 3.ibidem, p. 7. 123 payn. a versâo portuguesa, que parece estar perdida, figura no catálogo dos livros de d.duarte sob o titulo de “o amante”. desta versâo fez-se una traduçâo castelhana, conservada no manuscrito g-ii-19 do escorial, cf. amador de los ríos, vi, 46.1 from d. duarte’s brief description of the subject matter of this livro do amante -no doubt a book of didactic and moral content-, and his overt intention to cite the sources of his inspiration -a common practice in john gower at a time when such an attitude was not the norm-, it seems likely that the book alluded to may well be confessio amantis. nevertheless, piel does not bring forward any evidence to support the idea that the translation was made during king joâo i’s reign. in an attempt to assign an approximate date to the portuguese translation, p. e. russell considers two possibilities: “either before 1399 or after 1415”; and he adds: i incline, if only tentatively, towards the latter hypothesis [ ... ] it is rather unlikely that robert payn, in view of his nationality and his close contacts with philippa herself, would have translated gower’s favourable remarks about richard ii between 1399 and philippa’s own death in 1415 [ ... ] certainly after henry v’s rehabilitation of richard ii’s memory (1413) there was no reason for an englishman living in portugal to be embarrassed about reproducing gower’s favorable references to the deposed english king.2 1.ibidem. 2.p. e. russell, “robert payn and juan de cuenca, translators of the confessio amantis”, medium ævum, vol. 30, 1 (1961), pp. 31-32. 124 there is no doubt that russell’s reasoning is more convincing than piel’s and the previous critics, but it still remains only conjectural. the castilian text, however, provides some key information which, in my opinion, is decisive in order to fix the date of the portuguese translation within a reasonable period of time. i refer to a very exact monetary parity between the currencies of two different countries, and it can be found in the “tale of the king and his steward’s wife” (vv. 2643-2858). in this exemplum gower writes: the king him bad upon the nede that take an hundred pounds he scholde, and yive it where that he wolde (v. 2718-20) but in the castilian version, these lines are translated as el rrey le dixo que tomase seys çientas coronas e las diese donde quisiese ... (f. 216 v. b.) in this brief fragment, an exclusive element of the society in which confessio amantis was conceived is replaced by another element belonging to one of the recipient cultures. it is the equivalence given by the translator between the english an hundred pounds and the seys çientas coronas (six hundred coronas) in the castilian version. nevertheless, as far as the coronas (crowns) mentioned in juan de cuenca’s text are concerned, a careful study is necessary. from the castilian passage quoted above, it would be easy to assume that the coronas mentioned by cuenca are either a castilian monetary unit of his time or some kind of fractional currency. but it is well known that towards the end of the middle ages there were no castilian coins of such a denomination. 125 on the contrary, the term corôa (corona, crown) was used in portugal, but it did not designate any specific type of coinage;1 either corôa or dobra were terms used to express the amount of 120 portuguese reaes during d. duarte’s reign (1433-1438). the corôa, therefore, was a portuguese monetary concept conceived to facilitate monetary equivalences in mercantile activities with foreign countries, including of course with england. since during the middle ages foreign gold and silver coins circulated as freely as the national ones, it became necessary to determine some form of exchange rate which, at the same time, would protect the national currency.2 accordingly, and in view of the devaluation of the portuguese monetary unit, joâo i tried to elaborate a series of regulations; but these ordinances were never enforced. 3 this was the reason why d. duarte had to assign an invariable value to the foreign gold and silver coins that were in circulation in portugal. from these observations on the portuguese corôas (coronas), the first obvious conclusion that can be drawn is that the monetary equivalence given in cuenca’s text can only be explained by the fact that the castilian translator literally followed robert payn’s portuguese version. however, this explanation is also the key to another important conclusion in relation to the date of the portuguese translation. from d. duarte’s ordinances on the value of foreign currency,4 we know 1.see antonio de sousa silva costa lobo, historia da sociedade em portugal no século xv e outros estudios históricos (lisboa: cooperativa editora, historia critica, 1979), note 1, p. 367. 2.ibidem, p. 362. 3.ibidem, pp. 362-3. 4.ibidem, p. 420; see also joâo josé alves dias, op. cit. 126 that in 1433, the portuguese king fixed a value of 245 portuguese reaes for the english gold noble. since this coin was 1/3 of an english pound, one pound was worth 735 reaes. at the same time, the portuguese monetary concept used in commercial transactions, the corôa, had been assigned a value of 120 reaes by d. duarte. therefore, the value of one english pound was 6’125 corôas, or, in other words, 100 pounds were worth 612’5 corôas. the monetary equivalence transmitted through juan de cuenca’s text (an hundred pounds = seys çientas coronas) is so close to these calculations that, in my opinion, there is no doubt that robert payn’s translation was written after 1433 and before 1438, the years of d. duarte’s short reign and most intense literary activity. similarly, there is no contradiction between these dates and the years in which it is known that robert payn lived in portugal. p. e. russell first found the name of the anglo-portuguese translator on a list of the personnel in philippa of lancaster’s service (c. 1402),1 with an indication that his salary was 1650 portuguese lljbras. although payn’s occupation was not specified on the list, it is clear that at that time he was not a member of the clergy, for these were included in different group. russell also found robert payn’s name in a document of the lease of a house dated in lisbon on the 25th of november, 1430.2 no other reference has been found to robert payn, but as russell demonstrates in his article, it is obvious that payn stayed in portugal after philippa of lancaster’s death, settled there, and probably remained in close contact with the royal family. thus, it is very likely that d. duarte, in view of payn’s position as a canon -no doubt a man of some learning with knowledge of both english and 1.cf. p. e. russell, op. cit., p. 28; see also monumenta henricina (coimbra: 1960), vol. 1, pp. 280-93 2.p. e. russell, op. cit., p. 29.p. e. russell, op. cit., p. 29. 127 portuguese-, decided to ask him to translate confessio amantis, a book that had probably been part of the royal library since the time of queen philippa. there is one point which still remains unsolved; the transmission of gower’s poem to castile and its translation into castilian. in order to find an answer, it would be necessary to take into consideration the relationships between juan ii of castile and d. duarte. from the chronicles of the castilian king1 and also from some of the extant letters d. duarte sent to juan ii,2 it is clear that their friendship was not only based on their family ties (they were cousins), but that they also shared a common interest in literature and in translation, and no doubt there was an exchange of opinions and of books between the two kings. there is some evidence in this respect. such evidence i take to be, for example, the translations that bishop alfonso de cartagena (1384-1456) made for both d. duarte and the castilian king. alfonso de cartagena translated the five books of seneca for juan ii,3 and cicero’s book of rhetoric for d. duarte.4 in the same way, there is a strong probability that juan de cuenca translated confessio amantis from the portuguese version at the request of juan ii. since cuenca’s version was written after 1428, it is plausible to assume that this translation was also the result of the cultural activities carried out by d. duarte and juan ii, and therefore, it is very likely that it was written at some time between 1433 and 1438. 1.cf. juan mata carriazo, ed., crónicas del halconero de juan ii, pedro carrillo de huete (madrid: espasa-calpe, s. a., 1946). 2.see joâo alves dias, op. cit., pp. 90-1. 3.this translation was published in antwerp in 1548. 4.this is the incipit to this translation: “libro de marcho tulio çiçeron q se llama de la retorica. trasladado de latin en romançe por el muy reuerendo don alfonso de cartajena obpo de burgos a ynstançia del muy esclareçido prinçipe don eduarte de portugal”. 128 at a time when most translations were of works of the latin and greek cultural traditions, it is a remarkable fact that john gower’s english poem was translated into two different languages almost simultaneously. it is clear evidence of the recognition gower had received beyond the borders of his own country and his own language. bernardo santano moreno university of extremadura cáceres * * * selim 19.indb luisa garcía garcía & esaúl ruiz narbona, selim 19 (2012): 59–79issn: 1132–631x labile verbs and word order in early middle english: an initial study 1 abstract: this paper serves as an initial exploration of the hypothesis put forth by garcía garcía (2012) according to which morphological syncretism in the expression of valency in causative pairs may have a connection with syntactic parameters, specifi cally the overt expression of all verbal arguments and a fi xed or consistent word order. in this paper we assess the relative position of subject-verb and verb-object in early middle english transitive and intransitive clauses containing melten, (a)quenchen, and burnen and compare them with those with a transitiveand intransitive-only verb respectively. the most outstanding result shows that labile verbs used transitively seem to anticipate the vo order that will become generalized in later stages of english. keywords: word order, early middle english, causatives, labile verbs, morphological loss, valency changes, english syntax. abstract: este artículo es una investigación inicial de la hipótesis expuesta por garcía garcía (2012) según la cual el sincretismo morfológico en la expresión de la valencia en las parejas de causativos puede estar relacionado con algunos parámetros sintácticos, más concretamente la expresión de todos los argumentos verbales y un orden de palabras fi jo o consistente. en este artículo evaluamos la posición relativa de sujeto y verbo y verbo y objeto en cláusulas transitivas e intransitivas que contienen los verbos melten, (a)quenchen y burnen en inglés medio temprano y realizamos una comparación con cláusulas con un verbo exclusivamente transitivo o intransitivo respectivamente. el resultado más relevante muestra que los verbos lábiles usados transitivamente parecen adelantarse al orden de palabras vo que se generalizará en posteriores periodos del inglés. palabras clave: orden de palabras, inglés medio temprano, causativos, verbos lábiles, pérdida morfológica, cambios de valencia, sintaxis inglesa. 1 introduction probably one of the aspects of the history of english that has attracted most interest has been the processes of morphological simplifi cation undergone by this language fr om its origins until the present day. special attention has been paid to nominal morphology, particularly the loss of gender and case during the middle english period. the possible relationship 1 this research has been partly funded by the spanish ministry of education, projects ffi2011-29532 and ffi2011-2827⒉ we would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments. the authors remain, of course, solely responsible for any shortcomings. luisa garcía garcía & esaúl ruiz narbona 60selim 19 (2012) between these phenomena and a less fr ee word order has been extensively researched by scholars, such as allen (2006), fischer et al. (2006), fischer (1992), hickey (2002), lass (1997), pintzuk (2002b), traugott (1972), among many others. however, the morphological simplifi cation undergone by english is not restricted to the aforementioned instances. derivational morphology has also been subject to syncretism. one such process aff ects the expression of verbal valency, specifi cally of the inchoative-causative alternation in the history of english, on which we focus in this paper.2 loss of derivational morphology has not received as much attention as might be expected. the study that we present here constitutes an attempt to start fi lling in the gap that other studies on morphological loss have not yet covered. the aim of this paper is to present the fi rst results of an ongoing research project on the eff ect of syncretism in the expression of verbal valency on word order in english. some of the theoretical foundations for the project can be found in garcía garcía (2012). we will summarize them in sections 2 and 3 below. at this stage of the project our aim is to be as descriptive as possible, so that our results may be useful for scholars fr om diff erent theoretical backgrounds. the paper has fi ve sections. first, we will explain the process of morphological loss in old english causative verbs that leads to an increase in the use of an invariant verbal form for both the intransitive and causative sense of a causative opposition. this invariant form is what we call “labile verb” (following haspelmath 1993: 90). second, we will explain how the use of labile verbs might aff ect syntactic parameters, word order in particular. the third section will be devoted to the presentation of the data and of the methodology that we follow in our analysis. fourth, we will show the results of the analysis. in a fi nal section we summarize the main conclusions of the study. 2 to the inchoative-causative alternation in english see levin (1993). for a typological study of the alternation see haspelmath (1993). labile verbs and word order in early middle english 61 selim 19 (2012) 2 morphological loss in old english causatives in this section of the paper we give a brief overview of the formation of morphological causatives in germanic. though rare in present-day european languages, several causative formations have been reconstructed for proto-indoeuropean, among them the germanic jan-formation. in germanic, the suffi x *-(i)jawas generally attached to the past singular grade of a strong verb to form a derived causative, which was ascribed to the fi rst class of weak verbs. the following (aft er ringe 2006: 252–253) are some examples fr om which present-day english drink / drench, lie / lay and sit / set stem. (1) *drinkana vs. *drankijana *ligjana vs. *lagjana *sitjana vs. *satjana despite the productivity of this formation in the germanic protolanguage, it was subject to erosion and ultimate loss later on in the history of the language family. several aspects, phonological, semantic and syntactic in nature, beginning in the pre-historical old english period were involved in the dissolution of causative pairs. these are described in garcía garcía (2012: 135–138). in this paper we are concerned with a syntactic process which garcía garcía (2012: 137) calls “syntactic melting” or “fusion.” with this name she refers to cases in which one or both of the members of a causative pair take on a further valency value, namely that of its partner. this process results into redundancy and the eventual loss of one of the verbs. she explains that this “process only aff ects pairs in which the base is an intransitive verb, and it consists in the base adding a transitive-causative usage (that is, a causing subject) to its valency fr ame and/or the jan-derivative an intransitive usage.” two examples follow (garcía garcía 2012: 137): luisa garcía garcía & esaúl ruiz narbona 62selim 19 (2012) (2) a) oe myltan “melt” (caus. and intr.) <  gmc *maltij a“melt” (caus.) b) oe meltan “melt” (intr.) <  gmc *melta“melt” (intr.) (3) a) oe hwyrfan “go, move about, return” (intr.); “turn, change” (caus. and intr.) < gmc *hwarƀij a“turn” (caus.) b) oe hweorfan “go; turn, change” (mostly intr.) < gmc *hwerfa“turn” (intr.) these examples show how two old english verbs (myltan and hwyrfan), which were originally used in a causative sense only, have acquired an intransitive use; they can be used both in an intransitive or causative sense with no morphological marking, i. e. they are labile. the demise of the causative formation does not conclude in the old english period. causative verb pairs of the germanic type described above decrease dramatically in middle english. whereas in old english 57 jan-causative pairs can be safely traced, only 12 survive in middle english, when many of the former causative oppositions have become labile verbs (garcía garcía forthcoming). 3 connection between labile verbs and syntactic parameters as pointed out in the introduction, numerous studies have connected the fi xation of word order in (late) middle english to the loss of infl ections. against a widely held opinion, pintzuk (2002b) argues that word order changes are not related to (the loss of ) case marking in old english. her conclusions are convincing, at least in the scope of her corpus, which consists of old english clauses with non-fi nite main verbs and np objects. as she shows in her table 1, v(erb)o(object) order increases in old english (24.3% in texts composed before 950, against 44.8% aft er 950). she shows that clauses with morphologically ambiguous objects do not have more incidence of vo (389–392). she concludes that the position of objects is determined by other factors, such as “heaviness and labile verbs and word order in early middle english 63 selim 19 (2012) clause type and structure” (381). pintzuk & taylor (2006) endorse pintzuk’s view of the change fr om ov to vo in middle english as a result of grammatical competition between two parameter settings, together with constraints that aff ect constituent movement within each setting (pintzuk 1999, 2002a). according to these researchers, both the changes in underlying order and the decrease of possible movements that result in diff erent surface positions are gradual processes that begin in old english and result in the loss of ov order in the late middle english period. in this study we aim to assess whether the loss of overt valency marking might have infl uenced the increase and fi nal fi xation of vo order in early english. we focus on the possible connections between the abundance of labile verbs in english (already noted by poppe 2009 or haspelmath 1993) and the loss of morphological distinctions in causative oppositions on the one hand, and syntactic developments on the other, more specifi cally the obligatory expression of all verbal arguments and a fi xed or at least consistent word order, in which a certain element order is expected. this need not be (s)vo, but it is in the case of english (see fischer & van der wurff 2006: 188) on the diff erence between english and dutch in this respect. we can illustrate that both might be connected if we contrast english with a language with few labile verbs, such as spanish. the inchoative-causative alternation expressed in english by the labile verb melt is expressed in spanish by means of an anti-causative opposition, derretir (“melt (something),” causative) and derretirse (“melt,” intransitive). in (4) and (5) we have included an intransitive ⒜ and a causative ⒝ clause with the verb “melt” in spanish and english respectively; the subjects have been underlined and a wordby-word translation of the spanish original is given in italics: (4) a) después del amanecer, se derritió el muñeco de nieve. aft er dawn, melted the snowman. “aft er dawn, the snowman melted.” luisa garcía garcía & esaúl ruiz narbona 64selim 19 (2012) b) después del amanecer, ø derritió el muñeco de nieve. aft er dawn, ø melted the snowman. “aft er dawn, he/she/it melted the snowman.” (5) a) aft er dawn, the snowman melted. b) aft er dawn, he/she/it melted the snowman. examples (4a) and (4b) intend to make clear that the valency alternation needs to be morphologically marked in spanish (derretir vs. derretirse) so as not to render the sentence ambiguous. this is so for two reasons. overt subjects can be omitted in spanish as it is a pro-drop language. further, subjects may precede or follow the verb. hence, both (4a) and (4b) could be interpreted as either “the snowman melted” or “someone/something ( just mentioned) melted the snowman,” if valency (intransitive vs. causative) was not marked in the verb itself. the case of english is diff erent, though. marking the valency in the verb itself is not indispensable because english makes use of syntactic resources at clause level to avoid ambiguity between sentences in (5), namely overt subjects and a fi xed word order. it is plausible then to expect the surge in the replacement of causative by labile oppositions in early english to have had some eff ects in the consolidation of the two syntactic parameters just mentioned. this connection may shed some light on the assessment of the fi xation of word order in english fr om a perspective diff erent to that provided by loss of overt case marking mentioned at the beginning of this section. 4 methodology of the study in the present section we will introduce the criteria taken into account in the selection of data, together with an explanation of the methodology applied in this study. we have chosen the early middle english period as the focus of our study. even if, as has been pointed out, several of the changes we have discussed, such as the reduction in nominal morphology or the syncretism undergone labile verbs and word order in early middle english 65 selim 19 (2012) by derivational morphology in the inchoative-causative alternation, begin to take place during the old english period, it is during early middle english when these changes begin to surface in the texts more consistently and spread at a faster rate. in fact, as mentioned in the introduction, not even a fi ft h of old english jan-pairs survive in middle english texts. the main source of data for our study is the linguistic atlas of early middle english (laeme ) for two reasons: to date it is the most comprehensive corpus of the period we are concentrating on and it aims at a diplomatic edition of the texts, following the manuscript faithfully. the data of our study are two diff erent sets of verbs, whose clausal behaviour we will compare. first, we have chosen three diff erent labile verbs, namely burnen, melten and (a)quenchen (infi nitive forms following the middle english compendium). these three verbs were selected because of their fr equency of use in early middle english and the high number of tokens found in laeme compared to other labile verbs. this is especially true in the case of burnen. second, we have chosen two non-labile verbs, one intransitive-only verb, risen, and one transitive-only one, (a) quellen. the main criterion for selecting these two verbs was the number of tokens in our data source. our objective was to include verbs whose number of tokens was as similar as possible to the number of examples of labile verbs used transitively and intransitively respectively, so that the results obtained fr om our analysis could be more easily compared. we have analyzed 285 examples altogether, divided in the following way: 83 examples of labile verbs used intransitively and 55 examples of labile verbs used transitively. the sample of the intransitive-only verb risen consists of 92 items and the transitiveonly verb (a)quellen has 55 examples. as for the procedure used in our analysis of the data, we have included the whole clause in which each of the tokens is inserted. the relative position of the verb and all clausal arguments have been assessed and quantifi ed. in the case of intransitive constructions, luisa garcía garcía & esaúl ruiz narbona 66selim 19 (2012) we have compared the relative position of subject and verb in the examples of labile verbs functioning as an intransitive verb with that of risen. in the case of the transitive use of labile verbs, we have quantifi ed the relative position of subject and object, on the one hand, and that of verb and object, on the other, in all clauses containing a transitive labile verb, and compared them with those of clauses containing (a)quellen. when quantify ing the results, we have taken into account two parameters which infl uence word order in early english.3 the fi rst one is type of subject: we note whether the diff erent subjects in our sample are full noun phrases or pronouns (see for instance van bergen 2003, fischer et al. 2006). this is relevant for assessing word order since pronoun subjects tend to be less prone to inversion than full noun phrases (np henceforth). the second parameter is type of clause. we have considered four types of clauses, i.e. main, coordinated, embedded and infi nitival modal clauses, with an infi nitive main verb and a fi nite modal verb.4 the latter do not show any signifi cant diff erences when used as main or embedded clauses, and build a distinct group. there are no constructions with analytic perfect in our sample. passive clauses have been excluded for obvious reasons. the case of coordinated clauses poses a special diffi culty. this type of clause presents a high number of examples in which the subject has been omitted. in the case of intransitive verbs, these examples have been excluded fr om our study, due to the impossibility of establishing the relative order of verb and subject. with respect to transitive clauses, however, these examples have been included when the relative position of verb and object was being assessed, since the omission of the subject need not aff ect the order of 3 discourse parameters have been left aside. they might be taken into consideration in a further study. 4 the classifi cation of the diff erent types of clause included in our study is similar to the ones used in fischer & van der wurff (2006) and pintzuk & taylor (2006). labile verbs and word order in early middle english 67 selim 19 (2012) these elements. examples (6) to (9) illustrate each of the clause types included; the relevant verbs are written in bold letters and the clause included in the sample has been underlined when part of a larger sequence. (6) main clauses a) so malt ðat mete in hem to nogt (laeme text 155) so melted the meat in them to nothing “so the meat in them melted to nothing” b) swilc niþ & hate ros hem on (laeme text 155) such envy & hate rose them in “such envy and hate rose in them” (7) coordinated clauses a) for men þor sinnen unkinde deden, so forsanc and brente þat steden (laeme text 155) because men there deeds wrongful did, such as drowned and burnt the steeds “because men there made wrongful deeds, such as drowning and burning the steeds” b) ich awelde & monie ich aquelde (laeme text 278) i ruled & many i killed “i ruled and i killed many” (8) embedded clauses a) alswa þet water acwenched þet fur, swa þa elmesse acwenched þa sunne (laeme text 2000) as the water put out the fi re, so the alms put out the sin “as water put out fi re, so alms put out sin” b) þe king igadered his ferde and þencheþ alle acwelle cwic þat he fi ndeþ (laeme text 280) the king gathered his army and thinks everyone kill alive that he fi nds “the king gathered his army and thought to kill everyone alive that he found” luisa garcía garcía & esaúl ruiz narbona 68selim 19 (2012) (9) infinitival modal clauses a) for ich schal bernen in fur & chiuerin in ise (laeme text 242) because i will burn in fi re & shiver in ice “because i will burn in fi re and shiver in ice” b) þir clerkis tell þat ar wise þate he of iuwis kinde sale rise (laeme text 296) these clerks tell who are wise that he of jewish kind will rise “these clerks, who are wise, say that he of jewish kind will rise” finally, note that the parameters of subject and clause type only concern us insofar that they might aff ect the comparability of the data obtained fr om the two diff erent sets of verbs analyzed. 5 presentation of the data the results obtained fr om the analysis of the data used in this study will be presented in diff erent groups. first, the results concerning the overt expression of subjects will be discussed. second, we present the results concerning the relative order of arguments in labile verbs and their transitive and intransitive-only counterparts. the data analysis shows that the overt expression of subjects is not as relevant for our hypothesis as we considered in the fi rst place; that is, our sample shows that labile and non-labile verbs do not diff er considerably in this respect. the presence of the subject is overt in most examples of both risen and (a)quellen and the labile verbs used in this study used both transitively and intransitively. there are cases in which the subjects have actually been omitted; however, these examples correspond to cases in which no overt subject would be expected, namely coordinated clauses that share the same subject with the main clause, infi nitival modal clauses and clauses containing a verb in the imperative form and are not seen in other clauses in our data. therefore, the examples analyzed in this study point to the fact that the absence of the subject depends labile verbs and word order in early middle english 69 selim 19 (2012) entirely on the type of clause analyzed and has no connection to whether the verb is labile or not. by reference to word order, we present fi rst the data related to the relative position of subject and verb in labile verbs used intransitively and in risen (see graphs 1, 2 and 3 below). the results of our analysis show that both labile verbs and the typical intransitive-only verb chosen for comparison present a very similar behaviour. both display a much higher fr equency of subject-verb order, 90.3% in the case of labile intransitive verbs versus 86.9% in the case of the intransitiveonly risen (see graph 1). percentages between the two groups vary slightly, though. the percentage of sv in the case of risen is lower. as our hypothesis suggests, we expect labile verbs to show a more consistent word order, and hence to surpass rise with respect to the dominant sv order. however, this slightly larger amount of sv examples does not seem to be signifi cant. the fact that the number of examples of certain type of clauses varies substantially may have had an infl uence on the data. a relevant case is the number of embedded clauses in the sv sample (graph 2): labile verbs appear in twice as many embedded clauses as risen. this could have skewed the results, since embedded clauses clearly favour sv. however, the much higher number of embedded infi nitival clauses in risen (which present a very similar behaviour to embedded clauses concerning word order) compensates this imbalance. all in all, more examples are needed in order to determine whether word order in intransitive-only verbs is less consistent than in labile verbs functioning intransitively. we have studied the possible infl uence of the v2 constraint on sv vs. vs word order in the sample and found out that, in fact, 16 out of the total of 20 vs examples (see graph 3) have the verb in second position and could be argued then to respond to the v2 constraint. our data are furthermore consistent with standard work on syntax with respect to the v2 rule and how it applies diff erently depending on the type of subject. thus, p subjects tend to be more resistant to this constraint than their np counterparts. in our luisa garcía garcía & esaúl ruiz narbona 70selim 19 (2012) sample, most of the subjects that appear in clauses with inversion are np (see graph 3). only one out of eight examples in the case of labile verbs has a p subject. the number of np subjects in clauses with inversion is slightly higher in the case of risen, namely four out of twelve. in general terms, though, the predictions stated by fischer et al. 2006, among others, apply in our sample. however, the workings of the v2 constraint have not proved relevant for our results, since there is no signifi cant diff erence between labile and non-labile verbs in this respect. therefore, the number of sv and vs examples in the graphs below corresponds to the number of clauses that show such a word order in their surface structure regardless of whether the v2 constraint is at work. graph 1: total number of examples of labile verb functioning intransitively and risen; and total number and percentage of sv and vs word orders graph 2: total number of sv clauses in labile verbs functioning intransitively and risen. in brackets the number of noun phrase and pronoun subjects labile verbs and word order in early middle english 71 selim 19 (2012) graph 3: total number of vs clauses in labile verbs functioning intransitively and risen. in brackets the number of noun phrase and pronoun subjects the next group of data we discuss is that of labile verbs functioning transitively in contrast to the data obtained fr om the transitive-only verb (a)quellen. the position of the subjects with respect to the objects in the diff erent clauses is presented fi rst. these data are displayed in graphs 4, 5 and 6. the results show that the three transitive labile verbs and (a)quellen present a very similar tendency concerning the relative position of subjects with respect to objects with a diff erence of roughly 5% between labile transitive verbs and (a)quellen (graph 4). the examples that show the expected subjectobject order clearly outnumber those where the much rarer objectsubject order is attested (only 7 out of 35 in the case of labile verbs and 6 out of 42 in the transitive-only one, see graph 6). contrary to what we hypothesized, though, object-subject order is more fr equent in the case of the labile verbs in our sample. nevertheless, the minimal diff erence of just one example is not statistically signifi cant. this minimal diff erence cannot be attributed to an imbalance in the number of examples of certain type of clauses either. this is almost symmetrical both in the case of so and os orders, as illustrated in graphs 5 and 6, with the exception of embedded clauses in the so sample, in which the transitive-only verb shows 12 examples against 6 in the case of labile verbs. as commented above with respect to intransitive verbs, more examples need to be analyzed in order to reach defi nitive conclusions. luisa garcía garcía & esaúl ruiz narbona 72selim 19 (2012) graph 4: total number and percentages of subject object and object subject order in labile verbs used transitively and ⒜ quellen graph 5: total number of clauses with a subject-object order in labile verbs functioning transitively and ⒜ quellen. in brackets the number of noun phrase and pronoun subjects graph 6: total number of clauses with an object-subject order in labile verbs functioning transitively and ⒜ quellen. in brackets the number of noun phrase and pronoun subjects the last set of data that will be discussed in this paper concerns the relative order of verb and object in labile transitive verbs and labile verbs and word order in early middle english 73 selim 19 (2012) the transitive-only (a)quellen. these are the most signifi cant data, since the relative position of verb and object is the defi ning parameter for clause constituent order, and one that is pivotal when describing word order changes cross-linguistically and within english in particular. it is also with respect to this parameter that variation between the two types of verbs being compared in this study is greatest, which makes the results all the more conclusive. there seems to be a consensus among scholars that old english is mainly an ov language. according to fischer & van der wurff (2006: 186) and fischer et al. (2006: 82), ov ceases to be productive in english around 1400, while vo only develops into a word order option in itself in late old english. in our early middle english data, ov order examples clearly outnumber vo ones in the case of (a)quellen, which presents only 16 examples of vo clauses, compared to 39 ov ones. however, labile verbs present almost the same number of vo orders than ov ones, namely 30 versus 25. again, it is important to have a closer look at the data in order to determine whether a disproportionate number of examples of a certain clause may have had some infl uence in our study. a close look at graph 8 reveals that both the labile verbs and (a) quellen present exactly the same number of embedded clauses. this type of clauses tended to favour ov orders in old english, a tendency that continues in the period under study in this paper, only becoming less common as the period advanced (fischer et al. 2006: 81–82). therefore, the cause for the higher number of vo examples in transitive labile verbs does not lie on the higher number of embedded clauses. the peculiar behaviour exhibited by labile verbs cannot be justifi ed by the number of modal infi nitival clauses either. there are 13 of these which show the vo order, while ov would be expected; on the other hand, its transitiveonly sample only has 4 examples of this specifi c type of clause. actually, (a)quellen does conform to the expected ov order in embedded and modal infi nitival clauses, since clearly the majority luisa garcía garcía & esaúl ruiz narbona 74selim 19 (2012) of these clauses (12 out of 16 and 18 out of 22, respectively) present a ov order, contrary to what is the case in the labile verbs in our sample. additionally, concerning the ov examples (graph 9), even if it is true that the number of embedded clauses is higher in (a) quellen, the number of modal infi nitival clauses is quite similar. all in all, clauses containing (a)quellen show a higher number of examples with an ov order. this is especially true in the case of embedded and modal infi nitival clauses, as expected. on the other hand, labile verbs show no clear preference for either vo or ov regardless of sentence type. in fact (see graphs 8 and 9) the number of examples of each sentence type in both vo and ov orders is almost identical. the fact that labile verbs show virtually no diff erence regarding vo / ov orders seems to contradict our hypothesis, since it predicts that labile verbs would exhibit a more consistent word order than a typical transitive verb. nevertheless, the transitive labile verbs in our study display svo order more oft en than a typical transitiveonly verb at this stage of the language and this can be interpreted as the former’s stronger thrust towards greater consistency, with labile verbs adopting what was going to become the canonical word order in late middle english at an earlier stage than non-labile verbs. the reason for the alleged preference of svo among labile verbs might lie in the stronger disambiguating force of this word order when these verbs are concerned. given that such verbs might be understood as both intransitive, with a patient subject, or transitive, with an agent subject and a patient object, a sequence like “[sin] the heart burns,” if ov is a word order option, might be interpreted as (s)ov or sv, with burn as transitive and heart as its object, or an intransitive burn with subject heart. however, within a svo order, burn can only be interpreted as a subject in the example. the order (s)ov is hence fr om the point of view of labile verbs more ambiguous than (s)vo. labile verbs and word order in early middle english 75 selim 19 (2012) graph 7: total number and percentages of verb-object and object-verb order in labile verbs functioning transitively and ⒜ quellen graph 8: total number of clauses with verb-object order in labile verbs functioning transitively and ⒜ quellen. in brackets the number of noun phrase and pronoun objects graph 9: total number of clauses with object-verb order in labile verbs functioning transitively and ⒜ quellen. in brackets the number of noun phrase and pronoun objects luisa garcía garcía & esaúl ruiz narbona 76selim 19 (2012) 6 conclusions in this paper it has been our intention to assess the possible infl uence of syncretism in the expression of valency on early middle english syntax. we set out fr om an initial hypothesis put forth by garcía garcía (2012), which connects the fr equency of labile constructions in english to two syntactic parameters which act as disambiguating strategies for verbal valency. these are the obligatory expression of the subject and a fi xed word order. in the study we have analyzed a signifi cant sample of labile constructions in early middle english texts using laeme and compared the results with non-labile verbs. we have quantifi ed the following features in each set of verbs: overt vs. covert subjects, sv vs. vs in intransitive and so vs. os and vo vs. ov in transitive verbs. the data have refuted part of our initial hypothesis. on the one hand, with reference to the obligatory expression of all arguments in the clause, our data have shown that this criterion does not seem to be relevant. a higher number of omitted subjects has no connection with whether the verb in the analyzed clause is labile or not. the absence of subject is related to another factor, namely the type of clause. in fact, our data only show examples of omitted subjects in coordinated, modal infi nitival clauses and those in which the main verb is in the imperative form, as expected in present-day english. on the other hand, labile verbs used intransitively and typical intransitive-only verbs also present an almost identical behaviour in relation to the relative order of subject and verb. even if the number of examples displaying a vs order is indeed slightly higher in the case of the intransitive-only verb, the diff erence does not seem to be signifi cant. more examples need to be analyzed in order to check whether these two types of verbs consistently behave in the same way concerning the relative position of subject and verb. another part of our hypothesis is confi rmed by our data. this is the one related to the position of object and verb, which is arguably the most signifi cant since it is the defi ning word order labile verbs and word order in early middle english 77 selim 19 (2012) parameter at clause level. the results obtained fr om the labile verbs used transitively and those of the transitive-only (a)quellen vary considerably. the latter shows a clear preference for ov orders (70.9% of cases), while the labile verbs used in this study present a very diff erent tendency, since slightly more than half of the examples (54.54% to be precise) display the vo order that would become the rule by the end of the middle english period. given that labile verbs increased remarkably in the early middle english period, they may have given impulse to the spread of the change fr om ov to vo order. our data seem to support the idea that constructions with labile verbs anticipate the tendency to svo order. nevertheless, the results obtained fr om this study should be treated with caution, and more data need to be analyzed in order to reach defi nitive conclusions. luisa garcía garcía & esaúl ruiz narbona university of seville references allen, c. l. 2006. case syncretism and word order change. in a. van kemenade & l. bettelou eds. the handbook of the history of english. chichester, wiley-blackwell: 201–223. fischer, o. 1992. syntax. in blake, n. f. ed. the cambridge history of the english language, vol. 2. cambridge, cambridge university press: 207–408. fischer, o., a. van kemenade, w. koopman & w. van der wurff 2006. the syntax of early english. cambridge, cambridge university press. fischer, o. & w. van der wurff 2006. syntax. in r. m. hogg & d. denison eds. a history of the english language. cambridge, cambridge university press: 109–198. luisa garcía garcía & esaúl ruiz narbona 78selim 19 (2012) garcía garcía, luisa, 2012. morphological causatives in old english: the quest for a vanishing formation. transactions of the philological society 110.1: 122–148. garcía garcía, luisa (forthcoming). the outcome of causative janoppositions in middle english. haspelmath, martin, 1993. more on the typology of inchoative/causative verb alternations. in b. comrie & m. polinsky eds. causatives and transitivity. amsterdam & philadelphia, john benj amins: 87–120. hickey, r. ed. 2002. motives for language change. cambridge, cambridge university press. laeme: a linguistic atlas of early medieval english: http://www.lel. ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme/fr ont_page/about_laeme.html lass, r. 1997. historical linguistics and language change. cambridge, cambridge university press. levin, b. 1993. english verb classes and alternations. a preliminary investigation. chicago, university of chicago press. middle english compendium: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mec/ pintzuk, s. 1999. phrase structures in competition: variation and change in old english word order. new york, garland. pintzuk, s. 2002a. verb-object order in old english: variation as grammatical competition. in d. w. lightfoot ed. syntactic eff ects of morphological change. oxford, oxford university press: 276–299. pintzuk, s. 2002b. morphological case and word order in old english. language sciences 24: 381–395. pintzuk, s. & a. taylor 2006. the loss of ov order in the history of english. in a. van kemenade & b. los eds. blackwell handbook of the history of english. oxford, blackwell: 249–278. poppe, e. 2009. standard average european and the celticity of english intensifi ers and refl exives: some considerations and implications. english language and linguistics 13.2: 251–266. labile verbs and word order in early middle english 79 selim 19 (2012) ringe, d. a. 2006. from proto-indo-european to proto-germanic. oxford, oxford university press. traugott, e. c. 1972. the history of english syntax: a transformational approach to the history of english sentence structure. new york, holt, rinehart and winston. van bergen, l. 2003. pronouns and word order in old english: with particular reference to the indefi nite pronoun man. new york, routledge. • received 30 may 2013; accepted 10 jul 2013 selim journal of the spanish society for mediaeval english language and literature revista de la sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval nº  oviedo,  edited by dirigida por trinidad guzmán & s. g. fernández-corugedo universidad de oviedo & sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval oviedo – murcia  isabel de la cruz cabanillas, selim  (): –issn: 1132–631x semantic primes in old english: a preliminary study of descriptors¹ abstract the aim of this paper is to apply the methodology of semantic primes by goddard and wierzbicka () to old english in order to check whether it represents a suitable theoretical and methodological amework for the lexical and semantic study of this period. this constitutes a preliminary analysis of the semantic primes grouped as descriptors: big/small. the group is discussed taking into account a sample of texts provided by the helsinki corpus of english texts and supplemented by the information contained in the dictionary of old english corpus. the main sources of information on old english definitions are a thesaurus of old english by roberts and kay () and a concise anglosaxon dictionary by clark hall (). the article attempts at being just a first approach to the topic, which could be further developed and extended to other semantic categories. keywords: old english, semantic primes, linguistic corpus. resumen el objetivo del presente artículo es aplicar la teoría de los primitivos semánticos de goddard y wierzbicka al inglés antiguo para comprobar si representa un marco teórico y metodológico adecuado para el estudio léxico-semántico del periodo. éste constituye un análisis preliminar de los primitivos semánticos agrupados bajo la denominación de descriptors: big/small. el grupo se analiza teniendo en cuenta una muestra de textos extraídos del helsinki corpus of english texts. el artículo intenta ser un primer acercamiento al tema, que podría seguir investigándose en el futuro, a medida que se amplíe el corpus de análisis a través de la información proporcionada por el dictionary of old english corpus. las principales fuentes de información para las definiciones en inglés antiguo proceden de the oxford english dictionary, a thesaurus of old english de roberts y kay, así como a concise anglo-saxon dictionary de clark hall. palabras clave: inglés antiguo, primitivos semánticos, corpus lingüísticos. i a lthough two opposing views on linguistic facts have been alternating throughout the history of linguistics and even if some aspects are culture-dependent, as proposed by ¹ the research reported here is part of the project “base de datos dinámica online de la morfología derivativa del inglés antiguo” (“dynamic online database of old english derivative morphology”), sponsored by the spanish ministry of education, reference hum2005-07651-c02-02/filo. 38 isabel de la cruz cabanillas selim  () relativism, some other linguistic facts seem to obey to universally valid rules.² in fact, a uniform language was already reported in the bible referring to the tower of babel. therefore, the quest to find out what is invariable and shared by all languages has a long history and om different theoretical positions both philosophers and linguists have strived along centuries to discover these universal features common to all human languages. the debate was centred not only on the finding of universals but also on their own existence, inasmuch as some scholars deny the actual existence of universal properties common to all languages. however, proponents of linguistic primitives are found among several schools of thought: realism in the early middle ages, nominalism and conceptualism in the renaissance period, rationalism in the th century as well as other movements and individuals in the next two centuries who tried to discover the relationship between the abstract universal entities and the particular languages that embody them, the best method to approach linguistic primitives and how to define them. some of the ideas defended within the philosophical ameworks were put into practice by linguists om the th century onwards, although the objectives were not always alike. thus, the neogrammarians developed a whole network of connections between languages based on their genealogy or common origin; typological linguists focused on grouping languages according to the morphological constituents basically, while generativists centred their research on the syntactic structure of the different systems. even if the approaches and the goals were diverse, the investigation on linguistic universals benefited om the advance in linguistics, as efforts were made to acquire a deeper knowledge of a huge amount of languages and to ² for a revision of the philosophical and linguistic origin and the development of language universals, as well as the different standpoints within this amework, see mairal (), mairal & gil () and moure (), among others. 39 semantic primes in old english selim  () compare them to find out about their origin, their morphemes, their syntactic patterns or their divergences. in the th century, especially in its second half, there was a renewed impetus in the search for universal linguistic properties. the debate on those general linguistic common traits was the focal point of investigation in two crucial conferences held at dobbs ferry (), “conference on universals of language”, organised by greenberg and at austin (), “symposium on universals in linguistic theory”, by bach and harms. as a result of the arguments exposed in these two events, studies to test hypothetical sets of universals across a number of genetically and typologically diverse languages were undertaken. they were applied to the different planes of language analysis: phonology, morphology, syntax and lexis and semantics. within the latter field, seminal work has been done on the part of goddard and wierzbicka. thus, following the tenets of universal grammar, wierzbicka (: ) defends the idea that semantic primes or fundamental human concepts are universal and innate. likewise, the natural semantic metalanguage amework assumes that every natural language can be used as a metalanguage, which makes it unnecessary to resort to abstract semantic predicates to account for the meanings of a given language. although there have been several previous attempts in which the set of hypothetical primitives was considerably expanded om one version to the next one, in its latest version the natural semantic metalanguage includes (goddard : ) the following: substantives• (, , , , /, ) determiners (• ,  , ) quantifiers (• , , , , /) evaluators (• , ) descriptors (• , ) mental predicates (• , , , , , ) 40 isabel de la cruz cabanillas selim  () speech (• , , ) actions, events and movement (• , , ) existence and possession (•  , ) live and death (• , ) time (• /, , , ,   ,   ,   ) space (• /, , , , , , , ) logical concepts (• ,  , , , ) intensifier, augmentor (• , ) taxonomy, partonomy (•  ,  ) similarity (• ) following the tenets rendered in goddard and wierzbicka () and wierzbicka (), this article aims at contributing to the model of universal grammar by carrying out the application of the natural semantic metalanguage research program (henceforth ) to old english. martín arista & martín de la rosa () already applied the model to the analysis of the semantic primes of old english that belong to the classes of substantives, determiners and quantifiers. the common characteristic to the three categories is that, being grammatical words, their combinations are far more restricted than those of lexical classes. as the latter article constitutes the first attempt to put the  into practice in old english, the present research follows similar techniques and methods, although on this occasion i will concentrate on the analysis of descriptors /, a lexical class. in choosing this specific approach my purpose is twofold: firstly, to check whether it represents a suitable theoretical and methodological amework for the lexical and semantic study of the period. secondly, to establish the ‘hyperonym⒮’ among all possible equivalents of  and  extracted om the old english thesaurus by roberts and kay (). 41 semantic primes in old english selim  () m  before discussing the exponents of the semantic primitives it is necessary to ponder on two preliminary issues: first of all, do all languages have units to express the concepts of  and ? the evidence presented by different scholars, such as goddard and wierzbicka,³ seems to suggest that they do. as one cannot resort to native speakers to confirm this claim in old english, lexicographic works are one of the most valuable information sources. as wierzbicka (: ) suggests the right way to proceed is by identiing “in the language the local exponents of the universal concepts in question, with all their allomorphs and allolexes (i.e., lexical variants) and with the relevant grammatical ames”. when one looks up for the equivalents of  in roberts and kay (: -), it reads as follows:⁴ .... greatness, bigness, size: micelnes, micelu . greatness, bigness: greatnes, gryto . fatness, bulkiness: fætnes . something huge, a very great mass: ormæte . large, big, broad: brad, micel, wid .. large, capacious, ample: sid . (of a ship) ample, with a large hold: widfæþme ³ some of their more relevant contributions to the establishment of the theory and the progressive development of the different sets of universals can be consulted in the reference section. see, for instance, goddard (; a & b), goddard & wierzbicka (; ) and wierzbicka ( & ). in some of these publications, the reader will also find the application of the model to other languages. ⁴ although long vowels are marked with a macron on the paper version of the thesaurus, the online version offers the possibility of searching with or without length-mark. as the helsinki corpus and the the dictionary of old english corpus show no vowel length, this feature is omitted all through the article. 42 isabel de la cruz cabanillas selim  () . massive, bulky, huge: great … (of things) plump, full-bodied, subtantial: fætt . considerable: gehycglice, ungehwæde . not little, great: unlytel . very great, exceedingly great: swiþlic . huge, immense, enormous: eacencræig, ormæte, ormætlic, ungefog, ungefoglic, unmæte, unmætlice, ungemet, uþmæte . giant, gigantic: entisc, eotenisc . of varying size: mismicel the first thing that strikes the reader by having a look at the elements is the fact that the word big is not included, as it is not documented until the end of th century in writers of northumbria and north lincolnshire. the oxford english dictionary relates its location to a possible norse origin. likewise, large was not part of the word-stock yet, as it is first attested in the middle english period. apart om that, the second striking aspect is the great amount of lexical units that can be used. according to wierzbicka, when trying to identi a proper evaluator (: ) “difficulties involved in identiing these concepts cross-linguistically are due more to the superabundance of plausible candidates than to their absence”. although she is referring to evaluators /, the great number of synonyms or quasi-synonyms documented in old english for the descriptors / seems to pose the same problem. it follows om here that the variation in use requires further investigation, as can be seen om the glance at the exponents of old english semantic primitive of  (roberts and kay, : -): ... littleness, smallness: gehwædnes, lytelnes 43 semantic primes in old english selim  () . little, a small amount: hwæthwugu, hwega, hwon, hwugudæl, lyt, lytel, lythwon, medmicel, tohwega. . a particle, small piece, jot: corn, egl, grot, lyttuc, mot, prica, pricele, spot, wloh . (of amount) small, little: hwæde, lytel, medeme, smæl, unginne, unmicel .. little, small, slight: hwonic, ieþelic, mæte, medemlic, medmicel . very little: forlytel, lytel .. least: læst . somewhat, a little: æthwara, æthwega, be sumum dæle, hwæthwara, hwæthwugu, hwæthwugununges, hwene, hwon, sumdæl, sume dæle, sumes, sum on dæle, tohwega . slightly, little: hwæthwugu, hwon, hwonlice, leohtlice, lyt, lytl, lythwon, lytle, lytlum, medemlice the abundance of terms for both concepts ( and ) makes it difficult to work out which one is the hyperonym among all the possible candidates. two selecting criteria can be applied here: on the one hand, the equency of occurrences; on the other, the range of different collocations a word shows. in order to apply the first criterion the group of descriptors is discussed taking into account a sample of texts included in the helsinki corpus of english texts. the use of written corpora is not ee om criticism, as has been pointed out by different scholars (görlach, : ). if written corpora present a series of deficiencies, historical ones show more specific constraints. some of limitations that are usually adduced for the study of historical texts and that are particularly related to the topic of representativeness of the corpus are: 44 isabel de la cruz cabanillas selim  () they just include written texts with their limitations, that is, () written texts are not representative of all registers, genres, age, sex, or social condition of speakers. modern readers do not have access to every text produced at a () specific period. they are restricted to some types of texts that contemporary readers considered it was worth copying. the survival of the original texts is oen arbitrary and by chance, () which implies the data are not complete as a consequence of the random preservation. this means that there is a random selection of texts. all these constraints may minimize the representativeness of the sample. the validity of the data has also been questioned on the part of some scholars. the written sources compiled in corpora are limited in size. it follows om here that the sample may be considered invalid because of its provenance and reduced size (schneider, : -). as the helsinki corpus has been widely contrasted and is worldwide accepted, it is taken for granted all the requirements for a suitable selection of the different sources have been met. thus, the equency parameter is based on the data retrieved by using this corpus. nonetheless, the results will show that there are some elements that are not present in the helsinki corpus. that is why the dictionary of old english corpus (henceforth doec) has also been consulted to try to solve some of the problems encountered when using the former corpus. the results of both will be contrasted to see if there are any significant differences. the second criterion is the variety of collocation a particular item shows. faber & mairal (: ), calling this feature the principle of lexical iconicity, refer to the fact that “the greater the semantic coverage of a lexeme is, the greater its syntactic variation”. or put it the other way round, cortes & mairal (: ) define it 45 semantic primes in old english selim  () as “the greater the syntactic coverage of a lexical unit, the higher its position in the semantic hierarchy within a given subdomain”. one will be able to find out about the collocations of the items by consulting roberts and kay (), available online now, which enables users to search for phrases in old english. in addition, those collocations that appear thrice or more in the helsinki corpus are also selected. the information contained in this source will be completed by that provided by a concise anglo-saxon dictionary (clark hall, ). d   the combination of both criteria, equency and range of collocations, should give us reliable clues to be able to determine which elements might have been used as superordinates, although it may turn out difficult to decide which of several was the real hyperonym. nonetheless, before having a look at some of the examples, it is necessary to comment on the researcher’s need to go through the data personally. obviously the automatic search enables the scholar to handle a wide variety of data, but also poses some problems: first of all, as we are dealing with an untagged corpus, no distinction is made between homonymy among the different word classes. thus, sid and wid can be both an adjective or an adverb. in fact, very oen the adverbial combination side and wide or vice versa wide and side is read through the texts. side can even be a noun, as well. in addition, by browsing an adjective like mæte, we find plenty of occurrences which correspond to a verb in third person singular; most of them show the construction gyf mon/man mæte… (‘if one considers…’). even more, if the search is done with the adjective in nominative we can have no occurrences, as happens with medemlic. that is why the option with final asterisk is preferred to find all the possible inflections and that is how medemlice is found. however, when the option mæt* is used, non desired examples like mæterne are 46 isabel de la cruz cabanillas selim  () retrieved as well. it follows om here that the data must be revised in order to filter the ones scholars really need for their analysis. the researcher must also be aware of language variation. although the variety of written forms is not so wide as in the middle english period, we find some alternants, like in the case of micel that is found  times either as quantifier or descriptor in the nominative case. furthermore, if the search is carried out by mycel with ⟨y⟩ instead of ⟨i⟩  tokens are displayed. finally the presence of some items is not so pervasive in the helsinki corpus as shown in roberts and kay (). in fact, even if the latter work provides several phrases for great, just  hints will be retrieved om the helsinki corpus, out of which  correspond to the name of the author, pope gregory the great. this fact must be taken into account, as the search will include the title of the work as well as the name of the author. from the whole set of items provided by roberts and kay () those that could be interpreted as quantifiers have been disregarded, because martín arista & martín de la rosa handled those data in their article. nevertheless, elements such as hwon or hwæthwugu or micel are found not only as quantifiers, but also as descriptors. therefore, all the items that could function as descriptors have been analysed concentrating on those cases where they function as adjectives and not as other word categories. likewise, nouns implying size have also been disregarded, as  and  will basically appear as adjectives in attributive function. thus, for the old english exponents of   entries provided by roberts and kay () have been revised. out of these, no occurrences were found for mismicel, swiþlic, ormætlic, unmætlice, uþmæte, ungefoglic, gehycglice and ungehwæde. the rest of the elements show the following equency and collocations either in 47 semantic primes in old english selim  () roberts and kay () or in the helsinki corpus (henceforth hc), as displayed in table : table . oe exponents of big, their frequency and collocations bi g item number of occurrences phrases  – >  entisc ! micel ! micel lic (‘elephantiasis’) micel wundor (‘great wonder’, hc) micel folc (‘big crowd’, hc)mismicel ! great ! great sealt (‘coarse salt’) greate wyrt (‘meadow saffron’) seo greate banwyrt (‘unidentified plant’) þa greatan netlan (‘nettle’) brad ! brad hand (‘big hand’) brad sweord (‘broad sword’) brad þistel (‘big thistle’) eotenisc ! swiþlic ! ormæte ! ormætlic ! unmæte ! unmætlice ! uþmæte ! wid ! (on/to) widan feore (‘eternity, for ever’) sid ! side rice (‘large kingdom’, hc) unlytel ! ungemet ! eacencræftig ! ungefog ! ungefoglic ! gehycglice ! ungehwæde ! 48 isabel de la cruz cabanillas selim  () similarly, for the old english exponents of   items have been revised, out of which no information was retrieved on any of the following: forlytel, hwonic, ieþelic, lytl, as can be seen in table : table . oe exponents of small, their frequency and collocations sm a l l item number of occurrences phrases  – >  ieþelic ! mæte ! medmicel ! medmicle ! medemlic(e) ! forlytel ! lyt ! lytel ! lytel forca (‘little fork’) lytle ! se lytla finger (‘the little finger’) lytlum ! lytlum fæce (‘a small interval of time’, hc) lythwon ! læst ! se læsta finger (‘the little finger’) hwæthwugu ! hwon ! hwonic ! hwonlice ! leohtlice ! the lack of results about the mentioned units can only be taken as an indication of the low equency of the terms, although obviously not being included in the compilation does not mean that the words were non-existent. a quick glance at the rest will make readers aware of the fact that there are several items that are etymologically 49 semantic primes in old english selim  () related in each set. thus, regarding the primitive embodied by  the bigger group is made up of the stem mæt with different affixes: ormæte, ormætlic, unmæte, unmætlice, uþmæte. in the  group we find lytel and its variants (lyt, lytle, lytlum, lythwon), medmicel (medmicle, medemlice), hwon (hwonlic, hwonlice) and then mæte, læst, hwæthwugu and leohtlice. from these the lytel family clearly outnumbers the occurrences found for the other items. if a comparison between both descriptors is established, it can be observed that  words out of  show no occurrences for ;  are just represented by very few instances ranging om  to  and finally just  exponents of old english  are found more than  times in the corpus. in the case of , no hints are retrieved for  of the  items;  lexical units show a equency ranging between  and  times in the helsinki corpus and the pending elements,  in total, are found on more than  occasions. there is not always a coincidence between the most widely recorded words in the corpus used and those whose phases are mentioned as common in old english by roberts & kay (), but both criteria can be combined to strive to figure out which ones could have been used as hyperonyms and are, because of that, more equent. these results highlight the insufficiency of the helsinki corpus to provide occurrences for all the searched items on this occasion. therefore, it seems necessary to look for complementary data in a bigger corpus. as the dictionary of old english corpus comprises at least one copy of each text surviving in old english, it will surely meet all the requirements to be a suitable complement to the study. in fact, the retrieval of data om the doec proves to be an important supplement. the number of tokens extracted outnumbers those found in the hc in most cases. as a matter of fact, most of the items show a higher equency in the doec than 50 isabel de la cruz cabanillas selim  () in the hc, but the real difference is made in relation to the absence of some items. regarding the primitive  nearly all the items absent om the hc are now found in the doec (mismicel, swiþlic, ormætlic, unmætlice, uþmæte, ungefoglic, and ungehwæde) with the exception of gehycglic. for instance, roberts and kay () mention that this word appeared just once in anglo-saxon documents. furthermore, the term is not registered by clark hall () as such, although hycglic—without the prefix—appears in die dialoge gregors den grossen  : . the only explanation for its absence om the doec would be that the variant text of gregory’s dialogues included in the doec introduced a synonym of hycglic, rather than this very word. on the contrary, all the three elements absent for  in the hc are now present in the doec: namely forlytel, hwonlic, ieþelic. however, some of the problems have not been solved by the use of the doec: for instance, being also an untagged corpus, no distinction is established between parts of speech. thus, cases of homonymy between word categories must still be worked out by the researcher. this task is even harder as the number of occurrences is much higher. not only is this tendency observed in cases like the ones mentioned above for lytel or micel and other related forms, but quite a simple form like brad in the hc, where  tokens are found, appears with  hints in the doec. thus, the doec helps in providing more reliable data regarding some items, but presents similar limitations to those found in the hc as well. as the outcomes obtained through the use of the doec do not alter significantly those retrieved om the hc, the presence of the semantic primes will now be illustrated by using examples om those that have  or more instances as descriptors in the helsinki corpus. the exponent that displays the greatest number 51 semantic primes in old english selim  () of occurrences is micel. even if micel and lytle can be found as quantifiers, as can be seen in the following passage om the anglosaxon chronicle, most of the occurrences happen to be adjectives in attributive position. some of them would even be controversial, for instance micle aþas sworon, where micle could be interpreted as a quantifier and translated as ‘swore many oaths’ or as a descriptor and be rendered as ‘swore great oaths’. the latter is the option chosen by both savage (: ) and swanton (: -) for the following sentence: & micle aþas sworon() some other instances of micel are clearly quantifiers as in: & geridon wesseaxna lond & gesæton micel þæs () folces ‘and they rode over the wessex land and sat up many of the people’ from the same extract examples with lytle as quantifier () and descriptor () are taken: & he lytle werede unieþelice æfter wudum for() ‘and he defended a little with greater difficulty through the wood’ þæs on eastron worhte ælfred cyning lytle werede () geweorc ‘at easter king aled built a little fort’ the other exponents for  showing more than  occurrences are brad, ormæte, unmæte, sid, wid, unlytel and ungemet. let’s see an example of each one: ofer brad brimu brytene soht() ‘brytene sought over the big waves’ 52 isabel de la cruz cabanillas selim  () gif ormæte hungor cymð() ‘if big hunger comes’ com werod unmæte() ‘a big multitude came’ we widefeorh weorcum hlodun geond sidne grund() ‘we built (with) works through the ample ground for a long time’. example () could illustrate both sid and wid; the latter oen appears with feorh ‘life, time span’ inasmuch as it is sometimes considered an adverb translated as ‘always’. to miclan bryne wæter unlytel() ‘to a big fire, big/much water’ þæt is asolcennyss, ðæt is modes swærniss and () ungemetegod slapulniss ‘that is laziness, that is sluggishness of spirit and excessive somnolence’. by going through the various sentences retrieved for , it has been observed that some of the descriptors function as intensifiers for other adjectives implying size, in the same way extremely, enormously or immensely can be used in present-day english. in fact, clark hall () records ormæte and ungemet both as adjectives and adverbs. with this function are found in the helsinki corpus: se mona is ormæte brad() ‘the moon is immensely large’ winter bringeð weder ungemet cald() ‘the winter brings extremely cold weather’. regarding the specific set of items for , apart om lytel/lytle and other etymologically related units like lytlum and lyt, the only 53 semantic primes in old english selim  () ones that are found  times or more are læst—that is also related to lytle as being its superlative—, hwæthwugu and hwon. babylonia, seo ðe mæst wæs & ærest ealra burga, seo () is nu læst ‘babylon, which was the largest and the first of all towns, is now the smallest’. hwæthwugu is documented as noun, adjective, pronoun and adverb in clark hall (). thus, many of the occurrences will go under any of the other word classes. besides, it is one of the few that can present graphic variants, since the last part of the compound can be recorded as -hwigu, -hugu, -hwega, -hwegu or -hwygu. an example of hwæthugu as descriptor is found in (): & gedyde hwæthugu getæse() ‘and did little profit’. finally, one of the items showing the greater number of occurrences is hwon, as it can be a form of the interrogative hwa, found in adverbial phrases like to hwon, for hwon meaning ‘why’; this is probably the most widely found case. besides, it can be an adjective, a noun and an adverb. most of the hints supplied are either as an inflected form of hwa or as an adverb. as a descriptor is found in: geond þas eorðan æghwær sindon hiora gelican hwon () ymbspræce ‘through the earth everywhere is their same little speech’. c  in the introduction section, the goals of the present research were set up: firstly, to check whether the natural semantic metalanguage research program represented a suitable theoretical 54 isabel de la cruz cabanillas selim  () and methodological amework for the lexical and semantic study of old english and secondly, to establish the ‘hyperonym⒮’ among all possible equivalents of  and  extracted om the old english thesaurus by roberts and kay () by means of the interpretation of the data retrieved om the helsinki corpus of english texts and the dictionary of old english corpus. regarding the first objective of the investigation, it can be concluded that, although the natural semantic metalanguage research program has dealt with various natural languages, english is probably one to which little attention has been paid. thus, one of the initial aims of the article was to test the validity of the natural semantic metalanguage research program as a useful tool in a former stage of english, namely old english. even if this piece of work attempted at being just a first approach to the topic, there is no doubt that the findings and proposals of the natural semantic metalanguage research program may be tested in old english. with this brief analysis i hope to have demonstrated that semantic primes represent a useful tool for the lexical and semantic analysis of old english inasmuch as it can certainly be applied to other levels of linguistic analysis, such as morphology and syntax, for instance. furthermore, it seems convenient to extend the research to other categories established by goddard and wierzbicka () in order to find the exponents in old english and to present the specific peculiarities this stage of the language shows. although the first objective was clearly achieved, there are some issues related to the second objective that need further research, such as which of the terms can clearly be considered hyperonyms. as a matter of fact, this second objective was tested and developed in the discussion of the data retrieved om roberts and kay () and the two corpus used: helsinki corpus and the dictionary of old english corpus. even if some methodological problems were solved 55 semantic primes in old english selim  () by handling the data provided by the latter, such as the retrieval of some items absent in the former, there are still some deficiencies that prevail. probably the most salient one is the fact that, being both untagged corpora, there is a need on the part of the researcher to filter the data in order to select the right information for the investigation. isabel de la cruz cabanillas universidad de alcalá de henares r primary sources clark hall, j. r. : a concise anglo-saxon dictionary. cambridge university press, cambridge. the dictionary of old english corpus. online version available at: http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/o/oec/ oxford english diccionary. online version available at: http:// dictionary.oed.com rissanen, m. & o. ihalainen. : the helsinki corpus of english texts. diachrnic and dialectal. universidad de helsinki, helsinki. roberts, j. & c. kay. : a thesaurus of old english. king’s college london medieval studies, london and online version available at: http://libra.englang.arts.gla.ac.uk/oethesaurus secondary sources the anglo-saxon chronicles. : translated and collated by a. savage. crescent books, new york. 56 isabel de la cruz cabanillas selim  () the anglo-saxon chronicles. : translated and edited by m. swanton. phoenix press, london. cortés, f. & r. mairal : a preliminary design for a syntactic dictionary of old english on semantic principles. díaz vera, j. e. ed. a changing world of words. studies in english historical lexicography, lexicology and semantics. rodopi, amsterdam: -. faber, p. & r. mairal : constructing a lexicon of english verbs. mouton de gruyter berlin. goddard, c. : semantic theory and semantic universals. goddard, c. & a. wierzbicka eds. semantic and lexical universals. theory and empirical findings. john benjamins, amsterdam: -. goddard, c. a: the search for the shared semantic core of all languages. goddard, c. & a. wierzbicka eds. meaning and universal grammar. theory and empirical findings (volume i). john benjamins, amsterdam: -. goddard, c. b: the on-going development of the nsm research program. goddard, c. & a. wierzbicka eds. meaning and universal grammar. theory and empirical findings (volume ii). john benjamins, amsterdam: -. goddard, c & a. wierzbicka : introducing lexical primitives. goddard, c. & a. wierzbicka eds. semantic and lexical universals. theory and empirical findings. john benjamins, amsterdam: -. goddard, c. & a. wierzbicka. : semantic primes and universal grammar. goddard, c. & a. wierzbicka eds. meaning and universal grammar. theory and empirical findings (volume i). john benjamins, amsterdam: -. 57 semantic primes in old english selim  () görlach, m. : corpus problems of text collections: linguistic aspects of the canon. studies in the history of the english language. carl winter, heidelberg: -. martín arista, f. j. & mª v. martín de la rosa : old english semantic primes: substantives, determiners and quantifiers. atlantis /: -. mairal usón, r. : reflexiones en torno a la noción de ‘universal lingüístico’. fuertes oliver, p. coord. lengua y sociedad: investigaciones recientes en lingüística aplicada. universidad de valladolid, valladolid: -. mairal, r. & j. gil eds. : en torno a los universales lingüísticos. cambridge university press, cambridge. moure, t. : universales del lenguaje y linguo-diversidad. ariel, barcelona. schneider, e. : investigationg variation and change in written documents. chambers, j. k., p. j. trudgil and n. schillingestes eds. the handbook of language variation and change. blackwell, oxford: -. wierzbicka, a. : semantic primitives: the expanding set. quaderni di semantica /: -. wierzbicka, a. : semantic primes across languages: a critical review. goddard, c. & a. wierzbicka eds. semantic and lexical universals. theory and empirical findings. john benjamins, amsterdam: -. wierzbicka, a. : semantics: primes and universals. oxford university press, oxford. wierzbicka, a. : anchoring linguistic typology in universal semantic primes. linguistic typology /: -. 58 isabel de la cruz cabanillas selim  () wierzbicka, a. : semantic primes and linguistic typology. goddard, c. & a. wierzbicka eds. meaning and universal grammar. theory and empirical findings (volume ii). john benjamins, amsterdam: -. ! received  feb ; revision received  may ; accepted  jun  microsoft word 2019notes_3_esteve maría josé esteve ramos, selim24 (2019): 157–172. issn 1132-631x / doi https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.24.2019.157-174 manuscript contexts and the transmission of the agnus castus herbal in ms sloane 31601 maría josé esteve ramos universitat jaume i, gremi2 ms sloane 3160 is a miscellaneous volume containing one copy of the herbal agnus castus in middle english. traditionally, editions focused on texts in isolation and did not look in detail to the rest of the material, diminishing the potential of manuscript contexts in explaining how texts flow and are received by a specific audience. if we consider these groupings of texts a collective product in which all the co-texts are part of an internal dialogue, the importance of looking at the whole volume from a collective perspective becomes paramount in understanding the final aim of the compiler, and the processes of transmission of text and/or texts. the objective of this article has been to study the arrangement of the material contained in ms sloane 3160 as a starting point to frame future comparison with manuscripts containing the same herbal. the results point to the identification of patterns which would confirm the “anthologistic impulse” (lerer 2000). the structure of this manuscript would contain a spectrum of the most important areas that would cover the contents of a typical vademecum of the time, including religious texts, but more studies are needed in order to be able to assess these contexts in medical miscellanies. the impact and transmission of the agnus castus herbal needs to be studied collectively, and assessing the manuscript contexts in which the text is naturally embedded points to the right direction in understanding all the processes therein. keywords: miscellanea; middle english; medical manuscripts; agnus castus 1 the research reported here has been funded by the pla de investigació de la universitat jaume i, grant number 18i405 for the project entitled la traducció medieval europea: models i autoritats. this grant is hereby gratefully acknowledged. i am also very much indebted to professor jeremy smith (university of glasgow) for suggestions and advice. 2 grup de recerca d’estudis medievals interdisciplinaris (gremi). 158 maría josé esteve ramos 1. introduction the transmission of scientific texts in the medieval times was possible in many cases thanks to the multiple copies and translations contained in volumes what is generally known as miscellanea. many of these miscellaneous collections — which in english flourished specially in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries— have been preserved and they represent the most common form under which medieval knowledge was transmitted. important shifts in the spreading of literacy widened the audience in a remarkable way, affecting production processes and resulting in one of the most important periods for the vernacularization of the english language. traditionally, different miscellanea or multi-text codices collections have attracted the interest of academics, being in most cases compilations of literary material. interest in these materials from a critical perspective has been reflected in recent publications, and the study of text transmission as a collective phenomenon has consequently begun to receive proper attention, pointing to the field as an emerging area of interest in manuscript studies. the presence of a text in a miscellaneous collection may point to a collective design and connects with the intentionality of the compiler. hence, a text of this period should be looked at not as an individual item in an isolated environment, but as part of a collective plan and meaning: considerable effort has been devoted in recent years to positing varieties of connection between texts that survive together on one manuscript, and to reading these connections as aspects of a manuscript’s overall conception or ‘meaning’. the material forms in which multiple works have been transmitted together in a manuscript are potentially significant. the presentation of works in a collection may indicate something of the collection’s status; the nature of its contents may suggest the collection’s generic affiliations; annotations may indicate something of a collection’s appeal to early readers. (boffey & edwards 2015: 263) miscellaneous materials related to science and medicine have survived in larger numbers, given their practical function, but have not received proper attention from this perspective. these materials had a more pragmatic function, covering the basic medical knowledge for an average practitioner. in terms of contents, they would bear a series of canonical texts together with well-known remedies and recipes. also, in medieval medicine, herbals such as the widely agnus castus herbal in ms sloane 3160 159 spread agnus castus would have a fundamental role in the content design of a medical miscellanea like this one. in this article i aim at focusing on the ms sloane 3160 containing a copy of the agnus castus as a starting point to study the intertextual relationships and collective function and meaning of the miscellaneous volumes this text was included in. this study is an incipient contribution to a wider scale project: the analysis of the manuscript contexts in the volumes containing a copy of the agnus castus in middle english. this analysis would provide us with information to assess the impact on the transmission of this herbal, uncovering the complex relationships of the textual network involved therein, and helping to unveil the role these contexts may play in the transmission and impact of this well-known text. to this objective, many different aspects, namely related to textual, co-textual and codicological issues, need to be addressed. the need to address them systematically is a matter that has been pointed at, as boffey & edwards (2015: 263) suggest: “[…] there are important additional factors that may affect or determine the forms such collections take, and there have been only intermittent attempts to identify these factors, and to clarify their roles in the shaping of the manuscripts.” in this work, we will refer to some terminological issues that need to be tackled, with special attention to the notion introduced by lerer (2003), defined as anthologistic impulse. a brief description of the agnus castus text follows, emphasizing the importance of this text, as the summary of the existing copies show. these copies, belonging to the sloane collection house in the british library, will be considered to develop the project in full. finally, a revision of the contents is carried out to explore the peculiarities, if any, in its particular arrangement. this arrangement will lead to further considerations related to the presence of patterns, an aspect i consider of special interest and that could help to propound a valid framework to analyze this type of compilations. in terms of further research, results would potentially lead towards a valid taxonomy to analyze the contents of scientific and medical miscellanea, specially in contrast with literary materials. 2. miscellanea, anthology or multi-text codex: the “anthologistic impulse” as it has been referred to in the introduction, different labels are in use to name these compilations, namely miscellanea and anthology. also, the term 160 maría josé esteve ramos multi-tex codex, the most recent and neutral of the three, has been used by a prominent number of scholars. however, there is no solid agreement as to which one would be defining the nature of these compilations, further than the identification of miscellanea with materials that do not show any plan in their conception, and the idea of anthology related to conscious thematic arrangement, and more widely associated with literary matters. in this respect, boffey & edwards point out: the lack of an adequate terminology to distinguish the forms that manuscript collections can take has resulted in frequent looseness of categorisation. terms like ‘anthology’ and ‘miscellany’ have tended to be used interchangeably, with others such as ‘commonplace book’ often invoked with misleading imprecision. any terminological debates must be based on an understanding of the processes by which different texts have been brought together, particularly when more than one manuscript preserves identical or very similar collocations. (boffey & edwards 2015: 264) the intention or plan on the side of the compiler (or compilers) presents us with one of the most difficult and fascinating tasks: was there an intentionality? was there a plan? if so, we must also think about the audience this material was targeted for. to study the manner in which the volume was composed and the materials found tells a story about intentionality and audience, and helps to stablish the chronological and social flux of textual transmission. although multi-text codex is a more neutral term as we have suggested above, miscellany and anthology connect directly with the intentionality of the scribe/compiler, and from this point of view, lerer (2003: 1255) indicates that “[t]here is much debate on whether medieval manuscripts are anthologies or miscellanies —on whether they are volumes guided by a critical intelligence or largely haphazard or practical assemblies of material”. this author introduces in the same article what he calls the “anthologistic impulse”: this is, when the idea of the anthology is thematically present in the texts (lerer 2003: 1255). the ultimate question then is related to the understanding of what the compiler’s will is in terms of audience, what there is behind his “anthologistic impulse”. many factors can affect this intentionality: quite simply, in any given locale, even a metropolis, one cannot be certain that exemplars of any given texts were available. as a result, manuscript compilers, when they acquired an exemplar for any desired text, could not be certain that agnus castus herbal in ms sloane 3160 161 they could gain access to it a second time. thus, they were constrained to make the fullest imaginable use of any book that came to hand, and their planned core selections would come to coexist with other items. difficulties of textual supply, as numerous studies indicate, contribute to the miscellaneous, not to say random, appearance of many middle english books. (hanna 1996: 47) despite the different motivations for the compilation process, the order of the texts may be one of the clues, as the idea of anthology is related to the arrangement of the textual bulk. the classification of the material by genres or themes arises as one of the most problematic but also most fascinating challenges of this type of analysis. to this aim, another author (stemmler 2000) proposes a taxonomy to attempt a differentiation between these two main labels, explaining that in many cases this differentiation may not be applied strictu sensu. in medical or scientific compilations —as it is the case with ms 3160 of the sloane collection— the “anthologistic impulse” may be clearly present, even if it can also be labelled as a miscellaneous volume. it is my aim to demonstrate that this “impulse” or intentionality is part of the primary origin of the material, not only in this manuscript but potentially in the rest of the related manuscripts. to this aim, not just the thematic strand may be fundamental, but also the forming of the different quires or gatherings may also be important in identifying the process and target of the compilation. whether the volume was composed at the same time or there was some primary material to which the rest of the composition was added by one or different compilers are questions that will help to feed the ground for a solid conclusion. concerning the arrangement of contents, stemmler’s proposal in his article ‘miscellany or anthology? the structure of medieval manuscripts’ attempts to arrange the materials in ms harley 2253 and proposes what he calls “potential organising principles for an anthology”. these principles would include the classification of the material according to author (one or several), language (latin/vernacular), form (prose/verse), genre (lyric/narrative/drama), or content (religious/secular). this proposal presents an interesting starting point, although in general terms i seem to agree more with the view of pratt (2017: 20) which states that “the contents of medieval text collections reveal that the distinctions we habitually make between high and low, religious and profane, entertaining and didactic literature are anachronistic, since cultural products of all kinds sit happily together in multi-text codices.” in this line, i think that a careful analysis of the materials, with an extensive analysis of the content, 162 maría josé esteve ramos should be required in order to uncover possible patterns of organization. to this aim, larger studies are needed and further research awaits until more details provide evidence to develop a proposed taxonomy for this kind of materials. i have compared the description of the different items in the british library catalogue and in the manuscripts of the west midlands catalogue. in this last one, the contents of the volume are described as: “a fifteenth-century miscellaneous manuscript containing mostly english medical texts such as agnus castus but also a variety of texts, from a treatise on the deadly sins to charms and homilies.” the centrality of the agnus castus is a prominent feature in the description, despite the short length of this specific copy. 3. the agnus castus herbal the social changes taking place in late medieval england —roughly expanding from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century— entailed an increase in the accessibility to books among secular and professional audiences. this situation derived into a demand for vernacular literature, which in the field of medicine resulted in the extensive production of medical treatises such as herbals. consisting mainly of translations and adaptations of traditional latin works, what these treatises lack in originality they make up in scholarly interest, as they are key to understand the emergence of a middle-class audience whose concerns were better addressed in the vernacular (keiser 2008). a representative example of these writings is the middle english herbal known as agnus castus. this herbal takes the name after the first plant that appears in the collection of herbs and their medicinal uses, normally followed by recipes, which provided “a handy textbook in case of illness or accident” (brodin 1950: 11). despite not being as well-known as some of its contemporary equivalents (e.g. macer or circa instans), this text seemed to enjoy great popularity in medieval england: no less than forty-two copies of the work have been identified in medieval manuscripts, to which more than twenty printed versions should be added. this stands for a very important reason to study the transmission and impact of this text. an important number of the copies of this herbal belong to the british library’s sloane collection of manuscripts, being part of “amalgamations of varying textual content” (de schepper 2011: 27); this is, miscellanies. accordingly, we find the agnus castus herbal surrounded by a diversity of agnus castus herbal in ms sloane 3160 163 texts, the majority of which are of medical nature. these include treatises on astrology, urinoscopy, botany, or on particular diseases, as well as recipes, charms and homilies, among others, as it will be referred to below. this text, as it has already been pointed out, was widely disseminated —circulating extensively—, as the forty-two identified copies in middle english attest. however, the importance of the agnus castus herbal should not diminish the relevance of the rest of the material contained in the codex, and it is our intention that describing the contents of this manuscript will shed some light in order to assess this point. as bouwmeester (2017: 57) indicates: scholars characterising medieval multi-text codices often focus largely on the first and/or longest text in the manuscript. […] neither the size of an individual text, nor its place within the collection solely determines or predicts its relevance for interpreting the compilation as a whole. in spite of its apparent popularity, agnus castus has received limited scholarly attention. in fact, the text only counts with one critical edition performed by gösta brodin in 1950 and is mentioned a few times in research carried out by scholars such as linda e. voigts or george r. keiser. among other issues, these scholars have stressed the interest of individually studying each of the agnus castus copies for the ways in which they are conflated with other herbals (keiser 2005), or because of the association of one of the manuscripts containing it —british library, ms sloane 2948— with the collection of related manuscripts known as the ‘sloane group’ (voigts 1990), as it can be seen in table 1 below. the issues raised by the two latter scholars would be in line with the interests of the so called ‘new philology’. since its advent in the 1990s, this discipline has called for the necessity of studying medieval manuscripts as cultural artefacts in which both the textual and paratextual elements, as well as the surrounding works, play an important role in the form and meaning of the texts (driscoll 2010). in this sense, it is claimed that a study of a manuscript as a physical object is key to understanding the ways, reason and purpose why a particular audience would engage with that text at a specific moment and place in time (driscoll 2010). thus, following the lines of the research opened by the scholars mentioned above, as well as by the field of new philology, it seems appropriate to claim that the main interest of the agnus castus herbal lies also in what its belonging together with other texts (i.e. its being part of 164 maría josé esteve ramos table 1. copies of the agnus castus text in the sloane collection 17. sloane 2407 f. 5b (c. 1500) 21. sloane 5 ff. 13a57a (conflated with lelamour’s macer, [238] below, c. 1465) 22. sloane 7 ff. 30a33b (14751500) 23. sloane 120 ff. 1a61b (c. 1450) 24. sloane 135 ff. 90a112a (eng. and latin; 15001525) 25. sloane 297 ff. 2a6b, 13a-b (14 cent.) 26. sloane 962 ff. 249a251b (fragment: 15 cent.) 27. sloane 1315 ff. 70a87b (c. 1500) 28. sloane 2460 ff. 2a33b (15 cent.) 29. sloane 3160 ff. 99a, 101a-b (15 cent.) 30. sloane 3489 ff. 12 a28 a (1450-1500) different miscellanies) can tell us about it and its owners and readers, than in a critical assessment of the text itself. in addition, its continuation in an abundance of printed editions from the sixteenth century onwards attests for the importance of this text in the context of medieval and early renaissance england. considering all the issues mentioned above, the aim of the wider project is to study the agnus castus following the thread of the new philology, and therefore placing our focus on both the textual as well as the paratextual (codicology and miscellanies) dimensions of the work. however, because of the difficulty of handling a number of copies as high as forty-two, and because of our particular interest in the botanical or medical nature of the miscellanies in which the text is contained, only the manuscripts belonging to the sloane collection in the department of manuscripts at the british library will be considered in further research, beginning with the case of ms sloane 3160 in this article. not only does this collection include some of the most recently identified copies of the work, but it is also considered as “the richest source of scientific and medical writings from medieval england” (voigts 1990: 26). the long-term objectives of this project would aim at creating a picture of the manuscript contexts of the work, i.e. to identify its readership —its audience, their socio-cultural contexts and their connections—, as well as to examine its reception —its dialectal and geographical distribution— and circulation. ultimately, a study of this nature will help us to understand the reach and impact of the agnus castus, and thus allow for its location within the broader agnus castus herbal in ms sloane 3160 165 history of medicine, shedding light upon our understanding of the role of pre-linnaean botany in the medical practices and the nature and influence of medical thought in late medieval and early renaissance times. 4. ms sloane 3160: contents and some thoughts on its collective meaning this article is focused on the description of the contents of ms sloane 3160 and its connection with the transmission and impact of the agnus castus text. ms sloane 3160 is a codex on paper and it contains 173 folios. two catalogues have been consulted in order to contrast the information about the content arrangement with the manuscript itself: the british library catalogue (blc) and the manuscripts of the west midlands catalogue (mwmc). most of the items appear in both sources, but there are some minor differences. also, the location of some texts was not precise and some material had not been included, as it will be indicated below. in table 2 there is a list of the items as they appear in ms 3160. we have also included the information related to language and form, partially following stemmler’s proposal above, with the exception of genre. in this case, all the material (with the exception of religious texts) can fall clearly into the medical and/or scientific category. however, a further distinction of different subtypes in the classification of the rest of the manuscripts involved would present us with interesting information. the table of contents appearing in the first place shows an incomplete description of the homilies, and an incorrect numbering. the first text is a religious one, a homily of the seven deadly sins, a very popular and extended text. there are two different page numberings, the first corresponding to the item in which the text was first copied, and the second —number four— would correspond to the rearranging of the material when it was included in the miscellanea. the second item is also religious. it is entitled ‘homilies for saints’, and starts with the incipit “the grace and the goodness of almyty god thurgh the preyers”. together with the homilies for the seven sins, these two are the only religious material present in the volume. a possible explanation would be that both texts may show an intimidatory function and a warning to the practice of several vices, which clearly lead to sickness and death. 166 maría josé esteve ramos table 2. items contained in ms sloane 3160 items location form language 1. on the seven deadly sins ff. 125v prose english 2. homilies for saints ff. 26r88v prose english 3. urine (flasks) ff. 89r90v drawing english/latin 4. treatise on urines ff. 91r96r prose english 5. an herball latin & english ff. 97r98v glossary english/latin 6. medical recipes f. 99a prose english 7. agnus castus f. 99b prose english 8. medical recipes (scribbles) f. 101r prose english 9. herbal f. 101v prose english 10. virtues of herbs ff. 102r108v prose english 11. medical recipes ff. 109r125v prose english 12. tractatulus de regimine sanitatis ff. 126r127v prose latin 13. medical recipes f. 127v prose english 14. teaching of galian the leche. on the best months to drink and eat -prose english 15. bloodletting. the best months to let blood f. 151r prose english 16. treatise on the best times of the year to eat meat and drink and also for bloodletting f. 151v prose english 17, 18, 19. medical recipes and charms of different sorts ff. 152r170v prose english 20. a promise to repay in time (mwmc) f. 173v prose english after two religious items, practical medicine appears in the form of flasks or jordans, which is the name typically given to the containers where urine was kept and studied, according mainly to the color or colors, each of them exhibiting a property which would describe and/or predict the individual’s health. we find a total of twenty-four of them. in this case, the jordans are presented depicting the color in latin at the top and giving a description of the color and causes. the first example reads “subrubea”, and the text below “a fever corrupt blod a vaynes brokyn in the bak”. following the jordans and the description of colors and sickeness is common to have a treatise on urines, to agnus castus herbal in ms sloane 3160 167 complement further knowledge in this field. item four accomplishes this expectation, beginning “these are the tokens of color in uryne.” the next item or text is a bilingual herbal latin and english and, as expected, will be followed by more similar material. this thematic group is going to be one of the most representative groups in the manuscript, including of course one of the copies of the agnus castus, which follows to the first herball. the text known as agnus castus was catalogued in the mwmc as in folios 99r to 100r. after revising the manuscript, it appears that 99ra contains medical recipes (for headache and other aches). these are not included in the description of the catalogues consulted, and it is in 99rb that the agnus castus will be found. the fact that both texts present an almost identical mise en page and in the same script may have led to be considered one. also in item eight, the mwmc describes the presence of an herbal in 101rv. however, the herbal does start in 101v, but not in 101r where we find recipes with some scribble at the end, and the phrase “probatum est”, an ephicacy phrase, very commonly used in recipes. the reason why text in 101r is not found in the descriptions of the catalogues is due to the fact that it does not bear significative material and may probably be a later addition. two more herbals complete this section of thematically-related group of texts: in 101v, a text which starts “her is an herbe that is called imarie”, followed by item nine, virtues of herbs, with the incipit “here men may se þe vertue of herbus whiche ben hote ande wheche byn cold for how many thenges þi beyn god.” we change now from herbs to medical recipes, noting that the script is the same. the following folios (109r125v) contain diverse recipes, the first being “for the migreyne in pe hede”. in the mwmc this first recipe for migraine is said to be “for mr whittenton” added in later script. item number twelve is described in both catalogues as tractatulus de regimine sanitatis editus aud montem perserulanum anno 1281. in the blc additional information is found, connecting the text with montpellier, france. most probably, we may have here a copy of the regimine sanitatis by the famous doctor arnau de vilanova, a canonical text that would suit the volume, as it is a compendium of advices on how to keep healthy. this text is followed by more recipes. and the next item, where different scripts are found, is identified as a text containing “teaching of galian the leche. on the best months to drink and eat”. the last part of the volume is the most miscellaneous in the original sense. several treatises on bloodletting, recipes and charms alternate. the mwc says that folio 151rv contains an item with the incipit “here begynnys the techynge and the rulyng how a man schuld governe hym 168 maría josé esteve ramos thru the ȝer of methus and drynkus and blode lettyng”, which would actually corresponds to 151v. text in 151r is actually a text on bloodletting beginning “the fyrst daie of the new mone gode is to lette blode”. items fifteen, sixteen and seventeen contain different recipes and charms, with some prayers also included. finally, in folio 173v, we find some scribble which corresponds to what the mwmc identifies as a promise to repay in time. once all texts have been described, it becomes fundamental to enquiry about issues such as the main thematic strands and the collective meaning of the arrangement. it is clear that the agnus castus is not precisely the longest text, but it is certainly one of the most canonical and easily recognized by the audience that would read and use the material. also, the importance in the arrangement of this text relies in the dialogue or collective meaning that conforms when presented with the rest of them. the audience of the miscellaneous volume would receive the text by naturally associating it with the rest of the manuscript contexts, and it would not fit into the medieval mind to extract or separate the agnus castus from the rest of the medical material, because it simply belongs there. the flux of textual transmission was a collective mission, and it is not accurate to think that the text was received and circulating without the company of more meaningful material, as it is normally described in critical editions. therefore, i would like to emphasize the importance of looking at these manuscript contexts in detail, as much knowledge about impact and reception can be gained. in this manuscript, we have therefore a small group of religious items, followed by a prominent compendium of herbals, urine treatises, bloodletting and medical recipes as a convenient addition when necessary. it primarily responds to the expectations we would have —including the religious material— and the thematic blocks would reflect the “impulse” guiding the responsible (one or many) in the final arrangement: it is generally accepted that the composition of a miscellany, be it cumulative or organic, responds to an intellectual organisation that predates its actual collection, resulting in a unique material entity which turns out to be the consequence of a project, of a conceptualisation. (van hemelryek 2011: 292) miscellaneous collections need to be described, analyzed and interpreted as a reciprocal entity, in which all texts are going to be part of their transmission and influence their reception. these co-texts should not be neglected when studying the individual texts, and editions or studies should make reference to agnus castus herbal in ms sloane 3160 169 manuscript contexts. these contexts are also meaningful, as pratt (2017: 34) quite recently stated, these contexts are also meaningful because: one might argue that each codex is a unique artefact, with its text collection providing a unique set of possible readings. however, it is possible to make some generalisations about these manuscripts, both with linguistic and cultural areas, and across them, although the evolution of these books from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries must also be taken into account. 5. conclusion and further research studying miscellaneous material shows the collective mind of scribes and compilers when it comes to textual gatherings. the so-called “anthologistic impulse” may have been present in a more or less conscious degree in the design of these materials, and was certainly the most frequent plan in medieval libraries. with respect to medicine and science, medical miscellanea would normally contain texts for prognosis, to identify the medical problem, and texts for remedies —together with charms— as it is the case of this volume. all together it shows also a concern for including prayers and religious texts, religion being part of the cure in these times. the fact that the homilies of the seven sins are there in the first place tells us that this material played an important and relevant part. this was very popular and circulated extensively, and homilies warned about the vices that led to sickness. this would add the spiritual dimension to the whole volume, which in fact, was of a very pragmatic nature: if you avoided gluttony, you would probably avoid diseases related to it. we can conclude that ms sloane 3160 is composed of items that would correspond to a medical or scientific compilation or vademecum of the time. following lerer’s concept of “the anthologistic impulse”, the arrangement shows that the compiler gathered most of the material according to a certain plan and for a certain audience. there are several texts with the same script, continuously arranged, which suggest these copies were being arranged in that specific order. a more thorough study of the codicological properties would contribute to confirm this. additionally, the search for patterns could benefit from a detailed comparison of more manuscripts. although the idea of proposing a taxonomy for their study could be too ambitious, identifying a set of different recognizable patterns would help to 170 maría josé esteve ramos understand the function of these manuscript contexts. in this line, van hemelryek (2011: 293) also points out that: […] let us suggest that we ought to make a distinction between the order of a miscellany and its logic: the first echoing the programmatic codicological act, the other calling out the concepts involved in its reception; because, when culture becomes its own object, it subjects itself to constraints that deserve to be further explored. in terms of further research, the main objectives of the wider project have been already introduced in section 3. these objectives will help us to understand what kind of audience had authors/copyists/scribes in mind when writing the text, what kind of audience actually recurred to the text and with what purpose, and what the other texts included in the miscellanies say about the text itself and about its audience. ultimately, this will help us to establish the importance of the text within the history of botany and medicine. as to the analysis of the manuscript contexts, the agnus castus text is as paramount to the miscellanea as any of the accompanying items, but co-texts may help to uncode the flux and impact of this herbal, and therefore their importance and role should not be diminished. bouwmeester (2017: 5758) emphasizes the idea that the interplay between all texts is a fundamental issue that is many times neglected in favour of solely studying the longest text in the codex. he encourages researchers to embrace a more global perspective on the study of the miscellanea or multi-text codices and consider all the texts included, as “all too often the meaning of a medieval text is shaped (or influenced) by all its co-texts, regardless of their length”. we do agree with this perspective, and further suggest that editions of texts may include a description and short analysis of the material compiled together in the codex, as part of the analysis of the context and its transmission, and the impact of the work. also lerer (2003: 1263) points that: our pedagogy should reflect this recognition: we should teach our texts with an awareness of the material contexts in which they originally appeared. but we should also recognize that those material contexts are constantly in flux, as texts get copied into new collections, printed books get bound together, and long works or portions of a poet’s oeuvre get plucked for beauties in a modern book. agnus castus herbal in ms sloane 3160 171 in this sense, the whole volume would offer a global perspective both for the compiler and the reader and/or practitioner, which would be altered by looking at the items individually, and not collectively. references boffey, j. & a. s. g. edwards 2015: towards a taxonomy of middle english manuscript assemblages. in m. conolly & r. radulescu eds. insular books. vernacular manuscript miscellanies in late medieval britain. oxford, oxford university press: 263269. bouwmeester, g. 2017: size does not matter: on characterising medieval multitext codices. in k. pratt, b. besamusca, m. meyer & a. putter eds. the dynamics of the medieval manuscript. text collections from a european perspective. göttingen, v&r unipress gmbh: 5780. blc =british library catalogue – browse collections: archives and manuscripts, sloane manuscripts (c. 1000 – c. 1750) available from: http://hviewer.bl.uk/iamshviewer/default.aspx?mdark=ark:/81055/vdc_10000000 0040.0x00011c&_ga=2.148417204.264356798.1531156327-117876278.1524556059 [accessed 25 april 2018]. brodin, g. 1950: agnus castus, a middle english herbal: reconstructed from various manuscripts. uppsala, lundequistska bokhandeln. de schepper, t. j. e. 2011: the several sages: the late middle english herbal in its genre, manuscript and printed context. (master’s dissertation.) utrecht, utrecht university. driscoll, m. j. 2010: the words on the page: thoughts on philology, old and new. in j. quinn & e. lethbridge eds. creating the medieval saga: versions, variability and editorial interpretations of old norse saga literature. odense, university press of southern denmark: 85102. keiser, g. r. 2008: vernacular herbals: a growth industry in late medieval england. in m. conolly & l. r. mooney eds. design and distribution of late medieval manuscripts in england. rochester, boydell & brewer: 291308. hanna, r. 1996: miscellaneity and vernacularity: conditions and literary production in late medieval england. in s. g. nichols & s. wenzel eds. the whole book. cultural perspectives on the medieval miscellany. ann arbor, the university of michigan press: 3751. lerer, s. 2003: medieval english literature and the idea of the anthology. pmla 118.5: 12511267. mwmc = manuscripts of the west midlands catalogue. a catalogue of vernacular manuscript books of the english west midlands c. 1300 – c. 1475. available from: www.dhi.ac.uk/mwm/ [accessed 22 march 2018]. 172 maría josé esteve ramos pratt, k. 2017: introduction. in k. pratt, b. besamusca, m. meyer & a. putter eds. the dynamics of the medieval manuscript. text collections from a european perspective. göttingen, v&r unipress gmbh: 1140. stemmler, t. 2000: miscellany or anthology? the structure of medieval manuscripts: ms harley 2252, for example. in s. fein ed. studies in the harley manuscript. the scribes, contents, and social contexts of british library ms harley 2253. kalamazoo, medieval institute publications, western michigan university: 111121. van hemelryek, t. 2001: of books and other miscellaneous revolutions. medieval miscellanies in context. in k. fresco & a. d. hedeman eds. collections in context. the organisation of knowledge and community in europe. columbus, the ohio state university press. voigts, l. e. 1990: the ‘sloane group’: related scientific and medical manuscripts from the fifteenth century in the sloane collection. the british library journal, 16: 2657. author’s address departamento de estudis anglesos facultat de ciències humanes i socials gremi (grup de recerca d’estudis medievals interdisciplinars) universitat jaume i 12071 castelló, spain received: 11 may 2019 e-mail: resteve@uji.es revised version accepted: 10 june 2019 selim 20.indb thij s porck, selim 20 (2013–2014): 287–290issn: 1132–631x fulk, r. d. 2014: an introductory grammar of old english with an anthology of readings. medieval and renaissance texts and studies 463. mrts texts for teaching 8. tempe (az): acmrs. pp. xii + 332. isbn: 978-0-86698-514-⒎ $40. old english pedagogy has a long history that stretches back, at least, to the late seventh century. in his ecclesiastical history of the english people (v.2), bede records how john of beverly, then bishop of hexham, taught old english to a dumb and sickly youth. the bishop started with the single word “gæ” (“yes”) and proceeded to educate the boy in the pronunciation of individual sounds, followed by syllables, words and, fi nally, longer sentences. then, a miracle took place: the boy, who had previously not been able to speak, now talked incessantly and, moreover, the boy’s bald head, which had been covered in hideous scabs and scales, was now fully cured and covered with beautiful, curly hair. the overall structure of bishop john’s course in old english, with its initial overview of sounds and gradual progression towards longer, complex sentences, is still surprisingly akin to the growing number of modern-day old english textbooks, to which fulk’s introductory grammar is the latest addition. however, whereas introductions such as those by mcgillivray (2011), baker (3rd edn., 2012) and mitchell & robinson (8th edn., 2012) have started catering for students who, much like bishop john’s mute youth, have little to no knowledge of traditional grammatical and linguistic terminology, fulk’s grammar is explicitly aimed at more advanced learners of old english with a decidedly linguistic interest. with its linguistic focus, fulk’s introductory grammar diff ers fr om other textbooks on the market today. in an overview of twenty-fi rst-century introductions to old english, scheil (2007) notes a trend in modern textbooks to put more emphasis on cultural and historical background and, on occasion, oversimplify linguistic matters. while this approach is well-suited for the thij s porck 288selim 20 (2013–2014) majority of old english learners today, who come to old english out of a cultural or historical interest and with no knowledge of (or taste for) linguistics, it leaves some students uncatered for. scheil warns that “some graduate students, particularly confi dent ones thoroughly committed to language study, might be put off by such lowest-common-denominator rhetoric” (2007: 52). those students, more interested in learning linguistic matters for their own sake rather than as pragmatic translation aids, will be pleased with the keen attention to philological detail off ered by fulk’s introductory grammar. as noted in fulk’s preface, his introductory grammar takes its cue fr om marckwardt & rosier’s old english language and literature (1972). this infl uence is particularly clear in the organizing principle of its twenty-one individual chapters. like marckwardt & rosier, fulk has decided against chapters that deal exclusively with one facet of language. rather, the chapters always deal with a variety of subjects, seemingly placed together at random, interlaced with brief exercises and concluded by an old english reading fr om the gospels or apollonius of tyre. as a result, the seven classes of strong verbs are discussed in four subsequent chapters, interlaced with information about prefi xes, absolute constructions, i-stem nouns and negative concord. the organizing principle of these chapters serves a pedagogical purpose, forcing students to go through the material gradually and off ering a variety in aspects of language discussed per chapter, rather than bombarding them with all possible information about a particular part of speech in one go. while this approach may aid cumulative learning, it also makes the introductory grammar, unlike baker (3rd edn., 2012) and mitchell & robinson (8th edn., 2012), less eff ective as a reference grammar, despite its brief index of grammatical subjects. in many ways, fulk’s introductory grammar is more than an updated version of marckwardt & rosier. fulk’s explanation of the mechanics and development of old english and its relation to proto-germanic is exceptionally clear and hardly leaves any reviews 289 selim 20 (2013–2014) detail or exception unexplained, while the exercises and readings in each chapter ensure a proper and thorough understanding of the material at hand. a valuable addition to the introductory grammar are its three appendices: a summary of sound changes in the history and prehistory of english, an overview of nonsaxon dialects, lavishly illustrated with samples of texts, and a brief introduction to old english poetry. the introductory grammar is further supplemented by a rich anthology of sixteen selections of texts, including well-known pieces, such as the “life of caedmon” and no fewer than thirty riddles fr om the exeter book (ten times as many as marckwardt & rosier), as well as texts which rarely feature in old english readers, such as the vision of leofr ic. all these texts are edited with diacritics, indicating palatalisation and vowel length, explanatory notes and a glossary. finally, a related website off ers a printable overview of paradigms and a bibliographical guide to resources for further study. fulk’s introductory grammar is explicitly aimed at graduate students and advanced undergraduates, and rightly so. with its level of philological detail, this textbook requires a student with a keen linguistic interest and is not likely to appeal to students who are just starting out or those with a taste for the culture and history of the anglo-saxons (which is treated in a little under two pages). in fact, fulk’s introductory grammar is probably best suited for an advanced course in old english that follows a course that uses a more approachable textbook. as such, it would form the solution to a notorious problem, also touched upon by scheil (2007: 57– 58), that students who have completed an undergraduate course in old english are oft en still ill-equipped to handle a traditional reference grammar, such as campbell (1959), hogg (1992) or hogg & fulk (2011). fulk’s introductory grammar certainly bridges this gap between undergraduate courses and the use of these advanced linguistic tools of the trade. in terms of bede’s story of john of beverly, then, fulk’s introductory grammar might be the curling iron that the recovering youths need once their growth of hair thij s porck 290selim 20 (2013–2014) has already been inspired by another, less linguistically ambitious, textbook. thij s porck leiden university references baker, p. s. 2012 [2003]: introduction to old english. 3rd ed. oxford, wiley-blackwell. campbell, a. 1959: old english grammar. oxford, clarendon press. hogg, r. m. 1992: a grammar of old english, volume 1: phonology. oxford, blackwell. hogg, r. m. & r. d. fulk 2011: a grammar of old english, volume 2: morphology. malden, wiley-blackwell. marckwardt, a. h. & j. l. rosier 1972: old english language and literature. new york, w.w. norton. mcgillivray, m. 2011: a gentle introduction to old english. peterborough, broadview press. mitchell, b. & f. c. robinson 2012 [1964]: a guide to old english. 8th ed. malden, wiley-blackwell. scheil, a. 2007: old english textbooks and the 21st century: a review of recent publications. old english newsletter 40.3: 47–59. • book reviews book reviews, selim 21 (2015–2016): 207–220. issn 1132-631x j.r.r. tolkien. 2015. the story of kullervo. london: harper collins publishers. ed. by verlyn flieger. pp. 192. isbn 9780008131364. reviewed by miguel a. gomes gargamala, university of sunderland tolkien posthumous publications keep returning to our bookshelves and they seem to do it on a more regular basis in recent times. since 2013, we have been offered the opportunity to welcome “the last ‘new’ tolkien work” at least once a year: the fall of arthur (2013), beowulf: a translation and commentary (2014) and the story of kullervo (2015). if those were not enough to satisfy the literary quench of fans, in 2016 they will be treated to a tolkienian double bill: a secret vice. tolkien on invented languages (edited by dimitra fimi and andrew higgins) and the lay of aotrou and itroun (edited by verlyn flieger with a preface from christopher tolkien). some critics may find in this extraordinary proliferation of new (old) books a perfect example of tolkien as the literary golden goose par excellence. the impact of “the new rare tolkien book to be (re) published” might perhaps one day lose some of its power to interest an international group of, mostly, fans under a permanent spell, however, that day is yet to come. stuart lee reminds us that “any title bearing tolkien’s name immediately opens up international sales to a large and ever-hungry readership” (lee 2015). that said, the story of kullervo is far from being a publication lacking academic merit, and it will be certainly treasured by a number of casual readers and fans. as it is well known, tolkien’s fascination with finnish legends and the kalevala started as a young student at king edward’s school and nearly ruined his hon. mods, “becoming the original germ of the silmarillion” in the author’s own words (letters, p.87). in the story of kullervo, verlyn flieger, one of the world’s foremost tolkien scholars, offers an in depth insight into the author’s exploration of the kalevala and the creative response derived from such activity. flieger’s edition includes, besides the unfinished the story of kullervo, two versions of tolkien’s essay (or, rather, drafts of academic talks) “on ‘the kalevala’ or ‘land of heroes’” and flieger’s own essay, “tolkien, kalevala and ‘the story of kulervo’”. the volume also offers flieger’s informative introduction, tolkien’s own artistic depiction of ‘the land of pohja’, a watercolor used as the book’s frontispiece, and several images of manuscript pages in tolkien’s own hand such as those including plot synopsis (ms tolkien b 64/6 folio 21 recto and verso), which the editor has used to suggest what she sees as tolkien’s 208 book reviews projected ending. the notes and commentary for tolkien’s take on what has come to be known as “the finnish national epic” (tolkien believed the kalevala was not such a thing, but rather “a mass of conceivably epic material […] a collection of mythological ballads”, pp.70, 71) and for the essays are not only useful, but completely necessary for the wider readership that the editor is trying to reach with this publication. the story of kullervo and most of its accompanying material had already been published in tolkien studies vii in 2010, which might make certain readers question the need for this volume. furthermore, the early date of composition alongside the incompleteness of the story could justify a critical approach to this publication which wishes to consider whether tolkien would have deemed this material publishable at all. one certainly wonders if a non specialist audience will appreciate the opportunity to look at two versions of a text conceived for a series of talks in oxford, which exist in manuscript and typescript form, and which undoubtedly show, through a careful analysis of modifications and revision of the early draft, a great insight into the mind at work of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. verlyn flieger explains how the story of kullervo “needed to reach a larger audience than that of a scholarly journal” (p.viii) and after reading the tale of hapless kullervo, one is tempted to accept such view. fans and scholars alike will enjoy the possibility of exploring tolkien’s interaction with the primitive tales in the finnish runos of the kalevala as originally recorded by elias lönnrot in the nineteenth century, and as translated into english by w.f. kirby and read by tolkien in 1911. flieger observes that if the story of kullervo was written sometime between 1912 and 1914, “this is the work of a beginning writer” (p.140). the young tolkien is also known to have composed two poems, in 1911, in which he casted himself in the role of lemminkainen, one of the heroes in the kalevala, poems discussed by andrew s. higgins in his phd thesis the genesis of j.r.r. tolkien mythology (2015), whose section on “the kalevala, finnish and tolkien’s language invention” the reader of this review is invited to consult. the tragic nature of the story of kullervo, an orphan never in control of his own life, although, as flieger points out, does not offer “a one-to-one equation between kullervo and tolkien” (p.144), it certainly presents interesting parallelisms between character and author. the story of kullervo serves as a window into tolkien’s earliest period of creative energy. if tolkien believed to have found in the finnish language and the kalevala a new world, primitive and fresh at a time, flieger’s edition offers book reviews 209 the readers of tolkien’s fiction a similar experience. kullervo is not as elaborated as túrin turambar, his direct fictional heir, and tolkien reconciliation of two world views (pagan and christian) under a single narrative framework is not yet fully articulated. tolkien took the kullervo cycle from a stage in which he reflected on its translation into modern english to a process of adaptation which would ultimately result in a move towards invention. flieger’s illuminating notes and comments contribute to a better understanding of tolkien’s use of new names for elements found in the story’s source as well as names invented for new characters and places in the author’s own retelling (e.g. kullervo’s unnamed sister in the kalevala becomes wanona or wanora, and the god of heaven in the original is given the names ilu, iluko and ulko). tolkien’s language invention here is particularly interesting when read in the context of its immediate impact on the author’s first fully developed invented language: quenya. readers of the story of kullervo might find the tale strange, ambiguous and lacking the eucatastrophic treatment of likely defeat that they have come to expect from the mature work of tolkien. this is the tragic story of a doomed hero which the young tolkien liked for being so in a different way to the classical, the celtic and germanic literatures which he considered a childhood attraction; he loved the kalevala for its newness, extravagance and its arresting barbaric strangeness. verlyn flieger has done a great job at presenting tolkien’s adaptation of a material he loved, to readers who might struggle if unfamiliar with the text’s source, but who will be always able to find a helpful note for confusing passages. the kalevala is a work which deserves a wider audience, and no one like tolkien has the power to rekindle the love for old texts in a modern audience. from the world of academia and medieval studies we should welcome this new chance to read about hapless kullervo, his people, their land and “the air that blows in that country”. references higgins andrew s. the genesis of j.r.r. tolkien mythology. unpublished phd thesis. cardiff: cardiff metropolitan university, 2015. stuart, lee. ‘is harpercollins flogging a dead horse with latest tolkien publication?’. the conversation, 2/09/2015 <http://theconversation.com/isharpercollins-flogging-a-dead-horse-with-latest-tolkien-publication-46968> (accessed on 10/10/2015). 210 book reviews the letters of j.r.r. tolkien, edited by humphrey carpenter, with the assistance of christopher tolkien. london: george allen & unwin, 1981. ‘the story of kullervo’ and essays on kalevala, by j.r.r. tolkien, transcribed and edited by verlyn flieger. tolkien studies 7 (2010), 211–278. tolkien on fairy-stories, edited by verlyn flieger & douglas anderson. london: harper collins, 2008. reviewer’s address faculty of education & society university of sunderland forster building, chester road, sunderland, sr1 3sd e-mail: miguel.gomes@sunderland.ac.uk luis lerate de castro. ed. 2015. sagas cortas islandesas. (íslendingaþættir.) madrid: alianza editorial. pp. 568. isbn 978-849104-011-8. reviewed by miguel gonzález plaza, investigador independiente si echáramos la vista atrás dos décadas y examináramos cuántos textos medievales en antiguo nórdico se habían traducido al castellano por aquel entonces, nos encontraríamos con un panorama muy limitado. tendríamos las dos sagas del ciclo del asentamiento en groenlandia, a cargo de antón y pedro casariego córdoba (1983); el fruto de la labor de traducción de enrique bernárdez sanchís, que ofreció al lector hispanohablante la brennu-njáls saga y la egils saga skalla-grímssonar, además de un conjunto de relatos cortos agrupados bajo el título de sagas islandesas (bernárdez 1984, 1986, 1988); y la kormáks saga, traducida por agustí dimas (1985). podríamos sumar a lo anterior algunas contribuciones realizadas en revistas de reducida difusión o publicadas en el extranjero y menos accesibles para el público, como la hrafnkels saga freysgoða, a cargo precisamente de luis lerate de castro (1971) o la traducción realizada por álfrun gunnlaugsdóttir de la saga af tristram ok ísönd bajo el título tristán en el norte (1978). apenas teníamos nada más accesible del resto del acervo saguístico. book reviews 211 desde entonces el interés por la materia ha ido creciendo y las traducciones a nuestro idioma se han multiplicado. la labor de mariano gonzález campo, santiago ibáñez lluch o javier díaz vera, por mencionar a los más prolíficos, ha permitido acercar al público español el fascinante, rico y prácticamente único mundo de la prosa vernácula producida en islandia y noruega entre los siglos xii a xv. a día de hoy tenemos acceso a la mayoría de los textos más significativos de este tipo, si bien existe todavía abundante material pendiente de ver la luz en castellano. con la llegada del volumen que ahora reseñamos se avanza un poco más en ese camino. sagas cortas islandesas, edición y traducción del islandés antiguo, abre las puertas de nuestro país a un tipo de relato en prosa del que poseíamos hasta ahora muy pocas muestras: el þáttr (plural: þættir), que podríamos traducir como saga corta, relato corto o, siguiendo la propuesta del editor, breve. de la edición y traducción se encarga luis lerate de castro que, aparte de la hrafnkels saga freysgoða, citada más arriba, ya tuvo a su cargo el cometido de trasladar obras capitales de las letras clásicas islandesas como edda mayor (1986), edda menor (1984) o la antología poesía antiguo-nórdica (1993). igualmente se le debe, ya en el campo de la lengua inglesa antigua, el logradísimo e imprescindible beowulf y otros poemas anglosajones (siglos vi-x) (1986), que consigue, dentro de las limitaciones que impone nuestro idioma, atrapar parte del ritmo y del sabor de la métrica original de este poema heroico-elegíaco del s. viii.1 por lo que se refiere al contenido, sagas cortas islandesas se estructura en tres partes bien diferenciadas. una “nota preliminar” de diez páginas a modo de introducción; el grueso del volumen, consistente en la recopilación de breves, casi en su totalidad pertenecientes al género de las íslendingaþættir (relatos cortos de islandeses); y, finalmente, dos apéndices en los que se ofrecen un listado de las sagas y breves traducidos al castellano, así como tres mapas, uno de escandinavia y dos de islandia. la “nota preliminar” (págs. 13–22) comienza con una somera explicación del tiempo y el lugar de gestación de las sagas islandesas. le sigue un comentario del criterio delimitador entre la saga (plural: sögur) y el þáttr que es, básicamente, la longitud del texto (en las sögur es mayor y en los þættir 1 desde la publicación del volumen editado por colin chase (1980), la tradicional fecha de composición de beowulf, el siglo viii, ha sido muy cuestionada. sin embargo, en el conjunto de ensayos editados por leonard neidorf (2014) se demuestra que con toda probabilidad beowulf ha de haber sido compuesto no más tarde del 725. 212 book reviews menor). este es, precisamente, el motivo por el que lerate elige el término “breves” para denominar estos relatos, como él mismo indica recurriendo a una analogía con el cine: “así como los cineastas llaman «cortos» a sus películas de poca duración” (lerate de castro 2015: 14). a continuación, se resumen algunas de las principales características del género como la sencillez, la limitada y aséptica intervención del narrador o el fenómeno del prosimetrum.2 acto seguido, se dedica la parte más extensa de la “nota preliminar” a desglosar las distintas categorías en que usualmente se dividen las sögur. continúa señalando a qué género pertenecen las que se han incluido en el volumen (sagas cortas protagonizadas por islandeses) y, para terminar, se ofrece alguna información sobre la transmisión de los textos. en cuanto al criterio de presentación de los breves, el editor advierte: “no hemos intentado aplicar criterio alguno para organizar la secuencia de las sagas que siguen. van, simplemente, en el mismo orden arbitrario en que se nos ocurrió traducirlas, aunque sí hemos querido cerrar este volumen con cuatro relatos que dan cuenta expresamente de las circunstancias últimas en que paganos y cristianos acordaron tener todos una sola fe” (lerate de castro 2015: 22). considerando el enfoque generalista del texto, cumple dicha “nota preliminar” perfectamente, ubicando al lector, con claridad y concisión, en los parámetros principales en los que se enmarcan las sagas. una panorámica, como digo, suficiente, que sirve bien a cualquier interesado en conocer el patrimonio literario nórdico y en ampliar enfoques desde el campo de la historia o de la mitología. no obstante, se puede echar de menos alguna explicación sobre las elecciones realizadas a la hora de trasladar las 2 nos referimos a la técnica narrativa consistente en el engarce de poemas dentro del texto en prosa, que nos remite a la literatura latina de época tardía. frecuente entre los autores medievales, es una constante en el género de las sögur que también vamos a encontrar en los þættir. ursula brown (1946–1953) defiende que dichos poemas pueden haber constituido, en muchas ocasiones, la auténtica génesis de las sagas de los tiempos antiguos. según esta propuesta, los poemas habrían sido originalmente conectados entre sí mediante breves fragmentos en prosa. posteriormente, estos breves fragmentos habrían sido ampliados de manera progresiva, dando lugar en última instancia a las sagas tal cual las conservamos hoy en día. no es descartable que esto mismo haya sucedido con algunos breves. en cuanto a la función que cumplen dichos poemas, como apunta ibáñez lluch (2011), por un lado se utilizan como fuente de autoridad y por otro sirven para expresar el pensamiento de los protagonistas. book reviews 213 peculiaridades del antiguo islandés al castellano, ya señaladas en su momento por ibáñez lluch (2002: 185–205), ítem que no falta en la gran mayoría de las traducciones. por ejemplo, ninguna información se ofrece sobre los criterios utilizados para el reemplazo de las grafías originales propias del islandés antiguo, inexistentes en nuestro idioma: <þ, ð, æ, ø, œ, ý>. otro tanto sucede con aquellas letras que, si bien existen en castellano, representan sonidos distintos en nórdico, como es el caso de <j, h, y, ö>. tampoco se explicitan las decisiones respecto al modo de presentar los nombres propios, los patronímicos, los apodos o los topónimos, ni se da cuenta del tratamiento que se ha dado a cuestiones como la alternancia de formas verbales en presente y en pasado, del estilo directo e indirecto, o la reiteración de conjunciones (ok, er) y adverbios (nú, þar), tan características del género saguístico.3 en cualquier caso, resulta una ausencia menor, pues se coligen fácilmente las soluciones adoptadas si se conocen esas peculiaridades y no afectan a la comprensión y disfrute del texto en ningún caso. 3 se escapa de los límites de la reseña el ampliar uno a uno este tipo de problemas. no obstante y para el lector curioso expondré un único ejemplo relacionado con la alternancia de tiempos verbales y la reiteración de la conjunción copulativa ok, a grandes rasgos equivalente a nuestra “y”, para que se comprenda un poco mejor la dificultad mencionada y las soluciones tomadas por el traductor. en el “breve de audun de los fiordos del oeste” (auðunar þáttr vestfirzka) tenemos la siguiente frase en islandés antiguo: ok nú fara þeir útan heðan ok fersk þeim vel, ok var auðun of vetrinn eptir með þóri stýrimanni; la traducción de lerate es: se hicieron luego a la mar y tuvieron buen viaje. audun pasó el invierno con tórir el capitán; por un lado las tres conjunciones ok han sufrido distintos destinos, para evitar la reiteración: la primera se elimina, la segunda se mantiene y la tercera se transforma en punto y seguido. por otro, en cuanto a la alternancia de tiempos verbales, se opta por cambiar los dos presentes (fara: viajan; fersk vel: tienen-se buen viaje) por dos verbos en pasado (se hicieron a la mar; tuvieron buen viaje). a cambio, el verbo en pasado (var: en este caso, pasó, permaneció) se ha mantenido igual. 214 book reviews la segunda parte y principal (págs. 25–557) está constituida por la recopilación de breves, en total cincuenta y ocho, que se cierra con algunos fragmentos de la kristni saga. se trata de una cantidad nada desdeñable, teniendo en cuenta que la totalidad de estos textos se ha calculado en torno a la centena (lange 1957: 150, pulsiano 1993: 661, ashman rowe y harris 2005: 462). de la selección que nos ofrece sagas cortas islandesas, sólo once se encontraban ya en nuestro idioma,4 repartidos entre el ya mencionado sagas islandesas (bernárdez 1984), cinco cuentos islandeses (fernández romero 1997) y el islandés y el rey (fernández romero 2006).5 el formato de los breves consiste en un relato de corta extensión, en ocasiones independiente, pero las más de las veces inserto dentro de un texto mayor,6 cuyo protagonista es normalmente un habitante de islandia (de casi cualquier rango social), que por diversas circunstancias se encuentra con alguno de los reyes de la escandinavia medieval. a partir de este esquema, se desgrana un riquísimo anecdotario donde caben situaciones que van de lo épico a lo ridículo, de lo venerable a lo soez. vemos deambular por las páginas de los breves personajes de lo más variopinto y que pocas veces nos dejarán indiferentes pese al laconismo del narrador: mercaderes, cuenta-sagas, nobles y 4 en sagas islandesas tenemos þorsteins þáttr stangarhöggs, gísls þáttr illugasonar, odds þáttr ófeigssonar y auðunar þáttr vestfirzka. en la revista el extramundi y papeles de iría flavia podemos encontrar brands þáttr örva (allí traducido como brand el dadivoso), stefnis þáttr þorgilssonar, þórhalls þáttr knapps, þorvalds þáttr tasalda y þormóðar þáttr kolbrúnarskálds. por último, en el islandés y el rey además del ya referido de brands se encuentran traducidos mána þáttr skálds e íslendings þáttr sögufróða. 5 conviene advertir que también teníamos algunos ejemplos de breves pero de los que podríamos clasificar, aceptando las convenciones que se aplican a las sagas, como “de los tiempos antiguos” (fornaldarsögur). es el caso de norna-gests þáttr, þorsteins þáttr bœjarmagns y helga þáttr þórissonar, todos ellos incluidos en la saga de fridthjóf el valiente y otras sagas islandesas, o þáttr af ragnars sonum contenido en saga de sturlaug el laborioso, saga de rangar calzas peludas, relato de los hijos de ragnar. igualmente sucede con otro breve, aunque relacionado éste con las sagas de caballerías (riddarasögur), como el valvens þáttr, incluído en sagas artúricas. 6 es el caso de un numeroso grupo de breves incluidos en la versiones tardías de la óláfs saga tryggvasonar en mesta y la óláfs saga helga, ambas contenidas en el flateyjarbók. estos relatos se encuentran integrados en dichos textos a modo de capítulo o anécdota. a menudo, si no siempre, se trata de interpolaciones del anónimo escriba (ashman rowe y harris 2005: 462). book reviews 215 reyes desde luego, obispos y esclavos, vikingos, tumularios arrepentidos, niños abandonados, mendigos, anacoretas, ogros, bandidos, brujos fineses e incluso un oso amaestrado llevado de aquí para allá, todo hay que decirlo, en lamentables condiciones. a aquellos que estén familiarizados con las sögur probablemente les llamen la atención dos características, aparte de la corta extensión, que van a encontrarse en múltiples ocasiones en estos þættir. en primer lugar, la fuerte impronta del cristianismo presente en muchos de ellos. en las sagas esa influencia existe y es significativa, pero suele quedar algo más oculta, relegada a un segundo plano. la mentalidad cristiana subyace en muchas sögur pero sin hacerse explícita. no sucede así en los breves, donde cobra un protagonismo mucho mayor. no faltan en ellos conversiones, apariciones de santos, peregrinaciones a roma, destrucción de templos, predicaciones, reliquias mágicas y ordalías. se colocan muchos de estos breves, de este modo, a caballo entre las denominadas byskupasögur (sagas de obispos y santos) y las íslendigasögur. en segundo lugar estaría la importancia que adquieren en estas narraciones los skáld. mayoritariamente islandeses, estos poetas medievales asumen el protagonismo en buena parte de los breves. retados una y otra vez en condiciones adversas para que compongan con rapidez en los complejos modelos métricos de la época, como el muy apropiadamente llamado (dadas las circunstancias) dróttkvætt, poesía de la corte,7 consiguen salir con éxito las más de las ocasiones. sus dotes igual pueden utilizarse para obtener el favor o un regalo del noble de turno que para evitar un castigo. de este último modo sucede, por ejemplo, en el breve de óttar el negro. su protagonista compone un poema titulado höfuðlausn, es decir, el rescate de la cabeza. se trata de un lugar común en la literatura islandesa medieval y existen al menos tres poemas distintos con ese nombre (cleasby y vigfusson 1874: s.v. höfuð). todos ellos se pretenden compuestos en similares circunstancias, con la intención de hacer cambiar de opinión al monarca o noble que pretende ajusticiar al skáld. tampoco faltan poemas para hacer decaer la salud o la honra de quienes les contravienen, para burlarse de rivales o para dar muestra de fe pagana a cierto ídolo de curiosa factura llamado völsi en uno de los relatos más cómicos de esta recopilación. 7 para conocer más sobre este tipo de composición, véase gordon (1957: §183). en castellano puede consultarse lerate de castro (1984: 10–15). 216 book reviews la pujanza de este tipo de relato nos permite atisbar dos motivos imbricados en su génesis. por un lado, hace partícipe al lector (y al público que escucha, pues muchos de estos textos estaban pensados para su recitado en voz alta) de un sentimiento de identidad e independencia en una época difícil, en la que noruega ha terminado anexionándose islandia, a lo que sigue un tiempo de crisis, hambrunas y catástrofes naturales.8 se rememora entonces un pasado en el que los habitantes de islandia se codeaban con los monarcas y los jarlar escandinavos, formaban parte de su corte, les acompañan en la batalla y demostraban en muchas ocasiones ingenio y valentía por encima del resto de personajes, llegando incluso a burlar a los poderosos con los que se cruzan. por otro lado, se mantiene vivo el recuerdo, verdadero o mitificado, de los hechos de los principales cabecillas de la islandia de la colonización, haciendo manifiesto de este modo el cómo adquirieron ciertas familias la relevancia de la que gozan entonces, en la época en que se componen y se leen. sirven así de justificación al estatus político y económico de los individuos que detentan ciertos apellidos. en conclusión, tan marcadas se encuentran estas dos características comentadas (el mayor influjo del cristianismo, referido como la “nueva usanza”, y la asunción de protagonismo por parte de los poetas) que han llevado a algunos autores como ashman rowe y joseph harris (2005: 462–464) a distinguir los “conversion þættir” y los “skald þættir” como dos de las ocho categorías que plantean en su propuesta de sistematización de los þættir. los “conversion þættir” serían aquellos en los que se muestra un momento de conflicto entre paganismo y cristianismo. dentro de estos habría un subgrupo al que denominan “pagan-contact þættir”, en el que dicho conflicto tiene lugar cuando un rey noruego cristiano, o su representante, se enfrenta cara a cara con algún aspecto concreto de la era pagana. por otro lado, los “skald þættir” vienen definidos según esa propuesta por contener breves anécdotas relacionadas con la poesía escáldica y provendrían de la parte en prosa que acompañaba a los poemas para darles un contexto y sentido. para terminar con el análisis de esta parte del libro, se hace preciso considerar el trabajo de traducción llevado a cabo por su autor. lerate de castro ha ido en este libro mucho más allá de la mera traslación del texto al 8 mitchell (1991: 129–130) cita, entre 1300 y 1424, erupciones del hekla, terremotos, inviernos especialmente duros, hambrunas, ausencia total de llegada de naves procedentes del continente, epidemias y carestía de alimentos. book reviews 217 castellano. le ha dado una impronta propia y personal, fácilmente reconocible para quienes hayan tenido oportunidad de leer sus anteriores trabajos. caracteriza su labor que no reniega, ni mucho menos, de acercarse a la literalidad del original en islandés antiguo, a veces al extremo de dislocar un tanto la sintaxis de nuestra lengua. a modo de ejemplo: no nos pensábamos cuando asentamos con biarni muertes que íbamos nosotros a chamuscar aquí cabezas de corderillos, mientras su proscrito torstein chamusca las de carneros castrados. no tan malo que hubiese biarni tenido más consideración con los parientes suyos en bodvarsdal y que no se le quedara ahora ese proscrito en sunnudal como que iguales fuesen. (lerate de castro 2015: 221–222)9 engaño ha sido. bien sabes tú, hermana, decir cosa otra de la que piensas. (lerate de castro 2015: 462)10 [...] las había recibido él aquellas tierras de su tío paterno éyvind, todo entre el río de vapnafiord y el río de vestrdal. (lerate de castro 2015: 467)11 además, despoja el texto de reiteraciones innecesarias y hace uso de un variado e imaginativo vocabulario para superar con éxito los envites terminológicos de una época, un lugar y una manera de narrar que hoy día resultan lejanos. la suma de lo anterior produce un texto rico y muy meritorio, a veces chocante, a veces arcaizante, en cualquier caso vehículo muy eficaz para el disfrute de estos breves medievales. tal vez merezca una mención, en tanto que sorprenderá a buen seguro a cualquiera que haya enfrentado antes la lectura de las sögur en nuestro idioma, la existencia de opciones que se apartan de la convención usual, como la de traducir nombres compuestos con -staðir (sitios knapp, en lugar de 9 en islandés antiguo: eigi varði oss þess, þegar vér tókum vist með vígabjarna, at vér myndim svíða hér dilkahöfuð, en þórstein skogar-maðr hans skyldi svíða geldingahöfuð; væri eigi verr at hafa meir vægt frændum sínum í böðvarsdal, ok sæti nú eigi skógar-maðrinn jafnhátt honum í sunnudal. þórsteins þáttr stangarhöggs. 10 en islandés antiguo: nú eru brögð, ok mæltir þú annat, frændkona, enn þér var í hug í gær. gunnars þáttr þiðrandabana. 11 en islandés antiguo: ok hafði honum þar land gefit eyvindr föðurbróðir hans, allt á milli vápnafjarðarár ok vestrdalsár. þórsteins þáttr hvíta. 218 book reviews knappsstaðir; sitios bruni, en lugar de brunastaðir), los patronímicos (égil hijo de grim el calvo, en lugar de égil skallagrimsson), o la variación sobre ciertas soluciones de transposición, más o menos asentadas, para determinados seudónimos (harald lindo pelo, en lugar de cabellera hermosa o el de hermosos cabellos; o glum muertes, en lugar de víga-glúm). no obstante, comparto con ibáñez lluch “que cualquier versión que permita atisbar fielmente el estilo de la antigua prosa islandesa y la complejidad de la poesía escáldica puede ser considerada válida mientras se halle lo más cerca posible del texto original y ofrezca al lector una clara exposición del entorno cultural en el que fue producido” (lluch 2002). sagas cortas islandesas cumple sobradamente con dichos fines. cierra el volumen una “relación de sagas y breves publicados en castellano” (págs. 561–563) y tres “mapas” (págs. 565–567). la “relación”, estructurada por temas (de islandeses, históricas, de los tiempos antiguos, de caballeros) es una útil fuente para quienes se queden con ganas de más y quieran acercarse a la literatura nórdica medieval traducida a nuestro idioma.12 ofrece además referencia a algunos textos poco conocidos, aunque se echa en falta la saga de ragnar calzas peludas en la traducción llevada a cabo por ibáñez lluch (1998). los “mapas”, por su parte, nos permiten localizar la mayoría de los lugares mencionados en los breves. dos están dedicados a islandia y señalan los enclaves y accidentes geográficos más relevantes y la división administrativa de la época en cantones. otro hace lo propio con la zona de escandinavia. también se ha incluido un dibujo con la disposición de þingvellir (los campos de la asamblea), marco de numerosos episodios de las islendingasögur.13 para concluir, sagas cortas islandesas supone una buena noticia en tanto en cuanto ofrece al lector hispanohablante, por primera vez, una traducción directa desde el nórdico antiguo de un numeroso grupo de þættir. además, se suma al interés intrínseco de los mismos que se trata de una cuidada 12 un catálogo similar y algo más actualizado se encuentra disponible en la siguiente dirección de internet: https://www.academia.edu/12223157/cat%c3%a1logo_de_sagas_traducidas_al_castel lano 13 en þingvellir se celebraba anualmente, desde el año 930, la asamblea nacional de islandia (el alþingi) en la que podían participar todos los hombres libres del país. en estas reuniones se resolvían pleitos, se modificaban leyes, se pactaban alianzas, se cerraban tratos, se transmitían noticias y se concertaban matrimonios. el alþingi está considerado uno de los primeros antecedentes de los modernos parlamentos. book reviews 219 traducción. siendo esto así, esta recopilación resultará de interés tanto para el profano como para el estudioso de la cultura, la literatura y la historia medieval del norte de europa. debemos alegrarnos por el mantenimiento del ritmo, constante ya, de llegada de traducciones a nuestra lengua desde el mundo de la prosa islandesa, pese a que aún existan numerosos e interesantes textos pendientes. en esta línea, sagas cortas islandesas supone un paso más. references ashman rowe, e. y j. harris 2005: short prose narrative (þáttr). en r. mcturk ed. a companion to old norse-icelandic literature and culture. oxford, blackwell: 462–478. bernárdez sanchís, e. (trad.) 1984: sagas islandesas. barcelona, espasa-calpe. bernárdez sanchís, e. (trad.) 1986: saga de nial. madrid, alfaguara. brown, u. 1946–1953: the saga of hrómund gripsson and thorgilssaga. saga-book of the viking society 13: 51–77. casariego córdoba, a. y p. casariego córdoba (trad.) 1983: saga de los groenlandeses. saga de eirik el rojo. madrid, siruela. chase. c. (ed.) 1980: the dating of beowulf. toronto: university of toronto press. cleasby, r. y g. vigfusson, 1874: an icelandic-english dictionary. oxford, clarendon press. dimas, a. (trad.) 1985: saga de kormak. barcelona, teorema. fernández romero, j.a. 2015/06/10 [2006]: el islandés y el rey. aspectos genéricos y estructurales del þáttur o relato breve islandés. http://www.tinet.cat/~asgc2/forum_2006/fernandez_romero/el_islandes_y_el_re y.doc fernández romero, j.a. (trad.) 1997: cinco cuentos islandeses. el extramundi y papeles de iria flavia 11: 99–126. gordon, e.v. 1957 [1927]: an introduction to old norse. 2ª ed. rev. a.r. taylor. oxford, clarendon press. gunnlaugsdóttir, á. 1978: tristán en el norte. reykjavík, stofnun árna magnússonar. harris, j. 2008: theme and genre in some íslendinga þættir. en speak useful words or say nothing: old norse studies ed. s.e. deskis y t.d. hill. ithaca (ny), cornell university library: 97–126. ibáñez lluch, s. (trad.) 2011: saga de yngvar el viajero y otras sagas legendarias de islandia. madrid, miraguano. ibáñez lluch, s. 2002: consideraciones generales sobre algunos problemas de traducción del antiguo islandés al español. terminologie et traduction 1: 185–205. ibáñez lluch, s. (trad.) 1998: saga de ragnar calzas peludas. valencia, tilde. 220 book reviews lange, w. 1957: einige bemerkungen zur altnordischen novelle. zeitschrift fur deutsches altertum und deutsche literatur 88: 150–159. lerate de castro, l. (ed. y trad.) 1993: poesía antiguo-nórdica. madrid, alianza. lerate de castro, l. (trad.) 1986: edda mayor. madrid, alianza. lerate de castro, l. (trad.) 1984: edda menor. madrid, alianza. lerate de castro, l. (trad.) 1971: saga de hrafnkel godi de frey. revista de letras 9.3. lerate de castro, l. y j. lerate de castro (trad.) 1986: beowulf y otros poemas anglosajones (siglos vii-x). madrid, alianza. mitchell, s.a. 1991: heroic sagas and ballads. ithaca (ny), cornell university press. neidorf, l. (ed.) 2014: the dating of beowulf: a reassessment. cambridge, d.s. brewer. pulsiano, p. et al. 1993: medieval scandinavia: an encyclopedia. londres, routledge. sturluson, s. 1984: edda menor, trad. l. lerate de castro. madrid, alianza. sturluson, s. 1988: saga de egil skallagrimsson, trad. e. bernárdez. madrid, miraguano. reviewer’s address e-mail: migonzalezplaza@gmail.com selim02.pdf 4 beowulf: some examples of binary1 structures traditionally punctuated as paratactic sequences oe and eme writing was associated with logic and was based on the logical meaning of sentences. rhetoric paved the way to other meanings.2 hence every medieval reader/listener could elucidate his 1.by “binary” is meant a bipolarization of two stretches of language (sentences, clauses or groups) notionally and syntactically interdependent or interordinate, and mutually bound in a related contingency. so i differentiate three models of syntactical organization of clauses: coordinate clauses (expansion of structure); subordination (+embedding); and interordination (=in terdependent binary clauses). then binary must be differentiated for our purposes from “binomial” in the sense defined by yakov malkiel, as a “sequence of words pertaining to the same form-class, placed at an identical level of syntactic hierarchy, and ordinarily connected by some kind of lexical link” (“studies in irreversible binomials,” lingua 8 (1959), p. 113). cf. also v. kohonen, “observations on syntactic characteristics of binomials in late old english and early middle english prose,” neuphilologische mitteilungen 2, lxxx (1979), pp. 143-163. a pioneer work in binary sentences can be found in g. rojo, “cláusulas y oraciones,” verba, anejo 14 (1974); cf. chapter 7, “las oraciones bipolares.” 2.the term “rhetoric” is used here in its medieval sense to denote a rhythmical structural pat tern which categorizes given poetic techniques in composition. so when we say, for example, that two units of language appear according to an elaborate rhetorical pattern, -in the sense that one tends to mirror the other, such as syntactical parallelism, chiasmus, etc-, we mean that the cohesion of both units must also be measured in logical, and rhythmical terms. (cf. w. h. beale, “rhetoric in the old english verse-paragraph,” neuphilologische mitteilungen, 2 lxxx (1979), pp. 133-142). scholars contend about the precise meaning of punctuation marks in medieval writing. to pose the matter unevenly i will quote m. b. parkes: “one might adduce a general principle about medieval punctuation. medieval scribes and correctors punctuate where confusion is likely to arise (if their latin is sufficient to recognize the fact) and do not always punctuate where 5 own interpretation of the right meaning of a sentence according to rhetorical, liturgical and oral performances. modern editors of medieval texts restrict the meaning of sentences by the syntactical use of punctuation marks.1 readers, therefore, passively limit themselves to digesting the conceptual units prepared for them by editors. notwithstanding, as alteration of the order of elements is not involved to amend the paucity of punctuation marks, the grammatical relationship between the varied components of the sentence maintains its original character. thus “tactic” (paratactic and hypotactic) relations are unevenly balanced, as parataxis apparently seems to be a prevalent principle of construction of all the “natural” syntax of an early english text. it is in the light of foreign sources that embedding may conceivably be justified in oe composition. the widespread occurrence, in particular, of paratactic univariate structures in medieval writing is still under conjecture.2 scholars conconfusion is not likely to arise, even when they are concerned with the sententia literae.” (“punctuation, or pause and effect,” medieval eloquence studies in the theory and practice of medieval rhetoric, ed. j. j. murphy (university of california press, 1978), pp. 138-9. 1.see on this topic the works of c. g., harlow, “punctuation in some manuscripts of aelfric,” review of english studies, 10 (1959), 1-19; b. mitchell, “the dangers of disguise: old english texts in modern punctuation,” review of english studies, 31 (1980), 385-413; m. b. parkes, op. cit.; p. clemoes, liturgical influence on punctuation in late old english and early middle english manuscripts (occasional papers, no. 1, printed for the department of anglo -saxon, cambridge: 1952); n. f. blake, the english language in medieval literature, (london and new york: methuen, 1977), pp. 66-74. 2.for a further study of parataxis in oe cf. g. rübens, parataxe und hypotaxe in dem ältesten teil der sachsenchronik (göttingen diss., 1915); g. w. small, the comparison of inequality (baltimore: 1924), pp. 125-32; h. möllmer, konjunktionen und modus im temporalsatz des altenglischen (breslau: 1937), pp. 2-8 and 113-14; s. o. andrew, syntax and style in old english (new york: russell & russell, 1940), pp. 87-100; fr. klaeber, “eine randbemerkung zur nebenordnung und unterordnung im altenglischen,” anglia beiblatt, 52 (1941), pp. 216-19; g. mann, “die entstehung von nebensatzeinleitenden konjunktionen im englischen,” archiv für das studium der neueren sprachen und literaturen, 80 (1942), 86-93; a. rynell, parataxis and 6 tend not only about the precise function of oe and eme punctuation marks, but also whether the absence of syntactical punctuation was the cause or the effect of the priority of a coordinate sentence structure, or of the paratactic construction idiomatically used to indicate subordination or semi-subordination. that paratactic uni-or-multivariate structures preceded hypotactic construction in the development of a language seems to be far beyond any type of doubt. it is a widely held opinion that statements of fact are much easier to express than their qualifications, though it seems fairly clear that at the time of the oe period most of the ie languages had developed, along with their own paratactic compositions,1 a highly complex system of subordination construction. this means that either oe was a very rudimentary language or, on the contrary, as many scholars suggest, hypotactic construction was not the natural grammatical system of this germanic language. to our understanding, however, many paratactic units of oe, properly punctuated, would be considered in a subordinate or interordinate relationship.2 s. o. anhypotaxis as a criterion of syntax and style, especially in old english poetry (lund: 1952); b. mitchell, old english syntax (oxford: clarendon press, 1985), i, pp. 693-763 and 769-772. 1.asyndetic co-ordinate clauses were also common in latin, though forthe mostpart restricted to certain verbs of opinion such as credo, opinor, puto, fateor, quaeso, obsecro, oro, etc. cf. attica mea, obsecro te, quid agit? (att. 13, 13, 3); proclivius currit oratio, venit ad extremum, haeret in salebra (fin . 5. 84); abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit (cat. 2, 1). sometimes these paratactic constructions were residual idioms or reminiscences of official style as in volens propitius, velis nolis, serius ocius, velitis jubeatis, quirites, ut… nonetheless, syndetic paratactic units are very often used to express a subordinate relationship both in prose and poetry after augustus’ time. this occurs particularly with verbs of commanding used in the imperative. dic quibus in terris, et eris mihi magnus apollo (eccl. 3, 104); impinge lapidem, et dignum accipies praemium (phaedr., 3, 5, 7). cf. also in spanish, hazme (“si me haces”) eso y te garantizo que no lo volverás a ver. 2.parataxis is used in two different senses: the multiple sentences-clauses occurrence lacking the formal subordination of one to the other (asyndet ic or syndetic parataxis), 7 drew,1 states that subordination in oe, though “clumsy,” was productive, particularly in prose. in like manner, b. mitchell says that the term co-ordinating is misleading because some oe conjunctions such as ond and ac “are frequently followed by the element order s…v, which is basically subordinate.”2 i am much of the opinion that there is no one-to-one correlation between the absence of instruction of vernacular grammatical units and the stagnancy of “natural” english syntax in paratactic constructions.3 nor do i believe that the difficulty of recognizing indigenous syntax must lead us to suppose that the language of the oe texts was an artificial or an elaborate code framed by foreign sources and far removed from colloquial speech. so i think it extremely unlikely that to “some extent it could be said that any syntactic construction in written (medieval) english was acceptable provided it had a model in some other language.”4 the crucial matter we face is how to punctuate supposedly paratactic sequences of oe according to syntactical principles. in some passages editors separate the paratactic element from the principal verb by a full stop making two sentences; on the other hand, by using a comma, others either integrate the “paratactic” components in a complex sentence, that is, in a hypotactic relationship, or form a coordinate sequence with the clauses involved. for the latter, the presence or absence of linkers probably has no special significance. beowulf is certainly considered the prototype of the oe paratactic conand an idiomatically co-ordinately juxtaposed sequence which encloses a subordinate relationship, as in “knock and it shall be opened,” instead of “if you….” cf. s. o. andrew, op. cit., p. 87. 1.ibidem , pp. 90 ff. 2.op. cit., i. p. 694. 3.n. f. blake, op. cit., p. 67. 4.idem, p. 138. 8 struction. however, i find that such a structural type is not systemically registered, particularly if we reconsider some of the punctuation patterns that appear in modern editions. in this paper i intend to encroach on two main areas of concern: on the one hand, to assemble evidence of how some basic rhetorical and rhythmical units of beowulf were converted into paratactic cumulative constructions by means of misleading punctuation and, on the other hand, to collate some of the translations provided for such paratactic compositions. i will concentrate on certain sequences in beowulf usually recognized in modern editions as self-contained clauses or parts of a compound (multiple) sentence. in particular, i will confine my attention to binary sequences introduced by the so-called adversative noµ pyµ æµr, the strong negative nealles and also to binary clauses introduced by wolde1 (“wished to,” “intended to”), -normally punctuated as complete sentences-, in which the subjects of the verbs of the sequential “parataxis” are different and both expressed. let us consider my first example (ex1)2 according to the punctuation given in one of the earliest editions of beowulf this century to 1.this usage is now obsolete or archaic, though sometimes it appears in clauses dependent on syntactical units with a verb in the preterite (cf. f. th. visser, an historical syntax of the old english language (leiden: e. j. brill, 1969), part iii, 1st. half, pp. 1705-7. 2.-j. zupitza’s transliteration of the ms is as follows: (a) sume / worde het pæt ic his ærest íe est gesægde / cwæí pæt hyt hæfde hiorogar cyning / leod scyldunga lange hwile. (b) no / íy / ær suna sinum syllan wolde hwatum heoro-wearde peah he / him hold wære. (ll. 2158-61), beowulf (reproduced in facsimile from the unique manuscript british museum ms cotton vitellius a xv), eets, 245, 1959). original punctuation differentiated limited pauses depending on rhetorical and rhythmical units. the longest was the period ( . ) and the shortest was the small slash ( ï ); and in between, the transposed semicolon ( .’ ) and the longer slash ( | ). 9 base itself on syntactical tenets:1 (for practical reasons i shall divide the passage into two units a and b). (a) sume worde heµt, pæt ic his æµrest íeµ eµst gesægde, cwæí pæt hyt hæfde hiorogaµr cyning, leµod scyldunga, lange hwèµle; (sedgefield’s edition, ll. 2156-59) later editions provide other alternatives to sedgefield’s punctuation. a. j. wyatt2 and f. klaeber3 write a semicolon after gesægde, whereas c. l. wrenn4 and fr. p. magoun5 have a colon and m. swanton6 uses a full stop. editing and punctuation are crucial matters. for instance, the prevailing paratactic sentence-structure of unit a of ex1, if rightly punctuated, may be transformed into a periodic one. in this way, the editors who use a comma or a semicolon after gesægde integrate unit a into a complex sentence. it would clearly appear capricious to link the components of this paratactic sequence in a hypotactic relationship just by means of punctuation. however, the pattern of this type of punctuation is substantiated by the word cwæí, which usually introduces an adverbial clause of reason or purpose7. 1.w. j. sedgefield, beowulf (manchester: univ. press, 1913) 2.beowulf (cambridge: univ. press, 1933, 1st. ed. 1914). 3.beowulf and the fight of finnsburg (massachussetts: heath & co., 3rd. ed. 1950, 1st. ed. 1922) 4.beowulf (london: harrap, 1973, revised ed. by w. f. bolton, 1st. ed. 1953). 5.beowulf and judith (massachussetts: harvard univ. press, revised ed. by j. b. bessinger, 1st. ed. 1959) 6.beowulf. ed. and trans. (manchester: univ. press, 1978). 7.s. o. andrew, syntax and style in old english (cambridge: univ. press, 1940), pp. 87-88. he also uses a semicolon after gesægde. 10 notwithstanding, the editors who use a colon or a full stop after gesægde divide the paratactic sequence into two sentences. so in sedgefield’s punctuation, we find an apparently univariate paratactic construction involving a subordinate relationship, whereas in swanton’s, for example, there are two independent sentences. in view of the various uncertainties surrounding this passage translators also show signs of hesitation. the problem seems to be one of basic definition of punctuation marks. though there are few differences in meaning, the syntactical variations are very important for our purposes, because the translator is usually taking for granted the punctuation provided by the editors. i am aware of the constraints on any type of translation. it seems reasonable to assume that the act of translating goes far beyond syntactical accuracy to the source language, therefore i do not intend to judge such a task as good or bad on that basis, but to consider it as appropriate or inadequate from syntactical principles. indeed, we note at least three different approaches from the syntactical point of view with regards to ex1. g. n. garmonsway and j. simpson1 thought of a clear division of the paratactic sequence: (hrothgar, the far-sighted ruler, gave me this garb of battle,) and in one speech he bade me first tell you whose legacy this is. he said that king heorogar, prince of the scyldings, had owned it a long while; swanton2 also divides the passage into two sentences with a full stop: 1.beowulf (london: dent & sons, 1968). 2.op. cit. 11 he commanded me in one speech that i should first tell you about his gracious gift. he said that king heorogar, the prince of the scyldings, had it for a long while; … in like manner, the translations of j. earle 1, j. r. clark hall2 and b. g. stanley3 do the same with a colon. andrew, by commenting this passage, opts for a decidedly hypotactic association of the ele ments of the sequence expressed in terms of reason or purpose and translates: bade me mention the gift of armour first because (emphasis mine) king herogar… once possessed it.4 whereas a. strong5 prefers a co-ordinately multiple sentence. let us consider his translation: and (emphasis mine) bade me bring thee the tale of its first bequeathing, and (emphasis mine) he said that the scylding king he orogar, long while owned it, … in my view, strong’s translation is the most appropriate one to incorporate the meaning of these cumulative reported clauses. incidentally, it should be stated that such a translation demands a correlative punctuation based on the same syntactical tenets. that is the reason why i consider the use of full stop after gesægde in ex1 to be a 1.the deeds of beowulf (oxford: clarendon press, 1892). 2.beowulf. a metrical translation (cambridge: univ. press, 1914). 3.a readable beowulf (carbondale: univ. press, 1982). 4.op. cit., pp. 87-88. he says that a paratactic sentence, when introduced by wolde, wende or cwæí is usually equivalent to an adverbial clause of reason or purpose. he also quotes the example under discussion. 5.beowulf (london: constable & co., 1925). 12 wrong punctuation. by using a comma or a semicolon we suspend the import of what has been said in order to integrate the clauses in the sequence in either a joining or a binding relationship. thus if we name the individual clauses of unit a of ex1 as a, b, c and d, and symbolize their hypotactic association with an arrow pointing towards the bound member and the paratactic relationship with a plus, and the binary relation with an arrow pointing in both directions <---> the structure of: a sume worde heµt || b pæt ic his æµrest íeµ eµst gesægde,|||| c cwæí || d pæt hyt hæfde hiorogaµr cyning, leµod scyldunga, lange hwèµle; would be as follows: (a -> b) + (c -> d) that is, b is bound to a, and d is bound to c, and both of these are joined to the complex unit a and b. the tree1 diagram would be as follows: 1.these are the meaning of the symbols used in this paper in tree diagrams: cs = complex sentence s = subject; ms = multiple/compound sentence p = predicator; a’ = element of a binary relation v = verb; a = main element m = mofifier; ß = subordinate element h = headword; a = adjunct q = qualifier; c = complement a’= element of complex group in an appositional paratactic univariate struc ture. in our syntactical description we differentiate three major groups of bound clauses: a) adding clauses which supply extra or incidental information; b) reported or verbalization clauses and c) contingent clauses which modify or limit the proposition of the dominant clause. cf. david j. young, the structure of english clauses (london: hutchinson, 1980), pp. 238250. it is worth noting that those clauses traditionally dubbed as conditional, causal, concessive and also adversative clauses are included here in interordination. 13 (a, b, c, d) <=== ’ <--interordinate ---> ’ ==> (e, f) c s   a p s c c p p c p s a ’ ’ m h v h m m h h v v h v m h h q m h with regards to unit b of ex1 there is no great difficulty in setting the grammatical relationship of the elements of the sequence. so, the clauses of unit a being (a, b, c, d) and the clauses of unit b (e, f): (b) |||| e noµ íyµ æµr suna sèµnum syllan wolde, hwatum heorowearde, || f peµah he him hold wæµre, breµostgewæµdu. (sedgefield’s edition, ll. 2160-2) the structure of unit b would be of this type (e --> f), and by and large editors coincide by punctuating similarly to sedgefield. but the problem arises when they try to figure the relationship of both units (a and b). sedgefield’s edition runs as follows: (a) … … .., lange hwèµle; (b) noµ íyµ æµr suna sinum … … wyatt, klaeber, wrenn and swanton also use a semicolon after hwèµle, whereas magoun, for example, prefers a full stop. the main 14 point then is how to organize both units syntactically and how to elucidate the relationship which occurs between them. andrew1 states that a sentence introduced by the adversative noµ íyµ æµr “should not be taken as a principle sentence,” but as a clause co-ordinate to a dependent sentence. magoun by pointing a full stop after hwèµle definitely creates two complete clauses. translators also differ on the syntactical meaning of ex1. swanton, for example, separates both units with a semicolon and leads the second half of the passage with “nevertheless.” … ; nevertheless (emphasis mine) he would not give it, the breastarmour, to his son, bold heoroweard, faithful to him though he was. like swanton, earle, garmonsway and simpson, and stanley also use a semicolon to separate both sequences, initiating the second unit with “nathless,” “yet even so,” “yet” respectively. clark hall keeps the same syntactical principle but uses a colon between the two units and begins the second unit with “yet,” whereas strong, more coherently, just uses a comma. a different view is held by andrew (1948: 53 ff) who integrates the whole passage in a “syndetic” co-ordinate clause and translates: … saying that h. long possessed it [and] yet would not give it to his son. he includes unit b of ex1 among the “clauses co-ordinate to dependent sentences.”2 in my opinion it seems to be more plausible to 1.op. cit., p. 53. 2.postscript on beowulf (cambridge: univ. press, 1948), p. 54. 15 consider the whole passage as a period in which both units a and b are in a mutual binding relationship. then i consider the supposed paratactic composition of ex1 as a binary structure of this type: a <-----> b i therefore propose replacing the semicolon or full stop after hwèµle with a comma, since any greater pause would separate the paratactic sequence of unit a from the dependent sentence of unit b creating two self-contained sentences. thus the structure of ex1 might be as follows: ((a -> b) + (c -> d)) <---------> (e -> f) in a linear diagram: a sume heµt šæt gesægde cwæí šæt hwiµle noµ heor šeµah breµos b c d e f free dominant bound reported free dom. bound reported dominant bound contingentjoined ----------------- joined ----> -----------> ---------> dependent <-----------------------------> dependent let us consider another example 1. (ex2) wrenn’s punctuation of the passage was as follows (for the sake of clarity i divide ex2 into two units): 1.grap pa/to-geanes guí-rinc ge -feng atolan / clom-mum no py ær in/ge -cod halan / lice hring utan ymb-bearh pæt (zupitza’s transliteration of the ms. ll. 1501-1503). 16 (a) graµp paµ toµgeµanes; guµírinc gefeµng atolan clommum; (b) noµ pyµ æµr in gescoµd haµlan lèµce; hring uµtan ymbbearh, ? æt… (ll. 1501-3) there are no radical divergencies in the punctuation of these lines: klaeber, swanton, magoun and wyatt coincide, though they have a comma after toµgeµanes. but all of them have thought of a paratactic construction of the two sequential elements of unit a. so that unit a appears coordinate to unit b. the translations are quite different. garmonsway and simpson maintain the asyndetic paratactic construction of the first two clauses of unit a and link these with unit b at the same level. this is their translation: she grasped him, she clutched the warrior in a terrible lock; yet for all that she did no harm to his unwounded body, for there was ring-mail wrapped around it to protect it, … swanton arrives at a similar translation, but earle prefers to divide the sequence of unit a with a semicolon. it made a grab then towards him; it caught the brave man with grisly talons; nevertheless … strong links the two paratactic statements of the first line with the linker and: and she caught at the hero and (my italics) clutched him in the grip of her fell embrace; but his flesh … again i consider strong’s translation as the most appropriate from a syntactical point of view, except for the semicolon after embrace. in 17 my opinion this supposed paratactic construction must be considered again as a bipolarized period (a <-----> b) and therefore i propose to replace the semicolon, wherever it appears in ex2, with a comma:1 thus the structure of a graµp paµ toµgeµanes, ||b guµírinc gefeµng atolan clommun; ||c noµ py æµr in gescoµd haµlan lèµce; ||d hring uµtan ymbbearh, would be: (a + b ) <----------> (c -> d ) in a linear diagram: graµp toµgeµanes guµírinc clommum noµ liµce hring ymbbearh a b c d free joiner ----------- free joiner domin ---------> bound ant dependent <----------------------------> dependent contingent we may also consider other sequences of beowulf introduced by noµ íyµ æµr which should not be taken as self-contained clauses. let us view the punctuation suggested by klaeber in the following passages (for practical reasons i differentiate two sequences, a and b, in every ex.): ex3. (a) heµ on moµde wearí 1.cf. andrew, op. cit., pp. 70-71. 18 forht on ferhpe; (b) noµ pyµ æµr fram meahte. (ll. 753-4) ex4. (a) him grendel wearí, mæµrum magupegne toµ muµíbonan, leµofes mannes lèµc eall forswealg. (b) noµ pyµ æµr uµt íaµ geµn èµdelhende bona bloµdigtoí, bealewa gemyndig, of íaµm goldsele gongan wolde; (ll. 2078-2083) ex5. (a) bearne ne truwode, pæt heµ wií ælfylcum eµpelstoµlas healdan cuµíe, íaµ wæs hygelaµc deµad. (b) noµ pyµ æµr feµasceafte findan meahton æt íaµm æíelinge æµnige íinga, pæt heµ heardreµde hlaµford wæµre, oííe pone cynedoµm cèµosan wolde; (2370-76) ex6. (a) white ne meahte on íaµm feorhbonan fæµghíe gebeµtan; (b) noµ íyµ æµr heµ pone heaíorinc hatian ne meahte laµíum dæµdum, peµah him leµof ne wæs. (ll. 2464-67) klaeber uses a semicolon in ex3 and ex6 before the joiner (binder, in my opinion) noµ pyµ æµr, whereas in ex4 and ex5 he has a full stop. the reasons seem to be fairly clear. the clauses introduced by noµ pyµ æµr in ex3 and ex6 had a subjectless verb. the unexpressed subject is dragged up from the previous non-dependent clause. bipolarization seems to be more uncertain for klaeber in ex4 and ex5 as he punctuated the two main sequences of the passages with a full stop creating two independent sentences. such punctuation 19 may be determined by the fact that the subjects of the verbs in both sequences are different and are both expressed. my suggestion is to punctuate with a comma all the clauses introduced by noµ pyµ æµr in beowulf and take them as non-selfcontained clauses. i suggest this for three main reasons. firstly, noµ pyµ æµr match two, and no more than two elements at the highest level. secondly, both elements (unlike cumulative clauses) are not interchangeable because they are mutually interdependent and interordinate (<-->). thirdly, word order confirms that noµ pyµ æµr clauses are not complete or self-contained clauses. thus, the order s … v is basically a subordinate order (cf. ex5 and ex6) and the v is placed at the very end of the period, except in ex2, in which alliteration demands the splitting of the preposition in and its governing adjunct haµlan lèµce.1 nealles clauses,2 on the other hand, are also usually punctuated in beowulf as self-contained clauses. in my opinion it would be more cohesive to remove by a comma many of the full stops and semicolons used before the introduction of a nealles clause. let us run through just one example:3 (ex7.) sedgefield’s edition reads as follows: 1.it is worth noting the parallelism in the usage of predicators: ex1 … syllan wolde. ex2 … in gescoµd / haµlan lèµce. ex3 … (gongan) meahte. ex4 … gongan wolde. ex5 … findan meahton. ex6 … hatian ne meahte. 2.it is certainly necessary to differentiate the stressed negative nales (nealles, nallas, nalas) used to negate a word or a nominal group as in nealles swæµslèµce (beowulf, 3089), from a headword used to negate a sentence as in the examples proposed in this paper. 3.pæt se byrn/ wiga bugan sceolde feoll on feían nalles / frætwe geaf ealdor dugo íe us wæs a syíían / mere-wio-ingas/milts ungyfeíe. (zupitza’s transliteration of the ms; ll. 2917-20) 20 ? æt se byrnwiga buµgan sceolde, feµoll on feµían; nalles frætwe geaf ealdor dugoíe; (ll. 2918-20) klaeber, wrenn, magoun and wyatt coincide with sedgefield using also a semicolon after feµían. swanton replaces the semicolon with a comma, whereas andrew1 suggests a colon. two factors may account for the hesitation in punctuating the pause before a nealles clause: firstly, to clarify the dependent/non-dependent character of a nealles clause, and secondly, if dependent, to reveal the type of relationship it kept with the main clause. translations also show a great deal of hazardous interpretations by taking for granted the punctuation provided by editors and therefore keeping the same syntactical digressive tenets. earle seems to detect an asyndetic coordination rather than a static paratactic construction and translates as follows: (the previous content to pæt clause is “they struck him with overwhelming force”) … that the mailed warrior was compelled to bow his head; he fell among the fighting men [and] (:) far was he from giving spoils as chieftain to his veterans (square brackets and brakets are mine) swanton seems to be aware of similar syntactical organization: … that the mailed fighter had to bow in death; the chieftain fell in the troop, [and] in no way gave adornments to tried warriors strong creates two independent sentences: 1.op. cit., p. 55) 21 … that in death must the hero bow him, and he fell ’mid his troop in the fight. no booty from out that battle the chieftain gave his clan! garmonsway and simpson do the same: … (they forced) the mail-clad warrior to bow down in death, and fall in the midst of his troops. no rich adornments did our soverign give to the flower of his host. and stanley has a different syntactical interpretation and integrate both paratactic sequences into a complex sentence of the following type: … (hetware) caused the mailed warrior to bow low and fall among foot-troops rather than give treasures as lord to his retainers i agree with such a view, since i think that the structure of a pæt se byrnwiga buµgan || b sceolde, ||c feµoll on feµían; || d nalles frætwe geaf ealdor dugoíe. should be: (a <-b --> c ) <--------> d in a linear diagram: 22 šæt buµgan sceolde feµoll feµían nalle dogoíe a b c d joiner joiner bound <-------dominant -----> bound dependent <---------------------------------------> dependent in view of the lack of consensus between such translations it is unwise to draw a definitive conclusion. there are signs that editors and translators seem to disagree about the syntactical function of nealles used as a head-word to negate a clause or a sentence. word order -nealles s … v, or nealles…v, tends to confirm a basic subordinate construction. so it seems to me quite inadequate to consider it as a simple strong negative adverb, and therefore traslations such as “by no means,” “not at all” and the like do not serve to convey the real dependent relationship in which it usually appears. thus i propose to organize ex7 as a complex sentence that bipolarizes two alternatives (placed on the same level at the highest rank) which are opposed in terms of polarity: positive <-> negative ps (predicators). consequently a nealles clause may appear in beowulf as a mutually interdependent or interordinate sequential statement in opposition to its partner, functioning as the negative alternative. hence, keeping in mind stanley’s translation of ex7, i am tempted to propose that a clause introduced by nealles binds the preceding clause by a “notial” binder such as “rather than” or the like. it may also be possible to explain this syntactical relationship as a contingency of preference that modifies or 23 limits the proposition of the dominant clause which has already been presupposed. let us consider now certain “asyndetic paratactic” constructions introduced with wolde. i only include here those clauses in which wolde heads the clause in modern editions and the subjects of the verbs of the sequential parataxis are different and both expressed.1 i intend to prove that some of these “paratactic” sequential statements of beowulf are wrongly punctuated because they are not complete self-clauses, though vs order (a functional rather than a syntactical order) may suggest the common order of an independent clause. let us consider these examples:2 ex8. (a) duguí eal aµraµs; (b) wolde blondenfeax beddes neµosan, gamela scylding. (klaeber’s edition, ll. 1790-3) in my opinion, the wolde-clause is interordinate with duguî eal aµraµs, though the subjects of the verbs of both units (a and b) are different and are both expressed. to point a semicolon after aµraµs would be very misleading; but being aware of word order ambiguity, i would remove that semicolon or just write a comma. i coincide with garmonsway and simpson’s translation of this sequential pseudo1.in some of the wolde-clauses of beowulf the subject is unexpressed, but dragged up from the previous sequence of the parataxis. cf. ll. 755-6; 794-7; 1292-3; 1337-42; 1545-7; 2293-5. andrew (syntax and style… op. cit., pp. 72-86) refers to this type of composition as co-ordinate clauses “idiomatically used to indicate subordination to the sentence before.” mitchell (op. cit., p. 697) considers this asyndetic parataxis as a kind of “semi-subordination.” 2.duguí eal aras wolde blonden-feax bed/ des neosan gamela scylding … (zupitza’s translit eration of the ms, ll. 1791-3). cf. also wolde-clauses in ll. 662-5; 1008-12; 18026; 2302-6. 24 paratactic statement in the sense that they also seem to think of a syntactical relationship of the following type: a <------> b instead of a # b (# = asyndetic parataxis) their translation reads as follows: the tried warriors all arose, for the aged grey-haired scylding wished to go to his bed. so translations such as swanton’s, who points the oe text in his parallel edition in the same way as klaeber, seem to me excessively static and lifeless: the band of companions all arose; the grey-haired man, the old scylding, wished to seek out his bed. clark hall also keeps a syntactic segmentation: the whole band rose, the grey-haired patriarch-scylding would fain go to his bed. ex7, then, provides a good example, on the one hand, of the hesitation in punctuating wolde clauses and, on the other hand, of the inconsistency of handling them as independent sentences. again i put forward the theory that the syntactical model in which wolde clauses when the subjects are different and both expressedmust be considered as interordinate clauses. so in my opinion the structure of a duguí eal aµraµs; || b wolde blondenfeax || c beddes neµosan, 25 gamela scylding. is a: <--------> (b --> c) a similar example might be the following one:1 (ex9) ne meahte heµ on eorpan, íeµah heµ uµíe weµl, on íaµm frumgaµre feorh gehealdan, neµ íæs wealdendes wiht oncirran; wolde doµm godes dæµdum ræµdan gumena gehwylcum, swaµ heµ nuµ geµn deµí. (klaber’s edition, ll. 2855-2859) probably editors are alike in recognizing the fuzziness of their punctuation. thus swanton uses a full stop after oncirran, others a semicolon or comma, though there is a tendency to create a new selfcontained sentence after oncirran. i certainly believe that the woldeclause is interordinate to the sequence before, and therefore a binary structure. in a causal clause the cause and its effect are mutually needed. hence it seems to me necessary to remove the full stop or semicolon and not to use any greater pause than a comma. again i agree with garmonsway and simpson’s translation: he could not retain the chieftain’s life in this world, dearly though he wished to do so, nor could he turn aside what came from god the ruler, for the decree of god ruled every man’s actions, as it does even now. 1.ne/meahte he on eorían / íeah he uíe wel on/íam frum -gare feorh ge -healdan / ne/íæs wealdendes wiht oncirran wolde dôm / godes dædum rædan gumena gehwylcum swa / he nu gen deí (zupitza’s transliteration of the ms, ll. 2855-60). 26 clark hall keeps a similar version, though he divides the sequential period with a full stop: he could not keep on earth the chieftain’s spirit, much though he wished it, nor alter anything ordained by the almighty. for men of all degrees god’s judgment ruled their deeds, just as it still does now. swanton seems to be consistent with his own punctuation of the passage: dearly though he would wish, he could not keep life on earth in the chieftain, nor turn aside anything ordained by the ruler. the judgement of god would rule the actions of every man, as he still does. the discrepancy between garmonsway and simpson’s translation and the one by swanton, for example, illustrates the uncertainties surrounding the syntactical model in which a wolde clause must be organized. i definitely consider the translation by garmonsway and simpson much more appropriate from a syntactical point of view because in my view the structure of ex9 must be measured in terms of polarity and periodical interordination. so the structure of a ne meahte heµ on eorían, || c íeµah heµ uµíe weµl, on íaµm frumgaµre || b feorh gehealdan, || d neµ íæs wealdendes || e wiht oncirran; || f wolde doµm godes dæµdum ræµdan gumena gehwylcum, || g swaµ heµ nuµ geµn deµí. should be: 27 ((a --> b --> c) + (d --> e)) <--------> (f --> g) a fair amount of space has already been given to the discussion of binary structures, so i will not insist on details of basic definition. at this point we can arrive at the conclusion that in scrutinizing the succession of thoughts of ex1-9 it seems fairly clear that all the passages are sequentially bound in bipartite structures, and that ordering rela tionships are more functional -the known thought precedes the unknown one -than syntactic. it is in the light of this that we can draw the conclusion that beowulfian composition is not first and foremost paratactic but periodic. and the supposed tactical or cumulative parataxis is essentially a binary/bipolarized construction: a) in terms of related and opposed contingency, as in the case of noµ pyµ æµr clauses; b) in terms of alternative opposition (positive <-> negative predicators, in the case of clauses introduced by nealles, and c) in terms of interdependence -wolde clauses in which the subjects are different and both expressed. we are left to fall back on the role of modern punctuation in oe. unfortunately scholars disagree as to the right function of medieval punctuation, and modern editors hesitate at some passages when they point on syntactical tenets. the general scarcity of joiners and binders in the sentences and word order constrictions may explain the abundance of semicolons in punctuation producing the banal effect of monotonous parataxis. much more embarrassing turns out to be the reproduction of paratactic compositions in translations, particularly in bound contingent and reported clauses. i cannot arrive at a definitive conclusion, but the problem is one of basic definition: what is the role of a semicolon in modern writing? it is a greater pause than a comma and lesser than a full stop, but to what extent does it divide the known information from the unknown one which follows? the subject-matter, then, implies the taking of a decision on the right grammatical meaning 28 of punctuation marks. if we consider that a full stop is a “reaction point” or a device to advise the reader to take stock of what has been said; and a semicolon or a comma a device to delay this process until one gets to the full stop, then a syntactical paratactic or periodic construction, or in popular usage, a sentence,1 would necessarily be delimited by a full stop. the term “sentence” is necessarily associated with a written text and therefore it depends largely on punctuation. so we may transform a sentence by means of punctuation into a tactical unit of discourse,2 -a unit independent of any grammatical structure-, as opposed to a syntactical one. if i say, “i haven’t seen him. for the last year,” grammatically i have one clause, but two tactical units of discourse. so many “supposed” paratactic sequences of beowulf would be transformed into “sentences” (=tactical units of discourse) by the abuse of semicolons and full stops. bibliography (not used in my references) cable, th. m., “rules for syntax and metrics in beowulf,” journal of english and german philology, 69 (1970) coombs, v., “beowulf negative indefinites,” orbis , 24 (1975) green, donald c., “formulas and syntax in oe poetry: a computer study,” computers and humanities, 6 (1971) fakundiny, l., “the art of oe verse composition,” res, 21 (1970) 1.particularly, when the term “sentence” is considered as a unit of higher rank than the clause. 2.according to j. mch. sinclair and r. m. coulthard (towards an analysis of discourse: the english used by teachers and pupils, london: oxford univ. press, 1975) there are two kinds of factors in addition to the linguistic form of what is uttered. situational factors and tactical factors (these are the functional and conventional stages or sequences of moves that characterize lin guistic interactions and which vary from one kind of discourse to another). quoted from david j. young, op. cit., p. 7. 29 lewis, r., “oe poetry: alliteration and structural interlace, language and style, 6 (1973). marg, ph., “structure du système des prépositions spatiales dans le beowulf,” etudes germaniques, 28 (1973). mitchell, b., “adjective clauses in oe poetry,” anglia (1963) mitchell, b., “some problems of mood and tense in oe,” neophilologus (1965) mitchell, b., “old english ac as an interrogative particle,” neuphilologische mitteilungen, 2/lxxviii (1972). mitchell, b., “two syntactical notes in beowulf,” neophilologus, 3/52 (1968). mitchell, b., “five notes on oe syntax,” neuphilologische mitteilungen, 1/lxx (1969) mitchell, b., “the status of “hwonne” in oe,” neophilologus (1965). mitchell, b., “linguistic facts and the interpretation of oe poetry,” anglo-saxon england, 4 (1975) mitchell, b., “no house is building in oe,” english studies, 5/57 (1976). mitchell, b., “some problems involving oe periphrasis with beon/wesan and the present part iciple,” neuphilologische mitteilungen, 4/lxxvii (1976) mitchell, b., “four syntactic notes,” neuphilologische mitteilungen, 1/lxxx (1979) mitchell, b., “pronouns in oe poetry,” review of english studies, 58/xv (1964) mitchell, b., “oe man, one: two notes,” amsterdam studies in the theory of history of linguistic science, iv (1982). mitchell, b., “oe op íæt adverb,” notes and queries , (1978) mitchell, b., “the expression of extent and degree in oe,” neuphilologische mitteilungen, 1/lxxxvii (1976) morgan c., the absolute participle in anglo-saxon (baltimore: press of isaac friedenwald, 1889). nikel, grand, “problems of beowulfresearch with special reference to editorial questions,” neuphilologische mitteilungen, 73 (1972) reinhard, m., on the semantic relevance of the alliterative collocations in beowulf (bern: francke, 1976) quirk, r., “poetic language in oe metre” in essays on the english language medieval and modern (terre haute: indiana univ. press, 1968). stanley, g. b., “grammar and meaning in poetry ,” pmla, 82 (1967). stanley, g. b., “grendel’s approach to heorot: syntax and poetry,” in r. p. creed (ed.), old english poetry (providence r. i. brown univ press, 1967). 30 stanley, g. b., the interpretation of old english poems (london: routledge & kegan paul, 1972) visser, f. f., “beowulf,” english studies, 35 (1954). luis iglesias-rábade university of santiago de compostela * * * microsoft word 2019article_2_condorelli marco condorelli, selim24 (2019): 29–52. issn 1132-631x / doi https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.24.2019.29-52 irregularity of the <ie> spellings in west saxon english: remarks on variation in third-person pronouns marco condorelli university of central lancashire orthographic consistency was rarely maintained in most old english varieties, because the language system was relatively new and spelling norms took time to develop. while full standardisation is never expected in old english, the understanding of factors underlying patterns of regularity and irregularity are paramount for a full grasp of issues pertaining to authorship, textuality and other linguistic and non-linguistic levels of analysis. these notes explore spelling irregularity in material from west saxon dialects, bringing comparative examples of variation in spelling between early west saxon (ews) <ie> and late west saxon (lws) <y>. west saxon generally stands up for its emphasis on some degree of orthographic standardisation and yet appears to display interesting patterns of variation. the focus of my notes will be on particular instances of spelling inconsistencies, with special attention to a specific category of words where <ie> appears to vary more frequently, namely third-person pronouns. for my exploratory analysis, various witnesses of the anglo-saxon chronicle (i.e. examples of ews and lws texts) were compared. the data was collected from different sections of an orthography-friendly edition of four different manuscripts, msa (bately 1986), msb (taylor 1983), msc (o’brien o’keefe 2001) and msd (cubbin 1996), and compared with digital copies of the original manuscripts. the latter part of these notes points to some of the factors which could explain the features detected, with an exhortation for future researchers to build on some of the ideas proposed and explore new territory. keywords: old english; spelling; pronouns; variation; early west saxon; late west saxon 30 marco condorelli 1. preliminaries: phonological insights the late west saxon dialect began to be used in writing from the second half of the tenth century and became the first ‘standardised’ written english (gneuss 1986: 46). the use of a regularised form of old english entailed the adoption of different conventions, which evolved over time and affected different linguistic levels, not least spelling. these notes concern irregularity in west saxon orthography and provide a preliminary investigation into variation in spelling between the typical ews <ie> and lws <y>. the ews and lws dialects are most likely not lineally descendents and the relationship between the two dialects is doubtlessly complex (cf. hoad 2014), which means that the term ‘standardisation’ should be used with caution and more preferably replaced with words like ‘regularisation’ and ‘conventionalisation’ with particular reference to lws. regardless of these caveats, ews and lws are expected to have some relationship with each other, albeit looser than previously assumed. in light of these remarks, my notes explore a diachronic relationship between ews and lws drawing on different versions of the same texts available in the anglo-saxon chronicle (dumville & keynes 1983–2001), which allow for a preliminary, more systematic comparison of <ie>-spelling patterns across different hands and across several years in the two varieties. the general agreement regarding the regularisation of <ie> in west saxon is that ews <ie> generally corresponds to lws <y>, but it turns into <i> before palatals in lws (campbell 1959: §§302, hogg 1992: §5.167). in ews <ie> (and, sometimes, <i>) is more frequent, and in lws <y> (and, occasionally, <i>) is usually used. however, the matter is not so straightforward: each graph has particular phonetic realisations in ews and lws, which are sometimes overlapping and inconsistent. the supposed phonetic signification of each graph as interpreted in traditional grammars is illustrated in figures 1–5, with hope that the graphic framework will help the reader to make more sense of the complexities of the phonological relationships in question. irregularity of <ie> spellings in lws 31 it is doubtful whether ews <ie> (from whatever source, either diphthongal (cf. lass 1994: 68–69, kim 1984: 2829) or monophthongal (hogg 1992: §5.164)) merged with the sound normally represented by <i>, namely /i(:)/, or whether it represented a different phoneme. some <ie> spellings seem to appear for /i(:)/, such as in gietsian, hiene and hiera (campbell 1959: §§300, 703; hogg 1992: §§5.167, 5.172). this is the normal phonetic realisation of <i> in ews, for example in hiran (hogg 1992: §5.171). ews: figure 1. ews <ie> <ie> /i(:)/ /ï(:)/ figure 2. ews <i> <i> /i(:)/ /ɪ(:)/ hogg (1992: §5.171) also suggests this phonetic realisation, with no specifications regarding when it occurs. perhaps a laxed (i.e. centralised and lowered) form of /i/ which occurs sporadically in ews (hogg 1992: §5.175, though hogg expresses uncertainty about this potential phonological value). 32 marco condorelli this indicates rounding and it is less frequent in ews. the <y> spelling usually occurs, in ews, between a labial sound and /r/, for instance wiernan > wyrnan (campbell 1959: §315, hogg 1992: §5.166). according to hogg (1992: §§170–175), <y> can also indicate laxness, not just rounding. however, laxness is sporadic in ews. it is not clear in which circumstances /y(:)/ and /ɪ(:)/ alternate. in general, however, a distinction between /y(:)/ and /y(:)/ seems less likely than the other values. this usually occurs only with a preceding /w/ or /r/ (e.g. wille and riht) and in weakly-stressed forms, such as syððan (hogg 1992: §5.170). for campbell (1959: §318), lws <y> indicates rounding of /i(:)/, often in the neighbourhood of labials and before /r/ (e.g. clypian). in lws, there is a greater tendency to laxness, especially in low stress environments, but, occasionally, even under primary stress (gradon 1962: 75, hogg 1992: §§170–173). according to hogg (1992: §5.170), this occurs only occasionally. figure 3. ews <y> <y> /y(:)/ /y(:)/ /ɪ(:)/ /i(:)/ lws: according to hogg (1992: §5.163), the phonological significations of <ie> in lws probably merged with those of <y>: figure 4. lws <ie, y> <ie> = <y> /y(:)/ /y(:)/ /ɪ(:)/ /i:/ irregularity of <ie> spellings in lws 33 this generally occurs before palatal consonants such as /x/ (hence, mieht > miht, where <h> = /x/) (campbell 1959: §316, hogg 1992: §5.163). figure 5. lws <i> <i> /i(:)/ /ɪ(:)/ the information provided in old english grammars is by no means the last word on the topic, as there appears to be a longstanding, parallel debate on the spellings in research-oriented publications, almost exclusively focussed on phonological explanations. lewenz (1908) started off the dialogue suggesting that ews <ie> and lws <y> usually occur in the vicinity of labials (e.g. hielpeð), sonorous dentals (e.g. byrð) and in weakly-stressed words (e.g. hiene). the phonetic indication of graphs like <ie> in west saxon has then continued to be a subject of debate in work published closer to our present day with focus on old and middle english (see e.g. pilch 1970; kim 1984; colman 1985, 1987, 1988, 1992, 1994, 1997; voss 1995; horobin & smith 2002: 48, 63; lass & laing 2005; fulk 2012: §§10, 20), but the matter seems to have been more formally settled in some recent discussion of <ie> scattered throughout the corpus of narrative etymologies (cone), produced at edinburgh by a team including roger lass and margaret laing. the position expressed in cone is that the only reasonable value for <ie> is [iy] and that the sound later split into [i(:)] and (probably) [y(:)], if their respective graphic indications —the western early middle english spellings with <u> and <ui>— do in fact indicate a front rounded vowel. at any rate the [iy] type (common for instance in large parts of the southern us) seems to give the most sensible history (cf. especially the change labelled ies (ie-split) in the cone subcorpus of phonological changes), though this conclusion did not come about without a great deal of rethinking and revisiting of the authors’ own ideas over time. regardless of the complexity of the scenario at hand, however, the current there is no specification about when <i> = /ɪ(:)/ occurs, although there is a general tendency for /ɪ/ to occur more frequently in lws (hogg 1992: §5.171). 34 marco condorelli understanding of the spellings in question as belonging to lineally disjoint varieties of west saxon and possibly representing different phonological values appears to be an essential, yet sufficient basis for an informed exploratory and comparative investigation of spelling consistency and irregularity in the anglosaxon chronicle. the chronicle is the backbone of old english literature and history surviving to our present day (jorgensen 2010a: 1) and represents an extremely useful resource for insights into spelling variation from cross-textual points of view. it is hoped that some of the insights into the patterns and issues referenced to in these notes will encourage others to frame new perspectives and questions that are not necessarily tied solely to phonology. the aim will be that of encouraging a comparative discussion on the underrated category of pronouns as evidence for spelling change in the chronicle, at a moment in time where spelling appears to have lost some momentum in the early english scholarly scenario. 2. remarks on samples from the anglo-saxon chronicle in order to investigate patterns of variation in <ie>, sections from editions of various witnesses of the chronicle were analysed, which are conventionally identified as msa (bately 1986), msb (taylor 1983), msc (o’brien o’keefe 2001) and msd (cubbin 1996). the editions used are semi-diplomatic and do not present any variation in spelling from the originals (as clearly stated by the editors in the introductions to each edition above). where sufficient legibility was possible, readings were also checked against facsimile copies of the original manuscripts in order to compare the faithfulness of transcription. the facsimiles are digital copies of the following manuscripts: cambridge, corpus christi college, ms 173 (msa), london, british library, ms cotton tiberius a. vi (msb), london, british library, ms cotton tiberius b. iv (msc), london, british library, ms cotton tiberius b. i (msd).1 the following table provides some additional details about the texts in question. 1 facsimile copies of these manuscripts are available in the british library online catalogue (https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/) and the parker library on the web (https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/actions/page.do?forward=home). irregularity of <ie> spellings in lws 35 table 1. details of the sources manuscript date place of production (?) msa: cccc173 c. 900 (ews) winchester (wessex) msb: cott. tib a. vi 977 x 979 (early lws) perhaps abingdon (wessex) msc: cott. tib b. i c. 1050 (mid lws) perhaps abingdon (wessex) msd: cott. tib b. iv c. 1050 (mid lws) perhaps worchester (mercia). although the location of msd is not in wessex, the language of this text still follows ‘standard’ lws2 the selection of the samples above represents the safest option for a preliminary overview to minimise the influence of different hands, as the annals were selected at regular intervals among the sections that are most likely to have been written from a single scribe for each of the texts (ker 1957: nos. 39, 188, 191, 192). this approach minimises the risk that any spelling inconsistency within the same source would be largely owed to the interference of different scribes. the specific annals chosen are [755], [871] and [885]; in msb and msc, [872] stands for [871] and [886] stands for [885] (msa ff. 10r–15v, msb ff. 11v–21v, msc ff. 125r–133v, msd ff. 22v– 37v). although the date of entry is largely difficult to identify for all manuscripts in question, the sections selected are among those which can be identified with most confidence (cf. taylor 1983, bately 1986, cubbin 1996, dumville & keynes 1983–2001, o’brien o’keefe 2001). the data available from these texts was analysed following two different steps. as a first step, the words with <ie> spellings in the above-mentioned sections from msa were compared with the same words from the same sections in all of the other manuscripts by ordering them in a table (appendix 1). the direct spelling comparison has shown a general variation pattern of ie > y from ews to lws, with the proportion of ews <ie> spellings decreasing and that of lws <y> spellings increasing, in accordance with expected patterns for ews and lws respectively. the patterns drawn in figure 6 suggest that the increase of <y> spellings is not directly proportional to the decrease of <ie> spellings and that a considerable number of <ie> spellings follow additional 2 by ‘standard’ lws, i refer to the ‘winchester standard’, namely a prestigious written form with reasonably fixed spelling conventions originated in winchester. 36 marco condorelli 0 20 40 60 msa (c. 900) msb (977 x 979) msc (c. 1050) msd (c. 1050) number of <ie> spelling examples number of ie>y spellings 0 10 20 30 msb msc msd <ie> <i> <eo> <y> alternations that are different from just <y> in lws, which again fits with more or less known patterns for ews and lws. figure 6. number of <ie> spellings and ie > y spellings alternative spellings that were identified in lws, i.e. <ie>, <i> and <eo>, are overall greater in number than <y>, as further illustrated in figure 7 below. figure 7. number of different spellings found in sections from msb, msc and msd despite the obvious differences in the proportions above, a general observation may be offered regarding the spellings at hand: the alternation between <ie> and <y> appears to be generally more consistent for multisyllabic, stressed words, for example words like gehierdun (msa (f. 10r)) > gehyrdon (msb (f. 12r), msc (f. 125v) and msd (f. 23r)). instead, variation appears much more irregularity of <ie> spellings in lws 37 frequent in pronoun forms (86% of the relevant word material across the samples), and especially third-person pronouns as a category that represents examples of all variants detected, namely <ie>, <eo>, <i> and <y>. as a second step of analysis, therefore, third-person pronouns were distributed in a table according to their case (appendix 2). this enabled a comparison of spellings in identical morphological forms within and across the samples from all four copies. in msa, hie indicates the third-person nominative and accusative plural pronoun; hiera indicates the third-person genitive plural, and hiene indicates the masculine accusative singular. the other texts compare as follows (for all of the texts, variation in all of the forms above occurs regardless of their orthographical environment):  in msb, the third-person nominative and accusative plural is consistently hie. a different form from msa is used here for the third-person genitive plural, namely heora, and the masculine accusative singular, hine. pronouns in the selected sections from msb appear to be coherent in spelling, with some conventions appearing as different from those in msa.  in msc, the forms hie and hi are used in free variation for the third-person nominative plural. the third-person genitive plural has four different forms: hira, hiera, hyra and heora. the masculine accusative singular is hine. as is evident, the chosen passages from msc present varying pronoun spellings and there appears to be considerable change in conventions between the passages in msc and those from the previous texts.  in msd, there is variation in the forms of the third-person nominative and accusative plural, hy, heo, hie, hi. heora and hine, instead, are used consistently for the third-person genitive plural and third-person masculine accusative singular, respectively. sections from msd, therefore, also appear to show some variation in pronoun spelling and conventions are different from those of the previous texts. patterns in personal pronouns are particularly interesting for addressing issues pertaining to the chronicle. first of all, the frequency of variation in pronouns may not be entirely dependent on stress, as pronouns are not always weaklystressed forms, especially in longer sentence contexts (cf. howe 1996: 87, cf. also colman 1994 for insights into the relationship between stress and morphology). rather, the fact that third-person pronouns appear more 38 marco condorelli susceptible to spelling variation in the chronicle could partially be a physiological symptom of their high frequency in the narrative context of the annals. these characteristics can be used to our advantage, as higher frequencies afford a cross-textual analysis with comparative insights into diachronic variation. some of the spelling innovations detected in my samples are particularly useful examples to support previous statements on the relationship across the surviving texts, with possible concurring influences from earlier manuscript sources. matters like the precise relationship of msc to msb and the place of msa in the lines of transmission of the chronicle have long been the subject of discussion and some disagreements (bately 1991: 1). a general agreement among these resources, however, is that msa, msb and msc are known to have the same core, i.e. up to 890 or 891 and a series of continuations to 914. the points of agreements and differences between msb and msc have led a number of scholars beginning from the father of modern studies on the chronicle, charles plummer, to hypothesise that msb and msc especially were in fact derived from a now lost copy of the chronicle (cf. plummer 1979). the first part of this lost copy was in turn supposedly derived from an ancestor copy, which may also have been an ancestor copy of msa and a possible common source of msd. for the most part, however, the hand for the period up to 890 in msd seems to have been influenced by a separate matrix text from the other three manuscripts, possibly a text from a northern scriptorium. from the tenth century onwards, instead, msd appears to be a conflation of msb and msc with distinctive elements of its own (bately 1991, jorgensen 2010a: 5). in the samples surveyed across the four manuscript copies, the form heora is the dominant form of the third-person possessive in msb and is also one of the forms existing in msc and msd. in light of the fact that heora is also the most dominant form in manuscripts of ælfric and wulfstan (cf. for example di paolo healey & venezky 1980), heora could indeed reflect the spellings already existing in the lost copy of the chronicle which allegedly influenced msa, msb and msc together with cross-textual interferences across the three copies (bately 1991: 16). the spelling examples retrieved from msd also appear to support a level of comparability of msd with the other manuscripts, especially msc. in the samples from msc, lws hi appears as the most dominant form for the thirdperson nominative plural, yet the form hie, which is typical of msa and msb, also survives in nominative and accusative case and, in the nominative case, it appears almost as frequently as hi. the form hi is in turn the dominant spelling in the samples from msd, while hie also appears as a less frequent irregularity of <ie> spellings in lws 39 variant both in the nominative and the accusative cases. the genitive form heora in the samples from msc appears to be dominant much like the form in the samples from msb, suggesting a possible connection between the two copies. more generally, the variants that are available in the manuscript before c. 890 suggest that this part of msd also somewhat reflects the original exemplar from which all versions of the chronicle are descended (cf. cubbin 1996). the elements above feed into the patterns identified in work that has focussed primarily on the sources, chronology and text-history of the chronicle, especially owed to bately (1978, 1979a, 1979b, 1985, 1991, 2003) and dumville (1983, 1985, 1986); cf. also lutz (1981, 1982) and meaney (1986). these scholars have often used spelling variation as evidence for crosstextual influences in the process of copying and transcribing the chronicle but have never elaborated on the significance of such a promising category of words like pronouns, and research in cross-textual influences has in fact lost centrality over the last two decades. while work on spellings and textual relationships in the chronicle has recently slowed down considerably, the last few years have seen an outbreak of research work in old english pronouns (cf. e.g. megginson 1994; howe 1996; van bergen 2000; ohkado 2001; seppӓnen 2004; koopman 2005; alcorn 2009, 2014; rusten 2013; cole 2017; and van kemenade 2017, to name only a few). the considerable increase in research output with focus on old english pronouns demonstrates a growing awareness of the potential of pronouns as first-order witnesses of historical change in early english, yet no work has so far focussed on spelling variation in pronouns and issues of elaboration and power. in general, changes affecting pronouns are more likely to reflect conscious attempts to change forms, rather than occasional scribal errors owed to uncertainty or inexperience, or solely passive influences from earlier ancestor or contemporary manuscripts. pronouns are highly frequent forms and, as such, they are expected to be more resilient to spelling change than other word classes and they generally retain forms longer than the rest of the vocabulary (lehmann 1992: 108f, howe 1996: 55). given the general tendency of pronouns to resist spelling variation, the preponderance of spelling variation in pronoun forms could be explained at least partially as a sign of a conscious willingness from individual scribes to engage with individual attempts to elaborate regularisation in core areas of the language, as a response to the pressures for standardisation (cf. horobin 2013: 66 on ‘elaboration’). the process of spelling regularisation was most likely the product of a conscious willingness to create a prestigious variety that would reflect the grandeur and 40 marco condorelli power of the court as well as winchester and the surrounding scriptoria (cf. hofstetter 1988: 161). this hypothesis still remains relevant in the face of the possibility that the ‘common stock’ of the annals up to c. 890891 may have been the product of scribal activity undergoing at the court of king alfred the great under commission by the king himself, and only subsequently distributed among and stored in the various scriptoria identified in table 1 (cf. scharer 1996, abels 1998, brooks 2011). if this possibility was true, copies of the annals were probably used as tokens for the king and the court entourage to gift to monasteries and as a means of ‘propaganda’, usually to establish or reaffirm power and favour (pratt 2014). regardless of where the copies originated, personal pronouns appear to have an important functional role in the context of the samples in question and of the common stock more generally, as they often refer to royal figures or a range of individuals closely related to the king’s court, whether by family lineage or simply historically and geographically (cf. sheppard 2004 on collective identity in the chronicle). the centrality of third-person pronouns linguistically and ideologically, both in the eyes of the writer and in those of the reader, may have also constituted the most suitable ground for scribes (who were mostly learned men of the church) to express their favour towards or dissent against the political entourage of the time and any rivalry with other monasteries and scriptoria. in other words, any conscious attempts to systematically control morphological forms and their spellings could also be related to issues of intellectual identity within an individual scriptorium or between two or more different scriptoria, where the scribes may have been not only participating to the requirement of spelling regularisation, but also competing with each other for the same goal. in the samples collected from msa (winchester) and from msb (abingdon), the spread of each dominant case form appears to also involve a levelling of spelling contrast (e.g. hiene and hiera in msa and hine and heora in msb), which could indicate different, yet relatively consistent attempts to control forms while them potentially representing phonological diversification. in light of these remarks, a comparison of pronoun practices between msb and msc is also interesting, as both msb and msc are traditionally thought to derive from or be destined to abingdon abbey, which means that the scribe from the samples in msc may have been more likely to have had access to msb, while still producing a great deal more variation than the samples from msb. the most traditional scenario to account for the discrepancies between msb and msc is the possibility that msc may have actually not been compared to msb at all, but solely derived from a lost irregularity of <ie> spellings in lws 41 ancestor copy. the dominant forms hira, hiera and hyra in msc recall the forms hiera in msa but not heora in msb, which probably represents a phonological change (see below). according to bately (1991: 20–21), heora may have existed in an ancestor copy one or two removes from msb, which means that the sampled section from msc may have been copied from an even earlier manuscript. however, the presence of forms like heora, hie and hine in msc also testify some degree of familiarity with the spellings in use in the samples from msb, as well as a more or less homogenous attempt to spelling, which can hardly be ignored. in view of these considerations, the msc scribe may have attempted to set his own version of the standard lws spelling of pronouns as non-identical to msb (perhaps taking into account other levels of the language, like form and style, as contextual deciders for pronoun variants) at a moment in time where lws was already well underway and individual scribes may not necessarily have agreed with the spellings used more than seventy years earlier. interestingly, msc is thought to have been hostile to the house of godwine, which is against the supposed cordial relations of abingdon with the same house of godwine (cf. baxter 2007: 1194). even though the anti-godwinist stance becomes more relevant towards the end of msc, this attitude may be read as a more implicit indication of the whole manuscript’s contextual affiliation, if we consider the possibility that issues related to intellectual identity were expressed not haphazardly in fragmented manuscript sections but rather in more or less meaningful continuity contexts tied to the history of each individual manuscript. the revised spellings therefore may be read as a willingness to take a stance against the previous msb copy and the views of the scribe who compiled the same sections. along these same lines of interpretation, differences in the spellings between msd and the other copies may also be linked to matters of intellectual identity: if we assume that msd probably originated in mercia (which is a matter of controversy as mentioned above, but still a strong possibility), then we should also consider that the mercian dialect of the midlands appears to have exerted a rival pressure on lws, reinforced by the prestige of the lichfield monastery (cf. horobin 2013: 67). although the samples do not necessarily provide evidence of any strong mercian dialectal influence, the rivalry may have resulted in semi-autonomous attempts to establish a regularised lws spelling, while also inevitably reflecting the influence of ancestor or more contemporary west saxon copies. some of these factors certainly deserve further discussion and exploration as they have the potential to reaffirm the linguistic role of scribes and scriptoria as more active 42 marco condorelli centres of intellectual and political engagement. they also enable us to bridge our linguistic field with work conducted on the chronicle from wholly extralinguistic points of view, focussed on recent interpretations of the annals as panegyrical and functional to the political and religious environment in which they were written (cf. bredehoft 2001, sheppard 2004, jorgensen 2010b, clarke 2012, smith 2012, sparks 2012). regardless of the complexity of all possible factors concurring as triggers of spelling variation, all levels of interpretations for the variations in pronouns can be combined with questions related to the traditional phonological understanding of the spelling irregularity. in particular, the <eo> forms, which have been found in words such as heora, appear to be the result of backumlaut, a process which spread relatively quickly in west saxon (diphtongisation of /i/ before back vowel in the following syllable: *hire > hiora; by a later development, io > eo in ws, see hogg 1992: §§5.146, 5.155; colman 1997, note also word-final e > a). the fact that back-umlaut has spread rather unevenly across the pronouns seems an intriguing scenario that warrants further investigation and may indeed be connected with the interplay of other extra-linguistic factors hypothesised in these notes, or questions related to functional analogy and morphological levelling. while the patterns drawn from the selected samples already provide interesting insights into the manuscript copies, a more extensive, comparative analysis of pronoun spellings across all surviving copies of the chronicle promises to give some tantalising additional perspectives into the linguistic significance of the common stock. a more extensive cross-textual analysis of variation in pronouns would allow for the investigation of largely unexplored questions from a linguistic point of view and would compensate for the dominant extra-linguistic focus on issues related to identity, historiography and history (see e.g. stafford 2007). in addition, a multilayered interpretation of spelling evidence would contribute to bringing the discussion of spellings in the chronicle more in line with recent trends in historical sociolinguistics (cf. condorelli & rutkowska forthcoming), and it is hoped that my notes will inspire future scholars to follow these trends. irregularity of <ie> spellings in lws 43 references primary sources bately, j. m. ed. 1986: the anglo-saxon chronicle: a collaborative edition. vol. 3. cambridge, d. s. brewer (msa). cubbin, g. p. ed. 1996: the anglo-saxon chronicle: a collaborative edition. vol. 6. cambridge, d. s. brewer (msd). dumville, d. & s. keynes gen. eds. 1983–2001: the anglo-saxon chronicle: a collaborative edition. vols. 3–6. cambridge, d. s. brewer. o’brien o’keefe, k. ed. 2001: the anglo-saxon chronicle: a collaborative edition. vol. 5. cambridge, d. s. brewer (msc). taylor, s. ed. 1983: the anglo-saxon chronicle: a collaborative edition. vol. 4. cambridge, d. s. brewer (msb). the texts above are printed editions of the following manuscripts: cambridge, corpus christi college, ms 173 (msa). london, british library, ms cotton tiberius a. vi (msb). london, british library, ms cotton tiberius b. iv (msc). london, british library, ms cotton tiberius b. i (msd). facsimile digital copies cambridge, corpus christi college, ms 173, parker library on the web, https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/actions/page.do?forward=home [accessed 11 april 2018]. di paolo healey, a. & r. l. venezky eds. 1980: a microfiche concordance to old english. toronto, dictionary of old english project, centre for medieval studies. ms cotton tiberius a. vi, b. iv and b. i, british library, https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/ [accessed 11 april 2018]. secondary sources abels, r. p. 1998: alfred the great: war, kinship and culture in anglo-saxon england (the medieval world). london, longman. alcorn, r. 2009: grammatical person and the variable syntax of old english personal pronouns. english language and linguistics 13.3: 433–451. alcorn, r. 2014: pronoun placement and pronoun case in old english. 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etymologies. edinburgh, university of edinburgh. http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/cone/cone.html [accessed 11 april 2018]. dumville, d. 1983: some aspects of annalistic writing at canterbury in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. peritia 2: 23–57. dumville, d. 1985: the west saxon genealogical regnal list and the chronology of early wessex. peritia 4: 21–66. dumville, d. 1986: the west saxon genealogical regnal list: manuscripts and texts. anglia 104: 1–32. fulk, r. d. 2012: an introduction to middle english: grammar and texts. peterborough, broadview press. gneuss, h. 1986: the old english language. in m. godden & m. lapidge eds. the cambridge companion to old english literature. cambridge, cambridge university press: 23–54. gradon, p. 1962: studies in late west saxon labialization and delabialization. in n. davis & c. l. wrenn eds. english and medieval studies presented to j. r. r. tolkien. london, allen and unwin: 63–76. hoad, t. f. 2014: west saxon dialect. in m. lapidge, j. blair, s. keynes & d. scragg eds. the wiley blackwell encyclopedia of anglo-saxon england. 2nd ed. oxford, blackwell. hofstetter, w. 1988: winchester and the standardization of old english vocabulary. anglo-saxon england 17: 139–161. hogg, r. m. 1992: a grammar of old english, vol. 1: phonology. oxford, blackwell. horobin, s. 2013: does spelling matter?. oxford, oxford university press. horobin, s. & j. smith. 2002: an introduction to middle english. edinburgh, edinburgh university press. howe, s. 1996: the personal pronouns in the germanic languages: a study of personal pronoun morphology and change in the germanic languages from the first records to the present day. berlin & new york, walter de gruyter. jorgensen, a. 2010a: introduction: reading the anglo-saxon chronicle. in a. jorgensen ed. reading the anglo-saxon chronicle: language, literature, history. turnhout, brepols publishers: 1–28. jorgensen, a. ed. 2010b: reading the anglo-saxon chronicle: language, literature, history. turnhout, brepols publishers. van kemenade, a. 2017: a response to cole. english language and linguistics 21.2: 409–411. ker, n. r. 1957: catalogue of manuscripts containing anglo-saxon. vols. 1–2. oxford, oxford university press. 46 marco condorelli kim, s-s. 1984: old english <ie> and its phonetic identification. in n. f. blake & c. jones eds. english historical linguistics: studies in development. sheffield, cectal: 24–43. koopman, w. 2005: transitional syntax: postverbal pronouns and particles in old english. english language and linguistics 9.1: 47–62. lass, r. 1994: old english: a historical linguistic comparison. cambridge, cambridge university press. lass, r. & m. laing 2005: are front rounded vowels retained in west midland middle english?. in n. ritt & h. schendl eds. rethinking middle english: linguistic and literary approaches. frankfurt am main, peter lang: 280–290. lehmann, w. p. 1992: historical linguistics. 3rd ed. london & new york, routledge. lewenz, m. a. 1908: west germanic “i” in old english saxon dialects. the modern language review 3: 278–286. lutz, a. 1981: die version g der angelsachsischen chronik: rekonstruktion und edition. munich, fink. lutz, a. 1982: das studium der angelsächsischen chronik im 16. jarhhundert: nowell und joscelyn. anglia 100: 301–356. meaney, a. 1986: st neots, æthelweard and the compilation of the anglo-saxon chronicle: a survey. in p. e. szarmach ed. studies in earlier old english prose: sixteen original contributions. albany, state university of new york press: 193– 243. megginson, d. 1994: he (pl) and other new old english pronouns. american notes and queries 7.1: 6–13. ohkado, m. 2001: the position of subject pronouns and finite verbs in old english. folia linguistica historica 22: 255–276. pilch, h. 1970: altenglische grammatik. munich, max hueber. pratt, d. 2014: kings and books in anglo-saxon england. anglo-saxon england 43: 297–377. plummer, c. [d. whitelock ed.] 1979: two of the anglo-saxon chronicles parallel, ii. english historical documents, c. 5001042. 2nd rev. ed. oxford, oxford university press. rusten, k. a. 2013: empty referential subjects in old english prose: a quantitative analysis. english studies 94.8: 970–992. scharer, a. 1996: the writing of the history at king alfred’s court. early medieval europe 5: 177–206. seppänen, a. 2004: the old english relative þe. english language and linguistics 8.1: 71–102. sheppard, a. 2004: families of the king: writing identity in the anglo-saxon chronicle. toronto, university of toronto press. smith, s. t. 2012: land and book literature and land tenure in anglo-saxon england. toronto, university of toronto press. irregularity of <ie> spellings in lws 47 sparks, n. a. 2012: textual histories of the anglo-saxon chronicle: the alfredian common stock. (mss abcg, with ref. to def), to ad 892. (ph.d. dissertation.) cambridge, university of cambridge. stafford, p. 2007: the anglo-saxon chronicles, identity and the making of england. the haskins society journal 19: 28–50. voss, m. 1995: traditional notes on old english palatal diphthongisation. vienna english working papers 4.1: 57–71. 48 marco condorelli appendix 1 the asterisk (*) indicates a new form introduced by the later scribes instead of the original corresponding word used in msa. the possible reasons for the change of form may include difficulties in choosing a variant form, with potential ties to form and style. msa msb msc msd line word line word line word line word [755] [755] [755] [755] line 4 hiene line 4 hine line 4 hine line 4 hine line 5 hiene line 5 hine line 5 hine line 5 hine line 16 hie line 16 hie line 14 hi line 15 hy line 17 hie line 17 hie line 15 hi line 16 heo line 21 hiera line 19 heora line 17 þa* line 19 heora line 21 hiera line 20 heora line 18 hira line 20 heora line 22 hie line 21 hie line 18 hi line 20 hie line 23 hie line 22 hie line 19 hi line 21 heo line 24 gehierdun line 23 gehyrdon line 20 gehyrdon line 22 gehyrdon line 26 hie line 25 hie line 22 hi line 24 hi line 30 hiera line 29 heora line 26 hyra line 28 heora line 31 hie line 30 hie line 26 hi line 29 hi line 32 hiera line 30 heora line 27 hira line 29 heora irregularity of <ie> spellings in lws 49 line 33 hie line 32 hie line 28 hi line 30 hie line 34 hiera line 32 heora line 29 hira line 31 heora line 34 hie line 33 hie line 29 hi line 31 hi line 35 hie line 34 hie line 30 hi line 32 hi line 35 hiera line 34 heora line 30 hyra line 32 heora line 35 hie line 34 hie line 30 hi line 33 hi line 36 hie line 35 hie line 30 hie line 33 hi line 36 hiera line 35 heora line 31 hiera line 34 heora line 38 hie line 37 hie line 32 hi line 35 heo line 38 hie line 37 hie line 32 hie line 35 hi line 38 hie line 37 hie line 32 þæs* line 35 hit* line 40 hie line 38 hie line 34 hie line 37 hy line 41 hie line 39 hie line 34 hie line 37 hi line 46 hiera line 44 heora line 39 heora line 42 heora line 48 miercna line 46 myrcna line 40 myrcna line 43 mearcna [871] [872] for [871] [871] line 3 hie line 3 hie line 3 hie line 3 hie line 5 fierd line 6 fyrd line 6 fyrd line 6 fyrd 50 marco condorelli line 11 hie line 12 hie line 10 hi line 11 hi line 18 gefliemde line 19 geflymdon line 17 geflymde line 18 geflymde line 24 hie line 24 hie line 22 hie line 23 hi line 24 hie line 25 hie line 22 hie line 24 hi line 24 gefliemdon line 25 geflymdan line 22 geflymdon line 24 geflymdon line 34 gefliemde line 35 geflymde line 31 geflymde line 33 geflymde [885] [886] for [885] [885] line 3 hie line 3 hie line 3 hie line 2 hi line 3 hie line 3 hie line 3 hie line 3 hi line 5 fierde line 4 fyrde line 4 fyrde line 4 fyrde line 5 hiera line 5 heora line 5 hyra line 4 heora line 6 hie line 5 hie line 5 hi line 5 hi line 8 hie line 8 hie line 8 hi line 7 hi line 9 hie line 9 hie line 8 hie line 8 hy line 11 hie line 10 hie line 10 hie line 10 hi line 12 hie line 11 hie line 11 hie line 11 hi line 15 hiene line 14 hine line 13 hine line 13 hine line 17 hie line 16 þa* line 15 þa* line 15 þa* irregularity of <ie> spellings in lws 51 line 18 aþiestrode line 1718 aþeostrode line 16 aþystrode line 16 aþystrode line 24 behienan line 23 beheonan line 21 beheonan line 22 beheonan line 28 hie line 27 hie line 25 hi line 25 hy appendix 2 overall number of pronouns spellings in selected sections from msa, msb, msc and msd. this appendix contains the same pronouns as in appendix 1, with the exception of newly introduced forms. msa 3rd person nominative plural 3rd person accusative plural 3rd person genitive plural 3rd person masculine accusative singular hie x 27 hie x 2 hiera x 9 hiene x 3 msb 3rd person nominative plural 3rd person accusative plural 3rd person genitive plural 3rd person masculine accusative singular hie x 26 hie x 2 heora x 9 hine x 3 msc 3rd person nominative plural 3rd person accusative plural 3rd person genitive plural 3rd person masculine accusative singular hi x 15 hie x 2 hira x 3 hine x 3 hie x 10 hyra x 3 heora x 1 hiera x 1 52 marco condorelli msd 3rd person nominative plural 3rd person accusative plural 3rd person genitive plural 3rd person masculine accusative singular hy x 4 hie x 1 heora x 9 hine x 3 heo x 3 hie x 2 hi x 17 author’s address school of humanities and social sciences university of central lancashire preston pr1 2he uk received: 2 june 2018 e-mail: mcondorelli@uclan.ac.uk accepted: 28 november 2018 selim 16.indb rodrigo pérez lorido, selim 16 (2009): 171–172issn: 1132–631x bueno alonso, jorge l. 2010. beowulf. vigo: rinoceronte editora s.l. 163 pp. isbn: 978-84-92866-17-⒌ if it is always a joyous occasion to announce a translation of the epic poem beowulf into a modern language, the joy is double if it is the fi rst translation of the poem into that language, as is the case with jorge l. bueno alonso’s rendering of the anglo-saxon work into the galician language, just published by rinoceronte ediciones in its vetera series. with his translation of beowulf into galician, dr. bueno alonso has faced a remarkably serious challenge, and the result cannot be more satisfactory. his translation is commendable for many reasons: to begin with, it is a verse translation,1 secondly it is an alliterative one, and thirdly, it is simply an excellent translation. the text lacks nothing of the rhythm and power of the anglo-saxon original while very faithfully reproducing the story of the anglo-saxon heroes, monsters and kings to the smallest details. dr. bueno’s work is a beautiful, musical and and fl uid literary piece, which is entertaining, engrossing and delightful to read. can this be done without a profound knowledge of the old english language as well as of the textual, editorial and linguistic problems of the anglosaxon canonical works? i don’t think so, and this is something dr. bueno must necessarily be credited for. translating old english into a modern romace language is a hard task, and not within everybody’s scope. to accomplish this task the author produced his own edition of the text  om the original manuscript, contrasting the diffi cult or controversial bits with the opinions and theories of other specialists. extensive documentation and informative rigour shines through all the text of the transaltion, thus paying homage to the labour of so many good philologists and writers,  om tolkien to liuzza, and  om thorkelin to heaney. from his edition of the original text the author has attempted basically “to translate poetry into poetry” (p. 26), taking special care in reproducing the rhythm and beat of the old english alliterative verse as faithfully as possible. this concern is refl ected in the author’s self-imposed requirement to have two (or preferably three) alliterative positions in each verse of the translation, which imposes a very 1 let’s remember all translations of beowulf into the castilian language were prose ones until lerate and lerate (1986). 172 rodrigo pérez lorido selim 16 (2009) tight harness on the translatorial work. but it works: when we read jorge l. bueno’s translation of beowulf there is something of the rhythm of the old epic poem ringing in our ears, everything fl ows in a very natural way, and we are easily carried away by the musicality of it all. it doesn’t matter if the original structure of the poem is slightly distorted at times (a strict necessity if the alliterative requirements mentioned before are to be met): here the goal is to achieve a poetic text and therefore reproducing the original structure literally is out of the question. this is possibly the reason why we don’t get line numbers in the translation (they wouldn’t match the lines in the original text), although some could feel a need for them. other debatable points are the author’s choice to retain the original division of the poem into 43 parts of “fi tts”, and the inclusion of a heading at the beginnig of each one of them as a subtitle. i personally am all for it. none of these decisions seriously hinder the progress of the reading of the text, and the headings are good guidance for the modern reader, especially for those not familiar with the intricacies of the stories and substories inside beowulf. finally, i would like to mention that the volume includes an interesting introduction, with some background information on the history of beowulf as a manuscript and beowulf as a literary piece, which is clear, informative, and particularly interesting for those not familiar with the vicissitudes of the earliest english literary documents. all in all, i think jorge l bueno’s translation of beowulf into the galician language is excellent news. it represents not only one more step in the diff usion of a “minority” language which will be appreciated and enj oyed by thousands of galician speakers worldwide, but also a remarkable contribution to the universality of the anglo-saxon masterpiece. i am sure it will be a reference text for a long time and i cannot but congratulate the author on it. rodrigo pérez lorido universidad de oviedo • received 19 oct 2010; revision received 03 nov 2010; accepted 10 nov 2010 selim 20.indb michael p. kuczynski, selim 20 (2013–2014): 309–313issn: 1132–631x sáez-hidalgo, ana & r. f. yeager eds. 2014: john gower in england and iberia: manuscripts, infl uences, reception (publications of the john gower society 10). cambridge, d. s. brewer. pp. x + 335. isbn: 978-1-84384-320-⒎ $99.00. at one time, gower had to wrestle in the minds of modern critics with chaucer (and to a lesser extent langland) for his status as an authoritative english poet. this is no longer the case, largely as a result of the determined, evangelical eff orts of the john gower society. in addition to multiple sessions over many years at the annual medieval congress in kalamazoo, michigan, the society has now hosted three international meetings of its own—gower “think tanks,” actually— that like the kalamazoo sessions have generated a substantial corpus of scholarship on the poet. taking the form of both essay collections and monographs, this criticism rivals and oft en exceeds in intellectual energy and perspicacity the best that is currently being written about the authors of the canterbury tales and piers the plowman. john gower in england and iberia: manuscripts, infl uences, reception, co-edited by r. f. yeager, founder and president of the gower society, and ana sáez-hidalgo, a professor of medieval and early modern english at the university of valladolid, continues this exemplary scholarly enterprise. the book gathers together the fr uits of the second international congress of the john gower society, held in 2011 in valladolid, spain—nineteen essays that began as conference presentations but that have been elaborated and revised for publication here. each one makes a deliberate and persuasive contribution to our understanding of gower and his works. a brief review can only remark on a selection. the most original and compelling material in the book, understandably enough, concerns gower’s under-examined connections with the iberian peninsula. these were the result of migration of a copy of confessio amantis to portugal—probably by way of john of gaunt’s daughter, michael p. kuczynski 310selim 20 (2013–2014) philippa, who between 1387 and 1415 was portugal’s queen—and subsequent translation of gower’s english poem into portuguese and then castilian spanish. yeager and sáez-hidalgo group much of the scholarship in the book related to portugal and spain in the volume’s second section, “iberia,” but it also extends across their other four subgroupings—on “manuscripts,” “the classical tradition,” “economy,” and “reception”—as a persistent (although not exclusive) theme. the castilian translation of confessio amantis, preserved in a single identifi ed manuscript, has been known since the 1930s, when j. m. manly fi rst brooded on its signifi cance. the portuguese translation that provoked the castilian one has likewise been identifi ed in only one copy, a manuscript rediscovered in the late 1990s. the two lead off essays in gower in england and iberia give these copies minute paleographic and codicological attention. mauricio herrero jiménez’s contribution, “castilian script in iberian manuscripts of the confessio amantis,” compares systematically the diff erent types of professional gothic book-hands used in copying madrid, real biblioteca ms ii-3088, the portuguese livro do amante, and madrid, el escorial library ms g-ii-19, the spanish confy sion del amante. using ample illustration, herrero jiménez demonstrates that neither manuscript is a presentation copy. rather, each was made for private reading, the manuscript of the portuguese livro probably for a nobleman, “who perhaps was seeking in it a model of ethical and political education and/or romantic diversion” (22)— that is, just the sort of mistura of “lore” and “lust” that gower announces as the aesthetic recipe for his long english poem. in addition to his careful scribal analysis, herrero jiménez also points out an intriguing codicological detail of each of gower’s iberian manuscripts: a castilian table of contents added at the fr ont of the portuguese codex and the conj oining in the more modest spanish one of sections fr om two diff erent confy sion copies. readership of iberian translations of the confessio, he concludes, was likely more widespread than the scant survival of two manuscripts indicates. reviews 311 selim 20 (2013–2014) further archival investigation, one imagines, will extend our knowledge of the international readership of gower’s poem. maría luisa lópez-vidriero abelló’s essay on “provenance interlacing in spanish royal book-collecting” takes as its focus the status of the portuguese codex in particular, held in the spanish royal library. predictably perhaps, lópez-vidriero abelló hypothesizes that this library “played an important role in constructing the image of the monarch” (35). more interestingly, she evaluates the details of certain historical exhibitions and visitations of the library to suggest how its contents and their variable arrangements refl ected “royal power, prestige, and accomplishment” (37)—all of these of course themes taken up in the confessio. her analysis of this point is a useful prolegomenon to lópez-vidriero abelló’s discussion of the actual arrival of ms ii-3088 in the royal library fr om the personal collection of count gondomar, an ambassador of philip iii of spain to the court of james i of england, who maintained a private library in valladolid. moreover, before this transfer, the author shows, the manuscript was owned by luis de castilla, son of a dean of toledo cathedral, whose humanist leanings (like gondomar’s interest in instruction for princes) link for us by way of a clear archival trail gower’s english work with high iberian culture. other iberian-themed essays take up more speculative matters. two, for example, concern the battle of nájera, where john of gaunt and edward the black prince allied in 1367 with pedro the cruel of castile (of monk’s tale fame) against his brother, enrique. david r. carlson connects a letter sent by edward fr om the battlefi eld to his wife, joan, with the propagandist tonalities of a number of late medieval texts, among them gower’s cronica tripertita of 1400 in praise of the english usurper, henry iv. fernando galván investigates how the 1367 engagement established a tighter nexus of connections between england, castile, and portugal than we might suppose and that ultimately led to the migration of the confessio to iberia. contributions by r. f. yeager michael p. kuczynski 312selim 20 (2013–2014) and tiago viúla de faria likewise probe the more shadowy but nevertheless intriguing dimensions of gower’s connections with portugal and spain. yeager suggests, for example, the possible infl uence of pedro alfonso’s twelft h-century anthology of fables, disciplina clericalis, a nearly ubiquitous text in medieval libraries, on the confessio’s “tale of the three questions,” for which (unlike most of gower’s exempla) an exact source has yet to be identifi ed. viúla de faria, for his part, proposes in contrast with the prevailing hypothesis of a royal avenue for the confessio’s progress to iberia an ecclesiastical one—the bishop of norwich, henry despenser, whose “literary tastes may well have warranted a personal interest” in the poem and whose “links with philippa of lancaster were both strong and enduring” (136–137). none of the essays in yeager and sáez-hidalgo’s “iberia” section has anything defi nitive to report about gower, his works, and that territory. their hypotheses, however, are energizing precisely because they are grounded in nuanced analyses of historical and cultural circumstances that involved english international interests and by way of these, quite possibly, some of gower’s writings. there is much to be learned about non-iberian gower in this volume as well. noteworthy among the other essays collected here is barbara shailor’s fascinating report, “the yale gower manuscript, beinecke osborn ms fa.1: paleographical, codicological, technological challenges and opportunities,” concerning what “the objective testing of inks and pigments” (not to mention mildew!) analyzed “scientifi cally across a corpus of manuscripts” (85) can tell us about particular gower codices, in this case the vexed copy of the confessio that is now beinecke osborn ms fa.1. two areas of gower’s minor literary activity that usually escape notice altogether or are denigrated in contrast with his major works are scrutinized by alastair j. minnis and siân echard, respectively: the latin glosses to the confessio and the poet’s shorter latin verse. minnis’s “inglorious glosses?” and echard’s “the long and the short of it: on gower’s forms” both encourage us to view the poet’s reviews 313 selim 20 (2013–2014) literary sensibility as “knotty” (249), to use echard’s metaphor— more intricate, versatile, and self-refl ective than critics usually allow. robert r. edwards and ethan knapp likewise introduce us to a complex gower, but by adopting a wider and comprehensive rather than narrow and selective perspective on his achievement— comparing it, respectively, to the artistic ambition of virgil’s epic trajectory and to the historical grandeur of balzac’s la comédie humaine. the poet who emerges fr om a reading of john gower in england and iberia is i think a much more sophisticated and bracing fi gure than even gower afi cionados have hitherto acknowledged: global in his appeal, erudite in his textual practices, and (for someone so preoccupied with the seven deadly sins) refr eshingly secular in his aesthetic concerns. this gower will never entirely replace the poet valued by other, more traditional readers for his parochialism, conventionality, and religion. he will, however, usefully complicate that author’s portrait and will it is hoped inspire a new generation of scholars to explore the works and infl uence of one of medieval england’s internationally regarded literary geniuses. michael p. kuczynski tulane university • selim 16.indb nikolaus ritt, selim 16 (2009): 65–89issn: 1132–631x exploring middle english (mor-) phonotactics: the case of word final /nd/ abstract the article investigates the diachronic interaction between phonology and morphology in the domain of morphonotactics, one of whose basic assumptions is that the relationship between the phoneme sequences which a language allows lexically and the ones which it produces through morphological operations is systematic, functional, and governed by domain specifi c dynamics. the historical development of consonant clusters such as /nd/ represents a good testing ground for this assumption: taking middle english as a whole, it is possible to say that /nd/ could occur both at the end of morphologically simple word forms and in the past tense and past participle forms of verbs whose stems ended in /n/. word internal fi nal /nd/ clusters had already existed in old english but the possibility of creating them through past tense formation represented a middle english innovation brought about through schwa loss—whereby word fi nal phoneme sequences (exclusively lexical originally) came to be joined by numerous (morphologically-produced) new homophones. such a change can be expected to have produced observable eff ects either in the domain of lexical phonotactics or in morphology, or in both. a er outlining the basics of morphonotactic theory and some of its more specifi c predictions (e.g. a preference for purely lexical phonotactic confi gurations and morphologically produced ones to be non-homophonous), i will then discuss what eff ects changes in the morphonotactic system of a language can be expected to have, and will fi nally propose that the peculiar way in which eme vowel lengthening before /nd/ clusters seems to have been implemented might indeed represent such an eff ect. keywords: phonology, morphology, (mor-)phonotactics, consonant clusters, middle english, homophones, vowel lengthening. resumen el artículo investiga la interacción diacrónica entre fonología y morphología en el terreno de la morfonotáctica, uno de cuyos presupuestos fundamentales es que la relación entre las secuencias de fonemas permitidas en el léxico de una lengua y las producidas mediante mecanismos morfológicos es sistemática, funcional y regida por la una dinámica específi ca. el desarrollo histórico de grupos consonánticos como /nd/ supone un terreno experimental adecuado para este presupuesto: tomando en consideración todo el inglés medio, podría afi rmarse que /nd/ podía ocurrir tanto al fi nal de palabras morfológicamente simples como en el pasado simple y el participio pasado de verbos cuya raíz terminaba en /n/. el inglés antiguo tenía palabras que terminaban en /nd/, pero la posibilidad de crearlas mediante la formación de tiempos verbales es una novedad del inglés medio, causada por la pérdida de la schwa, y por la cual, a secuencias de fi nal de palabra originalmente léxicas se les unieron numerosos homófonos nuevos, creados por procedimientos morfológicos. tal cambio debería haber producido efectos observables en el campo de la phonotáctica léxica, en el de la morfología o en ambos. tras exponer los elementos fundamentales de la teoría morfonotáctica y algunas de sus predicciones más específi cas (p.ej. la tendencia a evitar que las confi guraciones fonotácticas puramente léxicas y las de origen morfológicas no fueran homófonas), se discuten los cambios esperables en el 66 nikolaus ritt selim 16 (2009) sistema morfonotáctico de una lengua, para fi nalmente sugerir que el modo en que sucedieron los alargamientos vocálicos antes de /nd/ en inglés medio temprano serían un ejemplo de tal tendencia. palabras clave: fonología, morfología, (mor)fonotáctica, grupos consonánticos, inglés medio, homófonos, alargamiento vocálico. 1 introduction l ooking at middle english /nd/ clusters, this paper investigates the diachronic interaction between phonology and morphology in the domain of morphonotactics. going back, originally, to ideas of nikolaj trubetzkoy, morphonotactics has recently been proposed as a potentially promising new fi eld of research by dressler and dz iubalska (e.g. 2006, or 2010). one of the basic assumptions on which morphonotactic theory rests is that the relationship between the phoneme sequences which a language allows lexically (i.e. morpheme internally) and the ones which it produces through morphological operations such as concatenation is systematic and functional, and governed by domain specifi c dynamics. the historical development of consonant clusters such as /nd/ represents a good testing ground for this assumption: if one considers the middle english period as a whole, it is possible to say that /nd/ clusters could occur both at the end of morphologically simple word forms (e.g. feond ‘fi end’, hond ‘hand’, land, round, etc.) and in the past tense and past participle forms of verbs whose stems ended in /n/ (e.g. iturn+d ‘turned’, join+ed ‘joined’, ordain+d ‘ordained’, ston+ed, etc.). while word internal fi nal /nd/ clusters had already existed in old english, however, the possibility of creating them through past tense formation represented a middle english innovation. it was brought about through schwa loss, which produced wordforms with the structure /xnd/  om earlier /xnǝd/ (as in lme /dʒoind/ < eme /ʤoinǝd/ ‘joined’). thereby, word fi nal phoneme sequences which had originally been exclusively lexical came to be joined by a large number of morphologically produced homophones that had not existed earlier. if the basic assumption outlined above is correct, such a change can be expected to have produced observable eff ects either in the domain of lexical phonotactics or in morphology, or in both. in order to test that very general prediction, this paper will fi rst outline the basics of morphonotactic theory and some of the more specifi c predictions that can be derived  om it—one of them being a preference for purely lexical phonotactic confi gurations and morphologically produced ones to 67 exploring middle english (mor-)phonotactics selim 16 (2009) be non-homophonous. it will then discuss what eff ects changes in the morphonotactic system of a language can be be expected to have, and will fi nally propose that the peculiar way in which eme vowel lengthening before /nd/ clusters (/biːnd/ < /bind/ ‘bind’, but not */haːnd/ < /hand/ ‘hand’) seems to have been implemented might indeed represent such an eff ect. 2 consonant clusters in morphonotactic theory in a number of recent papers, dressler, dz iubalska-kołaczyk (2006) and others (dressler, dz iubalska-kołaczyk & pestal 2010, zydorowicz 2007, 2009) suggested that morphonotactics, which was originally conceived of by trubetzkoy (1931) as the study of the internal phonological structure of morphemes (cf. 1931: 161 ff .), might be  uitfully expanded to investigate also the “shapes of morpheme combinations, particularly when they diff er  om the phonotactics of lexical roots and thus signal morpheme boundaries” (dressler & dz iubalska-kołaczyk 2006: 72). that such diff erences do exist is obvious, and has long been recognized. in fact, at least since spe (chomsky & halle 1968) much phonological research has been carried out to account for diff erences between the prosodic structures and, particularly, the stress patterns of morphologically simple items and those of complex ones in terms of stratifi ed derivational theories such as lexical phonology (e.g. kiparsky 2000, macmahon 2000, giegerich 1999) or more recently (stratal) optimality theory (e.g. bermúdez-otero forthcoming). this paper focuses on a diff erent aspect of phonotactics, namely on the word fi nal consonant cluster /nd/. in order to set the  ame for this discussion, and in order to show how morphonotactic theory can contribute, let us look fi rst at the distribution of word fi nal consonant clusters in modern english. restricting our view to clusters with two constituents only, we can observe that some of them occur exclusively in lexical roots (such as /ŋk/ in ink, or /mp/ in lamp), others occur exclusively across morpheme boundaries (such as /md/ in seem+ed, /fs/ in wife+’s, or /ɡz/ in egg+s), and still others occur both in lexical roots and in across boundaries (such as /ts/ in cats or waltz, /ks/ as in lock+s or sex, or /nd/ in hand or gained). in dressler and dz iubalska-kołaczyk’s terms, the fi rst type would be referred to as ‘exclusively phonotactic clusters’, and the second type as ‘exclusively morphonotactic clusters’. clusters of the 68 nikolaus ritt selim 16 (2009) third type, i.e. clusters that occur both within roots and across morpheme boundaries can be ordered on a scale according to the relative  equency of their phonotactic and morphonotactic occurrences. among them, there can be clusters that are morphonotactic by strong default (such as /ts/ which occurs only in very few mono-morphemic roots), clusters that are morphonotactic by weak default (such as /ks/ which occurs in many roots of romance origin), clusters which are  equent both morpheme internally and across boundaries (e.g. /nd/), and so on, as shown in figure 1 below. phonotactic c lusters pt by strong default pt by w eak default pt in the m ajority of cases m pt and pt cases about equally frequent m pt in the m ajority of cases m pt by w eak default m pt by strong default m orphonotactic c lusters ink lamp gain+ed hand lock+s sex cat+s waltz wife+’s egg+s seem+ed figure 1 now, at fi rst sight this taxonomic exercise might seem superfi cial and somewhat trivial. in languages where consonant clusters occur, it is rather non-surprising that some of them occur in morphologically simple items, and that others may be produced by such processes as the concatenation of morphemes. it also seems obvious that there will be a certain overlap between the two classes. it can be shown, however, that ⒜ interesting a priori predictions can be made about the distribution of clusters among 69 exploring middle english (mor-)phonotactics selim 16 (2009) the categories suggested in figure 1, and that ⒝ interesting further predictions can be derived  om it. 2.1 predictions about the distribution of consonant clusters with morphemes and across boundaries consider fi rst some predictions that can be made a priori about the consonant cluster types to be expected in natural languages at all, and about the probability that they should occur in phonotactic and/or morphonotactic contexts. recall, fi rst of all, that consonant clusters are generally rare in the languages of the world (see e.g. dz iubalska-kołaczyk 2002). it is widely acknowledged that this refl ects the fact that they are suboptimal, primarily, in terms of perception, because the contrast between two consonants is usually smaller than the contrast between a consonant and a vowel. for obvious semiotic reasons, segments are more easily identifi ed, learnt and therefore transmitted when they occur in contexts against which they stand out. therefore, it is no surprise that the most stably transmittable and most  equent syllable type is cv, and in languages where only cv syllables are allowed, consonant clusters can obviously not arise. the perceptually grounded preference for possibly high contrasts among neighboring segments does not only predict that consonant clusters should be generally rare, however. it also predicts, for example, that in languages which do admit consonant clusters, clusters should be more stable and  equent intervocalically than at the beginning or the end of words. this is quite evident because in medial position clusters have vowels on each other sides, with which their constituents will contrast well enough. another prediction is that clusters with two constituents will be more stable and  equent than clusters with three or more constituents, and clusters with relatively strong perceptual contrasts among their constituents more stable and  equent than clusters in which that contrast is weak. at least statistically speaking, these predictions also seem to be borne out in the world’s languages. the general point is that physiological constraints on articulation and perception speci quasi-universal preferences for phonemic inventories and phoneme combinations, and that consonant clusters can of course not be expected to be immune to the impact of such preferences. 70 nikolaus ritt selim 16 (2009) more importantly for the present argument is another prediction, however. it can be argued that universal physiologically grounded preferences like the ones just mentioned should aff ect phonotactic confi gurations more strongly than morphonotactic ones. to see why this is so, compare the cluster /nd/ in a simple lexical morpheme such as land to its homophone in the past tense form gained. look at land fi rst. whenever the word gets produced, the fi nal /d/ in it is always preceded by the homorganic nasal /n/. since the contrast between /n/ and /d/ is small —both in terms of sonority and in terms of place-of-articulation—each of the two segments makes the perception of the other one relatively diffi cult, so that neither can contribute a lot to the successful identifi cation of the word hand. when even the careful articulation of the sound sequence is communicatively relatively ineff ective, however, this may easily motivate speakers to save eff ort in producing it, so that they may fail to release the fi nal /d/, for example, or fail to pronounce the sound altogether. the less o en the fi nal /d/ gets articulated faithfully, however, the less likely it is to be recognized and acquired. therefore, the phonotactic cluster /nd/ in words like hand can be predicted to be relatively instable and variationist studies show that this is indeed the case (e.g labov 1972). in cases like that of past tense gained, on the other hand, the situation is slightly diff erent: here, the /n/ and the /d/ that make up the fi nal /nd/ cluster do not occur exclusively in each other’s company. instead, present tense uses of gain will see the fi nal /n/ in a variety of diff erent contexts, and many of them will be more favorable to its successful perception, such as the vowel which follows it in women gain a voice, for example. likewise, the /d/ in the past tense morph will o en occur a er segments with which it contrasts much better than with the /n/ of gain. therefore, the negative eff ect which the two consonants may have on each other’s perception in gained will not aff ect their successful recognition and acquisition as much as it does when the two sounds co-occur in mono-morphemic words. instead, each of them will o en get produced, recognized and acquired independently of the other. thus, the /n/ will come to be stably represented in the base form gain, and the /d/ in the past tense morpheme -ed, and these independent representations will facilitate the recognition of the sounds even when they occur in the perceptually sub-optimal sequence gained. to the extent that speakers can trust the constituents 71 exploring middle english (mor-)phonotactics selim 16 (2009) of morphonotactic clusters like /n+d/ in gained to be recognized and to unfold their intended communicative eff ect, they will be motivated to invest in their articulation and to suppress reduction processes. once again, evidence  om variationist studies shows that this is indeed the case (see labov 1972). thus, the fact that the constituents of morphonotactic clusters are also transmitted independently of each other, while those in phonotactic clusters are not, explains why the former should be more immune to the pressures  om universal phonotactic constraints such as the preference for cluster constituents to contrast well with each other. therefore, morphonotactic clusters can be expected to be more marked or less preferred, on average, than phonotactic ones, and  om this follows in turn that languages which admit clusters at all are likely to include at least some that are exclusively morphonotactic. for english, german and polish, dressler and dz iubalska-kołaczyk (2006) have demonstrated that this is indeed the case. it needs to be added, however, that even morphologically produced sound sequences cannot be fully immune to physiologically grounded constraints on their phonotactic viability. thus, in spite of the fact that their constituents may be independently transmitted in phonotactically preferred environments, morphonotactic clusters that are extremely diffi cult to pronounce or to perceive will clearly not be stable either. so the prediction is not that they will be extremely dispreferred in terms of phonotactic naturalness, but only that they can aff ord to be less preferred than phonotactic clusters. finally, there is a third prediction that can be made a priori, at least for languages where the inventory of sounds that can occur in infl ectional and derivational affi xes is highly restricted (cf. jakobson 1962): in such languages, the variety among cluster types can be expected to be higher among phonotactic clusters than among morphonotactic ones. in english, for example, this clearly applies: the inventory of purely consonantal infl ectional and derivational suffi xes includes only /s/ and /z/, which occur in 3rd person present tense forms and in noun plurals, /d/ and /t/, which occur in past tense and past participle endings, and /θ/ which occurs in ordinals and de-adjectival nouns like strength, or width. thus, there are no word fi nal morphonotactic clusters that end in /p/ /b/, /m/, /k/, /ɡ/, /ŋ/, /ʧ /, /ʤ/, etc., while such clusters occur quite  equently at the 72 nikolaus ritt selim 16 (2009) end simple morphemes, as in limp, bulb, elm, sink, ring, fi nch, or singe, for example. generalizing  om this observation, it can be expected that languages which admit clusters are likely to include at least some that are exclusively phonotactic. we can now draw a fi rst summarizing conclusion. the fact that morphonotactic clusters are more likely to be immune to the pressures of universal physiologically grounded preferences than phonotactic ones predicts the existence of exclusively morphonotactic clusters, while the fact that the segment inventory of infl ectional and derivational affi xes is o en limited predicts the existence of exclusively phonotactic clusters. this implies that on the category scale in figure 1 a relatively high number of cluster types will be found near its edges than in its centre, i.e. the number of clusters that occur both within morphemes and across boundaries will be smaller than if their distribution were random. putting it more simply still, there will be a tendency for consonant clusters to distribute complementarily between typically phonotactic and typically morphonotactic categories. 2.2 the semiotic potential of distributional diff erences between phonotactic and morphonotactic clusters now, as indicated above, it is possible to derive some further predictions  om this. dressler and dz iubalska-kołaczyk do so by taking semiotic functionality into consideration, and point out that the predictable tendency of phonotactic and morphonotactic clusters to distribute complementarily lends itself naturally to being utilised for such semiotic purposes. according to them, “prototypical morphonotactic clusters [… ] have the function of co-signaling the existence of a morphological rule” (2006: 83). if an english listener perceives clusters such as /fs/, /ɡz/ or / md/, for instance, s/he will be able to infer that the word form ending in it must be morphologically complex, i.e. a plural, a genitive or a 3rd person present in proof+s, egg+s, wife+’s, rogue+’s, (s/he) cough+s, or (s/he) dig+s, or a past tense or participle in seem+ed or roam+ed. recognising this potential, dressler and dz iubalska-kołaczyk hypothesise that their ability to signal morphological complexity may be an additional motivation for the stability of exclusively morphonotactic clusters both in production and in diachrony. by the same rationale, on the other hand, they point 73 exploring middle english (mor-)phonotactics selim 16 (2009) out that such morphologically created clusters that are homophonous with well established phonotactic counterparts can obviously not fulfi l this function well. their overall implication is then that the inherent tendency of phonotactic and morphonotactic clusters to distribute complementarily and to cluster on the edges of the scale in figure 1 can be expected to be further enhanced through the signalling function it can be made to serve. thus, morphonotactic clusters will tend to be more marked than phonotactic ones not only because they are more immune to pressures  om physiologically grounded constraints on their articulatory and perceptual viability, as argued above, but also because they will be positively selected for their markedness and the signalling function it serves. another prediction that dressler and dz iubalska-kołaczyk derive  om their arguments is that morphologically complex word forms which have the boundary in a cluster that occurs  equently in simple word forms as well ought to be particularly prone to lexicalisation, to losing their morphological transparency, and to becoming irregular. “expanding on arguments used by hay & baayen (2002, 2005)” (dressler & dz iubalskakołaczyk 2006: 72), they argue that morphonotactic clusters with  equent phonotactic homophones are hardly apt to co-signal the application of morphological rules (mrs) and thus do not stimulate morphological decomposition and therefore […] may be liable to lose their internal morpheme boundaries in diachronic development. (ibid.) thereby, originally morphonotactic clusters become normal phonotactic ones, and the tendency to avoid overlaps, or homophonies, between phonotactic and morphonotactic clusters is further strengthened. 2.3 summary to sum up, morphonotactic theory, as developed by dressler and dz iubalska-kołaczyk, makes the following predictions: because morphonotactic confi gurations are less strongly constrained by universal preferences than phonotactic ones they can be expected to be more marked than the latter. therefore, languages can be expected to have some clusters that occur only across morpheme boundaries but not within morphemes. similarly, the fact that the inventory of segments that can 74 nikolaus ritt selim 16 (2009) appear in infl ectional and derivational morphemes will o en be smaller than the inventory of segments lexical morphemes predicts that languages will o en include some clusters that that can appear in within lexical morphemes but never across boundaries. while these two predictions are almost self evident, however, morphonotactic theory—as conceived of by dressler and dz iubalska-kołaczyk—goes further than that: since the signaling function which morphonotactic confi gurations clusters may assume by being more marked than morpheme internal phonotactic ones is served better if the number of homophonous morphonotactic and phonotactic confi gurations is small, it is predicted that languages will tend to keep homophonies of this kind minimal. that is to say, the inherent tendency of phonotactic and morphonotactic confi gurations to distribute complementarily is expected to be additionally enhanced, because speakers realize and exploit its semiotic potential. therefore, diachronic changes in both the phonological and the morphological domains which diminish homophonies between morphonotactic and phonotactic confi gurations ought to be more expected than changes with the opposite eff ect. this is clearly a relatively strong prediction, which deserves to be put to the test. 3 final /nd/ clusters in middle english in order to do so, the second part of this paper discusses the word fi nal cluster /nd/ in middle english. as i shall show, it provides a very good test case for morphonotactic theory, because historical developments in english phonology brought about homophonies of the very type that the theory predicts to be semiotically undesirable and that ought to trigger therapeutic eff ects. i begin by sketching a brief overview. 3.1 (old and) early middle english in old english, word fi nal /nd/ clusters were exclusively phonotactic. they occurred in nouns such as lond ‘land’, feond ‘enemy’, freond ‘ iend’, or pund ‘pound’ in adjectives like blind, in the highly  equent conj unction ond ‘and’, and in the present participle suffi x -end ‘-ing’. since in old english infl ectional endings were generally syllabic, and usually began with vowels (in later periods most probably schwa, cf. lass 1994: 123 75 exploring middle english (mor-)phonotactics selim 16 (2009) ff .), word fi nal morphotactic consonant clusters did practically not exist. since this applies of course also to past tense and past participle endings, morphonotactic fi nal /n+d/ clusters did not occur, except, possibly, in highly causal or fast speech. the situation is likely to have persisted in early middle english. phonotactic fi nal /nd/s will have been about as  equent as they had in old english, and morphonotactic ones still improbable, even though occasional spellings like iturnd ‘turned’ (katherine group [juliane]: 95), itund ‘closed’ (ancrene wisse: 215), or ibearnd ‘burnt’ (ancrene wisse: 165) can be found, which suggest that fast or casual speech variants in which the schwa of the -ed suffi x was deleted may have become more common. in terms of morphonotactic theory, and its inherent predictions, the situation in old and early middle english does not seem to be particularly interesting. a few observations nevertheless deserve to be made. first of all, the fact that no morphonotactic but many phonotactic fi nal clusters occurred word fi nally appears to be somewhat puzzling. it seems to contradict the assumption that purely phonotactic sequences ought to be more strongly constrained by universal physiologically grounded preferences than morphonotactic ones. since word fi nal clusters are generally dispreferred, then it would seem that they ought to occur more easily in morphonotactic contexts than in phonotactic ones. however, the fact that most old english infl ectional endings began with vowels can help to understand this apparent oddity, because infl ection would o en render clusters that were fi nal in some forms intervocalic in others; and —as observed above (see p. 3) already—word medial, intervocalic clusters are generally held to be much less marked than fi nal ones. (dz iubalskakołaczyk 2002). thus, for instance, oe freond ‘ iend’ would actually have occurred with a fi nal /nd/ cluster only in some of its forms, such as the nominative and the accusative singular. in genitives, plurals, and datives, on the other hand, it would o en show up as freond+es, or freond+e,1 and in such contexts both the /n/ and the /d/ would be neighbored by vowels, with which they contrasted well enough. being relatively easy to perceive and to acquire in such contexts, the /nd/ clusters would be indirectly stabilized also in case forms in which they were word fi nal, because they did not depend on them exclusively for being successfully transmitted. 1 although athematic datives (i.e. freond-ø) are also attested. (cf lass 1994:137). 76 nikolaus ritt selim 16 (2009) the other thing to be said about the status of fi nal /nd/ clusters on old and early english is that it does—obviously but also somewhat trivially— conform to the other assumption of morphonotactic theory, namely that languages will generally avoid homophonies between phonotactic and morphonotactic confi gurations. nevertheless, it can be claimed that word fi nal /nd/ clusters served to indicate the morphological simplicity of the word forms in which they occurred, because they were never created through morphological processes. 3.2 late middle english so much for the old and early middle english situation: as the middle english period progressed, the situation was changed dramatically, because unstressed syllables were increasingly aff ected by reduction processes, and these processes caused schwa vowels to gradually disappear  om practically all infl ectional suffi xes. middle english schwa loss is discussed in considerable depth in lass (1992), and minkova (1991) represents a book length study to the history of fi nal schwas, so only the basic facts need to be rehearsed here. most probably, schwa loss started as a postlexical process, which was fi rst restricted to word fi nal schwas in hiatus, (1) ǝ → ø / σs(σ) x__#v where it removed them in contexts like himm sholld(e) onn eorþe shæwenn (ormulum: h 876). next, it seems to have been gradually extended to word fi nal schwas in general, (2) ǝ → ø / σs(σ) x__# removing them in contexts like vor wan(e) þu sittest on þin(e) rise (owl and nightingale, 894). eventually, also schwas in closed fi nal syllables were lost, except where the deletion would have yielded such extremely dispreferred clusters as /t+d/, /d+d/, /s+s/, /ʃ+s/ or /ʒ+z/. (3) ǝ → ø / σs(σ) x_y#, where xy is phonotactically well formed. a er that change, schwas did not surface anymore in contexts like for, lording(e)s, sith i twelf yeer was of age, thonk(e)d be god, that is etern(e) on lyve (wife of bath’s prologue, ct: 4 f.) 77 exploring middle english (mor-)phonotactics selim 16 (2009) of course, much socio-stylistic variability will have been involved in what looks like a clean sequence in the representation above. also, schwa deletion in closed syllables is likely to have remained a post-lexical process through much of the middle english period. it is nevertheless clear, however, that it created a large variety of new word fi nal consonant clusters, both word internally and across morpheme boundaries, and this is what matters in the context of the present discussion. as far as the fi nal cluster /nd/ is concerned, schwa deletion must fi rst have increased the number of phonotactic, word-internal occurrences by removing the sound  om infl ectional endings of more or less all word classes (cf. minkova 1991: 125–151). a rough quantitative estimate of the increase in phonotactic xnd forms through schwa deletion can be gained, if one searches a representative sample of early middle english texts for <*nd> forms on the one hand, and <*nde> forms on the other. excluding the highly  equent conj unction and, the hm1 section of the helsinki corpus (1150–1250), for example, contains 101 types and 397 tokens of word forms ending in <nd>, and 315 types and 855 tokens of word forms ending in <nde>. if one assumes that forms ending in <nde> contained schwas that were eventually lost, fi nal schwa deletion can thus be estimated to have increased the  equency of xnd types by about 2oo%, and that of xnd tokens by about 115%. while the number of word fi nal /nd/ clusters rose during the fi rst phase of schwa deletion, the fact that schwas were still stable in closed syllables for some time helped to support their stability because they would still occur as medial clusters in plural and genitive forms of nouns (hound nom/acc/dat – hound+es gen sg/pl) and in various forms of verbs (bind – bind+en inf, bind+eð 3rd sg pres, bind+end pres part, etc.). at the same time, the absence of morphologically produced homophones allowed fi nal /nd/ to continue to serve as indicators of morphological simplicity. thus, all in all at this stage, the situation still conforms to the assumptions and predictions of morphonotactic theory as proposed by dressler and dz iubalska-kołaczyk, and as described above (see p. 4 f.). as schwas came to be lost in closed syllables as well, however, two situations arose that seem to be diffi cult to reconcile with it. on the one hand, phonotactic fi nal /nd/ clusters lost at least some the indirect support they received  om occurring before schwas in infl ected forms, 78 nikolaus ritt selim 16 (2009) because those schwas were deleted. thus, instead of phonotactically quite natural /huːndǝs/, plural and genitive formation would no produce the highly marked triple fi nal cluster /ndz /  om the sg /huːnd/ ‘hound’. on the other hand, schwa deletion resulted in the creation of  equent morphonotactic /nd/s, which arose when past tense or participle forms were created  om verbs that ended in /n/, such as sinnen ‘to sin’, runnen ‘to run’, monen ‘to moan’, etc. clearly, in terms of morphonotactic theory this development seems to be unexpected. the less problematic aspect is the creation of triple clusters like /ndz / in plurals like hounds. while they may not have helped to make the /d/ more easily perceivable than in absolutely word fi nal positions, these newly created clusters were themselves highly marked, of course, and since they did not occur phonotactically, they were prototypical morphonotactic clusters and capable of indicating the morphological complexity of the forms in which they occured. that they should be stable is actually what dressler and dz iubalska-kołaczyk would predict. on the other hand, however, the fact that fi nal /nd/ clusters could now both occur within simple morphemes and be morphologically created through past tense and participle formation would clearly have been suboptimal, because the cluster did not seem to indicate anymore whether the word forms in which it occurred were morphologically simple or complex. therefore, the arguments developed by dressler and dz iubalska-kołaczyk would seem to predict that this situation should either be diachronically unstable or else cause therapeutic changes of some kind. however, the former prediction does obviously not hold: homophonies between phonotactic and morphonotactic fi nal /nd/ clusters seem to have remained stably established in english until the present day. clearly, there are still many simple words that end in /nd/ (such as and, bend, end, hand, hound, kind, land, lend, mind, send, wind, to name just a few), and at the same time, regular past tense formation still applies productively to verbs that end in /n/, and thereby produces forms such as burned, loaned, moaned, sinned, tanned, and so on. this leaves the other possibility, namely that the english language developed some strategies in order to neutralize the semiotically unwelcome eff ect which schwa deletion had created in its morphonotactic system. if no such strategies can be found, it 79 exploring middle english (mor-)phonotactics selim 16 (2009) will have to be concluded that the ability of phonotactic confi gurations to signal morphological structure may be nothing more than an accidental or epiphenomenal side eff ect of tendencies that are expected for independent reasons: languages may happen to be able to exploit that possibility more  equently at some times and less  equently at others, but nothing about their development can be derived  om the fact that the possibility exists. 4 morphonotactic theory and /nd/ after schwa deletion let us recapitulate. the creation of morphonotactic fi nal /nd/ clusters through the deletion of schwas in past tense and participle endings seems to have created a semiotically suboptimal situation, because when listeners perceived a word form that ended in /nd/, the cluster did not tell them much about the morphological structure of the word. of course, statistically speaking, phonotactic /nd/s were considerably more  equent than morphonotactic ones. if one searches section hm4 of the helsinki corpus (1420–1500), one fi nds that about 87% (2208 tokens) of word forms ending in /nd/ are lexically simple, and only 13% (330 tokens) complex.2 thus, the cluster by itself was certainly no useful indicator of morphological complexity—on the contrary, if it signaled anything at all then it would have been that the word forms in which it occurred were morphologically simple, and that guess would have been wrong in 13% of all cases. however, the picture which these numbers suggest is too simple, and somewhat unrealistic: it rests on the implicit and unwarranted assumption that the morphological structure of any word form ending in /nd/ would be signalled—or fail to be signalled—by the mere fact that it contained the specifi c fi nal cluster. this is misleading because fi nal clusters occur by defi nition at the end of something, i.e. at the end of word forms which may vary considerably as far as their overall phonotactic gestalt, of which fi nal /nd/ is just one aspect, is concerned. thus, eme fi nal /nd/s occurred in forms where they were preceded by nothing but a single short vowel as in and, or end⒠ , in more complex monosyllabic forms hound, lerned ‘learned’, fownde ‘found’, as well as in polysyllabic forms such as doand(e), ‘doing’, erande ‘errand’, euerlastande ‘everlasting’, recomende ‘recommend’, 2 the highly  equent copula and was once again not considered in this calculation. 80 nikolaus ritt selim 16 (2009) and so on. clearly, the overall phonotactic shape of the word forms in which /nd/ was the fi nal cluster may have contributed to any inference concerning their morphological structure. therefore, they need to be taken into consideration as well, if one wants to assess how easy it may have been for speakers of middle english to derive the morphological structure of word forms  om the fact that they ended in /nd/. 4.1 final /nd/ clusters and the role of their phonotactic environment in supporting their signalling function of course, a crucial question is how much detail should be taken into account. obviously, the exercise only makes sense if one classifi es word forms into fairly general categories, because otherwise, and radically speaking, one might just as well regard every single word form with fi nal /nd/ as a particular phonotactic structure, and—absolute homophones apart—it is trivially true that listeners will know what morphological structure a word form has once they have fully recognised it. for instance, saying that the fi nal /nd/ signals the morphological complexity of a word form if it occurs a er /ler/ as in me lerned, amounts merely to saying that speakers will recognise the form /lernd/ as the past tense of lernen. in such a case, the contribution which the fi nal cluster makes does not go beyond the contribution of any other segment in the word form. its special status as a relatively marked morphonotactic cluster plays no special role at all. of course, by the same rationale, the contribution that / nd/ can be said to make to a successful identifi cation of the morphological structure of a word form is of course greatest, if it disambiguates it in word forms of all possible shapes. in that case it would be a prototypical, exclusively morphonotactic cluster—but we have seen that this is not the case. therefore, in order for it to play a meaningful role in facilitating the recognition of morphological structure, the categories of phonotactic confi gurations in which it can be shown to do so, must at least be broad and include as many individual word forms as possible. 4.2 the role of the metrical weight of word forms now, there seems indeed to be a simple and rather natural way of dividing me word forms in just two classes, so that in each of the two classes 81 exploring middle english (mor-)phonotactics selim 16 (2009) the predictiveness of fi nal /nd/ with regard to morphological structure is signifi cantly higher than among all /nd/ forms taken together. the criterion is based on metrical weight: if one considers the foot which the fi nal /nd/ belongs to, and takes the cluster away, the remaining constituents may either amount to a light syllable—i.e cv—as in a(nd), ha(nd), te(nd), se(nd), or e(nd), or to more than that, as in lear(nd), turnd (cvc), bind, hound (cvv), or itake(nd), ‘indicated’, faste(nd), erra(nd), doa(nd) (σσ). for the sake of simplicity let us call the former class of word forms light, and the latter one heavy. on the basis of this classifi cation, it turns out that a er schwa deletion the vast majority of morphonotactic fi nal /nd/s occurred in heavy forms (taken+d ‘signifi ed’, christen+d ‘christened’, mon+ed ‘moaned’. a search of the hm4 section of the helsinki corpus yields a proportion of slightly over 96% of all tokens. (occurrences of banned and sinned are notable exceptions, and although the latter is  equent in terms of tokens, it is probably over-represented in the corpus, which includes a substantial number of religious texts). among phonotactic fi nal /nd/s, on the other hand, the situation is diff erent. first of all, there are a large number of present participles that end in -end (e.g. seand ‘seeing’, goand ‘going’, etc.). being at least disyllabic, they are all heavy in terms of our defi nition, and the /nd/ clusters in them are phonotactic because they do not span a morpheme boundary. present participles represent roughly a quarter of all disyllabic word forms in /nd/. in the context of the present discussion, they constitute a special case, however. one reason is that all present participles represent really one and the same /nd/-fi nal morpheme, namely -end, although the type has many tokens. also, even though the /nd/ clusters in participles are phonotactic on our defi nition, the word forms in which they occur are always morphologically complex, although the boundary is not between the /n/ and the /d/. therefore, it is not fully adequate to say that their overall phonotactic structure, including the fi nal /nd/ cluster, identifi es them as morphologically simple. for those reasons, the present participle morpheme -end, will be le out of the discussion for the time being. if we look at lexical morphemes only, then, it appears that only 16% of them occurred in heavy word forms (such as husband ‘husband’, errand ‘errand’, bind, or hund ‘hound’) all the others in light ones. thus, there 82 nikolaus ritt selim 16 (2009) seems to be correlation between the likelihood of a fi nal /nd/ cluster to be morphonotactic and the overall metrical weight of the word forms in which it occurred. this is actually not very surprising, if one takes into account that there is a plausible, ultimately physiologically grounded preference for simple morphemes not to be longer than necessary for eff ective communication. this preference obviously implies that morphologically simple morphs will tend to be shorter than word forms resulting  om concatenation, and this in turn implies that there will tend to be more segments before morphonotactic /n+d/ clusters than before phonotactic /nd/ clusters. the crucial question to be asked then, is how well the morphonotactic status of a fi nal /nd/ cluster can actually be predicted, if the heaviness of the preceding material is taken into account as well. in order to check this, i have once again looked at tokens of word forms with fi nal /nd/ in the hm4 section of he helsinki corpus. the results for /nd/ clusters are shown in figure 2. figure 2. morphonotactic and phonotactic fi nal /nd/s in metrically light word forms figure 2 clearly shows that practically all light words forms in /nd/ were morphologically simple. speakers would therefore have been well able to infer their morphological structure  om their phonotactic shape. 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 mpt (type sinn+ed) pt (type hand) ⒉ 08 9⒎ 92 83 exploring middle english (mor-)phonotactics selim 16 (2009) pt (type bind) mpt (type taken+d, lern+de) 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 3⒎ 74 6⒉ 26 for heavy forms, however, the situation appears not to be quite so straightforward. the results of the corpus search are charted in figure 3. figure 3. morphonotactic and phonotactic fi nal /nd/s in metrically heavy word forms that 62 percent of heavy /nd/-fi nal word forms are morphologically complex while 38 percent are not, does certainly not represent a good basis for statistical inferences. in such forms, the presence of an fi nal /nd/ does not seem to be semiotically signifi cant, and a situation seems to obtain, which is clearly suboptimal  om the perspective of morphonotactic theory, and throws doubt on its central hypothesis that languages should avoid phonotactic confi gurations that are ambivalent in terms of their morphological structure. however, the class of heavy /nd/-fi nal forms can be further divided in ways that increase the morphological predictiveness of their phonotactic shapes. thus, it seems to be the case that practically all forms among them that are morphologically simple are monosyllabic words of the type hound or bind. monosyllabic words of the type lernde ‘learned’, as well as disyllabic ones, such as takend ‘signifi ed’, awakend ‘awakened’, or christend ‘christened’, were more or less always complex. this means that the only really ambiguous phonotactic confi gurations are word forms with rhymes of the type /xvvnd/. 84 nikolaus ritt selim 16 (2009) 4.3 vowel quality and the implementation of homorganic lengthening before fi nal /nd/ now, apart  om freond ‘ iend’, and feond ‘enemy’, practically all simple words of the /xvvnd/ type were produced through a sound change known as homorganic lengthening. this sound change is supposed to have lengthened vowels before homorganic clusters of sonorants and voiced obstruents such as /ld/, /rd/, /rz/ and /rð/ /mb/, /ŋɡ/, and /nd/. the status of this change has always been considered as questionable ever since it was proposed by karl luick, because it certainly does not seem to represent anything like a good neo-grammarian sound change, and because it is odd in a number of additional respects too. for instance, lengthenings before the cluster /ŋɡ/ are supposed to have been ‘reversed’ soon a er having been implemented so that none of them have survived into modern english. in the case of /rd/, /rz/ and /rð/, on the other hand, any unambiguous long terms eff ects of the change have been obscured by later eff ects, which /rc/ custers had on the quality and the quantity of the preceding vowels, and something similar holds for /ld/ clusters. thus, stockwell and minkova (1992) have suggested that homorganic lengthening does not really deserve to be considered as a single coherent sound change at all. instead, we seem to be con onted with a heterogeneous set of individual lengthenings, of which some happen to have aff ected just enough words to avoid being classifi ed as sporadic. it is true that the clusters before which the lengthenings occurred were all homorganic and voiced, but the large number of exceptions to, or apparent reversals of the change, make it doubtful that it was ever systematically implemented in that environment. looking at the cluster /nd/ in particular, its role in homorganic lengthening is odd in another respect as well. while it does seems to have caused lengthening in more than a handful of words, it seems to have stably aff ected only high vowels, while words such as bend, bond, land, hand, tend, sand, band, etc. all kept their short vowels. this is strange because normally mid and low vowels are much more likely to undergo lengthening than high ones. this may hang together with the fact that low vowels are more sonorous than high ones, perceived as more prominent than the latter, and therefore more easily interpreted as long. another physiologically based explanation may be that the more 85 exploring middle english (mor-)phonotactics selim 16 (2009) pronounced jaw movement required for the production of low vowels causes their articulation to take more time. whatever the ultimate reason, however, it is empirically well established that high vowels are less prone to lengthening than mid and low ones. therefore, the fact that only high vowels seem to have lengthened before /nd/ is highly exceptional. on the distribution of phonotactic and morphonotactic /nd/ clusters among monosyllabic word forms of the type /xvvnd/, however, the strange way in which homorganic lengthening was implemented seems to have had a surprising eff ect. there appear to have been very few me weak verbs that ended in /iːn/ or /uːn/, and those that did exist, like minen ‘to mine’, pinen ‘to pine’, or brunen ‘to become brown’ were very rarely used. since the same must have applied to their past tense and participle forms, this means that the number of morphonotactic word forms ending in /iːnd/ or /uːnd/ would have been extremely small. on the other hand, there were quite a number of weak verbs, and some of the relatively  equent, which ended in /eːn/, /ɛːn/, /oːn/, /ɔːn/ or / aːn/. among them were clean, glean, hean, mean, lean, wean, yean, green, screen, gleen, keen, preen, sheen, spleen, steen, ween, croon, swoon, groan, loan, moan, bane, cane, crane, gane, pane, plane, wane. now, since there were only very few past tense or participle forms ending in /iːnd/ or /uːnd/, vowel lengthening in words ending in /ind/ or /und/ would have created hardly any ambiguities with regard to morphological structure. on the other hand, the lengthening of oe /land/ or /band/ to /laːnd/ and / baːnd/ would have resulted in me /lɔːnd/ and /bɔːnd/, and would thereby have made it impossible to recognise the morphological complexity of /mɔːnd/ ‘moaned’ and /grɔːnd/ ‘groaned’  om the structure of their rhymes. the same would have been true for other non-high vowels as well, of course: lengthened /e/ in bend or lend would have made the recognition of past tense mende ‘meant’, or cleaned more diffi cult for the same reasons. in short, it seems as if the idiosyncratic implementation of lengthening before /nd/ clusters helped to establish a situation in which the morphological complexity of word forms ending in /nd/ was inferable  om their phonotactic shapes, even though the cluster itself occurred both in phonotactic and in morphonotactic confi gurations. the necessary steps in this inference process are charted in figure 4 below. 86 nikolaus ritt selim 16 (2009) figure 4 now, since there does not seem to be any other plausible reason why nonhigh vowels should have failed to be lengthened before /nd/ clusters, the possibility that their lengthening was avoided, so that the morphological signalling function of rhymes like /eːnd/, /ɛːnd/, /oːnd/, /ɔːnd/ and /aːnd/ could be maintained clearly deserves to be taken seriously. if that was indeed the relevant reason, the way in which homorganic lengthening was implemented in /nd/ forms would represent a development of the very type that dressler and dz iubalska-kołaczyk seem to predict, when they assume that languages prefer morphonotactic clusters which serve as indicators of morphological complexity. of course, the proposal has something teleological about it. it seems at fi rst sight diffi cult to imagine how speakers should know that a sound change would create a problem before it had occurred and suppress it prophylactically, or that they should be able to reverse it, once it had occurred. that explanations like this are problematic has been monosyllabic yes no light yes no high vowel yes no hand bind morphologically simple /nd/ moned cristend morphologically complex /n + d/ 87 exploring middle english (mor-)phonotactics selim 16 (2009) pointed out repeatedly, for example by roger lass (e.g. 1996). from a variationist perspective, however, they can easily be given non-teleological interpretations. in our case, it is perfectly conceivable, for instance, that lengthened variants of land, i.e. /lɔːnd/ might have struck speakers as odd because they associated its rhyme structure with morphologically complex word forms, and this may have caused them to suppress the lengthening process, so that the un-lengthened variant remained stably established in the community. 5 conclusion now, what does the distribution of me word forms that end in /nd/ which has been just described and discussed imply for the hypotheses of morphonotactic theory as developed by dressler and dz iubalskakołaczyk? first of all, it shows that the morphonotactic /nd/ clusters created through schwa deletion, and the fact that they have remained stable, even though there exist numerous phonotactic homophones, is not really as problematic as it fi rst appears. instead, token  equencies in middle english texts suggest that the morphological structure of most word forms that ended in /nd/ could still be relatively easily inferred  om their phonotactic shapes, and that the cluster signalled morphological complexity quite reliably if it occurred in disyllabic forms or in heavy monosyllables as long as they didn’t contain a high vowel. in other words, the prediction that languages will tend to distribute morphotactic and morphonotactic clusters in complementary ways, so that they help to signal the morphological structure of word forms, seems to be fulfi lled. secondly, the possibility to interpret the failure of homorganic lengthening to aff ect non-high vowels suggests that the functionality which arises when morphotactic and phonotactic clusters are distributed complementarily might be more than an accidental by-product of independent factors, and might indeed represent an active force in directing linguistic changes. thereby, the discussion has suggested that the implementation of phonological changes may depend on morphological factors in ways that have so far received little attention. nikolaus ritt university of vienna 88 nikolaus ritt selim 16 (2009) references bermúdez-otero, ricardo forthcoming: stratal optimality theory. oxford, oxford university press. chomsky, noam & morris halle 1968: the sound pattern of english. new york, harper & row. dz iubalska-kołaczyk, katarzyna 2002: beats-and-binding phonology. frankfurt, lang. labov william 1972: sociolinguistic patterns. philadelphia, university of pennsylvania press. dressler, wolfgang u. & katarzyna dz iubalska-kołaczyk 2006: proposing morphonotactics. wiener linguistische gazette 73: 69–87. dressler, wolfgang u., katarzyna dz iubalska-kołaczyk & lina pestal 2010: change and variation in morphonotactics. folia linguistica historica 31: 51–66. giegerich, heinz 1999: lexical strata in english: morphological causes, phonological eff ects. cambridge, cambridge university press. gussmann, edmund 2002: phonology: analysis and theory. cambridge, cambridge university press. hay, jennifer & r. harald baayen 2002: parsing and productivity. in geert booij & jaap van marle eds. yearbook of morphology 2001. dordrecht, kluwer: 203–235. hay, jennifer & r. harald baayen 2005: probabilistic phonotactics and morphological productivity. http://www.ling.canterbury.ac.nz/jen/ documents/haybaayenh_esse.htm. hubmayer, karl 1986: natürliche diachronie. untersuchungen zur phonetischen motivation historischer phonologischer prozesse im englischen. salzburg: universitätsverlag. jakobson, roman 1962: selected writings i. the hague, mouton. kiparsky, paul 2000: opacity and cyclicity. the linguistic review 17: 351–366. lass, roger 1992: phonology and morphology. in norman blake ed. the cambridge history of the english language. volume ii: 1066–1476. cambridge, cambridge university press: 23–155. 89 exploring middle english (mor-)phonotactics selim 16 (2009) received 03 sep 2010; revision received 19 oct 2010; accepted 26 nov 2010 lass, roger 1994: old english. a historical linguistic companion. cambridge, cambridge university press. lass, roger 1986: on sh*tting the door in modern english: a reply to professor samuels. in willem f. koopman, frederike van der leek, olga fischer & roger eaton eds. explanation and linguistic change. amsterdam, john benj amins: 251–256. lass, roger 1997: historical linguistics and language change. cambridge, cambridge university press. lüdtke, helmut 1980: sprachwandel als universales phänomen. in helmut lüdtke ed. kommunikationstheoretische grundlagen des sprachwandels. berlin, springer. mcmahon, april 2000: lexical phonology and the history of english. cambridge, cambridge university press. minkova, donka 1991: the history of fi nal vowels in english. berlin, mouton. pinkser, hans ernst 1974: historische englische grammatik. münchen, niemeyer. plag, ingo 2002: the role of selectional restrictions, phonotactics and parsing in constraining suffi x ordering in english. in geert booij & jaap van marle eds. yearbook of morphology 2001. dordrecht, kluwer: 285–314. ritt, nikolaus 1994: quantity adjustment. vowel lengthening and shortening in early middle english. cambridge, cambridge university press. stockwell, robert p. & donka minkova 1992: homorganic clusters as moric busters. in matti rissanen et al. eds. history of englishes. berlin, mouton. trubetzkoy, nikolaj s. 1931: gedanken über morphonologie. travaux du cercle linguistique de prague 4: 160–163. zydorowicz, paulina 2007: the acquisition of polish morphonotactics. wiener linguistische gazette online 74: 24–44. zydorowicz, paulina 2009: english and polish morphonotactics in fi rst language acquisition. [ph.d. dissertation]. poznań, adam mickiewicz university. • selim 18.indb andrew breeze, selim 18 (2011): 181–183issn: 1132–631x saunders, corinne 2010: magic and the supernatural in medieval english romance. [studies in medieval romance 13]. cambridge, d. s. brewer. pp. viii+304. isbn: 978-1-84384-22⒘ $95.00/£50.00. professor saunders of durham, who in 2001 published a volume on rape, now turns to another sensational theme: magic. her study (in seven chapters) is imposing, at least in its plan. we begin with magic in greece, rome, and the bible, and then go on to early medieval attitudes, including the warnings of st augustine, and the penalties of church councils and canon law. chapter three concerns white magic (used for healing, inducing love, and so on), in which gemstones were thought to be eff ective. ay er that comes black magic: evil arts, shape-shiy ing, medea the witch, alchemy. chapter fi ve discusses the other world, with fairy mistresses, enchanters, knights, and “the world of faery.” then we have christianity as regards miracles, ghosts, and demons, followed by sir thomas malory on sorcery, marvels, and the grail. a brief epilogue gestures towards shakespeare (a midsummer night’s dream, the tempest) and the renaissance. magic in early romance means consideration of standard works: beves of hampton, chaucer’s tales of the franklin, squire, and wife of bath, gower’s confessio, lybeaus desconus, sir degarré, sir gawain and the green knight, sir orfeo, and so on. nevertheless, there seem two major problems. first is the question of focus. paranormal activities of all kinds are here assembled with what some might fi nd to be a lack of cohesion. there appears to be a failure to bring together real magic (amulets, curses, voluntary confessions) with literary treatment of magic (as with gower and the legend of medea). the two are presented side by side, without the contacts between them that might be expected. second is the treatment. despite the attractions of her subject, professor saunders is not the most exciting of writers. more serious than that are actual inaccuracies, as in an account of welsh 182 andrew breeze selim 18 (2011) literature (pp. 180–181). it tells us that celtic narratives of the other world “tend to unfold” in “dream-like” ways. we disagree. in, for example, the four branches of the mabinogi, the supernatural characters behave like ordinary humans, their extraordinary experiences being told in the most straightforward way possible, as kenneth jackson noted in his a celtic miscellany. the book of taliesin is dated to the “thirteenth century” (it is of the early fourteenth). an edition by b. f. roberts of the black book of carmarthen is cited % om the idris foster festschri& of 1978, when no such edition by dr roberts exists. the mabinogi hero pwyll is called “lord” of dyfed, when he is its prince; a signifi cant point, because the precision of these tales on matters of status suggests composition by an author of exalted rank. professor saunders refers on the white book of rhydderch to discussion by r. m. jones in lly! gwyn rhydderch, a title she gives inaccurately, with no mention of the better study by daniel huws (1991). mabinogion tales are cited % om jeff rey gantz’s penguin version of 1976, not sioned davies’s improved world’s classics translation of 2007. the tales are elsewhere misrepresented (p. 202) as “folk stories,” disregarding the universality of narrative in early culture and the evident familiarity of some of them with life at court. here we may again cite kenneth jackson for a classic defi nition of the former in his the international popular tale and early welsh tradition, a volume with comments on stories and the supernatural that have permanent value. it is true that magic and the supernatural in medieval english romance avoids pretentiousness. it re% ains % om dropping the names of fashionable critics who might be praised less and read more. yet some might conclude that the book not only fails to advance its subject as one might expect, but in some aspects will confuse or mislead its readers. it appears that a really penetrating study of magic in the middle english romance, which co-ordinates medieval dealings in the occult with the literary texts, and which 183 reviews selim 18 (2011) shows full understanding of the oral and other traditions behind them, is still to be written. andrew breeze university of navarre, pamplona references bromwich, r. & r. b. jones eds. 1978: astudiaethau ar yr hengerdd: studies in old welsh poetry. caerdydd, gwasg pri5 sgol cymru. davies, s. ed. 2007: the mabinogion. oxford, oxford university press. evans, j. g. ed. 1973: lly! gwyn rhydderch: y chwedlau a’r rhamantau. [the white book of rhydderch: the tales and romances]. caerdydd, gwasg pri5 sgol cymru. gantz, j. ed. 1976: the mabinogion. harmondsworth, penguin. huws, d. 1991: lly9 gwyn rhydderch. cambridge medieval celtic studies 21: 1–37. jackson, k. h. 1961: the international popular tale and early welsh tradition. cardiff , university of wales press. jackson, k. h. 1971: a celtic miscellany: translations ! om the celtic literatures. 2nd ed. harmondsworth, penguin. • selim 18.indb ayoush lazikani, selim 18 (2011): 77–102issn: 1132–631x defamiliarization in the hagiographies of the katherine group: an anchoress’ reading abstract: this article studies the three hagiographies of the katherine group (seinte katerine, seinte marherete, and seinte iuliene), focusing on an anchoress’ reading of these texts. it argues that in reading these hagiographical legends, the anchoress engages in a spectatorship based on defamiliarization or estrangement. deliberately discouraging their readers & om uncritical aff ective stirrings for the saints, the legends invite the anchoress to see beyond this bodily trauma to the heavenly purpose of the suff ering. situating itself within scholarship by jocelyn wogan-browne and sarah salih, this article contends that an anchoritic reader gazes not upon naked tortured fl esh, but upon the divine foundation underpinning this abuse. keywords: female spirituality, early middle english literature, saints, suff ering, anchorites, katherine group, seinte katerine, seinte marherete, seinte iuliene. resumen: este artículo estudia las tres hagiografías del katherine group (seinte katerine, seinte marherete y seinte iuliene), centrándose en la lectura de esos textos por parte de una anacoreta. argumenta que, leyendo estas leyendas hagiográfi cas, la anacoreta se involucra en una contemplación basada en la desfamiliarización o extrañamiento. disuadiendo adrede a sus lectores de acríticos indicios afectivos hacia de las santas, las leyendas invitan a la anacoreta a ver, más allá del trauma corpóreo, el propósito celestial del su& imiento. situándose en el marco de las investigaciones de jocelyn wogan-browne y sarah salih, este artículo sostiene que una lectora anacoreta no mira la torturada carne desnuda sino el fundamento divino que sostiene tal abuso. palabras clave: espiritualidad femenina, literatura inglesa medieval temprana, santas, su& imiento, anacoretas, katherine group, seinte katerine, seinte marherete, seinte iuliene. 1 the anchoritic reader when he likens the humble confessant to a beggar in part v, the ancrene wisse-author encourages the anchoress to appeal to god’s love not only through his suff ering, his holy mother, and his love for the soul and holy church, but also through the love of all his saints (“on alle his halhene luue,” part v, i.125, ll. 420–425).1 saints were constantly visible in the anchorhold of the anchoress reading ancrene wisse. in part i, the author informs the anchoress that, a ̀er kneeling for her lady: aleast to þe oþre ymagnes ant to ower relikes luteð oþer cneolið, nomeliche to þe halhen þe 3e habbeð to þurh luue 1 references to ancrene wisse (part, volume and page) & om millett 2005–2006. 78 ayoush lazikani selim 18 (2011) iturnd ower weofdes, swa muche þe reaðere ȝef ei is ihalhet. (i.8, ll. 60–63) as bella millett notes, aelred of rievaulx’s (1110–1167) austere rejection of images was not consistently followed.2 the anchoress reading ancrene wisse had direct and + equent visual access to saints, though the exact form of these “ymagnes” is not clarifi ed in the text; the presence of the “relikes” may have facilitated a touchbased access.3 complementing the anchoress’ use of saintly images and relics was her careful reading of hagiographies. hagiographical writings were not divorced + om the other elements of the anchoress’ reading programme; the ancrene wisse-author himself advises the reading of various saints’ lives, most famously “ower englische boc of seinte margarete” (part iv, i.93, ll. 931–932). the katherine group hagiographical legends are never directed explicitly at anchoresses, nor did the audience of the texts comprise female recluses alone (millett 1988: 33). given the association of the fi ve katherine group texts with ancrene wisse in the manuscript and linguistic traditions, it remains likely that anchoresses would have comprised part of the readership.4 the anchoritic reader is not intended to re-create the saints’ 2 see her comments on the gilbertine nuns of sixhills priory in millett 2005– 2006: ii.19. see also hoste & talbot 1971: 657. 3 this is not to ignore the fact that reliquaries may have also served to protect the relics + om touch. for a survey of the role of relics and reliquaries in medieval devotion, see the british museum exhibition catalogue treasures of heaven: saints, relics and devotion in medieval europe (bagnoli, klein, mann & robinson 2010). apart + om her possible view of wall paintings depicting saints, the anchoress may have had rich and detailed pictorial representations in her cell, like those “exquisite pictures” of the virgin mary and john the evangelist in the cell discussed in the later rites of durham (1593) and noted in clay 1968: 80. 4 see further millett 1982: xxiii. throughout this article, the reference to a singular “anchoress” and “reader” is deliberate, as its focus is on the anchoresses who had a high level of literacy in english and french, and a basic knowledge of latin. on anchoresses’ literacy, see millett 1996; robertson 2003. 79 defamiliarization in the hagiographies of the katherine group selim 18 (2011) torture literally: the ancrene wisse-author is clear on this point (part viii, i.158, ll. 118–127 and part v, i.129–130, ll. 599–609).5 but she has to be aware of the intricacies of the saints’ trials, with descriptions provided in part iii, i.49, ll. 68–73 and part vi, i.137, ll. 201–204. the author off ers the anchoress a skeletal version of the saints’ narratives; she would have presumably retrieved the full details through her reading of hagiographies.6 comparing various saints’ legends with the life of christina of markyate (b. c. 1096), jocelyn wogan-browne suggests that the violence in such texts had particular relevance to female readers, with the physical brutality encapsulating “violence to the volition of young women” (wogan-browne 1991: 315, 321). and sarah salih (2001) has revealed the attentive reading skills an anchoress employs in con1 onting the savagery of the katherine group hagiographic legends. whilst the three hagiographies in the katherine group—seinte katerine, seinte marherete, and seinte iuliene—are important to the anchoritic reader, they also contradict her usual aff ective receptivity. an anchoress must nurture her capacity to feel physical and, moreover, aff ective pain. yet the saints in these texts remain curiously detached 1 om the sensation of pain through their tortures. in reading the legends of the katherine group, the anchoress engages in a spectatorship based on defamiliarization 5 ancrene wisse is also peppered with holy fi gures apparently known to the author—though probably drawn 1 om the vitae patrum—who suff er on a level that is both impossible and inadvisable for the anchoress. examples include the unnamed man and woman mentioned at the close of part vi (i.144, ll. 479–490), whose severe bodily trauma is recounted to the anchoress. 6 whilst the katherine group hagiographies are, as millett 1988 has shown, “part of a style intended primarily for listeners rather than readers” and intended for “public delivery” (millett 1988: 29, 33–34), an anchoress is likely to have read these saints’ lives. the ancrene wisse-author refers to the “boc” about st margaret, and then immediately refers to reading about st bartholomew (“me redeð,” part iv, i.93, ll. 931–932). 80 ayoush lazikani selim 18 (2011) or estrangement. the implied suff ering is not made familiar enough to “deaden” the sharpness of her reading skills, nor does passive aff ective engagement with the saints impair the “critical detachment” necessary to analyse the legends appropriately.7 unlike the christ of her passion meditations, the saints in these legends remain unreachable and untouchable; and the anchoress remains a distanced spectator, pushed away & om the spectacle and barred & om aff ective entrance. her approach to reading the hagiographies is not identifi able with the aff ective immersion she embraces when meditating on the passion.8 situating itself within the scholarship by wogan-browne and salih, this article contends that an anchoritic reader is inundated with violent imagery to resist it. an anchoritic reader of these texts gazes not upon naked tortured fl esh, but upon the divine foundation underpinning this abuse. the anchoritic spectator’s aff ective distance & om the pain of the saints is closely related to her non-voyeuristic readings of these texts. according to the gaze theory models of john berger and laura mulvey, the fetishized and itemized body of the female is scrutinized by a male gaze, hostile and overpowering, which attempts to reduce the female to a “commodity ready for consumption” by male sexual 7 this article uses russian formalism and the theatre of estrangement as a springboard for discussion of the hagiographies, but it does not use viktor shklovsky’s concept of ostranenie, nor bertolt brecht’s ver! emdungseff ekt, as a full & amework; this anachronistic approach creates more problems than it solves. for “deadening,” see jestrovic 2006: 4: “estrangement (ostranenie) is a means of counteracting one of the most deadening forces in both art and life— habitualization or automatization.” see also the comments on the translation of ostranenie as “defamiliarization, distancing, or estrangement” (jestrovic 2006: 19). on the danger of passive emotional involvement in theatre, see especially the discussion by south american director augusto boal (2008: 395) on brecht’s theories. on “critical detachment” in brecht’s theatre, see bradley 2006: 7. 8 for passion narratives likely to have been read by anchoresses, see especially þe wohunge of ure lauerde, where the reader is invited to share christ’s and mary’s pain (thompson 1958: passim, especially 33, ll. 472–495 and 35, ll. 562–563). 81 defamiliarization in the hagiographies of the katherine group selim 18 (2011) and social appetites (mulvey 2009: 57).9 wogan-browne and salih have both argued convincingly that the katherine group saints are not passive victims of voyeuristic violence, objects of pornography ripped apart at the will of the male torturers (salih 1999; woganbrowne 1994). in their recent collection of essays on pornography and sanctity, bill burgwinkle and cary howie (2010: 8) stress the permeable borderline between viewer and viewed:10 what do pornography and sanctity have in common? […] they produce bodies as spectacle […] and enact a process of synesthetic corporeal interaction such that the viewer believes that s/he can feel what the other is feeling or that the other is in him even more than himself. in these domains, the distinction between bodies that are “lived in” and “looked at” largely disappears. but with the gaze of an estranged spectator, the anchoress actively refuses to “live in” the saints’ bodies. she estranges herself + om the implied pain saturating these texts in order to interpret the violence correctly. it remains unclear what the anchoress does with the residual imagery of horror that permeates the katherine group hagiographies. writing on passion narratives in the middle ages, thomas h. bestul has raised the question of whether the graphic passion scenes would have numbed the audience to violence. he concludes that “the eff ect was not to desensitize their audiences to violence or anesthetize them to brutality” (bestul 1996: 160–161). it is also unlikely that an anchoress is meant to become desensitized + om this overload of grisly imagery in the hagiographies, as this would devastate her acutely sensitive and careful response to the passion. the important point for the purpose of this article is that 9 see also berger 2008. for use of gaze theory in analysis of middle english literature, see especially stanbury 1991. 10 “pornography” is defi ned in the present article as images and texts used for sexual titillation, but, following the nuanced defi nition of pornography given in burgwinkle and howie’s essay collection, it is not a “distinct genre;” it is rather “a mode of manifestation and reception” (burgwinkle & howie 2010: 3). 82 ayoush lazikani selim 18 (2011) a sophisticated anchoritic spectator does not settle her gaze on the carnage. 2 feeling pain in saints’ lives saints’ sentience in medieval hagiographical writings has already received critical attention. as esther cohen has asserted in her recent monograph on pain in medieval cultures, “martyrological” texts are contradictory: “the stories are full of pain infl iction, but pain itself is sometimes simultaneously affi rmed and denied in the same text” (cohen 2010: 229). tracing the saints’ sensitivity to pain over time, she observes that, in the later medieval centuries, “martyrs were far more impassive than impassible” (cohen 2010: 248–249). karen winstead’s book on virgin martyrs includes an assessment of thirteenth-century middle english hagiographies. on the south english legendary, regarding a passage in the juliana legend, winstead remarks: one might conclude that violent passages such as this one are designed to evoke readers’ compassion for the saints’ pain. this interpretation is too simple, however, for descriptions of grisly tortures are almost invariably accompanied by assurances that the saint feels nothing (winstead 1997: 73).11 in her 2006 article on the abbreviated vitae in dominican legendaries, donna trembinski has suggested that the painlessness of the saints enabled the cultural move towards accepting judicial torture in the thirteenth century. the relative levels of sentience evoked in hagiographies and saint-based visual cultures throughout the broad medieval period is a subject beyond the scope of this article; its focus is solely on the three thirteenth-century hagiographies of the katherine group. 11 regarding the katherine group legends, winstead suggests a level of aff ective involvement and identifi cation on the part of the reader, which contrasts with the interpretation put forward in the present article: see especially winstead 1997: 42, 47, 63. 83 defamiliarization in the hagiographies of the katherine group selim 18 (2011) it is now near-commonplace that in all three cases, the torture of the saints has been made more explicit in the middle english adaptations of the latin texts (winstead 1997: 40).12 but the saints’ sensation of pain during these tortures should be treated as a separate question, as winstead’s comment on the south english legendary shows. the katherine, margaret, and juliana of the middle english texts are not consistently “impassible;” there are indications of pain-sensation. margaret shows an awareness of the pain she is about to experience, submitting her body to whatever “bitternesse” comes * om olibrius’ cruel ingenuity, regardless of how “sare” it bites into her (mack 1934: 12, ll. 7–10; quotations * om seinte marherete * om this edition). she again implies her sensation of pain as she is scourged, praying that the wounds and other signs of agony may be wiped clean * om her countenance: lauerd, loke to me ant haue merci of me. so/ e me mi sar swa, ⁊ salue mine wunden, þet hit ne seme nohwer, ne suteli o mi samblant, þet ich derf drehe. (mack 1934: 14, ll. 1–4) she feels pain, but asks only that the pain does not reveal itself. to return to cohen’s phrase, margaret is impassive but not impassible. katherine’s martyred empress also feels pain. as she is about to experience the horrifi c torture of having her breasts torn off * om the roots before being beheaded, the empress admits that for christ she suff ers (“ich þolie”) and is maimed (“me bilim[eð],” 112, l. 779).13 she refers to her “wa,” “wene,” and “pine” (47, ll. 14, 3), and in response, katherine makes clear that her torture will be painful: for þis lutle pine þe alið i lute hwile, endelese reste i þe riche of heouene; for þis swi/ e [sar] þe aswikeð se sone, blissen buten ende. (112, ll. 787–789; emphases added) 12 particular comparisons between the middle english and latin texts will be made in the course of the analysis. 13 lines * om seinte katerine quoted * om d’ardenne & dobson 1981. 84 ayoush lazikani selim 18 (2011) as will be discussed, juliana’s pain is also indicated at points in the text. these references to pain are set against moments of extreme torture where the saints apparently feel no pain at all, revealing the “contradiction” that cohen has observed. the brief references to pain-sensation in the katherine group are signifi cantly less evocative than the accounts of suff ering in christina of markyate’s vita.14 christina’s sensation of physical pain in the hermit roger’s abode is made plain: o quantas sustinuit illic incommoditates ' igoris et estus. famis et sitis. cotidiani ieiunii. loci angustia non admittebat necessarium tegumentum algenti. integerrima clausula nullum indulgebat re' igerium estuanti. longa inedia. contract sunt et aruerunt sibi intestina. erat quando pre ardore sitis naribus ebullire〈n〉t ' usta coagulati sanguinis. o what trials she had to bear of cold and heat, hunger and thirst, daily fasting! the confi ned space would not allow her to wear even the necessary clothing when she was cold. the airless little enclosure became stifl ing when she was hot. through long fasting, her bowels became contracted and dried up. there was a time when her burning thirst caused little clots of blood to bubble up ' om her nostrils. (talbot 1959: 102–105) so vivid is this description of christina’s anguish that modern scholars have felt her distress. in a seminal volume on anchorites and hermits, rotha mary clay (1968: 119) quotes part of the above passage before declaring: “the description of physical agony is too painful to repeat”. christina’s vita is permeated with accounts of her pain, encouraging a reader’s aff ective participation. the katherine group texts, on the other hand, encourage a reader’s aff ective distance, militating against the anchoress’ aff ective penetration of the spectacle. 14 there is no evidence that the ancrene wisse-author or the katherine group authors knew of christina’s vita, but it is included here as an analogue. 85 defamiliarization in the hagiographies of the katherine group selim 18 (2011) 3 defamiliarization in the katherine group a thirteenth-century wall painting of st katherine in the church of st john the baptist in cold overton, leicestershire does not show the martyr suff ering on the wheel of torture: instead, it depicts the saint holding the wheel in her hand (c. 1230).15 like a viewer of this wall painting, the anchoritic reader of the katherine group hagiographies must not succumb to a spectatorship that sees only pain. deliberately discouraging their readers = om uncritical aff ective stirrings for the saints, the legends invite the anchoress to see beyond this bodily trauma to the heavenly purpose of the suff ering. seinte katerine focuses on the spectator’s translation of scenes of violence into scenes of beauty; seinte marherete reveals the impotency of the pagan gaze which focuses so inadvisedly on bodily pain-pleasure; and seinte iuliene, much like seinte katerine, asks the spectator to transform scenes of brokenness into scenes of healing. each legend will now be studied in turn, following the order of texts in oxford, bodleian library, ms bodley 34. seinte katerine is a text engaged in a battle of perspectives. it attempts to translate scenes of violence into scenes of beauty, and the capacity to eff ect this transformation is in the hands of the viewer. the text itself is cluttered with scenes of bloodshed and torments, but the anchoress is meant to read beyond this savagery to the potential beauty signifi ed within it. the early middle english version of the life is much-altered = om the vulgate latin of katherine’s passio, with extensive passages “not represented […] whether by translation, paraphrase, summary, or expansion” (d’ardenne & dobson 1981: 132). but the middle english version preserves = om the latin source katherine’s vocality and the importance of her gaze—both elements which contribute to the emphasis on translating violence into beauty. 15 this is a common motif in medieval wall paintings of the saints: see rosewell 2008: 65. for this image, see anne marshall’s online catalogue: www. paintedchurch.org/coverton.htm. the dating of c. 1230 follows marshall. 86 ayoush lazikani selim 18 (2011) to deal with the mass conversion brought about by katherine’s debate, maxentius orders the converts to be bound by the feet and hands, and burnt: “þet ha [w]rungen aȝein, ant i þe reade lei ant i þe leitinde fur het warpen euch fot” (70–72, ll. 497–500). this desire to have the bodies struggle against their bonds in the fi re might be intended both to maximize the converts’ pain and to provide a sight for the sadistic maxentius to eƭ oy. nevertheless, his attempt to orchestrate this torture scene falls through: ah þet wes miracle muchel, þet nowðer nes iwe[m]met clað þet ha hefden ne her of hare heafden; ah wið se swið l[u]fsume leores ha leien, se rudie ant se reade ilitet eauereuch leor as lilie ileid to rose, þet nawt ne þuhte hit þet ha weren deade ah þet ha slepten swoteliche a sweouete, swa þet feole tur[n]den to treowe bileaue ant þoleden anan deað i þe nome of drihtin. (74, ll. 518–524) maxentius’ imagined spectacle is replaced by an image of angelic bodies, likened to fl oral arrangements. seen as lilies upon roses, the sight of the bodies brings about conversions; and it is not the last case of conversion through sight in this text. the violence against katherine herself has been well acknowledged. like margaret and juliana, katherine is “stripped stark-naked” and scourged so that her body is soaked in blood: þe king ne cuðe na wit ah bigon to cwakien ant nuste hwet seggen. het o wod[e] wise strupen hire steort-naket ant beaten hire beare fl esch ant hire 2 eoliche bodi wið cnottede schurgen, ant [swa me] dude sone, þet hire leofl iche lich liðerede al [o] blode; ah heo [hit lihtliche] aber ant lahinde þolede. het hire blode; ah heo [hit lihtlice] aber ant lahinde þolede. het hire þre3 er kesten i cwalmhus, ant bed halden hire þrin þet ha now[ð]er ne ete [ne drunke,] leasse ne mare, tweolf dahes fulle. (80, ll. 563–569) at fi rst glance, katherine—stark-naked and bleeding, with sexually voracious men observing her—appears to be an obvious example of a fetishized and itemized female scrutinized by a male gaze. but, as mentioned, wogan-browne and salih have both 87 defamiliarization in the hagiographies of the katherine group selim 18 (2011) demonstrated that the katherine group saints are not mere objects of “pious pornography” destroyed by men.16 whilst the spectacle of female nakedness and torture invites a pornographic reading, the reader who eƭ oys the text in such a way is, as salih expresses it, “endangered by his own inadequacy as a reader of the spectacle of the body” (salih 2001: 81, 83, 85). katherine laughs (“lahinde”) through this spectacle, apparently fi nding humour in the horror, as does st lawrence with his culinary jest.17 her laughter undercuts the eff ectiveness of this spectacle as pornographic eƭ oyment for a male, or more broadly a pagan, gaze. the anchoress who reads katherine’s ordeal in such a way becomes the object of ridicule by the saint herself. katherine’s scourging is unquestionably a horrifi c torture scene. but once cast into the prison cell, her damaged fl esh is healed in a spectacle observed by porphirius and empress augusta, along with the nursing angels: þa ha weren iseten up, sehen as þe engles wið smirles of aromaz smireden hire wunden ant bieoden swa þe bruchen of hire bodi, al tobroken of þe beatunge, þet tet fl esch ant tet fel worðen se feire þet ha awundreden ham swiðe of þet sihðe. (84, ll. 585–589) what was a scene of brutality is transformed into an angelic vision.18 these “sihðen of heouene” embolden the empress and leader of knights: 16 the term “pious pornography” is robert mills’ (2005: 106), not in relation to the katherine group. 17 goscelin of saint-bertin (c. 1035–1107) is one writer who refers to lawrence’s macabre humour while being burned on the coals (talbot 1955: 63). as monika otter describes it: “the famous story is that lawrence said, in the middle of the torture, ‘i am done on this side, turn me over.’” (otter 2004: 72 and n. 75). this joke is also included in the anglo-norman version of his life (c. 1170; russell 1976: 57, ll. 897–898). for dating, see russell 1976: 22–23, and also wogan-browne & burgess 1996: xxxix. the earliest recorded instance of lawrence’s defi ant humour is in ambrose of milan (d. 397). see wogan-browne & burgess 1996: xxxvi. 18 on this scene in the dungeon, see further salih 2001: 75. 88 ayoush lazikani selim 18 (2011) porphire ant auguste worðen of þeos wordes se swiðe wilcweme ant se hardi, forþi þet ha hefden isehen sihðen of heouene, þet ha wenden % om hire, abute þe midniht, ȝarowe to al þet wa þet ei mon mahte ham ȝarki to drehe for drihtin. (90, ll. 630–633) porphirius talks to two hundred knights, implicitly inviting their spectatorship of this beauty in turn (90–94, ll. 633–661). the spectating anchoress is included in this widening community of spectators of the beauty eff ected by katherine. the wheel of torture also demands % om the anchoress a correct spectatorship. at fi rst eager to watch bodies writhe against fl ames, maxentius subsequently devises a wheel to cause maximum pain. he is fascinated with the machine of torture before it has been used to infl ict pain. cursates, hired by maxentius to wear down katherine’s will, forms the scene of agony before it has occurred: ȝet ne seh katerine nanes cunnes pine þet ha oht dredde. do ido dede. nu ha þus þreateð ant þrepeð aȝein þe, hat, hwil ha wed tus, inwið þe[os] þreo dahes ȝarkin fowr hweoles; ant let þurhdriuen þre2 er þe spaken ant te uelien wið irnene gadien, swa þet te pikes ant te irnene preones se scharpe ant se sterke borien þurh ant beore forð feor o þet oðer half þet al þe hweoles beon þurhspitet mid [spikes] kenre þen [eni] cnif, rawe bi rawe. let þenne turnen hit tidliche abuten, swa þet katerine wið þet grisliche rune, hwen ha þerbi sit ant bisið þerupon, [swike] hire sotschipes ant ure wil [wurche]; oðer, ȝef þet ha nule no, ha schal beo tohwiðeret wið þe hweoles swa, in an honthwile, þet alle þe hit bihaldeð schule grure habben. (100–102, ll. 697–709) even in the absence of a body-in-pain, the reader can easily imagine the potential pain caused by the wheel. cursates emphasizes % om the outset the importance of katherine seeing the torture: katherine is bold because she has not seen her torture instrument, he claims. this is a claim preserved % om the vulgate latin, as is the prelude to the wheel’s horror before a body has been placed 89 defamiliarization in the hagiographies of the katherine group selim 18 (2011) inside it (191–192).19 he and maxentius imagine a body-in-pain and the spectators’ response to the pain they see. the wheel is then constructed in accordance with this barbaric fantasy: þis pinfule gin wes o swu[ch] wise iginet, þet te twa tur[n] den ei[ð]er wiðward oðer ant anes weis baðe, þe oðer twa tur[n]den anes weis alswa ah toȝein þe oðre (swa þet, hwenne þe twa walden keasten uppart þing þet ha [c]ahten, þe o[ð] re walden drahen hit ant dusten dunewardes)—se grisliche igreiðet þet grure grap euch mon hwen he lokede þron. her amid[heapes] wes þis meiden iset forte al torenden reowliche ant reowðfulliche torondin ȝef ha nalde hare read heren ne hercnin. ah heo keaste up hire ehnen ant cleopede towart heouene, ful heh wið hire heorte ah wið [stille] steuene […] (102–104, ll. 713–722) the anchoritic reader is invited temptingly to look at it, “se grisliche igreiðet þet grure grap euch mon hwen he lokede þron.” katherine, however, focuses her gaze correctly once in the wheel. unlike the torturers and the pagan spectators, she looks not at the wheel and the potential for violence it holds, but rather at heaven: “ah heo keaste up hire ehnen ant cleopede towart heouene,” following the vulgate katherine (“erectis in celum oculis;” d’ardenne & 19 in the anglo-norman version of lawrence’s life, decius also uses the horror of sight, prior to the torture itself: devant lui fait puis aporter ‘et ne veis tu toz ces tormenz fors tormenz de totes manieres, ke por tei sunt ci aporté? de fust, de fer, de plun, de pieres. tu ieres en chascun tormenté onques ne fu nul torment fait se ne veus nos deus aorer que al feel deu mostré nen ait et ta fole eror delaisser’ decius dit a saint lorenz: (russell 1976: 47, ll. 539–549). “[lawrence] had brought before him cruel instruments of torture of all kinds, made 4 om wood, 4 om iron, 4 om lead and 4 om stones. never had any instrument been made which he did not have shown to god’s faithful servant. decius said to st lawrence: ‘do you not see all these instruments of torture which have been brought out here for you? you will be tortured by each one if you refuse to worship our gods and to abandon your foolish error.’” this translation is that in woganbrowne & burgess 1996: 53. 90 ayoush lazikani selim 18 (2011) dobson 1981: 193). if the anchoress has become distracted, gazing in horrifi ed fascination with the pagans at the wheel of torture, she is abruptly reminded of where she should, in fact, be looking. the spectators who have been incorrectly gazing at the wheel in its irresistible horror turn into spectacles of pain themselves, watched in turn by christian people. an angel destroys the wheel a* er katherine’s prayer, killing four thousand pagans: ruten forð wið swuch rune þe stucchen of [baðe], bimong ham as ha stoden ant seten þerabuten, þet ter weren isleine of þet awariede uolc fowr þusent fulle. þear me mahte iheren þe heaðene hundes ȝellen ant ȝeien ant ȝuren on euch half, þe cristene kenchen ant herie þen healent þe helpeð hire oueral. (104, ll. 730–735) this follows the latin in contrasting the chaos of the pagans and the exultation of the christians (193). the reference to the “cristene kenchen,” the christians laughing at the misery of the pagans, brings to the foreground a community of christian spectators within the text. it is an anonymous, almost absent community of spectators. this community implicitly appears in the illegal burials of the bodies: fi rst the converted martyrs (74, ll. 524–526), then the empress (114, ll. 799–803), and fi nally porphirius and his knights (118, ll. 821–824). not as visible or as vocal as the wailing pagans, these christian spectators are the anchoress’ closest point of correspondence for her own spectatorship. as the hagiographic legend approaches its close, the anchoress is still being asked to spectate correctly. an overwhelmed maxentius again imagines the response of spectators, before the spectacle of pain has taken place: ne [let] tu us na lengre ah loke nu biliue hweðer þe beo leouere don þet ich þe leare ant libben ȝef þu swa dest, oðer þis ilke dei se dreoriliche deien þet ham schal agrisen alle þe hit bihaldeð. (120, ll. 834–837) katherine, however, disagrees with maxentius’ defi nition of the sight: 91 defamiliarization in the hagiographies of the katherine group selim 18 (2011) nis nawt grislich sihðe to seon falle þing þe[t] schal [stihen], þurh þet fal, a þusentfalt te fehere, of deað to lif undeaðlich, ant to arise % om ream to a leastinde lahtre, % om bale to eche blisse, % om wa to wunne ant to weole þurhwuniende. (120, ll. 838–841) she translates the “grislich sihðe” into something “a þusentfalt te fehere.” engaging in a battle for meaning, she insists on her right to defi ne her own spectacle. this re-defi nition follows the latin: “non est,” inquit, “miserabile spectaculum cui de occasu ortus succedit gloriosus, de morte immortalitas, de merore iocunditas, de tristitia gaudia mercantur eterna.” (d’ardenne & dobson 1981: 200) “it is not,” she said, “a miserable spectacle where: % om a fall is born a glorious ascension, % om death immortality, % om grief delight, % om sadness eternal joys are bought.” both the latin and english foreground her death as a spectacle, but one that is not “grisly” or “miserable.” there is a close correspondence between the latin and early middle english on the transformation taking place at the point of her death, a transformation put on display by the spectacle of the execution. the spectators who follow her to the execution cannot see this beauty: heo, as me ledde hire, lokede a3einwart for ludinge þet ha herde, ant seh [sihen] e0 er hire heaðene monie, wepmen ant wummen, wið wringinde honden, wepinde sare; ah þe meidnes alre meast, wið sari mod ant sorhful, ant te riche leafdis letten teares trondlin. ant heo biwende hire a3ein, sum[hwet] iwreaðet, ant [e]dwat ham hare wop wið þulliche wordes […] (122, ll. 849–855) only able to see the painful violence, the pagan spectators descend into a sore/painful (“sari” and “sorhful”) mood, released through rolling tears (“teares trondlin”) and wringing hands (“wringinde honden”). in an echo of luke 23: 27–28, katherine looks back at these morose spectators, as clarifi ed three times in this passage (“lokede,” “seh,” “biwende”), becoming gazer rather than object 92 ayoush lazikani selim 18 (2011) gazed upon, and demands, “sum[hwet] iwreaðet” in the speech which follows, an interpretation of beauty rather than horror (122–124, ll. 854–864).20 one could forgive the anchoress for being confused as to how she is meant to spectate. in a climate of passion devotion that treasured intense weeping, the anchoress would have cherished her ability to cry.21 yet here, to weep is to align oneself with * ail pagan souls. katherine aids the anchoress in polishing her interpretative skills. as crystallized in lamentations 1:12 (“o all ye that pass by the way, attend, and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow”), no suff ering is comparable with christ’s on calvary. the anchoress learns not to uncritically transfer her weeping for the crucifi xion, that most unique of events, to the sensationalism of this event. she rejects the ineptitude and hysteria of the pagan gaze, training her eyes to see the beauty inscribed within the anguish. seinte marherete is preoccupied with revealing the impotency of the pagan gaze. the author stresses the suff ering of those who view margaret’s torture, as does the author of katherine’s legend with the rolling tears and wringing hands: “wa is us þet we seoð þi so/ e leofl iche lich to-luken se ladliche!,” they cry (14, ll. 14–15). the procedures of torture are also amplifi ed * om the mombritius version, as mentioned (mack 1934: xxxii). but in all their suff ering, they gain voyeuristic pleasure, eagerly returning for more visual consumption of margaret’s traumatized body: “striken men þiderward of eauereuch strete, for to seo þet sorhe þet me walde leggen on hire leofl iche bodi ȝef ha to þe reues read ne buhe ne ne beide” (40, ll. 28–31). margaret’s tortured body feeds pain and pleasure into the spectators: 20 “and there followed him a great multitude of people, and of women, who bewailed and lamented him. but jesus turning to them, said: daughters of jerusalem, weep not over me; but weep for yourselves, and for your children” (luke 23: 27–28). 21 see especially jacques de vitry’s account of the desert mother of brabantliège, mary d’oignies (c. 1177–1213), one of the great weepers of christian history. (bolland, carnandet & henschenius 1863–1940: iv june 23, 640c–641a). 93 defamiliarization in the hagiographies of the katherine group selim 18 (2011) hwil þet ha spec þus, me to-lec hire swa, þet te luðere reue for þe stronge rune of þe blodi stream, ne nan oðer þet ter wes, ne mahte for muche grure lokin þiderwardes; ah hudden hare heafden þe heardeste-iheortet under hare mantles, for þet seorfule sar þet heo on hire isehen. (16, ll. 23–28) despite the widening vocabulary for spectatorship (“toluken” / “lokin,” “seo” / “isehen”), the pagans’ potential “looking” remains uncomplex, a desire for the kind of pleasurable, passive spectatorship that augustine of hippo (354–430) so detests.22 and diff erently 1 om augustine’s scenario, these spectators fail to spectate, preferring to hide under their mantles. even the “heardeste-iheortet,” including the unfeeling olibrius himself, are unable to gaze upon her lacerated fl esh, the sheer agony of this gaze conquering the pleasure. olibrius later claims that he will count all of margaret’s sinews, in a bodily reduction echoing psalm 21:18 (“they have numbered all my bones. and they have looked and stared upon me”): ah buh nu ⁊ bei to me ear þen þu deie o dreori deð ⁊ derf; for ȝef þu ne dest no, þu schalt swelten þurh sweord ⁊ al beo limmel to-loken; ant ich wulle tellen, hwen þu al to-toren art in euchanes sihðe þe sit nu ⁊ sið þe, alle þine seonewwen. (16, l. 32–18, l. 4) he confi gures an imagined spectatorship of suff ering, where a safe eƭ oyment of her tormented body can be pursued. in doing so, he defuses the threat of overwhelming pain. this reeve is powerless and emasculated, all possible agency in his spectatorship disarmed. for the anchoress, he is the model of impotent spectatorship. like his subjects, olibrius has a protective mantle, but in his case it is a fi gurative mantle born of his morbid imagination. he imagines the saint’s pain and dismemberment without facing it directly; he desires sexual gratifi cation 1 om her damaged body, but remains unable to attain it. 22 see his confessiones (migne 1878–1890: 32.683); the confessiones are one of the sources of ancrene wisse. 94 ayoush lazikani selim 18 (2011) juliana’s eleusius is equally impotent in his spectatorship, as will be seen. like seinte katerine, seinte iuliene is engaged in eff orts to translate brokenness into healing, and it reveals the pagan spectators to be spectacles of pain themselves. the early middle english life of juliana also stresses juliana’s vocality, as does its related latin text, found in oxford, bodleian library, ms bodley 285. like maxentius and olibrius, juliana’s father a' icanus attempts to terrorize his daughter through imagined spectatorship of her pain before it has occurred:23 for þu schalt on alre earst as on ernesse swa beon ibeaten wið bittere besmen, þet tu [wani þet tu] were wummon of wummone bosum to wraðer heale eauer iboren i þe world. (15) once this bitter beating does occur, juliana speaks in the midst of her pain, disabling the potential for her spectacle to degenerate into a form of pornographic pleasure for her onlookers: ant het swiðe heatterliche strupen hire streort naket ant leggen se luðerliche on hire leofl iche lich þet hit liðeri o blode. me nom hire ant dude swa þet hit ȝeat adun of þe ȝerden, ant heo bigon to ȝeien: “beaten se ȝe beaten, ȝe beliales budeles, ne mahe ȝe nowðer mi luue ne mi bileaue lutlin towart te liuiende godd, mi leofsume leofmon þe luuewurðe lauerd […]” (15) her use of voice is a crucial act of agency, as salih has affi rmed (salih 2001: 82). it is true that, as robert mills has argued, female voices in saints’ lives are not necessarily pure and unpolluted vehicles of agency (mills 2003: passim, especially 207). in this instance, juliana’s voice is not entirely her own; she is a mouthpiece for her “leofsume leofmon þe luuewurðe lauerd.” but keeping this qualifi cation in mind, juliana’s agency, enabled by her love-worthy lord, is clear in her use of voice. in her major work on pain, elaine scarry’s central premise is that intense physical pain destroys language, a point also cited by both salih and mills (scarry 1985: 4). juliana’s resistance, or to use salih’s term “immunity,” to this degeneration of language 23 page references to seinte iuliene ' om d’ardenne 1961. 95 defamiliarization in the hagiographies of the katherine group selim 18 (2011) is particularly important in her case. though seinte iuliene is a text that discloses little about the feeling of pain, it does contain one explicit expression of juliana’s sensation: þer wes sorhe to seon on hire % eoliche fl esch hu ha ferden þer-wið. ah heo hit al þuleliche þolede for drihtin, ant hwen ha felde meast sar, sikerlukest seide: “haldeð on longe, ne leaue ȝe neauer! for nulle ich leauen his luue þet ich on leue, ne for luue nowðer ne for luðer eie.” (23–25) it remains unclear for whom this sight is “sorhe to seon:” it could refer to the author as witness, eleusius, the torturers, or the other spectators. the perspective moves % om the observers to juliana’s own sensation of pain: “hwen ha felde meast sar” (emphasis added). the extent of the pain juliana feels is directly proportionate to her use of voice: she speaks when she feels “meast sar.” in juliana’s case, language does not crumble in the face of physical pain; rather, it is strengthened. the anchoress shi0 s her focus % om juliana’s felt pain to the potency of juliana’s voice. juliana’s agency in defi ning her spectacle persists. as in seinte katerine, a torture-wheel is devised, and its potential for agony is spectated before a body experiences pain inside it (51). unlike katherine, however, juliana encounters the horrors of the wheel. her body reaches the ultimate state of brokenness: ant heo, as þe deouel spurede ham to donne, duden hit unsperliche; þet ha bigon to breoken al as þet istelede irn strac hire in oueral, % om þe top to þe tan, áá as hit turnde, tolimede hire ant leac lið ba ant lire; bursten hire banes ant þet meari bearst ut, imenget wið blode. þer me mahte iseon alre sorhene meast, þe i þet stude stode. (51–53) again, there is a reference to juliana’s pain, though here it is % om the witness’ perspective rather than her own sensation: to the viewers who “i þet stude stode,” she experiences the worst possible human suff ering. such brokenness is not the anchoritic reader’s fi nal sight of juliana, however. the virgin’s body is broken only to be reformed, reassembled a0 er its horrifi c disintegration. an 96 ayoush lazikani selim 18 (2011) “engel of heouene” sweeps down, and “bursten hire bondes, ant breken alle clane.” juliana emerges “fi sch-hal:” “ant heo, ase fi schhal as þah ha nefde nohwer hurtes ifelet, feng to þonki þus godd wið honden up aheuene” (53). the early middle english author’s striking “fi sh-whole” image does not seem to be in the latin version in ms bodley 285 (52). fishes would have been pervasive in the anchoress’ image-based vocabulary, given that this is mentioned as a staple food in her diet in aelred’s regime (hoste & talbot 1971: 648–649). a fi sh-body is characterized by its symmetry and unbroken skin, emphasizing juliana’s wholeness.24 juliana slips out of the grasp of any spectator who attempts to defi ne her spectacle as torture. christ’s body is an open dovecote; juliana’s fi sh-whole body, on the other hand, does not invite aff ective entrance.25 the wholeness of juliana’s body is again threatened, this time by fi re. juliana sees the fi re while she is bound within it. but, like katherine, she turns her gaze to heaven, and speaks to christ: eleusius þe hwile, lette his men makien a muche fur mid alle, ant bed binden hire swa þe fet ant te honden ant keasten hire into þe brune cwic to forbearnen. as ha lokede up ant seh þis lei leiten, biheolt towart heouene, wið honden aheuene, ant þus to crist cleopede […] (59–61) she uses her voice to implore jesus to keep her within his “ehsihðe:” “ihesu, mi selhðe, ne warp þu me nawt ut of þin ehsihðe; bihald me ant help me” (61). juliana knows that, unlike the impotent eleusius, 24 the thirteenth-century anchoress’ potential use of fi sh imagery resonates with julian of norwich’s (b. 1343) image of the spreading blood on christ’s forehead as herring scales (watson & jenkins 2006: 147). julian draws attention to the rough texture of a fi sh’s body, whereas the author of seinte iuliene foreground’s the fi shbody’s wholeness. for more on julian’s use of this imagery, see finke 1992: 97. 25 on christ’s body as dovecote, see aelred (hoste & talbot 1971: 671) and bernard of clairvaux’s († 1153) sixty-fi rst sermon on the song of songs (leclercq, rochais & talbot 1957–1977: ii.149). aelred and bernard are two of the ancrene wisse-author’s named sources. the ancrene wisse-author, like aelred, uses canticles 2:14 to describe christ’s body as a dovecote (part iv, i.111, ll. 1639–1642). 97 defamiliarization in the hagiographies of the katherine group selim 18 (2011) christ always maintains his lovers within his sight. in response, she gazes up at him, implicitly enticing the anchoress to do the same.26 if this enticement by the saint herself is not enough, the anchoress also sees the horri% ing results of incorrect spectatorship. although christ cools the boiling pot for juliana a& er she calls to him, it remains hot enough to kill the pagan spectators (63; see further salih 2001: 79–80). this passage on the boiling liquid has a powerful correspondence to seinte katerine, when the pieces of broken wheel fl y into the masses, slaughtering the pagans. an even stronger deterrent to weak spectatorship is eleusius himself. throughout the legend, the reeve eleusius is vulnerable to pain and dismemberment, vulnerable to the spectacle of juliana. from his fi rst view of juliana, he is hurt by the sight of her attractiveness: as he biseh ant biheold hire lufsume leor, lilies ilicnesse ant rudi ase rose, ant under hire nebsche& al se 1 eolice ischapet, weorp a sic as a wiht þet sare were iwundet—his heorte feng to heaten, ant his meari mealten; þe rawen rahten of luue þurh euch lið of his limes—ant inwið bearnde of brune swa ant cwakede as of calde, þet him þuhte in his þonc þet ne bede he i þe worlt nanes cunnes blisse bute hire bodi ane, to wealden hire wið wil e& er þet he walde […] (17–19) he is wounded by lust, an erratic wounding that contrasts with the power of the anchoress’ penitential self-wounding in ancrene wisse (part vi, i.143, ll. 436–440). this passage in seinte iuliene is intriguing in its description of the sensations of desire: eleusius is at once wounded, hot, melted, and shivering. his aff ective and physical wholeness is already in jeopardy. the mere sight of juliana begins the steady destruction of his body, his heart, and, eventually, his soul in the throes of hell. as she continues to refuse his advances, eleusius attempts to see juliana in pain. but it is his own agony and self-annihilation that the anchoritic reader sees. 26 in the latin version, the juliana who speaks is tearful (60); the absence of tears in the early middle english version further underscores her composure in the midst of torture. 98 ayoush lazikani selim 18 (2011) when juliana is unaff ected by the “brune-wallinde bres” (25), eleusius demands that she be taken out of his sight “swiðe” (see further salih 2001: 81): eleusius warð þa wod, ant nuste hwet seggen; ah hehte swiðe don hire ut of his eh-sihðe, ant dreaien into dorc-hus to prisunes pine. (27) he even orders men to “lokin” to check that juliana is still alive in the dungeon, apparently unable to bear this sight himself (45). the suff ering infl icted on eleusius by the spectacle of juliana becomes even more obvious as the legend progresses towards its end. he himself is torn apart, fi rst ripping his clothes (63), and then being literally dismembered by animals feasting on carrion (69–71).27 the ripping apart of his clothes notably coincides with a plea for juliana to be taken out of his “ehsihðe.” eleusius can no longer endure the sight of such impenetrability. juliana’s body is whole despite the many tortures, and her hymen has not been broken despite eleusius’ overwhelming desire. moreover, she has remained aff ectively impenetrable. like katherine and margaret, juliana seems generally impervious to pain. but even in those rare moments when she does feel pain, the sensation is reversed, and she is able to exit 4 om the tortures insentient and invulnerable. if the hagiographers were to focus on the felt experience of the saints’ pain, it would render these untouchable saints vulnerable. the martyrdom would no longer be a glorious spectacle of godassertion, but rather an experience of pure agony. the texts would make themselves unbearable for the reader: and in reading the legends, the anchoress’ goal is not to delve into unendurable pain. the katherine group hagiographies are texts which seal themselves 4 om aff ective penetration. they repel any attempt at passive aff ective engagement with pain. through a spectatorship based on defamiliarization, the anchoress reading the hagiographies translates pain into bliss, violence into beauty, and brokenness into 27 see further wogan-browne 1994: 178–179; salih 1999: 106, and salih 2001: 92. 99 defamiliarization in the hagiographies of the katherine group selim 18 (2011) healing. she reads the indications of god’s love signifi ed within the handmaidens’ torture, & om the image of burnt bodies as lilies upon roses, to the mouthpiece of god speaking out in the midst of agony. as a spectator of the hagiographies, the anchoress must allow pain to ricochet off her. in learning how to spectate, the anchoress nurtures a crucial skill. she learns how to perform her lover’s will on earth. ayoush lazikani university of oxford acknowledgements i am very grateful to dr annie sutherland (university of oxford) for reading through the research towards this paper a countless number of times, and for all her kind and detailed feedback. i am also grateful to professor vincent gillespie (university of oxford) and professor elizabeth robertson (university of glasgow) for a great deal of helpful feedback on this material. finally, many thanks to the anonymous reviewers at selim for their rigorous reading of this article. references bagnoli, m., h. a. klein, c. g. mann & j. robinson eds. 2010: treasures of heaven: saints, relics and devotion in medieval europe. london, british museum press. berger, j. 2008: ways of seeing. london, penguin. bestul, t. h. 1996: texts of the passion: latin devotion al literature and medieval society. philadelphia, university of pennsylvania press. boal, a. 2008: empathy or what? emotion or reason? in d. krasner ed. theatre in theory 1900–2000: an anthology. oxford, blackwell: 394–396. bolland, j., j. b. carnandet & g. henschenius eds. 1863– 1940: acta sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur, vel a catholicis scriptoribus 100 ayoush lazikani selim 18 (2011) celebrantur quae ex latinis & graecis, aliarumque gentium antiquis monumentis. 69 vols. parisiis, victor palmé. bradley, l. j. r. 2006: brecht and political theatre: the mother on stage. oxford, clarendon press. burgwinkle, w. e. & c. howie 2010: sanctity and pornograp hy in medieval culture: on the verge. manchester-new york, manchester university press. clay, r. m. 1968 [1914]: the hermits and anchorites of england. london, methuen. cohen, e. 2010: the modulated scream: pain in late mediev al culture. chicago, university of chicago press. d’ardenne, s. r. t. o. ed. 1961: þe lifl ade ant te passiu n of seinte iuliene (e.e.t.s. o.s. 248). london, oxford university press. d’ardenne, s. r. t. o. & e. j. dobson eds. 1981: seinte katerine (e.e.t.s. s.s. 7). oxford, oxford university press. finke, l. 1992: feminist theory, women’s writing. ithaca, cornell university press. hoste, a. & c. h. talbot eds. 1971: aelredi rievallensis opera omnia (corpus christianorum. continuatio mediaevalis 1). turnholti, brepols. jestrovic, s. 2006: theatre of estrangement: theory, pract ice, ideology. toronto, university of toronto press. leclercq, j., h. rochais & c. h. talbot eds. 1957–1977: sermones super cantica canticorum: sancti bernardi opera. 8 vols. roma, editiones cistercienses. mack, f. m. ed. 1934: seinte marherete: þe meiden ant martyr (e.e.t.s. o.s. 193). london, oxford university press. migne, j.-p. ed. 1878–1890: patrologiae cursus completus. s eries latina. 221 vols. parisiis, apud garnier fratres. millett, b. ed. 1982: hali meiðhad (e.e.t.s. o.s. 284). london, oxford university press. 101 defamiliarization in the hagiographies of the katherine group selim 18 (2011) millett, b. 1988: the saints’ lives of the katherine group a nd the alliterative tradition. jegp 87: 16–34. millett, b. 1996: women in no man’s land: english recluses a nd the development of vernacular literature in the twelh and thirteenth centuries. in c. m. meale ed. women and literature in britain, 1150–1500. cambridge, cambridge university press: 86–103. millett, b. ed. 2005–2006: ancrene wisse: a corrected edition of the text in cambridge, corpus christi college, ms 402, with variants & om other manuscripts. 2 vols. (e.e.t.s. o.s. 325, 326). oxford, oxford university press. mills, r. 2003: can the virgin martyr speak? in a. bernau et al. eds. medieval virginities. cardiff , university of wales press: 187–213. mills, r. 2005: suspended animation: pain, pleasure and punishment in medieval culture. london, reaktion. mulvey, l. 2009 [1989]: visual and other pleasures. basingst oke, macmillan-palgrave. otter, m. ed. 2004: the book of encouragement and consolation [liber confortatorius]. cambridge, d. s. brewer. robertson, e. 2003: “this living hand:” thirteenth-century female literacy, materialist immanence, and the reader of the ancrene wisse. speculum 78.1: 1-36. rosewell, r. 2008: medieval wall paintings in english & welsh churches. woodbridge, boydell press. russell, d. w. 1976: la vie de saint laurent: an anglo-norman poem of the twel( h century (anglo-norman texts 34). london, anglonorman text society. salih, s. 1999: performing v irginity: sex and violence in the katherine group. in c. l. carlson & a. j. weisl eds. constructions of widowhood and virginity in the middle ages. basingstoke, macmillan: 95–112. 102 ayoush lazikani selim 18 (2011) salih, s. 2001: versions of virginity in late medieval england. cambridge, d. s. brewer. scarry, e. 1985: the body in pain: the ma! ng and unma! ng of the world. new york-oxford, oxford university press. stanbury, s. 1991: the virgin’s gaze: spectacle and transgression in middle english lyrics of the passion. pmla 106.5: 1083–1093. talbot, c. h. ed. 1955: the liber confortatorius of goscelin of saintbertin (analecta monastica, 3rd series-studia anselmiana 37). roma, herder. talbot, c. h. ed. 1959: the life of christina of markyate, a twel" hcentury recluse. oxford, clarendon press. thompson, w. m. ed. 1958: þe wohunge of ure lauerd (e.e.t.s. o.s. 241). london, oxford university press. trembinski, d. c. 2006: insensate saints: contextualizing non-suff ering in early dominican legendaries. florilegium 23. 2: 123–142. watson, n. & j. jenkins eds. 2006: the writings of julian of norwich: a vision showed to a devout woman and a revelation of love. university park (pa), pennsylvania state university press. winstead, k. a. 1997: virgin martyrs: legends of sainthood in late medieval england. ithaca, cornell university press. wogan-browne, j. 1991: saints’ lives and the female reader. forum for modern language studies 27.4: 314–332. wogan-browne, j. 1994: the virgin’s tale. in r. evans & l. johnson eds. feminist readings in middle english literature: the wife of bath and all her sect. london, routledge: 165–194. wogan-browne, j. & g. s. burgess eds. 1996: virgin lives and holy deaths: two exemplary biographies for anglo-norman women. london, dent. • received 04 oct 2012; accepted 26 feb 2013 selim 16.indb melania sánchez reed & antonio miranda garcía, selim 16 (2009): 121–147issn: 1132–631x a semi-automatic part-of-speech tagging system for middle english corpora: overcoming the challenges abstract historical corpus annotation is very much a manual, time-consuming task. the last few years have witnessed advances in the use of computational tools for the annotation of middle english corpora. in 2007 an attempt at creating a semi-automatic system for part-of-speech (pos) tagging, based on the use of parallel texts, was developed at the university of texas. although this work still revealed manual annotation to be more accurate, it proved the potential of computational tools for the creation of tagging systems. we propose the development of a semi-intelligent and semi-automatic pos tagging program for me corpora capable of tagging any given me text with a high rate of success; no such computational system is currently available. this task entails challenges of a two-fold nature: a) linguistic diffi culties; and b) computational limitations. this paper discusses these diffi culties and provides possible solutions to them in order to create a tool that will facilitate pos tagging and help searching for linguistic information. keywords: pos tagging, middle english, historical corpora, computational linguistics. resumen la anotación de corpus históricos es en gran medida una tarea manual y laboriosa. los últimos años han sido testigos de muchos avances en el uso de herramientas computacionales para el etiquetado de corpus de inglés medio. en el 2007 la universidad de texas desarrolló un sistema semi-automático de etiquetado morfológico basado en el uso de textos paralelos y, aunque el estudio siguió revelando que el etiquetado manual era más preciso, demostró el potencial de las herramientas computacionales para la creación de sistemas de etiquetado. proponemos el desarrollo de un etiquetador morfológico semi-inteligente y semi-automático para corpora de inglés medio capaz de etiquetar cualquier texto con mucha precisión; actualmente, no disponemos de tal sistema. esta tarea supone desafíos tanto lingüísticos como computacionales. este artículo analiza estos problemas y o ece posibles soluciones al objeto de crear una herramienta que facilite el etiquetado morfológico y ayude en la búsqueda de información lingüística. palabras clave: etiquetado morfológico, inglés medio, corpora históricos, lingüística computacional. 1 introduction e lectronic corpora are almost inexhaustible sources of linguistic knowledge. however, without the appropriate annotations most of this information would be as lost as a needle in a haystack. part-of-speech (henceforth pos) annotation/tagging is undoubtedly the most common type of corpus annotation, simply because it stands as the basis of all corpus studies. assigning pos-tags to raw corpora is essential 122 melania sánchez reed & antonio miranda garcía selim 16 (2009) for performing further analyses, such as syntactic parsing and semantic fi eld annotation (mcenery and wilson 1997), and furthermore to perform collocation studies and obtain word  equency lists, among others. all this is of great help in fi elds such as lexicography and language teaching and learning. many automatic pos taggers are available on-line nowadays that can tag large amounts of raw text in a matter of seconds. however, this task was entirely manual prior to 1971, when greene and rubin developed taggit, the fi rst pos tagging program. although the taggit system was very primitive and at fi rst could guarantee a success rate of just 71%, many diff erent systems have been developed over the years, each one providing new improvements, such as claws (1983), developed by ucrel at lancaster; the brill tagger (1993); or genia (2006), which also performs shallow parsing, and named-entity recognition for biomedical texts. actually, the people behind claws, which served to tag the famous bnc corpus, worked for a number of years on improving the system ever since it was developed in 1983, and by 1994 it could already claim a success rate of up to 97–98%. in light of this, most computational linguists today consider the automatic pos tagging process to be a close case, and although there is still much controversy as to what extent it is actually entirely solved (see giesbrecht and evert’s 2009 discussion on the nature of fi ve current german tagging systems). it is a fact that if, as wolfgang fischel claims, “human annotators agree in just 96% of the cases” (2009: 7) and this is the same percent of success that an automatic tagger can feasibly achieve on average, then the remaining percentage can be attributed to “the ambiguity in the language itself ” (2009: 7) and not, therefore, on the tagging programme’s limitations. but all in all, and bearing this in mind, we could easily consider the task of automatic pos tagging of english texts to be virtually resolved. on the other hand, english historical corpora has lagged behind its modern counterpart: in fact, not until the last few decades has historical linguistics even become “strictly corpus-based”. the common procedure was to take “a selective approach to empirical data” and simply to “look for evidence of a particular phenomena […] making rough estimates at 123 a semi-automatic post system for me corpora selim 16 (2009)  equency” (mcenery and wilson 1997). however, since 1984, when the helsinki corpus of english texts: diachronic and dialectal (the most famous historical corpus of english) was compiled, many other historical corpora have been developed or are currently in the making: the innsbruck computer archive of middle english texts (1994), the corpus of early middle english tagged texts and maps (1997), or the corpus of early english correspondence (1998), to quote but a few. here in spain we should mention the coruña corpus, developed at its namesake university, and the corpus of late middle english scientifi c prose, currently being compiled with the collaboration of the universities of málaga, oviedo, murcia, jaén and glasgow. while similar in scope (the two of them deal with scientifi c english prose), there are also important diff erences between both projects. most importantly, the former corpus is tagged and diachronic, while the latter is pos-annotated and synchronic. the malaga corpus, as we can call it for short, pursues the electronic editing of the middle english material housed in the hunterian collection at glasgow university library. this corpus currently holds approximately 250,000 words, and the fi nal target is to reach no less than half a million words. in view of the late development of the creation of historical corpora, it stands to reason that the development of automatised pos tagging systems for such corpora is dilatory. the current state of art reveals only two attempts at creating an automatic system for the automatic pos tagging of english historical texts, the fi rst regarding old english corpora and the second dealing with the tagging of middle english texts, which is in fact the object of our present study. a part-of-speech tagger for oe was developed at zurich university (switzerland) by beni ruef; it consisted in a rule-based tagging system following transformational-based learning.1 a manually tagged corpus of 108,000 words was employed for training the program into learning the rules of the language. the total rate of successful tagged words was of 88.5% (91.5% accuracy for known tokens and 56.5% for unknown tokens). as we can see, the main problem this system had is that it could not recognise items that had not previously been included during the training 1 see also miranda-garcía et al. 2000 and 2001 on the implementation of a pos tagger of oe, developed at the university of málaga. 124 melania sánchez reed & antonio miranda garcía selim 16 (2009) process. in turn, the me pos tagging system, developed by the university of texas at austin in 2007, attempted to create a semi-automatised tagger for me based on the alignment of already tagged parallel contemporary english texts. the parallel texts chosen were excerpts taken  om the bible. this new tagger was trained using the modern tagged texts as basis; through multiple alignment with the me texts the appropriate tag was to be identifi ed. moreover, to ensure a higher rate of success and further automatisation a bigram tagger was trained on these alignments. finally, the c&c (curran and clark) maximum entropy tagger, which was initially employed to tag the modern version of the bible, was then bootstrapped onto the me text which had been, in turn, tagged by the trained bigram tagger (moon and baldridge 2007: 393). they also attempted the use of unsupervised bootstrap methods to train the tagger without previously having to tag the texts manually. however results revealed that “a manually annotated training set of 400–800 sentences surpassed our best bootstrapped tagger”. overall, their methods managed to obtain “an accuracy of 84%” (moon and baldridge 2007: 391). note further that this method presents a clear limitation as it relies on the existence of a text written in two languages and, consequently, proves unfeasible for the tagging of me texts that do not have modernised equivalents, which is our case. as we can see, even though the last few years have witnessed this important advance in the development of a semi-automatic system for pos tagging for historical texts, much work still needs to be done before we can plead success. nevertheless, these fi ndings are encouraging as to the potential of computational tools for the creation of tagging systems and will undoubtedly set the ground-work for the development of a system of these characteristics. we propose to devise a semi-intelligent and semi-automatic part-ofspeech tagging program for me corpora that is capable of tag any given me text successfully with a very high rate of success, much more than any computational system of similar characteristics that we know of is currently able. however, this task con onts us with several challenges. 125 a semi-automatic post system for me corpora selim 16 (2009) if contemporary english pos taggers pose problems when it comes to ambiguity and unknown words (among others), the range of diffi culties encountered for the creation of an automatic pos tagger for me words is considerably wider due to the nature of the language—mainly its orthographical variation. consequently, we face challenges of a twofold nature: (a) linguistic diffi culties; and (b) computational limitations. the present paper discusses the nature of each of these diffi culties and provides solutions, whenever possible, to overcome them, in order to create a useful tool that will facilitate the pos tagging process and, therefore, help the linguist’s search for linguistic information.2 the present paper is organised into 4 diff erent sections. section 2 deals with the challenges and is, accordingly, divided into two diff erent subsections. the fi rst (2.1) enumerates and discusses linguistic diffi culties, and the second (2.2) accounts for computational limitations. section 3, in turn, provides the possible solutions to overcome the diffi culties enumerated in the previous chapter. and fi nally, section 4 provides the conclusions. 2 the challenges before we begin to discuss the diffi culties posed by the design of a semiautomatic me tagger, we consider it important to highlight and establish, if at a very basic level, the main steps involved for the creation of an algorithm for any automatic pos tagger, regardless of the language. we follow wolfgang fischl’s summary for the task. he divides the process into three basic steps. first comes tokenization, wherein “the text is divided into tokens”, including “end-of-sentence punctuation marks and word-like units”. ambiguity look-up then follows. here each token that has been previously identifi ed will be provided with a number of “possible part of speech tags”. for example, me bath would be tagged initially as both a noun and a verb. the fi nal step is disambiguation: every word that has been assigned more than one tag in the previous phase will be given a single, correct tag. the program will have to choose the correct pos tag and assign it to the token in question. homonyms and polysemic words 2 the present research, entitled etiquetador morfológico (pos-tagger) de inglés medio, is funded by the autonomous government of andalusia (project p09-hum–4790). this grant is hereby gratefully acknowledged. 126 melania sánchez reed & antonio miranda garcía selim 16 (2009) are particularly bound to undergo the latter process. this complicated task can be solved by using two diff erent types of taggers: rule-based and stochastic ones (fischl 2009: 2). section 2.2, which deals with computational matters, expounds further on the nature of these two systems. 2.1 linguistic diffi culties spelling and word formation in the me period was irregular due to a lack of standardisation in the language. moreover, manuscripts were o en compiled by diff erent scribes or written by the same scribe but compiled  om several diff erent sources, many belonging to diff erent dialects or even diff erent languages, mainly latin. the following section presents some of the linguistic problems that one encounters when dealing with me texts. 2.1.1 choosing the transcription the fi rst step to build a successful pos tagger for me begins at the level of transcription. depending on the type of transcription we are working with, the possibility of it being “taggable” will be more or less feasible, will be accomplished automatically or manually. we provide three diff erent models of transcription below in order to ascertain, according to their specifi c features, whether they would be compatible with a semiautomatic pos tagging system. let us begin by considering a graphetic diplomatic transcription, maintaining the text as originally written by the scribe insofar as it not only preserves the original spelling, emendations and other scribal mistakes, but also reproduces the abbreviation symbols without expanding them. this model will normally also maintain the original punctuation as well. this type of transcription is completely incompatible will pos tagging, manual or automatic. first of all, it is graphetic and so reproduces every distinct letter type, resulting in a number of diff erent graphs to represent the same letters. for example, in fig. 1 below, we have an instance of two letter ⟨r⟩ shapes found within the same word. due to the great number of symbols that the tagger would have to learn, it would be highly timeconsuming and not at all practical. furthermore, if no expansions are 127 a semi-automatic post system for me corpora selim 16 (2009) provided for the many abbreviations that appear across the witnesses, pos tagging is an impossibility even in manual tagging, as even if the tagger could be trained into understanding the diff erent symbols, this would only be possible if there were a one-to-one correspondence between the symbols and the letters they represented during the period—which, of course, is not the case. the same symbols are  equently found to stand for diff erent letters, not only intertextually, but also intratextually. see, for instance, the cases of ⟨peper⟩ and ⟨parte⟩ (fig. 2–3) where the groups ⟨ar⟩ and ⟨er⟩ have been abbreviated by means of the same symbol, a bar across the stem of letter ⟨p⟩. last of all, if the punctuation remains the same as in the original ms, correct tokenization has also proved impossible. fig. 1. f. 47v (hunter 328) fig. 2. f. 59r (wellcome 397) fig. 3. f. 62v (wellcome 397) our second model of transcription proposes, again, a semi-diplomatic transcription, using a graphemic—rather than a graphetic—approach, i.e. not distinguishing individual letter types (for example, s longa as opposed to diamond-shaped and sigma-shaped s) but presenting most phonemes in the text via one and the same graph (in the above case, ⟨s⟩ for all instances). moreover, abbreviations would also be expanded. however, punctuation would still remain the same as in the original source, and, for this reason, our second model also has to be rejected for the achievement of a successful pos tagging process. our third and fi nal model is also a graphemic semi-diplomatic transcription as the one above, only diff ering in that sentential punctuation is now so -marked according to some rules. this feature is key to obtaining a model of transcription which feasibly allows for being processed by an automatic tagger, since having a more or less standard punctuation will allow a computer programme to identi sentence patterns with which to perform the automatic pos tagging process. note that all three models involved a (semi-)diplomatic transcription. indeed a general edition, wherein punctuation, and sometimes even 128 melania sánchez reed & antonio miranda garcía selim 16 (2009) spellings, are regularised/standardised to a degree (take for instance the riverside chaucer), would solve many problems instantly. however, we wish to work with diplomatic transcriptions as we aim to provide the reader with versions of original sources as unbiased as possible, ones that are reliable for linguistic, codicological, palaeographical and historical research purposes. 2.1.2 item/word recognition: tokenization across me witnesses we fi nd many instances of words that appear separated as if they were two diff erent units when they are in fact just one, such as ⟨be fore⟩, ⟨with out⟩ and ⟨a boue⟩, below. fig. 4. f. 53v (wellcome 397) fig. 5. f. 66v (wellcome 397) fig. 6. f. 49r (hunter 328) we have just stated in 2.1.1 that we are to follow a semi-diplomatic transcription to reproduce the original source faithfully. therefore, if the scribe wrote these words separately for any given reason, then we must respect this and reproduce it accordingly in the transcription. however, when feeding this transcription into a pos tagging program these words would be considered as two diff erent items. for example, ⟨be fore⟩ would appear as ⟨be⟩ and ⟨fore⟩ and tagged as verb and preposition, respectively. we can also fi nd the opposite situation: words that appear written continuously as a single token when they are in fact two separate words. note cases as ⟨adragme⟩ and ⟨aman⟩ (fig. 7–8), consisting of a determiner and a noun. these words would be understood as one item and as a result fail to be recognised by an automatic pos tagger. fig. 7. f. 54r (wellcome 397) fig. 8. f. 53v (wellcome 397) 129 a semi-automatic post system for me corpora selim 16 (2009) another problem when dealing with me texts is line-fi nal word division. sometimes we have a hyphen at the end of the line indicating that the word continues on the next line. theoretically at least, we could train the tagger to recognise these hyphens, as they are accurately reproduced in the transcription. however, what happens when we have no hyphen indicating line-fi nal word division, which is the unfortunate case more o en than not? the genitive morpheme is also trouble making. apart  om being a compound and, therefore, to be considered as one single unit (compounds will be discussed further below), how can we make the system understand that in a noun phrase like ⟨bores grece⟩ the fi rst token is a noun in the genitive case and thus avoid the real danger that the system automatically interprets it as a noun in the plural? we use the apostrophe nowadays to tell the genitive singular ⟨’s⟩  om the plural ⟨⒠ s⟩, and consequently most pos taggers for present-day english are trained to identi the ⟨’s⟩ morpheme as a separate unit. however, in the 15th-century the genitive ending -es, which survived  om the oe declension for singular nouns, was still very much in use. the apostrophe did not appear until the ⟨e⟩ was fi nally dropped, since it fact it was used to indicate this contraction (cavella and kernodle 2003: 2). last of all, middle english included letterforms which are no longer extant in our contemporary alphabet: these include, thorn ⟨þ⟩, yogh ⟨ȝ⟩ together with their respective capital counterparts ⟨þ⟩, ⟨ȝ⟩ and (since we work with semi-diplomatic transcription) we should probably include dotted ⟨ẏ⟩.3 so, the tagger will have to be trained into recognising these letterforms, and moreover, into interpreting these letter forms as possible variants. take for one the following spellings of the defi nite article: ⟨þe⟩, ⟨the⟩ and ⟨ye⟩. the tagger will have to realise that all these diff erent letterforms are representing the same word and that they should accordingly acquire identical tags. 3 note that for early me texts at least ⟨ð⟩, ⟨æ⟩, ⟨ð⟩ and ⟨æ⟩ should be added to the inventory. 130 melania sánchez reed & antonio miranda garcía selim 16 (2009) 2.1.3 word identification once all the tokens have been suitably established, the system must recognise them in order to be able to add their corresponding morphological tag⒮ . however, this is not a straightforward process, as not all the items will be recognised by the tagger. dialectal variants, scribal errors, roman numerals and terms belonging to other languages, mainly latin, will be the main source of our problems. a possible solution regarding dialectal variants and scribal errors would be to standardise and correct them, respectively. as we are dealing with semi-diplomatic transcription, this is naturally out of the question. the manual tagging process followed by the corpus of late middle english scientifi c prose lemmatises the words according to the online version of the middle english dictionary (henceforth e-med), but not only lemmas are provided, since their original spellings are also maintained. so, a semiautomatic tagger for me would need to be trained to recognise these variants and, furthermore, to identi them as belonging to the same lemma. however, the real problem would arise when variants never seen before appear in a text, as a tagger trained on a specifi c set would not be able to recognise them. as for roman numerals, they can easily be input into the system as indeed they already are in most present day english taggers. concerning foreign terms (latin, french, etc.), the basic problem is that we have a limited knowledge base. our transcriptions, which have been manually annotated, have been lemmatised, as mentioned above, according to the entries recorded by the e-med, but this source is of little use when it comes to such latinate terms and other foreign words as were not considered borrowings by the editors of med. words not recorded in the e-med have been tagged consulting other sources (see moreno-olalla & miranda-garcía 2009: 137 for details). furthermore, we can also rely sometimes on prior experiences, that is, if a particular word has already appeared in a previous text then we can tentatively assign it the same tag—but of course this practice is very limited. moreover, if the tagger is solely trained on items that have already appeared then it is bound to encounter  equently new words which it is unable to identi . all in all, these problems are tied to the same main concern, the existence of “unknown” words that will not be identifi ed by the system. this is, 131 a semi-automatic post system for me corpora selim 16 (2009) in fact, a diffi culty that automatic pos taggers designed for present day languages still have to contend with. 2.1.4 tagging criteria before attempting to devise a semi-automatic and semi-intelligent pos tagging system a criterion must be established for the task. what information do we want our tagger to provide? and, how do we want this information organised? the manuscripts compiled in the corpus of late middle english scientifi c prose have all been tagged manually according to the following criteria. first of all, the transcriptions are downloaded onto a microso excel spreadsheet, so that all the words appear vertically ordered in the fi rst column. then, each word is annotated with its corresponding lemma and morphological information in the remaining horizontal columns. every word is tagged with the same information: lemma, word class, accidence, folio, line manuscript number, and meaning. each lemma will moreover appear with its specifi c word class attached in order to procure disambiguation. the entries would look as presented on fig. 9 below. our objective is to design a semi-automatic pos tagger that can provide the following information: (a) lemma (disambiguated according to its morphological category); (b) pos tag; and (c) accidence. in addition to that, we plan to off er some information on the dialectal provenance of each of the variants whenever this can be ascertained. moreover, our goal is not solely to provide tags at a simple word level. we also wish to take into consideration compound words, collocations and other phrases. so, our tagging system aims to perform pos tagging but also chunking to a certain extent, doubling up as a simple syntactic parser. at word level, on virtually any text we will fi nd both simple and compound nouns, such as ⟨enula campana⟩ and ⟨v levyd grase⟩, that should be tagged as one token only. however, this will cause diffi culties for the system, as the terms are divided in the transcription and the tagger will assume that they are separate items. for example, ⟨v levyd grase⟩ would be tagged independently as a numeral determiner ⒱ , an adjective (levyd) and a noun (grase), when our objective is in fact to tag the whole chunk as one noun. 132 melania sánchez reed & antonio miranda garcía selim 16 (2009) fig. 9. system of tags 133 a semi-automatic post system for me corpora selim 16 (2009) we also intend to identi common nouns and proper nouns, both simple, such as ⟨galion⟩ (ms hunter 497, f. 88v) and ⟨eneas⟩ (ms hunter 497, f. 90r), and compound ones such as ⟨kynges rogere⟩ (ms wellcome 397, f. 54r) and ⟨christofer rochester⟩ (ms hunter 329, f. 30 v). how will the automatic system recognise proper names? normally, they appear capitalised in me witnesses. however, we must be aware that we can have instances of proper names which appear entirely in small case letters, such as ⟨uirgil⟩ (ms hunter 497, 90r) or ⟨ypocras⟩ (hunter 497, 48r), and also instances of common nouns that appear capitalised in the middle of a sentence, as in ⟨mynttis⟩ (ms hunter 328, 56v) and ⟨coriander⟩ (ms hunter 328, 60v). therefore, the system will not be able to rely on capitalisations in order to identi proper names. collocations and other phrases are divided into two types: (a) those wherein all the units remain together in a consecutive sequence, such as ⟨because of⟩, ⟨take  om⟩, ⟨to and  o⟩ (hunter 503), ⟨yn as moche as⟩ (hunter 513a) or ⟨in respect of⟩ (hunter 513a), among many others; and (b) those that appear divided, such as ⟨not only … but also⟩, ⟨whether … or⟩, ⟨if … than⟩ or ⟨neyther … ne⟩, among others. below, we have examples of these “divided” phrases found within context: not only puttyth oute sauerey hyr chylde whether yt be quyk or deed yf she ete sauerey. but also yf sauorey be under put to þe woman þat ys with chylde (ms hunter 497, 28v) whether yt be quyk or deed (hunter 497, 28v) if he parbrake malum signifi cat . than serche þe wounde . & chaff e þe brokyn bonys (hunter 328, 64v) neyther þe rose coloure ne þe lylye may ouerpasse þe uiolet (hunter 497, 15v) these phrases should be tagged as a single item. however, how can we make the system recognise them as such? as we can see, we have the same problem that we fi nd with compound nouns. furthermore, phrases that appear divided, such as ⟨not only … but also⟩ pose even more of a challenge for the system since, as we have seen above, they can  equently be lines apart. 134 melania sánchez reed & antonio miranda garcía selim 16 (2009) 2.1.5 homonyms homonyms can only be disambiguated within context, and, as a result, they are a source of problems for pos taggers, particularly since our target tagger also aims to provide the meaning of any given token. for example, pde ⟨lap⟩ can be both a round of a race track and the part of the body when sitting down. in me we also have homonymous words. the following sample pairs are entries taken  om the e-med: lēchen, v (1) ‘to cut, slice’ vs. lēchen, v (2) ‘to cure, treat’ whītel, n (1) ‘a knife, dagger’ vs. whītel, n (2), ‘a blanket’ note further that homonyms do not necessarily have to share the same pos: ⟨fair(e, n⟩ and ⟨fair(e, b⟩, both taken  om the e-med, are a noun meaning “an aff air or business” and an adverb meaning “beautifully”, respectively. 2.1.6 word order word-order in present day english (henceforth pde) is very fi xed, which gives pde automatic pos taggers a distinct advantage when it comes to item recognition. for instance, even if a word is unknown or ambiguous to the tagger, the system will  equently be able to tag the word successfully by means of analysing its immediate context, a task that is performed by many existing algorithms. on the other hand, in me word-order was not so rigid. for example, a number of adjectives can appear before or a er the noun they are modi ing, as in ⟨piper long⟩ (hunter 328, f. 47v) or ⟨longe peper⟩ (wellcome 397, f. 55r), which is problematic for devising a pos tagger. or let us take the following phrase, “mellicratum cum piper long & alys specibus” (hunter 328, f. 47v), and imagine that the word ⟨long⟩ is unknown to our system. if our tagger is trained according to the “adjective + noun” pattern, which is the fi xed pattern in pde, then a phrase like this is bound to be tagged erroneously. the context around the word ⟨long⟩ would be looked at, and as soon as the tagger realised that it had a noun to the right and the conj unction ⟨and⟩ to the le , the program would most likely assume (of course erroneously) that the unknown word is another 135 a semi-automatic post system for me corpora selim 16 (2009) noun, when it is in fact an adjective. our me tagger would then have to train the system into recognising diff erent patterns for adjectives, and this would now cause ambiguity problems. 2.1.7 punctuation tokenization relies heavily on sentential punctuation, as it allows a pos tagging system to recognise sentences and, as a result, to identi the items that compose it. however, me punctuation poses a problem for this process due to its extreme haphazardness. the most common punctuation marks in me include the period (.), the virgule (/) and the paragraph mark (¶), but, in any given witness, “the signifi cance of a given mark varied almost as  equently as spelling did” (petti 1977: 25). to make matters worse, “practice o en diff ered  om writer to writer” (petti 1977: 25).4 therefore, we cannot train our tagging system to recognise me punctuation if there are no standard rules. for example, the virgule was  equently employed between words as is our present-day comma, as in the following sequence: “take turbite / clowes / armodactules / of eueryche x dragynes […]”. but it could also function as a full stop, indicating the end of a paragraph. in a similar vein, the period (.) could also function as a comma or as full stop. another symbol found within our transcriptions is square brackets ([ ]). these have been added by the transcriber in order to re-introduce marginalia and other interlinear additions within the main body of the text, so they are not are not part of the original witness. however, as they are found within the transcription, and will therefore be fed into the system, they still have to be dealt with. we have two options: (a) to delete them before introducing the transcription into the system; (b) to train the tagging system to ignore these symbols and solely acknowledge their contents, which will appear in superscript, as in “put it into a fayre vessel [of glasse]. & vse to drynk it o en” (ms hunter 328, f. 45v). note incidentally that this example illustrates as well the use of the period (.) as a present day comma. 4 see calle-martín 2004, calle-martín and miranda-garcía 2005 and marqués-aguado 2009 for further information regarding the nature of me punctuation. 136 melania sánchez reed & antonio miranda garcía selim 16 (2009) 2.2 computational limitations in order to devise an successful semi-automatic pos tagging system for me it is necessary to look at the existing systems and algorithms that are currently available for the task, irrespective of their target language, in order to establish those methods that are best suited to fulfi ll our needs as to the information we wish our tagger to provide. 2.2.1 classification pos taggers can be classifi ed into four basic types: (a) rule based; (b) stochastic or probabilistic; (c) hybrid; and (d) based on alignment and projection of parallel texts. (a) rule based taggers rule-based taggers, such as taggit, employ specifi c rules to eliminate ambiguity. these rules can be fed into the system by introducing a pretagged corpus, a “tagger dictionary” (van guilder 1995: 1), where om the program can be trained, and by introducing rules (manually or automatically) by searching for generalised patterns of word order, the most  equent clause patterns including noun phrases, verb phrases and prepositional phrases. on the one hand, manually established rules require a high level of linguistic knowledge of the language in question and, moreover, a great deal of human eff ort, which is precisely what we are trying to reduce. furthermore, manually established rules limit the tagger to the language and/or domain which it was designed for in the fi rst place, not allowing for accurate results when trying to tag texts of a diff erent nature. on the other hand, automatic taggers learn the rules automatically,  ee of human intervention, through a training process on a previously tagged text. (b) stochastic or probabilistic taggers stochastic or probabilistic taggers, as their name implies, rely on probabilistic methods for disambiguation. usually trained on a previously tagged text, although not necessarily (see eric brill 1995 for more information regarding this matter), the system chooses those tags with the highest rate of  equency for the given word sequence. simple stochastic taggers will assign tags relying solely on  equency, that is, an ambiguous 137 a semi-automatic post system for me corpora selim 16 (2009) word will be tagged depending on the most  equent tag it has throughout the trainer text, which can cause words to be tagged erroneously. to surmount this problem many diff erent types of stochastic taggers have been devised, all employing diff erent systems based on probability. let us look at seven commonly used stochastic systems: hidden markov models, maximum entropy taggers, decision trees, sliding windows, support vector machines and memory based learning. hidden markov models (henceforth hmm), used in taggers such as hunpos or tatoo, combine “tag sequence probabilities and word  equency measurements” (altunyurt, orhan and güngör 2007: 66), that is, they tag a word by making assumptions based not only on the  equency of the tag in itself, but also on the  equency of the tag appearing with the previous tags. this way the context of the word is taken into account and a tag will be applied or not depending on its preceding and succeeding words. for instance, note the position of the word bathe in the following phrases found in ms hunter 497: “a bathe of hem” (f. 6v) and “wasshe or bathe well þe heed” (f. 26r). out of context bathe could be either a noun or a verb, so to resolve ambiguity, a hmm would fi rst of all calculate the probability of it being one or the other, depending on its rate of  equency found in the trainer text, and then it would look at the probability of these tags appearing with other tags, and thanks to the fact that in “a bathe of hem” bathe is preceded by a determiner the tagger will be able to correctly identi it as a noun, given that the structure determiner + noun is invariable across any text. in turn, maximum entropy taggers are statistical models based on mathematical formulas for automatic pos tagging. this model searches for the probability of distribution of the maximum entropy according to common restrictions and “combines diverse forms of contextual information in a principled manner, and does not impose any distributional assumptions on the training data” (ratnaparkhi 1996: 133). decision trees involve the creation of a decision tree generated  om a previously tagged corpus that is used for the training process. the resulting tree will then be employed for the subsequent tagging of any text. schmid claims that decisions trees would require a smaller training 138 melania sánchez reed & antonio miranda garcía selim 16 (2009) corpus than other methods, such as hmm, in order to obtain accurate results (schmid 1994a: 48). a sliding window is defi ned as “a system which assigns the part of speech of a word based on the information provided by a fi xed window of words around it” (sánchez-villamil, forcada and carrasco 2004: 454), that is, that although the window, or  ame, is mobile in itself, the number of words that is scanned at a time by that sliding window is always fi xed. sánchez-villamil et al. present a tool that allows for the system to be trained  om a raw corpus, i.e. unsupervised, not having to be tagged previously, furthermore implementing the tagger “exactly as a fi nite-state machine” (2004: 454). morphologic tagging can also be modeled and resolved with artifi cial neural networks (ann). these networks “consist of a large number of simple processing units” which “are highly interconnected by directed weighted links”. each unit will have its own activation value, this activation being “propagated to other units” through tile connections (all quotations  om schmid 1994b: 172). these networks can learn self-suffi ciently by adapting the weight of their connections  om a group of classifi ed samples. this method has been claimed to “have shown performances comparable to that of hidden markov model systems or even better” (lippmann 1989 cited in schmid 1994b: 172). the concept of support vector machines (svm) is defi ned by pianta and zanoli in the following manner: “support vector machines are based on the structural risk minimization strategy [7],5 which aims at fi nding a hypothesis h for which we can guarantee the lowest true error, that is the probability that h will make an error on an unseen and randomly selected test example” (pianta & zanoli 2007: 8) a svm “performs classifi cation tasks by constructing hyperplanes in a multidimensional space that separates cases of diff erent class labels” (electronic statistics textbook 2010). murata, ma and isahara claim yet that svm’s can implement the pos tagging learning process effi ciently only when large corpora are not being used as supervised data (2001: 24). 5 from vladimir n. vapnik 1995: the nature of statistical learning theory. springer. 139 a semi-automatic post system for me corpora selim 16 (2009) finally, the last stochastic method we will be dealing with is memorybased learning. this is a supervised inductive training method. when tagging a text both the tagged words of the training text and their context are stored in the system’s memory and the words in our target text will be tagged according to their similarity with those words that have been stored in the memory. this system can provide assets such as the possibility of using a small tagged corpus for training, i.e. “incremental learning”, and it apparently yields “good results on unknown words without morphological analysis”, among others (daelemans and zavrel 1996: 25). (c) hybrid taggers hybrid taggers combine aspects of both stochastic and rule-based methods. available hybrid taggers include, among others, systems based on transformation-based-learning (henceforth tbl) such as the brill tagger,6 and those based on a combination of rules and hmm, such as claws4. tbl “is an error-driven approach to induce the retagging rules  om a training corpus” (algahtani, black and mcnaught 2009: 67). these taggers are trained  om previously tagged texts. this process, however, is carried out in two diff erent stages. firstly, the words in the sample text are tagged according to their most  equent tag, and secondly (in the rule-learning stage), the tagger applies a series of possible disambiguation rules and evaluates them whilst gauging their adequacy, which is expected to reduce the error-rate. in this way the system can learn  om its own errors and only learn those rules that are most eff ective. a er the learning process has taken place, the texts are initially tagged without taking the rules into account; these are applied at a second stage to improve the fi rst tagging. (d) taggers based on alignment and projection of parallel texts this method, as seen above concerning the me tagger developed at the university of texas, relies on the existence of a text written in two diff erent languages. one of the texts is tagged, either manually or by means of any 6 note that tbl can be classifi ed as a rule-based method (see brill 1992) and also as a stochastic method (charniak 1997). however, given that it combines aspects of both methods, this study as considered it to be of a hybrid nature. 140 melania sánchez reed & antonio miranda garcía selim 16 (2009) of the aforementioned automatic pos taggers, and then the other text is tagged by means of alignment and projection with the previously tagged text, therefore, automatically acquiring the same tags. note that for our present objective this method is unfeasible, as no contemporary tagged versions of the me texts we are dealing with are currently in existence. 2.2.2 our beta tagger given the complexity of our objectives, the most adequate solution to fulfi ll our specifi c needs is to build a hybrid pos tagging system, wherein both rule-based and probabilistic methods are combined for the sake of a higher accuracy. at present we have a beta version of our target me pos tagger that is fully operative and is continuously being improved by testing diff erent methods. however, the tagger is able so far to tag items that have been previously trained into the system only, and does not deal as yet with unknown tokens. we distinguished above the three stages involved in the pos tagging process: (a) “tokenization”; (b) “ambiguity look-up”; and (c) “disambiguation”. our current tagger is in the second phase of this process: it divides the text into tokens and then assigns all the possible tags that could possibly be applied to each of them. take the token ⟨powder⟩ for instance. our tagger is already able to assign it the pos tags of noun and verb, given that it can function as both, as seen  om the following examples: “tyll the powder be consumed” (hunter 503, p. 35) vs. “and powder it and medyl it wyth suger captyn” (hunter 503, p. 124). the next step in line is hence to achieve a successful disambiguation, as ambiguity remains the main computational challenge. the central trainer for our system is our tagger dictionary, compiled  om the morphological information contained in the manually tagged transcriptions belonging to the corpus of late middle english scientifi c prose. when a text is fed into the system, it is fi rst of all tokenized: tokens are acknowledged and supralinguistic elements such as spaces and punctuation marks are skipped for the moment. then the system searches for these tokens in the database and those that coincide with those words stored in the tagger dictionary are tagged automatically. nothing really new here: this is how ordinary tokenizers work. however, in view of the aforementioned diffi culties that the me language poses for a successful 141 a semi-automatic post system for me corpora selim 16 (2009) tagging process, which cause so many words to remain unidentifi ed, our system needs to be more complex. therefore, the identifi cation of the words that are unknown to the tagger becomes our second main computational challenge. 3 solutions 3.1 linguistic problems let us now move on to provide possible solutions to several of the aforementioned linguistic problems. note that our linguistic problems are  equently solved by means of computational solutions. when a word is not identifi ed automatically it will undergo several processes: a) the fi rst process surmounts our diffi culties concerning line-fi nal word division. take, for instance, ⟨cle-pid⟩ or ⟨whi-ch⟩ when there is no hyphen indicating that these instances are just one word. the system performs the following procedure to identi them. first of all, it searches for the fi rst part, in the case of ⟨cle-pid⟩ it will search for ⟨cle⟩, and if it cannot fi nd it, the system will automatically unite it with the following token and perform the search again, this time searching for ⟨clepid⟩; if found, it will be added the corresponding tag⒮ . note that this solution only works for words which are divided into tokens that are unrecognisable to the system. for example, the word ⟨with out⟩ if divided would fail to undergo this process, as ⟨with⟩ would be identifi ed and tagged as a preposition and ⟨out⟩ would also be found and tagged as an adverb. to avoid this problem, before any word is tagged by default the system will look at the word that follows it, to see if they exist in conj unction with another in the tagger dictionary. this way, ⟨with out⟩ will be successfully tagged as one token. note that whenever a longer form is available in the tagger dictionary it will be favoured and chosen as the valid tag even if individual tags are found for the shorter tokens. b) the second process solves the instances in which two words appear united. take ⟨aman⟩, a determiner plus a noun, which was one of the aforementioned examples. the system fi rst searches for the word as a whole, and since it will not found it begins to break down the word into two parts, going through all the possible combinations and searching for both parts respectively in the tagger dictionary. our example ⟨aman⟩ can theoretically be divided in three ways: a-man, am-an and ama-n. 142 melania sánchez reed & antonio miranda garcía selim 16 (2009) in this case, the fi rst division is successful as the other two options are impossible. the system searches for ⟨a⟩ and then ⟨man⟩ and they acquire their respective tags, and what was once one token instantly becomes two. c) for the system to recognise me characters, such as ⟨þ⟩ and ⟨ȝ⟩, it is necessary to employ a character repertory that contains these characters. this corpus complies with version 5.0 of the unicode standard, as it is becoming the most used one in the world. d) as for me irregular capitalisation, identifi cation will pose no problems if the proper names appear in the training text, as they will automatically receive their corresponding tag, regardless of whether they happen to appear capitalised in our target text or not: the system will invariably check the word we wish to tag both in upper-case and lowercase letters. that is, if our text presents a proper noun in lower-case that appears capitalised in our database, the system will fi rst look for it in lower-case exactly as it is found in the text, and then search for it with a capital initial. likewise, for a common noun that appears capitalised the system will search for its capitalised form and, when not found, a lower case version will automatically be searched. however, this method can be problematic when we are dealing with me characters, as the unicode standard can sometimes cause problems when converting lowercase into uppercase and conversely. moreover, our problem still remains for unknown proper nouns. how can they be identifi ed? e) finally, to surmount the lack of standardisation in me punctuation we initially developed a system of symbols that were to be introduced at transcription level and which would allow the tagger to recognise sentences. three symbols were employed: ⟨**⟩, ⟨@@⟩ and ⟨%⟩, all of them respectively placed a er the scribal punctuation. the two asterisks indicated that the system was to ignore the preceding punctuation mark. the two “at” symbols indicated that the mark we were dealing with should be acknowledged as valid also in pde. finally, the percent symbol indicated that the preceding mark of punctuation was added by the transcriber in order to provide a contemporary punctuation, irrespective of the value of the mark in the original ms. an example of this system looks as follows: ⟨& make .** a plaster & ley it to þe dyssese .@@⟩. here we are telling the program to ignore the fi rst period, and acknowledge the last one. using this system we could teach the pos tagger to identi 143 a semi-automatic post system for me corpora selim 16 (2009) sentences without disturbing the scribe’s original punctuation, as once the transcription has been fed into the system, the added symbols can be removed or made invisible. a similar system of symbols was developed to lemmatise tokens that appeared divided, including compounds, collocations and other phrases. this was solved by placing ⟨ññ⟩ in between the separated parts, this way telling the tagger that they were to be taken as one lemma. for example, ⟨withññout⟩, ⟨enulaññcampana⟩ and ⟨becauseññof⟩. furthermore, for those grammatical expressions that could appear lines apart (as in ⟨not only … but also⟩) not only ⟨ññ⟩ would be used to unite each section but arrows would also be added: > meaning that something follows; and < meaning that something precedes, as seen below. “notññonly> puttyth oute sauerey hyr chylde whether yt be quyk or deed yf she ete sauerey. <butññalso yf sauorey be under put to þe woman þat ys with chylde” (ms hunter 497, 28v). however, although this system is feasible, it is clear that adding all these symbols is a tedious and time-consuming task for the transcriber as they have to be introduced manually, and all the more so since all the texts that were to be tagged by the system would have to undergo the same process. so, we aim to mark sentential punctuation instead by placing a bar or any similar symbol for the program to recognise full sentences. 3.2 computational problems ambiguity will most likely be ultimately resolved by means of a hmm, grouped above within the stochastic systems. hmm are algorithms which tag words by taking into account (a) the  equency of the tag in itself across the trainer text; and (b) the  equency of the tag appearing with the previous tags, i.e its context. so, the tag will be applied or not depending on its preceding and succeeding words. again, unknown words remain as our main problem here. however, these may also be sorted by enlarging our tagger dictionary, by the assignment of the most  equent tag that is recorded within the tagger dictionary, by a simple analysis of the words context, and also by using the morphology of the word itself. in some cases, due to the unreliability of me word order, infl ectional morphology can be a very helpful resource for the tagging process. 144 melania sánchez reed & antonio miranda garcía selim 16 (2009) 4 conclusions this paper tried to fulfi ll the following purposes: (a) to present our objective: to design an accurate semi-intelligent and semi-automatic tagger for me texts, as no such system is currently in existence; (b) to discuss the challenges that me poses for our task, all these mainly due to a lack of standardisation in the language; (c) to present the diff erent tagging systems that are available to suggest those that are most useful to fulfi ll our needs. the best system appears to be a hybrid one, which combines rulebased methods by employing a tagger dictionary  om which the texts will acquire their corresponding tags, and stochastic and probabilistic methods in order to resolve ambiguity, mainly hmms that can resolve ambiguity by looking at probabilities and the contextual information of the word in question. finally, we aim (d) to provide the provisional solutions we have developed thus far to overcome the aforementioned problems. as we have seen, our project is still very much work in progress. even though some problems have been solved, we are still looking for suitable solutions for the successful identifi cation of the genitive case and, more importantly, for the tagging of unknown tokens. these remain the main stumbling-blocks that hinder the development of a tool that may facilitate the part-of-speech tagging process and thus aid the linguist’s search for useful information. melania sánchez reed & antonio miranda garcía university of málaga references algahtani, s., w. black and j. mcnaught 2009: arabic part-of-speech tagging using transformation-based learning. in k. choukri and b. maegaard, eds., proceedings of the second international conference on arabic language resources and tools. (cairo, egypt): 66–70. altunyurt l., z. orhan and t. güngör 2007: towards combining rule-based and statistical part of speech tagging in agglutinative languages. computer engineering 1.1: 66–69. 145 a semi-automatic post system for me corpora selim 16 (2009) brill, e. 1995: unsupervised learning of disambiguation rules for part of speech tagging. proceedings of the 3rd workshop on very large corpora. massachusetts institute of technology (cambridge, massachusetts). 1–13. brill, e. 1992: a simple rule-based part of speech tagger. in m. kauff man, ed., proceedings of the darpa. speech and natural language workshop. (san mateo, california): 112–116. calle-martín, j. 2004: punctuation practice in a 15th-century arithmetical treatise (ms bodley 790). neuphilologische mitteilungen 4. 407–422. calle-martín, j. and a. miranda-garcía 2005: editing middle english punctuation. the case of ms egerton 2622 (ff . 136–165). international journal of english studies 5. 27–44. cavella, c. and r. a. kernodle 2003 [2010/08]: how the past aff ects the future: the story of the apostrophe’. au tesol working papers 2. american university: washington, dc. http://www1.american.edu/tesol/ working%20papers/wpkernodlecavella.pdf charniak, e. 1997: statistical techniques for natural language parsing. ai magazine, 18.4. american association for artifi cial intelligence. 33–43. daelemans w. and j. zavrel 1996: mbt: a memory-based part of speech tagger-generator. proceedings of the fourth workshop on very large corpora (acl sigdat). copenhagen. 14–27. fischl, w. 2009: part of speech tagging – a solved problem? unpublished work  om seminar/lecture. technical university of vienna: austria. 1–8. giesbrecht, e. and s. evert 2009: is part-of-speech tagging a solved task? an evaluation of pos taggers for the german web as corpus. proceedings of the 5th web as corpus workshop (wac5). donostia. 27–35. kurath, h., s. kuhn, j. reidy and r. e. lewis eds. 1956–2001 [2010/08]: middle english dictionary. ann arbour: university of michigan press. http:// quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/lookup.html lippmann, r. p. 1989: review of neural networks for speech recognition. neural computation, vol. i. mit press. 1–38. cited in schmid, h. 1994. part-of-speech tagging with neural networks. proceedings of the 15th conference on computational linguistics. kyoto: japan. 172–176. marqués-aguado, t. 2009: punctuation practice in the antidotary in g.u.l. ms hunter 513 (ff . 37v–96v). miscelánea 39. 55–72. 146 melania sánchez reed & antonio miranda garcía selim 16 (2009) mcenery, t. and a. wilson 1997 [2010/08]: corpus linguistics. http://www. lancs.ac.uk/fss/courses/ling/corpus/contents.htm. miranda-garcía, a., j. calle-martín, d. moreno-olalla and j. l. triviñorodríguez 2001: calloe: a pedagogical tool for the learning of old english. old english newsletter 34.3. 12–20. miranda-garcía, a., j. l. triviño-rodríguez and j. calle-martín 2000: a morphological analyzer of old english texts (maoet). in a. m. hornero and m. p. navarro, eds. proceedings of the 10th international conference of selim. zaragoza, institución fernando el católico: 127– 145. moon, t. and j. baldridge 2007: part-of-speech tagging for middle english through alignment and projection of parallel diachronic texts. proceedings of the 2007 joint conference on empirical methods in natural language processing and computational natural language learning (prague, czech republic): 390–399. moreno-olalla, david and miranda-garcía, antonio 2009: an annotated corpus of middle english scientifi c prose: aims & features. in díaz vera, javier enrique & caballero rodríguez, rosario eds., textual healing: studies in medieval english medical, scientifi c and technical texts. bern-new york, peter lang: 123–140. murata, m., q. ma and h. isahara 2001: part of speech tagging in thai language using support vector machine. proceedings of natural language processing and neural networks (nlpnn). tokyo: japan. 24–30. petti, a. g. 1977: english literary hands from chaucer to dryden. harvard university press: cambridge massachusetts. pianta, e. and r. zanoli 2007: tagpro: a system for italian pos tagging based on svm. contributi scientifi ci, 4.2. 8–9. ratnaparkhi, a. 1996: a maximum entropy model for part-of-speech tagging. proceedings of the empirical methods in natural language processing. philadelphia, pa. 133–142. ruef, b. [n. d.] [2010/08]: transformation-based learning and part-of-speech tagging of old english. zurich. https://fi les.ifi .uzh.ch/cl/gschneid/ korpusseminar/beni_tbl_slides.pdf sánchez-villamil, e., m. forcada and r. carrasco 2004: unsupervised training of a finite-state sliding-window part-of-speech tagger. in vicedo, j. 147 a semi-automatic post system for me corpora selim 16 (2009) received 28 oct 2010; revision received 17 nov 2010; accepted 22 nov 2010 l. et al. eds., proceedings of the 4th international conference españa for natural language processing (estal) (alicante, spain): 454–463. schmid, h. 1994a: probabilistic part-of-speech tagging using decision trees. proceedings of international conference on new methods in language processing. (manchester, uk): 44–49. schmid, h. 1994b: part-of-speech tagging with neural networks. proceedings of the 15th conference on computational linguistics (kyoto, japan): 172–176. statso , inc. 2010 [2010/08]: electronic statistics textbook. tulsa: statso . http://www.statso .com/textbook/ van guilder, l. 1995 [2010/08]: automated part of speech tagging: a brief overview. handout for ling361. georgetown university. http://ccl.pku. edu.cn/doubtfi re/nlp/lexical_analysis/word_segmentation_tagging/ pos_tagging_overview/pos%20tagging%20overview.htm. • selim 20.indb ivalla ortega-barrera, selim 20 (2013–2014): 291–295issn: 1132–631x calle-martín, javier & miguel ángel castaño-gil 2013. a late middle english remedy-book (ms wellcome 542, ff . 1r–20v). a scholarly edition (late middle english texts 5.) peter lang ag, bern. pp. 183. isbn: 3-0343-1369-⒈ a late middle english remedy-book (ms wellcome 542, ff . 1r–20v) a scholarly edition. late middle english texts 5. peter lang ag, bern is number 5 in the collection late middle english texts (lmet) series. this series publishes scientifi c manuscripts and early prints covering a study of their palaeographic and language features, as it is shown in this number under study, which includes the transcription of a medieval remedy-book (ms wellcome 542, ff . 1r–20v). the present volume is organised in four diff erent chapters, namely “the manuscript,” “the language,” “the text” and “the glossary.” the work has been prefaced by medievalist and linguist irma taavitsainen. the preface, “recipes in middle english medical literature,” emphasises the importance of editing manuscripts and gives the current state of the art of editing middle english medical recipes, clarify ing the importance of non-literary texts and, at the same time, explaining the meaning of recipes. taavitsainen’s contribution to the book is very signifi cant. she herself has been the author of several articles dealing with recipes both fr om a linguistic and a cultural perspective (taavitsainen, 2001; taavitsainen & pahta 2004, among others). recipes are defi ned as belonging to utilitarian literature as they “give instructions on how to prepare medicines to cure an illness, how to maintain health or prevent a harmful condition” (p. 13). taavitsainen also deals briefl y with the diff erent electronic catalogues that exist concerning medical texts, emphasising the usefulness of these resources. in her conclusion, she presents this edition as one further step in linguistics and philological studies since it is a contribution to the material available to scholars and researchers. ivalla ortega-barrera 292selim 20 (2013–2014) the fi rst chapter (“the manuscript”) provides an analysis of the contents of the manuscript, listing other manuscripts with the same contents, which are the prologue, charms and other medical formulae. the authors also give information about the owners, presenting a brief biography of each one, and the way the manuscript was acquired, and the parallel manuscripts, which are a total of 21 copies. the writers explain why they use the term remedy-book to refer to this manuscript and that is because it contains “a collection of recipes including charms, but not a fully developed ‘treatise on bloodletting or urines’ (keiser 1988: 3365)” (p. 20). in the absence of further considerations, i think the category works well for the volume as it resembles other remedy books in the line of the ones edited in odgen (1938) and, more recently, alonso-almeida (2014). the second part of this fi rst chapter analyses the codicological aspects, such as material, dimensions and ink, quiring and collation, ruling, foliation, binding and fl y-leaves. the manuscript has been written in a quarto size vellum. the black ink is the most used, although the red ink also appears fr equently. the text is written in 119 folios, which “present a modern foliation at the top right-hand corner of every folio recto” (p. 29). in this case, more information about collation is badly needed here because the only reference to the manuscripts that can be compared with ms wellcome 542, ff . 1r–20v, seems to be the listing of 21 parallel manuscripts, but with no further reference or any comparison among these evidences. this collation would greatly benefi t the edition but the authors, i guess, may undertake this as future research prospects. there is a paleographical analysis in which the authors off er the diff erent letterforms found in the manuscript. in this vein, the writers, following denholm-young 1954, hector 1966, and petti 1977, establish that the letter used is a mixture between the 14th century anglicana and the 15th century secretary and include a description of the section titles, which are visually identifi able since they are with a “bigger size written in red ink” (p. 32); numerals, which are roman fi gures; punctuation marks (punctus, punctus reviews 293 selim 20 (2013–2014) elevatus and the hyphen); and abbreviations used in the original manuscript. the abbreviations used are contraction, suspension, superior letters, and brevigraphs. the second chapter, “the language,” comprises the study of the provenance of the manuscript and the description of the infl ections found in the diff erent word classes that are used in the manuscript. to determine the origin of the manuscript, the authors have made a dialectal localisation of the manuscript using the fi t-technique, and they have concluded that its provenance is in the county of norfolk, in a neighbouring area with cambridge. aft er this, a morphological study is presented. the description of the infl ections used by the scribe and the number of occurrences of each one are provided. in this sense, although the number of instances per infl ection is given, there is no reference to the precise location of each case in the text, so the reader cannot fi nd the examples in the text unless he/she conducts an exhaustive analysis. i wonder, however, whether this information is of real value but, if so, a detail description would have been very welcome. the third chapter, “the text,” presents the editorial guidelines followed by the authors, who have used a semi-diplomatic edition adapting some guidelines fr om petti (1977). the authors have maintained the original spelling, with double 〈ff 〉 transcribed as 〈f〉, and the capital letters at the beginning of each epigraph appear in square brackets. punctuation does not undergo any alteration and abbreviations have been expanded with the supplied letter in italics. thus, insertions have been reproduced as 〈t/e/ye〉, and marginalia have been included in the textual apparatus. following this, there is a digitised image of f. 3v of the manuscript and then the transcription starts. in the transcription, the reader can fi nd the diff erent recipes at a glance. the authors have provided editorial line numbers. the fourth chapter, “the glossary,” off ers a “selected glossary of the middle english terms found in ms wellcome 542” (p. 123), without including latinate terms. this glossary presents the ivalla ortega-barrera 294selim 20 (2013–2014) entries followed by their word class. for this glossary, the e-med and the oxford english dictionary have been used. the allomorphs and their occurrences have been included in this glossary. in this case, it would have been valuable if the authors had included their localisation in the text to take into account the study of diff erent variations in context. the inclusion of latinate terms would be also an appreciated aspect to be considered as the authors claim that the glossary is an aid for a better understanding of the edited text. at the end, the authors give the list of references. this list represents a good deal of the literature written in the topic, and the references are reasonably updated. there are, however, some missing references in the literature, which should be added. note, for instance, that carrillo-linares’s (2006) and garrido-anes’s (2004) works on medical texts have not been mentioned, not even as part of the description of earlier literature. all in all, this book can be considered as an outstanding contribution to editorial work in the fi eld of early scientifi c medical manuscripts. these editions can be later used to implement databases of earlier english texts. these compilations would be useful not only for linguists for obvious reasons, but also for students who want to start their professions as philologists. its internal organisation into the diff erent chapters, even if too concise (between 8–10 pages), makes the book very practical and easy to read and use, emphasising the edition and the glossary as the main and longest parts of the book. ivalla ortega-barrera universidad de las palmas de gran canaria reviews 295 selim 20 (2013–2014) references alonso-almeida, f. 2014: a middle english medical remedy book. edited fr om glasgow university library hunter 185. (middle english text series 50.) heidelberg, carl winter. carrillo-linares, m. j. 2006: “de humana natura.” in m. t. tavormina (ed.) sex, aging and death in a medieval medical compendium: trinity college cambridge r.14.52, its texts, language and scribe. tempe, center for medieval and renaissance texts and studies 292: 253–269. denholm-young, n. 1954: handwriting in england and wales. cardiff , university of wales press. garrido-anes, e. 2004: transmisión, vernacularización y usos del liber de simplici medicina: las versiones del circa instans en inglés medio. medicina & historia. revista de estudios históricos de las ciencias médicas 2: 1–15. hector, l. c. 1966: the handwriting of english documents. london, edward arnold. ogden, m. s. (ed.) 1938: the “liber de diversis medicinis” in the thornton manuscript (ms. lincoln cathedral a.5.2). (e.e.t.s. o.s. 207.) london, oxford university press. petti, a. g. 1977: english literary hands fr om chaucer to dryden. cambrige (ma), harvard university press. taavitsainen, i. 2001: middle english recipes: genre characteristics, text type features and underlying traditions of writing. journal of historical pragmatics 2.1:85–113. taavitsainen, i & p. pahta (eds.) 2004: medical writing in early modern english. cambridge, cambridge university press. • selim 18.indb rafael j. pascual, selim 18 (2011): 197–206issn: 1132–631x terasawa, jun 2011: old english metre: an introduction. toronto, university of toronto press. pp. xiv + 154. isbn: 978-1-44261129-0. 15,41€. old english metre is a maze area, full of dead ends. the complexities and subtleties of the metrical system which underlies oe poetic compositions—and which were once intuitively known to the poets as native speakers of oe—starkly contrast with the v agmentary nature of the surviving corpus of oe poetry. in order to bridge the gap which separates the remaining manuscripts v om the actual composition of poetry, metrical theories arise. of these theories, the one which has had the deepest infl uence upon anglo-saxonists has been that by eduard sievers (1885, 1893). the main reason is, no doubt, its powerful descriptiveness: it manages to classi[ the large number of surviving oe verses— approximately 60,000—into fi ve basic types. but the problem is that, despite its suitability for modern readers to conceptualise the metre, such a descriptive formalism fails at capturing the logic behind the metricality of verses. the inability of the sieversian system to go beyond mere description has resulted into a paradoxical situation. on the one hand, many reformulations and refi nements of sievers’s theory, as well as a variety of new paradigms, have appeared. but this has, at the same time, made the fi eld of oe metrical studies become so complex and specifi c that most basic readers, beginners’ books and introductions to oe either dispense with metre or present a clearly insuffi cient, o ̂en hacked account of it.1 it is the purpose of jun terasawa’s book, old english metre: an introduction (hereina ̂er cited as oem), to compensate for such a disproportion by off ering a straightforward introduction to oe metre for students, as well as 1 notable exceptions are cassidy & ringler (1971: 274–288), pope-fulk (2001: 129–158), mccully & hilles (2005: 143–185), and baker (2012: 123–155), which contain ample introductions to sieversian metrics. 198 rafael j. pascual selim 18 (2011) a state-of-the-art presentation of current debate.2 the aim of this review is to assess if terasawa fulfi ls his twofold purpose, and how. maze areas need elaborate, well-organised maps, so the fi rst thing to consider is whether terasawa’s book off ers a trustworthy guide to such a labyrinthine fi eld. this leads us to evaluate the book’s general structure. oem is organised into seven diff erent chapters. the basics of the metre are described in the fi rst three while the remaining four are devoted to more specifi c and ambiguous aspects, ranging ' om the phonological processes of contraction, parasiting, and syncopation through textual criticism, and currently controversial issues such as the dating of texts, authorship, and the diff erence between verse and prose. thus, this book is arranged according to a principle of increasing diffi culty, so that its overall structure unequivocally refl ects the author’s twofold purpose. the complexity of its contents is not only regulated at book-level but also within each chapter. the signs ê and êê are used to mark intermediate and advanced topics respectively, so that more complex chaptersections might be skipped at a fi rst reading. a/ er the general introduction given in chapter 1, chapter 2 focuses on alliteration—which basically means that the author has decided to begin his study ' om above. instead of giving attention fi rst to the manner in which syllables are regulated at the level of the foot or the half-line, terasawa opens his guide by paying heed to the structure at line level. the benefi cial point of this choice is that the student—who is usually faced with the common expression “alliterative verse”—will encounter the most noticeable feature of oe poetry at an early stage. the disadvantage is that, despite being its most noticeable feature, alliteration is not the most fundamental characteristic of oe verse (cf. tolkien 2006: 66; cable 1991: 2). nevertheless, it is made clear all throughout chapters 3 and 4 that the most essential aspect of oe 2 alan bliss’s an introduction to old english metre has been in existence since 1962. nevertheless, the large amount of oe metrical studies which has appeared since then made the need for a new introduction pressing. 199 reviews selim 18 (2011) metre is not alliteration but the number of syllables and their rhythmic distribution along the half-line. oem is also rich in examples, the majority of which are taken % om beowulf—a nostalgic desire for examples % om other poems of as traditional a metre as that of beowulf, such as daniel or genesis a, may arise at this point, though. but this book’s bid for practicality is not exhausted by its copious display of examples. far % om that, each chapter is also accompanied by a number of exercises—amounting to a total of twenty-six—with suggested answers provided in appendix a at the end. some of them will make the student deal with the same diffi culties that the poets encountered, while some others will put the reader in the place of modern editors faced with ambiguous, metrically emendable manuscript readings. this is as welcoming an addition as a rare one—as far as i am aware, only thomas cable’s a companion to baugh and cable’s history of the english language (2002: 38–43) and mccully and hilles’s the earliest english: an introduction to old english language (2005) incorporate practical exercises on oe metre. (these exercises are not, however, as plentiful and elaborate as those provided by terasawa in oem). two other appendices are added: one provides practical tips for scanning verses and the other consists of a useful glossary of technical terms. moreover, each chapter is opened with a short overview and closed by a “further-reading” section. all the works cited in these sections are gathered in the book’s fi nal bibliography, which would constitute by itself a valuable contribution to the fi eld of oe metrical studies.the meaningful structure and the intelligent organisation of oem eff ectively contribute to the book’s practical bias, which is at the same time one of its most attractive assets. the theoretical standpoint terasawa adopts is essentially sieversian. in this respect, oem fulfi ls cable’s recommendation that more work should be done in order to contribute to sievers’s theory rather than developing brand-new formalisms (cable 2008: 396). but terasawa, besides making continuous references to other 200 rafael j. pascual selim 18 (2011) points of view diff erent & om sievers’s, also recurs to arguments & om other theoretical models which prove useful for explaining specifi c aspects of oe metre. (for example, in chapter 2, he accounts for the nature of alliteration in terms of geoff rey russom’s word-foot theory). this provides oem with an eclecticism which will be useful for students to get a panoramic view of the metre. however, although this is a very appropriate feature for an introduction, the reader should bear in mind that oem is not a theory of oe metre in itself, but the hall which opens the way to diff erent rooms—and that a deeper understanding of oe metre will in the end mean getting to know the diff erent theories. chapter 1 off ers a general introduction to the whole book. it is like a condensed version of the entire work. the author highlights & om the very beginning that the two most conspicuous aspects of oe verse texts, alliteration and rhythm, are regulated by strict rules. this is, no doubt, a positive aspect, since it helps counteract the old view that the language of oe poetry is the language of everyday use rather tidied up (daunt 1946: 64). there is a real poetic metre underlying oe verse texts, and this is manifested in systematic rules, such as the four-syllable principle (which is presented early in the book), as well as in the poets’ avoidance of certain words and syntactical constructions—i will focus on this below. despite its emphasis on rules and constraints, the section on rhythm in chapter 1 opens with a commentary which might be thought unfortunate (terasawa 2011: 7): each half-line normally contains two li3 s or rhythmically stressed syllables whereas the number of unstressed syllables may vary. thus, unlike post-conquest poetry, old english verse texts do not strictly regulate the number of syllables either in the half-line or in a line: some half-lines consist of four syllables […] and others of nine or even more […]. that the number of syllables in oe verse texts does not remain constant but varies & om one half-line to another does not necessarily mean that it is not strictly regulated. in fact, as some 201 reviews selim 18 (2011) recent theorists have demonstrated, the syllabic variability of the oe half-line is regulated by a principle whereby the foot-structure mimics the word-stress patterns of oe, allowing a maximum of four extrametrical syllables to occur between feet (russom 1987: 8–24). even cable, who is an advocate of the sieversian essentials, acknowledges the importance of russom’s word-foot theory in accounting for constraints on the number of weakly-stressed syllables (cable 1991: 2). nevertheless, this minor inconsistency does not aff ect the overall coherence of oem, which very successfully conveys through repetition and exemplifi cation the idea that oe verse was highly systematic and strictly governed by rules. in his study on early english metre, thomas bredeho/ (2005a: 8, 51) complained about the defi ciency in our understanding of oe metre derived 4 om both a too exclusive overemphasis on alliteration and the neglect of end-rhyme as an occasional structural element. donka minkova (2008: 675) acknowledged the importance of this contribution in her review of bredeho/ ’s work. terasawa’s chapter 2 includes a section on end-rhyme (2011: 24–25), as well as a subsection on secondary patterns of alliteration (2011: 18–19).this is a positive good of oem, which will no doubt help students get a more comprehensive understanding of oe metre. chapter 5, which deals with the relation between metre and vocabulary, is one of the most valuable and interesting parts of oem. three general points are tackled: (1) the poets’ preference for words with a lower number of syllables; (2) their choice for certain morphological variants of words to the detriment of others equally native to the oe language; and (3) their avoidance of certain kinds of compounds depending on their phonological structure.3 that the 3 especially relevant is terasawa’s appreciation that the poets avoided the use of compounds requiring resolution at the start of the second element if this was immediately preceded by an unstressed syllable (cf. terasawa 2011: 73–74). this general tendency has been defi ned by r. d. fulk as terasawa’s law (cf. fulk 2007: 304). on the importance of terasawa’s law for delimiting the range of infl uence of oral tradition upon oe poetic composition, cf. fulk 2007: 304–312. 202 rafael j. pascual selim 18 (2011) poet makes choices as to what oe simplexes and compounds fi t into his poem unmistakably means that there are strict rules restraining the number of syllables to the half-line. (paradoxically, such a core feature of oe metre has o& en been overlooked in the past.) further, oem benefi ts ' om the fact that its author is one of the few scholars who have gone deep into the relation between vocabulary and metre, which makes this book unique. that the four-syllable principle is the gist of the metre is not only manifested in the poets’ lexical choices, but also in the grammatical constructions of the poetry—as chapter 6 emphasises. the relaxation of certain grammatical features in the poetry which are clearly observed in the prose, such as the concord between subjects and adjectival complements, the use of weak forms of the adjective without the presence of a demonstrative or possessive in the noun phrase, or the blurring of syntactically distinctive word-orders— among other factors—undoubtedly means that the grammar of the poetry is subservient to the rules of the metre. cable has remarked on the necessity of accounting for the rules of the metre in terms of the linguistic structures of oe (2008: 396–397). by devoting two whole chapters to the particular shapes that oe vocabulary and grammar adopted in order to conform to the requirements of the poetry, as well as by describing all throughout chapters 3 and 4 the phonological constraints into which the language of poetry had to fi t,4 oem off ers a solid introduction to the workings of oe metre which, in my opinion, anticipates the character of future studies on oe metre. in chapter 7, a state-of the-art overview of the main controversial areas of oe metre and the study of oe verse texts—namely, dating, authorship, and the diff erence between verse and prose—is off ered. in his prefatory remarks to c. l. wrenn’s 1940 edition of j. r. 4 for instance, kaluza’s law—with which some recent metrical theories dispense—is devoted a subsection in chapter 4 (terasawa 2011: 55–56). nevertheless, terasawa speaks of the “metrical structure” of the resolvable sequence as the key to understand if resolution is applied (2011: 56). “phonological structure” would be, in my opinion, a more appropriate expression. 203 reviews selim 18 (2011) clark hall’s prose translation of beowulf, j. r. r. tolkien pointed out that, due to the approximately equal metrical weight of the halflines, the oe line could be defi ned as a balance (tolkien 2006: 63). as if in keeping with this structural principle of oe poetic practice, terasawa (2011: 103) explicitly states that he intends to maintain a balance among the diff erent stances held by the scholars—which i think he manages to do successfully. thus, this chapter contributes to the author’s second purpose (i.e. to introduce the advanced student to the current state of oe metrical studies, which is controversial). nevertheless, that the author does not affi rm that beowulf is an early poem is, in my opinion, a negative aspect, since the conformity of beowulf to the fi rst part of kaluza’s law furnishes strong evidence that the poem was composed either before ca. 725 if originally mercian, or before ca. 825 if northumbrian (see fulk 1992: 12–13, 31, 36, 164– 168, 349, 381–392). seiichi suzuki (1996: 207–233), b.r. hutcheson (2004) and roberta frank (2007) have questioned the validity of kaluza’s law as an indicator of the poem’s antiquity, but their arguments have been convincingly refuted by fulk (2007: 317–329) and george clark (forthcoming). in the light of the latter studies, it appears unreasonable to regard the phonological conditioning of the beowulf poet’s adherence to kaluza’s law as anything other than a clear sign of the poem’s early composition. hopefully, this review has made clear that because of its organisation, its abundance of examples and exercises, its theoretical standpoint and eclecticism, its increasing complexity, and the balance it maintains among currently controversial issues, oem constitutes a fi rm introduction to oe metrical studies as well as a proper overview of state-of-the-art research in the fi eld—and subsequently its author’s twofold purpose is eff ectively achieved. jun terasawa’s oem serves as an excellent introduction to the fi eld of oe metre, an understanding of which is essential in order to properly assess oe poems (cf. bredeho6 2005b). recently, another remarkable elementary book on oe has appeared: bruce mitchell and fred c. robinson’s eighth edition 204 rafael j. pascual selim 18 (2011) of a guide to old english (2012). i should like to fi nish this review by pointing out that, in my opinion, an understanding of the phonological and morphological basics of the oe language as presented in mitchell and robinson’s guide (cf. §§26–32; §§15–25 and §§33–35, respectively), followed by the study of terasawa’s oem, would constitute a most formidable training in oe metrical studies—a swampy yet incredibly fascinating area, at the end of whose interlaced paths lies, irrespective of its complexity or low appeal to modern taste, highly signifi cant information about oe literary texts. rafael j. pascual university of granada references baker, p. s. 2012 [2003]: introduction to old english. 3rd ed. malden, wiley-blackwell. bliss, a. 1962: an introduction to old english metre. oxford, blackwell. bredeho= , t. 2005a: early english metre. toronto, toronto university press. bredeho= , t. 2005b: what are old english metrical studies for? old english newsletter 39.1: 25–36. cable, t. 1974: the meter and melody of beowulf. urbana, university of illinois press. cable, t. 1991: the english alliterative tradition. philadelphia, university of pennsylvania press. cable, t. 2002: a companion to baugh and cable’s history of the english language. london and new york, routledge. cable, t. rev. 2008: bredeho= , t. a. (2005) early english metre. in journal of english and germanic philology 107.3: 394-397. 205 reviews selim 18 (2011) cassidy, f. g. & r. n. ringler 1971: bright’s old english grammar and reader. 2nd corrected printing. new york, holt, rinehart and winston. clark, g. forthcoming: scandals in toronto: kaluza’s law and transliteration errors. in l. neidorf ed. the dating of beowulf: a reassessment. daunt, m. 1946: old english verse and english speech rhythm. transactions of the philological society 45.1: 56–72. frank, r. 2007: a scandal in toronto: the dating of “beowulf ” a quarter century on. speculum 82: 843–864. fulk, r. d. 1992: a history of old english meter. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 1992. fulk, r. d. 2007: old english meter and oral tradition: three issues bearing on poetic chronology. journal of english and germanic philology 106.3: 304–324. hutcheson, b.r. 2004: kaluza’s law, the dating of beowulf, and the old english poetic tradition. journal of english and germanic philology 103: 297-322. mccully, c. & s. hilles 2005: the earliest english: an introduction to old english language. harlow, pearson/longman. minkova, d. rev. 2008: bredeho4 , t. a. (2005) early english metre. speculum 83: 673–675. mitchell, b. & f. c. robinson 2012 [1964]: a guide to old english. 8th ed. malden, wiley-blackwell. pope, j. c. 2001 [1966]: eight old english poems. 3rd ed. revised by r. d. fulk. new york, norton. russom, g. 1987: old english meter and linguistic theory. cambridge, cambridge university press. sievers, e. 1885: zur rhythmik des germanischen alliterationsverses. beiträge zur geschichte der deutschen sprache und literatur 10: 209–314, 451–545. 206 rafael j. pascual selim 18 (2011) sievers, e. 1893: altgermanische metrik. halle, max niemeyer. suzuki, s. 1996: the metrical organization of beowulf: prototype and isomorphism. berlin, mouton de gruyter. tolkien, j. r. r. 2006: on translating beowulf. in c. tolkien ed. the monsters and the critics and other essays. london, harper collins: 49–71. • selim journal of the spanish society for mediaeval english language and literature revista de la sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval nº  oviedo,  edited by dirigida por trinidad guzmán & s. g. fernández-corugedo universidad de oviedo & sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval oviedo – murcia  nils-lennart johannesson, selim  (): —issn: 1132-631x icc hafe don swa summ þu badd: an anatomy of the preface to the ormulum abstract this paper will provide an analysis of those parts of the preface to the ormulum which are not reworkings of concrete textual sources, but rather constitute orm’s original writing within the amework of traditions current in the twelh century. the preface will be shown to combine features of two contemporary text genres. on the one hand it has all the typical features of a ciceronian praefatio, detailing the author’s relationships to various other persons: to his patron, to the corrector of the text, to his copyist⒮, to future readers/detractors, and, finally, to god. on the other hand, orm’s presentation of various features of his text (such as author’s intention, material used, method, and order) makes his preface conform to the conventions of the standard form of introduction to works of scriptural exegesis in the twelh century. the paper also discusses the possible implications of orm’s statement that he and walter are brothers in three different ways. keywords: ormulum, homilies, middle english, cicero, glossa ordinaria. resumen este artículo analiza aquellas partes del prefacio al ormulum que no son reelaboraciones de fuentes textuales concretas sino que constituyen la obra autógrafa de orm dentro del marco de tradiciones usuales del siglo . se muestra cómo el prefacio combina rasgos de dos géneros textuales contemporáneos. de un lado, tiene todos los rasgos típicos de una praefatio ciceroniana, detallando las relaciones del autor con otras personas: su patrón, el corrector del texto, su⒮ copista⒮, futuros lectores/detractores y, finalmente, dios. del otro, la presentación que orm hace de varios rasgos de su texto (intención autorial, material empleado, método y orden) configura su prefacio de acuerdo con las convenciones estándar de las introducciones para obras de exégesis bíblica en el siglo . el artículo analiza asimismo las posibles implicaciones de la afirmación de orm de que él y walter eran hermanos desde tres puntos de vista. palabras clave: ormulum, homilias, inglés medio, cicerón, glossa ordinaria. i a  first sight, the preface¹ to the ormulum reads like an artless and somewhat naive address to orm’s brother walter, who is said to have instigated the writing of this ¹ various labels have been given to the prefatory matter on folios – of the extant ormulum manuscript (oxford, bodleian library, ms. junius ). holt () divided it into three parts: dedication, texts, and preface. matthes (: –) demonstrated that the so-called preface (the english text on folio ) was marked for insertion aer verse . thus the prefatory matter falls into two parts, one in english, written in orm’s standard metre, and one in latin, made up of the incipits of the gospel texts for all the homilies. in johannesson (b) i called the english part the ‘dedication’ of the ormulum. since then, however, i have settled for the term preface, since orm never explicitly dedicates his work to walter (nor, for that matter, to anyone else). 108 nils-lennart johannesson selim  () homily collection:² orm states that he has completed the task, he expects detractors but assumes that these will only be motivated by envy, he worries about future copyists being too careless to preserve the details of his spelling system, and, shiing gradually towards a wider audience, sets out to explain why he has undertaken the huge task of explaining the gospels in english to the laity. as a matter of fact, however, orm’s preface is a highly conventional product, an exponent of a literary tradition which permeates the body of late classical and post-classical latin writing to which the source texts for orm’s homilies belonged. at the same time, it is very much up to date: it can be shown to conform to the conventions of the standard type of preface used in academic twelh-century writing. yet amidst its adherence to contemporary genre conventions, the preface also offers us some insights into orm’s personality. johannesson (b) identified the latin sources for two central metaphors in orm’s preface: the gospels as a four-wheeled quadriga, and the gospels as an embodiment of seven ‘goodnesses’ (or sacraments), represented by the seven seals of the book described in revelation –. this paper will provide an analysis of those parts of orm’s preface which are not reworkings of concrete textual sources, ² the ormulum does not fall neatly into a single genre: it is a homily collection in the sense that it provides exegetical comments on gospel texts, but unlike a standard homily collection, which presents the gospel texts in the order of their appearance in the missal throughout the liturgical year, the gospel texts in the ormulum are arranged so as to provide a chronological account of the lives of john the baptist, christ, and the apostles, chiefly peter and paul. in this respect the ormulum looks rather like a gospel harmony (including also portions of acts). it is perhaps best described as a cross between a gospel harmony and a homily collection. a possible source of inspiration for orm can be found in in unum ex quatuor (pl ), where zacharias chrysopolitanus in the ’s added exegetical comments (drawn om various sources) to a latin translation of a greek gospel harmony by ammonius of alexandria. it is clear, however, om the order of presentation of the gospel texts, that orm did not use in unum as a model. 109 an anatomy of the preface to the ormulum selim  () but rather constitute orm’s original writing within the amework of traditions current in the twelh century. it will also discuss an apparently unique feature of the preface, namely orm’s description of walter and himself in terms of threefold brotherhood. t c  the first of the traditions to be considered here goes all the way back to classical roman literature, and is commonly ascribed to cicero. janson () has shown that the ciceronian praefatio was a popular genre among classical and post-classical latin writers, pagan as well as christian. i will here seek to demonstrate that the preface to the ormulum exhibits all the features of a standard ciceronian praefatio.³ a comparison with the ciceronian features of some of ælic’s prefaces⁴ will also be undertaken, not because i wish to suggest that orm was influenced by ælic’s prefaces (or even knew them), but rather for the light such a comparison sheds on the different personality traits of orm and ælic. the typical features of a ciceronian praefatio, as presented by janson, can be summarised as follows: ⓐ addressing the instigator of the work (janson : –) ⓑ indicating compliance with the instigation ( ff.) ⓒ the author’s modesty and self-deprecation ( ff.) ⓓ acknowledging the help of god ( ff.) ³ mancho () suggested that the preface to the ormulum was actually a prologue in the aristotelian tradition. the major difficulty for such a view is obviously the fact that aristotle’s work did not become widely known in the west before the thirteenth century, and the ormulum must have been completed by  (cf. parkes ). ⁴ of ælic’s prefaces, only those to genesis, to the lives of saints, and to the two series of catholic homilies will be considered here, nor will a complete analysis of these prefaces be undertaken; only such properties of these prefaces as provide some illumination on orm’s work will be taken into account. 110 nils-lennart johannesson selim  () ⓔ assigning a corrector’s role to the instigator ( f.,  f.) ⓕ mentioning the envy and scorn of contemporary detractors ( f.) ⓖ admonition to the scribe who is to copy the work, forbidding changes ( f.) apart om ⓒ, the expression of the author’s modesty/humility, these features are all concerned with interpersonal relations: between the author and his patron/the instigator of the work, between the author and the corrector of the text (who may or may not be identical with the patron/instigator), between the author and his copyist⒮, between the author and future readers/detractors, and, finally, between the author and god. addressing the instigator. orm does not explicitly dedicate the work to ‘brother walter’, but he certainly addresses walter explicitly, calling him his brother in three different ways: in the flesh, as a christian, and as a fellow canon following the rule of st. austin ().⁵ () nu broþerr wallterr. broþerr min. aerr þe flæshess kinde. & broþerr min i crisstenndom. þurrh fulluhht. ⁊ þurrh trowwþe. & broþerr min i godess hus. t o þe þride wise. þurrh þatt witt hafenn takenn ba. an reͪellboc to follͪenn. unnderr kanunnkess had. ⁊ lif. swa summ sannt awwstin sette. (d–) ⁵ all the passages om the ormulum cited in this article are newly edited om ms junius . i am grateful to dr bruce barker-benfield, bodleian library, for granting me access to the manuscript in  and again in . all line numbers, however, follow the numbering in holt  (with the prefixes d = dedication, p = preface, h = homilies), since that is the most recent complete edition generally available. 111 an anatomy of the preface to the ormulum selim  () in a similar fashion ælic addresses ealdorman æðelweard as the instigator of the translation in two of his prefaces ()–(); the catholic homilies, by contrast, are said to have been written on ælic’s own initiative because he was concerned about the mycel gedwyld ‘great heresy’ of existing english books (clemoes : ). () incipit prefatio genesis anglice.      dlice. þu bæde me, leof, þæt ic sceolde ðe awendan of lædene on englisc þa boc genesis. (preface to genesis; ægenpref ) … ic hæbbe nu gegaderod on þyssere bec þæra halgena þrowunga þe me to () onhagode on englisc to awendene, for þan þe ðu leof swiðost and æðelmær swylcera gewrita me bædon, … (preface to lives of saints; æls (pref ) ) compliance. orm then goes on to say that he has done what walter asked him to do (df. in () below): he has translated the gospels into english (df.). aer this follow two verses indicating orm’s humility and awareness of not being properly equipped for the task (df.). orm then expands on walter’s motives for initiating the project (d–), and this section is rounded off with four verses acknowledging christ’s help in bringing the work to completion (d–). () icc hafe don swa summ þu badd  forþedd te þin wille. � icc hafe wennd inntill ennglissh. goddspelless hallͪe láre ⓒ aerr þatt little witt tatt me. ⓒ min drihhtin hafeþþ lenedd. � þu þohhtesst tatt itt mihhte wel. till mikell ame turrnenn. 5iff ennglissh follc forr lufe off crist. itt wollde erne lernenn. & follͪenn itt ⁊ fillenn itt. wiþþ þohht wiþþ word wiþþ dede. & forrþi errndesst tu þatt icc. 112 nils-lennart johannesson selim  () þiss werrc þe shollde wirrkenn. & icc itt hafe forþedd te ⓓ acc all þurrh cristess hellpe. ⓓ & unnc birrþ baþe þannkenn crist ⓓ þatt itt iss brohht till ende. (d–) ælic explicitly states that he has complied with the requests of æðelweard and æðelmær in the preface to lives of saints, as shown in () above; in the preface to genesis the compliance has to be inferred om the existence of the translation. modesty. orm’s expression of modesty is as short as it could possibly be (df., marked by ⓒ in () above) without making a complete break with tradition. he admittedly repeats this phrase four times in the extant homilies (hf., hf., hf., hf.), but he does not really give the impression of being a very modest person. a study of the source texts he used reveals a man who was very well-read in the exegetical literature, both older writers and more contemporary ones, capable of combining ideas om different passages or even different writers in a short passage (cf. johannesson , a, b): he doubtless did not expect anyone who read his huge homily collection to take seriously his comments on limited understanding (“þatt little witt tatt me. / min drihhtin hafeþþ lenedd.”). ælic, by contrast, uses expressions which are more suggestive of true humility (); like orm, however, he also hopes for salvation as a result of his exertions: () praefatio. ic ælic munuc ⁊ mæssepreost swa ðeah waccre þonne swilcum hadum gebyrige. … forwel fela ic wat on ðisum earde. gelæredran þonne ic sy. ac god geswutelað his wundra ðurh ðone ðe he wile. swa swa ælmihtig wyrhta. he wyrcð his weorc þurh his gecorenan. na swylce he behofige ures fultumes. ac þæt we geearnion þæt ece lif þurh his weorces 113 an anatomy of the preface to the ormulum selim  () emminge. (preface to catholic homilies, first series; æchom i (pref ) ., .–) giving thanks to god. orm first acknowledges divine help in bringing the task to completion at d– (marked by ⓓ in () above). some fi verses later () orm returns to the matter of carrying out the task only with the help of god: they should praise and thank god for both the inception and the completion of the project, because it may help the souls of english people to be saved. () & unnc birrþ baþe lofenn godd. off þatt itt wass bigunnenn. & þannkenn godd tatt itt iss brohht. till ende þurrh hiss hellpe. forr itt ma hellpenn alle þa þatt bliþelike itt herenn. & lufenn itt. ⁊ follͪenn itt. wiþþ þohht. wiþþ word. wiþþ dede. (d–) so when orm gives thanks to god for the completion of his work, it is still the value of his book that is uppermost in his mind. ælic, by contrast, sounds genuinely relieved at having come to the end of his labours (). ælic’s thanks to god are easy to overlook since they are not expressed in his prefaces, but are placed at the end of the second volume of the catholic homilies. () explicit liber secundus. catholicorum sermonum anglice. deo gratias. amen; oratio ic ðancige þam ælmihtigum scyppende mid ealre heortan. þæt he me synfullum þæs geuðe. þæt ic ðas twa bec him to lofe and to wurðmynte angelcynne onwreah ðam ungelæredum. ða gelæredan ne beðurfon þyssera boca. for ðan ðe him mæg heora agen lar genihtsumian. (explicit to catholic homilies, second series; æchom ii (prayers) ) 114 nils-lennart johannesson selim  () correction. somewhat later orm turns again to walter and asks him to inspect every verse to make sure that there are no expressions of heresy in the work (). () � & te bitæche icc off þiss boc. heh wikenn. alls itt semeþþ. all to þurrhsekenn illc an ferrs.  to þurrhlokenn oe þatt upponn all þiss boc ne be. nan word æn cristess lare. nan word tatt swiþe wel ne be to trowwenn. ⁊ to follͪenn. (d–) this is similar to ælic’s request, in the prefaces to the two series of catholic homilies, for sigeric’s corrections of any expressions of ‘malign heresy’ that might be there ()–(). precor modo obnixe almitatem tuam mitissime pater () . ut digneris corrigere per tuam industriam. si aliquos neuos maligne heresis. aut nebulose fallacię in nostra interpretatione repperies. (preface to catholic homilies, first series; clemoes : ) hoc quoque opus commendamus tuae auctoritati corrigendum. () quemadmodum et precedens precantes obnixe. ne parcas oblitterare si aliquas malignae haeresis maculas in eo repperies. (preface to catholic homilies, second series; godden : ) in the prefaces to genesis and the lives of saints there is, of course, no place for such a plea since æðelweard, the instigator of those works, was a layman who had commissioned the translations for his own instruction and thus was not in a position to make any corrections. 115 an anatomy of the preface to the ormulum selim  () detractors. orm next inserts a paragraph () which deals with future detractors of his homiletic work, people who ‘scorn what should be praised’. orm’s choice of words suggests that he has a concrete group of people in mind (“þatt laþe flocc. / þatt iss þurrh niþ forrblendedd” d–); parkes (: ) reads this as a reference to the twelhcentury controversy over canons regular undertaking the cure of souls (including preaching). this is fully possible: dickinson (: ) quotes om the liber de ordine canonicorum, “… whosoever should strive to maintain this [sc. that canons should not undertake the cure of souls] … it is clear, does so more om jealousy of the canonical order than om love of truth.”⁶ the wording here is strikingly similar to what orm says about expected detractors; at the same time, the mention of envious critics is a conventional feature of a ciceronian praefatio om the earliest times, so orm may merely be following the tradition in this respect. () ~ witt shulenn tredenn unnderrfőt.  all þwerrt űt forrwerrpenn. þe dom off all þatt laþe flocc. þatt iss þurrh niþ forrblendedd. þatt tæleþþ þatt to lofenn iss þurrh niþfull modinesse. � þe shulenn lǽtenn hæþeli off unnkerr swinnc lef broþerr. & all þe shulenn takenn itt. onn unnitt. ⁊ onn idell. acc nohht þurrh skill. acc all þurrh niþ.  all þurrh þere sinne. & unnc birrþ biddenn godd tatt he forrgife hemm here sinne. (d–) ⁶ for the original latin, see dickinson (: , fn. ). 116 nils-lennart johannesson selim  () ælic provides a more succinct comment on detractors motivated by envy: nequaquam nos inuidorum reprehensio mouet. si hoc munus tuae benigne () auctoritati non displicuerit; (preface to catholic homilies, second series; godden : ) more interesting, to my mind, than the possible real-world reference to detractors in the ormulum preface is what a comparison between what ælic and orm have to say about detractors reveals about the writers’ attitudes. orm certainly does not emerge as the more modest and humble of the two. ælic appeals to his superior in the church: if only archbishop sigeric approves of his homilies, he will not worry about envious detractors. orm, by contrast, appeals to nobody: he knows that his work deserves praise (“to lofenn iss”), and for that reason he will not worry about envious detractors. copying. considering the kind of complex spelling system that orm had developed, it does not seem unreasonable to take his worries about careless copying seriously as being rooted in experience (). () � & wha se wilenn shall þiss boc. e oþerr siþe writenn himm bidde icc þatt ht wríte rihht. swa summ þiss boc himm tæcheþþ. all þwerrt űt aerr þatt itt iss upp o þiss firrste bisne. wiþþ all swillc ríme alls her iss sett. wiþþ all se fele wordess. & tatt he loke wel þatt he. an bocstaff wríte twiess. ewhær þær itt upp o þiss boc iss wrĭtenn o þatt wise. loke he well þatt ht write swa. forr he ne ma nohht elless. 117 an anatomy of the preface to the ormulum selim  () onn ennglissh wrítenn rihht te word. þatt wite he wel to soþe. (d–) if orm had a particular scribe in mind, it must have been the scribe behind ‘hand c’ (parkes : ff.): his main task in the production of the ormulum was to insert the latin incipits in their proper places at the beginning of each gospel text, but he also copied a few verses of orm’s english text where orm’s writing for one reason or another had become difficult to read. () shows how much went wrong when he copied orm’s version of h–: he did not distinguish between the capital letters of onand off-verses, he turned the double acute accent in “főt” into a single one, he wrote a single consonant for a double one in seven places, a double consonant for a single one in one place, wrote 〈u〉 for intervocalic 〈f〉, wrote 〈g〉 for 〈c〉 in “strengþe”, and split the 〈ͪ〉 digraph. if he actually got round to copying the ormulum, the result will not have made orm happy. orm: hand c:() þiss mahhte tredeþþ unnderr főt all modinessess strenncþe. 5iff þatt iss þatt tu lufesst itt.  follͪesst itt wiþþ herrte. (h–) þiss mahhte tredeþþ underr fótt all modinesses strengþe. iff þatt iss þatt tu luuest itt ⁊ foʰllest itt wiþ herte. ælic is also concerned about correct copying (), but not at the level of spelling errors: he is concerned about a correct representation of his exegetical ideas. nu bydde ic ⁊ halsige on godes naman gif hwá þas bóc awritan wylle.  hé () hí geornlice gerihte be ðære bysene. þy læs ðe we ðurh gymelease writeras geleahtrode beon; (preface to catholic homilies, first series; clemoes : ) 118 nils-lennart johannesson selim  () discussion. orm’s preface is in all respects a traditional ciceronian praefatio; yet while observing all the genre conventions, the preface, in its ciceronian parts, affords us some glimpses into orm’s mind. he is, quite clearly, convinced of the intrinsic value of his book, and for that reason he is not worried about future detractors. his only real worry, apparently, is related to the difficulty of finding a scribe who can copy his text with a reasonable degree of correctness. the early folios of the homilies (fol.  onwards) were quite neatly laid out (disregarding the sometimes irregular shape of the parchment leaves), but as the writing proceeded and more and more changes and corrections crept in, the manuscript took on the character of a rough dra, and some  folios into the work (not counting lost folios) he did not always take the trouble to write straight columns (e.g. fol. v). by that time the need for a fair copy must have become obvious to orm; the thought of handing over this task to someone else was understandably worrying to him, since not even his collaborator, the scribe behind ‘hand c’, could be expected to render the text correctly. n-  as far as personal matters are concerned, the preface to the ormulum is, as we have seen, a very clear-cut example of a ciceronian praefatio. but there are several passages in the preface that are not related to personal matters; in order to account for those passages we need a different model of analysis. such a model was provided by minnis (), developing further a classification of academic prologues presented by hunt (). for a full account of the historical development of the different prologue types the reader is referred to these works; here we will focus exclusively on the so-called ‘type c’ prologue, which was 119 an anatomy of the preface to the ormulum selim  () the dominant type in the twelh century: “in the systematisation of knowledge which is characteristic of the twelh century, the ‘type c’ prologue appeared at the beginning of commentaries of all disciplines: the arts, medicine, roman law, canon law and theology… the ‘type c’ prologue, specially adapted to meet the unique requirements of sacred scripture, became the standard form of introduction to commentaries on the bible.” (minnis : , ). small wonder, then, if orm, writing in the third quarter of the twelh century (parkes : ), would adopt this “standard form of introduction” for his commentaries on gospel passages. a ‘type c’ prologue can be summarised by the following headings (minnis : –): ① titulus libri – the title of the work ② nomen auctoris – the name of the author ③ intentio auctoris – the intention of the author ④ materia libri – the subject-matter of the book ⑤ modus tractandi – the method of didactic procedure employed in the work ⑥ ordo libri – the order of the book ⑦ utilitas – utility ⑧ cui parti philosophiae supponitur – the branch of learning to which the book belonged title of work and name of author. orm states the title of the work and the name of the author at the top of folio  recto (), at the beginning of the passage which holt () labelled ‘preface’ (cf. footnote  above); on the verso of folio  the title is repeated (). he gives his name in the first instance as ‘orrm’; in a later part of the preface he says that he was given the name ‘orrmin’ in baptism (). () � þiss boc iss nemmnedd. orrmulum forr þi þatt orrm itt wrohhte. (pf.) 120 nils-lennart johannesson selim  () () � & all þuss þiss ennglisshe boc. iss orrmulum ehatenn. inn quaþþrígan amminadab inn currum salomonis. (p–) () icc. þatt tiss ennglissh hafe sett. ennglisshe menn to lare icc wass þær þær i crisstnedd wass. orrmin bi name nemmnedd. & icc orrmin full innwarrdli. wiþþ muþ. ⁊ ec wiþþ herrte. her bidde þa crisstene menn. þatt herenn oþerr rédenn. þiss boc hemm bidde icc her þatt te. forr me þiss bede biddenn. (d–) author’s intention. the intention of the author is also clearly set out: orm has written this work in an attempt to save the souls of those englishmen who do not know enough latin to read and understand the gospels (). this aspect of the work is so central that orm comes back to it, e.g. at d–. () ~ & iff mann wile witenn whi. icc hafe don þiss dede. whi icc till ennglissh hafe wennd. goddspelless hallͪe lare icc hafe itt don forr þi þatt all. crisstene follkess berrhless. iss lang uppo þatt an. þatt te. goddspelless hallͪe lare wiþþ fulle mahhte follͪe rihht. þurrh þohht. þurrh word. þurrh dede. forr all þatt æe onn erþe iss ned. crisstene follc to follͪenn. i trowwþe. i dede all tæcheþþ hemm. goddspelless hallͪe lare. & forrþi. wha se lerneþþ itt. 121 an anatomy of the preface to the ormulum selim  ()  follͪeþþ itt wiþþ dede he shall onn ende wurrþi ben. þurrh godd to wurrþenn borrͪenn. & tærfore hafe icc turrnedd itt. inntill ennglisshe spæche forr þatt i wollde bliþeli. þatt all ennglisshe lede. wiþþ ære shollde lisstenn itt. wiþþ herrte shollde itt trowwenn. wiþþ tunge shollde spellenn itt. wiþþ dede shollde itt follͪenn. to winnenn unnderr crisstenndom. att godd soþ sawle berrhless. (d–) material. the subject matter of the book is stated most clearly and succinctly at p– (); it is also presented at great length in the central parts of the preface through the metaphors of the quadriga of amminadab and the chariot of solomon as well as the seven ‘goodnesses’ (or sacraments) (see johannesson b). () � icc hafe sammnedd o þiss boc. þa goddspelless neh alle þatt sinndenn o þe messeboc. inn all þe er att messe. (p–) orm is more reticent about the commentators he relied on for his explications of the gospel texts. where ælic, in the latin preface to the first series of the catholic homilies, explicitly identified augustine of hippo, jerome, bede, gregory, smaragdus and haymo as his sources, orm merely referred to ‘the book’ (“þe boc”) throughout the text ( occurrences). he later removed the references to “þe boc” or modified them to an indefinite form (e.g. “soþ boc” ‘a true book’, “latin boc” ‘a latin book’), as if more precise knowledge of these sources would be irrelevant to his lay readers (or listeners). 122 nils-lennart johannesson selim  () method. the modus tractandi is described in some detail in the two paragraphs ( verses) starting at d (): each gospel text is followed by an interpretation of the text as well as other useful information (such as the long digression on jewish sacrifices and their relevance to twelh-century christians, h–). in the second of these paragraphs orm explains that he has made additions to the gospel texts for two reasons: partly to make the gospel story more coherent by telling it in greater detail (“þe ríme swa to fillenn.”, d; cf. johannesson ) and thus make readers understand the gospel more easily, partly to make the number of syllables in each verse come out right (“min ferrs to fillenn”, d). () � & a aerr þe goddspell stannt. þatt tatt te goddspell meneþþ. þatt mann birrþ spellenn to þe follc. off þere sawle nede. & t tær tekenn mare inoh. þu shallt tæronne findenn. off þatt tatt cristess hallͪe þed birrþ trowwenn wel. ⁊ follͪenn. � icc hafe sett her o þiss boc. amang goddspelless wordess. all þurrh me sellfenn mani word. þe ríme swa to fillenn. acc þu shallt findenn þatt min word. ewhær þær itt iss ekedd ma hellpenn þa þatt redenn itt. to sen. ⁊ tunnderrstanndenn. all þess te bettre hu þem birrþ. þe goddspell unnderrstanndenn. & forrþi trowwe icc þatt te birrþ. wel þolenn mine wordess. ewhær þær þu shallt findenn hemm amang goddspelless wordess. forr wha se mőt to læwedd follc. 123 an anatomy of the preface to the ormulum selim  () larspell off goddspell tellenn he mőt wel ekenn mani word. amang goddspelless wordess. & icc ne mihhte nohht min ferrs. a wiþþ goddspelless wordess. wel fillenn all. ⁊ all forrþi. shollde icc well oe nede. amang goddspelless wordess don. min word. min ferrs to fillenn. (d–) order. information about the ‘order of the book’ is provided by the numbered list of latin incipits of the gospel texts. this list is introduced by a curious passage where orm promises to list all the ‘gospels’ that he can find in this book (), as if he was editing someone else’s book. possibly the “icc” at the end of d is an uncorrected slip for “mann”, referring to any reader of the book. () � þa goddspelless alle þatt icc. her o þiss boc ma findenn hemm alle wile icc nemmnenn her. bi þere firrste wordess. & tăle wile icc settenn to. to don uw tunnderrstanndenn. hu fele sinndenn o þiss boc. goddspelless unnderr alle. (d–) utility. the utility of the book is stated in no uncertain terms: if people will ‘hear it’ and ‘follow it’, their souls will be saved; in any case, orm is sure of his own reward, regardless whether his readers accept it or reject it (). the same idea is repeated e.g. in the prayer concluding the preface proper, before orm’s request for his readers’ prayers (). 124 nils-lennart johannesson selim  () () & iff þe wilenn herenn itt.  follͪenn itt wiþþ dede icc hafe hemm hollpenn unnderr crist. to winnenn þere berrhless. & i shall hafenn forr min swinnc. god læn att godd onn ende 5iff þatt i forr þe lufe off godd.  forr þe mede off heffne hemm hafe itt inntill ennglissh wennd. forr þere sawle nede. & iff þe all forrwerrpenn itt itt turrneþþ hemm till sinne. & i shall hafenn addledd me. þe laferrd cristess are. þurrh þatt icc hafe hemm wrohht tiss boc. to þere sawle nede. þohh þatt te all forrwerrpenn itt. þurrh þere modinesse. (d–) () � & godd allmahhti gife uss mahht.  lusst. ⁊ witt. ⁊ wille. to follͪenn þiss ennglisshe boc. þat all iss hali lare. swa þatt we motenn wurrþi ben. to brukenn heffness blisse. amæn. amæn. amæn;‧ (d–) branch of philosophy. orm says nothing about which branch of philosophy his work belongs to; in this he is in line with many contemporary theologians, who regarded this matter as irrelevant to works on scriptural exegesis (minnis : ). discussion. so far, we have simply assumed that ‘the work’ that orm had in mind in his preface was the ormulum, and that ‘the author’ was orm 125 an anatomy of the preface to the ormulum selim  () himself. however, this was not the standard approach to the question of authorship in contemporary scriptural exegesis. we may compare orm’s implied view with that expressed in the prologus to the  commentary on the song of solomon by honorius augustodunensis (the source for orm’s quadriga metaphor (johannesson b: ), and thus known to orm): here ‘the work’ is not honorius’ expositio, but the song of solomon, and ‘the author’ is not honorius, but the holy ghost (). auctor libri hujus est spiritus sanctus, loquens per vas sapientiae, salomonem () hujus libri scriptorem qui fuit rex sapientissimus et propheta praecipuus. (honorius augustodunensis, expositio in cantica canticorum; pl vol.  col. c–d) what orm has done, then, in his preface is to set himself up as author, rather than stay in the background as a mere commentator. in the prayer which he asks the reader to say for him () he says that he both “wrt” and “wrohhte” ‘this english text’: he was both *writere⁷ (‘writer’, ‘scribe’) and wrihhte (‘wright’, ‘maker’, ‘author’). () � þatt broþerr þatt tiss ennglissh writt. allræresst wrt. ⁊ wrohhte þatt broþerr forr hiss swinnc to læn soþ blisse móte findenn. amæn. (d–) the fact that he apparently regarded his own exegetical writing rather than the gospel texts as ‘the work’ to which the preface belongs certainly ties in very nicely with his high opinion of the utility of that writing: in the course of the preface the emphasis shis om the importance of the gospels for people’s salvation (d–; cf. () above) to the importance of ‘this english book’ (d; cf. () above). ⁷ the word is asterisked simply because it is not attested in the ormulum; it is, of course, well-attested in both old and middle english. 126 nils-lennart johannesson selim  () t  there is one feature of orm’s preface which goes beyond the typical properties of a ciceronian praefatio and a ‘type c’ prologue. this is orm’s insistence on threefold brotherhood: walter is described as orm’s brother in the flesh, as a christian, and as a fellow canon following the rule of st. austin (d–) (cf. () above).⁸ it seems very difficult to find a textual analogue for this — dickins and wilson (: ) suggest influence om st. paul’s epistle to philemon, verse , where paul entreats philemon to receive onesimus as “a brother beloved … both in the flesh, and in the lord” (kjb) (“carissimum atrem … et in carne et in domino”, vu). more relevant, perhaps, is the case of st. andrew and st. peter, since orm himself describes them as brothers in the flesh, and brothers in the faith (). but this is still only twofold brotherhood: why does orm insist on threefold brotherhood? () all swa se sannt anndrew stod inn. to brinngenn sannte peterr. to ben hiss broþerr unnderr crist. i crisstenndom þurrh trowwþe. swa þatt te mihhtenn breþre ben. þurrh rihhte læfe o criste swa summ þe wærenn breþre ba. þurrh fader. ⁊ þurrh moderr. (h–) i would like to suggest that orm — whether influenced by philemon : or not — was actually making a covert reference to another pair of threefold brothers, two brothers whom he may have regarded as the predecessors of walter and himself, namely anselm (†) and ralph (†) of laon. like walter and orm, anselm and ralph were brothers in the flesh, brothers in the faith and also canons regular. they were furthermore successive heads of the ⁸ i am grateful to andrew breeze for drawing my attention to this issue by asking a question about it aer my  selim conference paper. 127 an anatomy of the preface to the ormulum selim  () cathedral school at laon in picardie in northern france, and are perhaps best remembered for their role in the early phases of the development of the glossa ordinaria: anselm was “responsible for having compiled the glossa ordinaria on the pauline epistles, the psalms and probably the gospel of st. john. … according to most manuscript witnesses, anselm’s brother ralph compiled the gloss on st. matthew …” (andrée : , ). in the remainder of this paper, i will try to establish what links we can recognise between anselm’s and ralph’s work on the glossa at laon and orm’s work on the ormulum, presumably at bourne in southern lincolnshire (cf. parkes : ff.). textual links. matthes () was the first to recognise the glossa ordinaria as a source text for the ormulum, although he took an exaggerated view of its importance (see also morrison , ). but orm not only used the glossa text as raw material for the expositions in his homilies, he also used some of the source texts used by the glossators. when anselm glossed the gospel according to st. john (andrée : f.), he used as his main source the commentarius in evangelium iohannis by the ninth-century teacher at laon, the irishman johannes scotus eriugena (jeauneau ). eriugena’s commentary on john survives in a single ninth-century manuscript with eriugena’s own corrections and additions (laon, bibliothèque municipale, ms ; cf. jeauneau and dutton ). while anselm was working with eriugena’s manuscript it is conceivable that he had one or more copies of the manuscript made. one such copy, or a descendant of it, must have become available to orm; as we will see, it is clear that orm used eriugena at first hand, and not simply mediated through the abbreviated version to be found in the 128 nils-lennart johannesson selim  () glossa ordinaria. here a single illustration will have to suffice; more evidence can be found in johannesson (a). for his comment on john : in homily xxv () orm selected a few non-consecutive topics om eriugena’s comments and combined his renderings of these to make one coherent paragraph. a certain amount of expansion can be observed in orm’s text, as when “regnum patris” is rendered as “þatt kinedom. þatt godd. / hehfaderr rixleþþ inne” (hf ). the glossa can only provide a few of the elements in orm’s paragraph, whereas eriugena provides them all. the phrase “þatt mann. þatt niss nohht borenn t / gastlike … / inn hallͪedd waterr fullhtnedd” (h–) is a reworking by orm om eriugena’s words in ③, turning second person address into third person comment, and with “off gastli moderr” added as orm’s own contribution.⁹ similarly, the last four verses in the paragraph, where orm translates christ’s words into the description of a modern conversion process, expressed in terms of baptism (“fulluhht”), instruction in christian doctrine and attainment of the true faith, read like orm’s attempt to clari the situation to a contemporary reader. ① () respondit iesus et dixit ei: amen, amen dico tibi, nisi quis natus fuerit denuo, non potest uidere regnum dei. … ② ac si ei aperte diceret: non sufficit tibi solummodo in me credidisse, ③ nisi sacramenta baptismatis accipias uirtutemque spi ritualis generationis intelligas. … quod ergo ait non potest uidere regnum dei, non incongrue � & tatt te laferrd sede þuss. till nicodem wiþþ worde. to fulle soþ i seġġe þe. þatt niss nan mann onn erþe. þatt muͪe godess riche sen. butt he be borenn twiess þatt wass alls iff he sede þuss. till himm wiþþ oþre wordess. þatt mann. þatt niss nohht borenn t. gastlike off gastli moderr. & all þurrh godd off hali gast. inn hallͪedd waterr fullhtnedd ① ② ③ ⁹ orm’s “gastli moderr” is presumably a rendering of “mater spiritualis”, referring to the church. 129 an anatomy of the preface to the ormulum selim  () intelligitur: ④ non potest me cognoscere, ⑦ qui sum regnum patris; non enim solummodo ⑤ rex omnium sum, sed et illud regnum et omnia. recte igitur ⑥ uisio ueritatis regnum dei et dicitur et intelligitur. (e; j , , ) .i. ④ non potest cognoscere me ⑦ qui sum regnum pa-⑦ qui sum regnum pa-qui sum regnum patris. ⑥ qui sum visio verita-⑥ qui sum visio verita-qui sum visio veritatis (g ) ne ma he nohht rihht cnawenn me. swa summ icc amm to cnawenn. þatt amm allmahhti godd. ⁊ ec. soþ sihhþe off soþfasstnesse. þatt amm þatt kinedom. þatt godd. hehfaderr rixleþþ inne. þatt tu t nunnderrstanndesst nohht forr þatt tu narrt nohht fullhtnedd. ne læredd nohht off crisstenndom. noff all þe rihhte læfe. (h–) ④ ⑤ ⑥ ⑦ the only surviving copy of eriugena’s commentary on john has several lacunae in the text; one of these covers passages in john that orm deals with in four homilies (xxi–xxiv), as shown in table  below. table . correspondences between extant parts of eriugena, commentarius in evangelium johannis, and orm’s homilies xviii and xxi–xxx. eriugena orm john :– (lost) homily xxix (:–) john :– homily xviii (:–) john :–: (lost) homily xxi (:–) (partly lost) homily xxii (:–) homily xxiii (:–) homily xxiv (:–) john :–: homily xxv (:–) homily xxvi (:–) homily xxvii (:–) homily xxviii (:–) (lost) homily xxx (:–) john :–: (lost) john :– 130 nils-lennart johannesson selim  () the lacunae (apart om the first one, john :–) were already there when anselm used the manuscript to produce the glossa on john (jeauneau : ); for those parts of john, anselm had to find source material elsewhere. the copy i believe orm had access to would have been made during anselm’s work on the glossa and would have had the same lacunae. and indeed: when anselm gathers material to fill the gaps in eriugena, orm typically sets off in a totally different direction to fill the same gaps. again, one example, albeit a fairly extensive one, taken om orm’s exposition of part of john :, will have to suffice to illustrate this. the latin gospel text and orm’s translation are shown in (): et dicit ei amen amen dico () vobis icc seġġe uw to fulle soþ  wel uw birrþ itt trowwenn. videbitis caelum apertum þatt heffness shulenn oppnedd ben. biforenn ure sihhþe. swa þatt e shulenn sen full wel. et angelos dei ascendentes et descendentes supra filium hominis (john : vu)  oe godess enngless. uppwarrd & dunnwarrd baþe upp o. þe manness sune stiͪenn. (h–) for the clause videbitis caelum apertum the glossa only provides a comparison with jacob’s dream (genesis :) of the ladder (). ¶ () uidebitis cęlum. nathanael israelita. dicitur visurus apertum cęlum ⁊ angelos ascendentes ⁊ descendentes vt olim patriarcha iacob vidit scalam ⁊ angelos ascendentes ⁊ descendentes qui per benedictionem vocatus est israel. (g ) apparently, orm found this comparison insufficient for his exposition; in its place he provided three different interpretations of videbitis caelum apertum, all based on different sources. he first gives a historical interpretation: it is a straightforward rendering of a comment by bede () about the gates of heaven being opened by 131 an anatomy of the preface to the ormulum selim  () the incarnation (or resurrection, as orm chooses to interpret bede’s ‘god as man penetrated heaven’), with very little added material. the passage is characterised by orm’s usual kind of reformulations, e.g. “nobis in eum credentibus” ‘to us who believe in him’ becomes “5æn alle þa þatt lufenn crist /  hise laͪess haldenn.” ‘to all those who love christ and keep his laws’ (hf.). ① () videmus etenim coelum apertum, quia ② postquam coelum deus homo penetravit, etiam ④ nobis in eum credentibus ③ supernae patriae patefactum cognoscimus ingressum. (beda, in s. joannis evangelium expositio, pl vol. , col. a–b) þiss ht tatt wass natanaæl. bihatenn ⁊ filippe wass filledd aerr þatt tatt crist. wass risenn upp off dæþe. forr þurrh þe laferrd cristess dæþ wass heffness ate all oppnedd. 5æn alle þa þatt lufenn crist  hise laͪess haldenn. (h–) ① ② ③ ④ the second interpretation is allegorical: on the basis of a passage om bruno astensis, orm uses metaphor and simile to show how ‘heavens’ can be taken to signi the apostles (). the usual kind of modification can be observed, e.g. “eorum fide et doctrina” ‘with their faith and teaching’ is turned into ‘through their preaching and their example’ (hf.). ① (32) totus mundus coelo concluditur, tota ecclesia catholica inter apostolicae fidei et doctrinae terminos continetur. quicunque extra hos terminos est, profanus et infidelis est. … quae quidem omnia apostolis quoque convenire videntur. in eis enim et solem, et lunam, et stellas � & mann ma unnderrstanndenn þiss t onn an oþer wise. þatt heffness sholldenn oppnedd ben biforenn follkess sihhþe. forr heffness her bitacnenn uss. þe laferrd cristess posstless. þatt æfenn uss þurrh þere spell.  ec þurrh þere bisne. soþ lihht her i þiss middellærd to sen ⁊ tunnderrstanndenn. all hu mann birrþ þatt wee gan ① ② 132 nils-lennart johannesson selim  () invenire non est difficile. ipsi sunt, quibus dominus ait: ② «vos estis lux mundi (matth. v, );» sic eorum fide et doctrina tota ecclesia illuminata est, ③ sicut solis hujus, et lunae splendore tota terra illuminatur, in quibus et virtutum omnium pulchritudo, quasi stellae quaedam coruscant. (bruno astensis, sententiae. pl vol. , col. a–b) þatt ledeþþ upp till heffne all swa summ heffne uss ifeþþ lihht þurrh sunne. ⁊ mone. ⁊ sterrness. (h–) ③ the third interpretation is again allegorical, and again seeks to demonstrate that ‘heavens’ signifies the apostles (). this time orm builds a complex metaphor om bits and pieces om five different sources,¹⁰ likening the faithless heart to an arid and ozen plot of ground, a uitless orchard, which should be watered with the salty and bitter tears of contrition. i have not been able to find the full metaphor anywhere in the pl database, only the ‘building-blocks’, so i assume that orm should be given credit for the metaphor. ⓐ () in omnibus gentibus per apostolorum ministerium ⓑ poenitentia et remissio peccatorum praedicata est (haymo halberstatensis, homilia lxxiv. pl vol. , col. a) …tam salutaris doctrinae fluenta effudit, per quae � & ec þe posstless æfenn uss. þurrh lare. ⁊ ec þurrh bisne. soþ rewwsinng off all ure woh. off sakess. ⁊ off sinness. to ① wattrenn ⁊ to ② dæwenn swa. þurrh beske. ⁊ sallte tæress. þatt herrte þatt wiþþinnenn uss. iss hefili forrclungenn. þurrh fakenn trowwþe towarrd godd  towarrd mann onn eorþe. ⓐ ⓑ ③ ④ ⑤ ⑥ ¹⁰ it should be noted that comments like that quoted om haymo in () can be found in other texts as well, but since orm used haymo’s homilies elsewhere, it seemed reasonable to use haymo’s version as an illustration here. 133 an anatomy of the preface to the ormulum selim  () ⑤ arida ⑥ infidelium ④ corda ① irrigavit, … continuos producit fontes lacrymarum, in quibus ⑤ arida terra ④ cordis dulciter ① irrigatur, et ⑩ ad proferendos dignae operationis uctus fecundatur. (godeidus admontensis, homilia xliii. pl vol. , col. b) item ② ros praedicatorum doctrinam, ut est illud in libro job: quis est pluviae pater? vel quis genuit stillas roris? (job xxxviii) ac si diceret: nisi ego, qui ⑤ siccam terram ④ humani cordis guttis scientiae gratuito ② aspergo rore. (rabanus maurus, de universo libri viginti duo. liber xi. caput xix. de rore. pl vol. , col. d) ③ lacrymae … sunt salsae et amarae ad restringendam carnis luxuriam; sunt calidae contra ⑧ igus infidelitatis, et ad accendendum ⑦ ardorem charitatis (beda, in matthaei evangelium expositio. liber i. caput v. pl vol. , col. c–d) & forr þatt itt bidæledd iss. off all soþ lufess hæte all iss itt uss biorenn swa. þurrh hete. ⁊ niþ. ⁊ irre þatt all itt liþ uss wasstmelæs. off alle gode dedess. (h–) ⑦ ⑧ ⑨ ⑩ 134 nils-lennart johannesson selim  () ⑨ malitiam quoque, iram et odium, … (petrus damianus, [de institutis suae congregationis.] caput xxvi. ‘quomodo lacrymarum gratia possit acquiri.’ pl vol. , col. c–d) of course, the fact that orm uses different source material om the glossa when there is a lacuna in eriugena’s expositio does not in itself prove that he had access to a copy of it (he may just have found anselm’s selections useless for his purposes, as in the interpretation of “videbitis caelum apertum” discussed above). nevertheless, taken together with those passages where orm uses material om eriugena which never made its way into the glossa, these ee-ranging parts of the ormulum can at least be seen as supporting evidence for the hypothesis that orm did have access to an eriugena manuscript and could tell where the lacunae were in eriugena’s exposition. a possible route of transmission. it remains for us to consider if it is reasonable to postulate a link between laon in picardie and bourne in lincolnshire in the twelh century.¹¹ anselm of laon died in , and the school soon went into decline aer his death (southern : ). shortly aer, gervase (abbot –) introduced a stricter discipline at the augustinian abbey of arrouaise, south of arras in picardie (now pas-de-calais) (dickinson : f., ). a scribe who had worked closely with anselm may have chosen the early s to leave laon for arrouaise, taking some manuscripts with him as he le, including the copy of eriugena. the distance om laon to ¹¹ i will assume that parkes’ () identification of orm’s house is correct. 135 an anatomy of the preface to the ormulum selim  () arrouaise was about  kilometres, so he need not have taken more than a week or two to get there. in  a party le arrouaise to go off to england to found the daughter house at bourne in lincolnshire (parkes : ). whether or not the scribe om laon was a member of this party, we have to assume that the manuscripts he had brought om laon went to bourne to form part of the abbey library there. this hypothetical scribe provides a possible link between the cathedral school at laon and bourne abbey: when orm started his work on the ormulum, presumably betwen  and , the copy of eriugena would have been there, as well as stories about the threefold brothers at laon, anselm and ralph. c the purpose of this paper has been to investigate those parts of the preface to the ormulum that are not derived om exegetical latin texts. for two of the three issues discussed here the evidence is there in the text, we only have to relate it to the relevant descriptive categories. as regards those passages that deal with relationships between orm and various other persons (the instigator of the work, the copyist, possible detractors, god), they agree perfectly with the norms for a ciceronian praefatio, as described by janson (). with respect to the passages that deal with non-personal characteristics of the text, the preface is a typical ‘type c’ prologue, as described by minnis (). however, as regards the reason for orm’s insisting on threefold brotherhood, my suggestion that this is a veiled reference to anselm and ralph of laon, another pair of threefold brothers, is less easy to find support for. there is textual evidence that orm used eriugena’s commentary on john in a way that presupposes that he had access to a manuscript copy of it. since the only surviving manuscript has 136 nils-lennart johannesson selim  () never le laon (jeauneau : ) and was used by anselm as the main source for the glossa on john, this suggests some kind of link between orm and the work carried out at laon a generation or two earlier. the possible transmission procedure sketched above is of course mere speculation, and it does not seem likely that evidence for or against this story will ever become available, as parkes (: , fn. ) hoped: the recently published documents om arrouaise abbey (tock ) contain no material relating to bourne. what remains is the textual evidence in the ormulum itself. the analysis of the preface to the ormulum made here suggests that orm was not a very modest person, and that he had a very high opinion of the value of his work. he may have wished to include a veiled reference to anselm and ralph because he saw walter and himself as their spiritual heirs; perhaps he even saw the ormulum as a vernacular counterpart of the glossa ordinaria. nils-lennart johannesson stockholm university r primary sources ælic, english preface to lives of saints. doe [æls (pref ).] ælic, preface to genesis. doe [ægenpref.] beda, in s. joannis evangelium expositio, pl vol. . biblia latina cum glossa ordinaria. tomus iv. facsimile reprint of the editio princeps adolph rusch of strassburg /. turnhout, brepols. 137 an anatomy of the preface to the ormulum selim  () bruno astensis, sententiae. pl vol. . clemoes, p. ed. : ælfric’s catholic homilies. the first series. text. eets s.s. . oxford, oxford university press. healey, a. dipaolo ed. : dictionary of old english corpus in electronic form. (cd-rom). toronto, university of toronto. (doe) glossa ordinaria. evangelium secundum joannem. see biblia latina. (g) godden, m. ed. : ælfric’s catholic homilies. the second series. text. eets s.s. . london, oxford university press. godeidus admontensis, homiliae in festa totius anni. pl vol. . haymo halberstatensis, homiliae de tempore. pl vol. . honorius augustodunensis, expositio in cantica canticorum. pl vol. . jeauneau, é. ed. : commentaire sur l’évangile de jean. par jean scot. paris, cerf. (j) johannes scotus eriugena, commentarivs in evangelivm iohannis. see jeaneau . (e) king james bible. artfl multilingual bibles. //: http:// www.lib.uchicago.edu/es/artfl/public/bibles/ (kjb) patrologia latina. the full text database. //: http://pld. chadwyck.co.uk (pl) petrus damianus, [de institutis suae congregationis.] pl vol. . rabanus maurus, de universo. pl vol. . 138 nils-lennart johannesson selim  () vulgate. artfl multilingual bibles. //: http://www.lib. uchicago.edu/es/artfl/public/bibles/ (vu) zacharias chysopolitanus, in unum ex quatuor. pl vol. . secondary sources andrée, a. ed. : gilbertus universalis. glossa ordinaria in lamentationes ieremie prophete. prothemata et liber i. a critical edition with an introduction and a translation. studia latina stockholmiensia . stockholm, almqvist & wiksell inter national. dickins, b. & r. m. wilson eds. : early middle english texts. cambridge, bowes & bowes. dickinson, j. c. : the origins of the austin canons and their introduction into england. london, s.p.c.k. holt, r. ed. : the ormulum, with the notes and glossary of dr. r. m. white.  vols. oxford, clarendon. hunt, r. w. : the introduction to the “artes” in the twelh century, in studia mediaevalia in honorem admodum reverendi patris raymundi josephi martin, –. bruges, de tempel. janson, t. : latin prose prefaces. studies in literary conventions. acta universitatis stockholmiensis: studia latina stockholmiensia xiii. stockholm, almquist & wiksell. jeauneau, é. & p. e. dutton. : the autograph of eriugena. turnhout, brepols. johannesson, n.-l. : the etymology of rime in the ormulum, in c. dollerup ed., worlds of words. a tribute to arne zettersten, –. nordic journal of english studies , special issue. 139 an anatomy of the preface to the ormulum selim  () johannesson, n.-l. : bread, crumbs, and related matters in the ormulum, in mcconchie r. w., o. timofeeva, h. tissari, & t. säily eds., selected proceedings of the  symposium on new approaches in english historical lexis (hel-lex), –. somerville, ma, cascadilla proceedings project. johannesson, n.-l. a: orm’s relationship to his latin sources, in g. mazzon ed., studies in middle english forms and meanings, –. studies in english medieval language and literature . frankfurt am main, peter lang. johannesson, n.-l. b: the four-wheeled quadriga and the seven sacraments: on the sources for the ‘dedication’ of the ormulum, in moskowich-spiegel, i. & b. crespo eds., bells chiming from the past: cultural and linguistic studies on early english, –. amsterdam, rodopi. mancho, g. : is orrmulum’s introduction an instance of an aristotelian prologue? neophilologus : –. matthes, h. c. : die einheitlichkeit des orrmulum: studien zur textkritik, zu den quellen und zur sprachlichen form von orrmins evangelienbuch. heidelberg, c. winter. minnis, a. j. : medieval theory of authorship: scholastic literary attitudes in the later middle ages. london, scolar press. morrison, s. : sources for the ormulum: a re-examination. neuphilologische mitteilungen : –. morrison, s. . vernacular literary activity in twelh-century england: redressing the balance, in m. aurell ed., culture politique des plantagenêt (–), –. poitiers, centre d’études supérieures de civilisation médiévale. 140 nils-lennart johannesson selim  () parkes, m. b. : on the presumed date and possible origin of the manuscript of the ‘ormulum’: oxford, bodleian library, ms. junius , in e. g. stanley & d. gray eds., five hundred years of words and sounds: a festschrift for eric dobson, – . cambridge, brewer. southern, r. w. : scholastic humanism and the unification of europe. volume i. foundations. oxford, blackwell. tock, b.-m. ed. : monvmenta arroasiensia. turnhout, brepols. ! received  feb ; revision received  mar ; accepted  mar  selim 20.indb carla maría thomas, selim 20 (2013–2014): 167–198issn: 1132–631x orm’s vernacular latinity 1 abstract: this article argues that homily 3 on the annunciation in the ormulum presents an image of the stella maris epithet for the virgin mary in the english vernacular in a way diff erent fr om its native predecessor, the old english gospel of pseudo-matthew. in bringing this piece of liturgical material to the laity for the fi rst time, orm was not only drawing on latin content fr om multiple continental sources—thus creating a composite text without a clear exemplar—but he was also elevating his vernacular composition by adapting it to the latin septenary. thus, orm’s use of the stella maris, or “sæsterrne,” demonstrates his participation in the dissemination of marian devotional material to the laity as well as in the attempt to elevate english through latin form and content, which represents a larger movement in the period. keywords: ormulum, sæsterrne, stella maris, septenary, virgin mary. resumen: este artículo postula que la homilía 3 sobre la anunciación en el ormulum presenta una imagen del epíteto stella maris para la virgen maría en inglés de un modo diferente al de su predecesor nativo, el evangelio del pseudo-mateo en inglés antiguo. al presentar por vez primera este material litúrgico al público laico, orm no solo estaba recopilando contenidos latinos a partir de múltiples fuentes continentales —creando de este modo un texto compuesto sin un ejemplar claro—sino que también estaba elevando su composición en vernáculo al adaptarlo al septenario latino. así, el uso que orm hace de stella maris, o “sæsterrne,” demuestra su participación en la diseminación de material devocional mariano al público laico, así como en el intento de elevar el inglés a través de formas y contenidos latinos, lo que representa un movimiento mayor en el periodo. palabras clave: ormulum, sæsterrne, stella maris, septenario, virgen maría. 1 introduction although most scholarship on the ormulum has focused on the language and orthography of orm’s collection of metrical homilies, homily 3 displays innovative treatment of marian devotional material and reveals 1 i am grateful for the support of and feedback fr om haruko momma and mo pareles in the early stages of this article and especially to my reviewers, whose comments were exceedingly helpful. finally, i am thankful to dr. bruce barkerbenfi eld at the bodleian library for giving me access to ms junius 1 in 2012 and 2014. carla maría thomas 168selim 20 (2013–2014) the move of such material out of the liturgy and into vernacular preaching in twelft h-century england.2 the ormulum is a late twelft h-century collection of verse homilies organized around the life of christ and written in fi ft een-syllable septenary verse, which includes seven metrical feet and one unstressed fi nal syllable per line. the author orm was a regular canon writing fr om approximately 1160 until 1180 in southern lincolnshire, possibly associated with bourne abbey, which was an arrouaisian reform of the order of st. augustine and founded in 1138 by norman augustinians who were brought to england aft er the conquest (parkes 1983; worley 2003: 23). this paper argues that the ormulum was participating in the dissemination of liturgical material through vernacular preaching texts in twelft h-century england with the specifi c example of the “sæsterrne” (“sea-star”) epithet for the virgin mary. furthermore, i maintain that this practice is emblematic of a larger movement in the twelft h century, for which i draw upon emily thornbury’s recent work on the late anglo-saxon poetic tradition. she argues that late anglo-saxon poets brought “latinate high culture” to the english laity by making it seem like it derived fr om a latin source (thornbury 2014: 235). in the case of the ormulum, the content most certainly comes fr om latin sources, but so does its verse form, which strengthens the connection between orm’s vernacular english preaching to its latinity. 2 for an extensive bibliography of ormulum research, i direct the reader to nilslennart johannesson’s website www2.english.su.se/nlj /orrmproj/orrmulum_site. html. the publication of the critical edition in the late nineteenth century by robert holt, with notes and glossary by robert meadows white, instigated the early philological work on the collection. the works of g. sarrazin, emanuel menthel, moritz trautman, sigurd holm, and heinrich matthes were essential in understanding the language, verse, and sources of the verse homilies, and recent work, especially by nils-lennart johannesson and stephen morrison, has aided scholars in moving beyond its philology. 169 selim 20 (2013–2014) orm’s vernacular latinity 2 the latin tradition of the stella maris stephen morrison posits that orm looked south of england for source material, most likely fr om works associated with northern french schools, such as those at tours, chartres, rheims, and clairvaux (2002: 266). in his examination of textual evidence, however, morrison concludes that the correspondences between the ormulum and the glossa ordinaria, as well as between the ormulum and the enarrationes in matthaeum, are only partial, which suggests that “a hitherto unidentifi ed text, sharing much in common with both” may be the source of the composite exemplar for the ormulum (2002: 266). this suggestion discredits orm’s own compositional ability, and it seems more likely that orm was a well-read canon who drew more fr om memory than fr om any singular exemplar.3 before i discuss the continental works that infl uenced orm’s use of the stella maris (“star of the sea”) epithet in the vernacular, i will fi rst show where the tradition originated: fr om the authoritative writings of sts. jerome, isidore of seville, and bede. scholars once considered the etymology of mary as the stella maris a mistranslation in isidore of seville’s etymologiae fr om jerome’s quaestiones hebraicae in libro geneseos (graef 1963: 162– 163; pelikan 1978: 162; 1996: 94). here, jerome uses the phrase stilla maris, which means “drop of the sea,” and winfr ied rudolf writes that this defi nition was infl uenced by i kings 18.41–45 (2011).4 it was generally accepted that isidore mistranslated the phrase when he wrote in “de reliquis in evangelio nominibus” (book vii.x.1, ed. lindsay): “maria inluminatrix, sive stella maris. genuit enim lumen mundi. sermone autem syro maria 3 see johannesson (2007b, especially 132) for another discussion on orm’s use of more than one source to develop an intricate metaphor in his homilies. 4 the passage fr om i kings concerns a small cloud that rises fr om the sea, which promises rain aft er a long draught. carla maría thomas 170selim 20 (2013–2014) domina nuncupatur; et pulchre; quia dominum genuit.”5 more recent scholarship has suggested that jerome was the originator of the phrase in his commentary on matthew in his liber de nominibus hebraicis (clayton 1990: 249–250; gambero 2005: 69): “mariam plerique aestimant interpretari, illuminant me isti, uel illuminatrix, uel smyrna maris, sed mihi nequaquam uidetur. melius autem est, ut dicamus sonare eam stellam maris, siue amarum mare: sciendumque quod maria, sermone syro domina nuncepatur” (1852: 841–842).6 we can see that the more likely origin of isidore’s etymology was fr om this passage in which jerome specifi cally uses the phrase “stellam maris”. furthermore, we can compare jerome’s “sermone syro domina nuncepatur” with isidore’s “sermone autem syro maria domina nuncupatur,” which appears to be taken nearly verbatim fr om jerome. following jerome’s and isidore’s leads, the most infl uential contributions to the literary development of mary as the stella maris in early medieval england are found in bede’s commentary on luke, the ave maris stella hymn, and other religious writings by continental commentators. bede interprets mary’s name in a similar fashion to jerome and isidore in his commentary on luke: “maria autem hebraice stella maris syriace uero domina uocatur et merito quia et totius mundi dominum et lucem saeculis meruit generare perennem” (1852b: 325).7 the epithet of stella 5 “mary the illuminator, and star of the sea. she brought forth, indeed, the light of the world. in the syrian language, however, mary is called ‘lady’ and ‘beauty’ because she brought forth the lord.” 6 “and very many determine that mary is interpreted ‘these illuminate me’ or ‘she who enlightens’ or ‘myrrh of the sea,’ but it does not seem thus to me at all. it is better, however, that we say she means ‘star of the sea,’ or ‘bitter sea:’ and that it ought to be known that mary is called ‘lady’ in the syrian language.” 7 “mary, however, in hebrew is called the ‘star of the sea,’ and in syriac, indeed, ‘lady’ and deservedly because she deserved to produce the lord of all the world and the enduring light for this life.” 171 selim 20 (2013–2014) orm’s vernacular latinity maris was considered one of the prerogatives or merits of mary, and bede continues this tradition in a homily for the feast of the annunciation, as mentioned above: “nec praetereundem quod beata dei genetrix meritis praecipuis etiam nominee testimonium reddit. interpretatur enim stella maris” (1852a: 10).8 interestingly, bede is the fi rst, based on the evidence that i have found, to expound on the importance of this interpretation of mary by bringing in further reference to the nautical metaphor: “et ipsa quasi sidus eximium inter fl uctus saeculi labentis gratia priuilegii specialis refulsit” (1852a: 10).9 the second major development in the stella maris metaphor is found in the ninth-century latin hymn ave maris stella, which survives on folio 1v in the st. gallen, stift sbibliothek, codices sangallenses ms 95 and reads:10 aue maris stella dei mater alma atque semper uirgo felix celi porta. sumens illud aue gabrihelis ore funda nos in pace mutans nomen eue. solue uincla reis profer lumen cecis mala nostra pelle bona cuncta posce. monstra te esse matrem sumat per te precem qui pro nobis natus tulit esse tuus. uirgo singularis inter omnes mitis nos culpis solutos mites fac et castos. vitam presta puram iter para tutum ut uidentes jesus semper conletemur 8 “and we must not pass over the fact that the blessed mother of god gave testimony by her special merits and also by her name. she is interpreted as the ‘star of the sea.’ ” 9 “and she herself, just as an extraordinary constellation among the waves of the slipping world, shone brightly on account of her special esteem and privilege.” 10 the following text was transcribed fr om images of the original ms, available at www.e-codices.unifr .ch. carla maría thomas 172selim 20 (2013–2014) sit laus deo patri summon christo decus spiritui sancto honor tribus unus. amen.11 notice that as the star of the sea, mary must “profer lumen cecis” and grant “iter para tutum.” that is, the “vitam […] puram” for which the prayer asks is the safe journey through the transitory world back to paradise. eventually making its way into the liturgy, ave maris stella became “one of the most popular marian songs of all christendom” (gambero 2005: 69). hrabanus maurus was penning his own works containing the stella maris around the same time as the hymn was composed, and the hymn and patristic etymologies inspired later continental theologians, like fulbert of chartres and bernard of clairvaux.12 instead of the more elaborate depictions of mary as the seastar that arise in the eleventh and twelft h centuries, maurus’s commentary on matthew is reminiscent of bede’s brief amplifi cation. here, maurus discusses the genealogy of jesus, the division of people into three tribes, and the betrothal of mary (1852a: 744). he begins, as we have seen previously with jerome and isidore: “maria quoque interpretatur stella maris, sive amarum 11 the text above is my transcription with abbreviations expanded and italicized: “hail the star of the sea, kind mother of god, and eternal virgin, happy gate to heaven. receiving that ave fr om the mouth of gabriel, establish is us in peace, changing the name of eve. release the band of the bound, bring forth the light of heaven, banish our evil, call upon all good. show yourself to be mother, through you may he receive prayer, who was born for us, to be yours. o, unique virgin, meek among all, fr ee us fr om our sins, make us meek and undefi led. grant a pure life, a safe journey, so that seeing jesus, may we always rejoice. praise be to god the father, to the highest christ glory, to the holy spirit honor, three in one. amen.” 12 paschasius radbertus, an author who was also widely read in early medieval england, used the stella maris epithet in his ninth-century writings as well, but orm does not seem to have drawn fr om radbertus for this content. for radbertus’s use of the stella maris, see his expositio in euangelium matthaei (1852). 173 selim 20 (2013–2014) orm’s vernacular latinity mare, et hoc nomen apte competit matri salvatoris.”13 in homily clxiii, maurus revisits the virgin mary as the stella maris and elaborates further on the reason for her title: the sea is “amarum” (“bitter”)—thus implying that the sea represents earthly life and all its troubles—but mary as the star “dulcis est nautis” (“is a pleasure for sailors”) because: “mos est ut stella viros ad portum adducat; sic maria in mundo ubi natus est christus, qui omnes ad vitam ducit dum sequantur illum, illuminatrix et domina dicitur, quae venum lumen et dominum nobis peperi” (1852b: 464).14 luigi gambero explains that illuminatrix or inluminatrix, which he translates as “light-bringer,” made the biggest impression on christians in maurus’s time. infl uential though maurus may have been, fulbert of chartres and bernard of clairvaux proved to have even greater signifi cance for medieval marian devotion. fulbert of chartres, who spent much of his time in rome and rheims, wrote sermons on the nativity and the purifi cation of mary that were especially important to the progression of marian doctrine (gambero 2005: 81). margot fassler writes that fulbert’s famous sermon approbate consuetudinis on the nativity of mary “is a striking break with many past marian liturgical texts in the west and yet fi rmly rooted in the devotional mentality of the peace movement, which emphasized the mirculous [sic], intervening powers of the saints” (2000: 417).15 fulbert made his greatest contribution to the marian cult as the bishop of chartres, whose patron saint was the virgin mary and whose relic, her birthing chemise, was destroyed in 13 “mary, also, is understood as the ‘star of the sea,’ or ‘bitter sea,’ and this name fi ttingly matches the mother of the saviour.” 14 “it is the custom that a star leads men to a port; so mary, in the world where christ was born, who leads all towards life provided that they follow, is called ‘illuminator’ and ‘lady,’ who brought forth the true light and the lord to us.” 15 for more information on the peace movement, see head & landes (1992) and head (1999). carla maría thomas 174selim 20 (2013–2014) the fi re of 1020 (2000: 403, 405). he participated in the growing stella maris tradition through his liturgical writings, and the fi re of 1020 seemed to only heighten his need to empower both the saint and his cathedral. the peace movement encouraged the kind of liturgical expansion in the years preceding and following the turn of the millenium that the marian apocrypha enj oyed in the eleventh century and especially the twelft h century (2000: 399).16 according to fassler, fulbert specifi cally strove to eradicate doubts regarding apocryphal stories of mary in order to integrate them into the liturgy, especially her nativity—the feast of which he sought to “magnify ” (2000: 405). in approbate consuetudinis, which is the fi rst manuscript evidence of the nativity apocryphon (biggs 2007: 25), fulbert refers to the annunciation scene in the nativity in which an angel appears to joachim and anna to announce mary’s birth and what she will be named: “sed divina dispensatio nomen accepit, ita ut ipsa quoque vocabuli sui fi gura magnum quiddam innueret: interpretatur enim maris stella” (1852: 321–322).17 the old testament prophecy in isaiah 7:14—“propter hoc dabit dominus ipse vobis signum ecce virgo concipiet et pariet fi lium et vocabitis nomen eius 16 fassler explains that, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, “new pieces for the mass and, to an even greater degree, for the divine offi ce” were being created in large numbers. 17 “but she received the name by divine direction, so that the form itself of her name signifi ed sometime great: certainly it means the ‘star of the sea.’ ” notice the fi nal phrase is the same as the one bede uses in his homily, which indicates that fulbert likely used bede as one source for his own sermon on mary. fulbert was working fr om the libellus de nativitate sanctae mariae, the source of which was the apocryphal gospel of pseudo-matthew, which i will discuss below, and it is signifi cant because “the compiler of the libellus sought to legitimatize the legends found in pseudo-matthew and to streamline the materials it contained, focusing it more intensely upon the virgin” (fassler 2000: 402). thus, the compiler’s goal mirrored fulbert’s own intentions. 175 selim 20 (2013–2014) orm’s vernacular latinity emmanuhel”18—lent itself to claims of prophetic fulfi llment in the canonical gospels, as well as in the new testament apocrypha.19 biblical prophecies drawn fr om the hebrew scriptures were well known when the earliest of the marian apocrypha were being written in the second century; hence the invention of the apocryphal proclamation of mary’s birth and name in her nativity, which relates to the events of the gospels, fi nds validation through prophetic precedent (clayton 1998: 7). shortly aft er discussing the divine plan of mary’s name, fulbert intensifi es the meaning of her name by elaborating on the iter para tutum of the ave maris stella: nautis quippe mare transeuntibus, notare opus est stellam hanc, longe a summo coeli cardine coruscantem, et ex respectu illius aestimare atque dirigere cursum suum, ut portum destinatum apprehendere possint. simili modo, fr atres, oportet universos christicolas, inter fl uctus hujus saeculi remigantes, attendere maris stellam hanc, id est mariam, quae supremo rerum cardini deo proxima est, et respectu exempli ejus cursum vitae dirigere. (322)20 as noted above, bede appears to be the fi rst to elaborate on the metaphor by alluding to the “waves of the slipping world,” and fulbert, clearly familiar with bede’s work, expands on the theme 18 “therefore the lord himself will give you a sign. behold a virgin will conceive and bear a son and his name will be called emmanuel.” 19 fulbert includes most of isaiah 7:14 verbatim in his approbate consuetudinis though not all of it. he adapts the fi rst part and then uses ecce […] emmanuhel verbatim. 20 “for sailors, certainly, crossing the sea, it is necessary to distinguish this star, twinkling fr om afar at the highest point in the heavens, and to appraise and direct its course out of respect for that, so that they may be able to lay hold of the chosen port. in a similar way, brothers, it is proper for all worshippers of christ, rowing among the waves of this world, to turn toward this star of the sea; it is mary, who is nearest to god, the highest point in the universe, and to direct the course of their life through consideration of her example.” carla maría thomas 176selim 20 (2013–2014) in a similar fashion. for the fi rst time, we see the beginning of the full potential of the meaning behind the stella maris metaphor. theologians do not liken mary to a shining celestial entity merely because she is perpetually pure, thus radiating a bright, blinding light, even if that may be how the idea began. rather, most important to fulbert and later theologians was the guidance and protection mary provides by way of the perfect example. christians must look to mary’s shining example of purity and faith in order to navigate the storms of earthly temptation; she alone can lead the faithful christian to heaven’s gates. therefore, not only does mary emerge as the “star of the sea” and the “gate of heaven,” but she also becomes the mediator, or “mediatrix,” between humans and god. in the twelft h century, bernard of clairvaux takes this elaboration to a new level by rendering what has now become familiar marian devotional material in striking and seemingly new ways. born in 1090 in bourgogne, bernard was admitted to the cîteaux monastery, which was the nexus of the cistercian order, in 1112, and the order went through a vast expansion throughout europe primarily because of his involvement (gambero 2005: 131). bernard went on to found a monastery at clairvaux, which he dedicated to mary as was the custom of the cistercian order, and he served as abbot for thirty-eight years until he died in 1153 (2005: 131). although bernard does not write extensively on mary in his numerous works, his contribution to her devotional writing is found in the beauty with which he writes about her. chrysogonus waddell writes, “bernard’s genius was not that [of ] an initiator or innovator, but of a witness to tradition,” and even though bernard was infl uenced by traditional works, he rendered them so beautifully that “it seemed as though his hearers and readers were discovering them for the fi rst time” (clairvaux 1993: vxiii). homily ii on the gospel of luke, which extols the virtues of mary and elaborates on her role in human redemption, contains a beautiful elaboration of the stella maris in the last section, but bernard takes his time getting there. as waddell explains, we see how the traditions of 177 selim 20 (2013–2014) orm’s vernacular latinity marian etymology and biblical prophecy play into bernard’s praise of the virgin as the stella maris. before he elaborates on the meaning of mary’s name as the star of the sea, in sixteen sections bernard gives a creative summation of what had become central elements of marian doctrine by this time, such as mary’s perpetual virginity, a reference to prophecy in numbers 24:17—“orietur stella ex iacob” (“a star will rise out of jacob”)—and mary as guiding intermediary. finally, in the seventeenth and fi nal section of his homily, the abbot begins with a verse fr om luke 1:27, “et nomen virginis maria” (“and the virgin’s name was mary”), and then proceeds, fi rst, with her perpetual purity relative to the nature of a star: loquamur pauca et super hoc nomine, quod interpretatum maris stella dicitur, et matri virgini valde convenienter aptatur. ipsa namque aptissime sideri comparator; quia, sicut sine sui corruptione sidus suum emittit radium, sic absque sui laesione virgo parturit fi lium. (1852: 70)21 aft er the direct reference to the rising star prophecy, bernard fi nally delves into the meaning and elaboration of the stella maris as a guide for the metaphorical seafarers of life: o quisquis te intelligis in hujus saeculi profl uvio magis inter procellas et tempestates fl uctuare, quam per terram ambulare; ne avertas oculos a fulgore hujus sideris, si non vis obrui procellis. si insurgant venti tentationum, si incurras scopulos tribulationum, respice stellam, voca mariam. (1852: 70)22 21 “let us say a little about this name, which is said to mean the ‘star of the sea,’ and for the virgin mother it is very appropriate. for she is most fi ttingly compared to a star; because, just as a star sends out its ray without its own corruption, thus without inj uring her own virginity she brought forth her son.” 22 “o whoever you are who feel you are more likely to be tossed among storms and tempests in the fl owing waters of this world, than to walk along the earth; do not avert your eyes fr om the brightness of this star, if you do not wish to be overwhelmed by the storms. if the winds of temptations rise up, if you run into the rocks of tribulations, look to the star, call mary.” carla maría thomas 178selim 20 (2013–2014) this passage begins bernard’s exhortation to the audience that they should look to mary whenever they are in need, and the infl uence of bede is clear when bernard mentions the saeculi profl uvio, which he then links to the temptation of the deadly sins. 3 making english latinate having discussed the latin sources of the stella maris above, i turn now to the ways in which vernacular english writing in the twelft h century sought to introduce an appearance of latinity to its reader-audience. in becoming a poet in anglo-saxon england, emily thornbury resists the institutionalized belief that old english poetry suff ered a “decay” fr om the tenth century onward. instead, she argues that late old english poetry may be considered, more usefully, a new form of old english verse that actually represents “the apotheosis of old english verse, not its downfall” (2014: 224). dubbed the southern mode because of its origin and surviving manuscripts being localized to the south of england—though some also extend to the west midlands—this new form purposefully diverged fr om the classical old english poetic style while heavily relying upon latin sources to create new vernacular texts that “functioned not as commentaries or retellings, but as simulacra” (2014: 224). not all texts in the southern mode take their material directly fr om a latin source; however, “the essential criterion is that a poem sound as if it might have a latin original” (2014: 225). furthermore, and most pertinent to my purposes, thornbury argues that the true “power” of this form of composition was in its ability to transcend the boundaries of the religious institution to reach the laity: […] by giving laypeople the chance to feel that they were directly experiencing latin texts, the authors of such poems could also help build ties beyond cloister and cathedral walls. it is even possible that some authors in the southern mode were themselves laypeople who wanted to participate in latinate high culture: even a poet with “small latin” or none 179 selim 20 (2013–2014) orm’s vernacular latinity could create verse that sounded as if it had a latin antecedent. (2014: 235–236) one example is the old english judgment day ii, which is a translation, more or less, of bede’s de die iudicii. as i will demonstrate below, orm was working fr om continental latin sources to create a vernacular version of the stella maris for his lay audience. to this, i would also argue that the very meter in which orm chooses to write—the fi ft een-syllable septenary with seven feet and an unstressed fi nal syllable—is also an attempt to present an english text in such a way as to elevate it through a meter based on a latin model. the fi rst scholar to publicly recognize that the ormulum was written in verse rather than prose, which is how george hickes (1705: 88) and humfr ey wanley (1705: 63) produced excerpts of it in their scholarship, was thomas tyrwhitt in 1775 (repr. 1845: 206–208).23 jakob schipper (1895: 186–189) was the fi rst to identify the type of meter used in both the ormulum and poema morale as the septenary, and the debate of its exact categorization and origins has been ongoing.24 nevertheless, scholars have long recognized that orm uses a fi ft een-syllable line that consists of seven metrical feet and ends with an unstressed, and therefore fi ft eenth, syllable. his lines are unrhymed, unlike the contemporaneous poema morale, and he does not appear concerned with maintaining the native old english tradition of alliteration, which the author of the 23 i would like to thank one of my reviewers who pointed out that jan van vliet (d. 1666) was really the fi rst to identify the verse form of the ormulum in his notebook (london, lambeth palace library, ms 783), but his fi ndings were never published. thus, the fi rst published recognition of orm’s use of verse is tyrwhitt’s essay. 24 for a debate on the origins of the septenary in english, see trautmann (1882: 111–130), menthel (1885: 49–86), and solopova (1996: 423–439). for an argument against the appropriation of the term “septenary” for english verse, see the entry for “septenarius” in preminger et al. (1993: 1145), which, unfortunately, off ers no alternative. carla maría thomas 180selim 20 (2013–2014) contemporaneous poem “the grave” attempts. occassionally, orm will utilize alliteration briefl y for rhetorical and mnemonic eff ect, but it is not a key element of his verse. while other middle english (both early and late) poems contain unstable verse lines, orm’s use of the strict fi ft een-syllable line regularly produces an iambic meter so that it would not be entirely inaccurate to refer to his verse as iambic heptameter: nu bró-|þerr wáll-|terr. bró-|þerr mín. | afft érr | þe fl ǽ-|shess kínd-|e (d1)25 as this line demonstrates, orm adds an unstressed syllable aft er the fi nal stressed syllable in the seventh foot, which renders the fi nal metrical foot incomplete. furthermore, due to the clear structure of the verse line—four feet with a strong ending in the fi rst half-line and three feet and extra syllable with a weak ending in the second half-line—on the one hand, one may argue for a traditional page layout with intented half-lines, as printed in holt’s edition: nu, broþerr wallterr, broþerr min afft err þe fl æshess kinde; ⁊ broþerr min i crisstenndom þurrh fulluhht ⁊ þurrh trowwþe; (d1–4)26 on the other hand, one may argue for a page layout with long lines and a visible caesura, as i do in my transcription of the same lines: 25 all excerpts fr om the ormulum in this article come fr om my edited transcriptions, and all translations are my own. line numbers follow the numbering in holt’s edition (d = dedication; no letter is used to designate the homily lines) since it is the only complete edition currently available. however, i have expanded all abbreviations and tironian notae in italics, silently inserted superscript letters, and left out orm’s accents. “now, brother walter, my brother according to the nature of the fl esh.” 26 “now, brother walter, my brother according to the nature of the fl esh and my brother in christendom through baptism and through belief.” 181 selim 20 (2013–2014) orm’s vernacular latinity nu broþerr wallterr. broþerr min.  afft err þe fl æshess kinde. annd broþerr min i crisstenndom.  þurrh fulluhht. annd þurrh trowwþe.27 the only aid that the manuscript provides is punctuation between each half-line, which i have maintained in the transcription above although, as the fi rst line above indicates, orm also sometimes uses punctuation syntactically. the layout, therefore, appears to be subject to traditional editorial policies, or, rather, to personal aesthetic preferences. eighteenthand nineteenth-century editorial practice generally published the septenary verse of the ormulum in alternating halflines, which is the case with tyrwhitt, holt, and henry sweet (1884: 47–78). however, edwin guest published his second volume of a history of english rhythms in 1838 with extracts of the ormulum in long lines (208, 210–216). like guest, joseph hall published his excerpt in long lines wih a caesura in his selections fr om early middle english (1920: 112–117). more recently, editors like j. a. w. bennett and g. v. smithers (1966) and elaine treharne (2009) have maintained the tradition of the half-line layout. in the history of publishing early middle english texts with the fi ft een-syllable line, it appears that only poema morale, the passion of our lord, and the woman of samaria have been consistently printed in the long lines. this is likely based on lineation within the manuscripts even though one of the earliest manuscripts of poema morale is laid out like prose in the same way that orm writes out his verse while another later poema morale manuscript lays out the poem in half-lines so that its rhyming couplets appear in every other line.28 the layout of the ormulum’s septenary verse, therefore, has fallen 27 the visible caesura that i use is a personal editorial choice, though unnecessary, since other early middle english poems are usually published in an unbroken long line, as i will demonstrate below. 28 for the poem laid out as prose, see london, lambeth palace library, ms 487, and for the poem laid out in alternating half lines, see oxford, bodleian library, ms digby 4. carla maría thomas 182selim 20 (2013–2014) to either tradition or personal preference, not metrical necessity. elizabeth solopova has eff ectively demonstrated that the format of an edition cannot be determined by meter since the structure of the ormulum warrants an editorial layout in both the half-lines and the long lines (1996: 436). as for the origin of orm’s septenary line, schipper suggests that orm was infl uenced by the latin iambic catalectic tetrameter, also known as the septenarius, because of the extra syllable at the end of the verse in the ormulum (1895: 186). the example he provides—“o crux, fr utex salvifi cus, / vivo fonte rigatus”—comes fr om the planctus bonaventurae of the thirteenth century. signifi cantly, schipper has written two tetrametric lines, which, alone, typically contain four metrical feet, to demonstrate how every second line is catalectic. that is, the line is incomplete and ends with only half a foot. when the two lines are combined into a long line, we suddenly fi nd a verse form very similar to that found in the ormulum: fi ft een syllables, seven feet, and an additional unstressed syllable. while schipper’s argument is appealing, solopova maintains a direct correlation between this specifi c form of latin meter and orm’s verse is not necessarily accurate. she reminds us that the fi ft een-syllable catalectic tetrameter was not written in iambic meter at the time of orm’s composition (1996: 428). rather, it was usually written as the trochaic tetrameter catalectic, and orm’s meter more closely resembles the “native tradition” found in poema morale, the woman of samaria, and a good orison of our lady (1996: 428). this tradition refers to the native four-beat verse, which may have contributed to the eight-syllable half-lines that emerge in the early middle english period. the native tradition, however, is not explicit in these poems for two reasons. first, the ormulum predates these three poems but his meter is more regular, and, second, one cannot fi nd one clear evolutionary track easily fr om old english to early middle english verse. i argue, however, that the iambic septenary line must be a natural result of lengthening the old english metrical line while also drawing infl uence fr om 183 selim 20 (2013–2014) orm’s vernacular latinity latin models. trochaic or not, english poets certainly were familiar with the iambic septenary in the twelft h and thirteenth centuries.29 in fact, a cursory search of the poetry collected in richard morris’s editions reveals that the three pieces of verse listed above are not the only ones that use the fi ft een-syllable line. morris’s editions of early middle english literature, which he identifi es as old english, are crucial to the study of this body of work, and in some cases, his editions remain the only ones in existence, such as his editions of the lambeth homilies and trinity homilies—the manuscripts of which both contain a copy of poema morale fr om the end of the twelft h century.30 in his old english miscellany (1872), there are at least four more potential texts that use the same meter: the passion of our lord, the duty of christians, the eleven pains of hell, and an orison of our lady. the last three poems have perhaps escaped notice because of their lineation into short rhyming verse. the stanzas of the duty of christians are arranged in octets with an abababab rhyme scheme: þeo soþe luue a-mong vs beo. wyþ-vten euch endynge. and crist vs lete wel i-þeo. and yue vs his blessynge. and yeue vs þat we moten fl eo. euer sunegynge. and þene feond and al his gleo. and al his twyelinge. (141, ll. 1–8)31 29 the iamb may be a natural evolution fr om old english b-type verse—one of the most common forms—in which each half-line contains two occurrences of one or more unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable: x / x /. unfortunately, there is no room in this article to elaborate further now. 30 for the lambeth homilies (london, lambeth palace library, ms 487), see morris (1867), and for the trinity homilies (cambridge, trinity college, ms b. 14. 52), see morris (1873). 31 “the true love among us is without each ending, and may christ allow us to do well and give us his blessing, and grant us that we may fl ee fr om ever sinning and the fi end and all his mockery and all his deceit.” carla maría thomas 184selim 20 (2013–2014) however, when we scan the lines, something peculiar stands out: þeo só-|þe lú-|ue ͜ a-móng | vs béo. wy-þú-|ten éuch | endíng-|e. it becomes clear that we have a replication of not only the fi ft eensyllable line reproduced in alternating four-feet and three-feet hemistichs, but also the iambic meter. therefore, instead of the octet, we may write the poem in quatrains of long lines with the fi rst half-lines rhyming internally at the caesura and the second half-lines rhyming at the end of each line: þeo soþe luue a-mong vs beo.  wyþ-vten euch endynge. and crist vs lete wel i-þeo.  and yue vs his blessynge. and yeue vs þat we moten fl eo.  euer sunegynge. and þene feond and al his gleo.  and al his twyelinge. interestingly, even though orm does not make much use of rhyme, he does occasionally utilize it in the same way that he sometimes uses alliteration to emphasize a particular piece of exegesis or didacticism. the following couplet appears twice in what is typically referred to as the dedication of the ormulum: wiþþ ære shollde lisstenn itt.  wiþþ herrte shollde itt trowwenn. wiþþ tunge shollde spellenn itt.  wiþþ dede shollde itt follᵹhenn. (d133–136; d309–312) in the fi rst appearance of these lines, orm is explaining why he wants all english people to have access to the gospel: they should hear it, believe it, preach it, and follow it. he has based his masterpiece on doubling and repetition but also upon the idea of the number four: there are four gospels and gospel writers, and orm likens the four books to the “quaþþrigan” (80) or quadriga, a four-wheeled chariot, of amminadab, who is one of christ’s distant ancestors according to the hebrew scriptures and the gospels of luke and matthew.32 it follows, then, that orm decided to reiterate these 32 for more on the quadriga in the ormulum, see johannesson (2007a). 185 selim 20 (2013–2014) orm’s vernacular latinity lines aft er explaining the rationale behind his quadriga fr amework and metaphor because of its group of four hortatives. thus, the ormulum anticipates a much more widespread use of the fi ft een-syllable iambic line than scholars have previously thought, and with the english iambic septenary appearing in the ormulum fi rst and then remaining in use through the thirteenth century, it seems reasonable to claim that the lengthening of the old english metrical line adapted well to the latin meter. orm’s meter, however, is only one characteristic of the latinity of his collection of homilies. the other major contribution to the seeming latin nature of his work lies in the treatment of his source material to produce a vernacular english version of the stella maris. 4 early english translations of the stella maris orm’s use of the “sæsterrne” for mary is only the second occurrence of the stella maris epithet in the english vernacular. the fi rst occurrence exists in three manuscripts of the same text, the old english translation of the apocryphal gospel of pseudo-matthew: oxford, bodleian library, ms hatton 114; cambridge, corpus christi college, ms 367, part ii; and oxford, bodleian library, ms bodley 343. the source of the old english text is the latin gospel of pseudo-matthew, which is a reworking of the latin proteuangelium iacobi. the proteuangelium was the foundation for a great amount of the marian apocrypha and eventually led to the series of marian feasts (clayton 1998: 8). additionally, it supplies the fi rst account of the birth and childhood of mary, which made its way into the vernacular translation of the latin pseudo-matthew. the latin text that was likely the source of the old english pseudo-matthew is extant in cambridge, pembroke college, ms 25 and can be placed in bury st. edmunds by 1154 (1998: 129). although the manuscript dates to the eleventh century, the collection of texts must have been available no later than the tenth century in england because old english homilies in the vercelli book, the old english martyrology, and other vernacular compilations draw on its contents (1998: 130). carla maría thomas 186selim 20 (2013–2014) the earliest evidence of any reference to marian apocryphal material in anglo-saxon england is the irish monk adamnan’s account of arculf ’s visit to mary’s tomb in jerusalem in de locis sanctis, written in latin in the late seventh century (clayton 1998: 101). the old english martyrology was composed in the mid ninth century, and the benedictional of st. æthelwold dates to the late tenth century, both of which make use of the apocryphal material (1998: 107–108). unlike his teacher æthelwold and many other contemporaries, ælfr ic chose not to use apocryphal texts in his preaching, a choice which was likely based on his desire not to perpetuate the supposed heresy (clayton 1990: 244). a note titled de maria that was added to the end of the homily for the sixteenth sunday aft er pentecost in the second series of his catholic homilies reads: hwæt wylle we secgan ymbe marian gebyrd-tide, buton þæt heo wæs gestryned þurh fæder and ðurh moder swa swa oðre men, and wæs on ðam dæge acenned þe we cweðað sexta idus septembris? hire fæder hatte ioachim, and hire moder anna, eawfæste men on ðære ealdan æ; ac we nellað be ðam na swiðor awritan, þy-læs ðe we on ænigum gedwylde befeallon. (godden 1979: 78)33 ælfr ic was, however, anomalous in this period for his prolifi c writing and popularity as much as he was for his orthodoxy: his writings are the only extant forms of resistance to apocryphal texts (clayton 1998: 111). unfortunately, his admonitions do not seem to have had much eff ect on his reader-audience. as my discussion of fulbert above demonstrates, the marian nativity apocrypha found its way into liturgical texts, and the creation of two new feasts in 33 “what will we say about the birthday of mary except that she was begotten by father and by mother just as other people, and was born on the day that we call the eighth of september? her father was called joachim, and her mother anna, pious people in the old law, but we will not write more about them, lest we fall into any error.” 187 selim 20 (2013–2014) orm’s vernacular latinity england, which was the fi rst in the west to celebrate such feasts, provides further evidence for this liturgical addition (1998: 114).34 the earliest manuscript of the old english pseudo-matthew, which does not translate the latin text in full because the latin only partially survived into the eleventh century, dates to the end of the eleventh century (ms hatton 114), and it translates the surviving chapters i through xii and adds a prologue and epilogue. the narrative contains the nativity of mary because it is a homily for the feast of her birth and childhood, but the contents extend past the parameters for her feast as the homily continues into the annunciation and her pregnancy. clayton takes the continuation of the homily into the annunciation as evidence that the composition of the homily was not necessarily based on the demands of the feast (1998: 136–137). furthermore, the addition of a prologue with a discussion of mary as the “sæsteorra,” which does not exist in the latin text, and the continued narration of her life past the annunciation may suggest that the scribe was more focused on the devotion to the virgin than the particular theme of the feast. the “sæsteorra” passage reads: sæsteorra heo is ᵹecweden, forðan þe se steorra on niht ᵹecyþeð scypliðendum mannum, hwyder bið east and west, hwyder suð and norð. swa þonne wearð þurh ða halᵹan fæmnan sancta marian ᵹecyþed se rihte siðfæt to ðam ecan life þam ðe lanᵹe ær sæton on þeostrum and on deaþes scuan and on þam unstillum yðum þære sæ þises middaneardes. (assman 1889: 117–118)35 34 clayton explains that winchester began the feast of the conception of mary around 1030, masses for which are found in the new minster missal, le havre, bibliothèque municipale, ms 330 (mid-eleventh century) and in the leofr ic missal, oxford, bodleian library, ms bodley 579 (c. 1066). 35 “she is called star of the sea because the star of the sea at night makes known to seafaring men where are east and west, south and north. in the same way, was through the holy virgin, saint mary made known the right path to eternal life to those who long before sat in darkness and in the shadow of death and upon the restless waves of the sea of this middle-earth.” carla maría thomas 188selim 20 (2013–2014) the tradition of commenting on mary ’s name, especially its significance as the stella maris, originates with the early latin commentators, as i have shown, and while several continental writers contribute to the overall corpus, the old english pseudo-matthew author is closer to the insular latin writings of bede. bede’s homily for the feast of the annunciation of the virgin mary refers to the temporal world as “fl uctus saeculi labentis” (“waves of the slipping world”), and the old english prologue mentions “þam unstillum yðum sæ þises middaneardes” (1852a: 10). the idea that the north star represents mary is perhaps even more strongly evoked in the old english prologue with the “scypliðendum mannum” seeking the star at night and the reference to the cardinal directions: “hwyder bið east and west, hwyder suð and norð.” although the north star is implied in the “sæsterrne” passage of the ormulum, the reference is less obvious than the prologue of the pseudo-matthew—not to mention orm neglects to refer to waves entirely—which suggests that orm’s homily derives fr om the continental latin texts rather than bede and other insular latin texts. what is most signifi cant about the old english pseudomatthew is the fact that two of the three manuscripts date to the middle and second half of the twelft h century, like the ormulum. because few people read the ormulum beyond its introductory material (i.e., the dedication, preface, and introduction in holt’s edition), scholars have overlooked orm’s participation in marian devotion through his vernacular use of the stella maris epithet.36 j. a. w. bennett mentions orm’s use of the norse form “sæsteorrne” in reference to mary only as an example of his “wholly native” language, and he uses this example to emphasize the mixture of english and scandinavian 36 see, for example, rubin (2009); clayton (1998); and especially clayton (1990: 249–252). 189 selim 20 (2013–2014) orm’s vernacular latinity languages that arose fr om the danelaw (1990: 33). except for bennett’s minor comment, no other discussion of orm’s use of the “sæsterrne” exists presently. the epithet arises when orm relates the annunciation in homily 3. in this homily on luke 1:26, the beginning of which is lacking due to two missing folios,37 orm adds an etymological passage about the virgin’s name: annd ure dere laff diᵹ wass;  þurrh drihhtin nemmnedd marᵹe. forr þatt tatt name shollde wel;  bitacnenn hire sellþe. forr hire name tacneþþ uss;  sæsterrne onn ennglissh spæche. annd ᵹho beþ æfr e. annd wass. annd iss;  sæsterne38 inn haliᵹ bisne. forr all swa summ þe steressmann.  aᵹᵹ lokeþþ till ane sterrne. þatt stannt aᵹᵹ stille uppo þe lifft .  annd swiþe brihhte shineþþ. forr þatt he wile follᵹhenn aᵹᵹ.  þatt illke sterrness lade. swa þatt he muᵹhe lendenn rihht.  to lande wiþþ hiss wille; all swa birrþ all crisstene follc.  till sannte marᵹe lokenn. þatt stannt wiþþ hire sune i stall.  þær heᵹhesst iss inn heff ne. annd iwhillc an crisstene mann.  ðatt ᵹerneþþ afft err blisse; birrþ stanndenn inn afft err hiss mihht.  to follᵹhenn hire bisne. swa þatt he muᵹhe lendenn rihht.  afft err hiss aᵹhen wille. vpp inntill hefennriches ærd;  to brukenn eche blisse. (2,131–2,146)39 37 in the holt edition, the missing bifolium is identifi ed by the columns (45–52), but it would have been located between folios 22 and 23 at the break between the two quires. 38 orm forgot to add a superscript ⟨r⟩ here. 39 “and our dear lady was called mary by the lord because that name should well signify her blessing, for her name signifi es for us the sea-star in the english language, and she ever will be, and was, and is the sea-star in holy example. just as the steersman always looks to a star, which always stands still up in the sky and shines so brightly, because he wishes to follow always that same star’s way, so that he is able to proceed correctly to land by his will. so it behooves all christian folk to look to saint mary, who stands with her son in place where it is highest in heaven.” carla maría thomas 190selim 20 (2013–2014) in this passage, orm is introducing his audience to mary for the fi rst time, which prompts him to elaborate on the meaning of her name based on the tradition of the etymologies by jerome and isidore. signifi cantly, her name was not chosen arbitrarily, but rather, the “drihhtin” called her thus because her name should “bitacnenn” the dual blessing she embodies. first, she is blessed: she is chosen by god to be the vessel for the son of god because of her mental and physical purity and religious devotion. second, she creates a blessing: by giving birth to jesus, she literally produces the possibility of redemption and salvation for humanity. thus, she is the “sæsterrne inn haliᵹ bisne” through her purity and steadfast faith in god, and, as the “sæsterrne,” she serves as a spiritual guide for those who are still earth-bound and in danger of losing eternal salvation. orm explains that, just as a steersman follows a star to fi nd his bearings at sea, so too “all crisstene follc” should look to mary to fi nd their way across the perilous sea of life. in old and early middle english homiletic literature, christ is oft en referred to as the brightest of all stars, eternally shining because he is truth and salvation, and orm ties the new vernacular tradition of mary as the star of the sea to this older authoritative tradition of christ as a star. but mary does not simply reside in heaven: she “stannt wiþþ hire sune i stall. þær heᵹhesst iss inn heff ne.” similar to her depiction as regina, orm depicts mary as equal in status and nobility to jesus because of her role in human salvation. the notion of mary as the queen of heaven is not new to the twelft h century, but the way that vernacular english literature depicts her as royalty seems to change. for instance, orm regards her as the “allre shafft e cwen” (2,159, “queen of all creation”). the anglo-saxon dream of the rood contains an early poetic example in vernacular english literature that contains slightly diff erent praise for mary: hwæt, me þa geweorðode  wuldres ealdor ofer holmwudu,  heofonrices weard! swylce swa he his modor eac,  marian sylfe, ælmihtig god  for ealle menn 191 selim 20 (2013–2014) orm’s vernacular latinity geweorðode  ofer eall wifa cynn. (krapp 1932: ll. 90–94)40 furthermore, in de assumptione beatae mariae in the fi rst series of the catholic homilies, ælfr ic refers to mary as the “ealles middangeardes cwene” (clemoes 1997: 430, “queen of all of middleearth”). there appears, then, to be an evolving trend to expand mary’s worth in the english vernacular. first, the dream of the rood poet makes her the worthiest of all women, and then ælfr ic raises her to the status of “queen of all of the world,” which is the realm that resides between heaven and hell (i.e., this world). finally, orm considers her the queen of all creation, which transcends all the spheres of existence, just as “weop eal gesceaft ” (55, “all creation wept”) for the death of jesus on the cross in the dream of the rood. the shift fr om the earlier valuation of mary ranking above all “wifa cynn” to a monarch ruling over all “middangeard” to, ultimately, ruler over all “shafft e” is signifi cant because it parallels the entry of the stella maris epithet into the english vernacular. one of the other key diff erences between the use of the marian epithet in the old english prologue to the pseudo-matthew and in the ormulum is the fact that the former precedes marian apocrypha on mary’s nativity and childhood while the latter occurs in narration of a canonical gospel teaching. orm resolutely avoids apocryphal material in his homilies, like his predecessor ælfr ic, so his “sæsterrne” appears where one would expect to fi nd it in the gospels: in the annunciation scene when we fi rst encounter mary. as the several etymologies for names in the ormulum indicate, whenever a new name arose in discussion, orm provided an explanation for it. therefore, following an orthodoxy similar to ælfr ic’s and his own augustinian inclinations towards etymological exposition, orm’s only concession to popular taste was to include 40 “lo, then the lord of glory honored me above the trees on the hill, protector of the kingdom of heaven! just as he, almightly god, also honored his mother, mary herself, over all womankind for all people.” carla maría thomas 192selim 20 (2013–2014) a brief note on the stella maris epithet for mary in his homily on the annunciation.41 the side eff ect, however, was that orm was bringing marian material, which had entered the latin liturgy prior to the twelft h century, to the english laity for the fi rst time. 5 conclusions the sources that orm used in the creation of his impressive collection are constantly under scholarly debate and include the glossa ordinaria; the pseudo-anselm enarrationes in matthaeum; the homilies and commentaries of bede and hrabanus maurus; the homilies of wulfstan and ælfr ic; fulbert of chartres’s homily on mary’s nativity; and other recently developed material fr om the early twelft h century, such as the work of bernard of clairvaux. his use of “brihhte shineþþ” is reminiscent of bede’s and subsequent writers’ use of “refulsit,” just as his statement that the lost sailor can “lendenn rihht to lande” by following “þatt illke sterrnes lade” seems to echo the hymn’s “iter para tutum” and maurus’s “stellam viros ad portum adducat.” moreover, bernard’s refr ain of “respice stellam, voca mariam” is echoed in orm’s “birrþ all crisstene follc till sannte marᵹe lokenn.” fulbert’s treatment of the stella maris, though, seems to resonate the most in the ormulum’s passage. orm’s fi nal line of the “sæsterrne” passage reads: “þatt stannt wiþþ hire sune i stall. þær heᵹhesst iss inn heff ne.” fulbert refers to the “summo coeli cardine” and then explicitly writes: “id est mariam, quae supremo rerum cardini deo proxima est.” finally, fulbert is the only writer to refer to the virgin mary as an “example” by using “exempli” in his stella maris passage, and orm specifi cally uses the word “bisne” to point to mary as a perpetual holy example embodied by the fi gure of the sea-star. 41 bede refers to mary as the stella maris in his homily for the feast of the annunciation, as mentioned above. thus, if orm took anything fr om bede regarding his “sæsterrne,” it may be the context in which he used the epithet. 193 selim 20 (2013–2014) orm’s vernacular latinity based on the evidence, it would appear that orm valued fulbert’s writings above others, even his english predecessors. as i have shown, morrison’s assertions are credible, especially when considered alongside orm’s marian devotion and the similarities between his stella maris section and those of writers in or near france. what is most signifi cant is the change of context for the material in the ormulum, which may anticipate the expanded use and wider application of this particular marian imagery later. for orm, the meaning of mary’s name as the “sæsterrne” is crucial to the narration and explication of the annunciation. as my survey of latin sources indicates, orm elaborates on the epithet in a way similar to the texts of major continental latin writers, and his use of the stella maris motif seems unrelated to the one found in the old english pseudo-matthew. the “unstillum yðum” in the old english pseudo-matthew is evocative of bede’s fl uctus saeculi labentis, and this implies that the composer of the old english prologue to the pseudo-matthew relied on insular latin sources to a greater extent than orm did. these two earliest vernacular english versions of the stella maris epithet, then, are unconnected; however, the fact that two of the three manuscripts of the old english pseudo-matthew date fr om the twelft h century, like the ormulum, indicates the growing popularity of the stella maris metaphor in english in this period. it is not necessary to prove with historical evidence the connections that may have existed between bourne and normandy, between orm and the cistercian order’s practice of strong devotion to mary, and between orm and the early latin tradition of etymologies although such proof would be welcome. orm’s treatment of his material alone provides enough evidence of a connection to the continent. although the old english pseudomatthew is written in the vernacular as well, the composer of the prologue to the marian apocryphon upheld the native style of old english prose and relied on insular source material. orm was shaped by his anglo-norman environment and by his desire to carla maría thomas 194selim 20 (2013–2014) bring latin high culture, which he had the privilege to access, to the english laity for whom he wrote his homilies. as a result, the relation of the virgin mary as the “sæsterrne” in the ormulum appears less native to england and more comfortable in the latin works of the continent, both in substance and in poetic form. carla maría thomas new york university references assman, b. ed. 1889: angelsächsishe homilien und heiligenleben. 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(e.e.t.s. o.s. 29, 34.) london: trübner. morris, r. ed. 1873: old english homilies of the twelft h century. vol. 2. (e.e.t.s. o.s. 53.) london: trübner. 197 selim 20 (2013–2014) orm’s vernacular latinity morris, r. ed. 1872: an old english miscellany containing a bestiary, kentish sermons, proverbs of alfr ed, religious poems of the thirteenth century. (e.e.t.s. o.s. 49.) london: trübner. morrison, s. 2002: vernacular literary activity in twelft h-century england: redressing the balance. in m. aurell ed. culture politique des plantagenêt (1154–1224). poitiers, centre d’études supérieures de civilisation médiévale: 253–267. parkes, m. b. 1983: on the presumed date and possible origin of the manuscript of the orrmulum: oxford, bodleian library, ms junius 1. in e. g. stanley & d. gray eds. five hundred years of words and sounds: a festschrift for eric dobson. cambridge, d. s. brewer: 115–127. pelikan, j. 1978: the christian tradition: a history of the development of doctrine: volume 3: the growth of medieval theology (600–1300). chicago, university of chicago press. pelikan, j. 1996: mary through the centuries: her place in the history of culture. new haven, yale university press. preminger, a., t. v. f. brogan & f. j. warnke eds. 1993: the new princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics. princeton, princeton university press. radbertus, paschasius 1852: expositio in euangelium matthaei. in j. p. migne ed. patrologia latina 120. paris, migne. rubin, m. 2009: mother of god: a history of the virgin mary. new haven, yale university press. rudolf, w. 2011: the spiritual islescape of the anglo-saxons. in s. i. sobecki ed. the sea and englishness: narratives, identity and culture. cambridge, d. s. brewer: 31–57. schipper, j. 1895: grundriss der englischen metrik. wien & leipzig, wilhelm. solopova, e. 1996: the meter of the ormulum. in m. j. toswell & e. m. tyzler eds. studies in english language and literature: “doubt wisely.” london, routledge: 423–439. carla maría thomas 198selim 20 (2013–2014) stridonensis, s. eusebius hieronymus 1852: de matthaeo. liber de nominibus hebraicis. in j. p. migne ed. patrologia latina 23. paris, migne. sweet, h. 1884: first middle english primer: extracts fr om ancren riwle and ormulum with grammar and glossary. oxford, clarendon press. thornbury, e. 2014: becoming a poet in anglo-saxon england. cambridge, cambridge university press. trautmann, m. 1882: zur altund mittelenglischen verslehre, anzeiger zur anglia 5: 111–130. treharne, e. ed. 2009: old and middle english c.890–1450: an anthology. oxford, wiley-blackwell. tyrwhitt, t. 1845: essay on the language and versifi cation of chaucer. in the poetical works of geoff rey chaucer. vol. 1. london, william pickering. wanley, h. 1705: antiquae literaturae septentrionalis liber alter. oxford: sheldonian theater. worley, m. 2003: using the ormulum to redefi ne vernacularity. in f. somerset & n. watson eds. the vulgar tongue: medieval and postmedieval vernacularity. university park, pennsylvania state university press: 19–30. • received 08 oct 2014; accepted 18 dec 2014 2019article_4_leneghan francis leneghan, selim24 (2019): 105–132. issn 1132-631x / doi https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.24.2019.105-134 the departure of the hero in a ship: the intertextuality of beowulf, cynewulf and andreas1 francis leneghan university of oxford this article identifies a new old english poetic motif, ‘the departure of the hero in a ship’, and discusses the implications of its presence in beowulf, the signed poems of cynewulf and andreas, a group of texts already linked by shared lexis, imagery and themes. it argues that the beowulf-poet used this motif to frame his work, foregrounding the question of royal succession. cynewulf and the andreas-poet then adapted this beowulfian motif in a knowing and allusive manner for a new purpose: to glorify the church and to condemn its enemies. investigation of this motif provides further evidence for the intertextuality of these works. keywords: old english poetry; beowulf, cynewulf; andreas; anglo-saxon literature 1. introduction scholars have identified a number of ‘motifs’, ‘themes’ or ‘type scenes’ in old english poetry. two of the best-known such motifs are ‘the beasts of battle’, typically featuring the carrion eagle, wolf and raven, anticipating or rejoicing in slaughter (magoun 1955, bonjour 1957, griffith 1993), and ‘the hero on the beach’, wherein a hero is depicted with his retainers in the presence of a flashing light, as a sea-journey is completed (or begun), usually at dawn 1 i would like to thank daniel anlezark, hugh magennis, richard north, andy orchard, rafael pascual and daniel thomas for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. 106 francis leneghan (crowne 1960: 368; fry 1966, 1971).2 broadening the focus to consider both old english verse and prose, mercedes salvador bello identified the ‘leitmotif’ of ‘the arrival of the hero in a ship’ in the anglo-saxon chronicle and beowulf, featuring “a recurrent thematic pattern which presents the story of the heroes (or the hero) who arrive from northern lands in a boat and become the ancestors of anglo-saxon dynasties” (1998: 214). this article contributes to this avenue of research by identifying a new old english poetic motif, termed here ‘the departure of the hero in a ship’. the salient features of this motif are as follows: (1) the presence of grieving retainers (2) the accompaniment of the departing hero to the shore (3) a description of an awaiting ship (4) the loading of treasure (5) praise of the departing hero in some instances, this motif is embellished by the presence of two further narrative elements: (6) the hero’s vessel is given to the sea, and (7) the narrator’s expression of wonder at the splendour of the hero’s departing vessel. in the cases discussed here, these various elements do not necessarily appear in the same order; poets freely re-arranged them to suit their specific purposes. of particular interest is the commonality of this motif to a group of closely-related old english poems, namely beowulf, two of the four signed poems of cynewulf (elene and juliana) and andreas. traditionally, the presence of common themes or motifs in two or more old english poems has been explained by the theory of a common stock of (oral)-formulaic scenes that all anglo-saxon poets could draw on (e.g. crowne 1960). any resemblance in phrasing and imagery between texts was therefore to be accounted for as simply reflexes of a common oral tradition. however, there is now increasing evidence to suggest that at least some anglo-saxon poets working in the vernacular not only directly quoted or borrowed from each 2 further examples include ‘the traveller recognises his goal’ (clark 1965) and ‘sleeping after the feast’ (mcfadden 2000, battles 2015). all quotations from beowulf are taken from fulk, bjork & niles (2008). all citations from other old english poems are from aspr, except andreas, which is cited from north & bintley (2016). i have silently hyphenated compounds and inserted macrons to indicate vowel-length. translations are my own unless otherwise stated. the intertextuality of beowulf, cynewulf and andreas 107 other’s work, but also sometimes engaged in sophisticated acts of literary allusion and intertextuality, in a manner comparable to contemporary poets composing in latin (orchard forthcoming).3 the term ‘intertextuality’ was first employed by julia kristeva (1986: 37) to theorise the relationship between texts: “any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another”. gérard genette (1997: 1–2) defines intertextuality as “a relationship of copresence between two or among several texts: that is to say […] the actual presence of one text within another” (emphasis added).4 this article will argue that the ‘co-presence’ of ‘the departure of the hero in a ship’ in beowulf, the signed poems of cynewulf, and andreas strengthens the case for the intertextuality of this group of texts and provides further evidence for how both cynewulf and the andreas-poet absorbed and transformed beowulf. 2. beowulf the motif of ‘the departure of the hero in a ship’ appears most frequently in beowulf, a work in which, as john hill (2008: 5) has demonstrated, the action revolves around scenes of auspicious arrival and departure. the first instance forms a major part of the description of the ship-funeral of scyld scefing that, in the view of many commentators, serves as a ‘prologue’ to the work: him ðā scyld gewāt tō gescæp-hwīle fela-hrōr fēran on frēan wǣre. hī hyne þā ætbǣron tō brimes faroðe, swǣse gesīþas, swā hē selfa bæd þenden wordum wēold. wine scyldinga, 30 lēof land-fruma lange āhte — 3 see further alfaro (1996). on similarities between the techniques used by poets composing in old english and latin in this period, see benson (1995) and orchard (forthcoming). 4 genette (1997: 2) identifies three distinct forms of intertextuality: quotation, plagiarism (‘undeclared but literal borrowing’), and allusion, the last of which he defines as “an enunciation whose full meaning presupposes the perception of a relationship between it and another text, to which it necessarily refers by some inflections that would otherwise remain unintelligible”. 108 francis leneghan þǣr æt h,ðe stōd, hringed-stefna īsig ond ūtfūs — æþelinges fær; ālēdon þā lēofne þēoden, bēaga brytttan on bearm scipes, 35 mǣrne be mæste. þǣr wæs mādma fela of feor-wegum frætwa gelǣded. ne h,rde ic c,mlicor cēol gegyrwan hilde-wǣpnum ond heaðo-wǣdum, billum ond byrnum; him on bearme læg 40 mādma mænigo, þā him mid scoldon on flōdes ǣht feor gewītan. nalæs hī hine lǣssan lācum tēodan, þēod-gestrēonum, þonne þā dydon þē hine æt frumsceafte forð onsendon 45 ǣnne ofer ȳðe umborwesende. þā gȳt hīe him āsetton segen gyldenne hēah ofer hēafod, lēton hom beran, gēafon on gār-secg; him wæs geōmor sefa, murnende mōd. men ne cunnon 50 secgan tō sōðe, sele-rǣdende, hæleð under heofenum, hwā þǣm hlæste onfēng. (beowulf, 26–52) (emphasis added) [then scyld departed at the appointed time, journeyed far, very strong, into the lord’s keeping. they carried him to the edge of the sea, dear retainers, as he himself had instructed while he still had the power of speech. the lord of the scyldings, beloved land-ruler, held power for a long time —there at the shore stood a ring-prowed ship, icy and eager to set out— the atheling’s ship; they laid therein the beloved prince, giver of rings, in the bosom of the ship, glorious by the mast. there was a great deal of treasures, ornaments piled up from far away. i never heard of a comelier ship strewn with war-weapons and battle-gear, swords and mailcoats; they placed onto his bosom many treasures, that would travel far with him into the embrace of the flood. not at all did they provide him with fewer gifts, treasures of the people, than did those who sent him forth in the beginning, alone over the waves, while still a child. they set a golden sail high over his head, let the sea take him, gave him to the ocean. they were sad at heart, grieving in spirit. men could not truly say, hall-counsellors, warriors under the heavens, who received that cargo.] the intertextuality of beowulf, cynewulf and andreas 109 in this famous passage, all the key elements of the motif are present, artfully combined to create a memorable and moving account of the funeral of a great danish king: the departing hero is accompanied to the shore (28–29a) and praised (30b–31a); his awaiting ship is described (32–33); the narrator expresses his wonder (ne h,rde ic) at the sheer extent of the many treasures that are loaded into the ship (36b–46);5 the vessel is committed to the sea (48b–49a); and the hero is mourned by his grieving retainers (49b–50a). the beowulf-poet then varies this theme in the much shorter description of the hero’s own departure from the geats as he sets out to confront grendel (205–212a). in this scene, the hero is again accompanied by his own troops to the shore (205–208a) and the prow of the ship is described (212a).6 given the optimistic mood of the scene, there is no mention of grief at beowulf’s departure; on the contrary, we are told that the geats did not try to dissuade him from this journey but rather offered him encouragement (202–204).7 a second minor variation of this motif, now in a tragic key, appears in the account of queen hildeburh’s departure from frisia that forms the conclusion to the ‘finnsburg episode’. the queen is accompanied to the shore by scēotend scyldinga, ‘the bowmen of the scyldings’ (1154a) and placed in a ship together with treasures (1154–1159a). however, on this occasion, there is no description of the ship itself, nor of any grieving individuals gathered on the shore, or words of praise for the departed. the marked absence of these 5 see below for echoes of this half-line in elene and andreas. 6 the ship’s prow is twice referred to in the subsequent account of beowulf’s sea voyage (218a, 220a). for discussion of this passage, together with other sea voyages in beowulf, see ramsey (1971). 7 for parallels between scyld’s funeral and that of the breton st gildas, see cameron (1969) and meaney (1988). for discussion of comparable departure scenes in germanic literature, see classen (2012). on homeric departure scenes (often involving libation), see greene (1995). a particularly striking anglo-latin parallel to scyld scefing’s funeral has recently been noted by henrietta leyser (2017: 54) in the descriptions of abbot ceolfrith’s departure for rome contained in bede’s lives of the holy abbots of wearmouth and jarrow, ch. 17 (grocock & wood 2013: 62–65) and the anonymous life of abbot ceolfrith, chs. 26–27 (grocock & wood 2013: 104–107). both these accounts share several elements of the motif of ‘the departure of the hero in a ship’, as defined in this article: the departing hero, ceolfrith, is accompanied to the shore by his ‘retainers’, who grieve and offer songs of praise; together with his retainers, the hero boards the ship, which is loaded with treasures (candles and a golden cross, as well, of course, as the codex amiatinus, though this is not mentioned in either text). 110 francis leneghan elements fits the sombre mood of the passage: in contrast to scyld’s impressive dynastic legacy in the form of his son, beow, hildeburh leaves behind her only the wreckage of royal family destroyed by feuding. the first major variation of ‘the departure of the hero in a ship’, however, occurs in the description of the geatish hero’s departure from the danes after his victories over the grendelkin: gecyste þā cyning æþelum gōd, 1870 þēoden scyldinga ðegn betestan ond be healse genam; hruron him tēaras blonden-feaxum. him wæs bēga wēn ealdum infrōdum, ōþres swīðor, þæt hīe seoððan nō gesēon mōston, 1875 mōdige on meþle. wæs him se man tō þon lēof þæt hē þone brēost-wylm forberan ne mehte, ac him on hreþre hyge-bendum fæst æfter dēorum men dyrne langað born wið blōde. him bēowulf þanan, 1880 gūð-rinc gold-wlanc græs-moldan træd since hrēmig; sǣgenga bād āgend-frean, sē þe on ancre rād. þā wæs on gange gifu hrōðgāres oft geæhted; þæt wæs ān cyning 1885 ǣghwæs orleahtre, oþ þæt hine yldo benam mægenes wynnum, sē þe oft manegum scōd. cwōm þā tō flōde fela-mōdigra, hæg-stealdra hēap, hring-net bǣron, locene leoðo-syrran. land-weard onfand 1890 eft-sīð eorla, swā hē ǣr dyde; nō hē mid hearme of hliðes nōsan gæstas grētte, ac him tōgēanes rād, cwæð þæt wilcuman wedera lēodum scaþan scīr-hame tō scipe fōron. 1895 þā wæs on sande sǣ-gēap naca hladen here-wǣdum, hringed-stefna mēarum ond māðmum; mæste hlīfade ofer hrōðgāres hord-gestrēonum. hē þǣm bāt-wearde bunden golde 1900 the intertextuality of beowulf, cynewulf and andreas 111 swurd gesǣlde, þæt hē syðþan wæs on meodu-bence māþme þȳ weorþra, yrfe-lāfe. gewāt him on naca drēfan dēop wæter, dena land ofgeaf. (beowulf, 1870–1904) (emphasis added) [then that good king, of noble ancestry, lord of the scyldings, kissed the best of thanes, grasped him by the neck; that grey-haired man shed tears. that very wise and old man was in two minds —but he knew it was most likely that they would never see each other again, brave in the meeting-place. that man was so dear to him that he could not prevent the welling of his heart, but secure in the thoughts of his breast a deep and secret longing for that dear man burned against his blood. from there beowulf took himself away, trod the grassy earth, the battlewarrior rejoicing in gold, exultant man; the sea-goer awaited its lordly owner, the one who rested at anchor. then the gift of hrothgar was often praised during the departure; that was a king without match, always blameless, until old age deprived him of the joys of strength, he who often injures so many. then they came to the water, many brave ones, a gathering of young warriors, carrying ring-nets, locked mail-shirts. the coastguard observed the return of the men, just as he did before; he did not greet the guests with insults from the edge of the cliff, but he rode towards them, and said that the warriors in their shining armour were welcome to travel to their ships, people of the weders. then the sea-curved prow was on the sand, the ring-necked ship, laden with battlegear, horses and treasures; the mast towered above, over hrothgar’s treasure-hoard. he gave that boat-guardian a sword of bound gold, so that afterwards he was always the more honoured on the mead-benches because of the ancient heirloom. they went into the boat, drove across deep water, departed from the land of the danes.] as in scyld’s departure-scene, the hero is accompanied to the shore (1888– 1890b) to an awaiting ship (1182b–1183), into which treasures are placed (1896–1899). however, while in the first scene the danes grieve at their king’s departure, now it is the old scylding ruler, hrothgar, who mourns the young hero’s leave-taking (1870–1880a).8 8 for further discussion of the dynastic implications of beowulf’s departure from the danes, see hill (2008: 61–64) and leneghan (forthcoming). 112 francis leneghan the second major variant of the ‘the departure of the hero in a ship’ in beowulf appears in the linked funerals of the dragon and king beowulf that form the poem’s conclusion: l,t ǣnig mearn þæt hī ofostlīce ūt geferedon 3130 dȳre māðmas; dracan ēc scufun, wyrm ofer weall-clif, lēton wēg niman, flōd fæðmian frætwa hyrde. þā wæs wunden gold on wǣn hladen, ǣghwæs unrīm, æþeling boren, 3135 hār hilde-rinc tō hrones næsse. him ðā gegiredan gēata lēode ād on eorðan unwāclicne, helmum behongen, hilde-bordum, beorhtum byrnum, swā hē bēna wæs; 3140 ālegdon ðā tōmiddes mǣrne þēoden hæleð hīofende, hlāford lēofne. [...] higum unrōte mōd-ceare mǣndon, mon-dryhtnes cwealm; swylce giōmor-gyd geatisc meowle 3150 æfter bīowulfe bunden-heorde sang sorg-cearig [...] hī on beorg dydon bēg ond siġlu, eall swylce hyrsta swylce on horde ǣr nīð-hēdīge men genumen hæfdon; 3165 forlēton eorla gestrēon eorðan healdan, gold on grēote, þǣr hit nū gēn lifað, eldum swā unnyt swā hyt ǣror wæs. þā ymbe hlǣw riodan hilde-dīore, æþelinga bearn, ealra twelfe, 3170 woldon care cwīðan ond cyning mǣnan, word-gyd wrecan, ond ymb wer sprecan; eahtodan eorlscipe ond his ellen-weorc duguðum dēmdon — swā hit gedefe bið þæt mon his wine-dryhten wordum herige, 3175 the intertextuality of beowulf, cynewulf and andreas 113 ferhðum frēoge, þonne hē forð scile of līc-haman lǣded weorðan. swā begnornodon gēata lēode hlāfordes hryre, heorð-genēatas; cwǣdon þæt hē wǣre wyruld-cyninga 3180 manna mildust ond monðwǣrust, lēodum līðost ond lofgeornost. (beowulf, 3129b–3142, 3148b–3152a, 3163–3182) (emphasis added) [there was no mourning when they quickly went out with valuable treasures; they also pushed the dragon, the serpent, over the sea-cliff, let the waves take him, the guardian of those treasures, the embrace of the flood. then that wound gold was loaded onto wagons, an immeasurable amount, the ætheling was carried, greyharried battle warrior, to hronesnæss. the people of the geats made for him a sturdy funeral pyre on the earth, hung with helmets and battle-shields, shining mail-coats, as he had instructed; they laid their illustrious prince in the middle, the warriors lamenting their beloved lord. […] they lamented their mind-sorrow with heavy spirits, the death of their liege lord; likewise, a geatish woman, her hair bound, miserably sang a sorrowful song in memory of beowulf. […] they placed on the barrow rings and treasures, all such plunder as desperate men had previously taken from the hoard; they let the earth hold the treasures of warriors, gold in the dirt, where it still lives now, as useless to men as it was before. then they rode around the barrow, battle-brave ones, sons of athelings, twelve in all, they wished to lament their sorrow and mourn their king, to recite tales, and to speak about the man; they praised his nobility and his glorious deeds, honoured his achievements —in such a way as is fitting for a man to praise with words his dear lord, love him in the heart, when he must be led forth from the body. so the men of the geats lamented the fall of their lord, hearth-companions; they said that of all the kings of the world he was the mildest of men, and the most gentle, the kindest to the people, and the most eager for fame.] as in the previous two departure scenes, the corpses of both the dragon and the hero are brought to the shore (3131b–3133, 3134–3136). naturally, the geats shed no tears as they commit the hated dragon’s carcass to the waves (3129–3133), while they greatly mourn the loss of their beloved king (3148b– 3150), laying treasures alongside him on his barrow (3137–3142, 3163–3168) and praising his great achievements and many virtues (3168–3182). in place of the splendidly decorated ships that accompanied the previous sea-borne 114 francis leneghan departures of scyld and beowulf, now a magnificent funeral pyre on a sea-cliff stands waiting to consume the hero’s body (3137–3148a).9 from this brief discussion, it will be clear that the beowulf-poet structured his work around major and minor variations of the motif of ‘the departure of the hero in a ship’. by varying the constituent elements of the motif, the poet achieved subtle and complex contrasts and associations that serve as links between key moments in the ‘dynastic drama’.10 3. the signed poems of cynewulf cynewulf appears to have made extensive use of beowulf to assist in the process of adapting his christian-latin sources into the medium of old english verse, borrowing from the secular heroic poem a number of words, phrases and themes (sarrazin 1886, 1888; schaar 1956: 304–305; orchard 2003a). further evidence of cynewulf’s engagement with beowulf can also be detected in his imaginative adaptation of the motif of ‘the departure of the hero in a ship’ in order to glorify god’s disciples and saints. while it remains possible that cynewulf’s use of this motif is indebted to other, unknown sources, the close links already established between his works and beowulf supports the theory of a direct textual link in this instance. cynewulf’s most elaborate use of this motif is found in elene, a celebration of the recovery of the true cross by the mother of the emperor constantine preserved in the vercelli book. the closest latin analogue, the acta cyriaci or inventio crucis, simply describes how, after receiving an inspirational vision of the cross on the eve of a battle, constantine studied the gospels and sent his mother to jerusalem to find the true cross:11 2. […] cum didicisset autem a sanctis euangeliis ubi esset dominus crucifixus, misit l suam matrem helenam ut exquireret sanctum lignum crucis domini, & in eodem loco ædificaret ecclesiam. […] hæc autem in omnibus scripturis se 9 as gale owen-crocker (2000: 227) has noted, the perspective of seafarers passing beowulf’s barrow (3156–3158) mirrors that of the danes who, in the opening scene, mournfully gaze after scyld’s departing ship. 10 see further leneghan (forthcoming). 11 on the sources of elene, see gardner (1970), calder & allen (1976: 59–60), borgehammar (1991) and gradon (1996: 5–22). the intertextuality of beowulf, cynewulf and andreas 115 exercebat, & nimiam in domino nostro jesu christo possedit dilectionem: postmodum & salutare sanctæ crucis lignum exquisivit. cum legisset autem intente adventum humanitatis salvatoris nostri jesu christi & crucis ejus assumptionem & a mortuis resurrectionem, non est moras passa donec victoriæ christi invenit lignum, ubi dominicum & sanctum fixum est corpus. (acta sanctorum, maius, tom. i, 1680: col. 445d) [when he had learned from the holy evangelists where the lord had been crucified, he sent his mother, helena, to seek the holy wood of the lord’s cross and to build a church in the same place. she studied all the scriptures, had exceeding love for our lord jesus christ and afterwards sought for the life-giving wood of the holy cross. when she had read attentively about the coming of our jesus christ, the saviour of mankind, his crucifixion on the cross, and resurrection from the dead, she lost no time till she found the wood of christ’s victory, upon which the lord and saviour’s body had been nailed.] cynewulf, by contrast, produces a greatly expanded departure-scene in which elene is accompanied to the shore by a band of warriors to a place where a ship stands waiting; treasure is then loaded onto the ship as the departing heroine is praised by the onlookers: ongan þā ofstlīce eorla mengu 225 tō flote f,san. fearoð-hengestas ymb geofenes stæð gearwe stōdon, sǣlde sǣ-mēaras, sunde getenge. ðā wæs orcnǣwe idese sīðfæt, siððan wǣges helm werode gesōhte. 230 þǣr wlanc manig æt wendel-sǣ on stæðe stōdon. stundum wrǣcon ofer mearc-paðu, mægen æfter ōðrum, ond þā gehlōdon hilde-sercum, bordum ond ordum, byrn-wīgendum, 235 werum ond wīfum, wǣg-hengestas. lēton þā ofer fīfel-wǣg fāmige scrīðan bronte brim-þisan. bord oft onfēng ofer earh-geblond ȳða swengas; sǣ swinsade. ne h,rde ic sīð ne ǣr 240 on ēg-strēame idese lǣdan, 116 francis leneghan on mere-strǣte, mægen fǣgerre. (elene, 225–242) (emphasis added) [many warriors then began hastily to hurry to the sea. billow-stallions stood ready at the shore of the ocean, sea-horses moored, beside the water, then the royal woman’s journey was made known, once she sought the ocean waves with a troop. there was many a proud one standing on the shore by the wendel sea. sometimes they advanced over border paths, one strong one after the other, and then loaded the wave-stallions with battle-shirts, shields and spears, mail-coated warriors, men and women. then they let the sea vessel glide over the foamy way of giants. the boards often received the swinging of waves over the mingling of oars; the sea roared. i never heard before nor since of a royal woman leading a fairer force on the water stream, across the sea’s riding.] cynewulf’s account of elene’s departure displays many of the same features of the motif of ‘the departure of the hero in a ship’ highlighted above in beowulf. in further echoes of scyld’s departure scene, elene’s ship is committed to the sea (234–236), while the narrator expresses wonder (ne h,rde ic, 240b) at the splendour of the departing heroine and her group.12 moreover, cynewulf appears to have adapted the beowulfian motif of the loading of the ship with treasure to describe how elene is accompanied on to her ship not only by weapons (elene 234b–235: hilde-sercum/ bordum ond ordum, byrn-wīgendum; cf. beo 39–40a: hilde-wǣpnum ond heaðo-wǣdum/ billum ond byrnum)13 but also by people (elene 36a: werum ond wīfum). as we shall see, the andreas-poet was alert to this cynewulfian repurposing of beowulf and offered his own imaginative variation on this motif in his description of the loading of st andrew’s ship on its departure from achaia. in a significant variation of the motif, as with the description of beowulf’s departure from the geats, the absence of grief at elene’s leave-taking is accounted for by the optimistic mood of the journey at hand.14 12 the phrase ne h,rde ic only occurs four times in the extant corpus of old english poetry, twice in beowulf (38a and 1842b), and once each in elene (240b) and the menologium (101a). 13 both heaðo-wǣdum (beo 39b) and hilde-sercum (elene 234b) are unique compounds. 14 the case for cynewulf’s direct use of beowulf here is strengthened by further parallels between the account of elene’s voyage and arrival in jerusalem (233b–275), in her hringed-stefnan, ‘ring-prowed’ ship (248b), and beowulf’s voyage from geatland and arrival in denmark (217–233). the compound hringed-stefna only occurs here and the intertextuality of beowulf, cynewulf and andreas 117 another, shorter variation on this motif appears towards the end of cynewulf’s juliana, a saint’s life copied in the exeter book and based on a latin source thought to resemble that preserved in the anonymous acts of saint juliana.15 this analogue concludes with a brief account of the drowning of the saint’s wicked tormentor, the governor eleusius, and his men: præfectus autem eleusius, cum nauigasset in sua suburbano, uenit tempestas ualida, et mersit nauem ipsius, et mortui sunt uiri numero .xxxiiiii. et cum iactasset eos aqua in locum desertum, sic ab auibus et feris corpora eorum deuorata sunt. passa est autem sancta iuliana .xiiii. kalemdarum martiarum a præfecto eleusio, regnante domino nostro iesu christo, cui est gloria in saecula saeculorum, amen. (lapidge 2003: 165) [iii. 22. while the governor eleusius, however, was sailing to his estate, a mighty tempest came and swamped his boat, and twenty-four men died, and when the water had cast them up in a desert place their bodies were devoured by beasts and birds. saint juliana was martyred on the fourteenth day before the kalends of march, at the hands of the governor eleusius in the reign of our lord jesus christ, to whom is glory forever and ever. amen.] cynewulf’s rendering of this scene, by contrast, is substantially embellished through the deployment of a number of words, phrases and motifs common to old english poetry and, more specifically, beowulf: þā sē syn-scaþa tō scipe sceōh-mōd sceaþena þrēate heliseus ēh-strēam sōhte, in beowulf, in the accounts of the departures of scyld (32b) and beowulf (1897b) from the danes, and the description of hengest’s inability to sail back to the danes from frisia during the frozen winter (1131a). 15 on the sources of juliana, see calder & allen (1976: 121–122), woolf (1978), lapidge (2003). noting this departure from the latin source, lenore macgaffey abraham comments that in this passage, eleusius and his men “like vikings, take to the sea by the ‘swanroad’”, suggesting that he was forced into exile due to his having been “proved wrong” at juliana’s trial-by-ordeal and abused the legal process, thereby losing “all claim to legitimate rule”. macgaffey abraham (2001: 186–187) further argues that cynewulf’s version of eleusius’ punishment, in which he floats at sea for a long time before drowning, “is reminiscent of the cold water ordeal”. 118 francis leneghan lēolc ofer lagu-flōd longe hwīle on swon-rāde. swylt ealle fornom 675 secga hlōþe ond hine sylfne mid, ǣrþon hȳ tō lande geliden hæfdon, þurh þearlic þrēa. þǣr þrītig wæs ond fēowere ēac fēores onsōhte þurh wǣges wylm wigena cynnes, 680 hēane mid hlāford, hrōþra bidǣled, hyhta lēase helle sōhton. (juliana, 671–682) (emphasis added) [then the harmful attacker eleusius, with a host of ravagers, went to the ship, sought out the water-stream, troubled in mind, floated across the sea’s flood for a long time, on the swan’s riding. death took all of them, the troop of warriors, and himself with them, before they had reached land, as a terrible punishment. there thirty-four of the kin of warriors were deprived of life through the surging of water, retainers with their lord, deprived of comfort, hopeless, they sought out hell.] several elements of the motif of ‘the departure of the hero in a ship’ are in play here: the (anti-)hero is again accompanied to the shore by his retainers, where a ship stands waiting. fittingly, given the wretched state of the departing group, on this occasion there is no loading of treasure or praise of the departed and it is the departing eleusius himself and his men, rather than those they have left behind, who are miserable (sceōh-mōd […] hrōþra bidǣled, hyhta lēase). further evidence for a direct textual link between this passage and beowulf is provided by a striking cluster of lexical parallels. for example, eleusius travels sceaþena þrēate, ‘with a host of ravagers’, while scyld scefing terrorised the neighbouring tribes sceaþena þrēatum, ‘with hosts of ravagers’ (4b);16 the governor’s journey on swon-rāde, ‘on the swan’s road’, echoes the extension of scyld’s power ofer hrōn-rade, ‘over the whale-road’ (10a), as well as beowulf’s subsequent journey to the danes ofer swan-rāde, ‘over the swanroad’ (200a);17 both eleusius and grendel are referred to as a syn-scaþa, ‘sinful 16 these are the only two collocations of these terms in the old english poetic corpus. 17 similar collocations occur in andreas (821a: on hron-rāde) and genesis a (205a: geond hron-rāde). the intertextuality of beowulf, cynewulf and andreas 119 ravager’ (juliana 671a, beowulf 801b),18 while the governor, together with his men, hrōþra bidǣled […] helle sōhton ‘deprived of comfort […] sought out hell’, just as grendel, drēamum bedǣled, ‘deprived of joys’ (721a), wished sēcan dēofla gedrǣg, ‘to seek out the company of devils’ (756a), after receiving a mortal wound from beowulf, before finally him hel onfēng, ‘hell received him’ (852b). it appears, therefore, that in this section of juliana, cynewulf sought to present eleusius and his men as satanic villains whose departure goes un-mourned through imaginative use of the motif of the ‘departure of the hero in a ship’, as well as a range of further beowulfian echoes.19 a further, albeit more tangential, variant on this motif is found in another exeter-book poem bearing cynewulf’s signature, christ ii (ascension). in this poem’s climactic scene, the ascension of christ, we find two of the typical features of the motif, namely the grief or those left behind and a song of praise for the departed, though the usual details of the awaiting ship and the loading of treasure are, of course, absent: him wæs geōmor sefa hāt æt heortan, hyge murnende, þæs þe hī swā lēofne leng ne mōstun gesēon under swegle. song ahōfun āras ufancunde, æþeling heredun, lofedun līf-fruman, lēohte gefēgun þe of þæs hǣlendes heafelan līxte. (christ ii, 409–505) (emphasis added) [they were sad in spirit, hot in the heart, grieving in the mind, because they could no longer see the beloved one under the heavens. they raised up a song, celestial messengers, praised the prince, glorified the life-creator, rejoiced in the light that shone from the head of that saviour.] 18 these are the only two occurrences of this compound in the old english poetic corpus. 19 in her edition of juliana, rosemary woolf (1978: 5) notes the presence of “reminiscences” of beowulf, “which appear to be the result of deliberate imitation, rather than to be coincidental similarities arising from the borrowing from a common poetic stock”. woolf provides a list of sixteen of “the most important parallels” between the two texts (19), though none of her examples are taken from the passage discussed above. for an extensive list of parallels between all the cynewulfian poems, beowulf and andreas, see orchard (2003a). 120 francis leneghan in none of the biblical accounts (ps. 23, mat. 28.16–20; mark 16.14–20; luke 24.36–53, acts 1.1–14) or the various other latin analogues and possible sources do we find comparable details.20 the gospel of matthew, for example, simply states that, after christ has ascended to heaven, the disciples “going forth preached everywhere” (mat. 16.20), while luke similarly records “[a]nd they adoring went back into jerusalem with great joy” (luke 24.52). although this is admittedly a much fainter echo than the examples discussed above, it appears, nevertheless, that cynewulf has again borrowed some elements of ‘the departure of the hero in a ship’ for a specific purpose. in an inversion of the motif, the disciples’ grief at their lord’s departure is offset by their knowledge of christ’s resurrection, symbolised by the shining light that surrounds his head. hence, while the pagan danes had lamented their lord’s passing, ignorant of the final destination of scyld’s funeral ship (beowulf, 50–52), the disciples rejoice (gefēgun) at their lord’s departure, confident in their knowledge that christ has ascended to heaven. 4. andreas it is now generally accepted that the author of the vercelli book verse saint’s life poem andreas drew on beowulf, and perhaps cynewulf, in adapting his main latin source, a now-lost version of the apocryphal acts of andrew and matthew.21 the two nearest surviving analogues are an early greek version of 20 on the sources of christ ii, see calder & allen (1976: 78). 21 the case for the andreas-poet borrowing directly from beowulf was first advanced in the late nineteenth century by arthur fritzche (1879: 493), and gained support from george p. krapp (1906: li–lviii) who, in his 1906 edition, noted some 145 verbal parallels between the two poems, in addition to various parallels in plot and theme. klaeber (1950: cxi) agreed that “the legend of andreas exhibits abundant and unmistakable signs of having been written with beowulf as a model”. with the advent of oral-formulaic theory in the 1950s, the consensus shifted towards the position that any such parallels were simply the result of a shared oral tradition which provided poets with a store of words, phrases and ‘type scenes’ from which to build their works (magoun 1953; peters 1951: 847, 851). see, however, kennedy (1943: 267–281), lumiansky (1949: 116–126), schaar (1956: 305), stanley (1961: xx–xxiii), riedinger (1993), powell (2002), orchard (2003a; 2003b: 82–83, 164; 2016), north & bintley (2016: 57–81). the intertextuality of beowulf, cynewulf and andreas 121 the acts (praxeis) and a latin text preserved in the twelfth-century codex casanatensis, while an old english prose life of andrew is incorporated into blickling homily 29.22 some commentators have found the andreas-poet’s use of seemingly stray words and phrases from beowulf incongruous or dissonant with the work’s religious theme (stanley 1966: 114). however, others have defended its author as a conscious artist who adapted both his latin and vernacular sources in order to transform the saint into a miles christi (kennedy 1943: 279, hamilton 1975: 82–86, herbison 2000). more recently, andy orchard (2016: 347) has described the andreas-poet as “an idiosyncratic artist” who “invites his sensitive audience to identify his allusions […] well aware of his place in the developing sequence of anglo-saxon poetry and confident of his own contribution”,23 while francisco rozano-garcía (2017: 194) goes further in describing andreas as “a masterly exercise of assimilative and allusive technique”. in the discussion that follows, i argue that the andreas-poet’s use of the motif of ‘the departure of the hero in a ship’ should be understood as a meaningful allusion to both beowulf and the works of cynewulf, rather than simply a reflex of old english poetic tradition. the motif first appears in andreas as the saint sets off from his home in achaia to mermedonia, a land inhabited by a race of pagan cannibals, after receiving a command from god in a dream to rescue st matthew from prison there. in the analogues, the saint’s departure is dealt with relatively briefly: in the casanatensis ch. 5, for example, andrew goes walking by the shore as the lord had commanded; he sees a little boat on the waves with three men on board (subsequently identified as jesus and two angels); the lord guides the boat ashore and andrew asks the pilot (jesus) if the sailors will convey him to mermedonia; andrew then boards the boat with his disciples and sits down near the pilot (calder & allen 1976: 17–18). the praxeis offers a similar account, though here the saint is accompanied to the shore by his men (macdonald 1990: 3–5). in andreas, by contrast, the scene is amplified through the inclusion of several elements of ‘the departure of the hero in a ship’: 22 for the praxeis, i cite the translation of macdonald (1990). for the greek text of the praxeis, see tischendorf, ii.1 (1959: 65–116). for the casanatensis, quotations are taken from blatt (1930) (latin text) and boenig (1991) (translation). 23 see further rozano-garcía (2017) and north (2018). 122 francis leneghan gewāt him þā on ūhtan mid ǣr-dæge 235 ofer sand-hleoðu tō sǣs faruðe, þrīste on geþance, ond his þegnas mid, gangan on grēote; gār-secg hlynede, bēoton brim-strēamas.24 sē beorn wæs on hyhte, syðþan hē on waruðe wīd-fæðme scip 240 mōdig gemētte. þā cōm morgen-torht bēacna beorhtost ofer breomo snēowan, hālig of heolstre heofon-candel blāc25 ofer lago-flōdas. hē ðǣr lid-weardas, þrymlīce þrȳ þegnas mētte, 245 mōdiglīce menn, on mere-bāte sittan sīð-frome, swylce hīe ofer sǣ cōmon; þæt wæs drihten sylf, dugeða wealdend, ēce ælmihtig, mid his englum twām. wǣron hīe on gescirplan scip-ferendum, 250 eorlas onlīce ēa-līðendum, þonne hīe on flōdes fæðm ofer feorne weg on cald wæter cēolum lācað. (andreas, 235–253) (emphasis added) [he took himself then at dawn, before day, over sandy dunes to the edge of the sea, determined in spirit, with his thanes, walking on the gravel; the ocean roared, water-streams clashed. the warrior was hopeful once he, proud on the shore, saw on the waves a broad-bosomed ship. then came the radiant morning, brightest of beacons, hastening over the deep, the heaven-candle shone holy from out of the darkness over the water-floods. he found there sea-guardians, three brave ones, proud men, sitting in a sea-boat eager to set sail after they had come out of (or across) the sea; that was the lord himself, ruler of troops, eternal almighty, with his two angels. they were dressed as sailors, in the likeness of warriors, ship-travellers, when they launch their boats into the flood’s embrace, into cold water, from foreign shores.] 24 the rare compound brim-strēam occurs only on two further occasions in andreas (348a, 903b), once in beowulf (1910b) and once in the the capture of the five boroughs (5a). cf. juliana 673b: ēh-stream. 25 note the presence of this feature of ‘the hero on the beach’; see crowne (1960). the intertextuality of beowulf, cynewulf and andreas 123 as in scyld’s funeral, the hero takes himself (gewāt him) to the shore along with his companions. however, only in beowulf, cynewulf and andreas do we find a description of the wīd-fæðme scip awaiting the departing hero on the shore; in the latin and greek analogues, by contrast, the saint first spies the boat out at sea. as in elene, the saint’s departure does not inspire grief, as he too is doing god’s work in setting sail for mermedonia. moreover, in a further echo of the departures of scyld and elene, the andreas-poet expresses his wonder at the ship’s cargo: gesæt him þā sē hālga holm-wearde nēah, æðele be æðelum; ǣfre ic ne h,rde þon cymlīcor cēol gehladenne hēah-gestrēonum. hæleð in sǣton, þēodnas þrym-fulle, þegnas wlitige. (andreas, 359–363) (emphasis added) [the saint then sat himself down next to the ship’s captain, one nobleman alongside another; never have i heard of a comelier ship laden with valuable treasures. the warriors sat down, a people full of might, splendid thanes.] as north & bintley (2016: 231) observe, the treasures loaded onto andreas’s ship are its human passengers, rather than the physical treasures that accompany scyld into the deep. moreover, as we have seen, cynewulf’s description of the loading of elene’s ship both with treasures and human cargo mediates between beowulf and andreas. in this way, the andreas-poet follows cynewulf in employing beowulfian allusions in order to convey his christian message that the apostolic mission is a heroic endeavour as worthy of praise as the great pagan kings of old —if not more so. while there are interesting parallels between this passage and the various scenes discussed above in beowulf and cynewulf, it is in the poem’s closing lines that the andreas-poet engages most deeply with the motif of ‘the departure of the hero in a ship’. in describing how the saint, having converted the mermedonians, leaves their shores and sails back to achaia, the andreaspoet appears to have drawn on all three of the main departure-scenes in beowulf discussed above, as well, perhaps, as cynewulf’s account of the apostles’ grief at christ’s ascension in christ ii. in repurposing these vernacular sources, combining echoes of beowulf and cynewulf, and indeed of cynewulf echoing beowulf, and bringing them to bear on his primary latin 124 francis leneghan source, the andreas-poet produced a fitting conclusion to his own poem, glorifying the triumphs of the apostles and the eternal power of their king. in the greek, latin and old english analogues, the saint’s departure from the mermedonians is again dealt with relatively briefly. after andrew has converted the former race of cannibals and established a church where his own prison had once stood, the mermedonians beg him to stay longer so that they can learn more about their new faith (praxeis/casanatensis, ch. 32). but despite their protestations and weeping at his imminent departure, the saint is determined to return home to his disciples, until christ, in the form of a small child, instructs andrew to remain with them for a further seven days. in the casanatensis ch. 33, for example, we read: andreas vero reversus est in mermedonia, benedicens dominum et ait, gratias ago tibi domine meus iesu christe, qui vis omnes animas salvas fieri, et ad agnitionem veritatis venire. populus autem cum vidisset eum reverti, obviantes ei cum gloria, magnoque gaudio letantes, domini gratie referentes, qui exaudierat eos lacrimantes, voceque eum clamantes. beatus vero andreas mansit cum illis diebus septem, predicans et docens eos verbis salutis domini iesu christi, conformans eos in integram fidem catholicam, sicuti iussum est ei a domino iesu christo. post expletos septe dies, profectus est et habiit inde. cunctus autem populus mermedonie maximum usque ad minimum, propter magnam dilectionem habierunt cum eo, usque ad aliquantulum locum et reversi sunt in suam benedicentes et laudantes dominum dicentes, unus est deus, quem nobis manifestavit beatus andreas apostolus eius dominum nostrum iesum christum, cui est honor et gloria, in secula seculorum, amen. (blatt 1930: 95) [then truly andrew went back into mermedonia, blessing the lord. and he said, ‘i thank you, my lord jesus christ, who can save all souls and bring them to knowledge of the truth.’ and when the people saw him return, they met him with glory and rejoiced with great joy, giving back thanks to the lord who had listened to their tears and their crying voices. indeed the blessed andrew remained with them seven days, preaching and teaching them with his words the salvation of the lord jesus christ, confirming them in the pure catholic faith, just as the lord jesus christ had commanded him. after the seven days were over, he departed and left. but all the mermedonian people, from the greatest to the least, on account of their great love, went with him to a certain little place and returned to their own, blessing and praising god and saying, ‘god is one, whom the blessed apostle andrew manifested to us, his lord our the intertextuality of beowulf, cynewulf and andreas 125 jesus christ, to whom be honor and glory, forever and ever. amen.’ (boenig 1991: 54–55)] the praxeis ch. 33 presents a similar, even shorter, account of the saint’s departure (macdonald 1990: 167–169), while blickling homily 29 adds the detail that andrew was led to the shore by the mermedonians: se eadiga andreas þa wæs eft hwyrfende on marmadonia ceastre, and he cwæð, ‘ic þe bletsige min drihten hælend crist, þu þe gehwyrfest ealle saula, forþon þu me ne forlete ut-gangan mid minre hat-heortan of þisse ceastre.’ hio wæron geofende mycle gefean, and he þær wunode mid him seofn dagas, lærende and strangende hira heortan on geleafan ures drihtnes hælendes cristes. mid þi þe þa wæron gefyllede seofon dagas swa swa him drihten bebead, he ferde of marmadonia ceastre efstende to his discipulum. and eall þæt folc hine lædde mid gefean and hie cwædon, ‘an is drihten god, se is hælend crist, and se halga gast, þam is wuldor and geweald on þære halgan þrynnysse þurh ealra worulda woruld soðlice a butan ende.’ (morris 1880: 249) [when he had said this, the lord jesus christ ascended up to heaven, and the blessed andrew returned to the city of mermedonia and said, ‘i bless you, my lord jesus christ, you who turns all souls to you, that you did not let me depart in my anger from this city.’ and the people rejoiced with great joy. and he dwelt with them there for seven days, teaching and confirming their hearts in the faith of our lord jesus christ. when the seven days were fulfilled, as the lord had commanded him, he departed from the city of mermedonia, hastening to his disciples. and all of that people led him forth with joy and they said, ‘there is one lord god, he is christ the saviour, and the holy spirit, to whom is glory and power in the holy trinity, through all of the world, truly world without end.’] the andreas-poet, however, again presents a greatly expanded account of the scene, including a number of details which do not appear in any of the analogues:26 26 andreas presents a similarly expanded account of andrew’s seven extra days among the mermedonians (1675–1705, esp. 1687–1696, on the razing of heathen structures). brooks (1961: 118) attributes this expansion to the andreas-poet; north & bintley (2016: 304–305), on the other hand, suggest that the poet here follows his now-lost source. 126 francis leneghan ðā ic lǣdan gefrægn lēoda weorode lēofne lārēow tō lides stefnan, mæcgas mōd-geōmre. þǣr manegum wæs hāt æt heortan hyge weallende. hīe ðā gebrōhton æt brimes næsse 1710 on wǣg-þele wigan unslāwne; stōdon him ðā on ōfre æfter rēotan, þendon hīe on ȳðum æðelinga wunn ofer seolh-paðu gesēon mihton, ond þā weorðedon wuldres āgend, 1715 cleopodon on corðre, ond cwǣdon þus: ‘ān is ēce god eallra gesceafta! is his miht ond his ǣht ofer middan-geard brēme gebledsod, ond his blǣd ofer eall in heofon-þrymme hālgum scīneð, 1720 wlitige on wuldre tō wīdan aldre, ēce mid englum; þæt is æðele cyning!’ (andreas, 1706–1722) [then i heard that hosts of people led their beloved teacher to the vessel’s prow, warriors dejected in spirit. for many there the thoughts were welling hot in the heart. then at the headland of the sea they brought aboard the boat the brave warrior; they stood themselves along the shore weeping in his memory for as long as they could see the joy of princes on the waves, over the seal-path, and then they worshipped the owner of glory, called out among the crowds, and said thus: ‘there is one eternal god of all creation! his might and his power are widely blessed in renown over middle-earth and his glory shines over all in the might of heaven, splendidly in glory for all time, eternal with the angles; that is a noble king!’] only in andreas and the blickling homily do the mermedonians lead andrew to the shore; in the greek and latin analogues, by contrast, they follow the saint and travel with him. the presence of several further narrative elements, however, suggests that the poet is drawing here on the motif of ‘the departure of the hero in a ship’: the intertextuality of beowulf, cynewulf and andreas 127 (1) the mermedonians grieve at the saint’s departure, whereas in all the analogues they greet his departure with joy;27 (2) the means of andreas’s departure, by boat, is emphasised, and the prow of his ship is mentioned (lides stefnan), whereas in the other accounts the boat is not described at all and andrew simply departs from mermedonia; (3) in andreas alone god is praised, in distinctly royal terms, in the expanded doxology, structured around an envelope pattern on the term ece; the final theme of andreas is the eternal kingship of christ. parallels between andreas’s leave-taking and scyld’s ship-funeral have been noted in passing,28 but the full significance of this connection, and the implications of links with the other two beowulfian passages, have thus far received little critical attention.29 peters, for example, dismisses the possibility that the andreas-poet had the end of beowulf in mind when composing his own closing section on the grounds that the saint’s leave-taking “bears no resemblance to the funeral rites of beowulf upon hronesnæsse at the end of the epic” (1951: 849).30 however, as we have seen, there is in fact a number of striking connections between andrew’s departure from mermedonia not only to beowulf’s closing lines but also to the earlier departure-scenes of both scyld 27 though in the preceding chapter (32) of praxeis/canatensis, the mermedonians had wept at andrew’s proposed departure, before christ instructs his to stay for a further week. 28 brooks (1960: xxiii), orchard (2003a: 164). 29 none of these passages from andreas or beowulf appear, for example, in schaar’s (1956: 304) list of passages containing “parallels most of which i am inclined to regard as literary borrowings”, despite the majority of these passages being from andreas and beowulf. kennedy (1943: 269) notes: “in each poem [beowulf and andreas], when the triumph is won, the story is rounded out by the hero’s preparation for departure, the general grief at his going, and the return voyage by which he sails back to the land from which he came. in each poem, the final scenes are laid upon a sea-headland looking out over the ocean”. kennedy does not discuss parallels between the departures of scyld and beowulf from the danes and andrew’s departure from the mermedonians. 30 peters (1951: 848) similarly dismisses the significance of parallels between andrew’s preparations to leave the mermedonians and beowulf’s departure from the danes on the grounds that “the andreas-poet is clearly following the apocryphal gospel rather than beowulf”. 128 francis leneghan and beowulf from the danes, as well as the various cynewulfian departurescenes. it is, of course, possible that the andreas-poet drew here on a now-lost latin source, an intermediary between the praxeis and casanatensis, in which these narrative details unique to the poem were present.31 alternatively, shannon godlove (2016: 197) has recently suggested that in embellishing the account of the saint’s leave-taking, the andreas-poet is “playing with the type scenes of departure common in old english heroic poetry”.32 however, as we have seen, within the old english poetic corpus ‘the departure of the hero in a ship’ is otherwise confined to beowulf and two of the four signed poems of cynewulf, texts which the andreas-poet is known to have made use of elsewhere.33 this correlation suggests that the andreas-poet was not simply drawing on old english literary convention but rather that he was alluding to these specific works in a knowing manner. 5. conclusion this article has identified a new old english poetic motif, ‘the departure of the hero in a ship’, common to beowulf, the signed poems of cynewulf and andreas. the ‘co-presence’ of this motif in this group of texts provides further evidence of their intertextuality. whereas in beowulf the motif serves as a frame to the entire work, highlighting key moments in the royal succession and providing a platform for characters to praise ancient pagan kings and æthelings, in the hands of cynewulf and the andreas-poet the same motif is put to a different use, to glorify the disciples and saints or to condemn those, like eleusius, who would hinder the church’s mission. the knowledgeable 31 see north & bintley (2016: 6). 32 see also crowne (1960: 372). 33 the description of the sea-borne departure of noah in genesis a (1356–1391) does not correspond in any substantial way with ‘the departure of the hero in a ship’. however, the departure of the saint’s messenger the end of guthlac b, a poem which is closely linked with the cynewulf group, does feature several of the key elements of the motif with some significant variations: the messenger, unaccompanied, departs on a boat, consumed by sorrow for his dead master (508b–525); on arriving at the house of guthlac’s sister, he sings a song of praise for his departed lord, 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scragg, d. g. 1997: source study. in k. o’brien o’keeffe ed. reading old english texts. cambridge, cambridge university press: 39–58. stanley, e. g. 1966: beowulf. in e. g. stanley ed. continuations and beginnings. london, thomas nelson: 104–141. tischendorf, c. ed. 1959: acta apostolorum apocrypha, rev. r. a. lipsius & m. bonnet. 2 vols. hildesheim, olms, ii.1: 65–116. whitelock, d. 1949: anglo-saxon poetry and the historian. transactions of the royal historical society 31: 75–94. woolf, r. ed. 1978: cynewulf’s juliana. exeter, exeter university press. author’s address faculty of english language and literature university of oxford st cross building, manor road oxford, ox1 3ul received: 1 may 2019 e-mail: francis.leneghan@ell.ox.ac.uk revised version accepted: 1 june 2019 selim02.pdf 147 chaucer’s criseyde and erudyce as well as being much more frequent than in filostrato, the added mythological additions in troilus and cryseide are often quite sophisticated.1 the epigraph above is a note to chaucer’ s troilus, book iv, line 7912 in david benson’s recent study on the work. the explanatory note gives some significant examples of chaucer’s learned additions to his main source besides the aforesaid line, where the allusion is to the myth of orpheus and eurydice, but benson does not specify here what the sophistication of these additions actually consists in. hence the sophistication is perhaps to be understood chiefly as formal or rhetorical, rather than at the semantic narrative level. the fact that chaucer’s allusion to orpheus and eurydice seems practically ornamental must explain why it has deserved very scarce critical attention. the present analysis, however, seeks to elicit the potential significance of tr iv 791 in connection with boethius’s version of the orpheus legend. it has been forcefully argued that chaucer had read the auchinleck manuscript, and that it influenced his conception of 1.david c. benson, chaucer’s troilus and criseyde (london: unwin hyman, 1990), p. 82, note 3. 2.all our references to lines in chaucer’s works are from larry d. benson (general editor), the riverside chaucer (oxford: oxford university press, 1987). 148 romance in some of the canterbury tales. thus the lay of sir orfeo was known to him, and had a particular effect in transforming boccaccio’s filoloco into the franklin’ s tale.1 however, the fantastic story of marital fidelity with a happy ending that sir orfeo tells cannot be said to have any bearing on the tragic story of troilus. conversely, it is commonly acknowledged that chaucer used boethius, whose consolation of philosophy he had recently translated, as his main intellectual instrument to give philosophical depth to a love story that in boccaccio’ s filostrato, from which he mainly adapted it, was treated in purely lyrical terms. since the story of how orpheus lost his beloved eurydice is a prominent episode in the consolation (and, of course, in chaucer’s boece), and, more importantly, was very popular in his version throughout the middle ages,2 it is not surprising that chaucer should somehow have had it in mind when he wrote his troilus, and particularly when he made criseyde remind us of it. the intertextuality of the legend is nowhere explicit in troilus, except for cryseyde’s casual allusion. nonetheless, the legend occupies a very conspicuous place in the consolation. friedman’s summary of the philosophical context in which it appears in boethius’ work is appropriate to our present purpose: “boethius has just been discussing the importance of unity (…). the highest happiness (…) is to be attained only when the soul has purified itself enough to rise and reunite itself with god.”3 the same critic explains the significance of the orpheus episode in such a context: “boethius sees in the story of or1.see laura h. loomis, “chaucer and the breton lays of the auchinleck manuscript”, studies in philology, vol. xxxviii (1941), pp.14-33 2.see john b. friedman, orpheus in the middle ages (cambridge, mass.: harvard university press, 1970), pp. 84-145, where the author argues the pervasive influence of boethius in the medieval interpretation of the orpheus legend. 3.friedman, op. cit., p. 93. 149 pheus and eurydice a human soul, freed from the bonds of earth and temporalia by a special dispensation and at last moving towards union with the one, suddenly yielding to the power of an earthly concern, in this case love, and so failing of its goal.”1 having descended to the underworld to rescue his dead wife, orpheus had, as is said in chaucer’s boece, “moevid to misericordes” the rulers of hell with his songs of complaint, who therefore agreed to allow him to ascend back to the world of the living with eurydice after him, on condition that he did not turn his eyes to look at her: “but what is he that may yeven a lawe to loverys?” (boece, metrum 12, lines 52-3) orpheus looks back, and loses her for ever. the point boethius wants to make has little to do with the law of venus, since love is just an example of earthly concerns. actually, the “fable apertenith” to anyone “whoso sette his thoughtes in earthly thinges, al that evere / he hath drawen of the noble good celestial he lesith it, whanne / he looketh the helles, that is to seyn, into lowe thinges of the erthe” (boece, m.12, 65-9). the epilogue of troilus leaves many a reader with the same uneasy impression that troilus did wrong to have been so involved in earthly matters, subjecting himself to the law of love and misplacing his natural (natural in boethius’ christian platonism) yearning for union with the one.2 a 1.ibid., p. 95. 2.in this respect, lee patterson says of troilus that “the love story the poem tells is about how two people strive, unsuccessfully, to become one.” lee patterson, chaucer and the subject of history (london: routledge, 1991), p. 137. on the other hand, the same critic later comments on “the ultimate impotence, even irrelevance, of boethianism” in chaucer’s love story: ibid., p. 153. see note 146 on the same page for a selection of articles and studies containing various boethian readings of the poem. over the past few years, we notice a tendency in criticism to diminish the role of boethianism in troilus, but in general these are only qualifications of an excessive enthusiasm in stressing the influence of the consolation on chaucer, not absolute disqualifications of an obvious influence. the most classic study on the subject is probably b. l. jefferson’s chaucer and the “consolation of philosophy” (princeton, 1917). 150 consideration of chaucer’s view of the orpheus legend may help to ascertain to what degree such an impression may be well-founded. an examination of chaucer’s allusions to orpheus and eurydice throughout his works reveals, to start with, that eurydice appears only twice, that is, only in boece (m.12) and in troilus (iv, 791), whereas orpheus alone is mentioned in three other works. furthermore, when he appears in boece and troilus, it is with regard to his love for eurydice, while elsewhere he is just alluded as a musician of extraordinary skills, not necessarily a lover. in the book of the duchess the mourning knight says that his sorrow could not be soothed even by “al the remedyes of ovyde / ne orpheus, god of melodye …” (bd, 568-9); in the house of fame orpehus has his place at a marvellous orchestra of renowned musicians with arion and chiron the centaur (hf, 1203), and in “the merchant’s tale” (canterbury tales, fragment iv, 1716), which may owe its presentation of the fairy kingdom to sir orfeo, it is simply said that even his melodies and those of amphion of thebes (another famous harper) could not match the music that old januarie orders to play for his wedding. in these three cases (most notably in the first and third one) it can be readily admitted that orpheus has no narrative role, being recalled merely to embellish a scene or strengthen a comparison rhetorically with classical allusion; in boece, however, he is clearly the hero of a significant episode, and in troilus, as we shall argue, his role can be best understood as midway between both extremes: the classical allusion to orpheus achieves narrative significance through the actual analogies between orpheus’ and troilus’ stories, and especially through those between criseyde and erudyce in relation to their respective lovers, who left them behind on their ascent to a higher world. once the orpheus legend has been briefly discussed in relation to boethius’ book and chaucer’s works, our next task is to focus on the moment it appears in troilus, in more detail. book iii ends with 151 “troilus in lust and in quiete / (…) with criseyde, his owen herte swete” (tr iii, 1919-20), a happy end which contrasts sharply with the ominous overtones at the opening of the next book, and its statement that “al to litel (…) / lasteth swich joie” (tr iv, 1-2) under fortune’s rule. the invocation to venus in the proem of the previous book has given way to one to the “herynes, nyghtes doughtren three” (tr iv, 22), that is, the three furies, 1 and to “cruel mars.” in order to know more about why the furies should be invoked here, we need to turn again to some other occurrences of their allusion in chaucer’s works. in troilus they are invoked, together with “dispitouse mars,” on one occasion before book iv, as a part of pandarus’ rhetoric to persuade criseyde that he meant no “harm or vilenye” (tr ii, 435-8) in his dealings as a go-between, having no particular narrative importance beyond the learned allusion. on the other hand, the presence of “the furies thre with al here mortal brond” courts disaster at the wedding of tereus and progne in “the legend of philomela” (legend of good women, 2252). no wonder, then, that poets from antiquity often tried to gain their benignity: among the greeks they were also known as the “eumenides” (“the benevolent”), a flattering name designed to dodge their dreadful wrath.2 in “the complaint unto pity,” of chaucer’s early poems, “herenus quene” (pity, 92), whose name is usually taken to be an error or corruption for “the erynyes,” is identified with pity, probably because pity (or mercy) can alone control their characteristic vindictiveness.3 indeed, in the consolation 1.the greek herynes became identified with the furies in roman mythology, and often also with the fates. chaucer does not seem to draw any well-defined distinction between these three triads, except that the furies are more characterized by their wrath than the fates, though all of them are agents of destiny. 2.see the entry for “erinias” in pierre grimal, diccionario de mitología griega y romana, trans. into spanish by p. pericay (barcelona: paidós, 1981), p. 169. 3.“the vindictiveness of vengeance,” as it is called in the riverside chaucer, op. cit., p. 1078, note 92). 152 they are able to take pity on orpheus when he sings for erudyce’ s release: “the thre goddesses, furiis and vengeresses of felonyes, that / tormenten and agasten the soules by anoy, woxen sorweful and / sory, and wepyn teeris for pite” (boece, m.12, 33-7). the fact that they might also have pity on troilus and criseyde is a very likely reason why the narrator of troilus invokes them in the proem of book iv, although he knows that he does it in vain, for the matter he has to present is “the losse of lyf and love yfeere of troilus” (tr iv, 27-8). when, in the first lines of book v, they are mentioned for the last time, it is as the parcas (i.e., the fates), and it has become most evident they will show no mercy: “aprochen gan the fatal destyne / that joves hath in disposicioun, / and to yow, angry parcas, sustren thre, / committeth to don execucioun” (tr v, 1-4). they are now diligent subordinates of jove, ready to execute his orders. diomede is already waiting at the gates of troy to carry criseyde away from troilus. the fates can resist their duty no more than they could, in boece, prevent erudyce’s return to hell, after orpheus made the fatal mistake of looking back at her. in the final book of troilus we are, therefore, led into a tragic context which is not altogether dissimilar from that of orpheus in boece, provided that we do not naively put all the blame on criseyde’s infidelity. a shallow recollection of the dramatic events of book iv leading to criseyde’s allusion to orpheus, though partial and inadequate as most summaries of chaucer’s masterpiece, may suffice for our purposes. immediately after the proem, we are faced with the historical scene in which antenor is captured by the greeks. this will fatally affect the lovers’ happiness when calkas proposes the exchange of his daughter, criseyde, for the trojan lord just captured. troilus is present when the trojan parliament accepts calkas’ proposal, but he remains silent, mainly because he is bound by the repeated vows of secrecy that he has made to criseyde and to 153 pandarus; to protest the exchange would have meant to make public his liaison with criseyde, and so to endanger her honour. troilus’ complex bonds (whether they are considered personal, social or political)1 render him helpless, in a situation that bears some casual resemblance to that of the imprisoned boethius in the consolation. in the next scene troilus appears confined to his private room by his own sorrow, and there, like boethius in prison, he has much to complain against fortune, though philosophy will not help chaucer’s hero at all. pandarus’ attempts to comfort him are also in vain. incidentally, troilus tells his friend that he would sooner die and go “down with proserpyne” to “eternally compleyne / my wo, and how that twynned be we tweyne” (tr iv, 473-6) than forget criseyde.2 being unable to take any course of action for himself, troilus leaves the decisions to criseyde. before they meet, as usual through the agency of pandarus, we are introduced to a monologue by criseyde in which she appears as genuinely disconsolate as her lover. when the narrator concludes this monologue saying that trying to describe her heaviness would only make it seem less than it really was (tr iv, 799-805), there is no reason why we should understand this ironically. it is in this scene that she expresses her wish to reunite her soul with that of troilus in the elysium, “as orpheus and eurydice” reunited theirs: myn herte and ek the woful goost therinne 1.on the complexity and ambivalence of troilus’ bonds, see especially stephen barney, “troilus bound,” speculum , 47 (1972), pp. 445-58. 2.proserpina is known as the queen of hell. troilus’ intention to descend to hell, which he never fulfills, may be compared to orpheus’ actual descent to hell to rescue eurydice with his songs of complaint. it should be noted that, although the queen of hell is not mentioned in the orpheus episode of the consolation, nor in boece, she plays a central role in henryson’s much fuller version of the legend in his poem “orpheus and eurydice”: proserpyne is the one who establishes the condition tnat makes orpheus lose eurydice definitively. 154 byquethe i with youre spirit to compleyne eternaly, for they shal nevere twyne; for though in erthe ytwynned be we tweyne, yet in the feld of pite, out of peyne, that highte elisos, shal we ben yfeere, as orpheus and erudice, his feere. (tr iv, 785-91) for an instant the reader is left wondering why criseyde pronounces such hope, since, even though orpheus and eurydice did meet in the other world, it was only to be painfully parted again soon, and eternally. if, moreover, we bear boethius’ interpretation of the le gend in mind, rather than the versions of virgil and ovid, it is as if she were already condemning herself as the earthly possession that troilus has to leave behind on his final ascent through the spheres. the question will not be easily answered, for it is as problematic as the whole relation of troilus to boethius’ philosophy. the intricate connection between boethius and the author of the troilus is, in our view, most forcefully and simply defined by david benson, a devoted practitioner of the reception theory in his full study of the work: “chaucer is a poet, not a philosopher, and he uses pieces of the consolation in unexpected ways to ask questions rather than to provide answers.1 the futility of philosophy seems particularly obvious when we analyse troilus’ lengthy boethian meditation at the temple (tr iv, 956-1078) soon after the allusion to orpheus: his mind practically never reaches far beyond the tautology from which he begins his thoughts: “al that comth, comth by necessitee” (tr iv, 958). however, discussions of boethian influence on the troilus usually base their authority upon the claim that they are able to explain why 1.david c. benson, op. cit., p. 149. 155 chaucer added to the story the strange coda of troilus’ palinode. thus theodore stroud: “perhaps these limited, sometimes even fanciful, correspondences between [the consolation and troilus] might be dismissed, if they were not germane to an illuminating view of the epilogue of troilus.”1 not surprisingly, stroud posits a unified meaning for the poem, in agreement with earlier views, and particularly that of willard farnham:2 “in my opinion the solution hinges on farham’s view of [criseyde] as the worldly possession of which troilus must be deprived.”3 under this perspective, criseyde’s function is exactly that of erudyce in boece. as a matter of fact, such interpretation might be highly plausible in the light of the moral exegesis of the orpheus legend, far more predominant in the middle ages (although this can be assumed through surviving texts only, that is, in the more clerical, learned context) than the romantic alternative of sir orfeo, where heurodis is happily saved by her loving husband, king orfeo. both in the case of eurydice and in that of criseyde, robert henryson had the last medieval word, and his word is a condemnation of his heroines in both “orpheus and eurydice” and “the testament of cresseid.”4 1.theodore a. stroud, “boethius’ influence on chaucer’s troilus,” reprinted from modern philology, xlix (1951-2), pp. 1-9 in chaucer criticism, vol. ii, ed. by r. j. schoeck & j. taylor (london: university of notre dame press, 1961), p. 125. 2.willard farnham, the medieval heritage of elizabethan tragedy (berkeley: university of california press, 1936). 3.stroud, op. cit., p. 130 4.friedman, op. cit ., pp. 194-208, makes an interesting point about henryson’s “orpheus and eurydice” as the culmination of all the medieval views of the orpheus legend. however, although henryson’s poem incorporates many romantic elements in using, as friedman puts it, “the romance orpheus as a vehicle for moral lessons” (ibid., p. 196), it is evident that the scots poet’s close reading of nicholas trivet’s commentary on the consolation, the complete loss of eurydice, and the separate “moralitas fabule sequitur” he adds at the end, make boethian morality the triumphant interpreter of the legend. 156 there is no end of modern studies finding the boethian moralitas as the conclusion to troilus. in the one full study we have of the sources and reasons for troilus’ apotheosis, john steadman hesitates but little before concluding that “the irony of the troilus enables the poet to ‘delight’ his readers through the details of a secular love story, in full awareness that such delight is transitory and that the story itself belongs in the catalogues of ‘wordly vanitees’.”1 in general this could be contested by saying that it makes chaucer sound like a monk (he was, of course, a christian, but not one absolutely devoted to instructing doctrine through his writings), and, in particular, that being so concentrated on the epilogue alone, the critic is too intent on providing the whole of troilus with a single meaning. steadman himself is aware that “a study devoted to the epilogue may seem to overstress the ethical element of the narrative as a whole,” and that perhaps in chaucer’s “intention delectare was a more immediate and a more generally attractive end than prodesse,”2 even though steadman’s book gives precisely the opposite impression. steadman’s own commentary on criseyde’s allusion to the myth of orpheus implies that one-sided interpretations of the troilus are by no means easy. on the one hand he says that “criseyde’s allusion to the myth of orpheus, and the fact that her reference to elysium apparently replaces an earlier allusion to pluto’s kingdom, suggest that she may possibly have in mind a subterranean region.” on the other hand, he supplies a footnote for this statement, in which he says that “since pluto’s kingdom was sometimes regarded as extending not only over the underworld but also over the manes in the atmosphere, criseyde’s allusion does not necessarily point to a subterranean location,” while troilus “apparently ascends to the elysium secundum theologos -the 1.john m. steadman, disembodied laughter: troilus and the apotheosis tradition (berkeley: university of california press, 1972), p. 164. 2.ibid., p. 163. 157 elysium circa lunarem circulum.”1 in sum, the self-same elysium seems to be like heaven for troilus, and more like hell for criseyde (since pluto is most commonly associated to the underworld, and given that in the gg manuscript “that highte elisos” reads “there pluto reignith”), or, possibly, a middle region “of pity, out of pain,” that is, a purgatory.2 what is most certain is that, as steadman concludes, “criseyde’s hope to ‘be yfeere’ with her paramour in the elysian fields (…) remains unfulfilled. troilus himself does indeed mount to this region, but there is little likelihood that criseyde will ever join him there.”3 she will have to stay alone in the lower elysium, the middle earth, abandoned like erudyce in pluto’s reign, from which troilus’ soul will never rescue her. henryson’s “testament” confirms that she will be expiating her guilt in a kind of earthly purgatory, once troilus has proudly ascended (actually, in the “testament” he only revives to pass by and toss her a coin without recognising her in her leprosy) to the higher elysium, which is also the site of his eternal good fame, as opposed to her perennial dishonour. whatever the overall, long term effect of the whole troilus may have been, chaucer himself did not condemn criseyde so utterly as troilus does in the epilogue, and he even made his narrator sympathise with her. it is nearly as likely that the overall effect, perhaps chaucer’s intention, was to show a world in which women, like criseyde and erudyce, would be condemned. suffice it to say that the 1.ibid., p. 41 and note 48. 2.the chapter that steadman ends with his commentary on criseyde’s allusion to orpheus actually aims at analysing the connections between elysium and purgatory: see ibid., pp. 21-41. most scholars, however, find good reasons to agree that the elysium is a subterranean region, as it is in virgil and ovid. the allusion to the elysium has demanded more interpretative attention than the one to orpheus, as witness the packed notes to these lines in b. a. windeatt (ed.), troilus and criseyde: a new edition of the ‘book of troilus’ (london: longman, 1984), p. 397. 3.steadman, op. cit., p. 41. 158 “disembodied laughter” of troilus in the epilogue (when troilus’s soul laughed at those who were mourning him and at the vanities of this life when compared to eternal life), which gives steadman’s study its title, appears with a very ambiguous significance when interpreted in terms of the symmetrical patterns the author built within his story, of its doubleness and “theban circularity,”1 so that we are led to ask, with david benson, “is there not an echo here of the prince’s callow laughter towards lovers in book i?.”2 troilus does not seem to learn anything through his experience in the whole book, so it is doubtful whether chaucer’s sole intention was to make an exemplum of him. in a way he did, at least for christian and boethian readers. but the really poignant experience is that of criseyde and of erudyce, who were left below on the earthly purgatory. since in chaucer’s works orpheus usually has no dramatic function beyond being a famous classical musician, or except when he appears as the lover of eurydice struggling against the furies, it follows that eurydice, not orpheus, contains the greatest dramatic potential. it is troilus and orpheus who have the renown, but in the house of fame chaucer shows that fame is a whimsical goddess. by explicitly sympathising with erudyce in tr iv, 791, criseyde is lending her own fully articulated voice and character to an otherwise silent female mythological figure who, like herself, had to suffer the fate of being an object of barter (not between trojans and greeks, but between her husband and the rulers of hell), which the hero will “do well” to renounce at the end as “blynde lust” (tr v, 1824). 1. on this subject, see for example patterson, op. cit., chapter 2. v, pp. 126-36:“the ‘lavor doppio’ of troilus and criseyde.” 2.david c. benson, op. cit., p. 198. 159 rubén valdés miyares university of oviedo * * * selim journal of the spanish society for mediaeval english language and literature revista de la sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval nº  oviedo,  edited by dirigida por trinidad guzmán & s. g. fernández-corugedo universidad de oviedo & sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval oviedo – murcia  michiko ogura, selim  (): –issn: 1132–631x the paris psalter and the metres of boethius: are they formulaic as anglo-saxon verses? abstract the article offers a detailed examination of the metrical lines of the paris psalter and the metres of boethius in order to assess the common assumption that old english verse delves on germanic poetic diction (formulae, alliteration) even when dealing with nongermanic subject matters such as the bible. both texts have been compared in search of similarities and differences in the formulaic character of its poetical resources. keywords: metrics, poetical diction, germanic, old english, formulae. resumen el artículo examina en detalle los versos del paris psalter y metres of boethius con el fin de evaluar la presuposición tradicional de que la poesía en inglés antiguo utiliza los recursos de la dicción poética germánica (estilo formulaico, aliteración) incluso cuando la temática no es estrictamente germana, como es el caso de los asuntos bíblicos. se ha comparado ambos textos, buscando tanto las similitudes como las diferencias en su uso del estilo formulaico. palabras clave: métrica, dicción poética, germánico, inglés antiguo, estilo formulaico. m ost old english prose texts are more or less latin-based, owing to the fact that the authors and scribes of the manuscripts are learned and christianised with variable knowledge of the originals. most old english verse texts, however, are supposed to be germanic, making full use of poetic diction and formulaic expressions in the metrical ame of alliteration, even though the contexts were biblical or non-germanic. in this paper i examine the metrical lines of the paris psalter (hereaer pps) and the metres of boethius (hereaer met)¹ and try to show how formulaic their lines are and how similar or different their formulaic usages are between the two as well as between these texts and other old english poems. ¹ for each poem i use the abbreviated titles adopted in the dictionary of old english om mitchell-ball-cameron ( and ). the lines i quote here are based on krapp (). 8 michiko ogura selim  () § . the crucial difference between the two texts lies in the distance om their direct sources. pps consists of prose translation (pps –) and verse translation (pps –) of the romanum.² owing to the metrical demand the verse part uses more lexemes than the prose translation, although it may omit some expressions for the same reason. met is a metrical paraphrase of the prose boethius, which is a rather ee and highly christianised translation of the latin original. the earliest extant manuscript of met, cotton otho a.vi, dates c, and ms lat. of pps c;³ a century distance may not affect too much on the making of alliterative lines, if the translators make good use of a set of formulaic expressions common to anglo-saxon poems. another significant difference between the two texts seems stylistic, one biblical and the other literary, rather than early and late west saxon. § . let us first see formulaic expressions common to the two texts.⁴   (met and pps exclusive): þinum agenum met b; pps. a up⒫ astigan met b; pps. b eall forweorðeð met b; pps. b ² see the introduction of patrick p. o’neill (). ³ the datings of manuscripts are based on ker (), o’neill () and sedgefield (). ⁴ letters in boldface indicate that the vowels or consonants bear alliteration. for the definitions of formulas and systems i follow fry (:): a “formula” is a group of words, one half-line in length, which shows evidence of being the direct product of a formulaic system, and a “system” is a group of half-lines, usually loosely related metrically and semantically, which are related in form by the identical relative placement of two elements, one a variable word or element of a compound usually supplying the alliteration, and the other a constant word or element of a compound, with approximately the same distribution of nonstressed elements. 9 pps & met. are they formulaic as anglo-saxon verses? selim  () swa hit gedefe ne wæs met b; pps. b⁵ swiðe gelome met b; pps. b (s-allit.) mæst ætgædere met b; pps. b ungemyndig met b; pps. b ealles wealde met b; pps. b wunode lange met b; pps.  b æghwylce dæge met a; pps. a on locian met b; pps. b cleopode to drihtne met b; pps. b (cleopedan)   (common to met, pps and other poems): æt fruman ærest met a; pps. a; christa b hæleða bearnum met b; pps. b, pps. b, pps. b; dan b, sat b, b, christc b monna bearnum met b; pps. b (manna); gena b weroda drihten met a (weorada), met b; pps. a (weoruda); gena a, b, ex a, sat b eorðbuende met b, met b; pps. a; gena b, a, a, ex a, pr b eorðbuendra met b, met b; pps. a; gena b, christc b, finn b, jdayii b, instr b eorðbuendum met a, met b; pps. b; gena a, a, dan b, sat b, rid b, creed a mæla gehwilce met b, met b (gehwylce); pps. b, pps. b, pps. b; sat b, sea b, beo b, instr b monna gehwilcum met b, met b (gehwylcum), b (gehwelcum); pps. a (manna); and  (manna), christa a, rid b, rid b o and gelome met b, b; pps. b; gena a, b, rid a, pr b, exhort b, msol b lange þrage met b; pps. b; gena a, a, b, dan b, and b, beo b (longe), a, b, capt a mihtig drihten met a; pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, ⁵ cf. pps. b, beo b, b swa hit gedefe wæs. 10 michiko ogura selim  () pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b; ex a, jud a, res a, pr b, b, b, instr b; psfr. b, psfr. b on modsefan met b; pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b; and a, el a, jul a; cf. beo a in modsefan on his modsefan met a, met a; pps. b; msol a; cf. gutha a in his modsefan sunna and mona met a; pps. b; dan a; cf. beo b, sat b, men b sunnan and monan heofona w⒠aldend met b, met b; pps. b; gena b, phoen b (heofuna) sigora w⒠aldend met b, met b; pps. b; gena b, b, a, a, b (sigoro), ex b, sat b, az b, phoen b, vain b, rid b, beo a, dedg b eallum wealdeð met b; pps. b; maxi b he⒪fonrices weard met b; pps. b, pps. b, pps. b; gena b, b, b, a, ex b, dan a, a, sat b, and b, a, dream b, el b, b, b, gutha b, b, jul b, men b, jdayii a, kthy b, ktps b, cæd(ws) b, mcharm b wuldres ⒠aldor met b; pps. b, pps. b, pps. b, pps. b; genb b, gena b, b, ex b, and b, b, a, a, b, jdayi b; psfr. b, psfr. b b, b, dream b, jul b, christa b, sea b, part b, seasons   (including reverse formulas): æghwilc hiora met a, met b, a æghwylc ealra pps. a æghwylce dæge met a daga æghwylce pps. a, pps. a ælmihti⒢ god met b (good), met b, met b, met b, met a (good), a; genb b, dan b, and b, b, dream a, a god ælmihtig met b; pps. b; genb b 11 pps & met. are they formulaic as anglo-saxon verses? selim  () monna æniges met b, met b; rid a æniges mannes pps. b; walderei b (monnes) awiht godes met b godes awiht pps. b feldes blostman met a eorðan blostman pps. b on rome byrig met b on sione byrig pps. a on sodoma byrig gena b and sona cweðan met b and eac cweþan pps. b yfel and edwit met a facen and edwit pps. b rihte floweð met b wide floweð pps. b dysiges folce met b cristenes folces pps. b holdes folces pps. b forgif nu, ece god met a forgif me, ece god pps. b forgif us, mægna god jul b fæste gehealdan met b wel gehealdan pps. b, pps. b, pps. b and gesamnade met a gesamnade pps. b e gescended met b æe gescended pps. b, pps. b, pps. b eall geworhtest met b ealle þu geworhtest pps. a, pps. a bloweð and groweð met b 12 michiko ogura selim  () lideð and groweð pps. b under eorðan grund met a; and a under neowulne grund pps. b lissum lufode met a lustum lufode pps. a dæg and nihte met a; gena b, sat a, gutha b, phoen a, a, beo a, pr a, a, exhort a, a dæges and nihtes pps. b ren onhrereð met b wind onhrereð pps. b lufan and sibbe met b blisse and sibbe pps. b soðfæstnesse met b; el b on soðfæstnesse pps. b ðurh ðinra me⒜hta sped met b, b; gena a (mihta), christb a ðurh ðinra mægna sped met b þurh þinra dæda sped pps. a æcera ðusend met b wergra þusend pps. b hefig and þystre met b deorc and ðystre pps. b dim and þystre genb a geond þas widan w⒠oruld met a, met a (giond, worulde), met a geond þas woruld wide pps. b geond þas wacan woruld christb a wordum and dædum met b wordum oðð dædum gena a dædum and wordum pps. b; genb b, gena b, a, gutha b, dedw a, lprii b 13 pps & met. are they formulaic as anglo-saxon verses? selim  () hwæt, þu, wuldres god met b hwæt, þe, wuldres god pps. a hwæt wilt þu, wuldres god pps. a when the numbers of verse lines of the two texts are considered, we cannot say that they use a common stock of formulas as a translation device. but the authors of each text must have had sufficient knowledge of alliterative poetry so as to use the same formulas or similar expressions found somewhere in extant poems. on the other hand, each text shows the use of formulas particular to each context, which may reveal the author’s effort of making his text appropriate for the mold of alliterative poetry. § . the paris psalter uses biblical set-phrases and repeats them quite equently: e.g. halig drihten, mihtig drihten, awa to feore, her on eorðan, lifes ealdor, holde mode, sawle mine, symble æt þearf, etc. they oen appear side by side so as to make one-line formulas. examples are: on ecnesse awa to feore pps. , . , . , . , .  and on ecnesse awa to feore pps.  on ecnesse awa to worulde pps. , . , .  ic þe andette, ece drihten pps. , . , . , .  ic þe andette ecne drihten pps.  ic andette ecne drihten pps. , .  ic andette ecum drihtne pps. , . , .  and hi þa on þære costunge cleopedan to dryhtne pps.  hi on costunge cleopedan to drihtne pps.  þa hi on costunge cleopedan to drihtne pps.  and he hi of þam earfoðum eallum alysde pps.  (earfeðum), . , .  and he hi of earfeðum eallum alysde pps.  and he hig of earfoðum eallum alysde pps.  14 michiko ogura selim  () se ðe heofon worhte, hrusan swylce pps. , . , .  þam þe heofon worhte, hrusan swylce pps.  þæs þe heofon worhte, hrusan swylce pps.  bletsa, mine sawle, bliðe drihten pps. , . , . ; psfr.  gehyr min gebed, halig drihten pps. , . , . , . , .  his mildheortnys mære to worulde pps. , . , .  these one-line formulas are typical of pps. most of them are repeated elsewhere, oen in the same chapter of the psalm (e.g. pps.  and .  gehweorf us, mægena god, and us mildne æteow) but sometimes appear in distant chapters (e.g. pps.  and .  nis me ege mannes for ahwæðer), depending on the place where the latin context is repeated. many half-line formulas are found in other poems as well as in pps. here are some examples of equent occurrence: ea ælmihtig pps. b, . b, . b, . b; gena a, a, a, a, a, b, a, b, b, genb b, christc b, jud b, cæd b samod ætgædere pps. b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b; ex b, men b, beo b, b, b, b dæges and nihtes pps. b; gena b, sat a, homfri b, el b, gutha b, phoen a, a, beo a, msol a, exhort a, a, lprii b, pr a ece drihten/dryhten pps. b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . a, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b; psfr. b, . b, . b, . b; gena b, b, b, a, a, 15 pps & met. are they formulaic as anglo-saxon verses? selim  () a, a, b, b, dan b, b, b, b, b, b, sat a, b, b, b, b, b, a, b, b, and b, b, b, christa b, b, az b, b, b, b, sea a, soulii b, res b, jdayii b, beo a, pr b, cæd a, a, mcharm b, b, msol b, kthy b (æce) ecne drihten pps. b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b; gena a, dan b, az b halig drihten/dryhten pps. b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . a, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b; psfr. b, . b; gena b, b, b, genb b, dan b, b, az b, beo b, seasons b wera cneorissum pps. b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b; gena b, b, ex b, christc a, guthb b, men b, orw b, b heofonrices weard pps. b, . b, . b; gena b, a, b, a, ex b, dan a, a, and b, a, dream b, el b, b, b, gutha b, b, jul b, men b, jdayii a, cæd b ofer middangeard pps. a, . b, . a, . b, . b; ex a, a, a, b, dan b, and a, a, a, b, b, fates b, el a, a, christa a, christb a, a, phoen a, glori b bliðe mode pps. b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b; dream b, christa a, gutha b, res a, hell a wide geond eorðan pps. b, . b, . b; beo b, b, maxi b, men b, dedw b to widan feore pps. a; ex b, and a, a, el a, b, christa b, christc a, guthb a, whale a, beo b⁶ ⁶ cf. pps. a, . b and to widan feore; christa b, lpri b a to widan feore; pps. a ic to widan feore; jul b, prec b widan feore. 16 michiko ogura selim  () as seen in dæges and nihtes and to widan feore, some formulas are used only once in pps, though the occurrences of the variants or similar expressions are possible. some formulas are exclusively found in pps: e.g. awa to feore (pps. b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b), awa to worulde (pps. b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b), drihten us(s)er (pps. b, . b, . b, . b, . a, . b, . b, . b, . a), wealdend drihten (pps. b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b), holde mode (pps. b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . a),⁷ sawle mine (pps. b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . a),⁸ hrusan swylce (pps. b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b), ungemette swiðe (pps. b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b) and symble æt þearfe (pps. b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b). we also find such formulas as those which occur only once outside pps: e.g. ofer manna bearn (pps. a, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b; lprii b), ecean drihtnes (pps. b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b; gena a), her on eorðan (pps. b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b; seasons a), swyþe geneahhe (pps. b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b; wan b), on worulda woruld (pps. a, . a, . a, . a, . a, . a; jdayii a)⁹ and geond werþeoda (pps. b, ⁷ cf. bliðe mode, which occurs outside pps. ⁸ cf. sawle minre in pps. a, . b, . b, . b, psfr. b, res b. ⁹ cf. and on worulda woruld in pps. a, . a, . a, jdayii a, glori a, and and þe on worulda woruld in pps. a, . a. 17 pps & met. are they formulaic as anglo-saxon verses? selim  () . b, . b; gena a). hælend drihten occurs in pps (. b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b, . b) and psfr (. b), but in other poems the order is drihten hælend (sat a, b, and a, el a, pr b). pps, therefore, makes good use of traditional formulas and, since the christianity brought literacy so that some types of heathen legacy could be chosen as a communicative tool to enlighten the anglo-saxons, formulaic variants seem one of the best means to combine the two different cultures. § . the metres of boethius tries to represent the content of the prose text as faithfully as possible, although such poetic regulations as alliteration and variation necessarily cause emphasis of a particular theme and subsequent addition or subtraction of other subject matters.¹⁰ met shares formulas and formulaic systems with other poems more oen than with pps. examples chosen below are of equent occurrences: ælces þinges met b, b, met b, met b; christa b agan moste⒩ met a, b; sat b, jul a, christc b, gutha b agan wille met b, met b; gena b, dan b bilewit fæder met b, b, b; kthy b cuð is wide met b; sat b, gutha b, rid b; cf. met b cuð wæs wide ¹⁰ in ogura (:–), i quote examples () in which the prose text is closely translated into verse (boethius bk ii, met iv, –; prbo ..–; met –), () in which the missing words in prose are skillfully supplied in verse (bo bk i, met vii; prbo ..–; met –), and () in which the verse text expands the theme greatly (bo bk i, met i; prbo ..–; met –). 18 michiko ogura selim  () monna cynne met a; genb a, a, a, christa a, beo a, a, a, rid b, gifts b, maxi a monna cynnes met a; gena b, christc b, phoen a, jul a, wid a, rid a, jud a dægrimes worn met b (double allit.); gena a, b, a dagum and nihtum met b; ex b, rid b eallra gesceaa met b, met b; and b, b, b, el b ealra (ge)sceaa met a, met a, met b, met b, a; dan b, christa b, christc a, gutha b, pan b eallum gesceaum met a, b; msol b ealle gesceaa met b, b; jul b, orw b, lprii b, glori b ealle gesceae met b; dan b, and b, christc b, az a, gutha b, b eard and eðel met a; gena a (eðyl), dan a, a, phoen a, exhort a eorðan sceatas met a; gena a, and b, dream a, christc b, sea a, a, rid a foldbuende met a; el b, christc b, a, hell b, b, beo a foldbuendra met b; gutha a, rid a foldbuendum met b; az b, beo b, creed b, cpep b freondrædenne met b; jul a, a, a, a fæste gebunden met b; sat b (feste), a (feste), b, rid a geara gehwelce met a, met a, b, met b; res a gumena gehwelces met b, met a; msol b, exhort a, kthy a, seasons b, instr b 19 pps & met. are they formulaic as anglo-saxon verses? selim  () heofon and eorðan met a; gena b, and a, el a, gutha b, phoen a, jul a, orw b innan and utan met a; gena a, christc a, phoen a, beo a; cf. genb a utan and innan lange hwile met b; dan a, dream b, rid b, jul b, beo 16a, 2159b, 2780a (longe) leohte geleafan met a; el a, gutha a, guthb a, phoen a, jul a lifes leohtuma met a; gena a, a, a, a, dan a, and a, a, gutha a, a (-uman), ktps a (lioht-) mine geæge met b, b; gena b, ex b, and b, phoen b, wid b, fates b, beo b, b, b, b, b, men b, seasons b, dedg b, cedg b geond middangeard met b, met b; gena b, sat b, b, el a, a, christb b, gutha b, a, a, a, b, b, guthb a, phoen a, b, sea b, fort a, jdayi a, pan b, b, men a, a, a, b geond ðisne middangeard met b; wan b, giftes b, rid a, beo b, b middangeardes met b, met b; gena a, a, a, el a, christa b, christb a, b, phoen a, a, jul a, maxi a, rid a, beo b, b, msol b, b, kthy b geond sidne grund met a; gena b, a, b, christb a, jul b, pr b, instr b ofer metodes est met b; gena a, dan b, and b middelnihtum met a; beo a, a, rid b monna ænig met a, met a, met b, b; guthb b, instr a; cf. gifts b ænig monna nergend us⒮er met b; gena b, b, a, b, a, b, a, a, genb a 20 michiko ogura selim  () rices hirde met b, b; ex b, and b, jul b, beo a, a, seasons b rodora/rodera waldend met b; gena a, b, b, b, dan b, el b, christb b, christc b, az b, jul b, ktps b, mep a þeodne mærum met b; phoen b, orw b; cf. beo a, a, a mærum þeodne þeoda waldend met a, b; dan a, and b, el b, b, az a, mald b, creed b, thureth b, instr a þinga gehwilces met a; el a, sea b, b, rid b, res b; cf. sea b, res b, instr a þinga gehwylce; also cf. sat b þinga æghwylces ungelice met a, met b; gena b, sat b, el a, christc a, b, b, vain a, b weorðan sceolde met b; el b, az b, phoen b, jul b weorðan sceoldon met a; and b, ktps b (scoldan) weorðan sceolden met b; genb b weroda drihten met b; gena b, ex b, a, psfr. b, instr b wordhord onleac met b; and b, b, wid b, beo b woruldgesceaa met b, a, a, a; gena b, dan b, men a wundorlice met a, met b, met a, b; phoen b, rid b as seen in examples, met oen repeats some formulas with slight morphological change, e.g. in prefixes or verbal inflections. in contrast with pps, one-line formulas are found far much less in met. such formulas as geara gehwelce and ælces þinges are chiefly found in met, and the following are used exclusively in met: dogora gehwilce (met a, a, met b, met a), ealla gesceafta (met 21 pps & met. are they formulaic as anglo-saxon verses? selim  () b, met b, b, met a, met a, a, b, met b, b), heofones and eorðan (met a, met b, met a), nis þæt nan wundor (met a, met a, met a, met a, a, a), rihtwisnesse (met a, a, a, b), þe we ymb spreceð (met b, met b, met b, met b, met b, met b), suð, east and west (met b, met b, met b), is ðæt wundorlic (met a, met a, met b) and woruld earfoða (met a, met b, b, b). § . here i give two tables to sum up the results of this survey. tables  and  illustrate how pps and met can be regarded formulaic on the basis of the same definitions of formulas and formulaic systems. table . how formulaic is each psalm of pps? ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps half-lines 24 57 36 152 84 84 68 126 74 48 formulas 9 13 19 27 18 22 3 46 21 12 % 3⒎5 2⒉8 5⒉8 ⒘8 2⒈4 2⒍2 ⒋4 3⒍5 2⒏4 2⒌0 ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps half-lines 76 72 58 94 122 38 189 215 36 154 formulas 12 15 17 13 28 15 24 29 10 36 % ⒖8 ⒛8 2⒐3 ⒔8 2⒊0 3⒐5 ⒓7 ⒔5 2⒎8 2⒊4 ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps half-lines 128 146 150 58 66 116 399 96 103 46 formulas 20 16 18 8 6 27 55 17 29 9 % ⒖6 ⒒0 ⒓0 ⒔8 ⒐1 2⒊3 ⒔8 ⒘7 2⒏2 ⒚6 ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps half-lines 36 92 82 66 104 34 106 282 116 84 formulas 4 16 12 10 25 3 16 57 20 10 % ⒒1 ⒘4 ⒕6 ⒖2 2⒋0 ⒏8 ⒖1 ⒛2 ⒘2 ⒒9 22 michiko ogura selim  () ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps half-lines 88 38 132 70 80 8 15 68 26 54 formulas 21 8 22 11 19 2 4 13 7 7 % 2⒊9 2⒈1 ⒗7 ⒖7 2⒊8 2⒌0 2⒍7 ⒚1 2⒍9 ⒔0 ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps half-lines 174 132 216 250 280 252 88 184 13 66 formulas 32 37 25 41 52 57 30 26 1 11 % ⒙4 2⒏0 ⒒6 ⒗4 ⒙6 2⒉6 3⒋1 ⒕1 ⒎7 ⒗7 ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps half-lines 64 46 156 50 42 14 155 1070 38 40 formulas 9 13 41 14 6 4 55 220 5 11 % ⒕1 2⒏3 2⒍3 2⒏0 ⒕3 2⒏6 3⒌5 ⒛6 ⒔2 2⒎5 ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps half-lines 58 34 52 38 42 42 42 52 46 20 formulas 12 6 9 6 4 10 5 13 13 3 % ⒛7 ⒘6 ⒘3 ⒖8 ⒐5 2⒊8 ⒒9 2⒌0 2⒏3 ⒖0 ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps half-lines 118 24 22 132 96 60 70 154 96 78 formulas 10 3 11 35 19 7 16 18 16 10 % ⒏5 ⒓5 50.0 2⒍5 ⒚8 ⒒7 2⒉9 ⒒7 ⒗7 ⒓8 ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps ps half-lines 58 104 126 142 72 68 56 84 51 10 formulas 9 20 22 37 19 11 5 12 8 2 % ⒖5 ⒚2 ⒘5 2⒍1 2⒍4 ⒗2 ⒏9 ⒕3 ⒖7 ⒛0 23 pps & met. are they formulaic as anglo-saxon verses? selim  () table . how formulaic is each metre of met? proem met  met  met  met  met  met  met  half-lines 20 168 38 22 114 90 34 108 formulas 6 56 8 5 42 29 19 37 % 30.0 3⒊3 2⒈1 2⒉7 3⒍8 3⒉2 5⒌9 3⒋3 met  met  met met met met met met half-lines 118 126 140 204 64 160 22 30 formulas 35 46 44 90 18 62 9 12 % 2⒐7 3⒍5 3⒈4 4⒋1 2⒏1 3⒏8 40.9 40.0 met met met met met met met met half-lines 48 60 24 94 562 88 130 24 formulas 16 24 6 26 225 35 55 7 % 3⒊3 40.0 2⒌0 2⒎7 40.0 3⒐8 4⒉3 2⒐2 met met met met met met met met half-lines 128 144 238 66 166 192 36 46 formulas 42 46 93 22 56 95 12 14 % 3⒉8 3⒈9 3⒐1 3⒊3 3⒊7 4⒐5 3⒊3 30.4 in sum total, pps (–) has  half-lines,  of which are formulaic (.%), while met (proem-met) has  half-lines,  of which are formulaic (.%). pps contains nearly three times as many half-lines as met has, and so the percentage of formulas and formulaic systems in pps should be comparatively low. met is not so highly formulaic as conlee concludes, following the definition of 24 michiko ogura selim  () magoun, jr.,¹¹ but the half-lines seem to be made as formulaic as possible so as to accomplish the translator’s intention.¹² a i: s  here i quote two specimen texts, ps and met, which show the highest of formulaic percentages in respective texts, with latin and prose version for comparison. half-lines considered formulaic are all underlined. ps: [deus in nomine tuo saluum me fac et in uirtute tua libera me; deus exaudi orationem meam. auribus percipe uerba oris mei; quoniam alieni insurrexerunt in me. et fortes quesierunt animam meam. et non proposuerunt deum ante conspectum suum; ecce enim dues adiuuat me. et dominus susceptor est anime meae; auerte mala inimicis meis. et in ueritate tua disperde illos; uoluntarie sacrificabo tibi. et confitebor nomini tuo domine. quoniam bunum est; quoniam ex omni tribulatione eripuisti me. et super inimicos meos. respexit oculus tuus]  on þinum þam haligan naman, gedo me halne, god; alys me am laðum þurh þin leofe mægen.  god, min gebed gearuwe gehyre, ¹¹ see conlee (:). his statistic results are based on the survey of two short metres (met and met) and parts of long metres (met and met); he says that  verses out of  in total (i.e. .%) were “demonstrably formulaic”. magoun, jr. (:) says that in , lines of anglo-saxon poetry “some seventy per cent of the text of this passage (i.e. beowulf ll. –) does occur elsewhere. now we understand that some parts of some poems can be highly formulaic. ¹² another significant difference between the two texts and the ordinary poems is the scanty use of variation, especially in pps. for the definition and use of variation, see robinson (). 25 pps & met. are they formulaic as anglo-saxon verses? selim  () and earum onfoh min agen word.  forþam me emde o facne gestodon, sohtan mine sawle swiðe strange, and na heom god setton gleawe¹³ on gesyhðe.  efne me þonne god gleawe fultumeð, is andfengea ece drihten sawle minre; he me swican ne wile.  ar me fæcne yfel feonda minra, and hi soðfæst toweorp syððan wide.  ic ðe lustum lace cweme, and naman þinne niode¹⁴ swylce geara andette, forðon ic hine goodne wat.  forþon þu me alysdest, lifes ealdor, of earfoðum eallum symble, ealle mine nd eagum ofersawe. met: bo bk ii, met; prbo ..– [cum polo phoebus roseis quadrigis / lucem spargere coeperit, / pallet albentes hebetata vultus / flammis stella prementibus. / cum nemus flatu zephyri tepentis / vernis inrubuit rosis, / spiret insanum nebulosus auster: / iam spinis abeat decus. / saepe tranquillo radiat sereno / immotis mare fluctibus, / saepe ferventes aquilo procellas / verso concitat aequore. / rara si constat sua forma mundo, / si tantas variat vices, / crede fortunes hominum caducis, / bonis crede fugacibus. / constat aeterna positumque lege est / ut constet genitum nihil.] đa ongan se wisdom singan ⁊ giddode þus: þōn seo sunne on hadrū heofone beorhtost scineð, þōn aþeostriað ealle steorran, forþāþe ¹³ ms gleaw/ne. ¹⁴ ms mode. 26 michiko ogura selim  () heora beorhtnes ne beoð nan beorhtnes for hire. þōn smylte blaweð suþanwestan wind, þōn weaxað swiðe hraðe feldes blosman; ac þōn se stearca wind cymð norðaneastan, þōn toweorpð he swiðe hraþe þære rosan wlite; swa o þone to smylton sæ þæs norðāwindes yst onstyreð. eala  nanwuht nis fæste stondendes weorces a wuniende on worulde. đa se wisdom e wordhord onleac, sang soðcwidas, and þus selfa cwæð: đonne sio sunne sweotolost scineð, hadrost of hefone, hræðe bioð aðistrod  ealle ofir eorðan oðre steorran, forðæm hiora birhtu ne bið auht to gesettane wið þære sunnan leoht. đonne smolte blæwð suðan and westan wind under wolcnum. þonne weaxeð hraðe  feldes blostman, fægen þæt hi moton. ac se stearca storm, þonne he strong cymð norðan and eastan, he genimeð hraðe þære rosan wlite, and eac þa ruman sæ norðerne yst nede gebædeð,  þæt hio strange geondstyred on staðu beateð. eala, þæt on eorðan auht fæstlices weorces on worulde ne wunað æe! a ii: h-   here i quote all the half-lines which i consider formulaic in pps and met. pps: .  b, a;  a, a, b, b;  b, a, b. .  b;  a, b;  b, a;  a, b;  b, a, b;  b;  b, b. 27 pps & met. are they formulaic as anglo-saxon verses? selim  () .  a, b, a, b;  b, a, b;  b;  b, a;  b, a;  a, b, a, b, a;  b, a. .  a, b, a;  b;  a;  a;  b, b, b;  b;  b;  b, a;  b;  a, b, a, b;  b, b;  b, a;  b;  b;  b, a;  b. .  a, b;  b;  b;  b, a, b, b, a, b;  a, b;  a, b, b;  b, a, a. .  b, b;  b;  b;  b;  b, a;  b, a;  a, b;  a, b, a, a;  a, b;  a;  a, b, a;  b. .  b;  b;  b. .  a, b, a, a, b;  a, b, b, a, b;  a;  b, a, b, b;  a, b, b;  b, a, b;  b;  a, b, a, b;  b, a;  b, b;  a, b, b;  a, b, b, a, b;  b, b;  a, b;  a, b, a, b. .  b, b;  b;  b;  a, b, b;  a;  b, b;  a;  b;  a, b, b, a, b;  b, b, a, b. .  b;  b, b;  b, b;  a, b;  b, a, b, a, b. .  a;  a, b;  b;  a, b;  b, b;  b;  b, b, b. .  a;  a;  a;  b;  b;  b, b, b;  b, a, b, b;  b, b;  b. .  a, b, a, b, b, b;  b, b;  b;  b, b;  b, b;  b, b;  a, b. .  b, a;  a, b;  b;  b;  b;  b, b;  b, a, b, b. .  b;  b, b;  b, a, b, b, b, b;  b;  a, b;  b, b;  a, b;  b;  b;  b, a;  a, b, b;  b;  b, b;  b;  b. .  a;  b, b;  a, b, a, b;  b, b;  a, b, a, b;  b, b. .  b, b;  b;  b, b;  b;  a, b;  b;  b;  a;  b, a, b;  a, b, b;  b;  b;  a;  a, b;  b, b. .  a, b;  b;  b;  a,  b, a;  b, b;  b, b;  a, b, b;  a;  a;  b;  b;  b, a;  b, b, a;  b;  b;  b;  b;  b, b. .  a, b, a, b, a, b;  b;  b;  b;  b. .  b, b;  b;  a, b;  b, b;  b;  a, b, b, a, b;  b, a, b;  b, b;  a;  b, b;  b;  b;  a, b;  b, a, b;  b;  a, b;  b, b, a;  b;  a. .  a, b;  a;  b;  b;  a, a;  b;  a, b;  b, a;  b;  b, b, b, a, b;  b, b. .  a;  b;  b;  a, b;  a, b, b;  b;  b, b;  b, b, b;  b;  b. 28 michiko ogura selim  () .  b;  b;  a, b, a;  a, b, a;  b;  b, a, b;  a;  b, b;  b;  a, a. .  a, b, b, a, b;  b, b;  a. .  b;  a;  b;  b;  b, b. .  b;  b, b;  b, a;  b,  a, b, a, a, b;  b, b, b, a;  a, b, a;  a, b;  b, a, b;  b;  b;  b, b. .  b;  b;  b, b;  b, a;  b;  b;  b, b;  b, a;  b, a;  a;  b;  b, b;  b;  a, a, b;  a;  b, b;  b;  b, b, b;  b;  b;  a, b;  b;  b;  b;  b, b;  a;  b;  b;  a;  b;  b, a;  b,  b, b;  b;  a, b, b, a, b;  b. .  b, a;  b;  b;  a;  a, b;  b;  b, b;  a, b, b;  b;  b, a, b. .  b;  a, b;  a, b, a, b;  a, b, a;  a, b, a, b;  b;  a, b;  a;  a, b, b, b, a;  b;  a, a;  a, b;  a. .  a, b;  b, b;  b, b, b;  b, b. .  b;  b;  a, b. .  b;  b;  a, b, b;  b;  b;  b;  a, b;  b, a, a, b;  a, b. .  b;  b;  b, a, b;  a;  a, b, a;  b;  b, a. .  b;  a, b, b;  b;  b, b;  b, b;  b. .  b, b;  a, a;  b, a;  b;  a, b;  b;  a, b, b, b;  a, b;  a, b, a;  a, b, b;  b;  b, b. .  b;  b, a. .  b, b;  b;  a;  b;  a;  b;  b, a, b, b, a, b;  b, a;  b. .  b, b, b, b;  a, a, b;  b, a;  b, a, b;  b;  a, a;  a, b, b;  a;  b;  b, b, b;  b;  a, b, b;  a, b, b, b;  b;  b;  b;  b, a, b;  b;  a;  a;  a;  a, a;  a, b, a, b;  a, b;  b;  b, b;  b, a;  b, a, b. .  b, b;  b, b;  b;  b;  b;  b;  a;  b;  b;  b, a, b;  b;  a, b, b, b;  b. .  b, b;  a;  a;  b;  b;  a;  b;  a;  b. .  b, b;  b, b;  b;  b, a, a, b;  b, b;  a, b, a;  a, b;  a, b;  b;  b;  b. .  a, b;  b;  b;  b, a, b;  a. .  a;  a;  b, a;  a, b, a, b;  b, a, b;  b, a;  b, b, b;  b, b;  b;  b, b, b. 29 pps & met. are they formulaic as anglo-saxon verses? selim  () .  b;  b;  b, a;  a, b;  b, a, b;  a, b. .  a, b;  a, a;  b;  b;  b, b;  b, b;  b, a, a,  b;  b;  b, a, b;  a. .  b, b. .  b, a, b;  a. . a, b, b;  b, b;  b;  b;  b;  b;  b;  b;  b, b. .  b, a;  a, b, a;  a, b. .  b;  b, b;  a;  b;  b, b. .  b, a, b, a, b;  b, a;  b;  a, b;  a, a;  a, b;  b, b;  b, b;  b, b;  b, b;  a, b;  b, a;  a, b;  b;  b;  b, a. .  a, b, a, b;  a, b;  a, b, a, b;  b;  a, b, a, b, a, b;  a;  b;  a, a, b;  a, b;  b;  a;  a;  b, a;  a, b, a;  b, a;  b;  b, b. .  a, b, b;  b;  b;  b;  a;  b, b;  b, a;  a;  b;  b, b;  a;  b;  b;  a, b;  a;  b, b, a, b. .  a, b;  b;  a;  a, b;  a, b;  b;  b;  b, b, a, b;  b, a;  b;  b;  a;  b, b;  b, b;  b;  b, b;  b;  a, b;  b;  b;  b;  b, b;  a;  a, a;  b;  a, b;  b. .  a, b, b;  b;  a, b, a, a;  a, b;  a, a, b, b, b;  a, b, b;  b, b;  b, b, a;  b;  a;  a;  b;  b;  b, b;  b;  b;  b;  b;  b;  b;  b, b;  a, a;  b, b;  b;  b;  b;  a, b;  b, a, b, b, a. .  a, b;  a, b;  a, b, a, b;  b, a;  a, b, a, b;  b;  a, b;  a, b, a, b;  a, b;  a, b, a, b;  b;  b, a, b;  a, b, a, b;  b, b, b;  b;  a;  a, b, a, b;  a;  a, b;  b, b;  b, b;  a;  a;  a;  a;  b, a. .  b, a, b, a;  a, a, b;  a, b, a, a, b;  a;  a, b, a;  b, b, a, b;  b;  a, b, b, a, b;  b, b, a, b. .  b;  b;  b;  b;  b;  b;  a, b, b;  b;  b, a, b;  b;  b;  b;  b;  a;  b;  a, a, b;  b;  b;  b, a. .  b. .  b, b;  a;  b;  b, a, a, b;  a;  b;  a. .  b;  b;  b, b;  b, b;  b, b;  a. .  b, a, b;  a, b, a, b;  a, b;  b;  b, a;  b. 30 michiko ogura selim  () .  b, a, a;  a, b;  a, b;  a, b;  b;  b;  a, b, b, a, b;  a;  b;  b;  a, b, b, b;  a;  a, b;  b, b;  b, a, b, b, a, b;  b;  a, b, b;  b;  a, b. .  b, a, b;  b;  a, b, b, b;  b, a, b;  b, b, a. .  b;  a;  a, b;  b, a. .  a, b, a;  b. .  a, b, a;  a, b, a, b;  b, a, b, a, b;  a, b, a, b;  a, b, a, b;  a, b, b;  a, b;  a, b;  b;  b;  b;  a, a;  a;  a, b, a, b;  b, b;  b;  a, b, a, b;  b;  a, b, a, b;  a, b, a, b;  b, b. .  b;  a, b, a, b;  b;  b;  b;  b;  a, b;  a, a;  b, a;  b, a;  b, b;  b, b, b;  a, b, a;  a, b;  b, b;  b, a, b;  b, b, b;  b;  b;  b;  a;  b;  b, b, a, b;  b;  b;  a, b, b;  b, b;  b;  b;  b, b;  b, b, a, b;  b;  a, a;  b;  b, b, a;  b;  b, a;  b;  b, a;  a, a;  b;  b;  b,  b, b;  b, b;  b;  b, b;  b, a;  a;  a, b;  b;  a;  a, b, b;  a, b;  a;  b, b;  b;  b;  b;  a;  b, a;  a;  a, b;  a, b, a;  b;  a, b;  b, b;  b;  a;  a;  a, b, a, b, b;  b, b;  b;  b, b;  b, b;  a;  b;  b, b;  a, b;  b;  a;  b, b;  b;  b;  b, a;  b;  a, b;  a;  b;  b;  a;  b, a, b;  a, b;  b;  b, a, b;  a;  a, b;  b, a, b, b;  b, b;  a;  b;  b;  b;  a, a;  a;  a, b;  a, a, b;  b, b;  b, b;  a;  b, b;  b;  b, a;  a, b, b, a, a, b;  b, a, b, a, b, a, b;  a, b;  b, b;  a,  a, b, a, b;  a, b, a, b, a, b. .  b, a, b, b;  b. .  b;  a, b;  a;  b, b;  b, b;  b, a, b. .  a;  a, b;  b, b;  b, b;  b;  b, a, b;  b. .  b;  b;  b, b;  b;  b. .  b, b;  b, b;  a;  b;  a, a, b. .  b, b;  b, a, b;  b. .  b, b, b;  b. .  b, a;  b;  b;  b, b;  b;  a, b, b. .  b;  b;  a;  a, a. .  a, b, b, a, b;  a;  a, b, a, b;  b;  b, b. .  b, a, a, b;  b;  a;  b, b;  a, b;  a, b;  b. 31 pps & met. are they formulaic as anglo-saxon verses? selim  () .  b;  a, b. .  a,  a, b;  b, b;  b;  b;  b, b;  a. .  b, a, b. .  b;  a, b, a, b;  b, b;  b, b, a, b. .  b;  a, b, a, b;  a, b;  a, a, b;  b, a;  a;  b;  a;  b;  b;  a;  b;  a, b, b, b;  a, a, a, b, a, a, b;  b, a, b, b, a. .  a, b, a, b, b;  b, a;  b;  a;  a, b;  b;  a;  b;  b;  b;  b, a;  b. .  b;  b;  b, b;  b;  a, b. .  a, b, b;  b;  b;  b;  b;  b, a, b, b;  a, b, b;  b, a. .  b;  b;  b;  b;  a;  b;  a, b;  a, b;  b, b, a, b;  a;  b;  b;  b. .  b, b;  b, a, b;  a, b;  b;  a, b;  a;  b, a;  b;  a, a. .  a;  a, b, a, b;  b;  b;  b;  b, a. .  b;  a, b;  b;  b;  b;  a, b;  b. .  a, b;  b;  b, b;  b, b;  a;  a, b;  b;  b, a;  a, b;  a, a, b;  a, b. .  a;  b;  a, b, a, b, a;  a, a, b;  a, b, a, b, a;  b;  b;  b;  a, a, b, a. .  a, b, a, b;  a, b, a, b;  a;  b, b;  b, b;  b;  b, a, b, b;  b, a, a, b;  b;  b, b;  b, b;  a, b;  b;  b, b, b, a;  b, a, b. .  b, a;  b;  a;  a, b, b, b;  b, b;  b, b, a, b;  a, b;  b, a, b. .  b, b;  b;  b, a;  b;  b;  a, b;  b, b. .  b;  b;  b;  b, b. .  b, b;  b;  b;  a, b;  b;  a;  b, b;  a;  a. .  b;  a;  a;  b, b;  b;  b, b. .  b;  b. met: proem a, b, a, a, a, b. met a, b, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, a, b, a, a, b, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, b, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, a, b, b, a, a, b, b, b, b, a, a, a, b, b, a. 32 michiko ogura selim  () met a, a, a, a, b, b, a, a. met b, b, b, b, a. met b, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, a, a, a, b, a, a, a, b, a, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, a, a. met b, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, b, a, a, b, a, a, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a, b, a. met a, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, a, a, b, a, a, b, a. met a, a, a, b, b, a, a, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, a, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, a. met a, b, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, a, a, b, a, b, a, a, a, b, a, a, b, b, b, a, a, b, a, a, b, b, a, b. met a, a, b, a, a, a, a, b, a, b, a, a, b, a, a, b, b, b, b, b, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, a, a, b, a, b, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, a, b, a, b, b. met b, a, b, b, b, b, b, b, a, b, b, b, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, b, b, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, b, b, b. met b, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, a, a, a, b, a, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, a, b, a, b, b, b, a, a, b, b, a, b, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, a, a, b, b, a, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, a, b, b, b, b, a, a, b, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, b, b, a. met b, a, b, a, a, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, b, b, a, b, a, b. met a, b, b, a, b, b, b, a, a, a, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, a, a, a, b, a, b, a, a, b, b, a, a, a, a, b, a, a, a, b, a, a, a, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, b, b, b. met a, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, a. met b, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, b. 33 pps & met. are they formulaic as anglo-saxon verses? selim  () met a, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, a, b, b, b, b, b, a, b. met a, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, a, a, b, a, b, b, b, b, a, b, b, b, a. met a, b, a, a, b, a. met b, b, a, b, b, a, a, b, a, a, b, a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, b, b. met a, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, a, b, a, a, a, a, a, b, a, a, a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a, a, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, a, a, b, a, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, a, a, b, b, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, a, b, b, b, a, a, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a, a, a, b, a, a, a, b, b, b, b, a, a, a, a, b, b, b, a, b, b, a, a, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, a, b, b, b, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, a, b, a, b, b, b, a, a, b, a, a, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, a, b, a, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, b, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, a, b, b, b, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, b, b, a, a, b. met b, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, a, a, b, a, b, a, a, a, a, b, b, a, a, b. met b, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, a, a, a, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, b, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, a, b, a, b, b, a, a, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, b. met b, b, b, a, a, b, b. met a, b, b, a, b, a, a, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, a, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, b, b, a, a, b, b, a, b, b, b, a. met b, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, a, a, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, b, 34 michiko ogura selim  () a, a b, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, a, a, b, a, a, b, b. met b, b, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, a, a, a, a, b, a, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, a, a, b, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, b, b, b, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, b, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, b. met b, b, b, a, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, b, b, b, b, a, a, a, b. met a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, a, a, a, b, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, a, b, b, a, b, b, b, b, b, b, a, b, b. met b, b, b, a, a, b, b, b, a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a, b, a, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, a, a, b, b, a, a, b, b, b, b, b, a, a, a, b, a, a, b, a, b, a, a, b, a, b, b, b, a, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, b, b, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, a, b, a, b, a, b, a, b, b, a, a, a, b, b, a, a. met a, b, b, a, b, b, a, b, a, a, b, b. met b, b, b, a, b, a, a, b, a, b, a, a, b, b. michiko ogura chiba university r benson, l. d. : the literary character of anglo-saxon formulaic poetry. pmla : –. 35 pps & met. are they formulaic as anglo-saxon verses? selim  () conlee, j. w. : a note on verse composition in the meters of boethius. neuphilologische mitteilungen : –. creed, r. p. : the making of an anglo-saxon poem. elh .: –. fry, d. k. : old english formulas and systems. english studies : –. ker, n. r. : catalogue of manuscripts containing anglo-saxon. oxford, clarendon press. krapp, g. p., ed. : the paris psalter and the meters of boethius, in g. p. krapp and e. v. k. dobbie, eds. (–) the anglosaxon poetic records i–vi. london-new york, routledge and kegan paul-columbia university press. magoun, jr., f. p. : the oral-formulaic character of anglosaxon narrative poetry. speculum : –. mitchell, b., c. ball and a. cameron , : short titles of old english texts. ase , –, with addenda and corrigenda. ase , –. morrell, m. c. : a manual of old english biblical materials. knoxville, university of tennessee press. ogura, m. : the making of the metres of boethius, in e. yamada, ed., bonds of language ― festschrift for dr. yasuaki fujiwara (tokyo, kaitakusha), –. o’neill, p. p., ed. : king alfred’s old english prose translation of the first fifty psalms. cambridge, (mass.), the medieval academy of america. robinson, f. c. : variation. a study in the diction of beowulf. unpublished dissertation, university of north carolina. 36 michiko ogura selim  () received  sep ; revision received  oct ; accepted  oct  sedgefield, w. j., ed. , rpt. : king alfred’s old english version of boethius. oxford-darmstadt, clarendon presswissenschaliche buchgesellscha. ! selim 20.indb kath stevenson, selim 20 (2013–2014): 199–235issn: 1132–631x some extra-linguistic evidence for the irish provenance of longleat house, marquess of bath, ms 29 and oxford, bodleian library, ms e mus 232 1 abstract: an irish connection for longleat house, marquess of bath, ms 29 and oxford, bodleian library ms e mus 232 has long been supposed, primarily on linguistic grounds. however, in ogilvie-thomson’s e.e.t.s edition of the rollean prose and verse in ms longleat 29 (1988)—the most extensive discussion of this material yet published—this assumed irish provenance was challenged. this article presents some extra-linguistic evidence in support of the irish provenance of both manuscripts, which has been suggested on linguistic grounds, and appends a transcription of a previously unpublished devotional item fr om ms longleat 29. keywords: medieval ireland; richard rolle; longleat house marquess of bath, ms 29; oxford, bodleian library ms e mus 232; devotional literature; irish hagiography; medieval hiberno-english. resumen: en razón de criterios principalmente lingüísticos, se ha asumido desde hace tiempo una conexión entre longleat house, marquess of bath, ms 29 y oxford, bodleian library ms e mus 232 con irlanda. sin embargo, este origen irlandés se cuestionó en la edición de ogilvie-thomson para la e.e.t.s. (1988) de la prosa y verso de richard rolle en longleat 29—el análisis más extenso de este material publicado hasta la fecha. este artículo presenta material extralingüístico que apoya un origen irlandés para ambos manuscritos, tal y como sugiere la evidencia lingüística, y añade en un apéndice la transcripción de un texto devocional inédito de ms longleat 29. palabras clave: irlanda medieval; richard rolle; longleat house marquess of bath, ms 29; oxford, bodleian library ms e mus 232; literatura devocional; hagiografía irlandesa; anglo-irlandés medieval. the two manuscripts discussed here are linked not only in their transmission of rollean material in medieval hiberno-english (hereaft er mhe) and in their shared preservation of two other devotional vernacular texts, but also, and 1 research for this article was made possible by the award of a travel bursary fr om the society for the study of medieval languages and literature, here gratefully acknowledged. my thanks also to dr kate harris, longleat house and to the librarians in the bodleian library for facilitating access to the manuscripts considered. i would like to record my gratitude to dr stephen kelly, dr ryan perry and to the two anonymous readers at selim for their comments on draft versions of this article and to thank charles roe for his kindness in checking a number of references for material held in the bodleian. 200 kath stevenson selim 20 (2013–2014) rather more pertinently, in that the main scribal hand of longleat 29 is that of bodleian e mus 232.2 there are, as will be shown below, good reasons for thinking that both these manuscripts are anglo-irish productions; and in light of the importance of longleat 29 as a “major anthology” of rollean material (hanna 2010: xx), the irish provenance of these manuscripts is worthy of more consideration in terms of anglophone literary culture in late medieval ireland than it has received hitherto.3 longleat 29 is a miscellaneous compilation in 169 folios,4 containing theological and devotional material in latin and english, prose and verse.5 dating fr om the second quarter of the fi ft eenth century—a terminus a quo provided by the reference, in the fi nal text of the manuscript, to st. lawrence’s night, 1422; and a terminus ad quem of “not later than the middle of the century” indicated on palaeographic grounds (ogilvie-thomson 1988: xxi)—the manuscript measures c. 220 × c.165mm (155–167 × 100–115) and is written throughout (except for some fi ller items and additions)6 in a 2 these manuscripts have received some published attention elsewhere, focused almost exclusively on their rollean contents. see ogilvie-thomson 1980; 1988. see also allen 1927, passim; and, on some of the problems in ogilvie-thomson’s e.e.t.s. edition, hanna 2010. longleat 29, on account of its copy of the “parson’s tale,” is also discussed by manly & rickert 1940. 3 the implications of the anglo-irish provenance of these (and several other manuscripts containing middle english texts in circulation in late medieval ireland) are discussed in stevenson 2011. 4 fols iii+163+iii, numbered 1–169. 5 a full description of the manuscript and its contents can be found in ogilviethomson 1988: xvii–xxxi and in hanna 2010: 208–212. 6 of the subsidiary hands, hand 2, a “contemporary textura” is responsible for the macaronic lyric on f. 3r, the pentecostal hymn “veni creator spiritus” on f. 16v and the latin list of seven points to consider for the avoidance of sin on f. 57r. hand 3, an “informal anglicana with secretary a,” dated by hanna to s.xv2/2 (2010: 208) has added the english lyrics (imev 3743 and suppl. 2169) found on ff . 143v, 145r, 144r and 145v–146v. 201 irish provenance of longleat ms 29 and bodleian ms e mus 232 selim 20 (2013–2014) single, slightly rounded, anglicana hand. the second booklet of the manuscript contains—in addition to a copy of the shorter version of walter hilton’s mixed life, an english version of william flete’s de remediis contra temptaciones, a copy of chaucer’s “parson’s tale” (opening simply under the heading “prima pars penitencie”), and various other forms of confession and prayers—a substantial collection of rollean material in english. the rollean work consists of the form of living, ego dormio, the commandment, desire and delight, ghostly gladness, an excerpt fr om meditation on the passion a, and various lyrics by rolle, including love is life, jesus god’s son, thy joy be every deal, and all sins shall thou hate.”7 as such, longleat 29 witnesses a substantial and important collection of vernacular work by rolle, which is, in its range, comparable to the extensive rollean material found in lincoln, cathedral library, ms 91 (the “thornton manuscript”) and cambridge, cambridge university library ms dd. v 64.8 oxford, bodleian library ms e mus 232, extant in its (presumably original) fi ft eenth century binding of whittawed leather over wooden boards, is, at 66 folios9 and c. 160 × 115mm (125 × 80mm) a somewhat smaller volume than longleat 29, and its contents number only fi ve items, all in the same anglicana hand of the main scribe of longleat 29. the fi rst of these items is rolle’s meditation on the passion b, followed by a treatise on humility and 7 ogilvie-thomson argues that the lyric following “all sins shall thou hate” in the longleat ms, which begins “ihesu swet nowe wil i synge” (imev 3238) should also be attributed to rolle (1988: lxxxix–xci). for some reservations as to this argument, see hanna (2010: xxiii). 8 longleat 29 contains, in full or in part, seven of the sixteen vernacular rolle works that hanna, following allen, outlines as the canon of his vernacular material. (2010: xviii–xix) this compares to six for cul ms dd.v.64, and seven for lincoln, cathedral library, ms 91. 9 the collation of the manuscript is vii+66+iv. 202 kath stevenson selim 20 (2013–2014) meekness, ascribed to st. gregory and st. bernard,10 an english translation, by “nicholas bellew,” of edmund rich’s (edmund of abington) speculum ecclesie, and, concluding the volume, two meditations on the passion, in verse and prose respectively. the verse meditation on the passion (incipit: “[i]hesu þat hast me dere j boght;” imev 1761) is accompanied by marginal crosses, and introduced with a rubric “prescribing it as a devotional exercise” (woolf 1968: 164) which instructs the reader that they should: [i]n seiynge of þis orisone stynteth and bydeth at euery cros and þynketh what ye haue seide ff or a more deuout prayere fond i neuer of the passioun who would so devoutly say hitte. a “short popularisation” of the original vernacular translation of john of howden’s philomena (woolf 1968: 163) this meditative poem survives in a number of manuscripts.11 a copy of the same text, complete with the same prescriptive rubric, is found in longleat 29, and it is followed, in both manuscripts, by an english prose meditation and prayers, (incipit: “[o] myghtful ihesu grete was þe payne þat ȝe suff red”) witnessed only in longleat 29 and e mus 232, and seemingly “inspired by the cult of the five wounds” (ogilvie-thomson 1988: xxviii). there is little by way of internal evidence for the date of e mus 232, but given that the same scribe is responsible for both manuscripts, it is reasonable to assume that its date is roughly commensurate with that of longleat 29, or possibly, as the respective dates given in hanna’s catalogue suggest, slightly earlier.12 10 hanna suggests that this item might, in fact, be comprised of two separate texts, but, following jolliff e g.19, treats them together in his list of the manuscript’s contents (hanna 2010: 170). 11 it is discussed further in kelly & thompson 2005 and boff ey 2005. 12 ogilvie-thomson suggests a date of c. 1430–1450 for both manuscripts. (1988: xxi, xxxiiii) hanna dates longleat ms to “s.xv2/4 or med” and bodleian, emus 232 to “s.xv in” (2010: 170, 208). 203 irish provenance of longleat ms 29 and bodleian ms e mus 232 selim 20 (2013–2014) in terms of the wider patterns of dissemination of manuscripts containing rolle’s works, the early to mid-fi ft eenth-century date of both longleat 29 and e mus 232 is entirely typical, and would seem to support sargent’s elegantly formulated observation that “the fi ft eenth and early sixteenth centuries were the great age of thirteenthand fourteenth-century spirituality”13 (sargent, cited barratt 2008: 361). certainly, as barratt notes, there are very few extant rollean manuscripts fr om pre-1400 (2008: 361), and when the focus is further refi ned to manuscripts which contain copies of rolle’s vernacular works, the date of the two manuscripts in question fi ts neatly with the increased circulation of rollean works in the fi rst half of the fi ft eenth century. a brief mention might be made here of the likely audience for these vernacular rollean materials. whilst rolle’s latin works—the works which established his national and international reputation— were likely to have been intended for, and certainly reached, a literate and educated clerical audience (doyle 1953: 190; barratt 2008: 361– 362), his vernacular writings were aimed rather at a predominantly female audience and “for other unlettered christians” (hartung, cited barratt 2008: 362). and as gillespie suggests (gillespie 1989: 321): the interests and abilities of the female religious for whom rolle was writing in the fourteenth century are in some ways paradigmatic of those of the wider lay audience in the fi ft eenth. moreover, there is ample evidence that clerical readers also came to value and exploit the resources of this vernacular tradition of spiritual guidance.14 there is, in addition to the readers identifi ed by gillespie, further evidence that “early rolle manuscripts (both latin and english) 13 longleat 29’s copy of hilton’s mixed life might also be noted in this context. 14 for this evidence, see gillespie, 1989, and further references there cited. an “interesting example of transfer fr om lay to clerical ownership” is found in the 1391 will of sir william de thorpe of northamptonshire, in which he bequeathed to his chaplain, henry hammond, “that book which richard heremit composed” (barratt 2008: 363; allen 1927: 413) 204 kath stevenson selim 20 (2013–2014) belonged to various monastic orders, in england and on the continent” (barratt 2008: 363). however, despite this, manly and rickert’s early suggestion that longleat 29 was “almost certainly made in a monastery” (1940: 346) is perhaps open to challenge. the provenance of the longleat ms is discussed further below, but both the date of longleat 29 and its other contents are more likely to suggest ownership by the laity, and ogilvie-thomson’s argument that the manuscript probably belonged to a “devout lay family” is here accepted (1988: xxxi). the likely original readership of bodleian e mus 232 is perhaps similar, although the inscriptions of the names of female readers—“annes hemperby,” “annes helperby” (twice) and “elyȝabethe stoughton”—led ogilvie-thomson to speculate on the possible later presence of the manuscript “in a community of women” (1988: xxxii).15 however, again the date of the manuscript in question may perhaps make lay ownership more likely. as for the origin of these manuscripts, the primary evidence for their provenance that has been discussed in previous scholarship is linguistic. both longleat 29 and e mus 232 are listed by mcintosh and samuels in the fourth category (“d”) of their seminal survey of mhe, placed under the heading, “unlocalized texts for which the evidence of irish provenance is wholly or mainly linguistic” (1968: 2).16 that both manuscripts evidence texts which are in mhe was 15 a similar suggestion—“possibly nuns”—is recorded in the relevant entry in the lalme index of sources (1986: i.272). 16 the manuscripts in question are items 38 and 44 in their discussion. they comment, “some of the longest texts are the unlocalized ones of d: eight of them include copies of works which originated in england and which, according to common later me practice, were ‘translated’ by their copyist. yet the list of features that can be complied fr om the evidence of a, [“[l]ocalized documents”], b [“[t]exts for which there is some evidence of localization”] and c [“unlocalized texts dealing with irish matters or having other irish associations, the language of which confi rms that provenance”] is so distinctive that the provenance of these longer texts is left in no doubt” (mcintosh & samuels 1968: 4). the linguistic features they identify as characteristic of mhe are here reproduced in appendix b. 205 irish provenance of longleat ms 29 and bodleian ms e mus 232 selim 20 (2013–2014) accepted in lalme, where, in the case of bodleian e mus 232, the dialect was further localised to dublin, on the basis of a detailed linguistic analysis of the entire manuscript (lalme, i: 272, 274). the dialectal analysis of the texts of both manuscripts off ered by mcintosh and samuels and in lalme is here accepted, as it is by hanna, in his descriptive catalogue of the english manuscripts of richard rolle, where both books in question were noted by him as “central exhibits in the formulation of middle hiberno english” (hanna 2010: 171) and by thompson, “[b]oth [manuscripts] were largely copied by the same main scribe writing in a hibernoenglish dialect that (similarly to that of the much earlier copyist of bl, ms harley 913) preserves underlying south-east midland forms” (2011: 272).17 by contrast, however, the extent to which the dialect of the vernacular texts in longleat 29 and e mus 232 should be seen as representing mhe was questioned by ogilvie-thomson, who summarised her linguistic analysis of the dialect as follows (ogilviethomson 1988: xxxiv–xxxv): on linguistic evidence professors mcintosh and samuels classify the dialect of lt [longleat 29] and mu [e mus 232] as anglo-irish. they list thirty distinguishing features of this dialect, any of which can and does appear in other dialects, but which cumulatively argue anglo-irish provenance. in lt fi ve of these features never occur; ten, predominantly of a phonological nature, occur regularly; in the rest, predominantly morphological, the scribe shows such marked inconsistency 17 bl, harley 913 is listed in the second category of mcintosh and samuels’s survey, “b: texts for which there is some evidence of localization” (1968: 2). the irish provenance of this manuscript has been accepted since the appearance of heuser’s edition in 1904. the cumulative import of the mhe features identifi ed by mcintosh and samuels in the vernacular items in longleat 29 and in e mus 232 seems, to me, convincing. 206 kath stevenson selim 20 (2013–2014) that it appears he was prepared to adopt whatever forms he found in his copy. […]18 the sum of these features points to the standard fi ft eenthcentury literary language19 based on the east midland dialect⒮ , with a sprinkling of south-eastern forms, the scribe’s fl exibility in all but a few of the anglo-irish criteria 18 ogilvie-thomson identifi es the following as the most signifi cant characteristics of the language of lt’s main scribe: the refl ex of oe ā normally appears as o, but a is found occasionally in texts of northern origin, as rolle: haly, and, particularly in rhyme, lare, mare, sare. oe ă before a simple nasal is regularly a; before a lengthening group both a and o are found. oe y normally appears as y or i, but u is found occasionally in bury, thurst-, lust v., þurleden, cusset, cluster, and e in iberiet, mery, euel, besy. the preferred vowel in unstressed infl exional syllables is e; i/y is fr equent in the gen. sg., especially goddis, cristis, but very rare in the p.p. the normal pr.2 sg,ind, ending is -est, but there are eleven occurrences of -s in the rolle texts. normal pr. 3 sg.ind, is -eth, occasionally reduced to -et, with two occurrences of -s in rolle texts. pr.pl.ind. shows both -eth, -en, and no ending, the preference varying fr om text to text although -eth predominates in the rolle texts. similar variation is seen in the use of -n in the strong p.p., it is preferred in the rolle texts. infi nitives in -n are relatively infr equent. pr.p. is regularly -ynge, even when rhyming on -and. the 3rd pl.nom.pron. is regularly þay (variously spelt); acc./dat. ham, less fr equently hem, with only one occurrence of thaym; gen. har(e), less fr equently her(e), and three occurrences of þar. initial shis always spelt as such. medially it varies between sh and ssh, very rarely sch. occasionally s(s)h is found for ss, as in mysshe, “miss” n. and v. rhyming on isse. the initial consonant in “give” and related forms is predominantly y, but g occurs sporadically throughout. earlier ht is spelt both ght and ȝt, and initial [j] both y and ȝ; in both cases mu prefers the ȝ forms. […] it is clear [the scribe] was prepared to interchange medial i and y, unstressed e and y, fi nal d and t, and initial and fi nal þ and th, and that fi nal –e had no infl exional signifi cance. 19 the extent to which there was a “standard fi ft eenth-century literary language” might, perhaps, be challenged. 207 irish provenance of longleat ms 29 and bodleian ms e mus 232 selim 20 (2013–2014) suggests that he had left his native country some time before, retaining only traces of his original linguistic habits.20 however, the grounds on which ogilvie-thomson reached her conclusions as to the scribal dialect of longleat 29 and e mus 232 are perhaps open to question. the manner in which ogilvie-thomson applies the criteria identifi ed by mcintosh and samuels—criteria whose validity she does not question (1980: 85)—to her analysis of the scribe’s dialect seems unnecessarily rigid. the typical features of mhe 20 the analysis off ered by ogilvie-thomson in her edition of the rollean works in longleat 29 and e mus 232 (the base manuscripts for her e.e.t.s. edition) stems fr om the edition of the english works in longleat 29 that constituted her doctoral thesis, and a fuller discussion of the dialect of the main scribe of longleat 29 is to be found there (1980: 84–87). the accuracy of the data collected by ogilvie-thomson is, it should be stressed, not being disputed, but there are perhaps, problems with her application of this data. in her thesis, ogilviethomson initially focuses her analysis of the applicability of the criteria noted by mcintosh and samuels for the identifi cation of mhe to the dialect of longleat 29 by examining the second text found in the manuscript (an anonymous prose treatise) where she thought it likely that the scribe was translating as he wrote. in her analysis of this text, she argued that fewer than half the common features of mhe were present. however, at c. 350 lines in length, the text selected for the detailed examination, whilst not negligible, is not particularly extensive, as the lack of examples for a quarter or more of the main criteria identifi ed by mcintosh and samuels suggests. the assumption that the anonymous prose treatise (unknown elsewhere) was being directly translated, rather than simply copied, by the scribe, and thus is an especially accurate refl ection of his own dialect is also problematic. so to, perhaps, is the location of the item chosen for this detailed analysis, close to the beginning of the fi rst booklet, as the dialectal anomalies outlined by ogilvie-thomson might simply attest to a period of scribal “workingin”—a reasonably common phenomenon in copying practice (benskin & laing 1981). perhaps most disconcerting for her argument is the fact that, on the basis of her own analysis, and by her own admission, the dialect of ogilvie-thomson’s “text ii” is not particularly representative of that of the rest of the manuscript, in which a much greater ratio of mhe features are found: “linguistically, the ratio of anglo-irish features is somewhat improved in the rest of the manuscript, some of them appearing some of the time in all of the texts” (1980: 86). 208 kath stevenson selim 20 (2013–2014) identifi ed by mcintosh and samuels were drawn fr om texts that ranged quite widely in date, and represented the dialect of various parts of anglophone late medieval ireland. not every single item they cite will be witnessed in any given mhe text, as can be readily demonstrated by analysis of the texts for which an irish provenance is not in doubt. rather, it is the cumulative import of these features that enables a dialectal identifi cation to be made. in this light, it should be noted that in relation to the dialect of the vernacular texts in longleat 29 as a whole, according to ogilviethomson’s own analysis (1980: 84–87), of the twenty criteria identifi ed by mcintosh and samuels as “the more important” in identify ing mhe (1968: 4–5; reproduced in appendix b): nine of the twenty are always present: (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (9), (10), (16) and (17);21 a further two are the predominant forms: (1), (2); four are fr equently, but not consistently found: (8), (14), (15), and (20); two occur sometimes: (11), (12); two rarely: (13), (19); and only one: (18) never occurs. of the eleven further features they identity as “fr equent but not universal:”22 one: (7) is always present; two: (1) and (8) occur sometimes; a further three: (4a), (5) and (6) are found rarely; and fi ve: (2), (3), (4b), (9), (10) never occur. nineteen of the twenty more important dialectal features, therefore, are found in the vernacular contents of longleat 29. obviously, the dialectal features of a text need bear no necessary relation to the provenance of the manuscript where it is found: linguistic profi les cannot, and should not, be confl ated with manuscript provenance, but mcintosh and samuels’s identifi cation of the scribal dialect as mhe seems, to the writer, more convincing than ogilviethomson’s hypothesis of a “native” dialect diluted by considerable time in england. 21 with regard to (17): “final -e has no morphological signifi cance,” i would accept ogilvie-thomson’s observation that this is not particularly signifi cant in light of the late date of the manuscript. 22 i here treat the features they number as (4a) and (4b) separately. 209 irish provenance of longleat ms 29 and bodleian ms e mus 232 selim 20 (2013–2014) allen, considering the rollean works in longleat 29 in her 1927 study, off ered no speculation as to the manuscript’s provenance, focusing rather on textual issues in the works by rolle it transmitted. longleat 29 was studied further by manly and rickert in the descriptions of the manuscripts that formed the fi rst of their eight-volume study of the text of the canterbury tales (although it is by no means clear if longleat’s copy of the “parson’s tale” was recognised as such by either the scribe or the early readers of the manuscript). as their interest was in the chaucerian text, manly and rickert, in accordance with the procedure explicated in their preface, mentioned only what they felt were the more notable items in the manuscript, but they off ered the fi rst suggestion as to the manuscript’s origin (manly & rickert 1940: 346): the compilation almost certainly was made in a monastery— perhaps christchurch, canterbury […]—by a number of monks, one beginning the principal book, others adding the smaller books that precede and follow, and still others fi lling in blank spaces with short pieces, quotations and so on. in positing longleat 29 as a monastic production, manly and rickert were infl uenced by their belief that the main texts of manuscript were the work of multiple hands—an assessment that has not been borne out by subsequent examinations of the manuscript by, amongst others, expert palaeographers such as neil ker (ogilvie-thomson 1988: xv, xxx). in total, only three hands are to be identifi ed in the manuscript. the slightly rounded anglicana of the main scribe is responsible for the overwhelming majority of the manuscript’s contents, with two subsidiary scribes responsible only for two lyrics on fol 143v–146v (hand 3) and three latin fi ller items on fols 3v, 16v, and 57r (hand 2). the appearance of the main scribal hand does undergo slight changes in the course of his copying, becoming rather more “relaxed” towards the end of the manuscript, but it is still recognisable both as the same hand of the earlier sections of longleat 29, and as that of bodleian e mus 232. 210 kath stevenson selim 20 (2013–2014) given their assumption that the manuscript was likely to be a monastic production, and following the lead provided by the addition of the name “goldwell” on f. 168r in a fi ft eenth-century hand, manly and rickert postulated that longleat 29 might have been produced at christchurch cathedral, canterbury (manly & rickert 1940: 347): on f. 168 is the name “joh[s] goldew[e?]ll (15 c), written as an owner might write; and cf. “…d.wel” on f.4. the family name [goldwell] is closely linked with canterbury—goldwells held lands in the 15 c at fawkham and bethersden—and with christchurch particularly: j. goldwell was third prior in 1435 […]; a john goldwell was monk and sacristan […]; and others were there in the early 16 c. the succession of names, together with the obvious continuation of the of the ms fr om time to time by diff erent writers, suggests that it may all have been the work of diff erent members of the same family. which john wrote his name in the ms it is impossible to say; he may have been not any of the canterbury monks but a layman of the same family. james goldwell, who died in 1498 as bishop of norwich, is identifi ed by wills and property transactions as a member of the kentish family […] and was nephew, brother, uncle, and great uncle of men named john goldwell. in this assessment, manly and rickert are, perhaps, at risk of confl ating the origin of the manuscript with a suggestion as to its early provenance, a confl ation made all the more tempting in terms of the larger project in which they were engaged. as ogilviethomson observes (1988: xxx–xxxi): [manly and rickert’s] collation showed the [longleat 29] text of the parson’s tale to be fr om an immediate common ancestor with the ellesmere ms, but without the latter’s editing, and so of high textual value, and it was for this reason they were anxious to place the manuscript in the environs of canterbury, and correctly identifi ed members of the goldwell family who held offi ce in the priory there. however the manuscript shows none of the palaeographic characteristics of a canterbury text, 211 irish provenance of longleat ms 29 and bodleian ms e mus 232 selim 20 (2013–2014) and although the link with the goldwells remains valid, this is an indication of ownership rather than origin. ogilvie-thomson, although rejecting an irish provenance on the dialectal grounds discussed above, off ered no alternative suggestion as to the place of the manuscript’s origin. her research into the later ownership of longleat 29 showed that the manuscript was in the possession of sir john thynne, “fi rst knight of the name, and builder of longleat house” by 1577 at the latest. not only does thynne’s name occur, in his own hand, on ff . 2r and 166r, but she was able to identify longleat 29 with an entry in the 1577 manuscript list of the contents of his library; and to suggest a possible (if necessarily speculative) scenario for the transmission of the manuscript fr om john goldwell, a mercer and citizen of london (d. 1466) into the possession of john thynne (1988: xx). as hanna notes, the dialect of the third scribal hand, placed by lalme in northeast somerset, and dated by him to the latter half of the fi ft eenth century, would support the supposition that the manuscript was in the longleat area in this period (lalme i: 137, 237; hanna 2010: 211–212). however, even if the dialect of the third scribal hand is accepted as indicative of the whereabouts of the manuscript in the later fi ft eenth-century, the manuscript’s relatively early presence in south west england need not preclude the irish origin suggested dialectally by the work of the main scribe: an irish origin accepted by hanna (2010: xxix). there is, however, extra-linguistic evidence to support the irish provenance suggested dialectally. the textual affi liations of a number of the items in longleat 29 are potentially of interest in this respect, but constraints of space prevent their discussion here. instead, the suggestive contents of a single item fr om the compilation will be examined, and its implications for the likely provenance of the volume considered. the item in question, an anonymous exposition on the lord’s prayer, incorporating a litany that names a number of irish saints, and a concluding prayer in 212 kath stevenson selim 20 (2013–2014) english,23 has never (to the writer’s knowledge) been published; a semi-diplomatic transcription, fr om this, the only manuscript in which it appears, can be found in appendix a.24 the item is, of course, of intrinsic interest, but in the context of the present study, the evidence suggesting localisation to an irish audience is of primary importance. as can be seen fr om the transcription, the item is structured around the latin text of the lord’s prayer, and proceeds through it, phrase by phrase, off ering a translation of the latin and devout, fi rst person expositions of each. following on fr om this (and judging fr om the layout of the manuscript, intended to be incorporated into it) is a fi nal prayer, invoking the sign of the cross, and addressed, in accordance with the structure of the sarum use, to the three persons of the trinity, the virgin, and to the holy prophets, patriarchs, apostles, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, and virgins. the text of the latter section is punctuated in the manuscript by the regular insertion of crosses, presumably serving as a prompt for a reader to perform the sign of the cross.25 three aspects of this text might be seen to support the idea that the manuscript was produced for an irish audience. firstly, 23 my interpretation of the materials that constitute this text is at odds with that off ered by hanna, who describes it “an english tract on the pater noster (ends. fol. 21) […] with two english prayers naming several irish saints (fols. 21v–22)” (2010: 209) however, the list of irish saints is, as i read it, incorporated into the body of the tract, which i suggest to end on fol. 21v; and to be followed by a single prayer invoking the sign of the cross. the item is immediately followed by a latin version of the same (fols. 22r–24v) which is “similar, but not identical” (ogilvie-thomson 1989: xxiii) and which hanna characterises as “the latin source” (2010: 209). 24 the item was edited by ogilvie-thomson for her doctoral thesis (1980: 208– 229). the transcription and discussion off ered here are independent of ogilviethomson’s work. 25 cf. the copy of imev 1761, mentioned above, and found in both longleat 29 and e mus 232, which have crosses, identical to those of the current item, inserted in the margins alongside the text. 213 irish provenance of longleat ms 29 and bodleian ms e mus 232 selim 20 (2013–2014) and perhaps least signifi cantly, there is, in the exposition of the second petition of the lord’s prayer, a shift fr om the heavenly to the temporal realm, in which ireland is explicitly mentioned: [fol 19v] ¶ to these prayers the state & prosperitee of al holy chirche our holy fadre the pope hys cardynals. his consaill. our bisshop our curates withal degrees in holy church [fol 20r] our kynge the quene the gouernour of this land with al har trewe consaill. the estate & prosperite of the roialmes of england irland & fraunce al tho that peeȝ maynteneth & trewe peple defendeth. my fadre my modre sowles my bretheren my sustres my kyn alliaunces al my good fr endes and in especial i. b. i. i. a. k ¶ the grouping of “england, ireland and france”26 here might well be formulaic, although the phrase does not seem particularly well attested in other texts of the period, but it is interesting that it follows the reference to “our king, the queen, the governor of this land,” which is strongly suggestive of an irish context. the role of chief governor was, at this date, an administrative post unique to ireland, modelled on the role of justiciar established in twelft hcentury england, although no longer operative there by the reign of edward i. in ireland however, the need to have a permanent head of the administration, governing on behalf of an absent king remained; and whilst the title came to be more commonly known as “lieutenant,” or “chief lieutenant” rather than “justiciar” by the late fourteenth / early fi ft eenth century, the role was essentially the same.27 given the very personal nature of the section of the prayer that follows, it seems that the references to “ireland” and to the “gouernour” might have more than a formulaic resonance 26 the same petition occurs in the latin version of the text immediately following in the manuscript. 27 for details of the role, and its development fr om the model of english administration, see otway-ruthven 1965. 214 kath stevenson selim 20 (2013–2014) with the author of this item and, one assumes, to the scribe who copied it (if the two are not one and the same). if the scribe was simply copying the piece fr om an exemplar, it seems unlikely that details such as the initials of individuals would be thoughtlessly transcribed, when they could so readily be substituted with details more relevant to the owner or users of the volume. more suggestive still of an irish provenance are the details of the exposition of the third, fourth and fi ft h phrases of the pater noster, which incorporates a litany of saints.28 the majority of the saints occurring in this litany are widely known (most, in fact, appear in the sarum use), but following the fi ft h latin phrase, there occurs a cluster of saints with very specifi c local associations. [f. 20v] et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut & nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris ¶ o lord god of pitte mercy & of grace foryeve vs our dettes our synnes & our trespasses as we foryeven to oure dettors. lord of amendes þu graunt vs space. of charite þu let vs nat mysshe of thy blisse þu graunt vs solace throgh þe swet callynge & bisy besechynge of thi clere & holy confessours. syluestre leo. hiller nicholas martyn. ambrose. ierom gregorie & austeyn dunston swythyn cuthbert & birryn german dompnic fran ceys & leonard benet esmond & bernard patrike fyn nyan columbe canik & brandane molynge synok keuyn & lasriane machot abbane euyn & colman and al other confessours of cristes courte in perfi te charite stalle vs of holy conscience sharpe compunccioun verray contricioun hool confessioun ful satisfaccioun & of al oure synnes ful pardoun þrogh al yor holy intercessioun let vs nat mysshe bot vs al brynge to þy heuynly habitacioun. amen 28 the details of the saints included vary between the english and latin versions, and even when the same saint is mentioned in both, the placing in the text can diff er. ss. “cithe” and david occur only in the latin text; ss. bernard, canice, esmund [sic] (twice), helen, “machot” and otilli, only in the english. 215 irish provenance of longleat ms 29 and bodleian ms e mus 232 selim 20 (2013–2014) of the thirteen fi nal saints named in the litany, the identity of “machot” is uncertain, but the rest of the saints in this cluster have distinctly irish connections, predominantly, but not exclusively, to leinster. patrick and columba are, of course, as two of the three patron saints of ireland, neither obscure, nor peculiar to leinster, but a notable proportion of the other saints mentioned, if the identifi cations suggested below are correct, do have a very local resonance with the province in which it is here argued that longleat 29 was written. st finnian was the founder of the famous abbey at clonard, historically in the province of meath, but by the post-norman period incorporated into leinster,29 and as farmer notes, his leinster connections are emphasised in his tenth-century life (1987: 161). reputed to be the tutor of “the twelve apostles of ireland” finnian is counted one of the principal saints of ireland, and is, in tradition, ascribed (along with st patrick) the role of judge of the irish on doomsday (ó riain 2011: 319).30 legend has it that as a youth st senach fi rst came to clonard as part of a raiding party but thanks to finnian’s “shrewd and prompt action in tonsuring [him]” he later succeeded finnian as abbot (hughes 1954: 23). ss. abban (abán), kevin (coemgen, caoimhghin) and moling are, according to the biographer of the former, the three sons of leinster “of eternal life” whose birth was prophesied by patrick. abban’s primary associations are with adamstown, co. wexford and with killabban, co. laois; the sites of his two main foundations (ó riain 2011: 51–52). kevin, descended in tradition fr om a noble leinster family, was the founder and abbot of glendalough, co. wickow, whose tomb became one of the chief places of pilgrimage 29 see hughes 1954. 30 it is possible that the reference here is to finnian of movilla, rather than to finnian of clonard, although given the leinster connections of many of the saints in this cluster, reference to the latter seems more probable. the associations of finnian of movilla are primarily with ulster (ó riain 2011: 323). 216 kath stevenson selim 20 (2013–2014) in ireland, deemed “important enough to be regarded as one of four irish equals of rome” (ó riain 2011: 148–150; farmer 1987: 123). st moling spent time as a monk in kevin’s foundation of glendalough before establishing his own monastery, st mullin’s, in carlow. fittingly, as one of leinster’s chief saints, he was popularly believed to have been buried with patrick, columba and brigid in downpatrick. clyn’s annals record how, when the black death fi rst appeared in ireland in the autumn of 1348, thousands gathered at his foundation “to wade in the water” in an eff ort to gain protection fr om the plague (williams 2007: 246–247; stokes 1906). a protégé of st abban, st evin (éimhín) is, despite his purported munster heritage, also particularly venerated in leinster; his primary association being with monasterevin, co. kildare. according to the life of abban, he was buried in new ross, co. wexford (ó riain 2011: 291–292). ss canice, laserian and brendan are three of the “twelve apostles of ireland” reputed to have studied under finnian at clonard. born in derry, st canice (in scotland, “st kenneth”) was an irish abbot, whose principal foundation was the monastery of aghaboe, co. laois “became the most important church of ossory” (farmer 1987: 72). laserian (laisren, molaise) is, like canice, venerated in both ireland and scotland. abbot of leighlin, co. carlow, his church gained diocesan status at the synod of rathbreasial “which led to the founding there of a house of canons regular of st augustine and, ultimately, to the composition of the life of st molaise preserved in fr agmentary form in the salamancan codex” (o’riain 2011: 486). his present-day cult is centred on his foundation of inishmurray, co. sligo (farmer 1987: 256). the reference to st brendan is perhaps likely to be to brendan (brandon) the navigator (i.e. brendan of clonfert), although it could also be to brendan of birr. due in no small part to the infl uence of the navigatio brendani, brendan’s cult was strong throughout ireland and, indeed, beyond, being particularly venerated in regions of scotland, wales and brittany. 217 irish provenance of longleat ms 29 and bodleian ms e mus 232 selim 20 (2013–2014) finally, it is by no means certain as to which of the hundreds of homonymous saints mentioned in the irish martyrologies the longleat st colman refers, but given the predominance of saints with leinster associations in this section of the text, the reference is possibly to st colman of clonard; like senach, a successor of finnian as abbot (ó riain 2011: 184; hughes 1954: 21, n. 43). just as the initials and details of the previous quotation were identifi ed as features of the text that were easily adaptable to a new copying context, so too could the local saints listed in this item (if it is not a scribal composition) have been readily changed to better suit the locality in which (or for which) the text was copied. the wording of the text would not be marred in any way by the substitution of one saint for another in the process of local adaptation suggested, and its devotional effi cacy might even be thought enhanced by “personalization” of this kind. as such, the inclusion or retention of the local saints listed in the text supports the irish origin for the manuscript indicated on linguistic grounds.31 there was, in the fourteenth and fi ft eenth centuries, as andré vauchez has demonstrated in his magisterial study of sainthood in the later middle ages,32 a marked shift towards the veneration of local saints in lay devotion, irrespective of whether or not the subjects of their petitions had been offi cially canonised by the 31 the saints listed in the corresponding section of the latin version of this text are “siluestri, leonis, hillarii, martini, patricii, nicholasi, ambrosii, ieronimi, gregorii, augustini, leonardi, germani, swythini, cuthberti, dauid, columbe, dominici, fyniani, francisci, molingi, brandani, cinoci, dunstani, keuini, euini, colmani, abbani, lasriani” [f. 23v]. of interest also is the inclusion of st “cithe” in the latin version (other than brigit, the only female irish saint mentioned. patent roll 36 henry vi, dated dublin, 3rd february 1458, records a warrant to a “john chevir” “giving him licence to found a chantry of one or two chaplains in honour of st cithe the virgin at the altar of st cithe in the church of st michan in the town of oxmantown in the suburbs of dublin.” (http://chancery.tcd.ie/ document/patent/36-henry-vi/4). 32 the period which “marked the apogee of the diff usion and popularity of the cult of saints in the west” (vauchez 1997: 1). 218 kath stevenson selim 20 (2013–2014) church.33 it is perhaps worth noting that over half of the irish saints named in this item fr om longleat are also to be found in the latin kalender of the composite c13–c14 manuscript belonging to the brethren of st. john of jerusalem, waterford; and further examples of these saints appearing in devotional material fr om ireland could doubtless be cited.34 admittedly, it is possible, as ogilvie-thomson’s argument would imply, that the inclusion of these irish saints refl ects merely the patriotic devotional preferences of an anglo-irish scribe working in england. however, given the performative aspect of the text,35 it seems more plausible to assume that the wording is applicable also to the wider audience for whose use the manuscript was intended: perhaps the “devout lay family” suggested by ogilvie-thomson (1988: xxxi). one further detail fr om the text, found in the exposition of “et ne nos inducas in temptationem” might be mentioned in support of a irish provenance for the manscript: [f. 21r] o holy fader patrike oure patroun with columb & bride whose bones resten in doune and al seyntes suynge your trace pray þe the pierles prince of paradise that of al wiked wormes this lond wedet that he endeigne for his dignite & his mercy which his werkes passeth. þe destruers of his trewe peple may approwe in þi pees perfi tly to þi plesaunce amen the phrasing of “oure patroun” and “this lond” in relation to st. patrick, again hints at an assumption of an irish audience. whether 33 vauchez 1997. see especially chapter 10, “local sainthood,” 157–249. 34 for details of this manuscript, see james 1912: ii.277. the relevant saints are: patricii, brendini, columbe, moling, colmani, finneani, senani, and possibly, if it equates to longleat’s “machot,” machin. 35 the insertion of crosses in this section of the text is reminiscent of the instructional rubric appended to the copy of imev 1761 in both the longleat and the e mus manuscripts which urges the reader to “stynteth and bydeth at euery cros and þynketh what ye haue seide.” see kelly & thompson 2005: 2–5. 219 irish provenance of longleat ms 29 and bodleian ms e mus 232 selim 20 (2013–2014) or not the details of the translations of ss. columba and bridget to downpatrick need imply a particularly local knowledge, the specifi c naming of the country’s three patron saints are certainly indicative of an identifi cation with ireland.36 given then, both the mhe dialect of the vernacular texts of longleat 29, and the details of localisation or adaptation to an irish audience outlined in the item discussed above, the obvious conclusion to draw would be that the manuscript is an angloirish production. the scenario postulated by ogilvie-thomson (explicitly in relation to the dialect; implicitly in relation to the exposition on the lord’s prayer)—that the manuscript is the work of a scribe trained in anglo-ireland, but resident in england for a considerable period of time, yet maintaining a patriotic aff ection for the country of his birth, as manifested in his petitioning of local irish saints—seems perhaps unnecessarily complex, especially as there is no evidence whatsoever to preclude the original composition and circulation of longleat 29 in ireland. in e mus 232, the other manuscript known to have been copied by the main scribe of longleat 29, there is no evidence of the sort of localisation discussed above. as noted previously, little is known about the origin or early provenance of this manuscript, and its attribution to ireland has been on dialectal grounds only. if, however, the argument made here for the irish origin of longleat 29 is accepted, then it seems almost certain that e mus 232 is also an example of the literary culture of anglophone late medieval ireland, and there are two further, although tantalizingly nebulous hints that might possibly off er further support for this attribution. on f. 62r, at the conclusion of the copy of st. edmund’s mirror, the english translation of which is, in this manuscript, attributed to “nicholas bellow whose noun konnygne haue ye excused,” is the 36 cf. the marginal additions on f. 72v of oxford, bodleian ms rawlinson b 490, among which are “in vno brigida patricius atque columba ?primus” (cited lalme, i: 279). 220 kath stevenson selim 20 (2013–2014) signature “jon flemmyn,” in red ink and in a contemporary hand. the same name, “johannes fleming” occurs twice in the opening folios of the copy of the prick of conscience found in dublin, tcd ms 156: “johannes fleming hunc librum composuit” (f. 1v, repeated f. 4v). in the dublin manuscript, the name is written in a seventeenth-century hand, and lewis and mcintosh, in their descriptive catalogue of the prick of conscience manuscripts, take this to refer to the copyist who, in the same later hand, transcribed the incipit and fi rst 22 1/2 lines of the medieval text fr om f. 2r, which is obliterated almost entirely by gall stain (1982: 51–52). however, it is not entirely clear, as ogilvie-thomson points out, that “johannes fleming” is to be identifi ed as the person responsible for the c17 copying—“a page and a half of text scarcely seems to justify the description ‘hunc librum’ ” (1988: xxxii, n. 5), and it is possible that the attribution in the seventeenth-century hand might record an earlier, now illegible, name fr om the manuscript. although accepted as such by both allen (1927: 382) and hanna (2010: 170), the hand of the signature in e mus 232 was not judged by neil ker to be that of the scribe. nor was the hand of the e mus 232 signature deemed by r. e. alton (on the grounds of diff erences in minim formation) to be that of the scribe of tcd 156 (ogilviethomson 1988: xxxii). however, the name is the only text in the entire manuscript to be written in red, and ogilvie-thomson suggests, in light of the fact that the point in the manuscript at which the signature appears is the same point at which the rubrication ends, that “jon flemmyn” may have been the rubricator of e mus 232 (1988: xxxii). if the seventeenth-century ascription in tcd 156 is to someone involved in the original copying of the manuscript, then the same name appears in two manuscripts of the same date, both written in a form of mhe localised in lalme to dublin. the extra-linguistic reasons for accepting tcd 156 as an irish production include evidence of its presence in dublin by the 221 irish provenance of longleat ms 29 and bodleian ms e mus 232 selim 20 (2013–2014) sixteenth century at the latest37 and a slight, but noteworthy, lexical substitution in book vi of the poem, in which the “rome” of morris’s edition of the prick of conscience (vi, 6614) is replaced with “deuelyn,” i. e. dublin (f. 99v, line 10).38 whilst there is no hard evidence to confi rm the suggestion, it is tempting to consider the presence of the name “jon fleming” in two early fi ft eenth-century anglophone irish manuscripts as more than merely coincidental. the second piece of extra-linguistic evidence supporting the irish provenance of e mus 232 also pertains to the manuscript’s copy of st. edmund’s mirror, specifi cally to what seems to be its attribution to a named translator: nicholas bellew. a search of tcd’s “a calendar of irish chancery letters c. 1244–1509”39 produces a single record for the name nicholas bellew, dated 10th october 1423, fr om close roll 2 of henry vi, and the following summary of the chancery letter in which his name appears: to the constable of trim castle james younge has pleaded to the k. that―as he has been held in irons in great duress [in ferris in magna duricia] for three quarters of a year in the castle [of trim] and has not been brought forth to answer contrary to law and reason, and he is still detained―he might be brought by suffi cient surety to dublin castle, to be judged according to common law. order to deliver james without delay to nicholas bellew to be brought to dublin castle, by mainprize of john more 37 that the manuscript was defi nitely in ireland by the sixteenth century is demonstrated by the presence in the margin of f. 78r of a sixteenth-century copy of a latin writ, fr om the reign of henry viii, addressed to the sheriff of dublin, and requiring attendance at the court of irish exchequer at dublin. a later note, on f. 1r–v, referring to the year 1618, is a deed, made in dublin, referencing james ware and matthew tirrel; and witnessed by a “white,” a “criff e” (?) and one “william blauer” (lalme, i: 77; lewis & mcintosh 1982: 51–52). 38 the substitution is noted in lalme, i: 77 and discussed more fully in benskin 1997: 94. 39 http://chancery.tcd.ie/document/close/2-henry-vi/40. 222 kath stevenson selim 20 (2013–2014) merchant, william sprot, john pakerell and john taath of dublin, for his safe conduct. intriguingly, then, at roughly the same time in which the attribution of the translation of edmund rich’s work to nicholas bellew in e mus 232 is written, a nicholas bellew is recorded as an eminent citizen of dublin, entrusted to take charge of james yonge, the selfstyled “notary imperial, and the least of the writers and citizens of dublin” (cited seymour 1970: 135) who, in 1422, and at the request of his patron, james butler, earl of ormond and viceroy in ireland, made a translation of the secreta secretorum. if the nicholas bellew named as the translator in e mus 232 is accepted as likely to be the same nicholas bellew referred to in the chancery letter, then there is evidence for locating him in dublin in the fi rst quarter of the fi ft eenth-century. this is, in itself, enough to support the irish provenance of e mus 232 suggested on linguistic grounds; independent of the extra-linguistic evidence outlined above for the irish provenance of its scribe’s other known manuscript, longleat 29. if the evidence presented above is accepted, then the irish provenance indicated dialectally of the two manuscripts discussed is assured. what then, are the implications of this provenance for considerations of anglophone literary culture in late medieval ireland? i have suggested elsewhere that anglophone works in late medieval ireland (certainly in general accounts) have received relatively little critical attention fr om a literary, rather than linguistic perspective.40 moreover, the attention they have received—dolan 1991 and 1999; bliss 1984; bliss & long 1987—has, by virtue of where these accounts appear, been explicitly weighed towards a key concern of literary scholarship concerning mhe materials: that is, in dolan’s formulation, of “original works related specifi cally to ireland” (1999: 223).41 the preoccupation in these accounts with 40 stevenson 2011. 41 the discussion off ered by thompson (2011) brings a useful perspective to bear on these materials. 223 irish provenance of longleat ms 29 and bodleian ms e mus 232 selim 20 (2013–2014) original works—in practice, more oft en than not, the anglophone contents of british library ms harley 91342—is understandable, but it serves, perhaps, to overshadow some of the other extant evidence for anglophone reading communities in late medieval ireland. in contrast to the alterity of cultural identity which is emphasised in such accounts, the evidence of longleat 29 and bodleian e mus 232, in conj unction with that of other manuscripts of demonstrable irish provenance containing copies of middle english texts (such as dublin, trinity college ms 156 [the prick of conscience] or oxford, bodleian library ms douce 104 [piers plowman]) draws attention to some of the commonalities of late medieval reading communities on either side of the irish sea. in doing so, this evidence hints at points of cultural contact and textual transmission that are worthy of much further examination than they have received thus far. kath stevenson queen’s university belfast appendix a: longleat ms 29 (ff. 19r–22r). semi-diplomatic transcription43 of an anonymous english exposition on the lord’s prayer (not known elsewhere) [f. 19r line 1] pater noster qui es in celis sanctifi cetur nomen tuum. o almyghty o alwise & witty. o al gracious & good euerlastynge heuenly fader & son & holy goost hey trinite that art in heuyn ihalowed be thy name. o fourmer of heuen & erth & of al thynge that in ham is. in whom 5 42 ed. lucas 1995. 43 lineation, capitalisation and punctuation of the original retained. raised letters retained, otherwise contractions have been expanded and the supplied letters italicized. tironian “et” silently replaced with “&” throughout. [?] aft er a word indicates an uncertain reading. 224 kath stevenson selim 20 (2013–2014) by whom & of whom al thynge good visible & onvisible bene my lord god my lord maker my sustener my mercy my grace my socour & my sauyour / the i calle the i wor shipe. the i thanke commend & preise with al my soule with al my herte & wt al my mynde that þu neuer need 10 of no creature hauynge bot of thyn owne infi nite bounte desyrynge that creatures weren to haue parte of thy blesse amonge al others thou endeignest me to fourme of noght. witte cunnynge. streynth of body. dyuers goddes of kynd & of fortune me yevynge the wey of thy heuynly 15 roialme me techynge. and by al these goodes me þedre as an heire ther of callynge. by thyn intollerables peynes of iues reprouet betrayet with a cosse i sold. with hard cordes ibounde ilyke an innocent lambe afoor anne pilat & herode falsly accuset with scourges 20 ibette reprouet scornet ivexet ispotte crownet wt thornes ibuff eted in croice isette with sharp nayll feet & handes ithurlet. al the veynes & synowes of thy body ibroken fr o the corone of thyn heed in to the solles of thy feet thy blessed body al to torne. thyn 25 owne clothes itake fr o the with other men clothes in scorne iclothet. these clothes al blodi of thy body þerto fast cleuynge onclothet. þi body nailet[?] inayllet to þe hard crosse at ons vp lift e wt þi crosse isquat doun into a morteys that al þy veynes ioyntures syno30 wes & membres of thy body ibroke & departed were wt a sharp speer þyn hert clouen al the blod of thy body out ranne wt eysel & galle idrynket. thy moder to seynt iohn þyn apostle commendett deynge iberiet [f. 19v] agayn risynge to lyue & merciably me to thy heuenly lif of 35 grace by al these peynes & passions & myche moor restorynge bot euer alaas my gilt my most gilt & my trespasse that i as an vnkynd most fals foul stynkynge traytour onwor thy heuyn vp to loke infy nytly ayeyns so kynd so benigne & so infy nyte good lord i haue i synnet in pride. enuy. 40 wrath. detracion sleuth. glotony. lechurye. & coueitise 225 irish provenance of longleat ms 29 and bodleian ms e mus 232 selim 20 (2013–2014) my ten commandements brekynge. my fy ve wittes in syght hyrynge. smyllynge tastynge & felynge. misusynge my goodes of kynd & of fortune mispendynd my tyme in ydelnesse & syn wastynge. the vij . workes of mercy nat ful 45 fi llynge. bot rather lord saue thy mercy perdurables peynes ff or these & myche more than i can telle deseruynge. in ferther meschief i am knyt ¶ for al these vices me cometh of kynd & verray virtue naue i none bot thou hit me lene lord of thi grace. bot sethen lord that thi mercy 50 thy workes passeth. wherthrogh by thy passionne to al synful man thou hast oppened thy yates of grace i most synful man of al for thy alaas. in hoop of thy helpe þy mercy i cry lord hyt & þy grace thou me graunt. and aft re the multitude of thy mercy haue pitte of me amen. 55 adueniat regnum tuum ¶ fadyr of heuyn bigger of al & holygoost confortour only god in trinite thy kyngedome come to vs. lord god for thyn habun daunt goodnesse graunt me grace of al the forsaiden synnes verray repentaunce vices to leue & in þe vij 60 virtuȝ wt profi te continuaunce to growe. while i lyve shal. that al my thoghtes wordes & dedes may turne to thy profi te & plesaunce and me thy creature throgh thy grace to thy kyngedome brynge. ¶ to these prayers the state & prosperitee of al holy chirche our holy 65 fadre the pope hys cardynals. his consaill. our bisshop our curates withal degrees in holy chirch [f. 20r] our kynge the quene the gouernour of this land with al har trewe consaill. the estate & prosperite of the roialmes of england irland & fraunce al tho that peeȝ maynteneth 70 & trewe peple defendeth. my fadre my modre sowles my bretheren my sustres my kyn alliaunces al my good fr endes and in especial i. b. i. i. a. k ¶ and al tho þt i am bound to pray for both quik & deed recommendynge that these my priers take eff ecte o glorious virgyn 75 mayd mary moder of god queen of heuyn lady of al land. emperice of helle. o ye vertuȝ angels michael gabriel 226 kath stevenson selim 20 (2013–2014) raphael wt al þe clere compayny of the heuynly courte o seynt iohn baptiste o al ye holy patriarches prophetȝ & seyntes for the rewardes which ye haue of god re80 ceyued pray ententifl y for vs in so greet worldly mys sayse isette. amen fiat voluntas tua sicut in c[aelo] & in terra. o blessed o glorious o euerlestynge trinite thi wille be hit fulfi llet in vs thi creatures in erthe as hit is in thi holy 85 aungels & halowes in heuyn. and grant vs grace al thynge thi plesynge bisily to desyre wiseli to enserche trewly to knowe and perfi tly to thyn honour to fulfi lle and hyr us graciousely in these & al oure prayers throgh þe ententifs suff rages of thyn holy apostles—petre paule 90 andreu. iames. iohn. philep. matheu / bartholomeu thomas symon & iude barnabe mark and mathy o ye holy apostles and al seyntes pray ye for vs. amen. panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie ¶ lord þt al leuest graunt vs to day our euery dayes 95 breed with al necessaries of our lyuynge help vs euer at need þe breed of science and verite thi holy commu nyoun graunt us grace to receyue wt so pure deuocion that heuyn may be our meed. ¶ hyr vs. help vs & comfort [f. 20v] vs in dreed through the vertue of the pacience of al þese preci 100 ous martires that for þi loue were deed. seyntȝ stephen lyne. clete. clement & sixte. corneli cipriane laurence vincent dyonise & ypolite george albane. esmond. oswald fabian sebastian. geruase prothase cosme & damyan marcelyn iohn & poule thomas tibrise. abdon & senne and 105 al oþer holy martyres in heuyn pray ye al for vs help forth in the virtu of fortitudo of perfi te feith hope & charite that we nat fayl. amen et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut & nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris ¶ o lord god of pitte mercy & of grace 110 foryeve vs our dettes our synnes & our trespasses as we foryeven to oure dettors. lord of amendes þu graunt vs space. of charite þu let vs nat mysshe of thy blisse þu 227 irish provenance of longleat ms 29 and bodleian ms e mus 232 selim 20 (2013–2014) graunt vs solace throgh þe swet callynge & bisy besechynge of thi clere & holy confessours. syluestre leo. hiller nicholas 115 martyn. ambrose. ierom gregorie & austeyn dunston swythyn cuthbert & birryn german dompnic fran ceys & leonard benet esmond & bernard patrike fyn nyan columbe canik & brandane molynge synok keuyn & lasriane[?] machot abbane euyn & colman and 120 al other confessours of cristes courte in perfi te charite stalle vs of holy conscience sharpe compunccioun verray contricioun hool confessioun ful satisfaccioun & of al oure synnes ful pardoun þrogh al yor holy intercessioun let vs nat mysshe bot vs al brynge to þy heuynly habitacioun. amen 125 et ne nos inducas in temptacionem ¶ o only god com fort in care in to temptacioun in leed vs nat. bot by þe grace of thy passioun graunt vs vertue of mekenesse abstinence clennesse chastite largesse almesse & charitee and by þese vertuȝ power victorie to haue & hold of oure 130 fl esshly lustes & lykynges þe fendes fondynge worldly coueitise & fool hard holdynge. o adonay lord gret merueillous god of abraham isaak & iacob. criste of al good men incarnatet of thy blessed moder mary [f. 21r] maid myld throgh loue of man þrogh thy wondes fy ve ff or 135 þi crosse & thy passioun þi precious deth & resurexioun ff or þi goostly comfortable visitatioun & for þi wondreful ascencioun and by the dreedful iugement that al thou shalt deme. and for þe loue of our lady mary þi moder heuen queen mary magdale marie egipcien. seynt anne perpetue agnes agaas 140 & cecilie anastase margaret & kateryn lucy petronelle tecle scolace barbre & bryde frideswyde warbugh elene iuli[e]tt & cristyne feith hope & charite radegund iuliane & prisce otili & helyn and al holy halowes wonnynge in þi blisse in this lond lord make pees for thi hey holy names. al 145 ilwille & malice of unlawful werryours abaat that þi due reuerence þer in fulfi llet be ¶ o lord god maker of pees þt art not wirshippet bot intyme of pees send trewe men pees to þy honour & al seyntȝ al þi holy pla 228 kath stevenson selim 20 (2013–2014) ces in lond pesibli to visite. o holy fader patrike oure 150 patroun with columb & bride whose bones resten in dounne and al seyntes suynge your trace pray þe the pierles prince of paradise that of al wiked wormes this lond wedet that he endeigne for his dignite & his mercy which his werkes passeth. þe destruers of his trewe peple may 155 approwe in þi pees perfi tly to þi plesaunce amen. ¶ o pierles precious emperour confer ine þyn honour anent fals folke þi trewe peple destroynge. o lord god of endles pitte pees rightfulnesse & veritee. for þe pitte & mercy that þou haddest of al mynkynd by disceite of þou ene 160 mye for syn ilost & departed fr om holy aungels. whan þou endeignest to descende in to þe bosome of þi blessed moder mayd marye incarnated of hir mankind to recon cile to þe pees of þi fader plesynge to þyn aungels: for that pitte & mercy wt al maner of humilite we þe besech 165 that we myght be worthy to þyn euerlestynge pees in heuyn to be reconcilet & as oon fl ok of þi fold in þis lond vndre oon prince to þin honour bemirly to be gouernet amen. [f. 21v] sed libera nos a malo. o messias sother emanuel sa boath. adonay principium primogenitis sapiencia virtus 170 alpha caput fi nus simul vocitatur & est o fons & origo boni paraclitus ac mediator. agnus ouis vitulus serpens aries leo vermis os verbum splendor sol gloria lux & ymago panis fl os vitis mons ianua lapisque angelus & sponsus. pastorque propheta sacerdos. athanatos kyros theos panton craton & 175 ysus. ¶ o almyghty god throgh þe vertue of al these thy names fr o al manner of synnes anguysshes. tribulaciouns meschiefs det tes & necessitees temptatiouns & perilles now & to cume of body & soule and fr o al manner perilles meschiefs & desaires of oure ene mys visibles & vnvisibles kepe vs saue vs mayntene 180 & defend gracousli vs delyur. and euer in thi proteccioun glorious trinite in heuyn trone. and throgh þe vertue of þy pas sioun þi grace & þi mercy the sacrementȝ of holy chirche de uoutly receyuet vs brynge to thy blisse that neuer 229 irish provenance of longleat ms 29 and bodleian ms e mus 232 selim 20 (2013–2014) shal haue ende amen. 185 in nomine patris & fi lii & spiritus sancti amen. the sign ᛭ of þe holy croice me defend fr o harmes ipassed nowe & to cum inward & outward. ᛭ by þe signe of þe holy croice fr o persecucioun of þe fend & al myn enemys delyuer me. ᛭ by þis signe al myn aduersaries be thei i cast doun & fl e þay 190 fr o me. ᛭ by this signe of the holy croice fr o al worldly perilles lord god delyur me. ᛭ the blessynge of god þe fadre almyghty with his angels be hit vpon me. ᛭ the bles synge of criste with his apostles be hit vp on me. ᛭ the blessynge of þe holy goost. the proteccioun & þe holynesse of 195 þe hei god with þe virtue of his misteries & þe holye godspel be hit vpon me. ᛭ the blessynge of cristes incarnacioun his holy birth his glorious circumcisioune his blessed passioun his reuerent resureccioun his won dreful ascencioun his holygoost confortable visitacioun 200 and þe ᛭ signe of þe holy croice be hit vpon me wt in me about me by. aft er me & in euery place þer as i am & shal be. ᛭ the blessynge of our lady [f. 22r] blessed seynt mary moder of ihesu al holy prophetes patriarches apostles euaungelistes martires confessours virgynes & al halo 205 wes be hit upon me with in me about me & in euery stidde þer as i shal be. and i commend my body & my soule to þe ho ly trinite þt he me kepe nowe & euer. ᛭ thi croice lord ihesu crist be hit þe signe of my helth by þe which þu endeig nest to by me. an helper a defender a consaillor a gou 210 noure & confortor & a lyght yeuer of me be þou my lord god ihesu ᛭ the blessynge of þe holy trinite me kepe fauoure defend & couer [?] fr om al manner of harmes & me comfort in al manner of good workes þt i may be i sauet here & euerlestynge ioy deserve & haue amen. ᛭ in nomine patris 215 & fi lii & spiritus sancti. amen. 230 kath stevenson selim 20 (2013–2014) appendix b: linguistic features of medieval hibernoenglish as identified by mcintosh and samuels, prolegomena to a study of mediaeval anglo-irish44 (1)  ham, har, “them, their;” occasionally harre, and later tham, thar. (2)  streinþ, leinþ, streynth(e) etc. “strength, length,” with variants streyng(t)h, leynt, strenyt. (3)  euch(e) “each.” vch(e), uch(e) also occur, more rarely ech(e), ich(e). (4)  þroȝ, þrow, throgh, throw(e) “through.” (5)  hir(e), hyr(e) “hear.” (6)  þay, þai, thay “they,” combined in earlier texts with hy, in later texts with þei, they. (7)  hit, hyt “it” always outnumbers forms without h-. (8)  beþ “are” (variants beth, byth, bet) survives later than in southern me texts, and similarly -et(h), -it(h), -yt(h) in the present indicative plural of other verbs. (9)  fale “many” is much commoner than fele. (10)  sill, syll(e) “sell.” (11) frequent doubling of medial and fi nal consonants, e.g. wonni inf. “dwell,” woddis “woods,” berr(e) “bear,” didde “did,” commyng “coming,” helppe “help,” wentten “went,” botte “boat,” clepped (-yt) “called,” plessyd “pleased.” (12)  stid(de), styd(de) “stead.” (13) the late survival of -y, -i in the infi nitive, e.g. auordy “aff ord” (1459), amercy “fi ne” (1460). (14) the prefi x y-, iis fr equent in past participles, and occasional with the infi nitive aft er auxiliary verbs, e.g. shulde ybe (1454). (15) -ir, -yr are the usual endings in words like fadir, afty r, and -er, -ur are much rarer; -re appears in later texts (fadre, aft er). (16) the usual forms for “though” are þeȝ(t), thegh(t), þoȝ(t), thogh(t), not þeiȝ, theigh, þouȝ, though, þa(u)ȝ as commonly in me. 44 mcintosh & samuels 1968: 4–5. 231 irish provenance of longleat ms 29 and bodleian ms e mus 232 selim 20 (2013–2014) (17) final -e has no morphological signifi cance. its early loss is shown by the otherwise conservative form hab “have.” (18) me v is oft en represented by w, e.g. yewe “give,” ewill “evil” and, in texts where hab is not preserved (cf. no. 17 preceding), haw(e) “have.” (19)  oþir, othyr “or” survives later than in southern me. (20) the endings of the weak preterite and past participle are fr equently unvoiced: -et, -it, -yt. other fr equent but not universal features are: (1)  w(h)och(e) “which.” (2)  brand, brant “burnt,” and occasionally branne “burn.” (3)  silf, sylf(e) “self.” (4) ⒜ the writing of n, l(l) for me nd, ld, as in fy ne “fi nd,” hell “held,” undirston “understand,” sune “sound.” (5) ⒝ the reverse spellings nd, ld for me n, l, as in fy nder “fi ner,” wand “when,” hold “whole,” sonde “soon.” (6) the writing of th for me t and of t for me þ, th, e.g. thyme “time,” thwey “two,” playnth “plaint,” tree “three,” tis “this.” (7) -it, -yt, -et for me -ith, -eth in both the 3rd singular and the plural of the present indicative (since this may occur in texts not showing no. 5 preceding, it should probably be regarded as a separate feature). (8) the earlier form for “say” is sigge, sygge, not segge. (9)  ar (conj . and prep.) “before” is in most texts preferred to er and or. (10)  no “nor” (and also occasionally in the meaning “not”). (11)  togadir (togaddyr, etc.) survives at a time when me texts show only eand i-forms for “together.” references cambridge, corpus christi college ms 405 dublin, trinity college dublin ms 156 232 kath stevenson selim 20 (2013–2014) london, british library ms harley 913 oxford, bodleian library ms douce 104 oxford, bodleian library ms e mus 232 wilts, longleat house, marquess of bath ms 29 allen, h. e. 1927: writings ascribed to richard rolle hermit of hampole and material for his biography. new york, heath. barratt, a. 2008: spiritual writings and religious instruction. in n. morgan & r. thomson eds. the cambridge history of the book in britain. vol. 2. cambridge, cambridge university press: 340–366. benskin, m. 1997: texts fr om an english township in late medieval ireland. collegium medievale 10.1–2: 92–173. benskin, m. & m. laing 1981: translations and mischsprachen in middle english manuscripts. in m. benskin & m. l. samuels eds. so meny people longages and tonges. philological essays in scots and mediaeval english presented to angus mcintosh. edinburgh, the editors: 55–106. brown, c. & r. h. robbins 1943: the index of middle english verse. new york: columbia university press. with supplement by r. h. robbins & j. culter 1965, lexington, university of kentucky press. bliss, a. 1984: language and literature. in j. lydon ed. the english in medieval ireland: proceedings of the fi rst joint meeting of the royal irish academy and the british academy, dublin, 1982. dublin, royal irish academy: 27–45. bliss, a. & j. long 1987: literature in norman french and english to 1534. in a. cosgrove ed. a new history of ireland: medieval ireland 1169–1534. vol. 2. oxford, oxford university press: 708–735. boff ey, j. 2005: middle english lyrics and manuscripts. in t. g. duncan ed. a companion to the middle english lyric. cambridge, d.s. brewer: 1–18. crooks, p. ed.: a calendar of irish chancery letters, c. 1244–1509, close roll 2 henry vi, §40. http://chancery.tcd.ie. 233 irish provenance of longleat ms 29 and bodleian ms e mus 232 selim 20 (2013–2014) dolan, t. 1991: the literature of norman ireland. in s. deane ed. the field day anthology of irish writing. vol. 1. derry, field day publications: 141–170. dolan, t. 1999: writing in ireland. in d. wallace ed. the cambridge history of medieval english literature. cambridge, cambridge university press: 208–228. doyle, a. i. 1953: a survey of the origins and circulation of theological writings in english in the 14th, 15th and early 16th centuries with special consideration of the part of the clergy therein. 2 vols. (ph.d. dissertation). cambridge, university of cambridge. farmer, d. h. 1987: the oxford dictionary of saints. oxford, oxford university press. gillespie, v. 1989: vernacular books of religion. in j. griffi th & d. pearsall eds. book production and publishing in britain 1375–1475. cambridge, cambridge university press: 317–344. hanna, r. 2010: the english manuscripts of richard rolle: a descriptive catalogue. exeter, exeter university press. heuser, w. ed. 1904: die kildare-gedichte: die ältesten mittelenglischen denkmäler in anglo-irischen überlieferung. bonn, p. hanstein. hughes, k. 1954: the cult of st. finnian of clonard fr om the eighth to the eleventh century. irish historical studies 9.33: 13–27. james, m. r. 1912: a descriptive catalogue of the manuscripts in the library of corpis christi college, cambridge. 2 vols. cambridge, cambridge university press. jolliff e, p. s. 1974: a check-list of middle english prose writings of spiritual guidance. toronto, pontifi cal institute of mediaeval studies. kelly, s. & j. j. thompson eds. 2005: imagining the book. turnhout, brepols. lewis, r. e. and a. mcintosh 1982: a descriptive guide to the manuscripts of the “prick of conscience.” medium aevum monographs, new series 12. oxford, society for the study of mediaeval language and literature. 234 kath stevenson selim 20 (2013–2014) lucas, a. m. ed. 1995: anglo-irish poems of the middle ages. (maynooth bicentenary series). blackrock, columba press. manly, j. m. & e. rickert 1940: the text of the canterbury tales: studied on the basis of all known manuscripts. 8 vols. chicago, university of chicago press. mcintosh, a., m. l. samuels, m. benskin et al. eds. 1986: a linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english. 4 vols. aberdeen, aberdeen university press. mcintosh, a. & m. l. samuels 1968: prolegomena to a study of mediaeval anglo-irish. medium aevum 37.1: 1–11. morris, r. ed. 1863: the pricke of conscience (stimulus conscientiae): a northumbrian poem. berlin, a. asher & co. ó riain, p. 2011: a dictionary of irish saints. dublin, four courts press. ogilvie-thomson, s. j. 1980: an edition of the english works in ms. longleat 29, excluding the “parson’s tale.” 4 vols. (ph.d. dissertation). oxford, university of oxford. ogilvie-thomson, s. j. ed. 1988: richard rolle: prose and verse edited fr om ms longleat 29 and related manuscripts. (e.e.t.s. 293). oxford, oxford university press. otway-ruthven, a. j. 1965: the chief governors of mediaeval ireland. journal of the royal society of antiquaries of ireland 95.1: 227–236. pearsall, d. & k. scott 1992: piers plowman: a facsimile of bodleian library oxford, ms douce 104. woodbridge, d. s. brewer. seymour, st. j. d. 1970 [1929]: anglo-irish literature 1200–1582. repr. new york, octagon books. stevenson, k. 2011: “of the holy londe of irlande:” a reconsideration of some middle english texts in late medieval ireland. (ph. d. dissertation). belfast, queen’s university belfast. stokes, w. 1906: the birth and life of st. moling. revue celtique 27: 257–312. 235 irish provenance of longleat ms 29 and bodleian ms e mus 232 selim 20 (2013–2014) thompson, j. j. 2011: books beyond england. in a. gillespie & d. wakelin eds. the production of books in england 1350–1500. cambridge, cambridge university press. vauchez, a. 1997: sainthood in the later middle ages. [jean birrell trans. 1981: la sainteté en occident aux derniers siècles du moyen âge (1198– 1431)]. cambridge, cambridge university press. williams, b. ed. and trans. 2007: the annals of ireland by friar john clynn. dublin, four courts press. woolf, r. 1968: the english religious lyric in the middle ages. oxford, clarendon press. • received 06 mar 2014; accepted 03 apr 2014 selim01.pdf 156 rowland, jenny, early welsh saga poetry: a study and edition of the ‘englynion’. pp. x + 688. cambridge: d. s. brewer, 1990. £ 75. dr. rowland’s book is an edition with exhaustive commentary of the ‘englynion’, the series of verses dating from the ninth and tenth centuries which make up some of the earliest poetry in welsh. these poems, some of the finest ever written in a celtic language, seem to come from sagas (now lost) set in the eighth and ninth centuries, when there was fierce fighting between english and welsh along the present border of wales, and the welsh were losing the last of their lowland territory to the english and being driven up into the hills for ever. the background to these poems, once described as ‘the nearest thing to great drama that wales ever produced’, is thus one of tragedy. one remembers above all the protagonist, llywarch hen or ‘llywarch the old’, the irritable chieftain who taunts his sons again and again into hopeless battle against the english. when all his sons have been killed, he remains in solitary desolation to grieve for them and for himself, a foolish old man. neither sleep nor happiness comes to me since the killing of llawr and gwên. i am a cantankerous carcass -i am old. other poems describe the tragedy of the princess heledd, who sees the body of her brother cynddylan lying dead after battle with the english, a grey-crested eagle feeding upon his breast. this happened 157 at the unidentified locality of ‘pengwern’, somewhere near shrewsbury. the grey-crested eagle of pengwern -tonight his screech is very high, greedy for the flesh which i loved. while cynddylan lies dead, heledd sees his hall, plundered and abandoned. the hall of cynddylan is dark tonight, without a fire, without songs. tears wear away the cheeks. the hall of cynddlylan is silent tonight after losing its lord. great merciful god, what shall i do? these poems might lead one to think that, after defeat by the english onslaught, the welsh lost everything except their genius for poetry. early welsh saga poetry provides the most thorough piece of work on these poems since the researches of sir ifor williams at the university of wales in the 1930s. dr. rowland’s book contains over 400 pages of annotations. clearly it will be the best edition of these archaic welsh poems for a very long time. anglicists will find the book of special importance for its comments on the links between welsh poetry and old english poetry, especially the so-called elegies the wanderer and the seafarer. here dr. rowland discusses various passages in these poems and also the wife’s lament, wulf and eadwacer, and beowulf, noting how english and welsh verse together use gnomic material and references to nature to make their effect. she thereby advances research on the account of this subject in p. l. henry’s the early english and 158 celtic lyric (london, 1966). heledd, for example, reflects in her sorrow on the eagle of ely. the eagle of ely watches over the seas: fish do not penetrate into the estuaries. he calls, he feasts on the blood of warriors. similarly, the seafarer opens with the speaker uttering his sadness in a bleak seascape with the eagle as a rare companion. there storms beat against the rocky cliffs, there the tern with icy feathers answered them. often did the eagle with dewy wings circle round, screaming. thanks are due, therefore, to dr. rowland for providing an accurate translation and study of the corpus of the welsh material. anglo-saxonists will now easily be able to include the welsh englynion in their comparative discussions of old english elegy. dr rowland’s important book should be consulted by anyone hoping to shed new light on the background to old english verse, although another account of this subject, nicolas jacobs’s ‘celtic saga and the contexts of old english elegiac poetry’, études celtiques, xxvi (1989), 95-142, must also be read as a corrective to many of dr rowland’s views. more positively, one hopes that spanish readers of early welsh saga poetry will be stimulated to make their own contributions from points discussed in it. on p. 597, for example, dr rowland mentions bloody tears and seems to suggest this is a particularly celtic phenomenon. concerning this, however, see my ‘the virgin’s tears of blood’, celtica, xx (1988), 110-22, which shows this to be an international topos, of which spanish examples may await investigation. again, on p. 601, dr rowland quotes the shropshire place-name ercall as deriving from old english ercol, ‘hercules’, plus an old 159 english word for ‘burial mound’. however, ercol is not an english form of ‘hercules’ at all. it is a british form used by the cornishman or breton who, it seems, translated the old english orosius for king alfred, as i argue in a forthcoming paper for the oxford journal notes and queries. since orosius was an iberian writer, coming from the vicinity of braga in modern portugal, this point may interest anglicists in the peninsula. it may be worth pointing out, incidentally, that because the old english orosius is one of the few books in medieval english known to have been read on the continent, and cornwall and brittany had strong links with the monasteries of northern france, as shown in dom louis gougaud, osb, ‘les relations de l’abbaye de fleury-sur-loire avec la bretagne armoricaine et les îles britanniques’, mémoires de la société d’histoire et d’archéologie de bretagne, iv/2 (1923), research on how the old english orosius as the work of a cornishman or breton fits into the pattern of crosschannel learning described by gougaud would be especially worth doing. early welsh saga poetry is, therefore, one of those large works of scholarship important not only in the information they contain, but also in suggesting further paths of investigation. one wishes this major work of learning the widest circulation amongst medievalists in britain and abroad. andrew breeze university of navarre * * * 160 medieval literary theory and criticism c. 1100-c. 1375: the commentary tradition, ed. by a. j. minnis and a. b. scott, with the assistance of david wallace (oxford: clarendon press, 1988). xvi + 538 pp. £ 65.00. it is impossible to do justice to this remarkable anthology in one short review. each section deserves careful reflection and discussion, but it is an essential tool for anyone trying to gain a full understanding of middle english literary theory and criticism. the “prescriptive” branches of medieval literary theory -artes poeticae, artes praedicandi, and artes dictaminishave received the attention of some modern scholars and most of the important texts have been translated into english. but in this book, the authors focus their commentaries and translations on “descriptive” and evaluative texts from c. 1100 until around c. 1375, undoubtedly one of the most significant periods for the development of the commentary tradition. all translated treatises and commentaries reflect a tradition of commentary on writers both sacred and profane, latin and vernacular, ancient and modern. the purposes of this anthology are three: to offer at once a “reader” of medieval literary discourse, a “sampler” which may encourage the reader to go back to the original documents themselves, and to show a collection of essays about the history of medieval literary theory and criticism. 161 the book consists of ten sections and a general introduction in which is analysed the significance of the medieval commentarytradition. in the first section an anthology of literary prefaces is introduced: introduction to the authors, those writers who were becoming established in medieval grammar-schools. in the second chapter we can read some extracts of the accessus ad auctores, “dialogue on the authors”, written by conrad of hirsau, an interesting work based on bernard of utrecht’s commentary on theodulus, who had drawn on isidore of seville’s etymologiae either directly or through some medieval intermediary. reading this dialogue between a master and his pupil we can understand the notion of hierarchy, how classical literature must be subordinated to christian doctrine, a basic principle in middle english literature well conveyed by the common metaphor of “despoliation of the egyptians”, here cited in st. augustine’s formulation: ... what they (i. e. the pagans) have said should be taken from them as from unjust possessors and converted to our use. for, just as the egyptians had not only idols and heavy burdens for the people of israel to abominate and eschew, but also vessels and ornaments of gold and silver and clothing for that people, departing from egypt, secretly to rescue for itself, as if to put them to a better use, not on its own authority but at god’s command, while the egyptians unwittingly supplied them with things which they themselves did not use well, so all the doctrines of the pagans contain not only simulated and superstitious imaginings and grave burdens of unnecessary labour, which each one of us leaving the society of pagans under the leadership of christ ought to abominate and avoid, but also liberal disciplines more suited to the uses of truth, and some most useful precepts concerning morals. 162 section iii and iv deal with dominant figures in the 12th. century such as the spiritual allegorists hugh of saint-victor, peter abelard and peter lombard, and the more philosophical such as bernard silvestri, william of conches and ralph of longchamps; the unifying element in their work is their common engagement with the platonism of the school of chartres. all these writers are keenly sensitive to new modes of thought and expression, and they observe the interrelation between secular and biblical hermeneutics; a comparison of hugh with alain may serve as an index to the effect of these developments in the course of the 12th. c. and 13th. c. these allegorists who wrote in prose and poetry stand at opposite ends of a period of debate and experimentation which saw the rise and decline of a great movement of humanistic and scientific thought, a movement whose signs are still visible everywhere in europe. this humanist enterprise was uniquely and profoundly important for the subsequent development of medieval poetry. the contrast of chartrian rationalism with the ultimately traditionalist position of hugh also serves to explain the gradual discrediting of chartrian thought and the redirection of the school’s influence into channels of literary study and poetic expression. section v: the dionysian imagination: thomas gallus and robert grosseteste presents the platonic models of this period while section vi focuses on the aristotelian influence on the literary theory; this topic is also analysed in sections vii and viii with commentaries and translations. such topics as the nature and structure of the universe and the relation of ancient philosophy to christian doctrine are expressed in these chapters as the great concerns of medieval thought. in the last two sections we are presented the transformation of critical tradition and the new ideas and theories expressed by dante, petrarch and boccaccio in their writings. 163 after reading this anthology we can understand that medieval theory and criticism have many things in common with modern criticism, in particular formalism, structuralism, semiotics and reception-theory, and that no criticism is free of ideology, as every approach to a text reflects and depends on a particular world-view. it is a weakness of the book that, while the authors are extremely interested in the development of dominant figures in which the unifying element in their work is their common engagement with allegorism, they are less concerned with such writers as adelhard of bath and bacon, to mention just a few authors among many others more concerned with a rational philosophy. against this weakness, however, many strengths must be set which will make the book a valuable introduction to the reader and scholar of middle english literature. the book is almost impeccably edited, it also has a full bibliography and index, and many notes to explain the complexities of the texts and of the historical and literary issues arising from it. this anthology can be recommended to all students and is a most welcome aid to more advanced medievalists. a. bravo university of oviedo * * * 164 bruce mitchell, on old english: selected papers (oxford: basil blackwell, 1988) xiii + 363 pp. £ 35.00. it is a real pleasure for students and scholars of old english language and literature to read this collection of essays. most teachers and students of anglo-saxon know professor b. mitchell thanks to his popular and well-known introduction to the language and literature of the anglo-saxons, a guide to old english (with fred robinson), and everyone with a love of english philology knows his authoritative old english syntax. but professor mitchell is less well-known for his essays, articles and reviews, most of which involve interpreting anglosaxon literary texts. this book is a selection of those essays. the book is divided into five sections; the first four bring together the majority of his “lesser works”, while the fifth section provides a review of anglo-saxon studies since 1947. in the first part a selection has been made of articles, notes and reviews about beowulf, the most outstanding being until the dragon comes..., some thoughts on beowulf, an introduction to beowulf, and 1987: postscript on beowulf . the second part is made up of five short works on the poet cædmon, and among the most important of these is postscript on bede’s “mihi cantare habes”. the third part examines, basically from a syntactic perspective, some lyric poems, such as the seafarer, the wanderer and the wife’s lament, the most significant on the basis of its length and depth being linguistic facts and the interpretation of old english poetry. 165 in the fourth section there is an assortment of studies of a linguistic nature, such as syntax and word-order in the peterborough chronicle 1123-1154, and the origin of old english conjunctions: some problems. in addition there have been gathered together several reviews in which mitchell shows himself to be a wise and judicious critic, little inclined to superficial, laudatory remarks if the piece of work under consideration is not praiseworthy, at least in some respects. at the same time, however, he knows how to see the positive aspects and encourages the author to strive to do better. the last part of the book focuses on the evolution of anglo-saxon studies in the last forty years, conclusion: forty years on. but alongside this short and well-documented summary professor mitchell voices his hopes and fears about future work on anglo-saxon literature. on the one hand he approves of the interesting study by d. donoghue, style in old english poetry, and paul szarmach’s studies in earlier old english prose; but on the other he censures the superficiality of many publications and the unmerited interest in overly allegorical interpretations. his conclusion on this point is summed up in a quote from professor robinson, another of our modern distinguished teachers of old english and the most cited in the book, who has written the following about the interpretation of old english poems: a knowledge of philology and history would do more than anything else (except perhaps good judgment) to discourage the proliferation of bizarre and arbitrary “critical readings”. bruce mitchell has been not only an insightful researcher of anglosaxon language and literature, but also a great teacher, and those of us who have had the good luck to have attended his classes will always remember him for his gifts as a scholar and a teacher; it is 166 hardly surprising to find the same quality in this collection of studies. mitchell almost always suggests rather than being dogmatic, especially when dealing with literary texts. for instance, in his introduction to beowulf he writes: whether the reader chooses to adopt one of the interpretations outlined above... or to find one for himself must be a matter of personal response. he also teaches us with his profoundly religious point of view what can be read between the lines and that not everyone is able to detect, that in anglo-saxon poetry, and specifically in beowulf, there exists a triumph of good over evil, whether germanic or christian (p. 29): today in this nuclear age, with man’s inhumanity to man daily more apparent on all levels and the powers of darkness in seeming ascendency throughout the world, we may see beowulf as a triumphant affirmation of the value of a good life: as the poet himself says “bruc ealles well”make good use of everything. but professor mitchell does not let himself become tangled up in simplistic religious and allegorical interpretations. on the contrary, he frequently warns against the unwarranted reading of allegory. in this regard i am reminded of one of his papers given at the university of oviedo in the first selim conference, in which he compared anglo-saxon literature to a flowering garden in which the rankest smelling blossom is allegorisis. to sum up this review i would like to make use of an idea that all of us students of english literature should keep in mind and that is well expressed by b. mitchell in the book: 167 i firmly believe that some knowledge of old english is an essential tool for anyone trying to gain an understanding and appreciation of english literature. a. bravo university of oviedo * * * calder, d.c. & christy, t.v. (eds.): germania: comparative studies in the old germanic languages and literatures. wolfeboro: d.s. brewer, 1988 (ix + 209 pp.) this book consists of a number of papers presented at a conference held at the university of los angeles (ucla) in 1985. the contributions aimed mainly at reviving “an integrated approach to the study of the various germanic languages and literatures” (p. vii). according to this, they tried to recover in this way that comprehensive orientation of the first philological studies (taking, therefore, into account some of the related disciplines such as mythology, religion, the history of civilization, etc.), which began to break off and specialize already in the late 19th century. in this connection, and as another important feature, the works included in the book show a comparative character. the underlying general goal is to get to the common core of germania through its varied manifestations in different aspects. 168 the essays fall into two sections, the first including what might be considered purely linguistic studies, the second, more neatly literary ones. before this latter section, there is a study (i. rauch: “how do germanic linguistic data react to purely literary methods?”), which undertakes a twofold approach into the germanic material. the articles of a linguistic character are the following: “can protogermanic be reconstructed as a natural language?” (h. penzl); “mutual intelligibility among speakers of early germanic dialects” (w.g. moulton); “on the origin of the dental preterit of the verba pura” (k. matzel); “systems and changes in early germanic phonology: search for hidden identities” (t. vennemann); “old english mæµl and sæµl in the all-germanic environment: comparative study” (k.r. jankowsky); “sentence connectives in ancient germanic texts” (t.h. wilbur). those in the literary section are: “oral-formulaic tradition and the affective interpretation of early germanic verse” (a. renoir); “walter haug’s heldensagenmode” (t.m. andersson); “eddic poetry and continental heroic legend: the case of the third lay of guíruån (guíruånarqviía)” (m. curschmann); “woden as ‘ninth father’: numerical patterning in some old english royal genealogies” (t.d. hill); “the drink of death in old english and germanic literature” (g. russom); “what kind of poetry is exodus” (r. frank). from the titles in the list above it becomes clear that, generally speaking, it is the collecting of diverse articles into a single volume and not the content of each of these articles individually considered what permits the editors to achieve their main goal of an “integrated approach”. most essays can be regarded as fully modern. in many cases, an attempt is made to apply updated theoretical models in order to reformulate explanations and laws traditionally settled in the field. as an illustrative example one can mention “systems and changes in 169 early germanic phonology: search for hidden identities”, in which t. vennemann suggests a profound revision of grimm’s and verner’s famous laws. other contributions show a serious attempt to fill in gaps and systematize traditionally neglected data (cf., for instance, the works by t.h. wilbur and r. frank). the comparative character of the theses put forward is specially reflected in papers such as those by h. penzl, w.g. moulton, a. renoir and g. russom, all of which show a painstaking effort to combine data from different germanic languages and literatures in order to draw the appropriate conclusions. as far as the edition is concerned, this book is beautifully printed and bound. however, an effort to impose a coordinate criterion on the bibliographical selection is lacking. this is left to each author’s discretion and there appears no global list at the end of the volume. finally, we must add that this book, although not exactly what undergraduates need, will prove to be extremely interesting for scholars and teachers of the subject, since it offers a remarkable overview of the research being carried out at the moment on old germanic languages and literatures. eugenio contreras university of madrid (complutense) * * * 170 gómez bedate, p. (1990): boccaccio: decamerón. 2 vols. selección de lecturas medievales, siruela, madrid. (ptas. 5,000) in the mind of a fourteen-year-old girl, the decameron was something attractive since it was something forbidden, something unknown. she had entered the cinema secretly to see the film with the same title by the italian director pier paolo pasolini. this meant two hours of frustration and disenchantment: adults were right, that was a pornographic film based on a medieval novel which she believed equally pornographic. in the mind of an apprentice medievalist, the great plague that invaded europe in the 14th century represents the starting point, the context for the most popular of the works by giovanni boccaccio: il decamerone, the evident heir of the medieval story-telling tradition in arabia (arabian nights) and europe (above all, that of the french ‘fabliaux’). seven women and three men with their respective servants try, by means of some tales, to mark time before the dreadful ‘black death’ can reach them: they have left florence, the birth-place of the culture of the italian ‘trecento’ -forerunner of the renaissance period-, behind them. they have abandoned houses, possessions and the tombs of their dead to flee from death which is now the owner of palaces, towns, cities and even entire countries. for ten days and in ‘courtois milieux’, these ten characters will narrate stories to each other, some of them imaginary and exaggerated, others real, which they had been told previously by their fellow citizens. the decameron has been considered for ages one of the ‘bêtes noires’ in medieval literature. authors of miraculous legends and lives of saints, courtier poets, historians, have been consecrated by the traditional literary critics, but only a few fabulists have been given 171 these honours: boccaccio has been one of those but not always in a positive way. reviewers have always wanted to see in the decameron its erotic part dominating over the stories or songs following the courtois fashion or pattern. sex, promiscuity, adultery, all kinds of tricks..., all these have their place in the novel but they do not monopolize it as pasolini wanted to show us in his adaptation of the brilliant work by boccaccio. their design and structure are analogous to those in the canterbury tales by the english poet geoffrey chaucer, though their situations are different: the decameron mixes up stories about achieved aims, impossible passions, tales to laugh and others to cry, sometimes sprinkled with irony, sometimes with delicious erotic touches. there are not so many explicit descriptions of sexual intercourse as we have been told. the novel has been mystified too much by many people and almost everyone, at one moment or another, has been misled into including it in an index of books forbidden because of their sexual content that even verges on pornography. this has nothing to do with the real world, anyway. pilar gómez bedate and the siruela editors offer us the possibility to undo the injustice. this new translation into spanish of the italian classic allows the spanish reader to come nearer the european society and culture of the 14th century through the diverse social types that the author described in his mother language: medieval tuscan (a direct translation from the medieval original is claimed). perhaps the style used by the translator for her purpose turns out to be excessively pompous or too formal. but it has been an effort, a satisfactory one, to adequate as much as possible to the rhetorics of the period, coming from latin oratores and highly influenced by the style of the provençal troubadours and an incipient humanism. is there an abuse of the word ‘incontinenti’? maybe, but also maybe this is a mere reflection of the first written steps of a language subject to a complex process of evolution, subjected to pressures 172 coming from other neighbouring cultures. the style, very repetitive and with structures hardly ever renewed, gives us a complete account of the difficulties of a young language entering the literary world through the main door. just in between the ‘dark ages’ and the light of the renaissance, who would deny saying that the decameron is one of the first flames in the history of the european vernacular literatures? gabriela garcía teruel university of oviedo * * * godden, malcolm: the making of piers plowman. longman: london & new york, 1990. (£ 12.95). the reader of dr godden’s essay is confronted with a very interesting and complete review of the poem and the critical approaches to it, both ancient and modern which make it a most useful first approach to piers plowman and its tradition. the making of piers plowman is a book of general reference for this particular poem, and a wholesome introduction directed not just to 173 undergraduates but also for serious students who would approach piers plowman for the first time with real and sound interest. what may be considered a handicap is that the texts adopted for criticism and quotation are not uniform, neither are the criteria used by the author in his selections. one might assume that godden’s choice of the textual editions of the versions of the poem seems to derive from their accessibility rather than from their scholarly quality. thus he chose a.v.c. schmidt’s partly-modernized edition for text b quotations, and derek pearsall’s c-text edition, whereas he relies on kane & donaldson’s critical a-text, and on rigg & brewer’s sole edition of their z-text. the making of piers plowman has an appropriate discussion of the topic setting apart in the first chapter all external matters: discussion on the poem’s creation in which godden defends single authorship against the traditional multiple authorship hypothesis, identity of the poet, and the literary and intellectual background of the work and langland. internal discussion of the poem using text a starts from chapter two onwards, a chapter usually being devoted to each section of piers plowman, and the account of the plot of the vision is currently spiced with adequate and illustrative quotations. godden continues discussing text a in chapters three and four, as he deals with langland’s second and third visions. the discussion on the seven deadly sins, and the idea of the church which seems to emerge from the text lead to a debate concerning langland and the lollard movement. dr. godden points out the importance of the wycliffite of feigned contemplative life for the pardon episode. particularly interesting is what we see on page 57 concerning the passages omitted or changed in versions z and a. the author appears to suggest that langland may have followed 174 wyclif in the spiritual reformation, though not in the social reformation, or at least adherence to the latter is not clearly specified. then godden incardinates very cleverly the problem of the a version in connection with the subsequent re-writings of the poem. topics like the friars and thought, and the dispute about the offices of friars and the secular clergy are examined and on page 70 we find the following remark: the plowman who in the second vision had come to stand as an image of man’s productive labour which wins him heaven now reappears to prove the irrelevance of striving... that helps the reader to attain what he calls “the true end of the a version”, and thus closes this first section of his essay. chapter five starts with a survey of the problem of dating text b. it is the passage called “the parliament of mice” which in the first instance places the poem in ±1380, but godden expands his very convincing arguments by explaining that there has been a full revision of the first two visions, especially in those points traditionally connected with wycliffite concepts: the theory of kingship, the use and abuse of pardons, and the confession of sins and the aims of repentance. godden suggests that the revision of the third vision and its completion in a new inner dream instead of the awakening of the narrator imply a new conception of the rôle of the poet. on page 89 we read: the opposition between the role of satirist which langland plays and the ideal of charity which he preaches is one of the sources of tension in the passus. 175 and as it has happened previously, this section ends with further discussion about clerks and the current debates concerning faith versus knowledge, and “kynde wit” versus “clergie”. the fourth vision is analysed in chapter six by means of an examination of the rôle of haukyn, the active man, and then by discussing the allegory of the different lives of man in full with special reference to the features of patience, poverty and penitence. godden reviews these carefully as we read (p. 102): patience thus represents one of the great ideals of langland’s time, the cult of poverty. this is the virtue represented in the poem by a hermit or a pilgrim, and it seems to me remarkable here that godden did not mention clearly that the dreamer in piers plowman was clothed as a hermit at the beginning of the poem, and no further detailed mention of his clothing has the relevance of his first appeareance. what godden does in this section is to reinterpret the figure of piers. “clergie” is rejected in favour of patience, who is also a hermit, and hence the earlier piers builds on the authority and anti-intellectualisms he has acquired so far throughout the dream: patience, being a hermit, is what piers chose to be. (p. 109). it is then that piers plowman stops being the representative of the active life, and haukyn intervenes, as the inherent sinfulness of active life leads into a discussion in which the author finally rejects the values associated with the active life (p. 114): the qualities of austerity, simplicity and dedication which the prologue had seen in both plowmen and hermits are now firmly located in the latter. 176 in chapter seven there is a new dream in which anima is the central topic; there follows a very interesting examination of the sermon on the tree of charity as the dreamer undergoes a new change in the fifth vision as the dreamer dreams within his dream, and piers is apparently identified with god. godden makes a very clever point in his discussion, as he states the dual nature of anima, being a feminine “soul” and a masculine “mind”. a discussion of previous interpretations of this passage centred on the works of coghill and wells, concludes in godden’s theory on how the different levels of society are used in the poem and how virtuous life is enacted in them. purity is confronted with death and piers, previously identified with god is now interpreted as christ. and then the dreamer wakes from the dream within a dream and meets abraham (faith), moses (hope) and the samaritan (charity). the poem has developed into an increasingly complicated mess, and godden actually understates it (p. 136): the vision as a whole is one of the most complex in the poem, but also one of the richest in significance. christ’s passion and the harrowing of hell appear in chapter eight. the new dream of palm sunday in jerusalem allows the author to review the traditional english accounts of the passion by commenting, namely, on the northern passion, ælfric, the cursor mundi, grosseteste, the ancrene riwle, and the dream of the rood. the love-theme of salvation is also extended by godden to references found in piers plowman which may ultimately derive from the apocryphal gospel of nicodemus, in the passage dealing with the harrowing of hell as the problem of redemption and the second coming of christ seem to have a very important relevance for the interpretation of this section of the poem. 177 in chapter nine the author examines the dreamer when asleep in church as he sees christ in the form of piers, thus providing evidence for the earlier identification and starting with a discussion about conscience and grace and including in the debate the battle of pride and conscience. the idea of redemption surveyed in the previous chapter is finally completed as the church becomes heir to christ’s work of redemption. as godden puts it (p. 156): conscience explains that the holy spirit is grace and the dreamer joins in the singing of a hymn to him. and thus he leads his readers into the interpreting of the castle of unity as holy church, and the argument in which the problem of need and the justification of justice become controversial, because the corruption of the church will ultimately cause the coming of antichrist at the end of the poem. as the church has not followed the ways of poverty, the enemies of life, led by elde, deprive the dreamer of his hair and sexual powers hence introducing the end of times both for the world and the dreamer. text-b is now finished, and godden offers the reader the following conclusions (pp. 168-169): as we have seen before, piers’ essential role in the poem is as the organiser of man’s salvation and a nexus of the current ideals and aspirations of the visions in which he appears... the poem ends with no answers, only an enrichment of experience and understanding [is achieved]. chapter ten is devoted to exploring the c-text of piers plowman, and godden has very carefully rejected the dates offered by skeat and devlin on internal evidence: he concludes that the late 1380s or 178 the 1390s are the most probable period for its completion. he comments in great detail the alterations or revisions found in the fourth and fifth visions, which in version c are merged into one. the inner dream of the fifth vision disappears as well, and godden infers that there is a general recasting of the poem but for the last two passus. he also considers the reasons which might account for that: the death of langland, demands of a patron, or even the lack of interest on the part of the author. godden also reviews in this section the theories of e. t. donaldson and g. russell on the process of rewriting the ctext. what i have found particularly rewarding is his comparison of the opening of the poem in the a, b, and c texts, and the “weariness” and “matter of fact” expressions found in version c are remarkably well explained. the prologues of the three versions are contrasted, and this results in godden’s opinion about the radicalization of the last text of the poem. he insists on the social criticism of the second vision and the intellectual crisis of the third as evidence for the abundance of more radical arguments. but he also points out the changes: patience in text-b is a hermit, but in text-c only resembles a pilgrim and piers as well; and moreover, patience becomes an ordinary pauper instead of being a voluntary one. in text-c piers is a palmer, and piers is no longer identified with christ as in b, though the rejection of learning for austerity is maintained. godden finally remarks (p. 200), that piers plowman is a poem that “in its own way it tells the story of its poet”. an epilogue closes the making of piers plowman. the possible connections of langland with winner and waster that godden provides are quite interesting and fairly convincing, though i assume that further discussion and research is needed. the list of references and suggestions for further reading is very well selected for the audience of the book, although i have not found in it two items which 179 could well be there: elizabeth salter’s (1962): piers plowman: an introduction, (oxford university press, oxford); and j. a. w. bennet’s article on the dating of the a-text (1943a: “the date of the a-text of piers plowman.” p.m.l.a. 58: 566-572), which is especially remarkable, as godden quotes his other paper on the btext (1943b: “the date of the b-text of piers plowman.” medium ævum 12: 55-64). s.g. fernández-corugedo university of oviedo * * * charles jones: a history of english phonology. london & new york: longman. 1989. x + 318 pp. (£10.95). professor jones’s book is included in longman’s linguistics library, first edited by r. h. robbins and g. n. leech, and later by robbins and martin harris. since j. m. anderson’s structural aspects of language change appeared in 1973, no other specific book on diachronic linguistics had been published in the series. in the meanwhile, both authors had published a seminal study for the students of english historical phonology: phonological structure and the history of english (amsterdam: north holland). this latter, 180 together with a book by anderson and r. lass: old english phonology (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1975), and with lass’s english phonology and phonological theory (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1975), on explaining language change (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1980) and the shape of english (london: dent & sons, 1987); constitute a bibliographical resource that no serious course on the history of english can ignore. i must acknowledge, though, that professor jones’s recent manual can be exploited as a most comprehensive textbook for a thorough and updated review of the history of english phonology and phonological changes on its own. that is no mean merit for a book whose extension is just slightly over three hundred pages. i think it must be made clear that although professor jones claims in his preface that the book “does not attempt to produce any major rethink on phonological change, far less does it claim to provide anything like an exhaustive coverage of all recorded types of sound change dealt with in the handbooks” (p. x), it is a major rethink on english phonological changes, as it enhances the idea of recurrence in a language and the need for using linguistic data instead of social, cultural or historical ones, as the primary source for explaining language change. it does provide as well a very exhaustive coverage of english sound changes, and a coverage that all but exhausts all interesting recorded types of language change dealt with in the traditional handbooks. a history of english phonology is also a remarkable practical study in the issues of that branch of theoretical phonology which little by little sprung from the joint venture that jones and anderson started in 1974. a history of english phonology is an extremely well organised book: a statement of the aims, methods and models (pp. 1-8), prepares the reader for the dual nature of the data and the treatment of those 181 data to be developed in the four sections (or chapters) that make up the presentation of the different phenomena discussed. it is quite difficult to demolish jones’s method and model from the point of view of traditional structural linguistics, but one is tempted to wonder whether james foley’s ideas concerning phonological strength set out in foundations of theoretical phonology (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1977) might not help to the better understanding of certain aspects of the jones-anderson-ewen’s dependency phonology model, with special reference to the revised theory of sonority hierarchy appearing on pp. 6-7. however, jones’s model proves extremely well grounded and fruitful for many sound change instances: his exposition of the old english vowel harmony processes (pp. 73-93), and the middle english vowel shift (pp. 127-141) are mastery. after the methodological aims have been stated in chapter 1, the book discusses english diachronic processes in succession from the period named by jones the early origins to the 12th century (chapter 2, pp. 9-93), to the section concerning the period from the 18th century to the present day (chapter 5, pp. 279-304). in between, two more chapters on middle english: 13th-15th centuries (chapter 3, pp. 94195), and 16th to 18th centuries (chapter 4, pp. 196-278), link the temporal sequence. one might criticise the study division that professor jones uses: for example in chapter 2, terms such as old english, late old english and middle english are constantly used, and i have been unable to decide the sort of reference, either linguistic or temporal, they respectively cover. the author has warned us at the very beginning of the book that the establishing of ‘periods’ or epochs has very little meaning for linguistic study, and that “the tradition of english and other historical linguistics is often bedevilled by the proliferation of descriptive nomenclature and by failure to relate phenomena in one often ad hocly delimited period with others” (p. 2), 182 and i think he is quite right, but i also think that there must be some points of reference. and professor jones does use those referential points in certain instances such as those when he talks about old english and late old english, for example. there is also the structuring itself of the book in sections dealing with periods of time: chapter 2 handles no less than six centuries; chapter 3 studies three centuries; and chapters 4 and 5 deal with two centuries each. there is a rather evident lack of balance, and i would ask him to make some concessions in this respect. everyone knows that temporal nomenclature is just a convenient label, a common reference. it means that when professor jones says that “the highly compartmentalized nature of the scholarly tradition... which, for cultural and often idiosyncratic reasons, produced a territory of separate scholars and schools where there was little or no inclination to enquire into the chosen realm of other workers”, we might immediately think of dickens and wilson’s early middle english texts (cambridge: bowes & bowes, 1964), or in bennet and smithers’s early middle english verse and prose (oxford: oxford university press, 1966), as a territory in secession from the vaster domains of middle english. in the history of a language there ought to be temporal divisions, and although these are quite whimsical on many occasions, as professor jones points out, there are others in which there seems to exist a wide and well established consensus. and j. w. clark’s early english (london: a. deutsch, 1957) appears to underlie, somewhat partially though, some of jones’s conceptions as expressed in chapter 2. my second remark concerns chapter 5: twenty-five pages are devoted to the modern period, and that is further proof of the uneven nature and evolution of linguistic changes. for professor jones demonstrates that changes are recurrent and similar language developments seem to be active throughout the history of english 183 phonology: but they do not emerge with the same predictability upon occasion. and there is the problem of data as well. these are either too many or too disperse to obtain a proper selection that may provide a comprehensive interpretation. jones argues that “there are many reasons why these two centuries are the cinderellas of english historical linguistic study,” (p. 279), and he offers many to his readers, to conclude that “against such a simplistic one to one, period to innovation mapping we have, of course, been arguing throughout this book, and we shall again attempt to show how the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries manifest the same types of phonological processes we have met at earlier historical ‘moments’.” (p. 280). however a sense of doom is haunting the author because he decides to limit his study: “it would, of course, take all of a book of this size and more even to review the exciting and increasingly productive research being carried out at present into contemporary language change along a temporal axis: we shall have space to examine but a few present-day ongoing innovations in this chapter, selecting in particular those which relate to some of the central historical processes which have been our recurrent concern thus far.” (p. 281). i hope that professor jones will delight us in the near future with such a book on modern english phonological history. it is virtually impossible that a book on phonology be free of errata: these are uncommonly absent from a history of english phonology: the publishers should be congratulated for their careful work. there are some, though, and it must be noticed that although an erratum example such as that found on p. 306: a font-size change as denos, -which should read denos instead on the evidence of dechene, just before it-, is a very easy one to detect and correct even by the inexperienced reader, such errata as [c] -correct to [ç]on p. 239, or the alpha symbol which does not appear with the stress mark in the first quotation (p. 239 as well), though there is an explicit 184 reference to it in the following paragraph, take for granted important previous linguistic training. and finally the reader cannot decide whether in the case of the more/more pair on p. 245 it should be emended to more/moor, as the next pair is pore/poor. however all these are but toys, as bacon said, and enough of them: because after reading a history of english phonology there is little need to go anywhere else to find a convenient advanced university textbook for the phonology of the old, middle and early modern english periods. it is also time to mention here jones’s an introduction to middle english (new york: holt, rinehart & winston, 1972) to complement some aspects of middle english sound changes treated in the work we are discussing. i am afraid that professor jones may now, indeed, look after his soay sheep with fewer distractions: whole flocks of patient undergraduates and graduates will graze in the happy fields of his fertile a history of english phonology. but we will be waiting for more. s.g. fernández-corugedo university of oviedo * * * selim 20.indb michelle p. brown, selim 20 (2013–2014): 81–120issn: 1132–631x beowulf and the origins of the written old english vernacular abstract: this paper seeks to present an overview of the evidence for vernacular literacy in england prior to the alfr edian revival and, in the light of this, to discuss whether, in principle, the beowulf poem—like the dream of the rood—could have undergone several iterations before assuming its full literary form. keywords: old english, vernacular literacy, beowulf, dream of the rood, history, art history, mercia, kent, northumbria, wessex, king alfr ed, book of cerne, book history. resumen: este artículo busca presentar una panorámica de las pruebas de una alfabetización vernácula en la inglaterra anterior al renacimiento alfr ediano y, en consecuencia, discutir si, en principio, el poema beowulf—como el sueño de la cruz—podría haber sufr ido varias revisiones antes de asumir su forma literaria completa. palabras clave: inglés antiguo, alfabetización vernácula, beowulf, sueño de la cruz, historia, historia del arte, mercia, kent, northumbria, wessex, rey alfr edo, libro de cerne, historia del libro. i do not propose to engage here in a specific discussion of the dating or localisation of the sole surviving early manuscript witness to the old english poem known as beowulf, nor to participate in the complex and contentious debate concerning the generation of the fully-fl edged composition that is preserved therein, as there are those far better qualifi ed to do so.1 rather, i should like to consider whether the cultural contexts for the composition and transmission of vernacular material of this sort might allow, in principle, for something of a back-story to this epic work, prior to its appearance in the nowell codex around the year 1000. this will entail a consideration of the origins of the written english vernacular and of the nature of cumulative composition, as well as of audience reception by what might be termed a “community of reading,” by which i mean the widest participative group sharing access, of varying sorts and degrees, to 1 i should like to thank leonard neidorf for his encouragement in writing this paper. for an overview of the debate on the dating of beowulf as it currently stands, see neidorf 2014. michelle p. brown 82selim 20 (2013–2014) a common narrative. this may, or may not, take a written form or forms and may, or may not, entail the ability to read writing. the majority of extant manuscripts containing old english, including the four poetic codices, were written in the tenth to twelft h centuries. transcription errors and archaic orthographical forms indicate that some of the texts in these manuscripts were composed at a signifi cant but uncertain remove. nevertheless, scholars have fr equently assumed that the palaeographical dating of our extant manuscripts provides us with more than the terminus ante quem of their contents. there is a problematic tendency in recent old english studies for scholars to equate the date of a particular manuscript’s production with the date of its content’s composition.2 thus, it is oft en assumed that if a prose text is found in a tenthor eleventh-century manuscript, it must have been composed then. however, r. d. fulk has recently made a persuasive case against this assumption, demonstrating that a substantial number of vernacular prose texts contain archaic and dialectal features that render eighth-century composition far more probable (1992: 60– 65). likewise, the leiden riddle, an eighth-century northumbrian translation of aldhelm’s enigma 33 (smith 1933: 18, 23–25; van kirk dobbie 1942: cviii–cx, 109, 199–200),3 survives due to copying by a tenth-century hand (in leiden, universiteitsbibliotheek, voss. lat. q. 106, f. 25v).4 a further intriguing case is the collectanea pseudo-bedae, a miscellaneous assemblage of materials including riddling questions, formerly attributed to bede and included in the edition of his complete works printed in basel in 1563,5 of 2 in the case of beowulf studies this has escalated since the publication of chase 1981 and kiernan 2011. 3 i am deeply indebted to mercedes salvador-bello for this reference, and those in the following two footnotes. 4 for a full description of this manuscript and its contents, see bremmer & dekker 2006: 107–112 and parkes 1972: 216–217. 5 herwagen 1563: iii.647–674. for discussion, see bayless & lapidge 1998. beowulf and the origins of the written old english vernacular 83 selim 20 (2013–2014) which no manuscript copy survives. nonetheless, comparison with other literary works led lapidge to conclude that the fl orilegium probably originated in the mid-eighth century, “either in ireland or england, or in an irish foundation on the continent” (bayless & lapidge 1998: 12).6 such admissions of the possibility of an earlier date of initial composition than that of the extant manuscript evidence is not new; tolkien adopted a similar stance in his seminal paper “the monsters and the critics,” delivered in 1936, in which he suggested a date for beowulf closer to that of bede (tolkien 2006). leonard neidorf has taken a similar stance in his recent study of the poem widsið, of which he writes (2013a: 165): recent work on widsið contends that there is little evidence supporting the presumed early date of composition. this essay argues, however, that four categories of evidence can be brought to bear on the dating of widsið—orthographic, lexical, onomastic, and cultural—and that all four of these categories agree in support of an early date of composition. concerning beowulf, neidorf (2013b) has also shown that, between the seventh century and the time that the monk “biuuulf ” was commemorated in the durham liber vitae (written around 840), parents were naming their children aft er a legendary hero whose reputation was already well-known, and who was probably later placed at the heart of the famous poem. neidorf (2013c), and earlier michael lapidge, has also cited the occurrence of multiple scribal errors in respect of the name in support of an earlier written circulation prior to the poem being inscribed in the nowell codex in the early eleventh century. lapidge (2000) has related some of these errors, palaeographically, to misunderstandings of eighth6 this compilation shares numerous characteristics with other riddling dialogues, see bayless & lapidge 1998: 13. however, the inclusion of fi ve pieces fr om symphosius’s enigmata and fi ve fr om aldhelm’s demonstrates that the author of the collectanea was acquainted with major riddle collections, see bayless & lapidge 1998: 22. michelle p. brown 84selim 20 (2013–2014) century insular set minuscule letter-forms of a sort current before the mid eighth century. an over-reliance upon the materiality of the evidential base under-estimates the likely low survival rate for the early medieval footprint of memory and identity. the fact that few artefacts and manuscripts bearing written old english survive does not mean that it did not enj oy wider currency. in fact, the law of probability would suggest that, on the basis of those items that do survive, it would have done. also, there are a series of references in historical texts of the period and a number of cultural contextual parallels that would likewise indicate that the written vernacular was more widespread during the pre-alfr edian period than has been assumed. a number of literary-historical assumptions support and inform the assumption that old english texts are more likely to be late rather than early. one of these beliefs is that the vernacular was rarely used in writing before the reign of king alfr ed. the cultural and political agendas of the king and his successors led them to portray him as an innovator in this practice, and modern scholars have generally credited his claims, partly in response to a reaction against an earlier scholarly tendency to assign the origins of major cultural trends to the age of bede.7 dorothy whitelock (1951: 25) helped to shift such assumptions when she suggested that a later date (before 835), perhaps the reign of off a of mercia, might be a more credible context for the origins of the beowulf poem.8 roberta frank (1981, 2007), john d. niles (1999, 2007), and craig davis (1996, 2006) are amongst those who have since argued eloquently that the alfr edian program of translatio and renovatio would have created new conditions conducive to the 7 for a summary of the debate on the dating of beowulf as it stood at the end of the twentieth century, see chase 1981, especially his introduction (3–8). 8 an attribution of the poem to off a’s reign was subsequently taken up by wrenn and sisam, see chase 1981: 7. beowulf and the origins of the written old english vernacular 85 selim 20 (2013–2014) composition of beowulf. n. f. blake (1977) has argued that the bulk of old english poetry, including beowulf, was composed during or aft er alfr ed’s educational program, which “provides us with a good reason for the rise and development of the poetry.” the biggest support for the myth that the vernacular was born during alfr ed’s reign, however, is the assumption that manuscript dates provide special insight into composition dates. e. g. stanley (1981) has expressed this questionable idea in the context of the dating of beowulf: “the greater the distance between the date of the beowulf manuscript—“s. x/xi” by paleographical dating—and the posited date of the poem as we now have it, the heavier the element of hypothesis.” the present essay will not make a specifi c argument about the date of beowulf. rather it will reconsider evidence bearing on some of the literary-critical and text-historical assumptions that have informed discussion of the issue. in particular, it will posit powerful cumulative evidence indicating that the vernacular was used in writing during the earlier anglo-saxon period. this evidence off ers some important methodological reminders: that the extant manuscripts present a skewed and partial image of the vibrant cultural production of anglo-saxon england; that the assertions of king alfr ed, his heirs and publicists should not always be taken at face value; and that we must take adequate account of probable lacunae in the evidence as well as its extant material manifestations. glosses, texts, inscriptions, and several crucial passages fr om bede indicate that there must have been fr equent use of the vernacular in writing before alfr ed’s reign. this paper is thus intended to encourage us to reconsider how we discuss old english literary history. we may achieve a more nuanced understanding of the literary culture of angl o-saxon england by focusing less on homogenizing manuscript dates and more on evidence indicating probable composition dates and cultural trends. michelle p. brown 86selim 20 (2013–2014) discussions of this beowulf poem’s origins have entailed a consideration of the text, palaeography and codicology of the nowell codex, its dating and localisation (this actual sole surviving manuscript dating to c.1000–1025, place of origin uncertain), and whether it is: (a) a copy of an earlier work; (b) a representative of authorial input and therefore close to the date of actual composition; or (c) part of an ongoing iterative process of textual transmission in which an earlier core text is being amplifi ed or reworked in some way. amongst the many valuable contributions to this debate has been the invaluable work undertaken by kevin kiernan, especially in pursuit of the goal of making beowulf the fi rst cybernaut, with the appearance of the electronic beowulf in which the manuscript was digitised and given a digital raft of scholarly apparatus and accompanying commentary (kiernan 2011). then there has been the ongoing process of examining the cultural context in which the action of the poem is set and the equation of this with material culture as attested by archaeology and art and attempts to match this to historical context—i.e. to render it period specifi c by locating parallels to features such as the hall in heorot, ship burial (which has been compared to that excavated at sutton hoo), treasure hoards concealed in barrows and the like. most recently, in this vein, has been the fascinating work by john d. niles (1999, 2007) on correspondences between the material culture described in the poem and the excavations at the danish site of lejre, where halls similar to heorot have been discovered, and also on the context of oral literature. the question then arises of whether such wellobserved evocations of social setting are period specifi c or whether they represent a literary topos, designed to evoke a past age and, if the latter, to identify a historical context for composition that would make such an evocation of an earlier age desirable. in the case of beowulf and the ideal it presents of germanic warrior lifestyle, these might include a wish to summon up such heroic associations beowulf and the origins of the written old english vernacular 87 selim 20 (2013–2014) for reasons of geneaological and political legitimisation,9 or a desire to heighten the sense of a shared cultural memory between diff erent peoples of common pagan germanic root-stock, namely the anglo-saxons and the scandinavians who had followed them in settling in britain fr om the ninth century onwards. such debates are not exclusive to beowulf, of course. the study of the transmission of homeric epic and its transition fr om an oral to a written mode of dissemination and preservation springs to mind as, closer to hand in both time and space, does that of the great celtic epic, the táin bó cúailnge (“the cattle raid of cooley;” kinsella 1969). this is thought, on linguistic grounds, fi rst to have been committed to writing in approximately the seventh century, although, like its anglo-saxon counterpart beowulf, the detail of the world in which it is set relates to the pre-christian iron age, whereas its earliest extant manuscript version dates to a later period, in this case to around 1100. a sixteenth-century copy is preserved in british library, egerton ms 93, and this exhibits a remarkable conservatism, as if highly trained druidic oral mnemonic discipline had been imported into the written environment, safeguarding the smallest details of the material culture and practices of an earlier age across perhaps as much as a millennium and a half by means of careful, disciplined recitation and periodic attempts to capture this orality in written form. as research by robin flower, a curator at the british museum library, demonstrated, as late as the midtwentieth century peig sayers, an elderly woman living on the blasket islands in western ireland and who was “illiterate” in the conventional sense, was still able to recite much of the tale verbatim 9 these include the work by craig davis in identify ing an alfr edian dynastic genealogical interest in asserting a link with the germanic dynasties of the beowulf poem, tracing his father’s line back to scyld and his mother’s to the geats and goths (see davis 1996, 2006). helen damico has recently delivered lectures on her work to demonstrate a link between the poem and queen emma’s dynastic interests. michelle p. brown 88selim 20 (2013–2014) as it occurred in its medieval written form, purely fr om memory (flower 1978; sayers 1974). like beowulf, the táin contains references to things and practices that may have passed out of currency by the time that they were recorded on the manuscript page. for example, the use of the celtic proto-writing system, ogham/ogam, attributed to the god ogmios, although it is essentially an exploded version of the roman alphabet which takes the form of carved lines grouped in families of fi ve. bede’s explication of the decimal system and the use of fi nger-counting may owe something, ultimately, to druidic use of the digits as a mnemonic aid, which also led them to group the graphic characters of ogam into fi ves, exhibiting the infl uence of pythagorean number symbolism. the practice was still employed, much later, in printing by typesetters. a similar treatment of exploded letter-forms may also be encountered in some of the grafi tti at pompeii. ogam was used for short inscriptions fr om the fi rst to the seventh centuries, in ireland and by irish emigrants to scotland and wales, whose inscriptions reveal that they retained their native tongue. these oft en commemorate individuals but the talismanic potential of ogam is also indicated by a passage in the táin, in which an army is stopped in its tracks by a stick carved with an ogam taboo (kinsella 1969: 68, 263). even if christian scribes of a later age were familiar with the ogam alphabet in an antiquarian fashion, as probationes pennae and other annotations suggest, their earlier signifi cance and use had long since disappeared.10 many manuscripts written in the early celtic vernacular languages are, like their old english counterparts, of later date than that of the textual composition—notably the twelft h century in the case of ireland when the normans were making their presence felt—perhaps refl ecting a perceived need on the part 10 interestingly, some 550 medieval rune-sticks have been excavated at bergen, norway and, as kelly has suggested, it is also possible that they were also used for practical communication in anglo-saxon england. see liestøl 1968, 1971 and kelly 1990: 37. beowulf and the origins of the written old english vernacular 89 selim 20 (2013–2014) of scholars, librarians, or other preservers of group memory, to preserve indigenous culture in the wake of conquest and renewed ecclesiastical rapprochement with mainstream europe. such a phenomenon is probably also to be observed in the tendency to anthologise knowledge in english around the turn of the fi rst millennium, evinced by works such as the anglo-saxon herbal, the so-called anglo-saxon scientifi c miscellany, the vercelli codex, the exeter book and perhaps the nowell codex itself (brown 2011 & forthcoming ⒝ ). in the case of ireland, however, rapid changes in linguistic development permit the excavation of underlying composition dates for vernacular texts preserved in later compilations. a thumbnail sketch of this process in ireland may serve as a useful comparative case study in linguistic and cultural transmission. to quote michael richter, “[a]ft er latin, irish is the language in western europe with the longest and best-documented development” (richter 1988: 11). its earliest vehicles were the ogam inscriptions (indeed, the term “ogam” was retained in medieval ireland as a cognomen for the written vernacular), an elegy of c. 600 (the amra coluim chille), an early “mirror for princes” (the audacht morainn of c. 700) and legal texts. this archaic old irish accompanies the period of the introduction and spread of christianity and its literate learning throughout irish territory and travelled with the peregrini to britain and the continent. texts are more plentiful fr om the mid-eighth century onwards and contemporary manuscript witnesses survive, mostly preserved in continental irish foundations, such as bobbio and st gall, such as the st gallen priscian. other extant early vernacular texts include a treatise on the mass in the early ninth-century stowe missal and texts included in the patriciana of the book of armagh, of 807.11 there was a permeable interaction between latin and the vernacular 11 dublin, trinity college library, ms 52 (alexander 1978: no. 53), dublin, trinity college library, ms 52 (alexander 1978: no. 53). michelle p. brown 90selim 20 (2013–2014) and patterns of such interaction could vary according to genre. some texts, such as annals and penitentials, were written initially in latin but moved into old irish fr om around 800, whilst others, such as the vernacular secular law tracts, seem to have received a stimulus fr om latin ecclesiastical collections. for example, senchas már (“the great old knowledge”) was compiled during the eighth century, probably in response to the latin ecclesiastical collectio canonum hibernensis (richter 1988: 88). in view of the early nature of the origins of the irish written vernacular, its interaction with latinate literacy, preserved oral tradition and observed patterns of preservation and migration over time and within the extant manuscript corpus, it is generally considered that the táin, as represented in its late medieval manuscript form, preserves at its core an orally composed and transmitted iron age epic, which refl ects the social and material contexts of the pre-christian period but which has grown and incorporated textual and linguistic interventions over succeeding centuries, especially during the process of being committed to writing by christian (probably monastic) scribes. the alacrity of the english in adopting a written vernacular was probably infl uenced, at least initially, by the precocity of their irish neighbours. like the celtic peoples and their ogam, the germanic exposure to romanisation seems to have fostered the adoption of a proto-writing system: runes. their origins also lie within the pre-christian, “pre-literate” prehistoric past. “rune” means “secret,” perhaps implying early elitist or cult use. the poet cynewulf, perhaps writing as early as the late eighth century, would append them to his works as a cryptic signature and the solutions to certain latin riddles depends upon a knowledge of runes (page 1973; sisam 1953: 1–28). the old german runic futhark / futhorc, of twenty-four characters grouped in families of eight, is thought to have been current fr om ad 200–750. localised demand led to expansion to thirty-three in england, for phonetic purposes. some runic characters are clearly indebted to the roman or etruscan beowulf and the origins of the written old english vernacular 91 selim 20 (2013–2014) alphabet, their angular forms betraying epigraphic origins. this is in eff ect a proto-literate writing system, born of lengthy liminal contact with the mediterranean and of limited application. runes generally occur in short inscriptions (page 1995; forsyth, higgitt & parsons 2001) on artefacts such as jewellery, weapons and monuments, sometimes occurring alongside latin, which aided in their initial decipherment, although they are also discussed in a scholarly context in later christian manuscripts and continue to occur in christian inscriptions, petering out only aft er the thirteenth century. as far as we can tell, the role of the scop was not as formalised within early germanic society as that of the celtic bard, whose role as a member of the aes dana—the professional classes—was protected and celebrated in irish law and whose training as a preserver of group memory and identity fell within the orbit of the specialised druidic caste, with its schooled tradition (mcgrath 1979). yet, even if we were to accept the premise that germanic bards were capable of composing, preserving and transmitting a complex epic poem of the nature of beowulf across several centuries before it was written down in the nowell codex or any earlier lost manuscript intermediaries, then the scholarly trend to place the origins of written old english in the alfr edian era has still tended to preclude this hypothesis. but is it really the case that there could have been no substantial literary compositions in old english prior to the alfr edian revival? or, as in the case of the táin, might there indeed be the possibility of a back-story to the process of textual development and transmission of beowulf prior to its appearance in the nowell codex? in a recent monograph, the book and the transformation of britain c.550–1050 (brown 2011), i have attempted to assess something of the nature of the complex interplay between written and visual literacy and orality in anglo-saxon england. in the course of this study i examined some of the evidence for the early use of the written vernacular and suggested that there may be some michelle p. brown 92selim 20 (2013–2014) value in reappraising the conventional scholarly view, as a cultural model even given the limited nature of the surviving evidence. it may be helpful to summarise here some of the context that i have proposed. literacy is more complex than simply the ability to read and to write. one needs to take full account of the reader as viewer and the reader as listener. the ability to “read” has as much to do with the ability to comprehend meaning as with the technical ability to decipher graphic symbols and form them into words. oral and visual literacy play as essential a part in communicating text as writing has—and oft en an even greater role for a wider audience. during the early middle ages, when the act of writing was essentially the preserve of professional scribes and highly educated scholars and the sustained act of reading generally one of public performance or private meditation and study, we should not judge a people’s literacy by the deployment of these skills alone, but also by its response to the book and to the impact of text conveyed across time and space. oral and written forms of transmission might interact over time, transforming a text in the process. the rise of the written vernaculars was intimately interwoven with the introduction and transmission of scripture (brown 2005). centralised authorities tend to promote the use of a single unify ing language, whilst those affi rming local or group identity oft en use language as a means of signalling independent traditions and histories. “vernacular” languages are distinguished by their particularised use, in contrast to “universal” languages. with the growth in the acceptance of christianity these notional universals became the linguae sacrae: hebrew, greek and latin. in the near east, although greek became the principal language of the byzantine empire, independent local churches emerged in areas such as armenia, syria and coptic egypt, each with their own languages and traditions which found graphic expression in their books (buchtal & kurz 1942; déroche & richard 1997). the same would occur in the british isles and ireland. beowulf and the origins of the written old english vernacular 93 selim 20 (2013–2014) the imperium of rome and the pattern of post-roman devolution of power to the urban episcopacy led to latin retaining a prominence in the west. in the preface to his institutiones cassiodorus wrote (mynors 1937: 5–6): and so it appears that the divine scriptures of the old and new testament fr om the very beginning to the end have been expanded in the greek language…but with the lord’s aid we follow rather aft er latin writers, that, since we are writing for italians, we may most fi tly seem to have pointed out roman interpreters as well. for more gladly is that narration undertaken by every man which is told in the language of his fathers. his portrayal of latin as the early italian may be disingenuous, but it does serve as a timely reminder that the primacy of latin was by no means assured. the shift in perception of its status owed a great deal to jerome, popes damasus and gregory the great in their promotion in the west of latin scripture and commentary, raising “vulgar’ (vulgata) latin to literary heights. latin and the roman alphabet thus rose to prominence largely in response to the bureaucratic needs of the amorphous roman empire and its heir—the church. the question was perhaps whether the church would embrace the idea of a lingua fr anca or would accommodate its multi-lingual, diverse local parts within a latter-day tower of babel (brown 2005). the account of pentecost (acts 2.4–6) was of particular relevance in this respect: all of them were fi lled with the holy spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the spirit enabled them. now there were staying in jerusalem god-fearing jews fr om every nation under heaven. when they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language.12 bede was particularly interested in this episode. in his commentary on acts (acts 2.6) he said that it could be taken as meaning that 12 biblical quotations fr om palmer et al. 1978. michelle p. brown 94selim 20 (2013–2014) the apostles went to many diff erent peoples and preached in their many tongues, or that they spoke only once and the holy spirit simultaneously translated for their hearers’ benefi t (hudson 1983: 3–99; martin 1989). he was much criticised for this assumed heresy of innovatio and in his retractatio justifi ed his statement by emphasizing that he was quoting fr om gregory nazianzen. yet bede was not alone in his perception of the value of sharing scripture in the vernacular, in both oral and written forms. indeed, some of the earliest examples of written vernaculars come fr om precisely this evangelising context. the conversion process for a religion of the word entails not only the translation problems of preaching in the fi eld, for which interpreters are oft en required, but also the need to teach the necessary literacy skills for reading and copying texts. missionaries accordingly oft en resorted to the use of a written version of the spoken language of the area they were evangelising, as a step on the path to achieving full (latin) literacy. phonetics played an important part, for diff erent sounds encountered in local languages oft en necessitated the creation of entire scripts or modifi cations of existing systems to suit spoken languages, such as the miao script developed by pollard of the christian bible society and cherokee script invented by the native american sequoya and his family (brown 1998).13 gothic was the earliest written vernacular in the late roman “west,” invented by ulfi la (c. 311–383) “apostle to the goths,” who drew upon the greek and roman alphabets to produce the written gothic language in order to translate the bible. the great monument to the gothic language is the codex uppsalensis (or codex argenteus: uppsala, universitetsbiblioteket, ms dg i), a splendid volume written in sixth-century ravenna for the ostrogothic king, theodoric (brown 1998: 43; webster & 13 for an outline of biblical transmission in the early middle ages see brown 2006b. beowulf and the origins of the written old english vernacular 95 selim 20 (2013–2014) brown 1997: 242–243).14 the adaptation of the greek alphabet to armenian and georgian is likewise attributed to the fi ft h-century missionary st mesrop and the greek-based glagolitic alphabet is ascribed to st cyril, missionary to the slavs. bede’s claims in respect of augustine’s mission having likewise begun the process of writing old english (rather than merely inscribing short runic inscriptions) are not, therefore, without context in the conversion orbit. he tells us that king ethelberht of kent “introduced with the consent of his counsellors a code of law inspired by the example of the romans, which was written in english, and remains in force to this day” (he, ii.5). infl uenced by a growing perception of the iconic nature of the book in a religious context, insular secular rulers were quick to perceive the value of this powerful medium, and of a literate clerical administration, and enlisted the support of church personnel in penning law-codes, charters and genealogies to help establish secure, legitimate states (cubitt 1995, 2009; kelly 1990; wormald 1999). the roman missionaries may not have translated the bible into english (although the english church, along with those of the irish, would soon display an open mind in translating scripture), but they were apparently quick to commit kent’s germanic lawcode to the “safe-keeping” of writing, thereby beginning the processes of transliterating old english into the roman script and integrating the church into the social structure.15 augustine’s role in inventing written old english is perhaps best viewed in the context of the mission’s instructions fr om pope gregory the great to site christianity within existing local tradition. the books that accompanied his mission helped shape perceptions of the authority of writing in such a society, revolutionizing its oral literary, learning and administration. augustine and his followers 14 facsimile in svedberg et al. 1927. 15 for an overview of the conversion period in england, see mayr-harting 1977 and brown 2006a. michelle p. brown 96selim 20 (2013–2014) had some foundations upon which to build. they supplemented the roman alphabet with characters representing alien phonetic elements based upon pre-existing germanic runes. even though the only extant copy of ethelberht’s code is in the twelft h-century copy (the textus roff ensis, now in kent record offi ce), the script of which preserves earlier palaeographical features, it therefore seems reasonable to accept that augustine and his circle intervened at an early stage in devising a written form of the language of the people they had come to convert (see webster & backhouse 1991: 39–46). those areas which appear to have most consciously preserved their own script systems, decoration and the vernacular were those which escaped absorption within the carolingian empire and its successors, namely: britain, ireland, visigothic spain and benevento. this raises the interesting issue of imperialism and regional identity in book production. the corresponding reluctance of the east and west franks and the rest of italy to promote the vernacular has been ascribed to the gradual evolution of the romance languages fr om the latinity of the late roman empire and to a conscious carolingian policy of promoting latin, and caroline minuscule, as a means of cultural cohesion and control throughout the carolingian empire. thus german identity would not be unduly distinguished fr om that of gaul, with its marked roman legacy and mixed population (nelson 1996: 10), and the written culture of the carolingian empire did not refl ect its daily speech. meanwhile, fr ee fr om centralised rule, the newly christianised anglo-saxon and celtic peoples used everything at their disposal, including language, to share the “good news” (old english gōd spell), as did some of their counterparts in the former eastern roman empire. in his letter to archbishop ecgberht of york, dated 734, bede— who presumably also incorporated runic characters into the latin alphabet in his writing of the vernacular—wrote that he had found it useful to translate the pater noster and creed into old english for use by priests lacking suffi cient latinity to conduct services beowulf and the origins of the written old english vernacular 97 selim 20 (2013–2014) (plummer 1892–1896: ii. 405–423; farmer, latham & sherleyprice 1990: 337–351). this passage is oft en cited as evidence of the “illiterate” nature of much of the priesthood in england at this period, but upon closer scrutiny it can be interpreted diff erently: in preaching to the people, this message more than any other should be proclaimed: that the catholic faith, as contained in the apostles’ creed and the lord’s prayer, which the reading of the gospel teaches us, should be deeply memorized by all who are under your rule. all who have already learnt the latin tongue by constant reading have quite certainly learnt these texts as well; but as for the unlearned, that is, those who know their own language only, make these learn the texts in their own tongue and accurately sing them. this should be done not only by the laity still settled in secular life but also by clerics and monks who are already expert in the latin language. for thus it will come about that the whole congregation of believers learns how to be full of faith and how it must protect and arm itself against the attacks of unclean spirits by fi rm belief: thus it comes about that the whole chorus of those who are praying to god learns what should be specially sought fr om god’s mercy. that is why i have fr equently off ered translations of both the creed and the lord’s prayer into english to many unlearned priests. for st ambrose the bishop, speaking of faith, admonishes believers to sing the words of the creed each morning: thus they fortify themselves with a spiritual antidote against the devil’s poison, which he can wickedly instill by day and by night. moreover the custom of repeated prayer and genufl exions has taught us to sing the lord’s prayer more oft en. bede’s primary intention here was to foster the creation of a community of prayer—the embodiment of the church militant, the present manifestation of the communion of saints, which is fused with the church triumphant (those in paradise) and expectant (those in purgatory) through collective prayer. this is to be sung, in the tradition of both the temple and of the germanic and celtic cultures, and in the vernacular, based upon written translations. the assumption is that there are those who will be able to read text michelle p. brown 98selim 20 (2013–2014) in this form—priests and perhaps some laity—who will instruct others in its recitation. those clerics who are already fully latinate and therefore “literate,” are also expected to participate in collective vernacular performative prayer. thus the oft misinterpreted passage presents us with a picture not of lamentable illiteracy amongst the priesthood, but a more nuanced situation of clergy who were expert in reading both written latin and the vernacular, some clergy who could only read the vernacular—indicating that there was already a measure of vernacular literacy in the pre-alfr edian era—and laity who participated in the enactment of written text, by committing what intermediaries taught them to heart and singing it verbatim, or perhaps in some cases by fi rst reading the words written in their own tongue (farmer, latham & sherley-price 1990: 340). in a similar vein bede also relates that cædmon, using the divine gift of song, turned scripture into english verse to make it more accessible: there was in the monastery of this abbess a certain brother particularly remarkable for the grace of god, who was wont to make religious verses, so that whatever was interpreted to him out of scripture, he soon aft er put the same into poetical expressions of much sweetness and humility in english, which was his native language. by his verse the minds of many were oft en excited to despise the world, and to aspire to heaven. (he iv.24) only the short piece known as caedmon’s hymn is actually quoted by bede, but his account reveals that caedmon was responsible for many other vernacular poems. to test his new-found gift , abbess hild asked him to compose verse based upon “a passage of sacred history or doctrine”—the fi rst of the many which followed aft er he took the cowl. bede’s interest in the vernacular relates to his recognition of the generosity of the jews in sharing their faith with the gentiles, pointing to passages in his commentary on tobit (3.12 and 2.6) and their sharing the word with the gentiles through the greek beowulf and the origins of the written old english vernacular 99 selim 20 (2013–2014) septuagint, an impulse shared by the gentile races of britain and ireland who sought to share their faith with others (connolly 1997: 24–25). on his deathbed bede was still sharing—translating extracts fr om isidore’s on the nature of things and the gospel of st john—fusing the revelations of science and mystic vision in the quest to know god. as the letter of his pupil cuthbert to cuthwin relates concerning bede’s fi nal illness in 735 (farmer, latham & sherley-price 1990: 358–359): in these days, besides our lessons and the chanting of psalms, he was much busied with two short works which are specially worthy of memory: the translation into our own language for the church’s benefi t of the gospel of st john fr om the beginning until the passage where it says: “but what are these among so many?” [john 6.9], and also certain excerpts fr om the book of cycles by bishop isidore, about which he said: “i do not wish my students to read lies, or to work at this task in vain aft er my death.” bede’s translations have not survived, but some of his work may be recollected in the interlinear gloss added c. 950–960 to the lindisfarne gospels by the monk aldred—the oldest surviving translation of the gospels into english, wherein the gloss to john’s gospel is executed in two inks; might that honoured by the use of red ink preserve something of bede’s translation? (brown 2003, 2006b). aldred opened his accompanying colophon with a synopsis of the monarchian prologues outlining the process of transmission (brown forthcoming ⒜ ). he associated himself in the colophon with those to whom original production was ascribed (the scribe, bishop eadfr ith of lindisfarne; the binder, his successor, bishop æthilwald; and the metalworker who adorned it, billfr ith the anchorite); in so doing, aldred presented himself by analogy as the fourth evangelist (brown 2003: 96), john, beloved of christ, placing himself, and the english language, in direct line of transmission fr om the divine to humankind. michelle p. brown 100selim 20 (2013–2014) of similar date is the interlinear gloss supplied by the priests owun and farmon to the early ninth-century irish macregol (or rushworth) gospels (oxford, bodleian library, ms auct. d. 2. 19). the west-saxon gospels (london, british library, royal ms 1.a.xiv), preserved in a manuscript of twelft h-century date, are written in single columns of continuous prose text with simple coloured initials. however, the earliest english translation of a biblical text to survive physically is the interlinear gloss to the vespasian psalter added during the mid-ninth century in canterbury to a kentish volume made a century earlier. both these and aldred’s glosses are inserted with care and sensitivity to the original layout of two extremely formal tomes. the signs are that, left to its own devices, anglo-saxon england would not have had to await wycliff e and tyndale to have produced an english vernacular bible. the origins of the anglo-saxon tradition of glossing may be observed in the latin  / old english glossaries used in the schoolroom fr om the reforms of learning implemented by theodore and hadrian at canterbury during the seventh century (lindsay 1921). in such handbooks the glosses provide explanations and perhaps a translation of terms, oft en drawn fr om specifi c texts or subject-based. such teaching aids were probably indebted to late antique and merovingian graeco-latin glossaries. the eighthcentury irish use of such glosses is also likely to have been of relevance here. the impact of the missionary conversion experience and of the “new learning” promoted by theodore reverbertated throughout secular society, as well as the church. early english kings soon came to take pride in tracing their newly christianised, integrated ancestry back through historical fi gures to pagan deities such as woden and thence back to the biblical adam and tracing their antecedents not only through the songs of bards and scops, but through the columns of a book, just as christ’s genealogy opened the holy gospelbook. as the deeds of the heroes of generations past were lauded in song, so the biblical forefathers were celebrated beowulf and the origins of the written old english vernacular 101 selim 20 (2013–2014) in the feasting hall. the account of bede’s death, written by his pupil cuthbert, bears witness to his love of song, “for he knew our poems well,” and indeed the earliest recorded old english verses (even if only of 9 lines in length) are caedmon’s hymn (he iv.24) and bede’s death song recounted by cuthbert (farmer, latham & sherley-price 1990: 248–249 and 358, respectively). yet before the eighth century was done such cross-cultural synthesis was becoming unacceptable, at least in cultivated circles, and another of northumbria’s scholar sons, alcuin, would demand aff rontedly of an anglian religious community, which permitted such songs / poems  / lays to be sung at table, “what has ingeld to do with christ?”16 another english verse of this era was carved in roman capitals and runes on the ruthwell cross in the ancient british kingdom of rheged in southwest scotland during the eighth century. this monument, a visual meditation in stone on the passion of christ and the religious life, refl ects northumbrian infl uence in a recently annexed region, emphasised by its display of runic script (ó carragáin 1994, 2005). in the late tenth-century this verse was copied in a fuller form in the vercelli book as the dream of the rood, in which the cross laments its role in the crucifi xion of the young warrior, christ, but is subsequently honoured by being covered in precious metals and jewels, becoming the honoured crux gemmata—symbol of resurrection. processional crosses, such as the early eleventh-century brussels cross, which carries passages similar to the dream of the rood poem inscribed upon it, recalled such eloquent splendour, as would the stone and wooden crosses that sprouted across the land. such crosses also oft en bore scenes fr om scripture, serving as teaching aids and being imbued with subtle exegetical meaning and typological analogies which would be apparent to the initiated and which might be expounded to the 16 alcuin raised this question in a letter dated 797 which has traditionally been thought to be addressed to bishop higbald of lindisfarne; see bullough 1993. michelle p. brown 102selim 20 (2013–2014) faithful. bede’s aspirations for refr aming heroic northern culture in christian guise were being fulfi lled. the bewcastle cross, of similar date to ruthwell, likewise bears an eroded inscription in runes, proclaiming in old english the fame of northumbria’s royal house—in the heart of british rheged which they had annexed (karkov & orton 2003). the use of particular scripts could be a powerful statement of both harmonious integration and unity, as in the lindisfarne gospels where roman capitals, greek letters and stylised forms recalling runes and ogam are carefully synthesised in its display script, or of cultural and political supremacy (alexander 1978: nos. 35, 20; brown 2003: 55– 56, fi g. 25; lowe 1934–1971: ii.215, ii.213; webster and brown 1997: 245–246). it is therefore most unlikely that the chad gospels, whose artist copied the incipit pages of the lindisfarne gospels, was welsh (as its ninth-century provenance might suggest), for it goes a step further and features actual runic letter forms in some of its display script—a thing that no self-respecting welsh person would do at a time of resistance to english expansionism (brown 2003, 2007, 2008). r. i. page has suggested that the epigraphic runes on the ruthwell and bewcastle crosses and the cuthbert coffi n are indebted to the approach of manuscript scribes, and the context of public display of these monuments is such that we are likely to be witnessing positive cultural statements of “englishness” and its relationships to graeco-roman past and international christian present—with runes already serving as a signifi er of anglo-saxon identity. such semiotics remained important, for most people’s knowledge of scripture, as of other texts, would continue to be oral and visual. runes and roman script also rubricate the northumbrian eighth-century whalebone box known as the franks casket, which has been proposed as a book reliquary, leslie webster (2010) suggesting that it contained a northumbrian royal genealogy. such books were penned by clerics and helped to legitimise the rule of their owners as christian princes whose ancestors, traditions beowulf and the origins of the written old english vernacular 103 selim 20 (2013–2014) and beliefs were presented as world history within the context of a christian eternity, just as their descent fr om historical and semimythical fi gures was traced to germanic gods and old testament patriarchs. thus the iconography of the casket related scenes fr om jewish, perhaps greek, roman, germanic and christian traditions, captioned in runes and roman capitals, juxtaposing and synthesising them to provide a visual genealogy of power and redemption for a contemporary english audience. thus the bird whose feathers enabled the vengeful weland the smith to escape his enemy, nithhad, becomes the holy spirit, guiding the magi to salvation in the form of the christ-child, on one face of the franks casket. not only letter forms and iconographies and myths, but whole mindsets and socio-ethical codes are juxtaposed and mutually accommodated. similarly, at another point during the eighth century an english reader would gloss the word thalaria, the winged sandals of mercury, as “fether homa,” weland’s garment of feathers, in a copy of servius’s commentary on vergil’s aeneid, book iv, attesting to the level of assimilation and association attained by insular readers.17 stressing a shared, participative world history with their biblical and roman counterparts was a preoccupation of insular ecclesiastical and secular authorities. the hagiography of native saints, such as cuthbert and guthlac, would soon rival the tales of the heroes of germanic and celtic mythology and those of the christian martyrs of rome—although as bede laments, in his letter to ecgberht, some teachers preferred to fi ll their minds with secular tales than the word of god and alcuin, in his epistle 124, urged that a reader rather than a harpist, patristic discourse, not pagan song, be heard at table (bullough 1993). these worthies would therefore doubtless approve that the earliest extant manuscript of a primary prose text in old english 17 spangenberg, pfarrbibliothek, s.n. (lowe 1934–1971: xii, no. 1806); see parkes 1997: 11. michelle p. brown 104selim 20 (2013–2014) should occur in a devotional context—in the book of cerne, a western mercian prayerbook which was probably made for bishop æthelwald of lichfi eld (818–830). my identifi cation of the hand of its old english prefatory exhortation to prayer as that of the main artist/scribe and my discussion of it as guide for the performative use of this devotional manual, make it the earliest extant example of an english vernacular text written as part of an original project, rather than added to an existing work (brown 1996). one of the prayers in cerne, the lorica of laidcenn—considered so effi cacious that it was recited thrice daily—also carries a planned interlinear old english gloss. it is telling that the exhortation, an early example of a vernacular text planned as part of a latin book compiled fr om numerous earlier sources, should be essentially an explicatio and instructio for its use, which also provides for the possibility of performance—before god and the communion of saints—with its exhortations to the user to prostrate himself and engage in other ritual acts during the text’s use. my work on this and other mercian manuscripts of the fi rst half of the ninth century, and my appraisal of the nature of the palaeographical and stylistic relationships of the regional components of what i have termed the “mercian schrift provinz” (greater mercia, including the fens, kent and wessex), coupled with the arguments adduced by jennifer morrish, point to westsaxon attempts to downplay the cultural achievements of mercia as their prominent political forebear. as part of the construction of a unifi ed england, the rules of wessex fostered forgetfulness of the extent of earlier learning and suppressed the mercian historical record represented by annals and other documents (brown 2001: 279–291, 2006: 164–172; morrish 1982, 1986, 1988; for a more pro-wessex view, see gneuss 1986). greater mercia was actively promoting texts in the vernacular during this period, as the prose “exhortation” and glossed lorica in the book of cerne, the interlinear translation / gloss of the psalms in the vespasian psalter (the earliest extant example of a biblical text in english, following in beowulf and the origins of the written old english vernacular 105 selim 20 (2013–2014) bede’s footsteps) and perhaps the old english martyrology and the poetry of cynewulf (who may have been a mercian writing around 800) suggest.18 nicholas brooks’s picture of the decline of standards of handwriting and latinity in the christ church canterbury scriptorium during the second half of the ninth century, which is based upon the extant output of one ageing monastic charter scribe, needs to be balanced against the evidence i have rehearsed of the continuing presence and infl uence of mercian manuscript exemplars and scholars, such as wærferth, plegmund, æthelstan and werwulf, in unoccupied western mercia and wessex in the late ninth century (brooks 1984; brown 1996: 16–18, 162–164, 173–177). couple this with a wish to recall (or better) charlemagne’s imperial achievement in establishing a court-focused scholarly equipe, a publishing programme in the form of the tours bibles,19 and a cultural renovatio,20 and we have receptive soil for the legend of alfr ed’s literary prowess. this grew over the course of the tenth century fr om the seeds of renewal sewn in his own circle—and probably with his own imprimatur—which were cultivated by his immediate heirs and eulogised by later authors. when the preface to the pastoral care states that there was nobody in alfr ed’s kingdom who could read latin by alfr ed’s day, and few elsewhere in england, it may accurately refl ect the situation in wessex and kent, but there were evidently those who could in mercia, at least. there are indeed indications that the 18 see bjork 1998; brown 2006, 2001; pulsiano 1996; zacher 2002. we know cynewulf ’s name fr om his runic signatures, woven into the four poems which comprise his acknowledged corpus: the fates of the apostles, juliana, elene, and christ ii (also referred to as the ascension), which survive in later collections in the vercelli and exeter books. 19 alcuin’s programme was probably infl uenced by wearmouth / jarrow’s earlier “publication” of the works of bede and of reliable editions of scripture, in turn indebted to cassiodorus’s example. 20 the carolingian court culture was one that alfr ed had visited as a child and which his carolingian princess / stepmother had inhabited. michelle p. brown 106selim 20 (2013–2014) decline in latinity had begun prior to the viking incursions, in the early ninth century, but that this was patchy and occasioned not so much by cultural degeneration as by the growth of an active written vernacular literacy—english was coming of age in its own right and fr eeing itself fr om its mediterranean masters. it would be ironic indeed if the edifi ce of west-saxon renovatio had its foundations laid by a largely mercian team, drawing also upon continental precedents and expertise and with a large dash of welsh hyperbole, courtesy of “asser.” notwithstanding ongoing scholarly debate concerning the extent of his personal scholarly role, alfr ed’s contribution should not be devalued, for even if many of the old english translations associated with his reforms were penned in the subsequent generation, he initiated such enterprise by his distribution—by means of a wearmouth / jarrow and touronian style publishing drive—to key centres of the pastoral care, a work designed to foster social cohesion—and by choosing the vernacular as its voice. he also ensured a measure of continuity in traditions of script and other aspects of book production and consolidated what remained of local scholarship. he also ensured a growing rapprochement with the cultural ideals and strategies of the carolingian empire, probably reintroduced schooling, extending it beyond the orbit of earlier monastic schoolrooms, for a substantial sector of the male population and began the process of reviving the ecclesiastical publishing houses and beacons of faith. these were considerable achievements indeed, but nonetheless alfr ed did not pioneer the use of written old english. he and his heirs transplanted and strengthened a vigorous root stock that had already sprung fr om the seeds of conversion and the accompanying reception of full literacy, as was also the case with so many other of the european and middle eastern vernaculars. what alfr ed did do was to escalate a trend to reverse the polarity. whereas insular authors such as aldhelm and bede composed in latin— even if bede for one recognised the pragmatic effi cacy of vernacular beowulf and the origins of the written old english vernacular 107 selim 20 (2013–2014) translation—post-alfr edian writers, such as ælfr ic, wulfstan and byrthferth, would write predominantly in their native tongue. ælfr ic’s homilies were designed for circulation to a literate englishreading clergy, whilst bede lamented the lack of latinate priests and began the process of equipping them with written vernacular tools which they could share orally with their wider communities. whereas the churchman bede translated into english in order to inform his people of an international christian literary tradition, 250 years later the layman ealdorman æthelweard translated into latin in order to integrate his nation’s historical experience back into that tradition. the english and irish escalation in the use of their written vernaculars during the ninth century can perhaps best be viewed, in some respects, as an ethnic response to viking invasion, settlement and the establishment of a “state within a state.” ninthcentury wales (and to a lesser extent cornwall) witnessed a similar phenomenon in reaction to english expansionism. for such threats spurred a desire to preserve national cultural identity. in england, they also stimulated the translation of appropriate classics, such as orosius’s history against the pagans, and the production of customwritten vernacular texts, including rousing sermons by ælfr ic and wulfstan—the wolf, designed to hearten and to mobilize english resistance to scandinavian incursion, penned largely in his own hand. the anthologising trends apparent in british and english literature, fr om the work of the welsh cleric nennius in the ninth century (dumville 1985), who tells of his collecting of historical sources and oral anecdotes to form the historia brittonum, to that of the compilers of the vercelli book (whom ó carragáin (2005) suggests may have been a canon; see also scragg 1992) and of the anglo-saxon scientifi c miscellany (bl. cotton ms tiberius b.v, pt 1; mcgurk et al. 1983), speak of a desire to capture existing knowledge—both written and, as nennius puts it, the “tales of old men”—within binding boards for posterity, perhaps in response to michelle p. brown 108selim 20 (2013–2014) the threat of loss of identity and to the challenge of establishing a perceived shared identity amongst established and incoming populations. there are also signs of attempts to assert traditional ties to ancient and imperial worlds, and to a northern scandinavian trading empire with shared germanic folk roots and vernacular orality. such was the climate that cultivated the production of the beowulf manuscript, the old english compendia of poetry, and sculptural monuments such as the nunburnholme cross and the gosforth cross with their juxtaposed images of crucifi xion and scandinavian saga. during the early eleventh century, such intersections of identities also reached new levels of visual narrative expression in the old english hexateuch (london, british library, ms cotton claudius b.iv) and the old english genesis (oxford, bodleian library, ms junius 11) manuscripts. these confl ated vernacular paraphrases of old testament texts with picture cycles of largely early christian origin, adapted to refl ect the interests of contemporary “communities of reading,” including women, and emphasizing the anglo-saxon people’s own sense of exile and journey fr om their original germanic homelands to england as the new “children of israel.” the english thereby asserted their own cultural and linguistic identity and set themselves within the biblical landscape.21 such works stressed the shared inheritance of anglo-saxon and scandinavian parallel cultures, sprung fr om a common germanic, and ultimately biblical, stock. such a trend can be detected as early as the alfr edian revival, with the inclusion of othere’s voyage alongside the old english orosius, which survives in an early tenth-century copy (the helmingham  / tollemache orosius). it culminated in the anglo-saxon world map, the fi rst of the medieval mappae mundi. this forms part of the anglo-saxon scientifi c 21 see barnhouse & withers 2000; dodwell & clemoes 1974 ; karkov 2006; muir 2004; withers 2007. beowulf and the origins of the written old english vernacular 109 selim 20 (2013–2014) miscellany (mcgurk et al. 1983), which links material such as priscian’s periegesis, archbishop sigebert of canterbury’s pilgrimage route, cicero’s aratea, the marvels of the east and computistic materials, also features a remarkable, precocious world map. based upon roman cartography supplemented by the experience gained on scandinavian voyages, this is the fi rst surviving attempt to depict a world view in diagrammatic form, other than the simple isidoran “t maps” in which a globe is divided into three continents. it depicts britain and ireland, with their outlying archipelagos, as part of a scandinavian empire linked via trading and pilgrimage routes to the holy land, with jerusalem as the umbilical centre-point of the world, and with the outlying lands of legend, as recounted by the marvels of the east. the monstrous races that it describes are not confl ated onto the map here, but they are depicted elsewhere in the volume, and in the beowulf manuscript where they complement the theme of grendel and his mother in a poem that retains a recollection of the culture of germanic prehistory. by the time of the more famous thirteenth-century hereford mappa mundi, which may once have functioned as an altarpiece, the monstrous races and other aspects of the information in the miscellany had been mapped onto the surface of a world which english scholars such as bede and byrthferth had played signifi cant roles in seeking to understand at a scientifi c level of revelation. such was the sophistication of the rapprochement of learning, text and image that had been achieved towards the conclusion of our period. the orality interface remained highly signifi cant. patrick conner’s recent work on anglo-saxon guilds has shown that the song of the germanic warriors’ mead-hall was giving way, by the eleventh century, to other sorts of secular fellowship of like-minded folk, linked by trading interests in a developing urban environment. books fi gured in guild feasts, and in the development of dramatic performances—forerunners of medieval mystery plays—and conner suggests such a context for the performance of at least some of the poetry and riddles in the exeter book (exeter, dean michelle p. brown 110selim 20 (2013–2014) and chapter, ms 3501).22 the inappropriate participation in such social rituals by monkish ale-poets caused wulfstan to lament, recalling alcuin’s demand “what has ingeld to do with christ?” (cherniss 1972). we might ask, in return, “what has beowulf to do with monks?” yet retention of a germanic way of life, or poetic and visual allusions to it, did not equate to the perpetuation of paganism, for as patrick wormald observed, the church was not separate fr om the world, and beowulf was not exclusively secular or antipathetic to a monastic audience (wormald 1978). the interplay between the oral and visual imagination and their commital to long-term graphic retention by means of the written word and images, which occurred in anglo-saxon england, was a complex one. this, coupled with the models of transmission provided by works such as the táin, the works of cynewulf (which are preserved in the anthologies in the vercelli and exeter books) and the dream of the rood, would suggest that it is possible that there was a back-story to the transmission of the beowulf poem before it was copied, reworked or expanded, in the form that it assumes in the nowell codex. it is conceivable that, like the dream of the rood, beowulf fi rst took the form of a written poem in the insular age (probably the eighth century). this would accord with the arcane archaeological, palaeographical and linguistic features of the poem, the mixed west saxon and anglian dialect of which suggests that an east anglian, mercian or northumbrian intermediary dwells at the heart of its west-saxon body. it may, previously and/or subsequently, have been recited in the mead hall and extracts fr om it may also have been inscribed 22 conner (2009) proposes “to examine the proposition that four poems preceding the riddles 1 to 59 in booklet iii of that manuscript beg, by their sequencing as well as thematic content, to be read together in a performance context, perhaps appropriate to a banquet with both men and women in attendance, such as those we know were held by the parish guilds which are documented in southern anglosaxon england.” see also conner 2008. beowulf and the origins of the written old english vernacular 111 selim 20 (2013–2014) onto stone, bone and wooden monuments and de luxe metalwork before its full literary form was incorporated by a monastic scribe into a manuscript anthology, with a focus upon the relationship between mankind and the monstrous races, sometime around the year 1000, perhaps stimulated by a rapprochement between english and scandinavian society and celebrating their shared roots in the germanic past. further support for the contention that the beowulf poem was an early composition comes fr om the arguments based upon linguistic similarities between beowulf and genesis a advanced by dennis cronan, who favoured an eighth-century date for both (cronan 2004: 49): the words examined here confi rm the presence of the chronological connection between beowulf and genesis a seen in this list, and to a lesser extent they also confi rm the connection between these poems and exodus, and perhaps daniel, although in this latter case the evidence is not as reliable. the distribution of suhtriga, heoru, eodor, engel and missere indicate that these poems are probably early; the restriction of suhtriga to genesis a and beowulf (as well as widsith) and to glossaries derived fr om a seventhor eighthcentury collection indicates an eighth-century date for genesis a, and, by implication, for beowulf, maxims i, exodus and perhaps widsith. in the case of maxims i it is uncertain whether the evidence points toward an eighth-century date for some of the materials in the poem, for the editorial work of an anthologist, or for the poem itself. this supported the chronology of old english poetry proposed by r. d. fulk (1992: 60–65), which in turn confi rmed that advanced by t. cable (1981: 80). this in turn lends support to lapidge’s contention that errors in the beowulf poem, as it appears in the nowell codex, were the result of scribal misunderstanding of certain letters such as would suggest that he was copying an exemplar in “anglo-saxon set minuscule script, written before c. 750” (lapidge 2000: 34). michelle p. brown 112selim 20 (2013–2014) the vernacular, it is clear, moved fr om the purely oral and inscriptional to a fully written form during the seventh, and eighth centuries. the fact that the four compendia of old english poetry were penned during the tenth and eleventh centuries should not lead us to imagine that poetry was not written down in previous centuries. these compendia contain transcription errors and archaic orthographical forms, moreover, which would suggest that they contain poems fi rst committed to writing during the earliest periods of anglo-saxon literacy. a variety of lexical and metrical evidence supports the possibility that beowulf was composed in the earlier anglo-saxon period; this essay has simply contributed a context, in light of which there is no literary-historical reason why it should not have been. michelle p. brown school of advanced studies, university of london references alexander, j. j. g. 1978: insular manuscripts, 6 th to the 9th centuries (a survey of manuscripts illuminated in the british isles, 1). london, h. miller. barnhouse r. & b. withers, eds. 2000: the old english hexateuch: aspects and approaches. kalamazoo & ann arbor, university of west michigan. bayless m. & m. lapidge eds. and trans. 1998: collectanea pseudo-bedae. dublin, dublin institute for advanced studies. bjork, r. e. 1998: cynewulf (fl . early 9th–late 10th 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zacher, s. 2002: cynewulf at the interface of literacy and orality: the evidence of the puns in elene. oral tradition 17.2: 346–387. • received 9 apr 2014; accepted 03 may 2014 lioba simon schuhmacher, selim 21 (2015–2016): 179–192. issn 1132-631x from leofgyth to lioba: perpetuating a medieval anglo-saxon name lioba simon schuhmacher universidad de oviedo, university of georgia this article explores the history of a rather uncommon anglo-germanic first name, a christian name in the original sense, tracking it back to its medieval roots in eighth century wessex. emphasis is made on leofgyth’s effort fostering the education of women in the then pagan germany, following the english model, and how this seemed to have been the cause of confrontation with the church of rome and its patriarchal concept. furthermore links are drawn to the present, depicting the name’s imprint on some nowadays’ institutions, predominantly in germany. finally, with a truly cross-cultural approach, and touching four continents (europe, africa, america, and asia), reference is made to some of the few people who bear this name (and why) in the twenty-first century. keywords: leofgyth of wessex; eighth century; education of women; christianization of germany; cross-cultural approach the benedictine monk and teacher rudolf, also known as rudolph or ralph (died in fulda in 862), was one of the most distinguished scholars of his time. he is recognized as the first chronicler of the english benedictine nun who came over as a young woman to take an active role in the christianization of – the then heathen lands of – germany, and who will be the subject of the ensuing pages. in 838 and at the suggestion of his master rabanus maurus, rudolf compiled, from notes of the priest mego and from oral tradition, a life of st leobgyth, 1 who had died a few decades earlier. this was to be part 1 rudolfus magister fuldensis, vita leobae abatissae biscofesheimensis. bibliotheca laureshamensis digital, münchen, bayerische staatsbibliothek, clm 11321. 180 lioba simon schuhmacher of the annales fuldenses, a worthy supplement to the history of that time, especially since rudolf was connected, through his superior rabanus (who was appointed to the archiepiscopal see in mainz) to the court of louis the pious, 2 who was king of aquitaine from 781 until his death at ingelheim am rhein in 840. originally started by einhard, rudolf continued the annales fuldenses 3 between 838 and 863 in a similar style. another authoritative source of information about leofgyth’s life is the letters exchanged with boniface, as will be mentioned further on. numerous both ancient and contemporary works make reference to leofgyth as an important figure in the christianization that went out from the british isles to the continent in the eighth century. 4 thus, in the beginnings of english society, professor dorothy whitelock includes an account of the evangelization that spread from england to the barbarian territories in europe. the name of leofgyth comes up several times, first when she refers to a young girl from wessex who was meant to take the veil and was related to boniface. whitelock explains that in the seventh and eighth centuries many double monasteries 5 had spread in england, and this type of foundation, she writes: legendarium (collectanea hagiographica) http://bibliotheca-laureshamensisdigital.de/view/bsb_clm11321/0205 (accessed 15/07/2015). also referred to in “acta ss.”, vii, sept., antwerp ed., 760–769, and in “mon. germ. script.”, xv, i, 121–131. 2 also called “the fair” and “the debonaire”. from 813 he was furthermore king of the franks and co-emperor with his father, charlemagne, of the holy roman empire. 3 there are many editions of the “annales fuldenses sive annales regni francorum orientalis”, yet that of friedrich kurze (hanover, 1891) is considered the most reliable (german translation by wilhelm wattenbach, geschichtsschreiber der deutschen vorzeit, xxiii, leipzig, 1889). more information about the life of rudolf can be found in: patricius schlager, “rudolf of fulda”. the catholic encyclopedia. vol. 13. new york: robert appleton company, 1912. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13218a.htm. retrieved 25/07/2015. further sources: august potthast, bibliotheca historica medii ævi (berlin, 1896), i, 67; ii, 1151, 1429, 1540; wilhelm wattenbach, deutschlands geschichtsquellen im mittelalter, ii (berlin, 1893), 227 sq., 238 sq. 4 this article will mention merely some of them, with no claim to representativeness. 5 these double monasteries, such as the great monastery of winburn (or wimbourne), built by the west-saxon kings, were each separated from the other and surrounded with high walls. no monk was allowed to set foot in the enclosure of the nuns, except in their church to say mass; and immediately afterwards he stepped down perpetuating a medieval anglo-saxon name 181 was primarily a house for nuns, but had alongside it a house of monks, who saw to the external administration and provided the priests to serve the community of women. the whole was under an abbess, often of royal birth, and many of these double monasteries rose to distinction as places of learning and education. [...] leofgyth, boniface’s chief woman helper in his mission to the germans, was educated first at minster, then at wimborne. her biographer tells us that at the latter place there were separate monasteries for the monks and the nuns, and the segregation seems to have been more complete than it was, as far as our evidence goes, at other places, for even the abbess spoke to the monks only through a window. boniface and his fellow-missionaries founded similar establishments in the lands which they converted. 6 boniface (in latin: bonifatius, born in wessex in 675) was the name the west saxon wynfryth took when setting out from the british isles as appointed papal legate and archbishop to the germans in the eighth century. many english helpers joined him and willibrord 7 on their mission to convert and educate the pagans, and were named bishops in the newly created sees, and abbots and abbesses at the monasteries founded above all in thuringia and hesse, but also in frisia and bavaria. whitelock continues: abbots include wigbert of fritzlar, beornred of echternach, who became archbishop of sens (died 797), and wynnebald of heidenheim, a double monastery like those they were accustomed to at home, in which he was succeeded by his sister waldburg. boniface’s chief woman-helper was leofgyth, abbess of tauberbischofsheim, mentioned above. 8 the role of women in this undertaking was crucial, and some of them followed in the footsteps of their male brethren, as was the case of waldburga from the altar to leave the church and return to his own cloister. as a rule no nun could ever go out of her own enclosure. 6 dorothy whitelock, the beginnings of english society (from the anglo-saxon invasion). pelican books, harmondsworth (1952, reprint 1962), chapter viii, “the church”, p.171. this synthesis of the life and thoughts of the anglo-saxons has become a classic and used to be widely read as a textbook. 7 willibrord (born 658 in northumberland) founded the benedictine monastery in echternach in 700, where he died in 739. he has since become the patron saint of luxembourg. 8 whitelock, the beginnings, p.178. 182 lioba simon schuhmacher who eventually came to run a double monastery, thus being in charge of both religious women and men. leofgyth is mentioned again in whitelock’s account of the anglo-saxons, when referring to chronicler rudolf’s 9 compilation of data on the saint’s life: aldhelm’s writings for the nuns of barking and rudolf’s life of st leofgyth, boniface’s helper in his missionary work, who was educated at minster and at wimborne, show that women, like men, studied the scriptures and their fourfold interpretation, the works of the fathers, chronography, grammar, and metrics. 10 rudolf’s compilation is, indeed, a main source for the entry in butler’s authoritative mid-eighteenth century work lives of the fathers, martyrs and other principal saints. 11 st. lioba’s namesday is generally celebrated on september 28 th , 12 yet in some calendars it appears to be september 22 nd , or even september 23 rd . on the pages containing the entries of september 28 th , the day corresponding to st. lioba, abbess, butler starts out: this saint was a great model of christian perfection to the church, both of england, her native country, and of germany. she was descended of an illustrious english-saxon family, and born among the west-saxons at winburn[sic], which name signifies fountain of wine. 13 9 as mentioned above, the benedictine rudolf, a most distinguished scholar of his time, compiled in 838 the life of st leobgyth. 10 whitelock, the beginnings, p.198. 11 alban butler’s great work, the lives of the fathers, martyrs and other principal saints (butler’s lives), the result of thirty years of industry and research, was first published in four volumes in london, 1756–1759. it has passed many (sometimes quite altered) editions and translations. the quotations in this article are from the 1866 revised edition published by james duffy, 15 wellington row, dublin, and 22 paternoster row, london, pp.315–317. 12 for instance, manuel raisch, lioba, die missionarin an bonifatius’ seite. die notwendigkeit von frauen in der missionsarbeit. nürnberg 2013, p.65, referring to september 28 th “dies ist ihr gedenk-und der wahrscheinliche todestag”. on the other hand, leinweber names september 23 rd as the day of her death, and september 28 th as the day of her burial in fulda. josef leinweber, st. lioba: leben u. wirken, bistum fulda, 1980. 13 if not stated otherwise, the ensuing shorter quotes stem from butler’s lives vol. ix, pp.315–317. perpetuating a medieval anglo-saxon name 183 indeed, her father dynne (also: dimo, tinne, born around 665; died around 725) was an anglo-saxon nobleman, and her mother was called aebbe (or ebba, born around 665; died after 630). they belonged to the second generation after the christianization of the anglo-saxon kingdoms that had spread from ireland. the legend goes that ebba had been barren for a long time. before she eventually conceived (at the then – and even today – relatively advanced age of 44), she dreamed of hearing a bell ringing in her belly. this was interpreted by her fostress as a sign of her forthcoming pregnancy. 14 moreover was it taken as god’s behest to promise the child to him. consequently, when her daughter was born (c. 710), ebba offered her to the church “and trained her up in contempt of the world”. the infant had been baptized truthgeb, or truthgeba, but came to be called leofgyth, or liobgeth(a), then abbreviated to leoba or lioba, which means “the dear one” or “the beloved” (by god, and her parents). when a young girl, probably at the age of seven, she was placed in “the great monastery of winburn in dorsetshire, under the care of the holy abbess tetta, a person still more eminent for her extraordinary prudence and sanctity, than for being sister to a king”. rudolf refers that once the girl was sent to the monastery, the fostress who had predicted her birth, and who seems to have been a serf or bond servant, was granted her freedom. 15 lioba is reported to have made “great progress in virtue”, she understood latin and loved reading. however, “she read no books but such as were proper to nourish piety and devotion in her soul”. in the monastery lioba received a comprehensive education in all seven liberal arts and underwent a thorough literary and theological training, including in ecclesiastical law. she is described as intelligent, good-tempered, charitable, modest, and patient. soon she took the religious veil and was devoted to teaching, first in monasteries of wessex and kent (including minster-in-thanet). these monasteries supported the missionary work of st. boniface. st. boniface, a relative (possibly a cousin) of lioba’s mother, ebba, had kept up an epistolary correspondence with the novice and later young nun, and appreciated her abilities. so he requested the abbess to give leave to lioba, thecla, waldburga, and others from their quiet abbey in wimborne to join him in the heathen wilds, “in order to settle some sanctuaries and nurseries of religion for persons of their sex in the infant church of germany”. tetta could 14 this is the reason why in the imagery leofgyth is sometimes depicted with a bell. 15 rudolf, vita leobae, ch.6. 184 lioba simon schuhmacher not oppose the urgent demand, though she “regretted the loss of so great a treasure”. in germany, lioba and her “little colony” of thirty companions were settled by st. boniface near mainz, in the monastery of bischofsheim (i.e. bishop’s house). butler proceeds: by the prudence and zeal of our saint, this nunnery became in a short time very numerous, and out of it she peopled many other houses which she founded in germany. she never commanded others anything which she had not first practised herself. her countenance appeared always angelically cheerful and modesty breathing a heavenly devotion and love. her time was spent in prayer, and in holy reading and meditation. she knew by heart the divine precepts of the old and new testaments, the principal canons of the church, the holy maxims of the fathers, and the rules of the monastic life and perfection. by humility, she placed herself beneath all others, and esteemed herself as the last of her community and washed often the feet of the sisters. the exercise of hospitality and charity to the poor was her delight. 16 butler’s account is patched with idealizing terms seeking to enhance lioba’s halo as a saint, yet the underlying facts are historically contrasted. later, so the chronicles go, lioba became abbess of tauberbischofsheim in franconia, serving for twenty-eight years, and actively contributed to the education of girls of the upper class in the neighborhood. thereby she followed the model known in the anglo-saxon kingdoms, which proved to be an effective way to connect with these families while fostering the christianization of the local elite. some of her disciples in turn became teachers and would thus carry on the torch of learning. it is especially noteworthy how, by applying the educational model known from her motherland, lioba contributed to the empowerment of women. however, this model was soon to be undermined by the patriarchic model imposed by the increasingly powerful church of rome. meanwhile, lioba was “respected and honoured” by kings and princes, “especially pepin king of the franks, and his two sons, charles or charlemagne and carloman”. when charlemagne reigned alone after the death of his brother, he “often sent for her to his court at aix-la-chapelle, and treated her with the highest veneration. his queen hildegardis loved her as her own soul, and took her advice in her most weighty concerns”. the queen, indeed, wished to have the abbess as often as possible at court, to 16 butler’s lives vol. ix, pp.315–316. perpetuating a medieval anglo-saxon name 185 “enjoy the edification and comfort of her example and instructions”, so refers butler. yet lioba seems to have preferred the retreat of her monastery and always made haste to return to it. bishops are reported to have had conferences with her, “and listened to her counsels”. before boniface went on his mission into friesland (where he suffered martyrdom in 754), he placed lioba at the head the mission, and beseeched bishop lullus of mainz to grant her special protection. furthermore he declared his desire, “as by his last will, that after her death she should be buried by his bones, that both their bodies might wait the resurrection and be raised together in glory to meet the lord, and be for ever united in the kingdom of his love”. boniface’s wish, however, was not fulfilled. upon lioba’s death about the year 779 17 in schornsheim, to where she had retired, apparently following the advice of lullus, the monks are said to have feared to disturb the relics of st. boniface. at least this is rudolf’s official version. so she was interred at fulda, on the north side of the high altar. 18 historians have read between the lines that there was more to it than just a breach of boniface’s last will. as a matter of fact, after the latter’s death a fight started between the bishop lullus and the first abbot of the monastery of fulda, sturmius regarding the question of authority. it was eventually won by the bishop. the sources do not clearly disclose where lioba stood in this dispute. yet with her status as boniface’s protégée she seemed to have been caught in the crossfire between lullus and sturmius. the fact that she did not spend her last years in one of the monasteries founded by her but in a retreat organized ad hoc in schornsheim, southeast of mainz, where she eventually died, point at the possibility that her role and her mission was to be mitigated by the expanding authority of the representatives of the church of rome. as mentioned above, it is most likely that her stance in favor of women actively participating in ecclesiastical and educational issues was being questioned by the increasingly male dominated concept dictated from rome, and thus she could have become a political nuisance factor. furthermore the disputes over the destination of her remains and the successive removal of them to three different sites seem to shed light on how the church struggled with this truly emancipated female figure, ahead of her time. 17 some sources declare she died in 781 or 782. 18 after being removed twice, (part of) her remains now rest behind an altar in a church dedicated to mary and the virgins of christ in petersburg in fulda. 186 lioba simon schuhmacher butler concludes his account of this saint’s life: “her tomb was honoured with miracles; her historian assures us he was himself an eyewitness of several”. “her historian”, rudolf, indeed refers to several legends reported and miracles believed to have been performed by the saint, both before and after her death. among those during her lifetime are: her dream of a red woolen thread emerging from her mouth, of such length that it could be wound onto a reel. a senior nun interpreted this dream as the read thread representing god’s love that should be passed on to others. lioba is also said to have saved the monastery and part of the town of tauberbischofsheim from a fire deploying salts consecrated by boniface; to have appeased a thunderstorm; and to have healed a mortally ill nun. rudolf furthermore reports events of the saint’s actions after her death, such as the story of an iron ring which oppressed a man’s arm and unlocked while he was praying at the tomb of the saint; and, around the year 836, of a spaniard with a nervous disease (probably parkinson) who was cured of his tremors while praying at the saint’s tomb. 19 the closeness between leofgyth and boniface, also accredited by touching letters, has given rise to conjectures that there might have been more to it than just a special affection between them; if not an open affair, at least some kind of platonic attraction. that speculation continues to offer food for debate (though it will not be taken up in this article), and has got as far as korea, with scholar i deug-su inquiring: “lioba – dilecta bonifatii. a love story in the 8 th century?”. 20 altogether there are numerous works dealing with aspects of the life of this outstanding forerunner not only in the christianization but also and significantly in the education of young women. 21 19 rudolfus magister fuldensis, vita leobae, chs. 8, 13, 14, 15, 22 and 23. 20 i deug-su: “lioba dilecta bonifatii. eine liebesgeschichte im 8. jahrhundert?” medieval and early modern english studies, published by the medieval and early modern english studies association of korea, vol. 10.2, 2002/12, pp. 29–80. 21 apart from the ones quoted from on these pages, the following likewise deserve mention, again, with no claim to exhaust the matter: heinrich hahn, lioba. as part of: allgemeine deutsche biographie (adb). band 18, duncker & humblot, leipzig 1883, s. 725; hieronyma angelika hieber, hl. lioba. erste lehrerin germaniens und patronin des taubertals. dokumentation einer sammlung. tauberbischofsheim 1989; brigitte kasten: lioba. in: lexikon des mittelalters (lexma). band 5, artemis & winkler, münchen/zürich 1991; petra kehl: die verehrung der hl. lioba. in: fuldaer geschichtsblätter 67 (1991), s. 141–150; gabriele lautenschläger: lioba (leobgith), heilige. in: biographisch-bibliographisches kirchenlexikon (bbkl). band 5, bautz, perpetuating a medieval anglo-saxon name 187 nowadays leofgyth, or lioba, is remembered above all as a pioneer in the christianization of germany, and more specifically for her active role in the creation of nunneries and therefore the education of women. in times of patriarchic dominance, it is astounding how some women not only stood their ground but actively engaged in the organization of the incipient church, and sometimes, as in the case of leofgyth, became helms in its structure. in schornsheim, where she died, a statue that represents lioba can be admired in a town square. the authorities of tauberbischofsheim declared lioba the patron saint of the town during an official ceremony in 2005, and every year the last saturday of september is celebrated as an official holiday in the town. this decision was not received without controversy since the lutheran church rejects the veneration of saints. a widely supported argument by the locals advocated that lioba’s prayers had saved the town towards the end of world war ii, while the nearby town of königshofen was almost completely destroyed. in the german village of bad nauheim, close to mainz, there is a secondary school with the name of the saint: st. lioba-schule, 22 and a primary school carries her name in the westphalian town of warstein. 23 in the bavarian city of nürnberg we come across a st. lioba church, with a catholic kindergarten attached to it, 24 and in the black-forest capital freiburg we can find a st. lioba monastery. 25 even a mineral fountain in the south of germany bears the saint’s name, under which water and other soft drinks are commercialized. 26 across the world there are several religious communities, such as in france, the frères et soeurs bénédictins de ste lioba in simianecollongue. 27 a detailed browsing of the internet may yield many more curious results. yet little or nothing can be made out in her home country, england, where monasteries, convents, and roman christian communities (such as priories and friaries) had been suppressed in the dissolution processes between 1536 and 1541 under henry viii, after he separated england from the papal authority. herzberg 1993. manfred weitlauff: lioba. in: neue deutsche biographie (ndb). band 14, duncker & humblot, berlin 1985. 22 http://www.lioba.de/ 23 http://www.lioba-schule.com/ 24 http://www.stadtkirche-nuernberg.de/pfarrgemeinden/st_lioba.html 25 http://www.kloster-st-lioba.de 26 http://www.mineralbrunnen.bad-liebenzell.de/produkte/lioba.html 27 http://www.lioba.com/en/histoire/sainte-lioba/ 188 lioba simon schuhmacher regarding the name of lioba as such, a dwindling number of women have borne or are bearing it. even in germany it is not only extremely uncommon, but also widely unknown. now let me continue striking a more personal key. as i am writing this note, i am hosted by the department of comparative literature of the university of georgia, in the franklin college of arts and sciences, in athens, some seventy miles from atlanta, capital of georgia, usa. the head of department is prof. dr. lioba moshi. three years ago, when first visiting this university as a guest of the english department, i spotted her name on the list of faculty and was curious to find out how she came by it, especially since i spotted a picture of her: she is ebony black. when we eventually met, she told me that she was born in tanzania and her first language was swahili. at first i thought, what a coincidence, a local or tribal african name which happens to be spelled and pronounced [li:ɔba] the same way as my own. yet she explained to me that this was related to the role of the german catholic missionaries who had worked in the district of moshi, the home of her family (whence she derives her surname), while it formed part of the german empire (and was called deutsch-ostafrika). 28 as a matter of fact, her ancestors were in touch with them, albeit not volunteers, since the religious men were considered part of a foreign power. it was only later, in the generation of her father, that the experience with the missionaries bore its fruits. when i beseeched her to provide me with some further details for this article, she sent me an email with this interesting account: how i got my name i am a third born preceded by two brothers. we come from a catholic family which means our names are taken from a book of saints. my father was an only son to my grandmother. he also had one sister. my grandmother was the youngest of four wives to my grandfather. by the time my grandmother got married to my grandfather, he had an average of six children by each of his other three wives. as such, he told my grandmother upfront that he did not want many more children. to secure a place in my grandfather’s extended family and to be able to claim property if my grandfather died before her, she needed a son. she was blessed with a son as her first born. my grandfather allowed 28 as of the late 1870s, germany participated in the process of colonization, a fact that caused animosity with the other colonial powers such as great britain and france, and decidedly contributed to the outbreak of world war i and the reich’s loss of all its colonies (mainly namibia, tanzania and togo). perpetuating a medieval anglo-saxon name 189 her to have a second child and this was my aunt. my grandfather was now contented and declared to my grandmother that she was secure because she had a son to claim inheritance on her behalf and a daughter to help her around the house. the culture does not allocate inheritance to females in the family. that is how my father ended up in a household of predominantly females which i am sure made him very protective of my grandmother and my aunt and later my sister and i, the only girls among nine brothers. through my grandmother’s efforts, my father went to school. this {special effort of the grandmother} was because my grandfather did not want to have anything to do with the missionaries to the extent that he refused to be baptized up until when he was on his death bed. being a descendant of the chief’s clan, my grandfather felt that the foreigners were striping the chiefdoms the power they customarily have on their subjects. he also felt that their intentions were to acquire their property and services illegally. from his primary school 5 th grade class, my father was picked with several other students to go to a teacher training college. the missionaries wanted to phase out the use of foreigners teaching at the primary school level (grades 1–4) and use locally trained teachers. there were two major reasons for this, one the language of instruction was kiswahili, the national language, and two, they wanted the curriculum to include the understanding of local cultures. with my father going to school under the missionaries, he got baptized and made sure that his mother and sister were baptized too. the knowledge and experience with the missionaries must have influenced my father in a big way, so much that when he got married and had children he became keen on finding unique names that no child in the village had. as such, all of my siblings and i were the first in the village to bear these unique names. the other thing that my father did was that he had criteria for choosing certain names. in the culture, parents choose names for their children based on the events of the day the child is born, after a major or unforgettable incident or after someone they admire. my father, who was known to be an independent thinker, had his own ideas about his children’s names. he used the book of saints and named his children with the rarest name closest to the birth date or some sort of pairing system. for example, my oldest brother was born in september and so my father picked the closest rare name after his birth, wenceslaus. the second child, also a boy born in september, two years later, was named ladislaus. both these names were european and the lives of these individuals influenced my father’s choice. when i came along, my father named me lioba. i can only think of two reasons. it was a rare name in the village and my father liked the biographic sketch of saint lioba. the second factor was that i was born july 30 th and there was no unique name in that month. because i was the first born girl he paired me up with my oldest brother, the first born male. we share the same feast day as our namesakes, 190 lioba simon schuhmacher september 28 th . i am sure if he had known beforehand that he would have a girl, he would have named my brother boniface because of the relationship lioba had with boniface. however, knowing how my father’s mind worked and his affinity to the women in his life, he gave me the name in the hope that i would grow up to be just like my namesake. i think when i look at my life at this age and how i have tried to live my life; there are a few characteristics that are inscribed in the story of st. lioba. needless to say, the name lioba is still very rare in tanzania and i only know of two, all from the same village i grew up in. 29 having known prof. moshi for some time, it becomes evident that bearing the name of st. lioba has had a seminal influence on her life, as she herself admits. not only is she a scholarly character, she has also crossed the sea (first from tanzania to the uk, then to the united states of america where she has culminated her academic career), and devoted her life to teaching. moreover is she a person with deep religious convictions, and has been caring for her large community, with a special focus on empowering women. for some time now, and with a view to her forthcoming retirement, she has been fostering an orphanage in northern tanzania, 30 to which she plans to devote the remainder of her life. thus the sentence quoted above from butler’s lives referring to st. lioba: “the exercise of hospitality and charity to the poor was her delight” likewise matches prof. moshi. another lioba i met personally is the german opera singer lioba braun, who specializes in wagner female roles. 31 it was some ten years ago in madrid, after the schubert mass no. 5 concerto the mezzosoprano had sung in, that i knocked on the door of her dressing room to congratulate her on her performance and ask her how she came by her name. she was overjoyed to meet somebody sharing it, and gave me a big hug. her first question was “did you also experience so many difficulties as a child?” she admitted to having had her leg pulled more than once on account of that strange name. yet in her professional career that unusual name, paired with a more common surname, has certainly contributed to her being more easily distinguished, she said. 32 29 quoted from an email by prof. dr. moshi, 16/07/2015. 30 http://www.upendo-okat.com/ 31 http://www.lioba-braun.de/ 32 in my childhood teachers were generally surprised at the name, yet would quickly learn it and not forget it, while it would take them longer to remember the more ‘normal’ names of my classmates. perpetuating a medieval anglo-saxon name 191 when i was about to leave lioba braun’s dressing room, she stopped me, “wait a second!” and handed me over the spectacular bouquet of dozens of pink roses she had been presented together with the audience’s applause on the stage. i dried it and have since then kept it in a place of honor. further resonances of that name may come when hearing of king favila 33 of asturias in the northwest of spain, who is reported to have died at the hands (or rather paws) of a bear when hunting in the year 739. he had been married to a lady called froliuba. 34 altogether, the name bears a touch of exceptionality. recently i learned that a younger member of the habsburg family bears it. according to a web page that features statistics on names, mynamestats, 35 in the united states there are only 110 people named lioba, and the national rank of that name is 43,092. seventy-three percent of them are reported to be white, sixteen percent of hispanic origin, and nine percent black. the state with the most people named lioba is texas (where seventeen people bear it). the website offers a breakdown by states and interesting complementary data. yet the probably most surprising – to me at least – bearer of that name is a male: lioba aragón. i met him personally some years ago in spain, and we were both not a little astounded when we introduced ourselves. it turned out that he had never heard of the saint. so when i explained it to him, he fell out a-laughing. no wonder: he had been given his name for radically different reasons. his father was an admirer of leon trotzky, born lev davidovich bronshtein. in russian it is written лев, pronounced [ɑlȼɛf], and its diminutive (on which m. aragón’s father had grounded his choice) is лев_ (pronounced [ɑlȼɛv`]). 36 33 favila was the only son of the visigothic king pelagius (pelayo), whose victory in the battle of covadonga around 722 marked the beginning of the reconquista – the christian recovery of the iberian peninsula from the moors. 34 i have not been able to find references to her background. that her name could be a compound of “fro” (from old-german “frouwe”, now “frau”, i.e., mrs.) and “lioba” is merely a personal conjecture. at that time the saint was a young woman in her late twenties, and though already abbess, it is not clear how widely known she was beyond her monastery. 35 http://www.mynamestats.com/first-names/l/li/lioba/index.html 36 not really with a bilabial [b], but a labio-dental [v]; therefore it should have been written lieva (i consulted a russian speaking estonian student in one of my classes about this). 192 lioba simon schuhmacher when i was in cuba some years ago, people seemed to be acquainted with the name and often addressed me without hesitating as lyuba. i found out that this was due to the cuban-soviet friendship, and the existence of a similar russian name, lyubov (любовь), pronounced: [lj-oo-bohf']. further research disclosed that this means: love, affection, passion. so, the slavic and anglo-saxon words share the very same root and meaning. in traditional russia it seemed to be a popular custom to bestow on daughters of the same family the three consecutive names, vera (truth, or faith), nadesha (hope), and liubov (love, charity, christanity), with clear biblical resonances (corinthians 13:13). the existence of literature and even a – not very highly rated – war movie produced in times of the soviet union by vladimir grammatikov as late as 1984 with the title: “vera, nadezhda, lyubov”, give proof of that popularity. 37 to conclude, i may add that some years ago i won a prize (a train ticket for two persons to whatever destination i chose in spain 38 ), when responding to a call issued in a spanish radio program on a september 28 th , along the lines: “today is the feast of st. lioba. is there anybody out there who bears such a name?” yes there is, indeed. author’s address universidad de oviedo, university of georgia facultad de filosofía y letras dept. filología inglesa, francesa y alemana c/teniente alfonso martínez s/n. 33011 oviedo, spain received: 17 november 2015 e-mail: lioba@uniovi.es revised version accepted: 15 august 2016 37 “вера, надежда, любовь” on memocast.com, e.g. www.youtube.com/watch?v=89_seazt_yo 38 so i travelled with my daughter, whom i have not given that name (they asked me about it), to cádiz. selim 19.indb keith glaeske, selim 19 (2012): 161–174issn: 1132–631x gower and the daughters of eve 1 in the beginning of the eighth book of his confessio amantis, which he devotes to an extended discussion on marriage and incest, john gower names two daughters of eve, calmana and delbora, as the sister-wives of cain and abel, respectively. these two extra-biblical daughters also appear within texts written both in middle english and other medieval vernaculars. earlier in the same poem gower mentions that delbora was the inventor of linen, an unusual detail, but not wholly unexpected, since traditionally her mother eve is considered the fi rst spinner and thus also weaver of cloth. in this article i will examine gower’s use of calmana and delbora within the wider contexts of middle english literature and medieval literature, and show which other traditions concerning the daughters of eve were known by a middle english audience, and where gower accords with these traditions, and where he contradicts them, and might have used other traditions. the book of genesis names only three of the protoplasts’ sons—cain, abel and seth—but alludes to other (unnumbered) progeny in genesis 5:4: “et facti sunt dies adam postquam genuit seth octigenti anni genitque fi lios et fi lias” (“and the days of adam, aft er he begot seth, were eight hundred years: and he begot sons and daughters”). the bible never names any daughters (or additional sons) of the fi rst human couple; it thus falls to non-biblical texts to provide us the numbers and names of their progeny, both daughters and sons. for example, the vita adae et euae 24:2 states that adam and eve had 30 sons and 30 daughters in addition to their three biblical sons. versions of the 1 an earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2014 international congress on medieval studies in kalamazoo, michigan. i would like to thank the attendees of the session “holy gower!” and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful questions and comments, as well as marian haggard and lynette chambliss, who read earlier draft s of this article. keith glaeske 162selim 19 (2012) latin vita that survive in greek, armenian, georgian, and old church slavonic agree on the total of 63 children (anderson & stone 1994: 23), as do most redactions of the latin vita itself.2 numerous medieval armenian adambooks preserve a similar tradition, stating that eve bore 60 children in total, in 30 births of twins during 30-year timespan; several of these texts name the twin sisters of cain and abel, and occasionally of seth (stone 1982: 22–23; stone 1996: 92, 118, 194, 203). other texts are much more modest: pseudo-philo’s biblical antiquities 1:1–4 names twenty of adam’s progeny (twelve sons and eight daughters), whereas the book of jubilees 4:1, 7–11 indicates that eve bore only fourteen children (charlesworth 1985: 304, 61). aside fr om cain, abel and seth, jubilees names only awan and azura, the sister-wives of cain and seth. the cave of treasures 5:19–20 explicitly states that the fi rst couple produced only fi ve children (their three biblical sons plus two daughters),3 and the combat of adam and eve with satan 2.2.8 and the book of the bee §18 agree (malan 1882: 106; budge 2006: 24–26). although these texts include the names and numbers of the protoplasts’ children, they provide no additional details about 2 jean-pierre pettorelli’s recently published critical edition of the latin vita adae et euae identifi es two recensions (“latin-p” and “latin-v”), the latter of which is further divided into fi ve redactions. the “latin-p” recension lists 52 sons and 72 daughters, but the “latin-v” recension consistently lists 30 sons and 30 daughters, plus cain, abel and seth, with the exception of “e,” the “rédaction anglaise.” see further pettorelli (2012a: 92–101), and the discussion on the middle english life of adam and eve below, which tends to follow the “rédaction anglaise” by listing 30 sons and 32 daughters. 3 the cave of treasures was originally written in syriac, before being translated into arabic, ethiopic, and georgian. andreas su-min ri edited critically and translated into french two recensions of the syriac (1987); the arabic has been edited critically and translated into italian by antonio battista and bellarmino gabatti (1980); sylvan grébaut translated the ethiopic into french (1911); and jean-pierre mahé translated into french ciala kourcikidz e’s critical edition of the georgian (1992). gower and the daughters of eve 163 selim 19 (2012) them, with one notable exception. several texts of the secondary adam literature recount an alternative reason for cain’s murder of abel. according to the cave of treasures, cain and abel both have twin sisters, named lebouda and kelimath, respectively. adam decrees that cain and abel should each marry the other’s twin sister. however, cain tells eve that he wishes to marry his own twin sister, because of her great beauty. cain’s desire for lebouda and his jealousy of abel spur him to slay abel aft er the two of them return fr om off ering sacrifi ces in the cave of treasures, before all four are to marry (the cave of treasures 5:18–32; cf. genesis 4:3–5, 8).4 the combat of adam and eve with satan 1.78–79 (malan 1882: 96-103) and the book of the bee §18 (budge 2006: 24–26) repeat the same scenario, and epiphanius of salamis alludes to it in panarion 40.5.4, as do certain jewish rabbinical texts.5 middle english texts exhibit a similar diversity. most simply note that adam and eve bore some variant of “many sons and many daughters,” akin to genesis 5:4; examples include the middle english genesis and exodus, 412–414, 427–428 (arngart 1968: 64), the historye of the patriarks (taguchi 2010: 45), and the middle english paraphrase of the old testament, 247–248, which states that “then scho suns and doyghters sere,  / the story says sexty and moe” (livingston 2011: 52). the “story” mentioned here is probably the vita adae et euae, either in the original latin, or in middle english translation. three distinct prose versions of the middle english life of adam and eve survive, as do the stanzaic canticum de creatione and the incomplete auckinleck couplets. 4 ri 1987: 18–21; battista and bagatti 1979: 45–46; grébaut 1911: 170–171; mahé 1992: 10–11. for commentary, see ri 2000: 183-190. 5 “they [archonitics] concoct another story and ⟨say⟩, “they were both in love with their own sister and that was why cain attacked abel and killed him” ” (williams 1987: 266); cf. panarion 40.5.7 and 40.6.9. the testament of adam 3:5 mentions the same scenario: “cain, your brother, who killed your brother abel out of passion for your sister lebuda” (charlesworth 1983: 994). the tradition also appears in jewish writings, e.g., bereshit rabbah 22:7 (ri 2000: 185, fn. 34). keith glaeske 164selim 19 (2012) these middle english versions of the life of adam and eve, while based on the latin vita, include additional material fr om genesis and other apocryphal sources, such as holy rood legends. in fact two diff erent copies of the middle english life contradict the latin vita in the number of children produced by the fi rst couple. the copy in london, british library, harley ms 4775 notes that adam begat 33 sons and 32 daughters whereas the copy in oxford, bodleian library, bodley ms 596 states that he begat only 30 sons and 32 daughters.6 the former fi gures seem to be the exception, since another copy of the life found in london, british library, additional ms 39754 (the “wheatley manuscript;” day 1921: 87) and the canticum de creatione 505–506 (murdoch & tasioulas 2002: 79), agree with bodley 596, as does the adam and eve material appended to the middle english gilte legende (hamer & russell 2000: 1002, 1014). the fi gures of 30 sons and 32 daughters are actually consistent with the latin vita in pettorelli’s recent critical edition. while pettorelli’s “latin-v” recension consistently lists 30 sons and 30 daughters, plus cain, abel and seth, “e,” the “rédaction anglaise” of the “latin-v” recension instead lists 30 sons and 32 daughters (pettorelli 2012b: 582). this variant was fi rst noted by john mozley in his edition of the latin vita, which, like pettorell’s “rédaction anglaise,” was based on manuscripts of british provenance.7 besides the confessio amantis, the only middle english texts to name calmana and delbora as the daughters of eve are the historye of the patriarks and the cursor mundi. each text, however, treats them diff erently. the historye of the patriarks comes closest to the 6 carl horstmann (1885: 345–365) has edited the middle english life of adam and eve fr om both these manuscripts; but compare to the copy of the life in oxford, bodleian library, eng. poet. ms a.1, the vernon manuscript: “adam hedde xxx sones and moni doughtres withouten caym and abel” (blake 1972: 113). 7 “et uixit adam postquam genuit seth dccc annis et genuit fi lios xxx et fi lias xxxii qui multiplicati sunt sumper terram in nacionibus suis” (mozley 1929: 135). gower and the daughters of eve 165 selim 19 (2012) secondary adam literature, for it notes explicitly that calmana and delbora were the twins of cain and abel, respectively (taguchi 2010: 37): wherfor adam […] knewe eve his wyf carnally and begat a son named caym and a doughter named cha[lmana]. furthermore, fy ft ene yere aft er that, adam bygat his second son abel and his suster delbora. the historye, however, does not tell us which sister married which brother; instead, this is noted by cursor mundi 1215–1222, 1449– 1450, 1501–1502 (morris 1874: 78–79, 90–91, 94–95; cf. horrall 1978: 71, 79, 81): vs tells of adam his stori; o suns þat he had thirtti, and he had doghtres als fel, wit outen caym and abel.8 þe sister giuen was to þe broþer, þe lagh moght certayn be non oþer; sua wald drightin, and behoued nede to do þair kin al for to sprede. […] seth spused his sister delbora, for drighten self had biden sua; […] til him [i. e., cain] was spused calmana, als giuen to seth was delbora and confessio amantis viii.59–72 (macaulay 1901: 387–388): a sone was the ferst of alle, and chain be name thei him calle; abel was aft er the secounde, and in the geste as it is founde, nature so the cause ladde, nature so the cause ladde, tuo douhtres ek dame eve hadde, the ferste cleped calmana was, and that other delbora. 8 the cursor mundi provides another set of numbers for the sons and daughters of adam and eve, 32 and 30 respectively. keith glaeske 166selim 19 (2012) thus was mankinde to beginne; forthi that time it was no sinne the soster forto take hire brother, whan that ther was of chois non other: to chain was calmana betake, and delboram hath abel take unlike the historye of the patriarks, neither the cursor mundi nor the confessio amantis give any indication as to whether calmana or delbora were single births or twins to their brothers. from the confessio we might infer that calmana was the elder of the two daughters at least, since she is named fi rst, as cain is. both the confessio amantis and the cursor mundi state that sisters married brothers in order to fulfi ll god’s command to be fr uitful and multiply. both, however, indicate a diff erent husband for delbora: the confessio names abel whereas the cursor mundi notes that she married seth; the cursor mundi is unusual, but not unique, in this regard (murdoch 2009: 220, 240). of course, given abel’s early death, there is nothing to prevent delbora fr om subsequently marrying seth, perhaps anticipating the levirate marriage arrangement described in deuteronomy 25:5–6. among the medieval texts that mention delbora, none indicates that she was the wife/widow of abel and subsequently the wife of seth; she is only ever mentioned as the wife of one or the other (and usually, it is abel). gower mentions delbora only one more time (confessio amantis iv.2435–2438; macaulay 1900: 367): the craft minerve of wolle fond and made cloth hire oghne hond; and delbora made it of lyn: tho wommen were of great engyn. the fourth book of the confessio discusses the sin of sloth, and it provides many examples of both slothful and industrious individuals. these four lines appear in an extended section (iv.2396– 2450) listing the inventors of numerous human craft s and trades; gower and the daughters of eve 167 selim 19 (2012) most of the other inventors are either classical deities or biblical personages. here the roman goddess minerva and delbora are named the inventors of weaving. minerva, the roman counterpart to athena, has a strong connection to weaving through the myth of arachne; moreover, her surname mercanitis (“inventor”) alludes to presiding over and instructing humanity in all manner of arts (bell 1982: 302). delbora’s connection to weaving derives fr om her mother. eve has a long-standing connection to weaving in popular tradition as evidence by the fourteenth-century proverb “when adam delved, and eve span, who was then the gentleman?” the character eve refers to spinning thread aft er the fall and expulsion in the chester mystery cycle as a result of her sin (lumiansky & mills 1974: 33), and adam makes a similar reference in the n-town play (spector 1991: 34). delbora’s status as an inventor of weaving in the confessio amantis actually contradicts cursor mundi 1523–1526 (morris 1874: 96–97; cf. horrall 1978: 81) and the historye of the patriarks (taguchi 2010: 43), both of which state that naamah (in the greek septuagint: noema) was the fi rst weaver. although naamah herself is not considered such within genesis, her brother tubalcain and two half-brothers jubal and jabal introduce smithing and musical instruments to humanity (genesis 4:22; cf. confessio amantis iv.2016-2033). they are the children of lamech and his wives zillah and adah, and thus the great-great-great-greatgrandchildren of cain. both the cursor mundi and the historye of the patriarks follow the historia scholastica of peter comestor: “de generationibus caym […] soror uero tubalcain noema, que inuenit artem uarie texture” (sylwan 2005: 55). other examples of medieval insular literature, however, demonstrate that there are several contenders for the inventor of weaving: for example, irish texts can be found to support either a daughter of eve or naamah or both as the fi rst weaver. the poem dúan in chóicat cest §19 asks “[w]hich woman did weaving before every woman?” answered by the gloss “that is, eve wove keith glaeske 168selim 19 (2012) palm leaves, or catafl uia, or olivana wife of japheth.”9 the prose banshenchas in the book of leinster, however, names naamah as the fi rst weaver (dobbs 1930: 316), and lebor gabála érenn mentions either catafl uia or naamah as the fi rst weaver in diff erent contexts (macalister 1938: 90–91, 189–190). gower’s mention of delbora as the creator of linen specifi cally, while not found in contemporary (or prior) surviving middle english texts, is later incorporated by john lydgate in his pageant of knowledge 89–90 (maccracken 1934: 727). gower himself fails to be consistent even within the confessio amantis: later, in the fi ft h book, he declares that minerva is the creator of both woolen cloth and linen (confessio amantis v.1202–1205). given that gower states that delbora is the wife of abel—a herder of sheep—one would assume her to have spun wool; calmana, the wife of cain—a farmer—would be a more logical choice as a spinner of fi bers fr om fl ax, a plant. even if one assumes that linen, as a symbolically more pure fabric (because it is produced fr om a plant, and not an animal), would more appropriately be woven by the wife of abel instead of the cursed cain, it would be even more appropriately woven by the wife of seth (the ancestor of the promised christ); but gower does not explicitly name delbora as such. where do the names calmana and delbora come fr om? delbora appears as a variant of deborah, the name of the nurse of rebecca, the wife of isaac, in genesis 35:8 and a judge of israel, whose story is told in judges 4–5. indeed, her name appears thus in both contexts within the wycliffi te bible (lindberg 1959: 79). the names calmana and delbora are not otherwise attested in either the bible or any of the apocryphal sources i mentioned above, although they are included in a single late latin version of the vita adae et euae found in oxford, balliol college, ms 228, as noted 9 “cía ben doringe fi ghe  / ria cach mnái co míngile,” with the accompanying gloss: “.i. eua rofi g duili na pailme nó cata fluia .i. olivána bean iáfeth” (meyer 1903: 236); translation mine. according to irish lore, catafl uia is one of the names attributed to eve’s daughters; see further glaeske (2006). gower and the daughters of eve 169 selim 19 (2012) in the editions of mozley and pettorelli.10 they likewise appear in the welsh translation of the vita adae et euae (the ystoria adda ac efa, preserved in the white book of rhydderch [aberystwyth, national library of wales, peniarth ms 5] and in the red book of talgarth [aberystwyth, national library of wales, llanstephan ms 27]; murdoch 2009: 123). outside of vernacular versions of the latin vita adae et euae, the names calmana and delbora are recorded within several medieval chronicles, both fr om the continent and fr om england. middle high german metrical chronicles record both names, as does the weltchronik of heinrich von münchen and the prose chronicle of jean des preis (murdoch 2009: 123, 146, 151; murdoch 2003: 11, 61). among middle english chronicles their names appear both in polychronichon ii.4 of ranulph higden and the english translation made by john trevisa, as well as the chronica majora of matthew of paris and the eulogium historiarum (murdoch 2009: 114, fn. 58). many of these texts cite their source as methodius, and trevisa translated a tract ascribed to him, which does mention the two sisters (perry 1925: 95), but all of these chronicles are largely indebted to the late twelft h-century historia scholastica of peter comestor, and it is there where we fi nd the earliest mention of calmana and delbora as the twin sisters of cain and abel: “de generationibus ade: adam cognovit uxorem suam […] et anno vite adam decimo quinto natus est ei caym et soror eius calmana […] post alios quindecim annos natus est ei abel et soror eius delbora” (sylvan 2005: 48). to conclude, gower’s use of calmana and delbora as the daughters of eve seems to derive either directly fr om the historia scholastica of peter comestor, or indirectly fr om other middle english texts that used it as source material. gower does not appear to have known any of the texts of the secondary adam literature (i. e., the cave 10 “et genuit fi lios xxx et fi lias xxx preter caym et sororem eius calmanam et abel et sorerem eius deboran et seth et multiplicati sunt in nacionibus super terram” (mozley 1929: 135). for further discussion concerning this specifi c manuscript, see pettorelli 2012a: 76–77, and pettorelli 2012b: 536–544. keith glaeske 170selim 19 (2012) of treasures, the combat of adam and eve with satan, or the book of the bee), as he does not refer to the alternative rationale behind cain’s slaying of abel, surely its most noteworthy addition to the bible. this seems clear, given the context of the confessio amantis where he includes calmana and delbora: although the secondary adam literature is never explicit on this point, the reason for adam to decree that his sons not marry their own twin sisters, seems to be because he considered doing so somehow to be less incestuous. for gower not to mention cain’s incestuous desire for his own twin sister as the impetus for killing his brother strongly suggests that he was unaware of this tradition; had he known it certainly he would have mentioned it in the eighth book of the confessio amantis. in fact, gower does not explicitly describe calmana and delbora as the twins of cain and abel, although the historia scholastica and other middle english texts all seem to suppose so. gower’s designation of delbora as the inventor of linen remains puzzling. it contradicts other surviving middle english texts, which do not mention delbora (or any daughter of eve) as a weaver at all: they either attribute the discovery of this craft to her mother eve or to cain’s descendant naamah, following either popular tradition or the historia scholastica.11 this association of weaving as a result of the fall, and/or with one of the descendents of cain (but also with a roman goddess) suggests a symbolic ambivalence with the craft . since gower appears not to have derived this designation fr om contemporary middle english texts, it suggests that he knew other traditions concerning the two sisters, possibly fr om other insular texts. keith glaeske independent scholar 11 contemporary iconography supports this supposition: a miniature of naamah sitting at a loom appears in the egerton genesis picture book (london, british library, egerton ms 1894, f. 2v). gower and the daughters of eve 171 selim 19 (2012) references anderson, g. a. & m. e. stone eds. 1994: a synopsis of the books of adam and eve (early judaism and its literature 5). atlanta, scholar’s press. arngart, o. ed. 1968: the middle english genesis and exodus. lund, c. w. k. gleerup. battista, a. & b. gabatti eds. 1980: la caverna dei tesori (studium biblicum franciscanum, collectio minor 26). jerusalem, franciscan printing press. bell, r. e. 1982: dictionary of classical mythology: symbols, attributes and associations. santa barbara, abc-clio. blake, n. f. ed. 1972: middle english religious prose. evanston, northwestern university press. budge, e. a. w. ed. 2006 [1886]: the book of the bee. piscataway, new jersey, gorgias press. charlesworth, j. h. ed. 1983: the old testament pseudepigrapha: volume 1, apocalyptic literature and testaments. garden city, doubleday. charlesworth, j. h. ed. 1985: the old testament pseudepigrapha: volume 2, expansions of the “old testament” and legends, wisdom and philosophical literature, prayers, psalms, and odes, fragments of lost judeo-hellenistic works. garden city, doubleday. day, m. ed. 1921: the wheatley manuscript (e.e.t.s. o.s. 155). london, humphrey milford. dobbs, m. c. 1930: the ban-shenchus. revue celtique 47: 288–339. glaeske, k. 2006: the children of adam and eve in medieval irish literature. ériu 56: 1–11. grébaut, s. 1911: littérature éthiopienne pseudo-clémentine iii, traduction du qalêmentos. revue de l’orient chrétien 16: 73–84, 165–175, 225–233. hamer, r. & v. russell eds. 2009: the gilte legende: volume ii (e.e.t.s. o.s. 328). oxford, oxford university press. keith glaeske 172selim 19 (2012) horrall, s. m. ed. 1978: the southern version of cursor mundi. ottawa, university of ottawa press. horstmann, c. 1885: nachträge zu den legenden 3. the lyfe of adam. archiv fü r das studium der neuren sprachen und literaturen 74: 345–365. lindberg, c. ed. 1959: ms bodley 959. genesis-baruch 3.20 in the earlier version of the wycliffite bible. volume i: genesis-exodus (stockholm studies in english 6). stockholm, almquist & wiksell. livingston, m. ed. 2011: the middle english metrical paraphrase of the old testament. kalamazoo, medieval institute publications. lumiansky, r. m. & d. mills eds. 1974: the chester mystery cycle. volume i (e.e.t.s. s.s. 3). london, oxford university press. macalister, r. a. s. ed. 1938: lebor gabála érenn, the book of the taking of ireland: part i (irish texts society 34). dublin, irish texts society. macaulay, g. c. ed. 1900: the english works of john gower. volume i (e.e.t.s. e.s. 81). london, trübner. macaulay, g. c. ed. 1901: the english works of john gower. volume ii (e.e.t.s. e.s. 82). london, trübner. maccracken, h. n. ed. 1934: the minor poems of john lydgate. part ii: secular poems (e.e.t.s. o.s. 192). london, richard clay & sons. mahé, j.-p. 1992: la caverne des trésors. version géorgienne (csco 527=si 24). leuven, peeters. malan, s. c. ed. 1882: the book of adam and eve, also called the confl ict of adam and eve with satan. london, williams and norgate. meyer, k. 1903: mitteilungen aus irischen handschrift en. zeitschrift en fü r celtische philologie 4: 234–240. morris r. ed. 1874: cursor mundi: part i (e.e.t.s. o.s. 57). london, richard clay and co. gower and the daughters of eve 173 selim 19 (2012) mozley, j. h. 1929: the “vita adae.” journal for theological studies 30: 121-149. murdoch, b. 2003: the medieval popular bible. cambridge, d. s. brewer. murdoch, b. 2009: the apocryphal adam and eve in medieval europe. oxford, oxford university press. murdoch, b. & j. a. tasioulas eds. 2002: the apocryphal lives of adam and eve. exeter, university of exeter press. perry, a. j. ed. 1925: dialogus inter militem et clericum, richard fitzralph’s sermon: defensio curatorum and methodius: þe bygynning of þe world and þe ende of worldes, by john trevisa (e.e.t.s. o.s. 167). london, humphrey milford. pettorelli, j.-p. & j.-d. kaestli eds. 2012a: vita latina adae et evae (ccsa 18). turnhout, brepols. pettorelli, j.-p., a. frey, j.-d. kaestli & b. outtier eds. 2012b: synopsis vita adae et evae (ccsa 19). turnhout, brepols. ri, a. s.-m. ed. 1987: la caverne des trésors. les deux recensions syriaces (csco 487=ss 208). leuven, peeters. ri, a. s.-m. 2000: commentaire de la caverne des trésors. étude sure l’histoire du texte et de ses sources (csco 581). leuven, peeters. spector, s. ed. 1991: the n-town play: volume i (e.e.t.s. s.s. 11). oxford, oxford university press. stone, m. e. ed. 1982: armenian apocrypha relating to the patriarchs and prophets. jerusalem, israel academy of sciences and humanities. stone, m. e. ed. 1996: armenian apocrypha relating to adam and eve (studia in veteris testamenti pseudepigrapha 14). leiden, e. j. brill. sylwan, a. ed. 2005: petri comestoris scholastica historica liber genesis (cccm 191). turnhout, brepols. taguchi, m. ed. 2010: the historye of the patriarks (middle english texts 42). heidelberg, carl winter universitätsverlag. keith glaeske 174selim 19 (2012) williams, f. 1987: the panarion of epiphanius of salamis (nag hammadi studies 35). leiden, e. j. brill. • selim01.pdf 47 two sides of a triangle: the beginning of gawain’s pentangle in sir gawain and the green knight our endeavour in this paper is none other than that of studying the role that the gawain-poet has assigned arthur within the thematic development of the tale. we believe that in arthur’s behaviour lies the true relevance of the story, for without his idiosyncratic tendency to fantasize, the narrator could not have defended the apparition of the green knight in camelot beyond the level of fairy tale. many are the factors that justified this apparition. yet, the most basic not to say elementary one resides in the event that arthur is a king: king of camelot. what arthur is affects the way in which he conducts courtly issues, such as celebrations, and this is not a trivial question. he is a king who has a way of being that is not only unique but unmistakable: he is a very young king, a king who owing to his tendency to fantasize maintains intact a habit, or custom, that has little or nothing to do with the social reality of his own time and environment. certainly arthur’s character conditions the way in which he understands what a court is, and therefore the behaviour of his courtiers. surely the gawain-poet expects his readers to see arthur in this light: a reader who must reach a constructive conclusion about the role that arthur plays in the thematic development of the story. accordingly the poet offers an ample number of relevant elements concerning arthur’s behaviour, that must be analyze and thus judged correctly. 48 to be able to understand what the gawain-poet is trying to say, one must start with what a king is: one must consider his conduct, and that of his courtiers, and understand both within a social-juridical frame: the government of a kingdom. it is no whim that arthur’s courtiers murmur, in low voices, when gawain is about to depart from camelot in quest of the green chapel, that the king is the only one responsible for what may happen to gawain: and they are right. yet, they do not voice their opinions to the king; but they do so in the corridors, since nobody seems to dare to exact from the king the necessary responsibilities for what has happened during the celebration of christmas. the courtiers grumble, and this signifies that the gawain-poet is depicting a court that is unhappy about the proceedings of their king. in this crucial moment the courtiers feel the full weight of the irrational, or thoughtless, behaviour of their king, and they feel it precisely because one of their companions at arms is going to die in a futile quest, the acceptance of the beheading game. the futility of this act does not stem so much from the event that gawain accepted the challenge of the green knight but from the motives that forced him to do so, principles that are no other than those of trying to avoid a situation in which the king would be faced with an unnecessary danger, since a monarch is an indispensable instrument in the good functioning a country, while a knight, regardless of his worth, is not so in the same degree as a king.1 nor it is a mere coincidence, nor can it be, that arthur is linguistically speaking the initiator of the major exponent of gawain’s adventure, the pentangle. the king does not only inaugurate the 1.the legal aspects related to the necessary process of transference of power when gawain accepts the beheading game have been examined by the present writer. see “sir gawain and the green knight: el chivo expiatorio,” estudios de filología inglesa, 10 (1982: 29-54). 49 beheading game but also initiates the geometrical design of the symbol that will adorn both the shield and clothing of gawain when he leaves camelot in quest of the green knight. the cause must be examined starting with one of the habits that characterize arthur’s behaviour, that of waiting for something very special and worthy of being qualified with the appellative of marvel to happen, since if it does not happen he cannot eat his meal that day.1 arthur’s world, and so that which is depicted in the medieval romances is full of astonishing components: fundamentals or principles which make sense only if the reader manages to unveil the idea, or ideas that were framed in the substratum upon which they used to rest, and so govern certain mores and conventions which, for one reason or other, have survived the demolishing impact of time. what has subsisted has become the exclusive patrimony of those who dedicate themselves to narrate, or invent fabulous tales in order to enchant their readers or their audience, independently of who the 1.arthur used to gather all his knights twice a year, during christmas and pentecost. in addition to the habit of not eating till something extraordinary takes place, he was also in the habit of granting boons to suppliants but before knowing the nature of the boon. as time went on, arthur became a very passive king: a king who lived solely and exclusively from the incentive that was offered to him by his knights who used to narrate their adventures. arthur does not leave camelot in quest of the grail, but waits in his palace to hear about the results. when bearing in mind these changes, certain habits do not make sense: they have become gestures and rites oriented to emphasize the value of words, a value that is well symbolized in the rites inherent in the narration of glorious exploits which deep down did not solve any pressing necessity. e.k. chambers has done a splendid study on arthur that we wish to refer the reader to. see arthur of britain (1927: rpt, new york, cambridge: speculum historiale, 1964). as e. jane burns writes in her work arthurian fictions: rereading of the vulgate cycle (columbus: ohio state universtiy press, 1984), the possible meaning of the repetitive nature of the adventures narrated at arthur’s court can be explained in terms of the attitude of knights who narrate only what they considered best to be narrated, and evidently some adventures sounded better than others. 50 readers or audience might have been.1 to achieve this end is not difficult since both charm and magic are part of the stale flavour inherent in these tales, or in the the apparent unusual elements that the narrator has managed to bring back to life from some forgotten and mouldy parchment. when a narrator uses this type of material, he manages to offer his readers something unusual, peculiar, uncanny, and consequently entertaining. what he tenders however may be amusing and of value in two different modes. one, that of an intelligent and imaginative creation that must therefore be judged solely in terms of the creative capacity of the narrator, no more. two, that of a clever usage, not to say manipulation, of idiosyncratic facts that used to govern the behaviour of olden societies which no longer exist. when the reader, or the critic, manages to comprehend the reasons, or postulates that used to govern these societies, e.g. the celtic world, he [or she] can then appreciate that there is nothing strange or extraordinary in this type of tales. certain things are not all that pleasant and we rather ignore them because, deep down, it is not easy to digest certain norms 1.we must bear in mind that some tales about wonders have endured the action of time through oral traditions. thus, the audience may be no more than a child listening to his [or her] grandmother, telling him fantastic tales that he likes. others, like lady gregory have collected stories not only about cuchulinn, but also about finn and the fionna: tales that are available to children as fairy tales. see, james stephan: irish fairy tales, (london: macmillan and co., 1924). in this there are stories about the story of ireland, oisin’s myth, and that of finn, made comprehensible for children, and yet they are not very different in their basic constituents from lady gregory’s rendering of these heroes. see gods and fighting men, the story of the tuatha de dannan and of the fianna of ireland, arranged and put into english by lady gregory (1904; rpt, buckinghamshire: colin smythe, 1987), preface by w. b. yeats. some events hardly make sense unless an exhaustive analysis is done of the underlying philosophy of life and religion of the ancient celtic races, and so of the role of the druids. see h. d’ arbois de jubainville, el ciclo mitologico irlandes y la mitologia celtica (barcelona: vision libros, s.l., 1981), trans.., alicia santiago. see also jean markale, druidas, tradiciones y dioses de los celtas (madrid: taurus humanidades, 1989), trans. juan aranzadi. 51 or attitudes to life merely because they are dated and so atypical not to say aberrant. evolution made possible their disappearance, and yet other habits have developed which would not better stand a close scrutiny had these old societies the chance to judge them. we can vaguely grasp why in a primitive society, like that of the children of milé, the king or chief of the tribe could not break the taboos of his ancestors, or the geis or gessa that were formulated by the gods on his birth, or on the day in which he became chief of the tribe. yet, what cannot be understood, and perhaps not accepted, is the fact that in an advanced society like that of the gawain-poet, not arthur’s of course, the narrator would take an apparently personal geis so seriously, when it has lost not only its vigency but it seems to clash with the religious principles governing the tenor of people’s lives. we are not dealing with finn and his fionna, and thus we are not dealing with a society that believed that to break old habits, or gessa, was not only dangerous for the life of the ruler, but for the society that he was ruler of. it was the belief of the ancient irish that when their kings observed the customs of their ancestors, the seasons were mild, the crops plentiful, the cattle fruitful, the waters abounded with fish and the fruit trees had to be propped up on account of the weight of their produce.1 with information such as that offered by frazer or jean markale, we can begin to intuit what the gawain-poet was trying to achieve when he wrote this romance, since what arthur is doing is rooted in obsolete ideas: ideas which, perhaps, he does not want to abolish 1.sir james george frazer, the magic art and the evolution of kings, vol. 1 (london: macmillan and co., 1932), p. 367. 52 perhaps because he was fascinated with the possibility of some wondrous event taking place, or merely because he is a superstitious king and so he thinks he has some kind of divine power that makes possible the occurrence of something that goes beyond the level of the ordinary if he submits himself to a sort of rite that demands of him abstinence and purification. perhaps it was just a question of a personal geis he dare not break. to accept that in the past people believed there were reasons that rendered it impossible to abandon an ancestral habit, an imposition from without, is easy. ancient irish literature abounds with kings who know they are about to die merely because they have unwillingly broken their personal gessa. the hound of cú knows he is not going to survive precisely because he has broken his gessa. we can perceive why finn sees life as he does, but it is difficult to understand arthur’s attitude to life because it is based on ignorance. this point achieves full force when the reader perceives that arthur is not with merlin, with his druid, and this makes all the difference in the world. this arthur is a purely christian king, acting on his own, not following the rules of a druid, merlin. to see arthur taking this lightly, merely as a game, with somebody enacting a wonder in the fashion of an "enterludez" before he eats is one thing, but to see him there, sitting, waiting for something real to happen is almost intolerable. in arthur’s incapacity to differentiate between myth and his present reality lies the problem. it is easy to appreciate the enormity of his act: an unnecessary act since the court is celebrating a crucial event in the history of mankind, the birth of christ. arthur seems to forget, or ignore, that he is celebrating the episode that has marked the beginning of a new era, and so the rupture with old beliefs and rituals. they are celebrating christmas, not beltaine or samuin. arthur’s words show that he is very conscious of the fact that he is enacting a very old habit, or ritual. it is not for nothing that 53 when he says he is waiting for something wonderful to happen, he makes an explicit equation between his waiting and the nature of the wonder, a tale of "alderes, of armes, of other auenturus",1 so he is speaking of his ancestors. his words verbally confirm not only the quality of his ritual but also the indubitable fact that it is he, and only he, who can conjure the apparition of the wonder and so begin to design the geometrical structure of gawain’s pentangle. bearing in mind the idea of ritual linked to that of the old concept of a personal geis, or taboo, as well as arthur’s verbalization of his habit, we wish to investigate the system that the poet uses to reveal that arthur, independently of the way in which he has been idealized in the old romances, is not a suitable king. he may have been so in the past, but according to the new world, the world of christ, he is not. it is in this point from where not only the didacticism that characterizes this romance stems from, but also its strength and novelty. the poet shows both an uncommon intelligence and equally uncommon knowledge of arthurian rites. owing to this he has managed to manipulate elements which in other tales about arthur seem to be irrelevant, exaggerated, belonging to the realm of faerie land, or purely anecdotic.2 the poet’s viewpoint prompts us to reflect on considerations related to what it means to be a king, and therefore to judge the negative effects that the anomalous behaviour of a king could have on the welfare of the community he governs. consequences which, as 1.sir gawain and the green knight, ed. j.r.r. tolkien and e.v. gordon, second. ed. by norman davis (oxford: at the clarendon press, 1972), i, 95. all quotations from this edition. 2.in malory’s works, this habit becomes the starting point of the quest of the holy grail. arthur has gathered his knights to celebrate pentecost and therefore he is waiting for something to happen, and what happens is the adventure of the floating stone with a sword stuck on it, that is the prelude to galahad’s apparition in the court. 54 we shall be able to show, have little, or nothing to do with the arrival of spring, or the fertility of animals, or the release of imprisoned waters. in short, and owing to the apparent accessorial, not to say peripheral role that the gawain-poet seems to have assigned to arthur, critics tend to see him merely in terms of an indispensable but ancillary figure functioning as some sort of auxiliary character. by placing arthur in this light the general impression is that of an indispensability which does not stem from what he is, but from what the poet needed him to be in order to formulate the perfect occasion to justify the presence of so many knights at his court: a happening that becomes the leitmotif that renders plausible, not to say coherent, the apparition of the green knight within an appropriate frame of reference. this is not however the case. arthur is more than a trivial target, more than the pivot around which his knights gather during a period of the year dedicated to celebrations, fun, and brotherhood. his indispensability lies in what he does, in what he wants, in what he says, and so it is absolute and unrestricted. there is in arthur much more than the apparent artistic, not to say aesthetic need to offer a fit occasion to justify the presence of the green knight in his court. when trying to find a harmonious and logical explanation about gawain’s adventure, and so about the possible meaning of the green knight, one must not concentrate only on gawain, or on the green knight, but on arthur as king of camelot. thus the investigation must begin with the king. it must be undertaken without trying to find reasons to exonerate his behaviour1 1.even if we move back in time, to the heroic world that preceded arthur, this world can hardly be praised. the behaviour of vther pendragon is not all that commendable. his motives for declaring the war to gorlois were amoral. his love for igerne does not justify vther’s behaviour, and even less that of merlin, who makes possible what now-adays would have been qualified with the term of physical violation. we can however accept this only if we see in arthur’s conception the unusual or peculiar birth of a god 55 using illusory parameters to justify how he understands the task of governing his people, the youth of the kingdom youth, or that of his courtiers, and therefore their desire to enjoy life at to fullest. without arthur the gathering of all his knights would not have been possible: without arthur an anomalous petition would not have been formulated; without arthur the phantasmagoric appearance of the green knight would not have taken place. ergo, to understand the way in which arthur precipitates the events, thus producing a binary system of oppositeness symbolized by his court and by gawain, casts much light on the motives that could have prompted the gawain-poet to write this romance. the way in which christmas has been celebrated is marked by the factors such as those of abundance, comfort, energy, noise and by the gathering of people around the king. in opposition to this, gawain, as he roams in the inhospitable land of virral, is confronted with a situation of extreme deprivations: he is alone suffering a great deal of physical discomfort. he lacks food, feels fear, and tiredness while a dreadful and appalling silence envelops him.1 the arthur that the gawain-poet delineates has nothing in common with the warrior depicted by writers such as geoffrey of monmouth, wace, or la¥amon, to name just three. when bearing in mind the orchestrated by a druid, merlin. see markale, op. cit. for different reasons we cannot applaud the attitude of ivain, or that of his wife, the lady of the fountain, unless we understand it within a purely mythical frame of reference, e.g. the black knight, as a symbol of the night, and ivain as a symbol of light, a sort of moon-man, as markale says, in quest of the light of the sun, his lady. see chrétien de troyes ivain, and iwain and gawain, as well as the version of the lady of the fountain that appears in one of the branches of the mabinogi, under the title of “owen, or the countess of the fountain.” see also of arthur and of merlin, and wace’s roman de brut and la¥amon’s brut. 1.the elements which singularize gawain’s journey to the green chapel have been studied by this writer. see “el viaje de gawain: a study of sir gawain and the green knight,” revista canaria de estudios ingleses, 13/14 (1987: 35-54). 56 number of years that divide this arthur from that of the those writers, changes must be expected. the change however has not been so radical as it should have been. the narrator uses a very old, not to say proverbial, arthurian custom; a convention that used to characterize two of arthur’s celebrations: christmas and pentecost. in old tales about arthur the narrator uses this habit as the launching board for which he is going to initiate the authentic purpose of his tale, e.g. the quest of the holy grail. here the poet has done the same. arthur’s habit becomes the occasion of the authentic crux of the matter: the green knight. there is in this tale a symbolic lack of the typical deeds which characterize a society of champions. this deficiency serves to show the futility of this custom of arthur’s. so the archaic necessity of narrating exploits oriented to show the worth and value of his institution of the round table, does not justify the maintenance of a habit which is both meaningless and ambiguous, especially when the habit is carried to the limits they are. regardless of the original function of this habit, or geis, the poet has not depicted a society of warriors, but a society characterized by idleness, plenty of leisure, and consequently by a strong desire to enjoy itself. when bearing in mind the intention inherent in this lack of dauntless feats, seeing the king maintain such a dated and empty habit, excite uneasy feelings not to say a great deal of mistrust about these ritualistic attitudes towards life. his personal geis serves only to emphasize two things. one, the lack of rationality cognate to this habit. two, the stupidity inherent in moving beyond the level of ritual, since it is enacted to its ultimate consequences, those of severing the head of a man1 thus placing the 1.the fact they think there is no danger in the game, derives from the severing his head. it is not for nothing that in old tales about finn, the tuatha dé danann, or the irishhero cuchulinn, the emphasis is placed on the druids’ capacity to restore warriors to life if the warriors’ heads have not been severed from their bodies, or their brains 57 life of another man: gawain, in an unnecessarily and unreasonably hazard. in this story, unlike that of malory, there is not a collective phenomenon, and so a collective and communal enterprise: the adventures of the grail. the poet has treated arthur’s habit in such a manner that the consequences are reductive, and so restricted to a very individualized phenomenon. so the aftermath of his protocol does not affect arthur’s court; the departure of gawain does not change, and does not have to change, the lives of the dwellers of camelot, and even less that of the king, who does not show much contrition about his inability to ignore the green knight’s plea. with arthur’s lack of contrition the poet is rendering a king who is not only foolish but unable to recognize the fact that he is responsible for the apparition of the green knight. his sightlessness forces his own people to confront a very sad reality, that of his behaviour and so the possible consequences of his thoughtless attitude to life. he functions as a load star that attracts what is not wanted. he seems to be a man endowed with mystical powers, a sort of shaman that lures to his court, with the power that his word confers him, and with the potency inherent in his abstinence, or rite of purification, an obsolete creature;1 a being that damaged. almost anything could be mended, a severed arm, as is the case of king nuadu, but never a head. diancecht, the druid, knew this well enough when he killed his child. it is evident that the people at camelot knew this, and so they could not foresee the danger cognate to the game. a good study on the meaning of the severing of the head, and therefore on the attitude of the court to it, must be undertaken. this would show they knew more than they seem to know. also that the way in which gawain takes up the game makes sense. gawain is a very cautious knight, he is not the type of man who risks his life unnecessarily. if we think of gawain, in other tales about him, as a knight who knows a great deal about the healing powers of herbs, it is evident that he has been trained by druids, or faeries. gawain therefore knew better than anybody else the irrevocability inherent in the cutting of green knight’s head, even if he were a creature from the sidhe. 1.two things ought to be considered: one: that arthur is very young and therefore, that according to tradition merlin should be with him. two: that due to merlin’s absence 58 exists only in the minds of primitive and superstitious societies.1 therefore the green knight is no more than a remembrance patterned by the scissors of time, a shadowy figure that has lasted long but only in the subconscious of the people, as part of a residual process of beliefs that were linked to the idea of the power inherent in the ancient kings, or in the chieftains of clans, and druids ruling over the health of his subjects, over nature, and the cyclical movement of the seasons. when it comes then to the exact understanding of the green knight, inevitably he is what the poet says that he is, a huge game, a huge and untimely joke. obliquely the gawain poet is attributing to arthur faculties that must be examined in order to reach a lucid comprehension of the thematic nucleus of the tale: the authentic meaning of mumming with all its corollaries. what the gawain-poet is trying to do is highly rational. in england, as in many other countries, till the reign of charles ii, people attributed to the king powers which entered within arthur seems to function as his surrogate and therefore, as a shaman’s surrogate, full of power. one of the elements that give power to a druid is that of the correct usage of words, in addition to rites, such as those of abstinence. much has been written about the relationship between arthur and merlin, and about the similarities between a druid and a shaman, and so about the tools that give a druid his power, such as words. see the works of jean markale, and in particular, druidas, tradiciones y dioses de los celtas (madrid: taurus humanidades, 1989), trans., juan aranzadi. 1.here we are using the word "primitive" with a great deal of care. the medieval man seems to be fascinated with mythology, and consequently he tried to explain mythology in terms of allegorical elements that embodied, at t imes, positive messages. many writers of this period saw the dangers inherent in this process, but they could do nothing about it. many were the ways in which elements pertaining to old myths were justified in christian terms, and at times, the methods used to prove this justification were clever, not to say highly imaginative. this process is not exclusive to the middle ages, but a common one during the renaissance. what a clever exegete could have done with the green knight is an intriguing question: it is almost certain that he could have discovered sufficient allegorical elements in him to render him either perfectly evil, or an example to be followed by good christians. see jean seznec, los dioses de la antigüedad (madrid: ediciones taurus, 1987), trans.., juan aranzadi. 59 the realm of the supernatural: it was thought that the king could cure scrofulism by means of the imposition of his hands upon the sick. it was a question of attributes which were intimately linked to the concept of monarchy grounded on divine right: a concept which has produced infinite problems. divine kingship could be a double -edgedweapon for any country ruled by a cruel and incompetent, and hence unwanted, king. the beginning of the tale is based on the poet’s brilliant manipulation of a ritual that arthur is dramatizing, possibly owing to ignorance, at the wrong time, and on the wrong occasion. arthur’s stimulus is not sufficiently clear. the poet however uses this prerogative to delineate a plausible cause that justifies the apparition of a green portent, and so to censure not the consequence, but the cause of the consequence, the ritual. the poet has managed an ingenious, not to say didactic innovation in the beheading game.1 the modernization is effective owing to the simplicity of the thematic base of the tale: a king, his behaviour, and the consequences. it is not difficult to see in celtic literature elements that show the remnants of beliefs in which the power of the king, and in particular that of his druid, was linked to natural phenomena. the focus of attention is of transcendental importance, especially when it comes to the celtic fictional world: a focus of attention that could still hold the renaissance reader, or audience, spellbound in stories such as those of macbeth, or king lear, to name just two. 1.the beheading game is a celtic game. however what we do not have in this type of stories is a king waiting for something wonderful to happen. see “bricriu’s feast,” in early irish myths and sagas (london: penguin books, 1981). in the case of this feast it is not a question of a wonder, but of some sort of test oriented to show, after a heated discussion, who is the best warrior of ulster. an interesting compilation of the various versions of the beheading game is that of elizabeth brewer, from cuchulinn to gawain (totowa, new jersey: rowan and littlefield, 1984). 60 in order to prompt the reader to place in correct perspective how arthur’s behaviour affects his world of chivalry, the poet has emphasized one of arthur’s obsessions, that of hearing tales about wondrous adventures. it is an activity, a conception of amusement, a principle that governs the lives of his knights which, with the passing of time, has dulled not only arthur’s sensibility but also that of his courtiers. his concern has become so persistent and pertinacious that, as the gawain-poet indicates, it cannot be abandoned even when celebrating peace and brotherhood. owing to his physical inactivity arthur cannot think about any thing other than marvellous adventures. this is not only applicable to arthur but to story tellers who, like him, make a living narrating scenes that are full of violence precisely because his readers, like arthur and his knights, enjoy this type of tales. one attitude is as irrational as the other, and the proof of it is that at arthur’s court they are celebrating the most important and marvellous adventure of the history of mankind: the birth of the son of god. to expect therefore for something wonderful to happen shows the spiritual blindness of arthur and his knights, a lack of insight that is not trivial since it has infected all his court. arthur is young and a little irrational: also his courtiers are young and a little extravagant. it is possible to presume that, in part, the behaviour of his courtiers is due to the natural propensity that makes human beings emulate their betters. consequently, it is feasible to conjecture that arthur’s attitude does not constitute a passing and momentary disposition but a permanent obfuscation that controls the tenor of his life and so that of his knights. what the gawain-poet is doing is criticizing a whole system of literary values. it is not for nothing that the knight that emerges with greatest frequency from the medieval romances is not spiritually speaking linked to a serviceable and thus authentic hero: the type of hero who is a hero when circumstances prompt him to be so, as happens, within certain limits, 61 with the homeric hero. this literary knight is characterized by his unproportionate desire for adventure, exploits which very often have no better motivation than that of the ordinary gratification that the exploit offers him, apart from the fame he achieves, and the opportunity of narrating it at arthur’s court. in the arthurian tales part of this adventurous hedonism included the approbation of the king, who encouraged the hero, in the presence of ladies and knights, to narrate his feat with the greatest possible detail. when doing so the narrator used to gain the monarch’s approval, his admiration, and his respect. one could go beyond this level for the king’s encomiums were seasoned with prizes of no little worth, and with the contingent favours of some enthusiastic lady. what surely had little relevance was the motives that brought about the adventure, or if such adventure could justify the physical risks faced by the knight, or if his opponent were dead in some forgotten field, forest, or bridge. only the passion aroused by the hearing of the tale and by the details of the adventure, was what truly mattered. nobody was concerned with the way in which such an adventure developed, or with the possibility of avoiding it, or with the useless death of a human being, and this is not a trivial issue at all. it was a question of heroes who should be considered as uncalled-for heroes. their paramount ambition was no other than that of earning the appellation of hero, so that the measurement of the exact magnitude of their acts, or the consideration of facts that rendered the adventure worthy of taking place in the light of morals or ethics was always beyond the point. this attitude is not identical to that of the homeric hero. although these men fought, and although being a hero was not a trivial incentive, there was an authentic cause justifying their fight. many of these heroes looked forward to the end of their fight and a return to their homes, to live there in peace with their families. they fought in 62 front of a backdrop not of a king, even less that of a court that passed its time hearing about war exploits, but horrid battles and their lucid understanding that such struggles conveyed death and much sorrow. at least as far as the greeks were concerned, their war was not the product of a capricious and gratuitous desire for adventure. these men, unlike many of arthur’s knights, had weighty reasons to fight against the trojans. the ones who could be however classified as foolish knights were the trojans, for they were risking their lives to protect the wife of another king merely because one of priam’s sons had fallen in love with her. the deeds of the homeric heroes delineated what the hellenic world expected of them, the defense of their honour. this is applicable also to the trojans, although to share their understanding of honour is not an easy task. the same must be said of the young beowulf, for, in spite of feeling deeply the drive inherent in his wish to be acclaimed as a hero, at least his adventures are not gratuitous. he manages to liberate with his effort and valour hrothgard’s people from the oppression of grendel. it is difficult to say, with the same kind of enthusiasm, the same about arthur or his knights. this difficulty is applicable not only to sir gawain, but to many tales about arthur, this being a fact that fully justifies the attitude of the gawain-poet towards arthur and his courtiers. consequently it is not illicit, in certain cases, to doubt the moral worth of their acts. many critics have shown concern about the ethics that govern arthur’s world. on more than one occasion spearing feels obliged to accept that the adventures of arthur’s knights contradict christian sentiments, not to say basic human ones.1 1.when spearing examines the alliterative morte arthure, he admits the fact that arthur and his knights lack, at times, human and christian sentiments. see a.c. spearing, the gawain -poet (cambridge: at the university press, 1970). 63 this valorization stems from an undubitable reality: that the acts of these heroes, regardless of how deeply they are rooted in one specific literary tradition, or regardless of the fact that they can be placed within a more or less historical context, do not cease to be marked by a disquieting dehumanization that proclaims the widely existence of irreconcilable dichotomies within a purely christian milieu. it is not surprising to perceive that works such as sir gawain, or of arthur and of merlin, or the death of king arthur, provoke the reader’s admiration, but it is however an admiration that is inevitably tarnished by disturbing sentiments of moral disapproval. the motive of this moral distress is born in the recognition of the fact that the measureless egos of arthur’s knights push them to commit deplorable acts, not to say despicable ones. the end result is an ill-contained exasperation that the reader tries to ignore since the world of chivalry runs parallel to his own oneiric one, so that in the end one feels like don quixote, fascinated but a little insane.1 if we take too seriously the message that many story tellers, again and again, reproduce during this period, as well as the preponderance they give to all that sustains the fantasy of their readers, negative sentiments will be aroused: sentiments that become profound when perceiving what the narrators are forcing them to do: to inflate their egos as heroes, forgetting, or rather having to forget their internal world, since both their egos and their internal world have become fully incompatible. 1.if we uproot many of the achievements of arthur’s knights from a world of wonder it becomes obvious that some of them are peculiar. this is how the gawain -poet makes the reader feel for what he has emphasized is a gratuitous violence that leads nowhere. the artificial questing after adventure solves nothing. thus an ample number of their adventures provoke uneasy feelings, mixed with admiration, approval, tension and finally with an unhappy conde mnation. when taken too seriously, their deeds trouble the reader. they cannot be easily understood by the common man; and the more one tries to impose some logical meaning on their acts the more these knights look like don quixote, searching phantasmagorical enemies with the purpose of adding more laurel leaves to their be -crowned heads. 64 because the gawain-poet knows that the internal world of any living creature is superior to the external world, he has tried to emphasize both things. in spite of his desire to narrate adventures, unlike other storytellers, he has not lost his moral fibre. he knows that many of the tales about arthur are the product, or the consequence, of a disproportionate hunger on the reader’s part for tales of action. this phenomenon is parallel to what is taking place in our days, for there is a measureless appetite for tales in which sex and crude violence have become the two main protagonists, protagonists which have become obsessively important in the public’s mind. the narrator, in this tale, has depicted arthur as he really is: a complex young man. his world is recondite and very particular: a world that cannot be severed from that of his court, gawain, or lancelot. the macrocosm of arthur is ruled by his social position: he is a king, and therefore he has power. however, and in view of his acts, it is possible to maintain that according to the narrator, arthur’s dominion goes beyond what can be defined in terms of what is neatly ordinary. the poet has conferred to his natural powers as king, by means of a subtle delineation of characteristics that are rather primitive, other types of prerogatives. they are idiosyncrasies which serve to define with accuracy the way in which this young king behaves, and thus the consequences: corollaries that are reflected in the behaviour of the dwellers of camelot. arthur is a king who craves to either see wonders or to hear about them. it is not a question of harmless, or ordinary adventures, but of exploits that cannot be confined within the boundaries of the commonplace, or the quotidian activities. therefore, and due to a basic and elementary process of mimicry, it is logical to see his knights spending their time roaming about in deep and dark forests on toilsome quests for all that could be defined in terms of extraordinary. 65 in showing the way in which arthur behaves, the narrator has depicted him as a young man of a restless heart: so bisied him his ¥onge blod and his brayn wylde. and also an oper maner meued him eke ? at he pur¥ nobelay had n omen, he wolde neuer ete vpon such a dere day er hym deuise were of som auenturus pyng an vncoupe tale of sum mayn meruayle, pat he my¥t trawe, of alderes, of armes, of oper auenturus oper sym segg hym biso¥t of sum siker kny¥t to joyne wyth hym in iustyng, in jopardeå to lay, lede, lif for lyf, leue vchon oper, (gawain: 89-98) and both his restlessness and anxiety are anomalous. the consequences of his brayn wylde are reflected not only in the clamorous announcement of the arrival of food but in nature, symbolized by birds: creatures that seem to be orchestrating the brainless gaiety that dominates this court. it is not a coincidence that the wylde werbles sing without stopping; they are proclaiming what arthur seems to be: a king with powers over the natural world, forces that ensure the maintenance of tables full of delicious “meats”. at arthur’s court all is joy, happiness, urgency and vitality. one of the entertainments of his knights is that of tournayed. this makes sense because through tournaments they can show that they are full of energy and so ready to undertake adventures. thus, as the narrator says, the number of jousts is not small: by time ful mony. this attitude confers on this celebration an air of vitality that is inevitably dulled by the violence innate in this type of display. because courtiers are young 66 and in perfect physical condition, the tournaments are merely a game, a way of amusing themselves for they want to spend these days in ful jolité. giving the motives cognate to the organization of so many tournaments, all that can be expected is a sad trivialization of this activity. there is no textual evidence proving that this activity is, in any way, related to military objectives. thus it is not possible to speak of a rational and pragmatic physical entertainment, but merely in terms of fun and erotism. the tournaments, as pure pleasure, lasted fifteen days, and therefore they constituted a dangerous emulation “of roman art and its order of cultural priorities”.1 to see the romans however celebrating, as an integral part of their culture, religious festivities with games involving bloodshed is the norm. their games were part of a social and political pattern that demanded this simply because the romans were people who expected violence and bloodshed in their entertainments. arthur’s court is not roman but christian so that the fact they cannot conceive of a less violent form to amuse themselves is not a trivial issue, or at least this is what the poet thinks. through the way in which they celebrate christmas something becomes evident: that camelot’s world is still, linked to both the greco-roman and celtic worlds;2 to the worlds that the poet mentions first by means of an introductory note to his tale and secondly through the beheading game. 1.the growth of tournaments both in number and scope during the tenth and eleventh centuries was no matter of chance: it was an aspect of the deliberate antiquarianism of the age that placed the collection, study and imitation of roman art high in its order of cultural priorities. glynne wickham, the medieval theatre (london: weinfeld & nicolson, 1980), p. 156. 2.see northrop frye, anatomy of criticism: “theory of myths: theory of archetypal meaning, demonic imagery,” (princeton: princeton university press, 1971), p. 147. 67 the world that the beginning of the tale evokes is rather negative. it is not for nothing that the poet strains this world through the sieve of a series of images that are purely demonic, images such as those of a besieged city, desolation, adultery and the total destruction of the trojans.1 bearing in mind the manner in which the narrator begins his tale, it is evident that he has left nothing to chance. he has used a very efficacious comparative system; a system that becomes cumulative with the unfolding of the plot of the tale. he is depicting, on the one hand, jousts that are comparable to a greco-roman spectacle. on the other, he offers information that must be linked to what he says, as he narrates his tale, with the purpose of reinforcing the thematic nucleus of his story. there is, juxtaposed to the ludic element inherent in the jousts, the element of eros: and the erotic load that characterizes this activity, next to its possible consequences, is not a vain issue. the erotic element became an ingrained element in the tournaments due to a gradual transformation of this venture. slowly the tournaments ceased to be a purely martial activity and became with the passing of time no more than a show: an entertainment oriented to amuse a public putting to the test the valour of its participants. apart from showing their valour, the knights also wished to attract the attention of ladies, it being something they could achieve easily since the sight of knights fighting carried an emotional load for the ladies.2 it was an emotional response that otherwise would have been more serene and therefore more rational, not to say natural. owing to this type of emotional response gottefried von strasburg uses a joust as the perfect occasion leading to the passionate and unhappy love between blancheflor and rivalin, 1.see northrop frye, idem, p. 147. 2.it was more or less at the beginning of the xii century that the ladies began to attend tournaments as spectat ors. their presence gives rise to expected and logical changes in the attitude of the knights. 68 parents of the equally unhappy tristam. the way in which this writer exploits a tournament is both eloquent and suggestive. his description of the joust begins like this, “in the sweet fullness of this springtide they began a charming knightly sport.”1 the narrator defines the joust as a sport that he qualifies with the adjective charming. among the participants there was rivalin, and among the audience, blancheflor. given the erotism that singularizes this pastime, the effects on the ladies are devastating. to question this is futile because their own comments exude sensuality, a sensuality that reaches the level of both audacity and indecency: ‘look!’ they say, ‘what a heavenly young man that is! everything he does, how divinely it becomes him! what a perfect body he has! how evenly those magnificent legs of his move together! how tightly his shield stays glued in its place! how elegant all his robes! how noble his head and hair! how charming his whole bearing! what a divine figure he makes! o, happy, lucky woman, she that will enjoy him!’2 when examining this quotation it is evident that the excitement of the ladies is not little, a fact that is conveyed with sufficient clarity by the language used: a language that is hardly decorous. the type of adjectives they use, plus their continuous usage of exclamations, serve to show the cynicism with which the narrator treats the effects of tournaments on the ladies’ hearts. the erotism inherent in the joust becomes a concrete and physical reality in the act of looking at the men. the knight has become an object much coveted by the ladies, who derive a great deal of pleasure 1.gottefried von strassburg, tristan (london: penguin books, 1976), p. 50. 2.ibid., pp. 50-1. 69 from looking at his body, without omitting the smallest detail. they scrutinize rivalin with impudence; they look at his legs, at his clothing, at the way in which he stands erect on his horse, at way he moves, at his hair, etc.. his physical beauty awakens carnal desires in the ladies, and especially in the sorrowful blancheflor, who ends up losing her head because of him: now good blancheflor was taking in what the ladies were saying, for whatever any of them did, she prized him, greatly in her thoughts. into her thoughts she has received him, he had come into her heart, and in the kingdom of her heart wore crown and sceptre with despotic sway.1 with descriptions of this nature it is easy to perceive why some writers claimed that “the court of chivalry” runs parallel to the court of love.2 in essence this is precisely what is taking place in tristan, and what is happening at arthur’s court. so the narrator is talking about a king who encourages his knights to celebrate christmas in a fashion that is hardly suitable, since he is sponsoring attitudes loaded with violence, erotism, not to say the satisfaction of the senses throught the mete. when the poet describes camelot, or what is happening at bertilak’s castle, he does not only always dedicate an ample number of lines to relate the way in which his heroes eat, but he introduces 1.ibid., p. 51. 2.wickham writes that the combats “served to stimulate the competitive element in this rough sport, giving the knight that fame which he priced so dearly, a development which the presence of ladies as spectators could only encourage. in this way the arts of war became associated with those of love and courtship; that of self-protection and preservation with that of survival into the future through procreation.” wickham, op. cit., p. 155. 70 very few variations, for what occurs at bertilak’s castle is just a replica of what took place -and is taking placeat arthur’s. the truth is that what separates both castles is far less than what unites them. when the poet narrates the christmas meal at camelot, he itemizes the paraphernalia that distinguishes the social act of eating, and he does so with pleasure and much detail. to achieve this he uses a narrative system that is common to his period, that of cataloguing those items the writer wishes to emphasize, in this case food and drink. it is possible to argue that the catalogue that the gawain-poet offers, when compared with other catalogues in tales about arthur, is not all that ample. however, this catalogue must be examined within the boundaries of the system used by the poet: a system which, often enough, is based on the most strict poetic economy. thus to note how he enumerates the victuals is almost surprising and it makes no sense unless he wants to prompt his readers into the appreciation not only of the feast’s splendour but something else far more important, its ritualization and the irreverent disvirtualization of the rite of abstinence on arthur’s part. at first the poet begins with the description of the joy that carries away the diners, but soon he mentions how, as they begin to sit at the table, they become calm. this change in attitude is hardly noticeable; it has been achieved with a tremendous economy and subtlety. it may pass unnoticed for this is all the poet says: “alle pis mipe pay maden to pe mete tyme.” (gawain, 71). in view however of the seriousness with which arthur undertakes his fasting, this change is important because of what arthur does. as soon as his guests sit at the table the reader must hear all about an irrational process of inversion of values that is being committed by the king. when the “mete” begins to be served the frivolous tone that characterized the lines that preceded this description, has disappeared. the joy of arthur’s guests has been displaced by ostentatious gestures which are loaded with pomp and 71 show. gestures that mark the arrival of the food; food that in theory nobody can eat till the king witnesses some sort of wonder. the way in which the apparition of the dishes takes place is like a show, and in the ponderation of concrete objects and edibles there is a suggestive distortion of values that is not all that different from that which characterized their enactment of the tournaments. the mete has acquired a unsafe ceremonious character that blurs the line that divides the sublime from the ridiculous. the “mete” has reached a ritualistic quality because it has been enhanced with visual pageantry,1 and accompanied with martial acoustic effects that show that at arthur’s court there is a marked preoccupation with everything that can be appreciated with the senses, such as those of sight and hearing. this meal shows that arthur places a greater emphasis on what can be externalized than on what belongs to the invisible and serene world of the spirit. to his solicitous interest in the visual arts must be added his preoccupation with what can be heard, because the arrival of food has been accompanied by a set of well calculated acoustic effects, those of the sound of “trumpes” and of “pipes”: ? en pe first cors come with crakking of trumpes, wyth mony baner ful bry¥t pat pebi henged; nwe nakryn noyse with pe noble pipes, wylde werbles and wy¥t wakned lote, ? at mony hert ful hi e hef at her towches. daynteås dryuen perwyth of ful dere metes, foysoun of pe fresche, and on so fele disches (gawain, 116-22). 1.ibid., p. 155. 72 in this quotation there is evidence that all of them are effects oriented to celebrate not only the abundance of their food, but its variety. the poet seems to expect of his readers to intuit that in the act of eating there is much more than mere eating. what they are doing is the prelude to something that goes beyond the level of having a christmas meal, for so much noise, so much colour, and so much singing of birds inevitably prompts the reader to suspect that his mete buries deep a ceremony that perhaps not even arthur understands: a service that has little or nothing to do with christmas, since the king, unlike the rest of his diners, cannot eat while he waits for some wondrous event to take place. both the ceremony and its ritualistic aspect are important facts seemingly used to hold the attention of arthur’s diners. their interest is aroused by means of the nakryn noyse and the crakkyng of trumpes. the visual impressions mixed with the acoustic effects have been enhanced by the loud singing of wild birds. yet, in this alternation of artificial shrill sounds with visual effects there is a note of discord produced by the birds for they are singing loudly, late at night, when there is no daylight, and therefore they belong to the night. this subtle discord functions as the necessary lack of compatibility that involves arthur’s guests, immersing them in a very discordant harmony which reflects arthur’s immaturity and explains why the poet feels he must qualify him, as he does, with the appellative of childegere. the ceremonial is brilliant. the important aspect is not however its brilliancy but the perturbing ritualization of the mete. what there is to this ritualization is none other than a faded drawing of a prelude to hunting, emblematized in the person of bertilak. a prelude of all that is going to be eaten and drunk by gawain at bertilak’s castle, reflecting thus both arthur’s youth and irrationality, caricaturized by the excessive joviality of bertilak, the seductive beauty of his wife, the 73 lady of the castle, and gawain’s foolish acceptance, on two occasions, of his game. it is not for nothing that arthur is doing now what later bertilak will do: to solemnize the pleasure inherent in the enjoyment of ful dere metes, the food that bertilak hunts, while gawain spends his time playing erotic games with his wife, games which constitute an absurd, unnecessary and consistent continuity on both arthur’s and gawain’s part of celebrations dedicated to thank mythical powers for the fertility of the animal world. as far as the celebration is concerned it is evident that there is an unconscious summoning of old and legendary powers; a call that ironically enough culminates with arthur’s abstinence thus crystallizing with the apparition of the green knight.1 this young king cannot understand what he is doing and so he does not only celebrate christmas with tournaments and ritualized meals, but encourages his guests to dance all night through fifteen days. since caroles were of a pre-christian origin, carole dancing served to reinforce the preponderance that the element eros had at arthur’s court. these types of songs were linked to the celebration of the cyclical movement of the seasons so that they used to be sung and danced, generally speaking, during, or after the collection of the fruit, or the harvest. e. k. chambers offers the testimony of the dominican john bromyard who, knowing sufficiently well the origin of caroles condemned them with a great deal of energy. the attitude adopted by this dominican towards caroles was hard, and he went so far as to declare that women who dance and sing caroles, adorned with 1.the primitive relationship between man and powers beyond the level of man was elemental: “it arises out of an endeavour to procure certain goods, which depend, in part, upon natural processes beyond man’s control.” e.k. chambers, the mediaeval stage, 2 vols (1903; rpt, oxford: oxford at the clarendon press, 1971), p. 102. 74 “garlands [were] the devil’s packhorse for sale”.1 a quick examination of the camina burana2 shows that father bromyard was not talking balderdash. another testimony that is worth considering, offered also by chambers, is that of m. jeanroy, who maintains that caroles were erotic songs and therefore songs which had nothing to do with the celebration of the birth of christ.3 for many fathers of the church christmas had become “a feast of words, with dancing and ditties.”4 their attitude towards caroles was sufficiently well known by the writers of this period and consequently by the readers. thus they could easily deduce that arthur should have known better than to celebrate christmas singing caroles in order to avoid giving to his people erroneous behaviourial patterns. arthur was no exception. his way of celebrating christmas was usual, and hence the existence of so many prohibitions. it is wrong to think that the fathers of the church were forbidding what was not practised, but the contrary, otherwise their prohibitions and sanctions would hardly make sense. what the gawain-poet describes is not new. at arthur’s court there is nothing other than, combats, carols, dances, gifts and feasting. it was so then, and it is so nowadays because most people are concerned only with externals, not with the spiritual aspect of this celebration. it is a question of attitudes and of habits that the narrator, as well as many fathers of the church, did not like. the testimony of e. k. chambers,5 among others, shows that many fathers of the church considered it improper to celebrate christmas as arthur does. 1.e.k. chambers, english literature at the close of the middle ages (1945; rpt, oxford: at the clarendon press, 1971), p. 76. 2.ibid., pp. 67-8. see carmina burana (barcelona: seix barral, 1981). 3.chambers, op. cit., p. 69. 4.ibid., p. 76. 5.ibid., pp. 69 & 71. 75 they lack nothing, and deprive themselves of nothing. in addition to singing carols they danced incessantly; and the manner in which the poet speaks of these dances suggests that he thinks that the dancers were dedicating themselves to celebrate the physical energy of the new sun. the fact that they dance during the night, after spending all day long either eating, or jousting, or interchanging gifts,1 is reminiscent of some ritual dedicated to the night. young arthur is full of energy and life. his vitality seems to be contagious: his ladies and his knights, in spite of the fact that the feast lasts full fifteen days, do not seem to need to rest either during the day or during the night. this event confers to the celebration an air of urgency that is not wholly pleasant. it is the same type of hurry that is going to characterize the green knight, who is in such a rush to have his head cut off that he does not waste his time even in the civilized act of saluting those present in the hall, and even less in wishing them a happy christmas. in the hall of camelot, as if it were just a physical manifestation of the "brayn wylde" of the king, the sense of urgency, physical energy, and frenzy seem to annul every sentiment related to the peace, tranquillity, and harmony that should prevail during these days. this is how the green knights perceives their games: thus without wishing them peace, or commending them to god, he abruptly demands a christmas game. 1.fertility is associated to, and celebrated by means of exchange of gifts, ibid., p. 81. j. leyerle writes that arthur’s ladies and knights dedicate themselves, as emerson claims, to exchange kisses. see “the game and play of hero,” ed. norman t. burns & christopher reagan, concepts of the hero in the middle ages and the renaissance (toronto: hodder & sloughton, 1971). it is possible to think that the game of exchanging gifts functions as the prelude to the game that gawain is going to play at bertilak’s castle. in the exchange of gifts, as derek brewer suggests, “there may be a witty if somewhat improper structural pun," that must be, we think, sexual. see derek brewer, symbolic stories (suffolk: st. edmund press, 19890), p. 81. i am very much indebted to dr. leyerle not only because of his generous help but also because of his kindness in giving me a copy of this paper before it was published. 76 elements such as those of vigour, energy, puissance, activity and restlessness become obvious with their dancing, especially when bearing in mind that they dance during the night. in many cultures a frenzied and incessant dance in the light of the moon was a religious manifestation, a cult that included the physical extenuation of the participants. the thought of reaching a point of extenuation fits in with what so far has been examined, and it achieves full force when perceiving that the “dere dyn” accompanies something more than an innocent and childish exchange of gifts. the poet says that: and sypen riche forth runnen to reche hondeselle, áe¥ed ¥eres ¥iftes on hi¥, ¥elde hem bi hond, debated busyly aboute po giftes; ladies la¥ed ful loude, po¥ pay lost haden, and he pat wan watz not wrothe, pat may ¥e well trawe. (gawain, 66-70) it is needless to point out that they “run”, and that they “debated busily” about the gifts. it could not be different. thus either when they are dancing, or exchanging gifts, or amusing themselves with tournaments, or eating, or dedicating themselves to games in which the ladies laugh loudly when they lose,1 and the knights are not displeased with their gains, they are celebrating the erotism, violence and energy inherent in a natural world that offers them food. it should not thus cause much surprise to see the green knight appearing at this court. 1.although it is almost unnecessary to comment on this, one must bear in mind the not always healthy connotations inherent in laughing immoderately. the emphasis on their noisy laughter, as is the case with the exchange of gifts, is just another prelude of the lady of the castle’s gay laughter, and i dare say this lady laughs a little too much to think that her laughter is totally innocent or harmless. 77 arthur with the type of activities that take place at his place, has invoked his presence. so much activity becomes the sign that shows the type of anxiety that controls this monarch. the poet clearly says that arthur is restless and anxious, so bisied him his yonge blod. yet he is not talking about spiritual restlessness but surely about earthly worries: concerns that are difficult to comprehend when trying to discover something solid behind so much pomp and show. deep down there is nothing but ignorance. it is alarming to think that arthur’s impetuous nature prompts him to hope to see a man demanding a boon involving a dangerous enterprise. it is not a question of a service dedicated to help the ones who need help, but merely of some sort of unusual show. arthur waits for the appearance of some unknown rider in his hall demanding permission to challenge somebody; and the challenge is unacceptable for it is a challenge that involves the death of the participants. the inversion of values is clear. he wants to see on such a dere day a joust in which the life of the combatants is at stake. his motives are banal: an old habit that is not only irrational but sinister since he hopes for something to happen, but appealing to fortune for the result of the context must depend on fortunes’s whim. arthur trivializes what is serious but aggrandizes and ritualizes what is trivial, simple, basic and quotidian: eating. let us bear in mind the profound implications inherent in his decision when he declares he will not eat till something wonderful, something beyond the level of normality, occurs. arthur, unawares, is transforming the important and serious act of fasting into an irrational banality thus giving an irreverent twist to it. he does not seem to know that fasting is a habit that has little, or nothing, to do with bloody combats, and much with religious acts. arthur is not however talking about a discipline linked to 78 the celebration of the birth of christ, but about an act oriented primarily to invoke something that is purely mundane: an amusing and entertaining event that is thus appropriate to his alderers for they used to invoke, before the advent of christianity, mythical principles such as those incarnated in the person of the green knight. the behaviour of arthur implies an unconscious regression to ancestral times. arthur is thus a monarch who, unaware of it, conjures supernatural powers linked to pre-christian cults, and therefore linked to the cyclical movement of the seasons. owing to what arthur has unwittingly been invoking, naturally enough he is the initiator of the pentangle of gawain, the talisman painted on his shield with the purpose of protecting him from the lethal axe of the green knight. with the purpuse of making his readers aware of the fact that the king is the only one who is responsible for the apparition of the green knight, the gawain-poet has used two linguistic stratagems which longinos, long ago, recommended in chapter xx of his work, on literary excellence, the anaphora and repetition. two linguistic stratagems which have been ingeniously combined to prompt the reader to evaluate correctly the role of arthur within the thematic context of the tale. to see this one needs only to pay the necessary attention to lines 93-5 of the first fitt. it is here that arthur invokes the presence, or the happening of some wonder, by means of a linguistic formula, that is through the power of the word. he has formed the two sides of a triangle, or the two elements of a triple system. thus, one way or other he has began to draw one of the triangles that configure gawain’s pentangle. let us observe how the poet has managed this: of sum aueturus pyng an vncoupe tale, of sum mayn meruayle, pat he my¥t trawe, of alderes, of armes, of oper auenturus. 79 (gawain, 93-5) these two literary stratagems synthesize all that the poet, up to this point, has been trying to say: that the celebration is more pagan than christian, and so it constitutes the prelude, or initiation, of the geometrical structure of the pentagon. to visualize the triangle one needs only to isolate the particle of contained in the above quoted lines. when doing so the two sides of a triangle emerge. one side has been formed by the initial anaphoras constituted by the repetition of the particle of at the beginning of each line. the other has been formed by the triple repetition of the particle of in the third line. the anagram that emerges is as follows: of of of of of the two sides of the triangle will be closed in the very moment in which gawain cuts the head of the green knight, since the game is characterized by a triple structure that will not be broken till the adventure is finished. in addition to this one should note the number of words that appear in each line: in the first line there are seven words, not counting the particle of, composing the line. in the case of the second line the same should be said; seven words have been used to compose the line. however, when it comes to the third line only four words, with the exception, of course of the particle of form the line; thus three words are missing, the three words that will serve to close the triangle. the way in which the gawain poet renders arthur’s role in the light of conjurer and therefore as the initiator of the beheading game 80 has been carefully planned, being this a fact that can be easily appreciated once the symbolic numerological system inherent in the pentacle has been correctly understood. to achieve this the reader must detect the number of games which go into the making of the deep structure of the tale. unveiling first the number of triangles contained within the five pointed star.1 this aspect of the study has been carefully examined in another paper and therefore it is a question of mentioning only two basic elements: that the pentangle is formed by five interlaced triangles and that each of the triangles embraces one of the games, games which united constitute the thematic nucleus of the tale. one can, and must affirm that arthur is the initiator of the structural fundamentals that govern the tale in the role of promoter of a lethal game. a quick glance at the pentangle confirms this. this event is an expected one because the poet has been playing with the powers that used to be attributed, in the past, and partially in the present to kings, with all the obligations and consequences of censurable behaviour. in other words the narrator has been manipulating the possible dichotomies that could exist between the natural body of the king and his divine nature, emphasizing censurable habits in its correct proportion, in the shape of unacceptable conclusions within a purely christian frame of reference. the poet warned the reader, from the very beginning of the tale, that there was some flaw or defect in the natural body of the king when he mentioned the fact he is irrational, impulsive and immature. this flaw is what pushes arthur to direct his gaze to a far distant point, to what can no longer be part of his actual present, and thus he has moved 1.these aspects of the tale have been analyzed by the present writer. see actas del primer congreso internacional de la sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval, “a triple progression in the pentangle: a study of sir gawain and the green knight,” (sept, 1988), pp. 48-65. 81 back in time. his regression has given place to an inversion of values for the sake of what is mythical. the deficiency of arthur, although obliquely, has been suggested by the narrator from the very moment in which he began to narrate the tale, because he did it by means of demonic images that run parallel to the defence of an erroneous cause, adultery. during the first fifteen lines there is something more that a basic not to say literary convention about the origins of the bretons, because the poet, deliberately, has been tracing a bridge between camelot and troy in order to make his readers perceive that in troy, as well, as in camelot, they were celebrating a concept primordially related to the elements of eros. it is not a mere coincidence that sir gawain or troilus and criseyde begin with demonic images, emblems that have been well delineated with terms such as sege, assaut, brittened, brent, brondez, tresoun, tricherie, etc. that constitute by themselves a clear warning about the dangers inherent in eros, a warning that will not be attended either by arthur or by his knights. in view of the disastrous end of arthur and camelot, these images must not be considered as part of a set of curious and pseudohistorical data, for, indirectly, they are part of the theme of the story since, as the plot of the tale develops, these images, owing to their backdrop, composed by guinevere and lancelot, acquire disheartening proportions thus becoming signs that indicate the existence of dangers that must not be ignored in camelot.1 1.the element of space framed by troy, united to the element of time, determined for sippen pe sege and pe assaut watz sesed at troye, is not a nostalgic evocation, but an important event of great transcendency rooted in the rapid transition to ?is kyng lay at camylot vpon krysmasse (i, 3 7), that forces the reader to move, apparently into two different directions. from an actual present, that of the narrator, to that of camelot forced upon the reader also by the narrator, an actualized present by both narrator and us in the role of readers. at the same time, the narrative voice / narrator, by beginning the 82 to be able to appreciate the relevance of these images as far as the themas of the tale are concerned, and the role that the poet has assigned to arthur, we must weigh correctly the corollaries of meaning innate in the judgement of paris, the foundation of rome and of great britain: hit watz ennias pe athel, and his highe kynde, ? at sipen depreced prouinces, and patrounes bicome welne ¥e of al pe wele of pe west iles. fro riche romulus to rome ricchis hym swype, ( ), and fer ouer pe french flod felix brutus on mony bonkkes ful brode bretayn he settez wyth wynne (gawain, 5-8 & 13-5) for by means of the recollection of the destruction of troy and of aeneas, the narrator incites the consideration of the primordial disaster and its consequences, a fact that should take us not only to the foundation of prouinces but to the golden apple and the three goddesses that quarrelled for its possession.1 tale in the past, brings to life that past and actualizes it through camelot. yet , it is a fictitious regression in time: we move at too great speed to camelot’s present; and camelot is a court which will also be destroyed, as the reader knows, for the same reason as troy: a woman. 1.ovid narrates how venus won the golden apple that discord threw among the guests, during the wedding feast of peleus and thetis, “at the marriage feast of peleus and thetis, the future parents of achilles, a golden apple inscribed with the words for the fairest, was flung among the guests by iris (strife), juno, minerva and venus claimed the prize, and it was agreed that they would refer the dispute to paris, the handsomest of mortal men. and so paris was invited to judge the three goddesses. he awarded the prize to venus, and she assisted him in the abduction of helen, the wife of menelaus of sparta.” ovid, heroides, trans. by c.h. cannon (new york: dutton and co., inc., 1971), p. 107. this event has been narrated also by apuleius in his work, the golden ass. 83 arthur is a direct descendant of a caste of heroes that fought defending the man who resolved that quarrel by giving the apple to venus. he is a worthy descendant because, as the poet suggests, in spite of the years that have elapsed since aeneas left troy, arthur still emulates some of the negative attitudes to life that characterized this people.1 the link can be appreciated not only in the way in which they celebrate christmas, but in the consequences that have been neatly assembled in the pentangle. the five pointed star is sacred to the goddess that paris selected, venus. therefore, whether we consider the green knight as real or not, or gawain’s adventure as the result of a joke of morgan’s, the truth is that such a buffoonery is possible only because at camelot they were celebrating eros, or venus, if you wish.2 arthur’s responsibility has been emphasized by the narrator when the green knight leaves the hall, for he does not describe a king who is genuinely perturbed by the events, but a young man who wants to eat because his wishes have been fulfilled with an apparition that he carelessly defines with the term enterludez, (gawain, 472). arthur does not lose his appetite, on the contrary because the green knight functions, ironically enough, as the element that whets his appetite. he is not distressed by the fact that in a year’s time gawain’s head is 1.the poet has established the necessary links between the pre-christian world of the trojans and that of arthur by manipulating the element of time and space during the first fifteen lines: manipulation that forces the reader to remember that the bretons are direct descendants of brutus, that is of the trojans. “the de excidio troiae historia of the suppositious dares is like the ephemeris belli troiani of the suppositious dictys, a latin romance of the late period. both lay claim to an historical truth from which homer departed. dares is on the trojan side against the greeks, since both franks and bretons claimed, like the romans, to descend from troy. dares enjoyed great prestige in the middle ages.” e.r. curtius, european literature and the latin middle ages (1953; rpt, london: routledge and kegan paul, 1977), p. 50. see geoffrey of monmouth, the history of the kings of britain, trans. lewis thorpe (london: penguin books, 1966). 2.robert graves, the white goddess (london: faber & faber, 1977) p. 143. 84 going to be severed, for what concerns him most is to avoid dulling the brilliancy of his feast with sad thoughts so that he rests importance to the event. even a not very sagacious reader would feel uncomfortable with the words that arthur pronounces. the "interludes" as synonymous of mumming were forbidden by the fathers of the church. at first interludes were tolerated but already in the xv century they were completely forbidden.1 apparently it was merely a question of innocent manifestations of joy that used to mark the celebration of christmas, but deep down they were not as innocuous as they seem to be mainly because of their pagan substratum. for the fathers of the church the most exasperating aspect of the situation lay in the fact that such entertainments were not the product of negative attitudes towards chrsitianity but the end-result of ignorance, and at times of a lack of commonsense,2 the latter being arthur’s case. facts such as those of ignorance, or a lack of commonsense were the ones that the gawain-poet wanted to emphasize; and to do this the best way was to write a christmas tale based on an ancient tradition which lay hidden in the celebration of this festivity. this romance was not written in the twelfth century but in chaucer’s time, and chaucer was using themes taken from the romances with a didactic purpose. his way of accomplishing this may have been at times unconstrained, at times dramatic, but effective as the tale of the wife of bath, or that of troilus and criseyde show. 1.wickham, op. cit., pp.120-21. see richard southern, the seven ages of the theatre (london: faber & faber, 1954), pp.142-45. 2.e. k. chambers writers that the celebrants “would not stick upon the explicit consciousness that they drank or danced in the might of eostre or freyr. and in time, as the christian interpretation of life became an everyday thing, it passed out of sight that the customs had been ritual at all.” chambers, the mediaeval stage, op. cit., p. 99. 85 although the finale of the story shows the unreality of the green knight, for the gawain-poet arthur’s irrationality is not a trivial matter. in order to prove his point a supernatural being appears in answer to arthur’s wishes. given the beliefs of this period, not fully dead during the renaissance, the green knight’s appearance says a great deal about arthur and about the moralizing tone of the tale. it is important to remember that according to tradition all that was magical, or supernatural had no power when the birth of christ is celebrated. marcellus in hamlet thinks so when he declares that “wherein our saviour’s birth is celebrated, / the bird of dawn singeth all night long / and then they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;” (hamlet, i, 1, 159-61) and he is probably right. arthur manages the opposite, the appearance of a portent, thus managing unintentionally to bring about a senseless amalgamation of christian elements with pagan ones. the poet does not say that this happens due to mischievous intentions , but because of arthur’s inconsideration: he is young and wants to have fun. his craving for recreation is out of proportion, since even when the inevitable has taken place he does not want to think that the life of his nephew is at stake. and he does not because to do so would spoil his feast. according to arthur nothing truly anomalous has happened but the expected owing to the time of the year: wel bycommes such craft vpon cristmasse laykyng of enterludez, to le¥e and to sing among pise kynde caroles of kny¥tez and ladyez. (gawain, 471-2), and he is wrong. with this attitude he is transforming the green knight into a conventional and innocuous “enterludez” proper to the 86 season, the irony of the case being that arthur, as the end of the story shows, was not fully mistaken. maria luisa dañobeitia university of granada * * * selim 16.indb andrew breeze , selim 16 (2009): 161–163issn: 1132–631x carrera, anunciación, and carrera, maría josé (eds), with carlos herrero, pilar garcés (general editors), berta cano, elena gonzálezcascos, and ana sáez (research editors) 2009: philip perry’s sketch of the ancient british history: a critical edition. newcastle upon tyne, cambridge scholars. xx + 250 pp. isbn 978-1-4438-0448-⒍ £39.99/$59.99. this volume represents a discovery, as the fi rst publication of a work by philip perry (1720–74), rector of the english college, valladolid. it thus off ers readers a novel double eff ect. it shows british christianity as seen by a scholar previously unknown to most of us; and, since perry was a catholic exile, it off ers a perspective diff erent  om that of the protestant or sceptical writers who dominate british historiography. this means many surprises. his history has fi ve chapters. the fi rst describes roman britain and how christianity reached it, together with discussion of the british church’s doctrines (found to be the purest milk of orthodoxy). the second deals with roman britain’s decline and the church’s suff erings  om persecution and heresy. then come the last days of roman britain, the scourge of pelagianism, and (more hopefully) missions to the picts and irish. chapter four sets out the coming of the anglo-saxons, the loss of britain, and the age of the saints. a last chapter informs us on columba of iona and his conversion of north britain. the valladolid team hence off er a picture of celtic christianity as represented by an eighteenth-century cleric. it has many insights. for all his interest in the celtic past, perry was singularly  ee  om romanticism. this is especially clear in his discussion of the druids. he calls their religion ‘barbarous’ (p. 12) and their customs ‘cruel and abominable’. despite their knowledge of astronomy and their belief in personal immortality (p. 13), they practiced human sacrifi ce. perry thus seems to have approved of augustus and claudius for having these loathsome individuals exterminated (even if for political rather than humanitarian reasons). so the interest of the volume is obvious. the editors have done their job well. they excel on perry’s sources, o en citing the very volume that he used in the english college’s library, including camden’s britannia of 1637, colgan’s acta sanctorum of 1645, dugdale’s monasticon of 1693, or 162 andrew breeze selim 16 (2009) john smith’s bede of 1722. the above and other points have been made by this reviewer in a notice for the welsh journal of religious history, v (2010). perhaps the best way of praising the edition further is by suggesting how researchers can use it for their own work. to update perry’s history in the light of modern research is a huge task, and the editors can be forgiven for not trying to do it here. on one question alone, they themselves point out (p. 189) that perry’s disagreements with camden on the identifi cation of british-latin place-names ‘merit independent study’. as with any new source, a reading of perry thus sharpens the wits by presenting us with new problems. amongst matters where we can advance perry’s discussion are the following. • the name of the durotriges (p. 7), a people of dorset and southeast somerset, is here corrupt. the correct form is durotrages, as given in an inscription on hadrian’s wall. • the name of boadicea (pp. 18–19) is corrected to ‘boudicca’, but this is still not right. the correct reading is boudica ‘victorious one’, with stress on the penultimate long vowel. • bodotria (p. 20), the name of the river forth, can be corrected to boudra or, later, bodra ‘defi led one’ (compare welsh budr ‘dirty’), referring to the river’s morasses and tidal fl ats. • st patrick’s birth (p. 97) near glasgow should be rejected by all (including patriotic scots and ulster scots). strathclyde had no roman villas of the kind belonging to patrick’s father. there are reasons to locate (emended) bannaventa tabernae instead near banwell in somerset/avon, an area of roman villas by a coast open to irish raiders. perry’s curiosity is such that he even notices welsh poetry, a subject normally of faint interest to the english. he comments (p. 125) on maelgwn gwynedd’s ‘bard named taliesin, as famous for his bigotry as for his poetry, if what rowlands relates of him be his genuine work’. taliesin was active two generations later than maegwn; and the task of sorting out his genuine poems  om the apocrypha is best begun with ifor williams, lectures on early welsh poetry (dublin, 1944). st david’s going to whitland in caermarthenshire (p. 141), where he was taught by st paulinus, derives ultimately  om the obscure 163 reviews selim 16 (2009) wincdilantquendi in rhygyfarch’s latin life of david. this form is corrupt and clearly meant nothing even to rhygyfarch in the eleventh century. but there seems reason to take it as old kea, near truro in cornwall. this was the site of a celtic monastery (a ruined church tower survives), and was formerly called landegea, which surely lies behind the reading -lantquendi. that gildas ‘passed over to ireland to improve himself in philosophic and theologic matters under the celebrated doctors then fl ourishing in that island’ (p. 147) also refl ects a celtic-latin source, the iren of gildas’s breton-latin life. although some scholars take this (quite illogically) as ‘ireland’, it makes better sense as a corruption of old welsh cerin or cirencester, roman britain’s second city, which would have been famous for its schools of rhetoric and law. the implication is that these schools survived as late as the year 500, when gildas attended them. we may conclude in triumphant terms. thanks to the outstanding care and industry of its spanish editors, perry’s sketch can now be read with ease. it deserves wide attention, and should be used by everyone concerned with the history of christianity in early britain. andrew breeze university de navarre, pamplone • received 03 aug 2010; revision received 17 aug 2010; accepted 24 aug 2010 selim journal of the spanish society for mediaeval english language and literature revista de la sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval nº  oviedo,  edited by dirigida por trinidad guzmán & s. g. fernández-corugedo universidad de oviedo & sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval oviedo – murcia  andrew breeze, selim  (): –issn: 1132–631x herebarde in ancrene riwle herebarde is a hapax legomenon in ancrene riwle, occurring as an addition in london, british library, md nero a.xiv.¹ the author, describing custody of the senses, compares sin to disease. he comments that, for a sick person, blood is let not om the distempered part but om one that his healthy. in the same way, christ, who was sinless, shed blood for sinful humanity. ‘but in all the fevered [nero hee adds “vel o herebarde”] world there was not found any healthy part, among all mankind, which might be let blood, except only the body of god, which was let blood on the cross, and not merely in the arm, but in five places, in order to heal mankind of the disease to which the five senses had given rise.’² in the nero manuscript the relevant passage may be read “auh in al þe worlde þet was oþe fee, vel oþe herebarde, nes among al moncun on hol solw ifunden þet muhte beon ilete blod bute godes bodi one”. zettersten, in his fundamental study of the ab language’s lexis, notes how nero’s “vel oþe herebarde” enlarges on “on oþe fee” ‘on the fever, in fever; in diseased condition; in the state of sin’. yet the sense and etymology of “herebarde” have been obscure, although zettersten thinks the first element is om old english “here” ‘(enemy) army’. he cites e.j. dobson for a possible sense ‘camp-fever’, armies having at all times been wonderful ways of transmitting disease.³ however, that offers no complete derivation. ¹ the english text of the ancrene riwle, ed. mabel day, eets o.s. (), ; ancrene wisse, ed. j.r.r. tolkien, eets o.s.  (), . ² the ancrene riwle, tr. mary salu (london, ), . ³ arne zettersten, studies in the dialect and vocabulary of ‘the ancrene riwle’ (lund, ), . 280 andrew breeze selim  () another explanation may thus be more cogent. ancrene wisse and related texts, posing many problems of vocabulary, are known for loans om welsh, like “cader” `cradle’ and “baban” ‘baby’. ⁴ hence “herebarde” may contain another such loan, om welsh “bardd” ‘bard, poet’, so that “herebarde” would mean ‘army-poet’. since “bard” is a familiar english borrowing om welsh, this might seem compelling. does it suit the contexts of welsh poetry and the text? on the first we may say that, if “herebarde” means ‘army-poetry’, it translates closely the welsh technical phrase “bardd teulu” ‘bard of the warband, poet of the bodygard’. his rights and duties, appearing in legal codices om north and south wales alike, went far back. if he declaims poetry with the royal bodyguard at the taking of booty, he receives the best animal. if they are preparing for battle, he may sing the poem ‘the chieainship of britain’. (this work is lost but was presumably bracing in its effects, like gaelic poems of  that spurred highlanders to fight for charles stuart.) when the bard of the warband took office, he received a harp om the king and a gold ring om the queen. at table he sat by the chief of the bodyguard.⁵ so the “bardd teulu”, whose trade was literature at its most pugnacious, was an animating presence in the welsh society. celticists have oen noted him. citing the phrase ‘the bards of the world judge men of valour’ of the seventh-century poet aneirin, they comment on how the “bardd teulu” conferred deathless praise for courage in battle, and lasting contempt for its opposite. naturally, ⁴ r.w. dance, ‘some notes on words’, in a book of ‘ancrene wisse’, ed. yoko wada (osaka, ), -, and his ‘the ab language’, in a companion to ‘ancrene wisse’, ed. yoko wada (cambridge ), -. ⁵ j.e. lloyd, a history of wales (london, ), ; h.i. bell, the development of welsh poetry (oxford, ), ; the laws of hywel dda, tr. melville richards (liverpool, ) -. 281 herebarde in ancrene riwle selim  () he accompanied fighting men on campaign. when they marched to the ont, he did not make himself scarce.⁶ this fiery inciter to arms would be known to the english in the military zone of herefordshire or beyond where the ancrene wisse school had its home, and even further (since the nero scribe worked at a remove om the original author). the very name of hereford ‘army ford’ reminds us of when it was part of a dangerous ontier region, liable to welsh attack. hence, it seems, “herebarde” ‘army-bard’ as a rendering of welsh “bardd teulu” ‘ward poet’. yet there is a problem in transition om fever to poet. can the present translation of “herebarde” really be correct? crucial here is “oþe” ‘on the’ in “auh in al þe worlde þet was oþe fee, vel oþe herebarde”. oed’s entry for the preposition “on”  notes its use for state or condition, as with modern ‘on the dole’, ‘on the look out’, ‘on the make’. this usage occurred for “on” in old english. the aledian orosius tells how the romans in  bc executed citizens of capua, inland om naples, because “hie wolden hannibale on fultume beon” ‘they wanted to be an aid to hannibal’.⁷ a like sense of state or condition seems to occur in “vel oþe herebarde”, ‘or as a welsh army-poetry’. if so, the nero passage would apparently mean ‘but in all the world that was in a state of fever, or that of a celtic military bard’. two circumstances support that reading. the english on the welsh marches in the thirteenth century had no love for the bards of welsh combat units, always ready to attack lowland settlers. they saw them as agitators and troublemakers, in rebellion against every ⁶ john lloyd-jones, ‘the court poets of the welsh princes’, proceedings of the british academy, xxxiv (), -, at -; j.e.c. williams, ‘gildas, maelgwn, and the bards’, in welsh society and nationhood, ed. r.r. davies et al. (cardiff, ), -. ⁷ the old english orosius, ed. janet bately, eets s.s.  (), . 282 andrew breeze selim  () principle of order. hence, it seems, the allusion to them in the nero text as a symbol of sinful man in revolt against god. we may add that such a sardonic and somewhat jolting addition would be typical of the nero text, which dobson called the work of ‘a fussy and interfering scribe, constanly archaizing the accidence, attempting to improve the syntax, word-order, and sentence construction (almost invariably with unhappy results), and padding out the phrasing.’⁸ if he placed a poet in the context of bodily illness, such illogical incongruity would be of a piece with his other changes. as the manuscript, dated to the second quarter of the thirteenth century, has associations with the worcestershire-gloucestershire region, its scribe would not be too far om wales to be ignorant of the place.⁹ if we are correct in taking “herebarde” as ‘army-poet’, the “bardd teulu” or poet of the welsh warband, this has several implications. it provides the earliest instance of “bard” in english. it vindicates dobson and zettersten’s translation of “here” as ‘(enemy) army’. if “here” translates “teulu”, it is also evidence for bilingualism. it allows postcolonial interpretations of ancrene riwle, with the welsh being seen as other and evil. it thereby reveals another defect of the nero scribe, who had a colonizer’s mentality that was both familiar with and negative towards native institutions like the bardic order. perhaps the word’s presence in nero is due to interrogation of such bards, captured in raids. it in any case suggests the english well understood the propaganda power of the “bardd teulu”, whose poems stiffened welsh resistence. in his attitude to celtic ⁸ e.j. dobson, ‘the affiliations of the manuscripts of ancrene wisse’, in english and medieval studies presented to j.r.r. tolkien, ed. norman davis and c.l. wrenn (london, ), -, at . ⁹ “temptations” from ‘ancrene wisse’, ed. yoko wada (osaka, ), lii-iv. 283 herebarde in ancrene riwle selim  () received  feb ; revision received  mar ; accepted  mar  bards, the nero scribe would foreshadow a later period of english colonization, when elizabethans in ireland saw the bards there as, at worst, traitors to be exterminated like vermin. typical of them is thomas smyth of dublin, who in  called irish poets a people ‘very hurtful to the commonweals, for they chafflike mayntayne the rebells; and further, they do cause them that would be true, to be rebelious theves, extorcioners, murtherers, ravners, yea and worse if it were possible.’¹⁰ in short, “herebarde” is of interest as an apparent early english comment on celtic poetry, both well-informed and hostile. andrew breeze university of navarre, pamplona ! ¹⁰ j.f. kenney, the sources for the early history of ireland: ecclesiastical (new york, ), ; j.e.c. williams, ‘the court poet in medieval ireland’, proceedings of the british academy, lvii (), -, at ; brian ó cuív, ‘ireland’s manuscript heritage’, éire-ireland, xix/ (), -. selim02.pdf 72 rewriting anglo-saxon: notes on the presence of old english in contemporary literature hwilum he sette word be worde, hwilum andgit of andgite, swa swa he hit tha sweotolost ond andgitfullicast gereccan mihte for tham mistlicum ond manigfealdum weoruldbisgum the hine oft aegther ge on mode ge on lichoman bisgodan. (king alfred’s translation of boethius, proem) a return to origins invigorates because it is a return to nature and reason. the man who returns to origins does so because he wishes to behave in the eternally sensible manner. that is to say, naturally, reasonably, intuitively. (ezra pound, “the tradition”) literary critics have described literature as a process that involves a constant rewriting of what others have written before. there is no literary work -we cannot conceive of any possible literary workwithout the presence, both in the mind of the author and the reader’s, of other texts, of some words, concepts and ideas that shape a literary tradition. it is self-evident that when we, once again, write “the arrows of fortune” we are, on the one hand, merely repeating or rewriting what shakespeare wrote four hundred years ago. but, on the other hand, it must also be apparent that our “arrows of fortune” are not the 73 same as shakespeare’s, since all that load that has been deposited upon the expression in these four centuries has contributed to give it another significance. and this simple example is naturally a mere illustration of a much more complex mechanism, one which has produced a well-known movement in contemporary literary theory and in literary creation associated with such fashionable terms as “poststructuralism” and “postmodernism.” the “death of the author” and the power exerted by the text, by the languague and by intertextuality seem to dominate over our contemporary culture and literature. what we create and what we read seem to be simply a product of the constant “remaking” to which all commodities are subject. one of the greatest contemporary writers in spanish, generally considered as a pioneer of this postmodernist trend, is the argentinian poet and short-story teller jorge luis borges, who was perhaps one of the first men to be conscious and to make others conscious of this complex phenomenon of intertextuality. i am thinking particularly of his famous piece “pierre menard, author of don quixote”, 1 but many other examples coud be quoted as well. the fictitious french writer of this story imposed upon himself the titanic task of rewriting cervantes’s work, with the astonishing result of producing an exact replica of the original 17th-century work. but the narrator of this borgesian short story is well aware of the differences that separate one from the other. although words and syntax are the same, the product -for borgesis finally diverse. his comments on a few lines are revealing; words such as “truth,” “mother,” “history,” “present,” etc. cannot be the same when written by cervantes or when “rewritten” by menard. borges wonders how we could ignore william james’s philosophy, which is (must be) hidden under menard’s words, and 1.cf. jorge luis borges, “pierre menard, autor del quijote,” ficciones, alianza editorial, madrid, 1980, pp. 47-59. 74 simply read a sentence like “la verdad, cuya madre es la historia, émula del tiempo, depósito de las acciones…” etc. in the manner of the 17th century. the conclusion then is simple: literature is necessarily a process of rewriting, since we need the words that others have used before, but it is also a process of “rereading,” because our role as readers of texts cannot remain unaltered by history and the evolution of genres.1 this contemporary condition, that makes us hesitate in the reading and interpretation of the texts of the past, cannot be ignored when we discuss anglo-saxon texts and their presence and relevance in literary tradition. it is well known that old english verse seemed to disappear from the english literary tradition after the norman conquest, and that the majestic stature of chaucer casts a long shadow on that earlier poetry, but that is simply a false impression. john speirs noticed this in his well-known book medieval english poetry. the non-chaucerian tradition,2 where he emphasized something that others seemed to have forgotten, that is, that not only gawain, pearl, piers plowman and other minor poems preserved the anglo-saxon alliterative tradition in the 14th century, but that also great english poets of later periods such as shakespeare, ben jonson, donne, even dryden, pope, crabbe and keats -not to mention hopkins, or yeats and eliotcultivated this vigorous tradition of alliterative poetry. and we could also add that alliteration is not the only feature of that old poetry which has been continuously present in the language and in english literature without interruption. shakespeare and milton, for 1.one of the most attractive and effective procedures to face this double process of rewriting and rereading is the one put forward by the french critic gérard genette in his book palimpsestes (1982), where he describes literary works that are affected by “transtextuality,” that is, five different kinds of textual activity: intertextuality, paratextuality, metatextuality, hypertextuality and architextuality. 2.cf. john speirs, medieval english poetry. the non-chaucerian tradition, london, 1966. 75 instance, are notorious cases in the continuity of compounding, so fundamental and significant in the construction of that old poetry, as hopkins remarked once when he tried to defend and justify his passion for anglo-saxon.1 but i am not going to trace an evolution of old english verse devices through all these centuries of english literary tradition, a task that is obviously beyond my purpose in this essay. let me simply tackle this issue of the rewriting of anglo-saxon from the perspective of our time, let me examine some contemporary instances of this process; because by doing so i think we can learn something of the power of a literature and a language which many people -among them some of our colleagues at the university, alasdeem dead and forgotten, those who insist in denying old english literature a space in the curriculum.2 my modest proposal here is then to show that this is not so, that old english is -to a certain extent at leaststill alive, and not only in the english literary tradition. some of the greatest writers of the twentieth century offer excellent evidence of the opposite. on the other hand, contemporary literary theory, one which seems so inimical to (or at least, so far apart from) our old english texts may help us in this task through the means of intertextuality (see note 2). 1.in a letter to robert bridges on november 26, 1882 he wrote: “it makes one weep to think what english might have been; for in spite of all that shakespear [sic] and milton have done with the compound i cannot doubt that no beauty in a language can make up for want of purity. in fact i am learning anglosaxon and it is a vastly superior thing to what we have now.” quoted by denis donoghue in “the flight of gerard manley hopkins,” a review of robert bernard martin’s gerard manley hopkins: a very private life published in the new york review of books, vol. xxxviii, no. 13 (july 18, 1991), pp. 14-18; for my quotation see p. 17]. 2.cf. the polemics initiated by valentine cunningham in the tls when he called “for an end to compulsory anglo -saxon study in the oxford english course.” tls, no. 4613 (august 30, 1991), p. 11. 76 ezra pound is perhaps the most remarkable contemporary poet who must be quoted in this case. his conception of tradition, for instance, or his defence of old literatures, and particularly anglo-saxon, come immediately to our minds. pound is certainly a man who cannot be ignored in a discussion of this kind, since his courage and determination in defying all those stereotyped notions about the primitive and simple values of old english literature deserve at least some attention. that he approaches it with clarity and simplicity, with an attitude free from what sometimes constitutes the heavy burden of old philology, should not -in my opinionbe rejected with the usual scorn philologists address to amateurs and dilettanti. pound was obviously no philologist, but he should not be seen as an intruder at all. let us read what he said when he defended the seriousness and quality of early english texts. although the quotation that follows is long, i think it is interesting to reproduce it, because the words pound uses here are an effective evidence for the depth of his insight and the seriousness of his commitment to anglo-saxon, and not, as some scholars have said, a mere superficial bent, led perhaps by fashion and snobbery: time and again the old lie.[…] we read again for the one-thousandone-hundred-and-eleventh time that poetry is made to entertain. as follows: ‘the beginnings of english poetry… made by a rude war-faring people for the entertainment of men-at-arms, or for men at monks’ tables.’ either such statements are made to curry favor with other people sitting at fat sterile tables, or they are made in an ignorance which is charlatanry when it goes out to vend itself as sacred and impeccable knowledge. ‘the beginnings -for entertainment’ -has the writer of this sentence read the seafarer in anglo -saxon? will the author tell us for whose benefit these lines, which alone in the works of our fore 77 bears are fit to compare with homer -for whose entertainment were they made? they were made for no man’s entertainment, but because a man believing in silence found himself unable to withhold himself from speaking. […] such poems are not made for after-dinner speakers, nor was the eleventh book of the odyssey. still it flatters the mob to tell them that their importance is so great that the solace of lonely men, and the lordliest of the arts, was created for their amusement.1 i should add, moreover, that pound’s commitment is not theoretical, is not simply concerned with statements of this sort, but that he really studies those texts. his version of the seafarer and his comments on it are revealing;2 he was not involved in a mere translation into modern english, but in something more transcendent, that is, in adapting old english words, phrases, alliterations, rhythm, even if that effort some times implied a certain treason of the dictionary “meaning” of the original. his version of the seafarer is not an accurate translation in this respect, as some critics have pointed out, because wrecan does not mean reckon (l. 1), because lifge mid englum is rendered as remain ’mid the english (l. 28), or because byrig faeriath is mistakenly given as cometh beauty of berries (l. 48), among other howlers. nevertheless he was fully conscious of some of these slips 1.ezra pound, “the constant preaching to the mob” [first published in poetry, viii, 3 (june, 1916)], in literary essays of ezra pound, edited with an introduction by t.s. eliot, faber & faber, london, 1985, pp. 64-5. cf. also these words about his classics: “i should want dante of course, and the poema del cid and the sea-farer and one passage out of the wanderer. in fact, some knowledge of the anglo -saxon fragments -not particularly the beowulfwould prevent a man’s sinking into contentment with a lot of wish-wash that passes for classic or ‘standard’ poetry,” in “the renaissance,” literary essays…, pp. 215-6 [originally published in poetry, chicago, 1914]. 2.cf. collected early poems of ezra pound, ed. by michael john king, with and introduction by louis l. martz, new directions publishing corporation, new york, 1976, pp. 188-190 for the text, and p. 311 for notes. 78 so that they cannot be simply due to “ignorance.” his purpose was to repeat the experience of the original poem and to produce in his contemporary audience similar effects to those of the earlier period. although pound was certainly no anglo-saxon scholar, and he did not aspire to accuracy in his version, most contemporary literary critics (but not many philologists, alas) judge his task as meritorious;1 it is perhaps michael alexander -who knows very well what he is talking aboutthe one who has defended pound more warmly, referring to some of the attacks he has suffered as “archaelogical fallacy,” that he defines as “the notion that the reading of a lexicographically accurate version in readable modern english prose, rather than pound’s phonetic simulacrum, would be nearer to the experience the original audience had of the original poem.”2 he also remarks that pound’s version “as a translation […] is brilliant, stimulating, inaccurate, misleadingly heathen and at times rather loud. as an interpretation it is radical and heterodox, though not indefensible. as a model to translators it needs to be handled with care, except by translators of 1.cf. vilas sarang, “pound’s seafarer,” concerning poetry, vol. 6, no. 2 (fall 1973), pp. 5-11, and hugh kenner, the pound era, university of california press, berkeley & los angeles, 1971, pp. 151-3, 349-354 and 484, passim. it is also interesting to quote borges’s opinion about this translation, that he compares with gordon’s version. borges says: “la prosa de gordon es más natural y fluida que la versión poética de aquél [pound], pero es evidente que pound, sin de jar de ser fiel, ha querido reproducir en inglés moderno la enérgica aspereza del texto antiguo y también los mismos sonidos. […] los que, como nosotros, se han dedicado, con mayor o menor fortuna, al ejercicio de la poesía, sabemos que lo esencial del verso es su entonación y no su sentido abstracto. los eruditos acusan a pound de incurrir en crasos errores, demostrando su ignorancia del sajón, del latín o del provenzal; no quieren comprender que sus traducciones reflejan las formas inasibles y no el fondo” (jorge luis borges, “notas sobre ezra pound, traductor,” syntaxis, 8/9 (1985), pp. 41-2). 2.michael alexander, the poetic achievement of ezra pound, university of california press, berkeley & los angeles, 1979, p. 71. 79 comparable gifts. but as an adaptation and as a poetic performance it is a work of genius.”1 it must be recognized that the voice of the solitary seafarer comes back anew, in an english which is not exactly our contemporary english but that we can understand and feel. it is also true that pound’s version says other things, slightly different from what was said in the original poem, but at the same time we cannot ignore that it sounds almost like the anonymous old english text, and this is much more than what others have achieved with more accurate prose versions: may i for my own self song’s truth reckon, journey’s jargon, how i in harsh days hardship endured oft. bitter breast-cares have i abided, known on my keel many a care’s hold, … … … … … … … … … … … something similar was done by another contemporary poet, although not perhaps with the high level of consciousness that pound exhibited. i mean w.h. auden, whose poem the wanderer is also characteristically an adaptation, a recreation (a re-writing), but not a translation, of the original anglo-saxon. in genette’s terms (see note 2), we could say that while pound deals mainly with hypertextual, paratextual and intertextual relations, auden prefers those wider references of architextuality, although paratextuality is also present. auden seems to have found inspiration in the theme and the atmosphere of the old text, seems to have imbued himself with the sounds, the rhetoric and other peculiarities of the poetic language of the period, 1.michael alexander, the poetic achievement… pp. 78-9. 80 and then tried to compose (to re-write) something equivalent. and certainly the reading of auden’s lines conveys parallel emotions to those we experience with old english verse, although this is not a version of any anglo-saxon text. notice how his efforts at alliteration, his deviant syntax, the occasional compounding, the absence of articles, and word order contribute decisively to create this impression: doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle. upon what man it fall in spring, day-wishing flowers appearing, avalanche sliding, white snow from rock-face, that he should leave his house, no cloud-soft hand can hold him, restraint by women; but ever that man goes through place-keepers, through forest trees, a stranger to strangers over undried sea, houses for fishes, suffocating water, or lonely on fell as chat, by pot-holed becks a bird stone-haunting, an unquiet bird. there head falls forward, fatigued at evening, and dreams of home, waving from window, spread of welcome, kissing of wife under single sheet; … … … … … … … … … … …1 these texts i have quoted, together with others by hopkins i have not cited here, are some of the most relevant examples of the preser1.w.h. auden, collected poems, ed. by edward mendelson, faber & faber, london, 1976, p. 62. 81 vation, of the rewriting, of anglo-saxon in contemporary english literature. there are also some critical studies on them, perhaps mainly because these authors -hopkins, pound and audenoccupy such an important position in the english literary tradition. but it would be wrong to assume that this sort of rewriting is present only in english and exclusively in the authors and texts i have mentioned. how can we forget geoffrey hill’s mercian hymns, for instance? many suggestions, echoes and images from the past, from the old literature of this distant past, are relatively abundant in our contemporary cultural scene. but there are other literatures, which had originally no connection with the anglo-saxon world, particularly french and spanish (as far as i know), where similar examples could be (and perhaps should be) quoted because they are usually ignored by old english scholars and medievalists in general; and because their lack of contacts (linguistic, historical, cultural, etc.) with the anglo-saxons is an adequate proof that the presence of these echoes in them are not merely a reflection of other external factors. we are really in front of a genuine process of rewriting for its own sake. two interesting cases of this presence of old english literature in french and spanish are the french writer marguerite yourcenar and the argentinian jorge luis borges, both essential writers in their respective literary traditions.1 yourcenar voices, or rather lends her voice to king alfred and -through himto bede, when in her essay “sur quelques lignes de bède le vénérable” she evokes some beautiful words uttered by a thane of northumberland in a “stormy dawn” of the 7th century, on the occasion of the christianization of this heathen people. 1.an interesting discussion of the meeting of both writers in geneva in 1986 is offered by juan luis panero in “encuentro en ginebra,” el país, 31 march 1991, “libros,” p. 8. 82 the french writer glosses the historical and social circumstances and explains the linguistic transmission of that message. references are made to the version written in latin by bede of the words pronounced in old saxon one century before he wrote; also to the new rendering by king alfred who, using the latin text, put those words back into english in his translation of the historia ecclesiastica; and finally yourcenar’s contemporary rewriting is presented to the reader. she explains in french those words of the thane, but gives them also in latin and in old english because -as she also saysthe human word comes down to us full of corruptions and misunderstandings caused by the passage of time and the omissions and additions of many generations. there is no other way than to rewrite bede’s and alfred’s words once more and, following the classical medieval procedure, to gloss them. she quotes the latin words: “adveniensque unus passarum domum citissime pervolavit, qui cum per unum ostium ingrediens, mox per aliud exierit,” remarking that bede’s prose is still excessively classic for such a primitive thought, and that alfred’s language is much more effective and powerful in its simplicity: “cume an spearwa and braedlice thaet hus thurhfleo, cume thurh othre duru in, thurn othre ut gewite.”1 the image of this bird entering the house and going out again is extremely suggestive for yourcenar, who meditates on its significance and compares it with man’s development upon the earth: pour ce barbare, au contraire, l’oiseau sort de l’ouragan et re ntre dans la tempête; ces rafales de pluie et de neige chassées par le vent dans la nuit druidique font penser au tourbillonnement des atomes, aux cyclones de formes des sutras hindoues. entre ces deux orages monstrueux, le thane interprète le passage de l’oiseau 1.marguerite yourcenar, “sur quelques lignes de bède le vénérable,” la nouvelle revue française, 280 (april 1976), pp. 1-7. 83 dans la salle comme un moment de répit [spatio serenitatis] . il nous surprend beaucoup. le thane d’edwin savait pourtant qu’un oiseau entré dans une maison des hommes tournoie éperdu, risque de se briser contre ces murs incompréhensibles, de se brû ler à la flamme, ou d’être happé par les dogues allongés au bord du foyer. la vie, telle que nous la vivons, n’est pas un moment de répit.1 the french writer is then rewriting and recreating on the basis of direct allusions and quotations from other texts (or a double text: an elaborated latin-old english text) -and that is genuine intertextuality for genetteas well as with commentaries (metatextuality) on them. yourcenar adapts these old words to our present perspective: the image of that bird which passes so quickly through the house, coming from a place no one knows and going elsewhere, is like the ephemeral course of human life (“this laene lif”). it becomes for her even a symbol of greater power, a symbol of anxiety: “that of the mind, an illumined room, a central fire, momentarily placed for each of us in the middle of all the things and without which, neither the bird nor the storm would have been imagined or perceived.”2 i have also mentioned jorge luis borges, who is -it is probably unnecessary to say it againthe best “english poet in spanish,” and also the spanish-speaking author who has done most to spread the knowledge of germanic medieval literatures in spanish. his book literaturas germánicas medievales, written first with delia ingenieros in 1951 (under the title antiguas literaturas germánicas), and revised later in 1966 with maría esther vázquez, is his best known 1.marguerite yourcenar, “sur quelques lignes…,” pp. 6-7. 2.marguerite yourcenar, “sur quelques lignes…,” p. 7. the french text says: “celui du cerveau, chambre éclairée, feu central, temporairemente placé chacun de nous au milieu des choses, et sans quoi l’oiseau ni la tempête ne seraient ni imaginés ni perçus.” 84 work about this period,1 but not his only contribution to this field; he also wrote essays on medieval germanic verse, such as “las kenningar” (in historia de la eternidad) and compiled a short anglosaxon anthology, in collaboration with maría kodama, where he translated a fragment from beowulf, “the fight at finnsburg,” “deor,” “the seafarer,” and some other pieces.2 what is perhaps less known is his contribution to this process of rewriting anglo-saxon literature, a task to which he devoted special attention from 1960 onwards, as can be appreciated in his books el hacedor (1960), el otro, el mismo (1964), elogio de la sombra (1969), el oro de los tigres (1972), la rosa profunda (1975) and la memoria de hierro (1976). there are about thirty poems connected with the germanic world, many of them particularly with anglo-saxon civilization, although some others are more closely related to old nordic literatures, especially icelandic. apart from his transla tions and his essays, in these poems borges is really rewriting old english literature -taking inspiration from particular anglo-saxon texts, but not translating them-, using poetic words, phrases, metaphors that evoke memories of the past. as if he were following his pierre menard, borges employs those classical old english words (in their spanish forms), importing into his spanish verse audacious metaphors that sound like the old kennings, trying to keep some of the rhythm and alliterations of old english through anaphoras and diverse rhetorical figures. this old language is for borges a vehicle that helps him 1.recent editions of this work are: alianza editorial, madrid, 1980, and also as a part of obras completas en colaboración, alianza tres & emecé, vol. 2, madrid, 1983, pp. 387-512. 2.cf. j. l. borges, “las kenningar,” in historia de la eternidad, alianza editorial & emecé editores, madrid & buenos aires, 1971, pp. 45-70; and “breve antología anglosajona” (in collaboration with maría kodama) in obras completas en colaboración, alianza tres & emecé, vol. 2, madrid, 1983, pp. 307-321. 85 recover his own poetical persona; we hear the poet’s voice expressing his gratitude: por los ríos secretos e inmemoriales que convergen en mí, por el idioma que, hace siglos, hablé en nortumbria, por la espada y el arpa de los sajones, por el mar, que es un desierto resplandeciente y una cifra de cosas que no sabemos, por la música verbal de inglaterra, por la música verbal de alemania, por el oro, que relumbra en los versos, por el épico invierno, … … … … … … … … … … …1 in these lines borges, our contemporary, feels one with the poets who spoke and wrote in the old northumbrian dialect, one with the warriors who handled swords, the scop who played the harp in the feasts celebrated after battle. for him language is then the instrument that takes him back to the primitive poetry and the primitive civilization where he finds himself; this is the way to enter the mystery of runes (“cifra de cosas”), and the music of the old words, and the gold present in this verse (which -we understandis the blood that speaks of death and war), and even the cold winter of the dark age. through this process (mostly intertextual and architextual in the lines quoted above) borges is implicitly preaching here again his sermon that “literature is inexhaustible for the simple reason that one single book is inexhaustible;” that each text contains all texts and that all authors are finally reduced to one. 1.j. l. borges, “otro poema de los dones,” in obra poética, 1923-1976, alianza editorial & emecé editores, madrid & buenos aires, 1979, pp. 267-269. 86 on other occasions borges is simply evoking an epic past that comes to his mind when he contemplates an old sword; in the following “fragmento” he is chanting and exalting the old sword that he imagines in beowulf’s hand. but his evocation is no mere reflection on the past; his expression is phrased in strong anglo-saxon images, that bear no resemblance to the spanish literary tradition: una espada para la mano que regirá la hermosa batalla, el tejido de hombres, una espada para la mano que enrojecerá los dientes del lobo y el despiadado pico del cuervo, una espada para la mano que prodigará el oro rojo, una espada para la mano que dará muerte a la serpiente en su lecho de oro, una espada para la ma no que ganará un reino y perderá un reino, una espada para la mano que derribará la selva de lanzas. una espada para la mano de beowulf.1 the references to “dientes del lobo” and “pico del cuervo” must remind us of the kennings for ‘dead’ and ‘warrior’ respectively that borges himself collects in the list of kennings included in his essay on scandinavian literature: the dead is “trigo de los lobos” as well as “árbol de los cuervos” and “avena del águila;” and the warrior is, 1.j. l. borges, “fragmento,” in obra poética…, pp. 228-9. a detailed discussion of this poem from the anglo -saxon perspective is found in my essay “jorge luis borges, poeta anglosajón (sobre un aspecto de las convenciones literarias),” revista de filología de la universidad de la laguna, 1 (1982), pp. 139-149. 87 among many other images, “enroje cedor del pico del cuervo.”1 another expression, such as “la serpiente en su lecho de oro” is an obvious allusion, in this context, to the treasure guarding dragon, as the direct mention later to beowulf proves. and “selva de lanzas” is a beautiful image probably coined on the anglo-saxon pattern of “gargewinn,” “sperenid,” “garmitting” or “garnid.” what borges has done here then is similar to pound’s effort to give shape to the old language, not merely to repeat it, but to integrate it as something transcendental, eternal, always present when rewritten by others. furthermore, we must notice that borges has to fight against a potent enemy which pound did not have: the spanish language is certainly very distant from the germanic source that he wants to imitate. but readers familiarized with anglo-saxon poetry cannot help identifying that “selva de lanzas” quoted above, or his allusion to “una espada para la mano,” which is reminiscent of “sweord-freca,” a usual term for “warrior.” this fragment i have quoted is only a sample of borges’s ability in intertextuality, hypertextuality and architextuality, of his capacity to make poetry with the old rhetorical devices that anglo-saxons and other germanic cultures had at their disposal. a comparison with his translation (not recreation this time) of egil skalagrimsson’s saga will help us see that borges was, in “fragmento,” really “rewriting” and not simply translating, as here: los teñidores de los dientes del lobo prodigaron la sangre del cisne rojo. el halcón del rocío de la espada se alimentó con héroes en la llanura. serpientes de la luna de los piratas 1.j. l. borges, obras completas en colaboración…, vol. 2, pp. 476-480. 88 cumplieron la voluntad de los hierros. … … … … … … … … … … … el aniquilador de la estirpe de los gigantes quebró al fuerte bisonte de la pradera de la gaviota. así los dioses, mientras el guardián de la campana se lamentaba, destrozaron el halcón de la ribera. de poco le valió el rey de los griegos al caballo que corre por arrecifes.1 this is obviously formulaic language taken to extremes, and borges knows very well that this is to be avoided, as he does when he is not translating, but composing his own poetry. probably some of the most outstanding examples of the control borges has of this old technique are the sonnets he writes, combining the requisites of this type of stanza (rhyme, stresses, lines of counted syllables) with the images and vocabulary of old english. the sonnet entitled “el instante,” dealing with the ubi sunt? theme, is a clear proof of this, where we find a reference to the rood (and possibly to the dream of the rood): ¿dónde estarán los siglos, dónde el sueño de espadas que los tártaros soñaron, dónde los fuertes muros que allanaron, dónde el arbol de adán y el otro leño?2 in another sonnet, called “lo perdido,” borges does not merely combine two different rhetorical traditions, but also introduces his own personal voice, his own particular and peculiar obsessions and images 1.j. l. borges, obras completas en colaboración…, vol. 2, p. 475. 2.j. l. borges, “el instante,” in obra poética…, p. 243. 89 (night, blindness, death …), thus demonstrating the capacity of old texts to be fresh again, full of new life. the reader will probably read through the following lines the text (or texts) that is (are) under borges’s words without any help: ¿dónde estará mi vida, la que pudo haber sido y no fue, la venturosa o la de triste horror, esa otra cosa que pudo ser la espada o el escudo y que no fue? ¿dónde estará el perdido antepasado persa o el noruego, dónde el azar de no quedarme ciego, dónde el ancla y el mar, dónde el olvido de ser quien soy? ¿dónde estará la pura noche que al rudo labrador confía el iletrado y laborioso día, según lo quiere la literatura? pienso también en esa compañera que me esperaba, y que tal vez me espera.1 some times borges presents his readers with suggestive pictures of the old world, as in “hengist quiere hombres (449 a.d.),” that tells of the plans for the germanic invasion of britain in the fifth century. but in doing so he uses language to evoke the future that awaits england, and to make a reflection on his role as creator in this process of rewriting history. some excerpts will suffice: hengist el mercenario quiere hombres. los quiere para debelar una isla que todavía no 1.j. l. borges, “lo perdido,” in obra poética…, p. 379. 90 se llama inglaterra. lo seguirán sumisos y crueles. saben que siempre fue el primero en la batalla de hombres. saben que una vez olvidó su deber de venganza y que le dieron una espada desnuda y que la la espada hizo su obra. atravesarán a remo los mares, sin brújula y sin mástil. … … … … … … … … … … … hengist los quiere (pero no lo sabe) para la fundación del mayor imperio, para que canten shakespeare y whitman, para que d ominen el mar las naves de nelson, para que adán y eva se alejen, tomados de la mano y silenciosos, del paraíso que han perdido. hengist los quiere (pero no lo sabrá) para que yo trace estas letras.1 these excerpts, so full of allusions to the past, are again a confirmation of this extraordinary fusion of voices and texts. borges tells us that what hengist is doing when calling his men to invade england is of transcendental importance, although this barbarous warrior cannot know, of course, the consequences. without hengist -the argentinian poet says-, shakespeare, milton and whitman would not have existed; without hengist and his men, even borges himself would never have written this poem. hengist is then not merely an excuse for rewriting history, the history of the invasion of england, but much more: he represents the foundation of the language, of the great literature borges loves so deeply. hengist and his men, nevertheless, come to 1.j. l. borges, “hengist quiere hombres (449 a.d.),” in obra poética…, pp. 407-408. 91 life through borges’s writing, through the words that borges takes from the tradition to create them (“hengist los quiere (pero no lo sabrá) para que yo trace estas letras”). but we also understand that borges -as i have just saidcould not have written this without hengist, because our contemporary poet is completely indebted to that language of iron, to those metaphors coined by a people of warriors. paratextuality and metatextuality are dominant in this poem, but most of borges’s works dealing with old germanic literatures are also full of the other types of transtextuality. it seems unnecessary to give more details. cases of intertextuality, hypertextuality and architextuality have been mentioned before. let us now conclude this brief vision of borges’s rewriting of old english with a poem in which he pays an emotive homage to an anonymous saxon poet. this is a summary of the culture and literature of that old england, including both the heathen world and the christian faith, the epic tone and the elegiac note, the language of war and battles and the language of poetry. borges again, as in the first quotation given above (note 18), is one with the old saxon poet: a un poeta sajón tú cuya carne, hoy dispersión y polvo, pesó como la nuestra sobre la tierra, tú cuyos ojos vieron el sol, esa famosa estrella, tú que viviste no en el rígido ayer sino en el incesante presente, en el último punto y ápice vertiginoso del tiempo, tú que en tu monasterio fuiste llamado por la antigua voz de la épica, tú que tejiste las palabras, tú que cantaste la victoria de brunanburh 92 y no la atribuiste al señor sino a la espada de tu rey, tú que con júbilo feroz cantaste, la humillación del viking, el festín del cuervo y del águila, tú que en la oda militar congregaste las rituales metáforas de la estirpe, tú que en un tiempo sin historia viste en el ahora el ayer y en el sudor y sangre de brunanburh un cristal de antiguas auroras, tú que tanto querías a tu inglaterra y no la nombraste, hoy no eres otra cosa que unas palabras que los germanistas anotan. hoy no eres otra cosa que mi voz cuando revive tus palabras de hierro. pido a mis dioses o a la suma del tiempo que mis días merezcan el olvido, que mi nombre sea nadie como el de ulises, pero que algún verso perdure en la noche propicia a la memoria o en las mañanas de los hombres.1 this fusion of voices and metaphors, this intermingling of cultures and literary traditions is -in my opiniona remarkable confirmation of the vitality of old english literature. borges has demonstrated that brunanburh and the poet who chanted it are not so far away, that they 1.j. l. borges, “a un poeta sajón,” in obra poética…, pp. 231-232. 93 are not forgotten; that they can be joined in our memories and in our activities with ulysses, and be present there, playing a relevant role in the creation of poetry. this eloquent defence of poetry is an important evidence of the values of returning to tradition, which -pound said in the epigraph that opens this paper“invigorates because it is a return to nature and reason.” pound, auden, yourcenar and borges have shown us how this can be achieved through the rewriting of old english, a rewriting that opposes mere philological archaeology, and uses the old language and literature of the anglo-saxons to express feelings and emotions that are alive, that speak to people today as they did to others many centuries ago. fernando galván university of la laguna * * * 2019bookrevs_1-3 book reviews, selim24 (2019): 175–189. issn 1132-631x maría josé esteve ramos, josé ramón prado-pérez. eds. 2018. textual reception and cultural debate in medieval english studies. newcastle upon tyne: cambridge scholars. pp. vi + 190. 978-1-5275-0652-7. reviewed by andrew breeze, university of navarra eight papers here advance our knowledge of old and middle english. all are serious in intent; some of them are outstanding pieces of research. they are also international in scope (with authors in spain, england, sweden, and the usa) and have comprehensive and up-to-date bibliographies. f. j. alvarez lópez starts us off with old english in bilingual copies of the rule of st benedict. j. l. bueno alonso (editor of this journal) then discusses beasts of battle in the old english battle of brunanburh. after that are two pieces on middle english scientific texts. isabel de la cruz cabanillas investigates the dialect of glasgow, university library, ms ferguson 147 (a collection of medical recipes) and locates it in herefordshire. after this is her co-authored study (with irene diego rodríguez) of the neglected booke of ypocras, a translation (surviving in many manuscripts) of astrologia ypocratis (which is not by hippocrates). astrology was a basic aspect of medieval medicine, as we recall from chaucer’s pilgrim physician. but modern scholars rarely have much enthusiasm for it. hence the neglect of this text. so we have an important act of rehabilitation. there is more variety in what follows. richard dance of cambridge surveys the contribution of old norse to middle english. his bibliography is superabundant, with one page (105) consisting entirely of footnotes, and others nearly so. miguel gomes, now teaching in sunderland, explores landscapes of evil in beowulf. nils-lennart johannesson of stockholm, who knows more about the work of orm than anyone else on this planet, investigates its relation to the medieval greek testaments of the twelve patriarchs. haruko momma, at notre dame university, ends the volume with the graveyard subject of worms, a topos dear to homilists and other medieval writers, but not much loved in modern times. in spain, medieval english studies came of age many years ago. textual reception and cultural debate is compelling proof of the expertise to be found here. to indicate that what it says can be taken further, we make these closing remarks. nicole discenza is quoted (p. 12) on how alfredian translations “carry little trace” of the foreign languages spoken at alfred’s court. this is 176 book reviews nonsense. the old english orosius was surely translated by a briton, dictating to an english scribe. we gather this from its bizarre treatment of name-forms, as janet bately showed in her edition of 1980. malcolm godden thereafter published evidence from vatican city, biblioteca apostolica, ms lat. 3363, for cornish influence in alfred’s circle; see this reviewer’s ‘the old cornish gloss on boethius’, notes and queries 252 (2007), 267−268. the old english orosius is the work of a cornishman, who pronounced names in british fashion, which were then copied down by an uncomprehending west saxon scribe. elsewhere, the battle of brunanburh is rightly termed “heroic epic poetry” (p. 32). ekwall’s entries for browney and lanchester in the concise oxford dictionary of english place-names now let us place the conflict at a roman fort near durham, in northern england. as for the poet, he will have been a cleric familiar with both heroic verse and the bible, for his (emended) on dingles mere “on the sea of the abyss” at line 54b alludes to the “great deep” of psalm 35:7 (36:6). richard dance, again with reason, calls sir gawain and the green knight “the high water-mark of norse influence on english” (p. 107); an unexpected instance here is the obscure form rasse (pp. 123−125). it will mean “water-course, channel” and be a borrowing from old norse rás “race, strong current of water” via welsh r(h)as (which explains the short vowel). the author of the poem (a cheshire magnate who died in 1414) knew wales well. no surprise, then, if he used a form still found on maps of wales at (for instance) pant-y-rhas or rhasau’r glo. including material on medical texts, norse influence on english, and sources known to orm, textual reception and cultural debate in medieval english studies deserves a place on the shelves of all university libraries. it should be widely noticed, because some of its contents will be of value for a very long time indeed. reviewer’s address departamento de filología, lenguas modernas universidad de navarra campus universitario, s/n 31009 pamplona, spain e-mail: abreeze@unav.es book reviews 177 gomes-gargamala, miguel a. ed & trans. 2019. elegías anglosajonas. madrid: oficina de arte y ediciones. pp. 125. hardback. isbn 978-84949714-4-0. reviewed by jorge l. bueno alonso, university of vigo1 since the dawn of time literature always had the power to make us recall and remember, to put ourselves in somebody else’s shoes in appropriate empathy, to discover unknown parts of ourselves or feelings shared with other voices that managed to express them in a more satisfactory way. “this has also happened to me, that is the way i feel”, we say while reading; and in such reading experience we are undoubtedly renewed. from all the literature written in old english the commonly called ‘anglo-saxon elegies’ could be signalled out as the texts that express such aforementioned evocative power with greater force, as so aptly stated lois bragg (1991: 17−18) in her classic study: how is it possible that a thousand-year-poem, a sequence of words in a dead language miraculously preserved and then ruthlessly edited, causes me to recollect what i know of the human experience, the things i know but have forgotten because i’ve filed them away in order to grade freshman essays or walk my children to their music lessons? society has evolved but we still have a great deal in common with those lyric voices from more than a thousand years ago in the sense that we are still human beings faced with our human emotions: grief, solitude, love, (be)longing, cold, absence, fear, hope […] these are the fragments that shape our emotional cartography. more than ever in history, literature keeps on providing us with a compass to navigate the territories of the mind and the emotion. when it comes to ancient literatures our capacity to read such compass always depend on the previous work done by other people versed in understanding their symbology and signification to render them later in our 1 this review is based on the spanish prologue i wrote to this volume (“prólogo: una voz necesaria”, 9−13). i thank the editors at oficina de arte for granting me permission to use parts of it to structure this review. 178 book reviews own language. translations keep on being the only way to make such texts accessible to the non-especialized reader. this is extremely important in the case of poetical texts written in old english, as the evolution and change suffered by the english language through its history turn old english into a sort of foreign language for its native contemporary speakers. the relationship between the medieval varieties of other languages and their contemporary speakers is described in tighter terms than in english. the language of medieval galicia, france, italy, spain or iceland is understandable, with some minor glosses, for any contemporary speaker of galician, french, italian, spanish or icelandic. in the case of english, such comprehension and understanding only comes after a long training process; that is why the literature of the anglo-saxons always needs to come to the average reader through translations. when discussing the old english elegies to say ‘translation’ is to say ‘text’, and uttering ‘text’ is talking poetry; we cannot forget the poetic nature and character of these pieces. miguel a. gomes, as the expert he is, never forgets about it. when we translate to other languages a poem composed in old english it is necessary to keep a certain degree of musicality in the final text. when you revise some prose translations of medieval and ancient literatures the reader faces more often than not a certain feeling of absence, as if something vital has been forgotten in the process of translation. as a translator of anglo-saxon myself i have never ceased to believe both in the outmost importance of having a poetic style and of following the formal aspects of poetic composition when translating, especially in dealing with such rich and structured texts as the old english elegies. doing otherwise would be to swindle the reader. it is a joy to see how miguel a. gomes has followed the path first travelled by translators such as marijane osborn, edwin morgan, seamus heaney, or my own case when it comes to spanish and galician. he offers in his elegías anglosajonas a set of texts that are excellent poetic translations but, first and foremost, constitute compositions with a voice of his own. not so long ago seamus heaney (o’driscoll 2009) stated, when discussing the translator’s craft, that the translated version of a poem had to offer a musicality, a personal voice that not only followed the original text but also served equally as a ratification of the translator’s personal expression. that personal voice is contained in the seven anglo-saxon elegies presented by miguel a. gomes, a voice that comes directly from his wide knowledge of the original old english text and from his very own decisions as a translator, which confirm his personal convictions when translating poetry: book reviews 179 in some lines he goes wonderfully archaic (“mientras en proa vime entre riscos envuelto”, seaf 8; “al albor vínome a ver la angustia”, wife 7), in some others he opts for classy wild modernity (“en días de ardua faena”, seaf 2; “mas cuesta calmar las cicatrices del corazón”, wan 49) but everytime his verses are direct and sincere, like the very texts he is rendering, and his versions highlight the complexity of simple things. just an example will suffice: wulf and eadwacer’s “willað hy hine aþecgan, gif he on þreat cymeð”, which is rendered as “matarlo querrán si su mesnada ronda”. no other translator in a romance language, as far as i know, has been able to render so beautifully the finesse of this old english line; certainly not bravo’s “¿podrán socorrerle si el se sintiera en peligro?”, lerate’s “recibirlo querrían si en aprieto llegara?”, or rico’s “tal han de recibirlo, si llega en son de guerra”, just to mention three of the most quoted translations of wulf in spanish. such knowledge and craftsmanship is shown by miguel a. gomes from his introduction to the seven poems he translates (“estudio introductorio: encadenados por el pesar”, 15−45), as this introductory text is well versed, easy to follow and understand by the non-especialized reader, and quite precise in content. the number of elegiac texts selected was not a random decision, as it could be considered as such between two and fourteen texts, in addition to some other sections extracted from longer works; practically all of them were excluded from the elegiac corpus or relabelled in a neverending number of subtypes: planctus, religious lyric, encomium urbis, frauenlied, love lyric, confiteor, etc. if we focus only on the texts coming from the exeter book, combinations do vary: two, five, seven or nine texts. that is why the selection of seven made by miguel a. gomes is fully justified and makes it a representative sample of this old english elegiac poetic discourse —to me (bueno 2001)—, elegiac genre, mode or way of composition —to many others (klinck 2001 & 2004, muir 2006, alexander 2013)—. miguel a. gomes’ translation is not only formally phenomenal. it is also thematically brilliant. at least in the way i have always considered them (bueno 2004), the elegies are built around three conceptual parameters. first, the main core of this conceptual triangle is by no means the psychological parameter; the whole elegiac discourse is directed to transmit the expression of the psychological awareness, of the suffering, the disturbance, the innermost feelings, of all its poetic narrators as something that is an essential part of human experience. second, the spatial/temporal parameter is always present as an element that frames the psychological expression: the present and the absent, the real and the mental journey, the passing-of-time obsession, the use 180 book reviews of imagination, the distance between human beings, these are always features that provoke or modulate the expression of psychological items. third, the ecology parameter, which appears as a contextual reflection of an adequate natural environment. it is always present as the modifying background for the psychological expression of the poetic narrators. once more, due to the richness of anglo-saxon elegiac poetry, every poet makes his own adaptation of this parameter, using different thematic figures —the sea, the germanic wintry seascape, the hostile and inhuman natural environment, islands, forests, animals, etc.— always connected with the psychological parameter and, on certain occasions —e.g. the wife’s lament—, with the space-time feature. the interaction between these three conceptual parameters is more than evident and when you read the renderings by miguel a. gomes all this thematic complexity arises crystal clear through his verses. the readers of spanish are lucky enough, finally, to have access to the seafarer (‘el marinero’, 49−64), the wanderer (‘el exiliado errante’, 65−80), the wife’s lament (‘el lamento de la esposa’, 83−90), wulf and eadwacer (‘wulf y eadwacer’, 91−96), the husband’s message (‘el mensaje del amado’, 97−104), the ruin (‘la ruina’, 107−114) and deor (115−122), in a translation that fully reflects the richness and thematic complexity of the original old english; a text free at last from the structural impostures and prosaic phrasing that have in many cases hindered a great majority of previous spanish translations. every translation is presented with the old english original, nicely edited2 and supplemented with notes that offer snippets of information about the most relevant aspects and queries posed by the text. a nicely selected and commented bibliography follows as the adequate closure to the volume (pp. 123−125). it is frequently said that what we are nowadays is connected to what we were in past times. these seven anglo-saxon elegies speak to us more powerfully than ever before, and they do so in this volume through the personal, unique and necessary voice of miguel a. gomes, to whom i give my most enthusiastically and heartfelt welcome to the highly reduced group of poetic translators of old english. 2 it is not mentioned in the volume but i assume the old english text has been edited using the manuscript as it appears on muir (2006). book reviews 181 references alexander, m. ed & trans. 2013: the wanderer: elegies, epics, riddles. london, penguin books. bragg, l. 1991: the lyric speakers of old english poetry. rutherford (n.j.), fairleigh dickinson university press. bravo, a. 1984: “wulf and eadwacer: ¿el primer poema de amor de la literatura inglesa?” el amor en la literatura inglesa: symposium. cádiz, servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de cádiz: 18. bueno, j. l. 2001: el discurso poético elegiaco del inglés antiguo. vigo, servizo de publicacións da universidade de vigo. bueno, j. l. 2004: is there an ‘elegiac discourse’ in old english poetry?: a proposal for a conceptual model based on a threefold hermeneutical approach. in a. rodríguez-álvarez & f. alonso-almeida eds. voices on the past: studies in old and middle english language and literature. a coruña, netbiblo inc: 157−164. klinck, a. l. 1992 [2001]: the old english elegies: a critical edition and genre study. montreal & kingston, mcguill-queen’s university press. [reprinted with updated bibliography.] klinck, a. l. 2004: anthology of medieval woman’s song. london, palgrave. lerate, l. & j. lerate trans. 1986 [2004]: beowulf y otros poemas anglosajones (s. vii−x). madrid, alianza editorial. muir, b. j. 2006: the exeter anthology of old english poetry. the exeter dvd. exeter, university of exeter press. [software by nick kennedy.] o’driscoll, d. 2009: stepping stones: interviews with seamus heaney. london, faber and faber. rico, f. ed & trans. 2009: mil años de poesía europea. barcelona, crítica. reviewer’s address department of english, french and german university of vigo lagoas-marcosende campus praza das cantigas, s/n e36310 vigo (spain) e-mail: jlbueno@uvigo.es 182 book reviews j. r. r. tolkien. 2017. beren and lúthien. london: harpercollins publishers. ed. by christopher tolkien. pp. 288. isbn 978-0-00821419-7. j. r. r. tolkien. 2018. the fall of gondolin. london: harpercollins publishers. ed. by christopher tolkien. pp. 302. 978-0-00-830275-7. reviewed by adriana taboada gonzález, university of vigo let us say, for lack of a better powerful and well-known introduction, that it is a truth universally acknowledged that the number of critical approaches concerning things tolkenian has increased steadily to reach an impressive amount of publications in recent times. the fiftieth anniversary of the lord of the rings in 2005 signalled an important revival on tolkien’s appreciation as a writer and gave way to the appearance of new materials that have proved to be fundamental for subsequent critical analyses: i.e. companions and guides (hammond & scull 2005 [2014], scull & hammond 2006, lee 2014) handbooks (chance & siewers 2005), casebooks (hunt 2013), encyclopaedias (drout 2007), specific studies (rosebury 2003, zettersten 2011), etc. evidently, one of the main responsible popular figures for such a recent revival of things tolkienian was peter jackson and his films —which could be considered classics since more than a decade has passed since the release of the first title of the series— on the three parts that shape tolkien’s epic narration: the fellowship of the ring, the two towers, and the return of the king. janice m. bogstad and phillip e. kaveny mentioned in the preface to their volume devoted to jackson’s film trilogy how “according to many represented in this collection, jackson’s efforts cannot diminish tolkien’s accomplishments, they can only deepen them” (2011: 3). so, always attentive to new business opportunities, some publishing houses took profit from that new-fangled interest to awake the never too dormant tolkenian marketing machinery by giving to the printing press new editions of his books, film tie-ins and, in some cases, highly philological works difficult to sell in the mass-market. only in such a context the publication of books such as the children of húrin (tolkien 2007), the legend of sigurd and gudrun (tolkien 2009), the fall of arthur (tolkien 2013), beowulf (tolkien 2014), the story of kulervo (tolkien 2015), or the lay of aotrou and itroun together with the corrigan poems (2016) book reviews 183 could be understood. the two books reviewed here are unquestionable heirs of such new approaches and reassessments. back in 2007 christopher tolkien edited the first of what his father considered to be the great tales of the middle-earth, the children of húrin, so as to give the insatiable readers of the fantastic realm an easier-to-read version of a story that had already been published and analysed as chapters of longer volumes (the book of lost tales 1984 [2015]: 3−48, 144−197; the lays of beleriand 1985 [2015]: 3−130) or mentioned as background reference in j. r. r. tolkien’s masterpiece. however, if in the children of húrin, christopher tolkien decided to present the story of túrin turambar as a single full-length, uninterrupted piece, with beren and lúthien he took the complete opposite path, offering the readers an amalgam of the different available versions —both verse and prose editions— of this “heroic-fairyromance” (2017: 12) mixed with his own comments on the most remarkable changes from one text to the other, with all its consequences. as the editor himself recognised, “this book does not offer a single page of original and unpublished work” (2017: 11) yet the need to bring this narration back does not lie in the originality of its content more than it does in the importance of the history within it. it is this term, history, that christopher tolkien chose to justify what he back then referred to as “(presumptively) [his] last book” (2017: 16). for him there are two different ways of understanding the aforementioned term: on the one hand, it refers to “a chronicle of lives and events in middle-earth” (2017: 11), on the other hand, it is an account “of the changing literary conceptions in the passing years”. both perspectives had already been dealt with through the publication of the history of middle-earth, however, since the preceding materials covered a vast collection of texts amongst which this one was everything but the main focus, being able to understand this particular story and its creative process as a “single and well-defined narrative […] is not easy” (2017: 12). thus, the interest of this work resides in its individuality, a well-deserved distinctiveness borrowed from the children of húrin and reused in the fall of gondolin that christopher tolkien justified in that “the narrative, the story of beren and lúthien, was itself continually evolving, and developing new associations as it became more embedded in the wider history” (2017: 16). of course, the singularity of this story is also explained by the personal and emotional attachment of both its original author and its now editor since its love story is no other than a fantastic retelling of tolkien’s own romance with the person who would later become his wife and mother of their kids, edith. 184 book reviews once the reader has admired alan lee’s front cover —whose work will be also discussed— and proceeds to consult the list of contents, they will find a surprisingly non-exhaustive account of everything that can be found throughout the volume, especially when compared to its predecessors. apart from the generally acknowledged sections (“list of plates”, “preface”) and those that are indispensable when we talk about things tolkenian (“notes on the elder days”, “list of names”, and “glossary”), the only reference to the main part, “beren and lúthien”, seems to diminish its prominence in the volume —use of capitals aside—, something particularly noteworthy given the circumstance that each version of the story comes after a title and a comment from the editor. this exclusion of the different editions of the narrative from the list of contents hinders any further consultations of the text, radically contradicting the editor’s initial purpose and anticipating what is to come: a series of more or less connected fragments whose meaning gets, more often than not, lost. avid readers of tolkeniana are used to christopher tolkien’s extensive notes throughout the texts he has edited so far, and beren and lúthien is not an exception, albeit the differences. even if in the preface the editor already gives some notes on why he decided to present this work, how he is doing it and where it lies in the history of middle-earth, once the main body of the text begins, the editor offers another thorough introduction that serves to put a historical frame —both inside and out the middle-earth— to the tale of beren and lúthien, focusing on its very first version, the tale of tinúviel. as one would expect, one of the most interesting features of this second introduction is the early analysis of some of the mayor changes the text suffered, that serve for a better understanding of the story itself, such as the evolution in beren’s identity, first as an elf and later as a man (2017: 32). what follows after this section is the tale itself told in j. r. r. tolkien’s “own words” (2017: 13); here resides the main difference to what seemed to be christopher tolkien’s editing style since, in contrast to what he normally does, in this case he avoids filling the text with footnotes, resisting “the urge to explain, for fear of undermining the primary purpose and method of the book” (2017: 16) —a choice that, apart from giving the reading process an extra sense of fluidity, reflects the author’s words and work in a rather illuminating way. the other excerpts of the tale follow a similar structure: an explanation of both the time when it was written and the major changes that can be found precede the text itself. however, it is not always clear where the comments book reviews 185 belong; for instance, in the second subsection, “a passage from the ‘sketch of the mythology’” (2017: 90), the notes on the text can be found both at the end of the previous section, as an introduction, and at the end of the actual section, whereas in other parts of the text those introductory comments are subsections themselves and then the passages follow, as it is the case of “the quenta noldorinwa” and “a passage extracted from the quenta” (2017: 103, 105). taking all this into account one cannot but wonder if the chosen structure to present these texts is the most adequate, since it sometimes hardens the understanding of the story and the history behind it. alan lee’s work is not new for anyone, no matter how remotely familiarised with tolkien’s world they are, therefore, the wise decision of designating him as the illustrator of this volume does not come as a surprise; after all, he had already illustrated the first of the great tales. lee’s use of watercolour is impeccable, but even more astonishing is his ability to draw the highly detailed pencil sketches that accompany the text. illustrations should be visual translations of what is being described with words, thus it is essential that they successfully convey the same tone of the narration. perhaps this is why in beren and lúthien, which is without a doubt the great tale that is closer to be a fairy tale with its shapeshifting characters and talking animals, lee choses to use a different approach to what he has traditionally offered. if the artist normally avoids drawing close portraits of the characters so as to bypass any possible conflicts “with the image the text is creating in the readers mind”, in this case he decided to take the risk of moving the focus from the landscapes to the protagonists, leaving the readers with scenes such as the one facing page 208 that portrays the lines: “fluttering before his eyes, she wound / a mazy-wingéd dance” (tolkien 2017: 209). in this moment of the tale lúthien is trying to save beren from morgoth’s fortress, angband, by casting a sleeping spell on every creature of the fortress, including morgoth. the amount of detail with which lee illustrates not only the sleeping orcs and other evil creatures but also every column of the castle is simply outstanding. the use of frames in the watercolour illustrations is also worth remarking, since it serves as the “visual equivalent of the narrator’s ‘once upon a time’”. bearing this in mind, lee plays around with the content of each of the frames, giving the reader a clear idea of what the main focus of a certain part of the story is; for instance, when the scenes describe an event related to the silmarils, the frames include jewel-shaped ornaments, whereas if the focus is given to the villain of that section, the adornments change to the eyes of that particular animal —in this tale tolkien chose cats and/or wolves as the main 186 book reviews villains. there is no doubt then of the importance of lee’s contribution to what seemed to be the last work of j. r. r. tolkien’s son. luckily enough for the readers —especially for those worried about christopher tolkien’s retirement—, right after a year since the publication of beren and lúthien, harpercollins surprised the audience with the announcement of the “(indubitably)” (2018: 9) last book edited by him, the fall of gondolin (2018). even if in this volume he “adopted the same curious form” (2018: 13) as in beren and lúthien, he also “arranged the content of the book in a manner distinct from [it]” (2018: 17), highly improving the result. whereas in beren and lúthien the list of contents already anticipated a rather confusing structure of an otherwise excellent content, in the fall of gondolin every chapter and section of the book find their own space, thus facilitating further in book searches. setting aside those epigraphs that were already used in the first of the tales under discussion, the addition of the “list of illustrations” is of especial interest since, for the first time in this kind of publications, christopher tolkien decides to give some credit to the pencil sketches that complete the text, giving them the same importance, at last, as the watercolours (“list of plates”). moreover, in the introduction to this tale he finally acknowledges and thanks alan lee for his work, certainly not without good reason for lee “has brought to this task a deep perception of the inner nature of scene and event that he has chosen from the great range of the elder days” (2018: 18). if in beren and lúthien the artist put the focus on the characters of the tale, here he moves back to what has become his signature: using breathtaking landscapes that still manage to portray the main events. a good example of this is the very first plate of the book, “swanhaven”, facing page 33. even if at first glance it seems to be an almost bucolic scene to promote a holiday destination, the roughness of the sea and apparently chaotic flight of the swans brings out the suspicion of what might be indeed happening. following the swans spiral, and once special attention is paid to the details of the watercolour, one can recognise that what looked like ordinary people hanging in the port is no other but a daunting amount corpses, the remains of a terrible battle that ended up with the annihilation of a whole elvish race marking the beginning of a long held curse by the gods of the middle-earth, the valar. the dramatic quality of this event is shown through the use of the colours and the depiction of nature, a technique lee demonstrates to master in each of his works, and in which he finds a particular enjoyment —getting to the point of sometimes feeling that “[his] trees have more life in them than book reviews 187 [his] people” (lee 2005: 105). however, he does not need to use colours in order to give nature its required dramatism, as it can be seen in the sketch of page 119 called “the mountains and the sea”. the water and the mountains are two fundamental elements in this story, since it is through the curse of the river sirion that tuor begins the trip that would take him to gondolin, the city hidden by mountains. the roughness of the waves in this sketch cannot but remind the reader of the moment in which ulmo appears from the sea to tell tuor what his deed is: trying to save the city of gondolin from the destruction. the movement of the water is in fact very similar to that of the watercolour that serves as a back cover of the book, the one entitled “ulmo appears before tuor”. as it was already mentioned, the division of the different sections of this book is a definite improvement from the previous publication. after a preface and a prologue that examine the context of the tale both inside the history of middle-earth and out, “the texts of the tale appear first, in succession and with little or no commentary”, followed by an “account of the evolution of the story” and a “discussion of [tolkien’s] profoundly saddening abandonment of the last version of the tale” (tolkien 2018: 17). this similar yet distinctive enough organisation of the text has an undeniably positive impact in the reading process, giving a sense of flow that was not always present in beren and lúthien, making the fall of gondolin look way more like what he intended to do with the previous one. furthermore, the inclusion of a map of beleriand at the end of the volume is of unquestionable help for the reader due to the amount of references to other places that are scattered throughout the text. christopher tolkien’s comments in between passages are of the same invaluable quality as in the other two tales, making it clear that he is the truthful son of his father by being able to interpret and transmit his manuscripts to the general audience in ways otherwise impossible. the necessity of these two tales in the overall scheme of the middle-earth is unquestionable. they close a cycle that begun with the publication of the children of húrin and gave a deeper understanding of the history behind the things tolkenian. christopher tolkien’s work throughout the years to bring his father’s work closer to the audiences is of incalculable value, not only to the general fandom but also to the academics who decide to dedicate their professional lives to the wonders of the middle-earth and its close connection with medieval literature. beren and lúthien and the fall of gondolin are no exceptions to this, although it is true that while reading the former might be of a too great difficulty for the inexperienced, the later does a better job in 188 book reviews facilitating the reading, both through its structure and the use of a clear and easy-to-follow language, to those readers who navigate these waters for the first time. however, and being most likely influenced by my profound interest in the works of tolkien and in contrast with my opinion in this matter about the children of húrin, i without any doubt recommend reading the main sources of the legendarium, i.e. the lord of the rings, the hobbit, and the silmarilion, to better contextualise them in the broader picture presented by middle-earth. references bogstad, j. m. & p. e. kaveny 2011: picturing tolkien: essays on peter jackson’s the lord of the rings film trilogy. jefferson (n.c.) & london, mcfarland. chance, j. & a. k. siewers 2005: tolkien’s modern middle ages. new york, palgrave macmillan. drout, m. d. c. ed. 2007: j. r. r. tolkien encyclopedia: scholarship and critical assessment. new york, routledge, taylor & francis group. [associate editors: d. a. anderson, m. burns, v. flieger & t. shippey.] hammond, w. g. & c. scull 2014 [2005]: the lord of the rings: a reader’s companion. london, harpercollins. hunt, p. 2013: j. r. r. tolkien: the hobbit & the lord of the rings (new casebooks series). houndmills, palgrave macmillan. lee, a. 2005: the lord of the rings sketchbook. london, harpercollins. lee, s. 2014: a companion to j. r. r. tolkien. oxford, wiley blackwell. rosebury, b. 2003: tolkien: a cultural phenomenon. houndmills, palgrave macmillan. scull, c. & w. g. hammond 2006: the j. r. r. tolkien companion & guide. 2 vols. [1. chronology, 2. reader’s guide.] london, harpercollins. tolkien, j. r. r. 1985 [2015]: the book of lost tales, the history of middle-earth. vol. 2. [c. tolkien ed.] london, harpercollins. tolkien, j. r. r. 1985 [2015]: the lays of beleriand, the history of middle-earth. vol. 3. [c. tolkien ed.] london, harpercollins. tolkien, j. r. r. 2007: the children of húrin [title as on title page:] narn i chîn húrin: the tale of the children of húrin. [c. tolkien ed.] london, harpercollins. tolkien, j. r. r. 2009: the legend of sigurd and gudrún. [c. tolkien ed.] london, harpercollins. tolkien, j. r. r. 2013: the fall of arthur. [c. tolkien ed.] london, harpercollins. tolkien, j. r. r. 2014: beowulf: a translation and commentary, together with sellic spell. [c. tolkien ed.] london, harpercollins. tolkien, j. r. r. 2015: the story of kullervo. [v. flieger ed.] london, harpercollins. book reviews 189 tolkien, j. r. r. 2016: the lay of aotrou and iroun together with the corrigan poems. [v. flieger ed.] london, harpercollins. zettersten, a. 2011: j. r. r. tolkien’s double worlds and creative process. language and life. new york, palgrave macmillan. reviewer’s address department of english, french and german university of vigo lagoas-marcosende campus praza das cantigas s/n e-36310 vigo (spain) e-mail: ataboada@uvigo.es selim 16.indb r. f. yeager, selim 16 (2009): 91–101issn: 1132–631x john gower’s iberian footprint: the manuscripts abstract the english poet john gower (d. 1408), unlike his close  iend geoff rey chaucer, seems never to have visited spain. yet it is gower’s great poem confessio amantis, and no work of chaucer’s (or of any other english writer for two centuries more) that was translated into not one, but two, iberian languages—and very likely during the poet’s lifetime. the evidence for gower’s “footprint” is the presence of two fi  eenth-century manuscripts, one portuguese and one castilian, now in the collections of, respectively, the libraries of the royal palace in madrid, and el escorial. somewhat surprisingly, these manuscripts have been little discussed by either spanishor english-speaking scholars. even  om among those who know of their existence—a relatively small number, compared to the many who read and teach gower’s work—one would be hard put to name more than a halfdozen who have even viewed them, let alone studied them with any systematic care. the paper has two parts: fi rst, a brief physical description of each manuscript; second, some conclusions that the physical elements of the manuscripts, and their idiosyncratic content, suggest about the probable identities of the castilian and portuguese patrons of the translations, and their likely motivations for having the translations made. keywords: john gower, confessio amantis, cinkante balades, escorial ms g.ii.19, confi syión del amante, juan de cuenca, huete, ms real biblioteca ii-3088, livro do amante, joão barroso, ceuta, john of gaunt, philippa of lancaster and portugal, katherine of lancaster and (catalina) of castile, joão i, henry (enrique) iii of castile, roberto paym (robert payne), dom duarte i, leal conselheiro, christine de pizan, henry iv of england, henry v of england, l’avision de christine. resumen parece que, al contrario que su buen amigo geoff rey chaucer, el poeta inglés john gower († 1408) nunca visitó españa. sin embargo fue el confessio amantis, el gran poema de gower, y no una obra de chaucer (ni de ningún otro autor inglés durante los siguientes dos siglos) el que fue traducido no en una sino en dos lenguas ibéricas—y muy posiblemente en vida del autor. la prueba de la huella de gower es la presencia de dos mss del siglo xv, uno portugués y otro castellano, que hoy están respectivamente en la biblioteca del palacio real de madrid y en el escorial. de manera algo sorprendente, estos manuscritos han sido poco estudiados por investigadores hispanoo angloparlantes. incluso entre los que conocen de su existencia—un número relativamente pequeño, comparado con los muchos que leen y enseñan la obra de gower—sería difícil nombrar a más de media docena que los hayan visto, y mucho menos que los hayan estudiado con alguna atención. este artículo tiene dos partes: primero una breve descripción física de cada manuscrito; y segundo, algunas conclusiones que los elementos físicos de los mss y su idiosincrático contenido sugieren acerca de las identidades probables de los patronos castellano y portugués de las traducciones, y sus motivaciones para ordernar que se hicieran. palabras clave: john gower, confessio amantis, cinkante balades, escorial ms g.ii.19, confi syión del amante, juan de cuenca, huete, ms real biblioteca ii-3088, livro do amante, joão barroso, ceuta, juan de gante, philippa de lancaster y portugal, catalina de lancaster y de castilla, joão i, enrique 92 r. f. yeager selim 16 (2009) iii de castilla, roberto paym (robert payne), dom duarte i, leal conselheiro, christine de pizan, enrique iv de inglaterra, enrique v de inglaterra, l’avision de christine. u nlike his  iend and fellow-poet geoff rey chaucer, the english poet john gower, who died in 1408, seems never to have visited iberia. chaucer apparently was dispatched by edward iii into castile via navarre in 1366, ostensibly as the king’s emissary to pedro i of castile just prior to the latter’s overthrow by enrique trastámara.1 gower, on the other hand, has le us no indication that he ever traveled farther  om london than kent during his seventy or so years of life—and scant evidence even of that. yet despite chaucer’s documented trip, it is not his literary “footprint”—but gower’s—that we fi nd in late medieval portugal and castile. indeed, for several more centuries gower remains the sole english writer with a textual presence on the peninsula, the result of his great middle english poem confessio amantis being translated into not one, but two, iberian languages. very likely, this translating, at least in its initial stages, took place while gower was still alive. that it should have been gower who thus became familiar to readers in the courts of portugal and castile has, over the years, stood out as something of an oddity—even a signifi cant surprise—to those few english-speaking medievalists and early modernists who knew about it. for it was only in 1909 that escorial ms g.ii.19, with a title confi syión del amante, was revealed to be a translation of gower’s poem into castilian prose.2 subsequently this castilian version was shown to have been rendered, not  om gower’s middle english, but  om an intermediary portuguese translation which apparently seemed lost. for decades the discovery has attracted little interest, save for occasional speculation about who the self-announced translator, one juan de cuenca, “vesino de la ciodad de huete” (“householder in the city of huete”), might have been (russell 1961). the manuscript was not fully edited until 1990, by the 1 chaucer and three companions were granted permission to travel through navarre in 1366; for the document, now in the archives of navarre, see crow & olson (1966: 64 and facing plate). for a full discussion, see yeager (2007). 2 an edition, with a modern spanish glossary, was published by adolf birch-hirschfeld (1909). 93 john gower’s iberian footprint: the manuscripts selim 16 (2009) team of elena and manuel alvar (alvar & alvar 1990), but it has largely been overlooked, both by spanish and english-speaking scholars.3 for many reasons, this neglect is unfortunate, to say the least. escorial ms g.ii.19 is shrouded in mystery, traceable ultimately to the originary narratives of both spain and portugal, and it—along with a second manuscript housed in spain, madrid ms real biblioteca ii3088—underscores their linkage as nation-states (and even as nascent world powers) in several important ways. rebound in modern times under the title livro do amante and mistakenly catalogued as the work of joão barroso, who seems to have been its copyist, ms real biblioteca ii3088 was properly identifi ed in 1995 (santano 1991) as a long-sought-a er translation of gower’s confessio into portuguese prose (cortij o ocaña 1997a: 1–9, 1997b). that a portuguese prose version of the confessio once existed was inferred  om linguistic evidence: the castilian of the escorial ms g.ii.19 contains remnants of what could only have been a portuguese, not an english, exemplar. thus apparently gower’s confessio was fi rst translated into portuguese, and thence into castilian, for a spanish audience.4 the existence of both portuguese and castilian translations, and their sequence, suggests part of the story of how gower’s poem came to iberia. in 1386 john of gaunt led an invasion force of several thousand troops into spain to press his claim to the crown of castile and león through that of his second wife constanza, daughter to pedro i (“the cruel” or “el justiciero”), deposed and killed by enrique ii trastámara, en route to the latter’s seizure of the throne in 1369. ultimately gaunt’s quest failed, in that he was unable to gain control of castile by force. he and constanza eventually relinquished her right to rule in 1387, in exchange for a large sum of money and a contract of marriage in 1388 between their daughter katherine (catalina) and prince henry (enrique) iii, then the nine-yearold son and heir of juan i of castile. since gaunt’s elder daughter philippa had married king joão i of portugal in 1387, the duke—while not himself 3 see also the study of bernardo santano moreno (1990). 4 the portuguese basis for the castilian translation was established by karl pietsch in two important articles, (pietsch 1923, 1926). 94 r. f. yeager selim 16 (2009) a monarch—became father-in-law and progenitor to the two foremost iberian royal lines (russell 1955). although other possibilities exist, it can be reasonably assumed that gaunt’s invasion, and the subsequent marriages of his daughters, brought gower’s confessio amantis into portugal and spain (yeager 2005). gaunt had styled himself king of castile and león since gaining edward iii’s permission to incorporate the royal arms into his in 1372, and he traveled across the channel fully intending to establish and maintain permanent residence. he thus came accompanied not only by his wife and daughters, but with a full court and complement—even staff and wherewithal to mint coins bearing his and constanza’s images for use in their new realm. apparently part of the baggage was books. philippa especially was a great reader, with documented tastes that we know included romances (coleman 2007). catalina, whose more conservative, less intellectually curious bent inclined toward religion, nonetheless was as well-educated as her elder sister. like philippa, she must have read (or been read to) as a way of passing the long hours and days while their father’s army, slowed by its more numerous noncombatants and a mountain of baggage, crawled forward, or sat for weeks while negotiations dragged on. that the confessio amantis was one of the books the sisters brought along to read is very likely. although generally gower is said to have completed the confessio ca. 1390–1393, hard evidence for these or any other dates is non-existent and there is no reason to rule out a date three or four years earlier. gower’s own connections to the house of lancaster are well known, and substantial. the near-lifesized effi gy on his tomb in southwark cathedral displays a version of an “ss” collar, originally of silver, with a pendant swan, he received  om henry iv, gaunt’s son and younger brother of philippa and catalina (hines, cohen & roff ey 2004), and gower probably composed his french sequence the cinkante balades with then-duke henry in mind (yeager 2005b). indeed, gower’s lancastrian affi nity may extend backward to henry of grosmont, fi rst duke of lancaster and father-in-law to john of gaunt (yeager 2006). a signifi cant likelihood exists that gower knew philippa, catalina and henry, at the very least in passing, as children in london. and we know the confessio was a popular poem among the extended lancastrians: the so-called staff ord manuscript (san marino, [california], huntington 95 john gower’s iberian footprint: the manuscripts selim 16 (2009) library, ms el 26.a.17) has a  ontispiece replete with lancastrian arms that could identi its original owner as john of gaunt, his brother thomas of woodstock, duke of gloucester, or henry iv himself, while still earl of derby. most importantly, perhaps, the mixture of varietous narratives long and short, bumbling confessor (and even more bumbling lover amans), lightly pointed humor and thoughtful, instructive moral  amework that gower managed in the confessio seems precisely suited to what—as far as we know—philippa and catalina liked to read. and thence, presumably, the confessio spread  om the english queens to their portuguese and castilian husbands,—but defi nitely to their courts. in portugal the case is easier to make. philippa and joão i apparently shared a love of literature, and it seems inarguable that gower’s confessio was turned into portuguese for him, robert payne the acknowledged translator having served in philippa’s retinue since her arrival with her father’s army (russell 1961: 26–32).5 the literary itch—and knowledge of the confessio amantis—was passed on to their son dom duarte i, who succeeded his father as king of portugal in 1433. duarte became an author himself, of the leal conselhiero, an essayistic examination, structured around the seven sins, of moral and spiritual necessities for living—and governing—well. in his prologue, dom duarte promises to name his sources, as did john gower in the confessio amantis, a copy of which is, presumably, the book o amante mentioned in a list dom duarte had made of portuguese royal holdings (alves 1982). how the castilian translation came to be made is a bit more obscure. although its translator, juan de cuenca, identifi es himself as a resident of huete in a headnote to his translation, and notes that he works  om the portuguese rendering of “roberto paym, a canon in the city of lisbon,” nothing more has been discovered about him (alvar 1990: 141). obviously we should like to know what—or who—prompted juan de cuenca’s labor. we can only surmise that by the fi rst third of the fi  eenth century, judging  om the hand, gower’s poem had developed a following in castile as well as portugal, and that a readership for the confessio extended outside of immediate royal circles. for this assumption escorial ms g.ii.19 is our best physical evidence. whoever was juan de cuenca’s intended reader, it seems unlikely to have been a royal personage. the manuscript is a plain 5 on payne, see also yeager (2005a: 507–08). 96 r. f. yeager selim 16 (2009) book of average size, 292 × 205 mm (roughly 11 ½ × 8 inches), containing 411 numbered leaves, of which 410 and the numerals are in the same early fi  eenth-century hand. there are a few sketchily ornamented capitals, in red ink only—but spaces were le for capitals which were never added by the scribe. it is the sort of object, in short, that might have been bespoke by a courtier, but hardly a presentation copy for a queen. precisely such a courtier’s book is real biblioteca ms ii-3088. although its rather careless modern rebinding makes it impossible to judge its original covers, at 260 × 195 mm (10 ½ × 7 ½ inches, trimmed), with 251 paper folios of translation and variously fi lled and unfi lled capitals, the portuguese manuscript resembles escorial ms g.ii.19 in nearly every way. in a colophon the copyist identifi es himself as joão barroso, noting that “this book i have written at the command of dom fernando de castro the younger in the city of ceuta in forty days in the year 1430.”6 dom fernando “o moço” was the son of the governor of ceuta, a city taken  om the moors in 1415 as the fi rst step in portugal’s imperialist expansion into north a ica. for barroso to have made a copy of the portuguese translation of gower’s poem (he could hardly have actually translated it  om english in just forty days) in ceuta, then, means that he was provided in a ica with a portuguese exemplar. one assumes the exemplar’s provider was the younger dom fernando de castro, and that— reasonably—he acquired it at the court in lisbon. certainly dom duarte’s reference, noted earlier, to “joan goer” in his leal conselheiro—a book written apparently during 1436 and 1437—is supportive of the conclusion that the confessio was preferred reading in the lisbon court in the 1430’s. corroborative as well—not to say intriguing, in its link to gower and barroso’s colophon—is the belief of many scholars that dom duarte wrote the leal conselhiero in part to stiff en support for an impending attack on tangier, by way of heading off a consolidated moorish eff ort to re-capture ceuta.7 6 “liber est scriptus./ laudatur senper xpistus./ este lyuro por graca do muy alto s.or./ deus screueo por mandado de dom fern-/ ando de castro o moco na cidade de/ cepta em xxxx. ta dias no ano de 1430 joham barroso.” text printed by cortij o ocaña (1997b: 3). english translation is my own. 7 on the leal conselhiero as conquest propaganda, see blackmore (2009: 9–10). 97 john gower’s iberian footprint: the manuscripts selim 16 (2009) real biblioteca ms ii-3088, then, would seem a text an aspiring young portuguese nobleman, especially dom fernando de castro with familial ties to ceuta, would go to some pains to own and read himself, even to the extent of having a copy sent to a ica for reproduction. gower’s english poem, which entered iberia as property of two english-born queens, thus passed into the tongues of their portuguese and castilian husbands, in translations made (presumably) fi rst for them and their children (e.g., dom duarte), and then later by and for courtiers with an eye out for what the powerful were reading. unfortunately, until these royal copies turn up—and the 1995 discovery of dom fernando’s copy, mis-identifi ed for years in the real biblioteca as a tract original to barroso, holds out hope that someday they might—their existence can only be inferred. should philippa’s copy, or catalina’s, surface, it would of course be wonderful. but in one extremely important way, the workaday versions we have may be of greater scholarly value. precisely because they are not royal presentation manuscripts, escorial ms g.ii.19 and real biblioteca ms ii-3088 provide tangible evidence that the confessio amantis was known, was read, and was in demand outside of the royal families, beyond castile and lisbon even to a ica, by lower-ranking iberian readers in some numbers. in terms of determining gower’s peninsular “footprint,” this recognition indicated by these manuscripts is very signifi cant indeed. one exercise such a recognition invites (along with a full, scholarly edition of the portuguese to match the alvar’s of the castilian translation) is, quite obviously, seeking out connections between the confessio amantis and late medieval and early modern iberian literary production (cortij o ocaña 2000).8 to date very little real work has been devoted to this question, although one or two scholars have proff ered unsubstantiated speculation. antonio cortij o ocaña, who is currently editing real biblioteca ms ii3088, has for example variously detected gower’s potential infl uence on juan rodríguez del padrón’s siervo libre de amor, the portuguese sátira de infelice y felice vida, the archpriest of talavera’s corbacho, as well as the libro de buen amor. beyond certain broad structural similarities—they all have to do with love, and include elements of confession—cortij o off ers 8 partial editions of real biblioteca ms ii-3088 have been completed, jointly by antonio cortij o ocaña and maria do carmo correia de oliviera (cortij o ocaña-correia de oliveira 2007) and by manuela faccon, as part of her doctoral dissertation (faccon 2007). 98 r. f. yeager selim 16 (2009) little by way of evidence, pending a more detailed exploration (cortij o ocaña 2000). yet his suggestions are interesting, and could prove worthy of pursuit by—one hopes—cortij o himself. another interesting and potentially  uitful direction has been posed by joyce coleman of the university of oklahoma, in a 2007 essay asserting the centrality of philippa of lancaster to the portuguese translation. coleman portrays philippa as actively promoting the anglicization of portugal via the importation of “english liturgy, exempla, alabasters, architecture, and purses;” but the greater strength of her argument derives  om its lightlyveiled feminist agenda. because of her sex, coleman asserts, philippa has been aff orded short shri by modern, predominantly male, scholars. it is a group into which, i should point out in the spirit of transparency, she has included me alongside others—not, perhaps, without some justifi cation. yet i think her points are all of them entirely well taken and telling, especially in a later context—i.e., following philippa’s death, during the fi rst thirty or so years of the fi  eenth century, when escorial ms g.ii.19 and real biblioteca ms ii-3088 are most likely to have been produced. accurate dating is always a challenge, but based on what evidence we have it would seem these decades form a moment when the widest proliferation of confessio amantis translation took place. what interests me about those years is the work, not only of gower, or of iberian writers per se, but of the french poet christine de pizan as well. her name and perhaps some of her early compositions i feel confi dent gower knew, and christine probably was aware of gower’s sequence the cinkante balades, dedicated in the single extant manuscript to philippa’s and catalina’s brother henry iv. it was of course this same henry who, christine tells us in her autobiographical l’avision de christine, immediately following his coronation attempted unsuccessfully to coerce christine into becoming poet-in-residence in london (reno & dulac 2001: 112–13). christine’s later work in prose and verse provides a nexus for an emergent recognition and exploration of feminine power and autonomy among late medieval aristocratic women. it has deservedly received signifi cant recent discussion in france, and is increasingly foregrounded in recent english and american scholarship too. hence i fi nd suggestive that, at the court at lisbon during the 1430’s, not only the confessio amantis but also christine’s le livre de trois virtues was translated into portuguese as the espelho de cristina. a presentation 99 john gower’s iberian footprint: the manuscripts selim 16 (2009) of the virtues of empowered women, it is a book philippa (i think) would have appreciated, along with her royal portuguese descendants who commissioned it and castilian relations (la católica comes to mind), and like gower’s confessio (and the leal conselhiero) it has as its center the notion of the speculum, and the anatomy of virtues. speculum literature has, it seems to me, a greater likelihood of being the underlying cause of the fi  eenth-century interest specifi cally in gower—more than a fascination with the confession form as pattern for longer poetry fostered by the presence of the confessio amantis in portuguese and castilian. while it is true that a proliferation of longer works built upon confession format occurs in both portugal and castile at roughly this same time, and some have attributed this to familiarity with the confessio amantis, it would be diffi cult, given the universal familiarity with confession form, to tie such work exclusively to gower. nonetheless, such speculation is valuable. it draws attention to how little we know, or have carefully considered, the possible centrality of the translations of gower’s work contained in escorial ms g.ii.19 and real biblioteca ii-3088 to a broad range of late medieval iberian literature. indeed, these two manuscripts themselves, having received scant study, undoubtedly have much to tell us about their production, their owners, their history as objects that brought them into these two libraries’ protection. such fi elds of interest open our eyes to an expanse of possibility for research into the multi-leveled interconnections of england and iberian in the late middle ages—and should serve as a challenge to spanish, portuguese and anglo-american scholars of the period to do the research that has waited so long to be broached. r. f. yeager university of west florida references alves dias, j. j., ed. 1982: livro dos conselhos de el-rei d. duarte (livro da cartuxa), edição diplomática, rev.ed. de oliviera marques a.h. and rodrigues t. f. lisbon, estampa. 100 r. f. yeager selim 16 (2009) alvar, e. ed. with introduction by m. alvar 1990: john gower: confesión del amante, traducción de juan de cuenca (s. xv). madrid, anejos del boletín de la real academia española. birch-hirschfeld, a. ed. 1909: confi sion del amante por joan goer. spanische übersetzung von john gowers confessio amantis aus dem vermächtnis von hermann knust nach der handschrift im escurial. leipzig, dr. seele. blackmore, j. 2009: moorings: portuguese expansion and the writing of africa minneapolis, university of minnesota press. coleman, j. 2007: philippa of lancaster, queen of portugal—and patron of the gower translations? in m. bullón-fernández ed. england and iberia in the middle ages, 12th–15th century: cultural, literary and political exchanges. new york, palgrave: 135–65. cortij o ocaña, a. 1995: la traducción portuguesa de la confessio amantis de john gower. euphrosyne 23: 457–66. cortij o ocaña, a. ed. 1997a: text and concordance of índices castellanos de la traducción portuguesa de la confessio amantis de john gower, palacio ii-3088 (spanish series 117). madison, hispanic seminary of medieval studies. cortij o ocaña, a. 1997b: o livro do amante: the lost portuguese translation of john gower’s confessio amantis (madrid, biblioteca de palacio, ms ii3088). portuguese studies 13: 1–6. cortij o ocaña, a. 2000: la ‘confessio amantis’ portuguesa en el debate de origen del sentimentalismo ibérico: un posible contexto de recepción ibérica. actas del viii congreso internacional de la ahlm. santander, mm: 583–601. cortij o ocaña, a. and correia de oliviera, m. do carmo 2007: o ‘rregimento dos homees’: el libro vii de la ‘confessio amantis portuguesa’. revista de literatura medieval 19: 7–124. crow m. m. and olson c.c. eds. 1966: chaucer life-records. oxford, oxford university press. faccon, m. 2007: la fortuna de la confessio amantis en la península ibérica: estudio comparativo de las traducciones y edición del ms madrid, real biblioteca, ii-3088 (prólogo, i, ii, iii, iv libros). [ph.d. dissertation]. university of verona-university of zaragoza. 101 john gower’s iberian footprint: the manuscripts selim 16 (2009) received 25 jan 2010; revision received 26 feb 2010; accepted 02 aug 2010 hines j., cohen n. and roff ey s. 2004: iohannes gower, armiger, poeta: records and memorials of his life and death. in s. echard ed. a companion to gower. cambridge, d.s. brewer: 23–41. pietsch, k. 1923: zur frage nach der portugiesischen übersetzung von gowers confessio amantis. in manly anniversary studies in language and literature. chicago, university of chicago press: 323–27. pietsch, k. 1926: zum text der confi sion del amante por joan goer. zeitschrift für romanische philologie 46: 428–44. reno c. and dulac l. eds. 2001: christine de pizan: le livre de l’advision christine. paris: champion. russell, p. e. 1955: the english intervention in spain and portugal in the time of edward iii and richard ii. oxford: clarendon press. russell, p. e. 1961: robert payn and juan de cuenca, translators of gower’s confessio amantis. medium ævum 30.1: 26–32. santano moreno, b. 1990: estudio sobre confessio amantis de john gower y su version castellana, confi syon de amante de juan de cuenca. cáceres, university of extremadura press. santano moreno, b. 1991: the fi eenth-century portuguese and castilian translations of john gower’s confessio amantis. manuscripta 56: 12–24. yeager, r. f. 2005a: gower’s lancastrian affi nity: the iberian connection. viator 34: 483–515. yeager, r. f. 2005b: john gower’s audience: the ballades. chaucer review 40: 81–105. yeager, r. f. 2006: gower’s french audience: the mirour de l’omme. chaucer review 41: 111–37. yeager, r. f. 2007: chaucer translates the matter of spain. in m. bullónfernández ed. england and iberia in the middle ages, 12th–15th century: cultural, literary and political exchanges. new york, palgrave: 189–214. • selim02.pdf 31 prayer as a literary device in the battle of maldon and in the poem of the cid the first common feature we find in the battle of maldon and in the poem of the cid is that they are, in some respects, more instructive than french, germanic or the primitive old english epic in that in these two poems the historical events and the christian atmosphere were much closer in time to their creation; and both heroes, byrhtnoth and mio cid, are real christian characters with common religious sentiments as can be seen in the christian allusions and prayers which are presented in both epics. the battle of maldon1 presents the army of the east saxons fighting in 991 against a viking fleet which had plundered the coast of kent and had established a base near maldon. the english army was defeated and his commander, the noble byrhtnoth was killed. the real event was not of great historical importance, or at least in the chronicles it is reported very laconically and it is difficult to understand why an insignificant defeat was celebrated in an epic poem, undoubtedly one of the most outstanding works in old english literature. some critics felt that the author must have been an eyewitness to the battle, he knows most of the english leaders by name and from 1. see the battle of maldon a. d. 991 manchester, 1991, eds. d. scragg and m. deegan; the latest edition and collection of essays on the battle, the poem and its background. 32 this it may be inferred that he must either have been a participant in the battle or else have derived his information directly from someone who fought in byrhtnoth ’s army; basing themselves on this fact, many scholars have suggested that the poem follows the historical reality closely. the hero, byrhtnoth, and several of his followers who are mentioned in this epic can be identified, such as wulfstan, wulfmær and æfwine. obviously, many of the details cannot be checked, but the poem gives the impression of being the work of a man, in our opinion a learned monk of ely, ramsey or some other abbey in east anglia who was well acquainted with the topography of the battle field. he also probably knew the character and history of the eastsaxon nobles who died at maldon with their lord, and who very well might have known byrhtnoth himself if we accept that the epic was written about two decades after the hero’s death.1 the battle of maldon is reported very briefly in the anglo -saxon chronicle for the year 9912 and with more details in the parker chronicle for 9933 where the viking leader olaf, the great olaf tryggvason (956-1000) who later became king of norway, is mentioned: her on thissum geare com unlaf mid thrim ond hundnig -entigon scipum to stane, ond forhergedon thæt on ytan, ond for tha thanon to sandwic, ond swa thanon to gipeswic, ond thæt eall 1.though some scholars would date the poem shortly after the battle, we prefer the theories of j. mckinnell “ on the date of the battle of maldon ” mæ 44 (1975) pp. 1316, and n. blake “the genesis of the battle of mald on” ase 7 (1978) pp. 119-29 who argue for a date as late as 1020; but see d. scragg. 1991. 2.the battle of maldon is reported in chronicles c, d, e, f under 991. the anglo saxon chronicle ed. b. thorpe r. s. 238-240. see also c. plummer two saxon chronicles parallel. oxford, 1892-99. vol. i pp. 126-7. 3.some editors and critics, such as f. lieberman, c. plummer and m. ashdown, suggest that 993 is an amalgam of events belonging to 991-994. 33 ofereode, ond swa to mældune; ond him thærcom togeanes byrhtnoth ealdorman mid his fyrde, ond him with gefeaht. ond hy thone ealdorman thær ofslogon, ond wælstowe geweald ahtan. “in this year came anlaf (olaf) with ninety three ships to folke stone, and devastated it, and sailed thence to sandwich, and thence to ipswich, overrunning all the countryside, and so on to maldon. ealdorman byrhtnoth came to meet them with his levies and fought them, but they slew the ealdorman there and took posses sion of the place of slaughter.” another account of byrhtnoth’s death and the east saxon defeat at maldon is in byrhtferth of ramsey’s vita oswaldi written about 1000. in this latin text the author gives us a vivid picture of byrhtnoth; probably the hero was known by the monk byrhtferth who due to his desire to glorify the patron of his monastery introduced an interpolation in the vita oswaldi about the east anglian ealdorman.1 this text is very important in the light of a tomb cult related to the genesis and the presence of christian allusions and prayers in the poem. another very important account of byrhtnoth and his death is found in liber eliensis, though this history is less accurate, as it belongs to a considerably later date this account reflects better the oral and written religious tradition of byrhtnoth’s life and death in the following centuries. this chronicle was written about 1170 by a monk of ely who drew his information from older “historiae” in the english language. in this text it is said that byrhtnoth’s body was taken from the battle -field by the monks of ely and buried in their church. 1.the vita oswaldi is an important source for tenth century anglo -saxon history as was suggested by m. lapidge. “the hermeneutic style in tenth century anglo -latin literature” ase 4 (1975). 34 we know through different sources that byrhtnoth was a protector of the monasteries; according to the historian florence of worcester the hero of maldon and his sister’s son æthelwine, who also died in the battle, gathered their men to protect the monasteries under their patronage. the monasteries of ramsey and ely received benefactions from byrhtnoth, and his widow ælflæd indicates in a document that her husband made grants to other communities, and he probably was a benefactor of the new minster in winchester which recorded the day of his death in a calendar. therefore we have to accept that byrhtnoth had a close relationship with the monasteries of his possessions and chiefly ely where he was buried, and this is why we have christian allusions in the poem the battle of maldon.1 the poem of the cid, like the battle of maldon, is basically an historical epic poem; it is the greatest and earliest surviving literary epic of castile, the first extensive verse-text written in the spanish language and one of the greatest epic poems of the european culture in the middle ages.2 the hero ruiz diaz was born c.1043, that is, about fifty years after byrhtnoth’s death at maldon, into the rank of baronet in a small village near burgos, the capital of castile. by his exploits he became known as campidoctor in latin chronicles, and mio cid, that is, my lord, in arabic sources. the poem consists of 3730 lines and in these verses an unknown poet wrote only about the last ten years of his life, when rodrigo was banished by his king alfonso vi of castile. rodrigo spent most of his exile fighting the moors until he began the siege of the city of valencia in 1092 which finally fell to him in 1094. mio cid 1.see e. v. gordon. the battle of maldon. manchester, 1937. rpt. 1971. pp. 18-20. 2.the poem of the cid is preserved in a manuscript dated 1307. the copyst was a certain per abad; all modern cidian scholars agree that the poem is earlier than per abad’s manuscript. however since menéndez pidal dated the original circa 1140 arguments supporting a later date have been advanced by others. 35 died in valencia in 1099 and according to the historia roderici,1 a reliable account of the cid’s life written about a decade after his death, his wife, doña jimena diaz brought his remains to castile three years later in order to bury them in the monastery of san pedro de cardeña, five miles to the east of burgos. the first christian literary document about the cid is the carmen campidoctoris written by a cleric, and it is an excellent beginning for the hero’s literary career.the next reference to the cid’s tomb at cardeña is found in a version of the latin chronicle the liber regum, written about 1220.2 we also possess a remarkable biography of the cid in the primera crónica general, where in the opening sentence of chapter 961 we read: estoria del noble varon el cid ruiz diaz el campeador, señor que fue de valencia. in this chronicle it is reported that the cid’s body remained incorruptible and was placed in a seated position to the right of st.peter’s altar in the monastery church at cardeña in full view of the public. associated with this tradition is an attempt to suggest that the cid before his death ordered that his body should be taken to cardeña for burial. this medieval cult at cardeña was not unique in castile and similar tomb cults existed in other castilian monasterie s which possessed the tombs of other heroes, kings and nobles. in fact, several of the spanish epics in latin or the vernacular, in poetry or prose, dealing with events from the 10th. century to the 14th. century in castile, appear to have some sort of connection with the benedictine monasteries of old castile .3 we must consider the christian references in maldon and mio cid in terms of their apparent relationships to the anglo-saxon an the 1.see r. menéndez pidal ed. primera crónica general. madrid, 1955. 2.see r. menéndez pidal, la españa del cid. madrid, 1947. 3.see p. m. russell. “san pedro de cardeña and the heroic history of the cid” mæ 27, 2 (1958). 36 spanish culture at that time. in england and in spain there was a tradition of liturgical and private prayers as those christians believed prayer necessary because god deserves man’s prayers and also because man himself benefits from prayer.1 directly or indirectly, the primary purpose of all prayers is communication with god and generally they have the same basic structure: invocation, comment, petition and closing, and in some cases there is also introduced a phrase of thanksgiving or a plea for intercession. most narrative prayers are based on liturgical latin texts, but they are not always literal translations, and the writers often made minor changes to adopt the prayer to the context, changing a mere religious text into a literary device which, according to the idea of that period, served to delectare et docere. the prayers and religious allusions we find in both epics are fictional passages and quite probably they were not pronounced by the characters in real life; therefore, the narrative prayers and religious phrases written in direct or indirect speech may have an artistic function. the poets used the prayers for characterization, to provide unity in the complex structure of the text, to give rhetorical emphasis, to introduce suspense or to express a dramatic tone; but also the writers may introduce the prayers with a didactic purpose as a devotional model of how and when to pray, a method of teaching christian doctrines and traditions. moreover we think that these prayers were introduced in the poems we are dealing with to inform indirectly of the relationship of the poems with the tomb cult of the heroes.2 1.see a. bravo. “una taxonomía de la plegaria en el inglés antiguo” proceedings of the ii international conference of selim. córdoba, 1989. (forthcoming). 2.the battle of maldon and the poem of mio cid: two tomb cult epic poems. unpublished paper read by a. bravo at the esse inaugural conference. norwich, sept. 1991. 37 in the early middle ages, anglo-saxon and spanish scholars, nearly all of them monks and clerks, were obviously influenced by christian sentiments and principles, and the narratives written at that time in prose or poetry, in latin or the vernacular, show this fact; therefore, it is frequent to find prayers at the origin of the english and spanish languages. in the anglo-saxon culture the writers used a variety of reasons to explain the need for prayer, but the most important is because god deserves man’s prayer as he is so much better than men and yet has still generously helped them. in his homily for christmas ælfric says that: we sceolon geefenlæcan thisum hyrdum, ond wuldrian and herian urne dryhten on eallum tham thingum the he for ure lufe gefre mode, us to alysednysse ond to ecere blisse.1 according to this, man has been created just so that he can pray to god; prayer here is seen as the very essence of man’s life. but, on the other hand, man also prays because he himself benefits by his prayer. ælfric in another homily wrote:swa theah ne magon manna herunga godes mærtha gemicclian, ac tha halgan lofsangas fremath us to ecere haelthe.2 that is, through his prayers, man does not increase god’s glory, but rather gains eternal salvation for himself. it is man, not god, who benefits. for many decades the battle of maldon was analyzed as an expression of the ancient germanic heroic code and the religious references were ignored.3 some critics, such as c.clark4 and j.e.cross1 1.see the homilies of the anglo -saxon church. ed. b. thorpe. 2 vols. london, 184446. 2.ibid. ch. ii. p. 584. 3.c. clark “the battle of maldon: a heroic poem” speculum 43 (1968) pp. 52-71. 4.c. clark. ”byrhtnoth and roland: a contrast”. neophilologus 51 (1967) pp. 288-93. 38 suggest that the prayer we have in the poem marks byrhtnoth as a christian, but this religious text does not modify the secular hero.: in itself the last speech does not modify the shape of byrhtnoth’s secular figure towards that of a martyr, this prayer in deed is selfish, though human.2 other critics see in the battle of maldon and in the hero a combination of heroic and religious features and they have stressed the pious sentiments which are introduced in the poem emphasizing the idea that byrhtnoth is a kind of mirror of christian leaders; blake has argued that the hero of maldon is like a christian martyr and that the battle is significant as a spiritual struggle of good against evil.3 byrhtnoth’s prayer in only eight lines, but we think that this text marks byrhtnoth as a christian and, at the same time, reveals a learned and religious author, plausibly a monk and poet. ic gethancie the, theoda waldend, ealra thæra wynna the ic on worulde gebad. nu ic ah, milde metod, mæste thearfe thæt thu minum gaste godes geunne, thæt min sawul to the sithian mote on thin geweald, theoden engla, mid frithe ferian. ic eom frymdi to the thæt hi helsceathan hynan ne moton. (ll.173-180) “i thank you, lord of the nations for all those joys which i have experienced in the world. 1.j. e. cross. “oswald and byrhtnoth: a christian saint and a hero who is christian”. es. 46 (1965). 2.ibid. p. 106. 3.n. blake. “the battle of maldon”. neophilologus 49 (1965) p. 339. 39 now, merciful god, i have the greatest need that you should grant my spirit the benefit that my soul be allowed to journey to you, into your keeping, prince of the angels, to pass in peace. i beseech you that hellish assailants be not allowed to harm it.” it seems to me that this prayer is a literary device perfectly organized in three sections. in the prayer, byrhtnoth acknowledges god’s greatness, later his own meanness, and finally god’s generosity. the beginning of the prayer, the two first lines, stresses the notion of god’s power and generosity as the hero thanks god for granting him joys in the world. god is implicitly recognized as the one who can control all the benefits man can attain in the world and his generosity is emphasized as byrhtnoth, when thanking him, refers to the fact that god has helped him in the past. the epithet used to refer to god calls forth the aspect of god contemplated by the one praying at that instant. thus, god is the ruler of peoples, theoda waldend, because byrhtnoth is referring to god’s influence on the material world of benefits to man. in the following lines, 3-7b, byrhtnoth talks about his mæste thearfe, great need, and here the hero invokes the merciful god milde metod because byrhtnoth is now aware of his own imperfections as a man; in this second section the poet is refering to god as theoda engla , prince of angels, this invocation is very appropriate to god considered in light of the final section of the prayer asking protection against devils, the proud fallen angels, and also considering the first section in which god’s might is being appealed to. then we interpret this section as a balance between god’s power and god’s generosity. in the last three hemistiches, the third section, we find one of the elements which can appear in narrative prayers, the petition for salvation. byrhtnoth recognizes that he has been sinful in his life and for his pride and arrogance before the battle he is going to 40 be defeated and finally dead; it was the same sin commited by the fallen angels, so he prays god to forgive him so thæt hi helsceathan hynan ne mo ton. these lines suggest the struggle between the good and the bad angels over man’s soul, this is a topic which can be found in other liturgical prayers written in latin: ut cum mihi dies extrema evenerit, angeli pacis me suscipiant et de potestate diaboli eripiant, quatinus in consortio sanctorum tuorum merear beata requie perfrui.1 in the missal of robert of jumieges we also find a dying prayer with an allusion to the angel of peace: et reple cum omnio gaudio etl aetitia et timore expelle omnes inimici insidias, mitte et domine angelem pacis qui hanc domum pace perpetua custodiat.2 byrhtnoth’s prayer is perfectly organized and is used as a literary feature in the narrative; the prayer gives a great emphasis to the text as it is introduced in the midst of the battle, suddenly all seems to fade as the poet focuses on byrhtnoth turning his eyes to heaven. it is an extremely dramatic moment as the audience wants to hear what will happen next, and the poet introduces the prayer to create dramatic suspense. the prayer is also used to express a dramatic irony; the hero is nearly a saint fighting the heathens, those vikings who were enemies of god, however byrhtnoth is dying with most of his retainers; in fact, only the cowards will survive. this irony, here a remarkable literary figure, is resolved by means of the prayer. the paradox is explained to the audience through the christian faith because only the true god has the power to grant byrhtnoth the final victory, and thus this death in a christian context becomes eternal life. therefore, the poet has introduced the prayer artistically in harmony 1.cit. by f. holthausen in “altenglische interlinear-versionen lateinischer gebete und beichte” anglia 65 (1941) p. 232. 2.the missal of robert of jumièges. ed. h. a. wilson. london, 1896. pp. 289-90. 41 with the christian view of the universe according to the religious conception of the time. besides this prayer, we also find in the battle of maldon two other religious allusions, in lines 94b-95 we read: god ana wat hwa thære wælstowe wealdan mote. “god alone knows who will be allowed to control the place of slaughter.” later, in the midst of the clash of the weapons, the poet expresses again his christian sentiment in these lines: se eorl wæs the blithra: hloh tha modi man, sæde metode thanc thæs dægweorces the him dryhten forgeaf. (ll.146b -48) “the noble was all the happier, he laughed then, a brave man, and said thanks to god for the day’s work the lord had granted him.” in the light of the prayer and these religious allusions it seems to me that the author cannot be a layman or minstrel, but a learned and pious monk probably dwelling in the monastery where the tomb of byrhtnoth was venerated. in the spanish epic, the poem of the cid, there are many religious allusions and some prayers. most references are constituted only by a hemistich or a line and very frequently can be considered epic formulas. many christian references express thanksgiving as gradéscolo a dios l. 246, “thanks be to god”; grado al creador e al padre 42 espiritual l. 1633, “thanks be to the creator and father in heaven”; grado al criador e a vos, rrey señor, l. 3200, “thanks be to the creator and to you my king and lord”. in some verses there are allusions to god and the holy virgin: plega a dios e a santa maría l.281, “may it please to god and the holy mary”; or to god and one of his saints: grado al criador e al señor sant esidro el de león l.1867, “thanks be to the creator and to st.isidore of leon”. some christians references are in an indirect style and cover two or three lines: quando despertó el cid la cara se santigó sinava la cara, a dios se acomendó. (ll.410-11) “when the cid awoke he made the sign of the cross on his forehead, he crossed himself and commended himself to god.” in other cases, the poet introduces a prayer or a religious allusion formed with some lines: el rrey don alfonso a toledo es entrado, mio cid rruy diaz en san serván posado. mucho fazer candelas e poner en el altar, sabor á de velar en esa santidad, al criador rrogando e fablando en poridad. (ll.3053-7) “king alfonso then went back to toledo, while the cid ruy diaz retired to san servando. he requested that candles be placed on the altar, for he desired to keep vigil in that holy place, praying to god and communing in secret”. 43 the poet also introduces in the narrative some prayers, mainly in the most dramatic moments, for example, when the hero has to leave to go into exile: a ti lo gradesco, dios, que cielo e tierra guias, ¡válanme tus vertudes, gloriosa santa maría! dáquí quito castiella, pues que el rrey he en ira, non sé si entraré i más en todos los míos días. vuestra vertud me vala, gloriosa, en mi exida e me ayude e me acorra de noch e de día! si vos assí lo fiziérides e la ventura me fuere complida, mando al vuestro altar buenas donas e rricas, esto é yo en debdo que faga i cantar mill missas. (ll.217-25) “i thank thee, oh god, ruler of heaven and earth.may the power of the blessed virgin protect me. now i must leave castile, for i have incurred the king’s wrath. i do not know whether i shall re turn to it in all my life. oh glorious virgin, protect me as i depart, and help me night and day. if you will do this and my good fortune holds, i shall adorn your altar with rich gifts, and i make a solemn promise to have a thousand masses sung there.” this is not a long prayer, but we can find in it all the characteristics which constitute a narrative prayer: invocation, thanksgiving, comment, petition and closing; all of it forms a plea for intercession. the most extensive prayer in the poem of the mio cid , and the most elaborated from a literary point of view is that one recited by doña jimena in lines 330 and ff. ya señor glorioso, padre que en el cielo estás, fezist cielo e tierra, el tercero el mar, 44 fezist estrellas e luna e el sol pora escalentar; prisist encarnación en santa maría madre en beleem aparecist como fue tu voluntad, pastores te glorificaron, oviéronte a laudare tres rreyes de arabia te vinieron adorar, melchor e gaspar e baltasar; oro e tus e mirra te ofrecieron como fue tu voluntad, salvaste a jonás quando cayó en la mar, salvest a daniel con los leones en la mala cárcel, salvest dentro en rome al senor san sebastián, salvest a sancta susanna del falso criminal (… ) 45 tú eres rrey de rreyes e de tod’el mundo padre, a ti adoro e creo de toda voluntad e rruego a san peidro que me ayude a rrogar por mio cid el campeador que dios le curie de mal; quando oy nos partimos, en vida nos faz juntar. (ll.330-60) “o glorious lord, our father in heaven. you did create heaven and earth and after them the sea. you did create the stars and the moon and the sun to give us warmth. you did become incarnate in your mother, holy mary, and was born in bethlehem according to your will. the shepherds worshipped and praised you. three kings from arabia came to do you homage, melchior, caspar and balthazar, who offered you gold, frankincense and myrrh, as was your holy will. you did save jonah when he fell into the sea and daniel in the evil’s den. in rome you did save st. sebastian, and you did save susanna when she was falsely accused … you are the king of kings and father of the world. i worship you and believe in you with all my heart and soul. i pray to st. peter and help me to intercede for the cid campeador that god may keep him from harm. though we must part today; may he reunite us in life.” this literary prayer seems not to have any specific latin source, in my opinion it is simply another example of the freedom used in handling a prayer. if we divide this text the three following sections occur: l.1, ll.2-60 and ll.61-5. the first line is an invocation formed by an oral formula frequently used in the poem. the second section is a kind of hymn and the poet describes the great glory and power of god by means of a description of the creation and the many wonders that the almighty has made and which are narrated in the old and new testament. in these lines we find continuous rhetorical figures such as anaphoras, variations, enumerations, antithesis, etc. which reveal the literary tone of these verses. in the last section, the last five lines, we 46 see the strategy of juxtaposing god’s greatness with his benevolence towards man; here the poet uses a plea for intercession to san pedro, the saint patron of the monastery of cardeña. we might take this prayer as a summary of the important principles governing the creation of vernacular prayers as literary devices. in fact, after reading this prayer it seems to me that the writer who composed this epic in its last stage might be a monk. all the religious passages when studied in connection with the context show a very religious and learned author. therefore, we do not agree with professor colin smith when he writes it does not seem likely that he was a priest or a monk, the christian sentiments of the poem are those normal for the time; and details of christian observances, though frequent, are no more than any 0bservant layman would have known ;1 and we do not agree with deyermond’s eclectic position either when he suggests that: if a cleric did compose the poem it would have had to be one turned public entertainer. this would not have been impossible. such clerics, to be sure, were not generally true juglares but, for the most part, persons who, having left their order, became vulgar goliardic jesters and minstrels … we think this could be possible but not probable .2 we think that all the christian allusions and prayers written in the poem of the mio cid reveal a poet and a religious man, a cleric or monk who wished to show an almost saintly hero guided and protected by god as hart pointed out3 who suggested that every vic tory won by 1.colin smith. ed. poema de mio cid . oxford, 1972. p. xxxiv. 2.a. d. deyermond. ed. the poem of the cid . london, 1969. p. 91. 3.t. r. hart “hierarchal patterns in the cantar de mio cid ” romanic review 53 (1962) pp. 161-73. 47 the campeador and his men is always acknowledged to have been made possible by god’s help as we can read in lines 792-3, 1102-3, 1118, 1157-8 and in the following verses: grandes son las ganancias quel’dio el criador fevos aquí las señas, verdad vos digo yo. (ll. 1334-5) “god gave him rich gains, and here is proof that i am speaking nothing but the truth.” the old english poem the battle of maldon and the spanish epic the poem of the cid are “historical” epics and both were developed through a process of creation and recreation until a monk, who knew the art of composing poetry, wrote these poems in their present form. we suggest that the prayers introduced in these poems reflect a religious author and though they were written in different countries and in very different historical context, still present the same cultural origin as they were influenced by benedictine monasteries in a period when europe was ruled by the same religious principles and sentiments. and in the light of literary analysis we think that both poems were composed by learned poets of remarkable sensibility, mainly if we consider the importance of the prayers in the midst of the narrative as literary devices which cannot possibly be used by itinerant minstrels. a. bravo university of oviedo * * * selim01.pdf 7 “of fish and flesh and tender breede of win both white and reede”: eating and drinking in middle english narrative texts the human condition is subject to a series of everyday physiological demands -eating / drinking, excreting, reproducing and sleepingsome of which lend themselves better than others to exploitation for literary purposes: those connected with what the wife of bath calls so neatly, on the one hand, “office” and, on the other, “ese of engendrure”, tend to find their literary reflection in middle english in the plain-speaking fabliau genre, in works such as dame siriz, or chaucer’s merchant’s, miller’s or summoner’s tales, not forgetting, either, the wife of bath’s prologue, sex, of course, although unspecified being implicit in any narrative dealing with adultery or suspected adultery (certain romances, for example). sleeping, indeed, had already acquired literary status in classical writings, as the conditio sine qua non for dreaming and for all that dreams might signify, and we need look no further than the nuns’ priest’s tale and the parliament of fowles to judge how productive a theme this was to be in middle english writing both as a subject of literary discourse and as a stratagem for literary invention. it is the aim of this study to take a look at some examples of the reflection in middle english narrative texts of the remaining physiological necessity -eating and drinkingin an attempt to analyse and evaluate the ways in which these all too human activities are exploited for literary purposes 8 in the period with which are concerned. since narrative literature, almost by definition, tends to occupy itself with the extraordinary, it will hardly be surprising if gastronomic allusions in middle english texts tend to move between the two poles of excess and default, rather than centring themselves on the desirable but unexciting golden mean. excessive eating and drinking, for example -the deadly sin of gula or gluttonyprovides an excellent excuse for the middle english author to indulge in a little preaching on the subject, in such narratives as lend themselves convincingly to the inclusion of moralising contexts. thus chaucer’s pardoner, having boasted to the pilgrims of his skill as a preacher, demonstrates realistically the truth of his claim by starting a story about a group of “riotous” “yonge folk”, whose vices he can then proceed to deplore in a fire-and-brimstone sermon, attacking in the first place precisely, the sin of gluttony, for they “eten...and drynken over hir might” in “superfluytee abhominable”. it is no accident, obviously, that chaucer has the pardoner himself insisting that before he begins his tale, he should (precisely) “...at this alestake/...bothe drynke, and eten of a cake”. in fact, he dedicates the majority of the lines dealing with the evil effects of gluttony -stupidity, lechery, gourmandiseto drunkenness, singling out for special condemnation the “white wyn of lepe” which, being stronger and cheaper than french wines, had a way of “creeping subtilly” into these, the resulting heady mixture giving rise to great “fumositee” (or indigestion). like other moralists, he insists on the more disgusting results of over-eating and over-drinking: sour breath, sterterous breathing and foul sounds at “either ende” of the belly, which, with great rhetoric al skill he both personifies and apostrophizes. 9 in gower’s english narrative poem, the confessio amantis, the poet likewise dedicates the greater part of the introductory section to the sixth book, concerning gluttony, to drunkenness, whose contradictory effects he analyses in some detail, pointing out that it can make a wise man foolish, yet turn a fool into a great clerk, a phenomenon perhaps illustrated by chaucer’s summoner, who when “... he wel dronken hadde the wyn,” would “... speke no word but latyn”. however, since amans (i.e. gower) is principally concerned with love, the text then moves into the world of allegorical imagery, a comparison being established between being besotted by wine and besotted by love! nevertheless, gower does manage to include a cautionary tale, concerning the spanish gluttons and drunkards, galba and vitelus, who not only oppressed all spain, but also defiled all her women -lechery, as the pardoner points out, being a fruit of inebriationbefore being finally brought to justice and executed deaddrunk! both in his allegorical french work le miroure de l’omme, and in his moral essay in latin, vox clamantis, gower satirises the various off-shoots of gluttony and gourmandise, in terms which almost suggest personifications of these abstractions. of course, the great master of such personification is the author of piers plowman, who in his magnificent evocation of the seven deadly sins in passus v, presents us with a memorable gula, drunk and incapacitated before he eventually repents and promises never to eat any more until his aunt abstinence gives him permission. langland spares us none of the sordid physiological details associated with gula’s state -urinating, breaking wind, vomitingsuch details, as jill mann points out, being typical of gluttony satire, the aim being to thus “create an aversion for the mountains of food which produce” such effects.1 1.jill mann: chaucer and mediaeval estates satire. cambridge, 1973; p. 169. 10 the tradition of the personification of the seven deadly sins is, in fact, carried on into the late 15th. century by william dunbar who in the dance of the seven deadly sins, witnesses, in a trance, the grotesque dance of the sins in hell on shrove tuesday. like the other writers already mentioned, it is excessive drinking which interests him most: here, the “fowll monstir gluttony” is seen as being followed by drunkards, armed with cans, flagons, cups and tankards, all demanding “drynk!” they are attended by devils who serve them “with hait leid to laip”! gluttony, of course, affects not only the intellect and the digestive system, but also the pocket: lavish eating means lavish spending, and the anonymous moralist who composed the 14th. century allegorical poem, wynnere and waster (thrifty and thriftless), in which both excessive expenditure and excessive hoarding are criticised, offers us an interesting and lengthy description (24 lines) of the kind of dinner waster lays on for his followers, worth says wynnere, “a ransom of silver which is hardly surprising if we think that the menu includes for its twelve courses (each dish to be shared by two guests): boar’s heads, buck-tails, broth, venison, frumenty, pheasants, pies, mince, grilled fowls, (of which each guest is given a six-man portion); all these to be followed by more roast meat in spiced gravy, halved kids, quartered swans, and an infinite variety of birds -as charles cooper remarks: “our ancestors ate practically everything that had wings, from a bustard to a sparrow”1 -a remark certainly borne out by wynnere’s list, which includes : wild geese, bitterns, snipe, larks, linnets (sprinkled with sugar!), woodcock, woodpeckers, teal and titmice, the meal to be rounded off with rabbits, pasties, pies, mawmenny and custard pies! 1.charles cooper: the english table in history and literature. london, 1929; p. 3. 11 members of the church, of course, especially monks and friars, were closely identified in the middle ages with gluttony, but hardly chaucer’s parson, who “koude in litel thyng have suffisaunce”, and who, in his sermon-tale, after glossing the uses of penitence, analyses the “chief synnes”. and their “braunches and ...twigges”, including, of course, gula. like the pardoner, he insists particularly on drunkenness which is “the horrible sepulture of mannes resoun”, and then, echoing st.gregory, classifies different types of gluttony, for all which, of course, the remedium is abstinence. it is, interestingly, dealt with in far fewer lines than any of the other deadly sins, so that one asks oneself if chaucer, author of the sympathetic description of the franklin, and “rounde of shap” as he admits himself to be in his envoye to scogan, was more tolerant of this particular failing than of the others? not everyone, of course, can become a prey to gluttony: to eat excessively well, as wynnere insists, you either need to be wealthy yourself or to be on good terms with those who are: as chaucer’s parson puts it: “... riche men been cleped to festes, and povre folk been put away and rebuked”, and his friar prefers to be familiar with franklins (and one can’t help thinking of the franklin) and to frequent the rich and “sellers of vitaille”, rather than such “poraille” as beggars (like himself) and lepers. although we do find individual instances of secular drunks and gluttons in the middle english narrative -the miller in the reeve’s tale, for example, goes to bed so befuddled with ale that he is totally unaware of the amorous antics around him, just as the miller-pilgrim’s “wit is (so) overcome” by drink, that he obstreperously demands to tell his tale before the monk’s, and at the wedding of sir gawain and dame ragnell in the romance of the same name, the latter, a loathly lady, “ete as moche as six that there wore”, including three capons, three curlews and a vast amount of baked foods, all which, of course, helps to make her even more loathly! -this specific 12 vice was traditionally and notoriously associated with the clergy in general, and with monks and friars in particular! we are, therefore, moving away from the moralising passage inserted into a narrative context, and into the realm of estates satire, satire because it is referred, precisely to those who ought to know better, to those who, like chaucer’s parson, should “drawen folk to hevene... / by good ensample”. chaucer’s friar, however, frequents “sellers of vitaille”, and the friar in the summoner’s tale who, according to his own words is “a man of litel sustenance”, requires only a capon’s liver and a “shiver” of soft bread followed, however, by a roasted pig’s head; indeed, as he continues to exalt his frugality, his hypocrisy becomes more apparent, and we realise that he is expecting far more and far better fare from thomas’s wife. as an anonymous poet in his diatribe against friars (about 1400) remarks, after commenting sarcastically on the “weakness” and “simpleness” of their “sustenance”: i have lived now forty years, and fatter men about the neres yet saw i never than are these freres chaucer’s monk not only has recourse to gastronomic figures of speech -invoking “oysters” and “pulled hens”, but also loved “a fat swan...best of any roost”, that is to say, one of the choicest dishes of the middle ages, prepared in a way probably forbidden by his rule, thus revealing himself to be perhaps a gourmet rather than a glutton, the choiceness of the swan being reflected by contemporary prices: in 1309, for example, (at the installation of the new prior of st.augustine’s, canterbury), 500 capons and hens cost 6 pounds, whilst 24 swans cost seven!1 1.m. e. whitmore: mediaeval english domestic life and amusements in the works of chaucer. new york, 1972; p. 108, n. 84. 13 not surprizingly, langland has his contribution to make in this context:1 in book xiii of piers plowman, the dreamer is invited to dinner by conscience with scripture, learning, patience and a great divine, and is irritated at the sight of this master friar at the high table, gulping down his wine greedily and gobbling up innumerable dishes of minced meat and puddings, tripe, galantine and eggs fried in butter, and wishes that, as in dunbar’s poem, the dishes were full of molten lead! these excesses in this “bloated, round-bellied chamberpot of a man”, says patience, will provoke the usual disgusting physiological effects, which he then proceeds to enumerate. of course, the indignation with such self-indulgence on the part of the clergy gains in intensity precisely because they are clergy, who are flagrantly flouting the rules of austerity imposed, in principle, on their orders; rules, if strictly followed, could be very severe. the rule of st. benedict, for example, which chaucer’s monk found “old and som-del streit”, laid down that his monks should have for their two daily meals: herbs, bread and wine (3/4) of a pint“, and that furthermore “all, save the very weak and sick” were to abstain wholly “from eating the flesh of quadrupeds”.2 it is hardly surprizing if their reactions thereto may have been on occasions excessive: and a charitable interpretation might see in such fallings by the way, a form of compensation for the loss of a normal family life imposed by the rule of celibacy. especially interesting in this context is the delightful late 13th or early 14th century anglo-irish parodic poem, the land of cokayne, for it should not be forgotten that references to eating and drinking in the middle english narrative are frequently exploited for humorous, and, as we have been seeing, for satirical ends: in this vision of an earthly paradise, tailor-made for monks and friars, and situated to “the 1.see jill man: “eating and drinking in piers plowman.” essays and studies, 1979. 2.whitmore: op. cit., p. 109. 14 west of spain”, the white and grey monks of the “fair abbee” established therein can break all the monastic rules with a vengeance: obedience, celibacy and austerity, including, of course, frugality in eating and drinking, since, in cokaigne is met and drink wipute care, how and swink the food there being “choice” and the wine “clear” at all three meals! it is to be noted that the anonymous author insists not only on the plentifulness of food and drink in cokayne, but also on its accessibility, for a multi-spice tree flourishes in the abbey grounds, and four wells constantly gush out not only healing medicinal waters, but also sweet spiced wine: better still, like the hansel and gretel houses of our youthful storybooks, the abbey walls are made of fish and meat pies, its roof-tiles of cakes, and its pinnacles of sausages, and, rather like our modern self-basting chickens, roasted geese fly to the abbey, roasted and begarlicked, ready for eating, whilst larks cooked in spices drop into your very mouth! what more could one ask for? and how different to the herring and eggs allowed to the black monks at christ church, canterbury on a fish day, or to the bacon, pottage bean-soup and bread which was the staple monastic diet in general! in fact, the gastronomic delights of this earthfully paradise are delightfully and irreverently contrasted even with those offered by the traditional paradise of mediaeval theology, in which there is nothing to eat, the author affirms, but fruit and nothing to drink but water! notions of paradise are, of course, very personal: for the wolf, in the beast-tale, the fox and the wolf in the well, paradise is where there are “bothe shep and get”! after the grim visions of gluttony evoked by langland and, indeed, chaucer, it comes as a relief to see the sin viewed in a comic light. the poem, in fact, has been classified as an example of english goliardic verse, the term, of course, deriving ultimately from latin gula (of goliard < l. gula). 15 any reference to large quantities of food in a middle english context will immediately bring to mind, of course, chaucer’s memorable portrait of the franklin, since of the 30 lines he dedicates to this pilgrim, at least half refer to food and drink: to the excellent quality of his wines: a bettre envyned man was nowher noon to the abundance and quality of his fare: it snewed in his hous of mete and drynke at every season, and to the demands made on the professional skill of his cook. this ruddy-faced, white-bearded santa claus figure (the chromatic combination recalling, perhaps, “the reed and the whit” wines), self-confessedly an epicure, is far from the repulsive embodiments of gluttony evoked by langland or chaucer’s pardoner, precisely because of his healthy, sanguine complexion -note that chaucer’s disgusting drunks turn pale in their cups, like both of his millersand, of course, on account of the suggestion of generosity and hospitality implicit in the allusions to st. julian and to his “table dormant”, always set for company, company such as chaucer’s friar, for example! the effects of helping himself generously from his own table may well be mitigated by his morning custom, specifically emphasized by chaucer, of having “a sop in wyn”, that is, a piece of toasted bread dipped in wine, a healthy dietetic measure if the 16th century regimen sanitatis salerni is to be believed: “wine soppis”, we are informed in this treatise, are good for cleaning your teeth, for improving your sight, and for curing all forms of indigestion and “superfluous digestion”.1 it will be remembered that old january, after 1.william e. mead: the mediaeval english feast. london, 1931; p. 128. 16 his nocturnal labours as a bridegroom, takes “a sop in fyn clarree” at dawn. that chaucer, in attrributing such good living to his franklin was, in fact, following a well established tradition concerning the epicureanism of this class of men, is confirmed by an interesting 15th. century document entitled a fest for a franklen, which contains an “irreproachable” menu for such an occasion, including, brawn, bacon, peas, mutton, chicken, capons, goose, pork, pies, stew, jussel, veal, lamb, kid, rabbit, pigeon, doucettes (sweet pies), fritters, apples, pears, spices, cakes and wafers spiced with mead and ale and bread and cheese -enough, as one critic has put it, to make any “table dormant” groan!1 of course, the franklin is not the only example in middle english writing of gastronomic “aficiones” being used as a characterisation device: chaucer’s monk’s swan, as we have seeen, contributes to the overall impression of good living that the poet obviously wishes to convey, and the general moral and physical repulsiveness of the summoner is emphasized by his fondness for “garleek, oynons, and eek lekes”, and “strong wyn, reed as blood” (a very telling simile that!). similarly, when the nightingale, in the early 13th century debate poem, wants to stress the repulsiveness of the owl, she suggests that frogs, snails, mice and disgusting creatures are her natural and proper diet, to which the owl ripostes that it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black since the nightingale lives on a diet of spiders, “foul” flies and worms dug out of the bark of trees! one is rather surprized that chaucer, in the general prologue, should be so silent on the subject of the gastronomic tastes of the ruddy-faced, wide-hipped wife of bath. however, in the prologue to her tale, she herself informs us of her fondness for “a draughte of sweete wyn”, associating drinking, as other moralists often do, with lasciviousness: “a likerous mouth moste 1.whitmore: op. cit., p. 103. 17 han a likerous tayle”, she affirms, adding that lechers know that “in wommen vinolent is no defence”! we hear more about the prioress’s table -manners than about her diet, but one suspects that the “rosted flessh, or milk and wastelbreed” with which she feeds her little dogs come straight from her own table, and she may be as much of a gourmet as the monk, wastel bread, for example, being made with fine white wheat flour as opposed to rye or barley bread, consumed by the poor and the frugal. frugality of diet, the other gastronomic extreme, may also be used as a characterising device, as is obviously the case of chaucer’s doctor of physik, who is “mesurable” of his diet: for it was of no superfluitee, but of greet norissyng and digestible evidently no sops in wine are needed here! with the knowledge of medical science afforded by all those medical classics he has read, the doctor, obviously knows that, as the pardoner puts it: ... many maladyes folwen of excesse and glotonyes we may note the similarity of chaucer’s vocabulary in both texts: the pardoner condemns “superfluytee abhominable”, and wishes that adam, like the doctor, had been “more mesurable / of his diet...” chaucer, however, follows up his references to the doctor’s diet with the remark that he “was but esy of dispence”, suggesting that the doctor’s frugality may, in fact, be due to meanness rather than to scientific considerations, and the modern english cliché, “cheap and nourishing” (“norissyng”) immediately springs to mind! in fact, there are no gastronomic allusions in the portraits of those other pilgrims most obviously obsessed with gain: the “sclendre colerik” reeve (as 18 opposed to the embonpoint of the monk), the merchant, the manciple, etc. chaucer’s widow in the nun’s priest’s tale is quite a different matter: here we are in the presence of enforced frugality, due to poverty, and chaucer’s negatives concerning her not suffering from any of the maladies characteristic of the glutton -gout and apoplexy-, concerning her not eating “deyntee” morsels or piquant sauces, nor drinking wine “neither whit ne reed”, marks her out as one of the world’s have-nots! her “sklendre” meals consist of milk, brown bread, boiled bacon and an occasional egg -a rather colourless board in comparison with the rosy wine and flesh tints of the franklin’s “table dormant”, and, of course, a far cry from the brilliant coral, gold, azure and jet hues of the real hero of the story -chantecleer! this, chaucer’s single reference to the diet of the poor does prove, at least, that he was acquainted with their way of life, as, obviously, was langland, who, like chaucer, has recourse to negatives when his protagonist is faced with the demands of hunger: “i have no money”, says piers, “to buy pullets, nor geese, nor pigs; nor do i possess the wherewithal to make bacon and eggs. what i do have”, he adds, “are two green cheeses, a few curds of cream, an oatmeal cake, two bran and bean loaves, parsley, potherbs and plenty of cabbages”. these, and his cow and calf must keep him and his family alive until next harvest-time. what other folk bring to help piers in his hour of need, is of much the same sort: peascods, baked apples, shallots, chervils and ripe cherries. the author of wynnere and waster has a very clear idea of the gastronomic abyss which separates the haves from the have-nots: “let lords live as they will, and lowly men (‘laddes on fote’) as they can”, he suggests; the former will eat bitterns and swans, wheat-bread and rich broths, the latter, bacon and beef, ryebread and grey gruel! another 14th century narrative text, how the ploughman learned his pater noster, however, contains a more 19 encouraging account of a thrifty ploughman’s store of food, including flitches of bacon, butter, eggs, cheeses, malt (for making ale), salt beef, onions, garlic, cream and milk. this sounds a little more promising, but even here we may observe a notorious lack of the fish, poultry, and assorted meats and pies which seem to have been so prominent a feature of the rich man’s table. chaucer has his parson, in his section on superbia, rail against this kind of “pride of table”, of which, presumably, the franklin might well feel guilty: pride of the table (he says) appeereth eek ful ofte; for certes, riche men been cleped to festes, and povre folk been put awey and rebuked. also in excesse of diverse metes and drynkes, and namely swich manere bake -metes and dishe-metes, brennynge of wilde fir and peynted and castelled with papir, and semblable wast, so that it is abusioun for to thynke. indeed, the middle english narrative is full of descriptions of great feasts in rich men’s houses, the main literary object thereof being, precisely, to illustrate the social rank, royal or otherwise, of the characters in the story, and to amaze the “humble reader” by these descriptions of their luxurious way of life. it is to be noted, in any case, that such narratives often deal with some extraordinary occasion or feast-day, (new year’s eve in camelot in sir gawain and the green knight), a wedding or a family reunion, for example, permitting thus great flights of culinary fancy! it is perhaps worth remembering, in this context, that one of the most popular and productive symbols of mediaeval literature -the round table sprang from the world of the great banquet. arthur made the round table, wace tells us in his roman de brut, that all might sit equally and be served equally at his board. the round table was to become, therefore, a symbol of equality: no one there was, like chaucer’s knight, or indeed, bishop baldwin, in a later arthurian story (sir 20 gawain and the green knight) “to begin the board” “above” another. the legendary example was not, however, followed, and allusions to the dais, or high table, and the positioning of guests “everich in his degree” are frequently to be found in middle english narrative poetry, including sir gawain and the green knig ht, chaucer’s knight’s tale and clerk’s tale, and cleanness, whilst 15th century courtesy books continue to insist on the ordre of goyng or sittyng with which the marshal or usher of a banqueting-hall must be familiar. in fact, the middle english narrative throws quite a lot of light on contemporary customs associated with the great banquet, as well as telling us about what was actually consumed and how on such occasions, although allowance must be made for a little literary exaggeration and idealisation! the use of a fanfare of trumpets, for example, to announce the first of the twelve courses to be served to arthur’s guests is described in sir gawain and the green knight, and in cleanness, probably by the same poet, “stentorian trumpets” indicate that belshazzar’s feast is starting in earnest. chaucer makes several allusions to minstrelsy as an essential part of a feast; at january’s wedding celebration, for example, at king cambuskan’s birthday dinner, and as an entertainment for duke theseus’ guests. his parson, however, sees in “curiositee of minstrelcye” an invitation to “delyces of luxurie”! references are sometimes made too to the regiment of servants, who, headed by the steward and the marshal, were responsible for the success of such occasions: thus chaucer the pilgrim is of the opinion that harry bailly would have made a “good marshal in an hall”, and he makes passing references in the squire’s and the merchant’s tales to stewards, ushers and squires. it will be remembered that the “squire of lowe degree” in the romance, actually becomes a marshal. especially interesting are chaucer’s 21 allusions to the art of carving meat (so plentiful, as we shall see, at great feasts), possessed by the squire, and also by damian in the merchant’s tale. the ability to carve skilfully was, indeed, highly considered as is proved by the existence of treatises on the subjects such as john russell’s 15th century the connynge of kervynge and the kervynge of flesh or the boke of kervynge printed by wynkyn de worde in the early 16th century. we have also the testimony of england’s earliest romance, king horn, in which king aylmar instructs his steward to educate his foundling, horn child, and teach him, among other arts: bivore me to kerve, and of the cupe serve. indeed, according to f.j. furnivall: “manly exercises, manners and courtesy, music and singing, knowledge of the order of precedency of ranks, and ability to carve,1 were in early times more important than latin and philosophy.” interesting in this context, is the affirmation made in cleanness that christ had so fine a force in his fingers that he needed no knife when cutting or carving, and broke bread without a blade, succeeding better than “all the toles of tolowse (probably a mistake for toledo)” could attempt to do it. the legend, derived from st luke (xxiv, 35)“and they told...how (christ) was known of them in breaking of bread” -would appear to suggest that christ trascends the requirement of mediaeval etiquette, that demanded that bread be cut, not broken, but as sir isaac gollancz points out, attention is drawn to the fact that christ’s fingers can, in fact, cut.2 in this same poem, 1.frederick j. furnivall: the babees book..., originally published eets, 1868, reprinted: greenwood press, new york, 1969; p. iv. 2.sir israel gollancz: preface to cleanness, with a new english translation by derek brewer. cambridge, 1974; p. xvii. 22 abraham is compared to a “steward”, and in the episode recounting belshazzar’s feast, reference is made to the contemporary taste for sophisticated table decorations, such as chaucer’s parson disapproves of: pies and dishes, he says, are “peynted and castellated with papir”. over each guest’s platter at belshazzar’s feast, we are told, there was an arbour intricately cut out of patterned paper pointed in gold, and pictures of birds and beasts thereon painted in azure and indigo. these platters were of “shining silver”, and king arthur’s guests in sir gawain..., likewise have their broth served in “bowls of silver”, obviously examples of the “to great preciousness of vessel” that chaucer’s parson likewise deplores. by the 15th century, the “preciousnesse” has increased and in the late burlesque romance, sir gawain and the carl of carlisle, the king invites the carl in “bowls of gold” so solid that no knight can lift them singlehanded, and the court drink their wine out of gold cups holding four gallons or more! insofar as the actual menus of such literary banquets are concerned, there are certainly no lack of detailed descriptions, although it must be admitted that chaucer, for example, although fairly specific on the subject of the franklin’s “table dormant”, is fairly restrained in this respect in other cases, although he does tend to exaggerate the general sumptuousness of the fare he is referring to. it is interesting, in fact, to note that both chaucer and the gawain-poet, apologise, as it were, for not offering a detailed menu of their feasts, by means of such rhetorical questions as: “what needeth yow the feste to descryve?”, or assurances such as: “now wyl i of her seruise say you no more, / for vch wy¥e may wel wit no wont pat pey were,” as if, indeed, they felt the need to justify their inclusion of all the gastronomic details, probably because, as will be seen, the romances did very often dedicate a fair number of lines to the subject. however, we learn that king sarpedoun entertained troilus and pandarus with expensive and “dainty” food, that queen dido offered 23 aeneas “a feste...ful of dayntees and richesse”, and that at king cambuskan’s feast (the squire’s tale) “strange broths”, swans and young herons were served. the gawain-poet is likewise restrained: insofar as king arthur’s new year’s feast is concerned, we learn only that there were delicacies and dainties, “foysoun of the fresche”, and both good beer and bright wine. however, the lenten feast set before sir gawain on his arrival at sir bertilak’s court on christmas eve, may be abstinential but is anything but frugal: several fine, wellseasoned soups, followed by grilled fish and fish pies of all kinds, “subtly sauced”, and plenty of wine! the gawain-poet likewise embroiders gastronomically the gospel of st.matthew, when he glosses it in cleanness: whereas the evangelist’s rich man who prepares a wedding feast only offers “oxen” and “fatlings”, the mediaeval exegete mentions as well: bulls, roast boars, “finely fattened” fowls, partridges, plovers and curlews! the 15th century romance of the squire of lowe degree is a particularly gastronomically orientated text, since the squire in question is appointed marshal of a king’s hall, and we are given information not only concerning his livery, but also concerning the hierarchy of other domestic officers: the steward, usher, panter and butler. we are likewise informed as to what the squire serves the king: expensive and “delicate” fare, including partridges, peacocks, plovers, teal, duck, drake, cocks, curlews, cranes, pheasants, storks and snipe (many baked in pies), as also fresh venison and many other “delicacies”. it is, in fact, interesting to compare this literary evocation of a royal dinner with the real-life 14th century menu or “porweanse” preserved in ms cosin v, iii, ll: “for the fest for the king at home for his owene tale,” at which he was to be provided with: 1st course: venison with frumenty, boars heads, large meat (i.e. boiled pork, beef or mutton), roasted swan, roasted fat capons, peas, pike, and two “soteltees” (subtleties, i.e. food made to look 24 like something else: christmas or wedding cake sculpture, birds covered with feathers to look alive and sugar sculptures of human figures, etc.) 2nd course: there were likewise to be three different types of pottages, plus roast pork, roast cranes, pheasants, herons and peacocks: bream, brawn, roast rabbit and another “subtlety.” 3rd course: german broth, roasted venison, roasted heron, peacocks, quail, rabbit, partridges, larks, perch, mincemeat, pasties, rice, fritters and two subtleties.1 life, on this count, is certainly larger than literature! the squire of low degree is an interesting text in this respect, since, apart from this more or less conventional list of food served at the king’s table, we are likewise offered that of the “goodies” with which the king tries to tempt and encourage his love-sick daughter: the edible “goodies” consist of wild fowl, green ginger and dates, and baked venison (not much of a change, one would think, for this particular princess). the drinkable “goodies” are, however, a different matter, since she is to be offered not only spiced wine in general, but more specifically: spanish white wine and malmsey, italian white wine, cretan white wine, raspis, antioch wine, honey wine, granada wine, greek wine, muscatel, claret, white wine from la rochelle, alsatian wine and simply red wine her “stomake to defie” (i.e. as a cure for indigestion -like the sop in wine!). sir launfal, in the breton lai, is given spiced wines and rhenish wines by dame tryamour, and, of course, vintner’s son as he was, there is no lack of “vinolent” references, as we have seen in chaucer’s works: daun john, in the shipman’s tale, brings his relatives “a jubbe of malvesye” and some red italian wine -vernage-, and, of course, the shipman himself is used to transporting vin de 1.curye on inglysch. (english culinary manuscripts of the fourteenth century), ed. by c.b. hieatt and sharon butler, eets, oxford, 1985; p. 39. 25 bordeaux. absalon sends alison a gift of sweet wine, mead and spicy ale, whilst anxious old january drinks “ypocras, clarree and vernage” on his wedding-night to increase his “courage”. the potency of el blanco de lepe has already been commented on, and chaucer makes several references to the distributing of wine and spices in elegant households, including calchas’ tent in the greek camp. banquetting, of course, means eating in public, and, hence, a social occasion, in which the question of table manners will inevitably arise: tha number of courtesy books which include instructions on how to be “at mete wel-ytaught”, like chaucer’s prioress, bear witness to the importance of the subject, and the allusion to the loathly lady’s behaviour at the table in the wedding of sir gawain and dame ragnell is significant in this respect: not only does she eat gluttonously, but also, with her “three-inch long nails” “she breke her mete ungoodly” -“therefore she ete alone”! of course, feasts, to be successful, need more than guests and stewards: the men behind the scenes, the cooks, are even more important, and that the culinary art was taken very seriously in the later middle ages is proved by the number of recipes extant from the period, and the literary references to the profession found in chaucer, gower and others. it is significant, as has often been pointed out, that the up-and-coming middle class represented by chaucer’s guildsmen should, precisely, have brought a cook along with them on their pilgrimage -a cook competent in the skills required to please the mediaeval palate; for, as a specialist on the subject has observed: practically all ordinary meats and game, fish and poultry, as well as stewed fruit and desserts of every description, were so loaded with cinammon, ginger, cloves, cubebs, pepper, galingale, mace and 26 nutmeg, one or all, that whatever has been taken as the basis of the dish was made practically unrecognisable... 1 not forgetting, either, the “stamping, straining and grinding” to which the basic food was subjected, before being spiced: “the ideal,” says w. e. mead, “was that nothing should be left in its natural state”!2 the descriptions of the mediaeval cooks’ activities, therefore, obviously contribute to the realism of the texts they appear in: chaucer’s guildsmen’s cook is wholly credible, and one can sympathize with the situation of the demanding franklin’s cook, such demands being very much the order of the day if we are to believe gower, who, in his sixth book, analyses the “delicat glutton” whose chief delight consists in spicy or fancy meats, and whose thanks, therefore, are measured only by how well his cook serves his mouth. the enumeration of the different culinary operations these literary cooks must perform is likewise convincing, above all, when compared with real-life recipes and household account books. chaucer’s pardoner, as was mentioned, enumerates the different pulverising operations, the turning of “substaunce into accident”, as he puts it humorously, operations with which the cook-pilgrim is likewise familiar, since we are specifically informed that he was a dab hand at morteux, (a boiled dish of finely ground meat or fish in broth), and “blankmanger” (ground capon with rice and almond milk). spices are also to be associated with chaucer’s cook’s art, a culinary tendency already adumbrated in the franklin’s cook’s “tart and pungent” sauce! as jill mann points out, “the portrait of chaucer’s cook is almost entirely constructed on the basis of his estate,”3 although the “mormal” on his sins endows him with a certain individuality. the 1.mead, op. cit., p. 74. 2.ibid., p. 53. 3.jill mann: chaucer and mediaeval estates satire, p. 168 27 profession in general is, of course, being satirised by harry bailley, as is obvious by his derogatory references to warmed-up pies, cheap substitute fillings, and the presence of flies in his shop. the realism of such references is borne out by contemporary ordinances concerning the sale of putrid food, the passing off of baked beef as venison, and of rabbit as everything, by pastry-cooks, whose street cries of “hot pies, hot!” closes langland’s vivid evocation of the different strata of contemporary society assembled in his field “full of folk”, and the familiar cry undoubtedly echoes through chaucer’s affirmation that his pardoner’s wallet is full of “pardons” come “all hot from rome.” references to eating and drinking, finally, may also function in the middle english narrative as a means to spark off dramatic incident, or to help the plot to progress: the most outstanding example of this phenomenon, as mediaeval moralists were not slow to point out, being the eating of the forbidden fruit in the garden of eden, which both chaucer’s parson and his pardoner, interestingly, ascribe to gluttony rather than to disobedience: for whil that adam fasted, as i rede, he was in paradys; comments the latter in the introduction to his tale. indeed, as the anonymous author of the ancrene riwle remarks, in a similar context, “often... great things have small beginnings”. thus, for example, the weeping of dame siriz’s bitch is produced by her being dosed with pepper and mustard, and it is this small, but telling detail, that of a dog weeping like a human being, that convinces margeri of the veracity of the old woman’s cock-and-bull story of a bewitched daughter. in the fox and the wolf, the fox’s gluttony, his devouring of too many hens, produces in him such an insatiable thirst that it befogs his usual acumen, and he falls into the trap of the well, just as the ale -befuddled 28 miller allows himself to be cuckolded in the reeve’s tale. the pregnant woman’s traditional craving for certain types of food, can be used as a justification by may, in the merchant’s tale, for climbing up into the pear-tree and having an acrobatic rendez-vous there with damian. as early as geoffrey of monmouth’s historia regum britanniae (1136), a banquet affords the occasion for utherpendragon to notice ygerna, apparently for the first time, and to upset her husband by not only constantly smiling at her, and engaging her in sprightly conversation, but also by ordering plates of food to be passed to her, and by sending his attendants to her with golden goble ts of wine -and from that particular instance of love at first sight the whole arthurian legend was born! in fine, allusions to eating and drinking, then, excessively, insufficiently or idiosyncratically, may be included in middle english narrative writing for varying reasons: for moralizing purposes, for characterization purposes, to illustrate and exult the wealth of a character or a social class, to satirise a determined estate or professional group, to reflect religious customs or the flouting thereof, to lend realism to a text, or, on the contrary, to add fantasy thereto, and thus to heighten its interest, or, finally, to spark off further dramatic incident, in the fulfilling of all which functions, moreover, humour, satire and irony will often be included to endow and enliven these manducatory and bibulatory episodes with a further literary dimension. patricia shaw university of oviedo microsoft word 2020article_5_carrillo.docx author, selim25 (2020): 121–172. issn 1132-631x / doi: https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.25.2020.121-172 copying strategies of late middle english scribes: hand(s) and language(s) of two 15th-century manuscripts maría josé carrillo-linares university of huelva the purpose of this paper is to compare two 15th-century manuscripts, cambridge, university library kk.1.3 and oxford, bodleian library hatton 50, focusing on both paleographical and linguistic aspects. samples from different sections of both manuscripts have been transcribed from either the original manuscripts or digital photographic reproductions. each word and morpheme have been lexico-grammatically tagged to evaluate the scribe’s linguistic behaviour with respect to spelling, phonology, and morphology. paleographical and linguistic data to support the two main conclusions of the study are offered. with this analysis, i conclude that both manuscripts are, almost certainly, copied by the same person. comparison of the different copying strategies generated by this single scribe allows us to achieve a better understanding of the written material in which middle english has been preserved. keywords: linguistic variation; middle english; paleography; scribes 1. introduction oxford, bodleian library, hatton 50 (henceforth hatt50) contains a copy of the prose brut chronicle. the whole manuscript is written on parchment with a total number of 131 folios and paginated in modern pencil. the marginal headings are in red and there are catchwords at the end and beginning of each quire. folio 1 has an illuminated initial ‘t’and is decorated with a border in the left, top, and bottom margins. in the running text there are two-line initials in red ink. a rubricated explicit on f. 130v reads: “here endith a book callyd brute of the croniculis of englonde made & compilid by notabill clerkis of all the 122 maría josé carrillo-linares actis & dedis of kyngis þat evir were in this londe to take exsaumpill what fil to fore our dayes”. according to mooney & matheson (2003: 364–368), this manuscript is the product of three different scribes.1 the first one is the so-called beryn scribe,2 who copied folios 2r–17v (quires 1 and 2), 84v–107r (second half of quire 10 and quires 11, 12, and 13), and 119r–130v (second half of quire 15 and quire 16). two other scribes supplied the rest of the text: hand b copied folios 18r– 25v (quire 3) and 80r–84v (half of quire 10). hand c was responsible for folios 26r–79v (quires 4–9) and 108r–119r (quire 14 and half of quire 15). the beryn scribe took over from each of the other two scribes in the middle of a page (f. 84v) or in the middle of a quire (f. 119r). as it stands today, cambridge, university library, kk.1.3 (henceforth culkk.1.3) is a volume rebound in 1976. part 2 of one original volume was broken into four parts. at present, parts 10, 11, and 12 are bound together. part 10 includes a copy of john lydgate’s life of our lady, and it is believed to have been copied by the beryn scribe (mooney & matheson 2003: 347–348). part 11 is a copy of thomas hoccleve’s regiment of princes and occupies seventy-nine folios. modern pencil foliation has been added in upper outer corners on every recto. in both part 10 and 11 the layout of the text is similar, and the intended two-line word initials are left unfinished. in part 11 some of these initials have been added in black ink but most of them have not. part 10 contains thirty to thirty-four lines to a page, while part 11 pages have thirty-four or thirty-five lines to a page. the watermarks3 in part 10 are a dragon (pp. 59, 60, 63, 93) and a bull’s head (p. 3). in part 11 the watermark is a bull, but different from that found in part 10, p. 3. part 12 contains two items: (i) ‘vita trium regium colonie’ in a small 15th-century hand, and (ii) ‘versus barnardi’. this part has different watermarks and layout of the text. mosser & mooney (2014: 72–73) suggest that the hand of the regiment of princes in culkk.1.3 (part 11) is hand b of the hatt50 copy of the brut chronicle. they make this claim on paleographical grounds and they state that the spelling evidence is inconclusive. accepting that in both hatt50 and culkk.1.3 the same two scribes (the beryn scribe and hand b) were copying 1 see also summary catalogue, vol. 2, part ii, p. 845. 2 mooney & matheson (2003) characterised this scribe as such because he copied the only extant copy of the tale of beryn in northumberland, alnwick castle 455. 3 mosser (2010) describes watermarks in the paper stock used by the beryn scribe, who copied part 10 in this manuscript. copying strategies of late middle english scribes 123 different sections of the same manuscript production, they use this fact as part of their evidence to claim that the beryn scribe worked in recurrent collaboration with other scribes in a commercial centre in london to produce multiple copies of the same work. they also conclude that hand b “is easily influenced by forms in his exemplars, and that the occasional resort to spellings associated with the repertoire of the beryn scribe suggests that some of these exemplars were prepared by him” (2014: 74). these authors offer no evidence for this claim. the aim of this paper is not to reach any conclusions about when, where, or under what circumstances 15th-century scribes undertook their tasks, but to analyse these two particular manuscripts, focusing both on paleographical issues and on the linguistic features of hand b of hatt50 and of the hand of culkk.1.3 (part 11). by first examining the paleographical details, we can investigate the claim of a common scribe for both texts. in the event that we are indeed dealing with the same hand, we may compare the scribe’s copying strategies when working with two works written in different styles, with different origins, and different language features. such studies will allow us to achieve a better understanding of the written material in which middle english has been preserved. the actual and final result of the copying process, that is, the text as we have found it, with a particular layout, writing conventions, or language features is the product of the interaction of its copyist with the material portrayed in his source text or ‘exemplar’. a medieval scribe had to decide how much of his exemplar he wanted to preserve in the same shape: whether he wanted to use the same calligraphic style, formatting and layout, or language of his original copy, or, on the contrary, alter some or all of these aspects. as for the linguistic aspects, mcintosh (1974: 61 [1989: 92]) proposed the three strategies that a scribe might adopt: (1) copy literatim; (2) ‘translate’ the dialect of the exemplar into the copyist’s own dialect; (3) partly copy, partly ‘translate’. the distance between the original copy of any work and the actual one that has come to us is determined by the number of intermediate copies between them, and the time elapsed between the original and the extant copy. when production increased considerably during the 14th and 15th centuries, successive copying might result in texts with multiple language layers. the consistency in language features depends entirely on the scribe’s abilities to ‘translate’ into his more spontaneous linguistic usage. however, in many cases the scribes were familiar with multiple forms which they might have adopted into their active linguistic repertoire as a consequence of making several copies 124 maría josé carrillo-linares of the same work,4 generating thus diverse texts with apparent inconsistent language. if the texts were in verse form, the copyist had other textual constraints since, additionally, he had to deal with rhyme, metre, or alliteration. translating then became more problematic since alterations could produce disruption to the metrical scheme. in any case, as benskin & laing (1981: 56) pointed out, “a copyist may shift from one type of treatment to another, and a transitional drift from type c to type b is in fact very common”. the copying environment in the early 15th century has been a topic of debate. doyle & parkes (1978: 170–174) found no evidence to indicate that most copies produced in the early 15th century were the work of a scriptorium. instead, independent craftsmen were hired when required, and some of these scribes might have worked outside the trade. christianson (1989: 96) argues that “instead of labouring in large work spaces, many artisans may have worked independently in small quarters, not in concert in a single shop, and a book was therefore created on many different sites”. taylor (2003: 2) even suggests that “if a scribe wanted to produce a large book in a hurry, he could farm out sections to his neighbours, or call on one of them to complete the rubrication or decoration”. the scribes copying in the 15th century undertook different tasks during their career. some of them can be identified while many others remain anonymous. mooney, horobin & stubbs’ late medieval english scribes website stores data with the aim of identifying scribes who copied major literary works. in their website, they set “an image of each scribal hand in each medieval or early modern manuscript of the english writings of five principal authors of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries: william langland, geoffrey chaucer, john gower, john trevisa and thomas hoccleve.” some of these hands seem to have been responsible for the copying of other works outside this canon. however, the evidence in the database suggests that some of the scribes specialised in some particular authors’ works. it also implies collaborative work among the scribes. horobin (2009: 193) states that the so-called edmund-fremund scribe specialised in the works of lydgate and was based in a commercial workshop at the abbey of bury st edmund, although this same scribe was also responsible for a copy of chaucer’s canterbury tales. some other scribes were very prolific, and although there are several extant manuscripts of their production, a fact 4 for a study of this circumstance in the writings of the beryn scribe, see carrillolinares & williamson (2019) and carrillo-linares & williamson (2020). copying strategies of late middle english scribes 125 which points towards this specialisation, they also copied other popular works.5 horobin & mooney (2004) argue that the scribe of two major manuscripts of the canterbury tales6 is also responsible for the copying of one of the manuscripts of piers plowman b text.7 mooney (2006: 98–99) claims that one adam pinkhurst was ‘chaucer’s scribe’ and that he was responsible for the copying of the ellesmere and hengwrt manuscripts of the canterbury tales, one manuscript gower’s confessio amantis,8 a fragment of a single leaf of chaucer’s troilus and criseyde,9 another single leaf of the canterbury tales in culkk.1.3 (part 20), an acephalous copy of chaucer’s boece,10 a copy of langland’s piers plowman b text,11 some prose tracts, including wycliffite,12 and several other documents.13 on other occasions, groups of scribes sharing some paleographical features are said to have worked together, such as is evidenced by the group of manuscripts attributed to the so-called ‘hooked-g scribes’, who are believed to have undertaken three copies of chaucer’s canterbury tales,14 four of gower’s 5 scribe d in cambridge, trinity college r.3.2 (a copy of gower’s confessio amantis) was identified by doyle & parkes (1978). he seems to be also responsible for the copies of this work found in: oxford, corpus christi college 67; oxford, bodleian library, bodley 902; oxford, christ church, 148; new york, columbia university library, plimpton 265; london, british library, egerton 1991; oxford, bodleian library, bodley 294; cambridge, trinity college r.3.2; princeton university library, taylor 5. besides, he also copied two manuscripts of the canterbury tales: london, british library, harley 7334, and oxford, corpus christi college 198; one manuscript of piers plowman: london, university library, v.88; and one of trevisa’s de proprietatibus rerum: london, british library, additional 27944. 6 san marino, huntington library ms el 26 c.9 (ellesmere); aberystwyth, national library of wales ms peniarth 392d (hengwrt). 7 cambridge, trinity college b.15.17. 8 cambridge, trinity college r.3.2 (581), fols. 9r–32v. 9 hatfield house, herts., cecil papers, box s/1. 10 aberystwyth, national library of wales ms peniarth 393d. 11 see note 7 above. 12 dublin, trinity college 244. 13 see warner (2018: 32) for a detailed and comprehensive description of these manuscripts. 14 new haven, yale university beinecke library takamiya 24; cambridge, trinity college r.3.3; oxford, bodleian rawlinson poet. 223. 126 maría josé carrillo-linares confessio amantis,15 four of lydgate’s fall of princes,16 two of lydgate’s troy book,17 one of trevisa’s polychronicon,18 one of chaucer’s troilus and criseyde,19 as well as three separated fragments of a single manuscript of the fall of princes20 (mosser & mooney 2016). warner (2018) challenges some of the attributions made by mooney and her collaborators of london literary scribes, providing a sharp critique of the methodology they have employed to come to their conclusions. other scribes copied multiple works from different origins and sources, different types of language employing a number of different dialectal types in a single manuscript. an example of this is the scribe of oxford, bodleian library, digby 84, who produced, as a whole, a text with a language with multiple layers (laing 2000). the beryn scribe was responsible for copying a number of popular contemporary works. these include several manuscripts of the prose brut chronicle,21 some of the stories of the canterbury tales22 and the unique tale of beryn,23 the oxford fragments of canterbury tales,24 one text of the main version of the prick of conscience, a version of the chronicle of london, a copy of chaucer’s parlement of foules, statues and ordinances for the army by henry 15 oxford, bodleian library, lyell 31; london, british library, harley 7184; oxford, magdalen college, lat. 213; washington, folger library v. b. 29. 16 london, british library, additional 21410; london, lambeth palace 256; oxford, bodleian library hatton 2; new haven, yale university beinecke library, takamiya 30. 17 london, british library, royal 18 d. vi; oxford, exeter college 129. 18 princeton, university library, taylor 6. (1). 19 london, british library, harley 3943. 20 new york, columbia university library, plimpton 255; philadelphia, free library, lewis t.15/487; new haven, yale university beinecke library, takamiya 79. 21 he is responsible for two manuscripts containing complete copies of the prose brut chronicle: london, british library harley 1337; london, british library harley 6251; and oxford, bodleian library rawlinson c. 901. he also wrote lengthy portions of the brut chronicle in three other manuscripts: ann arbor, university of michigan, hatcher library, 225; oxford, bodleian library, hatton 50; and oxford, bodleian library, tanner 11. 22 alnwick castle, duke of northumberland, 455; princeton firestone library, 100. 23 alnwick castle, duke of northumberland, 455. 24 rosenbach 1084/2 and manchester, john rylands library english 63. copying strategies of late middle english scribes 127 v,25 and a version of john lydgate’s life of our lady.26 carrillo-linares & williamson (2020) consider that “having different models for each of his productions, he [the beryn scribe] was led in each of them to produce a language with different layers of different depths”, even if there are certain idiosyncratic features which are consistent across his productions. it is my understanding that this same principle could be applied to many other 15th-century scribes who made multiple copies of diverse works. to determine how typical these copying practices were among professional copyists requires investigation of other cases of manuscripts in the same hand and comparison of their language. the evidence collected by mooney, horobin & stubbs, and gathered in the late medieval english scribes website, points to the fact that, although some scribes have been ascribed only works of the same kind or by the same author, there are many others who seem to have copied pieces with less in common. the linguistic analysis of texts which are the result of multiple layers of copying is, at the very least, daring, when it comes to reach general conclusions about the state of the language in the middle english period. this is essentially so because of the process of transmission and the nature of the resulting output. it is essential to understand the underlying facts and issues to be able to interpret the data accurately. it is not always possible to figure out how much of a text has been inherited from an exemplar and how much is the reflection of the scribe’s language. minority forms in a text can be interpreted in various ways, since they can be seen as relics carried over from the exemplar, or, on the contrary, as the spontaneous usage of the scribe. this paper, along with my previous work on the topic, aims to contributing some pieces to fill some of the gaps in the massive jigsaw puzzle that is the history of english. 2. data and methodology the sources of the data for this paper are mainly the manuscripts hatt50 and culkk.1.3, complemented with data from other manuscripts whose copying has been attributed to the beryn scribe, as he participates in the copying of hatt50 and culkk.1.3. for hatt50, samples from all portions copied by the three different scribes have been transcribed to disk. transcription was made 25 all these are found in a single volume in oxford, st john’s college 57. 26 cambridge, university library, kk.1.3 (part 10). 128 maría josé carrillo-linares from either the original manuscripts or digital photographic reproductions.27 from the transcribed texts i tagged each word and morpheme lexicogrammatically in order to be able to evaluate the scribe’s linguistic behaviour with respect to spelling, phonology, and morphology. lexico-grammatical tagging involves adding a label comprising a lexical element and/or a grammatical element to the words found in the manuscript text. all the features recorded were examined and assessed comparing occurrences in all the samples. i created linguistic profiles (henceforth lps) using an extended version of the questionnaire in the electronic version of a linguistic atlas of late medieval english (henceforth e-lalme) to include some further items that seemed relevant for the copying practice of the scribe. the forms and features displayed in the lps have been compared, and for the present paper a smaller selection of items for the analysis is presented.28 as a point of reference for occurrence of 27 i am grateful to the staff in the manuscripts reading room at cambridge university library for their help during my visits to the library (31 october to 5 november 2017 and 21 october to 14 november 2019) and for allowing me to transcribe from manuscript kk.1.3 and to take images from it; likewise, to the staff in oxford, bodleian weston library for letting me take photos from their manuscripts (6–10 august 2018) and providing me with digital copies. reproduction of images from ms hatton 50, ff. 18r–25v have been kindly granted by the bodleian libraries, the university of oxford. images from cambridge university library kk.1.3 are reproduced by kind permission of the syndics of cambridge university library. 28 tables including eighty-two items and features have been produced form the lps for the analysis presented here. these items are organised in various categories: (1) common words including the items again, against, any, are, before, both, brother, church, daughter, death, does, each, either, fell, fire, gave, goes, have, if, it, his, land, many, mother, much, neither...nor, not, one, people, saw, shall, should, strength, such, than, thee, the-one, the-other, their, them, then, these, they, thou, through, thy, two, upon, was, were, when, where, which, while, wight, will, witen, world, ye, year, you, your. (2) grammatical features, including ‘substantive plural’, ‘3rd person singular present indicative’, ‘plural present indicative’, ‘weak past’, ‘weak past participle’, ‘present participle’, ‘past participle prefix’, ‘infinitive ending’, ‘negation with ne’. (3) items related to spelling or phonology, including prefixes -able, -ly, and -ase (for -ace), combination of syllables as <atte> (for at the), spelling of <v> for etymological /w/, use of <v> or <u> for non-initial /v/, preference for <sh> or <sch> for sound / ∫ /, ‘h’ dropping, non-etymological ‘h’ insertion, spelling reflexes for oe /x/, the distribution of ‘w’, the sequence ‘wh’. copying strategies of late middle english scribes 129 some of the forms in the resulting lps, this study draws on those originally collected for lalme. these can be accessed on-line through the ‘electronic version’. in discussions of the dialectal character of certain items, i refer to the e-lalme ‘dot maps’ which show the geographical distribution of forms collected in the lps. to supplement the dot maps (henceforth dm) and access more diatopic detail, i have also used the ‘user-defined map’ function available in e-lalme. this paper has two main sections. (1) the first one is essentially descriptive and devoted to paleographical details, and its aim is to compare the scripts in both manuscripts to attest the scribal identity of both copies. for this section, data for various letter formations have been collected. these figurae for letters are considered in isolation as well as in context, but in the examples provided in each case the whole word in which a letter occurs is shown. a parallel selection from both texts showing the formation of the letters where they occur in equivalent contexts, i.e. in the same sequence of letters (same word) is given in the appendices. (2) the second section provides details and interpretation of the selected linguistic forms and features. 3. paleographical details according to mooser & mooney (2014: 72–73), “[t]he hand of the regiment [in culkk.1.3 (part 11)] appears, on paleographical grounds, to be that of hand b in the hatton 50 copy of the brut.” these authors only point out the similarities of “aspects and of formation of the letters w, secretary g, d with looped ascender, y which is frequently dotted and has a sharp turning to the right at base of the descender, and upper case b.” since these features are far too few and general and shared by many scribes in the 15th century, a closer and more detailed look at the general aspect, duct, and letter formation exhibited in both texts is required to draw more accurate conclusions about the scribe/s of both pieces. at first sight, there are certainly many similarities between both hands, although, as mosser & mooney (2014: 73–74) also state, “[i]n writing the prose brut, this scribe uses a looser, less formal hand than when writing verse in hoccleve’s regiment.” a description of some of the isolated letters in both manuscripts will be carried out first.29 29 images corresponding to the descriptions of the letters are included in appendices 1 and 2 for culkk.1.3 (part 11) and hatt50 respectively. 130 maría josé carrillo-linares 3.1. description of the figurae in cambridge university library kk.1.3 (part 11) and oxford, bodleian library hatton 50 cambridge university library kk.1.3 (part 11) oxford, bodleian library hatton 50 <a> two-compartment ‘a’ is used throughout. the shape varies slightly but is consistent. the same shape occurs both in initial position, e.g. <atte> f. 9v, <agoo> f. 5r, <as> f. 5v; and in medial position, e.g. <grave> f. 5r, <shall> f. 5v, <make> f. 1r. two-compartment ‘a’ is used throughout. the shape varies somewhat within the limits of consistency, e.g. <aftir> f. 18v, <agayne> f. 23r, <as> f. 19r in initial position; and <have> f. 24v, <schall> f. 19r, <make> f. 22r in medial position. copying strategies of late middle english scribes 131 cambridge university library kk.1.3 (part 11) oxford, bodleian library hatton 50 <d> there are three formations for this letter: (1) the commonest shape is looped; the lower lobe takes different forms being sometimes quite angular, e.g. <desire> f. 2r, and other times more rounded, e.g. <tolde> f. 2r. formed with upper loop curving back just over the lower lobe. the looped ‘d’ is used throughout the whole text. in final position a long descending flourish is sometimes produced, e.g. <heed> f. 2v. (2) another formation which results in something similar to a looped ‘d’ is found, for instance, in <goode> f. 3r, where instead of a loop to the left, the scribe produces an ascender that turns to the right and comes down to join the right side of the ascender. a variation of this type has an unfinished descender which does not join down, e.g. <glade> f. 2r, or without descender, e.g. <doun> f. 1v. (3) textura ‘d’, e.g. <wade> f. 2v in medial position, and <dure> f. 1r in initial position. the last two occur essentially in the first two or three folios of the poem and thereafter the looped one is preferred. it is looped and the lower lobe is quite angular, e.g. <done> f. 23r. formed with upper loop curving back just over the lower lobe. used throughout the whole text. in final position a flourish is occasionally produced, e.g. <arayid> f. 23r. 132 maría josé carrillo-linares cambridge university library kk.1.3 (part 11) oxford, bodleian library hatton 50 <g> there are two types: (1) a two-compartment ‘g’, e.g. <grave> f. 5r (initial position), <þought> f. 2r (medial position). (2) a kind of secretary ‘g’ with a horizontal cross-bar, e.g. <agoo> f. 5r (initial position), <almyghty> f. 11v, (medial position), <being> f. 13r (final position). secretary type with a horizontal cross-bar, e.g. <grete> f. 18r (initial position), <agayne> f. 23r, (medial position), <fiȝting> f. 23r (final position). it seems to be a rapidly-made form with the left arm curving to the left and the cross-bar joining both arms. occasionally, a tail stroke of the left hand joins both stokes as well, e.g. <gouernyd> f. 18r. <h> has an arch head stroke which can be: (1) completely close joining up with the tail stroke, e.g. <wiche> f. 5v. (2) open and neatly executed, e.g. <with> f. 2v. the tail stroke usually flicks to the left beneath the body of the graph, e.g. <with> f. 2v, <hyt> f. 3r, <his> f. 1r; and, occasionally, it is just a neat vertical stroke, e.g. <schall> f. 3r, <wiche> f. 5v. has an arch head stroke which can be: (1) completely close, joining up with the tail stroke, e.g. <othir> f. 18r. (2) it can be open, e.g. <have> f. 21r. the tail stroke usually flicks to the left beneath the body of the graph, e.g. <have> f. 21r, <might> f. 18r, <hem> f. 19r; or it is just a neat vertical stroke, e.g. <othir> f. 18r, <hem> f. 19v. copying strategies of late middle english scribes 133 cambridge university library kk.1.3 (part 11) oxford, bodleian library hatton 50 <r> the scribe uses two types of <r> which are very similar: (1) it resembles a modern <r> made with two strokes: a ‘z’ shaped one and a horizontal short bar lined up with the upper part of the ‘z’ stroke, e.g. <aftir> f. 2v (final position), <gretter> f. 5r (medial position), <renegate> f. 5r (initial position). (2) ‘z’ shaped, sometimes with a flicked serif, e.g. <aright> f. 2r, <brente> f. 5r (medial position), <gretter> f. 5r (final position), <relievid> f. 4v (initial position). additionally, in initial position there is a third type: (3) capitalised ‘r’ is often produced, e.g. <riche> f. 4r, <remedy> f. 4v. the scribe uses three very similar types: (1) it resembles a modern <r> made with two strokes and sometimes with a flourish, e.g. <brothir> f. 23r. it occurs mainly in word-final position, although, at times, it is used in medial position, e.g. <were> f. 24r, and only rarely in initial position, e.g. <rydyn> f. 24r. (2) ‘z’ shape, with a horizontal short bar lined up with the upper part of the ‘z’ stroke, e.g. <her> f. 23r, <aftir> f. 18v. (3) ‘z’ shape without the bar, in medial position, e.g. <brothir> f. 23r, <gouernyd> f. 18r; and occasionally in initial position, e.g. <robbid> f. 20r. additionally, in initial position there is another type: (4) capitalised ‘r’ is used in places where modern convention would not use a capital letter, e.g. <reste> f. 22v, <rede> f. 25r. 134 maría josé carrillo-linares cambridge university library kk.1.3 (part 11) oxford, bodleian library hatton 50 <s> the scribe makes use of two types: (1) kidney-shaped, which is the only one used in final position, e.g. <is> f. 2r. (2) a long ‘s’ used in medial position, e.g. <also> f. 7v; initially in a word the preferred form is also a long ‘s’. additionally, in word initial position: (3) capital ‘s’ is used throughout in places that are not conventionally capitalised in present-day usage, e.g. <skynner> f. 7v. the capital ‘s’ occurs also in word initial at the beginning of a line, e.g. <shal> f. 5v. the scribe makes use of two types: (1) kidney-shaped is used consistently in final position, e.g. <as> f. 19r, and occasionally in initial position, e.g. <sone> f. 18r. (2) a long ‘s’ is always used in medial position, e.g. <aȝenste> f. 24v, <resseyuyd> f. 21v. it is also found in initial position, e.g. <stronge> f. 18v, <schulde> f. 22r. additionally, in initial position: (3) capital ‘s’ is used throughout in places that are not conventionally capitalised in present-day usage, e.g. <shal> f. 19r. <w> modern-like graph. the only variation found is in the length of the approach stroke when it occurs initially, which sometimes extends somewhat down, e.g. <were> f. 2r; and in others it is almost inexistent, e.g. <was> f. 5v. in medial or final position it joins up with the previous letter, e.g. <power> f. 5r, <thow> f. 3r. modern-like graph. the only variation found is in the length of the approach stroke when it occurs initially, which sometimes extends downwards, e.g. <were> f. 24r, <was> f. 18r, and in others it is almost inexistent, e.g. <was> f. 23r, <were> f. 23r, <worlde> f. 21r. the same applies for occurrences in medial or final position, e.g. <power> f. 18r, <thow> f. 24r. copying strategies of late middle english scribes 135 cambridge university library kk.1.3 (part 11) oxford, bodleian library hatton 50 <y> usually shaped with a vertical stroke for the left arm of the letter, and a curved limb for the right whose descender continues as a tail. it is frequently dotted, e.g. <any> f. 5v, but not always, e.g. <any> f. 2v. its appearance is the same in medial or final position, e.g. <almyghty> f. 11v, <ȝyf> f. 6r. it does not occur in initial position. usually shaped with a vertical stroke for the left arm of the letter, and a curved limb for the right whose descender continues as a tail. it is frequently dotted, e.g. <any> f. 19r, but not always, e.g. <aryvyd> f. 19v. it has a similar look in medial or final position. it does not occur in initial position. <v> in initial position the approach stroke of ‘v’ is shaped with a small tag at the top of the left limb, e.g. <vnbuxum> f. 15r. this shape is also found in medial position: e.g. <have> f. 5r, <grave> f. 5r. in both initial and medial position there is another type which resembles the shape of the <b> the scribe uses, although it is less common. the left limb is at times slightly more oblique than that of the <b>, e.g. <have> f. 4r, <be-leve> f. 5r, <vnto> f. 4r. in initial position it has a long approach stroke, e.g. <vppon> f. 22r. in medial position there is another type of <v> which resembles the shape of the <b>. the left limb is at times slightly more oblique than that of the <b>, e.g. <have> f. 19v. 136 maría josé carrillo-linares cambridge university library kk.1.3 (part 11) oxford, bodleian library hatton 50 <b> occurs in both initial and medial position with the same shape, e.g. <busy> f. 4v, <habundaunce> f. 4r, <be-leve> f. 5r. occurs in both initial and medial position with the same shape, e.g. <brothir> f. 23r, <abyde> f. 22r. in initial position a capitalised ‘b’ is common in places where present-day usage would not require a capital, e.g. <brothir> f. 23r, <batellis> f. 23r. <e> in final position the scribe uses two types: (1) a present-day-like one. (2) a round ‘e’, e.g. <grave> f. 5r, <brede> f. 5r, <done> f. 7v and <have> f. 4r, <atte> f. 9v, though the round ‘e’ occurs less often. in other positions the round ‘e’ is rarely used but it occurs occasionally: e.g. <resoun> f. 3r. in all positions the scribe uses a present-day-like ‘e’, e.g. <were> f. 23r, <euer> f. 21v. copying strategies of late middle english scribes 137 cambridge university library kk.1.3 (part 11) oxford, bodleian library hatton 50 <þ> is shaped with a vertical stroke with a very short lead-in or even non-existent stroke for the left arm, and a curved limb joined to the left arm without leaving any space, e.g. <þought>. it occurs only in initial and final position including abbreviated words, and never in the middle of a word. it is essentially used for pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions with the exception of the lexical item <think> and all its derived forms <thought>, <thoughtful>, etc. which are frequently spelled with ‘þ’ rather than ‘th’. is shaped with a vertical stroke with a very short lead-in stroke for the left arm and a curved limb joined to the left arm without leaving any space, e.g. <þe> f. 24r. it occurs only in initial position and mainly at the end of a line in abbreviated words. it is primarily used for the article ‘the’ and the adverb ‘there’. <ȝ> the head of the letter is angular while its tail is curve. it is used in three contexts: (1) as an alternative for <gh>, e.g. <nouȝte> f. 5v. (2) for the sound represented by other scribes with the spelling <y>, e.g. <ȝowe> f. 7r, <ȝonge> f. 9v. (3) in words which seem to show a palatalised consonant, e.g. <aȝenste> f. 5v, <aȝeine> f. 5r. in later pages of this manuscript the shape of the yogh changes slightly and the tail curves up to the right to join the following letter, e.g. <ȝit> f. 60v. both the head of the letter and the tail are angular and the tail curves up to the right to join the following letter. it is used in three contexts. (1) as an alternative for <gh>, e.g. <fawȝte> f. 23r. (2) for the sound represented by other scribes with the spelling <y>, e.g. <ȝow> f. 24v, <ȝonge> f. 24r. (3) in words which seem to show a palatalised consonant, e.g. <ȝ^i^ftis> f. 23r, <aȝenste> f. 24v, <aȝene> f. 25v. 138 maría josé carrillo-linares 3.2 comparison of words and letters in culkk.1.3 (part 11) and hatt50 the above description of the letter forms in both manuscripts shows many similarities between the outputs of both texts. comparison of letters in exactly the same contexts also shows that the final look of a word is, in many cases, almost identical. most of the spellings selected coincide in the examples for both texts, although, as stated in section 4 below, spellings are not always the same. allowing for the fact that the scribe shows alternative shapes for some of the letters and that, as seen above, his repertoire is wider in culkk.1.3, whenever the shapes coincide there are striking similarities which would suggest that both texts shared a common scribe. there are only a few features that are not alike, and this might be due to the degree of formality of the script that, as mosser & mooney (2014) suggested, seems to be less formal in the copying of hatt50. examples of these are the formation of minims for letters <m>, <n>, and <u>. in culkk.1.3 these minims are mainly a neat vertical stroke lacking a connection to join them together and showing only a hair-line stroke. in the examples for any, ever, make, or than the minims for the letters <n>, <u>, and <m> in both texts are shown in appendix 3. in hatt50 and some examples of culkk.1.3 the writing is executed more rapidly and the minims are joined with a connecting line from the bottom of the first minim to the top of the next one, as the pen is not lifted between the minims, so that the resulting letter closely resembles a modern shape as in the examples for many, much, nor, and never. another letter shape which differs clearly in both manuscripts is the yogh. the examples in appendix 3 for year (ʒeer) and if (ʒif/ ʒyf) show that in hatt50 the tail curves up to the right to join the following letter. in culkk.1.3 the tail is curve turning to the left with no connecting stroke. however, as the copying moves on along this manuscript the shape of the yogh becomes more like the one exhibited in hatt50. in spite of these different letter shapes that seem to indicate in the case of hatt50 a rapid script, from the rest of the evidence obtained from both texts i would agree with mosser and mooney that the same scribe was responsible for both works. 4. scribe’s linguistic repertoires the aim of this section is to focus on the linguistic features of hand b in hatt50 and culkk.1.3 (part 11). the language of both texts shows differences and similarities in the use of some common forms. a close comparison of these copying strategies of late middle english scribes 139 forms is carried out to determine the degree of consistency in the scribe’s spelling system or if, on the contrary, the spelling in each case might have been determined by that of the exemplars the scribe is copying from. the type of text also might influence the scribe’s choices. by comparing forms and features in both texts and by contrasting these features with other scribes’ we aim at identifying possible copying layers. 4.1 purely orthographic conventions for the suffix ‘+able’ and word-terminating sequences ‘+ple’ and ‘+tle’, our scribe has a tendency to use either of the medial vowels <i> or <y> instead of medial <e>. in hatt50 there is a high degree of consistency and only the cases for ‘+tle’ show variation (-till 14x and -tell 24x). in culkk.1.3 (part 11) spellings with medial <i> or <y> in these sequences are more common than those with <e>, although there are also cases with final <e>, especially for ‘+ble’ (-bill 8x, -ble 8x), for ‘+tle’ (-til, 4x, -teyle 1x, -telle 1x). this manuscript also shows cases of <+dell> and <+kill> for endings ‘+dle’ and ‘+kle’. these suffixes are also spelled with medial vowels <i> or <y> by the other two scribes in hatt50. the beryn scribe uses essentially <+pill> and <+bill> and, although there are also cases of <+till> / <+tyll>, the preferred form for ‘+tle’ is <+tell>. hand c shows the same preferences and he also has <+tell> as the preferred form for ‘+tle’. the coincidences in the choices of the three scribes of hatt50 could have an origin in the exemplar for the brut chronicle. there is no way to know whether the three scribes were using the same exemplar, although it seems that whatever text/s they were copying from it/they belonged to the same family of manuscripts.30 from a comparative analysis of these forms and features in the three scribes’ productions, it seems likely that they shared the same exemplar given the many common features in their spellings. however, hatt50 hand b, when copying culkk.1.3 (part 11), shares to some extent those features which might suggest that they are not only inherited from the exemplar but also part of the scribe’s personal repertoire. the beryn scribe when copying culkk.1.3 (part 10) also uses the same suffixes as those used when copying hatt50. if all the three scribes involved in the copying of hatt50 had a similar training or 30 matheson (1998) identifies different groups and families for all the manuscripts of the brut chronicle and hatt50 is parallel to some others and grouped together with them into what he calls ‘the abbreviated version to 1419: group b’. 140 maría josé carrillo-linares geographical origin this could be an explanation for the similarities in these spelling choices.31 for the sequences ‘+ace’, ‘+ice’, and ‘+ece’ there is also a strong tendency to use <s> instead of <c>. in the sample from hatt50, there are 6x of words in which these sequences are found with <s> and 4x with <c>, while culkk.1.3 (part 11) has 14x with <c> and 9x with <s>. it seems from this evidence that there is no significant preference for either of them, even if <s> has a slightly higher incidence. comparison with the outputs of the other scribes in hatt50 shows that the tendency to use <s> is higher in the sections copied by the beryn scribe, although he also uses <c>, while hand c uses either <s> or <c> in equal proportions. when copying culkk.1.3 (part 10), the beryn scribe tends to use <c> more often than <s>. it is possible that the exemplar/s for the brut chronicle had this feature and that all the scribes involved in the copying had both forms in their personal repertoires, since using one or the other does not imply any phonological variation, being a matter of written convention. for intervocalic /v/ in hatt50 the commonest spelling for hand b is <v> (50x), being 83.3 per cent of the cases, as against <u> (10x) with a percentage of usage of 16.6. this proportion gets inverted in words where there is an abbreviation of the syllable <ver>. in those cases, <u> is used in 86.9 per cent of the cases while the percentage of use of <v> is 13 per cent. the figures are similar in culkk.1.3 (part 11) where <v> occurs in 68.9 per cent of the cases with eighty instances in the sample, and <u> occurs in 31 per cent of the cases on thirty-six occasions. conversely, in abbreviated contexts <u> represents 77.2 per cent and <v> 22.7 per cent. the other scribes in hatt50 also follow the same convention of using <v> rather than <u>, although the beryn scribe is more consistent than hand b as he uses <v> in 100 per cent of the non-abbreviated occurrences, and hand c in 95.5 per cent of the non-abbreviated syllables. the percentage of usage of <v> in culkk.1.3 (part 10) by the beryn scribe is very high as well (93.4%). in the 15th century using <u> for /v/ was commoner than using <v>. in this respect these three scribes seem to be following similar conventions. although it is not impossible that working independently, and in different places, the three scribes could have shared this feature, it is more likely that it should come either from the copying of works where this was the ordinary practice or from having a similar training. 31 although there is no data in e-lalme for the geographical distribution of these suffixes. copying strategies of late middle english scribes 141 the plural of nouns has very similar outputs in both manuscripts, although the percentages are not identical. in hatt50 plural is marked by <-is> in 92 per cent of the plural nouns, while <-ys> represents only 6.5 per cent, and <-s> 1.4 per cent. in culkk.1.3 (part 11) the commonest suffix is also <-is> comprising 45 per cent of the endings, followed by <-ys> with a 38.4 per cent. in this text <-es> occurs in certain words and it represents 12.1 per cent, and <-s> is the plural suffix in 4.3 per cent of the nouns. these endings are common and widely used by many scribes in the 15th century. the spelling for words that originally had postvocalic /x/ varies considerably and this scribe has two main alternatives: <gh>, which represents 57.5 per cent of the instances (61x) in hatt50 and 60.3 per cent (102x) in culkk.1.3 (part 11); and <ȝ>, which occurs in 31.1 per cent (33x) of the cases in hatt50 and in 39.6 per cent (67x) in culkk.1.3 (part 11). besides, in hatt50 there are eleven instances of <h> and one of <g>. the usual practice for this feature in the other two scribes in hatt50 differs from that of hand b. the beryn scribe has a clear preference for <ȝ> and he uses it in all the instances. hand c has a slight preference for <gh> over <ȝ>. his percentage of usage is almost identical to that of hand b (58.4% of the cases are spelled with <gh>). the beryn scribe in culkk.1.3 (part 10) also uses <ȝ> in 97.6 per cent of the cases, which might indicate that that spelling is the form he deployed from his own repertoire. the evidence suggests that for hand b, there is no unique way to portray the reflexes of post-vocalic /x/, and he seems to be comfortable with the forms he produces, whether they were originally in his exemplars or not. there is also another spelling characteristic which is highly marked in hatt50 but which occurs only sporadically in culkk.1.3 (part 11). for the palatal fricative sound / ∫ / in hatt50 the scribe invariably uses <sch> (73x), while in culkk.1.3 (part 11) most of the time (77x) the spelling is <sh>, with <sch> occurring only 15x. this might suggest that in the exemplar from which he was copying the usual spelling was <sh>, and that <sch> might have been a more spontaneous variant. the beryn scribe in the hatt50 sample shows only one occurrence of <sch> against the 127 cases of <sh>, and in culkk.1.3 (part 10) there are no occurrences of this spelling at all. conversely, hand c in hatt50 uses <sch> 206 times in the sample and <sh> only in eight words. for this feature, if the three scribes were copying from the same exemplar, they made different choices. if we apply the majority rule, we should conclude that the spelling for this sound in the exemplar would have been <sch>, since two out of three copyists prefer that spelling. however, there is no way to be certain 142 maría josé carrillo-linares from the extant evidence, and one cannot draw a conclusion from this item in isolation. 4.2 possible phonological realisation with spelling variants although it is not a majority feature in the texts, our scribe uses <v> and <w> indiscriminately in some words with me /w/: e.g. <vyse> / <wyse> / <wise> or <vight> / <wyght> / <wight> in culkk.1.3 (part 11), and <wortimere> / <vortimere> in hatt50. likewise, there is some instability in the use of <wh> and <w> for me /w/ or reflexes of oe /hw/ in both texts, since spellings such as <whortegere> alternate with <wortteger> in hatt50, and in culkk.1.3 (part 11) <where> alternates with <were>. the item what is spelled <wat> 9x in hatt50, and the spellings for wine and white are <whin> and <wiȝte> or <wyhit> respectively. the forms and spellings for which in both texts are consistent. hatt50 shows <wiche> 6x, <wyche> 2x, and <the wyche> 1x, while culkk.1.3 (part 11) has <wiche> 25x, <wich> 1x, and <wych> 1x. the spelling for whereshows some differences in both texts: in hatt50 <were-> occurs 8x, and <where-> 7x. in culkk.1.3 (part 11), on the contrary, there are no cases in the sample of <were->, only <where-> is to be found (13x). the item when also shows variation but it is more stable in culkk.1.3 (part 11), where only <wh-> forms occur. in hatt50, however, there are several different forms: <when> 33x, <wen> 5x, <whan> 4x, <wan> 3x, <when> 1x, and <whan> 1x. this manuscript also attests several forms for the past plural of be including <where>. the past singular is mostly <was>, but there is one instance of <whas>. for the item while there are also some alternative spellings such as <wyle> 2x, <while> 1x, and <wylis> 1x. all this evidence suggests lack of aspiration in the sequence <wh> in most words, and lack of the bilabial sound in words like <holsom> (wholesome). in the words found in the samples both features were very widespread in the 15th century and the possible pronunciation that these spellings imply were the ones that eventually became standardised. they are not helpful for identifying the scribe’s provenance. the other scribes of hatt50 do not evidence this feature to the same extent as hand b. the beryn scribe only tends to spell certain words with <v>, for example <vomman> for woman, and when copying culkk.1.3 (part 10) there is also a case of <vombe> for womb, while the rest of the words with initial /w/ are always spelled with <w>. for hand c in the hatt50 sample, only one instance of this feature has been found, and the evidence is very weak, since it is a proper name (<wortigere> for <vortigere>) and for names the scribes’ behaviour could be copying strategies of late middle english scribes 143 disparate; if that was the form he encountered in his exemplar, it is likely that he decided not to change it, even if he had a more stable system for this feature than hand b. instability of /h/. the scribe’s spelling in both texts suggests that he might have been an /h/ dropper. there are alternative spellings for words with initial ‘h’, e.g. omage (homage) and abite (habit) in hatt50, and eresie (heresy), ole (hole), abit (habit) in culkk.1.3 (part 11). there are also cases of unetymological <h> such as his or hys (is) and hothir (other) in hatt50, and dishobey (disobey) and his (is) in culkk.1.3 (part 11). as for the other two scribes of hatt50, only hand c shows a similar instability in his production. it might be, then, that since hand b shows a similar pattern of ‘h’ / non-‘h’ usage in both his texts, it was not inherited from his exemplar but was part of his linguistic spontaneous repertoire to the same extent shared with hand c. 4.3 spelling of common words some common words, such as against, at, many, and upon share spellings in both texts. against is invariably <aȝenste>. the preposition at has a majority form <att> in both texts. many occurs mainly as <many>, but in culkk.1.3 (part 11) there are also 4x of <manye>. for the preposition upon the scribe uses <vppon> 9x in hatt50 and 4x in culkk.1.3 (part 11). however, in both texts the form <oppon> occurs 4x and 1x respectively. in spite of this apparent consistency, there are many other common words which differ in their spelling between the manuscripts. if, for example, has three forms in hatt50: <ȝyf> 4x, <ȝif> 2x, <yf> 1x, while in culkk.1.3 (part 11) there are seven different spelling variants: <jff> 11x, <if> 10x, <ȝyf> 6x, <iff> 4x, <ȝif> 4x, <ȝyff> 1x, <iffe> 1x. the commonest in this manuscript is <jff>, which occurs frequently due to the layout of the text. this form tends to appear at the beginning of the line where the <j> stands for a capital ‘i’. the majority form <ȝyf> in hatt50 is shared by hand c, which might suggest that they both had it in their exemplar/s (<ȝif> could be easily included in the same group). most of the variants in culkk.1.3 (part 11) are probably dependent on the exemplar, but they can be found extensively in the 15th century coexisting with what seems to be the scribe’s majority forms. there are other items whose occurrence seems to provide contradictory dialectal information about the scribe. the forms used for again are disparate in both texts. hatt50 shows: <agayne> 10x, <aȝene> 3x, and <a-ȝene> 1x, while in culkk.1.3 (part 11) the forms <aȝein> 2x and <aȝeine> 1x are found. the 144 maría josé carrillo-linares distributions for these forms in e-lalme do not always coincide in any particular place, since there is no single lp for any text in which a scribe uses all these forms, nor are these forms used in different lps localised in the same place. however, if we move beyond the particular forms the scribe uses, and we classify them into more general types, the areas in which they could coexist are essentially in the eastern part of the country.32 the other hatt50 scribes’ data for this item are not very informative, nor do they provide a clear explanation for hand b’s behaviour regarding this item. the beryn scribe uses only <ageyn> (7x) here and in culkk.1.3 (part 10) he is also consistent with this same form. hand c has as a majority form <aȝene> (17x), which is a minority form for hand b, while his minority forms are <ageyne> (1x) and <agayne> (1x). it is difficult to figure out in this case what forms were in the exemplar/s and which ones are the product of spontaneous input. what seems to be clear is that our scribe lacks a coherent set of variants since his choices do not exhibit any geographical pattern. the scribe displays two forms for any (<ony> 3x, <any> 1x) in hatt50 and only one (<any> 9x) in culkk.1.3 (part 11). <any> is widespread in the 15th century and is the form that will eventually become standard; <ony> occurs also over a wide area. it seems plausible that any preference for either of them was dependent on what a scribe found in his copy-text. the preferred form for the beryn scribe both in hatt50 and culkk.1.3 (part 10) is <eny>, while hand c has <ony> 3x and <eny> 1x. again, hand b and hand c seem to share the majority form that could have been that of the exemplar/s. for before there are also four variants in both texts: <to-fore> 12x, <be-fore> 1x, <afore> 1x in hatt50, and <beforne> 1x in culkk.1.3. the latter (form with -n-) is mainly found in texts localised in norfolk, ely, suffolk, essex, and occasionally in lincolnshire (3 lps), sussex (3 lps), cambridgeshire (3 lps), northamptonshire (2 lps), nottinghamshire, leicestershire, london, bedfordshire, berkshire, buckinghamshire, and kent (one lp in each of these counties).33 forms with the prefix ‘to-’ are common in the south and midlands,34 and those with ‘a-’ prefix and <be-fore> are scattered all over the 32 see e-lalme dm, again: ‘forms with -g(a-gayne, ageyn, etc.)’; dm, again: ‘forms with -ȝ(a-ȝayne, aȝein, etc.)’; dm, again: ‘medial -aior -ay(a-gaine, a-yayn, etc)’; dm, again: ‘medial -eior -ey(agein, a-yeyn, oȝeine, etc.)’. 33 see e-lalme dm, before adv/pr: ‘(-)forn(e)’ type. 34 see e-lalme dm, before adv/pr: ‘forms with to-prefix’. copying strategies of late middle english scribes 145 country.35 if there were more occurrences of <beforne> in the part of the text beyond the sample, it would be a useful indicator for the scribe’s provenance. a single occurrence is very weak evidence to come to any conclusions, especially when the forms he uses in hatt50 are far more widespread. the preferred form for much in hatt50 is <moche> 33x. the remainder are minority occurrences, with 4x <miche> and three forms occurring only once (<muche>, <myche>, <mykyll>). the majority form in this manuscript is common in all the midlands and south of the country.36 <miche> is less common and tends to occur more frequently in the central and west midlands, while <myche> seems to be more widely spread into the east midlands.37 <mykyll>, on the other hand, has a more northern distribution, although there are occurrences in the east midlands as well.38 in the sample in culkk.1.3 (part 11) there are only two instances of <muche>, which tends to have a denser occurrence in the west midlands, although it occurs sporadically in the south and in east anglia.39 the beryn scribe consistently uses <much>, both in hatt50 and culkk.1.3 (part 10). hand c, on the contrary, exhibits four forms: <muche> 17 x, <moche> 13x, <much> 2x, and <mychill> 1x. it is not clear what form could have been in the exemplar/s or if there was only one form or several. in any case, it seems that hand b’s attitude towards this item is flexible and that the forms he uses might have belonged to his passive or active repertoires. the majority form for church in both manuscripts is <chirch>, commonly found in texts localised throughout the midlands and south.40 there are also two forms which occur once: <church> in culkk.1.3 (part 11) and <cherch> in hatt50. since these occur only once in different manuscripts, they both might have been relics present in the scribe’s copy-text, or one of them could be a relic and the other a form from the scribe’s spontaneous usage. hand c in hatt50 also has <chirch> once, and in the beryn scribe section there are 35 see e-lalme dm, before adv/pr: ‘forms with a-prefix’; dm, before adv/pr: ‘forms with be-prefix’. 36 see e-lalme dm, much: ‘moch’ and ‘mochel’ types, all variants. 37 see e-lalme dm, much: ‘mich’ and ‘michel’ types, all variants. the specific forms <miche> and <myche> are part of the distribution shown on this dm. the distribution of any single form can be discovered using e-lalme’s ‘user-defined maps’. 38 see e-lalme dm, much: ‘mikel’ type, all variants; dm much: forms ending in -ill(e) or -yll(e). 39 see e-lalme dm, much: ‘much’ and ‘muchel’ types, all variants. 40 see e-lalme dm, church: ‘chir-’ and ‘chyr-’ types. 146 maría josé carrillo-linares no occurrences of church, although in his copy of culkk.1.3 (part 10) the form is also <chirch>. the evidence for the item death is difficult to interpret. the word appears invariably as <dehet> 14x in hatt50, while in culkk.1.3 (part 11) three forms are found: <deith> 4x, <deth> 3x, and <dede> 1x. this word is an item for the lalme northern questionnaire so there is no evidence for the southern part of the country. in any case, the spelling found in hatt50 is not recorded at all. <deth> is widespread everywhere in the midlands;41 <dede> is very common in the eastern part of the country;42 and forms with <ith> or <yth> occur sporadically in the north midlands.43 hand c in hatt50 has <dehit> 7x and <dehyt> 1x. the beryn scribe offers no evidence for death in this manuscript. as the forms found in hatt50 are very uncommon and remarkably similar in the outputs of both scribes, it is reasonable to infer that they must have come down from a similar form in the exemplar/s. two forms for fire are found: <fere> in hatt50 and <fier> in culkk.1.3 (part 11). there are only two instances of this item in both manuscripts and, consequently, it is hard to say which form would be the scribe’s spontaneous one, or whether it was one of these two. they have different dialectal distributions in e-lalme, but they coincide in norfolk, suffolk, essex, and south lincolnshire,44 so it would be perfectly possible for a single scribe to produce both of them. hand c’s forms are <fire> and <feir>, which do not coincide with any of the forms of hand b, so if they were copying from the same exemplar, either one or both of them was altering the forms of the original text. hand b in hatt50 only has one instance of the item such and the form is very unusual: <schoche> 1x. this form has been attested only once in e lalme, in an lp localised in devon.45 in culkk.1.3, on the contrary, there are many occurrences of this item and three variants are found: <suche> 21x, <such> 2x, and <shuche> 2x. the first two are common in all areas in the south and midlands;46 <shuche>, on the other hand, has been attested only in three 41 see e-lalme dm, death: ‘deth’ type. 42 see e-lalme dm, death: ‘ded(-)’ type. 43 see e-lalme ‘user-defined maps’: death as ‘deith’, ‘deithe’, ‘deiþ’, ‘deyth’, ‘deythe’, and ‘deyþ’. 44 see e-lalme dm, fire: ‘fe(e)r’ type, incl vforms; fire: ‘fier’ and ‘fyer’ types. 45 see lp 5030. 46 see e-lalme ‘user-defined maps’: such as ‘suche’, ‘such’. copying strategies of late middle english scribes 147 lps in those same areas.47 the beryn scribe in hatt50 only has the form <such> 2x, and hand c has a preferred form <schuche> 4x, which is also uncommon, and then <scuche> 1x (which could be an error) and <suche> 1x. hand c’s majority form is close enough to hand b’s unique form to envisage a common origin as the possible explanation for the disparity in the forms exhibited by hand b in his two productions. however, the minority form <shuche> in culkk.1.3 might point to the fact that, if it is not the most spontaneous form, at least forms with palatalised initial consonants for such could be part of the scribe’s repertoire. the distributions of these forms in e-lalme do not provide useful information about the possible origin of the scribe, since their distribution is scattered throughout the south and midlands. 4.4 morphological variants 4.4.1 pronouns and determiners the pronouns ye/you are complex as they are used with 2nd person singular and plural referents and both for nominative and oblique cases. hatt50 hand b’s evidence shows that for the subject (both singular and plural) the only form used is <ȝe> 19x, and for the object (singular and plural) <ȝow> 18x. these forms basically coincide with those used by hand c <ȝe>, <ȝee> / <ȝow>, <ȝowe>, but differ from those in the beryn scribe section: <yee> / <ȝew>, <ȝewe>. culkk.1.3 (part 11) shows more variants, although the majority forms coincide with those of hatt50 hand b. for the nominative case there are 14x of <ȝe> and 2x of <you>, with the latter used as a singular form, while the former is found for both singular and plural. the oblique forms are <ȝow> 6x, <ȝowe> 5x, and <ȝou> 1x, the last being used only for the singular, and the other two for both singular and plural. the majority form in both texts for the nominative is not uncommon, while the minority one, <you>, is very rare as subject.48 the object forms <ȝow> and <ȝou> are densely spread in the midlands, while <ȝowe> is more infrequent but widely spread in the central midlands.49 for the 2nd singular thou, hatt50 has <thow> 3x, while culkk.1.3 (part 11) has a variety of forms. the majority one is <thow> 19x, also used by hand b in hatt50. in addition, the following forms occur: <thou> 14x, <þou> 9x, 47 lp 313, lp 704, and lp 5040. 48 see e-lalme dm, ye: ȝforms and ‘user-defined maps’: ye as ‘yow’. 49 see e-lalme ‘user-defined maps’: you as ‘ȝou’, ‘yow’, and ‘ȝowe’. 148 maría josé carrillo-linares <thowe> 4x, <þow> 1x, and <þu> 1x. for the object pronoun thee the only attestations are in culkk.1.3 (part 11): <the> 31x and <þe> 3x. the scribe is more consistent in hatt50, perhaps because his exemplar had few occurrences, while that for culkk.1.3 (part 11) might have presented more variation which conformed to the scribe’s own preferred usage. hand c in hatt50 consistently has <thow>. the forms for your both in the singular and the plural are broadly consistent in both texts. the preferred form is <ȝowre>, but <ȝoure> also occurs. the percentages of use in both texts are very similar: <ȝowre> is used in around 75 per cent and <ȝoure> in 25 per cent of all the occurrences of your in the two manuscripts. thy/thyne do not show significant differences, except that attestations in hatt50 are few. conversely, in culkk.1.3, and due to the nature and inner structure of poem, with a speaker addressing directly his son, the number of occurrences of this item as pronoun or determiner is much higher. the preferred form in both manuscripts is <thi>, although culkk.1.3 (part 11) also has instances of <thy> 12x and <thyne> 1x. the use of alternative forms for the neuter pronoun it, either as subject or as object, differs considerably in both texts. the sample for hand b in hatt50 shows forms with initial ‘h’ only: <hit> 26x and <hyt> 4x. in culkk.1.3 (part 11) the majority of the forms have no initial ‘h’: <it> 62x, <hit> 8x, <hyt> 2x, <yt> 1x, and <itt> 1x. hand c in hatt50 also shows a preference for ‘h’ forms: <hit> 19x, <hyt> 1, <it> 2x, and <yt> 1x. the beryn scribe, on the other hand, has invariably <it> 25x. from the dialectal point of view, the use of these different types is relevant, although the ‘h’-less variant was spreading throughout the country in the 15th century.50 forms with ‘h’ are also common, although they do not seem to occur so frequently in the north or eastern areas.51 the differences in culkk.1.3 (part 11) might be due to the scribe’s attempt to be faithful to his copy-text, <it>. nevertheless, he occasionally introduces the form with initial ‘h’ (10x), which perhaps was his own usage. six alternative forms are found for their in hatt50: <here> 6x, <her> 5x, <hir> 5x, <theyre> 3x, <hire> 1x, and <their> 1x; and three in culkk.1.3 (part 11): <her> 11x, <hir> 5x, and <here> 2x. among these forms the ones with a more limited geographical occurrence are <hir> and <hire>, which are mainly used in the south midlands and south.52 50 see e-lalme dm, it: spellings without initial ‘h-’. 51 see e-lalme dm, it: ‘h-’ type, all variants. 52 see e-lalme dm, their: ‘hir’ type, simple i or y as medial vowel. copying strategies of late middle english scribes 149 the majority form for them in both texts is <hem>, 60x in hatt50 and 12x in culkk.1.3 (part 11), with abbreviated forms such as <hem> 2x in hatt50 and 1x in culkk.1.3 (part 11). this manuscript also shows one case of <heme>. ‘th-’ type forms are found in hatt50 only: <them> 10x, <theme> 1x. these are less common than the ‘h-’ forms but they were widespread in the 15th century.53 hand c in hatt50 also has some cases of ‘th-’ forms, <they> 4x, although his majority form is <hem> 49x. the evidence in both texts for the plural nominative pronoun they is consistent. both have <they> as the majority form, although there are many more occurrences in hatt50 (86x). culkk.1.3 (part 11) has <they> 24x and <þey> 2x. <thei> occurs once in hatt50 and <þay> once in culkk.1.3 (part 11). none of these forms are dialectally interesting since they are common and scattered across the whole country. 4.4.2 verbs the narrative of hatt50 does not allow for many verbs in the present as the topic is a historical chronicle, and so most of the verbs are in the past. however, there are four singular forms in the sample analysed with the endings <-hit> 2x, <-ht> 1x, and <-jt> 1x. in the plural there are nine cases ending in <-in> 3x, <ø> 2x, <-yn> 1x, <-ine> 1x, <-en> 1x, and <-it> 1x. culkk.1.3, on the other hand, has many forms in the present tense both for the singular and the plural. the endings for the singular are: <-ith> 59x, <-eth> 11x, <-yth> 9x, <ø> 6x, <-ithe> 4x, <-th> 1x, and <-t> 1x. the plural endings are: <-en> 13x, <ø> 13x, <-yn> 4x, <-n> 2x, and <-ne> 1x. the forms for the singular differ considerably in both manuscripts. hand c in hatt50 exhibits very similar endings to those of hand b, <-it> 4x, and <-hit> 3x, which might suggest that these were endings found in the exemplar. the beryn scribe differs again here and shows commoner endings for this feature: <-ith> 6x, <-yth> 3x. e-lalme does not provide complete geographical coverage for present tense endings. some of the singular forms found in hatt50 (hand b and hand c) are not widely spread and they are most apparent in norfolk in the e-lalme sources.54 those in culkk.1.3 (part 11) are very common forms in the midlands and south. the plural endings in both cases are typical of the midlands. 53 see e-lalme dm, them: ‘th-’ type, all variants. 54 see e-lalme ‘user-defined maps’: 3sg pres ind ending as ‘-ht’, ‘-eht’, and ‘-iht’. 150 maría josé carrillo-linares there is consistency in the forms used in both texts for are. both use <bene>, <ben>, and <be>, although there is one instance of <bein>, occurring only in culkk.1.3 (part 11). in e-lalme <bein> occurs in 13 lps, most in essex or nearby, although it occurs in two lps in norfolk, two in cheshire, and one in lancashire.55 the scribe’s single occurrence might well have been carried over from the exemplar while still familiar to the scribe. the number of occurrences of verbs in the past is much higher in hatt50 than in culkk.1.3 due to the nature of the narrative as mentioned above. the endings for the weak past are similar in both manuscripts with a few exceptions. hatt50’s commonest ending are <-id> 78x or <-yd> 35x. less common endings are: <-it> 5x, <-ed> 4x, <-de> 4x, <-iid> 2x, <-yt> 1x, <-t> 1x, <-d> 1x, and <-te> 1x. in culkk.1.3 (part 11) the most used endings are also <-id> 22x or <-yd> 8x. minor endings are <-ed> 5x, <-d> 1x, and <-de> 1x. the comparison with the endings employed by the other two scribes in hatt50 is crucial here to understand our scribe’s behaviour. the beryn scribe uses <-id> 38x, <-ed> 4x, <-it> 3x, and <-d> 1x. in turn, hand c uses <-yd> 55x, <-id> 41x, <-it> 12x, <-de> 12x, and <-ed> 5x. the beryn scribe’s practice is highly systematic in this respect.56 the form of the verbal ending depends on the final consonant in the stem: <-it> is used when the final consonants in the verbal forms are ‘d’, ‘g’, or the sequences ‘ng’, ‘bl’, or ‘dr’; <-ed> is used after a nasal and occasionally after ‘t’, ‘s’, and ‘x’; <-id> and the alternative <-yd> are used after any other consonant and only rarely after a vowel; <-d> is used after a vowel, ‘i’ / ‘y’ or ‘u’ / ‘w’. hand c follows a similar system but slightly more relaxed. this scribe uses <it> when the final consonants in the verbal forms are ‘d’, ‘g’; <-ed> is used after a vowel or ‘th’; <-id> and the alternative <-yd> are used after any other consonant and only rarely after a vowel. hand b uses the same endings and similar distributions, although not identical since <-it> is used after ‘d’, ‘g’, and also occasionally after ‘l’ but not in all the instances of verbs with these endings. <-id> and <-yd> are used after most consonants although there are not any examples of <-yd> after ‘b’ or ‘t’. <-ed> or <-de> are occasionally used after a vowel and <-d> after ‘n’ or ‘g’. hand b does not show the same degree of systematisation as found in the section copied by the beryn scribe or even in that by hand c. since in culkk.1.3 (part 11) the evidence seems to be different, having no <-it> endings, it could be inferred that hand b is following 55 see e-lalme ‘user-defined maps’: are as ‘bein’. 56 see carrillo-linares & williamson (2020). copying strategies of late middle english scribes 151 loosely what he might have had in his exemplar, and the same could be said for his copy of culkk.1.3 (part 11). regarding the non-personal forms of the verbs, none of the 149 past participles in hatt50 have a prefix, while in culkk.1.3 (part 11) there are seven participles (out of 108) with the prefix ‘j-’. the use of the prefix in this text might have been exemplar-induced. comparison with other manuscripts of the same work shows that they were used in the same contexts, so it seems that in this respect the scribe was just being faithful to what he had in his source. the weak past participle endings follow the same pattern as the weak preterite forms in both manuscripts and the conclusions we reach should be the same. hatt50’s endings are: <-id> 37x, <-yd> 27x as majority forms, and <-it> 3x, <-d> 1x, <-de> 1x, <-ijd> 1x, and <-te> 1x comprising just a few occurrences. in culkk.1.3 (part 11) the endings are identical to those of the weak preterite: <-id> 27x, <-yd> 13x, <-ed> 14x, <-d> 2x, <-de> 1x. as for the infinitive endings, in the hatt50 sample there are 235 infinitives and only three instances of infinitive ending (<done> 2x and <begotten> 1x). a few more cases occur in culkk.1.3 (part 11) since there are 231 infinitive forms and fourteen of them have an ending (<ben> 2x, <done> 2x, <herken> 2x, <gan> 1x, <stinkin> 1x, <twynnen> 1x, <stonden> 1x, <vsen> 1x, <followen> 1x, <praien> 1x, and <hoppyn> 1x). it seems again that the scribe might be following the forms in his exemplars and that adding an infinitive ending is not a spontaneous choice in his copying practice. 4.5 forms without occurrences in one of the manuscripts but comparable to the other hatt50 scribes as for the items does / goes, hatt50 hand b does not have verbs in the 3rd person singular, while culkk.1.3 (part 11) exhibits the forms <doith> 5x, <dooith> 1x, <doeth> 1x, <gooith> 2x, <goith> 1x, <goo> 1x. e-lalme data for 3rd person singular present indicative ending in <-ith> indicates that the suffix is spread throughout the midlands and south,57 though with verbs ending in <o> the commonest ending seems to be <-th> (without a vowel). the records for does and goes with <-ith> are not many but, at the same time, they are not localised in a small or compact area.58 on the contrary, the evidence is 57 see e-lalme dm, 3sg pres ind: ‘-ith’ and ‘-yth’ types. 58 see e-lalme ‘user-defined maps’: does as ‘doith’, ‘doyth’, ‘doiþ’, ‘doythe’, and ‘doyþ’; goes as ‘goith’, ‘goithe’, ‘goyth’, ‘goiþ’, ‘goythe’, and ‘goyþ’. 152 maría josé carrillo-linares scattered throughout the south midlands and south of the country. hand c does not exhibit a similar form, since the only occurrence is <goohit>; the beryn scribe does not have any instances for this word in hatt50, but in the life of our lady in culkk.1.3 (part 10) there are four occurrences of <goith>.59 a similar spelling is found for the item both in culkk.1.3 (part 11): <boith> 2x, <bothe> 1x. as for the previous item, there is no evidence in the sample in hatt50. e-lalme data indicate that the spelling <boith> is uncommon (found in 13 lps) but, as for <goith> and <doith>, the occurrences are localised in the north, the midlands, and the south.60 neither the beryn scribe nor any of the other scribes contributing to the copying of the brut chronicle use this peculiar form. it is impossible to decide in this case if it was a natural choice of form for this item or if he was just reflecting his copy-text. the compounds the one and the other do not occur in culkk.1.3 (part 11). the former occurs 4x in the hatt50 sample as <the tone>. the same form is used by hand c in hatt50, and the beryn scribe uses <the toon> 3x and <þe toon> 1x. the majority form for the other occurs in the hand b sample of hatt50 as <the tothir> 3x, and there is also one case of <þe tothir>. hand c’s forms are <the tothir> 1x, <þe tothir> 1x, <the todir> 1x, <tothir> 1; the beryn scribe has <the todir> 4x. it is not possible to localise the occurrences of these items since the distributions supplied by e-lalme are diffuse. since these forms are not common and not restricted to any particular area, the exemplar from which these scribes were copying may have had something very similar to their actual outputs for this item, and so the three scribes preserved these forms in their copies. 4.6 forms with abbreviations in general, the number of abbreviations is higher in hatt50 than in culkk.1.3 (part 11), but the sequences of letters abbreviated are similar: ‘e’ and ‘n’ are the commonest letters abbreviated, but ‘er’, ‘us’, ‘ir’, ‘ro’, ‘e’, ‘i’, ‘m’, or ‘r’ are also 59 the beryn scribe also produces these forms in the canterbury tales preserved in northumberland, alnwick castle 455 and in princeton, firestone library 100, as well as in the copy of prick of conscience in oxford, st john’s college 57. other scribes copying the brut chronicle along with the beryn scribe in oxford, bodleian library, tanner 11 and ann arbor, university of michigan, hatcher library, 225 also exhibit these forms. 60 see e-lalme ‘user-defined maps’: both as ‘boith’, ‘boiþ’, and ‘boithe’. copying strategies of late middle english scribes 153 subject to abbreviation. there are some words that occur frequently in both texts and that might show abbreviated syllables or suspended letters. it is worth noting that the way they are spelled or the type of abbreviation used is not always the same in both texts. as an example, the forms for the items then and when show variation both in the vowels, where there is an alternation between <a> and <e>, and also in the way they can be abbreviated. for then, hatt50’s sample has four choices: <then> 31x, <than> 12x, <thane> 1x, and <then> 1x. the last form is abbreviated with suspension of the nasal sound and it happens only once. the choices found in culkk.1.3 are slightly different: the majority form is abbreviated, <thanne> 6x, and the rest of the occurrences are <thane> 3x and <than> 1x. there are no forms with medial <e>, which is the commonest in hatt50. regarding when, the preferred form in hatt50 is <when> 33x and the minority forms are <wen> 5x, <whan> 4x, <wan> 3x, and there are two abbreviated forms occurring once each: <when> and <whan>. culkk.1.3 (part 11), on the other hand, does not have any forms with medial <e>, and all the occurrences for this item but one have some kind of abbreviation: <wh^a^n> 13x, <wh^a^ne> 8x, <whanne> 4x, <wh^a^nne> 1x, <whane> 1x, and <whane> 1x. most of the occurrences for this item are spelled with a suprascript <a>, while other abbreviations imply a suspended nasal or an omitted vowel. it seems obvious that the scribe chose different ways for performing the same task in either manuscript. he does not seem to have his own system for abbreviating common words. the most obvious reason for doing this might have been to try to follow the same system he had in both his exemplars, which produced disparate outputs in both works. all the evidence for the forms and features discussed above seems to indicate that the aspect of the language in hand b in hatt50 differs in many respects from that of culkk.1.3. there is a lot of common ground, but at the same time there are some points where both productions are quite far apart and in some extreme cases the scribe produces variants that do not seem to have coincided in place, being dialectally distant. this distance may have been brought about by the scribe’s proximity in each of his pieces to his original copy, by having remained faithful to his model, although within the limits permitted by his adaptability and wide repertoire. 154 maría josé carrillo-linares 5. dialectal variation: fitting of scribal features it would be desirable to be able to locate the origin of this scribe by means of the linguistic features shared by both texts. however, many of his characteristics appear widely distributed to be able to reach reliable conclusions, while others are highly restricted because the number of attestations in the e-lalme sources is low. fitting an assemblage of some of the forms and features which are common in both productions (see table 1) points to two possible localisations for the scribe: (1) a large area in the east part of the country including norfolk, suffolk, essex, and areas of cambridgeshire; (2) an area in the west midlands that includes the counties of gloucestershire and south herefordshire and worcestershire. table 1. common features pde form if ȝyf against aȝenste church chirch their her them hem ‘h’ added initially etymological ‘h’ omitted use of ‘v’ for ‘w’ use of ‘wh’ for ‘w’ when fitting both texts separately, i used both majority and minority forms since, as stated previously, minority forms could easily be more spontaneous forms. i created separate assemblages for the fitting of each of the two texts. in each assemblage there are features which are not common in both texts (see tables 2 and 3). the results of the fitting led to the following conclusions: (1) the features of the language of hatt50 fit together in the south essex area and in london; and (2) culkk.1.3’s distinctive features fit either in the area of london, essex, and south hertfordshire or in warwickshire. if we put these features together with the common ones there are some incompatible areas. essex is the only county in which many of these features have been found to copying strategies of late middle english scribes 155 coexist; however, there are not any lps in the e-lalme sources containing these assemblages or even geographically close texts that might contain all or most of these elements. table 2. assemblage 1 (hatt50) pde form if yf again agayne / aȝenne before to-for / be-for / a-fore much moche / miche / mykill church cherch death dehet fire fere it hit their theyre / their them them 3sg pres ind -hit / -ht / -t wk pret / ppt ending -it 156 maría josé carrillo-linares table 3. assemblage 2 (culkk.1.3) pde form if if / iff / ȝiff / iffe again aȝein/e before beforn much muche church church death deith / deth / dede fire fier it it are bein many manye 6. concluding remarks the study of the two texts carried out in this paper leads to the following conclusions. first, the paleographical descriptions have shown that it is highly probable that these two texts share a scribe, although the repertoire of figurae for different letters may vary with respect to the degree of formality in each of his productions. given this, the analysis of the linguistic characteristics of the two texts has shown that a professional scribe in the 15th century, who was accustomed to copying texts of a different nature with different formal and linguistic characteristics, can create copied texts with very different linguistic profiles. all the professional scribes involved in copying the texts discussed above seem to have had a broad linguistic repertoire with a broad range of variant spellings and a great flexibility to adapt to the text they were copying. the result is manuscripts that contain a large number of features brought from their models, but also features that may be the result of a more spontaneous action. their versatility sometimes makes it impossible to distinguish which of the characteristics of a text belonged to the scribe’s spontaneous usage and which were inherited. the linguistic analysis in cases like this is always inconclusive copying strategies of late middle english scribes 157 for scribal identification and cannot be used to assign a text to any particular scribe. paleographical analysis has to provide the decisive data on this matter since the linguistic characteristics of many 15th-century texts can be misleading and, therefore, cannot be used as primary evidence for these purposes. the lps for two different texts written by the same scribe may look inconsistent and may even contain elements that might be incompatible from a dialectal point of view. however, localising texts copied in the 15th century can sometimes be difficult because of what samuels (1981) called ‘colourless regional’ language. the evidence in these texts and others indicates that some of the forms with a widespread distribution in the 15th century are not good dialect indicators even if many of them are not forms that eventually became standard. the linguistic result of a 15th-century scribe’s output with such linguistic character does not necessarily have to be a ‘mischsprache’ as defined by benskin & laing (1981). as shown above, it is possible to broadly localise a comprehensive assemblage of features drawn from more than one input (scribe and exemplar), albeit to a large area (essex and neighbouring areas). our scribe might have followed different strategies when copying either prose or verse. copying a poetic text poses different constraints from copying prose, even more so if the text was written in a variety substantially different from his own that might compel a more radical effort of ‘translation’ towards his spontaneous usage. occasionally, the changing of morphological forms or features required a sophisticated alteration in the structure of the text since any change can break the rhyme or rhythm of the piece. in those cases, the scribe might have chosen not to alter the shape of the original word even if it was alien to him. the result of this strategy is that in culkk.1.3 there is a higher level of consistency in many items as it seems that he was trying to be more faithful to his source. however, even when copying prose texts, he respects and embodies the form in his text. the act of translating into his own dialect seems to have been only partially performed. yet, as we do not know what his source manuscripts were, it is impossible to figure out his behaviour or attitude if the form he encountered was completely alien to him. regarding mooney & matheson’s (2014: 74) claim that hand b “is easily influenced by forms in his exemplars, and that the occasional resort to spellings associated with the repertoire of the beryn scribe suggests that some of these exemplars were prepared by him”, this study supplies data to confirm that he was relatively faithful to his sources, but i have not found any evidence for the second part of the claim. our scribe shares certain forms and features with the beryn scribe, but for some others they are radically different. there is no 158 maría josé carrillo-linares evidence that indicates that the beryn scribe prepared any exemplars used by hands b and c. i have shown that hands b and c have similar characteristics that might have been inherited from their exemplar/s, and that the beryn scribe differs from them in a significant number of cases. in carrillo-linares & williamson (2020) the conclusions for the beryn scribe’s copying approach are not different from the conclusions in the analysis of this scribe’s copying practice. as in the beryn scribe’s production, there is a tendency to respect a great deal of what he found in his exemplars, and the language of his texts was highly dependent on individual textual histories. his experience as a professional copyist must have caused him to augment his repertoire with characteristics inherited from his exemplars reproducing them to greater or lesser degree if they resembled those found in the manuscripts he later copied. throughout their copying career 15th-century scribes became accustomed to certain forms that were not incompatible with their spoken language in many cases, and even though these forms would not have been the most spontaneous ones, they were perfectly acceptable and became, first, part of their passive language and, eventually, these forms ended up being familiar and used with the same facility as those they first learnt. references manuscript sources ann arbor, university of michigan, hatcher library, 225 cambridge, university library kk.1.3 (parts 10 and 11) london, british library harley 1337 london, british library harley 6251 manchester, john rylands library english 63 northumberland, alnwick castle 455 oxford, bodleian library, hatton 50 oxford, bodleian library, rawlinson c. 901 oxford, bodleian library, tanner 11 oxford, st john’s college 57 philadelphia, rosenbach museum and library 1084/2 princeton, firestone library 100 copying strategies of late middle english scribes 159 secondary sources benskin, m. & m. laing 1981: translations and mischsprachen in middle english manuscripts. in m. benskin & m. l. samuels eds. so meny people longages and tonges: philological essays in scots and mediaeval english presented to angus mcintosh. edinburgh, middle english dialect project: 55–106. carrillo-linares, m. j. & k. williamson 2019: a reconsideration of the dialectal provenance of the prick of conscience in oxford, st john’s college, 57. anglia 137.2: 303–350. carrillo-linares, m. j. & k. williamson 2020: the linguistic character of manuscripts attributed to the so-called ‘beryn scribe’: a comparative study. in l. wright ed. the multiple origins of standard english. berlin & new york, mouton de gruyter: 87–139. christianson, c. p. 1989: evidence for the study of london’s late medieval manuscript-book trade. in j. griffiths & d. pearsall eds. book production and publishing in britain, 1375–1475. cambridge, cambridge university press: 87–108. e-lalme: an electronic version of a linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english. 2013: m. benskin, m. laing, v. karaiskos & k. williamson. edinburgh, the university of edinburgh. http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/elalme/elalme.html. [accessed from september 2013 to june 2020] horobin, s. 2009: the edmund-fremund scribe copying chaucer. journal of the early book society 12: 193–203. horobin, s. & l. r. mooney 2004: a ‘piers plowman’ manuscript by the hengwrt/ellesmere scribe and its implications for london standard english. studies in the age of chaucer 26: 65–112. laing, m. 2000: the linguistic stratification of the middle english texts in oxford, bodleain library, ms digby 86. neuphilologische mitteilungen 101.4: 523–569. lalme: a linguistic atlas of late medieval english. 1986: a. mcintosh, m. l. samuels & m. benskin [with the assistance of m. laing and k. williamson]. aberdeen, aberdeen university press. mcintosh, a. 1974: towards an inventory of middle english scribes. neuphilologische mitteilungen 75: 602–624. [reprinted in m. laing ed. 1989: middle english dialectology: essays on some principles and problems. aberdeen, aberdeen university press: 46–63.] matheson, l. 1998: prose brut: the development of a middle english chronicle. tempe (arizona), medieval and renaissance texts and studies, 180. mooney, l. r. 2006: chaucer’s scribe. speculum 81.1: 97–138. mooney, l. r. & l. matheson 2003: the beryn scribe and his texts: evidence for multiple-copy production of manuscripts in fifteenth-century england. the library 4.4: 347–370. mooney, l. r., s. horobin & e. stubbs. late medieval english scribes https://www.medievalscribes.com. isbn 978-0-9557876-6-9. 160 maría josé carrillo-linares mosser, d. 2010. the paper stocks of the beryn scribe. journal of the early book society for the study of manuscripts and printing history 13: 63–93. mosser, d. & l. r. mooney 2014: more manuscripts by the beryn scribe and his cohort. the chaucer review 49.1: 39–76. mosser, d. & l. r. mooney 2016: the case of the hooked-g scribe(s) and the production of middle english literature, c. 1460 – c. 1490. chaucer review 51: 131– 150. samuels, m. l. 1981: spelling and dialect in the late and post-middle english periods. in m. benskin & m. l. samuels eds. so meny people longages and tonges: philological essays in scots and mediaeval english presented to angus mcintosh. edinburgh, middle english dialect project: 43–54. summary catalogue, vol 2, part ii. 1937: h. h. e. craster & n. denholm-young. summary catalogue of western manuscripts in the bodleian library at oxford, vol 2, part ii (collections and miscellaneous mss acquired during the second half of the 17th century), not. 3491–8716. oxford, clarendon press. taylor, a. 2003: manual to miscellany: stages in the commercial copying of vernacular literature in england. the yearbook of english studies 33: 1–17. warner, l. 2018: chaucer’s scribes. london textual production, 1384–1432. cambridge, cambridge university press. copying strategies of late middle english scribes 161 appendix 1. cambridge, cambridge university library, kk.1.3 f. 5r f. 5v f. 9v f. 2v f. 11v f. 7v f. 2v f. 5v f. 5r f. 5v f. 13r f. 5r f. 5r f. 5r f. 4v f. 2r 162 maría josé carrillo-linares f. 1v f. 7v f. 1r f. 2r f. 3r f. 5r f. 5r f. 4r f. 4r f. 5r f. 2v f. 1r f. 3r f. 2r f. 1r f. 5v f. 5r copying strategies of late middle english scribes 163 f. 4v f. 4v f. 5r f. 3r f. 4r f. 3r f. 5v f. 7v f. 3r f. 2r f. 15r f. 4r f. 2v f. 5v f. 2r f. 5v f. 2v 164 maría josé carrillo-linares f. 9v f. 6r f. 6v f. 2r copying strategies of late middle english scribes 165 appendix 2. oxford, bodleian library, hatton 50 (hand 2) f. 22r f. 18v f. 23r f. 19r f. 19v f. 19v f. 19r f. 25v f. 24v f. 23r f. 23r f. 23r f. 23r f. 21v f. 23r f. 23r 166 maría josé carrillo-linares f. 18r f. 18r f. 24v f. 19v f. 19v f. 23r f. 22r f. 18r f. 18r f. 25r f. 22v f. 21v f. 20r f. 24r f. 19r f. 19r copying strategies of late middle english scribes 167 f. 19r f. 22r f. 18v f. 18r f. 24r f. 22v f. 18r f. 23r f. 24r f. 23r f. 21r f. 23r f. 24r f. 24v f. 24r 168 maría josé carrillo-linares appendix 3. comparison of forms from cambridge, cambridge university library, kk.1.3 and oxford, bodleian library, hatton 50 (hand 2) f. 5v f. 19r f. 2v f. 9v f. 5v f. 24v f. 5v f. 19r f. 2r f. 21v f. 5r f. 18r copying strategies of late middle english scribes 169 f. 12v f. 23r f. 6r f. 24r f. 6v f. 24v f. 4r f. 24v f. 3r f. 19r f. 1r f. 19r f. 7r f. 18r 170 maría josé carrillo-linares f. 1r f. 22r f. 11r f. 18r f. 7r f. 22r f. 7v f. 24r f. 3r f. 24v f. 7r f. 24r f. 13r f. 19v copying strategies of late middle english scribes 171 f. 7r f. 18r f. 8v f. 22r f. 5r f. 18r f. 4r f. 21v f. 3r f. 19r f. 5v f. 19r f. 3r f. 25v 172 maría josé carrillo-linares f. 4v f. 20v f. 5v f. 23r f. 2r f. 24r f. 3r f. 24r f. 2v f. 18r f. 2v f. 22v author’s address departamento de filología inglesa university of huelva facultad de humanidades, campus universitario, campus del carmen avenida de las fuerzas armadas s/n 21071 – huelva spain received: 22 july 2020 e-mail: mlinares@dfing.uhu.es revised version accepted: 7 september 2020 selim 16.indb kiriko sato, selim 16 (2009): 23–45issn: 1132–631x old english geond expressing duration of time: the winchester usage1 abstract “the winchester group” is a restricted group of late old english texts, including the works of æl ic, which are connected with winchester. they are known to show a remarkable uniformity in their choice of vocabulary within certain groups of synonyms. lexical studies confi rm the existence of “winchester words”—the winchester group’s preferred words (gneuss 1972, ono 1986, hofstetter 1987 & 1988, gretsch 2001). however, no study has considered the possibility that the winchester group may show syntactic uniformity as well. in this article, i focus on the preposition geond ‘through, throughout’, used to express duration of time. in the old english period, the adverbial accusative was commonly used for this function. in fact, temporal prepositions were not yet fully developed, and geond was rarely employed as such. utilizing the dictionary of old english corpus, i will demonstrate that the use of the temporal geond is strictly confi ned to the winchester group. keywords: æl ic, duration of time, geond, old english, temporal preposition, the winchester group. resumen el “grupo winchester” es un grupo reducido de textos en inglés antiguo tardío, que incluye las obras de æl ic y que están conectados con winchester. se sabe que muestran una clara uniformidad en la elección de vocabulario en lo concerniente a ciertos grupos de sinónimos. los estudios léxicos confi rman la existencia de “palabras winchester”—las palabras preferidas por el grupo winchester (gneuss 1972, ono 1986, hofstetter 1987 & 1988, gretsch 2001). sin embargo, ningún estudio ha considerado la posibilidad de que el grupo winchester pueda mostrar tambien uniformidad sintáctica. en este artículo me centro en la preposición geond ‘a través de, a lo largo de’, usada para expresar duración temporal. en inglés antiguo el acusativo adverbial se usaba comúnmente para tal función. de hecho, las preposiciones temporales aún no estaban plenamente desarrolladas, y geond rara vez se usa como tal. usando el dictionary of old english corpus, demonstraré que el uso temporal de geond está confi nado estrictamente al grupo winchester. palabras clave: æl ic, duración temporal, geond, inglés antiguo, preposiciones temporales, grupo winchester. 1 introduction “t he winchester group”, an idea fi rst proposed by gneuss (1972: 75), refers to a certain group of texts that can be connected to winchester in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. as 1 this article is based on a paper read at the 21st international conference of the spanish society for mediaeval english language and literature held at universidad complutense de madrid on 24th–26th september 2009. i am grateful to professor warren w. gehl, the foreign language centre at kumamoto gakuen university, for his comments on an earlier version of this paper and helpful stylistic corrections. i also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions. 24 kiriko sato selim 16 (2009) gneuss clearly demonstrates, these texts display a signifi cant uniformity in their choice of vocabulary, which is ascribable to the movement to standardize the english language led by æthelwold’s school at the old minster in winchester. texts that gneuss identifi es as belonging to this group are the works of æl ic, the lambeth psalter gloss, the gloss to the expositio hymnorum, and the old english translation of the rule of chrodegang. building on his argument, scholars of old english have proved the signifi cant role that æthelwold’s school played in standardizing english. they have also identifi ed additional winchester texts by presenting convincing evidence that the texts show the same choice of vocabulary characteristic of the winchester group. the most comprehensive and infl uential study is hofstetter’s 1987 monograph. establishing thirteen semantic fi elds, hofstetter distinguishes between “winchester words”, which are confi ned to the winchester group, and synonymous words, which are preferred in non-winchester texts.2 gretsch (2001) discusses the nature and origin of winchester words as well as the motives for employing them. ono (1986) shows that some winchester words did not survive in modern english. thus, the language of the winchester texts, particularly the uniformity of vocabulary, has received much attention. however, other linguistic aspects, for example, the possibility of syntactic uniformity, have been disregarded in the literature. an important historical change in old english syntax is the replacement of case-forms with equivalent prepositional constructions. as sato (2009a) has shown, in the old english period when this development was still in progress, case-forms and prepositions overlapped for various functions. the use of a preposition (for which a case-form was still available) indicated not merely a chronological development but also the stylistic preference of an individual author or translator. for example, to express duration of time, æl ic uses prepositions such as binnan ‘within’, for, geond and to as well as the accusative of extent. his contemporaries, by contrast, never or rarely used prepositions for this function, choosing the accusative instead (sato 2009a: 108–113, 140–144, 174–175). mitchell discusses the high  equency of temporal prepositions that is found in 2 hofstetter 1988 is a summary of his monograph. 25 oe geond expressing duration of time: the winchester usage selim 16 (2009) æl ic’s works3 and poses the question of whether this should be viewed as the result of a chronological change or simply as æl ic’s personal preference (mitchell 1985: §1384). the matter has been le unresolved thus far. in this paper, i shall deal exclusively with the temporal use of the preposition geond.4 æl ic’s catholic homilies are evidence that this preposition served the same function as the accusative of temporal extent,5 viz. (1) æchom i, 22.104 he ða gesæt  setl þritig geara ‘he then sat on that seat thirty years’6 (2) æchom ii, 17.70 he geheold cristes setl geond ðrittig geara fæc ‘he held christ’s seat for a space of thirty years’ in both sentences, the subject he refers to st. james the greater. æl ic writes that st. james held christ’s seat for thirty years, employing the accusative in the fi rst sentence, but a geond-phrase in the second. geond can express either spatial or temporal relationships,7 but the latter is much less common: although geond is recorded, including its variant forms, 886 times in the dictionary of old english corpus,8 it expresses temporal duration only thirty-eight of these times, accounting for 4.3 per cent of the occurrences.9 the distribution of temporal geond is also important: 3 for æl ic’s preference for prepositions, see also yamakawa 1980: 13. 4 for the temporal sense of geond, see doe geond sense 1.a.3. 5 mitchell (1985: §1383) mentions the semantic equivalence between them, too. 6 for the abbreviated titles and the method of citation of old english works, i follow mitchell, ball & cameron 1975 & 1979 unless otherwise specifi ed. 7 it is a common cross-linguistic tendency that spatial expressions become temporal expressions; see lyons 1977: 718. 8 for this data, i searched the variant word/phrase search of the dictionary of old english corpus in electronic form and confi rmed the data by the doe, s.v. geond. all the variants and their  equencies are as follows: eond (3×), geand (2×), gend (8×), geod (1×), geon (2×), geond (806×), geonden (1×), geont (1×), giend (1×), gind (14×), giond (13×), gund (4×), gynd (23×), iand (3×), ion (1×), iond (3×); accessed on 4 may 2009. 9 i exclude examples of geond used to render per singulos dies ‘each day’, which has the distributive (not durative) temporal meaning, e.g. psglf 7.12 geond ænlipie dag. for the distributive sense, see doe geond sense i.a.3.a.i.a. 26 kiriko sato selim 16 (2009) there are nineteen instances in æl ic’s works, fi ve in the lambeth psalter gloss and fi ve in the continuous interlinear gloss to the regula s. benedicti, respectively; outside of these works, the temporal geond does not occur more than twice in one text. æl ic’s works and the two interlinear glosses are typical winchester texts. the others are also assumed, as will be shown below, to be winchester texts or otherwise connected to winchester. in the following sections, i will demonstrate that the temporal use of geond is strictly limited to the winchester group, especially to the works of æl ic. i will further show that it is used under direct infl uence (and, in the case of æl ic, also indirect infl uence) of the latin preposition per. 2 geond and per: a winchester set if data  om the works of æl ic are excluded  om analysis, there are nineteen instances of temporal geond in the old english texts. most of them (sixteen instances) occur in interlinear glosses, always corresponding to per: the lambeth psalter gloss (5×),10 the continuous interlinear gloss to the regula s. benedicti (5×),11 the durham hymnal gloss (2×),12 the continuous interlinear gloss to the expositio hymnorum (2×),13 the glosses to aldhelm’s prose de virginitate (1×)14 and the interlinear gloss to the monastic canticles (1×).15 the remainder are found in three prose works 10 examples  om the lambeth psalter gloss are given in (3b), (4b), (5b) and (6b) below. 11 benrgl 49.11 geond þa ylcan tida [per easdem horas], 50.1 iond þa ylcan tida [per easdem horas], 52.3 iond þære uwucan emrene [per septimane circulum], 72.4 geon dæg [per diem], 118.8 geond ealle minsterlice tida [per omnes canonicas horas]. 12 hygl 2, 36.4 geond gæres ymbrene [per anni circulum], 65.1.2 geond tida [per tempora]. (cited by hymn and verse numbers.) 13 hygl 3, 36.4 geond ymbryne geares [per circulum anni], 65.1.2 geond tide [per tempora]. (cited by hymn and verse numbers.) 14 aldv1.480 gend þam ylcan timan [per idem tempus]. (cited by line numbers assigned by doe.) 15 monca 3.10.17 geond dæg ⁊ nihte [per diem et noctem]. (cited by hymn and verse numbers.) 27 oe geond expressing duration of time: the winchester usage selim 16 (2009) translated  om latin source texts, i.e. the life of st machutus (1×),16 an old english translation of the sermo in cena domini ad penitentes (1×)17 and the old english translation of part of the capitula theodulfi (1× in oxford bodleian, bodley 865).18 manuscript variants are found only in the last work: ofer appears in place of geond in the translation of the capitula theodulfi , which is contained in cambridge, corpus christi college 201. it is important to note that all the texts above, both gloss and prose, show a strong preference for winchester words. based on his analysis of vocabulary, hofstetter (1987) concludes that they belong to the winchester group, with the exception of the old english translation of the capitula theodulfi , which is extant in oxford bodleian, bodley 865. in general, this manuscript avoids winchester words in favour of non-winchester synonyms (sauer 1978: 274; hofstetter 1987: 324). it does contain two typical winchester words, leahtor ‘sin’ (thcap 2, 357.3) and undergytan ‘to understand’ (thcap 2, 371.1);19 however, sauer (1978: 274–275) considers the occurrence of leahtor accidental and, due to the overall dominance of non-winchester words in the text, he recognizes no relation to winchester.20 yet, if we consider the temporal use of geond to be a winchester usage, there are at least three pieces of linguistic evidence (leahtor, undergytan and geond) to link this work to winchester. in addition, oxford bodleian, bodley 865 is assumed to have been written in the fi rst half of the eleventh century, perhaps in exeter (hofstetter 1987: 324; ker 1990: 380–381, no. 318). in view of the fact that a number of texts written in the second half of the eleventh century in exeter used 16 ls 13.22r.6 geond ealle tida [per tempora]. (cited by folio and line numbers.) godden notes a syntactic similarity between the life of st machutus and æl ic’s works: “the only text i have so far come across that shows anything resembling æl ic’s variation in the case governed by þurh is another winchester text, of uncertain date but certainly produced by his time: the anonymous life of st machutus” (2002: 28). the use of temporal geond can be another piece of evidence for the syntactic similarity between them. 17 homs 23.32 geond syx hundred geara fæc [per sexcentos annos]. ed. bethurum 1957: 366–373. (cited by line numbers.) 18 thcap 2, 401.8 gynd ealne dæg [per totum diem]. 19 the occurrence of undergytan was pointed out by ono (1986: 569). 20 hofstetter agrees with sauer on this matter (hofstetter 1987: 324). 28 kiriko sato selim 16 (2009) winchester words under the infl uence of winchester (hofstetter 1987: 546, 549 n. 19), we may ascribe the usage of winchester vocabulary in the translation of the capitula theodulfi to the infl uence of winchester. secondly, latin played a very important role in the employment of temporal geond: all nineteen examples mentioned above render per in latin. manuscript variants further suggest the signifi cance of latin. the old english translation of the capitula theodulfi survives in two manuscripts: oxford bodleian, bodley 865, which represents “the rather literal old english” and cambridge, corpus christi college 201, which represents “the  ee and fl uent old english translation” (fulk & cain 2003: 130).21 temporal geond appears in the former, while ofer is preferred in the latter (thcap 1, 401.8 ofer ealne dæg). thus, it seems that temporal geond was available for direct translations  om latin but was avoided in  ee translation. by analysing the distribution of temporal geond and given the signifi cant infl uence  om the latin per, we can conclude that temporal geond most plausibly originated  om the practice of glossing per as geond in winchester. in order to show that non-winchester texts are not characterized by this practice, i will compare the fi ve examples  om the lambeth psalter gloss (psgli) with corresponding phrases in the vulgate psalter (gallican version), the vespasian psalter gloss (psgla) and the prose and verse translations of the paris psalter (ps(p)): (3a) ps 21.3 [deus meus clamabo per diem ‘i call to my god through day’] (3b) psgli 21.3 god min ic clepige iand dæg (3c) psgla 21.3 god min ic cleopiu ðorh deg (3d) ps(p) 21.2 ic clypige dæges and nihtes to ðe ‘i call to you day and night’ (4a) ps 91.3 [ad adnuntiandum mane misericordiam tuam et veritatem tuam per noctem ‘to show your compassion in the morning and your truth through night’] (4b) psgli 91.3 to kyþanne on ærnemorgen þine mildheortnesse þine soðfæstnesse ⁊ geond niht (4c) psgla 91.3 to seggenne on marne mildheortnisse ðine ⁊ soðfestnisse ðine ðorh naeht 21 see also ker 1990: 90–91. 29 oe geond expressing duration of time: the winchester usage selim 16 (2009) (4d) pps 91.2 and þonne on morgene mægene sæcge / … / and his soðe sæcge nihtes ‘and then in the morning i say mightily … and say his truth at night’ (5a) ps 104.39 [expandit nubem in protectionem eorum et ignem ut luceret eis per noctem ‘he spread cloud for the protection of them and fi re so that it would be light for them through night’] (5b) psgli 104.39 he aþenede genipu on gescyldnesse heora ⁊  r þæt hit lihte heom geond nihte (5c) psgla 104.39 aðeneð wolcen in gescildnisse heara ⁊  r ðæt hit lithe him ðorh næht (5d) pps 104.34 he hi wolcne bewreah, wraðum ahredde, / het him neode nihta gehwylce /  renne beam beforan wisian ‘he covered them with cloud, rescued the band, eagerly ordered a burning pillar to show the way before them’ (6a) ps 120.6 [per diem sol non uret te neque luna per noctem ‘throughout day the sun does not burn you or the moon through night’] (6b) psgli 120.6 ðurh dægtiman ł geond dæg sunne he forswæle þe ne mona geond nihte (6c) psgla 120.6 ðorh deg sunne ne berneð ðec ne mona ðorh naeht (6d) pps 120.6 ne þe sunne on dæge sol ne gebærne / ne þe mona on niht min ne geweorðe ‘may the sun not burn you during the day / nor the moon get small at night’ in the lambeth psalter gloss, temporal per is glossed as geond. the only exception is the “double gloss” in (6b) above, where geond is combined with ðurh.22 in contrast, per is consistently glossed as ðorh in the vespasian psalter gloss. the other old english interlinear versions agree with the vespasian psalter gloss in their selection of þurh/ðurh for per. in fact, out of the twelve old english interlinear versions, only the lambeth psalter gloss renders temporal per as geond. thus, the glossator’s choice in rendering temporal per supports gneuss’s observation: “the glossator of the lambeth psalter appears to have deliberately rejected words  om the 22 a double gloss is a combination of a word  om the earlier psalter glosses and a “modern” or “winchester” word, which is quite common in the lambeth psalter gloss (gneuss 1972: 77). 30 kiriko sato selim 16 (2009) earlier psalter glosses he may have utilized when such words did not agree with the usage of the winchester group…” (gneuss 1972: 77). in the prose translation of the paris psalter, which king al ed  eely translated into the early west-saxon dialect, the per-phrase is rendered as the adverbial genitive; in the verse translation of the paris psalter, it is rendered as either the adverbial genitive or the preposition on. thus, temporal geond occurs in the winchester texts and in texts infl uenced by winchester but not elsewhere. as temporal geond is always paired with latin per, they constitute “a winchester set of latin-old english equivalents” (godden 1980: 222). 3 syntactic anglicization in non-winchester texts before examining the rest of the winchester group, i.e. æl ic’s works, i will expand my investigation into prose works unaffi liated with the winchester group in order to show that rendering temporal per as the accusative of extent is the prevailing way of translation. this, i dare say, is a syntactic anglicization since the accusative of extent is especially common in texts that are generally believed to have little infl uence  om latin. my investigation will examine the old english translation of orosius’ historiarum and the old english translation of bede’s historia ecclesiastica. in their description of historical events, these texts provide examples of temporal duration which confi rm my argument that the use of temporal geond is strictly limited to the winchester group. the old english orosius is written in the al edian period, between ad 889 and 899. stylistically, it is “much more of a paraphrase than a strict translation” (greenfi eld & calder 1986: 55).23 it is expected therefore that the language of this work should represent the early old english usage  ee  om the infl uence of latin. in orosius’ historiarum,24 temporal per 23 see also bately 1980b. 24 orosius’ historiarum (oh) is referred to by book, chapter and section numbers in zangemeister’s (1967 [1882]) edition. 31 oe geond expressing duration of time: the winchester usage selim 16 (2009) appears twenty-three times, and twenty of these occurrences (87.0 per cent) are translated into old english using the accusative, e.g.25 (7) or 77.19 alexander xii gear þisne middangeard under him þrysmde ⁊ egsade ‘alexander oppressed and terrifi ed this world under him for twelve years’ [oh 3, 23.6 alexander per duodecim annos trementem sub se orbem ferro pressit ‘alexander oppressed the world cruelly under himself for twelve years’] the latin sentences that contain the remaining three per-phrases are largely paraphrased in translation, and the per-phrases are changed syntactically to fi t the old english contexts: (8) or 96.24 on þæt gerad … þæt hie … him gesealden þæronufan iii m talentana ælce geare ‘on condition that they should pay them three thousand talents each year in addition’ [oh 4, 11.2 condiciones autem erant, ut … tria milia talentum … aequis pensionibus per annos uiginti penderent ‘conditions were, so that they pay three thousand talents by equal payment through twenty years’] (9) or 115.23 ymb xiiii gear þæs þe ueriatus wið romane winnan ongan, he wearð  om his agnum monnum ofslagen ‘fourteen years a er viriatus began to fi ght against rome, he was killed by his own men’ [oh 5, 4.14 viriatus autem cum per quattuordecim annos romanos duces atque exercitus protriuisset, insidiis suorum 25 the rest are: or 22.10 twa ⁊ feowertig wintra [oh 1, 4.4 per duos et quadraginta annos], 29.9 fi ftene gear [1, 14.4 per xv annos], 34.30 xx wintra [1, 21.3 per annos uiginti], 35.3 x winter [1, 21.4 per decem annos], 45.8 xxx wintra [2, 7.6 per annos triginta], 46.7 v gear [2, 9.1 per quinquennium], 56.15 lxx wintra [3, 3.4 per septuaginta annos], 56.28 ii gear [3, 4.3 per biennium], 66.3 xxv wintra [3, 14.10 per uiginti et quinque annos], 76.22 lviiii wintra [3, 22.10 per quadraginta et nouem annos], 95.22 fi f winter [4, 10.1 per quinque annos], 113.24 cc wintra [5, 1.6 per annos ducentos], 117.2 xiiii winter [5, 7.3 per annos quattuordecim], 125.20 xl wintra [6, 5.11 per quadraginta annos], 131.2 ealne dæg [6, 20.6 per totum diem], 133.29 xii winter [7, 3.4 per duodecim … annos], 137.25 vi dagas …⁊ vii niht [7, 7.4 per sex dies septemque noctes], 139.6 xv gear [7, 10.1 per annos xv], 139.23 xix ger [7, 12.1 per annos decem et nouem]. 32 kiriko sato selim 16 (2009) interfectus est ‘a er viriatus oppressed roman generals and armies for fourteen years, he was killed by his men’s plot’] (10) or 147.22 for þon gebode gewurdon fela martyra on x wintra fi rste ‘for this order there were many martyrs in the space of ten years’ [oh 7, 25.13 persectio … per decem annos … caedibus martyrum incessabiliter acta est ‘persecution by slaughter of martyrs through ten years is incessantly done’] in (8) above, orosius writes that the carthaginians sued for peace with the romans and were granted it on condition that they pay three thousand talents by instalment per annos uiginti ‘for twenty years’. however, the old english translator, perhaps misunderstanding the latin, writes that the same amount of money is to be paid ælce geare ‘every year’.26 in (9), per quattuordecim annos ‘for fourteen years’, which modifi es protriuisset ‘oppressed’, is rendered as ymb xiiii gear and moved in  ont of the þæs þe-clause. in (10), on x wintra fi rste is the translation of per decem annos. however, on and per diff er in the meaning that they convey. orosius intends to state that acts of martyrdom incessantly (incessabiliter) continued per decem annos ‘for ten years’; note that what orosius describes here is duration. on the other hand, the old english translator writes that many acts of martyrdom happened (not continued) on x wintra fi rste ‘in ten years’; what the preposition on means here is punctual, ‘in, within’, rather than durative, ‘for the duration of ’. thus in the three passages above, per-phrases are paraphrased rather than translated verbatim. in summary, the old english translator of orosius favours the accusative and does not use old english prepositions to serve the same function as temporal per. next, i will examine the old english bede. its source text, bede’s historia ecclesiastica,27 contains fourteen instances of temporal per. as in 26 bately (1980a: 283) also mentions the diff erence in description of the payment, but off ers no reason for it. 27 bede’s historia ecclesiastica (he) is referred to by page and line numbers in colgrave & mynors’s (1969) edition. 33 oe geond expressing duration of time: the winchester usage selim 16 (2009) most old english psalter glosses, seven of them are rendered as þurh, e.g.28 29 (11) bede 360.21 se [cuthberht] … ancorlíf lædde þurh monig gear in mycelre forhæfdnesse lichaman ond modes ‘he led a solitary life for many years in great temperance of body and mind’ [he 430.23 uitam solitariam per annos plures in magna corporis et mentis continentia duxerat ‘he led a solitary life in great continence of body and mind for many years’] it is widely accepted that the old english bede renders the source language faithfully (greenfi eld & calder 1986: 58). potter lays particularly strong emphasis on its linguistic closeness to latin, stating that the translator of old english bede “endeavour[s] to follow the latin text slavishly, so slavishly, in fact, that the translation sometimes becomes little more than a gloss…” (1931: 2). his observation would be valid if the old english bede consistently used þurh for per, as do most psalter glosses. however, the other seven of the fourteen instances are translated using the accusative, i.e. the anglicized rendering, e.g.30 (12) bede 192.22 he to riice feng, ⁊ þæt eahta ⁊ twentig wintra gewinnesfullice heold ⁊ hæfde ‘he took over the kingdom and laboriously held and had that for twenty two years’ [he 254.25 suscepit regni terrestris sedem pro eo  ater eius osuiu … et per annos xxviii laboriosissime tenuit ‘his brother osuiu succeeded to his seat in the earthly kingdom for him, and laboriously ruled for twenty-eight years’] 28 the rest are as follows: bede 34.4 ðurh tyn winter full [he 28.6 per x annos], 132.16 þurh sume tide [180.30 per aliquod tempus], 162.10 þurh eall ger [226.27 per totum annum], 288.5 þurh nigon ger full [360.8 per annos nouem], 320.25 þurh twegen dagas [394.20 per biduum], 338.14 þurh syx singal ger [410.36 per sex continuos annos]. 29 the temporal use of þurh is limited to the old english bede, psalter glosses and some verse texts; see sato 2008. 30 the rest are as follows: bede 44.10 fela geara [he 40.21 per annos], 220.10 eall ger ⁊ þæs oðres syx moonað [276.32 per annum et sex menses], 252.9 anes wonðe twentig wintra [328.6 per nouem annos], 420.28 sum gear [486.10 per annos aliquot], 466.19 xii winter [530.30 per annos xii], 474.27 feower ⁊ þritig wintra ond … fi fte healf [556.4 per xxxiiii semis annos]. 34 kiriko sato selim 16 (2009) this clearly suggests that the accusative is available as a translation for per-phrases even in the old english bede, the syntax of which is generally assumed to be close to its source language.31 in the old english orosius and bede, geond is never attested in its temporal sense. in fact, this usage is uncommon in old english. in wulfstan’s homilies the accusative is always used to convey the meaning of temporal duration (sato 2009a: 163–164). in the latin source passages corresponding to the anonymous portion of the heptateuch, temporal per occurs twice, and both times it is translated using the accusative in the old english version, e.g.32 (13) gen 41.34 hi gegaderion togædere þone fi  an dæl ealra wæstma þas seofon wæstmbæran gear ‘they gather the fi  h part of all the produce during the seven  uitful years’ [et quintam partem  uctuum per septem annos fertilitatis ‘and the fi  h part of  uits through seven  uitful years’] yet, temporal geond appears in æl ic’s works, including the portion of the heptateuch ascribable to him, as will be shown in the next section. 4 ælfric i will proceed to examine æl ic’s usage of temporal geond. it appears nineteen times in his works, accounting for just half of the total occurrences in old english texts. they are distributed in the fi rst series of catholic homilies (4×), its second series (3×), the lives of saints (9×), æl ic’s portion of the heptateuch (2×)33 and the grammar (1×). given that geond dagas is given as the equivalent of per dies in æl ic’s grammar, we can expect to fi nd that the latin per is a semantic model in æl ic’s works. in fact, he rarely translates a per-phrase using the accusative (see the last paragraph of this section). however, it is not surprising that æl ic was inclined to go against the conventional anglicization, choosing instead to follow the 31 sato (2008: 29) argues against potter’s view that the syntax of the old english bede is as slavish as glosses. 32 also num 10.33 ðry dagas ‘for three days’ [per dies tres]. 33 the old english heptateuch consists of non-æl ician and æl ician parts. the parts ascribable to æl ic are gen. i–iii, vi–ix, xii–xxiv.22; num. xiii–xxxi; josh. (except for i.1–10, xii); judg. see clemoes 1959: 218; pope 1967: 143. 35 oe geond expressing duration of time: the winchester usage selim 16 (2009) syntax of latin. sato has argued that æl ic is fond of applying latinate syntax to his vernacular writing: “æl ic adopts absolute constructions—a loan syntax  om latin—as his own usage, occasionally employing them without their latin counterparts” (2009b: 14). æl ic’s independent use of geond is best explained along this line, too: its temporal sense, which probably originated  om latin per, was adopted by æl ic as his own expression in his vernacular writing. this postulation supports godden’s statement about the winchester vocabulary: “it is easy to imagine … that the practice of glossing latin texts in the school of winchester, as part of a training in latin, would produce as a perhaps unintentional by-product a winchester set of latin-old english equivalents which infl uenced the practice of literary writers trained in the school [æl ic, for example] too” (1980: 222). in addition, it would be more reasonable to consider that æl ic remained as faithful as possible to the syntax of the latin source than to expect that he would anglicize it in translation. as he himself wrote in the preface of his grammar, he intended to produce simplicem interpretationem ‘the straightforward interpretation’.34 furthermore, æl ic’s usage of temporal geond is distinguished  om that of other translators and glossators who use it only to render per. in æl ic’s works, geond is not always a translation of per. of the nineteen examples, eleven correspond to per (see table 1 below), but six have no latin counterparts.35 i will analyse these six examples to show how æl ic alters his latin source passages: (14) num 20.30 ⁊ hi ealle beweopon aarones forðsið geond .xxx. daga geomriende swyðe ‘and they all wept over aaron’s decease for thirty days, lamenting very much’ 34 ægram 5.13 scio multimodis uerba posse interpretari, sed ego simplicem interpretationem sequor fastidii uitandi causa … nos contenti sumus, sicut didicimus in scola aðerwoldi uenerabilis praesulis, qui multos ad bonum imbuit ‘i know that words can be rendered in many ways, but i always adopt the straightforward interpretation for the sake of avoiding tedium. … i am happy to translate in the way i learned at the school of æthelwold, the venerable bishop, who taught many for their own good’. lapidge’s english translation is cited (2002: 302). 35 latin source texts are unidentifi ed for the other two, viz. æchom i, 1.281 geond feowertig daga fyrste and æchom ii, 17.70 geond ðrittig geara fæc. 36 kiriko sato selim 16 (2009) [omnis autem multitudo … fl euit super eo triginta diebus per cunctas familias suas36 ‘and all the multitude … wept over him for thirty days throughout all their families’] (15) æls 2.307 ác hé wunade swá ðeah on þam wundum cucu . geond þreora daga fǽc . ‘but he remained alive a er the wound for the period of three days’ [pasionario hispanico ii, 93.29: beatissimus vero filippus post percussuram tribus diebus esse in corpore permissus est ‘philips, the most blessed, in fact, was allowed to be in body for three days a er the buff eting’] (16) æls 9.8 seo wydewe wæs unhál . swa þæt hire arn blód geond feower geare fæc . ‘the widow was ill so that blood ran  om her for the period of four years’ [de probatis sanctorum vi, 892: quæ annis quatuor fl uxu sanguinis patiebatur ‘who suff ered  om the fl ux of blood for four years’] (17) num 13.22 ⁊ hi ferdon ða sona ⁊ sceawodon þone eard, ⁊ geond feowertig daga embferdon ðone eard. ‘and they went then at once and examined the land, and for forty days travelled round the land’ [reuersique exploratores terræ post quadraginta dies, omni regione circuita ‘and explorers of the earth returned a er forty days, a er going around all the regions’] (18) æls 3.469 mid þam wunode án mæden mærlice drohtnigende . geond feowertig geare fec fægre gehealden . ‘with him dwelt a virgin, living in splendour for the period of forty years, well considered’ [de probatis sanctorum i, 14.1: erat enim virgo venerabilis vitæ & conuersationis, quæ iam quadraginta annos exegerat apud contubernalem suum ‘indeed, was a virgin of venerable life and behaviour, who spent forty years now with his mate’] 36 here, per construes with cunctas familias suas. 37 oe geond expressing duration of time: the winchester usage selim 16 (2009) (19) æchom ii, 11.557 and hé ðærrihte mid stiðlicum fefore geond ða seofon niht þearle gedreht wearð ‘and he was immediately affl icted with severe fever for the seven nights’ [per dies singulos languor ingravesceret ‘day by day faintness grew heavy’]37 in (14), æl ic renders triginta diebus ‘for thirty days’ as geond .xxx. daga; here he translates a synthetic construction as an analytic one. sentences (15) and (16) display the same translation pattern (cf. sentence (20) below, which is a translation of the opposite direction). in the remaining examples, æl ic translates latin somewhat more loosely. sentence (17) is a close paraphrase: in æl ic’s version, the explorers travelled the land geond feowertig daga ‘for forty days’, while in the latin version, they went around the land and returned post quadraginta dies ‘a er forty days’. sentence (18) contains a syntactic alteration: æl ic employs the intransitive verb, drohtnian ‘live’ modifi ed by the adverbial phrase geond feowertig geare fec ‘for forty years’. however, the source latin uses the transitive verb exegerat ‘spent’, which takes quadraginta annos ‘forty years’ as its direct object. in (19), æl ic replaces the phrase per dies singulos ‘day by day’, which is used in the distributive (not durative) temporal sense,38 with geond ða seofon niht ‘for the seven nights’, which is not found in latin.39 thus, æl ic uses geond to express temporal duration regardless of whether or not per appears in the latin source. his preference for geond becomes more obvious when we take into account his treatment of temporal per. as i have mentioned previously, he translates per as geond eleven times (table 1), but anglicized the construction only twice:40 37 the latin sentence is cited  om godden 2000: 447. 38 for the distributive sense of per, see leumann & hoff mann 1928: 522; glare 1982 s.v. per 5. 39 this is a rather  ee translation of the latin sentence which comes  om gregory’s dialogues; per dies singulos is usually rendered as ælce dæȝe in old english, as wærferth did in his translation of this passage: gd(c) 175.16 þa ælce dæȝe weox se ece, ⁊ seo adlhefeȝode ‘then day by day the pain and the disease became heavy’. sato (2008: 28) shows the way of rendering distributive per. 40 also æchom i, 22.228 seofon dagas ‘for seven days’ [per septem dies (godden 2000: 182)]. 38 kiriko sato selim 16 (2009) (20) josh 5.4 heora fæderas wæron ær on egypto ymbsnydene ⁊ seo iugoð næs, ðe be ðam wege wæs acennd on ðam langsumon færelde feowerti geara ‘their fathers were circumcised in egypt and the youth was not, who was born on the way on the long journey for forty years’ [per quadraginta annos itineris latissimæ solitudinis incircumcisus fuit ‘on the long journey of the desert for forty years, he was uncircumcised’] he uses the preposition for twice, e.g.41 (21) æchom i, 31.59 se þe for manegum gearum mid egeslicre wodnysse gedreht wæs ‘who was affl icted by terrible madness for many years’ [passio bartholomaei, mombritius, 141.25: qui per multos annos passus est ‘he suff ered for many years’] for, which usually means ‘before’ in the temporal sense in old english, developed the meaning ‘for the duration of ’ much later, perhaps in the middle english period.42 æl ic’s inconsistency in rendering per suggests that he makes linguistic experimentation, but he favours geond over the other two alternatives. temporal geond in æl ic latin counterparts æchom i, 21.5: geond feowertig daga acts i.3: per dies quodraginta æchom i, 30.23: geond æighwylces geares ymbrene de assumptione, §7: per singulos annos tota æchom i, 38.251: geond ealle þa niht [ms d ealle þa niht] passio andreae, 18.8: per totam noctem æchom ii, 17.2: geond twentig geara fæce passio philippi, mombritius ii, 385.3: per annos uiginti 41 also æchom i, 31.54 for manegum gearum ‘for many years’ [passio bartholomaei, mombritius, 141.22 per multos annos]. 42 for example, oed cites the earliest instance  om c1450 cov. myst.129 (s.v. for prep. 28a); the quotations in med also come  om late middle english except for one  om a1175 (?oe) bod. hom (s.v. for 15a). for more details, see sato 2009a: 111–112, 143–144. 39 oe geond expressing duration of time: the winchester usage selim 16 (2009) æls 2.401: geond twæntig daga pasionario hispanico ii, 97.41: per vigintim dies æls 8.12: geond þrittig nihte acta s. agathae, ass feb. i, 615: per dies triginta æls 21.145: geond fi f monþas land ed’s swithun 4.4: per interstitium quinque mensium æls 21.157: geond nigon geara fec land ed’s swithun 5.3: per spatium … novem annorum æls 31.1223: geond twentig wintra fyrst sulpicii severi 205.4: per uiginti annos æls 34.189: geond seofon dagas passio sanctae ceciliae, mombritius i, 336.56: per septem dies ægram 269.17: geond dagas per dies table 1: ælfric’s geond-phrases which correspond to per-phrases (11×) 5 conclusions this investigation has shown that the use of geond to express duration of time is a syntactic feature of texts of the winchester group. this conclusion does not rule out one of the two possibilities that mitchell suggests: the preference for prepositions is due to the general historical development toward a more analytical language (see section 1 above). yet, it is diffi cult to ascribe this usage of geond to a simple chronological development because it is not found in texts written in earlier or later periods of old english unless they are connected, either directly or indirectly, with winchester. secondly, it is important to note that the temporal meaning of geond derives  om the latin per, and æl ic is so familiar with this latinate meaning that he uses it even where latin has no direct infl uence. the following lexical question still remains: why did the glossators in winchester choose geond in place of þurh? it may be diffi cult to fi nd a convincing reason for their choice of function words. in any case, the answer to this question is beyond the scope of this paper, as it requires a comprehensive survey of the distribution and competition of 40 kiriko sato selim 16 (2009) the two prepositions, taking into account both the temporal and spatial meanings. the use of either geond or þurh, which was analysed in the lambeth psalter gloss and æl ic’s works on the one hand and eleven other interlinear psalter versions and bede on the other, is little more than a question of lexical choice. on the other hand, the competition between the adverbial accusative and geondor þurh-phrases concerns both lexis and syntax. 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lengua y literatura inglesa medieval oviedo – murcia  clara molina & manuela romano, selim  (): –issn: 1132–631x old texts in new vessels: teaching and learning hel online abstract university education is nowadays undergoing exhaustive revision under the auspices of the european higher education area reform initiative. more oen than not, proposals for teaching/learning improvement are linked to technological innovations. ict provide platforms that foster autonomous learning while training students in technological competences without which they are severely impaired today. online teaching/learning is therefore not only more dynamic than traditional methodologies, but also in line with the ects amework, which contemplates less contact hours and more independent student work under the guidance of the lecturer. against this setting, we present a website for the analysis of historical texts in english. the website has been designed so as to ⒤ enhance self-learning by means of readings, problems and textual commentaries and (ii) familiarize students with the technologies they will be using in their professional future. keywords: english historical texts, online teaching/learning, hel, ects resumen en el marco cambiante en que se encuentran los estudios universitarios, todo proyecto de mejora pasa por la progresiva adaptación a las innovaciones que propone el espacio europeo de educación superior. las nuevas tecnologías de la información y la comunicación proporcionan plataformas que fomentan el aprendizaje autónomo sin necesidad de enseñanza presencial continua, al tiempo que entrenan al alumno en competencias que hoy resultan imprescindibles. la enseñanza online no es sólo más dinámica, sino también más acorde a los parámetros de la innovación docente con ects, que contempla menos docencia presencial y más trabajo personal del alumno tutorizado por el profesor. en este contexto, presentamos una página web para el análisis de textos históricos de la lengua inglesa diseñada con el fin de ⒤ fomentar el autoaprendizaje mediante lecturas, problemas y comentarios textuales y (ii) familiarizar al estudiante con las tecnologías con las que habrá de convivir en su futuro profesional. palabras clave: textos históricos del inglés, enseñanza/aprendizaje online, historia de la lengua inglesa, ects n v  o t t he bologna process, a reform initiative aiming at establishing a european higher education area by , is steering the introduction of the ects credit system in spanish universities. the aneca, spanish contributor to the european network of quality assurance agencies (enqa), 60 clara molina & manuela romano selim  () has stressed the significance of the european credit transfer system for an adequate upgrade of university degree structures. the pursuit of easily readable and comparable degrees aims not only at increased mobility and employability of both students and academics throughout europe, but also at increased excellence within the higher and lifelong education systems. as a transfer and accumulation system, ects supports the adoption of innovative teaching and learning procedures in which the student workload is at the core of the qualification process. one of the immediate effects is therefore the need for online platforms that allow independent student practice while promoting the acquisition of ict competences, without which students will be severely impaired once university years are over. nowadays, being literate involves both multiand transliteracies, that is, a proficient command of the multimodal ways for making meaning today, and within these, it/ict literacy stands out. however, online teaching platforms (synchronous or asynchronous) are not widely implemented yet, which widens the gap between the vocational and scholarly pursuits of students. website browsing, sms texting, instant messaging, chat rooms and forums are part of the everyday life of students, who choose them over traditional media for a wide variety of uses. such a demand, however, is not met by the educational arena, in which traditionally there has been little room for technological innovation. the university reform process, however, has placed an emphasis on competences and learning outcomes that brings the need for such an innovation to the fore. learning outcomes are statements of the competences a student must have acquired as a result of the learning process. such competences typically emphasize what students will “be able to do” rather than what students will “know”, and in the case of a discipline such as the study of the history of the english language (hel) 61 teaching and learning hel online selim  () verbs such as “analyzing”, “appraising”, “assessing”, “categorizing”, “collecting”, “contrasting”, “describing”, “designing”, “discussing”, “explaining”, “formulating”, “identiing”, “interpreting”, “locating”, “relating”, “reviewing” or “solving” should come up and replace mere “knowing”. outcomes-based instruction is a learner-centred approach that fosters the professional component in university education while training students for autonomous life-long learning and flexibility towards change. and if there is one thing that studying hel promotes, that is indeed an open approach to change. the attachment of increased technological competences to this far-reaching learning outcome predicts a bright future for the historical study of language even in an increasingly matter-of-fact scenario. a glance into the tuning¹ taxonomy of university competences reveals interesting insights, such as the presence of “synthesis”, “analysis”, “time management”, “learning strategies”, “problem solving”, “decision making”, “planning”, “ict competence” and “written and spoken competence in a foreign language as well as in the mother tongue” among unavoidable instrumental competences. is there anything in the list which is not fully addressed by hel— even if “synthesis” and “analysis” were not keywords both in the list and in the historical study of english? let us now take a look at key tuning interpersonal competences: “critical and self-critical attitude”, “multicultural and diversity awareness”, “teamwork”… once again, is there anything in the list not addressed by hel? the same might be applied to systemic competences in tuning: “skills for project design and management”, “creativity”, “entrepreneurial spirit”, “innovativeness”, “leadership” or “success and achievement orientation”. ¹ the tuning project is available at http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/ educ/tuning/tuning_es.html and http://tuning.unideusto.org/tuningeu 62 clara molina & manuela romano selim  () what is the problem with hel then? what has been the reason for the steady neglect of historical disciplines in philological curricula? the answer is manifold for sure, but some degree of uncreativeness in teaching and learning methodology is likely to play a role, and in this respect, the adoption of ict innovations stands out as an optimal candidate for a revival of the discipline. within this amework, the paper presents a website² (http://www. ffil.uam.es/textoshel/hel/home.htm) designed for the analysis of historical texts of the english language by means of readings, problems and textual commentaries. in providing students with tools and materials for the textual analysis of early texts, the website aims at fostering autonomous learning and hands-on acquisition of ict competences. online teaching (and online-aided in-class teaching) is not only more dynamic, in that it allow courses to “grow” and meet student needs as they come up. it is also much more in line with the parameters of ects innovation, in that it encompasses less class attendance and more independent student work under the supervision of the lecturer. for these reasons, the enterprise of creating a website for the analysis of hel texts seems worthwhile and the pages that follow will be devoted to the description of the website against the relevant context. t s  h   e l  uam   the autónoma university of madrid (http://www.uam.es) is a state university founded in  and known for its distinguished record in scientific research as well as for its social commitment. the uam offers a wide choice of undergraduate and postgraduate study programmes, one of which is a four-year bachelor degree in english studies (http://www.uam.es/departamentos/filoyletras/ ² ® m-/ 63 teaching and learning hel online selim  () filoinglesa). the historical study of english within the degree is addressed by three subjects, two core subjects in the first and second semesters of the third course (history of the english language i & ii) and one elective subject in the fourth year (diachronic english linguistics). the theoretical basis for delimiting the contents and methodology of the two hel courses at uam is based on the recent³ idea that synchrony and diachrony overlap and stress the significance of one another. on the one hand, historical linguistics (in fact, dynamic approaches to language at large) helps corroborate synchronic analyzes and is therefore at the center of linguistic research within fields such as cognitive linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, pragmatics, anthropology and so on. on the other hand, the findings and theoretical premises of these synchronically-oriented fields are helping unravel the past. this is a healthy state of affairs, with historical linguistics at the core of linguistic theories, which sharply contrasts with the scarce presence of diachronic subjects in the curricula of most european universities, spain among them. the causes for the gradual reduction of diachrony om european university curricula have already been analyzed in depth (schousboe,⁴ tejada ). let us just recall, among some of the most significant reasons for this decrease, the shi within english departments towards more experimental subjects with concrete and immediate applications within society, to the detriment of more relational, open subjects such as historical linguistics. the distinction (savater ) between open and closed disciplines is one that opposes ³ although already present in the pre-structuralist historical approach (geeraerts  and ), this conception of language was not reintroduced until the birth of the functional and cognitive paradigms in the late s. ⁴ teaching historical linguistics is available at http://www.univie.ac.at/anglistik/ hoe/pschousboe.htm 64 clara molina & manuela romano selim  () technical subjects, which can be completely mastered and directly applied within society, to open-ended ones, which can never be thoroughly learnt with no ifs nor buts. indeed, the more one learns about an open subject (be it language, music or philosophy), the more conscious one becomes of what is still le to know, and the more paths and questions appear—a scenario which does not seem particularly tuned with the fast, earthbound requirements of the world today. this is not the place to insist on the many reasons to promote dynamic approaches to language in present and future university curricula (tejada , romano ) but let us go over our main aims in the choice of contents for hel i and hel ii, which will help explain our methodology within the new ects system. the course of instruction for both subjects falls within the conception of language as a complex, dynamic and open system, an approach within which students should be made aware of: the variety and complexity of the linguistic and extralinguistic () factors which intervene in any linguistic change. the interdisciplinary nature of the field and the necessity to () take into account the findings of related disciplines for the explanation of language (change), especially those which relate language to cognition and culture. the fact that we carry, om school, linguistic prejudices on the () superiority of certain languages, styles, registers and therefore people over other varieties/people⒮. prejudices which are not based on linguistic, scientific data. upon the bases of the foregoing aims, which provide the encompassing theoretical rationale for these two subjects, let us now summarize the contents of both courses in terms of learning outcomes. at the end of hel i, students should have a basic 65 teaching and learning hel online selim  () understanding of ⒤ the place of historical linguistics within the history of linguistics, (ii) the main causes and processes of language change, (iii) the main research methods in historical linguistics as well as (iv) acquaintance with the sociolinguistic and historical backgrounds of english. by the end of hel ii, students should ⒤ have a basic understanding of the most significant lexico-semantic, morpho-syntactic and grapho-phonological changes undergone by the english language over time (in particular om the seventh to the seventeenth centuries, but also into the present day) and (ii) they must be able to identi and analyze the grammatical structures of a historical text. together with these learning outcomes, a number of conceptual, procedural and attitudinal competences should have been developed over the course of both hel semesters. to our mind, the following outstand out the many competences enhanced by the historical study of language: conceptual competences: ⒤ to understand language change () as a natural, universal process, (ii) to learn the importance of diachronic linguistics for the explanation of present-day linguistic problems, (iii) to develop linguistic awareness in order to promote a scientific rather than intuitive approach to the analysis of different languages and cultures by learning to establish connections between different disciplines and languages and by acquiring theoretical background for linguistic analysis—in the case of hel i, together with those conceptual competences fostered by hel ii: ⒤ to understand the major lexico-semantic, morpho-syntactic and grapho-phonological changes undergone by english over time and (ii) to acquire the theoretical background and applied expertise for the linguistic analysis of english historical texts. 66 clara molina & manuela romano selim  () procedural competences: to learn how to ⒤ explore diverging () approaches to a topic, (ii) pose questions and formulate hypotheses upon data, (iii) locate and assess relevant references, (iv) acquire learning autonomy by means of analytic reading, ⒱ improve oral and written communication in english and (vi) present work to an audience. attitudinal competences: to become critically aware ⒤ of the () different means that different languages and periods of the same language have to express similar grammatical meanings and (ii) of the ever-changing character of language, (iii) to develop an analytic advance towards linguistic issues and a critical attitude towards linguistic theories and (iv) to cooperate towards the success of teamwork while ⒱ stressing the value of sustained effort when cononted with texts and realities at first alien to our eyes and minds. once the rationale and learning outcomes looked for have been presented, let us briefly turn to the teaching/learning methodology and procedures for assessment within the new ects system, which will help us show the usefulness of the website within the new amework. as discussed earlier on, one of the most challenging demands of the new system is the introduction of notable changes in the teaching/learning methodology, with an emphasis on learner autonomy. in this way, for the estimated  hours of student work assigned to each of the hel courses, the following contact/noncontact arrangements are suggested: a weekly in-class session devoted to ⒤ a brief lecture on the () weekly topic, (ii) solving the weekly assignments and (iii) discussing the weekly readings (some  hours altogether) independent study devoted to ⒤ reading a weekly paper, (ii) () completing a weekly task (including both problems and critical 67 teaching and learning hel online selim  () discussion of relevant topics) and (iii) preparing a joint oral presentation on a topic selected by out of an assortment of research lines, coupled with a short essay on the same topic once incorporated the feedback om the audience, as well as (iv) regular revision of class notes and course website materials and drawing of conceptual maps (some  hours altogether) seminars and/or workshops devoted to ⒤ hands-on activities at () the library or the language lab and (ii) audiovisual tasks (some  hours altogether) tutorials which students have to attend at least twice as a () compulsory requirement in order to ⒤ keep up momentum with the summative evaluation scheme and (ii) address the composition and presentation of the research project (some  hours altogether) online teaching by means of uam teaching platform (which () encompasses both synchronous chat rooms and asynchronous forums as well as sections for student contributions and teacher posting of relevant materials) and also by means of the hel website presented in this paper hence, the new methodological approach is paired with continuous assessment in which the final grade depends not only on a final exam (worth no more than fi per cent of the final grade), but also on class engagement and completion of weekly assignments (worth fieen per cent of the final grade) and on the submission of a short essay about a topic previously presented in class (worth the remaining thirty five per cent of the final grade). such a work plan, which promotes uninterrupted student (and teacher) work, is paired with reduced contact hours (for, although students are encouraged to attend office hours liberally, most prefer the advantage of email consultations), which creates a new scenario in which no more than fourteen in-class sessions can ever be planned per semester. this is 68 clara molina & manuela romano selim  () of course the setting against which the website “texts for the study of the history of english” has proved to be most useful, since it has allowed to counteract the difficulties posed by reduced teaching hours. let us then explore the website. t  “t   s   h   e” the website is divided into four major sections: ⒤ how to analyze a historical text, (ii) sample textual commentaries, (iii) texts for the study of the history of english and (iv) links, each of which will be reviewed in the subheadings below. .. how to analyze a historical text is a theoretical guide on how to analyze (rather than translate, since texts in the website are transliterated) english historical texts, since students must be able to date and comment on a text by the end of the two hel courses. the principle underlying the compilation of this template was the assumption that students have never been taught how to comment on the linguistic features of an early text, and therefore, the hard labovian (:) target of “making the best use of bad data” becomes even harder. these guidelines insist on the complexity of using historical texts as raw data, as well as on the necessity to study the socio-historical and cultural factors surrounding the text before attempting the linguistic analysis, as well as on a number of practicalities with which students are oen not aware of beforehand. since no such guide had been previously compiled within the arena of english historical studies until the moment (to our knowledge), the section stands out as one of the most significant contributions of the website, and for this reason it is replicated in full below. 69 teaching and learning hel online selim  () a few remarks to get you started texts are not stable, perfectly defined entities. they are subject to a great number of variables, such as social, geographical, rhetorical, cultural and historical factors which make them fuzzier than they seem at first sight. this fact becomes even more evident when analyzing a text om the past, since historical texts are not without problems. to begin with, texts are limited in number and oen restricted to given genres or registers. besides, there exist many difficulties in interpreting written language, typically more conservative than spoken discourse, when there are naturally no native speakers to consult. texts are, nevertheless, our best data to unravel the past, and as labov points out, we can learn to “make the best use of bad data.” and the very first thing we have to learn when dealing with linguistic data is honesty. this means that we should never try to squeeze textual data into our previous theoretical knowledge of the language: the linguistic evidence should match the theory rather than vice versa. and only those linguistic features actually present in the text should count as data: how could it count as evidence otherwise? the second thing that we have to learn is that we have to be very careful: dealing with texts om the past is tricky. why is this so? because in interpreting a historical text om a contemporary standpoint, we might end up analyzing the function and meaning of linguistic constructions om the past as though they were the antecedent of present-day ones, which is oen not the case: old english did have -ing patterns, which does not mean the progressive existed at the time. 70 clara molina & manuela romano selim  () besides, when analyzing a text we should never forget that language is ingrained within a context. therefore, before attempting the linguistic analysis of any given text, we should always try to find as much information as possible about aspects such as the following: social, historical and cultural highlights of the period.• overall linguistic features of the language at that time.• specific features of the language variety displayed by the • text: dialectal belonging, genre and stylistic constraints such as alliteration and rhyme in the case of poetry, calques in the case of translations, degree of formality in epistolary correspondence and so on. author and intended audience as well as means of • transmission: texts to be said aloud, manuscripts to be read by a selected few, printed matter, handwritten letters and the like. more oen than not, however, we will not know such details beforehand, in which case we should not try to decide on the date and variety of the text until having analyzed it carefully as a whole. thus, we should only try to advance a rough date and location for the text once we have already considered the morphosyntactic, lexical and phonological levels in detail. even at this point, precise dating or dialectal location might well be elusive, which is nothing to et about, since a proficient textual analysis is never restricted to it. as a matter of fact, neither geographic nor diachronic boundaries are clear-cut. as such, most texts are somehow transitional—in between two historical periods, in between 71 teaching and learning hel online selim  () two dialectal zones. even if we came across a text clearly belonging to a given place om a given time, we would still face the challenge of the different paces for change at the various levels of the language: a middle english text will display a very simplified state of nominal inflection, while verbal inflection in the same text will still be very similar to that of the old english period. likewise, a late middle english romance might well be very archaic in its lexicon because of the constraints of alliterative poetry and nonetheless very advanced at the morphosyntactic level. this is surely most interesting and challenging for the historical linguist and yet another reason not to hurry the analysis. the linguistic analysis of a historical text the linguistic analysis of a historical text should never be approached as a word for word description of the excerpt. thus, each grammatical level, each phrase and each component should be analyzed independently rather than at a go and all at the same time. we will only have a holistic knowledge of the linguistic features of the text under study once we have considered all the grammatical levels. the analysis of a historical text should therefore include comments on the spelling, morphology, syntax, lexis and phonology of the text. how to combine them all into a coherent analysis rather than a useless checklist? spelling is a good starting point, even if not a hundred per cent trustworthy. why not trustworthy? because every printed text we have for the early stages of english is naturally an edited version of a manuscript. this means that abbreviations 72 clara molina & manuela romano selim  () have been filled out, punctuation has been added, gaps in the original rounded out and so on. nonetheless, texts will still display graphemes and spelling conventions typical of given periods or varieties that will help us place the text in context. in addition to fairly broad considerations (such as chaotic spellings indicative of no linguistic standardization as opposed to orthographic consistency indicative of scriptoria and language planning), distinctive signals we should be in search of include: the appearance of runes such as wynn 〈ƿ〉 and asg • 〈〉, ligatures such as ash 〈æ〉, the use of 〈e〉 to indicate palatalization, the occurrence of thorn 〈þ〉 in initial positions and eth 〈ð〉 anywhere else or graphemes such as 〈cg〉, 〈cw〉, 〈hl〉, 〈hn〉, 〈hw〉, 〈lc〉, 〈lh〉 and 〈sc〉—all of them markers of an old english text, as well as the absence of the letters 〈j〉, 〈q〉, 〈v〉 and 〈z〉. the presence of yogh 〈ȝ〉, the occurrence of 〈v〉 in initial • positions and 〈u〉 anywhere else or the appearance of french digraphs such as 〈ch〉, 〈ck〉, 〈ph〉, 〈qu〉, 〈sh〉, 〈th〉 and 〈wh〉— all of them indicative of a middle english text. the addition of a final -e to mark vowel length or the • replacement of yogh by 〈y〉 and thorn by 〈th〉—all of them suggestive of an early modern english text. the linguistic analysis of a text should also include a brief analysis of its phonology. however, reconstructing the phonological system of a text is quite a difficult task because of the lack of correspondence between spelling and pronunciation throughout the history of english. the task is hard for the 73 teaching and learning hel online selim  () early times since the idea of a stable spelling did not even exist until aer the advent of print. aerwards, it became even more difficult because of the great vowel shi. this means that in old and middle english there were several spellings for the same word, while in early modern english and beyond there was only one spelling—but it oen had nothing to do with the way in which the word was actually pronounced! nevertheless, there are certain features that can be observed with the help of our theoretical knowledge: changes in the syllable-structure of words, such as the • reduction and loss of vowels in final unstressed syllables. disappearance of voiceless icatives.• lengthening of short vowels.• disappearance in the number of contrastive units in the • vowel system. loss of initial • h-sounds (hring into ring), metathesis (frist into first) and appearance of initial dg-sound (as in judge) in middle english. morphology will then become a crucial level of grammatical description, mostly if in ont of an old or middle english text. why mostly in early texts? because the most influential change in the history of english was the transition om a semantically-oriented synthetic language type to a syntactically-oriented analytic language type. to make a long story short, this means that, in the transit om old to middle english, word endings were lost while word order became more rigid and prepositions more equently used. since nominal declensions were dropped well before verbal 74 clara molina & manuela romano selim  () inflections, a close inspection of noun and verb phrases will help us identi the stage for development of the text under study. thus, as for the noun phrase, some of the questions we should ask ourselves include: are nouns inflected for case, gender and number? is gender • natural or grammatical? do adjectives agree with the nouns they modi?• are there weak and strong adjectives in the text?• do determiners display different forms for the different • functions? which forms and functions do personal and possessive • pronouns show? do we find anglo-saxon • h-forms or scandinavian th-forms of third person plural personal pronouns? are genitive constructions synthetic or analytic?• as for the verb phrase, questions such as the following should be a must: are verbs inflected for person and number?• which ending do we find for present indicative plural • forms: -eth, -en or ø? which weak and strong preterits are there in the text? have • any of these forms disappeared or been replaced in pde? what is the ending for present participles?• an analysis of the syntax of the agment should follow the morphological review. nonetheless, remember the transit om a synthetic to an analytic language type was not abrupt. inflections did not disappear overnight as a means of signalling 75 teaching and learning hel online selim  () relations among words within the sentence. rather, they were gradually replaced by word order and prepositional constraints. this means that the boundaries between morphology and syntax got steadily blurred over the history of english. for this reason, analyzing the morphosyntax of a text rather than the morphology and the syntax as discrete levels will oen be helpful. in any case, a comprehensive insight should combine overall textual matters and much more specific reflections about salient features. questions such as the ones below will help us ame the analysis: examine word-order constructions: are they different om • pde in independent and subordinate clauses? what about in questions and imperatives? does word order seem to be ee or not? in the case of poetry, do not forget to observe whether the metrical system imposes any constraints on syntax! is the number of different prepositions remarkable in • any way? what about their equency? does the form or function of prepositions seem to have changed ever since? are there any instances of redundant overmarking?• how are definite and indefinite articles used in the text?• is there double negation?• are there impersonal verbs and dummy subjects such as • there or it? besides, a detailed analysis of the formation and use of verb tenses should include questions such as the following: is the tense system reduced to present and past only?• 76 clara molina & manuela romano selim  () are there compound verbal forms for perfects, futures and • passives instead? how advanced is the development of auxiliaries? is the use • of be, do and have equivalent to pde in the formation of periphrastic constructions? have modal verbs become auxiliaries? do they seem • grammaticalized already? an analysis of how information is organized or structured within the text can also provide valuable data om a historical point of view. the earlier stages of the english language would be more semantically-oriented; that is, organized around communicative factors which determine word order, the appearance or non-appearance of subject forms, conjunctions, deictic markers, etc. in short: a language which is based on the speaker’s need for economy and expressiveness. on the contrary, stages closer to present-day english would be more syntactically-oriented; that is, a language with more and clearer grammatical categories, a fixed word order and a higher degree of conventionalisation; in short: a language based on the hearer’s need for transparency (tejada ). where are the most informative elements of the sentence/• text? how is this salience marked? are coordination and parataxis more equent than • subordination or hypotaxis? are deictic markers (demonstrative pronouns, personal • pronouns, þa and so on) equent in the text? what are their functions? 77 teaching and learning hel online selim  () in any case, remember “why?” and “why is this significant?” are questions we cannot do without in our analysis. always remember to discuss the entailments of every finding: there is no point in noticing the presence (or absence) of whatever feature if we do not discuss its relevance. likewise, there is no point in analyzing the various levels of grammatical description as distinctively discrete entities with no relation to one another. there exist no coincidences in language, which means that the morphosyntactic analysis above will surely have a lot to do with the analysis of lexical and semantic aspects to follow. the analysis of lexis within the text should ideally be tackled with the aid of an etymological dictionary such as the oed. an etymological dictionary will reveal the origin of words— when a given word entered the language and where om. this seems certainly relevant since as many as  per cent of the words in english today are of a foreign origin! besides, an etymological dictionary will display all the various senses every word has and has had over the history of the language. this will allow us to trace changes in the meaning of words such as generalization (bridd ‘small bird’ into ‘bird’), specialization (tid ‘time’ into ‘tide’), amelioration (nice ultimately om latin nescius) or pejoration (sælig ‘happy’ into ‘silly’)—in short, whether the meaning of a word has undergone a metaphorical or metonymic extension (gebedu ‘bead for keeping count of the rosary’ into bede ‘prayer’) or whether it has been subjectified. nonetheless, there will be times in which an etymological dictionary will not be an available resource. even so, there will still remain a number of lexical questions to ask ourselves: 78 clara molina & manuela romano selim  () are there many words of germanic origin that have been • dropped om the language ever since? the knowledge of other contemporary germanic languages becomes an asset at the time of identiing cognates not present in the language any more, such as middle english bocstæf ‘letter’ (besides german buchstabe), middle english frið ‘peace’ (german frieden) or middle english stund ‘hour’ (german stunde). this knowledge will also prove useful for identiing processes of semantic change, since this is the reason why existing cognates oen become false iends in related languages. are there many borrowings that make the lexicon of the • text seem familiar to a contemporary speaker of english? is it possible to identi the source om which the borrowings have been loaned? do the words in the text belong to any specific genre or • register? are there calques (ælmihtig ‘almighty’ om latin omnipotens), doublets (lonely versus solitary) or learned words? do the semantic fields help to reconstruct the social and • cultural context of the text? new words are always being created—mostly out of other words through compounding and derivation. even though the former stands out as a particularly inventive device for lexical innovation, derivation has always been the most productive source of new words in english. a close examination of the patterns for word formation will also become a useful tool for placing the text within its context: 79 teaching and learning hel online selim  () old english exhibited a vast stock of prefixes and suffixes. • among the former, geis particularly outstanding. as a matter of fact, it was so widely used in so many different ways that it ultimately became meaningless and was dropped om the language shortly aer the end of anglo-saxon times. other prefixes were æfter-, fore-, forþ-, ofer-, þurh or wiþ-, whereas common old english suffixes included -cund, -fæst, -ig, -isc, -leas, -lic, -sum or -wende. despite the loss of a number of native prefixes and suffixes, • the new affixes borrowed om french and latin in middle english further increased the equency of affixing as a means for creating new words. the novel affixes included prefixes such as counter-, de-, dis-, in-, inter-, mal-, pre-, re-, subor superand suffixes such as -able, -age, -ance, -al, -ant, -ence, -ery, -ess, -ify, -ist, -ity or -ment. the massive loss of inflections during middle english • prompted the rise of a highly productive source of new vocabulary: functional shi or zero derivation, widespread om early modern english onwards and particularly distinctive of the english language ever since. rounding up now, once you have analyzed all and every one of the levels of grammar above, put your pencil down, think for a while and then write an all-encompassing review: a textual commentary should never reduce to a checklist of features! plan your essay carefully, quote whenever using ideas other than your own and provide illustrative examples om the text. remember length does not stand for quality—orderly argumentation does. 80 clara molina & manuela romano selim  () .. as a companion to the guide how to analyze a historical text, the website includes a section entitled sample textual commentaries which provides two models for the analysis of a historical text, one om old english (matthew) and another one for middle english (cursor mundi). both textual commentaries follow the principles advanced in the guidelines, but with a slightly different twist so that students understand there is no one single way in which a text can be analyzed, and that each text and commentator will necessarily follow different paths in their journey through the data. .. the third section in the website, texts for the study of the history of english, constitutes the backbone of the site, for it includes a collection of transliterated texts of diverse origin, both om a stylistic and om chronological point of view, for students to comment once acquainted with the instructions for the analysis of historical texts and the sample commentaries. this section of the website is further divided into four sub-sections, three of which correspond to the old, middle and modern stages of the language and a fourth one dedicated to the biblical text on the tower of babel, presented in three versions, one for each of the main periodizations. each of the sub-sections (old, middle and modern english) presents the same structure: readings on the period• : an introductory article on the linguistic features of the period together with a list of suggested references on the socio-historical and linguistic context. audio sample• : a brief recording of an excerpt which provides students with some hints on what the oral language could have been like at each of the three main periods. texts• : a series of texts for each of the three stages of the language— all of them transliterated and accompanied by a number of guided questions which have been included to help students with the 81 teaching and learning hel online selim  () analysis. the texts om which the excerpts were chosen are listed below: old english: ○ beowulf ’s fight with grendel, anglo-saxon chronicle, ælfric’s parable of the two sons, ælfred’s preface to the pastoral care and peterborough chronicle. middle english: ○ the owl and the nightingale, ormulum, layamon’s brut, sir orfeo, piers plowman, canterbury tales, sir gawain and the book of margery kempe. modern english: ○ everyman, william caxton’s preface to malory’s la morte darthur, thomas more’s last letter and the scholemaster. parallel texts: ○ the tower of babel (genesis chapter ) in old, middle and early modern english. .. the fourth and final section of the website contains a series of relevant links, organized again into periods, on various theoretical and practical linguistic issues, as well as on the socio-historical, cultural and literary context of the period. the map of the website is therefore as follows: how to analyze a historical text• sample textual commentaries• texts for the study of the history of english• old english ○ readings on the old english period  a reading on the linguistic features of oe – suggested readings on the oe period – old english audio sample  old english texts  82 clara molina & manuela romano selim  ()  f p over the course of the two years in which the website “texts for the study of the history of english” has been accessible online, it has become more and more of a key factor for students aiming at fuller command of the textual commentary of early texts in english. since a highly significant outcome of the learning of hel as it is taught at uam is being able to identi and analyze the linguistic features of an historical text while providing an approximate date for it, the possibility of extensive practice becomes indispensable in a competence not likely to be encountered by students in other subjects. for this reason, the website has become increasingly welcome by students who, aer an introductory tour to the website middle english ○ readings on the middle english period  a reading on the linguistic features of me – suggested readings on the me period – middle english audio sample  middle english texts  early modern english ○ readings on the early modern english period  a reading on the linguistic features of emode – suggested readings on the emode period – early modern english audio sample  early modern english texts  parallel texts ○ suggested readings on the history of english  biblical parallel texts  links• 83 teaching and learning hel online selim  () (and once familiar with the theoretical developments undergone by the language), feel more and more at ease with early english texts and their analysis. in order to further promote the exploitation of the resources made available by the website, throughout the fourteen-week hel ii course, both theory and practice are dealt with simultaneously, and extra work on commentaries is not only always welcome, but also oen mandatory. as the course proceeds and students gain more theoretical knowledge on the subject, more and more commentaries are set for homework and later on revised in class and/on online in the online teaching platform (which also allows students to ask one another for help, hence promoting self-learning and peer-revision under the supervision of the lecturer). it is at the arena of distant, autonomous learning where the website has proved most useful, particularly during the last weeks of instruction and for exam preparation. at the same time, uam erasmus students registered for the course but living abroad as well as all other students not attending lectures for whatever reason, have also appreciated the innovative teaching/learning methodology provided by the website. in the future, reduced contact hours and increasing emphasis being placed on autonomous learning will undoubtedly stress the role of distant learning and students being able to control their own workload without attending in-class sessions as oen as in the past but with the novel aid of online tutorials. against this setting, the website provides a new dynamic tool both for online and onlineaided in-class teaching which we hope will be of use not only to uam students but also to all those who approach it at its url. in addition, it might be the right time for the website to become the jumping-off point for a unified platform for the teaching/learning 84 clara molina & manuela romano selim  () of hel in spain.⁵ we are all in the same boat, and there are many other websites⁶ created by spanish lecturers of english historical linguistics which we all should start sharing for the benefit of our field and students. let us start doing so—and to this end we remind you of our electronic addresses (clara.molina@uam.es and manuela. romano@uam.es) in the hope that sooner rather than later you take up the glove! clara molina & manuela romano universidad autónoma de madrid r geeraerts, d. : “cognitive grammar and the history of lexical semantics”. in b. rudzka-ostyn ed. topics in cognitive linguistics. amsterdam, john benjamins: –. geeraerts, d. : “the theoretical and descriptive development of lexical semantics” in d. geeraerts ed. words and other wonders. papers on lexical and semantic topics. berlin, mouton de gruyter: –. labov, w. : principles of linguistic change. oxford, blackwell. romano, m. : proyecto docente “lengua y lingüística inglesas: sincronía y diacronía”— teaching project “english language and linguistics: synchrony and diachrony”. madrid, universidad autónoma de madrid. unpublished ms. ⁵ suggestion by professor gonzález y fernández-corugedo at  selim (almagro: october ) ⁶ personal communication with professors guzmán and alcaraz at  selim (almagro: october ) 85 teaching and learning hel online selim  () savater, f. : el valor de educar. barcelona, ariel. schousboe, s. // [no date]: teaching historical linguistics http://www.univie.ac.at/anglistik/hoe/pschousboe.htm. tejada, p. : “aplicaciones de la lingüística histórica”. perspectivas europeas sobre enseñanza universitaria. º seminario de lingüística aplicada. madrid, departamento de filología inglesa de la universidad complutense de madrid. tejada, p. : el cambio lingüístico. claves para interpretar la historia de la lengua inglesa. madrid, alianza. ! received  nov ; revision received  dec ; accepted  jan  selim 19.indb rubén valdés miyares, selim 19 (2012): 177–181issn: 1132–631x bueno alonso, jorge luis & laura torrado mariñas 2012: judith del cotton vitellius a. xv ff . 202r–209v: texto, estudio y traducción. vigo, servizo de publicacións da universidade. pp. 147. isbn: 978-84-8158-595-⒎ 12€. the first edition (to my knowledge), spanish translation and commentary of the old english judith has arrived by the hand of jorge luis bueno, a very consistent scholar in the fi eld of old english literature, particularly translation into spanish and galician, this time in collaboration with researcher laura torrado. they make a laudable point of presenting the text and translation before the commentary, so that the reader should confr ont the work and its present translation previous to interpreting it (4). the edition is not critical or annotated, but based on a careful study of london, british library, cotton vitellius ms a. xv, ff . 202r–209v, and an editorial transcription of this manuscript, collated with the current editions, particularly that by mark griffi th (1997) and more recent ones included in anthologies. the result is a neat state-of-the-art old english text, followed by the translation into alliterative spanish verse bearing bueno’s hallmark. while some might argue that alliteration is somewhat alien to spanish diction, it does have an occasional presence in old spanish romances, and, rather than distorting the old english original, bueno’s rendering evokes it in a diff erent tongue. the translation of certain familiar phrases may become a formidable challenge and one wonders whether it is not possible to fi nd a better castilian phrase for medobyrig (167) than “ciudad con sala de bebida” (28), which defi nes bethulia as a civilized city in the anglo-saxon weltanschauung. as stated on page 21, it is clear that no translation can replace reading the original, but understanding it is only for precious few specialists, so what a translation can do is reproduce the experience of reading the original poetry as closely as possible. on the other hand, that experience would have rubén valdés miyares 178selim 19 (2012) been greatly improved, in my opinion, if the original text and the translation had been presented on facing pages and with numbered lines, so that spanish readers could easily keep the old english in view. though a line-to-line translation is not always possible, great translations on facing pages have been successfully produced, for instance, those of beowulf by roy m. liuzza and seamus heaney. concerning the study and commentary, it could hardly be otherwise at the present times of globalization and intercultural assimilation: the poem is approached fr om the perspective of cultural hybridity, as it embodies the confl uence of christian and germanic narratives (35). laura torrado considers the problematic of an analysis like hers, largely based on cultural syncretism and crossbreeding (40) in a preliminary section (2.1). next she goes into the historical context (2.2.1), the literary and critical context (2.2.2), the nowell codex (2.2.3), and “interrelaciones bíblicas” (2.2.4), focusing on the interpretations of the story in diff erent latin and old english texts. aft er revising relevant scholarship on all these introductory aspects, she plunges into a formal analysis (2.3), which includes the genre of the poem (2.3.1), its language (2.3.2), metrics (2.3.3), characters (2.3.4), and a concluding remark on “the nature of anglo-saxon poetry” (2.3.5). section 2.4 expands the contextual and cultural issues in two directions: the germanic heritage (2.4.1) and the christian syncretism (2.4.2), leading to overall conclusions (2.5). the arguments are generally solid and resting on appropriate references. what is perhaps missing is an explicit account of judith fr om the point of view of translation theory, as lori ann garner, for example, has examined it. this would include the context of textual production, where, “prior to the notion of a fi xed text, the scribe still worked within a specifi c performance context, simultaneously fulfi lling the roles of performer and scribe,” so that an “ideal poetic translation […] is not a literal retelling, but a text that would resonate for a germanic audience” (garner 2001: 171). it would also include an analysis of the augmentations, omissions and rhetorical reviews 179 selim 19 (2012) ornamentations made by the judith poet, departing fr om the latin vulgate cycle in order to appeal to the anglo-saxon public, for instance, in the description of holofernes’s feast, the descent of his spirit into hell, judith and her servant’s journey back to bethulia carrying the tyrant’s head, and the battle against the assyrians. understanding why such passages were incorporated in the translation greatly enhances our sensitivity to the poem’s culture. the elucidation of this process of translation might have merited a section of its own, though much of it is implicit in section 2.4.1, when dealing with the anglo-saxon themes in the text. a special focus on judith itself as translation, however, would have been appropriate in a volume whose primary purpose is translating the poem into a new cultural context and language. one can only have minor quibbles: the brief comparison made with beowulf (77) would be more fr uitful if it was extended to the nowell codex as a whole, and particularly to the inclusion of the wonders of the east in it (this is only mentioned on page 2, along with the other texts in the codex), where descriptions of monsters abound. thus, as pointed out by r. d. fulk & christopher m. cain, who refer to holofernes as a “moral monster” (2003: 159), “bl cotton vitellius a.xv would appear to be a collection devoted to monsters.” of course a moral monster is something or someone deviating fr om the moral norm, whether christian or pagan. holofernes, whose orgies are depicted in judith as the very antithesis of the heroic banquet, is not a more christian or pagan monster than grendel, who loathed heroic banquets. beheading a monster who defi les the sacred function of the mead-hall in one way or another, and all the values it stands for, judith, nergendes þeowen (“doncella del salvador,” 23), is as heroic as beowulf in his own masculinity. by emphasizing the syncretic nature of judith, torrado’s study aims at breaking new ground against an apparent general inclination among critics to believe that “the poem was changed to suit its times” (177), instead of being originally designed (more or less rubén valdés miyares 180selim 19 (2012) consciously) to hybridize pagan and christian values. thus her work stands up against “a general reticence among critics to categorize judith as a hybrid product, in terms of culture and genre” (178). i do not think there are so many critics who doubt the intercultural richness of the poem. as early as 1960 chaney mentioned “the anglo-saxon judith” as a prominent example of “a syncretism between pagan culture and christian cult” (chaney 1960: 208– 209). whether critics believe that the story was transformed fr om the biblical source or conceived fr om the start as a cultural hybrid, few would question the position of the present study today, which suggests that it is the heroic tradition of the anglo-saxons that gives the poem its dramatic appeal and currency, unspoiled by its also present christian allegory (131–132). rather than advancing a thesis of its own, or being comprehensive and exhaustive, the commentary gathers mainstream readings of the poem in a few pages with scholarly pulchritude (its aim is to provide “un enfoque coherente,” as summed up in the conclusions, 127), which makes it the more useful for students and for the general spanish public with literary interests. this spanish translation should be welcome, not only because it is the fi rst available one, but especially because it is brilliantly executed and contextualized. the fr ont cover, a photographic interpretation of gustav klimt’s judith by mari luz vidal, is a felicitous choice, as it suggests the enduring validity of the story in various historical and aesthetic contexts, and particularly its provocative power in successive patriarchal cultures. rubén valdés miyares university of oviedo references chaney, w. a. 1960: paganism to christianity in anglo-saxon england. the harvard theological review 53.3: 197–217. reviews 181 selim 19 (2012) fulk, r. d. & c. m. cain 2003: a history of old english literature. oxford, blackwell. garner, l. a. 2001: the art of translation in the old english judith. studia neophilologica 73: 171–183. • selim 16.indb andrew breeze , selim 16 (2009): 161–163issn: 1132–631x carrera, anunciación, and carrera, maría josé (eds), with carlos herrero, pilar garcés (general editors), berta cano, elena gonzálezcascos, and ana sáez (research editors) 2009: philip perry’s sketch of the ancient british history: a critical edition. newcastle upon tyne, cambridge scholars. xx + 250 pp. isbn 978-1-4438-0448-⒍ £39.99/$59.99. this volume represents a discovery, as the fi rst publication of a work by philip perry (1720–74), rector of the english college, valladolid. it thus off ers readers a novel double eff ect. it shows british christianity as seen by a scholar previously unknown to most of us; and, since perry was a catholic exile, it off ers a perspective diff erent  om that of the protestant or sceptical writers who dominate british historiography. this means many surprises. his history has fi ve chapters. the fi rst describes roman britain and how christianity reached it, together with discussion of the british church’s doctrines (found to be the purest milk of orthodoxy). the second deals with roman britain’s decline and the church’s suff erings  om persecution and heresy. then come the last days of roman britain, the scourge of pelagianism, and (more hopefully) missions to the picts and irish. chapter four sets out the coming of the anglo-saxons, the loss of britain, and the age of the saints. a last chapter informs us on columba of iona and his conversion of north britain. the valladolid team hence off er a picture of celtic christianity as represented by an eighteenth-century cleric. it has many insights. for all his interest in the celtic past, perry was singularly  ee  om romanticism. this is especially clear in his discussion of the druids. he calls their religion ‘barbarous’ (p. 12) and their customs ‘cruel and abominable’. despite their knowledge of astronomy and their belief in personal immortality (p. 13), they practiced human sacrifi ce. perry thus seems to have approved of augustus and claudius for having these loathsome individuals exterminated (even if for political rather than humanitarian reasons). so the interest of the volume is obvious. the editors have done their job well. they excel on perry’s sources, o en citing the very volume that he used in the english college’s library, including camden’s britannia of 1637, colgan’s acta sanctorum of 1645, dugdale’s monasticon of 1693, or 162 andrew breeze selim 16 (2009) john smith’s bede of 1722. the above and other points have been made by this reviewer in a notice for the welsh journal of religious history, v (2010). perhaps the best way of praising the edition further is by suggesting how researchers can use it for their own work. to update perry’s history in the light of modern research is a huge task, and the editors can be forgiven for not trying to do it here. on one question alone, they themselves point out (p. 189) that perry’s disagreements with camden on the identifi cation of british-latin place-names ‘merit independent study’. as with any new source, a reading of perry thus sharpens the wits by presenting us with new problems. amongst matters where we can advance perry’s discussion are the following. • the name of the durotriges (p. 7), a people of dorset and southeast somerset, is here corrupt. the correct form is durotrages, as given in an inscription on hadrian’s wall. • the name of boadicea (pp. 18–19) is corrected to ‘boudicca’, but this is still not right. the correct reading is boudica ‘victorious one’, with stress on the penultimate long vowel. • bodotria (p. 20), the name of the river forth, can be corrected to boudra or, later, bodra ‘defi led one’ (compare welsh budr ‘dirty’), referring to the river’s morasses and tidal fl ats. • st patrick’s birth (p. 97) near glasgow should be rejected by all (including patriotic scots and ulster scots). strathclyde had no roman villas of the kind belonging to patrick’s father. there are reasons to locate (emended) bannaventa tabernae instead near banwell in somerset/avon, an area of roman villas by a coast open to irish raiders. perry’s curiosity is such that he even notices welsh poetry, a subject normally of faint interest to the english. he comments (p. 125) on maelgwn gwynedd’s ‘bard named taliesin, as famous for his bigotry as for his poetry, if what rowlands relates of him be his genuine work’. taliesin was active two generations later than maegwn; and the task of sorting out his genuine poems  om the apocrypha is best begun with ifor williams, lectures on early welsh poetry (dublin, 1944). st david’s going to whitland in caermarthenshire (p. 141), where he was taught by st paulinus, derives ultimately  om the obscure 163 reviews selim 16 (2009) wincdilantquendi in rhygyfarch’s latin life of david. this form is corrupt and clearly meant nothing even to rhygyfarch in the eleventh century. but there seems reason to take it as old kea, near truro in cornwall. this was the site of a celtic monastery (a ruined church tower survives), and was formerly called landegea, which surely lies behind the reading -lantquendi. that gildas ‘passed over to ireland to improve himself in philosophic and theologic matters under the celebrated doctors then fl ourishing in that island’ (p. 147) also refl ects a celtic-latin source, the iren of gildas’s breton-latin life. although some scholars take this (quite illogically) as ‘ireland’, it makes better sense as a corruption of old welsh cerin or cirencester, roman britain’s second city, which would have been famous for its schools of rhetoric and law. the implication is that these schools survived as late as the year 500, when gildas attended them. we may conclude in triumphant terms. thanks to the outstanding care and industry of its spanish editors, perry’s sketch can now be read with ease. it deserves wide attention, and should be used by everyone concerned with the history of christianity in early britain. andrew breeze university de navarre, pamplone • received 03 aug 2010; revision received 17 aug 2010; accepted 24 aug 2010 selim journal of the spanish society for mediaeval english language and literature revista de la sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval nº  oviedo,  edited by dirigida por trinidad guzmán & s. g. fernández-corugedo universidad de oviedo & sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval oviedo – murcia  keith williamson, selim  (): –issn: 1132–631x a latin–older scots glossary in edinburgh university library ms  abstract edinburgh university library ms  (the makculloch ms) offers significant data for the study of older scots as it contains poetry, notes, collectanea and on ff. v–r a latin–older scots glossa collecteana of  items. this paper examines the issues related to the ms readings for the glossary, compares the linguistic forms of the vernacular glosses with the forms found in the poems, and discusses some problematic semantic equivalences between the latin and older scots terms. an overall assessment of the glossary and the textual relationship of the glossary to the poems are established. keywords: older scots language, older scots poetry, glossary, semantic equivalences, manuscript studies. resumen el manuscrito  de la biblioteca universitaria de edimburgo (el manuscrito makculloch) nos oece datos muy significativos para el estudio del escocés antiguo pues contiene poesía, notas, colectáneas, y en sus folios v-r un glosario latín-escocés antiguo de  entradas. este trabajo examina los problemas relacionados con las lecturas del ms en relación con el glosario, compara las formas lingüísticas de las glosas vernáculas con las formas que aparecen en los poemas, y discute ciertas equivalencias semánticas problemáticas existentes entre los términos latinos y del escocés antiguo. se oece un estudio completo del glosario y de la relación textual entre el glosario y los poemas. palabras clave: lengua escocesa antigua, poesía escocesa antigua, glosario, equivalencias semánticas, estudios de manuscritos. i e dinburgh university library ms  has been by-named the “makculloch” manuscript. it comprises mainly material om lectures written down in  by magnus makculloch (d. ) when he was a student at the university of louvain. these “lecture notes” are om his classes in logic and they are, of course, in latin. subsequently, makculloch was a secretary to william scheves (ca –), who became archbishop of st andrews. makculloch was responsible for two complete copies of walter bower’s (–) scotichronicon, one for the augustinian abbey of scone (), the other for scheves (–) (odnb, 222 keith williamson selim  () s.n. bower, walter).¹ the makculloch ms has attained literary significance for scholars of older scots not for any material in the manuscript by makculloch himself, but because a later hand copied onto the opening fly-leaves and onto some blank folios a number of poems written in older scots. this later hand has been ascribed either to the late th century or early th century (borland ; smith ). in a number of places in the manuscript appear the signatures “i purde” and “iohannes purde” and he seems to have been a later owner of the manuscript. borland () notes that the name “john purde” occurs in the chartulary of brechin under the dates  and –.² a brechin association for the manuscript is also suggested by what seems to be a pen trial on f. ir, where the writer refers to “ane’ faire erbere of myñ / in brechyne”. borland suggests identification of this john purde with the “iohannes plenus amoris” of the colophon at the end of the text of henryson’s tale of the cock and the jasp on f. iiiiv. and gregory smith (: lxvii) suggests that purde “may have been the copyist of the vernacular pieces”. however, i do not believe that the pen trial is in the same hand as that of the poems. if john purde wrote the pen trial, then he was not the copyist of the poems. i incline to agree with borland that the hand of the vernacular texts belongs probably to the early th century and this would probably be too early for the john purde writing in the manuscript during the s and s. on the face of it, the name “iohannis plenus amoris” could be taken as a form of john plenamour; black (: ) notes the surname “plenamour” twice in arbroath and environs in the th century. if “iohannes plenus amoris” was the copyist of the poems, then it ¹ brechin castle ms () and bl harley ms  (–) (borland : ). ² registrum episcopatus brechinensis, vol. ii, pp. , , . 223 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () might be conjectured that either he himself was a previous owner of the manuscript or that he copied the poems into the manuscript for its then owner. the later brechin association and the association of the name plenamour with angus in the late th century allow the hypothesis that it was in that area that the poems and the glossary were added to the manuscript. however, recent research by reynhout () and moreno olalla (in preparation) suggest a different interpretation of ‘plenus amoris’ here. according to reynhout’s and moreno’s studies the phrase ‘plenus amoris’ following a christian name occurs with unusual equency and with wide attestation across manuscripts. moreno olalla (p.c.)³ has “recorded  different male christian names” with the signature. he observes that it is “overwhelmingly recorded in mss with religious contents, written in a religious scriptorium or with some other clear religious link”. if the occurrence here is to be taken as an, as it were, ‘nom de foi’ it would fit the general religious character of the vernacular pieces in the manuscript (see below). that it occurs in the phrase “scriptoris iohannes plenus amoris” is perhaps significant. moreno olalla (p.c.) proposes that “the tag was added just to complete a leonine hexameter, providing a perfect rhyme with ‘scriptoris’”. at the foot of f. v is another name, rather faded and only partly decipherable. i have read this as “〈io〉hanis [c]amb〈e〉le”⁴ from what is visible of this inscription, it appears not to be in the hand of any of the other vernacular addenda in the manuscript. ³ i am very grateful to david moreno olalla for kindly allowing me to cite some of the results of his research on ‘plenus amoris’ here. ⁴ litterae in 〈 〉 are conjectured; those in [ ] are interpretations of unclear manuscript figurae. 224 keith williamson selim  () t v t the poems. the poems interpolated into the makculloch ms have a predominantly religious and moralizing character. they include four works by robert henryson, two by john lydgate and one formerly attributed to william dunbar. their folio references, authorship (where known) and incipits are given below. each poem has also been assigned a reference number, e.g. p. the order adopted follows the sequence of leaves and folios on which they occur in the manuscript. it should not be inferred that this order is that in which the poems were copied into the manuscript. as the poems have been interpolated into available spaces in the manuscript, there is no way to determine the order in which they were copied. moreover, it cannot be assumed that they were all copied within a single timespan, nor that they were copied om the same source. p, f. iiv robert henryson: () prologue to the fables — thowcht fenȝeit fables of auld poetry; () the tale of the cock and the jasp — a cok sum tyme wt fetherem ech & gay p, f.iiiv henryson: o farest lady o swetast lady o blisful lady hewynnis quheyne (bl harley , ff. –; nls adv. ms .. ‘bannatyne ms’, ff. v–v, –, v–v; nls ms , ff. –; edinburgh university library, la.iii., f. v ( stanza); prints: charteris ; bassendyne  (nimev, )) p, f. v ?: compaciens perß rewtht and mercy stundis (versions also in nls adv. ms .. ‘bannatyne ms’, f. v; bl arundel , f. v) p, f. r ?: man hef in mynd & mend yi myß. apparently ‘closely related to’ ‘man haue mynd and ye amend / of all thi mys‥’ in nls 225 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () adv. ms .., f. v. (imev , )) p, f. r henryson, the praise of age — in tyl ane garth wnder ane reid roseir (versions also in nls adv. ms .. ‘bannatyne ms’, f. v, f. v; prints: chepman and myllar ; nimev . p, f. r ?: a paternoster — almyty god our fader of hewyne abuf p, f. r ?: a hail mary — hail mare goddis moder ful of grace p, f. v ?: creed — i trow in god ye fader almychty p, f. r john lydgate — criste qui lux es et dies [scots version also in nls adv. ms .. ‘bannatyne ms’, f. r — and for other versions see ‘zupitza, archiv [ ür das studium der neueren sprachen und literaturen] lxxxix.’. (imev , , , , , )]; nimev  p, f. v henryson: reasoning betwixt age and youth — quhen fair flora ye goddas of al flowris [cambridge, magdalene college, pepys  ‘maitland folio ms’, pp. –; nls adv. ms .. ‘bannatyne ms’, pp. –, ff. –]; nimev  p, f. v ?: a ballad of our lady — royß mary most of vertu virginall [versions also in nls ms  ‘asloan ms’, p.  and bl harley , p. b]⁵ p, f. r: lydgate: a dietary — for hail of body keip a cald yi ⁵ imev (supplement) attributes this poem to william dunbar, but there is no conclusive evidence for the attribution in the extant (all incomplete) versions. neither of dunbar’s most recent and most thorough editors, kinsley () and bawcutt (), admit it to the canon. (see baxter : ). the recent revision of imev — nimev — excludes reference to this poem because of revision of the temporal coverage of the work. 226 keith williamson selim  () heid; nimev / [other scots versions in cambridge, st john’s college  (g.), ff. v–v; nimev /. nls adv. ms .. ‘bannatyne ms’, ff. –; nimev /)] p, f. v–r ?: herkyne wordis wonder gud [versions in bl arundel , ff. v–; bl add. ms , stanzas –, f. v; stanzas –, f. v]; nimev  [= ringler , tm ] sts edn. prints the text on f. r, beginning ‘se i for luf man bot ye deyre’ as a separate poem. however, on the evidence of british library ms arundel ⁶, ff. v–r, it is a continuation of the poem beginning here on f. v. p, f. r ?: me rewis one’ mary my modyr [mild]. ringer  (tm  notes it as ‘… a damaged agment’ of p, ‘herkyne wordis wonder gud’. the verse to which this partly corresponds in bl arundel  is not in p. it is not clear (especially given the damage to the makculloch version) if this should be taken as part of p or if it was supplied om a different source. i have opted to treat it as a separate item for now. my concern in this paper is not directly with the poems but with another interpolated text of an altogether different character. the poems as an assemblage of linguistic objects in their own right will be discussed in a separate paper (williamson in prep.). they are referred to here in so far as they may cast light on the text which is the subject of this paper. the glossary. on ff. v–r is a latin–older scots glossa collecteana of  items (including one repetition). this glossary is in the same hand as that of the poems. an annotated text of the glossary is provided in ⁶ for a printing of the the arundel text, see bennett (: –). 227 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () appendix a. for ease of reference in the discussions which follow i have assigned a number to each latin word and its older scots equivalent. the transcription of the text of the glossary is given in the “research format” used in the edinburgh corpus of older scots (ecos).⁷ this format is also used in quotations and citations om the poems. arrangement of the glossary the glossary is arranged to give first a latin word then a scots equivalent. the latin words are arranged to give first nouns, being glosses –, and then verbs (of which there are ), being glosses –. the nouns are arranged in three columns on f. v:  in the first column,  in the second and  in the third. the nouns are grouped broadly according to their grammatical gender. the gender of the latin noun in each case is indicated by prefixing hic, hec or hoc as appropriate. first come  neuter nouns, followed by  masculine and feminine intermixed. in three cases — 66 forfex, 67 forpex and 75 ganneta — the gloss-maker has not specified the gender. in 66 and 67 he has written simply h. to the le of 75 ganneta is a partly erased h. in the scots equivalents,  out of the  nouns are preceded by the indefinite article, a. the verbs are listed separately on f. r. the latin verbs are given in the first person singular indicative form. in the scots equivalents, they are presented as infinitives, marked usually by as to. as here would ⁷ ecos is being compiled as the data-base for the linguistic atlas of older scots (laos), published in  as an open-access interactive web-site by the department of linguistics and english language, university of edinburgh (www. lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laos1/laos⒈html). in the “research format”: visible manuscript letters are in upper case; expansions of manuscript abbreviations are in lower case, except for ‘z’, which represents manuscript ‘ȝ’; ‘~’ at the end of a word indicates a horizontal stroke over all or part of the manuscript word; ‘ ” ’ at the end of a word indicates an upward and back-curving stroke om the final letter. 228 keith williamson selim  () seem to mean “like” or perhaps “as [if it were]”.⁸ the glossary maker was presumably concerned to group the nouns and verbs separately. there would have been ample room in the third column on f. v to accommodate the verbs listed on f. r. in two cases, there are etymological connexions between nouns and verbs: 85 hec occa harrow; area of cultivated land, furrow : cloid clod of earth 101 occo to harrow; to break up (stone) : +as to cloid to ee (land) om clods by harrowing (oed); to pelt with clods (dost) 43 hec lirapa ? : a button~ ?button 92 lerapo ? : as to button~ to ?button from this arrangement, the glossary maker collected his materials om some other source⒮ and has sought to order them according to conventions of latin grammar. aims of the present study. in the remainder of this paper i will: examine issues related to the manuscript readings of the () glossary; compare the linguistic forms of the vernacular glosses with () corresponding forms found in the poems; discuss some problematic semantic equivalences between the () latin and older scots terms in the glossary; assess the overall content of the glossary.() ⁸ arguably, a could be read as an abbreviation for ‘a[nglice]’ and as for ‘a[lias]’. but a appears only in the noun glosses and as in the verb glosses. while ‘a’ for anglice is to be be found in other glossaries, i have not come across ‘as’ for alias in this context to connect latin and vernacular equivalents. if these are interpreted as the vernacular (scots) words a and as, they make good sense in their context. 229 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () r  m g editorial practice. the glossary has been edited once previously by george stevenson for the scottish text society (; henceforth ‘sts edn.’) along with the other vernacular poems om the makculloch ms.⁹ sts edn. provides a plain text, conservatively edited, noticing abbreviations explicitly with literal expansions in italics. there are one or two footnotes concerning alternative readings, but otherwise there is no commentary on the text. i have re-edited the makculloch texts for the edinburgh corpus of older scots (ecos), re-transcribing om the manuscript using the ecos ‘research format’ conventions (see footnote ). my text differs om that of the sts edn. in some matters of editorial practice. where stevenson interprets a horizontal stroke over a word as a final ‘e’, i have preferred to indicate this with a ‘~’. however, in line with the transcription conventions for ecos, i have interpreted final ‘r’ with an upward and leward-curving flourish over the letter as ‘re’ (usually rendered in more conventional typescript as ‘re’). in ane” the final ” indicates a upward, backward turning flourish off the final letter. some re-readings of the manuscript text of the glossary. these points of editorial practice aside, i have also differed om the sts edn. in some readings both of latin and scots words. my differences in reading om those in the sts edn. have been motivated primarily by what (i think) i saw in the manuscript. if the alternative reading also brings out what seems to be a more plausible word in the language in question, then i have taken that ⁹ the edition also contains vernacular poems om the ‘gray ms’ (edinburgh, national library of scotland ms ..) and om the ‘chepman and myllar prints’, also held by the nls, sa.(–) and now viewable in digitized form online at www.nls.uk/firstscottishbooks/items.html. 230 keith williamson selim  () as offering supporting evidence for the alternative reading. my different readings derive om various palaeographical issues and i have grouped my re-readings below according to these issues. 〈c〉 and 〈t〉3.2.1 the scribe’s 〈c〉 and 〈t〉 are usually quite distinct, but there are instances where an etymological ‘t’ is rendered by a c-like figura and vice versa. i have read 14 hoc pracellum for sts edn. pratellum 28 venacar for sts edn. venatar 74 chesell for sts edn. thesell 〈r〉 and 〈i〉3.2.2 the zor -shaped ‘r’ is sometimes written in a very open way tending to look like a rather cursive minim. hence, ‘i’ and the z-like ‘r’ are occasionally liable to confusion. i have preferred to read gloss  as 19 hoc braciarium for sts edn. bracrarium braciarium is the better reading of the manuscript, i believe, and it also gives a form that matches a recorded latin word. similarly, in gloss  i have preferred 25 bigrild for sts edn. bigald and, indeed, sts edn. also gives bigrild as an alternative reading in a footnote. given the sense of “by-girdle”, the form bigrild could be seen as a metathesized form of the girdle element. cf mod. eng. / sc. girdle, griddle “a circular iron plate upon which cakes are baked; a cooking grill”, where girdle is om metathesis of griddle. in fact, the form bigrild suggests a double metathesis, with ‘dl’ also inverted. both [c(v)r] and [vcl] are sequences which have had a 231 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () tendency to metathesis in the histories of english and scots. 93 ?frico for sts edn. fuco the sts edn. reading looks convincing, albeit the form fuco does not correspond to the sense of the scots equivalent, as to fry. pp  has ‘ffryn in apan: ffrigo, –is, –xi ‥ ixo, –as, –aui’. it is possible that the u is to be read as ri, giving frico. in the writing of the putative u, the (hairline) cross-stroke of the f joins to the top of what looks like the first of two linked minims. now, the ‘r’ of this hand is written with a z-like figura and and if the onand off-strokes of this type or ‘r’ are short, it can take on a minimlike appearance. although, in the hand of the glossary, the ‘r’ is normally quite clear and not confusable with ‘i’, there are one or two cases where confusion is possible. witness the two preceding cases. other instances in the glossary where ‘r’ tends to a minimlike shape are in 17 herilicium, 27 preconium, 46 cardius, 77 brancia, 80 veruca. expansions of abbreviations and suspensions.. there are cases where i have interpreted a manuscript abbreviation or suspension mark differently that given in the sts edn. 10 hoc impame” for sts edn. impamen i decided finally not to expand the abbreviation on impame” (an upward and back-turning curl om the final ‘e’) out of uncertainty to what it may stand for. stevenson, not unreasonably, interprets it as ‘n’, but i have been unable so far to find a latin word that corresponds to either impamen or impam, or anything similar. 22 hoc pedum for sts edn. pedium the new reading takes the final three minims to be ‘m’ and the 232 keith williamson selim  () form then corresponds to the latin pedum with the sense of “crook, crozier” and matches well enough the scots gloss, a schipcruk “sheep-crook”. 55 proapsis: a plait i agree with sts edn. that the abbreviation mark looks like that for ‘ro’, although the expected form of the latin word would be perapsis or paropsis. supplying of apparently omitted letters.. in gloss , 29 mustar for sts edn. mustar[d]. i have simply chosen to leave the form unaltered. it could be an erroneous omission of ‘d’ or it may be an intended spelling, to reflect loss of the stop in the word-final cluster /rd/. cf dost s.v. mustard n. ‘in beir melk muster; – household bks. jas. vi  mar.’ s.v. mustard n. ‘mustyr seid … makith ones eis to vattyr; ?  black bk. taymouth ’. interpretation of minims.. 30 hoc pistrinum for sts edn. pistium the issue here is partly interpretation of a string of minims, complicated by an abbreviation mark. sts edn. reads three minims aer 〈t〉 as 〈iu〉, with the abbreviation standing for a final ‘m’. however, i read two minims and interpret them as 〈u〉. also, a single abbreviation in a latin word may stand for more than one littera, which need not be contiguous ones. again, pistrinum gives a possible latin word which corresponds to the vernacular equivalent. arguably, it could be read alternatively as pistrum, 233 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () though this means “pestle” and not “bakehouse”. 42 ?huouin for sts edn. huome i propose tentatively the reading ?huouin here. there are three final minims with a horizontal stroke over them and, while it is possible to read them as 〈m〉, 〈in〉 as well as being a plausible alternative reading also gives an etymologically better form. nonetheless, the form is odd in that huoimplies a breaking or an off-glide om the expected stressed vowel /yː/, so ?/ˈhyøɪn/. another possible (and simpler) reading, is ?huoin~, which could be interpreted phonically as a disyllabic with loss of intervocalic [v] — phonically ?/ˈhyøˌɪn/. (cf. dost, s.v. ovin, uven, une and hoyne for older scots forms and snd, s.v. une for modern scots forms.) 46 sts edn. hec cardnis in the manuscript, the form certainly looks like cardnis, but the expected form would in fact be carduus. it should be read perhaps as carduis, albeit either this or the sts edn. reading would indicate an erroneous form in the manuscript. 50 hec fauella for sts edn. fanella 〈u〉 is a perfectly possible reading in the manuscript and again allows a recognizable latin form when read against the scots equivalent. (indeed, dost s.v. spark n. notes “erron. for favella”.) 83 hec lanigo for sts edn. lamgo it was not possible to decide conclusively how to read the minims in this form. the scots equivalent, a wow-caym~ (“wool comb”) suggests that the better reading would be lanirather than lam on the evidence of wow “wool” in the vernacular form (cf. latin lāna “wool”). 234 keith williamson selim  () p  a number of the latin words i have not been able to identi, or their forms in the glossary seem to be partly erroneous. also, some of the equivalences in meaning are problematic. unidentified words. 10 hoc impame” this seems to be abbreviated, but it is not clear what the abbreviation would stand for. as noted above, i finally reained om expanding the apparent abbreviation mark in impame~. none of my attempts at deciphering this form have yielded a plausible latin word. the scots equivalent would seem to mean “travail, trouble, effort”. sts edn. has impamen, but i can find no latin word with this form. 11 hoc eputitium in the text of the glossary i have agreed with sts edn. in the expansion of the abbreviation as m, but i have been unable to find a latin word corresponding with this, nor any where the mininims and abbreviation are read in different ways. the vernacular equivalent, a turment, is open to interpretation: () “torture”; () “storm, tempest”; () “an engine of war worked by torsion, for hurling stones, darts, or other missiles” (oed s.v. torment n. ). the third sense is not recorded in dost, but that need not preclude it. in latin turmentum / tormentum has the extended sense in the th century of () to “gun”, “fire-arm” (rmlw s.v. torment/um). on the theme of weaponry in the glossary, cf. 24 magonale a gown, and possibly 17 … wyer. nevertheless, a tentative solution to this gloss may be inferred om the ‘nominale’ edited and printed om a th-century manuscript in wright–wülcker () (their text xix). in xix/. is ‘hoc 235 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () epitimeum, tyme’ and on xix/., ‘hec tormentilla, tormentyne’. one might hypothesize that either the source of the makculloch glossary, or some earlier textual glossarial source, also had glosses close together (perhaps in contiguous lines) for thyme and tormentil or tormentyn (another possible form; see med s.v. tormentīn(e (n.)). in medieval glossaries words might be arranged into rough lexical fields. in ww-xix, the above examples fall under ‘nomina arborum arabilium et florum’. in our hypothesis, the latin word would have been matched with the wrong vernacular one and there was at the same time, or subsequently, miscopying of epitimeum and confusion of tormentil with torment. 17 hoc herilicium the vernacular equivalent for this is wyer, which would seem to mean “wire” — the spelling seems to suggest a disyllabic form, common in modern scots. the expected medieval latin form for “wire” would be ferrifilum. an alternative reading of the vernacular word might be “a bolt for a cross-bow” (dost s.v. vyre n.). promptorium parvulorum has  “bolt: petilio, –is ‥ tribulum, –li”. 43 hec lirapa : a button~ this also connects with 92 lerapo : as to button~. i have not been able to find any latin words corresponding to lirapa or lerapo. 82 hic dent” : a cobill the vernacular word could mean “coble; a small flat-bottomed boat”, but there seems to be no corresponding latin word beginning with dent– or deut– with this sense. cf. also pp  ‘pyk, sh: dentrix, –cis’. however, if dent” is intended to represent dentrix, there seems to be be no scots word corresponding to cobill with the sense of 236 keith williamson selim  () “pike”, “dogfish” or any other fish. another interpretation is dentaria, which mld defines uncertainly “(?) pellitory (parietaria)” (oed sense : “a low bus plant (parietaria officinalis, n.o. urticaceæ) with small ovate leaves and greenish flowers, growing upon or at the foot of walls. commonly distinguished as pellitory of the wall.)” there is nothing to connect this interpretation with cobill. if we reconsider the reading, taking into account the possibility of n as u and t as c, we could have here deut” or deuc”. if u is then taken to be /v/, then we might posit a connexion with the verb devehere “to carry, transport” (dml s.v devehere). this has a past participle devectus. (and cf. mwb s.v. devector, –oris “perlator – überbringer”.) taking this route, a reading deut” / deuc” might partly be unpacked as *deuect– / *deuect–, where the full word would have the sense of “something which conveys, carries”, as a cobill used as a ferry. 83 hec lanigo? lan– (if the reading be accepted) suggests latin lāna “wool” which would accord with wow in its scots equivalent. the word lanigo does occur in an anglo-norman glossary glasgow university ms hunter  (ca ) (hunt  i: ). in the glossary it appears listed under a heading ‘de menbris et de visceribus’ but there it is glossed ‘prime barbe’ (hunt  i: ). it is possible that the intended word was lanugo. this occurs in ww-xix and -xx (see appendix b), but none of the senses match with the scots wow caym~. 88 geresto : as to brank the scots word here offers three possible senses according to dost s.v brank, v.¹ . intr. “to behave violently or without restraint”; “. to bear oneself proudly or extravagantly; to toss the head; to prance”; “. tr. to make fine; to dress up.” and s.v. brank, v.² “[f. brankis n.] tr. to punish with the branks; to put the branks on.” brankis 237 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () are defined (s.v. brankis n.¹) as “a form of bridle with wooden sidepieces”; “. an iron device of the nature of a bridle and gag, used as a means of public punishment for breaches of the peace, abusive language, etc.” oed marks brank, branks as scots. which sense of brank is intended to equate with geresto is not possible to say as i have been unable to identi it with any latin word. 89 putitio cf. ww-xvi/. pictacium, clowte of a schoo; xviii/. “hoc pictacium, ae clowt’. but pictacium scarcely resembles putitio. 92 lerapo see above, 43. 96 sarffo : as to wret this gloss is cited in dost s.v. writ(e v., ii. intr.. a. to form characters with an implement, usu. a pen, usu. with ink, to write letters, words, etc. so as to communicate in this fashion. b. to have the skill or ability to do this. c. to make a mark. d. to represent words or sounds orthographically, to spell. the citation is: “sarffo [? erron. for scribo], as to wret; makc. ms xiii ” the figura following on the ‘s’ looks like a large singlecompartment ‘a’. there is a small diagonal (le-to-right and upward) cross-stroke on the downward off-stroke om the ‘a’, which suggests a correction. if the cross-stroke be relevant to the reading, was it an attempt to make a correction? but it is difficult to see what would have been intended in terms of the form in the manuscript—an attempt to correct to 〈scr〉? yet, the figura for the fourth letter is very clearly ‘r’ and would remain unaltered. if a correction really was attempted here, it was somewhat tentative. if 238 keith williamson selim  () the suggestion in dost of an error for scribo is correct, it might be supposed that the glossary maker drew here on a manuscript source which was unclear and that he misread ‘scri–’ as ‘sar–’. however, this would imply *〈scriffo〉 with 〈ff〉 representing /v/. this would be quite possible in older scots, but rather odd in a latin word. scrivo would not be an impossible medieval latin form of scribo. that said, the dost suggestion seems to me to require hypothesizing too much emendation to make a plausible argument om the specifics of the form. if the exemplar word was scribo, one would have to propose simply a serious misreading and misunderstanding by the compiler of the glossary. identifiable words with problematic forms. 4 hoc concuteum : med-ny^t this is quite possibly an error for concubium (also cl. lat) “that part of the night in which the first sleep falls upon men” (lewis and short, s.v. ‘concubium’), which definition would accord reasonably with the vernacular equivalent, med-ny^t “midnight”. 86 suffendo : as to onder-mynd w–w equates ‘undermyne’ with latin ‘cunio’. pp , s.v. ‘vndermyndyne’ cross-refers to ‘vnder delvynge’ and s.v. ‘vnderdelvynge’ the equation is with ‘subfossura, ire’ and ‘subfossio, –nis’. suffcertainly suggests latin sub + f–. the second element could be taken as a form of latin findere “to cleave, split”, so the form could be intrepreted as “to undercut” (cf. anglo-french fendre and fyndre “to cleave, split”; and s.v. ‘fendre¹‘). suffendo could also be read as suffeudo, taking the ‘n’ for ‘u’, with the sense of “subfeu”, but this seems to bear no relation to the scots equivalent. 239 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () problems with equivalence of meaning. in some cases i have been unable to reconcile the meanings of the latin words and their given scots equivalents. either the words mean quite different things or they do not match exactly in any of the expected senses. 21 hoc antipodium “?for antepedia uppers of a shoe”: fordell “?precedence, lead; advantage, profit (dost s.v. fordell n. ” if one accepts the latin form given here, it suggests antipos “diametrically opposed” or antipodes “those who dwell directly opposite to each other on the globe” (oed s.v. antipodes). antipodium might be one such; but this does not connect with fordell “precedence, lead; advantage”. antimight be supposed to be for ante– and so correspond to forfor fore– in the scots equivalent. w–w has ‘hoc antepedale, ae wampe [i.e. the upper of a shoe] / hoc pedium, idem’; dml records antepedale and antipedia both “vamp (of shoe)”. if antipodium refers to “vamp or upper [part of a shoe]”, then fordell might be interpreted as fore– [“before, forward”]+ deal =“part” (cf. osc dele “bit, part”). but cf. also med. latin antependium “altar ontal; curtain before the table of sacrament house” (dml s.v. antependium, where the illustrative quotation is om the registrum aberdonensis). 34 hoc lorum “thong, strap; rein, bridle; bond, restraint” : mailze ? there is no obvious close semantic connexion between mailze and lorum. dost s.v. male, mail(l, n. has “a travelling bag or portmanteau; a travelling case or trunk. appar. usually as made of leather or cloth, but also of wood” and s.v. mailȝe, n.¹ the senses . “one of the metal rings of which mail-armour is composed”; . “chain-work of interlaced metal rings as a constituent of armour; mail-armour”; . “a small metal ring to be fixed to a garment to 240 keith williamson selim  () take a hook, clasp, lace, or other fastening; a metal eyelet”. the best that might be made is the idea of joining things together — the links in the mail? 36 hoc depletorium ? “utensil for emptying” : a ladill “household ladle” i have not been able to find a noun depletorium, but it is presumably connected to latin deplēo “to empty”. 39 hec sagana “female soothsayer, witch” : surplis “gown, loose garment” dost s.v. surples, surplice, n. quotes the makculloch ms and notes ‘l. sagana (= a female soothsayer, a witch) seems to have been confused with sagum or sagus a coarse woollen blanket or mantle; a garment, or sagulum a small military cloak.’ 40 hec sectura “cutting; place where anything is cut or dug” : a saim “join between two pieces of cloth” saim here is a form of scots seme. dost s.v. seme n. gives among the senses “. the join between two pieces of cloth or other material, effected by stitching the edges together; the part of a garment so stitched” and “. a geological layer or stratum containing mineral or ore deposits, such as coal, silver, etc.” med. latin sectura appears to map to the second of these senses, but not the first. pp  s.v. ‘ceme, of cloth’ equates seam with latin ‘sutura, –re’. it is possible that sectura in the glossary is a mis-rendering of sutura. 47 hec mastix “gum mastic” : mader “madder – the plant; the dyestuff got om the plant” equation of mastix with madder is found also in alexander of villa dei’s doctrinale: ‘() mastix: anglice madir (a [= bl, arundel , a manuscript of the second half of the th century])’ (hunt  ii: ;  i: ). the usual latin for madder, is sandix, –dex: 241 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () for examples see hunt ( iii: ). 54 hic nothus “bastard; adulterer; (of animals) mongrel” : a hurson~ “whoreson (coarse term of abuse); bastard” in fact, there is probably no problem here, but c.f. the footnote in wright–wülcker (: .; appendix c, ), where it is pointed out that notus ‘south wind” was also spelled nothus. 58 hic polipus “octopus or squid or cuttlefish – cephalopod having eight or ten tentacles” : a lopstare “lobster” polypus usually refers to some kind of cephalopod. indeed, the word is borrowed into older scots (dost s.v. polipus “a polypus, a cuttle fish or an octopus”. however, rmlw does give “lobster, crayfish” as possible definitions. the term would seem to have been extended to include certain crustaceans. 66 h forfex “scissors” : a pair tangis “set or pair of tongs, pincers or forceps” 67 h forpex “pair of shears; scissors” : a pair scheris “shears” the glossary appears to identi tongs with forfex “scissors”. perhaps, there was uncertainty and confusion with forpex, the following word, which can mean “shears” or “scissors”. cf. pp,  s.v. ‘sysowre, schere: fforpex, –cis; cf.  schere, to clyp with: fforfex, –cis’. 78 hec carcintia ?polygonon = knotweed : mynt mint, the aromatic herb the usual latin for mint is menta, mentha. i have been unable to find carcintia. the latin word here might be related to carcinothron “polygonon”. but this is still a different plant om mint. 242 keith williamson selim  () 79 hec spelta ?“species of grain (triticum spelta)” : ryiss ?“rice; rush – the plant; rush-wheat, rush-corn; ?twigs, brushwood” 84 hec manella ?“sort of clothing” : a hupschakyll “hobble for a horse” the second element of the scots word seems to be shackle. cf pp  ‘schakyl, or schakle: murella, –e’. manella might be an error for murella or a similar form. 93 fuco “to dye, stain with colour” : as to fry ? “y” this was discussed above (§ ) in relation to the reading of fuco. if the correct reading is fuco, then this has the meaning “to dye or stain with colour” and makes for an apparently incorrect equivalence. 94 derogo “to derogate, detract om; to revile, mock” : as to mak lyss “to fabricate lies” 102 ampulo = ?ampliāre – “to make wider, extend, enlarge” : as to spred “to spread; extend the effect of (sthg)” l f the textual relationship of the glossary to the poems. although the text of the glossary and the texts of the poems are in the same hand, it cannot be assumed thereom that they are linguistically the same, that is, in the same scribal language. if the copying scribe tended towards representing faithfully the orthographic forms of his exemplar⒮ rather than ‘translating’ them into his own customary usage, then, if the sources were different, there would likely be different scribal languages in the present copies. there are two questions of linguistic comparison here: () how similar are the texts of the individual poems linguistically to each other?; () is the language of the glossary consonant with the 243 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () language found in any or all of the texts of the poems? there is not space in the present paper to address the first question in this paper. that will form part of a separate paper on the poems (williamson in prep.). here i address the second of these questions and offer a comparison of linguistic forms found in the vernacular forms in the glossary with the forms for the functionally equivalent items in the poems as a set. an important issue in making this comparison is the relationship of the text of the glossary to the text of the poems. the poems, we can reasonably propose, came originally om different manuscript sources since they are the output of different authors. however, an important issue for a linguistic analysis of the the poems is whether they may have been copied into the makculloch ms om a single exemplar or om more than one. again, that is not a question for the present paper. for the purposes of linguistic comparison of the poems and the glossary, i treat the poems as a single corpus, albeit identiing the individual poems in which different features occur. comparison of the forms of the glossary with the forms of the poems. the glossary provides a very limited subset of its compiler’s potential linguistic repertoire. nevertheless, there are a number of salient features in the glossary that are shared amongst the poems. indefinite article.. the glossary maker consistently has a for the indefinite article, !. in the poems, a is also the dominant form, !, comprising  ﹪ of the occurrences;  of these occur before a word beginning with a consonant and only  before a word beginning with a vowel. the poems also contain an ! and  instances of ane ( ﹪) and  ( ﹪) of ane”. the glossary has a in all positions, viz. before a word beginning with a consonant, a vowel and ‘h’. in  a notyr (“indef 244 keith williamson selim  () art + otter), there seems to have been a metanalysis (cf. mod. eng. newt < oe efeta). i have treated the indefinite article here as /a+c (i.e. before a consonant). the ‘notter’ type is recorded also in middle english (see med, s.v. oter), but it is not recorded for older scots in dost other than for this text. table . indefinite article g +c a 40, a+ 1 41 +v a 4 4 +〈h〉 a 5 5 p +c a 44 (p p p p p p p p), an 1 (p), ane 6 (p p p), ane” 5 (p p p p) 56 +v a 2 (p) 2 +〈h〉 ― 0 in the poems, there are only two instances of the indefinite article before a word beginning with a spelling which implies a vowel; there are no instances in any of the poems of the indefinite article before a word beginning with 〈h〉. overall the clear preference would seem to be for a (! out of ), although  of these instances occur in p; ‘ane’ occurs ! (ane ! ane” !) and ‘an’ only !. excluding p the overall pattern is ‘a’ !, ‘an’ !, ‘ane’ !. however, only p and p offer convincing evidence of this. ‘a’ is also preferred in p and p, while ‘ane’ is preferred in p; but as these texts only have four occurrences each of the item, it would not be safe to draw a firm conclusion om their evidence. it is not possible to say if forms with ‘n’ (an, ane and ane”) — generally the more common forms by the end of the th century — are part of the glossary copier’s active repertoire or are carryovers om his exemplars. however, even if they are not his normal or preferred usage, forms of the ‘an(e’-type are so common in 245 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () older scots texts that he must have been familiar with them and, if they were not in his active repertoire of forms, it is a reasonable assumption that they must have been part of his passive repertoire. verbal noun inf lexion.. the glossary contains  instances of the verbal noun +yn~ ! (5 … dawyn~), +in ! (12 .. hegin) and +yne ! (31 .. foullyne, 32 .. huntyne). out of  occurrences of the verbal noun in the poems only the form +yne is shared with the glossary, occurring !. otherwise, the poems have +ing !, both in rhyming position, and +yng !,  of these in rhyming position. there is one occurrence of +and. table . verbal noun inflexion g $/vn +in ! +yne ! +yn~ ! 4 p $/vn +and ! (p) +yne ! (p, p) +yng ! (p !, p !, p !) 12 $/vn-aj +yng ! (p) 1 $/vn{rh} +ing ! (p !, p !) +yng ! (p !, p !, p !, p !) 8 as.. the glossary consistently has as in the collocation as to in the list of verbal glosses. (in 90, 98 to has been omitted; in 103 and 104 as has been omitted.) the poems have as ! in  poems, being ﹪ of the occurrences, and alss ! in  poems. all but one 246 keith williamson selim  () of the occurrences of alss are in p, which also has  instances of as. table . as g as !  p as ! (p !, p !, p !, p !, p !, p !, p !)  alss ! (p !, p !)  〈vi〉 spellings.. 〈vi〉 and 〈vy〉 are common spellings for etymologically long monophthongs in th-century older scots texts. they begin to appear in scots om the last quarter of the th century. table  shows the distributions of 〈vi〉 spellings in the glossary for the vowels in each of the poems. (williamson in prep. will offer a wider study of the orthography and phonology of the poems.) as a reference point i use the early scots (late th-century) system of vowels as reconstructed by a.j. aitken (see especially aitken ). both the glossary and the poems share the use of this type of marker for spelling of the long monophthongs. distinctive here is the use of ai in reflexes of esc /ɛː/ as well as of /aː/ and /ai/, and the use of yi in reflexes of esc /iː/. table . 〈vi〉 (i.e. 〈i〉 as marker of vowel length) /iː/ /eː/ /ɛː/ /aː/ /oː/ g yi ! ei ! ai ! ai ! oi ! p yi ! ei o!⁸ ei !² ai ! oi ! ey ! ay ! p – ey !⁴ ai ! – oy ! ei ! 247 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () p – ei !² – ai ! – ey ! ay ! p – ei ! – ai ! – ey !² ay !³ p – ei !¹ ei ! ai ! oi ! ey !¹ oy ! oy ! p – – – – – p – ei ! – ai ! – p – – ei ! ai ! – ey ! p yi ! ei !² ei ! ai ! – p – ei ! ei !¹ ai !³ – ey ! ey ! ay ! oy !¹ p – ei ! ei ! ai ! oi ! ay ! oy ! p – ei !² ei !² ai !² – ay !¹ p – ei !¹ ei ! ai ! oi ! ay !¹ p – ei ! ei ! ai !² oi ! ey !¹ ay !¹ superscript numbers refer to the number of cases where the spellings occur in rhyming words. 〈nȝ〉 for palatal /n/ and 〈lȝ〉 for palatal /l/.. in the glossary, palatal /n/ and /l/ are indicated in spelling by 〈ȝ〉; only palatal /n/ with the palatal indicated by 〈ȝ〉-spelling occurs in 248 keith williamson selim  () the poems; that is, i take the form in  cugze to be for cu〈n〉 gȝe (=? / kuŋjɪ/). in the poems, the only occurrences of palatal /n/ are in: p fenziet past part adj !, derenze v inf !; p sezour, where, as in the glossary form cugze, there is also nothing to express ‘n’ /n/ either in figura or abbreviation. it is possible that these forms express for the writer / copyist (sporadic) loss of /n/, i.e. /nj/  /j/, or /ɲ/  /j/. or perhaps /n/ was not lost, but came out in nasalization of the vowel, e.g. ?[kũjɪ], ?[ˈsẽjˌʊr]. 〈ch〉 for /ʃ /.. in the glossary,  has fych, with 〈ch〉 for /ʃ /. this spelling occurs also in the poems: in frech ‘fresh’ !, flech ‘f lesh’ !, chankis ‘shanks’ !, child ‘shield’ v !, wech~ ‘wash’ (!). the poems also have regular 〈ch〉, implying [ʧ ], and 〈sch〉, implying [ ʃ ]. 〈sch〉 also occurs in the poems for etymological /sk/, implying [ ʃ ] — or even ?[sx] — viz. schraip ‘scrape’ v inf ! (p) (alongside scrapand v pres part !) and schurgit ‘scourge’ v past part ! (p). (see table  for the distribution of 〈sch–〉, 〈ch–〉 and 〈sk–〉 in the poems.) table . 〈ch〉 for /ʃ / g fych () p frech ‘fresh’ ! (p, p, p) flech ‘f lesh’ ! (p, p) chankis ‘shanks’ ! (p) child ‘shield’ v ! (p) wech~ ‘wash’ ! (p) let .. v the glossary has lat for ‘let’ (< oe lǣtan (onhb lēta); oscand. láta) once in the phrase to lat blud. this verb occurs also in the poems !, as an imperative in each case. 249 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () table . let v g lat ! p lat v imper ! (p, p, p) 〈o〉 for initial etymological /u/ in .. (+), –, ,  in the glossary, under+ in 86 onder-mynd is spelled with initial 〈o〉. in the poems this occurs once in the poems in understand v pres indic onderstand in rhyme (p). for forms of understand, the other poems have initial 〈w〉 — p !, ! rh, p ! rh 〈w〉 being the preferred spelling, with 〈v〉 once for the initial vowel. p has wn+ for un–. for under prep p has wnder !, p *vnder !, but p has one”+ !. 〈o〉, though, occurs in the poems as the initial vowel in unto and until: p one-to !; p one-to !; p one”-til !; p one”-til !; p one”-tyll !, one-to !. infinitive marker.. in the glossary, the infinitive marker is consistently to, usually in the collocation as to. there is only one occurrence before a word beginning with a vowel, in 86 as to onder-mynd. in the poems there are  instances of an infinitive marker; to is the most common form (! in  poems — +c !, +v ! +〈h〉 !). however, as minor variants are to be found til !, for-to ! in  poems (p !, p ! and p !) and for-til ! (p). t       m ms the occurrence of these features in the glossary and in the texts of the poems support the palaeographical evidence, that the glossary was written down and the poems copied by the same person. the 250 keith williamson selim  () fact that in a number of cases the forms of the glossary are to be found also in a number of the poems supports the hypothesis that they were part of the copier’s own scribal language and that therefore he tended (at least) towards being a translator rather than a literatim copier of the language of his exemplars. the poems certainly show other forms in some cases for the common items and we cannot know which of these may have been part of the glossary maker’s active or passive repertoires or were carried over om his exemplar⒮ for the poems. there are two hypotheses to consider concerning the glossary: ⒜ it was compiled by the copier of the poems; ⒝ it was simply copied as a whole into the manuscript om another source, either the same source (or one of the sources) of the poems or om a quite separate source. the words in the glossary have been collected and organized into the order in which we find them in the manuscript either by the makculloch scribe or by an earlier compiler. with an interlinear or marginal gloss where the languages of the main text and the gloss are different, it is clear which language is the ‘source’ language and which the ‘target’ language: we conclude with certainty that the interlinear or marginal material was the ‘target’ language: the main text had to come first. with a glossa collecteana, which language is the ‘source’ language and which the ‘target’ language may not be obvious. latin in the middle ages was a second, or later, learned language. anyone coming upon such a glossary must be supposed to have acquired command of the vernacular (in this case scots) before learning latin. indeed, the principal purpose of making or using such a glossary was as an aid to learning or improving competence in latin — in the present case of latin vocabulary and associated morphological features. in that general sense, we may think of latin as the target language for the user. 251 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () the present glossary seems to be an abbreviated version of a type to be found in th-century and earlier english manuscripts. examples of such glossaries om manuscripts dating om the th to the th century were edited by wright–wülcker (). these examples are all arranged (like the makculloch glossary) with the latin word given first followed by the vernacular (english) equivalent. however, the opposite arrangement is to be found in galidus’ promptorium parvulorum, which also provides additional morphological information, for example the declension and the gender of nouns. appendix b cross-references the glosses in the makculloch glossary with those in the various glossaries in wright– wülcker () and appendix c cross-references the glosses with those in promptorium parvulorum. from a comparison with these, it is evident that many of the makculloch glossary items were common currency among medieval glossaries, some recurring even om the latin–old english glossaries. it seems plausible, therefore, that the makculloch glossary assemblage was copied om a source (perhaps more than one) which was itself a glossary and that the blank leaves of the manuscript were a convenient place to record the items. the manuscript would seem to have become, for this owner, a ‘commonplace book’. the poems and the glossary must have been assembled either () into some earlier manuscript om which the makculloch copier copied directly (his exemplar had the glossary and poems already assembled in it, itself possibly the product of one or more removes of copying of the assembled material) or () the makculloch copier himself assembled the vernacular pieces with the glossary and the poems om two separate sources at least. given the different nature of the poetic texts and the glossary, they are likely to have come om separate sources and supposing the makculloch copier to be the assembler of all the vernacular pieces offers the simpler account. 252 keith williamson selim  () adopting (), then — a separate source for the glossary as opposed to the poems — the similarities in the linguistic characteristics of the glossary and the poems suggest that the makculloch copier tended to cast the orthographic forms in his exemplar into his own orthography. if the copier tended to translate, can we say anything about the exemplar for the glossary? there is certainly variation in the linguistic forms among the poems, which suggests that the makculloch copier was not always a thorough-going translator — that he let through material om his exemplars. if this were the case also with the glossary, there is nothing to indicate that the immediate source for the glossary was an english one, unless perhaps a northern middle english one, where some forms were either the same or sufficiently similar to those of the copier — acceptable or unremarkable to him as a scots speaker / writer. it is, of course, quite possible that the exemplar glossary was itself a scottish one (latin–scots). while latin–english glossaries om the th century have survived, the makculloch glossary is (to my knowledge) the only latin–scots one to have survived. it suggests, nevertheless, that the latin–vernacular glossary tradition extended also into scotland in the late medieval period. while the individual forms of the vernacular words in the glossary appear to be scots (and certainly the whole assemblage must be taken as distinctively scots), cognates of many of the vernacular words are to be found in the surviving english glossaries. however, a few lexical items in the present vernacular set seem to be examples of distinctively scots lexis: 1 leid, 75 soland, 68 castok, 88 to brank. excluding 75, these have no recorded forms in middle or early modern english (see med, oed). 75 seems to have become known among english writers om the th century (see oed, s.v. solan). 253 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () given the latin words whose forms seem to be not quite correct, the source of the glossary may have been unclear in places and this led to misrendering by the makculloch copyist of those items. either the source was not clearly written or it was the product of some earlier version with problematic forms. problems in reading may also be behind some, at least, of the (so far) unidentified latin words. it is not impossible that the assemblage of glosses in the mackulloch glossary were originally noted down om an oral source and these were in some cases misheard and so misrendered into a ‘fair copy’ that we can suppose the makculloch text to be (given its reasonably careful organization). this is just a speculation, but we should remember that a medieval text could be transmitted not only by copying om writing. t     m  while much of the material in the makculloch glossary is to be found in other similar texts, is it possible to discern a purpose in the assembling of this particular subset of words? does the content of the glossary suggest anything about the compiler or his interests? the glossary implies acquisition of latin vocabulary. the poems found alongside it in the manuscript are of a strongly religious character, and include verse versions of a ‘paternoster’, ‘hail mary’ and a ‘creed’. a number of glosses refer to ecclesiastical items: 23 hoc mortuarum : a cors presend, 26 hoc aspersorium : a water-styk, 27 hoc preconium : honowre, 63 hic ysopus : ysop. to this set, one might be tempted to add 22 hoc pedum : a schipcruk, if the sense intended is “crozier” rather than ”shepherd’s crook”. that the glossary compiler had an association with some religious establishment is an obvious inference. he may have belonged to some kind of clergy or was in training towards becoming so. 254 keith williamson selim  () as to the possible areas of interest, there is an emphasis on ‘textiles’ —  of the glosses can be interpreted as having to do with textiles, their preparation and manufacture and in items of clothing. if one were to consider the whole collection of glosses as conscious choice, then one might infer that the glossary maker was connected with a religious house with agricultural interests and with a connexion to textile manufacture. the glosses which refer to aquatic creatures are interesting. 51 hic lotercius “otter” : a notyr “otter” 58 hic polipus “octopus or squid or cuttlefish – cephalopod having eight or ten tentacles” a lopstare : “lobster’ 59 hec conca “bivalve shellfish, mussel” : wilk “whelk, buckie” 75 <[h]< ganneta “gannet” : a soland “solan, goose; gannet” 76 hec pinna “feather; fin of a fish” : a fych fyne “fish fin” 77 hec brancia “gills of a fish” : a gyll “gill” the solan goose — or gannet — was hunted (cf. the reference to fowling in the glossary) for its meat, feathers and the oil that could be rendered om it. an act of parliament () notes how proffitable the solane geis … quhilkis hantis … within the ile of bas … ar to the commoun weill of this realme acta parliamentorum scottorum iii /. otters were hunted for their pelts. in the listing of ‘custumis’ in the leges burgorum, the levy for taking skins out of a burgh is ilk tymyr at the outpassyng iiij d *of ye tymyr of skurel ij d” *of j *c gray gryse & skurel dycht and letheryt viij d” *and of ilk otyr skyn j obl~ (edinburgh, national library of scotland, ms  ‘the bute ms’, f. r; text om ecos) 255 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () otter skins were evidently a luxury item. the perth guildry records (/ jan ) refer to all vther costly geir mertrik tod or ottir (perth guildry ms f. ) given the importance of fish to the medieval scottish economy, the references to sea creatures is not surprising. there are numerous references to fish in civil and ecclesiastical as well as the parliamentary records. wilks “whelks” (also known as buckies) were gathered for food and for their shells; they were also used to bait fishing lines. there are references to apparent use of the shells for buttons: ane gros & ane string of buckie buttones;  edinb. test. xxv.  (dost s.v. buckie)  dusson of wilke buttones;  oliphants  (dost s.v. wilk) the inclusion of gill and fin of a fish might not then be surprising, yet, curiously, in vernacular texts there is a dearth of reference specifically to gills and fins (on the evidence of dost and ecos). it is possible also to propose connexions between glosses. for example, are 54 hic nothus “bastard; adulterer; (of animals) mongrel” : a hurson~ “whoreson (coarse term of abuse)” and 94 derogo “to derogate, detract om; to revile, mock” : as to mak lyss “to fabricate lies” connected with 88 geresto ? : as to brank ? this supposes that the sense of to brank here is “to punish with the branks (an iron bridle and gag used in public punishment for 256 keith williamson selim  () breaches of the peace, abusive language, etc.)”. and, might there be an connexion between 68 hec maguderis “cabbage stalk, castock, cabbage” : a castok “kale stalk, castock” and 31 hoc aucepium “fowling, hawking” : foullyne “fowling, hawking”? cf. the dost entry s.v. *castok, n. ? — ‘for castokis to mend the kingis halk fedderis;  treas. acc. iv. .’ c the aim of this paper has been to provide a new editing of the glossary text in the makculloch manusript and to provide some analysis of its forms and of its relationship to other texts in the manuscript in which it occurs. in terms of its content, i have also offered evidence of its relationship to other similar glossaries in an attempt to place it in a wider context of medieval glossaries and vocabularies. the makculloch glossary could be taken as just one more collection of latin–vernacular words, but in the compilation of any glossary there are motives for the choice that results in the particular assemblage — be it more broadly didactic, as in the case of promptorium parvulorum, or focused on a particular area of human activity, such as plants and their uses. the material in such glossaries merits deeper semantic investigation beyond the forms and the relationships between the latin and the vernacular. keith williamson university of edinburgh 257 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () r abbreviations dml = dictionary of medieval latin from british sources dost = a dictionary of the older scottish tongue imev = index of middle english verse: brown and robbins () med = middle english dictionary nimev = a new index of of middle english verse: boffey and edwards () odnb = oxford dictionary of national biography oed = oxford english dictionary pp = promptorium parvulorum: mayhew () rmlw = revised medieval latin wordlist from british sources sts edn. = stevenson () ww = wright–wülcker () dictionaries craigie, w. & aitken, a. j. et al. –: a dictionary of the older scottish tongue from the twelfth century to the end of the seventeenth.  vols. chicago: chigaco university press — aberdeen: aberdeen university press oxford: oxford university press [on-line as part of the dictionary of the scots language, http://www.dsl.ac.uk] (= dost). latham, r. e. & howlett, d. r., et al. (ed.) –: dictionary of medieval latin from british sources. london: published for the british academy by oxford university press (= dml). 258 keith williamson selim  () lewis, c.t. & short. c. (ed.) : a dictionary of latin. oxford: clarendon press (= lewis and short). lewis, robert e., et al. (ed.) –: middle english dictionary. ann arbor: university of michigan press (= med). oxford dictionary of national biography [on-line, http://www. oxforddnb.com] (= odnb). oxford english dictionary,  (nd edn.), prepared by j.a. simpson & e.s.c. weiner. oxford: oxford university press. [on-line, http://dictionary.oed.com] (= oed). revised medieval latin wordlist from british and irish sources, , ed. r.e. latham. london: published for the british academy by oxford university press (= rmlw). other works aitken, a. j. : the older scots vowels: a history of the stressed vowels of older scots from the beginnings to the eighteenth century, ed. caroline macafee. edinburgh: scottish text society. bawcutt, priscilla : the poems of william dunbar.  vols. glasgow: association for scottish literary studies. baxter, j. w. : william dunbar: a biographical study. edinburgh: oliver and boyd. bennett, j. a. w. (ed.) : devotional pieces in verse and prose, from ms. arundel  and ms. harleian . scottish text society rd ser., no. . edinburgh: blackwood. black, george f. : the surnames of scotland: their origin, meaning and history. new york: new york public library. 259 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () boffey, julia & edwards, a.g.s. : a new index of middle english verse. london: the british library (= nimev). borland, catherine r. : a descriptive catalogue of the western medieval manuscripts in edinburgh university library. edinburgh: edinburgh university press / t.a. constable. brown, carleton & robbins rossel h. : the index of middle english verse. new york: columbia university press (= imev). chalmers, p., chalmers, c. i. & innes, cosmo (ed.) : registrum episcopatus brechinensis.  vols. aberdeen: bannatyne club. hunt, tony : teaching and learning latin in thirteenthcentury england.  vols. cambridge: d. s. brewer. kinsley, james : the poems of william dunbar. oxford: clarendon press. mayhew, a. l. (ed.) : the promptorium parvulorum: the first english–latin dictionary. eets es . london: kegan paul, trench, trübner & co. / oup (= pp). moreno olalla, david in preparation: the scribal inscription plenus amoris. a critical appraisal. reynhout, lucien : formules latines de colophons.  vols. turnhout: brepols. ringler, william, a. : bibliography and index of english verse in manuscript –, prepared and completed by michael rudick and susan j. ringler. london new york: mansell. robbins, rossell hope & cutler, john l. : supplement to the index of middle english verse. lexington: university of kentucky press. 260 keith williamson selim  () smith, gregory g. : specimens of middle scots (edinburgh: blackwood). stevenson, george : pieces from the makculloch and the gray mss. scottish text society ser. , no. . edinburgh: blackwood (= sts edn.). williamson, keith : spatio-temporal aspects of linguistic variation in older scots texts. scottish language : –. wright, thomas & wülcker, richard paul (ed.) : anglo– saxon and old english vocabularies. nd edn.,  vols. london: trübner (= w–w). ! 261 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () appendix a: a glossa collecteana in eul ms  ‘makculloch ms’, ff. v–r column () contains my reference number for each gloss, used for reference elsewhere in this paper. the text of the glosses is given in columns () and (). upper case letters represent letters seen in the manuscript. lower case letters are expansions of abbreviations except for ‘z’ which represents ‘ȝ’ (yogh). ‘^’ before a letter indicates that it is written as superscript in the manuscript, e.g. med-ny^t = manuscript 〈med nyt〉. ‘j’ stands for manuscript 〈 i 〉, ‘ss’ for manuscript 〈ß〉. ‘~’ indicates a stroke over one or more letters of the word; ‘ ” ’ indicates a backward curling stroke of the letter. columns () and () are attempts to define independently the latin and scots words in each latin–scots pairing. dictionary sources are: dml, rmlw, lewis and short (l&s), dost, oed (see references for details). cl = ‘classical latin’, ml = ‘medieval latin’. a sole ‘?’ in () indicates that i have have been unable to veri and define the latin word. ‘?’ before a definition in () or () indicates that the definition is not certain. no. latin definition of latin scots definition of scots f. va 1 hoc ydeoma language a leid language 2 hoc nunisma coin, coinage cugze sic coin, coinage, money 3 hoc crepusculum evening, dusk a ewyntyd evening, dusk 4 hoc concuteum ? for concubium “that part of the night in which the first sleep falls upon men” (l&s) med-ny^t midnight 5 hoc diluculum dawn, daybreak dawyn~ dawn, daybreak 6 hoc gallacenium cockcrow cokcraw cockcrow 262 keith williamson selim  () 7 hoc vertubrum spindle whorl a quorill whorl = weight on a spindle for spinning 8 hoc sagum bolting-cloth; woollen blanket or mantle say fine cloth; bolting-cloth 9 hoc scisma schism discord discord 10 hoc impame” ? trawell ?travail, trouble, effort 11 hoc eputitium ? a turment ?storm; ?torture; ?gun 12 hoc incitamentum ? incitement hegin egging on; inciting 13 hoc femorale breeches, drawers a brek breek (sg form) = (pair of ) breeches, breeks 14 hoc pracellum meadow a medow meadow 15 hoc pirotum perry, pear-tree a parin perry, pear-tree 16 hoc petrocellum parsley percill parsley 17 hoc herilicium ? wyer wire 18 hoc lientarium lientary, diarrhoea schet excrement, shit, diarrhoea 19 hoc braciarium brew-house brwhouss brew-house 20 hoc absinthium wormwood wormot wormwood 21 hoc antipodium ?vamp of shoe fordell ?precedence, lead; ? advantage, profit (dost s.v. fordell n. ); ?fore-part (fore “fore–” + dele “bit, part’) 22 hoc pedum crozier a schipcruk sheep-crook 23 hoc mortuarum mortuary payment; service for the dead a cors presend gi to clergy om the goods of a householder on his / her death and burial 263 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () 24 hoc magonale mangonel; machine for casting projectiles; gun a gown” gun 25 hoc marsubium pouch, purse bigrild pouch, purse 26 hoc aspersorium holy water sprinkler a water-styk aspergillum = utensil for sprinkling holy water 27 hoc preconium praise, worship (eccl.) honowre honour, reverence for god 28 hoc asetum vinegar venacar vinegar 29 hoc senapium mustard mustar mustard 30 hoc pistrin?um bake-house bakhouss bake-house, bakery 31 hoc aucepium fowling, hawking foullyne fowling, hawking 32 hoc uenatorum ? hunting, cl vēnātiō, –ōnis a huntyne hunting 33 hoc poplicium garter ml propliliga a gartyne garter 34 hoc lorum thong, strap; rein, bridle; bond, restraint mailze ? 35 hoc alabrum reel, spindle a reill reel, spool or bobbin on which thread may be wound 36 hoc depletorium ? utensil for emptying a ladill household ladle f.vb 37 hic wnculus ? small hook a nok small hook; hook holding the thread in a distaff 38 hec armelausa cloak clok cloak 39 hec sagana female soothsayer, witch surplis gown, loose garment 264 keith williamson selim  () 40 hec sectura cutting; place where anything is cut or dug a saim join between two pieces of cloth 41 hec fimbria border, bordure (heraldic) a list hem, edging of a garment; edging strip on a piece of cloth 42 hic clibanus oven a ?huouin oven, furnace 43 hec lirapa ? a button~ ?button 44 hic cophinus basket a mand woven basket, wickerwork basket 45 hec mataxa heckle a hekyll hackle, flaxcomb 46 hec cardius teasel, thistle a tasell teasel, thistlelike plant; dried prickly flowerhead of the plant, used for raising the nap on cloth 47 hec mastix gum mastic, but also glossed elsewhere as “madder” (see § .) mader madder – the plant; the dyestuff got om the plant 48 hec gaude woad waid woad om the plant isatis tinctoria, and giving a blue dye; plant om which a blue or yellow dyestuff was got 49 hec creocra crook, hook, pothook a ewilcruk hook for liing flesh out of a pot, pot-hook 50 hec fauella spark a spark spark 51 hic lotercius otter a notyr otter 52 hec wanga spade a spaid spade 265 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () 53 hec marra cl hoe, weeding hook a peik pick 54 hic nothus bastard; adulterer; (of animals) mongrel a hurson~ whoreson (coarse term of abuse) 55 hec proapsis sic dish a plait dish, plate 56 hic crocus crocus (the plant); saffron (product of the plant) safferon~ crocus (the plant); saffron (product of the plant) 57 hic *fustis cudgel, knobbed stick a staf walking pole; cudgel or clubstick used as a weapon 58 hic polipus octopus or squid or cuttlefish – cephalopod having eight or ten tentacles a lopstare lobster 59 hec conca cl bivalve shellfish, mussel wilk whelk; buckie (a variety of small shellfish) 60 hec *facicula scythe a syth sickle 61 hec calendula marigold a guld marigold 62 hec salgea sage sage sage 63 hic ysopus holy-water sprinkler ysop aromatic herb of the genus hyssopus; holywater sprinkler, aspergillum 64 hec epifia saddle, caparison, horse-collar a bre[?] cham horse collar 65 hec bilanx balance, scales (for weighing) a pair of weyss (pair of ) scales 66 h forfex scissors a pair tangis set or pair of tongs, pincers or forceps 67 h forpex pair of shears; scissors a pair scheris shears 266 keith williamson selim  () 68 hec maguderis cabbage stalk, castock, cabbage a castok kale stalk, castock 69 hec plantago water plantain a wabred plantain 70 hec parilla dock a doccan~ dock-plant 71 hec vrtica nettle, stinging nettle; cloth of nettle fibres nettyll nettle 72 hic caduciator herald, mediator; officer sent with a flag of truce aimbacitowr envoy; ambassador 73 hic caduciator ibid. aimbassitor ibid. 74 hec celtis chisel chesell chisel 75 <[h]< ganneta gannet a soland gannet 76 hec pinna cl feather; fin of a fish a fych fyne fish fin 77 hec brancia gills of a fish a gyll ?gill 78 hec carcintia ? polygonon = knotweed mynt mint, the aromatic herb 79 hec spelta ? species of grain (triticum spelta) ryiss ?rice; ?rush – the plant; ?rush-wheat, rush-corn; ?twigs 80 hec veruca wart a wart wart f.vc 81 hic spasmus spasm ye cramp cramp 82 hic dent” ? a cobill ?coble; small flat-bottomed boat 83 hec lanigo ? for lanugo a wow-caym~ wool-comb 84 hec manella ? sort of clothing a hupschakyll hobble for a horse 85 hec occa harrow; area of cultivated land, furrow cloid clod of earth 267 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () f.r 86 suffendo ? for suffodio (see pp , s.v. vnder delvyn); cf. ww-xi/. subfundit, orreteð [oe orrettan “to disgrace, put to shame”] as to onder-mynd to undermine, lit. and fig.; to excavate or tunnel beneath sthg 87 flebotmo to let blood, bleed as to lat blud to let blood 88 geresto ? as to brank ?to punish with the branks (an iron bridle and gag used in public punishment for breaches of the peace, abusive language, etc.) 89 putitio ? as to clout ?to patch, mend 90 jncanto to cast a spell on, charm as scharm to charm 91 compedito ? to shackl as to fytter to secure with fetters 92 lerapo ? as to button~ to button 93 fuco to dye, stain with colour as to fry ?y 94 derogo to derogate, detract om; to revile, mock as to mak lyss to fabricate lies 95 irrito to irritate, annoy as to crab to annoy 96 sarffo ? as to wret ?write 97 alabro to reel as to reill to wind (thread) on a reel 98 gracello to cackle. cf. pp –, “cakelyne, as hennys: gracillo” as kekyll to cackle (of birds) 268 keith williamson selim  () 99 mino to drive (beasts, carts) as to dryf to drive, direct the course of (animals, people) 100 matro probably for mātūrō to make ripe, ripen as to ryp to become ripe; to make ripe, bring to ripeness 101 occo to harrow; to break up (stone) +as to cloid to ee (land) om clods by harrowing (oed); to pelt with clods (dost) 102 ampulo ?for ampliāre – to make wider, extend, enlarge as to spred to spread; extend the effect of (sthg) 103 scaturiso cl scatturio ml scaturizo (rmlw s.v. ‘scaturi/igo’ “to gush forth” to spring to spring, well up 104 amputo to cut around, trim, prune to cut to cut 105 carpino to card as to card to dress (wool) with cards 106 delussico ? as to saw to scatter or deposit (seed), to sow (seed) 269 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () i anglo–saxon vocabulary,  c ii kentish glosses,  c iii colloquy of ælic iv abbot ælic’s vocabulary,  c v supplement to ælic’s vocabulary, / c vi anglo–saxon glossary,  c vii anglo–saxon vocabulary,  c viii anglo-saxon vocabulary,  /  c ix anglo-saxon vocabulary,  c x anglo-saxon vocabulary,  c xi glosses, latin and anglo–saxon,  c xii miscellaneous anglo–saxon glosses,  c xiii ‘semi-saxon’ vocabulary,  c xiv vocabulary of the names of plants,  c xv latin and english vocabulary,  c xvi metrical vocabularies,  c xvii names of parts of the human body,  c xviii english vocabulary,  c xix nominale,  c xx pictorial vocabulary  c first is given the makculloch gloss reference number, the mackulloch gloss latin word; these are then followed by a list of correspondences in the wright–wülcker texts. these are cited as text number (roman numerals), page (in fact column) number and line number; so v/. means text v, page , line . 1 hoc ydeoma v/. idioma, proprietas linguae, agen uel gecynde spræc 2 hoc nunisma v/. numisma, scylling, . nummisma mynet; xiii/. num[i]sm, munet 3 hoc crepusculum iv/. crepusculum, glomung; v/. crepusculum, tweoneleoht uel deorcung; xx/. hoc crepusculum a hewyntyde 5 hoc diluculum v/. diliculum, dægred 6 hoc gallacenium v/. conticinium, uel gallicinium, hancred; xi/ gallicinium, honcred-tid 7 hoc vertubrum xv/. vertebrum, ance a wherve, or a reele; xvi/. uertebrum warbe 8 hoc sagum vi/. (nomina uasorum), . (uestium nomina) sagum, hwitel; ww/. (incipit de lectulo) sagum, hwitel oþþe ry; x/. sagum, hwytel appendix b: lexis shared between the makculloch glossary and the glossaries edited in wright–wülcker () the purpose of comparing the makculloch glosses with the texts in wright–wülcker () and promptorium parvulorum (appendix c) is to illustrate the occurrence of many, if not most, of the makculloch vocabulary in the ‘tradition’ of english glossaries, even going back to old english. the texts in wright–wülcker are cited in the order in which they are printed, which is chronological, in so far as their relative chronology can be determined, viz. 270 keith williamson selim  () 12 hoc incitamentum i/. incitamenta, tyhtinne; xi/. incitamenta, tyhtenne 13 hoc femorale xv/. femorale, ance a strapul; xviii/. (nomina ornamentorum) hoc femorale, ae breke / hee bracce, –arum, idem; x/. femoralia, bræc; xx/. hec femoralia, ace a quischens [f.n.  ‘more usually called cuisses, the pieces of armour which protected the thighs’.] 14 hoc pracellum iv/. pratum, mæd; v/. pratum, mæd; x/. pratum, mæd; xix/. hoc pratum, a medowe; xx/. (nomin terrarum) hoc pratum, ance a medow 15 hoc pirotum xix/. (nomina arborum et earum ucuum) hec pirus, pertre, hoc pirum, a pere hoc piretum, est locus ubi crescunt 16 hoc petrocellum x/. petrocillium, petersilium. xviii/ . (nomina herbarum) hoc petrocillum, ae percylle; . hoc petrocillum, persylle; . hoc petrocillum, ance persley 17 hoc herilicium xv/. argentifilum, sylver wyre; . ferrifilum, ance wyre of yre; . erifilum, ance braswyre 18 hoc lientarium iv/. lientaria, mete utsiht; xi/. mete utsihð; xv/. lientaria, ance the flux 19 hoc braciarium xv/. brasiarium, ance a brewehous 20 hoc absinthium i/. absinthium, wermod; ww/. (nomina herbarum, grece et latine) absinthium, weremod; x/. absintium, wermod; xi/. absintium, wermod; xiii/. absinthium, wermot; xiv/. absinthium, i. aloigne, i. wermod; xv/. absinthium ‥, ance wermod; xviii/. ( ) hoc absinthium, ae wormode; xix/. (    ) hoc absinthium, wormwod 22 hoc pedum xviii/. (nomina ludorum) hoc pedum, ae cambok [f.n.  ‘cambok, an old game at ball played with a crooked stick ‥’]; xix/. (    ) hoc pedum, a clappe, . hoc pedum, a crowche; . hoc pedum, a clubbe; xx/. hoc pedum, ance a scheperdes croke 24 hoc magonale xv/. mangonale, ance a mangnel, or a gun 25 hoc marsubium iv/. marsupium, uel marsippa, seod; x/. marsupium, seod [f.n.  ‘the bag, or purse, carried at the girdle, called at a later period of the middle ages a gypsere (in french gibbecière) ‥’]; xiii/. marsupium, seod; marsupium, ance a pautener; ww/. (nomina ornamentorum) hic loculus, ae purse. / hoc marsupium, idem; ww/. marsuppia, ceodas 26 hoc aspersorium xv/. aspersorium, ance an holy water stykke; xviii/. (  ) hoc aspersorium, ae strynkylle / hic ysopus, ae idem est; xix/. (nomina domorum et rerum ecclesiasticarum) hoc aspersorium, a strynkylle; xx/. hic ysopus, ace a sprenkylle / hoc aspersorium, idem est 27 hoc preconium xi/. preconia, mærnessa 29 hoc senapium xviii/. (   ) hoc senapium, ae mustarde 30 hoc pistrin?um iv/. pistrinum, bæacern; viii/. pistrinum, cofa 271 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () [“chamber, inner room, closet”]; x/. pistrinum, bæcern; xiii/. pistrinum, bakern; xv/. pistrinum, an a bachous; xvi/. pistrinum, bakehouse; xix/. (jam de edificiis domorum) hoc pistrinum, a bakhows; /. hoc pistrinum, ance a bakehowse 31 hoc aucepium xix/. hoc aucipium, a hawkynge; iii/. aucupes fugeleras 32 hoc uenatorum iii/. uenatores, huntan, ., . uenare, huntian, . uenatione, huntnolde, . in uenationem, on huntunge . uenator hunta, . uenatione huntunge; viii/. uenator, hunta; x/. uenator, hunta; xiii/. uenator, hunta; xix/. hic venator, a hunter; xv/. venor, ance to hunty [sic] 33 hoc poplicium . popliliga, ance a gartour 34 hoc lorum xvi/. lorum, reyne; . hoc lorum, a brydille 35 hoc alabrum xv/. alabrum ?; xvi/. alabrumque, reele 38 hec armelausa xvi/. armilansa, cloke; xx/. (nomina vestimentorum) hec armilansa, a cloke; . armelausa, ance a cloke, . armilausa, a scalvayn [med, s.v. sclāvīn(e “⒜ a cloak, esp. a pilgrim’s cloak or mantle ‥; ⒝ a ceremonial vestment; a cope, robe ‥”]; xvi/. armilansa, cloke [f.n.  ‘read armilausa]; xviii/. ( ) hec armilausa, ae cloke; /.; . (   ) hec armilausa, ae cloke; i/. armilausia, serce; vii/. armilausia, sere; xi/. armilausia, serce; . armilausia, serc [f.n.  ‘so the ms. r. w[ülcker].] 40 hec sagana ?x/. sagene, sænet; xii/. sagina, fodre 41 hec fimbria iv/. fimbria, fnado, uel læppan 42 hic clibanus iv/. clibanius, ofenbacen hlaf 44 hic cophinus iv/. cophinus, wilige; v/. cophinus, wilige, uel leap; xii/. cof finus, manda; . cophinus, mand; xviii/. hic cophinus, ae hampere 45 hec mataxa v/. mataxa, uel corductum, uel stramentum, stræl, uel bedding; xi/. mataxa, wæde; xv/. mataxa, an hychele; xviii/. hec mataxa, ae hekylle; xix/. hec mataxa, a hekylle; xx/. hec mataxa, ance a hekylle 46 hec cardius i/. cardus, þistel; ix/. cardus, smæl þistel; x/. cardus, ðystel; xi/. cardus, þistel; xv/. cardo, ance a thystell, or a tesell, carduus, ance a tesel, cardus, ance a corde 47 hec mastix iv/. mastix, uel resina, cuter; ix/. mastix, hwit cwuda 48 hec gaude xiv/. sandix, i. waisde, i. wod 50 hec fauella i/. scintella, spærca; iv/. fauilla, ysle; viii/. (  ) scintilla, spearcal; . fauilla, ysle; ix/. scintilla, spearca; . fauilla, ysle; xi/. fauilla, ysle 51 hec lotercius x/. i/. sullus, ottor; lutrius, oter [f.n.  ‘read lutra’ r. w.]; iv/. lutria, otor; xi/. lutrus, otor 52 wanga iv/. uanga, spada; x/. uanga, uel fossorium, spædu; 272 keith williamson selim  () xiii/. uanga, uel fossorium, spade; xv/. vanga, ance a spade; xvi/. uanga – spade; xix/. hec vanga, a spathe; xx/. hec vanga, a spade 53 hec marra xi/. bidubium, i. marra, bill; xi/. marra, bill 54 hic nothus iv/. auster, uel nothu, suðen wind; xi/. nothus, suðan wind, oððe dooc, hornungsunu [f.n.  ‘no doubt, in the original text in which this word stood, it was notus, the south wind, and was glossed as such, but in the debased orthography of medieval latin, another glossator seemst to have supposed it might be nothus, a bastard’]; xix/. hic spirius, a basterde / hic nothus, contrarius spirio. 55 proapsis xviii/. hec perapsis, ae doblere; xix/. hic perapsis, –dis, a dobler 56 hic crocus vi/. crocus, i. lutei coloris, geolu; viii/. crocus, gæle, geolo; xi/. crocus, geolu; xviii/. hic crocus, ae safurroun; xix/. (    ) hic crocus, sapherone; . (  ) hic crocus, saferon; xx/. hic crocus, ance sayn. 57 hic *fustis iv/. ligo, becca, uel palus, uel fustis; x/. fustis, sagol; xiii/. fustis, sowel; xviii/. ( ) hec fustis, hic baculus, idem sunt 58 hic polipus xv/. polipus, a loppestere; xvi/. polipus a loppyster or a crabbe; xix/. ( ) hic polipus hec gorra a lopster 59 hec conca i/. . conca, musclan scel; xi/. conca, musclan scil; . de conca, of muscellan; xii/. de conca, of muscellan [f.n.  ‘read concha. r. w.’]; . de conca, of muscellan [f.n.  ‘read concha. r. w.’]; xv/. bilbus, ance a welke; . conca, ance a loppyster; . papula, ance a whelke; xvi/. concha whelke; xviii/. ( ) hec conca, ae cochilt; xx/. hec conca, ace a cokylle, hic bulbus, ace a wylke 62 hec salgea xv/. salgea, ance sawge; xviii/. ( ) hec salgea, ae sawge; xx/. hec salgea, ance sawge 63 hic ysopus xiv/. ysopus, i. ysope; xviii/. ( ) hic ysopus, ae ysoppe. ysopus est harba, ysopo spergitur unda; . (  ) . hic aspersorium, ae strynkylle. / hic ysopus, ae idem est; xx/. hic ysopus, ace a sprenkylle / hoc aspersorium, idem est. 65 hec bilanx i/. bilance, tuiheolore; iv/. bilances, twa scale; vi/. bilance, twiwæage, uel heolore; xi/. bilance, twyfealdre heolra; xii/. bilancee, twyfealdre heolra; xix/. hic bilanx, –cis, belans 66 h forfex  h forpex i/. forfices, scerero, forfex, isern sceruru; vi/. forfices, ræglsceara; . forpices, fexsceara;x/. forceps, tange; . forfex, sceara; xi/. forfex, scer 68 hec maguderis x/. caula, uel magudaris, caul; xiii// caula, uel magudaris, caul; xviii/. ( ) hoc magudere, ae calstok; xix/. (    ) hec maguderis, a calstok; xx/. hec maguderis, a calstok 69 hec plantago i/. plantago, uuegbrade; iv/. cinaglossa, uel plantago, uel lapatium, wegbræde; ix/. plan273 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () tago, wegbrade; x/. plantago, wegbræde; xi/. plantago, uel sepineruia, wegbræde; xiii/. plantago, weibreode; xiv/. plantago, i. planteine, i. weibrode; xviii/ . hic plantago, ae waybred; xix/. hec plantago, –nis, waybrede; xx/. hec plantago, ace weybrede 70 hec parilla xv/. parella, ance dokke. cf. iv/. dilla, uel acrocorium, docce; ix/. rodinaps, ompre, docce; x/. dilla, docca; xi/. lappatium, docce. 71 hec vrtica ii/. urtice, of netelan; iv/. urtica, netle; viii/. urtica, netele; ix/. urtic, netle; x/. urtica, netel; xiii/. urtica, netle; xviii/ . hec vrtica, ae nettylle; xix/. hec urtica, a netylle; xx/. hec urtica, ance a netylle 72, 73 caduciator iv/. caduceatores, uel pacifici, gesibbe ærandracan 76 hec pinna xix/. hec pinna, a nne 77 hec brancia xv/. brancia, ance a gyle; . hec brancia, hec senecia, a gylle; . hic branchia, ace a gylle 78 carcintia cf. for mint: i/. menta, minte; iv/. menta, minte; viii/. mento, minte; ix/. menta, minte; x/. menta, minte; xi/. mento, minte 80 hec veruca xx/. hec veruca, ace a wrothe [f.n.  ‘wrothe. a wart is still called a wrat in some of the northern dialects.’]; . hec veruca, ance a werte 81 hic spasmus iv/. spasmos hramma, uel swiung; xv/. spasmus, ance the crompe; xix/. hec spasma, the cramppe; xx/. hic spasmus, ance the crampe 83 hec lanigo xix/. lanugo, wullknoppa [sic, for ?–hnoppa “wool on a fleece”]; .; . lanugo, ance a loke of wulle; xix/. hec lanugo, –nis, walkyng; xx/. hec pubes, hic lanugo ance schere. 85 hec occa i/. occa, faelging [“a harrow”]; xi/. in occa, on rh; . occa, furh, lging, walh; xii/. occa, wealh, oþþe wyrðing 87 flebotmo xi/. flebotomo, blodseax; xii/. flebotomo, blodseax 90 jncanto xv/. incanto, ance to enchaunte 93 ?frico vi/. frico, abstraho, uello, gebrytte; xi/. frico, ic gnide [“rub”]; xv/. frico, ance to ote 94 derogo cf. iv// ic oeo [oftēon “to withdraw, deprive”] 95 irrito xi/. irritat, gremede; xii/. irritat, gremede 98 gracello xv/. gracillo, to cakele as an hen 99 mino iii/. mino ic drife 274 keith williamson selim  () appendix c: lexis shared between the makculloch glossary and promptorium parvulorum 12 hoc incitamentum : hegin  eggyd, or steryd, or yntysyd to done a dede: instigatus, –ta, –tum: incitatus, –ta, –tum;  eggyng, or entysyng to done welle or evyl: incito, –as, –aui, –re: provoco, –as, –aui, –re, similiter declinatur; prime con., act. 16 hoc petrocellum : percill  percyle, herbe: petrocillum, –li; ‘dictionarius’: uel petrocilium, –ij: uel petrocilinium; omnia neut., , vgucio in petros. 17 hoc herilicium : wyer  wyre: ffilum, –li: uel fferifilum, –li; omnia neut., . 20 hoc absinthium : wormot  wyrmewode, herbe: absinthium, –ij; neut., . 22 hoc pedum : a schipcruk  crosse of a byshop: pedum, –i; neut.,  ‥ 24 hoc magonale : a gown”  gunne: petraria, –e; fem., prime, et ‘commentarius’: mangonale, –is; neut.  ‥ 26 hoc aspersorium : a waterstyk  haly water strenkyl: aspersorium, –i; neut., : ysopus, –i; masc.  ‥  strenkyl, haly water styke: aspersorium, –ij; neut. : isopus, –pi; masc., . 28 hoc asetum : venacar  vynegre: acetum, –ti; neut.,  vinum acidum; kylwarbi: ; uel vinum acre, vini acris; neut., . 29 hoc senapium : mustar  mustard: sinapium, –ij, neut., . mustard, or warloke, or senwyn, herbe: sinapis, is; masc., . 30 hoc pistrin?um : bakhouss  bakehowse, or bakynhowse: pistrina, –e; fem. prime; uel pistrinum –i; neut. 31 hoc aucepium : foullyne  ffowlyng, or takyng off byrdis: aucupium, –ij; neut.,  vgucio in aueo. 32 hoc uenatorum : a huntyne  huntyng: venacio, –is; fem. : venatus, venatus, –vi; masc.,  decl.  huntyn: venor, –aris, venatus, –ri; prime con., dep. 35 hoc alabrum : a reill  rele, wommanys instrumente: alabrum, –bri; neut., , ‘campus florum’.  relyn with a rele: alabriso, –as, etc.; prime con., act. 36 hoc depletorium : a ladill  ladyl, pot spone: contus, –i; masc., ; coclear, –ris; neut., , nekkam. 37 hic wnculus : a nok  noke of a bow, or spyndyl, or oder thynge: tenerculus, –li; masc., , kylwarbi: clauicula, –le; ffem., prime decl., kylwarbi. 38 hec armelausa : clok  cloke: armilausa; fem., prime. 39 hec sagana : surplis  surplice: superpelicium, –ij; neut., . [with reference to sagana, cf. ‘ mare, or wych: magus, –i; ‥ sagana, –e; fem., prime decl.’] 40 hec sectura : a saim  ceme, of cloth: sutura, –re; fem. prime. 42 hic clibanus : a ?huouin  ouyn: ffurnus, –ni; masc., ; ffornax, cis; ffem., ; clibanus, –ni; masc.,  decl. 275 a latin-older scots glossary selim  () 44 hic cophinus : a mand  mawnd, skype: sportula, –le; fem., prime.  cophyme: cophinus, –ni; masc., ‘campus florum’. 45 hec mataxa : a hekyll  hekele: mataxa, fem., prime. 46 hec cardius : a tasell  taslyle : carbo, –nis: uel cardo fullonis; ffem, : uel carduus, –ij; masc., . 47 hec mastix : mader  mastyke, speice: mastrix, –cis; fem., . 48 hec gaude : waid  wood, or wadd, for lytstaris: gaudo, –is; fem., , kylwarbi 50 hec fauella : a spark  spark of a re: scintilla, –e; fem., prime: fauilla, –e; fem., prime, ‘catholicon.’ 52 hec wanga : a spaid  vanga, –e; fem., prime ffossorium, –ij: neut., . 55 hec proapsis : a plait cf.  platere of a yr erth: perapsis, –dis; masc.  ‥ 56 hic crocus : safferon~  sayn: crocum, –ci; neut., , ‘catholicon’ et ‘campus florum’. 57 hic *fustis : a staf  baculus, –li; masc., : ffustis, –tis; masc., . 59 hec conca : wilk  wylk, shyll: conca, –e; fem,. prime, ‘campus florum’ 60 hec *facicula : a syth  syth, instrument of mowynge; ffalx, –cis; ffem. gen.  decl.  sykyle: ffascicula, –le; fem. prime, ‘dictionarius’ et kylwarbi: ffasciculus, –li; masc., . 61 hec calendula : a guld  goolde, herbe: solsequium, –ij; neut., , quia sequitur solem elitropium, –ij; neut., : calendula, –le; ffem., prime. 63 hic ysopus : ysop  haly water strenkyl: aspersorium, –i; neut., : ysopus, –i masc., , media producta, ysopus media correpta, anglice ysop, herbe; versus, ysopus est herba, ysopp spargitur vnda.  strenkyl, haly water styke: aspersorium, –ij; neut., : isopus, –pi; masc., . 64 hec epifia : a bre[?]cham  berewham, horsis colowre: epicium, –ij, uel epiphium, –ij; neut., , ‥ 66 h forfex : a pair tangis  toonge, instrumente for re: fforceps, –is 67 h forpex : a pair scheris  sysowre, schere: fforpex, –cis; cf.  schere, to clyp with: fforfex, –cis 68 hec maguderis : a castok  calkstoke: maguderis, –ris 69 hec plantago : a wabred  we[y]brede, herbe: plantago, –is 70 hec parilla : a doccan~  dokke, herbe: paradella, –le 72 hic caduciator : aimbacitowr  nettyl, herbe: vrtica, –ce 74 hec celtis : chesell  chisel, instrument: celtis, –tis 76 hec pinna : a fych fyne  nne of a she: pinna, –e 77 hec brancia : a gyll  gylle of a she: branchia, –e; ‥ senecia, –e ‥ ‘catholicon’. 276 keith williamson selim  () 78 hec carcintia : mynt  mynte, herbe: menta, –te 81 hic spasmus : ye cramp  crampe: spasmus, –i 82 hic dent” : a cobill cf.  pyk, sh: dentrix, –cis ‥ 84 hec manella : a hupschakyll cf.  schakyl, or schakle: murella, –e. 85 hec occa : cloid  clodd: gleba, –e (cf. ) 86 suffendo : as to onder-mynd  vndermyndynge, idem quod vnder delvynge, supra. vnderdelvynge: subfossura, –re ‥ subfossio, –nis 87 flebotmo : as to lat blud  letyn blode: ffleobotimo, –as; vgucioin fleobotamia et kylwardi: flegbotimo, –as; kylwarbi 90 jncanto : as scharm  charmyn: incanto, –as, –aui, –are ‥ charmyn, be-gylyn, or forspoylyn: ffascino, –as –aui, –are 92 lerapo : as to button~ cf.  botone clothys: botono, –as, –aui, –re: ffibilo, –as, –aui ‥ 93 fuco / ?frico : as to fry  ffryn in apan: ffrigo, –is, –xi ‥ ixo, –as, –aui 94 derogo : as to mak lyss cf.  leyng, or lyynge: mendacium, –ij 97 alabro : as to reill  relyn with arele: alabriso, –as, etc. 98 gracello : as kekyll -cakelyne, as hennys: gracillo, –as, –aui, –are 99 mino as : to dryf  dryvyn beestys: mino, –as, –aui, –re: gutto, –as ‥ 101 occo+ : +as to cloid  cloddyn, or brek cloddis: occo, –as, –aui, –re, –andi, –do, –dum 102 ampulo : as to spred  spredyn: dilato, –as, etc. ‥ expando, –dys, –di, –re, –sum ‥ 103 scaturiso : to spring  spryngyn, as a welle: scaturio, –is, –iui, –re; ‥ scaturiso, –as, –aui, –re 104 amputo : to cut cf.  cuttyn: scindo, –is, –idi, –re, scissum. cuttyn awey: abscindo, –is, –idi; reseco, –as, –aui, –are: amputo, –as ‥ 106 delussico : as to saw  sowyn, as corn, or odyr sedis: semino, –as etc.: sero, –is, –vi– uel seui, –re, –satum received  aug ; revision received  feb ; accepted  mar  microsoft word 2020article_3_ggargamala.docx miguel a. gomes gargamala, selim25 (2020): 37–60. issn 1132-631x / doi: https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.25.2020.37-60 borges, solomon and saturn: “un diálogo anglosajón del siglo xi” (1961) miguel a. gomes gargamala university of sunderland j. l. borges’s interest in and understanding of the old english dialogues featuring king solomon and the pagan saturn have hitherto received little academic attention. this article will explore borges’s engagement with these texts and in doing so aims at contributing to recent scholarship concerning the author’s lifetime fascination with the medieval literatures of northern europe. particular attention will be given to borges’s annotated translation of one of the solomonic dialogues published in the journal of the national library of argentina in 1961, la biblioteca, under the title “un diálogo anglosajón del siglo xi”. borges’s reasons for selecting the text as well as the old english sources used in this translation will be explored alongside his passion towards the subject of the translated passage. keywords: borges; old english; solomon and saturn; translation studies no aspiro a ser esopo. mis cuentos, como los de las mil y una noches, quieren distraer y conmover y no persuadir. este propósito no quiere decir que me encierre, según la imagen salomónica, en una torre de marfil. “el informe de brodie”, j. l. borges (oc, i: 1021)1 1 throughout this article oc, i abbreviates borges’s obras completas vol. i (1974) and, similarly, oc, ii is the short form for obras completas vol. ii (1989). likewise, occ will be used for citations and titles as appearing in obras completas en colaboración (1997). 38 miguel a. gomes gargamala 1. introduction 1961 was undoubtedly an eventful and momentous time in the life of jorge luis borges. it is well known among students of his work that it was during that year when an international group of publishers awarded the recently created formentor literature prize jointly to samuel beckett and the argentine writer, marking a turning point in borges’s career. his now exponentially increased international reputation led to a significant number of translations of his literature, and borges’s fame travelled beyond the confines of the spanishspeaking world. in september 1961, borges first went to the united states to become a visiting professor at the university of texas in austin. the following year he would find himself in france, new mexico, california, and harvard. when it comes to his publishing activity, 1961 witnessed the first edition of antología personal, as well as second editions of historia de la eternidad, el aleph, ficciones, and el hacedor. a number of prefaces by borges were also published around the same time, including a contribution to a volume on his mentor, macedonio fernández, and a prologue for edward gibbon, páginas de historia y de autobiografía. his participation in periodical publications did not cease either.2 bearing in mind the literary context presented above, it is somehow unsurprising that borges’s “un diálogo anglosajón del siglo xi” (“an eleventhcentury anglo-saxon dialogue”), first published in 1961 in la biblioteca (segundo periodo, 9.5), the journal of the buenos aires national library of argentina, has received very little attention. borges’s lifelong fascination with old english and old norse literature has been well documented and studied in some detail since the 1980s. as early as in 1982, in ‘jorge luis borges, poeta anglosajón’, fernando galván explored the affinities between old english texts and the poetry of borges, identifying a number of compositions in which “la huella de lo anglosajón” (1982: 142) could be easily appreciated. among those singled out for analysis were “al iniciar el estudio de la gramática anglosajona” (“on beginning the study of anglo-saxon grammar”), “un sajón (449 a.d.)” (“a saxon (449 a.d.)”), “composición escrita en un ejemplar de la gesta de 2 the website of the borges centre, now hosted by the university of pittsburgh, offers an excellent timeline bibliography (https://www.borges.pitt.edu/, last accessed on 22 april 2020). l. venuti (2018: 227) explains how in the 1950s and early 1960s translations of the work of borges and cortazar contributed to their inclusion in the modernist mainstream of european fiction, “[a]mong the first book-length translations in this tendency was in fact borges’s ficciones (1962)”. borges, solomon and saturn 39 beowulf” (“a poem written in a copy of beowulf”), “hengist cyning”, “fragmento” (“fragment”), “a una espada en york minster” (“to a sword at york minster”), the two poems bearing the title “a un poeta sajón” (“to a saxon poet”), “hengist quiere hombres (449 a.d.)” (“hengist wants men (449 a.d.)”), “brunanburh, 937 a.d.”, and “la pesadilla” (“the nightmare”).3 also in the 1980s, and through the following decade, enrique bernárdez (1992), margrét jónsdóttir (1995), and sigrún á. eríksdóttir (1986, 1987, 1996) added to the emerging discussion around the influence and presence of the medieval germanic world in the work of borges, both in his fiction and his studies, focusing their attention on the scandinavian world. borges never shied away from publicly displaying his love for the languages and literatures of “the old north”. without any sort of formal training or academic expertise in medieval literature, an enthusiast rather than a scholar, he wrote a pioneering study of old english, old norse, and old high and middle high german texts aimed at a readership in spanish. this was first published, in collaboration with delia ingenieros, as antiguas literaturas germánicas (ancient germanic literatures — alg) in 1951, with a second version of the book appearing under the title literaturas germánicas medievales (medieval germanic literatures — lgm), this time with the collaboration of his close friend maría esther vázquez, in 1966. both publications, as well as his breve antología anglosajona (brief anglo-saxon anthology — baa) (1978), a choice of old english texts translated by borges and maría kodama, have been the object of academic scrutiny in the new century, which has seen renewed efforts to establish the relationship between borges and old english literature as a subject worth of detailed exploration. martín hadis’s ‘borges y el anglosajón’ (2003), carlos gamerro’s ‘borges y los anglosajones’ (2009), vladimir brljak’s ‘borges and the north’ (2011), m. j. toswell’s borges the unacknowledged medievalist (2014), and 3 vladimir brljak (2011: 116) observes that “[i] the scholarly and essayistic writings are the head, then [the] poems are the heart of borges’s northernist opus”. brljak, who states that “[o]ne can hardly read through a dozen pages of late borges without coming across some northernist reference” (2011: 122), provides a far more comprehensive list of borges’s fiction in which old english and old norse echoes can be heard. some of borges’s “anglo-saxon poems”, have been the subject of individual analysis; see, for example, j. l. bueno’s (2011: 58–75) ‘“eorlas arhwate eard begeatan”: revisiting brunanburh’s (hi)story, style and imagery in translation’, in which bueno explores borges’s poetic inspiration for “brunanburh, 937 a.d.”, included in la rosa profunda (1975) and “a un poeta sajón”, in el otro, el mismo (1964). 40 miguel a. gomes gargamala joshua byron smith’s ‘borges and old english’ (2016) should be listed as some of the most insightful contributions to the field in recent years. within the subject area of translation studies, including views on borges as translator and borges in translation, there have been a number of critics who have found in the work of the argentine writer aspects which merit close and careful consideration: invisible work: borges and translation (kristal 2002), and the more relevant ‘borges, old english poetry and translation studies’ (toswell 2017) are of particular interest to us since the text we will be exploring in this article is nothing but a translation by borges of a fragment from an old english original. 2. borges and old english literature borges’s antiguas literaturas germánicas (1951) was divided in three sections: i. “literatura de la inglaterra germánica” (“the literature of germanic england”), ii. “literatura escandinava” (“scandinavian literature”), iii. “literatura alemana” (“german literature”). the first section, whose title borges would change to “literatura de la inglaterra sajona” (“the literature of saxon england) in the revised version of the volume in 1966, lgm, was structured around the following subdivisions: la gesta de beowulf (beowulf’s geste), otras poesías precristianas (other pre-christian poems), poesía cristiana (christian poetry), el poeta cædmon (the poet cædmon), el poeta cynewulf (the poet cynewulf), dos baladas guerreras (two war ballads), las adivinanzas (the riddles), el bestiario (the bestiary), el fénix (the phoenix), salomón y saturno (solomon and saturn), la crónica anglosajona (the anglo-saxon chronicle), beda el venerable (the venerable bede), and layamon: último poeta sajón (layamon: the last saxon poet). beyond the modification to the title mentioned earlier, in the first section of literaturas germánicas medievales (1966), “literatura de la inglaterra sajona”, borges occasionally extends the analysis and comments offered to some of the texts, a number of new paragraphs are added, a few sentences rewritten, the layout is slightly altered, however, it is, in essence, a revised version of the 1951 publication. both toswell and brljak have noticed the inconsistencies found in borges’s own account of his discovery of old english presented in the lecture and essay “la ceguera” (“blindness”, 1964), and repeated in several interviews throughout his life. borges claimed that it was in 1955, when he lost his eyesight for reading and writing and, therefore, access to the visible world, that he decided to recover borges, solomon and saturn 41 another one, that of his ancestors. borges who in 1955 had just been appointed director of the national library, elaborates on his decision as he persuades a group of about ten of his female students at the universidad de buenos aires to embark on the study of a language and literature at that point unknown to all of them: recordé que en casa había dos libros que pude recuperar porque los había puesto en el estante más alto, pensando que no iba a precisarlos nunca. eran el anglosaxon reader de sweet y la crónica anglosajona. los dos tenían glosario. y nos reunimos una mañana en la biblioteca nacional. pensé: he perdido el mundo visible pero ahora voy a recuperar otro, el mundo de mis lejanos mayores, aquellas tribus, aquellos hombres que atravesaron a remo los tempestuosos mares del norte y que desde dinamarca, desde alemania y desde los países bajos conquistaron a inglaterra; que se llama inglaterra por ellos, ya que ‘engaland’, tierra de los anglos, antes se llamaba ‘tierra de los britanos’, que eran celtas.4 (oc, ii: 279–280) if we are to believe this account, an obvious contradiction jumps out at the careful reader. if borges discovered old english in the mid-1950s, “así empezó el estudio del anglosajón” which is then followed by the study of “the later and richer scandinavian literature” (oc, ii: 280), how could he have possibly published antiguas literaturas germánicas in 1951? toswell, in a note to her english translation of alg believes that “his memory must be faulty” (2014: xiv). brljak, who also entertains the possibility of old memories not conforming to the truth, summarises the borgesian conundrum well: “borges says he turned to old english about 1955, then progressed to old norse, and eventually wrote a book on early germanic literatures. in fact, however, he had already published such a book – antiguas literaturas germánicas” (2011: 100). 4 “i remembered that at home there were two books i could retrieve. i had placed them on the highest shelf, thinking i would never use them. they were sweet’s anglo-saxon reader and the anglo-saxon chronicle. both had glossaries. and so we gathered one morning in the national library. i thought: i have lost the visible world, but now i am going to recover another, the world of my distant ancestors, those tribes of men who rowed across the stormy northern seas, from germany, denmark, and the low countries, who conquered england, and after whom we name england since ‘angle-land’, land of the angles, had previously been called ‘the land of the britons’, who were celts.” [trans. e. weinberger, 1984] as printed in j. l. borges, the total library. non fiction 1922–1986 (2001: 477). 42 miguel a. gomes gargamala brljak further explores the early stages in the making of borges’s northernism in detail, from the influence of his upbringing surrounded by english books and the presence of his english grandmother frances haslam, to borges’s interest in his ancestral northumbrian and mercian roots and the early attempts at exploring the poetic language of the kennings in “noticias de las kenningar” published in the buenos aires journal sur as early as in 1932.5 brljak, questioning borges’s own accounts, described as of an “automythographical” nature, concludes that “the true story of borges’s encounter with the north is not that of one deliberate, fateful decision, but rather of a gradual, uneven development, spanning many years and a variety of works and publications” (2011: 100). for fear of digressing beyond what is acceptable, i shall not discuss in this article whether borges felt uneasy or ashamed of alg later in his life and decided to be playful with time, to merge the creation of alg and lgm into a single event and moment, and, ultimately, confuse his critics; there is hardly anything more borgesian than that. whatever the case, in the prologue to alg borges & ingenieros emphasise the importance of bringing the subject matter for a first time to a spanish-speaking readership, as well as their decision to provide numerous quotations and transcriptions, with little critical commentary, and in such a way producing some kind of anthology. in 1965, borges & vázquez include a rather meaningful statement in the preface of lgm: “creemos más importante señalar que la concepción y redacción de este libro han sido efectuadas directamente sobre los textos primitivos, salvo en el caso de la biblia ulfilana”.6 5 also, in the autumn of 1933 borges published a series of short pieces on “old germanic myths” and related subjects in the buenos aires crítica: revista multicolor de los sábados [“the dragon”, “on witches”, “the gnome”, “the myth of elves”]: “el dragón (antiguos mitos germánicos)” in 1.7 (23rd september 1933: 8), “las brujas (antiguos mitos germánicos)” in 1.9 (7th october 1933: 8), “el gnomo” in 1.11 (21st october 1933: 6), and “el mito de los elfos” in 1.13 (4th november 1933: 4) also, if we are to accept that borges also signed a number of contributions to the “revista” with the pseudonym “bernardo haedo”, then the number containing “el dragón” would include a second piece by borges, a short story entitled “renacen en el siglo xv adán y eva” (“adam and eve are reborn in the 15th c.”) in 1.7 (23rd september 1933: 1). we shall return to the presence of adam in the work of borges in the following pages. 6 “we believe it is most important to note that the conception and writing of this book have been based directly on the primitive [ancient] texts, with the exception of the ulfilian bible”. translations are my own unless otherwise noted. borges, solomon and saturn 43 by 1965 borges is working directly from the old english texts and in a number of the sections within “literatura de la inglaterra sajona” new translations are added to the 1951 core text, such is the case of “salomón y saturno”. what makes borges’s treatment of this subject particularly interesting is the fact that in 1961, and therefore in between the publication of the two studies concerning germanic literature, borges had already published an intriguing translation of one of the old english dialogues of solomon and saturn. 3. “un diálogo anglosajón del siglo xi”: borges and the critics five numbers of the journal of the national library of argentina in buenos aires, la biblioteca, were published between 1957 and 1961 under the direction of j. l. borges. this was a second period of activity for the journal founded in 1896 by paul groussac, who had directed the publication of eight volumes between 1896 and 1898, covering a range of cultural, historical, and scientific matters, as well as reviews of recent publications, all marked by the immediate context of the federalization of buenos aires. the journal is reborn in the 1950s with borges acting not only as director, but also contributing extensively to the new published numbers. the first of these opens with a brief preface in which borges shares his intentions (“intenciones”) for the journal in this new period, plus three prose pieces under the generic term prosas: “el cautivo” (p. 116), “el simulacro” (pp. 116–117), and “borges y yo” (pp. 117–118). three more prosas appeared later on in the same year in the second number of the journal: “diálogo de muertos” (p. 44), “la trama” (p. 116), and “un problema” (p. 116). he would conceive “el hacedor” for inclusion in the third issue of la biblioteca (1958: 129–130), and after not penning any piece of the 1960 number, borges the writer reappears in 1961 for a final published number of the journal with him as director. however, this time, he offers an annotated translation, “un diálogo anglosajón del siglo xi” (pp. 156–157), and a short poem, “composición escrita en un ejemplar de la gesta de beowulf” (p. 158). if i may add a playful remark, this is a different borges, “borges y él”, borges and the student of old english. a section dealing with the old english dialogues between solomon and saturn had been included in alg a decade earlier, perhaps showing an early interest by borges in the texts, but no translation was appended. in lgm borges will reproduce the comments offered in alg verbatim, but would add, 44 miguel a. gomes gargamala at the end of the section, the translation previously published in la biblioteca with the title “un diálogo anglosajón del siglo xi”. this is introduced in lgm as follows: “traducimos, a continuación, un fragmento que fue escrito a manera de catecismo y que ahora es magia y poesía”7 (occ: 893–894). in 1978 when borges, this time working with kodama, completes their breve antología anglosajona, the first anthology of old english texts ever to be published in spanish,8 they choose, again, to include “un diálogo anglosajón del siglo xi” as one of only seven translated old english originals. deor, the seafarer, the finnsburgh fragment, and scyld scefing (from beowulf) are what any early medievalist would call, perhaps, “obvious” choices; the grave, othere, and un diálogo are certainly less so. toswell has reflected on the translators’ criteria: the last three texts are rather unusual choices: ‘the grave,’ described by borges and kodama as an adaptation of ecclesiastes chapter 12, the story of ohthere from the translation of orosius ordered by alfred; and a piece of what they call an eleventh-century dialogue, which is the prose solomon and saturn. in the notes for two of these texts, the authors refer to longfellow’s use of these texts, which may suggest the source for some of their translational choices. (toswell 2014: 39, emphasis mine) i shall return to longfellow. neither martín hadis (2003) nor carlos gamerro (2009) in the most recent studies in spanish of ‘borges y lo anglosajón’ that i have consulted make any reference to “un diálogo anglosajón del siglo xi”.9 7 “we translate below a fragment which was written as catechism and it is now magic and poetry.” 8 in the preface to baa, borges defines old english poetry as “ancient gold once hidden in a secret chamber”: “hará unos doscientos años se descubrió que [la literatura inglesa] encerraba una suerte de cámara secreta, a manera del oro subterráneo que guarda la serpiente del mito. ese oro antiguo es la poesía de los anglosajones” (occ: 787). joshua byron smith believes that in this co-authored anthology kodama “did much of the work. her doctoral studies in english literature focused on the anglo-saxon period. borges (2016: 316) probably received current scholarly opinions through maría who, after reading articles and books, would relate the interesting bits to the aging blind poet”. 9 in borges profesor (2000), arias & hadis rightly identify the text borges translates as the prose solomon and saturn, but only note the translation as part of baa, and seem to imply that borges translated the whole old english fragment: “una traducción del diálogo en prosa de saturno y salomón aparece bajo el título “un diálogo anglosajón del siglo xi” en su breve antología anglosajona, libro escrito en colaboración con maría borges, solomon and saturn 45 brljak, has been, to the best of my knowledge, the first critic to notice the relevance of this rather forgotten translation: [on the translations included in 1966] perhaps the most important of these translations is that of the dialogue of solomon and saturn, a verse from the old english exeter book [sic]: this was originally published under the title “un diálogo anglosajón del siglo ix” [a ninth-century anglo-saxon dialogue] [sic] in a 1961 issue of the buenos aires journal la biblioteca and thus barely beats the 1962 beowulf translation by orestes vera pérez for the title of the first separate and complete translation of an old english poem into the spanish language. (brljak 2011: 110) any reader wishing to acquire in-depth knowledge about borges and old english, or more widely, to use brljak’ terminology, about borges and “the north”, should be encouraged to read toswell’s and brljak’s scholarly work. their accounts are comprehensive, well informed, and insightful; however, there seems to be some confusion around borges’s engagement with the old english dialogues of solomon and saturn and much to be done in attempting to trace the texts and topics which explain his interest in analysing and translating these most complex compositions. 4. a translation of the old english prose solomon and saturn brljak (2011: 26) is right in highlighting the pioneering status of the publication “un diálogo anglosajón del siglo xi” in la biblioteca. i believe he is also most correct when he affirms that “the relevant bibliographies and surveys have significantly underrepresented borges’s contribution to spanish-language old germanic studies”. conde-silvestre & salvador in ‘old english studies in spain: past, present and…future’ (1995), for example, only list borges’s alg kodama en 1978” (intro, n.p.). in the transcripts of the twenty-five lectures borges gave at the university of buenos aires in 1966, of which seven were devoted to old english literature, there is a single reference to the solomon and saturn material. in the first lecture (“los anglosajones. la poesía y las kennings. genealogía de los reyes germánicos”) delivered on 14th october, 1966, borges says: “sólo nos quedan cuatro códices y poco más […] hay otros códices: la crónica anglosajona, una traducción de boecio, de orosio, leyes, un “diálogo de salomón y saturno”. y nada más.” (arias & hadis 2000: n.p.). 46 miguel a. gomes gargamala (1951) and literaturas germánicas medievales, which is dated to 1978. brljak observes that this and similar bibliographies in the spanish-speaking world,10 have failed to include a number of relevant items, “noticia de los kenningar” (1932)11 and “un diálogo anglosajón” (1961) would be two obvious examples, and that some of those which are included are dated to later reprints. however, brljak own statements are not free from omissions and inaccuracies; i do not claim to be immune to those either. orestes vera pérez’s full prose translation of beowulf was first published in 1959 and republished in 1962. for the translation of passages from beowulf into spanish, we would need to go back to manent’s selection in la poesía inglesa de los primitivos a los neoclásicos published back in 1947. the reason why i mention fragmentary translations here is because, although brljak describes “un diálogo anglosajón” as “the first separate and complete translation” (p. 112), what borges translates is, in fact, a fragment of the prose solomon and saturn. brljak adds to the confusion when he states that we have a translation of “the dialogue of solomon and saturn, a verse from the old english exeter book […] originally published under the title “un diálogo anglosajón del siglo ix’” (ibid.). what borges translates is: a) not a verse, b) there isn’t just one dialogue of solomon and saturn (“the dialogue”), c) none of the surviving old english solomonic dialogues appear in the exeter book, and d) the title used by borges was “un diálogo anglosajón del siglo xi”. there are as many as four separate dialogues between solomon and saturn which survive from the anglo-saxon period. three of these texts, two poems commonly referred to as solomon and saturn i and solomon and saturn ii, as well as the prose pater noster dialogue, are found in two separate cambridge corpus christi college manuscripts (ccc41, cccc422) and have been most recently edited and translated by daniel anlezark (2009), who has argued for a common scholarly milieu in their origins.12 a different dialogue, the prose 10 brljak (2011: 126–127) lists f. galván 1989: medieval english studies in spain: a first bibliography. atlantis 11: 191–207; a. bravo garcía 1991: old english in spain. medieval english studies newsletter 25: 4–7; a. bravo garcía, f. galván & s. g. fernández-corugedo 1994: old and middle english studies in spain: a bibliography. oviedo, selim – universidad de oviedo. 11 for an early article on the topic, see k. lynn & n. shumway 1984: borges y las kenningar. texto crítico 28: 122–130. 12 “the first part of solsati is found in cambridge, corpus christi college 41, of the mid-eleventh century, while all three texts (with a poetic fragment, solsatfrag) are found in cambridge, corpus christi college 422, of the mid-tenth century. a separate trivia dialogue presenting solomon and saturn as interlocutors is found in cotton borges, solomon and saturn 47 solomon and saturn, a list of brief questions and answers between the two central characters, is preserved in the british library manuscript cotton vitellius a. xv. (fols 86v–93v) and it is now, therefore, bound with the beowulf manuscript. the prose solomon and saturn, a fragment, appears in the ‘southwick codex’, alongside old english versions of the soliloquia of st augustine (fols 4–59v), the gospel of nicodemus (fols 60–86v), and a homily to st quintin (fol 93v). the prose solomon and saturn, unlike the other old english solomonic texts, is a trivia dialogue featuring a series of questions “based on scripture or arising from scripture. some demand direct knowledge of scriptural fact, even of the letter of scripture, some of apocryphal or rabbinic lore” (cross & hill 1982: 3). let’s remove all uncertainty and confusion. borges’s “un dialogo anglosajón” is a translation of the opening sentence and the first twelve questions of the prose solomon and saturn (fols 86v–88r). the first and final of the question/answer exchanges by the interlocutors are given here in old english, modern english (cf. footnotes), and borges’s spanish translation so that readers may judge by themselves: her kið hu saturnus and saloman fettode ymbe heora wisdom. þa cwaet saturnus to salomane: sage me hwer god sete þa he geworhte heofonas and eorðan. ic þe secge, he sætt ofer [winda] feðerum.13 aquí se cuenta como salomón y saturno midieron su sabiduría. saturno le dijo a salomón: dime dónde estaba dios cuando hizo los cielos y la tierra. yo te digo que estaba sobre las plumas (alas) de los vientos. vitellius a. xv., of the mid-twelfth century” (anlezark 2009: vii). in his excellent introduction to the edition and translation of the solomonic texts, anlezark explores the influence of irish continental learning in late anglo-saxon england and the possibility of a glastonbury setting for the production of the dialogues, result of the work of a circle that probably included a young dunstan. 13 “here is shown how saturn and solomon contended about their wisdom. then saturn said to solomon: tell me where god sat when he made the heavens and the earth. i tell you, he sat on the wings of the wind.” 48 miguel a. gomes gargamala saga me hu fela wintra leofode adam on þissere worulde ic þe secge, he leofode ix hund wintra, and xxx wintra, on geswince, and on yrmðe; and syððan to helle ferde, and þar grimme witu ðolode v þusend wintra, and twa hund wintra, and viii arid xx wintra.14 dime cuántos inviernos (años) habitó adán en este mundo. yo te digo que vivió novecientos inviernos y treinta inviernos en el trabajo y las aflicciones, y luego fue al infierno, y en ese cruel castigo padeció cinco mil inviernos y doscientos inviernos y veintiocho inviernos. once we have established what old english text was borges actually translating, we can turn our attention to the annotation. six notes are added to the translation borges published in 1961 in la biblioteca. toswell commenting on the final note, which she takes from baa, finds a possible source for borges’s translation of the grave: a clue for the source of the grave and for solomon and saturn material comes from the last note in the collection, which refers to the solomon and saturn dialogue: debemos esta cita a las curiosas anotaciones que longfellow agregó a su versión inglesa de la comedia, publicada en 1867 (‘we owe this reference to the curious annotations added by longfellow to his english version of the comedia, published in 1867’). the reference, a lengthy one, discusses the chronology of adam as believed in the middle ages and references dante and the talmud. longfellow’s translation and commentary on dante’s divina commedia is clearly a rich source for borges and kodama. (toswell 2017: 72– 73) toswell does not fail to notice that one of the notes to borges and kodama’s othere also references longfellow’s use of this story. a final clue comes from the fact that the grave is one of three texts that longfellow himself translated from old english originals, alongside beowulf’s passage to heorot and soul and body i. hence, toswell concludes that “despite the clear declaration that they were working directly from the old english texts, it seems likely that borges and kodama used other translations and read other commentaries and 14 “tell me, how many years lived adam in this world? i tell you, he lived nine hundred and thirty years, in toil and in misery, and afterwards he went to hell and there he endured grim torments for five thousand two hundred and twenty-eight years.” borges, solomon and saturn 49 comments on this material” (2017: 73). i find toswell’s argument convincing, but, unfortunately, it does not help us identify a source for “un diálogo anglosajón”. that is not to say that borges’s interest in the subject of this solomonic dialogue was not influenced by his, widely researched, fascination with dante15 and his admiration for longfellow’s nineteenth-century english translation and notes to the divine comedy. longfellow, however, did not mention or translate any of the old english dialogues between solomon and saturn. returning to borges’s annotation of “un diálogo anglosajón”, the opening remark contains the single clear reference to the literary tradition to which the old english texts belong: salomón, en el diálogo, es el maestro; saturno, el discípulo que recibe con pareja pasividad las contestaciones triviales y las contestaciones de índole mágica. al cabo de los siglos da en rebelarse y toma el nombre de marcul. escribe groussac: ‘en los folklores medievales, el sabio salomón va seguido siempre de un acólito, marcul, encargado de encontrar un reverso irónico a las nobles máximas del primero.’16 the quote from groussac had already been included in the “salomón y saturno” section of alg in 1951, which seems to give us some indication of borges’s early encounter with the context of solomonic dialogue literature. françoispaul groussac (1848–1929), a notable figure, distinguished literary critic and borges’s illustrious predecessor as director of the biblioteca nacional, had published his crítica literaria in 1924. it is in the second lecture printed in this volume (“segunda conferencia: génesis, realización y evolución mundial del quijote”) where groussac presents marcul as a literary model for sancho panza.17 for what is worth, the third essay in crítica literaria is entitled la 15 see f. j. rodríguez risquete’s ‘borges: fervor de dante’ (2005: 195–218) and h. núñez-faraco’s borges and dante. echoes of a literary friendship (2006). 16 “in the dialogue solomon is the teacher, saturn the disciple who shows an equally passive reaction to both trivial answers and replies of a magical nature. over the centuries saturn rebels and takes the name of marcul. groussac writes: “in medieval folklore, the wise solomon is always accompanied by an acolyte, marcul, whose role is to find an ironic reversal to the noble maxims of solomon.” 17 toswell, commenting on borges’s practice of linking the old english text under analysis to other germanic and spanish texts in alg, points out that “[borges] juxtaposes the oneiric inspiration of cædmon against that of robert louis stevenson, 50 miguel a. gomes gargamala gloria de dante. groussac’s scholarship might have acted as a gateway for borges’s interest in the dialogues between solomon and marcul/saturn, but it was certainly not how he discovered the old english texts. what were, then, borges’s old english sources in the 1950s and 1960s? joshua byron smith, noting borges’s pursuit of old english scholarship in his lectures and writing from the mid-1950s, points out that “in literaturas germánicas medievales, borges mentions otto jespersen, grímur thorkelin, n. f. s. grundtvig, j. r. clark hall, john earle, william morris, w. p. ker, martin lehnert,18 and a host of other scholars”19 (2016: 313). m. j. toswell (2017: 72), in her search for the old english sources that borges and kodama could have worked from in the translations included in breve antología, states that borges was certainly familiar with r. hamer’s a choice of anglo-saxon verse (1970), a reader with facing-page modern english versions, and that perhaps he might have had access to j. j. conybeare’s illustrations of anglo-saxon poetry (1826), james w. bright’s old english grammar and reader (1891), or the old english handbook (1935) of marjorie anderson & blanche colton williams. the scholarship of j. m. kemble and h. m. chadwick, sweet’s anglo-saxon reader (1876), and robert k. gordon’s anglo-saxon poetry (1922) can be added to this list of sources without fear of being mistaken.20 who conceived the plot of dr jekyll and mr hyde during a fevered dream. he follows up with coleridge’s kubla khan, and later yet connects the dialogues of solomon and saturn with the proverbial elements of don quijote” (2010: 3, emphasis mine) in a poem to sherlock holmes of the same name, borges equals holmes, quijano and adam as they are all creations of a mind with no mother or ancestors: “no salió de una madre ni supo de mayores./ idéntico es el caso de adán y de quijano./ está hecho de azar, inmediato o cercano/ lo rigen los vaivenes de variables lectores.” (oc, ii: 474) 18 martin lehnert’s poetry and prose of the anglo-saxons (1955) includes six out of the seven old english texts that borges and kodama would translate in baa. the one text missing is the prose solomon and saturn. 19 by the mid-1960s borges had “hoarded” a fair number of books on old english and old norse literature: “in the final stage of borges’s northernism, literary and scholarly pursuits were joined by an increasingly personal involvement with the north. this development was well underway by the mid-1960s, when the audience of the 1966–1967 charles eliot norton lectures was made privy to the following anecdotal remark: ‘whenever i walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies —for example, old english or old norse poetry— i say to myself, what a pity i can’t buy that book, for i already have a copy at home’.” (brljak 2011: 121). 20 dates given in brackets are of first editions. i suspect borges might have also been borges, solomon and saturn 51 in “salomón y saturno”, the section first included in alg, borges describes two fragmentary dialogues dating from the ninth century and a prose fragment. borges is, no doubt, writing about the two poetic texts, solomon and saturn i and solomon and saturn ii, and the prose pater noster dialogue, all three found in the cambridge, corpus christi college manuscripts given above: el primer diálogo es de índole sapiencial: saturno interroga: «¿qué maravilla es esa que recorre ferozmente la tierra y vence a las estrellas, a las piedras, a las piedras preciosas, a las fieras y a todo?» salomón responde que se trata del tiempo, «que devora al hierro con herrumbre y también nos devora a nosotros». el segundo diálogo es más extraño; salomón, instado por saturno, explica el poderío del padrenuestro. cada una de las letras de su nombre tiene una virtud especial; la p, por ejemplo, es un guerrero con una larga lanza de oro, que acomete al diablo, a quien hostigan luego la a y la t. un fragmento en prosa describe las formas que asumen el padrenuestro y el diablo para combatir y la configuración de la cabeza, de las entrañas y del cuerpo del padrenuestro.21 our reader must realise that what borges calls “el primer diálogo” is the poem scholars today refer to as solomon and saturn ii, and that borges’s s account of the “segundo diálogo” would match the content of solomon and saturn i. borges concludes the section on solomon and saturn with an important clue for locating his old english sources for the solomonic dialogues. he quotes, in translation, john earle’s rendering of the prose pater noster dialogue, in chapter x of his anglo-saxon literature: familiar with dobbie’s the anglo-saxon minor poems (1942), and possibly with other available sources of this kind in french and german. 21 in toswell’s (2014: 25) translation, “the first dialogue concerns sapiential matters. saturn questions: ‘what wonder is this that ferociously travels over the earth and conquers the stars, the stones, the precious gems, the beasts and everything?’ solomon responds that they’re discussing time, ‘which devours iron with rust and also devours us ourselves’. the second dialogue is more esoteric; solomon, urged by saturn, explains the power of the paternoster [the lord’s prayer]. each one of the letters of its name encodes a special virtue; the p, for example, is a warrior with a huge lance of gold who attacks the devil, who the a and the t later lash out at. a prose fragment describes the forms that the personified paternoster and the devil assume in order to fight, and the configuration of the head, of the bowels, and of the body of the paternoster.” 52 miguel a. gomes gargamala and his thought it is more alert and swifter than 12,00 angelic spirits, though each particular spirit have severally twelve suits of feathers, and each particular feather-suit have twelve winds, and each particular wind twelve victoriousnessess all to itself. (1884: 211–212) “el pensamiento del padrenuestro es más ágil que doce mil espíritus santos, aun si cada espíritu santo tuviera doce capas de pluma, y cada capa tuviera doce vientos, y cada viento doce victorias.”22 earle gives lines 65–86 of the prose pater noster dialogue in old english and modern english translation in the section dedicated to the first half of the tenth century and to ælfric, acknowledging john mitchell kemble as his source. earle, however, neither discusses nor presents or translates any fragment from the prose solomon and saturn that borges would put into spanish in 1961 for the readers of la biblioteca. at this point, two options seem possible. the first would be to assume that borges had access to kemble’s edition, the dialogue of salomon and saturnus with an historical introduction, published by the ælfric society in 1848, and which included the prose solomon and saturn from the cotton vitelius a. xv., with a facing-page modern english translation, followed by notes (pp. 178–197). although possible, this seems highly unlikely as a source for someone who was not an academic with a scholarly interest in the texts.23 the second, and most likely option, would be to argue that in 1961 borges was translating the twelve first questions of the prose solomon and saturn as he had encountered them in an anthology or introductory text for students of old english. the second contribution by borges to the 1961 issue of la biblioteca is rather significant in this context. “composición escrita en un ejemplar de la gesta de beowulf” (“a poem written in a copy of beowulf”) is a short poem in which borges portrays himself wondering about the reasons that have moved him to study “la lengua de los ásperos sajones” (“the language of the blunt-tonged anglo-saxons”). in borges’s poetic composition, observes joshua byron smith, “studying old english becomes analogous with the 22 toswell (2014: 25–26) translates borges in alg: “the thinking of the paternoster, is more agile than two [sic] thousand holy ghosts, even if each holy ghost were to have twelve feather capes, and each cape had twelve winds, and each wind, twelve firm victories (sigefæstniss).” the first line should read “more agile/swifter than twelve [not two] thousand holy ghosts”. 23 robert j. menner’s the poetical dialogues of solomon and saturn, published in 1941 in the modern language association of america monograph series (13), contains the two poems, and the prose pater noster dialogue as an appendix. borges, solomon and saturn 53 ‘inexhaustible’ universe […] borges believed that his immortal soul had once spoken the language of the anglo-saxons, learning that tongue was a reclamation of a forgotten self” (2016: 308). immersed in such a process, the borges of 1961, the laborious learner, student of the old english language, must have found the source for “un diálogo anglosajón” in one of the textbooks he was using to teach himself that language of those he considered his ancestors and, by extension, of his own. leafing through the volumes of a possible reconstructed library of borges’s old english readers and anthologies, including those we have mentioned earlier in this article, i believe we can safely say that borges’s source for “un dialogo anglosajón del siglo xi” was alfred j. wyatt’s an anglo-saxon reader. first published in 1919, reprinted eight times by 1959, its contents were divided into three sections: i. early west saxon prose, ii. later prose, and iii. poetry. the third entry in later prose, after apollonius of tyre and ælfric’s colloquy, is solomon and saturn. what turns wyatt’s reader from one of several possible sources into what i believe to be definitely borges’s source text for “un diálogo anglosajón” is that wyatt reproduces exactly the same fragment that borges will translate: the opening line and the first twelve exchanges between solomon and saturn in the prose solomon and saturn (her kið hu saturnus and saloman fettode ymbe heora wisdom […] and þar grimme witu ðolode v þusend wintra, and twa hund wintra, and viii arid xx wintra). if more evidence was required, the question concerning time/old age that borges had included in alg can be found in the lines that wyatt selects from the poem solomon and saturn ii in the reader. looking at the notes to the prose fragment, wyatt argues that “the date is probably early 11th century” (p. 221) providing borges with a final title: “un dialogo anglosajón del siglo xi”. 5. all about…adam? i hope i have been able to illustrate in this article how in 1961, jorge luis borges, the passionate student of anglo-saxon england and its language, published a translation of a fragment from the old english prose solomon and saturn using the edited text he found in wyatt’s an anglo-saxon reader as his source. now one final question remains. why did borges choose a dialogue between solomon and saturn for his first separate published translation of (a fragment from) an old english original? i am sure that if anyone who specialises in the work of borges, unfamiliar with old english literature, were to read the 54 miguel a. gomes gargamala poetic dialogues between solomon and saturn, would probably think that there is something about them which is truly borgesian; after all, it was borges who genuinely believed that “cada escritor crea a sus precursores” (‘each writer creates his precursors’). anthropomorphised letters that fight against the devil, the symbolism in numbers, the magical power of runes,24 an apocalyptic marvellous bird (vasa mortis), a mysterious monster slayer with the courage and strength to slay twenty-five dragons at dawn (wulf) … and yet, borges opted for a translation from the dialogue in prose. the wisdom embodied by solomon would have certainly appealed to him. without attempting to be exhaustive, it is not difficult to identify a number of short stories, poems, and other writing by borges in which he makes use of solomonic imagery, as in the quote from “el informe de brodie” that opens this article, or the excerpt from bacon (essays, lviii) cited in “el inmortal”: “solomon saith: there is no new thing upon the earth. so that as plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance, so solomon given his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion. in “la cámara de las estatuas” (1933) the circular mirror of suliman/solomon is found in the fifth chamber of an andalusian castle (oc, i: 337); in “las mil y una noches” (oc, ii: 238) solomon, his seal and the link to the genie’s past are featured in the conversation between the latter and a fisherman. finally, in “la memoria de shakespeare” we read about solomon’s ring in islamic tradition and how it grants the bearer the power of understanding the language of birds. when in 1975 borges puts together a book of dreams (libro de sueños), which includes his version of the dream of the rood (“sueño de la cruz”), he offers his readers a translation from 1 kings, 3, 4–15 entitled “sueño de salomón” (1975: 24). admitting that borges might have “had a thing” for solomon, and for dialogue literature, i believe that what borges found of particular interest in the fragment he selected for translation in 1961 was the nature of its content rather than the speakers in the dialogue, the act of creation of the first man, and the chronology of adam. 24 in alg, borges discusses the runes used in cynewulf’s poetry: “in order to make this method of cynewulf’s less inexplicable, we can comment that the letters, over a long period of time, developed a kind of sacred quality; it is sufficient to remember that the cabbalists believe that god could create the world by way of the letters of the alphabet” [trans. toswell 2014: 20]. borges’s interest in the kabbalist understanding of god’s creation through letters, which is explicit here, will be explored in this section. borges, solomon and saturn 55 it is well known that borges had a profound and lifelong interest in the mystical kabbalistic tradition. gustav meyrink’s der golem (1915) was the first novel borges read in german, around 1916, during the period spent with his family in geneva (oc, ii: 444). this first contact with a literary rewriting of the old popular kabbalistic legend would make a lasting impression on the young man who in 1932 would include “una vindicación de la cábala” (“a defense of the kabbalah”) in his fifth book of essays discusión. in a 1971 interview with jaime alazraki, when questioned about the earliest references to the kabbalah in his work dating back to the 1926 essay “historia de los ángeles”, borges admits that he took those, interestingly enough, from the paradise appendix in longfellow’s divine comedy (1997: 167). he would return to the same appendix more than thirty years later in “un diálogo anglosajón”.25 borges would acquire a deeper understanding of the kabbalah upon reading henri sérouya la kabbale (1947), and through the study of the work of gershom scholem —who he would meet in the 1960s—, and his seminal work major trends in jewish mysticism published in 1941. however, his interest in lo hebreo must be traced back to the influence of her protestant grandmother, who according to borges knew the bible by heart, and his fascination with divine and human creation through the power of the word to the impact of meyrink’s novel, jewish mysticism, and, as edna aizenberg reminds us, “to the biblically imagistic german expressionists” (2014: 340). the index provided by the borges centre at the university of pittsburgh offers over fifty entries for adán/adam referencing a wide range of poems, stories, essays, and lectures. in “las ruinas circulares” (“the circular ruins”) the central character, some kind of sorcerer, is trying to dream a man into existence, organ by organ (only to find out that he himself is the illusion created by another man’s dream); borges interrupts the main story to educate his reader: “en las cosmogonías gnósticas, los demiurgos amasan un rojo adán que no logra ponerse de pie; tan inhábil y rudo y elemental como ese adán de polvo era el adán de sueño que las noches del mago habían fabricado”.26 25 in the same interview borges recalls an anecdote from the time he spent in cambridge, massachusetts, in 1967, and how he used to recite old english verses once translated by longfellow when walking near what had been the american author’s house: “yo viví a la vuelta de la casa de él en cambridge. cuando daba la vuelta a la manzana —si es que puede hablarse de manzanas en cambridge— recitaba unos versos en anglosajón que él tradujo” (1997: 168). 26 “in gnostic cosmogonies, demiurges mould a red adam who cannot stand. just like 56 miguel a. gomes gargamala this “red adam” (adama) features in a high number of borges’s poems27 and the appeal to gnostic cosmogonies and or to the kabbalistic tradition, and the possibility of creation encapsulated in one word (the tetragramaton), are displayed, in “la creación y p. h. gosse” (1941), “el golem” (1958), “adam cast forth” (1964), “invocación a joyce” (1969), “la rosa de paracelso” (1983), and in the lecture “la cabala” (1977), just to name a few relevant texts. the first three stanzas of “el golem” (oc, i: 885) published only three years before “un diálogo anglosajón” are revealing, the link between adam and the stars is made explicit in both texts:28 si (como el griego afirma en el cratilo) if (as the greek states in the cratylus) el nombre es arquetipo de la cosa, a name is the archetype of a thing, en las letras de rosa está la rosa in the letters of rose the rose is, y todo el nilo en la palabra nilo. and all the nile in nile flows y, hecho de consonantes y vocales, and, made of consonants and vowels, habrá un terrible nombre, que la esencia an awe inspiring name there is, that the essence cifre de dios y que la omnipotencia of god encodes and his omnipotence guarde en letras y sílabas cabales. in perfect letters and syllables holds adán y las estrellas lo supieron adam and the stars once knew it en el jardín. la herrumbre del pecado in the garden. by sin’s corrosion that clumsy, crude and raw adam of dust was the adam of dreams fashioned by the magician’s nights.” 27 see, for instance, “la luna” (oc, i: 819), “al hijo” (oc, i: 948), “la clepsidra” (oc, ii: 157), or “a israel” (oc, i: 996) and “la secta de los treinta” (oc, ii: 39). 28 in the passage from the prose solomon and saturn which borges translates, saturn asks from where was adam’s name created?, to which solomon replies that it was created from four stars called arthox, dux, arotholem, and minsymbrie. borges realises in the third note to his translation that the name of the stars are the four points of the compass in greek (“proceden de los nombres griegos de los cuatro puntos cardinales”). in their edition of the prose solomon and saturn, cross & hill point out that “this is a widely attested motif, particularly so in hiberno-latin texts” (1982: 67). borges, solomon and saturn 57 (dicen los cabalistas) lo ha borrado —the kabbalists say— it has faded away y las generaciones lo perdieron lost to generations. it is also worth adding that in the penultimate note to “un diálogo anglosajón” borges draws on richard burton’s personal narrative of a pilgrimage to al-madinah and mecca (1855–1856), expanding the discussion around the stature of adam, and its reduction after the fall, to the arabic world. the universal appeal of adam, the first golem, is acknowledged by borges when in “la ceguera” he mantains that, in paradise lost, milton aimed for a topic who would be of interest not just to the english but to all humankind, “that topic was adam, our common father” (oc, ii: 282). in “un diálogo anglosajón”, borges follows the same reasoning selecting for translation into spanish a passage in which the reader is taken to the primordial time of the story of creation in which naming, the cosmogonic word, the nature of the divine, and the shaping of the first man are the subjects of the word exchange between solomon and saturn. all of these mattered most to borges who thought of himself and of all humans as broken mirror reflections of an undecipherable god, of a pre-paradise adam. ¿de qué adán anterior al paraíso, de qué divinidad indescifrable somos los hombres un espejo roto? beppo (oc, ii: 297) references aizenberg, e. 2014: ‘‘i, a jew’’: borges, nazism, and the shoah. the jewish quarterly review 104.3: 339–353. alazraki, j. 1997: conversación con borges sobre la cábala: entrevista inédita de 1971. variaciones borges 3: 163–176. anlezark, d. ed. 2009: the old english dialogues of solomon and saturn. cambridge, d. s. brewer. arias, m. & m. hadis eds. 2000: borges profesor: curso de literatura inglesa dictado en la universidad de buenos aires. buenos aires, emecé. bernárdez, e. 1992: borges y el mundo escandinavo. cuadernos hispanoamericanos 505/507: 361–370. borges, j. l. 1932: discusión. buenos aires, manuel gleizer. 58 miguel a. gomes gargamala borges, j. l. 1932: noticia de las kenningar. sur 6: 131–134. borges, j. l. 1933: el dragón (antiguos mitos germánicos). crítica: revista multicolor de los sábados 1.7 (23rd september): 8. borges, j. l. 1933: el gnomo. crítica: revista multicolor de los sábados 1.11 (21st october): 6. borges, j. l. 1933: el mito de los elfos. crítica: revista multicolor de los sábados 1.13 (4th november): 4. borges, j. l. 1933: las brujas (antiguos mitos germánicos). crítica: revista multicolor de los sábados 1.9 (7th october): 8. borges, j. l. 1961: [preface] ‘macedonio fernández’ in macedonio fernández. buenos aires, ministerio de educación y justicia. borges, j. l. 1961: [preface] in edward gibbon. páginas de historia de autobiografía, ed. with intro by j. l. borges. buenos aires, facultad de filosofía y letras. borges, j. l. 1961: composición escrita en un ejemplar de la gesta de beowulf. la biblioteca (segundo periodo, 9.5): 158. borges, j. l. 1961: un diálogo anglosajón del siglo xi. la biblioteca (segundo periodo, 9.5): 156–157. borges, j. l. 1984 [1974]: obras completas. vol. i. buenos aires, emecé editores. (carlos v. frías ed.) borges, j. l. 1989: obras completas. vol. ii. buenos aires, emecé editores. (carlos v. frías ed.) borges, j. l. 1997: obras completas en colaboración. buenos aires, emecé editores. (carlos v. frías ed.) borges, j. l. & d. ingenieros 1951: antiguas literaturas germánicas. méxico city, fondo de cultura económica. borges, j. l. & d. ingenieros 2014: ancient germanic literatures. tempe, old english publications: studies and criticism vol. 1. (m. j. toswell trans. borges, j. l. & d. ingenieros 1951: antiguas literaturas germánicas. méxico d. f., fondo de cultura económica.) borges, j. l. & m. e. vázquez 1966 [c. 1965]: literaturas germánicas medievales. buenos aires, falbo librero editor. brljak, v. 2011: borges and the north. in k. fugelso ed. studies in medievalism xx. cambridge, boydell & brewer, d. s. brewer, 99–128. bueno alonso, j. l. 2011: “eorlas arhwate eard begeatan”: revisiting brunanburh’s (hi)story, style and imagery in translation. babel 57.1: 58–75. conde-silvestre, j. c. & m. salvador 1995: old english studies in spain: past, present and…future?. old english newsletter 40: 38–58. cross, j. e. & th. d. hill eds. 1982: the prose solomon and saturn and adrian and ritheus. toronto, buffalo & london, university of toronto press. earle, j. e. 1884: anglo-saxon literature. london, society for promoting christian knowledge. borges, solomon and saturn 59 eiríksdóttir, s. á. 1986: ‘la alucinación del lector’: jorge luis borges and the legacy of snorri sturluson. iberoamerikanisches archiv 12: 247–260. eiríksdóttir, s. á. 1987: borges’ icelandic subtext: the saga model. neophilologus 71: 381–387. eiríksdóttir, s. á. 1996: ‘el verso incorruptible’: jorge luis borges and the poetic art of the icelandic skalds. variaciones borges 2: 37–53. galván, f. 1982: jorge luis borges, poeta anglosajón. revista de filología de la universidad de la laguna 1: 139–152. gamerro, c. 2009: borges y los anglosajones. variaciones borges 28: 27–42. groussac, f. p. 1924: crítica literaria. buenos aires, jesús menéndez e hijo libreros editores. hadis, m. 2003: borges y el anglosajón. el lenguaraz 4: 59–74. haedo b. 1933: renacen en el siglo xv adán y eva. crítica: revista multicolor de los sábados 1.7 (23rd september): 1. jónsdóttir, m. 1995: borges y la literatura islandesa medieval. acta poética 16: 123–157. kemble, j. m. ed. 1845–1848: anglo-saxon dialogues of solomon and saturn. london, ælfric society. kristal, e. 2002: invisible work: borges and translation. nashville, vanderbilt university press lehnert, m. 1960: poetry and prose of the anglo-saxons. vol i: texts. verlag/halle (saale), max niemeyer. longfellow, h. w. [trans.] 1893: the divine comedy of ante alighiery. manchester & new york, george routledge and sons. lynn k. & n. shumway 1984: borges y las kenningar. texto crítico 28: 122–130. manent, m. 1947: la poesía inglesa: de los primitivos a los neoclásicos. barcelona, ediciones lauro. núñez-faraco, h. 2006: borges and dante. echoes of a literary friendship (vol. 20 european connections). pieterlen & bern, peter lang. rodríguez risquete, f. j. 2005: borges: fervor de dante. quaderns d’italià 10: 195– 218. smith, j. b. 2016: borges and old english. in j. d. niles ed. old english literature: a guide to criticism with selected readings. malden (ma) & oxford, wiley blackwell: 301–318. scholem g. 1995 [1941]: major trends in jewish mysticism. new york, schocken books. sweet, h. 1881: an anglo-saxon reader in prose and verse. oxford, clarendon press. toswell, m. j. 2010: jorge luis borges and medieval germanic literatures. old english newsletter 43.1, http://www.oenewsletter.org/oen/pdf/toswell43_1.pdf [accessed 12 march 2012] toswell, m. j. 2014: borges the unacknowledged medievalist: old english and old norse in his life and work. new york, palgrave macmillan. 60 miguel a. gomes gargamala toswell, m. j. 2017: borges, old english poetry and translation studies. in t. birkett & k. march-lyons eds. translating early medieval poetry: transformation, reception, interpretation. cambridge, d. s. brewer: 61–74. vera pérez, o. [trans.] 1959: beowulf. madrid, aguilar. venuti, l. 2018 [1995]: the translator’s invisibility. a history of translation. milton park & new york, routledge. wyatt, a. j. 1919: an anglo-saxon reader. cambridge, cambridge university press. author’s address faculty of education & society (2epd) university of sunderland st peters campus, st peters way sunderland sr6 0dd united kingdom received: 5 june 2020 e-mail: miguel.gomes@sunderland.ac.uk revised version accepted: 20 july 2020 selim03.pdf 45 ricardo mairal & javier martín, selim 3 (1993): 43-56 underlying predications and latin-old english translation: two predicates under scrutiny1 0. introduction the aim of this paper is to study the translation into old english of two latin verbal predicates: deliberare/íencan and amitto/gewitten2. for this purpose, we will resort to one of the most elaborate theoretical linguistic models, viz. functional grammar (henceforth fg)3. one of the key notions of fg that plays a fundamental role in our transla tion study is that of underlying predication. dik (1979) claims that predications are characterized in such a way that makes them the best representation 1 this article is a revised version of the paper “underlying predications and translation: on the old english version of a latin text”, which we presented in the 7th international congress of english historical linguistics, held in valencia (september 1992). 2 from the old english apollonius of tyre (in goolden 1958:6 -7). 3 the following abbreviations are used in this paper: (i) predicative categories: v (verb); (ii) syntactic functions: s (subject) and o (object); (iii) semantic functions: ag (agent) loc (locative) and exp (expiriencer); (iv) operators: p3 (degree of certainty, an operator that modifies the propositional content of the clause); (iv) phrasal categories: np (noun phrase) and pp (prepositional phrase); (v) the hierarchical structure of the clause: e1(variable designating state of affairs), ill (illocutionary force) and pred (predication); (vi) translation terms: l1 (source language) and l2 (target language). 46 of sentences. then, on the basis of this idea, a translation model (dik 1979 and 1986; van der korst, 1990) is formulated by means of describing the procedure for arriving at the mechanical translation of underlying predications of one language into underlying predications of another language. in this paper we will investigate, on the basis of the information provided by the underlying predications, to what extent the underlying predication of the source language (latin) can be related to an equivalent underlying predication of the target language (old english). 1. underlying predication dik (1989) proposes to treat clausal constituents under the form of an abstract underlying clause structure, which will be mapped onto the actual lin guistic expresions by a number of expresion rules, which provide these constituents with the order, form and intonation pattern (dik l989:45). then the analysis of the clause entails the distinction of several layers or levels of formal and semantic organization. these layers would be illustrated in the following chart: (1) clause “speech act” proposition “posible fact” predication “state of affairs” predicate “property/relation” this type of analysis has been called the layered hypothesis. it was originally proposed by hengeveld (1987,1988 and1989), dik (1989) and dik and hengeveld (1990). these linguists propound to represent utterances by means of a multilayered clause model. dik and hengeveld (1990:2-3) support the view that two main levels should be distinguished in an analysis of the 47 clause: the representational and the interpersonal level, each being modified by a number of operators and satellites. by the higher level or interpersonal they mean that concerned with those linguistic means which are used by the speaker to evoke a certain comunicative effect in the addressee, whereas the lower level or representational is concerned with those linguistic means which are used by the speaker to provide the addressee with a description of a state of affairs. the representational level is built on the basis of (i) a predicate frame (level 1), which specifies a predicate plus the number of arguments required, and (ii) a predication (level 2), which locates the state of affairs in terms of its time ocurrence, frequency of ocurrence and actuality of occurrence. the illocutionary level is constructed on the basis of (i) an illocutionary frame (level 4), which signals the value of a sentence as product of a speech act, and (ii) the propositional level (level 3) which represents the sentence as a possible fact, something which can be verified or denied. then, underlying predications will have the form as drawn in (2): (2) layers clause (e1: [ ill (s) (a) (x1: etc. (x1))] (e1)) proposition (x1: [ e1: etc. (e 1))] (x1)) predication (e1: [pred. (x1)] (e1) term (x1: pred (x1)) the structure underlying linguistic expresions consists of four hierarchichally ordered layers1, each one designating different entities as proposed in lyons (1977). 1 dik and hengeveld distinguish a number of operators and satellites in each layer (for further reference of these operators and satellites we refer the reader to the works mentioned above). 48 we will use this hierarchical model not only for the descrip tion of sentences but also for a description of clausal complements. in some cases, we will see how the different clausal complements signal different types of layers namely predications, propositions and utterances (dik and hengeveld 1990). in sum, the information specified in the underlying predications does not only contain syntactic and semantic features but also pragmatic and propositional. these latter two will play a conspicuous role in translation studies since they provide more tools to achieve a higher degree of accuracy in translation. 2. underlying predication and translation as pointed out above, underlying predications will be the starting point for our translation research. in line with dik (l979 and 1986) and van der ko rst (l990:290), a translation procedure ammounts to three phases: (i) reconstruction of the underlying predication of a sentence, (ii) substitution of the underlying predication according to the equivalences and (iii) application of the expression rules of the target language. this paper will concentrate on the first two leaving for the moment those issues dealing with expression rules. then, our first task will consist of reconstructing the underlying predication for both the source language (latin) and the target language (old en glish). in doing so, we will follow the main postulates of fg, succintly pre sented in the previous section. the second phase of our work -perhaps the most interestingwill be concerned with the (non-)equivalences of the expressions under scrutiny. once we have the underlying predication for a predicate of l1 and a predicate of 49 l2, we will see to what extent these are equivalent and therefore can be substituted. this substitution of predicates involves a number of factors: -quantitative and qualitative valency of the two predicates; syntactic and sematic functions; selection restrictions and type and nature of clausal complements. summarizing, we have presented so far the fundamental ideas that guide our research in this paper. in the third section, these ideas will be put to the test of translating two underlying predications of a latin text into the corre sponding old english predications. 3. two predicates under scrutiny 3.1. deliberare/íencan let us detain now to determine the semantic weight of the first two lexemes that we have chosen, given the limitations of this paper, to carry out our analysis. the semantic weight will serve to evaluate their differences and, ultimately, “to make a choice”. as a preliminary step, the determination of this semantic weight is based on the analysis of both the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes since we believe that the intersection of both constitutes the meaning of a word. following the methodological premises oulined above, the semantic analysis of the predicates will have the form of an underlying predication. the latin predicate delibero pertains to the semantic field of verbs of cognition. within this vast semantic field, this verb will be classified under 50 the dimension1 “to think carefully”. the old english predicate ¥encan, on the other hand, represents the archilexematic content of the semantic field. this simple difference will play an important role in determining the “best2 possible translation”. more specifically, the pair delibero/íencan is a case of non-lexical equivalence between the source and the target language. in this circumstance, as van der korst (1990:291) remarks: when a word (predicate) of the source language corresponds to more than one word (predicate) of the target language, a choice will have to be made. in fact, this is the crux in (machine) transla tion. indeed, the latin verb delibero does not show a one-to-one correspondence with the old english íencan. in these cases, the predicates might differ in various respects: qualitative valency: semantic function assignment3; quantitative valency: syntactic function assignment4 and selection restrictions5 1 the organization of the vocabulary in semantic fields follows the tenets of lexematics (coseriu 1981). for the introduction to the term dimension, see geckeller (1971). 2 by best we refer to the most approximate translation once we have revised the linguistic in formation provided by the underlying predications. 3 the assignment of semantic functions has been a source of dispute among the various linguistic schools. however, in order to avoid terminological tedium, we will remain faithful to the terminology presented in dik (1989), who draws on fillmore (1968, 1971 and 1977). studies such as chomsky (1981, 1986a and 1986b), halliday (1985) etc. present a different picture. 4 we follow dik (1979 and 1989) with respect to syntactic function assignment: the syntactic functions subject and object are assigned at the level of the predication formation component rather than at both the level of the predication formation and expression components, as conolly (1991) has put forward. 5 selection restrictions have also been alluded under the name of contextual restrictions. 51 however, the difference does not necessarily stem from the syntagmatic axis alone but, conversely, this might be codified in the paradigmatic organization. this leads to formulate what we call the scalarity principle: (3) scalarity principle: those predicates higher on the scale (paradigmatic) tend to take an ample range of complementation patterns as well as a wide semantic scope whereas those lower on the scale (syntagmatic) tend to have a reduced ammount of patterns; and, accordingly, its semantic scope is narrower. thus, delibero and íencan: (4) a. deliberov (x1: human (x1))exp/s (x2: ppde <animate-concrete’> (x2))go de aliqua re deliberare “to discuss something” b. deliberov (x1: human (x1))exp/s (x2: np <‘animate-concrete’> (x2))go/o re deliberata, post diem tertium ad caesarem reversuros1 “having discussed the matter, they would go back to ceasar’s positions after three days” (5) a. íencanv (x1: human (x1))exp/s agunnon íencan ía bocerns “coeperunt cogitare scribæ”1 1 in lewis and short (1966:236). 52 b.íencanv (x1: human (x1))exp/s (x2: [p3 x1] (x2))go/o secge he hwæt ic íence “let him say what my thoughts are”2 c. íencanv (x1: human (x1))exp/s (x2: ppon <‘animate-concrete’> (x2))go god ys on dryhten to íenceanne “bonum est confidere in domino”3 d. íencanv (x1: human (x1))exp/s (x2: [p3 x1] (x2))go/o hie íohton hu hie hine acwellan meahton4 “they were thinking how to kill him” e. íencanv (x1: human (x1))exp/s (x2: [p3 x1] (x2))go/o nænig heora íohte, íæt he íanon scolde gesecean folc5 “nobody thought that he would search for his people afterwards” since we are concerned with the predication-formation component we do not draw a distinction between cases like (6) and (7): (6) him ías íing íencendum “hæc eo cogitante”6 (where the subject of thought is in the accusative) 1 an etymological dictionary of the english language, in bosworth and toller (1964:1046) 2 the blickling homilies 181, in bo sworth and toller (1964:1046) 3 libri psalmorum 117:8, in bosworth and toller (1964:1046) 4 libri psalmorum 241:8, in bosworth and toller (1964:1046) 5 libri psalmorum 123:4, in bosworth and toller (1964:1046) 6 the gospel according to st. mathew i:20, in bosworth and toller (1964:1046). 53 (7) we moton íæs íencan íe egeslic on íissum bocum is gewrit ten1 “we must think about the threatening things that are written in this book” (in these cases the subject of thought is in the genitive) it is the expression rules, concieved as a bridge between the underlying predications and the actual linguistic expressions, that account for case marking (such as accusative vs. genitive in (6) and (7)). this analysis reveals that íencan does not correspond to delibero but to cogito, which shows the same semantic behaviour as íencan. the first obvious difference lies in the fact that both predicates differ in their quantitative valency. this proves our scalarity principle (cf. above). our analysis in terms of the scalarity principle is also reinforced if we take into account the other two lexemes corresponding to the archilexeme íencan in old english: hogian and hycgan: (8) hogianv (x1: human (x1))exp/s (x2: ppymbe <‘entity’> (x2))go he lythwon hogode ymbe his sawle íearfe “he thought little about the needs of his soul” 2 (9) hycganv (x1: human (x1))exp/s (x2: ppymbe <‘entity’> (x2))go hycgeí ymbe se íe wille “he shall think about he who will” 3 1 laws of king athelstan, in bosworth and toller (1964:1046). 2 an anglo -saxon reader in prose and verse 101, 201 in bosworth and toller (1964:549). 3 the anglo -saxon version of the metres of boethius 19,2 in bosworth and toller (1964:578). 54 as is shown in (8) and (9) íencan, hogian and hycgan differ with respect to their quantitative valency, that is the choice is defined by syntax. these verbs, however, also have clausal complementation, although with a differe nt meaning: (10) hogianv (x1: human (x1))exp/s (x2: [p3 x1] (x2))go/o we sceoldon hogian hu we hi begyton “we must consider how we may obtain it” 1 (11) hycganv (x1: human (x1))exp/s (x2: [p3 x1] (x2))go/o uton we hycgan hwær we ham agen and íonne geíencan hu we íider cumen “let us consider where we may have a home and then devise how we may come thither” 2 examples (10) and (11) do not contradict our explanation in terms of the scalarity principle: although one may draw the conclusion that the different quantitative valencies that íencan and hogian and hycgan have cannot account for the restrictions imposed on the final choice, the fact that these two verbs have a different meaning when they undergo clausal complementation reinforces our scalarity principle explanation: there is a difference of contextual value and the two predicates lose the archilexematic meaning of íencan and acquire a more specific meaning that belongs to another dimension3 (“to think carefully”) within the same semantic field: to consider. 3.2. amitto/gewitten 1 the homilies of ælfric ii 316, 25 in bosworth and toller (1964:549). 2 apollonius of tyre 83a, in bosworth and toller (1964:578). 3 following coseriu (1981). 55 the second pair of predicates that we examine is the one formed by amitto and gewitten. this equivalence involves two fixed expressions, vitam amittere and gewittan of life . since there exist a l2 equivalence the steps that van der korst (1989:297) calls paraphrasing and deparaphrasing can be avoided: (12) amittov (x1: human (x1))exp/s (x2: np <‘entity’> (x2))go/o decius amissit vitam1 “decius passed away” 1 in lewis and short (1966:109). we also draw on gaffiot (1934). 56 (13) gewittanv (x1: human (x1))exp/s (x2: ppof <‘entity’> (x2))loc he of life gewat “he departed this life”1 nevertheless, the fact that there is an equivalence in the target language, does not prevent this equivalence from showing a different complementation pattern: an np (nominal complementation) in latin and a pp (prepositional complementation) in old english. therefore, the difference between the two underlying predications can be said to be one of qualitative valency. the scalarity principle proves again useful in this translation procedure because these two predicates , which are lower on the scale (syntagmatic), have only one pattern of complementation and, accordingly, its semantic scope is narrower: to die. 4. conclusion in this paper we have presented the outlines of a predicate comparison procedure of translation in terms of the scalarity principle, which sets the complementation patterns of a given predicate in the syntagmatic as well as in the paradigmatic axis and relates the complementation patterns to the semantic scope of the predicate under scrutiny. this principle has proved valid for a translation procedure by application to two latin predicates and their old english equivalents. ricardo mairal usón (universidad autónoma de madrid) javier martín arista (universidad de zaragoza) 1 beowulf 4934, in bosworth and toller (1964:470). 57 references bach, e. and t. harms eds. 1968. universals in linguistic theory. new york: holt, rinehart and winston. bosworth, j. and t.n. toller (1898)1964. an anglo-saxon dictionary. oxford: oxford university press. chomsky, n. 1981. lectures on government and binding. dordrecht: foris. chomsky, n. 1986a. knowledge of language. its nature, origin and use. new york: pantheon. chomsky, n. 1986b. barriers. cambridge (massachusetts): mit press. cole, p. and m. sadock eds. 1977. “grammatical relations” syntax and semantics 8. new york: academic press. conolly, j. h. 1991. constituent order in functional grammar: synchronic and diachronic perspectives. berlin and new york: foris publications. conolly, j.h. and s.c. dik eds. 1989. functional grammar and the computer. dordrecht: foris. coseriu, e. 1981. principios de semántica estructural. madrid: gredos. dik, s. c. 1979. functional grammar. dordrecht: foris. dik, s. c. 1986. “two papers on the computational application of functional grammar” (working papers in functional grammar 18). ams terdam: university of amsterdam. dik, s. c. 1989. the theory of functional grammar part i: the structure of the clause. dordrecht: foris 58 dik, s.c. and k. hengeveld: 1990. “the hierarchical structure of the clause and the typology of perception verb complements” (working papers in functional grammar 37). amsterdam: university of amsterdam. fillmore, c. 1968. “the case for case” in bach and harm eds. 1968:1-88. fillmore, c. 1971. “types of lexical information” in steinberg and jacobovits eds. 1971:370-392. fillmore, c. 1977. “the case for case reopened” in cole and saddock eds. 1977:59-81. gaffiot f. 1934. dictionarie illustré latin-francais. paris: librairie ha chette. geckeller, h. 1971. strukturelle semantik und wortfeldtheorie translation by marcos martín hernández (1976) semántica estructural y teoría del campo léxico. madrid: gredos. goolden, p. ed. 1958. the old english apollonius of tyre. london: oxford university press. halliday, m.a.k. 1985. an introduction to functional grammar. london and new york: arnold. hengeveld, k. 1987. “clause structure and modality in functional grammar” in van der auwera and goosens eds. 1987:53-66. hengeveld, k. 1988. “illocution, mood and modality in a functional grammar of spanish”. journal of semantics 6.3/4 (1988):227-269. hengeveld, k. 1989. “layers and operators”. journal of linguistics 25.1(1989): 127-157. lewis, c.t. & c. short (1879) 1966. a latin dictionary. oxford: clarendon press. lyons, j. 1977. semantics (2 vols). cambridge: cambridge university press. 59 steinberg, d.d. and l.a. jakobovits eds. 1971. semantics, an interdisciplinary reader in philosophy, linguistics and psychology. london: cambridge university press. van der auwera, j. and l. goosens eds. 1987. ins and outs of the predication. dordrecht: foris. van der kost, b. 1990. “functional grammar and machine translation” in conolly and dik eds. 1989:289-316. * * * selim 19.indb maría dumas, selim 19 (2012): 81–110issn: 1132–631x the use of the pilgrim disguise in the roman de horn, boeve de haumtone and their middle english translations 1 abstract: the fi gure of the pilgrim has been considered one of the leitmotifs of vernacular insular literature. in the roman de horn, boeve de haumtone, and their middle english translations, king horn and the auchinleck bevis, the heroes repeatedly exchange clothes with pilgrims, since the “esclavine” and the “bourdon” grant them complete immunity to encroach on their enemies’ territory and test the loyalty of their lovers. however, the pilgrim disguise may prove useful in yet another way, providing the poets with a convenient fi gure in which to mirror their own role as storytellers. the purpose of this paper is to examine to what extent the authors of these romances make use of the fi gure of the pilgrim in order to foreground their authorial role and draw attention to their own poetic activity. keywords: anglo-norman romance, middle english romance, translation, pilgrim, disguise. resumen: la fi gura del peregrino ha sido considerada uno de los motivos más recurrentes en la literatura vernácula insular. en el roman de horn, boeve de haumtone y sus traducciones al inglés medio, king horn y la versión de bevis del manuscrito auchinleck, los héroes cambian con fr ecuencia sus ropas con peregrinos, ya que la esclavina y el bordón les confi eren total inmunidad para penetrar el territorio enemigo y probar la lealtad de sus amantes. sin embargo, el disfr az de peregrino también puede resultar útil en otro sentido, en la medida en que proporciona a los poetas una fi gura conveniente en la cual refl ejar su rol como narradores. el propósito de este artículo es examinar hasta qué punto los autores de estas obras hacen uso de la fi gura del peregrino a fi n de poner en primer plano su función autoral y llamar la atención acerca de su propia actividad poética. palabras clave: romance anglonormando, romance en inglés medio, traducción, peregrino, disfr az. disguise is a ubiquitous topic in insular romances, both anglo-norman and middle english. the authors of these romances, which are oft en based on the exileand-return tale-type,2 fr equently use disguise in nearly identical 1 i am grateful to the deutscher akademischer austauschdienst (daad) for fi nancial support in the preparation of this article, and to prof. dr. wolfr am keller for his careful reading of a previous version of this paper. 2 see crane 1986. while recognizing that tales of exile and return are not uniquely insular, susan crane acknowledges its fr equent occurrence in anglo-norman and middle english romance and suggests that this narrative pattern proved highly functional for the articulation of specifi cally insular baronial concerns, namely, maría dumas 82selim 19 (2012) narrative contexts. disguise appears almost invariably as a central feature to stage the return of a dispossessed king fr om exile. in the struggle of the displaced heroes to regain their dynastic rights, the concealment of identity becomes an invaluable strategy to test the fi delity of a lover or the loyalty of a servant.3 scholars have acknowledged the fr equent and similar use of disguise throughout the insular corpus, mainly focusing on theoretical issues stemming fr om these scenes, such as the nature and the integrity of a knight’s or, more importantly, a king’s identity (burrow 1994, dickson 2000, snell 2000). if under the clothes of a fool, a minstrel, a leper, or a pilgrim the king is no longer recognizable, how is his identity defi ned? to what extent is his identity merely dependent landholding and the defense of dynastic rights by law rather than by war. judith weiss has contested this view, pointing out that “such concerns do not appear solely in insular romance: they are evident in french chansons de geste, such as raoul de cambrai, aiol, and mainet, and romances such as ille et galeron, which use the ‘exile and return’ theme” (weiss 2004: 40). rosalind field has also analyzed the exile-and-return tales found in anglo-norman romances of the late twelft h and early thirteenth century, underscoring their intrinsically insular features (e.g., the return by water) and calling the attention to the particular cultural and historical context which could have motivated the recurring choice of this tale-type by romance writers. according to field, the popularity of the exile-and-return narrative in insular literature may be explained by its “chiming with contemporary concerns and the perception of the same motif in the english political scene fr om henry ii to henry iv and beyond” (field 2005: 53). 3 disguised heroes and heroines are traceable throughout the diff erent genres of medieval literature. however, in combination with exile-and-return narratives, such as in insular romances, this topic achieves a remarkable specifi city: oft en associated with episodes of recognition and reunion, it yields highly dramatic scenes, hardly discernible in other texts which make use of this narrative device. studies focused on roughly contemporary continental chansons de geste—with which these romances share numerous features—have suggested that the topic of disguise would oft en introduce a comic register. unlike insular romances, chansons such as charroi de nîmes and prise d’orange present disguise as a playful game devised by the conquering hero to deceive his enemy and make fun of him. see gallé 2005 and suard 1994. the use of the pilgrim disguise 83 selim 19 (2012) on his physical appearance or his social insignia? these studies have yielded interesting results regarding the tight connections between the interior self and the exterior appearance in feudal society. morgan dickson (2000) has emphasized that the effi cacy of the hero’s disguise normally depends on the lowering of his social status as he assumes the role either of a fool, a minstrel, a leper or a pilgrim. however, besides noting the shared effi cacy of these lower-class masks, it is equally interesting to examine their peculiarities, since the hero’s choice to impersonate one or another of these socially inferior types might have important implications for the understanding of both the disguise episodes and the works as a whole. this is at least the case in the texts i examine. the anglo-norman boeve de haumtone and the roman de horn, as well as their middle english rewritings, sir bevis of hampton and king horn, include several disguise episodes. given their similar and thus easily comparable outline, i shall focus on those scenes in which the hero, coming back fr om exile, assumes the appearance of a pilgrim in order to gain access to his lover and test her loyalty. according to neil cartlidge (2005), the fi gure of the peregrinus ignotus represents one of the leitmotifs of vernacular insular romance. helen cooper (2004) has likewise identifi ed pilgrimage as one of the most enduring motifs of english romance.4 this pervading presence of pilgrims in romance may be perhaps better apprehended following judith weiss’s distinction between serious, penitential pilgrims, such as guiac in waldef, gui de warewic, or sir isumbras, on the one hand, and, on the other, less pious knights, such as tristan, horn and boeve/bevis, who temporarily use the guise of the penitent pilgrim “to accomplish their own secular ends” (weiss 2010: 50). indeed, in the romances i consider the adoption of the “esclavine” and the “bourdon” entails no piety and serves, 4 in the motif index of folk literature, stith thompson (1995) classifi es the pilgrim disguise under two headings: k1817.2, “disguise as palmer (pilgrim)” where he mentions king horn, and k1837.2, “woman disguised as pilgrim engages lover in conversation and learns of his faithlessness”. maría dumas 84selim 19 (2012) thus, no didactic purposes. instead, it is highly functional in secular terms, not only on the diegetic level, granting the heroes complete immunity to encroach on their enemies’ territory, but also on the extra-diegetic level, providing the poets with a convenient fi gure in which to mirror their own role as storytellers. in her study on the role of pilgrims in continental chansons de geste, valérie galentfasseur (1997) shows that pilgrims do not appear only as penitents, walking tirelessly to holy land in search of redemption, but also as carriers of information, that is, as storytellers. galent-fasseur focuses mainly on pilgrims’ varying relationship with truth as the genre evolves, but it would similarly be interesting to explore how poets made use of these alternative storytellers in order to represent their own poetics. the texts i examine do not utilize the character of the pilgrim in the same way. the author of the roman de horn shows a clear interest in associating his role to that of the pilgrim, with the purpose of drawing attention to and refl ecting on his own poetic activity. by contrast, in boeve de haumtone this association is only faintly suggested. i shall analyze if the middle english adapters exploited this meta-narrative procedure available in their ultimate sources, and if so, how and to what extent. i hope it will become evident that far fr om simply reproducing their models in a servile way, in the process of translation, the middle english redactors of sir bevis of hampton5 and of king horn reshaped the disguise episodes, making diff erent use of their meta-narrative potential according to their own interest in foregrounding their authorial role and asserting their conceptions of poetry. in this sense, 5 the textual tradition of the middle english bevis is extremely complex. it survives in six manuscripts and several printed editions (see fellows 2008). all these versions have been studied in order to assess whether their redactors made any use of the meta-narrative potential of this episode. as a result, i have found that only the auchinleck poet consistently did. in the boeve/bevis section, this will be shown in the main body of the article, while references to the relevant passages in the alternative manuscripts and printed editions will be provided in notes. the use of the pilgrim disguise 85 selim 19 (2012) the pilgrim-disguise episodes will prove to be of much value to examine the diff erent models of authorship embedded in each text. interestingly, these models do not seem to be linguistically arranged. in fact, as will become evident, similarities may be traced in the authorial stance adopted by the poets of king horn and the anglonorman boeve, while the auchinleck bevis redactor shares much more with thomas than with the author of his source. rosalind field has stated that “there are […] few valid generalizations to be made about relations between anglo-norman and middle english versions of the same material” (1999: 166). authorship, i will argue, cannot be counted among them. studies on translation theory and practice carried out mainly during the last two decades have been pivotal for the examination of the links between anglo-norman and middle english romances, and ultimately, for the scholarly reassessment of the latter.6 although the close interdependence of anglonorman and middle english romances has long been established by scholars, studies published in the early and mid twentieth century tend to simplify this relationship, considering middle 6 since the 1980s and during the 1990s, several scholars have claimed the importance of translation as technique of composition in the specifi c contexts of medieval literature (kelly 1978; zumthor 1980; buridant 1983; copeland 1991; beer 1989, 1997). however, in the insular context, research on translation appears as particularly relevant, since it is aff ected by the complex interactions between the two main vernaculars of post-conquest england, i.e., french and english. for a thorough survey of the shift ing relationship between french and english fr om the eleventh to the fi ft eenth century, see crane 1999, and for a more recent and encompassing reassessment of the role of the “french of england” and of its connections with english and anglo-latin in fi elds not as well-established as literature (e.g. devotional or medical writing), see wogan-browne 2009. during the past two decades, important studies on insular translation practice have been published (see, for instance, the surveys by field 2008b and warren 2007). however, especially noteworthy is the work of ivana djordjević, who made a highly valuable contribution providing scholars with a useful theoretical fr amework within which vernacular translation and, specifi cally, romance translation fr om anglo-norman to middle english may be studied (djordjević 2000, 2002, 2008). maría dumas 86selim 19 (2012) english translations as coarser popularizations of their courtly and refi ned french predecessors (ker 1912; pearsall 1965; diekstra 1975).7 this hypothesis, which assumes that translation inevitably implies a change in the intended audience, has been more recently contested by a number of scholars. in their re-investigations of the romances (crane 1986, 1999; field 1999, 2008a, 2009; calin 1994) and their contextualization within manuscripts, inventories, and records (meale 1994), they have argued that there is no reason to assume that the audience of middle english works was diff erent in terms of class status or any less sophisticated in its tastes than that of anglo-norman romances. the alleged popularization resulting fr om the process of translation has equally shaped the scholarly appraisal of the authorship of middle english romances (mcdonald 2004; reichl 2009). translation would have inexorably substituted a clerical and learned french author for a crude hack writer. this “stigmatization” of middle english poets, as mc donald puts it (2004: 9), is most blatantly exposed in loomis’s description of the auchinleck romances’ authors: “if these, for the most part, unoriginal and ungift ed translator-versifi ers were not what we should call literature hacks, what were they?” (1942: 608). in what follows, overlooking the biased and rhetorical nature of this question and further extending it to the anglo-norman romancers, i intend to describe the diff erent ways through which the authors of the roman de horn, boeve de haumtone and their middle english analogues appear in their narratives, such as it becomes apparent fr om their varying interest in guiding the readers’ attention to their poetics in the pilgrim-disguise episodes. 7 in her “polemical introduction”, mc donald 2004 has suffi ciently shown to what extent the scholarly labeling of middle english romance as “popular” usually entails, as it is above implied, a negative appraisal of its aesthetic value and an assumption that these debased literary products would appeal to a lower-class audience. the use of the pilgrim disguise 87 selim 19 (2012) 1 from the roman de horn to king horn in the anglo-norman roman de horn, the narrative context for the hero’s adoption of the pilgrim disguise may be briefl y summarized in the following terms: due to wikele’s slanders, horn is forced to leave brittany, where he had grown up aft er the saracens invaded his own kingdom, suddene, and killed his father. exiled fr om brittany, horn goes to ireland where, under the pseudonym gudmond, he helps the king to defeat the saracens and avenges his father’s death. aft er some years, he hears fr om a pilgrim that his lover, rigmel, daughter of the king of brittany, is forced to marry king modin. backed by a powerful army, horn goes back to brittany to stop the wedding. but before engaging in battle, he changes his clothes with a pilgrim, he verbally confr onts his rival and then goes into court—still in disguise—in order to test rigmel’s loyalty. in view of my present concerns, this encounter with the pilgrim deserves special attention. it is noteworthy that before exchanging their garments, horn asks the pilgrim about the situation in the country. the pilgrim gives a full account of the recent events regarding rigmel’s wedding, providing horn with strategic information for the fulfi llment of his plans (3954–3964). this account of events, however, is not only useful and necessary on the diegetic level; it turns out to be as informative for horn as it is for the audience, who is equally unaware of the situation in brittany, since until this point, the narrative focus has remained exclusively directed to the description of horn’s activities. the pilgrim, thus, slips into the narrator’s role, supplementing the events left out of his reach. interestingly, this is not the fi rst time that, by means of the fi gure of the pilgrim, the narrative voice is split in order to render simultaneous events. aft er horn’s exile, the narrator follows his hero to ireland, leaving rigmel’s aff airs in darkness. in this case, it is also a pilgrim, joceran, who widens the narrative scope, disclosing simultaneously to horn and the audience what the narrator has been omitting: the desperate situation of herland, maría dumas 88selim 19 (2012) horn’s tutor, in brittany, wikele’s treacherous actions, and rigmel’s imminent wedding. mestre thomas evidently takes full advantage of the storytelling skills associated with pilgrims, relying heavily on these characters to complement his limited narrative perspective. besides these contributions to the narration of the story, pilgrims are of much use for the poet in yet another way. when horn assumes his disguise, together with the “esclavine,” the “burdun” and the “paulme,” he also takes hold of the pilgrim’s narrative ability, which has just been demonstrated. above all, he becomes a storyteller. his fi rst chance to display his skills ensues right away. king modin, intrigued by the contrast between the alleged pilgrim’s beauty and his poverty, sets horn a series of questions, which prompt his fi rst story. in response to his rival’s demands, the hero gives a rather oblique account of his life at the end of which he explicitly defi nes himself as a teller of tales: “tiele vïe demein cum vus sui cunteör. / s’en volz plus oïr, querez autre ditor” (4053–4054), (“i lead such a life as i tell you. if you want to hear more, ask another storyteller,” 117).8 in the following laisses, until horn fi nally drops his mask, the story will not be about a knight, not even about a pilgrim, but about a storyteller. through the pilgrim’s persona, the narrator takes the stage and displays his own narrative ability. twice in this episode, the disguised hero, mimicking mestre thomas, sets himself to the task of telling his own story. both times, however, he does it in an obscure way. horn, whose language is usually plain and straightforward, is suddenly possessed by a conspicuous inclination to use fi gurative speech. just as he disguises his appearance with the pilgrim’s cloak, he disguises his intentions with words, too. morgan dickson has noted that horn’s riddles are “a form of verbal disguise” (2000: 47). he tells king modin that he is a fi sherman who has put his 8 all references to the text of the roman de horn are by line number to pope 1955 and 1964, and english translations are quoted fr om weiss 2009. emphasis mine. the use of the pilgrim disguise 89 selim 19 (2012) net into the water seven years ago and is now coming back to see if it caught a fi sh. a few lines below, he says to rigmel that seven years ago he tamed and put into mew a goshawk and that now he wants to know “s’il est si entier, cum il fud a ces dis / quant joe turnai de ci” (4263–4264) (“if it is unblemished, as it was in the days when i left ,” 121). horn is telling the truth about his intentions by lying. this veiled use of language does not seem to be just a useful subterfuge employed by the disguised hero to make fun of his rival or test his lover’s virginity. horn’s truthful lies go far beyond their immediate narrative purpose. in fact, they may be construed as meta-narrative comments on the author’s own poetical program: in the roman de horn, fi ction, just as horn’s riddles, is primarily a way of conveying truth, and it is up to the reader to be able to grasp it. this becomes evident fr om the diff erent responses of king modin and rigmel to horn’s fi ctions. on the one hand, king modin sticks with the literal meaning of the hero’s discourse and, hence, considers it a “grant folur” (4055), “great nonsense” (117) and the speaker, a “gabeör” (4056), “joker” (117). rigmel, on the other hand, is insightful enough to remove the veil imposed by horn’s words and, thus, recognize their true meaning and the pilgrim’s real identity: “amis horn, c’estes vus! bien conois vostre vis […] li ostur dont parlez, ja mar sééz pensis: / par tut est bien gardé si cum joe vus pramis” (4271, 4274–4275), “horn, my fr iend, it’s you! of course i know your face […] have no doubts about the goshawk you speak of; i promise it is well guarded in every way,” (12). the impersonation of his hero as a pilgrim, thus, allows the horn-author to voice his claim to the validity of fi ction as a disguised form of truth and, more importantly, to lay on the reader the responsibility for removing this disguise in the appropriate way. 9 this situation in 9 the importance of the audience’s disposition for the correct interpretation of the story is also highlighted in the abovementioned episode in which horn, under the pseudonym of gudmond, is informed by the palmer-narrator about the situation in brittany. although joceran is telling the truth, horn, whose primary maría dumas 90selim 19 (2012) which the author attracts the attention to his own literary project is described by michel zink as typical of romance composition. indeed, in romance, by contrast to chanson de geste, “la subjectivité de l’auteur s’impose […] à travers la défi nition d’un projet ou d’un démarche dans l’ordre de la création littéraire” (zink 1981: 8). as m. k. pope, horn’s editor, acknowledges in his introduction to the poem, mestre thomas is noticeably a clerk. this is apparent, pope argues, in the title he accords himself in the prologue, in his conspicuous biblical knowledge, in his acquaintance with ovid, in his strongly latin-infl uenced vocabulary, in his fr equent remarks on women’s fi ckleness, and, i would add, in his idea of intention is to preserve his disguise in ireland, levels serious accusations against the pilgrim, questioning his credibility: “bien diz cum[e] paumer, mençonges vas trovant; / lei est de pelerin, nul ne mentira taunt; / ja ne dirront taunt veir ke je·s seie creant” (3730–3732) “you talk like a palmer, inventing lies. no one lies so much as pilgrims, who are used to it. they can never speak truly enough for me to believe them” (111–112). in medieval literary imagination pilgrims were traditionally represented as god’s spokesmen and instruments of divine providence. however, by the twelft h century, the association of these fi gures with the disguise topos yields, according to valerie galent-fasseur, “une angoisse liée à la notion de vérité”, since “le signe qui révèle la vérité peut aussi être utilisé comme véhicule du mensonge” (galent-fasseur 1997: 204, 210). therefore, alongside providenceordained pilgrims, such as saboath in boeve de haumtone (see galent-fasseur 1998) or the mysterious palmer who rebukes guiac’s ambition in waldef (see cartlidge 2005), pilgrims accused of being liars eventually became commonplace in chanson de geste (galent-faseur 1997) and insular romance (weiss 2010). however, it is noteworthy that this accusation of mendacity is also traditionally directed to poets ever since they were fi rst exiled by plato fr om his republic. green 2003 identifi es three reasons why poets are oft en charged with being liars both in antiquity and the middle ages: fi rst, the refusal of rigorist critics to recognize any kind of truth under the mendacious veil of fi ction, regardless of intention, eff ect or context. second, rivalry among authors, and fi nally “the absence of a specifi c term and a theoretical home for the new genre of the romance and the fi ctionality that characterized it” (12–13). it is against this accusation that thomas appears to be reacting as he forwards in meta-narrative terms his idea of poetry, which, as i argue below, he may have borrowed fr om scholarly commentaries and rhetorical treatises. the use of the pilgrim disguise 91 selim 19 (2012) poetry.10 indeed, in the pilgrim episode thomas may be echoing a view of poetry prevalent in late classic and medieval grammatical commentaries on the auctores. equally interested in coming to terms with their pagan heritage, late-antique christian commentators, such as servius, lactantius or fulgentius, show a recurring concern for explaining poetic language and assessing its validity.11 for this purpose, they draw largely on rhetorical theories of fi guration. martin irvine and david thomson highlight that “the conception of metaphor and fi gure found in the artes grammaticae provided a foundation for literary theory for over a thousand years” (2005: 35). according to nicolette zeeman, these texts and commentaries present a relational defi nition of poetry, which distinguishes itself fr om other discourses, such as philosophy, theology, ethics or natural sciences, in terms of its “special potential for obliquity, inexplicitness, evasiveness and obscurity” (1996: 155). in the early fourth century, lactantius states that “offi cium poetae [est] in eo, ut ea, quae gesta sunt vere, in alias species obliquis fi gurationibus cum decore aliquot conversa traducant” (“it is the business of poets elegantly and with oblique fi gures to turn and transfer things which have really occurred into other representations,” zeeman 1996: 156; emphasis added). his description of the poet’s role would become commonplace among later clerics in their eff orts to defend poetry as a veiled form of truth. in the twelft h century, bernard of chartres 10 rosalind field also underscores the clerical status of thomas among other anglo-norman romancers, drawing the attention to a distinctive feature of insular clergie: whereas in continental romances, as noted by peter haidu, the cleric oft en maintains an ironic distance towards his narrative, in the insular context there seems to be no disagreement between clerical and baronial concerns. in fact, she argues that both literary and historical evidence (i. e., the issuing of magna carta) show that the two groups were jointly engaged in “defi ning and supporting good rule” (field 2011: 187). 11 for a full account of the study of classical authors in late antiquity and the early middle ages, and of the implications of these readings for medieval literary theory, see wetherbee 2005. maría dumas 92selim 19 (2012) and, especially, william of conches would further explore the potential scope of this philosophical view of poetry, introducing the concept of integumentum or involucrum in their readings of plato, macrobius and boethius.12 this fi gural conception of poetry is certainly discernible in the pilgrim’s slanting way of telling his vere gesta. but it can also be traced in thomas’s own way of conveying meaning throughout his work. his idea of love, for instance, is not stated directly by means of authorial interventions. on the contrary, it is suggested through the careful structuring of the narrative in a pattern of doubling and repetition. the analogical relationship weaved between rigmel and lenburc allows the author to articulate in a disguised way his view of love, namely, that sexual desire is only acceptable when constraint by marriage and as a means of recovering the hero’s inheritance rights.13 it could be, thus, argued that in appropriating this academic view of poetry, originally conceived for reading the classical auctores, thomas may be seeking to authorize and enhance the value of his own vernacular project, a strategy equally noticeable in the roughly contemporary works of chrétien de troyes and marie de france, who defi nitively share thomas’s literary awareness.14 12 integumentum is defi ned in the martianus capella commentary, possibly authored by bernard silvester, as “a mode of discourse which covers a true meaning under a fi ctitious narrative” (westra 1986: 24). for discussions on the twelft h century theory of integumentum, see the bibliography in copeland 1991: 247, n. 57. 13 for the use of analogy to express authorial intention as a characteristic trait of romance composition, see kelly 1992, particularly pages 217–222 and 306–308. the romance author would carry out a rhetorical or critical reading of his matière governed by a preconceived idea (the sans or antancion), which is subsequently entangled in the plot to construct a meaningful structure; in chrétien’s terms, a “moult bele conj ointure” (erec et enide, v. 14). for the use of doubling patterns in the roman de horn, see dickson 2002. 14 for this argument, i am indebted to the insightful fr amework provided by copeland 1991 for understanding the interrelations between academic and vernacular cultures throughout the middle ages. in the context of this essay, it is the use of the pilgrim disguise 93 selim 19 (2012) if we consider the middle english reworking of horn’s story in king horn, it is evident that the adapter did not make as much of the meta-narrative potential of the pilgrim-disguise episode. to begin with, the role of pilgrims as storytellers is considerably reduced. it is not a pilgrim but a “knave” (949) who informs horn about the recent events in brittany, with which the readers, by the way, are already acquainted because they have just been described by a much more encompassing narrator. when horn comes back fr om ireland, he does meet a pilgrim who informs both him and the audience about rymenhild’s situation in an eloquent way, which enhances the suspense of the episode. in assuming the identity of the pilgrim, however, the middle english horn does not make much use of his storytelling skills. the encounter with king modi is deleted, and with it, the hero’s fi rst veiled account of his life and his self-identifi cation as a storyteller. the episode is therefore substantially shortened, and there is a signifi cant reorganization of the narrative components found in the anglo-norman version. the story about the fi sherman that horn had told to king modin is relocated so as to be included in his dialogue with rymenhild, replacing the goshawk allegory. and, more importantly, unlike the anglo-norman text, this is not the fi rst time the fi shing image appears in the romance: before horn is betrayed by fikenhild, rymenhild dreams that she casts a net to the sea and a big fi sh breaks it. the meaning of this dream is interpreted by horn, who understands it as a prediction of the suff erings they will have to endure. a few lines on, horn is exiled and his hermeneutical competence is demonstrated: “lemman, derling, / nu havestu þi swevening. / þe fi ss þat þi net rente, fr am þe me he sente” (allen 1984: 737–740). thus, when disguised as a pilgrim horn brings up this story, his main purpose is to refr esh rymenhild’s memory particularly relevant her study of chaucer’s and gower’s appropriation of academic exegetical practices with the purpose of authorizing vernacular writing (chapter 7). for chrétien de troyes’s and marie de france’s literary awareness, see zink 1981 and stanesco 1991. maría dumas 94selim 19 (2012) recalling her dream, which is known to the two of them only, in order to prompt recognition. as a clue to horn’s real identity, then, the fi shing story has a clear function within the narrative. it works in a similar way as the ring he drops in the horn. this narrative function is hardly recognizable in the anglo-norman version: the story is not told to rigmel but to king modin and, anyway, there is no dream to recall. although almost completely gratuitous on the level of the narrative, the fi shing story, as i argued before, achieves full signifi cance in its meta-narrative dimension, drawing attention to horn’s veiled use of language as a mirror of fi ction-making. the middle english adaptor, not recognizing or not interested in exploiting its meta-narrative potential, deletes the encounter with king modi and relocates the story, providing it a clear function within the narrative. in king horn the fi shing riddle serves, thus, a diff erent but equally functional purpose: the repetition of this among other themes, such as the sea voyages, provides the work with a high degree of cohesion (hynes-berry 1975). rosalind wadsworth argues that “the conciseness of the middle english renders this repetition eff ective and indeed necessary, and it accentuates signifi cant verbal repetition” (1972: 222). this is specially noticeable in the use of the ring motif: whereas in the anglo-norman romance it is mentioned only once (3166), in the middle english the inspirational power of the ring is fr equently recalled in almost identical terms throughout the work (613–314; 873–874; 1483–1484). these kinds of verbal repetitions may only succeed in establishing thematic unity in the middle english text: even if thomas would have likewise insisted on the ring’s magical qualities, in his detailed and expanded romance, field suggests, these repetitions would not have proved as eff ective as in the highly condensed narrative of king horn. it should be noted that the wedding scene is not the only instance in which the middle english narrator disregards the possibility, available in the anglo-norman version, to step into the narrative and stage his practice in a self-refl ective way. in the the use of the pilgrim disguise 95 selim 19 (2012) roman de horn, during his stay in ireland, the hero also conceals his identity: this time he keeps his status as a knight, but he disguises his name, assuming the pseudonym gudmond. under this disguise, in a musical meeting in lady lenburc’s chambers, he sings a lai about the love story between himself and rigmel, delighting his audience, of course, just as mestre thomas hopes to do. this episode is, not surprisingly, deleted by the author of king horn, who, furthermore, does not seem to grasp the use of the pseudonym, since both he and characters such as king thurston constantly forget it, calling the hero sometimes horn and others by the name he falsely assumes, cutberd. in this way, unlike the author of the roman de horn, who is evidently inclined to comment on his own activity by way of these meta-textual procedures, the middle english rewriter, dismissing these opportunities to foreground his authorial role, disappears behind his story. as spearing puts it, “the story is told, but there is no indication of anyone telling it” (2005: 40). this withdrawal of the poet fr om his narrative is noticeable —other than in his indiff erence for the meta-textual procedures— in two other aspects identifi ed by spearing, that is, in the lack of narratorial explanations for changes in the focus of attention, on the one hand, and, on the other, in the almost exclusive use of the past tense, which “is felt to be the vehicle of objective discourse, fr om which all traces of speaker subjectivity have been eradicated” (spearing 2005: 41, citing fleischman). the poet’s withdrawal has long been recognized by grimm and hegel as characteristic of the epic narrative, which “donne l’impression de se chanter de luimême, d’une façon autonome, et sans être guidé par un auteur” (cited by jauss 1963: 74). jauss expands on this idea examining the old french chanson de geste and contrasts the impersonal distance of the epic jongleur with the oft en overwhelming intermediary presence of the romance poet (1963: 75). although focused on continental narrative, his insights turn out to be quite illuminating for describing the diff erences between the authorial stances adopted by the authors of the romance of horn and of king horn, but also, maría dumas 96selim 19 (2012) as will be seen in what follows, by the poets of the auchinleck bevis and boeve de haumtone. 2 translating boeve de haumtone the context for the pilgrim-disguise episode in the boeve/bevisstory is very similar to that of horn. as a boy, the hero is sold to saracen merchants aft er the emperor of germany kills his father, the earl of hampton, to marry his mother, who planned his murder. he grows up at the saracen court of king hermine and aft er some years, he has a love aff air with his daughter, josiane. he is betrayed by two knights, however, and confi ned to a prison in damascus for seven years. when he manages to escape, he searches for josiane, who, although married to king yvori of monbrant, has preserved her virginity by means of a magic belt. disguised as a pilgrim, boeve/bevis tests josiane’s love and, following the suggestion of her squire, deceives his rival in order to run away fr om the city. although in both versions of the boeve/bevis story the outline of the episode is almost identical, signifi cant diff erences can be seen at this point. in the anglo-norman boeve, the choice of the pilgrim disguise is not explicitly motivated and, as it is the case in many other episodes of the narrative, the appearance of the fake pilgrim must be taken for granted. aft er boeve sees josiane complaining about him, the reader is simply informed that he felt pity and “en paleis entre en guise de palmer” (1394; “he entered the palace dressed like a palmer,” 52).15 further on, she asks the question that triggers his fi rst fi ctitious narrative. motivation, thus, is merely suggested by the paratactic arrangement of two narrative elements (boeve’s disguise and josian’s question) which appear to work as cause and eff ect. in translating his source, the middle english auchinleck poet completely dismisses this paratactic style borrowed 15 all references to the text of boeve de haumtone are by line number to stimming 1899 and english translations are quoted fr om weiss 2008. the use of the pilgrim disguise 97 selim 19 (2012) fr om the chanson de geste tradition by the anglo-norman author. his insinuations are replaced by overt explanations of the hero’s motivations: becoming a pilgrim allows him, fi rst, to go unnoticed and obtain information about the situation at court. this could have certainly been achieved with any kind of disguise that would conceal his social status. only under the pilgrim’s cloak, though, can he attract josian’s attention, which is exclusively directed to pilgrims’ storytelling skills. in fact, one of the palmers gathered at the castle’s gate explains that josian expects nothing fr om them but stories about bevis and that she would reward them for these: “to a riche man ȝe wolde him bringe, / þat kouþe telle of him [bevis] tiding!” (102).16 not long aft erwards this requirement is voiced by josian herself in the following terms: herde ever eni of ȝow telle in eni lede or eni spelle, or in feld oþer in toun, of a kniȝt, beves of hamtoun? (104) these two statements suffi ciently explain bevis’s reasons for using the pilgrim disguise. but they have another purpose as well: at the same time they underscore the pilgrims’ narrative role, clarify ing thus the hero’s motivations, they enhance the association between their fi gure and that of the narrator. just as these pilgrims, the narrative persona of the auchinleck bevis expects to receive rewards for telling stories about bevis (particularly in the form of beverage: “ac er þan we be-ginne fi ȝe  / ful vs þe koppe anon riȝe!,” 194) and, just like josian, he also refers to the narrative he is voicing as 16 all references to the auchinleck (a) text of bevis are by page number to köbling 1885–1894. references to other manuscrips and printed versions of bevis are by line number to fellows 1980. i use fellows’ abbreviations for manuscripts and printed texts. this reward promise voiced by the palmer in a is attributed to josian in n, s, c (2794–2795), m (1902–1903), and the printed versions (1881–1882). maría dumas 98selim 19 (2012) a “spelle.”17 josian appears to be summoning the narrator himself, who, in the same way as mestre thomas, steps into the narrative by means of his hero’s pilgrim disguise. unlike horn, however, the disguised bevis will not tell truthful—though veiled—stories of his life; he will tell only lies. this is especially evident when, already recognized by josian, he uses his pilgrim disguise once again to trick king yvori. on account of this ruse (devised by josian’s squire, bonefas), the audience is invited to witness the process by which a fi ctitious story is constructed. therefore, the means used by the narrator to guarantee his credibility are bluntly exposed and can be easily identifi ed. in the fi rst place, bevis draws his authority fr om his pilgrim cloak. a pilgrim, as valérie galent-fasseur points out, “instaurait avec dieu un rapport privilégié qui lui conférait une puissance sur la parole porté par le texte, et sur les auditeurs” (1997: 54). given this tight association between storytelling and truth embedded in the character of pilgrims, it is not hard to envision the benefi ts for bevis to impersonate a pilgrim. in his eff ort to make his story believable, the “sclavyne” would grant his narrative the same unquestionable and god-sanctioned credibility as that attached to the pilgrims’ discourse. interestingly, this authorizing gesture, which is here enacted in a meta-narrative fashion, is later uttered by the narrator in much more straightforward terms. 17 the word spelle is not used by josian in s, n or the printed versions. it can be found, other than in a, in c and m, but only in the fi rst two manuscripts does the narrator use the term “spelle” to refer either to his work (“of þat feste ne lich namor telle,  / for to hiȝe wiþ our spelle,” 78) or to the activity he is performing (“nomore of þis erle wyll y telle / but of hys sone wyll y spelle,” c: 316/317). nevertheless, in c the pilgrim’s tale is not otherwise associated to the narrator’s work; see below. as stated by paul strohm, the term spelle off ers valuable information about the generic nature of the works thus defi ned. in his analysis of the terminology used by middle english writers for describing narrative genres, he called the attention to the strong “identifi cation of spelle with what we think of today as metrical romance” (1971: 353), such as it becomes especially evident fr om chaucer’s use of this word to describe his parodic sir thopas. the use of the pilgrim disguise 99 selim 19 (2012) when the poet, in an episode interpolated in the middle english translation, has to assert the truthfulness of a dragon’s dreadful and questionable properties, he equally resorts to the authority of pilgrims: and who þat nel nouȝt leve me, wite at pilgrimes þat þer haþ be, for þai can telle ȝow, iwis, of þat dragoun how it is. (125; m, 2301–2302)18 this is not the only instance in the work in which the poet appeals to an external source of authorization and disclaims responsibility for the truth of the events narrated. in the same way as bevis borrows the pilgrim’s authority to make his lies believable, the poet usurps the authority of the “french bok” to provide credibility to his fi ction. in second place, in the process of construction of the counterfeit story, it becomes evident that bevis grounds his credibility on his rhetorical skills, which he displays fully to compose a convincing narrative. the storyline is provided to him by bonefas: sai, þat þow havest wide i-went, and þow come be dabilent, þat is hennes four jurné: sai, men wile þer the king sle, boute him come help of sum oþer. (109) the hero amplifi es it substantially, however, to spin an elaborate “tale”, as king yvori calls it: sire, ich come fr o jurisalem fro nazareþ & fr o bedlem, 18 this commentary appears only in a and ma (the intervening portion of m). interestingly, fellows indicates that “given that ma is generally much closer to the later texts of bevis, it seems likely that where it agrees with a against other manuscripts, the features in question are original” (fellows 2008: 94). therefore, the identifi cation between the disguised hero and the narrator, both appealing to the authority of pilgrims to authorize their discourse, could have already been suggested in the original middle english translation of boeve. maría dumas 100selim 19 (2012) emauns castel & synaie; ynde, erop, and asie, egippte, grese, and babiloine, tars, sesile and sesaoine, in fris, in sodeine and in tire, in aufr ik and in mani empire, ac al is pes þar ichave went, save in þe lond of dabilent. in pes mai no man come þare, þar is werre, sorwe & care. þre kinges and dukes fi ve his chevalrie adoun ginneþ drive, and meche oþer peple ischent, cites itake and tounes i-brent; him to a castel þai han idrive, þat stant be þe se upon a clive, and al þe ost liþ him aboute, be this to daie a is in doute. (110) the exhaustive enumeration of cities or territories and the detailed account of the alleged siege by the armies of three kings and fi ve dukes are not usual in this narrative which is generally more succinct in its descriptions.19 drawing on his eloquence and showing off his rhetorical mastery, bevis makes his story plausible. in addition to the pilgrim’s cloak, then, it is this verbal profusion, this “rhétorique de l’excès” (gallé 2005: 260) that warrants the credibility of the fi ctitious story. it is noteworthy that the economy of the narration is also subverted by a lengthy and eloquent description in another episode, which, due to its questionable nature, requires further endorsement: the battle with the dragon. here, the poet off ers 19 although in the anglo-norman version the alleged pilgrim also enumerates the places he visited and describes the siege of dabilent (1519–1527), in the a redaction of the middle english poem (as well as in s and n) this passage is considerably amplifi ed: the number of place names is doubled and more precise details about the siege are included to confer further credibility to the pilgrim’s account. in c, m, and the printed versions, instead, bevis’s tales as a traveller are omitted and bonefas’s speech is, in varying degrees, amplifi ed. the use of the pilgrim disguise 101 selim 19 (2012) a very detailed account of the characteristics of this dubitable creature, including, for example, the length of the dragon’s tusks: his eren were rowe & ek long, his fr ount be-fore hard & strong; eiȝte toskes at is mouþ stod out, þe leste was seventene ench about, þe her, þe cholle under þe chin, he was boþe leiþ and grim; a was i-maned ase a stede; þe heved a bar wiþ meche pride, be-twene þe scholder and þe taile foure and twenti fot,saunfaile. his taile was of gret stringeþe, sextene fot a was a lingþe; his bodi ase a wintonne. whan hit schon þe briȝte sonne, his wingges schon so þe glas. his sides wer hard ase eni bras. his brest was hard ase eni ston; a foulere þing nas never non. (125)20 the description of the dragon provides an eloquent example of this use of hyperbolic language as an authorizing strategy, which the narrator had previously underscored in his fi ctitious account of the siege of dabilent. consequently, exploiting the meta-narrative possibilities of the pilgrim-disguise episode available in his source, the auchinleck bevis-poet suggests diff erent and quite contradictory forms of narrative authorization: on the one hand, he draws his credibility fr om external sources, either a pilgrim or the “frensch bok”, whose stories he claims to reproduce or translate. on the other hand, however, he emphatically asserts the value of his own eloquence as a comparable source of credibility, moving away fr om the humilitas20 this long and “excessive” description appears only in a. in nsec (3497– 3501), m (2372–2376), and the printed versions (2340–2344) a much more concise depiction is provided when bevis encounters the dragon, and this is correspondingly omitted in a. maría dumas 102selim 19 (2012) topos which translators generally use to describe the relationship between source and translation, even when they consciously subvert their sources.21 3 conclusions in the past decade, scholars have argued that boeve de haumtone and the roman de horn share numerous features with continental chansons de geste and could, in fact, be considered peculiar insular developments of this genre (ailes 2006, 2008, 2011; furrow 2010). a common practice has been to read these texts in the light of the critical models which describe and explain the continental genre in order to ascertain their suitability when applied to the insular corpus. if one follows this approach regarding the ways in which poets represent themselves and their poetics within their own works, one reaches interesting conclusions. in his seminal work on medieval poetics, paul zumthor (2000 [1972]: 399) states: quelle que soit la rigueur avec laquelle il applique les règles propres de son texte, jamais le chanteur de geste (bien diff érent en cela du trouvère) n’imposa à ses auditeurs sa propre conscience artistique; il subordonne, à l’accomplissement d’une tâche qui est de raconter une fois encore une fable héritée, le dessein particulier de sa parole. while this fi ttingly describes the poet of boeve de haumtone, who appears to be exclusively focused to the task of telling a story, the author of the roman de horn can hardly be described in terms of zumthor’s chanteurs. the meta-narrative procedures presented above show a poet with a clear artistic conscience, eager to showcase and assert his poetics and, therefore, at least concerning this aspect, closer to romance authors such as chrétien de troyes or hue de 21 for a survey on medieval translation as an essentially hermeneutical practice, see copeland 1991. the use of the pilgrim disguise 103 selim 19 (2012) rotelande.22 interestingly, when these narratives are rewritten in middle english, the case is the opposite: mestre thomas’s overt displays of authorial consciousness cannot be traced in king horn but are defi nitely visible in the auchinleck bevis. jennifer fellows has in fact suggested that “the auchinleck bevis clearly represents a systematic reworking of the romance—what in short may reasonably be termed ‘authorial revision’ ” (1998: 21). the texts we have looked at show two diff erent authorship models. the poets of both boeve de haumtone and king horn appear to adopt the traditionally epic authorial stance: they are simply vehicles of a tradition they inherit. as michel stanesco puts it, “ce n’est pas l’individu qui a ici la parole, mais la tradition embrassant toutes les dimensions de l’être, y compris le dit poétique” (1991: 8). in this context, zumthor certainly had it right when he proclaimed the author’s disappearance, in whose place “reste le sujet de l’énonciation, une instance locutrice intégrée au texte et indissociable de son fonctionnement: ‘ça’ parle” (zumthor 2000 [1972]: 89). but the authors of the roman de horn and the auchinleck bevis refuse to disappear. advertising their authorial status, the auchinleck scribe and mestre thomas insistently drive the reader’s attention to their role in the individual reworking of a traditional story. the development of literary conscience is, therefore, not linear and, as becomes evident fr om the works analyzed above, the vernacular employed would not represent a signifi cantly determining factor in the evolution of authorial consciousness in medieval england. these conclusions may be supported by recent critical work on other anglo-norman and middle english romances. a. c. spearing, for instance, off ers an insightful reading on the literary awareness of the havelok poet (2005) and rosalind field, in her study on the translation of gui de warewic into middle english 22 for the role of twelft h-century romance and, in particular, chrétien de troyes’s work in the development of authorial consciousness, see zink 1981. maría dumas 104selim 19 (2012) (2008a), has demonstrated that the anglo-norman author may be described in terms similar to those usually employed to refer to middle english popular writers. these essays have contributed greatly to qualify previous generalizations on the authorial modes commonly associated either to anglo-norman or to middle english romances. however, much remains to be done. according to field’s recent assessment of anglo-norman critical practice (2011), scholars have long been focused on the intended audiences of these romances, neglecting the authorship question. this essay has thus been intended to partially make up for this uneven distribution of scholarly attention, extending the study of this problem also to the middle english period. maría dumas university of buenos aires conicet (imhicihu) references ailes, m. 2006: anglo-norman developments of the chanson de geste. olifant 25.1: 97–109. ailes, m. 2008: the anglo-norman boeve de haumtone as a chanson 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suard, f. 1994: le motif du déguisement dans quelques chansons du cycle de guillaume d’orange. in f. suard ed. chanson de geste et tradition épique en france au moyen age. caen, paradigme: 111–126. thompson, s. 1995: motif-index of folk-literature. indiana, indiana university press. wadsworth, r. 1972: historical romance in england: studies in anglonorman and middle english romance (ph. d. dissertation). york, university of york. warren, m. 2007: translation. in p. strohm ed. middle english: oxford twenty-first century approaches to literature. oxford, oxford university press: 51–67. weiss, j. 2004: insular beginnings: anglo-norman romance. in c. saunders ed. a companion to romance fr om classical to contemporary. malden, blackwell: 26–44. weiss, j. 2010: the exploitation of ideas of pilgrimage and sainthood in gui de warewic. in l. ashe, i. djordjević & j. weiss eds. the exploitations of medieval romance. woodbridge, boydell & brewer: 43–56. weiss, j., trans. 2008: “boeve de haumtone” 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n. 1996: the schools give a license to poets. in r. copeland ed. criticism and dissent in the middle ages. cambridge, cambridge university press: 151–180. zink, m. 1981: une mutation de la conscience littéraire: le langage romanesque à travers des exemples fr ançais du xiie siècle. cahiers de civilisation médiévale 24: 3–27. zumthor, p. 1980. parler du moyen age. paris, les éditions de minuit. zumthor, p. 2000 [1972]: essai de poétique médiévale. 2nd ed. paris, éditions du seuil. • received 17 sep 2013; accepted 25 oct 2013 selim04.pdf xavier campos, selim 4 (1994): 121-123 ælfric refers to bishop possidius (with the source) possidius,1 bishop of calam2 since ad 397 up to his death in an unknown date later than ad 437,3 also the writer of a latin vita sancti augustini4 and an indiculus dating all the works of augustine of hippo,5 is an author whose textual presence in the literature of the anglosaxons had deserved an intended entrance into the archives of sources of anglo-saxon literary culture (saslc), an ongoing project in the center for medieval and early renaissance studies, state university of new york at binghamton, usa. however, possidius’s intended saslc entry remains empty.6 this paper identifies both: a) one reference to possidius in one of ælfric’s catholic homilies, and b) the fragment from augustine of hippo’s de civitate dei which ælfric seems to have used as a source. 1 there is a spanish biography of bishop possidius introducing his own vita sancti augustini in obras de san agustín en edición bilingüe, ed. v. capánaga (madrid, 1969), i.295-02. this document also includes references to other latin editions of possidius’s vita sancti augustini, several translations of this work into italian, spanish, catalan, french, and german, as well as a few scholarly papers dealing with our bishop. 2 calama, a city in the ancient roman province of numidia, has been identified with present -day guelme, in the north of algeria. 3 it was in ad 437 when genseric, leader of the vandals from spain invading the north of africa, drew possidius out of his episcopal see. (capánaga, ed. 302). 4 the latin text of this work is in v. capánaga, ed. 303-65. 5 v. capánaga, ed. 375-6. 6 f.m. biggs, t.d. hill, p.e. szarmach, eds., with the assistance of k. hammond, sources of anglo-saxon literary culture: a trial version (new york, 1990) 233. xavier campos ____________________________________________________________________ 122 the homily where bishop possidius is mentioned bears the following title: «uii. kalendas ianuarii. natale sancti stephani protomartyris»,1 largely rendered from de civitate dei2 and different commonplaces from the new testament.3 forty old english words shaping three sentences are the vehicle to the reference here described: eucharius hatte sum mæssepreost on pam lande pe is gehaåten hispania. se wæs íearle geswenct mid langsumum broce. ía gebrohte se biscop possidius. sum íing lytles of íære foresædan cyrcan íæs eadigan stephanes. and se preost pu r h pæt wearí gehæled.4 the latin text seemingly used as a source is the following: 1 ælfric’s catholic homilies: the second series text, ed. m. godden (eets, 1979) 12-18. 2 obras de san agustín. edición bilingüe, ed. j. morán (madrid, 1965), xvii. 779. this volume contains the last ten books building up de civitate dei. our present interest is centered upon book 22, chapter 8, pp. 705-21. 3 on the one hand some biblical commonplaces are part of the translated text itself, as in ‘criste. accipe spiritum meum. ? æt is crist onfóh minne gast’ (godden ed., p. 13) = facts 7: 59; some others, on the other hand, are part of ælfric’s final explanations, as in ‘min drihten miltsa him nyton hí hwæt hí dop’ (godden, ed., p. 17) = lk. 23: 34; ‘drihten min. ne sete pu him íæs dæda to synne’ (godden ed.,p. 17) = facts 7: 60; ‘? æt ía wyrigendan godes rice ne geagniaí’ (godden, ed., p. 17) = 1 cor. 6: 9; ‘lufiaí eowre fynd. doí pam tela íe eow hátiaí’ (godden ed., p. 18) = lk. 6: 27; ‘gebbidaí for eowrum ehterum and tynendum. ? æt ge beon eowres fæder bearn se íe on heofonum is’ (godden ed., p. 18) = matt. 5: 44-45. 4 m. godden ed., p. 12. ____________________________________________________________________ 123 eucharius est presbyter ex hispania, calamae habitat, veteri morbo calculi laborabat, per memoriam supradicti martyris, quam possidius illo advexit episcopus, salvus factus est.1 this fragment had been slightly enlarged by ælfric’s purpose to overcome cultural distances. the additions he carried out actually explain wh at hispania is, and provide both a) the hearer/reader with the necessary reference to supradictus martyr, and b) his text with an element absent from the latin one (cyrcan instead of memoria) but necessary to the new narrative coherence within the old english homily. one omis sion observed (calamae habitat) prevents the hearer/reader from sophisticated and unnecessary in formation. an alteration (langsum broc for morbus calculi) hides the precise hue of the latin original. the challenge now are mss, booklists, quotations and citations to be identified. xavier campos vilanova university jaume i, castelló * † * 1 augustine of hippo’s de civitate dei 22: 8, 12, ed. j. morán (madrid, 1965), xvii. 714-5. selim02.pdf 160 from sebell and the grunye to sevilla and la coruña: translating barbour’s bruce into spanish much work remains to be done in the field of translating mediaeval english texts into spanish. my own interest in the history of scots and my activity in the area of translation eventually led me to the project of producing a spanish version of scotland’s major epic poem. this article aims to set out some of the reasons for carrying out such a translation and to make some considerations about the technical problems involved. some of the ideas included here were presented in a paper delivered at the fifth symposium on literary translation held at the university of extremadura at cáceres in may 1991, and others in a paper delivered at the third cardiff conference on the theory and practice of translation in the middle ages, held at the university of wales in august 1991. in october 1991 this translation project was awarded a grant from the spanish ministry of culture (ayudas a la creación literaria, modalidad de traducción). i wish to acknowledge the help received, which will mean that the translation will be ready for publication in 1993. john barbour, archdeacon of aberdeen, started to write the epic poem the bruce, based on the life and exploits of robert bruce, king robert i of scotland, in 1375, as we are told in the poem, and probably completed it in 1376. the work has come down to us in two manuscripts, both of them copied out in the fifteenth century. the cambridge ms (c) was written out in 1487, by a copyist identified as 161 john ramsay. the edinburgh ms (e) was written out in 1489 by the same copyist, although recent studies show that it was probably copied from an older text. for editorial purposes, and ever since pinkerton’s edition of e in 1790, the work has been divided into twenty books, although no such division exists in the manuscripts. walter w. skeat edited c for the early english text society in 1870-89. up to book iv, line 57, he followed e, since that first part, an estimated 25 pages, is missing in the cambridge ms. m.p. mcdiarmid and j.a.c. stevenson (editor of the dictionary of the older scottish tongue) edited e in 1980-85: according to stevenson’s studies, it is a “better” text than c, and reflects an earlier stage of the language. the poem is written in early scots, a variety which has many features in common with the dialect known as northern middle english and also some peculiarly scottish characteristics. early scots is dated from 1375 (to 1450) precisely because that is the date of composition of the bruce, the first major work of scottish literature. up to now, this epic poem has never been translated into spanish, but i think there are several good motives for doing so. the most obvious one is given by barbour in the very first line of the poem: “storys to rede ar delitabill.” ideally, all major works of literature should be made available to the greatest number of readers possible, and that in itself is a good enough reason for translating. but perhaps one should ask more precisely what a work like the bruce can offer a reader of present-day spanish. like the epic poem it is, more in the style of the chansons de geste than in that of romances of chivalry, it offers the narration of brave exploits by the two main heroes, bruce and douglas, and the struggle of the scottish people in their fight to break away from the subjection to which they had been submitted by king edward i of england. it presents a lively narration of several battles and skirmishes, and especially of the battle of bannockburn, 162 and includes a famous passage in praise of freedom, among many other brilliant moments. spanish readers will find several points of contact with the most famous of spanish epic poems, the cantar de mio cid (1140), which recounts the feats of rodrigo díaz de vivar, “el cid,” in fighting against the moors who had invaded spain. like el cid, the bruce is based on historical facts, but the author’s aim is not so much to write a chronicle as to praise the virtues of the heroes of the story, and to express the idea of national freedom. nevertheless, the bruce is one of the main sources of information about the angloscottish wars in the fourteenth century. a spanish audience will now have a chance to read about the wars between england and scotland as they were told by a scotsman of the time. it could also be argued that, with nationalism still an important issue in present-day europe, a reading of the bruce can be of help in obtaining a historical perspective. for spanish readers there is an added interest in the final part of the poem, in book xx, where we find a description of lord james douglas’s death in spain. after king robert i died, we are told in the poem, douglas tried to keep the promise he had made to his sovereign, whic h was to carry the king’s heart in a silver case on a crusade to the holy land. douglas and his men travel to spain on their way there. they sail past “the grunye of spanye” (la coruña, in spain) till they come to “sebell the graunt” (seville the great). there douglas decides to help the king of spain fight against the sarracens, and is eventually killed in a skirmish against them. historians in spain have tried to reconstruct the facts behind this episode,1 and now the spanish public will be able to read it as told in the poem. 1.see j. e. lópez de coca and b. krauel, “cruzados escoceses en la frontera de granada (1330)”, in anuario de estudios medievales, no. 18 (barcelona: c.s.i.c., 1988), 245261. see also blanca krauel heredia, “sir james douglas’s death in spain, 1330” in the scottish historical review, vol. lxix, no. 187 (1990), 84-95. 163 these reasons seem to justify the attempt to translate the full poem into present-day spanish. once that has been accepted as the transla tor’s aim, several methodological questions arise. in the first place, a decision has to be made about the text to be used as a basis for the translation. the authoritative editions of the two manuscripts, by skeat (c) and mcdiarmid and stevenson (e), make it feasible for the translator to work on them without having to translate from the originals, although one should always count on the fact that the need to go back to the manuscripts may come up in some particular instances. in the light of the reasons given by stevenson in his introduction to the edition of e, the translator’s choice must be to use that edition of the edinburgh ms as the basis. however, in my opinion, skeat’s edition of the cambridge ms should always be kept at hand, and his glossary and many of his notes and observations will prove to be be most valuable aids to translation. skeat’s punctuation of the poem is certainly a help: whereas stevenson keeps punctuation to a minimum, trying to edit the text as close to the original as possible, skeat punctuated his text much more profusely. in my opinion, there is little point in trying to reflect the original lack of punctuation in the translation, and therefore skeat’s suggested punctuation (with which, however, i do not agree in all instances), is a major guideline. differences between the mss as far as contents are concerned should be pointed out in notes, indicating the lines which are present or absent in c as compared with e, and including the translation of those lines as notes. textual differences such as variant spellings, or the use of different words which amount to much the same meaning need not of course be noted, since these do not normally affect the translation. there are, of course, cases in which such items are important. a good example of this, which also illustrates why mcdiarmid and stevenson’s edition of e is to be preferred, can be seen in the reference to la coruña quoted above. in book xx, lines 324-5, when 164 douglas’s trip to spain is described, skeat’s text has : “he salit, and left the grund of spanye / on north half him…,” where skeat takes grund as “ground.” stevenson points out that both e and c have grunye but that skeat, not recognizing the place-name, emended to grund.1 the translation must, of course, reflect stevenson’s and not skeat’s reading. once the source text has been selected, two decisions regarding language and form must be made. one has to do with the type of spanish to be used; the other means making a choice between a prose or a verse translation. the first question poses the problem of whether one should try to use something resembling fourteenth-century spanish when translating a fourteenth-century text. in this aspect the translator may find help in the advice offered by a master of things mediaeval, sir walter scott. in the dedicatory epistle to ivanhoe, laurence templeton, the “author” of the work, explains that in narrating manners and events of times past it is not a good idea to try to use only those words and phrases which have fallen out of use. he says that in fact the words and expressions which have remained the same in the language from the older days to our time are much greater in number than those which have become obsolete since then. he also suggests that anyone wishing to imitate what they admire in earlier times should try to avoid the error of chatterton, the eighteenth-century poet, who, in order to give his language the appearance of antiquity, “rejected every word that was modern, and produced a dialect entirely different from any that had ever been spoken in great britain.” in other words, we can accept as advice for the translator of medieval texts what scott was suggesting for the writer of historical novels: 1.lópez de coca and krauel (op. cit.) also say the place referred to is la coruña. 165 his language must not be exclusively obsolete and unintelligible; but he should admit, if possible, no word or turn of phraseology betraying an origin dire ctly modern.1 thus, in translating into spanish, it would not be wise to rely solely on an archaic vocabulary. in my opinion, one should definitely avoid employing certain characteristics of old spanish which may look as if they would give the text an ancient appearance. these would be things such as the use of e as the coordinating conjunction (the older form as opposed to present-day y), or putting the definite article before a possessive adjective preceding a noun (“la mi espada”) which would give a sort of “mock old spanish flavour” to the text. a careful look at dates in the spanish etymological dictionary2 in many cases will show the translator that the spanish equivalent that comes to mind for a term was probably already in use in the fourteenth century anyway, but the main aid to be got from such a work is information about recent usage of words and expressions. the transla tor should certainly strive to avoid idioms which sound very new, or those which have developed a different meaning in modern times. as far as geographical dialect is concerned, the fact that the text is in early scots does not imply a stylistic problem for the translation, since the whole poem is written in that dialect, and there are no contrasts with other varieties. a translation of chaucer’s reeve’s tale would be harder in this sense, since the translator would wish to reflect the students’ northern dialect as contrasted with the east midland one used in the narrative and in the miller’s speech. for the 1.walter scott, dedicatory epistle to ivanhoe (1819) (london: dent, 1977). the quotations are from pp. 19 and 20. 2.joan corominas annd josé antonio pascual, diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico (6 vols. madrid: gredos, 1980-1991). 166 bruce the translator of course has to be familiar with the grammar and vocabulary of early scots (which differs from chaucer’s east midland dialect in several ways), but once a decision has been made about the dialect of spanish into which the text will be translated, no other varieties have to be sought. i am translating the bruce into standard spanish (castilian), which seems the obvious choice since it is the type of spanish in which most books are written, but other dialects could also be used if they were used consistently. in keeping with scott’s recommendations, i feel it is adequate in some cases to make a sparing use of archaic words that would fit in well with the tone of the text. i would like to quote as an example of a similar attitude the words of dr. luis cortés vázquez in the introduction to his transla tion into spanish of la chanson de roland: como observarán mis lectores he usado a veces, sin exagerar, un léxico arcaizante; palabras como aviltar, guarir, huesa, fortuna, en lugar de las hoy usuales de envilecer, proteger, bota de montar o tempestad, que espero sirvan para dar una adecuada ambientación al texto.1 in this line, the vocabulary used in the cantar de mio cid is often a good source. an obvious example is the word mesnada “a company of men at arms who in old times served under the command of the king or of a rich man or leading knight” (to translate the definition given in the diccionario de la real academia de la lengua española ), a word which is certainly archaic today, but which is the best translation for menye in the bruce, glossed by stevenson as “a band 1.luis cortés vázquez, el cantar de roldán (salamanca, 1975). his translation of the oxford ms of the chanson is in verse, the laisses being rendered in spanish alejandrinos with the same rhyme (rima asonante) being kept throughout each lais, as in the original. 167 of followers, army,” a word not to be found in present-day english (or present-day scots, at least not in that sense). both words ultimately go back to the same latin source, scots having taken the word from old french, and mesnada certainly appears as the most adequate equivalent. the same could be said for the word battail in the sense of “division (of an army).” the diccionario quoted above includes that definition as one of the senses of spanish batalla , but the word has fallen out of use in that sense, though it was frequent in old spanish. terms of this type are perhaps the easiest and safest way of reflecting the antiquity of the text without forcing the language into a parody of its older stages. apart from the cantar de mio cid , the spanish romances, metrical narratives based -sometimes rather looselyon historical events and figures, and written especially in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in spain, are good sources for vocabulary that may be suitable to the period of the text. i would like to add that the considerations just given apply mostly to the idea of a prose translation; in the case of a verse translation (and dr. cortés did an excellent one, with rhyme), i feel that the translator should be allowed the poetic licence of making a slightly broader use of such archaisms, and even resorting more frequently to some constructions, such as the use of the verb ser with intransitive verbs of motion, as opposed to modern usage which favours haber (“es llegado” vs. “ha llegado”). which brings up the other major question: prose or verse? the question of whether to translate the text as prose or verse must be faced taking several things into account. as a translator, i tend to agree more and more with the idea that poetry must be translated as poetry, and thus if the original text conforms to certain patterns of metre or rhyme, the translation should also be bound by certain formal requisites, though not necessarily the same patterns. the next thing to add is that not all poetry is, so to say, “poetic” in the same degree, and that metre and rhyme do not of themselves make a 168 text “poetic.” as an example of this, i will quote the translation into present-day english of some lines from the bruce. as someone familiar with the poem who has attempted verse translations of several parts of it, i am aware that it is extremely difficult to keep up a rhyme-scheme, couplets in this case, throughout the translation of a poem over 13,600 lines long. my point is that keeping to the requirements of rhyme and metre does not always make for “poetry.” we may find that powerful lines like barbour’s reproach to the scots for having allowed king edward i of england to decide who should be king of scotland (book i, lines 91-94): a! blynd folk full off all foly! haid ye wmbethocht yow enkrely qhuat perell to yow mycht apper, ye had nocht wrocht on that maner. may lose the greater part of their force due to the changes required by keeping to rhyme and metre: ah, foolish folk, how blind ye were for had ye thought with greater care what perils to you soon might grow, ye would not have arranged it so.1 also, metre and rhyme may be much more relevant stylistically in shorter lyrical compositions than in lengthy historical narratives like the bruce. if in spite of this the translator decides to attempt a translation in verse,the next thing would be to decide what type of line to use. the bruce is written in tetrameters, which in a strict correspondence would give us the spanish octosílabo, or eight-syllable line, but 1.as in the translation into modern english by archibald h. douglas (london: mcclellan, 1964). 169 it is a fact that, english being a language which has many native monosyllabic words, and spanish having a greater number of polysyllabic words, a line translated fully into spanish may have nearly twice the length of the original (and the reverse is also true). the lines which at first thought might suggest themselves as most suitable for the type of poetry involved might seem to be the fourteen-syllable spanish alejandrino, the line most frequently used in el cantar de mio cid , or the eight-syllable line used in the romances. however, the former turns out to be too long in most cases, while the latter is far too short if a fairly high degree of literalness is desired.1 if we decided on a verse translation having a fixed metre (which will always mean a certain loss in the literalness of the translation), the line that would seem to suit the translation best would probably be the endecasílabo, or eleven-syllable line, which in length is the close equivalent of the english pentameter (a line which, in turn, is usually best rendered as the spanish alejandrino, or fourteen-syllable line). using the eleven-syllable line, if rhyme were to be employed, we would then have have to decide on a rhyme-scheme. couplets of course are the closest to the original, but other possibilities are available, including the rhyme-scheme of the romances, where the evennumber lines rhyme with the type of rhyme known as rima asonante (only the vowels from the last stress onward of the words in rhyme position have to be the same). i have used eleven-syllable rhyming couplets in translating the lines in praise of freedom found in book i, and eleven-syllable lines with the second rhyme-scheme described in 1.a most interesting discussion on the relationship between the metre and rhymescheme chosen and the amount of literalness conveyed in the translation of poetry was presented by tomás ramos orea in his paper “la traducción de poesía o el juego de los espejos” delivered at the quinto simposio sobre traducción literaria (inglés > castellano, catalán, gallego y vasco) at the university of extremadura at cáceres in may 1991. he exemplified with his own translations of the same poem (part of marvell’s “to his coy mistress”) rendered into spanish in four different poetic patterns. 170 translating part of bruce’s address to his men before the battle of bannockburn in book xii. some examples from both are given at the end. as for the question of the tone and “ancient flavour” of the translation, the spanish vocabulary used here would go to prove scott’s point: practically all the words in those lines already existed in fourteenth-century spanish, and they are all still in use today. it would be desirable to have a full verse translation following one of these patterns, but the task would take a long time, and the effort might not be worth it: there would inevitably be passages which, although they might formally maintain the rhyme and metre, would in fact not be very “poetic” at all (as in the case of the modern english version quoted earlier; in fact,something similar happens in the original at certain points), and yet their meaning would have been altered, however little, by the demands of conforming to rhyme and metre. at present, my position as a translator of the bruce is that it seems more convenient to start off by producing a full prose translation of the text. as explained above, in the case of long narrative poems like the bruce the formal poetic shape is not as important as in other types of poetry. keeping in mind scott’s advice as outlined and illustrated above, i believe that an acceptable prose translation which is faithful to the contents and to the tone and style of the poem is a reasonable aim. barbour’s opening lines, of which i have already quoted the first, say: storys to rede ar delitabill, suppos that thai be nocht but fabill; than suld storyss that suthfast wer, and thai wer said on gud maner, hawe doubill plesance in heryng. the fyrst plesance is the carpyng, 171 and the tothir the suthfastnes, that schawys the thing rycht as it wes … the translator should try to make the carpyng (i.e. the narrating) a credible echo of the original; although there is some literary loss in doing a prose translation, i believe it is possible to produce one which can give the reader of modern spanish a degree of plesance comparable to that obtained by a reader of the early scots original. my project as it stands is to complete the prose translation and to include as an appendix the verse translations of several major passages, such as the praise of freedom, some of bruce’s addresses to his men, episodes from the battle of bannockburn, and some from douglas’s expedition and death in spain. it is my wish that the doubill plesance will not be greatly diminished: a faithful and well documented translation will ensure that the suthfastnes put into the poem by barbour will not be altered; the care put into the prose translation and the craft put into the excerpts translated as verse will, i hope, make the carpyng at least half as pleasant as that of the original. samples of verse translation (the originals here are as edited by skeat) lines in praise of freedom (book i, lines 225-242). a! fredome is a noble thing! fredome mayss man to haiff liking; fredome all solace to mann giffis: he levys at ess that frely levys! 172 a noble hart may haiff nane ess, na ellys nocht that may him pless, giff fredome failyhe, for fre liking is yharnit our all othir thing. na, he that ay hass levyt fre, may nocht knaw weill the propyrte, the angyr, na the wrechyt dome, that is couplyt t o foul thyrldome. bot giff he had assyit it, than all perquher he suld it wit; and suld think fredome more to pryss than all the gold in warld that is thus contrar thingis euir-mar, discoweringis off the tothir ar. ¡la libertad es una cosa noble! la libertad le da albedrío al hombre, la libertad todo solaz confiere: ¡vive con paz quien vive libremente! para un corazón noble no hay sosiego, ni cosa que le agrade por entero, si falta libertad, que el libre arbitrio para él será el bien más perseguido. no, quien haya vivido siempre libre, no sabrá bien qué condición tan triste, qué ira y qué miseria encierra el sino que el vil sometimiento trae consigo. mas si hubiere vivido sojuzgado, entonces lo sabrá, con saber largo; tendrá la libertad por más preciada 173 que todo el oro que en el mundo haya. pues siempre, de este modo, los opuestos uno del otro son descubrimientos. bruce encourages his men (book xii, 231-258). for reasons of space only two of the three “advantges” are given here. “and, certis, me think weill that we, far-out abasyng, aucht til be worthy and of gret wassalage for we haue thre gret avantage. the first is, that we haue the richt; and for the richt ilk man suld ficht. the tothir is, thai ar cummyn heir, for lypning in thar gret power, to seik vs in our awne land, and [has] brocht her, richt til our hand, riches in-to so gret plentee, that the pourest of yow sal be bath rych and mychty thar-with-all, gif that we wyn, as weill may fall.” y a mí sin duda me parece bueno que luchemos con brío y con fiereza, pues nosotros tenemos tres ventajas. tenemos la razón, es la primera; por la razón han de luchar los hombres. es la segunda, que hasta nuestra tierra, 174 a buscarnos aquí han venido ellos, muy confiados en sus grandes fuerzas, y así han traído hasta nuestras manos tan grandes cantidades de riquezas que harán que sea el más pobre de vosotros muy rico y poderoso gracias a ellas, si, como bien pudiera ser, vencemos.1 editions of the bruce mcdiarmid, j.a.p. & stevenson, j.a.c.,1980-85: barbour’s br uce. edinburgh: the scottish text society (3 vols.) skeat, w. w., 1870-89: barbour’s bruce. the early english text society. e.e.t.s. facsimile: o.u.p.,1968 (2 vols.) fernando toda university of sevilla * * * 1.spanish readers may find it interesting to compare bruce’s second avantage -“in coming to conquer us the english are really bringing riches to your hands”with el cid’s words to doña jimena who is frightened at seeing the moors gather around valencia: “ya mugier ondrada, non ayades pesar! / riqueza es que nos acreçe, maravillosa e grand: / a poco que viniestes, presend vos quieren dar: / por casar son vuestra fijas, adúzenvos axuvar.” (lines 1647-1650, as edited by r. menéndez pidal). selim03.pdf 199 de la cruz, juan & ángel cañete (1992): historia del inglés. (fundamentación e historímetro). málaga: ediciones edin ford. 363 pp. (ptas. 4,000). we must congratulate the authors of this book because they have offered us a new, different, elaborated and rigorous view of the history of english from its oldest stages to the modern times. with the exception of f. fernández’s impressive and thorough historia de la lengua inglesa (1982), no other history of english that covers all its periods has been published in spanish or in spain so far, although some monographs of a particularly high standard have dealt with concrete topics or periods of this aspect of english studies. de la cruz and cañete’s approach to the history of english is also new and unconventional because their historia del inglés is not a mere history of english in a traditional sense. the book is not revolutionary in the data that its authors offer, but rather in the way in which such data are presented to the reader. this is unusual, because de la cruz has contributed extensively to explain several issues in the history and evolution of english (see for in s tance, among others, de la cruz 1969, 1970, 1972a, 1972b, 1972c, 1972d, 1973a, 1973b, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1983, 1986a, 1986b, 1988), and his work has always been characterized by the careful examination of data and the revaluation of previous studies, a procedure that has frequently implied the eager formulation of arresting and demanding theories. that this historia del inglés presents a mixed methodology in the presentation of facts and expla nations, and a peculiar handling of sources and references, may b e a result of the audience that might have been in mind when preparing the book, that is, one may assume that this is a university handbook for the very likely audience of spanish undergraduate students of english. although we may pre sume that, and also that de la cruz and cañete’s own málaga students might 200 have been one of the primary targets of historia del inglés, the book is worth reading by all other students and scholars of the history of english. two main methodological approaches have been applied to the composition of this historia del inglés, and they have been used with different intentions within the structure of the work: 1) the first one is an external view of the history of the english from the period of the migration of the anglo -saxons from their continental territories to britain, up to 1066: all that constitutes what is chapter 1 in the book (pp. 45-84); plus a section in chapter 2 (pp. 107-126) that deals with the scandinavian and french influences on english, especially on its lexicon; 2) the second one is mainly an internal view of the history of english divided into two well defined parts. the first portion deals with the older stages of english and its previous evolution from indo-european to old english (pp. 85-106 in chapter 2); and then, most of the book (chapter 4: 139-340) is devoted to the diachronic study of the english language that we find in writ ten documents. the second part presents some precise illustrations of those texts (chapter 3: 127-138, and the first part of chapter 6: 341-350) and offers a well constructed pattern that may guide the student through the process of a linguistic commentary of the texts. this appreciation contrasts partially, no doubt, with the authors’ declara tion in their prologue (p. 15) that their book is constituted by two parts: the first one devoted to building the ‘necessary foundations for the successful study of the historical evolution of the english language’ and which is subdivided in five sections; and a second part formed by an ‘his torímetro’ (i.e. a historymeter: a chronological set of charts that measure the history of en glish) that provides ‘an analytical instrument’ to study the texts that illustrate that evolution and a set of suggestions for further textual commentaries. de la cruz and cañete also explain that their first part contains three sections that cover (1) a ‘general view of the peoples that have contributed to the cre ation of the english nation and its tongue;’ (2) the ‘analysis of the linguistic sources of english plus a short survey of indo-european declensions,’ and 201 their relations with latin and germanic, together with a review of scandinavian and french influence on middle english; and (3) the ‘first steps for the practical study of the language of the first english people. this historia del inglés also includes a “shock” for the reader (pp. 21-28), a general introduction -section 0 (pp. 29-43), a short section -the second part in chapter 6 (pp. 351-356)directed to present to the student the elemental commentary of a text from the perspective of the history of english, and finally a bibliography -chapter 7 (pp. 357-363)whose incorporation to the volume one has to assume as being principally a guide for supplementary reading because references in the text have been kept to a minimum. the index divides the volume in 8 sections, and it may suggest to the reader a different structure. these sections are numbered and entitled: 0. general introduction and general historymeter; 1. population; 2. linguistic relations of english; 3. first steps and adapted texts; 4. historymeter of his torical english; 5. diachronic illustration of texts; 6. suggestions for the elementary treatment of the texts from the perspective of the history of en glish; and 7. bibliography. references in this historia del inglés are to some extent irregular. for instance on p. 230 a mention to la prosa de los anglosajones is quoted without brackets -and this is the procedure normally followed in the book-, whereas in other places such as on p. 309 we find a double possibility: samuels’ linguistic evolution contrasts with lass’ english phonology, because this latter is bracketed whereas the former is not. when samuels is cited again on p. 316 a full reference is given, although it is customary in the book to use op. cit. and similar latin abbreviations when an item has appeared previously. also, there are books quoted in the text or in the notes that have not been collected in the general bibliography: some of them such as c. castillo’s thesis: el verbo frasal en shakespeare, (note 13 to section 4.5.2, p. 270), have their full reference when they appear for the first time. however, there are other cases reference to which can never be traced in the historia del inglés: such is the allusion to martinet on p. 310: it may refer to 202 the économie des changements phonétiques, but one can never be sure. another one appears on p. 287 where ‘gimson (p. 159)’ is alluded to. it is obscure, unless the reader is familiar with english phonetics, because gimson is neither in the general bibliography nor in the notes, and whereas there may be very little doubt that it must be a. c. gimson’s popular and excellent handbook an introduction to the pronunciation of english, that may not be so evident for the undergraduate student or for a more general audience. it would be advisable, hence, that when the volume is revised for a new issue only one system of reference may be used, as that will relieve the reader considerably from the pains of checking and rechecking pages searching for the appropriate notes or from the frequent coming and going from the main text to its accessory parts. in this aspect it would also be highly recommendable that the notes should appear at the bottom of pages rather than at the end of subsections and sections. we will now discuss the sections of this book in detail. the “shock” pages are a set of preliminary reflections on the nature and principles of textual commentary and the historical study of languages. this shock treatment is an exc ellent idea for attracting the attention of the student: it consists of a synchronic and diachronic comparison that implies simultaneously intracultural and intercultural effects and modes, because the texts chosen for the illustration are an excerpt from the old english and its corre sponding medieval spanish apollonius together with their modern english and spanish renderings. that, i think, provokes an automatic impression of proximity and alienation that is skilfully exploited by the authors and helps both to arouse and maintain the interest of the reader. chapter 0 includes an introduction that inserts a figure illustrating the human brain, and then a map followed by a set of diagrams depicting the indo-european families of languages and a general chronology. these dia grams can be exceptionally useful for teaching purposes. in this sense, as this historia del inglés makes a recurrent use of diagrams and charts in its 203 different divisions, it becomes a book full of tutoring resources: it would be rather effective, for instance, to use an overhead projector and xerocopies and transform de la cruz and cañete’s excellent synthesis into introductory classroom material. chapter 1 deals with the population of britain before the arrival of the anglo -saxons (pp. 45-51), and then, in greater detail, with the migrations and the kingdoms of the anglo -saxons (pp. 51-84). as this book is planned to be used together with de la cruz’s iniciación práctica al inglés antiguo (1986a), it is only fitting that these aspects of population stop being dis cussed at the times of the norman invasion. it might be worth adding a subsection on the true extent of norman and french influences, plus commentaries on other influences such as flemish in the 13th and 14th centuries for a future issue. from my point of view, a whole chapter considering the world expansion and fragmentation of english, with a special section on american english in particular, is also missing from this handbook. however, in this sense, one may also admit that it is truly a history of english. chapter 2 is devoted to indo-european, germanic and its varieties and characteristics, and includes different inventories showing french and scandinavian influence on the english lexicon. these range from terms re ferring to the crown, nobility, state, army and warfare, church, crafts and trades, to cooking and the law. chapter 2 ends with a section that explains different morphosyntactic aspects of french origin. in this sense, historia del inglés does not depart significantly from other books in the same tradition, as for example a. c. baugh & th. cable’s a history of the english language. chapter 3 is a brief presentation of old english texts adapted for the first stages of learning: it comprises two lists of independent sentences and five excerpts that have been graded in difficulty. consequently, it is a condensed primer, but, again, to be used with the iniciación práctica al inglés antiguo. chapter 4 is the central part of the work. first it presents phonological charts (pp. 139-145), and then morphological ones followed by an extensive explanation of english forms and their interaction in terms of classes (nouns: 204 146-171; adjectives: 172-179; pronouns: 180-208;2 verbs: 209-261) and functions (negation, question: pp. 262-66; relative and phrasal complementation: 267-271). then, sections 4.6 (pp. 272-292) and 4.7 (293340), are dedicated to the historical development of the sound systems of english and to english graphical systems. this part of the historia del inglés studies well known and controversial topics of english historical linguistics, and it is here where the reader may be more prone to agree or disagree with the authors. for instance, when dealing in detail with the great vowel shift (pp. 308-322) -we must say, incidentally, that the gvs has a very happy spanish rendering: ‘gran desplazamiento vocálico’-, the only sources quoted are samuels, lass, martinet and jes persen, and the authors’ own interpretation follows explicitly that of lass 1975 (see p. 310), and not that of lass 1987, who revised some of his previous ideas about the gvs. the works of e. dobson (1968), n. chomsky & m. halle (1968), p. m. wolfe (1972), r. stockwell (1978), f. cercignani (1981), or c. jones (1989), among many others, might have been used in this discussion, especially because cercignani (1981), dobson (1968), jones (1989), and lass (1987), appear in the final bibliography. chapter 5 offers the student two texts: the ‘our father’ (matthew 6: 9-13) in different germanic languages and dialects (gothic, northumbrian, west saxon, king james bible and german: luther’s bible), and the ‘parable of the prodigal son’ (luke 15: 11-24) in gothic, german and in different stages of the history of english (west saxon, wycliffite bible, king james bible both in original and modernized spellings, and the gideon bible). chapter 6 introduces a set of suggestions for the ‘elementary treatment of texts from the point of view of the history of english’ (p. 351). this set of practical postulates and questions is one of the more useful parts of the book for the student: the authors supply a convenient thread that can be easily and profitably followed, and which will contribute to the better understanding of the nature and purposes of the study of the history of english. 205 chapter 7 is devoted to sources. the bibliography is divided in three sections: what the authors call their fundamental bibliographical source, namely the year’s work in english studies; then dictionaries, and in conclusion a general bibliography. the latter, and we must welcome it once more, regis ters 155 entries of which there is a total of 16 registers in languages other than english (15 in spanish and one in french). there are also two entries published in english by spanish authors, but out of those 15 entries in spanish, five are related to indo-european and other germanic languages. in such a field as english historical linguistics where the number of spanish experts is very small, and whose contribution in absolute world terms is almost insubstantial, to be able to set down six different names to published items that de la cruz & cañete consider good enough to be recorded here is no mean accomplishment. this historia del inglés will very likely become a standard handbook for university students of english in spain, especially when a new edition will have polished its minor defects and drawbacks (its price is also a possible deterrent for weaker economies). in any case it is to be highly recommended to any serious reader who is interested in the history of the english language. s. g. fernández-corugedo university of oviedo references baugh, a. c. & cable, th. (1980[1935]): a history of the english language. routledge & kegan paul, london. cercignani, f. (1981): shakespeare’s works and elizabethan pronunciation. oxford university press, oxford. 206 cruz fernández , juan m. de la (1972d): “transference and metaphor in middle english verbs accompanied by a locative particle.” orbis, 21, 1: 114-35. cruz fernández , juan m. de la (1969b): “rasgos tipológicos del inglés en el desarrollo histórico de las estructuras del verbo con partícula.” filología moderna, ix, 35-36: 265-85. cruz fernández , juan m. de la (1970): “nota sobre el diverso grado de adverbialización en las partículas del verbo preposicional inglés.” filología moderna, x, 39: 339-41. cruz fernández , juan m. de la (1972a): “a syntactical complex of isoglosses in the north-western end of europe (english, north germanic and celtic).” indogermanische forschungen, 77, 2/3: 171-80. cruz fernández , juan m. de la (1972b): “the latin influence on the germanic development of the english phrasal verb.” english philological studies, 13: 1-42. cruz fernández , juan m. de la (1972c): “the origins of the germanic phrasal verb.” indogermanische forschungen, 77, 1: 73-96. cruz fernández, juan m. de la (1973a): “a late 13th. century change in english structure", orbis, 22, i: 171-80. cruz fernández , juan m. de la (1973b): “notas para el estudio del desarrollo angloescandinavo de los verbos preposicionales. los datos del inglés antiguo y medio.” revista española de lingüística, 3, 2: 369413. cruz fernández , juan m. de la (1975): “old english pure prefixes. structure and function.” linguistics, 145: 47-81. cruz fernández z, juan m. de la (1976a): “context -sensitivity in old and middle english.” studia anglia posnaniensia, 8: 3-43. cruz fernández , juan m. de la (1977): “synchronic -diachronic remarks on the nature of prefixation.” orbis, 26, 2: 262-92. cruz fernández , juan m. de la (1983): la prosa de los anglosajones. málaga & salamanca. 207 cruz fernández , juan m. de la (1986a): iniciación práctica al inglés antiguo. alhambra, madrid. cruz fernández , juan m. de la (1986b): “la consolidación preverbial in doeuropea y la consolidación frasal del inglés. nuevos datos referentes al proceso evolutivo.” revista española de lingüística, 16, 2: 325-79. cruz fernández, juan m. de la (1988): “los paradigmas verbales en la historia del inglés: más allá del epifenómeno.” revista española de lingüística, 18, 1: 47-91. cruz fernández , juan m. de la (1989): “linguistic scholarship and the linguistic interpretation of old english data.” actas del i congreso de selim. oviedo: 28-47. chomsky, n. a., & halle, m. (1968): the sound pattern of english. harper & row, new york. dobson, e. j. (1968[1957]): english pronunciation 1500-1700. vols. i & ii. oxford university press, oxford. fernández , f. (1982): historia de la lengua inglesa. gredos, madrid. jones, c. (1989): a history of english phonology. longman, london. lass, r. (1975): english phonology and phonological theory. cambridge university press, cambridge. lass, r. (1987): the shape of english. dent & sons, london. stockwell, r. p. (1978): ‘perseverance in the english vowel shift.’ in j. fisiak ed. (1978): recent developments in historical phonology. mouton, berlin. pp. 337-348. wolfe, p. m. (1972): linguistic change and the great vowel shift. university of california press, berkeley-los angeles. * * * 2019notes_1_spencer alice e. spencer, selim24 (2019): 135–148. issn 1132-631x / doi https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.24.2019.135-148 augustine and monica in the abbotsford legenda aurea alice e. spencer università degli studi di torino the following piece will represent the first in-depth evaluation of the lives of saint augustine and his mother monica in the as-yet unpublished abbotsford manuscript, bokenham’s long-lost translation of the legenda aurea, a text which survives in a single manuscript, purchased by sir walter scott at sotheby’s in 1809, which had remained unattributed and unstudied until it was brought to the attention of simon horobin by the faculty of advocates in 2004 (horobin 2008: 135). as a celebration of the remarkable piety of a wife and mother (as opposed to a virgin martyr), it is a highly unusual hagiographic text and would have presented a particularly accessible model of spirituality to the network of powerful lay female patrons by whom we know bokenham to have been employed. i will argue that bokenham’s vita espouses an incarnational augustinian poetics which is at odds with the more ascetic, eremitical vision of the original legenda aurea. keywords: osbern bokenham; abbotsford legenda aurea; augustine; monica; hagiography 1. introduction the present article will represent the first extended analysis of the lives of saint augustine and his mother monica in the as-yet unpublished abbotsford manuscript, bokenham’s long-lost translation of the legenda aurea, a text which survives in a single manuscript, purchased by sir walter scott at sotheby’s in 1809, which had remained unattributed and unstudied until it was brought to the attention of simon horobin by the faculty of advocates in 2004 (horobin 2008: 135). these two lives have an especially important place within the collection, since we would expect bokenham to have taken a particular interest in the life and works of the founder of his own order. the 136 alice e. spencer life of monica is remarkable inasmuch as it represents what appears to be the first medieval english life of the saint. as a celebration of the remarkable piety of a wife and mother (as opposed to a virgin martyr), it is a highly unusual hagiographic text and would have presented a particularly accessible model of spirituality to the network of powerful lay female patrons by whom we know bokenham to have been employed. 1 the primary source for bokenham’s life of st augustine is voragine’s legenda aurea. however, he diverges from voragine at several crucial junctures. specifically, in the early parts of the legend, he draws from jordanus of saxony’s de vita sancti augustini episcopi or, very possibly, directly from capgrave’s translation thereof. all of these insertions serve to expand on and foreground the role of augustine’s mother, monica, in his spiritual journey — an emphasis reflected in bokenham’s inclusion of the first middle english life of saint monica. together with various other small additions which bokenham makes to his source, these borrowings also serve to intensify and render more continuous the role of grace and providence in augustine’s narrative. at the very end of the text, instead, he translates from possidius’ vita augustini. this closing passage, together with another brief adjustment which bokenham makes to his source, serves to illustrate the continuity of the augustinian monastic community with its saintly founder and, in so doing, to lend authority to the hagiographic text and its author. more broadly speaking, i will argue that bokenham’s vita espouses an incarnational augustinian poetics which is at odds with the more ascetic, eremitical vision of the original legenda aurea. the source for bokenham’s life of saint monica is less clear. one possibility might be the (much longer) life of st monica preserved in the autograph manuscript of jordanus’ writings on augustine, bibliothèque de l’arsenal ms−251, together with his de vita sancti augustini episcopi, a text which, like bokenham’s vita, includes a description of monica’s wifely, motherly and spiritual virtues and her death, which is followed by an account 1 we know from bokenham’s own “prologues” that dame isabel bouchier, sister of richard duke of york, commissioned the life of saint mary magdalen, and that elizabeth vere, wife of the twelfth earl of oxford, requested that of elizabeth of hungary. the legend of saint anne was written for katherine denstone, who was also the dedicatee of the legend of saint katherine, together with katherine howard. the life of saint agatha was dedicated to agatha flegge, wife of an essex landowner (delany 1998: 15−22, horobin 2007: 941−942). augustine and monica in legenda aurea 137 of the translation of her body from ostia to rome. the account, written by walterus of arrouaise and included in the acta santorum for 2 may, is a compilation of excerpts from the confessions referring to monica. 2. augustine, monica and the ascetic ideal in jacobus de voragine’s legenda aurea bokenham’s primary source throughout most of his lyf of seynt austyn the doctour is jacobus de voragine’s legenda aurea —a text which, as sherry l. reames has demonstrated, presents us with a narrative of augustine’s conversion which would scarcely be recognizable to modern readers familiar with the troubled and reassuringly human scholar depicted in the confessions. voragine tends to idealise augustine, omitting references to his sinfulness and recounting his boyhood sins only “to illustrate the great purity and humility of a soul that would bother to confess such trivial flaws” (reames 1985: 136). as a consequence of this, the redemptive agency of augustine’s mother monica is largely denied (ibid. 139, winstead 2007: 194−195). reames argues that the pivotal significance of augustine’s baptism is radically altered in voragine’s account. whereas in the confessiones augustine’s baptism occurs when he has finally overcome heresy and sin, in voragine’s version the moment of baptism marks a complete renunciation of the world —a contemptus mundi: one can almost say that augustine’s earthly existence ends with conversion. (reames 1985: 143) what is missing from jacobus’ account of augustine’s spiritual journey is what reames terms the “incarnational pattern” of the confessiones —the centrality of the humanity, humility and compassion of christ to augustine’s original narrative: one does not greatly oversimplify the confessions by asserting that the remedies for all of augustine’s doubts and sins —and those of the human race he represents— are found in the incarnation. man’s intellectual pride is vanquished by the humility of a lord who embraced the condition of his creatures, flesh and all; man’s fear of commitment, by the magnitude of the love that reaches down to him; the bondage of his habitual sins, by the liberty conferred on his will when he simply surrenders to christ, confessing his total dependence on him and participating in his saving humility. (ibid. 139−140) 138 alice e. spencer by removing the intercessional agency of monica and the compassionate grace of christ from the narrative, voragine introduces a radical binarism into his account of the saint’s life which had little to do with the vision of augustine himself and which left no space, for example, for the lay piety of bokenham’s patrons. i will argue that bokenham’s treatment of monica and augustine tends to reintroduce this “incarnational pattern” and, indeed, to locate therein the justification for the hagiographer’s own output. bokenham rests his own claims to literary authority on the inclusiveness of the communio sanctorum: on the redemptive force of the incarnation; on the saints’ imitatio christi; on the fraternity and continuity between augustine and his monastic followers in the past and present; and on the parallels between the intermediary function of the saints and the intercessional function of hagiography itself. 3. bokenham’s lyf of seynt monica seynt austyns modir the abbotsford ms is remarkable in containing the first medieval english life of saint monica (abbotsford 101v−102r, winstead 2011: 344). it is true that there was a proliferation of hagiography dealing with female saints in the fifteenth century, but saint monica stands apart from these other subjects in being neither a virgin nor a martyr but rather a wife and mother. winstead has shown us that fifteenth-century virgin martyr legends have a tendency to underline the humanity and exemplarity of the saints, presenting them, as much as possible, as appropriate models of female piety for contemporary english gentlewomen (winstead 1997). however, as a pious, assertive married mother monica’s experience came far closer to that of bokenham’s east anglian female patrons than that of any of these saints. as well as being remarkable in her religious devotion, monica is also held up (following book ix of the confessiones) as an exemplary wife and mother, prudently and patiently managing her errant son and a recalcitrant, abusive and unfaithful husband and a difficult, live-in mother in law (fol. 101r). in stark contrast to voragine’s binarism and contemptus mundi, bokenham presents monica as harmoniously combining mundane and spiritual values. the lyf of seynt monica seynt austyns modir is noteworthy in the extent to which it foregrounds monica’s agency in her son’s salvation. indeed, bokenham places her at an equal standing with simplicianus, claiming that: augustine and monica in legenda aurea 139 thurgh the merite of hir preyers and the prechyng and the hooly exortacions of seynt symplician hir sone was convertid and made a perfite cristen man. (fol. 102v) monica is extolled and endorsed by augustine and ambrose as an authority in matters of divinity. rather extraordinarily, her “natural witte enflamed with natural wisdam” is placed on a par with, if not even above, masculine clerical learning and authority: this blissid woman loued excellently wele the holy bysshop seynt ambrose for as moche as he was cause of the gostely helthe of austyn hir sone and he therageyn lovid hyr singularly for hir hooly and religious conuersacion and for she was feruent in sprite in gode werkis and for noon houre she left withoute preyer and preysyng of god gretely reioyssing that he sawe such a modir of such a sone. and of hir natural witte enflamed with natural wisdam thurgh the special grace of god spekyng hir sone in sentence seith on this wise in disputacion of a not little thing but of a right grete thing the which i remembrid me and put it into a boke so gret and so excellent hir reson and hir wytte apperid unto me that aftir my felyng and myn undirstondyng no thing might more ably and more conuently ben alluded and […] to very and true philosophie. wherfore quoth he fro thens forward i provided and ordeyned that whan leyser and oportunyte habounded that ony thing of diuinite shuld be dysputid that she shuld nat ben absent so grete excellence of witte and reson i fonde in hir comunyng. (fol. 102r) in general, monica’s devotion is characterized by an affective piety —an emotional, loving intimacy with god, strongly rooted in compassion for christ incarnate: she is described as being “fastenyd and nailed on the crosse with criste” and as having “contynnelly the passion of criste in hir mynde” (ibid.). any suggestion that a clear dichotomy really existed between “feminine” affective and “masculine” intellectual and speculative forms of spirituality has been undermined by the work of scholars such as bernard mcginn (1994) and amy hollywood (1995). however, it is also true that religious writers tended to characterize one kind of piety as “feminine” and another as “masculine” and that the model of “feminine” affective piety, although not without its dangers and controversies, at least evaded the rocky ground of female scriptural study and erudition. this characterization of monica is consistent with her depiction in the confessiones, where her example plays such a crucial role in undermining augustine’s devotion to philosophy and his intellectual pride (power 1996: 140 alice e. spencer 71−93). however, as laferrière argues, these elements had been largely eliminated from medieval augustinian accounts of the story, where, by omitting her character, the authors were able to gloss over troublesome episodes of augustine’s faith wavering and examples of a woman surpassing their founder in religious excellence. (laferrière 2017: 73) in bokenham’s account, as in capgrave’s, we find that she has been thoroughly reinstated. her relationship with the divine seems, in its immediacy and simplicity, to be privileged over that of her son, as witness bokenham’s inclusion and treatment of the following miracle narrative: the seid hand maiden of criste shuld receiven the sacrament of cristis precious body she was so rapt with the spirite of compunccion and devocion that she was seen lyfted up a cubite from the erthe and notwithstondyng that she was wone to be moste quyete cried moste swetely and seid fflye we to heven flye we to heven with which crie she replenisshid and fulfilled austyn hir sone and al the meynee of hir housholde with an inestimable ioye and gladnesse seeing the grete grace of compunccyon and of devocion that god had shewid in hir. (fol. 101r) bokenham’s life of monica also contains an extended description of the mystical experience which augustine shares with monica at ostia shortly before her death (fol. 102v). this episode, which is of central importance in the confessions and is also described in the vitae of augustine by jordanus of saxony and capgrave, was omitted in the legenda aurea and, as anik laferrière has noted, had tended to be left out of augustinian accounts of the saint’s life (laferrière 2017: 79): and whan that austyn hir sone was conuertid and baptized and made a parfite christen man and he and she with many other returning ageyn to affrik weren at hostye abiding […] it happid hem tweyn to stonden togider alone at a wyndowe comonyng and talkyng of the evirlastyng life of seyntis in heven the which neither eigh hath seyn nor eer herd ner hert fully thoght. in whiche communicacioun the worlde with alle the delectaciouns therof was so little apprised and sette by in hir affeccion an so lithesome and so tedious to hir that at the last sche brak oute with these wordis and seid siker sone what i shuld lenger doon here o why i am here now i wote for fully al the hope of this werld is to live in contempt and in despite. oo thing oonly ther was for which i desired to taryen and abiden here a while that is that i myth er than i passed augustine and monica in legenda aurea 141 hens seen the sone a parfite christen man. and god of his inestimable grace hath parfourmid my desire more plenteously than i askid it. (fol. 102r) the authoritative voice here, transcending earthly desires, is that of monica, not of her famous son. 4. sons and brothers: augustinian agency, intercession and the translation of monica in the lines immediately following this passage, in bokenham’s account of monica’s final illness and death, the narrative voice makes an abrupt and somewhat disorienting shift into the first person voice of book ix of the confessiones. there is no precedent for this in the accounts of monica’s death in jordanus, capgrave or voragine: aftir whiche tyme five dayes she langired in the accesse so grevously labored that she sempt to ben alienat som what from her wittis. but sone aftir whan she came ageyn to hir self and bihelde me and my brethren stondyng abouten hir astonyed with morning and hevynesse she seyd thus to me and to my brother. putteth here to sepulture your modir the which sone shal deyen. and at that worde quoth austyn whan i gan mornen and wepyn my brother seid that he wolde nat that she shuld deyen there in her pilgrimage but rather goon hoom and be buryed in hir owen cuntre. which worde she heryng turned hir eyen with an hevy chier to hymward first and afterward to me and seid see what he seith. and aftir that she spake to us both to gider and seid puttyth this body where so evir you list lattith no body be troubled with busynesse therefore but this oonly i prey you that where so evir ye ben whan ye stoned at goddis awtier than hath mynde upon me. (fol. 102r) the “quoth austin”, which indicates that the first person narrative is a quotation, appears rather late on in the narrative and i would argue that it is not over-speculative to posit that bokenham is here on some level identifying with the emotions and love of augustine and his brothers —asserting the ties between the fraternity of austin friars, their founder and the “mother” of their order (holgate 2003). at the end of his life of saint monica, bokenham describes the translation of her physical remains from ostia to the church of saint trifone in rome in april 1430: 142 alice e. spencer but as it plesid our lordis mercy the yere of grace a thousand foure hundred and thritty upon palme sunday that yere fallyng on the ninth day of april by pope martyn the fifte at the instaunce of his confessour and sexteyn of his chapel ffrere peter bysshop a frere austyn and of frere austyn of rome that tyme priour general of the same ordre. she was translated to rome solemnly and leid in the churche which egidius de roma made in the honour and wership of hir sone seynt austyn beside seynt triphones undir attestacion and certificacioun of many and grete myraclis shewid there that tyme the which were now to longe to written. (fol. 102r) the agency of the augustinian order is at the fore here and i would argue that, as elsewhere in bokenham’s oeuvre and most specifically in his depiction of the translation of saint margaret, parallels can be drawn between this act of translation and that being undertaken by bokenham himself —between the translation of saintly corpse and hagiographical corpus (cf. spencer 2013: 109−114). the naming of a famous augustinian author, giles of rome, as the founder of the church of saint trifone further enhances this connection, ultimately, i would argue, drawing connections between the hagiographical vita and the reliquary as vehicles of saintly authority. the vita closes with a prayer for intercession: pray we now then finally al to our lorde god that for the merites and preyeris of blissid monic he vouchsafe to senden us nat richessis ner worshippis ner no such fluwible thyngis that comen and goon withoute stabilnesse which she despised of al hir hert but that such thyngis mote fallen unto us that mow makyn us souereyn gode and souereyn blissid and that the wille of god may be so parfounmed in this world in us that in the tothir worlde we mow duellyn with hir and hir sone in evirlastyng blisse amen. (fol. 102r) bokenham here further reinforces the theme of augustinian fraternity by asking monica to intercede for augustine’s brothers in the same manner as she did for her son. he also, implicitly, adopts a parallel intercessional role for himself, acting as an intermediary between his patron and the saint in the same way that the saint should act as a go-between between the supplicant and god. augustine and monica in legenda aurea 143 5. monica in the lyf of seynt austin the doctour bokenham’s additions to the legenda aurea version of the life of saint augustine repeatedly serve to re-establish monica’s essential role in the narrative. monica’s piety is emphasized from the outset. thus, while the opening of the legenda aurea simply names augustine’s parents, without providing any further deails (“[…] scilicet patre patricio, matre moniacha genitus”, graesse 1850: 549; “and his father was named patricius and his mother monica”, granger-ryan 1997: ii.124), bokenham mentions monica’s christianity right away: whos fadyr hyht patrick a hethene man til the yer byforn that he deyis. hys modrys name was monica a cristene woman and an holy. (fol. 107v) whereas voragine seems to deny augustine’s family any role in his education, bokenham tells us that during his early life, he was “virtuously educat […] at hoom” (ibid.). in an episode omitted from voragine’s vita, bokenham borrows from jordanus of saxony’s account of augustine’s life in detailing monica’s first struggles to get augustine baptized: this seyid austyn oo tyme why he was yung was gretly and greuously vexed in hys stomack. wherfore his modyr dredynge hys deth counseld hym for to byn cristenyd but his fadyr whiche that tyme was hethene wolde not sufferyn yt. and so for a tyme his baptem was dilayid. in whiche mene tyme by helpe of grace hys peyne secyd and he was hool. and […] his puryficacioun by baptem was deferid for as moche as if he lyuyd he shulde nedys be defoulyd more yet and his offence shulde be the more greuous yf he synnyd aftyr hys baptem. (fol. 170v) this reference to divine providence in response to monica’s prayers, together with the depiction of monica’s privileged relationship with god in the lyf of seynt monica seynt austyns modir, is indicative of another noticeable contrast between bokenham and voragine, who tends, instead, to “increase the remoteness of god” to the extent that god is no longer a part of [monica’s] experience, as jacobus relates it. (reames 1985: 139) when monica follows her son to milan, voragine simply writes: 144 alice e. spencer mater autem ejus quiescere non valens cum multa difficultate ad eum venit. (graesse 1890: 550) his mother, however, could not rest and, overcoming all sorts of difficulties, came to join him. (granger-ryan 1997: ii.124) bokenham instead adds that she travelled “both on lond and watyr” — recalling the descriptions in jordanus and capgrave (“[…] his modir, took þe se and put hirselue to gret perel for to se hir son […] sche is come to lond and to þe speche ofhir son”, smetana 2001: 30). bokenham describes monica’s love and admiration for ambrose: “and seynt ambrose she louyd as an aungel of god”, fol. 170v). he thereby echoes capgrave (“sche loued ambrose as an aungel of god”, smetana 2001: 30) and jordanus (“sicut angelum dei”, ibid. 83). voragine, in contrast, makes no reference to any kind of relationship or interaction between the two, stressing, instead, only augustine’s immediate fascination with ambrose’s preaching. 6. the miracle at fonteine and monastic fraternity one of the various miracles narrated at the end of jacobus’ vita takes place at the augustinian monastery at fonteine in burgundy. the legenda aurea account is as follows: apud burgundiam in monasterio, quod dicitur fontanetum, erat quidam monachus, hugo nomine, sancto augustino valde devotus, qui in ejus scriptis miro desiderio pascebatur, quem etiam crebra supplicatione rogaverat, ut ipsum ex hae luce migrare non sineret, nisi in die suae sacratissimae sollemnitatis. ipse igitur xv die ante festum ejusdem sic coepit duris febribus aestuare, ut in vigilia ipsius super humum tamquam moriens poneretur. et ecce plures decori ac fulgentes viri amicti albius ecclesiam dicti monasterii processionaliter intraverunt, quos sequebatur quidam reverendus pontificalibus insignitus. quidam autem monachus in ecclesia consistens hoc videns obstupuit et, quinam essent vel quo pergerent, inquisivit. cui unus corum dixit, quod sanctus augustinus esset cum suis canonicis, qui ad devotum suum morientem pergeret, ut ejus animam ad regnum gloriae deportaret. post hoc illa reverenda processio ad infirmarium ingreditur; ubi cum aliquamdiu manisset, sancta illa anima a carne soluta est, quam dulcis amicus et ab hostium insidiis securam reddidit et ad coeli gaudia introduxit. (graesse 1890: 563) augustine and monica in legenda aurea 145 in the monastery of fontaines at burgundy there was a monk who was particularly devoted to saint augustine, read his writings zealously, and derived spiritual nourishment from them. for a long time he had petitioned the saint not to let him leave this life except on the day when his sacred feast was celebrated. then, two weeks before the saint’s feast day, the monk was stricken with a high fever and on the vigil of the feast was laid out on the ground to await death. and behold, a number of men, decorous and splendid in appearance and wearing white garments, entered the church in procession, followed by a venerable man clothed in pontifical vestements. a monk who was in the church was astounded at the sight of the procession, and asked the marchers who they were and where they were going. one of them said that saint augustine, with his canons, was on his way to his dying devotee to take his soul to the kingdom of glory. then the solemn procession entered the infirmary, and after some time the monk’s soul was released from his body, and his dear friend, shielding it from the grasp of the enemy, led it into the joy of heaven. (granger-ryan 1997: ii.129) bokenham makes a slight but significant alteration in his version, converting the dialogue between the monastic onlooker and the canon into direct discourse and having the canon address the austin friar as “brother”: sykyr brother quoth he this ys seynt austyn the grete doctor the whiche comyth with his bretheryn to visityn his deuote seruauntand to ledyn with hym his soule in to the blysse of heuene. (fol. 173 v) this stress on fraternity within the augustinian order implicitly serves to underline the ties between the monastic hagiographer and his saintly subject, elevating his status and lending authority to his narrative. 7. “vox tua nempe mia est”: the incarnational poetics of hagiography at the end of the vita, bokenham abandons voragine altogether and turns to possidius, augustine’s first biographer, for a particularly striking statement of monastic fraternity and hagiographical auctoritas: to makyn an ende thane of this blyssid and hooly mannys lyf seynt austyn i concludyd with possidane the whiche was a dyssiple of his longe conusaunce wiche in hys laste dayis and aftyr his deth compilid hys lyf as he saw and 146 alice e. spencer knewe. this seyid possidone in ende of hys legend aftyr that he hath told how blyssyd austyn maad noo testament for bodily […] he concludyth hym to hau lefth aftyr hym myche goostly rychesse for he leffte quoth he sufficient of lerge monasteries full stuffyd bothe of men and of women instruct with maners and arayid with bokys the whiche he had endityd hym self. wherin he lyuyth to us thogh that in flesshe he be deed fro us. i seye that he leuyth to god and eek to us to god he lyuyth parfytely ioyned to hym by perpetual and inseparable fruycyoun. to us le lyuyth he lyuyth by his wrytyng dayle spekynge to us after the maner of spekynge of a poete the whiche de syttyu these vers up on hyre graue “vivere post obitum vate vis nosse, viator? quod legis ecce loquor: vox tua nempe mia est.” swich a man thanne quod possidonie and so wurthi a fadyr and soo profund a doctor mote alle cristene people wurshipyn bothe religious and clerkys ffor bothe his doctrine ys instructyoun of alle feythfull men and the singular myrour of oure religioun. be yt therefore dowtyd to no man that he is reseyryd in to the felaschepe of aungeles. where he byholdyth the begynnyng of the vertu of god in the brythnesse of seyntys neuere with owte remembraunce and mynde of his brethryn but fully as i hope and presume he shall byn a medyatour to reformyn hem to god hic possidoun. (fol. 174r) this passage directly identifies the augustinian monastic order as the spiritual heirs (the embodiment of the “goostly richesse”) of augustine. the latin motto on augustine’s tomb 2 constitutes a particularly bold exaltation of the monastic hagiographer’s voice and textual output. as bokenham transmits augustine’s acts and teachings, his voice is appropriated by and identified with the saint. just as the saint figures forth and acts as an intermediary with christ, bokenham transmits and mediates with the saints of whom he writes. perhaps most intriguingly of all this intersection between a literary text (the poem) and the tomb of the saint implicitly raises the status of the hagiographical vita, which acquires the role of a reliquary, a vessel for the saint. 2 the motto might be roughly translated as follows: “traveller, do you know that poets live beyond their death? what you read, behold, i speak, for your voice is truly my own.” augustine and monica in legenda aurea 147 8. conclusions in conclusion, bokenham rejects the ascetic binarism evident in voragine’s treatment of augustine in favour of a renewed assertion of what reames terms the “incarnational patterns” of the confessiones. if jacobus’ saints exist at a far remove from temporal, mundane life, bokenham instead grounds his retellings in a vision of sanctity which is characterized by community and continuity. his reinstatement of monica as an active protagonist in her son’s salvation serves to promote and endorse a model of feminine lay piety which would have been accessible and attractive to his female patrons. monica’s intercessional role is shared by the hagiographer himself, who documents saintly vitae and prays on behalf of his patrons. the sanctity of monica as mother and augustine as father/brother lend authority, cohesion and continuity to the monastic community of austin friars, whose agency and status are repeatedly emphasized in the abbotsford lives. bokenham’s treatment of the translation of monica and of the verse on the tomb of augustine serve in particular to invest the hagiographical text with something of the prestige of the reliquary, inasmuch as it becomes an enduring vessel for saintly authority. references primary sources advocates library, abbbotsford ms british library, arundel 327 ms bibliothèque de l’arsenale, ms−251 secondary sources bollandus, j. 1863: acta sanctorum. paris and rome: bibliopolam. brown, p. 1982: the cult of the saints: its rise and function in latin christianity. chicago, university of chicago press. delany, s. 1998: impolitic bodies. poetry, saints and society in fifteenth century england: the work of osbern bokenham. oxford, oxford university press. graesse, t. 1890: jacobi a voragine. legenda aurea: vulgo historia lombardica dicta. breslau: koebner. granger-ryan, w. 1997: jacobus de voragine. the golden legend: readings on the saints. 2 vols. princeton (nj), princeton university press. hammond, c. j. b. ed. 2014: augustine. confessions. 2 vols. cambridge (ma), loeb classical library, harvard university press. 148 alice e. spencer heffernan, t. 1992: sacred biography: saints and their biographers in the middle ages. oxford, oxford university press. holgate, i. 2003: the cult of saint monica in quattrocento italy: her place in augustinian iconography, devotion and legend. papers of the british school at rome 71: 181−206. hollywood, a. 1995: the soul as virgin wife: mechthild of magdeburg, marguerite porete, and meister eckhart. notre dame (in), university of notre dame press. horobin, s. 2007: politics, poetry and patronage in the works of osbern bokenham. speculum 82: 932−949. horobin, s. 2008: a manuscript found in the library of abbotsford house and the lost legendary of osbern bokenham. english manuscript studies 1100−1700 14: 130−164. laferrière, a. 2016: the doubting augustine: the deletion of monica from fourteenth century vitae augustini in the augustinian order of hermits. studies in church history 52: 150−163. laferrière, a. 2017: the austin friars in pre-reformation england. (d.phil. thesis.) oxford, oxford university. mcginn, b. 1994: meister eckhart and the beguine mystics: hadewijch of brabant, mechthild of magdeburg, and marguerite porete. new york, continuum. reames, s. l. 1985: the legenda aurea: a re-examination of its paradoxical history. wisconsin, the university of wisconsin press. sanok, c. 2007: her life historical: exemplarity and female saints’ lives in late medieval england. pennsylvania, university of pennsylvania press. serjeantson, m. s. 1938: osbern bokenham. legendys of hooly wummen (e. e. t. s. o.s. 206). london, oxford university press. smetana, c. l. 2001: life of saint augustine by john capgrave (edited from british library additional ms 36704 together with jordanus of saxony’s vita s. augustine from bibliothèque de l’arsenale ms−251). toronto, pontifical institute of medieval studies. spencer, a. 2013: language, lineage and location in the works of osbern bokenham. newcastle-upon-tyne, cambridge scholars press. winstead, k. 1997: virgin martyrs: legends of sainthood in late medieval england. new york, cornell university press. winstead, k. 2006: john capgrave’s fifteenth century. pennsylvania, university of pennsylvania press. author’s address centro linguistico di ateneo università degli studi di torino via s. ottavio, 20 10124 torino, italy received: 18 january 2019 e-mail: alice.spencer@unito.it revised version accepted: 29 march 2019 alexandra guglieri, selim 21 (2015–2016): 193–204. issn 1132-631x an interview with tom shippey alexandra guglieri university of granada tom shippey was born in calcutta in 1943. his father was an engineer and bridge-builder, his mother (also born in calcutta) was the daughter of the harbourmaster. both stayed on for some years after indian independence in 1947, and tom was sent to boarding school in scotland at the age of seven. he often remarks that it was a proper boarding school, not like hogwarts, where the children go home for holidays! inmates of his school, with parents abroad and as yet little air travel, were there 365 days a year and saw their parents at three-year intervals. his parents did however eventually return to britain and in 1954 tom won a scholarship to king edward’s school, birmingham, where tolkien had been a pupil fifty years before. he went on to cambridge in 1961, and in 1965, with only a ba in english, became assistant lecturer, coincidentally, at birmingham university opposite his old school – which meant that for seven years he could play rugby for the old edwardians club. his first book came out in 1972 with the title old english verse, and on the strength of this he gained a fellowship at st john’s college, oxford, a major and unexpected promotion. other publications on old english led to appointment in 1979 as chair of english language and medieval english literature at the university of leeds – the chair tolkien had held, again some fifty years before. up till then, his publications had almost all been in orthodox areas of medieval studies – there is a very long list of his publications at http://www.slu.edu/english-department/faculty/thomas-shippey-phd – but meeting tolkien in oxford before tolkien’s death in 1973 had given tom a strong sense of fellow-feeling with another anglo-saxonist, old edwardian, and rugby player, and he decided to write a book about tolkien’s fiction (to use tolkien’s own phrase from the sir gawain edition) “of the sort which its author may be supposed to have desired”. this came out in 1982 as the road 194 alexandra guglieri to middle-earth, which has since appeared in successive expanded editions up to 2005. the burden of this was that tolkien could and should be seen diachronically, as inspired by the discoveries of the grimmian discipline of comparative philology – jacob grimm being, so to speak, the nineteenthcentury darwin of the humanities. some years later tom reflected further that tolkien could also be seen synchronically, in the context of his own time, though it was a very different context from that normally noticed by literary critics (sc. “modernism”). this insight appeared first at a conference and then in a volume organised by selim-attendee keith battarbee, and led to the provocatively-titled j.r.r. tolkien: author of the century (2001). in 2007 walking tree press brought out a collection of tom’s papers on tolkien, titled roots and branches. in 1993, meanwhile, and after visiting professorships at harvard and the university of texas, tom had taken up the walter j. ong chair of humanities at saint louis university, where he remained till his retirement in 2008. during this period he continued to publish in the areas both of medieval studies and of modern fantasy, but he began to take an interest as well in the then-neglected topic of “medievalism”, that is to say the way the middle ages have been viewed and exploited in the modern world. he edited several volumes of studies in medievalism, as well as the 2005 collection the shadow-walkers: jacob grimm’s mythology of the monstrous. another very timeconsuming task was the survey of early reactions to beowulf (most of them written in german or scandinavian languages) begun with professor andreas haarder of odense university, but devolving on tom after professor haarder suffered an untimely and serious stroke. this appeared eventually as the critical heritage: beowulf (1998), a work which has kept many scholarly opinions alive – even though most of them had been amusingly dismissed by tolkien in his influential lecture of 1936. tom had, however, had a secret passion ever since 1958 (secret in the sense that it had had to be concealed from academic circles, in which it was regarded as sub-literary). this was for science fiction. he attended and spoke at science-fiction fan conventions, became a judge of the john campbell award for year’s best novel almost from the award’s inception in 1974, and collaborated with the famous author harry harrison on two “alternate history” trilogies (west of eden and the hammer and the cross) in the 1980s and 1990s. fifteen of his occasional essays have now been collected and published in 2016 by liverpool university press as hard reading: learning from science fiction. an interview with tom shippey 195 meanwhile, in alleged retirement, tom keeps all his interests alive. listing them chiastically, he is currently the regular reviewer of science fiction and fantasy for the wall street journal. his interest in medievalism, especially as it affects the creation of national identities, shows in his connections with the spin and ernie projects of professor joep leerssen of amsterdam (study program in interlocking nationalisms and encyclopedia of romantic nationalism in europe): he is a frequent speaker in europe on such topics. on old english, he contributed to the 2014 volume of the dating of beowulf, edited by leonard neidorf, and is co-editor, with neidorf and rafael j. pascual of granada, of old english philology: studies in honour of r.d. fulk. he, leonard, and rafael have other projects in mind, all part of what tom labelled at the selim conference in granada 2015 as la reconquista de la filología, a goal of which tolkien would heartily have approved. finally, completed or half-completed, but not as yet placed with publishers, are a book on old norse, which may in the end be titled the road to valhalla: death and the vikings, and another which builds on published articles and applies pragmatic linguistics to early poetry in several languages, how the heroes talk. if there is a consistent element in these many activities, it is a conviction that, in the english-speaking academic world, critics have been neglecting, ignoring, or misprising vital developments, both intellectual (comparative philology and medievalism) and popular (the rise of fantasy and science fiction as literary genres). attention has been disproportionately focused on classical canons – such as “the great tradition” of f.r. leavis, which ruled cambridge in tom’s youth, and the now-outdated notion of “modernism” – and in the last forty years on the philosophical notions of “literary theory” which have driven many british and american students out of the humanities altogether. tom knows he is a neinsager, who finds it easy to disagree with established opinion. some would say – in line with the current veneration for those who claim victim status – that this may be connected with old feelings of being an “outsider.” tom, however, characteristically thinks he is an “insider” and it is the administrators of established literary opinion who are culturally marginal. this is, of course, a minority opinion. at the moment. but time will tell. the following interview was conducted via e-mail by alexandra guglieri, of the universidad de granada, during october 2015. 196 alexandra guglieri 1. your association with selim goes back quite a few years, and you’ve delivered the keynote address at two different conferences. how would you describe your connection to selim? what do you enjoy most about presenting your work at selim? for the whole fifty years of my professional career (1965–2015, so far), departments of english studies in britain and america have set their faces against any form of serious language study. students graduating with degrees in ‘english language and literature’ usually know nothing about the structure of their own language, and have a diminishingly small awareness of its history. 1 the discipline has been controlled by the literary critics, many of whom were and are what tolkien, in his oxford “valedictory address”, called “misologists”. i spent many of my fifty years, accordingly, fighting what one of tolkien’s characters called “the long defeat” – trying to keep some part of the old philological discipline on the syllabus of successive universities. i had some success at leeds in the 1980s (though that success has now been reversed), and it was at this time that i came into contact with patricia shaw, a leeds graduate and one of the founders of selim. briefly, selim has always been a great relief to me because none of what i said in the paragraph above applies to it. just a few days ago, a young american working for a phd in philology at oxford said to me, looking at the 2015 selim programme, “[t]here are more philological papers offered at selim [which had seventy delegates] than at the whole of kalamazoo [the annual international medieval congress, which has more than 4000 attendees]”. that’s correct. selim never turned its face away from philology, and has continued to develop philological methods and results. and in addition, its conferences have always been exceptionally genial, hospitable, and culturally valuable. i remember exploring moorish hydraulics at córdoba, marvelling at the clock collection in coruña (clocks are one of the great medieval inventions), visiting cervantes’ house at alcalá de henares (one of only two pre-modern houses which i could see myself living in), and going to the flamenco in granada: always accompanied by old friends and new ones. 1 to illustrate this, i have put a couple of my recent reviews – of books by a mr ritche and a professor watts – under my name on the website academia.edu in different ways, they show what a situation english departments have reached. an interview with tom shippey 197 2. how has the state of old english scholarship changed since you delivered your first keynote address at selim? my answer here goes on from the one above. in 1991 i gave a kind of “recessional” speech at the modern language association in san francisco, 2 warning that the often self-congratulatory attitude of, for instance, the international society of anglo-saxonists disguised disciplinary weaknesses, especially as regards student enrolments (true of course, in america, of the humanities generally). but perhaps, without my recognizing it, the tide had already turned. as i now argue in my contribution to old english philology (see below), the highpoint of “misology” may have been the 1980 toronto conference on the dating of beowulf, which argued in effect that linguistic tests of date were valueless; that no chronology of old english poetry could be recovered; that literary history was accordingly impossible; and that literary speculation could continue unchecked. yet this act of hubris perhaps produced its own nemesis, in the form of severe criticism by one bold junior scholar, robert d. fulk, and a growing chorus of dissent from those outside departments of english, including historians like patrick wormald and scholars of norse and german like theodore andersson. those dissentient voices were orchestrated by another then-junior scholar, leonard neidorf, at that time a post-graduate student at harvard, into a further conference on dating, held in 2011, with a follow-up volume of essays edited by neidorf in 2014. neidorf has since attended selim, and published with selim, for, as he points out, editors in us journals are still reluctant to publish material too fiercely critical of what has become the comfortable post1980 consensus – which also explains why the 2014 volume, based on a us conference, had to find a courageous publisher in the uk! neidorf has furthermore been joined and supported in their metrical studies by rafael j. pascual, of the university of granada, another selim member, a pairing which may prove to be a further turning-point in the history of medieval linguistic and literary studies. indeed, at the selim conference in granada, i suggested that the neidorf-pascual conjunction might well be the start of la reconquista de la 2 “recessional” is a poem by rudyard kipling, written in 1897 (queen victoria’s diamond jubilee) warning of the future decline of the british empire. i have put the mla lecture on academia.edu as well. 198 alexandra guglieri filología. one “reconquista” culminated in granada, so it would be fitting for another “reconquista” to begin there. in which case selim will have played an important role, which i am sure my old friend patricia shaw would be delighted to see. 3. you collaborated with leonard neidorf and rafael j. pascual in the dating of beowulf: a reassessment, and you’re now editing with them old english philology: studies in honour of r.d. fulk. what impact do you think these books will have? i hope that the most immediate response to the dating volume will be to undo the damage caused by the 1981 volume on dating, and its spin-offs. this damage has been considerable. i’ve remarked elsewhere (see my short article on jacob grimm online at academia.edu) that there is a clear parallel between the theory of evolution and the development of comparative philology, two of the great intellectual achievements of the nineteenth century. in both cases one man, charles darwin or jacob grimm, was the instigator, but in both cases someone else would have got there if they hadn’t: alfred wallace or rasmus rask. both grimm and darwin addressed very evident questions – what made animals different, what made languages different – and ignored the old mythical explanations (noah’s ark and the tower of babel). both men were followed by whole armies of investigators, who developed, extended and corroborated their ideas until they became rationally unchallengeable. here the parallels diverge. while the claim that darwinism is “only a theory” is now confined only to creationists, and is no longer intellectually respectable, rejecting the evidence of philology has (especially since 1981) become normal rather than exceptional in british and american universities. you might say it’s not even rejected by argument, just neglected, assumed to be irrelevant. well, we hope – and the reviews indicate that this is already happening – that the neidorf volume on dating will make people think again. the range and strength of its arguments for an early date for beowulf – not a late date, not an indeterminable date – should convince anyone who is not, like creationists, ideologically committed. in many areas proof is not attainable. but (as robert fulk has often said) probability may reach such a level as to make denial irrational: especially where “a theory” explains elegantly and economically prodigious amounts of accumulated data. an interview with tom shippey 199 robert fulk was of course the keynote speaker for the conference which generated neidorf’s dating, and the festschrift which he and i and rafael have put together will not only bear tribute to his initially lonely efforts to keep philology within scholarly awareness, but also remind people of the range and strength of his contributions. remembering my parallel above, i might say that robert fulk has been to grimm as richard dawkins to darwin. it’s not by any means a perfect comparison, as fulk is quite without dawkins’s aggression and intolerance. but fulk has been “the critic of the century”, or shall we say of his half-century career, and old english philology will help people to see that. besides all that, we hope (and i confidently expect) that the two volumes together will act as a support and encouragement for younger scholars in particular. the range of approaches taken will show them that there is still much more to be gained by philological studies of all kinds: such approaches are there to be followed up. moreover, the number of contributors – thirteen for the dating volume, twenty for philology, though some names occur in both – will reassure junior scholars who may be wondering what direction to take, that their career-options are still open. the “jobs-market”, as it is crudely called in the usa, is a very frightening place to be, notably at the mla conference after christmas (the “hiring-fair”), and i have heard young postgrads say that they fear being overlooked because old english studies are “too masculine”, or “not relevant”, or “insufficiently theoretical”. well, now they know not everyone thinks that, and they have a powerful and respected body of opinion to support them. they can take these books into the interview room to show sceptical interviewers that the tide has turned! 4. what are some of your other current projects in medieval studies? this is a sad question to answer, because i have been so slow in developing them. i have almost finished a book on old norse literature, centring on the many death-scenes, death-songs, “last stands” etc., which also doubles in a way as what one might call – and this is the kind of title that publishers like – “top ten vikings”. i have written about half of a book called how the heroes talk, which seeks to apply pragmatic linguistics to beowulf, eddic poems, hildebrandslied, saints’ lives, the heliand (etc.). three articles of this kind have already been published, but i need to finish the job and set those articles in a wider frame. 200 alexandra guglieri 5. can the world expect any additional projects from you in the realm of tolkien studies? what the world needs, i feel, is a survey of tolkien’s effect and influences. but this is such a massive job, when one considers the explosion of fantasy since 1955, that i think it would have to be done by a consortium. 6. which avenues of research in medieval studies and tolkien studies do you think are most promising at present? on tolkien studies, i feel we still have little awareness of his literary and cultural background – and that has the same kind of cause as the turn-away from philological studies i mentioned above. when i was an undergraduate at cambridge, our syllabus – i mentioned this in a recent article drawing on erich auerbach – was extremely restricted, without us or many of our tutors realizing the fact. in fiction, it was exclusively “the great tradition”, which dealt with the often-repressed emotional lives of a cultured, sheltered and privileged elite who were much less interesting than they thought they were i won’t name names, except to say that henry james was in, but his much more widely-influential contemporary h.g. wells was out. firmly excluded also were all the “new romancers”, as they are sometimes known – conan doyle, rider haggard, r.l. stevenson, bram stoker, and many more. tolkien has much in common, especially as regards class-feeling, with the latter group; and conversely, much less in common with “the bloomsbury group”, whose members were (i think) a continuing provocation to the “inklings”, especially lewis. but there were people with links to both sides, like naomi mitchison, surely a new romancer and a correspondent of tolkien, whose brother j.b.s. haldane however reacted sarcastically to lewis’s “space trilogy” – google “haldane” and “auld hornie, f.r.s.”. this whole area of literary life in the early twentieth century has hardly been noticed. meanwhile, in medieval studies i (and michael drout) have put our disagreements with tolkien’s (1936) lecture online through “scholars’ forum”, 3 but i have to agree with tolkien that, for all the avalanche of studies 3 our two essays are online at http://www.lotrplaza.com/showthread.php?18483, and an interview with tom shippey 201 about beowulf as a poem, there has been remarkably little about the nature of alliterative poetry at any time, its strengths, its characteristic tropes and rhetoric. new critical terminology just doesn’t work, but we have not developed a different one. tolkien, of course, spent many years trying to revive alliterative poetry, with to begin with very little success. 7. you were involved with the production of peter jackson’s lord of the rings movies. could you describe your involvement and share some opinions on these films? my involvement really consisted of making sure all the (many) names were pronounced correctly. this is not so easy. tolkien uses the word “thain”, as a title for hobbits, “gwaihir” (for an eagle), and thrain (so spelled in the hobbit) for a dwarf, and in each case the <ai> is pronounced differently. i produced a long video-tape for the actors, which i must say they stuck to very accurately – with one exception. sméagol came out as “smeagle”. they must have forgotten to ask me about that one. the hobbit movies were much less careful about the dwarf-names. as for opinions, i have to say that jackson was coping with a changed medium, and a changed audience. i was impressed by his comments on why he made the changes he did in the lotr movies – characters could not merely be left in abeyance, like arwen (a place had to be made for her in the second movie, though she does not figure in the second book). nor could major action-scenes like the destruction of isengard merely be told in flashback! in movies, you must show, not tell! or the special effects team will break its collective heart! and there were other forced changes which i understood. what was lost, i felt, was first, something in tolkien which was hard-hearted and realistic: tolkien was a combat veteran who passed his life in the company of other veterans. they understood that the bold aggression rewarded in video-games was not always so rewarded in real life. more subtly, i felt – but not many have agreed with me – that the movies lost tolkien’s almostimperceptible presentation of the effects of providence, or if you prefer, the valar. http://www.lotrplaza.com/showthread.php?17739. the two essays complement each other, but were written entirely independently. 202 alexandra guglieri these criticisms are much more easily made about the three hobbit movies. once again i think jackson put his finger on the problem with the hobbit as a narrative: it is highly episodic, one thing after another. it needed a connecting thread, which jackson introduced (the continuous pursuit by the orcs). what it lost was the development of bilbo as a hero, from being regarded with complete contempt to his final demonstrations both of physical courage (going down the tunnel to smaug a second time), and moral courage (handing over the arkenstone, and then returning into the power of the dwarves whom he has betrayed). all bilbo’s big scenes, in the book, take place when he is alone and in the dark, and movies don’t do this very well. but we had too much waving a sword and charging, video-game heroism, instead. 8. in addition to being a prolific scholar, you are also a celebrated teacher, whose lectures were recently recorded and published by the teaching company. how would you characterize your philosophy of teaching? perhaps here i can quote my successor at leeds, andrew wawn. he said that whenever he went out to confront the 250 students of the new intake at leeds, he knew that not one of them had any interest in medieval studies. but every one of them could have! (and they did: year after year we had to cap the number of entrants to our old norse courses because we could not fit any more into our allotted times at the language laboratory.) my view is that every student knows something, and probably something i don’t. the trick is to connect what i am trying to tell them with what they know already. just to give one example, the most perceptive comment i ever heard on old norse sagas came from an undergraduate student at st louis, who was studying aeronautical engineering. i was explaining the plot of laxdæla saga. what is the cause of the death of kjartan? his abandonment of gudrun? the jealousy of bolli? the family grudge going back to hoskuld’s purchase of a concubine? or is it the cursed sword? but as i droned on, young joseph yurgil spoke up, and said: “stop! you are describing what we in aerospace call, ‘an error-chain’”. and then he told us what an “error-chain” was, and why airliners crash. but that told us a lot about sagas too. an interview with tom shippey 203 9. looking back on your career, what accomplishments are you most proud of? in your voluminous corpus of scholarship, are there certain works that you regard most highly? there’s a kind of discrepancy here. i think my most-read book may well be tolkien: author of the century. but this did not take me long to write, and was strangely trouble-free – largely because my editor at harpercollins, jane johnson, kept on telling me “no footnotes! not a single footnote!” (did i smuggle two or three past her? no more than that.) but my least-read book must certainly be the critical heritage volume on beowulf, for which i read almost everything written on the poem up to 1935, most of it in german or danish or swedish, and translated large amounts of it (my friend and colleague rory mcturk helped me with the swedish, but my danish collaborator andreas haarder unfortunately had an incapacitating stroke). but then few copies were printed, and they were sold at an exorbitant price. i have now put my long “introduction” up on academia.edu, and i may put the whole book there, if i can settle copyright issues. i think my mini-book on beowulf had a lot of new ideas, back in 1978. 10. few scholars have been able to achieve the international reputation you’ve managed to earn. what advice would you give to young scholars who hope to thrive in this profession? frodo baggins says, “go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes”, and although my counsel can’t be elvish, it may sound like the advice to lovers in the faerie queene: “be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold. / be not too bold.” so, first i would say: do not worry about wasting time on an idea, a project. you never know what will pay off. back in 1970 there was no good reason for me to go and talk about “tolkien and philology” at a tolkien-day run for the general public in birmingham. i was never paid for it, it has never appeared on my curriculum vitae. but tolkien’s secretary was there, she liked the talk, i gave her the carbon copy of my script (this was forty-five years ago), tolkien liked it too, the effects are still with me to this day. so, range widely. on the other hand, read deeply. it is hard to make the time for this in the modern academic world, where rapid results are often demanded, but not only did i spend a long, long time in the 1980s and 1990s reading long-dead beowulf studies, i also spent a long, long time in the 1970s and 1980s reading 204 alexandra guglieri all the old reviews of lord of the rings (rayner unwin had kept a file of them), and many of tolkien’s old books donated to libraries in oxford. much of this looked like work wasted: but the overall experience was not wasted. and you can never tell ... finally, first reactions are precious. write down any hint of an idea you have. think about it later. author’s address dept. de filología inglesa y alemana universidad de granada campus universitario de cartuja c.p. 18071 granada, spain received: 4 november 2015 e-mail: alexandraguuglieri@gmail.com revised version accepted: 15 may 2016 selim 18.indb christopher monk, selim 18 (2011): 7–48issn: 1132–631x defending rihthæmed: the normalizing of marital sexuality in the anglo-saxon penitentials abstract: this paper is a semantic and social study of marital sexuality in anglo-saxon england. by contextualizing the sexual vocabulary of the old english penitentials it demonstrates that marriage was sexualized both linguistically and culturally. the essay also reveals how marriage intersected with social expectations that related to gender and procreation. the pastoraljudicial context of the penitentials is explored and, as a consequence, the argument is made that the repeated invoking by priests of penitential codes reinforced a binding, discursive authority on matters of sexuality. keywords: adultery, bigamy, gender, impotence, lawful sexual union, marriage, penitentials, procreation, sex, sexuality, unlawful sexual union. resumen: este artículo es un estudio semántico y social de la sexualidad marital en la inglaterra anglosajona. contextualizando el vocabulario sexual de los penitenciales en inglés antiguo, se demuestra que el matrimonio estaba sexualizado tanto lingüística como culturalmente. este ensayo también revela cómo el matrimonio está entreverado de espectativas sociales en relación con el género y la procreación. se explora el contexto pastoral-judicial de los penitenciales y, en consecuencia, se argumenta que la invocación repetida de los códigos penitenciales por parte de los sacerdotes reforzaban una autoridad obligatoria y discursiva en cuestiones de sexualidad. palabras clave: adulterio, bigamia, género, impotencia, unión sexual legítima, matrimonio, penitenciales, procreación, sexo, sexualidad, unión sexual ilegítima. 1 introduction ecclesiastical instructions relating to sexual matters formed part of a pastoral agenda in late anglosaxon england.1 this is evident when we examine the vernacular anglo-saxon penitentials.2 these texts, priests’ handbooks 1 a good starting point for scholarship on sex and sexuality in anglo-saxon england is pasternack and weston (2004); a number of the essays explore the intersection of gender and sexuality in anglo-saxon culture. an excellent thematic study of sex and marriage in the middle ages, including the anglo-saxon period, is provided by mccarthy (2004b). for medieval source material on gender and sexuality, see brożyna (2005); bullough & brundage (1996); and mccarthy (2004a). 2 my research on penitential tradition is heavily indebted to the pioneering work of allen j. frantzen, whose monograph the literature of penance in anglo-saxon england (1983) is an essential read for anyone wishing to study the vernacular penitentials. also helpful and relevant to the anglo-saxon period are two more recent essays by catherine cubitt (2006) and rob meens (2006). 8 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) for confession, deal explicitly with sex, incorporating canons specifi c both to marriage and to what might be termed deviant or dissident sexual expression. the focus of this essay is the former; specifi cally, i argue that penitential literature was a vehicle for normalizing marital sexuality. to support this claim, this essay off ers a cultural reading of the sexual vocabulary within the vernacular penitentials, for it is through the language of sex that an ideology of sex is ' amed, and through which a more nuanced understanding of the place of marriage in anglo-saxon society is obtained. recent scholarship has addressed the issue of whether we can speak of normal medieval sexuality or, more specifi cally, whether “heteronormativity” should be assumed for the medieval period. karma lochrie contends that sexual “norms” are specifi c to modern statistics, and therefore the concept of “heteronormativity” was not available to the medieval world (lochrie 2005). there is not space in this essay to address this issue in any great detail; nevertheless, the analysis that follows suggests a broader understanding and use of normal and related words (monk 2012: 88–98). thus, in discussing how the anglo-saxon penitentials normalize certain sexual behaviours, this is not my invocation of statistical norms but an argument in favour of contemporaneous cultural expectations relating to sex. it is not the case, however, that the penitentials directly stipulate that which is normal; rather, they assume a single, normative sexual condition by means of their disapprobation of improper, unriht, sexual behaviours and states. in other words, in the defence of rihthæmed—proper or lawful sexual union—the penitentials can be read as the church’s attempt to nurture a sexual norm.3 3 the deverbal noun hæmed (sexual union), which derives ' om hæman (to have sex[ual intercourse]) is dealt with at length by andreas fischer in his study of old english vocabulary relating to marriage (1986: 68–75). i examine below the immediate context of its use in the penitentials, and in doing so also address fischer’s reading. all translations of old english are my own, unless otherwise indicated. 9 defending rihthæmed selim 18 (2011) 2 penitentials: as regulation and as lived experience the scri! boc, the penitential or handbook of penance, was a vital part of an early medieval priest’s ministerial equipment, and as such it connected the judicial and educational roles of a priest (frantzen 1983: 151).4 it was a tool for determining the degree of fasting, or other penance, necessitated by particular sins (payer 1984: 9).5 as the blickling homilist shows, priests were to carry on the tradition of teaching the fl ock e om “heora scrig -bec” (“their penitentials”), thus providing instruction on how to confess sins correctly. furthermore, the onus for confession lay with the priest, for, as the homilist argues, sins were so various and some “swiþe unsyferlice” (“so very fi lthy”) that without the priest asking, the sinner would avoid telling his sins (morris 1967: 43). the introduction to the old english penitential captures the importance and seriousness of the confessor’s role: hyt gebyreð þæt se sacerd smeage synfullra manna bote be bisceopes dome, ⁊ ne wandige he na, ne for ricum ne for heanum, þæt he him tæce swa seo boc him tæcð, forþan se hælend cwæð gif se sacerd nolde þam synfullan his synna bote tæcean, þæt he eg þa sawle æt him secan wolde. (frantzen 2012: sxy41.01.01)6 4 for evidence relating to the teaching of penance, see frantzen (1983: 151–174). 5 pierre j. payer’s study off ers a detailed survey and analysis of the sexual contents of welsh, irish, anglo-saxon and frankish penitential texts written in latin prior to 813; and it identifi es penitential material incorporated into later collections of ecclesiastical law up to the twelg h century. another key study on latin penitentials in europe is by sarah hamilton (2001). 6 frantzen’s database includes the texts for all manuscript witnesses of the vernacular penitentials. the old english text i provide within this essay is based on his editions. frantzen’s titles for the texts and his “tagging system” are preserved. if the canon appears in more than one manuscript, this is indicated by multiple sigla (capital letters). a quotation is e om the fi rst manuscript listed; it should be assumed that, unless otherwise stated, the text in the other versions is very similar. 10 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) it is fi tting that the priest deliberate on the penance of sinful men according to the judgment of the bishop, and he never hesitate, neither for the rich nor the poor; that he teach as the book teaches him, because the saviour says if the priest would not teach the sinful one penance for his sins, then therea& er he would seek the soul ' om him. sins of all types are covered by the canons of the various penitentials, and sexual sins make up a signifi cant proportion of their content. there are fi ve extant vernacular penitential texts, one containing instructions on how to receive penitents, and four that are essentially lists of tariff s for the various sins.7 the range of penance is ' om a few days’ fasting for relatively minor off ences to lifetime banishment ' om christian communion for particularly heinous crimes. tariff s for sexual sins fi t right across this spectrum. collectively, they can be understood as reinforcing the church’s perspective on sexual intercourse, namely that the purpose or natural orientation of sex was reproduction within the confi nes of marriage. this perspective, together with the belief that sexual intercourse was only permissible in legitimate marriage, is described by pierre j. payer as “an unstated theological assumption throughout the patristic and medieval periods” (1993: 4). such an ecclesiastical premise, though not enunciated explicitly, helps us to understand why the anglo-saxon penitentials are so prescriptive on sexual matters, even when relating to sex within marriage. it is clear that the church did not consider marital relations to be legitimate per se but, rather, sex had to be performed in the right or proper manner.8 thus, coƭ ugal privileges or rights are tightly regulated in the penitentials, impinging on what might be 7 frantzen, in his database, provides a description and manuscript history for each text. the texts are: old english introduction; canons of theodore; scri! boc; old english penitential; and old english handbook. 8 the idea of sex “in the proper manner” is expressed in the later synod of angers (c. 1217). this is cited by payer (2009: 4). 11 defending rihthæmed selim 18 (2011) considered today as matters of personal preference, such as sexual positions, forms of intercourse and the % equency of sex. the penitentials were a vehicle for teaching and preaching a more nuanced doctrine of sexual decorum than was available through liturgical services generally. the capacity therein for the regulation of sexual behaviour is more readily appreciated if we conceive of the vernacular penitentials as texts situated at the intersection with confessional oral experience. on this matter, allen j. frantzen employs the model of “confession as narrative” in his discussion of the “literariness” of the penitentials. his theoretical % amework promotes a more productive way of looking at these texts, and is particularly useful in opening up their sexual dicta to scrutiny (1991: 3–4).9 “confession as narrative” shi+ s the emphasis away % om perceiving the penitentials solely as texts, enabling us to engage with the lived experience of confession. as part of his model, frantzen explains how penitential “texts depend on agents (confessors and sinners) for production”— production being defi ned as “what happened when written texts came to life”—and therefore they are “reproduced in specifi c social circumstances.” as a consequence, the “oral context” of confession is projected by the penitential texts, and therefore the tradition of penance “is engaged in concrete circumstances” (frantzen 1991: 5). this oral context is especially noticeable when one considers the introductory material of penitentials, as found in the old english introduction (frantzen 2012: snx31.01.01–10.01 and sn32.01.01–03.01).10 here, there is a mixture of formula, where the priest engages the penitent in a dialogue and catechism, and “open” communication, where the sinner is invited to speci2 his 9 frantzen’s essay (1991) is reproduced in his database (see “background;” accessed 27.04.12), and constitutes the introduction to his 1991 la littérature de la pénitence dans l’angleterre anglo-saxonne (fribourg, éditions universitaires), a translation by michel lejeune of frantzen’s literature of penance (1983). 10 manuscript n omits 31.05.01 and 31.10.01. 12 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) particular sins, to provide “personal details and circumstances” (frantzen 1991: 6). frantzen’s emphasis concerning the orality of penitential texts centres on the “communication systems within which the texts functioned,” and he explains that these systems exist on “two levels: the oral, interpersonal encounter (in confession) and the written act of manuscript transmission.” the intersection of the two levels is described as follows: private confession was an event that the priest and the penitent re-enacted—that is, voiced—according to a form controlled by a document that was itself based on previous confessions (and, of course, on other documentary sources, including scriptural commentary and homilies). (frantzen 1991: 6)11 the concept of the private confessional dialogue as a re-enactment or voicing helps us to perceive that the written directions about confession are not solely a “how to” manual for priest and penitent, but are, in eff ect, the documenting of confessional experience as repeated performance. they are the textual expression of the cultural reiteration of a penitential tradition, a systematic process engaged in by an incalculable number of individual priests and penitents. frantzen reasonably postulates that the confessional interchange, the oral context of the penitentials, may have contributed to the modifi cation or “fi xing” of penitential texts, so that these texts “refl ected, in reduced form only, the event in which they originated” (1991: 5). furthermore, the textuality of the penitentials—their manuscript forms—implies an accumulative, discursive and binding power. their recording, copying, adapting and compiling reinforced their status as dicta and tradition, in a similar way to how anglo-saxon law was formed on precedent, and lawmakers built on the work of their predecessors (wormald 11 my own emphases. 13 defending rihthæmed selim 18 (2011) 1999).12 as frantzen states, “[t]he texts narrated a tradition of authority and precedent, maintaining the continuity of the codes and their infl uence” (1991: 4). if, then, we read confession as a re-enacting of an oraltextual event, an occasion where the priest and penitent “voiced” a predetermined discourse “according to a form controlled by a document that itself was based on previous confession,” then the penitentials not only reassign the tariff s of penance, but they represent this oral-textual lived experience. therefore, they can be understood as cultural reiteration. in other words, as confessors and sinners re-perform the “narrative” of confession, the recitation of established formulae, outlined in the penitentials, continuously restates and reinforces the practice of confession as both lawful and traditional. moreover, the details of the canons on sex become associated with established “truths”. that penitentials represent something more than just texts, that they are the intersection of the systems of communication that produced oral confession—a repeated, lived experience—suggests that the sexual dicta in the penitentials should be viewed as part of that lived reality. it is this essay’s contention that the ongoing repetition of specifi c sexual proscriptions would have served as a cultural reiteration of the church’s narrow perspective on sex; and thus the disseminating of penitential content had the capacity to normalize certain sexual behaviour, whilst at the same time to stigmatize “deviant” sexuality. this notion of cultural re-iteration draws upon work by judith butler, especially her concept of “binding power” through “citational legacy.” butler argues that “it is through the invocation of convention that the speech act of [a] judge derives its binding power” (1993: 225). though butler’s work does not deal 12 for a detailed analysis of the development of legislative texts 4 om al4 ed to cnut, see chapter 5. as an example of precedent, wormald observes concerning cnut’s code that it “was above all a tribute to the legislative achievements of kings since al4 ed. almost all their major interests were refl ected. much of their work was quoted” (1999: 355). 14 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) directly with the medieval period, what she is stating here relates to the principle of how textual authority is established through its reiteration and repeated citation. this principle is in evidence in relation to the sexual dicta of the anglo-saxon penitential. the performing of confession and penance incorporated a reiteration of a textual formula in the form of the confessional dialogue. furthermore, it might be argued that the repeated invoking by priests of penitential codes reiterated and reinforced a binding, discursive authority on matters of sexuality. to summarize, the regulating of sexual behaviour may be seen as one part of an overall programme of “educating and reforming the laity” (frantzen 1983: 151). the fact that moral education and confession went hand in hand, and that educating the fl ock was a fundamental function of the work of the priest as confessor, is captured well in wulfstan’s homily, sermo ad populum: utan gyman þæt we urne cristendom clænlice gehealdan ⁊ aweorpan alcne hæðendom ⁊ habban rihtne geleafan, ⁊ lufi an cyricsocne dæges ⁊ nihtes o0 ⁊ gelome, ⁊ libban þam life þe scri! us wisige. (bethurum 1971: 229)13 let us take heed to hold cleanly our christianity, and to cast out all heathendom and hold the right faith, and to love the refuge of the church day and night, o0 en and regularly, and to live that life to which the confessor would direct us. 3  æfter gecynde: gender and marital sex the view of lawful sex fostered by the anglo-saxon church conforms to an originary, procreative and hence gendered paradigm. though this is never explicitly rehearsed in the penitentials, and though permitted sexual behaviours within marriage are not delineated, it is evident h om an analysis of the diction relating to sexual sins that the proper function of gender is at the centre of approved sexuality. 13 my own emphasis. 15 defending rihthæmed selim 18 (2011) in the anglo-saxon period, gender was understood as something defi nable “æ& er gecynde” (“according to nature;” cameron et al. 2003).14 helpful for understanding this fundamental point is æl* ic’s grammar, which off ers the following on the designation of male and female: “[æ]& er gecynde syndon twa cyn on namum, masculinum and femininum, þæt is, werlic and wifl ic” (“according to nature, there are two kinds in name, masculinum and femininum, that is, male and female;” zupitza & gneuss 1966: 18.5). here, a binary model of gender is presented as a given of nature, part of “the established order of things” (cameron et al. 2003),15 and thus intrinsic to “natural law.”16 male and female are, in this defi nition, the primary genders of nature, states conforming to the originary, biblical narrative of creation. payer, in discussing later medieval views of original gender diff erence, observes that “gender diff erentiation would seem to have been intended as a natural feature of the original human condition” (1993: 21). this too appears to be the primary understanding of gender expressed by the anglo-saxon church.17 in her study of virginity and misogyny in late anglo14 gecynd, 2a, “in accordance with nature” for “æ& er gecynd and þurh gecynd.” 15 gecynd, 2. 16 though “nature” is the most suitable translation for gecynd, the full range of meaning is broad and nuanced; it is not, however, within the scope of this essay to dwell on this in any detail. however, it is helpful to appreciate that gecynd is o& en used to connote a shared or universal innateness, the condition or state of being that all are born into as part of the continuum of life * om creation; the related adjectives and adverbs, correspondingly, to the attribute or manner expected due to this (monk 2012: 87–100). hugh white analyses the medieval latin discourse on nature, especially in response to ulpian’s “natural law” model, * om which “comes the union of male and female, which we call marriage, [and] the procreation of children and their bringing up” (white 2000: 20–21). 17 i do not wish to over-simpli= medieval views of gender, as if there was a uniform gender system across the medieval period. for an excellent study of sex diff erence in later medieval culture, especially as infl uenced by medieval discourses of medical and natural philosophy, see cadden (1993). 16 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) saxon england, for example, catherine cubitt demonstrates that gender diff erence was part of the “highly developed sense of social order” propagated via the writings of æl& ic and wulfstan (2000: 21). 3.1  beyond the wedding the penitential instructions regarding marital intercourse reinforced the church’s position on gender. all sexual behaviour within a lawful marriage had to have the potential for reproduction for it to be considered proper. thus sexual function within marriage was tightly bound to the reproductive roles of mother and father, as can be seen & om penitential pronouncements against non-reproductive sex, discussed in more detail below. what is apparent, too, is that sexual intercourse served as a fundamental characteristic, a religiocultural signifi er, of marriage. this is evident in canons that permit a wife to abandon her husband on grounds of impotence, also discussed below. it is thus implicit in the penitentials that a married couple is characterized by its active sexual behaviour, and thus the basis of a sexualized state or identity is formed. furthermore, the gendered status of each individual within that state is underpinned by its integral reproductive, and hence sexual, function. in linguistic terms, the penitential known as scri! boc diff erentiates between the act of marrying (the wedding ceremony) and the durative state of being married. the former is contextually linked to the uniting of husband and wife by a priest, and also to the public sanctioning of that action; for the latter, the emphasis falls on the sexualized status of those who are married. in a canon referring to the wedding ceremony, the priest, who presides “in þære ærestan geðeodnysse weres ⁊ wifes” (“in the fi rst joining of man and woman”), is required to sing mass and to bless “þa gesamnunga” (“the unions”), so that, subsequently, couples may off er almsgiving to the church, pray, fast for forty nights and a2 er that attend the eucharist (frantzen 2012: x09.05.01). from the context, there is no direct semantic association with the sexual in the employment of geðeodnes (“a joining,” or 17 defending rihthæmed selim 18 (2011) “marriage”) (fischer 1986: 104–105) and gesamnung (“union”). the former derives + om the verb ðeodan (“to join, attach”), which has a very broad use, but which in the semantic fi eld of marriage connotes “to join in marriage;” though it is not a native marriage word but a loan-translation + om latin (fischer 1986: 102–104).18 thus the noun geðeodnes in scri! boc connotes the joining of man and woman in marriage. likewise, the latter noun, derived + om the verb gesamnian (“to unite, join”), and here being used as a variation of geðeodnes, has no immediate sexual connotation, though its use in this passage might be said to anticipate the sexual aspect of a marital union.19 according to scri! boc, this particular joining or union is not a private coming together, but one performed openly through the services of a priest. furthermore, as a reciprocation of the public sanctioning of their union, the married couple are required to approach the congregation with almsgiving, further demonstrating the societal importance of their newly acquired, wedded state.20 18 fischer, however, does note that there are two instances (out of seventeen occurrences) in the old english corpus where geðeodan is used with reference to sexual intercourse, though the example he gives + om bede shows that the verb is not used in isolation to mean this but, rather, is qualifi ed by “in lichoman gegadrunge” (“in union of the body”). 19 i say this because the related verb, gesamnian is used later to indicate the joining together in sexual intercourse (frantzen 2012: xs11.05.01). see fischer’s discussion of gesamnian (1986: 97–98). 20 it seems likely that the blessing of the priest takes place in + ont of a congregation as it is associated with his singing of mass. furthermore, the subsequent statement “and heo æ5 er þon hie ahebban, þæt he cyrican secan, mid ælmessan” (“and a5 er that [i. e. the blessing], they themselves are to rise, so that they approach the congregation with almsgiving”) may suggest that the couple are kneeling before the priest and before the congregation, and hence inside the church where a ministering priest would naturally be located. this canon seems to anticipate later medieval laws requiring all marriages to be performed by a priest in a church in order to be considered legal (mccarthy 2004b: 19–50). 18 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) the old english penitential, though it diff ers & om scri! boc by stipulating that the eucharist is taken sooner, similarly emphasizes the public signifi cance of the marriage, but it also indicates the non-sexual state of the initial ceremonial union: be ðam hu gesynhiwan heora ðeawas healdan sculon for gode: halige gewritu tæcað hwæt æghwylcum geleaff ullum were to donne is, þonne he his riht æwe ærest ham bringeð; þæt is æ* er boca tæcinge þæt heo ðreora daga ⁊ nihta . rst heora clænnyssa healdan sculon, ⁊ ðonne on þone þriddan dæg heora mæssan gestandan ⁊ hi butu husel niman, ⁊ syððan heora gesinscipe healdan for gode ⁊ for worulde swa heora þearf sy. (frantzen 2012: x42.21.00–01; sy42.21.01) concerning how a wedded couple shall observe their customs before god: holy books teach what every believing man is to do, when he fi rst brings his lawful wife home; that is, following the teaching of the bible, that they shall fi rst hold their cleanness three days and nights, and then on the third day are to be present for mass and are to take the eucharist vessel, and a* erwards are to observe their marriage before god and before the world as is their necessity. it is noteworthy that the couple are required to abstain & om sexual intercourse (or, euphemistically, “hold their cleanness”) for the fi rst three days following the wedding—which, here, incorporates the act of the man bringing home his wife. this stipulation of sexual abstinence underscores the non-sexualized state of marriage as a ceremony. this appears to run counter to the germanic cultural tradition whereby the wedding day incorporated the “wedding night”—sexual intercourse—which “marked the beginning of the state of marriage” (fischer 1986: 22). furthermore, it is a modifi cation of early canon law, which only required one night’s sexual abstinence (cross & hamer 1999: 91 [59]). the penitential canon has no parallel in halitgar’s penitential, the continental latin source for much of the old english penitential, and thus it 19 defending rihthæmed selim 18 (2011) would seem to represent an indigenous perspective of marriage.21 through the reiterating but modi% ing of the tradition of sexual abstinence following a wedding, we are probably witnessing a particular anglo-saxon ecclesiastical point of view on this matter, an attempt to emphasize the wedding as spiritual and holy. the requirement for initial sexual abstinence is relinquished once mass is attended and the eucharist is shared with the congregation; then the couple are & ee to “observe their marriage” before god and everyone else. though not explicitly stated, this would include the & eedom to have sexual intercourse, “as is their necessity.” it is, however, pertinent that this canon implies that the condition of being married continued as a publicly performed state even once private sexual intercourse was permitted. it might be said that the sexual aspect of marriage was observed “before the world” in that the local community had evidence of the couple’s coƭ ugality in the form of children being born to them. indeed, sexual fecundity was a corollary of marriage: not only were husband and wife permitted to have sexual intercourse, but it was also expected of them. the restrictions on marital sex in the penitentials reveal how, linguistically, sexual intercourse is integral to the lived experiences of those in a marital union. the scri! boc is useful for illustrating this point: þa þe on rihtum hæmede beoð, þrym nihton ær þam feowertiges nihta fæstene, hig ne gesamnigen hig, ⁊ swa þæt feowertig nihta ealle oþ þa nigoðan niht in eastron. (frantzen 2012: sx11.05.01) 21 the old english penitential signifi cantly modifi es the material & om halitgar’s penitential (schmitz 1898: 275–300) concerning sexual abstinence in marriage. the latter stipulates abstention for three days prior to each communion, which is not included in the old english canon. material included in old english penitential but not in halitgar’s work includes not only the stipulation to abstain & om sex for three days a6 er the wedding, but also the requirement to abstain every wednesday night, friday night and sunday night. cf. frantzen 2012: xys42.21.01–02 with schmitz 1898: 284 (4.24). 20 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) those who are in a lawful sexual union: the three nights before the forty nights of fasting, they may not join themselves [in sexual intercourse], and likewise the whole forty nights until the ninth night in easter. it is important to note the use of the prepositional phrase “on rihtum hæmede” to signi% the condition of being married.22 it may be translated as “in a lawful marriage.”23 however, the noun hæmed derives & om hæman which, as andreas fischer shows, predominantly means “to have sexual intercourse” (1986: 63–68).24 hæman is used throughout scri! boc and the other penitentials to refer explicitly to the act of sexual intercourse, either licit or illicit; it is never used in the sense of “to marry.” an obvious example of its associations with lawful intercourse is found in the following canon in scri! boc: “ceorl gif he mid his agenum wife hæme, þwea hine ær he on cyrcean ga” (“a man, if he should have sex with his own wife, should cleanse himself 22 ms x uses the preposition in. 23 frantzen gives “in lawful union” (frantzen 2012: s11.05.01). 24 fischer notes that it is commonly accepted that hæman (and the whole family of hæm-words) derives ultimately & om the stem ham, meaning “home;” and thus hæman must have initially had the meaning “to take home,” though this is not attested to in old english. the etymology suggests that hæman took on the specialized meaning of “to take the bride home on the wedding day,” though, again, this sense is not directly attested to in old english (cf. lehmann 1986: 170 [h14: haims]). although the uses of hæman in the old english corpus indicate that the literal meaning “to take home” is lost, there are a handful of cases where “to marry” is signifi ed. (cf. the phrase in the canons of theodore: bringe wif ham (“bring home a wife”), which refers to illicit marriage/intercourse by a priest or deacon; frantzen 2012: by69.01.01.) this usage, however, represents less than ten percent of all recorded instances, and the remaining examples, as fischer identifi es, all mean to “to have sexual intercourse,” and therefore, as fischer notes, it is clear that “‘to marry’ should be set up as a separate meaning” (fischer 1986: 63–75, esp. 67, n. 129). we should observe, too, julie coleman’s reference to the “physical connotations” of hæman in the context of marriage terms, which would suggest that, even where “marry” is a reasonable rendering of hæman, the sexual associations are not absent (coleman 2000: 113). 21 defending rihthæmed selim 18 (2011) before going to church;” frantzen 2012: sx12.01.01). the meaning of hæman is clarifi ed, in the context of illicit intercourse, in a heading to one of the canons of the old english penitential, where the latin cohit (“has sexual intercourse”) is given as the gloss for “hæmð” in the manuscript oxford, bodleian library, junius 121 (frantzen 2012: x42.06.00). this particular canon discusses men defi ling themselves with animals or with young men, as well as sex between adult men, and thus the sense “marries” is inappropriate.25 the semantic association between verb and deverbal noun can thus be understood to accentuate the sexual aspect of rihthæmed as found in the scri! boc canon under consideration. thus the translation “marriage” does not capture the sexual element that is integral to the old english meaning of hæmed. my own choice of “sexual union” preserves that sexual element whilst allowing for a range of meanings both relating to lawful and illicit sexual union. the phrase “þa þe on rihtum hæmede” may therefore be rendered better as “those in a lawful (or, proper) sexual union” or, perhaps, 25 in his database, frantzen generally translates hæman as “fornicate,” even though a more obvious oe word for “fornicate” is forlicgan. this sometimes presents problems of interpretation, such as in the canon against having sex on a sunday in the canons of theodore which gives just three days of fasting for this sin: “se ðe hæme on sunnandæge bidde him æt gode forgifenesse ⁊ fæste iii dagas” (“whoever has sex on a sunday, he must beg forgiveness for himself om god and fast 3 days; frantzen 2012: yb66.01.01). this minimal tariff of penance does not correspond to the fairly lengthy periods of fasting for fornication elsewhere in penitential literature. it is logical, therefore, that the canon concerns marital sex on a sunday (that is, sex within a lawful union, but performed at the wrong time), rather than against fornication (sex outside of marriage) on a sunday. therefore, “has sex” is a more appropriate translation than frantzen’s “fornicates.” though i do not wish to assign a single defi nition for hæman, “to have sex” avoids misunderstanding its semantic range in penitential diction, where it is used neutrally to describe both unlawful and lawful sex. in discussing sex words, and with particular reference to hæman, coleman (1992: 94) observes the “later moral distinction being imposed upon the language” in standard old english dictionaries. 22 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) “those in lawful intercourse,” though the latter is somewhat archaic.26 the association of sexual intercourse with hæmed is made clear elsewhere in the old english corpus. in his catholic homilies, æl% ic states that “mægþhad […] biþ forloren on hæmede” (“virginity is lost in [a] sexual union;” godden 1979: 5.76–77); and in his lives of saints he observes, regarding the marriage of æthelthryth, that god did not wish “þæt hire mægðhad wurde mid hæmede adylegod ac heold hi on clænnysse” (“that her virginity should be destroyed through [a] sexual union but he kept her purity;” skeat 1966: 432–433).27 the correlation of hæmed and sex is evident in two of the exeter riddles, 20 and 42. in the former, which exploits the phallic symbolism of the “sword,” mercedes salvadorbello observes the “literal reference to sex” in the proclamation by the riddle’s subject that “ic wiþ bryde ne mot / hæmed habban” (“with a bride i cannot have a sexual union”). in the latter riddle, she notes the “direct allusion to sex” in the use of the compound hæmedlac (sexual play/sex-play), used to describe the coupling of the two creatures that results in the female becoming pregnant (2011: 368–369).28 in discussing hæmed, margaret clunies ross argues that in its earliest forms, in anglo-saxon laws, it had “the paramount sense 26 fischer’s analysis of the semantic range of hæmed is, i would suggest, somewhat problematic in the context of this essay (1986: 68–75); indeed, he acknowledges the “semantic problems associated with [hæmed]” (1986: 63). the semantic range within his study is directly that of engagement, weddings and marriage; so, inevitably, his discussion of hæmed is tightly focused around marriage. however, he does discuss its basic neutral meaning of “(legal and illegal) intercourse” (1986: 72–75). my particular problem with fischer’s analysis is the choice of the modeng word “marriage” as a meaning in certain contexts, for it produces a somewhat circular presumption of a direct correspondence between oe hæmed and modeng “marriage.” marriage maybe what is implied in certain contexts, but the word “marriage” does not convey the sexual nuance of hæmed. 27 skeat euphemistically translates “mid hæmede” as “through cohabitation.” 28 my thanks to mercedes salvador-bello for allowing me to see her article ahead of publication. 23 defending rihthæmed selim 18 (2011) of sexual intercourse within the male partner’s home (hām) as the establishing feature of a relationship, legitimate or illegitimate” (1985: 21–22).29 her point that hæmed directly relates to a relationship defi nable by sexual intercourse is apposite. in the context of the penitentials, the fact that hæmed is modifi ed by both riht and unriht demonstrates that by itself, it is a neutral term, connoting simply a sexual union or relationship, without any reference to its legitimacy. though clunies ross asserts that the association of hæmed with both lawful and unlawful sexual relationships “must have rendered the word highly unsuitable” in the propounding of “legal marriage as an institution sanctioned by god,” it appears, however, that the compounding of hæmed with riht was all that was required to make it a useful word to denote the state of being married. furthermore, in the penitential context of regulating sexual behaviour, it is most appropriate that marriage was not disassociated * om its sexual meaning. the use of rihthæmed with its explicit sexual associations demonstrates that there existed a discrete notion of what it meant to be married as opposed to the ceremonial joining together indicated by the non-sexual words geðeodnes (“ joining”) and gesamnung (“union”). 4 defining the improper; normalizing the proper the phrase “nydinga nymð to unrihthæmede” (“forcibly takes into an unlawful sexual union”) is used in the second book of the old english penitential to describe an abduction of a woman into a sexual union against her will—an attempt by a man to obtain a wife by force through rape (frantzen 2012: x42.13.00–01; sy42.13.01; monk 2012: 56, n. 176).30 the phrase “for unrihtum hæmede” (“for an unlawful [or, improper] sexual union/for unlawful intercourse”) 29 my own emphasis. 30 the canon is also repeated in three manuscript witnesses of the old english handbook (frantzen 2012: dbc54.21.01). shari horner makes a case for hæmed and hæman being used to signip forced sex in al* ed’s laws (2004: 157–160). 24 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) is used in the canon heading that follows to describe a steward’s enticement of his master’s wife “% am his hlaforde” (“% om his lord”), probably indicating that the wife abandons her husband for this new union (frantzen 2012: x42.14.00; monk 2012: 56, n. 177). later in the same penitential, the taking of a nun as wife is given as an example of the “unrihtum hæmede” concerning which st gregory wrote (frantzen 2012: x42.19.00–01; sy42.19.01). that sexual unions are improper or unlawful allows for a reading of early medieval sexuality that moves beyond the idea that sex is only ever represented as acts. the positing of riht and unriht in relation to sexual unions, and not simply to sexual acts, signifi es an attempt by the church to confer either approval or disapprobation upon sexual relationships; and thus the parties to such unions become more than mere juridical subjects of forbidden or permitted acts; they become the bearers of a culturally determined state.31 repeated over time, through the enactment of pastoral and confessional duties, written and verbalized judgements concerning proper and improper unions normalize the rihthæmed, the lawful state of the reproductive female and male. thus, having “proper” sex within a “proper” union could have been understood as a performance of status and, consequently, a confi guring of identity. 4.1  becoming an æwbreca it is necessary to examine the language of the penitentials in detail in order to detect the cultural nuances regarding illicit sexual unions. the following example % om scri! boc illustrates how the person who may be read simply as an “adulterer” should be read also as an untrustworthy law-breaker to be shunned by the community. 31 cf. david halperin’s (2002: 24–47, here 27) analysis of michel foucault’s (1998: 43) problematic discussion of the medieval discourse of sodomy as “a category of forbidden acts,” the author of which “was nothing more than the juridical subject of them.” 25 defending rihthæmed selim 18 (2011) swa hwylc man swa forlæte his wif ⁊ hine to unrihthæmede þeodeð, fæste vii winter hearde fæstene oððe xv leohtlicor. (frantzen 2012: xsy09.09.01) whosoever may abandon his wife and subjects himself to an unlawful sexual union, should fast 7 years hard fasting or 15 lighter. the phrase “hine to unrihthæmede þeodeð” (“ joins/subjects himself to an improper sexual union”) means more than “commits adultery,” for the man is said to abandon or leave ( forlætan) his wife; he actively seeks and joins himself to another in a sexual union. though this canon may refer broadly to a man conducting an adulterous aff air or to cohabitation (whether with another woman or another man), it most probably signifi es the attempt to establish another marriage, that is, a bigamous union; this would be unriht in the sense of unlawful, as well as in the sense of unrighteous, or improper. the seriousness of abandoning a wife and attaching oneself to a new, but improper, sexual union is refl ected in the high tariff of seven years of penance. this is in contrast to an earlier canon in scri! boc which prescribes only one year for a married layman committing what would seem to be a single act of adultery, though, interestingly, the amount of penance is increased to three years should the woman the man commits adultery with subsequently become pregnant, and to the full seven years should the man then become hegsteald (“unmarried”), which seems to be referring to the man abandoning his lawful wife and taking up with the new woman with whom he has fathered the child (frantzen 2012: sxy02.01.01–03).32 the old english penitential also refers to the unlawful repudiation of a spouse—to what is tantamount to bigamy— 32 “læwede man him wif agende gif he oþres ceorles wif wemme oþþe fæmnan, fæste i winter; gif he bearn hæbbe fæste iii winter; gif he þonne hegsteald sy, fæste vii winter; sume willað x” (“a layman, having a wife, if he defi les another churl’s wife or a virgin, should fast one year; if he should have a child [by her], he should fast 3 years; if he then becomes unmarried, he should fast 7 years—some wish 10”). 26 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) providing additional information that sheds further insight on the socio-cultural implications of improper sexual unions: be þam men þe his æwe forlæt, ⁊ be þam wife þe hire wer forlæt ⁊ oðerne cyst: se man þe his riht æwe forlæt ⁊ oðer wif nimð, he bið æwbreca; ne sylle him nan preost husl ne nan ðara gerihta þe cristenum men gebyreð, ⁊ gif him forðsið getimað, ne lecge hine man na mid cristenum mannum; ⁊ gyf wif hyre riht wer forlæt ⁊ ceosoð oðerne, beon heo þæs ylcan wyrðe þe her bufan segð; ⁊ þa magas þe æt þam dihte wæron ðolien þone ylcan dom, butan hi ær to bote gecyrron willon swa hire scri& him tæce (frantzen 2012: x42.08.00–02; sy42.08.01–02).33 concerning a man who abandons his wife [or, marriage],34 and concerning a woman who abandons her husband and chooses another: the man who abandons his lawful wife [or, marriage] and takes another woman, he is a vowbreaker. a priest should not give him the eucharist or any of the rights that befi t christian men; and if death is brought to him, do not lay him as a man amongst christian men. and if a woman abandons her lawful husband and chooses another, she is to be [judged] by the same value that is here stated above. and the kinsmen who were at this arrangement are to suff er the same judgment, unless they fi rst desire to turn to repentance, just as their confessor shall teach them. these canons immediately follow one concerning the man who “æwe brycð” (“breaks a marriage vow”) and the woman who takes another man “ofer her riht hlaford” (“over her rightful lord;” frantzen 2012: xsy42.07.01),35 both of whom receive seven years fasting, corresponding to the penance in scri! boc for the man who abandons his wife and takes another. signifi cantly, the 33 the same canons (without the heading) appear in the old english handbook (frantzen 2012: dbc54.15.01–16.01). 34 for a discussion of æ as “marriage,” see fischer (1986: 86–89). 35 cameron et al. 2003: æ 2. b: æwe brecan, “to break the marriage vow.” 27 defending rihthæmed selim 18 (2011) canons elaborate on adulterous unions by stressing that the illicit repudiation of the innocent spouse is in favour of another whom the off ender has taken via an unlawful wedding arrangement, presided over by family members complicit in the illegal marriage of the guilty couple. this is referring to what today would be understood as bigamy.36 the context here demonstrates that the noun æwbreca does not signi& the modern “adulterer” in an exact way. the æwbreca here is the man who abandons his fi rst wife, or riht æwe (“proper/lawful wife/union”), in order to take another in an unlawful ceremony arranged by the kinsfolk of the woman.37 as is suggested by the literal meaning of æwbreca (“lawbreaker”), the guilty person is connoted as one who breaks the law, indicating that the sense of “bigamist” is appropriate, rather than just “adulterer.” this is further nuanced when one considers the semantic association between “law” and “marriage” in the word æ, the fi rst unit of the compound æwbreca, which leads to the sense of “breaker of the marriage vow” (fischer 1986: 87–90).38 the religious and social implications for those involved in the illicit union are profound: the guilty persons become outcasts in life and death; they are to be excommunicated, not even deserving of a burial amongst christians. this latter point is in fact a rather emphatic elaboration of the source canon in halitgar’s penitential, which the old english penitential loosely paraphrases (schmitz 1898: 281 [4.11]). it is evident, therefore, that the man who, according to scri! boc, subjects himself “to unrihthæmede” (“to 36 surprisingly, fischer does not address the concept of bigamy in his analysis of the stem æw-; he gives “adulterer” for æwbreca (1986: 84–95 [84]). 37 compare the anonymous law code wifmannes beweddung, which wormald associates with wulfstan’s era, where once pre-nuptial agreements are made between the would-be husband and the would-be wife and her kin, her kin are subsequently to arrange her betrothal and marriage (whitelock 1979: 467–468; wormald 1999: 385–387). 38 see also cameron et al. 2003: æ 1: “law;” and æ-breca, æ-bryca 1: “breaker of the (marriage) vow, adulterer (ref. to men or women).” 28 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) an unlawful sexual union”) is doing far more than committing an improper sexual act. in abandoning his wife and joining himself to an improper sexual union, he alters his standing before the church and the community. his socio-sexual status is altered, for his actions make him an æwbreca, an impugned violator of vows, a law-breaker. thus the priest who taught this % om his scri! boc not only expressed an ideology of marriage centred on christian morality but he underscored the legal and social contexts of matrimony. 4.2  being in an unlawful sexual union; " aming an unrihthæmed a pair of canons in scri! boc, that diff er signifi cantly % om their probable source, also shed light on how sex was constructed as something more than an isolated act (or a series of acts), and that sexual unions were closely tied to social standing. these canons appear to contrast the discovery of a woman’s status as illicitly married with a woman’s deliberate forging, or % aming, of an improper sexual union: wif gyf sy on unrihtumhæmede, ⁊ hire wer mid hyre eardian nelle, ga heo on mynster gyf heo wille; gyf heo nelle, nime þone feorðan dæl þæs y% es. (frantzen 2012: xsy16.05.01) a wife, if she should be in an improper [or, unlawful] sexual union, and her husband does not wish to dwell with her, she may go to a monastery if she wishes; if she does not wish this, she may take the fourth part of the property. gyf hwylc wif sy þe unrihthæmed % emme, hyre wite sy in hyre weres handum. (frantzen 2012: xsy16. 06.01) if there be any wife who eff ects an unlawful sexual union [or, commits unlawful intercourse], her punishment is in the hands of her husband. the clause “wif gyf sy on unrihtum hæmede” (“if a wife be in an unlawful sexual union”) does not straightforwardly translate “mulier si adultera est” (“if a woman is an adulteress”), the corresponding latin clause in the canon % om theodore’s 29 defending rihthæmed selim 18 (2011) penitential, the probable source of this pair of old english canons.39 the vernacular places the woman on (“in/within”) an improper sexual union, whereas the latin presents the woman herself as violator, using the noun for adulteress. in the vernacular text, the same prepositional construction, on hæmede, is employed as was earlier used in the description of the couple who “are in a lawful sexual union.” thus, a similar rendering is appropriate here. therefore, specifi cally, the wife is in an unlawful sexual union, rather than being an adulteress. the mood suggested by the subjunctive allows for a reading beyond a simple reference to a wife committing adultery against her husband; it permits the interpretation that the wife is in an unlawful union with her husband—this being due, for example, to their marriage breaking the church’s rules on consanguinity. we are reminded of the possibility of such irregular marriages taking place—even with the blessing of a priest—in the concluding statement of the late anglo-saxon, anonymous law code wifmannes beweddung, where the warning is given: “it is also well to take care that one knows that they [the bride and bridegroom] are not too closely related, lest one a& erwards put asunder what was previously wrongly joined together” (whitelock 1979: 486). an example of an irregular union is presented in a pair of canons 1 om the old english penitential (repeated in the old english handbook) where a wife “nimð hire to gemæccan” (“takes to herself as husband”) the brother of her fi rst husband. the stipulation is made that the couple in this “manfullan sinscipe” (“sinful marriage”) should be separated and both should atone earnestly (frantzen 2012: sxy42.11.01–02 and dbc18.01–19.01).40 in such a case, where ecclesiastical intervention is advocated, it is quite possible that the woman did not understand 39 the scri! boc author has signifi cantly reworked two canons 1 om theodore’s penitential (haddan & stubbs 1871: 2.12.10–11). for a discussion of the diff erences between the vernacular and the latin, see monk (2012: 60–61). 40 mccarthy provides an overview of the church’s view of marriage and kinship (2004b: 126–132). 30 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) the impropriety of marrying her dead husband’s brother; similarly, the scri! boc canon in question may also be referring to a woman having her unlawful union brought to her (and her husband’s) attention. if read accordingly, the scri! boc canon implies the discovery or realization of an improper marriage, rather than a deliberate act of adultery by the wife. the consequence of this, should the husband end the union, is that the woman is either % ee to join a monastery or to take with her a portion of the marital property. importantly, the vernacular text diametrically deviates % om the latin in permitting the woman to keep a proportion of her marital property even if she does not wish to enter a monastery, reinforcing the perspective that this particular canon off ers a deliberate amendment of the latin source.41 as such, it may represent an indigenous or localized perspective on irregular marriages. in its relative leniency of allowing the wife to keep some of the marital property, we observe the anglo-saxon church’s pragmatic approach towards certain irregular marriages, something not generally witnessed in penitential dictates on adultery, nor in anglo-saxon laws concerning adultery.42 the second of the pair of canons % om scri! boc appears to contrast the discovery of irregular marriage with the deliberate conducting of an adulterous union on the part of a wife. the canon makes it clear that a wife is subject to her husband’s law and that her fate is in his hands if she deviates sexually. it should be noted that there is no mention of the possibility of reconciliation, as found in theodore’s penitential. it is diffi cult to determine whether this means reconciliation was considered undesirable, or simply that reconciling with one’s adulterous wife was an unspoken given, though jerome’s statement concerning the stupidity of maintaining an adulterous wife, which is preserved in 41 see above, n. 39. 42 note especially ii cnut 53, which states that a husband is to have all that the adulterous wife owns, and she is to lose her nose and ears (whitelock 1979: 463). 31 defending rihthæmed selim 18 (2011) wulfstan’s canon law collection, may suggest the former (cross & hamer 1999: 104–105 [92]). what is of interest linguistically in this canon is the use of the verb ! emman in relation to unrihthæmed as a contrast to the state of being in such a union in the previous canon. fremman connotes a very active sense of “to act” or “do;” “perform” and “eff ect” are alternative renderings (cameron et al. 2003).43 usually, in the context of crime or sin, it carries the meaning of “perpetrate” or “commit,” as can be seen / om its use with the noun morþor (“murder;” cameron et al. 2003).44 a fair translation of “unrihthæmed / emme” would therefore be “commit unlawful intercourse.” however, more seems to be indicated than simply that a woman commits adultery; the fact that the guilty woman’s future is to be determined by her husband strongly suggests that female adultery is here conceived as an aff ront to masculinity—to the husband’s gendered role of father and virile male. the use of ! emman in connection with unrihthæmed may also suggest that the adulterous wife actively eff ects, advances or / ames an improper sexual union and, as a consequence, undermines the rihthæmed or lawful sexual union in which the couple have been in up until this point. leaving the punishment or penalty of the wife to the judgement of her wronged husband, this canon allows him to defend his own gendered position should he choose to divorce her and remarry. this analysis of marital sexuality in the vernacular penitentials demonstrates that it is necessary to carefully consider—or reconsider—the way sex was / amed in the anglo-saxon period. it is easy to dismiss the canons on marriage as straightforwardly condemning sexual acts outside of marriage, but it is evident that so much of marital sexuality was inherently connected to social status, something made clearer only when we consider the details 43 ! emman, 3. 44 ! emman, 3. a. ; 3. a. iv. morþor ! emman. 32 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) and nuances of the vernacular lexis. that anglo-saxon persons could subject or attach themselves to an unrihthæmed, or could be said to be in or within one, or eff ect or perpetrate such a sexual state, has interesting implications in terms of contemporaneous cultural perceptions of identity. the language used in these canons demonstrates that sexual intercourse was not seen solely as an isolated act. people are not said merely to have illicit sex, but they become identifi able as belonging to an improper union. in the examples above, the diction alludes to cultural movement: a person may shi' * om a riht sexual state to an unriht one; or they may awaken to the improper state of their sexual union. thus the context of sexual acts determines the status of the union they are performed in. who one was and with whom one had sex determined the social standing of one’s sexual coupling. that this is so is further demonstrated in penitential canons addressing those who should have been celibate. 4.3 hæmedþing: a sexual union of sorts in the following example * om the fourth book of the old english penitential, the word that signifi es the sexual status of an ordained man who has returned to his former spouse is signifi cant: gif hwylc gehadod man, bisceop oþþe mæssepreost oþþe munuc oþþe diacon, his gemæccan hæfde ær he gehadod wære, ⁊ þa for godes lufan hig forlet ⁊ to hade feng, ⁊ hig þonne e' syþþan togædere hwyrfdon þurh hæmedþing, fæste ælc be his endebyrdnysse, swa hit bufan awriten ys be manslihte. (frantzen 2012: sxb44.04.01) if any ordained man, bishop or mass-priest or monk or deacon, had his mate before he was ordained, and then for the love of god abandoned her and took orders, and they then a' erwards returned again together through a sexual association, let each fast according to his rank, as it is written above for manslaughter.45 45 emphasis mine. 33 defending rihthæmed selim 18 (2011) the church allowed the repudiation of a spouse in order to enter the monastic life. this course of action represented a permanent ending of the marriage with no possibility of sexual reconciliation. thus, the denunciation of the sexual re-union of an ordained man and his former wife is unequivocally condemnatory in tone, the seriousness of such behaviour being equated, in penance terms, to manslaughter. the act or, more precisely, the condition of returning together sexually is described as hæmedþing, a diffi cult word to translate exactly, though it most literally means “sexual thing.”46 the old english word þing has a broad use. it can mean an act or deed, but it can also signi& a condition or set of circumstances (bosworth & toller 1882–1898: 1060–61; clark hall 1960: 360). these latter defi nitions underpin the meaning of hæmedþing as used in this context. it is, a1 er all, a case of the guilty man exchanging one condition or set of circumstances for another: the disavowal of the celibacy of his holy orders (his had, or “hood”) for the sake of reinstituting the original sexual condition of marriage. in the corresponding canon of the old english handbook, the description of the sin is: “þurh hæmedþingc h[e] e1 underfenge” (“through a sexual thing he should again receive [her];” frantzen 2012: dbc54.28.01).47 the use of the verb underfon, here, links hæmedþing to something beyond a single act or deed, for it connotes the reception, or accepting of the former wife, taking her e! (“once more”) as his sexual partner. their re-union, 8 om the church’s perspective, could not be considered as rihthæmed, regardless of it originally being so; it was, however, a sexual union of sorts, a sexual thing. a comparable canon is found in halitgar’s penitential, though not in the section normally considered the source for the old english penitential (schmitz 1898: 294 [6.8]). here, though, the 46 “carnal intercourse, venery, matrimony” (bosworth and toller 1882–1898: 500); “coition, cohabitation […] marriage” (clark hall 1960: 165). fischer explains it can be taken to mean “illegal marriage” (1986: 73). 47 the original manuscript reads “hi” (“they”); however, this is not in agreement with the verb “underfenge,” which is singular subjunctive. 34 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) euphemistic “iterum cognoverit” (“has again become acquainted with”) is used to refer to the sexual re-union. obviously, the old english term is far more direct in indicating the nature of the union as sexual but, additionally, the use of a noun (hæmedþing) rather than a verb (hæman) emphasizes that the vernacular canon is signi% ing a relationship and not just an act. similarly, hæmedþing is also the word used in the old english penitential to describe the forbidden sexual relationship subsequent to clerical marriage (frantzen 2012: xsy43.01.01), as well as the word used for the improper sexual relationship pursued (oe drifan) by a bishop and other clerics (frantzen 2012: ysxb44.03.01). thus the pursuit of forbidden sexual unions, or illicit marriages, by clerics—not just acts of momentary weakness—is what is refl ected in the use of hæmedþing in these contexts.48 it becomes apparent, + om the foregoing, that both proper and improper unions—lawful marriage and illicit cohabitation—are conceived as sexualized, making sexual intercourse fundamental to these states. thus married couples in a rihthæmed are identifi able by sexual activeness; old english vocabulary allows for a presumption of marriage as a sexualized condition.49 this is more than simply a linguistic construct, however, and that this is the case can be determined when we consider penitential canons that touch on matters of sexual reproduction. in examining dicta that discuss both sexual impotence and modes of non-reproductive sex, we gain insight into what conor mccarthy calls “ideological suggestions as to what marriage is.” the regulating of intimate sexual behaviour, of personal choices of sexual expression, represents the defi ning “boundaries” that “determine practice” within marriage (2004b: 4). 48 it should be noted too that in a heading in one manuscript version of scri! boc, hæmedþing is used to describe heathen marriages (frantzen 2012: s06.01.00). 49 compare the two hæm-stem words signi% ing married persons, hæmedceorl (“married man”) and hæmedwif (“married woman”) (fischer 1986: 68, n. 130). 35 defending rihthæmed selim 18 (2011) 4.4  impotence and sexual “ deviance” in marriage the anglo-saxon penitentials are surprisingly forthright in their defence of the right of a wife to have sexual intercourse with her husband, which we should probably interpret as her right to bear a child. though childless marriage undoubtedly existed in anglosaxon england, and though it is possible that celibate marriages were practiced by some, the penitentials provide us with insight into cultural expectation regarding childbearing. notable is the canon in scri! boc which stipulates that the inability of the husband to perform sexually * ees the wife to fi nd another husband: wer and wif gif heo geþeoded beoð and se wer wið her hæman ne mæge, þæt wif hine mot forlætan and hire oðerne niman, gif on þone ceorl cuð bið. (frantzen 2012: ysx12.07.01) husband and wife, if they are joined but the man is not able to have sex with her, the wife may abandon him and take for herself another, if that is known about the man. this canon, lacking any mention of a tariff of penance, is revealing for what it promotes ideologically concerning marriage. it demonstrates that even though a husband and wife are geþeoded (“ joined”) through the ceremony of marriage, they are not considered to be in a viable union if the husband is incapable of sexual intercourse. the fact that the word hæmed is not used to describe such a relationship is pertinent;50 the marriage is in eff ect void, unviable as a sexual union, and consequently as a reproductive unit. the impotence of the husband can be read as nulli2 ing the function of gender, which according to christian teaching formed the foundation of marriage.51 since the originary, 50 it is signifi cant that hæmed is not used either to describe the marriages of the virgin spouses in æl* ic’s lives of saints; see upchurch (2007: 55, 73 & 90). 51 see christ’s words on the forming of male and female as the basis of the “one fl esh” of marriage: mark 10:6–8; matthew 19:4–5. see also the discussion of christ’s words in a canon concerning legitimate marriage * om wulfstan’s canon law collection (cross & hamer 1999: 147–149 [130]). 36 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) reproductive function of male gender is absent, the wife is % ee to leave her husband, should she wish this, and to take another as a lawful husband. thus her potential gendered role of wifemother is preserved. furthermore, if we deploy frantzen’s model of confession as narrative, such judgements concerning impotence, wherever taught by priests using their penitentials and whenever the provision for remarriage was invoked by a woman, give evidence of a societal querying of an impotent man’s gendered status. even though the prevailing understanding was that god created male and female, the % ailty evident in impotence meant that gendered identities were vulnerable to cultural judgements and re-evaluation. the importance of sexual reproduction in marriage is further highlighted by those canons that prohibit certain forms of coƭ ugal sex. it is noteworthy that both oral and anal sex warrant lengthy penances, as can be seen % om the following two canons in scri! boc: swa hwylc man swa on muð sæd forlæteð, fæste vii winter (frantzen 2012: yxs02. 04. 01; whoever releases seed into the mouth should fast 7 years. [g]if he on hire bæcþerm hæme, fæste x winter (frantzen 2012: sx15. 02. 02 if he has sex in her rectum, he should fast 10 years the fi rst of these canons concerns fellatio, but it does not speci0 who the recipient of the male’s semen is. it could be referring to a same-sex act or a male-female act, including fellatio between married couples. the emphasis is on the ejaculative aspect of the act, the emitting of sæd into the mouth rather than into the vagina. as a non-reproductive form of intercourse, fellatio necessitates a particularly severe penance of seven years. the canons of theodore, in a parallel canon, notes that it had been judged by someone that penance should be for the rest of the sinner’s life, and it also states that fellatio is “wyrreste” (“worst,” meaning the worst evil; frantzen 2012: sb75.03.01). what appears % om the church’s perspective to have been most objectionable about fellatio, and 37 defending rihthæmed selim 18 (2011) this would have been most pertinent to marital sex, is that it represented an abuse of the gendered and reproductive function of sex and the sexual state of rihthæmed. the second of the scri! boc canons is specifi cally referring to anal intercourse within marriage, for it is a continuation of a canon that explicitly pertains to a husband and his wife, and which states: “man gif he hindan hæme mid his wife, fæste xl nihta” (“a man, if he should have sex with his wife & om behind, should fast 40 nights;” frantzen 2012: sx15.02.01). a comparison of the two statements is informative. the man who has vaginal intercourse & om the rear is committing a relatively minor off ence, for he is given just forty days of penance, whereas the man having sex “on hire bæcþerm,” that is, in his wife’s rectum (literally, “in her back-gut”), warrants a penance of ten years, one of the most severe tariff s in the whole of the penitential. this severity was likely due to anal sex representing the same abuse of gendered sexual function as was discernible in fellatio. neither form of sexual intercourse was viable as an act of potential reproduction; neither was compatible with the gendered roles of father and mother. we cannot presume that married couples would have known instinctively that practicing oral and anal sex was forbidden by the church. it is quite possible that either practice may have been viewed and performed by some as a form of contraception.52 unless we are to assume that priests publicly preached to their congregations concerning oral and anal sex—something unlikely in view of concerns over introducing dissident ideas—it is likely that confession was the vehicle for teaching these matters. if we consider the lived experience of confession, suggested by frantzen’s model of the penitentials as an oral-textual intersection, then we are enabled to perceive the anglo-saxon church creating and reiterating boundaries for marriage, but not just in a broad, general way, but rather, specifi cally, in a way that attempted to defi ne for 52 john noonan (1986) provides a detailed study of contraception in the medieval period (and beyond). 38 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) individuals a proper view of marital intimacy. each time a priest questioned a person about his or her marital customs, there was the potential to inculcate a particular perspective on sex. indeed, at a micro-level, the church was, to draw upon mccarthy once more, over-determining marriage and sex (2004b: 4). 4.5  misappropriating semen a further canon in scri! boc highlights the sinfulness of the misappropriation of male sæd or semen. the abuse of the gendered procreativity of a couple’s rihthæmed is what appears here to warrant a fairly severe tariff : wif seo ðe mencgð weres sæd on hire mete and ðone þigeð, þæt heo þam wæpnedmen sy ðe leo/ e, fæste iii winter. (frantzen 2012: xsy14.08.01) a woman [or, wife] who mixes a man’s [or, husband’s] semen into her food and consumes it, that she becomes more pleasing to the virile man, should fast 3 years. the postulated motive for a woman ingesting a man’s semen is clearly expressed: she intends to consume it in order to become more sexually desirable to the man, emphasized by the shi1 in diction / om wer (man) to wæpnedman (virile man).53 wif and wer can be read either as “woman” and “man” or “wife” and “husband,” and so the canon addresses the possibility of the marital misuse of a husband’s semen, the harvesting of it by the wife in order to use it subsequently as some kind of aphrodisiac. the husband receives no tariff of penance, thus the emphasis is on female culpability and female sexual desire. it would seem, therefore, that an inherent perception within this canon is that the husband is not party to the wife’s action, that the harvesting and consumption of semen are enacted surreptitiously. though the method of obtaining the semen is not explained, if it were understood that the wife harvests semen a1 er sexual intercourse with her husband, then the idea that 53 see andy orchard’s defi nition of wæpnedmen as “virile man” (2007: 349). 39 defending rihthæmed selim 18 (2011) she is denigrating her husband’s gendered role of father and her own as mother is apparent. in that case, the act of sexual intercourse with her husband becomes a deception, even though it may have been performed in the “proper manner;” and in its re-appropriation as a vehicle for excessive female sexual desire, it is severed % om its approved, normalized signifi cance of gendered procreativity. 5 conclusions: anglo-saxon sexuality when we read about sex in the anglo-saxon penitentials, it becomes clear that % om an ecclesiastical perspective sexual intercourse between a man and a woman is never perceived simply as an instinctive act, for it is always interpreted and judged according to the context within which it is performed. thus having sex illicitly or improperly (unrihtlice hæman) is referred to; proper and improper sexual unions (rihthæmed and unrihthæmed) are pronounced upon; and the irregular sexual association (hæmedþing) is condemned. the penitentials, though in no sense liberal in their ideology of marriage, are, nevertheless, pragmatic about marital sex: sex existed but it needed to be governed. thus in the context of marriage, the penitentials should be seen as enabling the ecclesiastical regulation of a presumed, sexually active majority. though probably rare, there may have been married couples in anglo-saxon england that entered a celibate “chaste marriage” (mcglynn & moll 1996);54 famously, æthelthryth reportedly preserved her virginity through multiple marriages (skeat 1966: 432–40);55 and, too, it is probable that couples may have eventually ceased to be sexually active. however, these marriages are not the focus of the penitentials. 54 mccarthy observes that “although the church allowed married chastity, it did not necessarily encourage it in practice” (2004b: 116). 55 dyan elliott (1993: 74–93) discusses virginal marriage in the context of anglosaxon hagiography. 40 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) though, of course, the penitential restrictions on marital sex held the potential to minimize the sexual activity of married couples (brundage 1987: 154–161; flandrin 1983: 41–54, 58), the details of the canons demonstrate that sex was not solely represented within a context of constraint and proscription. the linguistic analysis presented here has demonstrated that sexual intercourse is actually represented as a fundamental characteristic of marriage; it is implicit in the penitentials that a married couple is a sexually active couple. furthermore, there is in evidence a cultural expectation of a “/ uitful” sexual relationship, as demonstrated in the analysis of those canons that defend the gendered roles of mother and father. thus the penitentials reiterate and reinforce the christian ideology of marriage as a sexual union based on the creation model of male and female. in their defence of the rihthæmed, the penitentials became the vehicle for (re)formulating a normal, or expected sexuality. patristic teaching concerning the validity and purpose of sex— that sex is to be performed only in a lawful marriage and with the sole purpose of procreation—is also defended throughout the penitentials. though, of course, sex in marriage is hardly an innovation of these vernacular texts, we should not assume that the anglo-saxon church was simply promoting what everybody already knew or believed about marriage and sex. it is clear / om reading the vernacular penitentials, that many canons on marital sex can be traced to earlier latin penitentials or other ecclesiastical texts, as well as to the old and new testaments. however, it is a narrow view that assumes that pre-existing pronouncements on sex were always defi nitive. rather, statements aff ecting the intimate lives of people had to be reiterated in order to preserve their fundamental authority; and the evidence discussed here shows that also, at times, former pronouncements were adapted or reinterpreted for indigenous concerns. furthermore, the way the ideology of marital sexuality is / amed within the vernacular o5 en provides us with a more nuanced understanding of how 41 defending rihthæmed selim 18 (2011) the anglo-saxon church operated its educational and regulatory processes relating to sex. drawing once again on frantzen’s model of the oral-textual nature of the penitentials, we can read the vernacular penitential canons as an engagement with the lived confessional experiences of actual people, and, moreover, as the church’s ongoing reiteration of normative values that served to construct a sexual model for men and women. taken together, the linguistic sexual integrality and the implied, gendered reproductive function of rihthæmed, as used in the penitentials, is suggestive of a notion of medieval sexuality, that is, of some kind of sexual identity. we should not discount the cultural signifi cance of the choice and use of the noun hæmed that so readily conveys the sexual aspect of marriage ahead of other qualities we might associate with marriage. as has been demonstrated, whereas the marriage ceremony was a necessary precursor to the state of being married, it was the presumed sexual activeness of the couple that defi ned the approved union; and it is this defi ning that off ers the modern reader a perspective of the anglo-saxon married couple as something akin to a sexual identity and not solely as a social category. it is true that this identity is discursively projected; it is not necessarily personally expressed or perceived, something we may associate with modern ideas of sexuality or sexual identity. it is not, therefore, a sexual identity defi nable in terms of sexual orientation. neither is it, arguably, an individual identity, but rather it is one that exists only when wif and wæpned come together in a proper sexual union.56 56 scholarship relating to sexual identity/identities in anglo-saxon texts has rarely focused on marital sexuality. for example, frantzen, r. d. fulk and david clark all discuss the bædling, the “sexual type” referred to in the canons of theodore in the context of inter-male sex (frantzen 1998: 163–167, 173–175; fulk 2004; clark 2009: 54–67). halperin analyses, in the context of the history of homosexuality, some of the limits of defi nition associated with the notion of pre-modern sexual identities (2002: 32–44). 42 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) nevertheless, it is important to readdress perceptions of medieval sexuality as expressed in recent scholarship, especially in view of payer’s statement that “[t]he concept of sex or sexuality as an integral dimension of human persons, as an object of concern, discourse, truth, and knowledge, did not emerge until well a% er the middle ages” (payer 1993: 14).57 payer is here referring to michel foucault’s thesis about the development of the history of sexuality in the west (foucault 1998), and, specifi cally, to what he reads as foucault’s “claim about the relatively late date for the invention of sex and sexuality” (payer 1993: 14).58 payer’s argument that sex(uality) is never a discrete “object of study” may be valid in the context of his area of study, namely latin academic and theological writings of the later middle ages. his premise for this perspective is that there is a distinct absence of medieval latin vocabulary for sex and sexuality, and this, he argues, “points to the absence of corresponding concepts” (payer 1993: 14–15). the analysis in this essay of the use of old english hæmed and related words does, however, indicate that the anglo-saxons had a vocabulary that revealed the availability of the concept of sex as a way of life, as custom, as an expectation, and not solely as the biological act of intercourse. sex, as revealed in the penitentials, intersects with notions of status, with the religious demarcation of culturally performed conditions, states that were lawful or illicit, proper or improper. furthermore, as we have seen, the dissemination of sexual instruction, made possible by the enacting of the priestly roles of confessor and teacher, was part of an ecclesiastical agenda to educate and reform the laity. thus, when reading the penitential dicta on sex, it is important that we do not simply view them as 57 my emphasis. 58 as clark points out, foucault’s discussion of the creation of a nineteenthcentury discourse of sexual identity is o% en over-simplifi ed: “foucault does not actually claim to be describing what ‘real people’ were like or what they did, but more specifi cally the way their acts were discussed and put into discourse” (clark 2009: 10). 43 defending rihthæmed selim 18 (2011) lists of sinful acts with their corresponding tariff s of penance, but rather observe the evidence for contemporaneous reiteration and reinforcing of a binding, discursive authority on matters of sexuality. it is not my intention here to advocate for the anglosaxon world, or the medieval period more generally, a modern defi nition and understanding of sexuality. nevertheless, payer’s idea that “[s]ex as a human dimension was not thought about or talked about” (payer 1993: 14) in the medieval period is not so readily apparent when one considers the anglo-saxon vernacular terms that embrace sexual behaviour, and the penitential context within which these are used.59 an awareness of the integrality of sexual function in the noun hæmed and related compound words should serve to elucidate the medieval history of sexuality, as it builds our appreciation of an anglo-saxon lexis that allowed for a concept of culturally-determined states defi nable, or identifi able, by sex. christopher monk university of manchester acknowledgements this essay is based on material @ om my doctoral thesis: monk (2012). i would like to thank the uk arts and humanities research council for funding the research. my sincere thanks also go to my supervisor gale owen-crocker as well as hal gladfelder and anke bernau for reading through various forms and drad s of the material, and to the anonymous readers at selim for their helpful criticism. any errors of fact or style remain my own. 59 my semantic analysis of sexual vocabulary in relation to marriage is by no means exhaustive here. for example, i have not addressed the use of words used with the stems gemeng-, gemænand gemæc-, all of which have the sense of “sexual intercourse” but are in certain contexts also used to refer to marriage. see fischer (1986: 106–110). 44 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) references bethurum, d. ed. 1971 [1957]: the homilies of wulfstan. oxford, clarendon press. bosworth, j. & t. n. toller 1882–1898: an anglo-saxon dictionary. oxford, clarendon press. brożyna, m. a. ed. 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in anglo-saxon england: essays in memory of daniel gillmore calder. tempe (az), arizona center for medieval and renaissance studies. payer, p. j. 1984: sex and the penitentials: the development of a sexual code 550–1150. toronto, buff alo (ny) & london, university of toronto press. payer, p. j. 1993: the bridling of desire: views of sex in the later middle ages. toronto, buff alo (ny) & london, university of toronto press. payer, p. j. 2009: sex and the new medieval literature of confession, 1150– 1300. toronto, pontifi cal institute of medieval studies. salvador-bello, m. 2011: the sexual riddle type in aldhelm’s enigmata, the exeter book, and early medieval latin. philological quarterly 90.4: 357–385. schmitz, h. j. 1898: die bussbücher und das kanonische bussverfahren. düsseldorf, schwalm. 48 christopher monk selim 18 (2011) skeat, w. w. ed. & trans. 1966 [1881–1885]: æl! ic’s lives of saints, vol. 1 (eets os 76 & 82). london, oxford university press. upchurch, r. k. 2007: æl! ic’s lives of the virgin spouses. exeter, university of exeter press. white, h. 2000: nature, sex, and goodness in a medieval literary tradition. oxford, oxford university press. whitelock, d. ed. 1979 [1953]: english historical documents c. 500–1042. 2nd ed. london & new york, routledge. wormald, p. 1999: the ma' ng of english law: king al! ed to the twel( h century. oxford, blackwell. zupitza, j. & h. gneuss eds. 1966 [1880]: æl! ics grammatik und glossar (sammlung englischer denkmäler 1). berlin, weidmann. • received 10 feb 2012; accepted 06 dec 2012 selim03.pdf 109 julia fernández cuesta, selim 3 (1993): 103-116 a pragmatic approach to the wife of bath’s tale 1. introduction pragmatics of human communicaton (1967), by psychologists paul watzlawick, janet beavin bavelas and don d. jackson is basically an attempt to analyze and explain pathological communication and its possible causes from the perspective of pragmatics. one of the most attractive aspects of the book is the fact that the writers turn frequently to literature in search of examples to illustrate their thesis. it was precisely from one such example that the idea for this article arose. in the seventh chapter of the book, there is an interesting reference to the relationship between the witch and the knight in the wife of bath’s tale,1 as a case of what is referred to in the book as ‘double bind’. double bind situations arise, according to watzlawick (1967: 197), when: 1. two or more people participate in an intense relationship that is highly important for the physical or psychological survival of one, several or all of them. 2. in this context, one of them gives a message which is structure d in such a way that: a) it states something, b) it states something about the statement itself c) both statements are mutually exclusive. thus, the message is an instruction that must be disobeyed in order to be obeyed. the hearer is prevented from escaping the framework established by that message, either by metacommunicating on it or withdrawing. therefore, 1 from now on, i will refer to the tale as wbt. 110 although the message makes no sense from the logical point of view, it constitutes a pragmatic reality: the hearer cannot help reacting to it, but at the same time s/he cannot react to it appropriately (not paradoxically), since the message is, in itself, paradoxical. in this paper i intend: a) to make an analysis of the prologue and the wbt from the point of view of pragmatics. b) to find out if both the prologue and the tale pursue/achieve the same effect in the audience/reader, although through different stylistic devices. c) to verify whether the conclusions reached in the analysis, from the perspective of pragmatics, coincide with watzlawick’s conclusions (1967) reached from a psychological approach. 2. theoretical suppositions of the analysis my analysis is based on teun a. van dijk’s theory of pragmatics (1977) and the postulates set forth by geoffrey leech (1983). in questions relating to literary politeness, i have basically followed the work of roger sell (1985, 1986). literary pragmatics considers the literary text as an interactive process between the writer and the reader, always linked to the social context in which it evolves. sell (1985:2) writes: "(literary pragmatics) does not fundamentally distinguish the communication between literary writers and their readers from any other type of communication". if we accept these assump tions, the next step would be to ask ourselves what exactly is to be understood by context in a literary text, and how it differs from the context of a real conversation. sperber and wilson (1986) understand context (in a conversation) to be the knowledge that the hearer has of the speaker, of the situation, of other more remote situations related to this one, and of the world in general. this context is what allows him, by deduction, to reach a series of conclusions as 111 to the communicative intention of the speaker, beyond the literal content. in the case of a literary text, it is more difficult to define exactly what constitutes the context, because there is not just one but rather several contexts, since the text, although originally intended for the public of a particular period, has also, as its audience, anyone who may read it in later times. thus, we must perhaps speak of various contexts in the reception of a literary text and, logically, of different interpretations of it; from there, it also follows that the greater our knowledge is of the period in which a particular work was written, and of the circumstances surrounding its creation, the more reward ing our reading of the text will be, and the greater our enjoyment. our context as readers, however, will always be different from that of the audience of the period in which the text was written. this is why, for us, it will also have other connotations, other nuances. apart from this ‘external’ context, in which the relationship between writer and reader would be situated, there exists another ‘internal’ context which includes everything that happens within the text. génette (1980) pro posed the terms extradiegetic level (external) and intradiegetic level (internal) for these two types of context.1 in the canterbury tales, since we are dealing with a story within a story, we should perhaps speak of two different contexts at the intradiegetic level. according to this, we would place the relationship between the characters of the works in a first intradiegetic level, whereas the action within the work would be situated in a second intradiegetic level. the contents of both levels are obviously related: what happens at the second intradiegetic level, within the tale, is of great consequence for what happens at the first extradiegetic level. sell (1986:487-512) used these concepts in his analysis of the miller’s tale and showed that the two intradiegetic levels are clearly related in chaucer’s tales. at the first intradiegetic level, the pilgrims interact with one another, asking questions, interrupting each other, and discussing the 1 for a more detailed explanation of these two concepts see génette (1980). 112 content of their tales (second intradiegetic level) among themselves. it is precisely the contents of both intradiegetic levels that which determines the relationship established at the extradiegetic level, between speaker/writer and the hearer/ reader. in sell’s own words (1985: 499): the events at the second intradegetic level, within his story, are in fact of consequence for relationships at the first intradiegetic level, between the pilgrims. furthermore, and in somewhat the same fashion, what happens at both intradiegetic levels is of consequence for the extradiegetic relationships between the writer and the reader. all the levels are, thus, related. in wbt, what happens at the second in tradiegetic level (the wife’s narration) is clearly linked to the contents of her sermon in the prologue (first intradiegetic level). in fact, the wife’s tale is clearly a parable (exemplum) of what has been said in the prologue. on the other hand, the relation between them both (prologue and tale) is what makes us aware of what the "moral" of the tale is, and what it has to say about women and the relationship between the sexes. having made these observations on the context, i will now proceed to the analysis of the tale and its prologue. 3. study of the prologue (first intradiegetic level) as has been said, wbt belongs to the canterbury tales and has a well defined place within the general plan of chaucer’s work. the subject of both the prologue and the tale is the same: the situation of dominance held by the wife over the husband, and the need for this situation to be maintained in order to preserve peace and family harmony. the prologue contains all the ingredients of a typical sermon of the time: quotations from the holy scriptures, from the church fathers, from the clas sics, and references to mythology and astrology. however, all these elements are used in such a way that they achieve effects which are opposite to those 113 sought by a sermon of the period, the purpose of which would be the edification of the christian. in her sermon, the wife of bath makes a passionate defense of sex and lechery, inviting her listeners to take pleasure in them, and supporting her cause with passages from the holy scripture, the meaning of which she in terpre ts (or misinterprets), by means of a series of "sui generis" inferences that the reader, however little he may know of the bible and exegetics, recognizes at once as having been clearly distorted. an apparent defense of marriage is made (in fact, a justification for sex and lust), with reference to the bible (advice given by christ for chastity and virginity), quotations from the apostle and other picturesque arguments, such as one citing the function of the sexual organs (115-134). it is a grand mixture of theological and bio logical arguments that help bring out the ironical aspects of the argumentation, and the fact that at no time must it be taken seriously, but simply for what it is: an attempt at using the rhetoric of the sermon for purposes which are very different from those belonging to the period’s moral principles on marriage. the conclusions to be reached from what is said by the goodwife in her sermon, make the reader (or those listening to the goodwife) take all of this with good humor: the wife of bath is using all her erudition to support her theories, distorting the meaning of the holy scripture, at least in its traditional interpretation, the only one valid at that time. the words used by the pardoner when he interrupts her: "now, dame, by god and by seint john! ye been a noble prechour in this cas" (164-65) are a reflection of this irony and of the fact that the audience, to whom the wife’s words are really addressed, is fully aware of it. it might be asked why the rest of the pilgrims do not take the widow’s words seriously. from the point of view of pragmatics, the goodwife violates the quantity and quality maxims of the cooperative principle, besides that of manner, in her confused exposition, lack of order and ambiguity. as an example, her version of christ’s meeting with the samaritan might be cited. instead of the traditional interpretation -jesus tells the samaritan that her 114 sixth husband is not really her husband, since (we infer) he is her loverthe goodwife states that she does not understand christ’s words, and wrongly as sumes that he is not her husband because he is the sixth: "why is the sixth not her husband? is it that one can only have five?". for her it is apparently just a question of the number of marriages permitted in a lifetime, not the difference between marriage and cohabitation1. starting from verse 195, the wife of bath tells us the story of her marriages; she boasts, in the first place, of how badly she has always treated her husbands, something which is altogether paradoxical in the mouth of a woman, unless that woman is perverse. this has surprised many readers of the tale, as well as scholars. pedro guardia (1987: 195) states that alisoun is a woman who, trying to be feminist, becomes, in fact, antifeminist. one might ask whether the widow’s speech is really absurd. in my opinion, it is not so at all; we must bear in mind the pragmatic principle of irony and, in the light of this principle, interpret the apparent paradox of a woman who speaks badly of women and boasts of faults and bad habits which are generally attributed to the female sex. leech (1983: 82) defines the principle of irony in the following way: 1 'thou hast yhad fyve husbondes', quod he, and that ilke man that now hath thee is noght thin husbonde', thus seyde he certeyn. what he mente thereby, i kan nat seyn; but i axe, why that the fifthe man was noon housbonde to the samaritan? how manye myghte she have in marriage? yet herde i nevere tellen in myn age upon this nombre diffinicioun. men may devyne and glosen, up and doun, but wel i wot, expres, withoute lye, god bad us for to wexe and multiplye; that gentil text kan i wel understonde. (17-39) 115 if you must cause offence, at least do so in a way which does not overtly conflict with the politeness principle, but allows the hearer to arrive at the offensive point of your remark indirectly, by way of implicature. this is the principle at work in the prologue, strongly linked to the notion of politeness. the satire aimed at the female sex, a recurre nt topic in me dieval literature, becomes more effective if that criticism is expressed by a woman, and is much more subtle on the part of the writer than if it were expressed either by a male character, (cf. the clerk’s tale and the merchant’s tale, or directly by remarks made by the narrator. for those listening to the goodwife tell her tale as well as for us, who are familiar with the mentality of the period, the argument might be as follows: 1. the goodwife boasts of how badly she has treated her husbands (at times, true enough, in return for their meanness or jealousy). nevertheless, there is no doubt that her behaviour is promiscuous. 2. this behavior is morally objectionable. so says the apostle st. paul: wives must be bound to their husbands, and, should the husband die, it is advisable for them not to remarry but rather to remain single1. likewise, the parson, at the end of his tale, in what has been considered as a moralizing conclusion of the entire work, reproaches this type of behaviour2. conclusion 1 the wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the lord. but she is happier, if she so abide after my judge ment: and i think also that i have the spirit of god. (cor. 7, 39-40) 2 now that a wommam sholde be subject to hire hosbonde, that telleth seint peter. first, in obedience. and eek, as seith the decree, a womman that is wyf, she hath noon auctoritee to swere ne to bere witnesse withoute leve of hir husbonde, that is hire lord. 116 the wife of bath is, then, an immoral character. thus, through irony and through implicatures, the satirization of a particular type of woman is achieved, and this woman is represented by the goodwife. like satan, in the anglosaxon poem genesis b, alisoun becomes likeable as she tells us her complaints and claims her "rights"; yet the public/reader of the period knows well enough that she is going against one of the fundamental principles of traditional morality: a wife must be subject to her husband, as previously cited sources testify and as the woman herself recognizes when she exclaims: "allas! allas! that ever love was sinne!" (614). this set of implicatures is also very clear when the goodwife tells stories of wicked women, which were told to her by her last husband. it would be absurd for her to tell such stories directly since, as a woman herself, she abhors them. yet, by putting them in the mouth of her husband, their appearance in the tale is justified and the ironical effect increases. it is precisely one of these stories that brings about the happy outcome of her last marriage, the only successful one. fed up with the stories that her husband tells her of wicked women, alisoun destroys one of his books by throwing it into the fire. in a fury, her spouse beats her so hard that the goodwife pretends to die from the fight. frightened to death at the idea of the crime that he has supposedly committed, the poor man swears to submit to his wife’s will if she "decides" to live. the wife finally agrees, and thus ends the narration of her marriages and the prologue of the tale 1. from the point of view of pragmatics, in deceiving her husband, alisoun flouts the maxim of quality of the cooperative principle. by doing so, she has 1 and neer he cam, and kneled faire adoun,/ and seyde, “deere suster alisoun,/ as help me god! i shal thee never smyte./ that i have doon, it is thyself biseke!”/ and yet eft soones i hitte hym on the cheke,/ and sayde, “theef, thus muchel am i wreke;/ now wol i dye, i may no longer speke.”/ but atte laste, with muchel care and wo,/ we fille acorded by us selve two./ he yaf me al the bridel in myn hond,/ to han the governence of hous and lond,/ and of his tongue, and of his hond also;/ and made hym brenne his book anon right tho. (803-806) 117 achieved her ends: the power over her own personal environment which society denies her. 4. study of the tale (second intradiegetic level) the tale of the wife of bath is the account of something that happened long, long ago: "in th’olde dayes of kyng arthour/ of which that britons speken greet honour" (857-58). i have considered, within the tale, the following units of meaning that organize the macro -structure1 of the story: 1. a knight rapes a maiden. the initial balance is broken by this act of violence. 2. the young man is denounced, tried and condemned to death by the king. 3. the queen intercedes on his behalf, and the king places the life of the knight in the hands of his wife. 4. the queen asks the young man to solve a riddle: "what is it that women most desire?", in exchange for his life. 5. the young man tries unsucessfully to find the solution to the riddle, questioning everyone he meets. 6. finally, a witch offers to give him the answer in return for the young man’s promise to grant her whatever she may ask him, if it is in his hands to do so. the young man agrees and the pact is sealed2. 7. the queen is pleased by the young man’s answer, which saves his life, but the witch, reminding him of his promise, demands that he marry her. the young man has no choice but to accept. 1 the concept of macro-structure has been taken from van dijk (1988). 2 the nexte thyng that i require thee,/thou shalt it do, if it lye in thy myght,/ and i wol telle it yow er it be nyght. (1010-12) 118 8. on the wedding night, the knight lies beside his wife in desperation. she suggests another alternative: he can choose either to have a young, but unfaithful wife or a wife who is faithful, but old and ugly. desolate in the face of the two alternatives, the knight refuses to make a choice and grants his wife this power: "i do not fors the wheither of the two; / for as you liketh, it suffiseth me" (1234-35). 9. the witch then turns herself into a young woman, both beautiful and faithful. the dramatic interest of the tale lies in the fact that the audience/reader knows from the start that the knight is being the victim of a game (perhaps as a revenge for the act committed by him against the opposite sex in the rape of the maiden). there are two key moments in the account, which are extremely useful for explaining the relation that exists between the prologue and the tale. i will now refer to these. in her first meeting with the knight, the witch rises and greets him with these words: "sire knight, heer forth ne lith no wey" (1001). these words go unnoticed by the knight (second intradiegetic level), who hears only the words spoken afterwards, promising help: "tell me what that ye seken, by youre fey! / paraventure it may the bettre be; thise olde folk kan muchel thyng" (1000-1005). nevertheless, both for the audience listening to the narrator (first intradiegetic level) and for the readers (extradiegetic level) the crone’s first words: "there is no way out through here", do not go unnoticed; they fores hadow the young man’s upcoming misfortune, that he will probably be the victim of one of the witch’s evil arts1. likewise, when the witch imposes her condition, something of a blank check, the young man does not hesitate to accept because, at that moment, the only thing he is interested in is saving his life. however, the audience/reader, contemplating the story from 1 something similar happens in the first meeting between the young man and the old man in the chaser (cf. garcés: 1990). 119 outside and with a certain perspective, guess that the witch is going to demand something dreadful of the young man in return, which is exactly what happens at the end of the story. once again, the writer plays with the two narrative levels (two contexts) which i have already referred to. the audience/reader knows more than the young man, and is in a position to infer more. there lies the dramatic tension of the narration, what makes it interesting, "tellable"1. the writer knows that the reader, with a broader experience in life than the young man’s, somehow guesses that the witch is not going to play fair, that she will not give something fo r nothing, and that she will make the knight pay dearly for her help. from the perspective of the principles of pragmatics, the crone flouts the quantity maxim of the cooperation principle, since she takes advantage of the young man’s urgent need to solve the enigma and save his life, something which will make him agree to anything that the witch may ask from him. at the end of the tale, we find the witch and the knight in bed on their wedding night. when the young man expresses his disgust at the idea of lying with his wife, she proposes a new alternative: if he accepts her as she is, old and ugly, she will be an honest and faithful wife. if, on the contrary, he wishes her to be young and beautiful, she will be so, but also unfaithful. once again, chaucer is playing with the two narrative levels (intradiegetic and extradiegetic). the audience/reader is aware that there is a third possibility of synthesis: a young and faithful wife. the witch denies the knight that possibility: a wife can only be faithful if she is old. the tale comes to a happy ending when, unexpectedly, the young man re fuses to go on playing, and gives up his possiblity to choose, that is, he gives up his will, and places it in the hands of his shrewd wife, thus implicitly admitting the superiority of female cleverness. just as the widow in the pro logue gains power over her last husband by means of an ingenious trick (by 1 cf. sell (1985) for the concept of “tellability” in the lit erary text. 120 making him believe that she is dying, 805-20), the witch wins the game through deception and cunning. from the pragmatic perspective, the witch flouts the maxim of quality of the cooperative principle, and the maxim of tact of the principle of politeness, since the choice offered is false and there is no possible gain for the lis tener; no matter what the young man decides, he will always lose. moreover, the witch is clearly in a position of superiority with respect to the man, so that he has no choice but not to choose, to relinquish his right to choose (the only truly human right) and to place his fate in the hands of h is wife. 121 5. interrelation between the two intradiegetic levels (prologue and tale) there is a clear link between the end of the prologue and the beginning of the tale, which is the dispute between the friar and the pardoner, caused by the fact that the latter censures the goodwife for "such a long preamble": "now, dame’ quod he, ‘so have i joye or blis, / this is a long preamble of a tale!" (830-31). the host makes peace: "pees! and that anon!" (850), and urges the goodwife to start the tale. she begins by humbly begging the friar’s leave: "al redy, sire,’ quod she, ‘right as yow lest,/ if i have licence of this worthy frere" (854-55), although we can immediately see the irony of this opening, since the very first words of her story are precisely directed against him. throughout the tale, alisoun reminds us, on numerous occasions, with her remarks and asides, that she is the one who is telling the story, which in turn keeps up the prologue/tale relation and assures that the reader does not forget who the narrator is (919-934 ss). at the semantic level, there are a series of indisputable parallelisms in the prologue and the tale. in both, we are introduced to a man who commits a violent act: he beats his wife (prologue)/ rapes a maiden (tale). the woman (wife, queen, witch), through cunning, by taking advantage of the man’s fear, makes him pay dearly for his crime, and finally, achieves control over her family environment, if not in theory, then in fact. there are rather negative ideas about women expressed by women both in the prologue and the tale. the satirical purpose of the writer is quite clear. women are not attacked directly, but rather by means of implicatures; chaucer thus saves face: it is not the writer who criticizes women, but women themselves, in an obvious paradox. 122 6. conclusions it is clear then, after this analysis, that the prologue and the tale pursue/achieve the same objectives: a) to present a view of marriage that in practice only works if the wife has power over her husband, against all that is established by traditional moral principles. b) by means of irony (implicatures), the writer satirizes a particular type of women, represented by the widow of bath. this type of woman is pre sented (both in the prologue and in the tale) as ambitious, avid for power, cunning and clever. to many present day readers, some of these characteris tics may seem positive attributes. this is just what i was referring to at the beginning of the paper, when i stated that our context as readers of the tale in a particular period varies, as the interpretation of the same also logically varies. from the pragmatics approach, the speaker flouts the quality and quantity maxims of the cooperative principle: the speaker lies to the lis tener, and the tact maxim of the politeness principle: the listener image is not saved. c) in the tale (second intradiegetic level), the knight finds himself in a spiral of false alternatives until he no longer has any alternative other than submit to female power. from the pragmatic perspective, the situation re ferred to by watzlawick as ‘double bind’ is one in which the quality maxim of the cooperative principle and the maxim of tact of the politeness principle are flouted, in a situation in which there is a false choice, and the intention of the speaker is to manipulate rather than cooperate. julia fernández cuesta university of seville 123 bibliography bhaya nair, r. (1985). "telling lies: some literary and other violations of thegrice’s maxim of quality". nottingham linguistic circular 14, 53-71. garcés conejos, p. (1993). "ejercicio práctico de pragmática literaria: una propuesta metodológica multidisciplinar." (en prensa). garcés conejos, p. (1990). “cuarta visita a the chaser: respuesta pragmática a shoper, deyes y barry". miscel.lánia homenatge enrique garcía díez. valéncia: universitat de valéncia, conselleria de cultura, educació i ciéncia de la generalitat valenciana. chaucer, g. (1958). canterbury tales. ed. by a. c. cawley. london: guernsey place. chaucer, g. (1987). cuentos de canterbury. madrid: cátedra. leech, g. (1983). the principles of pragmatics. harlow: longman. sell, r. (1985). "tellability and politeness in ‘the miller’s tale: first steps in literary pragmatics". english studies, 496-52. sell, r. (1985). "politeness in chaucer: suggestions towards a methodology for pragmatic stylistics". studia neophilologica 57: 175-185. sell, r. (1989). "the politeness of literary texts: a literary -pragmatic dimension". iaupe conference in lausanne, 1-22. sperber & wilson. (1986). relevance. oxford: blackwell. van dijk, teun a. (1988). texto y contexto. madrid: cátedra. watzlawick, paul et ali. (1967). pragmatics of human communication. new york: w. w. norton and co. * * * selim 18.indb robert j. meindl, selim 18 (2011): 207–223issn: 1132–631x filardo-llamas, laura, brian gastle & marta gutié rrez rodrí guez eds.; ana sá ez-hidalgo ass. ed. 2012: gower in context(s). scribal, linguistic, literary and socio-historical readings. (special issue es. revista de filologí a inglesa 33.1). valladolid, publicaciones de la universidad de valladolid. pp. 189. isbn: 84844-8725-⒊ the essays in this special issue of es. revista de filologí a inglesa were presented at the second international congress of the international john gower society held 18–21 july 2011 in valladolid and entitled “john gower in iberia: six hundred years.” the guest editors, laura filardo-llamas, brian gastle, and marta gutié rrez rodrí guez, briefl y describe in their introduction, “gower in context⒮ : scribal, linguistic, literary and socio-historical readings,” the idea of context around which they organize the issue and then divide it into three sections: “manuscript context,” “socio-historical context,” and “literary and historical context.” this collection, by an international assembly of prominent scholars, is required reading for anyone interested in gower studies. ruen-chuan ma, in the fi rst essay in the “manuscript context” section, “vernacular accessus: text and gloss in gower’s confessio amantis and christine de pizan’s é pî tre othé a,”(17–28), argues that gower and christine de pizan base their literary practice in the confessio amantis and the é pî tre othé a on the acceptance of latin as the established literary language } om which their native tongues must acquire, through investigation of the classical language’s authority, the necessary credentials to become themselves established as vehicles for serious thought and literature. both authors employ elements of medieval academic prologues, accessus ad auctores, to achieve related but diff erent goals. gower’s “representation of latinity as a labored course of learning serves as an accessus for the language itself, a derivation of cultural authority that gower aspires to replicate in the vernacular” (17), theorizing “the vernacular’s 208 robert j. meindl selim 18 (2011) potential as a literary language to identi% the interpretive skills that it still needs to acquire” and clari% ing “the skills and knowledge that can be transferred & om latin” (18). christine, however, “uses the vernacular to create an alternative, but no less eff ective, accessus form” (17–18), illustrating by her practice the fulfi llment of such an acquisition and exempli% ing “the types of vernacular literature that such transference makes possible” (18). ma selects ca iv.2633–74 to illustrate his point about gower’s use of latin authority. the passage occurs as part of genius’ instruction of amans in labor as the antidote to sloth, the main subject of book iv, and consists in an account of latin’s growth & om its fi rst letters, fashioned by a certain carmente, to the structuring of its “ferste reule of scole” by aristarchus, donat, and dindimus, the emergence of “rethorike” through tullius and cithero, jerome’s translation of the bible, and ovid’s poetic advice to lovers. ma proposes this passage as gower’s valorization of “latin’s ability to articulate eloquence, sacred truth, and wise counsel,” which “exemplifi es latin as a literary language worthy of respect and emulation.” gower “represents the vast tradition of latin learning through its versatility and interpretive skills in order to target his exemplum at amans and at the english vernacular reading public” (20), thereby creating a “poetics of learning” that “theorizes the vernacular treatment of the narratives, morals, and concepts that has its origin in latin learning” (21). gower’s mention of carmentis in the latin head verse at the beginning of the prologue “reveals that the course of latin literary history occupies a fundamental place not only in reenactment of latinity as an exemplary cultural authority, but also in the essential design of his multilingual work” (21) and so “symbolizes the transfer of learning & om latin into english, which gower sees his confessio as facilitating” (22). in ma’s view, christine’s é pî tre othé a responds to gower’s theorizing by illustrating “the forms of vernacular writing that learning latin makes possible […] christine’s work dispenses with 209 reviews selim 18 (2011) the latinate trappings of the confessio’s apparatus and instead incorporates latin citations into the french text so that the two languages and the types of writing that they embody are in direct contact” (23). because each of the classical narratives christine includes is followed by prose gloss and allegorical interpretation, indicating the respective values of scholastic and biblical analysis, she can be said to speci& the “distinct literary capacities— philosophical commentary and allegorical exegesis among them— that the vernacular acquires through its engagement with latin learning” (23). as gower used the latin head verses to suggest his approach, so christine uses her prefaces to announce her intention to spur others to similar enterprises. as gower uses genius for his spokesperson, so christine creates the fi ctional goddess othé a, although with the crucial diff erence that gower’s choice suggests both the expansion and limitation of vernacular literary capacities and christine’s re-mythicizes classical narrative and adapts it to the needs of the vernacular. tamara pé rez-ferná ndez, in her essay “the margins in the iberian manuscripts of john gower’s confessio amantis: language, authority and readership” (29–44), discusses the diff ering presentations of the english and iberian manuscripts of the confessio amantis, in particular the translation of gower’s latin head verses into the vernaculars and the elimination of his marginal glosses. the result is a change in what she terms the “textual dynamics” of the poem. for her, the appearance of gower’s text is important evidence of his expectations because, she believes, he may have participated in its preparation. whether or not he supervised scribes, he played a role in the development of his manuscripts and likely provided the layout in its commonly-encountered two columns of text, forty-six lines per column, latin apparatus in the margins or the text column, and two miniatures. latin text is off ered apart 1 om the poem’s body, some placed in the margins in red ink or a diff erent script in the tradition of literary glossing, some inserted in the text column with marginal remarks and glosses. individual 210 robert j. meindl selim 18 (2011) manuscripts testi% to the wide range of scribal divergences & om the common arrangement and to the inclusion of a wide range of glosses. apparently the portuguese and spanish translators moved the authorial latin glosses into the text itself; thus in the iberian manuscripts, only occasional scribal glosses survive. pé rez-ferná ndez acknowledges that assessing gower’s role in the presentation of the confessio is a complex task. he is the author and compiler of the text, its commentator via the latin verses and glosses, and scriptor by his role in its arrangement. the movement of the apparatus of annotation into the vernacular in the iberian translations erases the boundary gower erected between latin and english, “thus threatening the carefully designed layers of textual interaction” (35) and altering the nature of gower’s presence. the spanish and portuguese translators, having completely blurred the existing line of demarcation, are forced to fi nd other ways “to remind the reader that the commentary in question is in another narrative & ame” (35) and resort for the most part to imitating the littera glossularis as reduced summary, with the result that the authority of the latin original is lost, the authorial presence is diminished, and exemplifi cation as an aspect of the confessio is de-emphasized. some of gower’s latin apparatus is moved into the index/table of contents of the iberian manuscripts, further obscuring the author’s multiple roles and even his name by taking it & om a much more prominent position in the prologue’s marginalia. pé rezferná ndez points out that gower’s role as author and commentator is diminished by the disappearance of bilingualism, whereas his role as compiler of exemplary tales suitable for the upper classes is reinforced. the structure and internal order proposed by gower become more diffi cult to appreciate and the tradition of boethian commentary, apparently so important to him, simply disappears in “the de facto naturalization of gower’s confessio into its new iberian context” (42). in “gower’s confessio and the nova statuta angliae: royal lessons in english law” (45–65), rosemarie mcgerr contends 211 reviews selim 18 (2011) that gower’s royal instruction of richard ii and henry iv in the confessio amantis bears comparison to the nova statuta angliae, an ongoing compilation of statute law % om the reign of edward ii that opens with an account of edward ii’s deposition and the pardon of all who participated. such comparison, she remarks, “illuminates each text’s hybrid quality, revealing how each interweaves discourses % om legal, religious, and literary genres, as well as ‘mirror for princes,’ that create new % ames of reference for its readers and present strong arguments for the king’s responsibility to uphold england’s laws” (46). mcgerr believes that both texts, probably commissioned for richard, share common concerns with a group of works % om the early 1390s “that off ered richard ii advice on good kingship” (47). these circulated in reading circles—nobility, land-holding gentry, educated professionals and administrators— interested in good governance. mcgerr’s edition of the nova statuta is the core text in cambridge, st. john’s college, ms a.7, a collection of latin and french statutes % om the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries compiled around 1390. the manuscript prefaces the nova statuta with three of the vetera statuta, or old statutes—magna carta, the articuli super cartas of 1300/1, and the ordinances of 1311—that focus on limitations on royal power and suggest that the collection provided richard “the opportunity to contemplate the legal ramifi cations of earlier episodes of crownmagnate confl ict as he con% onted his own” (48). the narrative that opens the new statutes “constructs the removal of edward ii % om the throne as both legal and divinely sanctioned in order to save england % om tyranny and restore justice to the realm” and shows “affi nities with the genres of chronicle, religious exemplum, mirror for princes, and chivalric romance” (49). by following evil counselors in allowing the despensers to return % om exile to which they had been justly and legally sentenced, edward ii falls % om divine grace and estranges himself % om his son, who, by following good counsel, restores just government and ascends the throne as edward iii. mcgerr proposes that, “the 212 robert j. meindl selim 18 (2011) opening narrative becomes a miniature mirror for princes that also serves as a lens through which the record of statutes that follows can be read” (49). it off ers “richard ii an explicit lesson on the english king’s responsibility to uphold the statutes of the realm, a lesson that countered richard’s sympathetic view of edward ii” (49–50). the narrative “weaves together literary, religious, and legal discourses” (52) to present evidence and arguments that edward betrayed his coronation oath, the same sworn twice by richard ii (1377 and again 1388 in the settlement with the lords appellant), and so lost god’s favor. gower, mcgerr asserts, by his legal training and status as wealthy landowner, was certainly familiar with the new statutes text and shares its opening narrative’s interest in the themes of good government, which he likewise explores in genius’ account of aristotle’s advice to alexander in book vii of the confessio. just as the coronation oath includes promises to keep and employ the law, book vii argues that “a king who does not take care to uphold england’s just laws has violated his oath and lost his right to rule” (55). mcgerr’s reading of genius’ counsel shows that the king’s responsibility to ensure the well-being of the land and the stability of his own reign by the maintenance of royal justice is central to gower’s concern and mirrors the similar content of the opening narrative of the new statutes. the version of book viii that gower adapted a0 er the lancastrian accession underscores this link by repeating book vii’s argument that “the good king fi rst justifi es himself according to god’s law and then is able to govern his kingdom according to the oath or ‘charge’ he swore at his coronation” (58). in both the ricardian and lancastrian versions, however, the confessio borrows 4 om several genres of medieval literature and “weaves these discourses together in such a way as to suggest a unity of courtly, legal, and religious ideals that the poem off ers as a new kind of advice to princes” (59). reading gower and the new statutes narrative together shows “the capacity of fourteenth-century english writers to interweave discourses so 213 reviews selim 18 (2011) as to create multiple % ames of reference for their readers, off er new perspectives, and transform older genres” (59). the fi rst essay in the volume’s second major section, “sociohistorical context,” is jerome mandel’s “confl ict resolution in the wife of bath’s tale and in gower’s ‘tale of florent’”(69–79). in their related tales of the young knight sent in search of the answer to an age-old question, chaucer and gower resort to diff erent methods of what we today call confl ict resolution. chaucer emphasizes interaction and negotiation between contending parties as they strive to be reasonable when authority does not work, and gower indicates resolution within his main character by recourse to authority and principle in a manner designed to be instructive of proper conduct. put another way, gower “defi nes character in terms of an individual’s thinking and commitment to the principles which ultimately defi ne ‘the good’ and direct his behavior accordingly” (69) and chaucer “reveals character in terms of discussion, negotiation, compromise—the contingencies of business rather than the demands of absolutes” (69–70). the object of both methods is to persuade, not to collapse contending positions to a mutually-acceptable middle ground. the diff erence, mandel suggests, is that gower’s approach refl ects the workings of medieval institutions and chaucer’s the actual workings of human beings within their less formal social contexts. gower’s method is designed to instruct, chaucer’s to entertain. the response of the respective communities to florent’s violent act is to approach the royal court, bypassing or ignoring lay or ecclesiastical options. the appeal to the king is immediately undermined in chaucer when the queen intervenes and negotiates with her husband for authority to resolve the case, which she receives. in gower, however, the grandmother appears with the idea of a quest, which is accepted without negotiation. when chaucer’s knight cannot answer the queen’s question, the two negotiate (he with his sighs and groans) a grant of additional time. in gower the grandmother lays down the terms and the knight 214 robert j. meindl selim 18 (2011) rides forth. when chaucer’s knight encounters the loathly lady, they strike a deal. gower’s knight off ers whatever the hag wants and then withdraws into the recesses of his mind to scheme a solution. chaucer highlights with wry amusement the contractual wedding night negotiations of the newlyweds; gower shows us the grim fulfi llment of an arrangement that turns out well because of adherence to principle. chaucer “foregrounds appeals to political, social, religious, and ethical authority, all of which are questioned, discussed, and negotiated […] gower’s world is more solid, more fi xed, more dominated by principle than by negotiation” (77). in “controlling the uncontrollable: love and fortune in book i of the confessio amantis” (81–96), misty schieberle “explores the connections between the views of love and fortune in the confessio amantis and in works by guillaume de machaut” (81): the jugement dou roi de behaingne, the remède de fortune, and the confort d’ami. machaut’s challenge to boethian ideas about fortune and his alternative interpretation that fortune is not “an uncontrollable capricious force but rather the consequence of a lover’s immoral choices” (83) is extended by gower to political and ethical concerns. for schieberle, the “political discourse of the confessio and the courtly / amework of book i” is bridged by the latin head verse to the prologue “to signal that the notion of fortune ties the political and amorous content of the work together” (82). gower’s “representation of the ties between love and fortune demonstrates his close engagement with and careful response to machaut’s ideas, in opposition to prevalent boethian concepts of fortune” (82). the jilted lover of the jugement represents a beginning point for recognizing how to deal with fortune’s instability in matters of the heart, schieberle contends. accepting responsibility for his wretched lot, he lacks a larger vision and simply resolves to suff er. the lover of the remède has the advantage of esperance’s guidance and learns that having placed himself willingly on fortune’s wheel his strategy must be to remove himself and practice virtues, which will bring him amorous fulfi llment. the confort d’ami, a 215 reviews selim 18 (2011) commentary on charles of navarre’s imprisonment, “constructs charles not as the victim of political intrigue (or political mistakes) but rather of erotic desire” that puts him in fortune’s power, % om which the poet “seeks to enable the king to regain control upon his escape” (85). by implying that the practice of virtues in love is applicable to political concerns, “machaut begins to suggest the perspective that gower adopts in the confessio amantis, in which the notions of controlling political fortunes and controlling fortunes in love become intertwined” (85). gower emphasizes personal responsibility in love and politics and shows how men’s decisions create the world. “by addressing the virtues amans needs to control his fortunes in love, gower simultaneously provides lessons in virtuous behavior that will allow man to control his fortune more broadly and respond to the needs articulated in the prologue for men to live virtuously and improve the state of the realm” (86). schieberle references tales % om book i of the confessio to illustrate her point: “acteon” for its protagonist’s “misloking,” “medusa” for perseus’ self-control, and “albinus and rosemund” for helmege’s lack of control. in “florent,” “nebuchadnezzar,” and “the three questions,” characters who submit to virtuous behavior resolve troubles and restore stability to their respective worlds. florent does this by accepting an obedient role and nebuchadnezzar by his transformation into a submissive beast. both pedro and alphonse choose humility in “the three questions” and so share in mutually benefi cial conclusions. returning to the prologue and the concluding % amework of book viii, schieberle connects her discussion of the tales % om book i to the issue of fortune and love, concluding that “the confessio extends machaut’s ideas about rejecting fortune in favor of practicing virtues in order to address simultaneously both amorous and political ventures.” gower “provides a worldly motivation that should drive his reader to embrace the counsel in the confessio: the fantasy of controlling the uncontrollable” (95). 216 robert j. meindl selim 18 (2011) in the following essay, katie peebles, “arguing % om foreign grounds: john gower’s leveraging of spain in english politics” (97–113), questions why gower employs a spanish setting for the confessio’s “tale of the three questions.” she concludes that he intends to contribute to a debate about the nature of england’s participation in spanish aff airs: “in particular, the choice of setting could have been inspired by lancastrian interventions on the iberian peninsula and recurrent parliamentary discontent about funding these expeditions” (97) in the period 1385–1387, when gower may have begun the confessio. the content of the tale is consistent with the poet’s intent “to support the potential for good government, fi rst by off ering advice to the young king richard ii, and subsequently by supporting the promise he saw in john of gaunt’s family. in this political context, even the act of keeping the setting of the ‘tale of the three questions’ in spain could be read as an argument for the relevance of spain to england and for the relevance of poetic counsel in domestic politics” (98). peebles points out gower presents spain to his reader as recognizable, a participant in a familiar court culture, not the wild locale of elsewhere in the confessio. the names and the idea of spanish dynastic marriage echo for english history. henry ii and eleanor of aquitaine married their daughter leonor to alfonso viii of castile in 1170. their great-granddaughter eleanor, sister of alfonso x of castile, married edward i in 1254, stabilizing the english position in gascony and allying england and castile, and was great-great-grandmother to both richard ii and henry iv. john of gaunt married constanza, daughter of pedro i of leon and castile, and wed their daughter catalina to the future enrique iii in 1388 at the conclusion of his eff orts to enforce a claim to the spanish throne. that ended english military activities in spain and made possible restoration of profi table relations based upon the exchange of goods and pilgrimage travel to compostela. gaunt’s costly military expeditions to spain were the subject of contentious parliamentary discussions complaining about wasted resources, lost 217 reviews selim 18 (2011) revenues, and energy diverted % om france and the low countries. parliament’s resistance is recorded in various sources, among them the westminster and st albans chronicles, which testi& to domestic % ustration with gaunt’s spanish adventures and the improvement of his public image upon their cessation. gower’s “tale of the three questions” is thus relevant to the national discussion about spain in the middle 1380s. its “performance of good counsel is ultimately directed to everyone participating in the world of parliament and the court” and it off ers “pointed advice […] that members of a court should avoid direct challenge or paci& ing acquiescence in favor of calming voices expressing an insistent logic that the king can accept” (110). when peronelle solves the king’s riddles and poses her own, she employs a strategy relevant “to the endemically tense relationship among richard, the magnates, especially his former regents and gaunt, and parliament” (110). peebles argues that gower’s story “off ers a way to re% ame the spanish political situation and domestic politics in a way that suggests a more acceptable set of choices: intermarriage, alliance, and realignment instead of the absolutism of either conquest or avoidance,” and the spanish setting “re% ames the political argument over lancastrian castilian engagements and models a role for counsel in domestic concerns” (110). the essay beginning the third large section, “literary and linguistic context,” is linda barney burke’s “‘the voice of one crying:’ john gower, christine de pizan, and the tradition of elij ah the prophet” (117–135). burke claims that christine de pizan in her lamentacion sur les maux de la france and john gower in his vox clamantis/cronica tripertita shared self-defi nition as voces clamantium in the tradition of john the baptist and his old testament prototypes elij ah and elisha. “it was in their selfappointed role as moral teacher, especially to the powerful, that each poet assumed the mantel of a biblical prophet, specifi cally the ‘voice of one crying’” (120). that mantel descends upon them through a fi ery biblical tradition presenting the prophet as the 218 robert j. meindl selim 18 (2011) angry voice of social and religious conscience, eager to con% ont the powerful with the truth about their actions and quick to threaten impending regime change as the consequence, even to encourage it as well as warfare in general if conducted by their choice for king. both poets modi& the tradition, however. in the lamentacion, christine presents herself as “a poor voice crying in this kingdom,” “a little woman all by myself,” which burke identifi es as “her elegantly feminized version of […] a male prophet standing apart as ‘vox clamantis in deserto’” (125), a function she is permitted as a woman otherwise denied the role of preacher. christine sides with the simple farmers and city dwellers against the nobility who condemn them to the horrors of civil strife to serve their own ends, but “the endorsement of violence by elij ah and elisha has no echo whatsoever in her lamentacion” (127). she expunges all traces of the jezebel fi gure and features virtuous queens who function as peacemakers. despite her appeals on behalf of the downtrodden, she “remained on good terms with patrons on both sides of the french civil wars” and her pleas to the queen “were most likely aimed at rati& ing the queen’s already long-term eff orts at diplomacy, rather than speaking unpopular truth to power” (129). on the other hand, “gower identifi ed strongly with ‘the voice of one crying,’ albeit in his own strategic and selective fashion” (123). he draws on visionary prophets % equently, but only in his french and latin works does he give “notable place” to elij ah and elisha. his “self-construction as a prophet may be coded” (124) in the famous archer illustration found in several manuscripts of the vox clamantis, showing the poet standing in a stylized wilderness to launch his missives. he fl ees to the forest in the vox’s visio anglie to lament the times. as does christine, he pleads for widows and the poor and against the iƭ ustice of kings and judges at various places in the vox and the mirour. he evidences the same sort of “religious certitude leading to persecution of dissenters” so prominent in the elij ah tradition, rejecting wycliff e as a rank heretic and praising bishop arundel, proponent of burning heretics. the cronica tripertita 219 reviews selim 18 (2011) is comfortable with “the deposition and fatal mistreatment” of richard ii and also with “the indiscriminate slaughter of the king’s supporters” (127). gower uses sparingly the misogyny central to the elij ah tradition, referencing only alice perrers at one point in the mirour, for the reputation of gentle queen anne did not allow her to be turned into jezebel. gower’s use of the elij ah tradition “was quite strategic and selective” and working within it he “was a speaker of only limited truth to power, being careful to phrase his political satire in the safe generalities allowed by the conventions of the de regimine principum tradition” (129). his diff erent strategy in the confessio yielded diff erent results. according to annika farber in the essay following, “genius and the practice of ethical reading” (137–153), genius’ narrative strategy is determined by gower’s decision to use “ethical reading” in the confessio amantis—that is, he re/ ames secular texts rather than appropriating them and makes them morally available to new readers. ethical reading (the term is farber’s) was developed in medieval schools “as a way of justi0 ing the use of imaginative literature in the classroom” by challenging readers “to view this literature as a source of practical wisdom, even if that wisdom is not always apparent on the surface of the text” (139). farber fi nds evidence of her category in the teachings of basil and in a type of medieval accessus ad auctores that poses the question cui parti philosophiae supponitur? (to which part of philosophy does it belong?), the most common response to which was ethicae supponitur (it belongs to ethics) (141). ethical reading of such diverse texts as ovid’s heroides and lucan’s bellum civile/pharsalia makes them “serve an exemplary function, teaching their readers about the intricacies of practical ethics” (144). pseudo-bernardus’ commentary on the aeneid provides both ethical and allegorical interpretations when it discusses, under the heading cur agat (what should it do? what is the utilitas or causa fi nalis?), the “knowledge of how to act properly, acquired / om the exhortation imparted to us by the examples” (145). the aeneid in pseudo-bernardus’ view is “a 220 robert j. meindl selim 18 (2011) collection of exemplary tales, according to which particular sections of the text can be pulled out and assigned relevant christian virtues” (146), a' er which the deeper level of allegorical signifi cance can be probed. ethical reading and allegorical interpretation are equally valid. to illustrate the advantage of reading ethically, farber off ers the tale of “phebus and daphne” in book iii as an example of rash behavior, and “ceyx and alcyone” in book iv as an instance of both sloth and the utility of dreams. genius’ strategy in “phebus and daphne” simplifi es the source “to make it more useful as an exemplum on the vice of ‘folhaste’ and related topics” (148). he aligns “ceyx and alcyone” to teach “that sloth and love are incompatible” and at the same time to speak “to the larger issues of the text” (149), refl ecting backward to the confessio’s initial establishment as a dream vision and forward to book viii. in both cases he responds to gower’s concern, expressed in the poem’s beginning, that the purpose of old books was to teach moral content, which truth imparts to present writers an imperative to attempt the same. “what the confessio portrays is that same process of reading and learning that readers are expected to experience” (151). in “cracks and fissures: gower’s poetics on the edge” (155– 170), malte urban addresses the wide range of reader responses to the presence of extreme violence in many of gower’s tales. gower “uses all levels of his texts, 5 om content to multi-linguality and manuscript layout, for his location of his poetry on the edge between acceptable and unacceptable behavior” (158). the result is that “there is not just one moral message in gower’s poetry, but rather several, o' en competing, messages,” o' en located “on the very edge of what is permissible,” allowing gower “by 5 equently striving to at least indirectly rationalize and explain otherwise morally dubious behavior [to] outline his own moral stance⒮ ” (158). urban reads a selection of texts to illustrate gower’s variety of “edginess,” beginning with the vox clamantis, which, modeling its 221 reviews selim 18 (2011) speaker on john of patmos and his apocalyptic stance, “situates his speaker on the edge between past and present, good and wrong, righteous and sinful” (159). gower’s use of english and latin in the confessio, a poem that proclaims it will go a middle way, likewise situates it “on the edge between latin and english, as well as between competing moral messages,” themselves the product of a dialogue that locates “ethics and morals on the edge between amans and genius” in “a space that is constantly teetering […] between past, present and future” (161). gower’s life in southwark, where he views the rising and famously meets king richard, is also “edgy” given its nature as a borderland beyond the city where circumscribed activities became possible. urban reads “the tale of the trojan horse” and “the tale of florent” in illustration of edginess in the confessio. the fi rst is located at the wall of a city which has become the edge between competing societies and illustrates the catastrophic consequences of the removal of that wall in order to accommodate an outside element. the second is perched “on the edge of what is acceptable human behavior” and highlights “the cracks and fi ssures on the edges of the chivalric code” (168), whose contradictory pressures require reconciliation in florent and his conduct. in the volume’s fi nal essay, “rewriting diff erence: ‘saracens’ in john gower and juan de cuenca” (171–189), emily houlik-ritchey asks, “why does gower’s confessio contain saracens and juan de cuenca’s castilian translation does not? gower mentions s aracens in some half-dozen tales, but the wicked “soudaness” of book ii’s “tale of constance” is his main representative of a category that indicates ambivalence about the world of islam and its relationship with christianity. the semantic range of the word “saracen,” houlik-ritchey notes, “is so varied that no particular reference is stable, even when texts describe (or over-describe) the ‘saracen’ as nefarious, evil, or misguided” (175). the sultan’s mother is the incarnation of evil, but houlik-ritchey points out that her violence and deception are directed against her own son and people 222 robert j. meindl selim 18 (2011) because she fears to lose her high estate and not her faith. she murders muslims and christians alike at the wedding feast, except for constance, who is sent to sea with a fi ve-year supply of food. the sultana does not care where her son’s intended bride ends up but simply desires to get her out of barbarie. “these details speak to a genuine desire on the souldaness’ part not to harm constance directly, and they complicate gower’s portrait” (177). when the heroine is rescued by the romans, however, the emperor launches a violent roman expansion against barbarie, supposedly justifi ed by the sultana’s wickedness. the spaniard cuenca’s narrative, however, although it follows gower’s in most details, does not employ the term “saracen” at any point and characterizes the sultana simply as “la mala vieja” (“the evil old woman”), declining to “describe the soldá n’s mother in terminology that plays upon the military, cultural, and religious tensions between christians and non-christians” (178) or “mark her as an enemy against which a fantasized christian wholeness (embodied in constance and rome) can be consolidated” (179). she is merely a villainess, unlinked to religion and culture. when religious diff erence must be noted, cuenca employs “infi eles” (“infi dels”) to mark the distinction, a word that doesn’t imply the same sort of narrative. for gower’s audience, “’saracen’ evokes the realm of fantasy, of an aggressor against which violence is always permissible because it is always necessary” (183). cuenca’s text, “in contrast, does not routinely characterize his christian protagonists’ neighbors in terms that invoke religious confl ict” (183). what diff erent value accrues, then, to cuenca’s text? houlikritchey suggests that the two versions of the tale refl ect the diff erent experience of paganism and otherness in england and spain. the peaceful conversion of northumberland and the bloody conquest of berverí a fi nd an alternative vision in spain, the other place in the tale where gower locates and employs the saracens suppressed in cuenca. houlik-ritchey suggests this would be spain before the islamic conquest and a place of convivencia, living 223 reviews selim 18 (2011) together, that the spanish translator wishes to promote. read in such a way, the two versions of the tale reveal “that placing english and iberian texts side by side makes legible medieval texts’ deep and % aught engagement with ethical questions of diff erence and representation—urgent questions with which we wrestle just as desperately today” (188). robert j. meindl california state university, sacramento • selim03.pdf 164 peter jackson, selim 3 (1993): 154-167 the future of old english: a personal essay with an additional note1 not long ago, i was invited to dinner at a cambridge college. when we changed places for dessert i went to sit with a group of english literature students and their teachers (or “supervisors”). i turned to the woman on my right and began to make conversation. “what do you do?,” she asked me. “i’m an anglo -saxonist.” “hard luck,” she replied (quite kindly). “i’ve never known anyone who does that.” this comment, doubtless well-meant, has often recurred to me as i have gone about my work for this article, for it is all together typical of the blend of incomprehension and faint amusement with which the study of old en glish is sometimes viewed, even by students and scholars in similar fields who ought to be its friends. as such, it may not be an irrelevant opening to a discussion of a controversy in which the place of those studies has been under attack -in particular their inclusion on the english degree course syllabus at oxford university. some account of that controversy may be of value to readers of the old english newsletter, most of whom live in north america and who thus may have heard of it only at second hand; for, as will be seen, the dispute has implications for the study of the subject that raise it far above the level of a merely local argument. a few preliminary words are necessary. the english course at oxford is divided into two parts.1 in the first (“moderations”), which is examined after 1 reprinted by permission of the author and the editor of old english newsletter, where it appeared —without the note— in vol. 25, nº 3 (1992): 24-28. 165 one year, every student is required to take six papers, including one each in victorian and modern literature, and two in old english -one a general survey paper, the other a selection of prescribed texts for translation. a further two papers must also be taken, one of which may be in old english. for its second part (“finals”), examined after a further two years’ study, the course bifurcates once more, and all candidates are required to take eight papers (five of them compulsory, three chosen from a range of others) drawn either from a general course in english language and literature (including an optional paper in old english) or from a more specialized course in medieval, early modern and linguistic topics (including one optional and two compulsory papers in old english). it will be obvious, then, that there is a large ele ment of compulsion in the course throughout; that old english is, however, a required subject for all students only in the first year of three; and that the whole of the syllabus is constructed by historical period. but at oxford, as at any university, syllabus reform is a subject never far below the surface. generous though the current provision for old english may seem, at one point it was greater still, and it was only as the result of prolonged campaigning early this century (led by the late f. w. bateson) that the number of medieval and linguistic papers was reduced even to its present level.2 now, having lain dormant for nearly twenty-five years , the cause has been reopened by bateson’s successor at corpus christi college, valentine cunningham, a critic whose special field of expertise is the poetry of the 1 the course requirements are set out fully in the university's examination decrees and regulations 1991 (oxford, 1991), pp. 39-41 and 171-82. 2 see f. w. bateson, "beowulf and all that," reprinted from oxford magazine, michaelmas 5 (1966), 81, in essays in critical dissent (london, 1972), pp. 221-23 and f. w. bateson and harrison t. meserole, a guide to english and american literature, 3rd ed. (london and new york, 1976), pp. 11-15: "when does english literature begin?" see also an unsigned article by valentine cunningham, "a bateson birthday," times literary supplement 7 march 1975, 250: "notorious as willing enrager and waspish nuisance to cant and establishments … [n]o no other man can have been on the side of the angels so consistently as bateson turns out to have been … the amount of compulsory anglo -saxon for oxford students of english literature is much diminished." 166 1930’s,1 and a prolific reviewer and talented polemicist, with a fine command of pungent english and a rare gift of caricature. there had been a good deal of more -or-less subterranean agitation in oxford, including an attempt to suppress the rawlinson and bosworth chair of anglo -saxon and instead fund one in critical theory or contemporary literature (33, 41),2 for some years before the present controversy broke out in an article by cunningham in the oxford magazine in may 1991 (1). there the matter might have remained, as none of the readers of the magazine showed any great interest in replying.3 but after a long and unexplained silence, a news report about the article (with quotations from interviews with cunningham and his sympathizers) appeared in the national daily newspaper the guardian (18 july 1991: 3), and sparked off a short though lively correspondence there (including the tribute of a leading article; 4-9). the dispute was then taken up by england’s main literary weekly, the times literary supplement, which published opposing articles by cunningham and john burrow (31 august 1991: 11-12) and a prolonged correspondence (13-23). but though this was the main forum of discussion, other newspapers were not silent: comments and letters in the daily telegraph (25-30) and the spectator (31) maintained the reputation of those journals for solid conservatism (see below); just when it seemed at the point of death, the dispute was revived by a long and vigorous review by richard north of the godden / lapidge cambridge companion to old english literature in the london review of books (10 october 1991: 35); and there was even a report on the late-night bbc television progamme newsnight (17 september 1991: 33). the last word (so far) has gone to the anglo -saxonists, with articles by malcolm godden in 1 he is the author of british writers of the thirties (oxford, 1988) and editor of the penguin book of spanish civil war verse (harmondsworth, 1980). 2 references are to the items in the bibliography at the end of this article. 3 cunningham's article appeared in the issue for fourth week, trinity term. the only reply printed by the journal (by a. w. barnett) was not published until three issues -and several monthslater (noughth week, michaelmas term). 167 a new oxford student newspaper, babel (hilary term, january -march, 1992). the debate was at times bitter and, in the english fashion, occasionally rich in absurdity. writing in the spectator, paul johnson declared, “take away anglo -saxon (from english studies) and there is nothing left but idleness and an increasing clutter of nonsense, such as deconstruction, postdeconstruction and the like, all expressed in hideous jargon” (31), while the education correspondent of the daily telegraph characterized old english literature as “epics such as beowulf, the battle of maldon and the dream of the rood, many of which begin with the exhortation ‘hwæt!,’ meaning hark!” (25). but for the most part the argument was conducted at a higher level than this. indeed, the point of departure -the survival of old english at oxfordat times became forgotten, as the debate rapidly (and quite rightly) widened into a discussion of the distinctive place and value of old english studies in the english curriculum as a whole. for example, jocelyn wogan-browne and jeremy smith discussed feminist approaches to anglo -saxon studies and the importance of new linguistic tools such as the old english thesaurus and the toronto dictionary (40), while marilyn deegan and smith advertized patrick conner’s “beowulf workstation” and other computer-based teaching aids (39).1 other scholars rejected attempts to isolate or “ghettoize” old english and argued for its central importance for the study of english literature. it is these broader aspects of the debate that i will be concerned with here ; and if in what follows i appear to quote at some length valentine cunningham’s arguments against old english to the exclusion of anyone else’s, it is not in order to pillory one scholar’s opinions, but simply because so few others were willing to go into print on his side -principally a recent oxford graduate writ ing in the guardian (6), and an editorial leader in the same paper (4). of the eleven letters printed in the times literary supplement 1 compare georgina ferry, "beowulf in bytes," oxford today 4.2 (hilary, 1992), 2021. 168 (13-23) ten were in favour of the study of old english, the single exception being one by cunningham himself (22). of course, some potential supporters may have been deterred by the unexpected conservatism of some of cunningham’s argument. for example, he has always been careful to say that his main quarrel is not with the inclusion on the syllabus of compulsory courses per se, but with the priviledged position given to old english within it. old english (or “anglo -saxon”) he re gards as a linguistic and literary blind alley, “educationally, linguistically, historically,… a cul-de sac’ (11), a wearisome philological diversion from the broad current of english literature rather than a central part of it. in cunningham’s argument, the language (pace tolkien) has no “essential kin ship with our own,”1 the themes and concerns of the literature have left no trace on ours, and the very term “old english,” implying that such a connection exits, is deeply spurious. it is an engaging curiousity, no more. but even on these terms, cunningham has little faith in the literary value of old english texts. the battle of maldon is “some little old alliterative poem about a last stand against the danish invader” and the dream of the rood, “lovely, spiritual though it be, is a very minor work, insubstantial in extent and depth, thin on readerly pleasure, only marginal historically” (11). is it fair (cunningham asks) to impose the study of such “bloody stuff” 2 on “bored and scrimshanking pressed women and men” (1) when hamlet and middlemarch are not similarly prescribed? its place on the oxford syllabus, like its place in 1 j. r. r. tolkien, "beowulf: the monsters and the critics," proceedings of the british academy (1936), pp. 245-95, at p. 278. 2 here cunningham quotes philip larkin's opinion in a letter to kingsley amis, as cited in amis' memoirs (london, 1991), p. 53. but larkin adopted the same pose of disgruntled philistinism towards other canonical texts in a way that cunningham could scarcely approve. amis prints a note written by larkin in the st. john's college, oxford, library copy of the faerie queene: "first i thought troilus and criseyde was the most boring poem in english. then i thought beowulf was. then i thought paradise lost was. now i know that the faerie queene is the dullest thing out. blast it" (amis 54). 169 the canon itself, is an historical anachronism. when oxford english was a “magnificently organic philological tree or fluvial system” (11), old english, naturally found an honoured place. but at a university where women’s writ ing and postmodernism are recognized subjects of study and where a marxist (terry eagleton) holds a chair of english, “anglo -saxon” now resembles nothing so much as an excrescence of vestigial organ, in john carey’s words, “a little appendix… which needs to be removed [by] a simple surgical opera tion” (33, cf. 41).1 the survival of compulsory old english on the course feeds a “german and english, northern european, male, aryan-suprematist myth” (21) about the origins of the language and culture which ignores the contribution of other peoples and literatures: latin, french, italian, welsh. its continued study says more about the obscure fantasies of j. r. r. tolkien, c. s. lewis et al. than it does about very much written in english since. there is at least some of this with which (one suspects) some anglo -saxonists will have a little sympathy. overblown as his rhetoric sometimes is, at his best cunningham writes with infectuous evangelical fervour. and such recent work as allen frantzen’s desire for origins,2 or the article by roberta frank on “germanic legend in old english literature” in the godden / lapidge companion3 (singled out for praise by cunningham himself in a letter in the london review of books (36) and by eric stanley in his review of the companion in notes and queries4) have made many of us examine the nature of the discipline and our own reasons for studying it in much the way that cunningham commends. nonetheless, there was much in cunningham’s 1 compare zoë heller's comments: "his (carey's) vigorous support for reforming the oxford english syllabus and getting rid of anglo -saxon returns him to the lefty corner where the dangerous new breed of dons is supposed to stand." (44) 2 aleen j. frantzen, desire for origins: new language, old english and teaching the tradition (new brumswick and london, 1990). 3 malcolm godden and michael lapidge, eds., the english companion to old english literatu re (cambridge, 1991), pp. 88-106. 4 237 (1992), 75-79, at 78. 170 broadside that could not be allowed to pass without reply, particularly as his attack on the subject raised questions far larger than merely its continuance in whatever format oxford. three main counter-arguments were put forward. first, continuity. no one attempted to argue that there was much organic literary connection between the worlds of the beowulf -poet and (say) chaucer -let alone later authors. but several writers (in particular edward wilson, malcolm godden, and richard north [13, 17, 33, 35, 41]) pointed to the appeal of old english literature (and metre) on hopkins, auden, and geoffrey hill (and, it might have been added, pound and seamus heaney1). cunningham dismissed auden as a “loony witness” (21), and of course it is perfectly fair to argue that it is precisely those writers with eccentric or adventurous intellectual interests that old english is likely to attract. but as for linguistic continuity, there can surely be less dispute: in stephen medcalf’s words, “to know anglo -saxon is to have as part of one’s conciousness the semantic richness of a large part of the language we speak” (15). in particular, cunningham made much of the claim that “the oed editors quite rightly decided on 1150 as the starting day of english” (11) -as if that meant they regarded old english as a foreign tongue. but as edward wilson pointed out, what the editors had in fact done was to exclude words which were obsolete by 1150, while including full entries (with supporting citations) for words which had been in circulation at any point since then, however early their first appearance (13).2 second, there was the argument about literary merit. here cunningham made things easier for his opponents by his teasing admission that he had occasionally overstated his own case in order to provoke: “i myself exaggerated the feebleness of anglo -saxon writing. of course i did. that’s 1 see hugh magennis, “some modern writers and their fontes anglo -saxonici,” oen 24.3 (spring 1991), 14-18. 2 j. a. simpson and e. s. c. weiner, eds., the oxford english dictionary, second edition, 20 vols. (oxford, 1989) i: xxv. the oed editiors have no doubt that old english marks “the be ginning” of the language (xxv). 171 polemics… of course some anglo -saxon, or rather west saxon, vernacular texts are good, even great” (21). the forum of most of the debate (the corre spondence columns of national newspapers) left little room for detailed lit erary exposition. yet in reply to cunningham’s dismissal of the dream of the rood cited above, edward wilson praised “its density of reference to the bible, the liturgy, patristic works, contemporary econography and heroic life, as well as its metaphysical wit unparalleled in english literature until the end of the sixteenth century” (13), while stephen medcalf aptly commented that “that man is little to be envied who does not feel that the wanderer, the seafarer, the dream of the rood, parts of the battle of maldon and beowulf, are profound poetry, or who does not, reading the kennings and riddles of lesser anglo -saxon verse, experience a deep excitement and illumination” (14). john burrow made the obvio us point that “set texts” were prescribed for old english, but not for later periods, not because the oxford examiners believed in the qualitative superiority of old english literature to all other, but for practical reasons: the linguistic difficulties of these texts were such that there was simply no time for students to read as widely as in later periods (12, cf. 13). it might have been added that there is sound logic in pre scribing texts in this fashion where only a few are available for study anyway. for the limited purpose of an examination, king lear is a fair alternative to hamlet, bleak house to our mutual friend. what alternatives are there to beowulf or the dream of the rood? but the third and most telling point to emerge from the discussion was the frequently expressed conviction that one studies old english, not for its lin guistic connection with the modern language (though that is undeniable), nor even for its literary value (great though that is), but to extend one’s experience in time, t o gain an insight into a way of thinking and feeling and viewing the world that is different from one’s own. cunningham is right to emphasize the diversity of influences at work in the history of english literature: christian, latin, french, italian, as well as the often neglected celtic strain. but none of these disciplines has the unique pertinence of old english, pre 172 cisely because it was only that language that was both spoken and written in england over centuries, and yet requires an intellectual and imaginative leap for us to comprehend today. it is “our own, and not our own.”1 it would be hard to find more persuasive witnesses to this truth than these: “i was given … the wanderer to study and not only my attitude to the course but my whole internal life was changed” (an oxford english graduate of thirty years ago; 9); “old english … remains one of the great experiences of my life” (a medical professor who studied the language with charles w. kennedy at princeton; 19); “it is absurd to have to argue the merits of the work of this period. anyone who has a sensitivity towards literature recognizes the quality and beauty of anglo -saxon poetry and prose. there are simply no real grounds for debate” (an undergraduate at goldsmiths’ college, london university, “part of one of the largest old english groups ever to take this subject as an option”; 22). a graduate student at cambridge, who read english at oxford 1985-88, told me of the fascination of studying old english in his first term, and then later periods in chronological order, so that his own intellectual and emotional maturing mirrored the growth and development of the literature. nor is this experience at all unusual. last year the english faculty’s consultative committee circulated a questionnaire to all oxford undergraduates reading english asking their opinion on the place of compulsory old english in the course. of 218 who responded, no fewer than 135 were in favour and 59 against, with 28 indifferent (14, 33, 37, 41). the percentage of third-year undergraduates in favour was particularly high (71%). as reported by helen cooper, one common rider was that “if the subject had not been compulsory they would not have taken it, but it was a good thing they had had to do so” (14). on this evidence, cunningham’s “multitudes of bored and scrimshanking pressed women amd men” simply do not exist. cunningham’s case, however, isn’t simply about compulsory old en glish, at oxford or elsewhere. his original article made it clear that his quarrel was as 1 a midsummer night's dream, iv. i. 191 (adapted). 173 much with middle english literature -at least pre -chauceras with old english. these quotations are representative: “the old english and medieval bailywick”; “that quaint medieval religious text the pearl”; “the anglosaxonists and medievalists … move across faculty business in the tight germanic wedge formation they’ve learned about in their favourite texts”; ”there is no justification for sir gawain and the green knight’s being a re quired text when hamlet or paradise lost or tristram shandy is not …. it’s surely time that anglo -saxon and much currently compulsory middle en glish literature felt the wind of competition” (1). after their initial airing in the oxford magazine, these arguments against middle english were quietly allowed to drop, cunningham even using the example of later medieval literature to support his claim that old english has no place in the canon (“nor does it lead on to second-year middle english and its great texts” (11)). but the point was not missed by richard north (35) or malcolm godden. in godden’s words: “all that would happen if anglo -saxon went is that … (there) would be pressure to get rid of later medieval literature or the history of the english language …. and after that … there’d be pressure to get rid of shakespeare or … the eighteenth century. it’s only against anglo -saxon now because that’s, as it were, the oldest bit” (33). perhaps professor godden exaggerated here. no one who has read cunningham’s arguments with attention could accuse him of trying to make the english syllabus less difficult. indeed, one of the most striking features of his polemic has been his insistence throughout that he favours greater rigour and comprehensiveness in the syllabus, not less (see esp. 36). the point at is sue is not how intellectually demanding the syllabus should be, but whether the five hundred years of writing in english before chaucer are deemed to form any part of “english literature” at all whether one who studies it ought to be the subject of the sort of commiseration that i received from my dinner-table companion. these large issues can merely be touched on here. the more immediate disagreement at oxford that gave rise to them has now once more retreated 174 below the surface. there are reports of a survey of opinion among university officers teaching english at the university and of the circulation of various alternative proposals for a thorough revision of the syllabus in the coming academic year. “bloody stuff” or “one of the great experiences of my life”? the outcome of this dispute will be awaited by old english scholars every where.1 bibliography 1.— cunningham, valentine. “reading english.” oxford magazine fourth week, trinity term, 1991, 5-6. 2.— barnett, a. w. “soldiering on.” oxford magazine noughth week, michaelmas term, 1991, 10. 3.— de jongh, nicholas. “the beowulf at oxford’s door.” guardian 18 july 1991, 23. [reprinted, with additions, as “english past and present: beowulf at the door.” guardian weekly 4 august 1991, 25.] 4.— “the beowulf battlers.” guardian 19 july 1991, 18. 5.— hogg, richard m. “lit crit.” guardian 20 july 1991, 22. [reprinted in guardian weekly 11 august 1991, 3.] 6-8.— harris, james a., mike fynch, and sarah foot. “incipient revolution in an anglo -saxon ivory tower.” guardian 22 july 1991, 18. [harris’s letter was reprinted in guardian weekly 11 august 1991, 3.] 9.— hindle, alan. “heart and soul of english.” guardian 24 july 1991, 18. [reprinted in guardian weekly 11 august 1991, 3; and extract was reprinted in “d. s.,” “nb,” times literary supplement 30 august 1991, 12. 1 i am grateful to several colleagues and friends for advice and assistance: valentine cunningham, malcolm godden, richard marsden, andy orchard, gary percival, james simpson and jeremy smith. 175 10.— bennett, catherine. “a cry from the citadel” (interview with terry eagleton). guardian 15 august 1991, 21-22. 11-12.— cunningham, valentine, and j. a. burrow. “the future of old en glish.” times literary supplement 30 august 1991, 11-12. 13-14.— wilson, edward, and helen cooper. “the future of old english.” times literary supplement 6 september 1991, 15. 15.— medcalf, steven. “the future of old english.” times literary supplement 13 september 1991, 15. 16-17.— brewer, derek, and malcolm godden. “the future of old en glish.” times literary suplement 6 september 1991, 15. 18-20.— simpson, james, thomas h. maren, and hanneke wirtjes. “the future of old english.” times literary supplement 18 october 1991, 15. 23.— smith, wade. “old english.” times literary supplement 25 october 1991, 15. 24.— king, geoff. “dons want to drop beowulf.” the times 31 august 1991, 2. 25.— clare, john. “hwæt! beowulf is under siege.” daily telegraph 31 august 1991, 1. 26.— millington, w. g. “astonishin g anglo -saxon attitude.” daily telegraph 4 september 1991, 14. 27.— armstead, guendolen. “lovely language.” daily telegraph 5 september 1991, 16. 28-29.— barsley, michael, and sam newton. “lines in defence of anglo saxon.” daily telegraph 9 september 1991, 16. 30.— valentin, deric. “betjeman’s welsh.” daily telegraph 9 september 1991, 16. 31.— johnson, paul. “is your journey really necessary, professor?” spectator 7 september 1991, 21. 32.— “don battles to drop beowulf.” oxford times 3 september 1991, 3. 33.— burroughs, andrew. newsnight. bbc2 tv. 17 september 1991. 176 34.— theroux, louis. “oxford factory’s degrees of fiction.” guardian 24 september 1991, 21. 35.— north, richard. “grendel gongan.” london review of books 10 october 1991, 17-18. 36.— cunningham, valentine. “good old english.” london review of books 7 november 1991, 4. 37.— goldsworthy, sophie. “bye bye beowulf.” cherwell 10 october 1991, 2. 38.— stocker, margarita. “the future of english.” oxford magazine. second week, michaelmas term, 1991, 3, 5. 39.— deegan, marilyn, and jeremy smith. “beowulf in a time warp.” higher: times higher education supplement 1 november 1991, 26. 40.— wogan-browne, jocelyn, and jeremy smith. “new accents in old english studies.” cue news: the newsletter of the council for university english 4.1 (autumn 1991), 11-13. 41.— godden, malcolm. “in defence of anglo -saxon.” babel hilary term 1992, 14. 42.— simpson, james. “the enjoyment and teaching of old and middle english: the current state of play.” cue news: the newsletter of the council for university english 4.2 (spring 1992), 3-5. 43.— griffiths, sian. “beleaguered beowulf finds new allies.” higher: times higher education supplement 1 may 1992, 2. 44.— heller, zoë. “defender of the suburbs” (interview with john carey). independent on sunday 28 june 1992, 23. additional note this article was first published in old english newsletter for spring 1992. i am very grateful to antonio bravo not only for offering it a second home in selim, but also for giving me the opportunity to make a few revisions and 177 corrections to the original and to bring the story up to date for a new readership. in particular, i am able to amplify the necessarily rather vague remarks in my last paragraph. by the time my article appeared in print, the english faculty at oxford had already set up a ‘syllabus reform committee’, part of whose brief was to consider the position of old english within the curriculum, especially in the first year of the degree course, where its position has always been strong. university english teachers and undergraduates were polled separately on several options. the most radical of these -from the anglosaxonist’s point of viewwhich removed old english altogether, came bottom of both polls. three other alternatives are now under considera tion, two allowing for one compulsory old english paper in the first year (as against the present two), and a third, which proposes to make no change at all. academic committees, however, move slowly, and so far nothing more has been done, so that the syllabus, and the position of old english within it, remain the same for the current academic year (1993-94) as they were when my article was written. one point i might have made more of was how much the disputants on both sides had in common, for all their apparent disagreements. valentine cunningham’s perceptions of the canon of english literature, with its view that some early texts must be jettisoned if they are ‘marginal historically’, or in other words do not ‘lead on’ to later ones , are -as he frankly admits if anything more conservative than those of his opponents. both sides talked of sources and influences, of continuities and blind alleys, though cunningham would wish to stress romance and christian influences rather than germanic and pagan. moreover, if some arguments had the ring of familiarity, perhaps that is because the matter had been debated at least twice before -in the 1930s and the 1960s in the same forums and often in the same terms. and after all, both sides were we dded to a notion of a literary canon constructed by historical period that has come increasingly under threat elsewhere. 178 for this reason, many teachers of old english outside oxford may still envy the lot of their colleagues there, for on the present showing, no proposal to remove the subject from the curriculum has any chance of success. but at the same time, many of them, especially those in the british isles and in north america, must face a more urgent question: the survival of old english in a really revised syllabus, whether deconstructionist, new historicist, feminist, psychoanalytical, or other. that battle has still to be won. peter jackson emmanuel college, cambridge november 1993 * * * selim journal of the spanish society for mediaeval english language and literature revista de la sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval nº  oviedo,  edited by dirigida por trinidad guzmán & s. g. fernández-corugedo universidad de oviedo & sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval oviedo – murcia  anna hebda, selim  (): –issn: 1132–631x on the excrescent middle english p abstract aer a historical discussion of consonantal epenthesis and the accounts of the insertion of p in early english, a dialectal corpus analysis of me texts is performed to study the sporadic and the permanent insertion of epenthetic p in the northern, east and west midlands, southwest, and southeast varieties. throughout middle english the forms with the extra plosive are clearly outnumbered by those without the stop with the exception of the west midlands. the process seems to have been irregular with no apparent correlations to time or place. it seems to have been a device facilitating the interpretation of minims by scribes, and permanent cases are scarce. keywords: consonantal epenthesis, p insertion, middle english, dialectology, scribal practices. resumen tras una discusión histórica de la epéntesis consonántica y de las explicaciones de la inserción de p en inglés temprano, se analiza un corpus dialectal de inglés medio para estudiar la inserción esporádica y permanente de p en las variedades del norte, midlands orientales y occidentales, sudoeste y sudeste. a lo largo del inglés medio las formas que presentan la oclusiva extra son claramente menos abundantes que las que no, con la excepción de la zona de las midlands occidentales. el proceso parece haber sido irregular, al no mostrar correlatos temporales o espaciales. parece haber sido un procedimiento para facilitar la interpretación de los trazos por parte de los escribas, ya que los casos de epéntesis permanente son raros. palabras clave: epéntesis consonántica, inserción de p, inglés medio, dialectología, prácticas de escribas. c :   c onsonantal epenthesis is a process which affects the number and arrangement of segments¹ in a sequence by inserting a consonant between two other consonants (trask : , ). unlike anaptyxis (vowel epenthesis), which may serve as a tool for breaking up articulatorily complex consonant clusters, consonant insertion is not inequently a consequence of “mistiming” (mcmahon  []: , ). the “wrong timing” ¹ by doing so, epenthesis falls into the category of what trask (: ) calls “whole-segment processes”, i.e. sound changes which interfere not only with the nature of segments, but also with their number and ordering in strings. 142 anna hebda selim  () (hock  []: ) leads to an overlap of the gestures involved in the primary articulation of each of the members of a cluster (ohala  []: ), whereby an unetymological consonant results between the adjacent segments. in the pde fence /fens/, for example, the two neighbouring homorganic obstruents differ in the type of closure, voicing and orality. if, by any chance, the velic closure is accomplished before the contact between the tip/blade of the tongue and the alveolar ridge becomes less intense (leading, in consequence, to the change in the type of closure), an extra alveolar plosive may appear on the way om the nasal to the ensuing oral.² in other words, fence might come to be realised as [fents], following the general model of excrescence as found in hock ( []: ): ø > y / x ______ z, the voicing of the epenthetic segment probably adjusting to that of the following consonant through assimilation (hock  []: ). as regards the driving force and the outcome of the process, campbell ( []: §...) observes that what excrescence typically yields are sequences that are phonetically easier to handle than the input. this, in turn, is in keeping with lindblom’s () account of the economy of speech gestures. lindblom (: ) points to the similarity between speech production and general motor behaviour in their pursuit of minimum “energy expenditure”. apparently, during normal speech, the possibilities of speech organs are never fully exploited. the management of energy expenditure is correlated both with the biological constraints on speech production and the requirements of speech perception that need to be satisfied, extremes being best avoided. epenthesis fits in with this model in that the extra consonant shortens the distance between each two destinations, which, as lindblom claims, “implies less work per ² in hock’s ( []: ) opinion, the timing of the gesture of nasality determines the presence/absence of an epenthetic plosive. 143 on the excrescent middle english p selim  () unit time … [and] lower[s] energy costs” (: –; see also shariatmadri ).³ p       p   e neither impressive in terms of scale nor particularly influential in terms of potential restructuring of the system, the phenomenon of consonant intrusion in early english has not been investigated thoroughly. with the exception of recent contributions by wełna (a, b) on bilabial and dental stop insertion respectively, jones () on constraints on medial consonant clusters, or papers over a century old by jespersen () and logeman () discussing the origin of unhistorical n in nightingale, there are only passing references to the process in standard reference books (e.g. jordan  []; luick –; fisiak  []; wełna ). the available accounts of the insertion of p in the history of english provide no exception.⁴ jordan ( []: ) speaks of “a transitional sound between m and a dental of the following syllable”, as in empti (ancrene riwle, the katherine group), which he considers a characteristic of the ab language, drempte ‘dreamt’ (genesis and exodus), dempte ‘judged’ (gen&ex, cursor mundi), dempster ‘judge’ (cm), but also nempnen ‘call, name’, hersumpnesse ‘obedience’ (trinity homilies), sompnin ‘urge’ (st. marherete), or dampnen ‘condemn’ (gawain), where the “dental of the following syllable” is likewise a nasal. jordan’s findings corroborate luick’s (– []: , ) with respect to the environment for insertion and the earliest attested instances of ³ lindblom’s observations pertain to assimilation, but the present author believes excrescence works along the same lines. ⁴ in lalme there is a map illustrating the distribution of empty (the only item to have undergone permanent insertion), but the variable is the initial vowel, not the word-internal mt. 144 anna hebda selim  () epenthetic p, but the latter goes further in that he actually attempts to account for the reason behind the excrescence which he attributes to the “incorrect” timing of articulatory gestures involved in the production of the segments in question. mclaughlin (: ) sees the excrescent p as a product of “a denasalization” of /m/, a stage in the motor activity on the way om the bilabial to a following dental, e.g. solemne ~ solempne, damner ~ dampner.⁵ he claims the word empti found in st. katherine (c) to be the earliest native instance of an inserted p (mclaughlin : ). summing up, what one finds out om the authorities as regards the insertion of p in early english is that ⒤ the plosive was inserted between /m/ and a following dental (mostly /n/, /d/ or /t/), (ii) the earliest instances of insertion are found in the southwest or west midlands⁶ (ancrene riwle, the katherine group), and east midlands (trinity homilies, genesis and exodus), and, finally, (iii) that the process itself was a result of a disturbance in the synchrony or coordination during the transition om one articulatory gesture to another in the sense that the velic closure occurred before the remaining articulators managed to take up the target positions for the oncoming segment. one does not find out, however, for example, whether the phenomenon was equally common in all dialects of english in all historical periods. what remains to be examined, then, is () which items underwent sporadic and which permanent insertion, () what the latest ⁵ it is interesting that mclaughlin should mention a “denasalisation of /m/” during the transition to the following dental given the following dental is a nasal, too. it seems unlikely that the insertion of /p/ in the examples given by mclaughlin is due to mistiming and overlapping of articulatory gestures because the position of the velum does not change on the way om /m/ to /n/ in the first place. ⁶ the med classifies ancrene riwle and texts om the katherine group as south-western, while the compilers of the helsinki corpus view them as west midland (see also laing ). 145 on the excrescent middle english p selim  () recorded instances without p are of the words affected permanently by epenthesis, () whether the rate of insertion was more or less the same for early and late middle english or not, () whether the rate of insertion was the same irrespective of the dialect area, and, finally, () whether the rate of insertion was affected in any way by the native/foreign origin of the lexeme. in the remainder of this paper, answers to the above questions will be sought, following the analysis of the adduced material. t    p  m e: t    ,  middle english dictionary   oxford english dictionary  the analysis has been carried out on the basis of the material extracted om the on-line versions of the middle english dictionary, the oxford english dictionary and a selection of  early and late middle english texts representing the traditional middle english dialect continua (for the me dialect boundaries see moore – meech – whitehall ). in order to avoid the discomfort of ignoring the data whose provenance is unknown, the statistics of the occurrence of the forms with and without p will be based not on the instances found in the med or the oed but on the ones found in the texts with a firmly established dialectal background (see table , below): table . the corpus of texts used for the quantitative analysis dialect early me (–) late me (–) n benedictine rule (lnsd  & vsp a. ) works by rolle mandeville’s travels (egerton ) pricke of conscience (glb e. ix & hrl) wars of alexander (ashmole ) 146 anna hebda selim  () em the peterborough chronicle – (ldmisc ) trinity homilies (trin-c b..) lambeth homilies (lambeth ) vices and virtues (stw ) ormulum (jun ) merlin (cmb ff..) confessio amantis (frf ) mandeville’s travels (cotton titus c. xvi) towneley plays (hnt hm ) guy of warwick (auchinleck) wm hali meidenhad (bodley ) poema morale (lamb ) st. juliana (bodley ) cleanness (nero a. ) pearl (nero a. ) destruction of troy (htrn ) gawain (nero a. ) joseph of arimathie (vernon) sw layamon’s brut (caligula a. ) hali maidenhad (titus d. ) owl and nightingale (clg a.  & jes-o ) winteney version of benedictine rule (cld d. ) st. juliana (royal .a.) a moral ode (egerton ) st. editha (fst b. ) castle of love (vernon) cato (vernon) harley lyrics (harley ) psalter mariae (vernon) se kentish sermons (ldmisc ) ayenbite of inwyt (arundel ) shoreham (add ) since, according to authoritative historical grammars such as luick (–), jordan ( []), or wełna (), the epenthetic p surfaced between /m/ and a following dental, all words in which /m/ came to immediately precede d, t, s, θ or n have been used in the study, e.g.: pret. and p.p. of dēmen ‘judge, criticise, condemn, believe’; pret. and p.p. of fordēmen ‘condemn, convict’; dēmester(e) ‘judge’; sēmester(e) ‘seamstress’; pret. and p.p. of drēmen ‘dream’; pret. and p.p. of nemnen, emptī ‘empty’, empten ‘to empty’, emptīnesse ‘emptiness’, empting ‘voiding’; ampte ‘ant’; pret. and p.p of wemmen ‘disfigure, injure’; pret. and p.p. of rēmen ‘rush in battle’; pret. and p.p. of quēmen ‘please sb, grati, serve sb’; pret. and p.p. of fremmen ‘perform sth’; pret. and p.p. of flēmen ‘expel, banish, exile’; 147 on the excrescent middle english p selim  () sŏm-dēl ‘partly’; him-self; sŏm-tīme ‘sometimes’; ,  sg pres. ind. of undernimen ‘entrap, surprise, receive, undertake’ and cŏmen ‘come’; ihērsumnesse, gehērsumnesse, hērsumnesse ‘obedience’, unhērsumnesse ‘disobedience’, buxŏmnesse ‘humility’, unbuxŏmnesse ‘inhumility’, sibsumnesse ‘peacefulness’; nemnen ‘name’, somnŏur ‘summoner’; samnen ‘to gather together’, samning(e) ‘gathering’; somnen ‘urge’, somninge ‘an assembly, summoning’; inflected forms of sŏm ‘some’; inflected forms of tōsāmen ‘together’, etc. the words have been divided into two groups on the basis of the orality of the dental following /m/ prior to excrescence. while in the first group, where /m/ precedes a dental plosive/icative, the insertion is most likely due to a delay in the shi om the bilabial to apico-dental relative to the formation of the velic closure, in the other group, where /m/ is adjacent to another nasal, such motivation is out of the question given that there is no change in the position of the so palate. therefore, an alternative explanation needs to be sought. epenthetic p: sporadic insertion. of all the analysed words, sporadic insertion affected almost every item, except for emptī and its derivatives. the earliest traces of sporadic epenthetic p were found in the east-, west midland and southwestern manuscripts dating back to c: (a) a () trin.hom.creed (trin-c b..) : he beð dempd to þolie wowe mid deflen on helle. (em) a(?c) () pmor.(lamb ) : þa boð nu mid him in helle fordon and fordemet [vrr. fordempde, vordemde]. (wm) (b) c(?c) () hmaid.(bod ) /: hwuch schal beo þe sompnunge [tit: somnunge] bituhen ow i bedde? (wm) 148 anna hebda selim  () c(?c) () st.marg.() (bod ) /: ne nis þear na bote bute fleo þenne, þet nowðer ne beo nohwer ane wið oðer; ne seon ham, ne sompnin, ne sitten to-gederes wið-uten wittnesse. (wm) c(?c) () st.kath.() (einenkel) : se ha crist cleopede & his nome nempnede. (sw) sporadic insertion of .. p: the northern dialect due to the lack of edited northern middle english textual material om before , the instances of an excrescent p om  and later, by necessity, pass for the earliest ones in this dialect: (a) a(a) () cursor (vsp a.) : to ded you deme he did‥ nu sal þat ded [i.e. death] be dempt on him. (n) (b) ?a mannyng () chron.pt. (petyt ) : nempe it [lamb: priuely þou hast hit boren, þat we ne scholde mynge for drede]. (n) c(?a) () wars alex.(ashm ) : alexander with ane ost of many athill dukis, samed [dub: sampnez] a vnsene somme. (n) tables a and b show the distribution of forms with and without the epenthetic p in northern middle english. table a. sporadic epenthetic p (north): 〈mn〉 vs. 〈mpn〉 forms with excrescent p forms without excrescent p total eme – – – lme 8 (⒛51%) 31 (7⒐49%) 39 (100%) total 8 31 39 149 on the excrescent middle english p selim  () table b. sporadic epenthetic p (north): 〈ms, mt, md, mth, mþ〉 vs. 〈mps, mpt, mpd, mpþ, mpth〉 forms with excrescent p forms without excrescent p total eme – – – lme 13 (⒑07%) 116 (8⒐93%) 129 (100%) total 13 116 129 interestingly, epenthesis is twice as equent in the case of two adjacent nasals as it is in the case of the other clusters. only .% of instances of /m/ covered by an oral dental undergo a split, whereas 〈mn〉 yields to insertion two times out of ten (.% ). nonetheless, the majority of forms occur without an unhistorical stop. sporadic insertion of .. p: east midlands in the east midlands, forms with the epenthetic p appear as early as c: (a) a () trin.hom.creed (trin-c b..) : he beð dempd to þolie wowe mid deflen on helle. (em) (b) … for hordom ne haueð non time ne scule. ac is defles () hersumpnesse. ne forðe gef man haueð to done mid his rihte spuse on unsele. (trin. hom., a) (em) … and lernie hwu hie sullen here lif laden on godes () hersumpnesse. and hem swo gaderen on rihte bileue. (trin. hom., a) (em), the east midland dialect being one of the earliest to show the presence of the segment under study. tables a and b show the ratio of p-full to p-less forms in early and late east midland texts. 150 anna hebda selim  () table a. sporadic epenthetic p (east midlands): 〈mn〉 vs. 〈mpn〉 forms with excrescent p forms without excrescent p total eme 2 (0.68%) 288 (9⒐32%) 290 (100%) lme 10 (3⒌71%) 18 (6⒋29%) 28 (100%) total 12 306 318 table b. sporadic epenthetic p (east midlands): 〈ms, mt, md, mth, mþ〉 vs. 〈mps, mpt, mpd, mpþ, mpth〉 forms with excrescent p forms without excrescent p total eme 1 (0.99%) 100 (9⒐01%) 101 (100%) lme 6 (0.96%) 617 (9⒐04%) 623 (100%) total 7 717 724 in the early middle english period insertion is rare, irrespective of the orality of the segment covering /m/. in fact, fewer than % of the clusters in question exhibit the presence of an unetymological p. in late middle english the percentage of 〈mpn〉 forms rises considerably om .% to .%, whereas in the case of a nasal – oral combination the operativeness of epenthesis falls om .% to .%. sporadic insertion of .. p: west midlands all early west midland instances of p-excrescence recorded in the investigated corpus of texts (! nempnede, ! inempnet, ! sompnunge) involve insertion of a segment between two nasals. likewise, all of them belong to the bodley  ms and come om hali meidenhad and st. juliana, known to have been written in the ab language: … bi nichomedesse burh o rade towart rome. sophie wes () inempnet of heh cun akennet. & nom þis meidenes bodi. & ber hit in to hire schip biwunden swiðe… (st. juliana, a) (wm) 151 on the excrescent middle english p selim  () ah! babilones folc þet ich ear () nempnede, þe deofles here of helle,—þet beoð, flesches lustes, þ feondes eggunge—weorrið & warpeð … (hali meidenhad, a) (wm) variants that show epenthesis outnumber those without the plosive and constitute .()% of the tokens. in texts dating om aer , no instances of an inserted word-medial p have been attested (see tables a and b, below). table a. sporadic epenthetic p (west midlands): 〈mn〉 vs. 〈mpn〉 forms with excrescent p forms without excrescent p total eme 8 (6⒍66%) 4 (3⒊33%) 12 (100%) lme – 32 (100%) 32 (100%) total 8 36 44 table b. sporadic epenthetic p (west midlands): 〈ms, mt, md, mth, mþ〉 vs. 〈mps, mpt, mpd, mpþ, mpth〉 forms with excrescent p forms without excrescent p eme – 7 lme – 83 total – 90 sporadic insertion of .. p: the southwest the southwestern variety belongs among the three dialects in which the excrescent p surfaces the earliest. the first traces of the epenthetic plosive are to be found in st. katherine (einenkel, c) and ancrene riwle (corp-c , c): c(?c) () st.kath.() (einenkel) : se ha crist cleopede & his nome nempnede. (sw) c(?a) () ancr.(corp-c ) /: nim anan þe rode steaf, mid nempnunge [nero: nemmunge; cai: nemnunge] i þi muð, mid te mearke i þin hond, mid þoht i þin heorte. (sw) 152 anna hebda selim  () the distribution of p-full forms between early and late middle english (in the sense of the number of tokens) is considerably even when insertion affects consonants of identical orality. however, the rate of epenthesis increases with time om .% in early me to % in late me: table a. sporadic epenthetic p (southwest): 〈mn〉 vs. 〈mpn〉 forms with excrescent p forms without excrescent p total eme 5 (⒉18%) 224 (9⒎82%) 229 (100%) lme 5 (25%) 15 (75%) 20 (100%) total 10 239 249 where members of the cluster differ with respect to their orality, the same tendency is to be observed. excrescence operates more effectively in late me with .% of tokens exhibiting unetymological p. this means a rise by .% om .% in early me: table b. sporadic epenthetic p (southwest): 〈ms, mt, md, mth, mþ〉 vs. 〈mps, mpt, mpd, mpþ, mpth〉 forms with excrescent p forms without excrescent p total eme 3 (⒊15%) 92 (9⒍85%) 95 (100%) lme 1 (⒐09%) 10 (90.01%) 11 (100%) total 4 102 106 as regards the rate of insertion relative to the type of environment, in early me both contexts seem more or less equally susceptible to the phenomenon. in late me, in turn, the epenthetic p surfaces far more equently when /m/ is followed by a dental nasal (% : .%). 153 on the excrescent middle english p selim  () sporadic insertion of .. p: the southeast there are no occurrences of any of the analysed words in the southeastern material om before . in late southeastern there are  instances of words that could potentially be affected by epenthesis, but none of them actually is. the only forms found in the ayenbite of inwyt and william of shoreham are: demde (×), demd (×), y-demd (×), yulemde (×), zomdel (×), warmd (×), semde (×), y-quemd (×), yemd (×); and (with a cluster of two nasals): buxomnesse (×), unbuxomnesse (×), nemni (×), nemny (×), nemneþ (×), and y-nemned (×), ssamnesse (×), emne (×), emni (×). sporadic insertion of .. p: summary sporadic insertion of p in middle english is, indeed, occasional and, as it seems, accidental. therefore, seeking any potential pattern behind it, a process which is by no means a wholesale change, appears utterly pointless. even if there are forms with an unetymological p in a text om a given dialectal area or their number happens to increase with time it is more likely that either the scribe used pronunciation spellings om his own repertoire or copied verbatim what he saw in the exemplar. alternatively, an influence of latin spellings could be postulated. tables a and b show the distribution of forms with and without the epenthetic p found in the  investigated texts: table a: sporadic insertion of p in middle english: 〈mn〉 vs. 〈mpn〉 eme lme + – total + – total n – – – 8 (⒛51%) 31 (7⒐49%) 39 em 2 (0.68%) 288 (9⒐32%) 290 10 (3⒌71%) 18 (6⒋29%) 28 wm 8 (6⒍66%) 4 (3⒊33%) 12 – 32 32 sw 5 (⒉18%) 224 (9⒎88%) 229 5 (25%) 15 (75%) 20 se – – – – 33 33 total 15 516 531 23 129 152 154 anna hebda selim  () table b: sporadic insertion of p in middle english: 〈ms, mt, md, mth, mþ〉 vs. 〈mps, mpt, mpd, mpþ, mpth〉 eme lme + – total + – total n – – – 13 (⒑07%) 116 (8⒐03%) 129 em 1 (0.99%) 100 (9⒐01%) 101 6 (0.96%) 617 (9⒐04%) 623 wm – 7 7 – 83 83 sw 3 (⒊15%) 92 (9⒍75%) 95 1 (⒐09%) 10 (90.01%) 11 se – – – – 34 34 total 4 199 203 20 860 880 throughout middle english the forms with the extra plosive are clearly outnumbered by those without the stop, with the exception of the west midlands where before  (st. juliane, hali meidenhad) a reverse tendency is to be observed. there are  (.%) instances altogether (tables a, b) of epenthesis in the analysed texts om early me, and  (.%) instances in texts om the second part of the period, which means an increase in the total of the affected items by .%. interestingly, both before and aer  epenthetic p is more common in clusters of two nasals than between a nasal and an oral. as regards the bearing of etymology of a lexeme on its susceptibility to epenthesis, there are  items of french or latin provenance in the investigated texts, namely: primseinen ‘mark with the sign of the cross’, apostēm ‘morbid swelling’, pilgrim, psalm, ensaumple ‘example’, ipotam ‘hippopotamus’, septentriōne, remenaunt ‘remnant’, circumstaunce ‘circumstance’, circumcisiŏun, chimenē ‘chimney’, omnipotent, simenel ‘a loaf made of fine flour’, raunsŏun ‘ransom’, painime ‘heathen lands’, damisēle ‘unmarried woman’, demestere, and somnour, not one of them with an unhistorical segment. in the med, somnour appears with an epenthetic p . times out of ten, septentrione does so . times out of ten, while demestere shows the extra segment . times out of ten. remenaunt, chimene 155 on the excrescent middle english p selim  () and raunsoun appear with the excrescent p once each. dampnen, solempne and their derivatives, not inequently given as examples of excrescence in middle english, have been disregarded since there is a possibility insertion affected them already in french. as for the mechanism and motivation behind the process, in the case of items in which the second element of the cluster is oral, the excrescent p is attributable to the overlapping of articulatory gestures, provided the segment in question is really there. what seems an argument to the contrary is the dubious voicing (or, rather, the lack of voicing) of the extra unit. it would be most unusual for a speaker to produce a fortis plosive right in the middle of a voiced environment, as in dempd or fordempde (dieter kastovsky, jerzy wełna, personal communication).⁷ another counterargument is the presence of 〈p〉 in words such as hersumpnesse or sompnunge. if, indeed, both members of a cluster are nasals, the mistiming cannot be held responsible for the insertion, since the transition om /m/ to /n/ involves only one articulatory gesture. why, then, insert a stop at all? on phonological grounds one could imagine the insertion of p to be a kind of evasive technique aimed at counteracting potential assimilation and the subsequent loss of /n/ (see nemmunge, ex.  above) as in pde column or solemn. it seems equally plausible, however, that 〈p〉 was used as a “phonetically empty” grapheme, the insertion of which was to facilitate the reading and interpretation of the otherwise troublesome sequences of minims, e.g. ஑஁୿஀இ஀୹୷ vs. ஑஁୿ஂ஀இ஀୹୷ (marcin krygier, dieter kastovsky personal communication). last but not least, there is ⁷ unless the use of 〈p〉 is due to scribes feeling somehow uneasy about inserting 〈b〉 in the context om which the plosive was more and more equently removed (wełna ). jones (: ,) accounts for the voicelessness of the epenthetic segment in terms of constraints on interludes. he claims that a combination of a nasal and a voiced obstruent right before a le syllable bracket, e.g. *[nemb] [nǝn], would be ill-formed. 156 anna hebda selim  () a question of syllable structure. according to the principles of syllable boundary placement (jones : ), if there are more syllabic segments per word than one, any medial (intervocalic) sequence is to be interpreted as ambisyllabic. an interlude which fails to involve overlap, e.g. [nem][nǝn], is considered highly marked and, therefore, calling for the satisfaction of the “second well-formedness condition” (jones : ). the problem is, the insertion of p does not result in a desired non-proper bracketing and cannot be, as jones (: ) himself admits, attributed to an attempt at altering the interlude. epenthetic p: permanent insertion. permanent insertion of p is to be seen in the me emptī and its derivatives. the earliest and only instance of the process found in early me comes om st. katherine (einenkel, c): c(?c) () st.kath.() (einenkel) : þe glistinde wordes‥ (þe beoð wiðuten godleic ant empti wiðinnen). (sw) next, there is an instance om oxfordshire, which, depending on the exact location, could be interpreted as either southwestern or east midland: c () sleg.cross (ldmisc ) : he is in a veteles þat ampti is. (oxon) then there is chaucer: (c) chaucer () ct.rv.(manly–rickert) a.: til that almoost al empty is the tonne. (em) and northern homily cycle: the devil as physician: c () nhom.devil phys.(vrn) : þis hermyte þonked god almihti þat made þe ffendes cra empti. (wm) 157 on the excrescent middle english p selim  () no instances of empty, whatever the form, were found in the examined texts om the northern dialect area. table  presents the ratio of forms with the epenthetic p to those without the segment in question in early and late me. table : permanent insertion of p in middle english: empti and its derivatives eme lme + – + – n – – – – em – 4 2 (6⒍66%) 1 (3⒊33%) wm – – – – sw – 2 – – se – – – 3 total – 6 2 4 with the exception of the single instance of epenthetic p found in the med, the insertion of p in empti does not seem to have caught on until the th century. if one were to draw conclusions solely on the basis of the tabulated data, in late middle english the excrescent p in empti would have been still quite a novelty. however, in the med there are  occurrences of empti with the plosive against  instances without it, which suggests a well advanced change in progress. the last occurrence of a derivative of empti in the form om before the epenthesis is to be found in a text om  (oed):  b() revint saul at endor  it is but an emty phantome. c the analysis of the material om the med online and a number of selected me texts allows one to formulate the following observations concerning the insertion of p in middle english: 158 anna hebda selim  () the sporadic insertion of () p in middle english is a highly irregular process with no apparent correlation to either time or place. where the plosive is inserted (if at all) it is probably either a () reflection of the scribes’ own preferences, a transfer om the exemplar, a device facilitating the interpretation of minims, or a tool counteracting potential assimilation. the only word affected by permanent epenthesis is () empty (and its derivatives). while forms with the excrescent p occur as early as old english (campbell  []), in middle english the earliest instance of insertion is to be found in st. katherine (c, sw). later () the epenthetic p surfaces in the midlands. the last instance of empty attested in the analysed corpus without the bilabial oral is found in a text om . even though the tabulated data om the investigated material () would appear to suggest otherwise, in late me the insertion of p in empty is probably a well advanced change. anna hebda adam mickiewicz university, poznań r primary sources corpus of middle english prose and verse [/]. http://quod.lib. umich.edu/m/mec/. secondary sources campbell, a.  []: old english grammar. oxford, at the clarendon press. 159 on the excrescent middle english p selim  () campbell, l. : historical linguistics: an introduction. cambridge, ma, mit press. fisiak, j.  []: a short grammar of middle english. warszawa, państwowe wydawnictwo naukowe. hock, h. : principles of historical linguistics. berlin – new york – amsterdam, mouton de gruyter. jespersen, o. : the nasal in nightingale. englische studien : –. jordan, r.  []: a handbook of middle english grammar: phonology. (translated and revised by eugene j. crook). the hague, mouton. jones, ch. . some constraints on medial consonant clusters. language .: –. joseph, b. d. & r. d. janda eds. : the handbook of historical linguistics. oxford, blackwell. kurath, h., s. kuhn, r. e. lewis eds. – [/]: middle english dictionary (med). http://ets.umdl.umich. edu/m/med. laing, m. : catalogue of sources for a linguistic atlas of early medieval english. cambridge, d. s. brewer. lindblom, b. : economy of speech gestures. in: p. f. macneilage ed., –. logeman, h. : the n in nightingale. englische studien : –. luick, k. – []: historische grammatik der englischen sprache. stuttgart, bernard tauchnitz. 160 anna hebda selim  () macneilage, p. f. : the production of speech. new york, springer. mcintosh, angus – michael l. samuels – michael benskin eds. . linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english. aberdeen: aberdeen university press. mclaughlin, j. c. : a graphemic-phonemic study of a middle english manuscript. the hague, mouton & co. mcmahon, a.  []: understanding language change. cambridge, cambridge university press. moore, s., s. meech & h. whitehall. : middle english dialect characteristics and dialect boundaries: preliminary report of an investigation based exclusively on localized texts and documents. university of michigan publications in language and literature : –. ohala, j. : phonetics and historical phonology. in: b. d. joseph & r. janda eds., –. ritt, n. & h. schendl eds‥ . rethinking middle english: linguistic and literary approaches. frankfurt/m. – new york, peter lang verlag. shariatmadari, d. : sounds difficult? why phonological theory needs ‘ease of articulation’. soas working papers in linguistics : –. simpson, j. & e. weiner eds. : the oxford english dictionary. (nd edition). oxford, oxford university press. trask, r. l. : historical linguistics. london, arnold. wełna, j. :. a diachronic grammar of english. part one: phonology. warszawa, państwowe wydawnictwo naukowe. 161 on the excrescent middle english p selim  () received  feb ; revision received  may ; accepted  may  wełna, j. : now you see it, now you don’t, or the fates of the me voiced labial stop in homorganic clusters. in: n. ritt & h. schendl eds., –. ! selim01.pdf 130 the virgin mary and romance from its very start, the middle english poem cursor mundi (c. 1300) is a work written to deny the best tunes to the devil. its unknown author begins it with a catalogue of heroes from romance, including alexander, brut, king arthur, gawain, kay, tristan, yonec and ysumbras; but then goes on to reject these fabled knights for the higher argument of religious poetry, and sets about this by praising the blessed virgin as a romance heroine. he calls her his “paramour” who saves him from sin, who has been faithful to him even when he has not been faithful to her, and whose love is sweeter than wild honey. qua truly loues this lemman, this es the lue bes neuer gan; for in this loue scho failes neuer, and in that tother scho lastes euer. of suilk an suld ye mater take, crafty that can rimes make, of hir to malk bath rim and sang and luue hir suette sun amang!1 the present article has the aim of bringing together recent discussion of those rimes and sanges whose authors, as it were, took the cursor 1.early middle english verse and prose, ed. j. a. w. bennett and g. v. smithers (oxford, 1968), 188. 131 poet, used romance modes to coax their listeners form secular verse onto the more wholesome fare of religious instruction. others used romance modes because these had come to permeate their religious imagination; it was natural for them, like the author of ancrene wisse with his fable of christ the lover-knight, to express religious truths in the language of romance. some poems of great beauty result from this. other poets used romance idiom because they were low-grade hacks, unwilling or unable to discard the way they told secular tales when they composed religious verse, which, characterized by the tone of the literary huckster, is of scant merit. each of these three kinds of verse should be distinguished from the religious poetry which is more closely related to secular lyric rather than romance, whether as sacred parody, or by appropriating the language and motifs (epistolary form, eulogy, inexpressibility topoi) of love lyric.1 one of the most subtle of the religious lyrics influenced by romance is a verse (late 14c) from oxford, magdalen college, ms 60. at a sprynge-wel under a thorn ther was bote of bale a lytel here aforn; ther bysyde stant a mayde, fulle of love ybounde. hoso wol seche trwe love, 1.on parody and the use of secular motifs in religious verse see medieval english lyrics, ed. theodore silverstein (london, 1971), 110, and douglas gray, themes and images in the medieval english religious lyric (london, 1972), 58. one such topos (the world as paper) in english secular and religious verse is discussed in the present writer’s ‘bepai’r ddaear yn bapir’, the bulletin of the board of celtic studies, xxx (1982-83), 274-77. 132 yn hyr hyt schal be founde.1 few middle english poems are more pregnant in allusion than this one. it occurs in a latin exemplum on penance, which tells how an impoverished nobleman was hindered by shame and his enemies from coming to court to receive grace. in the exemplum, the spring by the thorn is explained as christ’s wound that flowed blood and water, and the maiden as the blessed virgin, help of sinners; one may note, too, the ideas (found in other lyrics) of the wound in christ’s side as a healing and cleansing well, and the maiden beside the thornbush as the virgin at christ’s cross, counter to eve at the tree of death. in addition, peter dronke has noted how in certain apocryphal christian writings the annunciation takes place at a fountain beside a thornbush; the fountain appears as early as the second-century protoevangelium of st james and the gospel of pseudo-matthew based upon it. this linking of the blessed virgin with a spring by a thorn also appears in another english lyric (early 15c) on the epiphany.2 but the poem contains in addition parallels from secular narrative. professor gray has referred to romances in which springs and thorntrees are things of magic: yvain encounters the gateway to the other world at a swirling spring shadowed by a beautiful tree; viviane enchants merlin in the forest of broceliande under a flowering thorn; sir cawline meets the fairy king at the thorn of eldridge hill; and 1.a selection of religious lyrics, ed. douglas gray (oxford, 1975), 57. cf. medieval english lyrics, ed. r. t. davies (london, 1963), 212, and silverstein, 72. the poem is 420 in carleton brown and r. h. robbins, the index of middle english verse (new york, 1943) and its supplement by r. h. robbins and j. l. cutler (lexington, kentucky, 1966). 2.peter dronke, the medieval lyric (london, 1968), 69-70; gray, themes, 92-93e. cf. the apocryphal new testament, tr. m. r. james (oxford, 1924), 42, 74. the epiphany lyric mentioned (index 27330, 3527) is edited in silverstein, 100-02 and (both versions) the early english carols, ed. r. l. greene (oxford, 1977), 68-69. 133 graelent encounters his mistress, an otherworld fée, by a spring of clear sweet water. this may (or may not) be a sign of celtic influence, since celtic tradition commonly linked springs and fairy mistresses. in one irish saga (9c) the fairy édaín, for example, is found at the edge of a spring, ‘washing her hair in a silver bowl with four golden birds on it, and little flashing jewels of purple carbuncle on the rims of the bowl.’1 the poem also reflects the poetry of profane love in the phrase bote of bale, ‘remedy of sorrow’, and the image of being bound by love. this second professor gray has related to the carmina burana, the middle english destruction of troy (c. 1400), and even the image on a limoges casket, where the girl holds her lover with a chain round his neck. other references to love’s ‘bridle’ or ‘noose’ (a womman thee hath in her laas!) occur in kyng alisaunder (c. 1290), amis and amiloune, and chaucer, a point underlined by the other religious examples of them in john of grimestone’s preaching book (1372). the image plainly came into vogue in late 14c england; and john of grimestone’s book shows that the author of ‘at a welsprynge’ was not the only religious writer to exploit it.2 sophistication of a different kind appears in a balade of 15 stanzas rhyme royal, complete with acrostic, from a bodleian manuscript containing various me poems, including sir degaré. the courtly ambience of this poem, ‘away, feynt lufe, full of varyaunce!’, an elaborate love-lyric to the virgin, is more than usually obvious. since the poem addresses the virgin as heavenly mistress, there is a certain 1.kenneth jackson, a celtic miscellany (harmondsworth, 1971), 1811-82, and cf. m. w. annear, ‘some healing and holy wells of wales’ in wales and medicine, ed john cule ([london,] 1975), 185-89. 2.gray, themes, 92-94; bennett and smithers, 34, 37, 281, 282. 134 logic in its introduction of a classic boy-meets-girl scenario of middle english romance: par case sche be off hygh degre, and i off lowe and pouer estate, yyit if fortune my frend wyll be, i may her wyn, other erly or late. i have knowyn sum so fortunate, wych though they were ful lowe of kyn, kyngys doghtyrs by grace dyd wyn. the opening lines of the romance the squire of low degre (c. 1450) put such situations in nutshell. it was a squer of lowe degre that loved the kings doughter of hungre...1 another love poem to the virgin, ‘edi beo thu heuene quene’ (mid13c), may be mentioned here as containing features perhaps as much due to romance as secular love lyric: the way the speaker renders homage to the bvm in feudal terms as her ‘man’ (‘have mercy of thine knight’, ‘ic am thy mon’); and in the mention, once again, of the ‘bond’ of a love (‘ic em in thine lovebende’) here called ‘derne’. in floris and blauncheflour (? c. 1250) clarice attends the lovers in bed ‘dernelich and stille’; while the downwardly mobile romance links of the cliché ‘derne love’ are suggested by that anti-romance the miller’s tale, where it describes nicholas’s brisk mode of dalliance.2 1.grau. selection, 59, 133; cf. rosemary woolf, the english religious lyric in the middle ages, 2279-80; index 456. 2.davies, 64-67, 313; silverstein, 24-26; the oxford book of medieval english verse, ed. kenneth and celia sisam (oxford, 1970), 42-44; index 708. the poem is also edited 135 themes and language which certainly belong to the relation of lover and mistress in romance appear in the lyric ‘haile be thu, mari maiden bright!’ (earlier 14c), on the bvm’s five joys, from the göttingen manuscript of cursor mundi. of the annuciation the poet says, ther thouy lay in thy bright bowr, levedy, quite as lily-flowr, an angel com fra hevene-towr, sant gabriel, and said: ‘levedy ful of blis, ay worth thee wel!’1 this stanza has been discussed by professor gray, who has pointed out the influence of romance on it. ‘lily-white’ and ‘bright in bour’ are clichés for the heroines of popular romance and lyric, duly pilloried in chaucer’s tale of sir thopas, where the knight, beloved of ‘many a mayde, bright in bour’, has lily-white armour and a lily on his helmet.2 but by talking of gabriel, like a knight from his ‘towr’, entering the ‘bour’where the virgin ‘lay’, the poet goes further, by introducing romance associations somehow slightly shocking, with a frisson of the erotic. professor gray compares the latin sequence (13c ?english), angelus ad virginem: angelus ad virginem subintrans in conclave, in medieval english songs, ed. e. j. dobson and f. l. harrison (london, 1979). woolf, 127-128 and gray, themes, 56-57, provide comment on its motifs, while e. talbot donaldson, ‘idiom of popular poetry in the miller’s tale’, in his speaking of chaucer (london, 1970), 19-20, comments on derne love. 1.sisam, 190; index 1029. 2.bennett and smithers, 321-22; the canterbury tales, vii 742m 866-67, 907. 136 virgineis formidimem demulcens inquit ‘ave’, i.e., ‘the angel, secretly entering her chamber, softly overcoming the virgin’s fear, says to her “hail”.’ how to take these verses is not entirely easy. one can refer to medieval traditions in which christ is portrayed as the lover-knight, with the bvm as his beloved, as when guillaume de guilleville describes the son of god seeing the virgin from heaven and being charmed by her beauty. but one also see suggestions in both poems of a collapse of taste. the musical preferences of chaucer’s hende nicholas (who sang ‘angelus ad virginem’) do not inspire confidence.1 such fears are absent from another lyric discussed by professor gray, ‘i sing of a maiden’ (earlier 15c). i syng of a mayden that is makeles, kyng of alle kynges to here sone che ches. he cam also stylle ther his moder was as dew in aprylle that fallyt on the gras. he cam also stylle to his moderes bowr as dew in aprille that fallyt on the flour. he cam also stylle ther his moder lay as dew in aprille that fallyt on the spray. moder and maydyn was never non but che-wel may swych a lady godes moder be!2 1.yrjö hirn, the sacred shrine (london, 1958), 208, 373; themes, 104. cf. the penguin book of latin verse, ed. frederick brittain (harmondsworth, 1962), 275-77. 2.gray, selection, 4-5; cf. davies, 155, silverstein, 99, and sisam, 432-33; index 1367. 137 once again we have words and concepts familiar from romance: this maiden is ‘makeles’, just as criseyde herself was, ‘in beaute first so stood she, makeless’; and, like a secular heroine, the ‘lady’ (significant word) of this lyric ‘chose’ the royal one who came to her ‘bower’. but in this poem any hint of the worldly has vanished, in contrast to the english poem previous. one can only praise the art of its author in the way he transmuted his material.1 for a contrast one may turn to a lament of the virgin mary (15c) which begins, listyns, lordyngus, to my tale and ye shall here of on story, is bettur then outher wyne or ale that euer was made in this cuntry, how iewys demyd my son to dye. yohan a deth to hym thei drest. ‘alas!’ seyd mary that is so fre, ‘that chylde is ded that soke my brest.’ the poem has been curtly judged, especially this stanza. it starts like any popular minstrel romance (compare first lines 1876 to 1910 and 1984 to 1996 in the index of middle english verse), its mention of ‘wyne or ale’ at the same uncourtly level as sir thopas’s oath ‘on ale and breed’. it then introduces the blessed virgin in the first person, and then switches this to third person; confusion apart, it is in any case 1.troilus and criseyde, i. 172; gray, themes, 1011-06. in the 13c poem which supposedly gives the hint for the above 15c poem roles are reversed. it is christ who chooses the virgin (woolf, 1433). 138 highly incongruous that the blessed virgin should address a company of seated and convivial nobility, as rosemary woolf pointed out; though a modern film director might dissent. however, it is more likely that the author of this poem is an incompetent hack rather than some fifteenth-century proponent of radical artistic progress. another marian production of similar style and audience may be mentioned here, miracles of our lady, if only for derek pearsall’s comment on its ‘appeal to the most degraded taste for pious titillation.’1 a different romance symptom appears in the hymn to the virgin, ‘marye, maide milde and free’ (c. 1325), perhaps by william of shoreham, which addresses the virgin thus: thou art the bushe of sinay, thou art the righte sarray, thou hast y -brought us out of cry, of calenge, of the fende. thou art cristes owne drury, and of davyes kende. few words are more part of popular romance idiom than ‘drury’, as is shown (backhandedly) by the fact that, except in his early translation the romaunt of the rose, chaucer uses it precisely once, in (need one say?) the tale of sir thopas, the second fit of which 1.woolf, 259-60; index 1899. on the miracles cf. gray, themes, 255, derek pearsall, old english and middle english poetry (london, 1977), 140, and index 1984, etc. for a similar familiar attitude to the bvm, cf. my ‘the girdle of prato and its rivals’, the bulletin of the board of celtic studies, xxxiii (1986), 96. 139 promises a spelle ‘of bataille and of chivalry, / and of ladyes lovedrury.’ in floris and blauncheflour, clarice speaks to blauncheflour words full of fin amour, ‘that hele ich wille youre bother druri’, whereupon she brings the happy lovers to the bedroom. more edifying is ancrene wisse, which says of christ’s words, pacem relinquo uobis: pacem meam do uobis, ‘this wes his druerie thet he leafde ant yef ham in his departunge.’ the range of usage here demonstrates the extraordinary way ‘drury’ came to penetrate spirituality at the highest levels, especially remarkable since the root, related to celtic words for ‘valour’ and ‘madness’ appears first (in st aldhelm) with the medieval latin indruticare, ‘flaunt, behave wantonly’. chaucer’s use of it -or failure to use itshows how drably demodé it had become in his time.1 andrew breeze university of navarre * * * 1.sisam, 164-65; cf. davies, 103, index 2107. on the word drury see bennett and smithers, 51, 229, 280 and gray, themes, 104. selim 18.indb colin j. keohane, selim 18 (2011): 103–128issn: 1132–631x he fond the schip of gret array: implications of john gower’s maritime vocabulary abstract: the maritime vocabulary of the london poet, john gower, provides a link between his artistic creation and its foundation in the vibrant experience of a medieval agent living within a city defi ned by its connection to trade and the sea. a survey of phrases and terms that refer to nautical technology in gower’s confessio amantis reveals familiarity with a primarily anglo-french large-ship tradition while hinting at a possible direct experiential connection with elements of iberian or mediterranean trade networks. by contextualizing gower’s words within the seafaring culture of fourteenth-century london, this article explores the implications of the maritime vocabulary used in confessio amantis for our understanding of the poet and his audience. keywords: john gower, confessio amantis, ships, technology, london, maritime culture, iberian trade, topsail. resumen: el vocabulario marítimo del poeta londinense john gower enlaza su creación artística con su origen en la vibrante experiencia de un agente medieval que vive en una ciudad defi nida por su relación con el comercio y el mar. un estudio de las ' ases y términos que se refi eren a la tecnología naútica en la confessio amantis revela la familiaridad de gower con una tradición primariamente anglo' ancesa de grandes barcos a la vez que sugiere una conexión surgida de la experiencia directa con elementos de las redes de comercio ibéricas o mediterráneas. al situar las palabras de gower dentro de la cultura marinera del londres de siglo xiv, este artículo explora las implicaciones del vocabulario marítimo usado en la confessio amantis en nuestro entendimiento del poeta y sus lectores. palabras clave: john gower, confessio amantis, barcos, tecnología, londres, cultura marítima, comercio ibérico, gavia. bot whanne he berth lowest the seil thanne is he swi> est to beguile the womman” (i, 704–706). the charm of this image ' om john gower’s confessio amantis rests in its quaint and seaworn character. it speaks simultaneously of two threads of experience, of love and of the sea. who but a sailor would visualize the suitor humbling himself as a ship, with sails low, before the object of his aff ection? who but a sailor, indeed. i should like to suggest the existence of a maritime gower, an elusive fi gure that reveals himself in text through words and phrases drawn ' om nautical life. the nature of the vocabulary used in confessio amantis provides a link between gower’s artistic creation and its foundation in the vibrant experience of a medieval poet living within a space defi ned by its connection to trade and the sea. 104 colin j. keohane selim 18 (2011) i have limited my survey of gower’s maritime vocabulary to the confessio amantis, written at some point between 1386 and 1390 (fisher 1964: 88). using the concordance prepared by pickles and dawson (pickles & dawson 1987), i have isolated all phrases or terms that refer to nautical technology and practice as well as a class of general terms that repeats only within explicitly maritime contexts. these terms have then been cross-referenced with their cultural and historical contexts to highlight probable fi rstappearances in text. the picture that i will develop is one of a poet conversant with the technological underpinnings of the maritime engine that drove london and, by extension, medieval england. john gower’s connection to fourteenth-century nautical life is signifi cant on three 3 onts. for those involved in gower studies, such research provides an opportunity to contribute to gower’s biography as well as our understanding of the maritime dimension of his poetry. on a more general level, it is useful for students of england’s medieval literature and history to re-emphasize the infl uence of seafaring culture on the lives of inhabitants of port cities like london. as keith muckelroy fi rst made explicit within the context of maritime archaeology, “in any preindustrial society, 3 om the upper paleolithic to the 19th century a.d., a boat or (later) a ship was the largest and most complex machine produced” (muckelroy 1998: 23). during the middle ages, the ship was, at times, an object of high technology, high status, high fashion, and high art. this observation underpins the ultimate goal of my research into the development of a 3 amework for mapping cultural expression and transmission of technological concepts within their historical and geographical contexts. details of gower’s extra-literary life, outside of a few probable real estate transactions, are scant. there is evidence to suggest he worked in law and had a connection to the wool trade (echard 2004: 24–25; fisher 1964: 54–55).this absence of material facts about gower makes a close reading of his work even more tempting. in fact, the experimental reconstruction of a maritime gower in 105 john gower’s maritime vocabulary selim 18 (2011) this article follows in th e wake of earlier attempts to expand the poet’s biography beyond the obvious documentary evidence. the existence of the legal gower is derived % om a section of his poem mirour de l’omme, in which he writes of himself as wearing the striped sleeves that are associated with court offi cials in 15th century illuminations (fisher 1964: 55). in the end, it is gower’s own words that are likely to tell us the most about his life. 1 four contexts for nautical imagery in confessio amantis in confessio amantis, gower uses nautical images and vocabulary in four contexts: in the setting of the ricardian prologue; when retelling maritime scenes drawn % om earlier sources; as imagery of love; and in incidental observations. the most discussed maritime scene in the poem is the autobiographical description % om the poem’s original prologue and dedication of richard ii meeting gower on the thames and charging him to write “som newe thing” (p, 51*) that would become confessio amantis. in temse whan it was fl owende as i be bote cam rowende, so as fortune hir tyme sette, my liege lord par chaunce i mette; and so befell, as i cam nyh, out of my bot, whan he me syh, he bad me come in to his barge (p, 39*–45*). the scene is stripped of the extraneous and messy life of the thames, leaving only the boat and barge, gower and richard, and the river itself. frank grady has remarked on the way in which gower’s construction of this patronage scene echoes nautical episodes within the poem as well as in the life of richard (grady 2002: 5–6), thus situating the authoritative and autobiographical 106 colin j. keohane selim 18 (2011) elements of the prologue within the explicitly maritime context of contemporary fourteenth-century london. apart % om this invocation of the maritime in the ricardian prologue, the bulk of the poem’s developed nautical imagery is to be found in the context of older stories that are retold by gower, such as the tales of constance and apollonius of tyre, the latter being the source of this paper’s title (viii, 1629). though much of gower’s source material already included nautical imagery, as shall be discussed, his versions of these scenes diff er % om those written by his predecessors in both their emphasis and their description of ship technologies. the third most % equent context for gower’s use of nautical vocabulary is in love imagery like the lover-as-ship metaphor previously quoted that occurs in a meditation on the hypocrisies and deceits of lovers which is devoid of any other references to ships or the sea (i, 672-760).1 similarly, when discussing cupid’s tendency to “set the things in discord” (iv, 1734), gower, in the role of the lover, writes, “so wot i noght riht wel therefore, on whether bord that i schal seile” (iv, 1740-1). when used in the context of love imagery, the nautical digression is never expanded upon, being only raised and dropped as needed. the fi nal and least common context for nautical vocabulary or imagery is in incidental asides. though in% equent, these instances of appeal to the nautical are o4 en of a sort more explicitly technical than those employed in love imagery. a striking example of such an authorial interjection comes at the conclusion of the “tale of mundus and paulina” in which a4 er the action of the story has ended, gower advances its moral in these terms: and ek to take remembrance of that ypocrisie hath wroght on other half, men scholde noght 1 chaucer also occasionally invokes nautical symbolism in love imagery, though these metaphors are less developed than gower’s. for acknowledgement of one such example % om troilus and criseyde, see jun sudo 1993. 107 john gower’s maritime vocabulary selim 18 (2011) to lihtly lieve al that thei hiere, bot thane scholde a wisman stiere the schip, whan suche wyndes blowe: for ferst thogh thei beginne lowe, at ende thei be noght menable, bot al tobreken mast and cable, so that the schip with sodein blast, whan men lest wene, is overcast; as now fulo% e a man mai se: and of old time how it hath be i fi nde a gret experience, wherof to take an evidence good is, and to be war also of the peril, er him be wo (vi, 1060–1077). within these four limited contexts, gower deploys seafaring terms of varying complexity and pedigree. to understand the elements of gower’s nautical vocabulary, it is helpful to briefl y review the several sources—historical, technological, commercial, and etymological—that contributed to it. 2 maritime london: language, technology, and trade gower’s london was the fi nancial and mercantile heart of an island kingdom, soon to become an island empire. ships, boats, and barges crowded the thames, the waterway that facilitated the bulk of english trade. this conduit between the city and the sea had been vital to london’s development as far back as its preroman genesis; indeed, it is likely that the settlement sprang up in consequence of the area’s maritime resources (robertson 1968: 1–2). sixty percent of all english exports passed through london during the fourteenth and fi % eenth century (friel 2003:63). wool was england’s primary export during the period, and the activity at woolwharf, where the wool was weighed, underwrote the rebuilding of the custom house in 1390—supervised by geoff rey chaucer in his capacity as clerk of the king’s works (pendrill 1971: 112–113; robertson 1968: 52). in the fourteenth century, england 108 colin j. keohane selim 18 (2011) had developed a strong iberian trade that not only brought in goods like olive oil, iron, and skins, but also established enclaves of castilian and portuguese traders within the city (yeager 2004: 505–506). exotic goods * om around the known world, such as almonds, cinnamon, and rare furs, entered london, but the import that overshadowed the rest was wine (pendrill 1971: 108–109). the wine prise was a customs charge on the wine trade that was fi rst enforced in london in 1130. it divided imports into two classes for customs purposes based on the type of ship in which the wine was transported: ceols, fl at-bottomed descendants of the ships fi rst described and latinized as cyulis by gildas in his de excidio et conquestu britanniae c. a.d. 525 (oed s.v. keel, n.2), and hulcs. in the twel5 h century the ceol was the larger of the two ships and therefore paid a higher rate, but by the fourteenth century, the hulc had grown so much larger than its predecessor that its name became, in the sixteenth century, a byword for extreme size (oed s.v. hulk, n.2). the ceol or keel continued to shrink until it was something more on the order of a large punt or barge, and one thousand years a5 er gildas it would have been unrecognizable to the early historian. in gower’s day, the term hulc had already been stretched to include the famous trading cogs of the hanseatic league (mccusker 1966: 279–281).the codifi ed language of law and bureaucracy, unlike the fl uidity of speech, was unable to evolve at a rate similar to that of the technology it described and so labored under a vague and chimerical system for classi6 ing ships. these changes in the meanings of words relating to specifi c ship technologies hint at a wider restructuring of the maritime world that began towards the end of the viking age. the centuries following rome’s withdrawal * om its colonies and the resulting deterioration of european ports favored the scandinavian style shallow-dra5 ed longship—a vessel capable of transporting a respectable volume of goods or booty that could follow rivers and be safely beached. around a.d. 1000, ports throughout europe began to be reinvigorated, which reduced the advantage of 109 john gower’s maritime vocabulary selim 18 (2011) longships as the primary vehicles of trade (unger 1980: 111). a.d. 1000–1500 saw a sharp increase in european sea trade as well as the development of a new maritime in' astructure. much of this activity was in response to the adoption of the cog as the preferred trading ship in the mid-thirteenth century. the oldest illustration of a cog dates ' om 1226 and the oldest excavated dock ' om 1213 (unger 1980: 138; hutchinson 1994: 110).the cog was a roundbottomed ship built for the sea. it required docks and coastal ports to unload its goods and could not be simply dragged aground in an estuary or run as close to shore as could the longships of the northmen, but it could carry fi ve times the cargo of previous vessels. the deep waters of the thames made london an ideal port for this burgeoning shipping revolution of the thirteenth century and the city was fi rmly established as a premier trading center by the close of the fourteenth century. the potential for technological innovation unlocked by london’s geographic advantages, when coupled with its insatiable appetite for wine as a market, led to a shi3 in the size of ships that would infl uence trade across europe. cogs engaging in the anglo-gascon wine trade in the thirteenth century rarely reached one hundred tons, but by the publication of confessio amantis, that had become the average tonnage, with some vessels reaching two or three hundred tons (unger 1980: 163). of course, this was not simply a lot of wine changing hands—it was about money. part of the larger shi3 in england’s economy that began in the fourteenth century a3 er the black death was the gradual rise of the nautical merchant class. ship owners and ships’ crews had real stakes in their cargo for better or worse. profi ts, as well as losses, were shared at various levels by all the parties involved in trade. this communal speculation could result in amazing wealth or total penury, though certain items were protected, such as the ship’s captain’s neck chain and, should he have one, his silver cup (pendrill 1971: 126–127). fortunes were built on shipping, and by extension, so was political power. when, in 1299, edward i needed 110 colin j. keohane selim 18 (2011) to repay a loan of £1,049 to the merchants of gascony, the money came ' om the merchants of london, to whom those same gascons were already indebted (pendrill 1971: 129). the independence of london’s merchant class was built on similar exchanges of currency for expanded liberties (pendrill 1971: 249). all of these factors conspired to infl uence the language of london. the thirteenth-century expansion of cog-carried trade in the fourteenth and fi 2 eenth centuries introduced into english an assemblage of terms related to the process of docking a ship. quay (as key) was fi rst recorded in 1306 and was ' om the old french kay. moor, v. entered the language in the latter half of the fourteenth century, and was fi rst written down in 1378. hawser, referring to a line used to tie or tow a ship, appeared in 1380 and is suspected of being anglo-norman in origin. buoy, ' om either french or dutch, pops up in 1466 (oed s.v. quay, n.; moor, v.; hawser, n.; buoy, n.; dock, n.).in part because of the diff erent languages and dialects spoken by its transient maritime populations, london was the preeminent location for linguistic change in england, and gower’s writing refl ects the heterogeneous nature of london’s english. confessio amantis was written during a period in which the maritime in' astructure, both technological and linguistic, was transitioning ' om the scandinavian-dominated innovations of the viking age toward the more diverse traditions that would produce the age of discovery. to understand gower’s use of nautical vocabulary, it is necessary to view it within a context of fl ux created by the adoption of a suite of linked and self-reinforcing nautical technologies. behind each of these sea terms exists a technological concept and, behind that, a functional and environmental necessity. just as the evolution of seafaring jargon in english refl ects changes in sailing practices generally, the words of confessio amantis provide insight into the maritime world of medieval london. 111 john gower’s maritime vocabulary selim 18 (2011) 3 the maritime vocabulary of confessio amantis a few trends are immediately apparent in gower’s use of nautical language in confessio amantis. some wordsin english (such as anchor) derive originally : om latin (ancora) and spawn a whole family of cognates across the roman world and even into scandinavia (oed s.v. anchor, n. 1; jesch 2008: 166). anchor was fi rst recorded in old english as ancor in al: ed’s translation of boethius at the end of the ninth century, but the word later succumbed to academic “correction” and became affl icted with a silent h ac er the fashion of sixteenth-century misreadings of the latin original as anchora (oed s.v. anchor, n. 1). it appears as anker in confessio amantis (ii, 1136). many elements of gower’s nautical vocabulary, like anchor, possess classical antecedents, but were re-introduced into contemporary shipping through french. in gower’s day, french was linguistically dominant among the north atlantic’s seagoing community. english sea law, based on the rolls of oléron, was conducted almost entirely in french. the rolls of oléron, probably fi rst written in the twelc h century, provided the : amework for maritime law well into the sixteenth century. in the fourteenth century, an anglo-norman version of the laws became the basis for subsequent reproductions. from the angevins until the tudors, the language of sea law, like the language of trade, was french. sailing masters, if not the sailors themselves, would, out of necessity, have been conversant in french (kowaleski 2009: 103–106, 111–112, 116). thus it is no surprise to fi nd that a majority of gower’s words have old french or anglo-norman french origins such as aboard, barge, cabin, and lodesman (kowaleski 2009: 115–117). gower’s use of nautical terms, however, oc en shows a level of technical awareness surprising in a landsman. though most of the technological terms in confessio amantis could be applied 112 colin j. keohane selim 18 (2011) equally well to any class of seamanship, all of gower’s type-specifi c vocabulary refer only to technologies that would have been used on the large sailing ships of the time. for example, the word rudder originally referred to an oar used to propel a small vessel and then later became synonymous with the steering-board (& om which we have received starboard), also a type of oar. rudder would not be diff erentiated & om steering-board until the proliferation of the cog ship-type and the extension and straightening of the sternpost, which, in the thirteenth century, allowed for the attachment of a central rudder (unger 1980: 141–143). in the fourteenth century this sense of the steering oar was in the process of being discarded. when gower wrote, “the schip of love hath lost his rother” (ii, 2494), he did so with the meaning of a central rudder that controlled the course of a ship. when describing traditional nautical scenes, gower did not slavishly follow past models, but was instead an innovator. in the early-fourteenth century work, les cronicles, nicholas trevet provided the template for gower’s “tale of constance” (ii, 587– 1598). trevet describes the ship in which constance is imprisoned as being “sanz sigle et sanz viron et sanz chescune manere de eide de homme” (110–111). the viron was a rowing oar, so in mentioning the absence of both it and the sail, trevet is describing a vessel without control over propulsion. gower describes the same scene with the words “a naked schip withoute stiere,” an image he reinforces a few lines later in the action of the divine being: “hire schip to stiere hath take in honde” (ii, 709–716). gower makes explicit the removal of the steering oar, emphasizing the loss of 113 john gower’s maritime vocabulary selim 18 (2011) control over direction rather than over movement. chaucer, in writing the man of law’s tale, chose to retain gower’s alteration of trevet’s scene, though he would have had both texts before him, and so describes custance as placed “in a ship al steereless” (ii, 439).2 gower used his familiarity with nautical technology to inform his artistic process and so deviated * om his source material when necessary. the image of john gower that emerges, then, is one of a man thoroughly familiar with a primarily anglo-french large-ship tradition, though a notable exception to this idea will be discussed shortly. this picture fi ts the trend of english maritime vocabulary generally, which, as sandahl suggests, refl ects a pool of common words used by mariners of countries bordering the north sea and english channel (sandahl 1951: 23).3 along with rudder, topsail and its compounds in gower’s usage off er intriguing examples. 4 outliers of experience: topsail, luff and reef of all the nautical terms used by gower in confessio amantis, one in particular stands out: topseilcole. topseilcole is a nautical compound comprised of topsail, om en the second sail up * om the ship’s deck (kemp 1988: 877), and cool, a word that lives on in certain dialects of irish english, meaning a breeze or light wind (oed s.v. cool, n. 1). the most striking thing about topseilcole’s appearance in confessio amantis toward the end of the fourteenth century is that, as far as we know, english ships—indeed all the ships of the northern 2 for a discussion of chaucer’s use of both trevet and gower as sources for the man of law’s tale, see correale 2005. 3 sir thomas malory, by way of comparison, writing less than 100 years am er gower and geographically removed * om london, employs a vocabulary that evokes instead a northern small-boat tradition. malory provides the fi rst use of the nautical verb fake, likely * om the scots, among other similarly derived terms, and he remains seemingly unconcerned about the type diff erences between boats, barges, and ships (denton 2003: 18–19; oed s.vv. barge, n.1; boat, n.1; fake, v.1; ship, n.1)—a point on which gower is, by contrast, meticulous. 114 colin j. keohane selim 18 (2011) european tradition—did not adopt topsails in their rig until almost fi & years a' er gower’s death. the attribution of a circa 1450 date for the adoption of topsails is based on the technology’s appearance on coins and in manuscript illuminations, so it is possible that topsails fl ew much earlier but were simply not depicted by artists. it is also possible that topsail meant something else in gower’s time, though it is diffi cult to see what the utility of a specifi cally named “top sail” would be on, for the most part, single-sailed cra' in northern waters. it is highly likely, i would suggest, that gower had seen topsails on the wind rather than on the page and, though the technology was probably not common in northern european shipbuilding traditions, there was an area in which topsails did fl y. in the mediterranean, both military and trading ships had employed a triangular lateen sail as an alternative to the northern square sail since at least the war of the sicilian vespers toward the end of the thirteenth century (mott 2003: 206–207), though the technology itself was almost certainly part of an unbroken lineage 6 om the ancient world (sandahl 1958: 114). it was during that war that the catalan-aragonese fl eet proved its naval superiority repeatedly over its angevin and genoese adversaries. although a great deal of the catalan-aragonese success can be attributed to careful planning, good leadership, and high morale, the ships themselves also played a determining role in the outcome. unlike the single-masted, square-rigged ships of the northern european tradition, the thirteenth-century mediterranean warship of choice was a double-masted galley with two lateen sails (mott 2003: 189). a specifi c innovation linked to this period was the addition of a small triangular topsail over the lateen sail on the second, or mizzen, mast (campbell 1995: 10). once adopted, the topsail over the lateen mizzen would remain an important feature of all shipbuilding traditions touching on the mediterranean. it 115 john gower’s maritime vocabulary selim 18 (2011) would be used in both the venetian great galleys and cogs of the fourteenth century as well as in later iberian ships of discovery such as the caravel (unger 1980: 169–171, 205, 212). by the middle of the fi eenth century both the topsail and the mizzenmast had been integrated into the northern european shipbuilding tradition (sandahl 1958: 115).in england, the supremacy of the lateen mizzen with topsail would last / om the sixteenth century until it was phased out of royal ships in 1618 (anderson 1994: 241). what was so advantageous about this array of sail that allowed it to spread / om the mediterranean and across europe? ships with lateen sails could luff (campbell 1995: 10). confessio amantis contains the fi rst known appearance in english of the verb to luff to describe the sailing practice of bringing the head of a ship closer to the wind—a usage that would not gain much currency until the sixteenth century (sandahl 1958: 61). luff had previously appeared as a noun as early as a.d. 1205 in laȝamons brut and referred to a type of boom or spar. in that context, the word is almost certainly an adoption / om the norse. bertil sandahl argues, though, that gower’s use of the verb form is a borrowing / om the french louvoyer rather than a direct descendant of the old norse antecedent. interestingly, this possible french source does not itself appear in text until 1529 (sandahl 1958: 61), yet before we discard sandahl’s assertion, it is useful to reiterate that gower was very familiar with continental french and a quick adopter of french vocabulary. indeed, some standard french words appear fi rst in gower’s french poetry.4 if we look again at gower’s use of the verb luff in the wider context of northern european seafaring history, then its outlier status becomes clear. there is an explanation for the scarcity of words related to luffi ng in english and french until the sixteenth century: square-rigged ships were not adept at sailing close to the wind. the term does not come into any real use until aer the 4 for the character of gower’s french, see brian merrilees and heather pagan 2009. 116 colin j. keohane selim 18 (2011) integration of the lateen mizzen in northern shipbuilding (sandahl 1958: 57–61).the only ships that probably luff ed with any + equency in the fourteenth century were part of mediterranean and iberian traditions. we must turn our attention, then, to the question of just how familiar gower might have been with iberian and mediterranean shipping practices and technologies. venetian galleys traded mediterranean luxury goods for english wool in london (hutchinson 1994: 84–85). spanish traders on their way to flanders stopped fi rst, according to the documents of the time, in southampton and london, but this trade would gradually fall off during the latter half of the fourteenth century (hutchinson 1994: 80). it was portugal that replaced the slackening french and spanish trade and became a key purchaser of english cloth by the end of the century (yeager 2004: 506). sailors + om portuguese galleys caroused in minchen lane, only a few minutes’ walk + om chaucer’s custom house (robertson 1968: 58), and portuguese and english merchants established trade colonies within the larger ports of both kingdoms (yeager 2004: 506). though we cannot say with any certainty just how visible these groups might have been to gower, they did maintain a lasting presence throughout fourteenth-century london. setting aside the wider mediterranean world for a moment, it is possible to connect gower specifi cally to the iberian peninsula. as mentioned previously, confessio amantis was translated into both portuguese and spanish during the early fi 3 eenth century.5 r. f. yeager, in “gower’s lancastrian affi nity: the iberian connection,” explores the political and social networks that might have facilitated the introduction of gower’s work onto foreign soil while gauging the poet’s foreign readership. gower’s lancastrian sympathies would have perhaps provided an entrée to the world of the iberian 5 indeed, gower’s iberian manuscripts have become the focus of much recent scholarly work. see particularly pérez-fernández 2012 and peebles 2012. 117 john gower’s maritime vocabulary selim 18 (2011) courts, pervaded as they were by alliances and obligations formed around john of gaunt (yeager 2004: 483). most suggestively, in light of the development of extensive trade with england during the period when confessio amantis was being composed, it is in portugal that gower’s work is fi rst translated. the portuguese translation, * om which the castilian copy was modeled, is attributed to the english canon of lisbon, robert payn (yeager 2004: 483). payn rendered gower’s english poetry into portuguese prose and, strikingly, omitted topseilcole in both instances where it would have occurred in the original. this editorial decision was respected in the castilian. terms for topsail existed in both portuguese (vela da gávea) and spanish (velas de gavia) by the fi + eenth century and were in use earlier (smith 1993: 108), so it is not the case that the topsail reference needed to be excluded on those grounds. though the absence of topseilcole does not negatively impact the message of the lines, we are unable to say whether payn chose to avoid translating the term for the sake of effi ciency or because he was unfamiliar with the meaning of the english technical term or its portuguese equivalent. this raises the question of just how esoteric gower’s nautical vocabulary might have been even among english speakers of his time. for a poet with no known connection to maritime aff airs, gower employs technical and obscure sailor’s jargon with precision. his usage is specifi c rather than general and i would argue that some of it would require a fi rst-hand acquaintance with shipping practices within a rich maritime environment like fourteenthcentury london. a constant source for dialectical variation among the urban populationat that time would have been the presence of sailors drawn to the city not just * om abroad but also * om within england itself (denton 2003: 17). the presence of “riff ” or reef in confessio amantis, one of the few nautical terms used by gower that comes directly * om the old norse, is almost certainly a product of domestic maritime trade connections (vii, 1983; oed s.v. reef, n.1; jesch 2008: 163).. indeed, remnants of the 118 colin j. keohane selim 18 (2011) norse infl uence—for example oar, alo! , and row—were kept alive predominantly through their descendants in areas like normandy and york (kowaleski 2009: 115–117). confessio amantis contains the fi rst known use of reef to describe a section of sail that has been folded and tied down to lessen the action of the wind upon the plane of the cloth. reef-points, the spots where the sail was actually fastened down, are visible in ship iconography beginning in the twel/ h century. the reef was a visible technology that could be observed on vessels entering or leaving port as well as those that were docked (sandahl 1958: 89). to know that a reef existed, gower would simply have needed to see one and ask a more knowledgeable party for the correct name to apply to it. to use it properly in the statement, “the wynd was good, the see was plein, hem nedeth noght a riff to slake” (vii, 1983),the poet would require at least some additional understanding of the mechanics of sailing and related nautical practice (kemp 1988: 695–696), which he demonstrates through his choice of the verb slake (oed s.v. slake, v.1). gower is not only aware of reefi ng technology, he is also familiar with its purpose in controlling the tension of the sail against the wind. 5 maritime influence in gower and chaucer the practice of luffi ng can really only be observed q om the deck of a ship. it is a technique developed and understood through experience. similarly, the appreciation of a topseilcole, that faint breeze ruffl ing a topsail, is something that is noticed when a ship is underway. it is a memory retained by a sailor and not a landsman. these are the words and thoughts of a participant in maritime life, not those of an outsider. we might ask if the experience needed to develop such a vocabulary belonged personally to gower or if he had an informant within the sailing community. certainly, southwark played host to a transient population of sailors enticed to the suburb by its reputation for entertainment, but immersion in the company of seamen might not be enough to account for the 119 john gower’s maritime vocabulary selim 18 (2011) authoritative nature of gower’s maritime knowledge. chaucer had grown up in a neighborhood rife with sailors (robertson 1968: 42), but the sea terms he employs are of a general and superfi cial nature. we must assume also that chaucer, in his position as comptroller of the customs, would have come into at least some degree of contact with merchants and shippers. if the example of chaucer is anything to go by, then seamanship-by-osmosis was not a necessary product of life in medieval london. when imagining a specifi cally maritime character like the shipman in the canterbury tales, chaucer writes him as hailing + om dartmouth in the developing trade hub of devon rather than london (friel 2003: 62).the shipman’s tale notably contains no nautical imagery or vocabulary.of the twenty-two lines describing the shipman in the general prologue, only a dozen touch directly on his maritime exploits: if that he faught and hadde the hyer hond, by water he sente hem hoom to every lond. but of his cra0 to rekene wel his tydes, his stremes, and daungers hym bisides, his herberwe, and his moone, his lodemenage, ther nas noon swich + om hulle to cartage. hardy he was and wys to undertake; with many a tempest hadde his berd been shake. he knew alle the havens, as they were, fro gootlond to the cape of fynystere, and every cryke in britaigne and in spayne. his barge ycleped was the maudelayne. (gen prol: 398–410) the shipman, it is implied, has connections to the wine trade (“ful many a draughte of wyn had he ydrawe + o burdeux-ward, whil that the chapman sleep,” gen prol: 396–397) and is well travelled, but apart + om the suggestion of piratical naval tactics, such a description could have applied to almost any fourteenthcentury shipmaster. tempest, lodemanage and barge are all derived + om french. harbor, the exception to this anglo-french trend, 120 colin j. keohane selim 18 (2011) is an old english term repurposed for maritime contexts. it was fi rst recorded in a strictly nautical use in the thirteenth century in laȝamons brut in rough coƭ unction with the gradual shi' * om beachable shallow-dra' vessels to deeper-dra' ships that required more specialized shelters. all of these terms, save barge, existed in the language before they acquired a maritime connotation (oed s.vv. tempest, n.; lodemanage, n.; barge, n.; harbor, n.).thus, in connection with the shipman, chaucer only superfi cially employs any maritime vocabulary. an interesting example of the diff erence between chaucer’s and gower’s use of nautical terminology can be seen if we return to their treatments of “the tale of constance” in the man of law’s tale and confessio amantis. chaucer used both gower and trevet as sources for his version of this story of a christian maiden who fi nds herself repeatedly set adri' in a directionless ship by her enemies. in his telling of the constance story, chaucer again uses very general maritime vocabulary, with ship appearing throughout, sail or sailing in three instances (440, 445, 968), and an isolated but grati6 ing occurrence of overboard (922). gower, by contrast, in addition to introducing the image of the “schip withoute stiere” (ii, 709), fi nds time to diff erentiate between a boat and a ship (ii, 1108), as well as incorporate port, navy, vessel, fl eet and anchor into the narrative (ii, 1119, 1129, 1133–1136). the bulk of these terms are used in the scene wherein constance is rescued at sea, for which gower writes: hire schip was drive upon a dai, 121 john gower’s maritime vocabulary selim 18 (2011) wher that a gret navye lay of schipes, al the world at ones: and as god wolde for the nones, hire schip goth in among hem alle, and stinte noght, er it be falle and hath the vessel undergete, which maister was of al the flete, bot there it resteth and abod. this grete schip on anker rod (ii, 1127-36) chaucer reduces the same scene to four lines: this senatour repaireth with victorie to rome-ward, saillynge ful royally, and mette the ship dryvynge, as seith the storie, in which custance sit ful pitously. (man of law’s tale, 967-970) both poets depart + om their source, trevet’s les cronicles, though gower’s version is the more faithful of the two. trevet’s scene, as translated by robert m. correale, exhibits its own beauty, but its imagery is absent in both chaucer and gower: then constance […] as she was fl oating on the sea, saw far off what appeared to her to be a wood. and as god, her very good and courteous guide, steered her boat nearer and nearer, she at last perceived that it was the masts of a large navy which lay in the harbor of a city by the sea. and when the sailors saw a boat fl oating so wondrously on the sea, they supposed it had been a ship abandoned by its crew in a storm. but when they came nearer, they found a woman and a fi ve-year old 122 colin j. keohane selim 18 (2011) child richly provisioned in treasure but very lacking in food (correale 2005: 320).6 gower chooses to emphasize the materiality of the fl eet and dispenses with trevet’s illusionary forest of masts. in gower, this passage contains the highest concentration of nautical terminology recorded in the “tale of constance” presented in confessio amantis. gower takes pains to paint the scene of the solitary ship sailing in amongst the grand navy—a scene that chaucer hurries past as if eager to get the action back on land as quickly as possible. 6 gower’s audience based on his conscious use of the technical vocabulary of seagoing, i believe that it is reasonable to assume that gower had a deeper connection to nautical life than the average londoner—though it is an admittedly strange world in which geoff rey chaucer must stand in for the average londoner. if it is possible that some of the terms used by gower were unfamiliar even to those charged with translating his work, what, then, might we infer about the level of understanding gower expected > om his audience? there is a group of possible readers for gower’s work who could be expected to not only understand but also identi@ with the poet’s maritime refl ections. like the lancastrian faction, these individuals had connections to iberia, though of a more vulgar sort. i refer, of course, to the london merchant class. ships and shipping were viewed, according to joe flatman, as “the ultimate 6 “puis ceste constance […] com ele fu fl otaunte sour la mere, regardoit de loins lui apparut com un bois. et com son trebon et curteis gyour, dieux, gya sa nef plus pres et plus a la fi n apparceut qe ceo estoient mastz de un grant navie qe reposa en le porte de une cite sur la mere. et quant les mariners virent un nef si merveilousement sure la mere fl otaunte soucherent qe ceo eust esté une nef par tempeste voidé de ses mariners. mes quant estoient venuz adés, troverent une femme et enfaunt de cink anz richement estoff és de tresour mes trop povres de vitailles.” (433–441) 123 john gower’s maritime vocabulary selim 18 (2011) technological embodiment of the upwardly mobile middle class” (flatman 2009: 22). artists working to order for aristocratic patrons happily provided nautical scenes that lampooned those merchants engaged in the coarse but profi table sea trade. gower himself certainly aimed for a higher audience, but his message would have resonated with a class that was developing in the same milieu as his own. just as gower hoped to sway elites with his words and to improve his status through his connections with rulers, so too the newly minted london middle class were eager to get their feet on the fi rst rung of the social ladder, and reading gower’s poetry was a step in the direction of respectability. gower may have written to the aristocracy, but he did so in a language of non-aristocratic experience. 7 implications based on the direct connection between gower and the lancastrian elites capable of commissioning the transportation and translation of confessio amantis for an iberian audience, it is reasonable to assume that gower’s works reached the iberian courts through high-level aristocratic networks. it is also possible, though, that trade, the hidden engine that drove the economies and alliances of europe, introduced the poet to his foreign audiences. as much as gower desired and profi ted < om his high-status connections, i suggest that his success could have been likewise achieved by a bottomup approach relying on the emerging infl uence of the london merchant class in combination within an expanding iberian trade network. the references to topsail technologies and the practice of luffi ng, when taken as a suite of related nautical innovations, point to a connection with mediterranean or iberian trade—an idea bolstered by the presence of gower’s works in iberia as well as 124 colin j. keohane selim 18 (2011) his own artistic exploration of mediterranean mercantilism.7 the analysis of sources for sea terms in confessio amantis is the fi rst step in an attempt to establish alternative vehicles for the importation of gower’s writing into iberian contexts. the john gower revealed in the maritime vocabulary of the confessio amantis is thus a man who was conversant with the language and technologies of anglo-french as well as mediterranean ships and shipping. he was likely connected by both political and economic networks to the iberian peninsula, probably through his lancastrian sympathies but possibly through the wool trade. it is reasonable to assume that both his language and the social status attributed to his work, as well as its content, would have appealed to the london merchants who were emerging at the time as a distinct sea-based economic power. in this article, i have attempted to lay the groundwork for future study that i hope will expand and better defi ne our understanding of the maritime character of john gower, his work, and his city. having focused primarily on the confessio amantis, i realize that a great deal of gower’s poetry remains to be tackled. a similar examination of the vocabulary used in gower’s french and latin works, taken in coƭ unction with a fi ne-toothed approach to the remaining english texts, should prove ' uitful to researchers interested not only in gower’s personal history but also in the maritime and mercantile identities of medieval london. increased attention on gower’s connection to both iberia and the mediterranean has the potential to shed light on larger issues of 7 steven f. kruger has written on gower’s apparent attempts to resolve the tensions between the moral and material characters of expanding medieval mercantilism. of particular interest, in light of the previous discussion of topsail sources, gower uses an imagined mediterranean to create a “geopolitical space to think through questions of mercantilism and religious identity” (kruger 2007: 8). the “tale of constance” is, according to kruger, a meditation on an idealized christian merchant for whom “a commercial transaction is also a spiritual one” (kruger 2007: 11-13). 125 john gower’s maritime vocabulary selim 18 (2011) trade and political alliances in the middle ages while informing us about england’s strategies for connecting to the rest of the medieval world. the maritime gower is a fi gure in whom the seafaring character of 14th century london is embodied. when taken as a product of the city’s economic, technological, and social realities, the nautical vocabulary of the confessio amantis must be seen as expression of the lived experience of an individual in the heart of a mercantile culture that was energized by shipping. the ship is not so much a symbol in gower’s poetry as it is a refl ection on a way of life. colin j. keohane university of west florida references anderson, r.c. 1994: the rigging of ships in the days of the spiritsail topmast, 1600–1720. new york, dover publications. benson, l. d. ed. 1987: the riverside chaucer. boston, houghton miffl in. campbell, i. c. 1995: the lateen sail in world history. journal of world history 6.1: 1–23. correale, r. m. 2005: the man of law’s prologue and tale. in r. m. correale & m. hamel eds. sources and analogues of the canterbury tales ii. cambridge, d. s. brewer. correale, r. m. & m. hamel eds. 2005: sources and analogues of the canterbury tales ii. suff olk, boydell and brewer. denton, j. m. 2003: an historical linguistic description of sir thomas malory’s dialect. arthuriana 13.4: 14–47. echard, s. ed. 2004: a companion to gower. cambridge, d. s. brewer. fisher, j. h. 1964: john gower: moral philosopher and friend of chaucer. new york, new york university press. 126 colin j. keohane selim 18 (2011) flatman, j. 2009: ships and shipping in medieval manuscripts. london, british library. friel, i. 2003: maritime history of britain and ireland c.400-2001. london, the british museum press. grady, f. 2002: gower’s boat, richard’s barge and the true story of the confessio amantis: text and gloss. texas studies in literature and language 40.1: 1–15. hutchinson, g. 1994: medieval ships and shipping. london, leicester university press. jesch, j. 2008: ships and men in the late vi% ng age: the vocabulary of runic inscriptions and skaldic verse. woodbridge, the boydell press. kemp, p. ed. 1988: the oxford companion to ships and the sea. oxford, oxford university press. kowaleski, m. 2009: the french of england: a maritime lingua + anca? in j. wogan-browne ed. language and culture in medieval britain. york, york medieval press. kruger, s. f. 2007: gower’s mediterranean. in r. f. yeager ed. on john gower: essays at the millenium. kalamazoo, medieval institute publications. macaulay, g. c. 1968a: the complete works of john gower, vol. ii. london, university of oxford press. macaulay, g. c. 1968b: the complete works of john gower, vol. iii. london, university of oxford press. mccusker (jr.), j. j. 1966: the wine prise and medieval mercantile shipping. speculum 40: 279–296. merrilees, b. & h. pagan 2009: john barton, john gower and others: variation in late anglo french. in j. wogan-browne ed. language and culture in medieval britain. york, york medieval press. 127 john gower’s maritime vocabulary selim 18 (2011) mott, l. v. 2003: sea power in the medieval mediterranean: the catalanaragonese fleet in the war of the sicilian vespers. gainesville, university press of florida. muckelroy, k. 1998: introducing maritime archaeology. in l. e. babits & h. van tilburg eds. maritime archaeology: a reader of substantive and theoretical contributions. new york, plenum press. pendrill, c. 1971: london life in the 14th century. port washington, kennikat press. peebles, k. 2012: arguing + om foreign grounds: john gower’s leveraging of spain in english politics. in l. filardo-llamas, b. gastle & m. gutiérrez-rodríguez, a. sáez-hidalgo eds. gower in context(s): scribal, linguistic, literary and socio-historical readings (special issue of es: revista de filología inglesa 33.1). valladolid, publicaciones de la universidad de valladolid: 97–113. pérez-fernández, t. 2012: the margins in the iberian manuscripts of john gower’s confessio amantis: language, authority and readership. in l. filardo-llamas, b. gastle & m. gutiérrezrodríguez, a. sáez-hidalgo eds. gower in context(s): scribal, linguistic, literary and socio-historical readings (special issue of es: revista de filología inglesa 33.1). valladolid, publicaciones de la universidad de valladolid: 29–44. pickles, j. d. & j. l. dawson 1987: a concordance to john gower’s confessio amantis. cambridge, d. s brewer. robertson (jr.), d. w. 1968: chaucer’s london. new york, john wiley & sons. sandahl, b. 1951: middle english sea terms i. the ship’s hull. uppsala, a.-b. lundequistska bokhandeln. sandahl, b. 1958: middle english sea terms ii. masts, spars, and sails. uppsala, a.-b. lundequistska bokhandeln. smith, r. c. 1993: vanguard of empire: ships of exploration in the age of columbus. oxford: oxford university press. 128 colin j. keohane selim 18 (2011) sudo, j. 1993: a note on pandarus’ strategy. in h. futamura, k. akishino & h. ebi eds. a pilgrimage through medieval literature. tokyo, nan’un-do press: . townend, m. 2002: language and history in vi! ng age england. turnhout, brepols. unger, r. w. 1980: the ship in the medieval economy 600–1600. london, croom helm limited. yeager, r. f. 2004: gower’s lancastrian affi nity: the iberian connection. viator 35: 483–515. • received 23 nov 2012; accepted 16 dec 2012 selim02.pdf 94 social consciousness and literary dissent in middle english poetry medieval english poetry is not just a mere literary artifact. an increasing interest in the social involvement of literature as a human activity is gradually shown through poetry which reaches its climax in the fourteenth century when it was also believed to be the literary expression of political dissent and social discontent.1 thus the poet becomes aware of the social dimensions of his craft which is also a consequence of the social engagement of the poet with the historical situation. he tries to reveal, through the poem, his inner feelings and his critical position against injustice and abuse. the quantity and the quality of the poetical output of this period might well have been a reaction to the radical crisis of the time. poetry was intended to have a real effect on society with political implications. it expressed the complaints and shaped the expectations of common people in an age of adversity and controversy. in this way poetry became a radical medium of social propaganda. it was the literary answer to social predominance and political incompetence. protest and political consciousness conformed to a new understanding of medieval poems, which became weapons in the struggle to reverse contemporary social trends and to encourage the projection of dreams 1.so we find that “poetry was a means of expressing such social discontent.” cfr. j. coleman, english literature in history 1300-1400. medieval readers and writers (london: hutchinson, 1981), p. 64. 95 and utopias where man could be free from alienation. poetry presented a new dimension which made it much more real and effective since its purpose was just to serve the “practical needs”1 of the people. everyday life and the tragic tone of events were the origin of the poetical experience as well as the possibility of poetical work which tried to reflect the social context, for “the whole range of medieval life -inner and outerwas expressed in poetry”.2 it was not only an individual revelation before confronted events but a social reflection through poetical production. the poet spoke on behalf of everybody in order to show social perversion and political manipulation. thus poetry became an “expression of something peculiarly of its own time”.3 it was the historical milieu that brought about a new concern and a new poetical interest. history, in this case, provoked a radical awareness and created a different poetical attitude in the poet towards his understanding of life and the role he was compelled to play within a society which had to face the tragedy of a time “particularly unhappy, as if it had left behind only the memory of violence, of covetousness and mortal hatred, as if it had known no other enjoyment but that of intemperance, of pride and cruelty”.4 thus gawain was forced to look for his utopia and piers was made to dream of the heavenly and everlasting happiness on earth. confusion5 and disorder6 were the ruling 1.cfr. e. salter, fourteenth century english poetry. context and readings (oxford at the clarendon press, 1983), p. 1. 2.ibid. 3.j. coleman, op. cit., p. 272. 4.j. huizinga, the waning of the middle ages (harmondsworth: penguin, (1924), rpt. 1976), p. 30. 5.confusion also reaches the spiritual and in tellectual dimension. cfr. s. medcalf (ed. ), the later middle ages (london: methuen, 1981), p. 3. 6.cfr. r. w. ackerman, background to medieval english literature (new york: random house, 1966), p. 21. 96 elements of a nation of which ye gode olde daies had certainly come to an end. pessimism and darkness coloured the daily expression of a hapless fate as the medieval crisis was at hand. growing social conflict and inadequate persistence of the old-fashioned world picture created the conditions for the agony of the middle ages which later would give rise to modern times. it meant destruction and confrontation since “some of the bitter and destructive class warfare to be seen in europe before the industrial revolution”1 took place in england during the xiv century. social instability and personal anxiety framed all human activity. people “seldom found the traditional answers adequate to meet the crushing new problems that seemed to arise on all sides”.2 men had to face the challenge of a new social order which exceeded the limits of real understanding and existential adaptation, for it was difficult to know all the factual implications of the new trends. the tragic experience of uneasiness and restlessness led to an outbreak of unending confrontation and intellectual controversies.3 the hundred years’ war, the black death and the peasant’s revolt of 1381 were the outstanding tragic episodes which brought chaos and despair to the layman. the social crisis was felt everywhere. the church also went through a bad period. the great schism was believed to be the beginning of the end of ecclesiastical unity since rome was no longer the centre of christendom. the official representatives of the church were not as holy and exemplary as they were supposed to be, for “open abuses were comparatively common among the 1.j. l. bolton, the medieval english economy, 1150-1500 (london: j. m. dent, 1980), p. 13. 2.r. e. lerner, the age of adversity (cornell university press, 1968), p. 17. 3.d. knowles, the evolution of medieval thought (london and new york: longman, 1988, 2nd edition), p. 304. 97 clergy in the 14th century …”1 this state of religious uncertainty and moral looseness favoured the appearance of heresy as the dissident attitudes of wyclif and the lollards show. the consequence of such religious degradation was the increase of skepticism2 which would shape the spirit of modern man in the renaissance. the medieval tragical picture was intensely felt at the end of the middle ages. it created a deep poetical concern with the radical experiences of human life. this negative existential context carried with it a special sensibility towards reality, together with an intense awareness of the helplesness of the people. it forced the poet to discover the ultimate sense of reality and to deal with the daily flux of life which, under these circumstances, was seen as something ephimeral. the ill-fated events and social agitation were finally believed to be the result of mutability which was effectively present everywhere since “this world is brief and all confined:/ when one man comes, another goes”. everything is changeable. love is also inconsistent, for “whom loves adored, now hates oppose.”3 man was just a puppet in the hands of an outrageous destiny, showing a radical incapacity to improve human conditions on earth. the only possibility he had left is to accept sorrow and decay as the unavoidable factors of the factual situation: the life of this world is governed by wind, weeping, darkness 1.gillian evans, chaucer (london: blackie, 1977), p. 32. 2.this skepticism was the logical consequence of a time of crisis and contrasts. it gave rise to a profound agnosticism and atheism. this attitude is found in the medieval proverb which asserts that “where there are three physicians, there are two atheists.” 3.b. stone (ed. ), “poems of adoration”, medieval english verse (harmondsworth: penguin, 1964), 21, p. 52. 98 and pangs. wind-blown we bloom, wind-blown decay; with weeping we come and so pass away. in pangs we start, in pangs we end; in dread we stay and in dread depart.1 there were not many expectations for man to enjoy in his lifetime but to suffer the consequences of complete alienation. he was the victim of an outrageous destiny. thus a dark and tragic overtone became the outstanding feature of medieval poetry. the universal instability was also reflected in old english poetry2 and it would be a recurrent element within the poetical material of later english poetry.3 the la ment of the poet over man’s misfortunes was the explicit manifestation of a deep rebellion against such a state of things. a sense of metaphysical dissent invaded the poetical complaint since human incompetence could not deal with calamity and disgrace, provoking an abiding feeling of collective pessimism and despair. therefore the poet was engaged in a redemptive and purgative function as he tried to comfort people and to favour the non acceptance of actual impositions coming from contextual negative events. in this way the poet became a literary dissident. 1.b. stone (ed. ), “poems of sin and death”, op. cit., 25, p. 63. 2.there is a strong consciousness of mutability all through old english poetry. the line from deor “that passed away, this also may” expresses this ultimate sense of decay and destruction which conforms to the poetic experience of the bard. 3.the poetry of john donne is a clear reflection of the fleeting aspect of life which in “the anniversaries” and “ satyre ii” has a destructive and tragic dimension. 99 poetry was not indifferent to political instability, religious abuse and social agitation which we come across in chaucer’s england where “violence and the threat of war were always in the background”.1 this chaotic and tragic situation was precisely what made the birth of a golden literature possible. we should bear in mind the fact that the result of such experience of disaster and confusion was not literary scarcity but the reinforcement of a more meaningful and creative approach to reality which ended in an unprecedented production of poems of a highly literary quality. this might be explained by the profound relationship we find, in this case, between life and literature. adversity and calamity created the necessary conditions for a poetical revival. the social consciousness of the poet was decisively stimulated by the historical circumstances without which he might not have been able to write such great poetry. frustration and manipula tion provoked the poetical genius which demanded an actual revision of the misuse of power and projected the possibility of a better world where man could get rid of oppression and restraint. thus the poet was forced to become critical in his art. if he shared the expectations of his audience, he could no longer ignore the suffering and despair of his countrymen. he became aware of the new role he was expected to play through his literary skill. poetry was thought to be more than an artistic creation. it must have been something else if it wanted to make real sense. in this way the poems became meaningful for they denounced social injustice. poetry was perhaps the only possible instrument for expressing such an inhuman situation. it meant the great possibility for opposing an unfair order and establishing more human conditions within a new social context. it was also believed to be a practical means in order to change reality. hence the so called litera1.gillian evans, op. cit., p. 24. 100 ture of social unrest1 appeared, being characterized by its social protest against political abuse. this peculiar kind of literature developed into a new literary genre known as the abuses of the age genre2 which was a consequence of the new dimension that literature held at the end of the middle ages when poetry was deeply involved in social matters. it was thought to be a radical weapon for social opposition. the new poetical attitude can be seen in the so called political poems3 as their main interest was to make public the political arbitrariness of the people in power and to oppose social disorder. their appearance might have been the consequence of “the increased interest of the people in politics and social questions”. 4 hence poetry was not regarded as something separate from life but a literary expression within a more general social framework. it implies that we need to know the social context of medieval poetry to have a real understanding of its literary implications and to be able to interpret the radical meaning of these poems whose political dimension was not only an essential item of the poetical production but also its raison d’etre. undoubtedly it was its most outstanding feature. it meant that the poet 1.cfr. j. coleman, “the literature of social unrest”, op. cit., ch. 3, p. 58 ff. 2.ibid., p. 60. 3.we may include among them the following poems: “satire on the consistory courts”, “satire on the retinues of the great”, “the simony”, “piers plowman”, “pierce the plough man’s crede” and “mum and sothsegger”. for further information and documentation see r. hope robbins, “middle english poems of protest”, anglia, 78 (1960), pp. 193-203; th. l. kin ney, “the temper of 14th century english verse of complaint”, annuale mediaevalia, 7 (1966), pp. 74-89; th. j. elliott, “middle english complaints against the times: to condemn the world or to reform it?, annuale mediaevalia, 14 (1973), pp. 22-34; r. hope robbins, “dissent in middle english literature: the spirit of (thirteen) seventy-six”, mediaevalia et humanistica, 9 (1979), pp. 25-51. 4.k. sisam (ed. ), 14th century verse and prose (oxford university press, (1921), rpt. 1985), p. 151. 101 was no longer the one whose occupation was just to praise power. he changed his social role and became the opposition. the lyric songs and the bard’s accounts gave way to a more realistic approach which forced the poet to lash the tyrannic behaviour of powerful lords and landowners. he took sides in the social and political confrontation of the time. then the poetical apprehension of reality was seen through a different perspective with radical connotations. this poetical movement was of a great importance for it marked the beginning of a new understanding of poetry which again showed its many-sided nature. the critical quality of these poems expressed an intentionality of reversing a concrete state of things where man could not bear such restraint and oppresion any more. poetry had not only an artistic end as far as it was considered to have an instrumental value. it accomplished its literary function because it made political sense. however we should find out what is meant by the term political in order to know the particular meaning of these poetical manifestations. perhaps the critical interpretation given by g. kane,1 who asserts that it must not be understood in a restrictive sense, is correct since the present political background is not the same at all and the modern understanding of the term has different shades. therefore to believe that they refer to something specifically political is not the right interpretation. the poems are political for they express a growing interest in certain matters related to the management of power and public finance. they are very much concerned with the practical implications of political decisions. they are political although they do not support any particular political system nor fight for the establishment of a concrete form of government. the poet accepted the ruling principles of the medieval world picture where “the general principle of authority 1.g. kane, “some fourteenth-century political poems”, g. kratzmannand j. simpson (eds.), medieval english religious and ethical literature. essays in honour of g. h. russell (cambridge: brewer, 1986), p. 82 ff. 102 as such was never in question”.1 poetry did not have the pretension of being considered as the origin of political manifestos since it “was designed not to produce democracy in any sense”.2 it only tried to air the precarious human conditions in which people of the lower class lived under unscrupulous rulers. it was just a simple way of sharing the despair and helplessness of the exploited. then the poet was aware of the social dimension of his poetry. his craft had no real sense without being the expression of the social crisis, for poetry was also engaged in the historical situation. hence the modernity of these poems which still appeal to us today. however we should be more accurate in the description of these kinds of poetical manifestations in order to avoid ambiguities in the terminology used. perhaps it would be better to call them poems of social unrest3 as they tried to reflect social discontent. they were intended to be common protests4 against “the government which tolerated so many abuses”.5 in this way the voice of the poet in the wilderness would denounce the evils of political perversion. the poetic approach to the social and political situation was varied. everybody concerned with politics was the target of these provocative poems, even the king himself was subject to literary judgement for his political actions and decisions as we can see in the song of the battle of lewes. however the major concern of this type of poetry which began in the xii century and culminated in the xiv was about 1.ibid., p. 83. 2.ibid. 3.k. malone and a. c. baugh, “the middle ages”, a. c. baugh (ed. ), a literary history of england (london and henley: routledge and kegan paul, 2nd edition (1967), rpt. 1977), vol. i, p. 240. 4.the term protest, in this case, should be understood in a general sense not having its particular meaning as it is defined in oed. cfr. g. kane, op. cit., p. 84. 5.k. malone and a. c. baugh, op. cit., p. 240. 103 everyday problems since they really affected ordinary people. thus the song of the husbandman strongly opposes the overcharging of taxes and the corruption in public finance. the simony points out the immoral behaviour of tax collectors who tried to get as much profit as possible out of common people: shrewedeliche for sothe hii don the kinges heste; whan everi man hath his part, the king hath the leste everi man is aboute to fille his owen purs; and the king hath the leste part, and he hath al the curs, [with wronge.1 it is in wynnere and wastoure where we find “the concern of the poet with a contemporary problem of statecraft and social and moral behaviour”.2 his poetical enterprise was not easy at all since he had to face a “delicate social and economic problem that was the concern and responsibility of the king himself”.3 it was the time when the conception of kingship was changing. the french campaigns of edward iii meant a shift in the understanding of what the role of the king was supposed to be in the arrangement of social order and in the management of public decisions as he might also be wrong and be responsible for disaster and chaos through his political incompetence. all the possible qualities ideally embodied in the figure of a king were no longer fully accepted, for he also failed in his divine function. he was not the fittest to carry out the politic al programme as he was responsible for the confrontation with france. the divine right was not, in this case, interlocked with political success. the presentation of 1.in g. kane, op. cit., p. 85. 2.j. speirs, medieval english poetry. the non-chaucerian tradition (london: faber, 1971), p. 263. 3.ibid., p. 265. 104 royal failure was the beginning of the end of the myth of kingship which would be wholly accomplished in renaissance drama, for it should mean more than just having a legitimate right to the throne. hence disappointment is the prevailing mood of the poem not only because of the political failure but also because of the degeneration of times. the poem begins with the following statement which might well be the ultimate reason of such tragic context: “thene dredfull domesdaye it draweth neghte aftir”.1 doomsday, in this case, reinforces the experience of destruction and nonsense. the consciousness of decay and the present political conditions forced the poet to change his role. he was no longer the official entertainer. his poetry had to stand for justice and air the demands of common people who suffered the exploitation of the rich time after time. however the new poetical function was not completely accepted since the authentic poets had been substituted for poetasters whose task consisted of flattering their lords through their unskillful poems. the indignation of the former is expressed as follows: whylome were lordes in londe that loved in thaire hertis to here makers of myrthes, that matirs couthe fynde, wyse wordes with-inn, that writen were never ne redde in no romance that ever renke herde bot now a childe appon chere, with-owtten chyn we dys, that never wroghte thurgh witt three wordes to-gedire, fro he can jangle als jaye, and japes can telle, he schall be levede and lovede and lett of a while wele more than the man that makes hym-selven.2 1.in ibid., p. 272. 2.in ibid., pp. 264-265. 105 it does not mean that the other poetical functions such as didactism and artistic delight were not relevant any more. this new approach to poetry cannot be separated from the other fundamental poetical aspects. hence english poetry enlarges its literary considerations within a greater and more meaningful scope. moreover new sources of inspiration and different thematic units stressing the sufferance of mankind extend the possibilities of a radical and decisive poetical experience. therefore we cannot refer to middle english poetry without taking into account the political involvement of the poet in the daily flux of the historical situation. from then onwards english poetry would have a critical dimension of literary opposition to social abuse. protest and dissent shape a new understanding of poetry. and without them you could not fully understand such medieval poetical masterpieces as piers plowman or the canterbury tales. it is hard work to think about these two poetical manifestations without the positive engagement of the poet with the surrounding context as the poetical production proper becomes a practical action for criticizing moral slackness and the deterioration of a disorderly arranged social order. this dissident attitude towards reality is not only found in secular poetry but also within the religious poetical framework as “many of the middle english religious poems lamenting the sins of the age, although they use the terminology of doctrine, are really political”.1 however the role of the poet consisted of something else which was much more decisive. it had a wider dimension within this context of social revisions and implications. poetry was the expression and manifestation of solutions for improving the conditions of mankind. it had a positive aspect. its social aim was not only to denounce some antisocial practices or abuses but also to project a utopian world where people could live in freedom, justice and peace. in this way po1.r. hope robbins, “middle english poems of protest”, anglia, 18 (1960), p. 193. 106 etry fulfilled a particular constructive social function as it showed that a different social order was possible where man could enjoy life and fully accomplish all his potential. it had the intention of suggesting alternative options to the radical contradictions of contemporary events. man had not been condemned to endure suffering for ever. he had the possibility of overcoming daily tragedy and personal alienation,1 for there was nothing permanent and irreversible. thus poetry tried to overcome common hardships, projecting a better future in agreement with human expectations. it became a way out relieving pain and despair. this was precisely the appropiate context where medieval dreams and visions should be placed. the great popularity enjoyed by dream-poems2 should be viewed from this perspective. they were an adequate answer to anxiety and frustration. at least the poet, together with his audience, could dream of illusions and utopias as dreams, like symbols, have “the connotation natural to us of an escape from reality”.3 bearing in mind the purgative effect of dreams it is difficult to maintain that they are only “spiritual adventure”.4 undoubtedly they were much more than that since their point of departure was a particular historical situation. they were characterized by their engagement with reality which was the origin of the projection of such illusion. moreover they had the intention of transforming factual conditions. they exhibited a radical realistic involvement with life. they were not abstract entities which tried to keep man away from adversity and misfortune through a process of human alienation. we 1.the canterbury tales may be the possibility of overcoming adversity through the projection of a utopian reality. cfr. josé manuel gonzález fernández de sevilla, lo utópico como dinamismo referencial significativo en “the canterbury tales.” (alicante: departamento de filología inglesa, 1988), ch. 3. 2.cfr. a. c. spearing, medieval dream poetry (cambridge university press, 1980), p. 1. 3.s. medcalf (ed. ), op. cit., p. 153. 4.cfr. a. c. spearing, op. cit., p. 6. 107 learn from the presentation of such visions that the most ideal, in this case, became the most real, for they represented the actual possibility for the complete fulfilment of human expectations. they were not mere fancy but the expression and manifestation of contemporary interests very much concerned with the establishment of a different social order where man could enjoy a better existence without political impositions and tragic implications. piers plowman is one of the poems in which the twofold aspect of medieval english poetry is best shown. it exemplifies a positive critical protest against moral perversion and social manipulation on the one hand and an allegorical presentation of an earthly paradise on the other. both features should be vie wed as mutually connected for one is the possibility of the other. the strong attitude of opposition against injustice and abuse is clearly expressed in the poem which shows “those ingredients of the social and religious condition of england in his day which he wishes to see reformed.”1 moreover langland stands for social transformation and moral regeneration. the utopian intention of the poet is reflected in the sustained visionary projection all through the poem and in the description of heavenly places as the one where you find: there the gryse was grene growen with floures the primrose, the pervynke, and piliole the riche the dewe appon dayses donkede fall faire, burgons and blossoms and braunches full swete, and the mery mystes full myldely gane falle: the cukkowe, the cowschote, kene were thay bothen, and the throstills full throly threpen in the bankes, 1.j. b. trapp, medieval english literature. the oxford anthology of english literature (london: oxford university press, 1973, p. 349. 108 and iche foule in that frythe faynere than other that the derke was done and the daye lightenede.1 this fanciful lanscape is the appropiate context for a new life full of beauty. moreover the utopian approach to this poetry is reinforced by christian doctrine whose creed postulates faith in a supernatural order where man can achieve complete happiness since pain and death will no longer be the tragic and irreversible episodes of human life. thus christ becomes a heroic figure, for he is the chosen one to help mankind in its fight against destruction and evil. he is the saviour who leads the way to regeneration. however his redemptive role has not only religious connotations but also a social dimension with political implications. he is presented as a young knight “that cometh to be dubbed,/ to geten hym gilte spores ow galoches ycouped … 2 his surprising purpose is to destroy “the fend and fals doom to deye”.3 he is just a very peculiar warrior since “humility and passivity”4 are his only weapons. it seems that langland intends, in this case, to set up a parallelism between “the feudal society which will highlight the theological issues of the atonement and the redemption of mankind”.5 in this way piers plowman shows that the poetry of this period is not only a literary craft but also an effective instrument of social awareness which tries to oppose the political conditions of the time through the projection of a utopian world. it becomes consolatio peccatorum in their everlasting confrontation with adversity and sin. 1.in j. speirs, op. cit., p. 290. 2.w. langland, the vision of piers plowman. a critical edition of the b-text, a. v. c. schmidt (ed. ), (london: j. m. dent, (1978), rpt. 1984), p. 220. 3.ibid. 4.a. finley, “the warrior christ and the unarmed hero”, g. kratzmann and j. simpson (eds.), op. cit., p. 20. 5.r. a. waldron, “langland’s originality: the christ -knight and the harrowing of hell”, ibid., p. 72. 109 josé manuel gonzález fernández de sevilla university of alicante * * * selim01.pdf 30 on the non-integrity of beowulf my topic is an old and recurring one that has been investigated in a number of ingenious ways and will, i suspect, crop up again about once every generation. it concerns the unity of beowulf: whether a single author conceived and composed it as one poem, or whether it is composite, formed of two or three or four more parts that were stitched together by creative scribes or bards or literate poets. it poses more than a question of formal scholarship, however, because it cuts to the heart of critical assumptions about old english poetry and the purpose of literary study. while i do not intend to address these larger questions directly in this paper, it is helpful to keep them in mind to prevent us from dismissing earlier scholarship as naively misinformed and from being too self-congratulatory about our own enlightened goals. after all, our assumptions today, which place a premium on the integrity of the poem, may prove wrong. beowulf’s integrity has not always been so highly prized. late nineteenth and early twentieth century german studies were under the influence of classical scholarship in two crucial ways: classical scholars had had great success in using philology to detect different authorial styles in classical and biblical texts, and the classical ideal of integritas was the model when beowulf came under the scrutiny of formal criticism. beowulf failed to meet this classical ideal to such an extent that its lack of unity was assumed from the start. thus one of the first and most influential dissectors of beowulf, carl müllenhoff, at the beginning of his long article “die innere geschichte des 31 beowulfs” can assert, “there is no shortage of editions and translations of beowulf. but the question of the means of its origin and composition as a poem... has hardly been touched upon. it has long occupied me.”1 he goes on, in a rather personal way, to tell how this work has occupied him for twenty years, how he has repeated the investigation seven times down to the last detail, and concludes “i now have no further results to show and submit them here.” with this introduction he proceeds to divide the poem: “it is simple enough.”2 the first 193 lines are a prologue outlining the succession of danish kings and the building of heorot. the rest of the poem could be divided into four parts: 194-836, concerning beowulf’s homecoming; and 2200-3182, beowulf’s fight with the dragon and death. the first and the last of these (the fight with grendel and the fight with the dragon) had an earlier history as old lays. to the first of them a continuator added the story of the fight with grendel’s mother. then another continuation, beowulf’s homecoming, was added to complete the story, and this author (known as interpolator a) also added some passages to the earlier parts. a second interpolator (b) combined the first three parts with another old lay, the dragon episode, “often introducing theologizing and most of the rather inferior passages.”3 the rest of müllenhoff’s article consists of some 50 pages giving a passage by passage stylistic analysis of the poem’s content: this line is old, this one is an interpolation. müllenhoff’s authority and the thoroughness of his scrutiny of the poem was enormously influential. his fourfold division was followed by other important scholars such as ten brink (1888)4 and schücking 1.zeitschrift für deutsche altertum 14 (1869): 193 2.p. 194. 3.p. 195. 4.beowulf: untersuchungen, quellen und forschungen 62 (straßburg, 1888). 32 (1905),1 each of whom modified and refined the basic theory. in 1921 r. w. chambers attacked the basis of the dissecting theories on two grounds: and second, “the minute scrutiny to which the poem has been subjected in matters of syntax, metre, dialect and tradition has failed to show any difference between the parts attributed to the different authors, such as we must certainly have expected to find, had the theories of the “dissecting school” been correct.”2 it is possible to imagine adherents of the “dissecting school” responding that that is precisely what they had demonstrated, and it was in the spirit of such a response that walter berendsohn published zur vorgeschichte des “beowulf,” in 1935.3 in a nutshell chamber’s opinion was that the dissectors may be right, but have not proven their case, and until they prove their case it is best to assume the unity of beowulf. “it is now admitted that the ways of old english narrative were not necessarily our ways and that we must not postulate, because our poem falls into two somewhat clumsily connected sections, that therefore it is compounded our of two originally distinct lays.”4 fifteen years later this opinion was supported and popularized by j. r. r. tolkien in his famous lecture “beowulf: the monster and the critics.” in it he refutes the assumption that the two main parts of the poem cannot be part of a unified whole. “[beowulf] is essentially a balance, an opposition between ends and beginnings. in its simplest terms it is a contrasted description of two moments in a great life, rising and setting; an 1.beowulfs rückkehr: eine kritische studie, studien zur englischen philologie 21 (halle, 1905). 2.beowulf: an introduction to the study of the poem with a discussion of the stories of offa and finn, 3rd ed. with a supplement by c.l. wrenn (cambridge, 1959), 114-15. 3.zur vorgeschichte des “beowulf,” mit einem vorwort von otto jespersen (copenhangen, 1935). 4.p. 117. 33 elaboration of the ancient and intensely moving contrast between youth and age, first achievement and final death. it is divided in consequence into two opposed portions, different in matter, manner, and length: a from 1 to 2199 (including an exordium of 52 lines; b from 2200 to 3182 (the end) .... this simple and static structure, solid and strong, is in each part much diversified, and capable of enduring this treatment .... we have none the less in beowulf a method and structure that within the limits of the verse-kind approaches rather to sculpture or painting. it is a composition not a tune ... no terms borrowed form greek or latin literature exactly fit: there is no reason why they should.”1 tolkien’s opposition between greek and latin standards exemplified by beowulf lies at the heart of the contrast he makes. against the classical unities of time, place and character he sets pairs of oppositions and balances. he articulates an aesthetic that can accommodate what classically trained sensibilities perceive as the disunities of beowulf. chambers and tolkien laid the groundwork, the one philological the other aesthetic, for the kind of literary interpretation that, for its application, assumes the unity of the poem, and this kind of interpretation has flourished since 1936. but chambers and tolkien did not prove the unity of the poem as much they showed its plausibility. anglo-saxonists, moreover, have long been aware of the extent of scribal tampering with poems in manuscript (seen in a few poems that survive more than one copy) and clear instances of composite poems, such as genesis, the christ poems, and the paired guthlac poems. there are also a number of instances where we are not sure where one poem in manuscript ends and the next one begins. in other words, there are still grounds, if one seeks to find them, to suspect the unity of beowulf. 1.proceedings of the british academy 22 (1936): 29-33. the influence of tolkien’s lecture is discussed by wrenn in his supplement to chambers, pp. 531-536. 34 francis p. magoun, jr. made the next notable effort to demonstrate the composite origin of beowulf in an article which takes up a number of details in lines 2009-2176, the transitional passage from the first half of beowulf (a) to the second (b).1 the passage consists primarily of beowulf’s speech, in response to hygelac, about his exploits in denmark, and it contains much recapitulatory matter. many of the details as beowulf relates them do not fit the earlier narrative. on the basis of these discrepancies, and on the basis of his knowledge of folk tales and theories of oral composition, magoun argued that a’, the transitional passage, was composed by an “anthologizer [who] had presumably to some extent mastered the technique of oral singing and hence was able to compose authentically in his own words neatly soldered joints.’2 this anthologizer knew a variant of the beowulf story and added it to a speech by beowulf near the end of the poem that is now the first 2009 lines of beowulf (making it some 140 lines longer), and he also added the details of beowulf’s gifts of treasures and horses to hygelac. in a later essay, magoun elaborated his argument of the composite origin with a similar analysis of the second half of the poem, beowulf b.3 arthur g. brodeur mounted a spirited attack against magoun, refuting in a point by point analysis much of the argument.4 but aside form instances where he shows magoun misunderstood the text, brodeur argues, essentially, that the discrepancies of beowulf a’ do 1.“beowulf a’: a folk variant,” arv 14 (1958): 95-101. 2.p. 101. 3.“beowulf b: a folk -poem on béowulf’s death,” in early english and norse studies: essays presented to hugh smith on tthe occasion of his sixtieth birthday, ed. a. brown and p. foote (london, 1963), 127-140. 4.“beowulf: one poem or three?” medieval literature and folklore studies, essays in honor of francis lee utley, ed. jerome mandel and bruce a. rosenberg (new brunswick, n. j., 1970), 3-26. 35 not necessarily lead to a conclusion of separate authorship if the discrepancies are interpreted correctly --that is, as parts of an integral poem. for example, in beowulf a, “the poet placed hrothgar’s monologue after the death of grendel’s dam; but in his report to hygelac [a’], beowulf places it at the feast following the defeat of grendel.” where this inconsistency confirms magoun’s assumption of different authors and folk-variants, to brodeur it is “the kind of lapse of memory much more likely to be made by a single poet working with complex material, and faced with the necessity of retelling, in drastically condensed form, what he had earlier told at great length ...”1 the most telling point here is that beginning with different assumptions about the process of composition, magoun and brodeur use precisely the same evidence to come to opposite conclusions. most anglo-saxonists have accepted brodeur’s argument, but it raises questions of how much of our willingness to accept it depends on our predisposition to accept the unity of the poem. conceiving it as unity immediately confers advantages for some kinds of criticism. it makes it easier to speak of authorial intention, for example, or the attitude of the christian author to the pagan past. complications can multiply if there is more than one intention in forming the poem or more than one attitude toward the past, especially if it is not clear which author wrote what when. since brodeur, the question of unity had been dormant, but it has not been laid to rest, as recent studies by kevin kiernan attest. after a careful study of the beowulf manuscript he concludes that the date of the poem (as we now have it) coincides with the date of the manuscript (early 11th century), or more precisely that the manuscript is a copy of the poet’s work in progress. he bases much of his argument on an analysis of folio 179, which, he argues, is palimpsest 1.p. 13. 36 made by the second scribe (scribe b) as part of a revision of a portion of the text he had already written.1 moreover the revision took place some twenty years later, as kierman argues form a slightly changed form for the letter “a”. from these and other details (such as the misnumbering of fits and the addition of lines by scribe b in key folios) he concludes that only the author of those lines could make such changes. scribe b is the author of the entire second half of the poem, which is a continuation of the first half, and he may or may not have composed the first half also. this is a sketchy summary of kiernan’s closely argued hypothesis, but it has been challenged in an authoritative way by leonard boyle, who made his own study of the manuscript.2 in it he asserts that folio 179 is not a palimpsest but a folio with rain damage, which was touched up not by scribe b but by someone else, and that the “beowulf text in the nowell codex is far form ‘original.’”3 it is undoubtedly a copy, and the peculiarities of the transcriptions show, if anything, the competence of the scribes. an important point lost in this exchange is that a crucial assumption in kiernan’s argument which neither boyle nor anyone else has been able to refute is that the episodes of beowulf, especially the last third of the poem concerning the fight of the dragon, reveal narrative disjunctions that are consistent with the idea of multiple authorship. in other words müllenhoff, schüching, magoun, and kiernan may be right, though for the wrong reasons, or at least for reasons that are not irrefutable. 1.“the eleventh century origin of beowulf and the beowulf manuscript,” in the dating of beowulf, ed. colin chase (toronto 1986), 9-21. the article is a summary of kiernan’s book beowulf and the beowulf manuscript (new brunswick, n. j., 1981). 2.“the nowell codex and the poem of beowulf,” in the dating of beowulf, 23-32. 3.29. 37 it may seem like an act of vanity or foolhardiness to reopen a question which so much ingenuity has failed to settle, but it occurred to me that more light could be shed on the question, even it it was the harsh, brittle light of statistical analysis. in my book style in old english poetry, i had some success in detecting different poetic styles in nineteen of the longer poems after observing the behavior of the auxiliary and verbal in the syntax and meter.1 i found that poems could not readily be pigeonholed according to style -there was no distinction, for example, between epic and lay styles. on the other hand, certain poems stood out from the other in significant ways, so that i was able to come to some conclusions about the poems attributed to cynewulf, about the style of exodus, and to argue for the common authorship of the two halves of solomon and saturn. i decided to carve up beowulf into the sections that earlier scholars had done, to subject them to the same kind of analysis with auxiliaries and verbals, and to compare the results. i hoped to see one of two results: a more or less homogeneous style that would support arguments for the unity of beowulf (as recent study by klaus grinda has done with impressive results2), or a portion of the poem such as the dragon episode, consistently showing itself to be distinct form the others. i got neither. i chose those features of auxiliaries that i found to be most useful in the comparative analyses in my book; these are summarized in the following four tables. 1.(new haven, 1987). 2.“pigeonholing old english poetry: some criteria of metrical style,” anglia 102 (1984): 305-322. 38 table one1 proportions of a-clauses to b-clauses a b ratio guthlac b 27 71 26 / 74 phoenix 37 57 39 / 61 juliana 55 85 39 / 61 elene 99 150 40 / 60 50-549 44 50 47 / 53 194-836 61 66 48 / 52 christ iii 71 74 49 / 51 2200-end 103 94 52 / 48 2550-3049 55 51 52 / 48 guthlac a 90 82 52 / 48 christ ii 41 38 52 / 48 1-2009 198 178 53 / 47 1550-2049 47 41 53 / 47 beowulf 321 271 54 / 46 christ i 45 38 54 / 46 550-1049 56 45 55 / 45 837-1629 85 61 58 / 42 1629-2199 54 40 58 / 42 1050-1549 52 38 58 / 42 2050-2549 46 33 58 / 42 andreas 192 144 57 / 43 daniel 92 40 70 / 30 exodus 62 25 71 / 29 maldon 72 20 78 / 22 table two number of auxiliaries per 100 lines lines aux. no./100 maldon 325 92 28.3 1.key to lines: 194-836 müllenhoff, fight with grendel; 837-1629 müllenhoff, fight with grendel’s mother; 1630-2199 müllenhoff, beowulf’s homecoming; 2200-3182 müllenhoff, magoun, and others, fight with dragon; 1-2009 magoun, “beowulf a”; tranches: 50-549, 550-1049, 1050-1549, 1550-2049, 2050-2549, 2550-3049. 39 2550-3049 500 106 21.2 guthlac a 818 172 21.0 550-1049 500 101 20.2 2200-end 983 187 20.0 194-836 643 127 19.8 andreas 1722 336 19.5 juliana 731 140 19.2 elene 1321 249 18.9 christ i 439 83 18.9 beowulf 3182 597 18.8 50-549 500 97 18.8 1-2009 2009 376 18.7 837-1629 787 146 18.5 christ ii 427 79 18.5 1050-1549 500 90 18.0 1550-2049 500 88 17.6 daniel 764 132 17.3 guthlac b 561 96 17.1 1629-2199 571 94 16.5 2050-2549 500 79 15.8 exodus 590 87 14.8 phoenix 177 94 13.9 table three percentages of all auxiliaries that are initial auxs. init. aux. % exodus 87 32 37 andreas 336 91 27 2200-end 54 197 27 194-836 34 127 27 2050-2549 21 79 27 daniel 132 34 26 1550-2049 23 88 26 2550-3049 27 106 26 christ ii 79 20 25 christ iii 145 36 25 50-549 23 94 25 550-1049 25 101 25 40 beowulf 597 140 24 guthlac a 172 41 24 maldon 92 22 24 guthlac b 96 21 22 1-2009 80 376 21 1629-2199 20 94 21 elene 249 53 21 juliana 140 26 19 phoenix 94 18 19 837-1629 24 146 16 1050-1549 11 90 12 christ i 83 7 08 table four word order of auxiliary and verbal in all dependent clauses (in descending order of vvå) vv våv vvåå1 elene 4% 27% 70% 837-1629 4% 32% 65% 550-1049 4% 30% 65% 1050-1549 4% 31% 65% daniel 4% 32v 64% exodus 0 39% 61% 1-2009 5% 35% 61% 194-836 7% 32% 61% 50-549 5% 35% 60% beowulf 5% 36% 59% guthlac a 5% 36% 59% andreas 4% 40% 56% 2050-2549 5% 41% 55% maldon 22% 24% 54% christ ii 8% 39% 54% 1629-2199 3% 44% 53% guthlac b 3% 45% 53% 2200-end 7% 41% 52% 1.v= unstressed auxiliary, våå= stressed auxiliary, v= verbal. 41 1550-2049 6% 43% 51% juliana 2% 47% 51% phoenix 3% 47% 50% christ i 11% 39% 50% 2550-3049 11% 42% 47% christ iii 17% 39% 45% the lists include the tallies for twelve other poems to give the comparisons some basis beyond the internal evidence of beowulf. the line numbers refer to portions of the poem that müllenhoff and magoun argued were originally different poems pieced together. (i excluded magoun’s a’ because it is only 180 lines long). i also include a series of what statisticians call trances, 500 line segments taken successively beginning with line 50, and therefore arbitrarily, form the poem, as another point of comparison. if the style of beowulf is homogeneous throughout, we may expect all the segments to crowd close together; if certain segments consistently clump together away form the others on several lists, we may be on solid ground arguing for different authorship. the actual results are scattered across the list, and even where there seems to be some clumping together around the average for beowulf as a whole (as in table one), some maverick segments nevertheless seem to go their separate ways. but before giving up entirely on the usefulness of these lists, i would like to examine them for what they can teach us, because there are indeed some lessons to be learned. it would be useful to trace a sample segment through all four tables to see what conclusions about style and authorship it can show, such as the segment form line 194 to 836, which is the episode of beowulf’s fight with grendel. it is also the segment (or lay) which müllenhoff and schücking considered to be the most primitive. primitive or not, it is a discrete episode, so if beowulf was composed 42 by piecing together of separate stories, traces of distinct authorial style may still be evident in these stories, traces of a distinct authorial style may still be evident in these lines. we can begin by looking at table one, which sets out the proportion of a-clauses to b-clauses, which i have considered one of the more revealing indicators of style. of the other twelve poems on the table the proportions range form 26% of the clauses beginning in the a-verse for guthlac b to 78% beginning in the a-verse for maldon. about half of the poems are grouped in the middle, within a few percentage points of beowulf’s segments are within a few percentage points of the poem as a whole, except for a tranche (50-549) and the grendel fight (194-836). so far this distinctiveness looks promising, and the tranche belongs here because most of its lines fall within the episode. if this were the only test considered, one might add it to the arguments for the separate authorship theory. but the picture becomes as murky as grendel’s mere when the other tables are taken into account. in the “number of auxiliaries per 100 lines,” for example, 194-836 has 19.8 auxs. per 100 lines and beowulf has 18.8, which, when translated into actual numbers, means that the 643 lines of the grendel episode has six or seven more auxiliaries than average. similarly, the table for the “percentages of all auxiliaries that are initial” has 194-836 separated from beowulf by what looks like a significant distance, but it amounts to only three percentage points, which means that of the 127 auxiliaries in that segment, there are only about four more initial auxiliaries than average. table four, showing the “word order of auxiliary and verbal in all dependent clauses” is even less helpful, because even though 194-836 is to beowulf the other segments are randomly scattered over the spectrum, making any sort of relative comparison perilous. another reason not to see a distinct style in 194-836 concerns the tranches that overlap it almost equally form either end: 50--549 and 43 550-1049. i mentioned in passing that the tranche 50-549 is adjacent to the grendel episode in the first table, of aand b-clauses, but the other is ten percentage points away, on the other end of the table. in the other tables the two tranches again seem to go their own way, but for reason mentioned earlier the differences are probably insignificant. the dangers of leaning too heavily on a single test of style can also be seen in another two of müllenhoff’s segments: 837-1628 is near the bottom of table three, and 1629-2199 is near the bottom of table two, yet they have no other claim to distinction, and their overlapping tranches -say for 1050-1549, which is the segment with by far the lowest proportion of initial auxiliaries (table 3) and also has a high proportion of a-clauses. no one has championed these 500 lines as an originally separate poem,1 but as a part of the poem with a distinctive style, it has as much claim as any other segment. to show signs of separate authorship, i would argue, a segment should stand out from others in more than one table and should bring overlapping tranches along with it. this is not asking too much: exodus, maldon, and cynewulf’s elene and juliana are poems with characteristics that are distinctive in a number of the tables. to press the examination further, i would like to investigate the episode of beowulf’s fight with the dragon (from 2200 to the end) for two reasons: first it is long enough to give a reliable statistical pool, and second it is the only episode that the generations of beowulfdissectors agree on. because it is such a large segment, it would be advisable to compare it both to beowulf and to the first half of the poem (magoun’s 1-2009). in the first table (proportions of a-clauses to b-clauses) the proportions of all three are within two percentage points of each other. the difference in the number of auxiliaries may be significant-the dragon episode has about fourteen more auxiliaries 1.it contains the finn episode, which accoun ts for less than 100 lines. 44 in its 983 lines than it would have with the proportions for beowulf and 1-2009. the proportion of auxiliaries that are initial is 6% higher, which may also be significant. but even though this is the most promising segment to discern differences in style, it does not inspire confidence. for one thing consider the tranche 2050-2549, most of which overlaps with the dragon episode and should thus show similarities. instead it seems to be a loose cannon on the first two tables: it is six percentage points lower in the first table and 4.2 lower on the second table -in both cases farther away than any other segment, when it should be quite close. that is, it should be quite close if one considers poetic style (or more exactly the features that i have selected) to be evenly dispersed throughout a poem.1 but the scattering of the segments throughout these four segments suggests just the opposite. even elements of style that can be considered beyond conscious control, such as the number of auxiliaries and the proportion of ato b-clauses, vary greatly from one passage to the next. it seems best to consider beowulf as having a mixed style, or a style that can vary from passage to passage, which may not be surprising in the digressive, expansive narrative style of the epic. the idea of a mixed style accords well with most readers’ impression of the beowulf-poet’s sophisticated and varied narrative technique. with this in mind, the effort to apply statistical analysis becomes more problematical, because when all the divergent features are gathered into an average, they cancel each other out, so to speak. beowulf falls squarely in that is “average” in comparison with the range displayed by other poems, but because its internal fluctuations seem to balance against each other. 1.using different tests grinda, “pigeonholing,” finds evidence for just such a conclusion. 45 this investigation offers several lessons. the first is practically a truism: studies of style based on statistics must be pursued with care. before any more conclusions about beowulf ’s mixed style can be made, other long poems must be subjected to the same kind of analysis of their parts (to see if the mixed style is repeated anywhere), and it might be promising to investigate the different kinds of passages in beowulf, such as elegiac, descriptive, direct speech, and action sequences.1 a second lesson is an old one: a large sampling is more accurate than a small one. it is no surprise that the smaller tranches (even though made up of 500 lines) jumped across the tables, while the larger two (1-2009 and 2200-end) stayed relatively close to the total for the whole. perhaps the most important lesson concerns earlier multiple authorship studies. most depend on anecdotal and selective evidence, such as magoun’s argument that some details of one part of the poem do not agree with those in another part, or schüching’s analysis of certain metrical and syntactical patterns. if one wants to find evidence for composite origin, one may readily find it. the tables show that almost any segment of beowulf has some feature that is disproportionately represented or even unique. each bit of evidence must be supported by other tests of style, compared against a control, which show the segment to be as consistently distinct from the rest of beowulf as other poems are. no study that i know has offered such an argument. on the other hand, if one is disposed to see unity, one can point to the constantly fluctuating features to argue that what seems unusual in one part is not any more unusual than other features that vary in other parts. this argument for the poem’s integrity is just as inconclusive as that for its non-integrity. the best evidence we 1.see, for example, peter lucas, ed., exodus (london, 1977), 43-51, for a limited study of this sort. 46 have for the unity of beowulf is the manuscript, which does not show the kind of scribal breaks that one can see with the enlarged capital defining the breaks of christ i, ii and iii, and the two guthlac poems. this study does not prove or disprove composite authorship, but in light of the manuscript evidence the burden of proof is on the shoulders of dissectors to show multiple and verifiable distinctions in the segments. this task becomes even more difficult, though perhaps not impossible, in the face of beowulf ’s mixed style. daniel donoghue harvard university * * * selim 20.indb helen cooper, selim 20 (2013–2014): 237–259issn: 1132–631x medieval drama in the elizabethan age abstract: the english cycles of corpus christi plays continued to be acted well into the reign of elizabeth i, and shakespeare almost certainly had some acquaintance with them. they off ered a form of drama radically at odds with the prescriptions laid down by aristotle, horace and their humanist followers, comparable in its independence to that recommended on commercial grounds by lope de vega. shakespeare not only adopted many of his theatrical principles fr om the cycle plays, but also derived an explicit theory of drama fr om their model of stagecraft to rival the humanists’: a theory he spells out in the prologue to henry v. this “apology for the stage” was taken up in similar terms in the introductory poem of thomas heywood’s apology for actors, so called in response to the attack on english stage practices in sir philip sidney’s apology for poetry. keywords: william shakespeare, dramatic theory, english medieval drama, spanish medieval drama. resumen: los misterios ingleses del corpus christi siguieron representándose bien entrado el reinado de isabel i, y shakespeare sabía de ellos casi con total seguridad. ofr ecían una forma de drama radicalmente opuesta a las prescripciones de aristóteles, horacio y sus seguidores humanistas y comparable en su independencia a la que lope de vega recomendaba por motivos comerciales. shakespeare no sólo adoptó muchos de sus principios dramáticos de los misterios medievales, sino que también extrajo una teoría dramática explícita a partir del modelo de técnica teatral de éstos, que rivalizaba con la de los humanistas: una teoría que expone en el prólogo de enrique v. esta “apología de la escena” reaparece en similares términos en el poema introductorio de la apología de los actores de thomas heywood, así llamada por responder al ataque a las prácticas escénicas inglesas en la apología de la poesía de sir philip sidney. palabras clave: william shakespeare, teoría dramática, drama medieval inglés, drama medieval español. the elizabethan age might seem too late a period to interest selim or its associated conference, but this paper is intended as a reminder that the middle ages did not end as early as we commonly like to think, and that medievalists are in many respects uniquely placed to contribute to the criticism and scholarship on renaissance literature. it is too easy to assume that there was some kind of divide between the medieval and the early modern; indeed, the two terms we use for the later period both insist on such a divide in diff erent ways. “renaissance” emphasises the rebirth of the classics, a renewal of the long-past; “early modern” suggests the birth of the modern age, a prediction of the future, as if it were only then that our helen cooper 238selim 20 (2013–2014) own world begins. both terms carry with them an implication that there was nothing in the middle ages of any value, in keeping with the familiar phenomenon that “medieval” is more oft en used as a term of insult than to designate a time period. it is a practice that goes back, indeed, to the humanists, who promoted such a derogatory attitude towards the middle ages in order to suggest that their own ideas were more innovative than they actually were; and since humanism has dominated education almost ever since, those ideas have become embedded in many modern ways of thinking (lewis 1954: 1–56, 1955; aers 1992; and many others). this paper, however, will argue the opposite, specifi cally with reference to elizabethan drama. the greatest drama in english, i believe, including shakespeare’s, is grounded in the medieval; so an understanding of its medieval context can bring things to the study of shakespeare that lie outside the early modernists’ fi eld of vision. a quick historical survey of what was happening in drama in late medieval and sixteenth-century england is necessary to explain what that context was. there is a common assumption that there was a sharp break between the two forms at the reformation: that pre-reformation drama was catholic and religious, while postreformation drama, under the pressure of disapproval fr om the stricter calvinist wing of the church of england, was secular. to an extent, that is indeed true; but it is also an over-simplifi cation that ignores a great deal of what was going on. medieval drama survived for much longer than we tend to assume. some dramatic genres, such as the saints’ plays, did indeed die out along with the cults of the saints they celebrated, and have left very little surviving evidence: only one, mary magdalene, survives in anything like fullscale dramatic form, though that, interestingly, operates through a stagecraft remarkably close to that of shakespeare’s pericles. moralities, the allegorical plays that segued into interludes in the course of the sixteenth century, were a late medieval development and reached their peak in the early tudor age; they were still being acted, and actively remembered, until late in the century, medieval drama in the elizabethan age 239 selim 20 (2013–2014) but they gradually changed form. plays with a dramatis personae of personifi cations rather than people transmuted into pageants, royal entries and court masques (all themselves medieval in origin), and enj oyed a vibrant aft erlife down to the civil war. moral interludes evolved or were absorbed into full-scale plays: plays such as marlowe’s dr faustus, with its protagonist despatched to hell; or ben jonson’s the devil is an ass (1616), in which a junior devil fr esh out of hell fi nds himself completely outclassed by the sharp practices of contemporary london; or the structure showing a man pulled between fi gures representing good and evil, as with prince hal between falstaff and the lord chief justice, or othello between desdemona and iago (whose associations with angel and devil are as close as is possible short of making them supernatural) (bevington 1962; spivack 1958). the major form of medieval drama, however, was the mystery plays, still referred to by the elizabethans as the corpus christi plays even aft er the feast of corpus christi had been abolished. these were the great play cycles of biblical drama performed annually in a number of major towns and cities across england; and for those we have abundant surviving elizabethan evidence, showing them in a form unaltered or only slightly altered fr om their medieval origins. in terms of texts, four near-complete cycles survive, plus a number of isolated individual plays recorded independently of the cycles that once contained them. there are records indicating that perhaps as many as fourteen cycles once existed, and that number may still not give a full picture.1 it is these plays on which i shall be focusing in this paper. at their fullest, the corpus christi plays showed cosmic history fr om the fall of lucifer and the creation of man through to the last judgement. there were also widespread shorter variants, such as cycles devoted to the new testament only, or with a concentration on the events of the passion. they were a 1 for a full listing of records, including dates of last performance, see reed (1979–). helen cooper 240selim 20 (2013–2014) kind of drama that encompassed god and the devils, patriarchs and sinners, kings and shepherds, all inhabiting the same stage; and they refused to believe that anything was unstageable, whether heaven, or noah’s fl ood, or the crucifi xion, or the last judgement. the full versions in particular were marked by their extraordinarily ambitious scope. they were the english equivalent of the great dramatic religious festivals of ancient athens, except that rather than new plays being written every year, the texts were traditional, and were revised or rewritten only intermittently. in impulse and origin they were religious, but they brought spectators fr om miles around, and gave a generous economic boost to the towns that hosted them. the plays were presumably written by clerics (all are anonymous), but they were usually performed by the various trade guilds under the aegis of the city rather than the church. initially inspired by the processions of the feast of corpus christi, which had been instituted in 1264, the play cycles emerged in the late fourteenth and fi ft eenth centuries. aft er the reformation, they were still not invariably regarded as catholic, many protestants valuing them as adjuncts to biblical teaching. one new passion play was composed in elizabeth’s reign by the protestant master of shrewsbury school, and performed several times in the 1560s; it was presented outdoors, as the civic plays were, and played to crowds numbering thousands.2 the years of its performance coincided with the young philip sidney’s attendance at the school, and since it was acted by the schoolboys, it is not impossible that he was one of them—a strange thought given his later comments on drama in his apology for poetry. performances of the cycles did not stop with the reformation, and indeed most of the texts that survive do so in sixteenth-century copies (all in manuscript: none reached print, initially probably because the cities wanted to keep control over 2 its school origins might suggest a play on the humanist model, but its acting outdoors and the large numbers of people attending point strongly towards a more popular model based on the staging of the corpus christi plays. medieval drama in the elizabethan age 241 selim 20 (2013–2014) performances, later because of the censorship of pre-reformation material). many elizabethan churchmen disapproved of them on religious grounds, because they portrayed god and christ on stage, and because they did not limit themselves to the strict text of the bible; the government disapproved of them on grounds of public order, since they were the occasion for bringing together large numbers of people who might then be incited to riot (though there is no record of any riot associated with them). strenuous eff orts were therefore made to suppress them, usually against the wishes of the towns themselves. norwich tried to keep on the right side of the new theology by providing its cycle with a new protestantfr iendly prologue in 1565. chester had extensively revised its plays in the 1530s, and adaptations continued to be made aft er the reformation, though the last performance of the full cycle took place in 1575. there was, however, an individual performance of its shepherds’ pageant for the earl of derby and his son ferdinando lord strange when they visited the town in 1578: noblemen who had a particular interest in drama, the father keeping a company of players in the 1570s and 80s, his son becoming one of the patron of one of the leading london theatre companies in the late 80s until his death in 1594. further evidence of interest in the chester cycle at the end of the century is supplied by the fact that it is the only cycle to survive in more than one copy; and all six manuscripts, full or fr agmentary, date fr om aft er 1590, in the great decade of elizabethan drama. other towns too kept their cycles going. york gave its last performance in 1569, though there were still hopes for a revival in 1580. it had been proud enough of its civic drama to present its creed play, a kind of mini cycle, to richard iii. coventry took equal pride in its cycle, though it may have restricted itself to the new testament; selected plays were regularly presented to visiting royalty, to margaret of anj ou, richard iii, henry vii, and to elizabeth herself when she visited the city in 1566. its last peformance took place in 1579, but one guild kept its pageant helen cooper 242selim 20 (2013–2014) wagon until the 1630s, just in case. coventry was within easy reach of stratford-on-avon, and in 1579 shakespeare was fi ft een: there is very strong circumstantial evidence that he saw them (cooper 2010: 49–71). other towns further fr om the seat of government managed to continue their plays for longer: newcastle intermittently to 1589; cornwall, which had its own biblical plays, to 1602; kendal, in the lake district, into the reign of james i, perhaps as late as 1612. preston also continued late, and a pageant wagon fi gures in a will of 1638. their aft erlife depended less on redundant wagons, however, than on people’s memories. as late as 1644, two years aft er the puritans had fi nally enforced the closure of the london theatres and brought the great age of early modern drama to an end, an old man in the lake district, questioned about his knowledge of jesus christ by a visiting preacher, replied, “oh sir, i think i heard of that man you speake of, once in a play at kendall, called corpus christi play, where there was a man on a tree, and blood ran down” (reed: cumberland, westmoreland, 1986: 219). nor were all these plays and memories mere relics. we therefore need to think of the reign of elizabeth not only in terms of its great drama for the public stage, but in terms of the overlap of that with performances and memories of this other tradition: a tradition still very much alive in the early decades of her reign, and retained for much longer in the minds and memories of later playgoers. london did not have a cycle of its own, but it did have a huge number of immigrants in the late sixteenth century fr om the rest of england, and so fr om areas where these plays were a vibrant tradition. that is the kind of background that we need to have in mind when we look at the drama written for the public stage under elizabeth, and to the kinds of comments made about it. what the commentators wanted was drama of the classical kind in which they had been educated, or neo-latin plays that followed the same model. what they saw on stage was something very diff erent. in his apology for poetry, sir philip sidney famously condemned as “gross absurdities, how all their plays be neither right tragedies, medieval drama in the elizabethan age 243 selim 20 (2013–2014) nor right comedies; mingling kings and clowns … with neither decency nor discretion” (sidney 2004: 46). in 1591, john florio, tutor in italian to the english aristocracy, made the same point in his english-italian phrasebook designed to assist speakers of either language to make intelligent, or at least polite, conversation in the other. it consists of a number of model conversations designed to explain the strange ways of the english to the italians, and one of the exchanges runs as follows (florio 1591: 23): h. the plaies that they plaie in england, are not right comedies. t. yet they doo nothing else but plaie every daye. h. yea but they are neither right comedies, nor right tragedies. g. how would you name them then? h. representations of histories, without any decorum. sidney’s apology was not published until 1595,3 some fi ft een years aft er he had written it; but although florio had links with the sidney circle that might have allowed him to read it in manuscript, the idea he expresses was commonplace. the assumption underlying the exchange is that italians would fi nd the plays presented on the english public stage not just odd, but improper, wrong: everything that is the opposite of that repeated “right.” these “histories” (by which he means not so much historical plays, though these had begun to appear in the theatres, but stories, dramatised narratives) did not follow “decorum,” the more technical rhetorical term for what sidney designates as “decency” and “discretion:” those rules demanding consistency of genre, plot and style and strict limitations on time and place such as were supposed to be followed by “right” comedies and tragedies. derived fr om greek roots in aristotle’s poetics and fr om latin in horace’s ars poetica, confi rmed by the practice of those greek plays known to the more educated elizabethans and of seneca’s more widely known latin drama, these 3 the work was printed twice, once as the apology for poetry and once as the defence of poesie. since thomas heywood seems to have it in mind under the former title, as described below, i have used that. helen cooper 244selim 20 (2013–2014) “unities” were repeated and strengthened by a series of humanist critics and theorists writing in most of the languages of europe, not least the authoritative latin. the discomfort they express with the shakespearean kind of drama still has clear echoes aft er the restoration, in dryden (who described shakespeare’s plays as disorderly), in dr johnson in the eighteenth century, and indeed for many later critics. it is this discomfort that led, for instance, to the twentieth-century invention of the category of “problem plays,” to take in the plays that were most evidently “neither right comedies, nor right tragedies.” sidney and florio do however share another important word too, though neither apparently notices it—as we still tend not to: for what english wrote and acted were plays, the standard term used to describe the vernacular english theatre for centuries. plays that were not right comedies or tragedies could still emphatically be right plays, just as the corpus christi plays had been. “play” remained the basic word for everything to do with drama throughout the sixteenth century: the one old english-derived word in a fl ood of imported classical terminology. “tragedy” and “comedy,” ultimately greek but which had entered the european vernaculars by way of latin, had been used in england since the later fourteenth century, but both were used to describe narrative forms, and they were assimilated to vernacular drama only slowly and awkwardly through the 1570s and 80s. to a degree, the humanist critics and the early playgoers did not even share a vocabulary; they used what were superfi cially the same words in diff erent senses, and had very diff erent literary models in mind when they used them. so it is scarcely surprising that the humanists had great trouble with plays that did not fi t their own defi nitions and classifi cations, for plays brought none of those classicising assumptions of defi nition or limitation with them. right tragedies and comedies, to sidney and florio and their fellow humanists, demonstrated their rightness by adherence to a fi xed set of rules. horace’s ars poetica had been known medieval drama in the elizabethan age 245 selim 20 (2013–2014) throughout the middle ages, and hence also his prescriptions as to the appropriate style to use for speakers of diff erent ranks, the maximum number of speaking characters, and so on; but there is very little evidence that those had much bothered actual medieval playwrights, including those writing in latin. the rediscovery of aristotle’s poetics around 1500 did however set both humanist drama and humanist theory off on a diff erent track, and humanist commentaries on the text rapidly turned both generic distinctions and what we know as the aristotelian unities into something much fi ercer than what the poetics actually says. aristotle describes and analyses the practices—in particular, what he reckoned to be the best practices—of the drama of his day. the humanist commentaries on the text, in particular the widely disseminated poetices libri septem of julius-caesar scaliger (1561) and the infl uential italian translation and commentary of ludovico castelvetro (1570), turn those descriptions into prescriptions, tightening them up and adding more. thus plays not only came in two sorts, tragedies or comedies; but tragedies were about the life of a high-ranking man of distinctly bad character who comes to a deservedly nasty end, composed in high-style verse; and comedies were about middle or low class characters, written in prose. the action should be single, that is there should be no subplots or mixing of genres; the time of the action should be limited to a single day, or, preferably, the time the play took to perform; and, in an addition to aristotle (though widely observed in classical plays themselves), the stage should represent a single place. the commentators also set rigid limits to the number of characters, or speaking characters, on stage at once; and although violent actions were regarded as the very substance of tragedy (murder, parricide, incest and so on), they all took place off stage, and were reported by means of a messenger. the emphasis given by the elizabethan stage, as on the medieval, on acting the action rather than describing it, is entirely absent. those rules became something of a mantra in sixteenth-century poetic handbooks and in the more casual comments made on helen cooper 246selim 20 (2013–2014) drama. they were so strongly insisted on because the unities in particular appeared to be founded on reason; and that brought with it the assumption, sometimes explicit, that anything else was an assault on reason, and therefore to be deplored. the imagination by contrast was untrustworthy, anti-rational. castelvetro indeed based his principles on the belief that audiences were incapable of understanding anything other than the most naturalistic of presentations, anything other than a direct transposition of real life onto the stage: the imagination was not only a danger but an impossibility (castelvetro 1570; weinberg 1961: 502–511). sidney’s reading in both aristotle and the commentators is evident in the detail of his complaints about the english public drama, his ideas of what a right tragedy or comedy should look like;4 and florio is only one of many other humanist-trained theorists who took the same line. that account may just seem to be repeating what has been known ever since shakespeare wrote his plays, that he broke the neo-classical rules. his approach to playwriting, however, can profi tably also be placed both in the context of medieval drama, and of what was happening to plays on the continent of europe. german drama, like english, resisted the imposition of humanist rules (benj amin 1998: 48–61); but seventeenth-century french drama famously took them up with grand commitment, even though—or perhaps because—france had had a particularly extravagant earlier tradition of vernacular religious theatre. in contrast to the concise secular plays, interludes and sotties and farces, french passion plays might last for days, or even weeks; their average length was 10,000 lines, the longest over 50,000, and at their most generous they might have hundreds of speaking roles. they were performed down to the 1540s; unlike the english corpus christi plays, a number 4 for a forceful argument that sidney knew the poetics itself as well as its commentators (a position that has oft en been doubted), see lazarus 2013. on his humanist sources, see sidney 2004: lvii. medieval drama in the elizabethan age 247 selim 20 (2013–2014) were printed, continuing into the seventeenth century (runnalls 1995). castelvetro’s own comments were likewise made against the background of italian vernacular theatre very diff erent fr om the neohumanist drama that followed. the italian sacre rapprezentationi were the approximate equivalent of the english mystery plays or saints’ plays, though usually more concise; the more recently invented commedia dell’arte, improvised plays based on stereotype characters, was in some ways more similar to music-hall than to formal drama, and was even less likely to appeal to a critic trained in the classics. the strength of neo-classical infl uences in italy went so far as to include the imitation of ancient theatre design: palladio’s teatro olimpico in vicenza (begun 1580) supplies for its stage a wide fl at fr ontage with depth largely confi ned to trompe l’oeil scenic eff ects in a fi xed street design, perfect for staging roman comedy or tragedies set in fr ont of a palace, but incapable of any fl uidity of place: even indoor scenes become almost impossible. the stage design itself, in other words, sets strict limits on the kind of plays that could be acted there. it may have seemed too restrictive even at the time: when the man who had completed the building aft er palladio’s death, vincenzo scamozzi, came to design his own teatro all’antica in mantua just a few years later, he designed a stage with greater depth and somewhat more potential for multiplicity of place, though the full fr eedom assumed by the london public stages would still be hard to reproduce here. the situation in spain was in many ways simpler. religious drama before the reconquista was largely limited to castile, though few play texts survive, and the records of others are so patchy as to suggest that many more may have been lost (stern 1996: 1–24).5 the brief twelft h-century auto de los reyes magos is a precious but rare survival almost without a context. by the later middle ages there was a certain amount of dramatic activity 5 for an indication of the dissemination of medieval religious drama across europe down to 1700, including in spain, see muir 1995: 270–287. helen cooper 248selim 20 (2013–2014) connected with corpus christi, but that oft en took the form of processional pageants of religious images or tableaux rather than the performances found in england—though they too may have their origins in such processions. autos, which were oft en connected with the feast of corpus christi, seem to have been played in a number of castilian towns, though the relationship between spectacle and performance is not always clear. although there had never been any strong tradition of civic drama, nor anything on the scale of the cycle plays, there was a large measure of continuity between medieval and early modern theatre in spain compared with most continental european countries (muir 1995: 158–159; stern 1996: 201–203; surtz 1979: 9–13). some early plays, most famously the elche dormition and assumption of the virgin fi rst performed in 1370, indeed survive in unbroken tradition to this day, a feature shared outside spain only with the oberammergau passion play, and that had a later start, in 1620. there was thus already a newly-developed form of drama that had no necessary connection with humanist principles, and it clearly had strong audience support. it was on this basis that lope de vega spelled out his own reasons for rejecting the offi cial rules, and for off ering his audiences a diff erent kind of drama, in his arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo of 1609. these reasons were fr ankly commercial and pragmatic rather than a matter of principle—and indeed the fact that the arte nuevo was directed to the academia de madrid indicates his wish to keep in with the humanists even while off ering something very diff erent on stage. the arte is his own apology for poetry, but written in fr ank acknowledgement that although he knows how plays should offi cially be written, he is not going to do anything of that kind. the principles of aristotle and the practice of plautus and terence are not going to bring in an income. he is going to give his audiences what they will pay for, and that is not neo-classical regulation. golden age spanish drama is indeed premised on just such a rejection. the very title of calderón’s gran teatro del medieval drama in the elizabethan age 249 selim 20 (2013–2014) mundo is an indication that the playwrights had larger ambitions in mind. english playwrights for the public stage similarly disregarded humanist calls for discipline and regulation, but they did not generally write so explicitly about what they were doing and why. for shakespeare, however, that rejection of the neo-classical unities in favour of a multiplicity of times and places and characters and plots, sicily and bohemia and kings and shepherds and pursuing bears within a single play, was, i believe, not only grounded, but consciously and deliberately grounded, on an alternative theory of drama that was itself derived fr om an earlier practice of drama: the medieval drama found in the cycle plays. lope de vega had limited himself to a model of practice without claiming any alternative theory for it; shakespeare went a large step further. commercial considerations no doubt came into play as well, and many elizabethan dramatists mention their hopes of pleasing their audiences; but the theoretical deliberateness of shakespeare’s move is demonstrated by how closely what he writes is a countermodel to what the humanists were writing. he asserts the total fr eedom of the stage in direct opposition to any imitation of literal naturalism, carried through in full complicity with the imagination of the audience. he had not started out like that: his initial ambitions towards authorship seem to have been very much on the classical model. his narrative poems venus and adonis and the rape of lucrece suggest that he initially set out to make a name for himself on the ovidian model; titus andronicus adds a strong measure of senecan tragic violence to ovid’s story of philomel, and his familiarity with plautus is on show in the comedy of errors—the one play of his that contains the classicizing term “comedy ” as part of its title, and which was performed before the classicallytrained lawyers and students at the inns of court. increasingly, however, he moved towards the much more ambitious tradition of english drama exemplifi ed by the corpus christi plays: plays helen cooper 250selim 20 (2013–2014) that dealt with all humankind, so had no social division into the binaries of comedy and tragedy; that were written entirely in verse; and that showed a cheerful disregard for the plausibilities of staging, let alone the unities. it was a form of drama that relied absolutely on the imaginative complicity of the audience to supply what was missing. shakespeare never wrote a poetics of his own, a treatise off ering a defence of his own kind of theatre; and we tend to assume that he did not have any theory, only an unconsidered practice. there has long been an unspoken (even subconscious) assumption that “plays,” as distinct fr om those classical terms of theatre, drama, comedy or tragedy, cannot be theorized. those classicizing assumptions, indeed, were written into the fi rst major act of criticism on shakespeare, and one of the most misleading: the first folio, with its division of his plays fr om the title page forwards into comedies, histories, and tragedies—a division made even though three of the histories (henry vi part 3, richard ii and richard iii) had actually been titled as tragedies when they were fi rst written and published6—though the creation of a separate section for the histories does perhaps acknowledge what florio was hinting at in his model conversation, that there could be a non-classical genre of “play” that subsumes history itself. in fact, however, shakespeare did write an apology for the stage parallel to sidney’s apology for poetry; and like sidney’s, it was at least as much a manifesto as a defence. it is perhaps no accident, too, that he wrote it as the prologue to one of his histories, henry v—a play that makes no claim at all to being either comedy or tragedy, and which shows a magnifi cent disregard for any humanist limitations. the prologue had been the point in latin comedy where terence had introduced himself as author, and where medieval playwrights had introduced the audience to the play; here shakespeare’s “we” represents a combination of 6 henry vi part 3 was originally “the tragedy of richard duke of york.” medieval drama in the elizabethan age 251 selim 20 (2013–2014) author and actors, the whole company—an inclusive term. it is an apology in both senses, the elizabethan meaning of “defence” as well as its modern meaning: hence his plea, “o pardon, gentles all” (line 8 below). elizabethan playwrights were not above fl attering their whole audience by addressing them as “gentles,” but there seems to be a suggestion here of something more specifi c: that the apology is addressed to the educated sector of his audience, those who might most need a defence of this “history without any decorum.” henry v was probably written for the “wooden o” of the newly built globe, in 1599; and it is appropriate that the manifesto should be written for this new theatre, whose “unworthy scaff old” can none the less represent the whole world: the globe, as its name implies, that can hold as much time and space as the play demands. o for a muse of fi re, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention: a kingdom for a stage, princes to act and monarchs to behold the swelling scene […]         but pardon, gentles all, the fl at unraised spirits that have dared on this unworthy scaff old to bring forth 10 so great an object. can this cockpit hold the vasty fi elds of france? or may we cram within this wooden o the very casques that did aff right the air at agincourt? o, pardon: since a crooked fi gure may 15 attest in little place a million, and let us, ciphers to this great account, on your imaginary forces work. suppose within the girdle of these walls are now confi ned two mighty monarchies, 20 whose high upreared and abutting fr onts the perilous narrow ocean parts asunder. piece out our imperfections with your thoughts: into a thousand parts divide one man, and make imaginary puissance. 25 think when we talk of horses, that you see them helen cooper 252selim 20 (2013–2014) printing their proud hoofs i’th’ receiving earth; for ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, carry them here and there, jumping o’er times, turning the accomplishment of many years 30 into an hour-glass—for the which supply, admit me chorus to this history; who prologue-like your humble patience pray gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play. here, humanist literalism (that the stage should represent a single stage-sized place) is given its reductio ad absurdum by the idea that acting henry v would need the space of an entire kingdom, or rather two. instead, the whole dramatic illusion depends not on rules but on “your thoughts:” that imagination ruled so fi rmly and decisively out of order by castelvetro. the audience’s imagination is now in full complicity with the playwright and the actors; it can fi ll the stage with absent horses, carry you here and there, jump o’er times, and explode those classical unities into something else altogether. there are, however, some lines in the speech (13–18) that need more annotation than they have been given; for the “cipher,” the zero, the nought, suggests another possibility in that wooden o. suppose you read it not as a “wooden o,” but a “wooden nought:” elizabethan print did not distinguish between them, so they look identical on the page. the zero was a comparatively recent import into england, roman numerals having remained standard until well into the sixteenth century, and the idea of it fascinated shakespeare and various of his contemporaries. in the middle ages and up until the late sixteenth century, the circle had symbolized infi nity, or everything. all four surviving corpus christi cycles open with god declaring, “ego sum alpha et o:” not just the beginning and the end, but all eternity. now, however, it could symbolize nothing— as shakespeare uses it in richard ii and king lear. but if you take an empty circle, a nought, and paint on it a map of the world, then you have everything, as john donne notes in his “a valediction: of weeping:” medieval drama in the elizabethan age 253 selim 20 (2013–2014) on a round ball a workman, that hath copies by, can lay an europe, afr ic, and an asia, and quickly make that, which was nothing, all, so doth each tear, which thee doth wear, a globe, yea world, by that impression grow. here, in the prologue, shakespeare plays both on that idea, of how the circle or the globe could be all or nothing, and also on the capacity of the zero, the cipher, the nothing, to multiply up. the standard gloss on the “crooked fi gure” (15), if it is glossed at all, is as a circle. but “crooked” does not mean circular: it means just what it says, crooked or hooked. “figure” is shakespeare’s term for a number other than nought, as in the reference in lear to “an o without a fi gure:”7 the opposite phenomenon to what is being described here. the obvious “crooked fi gure” is the fi gure one: the upright line with its little hook on the top. add a series of noughts, and you can turn it into a thousand or a million; and similarly the speaking actor, the single upright fi gure like a fi gure one, can turn into a thousand. by the addition of nothing, the one man can become a whole army, “imaginary puissance.” it is another way for not just a poet but the playwright to make substance of “airy nothing,” as theseus puts it in a midsummer night’s dream (5.1.6), and a way of multiplying classical unity into a million sparkling shards. and if you can do that, you can equally imagine that the stage has the same fr eedom of time and place as we accord to the cinema or television screen: it can show whatever it likes, and shakespeare can rely on his audience to go with him wherever he takes them. that, then, is what he proceeds to do, both in terms of time and space, and in what gets staged, including the entire battle of agincourt. the prologue is not just a defence of his own stage practice, but a grand assertion of its superiority over humanist limits. 7 i.4.174–175 in stanley and wells’s edition of the folio text. helen cooper 254selim 20 (2013–2014) the inclusiveness, the “allness,” of this kind of theatre is refl ected in the term “theatre” itself. again, it was a comparatively new import into english: the terms that had been used earlier were “playhouse,” or, for an outdoor venue, “gameplace.” “theatre” was most commonly used in the sixteenth century for a moral anatomy of the world, a display-case for everything (as in calderón’s gran teatro del mundo). ortelius entitled his great atlas theatrum orbis terrarum, which was englished as abraham ortelius his epitome of the theater of the worlde. the term covered what in medieval latin had been called a summa, a gathering together of the sum of everything, the whole world, or the kind of summa of life invoked by john alday in 1566 homiletic theatrum mundi, the theatre or rule of the world, wherein may be sene the running race and course of everye mans life. it was only aft er james burbage named his new building the theatre in 1576 that the term caught on to mean a purpose-built playhouse; and the idea of the theatrum mundi was carried through in the naming of the globe, with its supposed motto (it is recorded only later) of “totus mundus agit histrionem.” it is commonly paraphrased into the shakespearean “all the world’s a stage” (fr om as you like it 2.7.139), though a more accurate translation might be “everyone (compare the french tout le monde) plays a part.” the phrase is itself a medieval one, borrowed fr om the twelft h-century policraticus of john of salisbury (where “exerceat” is used instead of “agit;” curtius 1953: 138–141). the work was printed and widely read in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and counted ben jonson among its readers. so the idea that the world is a “wide and universal theatre” (ayli 2.7.137) is a thoroughly medieval concept, though it was one eagerly adopted by the early modern stage. the idea is given one of its fullest developments in thomas heywood’s prefatory poem to his apology for actors of 1612: another rare statement of dramatic theory by a practising playwright, and one whose title suggests that it should be read in tandem with, or as a response to, sidney’s apology. heywood works explicitly with that concept of the theatre both as playhouse and as world, but to medieval drama in the elizabethan age 255 selim 20 (2013–2014) produce a theory that is the opposite of the neohumanist theory of drama.     the author to his booke the world’s a theater, the earth a stage, which god, and nature doth with actors fi ll, kings haue their entrance in due equipage, and some their parts play well and others ill. […] this plaies an honest man, and that a knaue a gentle person, this, and he a clowne, one man is ragged, and another braue. all men haue parts, and each man acts his owne. she a chaste lady acteth all her life, a wanton curtezan another playes. this, couets marriage loue, that, nuptial strife, both in continuall action spend their dayes. some citizens, some soldiers, borne to aduenter, sheepheards and sea-men; then our play’s begun, when we are borne, and to the world fi rst enter, and all fi nde exits when their parts are done. if then the world a theater present, as by the roundnesse it appeares most fi t, built with starre-galleries of hye ascent, in which iehoue doth as spectator sit. and chiefe determiner to’applaud the best, and their indeuours crowne with more then merit. but by their euill actions doomes the rest, to end disgrac’t whilst others praise inherit. he that denyes then theaters should be, no theater, he may as well deny a world to me. no world the world is a theatre created by god, where “all men have parts, and each man acts his own:” parts that encompass all classes and walks of life fr om kings to clowns and shepherds—there is no discrimination here by genre, and the comprehensiveness of the cast list is the very point. the play described here, moreover, represents the totality of human life, not just that of an individual. the fr ame of the world itself is the wooden o of the playhouse, “as by the roundnesse it appeares most fi t;” and god acts as helen cooper 256selim 20 (2013–2014) spectator—or rather, he is the only one who does not act, for he is real, not a role-player: he is spectator, critic and judge. together, those things amount to being an exact replication of the model of the cycle plays. the fi nal couplet drives the point home, and heywood adds too the succinct summary in the marginal note, “no theater, no world.” the totality of human experience and the public drama are reciprocal analogies for each other. “play” to heywood as to the middle ages off ers a total drama, recalling the cycles that embraced eden and the crucifi xion and damnation and bliss, and that encompasses all earthly space and time, all of humankind. transposed to shakespeare’s secular stage, theatre can embrace within a single play all the estates of society fr om prince to gravedigger, gods to brothel-keepers; everything that plays havoc not only with the unities of time and space and action, but with the principles of generic purity, of “right comedies” opposed to “right tragedies,” and where the judgement is not only god’s, as the ultimate spectator, but the audience’s too. heywood makes divine judgement, the ethics of human life sub specie aeternitatis, the very point of drama. it had been the work that medieval drama very explicitly did, but it is now claimed for early modern drama too, just as aristotle had seen the work that tragedy did as the catharsis of pity and fear. shakespeare, in the prologue to henry v, locates the work of drama elsewhere: in the imagination that had so scared castelvetro. in his conception, plays enlarge the imagination to the size of world. shakespeare makes that totality of theatre, the “summa” of the world, integral—indeed essential—to his idea of drama, in ways that were inherited fr om the basic and necessary multiplicity of the cycle plays. and “play,” again, is the operative word, as in the last line of the prologue, when the audience is entreated “gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.” here, the spectators’ response is entirely secular: the judgement invoked is not an analogy for doomsday, as in heywood. it may be ethical, but it is not eternal—it is secular, not religious. shakespeare, however, was not always as secular as medieval drama in the elizabethan age 257 selim 20 (2013–2014) we tend to think. surprisingly oft en (though it is perhaps not so surprising given the intense religiosity of the age in which he lived), he comments on the ultimate destination of characters aft er their deaths. perhaps the most famous is mistress quickly’s remark on the deceased falstaff , “he’s in arthur’s bosom, if ever man went to arthur’s bosom” (henry v 2.3.9–10); but that is not just a parody of unlearned beliefs about judgement, it is shakespeare’s parody of his own practices too. he almost always indicates the ultimate destination of the souls of all the signifi cant characters who die in those plays of his that have christian settings. oft en it is done in a single line, as in hal on hotspur, “take thy praise with thee to heaven,” or horatio on hamlet, “flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” sometimes it amounts to a discussion, as happens over the destination of wolsey’s soul in henry viii, a play in which katherine of aragon is also given a staged vision of her own entry into heaven. such comments are included even if it is suggested that the earthly judgement may be wrong: falstaff ’s companions predict hell for him, and mistress quickly does at least provide a kind of alternative. othello sees himself as damned, but the audience are not required to accept his conviction, and especially when he is set alongside the devil iago. it is, however, always a signifi cant issue: that is, characters’ lives are completed in the same ways that both the cycle plays and heywood indicate. the act against the abuses of players of 1603, which forbade the speaking of the name of god on stage, restricted that practice, but it did not stop it; and what are traditionally (if incorrectly) seen as shakespeare’s last lines for the stage return to it. this is the close of the epilogue to the tempest, where prospero does not so much step out of role as subsume the roles of both actor and playwright into himself. my ending is despair unless i be reliev’d by prayer, which pierces so, that it assaults mercy itself, and fr ees all faults. helen cooper 258selim 20 (2013–2014) as you fr om crimes would pardon’d be, let your indulgence set me fr ee. (epilogue, 15–20) they are lines that bring together humankind’s hope for divine mercy at the last judgement, with the not-yet-forgotten catholic power of the living to contribute to that mercy through indulgences; and also the judgement of the audience, who at least for the purposes of this play, sit in the place of god. helen cooper magdalene college, cambridge references aers, d. 1992: a whisper in the ear of early modernists; or, refl ections on literary critics writing the “history of the subject.” in d. aers ed. culture and history 1350–1600. london & detroit, harvester wheatsheaf & wayne state university press: 177–202. benj amin, w. 1998: the origins of german tragic drama [j. osborne trans. 1963: ursprung des deutschen trauerspiels.] new york, verso. bevington, d. 1962: from “mankind” to marlowe: growth of structure in the popular drama of tudor england. cambridge (ma), harvard university press. castelvetro, l. 1570: poetica d’aristotile vulgarizzata et sposta. vienna, g. stainhofer. cooper, h. 2010: shakespeare and the medieval world. london, arden shakespeare. curtius, e. r. 1953: european literature and the latin middle ages [w. r. trask trans. 1948: europäische literatur und lateinisches mittelalter.] princeton, princeton university press. florio, j. 1591: florios second frutes. london, thomas woodcock. medieval drama in the elizabethan age 259 selim 20 (2013–2014) received 01 may 2014; accepted 05 jul 2014 garcía santo tomás, e. ed. 2006: lope de vega: el arte nuevo de hacer comedias. madrid, cátedra. heywood, t. 1612: an apology for actors. london, nicholas okes. lazarus, m. 2013: aristotle’s poetics in renaissance england (ph.d. thesis). oxford, university of oxford. lewis, c. s. 1954: english literature in the sixteenth century excluding drama. oxford, oxford university press. lewis, c. s. 1955: de descriptione temporum. cambridge, cambridge university press. muir, l. r. 1995: the biblical drama of medieval europe. cambridge, cambridge university press. reed 1975–2010: records of early english drama (series). toronto, university of toronto press (continuing; now online). runnalls, g. 1995: passion plays. in w. w. kibler & g. a. zinn eds. medieval france: an encyclopedia. new york & london, garland: 710–712. wells s. & g. taylor eds. 1986: william shakespeare: the complete works. oxford: clarendon press. sidney, p. 2004: the defence of poesy. in g. alexander ed. sidney’s “the defence of poesy” and selected renaissance literary criticism. london, penguin. spivack, b. 1958: shakespeare and the allegory of evil. new york & london, columbia university press. stern, c. 1996: the medieval theater in castile. binghamton (ny), medieval and renaissance texts and studies. surtz, r. e. 1979: the birth of a theater: dramatic convention in spanish theater fr om juan del encina to lope de vega. madrid, castalia. weinberg, b. 1961: a history of literary criticism in the renaissance. chicago, university of chicago press. • selim journal of the spanish society for mediaeval english language and literature revista de la sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval nº  oviedo,  edited by dirigida por trinidad guzmán & s. g. fernández-corugedo universidad de oviedo & sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval oviedo – murcia  laura esteban segura & nadia obegi gallardo, selim  (): -issn: 1132–631x absolute constructions in the old english gospels: a case-study¹ abstract this article pays attention to absolute constructions in the old english gospels. although the origin and formation of such type of structures have been investigated in many ways, there is no general agreement as regards these aspects and only a few contrastive studies on the subject have been done. the article is organized as follows: first, the state of the art is discussed; then a contrastive analysis is carried out, taking as the starting point the gospels in latin and comparing them to the west-saxon and lindisfarne versions. the data analysed are presented and discussed. finally, the conclusions drawn om the study are offered. keywords: ablative absolute, dative absolute, west-saxon gospels, lindisfarne glosses, latin. resumen el presente artículo trata las construcciones absolutas en los evangelios anglosajones. aunque se ha investigado el origen y formación de este tipo de estructuras, no hay consenso general al respecto y únicamente se han realizado unos cuantos estudios contrastivos sobre la materia. el artículo se organiza como se señala a continuación: tras presentar el estado de la cuestión, se ha llevado a cabo un análisis contrastivo que toma como punto de partida los evangelios en latín y los compara con las versiones en sajón occidental y en lindisfarne. a continuación, se presentan y comentan los datos analizados. finalmente, se oecen las conclusiones a las que se ha llegado con el estudio. palabras clave: ablativo absoluto, dativo absoluto, evangelios anglosajones, glosas de lindisfarne, latín. s    t here are several studies on absolute constructions in english (callaway: ; chase: ; hunter: ; helming: ; liuzza: ; amati, in liuzza: ), albeit only the last two deal with the old english gospels. the origin ¹ the present research has been funded by the spanish ministry of science and technology (grant number hum-/filo). this grant is hereby gratefully acknowledged. we are also grateful to prof. antonio miranda garcía for his useful help and advice and to the anonymous referees for corrections and detailed comments. 88 laura esteban segura & nadia obegi gallardo selim  () and formation of absolute structures have been investigated in many ways but the available literature confirms a lack of consensus. on the grounds of its origin, in the first place, there is disagreement about whether it is a native structure or, on the contrary, it is a linguistic calque taken om latin and adopted through translations. in this vein, callaway points out that some writers such as grimm or koch accepted the idea that the absolute construction was a native germanic expression and therefore native to old english, whereas other authors, including hofer and flamme, thought that the dative absolute in old english was a latin borrowing (callaway: ). to this idea, visser (:) argues that it was somewhat improbable for translators to include structures which, to a broader extent, were not fully comprehensible to their readers. callaway (: -), in turn, comments that, although it is apparently equent in closer anglo-saxon translations om latin, it is less equent in less literal ones, and practically unknown in independent literature. in general, it is agreed that absolute constructions are most common in prose texts based on the original latin ones (mitchell : ). as for its form, callaway (: ) suggests that the absolute participle is easily distinguished om the appositive participle insofar as the latter has no subject of its own (agent or patient), but it agrees with the subject of the verb or with any other word in government. likewise, kellner (in mitchell : ) points out that the absolute construction is one of the several constructions which imply detachment om the main sentence. he also remarks that this construction was originally a case used in a ee way which at first implied an instrumental meaning, and then the grades of cause and time were included. according to visser (: ), the person or object denoted by the (pro)noun forming a syntactic unit with the past participle is not identical with the person or object denoted by the subject of the main syntactic unit. matsunami (in 89 absolute constructions in the oe gospels selim  () mitchell : ) also holds this view and argues that a participle is absolute when its subject is grammatically independent om the rest of the sentence. in contemporary english, the structure is found with non-finite and verbless adverbial clauses which have an overt subject but are not introduced by a subordinator nor are they the complement of a preposition. they are designated absolute clauses because they are not explicitly bound to the matrix clause syntactically. absolute clauses may be -ing, -ed, or verbless clauses, but not infinitive clauses. they tend to be formal and inequent (quirk et al. : ). these authors provide the following examples for this type of clause (in italics): “no further discussion arising, the meeting was brought to a close”; “lunch finished, the guests retired to the lounge”. it has also been pointed out that absolute clauses do not share any element with the main clause, even on a semantic level (quirk et al. : ). this last view stands in opposition to those expressed by callaway (: ) when he remarks that the “clause stands in close relationship to the rest of the sentence” and by metlen (: ) who, in spite of refusing any grammatical connection, allows for a logical one. this being the state of the art, the definition of a dative absolute construction according to the criteria considered in the analysis will be proposed in the next section. section  covers the definition, the objectives and the methodology of the study; in section  the analysis is carried out; the conclusions are offered in section , and finally the references are included. 90 laura esteban segura & nadia obegi gallardo selim  () d,    from the perspective employed in this study, the dative absolute construction is composed of a participle in the dative case followed by a (pro)noun or (pro)nouns in the same case functioning as the subject, being both independent elements om the rest of the sentence. if the participle and the noun are governed by a preposition, then such a construction is not considered to be a proper dative absolute construction. the authors mentioned above coincide in emphasizing the independence of the construction with respect to the main sentence. this line has also been chosen for the analysis of the examples. see, for instance, some cases following the morpho-syntactic criteria mentioned above. for the sake of clarity, latin, old english and contemporary english renderings are shown (following that order). () ianuis clausis belocenum duron the doors were locked² (jn, xx, ) () procurante pontio pilato begymendum þam pontiscan pilate when pontius pilate was governor (lk, iii, ) () fracto alabastro tobrocenum sealfboxe [she] broke the jar (mk, xiv, ) () conuentione autem facta gewordenre gecwydrædene [he] agreed (mt, xx, ) ² the translations provided in contemporary english are taken om the bible’s new international version as found in the website <http://www.biblegateway. com> [ november ]. 91 absolute constructions in the oe gospels selim  () some examples, however, have been rejected in the light of the case in which they appear. accordingly, the following instance in the nominative case is not considered an absolute construction because the subject of the participle is the same as that of the main sentence (tu, elided in latin, and þu in old english): () ne uidearis hominibus ieiunans þæt þu ne sy gesewen am mannum fæstende so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting (mt, vi, ) for the same reason, the ensuing two examples have been rejected. example () in the accusative case is not considered a construction of this type, as frumcennedan, apart om its adjectival function, agrees with sunu, which is the direct object of cende; example () in the genitive case is also rejected because it forms part of the subject: peperit () filium suum primogenitum heo cende hyre frumcennedan sunu she gave birth to a son (mt, i, ) flumina de uentre eius fluent () aquae uiuae lybbendes wætres flod flowað of his inoðe streams of living water will flow om within him (jn, vii, ) the present study, which is mainly based on the editions of the old english gospels done by skeat (–) and liuzza (), focuses on the analysis of the west-saxon version because it was the standard dialect of the period. however, for complementary purposes the lindisfarne versions of each gospel are also taken into consideration. in relation to this, the aim of the study will be to widen on the translator’s attitude when dealing with these structures, that is to say, whether he has followed the latin text closely by reproducing 92 laura esteban segura & nadia obegi gallardo selim  () the absolute constructions or, on the other hand, he has used them even though they did not appear in the original text. this contrastive methodology would be helpful inasmuch as it would validate the hypothesis of the relevance of the construction in germanic. the contrastive approach has been followed since studies of this kind are scarce. the original latin text was firstly taken for comparison with the west-saxon version in order to find out how the scribe interprets absolute constructions om latin. it is important to take into account that, om a morphological perspective, the latin ablative absolute does not correspond with the west-saxon counterpart, where the dative case is used. once the definition of absolute constructions and the purpose of the study have been explained, the chronological stages of the research will be described. first, the electronic corpus (moreno olalla: ; esteban segura: ; obegi gallardo: ; marqués aguado: ) under analysis was annotated by means of maoet (morphological analyser of old english texts) (miranda garcía et al. ) so that it would allow to retrieve the morpho-syntactic information automatically with the old english concordancer (miranda garcía et al. ), a programme for the handling of old english text corpora. moreover, this annotation contained the lemmatization, the morphological tags, the meanings, the marks of punctuation, and the references. as the oec is both word and lemma-based, it is able to solve any kind of query, regardless of its complexity, by means of boolean filters. in a further stage, the total number of occurrences of present and past participles in the west-saxon gospels was obtained om the tagged corpus. obviously, not all of them fitted into the concept of absolute datives; therefore, some examples had to be rejected. subsequently, the output thus generated was saved with an excel file format, so that most of the instances could be easily classified. 93 absolute constructions in the oe gospels selim  () in this way, more than half of the instances were automatically sorted, the remaining ones having to be manually classified. in addition, some detailed information could also be added such as the type of subjects (nominal/pronominal) or of verbs (passive/active, transitive/intransitive…), etc. more importantly, the patterns when looking for specific words and a particular context could be selected, for example, a verb preceded by a noun in nominative case and followed by an adverb and the latter followed by a prepositional phrase. a in this section the elements which make up the absolute construction are analysed, the casuistry exposed and, finally, their order considered. apart om this, the lindisfarne version is examined and the evolution of the structure in the different periods of the english language considered. composition. the west-saxon dative absolute construction consists of a participle and its corresponding subject (indicated in the examples by means of italics), whose structure shows different variants as the following: . one-word noun phrase/pronoun in dative: gebigedum () cneowum and begged him on his knees (mk, i, ) () þysum gecwedenum aer jesus had said this (lk, xix, ) in (), the subject of the participle is a pronoun whereas in () a one-word noun (phrase) is employed. 94 laura esteban segura & nadia obegi gallardo selim  () . two-word noun phrase (determiner + noun) in dative: () twam fixum onfangenum he also divided the two fish (mk, vi, ) . three-word noun phrase (determiner + noun/adjective + proper noun) in dative: begymendum () þam pontiscan pilate when pontius pilate was governor (lk, iii, ) no occurrence of a one-word noun phrase consisting only of a proper noun has been attested. as for the participles, the absolute construction may consist of a present/past participle which implies an agent/patient subject respectively. in the examples of present participle (), () and past participle (), (), the latin version appears first and then the old english one (the subject appears in italics): () eo cogitante him ðencendum but aer he had considered this (mt, i, ) () eo loquente him sprecendum while he was still speaking (mt, xvii, ) () facto sabbato gewordenum restedæge when the sabbath came (mk, vi, ) () ruptis vinculis toborstenum bendum he had broken his chains (lk, viii, ) 95 absolute constructions in the oe gospels selim  () count and casuistry. the number of absolute ablatives in latin and datives in old english compiled by liuzza () and that of absolute datives selected for this study are shown in table : table . absolute constructions and their normalized frequency (biber : -) gospel* john luke mark matthew latin (liuzza) 12 69 49 77 old english (liuzza) normalized equency () with respect to running words 1 ⒌85 27 12⒐19 23 18⒍23 15 7⒋14 old english (our study) normalized equency () with respect to running words 1 ⒌85 23 10⒐58 19 15⒊84 14 6⒐20 old english (our study) normalized equency () with respect to verses† 1 ⒒36 23 20⒉46 19 280.64 14 130.84 it is worth commenting the fact that even in latin there are differences as john’s gospel is longer than mark’s but it has only a quarter of the absolute constructions. although luke’s and matthew’s gospels have more or less the same number of words, the total number of absolute constructions varies greatly. by contrast, mark’s and luke’s gospels show a similar amount of absolute datives, notwithstanding the different size of their vocabulary, this representing a stylistic feature which could point out to a different authorship. the number of absolute datives in old english which are consistent to the definition suggested has been reduced om that of 96 laura esteban segura & nadia obegi gallardo selim  () liuzza. in fact, several of the instances proposed by him have been rejected as they do not fit into the criteria selected for the study. several examples would be: sedentibus in regione() sittendum on earde those living in the land (mt, iv, ). in this case, there is not an explicit subject in dative. () domino cooperante drihtne mid wyrcendum and the lord worked (mk, xvi, ). here, the occurrence of the preposition mid invalidates the construction as a dative absolute one, unless mid is taken as verbal prefix of wyrcendum. as for the casuistry of absolute constructions in west-saxon, the following cases have been found: . a construction of ablative absolute in latin is rendered with a dative absolute construction in west-saxon: () relicta ciuitate nazareth forlætenre þære ceastre nazareth leaving nazareth (mt, iv, ) () clauso ostio tuo þinre dura belocenre when you […] close the door (mt, vi, ) () ut adryfenum þam deofle eiecto daemone when the demon was driven out (mt, ix, ) () acceptis quinque panibus et duobus piscibus fif hlafum and twam fixum onfangenum taking the five loaves and the two fish (mk, vi, ) 97 absolute constructions in the oe gospels selim  () () hymno dicto gecwedenum lofe when they had sung a hymn (mk, xiv, ) () consummatis-que diebus gelledum dagum aer the feast was over (lk, ii, ) . the ablative absolute construction in latin is not translated with a dative absolute; thus, instead of finding a dative absolute in old english, sentences expressing time with þa (, ), þonne (), finite-verb constructions () or prepositional phrases () are used. () nauigantibus autem illis þa hig reowun as they sailed (lk, viii, ) () audito herodes þa herodes þæt gehyrde but when herod heard this (mk, vi, ) () te autem faciente elemosynam þonne þu þine ælmessan do but when you give to the needy (mt, vi, ) () inclinato capite he ahylde his heafod he bowed his head (jn, xix, ) () mane autem iam facto witodlice on ærnemergen early in the morning (jn, xxi, ) . there is one instance of an absolute construction in west-saxon but not in latin. () exiens iesus 98 laura esteban segura & nadia obegi gallardo selim  () þam hælende utgangendum jesus went out (mt, xiii, ) word order. with regards to the order of elements in the latin absolute construction, the subject can precede (, ) or follow (, ) the participle as in the following instances. the subject, as in the previous examples, is indicated by means of italics. () quo cognito iesus ait illis þa se hælend þæt wiste he cwæð aware of their discussion, jesus asked them (mk, viii, ) () conventione facta gewordene gecwydrædene he agreed (mt, xx, ) () egressis autem illis ða hig wæron soþlice ut agane while they were going out (mt, ix, ) () et timuerunt intrantibus illis and hi ondredon him gangende and they were aaid as they entered (lk, ix, ) as a whole, the data in latin point to the direction that the order “subject + participle” is somewhat more common than the order “participle + subject” but the distribution is not balanced if each gospel is considered separately. the former is more equent in mark and john, whereas the latter is more common in matthew, and both are balanced in luke. the same tendency is observed in west-saxon as the order “subject + participle” predominates in luke, mark and matthew. the conclusion that can be drawn is directly linked to the opposite trends found. 99 absolute constructions in the oe gospels selim  () table . word order participle + subject john luke mark matthew latin 4 ⑿ 36 (69) 22 (49) 40 (77) west-saxon 1 ⑴ 4 (23) 8 ⒆ 6 ⒁ the lindisfarne version of the holy gospels. as pointed out in the introduction, some authors consider that these constructions are more equent in closer translations than in less literal ones. for this reason, an analysis of the lindisfarne glosses to the old english gospels has been carried out. concerning the casuistry, as with that already presented for west-saxon, latin has been taken as the starting point. thus, a construction of ablative absolute in latin is rendered in the glosses with: . a dative absolute construction: () uento magno flante winde miclum forblauene a strong wind was blowing (jn, vi, ) () eleuatis manibus ahefenum hondum he lied up his hands (lk, xxiv, ) . a finite verb: () orto iam sole was arisen gee sunna just aer sunrise (mk, xvi, ) () auditis his discipuli weron gehered ðas word ða ðegnas 100 laura esteban segura & nadia obegi gallardo selim  () when the disciples heard this (mt, xix, ) . both a dative absolute and a finite-verb construction: () transeunte iesu geongende + ða ge-eode ðe hælend as jesus went on (mt, ix, ) () proficiscende eo mið ðy foerde he + hine færende [as jesus and his disciples] […] were leaving (mk, x, ) in table , the number of absolute constructions in latin, westsaxon and the lindisfarne glosses for each gospel is provided, as well as the number of constructions employed in west-saxon and the glosses instead of the absolute ones. table . absolute constructions in the gospels and their translations in the west-saxon and lindisfarne versions john luke mark matthew lat ‡ ws lg lat ws lg lat ws lg lat ws lg aa 12 69 49 77 da 1 8 23 26 19 15 14 36 fvc 4 2 22 38 16 30 32 29 d 2 2 4 12 pp 1 1 1 1 þa 6 20 1 12 30 þænne 1 þar 1 1 þonne 1 1 1 101 absolute constructions in the oe gospels selim  () it could be inferred that the glosses (since they represent a close or literal translation) would contain more absolute constructions than the west-saxon version. the results of the analysis do confirm this initial hypothesis. thus, the only gospel which has less absolute constructions in the lindisfarne version is the one according to saint mark, as opposed to the other three which have a higher count of these constructions in the glosses. evolution. the use of this type of construction in subsequent stages of the english language has been briefly examined by looking at its evolution in the middle english version (wycliff bible), the modern english one (king james’ bible) and, finally, in contemporary english. the gospel according to saint luke has been selected for that purpose for two main reasons; the first of these has to do with the fact that this gospel contains a higher number of absolute constructions in west-saxon, whereas the second reason has a more practical motivation, as there was the possibility of consulting a volume with the aforesaid four versions together.³ the number of absolute constructions is provided in latin, west-saxon, the lindisfarne glosses, middle english, modern english and contemporary english in the following table. table . evolution of absolute constructions in the gospel according to saint luke luke latin west-saxon lindisfarne gloss mid. e. mod. e. cont. e. 69 23 26 20 6 0 ³ this volume was downloaded om <http://.../bibl-eng/luke.htm> [ may ]. 102 laura esteban segura & nadia obegi gallardo selim  () the data compiled suggest that dative absolute constructions in the holy gospels become less equent om the modern english period onwards, being their presence non-existent in present-day english. c from the analysis carried out in this study, different possibilities were available for the scribe when translating these structures into old english. on the one hand, he could strictly follow the latin text, conveying the ablative absolute by means of a dative absolute, thus showing more fidelity to the original text or, on the other hand, he could adapt the latin text and express the absolute construction in other ways by means of sentences with þa, þonne, etc., or with finite verbs, among many other choices. the data show that the translation of the ablative absolute by a dative absolute in west-saxon does not reach fi per cent in any of the gospels and, sometimes, not even ten per cent. secondly, there are important differences as far as the distribution of absolute constructions in each gospel is concerned, which may indicate a multiple authorship for the gospels. in order to corroborate this hypothesis, a further study on authorship attribution would be required. moreover, the pronominal character of the subject in the absolute constructions in latin seems to have had an influence on its westsaxon counterparts, which have favoured other variants, such as adverbial clauses of time or coordinated sentences. nevertheless, as it has been previously suggested, dative absolute constructions stand out by the contradiction regarding their origin and conception. this study has a preliminary character since a bigger corpus would be needed in order to obtain more reliability and corroborate the data obtained. 103 absolute constructions in the oe gospels selim  () finally, the study of the absolute datives in the gospel according to luke in the middle english version (wycliff ), in modern english (king james) and in contemporary english shows that the english language favours the alternative constructions mentioned above (adverbial, coordinated, etc.). laura esteban segura & nadia obegi gallardo⁴ universidad de málaga r biber, d. : variation across speech and writing, cambridge, cambridge university press. callaway, m. : the absolute participle in anglo-saxon. the american journal of philology, .: -. chase, f. h. : the absolute participle in the old english apollonius. modern language notes, .: -. esteban segura, m. l. : el evangelio de s. juan en sajón occidental: edición electrónica, etiquetado morfológico y estudio léxico. memoria de licenciatura. málaga, universidad de málaga. helming, e. m. : the absolute participle in the apollonius of tyre. modern language notes, .: -. hunter, c. h. : the absolute participle in middle and modern english. pmla, .: -. ⁴ departamento de filología inglesa, francesa y alemana, escuela universitaria politécnica, campus el ejido, universidad de málaga, plaza el ejido s/n, , málaga. e-mail address: lauraesteban@uma.es; nobegi@uma.es. 104 laura esteban segura & nadia obegi gallardo selim  () koopman, w. : another look at clitics in old english. transactions of the philological society, .: -. liuzza, r. m. ed.  –: the old english version of the gospels.  vols. oxford, oxford university press. marqués aguado, t. : el evangelio según san mateo en sajón occidental: edición electrónica, estudio léxico y sistema de puntuación. memoria de licenciatura. málaga, universidad de málaga. metlen, m. : absolute constructions in the gothic bible. pmla, .: -. miranda garcía, a., j. calle martín, d. moreno olalla, & g. muñoz gonzález : the old english apollonius of tyre in the light of the old english concordancer, in renouf, a. & a. kehoe eds., the changing face of corpus linguistics. amsterdam – new york, rodopi, -. miranda garcía, a., j. l. triviño and j. calle martín : a morphological analyser of old english texts (maoet), in honero, a. m. & m. p. navarro eds., proceedings of the th international conference of selim. zaragoza, institución ‘fernando el católico’: –. mitchell, b. : old english syntax. vol. . oxford, clarendon press. moreno olalla, d. : problemas textuales en la versión anglosajona del evangelio según san lucas. memoria de licenciatura. málaga: universidad de málaga. obegi gallardo, n. : el evangelio según san marcos en sajón occidental: edición electrónica, etiquetado morfológico y estudio 105 absolute constructions in the oe gospels selim  () received  dec ; revision received  jan ; accepted  jul  léxico. memoria de licenciatura. málaga, universidad de málaga. quirk, r., s. greenbaum, g. leech, & j. svartvik : a grammar of contemporary english. london: longman. quirk, r., s. greenbaum, g. leech, & j. svartvik : a comprehensive grammar of the english language. london: longman. skeat, w. w. ed. –: the gospels in anglo-saxon and northumbrian versions. cambridge, cambridge university press. visser, f. t. : an historical syntax of the english language. vol. . leiden, brill. e * the number of words for each gospel is the following: john, ,; luke, ,; mark, ,; matthew, ,. † since normalization with clauses or sentences could be ambiguous owing to punctuation, it has been done taking into account the number of verses. ‡ lat: latin; ws: west-saxon; lg: lindisfarne glosses. aa: ablative absolute; da: dative absolute; fvc: finite-verb construction; d: double; pp: prepositional phrase. ! selim04.pdf reviews, maría bullón ____________________________________________________________________ 164 santano moreno, bernardo 1990: estudio sobre confessio amantis de john gower y su versioån castellana confisyon del amante de juan de cuenca. caåceres, ediciones de la universidad de extremadura. santano moreno’s estudio was originally a doctoral thesis defended at the universidad de extremadura in spain. the study is part of a group effort by young scholars from this university to analyze and establish the text of the spanish translation of gower’s confessio amantis. although juan de cuenca did not make his translation directly from english but via a portuguese translation of gower’s poem, cuenca’s counts as the first rendering of an english text into spanish. santano moreno carries out “a comparative analysis” of juan de cuenca’s and john gower’s texts and pro vides new evidence which allows him to date both the lost portuguese translation and the spanish one with more precision than has been possible until now. estudio is divided into seven chapters plus an introduction, a conclusion, and an extensive and useful bibliography. short versions of the first chapter have been published as articles in manuscripta (reviewed in jgn x.2 [1991]) and in selim (reviewed in jgn xiii.1 [1994]). this chapter provides some convincing arguments that establish the dates of the portuguese and the spanish translations at around 1433-38 and no later than 1454 respectively. it also gives a historical context for each of the two translations, as products of the political relationships among england, spain, and portugal in the late middle ages (in the late fourteenth century, one of henry iv’s sisters, philippa of lancas ter, married king joão i of portugal, while another one of his sisters, catherine of lancaster, married king enrique iii of castile). robert payne, the translator of the lost portuguese translation, seems to have come to portugal as a member of philippa’s court. although, according to santano, payne’s transla tion must have been commissioned by joão i’s successor, ____________________________________________________________________ 165 king dom duarte, philippa herself must have brought to portugal the manuscript of the confessio amantis that was the basis of payne’s transla tion. moreover, santano argues that the spanish translation was probably commissioned by juan ii rather than by his mother catherine of lancaster. the ingenuity of the presentation of the evidence and the conclusions derived from that evidence make this the best chapter in the book, as well as the main raison d’être of santano’s study. the remaining six chapters offer a comparative analysis of cuenca’s and gower’s texts in which santano notes interesting omissions, additions, and differences between them. this part of the book, though, has two main short comings. first, it is rather unclear what kind of taxonomy he uses to arrange his data. for instance, the title of chapter three is “omissions that do not modify the meaning substantially,” while the title of chapter four is “omissions that modify the meaning, and censorship of ethical and religious nature.” but what santano understands by “substantial modifications of meaning” in the confessio is never explained. this gives rise to some odd arrangements of the data. for example, in chapter three santano analyzes cuenca’s omission of gower’s metaphoric reference to virginity as a “flour” in the story of apollonius. gower’s lines, “sche couthe noght hir maidenhede / defende, and thus sche hath forlore / the flour which sche hath longe bore” (viii.301-03), are translated by cuenca as follows: “non se supo defender del que por fuerça no le privase la vergenidad” (f. 366 r. b.). instead of “flour” cuenca uses the noun “vergenidad.” since santano makes this observation in chapter three, one concludes that, according to him, the omission of the metaphor does not modify the meaning substantially. now, when we go to chapter four, in which he purports to analyze those omis sions which modify the meaning of the translated passage, or which re veal a certain ethical or religious censorship, we find examples similar to the one just mentioned. he cites, for instance, two lines from the “tale of canace and machaire” — “i wole a lettre untomi brother, / so asmy [sic] fieble hand may wryte” (iii.268-69) —and notes that cuenca misses the adjective reviews, maría bullón ____________________________________________________________________ 166 “fieble”: “…una carta a mi hermano enbiare, la qual por mi mano es cripta sera ®” (f.127 v.b.). santano does not explain why he considers this omission a substantial modification of meaning, while the omission of the “flour” metaphor in the passage from “apollonius” cited above is not. does not “flour” convey several possible connotations (like fragility, or temporality) that are as meaningful as the adjective “fieble”? one could find many more examples of such inconsistencies not only in chapters three and four but in the other chapters as well. the second shortcoming that should be mentioned is santano’s limiting self-restriction to a mere recording of textual differences. he gives us very valuable information when he notes, for instance, that cuenca (or, perhaps, payne, the portuguese translator) tends to correct gower’s modifications of ovid’s stories in order to bring them closer to ovid (126-27), or that either of the translators also corrects gower’s “mistakes” in his biblical references (for instance, when he notes that noah’s sons engendered seventy-two nations [viii.91], cuenca, following genesis 10.1-32, corrects the number and makes it seventy-five). gower scholars will be especially interested in his observation that the translation tends to moralize and emphasize the role of religion in the english text. santano notes, for instance, that the translators tend to suppress references to nakedness or sexual desire, and introduce god at many points where the english text does not mention him. nevertheless, many of the differences recorded in estudio either remain unexplained, or are explained in very general terms. santano notes, for example, that cuenca omits the term “sarazin” when he translates amans’ comments on slaying knights: “a sarazin if i sle schal, / i sle the soule forth withal, / and that was nevere cristes lore” (iv.1679-81). cuenca’s translation reads as follows: “es sabido que matando los cuerpos matariamos asymesmo las almas, lo qual es contra la fe de christo” (f.171 v.b.). santano’s only observation at this point is that cuenca omits the term “sarazin,” a word which, as he himself notes, obviously had an equivalent in spanish, since part of spain was still dominated by the arabs at that time. here, santano ____________________________________________________________________ 167 misses a great opportunity to try to give depth to his analysis and look into the political motivations and context of the spanish translation. indeed, amans’ remark in the confessio invalidates the killing of “sarazins” even as acts against christ’s own teachings. such a remark would have been too radical for a country which was still fighting the “sarazins” in order to finish the reconquest. cuenca, probably writing for the king of castile, cleverly omitted such a problematic allusion to the killing of “sarazins.” the problems noted in this review, though, should not deter us from welcoming santano’s study. his work on the dating of the translations is the most valuable part of it, and the dates he proposes will remain as the most accurate ones until more evidence is found. the comparative analysis of the texts does offer a starting point for in -depth studies of the spanish translation at both literary and historical levels. for historians, santano’s study opens up many questions and reminds us of how much re search is still to be done in the area of spanish, english, and portuguese relationships in the late middle ages. for literary critics and students of gower, his conclusion that the translation tries to smooth out ambiguities in the english text in order to “moralize” the confessio is very suggestive. indeed, it indicates not so much that it is possible, as some would say, to “outgower” gower, but rather, that we should reconsider the dominant view of the confessio as another moralis tic work by the english author. that the translators feel a need to correct and modify gower’s text in order to give one-sided morals reveals that gower’s confessio is not as straightforward as we may think it is. maría bullón cornell university * † * selim03.pdf 180 murdoch, brian (1993): cornish literature. cambridge: d. s. brewer. x + 174 pp. (£ 25). isbn 0 85991 364 3. this book gives a clear and up-to-date account of a subject which until now can have been known to few people. it breaks new ground, not only for those concerned with cornwa ll’s past, but for all students of medieval drama, popular religion, and apocryphal literature. cornwall, the most south-westerly county of england, was an in dependent celtic state until its conquest by the english during the ninth century. until the eighteenth century it retained its own language, cornish, related to welsh and (more closely) to breton. during the later middle ages cornish developed its own drama, the only medieval celtic language to do so, and these religious plays are our main source of knowledge for the language. however, cornish would be of interest to literary historians even if these plays had not been written, since cornwall played an important role in the diffusion of legends associated with king arthur, especially the tale of tris tan and isolde. unfortunately, there are no surviving cornish texts for this material, which is known only from later versions in latin and french. it is likely that much early cornish story -telling was oral, and was never writ ten down. in six chapters, brian murdoch’s book describes the scanty re mains of old cornish; the four works (the "poem of the passion", ordinalia, creation of the world, and play of saint meriasek) which make up the bulk of middle cornish literature; and the varied texts of modern cornish during its seventeenthand eighteenth-century decline, and twentieth-century form devised by enthusiasts attempting to revive it as a spoken and written language. the author ably sets out current knowledge of cornish literature at a time when its texts are receiving fresh attention from editors and critics in britain, austria, and the united states. as a professional historian of literature. he also sets 181 out a strong and persuasive case for the merits of the religious texts as works of art. what is the importance of this book for specialists in old and middle en glish?. its main value is for students of medieval english drama. as is well known, much of this has been lost; most of what we have survives by chance in four cycles, from chester, york,wakefield, and "n-town" (perhaps from norfolk). what we can guess from these is greatly supple mented by the cornish plays, which are influenced by english forms of drama, but yet show many distinctive features of their own. analysis of the ordinalia, written probably in the later fourteenth century, brings this out. this cycle consists of three parts: the beginning of the world; christ’s passion; and the resurrection of our lord. the first part represents the creation of the world, man’s fall (with a vivid depiction of adam, eve, and the serpent), cain’s murder of abel, noah’s escape from the flood, abraham’s sacrifice of isaac, moses and pharaoh, david and bathsheba, and solomon’s building of the temple. much of this is familiar from the english plays of the period. but the unknown cornish dramatist often shows great originality of treatment, especially through incorporating apocryphal material. an instance of this is his use of the "legend of the rood", that the three seeds from the tree of knowledge, placed by seth in adam’s grave, eventually became the tree of the cross. this apocryphal narrative is unknown in medieval english drama, and very rare (to say the least) elsewhere. those involved in the producing of medieval plays will also be interested in the evidence for how cornish drama was staged. while most medieval english plays were performed on carts, which could be hauled through the streets of towns, cornish drama was performed in earthen amphitheatres. two of these still exist, and the book includes a photograph of a 1969 revival of the ordinalia, performed in one of these amphitheatres by students of bristol university. shown dressed as black, spiky devils emerging from a smoke -filled hell-mouth, these amateur actors bring home something of the 182 vitality of the cornish literature described in this book. far from being of mi nority interest, brian murdoch’s cornish literature is a book from which almost anyone concerned with medieval religious writing can learn much. it deserves a warm welcome. andrew breeze university of navarra, pamplona. * * * selim04.pdf ____________________________________________________________________ 143 meale, carol c. ed. 1993: women and literature in britain, 1150-1500. cambridge, cambridge university press. cambridge studies in medieval literature 17. x + 223 pp. (hardback £ 30.00). this volume of nine essays, preceded by an introduction by carol m. meale, and containing an index of names and titles, belongs to a series (general editor: alastair minnis) which so far has only published on one other occasion (the theatre of medieval europe: new research in early drama , edited by eckehard simon) a collection of studies dedicated to a general topic. this collection as the foreword suggests, is the first such volume to focus on issues such as women’s literacy, “the historical evidence of women’s activities as writers, patrons and readers”, and the representation of women in different types of literary texts “within the specific framework of late medieval britain”. the cultural context in which women were reading, writing or being written about is, indeed, particularly emphasized and very well defined in these stimulating essays, which throw much new and fascinating light on the subject. thus judith weiss draws our attention to real life examples of powerful women (the two roheses of monmouth, the albinis of arundel) as possible models for “the surprisingly formidable women” who make their appearance in anglo -norman romance, in the well documented study with which the volume opens. when dealing with apparently strong-minded heroines josiane, argentille, ydoineshe does, however, register scrupulously the extent and the limitations of their activities, thus defin ing such heroines in terms of their power and their weakness within the context of the narratives they appear in. another group of essays centre on the relationship between women and the pro duction of religious texts: thus bella millet, after an interesting dis cussion of what litteratura really meant in the middle ages, argues that verreviews, pat ricia shaw ____________________________________________________________________ 144 nacular writings derived ultimately from an oral culture, and then proceeds to examine in some detail what can be known concerning the level of literacy/illiteracy of 12th and 13th century english anchorites, especially women recluses. she then goes on to explore which written vernacular texts may have been aimed specifically at such women recluses, in the belief that “there is some evidence to link (them) with the development of vernacular re ligious literature” in the period under consideration. amongst the texts she singles out for special attention are the ancrene wisse, the saint katharine, margaret and juliana group, hali meidhad, the sawles ward and the “wooing group”, and she likewise suggests that the puella for whom thomes of hales wrote his luue-ron may have been a recluse rather than a nun as has generally been assumed. the author dedicates her final paragraphs to weighing up the pros and the contras of assigning female authorship to any of the anonymous vernacular religious writings, and to emphasizing the importance of recluses in general as solitaries and hence of being readers rather than listeners, and therefore, promoters of the written word. similarly, it is felicity riddy’s contention that the vernon manuscript provides substantial evidence for the existence of a certain kind of female readership for which chaucer’s prioress “can be said to function as a metonym” in the 14th century, and that miracles of the virgin and “the things of god” as commented on by such writers as ælred of rievaulx, richard rolle, walter hilton or william langland, constituted the staple of such reading. she emphasizes the importance of female influence on richard rolle, suggests that women may have been responsible for translating some latin texts into the vernacular and explores in interesting detail the documentary evidence to prove that in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, some women were actively engaged in procuring, lending, giving and bequeathing religious texts to one another. from women readers to women writers, and a thought-provoking examination of the “marginal cultural space” into which julian of norwich comfortably fitted herself, the style of her discourse and ____________________________________________________________________ 145 the differences between her attitudes and those of margery kempe towards their relationship with the external world. women as book owners likewise constitute the subject of carol m. meale’s own contribution to the volume whose aim is to throw light on “the relationship between laywomen and books in the late middle ages”. this she does by citing evidence from testaments still extant, generally corresponding to noble or wealthy upper-class families, and which may contain the titles of books bequeathed or donated by or to women. the question of women actually commissioning books is likewise dealt with. as is to be expected, a large proportion of such books were devotional, but arthurian and other ro mances, above all in french, are also registered. the documentary evidence here amassed points to the popularity among women of lydgate’s writings, but, surprisingly, there are far fewer references to the works of chaucer and gower being in female hands. it is necessary, the author suggests at the end of her fascinating study, to recover far more details concerning medieval women’s collective and individual lives, if we are “to understand more fully their engagement with literature, and with books in general”. women as authors, above all in the late medieval period, are the concern respectively of julia boffey and ceridwen lloyd-morgan, the former dealing with women writers in england, the latter with women writers in wales. julia boffey whose objective is to explore the answers to a series of problematic questions relating to medieval women’s literacy, the dissemination of me dieval texts and the possibility of assigning anonymous writings to women authors, insists on the need for circumspection when dealing with such subjects. she assesses negatively the possible influence exercised by earlier women writers, marie de france, for example, and the women hagiogra phers discussed in the essay by jocelyn wogan-browne, and when dealing with possible foreign rôle models for english women writers (saint bridget of sweden, margarete porete® ) underlines the irony of christina de pizan’s works being dissemi nated in english by male translators. in this context, she suggests, extreme caution must be used when applying modern notions of reviews, pat ricia shaw ____________________________________________________________________ 146 writing, literature and authorship, to medieval compositions, making her point by analysing in most interesting detail the cases of the writings of ju lian of norwich and margery kempe, and then the paston and cely letters, in which, respectively, oral transmission and dictation may have played an important part. we are, however, she suggests, on even less safe ground when dealing with anonymous works, it being well nigh impossible “to deduce the genders of those concerned in the chain of composition and dissemination”. even where a female narrator is implied (the good wife taught her daughter), we may be dealing with a case of dramatic appropriateness rather than a real woman author, although julia boffey is willing to admit that there is no certain indication that some treatises of a practical kind could not have been composed by women. the question of the authorship of works supposedly narrated by women, the flower and the leaf, the assembly of ladies, for example, and including “women’s songs” and the “female” love lyrics in the findern ms., is then discussed in some detail, the conclu sion again being that dramatic appropriateness rather than a woma n writer may well be the answer. this carefully argued and very convincing essay is closed by a series of references to instances from the late 15th and early 16th centuries in which women’s literacy and authorship may be accepted with conviction, above all in the field of the translation of devotional works, and the less devotional productions included in the so-called devonshire ms., and the author summarises the positive lessons to be learnt from what at first sight, she admits, might be considered a “gloomy concluding note”. “research in the field of women’s poetry in welsh”, ceridwen lloyd morgan as sures us, “is still … in its infancy”: her stimulating and informative essay thus repre sents a valuable contribution to its growth and development. contrary to julia boffey’s contention concerning english anonymous poetry, the author sees the experience reflected in some traditional folk-verses as so “gender specific” that she feels that “much of the published output of women may be hiding behind the “anonymous” label of poetry of this kind”. the names of some sixty-six female poets are registered in the history of ____________________________________________________________________ 147 welsh literature, although some of these may be purely legendary (inseult!), or the pseudonyms of male poets, and only two were active before 1500, examples of their work being in any case generally very limited. the author offers us interesting information concerning these two writers, the 12th. century poet’s daughter, gwenllian ferch rhirid flaidd, and especially the 15th. century gwerful mechain, as also concerning the transmission, copying and dissemi nation of their texts and of welsh texts in general and the confusion arising from the late manuscript tradition. the oral dimension has traditionally, and still is, we learn, important in welsh (e. g. the eistedfodd), and women’s compositions may have tended to be restricted to oral transmission which would explain the scarcity of texts by women writers. another explanation, the author suggests, is the limited access that women would have to training in the strict metres of welsh poetry, and it can hardly be a coincidence, therefore, that named women poets up to the 17th. century, with the exception of the fascinating gwerful mechain (and even she is supposed to have been the lover of a poet), were wives or daughters of male poets. conditions for composition would be different for women, and ceridwen lloyd-morgan cites examples of women poets from later centuries as possible analogues for earlier women writers, whilst pointing out likewis e that there were no female scribes before the 18th. century. what the author summarises for us concern ing gwerful mechain makes fascinating reading, and it is satisfying to learn that not being dependent on a patron for her living (one advantage of the patriarchal system!), she probably enjoyed greater freedom as regards her choice of themes, which is as wide and sometimes wider than that of her male contemporaries. although conforming to the forms and themes of the male tradition, her work, says the author, is distinguished by the specifically female viewpoint often expressed, and exemplified in this essay, which ends with a spirited and convincing defence of this able, proficient and versatile woman poet whose “tone varies from light-hearted to angst-ridden, from biting satire and anger to gentle funpoking, from the passionate to the devotional”, and who undoubtedly reviews, pat ricia shaw ____________________________________________________________________ 148 deserves the place in the welsh parnassus which male critics up to now have denied her. women as religious writers constitute the subje ct of jocelyn woganbrowne’s es say on anglo -norman hagiography in the 12th. and 13th. centuries, in which, before studying three hagiographic texts composed by women, a detailed analysis is offered on the one hand, of anglo -norman verse hagiography in general, and on the other, of “nunneries and their cultural traditions” in particular, emphasis being laid on the aris tocratic nature and connections of these nunneries, a fact of some consequence for a full appreciation of the hagiographic texts which we re mainly produced in such places. some sixty verse lives, concerning thirty-six saints, have survived in anglo -norman, three of which were written by women, two certainly, and the third, probably, nuns: these are the vie seinte audreåe by marie (of chatteris?) the vie de seinte catherine by clemence of barking and the vie d’edouard le confesseur by another nun of barking. these works are analysed in some detail, attention in the case of the women saints, and of edward’s queen, edith, being paid to what may be attributable in their characterisation to the sex and situation of their author in comparison with earlier or later versions or analogues by male writers: thus, st. audrey is presented less pas sively than in other versions, and her virginity seen as “the foundation of a female religious career”, a subject of obvious interest to real life anglo norman patronesses and foundresses. an interesting analysis is offered of the distinctive characteristics of clemence of barking’s st. catherine, in which emphasis is laid on “its heroine’s state of mind rather than her looks” and on a motivating emotional context (including a reference to the term “fin amors”) being supplied for the queen’s torture. it is a work which, in the opinion of the author, deserves to better known and conceded a higher literary status than has been the case up to now. the barking vie d’edouard le confesseur is likewise interesting on a number of counts, each of which is carefully explored by the author, including a comparison of the nun’s text and that of matthew paris’s 13th. century life of edward, since both share the ____________________________________________________________________ 149 same source: the vita by aelred of rievaulx. especially fruitful is the discussion of their respective treatments of queen edith, who is endowed by the nun of barking with a point of view and a will of her own, as opposed to the static romance heroine envisaged by matthew paris. the theme of the barking text lends itself to an interesting commentary on the medieval debate concerning the “chaste spouse” in lay and ecclesiastical models of marriage, exemplified not only in this text, but also in the different versions of the st. alexis legend, and the essay closes with a discussion of why, in the light of the value of the texts here studied, more hagiographic texts were not in fact produced by women. representations of women as lovers and mothers in middle english ro mance are the subject of studies by, respectively, flora alexander and jennifer fellows. the former dedicates her essay to discussing the question of female sexual passion and active response as reflected in early english ro mance, and in texts which all have french or anglo -norman versions too, emphasizing, for example, in layamon’s brut, a heightened amorous aware ness on the part both of guinevere and igerne, in comparison with their counterparts in wace’s earlier version. in this context, the author stresses the fact that layamon insists on igerne really believing that uther is her husband, gorlois, “something not said at all in wace”, but implicit, surely, in geoffrey of monmouth’s “she naturally believed all that he said and refused him nothing that he asked”. the idea of a woman as an exchangeable commodity re flected in 13th. century literature, the author goes on to comment, evidently corresponded to a real life situation, at least among the upper classes, but, as she points out, this conception of woman is criticised in works such as floris and blancheflour and sir tristrem, where there is an exaltation of love over riches, and of the sense of companionship which characterises the two pairs of lovers, and a deploring of woman’s situation as a mere chattel. women’s sexual inclinations are hinted at, the author suggests, even in religious alle gories (christ the knight has the “fairest” of faces in the ancrene wisse), and violent female passion is reflected in such works as king horn and sir reviews, pat ricia shaw ____________________________________________________________________ 150 tristrem (tristan’s mother), in contrast to the slowly burgeoning passion of an ysoude or a blancheflour. flora alexander sees such heroines as ysoude, rymenhild, blancheflour and belisaunt as strong women who are not only willing to take the initiative in their pursuit of love, but are also willing to die for it if need be, the author analysing in detail the respective romances in support of her contention that in these texts situations are generated “which require the woman to be active”, a fact symbolised, for example, in sir tristrem by ysoude’s calling for the fatal drink, instead, as in other versions, of tristan or a servant. flora alexander draws attention, in terestingly, to the active rôle assigned to the heroine’s mothers in these ro mances, as also to the english writers’ depiction of male and female lovers as participating in the love experience “on equal terms”, and offering each other mutual support and affection. the author warns us, at the close of her stimu lating essay, not to confuse fact with fiction, nor the freedom of choice of these literary hero ines with that of women in real life, whilst, however, making the surely very significant point that there was obviously “some taste for stories that showed women as resourceful, determined and committed to the pursuit of emotional satisfaction. it is the aim of jennifer fellows’ essay “to examine the attitudes towards mothers and motherhood either implicit or explicit” in middle english ro mances, by relating them to references to the maternal rôle in non-narrative literature, in order to try to as sess to what extent “a distinctive medieval view of motherhood” emerges from these romances ”. here again, as in flora alexander’s study, it is suggested that care must be taken to avoid, for example, confusing “the idealisation of motherhood in the abstract” patent in much devotional and marian imagery, with attitudes to actual mothers in the middle ages, and we are reminded of the ways in which the medieval view of woman was coloured by scriptural and patristic exegesis: in spite of some conflicting interpretations, such texts seemed to reflect a general consensus concerning the passivity, the sensuality and the uncleanness of women. after insisting that post-conquest mothers enjoyed very little freedom ____________________________________________________________________ 151 insofar as rearing their children was concerned, and giving cogent reasons for the me dieval tendency to marginalise daughters, the author examines a number of romances in order to see to what extent real life motherhood is “reflected or endorsed” in such literary texts. she begins her analysis with the “calumniated wife” group of romances, in which young and recent mothers who are made to suffer by their envious and vindictive mothers -in-law, acquire individuality and moral stature pre cisely through their maternal virtues, both as defenders and educators of their helpless and fatherless sons. flo rence, in octavian, whose contant invocations to mary as the mother of christ add a spiritual dimension to the story, emareå, margaret in sir tryamour, and bellyssant and valentine and orson, whose relationship to her children is depicted in more emo tional tones, but who, in fact, as jennifer fellows suggests, actually does less for them than the other three mothers. the theme of a father-son separation implicit in this group is likewise the leitmotif of the group of romances concerned with unmarried mothers, who, however, as lovers or mothers of the heroes (eglamour, torrent, de gareå and generydes) are treated sympathetically, varying narrative strategies being employed to justify their behaviour. an in teresting analysis is offered of the oedipal implications in romances such as sir eglamour and degareå, where a lengthy mother-son separation permits an incestuous relationship to be at least conceivable, and some consideration is given to such tales as sir perceval of gales and lybeaus desconus, in which over-protective, or over-possessive, mothers keep their sons secluded from the world. wicked stepmothers and mothers in-law are a staple of romance, wicked mothers less so, and for this reason bevis’s mother, at first sight, arouses one’s interest; however, as the author quite rightly points out, the whole romance is informed with a kind of gratuitous misogyny, and no real attempt is made to portray this evil woman as a mother, and the same may be said of bevis’s wife, josian. such romances are, as the author reminds us, es sentially son-centred: “in general the mothers of romance heroines are conspicuous by their absence”. older motherreviews, pat ricia shaw ____________________________________________________________________ 152 figures, such as the mothers -in-law, are particularly malicious where younger women are concerned, she suggests, and she sees in blancheflour’s surrogate mother (floris and blancheflour) a refreshing exception to this rule; another might be found, perhaps, in belisaunt’s mother in amis and amiloun, who, as flora alexander points out (p. 35), is directly responsible for the happy encounter between her daughter and amis. after a brief analysis of lay le freine, “the most extended treatment of a mother-daughter relationship in middle english ro mance” and a rare example of a work protagonised by a heroine (the original story, of course, was by marie de france!), the author offers an excellent summary of her findings, which lead her to conclude finally, that the ro mances provide evidence to suggest that “the medieval period was somewhat more sympathetic to female predicaments and less misogynistic than a study of its clerical writings alone might lead us to believe”. in fine, this volume may be considered as a valuable contribution to a very wide field of medieval studies, offering as it does interesting insights into, and evidence concerning, the socio -cultural backgrounds to women’s literacy and their relationship with the written word, bringing to the fore hitherto little appreciated works, such as clemence of barking’s life of st. catherine, or writers, such as gwerful mechain, and throwing new and thought-provoking light both on the vision of women in their perennial and universal rôles as lovers and mothers presented in the middle english ro mance, and on the possible relationship between these fictional portraits and the actualities of medieval life. patricia shaw university of oviedo * † * selim 20.indb leonard neidorf, selim 20 (2013–2014): 7–48issn: 1132–631x lexical evidence for the relative chronology of old english poetry abstract: this article explores the dating implications of rare vocabulary attested in beowulf, genesis a, daniel, exodus, maxims i, and widsið. it argues that these poems preserve an archaic lexical stratum, which consists of words that became obsolete before the composition of ninth-century poetry and prose. keywords: beowulf, anglo-saxon literature, history of the english language, germanic philology, lexicology. resumen: este artículo explora las implicaciones cronológicas de ciertos elementos léxicos poco fr ecuentes que se dan en beowulf, genesis a, daniel, exodus, maxims i y widsið. el argumento principal es que estos poemas preservan un sustrato léxico arcaico consistente en palabras que se volvieron obsoletas antes de que la poesía y la prosa del siglo noveno fueran compuestas. palabras clave: beowulf, literatura anglosajona, historia de la lengua inglesa, filología germánica, lexicología. linguistic attempts to establish a relative chronology of old english poetry can be divided into two broad categories: the metrical and the lexical.1 metrical studies are concerned with the distribution of verses in which words must scan according to their older phonological values. a poem abounding with verses requiring archaic phonology for scansion was probably composed much earlier than a poem exhibiting few or no such verses. lexical studies, on the other hand, are concerned with the distribution of words whose restricted attestation might possess chronological signifi cance. a poem containing a cluster of words that became obsolete early in the anglo-saxon period was probably composed well before a poem that lacks such words and exhibits neologisms or late borrowings. although metrical and lexical studies fall under the umbrella of linguistic argumentation, 1 other forms of linguistic evidence tend to bear on the dating of individual poems rather than on the relative chronology of the poetic corpus; see, for example, the syntactic and morphological evidence discussed in fulk 2007a. because of the quantity of material involved, short titles and texts cited in this study are those used in the doe. for the purpose of disambiguation, macrons are silently inserted over long vowels throughout. leonard neidorf 8selim 20 (2013–2014) they deal with separate phenomena whose dating implications derive fr om unrelated developments in the history of the english language. accordingly, the conclusions drawn in metrical studies can be tested against the conclusions independently drawn in lexical studies, and vice versa. if lexical evidence contradicts metrical evidence, for example, this might provide some basis for querying or refi ning the conclusions drawn in metrical studies. if lexical and metrical evidence consistently demand the same chronological conclusions, however, then the probability that these conclusions are correct is considerably strengthened. metrical evidence has been studied far more intensively than lexical evidence, with the result that several metrical criteria are now recognized as reliable indicators of relative chronology. perhaps the most reliable dating criterion is the incidence of verses requiring non-contraction or non-parasiting for scansion (fulk 1992: 66–121). non-contraction is evident in verses such as “on fl ett gæð” (beo 2034b), where gæð must scan as disyllabic *gæ-iþ, the form of this verb before it underwent contraction during the seventh century, since the verse would otherwise contain only three metrical positions (ss). non-parasiting is evident in verses such as “đær wæs hæleþa hleahtor” (beo 611a), where hleahtor must scan as monosyllabic *hleahtr, the form of this noun before it underwent parasiting in the seventh century, since the verse would otherwise contain fi ve metrical positions (ss). r. d. fulk has demonstrated that the distribution of verses exhibiting non-contraction, non-parasiting, and other older phonological features is remarkably consistent throughout the corpus of longer old english poems (1992: 348–351). verses requiring archaic phonology for scansion occur with the highest incidence and greatest lexical variety in beowulf, genesis a, daniel, and exodus. the incidence of these archaisms generally declines in cynewulfi an poetry, regresses further in alfr edian poetry, and reaches its nadir in poems externally datable to the tenth and eleventh centuries. the consistent pattern of their distribution 9 lexical evidence for the relative chronology oe poetry selim 20 (2013–2014) indicates that metrical criteria such as contraction, parasiting, compensatory lengthening upon loss of h, and analogical lengthening in diphthongal stems can reliably adumbrate a relative chronology of old english poetry. metrical dating scholarship has reached a fairly advanced state: the distribution of various kinds of chronologically signifi cant verses throughout the corpus is well known and the validity of several dating criteria has been established. the arguments of fulk’s monumental a history of old english meter have been repeatedly validated in philological scholarship in the two decades since its publication.2 metrical studies fr om geoff rey russom, michael lapidge, and thomas a. bredehoft have identifi ed additional criteria whose distribution lends independent support to fulk’s relative chronology of old english poetry.3 lexical dating scholarship, in comparison, remains somewhat underdeveloped. in 1952, robert j. menner published an illuminating study, in which he contrasted the vocabulary of beowulf and genesis a with that of late poems such as the meters of boethius and the paris psalter.4 lexical argumentation of this sort received little attention in the dating controversies that erupted over the next few decades. the value of restricted vocabulary went largely ignored in scholarship until dennis cronan published a meticulous study in 2004, which refi ned and substantially augmented menner’s arguments. cronan contended that the restriction of a cluster of rare poetic simplexes to beowulf, genesis a, daniel, exodus, maxims i, and widsið is best explained by postulating a relatively early date of composition for 2 in addition to the studies cited in the next footnote, see clemoes 1995: 1–67; griffi th 1997: 44–47; lapidge 2000; bremmer 2004; shippey 2005; neidorf 2013b; doane 2013: 37–41, 51–55; neidorf 2014; hartman 2014; clark 2014; neidorf & pascual forthcoming [2015]. 3 russom 2002; lapidge 2006; bredehoft 2014. 4 menner 1952 is reviewed favorably alongside other lexical dating studies in amos 1980: 141–156. leonard neidorf 10selim 20 (2013–2014) these poems. his conclusion has commanded widespread assent fr om scholars, with the exception of roberta frank, who recently published an essay (2008) off ering alternative interpretations of cronan’s data. because lexical investigation into the relative chronology of old english poetry is still in its infancy, much work remains to be done both in identify ing chronologically signifi cant words and in articulating the methodological considerations governing the interpretation of their dating implications. the present article aims to advance both of these enterprises and is therefore divided into two sections. the fi rst section gauges the relative probability of the competing hypotheses propounded by cronan and frank, and thereby reviews the existing lexical evidence for the relative chronology. numerous methodological considerations emerge in this analysis, which then inform the interpretation of new lexical data adduced in the second section of this article. because cronan’s study focused on poetic simplexes restricted to two or three poems, many words with potential chronological signifi cance have been excluded fr om consideration. the second section of this article represents a preliminary attempt to identify words that fell outside of the purview of cronan’s study, but bear on the explanatory power of his hypothesis. of particular interest are words whose distribution in the corpus of recorded old english suggests that they became obsolete early in the anglosaxon period. the presence of these words in various poems may constitute strong evidence for the falsifi cation or validation of hypotheses concerning their dates of composition. the relative chronology erected upon other linguistic evidence will here be tested and found to generate data that either confi rm or contradict its predictions. 1 restricted poetic simplexes before individual words and the competing interpretations of their chronological signifi cance can be discussed, it is necessary fi rst to 11 lexical evidence for the relative chronology oe poetry selim 20 (2013–2014) lay out the evidence as a whole. cronan identifi ed fourteen poetic simplexes whose restricted attestation establishes a connection between six poems. the simplexes and the poems in which they appear are as follows: dyhtig (“strong”), fær (“vessel”), fr eme (“vigorous”), and gombe (“tribute”), restricted to beowulf and genesis a; eodor (“protector”), heoru (“sword”), wlenco (“bravado”), and umbor (“child”), restricted to beowulf and maxims i; suhtriga (“nephew”), restricted to genesis a, beowulf, and widsið; missere (“half-year”), restricted to beowulf, genesis a, and exodus; þengel (“lord”), restricted to beowulf and exodus; lufen (“joy”) and wǣfr e (“restless”), restricted to beowulf and daniel; and bresne (“mighty”), restricted to genesis a and daniel. cronan off ered a chronological explanation for the restriction of these words: the poems in which they appear were probably composed at a relatively early date and therefore preserve a stratum of inherited poetic vocabulary unavailable to later old english poets. as will become clear, the value of each individual simplex is not commensurate. some of these words would constitute compelling dating criteria on their own, while others would not, but it is the ability of a hypothesis to accommodate the whole of the evidence that matters most. the methodology of cronan’s study and the rationale informing his conclusion can be illustrated with his analysis of suhtriga (nephew), the word with perhaps the clearest dating implications. in poetry, suhtriga occurs as a simplex only in genesis a, where it is used four times in reference to lot, the nephew of abraham.5 the only other attestations of suhtriga in the poetic corpus occur in beowulf and widsið, where the compound suhter(ge)fædren (“nephew-and-uncle”) is applied to hroðulf and hroðgar.6 this word is a rare example of a dvandva or copulative compound: it is one of just four dvandvas recorded in the early germanic languages and represents a type of word-formation that ceased to be productive in 5 gena 1775, 1901, 2071, 2029. 6 beo 1164, wid 46. leonard neidorf 12selim 20 (2013–2014) prehistoric old english.7 elsewhere in the corpus of recorded old english, the word suhtriga appears only in glossaries, all of which derive fr om an eighth-century exemplar and refl ect seventh-century glossae collectae.8 the restriction of suhtriga to genesis a, archaic glosses, and a fossilized compound leads cronan to conclude that this word must have fallen out of the english language very early in the anglo-saxon period. a strong case for the obsolescence of suhtriga can be made, moreover, since synonymous words, such as brōðorsunu and nefa, are attested in texts throughout the anglosaxon period. later authors had ample opportunity to use suhtriga, but only a seventh-century glossator and the poets of genesis a, beowulf, and widsið seem to have been aware of the word’s existence. in her attempt to rebut cronan’s argument, frank raised two objections to his interpretation of the dating implications of suhtriga. one objection is that “suhtriga and brōðorsunu are not exact synonyms; the poetic simplex refers to ancient founding fathers of the tribe, fi gures drenched in sacrality, not to uncle wally washing dishes” (2008: 7). there are several reasons why this assertion is not credible. first, the semantic parity of brōðorsunu and suhtriga is indicated by the fact that both of these words are used in glossaries as the equivalent of fr atuelis.9 second, the genesis a poet labeled lot both a suhtriga and a brōðorsunu; the words were evidently synonymous to him.10 third, when ælfr ic writes of 7 see carr 1939: 40–42. the three other copulative compounds recorded are old english āþumswēoran, “son-in-law and father-in-law” (beo 84), old saxon gisunfader, “son and father” (heliand 1176), and old high german sunufatarungo, “son and father” (hildebrandslied 4). 8 see cronan 2004: 36–38; on the seventh-century origin of the glossae collectae, see lapidge 1986: 58. 9 for example, cf. corpgl 2 6.320: “fratuelis brōðorsunu;” corpgl 2 6.319: “fratuelis suhterga.” 10 lot is abraham’s brōðorsunu in gena 1800. twenty-fi ve lines earlier, lot is abraham’s suhtriga. 13 lexical evidence for the relative chronology oe poetry selim 20 (2013–2014) lot in his translation of genesis, he refers to him as a brōðorsunu, not a suhtriga (see cronan 2004: 39). in short, the restriction of suhtriga cannot be explained by arguing that this word could only be used in special or unparalleled contexts. broader consideration of the relationship between suhtriga and its synonyms suggests that suhtriga was a mundane word for the genesis a poet, who, like the early glossators, used it as a functional expression for nephew. later authors refr ained fr om using suhtriga not because they lacked suitable contexts, but because the word had become obsolete. frank’s second objection to cronan’s interpretation of suhtriga is that “[i]f cronan had selected another gloss-word of restricted poetic distribution,” his conclusions would have been rather diff erent (2008: 6). frank then proceeds to discuss the distribution of bune (“cup”), which appears in the same glossaries as suhtriga and in beowulf, maxims i, the wanderer, and judith.11 the import of frank’s discussion is that since the distribution of bune is apparently meaningless—that is, the word appears both in poems presumed to be early and in poems presumed to be late—then the distribution of suhtriga should be meaningless as well. she writes: “if the use of bune does not transform judith and the wanderer into eighth-century compositions, then the presence of suhtriga in beowulf, genesis a, and widsið is no magic wand either” (2008: 7). one need not be much of a logician to recognize that frank’s conclusion does not follow fr om its premises. the distribution of bune reveals simply that bune remained in circulation throughout the anglo-saxon period. the same holds true for many words that appear both in glossaries and in poems, such as mēce (“sword”) or gār (“spear”).12 yet the long lifespan of certain words cannot be imagined to extend the short lifespan of others. the perseverance of bune has no bearing on the obsolescence of suhtriga, and therefore 11 beo 2775; max i 82; jud 17; wan 94; hlgl c 339; corpgl 2 3.266; clgl 1 888. 12 see doe corpus search: “mece,” “gar.” leonard neidorf 14selim 20 (2013–2014) does not diminish the probability that texts containing the latter are early compositions. several other restricted simplexes permit an analysis similar to suhtriga. one word whose early obsolescence is probable is gombe (“tribute”), which appears only in beowulf and genesis a. in both poems, it is used in the formula gomban gyldan (“pay tribute”).13 in the heliand, the old saxon cognate gambra is also collocated with gelden (355), which indicates that the formula is a common inheritance of west germanic poetic tradition (cronan 2004: 29). the restriction of gombe to a formulaic expression limited to two archaic poems suggests “that the word was obsolete in the colloquial language, if it had ever been used there, and was on its way to becoming obsolete in the poetry as well” (cronan 2004: 29). cronan’s analysis appears sound, since later poets use gafol and gafolrǣden in reference to the rendering of tribute.14 frank objects to cronan’s reasoning with the remark: “perhaps gombe seemed a more appropriate word for the heroic, buccaneering days of scyld and abraham than its synonyms gafol or gafolrǣden, terms that in old english prose also meant taxes, interest on loans, and rents” (2008: 8–9). the objection is leveled in error, however, since gafol actually appears alongside gombe in genesis a. the two words alliterate and vary the expression of the same idea in the line gombon gieldan and gafol sellan (gena 1978); the evident parity of the two words falsifi es the notion that gombe reeked of antiquity, while gafol evoked bureaucracy. frank’s objection also is untenable because cynewulf and the andreas poet composed about events set in the distant past, yet they used gafol or gafolrǣden, not gombe.15 the 13 beo 11; gena 1978. 14 in addition to the references in the following footnote, see guthb 986 and mald 33, 46. 15 jul 529; and 296; it is worth noting that cynewulf collocates gafol with geārdagum in christii 559. 15 lexical evidence for the relative chronology oe poetry selim 20 (2013–2014) restriction of gombe to beowulf and genesis a lends clear support to cronan’s chronological hypothesis. like gombe, the simplex fær (“vessel”) is found only in beowulf and genesis a.16 synonymous words appear throughout the poetic corpus—including bāt, cēol, cnear, fl ēot, fl ota, lid, naca, and scip— therefore cronan regards the restriction of fær to beowulf and genesis a as strong evidence of a lexical connection between the two poems (2004: 28). just as suhtriga was evidently displaced by synonyms such as nefa and brōðorsunu, it is reasonable to think that fær was lost rather early amid the multitude of comparable words. frank rejects this chronological explanation and argues instead that the restriction of fær is due to the particularized meaning of the word, which has hitherto gone unrecognized in dictionaries and glossaries. aft er observing that fær is used in reference to noah’s ark in genesis a and in reference to scyld scefi ng’s ship in beowulf, frank writes: “for some reason, fær seemed to two anglo-saxon poets the right word for a divinely propelled vessel” (2008: 8). the notion that fær is restricted because of this purported meaning is dubious: the poets of beowulf and genesis a vary the word with commonplace terms such as cēol and scip, which suggests that these poets did not regard fær as a semantically diff erentiated entity.17 but even if frank’s ad hoc redefi nition of fær were admitted, and the word were taken to mean “divinely propelled vessel” rather than “vessel,” this would hardly diminish the signifi cance of its restriction to beowulf and genesis a. there are many references to divinely propelled vessels (typically arks) in later old english texts, yet the word fær remains restricted to two archaic poems.18 16 beo 33; gena 1307, 1323, 1394(?), 1419, 1544. 17 scip: beo 35, gena 1306, gena 1417. cēol: beo 38. 18 see doe corpus search: “earc.” it is worth noting that in andreas, christ himself propels a vessel, which is labeled a cēol (349). if fær were the precise term for a divinely propelled vessel, surely it would have been used in that context. leonard neidorf 16selim 20 (2013–2014) of the four words restricted to beowulf and maxims i, umbor (“child”) is the clearest contender for early obsolescence. the simplex umbor occurs only in maxims i, while the compound umborwesende (“being a child”) occurs only in beowulf.19 because synonymous words such as cild, cniht, and bearn are used throughout the extant corpus, cronan treats umbor as strong evidence for a lexical connection between beowulf and maxims i. like the thirteen other restricted simplexes, umbor would seem to belong to an archaic stratum of the lexicon lost before the composition of later works. frank off ers no alternative explanation for its restriction, which is not surprising, given the inconspicuous and inconsequential nature of this word.20 it would be diffi cult to see in the use of umbor anything other than the straightforward deployment of a functional word that simply fell out of the language at a relatively early date. the restriction of þengel (“lord”) to beowulf and exodus is signifi cant, since synonymous words (dryhten, fr ēa, hlāford, þēoden, etc.) are used in virtually every long old english poem.21 because of the poetic status of the old icelandic cognate þengill, cronan concludes that þengel “appears to be an old poetic word which was obsolete except for its use in the conservative diction of beowulf and exodus” (2004: 41). a similar explanation is given for the restriction of missere (“half-year”) to beowulf, genesis a, and exodus.22 this word, used in formulaic expressions for the passage of time, such as fela missera and hund missera, was evidently supplanted early by gēar and winter, which are used throughout the poetic corpus in parallel expressions (2004: 40). the probability of the early obsolescence of missere is considerable, since the existence of an old icelandic cognate (missari) and the formulaic use of the word indicate that 19 max i 31; beo 46. 1187. 20 frank (2008: 8) reiterates cronan’s remarks (2004: 34–35) about umbor and adds nothing further. 21 beo 1507; ex 173. 22 beo 153, 1498, 1769, 2620; gena 1168, 1743, 2347; ex 49. 17 lexical evidence for the relative chronology oe poetry selim 20 (2013–2014) it must have been part of the lexicon of prehistoric old english, whereas its absence fr om all datable texts suggests that it had fallen out of the language by the ninth century. the restriction of missere to beowulf, genesis a, and exodus is another strong piece of evidence supporting the hypothesis that these poems preserve an archaic lexical stratum because they were composed at an early date. frank objects to cronan’s chronological interpretation of the restriction of þengel and missere by hypothesizing that the use of these words refl ects the infl uence of tenth-century skaldic poetry (2008: 9). it is surprising to see the hypothesis of skaldic infl uence on these poems resurrected, since it has been repeatedly discredited and it involves a number of well-known improbabilities.23 chief among the reasons why skaldic infl uence is improbable is the fact that there is no linguistic rationale for regarding the words frank deems “skaldic” to be late scandinavian borrowings rather than common germanic inheritances. as matthew townend wrote regarding beowulf: “its 3,182 lines contain not a single clear loanword fr om old norse, and the proposed lexical parallels are almost certainly cognates and not loans or loan-translations” (2000: 357). furthermore, although old english and old norse were mutually intelligible to a limited degree, as townend (2002) has demonstrated, it is not reasonable to imagine that anglosaxons could comprehend skaldic poetry. that is rather like positing that a medieval italian could comprehend the latin poetry of aldhelm at the speed of recitation. a limited degree of 23 on the improbability of skaldic infl uence on beowulf, see fulk 1982: 343–345; andersson 1983: 295–297; harris 2007; fulk 2014. the arguments of hofmann (1957) for skaldic infl uence on genesis a and exodus were refuted in irving 1959. stanley 1969 also rejects the possibility of scandinavian infl uence on exodus. for a reliable account of linguistic interactions between speakers of old english and old norse, see townend 2002; and kastovsky 1992: 320–336. neither townend nor kastovsky nor any reputable linguist credits the notion that the infl uence of the old norse language or skaldic poetry is discernible in beowulf, genesis a, or exodus. leonard neidorf 18selim 20 (2013–2014) mutual intelligibility between languages hardly ensures that the most artifi cial and convoluted works composed in one language would be comprehensible to speakers of the other language.24 an additional degree of improbability attends the hypothesis that missere is a late borrowing: the use of this word in formulaic expressions forces proponents of skaldic infl uence to believe that three poets independently chose to deploy a new word in identical verses. the formulaic status of missere confi rms that this word had an ancient place in germanic poetic tradition. for this reason and many others, the hypothesis of skaldic infl uence is untenable, and cronan’s interpretation of the data must be preferred. frank resorts to a diff erent line of reasoning when attempting to explain the restriction of dyhtig (“strong”) to beowulf and genesis a and the restriction of heoru (“sword”) to beowulf and maxims i.25 cronan, for reasons similar to those propounded above in connection with the other simplexes, regards the restricted attestation of dyhtig and heoru as further evidence for the preservation of an archaic stratum of the lexicon in a set of poems composed at a relatively early date. frank objects to his interpretation by arguing that dyhtig and heoru are not genuine signs of archaic composition, but rather are self-consciously archaizing gestures. in her view, dyhtig should be regarded as a “ye olde sign” and so should heoru, which was apparently selected over its numerous synonyms (bil(l), ecg, mēce, etc.) because it “evokes bedrock beginnings in a distant longago” (2008: 9–10). this line of reasoning, which for the sake of convenience might be labeled “the theory of conscious archaism,” merits extended discussion in the present context, since it is one of the objections most fr equently leveled at linguistic dating 24 ironically, frank articulated this view in a book review: “although opland expertly surveys the infl uence of old norse on old english poetic traditions in the time of athelstan, i remain unconvinced about the easy intelligibility of the skalds to their english audiences” (frank 1982: 154). the remark is surprising, since unintelligibility would seem to obviate the possibility of lexical infl uence. 25 dyhtig: beo 1287; gena 1993. heoru: beo 1258, 1590, 2358; max i 200. 19 lexical evidence for the relative chronology oe poetry selim 20 (2013–2014) studies. because agnostic scholars tend to give some version of the theory of conscious archaism as a reason for not crediting linguistic argumentation, it remains necessary to demonstrate why that theory lacks explanatory power and refl ects an inadequate understanding of the evidence. the theory of conscious archaism might seem plausible at a theoretical level, but its implausibility becomes apparent when it moves fr om theoretical abstraction to concrete linguistic evidence. the theory generates gross improbabilities, for example, when it is deployed against the evidence for kaluza’s law in beowulf. the poem carefully observes the law in sixty-two a2a verses like goldwine gumena, in which an etymologically short desinence is resolved, and forty-four d2 verses like eald æscwiga, in which an etymologically long desinence suspends resolution.26 in 106 verses, the beowulf poet observed distinctions of etymological length in twenty-fi ve diff erent desinences that became phonologically indistinct in mercia by around 725.27 this subtle regularity constitutes arguably the most compelling evidence for the early composition of beowulf. yet frank, in a diff erent paper, argued that the poem’s adherence to kaluza’s law is not a genuine sign of archaic composition, but a conscious “ye olde sign” intended to evoke a bygone era (2007: 858– 860). this application of the theory of conscious archaism fails, however, because there is no phonological reason why these verses should have sounded archaic to anglo-saxon ears. resolution and its suspension were mundane features of old english verse: the only distinguishing feature of kaluza verses is that resolution is restricted to desinences that were short in proto-germanic (or shortened in prehistoric old english). unless poets and audiences consulted grammars of proto-germanic before a recitation of 26 for a list of the verses in beowulf adhering to kaluza’s law, see bliss 1958: 27–30; and fulk 1992: 160–162; the literature on kaluza’s law is reviewed in neidorf and pascual forthcoming [2015]. 27 see fulk 1992: 381–392; and fulk 2007: 321. leonard neidorf 20selim 20 (2013–2014) beowulf, they would have no basis for associating kaluza verses with deep antiquity. to believe that kaluza’s law is a conscious archaism, one must eff ectively believe that the beowulf poet composed for an audience of germanic philologists. theories of conscious archaism generally force their proponents to attribute to anglo-saxon poets an improbable degree of insight into the history of the english language. the attribution tends to be implicit, as above, but in the case of heoru, frank explicitly compares the beowulf poet and the maxims i poet to john milton, seamus heaney, and nineteenth-century philologists (2008: 10–11). just as milton chose to use the word error in its etymological sense (“wandering”), the poets behind beowulf and maxims i purportedly chose to use heoru in its etymological sense (“sword”) rather than in the generalized sense (“war, battle”) it later developed. their preference for the word’s etymological meaning allegedly refl ects the desire of these poets to go “back to roots” and evoke an ancient era; as frank notes, “milton knew his latin and greek roots” (2008: 10). yet is there any independent reason for us to believe that the beowulf poet or the maxims i poet possessed special insights into the etymology of poetic simplexes? the only evidence given for their purported etymologizing tendency is heoru. frank’s theory is thus entirely ad hoc and narrowly circular: it explains and fi nds support in no evidence besides the single word around which it was developed. the ad hoc quality of the aforementioned argument is not surprising, since every iteration of the theory of conscious archaism is the product of ad hoc reasoning. the theory is in essence parasitic, because it can only be developed as an objection to a metrical or lexical dating argument already propounded. it is doubtful that any scholar would propose that a poem’s adherence to kaluza’s law is a conscious archaism if another scholar had not previously argued that this adherence refl ected a phonological regularity dating beowulf to c. 700. the same holds true with regard to dyhtig, gombe, and other words frank considers to be conscious archaisms because 21 lexical evidence for the relative chronology oe poetry selim 20 (2013–2014) they appear in poems set in the distant past. since the entire poem is set in the distant past, what independent method could be used for distinguishing words deployed as “ye olde signs” fr om words that are not? was every word in beowulf and genesis a selected for its ability to evoke a bygone era? the parasitic nature of the theory of conscious archaism is clear fr om the fact that its methods cannot rationally be employed independent of eff orts to critique linguistic dating scholarship. marshaled in a study devoid of such an aim, frank’s methods for identify ing some phenomena, but not others, as conscious archaisms would appear to be as arbitrary and impressionistic as sievers’s schallanalyse.28 no rational criteria can be extracted that enable one to distinguish conscious archaisms fr om regular words; the method thus belongs to divination rather than scholarship. the ad hoc origin of the theory of conscious archaism is made plain by its lack of reproducible methodology. on the whole, there are two overarching reasons why cronan’s interpretation of the restricted poetic simplexes must be preferred over frank’s. the fi rst is that frank’s various alternative hypotheses uniformly fail to explain the restricted attestation of the words under consideration. the second is that frank’s argumentation is the product of an ad hoc mode of reasoning, which is demonstrably inferior to cronan’s holistic reasoning. cronan developed a unitary hypothesis capable of explaining all of the data: the fourteen restricted simplexes belong to an archaic stratum of the lexicon preserved only in six poems composed at a relatively early date. the explanatory power of this hypothesis is elevated further by its ability 28 schallanalyse (“sound-analysis”) was an unscientifi c method for identify ing interpolations developed by eduard sievers toward the end of his life. sievers’s enthusiasm for schallanalyse is generally regarded as an unfortunate byproduct of mental illness; it has no relationship to the fünfty pensystem for which the great philologist remains justly famous. for an account of schallanalyse and the responses it generated, see pope 1998: 185–189. interestingly, menner’s (1952) lexical study emerged as an eff ort to refute conclusions derived fr om schallanalyse on the dating and authorship of genesis a. leonard neidorf 22selim 20 (2013–2014) to accommodate a great deal of metrical and paleographical evidence beside the restricted simplexes.29 frank’s several hypotheses, on the other hand, explain nothing beside the particular phenomena at which they are narrowly aimed. disregarding occam’s razor, frank discards a coherent hypothesis and replaces it with a multitude of incoherent hypotheses: we are to believe that one word is a late borrowing fr om skaldic verse, that another word is a “ye olde sign,” that yet another word possesses a hitherto unrecognized meaning, etc. this is methodologically unsound reasoning, which evinces little real interest in ascertaining the most probable explanation of linguistic phenomena. even if frank’s alternative hypotheses were individually plausible, it would be illogical to exchange a coherent hypothesis for a haphazard assemblage of hypotheses, especially when the former hypothesis is capable of explaining signifi cantly more data than all of the others combined. in sum, frank’s objections provide no rational basis for doubting cronan’s chronological hypothesis. it remains most reasonable to conclude that the fourteen aforementioned simplexes are restricted to beowulf, genesis a, daniel, exodus, maxims i, and widsið because these poems preserve an archaic lexical stratum lost before the composition of later poetry and prose. the majority of the simplexes—suhtriga, gombe, fær, dyhtig, bresne, umbor, þengel, and missere—are probably restricted because they ceased to be used in the spoken language and in poetic discourse at a relatively early date. the presence of synonymous words in texts composed throughout the anglo-saxon period makes obsolescence the most logical explanation for the restriction of these simplexes to poems judged to be archaic on the basis of independent metrical criteria. the other restricted simplexes cronan discussed – fr eme, eodor, heoru, wlenco, lufen, and wǣfr e—are not as straightforward in their dating implications, for reasons too complex to explore 29 see, for example, fulk 1992; fulk 2007b; lapidge 2000; doane 2013: 37–41; neidorf 2013b. 23 lexical evidence for the relative chronology oe poetry selim 20 (2013–2014) here.30 for example, eodor, heoru, and wlenco remained in use, but they underwent semantic shift s, and are found possessing their original (or poetic) meanings only in the corpus of archaic poetry. obsolescence applies in these cases not to the words themselves, but to the meanings they possessed. these semantic archaisms refl ect the variety of linguistic indications of chronological priority to be found in the earliest english poems. 2 the archaic lexical stratum cronan’s study has demonstrated that lexical evidence corroborates the chronological conclusions independently drawn in metrical dating studies. metrical criteria such as parasiting, contraction, and kaluza’s law provide a set of independent reasons for regarding beowulf, genesis a, daniel, and exodus as part of a corpus of archaic poetry composed early in the anglo-saxon period. the distribution of verses requiring archaic phonology for scansion adumbrates a relative chronology of old english poetry wherein beowulf and the old testament poems were composed prior to the cynewulfi an poems, which were composed prior to the alfr edian poems, which were composed prior to the poems datable to the tenth and eleventh centuries. if beowulf, genesis a, daniel, and exodus were genuinely composed prior to the majority of extant old english texts, we might expect them to contain lexical indications of their chronological priority. that they do indeed contain such indications is powerful corroboration of the metrical dating criteria. at present, the hypothesis that the corpus of archaic poetry preserves an archaic lexical stratum lost before the composition of later poetry and prose accommodates fourteen simplexes. the purpose of the remainder of this article is to examine the vocabulary of the earliest english poems and determine how many other restricted words are complementarily explained under the foregoing hypothesis. does the archaic lexical stratum consist exclusively of 30 for the discussion of these words, see cronan 2004: 28–33, 42–49. leonard neidorf 24selim 20 (2013–2014) the fourteen words identifi ed by cronan? if a hypothesis formulated to explain one set of data were found to explain incidentally an array of other data, the probability that it is correct would be signifi cantly strengthened. the present study focuses therefore on words that fell outside of the purview of cronan’s study, which sought to identify restricted poetic simplexes in order to establish a lexical connection between a set of poems. because of this aim, cronan necessarily excluded hapax legomena, compounds, and words that are attested in only one poem. such exclusion was logical, since the interpretation of the restriction of these words involves a set of considerations that would not apply to restricted simplexes. for words attested in only one poem, the possibility that these words refl ect the innovative tendencies of an idiosyncratic author is very real, whereas that possibility need not be entertained for words (such as umbor, gombe, etc.) attested in at least two poems. the central question governing the interpretation of the ten restricted words to be discussed below is whether obsolescence or innovation is the more probable cause for the word’s restricted attestation. to be sure, the restricted attestation of a given word is not inherently signifi cant. teosol (“die”) is restricted to maxims i and glossaries, but it would be foolish to advance a chronological explanation for the word’s restriction, since the genuine cause for the restriction is plain enough: dice rarely appear in extant old english texts.31 to regard a rare word as an indication of relatively early or late composition, a clear argument for obsolescence or innovation must be mounted. a fi ne example of an argument for lexical innovation can be found in franz dietrich’s study of hycgan and hopian, in which he contended that the use of the verb hopian in judith is a sign of the poem’s late composition.32 elsewhere in the poetic corpus, hopian is found exclusively in the meters of boethius, a work securely dated to the later anglo-saxon period. in earlier 31 max i 183; erfgl 1 998; corpgl 2 18.84; epgl 865. 32 see dietrich 1853; cf. amos 1980: 148–149. 25 lexical evidence for the relative chronology oe poetry selim 20 (2013–2014) old english poetry and in other corpora of early germanic poetry, the synonymous hycgan is preferred and hopian seems to have been either unknown to or consciously avoided by traditional poets. the restricted attestation of hopian suggests that its presence in judith refl ects a late innovation licensed by change in the poetic tradition. this interpretation of the data fi nds support in the metrical criteria, such as parasiting and contraction, which independently establish the probability that judith is a relatively late poem. unless it is accompanied by a detailed argument for obsolescence or innovation, the observation that a word is restricted to one or two texts is meaningless and bound to generate erroneous conclusions. for example, frank has observed that there are certain lexical affi nities linking beowulf, alexander’s letter to aristotle, and blickling homily 16 (2008: 11–13).33 she regards the restriction of nicor (“sea-monster”) to these three texts as a signifi cant lexical connection between them (2008: 12).34 because frank presumes that the prose texts are tenth-century compositions, she sees this lexical connection as evidence favoring a later dating of beowulf. yet in the case of nicor, no argument for innovation or obsolescence is made, nor could one reasonably be made: it cannot be imagined that nicor supplanted or was supplanted by another word, since references to sea-monsters are rare and no plausible synonym for nicor exists. but if the lexical connection between beowulf, alexander, and blickling 16 genuinely demanded a chronological explanation, it would be the opposite of what frank proposed. the heavily mercian language of alexander and blickling 16 diff ers markedly fr om prose texts known to have been composed during the tenth 33 her evidence derives fr om orchard 2003: 25–39, but it should be noted that orchard attached no chronological signifi cance to these lexical affi nities. 34 nicor, in the sense of ‘sea-monster,’ is in fact the only lexeme restricted to these three texts. the other lexical affi nities between them pertain merely to the collocation of words, such as fen ond fæsten, whose restriction cannot be imagined to establish a meaningful chronological connection. leonard neidorf 26selim 20 (2013–2014) century, which are uniformly composed in the west saxon literary language, regardless of locale (see fulk 2012). there are no reasons for presuming alexander and blickling 16 to be late compositions, but there are strong reasons for thinking that their composition antedated the tenth century.35 if the restriction of nicor to these three texts means anything, it would be that mercians feared seamonsters most intensely during the eighth and ninth centuries; but the restriction is more likely due to the rarity of sea-monsters than to chronological proximity. cronan’s analysis of suhtriga furnishes a sound model for the obsolescence argument. at one end, the presence of suhtriga in seventh-century glosses establishes that this word had a place in the english language during the prehistoric period. conversely, the absence of suhtriga fr om prose of all periods suggests that this word fell out of use before the ninth century. the regular deployment in extant texts of synonymous words, such as nefa and brōðorsunu, indicates that later authors had ample opportunities to use suhtriga. obsolescence consequently emerges as the most logical explanation for the restriction of suhtriga to genesis a, archaic glosses, and a fossilized compound in beowulf and widsið. furthermore, the higher the fr equency of the synonyms’ attestation, the higher the probability of obsolescence becomes. if seventy diff erent authors needed a word for “brother’s son” and consistently chose nefa or brōðorsunu rather than suhtriga, the probability that suhtriga was unknown to them is considerable. to propose that suhtriga persisted into the later anglo-saxon period, one would have to credit an improbable coincidence: that every time suhtriga could have been used, authors chose instead to use nefa or brōðorsunu, and hundreds of independent decisions accidentally resulted in a 35 reasons for dating alexander prior to the tenth century are given in bately 1988: 133, n. 121. the dating of anonymous, mercian prose is explored most fully in fulk 2010. 27 lexical evidence for the relative chronology oe poetry selim 20 (2013–2014) perfect distribution. while it is possible that suhtriga remained in the language, probability is on the side of early obsolescence. the fi rst of the ten restricted words presented here for consideration is wōcor (“progeny, increase”), which occurs exclusively in genesis a. the restriction of this word to a single poem naturally raises the question of obsolescence versus innovation. is the word restricted to an early poem because it became obsolete or to a late poem because the poet invented it? several considerations point decisively toward obsolescence. one is that the poet used wōcor four times: this suggests that the word was readily comprehensible and was not spontaneously generated.36 more importantly, the existence of exact cognates in several germanic languages confi rms that wōcor is a word of common germanic inheritance, which must have been present in the lexicon of prehistoric old english. the absence of wōcor in later poetry and prose is signifi cant, since these texts contain a wide variety of synonymous words, such as cnōsl, gecynd, sǣd, tēam, tūdor, and wæstm.37 later authors had ample opportunity to use wōcor, yet the only author to use this word was the genesis a poet, who did so four times. assessing this distribution, robert j. menner observed: “surely the most natural explanation is that wōcor, paralleled as it is in gothic wōkrs, ofris. wōker, and ohg wuohhar, is an old word used by an early poet, a word that appears nowhere else in old english because it had become obsolete” (1952: 288). the restriction of wōcor to genesis a is readily explained under the hypothesis that this poem preserves words belonging to an archaic lexical stratum. similar to wōcor is the hapax legomenon rēofan (“break”), which occurs only in exodus and only in its past participial form, in the verse randbyrig wǣron rofene, “ramparts were broken” (464). the 36 gena 1312, 1342, 1409, 1490. 37 consultation of the thesaurus of old english (roberts & kay 1995) informs judgments concerning synonyms throughout this study. consultation of holthausen 1934 and bammesberger 1979 informs comments about germanic cognates. leonard neidorf 28selim 20 (2013–2014) existence of an old icelandic cognate rjúfa and the common use of the related verb berēofan (“deprive”) in old english poetry indicate that rēofan is an ancient germanic word, not an innovation of the exodus poet. it is noteworthy that berēofan, like rēofan, is also attested exclusively in its past participial form (berofen) in formulaic verses such as golde (since, gǣste) berofen.38 this signifi cant restriction led edward b. irving, jr. to posit: “it seems probable that both rēofan and berēofan fell out of use early except in the one special formula” (1959: 8). the attestation of many synonyms for rēofan, including brecan, rendan, slītan, and teran, which are used hundreds of times in later texts, demonstrates that later authors could easily have used this word if it were available to them. early obsolescence for rēofan is thus exceedingly probable, and one important cause for this might have been the widespread use of the weak verb (a-, be-) rēafi an (plunder). the phonological similarity between these two verbs with similar meanings could have accelerated the process of obsolescence.39 regardless of the cause, the lifespan of rēofan plainly did not extend into the later anglo-saxon period. rēofan is attested only in exodus because exodus is one of a handful of poems that preserves archaic vocabulary lost at an early date. the distribution of ōretta (“warrior”) in the poetic corpus suggests that this word became obsolete relatively early, though perhaps not as early as wōcor and rēofan. ōretta is attested twice in beowulf, four times in guthlac a, and two times in andreas.40 guthlac a is not one of the poems discussed by cronan, but there are strong reasons for including it in the corpus of archaic poetry: the narrator claims that guthlac’s death (in 714) was a recent event and the poem’s archaic metrical features corroborate this claim (see fulk 1992: 399–400). metrical criteria locate the composition of andreas, on the other hand, in the cynewulfi an period—that is, 38 see doe corpus search: “berofen.” 39 this possibility is recommended in irving 1959: 8. 40 beo 1532, 2538; gutha 176, 344, 401, 569; and 879, 983. 29 lexical evidence for the relative chronology oe poetry selim 20 (2013–2014) later than the archaic poems but prior to the reign of alfr ed. to judge fr om the restriction of the old high german cognate urhētto to the hildebrandslied, ōretta must have been an ancient word of germanic poetic tradition, long obsolete in the colloquial language and on its way toward obsolescence in the poetry as well (see green 1998: 73–74). because ōretta possesses dozens of synonyms, which appear in virtually every old english poem, it is probable that obsolescence is the cause of its restriction to two archaic poems and one cynewulfi an poem. the appearance of ōretta in andreas might even be a consequence of the long-hypothesized infl uence that beowulf exerted on andreas (see riedinger 1993). ōretta therefore appears to have fallen out of poetic discourse during the ninth century, if not before. the same explanation can be posited for the restriction of fr iclan (“desire”), which is attested only in beowulf, genesis a, and fates of the apostles.41 because fates is one of the signed works of cynewulf, the distribution of fr iclan mirrors that of ōretta: it is restricted to two archaic poems plus one cynewulfi an poem. the presence of fr iclan in three poems confi rms that it cannot be an innovation, but must have been a part of the inherited poetic vocabulary. because synonymous verbs—giernan, lystan, willian, wilnian—occur hundreds of times in later poetry and prose, obsolescence appears to be the probable cause for the restriction of fr iclan to three prealfr edian poems. like ōretta, fr iclan was probably a poetic word that fell out of use during the ninth century. the list of recognized archaisms in the language of beowulf is now extensive, yet several obsolete words might merit a place on the list, including hōs (troop), one of the poem’s hapax legomena.42 hōs is securely attested only in beowulf, though it might also 41 beo 2554; gena 1841; fates 107. the restriction of fr iclan is also noted in menner 1952: 286–287. see doe s.v. fr iclan. 42 archaic linguistic features in beowulf are reviewed in fulk 2007a; fulk et al. 2008: clviii–ix, clxv–vii; and fulk 2014. leonard neidorf 30selim 20 (2013–2014) appear on the franks casket, depending on how the runes are construed.43 attestation on the franks casket would ensure the word’s presence in the lexicon of the earliest old english, but the antiquity of hōs is nevertheless confi rmed by the existence of hansa, a gothic and old high german cognate. wulfi la’s use of hansa as the equivalent of σπεῖρα and πλῆθος (lat. cohors and multitudo) suggests that hōs possessed an exceptionally large number of words with comparable meanings in old english, including cist, corþer, gedryht, gefērscipe, fl occ, hēap, menigu, gemong, weorod, and teoh.44 the considerable fr equency with which these synonyms appear in texts throughout the anglo-saxon period renders it probable that the restriction of hōs to beowulf is a consequence of early obsolescence. one possible cause for this word’s demise might be discernible in the context of its appearance in beowulf. hōs is used in reference to wealhþeo’s female retinue, her mægþa hōs, “troop of ladies” (924). this passage might hint at a process of semantic pejoration, which domesticated an otherwise standard word for a troop or a host. whatever the cause for its demise, hōs belongs to the archaic lexical stratum preserved only in the earliest english poetry. the nasal consonant in middle english hanse indicates that it does not derive fr om hōs, but rather refl ects the borrowing of one of its continental cognates.45 fengel (“ruler”), like hōs, is another word that would have been useful to most old english poets, yet it is attested only in beowulf. the absence of exact germanic cognates creates the possibility that this word is restricted because it is a neologism, but several considerations tell against that possibility. one is that fengel is used four times in beowulf, which suggests that it was not spontaneously generated. another is that this word appears to have been embedded 43 beo 924; runeauzon 5? for further discussion, see bammesberger 1979: 83–84. 44 on the gothic cognate, see feist 1939: s.v. hansa. 45 see med s.v. hanse, where the word is said to be a borrowing fr om old french hanse, which must be of germanic (presumably frankish) origin. 31 lexical evidence for the relative chronology oe poetry selim 20 (2013–2014) in the formula snottra fengel (“wise ruler”), used twice in reference to hrothgar, as is the similar wīsa fengel.46 the repeated association of fengel with adjectives denoting wisdom indicates that the word had acquired certain connotations in poetic tradition. obsolescence is therefore the more probable cause for the restriction of fengel to beowulf. one word to consider alongside fengel is the hapax legomenon strengel “ruler” (3115) which is also restricted to beowulf despite its obvious utility. because strengel occurs only once in beowulf and has no exact cognates, the case for its obsolescence is weaker. yet in both fengel and strengel, the root vowel has undergone fr ont mutation, a process that luick dates to fi rst half of the sixth century (1964: §291). while not outside the realm of possibility, it is improbable that a neologism should exhibit conformity to such an ancient sound change. fengel and strengel appear to be inherited poeticisms that are restricted to beowulf because they were lost fr om the poetic vocabulary at a relatively early date. gædeling (“kinsman, companion”) is not unique to beowulf, but its distribution suggests that it too belongs to the archaic lexical stratum preserved in the earliest english poetry. in the corpus of recorded old english, gædeling is restricted to beowulf, daniel, and the eighth-century corpus glossary, where it is used to gloss fr atuelis (“nephew”) and patruelis (“cousin”).47 the existence of an array of cognates, such as gothic gadiliggs (“cousin”), confi rms that gædeling was an ancient germanic kinship term. the reason for the restriction of gædeling to three archaic contexts, however, is that it did not remain a straightforward kinship term in english: gædeling underwent semantic pejoration, as the regular use of the word in middle english to mean “vagabond” indicates.48 gædeling must have lost the meaning “kinsman” as the meaning “companion” 46 snottra fengel: beo 1475, 2156; wīsa fengel: beo 1400; hringa fengel: beo 2345. see doe s.v. fengel. 47 beo 2617, 2949; dan 420; corpgl 2 6.318, 14.104. see doe s.v. gædeling. 48 see med s.v. gadeling, sense ⒝ ; see also oed s.v. gadling, senses 2 and 3. leonard neidorf 32selim 20 (2013–2014) began to spread, and it is fr om the latter that the sense “vagabond, rascal, fellow” must have developed. to judge fr om the fr equency with which kinship terms appear in old english, gædeling probably stopped being a straightforward term for “kinsman” rather early. the standard use of the mǣg and gesibb might have rendered the more ambiguous gædeling a superfl uous term for consanguinity. if the process of pejoration revealed in middle english began to take place much earlier, that would explain why gædeling is not used in later old english poetry and prose, but is found only in beowulf, daniel, and the corpus glossary. another word in beowulf probably indicative of chronological priority is helrūne “demon” (163). since this word is a compound, the possibility of poetic innovation looms large, but there are clear signs that the word is not a neologism coined by the beowulf poet. one unambiguous sign of the antiquity of helrūne is the existence of the gothic cognate halj arunae, which is recorded in jordanes’s getica.49 outside of beowulf, helrūne is attested in fi ve aldhelmian glosses, all of which were generated during the eighth century. helrune is consistently used to gloss phitonissa (“witch”) and divinatrix (“prophetess”), and in two of the glosses in which it appears, wicca (“witch”) is listed as a synonym beside helrūne.50 the semantic parity of these two words—supported not only by the glosses, but also by the getica, where the halj arunae are witches—lends chronological signifi cance to the fact that helrūne is preserved only in beowulf and in archaic glosses. the glossarial evidence suggests that helrūne and wicca were standard, competing terms for “witch” during the eighth century. helrūne evidently 49 see wiersma 1961: 77–83; chadwick 1959: 174–175; on the form halj arunae, see fulk et al. 2008: 126. 50 aldv 7.1 106; aldv 9 107; aldv 10 60; aldv 1 1902 (helhrūnan, wiccan); aldv 13.1 1926 (helhrūnan, wiccan). on the dating of these glosses, see chadwick 1959: 175. she writes: “the ultimate relationship of the majority of them to glosses dating fr om not later than the eighth century on the works of aldhelm is beyond doubt.” 33 lexical evidence for the relative chronology oe poetry selim 20 (2013–2014) suff ered an early death, while wicca fl ourished and went on to be attested twenty-eight times in the corpus of old english.51 wiccan are common in the writings of ælfr ic and wulfstan, for example, where they are found alongside wælcyrian (“valkyries”) and other demonic forces. the eighth-century circulation and apparent expiration of helrūne is one additional sign, minor but not negligible, that the earliest english poems preserve an array of obsolete words indicative of their chronological priority. widsið merited a place in cronan’s corpus of archaic poetry because it is one of the three poems in which suhtriga appears (in the dvandva suhtorfædren). widsið is typically omitted fr om metrical dating studies on account of its brevity, yet it has traditionally been considered one of the oldest poems in english, and there are strong reasons for regarding it as such (see neidorf 2013c). closer examination of the vocabulary of widsið reveals that it contains two other items that belong to the archaic lexical stratum preserved in the earliest poetry. rōmwealh (“roman”), spelt with archaic rūm for rōm, is attested solely in widsið, a gloss, and possibly the franks casket.52 early obsolescence is the probable cause for the restriction of this ethnonym, since the corpus of recorded old english contains hundreds of references to romans. in texts fr om the ninth and tenth centuries, these romans are regularly labeled rōmāne or rōmware—sometimes eotolware or lǣdenware—but are never labeled rōmwēalas. because of the considerable fr equency 51 see doe corpus search: “wicca.” 52 wid 69; durritglabbrev c2 189.7a; runeauzon 3. the names romulus and remus are rendered romwalus and reumwalus on the franks casket; it is possible that these spellings contain a punning or folk-etymological reference to rōmwealh, but the similarity could be accidental. the gloss reht rōmwāla (for ius quiritum) occurs in the tenth-century gloss on the durham ritual, but the vocabulary of this gloss probably derives fr om an archaic source; see ross 1970. elliott and ross 1972 posit that aldred relied elsewhere on archaic vernacular sources, including bede’s translation of the gospel of st. john. on the archaic spelling of rūm for rōm, see fulk and cain 2013: 216. leonard neidorf 34selim 20 (2013–2014) with which these synonyms are attested, the restriction of rōmwealh is a probable sign that this word fell out of use. of greater signifi cance than rōmwealh, however, is the semantic archaism evident in the simplex wealh, which in widsið possesses the specifi c meaning “roman.” the poet affi rms that caesar wields the wāla rīce (78), in other words, the roman empire. this usage is striking, since the other refl exes of proto-germanic *walhaz indicate that wealh must have been a standard term for “roman” in prehistoric old english. in old high german, for example, the cognate uualha is regularly used to gloss romani, presumably because the continental germanic peoples regarded the romans as their principal foreigners (see weisgerber 1953: 178–188). aft er the migration to britain, the new environment for the english language led wealh to be used diff erently: the word underwent a semantic shift and came primarily to mean “celt” or “slave.”53 as early as the laws of ine, issued in 694, wealh can be seen to possess precisely these meanings.54 wealh must have become an unacceptable term for “roman” at an early date, since references to romans in old english literature are manifold, yet they are labeled wēalas only in widsið. obviously, authors in the ninth and tenth centuries could not refer to romans as wēalas, since this would imply a celtic or servile quality. the composition of widsið must have antedated the completion of a semantic shift already discernible at the end of the seventh century. the obsolete meaning of wealh in widsið lends powerful support to the hypothesis that the earliest english poems contain lexical indications of their chronological priority. 3 conclusion cronan identifi ed fourteen poetic simplexes whose restricted attestation establishes a lexical connection between beowulf, genesis a, daniel, exodus, maxims i, and widsið. he explained the 53 see pelteret 1995: 43; and faull 1975. 54 see, inter alia, lawine 23.3, 24.2, 33, 74. 35 lexical evidence for the relative chronology oe poetry selim 20 (2013–2014) connection by hypothesizing that these six poems were composed during the eighth century and therefore preserve words and meanings that became obsolete before the composition of later poetry and prose. the present study has demonstrated that this hypothesis satisfactorily explains considerably more lexical data than has been realized. the ability of a hypothesis to explain a wide array of phenomena in addition to the phenomena it was originally formulated to explain is a fi rm indication that it is correct. the corpus of archaic poetry preserves an archaic lexical stratum, which consists not only of cronan’s fourteen simplexes, but also of the ten additional words i have identifi ed and analyzed above. viewed in isolation, an individual word generally cannot yield decisive dating implications. examined in the light of cronan’s hypothesis, however, an individual word can elevate its probability on an incremental basis. the addition or subtraction of a few words would not signifi cantly change the picture. the preservation of twenty-four lexical archaisms in poems independently judged to be the earliest on the basis of metrical dating criteria invariably validates the conclusions drawn in metrical studies. the relative chronology appears to be correct: beowulf, genesis a, daniel, and exodus (among others) contain numerous lexical indications that they were composed before the cynewulfi an, alfr edian, and tenthcentury poems. the lexical evidence, like the metrical evidence, pertains both to relative and absolute dating. in relative terms, the preservation of the archaic lexical stratum broadly locates the composition of the corpus of archaic poetry in a period prior to the composition of later poetry and prose. the earliest poems are the only texts (besides glosses) to preserve words such as wōcor, rēofan, hōs, fengel, helrūne, and rōmwealh because their composition antedated the obsolescence of these words. the distribution of ōretta and fr iclan also bears on relative dating: each of these words is restricted to two archaic poems and one cynewulfi an poem, which probably means that they fell out of use during or shortly aft er the cynewulfi an leonard neidorf 36selim 20 (2013–2014) period. the restricted simplexes of cronan’s study likewise possess relative dating implications. on the one hand, the preservation of obsolete words such as missere, umbor, gombe, and þengel, suggests that the corpus of archaic poetry was composed prior to their obsolescence, which appears to have taken place by the time of cynewulf. on the other hand, the restriction of several simplexes to two poems—e.g., the restriction of four simplexes to beowulf and maxims i—suggests that the dates of composition for these poems are relatively similar. because of the quantity of poetry and prose securely dated to the ninth century and later, the broad implication inherent in the lexical and metrical evidence for relative dating is that the corpus of archaic poetry—beowulf, genesis a, daniel, exodus, maxims i, and widsith—was composed prior to the ninth century. there are now, however, many fi rm reasons for anchoring the composition of the earliest english poems in a period extending fr om the fi nal decades of the seventh century to the middle of the eighth century. the regular observation of etymological length distinctions in beowulf renders it probable that this poem was composed before 725.55 the semantic archaism of wealh in widsið demands a date of composition close to the year 700. the restriction of suhtriga anchors the composition of beowulf, widsið, and genesis a close in time to the period of the theodorean glossators, who compiled glosses at the end of the seventh century. the restriction of gædeling likewise ties beowulf and daniel to the language of the earliest glossaries. rafael j. pascual has off ered further evidence for this connection by demonstrating that the semantics of scucca and þyrs in beowulf deviates considerably fr om ninthand tenth-century usage, but conforms to the usage of eighth-century glossaries.56 linguistic dating argumentation received powerful independent 55 see fulk 1992: 381–392; neidorf and pascual forthcoming [2015]. 56 see pascual 2014; other semantic archaisms in beowulf are discussed in robinson 1985: 55–57; shippey 1993: 173–175; fulk et al. 2008: clii. 37 lexical evidence for the relative chronology oe poetry selim 20 (2013–2014) corroboration, moreover, when michael lapidge argued on the basis of transliteration errors that beowulf had been committed to parchment prior to 750.57 a. n. doane, borrowing lapidge’s methodology, has propounded a similar argument for an eighthcentury archetype of genesis a (2013: 37–41).58 it cannot be an accident that so many independent forms of evidence align in dating these poems to a relatively narrow period of time, c. 675–750. because of the improbability that metrical, lexical, and textcritical indicators of chronology should each be in error, the probabilistic value of the chronological hypotheses they support approximates virtual certainty. excessive precision is obviously not warranted; the evidence cannot enable poems to be dated to a particular year or decade. yet the evidence is not so malleable as to license the belief that every date of composition proposed for beowulf or daniel is equally probable. the later that these poems are dated, the higher the degree of improbability becomes. for example, believing that the composition of widsið or genesis a could have been contemporary with alfr edian or tenth-century works generates several gross improbabilities: one being that the widsið poet used the word wealh in a manner incomprehensible to an alfr edian audience; another being that the genesis a poet composed exponentially more verses exhibiting non-contraction or non-parasiting than tenth-century poets.59 to believe that the corpus of archaic poetry was composed in the tenth century, one must believe that six poets shared access to various words that were entirely unknown to their supposed contemporaries, but were known to glossators during the seventh and eighth centuries. 57 see lapidge 2000; his argument builds upon gerritsen 1989 and clemoes 1995: 32–34. it is validated in clark 2009 and neidorf 2013b. 58 another reason for anchoring the composition of genesis a close in time to beowulf is the peculiar usage of þā in these two poems; see fulk 2007c. 59 for the disparity between genesis a and late poetry in terms of non-contraction and non-parasiting, see the tabulations in fulk 1992: 83, 103. leonard neidorf 38selim 20 (2013–2014) statements about the inability of old english poems to be dated to a period narrower than three centuries—typically uttered with regard to beowulf—refl ect defi cient critical reasoning or inadequate understanding of the philological evidence. to conclude, it may be fr uitful to take stock of the relative chronology of old english poetry as it presently stands. the distribution of verses requiring archaic phonology for scansion, which has been explored most thoroughly in fulk’s a history of old english meter, carves the poetic corpus into at least four distinct periods: (1) the archaic period; (2) the cynewulfi an period; (3) the alfr edian period; and (4) the late period. poems belonging to the archaic period exhibit the highest incidence and greatest variety of metrical archaisms. cynewulfi an poetry—the signed works of cynewulf and metrically similar poems—is less conservative than archaic poetry, but more conservative than poetry dating to the reign of alfr ed. verses requiring archaic phonology for scansion rarely occur in poetry composed during or aft er the tenth century. in addition to containing dramatically fewer metrical archaisms, the poems of late authorship exhibit various innovations conditioned by linguistic developments, which are not to be found in archaic or cynewulfi an poetry.60 the consistent distribution of linguistic archaisms and innovations indicates that the relative chronology must be broadly correct. many chronological variables independently confi rm its predictions. for example: the adherence to kaluza’s law in beowulf dates this poem prior to 725, whereas the spelling of cynewulf ’s name situates his poetry aft er 750; the author of the metrically archaic guthlac a claims to have been a contemporary of st. guthlac, whereas the author of guthlac b, a cynewulfi an poem, makes no such claim.61 this is not coincidental. 60 see fulk 1992: 251–268; see also bredehoft 2014. 61 see fulk 1992: 351–368, 381–392, 399–402; see also roberts 1971. 39 lexical evidence for the relative chronology oe poetry selim 20 (2013–2014) the corpus of archaic poetry, encompassing works probably composed at various dates between roughly 675 and 750, consists chiefl y of beowulf, genesis a, daniel, exodus, guthlac a, and christ iii.62 these poems are of suffi cient length for metrical criteria, buttressed by other evidence, to provide conclusive indications of early composition. lexical evidence attaches widsið and maxims i to the archaic corpus. evidence for the circulation and cessation of germanic legend in england renders it probable that waldere, deor, finnsburh, and wulf and eadwacer (like beowulf and widsið) are relatively early poems.63 metrical criteria suggest that the exeter book riddles are predominantly of eighth-century origin (see fulk 1992: 404–410). the early composition of at least some of the riddles is supported by the preservation of the (linguistically) eighth-century leiden riddle in a ninth-century manuscript (see smith 1978: 19–37). other poems belonging to the corpus of archaic poetry on account of their preservation in archaic contexts include cædmon’s hymn, bede’s death song, a proverb fr om winfr id’s time, the franks casket, and the dream of the rood (see shippey 1993). the corpus of cynewulfi an poetry consists fi rst of the signed works of cynewulf: juliana, elene, christ ii, and fates of the apostles. metrical criteria locate the composition of andreas, guthlac b, and possibly the phoenix in the cynewulfi an period, which encompasses works probably composed at various dates between roughly 775 and 850 (see fulk 1992: 348–368, 400–404). it is reasonable to set a terminus for the cynewulfi an period at around 850, since a considerable span of time is needed to account for the drastic loss of metrical archaisms evident in the alfr edian meters of boethius, composed in 897. other poems composed during or aft er the reign of king alfr ed include the preface and 62 on christ iii, see fulk 1992: 397–399. 63 for a survey of this evidence, see neidorf 2014; see also chadwick 1912: 42–66; wormald 2006; neidorf 2013a; and shippey 2014. leonard neidorf 40selim 20 (2013–2014) epilogue to the pastoral care, judith, metrical psalms of the paris psalter, judgment day ii, battle of brunanburh, capture of the five boroughs, coronation of edgar, battle of maldon, death of edward, and durham. further philological research, building upon the considerable foundations of known lexical and metrical evidence for relative chronology, will surely identify additional poems as relatively early or late. the discipline of old english studies, as it is presently conducted, exhibits selective adherence to probability. in scholarship on genesis a and judith, linguistic dating criteria are tacitly lent credence on a regular basis. genesis a is routinely regarded as a relatively early poem, whereas judith is ubiquitously presumed to be a relatively late poem. the only decisive evidence for the dating of either poem, however, is metrical and lexical evidence.64 it is surprising, then, that so much literary scholarship on beowulf should proceed fr om the assumption that this poem cannot be relatively dated. the uncertainty surrounding the dating of beowulf should not be imagined to refl ect uncertainties in linguistic dating scholarship. to the contrary, there is much fi rmer linguistic evidence for the relative and absolute dating of beowulf than there is for genesis a or judith. if scholars regard judith as a late poem on account of its lexical innovations, its violation of kaluza’s law, and its dearth of verses requiring non-contraction or non-parasiting for scansion (inter alia), then consistency would demand that beowulf be regarded as an early poem for the opposite reasons. there can be no principled basis for the varying degrees of credence granted to linguistic dating criteria in the scholarship on genesis a, judith, and beowulf. the controversy over the dating of beowulf is a product not of ambiguous linguistic evidence, but of the tendency of literary scholars to ignore linguistic evidence and fr ame the question of dating in ambiguous terms not conducive to rational debate. 64 for genesis a, see doane 2013: 51–55; for judith, see griffi th 1997: 44–47. 41 lexical evidence for the relative chronology oe poetry selim 20 (2013–2014) when conceptualized as a purely non-linguistic issue, the dating of beowulf appears rather like an amateurish guessing game, incapable of principled resolution, as in the following remark (earl 1994: 17): does beowulf refl ect the conversion, express the golden age of bede, pay tribute to off a or wiglaf of mercia, legitimize the west saxon royal line, conciliate the danish settlement, respond heroically to the vikings, or praise the anglo-danish dynasty of cnut? framed in these nebulous terms, the question of dating naturally elicits an agnostic response, since no decisive criteria can be employed to render the competing hypotheses more or less probable. non-linguistic considerations can play an important role in the dating of a text, but in the case of beowulf, linguistic evidence provides by far the fi rmest indications of date. one sign of the unambiguous nature of this evidence is that there has never been a controversy about the dating of beowulf in linguistic scholarship.65 the notion that beowulf could be a late poem has never appeared credible to linguists; only literary scholars unwilling or unable to comprehend linguistic argumentation have taken the hypothesis of late composition seriously. as research into the relative chronology of old english poetry advances, disregard for linguistic evidence will prove increasingly perilous. treating early poems as if they were late, or datable poems as if they were undatable, is a recipe for impeding knowledge and generating improbable claims. rationally crediting the linguistic evidence for the relative chronology, on the 65 fulk has observed that linguists uniformly regard beowulf as a specimen of archaic old english in diachronic studies; see the references compiled in 2007a: 278, fn. 2. fulk concludes fr om his survey of linguistic archaisms in beowulf that “the data presented here suggest that linguists are largely justifi ed in ignoring the debate among literary scholars about the poem’s date” (2007a: 278). leonard neidorf 42selim 20 (2013–2014) other hand, is bound to yield important insights into the history of old english literature.66 leonard neidorf harvard university works cited amos, a. c. 1980: linguistic means of determining the dates of old english literary texts. cambridge (ma), medieval academy of america. andersson, t. m. rev. 1983: chase, c. (1981) the dating of beowulf. in university of toronto quarterly 52: 288–301. bammesberger, a. 1979: beiträge zu einem etymologischen wörterbuch des altenglischen: berichtigungen u. nachtr. zum altenglischen etymologischen wörterbuch von ferdinand holthausen. heidelberg, winter. bately, j. 1988: old english prose before and during the reign of alfr ed. anglo-saxon england 17: 93–138. bliss, a. j. 1958: the metre of beowulf. oxford, blackwell. bredehoft , t. a. 2014: the date of composition of beowulf and the evidence of metrical evolution. in l. neidorf ed. the dating of beowulf: a reassessment. cambridge, d. s. brewer: 97–111. bremmer, jr., r. h. 2004: the frisians in beowulf; beowulf in frisia: the vicissitudes of time. in j. c. conde silvestre & m. n. vázquez gonzález eds. medieval english literary and cultural studies. selim xv. murcia, universidad de murcia: 3–31. carr, c. t. 1939: nominal compounds in germanic. london, h. milford. chadwick, h. m. 1912: the heroic age. cambridge, cambridge university press. 66 the prospects are illustrated, for example, in shippey 1993; wright 1996; orchard 2007; frantzen 2014. 43 lexical evidence for the relative chronology oe poetry selim 20 (2013–2014) chadwick, n. k. 1959: the monsters and beowulf. in p. clemoes ed. the anglo-saxons: studies in some aspects of their history. london, bowes & bowes: 171–203. clark, g. 2009: the date of beowulf and the arundel psalter gloss. modern philology 2009: 677–85. clark, g. 2014: scandals in toronto: kaluza’s law and transliteration errors. in l. neidorf ed. the dating of beowulf: a reassessment. cambridge, d. s. brewer: 219–234. clemoes, p. 1995: interactions of thought and language in old english poetry. cambridge, cambridge university press. cronan, d. 2004: poetic words, conservatism, and the dating of old english poetry. anglo-saxon england 33: 23–50. doe = cameron, a., a.c. amos, & a. dipaolo healey. eds. 2007– : dictionary of old english: a to g online. http://www.doe. utoronto.ca. doe corpus = dipaolo healey, a. ed. 2004: dictionary of old english: old english corpus. ann arbor: university of michigan press. dietrich, [f.]. 1853: hycgan und hopian. zeitschrift fü r deutsches alterthum 9: 214–222. doane, a. n. ed. 2013: genesis a: a new edition, revised. tempe, acmrs. earl, j. w. 1994: thinking about beowulf. stanford, stanford university press. elliott, c. o. & a. s. c. ross. 1972: aldrediana xxiv: the linguistic peculiarities of the gloss on st. john’s gospel. english philological studies 13: 49–72. faull, m. l. 1975: the semantic development of old english wealh. leeds studies in english 8: 20–37. feist, s. 1939. vergleichendes wörterbuch der gotischen sprache. leiden, e.j. brill. frank, r. rev. 1982: opland, j. (1980) anglo-saxon oral poetry: a study of the traditions. in notes and queries 227: 153–154. leonard neidorf 44selim 20 (2013–2014) frank, r. 2007: a scandal in toronto: the dating of beowulf a quartercentury on. speculum 82: 843–864. frank, r. 2008: sharing words with beowulf. in v. blanton & h. scheck eds. intertexts: studies in anglo-saxon culture presented to paul e. szarmach. tempe, acmrs: 3–15. frantzen, a. j. 2014: aft erword: beowulf and everything else. in l. neidorf ed. the dating of beowulf: a reassessment. cambridge, d. s. brewer: 235–247. fulk, r. d. 1982: review article: dating beowulf to the viking age. philological quarterly 61: 341–359. fulk, r. d. 1992: a history of old english meter. philadelphia, university of pennsylvania press. fulk, r. d. 2007a: archaisms and neologisms in the language of beowulf. in c. m. cain & g. russom eds. studies in the history of the english language iii: managing chaos: strategies for identify ing change in english. berlin, mouton de gruyter: 267–287. fulk, r. d. 2007b: old english meter and oral tradition: three issues bearing on poetic chronology. journal of english and germanic philology 106: 304–324. fulk, r. d. 2007c: old english þa ‘now that’ and the integrity of beowulf. english studies 88: 623–631. fulk, r. d. 2010: localizing and dating old english anonymous prose, and how the inherent problems relate to anglo-saxon legislation. in s. jurasinski, l. oliver, & a. rabin eds. english law before magna carta: felix liebermann and die gesetze der angelsachsen. leiden, brill: 59–79. fulk, r. d. 2012: anglian features in late west saxon prose. in d. denison, r. bermúdez-otero, c. mccully, & e. moore eds. analysing older english. cambridge, cambridge university press: 63–74. fulk, r. d. 2014: beowulf and language history. in l. neidorf ed. the dating of beowulf: a reassessment. cambridge, d. s. brewer: 19–36. 45 lexical evidence for the relative chronology oe poetry selim 20 (2013–2014) fulk, r. d., r. e. bjork & j. d. niles. eds. 2008: klaeber’s beowulf: fourth edition. toronto, university of toronto press. fulk, r. d. & c. m. cain. 2013: a history of old english literature. 2nd ed. chichester, john wiley & sons. gerritsen, j. 1989: have with you to lexington! the beowulf manuscript and beowulf. in j. l. mackenzie & r. todd eds. in other words: transcultural studies in philology, translation and lexicography presented to hans heinrich meier. dordrecht, foris: 15–34. green, d. h. 1998: language and history in the early germanic world. cambridge, cambridge university press. griffi th, m. ed. 1997: judith. exeter, university of exeter press. harris, j. 2007: beasts of battle, south and north. in c. d. wright, f. m. biggs & t. n. hall eds. source of wisdom: old english and early medieval latin studies in honour of thomas d. hill. toronto, university of toronto press: 3–25. hartman, m. e. 2014: the limits of conservative composition in old english poetry. in l. neidorf ed. the dating of beowulf: a reassessment. cambridge, d. s. brewer: 79–96. hofmann, d. 1957: untersuchungen zu den altenglischen gedichten genesis und exodus. anglia 75: 1–34. holthausen, f. 1934: altenglisches etymologisches wörterbuch. heidelberg, carl winters universitätsbuchhandlung. irving, jr., e.b. 1959: on the dating of the old english poems genesis and exodus. anglia 77: 1–11. kastovsky, d. 1992: semantics and vocabulary. in r. m. hogg ed. the cambridge history of the english language, vol. 1: the beginnings to 1066. cambridge: cambridge university press. 290–408. lapidge, m. 1986: the school of theodore and hadrian. anglo-saxon england 15: 45–72. lapidge, m. 2000: the archetype of beowulf. anglo-saxon england 29: 5–41. leonard neidorf 46selim 20 (2013–2014) lapidge, m. 2006: an aspect of old english poetic diction: the postpositioning of prepositions. in j. walmsley ed. inside old english: essays in honour of bruce mitchell. oxford, blackwell: 153–180. luick, k. 1964 [1914–1940]. historische grammatik 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honor of jess b. bessinger, jr. kalamazoo, medieval institute: 283–312. roberts, j. 1971: a metrical examination of the poems guthlac a and guthlac b. proceedings of the royal irish academy c 71: 91–137. roberts, j. & c. kay 1995: a thesaurus of old english. 2 vols. london, king’s college london, centre for late antique and medieval studies. robinson, f. c. 1985: beowulf and the appositive style. knoxville, university of tennessee press. ross, a. s. c. 1970: conservatism in the anglo-saxon gloss to the durham ritual. notes and queries 17: 363–366. russom, g. 2002: dating criteria for old english poems. in d. minkova & r. stockwell eds. studies in the history of the english language: a millennial perspective. berlin, mouton de gruyter: 245–266. shippey, t. a. 1993: old english poetry: the prospects for literary history. in a. león sendra ed. proceedings of the second international conference of selim (spanish society for english medieval language and literature). córdoba: selim. 164–179. shippey, t. a. 2005: the merov(ich)ingian again: damnatio memoriae and the usus scholarum. in k. o’brien o’keeff e & a. orchard eds. latin learning and english lore: studies in anglo-saxon literature for michael lapidge, vol 1. toronto, university of toronto press: 389–406. leonard neidorf 48selim 20 (2013–2014) shippey, t. a. 2014: names in beowulf and anglo-saxon england. in l. neidorf ed. the dating of beowulf: a reassessment. cambridge, d. s. brewer: 58–78. smith, a. h. ed. 1978: three northumbrian poems: cædmon’s hymn, bede’s death song, and the leiden riddle. revised by m. j. swanton. exeter, university of exeter press. stanley, e. g. 1969: old english ‘-calla’, ‘ceallian.’ in d. a. pearsall & r.a. waldron eds. medieval literature and civilization: studies in memory of g. n. garmonsway. london, athlone press: 94–99. townend, m. 2000: pre-cnut praise poetry in viking age england. review of english studies 51: 349–370. townend, m. 2002: language and history in viking age england: linguistic relations between speakers of old english and old norse. turnhout, brepols. weisgerber, l. 1953: deutsch als volksname: ursprung und bedeutung. stuttgart, w. kohlhammer. wiersma, s. m. 1961: a linguistic analysis of words referring to monsters in beowulf. (ph.d. dissertation). madison, university of wisconsin. wright, c. d. 1996: the blood of abel and the branches of sin: genesis a, maxims i and aldhelm’s carmen de virginitate. anglo-saxon england 25: 7–19. wormald, c. p. 2006: beowulf: the redating reassessed. in s. baxter ed. the times of bede: studies in early english christian society and its historian. malden, blackwell: 71–81, 98–105. • received 06 mar 2014; accepted 22 apr 2014 selim04.pdf javier martín arista, selim 4 (1994): 59-73 analogy in functional syntax1 0. introduction denison (1993: 414) has identified six main areas in which change is found in the history of the english passive: function and meaning of the pas sive, form and function of the participle, choice of auxiliary verb, paradigm of the auxiliary, range of syntagms available to passivization and expression of the agent. as regards the choice of the auxiliary, it is a well-known fact that there were three possibilities in oe: wesan passive, weorían passive and zero auxiliary or inflectional passive, re stricted to the verb hatan “call, name”: (1) a. nu is seo boc swiíe nearolice gesett now is this book very accurately compiled “now this book is very accurately compiled”2 (asc 1014) b. him wearí íæs getiíod he was that given “he was given that” (osw) c. on íæm bocum íe hatton apocalipsin on those books that are called apocalypsis “in those books which are called apocalypsis” (v) 1 the research resulting in this paper has been financially supported by the vicerrectorado de investigación de la universidad de zaragoza through the project estudio evolutivo de la crónica anglosajona, whose main researcher is dr. maría pilar navarro errasti. a preliminary version of this paper was read at the xviii aedean congress, held in the university of alcalá de henares in december 1994. 2 we have used, whenever they were available, the translations from old english offered by reputed scholars such as garmonsway (1967) and visser (1984). ____________________________________________________________________ 59 however, only the suppletive verb wesan has survived in modern times: weorían1 and hatan disappeared before modern times, although hatan, as a literary archaism, has been attested in english up to the ea rly modern en glish period, as these examples show: (2) a. what hight she? (v) b. i hyght iohan of helenes (v) c. what doth he hight? (v) in other germanic languages, this verb is still in full use (dutch heten, german heißen, swedish heta, danish hede), as visser (1984: 2090) has poin ted out: (3) a. german ich heiße geiges i am called geiges “my name is geiges” b. swedish (koefoed 1991: 13) hun hedder lise she is called lise “she is called lise” given these preliminary remarks, the purpose of this paper is to explore how analogy works in a functional grammar in general and, more specifically, in functional syntax, by discussing the analogical change undergone by the former middle voice hatan. we have organized this paper as follows: section 1 for fuller discussion that we can offer here see denison (1993: 420ff). javier martín arista ____________________________________________________________________ 60 1 introduces the treatment of the copula in functional grammar (hereafter fg) both in the synchronic and in the diachronic axis; section 2 presents the data extracted from the oe and me corpus; section 3 examines the points starred in section 2 and focusses on the analogical change at the semantic, morphosyntactic and pragmatic levels; finally, section 4 summarizes the results of our research. 1. the copula in fg there are two distinctions that have brought about some complication to the transformational grammar (henceforth tg) view of the passive, namely the distinction drawn between lexical and syntactic passives and between be deletion and intro duction. in order to remedy this undesirable situation, fg has gone a long way in treating the copula (henceforth cop) as a supportive device which is empty from a semantic point of view1. dik’s (1983: 121ff) first claim is that the new treatment of this phenomenon, including be as a copulative, passive and progressive verb, consists of the application of a sin gle rule 2 of be support introduction when cop shows up at surface level; 1 on this topic, goossens (1992: 71) is worth seeing since he does not regard be as a completely meaningless verb: rather, it contributes a highly abstract meaning which i have labelled adscriptive: it explicitly ascribes some non-verbal predicate to an argument. whether that means that there should be some representation of this meaning in the underlying structures of fg, or whether specific expression phenomena should be interpreted as meaningful, i do not want to decide in the restricted context of this paper, but at least i want to mention the problem. 2 not all languages, however, allow for a unified treatment of cop. old english and spanish, for instance, have two copular verbs with clearly differentiated uses. spanish ser and estar qualify as distributionally complementary verbs, ser imply ing permanent property and estar non-permanent property. the solution which is proposed by hengeveld (1986: 393) is to put forward two support rules: ser support and estar support. these rules also allow for an elegant treatment of pas sives, where the same variation ser/estar is possible the existence of the two copulas and the proposal for two support rules is compatible with the explanation provided above because it is predicate operators that ultimately determine -before expression rules such as cop support apply which ____________________________________________________________________ 61 tg, on the other hand, favours an explanation according to which cop is always present at deep structure and is deleted whenever it does not appear in surface structure. indeed, dik (1983, 1989: 166ff) is forced by the constraints imposed upon the power of the theory to consider the presence of cop as a result of introduction rather than a matter of deletion. in the diachronic axis, dik (1987: 53ff) has regarded the process whereby the copula comes to be used -copula auxiliarization, henceforth ca as a matter of expansion rather than as a matter of desemanticiza tion1. this statement is based on the view that the rule of cop support, which inserts cop when necessary, is part of the expre ssion rules and therefore it adds nothing to the semantic content of the predication. according to this view, the verb be has received an extra, equally grammatical function: the copula comes to be used in constructions which are integrated into the tense-mood-aspect system of the predicate. once this integration is completed, the copula can be said to have auxiliary status, while retaining its basic character of a semantically empty supportive verb (…) ca is more a matter of gradual expansion into the domain of the verbal paradigm, than a categorial clear-cut acquisition of entirely new functions by the copula. (dik 1987: 58) as regards the origin of ca, it is to be found in aspectual forms that may be later reinterpreted in terms of tense or voice. the most important channels of the two rules is to be used. moreover, as hengeveld (1986: 395) has remarked, the difference between languages with or without cop, or with a limited use of cop can easily be accounted for. 1 this statement must be seen in the light of givon’s explanations for the origins of the passive (1990: 600ff): the stat ive-adjectival source (english), the reflexive source (spanish), the topic construction source (kimbundu), the nominalization source (panare) and the obviative source (chamorro). it should also be taken into account that the view of ca has to be coherent with the unified treatment of cop proposed by dik (1983: 121ff). javier martín arista ____________________________________________________________________ 62 along which cop develops into an aspectual auxiliary (dik 1987: 64ff, fo llowing haine and rech 1982: 116 and claudi and heine 1985: 17ff) are the following: the localist channel (e.g. john is in the garden), the property channel (e.g. cæsar victus est) and the serial channel (e.g. he is going to eat). 2. the data the study of the corpus yields the following summary, which shows the different variants and alternatives of hatan that coexist in the early stages of the english language1: (i) oe (4) hatte … and se munuc hatte abbo (edm) “ … and this monk was called abbo” (5) is/wæs haten … íæt is meresig haten (asc 894) … that is called mersey” (6) is/wæs gehaten he wæs gehaten leohtberend (ah) “he was called lightbearing” 1 the corpus comprises 2,100 passive clauses covering the following periods: (i) oe (up to 1100): from the anglo-saxon chronicle (macintosh file by dr. santiago gonzález -corugedo, universidad de oviedo, quoted as asc); from st. edmund, king and martyr (in needham 1966: 43ff, quoted as edm); from visser (1984: 2091ff, quoted as v). (ii) eme (1100-1300): from visser (1984: 21091ff, quoted as v); from the kentish sermons (in burnley 1992: 107-111, quoted as ks); from the peterborough chronicle (macintosh file by dr. gonzález -corugedo, quoted as asc); (iii) lme (1300-1500): from chaucer’s translation of boetius’ de consolatione philosophiæ (in navarro et al. 1991: 101-126, quoted as chb); from the wycclifite sermons (macintosh file by dr. gonzález -corugedo, quoted as ws); from visser (1984: 2165ff, quoted as v). ____________________________________________________________________ 63 (ii) eme (7) is/was haten his fæder wæs englisc raulf hatte (asc 1084) “his father was called raulf in english” (8) is/was gehaten … íatt wass beíiania gehatenn (v) “ … who was called bethiania” (iii) lme (9) hatte a. dis child shal hoten godes prophete (v) b. the gnatte is a littil fflye íat hatte spitil (v) a couple of points of clarification are in order here. to start with, the oe verb cleopian (to call on, to summon, to call by a name) coexisted with hatan and was re tained in use down through the me period (oed): (10) a. … in ane cite íat was icleped cane (ks) b. so that thise ilke rychesses ne oughten nat by ryghte to ben cleped rychesses (chb) oe nemnan has also survived until modern times; here is an eme example: (11) … íatt wass íurrh drihhtin nemned marge (ks) “ … who was called mary by our lord” another interesting datum: the first entry of the oed for the scandinavian borrowing call with the meaning of call by the name of dates back to 1250: javier martín arista ____________________________________________________________________ 64 (12) a. îat stede beí cald íor-for-carbroth b. yow schalt be callud petre (ws32) the picture that emerges from all this is summarized and put into pers pective in (13): (13) oe me lme hatten x x (rare) is/wæs haten x x (rare) is/was gehaten x x (rare) is/was nemned x x x is/was clepud x x x is/ben callud x x in a few words, the table takes care of the fact that, even though hatan was in use up to the emode period, it must have started to decay in eme times. this hypothesis couples with the data extracted from the corpus, where hatan occurrences hardly turn up in lme texts. from oe times onwards hatan coexisted with nemnan and cleopian, whereas call and hatan became concurrent in the eme period. as a result, evidence suggests that (i) there was a change in the analogical direction whereby hatan acquired passive form; and that (ii) later on, the verbal predicate hatan -along with cleopianwas swept away by call and name. in the remainder of this paper, we deal with (i), leaving (ii) for future research. 3. discussion what we have called rather tentatively change in the analogical direction may, in fact, involve a series of changes at different levels: in the first place, hatan became accessible to passivization, which means, in practice, that the middle voice died out. in oe times passivization demanded ____________________________________________________________________ 65 the presence of two predicate slots filled with arguments -not with satellites 1. more pre cisely, only first arguments along the semantic function hierarchy (dik 1989: 226ff), that is, arguments whose semantic function was agent, positio ner, force, processed and zero, or goal arguments were candidates for subject assignment. in the case of hatan, a single argument with semantic function zero, was present in the predicate frame of hatan. the change, there fore, must have originated in the lexical fund, where the quantitative valency of the predicate increased2. relevant to this hypothesis is the fact that this verb (hatan-1) had, at least, another meaning, which called for a different complementation pattern: hatan was a three-place verbal predicate when it meant to order, to which we shall re fer as hatan-2: (14) îa het he me on íysne sií faran then ordered he me on this journey go then he told me to go on this journey (asd) the existence of the predicate frame of hatan-2 leaves room for a movement in the analogical direction of hatan-1. this analogical change may be illustrated, at surface level, by the following linguistic expressions: 1 as stated, in tg terms, in lightfoot (1979: 239ff) and denison (1993: 103ff). 2 in the fg framework predicate formation rules account for the extension of the number of arguments of the predicate frame and the shift of the semantic functions of the predicate frame. on the far-reaching implications of this treatment dik comments the following: «predicate formation rules (…) may have certain structure-changing, that is transformational properties, in that the output predicate-frame of a predicate formation rule may constist of a restructuring of the input predicate-frame(s), involving re-allocation of a semantic function, loss (or addition) of argument positions, and shifts in semantic aspects. it is clear, then that the general ban on structure-changing operations characteristic of fg will have to be relaxed as far as these properties of the predicate formation component are concerned.» (dik 1980: 51). for the opposite phenomenon see moreno cabrera (1990: 39). javier martín arista ____________________________________________________________________ 66 (15) *the monk calls abbo (by means of valency increase) ›they call the monk abbo (by means of marked subject as signment) ›the monk is called abbo as is displayed in (15), a reinterpretation middle (intransitive) -active (transitive)-passive (transitive) seems plausible. in the lexical fund, then, the predicate frame of hatan-1 must have undergone the following change1: (16) a. hatanv (x1)ø where x1=s b. hatanv (x1)ag (x2)go where x1=s [unmarked] and x2=s [marked] having these entries in the lexical fund, let us see briefly to what happens in the clause layer component. the predicate frame in (16.a) gives rise to linguistic expres sions like (17.a): the verbal predicate hatan combines with an argument which bears the semantic function zero and to which the syntactic function subject is assigned. the predicate frame in (16.b), on the other hand, combines with two arguments, which are assigned the semantic functions agent and goal, subject being assigned to the agent argument in the 1 dr. gómez soliño [university of la laguna], in personal communication, pointed out that the predicate hatan is not a one-slot but a two-slot predicate and that one should resort to the semantic function reference (dik 1989) to account in a satisfactory way for the predicate frame of this verb. we have not taken this line for two reasons: in the first place, because the function reference has not been properly studied in the fg literature; in the second place, and more importantly, because the existence of one or more verbal arguments does not constitute a point central to this discussion; from the perspective of a functional syntax, what constitutes a main point of debate is the functional explanation for the analytical construction advanced in this section. ____________________________________________________________________ 67 unmarked voice and to the goal argument in the marked voice, as is the case with the linguistic expression in (17.b): (17) a. his sune -willelm hæt eallswa íe fæderfeng to íam rice. “his son -william was also called his fatherinherited the kingdom” (asc 755) b. se wæs cyneheard haten “he was called cyneheard” (asc 755) now, let us turn to the expression rules that turn out the passive form of hatan-1. once there was a candidate for marked subject assignment in the predicate frame of this verb, the expression component must have started triggering the cop support rule. as in the rest of the cases, it is not beyond all doubt when wesa n underwent ca, thus acquiring aux(iliary) status. gi ven the evidence yieded by the corpus, our view is that wesan had already achieved aux status when the perfective form gehaten entered linguistic expressions like: (18) on íam ylcan timan com eac sum bisceop fram romebyrig, birinus gehaten, to westsexena kyninge, cynegyls gehaten “at that time a bishop called birinus came from rome to visit the westsaxon king, called cynegyls” (asc 755) moreover, the omission of the wesan form (*íe wæs cynegyls gehaten), reinforces the view of this verb as an aux element. the omission (* íe wæs leofstan gehaten) is more glaring in the following example, where wesan shows up in the main clause1: 1 in using the gapping criterion we derive our inspiration from ramat and denison. denison (1993: 422) provides six kinds of syntactic evidence of grammaticalizajavier martín arista ____________________________________________________________________ 68 (19) on íam lande wæs sum man, leofstan gehaten (edm) “there was a man in that land, called leofstan” in semantic terms, the meaning of the copulative verb wesan became in creasingly more non-denotational (grammatical) as wesan approached the aux status1. so far, we have explored the semantic and morphosyntactic as pects of the movement in the analogical direction of hatan. however, the pic ture that we have got is that of the re sult rather than of the cause of the analogical change2. in line with the fg view that morphosyntactic and semantic rules can make reference to pragmatic rules but not viceversa, our point is that the cause of the change must be explained in pragmatic terms 3: the cause of the change in the analogical direction must have been the attempt to tion of the passive auxiliaries: generalization to all lexical verbs, acquisition of agreement, transparency (the retained object is part of the lexical structure of the lexical verb rather than of the auxiliary); postverbal ellipsis, the presence of other auxiliaries before the passive auxiliary and the occurrence of the progressive passive. ramat (1987: 16) has defined aux in terms of four criteria: aux must have the same s as the uninflected dependent verb; aux and v must have the same predicate frame; no semantic restrictions can be imposed by aux on v; and the function of aux is to express tense, mood and aspect relations. 1 goossens (1992: 54) has set a a predicational scale such that the further we move towards the minimally -predicational end of the scale, the lower the degree of denotational meaning becomes, and the higher the degree of grammatical (non-denotational) meaning. the predicational scale can be correlated with the grammat icalization scale in fg as follows: «full predicate predicate formation operator» / «predicational semi-predicational minimally predicational». 2 in this respect, we follow lightfoot (1979: 371) as regards analogy, which seems to be a result rather than a cause of change. as for linguistic change, our approach comes in the wake of bossuyt (1986) and dik (1986), who have set up the framework of a functional explanation in the diachronic axis. for more detailed information, we refer the reader to these papers. 3 therefore, we provide an external explanation in the sense of external control, in line with comrie (1983), hyman (1983) and kuno (1987). ____________________________________________________________________ 69 bridge the gap that the lack of the interverbal position imposes on the informative structure of the clause; indeed, hatan clauses like (4) lack a position of special pragmatic value in oe. the constituent bearing focus (foc) was likely to be aligned in interverbal position, as the following examples show1: (20) a. cuíbryht wæs to ærcebisc gehalgod (asc 741) cuthbrith was to archibishop consacrated b. îar wæron eac oíre vii broíru be naman gecigde (v) there were also other seven brothers by name announced the interverbal constituents in bolds in (20) are assigned foc, as is the case with the postverbal ones in the present-day english versions: (21) a. “cuthbrith was consacrated archbishop” b. “there were announced also the other seven brothers by their names” 4. summary and conlusions we close our investigation by restating the most important points: (i) before its disappearance, hatan underwent a change in the analogical direction whereby it acquired passive form and meaning; (ii) the semantic and the morphosyntactic levels provide us with the results rather than with the cause of the change: hatan became accessible to passivization after a change that took place in the lexical fund, where the quantitative valency of the predicate increased. such valency increase allowed for a reinterpretation middle (intransitive)-ac1 dezsó (1978: 3ff) has identified sentence stress in preverbal position in sov languages and in postverbal position in svo languages. javier martín arista ____________________________________________________________________ 70 tive (transitive)-passive (transitive). in the expression rule component, the cop sup port rule started applying. (iii) wesan in hatan passives must have got aux status before gapping was acceptable. (iv) the cause of the change can be explained in pragmatic terms as the desire on behalf of the speaker to provide hatan clauses with a position of special pragmatic value, namely interverbal position, in which the constituent bearing foc frequently turned up and which was lacking in middle voice hatan clauses. (v) as the results of this paper suggest, analogy in functional syntax must be explained multifunctionally by resorting to multiple perspectives of analysis and by looking in pragmatics for the external explanations that functional syntax demands. javier martín arista university of la rioja (logroño) references bossuyt, a. 1986. “functional requirements. causes or constraints upon language change?”. belgian journal of linguistics 1: 127-147. bosworth, j. and t. n. toller. 1983 (1898). anglo-saxon dictionary. oxford: oxford university press. burnley, d.1992. the history of the english language. london: longman. claudi, u. and b. heine. 1985. “from metaphor to grammar: some examples from ewe”. afrikansiche arbeitspapiere 1: 17-54. comrie, b. 1983. “form and function in explaining linguistic universals”. linguistics 21/1: 87-103. ____________________________________________________________________ 71 conte, m. et al. eds. 1978. wortstellung und bedeutung. tübingen: nie meyer. denison, d. 1993. english historical syntax. london: longman dezso, l. 1978. “towards typology of theme and rheme: sov languages” in conte et al. eds.: 3-11. dik, s. c. 1980. studies in functional grammar. london and new york: academic press. dik, s. c. 1983. “auxiliary and copula be in a functional grammar of english” in heny and richards eds: 121-143. dik, s. c. 1986. “on the notion functional explanation”. belgian journal of linguistics 1: 11-52. dik, s. c. 1987. “copula auxiliarization: how and why?” in harris and ramat eds.: 54-84. dik, s. c. 1989. the theory of functional grammar. part i: the structure of the clause. dordrecht: foris publications. givon, t. 1990 (1984). syntax: a functional-typological introduction (2 vols.). amsterdam: john benjamins. goossens, l. 1992. “graded predicationality, semanticization and be in a functional grammar of english”. belgian journal of linguistics 7: 5373. hanay, m. and e. vester eds. 1990. working with functional grammar: descriptive and computational applications. dordrecht: foris. harris, m. and p. ramat eds. 1987. historical development of auxiliaries. berlin: mouton. heine, b. and m. rech. 1982. patterns of grammaticalization in african languages. akup: arbeiten des kölner universalienprojekts 47. hengeveld, k. 1986. “copular verbs in a functional grammar of spanish”. linguistics 24: 393-420. javier martín arista ____________________________________________________________________ 72 hyman, l.m. 1983. “form and substance in language universals”. linguistics 21/1: 67-85. koefoed, h. a. 1991 (1958). danish . sevenoaks, kent: hodder and stoughton. kuno, s. 1980. “functional syntax” in moravsik & wirth eds.: 117-135. lightfoot, d. w. 1979. principles of diachronic syntax. london: cambridge university press. moravsik, e. &. j. r. wirth eds. 1980. syntax and semantics xiii: current approaches to syntax. london and new york: academic press. moreno cabrera, j. c. 1990. “spanish impersonal constructions” in hannay and vester eds.: 31-40. navarro, m. p. et al. 1991. setting up a presence-and-permanence glossary of native and non-native terms in medieval english i. universidad de zaragoza: servicio de publicaciones. needham, g. i. 1966. ælfric lifes of three english saints. london: methuen. ramat, p. 1987. “introductory paper” in harris and ramat eds.: 3-19. visser, f. t. 1984 (1973) an historical syntax of the english language. leiden: brill. * † * 2019article_1_ojanguren ana elvira ojanguren lópez, selim24 (2019): 1–28. issn 1132-631x / doi: https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.24.2019.1-28 old english verbs of prohibition. grammatical behaviour and class membership 1 ana elvira ojanguren lópez university of la rioja the aim of this article is to determine if the old english verbs bewerian, forbēodan, foresacan, forwiernan, stīeran and tōcweþān constitute a unified class of prohibition. the theoretical model is provided by the framework of verb classes and alternations, as well as by role and reference grammar. class membership requires not only similar meaning components but also shared grammatical behaviour. while bewerian, forbēodan and forwyrnan are found in three syntactic configurations, and in the nominalisation and undergoer alternations, foresacan, stīeran and tōcweþān occur in one syntactic configuration only and do not take part in these alternations. the main conclusion of this article is that these verbs do not show a similar grammatical behaviour and, therefore, cannot be said to represent a consistent verbal class. keywords: old english; verb classes; alternations; role and reference grammar 1. introduction the aim of this article is to analyse the old english verbs of prohibition bewerian, forbēodan, foresacan, forwiernan, stīeran and tōcweþān as to class membership. a thesaurus of old english (toe, roberts & kay 2000) classifies 1 the research presented in this article has been funded through the grant ffi2014−59110−p, which is gratefully acknowledged. i would like to thank javier martín arista for his remarks and comments on earlier versions of this paper. in particular, the description of the undergoer alternation as raising in section 4 and the theoretical and descriptive limits of the analysis discussed in section 6 were pointed out by martín arista (personal communication). the usual disclaimers apply. 2 ana elvira ojanguren lópez these verbs under the label of verb of prohibition because they share meaning components related to prohibiting, hindering or preventing that something is the case. with an alternative approach, the analysis carried out in this article is based on the idea that the class membership of verbs depends not only on meaning components but also on grammatical behaviour. this theoretical position, which has been held by levin (1993) among others, is adopted in this research together with the descriptive and explanatory concepts of role and reference grammar (rrg, van valin & lapolla 1997), which provides a suitable framework for determining whether or not the verbs at stake share their grammatical behaviour. the article is organised as follows. section 2 presents two approaches to verb classes, on the basis of syntactic behaviour and semantic roles. section 3 reviews previous work on the verbal classes of old english, with special emphasis on verbs of speech and related meanings. section 4 describes the method of analysis, including the data sources, the steps of analysis and the application of the theoretical framework. section 5 deals with the grammatical behaviour of the verbs of prohibition, while keeping an eye on the meaning components that have been identified through comparison with present-day english. to conclude, section 6 discusses the results and section 7 summarises the main findings of the article. 2. two approaches to verb classes in this section, two approaches to the building of verb classes are reviewed: verb classes based on syntactic behaviour (levin’s framework of verb classes and alternations) and verb classes formed from semantic criteria expressed as thematic roles (role and reference grammar). levin (1993) lays the foundation of a research programme in the semantic motivation of syntax that focuses on verbs. it consists of two descriptive concepts, namely verbal class and alternation, which are explanatory with respect to each other. while the semantics of a given verb determines the range of expressions with which it is found, the syntactic configurations shared by a set of verbs is a defining criterion for class membership. that is to say, from the perspective of argument realisation, the number and form of the compulsory complements of a verb is restricted by the meaning component of the verb in question, whereas from the perspective of class membership “verbs that fall into classes according to shared behavior would be expected to show old english verbs of prohibition 3 shared meaning components” (levin 1993: 5). verbal classes and alternations are not explicitly defined. the former are syntactically relevant and semantically coherent, whereas the latter affect the diathesis of verbs (levin 1993: 22). the characteristic properties of verbal classes include argumenttaking properties, participation in diathesis alternations and morphological properties. for instance, grow verbs include develop, evolve, grow, hatch and mature (levin 1993: 174). the properties of this class include the alternations in (1), which are understood as systematic morpho-syntactic contrasts in the realisation of verbal arguments. (1) a. material/product alternation (intransitive) that acorn will grow into an oak tree. an oak tree will grow from that acorn. b. causative/inchoative alternation the gardener grew that acorn into an oak tree. that acorn will grow into an oak tree. as levin (1993: 174) remarks, these verbs show an alternation that can be described as the intransitive counterpart of the material/product alternation in which build verbs participate (as in martha carved a toy out of a piece of wood vs. martha carved the piece of wood into a toy). alternations, therefore, do not only constitute a defining property of verb classes but also allow us to make generalisations across verb classes. for example, the body-part possessor ascension alternation (as in margaret cut bill’s arm vs. margaret cut bill on the arm) distinguishes cut, hit and touch, which participate in the alternation, from break, which does not display this alternation. differences in verb behaviour can be explained if alternations are sensitive to certain components of the meaning of verbs. for example, touch is “a pure verb of contact”, hit is “a verb of contact by motion”, cut is “a verb of causing a change of state by moving something into contact with the entity that changes state”, and break is a “pure verb of change of state” (levin 1993: 10). in other words, certain meaning elements can be defined for a given alternation, which ultimately determines which verbs can undergo the alternation and belong to a certain verbal class. turning to verb classes formed from semantic criteria expressed as thematic roles, rrg (foley & van valin 1984, van valin & lapolla 1997, van valin 2005) classifies verbs with respect to the semantic properties necessary for the description of semantic roles, in such a way that verb classes 4 ana elvira ojanguren lópez can be derived from the assignment of semantic roles to the arguments of the verb. these questions are addressed in more detail in the remainder of this section, which is based on the overview of rrg available from http://linguistics.buffalo.edu/people/faculty/vanvalin/rrg/rrg_overview.pdf. the tables in this section follow, with few modifications, this overview. this section also draws on this overview for the terminology and the definitions of rrg. some examples have been changed or modified. in rrg, the semantic representation of the sentence is based on the aktionsart (internal aspect) class of the verb. the typology of aktionsart consists of four classes: state, achievement, accomplishment and activity. states and activities are basic types. achievements are punctual and accomplishments are durative. van valin & lapolla (1997) also distinguish the active accomplishment (telic uses of activity verbs) and the causative version of all aktionsart classes. van valin (2005), additionally, proposes the semelfactive class, both non-causative and causative, or punctual events. aktionsart types are defined by means of the set of features shown in table 1. table 1. aktionsart or internal aspect (van valin 2005) state [+static], [-dynamic], [-telic], [-punctual] leon is a fool activity [-static], [+dynamic], [-telic], [-punctual] the children cried semelfactive [-static], [± dynamic], [-telic], [+punctual] the light flashed achievement [-static], [-dynamic], [+telic], [+punctual] the window shattered accomplishment [-static], [-dynamic], [+telic], [-punctual] the snow melted active accomplishment [-static], [+dynamic], [+telic], [-punctual] paul ran to the store logical structures relate clausal semantics to clausal syntax and viceversa, thus constituting the main device of semantics-syntax and syntax-semantics linking. table 2 shows aktionsart types and the corresponding logical structures. the main distinction is drawn between the stative (predicate′) and non-stative (do′) part of logical structures. the variables x, y and z stand for verbal arguments. the metalinguistic predicates ingr(essive), sem(e)l(factive), become and cause indicate, respectively, ingressives, semelfactives, accomplishments and causatives. old english verbs of prohibition 5 table 2. aktionsart types and logical structures in rrg aktionsart type logical structure state predicate′ (x) or (x, y) activity do′ (x, [predicate′ (x) or (x, y)]) achievement ingr predicate′ (x) or (x, y), or ingr do′ (x, [predicate′ (x) or (x, y)]) semelfactive seml predicate′ (x) or (x, y), or seml do′ (x, [predicate′ (x) or (x, y)]) accomplishment become predicate′ (x) or (x, y), or become do′ (x, [predicate′ (x) or (x, y)]) active accomplishment do′ (x, [predicate1′ (x, (y))]) & become predicate2′ (z, x) or (y) causative α cause r, where α, r are lss of any type the semantic interpretation of verbal arguments in rrg is based on two generalised semantic roles or macroroles called actor and undergoer. macroroles make grammatical generalisations across argumental structures. in a transitive predication, the actor is the first argument and the undergoer the second argument of the verb. in an intransitive predication, the only argument can be an actor or an undergoer, depending on the semantic properties of the predicate. the number of macroroles that a predicate takes is called macrorole transitivity. this definition is semantic and is intended to distinguish the number of macroroles from the number of syntactic arguments, called syntactic transitivity. the three possibilities of macrorole transitivity are: transitive (2 macroroles), intransitive (1 macrorole) and atransitive (0 macroroles). there is no third macrorole available for ditransitives. the third argument is called a non-macrorole direct core argument. as regards grammatical relations, subject and object are not universal for rrg. instead, rrg posits the concept of privileged syntactic argument (psa). in an active construction, the macrorole actor is linked to psa if the verb is dynamic, while the undergoer becomes the psa with stative verbs. in passive constructions, the macrorole undergoer enjoys the status of psa. the other arguments in a clause are core arguments, either direct (without preposition) or oblique (with preposition, or case-marked genitive or dative in inflectional languages like old english). some constraints operate. in some languages only macrorole arguments can be linked to psa, whereas in others, such as old english, non-macrorole core arguments can be linked to psa. 6 ana elvira ojanguren lópez linking is the correspondence between syntax and semantics, which operates in both ways. the linking between syntax and semantics is governed by the completeness constraint, stipulating that all the specified arguments in the semantic representation of a sentence must be realised in the syntax, and conversely that all the expressions in the syntax must be linked to some element in the semantic representation of a sentence, in order to be interpreted. important elements of linking are verb agreement, case assignment and prepositional government. the rrg theory of complex sentences is based on two concepts, juncture and nexus, in such a way that the type of unit (juncture) is independent of the type of relation (nexus). beginning with juncture, it is necessary to make reference to the structure of the clause in rrg. the layered structure of the clause is a hierarchical structure that consists of several semantic layers that are motivated by the scope of operators (grammatical features such as tense, aspect, modality, etc.). the central components of the logical structure of the clause are the core (a verbal nucleus with its arguments and its argumentadjuncts, as in drink wine and go to the park respectively), the clause, which is comprised of the core and the periphery (as in play chess in the park), and the sentence, which consists of one or more units of clause level, as in i read a novel before going to bed. these components, in the rrg view, also represent the fundamental constituents of complex sentences. the unmarked pattern for the construction of complex sentences involves the combination of nuclei with nuclei, cores with cores, clauses with clauses, and sentences with sentences. these are called levels of juncture. depending on the degree of complexity of the combining units, the types of juncture are nuclear juncture, core juncture, clausal juncture and sentential juncture. nuclear junctures, for example, are complex constructions made up of multiple nuclei. for example, in john forced open the door, two nuclei, force and open, can be found in a single core. core junctures comprise two or more cores in a clause, as in i ordered fred to force the door open. in this type of core juncture, the two cores share a core argument, in this case the participant fred. a clause juncture can be identified in more complex structures of the type john phoned mary yesterday and jim phoned her too. further differences between the levels of juncture have to do with complementisers (to, from, etc.). nuclear junctures do not include complementisers, whereas core junctures may require them. as a result, the two nuclei can be adjacent in a nuclear juncture, while they cannot be adjacent in a core juncture. old english verbs of prohibition 7 the possible syntactic and semantic relations between the units in a juncture, called nexus, include coordination and subordination. subordination is divided into two subtypes, daughter subordination, when the subordinate clause functions as an argument, as in that she arrived late shocked everyone; and peripheral subordination, when the subordinate clause is a periphery, as in kim saw pat after she arrived at the party. both subtypes of subordination are possible at the clause, core and nuclear levels. for subordination to take place, it is a requirement that clefting and passivisation are possible. thus, mary regretted john’s losing the race is an instance of subordination because the cleft (it was john’s losing the race that mary regretted) and the passive (for john to lose the race was regretted by mary) are possible (van valin & lapolla 1997: 445). to the traditional nexus types of coordination and subordination, rrg adds a third nexus type, called cosubordination, which is dependent coordination. in cosubordination, the dependence is due to the operators, given that the units must share at least one operator at the level of juncture. for example, in mary sat playing the guitar the operator of imperfect aspect has scope over both nuclei, sat and playing. 3. review of previous work the lexematic-functional approach to old english verbal classes distinguishes constructions (recurrent associations of form and meaning) and alternations (recurrent contrast of form and meaning). both constructions and alternations make reference to the semantics of the verbs in question by identifying the aktionsart (internal aspect) realisations and also refer to the syntax of verbs (including argument realisation, case marking and prepositional government and clausal relations within the complex sentence). for a certain verbal class to be distinguished, as in the framework of verb classes and alternations (levin 1993), not only the expression of a common meaning but also a certain degree of similar grammatical behaviour are compulsory. if we concentrate on the specific contributions of the lexematicfunctional approach to old english verbal classes, several verb classes have been studied, along with their logical structures (formal representation of aktionsart types), constructions and alternations: verbs of warning (gonzález orta 2002), verbs of running (cortés rodríguez & torres medina 2003), verbs of writing (cortés rodríguez & martín díaz 2003), verbs of smell perception and emission (gonzález orta 2003), verbs of speech (gonzález orta 2004), 8 ana elvira ojanguren lópez remember verbs (gonzález orta 2005), verbs of sound (cortés rodríguez & gonzález orta 2006), verbs of feeling (c. l. garcía pacheco 2013), and verbs of existence (l. m. garcía pacheco 2013); as well as some specific constructions, like the resultative (gonzález orta 2006). gonzález orta (2006), in a representative work, proposes a lexical template for the class of verbs of speech. a lexical template is a lexical representation that includes syntactic and semantic information within the same format, based on the logical structures of rrg and semantic decomposition. for example, the resultative construction describes the state achieved as the result of an action (levin 1993: 101). this construction is instantiated in subconstructions involving verbs of speech. in the case of old english verbs of speech, each event comprises the subevents in table 3. table 3. subevents in events of speech (gonzález orta 2006) the activities [do′ (y, z)] and [not do′ (y, z)] regarding command, ask and forbid verbs the state [want′ (y, z)] with persuade verbs the accomplishments [become believe′ (y, z)], [become think.again.about something (a).be.in.mind.from.before′ (y, z)] and [become know′ (y, z)] concerning persuade, remind and tell verbs, respectively in the first subevents of the constructional templates in table 4, the external variable (x) acts as effector initiating an action (do′) by using (use′) verbal means (voice/words), in such a way that, focusing on verbs command and ask verbs, this effector causes (cause) someone to do or not to do something. table 4. the resultative construction: constructional templates with verbs of speech (gonzález orta 2006) command verbs [do′ (x, [use′ (x, voice/words)] cause [do′ (x, [express.instructions.(a).to.(b). in.language.(c)′ (x, y)])] cause [do′ (y, z)], where y = b , z = a. ask verbs [do′ (x, [use′ (x, voice/words)] cause [do′ (x, [express.requests.(a).to.(b). in.language.(c)′ (x, y)])] cause [do′ (y, z)], where y = b , z = a. old english verbs of prohibition 9 as can be seen in these tables, the template motivates a set of constructionbased templates corresponding to the related constructions. 4. method. the semantics and syntax of verbs of prohibition in this section, the method of research is described, including the data sources, the steps of analysis and the application of the theoretical framework as well as the synthesis presented in the previous sections to the verbs under analysis. as regards the data sources, the inventory of verbs of prohibition has been retrieved from a thesaurus of old english (toe). the verbs beginning with the letters a−h have been consulted on the dictionary of old english (doe). all the citations corresponding to the meaning under analysis have been selected. for the verbs beginning with the letters i−y, the citations in the bosworth-toller dictionary have been extracted. this research takes the following steps of analysis: firstly, it describes the semantics and the grammatical behaviour of verbs of prohibition in presentday english; in the second place, it analyses the realisation of arguments and the structure of the clause with old english verbs of prohibition; thirdly, it identifies the alternations found with verbs of prohibition; and, finally, it assesses the consistency of the set of verbs of prohibition as a verbal class in old english. with respect to the semantics of prohibition in present-day english, forbidding is a speech act. it has the illocutionary force of a negative imperative of the form don’t do x. semantically, the first argument is a prototypical agent: a volitional initiator with authority over the addressee. the addressee undergoes a change of state whereby they are no longer allowed to do something. this is typically an activity controlled by the addressee. the change of state may or may not be punctual, from being allowed to not being allowed to do something. verbs of prohibition do not presuppose that the forbidden action does not take place. in this respect, verbs of prohibition are substantially different from verbs of prevention, which presuppose that the action was not accomplished (as in the ministers prevented the president from resigning). prevent verbs, unlike verbs of prohibition, take the complementiser from. for this reason, the logical structure posited for forbid verbs by gonzález orta (2006), a causative 10 ana elvira ojanguren lópez active accomplishment, is not adopted in this research. the causative accomplishment is preferred to indicate that a process has taken place whereby someone is no longer allowed to do something. this process may be durative but its logical end is that someone is forbidden to do something. the metapredicate become marks the culmination of the process. the logical structures of verbs of prohibition such as forbid and verbs of prevention like prevent are presented in table 5. table 5. the logical structure of forbid and prevent forbid the new government has forbidden to sell chewing gum. causative accomplishment [do′ (x, [predicate′ (x, y)])] cause [become (not allowed′ (y, z))] prevent i cannot prevent you from doing so. causative activity [do′ (x, [predicate′ (x, y)])] cause [not do′ (y, z)] the lexical representation of forbid in table 5 is a simplified version of the logical structure of promise, which states that the speaker expresses an obligation to someone to do the action denoted by the logical structure filling the second argument of obligated′ (van valin & lapolla 1997: 551). this lexical representation is consistent with the logical structure posited for transfer of possession (van valin & lapolla 1997: 583). syntactically, verbs of prohibition are found in the nominalisation alternation, which involves a simplex clause with an argument (typically, the first argument) that usually entails a predication with its participants expressed as modifiers; and a complex sentence in which the linked clause expresses the prohibition with a non-finite verb that takes a direct argument of its own, as in the consumption of alcohol is forbidden vs. it is forbidden to consume alcohol. the alternation between the that-clause and the infinitive, which holds in old english, is archaic in present-day english and is found only in expressions like heaven forbid that he should go there. old english verbs of prohibition 11 verbs of prohibition are also found in the undergoer alternation, which can be described as a result of raising from actor in the linked clause to undergoer in the matrix clause, as in the king forbad that horses should be sold vs. the king forbad to sell horses. in a clausal subordination juncture like the king forbad that horses should be sold, the linked clause that horses should be sold is assigned the macrorole undergoer, whereas in the core coordination juncture the king forbad to sell horses, the linked core to sell horses does not receive the macrorole undergoer. the reason is that the clausal subordination juncture can be turned into a passive with the undergoer as target, thus selling horses was forbidden by the king, while no such passive is possible on the basis of the core coordination juncture. if there is an explicit patient of prohibition, as in the king forbad that farmers sold horses vs. the king forbad farmers to sell horses, competition arises to get undergoer status between the patient of prohibition (farmers) and the object of prohibition (to sell horses). in the king forbad farmers to sell horses the patient of prohibition is assigned undergoer, while in the king forbad that farmers sold horses it is the object of prohibition that gets the macrorole undergoer. as has been remarked above, undergoer competition is ultimately a matter of raising from actor in the linked clause to undergoer in the matrix clause. morphologically, this involves a shift from nominative to dative case, in such a way that the accusative is related to the nominalisation alternation and the dative to the undergoer alternation. to conclude this section, the criteria for analysing the grammatical behaviour of verbs of prohibition are listed. they are based on the semantics and syntax of these verbs, as presented in this section, as well as on the theoretical model and the previous research reviewed above. the criteria are the following: nexus and juncture type; complementiser; finite vs. non-finite form of the dependent verb; aktionsart type; semantic valence (transitivity of macrorole); syntactic valence (obligatory arguments and argument-adjuncts); omitted arguments (in parallel or coordinated constructions); unspecified arguments (second or third argument); actor vs. undergoer psa; morphological case of arguments; prepositional government in argumentadjuncts. the criterion of voice is not considered because it is redundant with respect to actor vs. undergoer psa. the relative order of arguments may be taken into account if recurrent alignments turn up. 12 ana elvira ojanguren lópez 5. the grammatical behaviour of old english verbs of prohibition this section analyses the grammatical behaviour of the old english verbs of prohibition bewerian, forbēodan, foresacan, forwiernan, stīeran and tōcweþan in order to determine their class membership. the approach is qualitative and aims at the different argument realisations found in the data. notice that in the examples in this section fragments are named as in the doe. bewerian, according to the doe, means ‘to ward off, defend, protect’ and, more to the point, ‘to hinder, restrain’. this verb is found in the two alternants of the nominalisation alternation, which, as has been said above, comprises a simplex clause with an argument that can entail a predication, and a complex sentence in which the linked clause expresses the prohibition with a non-finite verb. in example (2), bewerian turns up in a simplex clause that belongs in a coordinate subject construction, in which a non-macrorole argument in the dative case realises the patient of prohibition (him ‘to them’) and a direct macrorole argument (undergoer) case-marked accusative (æghwylc yfel ‘every wicked thing’) expresses the object. (2) [homs 47 21] se halga gast hie æghwylc god lærde, & him æghwylc yfel bewerede. the holy spirit taught them every good thing and prohibited them every wicked thing. the other alternant can contain either a finite or a non-finite verb in the dependent clause, so that the nexus-juncture types are clausal subordination or core coordination. in (3), the linked clause, introduced by the complementiser þæt, is assigned the macrorole undergoer and is linked to psa. (3) [bede 1 16.70.18] swelce is eac bewered þæt mon hine menge wið his broðorwiife, forðon þurh þa ærran geþeodnesse heo wæs geworden his broðor lichoma. so also it is forbidden that a man weds his brother’s wife, for by the previous union she became his brother’s body. core junctures with coordination nexus that contain bewerian can take a complementiser, such as to in the inflected infinitive to etanne ‘to eat’ in (4a); or no complementiser at all, as is the case with the uninflected infinitive onwreon ‘to uncover’ in (4b). old english verbs of prohibition 13 (4) a. [bede 1 16.80.7] mid þy seo æ monig þing bewereð to etanne, swa swa unclæne, hwæðre in godspelle drihten cwæð... for while the law prohibits the eating of many things as unclean, in the gospel the lord said… b. [bede 1 16.70.8] seo halige æ bewereð & forbeodeð þa scondlicnesse onwreon mægsibba. the holy law prohibits and forbids to uncover the shame of relatives. semantically, the object of prohibition does not receive the macrorole undergoer in simplex clauses, like (2a), and core coordination junctures, like (4a) and (4b), because the patient of prohibition usually gets the undergoer and the agent of the causative accomplishment is the actor. then, the actor argument licenses the nominative case and the undergoer is case-marked dative. in clausal subordination junctures, the object of prohibition rather than the patient of prohibition is the undergoer. given that there is competition for the assignment of this macrorole with bewerian, it can be said that this verb is found in the undergoer alternation. the psa can be linked to the actor or the undergoer, so that two passives are possible: on the object and on the patient of prohibition. in (5a) the clausal subordination corresponds to the assignment of psa to the object of prohibition undergoer, while in (5b) the patient of prohibition undergoer gets psa, but is omitted. the argument-adjunct inflected for the dative and governed by the preposition from expresses the object of prohibition. (5) a. [bede 1 16.76.19] fulwian þonne þæt cennende wiif oðþe þæt bearn þæt þær acenned bið [...] nænige gemete is bewered. so then, to baptise a woman after childbirth or the new-born child […] is in no way prohibited. b. [bede 1 16.76.2] hwelce rehte mæg þonne bewered beon from gife þæs halgan fulwihtes. for what reason may then one be prohibited from the gift of holy baptism? example (5b) reflects the semantics and syntax of prevent verbs rather than the configuration of verbs of prohibition. firstly, it does not realise a predicative object of prohibition and presupposes its non-occurrence, unlike verbs of 14 ana elvira ojanguren lópez prohibition, which do not presuppose that the object of prohibition is not going to be the case. secondly, it takes the complementiser from ‘from’ rather than to or þæt, as the other examples presented above do. finally, with bewerian there is a tendency for the dative core argument expressing the patient of prohibition to be placed after the nominative and before the core, the clause or the direct argument realising the object of prohibition. forbēodan is, from the point of view of meaning definition, a typical verb of prohibition. according to the doe, it means ‘to forbid, prohibit; to ban, refuse; to restrain, check, hinder, prevent; to resist, deny’. this verb is found in the nominalisation alternation because the object can be non-verbal and verbal. this verb appears in simplex clauses with an accusative noun phrase that realises the object, such as ælc wiflac ‘all cohabitation’ in (6a), and in complex sentences like (6b) and (6c). in core coordination instances like (6b), the object of prohibition constitutes a non-macrorole core, thus to donne ‘to do’ and its arguments. in clausal subordination constructions in the active voice like (6c), the object of prohibition (þæt nan man na ma wifa næbbe buton i ‘that any man has more than one wife’) receives undergoer. in (6a), (6b) and (6c) the agent of the causative accomplishment is case-marked nominative. (6) a. [homu 40 144] hig forbudon æfre ælc wiflac weofodþenum, þæt is bisceopum and mæssepreostum. they forbade for ever all cohabitation to servers of the altar, that is, bishops and mass-priests. b. [thcap 1 10.317.3] forþan þe we forbeodað ægðer ge geflytu ge plegan ge unnytta word ge gehwylce unnyttnesse in þam halgan stowum to donne. therefore, we forbid to do any quarrelling, dancing, vain words or any other follies in that holy place. c. [lawnorthu 61] and we forbeodað on godes forbode, þæt nan man na ma wifa næbbe buton i. and we forbid after god’s prohibition, that any man has more than one wife. the general tendency is for the core coordination to opt for the inflected infinitive, and for the clausal subordination to select a finite form of the verb conjugated for the subjunctive, as is the case with leornode ‘learnt’ in (7). old english verbs of prohibition 15 (7) [or 6 31.150.14] þa wæs he sona geornfull þæt he wolde diegellice þone cristendom onwendan & forbead openlice þæt mon nane fæste boc ne leornode. then he was soon glad that he would secretly avert the christian faith and he openly forbade that anyone read the fast book. this verb is also found in the undergoer alternation, given that there is competition for the assignment of this macrorole. the tendency is for the subject of prohibition to be realised as a dative both in core coordinations, like us ‘us’ in (8a), and in clausal subordinations, as is the case with him ‘them’ in (8b). (8) a. [cp 48.369.1] eac hie sint to manigenne ðætte hie ðurh hiora gedwolan & ðurh hiora ungeðwærnesse ða godes æ, ðe us forbiet diofulum to offrianne, ðæt hie ða ilcan æ ne gehwierfen to diofulgielde. they are also to be admonished with their errors and disagreement over the law of god, which forbids us to sacrifice to devil, that they do not turn the law into an offering to the devil. b. [cp 32.211.22] ne sculon we no hi ðreagean suelce hie hit gedoon hæbben, ðeah hit gedon sie, ac we sculon him forbeodan ðæt hie huru sua ne don. we should not blame them as if they had done it, although it be done, but at least we must forbid them to do so. however, the patient of prohibition can be realised as an argument of the matrix clause, thus the dative him ‘him’ in (9a), or as an argument of the linked clause, such as the nominative ne kyning ne nan man ‘no king and no man’ in (9b). example (9a) also illustrates the realisation of the patient of prohibition as an argument of the linked clause. (9) a. [cp 32.211.22] ne sculon we no hi ðreagean suelce hie hit gedoon hæbben, ðeah hit gedon sie, ac we sculon him forbeodan ðæt hie huru sua ne don, suelce hit ðonne giet gedon ne sie. we should not blame them as if they had done it, although it be done, but we must forbid them to do so, as if it were not yet done. 16 ana elvira ojanguren lópez b. [chrone 656.93] ic uitalianus papa [...] forbede þet ne kyning ne nan man ne haue nan onsting buton þon abbod ane. i vitalianus pope […] forbid, that any king, or any man, have any ingress, but the abbot alone. the competition for the macrorole undergoer is also reflected by the fact that both the patient and the object of the prohibition can be duplicated, which guarantees the assignment of undergoer to the duplicated role and excludes the other. for instance, in (10a) the dative þam blindan ‘to the blind’ in the matrix clause is co-referential with the nominative he ‘he’ in the linked clause. in (10b) the accusative hit ‘it’ in the matrix clause anticipates the linked clause þæt hi ne weopon ‘that they would not weep’. (10) a. [æhomm 12 75] hi forbudon þam blindan þæt he to þam hælende ne clypode. they forbade the blind man to talk to the saviour. b. [alex 40.13] ac þa forbead hit se bisceop þæt hi ne weopon. but then the bishop forbade them to weep. a consequence of the competition for the assignment of undergoer is the double case marking of the patient of prohibition. it is usually case-marked dative, even in the absence of an accusative noun phrase, as him ‘to him’ in (11a), but it can also be inflected for the accusative, as hine ‘him’ in (11b). (11) a. mk (wscp) 9.38 lareow, sumne we gesawon on þinum naman deofolseocnessa ut adrifende se ne fyligð us, & we him forbudon. teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name who does not follow us and we forbade him. b. [lk (wscp) 9.49] bebeodend, we gesawon sumne on þinum naman deofolseocnessa ut drifende & we hine forbudon. master, we saw someone casting out devils in your name, and we forbade him. old english verbs of prohibition 17 with forbēodan, the psa is linked to the actor more frequently than to the undergoer. instances of psa undergoer, nevertheless, include realisations in both simplex clauses like (12a) and complex sentences such as (12b). (12) a. [conf 1.1 381] nis horses flæsc forboden þeah ðe hi fela mægða þicgean nelle. horse meet is not forbidden although many men will not taste it. b. [homu 53 112] ðonne is eow micel neadþearf þæt ge gebeton þa þing þe eow fram gode forbodene wæron. because it is a great necessity for you that you make good the things that were forbidden by god to you. in both (12a) and (12b), passivisation is done on the object of prohibition. when the patient of prohibition is the target of passivisation, the dative case of the corresponding active is preserved in the passive construction. this happens in (13), with the psa linked to the dative ðæm sacerde ‘the priest’. (13) [cp 18.139.24] suiðe ryhte wæs ðæm sacerde forboden ðæt he his heafod sceare, & eac ðæt he his feax lete weaxan. the priest was with good reason forbidden to shave his head or to let his hair grow. finally, the patient of prohibition, usually case-marked dative, tends to follow the auxiliary and to precede the lexical verb of the matrix clause, thus, for instance, ðæm sacerde ‘the priest’ in (13). this is the case not only with complex sentences but also with simplex ones, like (11a) and (11b), in which the dative precedes the lexical verb. the existence of counterexamples like (6a) indicates that this represents a tendency rather than a strict rule. according to the doe, the verb forsacan primarily means ‘to refuse’. it can also be found glossing latin prohibere in sense ‘to refuse, prohibit, forbid (someone from an action)’. in (14), the patient and the object of prohibition are omitted because they can be recovered from the context. by analogy with the verbs discussed so far, the simplex clause configuration can be proposed, with the agent of the active accomplishment assigned to the macrorole actor and realised by a noun phrase case-marked nominative; and the patient of 18 ana elvira ojanguren lópez prohibition assigned to the macrorole undergoer and realised by a noun phrase inflected for the accusative. the nominative is linked to psa. (14) [mtgl (li) 006300 (3.13)] ða cuom haelend from in to þæt he were gefulwad from him. soðlice foresoc ł forbead hine cueð ic from ðe rehtra is gefulwia & ðu cuom ł cymes to me. then the saviour came to be baptised by him. indeed, john prevented and prohibited him and said: it is more suitable that i am baptised by you and you come to me. the doe entry to forwyrnan defines the meaning of this verb as ‘to refuse, deny; to hinder, prevent, restrain, forbid, prohibit’. in simplex clauses, the object of prohibition is case-marked genitive, as in (15a), while the patient of prohibition is inflected for the dative, as in (15b). in (15c), both the object of prohibition and the patient of prohibition are realised, in the genitive and the dative, respectively, thus us ‘us’ and þæs ‘of that’. (15) a. [chrodr 1 6.17] and gif se eard sy wynes wæstmbære, sylle man dæghwamlice ælcum breðer fif punda gewihte wines, gif þa unwedru his ne forwyrnað. and if the earth is devoid of wine, one must give daily to each brother five pounds of weighted wine, if the bad weather does not prevent it. b. [æchom ii, 11 103.376] ac se halga wer him forwyrnde. but the holy man restrained him. c. [æchom ii, 40 302.116] þonne forwyrnð se mildheorta god us þæs ðe we ungesceadwislice biddað. then the mildhearted god restrains us from that which we foolishly beseech. even though the object of prohibition in (15a) and (15c) entails a predication, the semantics and syntax of these clauses corresponds to a prevent verb rather than to a verb of prohibition. as has been remarked above, prevent verbs presuppose that the object of prohibition does not take place, whereas with verbs of prohibition such a presupposition does not hold. nevertheless, the verb can be found in the nominalisation alternation, as it takes both noun phrases and verbal clauses that realise the object of prohibition. in complex sentences, this verb appears in core coordination and clausal subordination junctures. in core coordination junctures, the agent of the old english verbs of prohibition 19 active accomplishment is assigned actor, thus dæges leoht ‘daylight’ in (16a), and the patient of prohibition gets undergoer, as gehwylcne ‘anyone’ in (16a). in this example, the object of prohibition is realised as a non-macrorole core, introduced by the complementiser to and with the verb in the inflected infinitive, to gefremmenne þæt þæt seo niht geþafað ‘to do what the night allows’. although the patient of prohibition is case-marked accusative in (16a), the tendency is for the patient of prohibition to license the dative case, as it happens in (16b). (16) a. [æchom i, 39 522.70] swa swa dæges leoht forwyrnð gehwylcne to gefremmenne. þæt þæt seo niht geþafað. as the light of day prohibits anyone to do what the night allows. b. [æls (auguries) 248] god us ne nyt swa þeah þæt we god don sceolon, ne eac us ne forwyrnð yfel to wyrcenne, forðan þe he us forgeaf agenne cyre. neither does he prohibit us to do evil, because he gave us free will. in clausal subordination junctures, the linked clause is introduced by the complementiser þæt and the verb is conjugated for the subjunctive. the linked clause is assigned undergoer, in the absence of a dative-marked noun phrase that expresses the patient of prohibition in the matrix clause. instead, the patient of prohibition is realised as the actor of the linked clause. this can be seen in example (17) with respect to hit...hit. (17) bo 41.144.26 nat he hit no forðyþe he wille þæt hit geweorðe, ac forðy þe he wile forwernan þæt hit ne geweorðe. he does not know it because he wishes that it happens, but because he would like to forbid that it happens. as in old english in general, two negations apply simultaneously in example (17). the negation in the matrix clause is lexical and can be attributed to the representation of verbs of prohibition, whose logical structure contains a negation metapredicate, thus do′ (x, [predicate′ (x, y)]) cause [become (not allowed′ (y, z))]; the other negation in this example is syntactic, through the negative word ne ‘not’. 20 ana elvira ojanguren lópez when the patient of prohibition is expressed, it precedes the linked clause in the linear order of the sentence. since the linked clause has to perform a function at sentence level (in rrg terms this is the same as receiving actor or undergoer), the object of prohibition has preference for the assignment of undergoer over the patient of prohibition. this happens in (18). (18) [christc 1503] þearfum forwyrndon þæt hi under eowrum þæce mosten in gebugan. they prohibited that the needy were allowed to dwell under a roof. when the object of prohibition is case-marked genitive, the patient of prohibition has priority for undergoer assignment because no passive can be done on the genitive in old english. nevertheless, this verb can be said to participate in the undergoer alternation. if the patient of prohibition gets undergoer, the object of prohibition is realised as a non-macrorole core in a core coordination juncture. if the object of prohibition is the undergoer, the patient of prohibition is not expressed or is marked by the dative case and the position in the order of the sentence, whose juncture is a clausal subordination. additionally, the patient of prohibition is co-referential with the actor of the linked clause, thus þearfum...hi in (18). it is also possible for these verbs to turn up in a case-preserving passive construction such as (19). the dative case of the corresponding active, marking the patient of prohibition, is kept in the passive construction. (19) [æchom i, 19 331.180] & deofol us wile ofslean gif he mot. ac him bið forwyrned þurh godes gescyldnysse. and the devil would destroy us if he could but he is restrained by god’s protection. this syntactic configuration corresponds to the assignment of the undergoer to the patient of prohibition, in such a way that the undergoer then is linked to psa. the object of prohibition is not realised because it is recoverable from the immediate context and, perhaps, because the competition for undergoer leaves only a non-macrorole constituent for the realisation of this participant. finally, the patient of prohibition tends to occupy the pre-verbal position, not only in passives with dative psa like (19), but also in actives like (18). this also applies to simplex clauses like (15b) and (15c). old english verbs of prohibition 21 according to the bosworth-toller entry to stīeran, this verb means ‘to steer; to restrain; to reprove; to punish; to prohibit’, so that the meaning of prohibition is not central to this verb. when this verb conveys the meaning ‘to prohibit’, it only appears in simplex clauses. the verb, therefore, cannot be found in the nominalisation alternation. the patient of prohibition can appear in the genitive, as his ‘him’ in (20a) and in the dative, thus ðe ungewittigum ‘the foolish’ in (20b). when the object of prohibition and the patient of prohibition are realised, the former is inflected for the genitive and the latter for the dative, as gielpes ‘of arrogance’ and monna cynne ‘mankind’ in (20c). example (20d) is reflexive, so that the actor and the undergoer are co-referential. given that the patient of prohibition, which is assigned undergoer, is case-marked dative, the object of prohibition is necessarily realised as a prepositional phrase introduced by fram ‘from’, a preposition frequently found with prevent verbs. (20) a. [swt. 33, 10] iacobus his stirde. jacob restrained him. b. [homl. th. ii. 532, 11−15] wel deþ se ðe ungewittigum styrþ mid swinglum, gif he mid wordum ne mæg. well does he who restrains the foolish with whipping if he cannot do so with words. c. [exon. th. 299, 20] he missenlice monna cynne gielpes styreþ. he in various ways restrains mankind of arrogance. d. [homl. skt. i. 17, 22] gif he him sylfum styrþ fram eallum stuntnyssum. if he refrains himself from all stupidities. as can be seen in these examples (taken from bosworth-toller, like (21)), there is no competition for the assignment of undergoer between the patient of prohibition and the object of prohibition, the reason being that if the object of prohibition is realised, it is case-marked genitive or appears as a prepositional phrase, neither of which can be linked to psa or, in standard terminology, become the subject of the corresponding passive in old english. this is possible on the dative, which, as has been shown above, is preserved in the passivisation of some verbs of prohibition. furthermore, the impossibility 22 ana elvira ojanguren lópez of linking a non-macrorole core or a subordinate clause avoids this kind of competition for the assignment of undergoer. still another difference between this verb and the others discussed above has to do with the expression of the instrument. this role does not seem relevant to verbs of prohibition, which tend to code the agent of the active accomplishment, the patient of prohibition and the object of prohibition. example (20b) realises the instrument (mid swinglum ‘with whipping’), as is the case with (21), which contains the instrument mid ðære tælinge ‘with his rebuke’. (21) [swt. 53, 16] se micla cræftiga hiertende toscyfþ and egesiende stierþ ofermetta mid ðære tælinge his hieremonnum. the great craftsman, who incites encouraging and terrifies, restrains his disciples from prides with his rebuke. the bosworth-toller entry to tō-cweþan defines the meaning of this verb as ‘to forbid, prohibit’. it is found in simplex clauses only, in which the object of prohibition (case-marked accusative) is assigned undergoer, while the agent of the causative accomplishment receives actor and is linked to psa, as þa wisan lareowas ‘the wise teachers’ in (22a); or in which the object of prohibition is case-marked nominative, like ordal & aðas ‘ordeals and oaths’, because, being the undergoer, it has been linked to psa in a passive such as (22b). (22) a. [æ homm 8 (ass 3) 000200 (5)] ac we nellað secgan be þære gesetnysse of ðam gedwylde, þe gedwolmen setton be hyre acennednysse, forðan þe hyt tocwædon þa wisan lareowas... but will not speak about the origin of the heresy, which heretics set about her birth, because the wise teachers forbid it... b. [lawvatr 003400 (18)] ordal & aðas syndan tocweðen freolsdagum... ordeals and oaths are forbidden on feast days... the patient of prohibition is not realised, either in (22a) or (22b). as for the object of prohibition, it is case-marked accusative in (22a) and, having been linked to psa, nominative in (22b). these configurations are not compatible with the nominalisation alternation and with the undergoer alternation old english verbs of prohibition 23 because the former requires the complex sentence alternant and the latter depends on the realisation of the patient of prohibition and the object of prohibition. 6. discussion the analysis presented in the previous section raises two descriptive questions related to the omission of clausal constituents. in the first place, if a subordinate clause and a core are linked to the same matrix clause, it is not possible to determine the type of nexus and juncture of the complex sentence, since the subordinate clause gives rise to clausal subordination with respect to the matrix clause and the non-macrorole core belongs to core coordination. it would, of course, be possible to assume that the matrix clause is omitted before the linked core to gehælgenne ferunga ‘to consecrate immediately afterwards’ in (23a), in such a way that two different complex sentences were distinguished, one involving clausal subordination and the other core coordination. this is not advisable, however, because when it comes to supplying omitted constituents to verbs that may take a clause or a core as complement, there is no principled way to do so. this is the case, for instance with (23b). (23) a. [mtmarg (li) 10.14] biscope is forboden þæt he onfoe niwecumenum preostum & to gehælgenne ferunga. the bishop is forbidden to undertake a rite with new priests and to consecrate them immediately afterwards. b. [mk (wscp) 9.38] lareow, sumne we gesawon on þinum naman deofolseocnessa ut adrifende se ne fyligð us, & we him forbudon. teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name who does not follow us and we forbade him. the second question is also illustrated by (23a). similar examples have been analysed in the previous section as conveying a case-preserving passive. this has been preferred over supplying a formal subject hit, which is often omitted in old english, so that the translation into present-day english would be it is forbidden that the bishop undertakes... / it is forbidden for the bishop to undertake... 24 ana elvira ojanguren lópez this said, the verbs bewerian, forbēodan, foresacan, forwiernan, stīeran and tōcweþān share some meaning components, as well as certain aspects of their grammatical behaviour. these are verbs with macrorole transitivity 2 with preference for the active voice. they can take a maximum of two direct core arguments (nominative and accusative) and two oblique core arguments (genitive, dative, argument-adjunct), although the maximal number of syntactic arguments is three. however, most of them take two arguments, one in the nominative and the other usually inflected for an oblique case (genitive or dative). in the constituent order of the sentence, these verbs show a clear tendency to insert the dative realising the patient of prohibition in pre-verbal position or between the auxiliary and the lexical verb. bewerian, forbēodan and forwyrnan are found in the nominalisation alternation and the undergoer alternation. they turn up in simplex clause configuration (figure 1) as well as in complex sentence configurations, involving either a core coordination with the inflected infinitive (figure 2) or a dependent clause with the verb in the subjunctive (figure 3). bewerian, forbēodan and forwyrnan can realise the agent of the active accomplishment (in the nominative), the object of prohibition (in the simplex clause or as a core in coordination, or as a clause in subordination), and the patient of prohibition (a dative in the matrix clause or a nominative in the linked clause). some differences arise with respect to these verbs, though. the psa of bewerian, forbēodan and forwyrnan can be linked to the agent of the active accomplishment. on the other hand, while the object of prohibition and the patient of prohibition of forbēodan can achieve psa status, the patient of prohibition of bewerian cannot be linked to psa because this verb does not preserve dative in passivisation, and the object of prohibition of forwyrnan cannot get psa because passives cannot be formed on the genitive. the patient of prohibition is, as a result, the noun phrase around which the complexity of the construction revolves, in terms of co-reference, the assignment of undergoer, the linking to psa, the preservation of dative case, and the raising from the linked clause to the matrix clause. in rrg, this kind of psa is called the pivot of the construction. old english verbs of prohibition 25 figure 1. the simplex clause foresacan, stīeran and tōcweþān are found neither in the nominalisation alternation nor in the undergoer alternation. they appear in simplex clause configurations, in which the agent of the active accomplishment is a nominative and, as a general rule, the psa. the object of prohibition is casemarked accusative (foresacan and tōcweþān) or genitive (stīeran), whereas the patient of prohibition is an accusative (forsacan) or a dative (stīeran). therefore, if the requisites for class membership are both meaning components and grammatical behaviour, verbs of prohibition as listed by the toe can not be said to constitute a verbal class in old english. 26 ana elvira ojanguren lópez figure 2. the linked core in coordination 7. concluding remarks the main conclusion of this article is that the class of verbs of prohibition as gathered by a thesaurus of old english is not consistent from a grammatical point of view. although they share components of meaning, remarkable differences in the grammatical behaviour of these verbs arise related to syntactic configurations and participation in alternations. bewerian, forbēodan and forwyrnan, which realise the patient of prohibition on a fairly regular basis and whose grammatical complexity revolves around this participant, give rise to a consistent verbal class, not only on the grounds of meaning, but also from the point of view of grammatical behaviour. on the other hand, foresacan, stīeran and tōcweþān are neither found in the three syntactic configurations nor in the two alternations and, furthermore, present divergent meanings. for these reasons, these verbs should be excluded from the class of verbs of prohibition. old english verbs of prohibition 27 figure 3. the linked clause in subordination references bosworth, j. & t. n. toller 1973 [1898]: an anglo-saxon dictionary. oxford, oxford university press. cortés rodríguez, f. & m. gonzález orta 2006: anglo-saxon verbs of sound: semantic architecture, lexical representation and constructions. studia anglica poznaniensia 42: 249−284. cortés rodríguez, f. & m. a. martín díaz 2003: the meaning-syntax interface of writing verbs: templates, constructions and linking rules within a lexical grammar of old english verbal predicates. revista canaria de estudios ingleses 47: 13−35. foley, w. & r. van valin 1984: functional syntax and universal grammar. cambridge, cambridge university press. 28 ana elvira ojanguren lópez garcía pacheco, c. l. 2013: los verbos de sentimiento en inglés antiguo: arquitectura léxica e interfaz semántica-gramática. (ph.d. dissertation.) universidad de la laguna. garcía pacheco, l. m. 2013: el dominio verbal de la existencia en anglosajón. análisis semántico-sintáctico. (ph.d. dissertation.) universidad de la laguna. gonzález orta, m. 2002: linking syntax and semantics in old english verbs of warning. estudios ingleses de la universidad complutense 10: 157−182. gonzález orta, m. 2003: the old english verbs of smell perception and emission: analysis of the interface of their semantic and syntactic representation. selim 12: 33−48. gonzález orta, m. 2004: diccionario sintáctico del léxico verbal del inglés antiguo: verbos de habla. servicio de publicaciones, universidad de la laguna. gonzález orta, m. 2005: the interrelation of semantic structure and syntactic variation in old english verb classes: catalogue of syntactico-semantic constructions. revista alicantina de estudios ingleses 18: 111−128. gonzález orta, m. 2006: the resultative construction in old english: towards a semantic network of verb classes. studia neophilologica 78: 123−137. dipaolo healey, a. ed. 2016: the dictionary of old english in electronic form a−h. toronto: dictionary of old english project, university of toronto. dipaolo healey, a. ed. with j. price wilkin & x. xiang 2004: the dictionary of old english web corpus. toronto, dictionary of old english project, university of toronto. levin, b. 1993: english verb classes and alternations. chicago, university of chicago press. roberts, j. & c. kay with l. grundy 2000 [1995]: a thesaurus of old english. 2 vols. amsterdam, rodopi. van valin, r. 2005: exploring the syntax-semantics interface. cambridge, cambridge university press. van valin, r. 2014: some questions concerning accomplishments. lecture delivered at the 2014 symposium on verbs, clauses and constructions, held at the university of la rioja. van valin, r. & r. lapolla 1997: syntax: structure, meaning and function. cambridge, cambridge university press. author’s address departamento de filologías modernas universidad de la rioja c/ san josé de calasanz, 33 26004 logroño, spain received: 23 january 2018 e-mail: ana-elvira.ojanguren@unirioja.es revised version accepted: 22 may 2018 microsoft word 2020article_1_bjork.docx robert e. bjork, selim25 (2020): 1–19. issn 1132-631x / doi: https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.25.2020.1-20 the reception history of beowulf robert e. bjork arizona state university this paper traces both the scholarly and popular reception of the old english epic beowulf from the publication of the first edition of the poem in 1815 to the most recent english novel based on it from 2019. once the work was first made available to the scholarly community, numerous editions in various languages began to appear, the most recent being in english from 2008; once editions were published, old english scholars around the world could translate the text into their native languages beginning with danish in 1820. translations, in their turn, made the poem available to a general audience, which responded to the poem through an array of media: music, art, poetry, prose fiction, plays, film, television, video games, comic books, and graphic novels. the enduring, widespread appeal of the poem remains great and universal. keywords: adaptation; beowulf; cultural influence; reception history; transmission history from a unique, obscure manuscript housed in the british library,1 beowulf emerged into the modern world in 1815 with the publication of the first edition of the poem accompanied by latin apparatus and a facing-page latin translation (thorkelin 1815). the epic had languished in obscurity for some 800 years. humfrey wanley noted its existence in his 1705 catalogue of anglo-saxon manuscripts and even transcribed lines 1–19 and 53–73 of it (wanley 1705: 218– 219), but otherwise the poem remained unnoticed, unmentioned, unappreciated.2 since 1815, however, it has experienced a host of scholarly and 1 cotton vitellius a xv contains five texts, including beowulf. for an edition and facingpage english translation of the entire manuscript, see fulk (2010). 2 the historian sharon turner does briefly mention the poem and its listing in wanley’s catalogue in turner (1803: 11) and again in turner (1805: 398–408), where he 2 robert e. bjork popular cultural migrations that testify to its power, international stature, and longevity. the migration story begins in 1785 when grímur jónsson thorkelin, a danish/icelandic scholar who would be appointed keeper of the danish national archives in 1790, sailed from copenhagen to england on a nationalistic voyage to collect any documents he could find related to danish and norwegian history and bring as many of them back to denmark as possible (anonymous 1897; see also bjork 1996: 293–294). discovering the beowulf manuscript, undoubtedly with the aid of wanley’s catalogue,3 he had the poem transcribed in 1787 and subsequently transcribed it himself. these two transcriptions, called thorkelin a and thorkelin b, represent the poem’s first migration in its entirety from near oblivion into the modern world.4 the audience for the transcriptions —just thorkelin himself— was extremely limited, however. his resultant edition of the poem from 1815 is what truly inaugurates the poem’s international diaspora even though the audience, much greater than one, was still restricted and still highly specialized since both the scholarly apparatus and the facing-page translation were in latin. that first complete edition, which was universally excoriated,5 was followed by over thirty others in english, danish, german, and french,6 and the secondary scholarship based on that multitude of editions is voluminous. it still grows exponentially every year in several languages around the world.7 the editions of beowulf with apparatus in various vernacular tongues considerably expanded the audience for the poem and also made possible its translation into twenty-nine of the world’s major (including japanese, korean, and chinese) and minor (including telugu) languages.8 in chinese alone, three summarizes the poem and supplies english translations in verse and prose of several sections. no other record exists of the poem’s having attracted anyone else’s attention. 3 thorkelin may have been alerted to wanley’s catalogue entry by jacob langebek, whom he would succeed as danish national archivist. see shippey & haarder (1998: 76–77). 4 for digital facsimiles of the manuscript and the transcriptions, see kiernan (2019). 5 for examples, see shippey & haarder (1998). 6 for a complete list of these editions, see fulk (2008: 475). 7 for bibliographical coverage of the scholarship, consult especially greenfield & robinson (1980), short (1980), hasenfratz (1993), and the old english newsletter bibliography database (oen, 2019). 8 consult sauer (2011). for studies of translations, see osborn (1997: 341–372) and magennis (2011). note that the south saami version of the poem (mcguinne 2019) is reception history of beowulf 3 complete and three partial translations were produced between 1959 and 2006 (sauer 2011: 135–136); in english, over twenty verse translations have been produced since 1950, the most recent appearing in 2017 (mitchell 2017).9 and translation, of course, facilitates the transmission of one culture into another and serves as a conduit of the original text to all levels of society and to numerous audiences. one of those audiences is artists. working in multiple media such as literature, art, music, television, and film, they have reacted with varying degrees of success and persuasive power to the old english masterpiece. in literature, dozens of poems, plays, novels, stories, retellings, paraphrases, and imaginative recreations have emerged in english, chinese, czech, danish, dutch, german, italian, japanese, latin, portuguese, and spanish (see sauer 2011: 69–79).10 in english in 1830, alfred lord tennyson was the first to put pen to paper while pondering beowulf. here is his translation of lines 258–262 of the poem, quoted in magennis (2011: 62): him the eldest answered. the army’s leader his wordhoard unlocked we are by race gothic people and higelac’s hearth ministers my father was to folk known in 1838, henry wadsworth longfellow followed suit with a translation of lines 189–257 (shippey & haarder 1998: 223–226), but it was not, as marijane osborn points out, until well into the twentieth century that major poets would turn their attention to beowulf. richard wilbur was the first to do so in 1948, then wallace stevens in 1950, edwin morgan in 1953, kingsley amis —in a satirical way— in 1957, w. h. auden in 1962, and kenneth rexroth in 1965 (osborn 1997: 352). seamus heaney, of course, wrote poems based on beowulf and produced the most important english translation of the poem ever created (sauer 2011: 49–52). of the lesser known poets to have taken an interest beowulf, maureen duffy published a poem from the dragon’s point of view in a translation of rob lloyd jones’s (2009) retelling for children. 9 facing-page english translation of the text from fulk (2008). 10 for a saami translation of a retelling, see note 8 above. 4 robert e. bjork 2010 (sauer 2011: 85), and in 1980 maurice sagoff issued a light-hearted synopsis of the epic in his book shrinklits, a compendium of “seventy of the world’s towering classics cut down to size”. the first two lines of that synopsis read monster grendel’s tastes are plainish. breakfast? just a couple danish. (sagoff 1980: 20)11 four english playwrights have also been attracted to beowulf beginning with percy mackaye in 1899 with his beowulf: an epical drama of anglo-saxon times and ending (to date) with david calcutt’s beowulf: a play based on the anglosaxon epic poem from 2001 (sauer 2011: 81).12 but novelists and short-story writers have made the most use by far of the old english poem beginning with john o. beaty in his 1937 novel swords in the dawn: a story of the first englishmen, which utilizes the finnsburg material in beowulf (osborn 1997: 351). several other novels and stories followed,13 and since 2008, several more, some told from the point of view of other characters in and not in the poem. wealtheow’s is offered in ashley crownover’s wealtheow: her telling of beowulf (2008), grendel’s mother’s in susan signe morrison’s grendel’s mother: the saga of the wyrd-wife (2015) and in diana stout’s grendel’s mother (2016), freawaru’s —hrothgar’s daughter mentioned just once in the original text at line 2022— in “the women of beowulf” trilogy by donnita l. rogers: faces in 11 blackistone (1977) is a poetic parody of beowulf; tegethoff (1971) is a german translation in which “[t]he old english words are substituted by their german etymological equivalents; very strange” (sauer 2011: 105); and an undated poem by the late linguist j. j. lambert published here for the first time is a paean for grendel’s mother by her son, grendel æglæca. the poem is titled “modor” (mother) and can almost be sung to the melody of nate king cole’s “l is for the way you look at me”: m is for the magas you have eten [kinsmen you have eaten]. o is for the orcneas that you lufode [monsters that you loved]. d is for the deaðdagas you beorhtnode [death-days you brightened]. o is for the oðre weras you’ve slagen [other men you killed]. r is for the reced you have wreckéd [hall you have wrecked]. put them all togædre: they spell modor, and modor means all the weorold to me. 12 there are also three plays in german that are based on beowulf; see sauer (2011: 113– 114). 13 see osborn (1997: 352–353) and sauer (2011: 81–84), for a listing of these to 2007. reception history of beowulf 5 the fire (2013), fanning the flames (2014), and cloak of ashes (2015), and grendel’s sister in susan thurston’s sister of grendel (2016). maria dahvana headley published the latest beowulf novel in english, the mere wife (2019), a modern retelling of the story. two of these imaginative recreations of beowulf, however, will be the most familiar to most readers: john gardner’s (1971) novel, grendel, and michael crichton’s (1976) novel, eaters of the dead: the manuscript of ibn fadlan relating his experiences with the northmen in a.d. 922. the first is justly famous for its point of view (grendel’s) and wit and demonstration of a deep understanding of the original text; the second became famous as the source of an antonio banderas movie “the 13th warrior” (1999), the title of which comes from line 2404 of the original text and refers either to the thief who stole the precious cup that occasioned the dragon’s wrath or to the thief’s owner. in the poem, “the 13th warrior” leads beowulf and his men to the dragon’s lair. both novels have been reprinted, reviewed, and studied (see sauer 2011: 82–83);14 both have been transmuted into other arts forms (see below under music and film); and crichton’s novel was translated into german as schwarze nebel (1998). finally, within literature and bridging the gap to art are comic books and graphic novels (sauer 2011: 85–86). the first comic strip based on beowulf was in italian, enrico basari’s and kurt caesar’s “beowulf: leggenda cristiana dell’antica danimarca cineepopea erotico”, in 1941. this fact may seem strange, but the italians took an early interest in beowulf as evidenced by their having produced four partial and eight complete translations of the poem between 1833 and 2003 (sauer 2011: 115–117).15 another comic strip treatment of it did not appear until 1975 in the dc comics series beowulf: dragon slayer by michael uslan and ricardo villamante.16 the first graphic novel based on beowulf is jerry bingham’s beowulf: adapted from the 8th century epic poem in 1984, but arguably the most famous of the graphic novels devoted to the poem is that by gareth hinds, first published in three issues from 1999–2000. the collected beowulf contains with grimmest gripe, gear of war, and doom of glory.17 since 1975 and the publication of uslan’s and villamante’s series, the poem or its characters 14 see also frantzen (2010), george (2010: 115–119), and killilea (2015–2016). 15 on basari’s and caesar’s comic, see osborn (1997: 351). 16 for a study of the series, see clarke (2010). 17 for studies of beowulf in the comics and graphic novels, see torregossa (2018). on hinds’ work, see killilea (2015–2016: 61–64). 6 robert e. bjork (such as grendel) make their appearances in over a thousand comics in eleven countries according to the grand comics database.18 scholars have been studying beowulf in the comics since 1953 (see overton 1953). in art, a profusion of images has cascaded out of books, album covers, dust jackets, comic books, video games, board games, and websites, and occasionally onto canvas. simply entering the term “beowulf” into a web browser yields an overwhelming number of illustrations of the hero, grendel, grendel’s mother, the dragon, wiglaf, and other beowulfian entities. the first of this profusion are the line drawings of cultural artifacts accompanying wentworth huyshe’s 1907 translation, beowulf: an old english epic (the earliest epic of the germanic race) (see echard 2010). one of the most recent is the depiction of a pretty punk beowulf ripping the arm off a very vampire-like grendel.19 in between come a plethora of portrayals that sometimes reflect the ideology, sometimes the interpretative stance of the artist. we have brian froude’s (1975) native american beowulf, for example, and lynd ward’s (1939) jungenstil beowulf to accompany william ellery leonard’s translation, and julio castron’s (1965) don-quixote-like rendering of the hero to illustrate jose luis herrara’s spanish translation, beowulfo.20 the pictorial representation of beowulf simply rolls on and on, unabated. in music, one of the most important american composers of the twentieth century and the director of the eastman school of music in new york, howard hanson, was the first to turn his attention to beowulf. having read william morris’s and a. j. wyatt’s (1895) translation of the poem during a trip to england, he felt strongly that the poem —especially its wrenching conclusion— cried out for musical interpretation by chorus and orchestra (hanson 1963: 15). the 1925 “lament for beowulf”, which is the first migration of the poem into a non-representational art form, is the result (hanson 1925). this riveting, haunting choral work constitutes hanson’s interpretation of the last forty lines of the morris/wyatt translation, which begin, 18 a search for “grendel”, for example, yielded 1,112 results (https://www.comics.org/ searchnew/?q=grendel) (accessed 15 july 2019). 19 see https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/features/feastingand-fighting-the-long-lost-secrets-of-beowulf-8784510.html (accessed 16 july 2019). 20 see plates 11 (froude), 4 (ward), and 3 (castro) in osborn (1997). consult as well her discussion of the illustrations of beowulf on pp. 355–357. reception history of beowulf 7 for him, then, they geared the folk of the geats, a pile on the earth all unweak —like that was, with war helms behung, and with boards of the battle, and bright byrnies, e’en after the book that he bade. (morris & wyatt 1895: 273) another twenty-nine years would pass before a second musical tribute to beowulf was produced (beach1954) and another sixteen before hasty pudding theatricals at harvard created a third in 1970 (hasty pudding 1970). many more have followed to the year 2019.21 two more choral works in addition to hanson’s appeared, one by samuel sørensen in 2007 and based on ian serraillier’s (1954) retelling of the poem entitled beowulf the warrior (sørensen 2007), and one by ezequiel viñao in 2009 focusing on scyld’s burial and commissioned by the national chamber choir of ireland and the cork international choral festival (viñao 2009). three rock musicals or rock operas (wylie & davies 1974, pickering & cole 1986, pickett & turner 2005) and a number of operas also emerged.22 and songs about beowulf have been written and performed by bands and artists such as dunwich, the italian symphonic metal hard rock band in 2008, history for music lovers, who told the story of beowulf to the music of nena’s “99 luftballons” against a backdrop of scenes from the 1999 film “the 13th warrior” in 2010, and aëndil, the spanish folk metal band from madrid, who first recorded its tribute to the old english epic in 2017.23 the history for music lovers creation is especially compelling and especially useful in the classroom. the 1974 rock musical —beowulf: a musical epic— is likewise compelling and loosely based on the entire poem itself. the following song, sung by the 21 for a list of most of those to 2010, see sauer (2011: 90–91). for additional items, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_translations_and_artistic_depictions _of_beowulf (accessed 3 june 2019). 22 for a list of opera and theater adaptations, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ list_of_translations_and_artistic_depictions_of_beowulf (accessed 10 june 2019). only three of the operas will be dealt with in the present essay: goldenthal (2006), lash (2016), and byers (2018). 23 dunwich’s song “beowulf” from its 2008 album, heilagmanoth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaaqxug4a2o); “beowulf (99 luftballons by nena)” 2010 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yibasqo7n9u); aëndil “beowulf y grendel” 2017 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqqu9g_9kho) (accessed 10 june 2019). 8 robert e. bjork chorus after grendel’s defeat by beowulf, crystalizes the essential qualities of this rollicking, banjo-plucking, canadian transmutation —a kind of “beowulf meets jesus christ superstar” rendition of the tale: farewell, grendel. die well, grendel. we have your arm, so we’ll wave goodbye. grendel, you are free to die. bye grendel, die grendel. armless, charmless, harmless, grendel. single-minded hero, single-handed hero, started with two and now he has three. clap all your hands now —one, two, three. bye, grendel, die grendel. armless, charmless, harmless, grendel. armless, charmless, harmless, grendel. armless, charmless, harmless, grendel. (wylie & davies libretto 1974) two of the operas produced thus far focus on grendel. elliott goldenthal, the well-known composer who won an oscar and golden globe award for his score for the film frida and who was nominated for golden globe awards for his scores for interview with the vampire (1994) and michael collins (1996), worked on grendel: transcendence of the great big bad for twenty years before it debuted in los angeles and new york in 2006. the opera is based on john gardner’s (1971) novel grendel, which tells the beowulf story from grendel’s point of view, and was eagerly anticipated. the great bass-baritone eric owens would play grendel and desmond richardson, the equally great american dancer, would play beowulf, both performing in a lavishly designed production conceived by the opera’s director, julie taymor. the result, however, disappointed most who saw it, and the opera has not been performed since, nor, unfortunately, was it recorded.24 not as lavishly produced but preserved on youtube, barbara byers’ onehour-and-thirty-four-minute beowulf: a folk metal opera from 2018 follows 24 for analyses of the opera, see frantzen (2010: 155–163) and george (2010: 120–121). reception history of beowulf 9 “the lead of john gardner’s work ‘grendel’ (1971), which explores ideas of fatalism, nihilism and the existential crisis in the context of the monsters of beowulf”. the opera “presents the tragedy of the monster grendel, illuminating his cruel birth as an always-other to the humans, created by humans, storied, demonized and finally killed by humans”.25 the story is accompanied by a musical ensemble of piano, percussion, double bass, baritone saxophone and oboe, flute, and electronics. byers narrates the tale, and the characters in it — grendel, wealtheow, hrothgar, aeschere, a sybil, and the norns— are all played by humans. beowulf, odin, and the dragon are not. beowulf is made of chicken wire, papier-mâché, and paint. odin consists of pvc pipe, rope, canvas, memory foam, and paint. and the dragon (or time or existence) is constructed of bamboo, “found objects”, and electrical wires.26 the third operatic treatment of beowulf dealt with here comes in 2016 from hannah lash, who is on the faculty of the yale school of music and is a wellknown composer. a performance of the twenty-five-minute opera with lash conducting is available,27 as is the libretto for it.28 the chamber opera is a modernized version of the beowulf story, very loosely based on the old english epic. in lash’s treatment, beowulf is a physician suffering from ptsd and consequent flashbacks after serving as an army medic in a war abroad and failing to save an injured child. he also cares for his elderly mother, who has suffered a stroke, and eventually in an act of mercy, he administers enough morphine to her to ease peacefully into death in his arms. rather than glorifying the hero, the opera “paints a true-to-life portrait of him, replete with the emotional pain from which he suffers”29 as he battles the monster time and his feelings of helplessness in the face of his mother’s deteriorating health. this innovative, provocative work was well reviewed by, for example, the boston globe on may 21, 2016.30 25 see http://musicweb.ucsd.edu/concerts/concert_programs/2017-8/spring%202018/ 20180518-byers.pdf (accessed 11 june 2019). 26 ibid. 27 see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiguvgtiveq&list=plwbwppufjysm wevnkzeuyn0lwannloi3a&index=2 (accessed 11 june 2019). 28 see http://guerillaopera.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/beowulf-libretto-newwebsite.pdf (accessed 12 june 2019). 29 ibid. 30 a fourth work intended to be an opera also bears mention, craton (2005–2011), who observes that: “[i]nitially the music which forms the beowulf orchestral suite was planned for an opera based on the life of the hero from the medieval epic poem of the 10 robert e. bjork the final musical treatment of beowulf to be touched on here is the utterly faithful performance of it in old english by benjamin bagby. a trained academic and musician, bagby combines his scholarly, philological understanding of the poem with his knowledge of medieval music to reconstruct a hypothetical performance plausibly close to how the epic may have been originally performed (bagby 2005). bagby plays the role of an anglo-saxon scop plucking a six-string harp and singing and reciting the first 1062 lines of the text. the harp is based on a historical understanding of the instrument and a seventh-century archeological find near stuttgart (george 2010: 124), and the music is improvised and tied to the meter of the poem. bagby first performed beowulf in 1990, and his 2006 performance in sweden is available on dvd. beowulf’s fourth migration into a medium not its own occurs on television beginning in 1966, when the story was read in its entirety. this occurred in five fifteen-minute episodes on bbc one’s “jackanory”, a series dedicated to getting children interested in reading. ten years later in the 1 february 1976 episode of “the six million dollar man” titled “the secret of bigfoot: part 1”,31 part of the story appears on television again. in this episode, astronaut steve austin — part man, mostly machine— searches for two missing geologist friends in california and confronts a recalcitrant sasquatch, played by andré the giant. the two wrestle fiercely, austin ultimately ripping off the sasquatch’s arm in a scene unmistakably from beowulf. as fanciful as it may seem to equate grendel and bigfoot, work has since been devoted to the hypothesis that the two are actually one in the same (mooney 1980, duncan 1994). the magic of television thus adumbrates the imaginative reaches of scholarship. nearly thirty years would pass before beowulf appeared on television again, this time on “mighty max”, the animated american television series based on the british mighty max toys. in the episode “the maxnificent seven”, which aired on 8 december 1993, max chooses beowulf (a washed-out professional wrestler in denmark) as one of seven heroes to help him battle skullmaster, his nemesis.32 less than two years later on 24 april 1995 in season one, episode same name. the operatic treatment, however, has been put on hold due to not yet having found a suitable libretto. the movements that comprise the present work were intended to be instrumental entr’actes within the larger opus itself, but for now they have been combined to form a suite that tells the story of our hero’s life without words.” 31 see https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073677/ (accessed 14 june 2019). 32 see https://www.thewatchcartoononline.tv/mighty-max-season-1-episode-13-themaxnificent-seven (accessed 19 june 2019). reception history of beowulf 11 eleven of “star trek voyager” titled “heroes and demons”,33 beowulf appears once again along with hrothgar and unferth and hrothgar’s daughter freawaru but misnamed “freya”. running a holonovel based on beowulf, ensign kim enters it, is followed by two more crew members and finally by the doctor, who engineers a peaceful accord with a malevolent photonic energy formation called grendel. an animated but otherwise much more faithful adaptation of beowulf appeared in 1998. the impressive and compact “animated epics: beowulf” boasts a screenplay by murray walls, narration by derek jacoby, and voice-over for beowulf by joseph fiennes. professor derek brewer of the university of cambridge served as advisor to assure the fidelity of the movie to the original text (walls 1998). in 2007, another film for television was aired, this one only loosely based on beowulf and titled “grendel” or “beowulf et la colère des dieux”. the low-budget film was made for the syfy channel.34 with the advent of the twenty-first century, the whole of beowulf is not seen on television but the main character of the poem is. he appears in “xena: warrior princess” in 2000 in season six, episodes seven (“the rheingold”), eight (“the ring”), and nine (“return of the valkyrie”), where he joins forces in the far north with xena to vanquish grindl and her son.35 grindl is the valkyrie grinhilda, transformed into a monster in xena’s evil past by a ring made of the rheingold gold. and in the thirteenth episode of abc’s “once upon a time” in season six in 2017, “ill-boding patterns”, beowulf appears again, this time wielding hrunting in the first war against the ogres. on the verge of defeat, he is saved by rumplestiltskin, who himself is aided by dark magic in slaying all the ogres and eventually breaking the neck of an unheroic beowulf as well.36 most significantly, beowulf stars in “beowulf: return to the shieldlands”, the short-lived television series produced in the uk in 2016. loosely based on the 33 see https://www.netflix.com/title/70178053 (accessed 19 june 2019). 34 see https://www.syfy.com/syfymovies/videos/101-grendel (accessed 20 june 2019). 35 see https://www.amazon.com/whos-gurkham/dp/b01jtfv68q/ref=sr_1_1?crid= 2gbxz5qhhdqcf&keywords=xena+season+6&qid=1561015808&s=instantvideo&sprefix=xena%2cinstant-video%2c317&sr=1-1 (accessed 20 june 2019). the other episodes are available on amazon as well. 36 see https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/b06xqss1my?ie=utf8&csrftoken =g14f1un%205dsnrmipyufnltbnbj4vnuemfapllz%2fnq9ebaaaacqaaaab dcjtxcmf3aaaaabvx8cwxqz4nul9rkx%2f%2f%2fw%3d%3d&offerasin= b06xqss1my&purchasetoken=xbrepnzqyhxwhxjuhapag%2bal%2br%2fa zzp2naqgdvvne1e&triggerpurchase=1& (accessed 20 june 2019). 12 robert e. bjork poem, with many new characters and plots and receiving mixed reviews, the series lasted for just one season of twelve episodes.37 the fifth but undoubtedly not the last migration of beowulf into other art forms finds him at the movies, first in don fairservice’s faithful but neglected adaptation of the poem to film in kevin crossley-holland’s translation in 197638 and then in 1977 in a single word in the academy-award-winning “annie hall”.39 in scene nineteen, “out to the hamptons”, annie sits and woody reclines on the bed, chatting, annie searching through a course catalogue and woody reading the newspaper. “does this sound like a good course?” annie asks. “um, ‘modern american poetry’? or … let’s see now … maybe i should take ‘introduction to the novel’ […]”; woody quickly interjects, “just don’t take any course where they make you read beowulf”. annie may have taken woody’s advice, but not everyone else has. in 1981, an australian filmmaker turned his attention to the poem via john gardner’s novel. the result is a whimsical, highly amusing animated feature film titled “grendel, grendel, grendel”. peter ustinov provides the voice for both grendel, who is the film’s narrator, and the dragon, who is grendel’s mother.40 less whimsical is christopher lambert’s (of “highlander” fame) futuristic “beowulf” from 1998,41 which is loosely based on the first half of the poem and takes place in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by grendel and his mother, played by layla harvest roberts, a former playboy playmate.42 from 1999, antonio banderas’s “the 13th warrior” likewise is only loosely based on the 37 see https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4520906/ (accessed 20 june 2019). 38 george (2010: 139), where the film is inaccurately dated 1973. 39 the imdb lists the 1967 japanese animated children’s movie “shônen jakko to mahôtsukai” as based on beowulf (a dubbed english version, “jack and the witch”, is available), and that would make the movie the first to allude to, be influenced by, or mention beowulf. the connection, however, is extremely difficult to see. a very distant echo of beowulf’s fight with grendel’s mother may be there but little if anything else. 40 see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qctdxsslpvi (accessed 21 june 2019). two other films from the 1980s, “clash of the titans” (1981) and “predator” (1987), the latter starring arnold schwarzenegger, have been said to contain some parallels to beowulf. the first has clearly adapted the three monster fights to the perseus legend, but the supposed parallels in the second seem too distant to be persuasive. george (2010: 127) lists some of those for “predator”. 41 see https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120604/ (accessed 21 june 2019). 42 on grendel’s mother in these two movies and in gunnarsson’s beowulf and grendel and in zemeckis’s beowulf, see peña gil (2011). reception history of beowulf 13 poem following instead michael crichton’s 1976 novel the eaters of the dead: the manuscript of ibn fadlan relating his experiences with the northmen in a.d. 922. novel and film take the view that grendel symbolizes a cannibalistic tribe that plagued denmark in prehistory.43 finally in 1999, “the male swagger”, apparently a comedy, debuted. featuring beowulf, wulfgar, wealtheow, hall thanes, jesus christ, malcom x, sir lardalot, and alex trebek among others, the film seems to be lost to history except for its essential details.44 at the beginning of the new millennium, several filmmakers capitalized on the huge popularity of nobel laureate seamus heaney’s 1999 translation of beowulf, which became a new york times bestseller. the icelander sturla gunnarsson turned the first part of the poem —the grendel story— into the 2005 film, “beowulf and grendel”, a rendition that has tremendous scenery, little fidelity to the text, and grendel as a neanderthal man. another seeming flight of movie-making fantasy actually has its antecedent in serious scholarship. one of the reviewers of the first edition of the poem in 1815 postulated that the monster symbolizes a primitive human (peter eramus müller 1815, apud shippey & haarder 1998: 106). another film based on beowulf, “blade of the king”, would have appeared in 2005 or shortly thereafter but only made it as far as a brief concept film to attract potential investors.45 investors do seem to have taken interest in robert zemeckis’s (2007) movie of the entire poem that boasts a stellar cast, including anthony hopkins, john malkovich, and angelina jolie, great fidelity as well as artistic infidelity to the text, and an outrageously believable dragon. this film “is the first full-length motion picture to use performance capture technology entirely from beginning to end” (jones 2010: 18), so it is significant in the history of film. it was well received for the most part, but some criticized it on at least three counts: the dialogue, the sex, and the portrayal of hrothgar as grendel’s father. all the alterations were made to make the film more appealing to a contemporary audience. the dialogue —which i found to be witty— has to be defended on that ground alone. but the other two can be defended by referring to past scholarship on the poem. regarding an extremely sensual, sexual, seductive 43 again, scholarly commentary on the poem anticipates the work of the creative writer. see peter eramus müller (1815, apud shippey & haarder 1998: 106). see also stopford brooke in shippey & haarder (1998: 486–487). 44 see https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0221371/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast (accessed 21 june 2019). 45 see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb0-ei2jk5e (accessed 27 june 2019). 14 robert e. bjork grendel’s mother, serious scholars have argued that she may represent dangerous sexual appetites (see crépin 1983: 51–60, 1991: 485; also chance 1980). angelina jolie or a playboy playmate seem appropriate choices for portraying such a mother. regarding hrothgar’s having fathered grendel, at least one scholar has made a similar argument in his critique of heroism in the poem, claiming that grendel’s mother is hrothgar’s sister and that grendel is the product of their incestuous relationship (fajardo-acosta 1989: 57). whatever the film’s flaws are, however, even if adumbrated in scholarship, its having brought beowulf to such a massive audience worldwide is its greatest virtue.46 of the four films following the zemekis version that pertain in any way to beowulf, two are only distantly related. beowulf appears briefly toward the end of “disaster movie” (2008),47 and one of the last four humans on earth battling robots in “the rise of the robots” (2015)48 is named professor beowulf. “beowulf: prince of the geats” (2007),49 however, is a serious though lowbudget retelling of the tale that benefitted the american and norwegian cancer societies and uniquely features a black beowulf played by jayshan jackson and damon lynch iii. and the big-budgeted “outlander” (2008) is a science-fiction adaptation, loosely based on the first half of beowulf, which opens with a space craft from a distant world crashing into a lake in eight-century norway. from it emerge kainan, the beowulf figure, and the moorwen, the grendel figure, a stowaway that starts immediately ravaging villages. jim caviezel plays kainan and john hurt, rothgar. freawaru appears once more as freya.50 the influence of beowulf, then, is vast and continuing and dynamic, its reception history constantly evolving. at least four countries have claimed the 46 for more on the zemekis film, see george (2010: 133–142) and jones (2010: 18–29). 47 see https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1213644/ (accessed 27 june 2019). 48 see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi33sfff5li (accessed 27 june 2019). 49 see https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=beowulf%3a+prince+of+the+geats&view =detail&mid=9743d7c304d3ebbaf40e9743d7c304d3ebbaf40e&form=vire (accessed 27 june 2019). 50 see https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0462465/?ref_=nv_sr_2?ref_=nv_sr_2 (accessed 28 june 2019). reception history of beowulf 15 poem as their own: denmark,51 germany,52 england,53 and sweden.54 at least three rock bands —one dutch, one finnish, and one australian— are named “grendel”; bullets and rifle parts, dogs and cats have received the same name or “beowulf”; a kick starter drive to fund the development of a “beowulf” board game was launched in 2014;55 license plates bear beowulf’s name; and one can purchase “got beowulf?” and “#beowulf” mugs, a beowulf-cluster software operating system, or the services of beowulf mining to explore natural resources in the nordic region.56 the appropriations seem endless. but one of the most striking of them appeared in the june 2004 issue of esquire, a magazine dedicated to men’s fashion, cocktails, politics, and entertainment. there, reclining on stomach and elbows in a bikini and spiked heels, lovingly holding an open copy of a translation of the epic, carmen electra smiles coquettishly out at her audience (chiarella 2004: 116–117).57 the accompanying article mentions neither poem nor photo. the photo, however, dramatically testifies to just how profoundly beowulf has affected our entire world —from scholars and poets, artists and merchants to glamorous actresses— ever since thorkelin first brought it to our attention in 1815. references anonymous 1897: fonden ad usus publicos, vol. 1. copenhagen, c. a. reitzel. baatz, c. 2014: beowulf in deutschland zur literarischen und wissenschaftlichen rezeption altenglischer literatur in deutschland am beispiel des beowulf. (dissertation.) university of tübingen. 51 e.g. thorkelin’s first edition of the poem, the title of which specifies the poem as being danish in the anglo-saxon dialect. 52 e.g. see the title of leo (1839) making the poem the oldest german epic. on the proto-nazi claim on beowulf for the german people, see osborn (2006). on the german reception history of beowulf, see baatz (2014). 53 e.g. kemble (1833). 54 e.g. gräslund (2018). see also bjork (1997: 114ff.). 55 see https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/827765657/beowulf-a-board-game/ updates (accessed 2 june 2019). 56 see https://beowulfmining.com (accessed 15 june 2019). 57 i am grateful to dr. karen bollerman for alerting me to this article and picture. 16 robert e. bjork bagby, b. 2005: beowulf, the edda and the performance of medieval epic: notes from the workshop of a reconstructed ‘singer of tales’. in e. b. vitz, n. freeman regaldo & m. lawrence eds. performing medieval narrative. cambridge, d. s. brewer: 181–192. beach, b. c. 1954: beowulf: a symphonic sketch for band by bruce c. beach. new york, remick music corporation. bjork, r. e. 1996: grímur jónnson thorkelin’s preface to the first edition of beowulf, 1815. scandinavian studies 68: 291–320. bjork, r. e. 1997: nineteenth-century scandinavia and the birth of anglo-saxon studies. in a. j. frantzen & j. d. niles eds. anglo-saxonism and the construction of social identity. gainesville, university press of florida: 111–132. blackistone, b. 1977: beowabbit. takoma park, md, n.p. byers, b. 2018: beowulf: a folk metal opera. https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=mobhapr3yjs. 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[accessed 15 july 2019] turner, s. 1803: a vindication of the genuineness of the ancient british poems of aneurin, taliesin, llywarch hen, and merdhin, with specimens of the poems. london, e. williams. turner, s. 1805: the history of the manners, landed property, government, laws, poetry, literature, and language of the anglo-saxons. vol. 4. london, longman. viñao, e. 2019: beowulf: scyld’s burial for satb and percussion quartert. http://www.tloneditions.com/ezequiel_vinao_beowulf_scylds_burial.html. [accessed 3 june 2019] walls, m. 1998: animated epics: beowulf. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6djd2r. [accessed 19 june 2019] wanley, h. 1705: librorum veterum septentrionalium, qui in angliae bibliothecis extant, nec non multorum veterum codicum septentrionalium alibi extantium catalogus historico-criticus, cum totius thesauri linguarum septentrionalium sex indicibus. reprinted 1970. hildesheim & new york, georg olms. reception history of beowulf 19 wylie, b. j. & v. davies 1974/1983: beowulf: a musical epic. toronto, leap frog records. wylie, b. j. & v. davies 1974/1983. libretto for beowulf: a musical epic. toronto, leap frog records. author’s address department of english arizona state university tempe, az 85287-1401 usa received: 22 october 2019 e-mail: robert.bjork@asu.edu revised version accepted: 11 february 2020 selim 16.indb maría beatriz hernández pérez, selim 16 (2009): 103–119issn: 1132–631x housing memory in the late medieval literary tradition: chaucer’s house of fame abstract literary renderings both in written and oral forms would be regarded during the middle ages as enactments of an individual moral and intellectual evolution linked to the eff ects of memory on the human soul. augustine’s insightful depictions of the works of memory insisted on the visual quality of such a mental process, thus linking it to the writing and reading activities. when reviewing the imagery regarding this fi eld, the fi gure of memory appears related to specifi c locations or habitats for images and words. of particular interest is the coincidence of such metaphors to those attributed to the fi gure of fame in classical literature, developed by chaucer as he also explored the role of memory in the rise of a conscious individual writing positioning. this paper proposes to analyze chaucer’s “the house of fame” in the light of augustine’s rendition of memory. chaucer used fame as the embodiment of the preservation of public name in memory, regarding its locations as repositories of the legendary past in late medieval collective memory. the paper presents chaucer’s house of fame as the place  om which he starts a dialogue with past literature and history and with himself and the reader as recipients of that common legacy. keywords: chaucer, the house of fame, oral and written medieval literature, memory, saint augustine. resumen durante la edad media las composiciones literarias tanto en su forma escrita como oral se consideraban representaciones de la moral individual tanto como de una evolución intelectual, e iban ligadas a los efectos de la memoria en el alma humana. las acertadas representaciones que san agustín propuso para las obras de la memoria insisten en las cualidades visuales de esos procesos mentales, de modo que las actividades de la escritura y de la lectura quedan unidas. cuando revisamos las imágenes y metáforas que encontramos en este campo, la fi gura de la memoria aparece de forma relacionada con lugares específi cos o con ambientes propios de imágenes y palabras. resultan de particular interés las coincidencias de esas metáforas en relación con las que se atribuyen a la fi gura de la fama en la literatura clásica según nos la presenta chaucer. también chaucer exploró el papel de la memoria en el desarrollo de la posición de la conciencia individual de la escritura. este trabajo se propone analizar la casa de la fama de chaucer a la luz de la representación de la memoria que hace san agustín. chaucer utilizó la fama como personifi cación de la memoria del nombre y la personalidad pública en relación con sus funciones de archivo del pasado legendario en la memoria colectiva del periodo bajomedieval. este trabajo presenta la casa de la fama de chaucer como aquel lugar en el que comienza el diálogo entre la literatura y la historia del pasado con el autor y con el lector considerándolos como herederos de esa herencia común. palabras clave: chaucer, la casa de la fama, literatura medieval oral y escrita, memoria, san agustín. i n listening for the text, brian stock propounds the existence of a relationship of interdependence between oral and written traditions as one of the features of medieval culture. as legatees of 104 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim 16 (2009) the biblical and the classical heritage, medieval authors acknowledged the preeminence of the divine utterance as well as the undeniable worth of the written literature they had received. out of these legacies,1 a symbiotic process started to arise between the oral and the visual systems of communication, so that “there was no orality without an implied textuality: there was no literacy without the primal force of the spoken word. much of the subsequent dynamism of literature and society, in the sacred as well as in the secular sphere, arose  om the continual reworking of this arrangement” (1990: 4). one of the authors that best embodies the rise of such a symbiotic process is augustine, whose own spiritual advancement was presented in his confessions. the work presents the autobiographical rendition  om the point of view of one who has been revealed the ultimate truth of the bible and starts a vivid dialogue with himself and the divinity by recollecting his early years as imminently bound to the ensuing christian vocation. by constantly resorting to his past as he talks in the present to the divinity, he evinces the outstanding role of memory in enabling the rise of an individual’s personal continuity and thus of self-knowledge. having devoted his youth to the study and teaching of rhetoric2, augustine certainly understood the signifi cance of memory within the oratorical scheme. therefore, he was able to draw on some practical mnemonic issues when adapting some of the platonic tenets pertaining memory to christian requirements. well acquainted with the classical mnemonic tradition that had started in the pre-socratic age, he delved on the metaphor of memory as a house, palace or cave the space of which is distributed and inhabited by diverse sets of memory bits: 1 in reference to this huge legacy, c. s. lewis (1964: 10) points out one of the medieval intellectual qualities which has traditionally been underrated: “at his most characteristic, medieval man was not a dreamer not a wanderer. he was an organizer, a codifi er, a builder of systems. he wanted ‘a place for everything and everything in the right place’. distinction, defi nition, tabulation were his delight. though full of turbulent activities, he was equally full of the impulse to formalize them”. 2 his teaching activity starts in 375 at tagaste, holding his own school in carthage  om the following year to 383, when he travels to rome to do the same, a work he will continue further when moving to milan in 384. 105 housing memory in the late medieval literary tradition selim 16 (2009) transibo ergo et istam naturae meae, gradibus ascendens ad eum, qui fecit me, et venio in campos et lata praetoria memoriae, ubi sunt thesauri innumerabilium imaginum de cuiuscemodi rebus sensis invectarum. ibi reconditum est, quidquid etiam cogitamus, vel augendo vel minuendo vel utcumque variando ea quae sensus attigerit, et si quid aliud conmendatum et repositum est, quod nondum absorbuit et sepelivit oblivio. ibi quando sum, posco, ut proferatur quidquid volo, et quaedam statim prodeunt, quaedam requiruntur diutius et tanquam de abstrusioribus quibusquam receptaculis eruuntur, quedam catervatim se proruunt et, dum aliud petitur et quaeritur, prosiliunt in medium quasi dicentia: “ne forte nos sumus”? et abigo ea manu cordis a facie recordationis meae, donec enubiletur quod volo atque in conspectum prodeat ex abditis. alia faciliter atque perturbata serie sicut poscuntur suggeruntur et cedunt praecedentia consequentibus et cedendo conduntur, iterum cum voluero processura. quod totum fi t, cum aliquid narro memoriter. i come to the fi elds and spacious palaces of memory, where are the treasures of innumerable images, brought into it from things of all sorts perceived by the senses. there is stored up, whatever besides we think, either by enlarging or diminishing, or any other way varying those things which the sense hath come to; and whatever else hath been committed and laid up, which forgetfulness hath not yet swallowed up and buried. when i enter there, i require instantly what i will to be brought forth, and something instantly comes; others must be longer sought after, which are fetched, as it were out of some inner receptacle; others rush out in troops, and while one thing is desired and required, they start forth, as who should say, ‘is it perchance i?’ these i drive away and with the hand of my heart from the face of my remembrance; until what i wish for be unveiled, and appear in sight, out of its secret place; until what i wish for be unveiled, and appear in sight, out of its secret place. other things come up readily, in unbroken order, as they are called for; those in front making way for the following; and as they make way, they are hidden from sight, ready to come when i will. all which takes place when i recite a thing by heart. (bk x, ch. 8, 12, pp. 217–218)3 in this passage, the visual quality of memory as glossed by yates’s seminal work (1966) leans on the personifi ed fi gures of vivifi ed past events we have just seen dwelling in the rooms of this palace, and seems to respond to aristotle’s claim that any mental activity is produced by means of images. in accordance with such dictum, the most commonplace metaphors dealing with memory in ancient times emphasized the motive of the 3 translation by frances yates, p. 60. 106 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim 16 (2009) storage, or that of the stamping of an image into some kind of so matter.4 according to mary carruthers: “this assumption concerning the material, and therefore spatial, nature of memory images also helps to account for why the ancients persistently thought of memoria as a kind of eye-dependent reading, a visual process” (1990: 27). notwithstanding the prevalence of the visual, augustine however, also included in his program the neo-platonic discrimination between temporal things that could be reproduced thanks to images and intemporal or eternal ones, which he linked not only to the visual realm, but to the oral one as well, maybe as the echo of plato’s heuristic method, based on the dialogue. this oral tradition augustine somehow restores in his constant addresses to god when referring to the process through which he searched further into his memory to fi nd out the ultimate divine nature within himself.5 drawing on these parallel ancient traditions and on the capital place of the mnemonic activity in late roman times, augustine could eventually present memory as one of the three qualities of the soul. his contribution to western thought is equally based on his articulation of a particular sense of time, in which memory stands as the matrix of all human temporal 4 frances yates (1966: 22) presents the artifi cial cra of memory exercised in classical times as parallel to the learning of the alphabet, through which the metaphor of the wax tablets turns even more meaningful: “the art of memory is like an inner writing. those who know the letters of the alphabet can write down what is dictated to them and read out what they have written. likewise those who have learned mnemonics can set in places what they have heard and deliver it  om memory. ‘for the places are very much like wax, tablets or papyrus, the images like the letters, the arrangement and disposition of the images like the scripts, and the delivery is like the reading’”. 5 janet coleman states (1992: 105): “thanks to this eternal truth as form, we have in us a true knowledge of things engendered like the word, in an interior diction. (…) augustine affi rms that there is nothing that we do voluntarily which we have not previously said in our hearts”. it is precisely this transcendental tendency in augustine’s theory of memory that has made authors like luis merino (2000: 361) defend his departure  om mere rhetorical schemes in order to delve into deeper meanings. thus, although the location imagery used by augustine may be taken  om the rhetorical mnemonic tradition, its target is placed farther: “el pasmo y el temor que agustín siente ante la inmensidad de la memoria demuestra que el intelecto es incapaz de abarcarla. por tanto, la topografía de la memoria de la que agustín habla en clave metafórica debe entenderse en un sentido propiamente fi losófi co, incluso religioso, y no retórico”. 107 housing memory in the late medieval literary tradition selim 16 (2009) perception.6 since memory makes present that which is no longer seen in actuality, it becomes the matrix within which humans perceive present and future as well. according to carruthers, “this amounts to saying that present and future are mediated by this memory of the past” (1990: 193). cultural historian pierre nora (2004: 25) argues that western society is no longer based on memory as a collective activity, this being one of the causes for the obsession with history as a means of recollecting those lost traces. in the late ancient world and the middle ages, instead, the key role assigned to memory guaranteed the survival of the past. but if the past could modi the sense of the present, the present was conversely engrained in the recollection of the past, and thus was persistently used to reconstruct it. this could be easily evidenced by the role of the rhetorician and poet, who spoke not about the real historical events but about the probable more universal accounts  om which general lessons could be drawn according to present perceptions.7 to coleman (1992: 37), the orator or poet “unites a community of individual rememberers by integrating them into the collectively accepted plausible fi ctions of their common past.” this duty had already been acknowledged by authors 6 according to harald kleinschmidt’s interpretation of confessiones cap. xi, 14–15 (2000: 17), “if time exists, it is not present, because it has no duration; but if it has a duration, then it is either past or future, and the[n], we cannot say that time is, because the past is no longer, and the future is not yet. but, nevertheless, time exists. (…) the most general remark about st augustine’s experience of time is that he perceived it as a remote process, far beyond the practical command and intellectual grasp of human beings, perplexingly created by the divinity, with an absolute dominance over the human world, moving on autonomously  om the past into the future and preventing human beings  om penetrating its inner nature. (…) the human experience of time was indirect, transmitted through instruments of the measurement of time, on the one side, and, on the other, through the human mind through which knowledge of the past could be recreated by the use of words.” 7 matthew innes (2000: 3) equally reminds of the diffi cult approach of nineteenthcentury historians to early medieval historical texts which had not been conceived out of the moral exegetical  ame of poetry: “in a study of four of the canonical texts in early medieval history, goff art argued that jordanes’ gothic history, gregory of tours’ histories, bede’s ecclesiastica history of the english people and paul the deacon’s history of the lombards, needed to be read as literary arguments, whose authors drew upon classical historiographical and rhetorical traditions inherited wholesale in representing the past of their societies to make a point about the present” 108 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim 16 (2009) like cicero, who claimed poets had “to maintain the life of the collective memory through recalling the exemplary nature of the past (coleman 1992: 59)8. augustine received the ciceronian oratorical schemes as well as the respect for the concept of auctoritas through which the survival of the past was to be enacted. resting on the augustinian foundation, the middle ages was therefore an intense memorial culture, so that, according to evans (2003: 92), by the fourteenth century: [… ] memory was by and large omnipresent, integrated, ritualistic, and tinged with the sacred: not a property of the individual, but a means of putting the individual and the community in a continuous relation with the past (…) all levels of society were concerned with the transmission of collective values through ‘remembrance’, whether through the learned textual traditions of auctoritas or through everyday domestic objects”. it is the contention of this paper that the the house of fame explores the links between present and past, the representation of what is being individually recollected out of communal contents of social nature which the author shares and makes present through the local and temporal imaginative device of the journey as symbolic of the memorial process. to start with, the poem could be interpreted as one of those items of family memory; just as today’s siblings may gather together around a picture album to comment on the family photographs and so reconstruct, alter or reinforce their common memories and identities (middleton & edwards 1992: 12), the poem is a picture in which legendary fathers and sons might be recognized: the key concept being that of fame, the narrator presents his journey to the palace of this allegorical fi gure, where he will be able to meet many of the famous auctores of the ancient and medieval literary tradition in a “vindication of poetry”(bennett 1986: xi). but on the other hand, it is also a reenactment of a poetic scheme that enabled the imaginary contact between the past and the present, namely the dream-vision  ame, which poets had followed relentlessly since ancient times. thus, in reproducing a kind of dream experience 8 “this recollection was unproblematic; its capacity to convince depended not on an investigation of evidence (…) but on the rhetorical plausibility of present arguments whose basis lay in unrefl ective common opinion.” (coleman 1992: 59). 109 housing memory in the late medieval literary tradition selim 16 (2009) that petrarch, boccaccio, machaut, dante, boethius or cicero had had, chaucer was not only off ering a picture of ancient fi gures, but taking a picture of himself among his equals and adding his own point of view to the portrait. however, his reconstruction of the past literary tradition, although responding to this conventional  ame, performs a divergent and particular operation: chaucer will underline the alternation of visual and aural transmission in order to question the resilience of fame as a means of defi ning the reliable remembrance of the past in individual and collective memory. the structure of the poem and its unfi nished state have puzzled readers and critics who wonder whether chaucer might be parodying previous poets and thus trying to release himself  om the chain of auctores that had set the path for him either in latin or in the vernacular languages. whatever appears in this dream might recall the traditional elements laid out as part of the ritualistic poetic setting of the dream vision: it is on the air or ethereal regions that the poet approaches higher truths, led by the hand of a reputed guide, cicero and aeneas being the most outstanding ones. dante’s infl uence over the house of fame having been confi rmed, its echo resounds not only in the fi gure of the eagle or in the dreamer’s invocation to apollo, but particularly in the reference to troy, that immediately evokes the key guiding fi gure of virgil in dante’s comedy.9 however, i think that augustine’s confessions are equally decisive in the treatment of the dido-aeneas episode (hf 221–382). chaucer’s treatment of the legend is quite revealing of the degree of intricacy between the written and other visual languages in late medieval culture. as the poet wakes up within his dream, he fi nds himself in the temple of glass where he sees the portrait of the ruling goddess, venus. in such depiction, he refers to colors and shapes; what next attracts his attention, as he says, is the following: 9 on the one hand, piero boitani (1984: 82) refers specifi cally to the architectural device of the castle of limbo in dante’s work as an undeniable source of inspiration for chaucer’s castle of fame: “[…] aeneas and the heroes of the troy legend that dante places in his limbo, and the matter of thebes which is represented there by statius’ heroines do fi gure in fame’s hall.” (1984: 83). on the other hand, authors like st john (2000: 82), still accepting such infl uence, stress the diverse standpoints  om which both poets depart, since “in chaucer’s poem, however, the limitations of the individual’s perspective are transcended not spiritually but rationally”. 110 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim 16 (2009) but as i romed up and doun, i fond that on a wall ther was thus written on a table of bras: “i wol now synge, yif i kan, the armes and also the man that fi rst cam, thurgh his destine, fugityf of troy contree, in ytalye, with ful moche pyne unto the strondes of lavyne” but as i wandered up and down  / i found that on a wall there was  / upon a tablet made of brass / inscribed the following: “if i can, / i now shall sing arms and the man. / the destined knight of mighty fame / who fugitive from troy fi rst came / much suff ering to italian land, / and trod lavinium’s river-strand” (hf 140–48) these lines reproduce the beginning of the aeneid, which the dreamer seems to be presently reading;10 the narrator starts referring to verbs that reinforce the sense of sight, so much so that he seems to have stopped reading and devotes his eyes to watching fi gurative depictions of the legendary characters, thus keeping to the metaphor of memory as a surface on which images are being carved or drawn. the location, a temple, is also evocative of augustine’s depictions of the palaces of memory where the passages known by heart wait on us as we search for them. the dreamer fi nds it easy to move  om the glass walls devoted to goddess venus to the space dedicated to aeneas, her son. once there, the fi gurative quality enables the narrator to supersede the virgilian account and to present the narration  om his own point of view, since he no longer seems to be reading but rather reproducing the famous troy legend in his imagination out of the painted shapes he fi nds on the walls, no longer on the brass tablet. thus, thanks to this work of recollection of the trojan past, he 10 besides, it reenacts the  agment in bk i of the aeneid in which, when entering the temple of juno in libya, aeneas see the depiction of the war of troy on the walls. let’s remember that there existed the mythographic tradition of the “poetic pictures” to refer to the poetic arts in rhetorical uses. when dealing with the concept of locational memory, carruthers (1993: 887) reminds that chaucer had already used the wall-painting in the form of a written book which glossed the romance de la rose in “the book of the duchess”, this device of stained-glass windows or wall-paintings being traditionally recognized as demanding meditational recollection. 111 housing memory in the late medieval literary tradition selim 16 (2009) will be slowly varying the intensity and opinions on some passages, like that dedicated to queen dido: ther saugh i such tempest aryse that every herte might agryse to see hyt peynted on the wal (… ) ther saugh i joves venus kysse, and graunted of the tespest lysse. ther saugh i how the tempest stente, and how with alle pyne he wente, (…) ther sawgh i grave how eneas tolde dido every caas that hym was tyd upon the see. and a er grave was how shee made of hym shortly at oo word hyr lyf, hir love, hir lust, hir lord, and dide hym al the reverence. i saw there such a tempest wake / that every heart would shudder and shake / to see it painted on the wall. / (…) i saw jove kiss her; then he swore / to venus he would still the uproar. / i watched the tempest come to rest / and saw aeneas, much distressed” (hf 209–11 & 219–22). i saw aeneas painted there, / telling dido all the care / and woes he suff ered while at sea. / and then was painted there how she / created him with just one word / her life, her love, her joy, her lord. / and did him every reverence. (hf 253–59) from this moment onwards, the dreamer seems to be gazing at (or reading) a diff erent book, since he cannot help producing his own continuation of the episode according now, not to aeneas’ interests, but to a female point of view which rather is identifi ed with that of queen dido, as she realizes that aeneas has abandoned her and laments her fate: “o wel-awey that i was born! for thorgh yow is my name lorn, and alle myn actes red and songe over al thys lond, on every tonge. o wikke fame!—for ther nys nothing so swi , lo, as she is! o, soth ys, every thing ys wyst, though hit be kevered with the myst. eke, though i myghte duren ever, that i have don rekever i never, 112 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim 16 (2009) that i ne shal be syd, allas, yshamed be thourgh eneas, “ah woe the day that i was born! / through you my name is lost and gone, / and all my acts are read and sung / throughout the land by every tongue. / o wicked fame! there cannot be / a thing that moves as swift as she! / yes, all is known and nothing missed, / though it be covered with a mist. / indeed, though i might live for ever, / undo what i have done i never / shall be able to. my name / through aeneas is brought to shame”. (hf 345–56) these lines reveal that chaucer, though acknowledging the virgilian masterpiece and dante’s reverential portrait of his guide, does not agree with the triumphant epic tone tradition had endowed it with. instead of reproducing virgil’s song of glory, he presents fame not linked to the heroic male character but to dido’s tragedy, according to her portrait in ovid’s seventh letter of epistolae heroidum (heroides 7). the betrayed queen kills herself once she understands she has lost her good name as a consequence of the male habit of telling about love conquests. virgil’s work had been specifi cally linked to the training of memory. no wonder augustine in de anima referred to his school  iend simplicius and his remarkable ability to handle this text and recite it even backwards: […] cum interrogatus esset a nobis, quos uersus vergilius in omnibus libris supra ultimos dixerit, continuo celeriter memoriterque respondit. queaesiuimus etiam superiores ut diceret: dixit. et credidimus eum posse retrorsus recitare vergilium; de quocumque loco uoluimus, petiuimus ut facere: fecit. […] when he might be asked by us for all the next-to-last verses in each book of virgil, responded in order quickly and from memory. if we then asked him to recite the verse before each of those, he did. and we believed that he could recite virgil backwards. if we desired a commonplace concerning any topic, we asked him to make one and he did. (de natura et origine animae libri quattuor, iv, vii, 9, 1987: 815–816)11 the capacity to master memory was best proved by this backward utterance of the passages, which cicero had also attributed to fellow orators or famous characters in the art of memory. beryl rowland fi nds chaucer’s possible source for his topic in bishop brawardine’s treatise on 11 translation by mary carruthers, 1990, p. 19). 113 housing memory in the late medieval literary tradition selim 16 (2009) artifi cial memory,12 but maybe augustine’s references were as well taken into account. together with this capacity to recite poems in the reverse order, a very diff erent way to substantiate the mark of a literary  agment on the listeners was their liability to be moved by it. it is quite revealing that in the confessions augustine complains about the fact that, instead of having read the bible in his student years, he had employed his wits in learning the latin alphabet and grammar precisely through the reading of the aeneid. [… ] nam utique meliores, quia certiores, erant primae illae litterae, quibus fi ebat in me et factum est et habeo illud, ut et legam, si quid scriptum invenio, et scribam ipse, si quid volo, quam illae, quibus tenere cogebar aeneae nescio cuis errores oblitus errorum meorum et plorare didonem mortuam, quia se occidit ab amore, cum interea me ipsum in his a te morientem, deus, vita mea, siccis oculis ferrem miserrimus. […] these letters (the greek ones) were much more useful than the following ones (latin). the former gave me the power, which i still hold, to read what is written and to write what i want. however, through the latter ones they made me learn by heart the adventures of an aeneas, whom i did not know, while forgetting my own mistakes. i also learnt how to lament the death of dido, who killed herself out of love, while i, amid these things, died far from you, my god and life, not shedding a single tear. (bk i, ch. 13)13 12 “metrodorus of scepsis was reputed to have recorded on the images of the zodiac all that he wished to remember. brawardine may be alluding to a similar system when he says that if one wants to be reminded of more things, he should put ‘images in the places following in the same way’. he adds, ‘when this is done, he who is recalling can recite those things in the order which he wishes, that is to say directly or backward’” (1975: 44–5). for chaucer’s use of artifi cial memory, see also e. buckmaster (1986). 13 my translation. robertsonian echoes can be found in koonce’s (1966: 112) analogical reading of the temple of glass passage in comparison to dante’s “inferno”, based on the tropological interpretation through which dido is perceived as the symbol of libidinous love. marilynn desmond’s chapter on dido as libido starts by referring to augustine’s quotation as a seminal reference to the danger that dido’s image symbolically posed as identifi ed with the desire that arouse out of memory (1994: 76):“he notes that his acquisition of literacy ostensibly provided him with the autonomy to read and write what he wished, but his initial experiences of reading the aeneid and committing it to memory threatened his autonomy as a subject and undermined his will”. 114 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim 16 (2009) in the confessions, aeneas’ abandonment of dido and her death are made parallel to young augustine’s abandonment and forgetfulness of god. the misdirected tears of the forlorn woman and those of the young grammar pupil may bring fatal consequences: physical and spiritual death respectively. but whereas young augustine had fi nally redirected his quest towards inner memory in search of god, chaucer’s persona does not forget dido, and instead warns women to beware of men who boast about their conquests. chaucer turns therefore the whole passage into a strong reminder of the need to remember what has been read. he performs the role of the orator or poet, who tries to transform stories into universal examples for readers to keep in their heart and meditate on. this endeavor to emphasize a pragmatic approach to memory is but the fi rst step of a careful program of decomposition of the notion of fame. my theory is that the whole structure of the poem rests primarily on the dido-aeneas episode, which epitomizes the values of memory and chaucer’s exercise of backward recitation. its disposition in diverse spaces, its written or engraved form, the sacred quality of the crystal architecture… if considered this way, the carthaginian episode should correspond chronologically, not to the fi rst, but to the last step in the initiation journey, the encounter with inner memory a er having properly read and swallowed the ancient authors. but then, what about the palace of fame and the house of rumour? what is their role in his passage to memory? these also follow the storage space metaphor, but they are not made for housing memory but that which precedes it, rumour being chronologically prior to fame and fame to memory. these two former stages, anterior to the stamping of memories in our mental spaces are best conveyed by the oral communal habit. the leading character here, the eagle, will announce the sound quality of these second and third parts of the poem. as it arises seizing the poet in its talons, the bird teaches him about the nature of sound, on which fame rests.14 when the poet gets into the palace, again the sound of the pomp surrounding fame will be outstanding: among the crowd of musicians, poets, the trumpets great 14 “sound is only air that is broken. / and every single word that is spoken, / aloud or secret, foul or fair, / is in its essence only air” (hf 765–68) “each air stirs up another one / increasingly: and once begun / then voice or noise or word or sound / with amplifi ed eff ect is bound / to travel to the house of fame.” (817–821) 115 housing memory in the late medieval literary tradition selim 16 (2009) renown and evil fame and all kinds of supplicants for fame, very few will be guaranteed the survival of their name. some of these sounds have arrived embodied in the shapes of the characters in their stories, dressed in the colors of books, or become simply the authors’ human shapes, a process the eagle had warned the poet about: but understond now right wel this: whan any speche ycomen ys up to the paleys, anon-ryght hyt wexeth lyk the same wight which that the word in eerthe spak, be hyt clothed red or blak; and hath so verray hys lyknesse that spak the word, that thou wilt gesse that it the same body be, man or woman, he or she. but grasp this further: when a speech / arrives within that house’s reach, / then straight away it starts to take / the form its speaker used to make / on earth below when it was said, / whether clothed in black or red; / and has a likeness so exact / to the speaker that you’d swear in fact / it must the self-same body be, / man or woman, he or she. (hf 1073–1082) the dreamer immediately recognizes some of the fi gures, but these are not those of the great heroes, but of the poets who sang them; thus, he privileges the role of poets over those of historical or legendary characters.15 finally, as he feels seduced by the sound of the next house, that of rumour, the oral quality exceeds the visual element. chaucer presents thus the very fi rst stage in the rise of collective imagination and memory: the notion of gossip. but let’s remember that gossip had already appeared in the poem precisely as the reason for dido’s disgrace, which was carved in the mind’s memorized version of the temple of glass. if reciting in the reverse order was known to be an ability of profi cient students in the art of memory, chaucer is here implying his own backward journey, since dido and aeneas’ story had fi rst started in the house of rumour, had later gone through the work of poets at the house of fame and fi nally landed 15 “and by him stood—no lie i speak / high on a column of iron true, / great homer, with him dares too, / the phrygian, dictys of crete / in  ont, and lollius, complete / with guido delle colonne and / geoff rey of monmouth, understand? / for each of these, god grant me joy / busily penned the fame of troy. / so mighty was that city’s fame, / to write of it was not a game.” (hf 1464–1474). 116 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim 16 (2009) as memorized engraved poems in the temple of glass, precisely where the dream starts. the stories told at the house of rumour spring  om anonymous mouths and try to get into the house of fame. the poet seems happier witnessing the spontaneous and varying whirl of words moving through this labyrinth, which does not resemble the organized realms of memory. here movement and sound reign completely16. the collective quality of rumour will undergo an individual authorial turn that lady fame’s decisions will seal up;17 but even so, we are certainly very far  om augustine’s conception of memory as a quality of the soul through which mankind’s divine origin might be traced. in chaucer’s backward dream, the origin of memory is in the last space he has access to, the house of rumour, but this cradle of future memories stands not for god’s primeval word but for the communal constant need to share and reproduce words. chaucer’s claim is for an individual perception of the relative quality of fame when attributed to the work of past authors, and therefore, to the past as a whole.18 he acknowledges the role of poets as endowers of fame, but defends as well a present communal disposition or aff ection for some works that might diverge  om traditional attitudes so far thought immutable. 16 the multiplying and distorting eff ect of repeated oral accounts is best perceived by the image of the swelling of news which in their competition to come out of the labyrinth: “each time he told it to a man / his news was more and stranger than / it was before. thus north and south / went all the news  om mouth to mouth, / each time increasing more and more,” (hf 2073–2077) “i saw two rising to the air, / a falsehood and a serious truth / by chance at one time coming both / and striving for a window space. / colliding in that narrow place,” (2089–2092) “thus saw i false and true confounded, / flying up in each report. / so out of holes there squeezed and fought / each bit of news, and went to fame,” (hf 2108–2111). 17 or, as minnis, scattergood & smith would put it (1995: 213): “the movement  om rumour to fame is the process in which experience becomes tradition—and contamination, it would seem, is an unavoidable part of the process”. 18 norman klassen (1995: 190) points out to this particular disposition in the chaucerian poem: “unlike augustine, chaucer does not off er the same evaluation of reading poetry. whereas for the church father such reading is aff ective and contrasts with the certainty of acquiring basic skills or essential spiritual knowledge, for chaucer it provokes positive questions of his relationship as poet to auctoritas. he is conscious of the role of the individual in negotiating the past, hearsay, truth. his is a humanistic response, where knowledge in whatever form has become interesting per se. 117 housing memory in the late medieval literary tradition selim 16 (2009) the dreamer’s preference for ovid’s19 (instead of virgil’s) approach to the fi gure of aeneas20 as a traitor and defamer, as well as his relish in fi nding present day’s manifold hybrid news and stories at the house of rumour, describe chaucer’s skepticism about the static nature of literary tradition21 and of the past.22 but if he acknowledges the creative role of gossip in the formation and deformation of oral traditions, he equally highlights through this peculiar journey with dido & aeneas the importance of individual reading in the molding of memory and experience, a legacy he might have received  om augustine. maría beatriz hernández pérez university of la laguna 19 according to minnis, scattergood and smith (1995: 237): “certainly, in book i of the house of fame, as in the narratives of the legend, chaucer sided with ovid, and that inevitably meant the subversion of the authority of virgil. that is hardly surprising, since ovid had set himself up as a writer who was diametrically opposed to virgil; his retelling of the aeneid in heroides vii constitutes a refusal to ally himself with his elder contemporary’s celebration of military glory and the distinguished lineage of the emperor augustus, ruler of the new troy. 20 as silvia federico (2003: 148) states: “[…]aeneas creates chaucer in his image: the medieval poet becomes, a er his death, the founder of an empire (of letters). he is the “father of english poetry” just as aeneas is the father of europe. but both foundations are based in treason, or in heroic defections  om authoritative precedent, and both prompt disavowals and revisions in their wake.” 21 ibid., p. 236: “in the house of fame, by contrast, chaucer seems to be conveying a sense of the lack of durability of literary fame-and indeed of all fame (as book iii intimates), since fame rests on evidence which is invariably literary, the testimony of ‘olde bookes’. neither is there any belief in the durability of empire and civic fame, no vision of the translation imperii to a ‘new troy’, whether it be rome or london, to correspond to dante’s faith in the divine origin and preservation of his continuing city. in view of such powerlessness, the house of fame can be said to record chaucer’s crisis of authority.” 22 ibid., p. 146: “‘history’ is thus created through a loss of control that more broadly characterizes the writing process. as chaucer himself lamented on many occasions, once a text is ‘published’ and sent out to the future, anything might happen to it. this loss of control is simultaneous with the process of trying to fi x, to capture, to solidi an event as history. fama and history are bedfellows, and the authority of history is as dangerous as the supposed impediments to it”. 118 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim 16 (2009) references augustine (st) 1987: obras de san agustín iii. obras fi losófi cas. introduction and notes  om victorino capanaga. madrid, bac. bennett, j. a. w. 1986: chaucer’s book of fame. oxford, oxford university press. benson, larry d. ed. 1988: the riverside chaucer. oxford, oxford university press. boitani, piero 1984: chaucer and the imaginary world of fame. cambridge, d. s. brewer. braswell, mary flowers 1981: architectural portraiture in chaucer’s ‘house of fame’. journal of medieval and renaissance studies 11: 101–12. buckmaster, elizabeth 1986: meditation and memory in chaucer’s ‘house of fame’. modern language studies 16: 279–87. carruthers, mary 1990: the book of memory: a study of memory in medieval culture. cambridge, cambridge university press. carruthers, mary 1993: the poet as master builder: composition and locational memory in the middle ages. new literary history 24.4: 881–904. coleman, janet 1992: ancient and medieval memories. studies in the reconstruction of the past. cambridge, cambridge university press. desmond, marilynn 1994: reading dido. gender, textuality, and the medieval aeneid. minneapolis & london, university of minnesota press. evans, ruth 2003: memory’s history and the history of criseyde: chaucer’s troilus. rcei 47: 87–99. federico, sylvia 2003: new troy. fantasies of empire in the late middle ages. minneapolis, minnesota university press. fenster, thelma & daniel lord smail eds. 2003: fama. the politics of talk and reputation in medieval europe. ithaca & london, cornell university press. innes, mattthew 2000: introduction: using the past, interpreting the present, infl uencing the future. in yitzhak hen & matthew innes eds. the uses of the past in the early middle ages. cambridge, cambridge university press: 1–8. 119 housing memory in the late medieval literary tradition selim 16 (2009) klassen, norman 1995: chaucer on love, knowledge and sight. cambridge, d. s. brewer. kleinschmidt harald 2000: understanding the middle ages. the transformation of ideas and attitudes in the medieval world. woodbridge, boydell. koonce, b. g. 1966: chaucer and the tradition of fame: symbolism in the house of fame. princeton, princeton university press. lewis, c. s. 1964: the discarded image: an introduction to medieval and renaissance literature. cambridge, cambridge university press. merino jerez, luis 2000: la memoria en confessiones (10, 8–26) de agustín. anuario de estudios fi lológicos 23: 347–368. middleton, david & derek edwards 1992: memoria compartida. la naturaleza social del recuerdo y del olvido. barcelona, paidós. minnis, a. j., v. j. scattergood & j. j. smith 1995: oxford guides to chaucer. the shorter poems. oxford, clarendon. nora, pierre 2004: les lieux de mémoire. paris, gallimard. rowland, beryl 1975: bishop brawardine, the artifi cial memory, and the house of fame. in rossell hope robbins ed. chaucer at albany. new york, robbins, burt franklin & co.: 41–62. st john, michael 2000: chaucer’s dream visions. courtliness and individual identity. aldershot, ashgate. skutella, martinus, ed. 1969: s. aureli augustini. confessionum libri xiii. stuttgart, teubner. stock, brian 1990: listening for the text. on the uses of the past. philadelphia, university of pennsylvania press. stock, brian 1998: augustine the reader: meditation, self-knowledge, and the ethics of interpretation. cambridge (ma), the belknap press of harvard university press. yates, frances 1966: the art of memory. london, pimlico. • received 04 mar 2010; revision received 31  may 2010; accepted 02 aug 2010 2019notes_2_breeze andrew breeze, selim24 (2019): 149–156. issn 1132-631x / doi https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.24.2019.149-156 old english hula ‘sheds’ and hull, yorkshire andrew breeze university of navarra hull or kingston-upon-hull is a port upon the river hull. with a population of over 300,000, it is the fourth biggest city in yorkshire (after leeds, sheffield, and bradford) and the fifteenth biggest in britain. yet its name, like those of other english cities (london, manchester, leeds, york, doncaster), has lacked rational explanation until lately. in 2018 the writer proposed that hull is not (as long asserted) called after the river hull, supposedly with an obscure pre-english name. the river is instead called after the town, because hull derives not from some opaque celtic hydronym but from old english hula ‘sheds, huts’. hull is thus a greater namesake of (much) hoole ‘shed(s)’ south-west of preston, lancashire. 1 as for the river hull, its old name may have been leven ‘smooth one’, still that of a village near its source. the original account being a summary one, what follows presents the case in detail. keywords: hull; place-names; old english; celtic 1. the historical background hull or kingston-upon-hull, famed for links with the anti-slavery movement, aviation, telephones, fishing, and poetry, is a medieval new town. in a memorable account of its churches, palaces, defences, hospitals, and religious houses, john leland attributed the place’s prosperity to when its mariners began “passing for fisch into iseland”; hull thereby gained “the hoole trade of stoke fisch into england” after it had previously been “but a meane fischar toune, and longid as a membre to hasille [hessle] village a 2. or 3. mile off, 1 a. breeze, ‘the names of yorkshire’s rivers’, transactions of the yorkshire dialect society, cxviii/23 (2018), 71−92. 150 andrew breeze upper on humber”. 2 leland’s phrase “meane fischar toune”’ should be kept in mind. it is fundamental evidence. thanks to fish, then, hull came from nowhere. documents chart its rise to greatness. in 1440 it was incorporated, becoming legally separate from yorkshire and a county in its own right, with a mayor and sheriff. 3 earlier events were set out by pevsner. edward i bought the settlement in 1293 (hence “kingston” and the crowns on the city’s blazon). “before that it was wyke, and belonged to meaux abbey”. the new kingston soon ousted its rival ravenser (down towards the north sea), becoming in the fourteenth century “the foremost english port on the east coast”. 4 its prosperity is clear from a sixteenth-century drawing, showing churches and other buildings within its walls, windmills beyond, and ships moored on the river hull. 5 chaucer thus naturally thought of hull when declaring of his shipman, “ther nas noon swich from hulle to cartage” (where “cartage” is cartagena, spain). 6 2. older explanations of hull’s name after glorification of the city, consideration of its name and that of its river. the hull flows twenty-three miles from near great driffield to its outlet on the humber. ekwall, citing a reference of about the year 1000 (concerning a shrine at beverley) to ea hull ‘river hull’, fatally took it as a “british rivername”. 7 yet kenneth jackson did not think it celtic at all. giving the area as settled by the english in the late fifth century (we shall return to this date), he omitted it from his map of such forms. 8 this did not stop others from taking hull as a celtic form. margaret gelling, citing a record of about 1080 on amnen hul(l) ‘river hull’, interpreted the form as either a scandinavian one meaning ‘deep one’ or ‘river which flows in a cut channel’, or else as celtic and with the sense ‘muddy one’. more to the point are her comments on the 2 the itinerary of john leland: parts i to iii, ed. l. t. smith (london, 1907), 48. 3 english historical documents 1327−1485, ed. a. r. myers (london, 1969), 570−572. 4 n. pevsner, the buildings of england: yorkshire: york and the east riding (harmondsworth, 1972), 267. 5 c. platt, the english medieval town (london, 1976), 43. 6 g. chaucer, the canterbury tales, ed. j. mann (harmondsworth, 2004), 18. 7 e. ekwall, the concise oxford dictionary of english place-names (oxford, 1936), 244. 8 k. h. jackson, language and history in early britain (edinburgh, 1953), 208, 220. oe hula ‘sheds’ and hull, yorkshire 151 settlement as wyke (later southwyke) ‘hamlet, village’ until it became kingston in the 1290s, under edward i. 9 there is full discussion of the old english text first mentioning the hull. 10 the document being otherwise devoid of viking influence, john field naturally doubted that hull was scandinavian, and preferred a supposed celtic root hul‘muddy’. 11 he was echoed by adrian room. 12 neither field nor room knew that there is no celtic root hulmeaning ‘muddy’ or anything else. it was still given by a. d. mills, as also the scandinavian etymology signifying ‘deep one’. 13 for this view taken to an extreme, we turn to the english place-name society’s dictionary, wherein a sense ‘muddy (river)’ is offered from an otherwise unknown celtic equivalent of lithuanian sulá ‘birch sap’ and old prussian sulo ‘curdled milk’. 14 3. a phonetic objection to the above we propose to demolish these assertations on hull. besides the lack of an equivalent in the celtic languages, there is an insuperable phonetic problem. it is this. the british language spoken in roman times had no initial <h>. the <h> at the beginning of words in medieval or modern welsh (a language deriving from british, just as french and spanish derive from latin) comes from development of an original initial <s>. the river severn offers an example. the romans called it sabrina, the welsh now call it hafren (where the sense is seemingly that of the ‘boiling together’ of the river’s bore or tidal flood). now, kenneth jackson long ago took the development of initial <s> to <h> in british dialects as occurring by ‘”the middle or later part of the sixth 9 m. gelling, ‘hull’, in the names of towns and cities in britain, ed. w. f. h. nicolaisen (london, 1970), 111−112. 10 d. w. rollason, ‘lists of saints’ resting-places in anglo-saxon england’, anglosaxon england, vii (1978), 61−83. 11 j. field, place-names of great britain and ireland (newton abbot, 1980), 88. 12 a. room, dictionary of place-names in the british isles (london, 1988), 179. 13 d. mills, a dictionary of english place-names (oxford, 1991), 197. 14 the cambridge dictionary of english place-names, ed. v. watts (cambridge, 2004), 322, 348. 152 andrew breeze century”. 15 he used the identical phrase years later in a simple account of sabrina and hafren. 16 yet the english occupied the hull region in the late fifth century. hull thus cannot have been borrowed from a british form with initial <s>. that here invalidates all previous statements. 4. a new approach from old english so we start again with two radical new premises: that hull’s name is neither scandinavian nor celtic nor pre-celtic, but english, and denoted the settlement, not the river. for ea hull and amnen hul(l), we take the sense as ‘river of hull, river at hull’, just as one might call the aire the ‘river at leeds’. the likely derivation of hull is hence from old english hula ‘sheds, huts’. place-name scholars record hula ‘sheds, huts’ elsewhere in england. in lancashire, between preston and southport, is the parish of hoole, with the settlements of much hoole and little hoole, attested in 1204 as hull and long since explained from old english hula ‘huts’. 17 near worcestershire’s border with warwickshire is the hamlet of holberrow green (sp 0259), attested in 1275 as holbarewe. it stands along a ridge on the worcesterredditch road. the first element will be hulu ‘shed’, the form meaning ‘hovelhill’ or ‘hill with hovels on or by it’. 18 a roadside position evidently did not enrich its inhabitants. it was a medieval favila or shanty-town. what this miserable place might look like is brought out by ancrene wisse ‘guide for anchoresses’, the prose masterpiece of an unknown thirteenthcentury friar from herefordshire or shropshire. he cited the scriptural direction to one who is “fairest among women” to feed her “kids beside the shepherds’ tents” (song of solomon 1:7). the last phrase he rendered as bi heordmonne hulen of ris & of leaues. 19 this is regularly mistranslated “beside the 15 k. h. jackson, ‘the british language during the period of the english settlements’, in studies in early british history. ed. n. k. chadwick (cambridge, 1954), 61−82. 16 k. h. jackson, ‘the british languages and their evolution’, in the mediaeval world. ed. d. daiches & a. thorlby (london, 1973), 113−126. 17 e. ekwall, the place-names of lancashire (manchester, 1922), 137. 18 a. mawer & f. m. stenton, the place-names of worcestershire (cambridge, 1927), 327. 19 the english text of the ancrene riwle, ed. m. day (london, 1952), 43. oe hula ‘sheds’ and hull, yorkshire 153 herdsmen’s tents of boughs and leaves”. 20 tents are made of cloth, however, not “boughs and leaves”. the sense of hulen is ‘shelters’, made of whatever came to hand. returning to toponyms, we can add two more, leaving to one side holcot (north of northampton) and hulcott (north-east of aylesbury), where the first element may mean ‘hollow’ and not ‘shed’. the first is the cheshire hamlet (absent from modern maps) of hull ‘huts, sheds’ (hulle in 1283), near appleton, south of warrington. 21 second is a gloucestershire field called hull piece ‘land containing a shed’ (from old english hulu), near poulton, in the flat lands between cirencester and fairford. 22 toponyms from lancashire, worcestershire, cheshire, and gloucestershire thus confirm interpretation of yorkshire’s hull as from old english hula ‘sheds, huts’. any other meaning is out of the question. 5. conclusions if the above process of thought is coherent, it offers four conclusions. first, in yorkshire, hull will originally have meant the settlement, not the river. second, the form will be an english one meaning virtually the same as wyke ‘hamlet, village’ already noted. it resembles too the names of dairycoates, sculcoates, and southcoates, with second elements meaning ‘cottages, shelters’ (and ‘scul’ being the scandinavian personal name skúli) and all now within hull’s industrial fringe. 23 third, the links set out by professional scholars over the years for expressions in latvian or lithuanian and so on can be dismissed. when leland spoke of hull as once “a meane fischar toune”, analysis of hull shows him as to the point, for hula need mean little more than ‘hovels’. a great city had humble beginnings. it is not alone. even though droitwich means ‘dirty salt-works’ and swindon ‘pig hill’, nobody thinks the worse of them for that. present analysis hence clarifies hull’s beginnings, as well as demonstrating entrenched error in the scholarly community. there is a fourth and final point. if 20 the ancrene riwle, tr. m. b. salu (london, 1955), 43. 21 e. ekwall, the concise oxford dictionary of english place-names, 4th ed. (oxford, 1960), 256. 22 j. field, english field-names (london, 1972), 110. 23 p. h. reaney, the origin of english place-names (london, 1960), 35−37. 154 andrew breeze hull is not celtic, can we point to toponyms near hull which are? the answer is yes. there are four instances, two of them from bede’s history. the names are in dera uuda, leven, roos, wawne. the first and last should interest both archaeologists and historians, for they indicate the sites of northumbrian monasteries, one of them hitherto unknown. (a) in dera uuda ‘in (the) wood of the deirans’. this is the name of a monastery at what is now beverley (‘beaver stream’), mentioned in book five of bede’s history. it is agreed that deirans, by which the anglians of the yorkshire region knew themselves, is a celtic expression, and that the first sense was that of a people (‘deirans’), not a territory (‘deira’). nor has it anything to do with early welsh dwfr ‘water’. it relates instead to welsh dewr (earlier deur) ‘brave, courageous’. the deirans had a military aristocracy who gave themselves out as “heroes, valiant ones”. 24 they resembled the bernicians, whose fighting men stormed the gap in an enemy battle-line (compare irish bearna ‘battle-gap’), or warriors in the british kingdom of elmet east of leeds, where the sense is ‘those who cut down many (in combat)’, as shown by welsh el‘many’ and medi ‘reap, harvest; cut down (foes in conflict)’. (b) leven, roos, wawne. 25 these all refer to villages and are dealt with together. (i) roos ‘moor’, not far from the sea at withernsea, is equivalent to welsh rhos ‘heathland’. the region, one of glacial boulder clay and infertile soil, was unattractive to settlers. british communities must have survived here long enough for the form to be borrowed by english. (ii) leven is north-east of beverley, by the headwaters of the hull in an area of drained marshland. although it is accepted that the name was that of a stream, the sense has been disputed. analogies in welsh yet allow an answer. welsh llyfn (feminine llefn) ‘smooth’ and so ‘smoothly-flowing one’ is applied 24 a. breeze, ‘the origin of the name deira’, transactions of the yorkshire dialect society, xix/97 (1997), 35−39. 25 r. coates & a. breeze, celtic voices, english places (stamford, 2000), 342. oe hula ‘sheds’ and hull, yorkshire 155 to several rivers in wales, as at llanllyfni on the western edge of snowdonia. 26 this provides a likely sense for the sluggish waters of the hull and its tributaries, as a connection with welsh llwyf ‘elm-trees’ does not. there is also an implication that leven was the former british name of the hull. surviving unrecognized until now at a settlement on its upper reaches, it has (it seems) been displaced as a hydronym by hull. (iii) wawne, five miles north of the centre of hull (and two miles south of vanished meaux abbey). professor richard coates perceived the form as celtic and equivalent to welsh gwaun ‘moor, meadow’ (the <g> appearing in the late eighth century, and thus being irrelevant to yorkshire). we may go further. in book three of his history, bede tells of bishop tuda, who died in 664 and was buried at the monastery of ‘paegnalaech’, routinely misunderstood by michael lapidge and other editors of bede, who then cannot locate it. there is again a simple solution. the correct initial is not <p>. it is the similar anglo-saxon runic letter wynn, with the value /u/ or /w/, so that we read ‘uaegnalaech’. the toponym is a hybrid, with a british element meaning ‘meadow’ and an english one meaning ‘stream’. 27 it enables the identification of wawne as the site of a monastery mentioned by bede, once again underlining the importance of place-names for researchers on yorkshire’s early history and archaeology. on that may now be noted observations from the humber wetlands survey, that “large tracts of the holderness plain, hull valley, and the southern vale of york were regularly flooded from the fifth to ninth centuries”; the result was “low levels of exploitation in these areas, except for meadowland” with “attendant settlement” on “free-draining soils nearby”. 28 26 h. w. owen & r. morgan, dictionary of the place-names of wales (llandysul, 2007), 270−271. 27 a. breeze, ‘the cult of st tuda and wawne, east riding’, northern history, xlviii (2011), 145−146. 28 j. d. richards & j. naylor, ‘settlement, landscape, and economy’, in early medieval northumbria, ed. d. petts & s. turner (turnhout, 2011), 129−149. 156 andrew breeze author’s address departamento de filología, lenguas modernas universidad de navarra campus universitario, s/n 31009 pamplona, spain received: 10 april 2019 e-mail: abreeze@unav.es revised version accepted: 20 may 2019 selim 16.indb maría josé sánchez de nieva, selim 16 (2009): 47–63issn: 1132–631x the significance of mary’s role in the exeter book advent lyrics1 abstract considered the most important compilation of old english poetry that is extant, the exeter book opens with twelve poems known as the advent lyrics or christ i. although little attention has been drawn to this group of poems, its study may however off er us a valuable insight into the manuscript and its context. as clayton and deshman have already noted, the signifi cance of the marian topic in the exeter book advent sequence seems to agree with the ideological concerns of the monastic reform of the late tenth century, an idea that prompts a possible contemporary dating of the lyrics. in the line of these scholars’ arguments, this paper aims to provide an analysis of lyrics 4, 7 and 9 of the exeter book advent sequence, focusing on the imagery employed to depict the virgin mary. i will then consider the antiphonal sources of the lyrics as well as the scribe’s departure  om them to highlight mary’s outstanding role in the advent lyrics. in addition to this, i will examine the signifi cance of the fi ve manuscript sections, paying special attention to punctuation and capitalization. the paper intends to add further evidence to the hypothesis held by some scholars that the fi rst part of the exeter manuscript was compiled during the heyday of the benedictine revival, when the prominence of the virgin mary reached the utmost peak of popularity in the anglo-saxon period. keywords: virgin mary, exeter book, advent lyrics, benedictine revival, marian imagery, liturgy, anglo-saxon queens. resumen considerada la colección existente más importante de poesía anglosajona, el códice de exeter comienza con doce poemas conocidos como los poemas de adviento o christ i. aunque ha recibido poca atención, estos poemas pueden o ecernos un entendimiento valioso del manuscrito y su contexto. como clayton y deshman ya han observado, la importancia del tema mariano en los poemas de adviento del códice de exeter puede coincidir con los intereses ideológicos de la reforma monástica de fi nales del siglo décimo; una idea que, o suscita una posible datación contemporánea de los poemas, o a lo sumo una probable infl uencia benedictina. en la línea de los argumentos sostenidos por estos académicos, este artículo tiene como objetivo presentar un análisis de los poemas 4, 7 y 9 de los poemas de adviento del códice de exeter, centrándose en las imágenes empleadas para describir a la virgen maría. tendré en cuenta las fuentes antifonales de los poemas, así como la intención del escriba de alejarse de las mismas para resaltar el papel sobresaliente de la virgen maría en los poemas de adviento. además, se examina la trascendencia de las cinco secciones del manuscrito, prestando especial atención a la puntuación y mayúsculas. el artículo pretende aportar evidencias a la hipótesis respaldada por varios académicos de que la primera parte del manuscrito de exeter se recopiló durante 1 i would like to express my gratitude to mercedes salvador-bello for her useful and enlightening comments on this article. an earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2009 mancass post graduate conference in manchester. i thank francisco álvarez and alexander r. rumble for their valuable comments on that dra . 48 maría josé sánchez de nieva selim 16 (2009) el apogeo del renacimiento benedictino, cuando la importancia de la virgen maría alcanzó la cota más alta de popularidad en el período anglosajón. palabras clave: virgen maría, poemas de adviento, códice de exeter, renacimiento benedictino, imágenes marianas, liturgia, reinas anglosajonas. i ntroducing the exeter book, the advent lyrics2 (fols. 8r–14r) constitute a collection of twelve poems which are based on the antiphons for advent found in the divine offi ce.3 in their current state (with a  agmentary beginning),4 three of the twelve extant poems are substantially devoted to the virgin mary—namely, lyrics 4, 7 and 9. in burlin’s opinion, “this marian sequence, with its evident chronology and progression, functions as a backbone to the structure” (1968: 177). the marian topic is therefore an essential component of the whole poetic sequence. but the prominence of the marian motif is not only found in the exeter advent lyrics, since it is also regularly observed in the liturgy of the period. the anglo-saxon devotion to the virgin is made evident in the rapid development of liturgical literature dedicated to mary. in addition to the four main marian feasts (purifi cation, annunciation, 2 the title christ stems  om the former scholarly view that the three opening exeter works, all of them traditionally attributed to cynewulf, constituted a single poetic piece. just as the cynewulfi an authorship of the whole triad was eventually dismissed, the unity of christ was also contested by various critics and the three resulting poetic pieces started to be called christ i (advent), christ ii (ascension), and christ iii (judgement day). 3 cook fi rst noted that the majority of the lyrics of the advent sequence derived  om the so-called “antiphonae majores” or “‘o’ antiphons,” which are regularly used in the liturgy of advent or christmas. see albert s. cook ed. (1900: specially pp. xxv–xliii). for a reprinted version of cook’s work with a preface by john c. pope, see ed. albert s. cook. (1964). a further comparative study of the advent lyrics and their liturgical sources is found in edward burgert (1921). also, see robert b. burlin (1968: 40–43). 4 it has been generally assumed by critics that several manuscript leaves have been lost. an initial lacuna precisely aff ects the beginning of the advent lyrics which start on fol. 8r. as pointed out by conner, “the resulting loss amounts to as much as forty-six manuscript lines of text, assuming that another gathering containing part of ‘christ i’ did not precede this one; the poem’s latin sources do not indicate a loss so great as to require our positing another quire before this one. in any case, fol. 8r is suffi ciently stained and darkened to allow the suggestion that it has existed for quite some time as the fi rst leaf of the manuscript while the book was in an unbound state.” (conner 1993: 98). 49 the signifi cance of mary’s role in the exeter book advent lyrics selim 16 (2009) assumption and nativity), new liturgical texts and prayers were composed and new celebrations such as vigils and octaves were created in the period of the benedictine reform (clayton 1990: 61). late-tenth century texts— such as the regularis concordia, probably composed by bishop æthelwold (c. 970)—established that all refounded monasteries should observe a saturday mass for mary or the recitation of a votive antiphon or daily memorial a er lauds and vespers. critics such as clayton (1990: 181) and deshman have also noted the great relevance of the marian topic in the literature and pictorial art of this period. as deshman demonstrates (1976: 376–405; 1995: 137), æthelwold’s benedictional (c. 973)5 off ers a new iconographic element that is recorded for the fi rst time in the history of western pictorial art: the virgin’s coronation as queen of heaven.6 according to him, the occurrence of this motif in the benedictional, a book that was most likely designed under æthelwold’s supervision, seems to be related to the contemporary concern with æl hryth’s legitimate condition as queen consort of edgar (957–75) a er the king’s repudiation of his former wife æthelfl æd.7 given that the compilation of the exeter book is roughly coeval with the benedicitional,8 the imagery used in the advent lyrics for the virgin mary might be equally meaningful, since the manuscript probably appeared at 5 robert deshman proposed 973 as the possible date of compilation of the benedictional, since he assumed that the iconographic elements found in this book seem to be related to the propaganda employed for edgar’s coronation that year. see deshman (1995: 212–14; 260–61). 6 for this miniature (fol. 102v of the manuscript), see deshman (1995: fi g. 34). for further comments on this illustration and its political implications, see deshman (1995: 204–07). 7 æl hryth was actually edgar’s third wife. for more information on this, see barbara yorke (2008: 143–57). 8 the exact date of the exeter book has been  equently an object of scholarly debate and is however far  om being settled. from a palaeographical point of view, flower (r. w. chambers. 1933: 90) notes that the script of the exeter book resembles that of london, lambeth palace, ms.149, stating that both manuscripts were written some time between 970 and 990. for krapp and dobbie (1936: xiii) “the date of the handwriting of the exeter book is evidently to be placed in the second half of the tenth century”. more recently, patrick w. conner (1993: 76) claims that the script suggests a date between 950 and 970. for his part, muir (1994: vol. 1: 1), the latest editor of the exeter book, suggests a time period between 965–75. 50 maría josé sánchez de nieva selim 16 (2009) a time when the legitimacy of æl hryth, a well-known patroness of the monastic reform, was at stake. not surprisingly, both deshman (1995: 137) and clayton (1990: 61–68) have associated the great importance of the marian motif in the exeter advent lyrics with the ideological concerns of the benedictine revival of the late tenth century. 9 in this train of thought, the aim of this paper is threefold: fi rst, by means of a detailed analysis of advent lyrics 4, 7 and 9 i intend to study the signifi cance of the imagery employed to depict the virgin as christ’s counterpart in the mystery of advent; second, to examine the author’s deliberate departure  om the antiphonal sources in these lyrics as to stress mary’s relevance in the advent sequence; and third, i will provide paleographical evidence, which seems to have passed unnoticed, in order to support the assumption that the virgin mary plays an essential part in the advent lyrics. a combined study of these three aspects may throw light on the possible ascription of the advent sequence to the heyday of the monastic reform when the prominence of the virgin mary reached the utmost peak of the anglo-saxon period. lyric 4 of the advent sequence is based on the marian antiphon o virgo virginum. dealing with the mystery of mary’s virginal impregnation, the lyric appears in the form of a dialogue as mary is questioned by the fi rst-person speaker who functions as a representative of the christians of jerusalem. by means of a forceful discourse, mary faces the people of jerusalem who want to learn about the mystery (geryne, 74) of her virginal state. before she gives her response, in a typically heroic style, she is described as symle sigores full, sancta maria (88) or “ever full of victory, sancta maria,”10 which heralds “a spiritual victory for mary as emblem of woman,” as stated by chance (1986: 23). also, it is mary’s knowledge of the geryne that stresses her authority as shown in her reply. by means of a rhetorical question and later a categorical statement (89–91), mary thus makes clear that this knowledge is not to be shared by mankind and that she will not fulfi ll the citizens’ curiosity as no answer to the mystery is provided: hwæt is þeos wundrung þe ge wafi að, /ond geomrende gehþum 9 for a recent assessment of the advent lyrics in a late-tenth century context, see mercedes salvador (2006: 169–211). 10 the edition and translation of the passages  om the advent lyrics is  om robert b. burlin (1968). 51 the signifi cance of mary’s role in the exeter book advent lyrics selim 16 (2009) mænað, / sunu solimæ somod his dohtor? (89–91) [“what is this spectacle that you wonder at / and lamenting moan with grief, / sons of salem and her daughters together?”]. by dismissing the people’s wundrung (“curiosity,” 89a), mary is clearly undermining the authority of the people of jerusalem and her superiority is thus highlighted. further in the poem, we fi nd another instance in which mary is signifi cantly elevated to a higher position above ordinary people. in line 96, the virgin refers to herself as dauides dyrre mægan (“david’s dear kinswoman”). this allusion to david’s stock acknowledges mary’s royal ascendancy  om jesse, king david’s father. this motif, which has traditionally been known as “jesse’s tree,” was o en employed to represent christ’s descent  om david and was usually portrayed as a tree stemming  om jesse, with his descendants representing the diff erent branches and ending either with jesus or the virgin and the holy child. in advent lyric 4, the allusion to mary’s royal background therefore contributes to characterize her as christ’s counterpart by stressing her superior condition. as mary responds to the inhabitants of jerusalem, the poem then centers on the notion of eve’s curse11 in a passage that evidently triggers the typological relationship between the virgin and eve: ac crist onwrah … þæt is euan scyld eal forpynded, wærgða aworpen, ond gewuldrad is se heanra had. (95–99a) [“but christ has revealed … that the guilt of eve is all absolved, the curse cast off , and glorifi ed is the lowlier sex.”] thus, mary is celebrated as a fi gure participating in the redemption episode as she is fi nally  eeing mankind  om the three curses set upon eve a er the fall: pain, sorrow and servitude. the emphasis here is on the redemption of eve’s sin and on the promises of eternal life for both men and women through the womanhood of mary. the poet is therefore stressing mary’s active involvement in salvation history, as she decisively participates in christ’s mission to redeem mankind. 11 this idea derives  om gen. 3:16: “to the woman he said, ‘i will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you will bring forth children; yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you’.” all citations  om the bible are  om new american standard bible. 1995. the lockman foundation. lahabra, california. 52 maría josé sánchez de nieva selim 16 (2009) the virgin’s characterization as a prominent fi gure in the advent sequence is also observed in the poet’s skillful handling of the liturgical source that served as the basis of lyric 4, the “o virgo virginum” antiphon, one of the “monastic o’s”: o virgo virginum, quomodo fi et istud? quia nec primam similem visa es nec habere sequentem? filiae jerusalem, quid me admiramini? divinum est mysterium hoc quod cernitis. [“o virgin of virgins, how shall this be? for never was there one like you, nor will there ever be. daughters of jerusalem, why do you look wondering at me? what you behold is a divine mystery.”]12 lyric 4 similarly opens with an allusion to mary by means of superlatives and basically follows the question-answer format of the antiphon. but the old english text goes a step further and describes her as fæmne freolicast ofer ealne foldan sceat (72), that is, “noblest woman over all the earth’s regions.” the powerful role of the virgin as consort queen of christ is thus emphasized. as observed in the antiphon, the reference is only to the daughters of jerusalem (fi liae jerusalem). by contrast, in the old english text, mary interestingly addresses both the sons of jerusalem and their daughters, sunu solimæ / somod his dohtor (91). by alluding to both men and women, the author is highlighting mary’s dominion over the whole of mankind, not just women as presented in the antiphon. also, towards the end of this lyric, the poet insists on this idea when the blessing is addressed to werum ond wifum (101a), that is, both men and women. in this light, mary’s participation in christ’s salvation task is again meaningfully stressed, as she is presented as the bond that connects god to all humankind. as the analysis of lyric 4 shows, the advent poet was concerned with characterizing mary as a fi gure of supreme power and authority. she is thus described as the legitimate queen consort of the king of heaven, a right deriving  om her own royal lineage, and as the lawful mother of the son god. her superior rank over men and women is also enhanced by the poet’s deliberate alterations of the original antiphonal source. the characterization provided by the advent poet therefore seems to be consonant with the actual requirements established for a contemporary 12 text and translation of the antiphons is  om robert b. burlin (1968). 53 the signifi cance of mary’s role in the exeter book advent lyrics selim 16 (2009) queen, as they put the emphasis on royal stock and legitimate authority. when æl hryth married edgar (c. 964–65), she theoretically fulfi lled all these requirements since she was the daughter of ealdorman ordgar of devon. also, it is generally assumed that she was of royal descent through her mother although the identity of the latter is unknown.13 her political connections were also important due to her fi rst marriage (c. 956), as she was the widow of ealdorman of east anglia æthelwold, and eldest son of æthelstan half-king. as regards the advent poet’s insistence on mary’s function as queen consort, playing an active role in salvation history alongside with christ, this recalls the reference to æl hryth’s cooperation with edgar as the offi cial patroness of nunneries in the preface to the regularis concordia:14 coniugique suae æl hrithae sanctimonialium mandras ut impauidi more custodies defenderet cautissime praecepit; ut uidelicet mas maribus, femina feminis, sine ullo suspicionis scrupulo subueniret. [“and he (edgar) saw to it wisely that his queen, ael hrith, should be the protectress and fearless guardian of the communities of nuns; so that he himself helping the men and his consort helping the women there should be no cause for any breath of scandal.”]15 in light of the diff erent features ascribed to the virgin mary in lyric 4, it is therefore not surprising, that the old english poet’s interest in highlighting her legitimacy as queen consort of christ appears to be in consonance with political and religious realities of the period. based on the traditional motif known as “the doubting of mary,” lyric 7 is structured as a dialogue between mary and joseph, in which the virgin, fi rst characterized in the role of joseph’s spouse, is questioned 13 for further information on æl hryth’s family ties, see oxford dictionary of national biography (s.v. æl hryth). 14 see catherine e. karkov (2004: 93). 15 text and translation  om symons (1953: 2). a similar reference to æl hryth’s collaboration with edgar in the supervising of convents is found in the so-called edgar’s establishment of the monasteries (whitelock et al. 1981: 150). 54 maría josé sánchez de nieva selim 16 (2009) about the legitimacy of her pregnancy.16 in this section of the advent sequence, the fi gure of mary seems to undergo a signifi cant evolution that is worth analyzing here. the lyric opens with a speech which clearly puts the emphasis on mary’s humanity: ic lungre eam / deope gedrefed, dome bereafod (167b–168a), “i am all at once deeply grieved, bere of reputation.” further in this part, the poet insists on mary’s deep sorrow: ic tearas sceal geotan geomormod (172–173), “i cannot keep  om weeping, saddened in spirit.” this fi rst passage therefore describes mary’s suff ering for the loss of her reputation in a way that clearly enhances her human dimension, setting her at the level of any other earthly woman. mary’s response, however, eventually initiates her transformation  om a mortal woman into “the temple of the lord”: nu ic his temple eam / gefremed butan facne (206b–207a), “now i am his temple, built without sin.” with this metaphor, the poet is thus adding prominence to mary, as she is here presented as a “founding mother” of the church: it is through her that christ is incarnated. a er having doubted mary’s honesty, joseph’s attitude similarly helps underline this transformation that takes place in mary. he then acknowledges mary’s impeccable reputation by alluding to her as fæmnan clæne, / womma lease (187b–188a), “a pure woman without stain.” finally, joseph refers to mary as dauides dohtor (191), “the daughter of david,” an expression that recalls the reference to mary’s royal ancestry found in lyric 4. the poet’s particular employment of the imagery alluding to mary similarly supports this gradual transformation. early in the poem she is described by joseph as fæmne geong (young girl or virgin, 175b) and mægð (virgin, maiden, 176a). as with lyric 4, the emphasis is fi rst placed on mary’s humble acceptance of the gi of god and on her virginal condition. however, as lyric 7 develops, the fi gure of the virgin is transformed when she explains the mystery (ryhtgeryno, 196a) of her virginal impregnation to joseph, as the archangel gabriel revealed to her that she had been chosen to be the mother of the “power of life” (lifes þrym, 204b), the “bright son” (beorhtne sunu, 205a), and the “child great of god” (bearn eacen godes, 205b). thus, it is in mary’s second speech that the poet fully acknowledges 16 here burlin follows the speech division suggested by cosij n (1898: 109–10). thus, mary’s fi rst speech runs  om l. 164 to l. 174a, followed by joseph’s speech  om l. 174b to l. 195a, and mary’s fi nal speech  om l. 195a to the end. 55 the signifi cance of mary’s role in the exeter book advent lyrics selim 16 (2009) her new status as christ’s mother, developing the temple analogy that was introduced by joseph. as explained by burlin, by placing the emphasis on the virgin as “the earthly vessel chosen to accomplish his [god’s] incarnation” (1968: 124), mary’s body, as she herself declares, becomes the metaphorical sanctuary where christ rests: nu ic his temple eam / gefremed butan facne (206b–207a). it is her maternal role that provides her with authority as she is the “temple” that will lodge the heavenly king on earth. by revealing the mystery of her impregnation and the divine origin of her son to joseph, the role of the virgin is therefore clearly stressed, as the lyric centers on her as the chief character and concludes with her own declaration that she is the legitimate mother of the meotodes sunu (210a). unlike the preceding poem, lyric 7 is not based on either the “greater o’s” or the “monastic o’s” (campbell 1959: 6–9). nonetheless, as suggested by burlin, the liturgical conventions are present particularly in the way the fi gure of the virgin undergoes a transformation  om “the grieving and bewildered wife into the radiant and illumined mother of god” (1968: 120). since this lyric off ers no liturgical parallel, it might be inferred that it is a further example of the idiosyncratic character of the advent sequence, in which the poet could have decided to present the motif of the doubting of mary in the form of a dramatic dialogue, highlighting thus the originality of the poet’s refl ection on the mystery of advent. in a contextualized reading, lyric 7 is also particularly insightful. the continuous emphasis made by the poet on the legitimacy of mary as joseph’s wife and mother of christ fi nds an echo in contemporary politics. the new minster refoundation charter (966), for example, reveals a notable concern with the legitimate status of both æl hryth and her son edmund who signed as witnesses. in the charter the queen is interestingly styled as legitima prefati regis coniuncx (“the legitimate wife of the aforementioned king” [edgar]) and edmund appears as clito legitimus prefati regis fi lius (“the legitimate son of the aforementioned king”).17 edmund’s signature appears before that of his older half-brother edward, who is designated by contrast as eodem rege clito procreatus (“son 17 as rumble (2003: 93, fn. 130) points out, “this may have been her [æl hryth’s] fi rst subscription as queen… if so, it could have been seen as an opportunity to make her status clear to the whole court.” 56 maría josé sánchez de nieva selim 16 (2009) begotten by the same king”) [rumble 2003: 93]. as pointed out by yorke, there is also a visual indication of the diff erent status of both the queen and edmund, whose corresponding crosses in their signatures are adorned with gold leaf, whereas a simple black cross represents edward’s subscription. as she observes, “the implication seems to be that æl hryth and her son edmund were ‘legitimate’ in a way that edward and his mother were not, probably on the grounds that æl hryth had been a consecrated queen when she conceived and gave birth to her son, but æthelfæd had not” (2008: 148). under this light, lyric 7 with its blatant acknowledgement of mary’s legitimacy a er her reputation has been at stake might have had interesting resonances for a contemporary readership. lyric 9 is the rhetorical result of what was anticipated in the pieces that have already been discussed. mary is thus directly presented as the mother of christ and as the queen and lawful bride of þæs selestan swegles bryttan (281) [“the most noble prince of the sky”]. as mary’s condition as illegitimate mother has been categorically dismissed in lyric 7,  om the beginning of lyric 9 the virgin is overtly portrayed as christ’s rightful counterpart in the kingdom of heaven. the lyric then introduces her as seo clæneste cwen ofer eorþan (276) [“throughout the world the purest queen”], which off ers the readers a powerful portrayal of the mother of god as an authoritative queen. lyric 9 is therefore a celebration of mary’s acknowledged status as queen of heaven. later on, the motif of mary’s pure impregnation and eternal virginity is further developed in the poem. her chastity is thus the object of the poet’s admiration as it was mary herself who off ered her pure maternal body to god. it is then in this context that the poet introduces a series of images, all of them deriving  om the traditional porta coeli motif, to refer to mary’s virginity. thus, she is metaphorically compared to ðas gyldnan gatu, “the golden gates” (318), æþelic ingong, “the noble gate” (308), and gebunden deoran since duru ormæte, “the huge door bound with precious treasure” (308b–309a). by means of these images, mary’s body is depicted as a bright and dignifi ed entrance through which only god can pass, since he is the only one who can unlock it.18 also importantly, these passages 18 the poet is alluding to the old testament vision of ezekiel describing the excellences of the temple which has been traditionally interpreted “as a prophecy referring to mary and the virgin birth…” for this, see jackson j. campbell (1959: 28). 57 the signifi cance of mary’s role in the exeter book advent lyrics selim 16 (2009) describe valuable impressive doors in such a way as to enhance the virgin’s noble ascendancy in the same way it was done in lyric 7. finally, mary is said to be þæt wealldor, “the wall-door,” (328a), which interestingly echoes the opening lines of lyric 1 in which christ was alluded to as se weallstan (2a), the cornerstone of the church.19 by using wealldor, the poet is thus consciously leveling mary’s status to that of christ, who is said to be se cræftga (12a)—the builder—who will reconstruct the church. in sum, the various images employed to depict the fi gure of the virgin queen provide cohesion to the entire poem and can be interpreted as a clear example of the old english poet’s intention to underline mary’s predominant character in salvation history (chance 1986: 28). thus, the anglo-saxon poet elevates the fi gure of mary to a higher position that is only reserved to christ. interestingly, in lyric 9, the old english poet chooses to depart  om the antiphonal source once more. as pointed out by campbell, the scribe’s decision to diverge  om the latin source, the monastic antiphon “o mundi domina,” is so clear that “we can only believe that the poet used the antiphon for little more than an opportunity to write another poem on the virgin” (1959: 27). mary is then presented not only as mundi domina, but as queen (hlæfdige, 284), as she is alluded to as the celestial empress of the three worlds: heaven, earth and hell (284–86).20 in this sense, the reference to the virgin as hlæfdige in this lyric might have been particularly meaningful in a contemporary context, since, as staff ord explains, this term was commonly used to refer to queen æl hryth a er her anointing in 973.21 the poem’s depiction of mary as queen of heaven in all her splendor and the emphasis on her queenship is further developed in this lyric: 19 for a thorough study of this image in the reform context, see robert deshman (1986: 261–82, especially at pp. 262–72; 1995: 19–23). for the signifi cance of the cornerstone image in the advent lyrics, see salvador (2006: 174–81). 20 also importantly, as stated by clayton (1990: 199), “mary’s title as domina of heaven, earth and hell is a transference of christ’s designation as lord of all three regions.” 21 æl hryth regularly subscribed charters either as regina or seo hlæfdige. for this see pauline staff ord (1990: 62–63). also, for seo hlæfdige being employed as æl hryth’s title in anglo-saxon charters, see staff ord (1990: 75, fn. 44). 58 maría josé sánchez de nieva selim 16 (2009) nan swylc ne cwom ænig oþer ofer ealle men, bryd beaga hroden, þe þa beorhtan lac to heofonhame hlutre mode siþþan sende. (290b–94a) [“none like you has come, none other  om among all mankind therea er, no bride with rings adorned, who has sent to the heavenly home with clear spirit such a bright gi .”] as pointed out by deshman (1995: 136), the description off ered in this passage suggests the coronation of the virgin. indeed, in this passage mary is described as a virginal bride, whose authoritative image is further enhanced as her behavior resembles that of a “heroic-minded warrior” in her courageous and fi rm determination (þisthycgende, 288b) to serve god, as observed by chance (1986: 26). but the characterization of mary as a fi gure of power is also supported by the choice of terms employed by the poet to describe her. thus, mary is styled as bryd beaga hroden (292a), that is, “bride with rings adorned.” this image could certainly accord with the description of an earthly queen. interestingly, in a rubric preceding the queen’s ordo (version b) in the sherborne pontifi cal (fol. 74), there are some directions for the consecration ceremony of a queen which are worth considering here: the king’s consecration ends. the queen’s consecration follows. to do her honour, she is anointed on the crown of her head by the bishop with the oil of sacred unction. . . . we further decree that she be adorned with a ring for the integrity of the faith, and a crown for the glory of eternity. these lines allude to the consecration of a nameless queen although, as pointed out by nelson (1986: 372), this queen could be no other but æl hryth, who was anointed together with her husband edgar in the same ceremony in 973. the crown and ring mentioned in this passage equate those bestowed earlier on the king, thus visually contributing to endow the queen with the symbols of regal authority.22 22 however, as pointed out by nelson (1986: 372), this queen must have been æl hryth, who was consecrated together with her husband edgar in the same ceremony in 973. 59 the signifi cance of mary’s role in the exeter book advent lyrics selim 16 (2009) a further text that seems to be in line with the characterization of the virgin mary in the advent lyrics as an earthly queen, wearing the jewels appropriate to her status, may be found in byrhtferth of ramsey’s vita sancti oswaldi, a text containing a description of the double coronation of edgar and æl hryth: regina uero cum abbatibus et abbatissis conuiuium habuit. que uestita carbasea ueste erat, splendide circumamicta, uarietate lapillorum et margaritarum suff ulta, elatius precellens ceteris matronis. [“the queen, together with the abbots and abbesses, had a separate feast. being dressed in linen garments and robed splendidly, adorned with a variety of precious stones and pearls, she lo ily surpassed the other ladies present.”]23 this passage provides an interesting insight into the description of a latetenth century queen. the reference to æl hryth’s being accompanied by abbots and abbesses is probably meant to highlight her role as patroness of the reform. as pointed out by hollis (1992: 208–09), “the queen, cast as a kind of paramount abbess, was endowed with a role parallel to the quasisacerdotal position that the king had been accorded  om the outset.” as with the preceding text and advent lyric 9, in this passage the reference to the queen bearing jewels is again indicative of her authority and regal status. as the analysis of lyrics 4, 7 and 9 has showed, the advent poet was clearly interested in endowing mary with an outstanding role as queen consort of christ and as his chief collaborator in salvation history. the poet’s employment of marian imagery and epithets such as dauides dyrre mægan, hlæfdige and bryd beaga hroden to describe mary as christ’s equal in the mystery of advent seems to support this idea. furthermore, paleographical evidence may help corroborate this assumption. in its current state in the manuscript, end-punctuation, capitalization and spacing seem to have been used by the exeter scribe to mark four sections in the advent sequence. as seen on fol. 9r of the manuscript,24 at the close of lyric 3 a double end-punctuation mark (:–) occurs. besides, a blank space has been le by the scribe to mark the end of lyric 3. 23 edition and translation by lapidge (2008: 58–59). 24 for this discussion see the exeter dvd, ed. muir (2006); raw (1991: 233). 60 maría josé sánchez de nieva selim 16 (2009) furthermore, a large capital e (in eala), which is slightly adorned, opens lyric 4. the a of eala is also capitalized but looks signifi cantly smaller than the preceding e. the scribe marked three further sections for lyrics 7, 9 and 11 by using a similar system of capitalization, spacing and endpunctuation. in the case of lyrics 7 and 9, the two poems are preceded by a single end-punctuation mark (). as regards lyric 9, on fol. 11v there is no blank space separating this poem  om the preceding lyric and the two capitalized letters (e and a  om eala) are smaller than the ones found in the other lyrics. but the other three sections of the advent sequence are consistently marked by large capitals and blank space.25 in the light of this discussion, the use of end-punctuation, capitalization, and spacing seems to point to the scribe’s attempt to defi ne four sections in the advent sequence, three of which precisely start at lyrics 4, 7, 9—the marian lyrics that have just been discussed—and one more marking the beginning of lyric 11, which deals with the trinity. this section layout suggests the scribe’s intent to grant the marian lyrics of the advent sequence special visual emphasis (clayton 1990: 182). this paper has analyzed lyrics 4, 7 and 9 of the exeter book advent sequence with the objective to off er evidence of the old english poet’s interest in presenting mary as a fi gure of outstanding importance. the use of various images and metaphors to depict the virgin, together with the deliberate departure  om the antiphonal sources and the evidence provided by the study of manuscript sections support my assumption that the scribe’s intention was to direct the reader’s attention to mary. this character is thus described as legitimate mother of christ, queen of heaven, and christ’s rightful counterpart. the signifi cance of the marian topic in the advent lyrics is therefore highlighted and may be linked, as noted earlier, with the great prominence granted to the virgin in the benedictine reform of the second half of the tenth century. in this light, the emphasis placed on the fi gure of mary in her role as queen of heaven and consort of christ reveals an interesting insight into contemporary queenship with a heightened focus on æl hryth as king edgar’s legitimate queen. also importantly, the stress on mary’s lawful 25 only lyric 9 on fol. 11v lacks the typical blank space serving as border-marker. conversely, capitalization and punctuation are present in this section. for the beginning of lyrics 4, 7 and 9, see fols. 9r, 10r and 11v in the exeter dvd, ed. muir (2006). 61 the signifi cance of mary’s role in the exeter book advent lyrics selim 16 (2009) condition as the mother of christ similarly fi nds echo in the political and religious context of the period. it is precisely her position as queen mother that made æl hryth a key fi gure during the reign of her son æthelred ii.26 as noted by staff ord (1990: 71), the second-half of the tenth century was a period in which succession struggles were intensifi ed and monarchs sought the help of their queen-consorts and queen-mothers to secure the throne and retain power. in sum, this set of poems celebrating christ’s advent, based on latin antiphons and included at the beginning of the exeter book, is probably the work of a dexterous monk  om one of the reformed monasteries with a strong marian devotion. this idea either prompts a possible contemporary dating of the sequence or at best a probable benedictine coloring carried out parallel to the manuscript compilation, when the prominence of the virgin mary reached the utmost peak of the anglosaxon period. maría josé sánchez de nieva university of seville references burgert, edward 1921: the dependence of part i of cynewulf ’s christ upon the antiphonary. washington d.c., catholic university. burlin, robert b. 1968: the old english advent: a typological commentary. new haven, yale university press. campbell, jackson j. 1959: the advent lyrics of the exeter book. new jersey, princeton university press. chance, jane 1986: woman as hero in oe literature: the virgin mary of christ i as secular and ecclesiastical feminine ideal. syracuse, syracuse university press. chambers, r. w. ed. 1933: the exeter book of old english poetry, with introductory chapters by max förster and robin flower. london, lund & humphries. 26 see yorke (1988: 82–83). 62 maría josé sánchez de nieva selim 16 (2009) clayton, mary 1990: the cult of the virgin mary. cambridge, cambridge university press. clayton, mary 1994: centralism and uniformity versus localism and diversity: the virgin and native saints in the monastic reform. peritia 8: 95–106. conner, patrick w. 1993: anglo-saxon exeter: a tenth-century cultural history. woodbridge, boydell. cook, albert s. ed. 1900: the christ of cynewulf. boston, ginn & co. cook, albert s. ed. 1964: the christ of cynewulf. hamden (ct), the shoestring press. cosij n, p. j. 1898: anglosaxonica iv. beiträge zur geschichte der deutschen sprache und literatur 23: 109–30. deshman, robert 1986: the image of the living ecclesia and the english monastic reform. in paul szarmach ed. sources of anglo-saxon culture. kalamazoo, medieval institute publications: 261–82. deshman, robert 1995: the benedictional of æthelwold. new jersey, princeton university press. dockray-miller, mary, 1965: the maternal performance of the virgin mary in the old english advent. nwsa journal 14.2: 38–55. hollis, stephanie 1992: anglo-saxon women and the church: sharing a common fate. woodbridge, boydell. karkov, catherine e. 2004: the ruler portraits of anglo-saxon england: edgar and the royal women of the monastic reform. woodbridge, boydell. krapp, george philip and elliott van kirk dobbie eds. 1936: the anglo-saxon poetic records, vol. 3. new york, columbia university press. lapidge, michael ed. and trans. 2008: byrhtferth of ramsey: the lives of st oswald and st ecgwine. oxford, clarendon. meyer, m.a. 1977: women and the tenth century english monastic reform. revue bénédictine 87: 34–61. muir, bernard j. 1994: the exeter anthology of old english poetry: an edition of exeter dean and chapter ms 3501. exeter, exeter university press, vol. 1: 1. 63 the signifi cance of mary’s role in the exeter book advent lyrics selim 16 (2009) nelson, j. 1986: the second english ordo. politics and ritual in early medieval europe, london, hambledon. new american standard bible 1995. lahabra (ca), the lockman foundation. pigg, daniel f. 1999: representing the gendered discourse of power: the virgin mary in christ i. in parentheses: papers in medieval studies: 104–126 raw, barbara c. 1991: biblical literature: the new testament. in malcolm godden & michael lapidge eds. the cambridge companion to old english literature. cambridge, cambridge university press: 227–242. rumble, alexander r. 2003: property and piety in early medieval winchester: documents relating to the topography of the anglo-saxon and norman city and its minster. oxford, oxford university press. salvador, mercedes 2006: architectural metaphors and christological imagery in the advent lyrics: benedictine propaganda in the exeter book? in catherine e. karkov and nicholas howe eds. conversion and colonization in anglo-saxon england. centre for medieval and renaissance studies, arizona: 169–211. staff ord, pauline 1990: the king’s wife in wessex, 800–1066. in helen damico and alexandra olsen eds. new readings on women in old english literature. bloomington, indiana university press. symons, thomas 1953: regularis concordia anglicae nationis monachorum sanctimonialiumque: the monastic agreement of the monks and nuns of the english nation. london, nelson. whitelock, dorothy et al. eds. 1981: councils and synods with other documents relating to the english church i: a.d. 871–1204. oxford, oxford university press: 142–54. yorke, barbara ed. 1988: æthelwold and the politics of the tenth century. bishop æthelwold: his career and infl uence. woodbridge, boydell: 65–88. yorke, barbara 2008: the women in edgar’s life. in donald scragg ed. king edgar 957–975: new interpretations. woodbridge, boydell: 143–157. • received 25 jan 2010; revision received 26 feb 2010; accepted 28 jul 2010 selim04.pdf louis j. rodrigues, selim 4 (1994): 124-132 further observations concerning the translation of anglo-saxon verse in an earlier article 1 i had outlined some of the problems facing modern english verse translators of the ruin. in this one i extend the discussion to include prose, selecting for my purpose the dream of the rood (lines 28-56). two examples of each type of translation, from out of the vast number available for examination, should suffice. long ago was it — i still remember it — that i was cut down at the edge of the forest, moved from my trunk. strong foes took me there, fashioned me to be a spectacle for them, bade me raise up their felons. men bore me on their shoulders there, till they set me on a hill; many foes made me fast there. i saw then the lord of mankind haste with great zeal that he might be raised upon me. then i durst not there bow or break against the lord’s behest, when i saw the surface of the earth shake; i could have felled all the foes, yet i stood firm. then the young hero — he was god almighty — firm and unflinching, stripped himself; he mounted on the high cross, brave in the sight of many, when he was minded to redeem mankind. then i trembled when the hero clasped me; yet i durst not bow to the earth, fall to the level of the ground, but i must needs stand firm. ‘as a rood was i raised up; i bore aloft the mighty king, the lord of heaven; i durst not stoop. they pierced me with dark nails; the wounds are still plain to view in me, gaping gashes of malice; i durst not do hurt to 1 ‘some modern english verse renderings of the ruin’, paper read at the sixth selim congress valladolid (1993), published as an appendix to anglo-saxon elegiac verse, llanerch, 1994. ____________________________________________________________________ 125 any of them. they bemocked us both together. i was all bedewed with blood, shed from the man’s side, after he had sent forth his spirit. i have endured many stern trials on the hill; i saw the god of hosts violently stretched out; darkness with its clouds had covered the lord’s corpse, the fair radiance; a shadow went forth, dark beneath the clouds. all creation wept, lamented the king’s death; christ was on the cross. (r. k. gordon, anglo-saxon poetry, pp. 235-6). ‘years ago it was — i still recall it — that i was cut down at the forest edge, removed from my root. strong enemies seized me there, fashioned me as a spectacle for themselves and required me to hoist up their felons. there men carried me upon their shoulders until they set me up on a hill. abundant enemies secured me there. ‘then i saw the lord of mankind hasten with much fortitude, for he meant to climb upon me. i did not dare then, against the word of the lord, to give way there or break when i saw the earth’s surfaces quake. all the enemies i could have felled; nonetheless i stood firm. the young man, who was almighty god, stripped himself, strong and unflinching. he climbed upon the despised gallows, courageous under the scrutiny of many, since he willed to redeem mankind. i quaked then, when the man embraced me; nonetheless i did not dare to collapse to the ground and fall to the surfaces of the earth, but i had to stand fast. i was reared up as a cross; i raised up the powerful king, lord of the heavens. i did not dare to topple over. they pierced me with dark nails: the wounds are visible upon me, gaping malicious gashes. i did not dare to harm any of them. they humiliated us both together. i was all soaked with blood issuing from the man’s side after he had sent forth his spirit. many cruel happenings i have experienced on that hill. i saw the god of hosts violently racked. darkness with its clouds had covered the corpse of the ruler; a gloom, murky beneath the clouds, overwhelmed its pure louis j. rodrigues ____________________________________________________________________ 126 splendour. all creation wept; they lamented the king’s death: christ was on the cross. (s. a. j. bradley, anglo-saxon poetry, p. 161). «long years ago (well yet i remember) they hewed me down on the edge of the holt, severed my trunk; strong foemen took me, for a spectacle wrought me, a gallows for rogues. high on their shoulders they bore me to hilltop, fastened me firmly, an army of foes! «then i saw the king of all mankind in brave mood hasting to mount upon me. refuse i dare not, nor bow nor break, though i felt earth’s confines shudder in fear; all foes i might fell, yet still i stood fast. «then the young warrior, god, the all-wielder, put off his raiment, steadfast and strong; with lordly mood in the sight of many he mounted the cross to redeem mankind. when the hero clasped me i trembled in terror, but i dared not bow! with black nails driven those sinners pierced me; the prints are clear, the open wounds. i dared injure none. they mocked us both. i was wet with blood from the hero’s side when he sent forth his spirit. «many a bale i bore on that hill-side seeing the lord in agony outstretched. black darkness covered with clouds god’s body, that radiant splendour. shadow went forth wan under heaven; all creation wept bewailing the king’s death. christ was on the cross.» (c. w. kennedy, early english christian poetry, pp. 93-4) ____________________________________________________________________ 127 ‘it was long past — i still remember it — that i was cut down at the copse’s end, moved from my roots. strong enemies there took me, told me to hold aloft their criminals, made me a spectacle. men carried me upon their shoulders, set me on a hill, a host of enemies there fastened me. and then i saw the lord of all mankind hasten with eager zeal that he might mount upon me. i durst not against god’s word bend down or break, when i saw tremble all the surface of the earth. although i might have struck down all the foes, yet i stood fast. then the young hero (who was god almighty) got ready, resolute and strong in heart. he climbed onto the lofty ga llows-tree, bold in the sight of many watching men, when he intended to redeem mankind. i trembled as the warrior embraced me. but still i dared not bend down to the earth, fall to the ground. upright i had to stand. a rood i was raised up; and i held high the noble king, the lord of heaven above. i dared not stoop. they pierced me with dark nails; the scars can still be clearly seen on me, the open wounds of malice. yet might i not harm them. they reviled us both together. i was made wet all over with the blood which poured out from his side, after he had sent forth his spirit. and i underwent louis j. rodrigues ____________________________________________________________________ 128 full many a dire experience on that hill. i saw the god of hosts stretched grimly out. darkness covered the ruler’s corpse with clouds, his shining beauty; shadows passed across, black in the darkness. all creation wept, bewailed the king’s death; christ was on the cross. (r. f. hamer, a choice of anglo-saxon verse, pp. 163-5) this short passage marks the first part of the tree’s account to the poet in his dream of how it had been selected from among others of its companions in the forest to be the means of christ’s death; and it describes, in highly emotive language, its unwilling involvement in that event and the universal lamentation of all created things for the fall of their king. there is an unusually high proportion of hypermetric lines here; and, here, too, occur some of those lines that the carver of the runes on the ruthwell cross had considered appropriate to his decorative, iconographic and in structive purposes. it is of considerable importance, then, that any rendering of this passage must not only endeavour to convey the fervour with which the poet composed these lines but also reflect its imagery and its style. the four translations selected are ‘academic’ in that they are directed at an audience familiar with the original anglo -saxon text, although none of them have been published by presses solely dedicated to the distribution of academic literature.1 a greater likelihood of faithfulness to the text is therefore inevitable as is a corresponding proneness to the commission of just such mistakes for which this type of transla tion is criticized as being 1 r. k. gordon, anglo-saxon poetry (everyman), london, 1962; s. a. j. bradley, anglo-saxon poetry (everyman), london, 1982; c. w. kennedy, early english christian poetry (oxford university press), new york, 1963; r. hamer, a choice of anglo-saxon verse (faber and faber), 1970. ____________________________________________________________________ 129 either unnatural or dull.1 their evaluation that follows is intended to be objective. gordon’s prose translation, from his deliberate use of archaic lexis and unusual syntactical patterns, signals his intention of keeping as close as possible to his original. this is by no means reprehensible as long as it is consis tent. unfortunately, this is not always the case. thus, for instance, he has an inversion where the text does not: line 28 ‘long ago was it’ (íæt was geara iu: it was years / long ago); but no inversion where it has: line 42 ‘then i durst not’ (ne dorste ic hwæíre: nor durst i then), line 47 ‘i durst not do hurt to any of them’ (ne dorste ic hie nænigum sceíían: nor durst i injure any of them); although, he keeps the inversion where he considers it atmospherically effective: line 44 ‘as a rood was i raised up’ (rod wæs ic aræred: as a rood was i raised / erected). there is inconsistency too in his use of lexis — a mixture of archaisms and modernisms instead of a preference for either the one or the other. more over, where genuinely effective anglo -saxon words have survived into the modern period, there seems to be no reason why they have been avoided. archaic is his use of ‘bade’ (= commanded), ‘durst’ (= dared), ‘behest’ (= word), ‘minded’ (= determined), ‘must needs’ (= had to), ‘do hurt’ (= injure), ‘bemocked’ (= reviled), ‘bedewed’ (= drenched), and ‘sent forth’ (= given up); and inexplicable, if he wanted to maintain the flavour of the past, his preference for ‘cut down’ (= hewn), ‘forest’ (= holt), ‘fashioned’ (= wrought), ‘cross’ (= gallows), ‘shed’ (= begotten), ‘dark’ (= wan), and ‘clouds’ (= welkin). this vacillation is disturbing since it detracts from the aesthetic pleasure to be derived from a text that is stylistically pure. and, some of his constructions are questionable: line 31 ‘fashioned me to be a spectacle to them’ (geworhton him íær to wæfersyne: made of me a 1 t. a. shippey, old english verse (hutchinson university library), 1972, chapter 3: ‘language and style’, for a fuller discussion. louis j. rodrigues ____________________________________________________________________ 130 spectacle unto themselves), line 34 ‘that he might be raised upon me’ (íæt he me wolde on gestigan: when he wished to mount me). inevitably, his transla tion of ‘gallows’ (line 4) as ‘cross’, has led to his use of ‘raise’ here instead of ‘mount’ which collocates more naturally with ‘cross’ at both lines 34 and 40. with the additional mistake of rendering the original in the passive instead of the active voice he succeeds in destroying an otherwise compelling image of a hero willingly going to meet his fate. almost banal is that of line 43 ‘fall to the level of the ground’ (feallan to foldan sceatum: fall to earth’s surface). both banal and ambiguous is that of line 44 ‘as a rood was i raised up’ in its use of a verb with a range of connotations that includes ‘brought up/reared’ as well as ‘erected’. gordon’s translation, more or less a pioneer in its field, continues to re main popular because it attempts to re -create the past; and, for that very reason, its minor inaccuracies may be readily forgiven. bradley’s translation, by comparison with gordon’s, is consistent in its choice of lexis, its faithful rendering of the original, and its uncomplicated syntax. he seems not to have erred seriously in his imitation of the poem’s style and manages to retain much of its dignity of tone. insofar as he prefers to write in perfectly natural modern english without the unwholesome intrusion of archaisms, there is no reason for complaint. it is the extent to which he is pre pared to go, in order to achieve his objective, that is reprehensible. so, ‘hoist up’ (= raise), ‘abundant’ (= many) in its collo cation with ‘enemies’, ‘collapse’ (= fall), and ‘topple over’ (= bend) are unfortunate. on the other hand, ‘felons’, ‘fortitude’, ‘unflinching’, ‘despised’, and ‘malicious’ are all suited to the contexts in which they occur; though, not quite so, at line 41, is his ‘under the scrutiny of many’ (on manigra gesyhíe : in the sight of many). kennedy’s verse translations continue to remain popular today, despite the fact that a number of them are dated. the reason is not far to seek: in its ____________________________________________________________________ 131 close, or reasonably close, approximation to the alliterative patterns, rhythms, diction, and curtness of style of anglo -saxon verse, he succeeds in re creating the atmosphere of the original. but, it also takes a poet’s imagination to make a modern english poem out of an anglo-saxon one; and, it is because he possesses this perceptive faculty, that the poetic licence he some times allows himself with his original is pardonable. by opting, however, to produce a rendering within these strict limitations, he most naturally succumbs to the temptation to use words he might otherwise have consid ered inappropriate, such as ‘rogues’ — the result of the exi gencies of alliteration. this is an isolated instance, since his lexis is otherwise exactly what is required and often quite original. he seems unafraid to create new words out of old ones and his capacity for devising ‘word -compounds’ to suit his needs matches that of any anglo -saxon scop. so, we have ‘foemen’ (= foes), ‘hasting’ (= hastening), and the not unusual compound ‘all-wielder’ (= god, exactly translating the anglo -saxon alwealda). in his use of original anglo -saxon words that have come down into modern en glish with no substantial change in meaning, such as ‘hewed’, ‘holt’, ‘wrought’, ‘fell’ (= slay), ‘bale’, and ‘wan’, he was undoubtedly aided by both the original text as well as a need to adhere to an alliterative pattern. there is a sense of drama conveyed in his ‘severed my trunk’, ‘high on their shoulders’, ‘army of foes’, ‘shudder in fear’, ‘trembled in terror’, and ‘in agony outstretched’; and his avoidance of the article in ‘shadow went forth’. the unexpected inversion of ‘refuse i dared not’ has no merit whatever, coming where it does amid a series of clauses/sentences with the normal word order; neither would it have disturbed the rhythm, had it remained unchanged. ‘all foes i might fell’ is another weak construction. apart from these minor flaws, there is no serious crit icism, however, that can be levelled against it. hamer’s translation, by comparison with kennedy’s, suffers from the most serious defect of all — dullness. instead of the rapidity of movement of louis j. rodrigues ____________________________________________________________________ 132 kennedy’s transla tion, its innate rhythms, its diction and curtness of style, we have here the heavy plodding of the iambic pentameters of blank verse. the decision to render the poem in an anachronistic form, unadorned by the other graces of imagery and diction (alt hough there is a faint effort made at alliteration) was an unwise one. blank verse can be effective in the hands of a marlowe, or a shakespeare, who instinctively senses the varying rhythms of such a measure and who would not, therefore, deliberately destroy its beauty by chopping up a series of lines almost in quick succession, as happens here. thus, within the space of twenty-eight lines, he begins a new sentence in the middle of ten of them: his lines 3, 5, 10, 12, 21, 24, 26, 27, 30 and 35. had he, o n the other hand, either rendered this passage in a loosely alliterative form such as that of langland’s piers plowman or, for that matter, in free verse, as in whitman’s leaves of grass, it might have allowed him more scope and greater freedom. his undistinguished choice of lexis and style of expression is more than likely due to the nature of his verse form, and it is not surprising to encounter the occasional solecism. examples of these are the following: his lines 1 ‘it was long past’; 2 ‘cut down at the copse’s end’; 3 ‘enemies there took me’; 4 ‘told me to hold aloft’; 5 ‘made me a spectacle’; 9 ‘hasten with eager zeal’; 15 ‘the young hero ® got ready’; 21 ‘upright i had to stand’; and, 30 ‘i underwent / fu ll many a dire experience’. much of the dignity of this passage is consequently lost; and, except for the inversions that suggest its poetic origin, the rhythms are those of prose, and not rhetorical prose either. despite these serious flaws, however, he has not failed to put across the tree’s message, prosaic though the translation might sound. louis j. rodrigues cambridge * † * selim02.pdf 48 the use of monsters and the middle ages the hesiodic theogony describes how the violent emasculation of uranus by his son paradoxically engendered numerous offspring; among these were the giants, who in later classical mythology attempted to overthrow the gods by scaling olympus. the giant’s violent and persistent presence in western culture begins with this notion of the gigantomachia and continues today, even while the modern phrase “gentle giant” obscures his transgressive birth and suggests new encrustations of meaning. ovid placed the gigantomachia in the iron age, the contemporary epoch, and rendered it a fable of political anarchy; augustine worried about the souls of these giants and of the other monstrous races, concluding that they might be saved at the final judgement. david’s encounter with goliath established a narrative pattern of polarized virtue and validation endlessly repeated in the medieval romances, so that giants became the embodiment of all that was antagonistic to the chivalric ethos; guillaume d’orange adopted the saracen giant rainoart, whom dante later placed among the christian heroes in the fifth circle of heaven. depictions of the menacing aboriginal giants of england stood enchained in london’s guildhall until destroyed in the great fire, were rebuilt in 1708, and were destroyed again during the bombing in world war ii, potent symbols of aristocratic supremacy; mikhail bakhtin created a rather fanciful anthropology of what he called “folkloric giants” , friendly figures of popular culture who function more as a modern wish-fulfillment fantasy of escape from the oppressive regime of stalin’s russia 49 (bakhtain’s true “medieval, official culture”) than as a real component of french history.1 the 1950s science fiction thriller attack of the fifty foot woman originally encoded a societal anxiety about the women’s movement with its depiction of a huge housewife run amuck, but today that same housewife has become more campy feminist hero than crazed and fearful horror. fear and envy, attraction and repulsion, prohibition and liberation, “other” and “us” -these contradictions characterize the reception not only of the monster called the giant, but of nearly all monstrous figures. an examination of the category monster and its genesis, then, can provide useful tools for approaching a new understanding of the middle ages, revealing the way in which the monstrous was used then and the ends to which its study can be adapted now. the english noun “monster” derives from latin monstrum, a divine portent, usually of misfortune. augustine, following cicero (de divinatione i.xlii.93), thought the latin noun to stem from mostrare, “to show” (de civitate dei, xxi.8); isidore of seville, following varro (de lingua latina), glossed monstrum as contra naturam and connected it to monere, “to warn”.2 the connotation of the word has always been negative and remains so today, even if modern monsters are as likely to be misunderstood innocents as violent ravagers. generally speaking, medieval monsters are characterized by abnormality, dangerousness, and exaggeration; the logical questions which follow from these traits are: “what is the standard of normality, and by whom is it being promulgated?” “to whom or what is the monster understood as threatening?” and “which qualities have become exag1.see, for example, richard m. berrong, rabelais and bakhtin: popular culture in gargantua and pantagruel. (linciln, ne: 1986). 2.see norman smith, loathly births of nature: a study of the lore of the portentous monster in the sixteenth century (dissertation, university of illinois at urbanachampaign, 1978), p. 3. 50 gerated attributes, and why?” this may all at first seem a mere exercise in description, but once we move toward answering such questions, the anthropological value of monsters as social phenomena becomes more clear. in addition to these three pervasive characteristics, monsters are usually associated with marginality (they dwell in a distant place with symbolic charge, on civilization’s periphery), anteriority (the monster originates in some invented or re-invented history, rather than in the narrative present), excessive appetite, anarchic violence, and perverse or misdirected sexuality. “marginality” and “anteriority” are traits resulting from the banishing of the monster from the oikumene, the fic tion-producing center; the triple linking of violence and appetite with the destructive expression of libido suggests why this removal is necessary. the monstrous is thus intricately tied to that ambitious category in modern critical praxis, the other; monsters may, in fact, be described as the primary vehicle for the representation of otherness in the middle ages. every reuse of a monster is a reinvention. the grendel of beowulf exists in order to be unproblematically destroyed by the hero; the grendel of john gardner’s work isn’t sure why he exists, but the fact that the reader is privy to his existential musings makes him a character of sympathy rather than one of simple repulsion. geoffrey of monmouth’s giant of mount st. michael was invented primarily to enlarge the impression of arthur’s martial prowess in the historia regum britanniae; the same giant in the alliterative morte arthure is quietly conflated with the now overly bellicose british king, replacing textual celebration with subtle re-evaluation. monsters, then, are not to be thought of as having an existence outside of their social and literary contexts. thus we can speak of the vampire of bram stoker’s dracula , where the monster’s transgressive sexuality is as subtly alluring to jonathan harker as henry irving, stoker’s mentor, seems to 51 have been to the author, or of marnau’s homophobic reinvention of the same vampire in nosferatu , where the undercurrent of desire is replaced with waves of disgust; or even anne rice’s modern rewriting of the myth, in which homosexuality and vampirism are conjoined and apotheosized; the historical influence of contemporary social movements (la décadence, nascent fascism, liberal humanism) is the determinant of the vampire’s cultural charge in each case. discourse extracting a transcultural, transtemporal phenomenon labelled as “the vampire” is of necessarily limited utility. even if vampiric figures are found almost worldwide, starting in ancient egypt and surviving today in hollywood film studios, each reappearance (and its analysis) is still bound in its re-creating moment. the genre particularly associated in the middle ages with the use of monsters is, of course, romance, which has at various times been denigrated or even condemned for its overabundance of the fantastic. romance then seems the logical point of embarkation for this journey of monstrous encounters, and no figure would be more appropriate as an introductory example than chrétien de troyes’ giant herdsman. appearing in the opening segment of yvain (le chevalier au lion), this herdsman is the first important intrusion of the other into the genre, a figure close to its very birth. the story of yvain begins with the arthurian knight cologrenant’s account of his own humiliating defeat beside a magic fountain, along the way to which he encounters a huge and hirsute vilain described in elegantly nonhuman terms: … il ot grosse la teste plus que roncins ne autre beste chevos meschiez et front pelé s’ot plus de deus espanz de le oroilles mossues et granz 52 autés come a uns olifanz les sorciz granz et le vis plat iauz de çuëte et nes de chat boche fandue come los danz de sangler, aguz et ros, barbe noire, grenons tortiz et le manton aers au piz, longue eschine, torte et boçue (ii. 295-307). he had a head larger than that of a pack-horse or any other beast. his hair was tufted and his forehead, which was more than two spans wide, was bald. he had great mossy ears like an elephant’s, heavy eyebrows and a flat face with owl’s eyes and a nose like a cat’s, a mouth split like a wolf’s, the sharp yellow teeth of a wild boar, a black beard and tangled moustache, and a long chin that ran into his chest…1 calogrenant supposes that any creature which so much resembles a beast must be as senseless as one, but when he asks the churl what he is, the reply is simple and astounding: “je suis uns hon” -“i am a man”. there is something marvelous, unapproachable, and unknowable about this “man”, however. to the knight’s further question of “what kind of man are you?”, the only reply is “tes con tu voiz./je ne sui autre nule foiz” (“i am what you see, nothing else”). placed as it is after a catalogue of his extraordinary attributes and followed by a description of his uncanny power of control over his deadly herd, the herdsman’s assertion that he is not, after all, extraordinary makes him all the more marvelous, and his denial of self-interpretation heightens 1.the old french is excerpted from foerster and reid’s edition (manchester, 1967): the translation is from d. d. r. owen in arthurian romances (london: 1987), pp. 284285. 53 the effect by leaving his signification ambiguous; announcing that he is a giant born of the devil and proceeding to smash calogrenant with his mace would ruin the atmosphere which chrétien creates by suspending discernment. faced with the mystery of the herdsman, calogrenant is forced to assert and therefore define his own identity as a knight. when the churl commands, “et tu me redevroies dire, /ques hon tu ies etque tu quiers”, calogrenant answers with what john stevens has called “a classic definition of chivalric romance”:1 “i am, as you see, a knight who searches for what i cannot find; i have searched long and have found nothing.” “and what would you want to find?” “avantures [adventure] to prove my prowess and my courage.” (ll. 358-63) calogrenant’s meeting with the churl becomes an exposition of the essential attributes of knighthood; the herdsman’s inexplicability evinces a self-examination and definition which indicates less an interest in personal psychology than the self-reflexive impulse of a writer in an as yet undefined genre. the marvelous and hence the monstrous enter romance just as the giant herdsman does: sitting at the margins of the knowable, ready to test the characterizing essence of a hero by not partaking of that composition themselves, and finally forcing the heroic to assert itself against their otherness and thereby define its own assumptions. yvain will reinitiate the process later in the work when he fights harpin of the mountain, a marauding giant who is a negative representation of the state induced by a lack of 1.medieval romance: themes and approaches (london: hutchinson university library, 1973), p. 107. 54 chivalry; the herdsman was likewise outside of the chivalric system, albeit ignorant of the function of knights rather than antagonistic to it. yvain defines himself by encountering and conquering harpin, so that the polarity between enemies is mutually identifying. in both cases, a revelatory instant of self-reflective examination is created.1 the encounter with the other, the encounter with the monster necessitates an assertion and evaluation of the textual (generic, chivalric, social) ideology. monsters are in this way like textual fissures, revealing momentarily the underworks, the machinery. employing monsters as an instrument of analysis seems a very modern endeavor, the work of anthropologists and literary critics. medieval usage is generally less self-conscious, but vast traditions of exegesis on the subject of the monstrous exist, engaged early in the classical period by aristotle (the generation of animals) and cicero (de divinatione), refined in the days of the great naturalists like pliny (natural history), christianized by augustine and the other patristic writers, and continued into the renaissance and far beyond by innumerable teratologists (ambroise paré, pierre boaistau, conrad wolffhart, polydor vergil). teratology has always exerted a strange fascination, perhaps contingent upon the attraction of monsters themselves. the best way to account for the uses of monsters may in fact be to first examine some reasons for their widespread popularity, especially as figures of entertainment. on a very basic level, we as humans like to be frightened, provided the creation of fear can be bounded, as in the safe spaces of narrative. a recent psychological survey concluded that couples attending a horror movie are more 1.this moment is perhaps related to tzvetan todorov’s notion of “fantastic hesitation,” although the horizons of expectation for medieval fantastic literature and the modern works that todorov theorizes from are perhaps different enough to cast doubt on the utility of his findings; see the fantastic, a structural approach to a literary genre (new york: cornell university press, 1975). 55 likely to have had what they describe as “a good date” than those attending a romantic movie, apparently because of this enjoyment of the former genres’ greater ability to activate the release of adrenalin; the production of excitement becomes attributed to the partner on the outing, rather than the monster, but the monster in fact deserves the credit. we watch horror films knowing that the cinema is a temporary place, that the denouement will be followed by re-entry into the world of comfort and light. as engrossed as we might become in a chilling book, we are always on some level aware that the number of pages in our right hand is dwindling, and that no matter how much terror a story can elicit, we are safe in the knowledge of its nearing end, and our liberation from it. the same is true of narratives received aurally; no matter how disturbing the description of the giant, arthur will ultimately destroy him because the audience knows how romance works. we retain to some degree as adults a childish delight in being frightened, and monsters engender that feeling well. a little later in this paper the sources of their terror will be probed, but it would perhaps be more helpful to explore first the use of monstrous figures as a source of delight. late in the renaissance the monster began to be pushed out of mainstream discourse and to take up its still familiar habitation in allegory and juvenile literature. the very young are attracted to monsters (dinosaurs, skeletor, freddy kreuger) because they allow them to express in a safe, clearly delimited space fantasies of aggression, domination, and inversion. the monster can function as an alter-ego, an attractive and temporary projection of (another) self. such escapist fantasy is no doubt behind much lavishly bizarre manuscript marginalia, as well as cathedral gargoyles and other grotesques, all of which seem to record the fancies of a bored or repressed hand suddenly freed. jacques le goff, writing of the marvels in medieval maps and travel accounts of the lands surrounding the 56 indian ocean (a place he calls “a mental horizon, the exotic fantasy of the medieval west, the place where its dreams freed themselves from oppression”), says that these monsters inhabit a world: where taboos were eliminated or exchanged for others. the weird ness of this world produced an impression of liberation and freedom. the strict morality imposed by the church was contrasted with the discomfiting attractiveness of a world of bizarre tastes, which practiced coprophagy and cannibalism; of bodily innocence, where man, freed of the modesty of clothing, rediscovered nudism and sexual freedom; and where, once rid of restrictive monogamy and family barriers, he could give himself over to polygamy, incest, and eroticism. 1 the habitations of the monsters -ethiopia or the antipodes or whatever land was sufficiently distant to be exoticizedbecame more than dark regions of uncertain danger; according to le goff, they were also realms of happy fantasy, horizons of liberation. even the quintessential wicked giant, goliath (or golias, as he is called in the vulgate), became something of a fantasy figure of escape. the group of poets known as the goliards traced their name from a mythical “bishop” or “mentor” named golias, who of course derives from the biblical giant. many of the goliards were bored university students applying some of their inculcated latin compositional skills to the invention of verses praising love, food, and drink; some of them went further and extolled lust, gluttony, and drunkenness. in true schoolboy fashion, they wrote elaborate parodies of the ecclesiastical 1.“the medieval west and the indian ocean” in time, work & culture in the middle ages, tr. arthur goldhammer (chicago: university of chicago press, 1980), p. 197. 57 hymns and ceremonies; deus sit propitius huic peccatori (“god have mercy on this sinner”) became deus sit propitius huic potatori (“god have mercy on this drunkard"). rules requiring indulgence of all kinds were invented for this “goliardic order”, but its existence continued to be more wistful fiction than actual brotherhood. in time such works as the apocalypse of golias appeared, in which the persona of golias was co-opted yet again, this time to condemn the sins of the goliards by illustrating them; “golias” was quickly restored as a word soaked in reprobation. this ability of the monsters to encode desirable traits while remaining ostensibly negative representations of otherness is ultimately responsible for the shift in their cultural valence. recognizing the escapist possibilities of the monster, rabelais, rousseau, and montaigne all envisioned narrative worlds in which the other could sustainedly be thought of as better than the human rather than worse. as richard bernheimer has pointed out, the wild man metamorphosized from aphasiac, violent cannibal to eloquent pacifistic vegetarian.1 the giant was likewise transformed from an embodiment of subversion, anarchy, exaggerated appetite, and perverse sexuality to a spokesman for the “good earth”, and ultimately into a corporate emblem assuring the freshness of a certain well-known brand of frozen vegetables.2 these co-optations of monsters into symbols of the desirable, often by neutralizing potentially threatening aspects with a liberal dose of 1.wild men in the middle ages: a study in art, sentiment, and demonology (cambridge: harvard university press, 1952), pp. 4-5. 2.the same process adapted giants from impediments to expansionism into town mascots; an effigy of the giant ascopart (from the romance sir beves of hampton) appears on southampton’s city gate. gogmagog, the primeval giant who opposed the trojan settlement of england, was depicted as two giants (gog and magog) and placed in guildhall by the reign of henry v; as stated earlier, these statues were destroyed in the great fire, rebuilt in 1708, and destroyed again during bombing in world war ii. 58 comedy, are ultimately less interesting than the retention of the monsters’ original, fearful significations. monsters may still work as fantasies even without their valence reversed. what le goff has called “oppressive institutions” can encode all that is necessarily viewed as bad in them in order to perform a wish-fulfillment fantasy of their own, by destroying the monster in the course of a narrative. the monster’s eradication then becomes a kind of exorcism, and perhaps a catechism. the demons disguised as “ladies of high descent and rank” who tempt sir bors to sexual indulgence function in this way in the monastically manufactured queste del saint graal; when he refuses to sleep with one of them, described as “so lovely and so gracious that it seemed all earthly beauty was embodied in her,” his assertion of control banishes them all shrieking back to hell.1 monsters are, however, seldom so uncomplicated in their use and manufacture, no matter how thin allegory might flatten them. monstrous figures have often been promulgated in the service of political or nationalistic ends. the primary model for the middle ages of this kind of usage is to be found in the bible, where the aboriginal inhabitants of canaan are transformed into menacing giants. when moses sends spies into the promised land in the book of numbers, they return to the israelites with this report (in the vulgate): “we came into the land to which you sent us, which indeed flows with milk and honey as may be known from this fruit, but it has very strong inhabitants, and the cities are great and walled. we saw the enakim there… the land which we have seen devours its inhabitants. the people whom we beheld are tall of stature. there 1.the quest for the holy grail, tr. pauline matarasso (london: penguin books, 1969), p. 194. 59 we saw certain monsters of the sons of enak, of the giant kind, in comparison to whom we seemed like locusts.” (num.13:28-29, 33-4). the indigenous inhabitants of canaan are here imagined as gigantic in order to convey the difficulty of the ensuing jewish settlement. just as the bounty of the land is great (fluit lacte et melle), so its resistance to colonization (sed cultores fortissimos habet); the abundance of the land is conveyed by the surfeit of valuable commodities and the exaggerated proportions of its warding occupants. envisioning the anterior culture as monsters (ibi vidimus monstra) justifies their extermination by making the act heroic. the groups of giants known in hebrew as the anakim, the emim, and the zamzummim all embody a similar set of textual ambitions in their various appearances in the pentateuch. walter stephens summarizes their raison d’être when he writes that “[s]uch giants embody the forces that resist expansion, conquest, cultivation, and domestication. because they oppose the origin of a culture, they are envisioned as archaic, even autochthonic; they are an explanation of origins made by cultures that see themselves as invaders or latecomers”.1 this method of rationalizing displacement is a process very old and, throughout history, very useful. in the historia regum britanniae, geoffrey of monmouth rewrote the passage previously quoted from the book of numbers, replacing the israelites with exiled trojans and canaan with great britain, retaining giants as the distorted remnant of an anterior culture ready to be replaced. the chansons de geste transformed the moslems into demonic caricatures whose menacing 1.giants in those days: folklore, ancient history, and nationalism (lincoln, ne: university of nebraska press, 1989), pp. 72-73. 60 lack of full humanity was readable from their bestial attributes.1 the scottish, irish, cornish and welsh were at various times monsterized as an expedient to expansionism. more recently, in american history, native americans were depicted as feral savages so that the powerful political machine known as manifest destiny could push westward with disregard. especially prone in the middle ages to the use of this process of monsterization are historical writings such as chronicles and the popular “history and topography” genre promulgated by giraldus cambrensis and others; the mapping of the geography or the history of a region is an act of colonization, of expansionism, and usually a reflex of incipient nationalism. implicit in the creation of such textual “maps” is the superiority of the “cartographer” to that which becomes the cartographer’s geography. in racial or cultural terms, an opposition is set up between the dominant culture which becomes encapsulated into story. encoded in this set of assumptions and the works it produces is not only a xenophobic fear of the other, but also the horrible suspicion that its otherness originates within “us”, the race which fabricates the myth. clearly, then, such stories also encode a fear of miscenegation -about which more will be said shortly. these examples connecting monsters with political contrivance and the promulgation of nationalism function as invitations to action, usually military. monsters were frequently used, however, as vehicles of prohibition, as admonitions against the engagement in certain endeavors. it has been suggested, for example, that merchants intentionally disseminated maps depicting monsters at the edges of their trade routes in order to discourage further exploration and to establish their own monopolies. more typical (and perhaps prototypical in 1.this tradition is transplanted to england with a curious result in the romance sir guy of warwick, which features a monsterized dane, the giant colbrond. 61 western culture) is the function of the homeric cyclops polyphemos, a figure familiar throughout the middle ages from various latin and vernacular reworkings of the odyssey.1 essentially a xenophobic rendition of the foreign, the cyclopes are depicted as savages who haven’t “a law to bless them” and who lack the techne to produce through cultivation. their primitivism is conveyed by a lack of hierarchy and of a politics of precedent, a dissociation from community leading to a rugged individualism which in homeric terms can only be destructive. because they do not partake a system of custom, the cyclopes are a danger to the arriving greeks, men who are defined by their compartmentalized function in a system of subordination and control. extended travel was dependent in both the ancient and medieval world on the promulgation of an ideal of hospitality in which the responsibility of the host to guest was sanctified. a violation of that assumed code was responsible for the destruction of the biblical sodom and gomorrah, and for the first punitive transformation in the metamorphoses (lycaon becomes a wolf, met. i.199ff.), as well as for the devolution from man to giant in sir gawain and the carl of carlisle . because popyphemos is ignorant of his “sacred duty”, he, like lycaon and the monstrous carl, becomes part of a fable constructed to validate this obligation by a violation of it. thus when odysseus finds himself trapped in the cyclops’ cave, he declares to polyphemus that he and his men are: beholden for your help, or any gifts you give -as custom is to honor strangers. we would entreat you, great sir, have a care 1.see donald k. fry, “polyphemus in iceland,” the fourteenth century, acta, vol. iv (1977), pp. 65-86. 62 for the gods’ courtesy; zeus will avenge the unoffending guest. (ix.232-6)1 to this formulaic language of courtesy, polyphemos replies in revealing action: in one stride he clutched at my companions and caught two in his hands like squirming puppies to beat their brains out, spattering the floor. then he dismembered them and made his meal, gaping and crunching like a mountain lioneverything: innards, flesh, and marrow bones. (254-9) cannibalism is the ultimate violation of the divinely ordained hostguest relationship. the graphic and lengthy depiciton, down to a catalogue of devoured bodily fragments, increases the deviance of the actions by creating an extended visualization of the scene; this technique was later used extensively in encounters with giants in the medieval romances, with much the same repulsive effect. the creation of revulsion asserts the natural value of the societal constructs whose opposite or rejection the monster represents. in the course of my research into the uses of monsters, i have come to the somewhat startling conclusion that when they are used as vehicles of prohibition, monsters most often embody a strong fear of interracial sexual relations, or even directly interdict miscegenation. desire which crosses the imagined boundaries of race is envisioned as an illicit mingling with an other who is a monster or by whom mon1.the odyssey, tr. robert fitzgerald (new york: anchor books, 1963). 63 sters are engendered; this negative depiction is the essence of the prohibition. the group most prone to transgression of this sort, and the group therefore most in need of protection against it and against themselves, turns out not surprisingly to be women. the bible was the primary source for the middle ages of divine decrees against miscegenation. one of these pronouncements is a straightforward command from god, coming through the mouth of the prophet joshua (josh. 23:12ff); another is a cryptic parable much elaborated during the medieval period, the story of how the “sons of god” impregnated the “daughters of men”, engendering the wicked race of giants: moreover giants were upon the earth in those days: for afterwards the sons of god went in to the daughters of men, and they bore children, who are the mighty men of old, men of renown. (gen.6:4) this biblical verse is highly problematic, and its ambiguity resulted in an extended period of erudite scrutiny and discourse, which in its turn influenced profoundly popular notions of the genesis of monsters. the importance of the cryptic references lies in their linking of the birth of the giants with a mysterious kind of interracial (or better “intergenus”) relations, and in the narrative proximity connecting the advent of the giants, the multiplication of worldly evil, and the divine retribution of the flood. all these events were read in the middle ages as linear history; what might strike the modern reader as an episodic collection, evidence perhaps of the bible’s composite authorship, was treated by successive exegetes as a progressive narrative of causal connections. according to the reworking of the history in the middle english genesis, the first miscegenation of the world occurred as follows: 64 two hundred ger after ío wunes, miswiven hem gunnen seíes sunes agenes íat adam forbead, and leten godes frigtihed; he chosen hem wives of caym, and mengten wií varied kin; of hem woren de getenes boren, migti men, and figti forloren.1 the passage goes on to state that the flood was sent as a direct result of the increase in evil attendant upon the generation of the giants, who are true monsters in that they organically encode a divine judgement on the sexual act which produced them. the old english genesis and the vernon manuscript’s life of adam and eve contain similar versions of the biblical story in which the “sons of god” (filii dei) are likewise men descended from seth, and the women (filiae hominum) are of the race of cain; these three works repeat the interpretation of the episode established by augustine in his de civitate dei. the verses of the pearl poet’s cleanness retell an older version of this same story in which the sons of god are immortals, fallen angels: so ferly fowled her flesch pat pe fende loked how pe de¥ter of pe doupe wen derelych fayre, and fallen in fel¥schyp with hem on folken wyse and engendered on hem jeauntez with her japez ille. ? ose wern men me peles and ma¥ty on urpe.1 1.the middle english genesis and exodus (ed. olof arngart), lund, gleerup: 1968, ll. 539-546. 65 this notion that giants originated from the union of devils (or incubi) with earthly women, opposed as it is to the augustinian orthodoxy, nonetheless flourished as a popular explanation for the origin of the giants in the romance tradition. in both its versions, the story revolves around miscegenation; the origin of the other is thus always “an illicit mingling of heterogeneous ontological categories” (stephens, p.79). the complete biblical episode was rewritten in the early fourteenth century as a prehistory of england. the anglo-norman poem de grantz geanz and its middle english counterparts (the anonymous riming chronicle of the auchinleck ms and the preface to the prose brut of the ms douce 323) invent an explanatory myth for the genesis of the giants which geoffrey of monmouth had asserted to dwell in britain long before the arrival of brutus and the trojans. an extended swipe at feminine integrity, the myth links womanly desire with miscegenation and the birth of monsters. the production of monstrous progeny simultaneously condemns women in general for their unbridled appetite, and interracial mingling in particular as inherently degenerative. the women in consequence become hardly distinguishable from the monsters they bear, which in turn are the result of a “maternal impression” both physical and moral. re-encodings of the fear of miscegenation through the monsterization of other races and teratogenesis did not stop in the middle ages. shakespeare’s caliban is such a product, the “freckled whelp” of the algerian witch sycorax and the devil. in modern america, blacks have been variously demonized in a presentation of their imagined danger to white women, especially after the civil war eroded some of 1.the poems of the pearl manuscript (ed. malcolm andrew and ronald waldron), berkely: 1979, ll. 269-273. 66 the restraints against interracial relations (the word “miscegenation”, in fact, was not coined until 1863, in america). charlotte brontë reversed the usual paradigm in her jane eyre, but horror movies as seemingly innocent as king kong demonstrate it in its essence. even a film as recent as 1979’s immensely successful alien may have a cognizance of the fear in its underworkings: the grotesque alien creature which stalks the heroine (dressed in the final scene only in her underwear) drips k-y jelly from its teeth; the jaw tendons are constructed of shredded condoms; and the man inside the rubber suit is bolaji badejo, a masai tribesman standing 2.2 meters tall who happened to be studying in england at the time.1 a societal anxiety surrounding interracial mingling is a powerful catalyst to the generation of monsters, but i would like to turn from it now to consider more fully the most useful of the monster’s functions, at least from the viewpoint of the modern critic. i will return here to a notion introduced early in this discussion, that the appearance of the other in the text is a revelatory moment of assertion during which the underlying ideology may be glimpsed. i suggest that this is especially so when the monster is being used as what could conveniently be called an illustrative antithesis, that is, as an embodiment of the textual suppositions’ opposites. this unconscious but revealing dialectic is beautifully employed in the greatest of old english poems and a work once devalued for its use of the monstrous, beowulf . grendel is perhaps the most truly unforgettable monster in english literature, perhaps because he is born of the commingling of so many different traditions while transcending them all in his wonderful loathsomeness. he intrudes into the narrative just as the scop is singing, caedmon-like, of the creation of the world -a bright song which 1.see john eastman, retakes: behind the scenes of 500 classic movies (new york, ballantine books, 1989), pp. 9-10. 67 begins with the shaping of the earth and closes at its populating. hrothgar’s warriors are by conjunction immediately brought into this antediluvian golden age (“swa ía drihtguman dreamum lifdon” -“so the warriors lived in joy”1), until the music -hating grendel intervenes; the parallel to the biblical advent of the giants and their spreading of evil among humanity in the days before the flood is subtle but unmistakable. grendel is immediately linked with cain, the first male other and the progenitor of the very giants of the books of enoch and genesis whose deeds grendel is repeating (“swylce gigantas, pa wií gode wunnon / lange rage” [“such giants, that fought against god for a long time,” ll.113-4]). grendel as a result exists in a narrative temporality which is simultaneously before the deluge (in its biblical time frame) and after it (in its historical setting). the attachment of monsters of germanic provenance to this genealogy as grendel’s brethren further conflates the two frames, merging them into some uncertain, vanished past which they all suddenly share. this manifold past is quietly defined against the christian present of the poet throughout the work; its point of vanishing is the interlocked deaths of beowulf and the dragon at the close of the poem. grendel’s relation to the comitatus or männerbund is one of illustrative antithesis. he disperses the unity of the war band with an eruption of misdirected violence; he supplants hrothgar as ruler of the hall through senseless, jealous slaughter. clearly the maintenance of order in a warrior society is achieved only by the repression of what grendel represents. wergild, for example, the institution which allows a payment of gold to disallow blood vengeance in the case of a murder, works well at defusing destructive impulses only so long as a people can be made to abide by its strictures. grendel represents the cultural 1.old english quoted from aspr vol. 4, beowulf and judith, ed. elliott van kirk dobbie (new york: columbia university press, 1953), l. 99; translation mine. 68 other to whom conformity to societal dictates is an impossibility because those dictates are not comprehensible to him; he is at the same time a monsterized version of what a member of that very society can become when those same dictates are rejected, when the authority of leaders or custom disintegrates and the subordination of individual to hierarchy is lost.1 grendel is therefore an uncontained version of the wroecca, who in his exile turns not to elegiac poetry but to subversive violence. beowulf’s triumph over grendel becomes a fantasy of the triumph of comitatus (a homosocial society held together by metaphorically fraternal bonds and a hierarchical system of allegiance) over individuality (associated here with atavism and anarchy). grendel’s ingestion of the sleeping man in heorot and the numerous references too the power of his grasp are the signifiers of his uncontrolled, destructive appetite; beowulf’s balancing grip and remedial rending of this very arm are its antidote: subordinated service which results in ataractic unity for society and, to make the action attractive, a celebrated personal glory for its enactor. by the end of the long episode this arm has been replaced with a more powerful emblem, the retrieved head of the giant: ? a waes be feaxe on flet boren grendles heafod, paer guman druncon, egeslic for eorlum ond paere idese mid, wliteseon wraetlic; weras on sawon. (1646-9). 1.cf. hayden white’s notion of “ostensive self-definition by negation” in his essay “the forms of wildness: archeology of an idea,” tropics of discourse: essays in cultural criticism (baltimore: the johns hopkins university press, 1978), pp. 151-152. 69 then the head of grendel, held up by its hair, was carried into where the men were drinking; it was a thing of horror for the warriors and their queen, a stunning spectacle; they looked upon it well. the men at first gape at the severed head, but their attention quickly moves from the fragment of the giant whole to the warrior who fragmented the giant and remained whole. the displayed remnant of the adversary becomes almost totemic, a medusa-like organic symbol which causes the watchers to stare in the realization that the monster’s powers have been transferred to the conqueror. grendel is reduced to a trophy, a dumbshow of the punishment for deviation; his destruction is a public validation of the control and acceptance of structured society whose antithesis he represents. this validation is not complete until the emblem has been changed from a hand to a head; after his dismemberment, grendel crawls back to his mother and unleashes another tide of condemnable violence, this time spawned of retribution. grendel’s unnamed mother suggests a spectrum of negative attributes not very different from her son’s, but centered around violent revenge rather than individualism and destructive nonconformity; even though her vengeance seems outwardly fair (one of hrothgar’s men for the one child she has lost), her act threatens a spiralling cycle of death-for-death which it is in the best interest of the warband to defuse. her appearance establishes, then, another dialectic to be resolved by a demise -which, like the death of her son, is a validation maneuver. a monster’s primary function as illustrative antithesis might best be described as an inducement to conformity. giants, for example, are monsters connected to aberrant and voracious sexual appetite in the romances, where, following geoffrey of monmouth’s giant of mount saint michael, they ordinarily are encountered with at le ast one abducted noblewoman who is being overtly or implicitly threatened with 70 rape: in lybeaus desconus, two giants have kidnapped violette in order to share her; in yvain, harpin of the mountain wants to prostitute a maiden to his “rabble of knaves”; in malory’s launcelot du lake, sixty ladies have been enslaved. because courtly love and the control inherent to it were linked inseparably in the romances, the giants became symbols of the anarchic power of both unsubordinated violence and of unchecked libido. this linking of force and sexuality is programatically shattered by the romance compulsion to restraint, but replaced with the interdiction of all sexual expression and the idealization of abstinence. the repressed, however, like freud himself, always seems to return. monsters are continually linked to sexuality, the expression of which is depicted as perverse in its excess, or perhaps in its nature taboo. monsters were earlier described as part escapist fantasy in their creation, and the linking of monstrosity with sexuality makes monsters all the more appealing as a temporary egress from repression. this simultaneous repulsion and attraction at the core of the monster’s essential composition accounts greatly for their continued cultural popularity. we fear and loathe monsters at the same time as we might envy them. every monster is a measure of its age, a core sample of prevalent attitude and unspoken ideologies. so, too, is the process of interpreting them. the monster is a window into worlds perhaps now estranged; the value in their study is, in the end, to be found as much in the images visible through this glass as well as in the reflection of the observer cast suddenly upon it. jeffrey j. cohen harvard university 71 * * * selim03.pdf 60 maría josé mora, selim 3 (1993): 57-71 the power of the keys: a parallel to the line drawings in bl ms stowe 944 the line drawings on fol. 7r of bl ms stowe 944, the new minster liber vitae, have traditionally been taken for a representation of the last judgement. the central register of the illumination shows st. peter striking the devil with his key and trying to release from his clutches a soul whose fate seems to be at stake, whereas the top and bottom sections depict the celestial city and the mouth of hell respectively [fig.1]. it is perhaps this simultaneous depiction of heaven and hell that has prompted the association with a last judgement context. in a recent study, however, david f. johnson has noted significant differences with traditional and contemporary representations of this theme and, analyzing iconographic details in the light of old english homiletic literature, has concluded that the scene is rather a vision of individual judgement at the moment of death and represents the efficacy of intercessory prayer.1 this re-interpretation can be further refined through a comparison with the 12th century latin miracle of the monk of st. peter’s at cologne, which constitutes a very close parallel to the central register of the stowe drawing. both the story and the illumination are indeed concerned with intercession and illustrate the same doctrinal point: the power of the keys, that is, the power of absolution granted by christ to peter and the church. the joint analysis of text and image can also be extended to explore a broader field, since the history of the transmission of the miracle story and the context 1david f. johnson, “st. peter's key and the knell of doom: an old english homiletic motif,” twenty-sixth congress on medieval studies, western michigan u, may 9, 1991. 61 of drawings offer a good insight into the changing traditions of medieval devotion. the story of the monk of st. peter’s at cologne appears regularly as the 7th (occasionally 8th) in the most widespread of medieval collections of marian miracles: that termed by mussafia hm (after the initials of the first and last story in the series, hildefonsus-muriel).1 this collection was put together at the beginning of the 11th century, almost certainly by anselm the younger.2 the story tells of a monk in the monastery of st. peter by the city of cologne who led an evil life. as a proof of his iniquity we learn that, "contra proposito monachi," he even fathered a son whom, in some versions of the story, he also made a monk at the same monastery. not surprisingly, the devils seize his soul at the moment of death. peter sees this and begs god for the salvation of his monk, but god refuses: ignoras inquit quid propheta me inspirante dixerit, domine quis habitarit in tabernaculo tuo, aut quis requiescit in monte sancto tuo? subitiens, qui in greditur sine macula, & operatur iustitiam. quomodo ergo hic potest fieri saluus, cum neque sine macula sit ingressus, neque ut debuit iusticiam opera tus.3 ‘do you not know what the prophet, under my inspiration, said: "lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle, and who shall dwell in t hy holy hill? he that enters taintless, and works righteousness. how 1adolf mussafia, studien zu den mitteralterlichen marienlegenden, sitzungsberichte der k. akademie der wissenschaften zu wien (1886-1893). 2r. w. southern, “the english origins of the `miracles of the virgin,'“ mediaeval and renaissance studies 4 (1958): 176-216. 3elise dexter, ed., miracula sanctae virginis mariae. u of winsconsin studies in the social sciences and history 12 (1927): 21. christ's words are taken from psalm 15. the full text of the miracle is reproduced in the appendix below. unless otherwise noted, quotations from the miracle story are taken from this edition. 62 can this be saved, who would not enter taintless, and did not work righteousness as he ought to have done?’ peter then asks the angels and saints to intercede with god for the monk and pray for the salvation of his soul, but god replies to all of them in the same way. finally, peter turns to the holy mother of god and the holy virgins, certain that their prayers will be heard. christ, not willing to contra vene the prophet’s words, but at the same time unable to refuse his mother and dear sisters’ request finds a compromise solution in letting the monk go back to life to repent and do penance, and thus be able to face judgement again with a better chance. upon hearing this, peter "magna clave quam tenebat diabolum terrens eum in fugam vertit, et animam fratris eripuit": he scares away the devil with the large key he had and snatches the soul of the brother. the soul is then led back to the body. the monk comes back to life and explains to all that he was saved from the power of the devil through the intercession of the virgin mary and st. peter. the description of peter brandishing his key to frighten away the devil and regain the damned soul closely parallels the action depicted in the central register of the liber vitae illumination. it is indeed possible that there may have been a connection between both: the liber vitae was produced in the first half of the 11th century; william of malmesbury, who retells this story in his miracula sanctae mariae virginis, places the miracle in the first half of the 9th, under the reign of louis the pious.1 withouth more conclusive evidence, however, it would be rash to conclude that this story is the direct source for the picture of peter in the liber vitae, especially since william’s 1for the dating of bl stowe 944 see n. r. ker, a catalogue of manuscripts containing anglo -saxon (oxford: oxford up, 1957). william's text is edited by peter n. carter in “william of malmesbury's treatise on the miracles of the virgin,” diss., oxford u, 1959. the story is no. 17 in this collection. 63 dating has been shown to be occasionally unreliable.1 but since, as david johnson pointed out, there is no known pictorial source for this drawing, we may at least assume that the artist had in mind a story similar to this one, a vision in which a soul is about to be condemned after death but is rescued through peter’s intercession. this focus on intercession is no doubt appropriate to the stowe manuscript: the liber vitae contained a record of the members of the monastic community and confraternities for whom the monks would offer their prayers. the comparison with the latin miracle thus clears up one important point in the interpretation of the liber vitae drawing: it shows that the fate of the soul for which peter and the devil seem to be contending is by no means undecided, since the fact that peter shows his key is a proof that he has triumphed over the devil. the significance of peter’s keys is alluded to, though not really explained, in the earlier versions of the miracle. at the end of his tale, the narrator comments on the extraordinary character of his story and defends its veracity. if someone should think this miracle is incredible, he protests, they should consider how great the power of the holy mother of god is, over all the orders of saints, and abandon all doubt. and he adds: "si uero obicit de claue sancti petri qua terruit inimicum, meminerit quia incorporalia corporeis nisi per corporea narrari non possent"; if they object to peter’s having a key, they should remember that spiritual truths cannot be re vealed to mortals except by material images. peter’s key is obviously being used as a symbol for a spiritual truth, but the narrator does not elaborate on this. william of malmesbury is more explicit on this point, although he still refers to the meaning of the key briefly: 1see peter n. carter, “the historical context of william of malmesbury's miracles of the virgin mary,” the writing of history in the middle ages: essays presented to r.w. southern, ed. r. h. c. davis and j. m. wallace-hadrill (oxford: oxford up, 1981), 127-65. 64 idem de clave dicetur que significativum potestatis petro attribuitur [emphasis added]. nec enim nisi per corpoream similitudinem debuit potes tas surrecturo monacho monstrari, nec ab alio aliter narrari, nec audientibus potuit aliter intellegi. ‘the same can be said as regards this key, which represents peter’s power. only in this graphic way could his power be re vealed to the monk who was about to be resurrected; it is imposs ible to think of any other way of describing these things so that they can be understood by those who hear.’1 the association of the keys with peter derives, obviously, from the words of christ in the gospel: "i will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (mt 16, 19). this gift of the keys, and the power to bind and unbind conferred on peter with it, has traditionally been interpreted in two ways: peter, the prince of the apostles, is the celestial key-bearer; he is the lord of the gates of heaven, and will open them to the souls of the righteous and close them against those who should justly be excluded. but more commonly, the gift of the keys has been related to the sacrament of penance, and understood as the power of absolution granted to peter, or peter and the church. this second meaning of the keys seems to be the one operating in the miracle story. in the story, peter unbinds in effect by assigning penance: by accepting this temporal penance, the monk is absolved from eternal punishment. thus peter functions in the hereafter as a priest would on earth. this relationship between peter’s keys and the power of absolution is more clearly explained in the legenda aurea, which incorporates this miracle in the chapter dedicated to "st. peter ad vincula." the chapter reviews four reasons 1carter ii, 424-25. 65 for the institution of this feast, the first being the commemoration of peter’s miraculous release from his bonds in prison and the last--illustrated by the story of the monk of cologne--the celebration of the power to remit sins conferred on peter by christ, and represented by the keys: dominus enim a vinculis petrum miraculose absolvit et eidem lig andi et absolvendi potestatem dedit, nos autem vinculis peccatorum obligati tenemur et absolvi indigemus. ideo, igitur ipsum in sollemnitate, quae dicitur ad vin cula, honoramus, ut, sicut ipse a vinculis absolvi promeruit et sicut absolvendi potestatem a domino accepit, sic ipse a peccatorum vinculis nos absolvat … quod autem per claves, quas accepit, interdum etiam damnandos absolvat, in quodam miraculo, quod legitur in libro miraculorum beatae virginis, satis claret. ‘our lord miraculously freed peter of his chains and gave him the power of absolving from sin; we, on the other hand, are bound by the chains of sin, and have need of being absolved. and therefore we honour him in the feast which is called ad vincula, in order that as he merited to be set free of his bonds and to receive the power of absolving from the lord, so also he may absolve us of our sins. and a certain miracle whereof we read in the book of the miracles of the blessed virgin shows that by the keys which he received, he does absolve even those who are about to be condemned.’1 both the story and the drawing then seem to exemplify the same doctrinal issue: the power of the keys. but, as the earliest versions extant present it, there seems to be a central inconsistency in the miracle story. ideally, the key 1latin text from th. groesse, ed., jacobi a voragine. legenda aurea (leipzig, 1850), 459-60; trans. by granger ryan and helmut ripperger, the golden legend (new york: arno, 1969), 406. 66 peter shows the devil represents his power to absolve. yet, the narrative in the story does not precisely inspire confidence in peter’s power: he tries, but is not able to save the monk by himself, and has to request mary’s help. this inconsistency may be explained by the fact that this story was not originally a miracle of the virgin mary, but of st. peter. the transfer to mary of a miracle first associated with a saint is by no means unprecedented. a clear example is the story of the two brothers at rome (hm 10). an early version of this story appears in the dicta anselmi: two brothers, peter and stephen, die. stephen is sent to hell, since he was a judge and had made ill use of his office moved by greed; he had, for instance, deprived the churches of st. lawrence and st. agnes of some land. but, as his only good deed, he had always served praeiectus martyr devoutly. this saint hears of stephen’s plight, turns to st. lawrence and st. agnes and begs them to cease in their wrath. the three of them then intercede for him before christ: in illis ergo poenis dum esset, beato martyri praeiecto … quidam sanctorum dixerunt: "o praiecte quid agis? nonne quantum miser iste te dilexerit recordaris? … cur pro illo non oras?" quibus ille, "vos" ait, "videris quod sanctus laurentius et beata virgo agnes indignati sunt ei." "nos," inquiunt "veniemus tecum. eamus pre cari eos ut hanc sibi noxam remittant, ac deinde pro eius libera tione dominum iesum nobiscum exorent." laurentius itque et agnes interpellati venerabili martyri praeiecto culpam donaverunt eiusque amore dominum iesum pro damnati ereptione adeuntes veniam obtinuerunt. protinus ergo domini imperio nuntius ivit qui eundem stephanum de lacu miseriae educeret, et pro eo qualiter praeiectus martyr oraverit indicaret. denuntiatum est illi etiam quod triginta dierum haberet spatium in corpore vivendi in quibus vitam pristinam emendaret.1 1text cited by southern, 214-15. 67 ‘while he suffered these torments some saints said to praeiectus: "praeiectus, what are you doing? … don’t you remember how much this wretched soul loved you? won’t you pray for him?’ but he said: ‘you have seen that st. lawrence and the blessed virgin agnes are greatly offended by him.’ they said: ‘we will go with you. we will go beg them to forgive his offence and then to come with us and pray to god for his deliverance. lawrence and agnes, when praeiectus martyr asked them, forgave stephen, and for the love of praeiectus went to the lord jesus and obtained pardon for the theft. then the messenger of the lord was dispatched at once, with the command that he should bring stephen out of the pool of misery and explain to him that praeiectus martyr had prayed for him. it was also announced to stephen that he would have thirty days to live in his body, so that he could amend his earlier life.’ as it appears in the dicta, therefore, this is not a miracle of the virgin. mary does not even figure in the story. but when the story is recast in the 11th-12th century collections of miracles, the virgin appears together with praeiectus, interceding and obtaining grace for stephen’s soul: … sanctus praeiectus, primo accedens ad sanctum laurentium et sanctam agnetem in quos ille deliquerat, precebatur ut ei veniam darent. illi vero pro amore eius culpae illius pepercerunt citius. deinde exoravit dominum pro eo, cooperante sancta genitrice dei maria [emphasis added], et mox obtinuit ut anima illius rediret ad corpus quatinus quod rapuerat redderet et peccatis suis paenitentiam ageret, vivens diebus triginta.1 1southern 216. 68 ‘ … st. praeiectus first turned to st. lawrence and st. agnes, against whom stephen had sinned, and begged their pardon for him. they, for his love pardoned stephen’s guilt immediately. they then prayed to the lord for him and, with the help of the holy mother of god, were soon granted that the soul might return to the body, so that he would live for thirty days to re turn what he had wrongfully taken and do penance for his sins.’ in the case of the miracle of the monk of st. peter’s, the scant evidence we have suggests that this story is also adapted from a miracle of a saint: as in the stowe drawing, peter would sprobably have occupied the central place in the original version. the setting for the story, a monastery of st. peter, seems to hint in that direction. but the clearest indication that such an adaptation has taken place is the apparent clash between peter and mary’s roles in the narrative. the allusion to the keys as a symbol of peter’s power to bind and unbind conflicts with his failure to resolv e in favour of his monk, and does not cohere with the emphasis on mary as universal protector and media tor. this conflict between the image of the keys and the new role assigned to mary was certainly perceived by those who recast the story. that is perhaps why they hint at the significance of the keys, but do not expand on the doctrine. the history of the transmission of the miracle, moreover, gives us further evidence that the story was in the process of being adapted from a peter to a mary miracle: in several later collections of marian miracles, the inconsistency is solved by omitting the reference to peter’s driving the devil away with his key. thus, for instance, gonzalo de berceo in his milagros de nuestra señora still has peter rescue the monk’s soul, but there is no mention of the keys: quando udió sant peidro esti tan dulz mandado, vío que su negocio era bien recabdado; tornó a los diablos, concejo enconado: 69 la alma que levavan tolliógela sin grado. diógela a dos ninnos de muy gran claridat, creaturas angélicas de muy gran sanctidat; diógela en comienda de toda voluntat por tornarla al cuerpo con gran seguridat.1 ‘when st. peter heard this sweet command and knew that his petition had been well received, he turned angrily to the devils and took the soul they were carrying away. he gave it in charge to two bright youths, angelic creatures of great sanctity, so that they would return it to its body safely.’ nigel of canterbury in his miracles of the virgin mary goes even further in his adaptation of the story. after the account of christ’s sentence, commanding the soul to be led back to the body, the narration turns directly to the resurrection of the monk. any reference to peter or his keys is silenced: dixit; et in corpus anima redeunte reuixit dandus iam tumulo iamque tegendus humo.2 ‘this he said; and as the soul entered the body, he who was going to be buried and covered with earth revived.’ in one case in this process of transmission, however, the story is brought back to its original peter context. the legenda aurea, even though it tells the story as a mary miracle, includes it, as we have seen, in the chapter devoted to "st. peter ad vincula." in this chapter, the story follows a full discussion of 1gonzalo de berceo, milagros de nuestra señora, ed. michael gerli (madrid: cátedra, 1988), vii.173-74. 2nigel of canterbury, miracles of the virgin mary, in verse, ed. jan ziolkowski (toronto: pontifical institute of mediaeval studies, 1986), 1099-1100. 70 the symbolic meaning of the keys and peter’s power to remit sins. in this case, the narrator logically omits the final comment emphasizing mary’s power as mediator. this change in the dedication of miracle stories is a consequence of a change in devotional practices. before the 12th century most miracle stories were associated to the shrine of a saint, and had therefore a strong local emphasis as pieces of propaganda.1 by the 11th and especially the 12th century, the increasing popularity of the miracles of the virgin reflect a new kind of piety: [in these stories, t]ime and place lose all significance, and we come under the sway of a universal power … exercised with the appearance of caprice for the protection of all who love the person from whom these benefits flow. like the rain, this protective power of the virgin falls on the just and the unjust alike. … the miracles of the virgin were not written to proclaim the glo ries, or to enhance the reputation of any church or corporate body: they appealed solely to individuals, and if they had a propaganda purpose, it was the encouragement of pious practices, which came in time to occupy a position at the very centre of medieval personal devotion.2 in both the liber vitae drawing and the miracle story, we have then a vision of post-mortem judgement that illustrates peter’s power to remit sins. in both cases, too, the context seems to reflect a change of emphasis from peter’s power of absolution as represented by his key--whose importance is well exemplified, for instance, in bede’s account of the synod of whitby--to mary’s rising role as mediator par excellence, as the main channel, or "aque1r. w. southern, the making of the middle ages (new haven: yale up, 1953), 247. 2southern 248. 71 duct" as st. bernard would call her, of god’s grace. in the new minster drawing (dating from the early 11th century), peter still retains the central place he would have occupied in the source of the latin miracle story. but winchester was already an important center of marian cult, and the new minster had been re -dedicated to mary.1 the liber vitae itself bears witness to the increasing importance of mary as mediator: in the illumination on 6r [fig.2], depicting cnut’s gift of a golden cross to the monastery, we see both mary and peter as the two figures to whom the monks represented below pray for intercession. the latin miracle, as we know it from the earlie st verions extant, seems to represent a later stage in this process. the central role which must originally have been peter’s has been finally transferred to mary. appendix in monasterio sancti petri quod apud coloniam, erat quidam frater, cuius uita & mores nimis ab habitu monachili discrepabant. nam leuiter se agens in pluribus actibus etiam filium contra proposito monachi habebat, et seculari se actu in multis tradiderat. hic igitur aliquando cum quibusdam fratribus potionem pro corporis salute accip iens, irruente languore nimis afflictus, sine confessione uel christi corporis sacra communione repente defunctus est. cuius anima ab antiquo mox hoste arrepta, ducebatur ad infernalia loca. quod cernens sanctus petrus cuius erat monachus, accessit ad benignum sominum, & pro anima ipsius deprecabatur eum. cui dominus: ignoras inquit quid propheta me inspirante dixerit, domine quis habitarit in tabernaculo tuo, aut quis r. in m. sancto tuo? subitiens, qui ingreditur sine macula, & operatur i. quomodo ergo hic potest fieri saluus, cum neque sine macula sit ingressus, neque ut debuit iusticiam operatus. 1mary clayton, the cult of the virgin mary in anglo -saxon england (cambridge: cup, 1990), 132. 72 hec audiens sanctus petrus, iterum sanctos angelos et deinde singulos ordines sanctorum precatus est, ut orarent pro anima fratris. quibus singulis se deprecantibus cum ea que supra retulimus respondet dominus, nouissime uenit ad sanctam dei genitricem sanctasque uirgines, sciens certissime earum exaudiri preces. ob quam rem cum surrexerit sancta dei genitrix, precatura suum filium cum sanctis uirginibus, statim assurrexit eis christus, dixitque sue sancte matri sanctisque uirginibus: quid a me poscis dulcissima mater, cum meis carissimis sororibus? cui sancta uirgo dum respondisset: quod pro anima fratris memorati postularet, christum ait illi: licet per prophetam dixeri neminem posse in meo tabernaculo habitare, nisi qui sine macula ingreditur, & iusticiam operatur, tamen quia tibi placet ut indulgentiam consequatur, concedo ut anima eius ad corpus reuertatur, ut acta de malis actibus penitentia, demum requie perfruatur. hec ut sancta uirgo sancto petro innotuit, confestim sanctus petrus magna claue quam tenebat diabolum terrens eum in fugam vertit & animam fratris eripuit. quam duobus spetiosis pueris commendauit, et et ipsi michilominus commendauerunt eam cuidam fratri, qui fuerat monachus prefati monasterii. qui reducens eam, rogauit quasi pro mercede ut singulis disebus diceret pro eo psalmum, misereri mei deus, & persepe scopis mundaret sepulchrum eius. at frater ille de morte resurgens, que sibi contigerant, uel quod uiderat narrauit, et quomodo a diaboli potestate fuisset ereptus, sufragiis sancte dei genitricis, atque sancti petri apostoli. sane si hoc quod narrauimus miraculum alicui uidetur incredible, cogitet quantum possit sancta dei genitrix supra omnes ordines sanctorum apud filium suum celi et terre dominum, et deponet omne incredulitatis ambiguum. si uero obicit de claue sancti petri qua terruit inimicum, meminerit quia incorporalia corporeis nisi per corporea narrari non possunt. maría josé mora university of sevilla 73 * * * 74 figure 1 fol. 7r of bl ms stowe 944 75 figure 2 fol. 6r of bl ms stowe 944 selim01.pdf 140 destiny, fortune and predestination in troilus and criseyde in order to discuss our subject, we must take into account the cosmological beliefs and ideas that the middle ages shared in respect of fortune, of fate, and predestination, so that we can apply them to chaucer’s works. to the medieval mind, divine intelligence was divided into several manifestations, providence among them; but it revealed itself through destiny, in different ways and at different times. we thus find that destiny is the ordering and the rules inherent in mutable things through which providence relates one thing to another and establishes their proper order.1 destiny is carried out by divine spirits (who are the servants of providence), by a soul (“anima mundi”), by nature, by the heavenly movement of stars, by the virtue of the angels, the machinations of the devils, or by all these together. destiny is highly divided and its influence reaches very far from its main function, although above everything there is fortune, a blind, whimsical force sometimes personified by a goddess, who determines the course followed by the various human baings in this world. the main characteristics of fortune are mutability, instability and 1.walter clyde curry, 1971, “destiny in troilus & criseyde” ii. in richard j. shoeck, ed. chaucer criticism, indiana univ. press: 34-5. 141 irrationality all of which tantamount to saying that, within the realms of fortune, we can find the events a man may go through in his life. this force, chaotic and illogical, can be either common or personal, depending on whether we deal with the universal experience of mankind or with the combination of two or more forces of destiny which affect specific events in the life of a person, such as birth, wealth or poverty, happiness or unhappiness, friendship, love and many others. in troilus and criseyde, chaucer shows us how the common fate of the protagonists is caused by “nature as destiny”1, that is to say, by the union of the various elements of the universe and the keeping of their own status as a result of the universal bond of love. the resulting fate is the work of destiny, which is inherent in the movements of the stars and other planets. thus we find in other works by the same author, “the knight’s tale”, for example, how the fate of palamon and arcite is presided over by the planets mars and saturn. at the end of “the nun’s priest’s tale”, fortune, personified as the goddess venus, changes the destiny of chanteclair: how, goode men, i prey yow hokneth alle lo, haw fortune turneth sodeynly the hope and pride eek hir enemy 2. in troilus and criseyde, chaucer sometimes presents fortune referring to some planet, with mysterious hints, about the tragic end of troy in oracles, dreams and divinations. 1.ibi.: 36-39. 2.chaucer, “the nun’s priest’s tale”. in the canterbury tales: lines 470-472. 142 in book i, the author1 begins with the double sorrow of troilus, who loved criseyde and whose love was rejected by her; but, imitating the tragedies of old, he develops this love story in the context of the long and cruel war of troy, which will eventually end in the total destruction of the city. calchas, astrologer and magician, receives, in this work, several signs from different sources that strange powers are going to converge on troy. the movements of the stars also agree with the forebodings of disaster, and, finally, apollo, through an oracle, tells him of the triumph of the greeks -and that is why calchas looks for shelter among the vanquishers: 10 now fell it so that in the town there was dwelling a lord of great anthovities a great dewign that cleped was calchas, that in science so expert was that he knew well that troye sholde destroyed be by answer of his god that hights thus: dan phoebus or apollo delphicus.2 (book i) this “nature as destiny” appears again when the love-story starts, with the prophecy that a powerful force of destiny will rule over the life and the actions of troilus; it is love’s force, which will subdue the proud heart of troilus, since no man can escape the blind power of love: 1.walter clyde curry, op. cit.,: 40-41. 2.all the quotations which will, gradually, appear in the present essay and refer to troilus and criseyde are from the following edition by john warrington, ed. 1966, troilus & criseyde, london: everyman’s library. 143 30 and with that word he gan cast up the browe, ascaunces, lo, is this not wysly spoken? at which the god of love gan looken rowe richt for despyt, and shoop for to be wroken, he kidde anoon his bowe nas not broken; for suddenly he hit him at the fulle; and yet as proud a peacock can he pulle. 31 o blinde world! o blind entencicum! how ofte fallet all th’ efect contraire of surquidry and foul presumpcioun; for caught is proud, and caught is debonnaire. this troilus is clomben on the stairs; and little weeneth that he must descenden, but alday falleth thing that fools ne wenden. (book i) afterwards, in love with criseyde, he bemoans the fact that “nature as destiny” has put him in chains and that it should be precisely criseyde, and not another trojan woman, his particular fortune made him fall in love with. troilus does not understand the path followed by his fortune, cannot see why destiny led him into this; therefore, when pandarus offers him his help, he rejects it, but he is comforted by pandarus´s words on the equitableness of fortune towards all men, now favourable, now unfavourable; but for ever turning its wheel and never giving it a rest. in book ii, the movements of the stars, the moon and venus above allhave a powerful influence on character; thus, pandarus, before talking to his niece about troilus’s love for her, considers it necessary to ascertain whether the stars will be propitious on those days: 144 11 and gen to call and dress him up to ryse, remenb’ing him his errand was done from troilus, and eke his great empryse; and cast , and knew in good plight was the mone to do viage, and took his wa y full sone unto his niece’s palace there besyde. now janus, god od entry, thou him gyde! (book ii) when at last troilus wins criseyde’s love, venus is in the perfect position in the sky1 to further the cause of love; this planet is favourable when it occupies the seventh house in the sky. chaucer mentions that the other planets were also in the adequate position to help troilus, although he only specifies clearly the position of venus in its seventh house. with this example, the author tells us that criseyde, at the time when she bestows her love, is under the influence of “nature as destiny” and the position of planets which helps to bring about the special fortunes of character, different from the general power of destiny. in book iv of the narrative there is a change of mood: personal fortune becomes adverse and tragedy begins to loom. so far the lovers had been happy, but “nature as destiny” has decreed their love and all the power of the movement of the stars had determined the conditions of their happiness; but now, as chaucer says, following boethius, a happy station is short-lived, since fortune takes criseyde from troilus’s arms and brings into its fateful wheel the greek diomedes: 1.walter clyde curry, op. cit., : 44-47. 145 1 but all too little (welaway the whyle!) lasteth such joy, y thanked be fortune by sort, and by augury eke, trewely, i dare well say the time is faste by that fyr and flame on all the yown shall spread; and thus shall toye turn in ashen dead, 18 for certain, phoebus and neptunus bothe, that makeden the walles of the town, ben with the folk of troy alwal so wrothe, that they will bring it to confusioun right in despyt of king laomedoun: because he nolde payen theme their hyre the town of troye shall ben set on fyre. (book iv) chaucer,1 having written book iv, in which the forces of destiny pushed the characters towards the final catastrophe, realized that the overall effect was not as precise or as complete as he had intended, and therefore, when fortune turns against the protagonist, he introduced troilus’s famous monologue about predestination and freewill in relationship to god. critics are rather reluctant to accept this insertion. for example, professor kean,2 thinks that the monologue is more important as a description of troilus’s character than because of the philosophy it contains. professor root3 considers that it is longer than it should 1.ibid., : 52-53. 2.patricia margaret kean, 1972, “the philosophy of troilus & criseyde” in chaucer and the making of english poetry, london: routledge & kegan paul: 175. 3.r.k. root, 1922. the poetry of chaucer. boston: houghton mifflin: 122. 146 really be, but that hamlet´s soliloquy is as much of a digresion, and that it totally agrees with troilus’s character as seen by chaucer. professor rollin patch1 tries to find, first of all, the relationship between the monologue and the events in the rest of the story; for example, troilus obtains ideas about these topics from clerks he talks to, and afterwards draws his own conclusions about god’s foreknowledge of everything and about man’s choice of action. in his story, chaucer follows boethius, with whom he is well acquainted, since the speaker in de consolatione philosophiae asks lady philosophy whether freedom of action exists; she answers it does, but he, after lady philosophy’s intervention, states his own ideas, which like troilus’s, are of an opposed nature. troilus thinks that man is not responsible for his actions, his merits or his shortcomings, since his reward or his punishment has been decided a priori. on the other hand, there are passages where chaucer tends to depart from his source. thus, at the beginning of the monologue, he uses a text from boethius different from what would seem adequate, in view of the fact that the sin of mankind would be almost perfect as an ending, but he uses it for the beginning in order to avoid any misinterpretation. at the end of the monologue in boethius, lady philosophy also answers the young man in a surprising manner: 16 i axe why thon wenest that thilke resouns of hem that assoilen this questioun ne ben hat speedful y -nough ne sufficient: the which “solicioun, or the whiche risoun”, for that it demeth that the prescience his nat cause of necessitee to thinges to comen, that he weneth it nat that freedorn of 1.howard rollin patch, 1969. “troilus on predestination”. in edward wagenknecht, ed chaucer, modern essays of criticism , oxford: oxford univ. press: 369-371. 147 wil be destorbed or y -let by prescience, (de consolatione philosophiae, book ii prose iv) after this speech by lady philosophy, the speaker admits his error; troilus, however, maintains his fatalistic points of view and does not offer any sort of possible solution to the problem. troilus’s monologue on predestination is really adequate to his dramatic character, but we cannot think that it contains chaucer’s views in this subject. professor rollin patch1 considers that chaucer’s sympathies are fully with his hero and that he went wholeheartedly into the difficulties of the lovers, but that he never set his values at this sentimental level or wanted, for a moment, to turn his work into a moral treatise. at the end, we do not know chaucer’s views on predestination, but we cannot enter into this because it would require a profound study of destiny, fortune and predestination in all his works2. what we can assert is chaucer’s great interest in these subjects, probably under the influence of boethius. professor kean3 considers that, notwithstanding all the circumstances involved in this work, this is really a love-story, allowing for the forms of philosophy it contains. bibliography boccaccio, giovanni: il filostrato. strasbourg: heitz & mundel chaucer, geoffrey: troilus & criseyde. in john warrington. ed. 1966. troilus & criseyde. london: dent, everyman’s library. 1.ibid.,: 374-375. 2.see, for example in “the nun’s priest’s tale” the following lines “witnesse on him that any parfit clerk is, / that in scole ...”: 480-490. 3.patricia margaret kean, op. cit., : 177. 148 curry, walter clyde: 1971. “destiny in troilus & criseyde” ii. in richard j. shoeck ed., chaucer criticism. indiana university press. gordon, ida l. 1970. the double sorrow of troilus, oxford: clarendon press. kean, patricia margaret. 1972. “love vision and debate”. in chaucer and the making of english poetry. london: routledge & kegan paul. knight, wilson. 1971. “the philosophy of troilus & criseyde”. in the wheel of fire. london: methuen. lawlor, john: 1968. chaucer . london: hutchinson. rollin patch, howard: 1969. “troilus on predestination”. in edward wagenknecht ed. chaucer: modern essays in criticism. oxford: oxford university press. isabel 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(paper). godden, m., s. keynes & m. lapidge, eds anglo saxon england 23. cambridge university press, 1994. godwin, m. the holy grail: its origins, secrets and meaning revealed. blooms bury, 1994. griffiths, j. & p. beal, ed english manuscripts studies 1100-1700. university of toronto press, 1994. hamer, r. a manuscript index to the index of middle english verse. university of toronto press, 1994. hanawalt, b. a. ed chaucer’s england: literature in historical context. university of minnesota press, 1994. hanna iii, r. william langland. variorum: u. k., 1993 (paper). harper-bill, c, ed anglo -norman studies xvii: proceedings of the battle conference 1994. boydell and brewer, 1995. harwood, b. j. piers plowman and the problem of belief. university of toronto press, 1993. hill, john m. the social world of beowulf. university of toronto press, 1994. hood, john y. b. aquinas and the jews. university of pennsylvania press, 1995. ____________________________________________________________________ 177 horrox, r. ed fifteenth-century attitudes: perceptions of society in late medieval england. cup, 1995. hughes, a. late medieval liturgical offices. tools for electronic research. text. pontifical institute of medieval studies, toronto, 1994. huot, s. the romance of the rose and its medieval readers: interpretation, reception, manuscript transmission. cup, 1993. irvine, susan, ed old english homilies from ms bodley 343. eets os 302. oup, 1993. itnyre, c. j. ed medieval family roles: a book of essays. garland, 1995. jack, g. ed bewulf: a student edition. oxford at the clarendon press, 1994. jackson, k. language and history in early britain . rpt. edn. four courts pr. irl, 1994. jaeger, c. stephen. the envy of angels: cathedral schools and social ideals in medieval europe, 950-1200. university of pennsylvania press, 1994. jimura, akiyuki, yoshiyuki nakao & masatsuru matsuo. a comprehensive list of textual comparison between blake’s and robinson’s editions of the canterbury tales. departments of english, hiroshima, 1994. jones, terry. chaucer’s knight: the portrait of a medieval mercenary. rvd. edn. methuen, 1994. jost, j. e. ed chaucer’s humor: critical essays. garland, 1994. kay, richard. dante’s christian astrology. university of pennsylvania press, 1994. kelly, h. a. ideas and forms of tragedy from aristotle to the middle ages. cambridge university press, 1993. antonio bravo ____________________________________________________________________ 178 keynes, simon. anglo -saxon history: a select bibliography. old english newsletter subsidia 13. binghamton, 1993. kim, t. the particle “tha” in the west saxon gospels: a discourse-level analysis. peter lang, 1994. kirkman, a. the three-voice mass in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries: style, distribution and case studies. garland, 1995. klassen, norman. chaucer on love, knowledge and sight. boydell and brewer, 1995. krygier, m. the disintegration of the english strong verb system. peter lang, 1994. kuczynski, m. p. prophetic song: the psalms as moral discourse in late medieval england. university of pennsylvania press, 1995. laing, lloyd. a catalogue of celtic ornamental metalwork in the british isles c. a. d. 400-1200. british archaeological reports. brit. ser. 229. 1993. lawton, david. blasphemy. university of pennsylvania press, 1993. le saux, f. ed amys and amylion. university of exeter press, 1994. liuzza, roy m. ed the old english versions of the gospels. vol. 1: text and intro duction. eets. os. 304. oup, 1994. lochrie, karma. margery kempe and translations of the flesh. university of pennsylvania press, 1994. 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and the self in medieval poetry: allan’s of lille’s anti-claudianus and john gower’s confessio amantis. cup, 1995. smith, s. l. the power of women: a topos in medieval art and literature. university of pennsylvania press, 1995. southern, r. w. scholastic humanism and the unification of europe: foundations. blackwell, 1994. spearing, a. c. the medieval poet as voyeur: secrecy, watching and listening in medieval love-narratives. cambridge university press, 1993. spearing, a. c. ed the pardoner’s prologue and tale. 2nd. edn. cambridge university press, 1994. stacey r. ch. the road to judgment: from custom to court in medieval ireland and wales. university of pennsylvania press, 1994. stevick, r. d. the earliest irish and english bookarts: visual and poetic forms before a. d. 1000. university of pennsylvania press, 1994. stone, gregory b. the death of the troubadour: the late medieval resis tance to the renaissance. university of pennsylvania press, 1994. antonio bravo ____________________________________________________________________ 184 switten, m. l. music and poetry in the middle ages: a guide to research on french and occitan song, 1100-1400. garland, 1995. tavormina, m. teresa. kindly similitude: marriage and family in piers plowman. boydell and brewer, 1995. thomas, hugh m. vassals, heiresses, crusaders, and thugs. the gentry of argevin yorkshire, 1154-1216. university of pennsylvania press, 1993. tite, c. the manuscript library of sir robert cotton. university of toronto press, 1994. toswell, m. j. ed prosody and poetics in the early middle ages: essays in honour of c. b. hieatt. university of toronto press, 1995. trussler, s. the cambridge illustrated history of british theatre. cambridge university press, 1994. van ostade & i. tieken-boon. the two versions of malory’s morte darthur: multiple negation and the editing of the text. boydell and brewer, 1995. wada, yoko, ed “temptations” from ancrene wisse. vol. 1. university press, osaka, 1994. walker, d. the normans in britain. blackwell, 1994. weever de, j. chaucer name dictionary: a guide to astrological, biblical, historical, literary and mythological names in the works of geoffrey chaucer. garland, 1994. weisl, angela j. conquering the reign of femeny: gender and genre in chaucer’s romance. boydell and brewer, 1995. whitaker, m. ed sovereign lady: essays on women in middle english lit erature. garland, 1995. ____________________________________________________________________ 185 willinsky, j. empire of words: the reign of the oed. princeton university press, 1995. wilkins, nigel. music in the age of chaucer. boydell and brewer, 1995. windeatt, barry. oxford guides to chaucer: troilus and criseyde. oxford at the clarendon press, 1995. wright, c. ed sir robert cotton as collector. university of toronto press, 1994. antonio bravo university of oviedo * † * selim05.pdf andrew breeze, selim 5 (1996): 116—118 sir gawain’s journey and holywell, wales lines 698-701 of sir gawain and the green knight describe how the hero, having travelled far into north wales, comes back into england. alle the iles of anglesay on lyft half he haldes, and fares over the fordes by the forlondes, over at the holy hede, til he hade eft bonk in the wyldrenesse of wyrale.1 that is, ‘keeping all the islands of anglesey on his left hand, and passing over the fords at the coastal promontories, he crossed over at the holy head, till he gained the shore once m re in the wilderness of wirral.’2 tolkien and go rdon understood sir gawain as journeying eastwards along the north wales coast, crossing the rivers conwy and clwyd where they enter the sea, as gerald of wales did in 1188. they cite the place-name y foryd (from môr ‘sea’ and rhyd ‘ford’) by the mouth of the clwyd in support of their argument.3 but the location of the holy hede has remained a puzzle. gollancz, citing r. v. chambers, took it as holywell (in the former flintshire), below which gawain might ford the dee at low tide. gollancz states that the ‘remains of a ford or ferry can be seen near holywell station and also at gayton [south of heswall] in wirral’. he thought the miracle of st winifred, the decapitated virgin patron of holywell, would appeal to gawain, besides explaining the name ‘holy head’. this argument was accepted by burrow, who quotes a reference of 1403 to fords ultra aquam de dee, perhaps as far down as holywell.4 1 the middle ages 700-1550, ed. m. j. alexander & felicity riddy (london, 1989), 281. 2 alexander & riddy, 280. 3 sir gawain and the green knight, ed. j. r. r. tolkien and e. v. gordon, 2nd edn (oxford, 1967), 97. 4 sir gawain and the green knight, ed. israel gollancz, eets o.s. 210 (1940), 107; j. a. burrow, a reading of ‘sir gawain and the green knight’, (london, 1965), 192. sir gawain’s journey and holywell ____________________________________________________________________ 121 however, dodgson rejected this, proposing that gawain crossed the dee much further down, along the line where it reaches the open sea between point of air in flintshire and west kirby in wirral.1 but this suggestion must be ruled out. dodgson’s explanation of the holy sede as ‘a periphrasis for kerkeby (west kirby) by a fancied analogy with the place-name holyhead for kaerkeby (caer gybi)’ is unconvincing, not least because kerkeby would be stressed on the first syllable, kaerkeby on the second. further, an attempt to ford the dee here would normally be suicidal; the only such recorded crossing (in a life of st werburgh) was miraculous, the dee opening like the red sea; and, as norman davis remarks, if gawain had taken this route, the poet would surely make more of it. davis also discounts gollancz’s link between the holy lede, holywell, and st winifred as ‘altogether too fanciful; the poet gives no hint that gawain went that way because of a special interest in heads chopped off and replaced.’2 andrew and waldron say of the holy hede that ‘the only real certainty is that it does not refer to holyhead in anglesey.’ they criticize the suggestion of p. l. heyworth in medium ævum, xli (1972), 124-7 that lines 698-9 refer to a crossing of the dee over to shotwick, between the headlands at blacon and burton (all places north-west of chester), as it does not explain the holy hede3‘ hence the scepticism of felicity riddy: ‘this location is unidentifiable; it is clearly not the holyhead on anglesey since it is at a crossing of the river dee.’4 yet all these problems may be solved very simply if we take hede in ? e hply hede as meaning, not ‘part of the body containing mouth and brain’ or ‘headland’, but ‘source of a river or stream’. this sense is first attested in oed from barbour’s bruce of 1375, which refers to the ‘hed off tay’, and occurs at such yorkshire places as coverhead (south of wensleydale) and ribblehead, 24 kilometres to the west.5 it also figures at pearl 974, where the 1 j. mcn. dodgson, sir gawain’s arrival in wirral, in early english and norse studies, ed. arthur brown & peter foote (london, 1963), 19-25. 2 tolkien & gordon, 97-8. 3 poems of the pearl manuscript, ed. m. r. andrew & r. a. waldron (london, 1978), 234. 4 alexander & riddy, 281. 5 eilert ekwall, the concise oxford dictionary of english place-names (oxford, 1936), 218. andrew breeze ____________________________________________________________________ 122 maiden tells the dreamer to go upstream to the source (bow up towarde thys bornes heued) if he would see the city of god. if the holy hede means ‘the holy sprlng or source’, it must mean holy well ‘holy spring’, of which holy hede is an exact equlvalent. this shrine of st winifred was famous through the centurles.1 as far as sir gawain and the green knight is concerned, interpretation of the holy hede as ‘holywell’ means line 699 would refer to the fords of conwy and clwyd, line 700 to the ford or ferry across the dee described by chambers, gollancz, and burrow. this strengthens arguments for associating the gawain -poet with the stanley family of storeton, which lies just six kilometres north-east of gayton. it also strengthens the argument that the gawain -poet knew the latin life of st winifred written by robert, prior of shrewsbury, which presents verbal parallels to the english poem. 2 in short, it provides evidence which may help us establish the exact identity of the gawain-poet. andrew breeze university of navarre, pamplona * † * 1 burrow, 190-4. 2 burrow, 193. selim04.pdf ____________________________________________________________________ 153 bately, janet 1993: anonymous old english homilies. a preliminary bibliography of source studies. center for medieval and early renais sance studies, state university of new york (suny) at binghamton. vi + 76 pp. (free to old english newsletter suscribers). this document of 5.5 x 8.5 inches was also handed out free of all charge to those attending the tenth open meeting of the project fontes anglo-saxonici. a register of sources used by authors in anglo-saxon england, which was held at king’s college, london, march 22nd 1994. though simply bound, this little book is a most useful tool of re search, an excellent example of scholarly integrity, and an encouraging path into new light for its providing readers with a fertile quarry of information only limited by the notion that source work is never definitive, but a pro cess carried out festina lente by the gathering of many hands. thus, professor jane bately’s compilation has been issued and given out thanks to the combined efforts of several people on both sides of the atlantic: fontes anglo-saxonici and king’s college, london (uk), and sources of anglo-saxon literary culture, the cemers at suny-binghamton as mentioned above, and old english newsletter (usa). this precious document will undoubtedly be welcomed by the profes sion not only for its own excellent merits but also as the first sample of a series of monographs to be published as part of the fontes anglo-saxonici project. the aim of the series is “to aid the compilers of the ‘regis ter of written sources used by authors in anglo -saxon england’, by providing details of potentially rele vant publications already in the public domain (...) a second aim is to provide a snap-shot of scholarship since source-studies first began, commemorating those early scholars who first blazed the trail for us in uncharted territories.” (p. ii) actually, the oldest reference here dates back to 1705. reviews, xavier campos ____________________________________________________________________ 154 material has been conceptually organized as an inverted pyramid. thus, section a is a broad base of prime val information under the title of manuscript collections, within which details of and references to the blickling homilies, bodley 343, vercelli homilies, and vespasian homilies are handsomely shown. eight outstanding titles set up section b, major modern collections. section c general, contains the references to one hundred and sixteen “studies relating to two or more homilies”. (p.4) section d, individual homilies, “editions and studies relating to sources and analogues” (p. 14), falls into a threefold division: 1) homilies for specified occasions (fifty homi lies considered), 2) homilies for unspecified occasions i (fifty eight homilies), and 3) homilies for unspecified occasions ii (sixteen homilies). section d also contains a considerable number of internal cross references, so that it is very easy to learn the existence and physical entity of manuscripts, facsimiles, and editions. in addition, further scholarly references to articles already published, plus the refe rence to several unpublished dissertations are inclu ded. appendix i fixes the relationship between cameron (1973, 1975, 1979) and the anonymous old english homilies here considered. appendix ii gives details mainly from ker (1957), and cameron (1973, 1975, 1979). one hundred and fourteen scholars set up the final index of authors, which is the top of this “inverted pyra mid”. the projects fontes anglo-saxonici (scragg, 1994) and sources of anglo-saxon literary culture (biggs, hill, szarmach, with the assistance of karen hammond, eds, 1990) are invitations to highly selective research, a path and a compass into “uncharted territories”, highly refined tools that the profession can use with meticulous care, precise implements to feel proud of. so, professor janet y. bately and the institutions behind her are to be warmly congratulated for this particular achievement. xavier campos vilanova universitat jaume i de castelló ____________________________________________________________________ 155 references biggs, frederick m., thomas d. hill, paul e. sza rmach with the asistance of karen hammond, eds., 1990: sources of anglo-saxon literary culture: a trial version, center for medieval and early renaissance studies, suny at binghamton, new york. cameron, angus 1973: a list of old english texts, in roberta frank and angus cameron, eds., a plan for the dictionary of old english , toronto, pp 29-267 cameron, angus 1975: short titles of old english texts, anglo-saxon england 4: 107-21. cameron, angus 1979: addenda and corrigenda, anglo-saxon studies 8: 331-3. ker, neil r. 1957: catalogue of manuscripts containing anglo-saxon, oxford. scragg, donald g. 1994: an introduction to ‘fontes anglo-saxonici’, an eight-page pamphlet given out in the tenth open meeting at king’s college in march 1994. the pamphlet was printed as an appendix to old english newsletter, and a similar article also by dr scragg was published in medieval english studies newsletter (tokyo). * † * selim 15.indb alejandro alcaraz-sintes, selim 13 (2005-2006): 9—46 old english ditransitive adjectives1 abstract this article describes old english ditransitive adjectives, that is, adjectives that license two complements and which may therefore be considered as three-argument predicates. one argument always surfaces as a nominative noun phrase functioning as clausal subject. the other two arguments are complements of the adjective and are realized as inflected noun phrases, prepositional phrases or clauses. the number of old english adjectives that may be considered to be ditransitive is small, as is also the case in present-day english. they denote such concepts as “gratitude,” “generosity and abundance,” “forgiveness,” “obedience,” “guilt and responsibility,” “deserving,” “agreement,” and “similarity.” i provide a hopefully complete list of these ditransitive adjectives, describe their semantic (argumental) and syntactic (complementational) patterns, contrast them with those of synonyms or of semanticallyand lexically-related adjectives, and show how this grammatical and semantic information may be encoded in a lexicon of adjectival complementation. keywords: adjective, argument, case, complement, complementation, ditransitive, lexicography, old english, role, semantics, syntax, transitive. resumen este artículo describe los adjetivos ditransitivos del inglés antiguo, es decir, los adjetivos que admiten dos complementos y que, por lo tanto, pueden considerarse como predicados con triple argumento. un argumento se presenta siempre como un sintagma nominal en caso nominativo cuya función es la de sujeto oracional. los otros dos argumentos son complementos del adjetivo y se realizan como sintagmas nominales marcados, sintagmas preposicionales u oraciones subordinadas. el número de adjetivos que pueden considerarse ditransitivos es reducido, tanto en inglés antiguo como en inglés contemporáneo. se refieren a conceptos como “gratitud”, “generosidad y abundancia”, “perdón”, “obediencia”, “culpa y responsabilidad”, “merecimiento”, “acuerdo” y “similaridad”. el artículo muestra una lista de estos adjetivos que aspira a ser completa, describe sus patrones semánticos (argumentales) y sintácticos (complementación), los contrasta con los patrones de adjetivos sinónimos o adjetivos relacionados semántica o sintácticamente, y muestra cómo esta información semántica y gramatical puede ser codificada en un lexicón de complementación adjetiva. palabras clave: adjetivo, argumento, caso, complementación, complemento, ditransitivo, inglés antiguo, lexicografía, rol, semántica, sintaxis, transitivo. 1 i express my gratitude to my anonymous referees for many corrections and suggestions for improvement, and to dr. belén méndez naya and dr. maría josé lópez couso of the universidade de santiago de compostela for their encouragement and wise criticism at the 18th selim conference in málaga, where i delivered a preliminary version of this article. naturally, all errors remain solely mine. i also acknowledge the financial support provided by the universidad de jaén and the junta de andalucía for a research period at the centre for medieval studies (university of toronto) in 2006, which has enabled me to further my investigation on old english adjectives. last, but not least, i also wish to convey my sincere gratitude to prof. antonette di paolo healey, for allowing me to use the facilities and resources of the dictionary of old english project, and to dr. ian mcdougall and dr. david mcdougall for valuable commentaries on many examples cited and not cited in this article. alejandro alcaraz-sintes 10 introduction objectives this article has a twofold objective. on the one hand, it purports to give a fairly complete list of old english (oe, henceforth) adjectives which are used as predicates in combination with a verb (bõon “be,” weorþan “be, become”, standan “stand,” wunian “remain,” …) and which can be considered as ditransitive, together with a detailed description of their semantic and syntactic configuration. on the other hand, it shows how the information resulting from this analysis may be recorded in a dictionary of adjectival complementation in oe. these two objectives are intertwined throughout the article and complement each other, since the analysis i posit for these adjectives is put to use as a major classifying parameter of adjectives and entry sections in the dictionary. to my knowledge, neither of these aims has been the subject of any monographic research in oe linguistic and lexicographic studies.2 this lexicon3 organizes 2 the two main dictionaries of old english — the 19th century dictionary of anglo-saxon (bosworth & toller, henceforth) and dictionary of old english in electronic form (doe, henceforth) — either do not provide information on the syntactic potential of adjectives or on their argumental structure, or do so indirectly, or in different sections and at different levels within the entries. for example, the doe does not systematically and explicitly distinguish between the predicative and the attributive (noun-modifying) usage of the adjective, a type of information which is only gathered from reading the examples, but which should — in my opinion — be stated explicitly for each headword or sense. as for the oxford english dictionary (oed, henceforth), it provides longer definitions, sometimes in combination with translation equivalents. however, one single definition often covers all the different meanings of the adjectives, irrespective of the fact that, depending on the meaning, the adjective may show different argumental and syntactic requirements. in short, not all complementational patterns are illustrated for each major period in the history of english. for example, s.v. guilty, the definition provided in the oed for sense 1 (the only one that goes back to the oe period) reads “that has offended or been in fault; delinquent, criminal. now in stronger sense: that has incurred guilt; deserving punishment and moral reprobation; culpable”. however, only one example corresponding to the oe period is included, and it does not have a complement. i therefore believe that a dictionary or lexicon dealing exclusively with adjectival complementation in oe is pertinent and certainly needed. old english ditransitive adjectives 11 entries at three levels: syntactic function of the adjective (attributive, postpositive or predicative), sense, semantic frame and syntactic structure. one major feature of this lexicon is that it provides synonyms, quasi-synonyms and antonyms for each sense of an adjective in order to facilitate quick comparison between the adjectives belonging to the same lexical class. it also provides definitions worded in a paraphrase-like manner.4 the reason why i have included in this article a sample dictionary entry along these lines for one adjective per semantic class of ditransitive adjectives is to demonstrate the practical value of my analysis of oe three-place or ditransitive adjectives. i will first define ditransitive adjectives (section 1), the case labels i have used (section 2), and show the different structures of the complements (section 3). i then present the various semantic classes and their members (section 4). each of the following sections (5–6) contains a detailed analysis of one representative adjective of the class, a sample dictionary entry, a comparison of the semantic and syntactic properties of different adjectives of the class (secondary or side issues are briefly dealt with in notes), and tables summarizing their complementational patterns and the realization of the arguments. finally i present an overall summary and my conclusions in section 7. 1.intransitive, transitive and ditransitive adjectives 3 a similar project was recently published for present-day english: herbst’s (2004) valency dictionary, which, however, does not include argument labels and deals with other word-classes as well. 4 thus, unlike the doe or bosworth & toller, which s.v. cystig, say “charitable, generous, munificent, liberal, bountiful” and “munificent, benevolent, bountiful, liberal, generous, good”, respectively, i propose the following definition “willing to give and share things”, while the pde adjectives would still be included in a special field for translation equivalents. alejandro alcaraz-sintes 12 it is first necessary to define the terms intransitive, transitive and ditransitive in order to delimit the type of adjectives described in this article.5 intransitive adjectives are those which are semantically self-sufficient and require no complementation, such as academic, neuter, bald or enormous. the vast majority of oe and pde are intransitive since they do not require a complement to complete their semantic potential. a transitive adjective is one whose semantic reading is vague and has to be restricted by means of a complementing structure, that is, adjectives which are not semantically full and which syntactically need a complementing structure, no matter whether this complement is a noun phrase (np), a prepositional phrase (pp) or a clause, such as anxious, delighted, devoid, fond, keen, mindful, proud or worth. the surface realization of the non-subject argument may be obligatory or optional. thus, georn “ready and willing” has a theme argument which is syntactically obligatory, there being no tokens without a complement in the toec. other adjectives also have this argument in their semantic structure, but its appearance in the surface does not seem to be compulsory. this is the case of ofergytol “forgetful”, which is found with and without a complement representing the theme argument; see example (1)6. transitive adjectives must therefore be seen a divalent or two-argument predicates. the other argument in example (1) is an experiencer, realized by the syntactic subject. (1) gecwomun ðegnas hissub [...] ofergeotole weron þæt hia hlafas onfengoncomp (came his disciples [...] forgetful were that they loaves had taken) (mtgl (li) 16.5) 5 see comesaña-rincón, 1986: 276, 287 and ff., 1998: 194, 2001a: 35 and ff. for the application of these terms to adjectives. as terms applied to verbs, see bolinger and sears 1981: 85, quirk & al. 1985: 1176 and ff., 1220 and ff., trask 1993: 284, biber & al. 2002: 47, and huddleston and pullum, 2002: 218–219, 542–543). 6 all my examples are excerpted from citations in the dictionary of old english corpus (doec, henceforth). i offer word-by-word translations, except when too literal a rendering would hinder comprehension or be too conspicuously agrammatical. old english ditransitive adjectives 13 transitive adjectives may be subdivided further into mono-transitive, which have only one complement, as in the above example, and ditransitive, which have two complements, such accountable or responsible. however, in this article the term ditransitive does not refer to the obligatory presence of two complements in the syntactic structure, but to the potential surfacing of either or both complements. thus example (2) contains two complements, but (3) contains none. yet, both are ditransitive, for it is the presence in the semantic structure of two arguments that is meant, whether overt or covert. in other words, ditransitive adjectives are trivalent or three-place adjectival predicates. (2) himcomp1 ealracomp2 wæs aracomp2 este ælmihtig godsub (to them in all favours was generous almighty god) (gena,b 1503) (3) beoð þancfulle (be thankful) (æchom i, 39, 606.18) comesaña-rincón (ibid.) also identifies pseudo-intransitive adjectives, which have a non-surfacing argument, such as ambitious or identical, corresponding to gelíc “similar” in example (4); and pseudo-transitive, which are accompanied by a complement-looking structure which does not actually belong to the semantic argument frame of the adjective, such as likely, acceptable, or difficult, corresponding to the adjectives toweard “imminent”, andfenge “acceptable”, and earfoþe “difficult” and eaþe “easy” in examples (5) to (8), respectively. i do not wholly agree with comesaña-rincón concerning pseudo-intransitive and pseudo-transitive adjectives. i believe that the dative np him in example (6) is an argument (experiencer) of the adjective that optionally surfaces as its complement. likewise, the infinitive clauses, to understandenne “to understand” and to slidenne “to fall” in examples (7) and (8) also belong to the semantic structure of the adjective (scope) and must be seen as complements of the adjective. what is more, i believe that there are grounds to consider some of these adjectives, such as gelíc (or even eaþe), as ditransitive adjectives, as we shall see further down (and in note 23). however, it is necessary first to define the meaning of the arguments, cases or semantic roles that i will be using in my description. alejandro alcaraz-sintes 14 (4) ures drihtnes dæda and þæs deoflessub [...] ne beon gelice (our lord’s works and the devil’s […] are not similar) (æhom 4 200) (5) se þe on þysne middeneard toweard is to cumenecomp (he who to this earth near is to come) (notes 21 (warn) 7) (6) se þe ondræt hyne د wyrcð rihtwisnyssesub andfencge ys himcomp (he who fears him & does justice acceptable is to him) (libsc 59.4) (7) swa wæs seo ealde .æ.sub swiðe earfoðe and digle to understandennecomp (so was the old law very difficult and obscure to understand) (æchom i,12, 188.6) (8) forlæten we […] æghwylce synne þissum gelice þasub þæm lichomancomp bið eaþe in to slidennecomp (let us abandon […] all sins to these similar which [for] the body are easy to fall in) (homu 15.1 (scragg) 126) 2.semantic roles in order to identify the different participants involved in the predication i will use a set of case labels, which have been current in the linguistic literature ever since they were originally proposed by fillmore (1968). the definitions i offer for the cases i use are almost standard now, but they mainly draw on cook (1998: 10–18), comesaña-rincón (2001b), and, in the case of the scope, tucker (1998). agent this is the case label for the participant which produces the action or process conveyed by the adjective predicate. the referent of this participant is normally personal, but it may also be inanimate, thus including other cases, such as instrument, force or cause, which i will not use in this article. examples: (9) and ðonne age we mycle þearfe þæt wesub=agent […] a wære beon wið deofles costnunga old english ditransitive adjectives 15 (and then it is very necessary that we […] always vigilant be against the devil’s temptations) (litben 7.8 (ure) 20) although agency is a concept usually associated with verbs and the actions they denote, there is a strong case for labelling as agent the argument of adjective predicates liable to be considered as process or action predicates, which often happens when the verb — the copula — is in the imperative mood, or if there is a participant affected by the action, whether actual or implied. in other words, the subject actively engages in an action. thus, the meaning of the adjective predicate in example (10) is “act with clemency / leniently.” (10) þonne byð us godsub=np=agent milde, and bliþe (homm 7 (then will be [to] us god mild and clement) (kertibc 1) 34) theme this argument basically refers to the participant described, an entity which is involved, consciously or unconsciously, in the state of affairs. in example (11), the theme surfaces as subject and is untainted by other meanings. however, in example (12), “se ende” may be seen as both as agent and theme, since it is the participant being described and also the participant producing some kind of effect upon another participant. finally, the theme may also manifest itself as a complement (example (13)). (11) eustachies wifsub=theme swiðe fæger wæs (eustace’s wife very beautiful was) (ls 8 (eust) 165) (12) himcomp se endesub=theme/agent wearð earm and þrealic (to him the end was miserable and woeful) (seasons 17) (13) sefasub wæs þe glædra þæs þe heo gehyrdecomp=theme (spirit was the gladder [on account of] that which he [had] heard) (el 955) experiencer alejandro alcaraz-sintes 16 this is the participant that experiences a sensation, an emotion or a cognitive process. it can surface as the subject of the clause (example (14)) or as the complement of the adjective (example (12) above). (14) ðonne hesub=experiencer/theme wæs hungrig ɞ þurstig, heo hine estlice gefylde (when he was hungry & thirsty, she him generously filled) (ls 22 (infestissmarie) 113) with “sensation” adjectives, the subject may be both the experiencer and the theme (example (14) above), where “he” is at the same time the entity described and the entity affected by the meanings conveyed by the adjectives. however, since hungrig and þurstig are inherently experiential, the participant experiencing these sensations are best labelled as experiencers. on the other hand, with “emotion” and “cognition” adjectives, the theme is a complement and it expresses the content of the experience. this complement is optional for “emotion” adjectives, that is, the argument may be covert (example (15)) or overt (example (16)). however, it is obligatory with “cognition” adjectives (example (17)). (15) ne beo gesub=experiencer dreorige: ne afyrhte (don’t you be distressed nor afraid) (æchom i, 29, 432.29) (16) þa wæs heosub=experiencer […] swiðe gedrefed bi swelcum witedomecomp=theme د forht geworden (then was she […] very frightened on account of such prophecy and troubled became) (bede 4 26.352.29) (17) ægþer þara folcasub=experiencer wæs þæs gefeohtescomp=theme georn (both peoples were for the fight eager) (or3 8.67.11) beneficiary this is the participant, always personal, that is affected positively or negatively by the emotion felt or the behaviour or attitude shown by the agent towards it. this agent may also be considered as experiencer, insofar as it is the participant that experiences the emotion towards the old english ditransitive adjectives 17 beneficiary and acts accordingly. however, since this emotion (e.g., gratitude, generosity, forgiveness or obedience) is normally expressed through some kind of active or willing behaviour, i prefer to keep the label agent. the beneficiary normally surfaces as a dative np, as in example (18): (18) heosub=agent her […] his ðrowunge ɞ his eadmodnessecomp1=theme […] himcomp2=beneficiary þoncfulle wæren (they here [for] his suffering & his humility [to] him thankful were) (homu 2 (belf 11) 116) scope this case specifies the extent to which the meaning conveyed by the adjective is valid. although debatable, i believe it must be included in the semantic frame of adjectives whose meaning is too general or vague to be left without any further specification for the proposition to make sense. in fact, the more general the meaning, the more necessary it seems to be. thus, in example (19) the meaning of genďh is semantically incomplete without the scope, and the infinitive tď healdenne should be seen as an optional complement realizing this argument. the same might be said of the anhydig in example (20). (19) twydæglic fæsten oðþe þreodæglic fæstensub=theme is genoh to healdennecomp=scope (two-day-long fast or three-day-long fast is enough to hold) (bede 4 26.350.31) (20) þær se halga þeowsub=theme elnescomp=scope anhydig eard weardade (there the holy servant [of] courage resolute the land guarded) (gutha,b 894) locative this is the entity where the state of affairs exists. not many adjectival predicates contain this argument in their semantic structure (and with many of them it is figuratively that we must understand it): only those referring to spatial relations (andweard “present,” feor “far,” gehende “near,” neah “near”) and alejandro alcaraz-sintes 18 those expressing lack or abundance of something (full “full,” genyhtsum “abundant,” rĭmgifol “abundant,” rĭmlíc “abundant,” spõdig “abundant,” wana “lacking,” welig “abundant”). in the case of the “proximity” adjectives, both the subject and the complement can be considered as theme and locative at the same time. in fact, the participants may exchange their syntactic functions, with no semantic alteration of the proposition, apart from the focus. example (21) can be rewritten as (22).7 as for the “abundance” adjectives, the theme and the locative can both surface as either subject or complement; see examples (23) and (24). (21) hesub=theme/locative wæs gehende þam scipecomp=theme/locative (he was near [to] the ship) (jn (nap) 6.19) (22) *þæt scipsub=theme/locative wæs himcomp=theme/locative gehende (the ship was [to] him near) (23) hit is welig þis ealondsub=locative on wæstmum ɞ on treowum misenlicra cynnacomp=theme (it is fruitful this island in fruits & in trees [of] different kinds) (bede 1 0.26.2) (24) eower lufusub=theme is betweoxn eowcomp=locative suiðe genyhtsumu (your love is between you very abundant) (cp 32.213.7) 3.types of syntactic complements the different types of structures that adjectival complements adopt are the following: a. a genitive np (georn deadra manna feos “eager [for] dead men’s property”, homs 14 (blhom4) 70), a dative np (azarias […] dædum georn “azariah […] [in] deeds ardent”, az 1), and in a few instances an accusative np (ælc þæra wita wyrðe “[to] each of the fines entitled”, 7 the asterisk in this article indicates that the example is not attested, but made up for illustrative or comparison purposes. old english ditransitive adjectives 19 lawiatr 1.14)) or an instrumental np (þy hade […] wyrðne “[of] the office […] worthy”, bede 4 2.260.3). b. a prepositional phrase (georne […] ymbe godra manna þearfe “diligent […] about good men’s need”, bo 7.18.16). c. a clause, whether finite (georne ne gewilnigende þæt þine deda halige gesæde beon ær hi halige gewurðan “eager nor desirous that your actions holy should be called before they holy become”, conf 1.4 (logeman) 68) or nonfinite (inflected or simple infinitive) (geornful to witanne þætte ær wæs “eager to know what before was”, solil 2 63.24); georn […] geseon sigora frean “eager […] [to] gaze upon the lord of victories”, guth a,b 1077). 5.the oe ditransitive adjectival predicates the adjectives there are around 50 adjectives in oe which may be considered to be ditransitive. they can be grouped semantically into eight classes. table 1 includes all those adjectives which i consider to have a three-place argument structure and which are used with either or both arguments as complements. the italics in the adjectives at the bottom of each group indicates that there are no attested examples in which both non-subject arguments surface at the same time. translation equivalents are taken from the doe (dictionary of old english), bosworth & toller, and/or the oed (oxford english dictionary). table 1. list of adjectives and semantic classification8 gratitude þancful “thankful,” uncĩþfull “ungrateful,” unþancfull “ungrateful,” unþancol “ungrateful.” generosity/ abundance cystig “generous,” ôste “liberal,” genyhtsum “plenteous,” rĩmgifol “generous,” rĩmheort “generous,” rĩmmčd “generous,” spôdig “generous,” fæsthafol niggardly,” r×cel×as “parsimonious,” heamol “parsimonious,” [fulgenyhtsum “very abundant,” ungenyhtsum “insufficient,” wana “lacking”], 8 the adjectives enclosed in square brackets semantically belong with the others, but are not ditransitive. alejandro alcaraz-sintes 20 [ælmesgeorn “charitable”]. forgiveness ârfull “compassionate,” forgyfen “forgiving,” forgyfende “forgiving,” unforgyfend “unforgiving.” obedience ôaþmčd “submissive,” gehƨrsum “obedient,” ungehƨrsum “disobedient.” guilt/ responsibility fâh “stained,” forscyldigod “guilty,” forworht “condemned, guilty,” gyltig “guilty,” scyldig “guilty,” sinnig “guilty,” þurhscyldig “very guilty,” unscyldig “innocent,” [åfƫled “defiled,” bilewit “innocent,” clŧne “clean,” unsinnig “not sinful,” unwemme “undefiled,” weorþ “guilty”]. deserving medeme “entitled,” unmedeme “not entitled,” weorþ “worthy,” unweorþ “unworthy,” unweorþlëc “unfitting,” [weorþfull “deserving,” weorþig “deserving,” weorþlîc “suitable”]. agreement ânræd “one-minded, agreeing,” geþwære “agreed,” ungerâd “discordant,” ungeþwære “disagreed.” similarity gelëc “like, similar,” anlëc “like, similar,” ungelëc “unlike.” i think that the meaning of these adjectives is not complete if at least two arguments — i insist, other than that surfacing as subject — are not taken into account. one may understand this through paraphrases: one is thankful to somebody for something, generous to something in something, obedient to somebody in something, forgiving of something to someone, deserving of something on account of something, responsible/guilty to somebody for something, agreed with somebody in something, similar to somebody/ something in something. the adjectives contained in table 1 are not always monosemous and therefore each sense section in the dictionary will state the differences in the number and nature of the arguments and in the type of syntactic complementation. figure 1 below is a tentative entry of the adjective þancful, old english ditransitive adjectives 21 where three basic meanings are explained according to what has been said so far, although it is only in sense 3 that þancful is ditransitive.9 adjectives of “gratitude” adjectives denoting “gratitude” are in principle liable to take three arguments: somebody [agent] is thankful to somebody else (beneficiary) for something (theme). this pattern will be illustrated with a sample dictionary entry (figure 1) for the adjective þancful.10 the agent always surfaces as subject; the beneficiary — an optional complement — is always found as a dative np; and the theme — optional — is always found as a genitive np. figure 1. dictionary entry of þancful11 þancful ܽ feeling or expressing gratitude to somebody for something � grateful, thankful ڢ uncĭþful, unþancfull, unþancol � predicative (cs) � agent, beneficiary, theme ;s+v+adj+c1+c2: [v = cop bõon/wesan] [s = pers; np; agent] [c1= pers; npdat ݏ beneficiary] [c2= abst; npgen; theme] • wesað þancfulle þon hælendec1=npdat=beneficiary eoweres andleofanc2=npgen=theme (be thankful [to] the saviour [for] your sustenance) (ls 12 (natjnbapt) 151) • heosub=np=agent […] his ðrowunge ɞ his eadmodnessec2=npgen=theme mid worde د weorcum himc1=npdat beneficiary þoncfulle wæren (they […] [for] his suffering & his mercy with word and 9 the dictionary entry in figure 1 contains some additional fields which, in my opinion, ought to be included in a lexicon of adjectival complementation, such as fields for synonyms, semantically related adjectives and antonyms (symbols =, ڡ and ڢ, respectively) and labels for different types of referents (personal, abstract, action…). i do not include the fields recording collocational patterns (that is, adjectives frequently used in coordination with the headword or found in its immediate vicinity, such as na georn ne gewilnigende “neither eager or willing” (conf 1.4 (logeman) 68), and frequent nouns in subject function, such as such as synnful + cild / folc / gãst / man / wíf “sinful + child / folk / spirit / man / woman”). 10 þancful has other senses, not presented here, namely, “causing pleasure to somebody (on account of something)” and “feeling satisfied with something.” 11 the order in which the various elements appear in the semantic frame and syntactic pattern boxes does not reflect the actual syntagmatic order in which the different elements are found in the examples. alejandro alcaraz-sintes 22 works [to] him thankful were) (homu 2 (belf 11) 116) ᆧ s+v+adj+(c1)+c2: [v = cop bõon/wesan] [s = pers; np; agent] [(c1) = pers; beneficiary] [c2 = pers/abst; npgen; theme] • þæt folcsub=np=agent wearð ða swa fagen his cystignessac2=npgen=theme and swa þancful (the people became then so joyful [for] his generosity and so thankful) (apt 10.14) ݑ s+v+adj+(c1)+(c2): [v = cop bõon/wesan] [s = pers; np; agent] [(c1); pers; beneficiary] [(c2); pers/abst; theme] • beoð ðancfulle (be thankful) (æchom i, 39, 606.18) the adjective has three antonyms: unþancful, unþancol and uncĭþ, roughly translatable as “ungrateful.” the patterns seen in the extant examples of these adjectives are shown in table 2, together with those of þancful (in sense 3), for contrast. table 2. syntactic complementation patterns of adjectives of “gratitude” s+v+adj+c 1+c 2 s+v+adj+c1+(c2 ) s+v+adj+(c1)+c 2 s+v+adj+(c1)+(c2 ) þancful + – + + uncĭþful + – – – unþancful + + – – unþancol + – + – since all the patterns, except that with only c1 (beneficiary) surfacing, have been illustrated in figure 1, i provide just one here, with unþancful: (25) þusub=np=agent wære swa ungeþancfull þinum drihtnec1=npdat=beneficiary (you were so ungrateful [to] your lord) (homu 37 (nap 46) 235) as for the different types of structure that the complements of the four “gratitude” adjectives take, there is a neat correlation between argument and structure: the argument beneficiary is always realized by a dative np (c1), while the theme is always genitive np (c2). adjectives of “generosity” and “abundance” adjectives of “generosity” and “abundance” take three arguments, agent, beneficiary and theme. i will illustrate the dictionary entry for adjectives of this group with cystig (see figure 2 below). the agent is obligatory and old english ditransitive adjectives 23 surfaces as subject, while the other arguments, beneficiary and theme, are optional. i have found no examples in which they co-occur, unlike þancful. however, this should not rule out the need for its inclusion in the group of ditransitive adjectives. since some of the synonyms (õste, genyhtsum, rĭmmďd and spõdig) are indeed found with two overt complements, one may safely presume that the same holds for cystig, despite the lack of evidence in extant texts. figure 2. dictionary entry of cystig cystig willing to give and share things � generous, liberal, munificent. ڡ genyhtsum, rĭmgifol, rĭmheort, rĭmmďd ڢ fæsthafol � predicative (cs) � agent, beneficiary, theme ;s+v+adj+c1+(c2): [v = cop bõon/wesan] [s = pers; np; agent] [c1= pers ݏ npdat; beneficiary] [(c2)= -anim; theme] • hesub=np=agent wæs cystig wædlum and wydewumc1=npdat=beneficiary swa swa fæder (he was generous [to] orphans and widows as father) (æls (edmund), 22) ᆧ s+v+adj+(c1)+c2: [v = cop weorþan] [(c1); pers; beneficiary] [c2 = -anim; pp: on; theme] • þa wearð se cynincg oswoldsub=np=agent […] on eallum þingumc2=ppon=theme cystig (then became king oswald […] in all things generous) (æls (oswald), 83) ݑ s+v+adj+(c1)+(c2): [v = cop bõon/wesan] [s = pers; np; agent] [(c1); pers; beneficiary] [(c2); -anim; theme] • horderesub=np=agent si gecoren of gegæderunge wis […] na cystig ac atodrædenne (the janitor [must] be chosen by the congregation wise […] not liberal but fearful) (benrgl 31.61.4) examples (2), with este, and (27), with genyhtsum illustrate the syntactic pattern with overt beneficiary and theme, while example (28), with spõdig, illustrates a the pattern with a covert beneficiary and an overt theme. (26) forþon þusub=np=agent drihtyn wynsum د milde eart د genihtsum on mildheortnyssec2=ppon=theme eallum gecigyndumc1=npdat=beneficiary (because you, lord, sweet & mild are & plenteous in mercy [to] all calling on you) (psglc (wildhagen) 85.5) (27) forðon þu drihten wynsum د biliwite þusub=np=agent eart د spedig on mildheortnessec2=ppon=theme eallum gecigendum þec1=npdat=beneficiary alejandro alcaraz-sintes 24 (because you, lord, pleasant & amiable you are & generous in mercy [to] all calling on you) (psgll (lindelöf) 85.5) (28) on ælmesdædumcomp=theme hesub=agent wæs rumgiful (in alms-deeds he was generous) (æls (oswald), 83) the extant examples of some antonyms of genyhtsum “generous”, such as fæsthafol, heamol and rõcelõas “niggardly, parsimonious,” only illustrate their use with two arguments, an agent (subject) and a theme (surfacing as a genitive np complement), but not with an beneficiary. yet, i believe that an beneficiary argument ought to be included in its semantic frame; see example (29). (29) for hwi wære þusub=np=agent swa fæsthafol minra godac2=npgen=theme? (why were you so parsimonious [with] my good [things]?) (homs 40.1 (nap 49) 165) table 3 summarizes the different syntactic patterns of the “generosity/ abundance” adjectives. table 3. complementation patterns of adjectives of “generosity” and “abundance” s+v+adj+c1+c 2 s+v+adj+c1+(c2 ) s+v+adj+(c1)+c 2 s+v+adj+(c1)+(c2 ) cystig – + + + õste + + – – genyhtsu m + + – – rĭmgifol – –12 + + rĭmheort – + + + rĭmmďd + + + – spõdig + – – + fæsthafol + heamol + 12 note, however, that there exists an example for this pattern with the corresponding noun: hesub. [oswald] wæs eallumc1=npdat=beneficiary rumgeofa ge æðelum ge unæðelum c1=npdat= beneficiary (bede 3 12.194.31) (he [oswald] was to all [a] liberal [one], both to high [ones] and low [ones]). old english ditransitive adjectives 25 rõcelõas + the boundary between both the meanings of “generosity” and “abundance” is often blurred: “having abundance of something” being a necessary condition for “acting with generosity”, but not vice versa. not all adjectives belonging to this semantic class qualify to their inclusion among ditransitive adjectives. for example, spõdig is ditransitive in (27) above, but if the subject has inanimate reference (and materializes a locative instead of an agent argument), the semantic frame cannot contain an beneficiary; see example (30). the same is true of fulgenyhtsum “very abundant” and wana “lacking”.13 however, the antonym ungenyhtsum “insufficient”, in its unique occurrence in the doec, has a different semantic frame (overt theme and scope, covert beneficiary).14 (30) ic his cynnsub(obj)=np=locative gedo […] wæstmumc=npdat=theme spedig (i his kin will make […] in fruits plentiful) (gena,b 2801) (31) gif soþlice seo tidsub=np=theme eal þis to gefremmannec=enneinfclause=scope ungenihtsum beo […] (if indeed the time all this to perform insufficient should be […]) (thcap 2 (sauer) 29.351.12) table 4 shows the different structures used by the complements of the adjectives of this group. c1 (beneficiary) correlates with a dative np and with pps headed by ofer, while c2 (theme) correlates with a genitive np and 13 besides, these adjectives are used in impersonal constructions, which cannot contain more than two arguments, either because the subject is clausal or because it is a subjectless clause. examples: genoh is munucec=npdat=experiencer and fulgenihtsum, þæt he hæbbe twa cugelan and twegen syricas for þære nihtwaresub=þætclause=theme (enough is [for a] monk and sufficient, that he have two cowls and two for the night-ware, benr 55.91.2); þam husec1=npdat=locative ne bið wana þæs healican leohtesc2=npgen=theme ([to] that house shall not be lacking [of] sublime light, æls (thomas), 66) (or take wana as a noun). 14 i justify this analysis further down. see example (45) and note 23. alejandro alcaraz-sintes 26 with a pp headed by on, fram and of, with very few examples with a dative np, in poetry. table 4. formal realization of the complements of “generosity and abundance” adjectives dative np genitive np prepositional phrase infinitive clause c1 c2 c1 c2 c1 c2 c1 c2 (scope) cystig + on õste + + genyhtsum + on rĭmgifol + on rĭmheort + + rĭmmďd + + ofer on spõdig + on ungenyhtsum + fæsthafol + heamul + rõcelõas + adjectives of “forgiveness” adjectives of “forgiveness” have three arguments (agent, beneficiary and theme). unlike the adjectives of the semantic classes seen so far, they are never found with the two non-agent arguments used at the same time. from a semantic point of view, the arguments are obligatory, but syntactically they are deletable and must be recovered from the context. the dictionary entry in figure 3 illustrates the adjective forgyfen “forgiving.”15 figure 3. dictionary entry of forgyfen forgyfen ready to show mercy and grant forgiveness to somebody for something � merciful, forgiving, compassionate = ãrful, forgyfende ڢ unforgyfende � predicative (cs) 15 past participle of forgyfan “to forgive” used as an adjective, with an active sense; see the doe, s.v. forgyfan d.3.f.ii.a. old english ditransitive adjectives 27 � agent, beneficiary, theme ݏ s+v+adj+c1+(c2): [v = cop bõon/wesan, weorþan] [s = pers; np; agent] [c1 = pers; npdat; beneficiary] [(c2); abst; theme] • hiesub=np=agent […] him eallumc1=npdat=beneficiary wurdon to milde د to forgiefene (they […] [to] them all became very mild & very forgiving) (or4 3.87.17) ᆧ s+v+adj+(c1)+c2: [v = cop bõon/wesan, weorþan] [s = pers; np; agent] [(c1); pers; beneficiary] [c2 = abst; npdat; theme] • sie god ælmihtigsub=np=agent […] eallum eowrum synnumc2=npdat=theme forgifen (conf 9.5 (först) 7) (let god almighty […] be forgiving [of] all your sins) there follow a few examples with other adjectives of the group: (32) sesub=np=agent arfull vel mild bið eallum unrihtwisnyssum þinumc2=npdat=theme (he merciful and mild will be [to] all your iniquities) (psglc (wildhagen) 102.3) (33) hesub=np=agent wæs swa heard د unforgyfende þam forwyrhtum mannum c1=npdat=beneficiary (he was so hard & unforgiving [to] the guilty men) (gdpref and 4 (c) 37.319.24) (34) and þusub=np=agent hælend crist sy […] forgifende […] mine synna and mine giltas c2=npacc=theme (and you, healing christ, be […]forgiving […] [of] my sins and my guilts) (conf 4 (fowler) 18.71)16 the patterns found in the doec citations are summarized in table 5. table 5. complementation patterns of adjectives of “forgiving” s+v+adj+c1+c2 s+v+adj+c1+(c2) s+v+adj+(c1)+c2 s+v+adj+(c 1)+(c2 ) 16 i analyse the structure bõon forgyfend (example (34)) as “copula + adjective”, even though this interpretation may be debatable, for various reasons: a) the form may also be used attributively (forgifendre miltse (arprgl 1 (forgiving mercy, holt-campb) 27.19)); b) its antonym unforgyfende is necessarily an adjective (example (33)), since there exists no such verb as *unforgyfan; c) the verb is in the imperative mood, which is semantically incompatible with a progressive interpretation (see quirk & al. 1985: 827); and d) even though in (34) the complement (theme) is in the accusative, which is the expected inflection as object of the verb (see the doe, s.v. forgyfan, sense d.3.d ), examples with a genitive form are also found, in which i consider the participial form to be adjectival: bið hesub=np=agent […] forgifende ura synna c2=npacc=theme (he shall be […] forgiving [of] our sins, homs 8 (blhom2) 95). see in this respect visser (1963–1973: 1931), mitchell (1985: i 272–280), denison (1993: chapter 13) and fischer and van der wurff (2006: 135 and ff.). alejandro alcaraz-sintes 28 ãrfull – – + – forgyfen – + + – forgyfende – – + + unforgyfende – + – – the formal realizations of complements of adjectives of “forgiving” are shown in table 6. again, c1 (beneficiary) is always realized by a dative np, while c2 (theme) may be a genitive, an accusative, or a dative np. table 6. formal realization of adjectives of “forgiving” genitive np accusative np dative np c1 c2 c1 c2 c1 c2 ãrfull + forgyfen + + forgyfende + + unforgyfend + adjectives of “obedience” adjectives of “obedience” also require beneficiary and theme arguments, apart from the agent: one is obedient to somebody in something. the adjective gehƶrsum is used in all four syntactic patterns, while the antonym ungehƶrsum lacks a surviving example with simultaneous surfacing of the two non-subject arguments. i am aware that the paraphrase used (“be obedient to somebody in something”) is misleading, since it would seem that the argument i call theme here is in fact scope, that is, it fences in the extent of one’s obedience. however, i think it is not. the fact that a pp is used for c2 should not bias us against choosing the label theme for this argument. this is borne out by a comparison of the referents of c2 in the examples of the entry for gehyrsum in figure 4. we can readily see that they are of the same nature and, whether the syntactic pattern is c1+c2 or (c1)+c2, what the agent is compliant with is still an order or a wish. figure 4 shows the dictionary entry of gehƶrsum. figure 4. dictionary entry of gehƶrsum old english ditransitive adjectives 29 gehyrsum feeling or expressing obedience to somebody in something � obedient, submissive = õaþmďd ڢ ungehƶrsum � predicative (cs/co) � agent, beneficiary, theme ݏ s+v+adj+c1+c2: [v = cop bõon/wesan] [s = pers; np; agent] [c1 = pers; npdat; beneficiary] [c2 = abst; ppæt/in/on/tď; theme] • gif gesub=np=agent æt þissum þreom þingumc2=ppæt=theme mec1=npdat=beneficiary hyrsume beon willað (if you in these three things [to] me obedient will be) (bede 2 2.102.10) ݐ s+v+adj+c1+(c2): [v = cop bõon/wesan, weorþan; intr wunian] [s = np; pers; agent] [c1 = pers; npdat/pptď; beneficiary] [c2 = abst; (c); theme] • ge ðeowansub=np=agent. beoð gehyrsume eowerum hlafordumc1=npdat=beneficiary (you servants, be obedient [to] your masters) (æchom ii, 21, 186.216) • hesub=np=agent sceal beon […] hersum to ælcum men د to godec1=nptď=beneficiary (he must be […] obedient to all men & to god) (homs 2 (scraggverc16) 185) ݑ s+v+adj+(c1)+c2: [v = cop bõon/wesan] [s = pers; np; agent] [c1) = pers; beneficiary] [c2 = npdat; abst; theme] • ðusub=np=agent wære gehyrsum ðines wifes wordumc2=npdat=theme (you were obedient [to] your wife’s words) (æchom i, 1, = s+v+adj+(c1)+(c2): [v = cop bõon/wesan, bõon/wesan geworden] [s ݒ (18.12 pers; np; agent] [(c1); pers; beneficiary] [(c2) = abst; theme] • læcedemonie þære byrigsub=np=agent siþþan gehiersume wæron (the lacedemonians of that city afterwards obedient were) (or3 1.55.9) the adjective õaþmďd, when used predicatively, is never found with a theme argument. however, there is one example, (35), in which it is used attributively and has one such argument, but no beneficiary.17 (35) he on brytene her eaðmode him eorlassub(obj)=np=agent funde to godes willanc2=pptď=theme 17 another example of õaþmďd which is somewhat misleading is the following: wite he eac, þæt hesub=np=experiencer?/agent? swa micle eaðmodra beon sceal on regoles underþeodnesse c2:ppon=theme/scope?, swa miclum swa he furðor forlæten is (let him also know that he must be all the more submissive/humble in [to?] the obedience of the rule the more he is allowed [in the service], benr 62.111.20)). ôaþmďd also means “humble, meek.” if we consider that this is the sense it has in the previous example, then the pp on regoles underþeodnesse could be labelled scope. but if we consider that it is the sense “obedient” that is being conveyed, then the pp is a theme. this would also alter the type of argument surfacing as subject: experiencer in the former interpretation, agent in the latter. alejandro alcaraz-sintes 30 (he in britain here obedient [for] himself earls found to god’s will [͸ he found himself law-abiding earls]) (men 95) table 7 shows the different complementation patterns of the two adjectives. table 7. complementation patterns of adjectives of “obedience” s+v+adj+c1+c2 s+v+adj+c1+(c2) s+v+adj+(c1)+c2 s+v+adj+(c1)+(c2) gehƶrsum + + + + õaþmďd – + – + ungehƶrsum – + + + the formal realizations of complements of adjectives of “obedience” are shown in table 8. c1 (beneficiary) can be either a dative np or a pp headed by tď or wiþ. c2 (theme) can be dative or genitive np or a pp with æt, in, on, tď. table 8. formal realization of adjectives of “obedience” dative np genitive np prepositional phrase c1 c2 c1 c2 c1 c2 gehƶrsum + + tď æt, in, on, tď ungehƶrsu m + + + õaþmďd + wiþ on, tď adjectives of “guilt and responsibility” this group of adjectives is semantically heterogeneous: not all of them have the same meaning components and some of them present great complexity in their denotations. this can be illustrated by means of paraphrases: one can be accountable for something (e.g., a crime or a sin) and, if found out, be liable to judgement, and if convicted, be liable to a sentence (that is, the punishment), while being responsible to somebody for the crime or sin committed. naturally, we are not going to find more than two of these complements used at the same time. however, two arguments may surface in the same element. old english ditransitive adjectives 31 for example, in sense 1 of scyldig (see figure 5), the subject is both agent, insofar as he is the doer of the action, and experiencer, since he is liable to undergo a punishment. besides, the semantic frame would contain two theme arguments, one of which should perhaps be given a more specific case label, such as cause. this contingency — the presence of two themes — actually only happens with very few adjectives and does not invalidate our choice of argument labels. it should be considered as an idiosyncratic feature of the adjective scyldig itself. however, for the sake of consistency, since i have used the term cause for no other adjective, i will refer to this argument as theme, and distinguish between the two themes by means of superscript numerals. sense 2 of scyldig also involves two arguments, though they are different from those it has in sense 1. here we have an agent surfacing as subject, an experiencer and an optional theme, which is always the price the subject referent must pay to compensate for his crime or sin. figure 5. dictionary entry of scyldig scyldig ܽ responsible or convicted for a crime and liable to punishment � guilty, convicted, liable ڡ weorþ � predicative (cs) � agent/experiencer, theme 1, theme 2 ;s+v+adj+c1+c2: [v = cop bõon/wesan] [s = pers; np ݏ agent/experiencer] [c1 = pers; ppfor; theme1] [c2 = abst; pptď; theme2] • scyldig hesub=np=agent/experiencer wæs to hellicere suslec1=pptď=theme1 for his mandædumc2=ppfor=theme2(cause) (guilty he was to hellish torment for his crimes) (æchom ii, 5, 45.131) ܾ responsible to someone and liable to punishment � guilty, liable ڡ weorþ � predicative (cs) � agent, experiencer, theme ݏ s+v+adj+c 1+c2: [v = cop bõon/wesan] [s = np; agent] [c1 = pers; npdat/ppwiþ; experiencer] [c2 = abst; npgen, dat, acc/ppwiþ; theme] • and gif hit hwa gedon hæbbe, beo hesub=np=agent […] wið þone cyningcc1=ppwiþ=experiencer scyldig ealles þæs, þe he age c2=npgen= theme (and if somebody should have done it, let him be […] against the king guilty [of] all that which he may own [i.e., liable to pay compensation]) (homu 40 (nap 50) 178) • twegen gafolgylderassub=np=agent wæron feohc2=npacc=theme scyldige sumum masserec1=npdat=experiencer (twelve tribute-payers were [to] money liable [to] some merchant) (æhomm 12 (brot 1), 163) • þusub=np=agent eart wið mec alejandro alcaraz-sintes 32 c1=ppwiþ=experiencer deaþec2npdat=theme scyldig, forþon ealle mine broðor […] wæron ofslegene (you are liable against me [to] death, because all my brothers […] were killed) (bede 4 23.328.24) • and se ðe rihte lage د rihtne dom forsace, beo se sub=np=agent scyldig wið þone þe hit agec2 =ppwiþ=theme: swa wið cyningc c1=ppwiþ =experiencer cxx scyllingac2=np=theme, swa wið eorlc1=pp wiþ =experiencer lx scyllingac2= np=theme (and he who disregards rightful law & rightful judgement, he shall be guilty against him [to whom] he owes: against the king [for] 120 shillings, against the earl [for] 60 shillings) (lawiicn 15.2) ݐ s+v+adj+c1+(c2): [v = cop bõon/wesan] [s = np; agent] [c1 = pers; npdat/ppwiþ; experiencer] [(c2)= abst; theme] • […] us sylfesub(obj)=np=agent scyldige þec1=npdat=experiencer ([…] ourselves guilty [against] you) (hygl 3 (gneuss) 12.3) • ælc man þe yfel deþ mid yfelum willansub=np=agent is scyldig wið godc1=pp wiþ=experiencer (each man who evil should do with evil will is guilty against god) (æls (exalt of cross), 170) • ic […] mesub(obj)=np=agent scyldigne dyde wið þec1=pp wiþ=experiencer (i […]myself guilty made against you) (conf 9.3.2 (logeman) 32) ܿ responsible to someone for something � guilty ڢ unscyldig � predicative (cs) � agent, experiencer, theme ݏ s+v+adj+c1+c2: [v = cop bõon/wesan] [s = np; agent] [c1 = pers; ppwiþ; experiencer] [c2 = abst; npgen; theme] • we […] ðæt witon se esne ðe ærendað his woroldhlaforde wifes, ðæt hesub=np=agent bið diernes geliresc2=npgen=theme scyldig wið godc1=ppwiþ=experiencer (we […] that know, the servant who acts as messenger for his lord’s wife, that he shall be [of] fornication guilty against god) (cp 19.143.1) some other meanings of scyldig have not been included in the preceding figure given the impossibility to recover a covert argument. in (36) below, where scyldig means “guilty of a crime or sin”, just one argument surfaces, theme2. which is the missing argument? the experiencer (the person against whom one is guilty, e.g., god) or the theme1 (the punishment, e.g., hell)?18 18 one particular meaning of weorþ in legal texts is synonymous with the second part of senses 1 and 2 of scyldig, that is, “liable to punishment”. for this reason, unlike scyldig, its semantic frame contains only an experiencer (subject) and an optional theme (complement), which refers to the punishment. thus, even though weorþ belongs to the “deserving” class, it is not ditransitive in this case. example: hwæt hæfð þes old english ditransitive adjectives 33 (36) nu synd þa iudeiscansub=np=agent[…] cristes deaðesc2=npgen=theme2 scyldige (now are the jews […] [of] christ’s death guilty) (æls (exalt of cross), 176) likewise, should an extra argument really be supplied in example (37), where scyldig means “liable to conviction and sentence,” and a new syntactic (c1)+c2 pattern be added to sense 2 in figure 5? (37) se ðe man ofslihð, sesub=np=experiencer bið domesc1=npgen=theme1 scyldig (he who a man kills, he shall be [to] judgement liable) (æhom 16 125) the following examples illustrate some of the other adjectives of the group, their complementation patterns being shown in table 9: (38) hesub=np=agent biþ leahtrumc2=npdat=theme fah wið wuldorcyningc1=ppwiþ=experiencer (he shall be [of] crimes guilty against the glorious king) (whale 62) (39) þasub=np=agent wæron synfulle menn, and bysmorlice forscyldgode on sceamlicum dædumc2=ppon=theme (who [the sodomites] were sinful men and disgracefully guilty in shameful deeds) (æhom 19 65) (40) hesub=np=agent bið […] scyldig wið god, د wið his hlafordc1=ppwiþ=experiencer eallenga forworht (he shall be […] guilty against god & against his lord utterly guilty) (cp 19.143.1) (41) ic wat […] me sylfnesub(obj)=np=agent forworhtne wordes and dædec2=npgen=theme (i know […] myself sinful [in] word and deed) (wpol 2.1.1 (jost) 57) (42) icsub=np=agent wille beon þyses mannes blodesc2=npgen=theme unscyldig د his deaþesc2=npgen=theme (i wish to be [of] this man’s blood guiltless & [of] his death) (homs 24 (scraggverc1) 187) rihtwisa man […] gefremod. þæt hesub=np=experiencer rodehengenec=npgen=theme wurþe sy? (what has this righteous man […] done, that he [of] crucifixion deserving should be?) (æchom i, 38, 596.1). alejandro alcaraz-sintes 34 table 9. complementation patterns of adjectives of “guilt and responsibility” s+v+adj+c1+c2 s+v+adj+c1+(c2) s+v+adj+(c1)+c2 s+v+adj+(c1)+(c2) fãh + + (?) (?) forscyldigod – + + – forworht – + + + gyltig – + + + scyldig1 + – – – scyldig2 + + – – scyldig3 + – – – synnig – + – – þurhscyldig – – + – unscyldig – + + + the complements of the adjectives of “guilt and responsibility” take the realizations shown in table 10: c1 (experiencer) correlates with dative and with a pp headed by wiþ, while c2 (theme) is normally realized by a genitive np or a pp headed by mid, on or þurh.19 table 10. formal realization of adjectives of “guilt and responsibility” dative np genitive np prepositional phrase c1 c2 c1 c2 c1 c2 fãh + wiþ forscyldigod wiþ for, mid, on, þurh forworht + + wiþ mid, þurh gyltig + + wiþ on scyldig1 for tď scyldig2 + + + wiþ wiþ scyldig3 + wiþ sinnig + wiþ þurhscyldig for unscyldig + ætforan, wiþ fram, of 19 a few adjectives semantically or lexically related adjectives cannot be considered ditransitive for they only have one non-subject argument in their semantic frame: ãfƶled, bilewit, clŭne, unsynnig and unwemme. old english ditransitive adjectives 35 adjectives of “deserving” adjectives of “deserving” are also ditransitive, insofar as one is worthy or deserving of something on account of something. the three arguments which make up the semantic frame of these adjectives are an experiencer, which always surfaces as subject, and a theme and a scope, which are realized by complements and never appear simultaneously. figure 6 illustrates the dictionary entry of medeme. figure 6. dictionary entry of medeme20 medeme having sufficient worth or merit in a certain respect to deserve having or receiving something � deserving, entitled, fit, worthy = weorþ � predicative (cs/co) � experiencer, theme, scope ݏ s+v+adj+c 1+(c2): [v = cop bõon/wesan, weorþan] [s = pers; np; experiencer] [c1 = pers; npdat/ppfor; theme] [(c2) = abst; scope] • seþe lufað fæder oþþe moder swiðor þonne me nis hesub=np= experiencer mec1=npdat=theme wyrðe vel meoduma (he who loves [his] father or mother more than me, he is not [of] me worthy or deserving) (mtgl (ru) 10.37) • wesub=np=experiencer magon on þyssum stowum […] gode د medeme weorþan for urum drihtne c1=ppfor= theme (we can in this place […] good & fit become for our lord) (homs 46 (blhom 11) 251) ݐ s+v+adj+(c1)+c2: [v = cop bõon/wesan, weorþan] [s = pers; np; experiencer] [(c1)= pers; theme] [c2 = anim; ppon/þurh; scope] • hesub=np=experiencer wes meodum on eallum þingumc2=pp on=scope (he was worthy in all things) (ls 3 (chad) 76) • hesub=np=experiencer wæs þurh allc2=ppþurh= scope meodum د gode gecoren (he was through all worthy & chosen by god) (bede 4 3.262.30) ݑ s+v+adj+(c1)+(c2): [v = cop bõon/wesan, weorþan] [s = pers; np; experiencer] [(c1)= pers; theme] [(c2) = -anim; scope] • ðeah mon nu yfelum men anwald selle, ne gedeð se anwald hinesub(obj)=np=experiencer godne ne medomne (even though an evil man may have been given power, power will not make him good or worthy) (bo 16.38.32) 20 the basic meaning of medeme is “moderate, occupying or observing the mean position”, whence “meet for” or “worthy of something.” see bosworth & toller, s.v. medume. my dictionary entry sample in this article records this last sense, though it often proves difficult to pinpoint the exact meaning in extant examples. alejandro alcaraz-sintes 36 the adjective weorþ is semantically more complex than medeme.21 three senses are relevant here: “having sufficient worth or merit in a certain respect to deserve having or receiving something”. with this sense it is a synonym of medeme and shares with it the same argumental and syntactic complementation structure.22 1.“legally entitled to something on account of something [=having the right to deserve].” 2.“worthy of esteem for somebody on account of something.” although the arguments of the adjective are the same in its three senses, they surface as different structures according to the meaning conveyed: x (1) “deserving” and (2) “entitled”: experiencer (subject), theme (c1) and scope (c2); x (2) “esteemed”: theme (subject), experiencer (c1) and scope (c2). unlike medeme, weorþ is always used with at least one complement. besides, both complements are allowed simultaneously. examples (43) and (44) illustrate senses 1 and 3, with 2 complements. (43) he […]cwæð þæt he meahte oðerne getæcnan, þesub=np=experiencer biscophadac1=npgen=theme wyrðra wære ge on gelærednesse ge on his lifes gegearnunge ge on gedefre eldoc2=ppon=scope (he […] said that he could another[one] instruct, who [for the] bishopric worthier would be in learning, in his life’s preparation and in adequate age) (bede 4 1.254.6) (44) wæs hesub=np=theme for his arfæstum dædumc2=ppfor=scope eallum his geferumc1=npdat=experiencer leof د weorð 21 weorþ has other meanings which that have nothing to do with the idea of deserving, such as “having a value equal to something specified”, “considered appropriate or acceptable for a given circumstance or purpose”, “of great value, importance or merit”, “deserving of or liable to punishment” (see note 17), and “held in esteem by somebody on account of something”. these meanings, of course, are not considered in this article. 22 however, the referent of the theme in the case of medeme is always personal, while in the case of weorþ it may also be inanimate. old english ditransitive adjectives 37 (was he for his honourable actions [to] all his companions dear & worthy) (ls 17.1 (martinmor) 31) there exist a few adjectives lexically derived from weorþ, namely, weorþfull, weorþig, weorþlíc and unweorþlíc, which also belong to the “deserving” group. however, only unweorþlíc “unworthy, unfitting” might be considered as ditransitive; see example (45). the adjective has three arguments, theme, experiencer and scope, which surface as subject, a dative np complement and an infinitive-clause complement, respectively.23 (45) þeah þe heosub=np=theme [sprƥce] si usc1=npdat=experiencer unwyrðelice ɞ unrihtlic to sprecanec2=-enneinfcl=scope (even though it [speech] should be [for] us unfitting & wrong to speak) (gdpref and 3 (c) 15.209.16) table 11 illustrates the different patterns of the adjectives of the “deserving” group. 23 when the scope is an infinitive clause, the clause often contains yet another argument which surfaces as a dative np. semantically this np is an agent within the infinitive clause, but in my view it is also an experiencer argument of the adjective predicate. the same analysis may be applied to a semantic class of adjectives which i have not considered in this article, that of “ease and difficulty”. in the sentence þæs dæges godspelsub=theme is swiðe earfoðe læwedum mannumcomp1=experiencer to understandennecomp2=scope (æchom ii, 36.2, 271.6; today’s gospel is very difficult for uneducated men to understand), the quality of ease applies not only to the action (tď understandenne), but also to the referent of the subject (þæs dæges godspel). as bolinger (1961: 373) points out (in his criticism of lees’s (1960) thesis that he is hard to convince has the same origin as it is hard to convince him), these adjectives “can as readily modify the subject as the action.” paraphrasing schachter (1980: 446, note 15), we could say that the act of reading the gospel is difficult by reason of some intrinsic quality of the gospel itself. see also wülfing (1894–1901 ii: 200). since there are examples in oe with no infinitive clause complement, it is clear that the adjective can indeed qualify the subject: hu nearu ys wegsub=theme ɞ earfoþe se gelæt to life (libsc 60.1; how straight and difficult is the path that leads to life). here the scope and experiencer arguments do not surface, though they are contextually recoverable (*mannum and *tredan, for example). there are examples where only the experiencer is overt and the scope is covert (but recoverable: *tď donne): drihten hælend. nis þec1=experiencer nan ðingsub=theme earfoðe (æchom i, 4, 62.10; lord saviour, is to you nothing difficult). therefore, adjectives of “ease and difficulty” could arguably be included among our ditransitive adjectives. see also examples (26) and ((45). alejandro alcaraz-sintes 38 table 11. complementation patterns of adjectives of medeme, unweorþ and weorþ with the sense “deserving” s+v+adj+c1+c2 s+v+adj+c1+(c2) s+v+adj+(c1)+c2 s+v+adj+(c1)+(c2) medeme + + + unmedeme – – – + unweorþ + + + + unweorþlíc + – – – weorþ1 + + + + weorþ2 + + + + the complements of the adjectives of “deserving” take the following realizations: table 12. formal realization of adjectives of “deserving” dat np gen np acc np pp finite cl. infin. cl. c1 c2 c1 c2 c1 c2 c1 c2 c1 c2 c1 c2 medeme + for on, þurh weorþ1 + + +(inst ) tď for, on + + weorþ2 + + mid, on for, in, mid, on unweorþ + fram, on + weorþful1 + weorþful2 + betwõoh, mid, on weorþig + adjectives of “agreement” there are four adjectives denoting “agreement with somebody in something”: ãnræd, geþwære, ungerãd and ungeþwære. the arguments required by these adjectives are two experiencers and a scope. one of the experiencer arguments always surfaces as the subject and the other may be a complement (a dative np or a pp); see example (46). as comesaña-rincón (2001b: 38) points out, there exists a relation of reciprocity between them: “a old english ditransitive adjectives 39 change in the (linear) direction of the relation provokes no alteration in the relation itself.” thus, example (46) may be rewritten as example (47). (46) hwæt gewilnað þes wiðerwinna, þe wyle, þæt þusub=np=experiencer1 beo wið hinec1=ppwiþ=experiencer2 geþwære, buton þines sylfes hæle? (ælet 6 (wulfgeat), 135) (what does this enemy wish, who desires that you should be agreed with him, except your own salvation?) (47) *hesub=np=experiencer2 beo wiþ þec1=ppwiþ=experiencer1 geþwære (he should be agreed with you) this reciprocal relationship is the reason why both arguments are given the same case label. reciprocity also means that both experiencers may appear as coordinated nps with subject function, as is illustrated in example (48), with the antonym ungerãd:24 (48) ðonne se abbodsub=np1=experiencer1 and se prafostsub=np2=experiencer2 ungerade beoð and him betwyx sacað […] (when the abbot and the provost discordant are and between them contend […]) (benr 65.124.18) what is more, the referents of the two coordinated phrases, that is, the two experiencers, may be realized by just one np in the plural: (49) æfter godes gesetnysse ealle cristene mensub=np=experiencers1+2 sceoldon beon swa geþwære. swilce hit an man wære (after god’s law, all christian men must be as agreeing as if it one man were) (æchom i, 19, 272.23) as for the second argument in the semantic frame, the scope, it surfaces as a complement: 24 naturally, although these “transformations” involve no change of meaning, the focus is different. see quirk & al. (1985: 940; 945 et passim). alejandro alcaraz-sintes 40 (50) and ealle hisub=np=experiencers1+2 wæron anræde æt eallum þam ðingum c2=ppæt=scope (and they all were unanimous on all those things) (wpol 2.1.1 (jost) 161) figure 7 illustrates the dictionary entry of ãnræd. figure 7. dictionary entry of ãnræd ánræd being agreed with somebody concerning something � agreed, one-minded, unanimous ڢ ungerãd, ungeþwære � predicative (cs) � experiencer 1, experiencer 2, scope ݏ s+v+adj+c1+c2: [v = cop bõon/wesan] [s = pers; np; experiencer 1, experiencer2] [c1 = pers; ppbetwõon; experiencer1, experiencer 2] [c2 = abst; pptď/cl fin: þæt; scope] • and hy ealle sub=np= experiencers1+2 wæron anræde him betweonanc1=ppbetwõon= experiencers1+2 to þæra gesætnyssa c2=pptď= scope (and they all were agreed between them concerning the decree) (ælet 1 (wulfsige xa), 98) • wurdan þa ealle sub=np=experiencer1 swa anræde mid þam cyngec1=ppmid=experiencer2 þæt hy woldon godwines fyrde gesecan gif se cyng þæt woldec2=þætcl=scope ([they] all became so agreed with the king that they would godwin’s army seek if the king so wished) (or else: “resolute in support of the king”; see doe, s. v. ãnræd) (chrond (classenharm) 1052.1.31) ݐ s+v+adj+(c1)+c2: [v = cop bõon/wesan] [s = pers; np; experiencer 1, experiencer2] [(c1) = pers; experiencer2] [c2 = abst; ppæt; scope] • and ealle hisub=np=experiencers1+2 wæron anræde æt eallum þam ðingumc2=ppæt=scope (and they were all agreed on all the things) (wpol 2.1.1 (jost) 161) ݑ s+v+adj+(c1)+(c2): [v = cop bõon/wesan, weorþan] [s = pers/conc(fig); np; experiencer1, experiencer2] [(c1) = pers; experiencer2 > reciprocity: c > s] [(c2) = abst; theme] • þæt we eallesub=np=experiencers1+2 gemænelice, gehadede and læwede, anræde weorðan for gode and for worold (that we all mutually, religious and lay [people], one-minded become for god and for [the] world) (homu 40 (nap 50) 206) • se monasub=np=experiencer1 and seo sæsub=np=experiencer2 beon anræde (the moon and the sea are harmonious) (days 3.2 (först) 42) the various patterns used by the “agreement” adjectives are shown in table 13. table 13. complementation patterns of adjectives of “agreement” old english ditransitive adjectives 41 s+v+adj+c1+c2 s+v+adj+c1+(c2) s+v+adj+(c1)+c2 s+v+adj+(c1)+(c2) ãnræd + – + + geþwære – + + + ungerãd – + + + ungeþwære – + + – the complements of the adjectives of “agreement” take the realizations shown in table 14. table 14. formal realization of adjectives of “deserving” dat np pp finite cl. c1 c2 c1 c2 c 1 c2 ãnræd betwõon, tď + geþwære + wiþ on ungerãd + betwõon ungeþwære + betwõoh 6.adjectives of “similarity” the three adjectives of “similarity”, ãnlíc and gelíc “like”, and their antonym, ungelíc “unlike”, always involve two themes and a scope. therefore, the patterns are very similar to those of the “agreement” adjectives. however, a major difference is that “agreement” adjectives always involve personal referents, while “similarity” adjectives may involve either animate or inanimate referents. theme1 always surfaces as subject in the clause structure while theme2 may surface as complement (c1), as in the following example: (51) forþam ys heofena ricesub=np=theme1 anlic þam cyningec1=npdat=theme2 þe hys þeowas geradegode (therefore is the kingdom of heaven like that king, who his servants reckoned) (mt(wscp) 18.23) since the same type of reciprocity relation which obtains with “agreement” adjectives exists with “similarity” adjectives, example (51) may be rewritten as (52), with no change in meaning. what is more, both themes may appear as alejandro alcaraz-sintes 42 coordinated nps with subject function (example (53) or as one np with double reference (example (54). (52) *se cyningsub=np=theme2 ys anlic heofena ricec1=npdat=theme1 (the king is like [the] kingdom of heavens) (53) sio bieldosub=np1=theme1 ɞ sio monnðwærnessub=np2=o2 bioð swiðe anlice (the courage & the meekness are most similar) (cp 40.287.23) (54) ac hiora anwalda endassub=np=themes1+2 wæron swiþe ungelice (but their rulers’ ends were very unlike) (or2 1.38.17) the second argument is scope, that is, the extent to which the similarity or lack of similarity between two people or things obtains. it surfaces as a complement taking the shape of a np or a pp, as in (55): (55) se fugelsub=np=theme1 is on hiwec2=ppon=scope æghwæs ænlic, onlicost peanc1=npacc=theme2 (the fowl is unique in aspect most like [a] peacock) (phoen 311) figure 8 shows the dictionary entry for the adjective gelíc. the section for syntactic pattern ݐ is further divided into subsections ۿ ,۾ and ܀ to illustrate more clearly the structures and types of referent of its components. both the subject and the c1 take the shape of finite clauses introduced by þe, þæt and swã, often anticipated by or correlating with hit, þŭm, þon and þæs. since these patterns disappeared in the course of history, the courtesy translations offered may at times prove a little taxing for pde acceptability. figure 8. dictionary entry of gelíc gelìc having resemblance in certain features to someone or something � like, similar = anlíc ڢ ungelíc � predicative (cs/co) � theme 1, theme2, scope s+v+adj+c1+c2: [v = cop bõon/wesan, weorþan] [s = ±anim; np; theme1] ݏ [c1 = ±anim; npdat; theme2] [c2 = ±anim; npdat/ppin/on; scope] • is seo eaggebyrdsub=np=theme1 stearc ond hiwec2=npdat=scope stanec1=npdat=theme2 gelicast (is the eye rigid and in aspect [to] a stone most similar) (phoen 301) • wendun ge ond woldun, wiþerhycgende, þæt gesub=np=theme1 scyppendec1= old english ditransitive adjectives 43 npdat=theme2 sceoldan gelice wesan in wuldrec2=ppin=scope (you imagined and wanted, evil-thinking, that you [to] the creator must similar be in glory) (guth a,b 663) • ne gedafenað biscope þæt hesub=np=theme1 beo on dædumc2=ppon=scope folces mannumc1=npdat=theme2 gelic (it does not befit a bishop he should be in deeds [to] the folk’s men similar) (æchom ii, 10, 81.14) s+v+adj+c1+(c2): [v = cop bõon/wesan] [(c2); -anim; scope] ݐ c1 = ±anim; npdat/gen/acc/pptď/cl fin: þæt] [s = ±anim; np; theme1] ۾ (anticipated by hit); þe; þe (anticipated by þŭm, þon); þæt (anticipated by þæs); theme 2] • helias se witegasub=np=theme1 wæs us mannumc1=npdat=theme2 gelic (elias the prophet was us men like) (æchom ii, 21, 189.277) • gelic is rice heofunassub=np=theme1 nettc1=npacc=theme2 asendun in sae (similar is the kingdom of heavens [to] a net thrown into the sea) (mtgl (ru) 13.47) • gelic is ric heofnasub=np=theme1 to darstec1=pptď=theme2 (similar is [the] kingdom of heavens is to leaven) (mtgl (li) 13.33) • hitanticip is us nu swiþor bismrec1=npdat=theme2 gelic þæt we þæt besprecað sub=þætcl= theme1 (it is now [to] us more like shame that we should complain about that) (or3 11.82.33) • gyf hwa hwæt ungewealdes gedeð, ne byð þætsub=np=theme1 eallunga na gelic, þe hit gewealdes gewurþec1=þecl=theme2 (if somebody something does unintentionally, that is not at all like that, that [= as if] it intentionally was done) (lawiicn 68.3 7) • hiosub=np=theme1 [seo sibb] sie þæmanticip gelicost þe mon nime ænne eles dropanc1=þecl=theme2 […] (it [peace] be that most like that, that [= as if] somebody a drop of oil took […]) (or4 7.97.28) ,c1 = -anim; npdat; theme1] [s = np; pers/abst; theme1, theme2] ۿ theme 2] • ealle gesceaftasub=np=themes1+2 þu gesceope himc1=npdat=themes1+2 gelice (all creatures you created to them [= to one another] similar) (bo 33.79.31 7) • ac ealle þry hadassub==np=themes1+2 emnece him sylfumc1=npdat=themes1+2 synt د gelice (but all three persons coeternal between themselves are & coequal) (pscai (lindelöf) 19(15).26) :c1 = abst; cl fin] [s = abst; cl fin: swã/þæt/þe (anticipated by hit); theme1] ܀ swã; theme2] • emne hitanticip bið gelice swa man mid wætere þone weallendan wylm agiotesub=swãcl=theme1, þæt he leng me mot rixian (likewise, it will be like that [as if] somebody with water the flowing flame would soak) (homs 40.3 (scraggverc 10) 129) ,s+v+adj+(c1)+c2: [v = cop bõon/wesan] [s = np; pers/abst; theme1 ݑ theme 2] [(c1); pers, abst; theme2] [c2; -anim; ppon; scope] • hisub=np=themes1+2 [iacob and esau] næron þeah gelice on þeawum ne on lifes alejandro alcaraz-sintes 44 geearnungumc2=ppon=scope (they [jacob and esau] were not, however, alike in customs nor in life’s earnings) (æchom i, 7, 110.20) ᆩ s+v+adj+(c1)+(c2): [v = cop bõon/wesan] [s = ±anim; np; theme1, theme 2] [(c1) = anim, abst; theme2 reciprocity: > s] [(c2) = -anim; scope] • ealle wesub=np=themes1+2 sind gelice ætforan gode (we all are alike before god) (æchom i, 19, 260.24) • se forholena cræftsub=np=theme1 and forhyded godsub=np=theme2 ne bið ællunga gelice (the hidden skill and the concealed good will not be atl all alike) (instr 69) the patterns for the “similarity” adjectives are shown in table 15 and the formal realization of the complements in table 16. table 15. complementation patterns of adjectives of “similarity” s+v+adj+c 1+c 2 s+v+adj+c1+(c2 ) s+v+adj+(c1)+c 2 s+v+adj+(c1)+(c2 ) anlíc + + – + gelíc + + + + ungelíc + + – + table 16. formal realization of adjectives of “similarity” dative np genitive np accusative np pp finite clause c1 c2 c1 c2 c1 c2 c1 c 2 c1 c2 gelíc + + + + tď in, on + anlíc + on + ungelíc + on + 7.conclusions although the vast majority of oe adjectives are intransitive and do not require a complement, a substantial number of them are transitive and some fifty odd of these can be further considered to be ditransitive. oe ditransitive adjectives belong to just a few semantic classes (“gratitude,” “generosity,” “obedience,” “guilt and responsibility,” “deserving,” “agreement,” and “similarity”). strictly speaking, the syntactic term ditransitive should apply only to adjectives which are always used with two complements (c1 and c2), but the broader definition i have used — ditransitive old english ditransitive adjectives 45 adjectives are three-place adjectival predicates — allows me to include adjectives which are found with just one complement, that is, with an overt argument and with a covert, but recoverable, argument. this may be due either to the fact that tokens have not survived in extant texts (and are not found in the doec) or to the fact that they simply disallowed such syntactic patterns with two complements. however, it is on the grounds of their close semantic relationship to other adjectives of which there are extant examples that i posit, and hope to have shown, that their semantic structure is the same. this approach permits to organize the dictionary entries of these adjectives in the lexicon in a highly systematic way. it also allows for efficient comparison and crossreferencing between semanticallyand lexically-related adjectives. a. alcaraz-sintes university of jaén references alcaraz-sintes, alejandro 2006a: proposal for a dictionary of syntactic and semantic complementation of old english adjectives. selected proceedings of the 2005 symposium on new approaches in english historical lexis (hel-lex). mcconchie r. w. & al. eds. 34–40. somerville (ma.): cascadilla proceedings project. 14/04/2006. www.lingref.com, document #1344 alcaraz-sintes, alejandro 2006b: la complementación del adjetivo en inglés antiguo. jaén: servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de jaén. alcaraz-sintes, alejandro 2006c: old english ditransitive adjectives. paper delivered at the 18th selim conference, university of málaga. alcaraz-sintes, alejandro in progress: a dictionary of adjective semantic and syntactic complementation. alejandro alcaraz-sintes 46 biber, douglas, susan conrad and geoffrey leech 2002: longman student grammar of spoken and written english. harlow, essex: longman, pearson education limited. bolinger, 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alcaraz-sintes 48 oed. the oxford english dictionary second edition on compact disk. version 3.0. 2002[1989]. simpson, joseph & edmund weiner. eds. oxford: oxford university press. quirk, randolph, sidney greenbaum, geoffrey leech & jan svartvik 1985: a comprehensive grammar of the english language. london and new york: longman. trask, r. larry 1993: a dictionary of grammatical terms in linguistics. london and new york: routledge. tucker, gordon h. 1998: the lexicogrammar of adjectives. a systemic functional approach to lexis. london and new york: cassell. visser, frederic th. 1963–1973: an historical syntax of the english language. leiden: e. j. brill. wülfing, j. ernst 1894–1901: die syntax in den werken alfreds des grossen. bonn: b. hanstein’s. * † * selim 19.indb phoebe boyd, michael d. c. drout, namiko hitotsubachi, michael j. kahn, mark d. leblanc & leah smith, selim 19 (2012): 7–58 issn: 1132–631x lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose: establishing controls with the old english penitential and the old english translation of orosius abstract: in this paper we demonstrate that “lexomic” techniques of computer-assisted statistical analysis, originally validated for old english poetry, can be adapted and applied to anglo-saxon prose texts. the methods we describe employ hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis to fi nd patterns of vocabulary distribution. these patterns, represented visually as tree diagrams, or dendrograms, can indicate the source structure or the affi nities of old english texts. comparing the dendrogram geometry of multiple editions of the old english penitential allows us to determine that the methods can produce consistent results even for critical editions made fr om the collation of multiple manuscripts. analysis of the old english translation of orosius’s historia demonstrates that the techniques can detect where an author has used for a given section of his text sources diff erent fr om those of the main body of the text. we conclude that lexomic methods are a useful new tool for the analysis of old english prose. keywords: lexomics, computer-assisted analysis, digital humanities, penitentials, orosius, historiarum adversus paganos libri septem, alfr edian translations, sources, editions. resumen: en este artículo demostramos que las técnicas lexómicas de análisis estadístico asistido por ordenador, válidas originalmente para la poesía en inglés antiguo, pueden adaptarse y aplicarse a textos anglosajones en prosa. los métodos descritos emplean análisis jerárquicos de clústeres aglomerativos para encontrar patrones en la distribución del vocabulario. tales patrones, representados visualmente mediante diagramas arbóreos o dendogramas, pueden revelar la estructura de la fuente o las afi nidades de textos en inglés antiguo. comparar la geometría del dendrograma de ediciones múltiples del old english penitential permite determinar que esos métodos pueden producir resultados consistentes incluso con ediciones críticas hechas mediante la colación de múltiples manuscritos. el análisis de la traducción anglosajona de la historia de orosio demuestra que las técnicas pueden detectar dónde un autor usó para una sección fuenrtes distintas de las del cuerpo principal de texto. concluimos que los métodos lexómicos son instrumentos útiles para el análisis de la prosa anglosajona. palabras clave: lexómica, análisis asistido por ordenador, humanidades digitales, penitenciales, orosio, historiarum adversus paganos libri septem, traducciones alfr edianas, fuentes, ediciones. in a recent series of papers our research group has demonstrated the value of combining computerassisted, statistical analysis with traditional, philological approaches to medieval texts. this lexomic1 approach, which detects 1 coined by betsey dexter dyer in 2002, the term “lexomics” is derived by analogy fr om “genomics” (dyer 2002) and fi rst appeared in genome technology 1.27 (2002). p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 8selim 19 (2012) patterns of vocabulary distribution that are not otherwise visible to the unaided eye,2 has already shed new light on poems in anglosaxon and on medieval latin prose and poetic texts,3 and methods originally developed for the analysis of old english poetry can, we believe, be adapted to investigate texts fr om the much larger corpus of anglo-saxon prose. in this paper, therefore, we use lexomic methods to analyze the old english penitentials and the anglosaxon translation of orosius’s historiarum adversum paganos libri septem, demonstrating not only the utility of the methods but the specifi c ways they must be modifi ed in order to be applied to prose texts, which present a particular suite of problems. although the challenges presented by text length, manuscript variation and editorial practice are substantial, lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose provides a new channel of information that can both support conj ectures made by previous scholars and also open up new lines of inquiry. 1 lexomic methods lexomic methods blend techniques fr om bioinformatics,4 2 the development of some of the lexomic methods discussed in this chapter were supported by the national endowment for the humanities, which sponsored the research with two grants, neh hd-50300-08, pattern recognition through computational stylistics: old english and beyond, and neh pr-50112011, lexomic tools and methods for textual analysis: providing deep access to digitized texts. any views, fi ndings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article do not necessarily refl ect those of the national endowment for the humanities. 3 forthcoming papers demonstrate that lexomic methods can also be used to analyze texts in old norse, 20th-century modern english (both drama and prose) and 17th-century english (drama). 4 bioinformatics treats nucleobases in dna as an alphabet, combinations of nucleobases as “words,” and genomes as texts. in their analyses, bioinformaticists have re-invented a number of techniques originally developed by philologists, such as the tracing of descent through shared error. see, for example dyer et al. 2007. lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 9 selim 19 (2012) computational stylometry,5 and traditional textual analysis (including philology, source study, historical contextualization and close reading). using the high-quality electronic editions of medieval texts now available to researchers, we employ computerassisted statistical techniques to identify patterns, which we then interpret using traditional literary methods. at the beginning of our research, the computational methods told us where in a text to look, while the traditional methods explained what our fi ndings meant, but as our research has progressed we have found that this expected pattern has at times been reversed, and our methods have evolved into a series of iterate and test processes that integrate all the tools at our disposal. lexomic methods diff er slightly fr om pioneering stylometric analyses in two major ways. first, although most researchers analyze subsets of words in a text (function words or content words, for example), we include every word in our analyses. second, while computational stylometry has traditionally focused on whole works, we divide our texts into segments and analyze the relationships of these to each other. also, although the information we recover with our methods may have some bearing on questions of authorship, our analyses have to this point do not focused primarily on author identifi cation but instead on a text’s sources or affi nities.6 the techniques discussed here all can be performed using our soft ware, which is browser-interfaced and fr eely available in the 5 pioneers of computational stylometry include john burrows and david hoover. burrows 2003 uses statistical analysis of “function words” (prepositions, conj unctions, pronouns) to create textual “signatures” for various writers, which he then uses to attribute authorship in a set of english restoration poems. hoover 2004 further refi ned burrows’s methods and applied them to prose in third-person american novels. 6 admittedly, sources and affi nities can have some bearing on authorship, and we have used lexomic methods to support the case for identify ing guthlac b as being written by cynewulf (drout et al. 2011: 323–326). p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 10selim 19 (2012) lexos integrated workfl ow at http://lexos.wheatoncollege.edu.7 we begin by scrubbing an electronic edition of a text, removing punctuation, changing capital letters to lower-case, and deleting formatting codes and other tags.8 scrubbing allows us to compare like to like, making certain that we count king as being the same word as king and (king) and not counting commas or periods as “words.” aft er the text is scrubbed we divide it into segments and then tabulate the words in both the entire text and in each segment.9 in order to allow us to compare segments of diff erent sizes, we compute relative fr equencies for each word by dividing the number of times the word appears in a segment by the total number of words in that segment.10 from this data we produce an n-dimensional array for each segment, where n represents the number of distinct words used in the entire collection of texts being studied.11 7 documentation and instructional videos and web pages are available at http:// wheatoncollege.edu/lexomics/introduction-lexomics. the research for this paper was performed using a previous iteration of the tools, which are preserved in the lexomics tool archive: http://wheatoncollege.edu/lexomics/tool-archive. 8 the program scrubber, written primarily by richard neal, was used for these purposes. it can also be used to lemmatize a text or to modify special characters. scrubber is now a part of the lexos integrated workfl ow. the version of scrubber used to perform the research in this paper is preserved in the lexomics tool archive. 9 the program divitext, written primarily by amos jones, was used to cut texts into segments and count the words in those segments. divitext itself is not part of the lexos integrated workfl ow, although lexos provides much of divitext’s functionality. divitext remains accessible in the lexomics tool archive. 10 if there are 1000 words in a segment and ond appears 50 times, we record 50/1000 = 0.05 as the relative fr equency of ond. if a word appears somewhere in the complete text but not in a particular segment we record 0/1000 = 0 for the word’s relative fr equency in that segment. 11 technically, the scripts use a hash table of arrays. interested readers are directed to the documented soft ware for specifi cs. lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 11 selim 19 (2012) we then use the fr ee implementation of hierarchical, agglomerative cluster analysis (mardia et al. 1980) within the statistical soft ware package, r (r development core team 2009), to group the segments.12 this clustering method uses a dissimilarity metric for the grouping of texts without pre-specify ing a number of groups. the dissimilarity (or distance) measure is computed for each pair of segments, and these distances are then used to create groupings, or clades,13 of texts by clustering texts that are most similar (i.e., have the shortest distance between them).14 in the analyses presented in this paper, we employ the most commonly used metric, euclidean distance,15 to calculate the distance between the multidimensional averages of the two clades. we then use hierarchical agglomerative clustering to order these distances and construct a branching diagram, or dendrogram,16 of their relationships. the dissimilarity between clades is represented by the 12 an explanation of the statistical methods, aimed towards humanistic researchers, can be found in drout 2013: 51–56. 13 the terminology is borrowed fr om evolutionary biology (hennig 1966). 14 to compare four segments we list all the words in each segment and calculate the relative fr equency of each word in each segment. we then compute (4×3)/2=6 distances, one for each pair of segments, calculate the diff erence between the proportion of a word’s use in each segment, square the diff erences, and total the squared diff erences fr om each word. the distance, then, is the square-root of the squared distance. 15 this metric makes use of all n words in a collection of texts to measure the dissimilarity between two texts. we also experimented with manhattan and canberra metrics but found no signifi cant diff erence in the fi nal clustering results. our soft ware allows researchers to choose among these metrics and between diff erent linkage methods. 16 the program which creates dendrograms, treeview, was written primarily by alicia herbert. treeview is now a part of the lexos integrated workfl ow. the version of tree-view used to perform the research in this paper is preserved in the lexomics tool archive. p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 12selim 19 (2012) vertical length of the line connecting them.17 figure 1 illustrates the similarities of four hypothetical segments or texts. any level of the branching diagram can be identifi ed as a clade, and we label clades fr om left to right using greek letters, fi rst marking all clades at the same level of the hierarchy and then descending to the next level and again labeling left to right. thus in figure 1, clade α contains segment a, clade β contains b, c, and d, and clade γ contains only segments c and d. a clade with no subsidiary branches, like clade α, is said to be simplicifolious. figure 1. sample dendrogram the geometry of the dendrogram indicates that segments c and d in figure 1 are most similar, segment b is closer to clade γ, which contains both c and d, and segment a is least like the other texts. the vertical distance between segments c and d is smaller than that between the simplicifolious clade α and clade β, indicating that segment a is quite diff erent fr om the other segments. 17 in our lexomic analyses the number of words is quite large, so it is diffi cult for the distributions of any single word to make two segments highly similar or dissimilar. instead, it takes a great deal of commonality (or diff erence) in the proportionate use of a wide array of words to create large similarity (or distance) between two texts. see the discussion in drout et al. 2011: 311–315. α β γ a b c d lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 13 selim 19 (2012) our previous work with latin poetry and prose and old english poems has shown that the geometry of a dendrogram can be infl uenced by the affi nities or sources of the texts being analyzed: similar segments or texts tend to cluster together. for example, the old english poem azarias is paired in a dendrogram with the section of daniel that is known to be very similar to it (both have a recent common textual ancestor; drout et al. 2011: 307–311). in addition, texts with multiple sources produce dendrograms in which the segments are grouped by source: a dendrogram of the old english genesis places genesis b in a high-level clade entirely separate fr om genesis a, and the segments of daniel that are based on latin canticles are separated fr om the rest of that poem (which is based on the bible; drout et al. 2011: 326–335). dendrograms of latin texts likewise refl ect both sources and affi nities. the source structure of alan of lille’s de planctu naturae is evident in its dendrogram, as is that of geoff rey of monmouth’s vita merlini. every papal letter quoted in bede’s ecclesiastical history separates fr om bede’s main text. a dendrogram of the gesta friderici imperatoris places chapters by its two authors (otto of friesing and his secretary, rahewin) in separate clades (downey et al. 2012). however, the two types infl uences—of sources and of affi nity— can also confl ict with or complicate each other. for example, the segments of the old english poem juliana in which cynewulf closely follows the latin vita that was his source cluster separately fr om the rest of cynewulf ’s corpus (drout et al. 2011: 333–335), and the segment of guthlac b dependent upon the “cup of death” motif (which is not found in felix’s vita s. guthlaci) appears separately fr om the rest of that poem and of the signed poems of cynewulf (downey et al. 2012). in these and similar cases it is essential to use non-lexomic knowledge about the text to interpret the lexomic results rather than relying solely upon dendrogram geometry. although the results of lexomic analysis of texts whose sources, affi nities or structures are well understood are not counterintuitive or even surprising, they are nevertheless quite valuable. p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 14selim 19 (2012) even if a particular lexomic analysis tells us nothing entirely new about a text, the correlation of dendrogram geometry with previously existing knowledge gives us some confi dence in analyses of texts whose authorship, sourcing or structures are unknown or controversial. the dendrograms of the known texts serve as controls for the dendrograms of the unknowns; if the former are consistent, we are not unreasonable in trusting the latter. but in order to establish such controls, it is important to determine which variables of orthography, manuscript variation and editorial practice are signifi cant, so that we can compare like to like. 2 corpus-specific parameters thanks to initiatives both organizational and individual, a signifi cant number of medieval texts are now available in electronic form. most important for our purposes is the complete corpus of anglo-saxon assembled by the dictionary of old english.18 but although the doe corpus contains a high-quality edition of every known anglo-saxon text in a well-curated archive, we still must address some corpus-specifi c questions before we can perform lexomic analysis. first, there is the problem of orthographic variation. because our soft ware compares and counts words according to exact identity, orthographic variation has the potential to obscure signifi cant patterns or to create statistical artifacts in our analysis. we must therefore process the texts in such a way to eliminate trivial variation without losing signifi cant data. this processing must be customized to each writing system. for the old english corpus the most signifi cant orthographic variations are between thorn 〈þ〉 and eth 〈ð〉—both of which are used to represent voiced 18 the dictionary of old english can be accessed at http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/ index.html; a subscription is required. the tools on the lexomics.wheatoncollege. edu website produce data about the corpus but do not distribute the corpus as a whole. lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 15 selim 19 (2012) and unvoiced interdental fr icatives—and among the tironian note 〈⁊〉, and and ond. scholars have long noted that the distribution of thorn and eth in the old english corpus is not phonetically consistent. unlike icelandic orthography, in which 〈ð〉 generally represents the voiced and 〈þ〉 the unvoiced interdental fr icative, in anglo-saxon either letter can be used represent either sound. the distribution of forms, however, is not entirely random. some early manuscripts use only 〈ð〉, while in later manuscripts the forms are more evenly distributed (roberts 2006: 20–28), and diff erent scribes appear to have diff erent tendencies to use each symbol, some, for example, seeming to avoid the use of medial thorn or initial eth but others not following these practices (klaeber 2008: xxix–xxx, cliv–clvii). david megginson has shown that there is signifi cant variation in the ratio of thorn to eth fr om manuscript to manuscript and fr om scribe to scribe. he also notes that certain words are consistently spelled with one letter or the other regardless of the phonetic value in the particular context, suggesting, he argues, that the spellings were memorized rather than phonetic.19 recent work by our research group shows that substantial variations in the thorn to eth ratio within a given scribe’s performance in a given manuscript may be diagnostic of diff erences in textual source (chauvet and drout forthcoming). this variation and its possible signifi cance thus creates two problems. if we treat the variation between thorn and eth as signifi cant and count þis and ðis as two distinct words, we may be unable to compare texts that are found in separate manuscripts, since scribal performance might overshadow other kinds of variation.20 but if we collapse the variation and treat all 19 megginson 1993: 35–36, 49–51, 60–62, 100–107 and passim in discussions of words that contain 〈þ〉 or 〈ð〉. 20 variation between 〈i〉 and 〈y〉, which o’donnell 2005 has shown to be the most common variation in the poetic corpus, has not to this point been a signifi cant problem (with the exception of beowulf ). p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 16selim 19 (2012) interdental fr icatives as the same, counting þis and ðis as the same word, we might lose relevant data. our solution to these problems is both empirical and mathematical. our soft ware allows us to consolidate texts, by converting all eths to thorns (or vice versa). we can therefore easily compare dendrograms of the consolidated with those of the unconsolidated texts. to this point, comparing hundreds of dendrograms, we have only found one complete text (beowulf ) and two segments (both in christ iii ) whose locations in a dendrogram change when the texts are consolidated.21 research into the characteristics of those two segments is ongoing, but we can conclude that in the vast majority of cases, orthographic variation of thorn and eth does not aff ect dendrogram geometry. mathematically this lack of eff ect can be explained by the interchangeable nature of the two letters. even when we count þis and ðis separately, if the variants are equally distributed in the segments, the distances between texts will not be aff ected, since the relative fr equency of either þis or ðis will simply be (þis + ðis)/2 split among the two segments.22 only signifi cant concentrations of either orthographic form would aff ect the dendrogram geometry, and these concentrations appear to be relatively rare in old english poetry. furthermore, since the analysis presented in this paper is lexico-morphologic rather than orthographic, we can be reasonably comfortable in using consolidated forms. nevertheless, we have performed all the experiments discussed here using both consolidated and unconsolidated forms, and the results have been the same. anglo-saxon scribes’ use of tironian note creates a slightly diff erent problem because the grapheme could in old english represent either and or ond. expanding the note to either all and 21 drout et al. forthcoming and chauvet & drout forthcoming. 22 if there were 8 instances of the consolidated word in text a and 6 in text b, the distance between the two texts would be 2. if thorn and eth are equally distributed, there would then be 4 instances of each orthographic form in text a and 3 in text b. the distance would then still be 2: (4-3)+(4-3)=8-6. lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 17 selim 19 (2012) or all ond, therefore, has the potential both to obscure existing patterns or to create artifacts, since we cannot know what form the scribe was abbreviating.23 we could choose not to expand the note, but by so doing we would be privileging the manuscript form of a text over its linguistic expression—a procedure which might at times be useful, but which is not necessarily always justifi ed. furthermore, because and/ond/⁊ is the most common word in the old english corpus, variations in its form aff ect the geometry of dendrograms in a way that variation between thorn and eth do not.24 we therefore use our soft ware to lemmatize ⁊, and and ond to a single form (arbitrarily, and), which eliminates artifacts created by orthography rather than vocabulary distribution. the problems presented by thorn and eth and by ⁊, and and ond are just a subset of the larger challenge of handling morphological, dialectal and grammatical variants. for example, the program counts separately cyning, cyninge and cyninga. additionally, variation in the spelling of diphthongs (for example, eo or io) or vowels (i or y) could infl uence word counts. we can use our soft ware to lemmatize every word in a text, but this work is both time-consuming and inevitably subjective— problems we try to avoid by the use of information-processing tools. we could also normalize, retaining grammatical variants but consolidating spellings, but again, the process would be both time-consuming and subjective. furthermore, we have some evidence that the distribution of various infl ected forms of words can be signifi cant, so lemmatizing them could obscure important patterns. in most of the cases we have studied, analyses performed with un-lemmatized texts yield results that are to controls (which 23 the spelling of and or ond can be an indicator of dialect. see campbell 1959: 110–112. 24 for example, the scribe of daniel uses and while the scribe of azarias uses ond, thus creating a diff erence between the texts that is consistent but of only trivial interest for our purposes. p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 18selim 19 (2012) are derived fr om traditional philological analyses),25 suggesting that for these particular types of problems, lemmatization is not necessary.26 scholars can use the soft ware to further test the utility of lemmatization in a variety of circumstances, and it may be that lexomic analysis using lemmatized texts has the capability of providing information that is otherwise unavailable,27 but at the present time we have found no benefi t fr om lemmatizing. 3 manuscripts, editions and editorial practices we must also address the problems associated with using edited or normalized texts instead of diplomatic editions. although the dictionary of old english uses the most authoritative editions of anglo-saxon texts, these are still editions, oft en collated fr om multiple manuscripts according to the judgments of various editors, each of whose editorial practices and judgment might diff er both fr om each other and fr om contemporary (and future) views. as peter stokes has noted, large-scale analysis using any electronic corpus can theoretically be shaped—to an unknown degree—by the editorial practices and assumptions embedded in that corpus (stokes 2009). furthermore, because lexomic analysis is based on critical editions, it may at times not engage particularly closely with any given manuscript. it may have been forty years since paul zumthor asserted the authority of manuscripts over critical editions by calling attention to the mouvance of medieval manuscript 25 the exception is beowulf, in which the spelling and orthographic variations between the a and b scribes are so consistent that they obscure any other potential patterns. we have dealt with this challenge by using a normalized text that makes spelling consistent without erasing morphological and grammatical variation through lemmatization. 26 scott kleinman is currently investigating the eff ects of lemmatization on dendrogram geometry. 27 for example, it may be that full lemmatization of text will allow us to apply lexomic analysis to texts on opposite size of the divide between old and middle english. lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 19 selim 19 (2012) texts (zumthor 1987), but even though anglo-saxon studies never adopted extreme points of view like bernard cerquiglini’s assertion that “l’écriture médiévale ne produit pas de variantes, elle est variance” (“medieval writing does not produce variants, it is variance;” cerquiglini 1999),28 the potential signifi cance of manuscript variation has become more important in recent years.29 by relying primarily on a doe corpus made up of critical editions, lexomic analysis goes somewhat against the grain of manuscript-centric approaches. it is therefore important for us to investigate the infl uence of both manuscript variation and editorial practice. these problems are more diffi cult than those of orthographic variation (which lends itself to substitutions that are easy to perform on electronic texts), but their solutions also have some fundamental similarity: by analyzing texts whose structure is already known and comparing these results with those based on manuscripts, we can see how infl uential both manuscript and postmanuscript variation are on dendrogram geometry. the most signifi cant problem is that of editorial collation. to give just one example, the doe corpus version of the rule of st benedict is based on arnold schröer’s 1885 edition, which he produced by collating fi ve manuscripts dating fr om the end of the tenth to the beginning of the twelft h centuries. schröer’s text, therefore, may not refl ect any single extant manuscript or even the state of any one copy of the old english rule in any given time period (schröer 1965 [1885]).30 before we put too much stock in the authority of any manuscript version of the text, however, 28 for a useful analysis of these issues see millett 2008, and for further discussion, see drout & kleinman 2010. 29 among the most successful applications of a manuscript-focused approach is katherine o’brien o’keeff e’s in visible song, in which she uses careful examination of manuscripts to demonstrate that in the old english tradition “an oral poem did not automatically become a fi xed text upon writing” (1990: 46). 30 see also cameron & frank 1973: 121–122. p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 20selim 19 (2012) we should remember that the aim of schröer’s collation was to produce the most accurate possible text fr om a variety of witnesses, each of which was imperfect in its own way.31 if, for example, we are interested in studying the sources of the old english rule, we would want to work with a text as close as possible to the original translation rather than a later witness in which useful information might be obscured by textual corruption. a diplomatic edition is not a priori more useful than a critical one. for nearly all poetic texts in old english the problems of editorial collations are insignifi cant because most anglo-saxon poems appear in only one copy. furthermore, the editors of the anglo-saxon poetic records (aspr) were extremely careful in their transcription and generally judicious in their emendation. nevertheless, it may be useful to compare dendrograms produced fr om the doe-adopted aspr critical edition with those produced fr om a diplomatic text to attempt to gauge the signifi cance of editorial emendation. to produce electronic diplomatic editions of our control poems, our colleague scott kleinman modifi ed the doe’s electronic fi les to make them match the manuscript forms given in the apparatus criticus of the aspr editions. we then used these electronic diplomatic texts to repeat the experiments that had distinguished genesis a fr om genesis b and matched azarias with the correct section of daniel. figure 2 shows the results of our analysis of genesis. both the diplomatic and critical editions have the same high-level clade structure in which the fi rst major division separates genesis b fr om genesis a and the second high-level division separates genesis a into two large clades, one containing segments 1, 5, 6 and 7 and the other containing segments 8 through 11. 31 as tom shippey notes, it is easy to celebrate the variant aft er the production of readable editions, but quite another thing to try to puzzle out unedited texts for the fi rst time (shippey 2007: 151–152). see also shippey 2008. lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 21 selim 19 (2012) 3241 5 678 9 10 11 α β γ δ figure 2. dendrogram of the dictionary of old english corpus edition of genesis cut into 1500-word segments 3247653111098 α β γ δ figure 3. dendrogram of a diplomatic edition of genesis cut into 1500-word segments p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 22selim 19 (2012) dendrograms of the diplomatic and critical editions are identical at the higher levels of the clade structure—those at which we separated genesis a fr om genesis b. only deeper within clade δ do we seem some very minor variation. in both texts segments 6 and 7 are the most similar, but in the critical edition segments 5 and 1 are separately paired, while in the diplomatic edition they join the 6–7 clade in a stepwise fashion. this is actually a very subtle distinction, probably caused by small diff erences in segment 5 between the diplomatic and critical editions. we generally have not relied heavily on the exact geometry of the deeper clade structure, which we believe to be very sensitive to minor variations, and the results of this experiment support that approach. since there is no diff erence in the high-level clade structures of the two editions, there is no reason to prefer the diplomatic edition over the critical (or vice versa) in cases where this upper-level structure is of interest. whether we had used a diplomatic or a critical edition, we would still conclude that genesis a is distinct fr om genesis b, and indeed, these two sections have diff erent sources. the poems daniel and azarias allow us to look at a relationship of affi nity. azarias is quite similar to the third 900word section of daniel because both derive fr om the same recent antecedent old english source even though the poems are found in two diff erent codices, the exeter book and the junius manuscript. as we did in the genesis experiment, we compared the dendrograms created using the electronic dictionary of old english critical editions to scott kleinman’s reconstructed diplomatic editions. lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 23 selim 19 (2012) d aniel 5 d aniel 4 d aniel 2 d aniel 1 d aniel 3 azarias α β figure 4. dendrogram of daniel cut into 900-word segments and azarias in one 1064word segment using the dictionary of old english corpus editions α β d aniel 5 d aniel 4 d aniel 2 d aniel 1 d aniel 3 azarias figure 5. dendrogram of daniel cut into 900–word segments and azarias in one 1064-word segment using diplomatic editions in comparing figures 4 and 5, we see that both dendrograms separate azarias fr om daniel and identify the correct 900-word segment, daniel 3, as being most similar to azarias. the larger p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 24selim 19 (2012) clade structure of the dendrograms is essentially the same: the fi rst, second, fourth and fi ft h segments of daniel are similar to each other, and azarias is an outlier along with the third segment of daniel. minor diff erences in the two dendrograms are found deeper inside the clades. in the dendrogram created fr om the diplomatic edition, the azarias and daniel 3 leaves are separate fr om each other as well as fr om the main text, while in the dendrogram created fr om the critical edition, they stick together. on the other hand, within the main body of the poem segments 1 and 2 are paired in the diplomatic edition but are slightly separated in the critical edition. based on what we know of daniel and azarias fr om the use of traditional methods—including simply comparing the poems line-by-line and word-by-word—we conclude that the dendrogram created fr om the critical edition is more consistent with the actual relationship between the two poems. azarias is very much like the third segment of daniel, and both of these are less like the rest of the poem. additional experiments with other texts whose sources and affi nities are known (christ iii, the signed poems of cynewulf, and others)32 show that dendrograms produced fr om diplomatic editions of old english poems are consistently identical at the high levels of the clade structure with those produced fr om critical editions. all variations that do occur are deep in the clade structure and have all been the replacement of pairings in the critical edition with stepwise arrangements in the diplomatic. because our previous research has shown that accurate lexomic analysis is possible even when we use only those words which appear in every segment of a poem (thus eliminating the infl uence of rare words; drout et al. 2011: 314–315), we conclude that the diff erences between diplomatic and critical editions are relatively invisible to lexomic methods. because we are comparing the distribution of between 500 and 1000 words per segment, because the most common words in 32 with the exception, as always, of beowulf. lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 25 selim 19 (2012) anglo-saxon are those least likely to be emended, and because the aspr editors were extremely judicious in their textual changes, we conclude that—with the possible exceptions of beowulf, exodus and christ and satan, which for various reasons are heavily emended— we would gain little or nothing fr om replacing the electronic critical editions with re-constructed diplomatic ones. in fact, in most of the cases we have studied, the critical editions appear to be somewhat closer to the structure of the poems. we conclude that the construction of electronic diplomatic editions for the purpose of lexomic analysis is not likely to produce benefi ts commensurate with the eff ort required to produce them. however, in cases where diplomatic electronic editions do exist, it may be worth examining them as well. it is more diffi cult to determine if we can have the same confi dence in lexomic analyses of prose texts fr om the doe corpus. in contrast to the poems, many of the prose texts are extant in multiple manuscript witnesses. although researchers could use the apparatus of schröer’s edition of the rule of st benedict to reconstruct all fi ve texts as electronic diplomatic editions, the vast amount of tedious manual labor required for such an experiment is currently beyond the resources of our research group (and probably beyond the interest of all other research groups). fortunately, allen j. frantzen generously provided us with electronic editions of all the manuscript versions of the anglo-saxon penitentials, thus enabling us to compare dendrograms derived fr om multiple manuscripts, both to each other and to the doe edition of the text. this exercise has allowed us to determine the degree to which collation and editorial practice infl uences dendrogram geometry. we chose to focus on the old english penitential, a tenthcentury anglo-saxon text that is primarily a translation of a ninthcentury latin penitential written by haltigar, bishop of cambrai (frantzen 1983: 134–139). books 1–3 of the four-part anglo-saxon text translate books 3–4 of the six-book latin penitential (schmitz p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 26selim 19 (2012) 1958 [1898]: 275–300), but the fi nal book of the old english penitential stems fr om a source written in anglo-saxon, the tenthcentury penitential now known as the scrift boc.33 the old english penitential is found in four manuscripts: cambridge, corpus christi college, ms 190;34 oxford, bodleian library, junius ms 121;35 oxford, bodleian library, laud misc. ms 482;36 and brussels, bibliothèque royale, ms 8558–8563 (catalogue number 2498).37 these were used by josef raith to produce his 1933 collated critical edition (raith 1964 [1933]), which is currently the text in the dictionary of old english corpus. frantzen’s digital edition of the penitentials at http://anglo-saxon. net includes all four manuscripts. because the amount of material in the brussels manuscript is very small, we omit this manuscript fr om the following discussion. 33 this text has, since benj amin thorpe’s 1840 edition, been incorrectly identifi ed as the confessionale pseudo-egberti (thorpe 1840). robert spindler also used this title for his 1934 edition (spindler 1934), which is used in the dictionary of old english corpus. however, as frantzen notes, the attribution to egbert is found only in the incipit of cccc 190, and the ascription most likely refers only to the “confessional” that follows the incipit, not the old english penitential itself. in order to reduce confusion between latin and old english documents, frantzen re-named the text scrift boc in the literature of penance in anglo-saxon england (frantzen 1983: 133–135). 34 ker, catalogue, no. 45b; gneuss, handlist, no. 59, an exeter manuscript fr om the middle of the eleventh century. 35 ker, catalogue, no. 338, gneuss, handlist, no. 644, a worcester manuscript fr om the last quarter of the eleventh century. 36 ker, catalogue, no. 34, gneuss, handlist, no. 656, a worcester manuscript fr om the middle of the eleventh century. 37 ker, catalogue, no. 10: glosses, penitential collections; gneuss, handlist, no. 808, a three-part manuscript containing material fr om the tenth, eleventh and twelft h centuries. lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 27 selim 19 (2012) book 1 s41.01.00-s41.15.00 s41.01.01-s41.15.00 y41.01.01-y41.15.02y41.01.00-y41.15.00 x 41 .0 1. 00 x 41 .0 1. 01 x 41 .0 2. 01 x 41 .0 3. 00 x 41 .0 1. 01 4. 02 8. 02 x 41 .0 9. 00 x 41 .0 3. 01 x 41 .0 4. 01 4. 01 x 41 .0 5. 00 5. 01 5. 02 x 41 .0 6. 00 x 41 .0 6. 01 x 41 .0 7. 00 x 41 .0 7. 01 x 41 .0 8. 00 8. 01 8. 03 9. 01 9. 02 9. 03 10 .0 11 .0 1 11 .0 2 12 .0 1 12 .0 2 13 .0 1 14 .0 1 15 .0 1 15 .0 2 x 41 .1 3. 00 x 41 .1 2. 00 11x 41 .1 0. 00 x 41 .1 4. 00 x 41 .1 5. 00 s4 1. 01 .0 0 figure 6. ribbon diagram of book 1 of the old english penitential in three manuscripts s42.01.00-s42.30.00 y42.01.00-y42.30.00 x4 1. 01 .0 0 1. 01 1. 02 1. 03 1. 04 1. 05 x4 2. 02 .0 0 2. 01 x4 2. 03 .0 0 3. 01 x4 2. 04 .0 0 4. 01 x4 2. 05 .0 0 5. 01 5. 02 x4 2. 06 .0 0 6. 01 6. 02 x4 2. 07 .0 0 7. 01 x4 2. 06 .0 0 8. 01 8. 02 x4 2. 09 .0 0 9. 01 x4 2. 10 .0 0 10 .0 1 x4 2. 11 .0 0 11 .0 1 11 .0 2 x4 2. 17 .0 1 x4 2. 17 .0 0 x 42 .1 2. 00 12 .0 1 x4 2. 13 .0 0 13 .0 1 x4 2. 14 .0 0 14 .0 1 x4 2. 15 .0 0 15 .0 1 x4 2. 16 .0 0 16 .0 1 x4 2. 18 .0 0 18 .0 1 cccc 190 laud misc. 482 junius 121 book 2 (continued) x4 2. 19 .0 0 x4 2. 20 .0 0 x4 2. 21 .0 0 x4 2. 22 .0 0 x4 2. 23 .0 0 x4 2. 24 .0 0 x4 2. 25 .0 0 x4 2. 26 .0 0 x4 2. 27 .0 0 x4 2. 28 .0 0 x4 2. 29 .0 0 x4 2. 30 .0 0 19 .0 1 19 .0 2 20 .0 1 20 .0 3 20 .0 2 21 .0 1 21 .0 2 22 .0 1 23 .0 1 23 .0 2 24 .0 1 24 .0 2 24 .0 3 25 .0 1 25 .0 2 26 .0 1 27 .0 1 27 .0 2 28 .0 1 29 .0 1 30 .0 1 30 .0 2 s42.01.01-s42.30.02 y42.01.01-y42.30.02 book 2 cccc 190 laud misc. 482 junius 121 s42.01.01-s42.30.02 y42.01.01-y42.30.02 figure 7. ribbon diagram of book 2 of the old english penitential in three manuscripts p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 28selim 19 (2012) book 3 s43.01.00-s43.16.00 junius 121 cccc 190 laud misc. 482 x 43 .0 1. 00 x 43 .0 2. 00 x 43 .0 3. 00 x 43 .0 4. 00 x 43 .0 5. 00 x 43 .0 6. 00 x 43 .0 7. 00 x 43 .0 8. 00 x 43 .0 9. 00 x 43 .1 0. 00 x 43 .1 1. 00 x 43 .1 2. 00 x 43 .1 3. 00 x 43 .1 4. 00 x 43 .1 5. 00 x 43 .0 1. 00 s43.01.01-s43.16.03 y43.01.01-y43.16.03 1. 01 2. 02 3. 01 4. 01 5. 01 6. 01 7. 01 8. 01 9. 01 10 .0 1 11 .0 1 12 .0 1 13 .0 1 15 .0 1x43.14.01x43.14.05 x43.16.01x43.16.03 y43.05.00y43.09.00 y43.11.00y43.16.00y4 3. 03 .0 0 y 43 .0 3. 00 y 43 .0 1. 00 y 43 .0 4. 00 y 43 .0 2. 00 figure 8. ribbon diagram of book 3 of the old english penitential in three manuscripts x41.11.01-x44.59.03 s4 4. 01 .0 0 y4 3. 03 .0 0 y4 3. 03 .0 0 s4 4. 14 .0 3 s4 4. 31 .0 1 y4 4. 18 .0 2 y4 4. 29 .0 3 y44.11.01-s44.18.01 s44.01.01s44.01.05 s44.02.01s44.05.01 s44.06.01s44.10.01 s44.11.01s44.13.02 s44.32.01s44.35.01 s44.39.01-s44.59.01s44.36.01s44.38.01 y44.19.01-s44.29.02 y44.30.01-s44.57.01 y4 4. 58 .0 1y4 4. 59 .0 1 s4 4. 01 .0 6 s44.05.02s44.05.04 s54.38.01s54.41.01 s44.14.04-s44.30.01 y44.01.01y44.01.05 y4 4. 01 .0 6 y4 4. 04 .0 1 y44.05.01-y44.10.01 s54.38.01s54.41.01 x44.01.01-x44.40.01 y4 4. 02 .0 1y4 4. 03 .0 1 book 4 junius 121 cccc 190 laud misc. 482 book 4 (continued) junius 121 cccc 190 laud misc. 482 figure 9. ribbon diagram of book 4 of the old english penitential in three manuscripts figure 10. legend for ribbon diagrams lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 29 selim 19 (2012) figures 6–9 represent the relationship among the manuscripts in what we call a ribbon diagram.38 the top ribbon indicates the books (1–4) of the penitential, while the lower ribbons represent the arrangement and relative size of capitulae and canons in each of the three manuscripts. missing and disarranged sections are indicated by shading. notice that for books 1, 2, and 3, the ribbons for cccc 190 and laud misc. 483 match up almost exactly, indicating that books 1, 2 and 3 are arranged the same in these manuscripts, with the capitulae grouped together at the beginning of each book as a table of contents. the version of the old english penitential in junius 121, however, is diff erently organized, with capitulae interspersed throughout the text, as chapter headings for the canons. having the capitulae spread throughout the junius text creates some challenges for lexomic analysis. although corpus and laud match up segment by segment regardless of segment size, the same content is distributed somewhat diff erently in the junius manuscript: the fi rst 1000 words of laud and corpus are made up entirely of capitulae, while the fi rst 1000 words of junius are approximately 65 percent text and 35 percent capitulae. to address this problem we used a process we call blending39 to re-arrange the material in the cccc 190 and laud manuscripts in order create segments that would allow one-to-one comparisons. we therefore cut the fi rst three books of corpus and laud between the capitulae and the main text and then sub-divided each of these segments in half, producing for each book two shorter segments composed entirely of capitulae and two short segments composed entirely of regular text. we then matched the fi rst segment of capitulae with the fi rst segment of text, the second segment of capitulae with the second segment of text, and so on, and then blended together the capitulae and their now-associated main text into new segments. figure 11 illustrates the process. 38 ribbon diagrams were developed by m. d. c. drout and courtney labrie in 2011. 39 the blending technique was developed by m. d. c. drout and leah smith. p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 30selim 19 (2012) figure 11. process of blending produces segments with the same contents because the capitulae run in order, putting the fi rst half of the cccc 190 and laud capitula sections with the fi rst half of the corresponding text creates new, hybrid segments that are composed of the same material as the junius text segments, in which the capitulae are interspersed. we can then use these texts to create dendrograms of the three manuscript witnesses of the old english penitential. α β α β blended cccc 190 blended laud misc. 482 blended l aud – 4b blended l aud – 4a blended l aud – 2b blended l aud – 2a blended l aud – 3 blended l aud – 1 blended c c c c – 4b blended c c c c – 4a blended c c c c – 3 blended c c c c – 1 blended c c c c – 2b blended c c c c – 2a figure 12. comparison of dendrograms of the old english penitential in cccc 190 and laud misc. 482, segments blended lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 31 selim 19 (2012) of the three manuscripts, corpus and laud have the most similar dendrogram geometries, and in the highest level of the clade structure they are the identical. in figure 12 the segments are named by their relationship to books of the old english penitential. books 1 and 2 are complete in individual segments; books 2 and 4, because they are larger, are each divided into two segments, “a” and “b.” the high-level clade structure of the texts in the two manuscripts is identical: segments 1, 2a, 2b and 3 cluster in one clade and segments 4a and 4b in the other. furthermore, this highlevel clade structure is consistent with what we know of the sources of the old english penitential: clade α (segments 1, 2a, 2b, and 3), on the left of the dendrogram, has haltigar’s latin penitential as its source; the material represented by clade β (segments 4a and 4b), on the right side of the dendrogram, is taken fr om the old english scrift boc. in both manuscripts, segment 1 clusters with segment 3, but in laud, segments 2a and 2b also cluster together, while in corpus 190 we see a stepwise geometry with 2a and 2b slightly separate. because the vertical distances between the branches are so short between the inner clades, the geometry may be perturbed by only very small variations in the underlying text. junius – 3 junius – 1 junius – 2b junius – 2a junius – 4a figure 13. dendrogram of the old english penitential in junius 121 p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 32selim 19 (2012) although the junius dendrogram in figure 7 at fi rst glance appears to have a geometry diff erent fr om that of the corpus and laud dendrograms, closer examination shows that the dendrograms are the same as long as we take into account the absence of some material fr om the junius text. in all three dendrograms, segments 1 and 3 cluster most closely, then segments 2b and 2a join that clade (stepwise in junius and cccc, pairwise in laud). material fr om the fourth book diff ers most in vocabulary and is thus separate fr om the rest of the dendrogram. this clade is simplicifolious in junius simply because the text corresponding to segment 4b in laud and cccc is missing fr om the manuscript. and, as figure 8 shows, the junius dendrogram also has essentially the same geometry as the dictionary of old english collated text, with the only diff erence being the absence of segment 4b. this geometry is explained by raith’s editorial practice of using material fr om junius to fi ll in gaps in corpus and laud. raith’s combined text therefore makes segment 4a somewhat diff erent fr om what it is in either laud or corpus (where 4a is more similar to 4b). junius 121 doe collated text junius – 3 junius – 1 junius – 2b junius – 2a junius – 4a d o e o e p – 4a d o e o e p – 4b [not in junius] d o e o e p – 2a d o e o e p – 2b d o e o e p – 1 d o e o e p – 3 figure 14. comparison of dendrograms of the old english penitential in junius 121 with the dictionary of old english collated edition of the same text lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 33 selim 19 (2012) d o e — 1 d o e — 3 d o e — 2a d o e — 4a d o e — 2b d o e — 4b junius — 3 c c c c — 4b l aud — 4b l aud — 4a l aud — 2a l aud — 2b l aud — 1 l aud — 3 c c c c — 4a c c c c — 2a c c c c — 2b c c c c — 1 c c c c — 3 junius — 1 junius — 2b junius — 2a junius — 4a figure 15. comparison of dendrograms of the old english penitential in the laud, cccc, and junius 121 manuscripts and the dictionary of old english collated edition figure 15 compares the dictionary of old english critical edition with all three diplomatic editions. as we would by now expect, lexomic methods correctly place matching segments together (even though the texts are not entirely identical). we also see that within clades, the segments of the doe collated critical edition stick most closely to the corresponding segments of the laud manuscript, showing that the doe edition follows the vocabulary of the laud manuscript more closely than it does the other manuscripts. if we simplify the terminal leaves of the dendrogram (figure 16), we can more easily see how the relationships between the texts and the critical edition are represented in the higherlevel clade structure. p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 34selim 19 (2012) l aud d o e c c c c junius l aud d o e c c c c junius l aud d o e c c c c junius l aud d o e c c c c junius l aud d o e c c c c junius l aud d o e c c c c figure 16. comparison of dendrograms of the old english penitential in the laud, cccc, and junius 121 manuscripts and the dictionary of old english collated edition, terminal leaves simplifi ed it is now easy to see that the combined dendrogram has the same high-level clade structure as the junius dendrogram in figure 13 (again with the exception that segment 4b is absent fr om the junius text). from these experiments we can draw several conclusions. first, at the higher levels of the clade structure, there is no signifi cant disagreement between the dendrograms produced fr om diplomatic and critical editions. we can therefore use either and still get results that agree with the controls. furthermore, we note that the relationships of source structure that are of particular interest to us are represented in the dendrograms of the prose texts regardless of manuscript or edition. in all cases, the material with an old english source is separated fr om that with a latin source at the highest level of the clade structure. there are small diff erences in dendrogram geometry between diplomatic and critical editions at lower levels of the clade structure, but these are subtle, in each case being the diff erence between a stepwise and a pairwise arrangement of clades lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 35 selim 19 (2012) with very short vertical distances between them, a geometry that indicates only small diff erences in vocabulary that should not be used to draw signifi cant conclusions. if the ultimate exemplar of the old english penitential included the fi rst three books translated fr om haltigar plus a fourth book taken fr om the old english scrift boc (the conclusion arrived at using traditional methods), then the critical edition accurately refl ects this archetype. furthermore, the dendrograms made fr om the critical edition display the same basic clade structure as those fr om the diplomatic editions of the manuscripts. our reception of texts fr om before the age of mechanical reproduction is strongly infl uenced by editorial practices, many of which are opaque to us if we read a text for content alone. we must therefore pay close attention to editorial practices at every level, fr om orthography to word division, emendation and collation, all of which have the potential to aff ect the data we are using to produce dendrograms (and thus analyze textual structures and relationships). prose texts, which are longer and oft en exist in more manuscript witnesses than old english poetic texts, present challenging problems, especially if we want to compare those edited by diff erent editors, whose practices likely vary. however, based on both our previous analysis of anglo-saxon poetry and the results of this examination of the editions of the old english penitential, we can have reasonable confi dence in lexomic investigations that use the critical editions in the dictionary of old english corpus. 4 lexomic detection of sources: the old english orosius the spanish priest paulus orosius wrote his historiarum adversus paganos libri septem in 417 or 418 at the urging of his teacher, st augustine of hippo. this universal history, which covers events fr om the fall of man to the early fi ft h century, was polemical as well as historical, attempting to demonstrate that the political and social disruptions of the author’s lifetime were not due to the adoption of christianity and subsequent neglect of the pagan gods. p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 36selim 19 (2012) in the past there were even more disasters, orosius asserts, and so christianity need not shoulder the blame for current (fi ft h-century) conditions. the historiarum adversus paganos was extremely popular throughout the middle ages, with over 250 surviving manuscript witnesses (bately 1980: lv). some time between 889 and 899 and probably closer to 890, orosius’s latin text (hereaft er abbreviated as oh) was translated into anglo-saxon (bately 1980: lxxxvi– xciii). based on the testimony of william of malmesbury, this old english translation (abbreviated or) was traditionally attributed to king alfr ed (stubbs 1887: i.132). alfr ed’s authorship was never seriously questioned until 1951 (raith 1951: 54–61), and it was only in 1970 that janet bately demonstrated that the translation was almost certainly not by the king himself, although it is likely to have been produced as part of alfr ed’s educational and translation programs (bately 1970: 433–460). where it follows the source text the anglo-saxon translation is a basically accurate rendering of oh, but as bately notes, the translator does not hesitate to omit or reduce the description of many of orosius’s interpretations of events, at times replacing them with his own observations or analyses and on the whole converting the text fr om a polemical document addressing a fi ft hcentury audience to a more general “survey of world history fr om a christian standpoint” (bately 1980: xciii). the translator also augmented his text with incidental material fr om various classical and patristic authors40—perhaps drawn fr om annotations in the latin manuscript that was his exemplar or fr om commentaries— and with geographic information not present in oh. the most famous of the additions are the reports of ninth-century voyagers ohthere and wulfstan (hereaft er be referred to as the voyages), which describe the lands and cultures of the north, but there is also 40 the most complete and up-to-date list of identifi ed or suspected sources can be found in the fontes anglo-saxonici: world wide web register, http://fontes. english.ox.ac.uk (accessed 25 february 2013). see also bately 1971 (but note that this important article is keyed to sweet’s edition, not bately’s later text). lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 37 selim 19 (2012) a great deal of geographic material in or which either replaces or augments the contents of oh.41 the doe corpus electronic text is bately’s defi nitive 1980 e.e.t.s. edition, which is based upon london, british library, additional ms 47967 (manuscript l), except for section 15/1–28/11, which are missing in l but found in london, british library, cotton tiberius ms b.i. (manuscript c). although bately adopts a few additions and corrections fr om other manuscripts (indicated by square brackets in her text), her edition is not an artifi cial conglomeration of multiple sources but a judicious reconstruction of the single manuscript that seems closest to the original old english archetype (bately 1980: xxxviii–xxxix concludes that mss l and c are at least two removes fr om that text). our pre-processing for lexomic analysis, then, only requires that we consolidate thorn and eth and lemmatize tironian, and and ond as well as performing our standard “scrubbing” to remove formatting and punctuation and force all letters to lower-case. we chose to divide the text into 900-word segments, a size which requires some explanation. previous research has shown that dendrograms of anglo-saxon poems are broadly accurate down to a segment size of 500 words, but that dendrograms based on segments closer to 1000 words somewhat more consistent in detail with the known structures of texts (drout et al. 2011: 311–315). the trick is to avoid creating segments that split apart signifi cant features of a text (for example, spreading the azarias section of daniel across two segments) and therefore producing artifacts in the dendrogram. unfortunately, when we are dealing with a text whose sources are unknown or only suspected we do not have a source-structure to guide the arrangement of our dividing lines. in these cases we have found it useful to create multiple dendrograms of varying sizes to see 41 the possible sources of the geographic material has been the subject of an enormous amount of scholarship. see bately 1980: lxiii–lxx, lxxxix–xc. the most recent discussion, which is extremely thorough, is valtonen 2008. p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 38selim 19 (2012) what patterns are robust across diff erent segment sizes (for example, we might start with 800-word segments and then increase the segment size by 100 words until we reach 1500-word segments). we are then able to isolate distinctive sections of a text by making small adjustments in segment boundaries in subsequent experiments.42 because the voyages of ohthere and wulfstan are a known feature of or, we sought to avoid combining these with other material in a single segment in order to avoid creating a hybrid whose vocabulary distribution was representative of neither the voyages nor the nonvoyages material. a 900-word division puts the voyages into two segments (3 and 4) that do not include non-voyage material. the dendrogram that results fr om performing cluster analysis on the 900word segments of the scrubbed old english text is shown in figure 17. there are fi fty -fi ve 900-word segments. 1 2 5 6 52 7 8 29 50 51 46 24 25 55 53 54 12 28 13 22 32 45 36 39 27 43 44 35 33 34 38 40 42 37 18 31 9 19 14 41 17 20 47 48 23 15 10 11 21 49 16 26 30 3 4 α β γ η ζ δ κ λ θ ι ν μ ο ξ π ρ ε figure 17. dendrogram of the old english orosius cut into 900-word segments 42 because we calculate all distances using relative fr equencies, it is not essential for the absolute sizes of each segment to be identical. however, we have found it important to avoid extreme diff erences in segment size because very large diff erences have the potential to produce artifacts in the dendrograms. lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 39 selim 19 (2012) when faced with as large and complex a dendrogram as figure 17 (a situation more likely in the analysis of prose texts than of shorter poems), it is useful to bundle together the terminal leaves of many clades in order to see more clearly the high-level clade structure. like figure 16 above, figure 18 borrows a convention fr om linguistics and represents large clades with triangles. the high-level clade structure of the dendrogram is thus seen to be relatively simple. there is a very signifi cant divide between clade α (which contains only segments 1, 2, 5 and 6) and the muchlarger β, which includes all the rest of the orosius translation. there are then four major divisions in β: single-leafed γ, and the bifolious clades ε and η are distinct fr om θ, which contains 46 segments. 1-2, 5-6 52 3 74 8 9-51, 53 -55 γ α β ε η δ ζ θ figure 18. simplifi ed dendrogram of the old english orosius cut into 900-word segments p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 40selim 19 (2012) se gm en t 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 o ro siu s c on te nt by b oo k an d ch ap te r i.i i.i i i.i ii i.v i.v i i.v ii i.v iii i.i x i.x i.x i i.x ii i.i v se gm en t 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 o ro siu s c on te nt by b oo k an d ch ap te r i.x ii (c on t.) ii .v i.v ii i.v i i.v iii ii i.i ii i.i i i.xiii i.xiv ii .i ii .ii ii .ii i ii .iv iii.iii se gm en t 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 o ro siu s c on te nt by b oo k an d ch ap te r ii i.i ii ii i.i x ii i.x ii i.x i iii.iv iii.v ii i.v i ii i.v ii ii i.v iii se gm en t 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 o ro siu s c on te nt by b oo k an d ch ap te r ii i.x i (c on t.) iv .v i iv .i iv .ii iv .v iv .ii i iv .iv iv .v ii iv .v ii iv .ix iv .x se gm en t 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 o ro siu s c on te nt by b oo k an d ch ap te r iv .x (c on t.) v .ii i iv .x i v .i v .ii iv .x i iv .x iii v .ix v .x i v .x ii v .iv v .v v .v ii v .v iii v .x se gm en t 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 o ro siu s c on te nt by b oo k an d ch ap te r v .x iii (c on t.) v i.i i v i.i ii v i.x xx i v i.x xx iv v i.x xx vi i v i.x xx v i.x xx iii vi.vi v .x ix v .x v v i.i v i.i x v i.v vi.xii vi.xiii vi.xiv vi.xv vi.xxxv vi.xxxvi vi.xxxviii 10 vi.vii vi.viii vi.ix vi.x vi.xi vi.xvi vi.xvii vi.xviii vi.xix vi.xx vi.xxi vi.xxii vi.xxiii vi.xxiv vi.xxv vi.xxvi vi.xxvii vi.xxviii vi.xxix vi.xxxii v.vi v.xiii figure 19. ribbon diagram of the old english orosius shows the organization of the text and the relationship of that organization to the segments of the dendrogram lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 41 selim 19 (2012) the ribbon diagram in figure 19 can be used to correlate the placement of each segment in the dendrogram with its content.43 the top row gives the segment number, the bottom row the book and chapter in the old english orosius. the core of the dendrogram, clade θ in figures 17 and 18, represents a signifi cant quantity of material—over 41,000 words—translated fr om the latin text of orosius’s history. the short vertical distances between sub-clades indicates that the material in this large grouping is relatively homogenous (though there are some diff erences, to which we will return). as is discussed in much more detail below, clades α, ε and η, which are separate fr om θ, all have diff erent sources than the main body of the text. most signifi cant for our present purposes is clade ε, which contains the voyages (pages 13–18 in bately’s edition). originally written in a vernacular and thus not translated fr om latin, the voyages have long been noted to be linguistically diff erent fr om the rest of the old english orosius (bately 1980: lxxii). they also diff er fr om each other. ohthere’s account is that of a scandinavian visiting england, whereas wulfstan’s is of an anglo-saxon who had traveled to scandinavia (townend 2002: 90–95). although the degree of infl uence of old norse upon ohthere’s account is disputed (townend 2002: 95–101), there is no doubt among scholars that the voyages were composed in old english. it is therefore signifi cant that they are so distinctly separated fr om the main body of the dendrogram. as in our lexomic analysis of the old english penitential, we are able to detect sections of a text that have signifi cantly diff erent sources than those of the main body of the text. even at this relatively crude level of analysis, therefore, we have taken a signifi cant step towards establishing the accuracy of lexomic methods for old english prose, since the placement of segments 3 and 4 indicates that these have a diff erent source fr om the other segments, which they do. 43 for a much more detailed breakdown of the contents of each segment, see appendix a. p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 42selim 19 (2012) there are, however, additional separated clades in the dendrogram that do not contain material fr om the voyages and therefore require further analysis. clade α contains segments 1, 2, 5 and 6 of or (book i, chapters i–iii, with the exception of the voyages). the sources of this geographic material are unknown and disputed. some of the geographic information may have been drawn fr om a mappa mundi (derolez 1971),44 and other elements appear to come fr om the translator’s general knowledge of continental europe in the ninth century (bately 1980: lxvii–lxx). but regardless of where the material came fr om, it is certain that it is not drawn fr om the latin text of orosius’s history. thus clade α, like clade ε, also has a diff erent source than the main body of the text in clade θ, and this diff erence is refl ected in its placement in the dendrogram. clade η likewise has additional sources beyond oh. this bifolious clade is comprised of segments 7 and 8, which contain the last third of chapter iii and chapters iv–viii of book i. as bately demonstrates in her commentary, the material in this section is heavily modifi ed and augmented fr om the orosius’s original. for instance, bately notes that at the end of chapter iii, a comment derived fr om josephus (by way of hegesippus) has been interpolated into the text. although the comment is found in various manuscripts of oh, it is absent fr om those that are closest to the deduced source of the old english orosius. its inclusion, therefore, suggests that the translator used an additional source here, perhaps isidore’s etymologies (bately 1980: 212–213).45 according to bately’s commentary, segments 7 and 8 contain 16–18 places where or contains additional material 44 for caveats see bately 1980: lxvii–lxx, who does not rule out the use of one or more more mappae mundi but notes that the evidence of the text is “sadly inconclusive.” 45 bately notes that the comment could have been derived fr om augustine, tertullian or tacitus, and that the version closest in wording to the old english text is bede’s de locis sanctis. the fontes database identifi es bede as the most likely source. lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 43 selim 19 (2012) not found in orosius’s latin text.46 in comparison, bately only identifi es fi ve unambiguous and two possible additions in segment 9, and these are shorter than those in segments 6 and 7. segment 1 2 3 5 6 7 8 9 10 orosius content by book and chapter i.i i.ii i.i ii i.v i.v i i.vii i.viii i.i x i.x i.x i i.x ii i.i v sources suggested by fontes anglo-saxonici 4 figure 20: ribbon diagram of the identifi ed sources (based on the fontes anglo-saxonici database) of segments 1–10 of the old english translation of orosius’s historia. segments are 900 words long. note the lack of latin sources for segments 3 and 4 the fontes anglo-saxonici database adds somewhat to this total: of the 165 lines in segments 6 and 7, fontes identifi es 72 of them as having sources in addition to orosius, and approximately 20 of these lines are defi nitely not fr om that source. of the 87 lines of segment 9, the fontes database identifi es up to 35 as possibly having a source outside of orosius, but none of these defi nitely has an outside source. figure 20, which represents the information in the fontes database, shows that indeed there are more potential sources in segments 7 and 8 than in segments 9 and higher. but close inspection of the citations in the fontes database suggests that we must be somewhat cautious here: the database lists all the possible sources for a given line but oft en does not indicate which is the proximate source for the old english translator because many of the citations are to the use of ideas rather than to phrasing fr om any specifi c text. although the translator might have been consulting a fl orilegium, a well-glossed commentary or manuscripts in a well-stocked library, he may also have drawn on his own general knowledge and prior reading. for example, bately 46 there are 16 notes in which bately 1980: 212–218 identifi es defi nite additions and two other places in which she suspects an addition. p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 44selim 19 (2012) and the fontes database identify genesis 41:29 as the source of a substantial passage in book i, chapter v that describes joseph’s prediction of the seven fat years (bately’s lines 23.19–24.15), a passage not found in oh (bately 1980: 213). certainly the ultimate source for the passage is the bible, but it seems likely that here the translator is merely drawing on his memory of the story than any specifi c intermediate source, since the old english does not translate the biblical text word for word. this passage therefore does have a diff erent source fr om that of the nearby material that translates orosius’s latin, but we cannot be certain which text was its proximate source. many of the other identifi cations of sources are likewise diffi cult to link to a physical text. but while segments 7 and 8 appear to have more defi nite sources than most of the other, later segments in clade θ, the density of material fr om nonorosian sources is not nearly as pronounced in this clade as it is in ε (the voyages) or α (the geographic material). and indeed, although η does separate fr om θ, it is the closest of all the outliers to that very large grouping of segments and so most similar to the main body of the text that is translated for the most part directly fr om orosius’s latin. the remaining anomaly in the dendrogram is segment 52, which in vocabulary distribution is less distant fr om the main body of the text than the geographic material, but, surprisingly, more so than the voyages. this segment contains book vi, chapters xxiiii–xxix and half of chapter xxx. diff erences between this segment and those before and aft er it are not readily obvious. at this point in book vi there are a series of short chapters that have the eff ect of repeating the opening words “æft er þæm þe romeburg getimbred wæs __ wintrum” [aft er the time in which rome had been established for __ years] more fr equently here than in many other segments, but not particularly more so than in 51 and 53. the ribbon diagram in figure 21 shows that segment 52 has very few identifi ed sources (fontes and bately propose oblique infl uence by jerome and isidore, but this identifi cation lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 45 selim 19 (2012) is tentative and there are no obvious quotations). bately’s note on the end of chapter xxviii speculates that there was corruption in the underlying manuscript at this point in the text, and it seems plausible that a damaged or defective text could infl uence a dendrogram, but in this particular case only a single sentence appears to have been aff ected directly by the corruption.47 we are therefore left without a good explanation for the placement of segment 52. either it has a source or author diff erent fr om the main body of the text but not identifi ed by bately or fontes, or its very lack of additional external sources makes it distinctive in vocabulary (although segment 22 similarly has few or no known sources beyond that of the latin orosius). segment 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 orosius content by book and chapter v.xiii (cont.) vi.ii vi.iii v i.x xx i v i.x xx iv vi.xxxviivi.xxx v i.x xx iii v.xix v.xv vi.i vi.ix vi.v v i.x xx v v i.x xx vi v i.x xx vi ii sources suggested by fontes anglosaxonici v i.x xx ii v i.x xi x v i.x xv iii v i.x xv ii v i.x xv i v i.x xv v i.x xx iv v i.x xi ii v i.x xi i v i.x xi v i.x x v i.x ix v i.x vi ii v i.x vi i v i.x vi v i.x v v i.x iv v i.x iii v i.x ii v i.x i v i.x v i.i x v i.v iii v i.v ii v i.v i figure 21: ribbon diagram of the identifi ed sources (based on the fontes anglo-saxonici database) of segments 47–55 of the old english translation of orosius’s historia. segments are 900 words long. note that 52 is the only segment generally lacking in known sources segment 52 therefore is at this point an unexplained anomaly. as such, it could cast some doubt on the applicability of lexomic 47 it may be that corruption in the exemplar aff ected the prose styly by forcing the translator to compose rather than translate and that the resultant diff erence in the distribution of vocabulary is infl uencing the dendrogram geometry, but at this stage of our knowledge we do not have enough evidence or understanding to confi rm or rule out this possibility. p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 46selim 19 (2012) methods to prose texts,48 but in all other cases the high-level of the geometry has refl ected the source structure of the texts. lexomic methods were able to detect the diff erences in vocabulary distribution between the section of the old english penitential that has an anglo-saxon source and the rest of the text, which is based on the latin penitential of haltigar, and they were likewise able to identify through dendrogram geometry alone the infl uence of diff erent sources in the voyages of ohthere and wulfstan, the geographic material fr om an unknown source, and the additions to segments 7 and 8 of the orosius translation. we can therefore have some reasonable confi dence in the accuracy of the methods when extended fr om poetry to prose, particularly when we remember that we are using lexomics to open up a complimentary information channel about texts, not to replace traditional methods. it is when we correlate traditional methods with lexomic analysis, using each to augment the other, that we gain new insight into the texts, and it is hoped that future scholars, now alerted that something may be unusual in segment 52, may be able to discover an explanation. 5 the deeper structure of the orosius translation to this point our paper has mostly developed controls to which future lexomic research into prose text can be compared. it is hard to overstate the importance of such controls in a historical discipline like ours: we can only have confi dence in the techniques if we can compare the results arrived at by their employment with knowledge acquired by other means. but while controls can show us that a methodology can produce accurate results, they do not necessarily demonstrate that the methods are useful. for this latter point we want not merely confi rmation of existing knowledge but 48 although other seeming anomalies, such as the placement of juliana in the cynewulf dendrogram or a seemingly anomalous simplicifolious clade in genesis have turned out, upon further study, to have external sources. see drout et al. 2011: 330-335. lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 47 selim 19 (2012) unexpected additional support for more controversial hypotheses or entirely new information. further analysis of the lower-level clade structure of the orosius translation gives us examples of both desiderata. for the purposes of our preceding analysis we had simplifi ed the large and complex dendrogram of the entire translation, temporarily ignoring the details of the structure of 46-leafed clade θ (in figure 17). it is now time to examine its geometry more closely. within θ the fi rst clade to separate is κ, composed of segments 24, 25, 29, 46, 50, 51, 53, 54 and 55, and within κ segment 29 is simplicifolious, indicating that the distribution of its vocabulary is distinct fr om the rest of the material. clade 29 contains the second half of book iii, chapter xi, in which orosius discusses the struggles among the successors of alexander the great in macedonia. the twists and turns of the plot are complex, with multiple treasons and shift s of fortune. as bately demonstrates, the old english translator attempted to make this section of the text clearer both by simplify ing and by adding explanations. bately’s notes refer fr equently to the epitome of justinus,49 an early roman historian who was a source for orosius and whose writings clarify —at least for the modern reader—the alexandrine succession. there is never a close enough verbal correspondence between justinus and or for bately to be certain that the epitome was a source for the translator, but reading justinus side-by-side with both oh and or does show how opaque some of orosius’s passages are in comparison to both the epitome and the old english text.50 additional circumstantial evidence for the infl uence of justinus may be the possibility that asser, king alfr ed’s biographer, knew the epitome, since michael lapidge has shown that justinus cannot be ruled out as a text known to asser 49 for the knowledge of justinus in anglo-saxon england, see crick 1987. 50 we are grateful for joel relihan’s assistance with this material. p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 48selim 19 (2012) (lapidge 2003: 27).51 although the orosius translation is no longer credited directly to the king, it is understood to have been part of his educational program and produced in his circle, of which asser was an important part, arriving at approximately the same time as grimbald and john the old saxon (keynes & lapidge 1983: 26–27). if asser had access to a copy of justinus—either in wales or england—then it is not unreasonable to suppose that the translator of or could likewise have read justinus and therefore use the epitome as a source for this section of his translation. the infl uence of justinus would then explain the placement of segment 29 in the dendrogram. however, when the old english translator deviates fr om orosius’s text, he does not obviously translate justinus. instead, it almost appears as if the translator becomes fr ustrated with orosius’s circumlocutions and rather brutally simplifi es the material. for instance, orosius, in his depiction of the death of lysimachus, off ers an elaborate, somewhat poetic description, which the old english translator renders tersely as “þær wæs lysimachus ofslagen” (sweet 1883: 152–153; bately 1980: 82; seel 1972: 148). other, similar simplifi cations are found throughout the section, suggesting that the infl uence of justinus, if it exists at all, is somewhat oblique. the fi nal passage of book iii, also included in segment 29, comes fr om neither orosius or justinus: “þonne us fr emde & ellþeodge an becumaþ & lytles hwæt on us bereafi að & us eft hrædlice forlætað.” as bately notes “there is nothing corresponding to this in oh: indeed the situation in rome in orosius’ day was very diff erent. it therefore seems reasonable to suppose that the translator is referring here to conditions in his own time, and to raids by the vikings” (bately 1980: 270 and xciv). here we see the translator modify ing and augmenting his source based on what is presumably his own experience rather than any external text. the additional 51 however, lapidge was not able to confi rm asser’s knowledge of justinus because the evidence is ambiguous. lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 49 selim 19 (2012) material here is only 18 words long, so it itself is almost certainly not the entire cause of the location of segment 29 in the dendrogram. but the obvious departure fr om the source may indicate that in this section of the text the translator was more fr eely adapting than elsewhere, either because he was fr ustrated by and wanted to clarify orosius, or because he had a text—justinus—that better explained the material, or some combination of the two. given the current state of lexomic techniques and our knowledge of the text, we cannot conclude at this time that segment 29 certainly has a diff erent source (or constellation of sources) than the rest of the orosius translation. but the correlation of the lexomic evidence with information derived fr om traditional methods of investigation gave us a reason to reexamine the evidence for changes in infl uence at this point in the text, and our subsequent scrutiny of the text has at least hinted at the translator’s practice (and perhaps his sources and identity). further examination of the orosius translation in light of the geometry of dendrograms, especially those composed of diff erently sized segments, may reward investigators who can correlate dendrogram geometry with previous hypotheses about structure, authorship or affi nity. for example, elizabeth liggins’s 1970 claim for multiple authorship of the translation—based on her analysis of the distribution of various syntactic features—was reasonably criticized by bately for, among other reasons, lacking a “control” and for failing to take into account “the possibility of a single translator, gradually developing a style” (bately 1980: lxxiv–lxxxi). lexomic analysis does not on the fi rst pass appear to support liggins’s assertions, but it may be worth noting that the interior structure of clade θ, which contains the most homogeneous section of the translation, does divide roughly into three large clusters (clades ο, π and ρ in figure 17). in research on other texts,52 we have found that the production of multiple dendrograms at diff erent segment sizes allows us to note “robust” groupings (those which appear at multiple resolutions). 52 drout et al. forthcoming. p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 50selim 19 (2012) identifi cation of such robust divisions and then further syntactic, semantic or stylistic analysis may allow researchers to revisit the claims for multiple authorship or to gain a better understanding of the translator’s practice. although such analysis is beyond the scope of the current paper, which has been concerned to establish a baseline of knowledge about the applicability of lexomic methods to anglo-saxon prose, it can be performed with comparative ease now that the soft ware tools are fr eely available and now can be operated through a convenient interface. 6 conclusions this paper set out to determine if the lexomic techniques which have been profi tably applied to anglo-saxon poetic texts might also be used for analysis of anglo-saxon prose. we conclude that with suitable modifi cation they can. researchers must take into account not only the larger size of most prose texts but also their existence in multiple copies and recensions, which are refl ected in the complexity of the critical apparatus of most editions. our investigation of the old english penitential shows that lexomic analysis based upon a critical edition is consistent with that based on a diplomatic edition, but we also note it is essential that researchers understand thoroughly an editor’s practices of collation and organization. had we not recognized that raith interpolated the capitulae fr om junius 121 into a text based primarily on laud misc. 482, we would not have been able to devise a useful experiment and then interpret the dendrogram correctly. combined with our comparison of the aspr critical editions of poems to the diplomatic editions reconstructed fr om the apparatus, the evidence of the old english penitential dendrograms gives us some confi dence in lexomic analysis based on the critical editions in the dictionary of old english corpus. it is important to note, however, that diff ering editorial practices across multiple texts may complicate the task of comparing them, and while the consistent editing of krapp and dobbie across the entire poetic corpus allows us to make comparisons among anglo-saxon poems, there is no such lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 51 selim 19 (2012) consistency in the editions of much of the prose. if, for example, we wanted to perform lexomic analysis across all the penitential texts in the doe corpus, we might fi nd that consistent diff erences between raith’s editorial practices and those of finsterwalder or mone might generate either false positives or negatives. consolidation of thorn and eth and expansion of tironian note will obviate some artifactual diff erences, and others can be eliminated through orthographic normalization or even lemmatization. in the end, researchers can have confi dence in lexomic analysis based on any single critical edition but must be cautious when making broader comparisons. our analysis of both the old english penitential and the old english translation of orosius allows us to conclude that the ability of lexomic methods to detect signifi cant diff erences in the sources of texts applies to prose as well as to poetry. the dendrograms of both the penitential and or separates material based on its sources: the fi nal book of the penitential, which is based on the anglosaxon scrift boc, is in its own clade, as are both the non-orosian geographic material and the voyages of ohthere and wulfstan. furthermore, like material appears to be grouped with like: despite the interruption of the voyages in segments 3 and 4, the most outlying clade in the orosius dendrogram contains all segments of geographic material derived fr om an unknown source (segments 1, 2, 5 and 6). the dendrogram does not only separate diff erently sourced segments but groups them correctly. in addition to establishing controls, this paper has set out to demonstrate the utility of lexomic analysis in anglo-saxon prose texts. our discussion of the possible infl uence of justinus on or shows both the promise of the methods and their challenges. in this particular case, we had no particular agenda with regard to the possible use of justinus by the translator because we were unaware that this was an open question in the scholarship. the dendrogram is therefore reasonably objective evidence that segment 29 is subtly diff erent in vocabulary distribution fr om the material that surrounds it. in itself that diff erence is not suffi cient evidence to be p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 52selim 19 (2012) certain that the translator knew justinus. even when we combine the lexomic evidence with bately’s very tentative hypothesis and lapidge’s identifi cation of the epitome as a text that might have been known to asser, we still fi nd ourselves in speculative territory. but although the accumulation of circumstantial evidence is never dispositive, it is still valuable, and we can therefore conclude that the translator’s use of justinus is somewhat more probable than it was before we knew of the lexomic results. perhaps more signifi cantly, we see here that the lexomic approach can show us where to look even if it cannot always tell us what we end up fi nding there. most investigations in our fi eld are thesis-driven: we have a hypothesis and seek evidence to support it. lexomic analysis can certainly be used this way, but it is perhaps even more valuable when we realize that because they are broadly objective and able to be automated, lexomic methods can be used as screening mechanisms. the orosius translation is enormous and bately’s edition larger still. most researchers must approach such large texts with a pre-existing thesis for which they seek supporting evidence. in such circumstances, the mind’s ability to detect large-scale, unanticipated patterns is limited. lexomic methods, however, can screen multiple large texts to identify particular sections that might repay scrutiny. once these segments of interest are identifi ed, scholars can employ traditional methods and then, in an “iterate and test” loop, return to lexomic approaches in order to generate additional evidence with which to test various hypotheses. although they will never replace the erudite and creative scholar, lexomic methods do have the potential to become a signifi cant tool for better understanding the culture of the middle ages. phoebe boyd, michael d. c. drout, namiko hitotsubashi, michael j. kahn, mark d. leblanc & leah smith53 wheaton college (mass.) 53 corresponding author: mdrout@wheatoncollege.edu. lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 53 selim 19 (2012) appendix a: segment ranges and contents in or segment no. word range book & chapter pages & lines in bately 1 1–900 i.i–i.i ⒏11–⒒6 2 901–1800 i.i–i.i ⒒6–⒔23 3 1801–2700 i.i–i.i ⒔24–⒓2 4 2701–3600 i.i–i.i ⒗3–⒙6 5 3601–4500 i.i–i.i ⒙6–⒛20 6 4501–5400 i.i–i.ii–i.iii ⒛20–2⒊3 7 5401–6300 i.iii–i.iv, v, vi, vii. 2⒊3–2⒌24 8 6301–7200 i.vii–i.viii 2⒌24–2⒏8 9 7201–8100 i.viii–i.ix, x 2⒏8–30.31 10 8101–9000 i.x–i.xi, xii 30.31–3⒊21 11 9001–9900 i.xii, i.xiii, i.xiiii–ii.i 3⒊21–3⒍12 12 9901–10800 ii.i, ii.ii, 3⒍12–3⒐3 13 10801–11700 ii.iii–ii.iiii 3⒐3–4⒈23 14 11701–12600 ii.iiii 4⒈23–4⒋9 15 12601–13500 ii.iiii–ii.v 4⒋9–4⒍23 16 13501–14400 ii.v 4⒍23–4⒏35 17 14401–15300 ii.v, ii.vi, ii.vii, ii.viii 4⒏35–5⒈19 18 15301–16200 ii.viii–iii.i 5⒈19–5⒋4 19 16201–17100 iii.i, iii.ii, iii.iii 5⒋4–5⒍24 20 17100–18000 iii.iii, iii.iv, iii.v 5⒍24–5⒐24 21 18001–18900 iii.v, iii.vi, iii.vii 5⒐24–6⒉14 22 18901–19800 iii.vii–iii.viii 6⒉14–6⒋29 23 19801–20700 iii.viii 6⒋29–6⒎15 24 20701–21600 iii.viii, iii.viiii 6⒎15–70.1 25 21601–22500 iii.viiii 70.1–7⒉25 26 22501–23400 iii.viiii–iii.x 7⒉25–7⒌11 27 23401–24300 iii.x–iii.xi 7⒌11–7⒏1 28 24301–25200 iii.xi 7⒏1–80.22 29 25201–26100 iii.xi–iv.i 80.22–8⒊10 30 26101–27000 iv.i 8⒊10–8⒌27 31 27001–27900 iv.i, iv.ii, iv.iii, iv.iiii 8⒌27–8⒏16 32 27901–28800 iv.iii–iv.v 8⒏16–9⒈6 33 28801–29700 iv.v–iv.vi 9⒈6–9⒊29 34 29701–30600 iv.vi 9⒊29–9⒍14 35 30601–31500 iv.vi–iv.vii 9⒍14–9⒐1 36 31501–32400 iv.vii, iv.viii, iv.ix 9⒐2–10⒈19 p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 54selim 19 (2012) 37 32401–33300 iv.ix–iv.x 10⒈19–10⒋7 38 33301–34200 iv.x 10⒋7–10⒍25 39 34201–35100 iv.x–iv.xi 10⒍25–10⒐10 40 35101–36000 iv.xi, iv.xii, iv.xiii 10⒐10–1⒓3 41 36001–36900 iv.xiii, v.i, v.ii 1⒓3–1⒕24 42 36901–37800 v.ii, v.iii 1⒕24–1⒘18 43 37801–38700 v.iii, v.iiii, v.v, v.vi, v.vii 1⒘18–1⒛20 44 38701–39600 v.vii, v.viii, v.ix, v.x 1⒛20–12⒊16 45 39601–40500 v.x., v.xi, v.xii 12⒊16–12⒍14 46 40501–41400 v.xii, v.xiii 12⒍14–12⒐6 47 41401–42300 v.xiii, v.xiiii, v.xv 12⒐6–13⒉2 48 42301–43200 v.xv, vi.i, v.ii 13⒉2–13⒋29 49 43201–44100 v.ii, vi.iii, vi.v 13⒋29–13⒎23 50 44101–45000 vi.v, vi.vi, vi.vii, vi.viii., vi.viiii, vi.x, vi.xi, vi.xii, vi.xiii 13⒎23–14⒈7 51 45001–45900 vi.xiii, vi.xiiii, vi.xv, vi.xvi, vi.xvii, vi.xviii, vi.xviiii, vi.xx, vi.xxi, vi.xxii, vi.xxiii 14⒈7–14⒋18 52 45901–46800 vi.xxiii, vi.xxiiii, vi.xxv, vi.xxvi, vi.xxvii, vi.xxviii, vi.xxviiii, vi.xxx 14⒋18–14⒏7 53 46801–47700 vi.xxx, vi.xxxii 14⒏7–15⒈6 54 47701–48600 vi.xxxii, vi.xxxiii, vi.xxxiiii, vi.xxxv, vi.xxxvi 15⒈6–15⒋4 55 48601–49452 vi.xxxvi, vi.xxxvii, vi.xxxviii 15⒋4–15⒍23 references bately, j. 1970: king alfr ed and the old english translation of orosius. anglia 88: 433–460. bately, j. 1971: the classical editions in the old english orosius. in p. clemoes & k. hughes eds. england before 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(accessed 1 november 2002). frantzen, a. j. 1983: the literature of penance in anglo-saxon england. new brunswick (nj ), rutgers university press. frantzen, a. j. 2013: the anglo-saxon penitentials: a cultural database. http://www.anglo-saxon.net/penance (accessed 2 march 2013). gneuss, h. 2001: handlist of anglo-saxon manuscripts. tempe (az), arizona medieval and renaissance texts and studies. hennig, w. 1966: phylogenetic systematics [d. d. davis & r. zangerl trans. 1950: grundz üge einer theorie der phylogenetischen systematik]. urbana, university of illinois press. hoover, d. l. 2004: testing burrows’s delta. literary and linguistic computing 19.4: 453–475. ker, n. r. 1957: catalogue of manuscripts containing anglo-saxon. oxford, clarendon press. keynes, s. & m. lapidge 1983: alfr ed the great: asser’s life of king alfr ed and other contemporary sources. london, penguin. lapidge, m. 2003: asser’s reading. in t. reuter ed. alfr ed the great. london, ashgate. liggins, e. 1970: the authorship of the old english orosius. anglia 88: 289–322. mardia, k, j. kent & j. bibby 1980: multivariate analysis. london, academic press. megginson, d. 1993: the written language of old english poetry. (phd dissertation). toronto, university of toronto. millett, b. 2008: what is mouvance? http://www.soton.ac.uk/~wpwt/ mouvance/mouvance.htm (accessed 12 dec 2012). lexomic analysis of anglo-saxon prose 57 selim 19 (2012) o’brien o’keeff e, k. 1990: visible song: transitional literacy in old english verse. cambridge, cambridge university press. o’donnell, d. p. 2005: cædmon’s hymn: a multimedia study, edition and archive. woodbridge, d. s. brewer. r development core team 2009: r: a language and environment for statistical computing. r foundation for statistical computing, vienna. http://www.r-project.org (accessed 2 march 2013). raith, j. ed. 1964 [1933]: die altenglische version des halitgar’schen bussbuches (sog. poenitentiale pseudo-ecgberti). darmstadt, wissenschaft liche buchgesellschaft . raith, j. 1951: untersuchungen zum englischen aspekt, i. grundsätzliches altenglisch. munich, heuber. roberts, j. 2006: guide to scripts used in english writings up to 1500. london, british library. schmitz, h. j. ed. 1958 [1898]: die bussbücher und das kanonische bussverfahren. graz, akademische druck u. verlaganstalt. schröer, a. ed. 1964 [1885]: die angelsächsischen prosabearbeitungen der benediktinerregel. darmstadt wissenschaft liche buchgesellschaft . seel, o. 1972: m. iuniani iustini epitoma historiarum philippicarum pompei trogi. stuttgart, b. g. teubner. shippey, t. 2007: fighting the long defeat: philology in tolkien’s life and works. roots and branches: selected papers on tolkien by tom shippey. jena, walking tree publishers. shippey, t. 2008: response to three papers on ‘philology: whence and whither?’ given by drs utz, macgillivray, and zolkowski, at kalamazoo, 4th may 2002. the heroic age 11: http://www.mun. ca/mst/heroicage/issues/11/foruma.php (accessed 2 march 2013). spindler, r. ed. 1934: das altenglische bussbuch (sog. confessionale pseudoegberti). leipzig, tauchnitz. stokes, p. 2009: the digital dictionary. florilegium 26: 37–65. p. boyd, m. d. c. drout, n. hitotsubashi, m. j. kahn, m. leblanc & l. smith 58selim 19 (2012) stubbs, w. ed. 1887: william of malmesbury de gestis regis anglorum (rolls series 90). london, longman. sweet, h. 1883: king alfr ed’s orosius: part i: old english text and latin original (e.e.t.s. o.s. 79). london, trübner. thorpe, b. 1840: ancient laws and institutes of england. 2 vols. london, g. e. eyre and a. spottiswoode. townend, m. 2002: language and history in viking age england: linguistic relations between speakers of old norse and old english. brepols, turnhout. valtonen, i. 2008: the north in the old english orosius. a geographical narrative in context. helsinki, société néophilologique. zumthor, p. 1972: essai de poétique médiévale. paris, seuil. zumthor, p. 1987: la lettre et la voix: de la ‘littérature’ médiévale. paris, seuil. • received 16 apr 2013; accepted 14 sep 2013 selim02.pdf 176 the wanderer and the seafarer: a bibliography 1971-1991 the increasing amount of work on the old english elegies published during the last twenty years has led to the compilation of this bibliography which, due to the material available, has had to be restricted to the wanderer and the seafarer. as far as i know, ever since the publication of w. b. knapp’s “bibliography of the criticism of the old english elegies” (1971) no other comprehensive list has been printed on this specific subject, exception made of the supple ment to the revised edition of r. f. leslie’s the wanderer (1985), which included some new items up to 1984, and the list appended to m. green, ed, the old english elegies (1983), which dealt with “selected elegy scholarship” up to 1982. consequently, this bibliography intends to update the previous ones and be a helpful tool for those who intend to take up research on the subject. the structure of the bibliographies which appeared in previous editions of the poems has been followed in the organization of this one, particularly r. f. leslie (ed, 1985), t. p. dunning and a. j. bliss (eds, the wanderer, london: methuen, 1969) and i. l. gordon (ed, 1979). the minor differences refer to the addition of an initial section on bibliography and information sources and the subdivision of some parts into subheadings for each of the poems. 177 i understand, finally, that there must be other titles that i have not been able to trace, therefore all communications which may add information to this bibliography are welcome. 1. bibliography and information sources anglo-saxon england, cambridge: cambridge university press [publishes annual bibliographies since 1972] beale, w. h. (1976), old and middle english poetry to 1500: a guide to information sources, detroit: gale bessinger, j. b. ed, (1978), a concordance to the anglo-saxon poetic records, ithaca: cornell university press. cameron, a., a. kingsmill and a. c. amos, (1983), old english word studies: a preliminary author and word index, toronto: university of toronto press. galvan reula, f. (1989), “medieval english studies in spain: a first bibliography,” atlantis, xi, 1-2: 191-207. greenfield, s. b. ed, (1982), the bibliography of old english, binghamton: state university of new york. greenfield, s. b. and f. c. robinson (1980), a bibliography of publications on old english literature from the beginnings to the end of 1972, toronto: toronto university press. knapp, w. b. (1971), “bibliography of the criticism of the old english elegies,” comitatus, 2: 71-90. old english newsletter, center for medieval and early renaissance studies, state university of new york at binghamton [publishes annual bibliographies since 1967] watson, g. ed, (1974), the new cambridge bibliography of english literature: vol. 1 1600-1660, cambridge university press. 2. manuscript conner, p. w. (1975), “a contextual study of the old english exeter book,” dissertation abstracts international, 36: 3647a. 178 gobel, h. (1982), “studien zu den altenglischen schriftwesenratseln,” dissertation abstracts international, 43: 2986c mcgovern, d. s. (1983), “unnoticed punctuation in the exeter book,” medium ævum, 52. 1: 90-99. pope, j. c. (1978), “paleography and poetry: some solved and unsolved problems of the exeter book,” in m. b. parker and a. g. watson, eds, medieval scribes, manuscripts and libraries. essays presented to n. r. ker, new york: scolar press. roberts, j. (1981), “the exeter book: swa is lar _ar to spowendre spræce gelæded,” dutch quarterly review of anglo-american letters, 11: 302-319. 3. editions 3. 1. the wanderer and the seafarer bravo, a. ed and trans, (1982), literatura anglo-sajona y antología bilingüe del antiguo inglés, oviedo: universidad. fowler, r. ed and trans, (1978), old english prose and verse, london: routledge and kegan paul [revised edition of the 1966 anthology] gordon, r. k. ed and trans, (1979), anglo-saxon poetry, london: dent [revised edition of the 1922 anthology] rodrigues, l. j. ed and trans; (1991), seven anglo-saxon elegies, felinfach: llanerch publishers. 3. 2. the seafarer gordon, i. l. ed, (1979), the seafarer, manchester: manchester university press [1960, first edition]. 3. 3. the wanderer leslie, r. f., ed, (1985), the wanderer, manchester: manchester university press [1966, first edition]. 179 4. translations 4. 1. the wanderer and the seafarer [see section 3: bravo (1982), fowler (1978), gordon (1979), rodrigues (1991)] alexander, m. and f. riddy, eds, (1989), macmillan anthologies of english literature. i: the middle ages, (700-1550), london: macmillan. bradley, s. a. j. (1982), anglo-saxon poetry: an anthology of old english poems in prose translation, london: dent. lerate, l. and j. lerate (1986), beowulf y otros poemas anglo-sajones (siglos vii-x), madrid: alianza editorial. oldknow, a. (1986), “two translat ions from old english,” north dakota quarterly, 54. 4, 18-24: 4. 2. the seafarer austin, l. (1975), “ the seafarer: a translation,” old english newsletter, 8: 1. rivero, a. (1988), “translation of the seafarer ,” anglo-american studies, 8. 1: 80-85. wain, j. (1980), the seafarer, warwick: greville press. 4. 3. the wanderer de caluwe-dor, s. (1981) “ l’errant,” ecritures, 79: 14-17. hopkins, j. (1977), “the wanderer : an anglo-saxon poem,” virginia quarterly review, 53: 284-287. 5. textual studies 5. 1. the seafarer 180 diekstra, f. n. m. (1971), “ the seafarer 58-66a: the flight of the exiled soul to its fatherland,” neophilologus, 55: 433-446. green, b. k. (1974), “the seafarer ’s joy: the interpretation of lines 58a-64a,” uct studies in english, 5: 21-33. hill, j. m. (1977), “ ‘dis deade lif’: a note on the seafarer, lines 64-66,” english language notes, 15: 95-97. moore, b. (1976), “ the seafarer, lines 1-8a,” explicator, 35: 11-12. orton, p. r. (1982a), “the seafarer 6b-10a and 18-22,” neuphilologische mitteilungen, 83: 255-259. orton, p. r. (1982b), “ the seafarer, 58-64a,” neophilologus, 66: 450-459. richardson, j. (1983), “on the seafarer , line 34b,” modern philology, 81. 2: 168-169. vickrey, j. f. (1982), “some hypothesis concerning the seafarer , lines 1-47,” archiv für das studium der neueren sprachen und literaturen, 219. 1: 57-77. vickrey, j. f. (1989), “the seafarer 12-17, 25-30, 55-57: dives and the fictive speaker,” studia neophilologica, 62. 2: 145-156. 181 5. 2. the wanderer bammesberger, a. (1986), linguistic notes on old english poetic texts, heidelberg: carl winter universitätsverlag. brown, g. h. (1978), “an iconographic explanation of the wanderer, lines 81b82a,” viator, 9: 31-38. diekstra, f. n. m. (1971), “the wanderer , 65b-72:the passions of the mind and the cardinal virtues,” neophilologus, 55: 73-88. hermann, j. p. (1979), “ the wanderer : 45-48,” explicator, 37. 3: 22-23. millns, t. (1977), “the wanderer 98: ‘weal wundurum heah wyrmlicum fah’,” review of english studies, 28. 112: 431-438. oka, f. (1985), “some notes on the wanderer, lines 41-44: the ceremony of homage in the feudal vassalage and in the troubadors’ love poetry,” thought currents in english literature, 57: 113-141. ray, j. j. (1978), “the wanderer, lines 78-84,” south central bulletin, 38. 4: 157159. richardson, j. (1989), “two notes on the time frame of the wanderer (lines 22 and 73-87),” neophilologus, 73: 158-159. 6. theme and structure 6. 1. the wanderer and the seafarer bately, j. (1984), “time and the passing of time in the wanderer and related old english texts,” essays and studies, 37: 1-15. calder, d. g. (1971), “setting and mode in the seafarer and the wanderer ,” neuphilologische mitteilungen, 72: 442-445. garcia tortosa, f. (1982), “la estructura temática de las elegías anglo-sajonas” in j. f. galván reula, ed, estudios literarios ingleses: edad media, madrid: cátedra, 43-67. goodall, j. l. (1981), “the old english elegies: a study of structure, cultural context and genre,” university of oklahoma, dissertation abstracts international, 42: 4832a. greenfield, s. b. (1989), “the old english elegies” in g. h. brown ed, hero and exile. the art of old english poetry, london: the hambledon press, 93182 123 [re-edited from the original in continuations and beginnings: studies in old english literature, london: nelson, 1962]. howlett, d. r. (1975), “the structure of the wanderer and the seafarer,” studia neophilologica, 47: 313-317. hultin, n. (1977), “the external soul in the seafarer and the wanderer ,” folklore, 88: 39-45. klein, w. f. (1975), “purpose and the poetics of the wanderer and the seafarer” in l. e. nicholson and d. w. frese. eds, anglo-saxon poetry: essays in appreciation of john c. mcgaillard, notre-dame: university of notre-dame press, 208 -223. morgan, g. (1990), “essential loss: christianity and alienation in the anglosaxon elegies,” in geardagum: essays on old and middle english language and literature, 11: 15-53. o’shea, m. (1977), “studies in structure in three old english poems” state university of new york, dissertation abstracts international, 38: 1374a. stanley, e. g. (1989), “notes on old english poetry,” leeds studies in english, 20: 319-344. storms, g. (1977), “notes on old english poetry,” neophilologus, 61: 439-442. tripp, r. p. jr. (1972), “the narrator as revenant: a reconsideration of three old english elegies,” papers on language and literature, 8: 339-361. 6. 2. the seafarer arngart, o. (1979), “ the seafarer: a postcript,” english studies, 60: 249-253. bessai, f. (1971), “the two worlds of the seafarer,” peregrinatio, 1: 1-8. bosse, r. b. (1973), “aural aesthetics and the unity of the seafarer,” papers on language and literature, 9: 3-14. butler, r. m. (1987), “the seafarer 1-66a: an approach to an edition,” duke university, dissertation abstracts international, 48: 1198a. campbell, a. p. (1973), “the seafarer : wanderlust and our heavenly home,” revue de l’université d’ottawa, 45: 235-247. davenport, w. a. (1974), “the modern reader and the old english seafarer,” papers on language and literature, 10. 3: 227-240. empric, j. h. (1972), “ the seafarer: an experience in displacement,” notre-dame english journal, 7: 23-33. 183 green, b. k. (1977), “spes viva: structure and meaning in the seafarer,” in b. s. lee, ed, an english miscellany presented to w. s. mackie, cape town: oxford university press, 28-45. greenfield, s. b. (1981), “sylf, seasons, structure and genre in the seafarer,” anglo-saxon england, 9: 199-211. hoope, s. c. (1990), “stefn: the transcendent voice in the seafarer,” in geardagum: essays on old and middle english language and literature, 11: 45-55. horgan, a. d. (1979), “the structure of the seafarer,” review of english studies, 30: 41-49. leslie, r. f. (1983), “the meaning and structure of the seafarer” in m. green, ed, the old english elegies. new essays in criticism and research, rutherford: fairleigh dickinson university press, 96-123. mandel, j. (1976), “ the seafarer,” neuphilologische mitteilungen, 77: 538-551. orton, p. r. (1991), “the form and structure of the seafarer,” studia neophilologica, 63: 37-55. osborn, m. (1978), “venturing upon deep waters in the seafarer,” neuphilologische mitteilungen, 79: 1-6. pope, j. c. (1974), “second thoughts on the interpretation of the seafarer,” anglosaxon england, 3: 75-86. serio, j. n. (1973), “thematic unity in the seafarer,” gypsy scholar, 1: 16-21. williams, d. (1989), “the seafarer as an evangelical poem,” lore and language, 8. 1, 19-31. 6. 3. the wanderer alfred, w. (1982), “the drama of the wanderer,” in l. d. benson and s. wenzel, eds, the wisdom of poetry: essays in early english literature in honor of morton w. bloomfield, kalamazoo: medieval institute publications, western michigan university, 31-44. bjork, r. e. (1989), “ ‘sundor æt rune’: the voluntary exile of the wanderer,” neophilologus, 73: 119-129. breuer, r. (1974), “vermittelte unmitterbarkeit: zur struktur des altenglischen wanderer ,” neuphilologische mitteilungen, 75: 552-567. chase, d. (1987), “existential attitudes in the old english wanderer ,” university of south florida language quarterly, 26:17-19. 184 davis, d. m. (1985), “ the wanderer ,” explicator, 43. 2: 7-8. doubleday, j. (1972), “the limits of philosophy: a reading of the wanderer ,” notre dame english journal, 7. 2: 14-22. frankis, p. j. (1975), “the thematic significance of ‘enta geweorc’ and related imagery in the wanderer ,” anglo-saxon england, 2: 253-269. green, b. k. (1976), “the twilight kingdom: structure and meaning in the wanderer,” neophilologus, 60: 442-451. greenfield, s. b. (1989), “the wanderer : a reconsideration of theme and structure” in g. h. brown ed, hero and exile: the art of old english poetry, london: the hambledon press, 133-147 [reedited from the original in journal of english and germanic philology, 1, 1951: 415-465]. hollowell, i. m. (1983), “on the identity of the wanderer” in m. green, ed, the old english elegies. new essays in criticism and research, rutherford: fairleigh dickinson university press, 82-95. lally, t. (1979), “thought and feeling in the wanderer ,” in geardagum: essays on old and middle english language and literature, 3: 46-54. lally, t. (1980), “the emotive diction and structure of the old english wanderer,” university of new york at stony brook, dissertation abstracts international, 41: 4043a. mullen, k. (1974), “ the wanderer considered again,” neophilologus, 58: 74-81. peters, r. a. (1981), “philosophy and theme of the old english poem the exile,” neophilologus, 65: 288-291. richman, g. (1982), “speaker and speech boundaries in the wanderer ,” journal of english and germanic philology, 81: 469-479. taylor, p. b. (1972), “charms of wynn and fetters of wyrd in the wanderer,” neuphilologische mitteilungen, 73 : 448-455. williams, d. (1975), “the exile as uncreator,” mosaic, 8. 3: 1-14. 7. historical and literary background. sources and analogues 7. 1. the wanderer and the seafarer alexander, m. (1983), old english literature, london: macmillan. 185 alexander, m. (1988), “old english literature” in c. ford, ed. the cambridge guide to the arts in britain, i, cambridge: cambridge university press, 179193. allen, m. j. b. and d. g. calder (1976), sources and analogues of old english poetry: the major latin texts in translation, cambridge: brewer. bately, j. (1986), “evidence for a knowledge of latin literature in old english” in p. e. szarmach and v. d. oggins, eds, sources of anglo-saxon culture, kalamazoo, michigan: medieval institute publications, western michigan university, 35-51. bloomfield, m. w. and c. w. dunn (1990), the role of the poet in early societies, cambridge: brewer. bolton, w. f. (1977), “alcuin and old english poetry,” yearbook of english studies, 7: 10-22. bravo, a. (1975), “la elegía en inglés antiguo,” nueva conciencia, 10: 185-200. bravo, a. (1978), “la poesía cristiana en la literatura anglo-sajona,” nueva conciencia, 14: 341-367. busse, w. (1984), “neo-exegetical criticism and old english poetry: a critique of the typological and allegorical appropriation of medieval literature,” the yearbook of research in english and american literature, 2: 1-54. caie, g. d. (1976), the judgement day theme in old english poetry, copenhagen: publications of the department of english, university of copenhagen. calder, d. g., e. a. (1983), sources and analogues of old english poetry: the major germanic and celtic texts in translation, cambridge: brewer. campbell, a. p. (1975), “physical signs of spiritual cleansing in old english poetry,” revue de l’université d’ottawa, 45: 382-391. campbell, j. j. (1989), “ends and meanings: modes of closure in old english poetry,” medievalia et humanistica, 16: 1-49. clemoes, p. (1975), “late old english literature” in d. parsons, ed, tenth century studies, london: phillimore, 103-114 and 230-233. clogan, p. m. (1982), “literary genres in a medieval textbook,” medievalia et humanistica, 11: 199-209. colin, a. i. (1991), “some analogues of the old english seafarer from hibernolatin sources,” neuphilologische mitteilungen, 92: 1-14. coote, s. (1988), “old english literature” in english literature of the middle ages, harmondsworth: penguin, 1-21. dahlberg, c. (1980), “the seafarer : the weir-metaphor and benedictine silence,” medievalia: a journal of medieval studies, 6: 11-35. 186 dahlberg, c. (1985), “beowulf and the land of unlikeness” in s. n. brody and h. schechter, eds. cuny english forum, new york: ams, vol. 1, 105-127. diaz de tuesta garcia, mª t. (1976), “el viaje como exilio en la poesía anglo-sajona: evolución pagana o alegoría cristiana,” oviedo: universidad de oviedo. earl, j. w. (1987), “transformation of chaos: inmanence and transcendence in beowulf and other old english poetry,” ultimate reality and meaning, 10: 164-185. engberg, n. j. (1984), “mod-mægen balance in elene, the battle of maldon and the wanderer ,” neuphilologische mitteilungen, 85: 212-226. florey, k. (1976), “stability and chaos as theme in anglo-saxon poetry,” connecticut review, 9. 2: 82-89. frantzen, a. j. (1977), “the keys of heaven. penance, penitentials and the lit erature of early medieval england,” dissertation abstracts international, 37: 4343a. frantzen, a. j. (1983a), “the tradition of penitentials in anglo-saxon england,” anglo-saxon england, 11: 23-56. frantzen, a. j. (1983b), the literature of penance in anglo-saxon england, new brunswick: rutgers university press. galloway, a. (1988), “peter and the seafarer ,” english language notes, 25. 4: 1-10. garde, s. l. (1987), “old english poetry in the age of faith: poetic perception of redemption,” university of melbourne, dissertation abstracts international, 47: 4385a. gardner, j. (1975), the construction of christian poetry in old english, carbondale: southern illinois university press. geissler, w. j. (1977), “psychic phenomena in old english literature as an index to anglo-saxon attitudes towards the preternatural,” kansas state university, dissertation abstracts international, 37: 5847a. gilles, s. a. (1985), “lyric and gnome in old english poetry,” city university of new york, dissertation abstracts international, 46: 434a. glosecki, s. o. (1989), shamanism and old english poetry, new york: garland. godden, m. r. (1985), “anglo-saxons on the mind” in m. lapidge and h. gneuss, eds, learning and literature in anglo-saxon england. studies presented to peter clemoes on the occasion of his 65th birthday, cambridge: cambridge university press, 271-298. 187 goldman, s. a. (1979), “the use of christian belief in old english poems of exile,” res publica litterarium: studies in clasical tradition, 2: 69-80. grant, r. j. s. (1975), “beowulf and the world of heroic elegy,” leeds studies in english, 8: 45-75. green, m. (1975), “man, time and apocalypse in the wanderer, the seafarer and beowulf,” journal of english and germanic philology, 74: 502-518. green, m. (1983), “introduction” in m. green, ed, the old english elegies. new essays in criticism and research, rutherford: fairleigh dickinson university press, 11-28. greenfield, s. b. and d. g. calder (1986), a new critical history of old english literature, new york: new york university press. grose, m. w. and d. mckenna (1973), old english literature, totowa: rowman and littlefield. gruber, l. c. (1972a), “isolation in old english elegies and the canterbury tales : a contribution to the study of the continuity of english poetry,” university of denver, dissertation abstracts international, 33: 2891a. gruber, l. c. (1972b), “ the wanderer and arcite: isolation and the continuity of the english elegiac mode” in r. p. tripp, ed, four papers for micho masui, university of denver, 1-10. fell, c. (1991), “perceptions of transcience” in m. godden and m. lapidge, eds, (1991), the cambridge companion to old english literature, cambridge: cambridge university press, 172-189. hansen, e. t. (1976), “wisdom literature in old english verse,” university of washington, dissertation abstracts international, 37: 985a. harris, j. (1982), “elegy in old english and old norse: a problem in literary history,” in r. t. farrell, ed, the vikings, chichester: lang, 157-164 [also in m. green, ed, (1983), the old english elegies: new essays in criticism and research, rutherford: fairleigh dickinson university press, 46-56]. harris, j. (1988), “hardubrand’s lament: on the origin and age of elegy in germanic,” in h. beck, ed, heldensage und heldendichtung im germanischen, berlin: walter de gruyter, 81-114. hermann, j. p. 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(1977), the english language in medieval literature, london: dent. 191 bolton, w. f. (1985), “a poetic formula in beowulf and seven other old english poems: a computer study,” computers and the humanities, 19: 167-173. bohara, a. m. (1985), “more than words can reckon: the rhetoric of after life descriptions in anglo-saxon poetry and prose,” university of pennsylvania, dissertation abstracts international, 46: 1273a. bragg, l. m. (1986), “the lyric voice in old english poetry,” state university of new york at buffalo, dissertation abstracts international, 46: 1935a claver martinez, a. (1984-85), “estudio morfosintáctico y estilístico comparado de los poemas the seafarer y the wanderer,” madrid: universidad complutense. clemoes, p. (1986), “symbolic language in old english poetry,” in g. h. brown, et al. eds, modes of interpretation of english literature. essays in honour of s. b. greenfield, toronto: toronto university press, 3-14. cooter, r. f. 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(1985), “the synt ax of the seafarer, lines 50 -52,” review of english studies, 36: 535-537 suhagara, s. (1979), “on the seafarer: its vocabulary and cultural phase,” tamagawa review, 4: 36-38. 8. 3. the wanderer clark, s. l. and j. n. wasserman (1979), “the imagery of the wanderer,” neophilologus, 62: 291-295. hait, e. (1984), “the wanderer ’s lingering regret: a study of patterns of imagery,” neophilologus, 68: 278-291. jeffery, c. d. (1988), “how to analyse polysemous words using firthian principles” in j. denson and w. greaves, eds, systemic functional approaches to discourse, norwood: advances in discourse processes, 26: 343-353. johnson, w. c. jr. (1986), “werig and dreorig in the wanderer : the semantics of death,” in geardagum: essays on old and middle english language and literature, 7: 45-69. 194 kintgen, e. (1975), “wordplay in the wanderer ,” neophilologus, 59: 119-127. kirby, i. j. (1974), “old english fer_,” notes and queries, 21: 443. pasternack, c. b. 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(1982), “phenomenology: good news for old english studies,” language and style, 15: 219-224. griffiths, p. (1982), “the wanderer : naresh sohal,” musical terms, 123: 545546. grinda, k. r. (1972), “review of t. p. dunning and a. j. bliss eds, the wanderer,” anglia, 90: 216-220. hamer, r. f. s. (1971), “review of the wanderer , ed by t. p. dunning and a. j. bliss,” medium ævum, 40: 262-266. moessner, l. (1988), “a critical assessment of tom scott’s poem the seavaiger as an exercise in translation,” scottish language, 7: 9-21. robinson, f. c. (1982), “the might of the north: pound’s anglo-saxon studies and the seafarer,” yale review, 71. 2: 199-224. savoia, d. (1974), “traduzione e poesia nel seafarer di ezra pound,” contributi dell’ instituto di filologia moderna, 1: 210-238. 195 torringa, j. (1971), “review of r. leslie ed, the wanderer,” review of english studies, 52: 55-57. turville-petre, g. (1973), “review of k. von see, die gestalt der havamal” in saga book of the viking society for northern research, 18: 387-389. williams, e. w. (1975), “the anglo-saxon theme of exile in renaissance lyrics: a perspective of two sonnets of sir walter raleigh,” english language notes, 42: 171-188. juan c. conde silvestre university of murcia * * * selim 18.indb rebecca dark, selim 18 (2011): 129–162issn: 1132–631x visions, power, and margery kempe abstract: texts including visionary english women of the middle ages range ' om bede’s ecclesiastical history of the english people to the book of margery kempe. the visionary experience authorizes the female voice and grants the visionary the opportunity to exercise feminine infl uence on masculinist culture. generally, in these texts dream theories and discourse on women are rhetorically combined to authorize the power of these women, whose power is then refl ected back on the church or church entities with whom they are associated. the book of margery kempe, however, off ers a unique example of the rhetorical deployment of feminine power authorized by visionary access that does not function in service of the church and, instead, is fully retained by the woman. i will argue that the persistence of interest in dream theories creates a rhetorical continuity over time among texts empowering english dreaming and visionary women, but that power functions diff erently in the case of margery kempe when compared to her visionary predecessors. keywords: st hild, whitby, margery kempe, st leoba, christina of markyate, visions, prophetic dreams, female spirituality, anti-feminism discourse, my. resumen: los textos medievales que incluyen inglesas visionarias van de la historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum de beda a the book of margery kempe. la experiencia visionaria da autoridad a la voz femenina y garantiza a la visionaria la oportunidad de ejercer infl uencia femenia sobre la cultura machista. en general, en estos textos las teorías del sueño y los discursos sobre la mujer se combinan retóricamente para dar autoridad al poder de estas mujeres, cuyo poder se refl eja en la iglesia o en las entidades eclesiásticas con las que se las asocia. the book of margery kempe, sin embargo, o' ece un ejemplo único de despliegue retórico del poder femenino autorizado por el acceso visionario que no funciona al servicio de la iglesia sino que queda en poder de la mujer. se argumentará que la persistencia del interés en las teorías del sueño crea una continuidad retórica en el tiempo entre los textos que dotan de poder a inglesas soñadoras y visionarias, pero que ese poder funciona de modo distinto en el caso de margery kempe si se la compara con las visionarioas que la precedieron. palabras clave: santa hilda, margery kempe, santa leoba, cristina de markyate, visiones, sueños proféticos, espiritualidad femenina, discurso antifeminista, misoginia. a great deal of recent scholarship on visionary women of the later middle ages, including margery kempe, explores the impact of late medieval interest in “discernment of spirits” on the relative agency and power derived by these women ' om their visionary status.1 nancy caciola, who locates the revival of discernment doctrine in the late twelz h 1 for informative analysis of later medieval “discernment of spirits” doctrine and practice, see for example caciola (2003), elliott (2002), and newman (1998). for specifi c application of this doctrine to the study of margery kempe, see voaden (1999) and beckwith (1992). 130 rebecca dark selim 18 (2011) century, asserts that this doctrine was developed and refi ned in the later middle ages only a& er a long “decline of interest in the testing of spirits” (caciola 2003: 8). women’s visions, however, were used to sanction female authority during the earlier middle ages, as well, though admittedly not in the numbers seen later. this sanction was partially made possible because of persistent interest in divine revelation through dreaming as well as the theories used to explain such dreaming * om antiquity onward. in texts regarding english religious women of the early and high middle ages, dream discourse was strategically combined with discourse on the nature of women to authorize both female access to divine dreams and visions and the agency derived * om this access by the visionary woman. i will demonstrate that the book of margery kempe deploys rhetorical strategies dependent on dream theories in much the same way that they are deployed in earlier english texts, albeit with somewhat diff erent results.2 because most women visionaries were either nuns or members of lay orders, their sanction ordinarily operated reciprocally: clerical authority produced texts authorizing the visionary woman whose divine inspiration then authorized some aspect of the church, perhaps a holy site, a particular order or abbey, or even a particular cleric. the visionary authority rhetorically established in the book of margery kempe, however, is less reciprocal. margery kempe is able to and o& en does use her gi& in service to individual clerics or particular sites, but the divine authority she derives * om her visions, rather than augmenting clerical power, grants her an extraordinary degree of personal * eedom * om the masculinist authority of the church. visionary experiences, though distinguished qualitatively * om dreams in some theories, are almost always accorded a place in medieval dream hierarchies; in essence, a vision is o& en theorized as 2 i am using the term discourse in the foucauldian sense of a set of authorized statements or paradigms that have some institutional or hegemonic force. i am using the term rhetoric to refer to the arrangement, juxtaposition, or merging of discourses that produces a persuasive eff ect in a text. 131 visions, power, and margery kempe selim 18 (2011) the highest form of dreaming. caroline walker bynum asserts that medieval mystics, exegetes, and spiritual writers did not separate, “[i]ntellect, soul, and sensory faculties” or use a separate vocabulary for each. she maintains that “god was known with senses that were a fusion of all the human beings’ capacities to experience. [t]hey and their hagiographers sometimes diff ered over whether a vision was seen with the eyes of the body or the eyes of the mind” (bynum 1987a: 151). theories and practices constituting the discourse of dreaming, however, demonstrate both the diffi culty and importance of determining the exact nature of any particular dream or vision and tend to be based on an assumption of body/spirit dualism. pagan dream theories, such the macrobian system of fi ve types ranging 2 om the entirely bodily dream to the completely spiritual divine oracle, were known and understood throughout the middle ages and were echoed in well-known patristic writings.3 in the dialogues, for instance, gregory the great acknowledges the bodily nature of dreaming along with its transcendent possibilities (zimmerman 1959: 261–262).4 likewise, medieval physicians diff erentiated between dreams of the body and soul (which might be useful for diagnosis) and signifi cant dreams not involving the body, following a three tiered organizational scheme made up of the somnium naturalia “of purely physical origin,” the somnium animale “caused by preoccupations of the waking mind,” and the somnium coeleste given by god or other supernatural forces (spearing 1976: 57–58).5 thus, in a variety of formulations dream 3 for the complete classifi cation system, see macrobius (1952). 4 gregory’s formulation accurately registers the ambiguity inherent in dream discourse: “it is important to realize […] that dreams come to the soul in six ways. they are generated either by a full stomach or by an empty one, or by illusions, or by our thoughts combined with illusions, or by revelations, or by our thoughts combined with revelations.” 5 the vast body of pagan and christian dream theories has been studied by numerous scholars. see, for example, kruger (1992, 1999) and lynch (1988). for discussions of the applicability of dream theory to medieval literature and religious experience, see barr (2010). 132 rebecca dark selim 18 (2011) theories reinforcing a body/spirit binary persisted throughout the middle ages. even before the resurgence of interest in discernment of spirits, then, dream or visions were available tools for the authorization of women’s power. the dualistic association of the feminine with matter or body and the masculine with spirit or mind that prevailed, at least theoretically, throughout the middle ages is well-known. defi ning woman as body rather than spirit and insisting that as daughters of eve all women share the defects and weakness of their general mother, misogynistic writings passed essentially unaltered & om century to century, in spite of the challenges to this paradigm posed by christian doctrines of spiritual gender equality and by both legendary and living women who defi ed these stereotypes. when the body/spirit polarizations found in the discourses of misogyny and dream theory are combined, a unique rhetorical space is opened for the sanction of women’s authority and agency. both discourses depend upon theoretical polarizations that are inconsistent with lived experience, thereby creating a paradox: theoretically a woman is all body and should not have access to the divine dreams and visions that are reserved for those who are perfectly spiritual, but real women throughout the middle ages did, in fact, experience divine dreams and visions.6 the texts produced about these women employ both discourses, but do so using rhetorical strategies that ultimately cancel out their inherent dualism. in the space opened by this paradox, we fi nd a rhetorical joining of the female body and the spiritual power and authority of 6 the word “real” here is, i recognize, deeply problematic. cleopatra, for example, is a historically attested person, but the character constructed in shakespeare is clearly a fi ction. the abbess hild, similarly, is historically attested, but the person named hild in bede’s text, while certainly a construction, is not a fi ction in the same way that shakespeare’s cleopatra is. the women i call “real” here, then, are real in the sense that the texts in which they appear assume them to be real persons who lived real lives and whose real experiences are recounted by the text. whatever skepticism i have regarding their textually constructed natures, their texts treat them as real in ways that works off ering fi ctionalized accounts of “real” women like cleopatra do not. 133 visions, power, and margery kempe selim 18 (2011) dreams and visions that ultimately creates a monistic, rather than dualistic, characterization of the visionary woman. such unifi cation allows feminine agency to coexist with masculine cultural dominance, which in turn allows for the reciprocal exchange of authorization. rather than forcing women and signifi cant dreams into a contentious body/spirit dichotomy that attempts to deny woman-as-body access to spiritual authority in the form of dreams and visions, english texts reporting the dreams and visions of women tend to affi rm discursive constructions of woman-as-body even as they assert her spirituality and her consequent ability to derive and exercise the power of divine inspiration through dreams and visions. this unifi cation of woman, spirituality, and dream-vision authority generally cooperates with and supports masculine clerical hegemony. thus a polyvocal eff ect is created: the maculinist system still dominates, but rhetoric allowing for feminine materiality, spirituality, sanctity, and power operates openly, as well.7 bede’s early medieval account of the anglo-saxon abbess known as hild off ers the fi rst english example of public authorization of visionary and dreaming women. his history of the english church is, among other things, an attempt to situate the late-coming, out-lying english fi rmly within the culture of christendom.8 the authorizing potential of dreams for women plays an important role in bede’s account of abbess hild, whom he describes as one of the most infl uential women of the early english church.9 7 brian gastle’s argument for the presence of feminine mercantile authority that is cooperative is not unlike the discursive cooperation i propose. he argues against a “holistic” or “reductive” paradigm and in favor of a more complex critique of masculine/feminine power relations (gastle 2003). 8 for a discussion of the importance of place to identity in christendom, see howe (2005). 9 while i fi nd evidence of bede’s genuine appreciation of hild in these texts, others interpret them quite diff erently. stephanie hollis, for example, contends that “the admiration that some readers have seen refl ected in bede’s portrait of hild is to a high degree their own” (hollis 1992: 246). 134 rebecca dark selim 18 (2011) although bede does not report a specifi c dream experienced by hild, herself, her life and death are both given signifi cance through the dreams of women. in book 4 bede gives hild great credit for her infl uence and importance in the church, and here he connects the authority of the abbess to divine revelation through dreams. bede begins his account of hild’s life at the point of her death but soon establishes her noble credentials by mentioning that she is niece of one king and aunt of another. he explains that she spent many years in secular life before deciding to enter a convent and that it is only the intervention of bishop aiden that prevents her * om joining her sister in a french monastery. at this point in his narration of hild’s early life, bede has connected the abbess to secular and clerical masculine power, and he continues her story with a description of hild’s authority and infl uence over men of the church, noting that “we have in fact seen fi ve * om this monastery who a+ erwards became bishops, all of them men of singular merit and holiness; their names are: bose, aetla, o+ for, john, and wil* id” (colgrave 1969: 409).10 according to bede, these clerics have learned the virtues that make them fi t for bishoprics * om hild herself; their ecclesiastical authority, then, is the product of their submission to the infl uence and teaching of a woman. emphasizing hild’s infl uence once again, bede declares that “all who knew hild, the handmaiden of christ and abbess, used to call her mother because of her outstanding devotion and grace” (colgrave 1969: 411).11 hild’s character, like her deeds, demonstrates that she merits the ecclesiastical authority invested in her both before and a+ er the romanization of the english church. 10 denique quinque ex eodem monasterio postea episcopos uidimus, et hos omnes singularis meriti ac sanctitatis uiros, quorum haec sunt nomina: bosa, aetla, o! for, ionhannes et uil" id (colgrave 1969: 408). 11 non solum ergo praefata christiancella et abbatissa hild, quam omnew qui nouerant ob insigne pietates et gratiae matrem uocare consuerant (colgrave 1969: 410). 135 visions, power, and margery kempe selim 18 (2011) the carefully cra% ed genealogy, history, and praise that bede provides for hild might have been enough to sanction her power in the english church if she had been a man; however, bede cements hild’s right to clerical authority with accounts of women’s dreams and visions.12 on the night hild dies, begu, a nun in a far off monastery, experiences a vision: as she was resting in the sisters’ dormitory, she suddenly heard in the air the well-known sound of the bell with which they used to be aroused to their prayers or called together when one of them had been summoned ' om the world. on opening her eyes she seemed to see the roof of the house rolled back, while a light which poured in ' om above fi lled the whole place. as she watched the light intently, she saw the soul of the handmaiden of the lord being borne to heaven in the midst of that light, attended and guided by angels. (colgrave 1969: 413)13 a similar vision is simultaneously experienced by a nun of whitby. these well-timed, beatifi c visions are standard hagiographic fare, but their importance should not be discounted for that reason. in his description of the vision of begu, bede confi rms her sanctity by asserting that she is holy and has been a virgin dedicated to god for over thirty years. he also calls attention to her physical body by pointing out that she is resting when the vision occurs, 12 hollis notes that “evidence of divine sanction for a conversionary role appears to have been required chiefl y by female saints” (1992: 253). karkov argues, however, that visionary proof of sanctity was important regardless of gender. she asserts that bede’s account of hild is like that of aiden in its need to guarantee the holiness of the subject through the visions of others (1999: 129) 13 haec tunc in dormitorio sororum pausans, audiuit subito in aere notum campanae sonum, quo ad orations excitari uel conuocari solebant, cum quis eorum de saeculo fuisset euocatus; apertisque, ut sibi uidebatur, oculis aspexit, detecto domus culmine, fusam desuper lucem omnia repleuisse. cui uidelicet luci dum sollicita intenderet, uidit animam praefatae dei famulae in ipsa luce, comintantibus ac ducentibus angelis, ad caelum ferri (colgrave 1969: 412). 136 rebecca dark selim 18 (2011) that she fi rst hears a bell, and that she then opens her physical eyes to see the angels and hild ascending to heaven. her proven purity and piety along with her experience of a vision mark this nun as a spiritual being, but she is also marked as a body. her vision and that of the nun of whitby operate as proof of hild’s sanctity, already so decisively set forth in bede’s description of the abbess’s life, and confi rm that the power hild wielded was divinely inspired and entirely appropriate, yet we are not permitted to forget that these visions amount to spiritual experiences originating in women’s bodies. bede’s tale of the dream of hild’s mother makes this point much more dramatically. having just asserted hild’s spiritual maternity, bede turns immediately to the prophetic dream experienced by hild’s biological, therefore bodily, mother: this was bound to happen in fulfi llment of the dream which her mother breguswith had during the child’s infancy. while her husband hereric was living in exile under the british king cerdic, where he was poisoned, breguswith had a dream that he was suddenly taken away, and though she searched most earnestly for him, no trace of him could be found anywhere. but suddenly in the midst of her search, she found a most precious necklace under her garment and, as she gazed closely at it, it seemed to spread such a blaze of light that it fi lled all britain with its gracious splendor. (colgrave 1969: 411)14 this mother’s dream prophesies hild’s note-worthy life and service to the church in a form that, like the visions of the nuns, 14 oportebat namque inpleri somnium, quod mater bregusuid in infantia eius uidit. quae cum uir eius hereric exularet sub rege brettonum cerdice, ubi ut uiveno periit, uidit per somnium, quasi subito sublatum eum quesierit cum omni diligentia, nullumque eius uspim uestigium apparuerit. verum cum sollertissime illum quaesierit, extimplo se repperire sub ueste sua monile pretiosissimum, quod, dum attentius consideratet, tanti fulgore luminis refulgere uidebatur, ut omnes brittaniae fi nes illius gratia spendoris impleret (colgrave 1969: 410). 137 visions, power, and margery kempe selim 18 (2011) is quite common in hagiography.15 as with the nuns’ visions above, however, we should not dismiss breogoswith’s dream as solely formulaic, for it also demonstrates a connection between the female body and divine revelation. clearly, breogoswith could not have been certain at the time she had the dream that it was, in fact, divine and prophetic, since the nature of such dreams can only be determined after the fact. bede, however, writing retrospectively, is able to deploy all of the theoretical authority inherent in divinely inspired, prophetic dreams to justif y hild’s clerical power. moreover, hild’s extraordinary life functions as both the translation of and the fulfillment of her mother’s dream. although hild is an infant at the time, the parturition imagery of the jewel “under her garment” that breogoswith brings forth to light all britain is unmistakable and demands that attention be paid to the corporeality of femininity; thus, hild’s just established spiritual maternity becomes imbricated in the physical maternity of breogoswith’s dream image. this maternal corporeality, though, is cast in a positive light, for rather than eve’s curse, breogoswith’s dream delivers a blessing that extends to the whole nation because 15 prophetic mother’s dreams about their children predate the christian era; clytemnesta’s dream of nursing serpents & om aeschylus’s choephori, for instance, prophesies her own death at the hands of her son orestes. however, the model of the hagiographic mother dream is probably most closely connected to monica’s dream of augustine & om the confessions 3.9.14. moreira notes that the mother dream is a familiar trope of merovingian hagiography and can either take the form of a prophetic dream similar to breogoswith’s or an oraculum in which an angel reveals the auspicious future of the child to the mother (2003: 635). hollis argues that the hagiographic mother vision “owes its currency to gabriel’s annunciation to the mother of christ” (1992: 253). i contend, however, that while the annunciation is the premier model of birth prophecy available to christians, as it is not constructed as a dream or a vision but rather as an actual experience, it is a less appropriate model for the hagiographic trope than the dream of monica. 138 rebecca dark selim 18 (2011) the shining necklace is a figure of hild, herself.16 as both the jewel and the translation of the dream, hild embodies the divine authority always already present in a prophetic dream, but she does so through her sanctity and through spiritual motherhood. thus, the mother’s dream that authorizes hild’s spiritual power while maintaining the connection between the feminine and the body indirectly authorizes bishops, male spiritual leaders of the church, as well. in this case the authority transferred to the dreamer according to dream theory is likewise transferred to the subject of the dream through the mother/daughter relationship and through their shared corporeality. the misog ynistic connection between the body and the daughters of eve cooperates with the authorizing potential of dream discourse to produce a text validating the woman, the two manifestations of the english church that she bridges, and historic english identity as a roman catholic nation. the cooperation of dream discourse and anti-feminist discourse in this historical account is only made possible because the ambiguities of both allow bede to combine their positive aspects without negating the cultural power exercised by each discourse as a whole. calling attention to parturition indicates bede’s acknowledgement of the patristic “truth” about women: that they are reproductive bodies under a curse; bede is aware, and knows that his audience is aware, that hild is a female body, but she is also one of exemplary spirituality. as such, she reifi es the transcendence of her mother’s prophetic dream; thus, hild is a repository of both fl esh and spirit, combining binaries into a monistic whole. moreover, 16 klein argues that the dream and the symbolic necklace are calculated to separate hild’s identity as abbess * om “the material manifestations of her former secular status.” she asserts that “the shining light of earthly riches is depicted as part of hild’s infancy and as wholly unnecessary to her later life, when she herself will become a living embodiment of a light so bright it can illuminate all of britain.” klein does not address the image of parturition and maternity embedded in the dream (2006: 50–51). 139 visions, power, and margery kempe selim 18 (2011) the visions experienced at hild’s death by other women (who do not appear to share her aristocratic origins or special holiness but, like hild, are simultaneously female bodies and spiritual beings) confi rm the abbess’s sanctity while also demonstrating the potential unremarkability of hild’s female spirituality.17 masculine hegemony is upheld; hild, a& er all, can teach and guide bishops, although she can never be one, but female spirituality, purity, and power are also maintained in this historical account of a dreaming woman that is intended to reinforce england’s place in the wider political and spiritual entity of christendom. another early medieval text, rudolf of fulda’s mid-ninth century life of the anglo-saxon st. leoba provides two interesting, if brief, examples of the authorizing power of real women’s dreams. rudolf relates that leoba’s mother aebba experiences a prophetic dream similar to that experienced by breogoswith. in this dream aebba draws ' om her bosom a church bell that “rang merrily” (rudolf 1995: 262). the dream is interpreted by aebba’s nurse, who explains that it signifi es the coming birth of a daughter who is to be consecrated to god; consequently, as a young girl leoba is handed over to mother tetta of wimbourne and is raised in the double monastery there. as a young woman, leoba dreams of a purple thread of enormous length issuing ' om her mouth, “as if it were coming ' om her very bowels” (rudolf 1995: 263). an old nun interprets this dream as a prophecy that leoba’s wisdom and good deeds will benefi t people in far off lands. the fulfi llment of the prophecy is boniface’s appointment of leoba to the abbacy of bischofsheim in germany, where she lives an exemplary and miraculous life. the spiritual authorization provided by these dreams as well as the link to parturition in aebba’s dream and the vivid physicality of leoba’s dream of the thread coming ' om her bowels (perhaps standing in for her womb) demonstrate the 17 prior to the norman conquest, it seems that holy women were much more common in english culture than in later periods. anne clark bartlett notes the “dearth of late medieval insular holy women” (2010: 167). 140 rebecca dark selim 18 (2011) same sort of confl ation of the spiritual and the corporeal that i detect in bede’s narrative of hild.18 in rudolf ’s account, leoba’s sanctity, like that of many saints, allows her to perform miracles in her lifetime and renders her grave a site of miracles as well. the monasteries and nunneries she founds, along with her grave, eƭ oy the sanction of her visionary and miraculous powers. the rhetorical combination of polarized discourses in her life unifi es the saint’s female body and spiritual purity into an authorized construction that in turn authorizes the church sites and entities associated with her. the unfi nished life of christina of markyate is a remarkable text in the hagiographic tradition that fairly teems with dreams and visions serving to authenticate both christina’s holiness and the authority she exercises, much as the dreams in bede’s narrative of hild’s life and rudolph’s life of leoba do for those women.19 the purpose of this text does not serve wide national and missionary interests, but like most hagiographies, it aims to establish formal recognition of the extraordinary sanctity of the subject and to associate the power of that sanctity to a particular site, in this case st albans, and those associated with it. unlike most hagiographies, however, this text appears to have another, somewhat more personal aim: that of providing a defense against gossip about christina and her questionable associations with men, 18 (rudolf of fulda 1995). some helpful resources for further study of leoba as a woman dreamer include j. l. nelson (1990), s. hollis (1992), a. h. olsen (1990), w. p. hyland (2006). 19 the historical person known as christina of markyate was originally named theodora. the “christina” in the life is, of course, a textual construction, as is the “theodora” of the life. my topic is the manner in which dreams are used in the text to authorize the narrative construct “christina,” but it is vital to acknowledge that the narrative construct is made possible and necessitated by the power exercised by the historical individual, regardless of which name she used. for an argument against reading with the historical individual in mind, see karras (1988) for a discussion of the constructed nature of both “christina” and “theodora” in the text, see partner (2005). 141 visions, power, and margery kempe selim 18 (2011) especially her long term relationship with geoff rey, abbot of saint albans, whom christina instructs on how to run his monastery, on what services he might provide to king stephen, and other matters of importance.20 hence, we fi nd the authorizing power of dreams doing double duty—personal defense and spiritual sanction—in the life of christina of markyate. composed during her lifetime by someone who knew her well, this text is a direct account of christina’s life ' om her own lips, and the writer eƭ oys both the opportunity to ask her questions and to access the accounts of others, such as her mother, who knew her well and were present for some of the narrated events.21 working in coƭ unction with the discursive ambiguities of antifeminist discourse, the discourse of dreaming validates christina as a divinely inspired, feminine, spiritual power exercised on and in the service of a system of masculine hegemony.22 more than forty 20 partner off ers a fascinating argument regarding the nature of this text as a personal defense of the relationship. she observes that the “narrative-constructing pressures make this a rather odd book: something like a defense attorney’s counterattack awkwardly laminated to a hagiographer’s celebration” (2005: 127–128). 21 the writer asserts, for example, that christina’s mother personally told him of the prenatal sign that the child was a chosen servant of god, that he is present when christina’s ' iend helisen takes the veil, and that christina “averred in my [the writer’s] hearing” her intense desire to speak with the recluse eadwin when she hoped he might be arranging help for her. (talbot 1998: 35, 45, 87). 22 bynum argues that women who came into the church as adults tended to show a greater awareness of their inferior status and to be more male oriented. she asserts that most of christina’s “visions and prophecies were for the benefi t of powerful males.” while i agree that christina’s visions and dreams tend to uphold the power of men, i argue that they also eff ectively serve to uphold her power over these same men(bynum 1987b: 134–135). diane watt’s suggestion that geoff rey is the recipient of the single direct address found in the text, in which the writer avers to his reader that christina “revered you more than all the pastors under christ” seems highly plausible and indicates that christina did demonstrate a high degree of respect for geoff rey even as she exerted her infl uence over him (2007: 34) the quotation is found on page 127 in the life. 142 rebecca dark selim 18 (2011) dreams and visionary experiences are recounted in the text, but one specifi c instance will suffi ce to demonstrate the importance of the authority of dreaming and the eff ective cooperation between dream discourse and discourse on women in the text. as a child christina devotes her life and virginity to christ but she is forced to take extreme measures to defend her virginity throughout her life. a particularly diffi cult assault on her virginity is her parents’ abusive insistence that she marry and consummate her marriage. eventually christina fl ees her parents’ home and hides with various religious recluses so that she may more easily defend her virginity, although she does not take the veil and enter religious life herself for some time. nancy f. partner ably demonstrates the troubling eccentricity of christina’s insistence on remaining chaste without committing herself to a religious order that would both authorize and defend her choice (2005). without the authority of religious orders to validate christina’s commitment to chastity in her younger years, the writer of her life must depend instead on numerous reports of dreams and visions that bring divine sanction to christina’s unconventional behavior. the account of christina and one of her keepers dramatically combines dream discourse with discourse on women. christina spends four years in the care of the good hermit roger, but aer his death the archbishop of york sends christina to live with a cleric who is also a man of high position. at the instigation of the devil, christina and the cleric develop a burning lust for one another. the cleric behaves abominably, appearing naked before her and pleading with her to have sex with him. christina “manfully” resists “the desires of her fl esh,” and through fasting and scourging she “tamed her lascivious body” (talbot 1998: 115)up to this point in the narrative, christina’s female body has fi gured prominently, but this passage draws great attention to the discourse of misogyny, as christina becomes the temptress of the cleric, burns with the ravenous sexual desire that marks all women in this paradigm, and can only resist the demands of her female body 143 visions, power, and margery kempe selim 18 (2011) by becoming “manly” in her self-discipline.23 not surprisingly, however, christina’s relief comes % om divine dreams. first the cleric is visited in a dream by mary, who threatens him with eternal damnation if he does not leave christina alone, and later christina experiences a vision of christ: then the son of the virgin looked kindly down up on the low estate of his handmaid and granted her the consolation of an unheard-of grace. for in the guise of a small child he came to the arms of his sorely tried spouse and remained with her a whole day, not only being felt but also seen. so the maiden took him in her hands, gave thanks, and pressed him to her bosom. and with immeasurable delight she held him at one moment to her virginal breast, at another she felt his presence within hereven through the barrier of the flesh. (talbot 1998: 119) this vision has many interpretive layers, including the eucharistic echo of luke 22:19 found in the phrase, “she took him in her hands, gave thanks” and the unmistakable image of christina and christ mirroring the virgin mary holding the infant jesus.24 in the discourse of dream theory, this episode marks a true high point for christina, for it is not only a waking vision, the pinnacle of transcendent experience, but it is also an oraculum in which she is visited not by a messenger of god nor by the mother of god, but by god himself in the person of christ. one can hardly imagine a dream-vision experience that would be a stronger seal of authority for christina. moreover, her visionary power is delivered in cooperation with discourse on women. to counteract christina’s plunge into the lowest 23 the sexualized feminization of the cleric in this account is worthy of further study, but space and time do not allow for the inclusion of that discussion here. 24 “and taking bread, he gave thanks and brake and gave to them, saying: this is my body, which is given for you. do this for a commemoration of me” (et accepto pane gratias egit et ! egit et dedit eis dicens hoc est corpus meum quod pro vobis datur hoc facite in meam commemorationem.) luke 22:19, douay-rheims translation of latin vulgate. 144 rebecca dark selim 18 (2011) reaches of physicality and depravity, this vision seals her virginity by spiritually impregnating her through christ’s penetration of “the barrier of the fl esh” so that she can feel him “within her.” in as physical a way as possible, christina’s vision identifi es her with the virgin mary, who reigns as queen of heaven, spiritually embodies a perfect purity that is impossible for normal women to achieve, and exemplifi es the greatest possible feminine authority. the virgin, in fact, is the ultimate example of how the operation of misogynistic discourse cooperates with masculine hegemony to empower a woman. the extraordinary physical paradox that defi nes mary—a virgin who is also a mother— is a simultaneously physical and spiritual mark of holiness and the source of her power as queen of heaven. as hagiography demands, christina’s unifi cation of body and spirit is reiterated through the many divine dreams and visions that she continues to experience in the remainder of the text as well as through the dreams and visions sent to others by god to confi rm that they should heed christina’s instruction. thus, the rhetorical deployment of two polarized discourses in the text publically affi rms the propriety of christina’s informal but considerable power over the church in the form of geoff rey, the abbot of saint albans, without signifi cantly disturbing the masculine power that authorizes her. christina’s story is synchronous with the earliest signs of a rising interest in the discourse of discernment of spirits, and this discourse has been demonstrated to have developed alongside the burgeoning numbers of extraordinarily pious and o+ en visionary women the late middle ages (caciola 2003). julian of norwich is arguably the most infl uential and signifi cant of the english female mystics, and it might seem imperative that i move next to an analysis of her text. however, a+ er careful consideration of the rhetoric in julian’s text, i have chosen not to address the showings in this setting. the showings do not demonstrate the same sort of rhetorical fusion of dream theory and misogyny that i fi nd 145 visions, power, and margery kempe selim 18 (2011) in the other texts examined here, and this is largely by design. though there is little doubt that julian was a real historical person, the dearth of information on her actual lived experience makes the information we have on hild, for example, appear copious by comparison. although julian’s deprecating references to her femininity demonstrate her awareness of the need for visionary authority to validate her message, unlike the other holy women treated in this paper she also strives toward a personal goal “to write herself out of her text,” and she almost completely accomplishes this aim.25 in this goal margery kempe is, of course, julian’s polar opposite. indeed, the book of margery kempe is a singularly personal account of a visionary woman. her story off ers a unique example of the deployment of feminine power authorized by visionary access that does not offi cially function in service of the church but, nevertheless, grants a great deal of authority and agency to the woman. in my discussion of the book of margery kempe i will follow the model developed by lynn staley of referring to the character in the text as margery and to the narrator as kempe.26 daughter of the mayor of king’s lynn, margery is married to a prominent burgess and gives birth to fourteen children. a' er the diffi cult birth of her fi rst child, margery suff ers a lengthy period of madness brought on by the stress of the birth and fear of damnation for an un-confessed, unnamed sin. a' er more than six months in this state, she experiences a vision in which jesus appears to her and comforts her with assurances of his constant love and approval. she will continue to have visions and conversations with christ, mary, god, and saints for the rest of her life. sometimes her holy conversations and dream-vision experiences are entirely internal, but others include visual and auditory elements. along with these incidents, margery describes other expressions of her extraordinary 25 barrett 1992: 10. 26 see staley (1994) for the explanation of this convention. 146 rebecca dark selim 18 (2011) piety such as her infamous bouts of loud weeping.27 a% er many years of marriage, margery persuades (bribes) her husband to agree to a chaste marriage, but she o% en calls upon her identity as a married woman for personal defense. frequently travelling alone, margery suff ers the abuse of some who do not appreciate her style of piety and others who suspect her of heresy, and on several occasions she is examined by offi cials on charges of lollardy.28 margery has a great deal of diffi culty getting her story written because she is illiterate and requires a scribe; however, a% er many years and multiple attempts, she fi nally persuades a priest to write the story of her life as she dictates it to him.29 because she describes so many dreams and visions, we see that kempe takes advantage of the authorizing power of the discourse of dream-visions to support her pious self-image and to infl uence readers’ perception of her text. the authorizing power of margery’s dreams and visions, then, functions on two levels. for the historical woman telling her story, they provide private, personal assurance of god’s approval and embolden her performances of public piety and her resistance to masculine control. at the same time, their narration is a textual attempt to publically justi/ her status as a religious authority for the audience of the text, much as the narratives of other female mystics present dreams and visions that authorize the spirituality and power of these women and their associated church entities. 27 much of margery’s life seems to have been a performance of the sorts of aff ective piety encouraged by the likes of nicholas love, richard rolle, and the author of the cloud of unknowing, though it would be naïve to treat the widely divergent practices represented by the authors of various mystical texts as a homogenous group. for more on these and other medieval mystics see chapter fi ve in beer (1992), ghosh (2002), hanna (2004), putter (2004) for more on the book as performance, see christie (2002). 28 for more on the lollard movement, see aston (1984) and ghosh (2002). 29 anthony goodman (1978) discusses the chapters in which the priest explains how he fi nally comes to believe in margery’s piety and spiritual insight. 147 visions, power, and margery kempe selim 18 (2011) dream discourse, of course, is a tricky thing to deploy in the service of female authority, and it seems to become trickier in the later middle ages because of the centuries-old suspicion in dream theories that meaningful and even prophetic dreams may come % om satan as easily as they may come % om god. in the unprotected state of sleep, a person lacking the greatest possible spiritual purity, which women by their nature lack, can be deceived by the devil and pass on this deception in the guise of divine revelation through dreaming. we see confi rmation of this suspicion at work in middle english depictions of the dream of pilate’s wife, where procula is either the dupe of satan or his accomplice in trying to thwart the crucifi xion of christ and with it the salvation of mankind. the scribe of kempe’s book acknowledges these disturbing deceptive possibilities in his long proem, noting that margery has worried a great deal over whether her spiritual experiences are diabolical or divine in origin: than had this creatur mech drede for illusyons and deceytys of hyr gostly enmys. than went sche be the byddyng of the holy gost to many worshepful clerkys, bothe archebysshopys and bysshoppys, doctowrs of dyvynyté and bachelers also. sche spak also wyth many ankrys and schewed hem hyr maner of levyng and swech grace as the holy gost of hys goodnesse wrowt in hyr mende and in hyr sowle as her wytt wold serven hyr to expressyn it. and thei alle that sche schewed hyr secretys unto seyd sche was mech bownde to loven ower lord for the grace that he schewyd unto hyr and cownseld hyr to folwyn hyr mevynggys and hyr steringgys and trustly belevyn it weren of the holy gost and of noon evyl spyryt. (staley 1996: 18–19) this concern refl ects a generally accepted wariness regarding transcendent experiences, especially those of women, and can be easily accounted for by discernment of spirits doctrine. it is important to note, however, that the fear of diabolical deception through dreams and visions, while certainly a vital part of this later medieval doctrine, was a signifi cant feature of dream theories 148 rebecca dark selim 18 (2011) throughout the middle ages.30 the assurances of “worshepful clerkys” along with those of “many ankrys,” julian of norwich among them, provide authorization % om church hierarchy as well as % om other mystics that the moving and stirrings she describes, including her visions of christ, are indeed % om the holy ghost. dispelling the possibility that margery is simply another dangerously deceived and deceptive daughter of eve, kempe and the scribe establish that the dreams and visions that will follow in the text are properly identifi ed, and that those presented as divinely inspired do, in fact, transfer that divine authority to the woman who reports them. firmly making this assertion in the fi rst few pages of the text, kempe and the scribe assure the reader that the visionary woman has heavenly authorization for her deviations % om traditional social roles, her instruction and chastisement of men—including highly ranked churchmen— and her defi ance of anti-feminist conventions.31 the discourse of dream theory, then, is used in coƭ unction with traditional masculinist authority structures to pre-authorize both margery and her text in the minds of readers.32 establishing margery as a reliable evaluator of her dream-vision origins so early in the book is vital because the fi rst dream she narrates is, in fact, diabolical in origin. suff ering % om madness following the diffi cult delivery of her fi rst child and the failure of her confessor to allow her to complete her confession and receive 30 in de genesi, for example, augustine points out that in “corporeal vision as well as […] the images of corporeal objects revealed in the spirit, good spirits instruct men and evil spirits deceive them” (kruger 1992: 45), and in the dialogues gregory notes, that one should be “very reluctant to put one’s faith in dreams, since it is hard to tell % om what source they come” (zimmerman 1959: 261). 31 margery’s deviation % om traditional social roles includes, according to staley, the sense that gender roles do not apply to her because of her intimate relationship with jesus (staley 1994). 32 voaden (1999) makes a very similar argument with a diff erence of emphasis in her book. 149 visions, power, and margery kempe selim 18 (2011) absolution for a long-standing un-confessed sin, margery reports being tormented by harrowingly devilish dreams or visions: and in this tyme sche sey, as hir thowt, develys opyn her mowthys al infl aumyd wyth brennyng lowys of & r as thei schuld a swalwyd hyr in, sumtyme rampyng at hyr, sumtyme thretyng her, sumtym pullyng hyr and halyng hir bothe nygth and day duryng the forseyd tyme. and also the develys cryed upon hir wyth greet thretyngys and bodyn hir sche schuld forsake hir crystendam, hir feyth, and denyin hir god, hys modyr, and alle the seyntys in hevyn, hyr goode werkys and alle good vertues, hir fadyr, hyr modyr, and alle hire ' endys. and so sche dede. (staley 1996: 22) it is vital to note that margery’s madness is a direct result of her confessor’s failure to shrive her properly, not simply evidence of post-partum depression, and this madness is deeply rooted in feelings of guilt and condemnation that predate the birth of her child. most who choose to speculate extrapolate ' om other statements margery gives that the unnamed sin is sexual in nature, and this theory implies an association with misogynistic concepts of women as sexually insatiable. even if we choose not to coƭ ecture on the nature of margery’s secret sin, however, we can easily establish the discourse of misogyny as an integral part of her oppressive guilt. she has, a0 er all, just endured months of illness during pregnancy and a torturous delivery, both of which are considered the physical half of the curse of eve that all women share, the other half being, of course, subservience to men. thus, the diabolical visions that margery suff ers in her madness are closely tied to feminine corporeality and permeability, female guilt for the fall, and margery’s personal share in both. the redemption that margery experiences, however, also comes in the form of a vision, but this experience is divine in origin and content: as sche lay aloone and hir kepars wer ' o hir, owyr mercyful lord crist jhesu, evyr to be trostyd, worshypd be hys name, nevyr forsakyng hys servawnt in tyme of nede, aperyd to 150 rebecca dark selim 18 (2011) hys creatur, whych had forsakyn hym, in lyknesse of a man, most semly, most bewtyuows, and most amyable that evyr mygth be seen wyth mannys eye, clad in a mantyl of purpyl sylke, syttyng upon hir beddys syde, lokyng upon hir wyth so blyssyd a chere that sche was strengthyd in alle hir spyritys, seyd to hir thes wordys: “dowtyr, why hast thow forsakyn me, and i forsoke nevyr the?” and anoon, as he had seyd thes wordys, sche saw veryly how the eyr openyd as brygth as ony levyn, and he stey up into the eyr, not rygth hastyli and qwykly, but fayr and esly that sche mygth wel beholdyn hym in the eyr tyl it was closyd ageyn. (staley 1996: 23) this type of vision is theoretically only granted to the most perfectly spiritual persons, for it is both a waking vision and an oraculum * om god himself in the person of christ. we should observe that the message that christ brings to margery is not for the benefi t or admonition of either the world or the church, nor is it a confi rmation of a seal of virginity, spiritual or bodily, that might elevate the woman to a place of authority within the church. it is purely for her personal comfort and includes an important assurance that even during her devilish torments and, perhaps more signifi cantly, even though she still has not confessed the unnamed sin, jesus has been with her. his appearance to her as a beautiful man dressed in kingly splendor is also noteworthy because in many of her visions and conversations margery’s relationship with jesus is romantic and somewhat erotic in nature. this sort of romanticized relationship with jesus is reported by many of margery’s visionary contemporaries, but the fact that it is conventional does not rob it of rhetorical power. margery’s attraction to the love and amiability of christ is always supplemented by a sense of physical attraction that endows both margery’s spirituality and the transcendence of the divine with an inescapable corporeal component. had the readers not been assured that sanctioned masculine authorities have already determined that margery does have access to divine transcendence, they might easily wonder whether this vision, and indeed those that follow, were not as diabolical as the fi rst. in fact, they could 151 visions, power, and margery kempe selim 18 (2011) be understood to be tricks of the devil designed to delude margery into believing that she has been forgiven of her secret sin without benefi t of clerical mediation and that she has divine authorization to ignore and de& masculine religious and secular authority when in fact she does not. because the text has already identifi ed margery as a reliable, inspired dreamer and interpreter, though, this fi rst vision of christ, like all of her subsequent dreams, visions, and conversations with holy fi gures, can be accepted as truly divine and as authorization both for the unconventional and heterodox behavior in which the character engages as well as for any potential theological or instructional value the text may hold. margery’s physical participation in the curse of eve, exaggerated by her susceptibility to demonic attack, is not, however, erased by christ’s uncritical acceptance of her. instead, the vision joins spirituality to margery’s corporeality, and the two discourses work in cooperation to confi rm the authority of both character and text. even so, masculine hegemony is maintained because orthodox, masculine clerical power has provided the foundational sanction for all that follows. margery’s examinations for heresy are clustered in the year 1417, the same year in which john oldcastle was burned for lollardy.33 although discourses of orthodoxy and heresy and of clerical conduct are prominent throughout this section of margery’s text, anti-feminist discourse drives many of the accusations made against her.34 the steward of leicester, one of the fi rst offi cials to examine margery, takes her into a private room and attempts to rape her, or to / ighten her enough to believe that he will, before demanding that margery reveal to him “whethyr thu hast this speche of god er of the devyl, er ellys thu schalt gon to preson.” when margery 33 claire cross (1978) discusses the presence and activity of women in the lollard movement. 34 for a fascinating discussion of the rhetoric of margery’s examinations, see beer (1992) and shklar (1995). 152 rebecca dark selim 18 (2011) refuses to answer him, he struggles with her again until she admits that “sche had hyr speche and hir dalyawns of the holy gost and not of hir owyn cunyng.” the attempted rape, of course, calls attention to margery as a female body, while the question of whether she is acting through divine or diabolical inspiration highlights the fear that women are easily deceived. the steward succinctly sums up the problematic nature of misogynist discourse with his words of dismissal: “’eythyr thu art a ryth good woman er ellys a ryth wikked woman” (staley 1996: 115). similarly, in margery’s fi rst examination before the archbishop of york, standard misogynistic iƭ unctions against women’s speech are brought to bear, and margery fi rst answers with an allusion to luke 11:27, in which a woman publically speaks a blessing on the virgin, as evidence that women are given the right to public speech in the bible.35 immediately, a second cleric reads the iƭ unction of paul against women’s preaching / om i timothy, which margery answers with the assertion that she does not go into the pulpit and only engages in holy conversation.36 thus, the discourse of misogyny asserting the wickedness of woman, her required subservience, and her enforced silence is used against margery, but she resists these attacks through assertion of her spiritual communion with god, biblical authority, and a quibble. as the archbishop prepares to put her out of the town, he requires that she have a male escort: than a good sad man of the erchebischopys meny askyd hys lord what he wolde gevyn hym and he schulde ledyn hir. the erchebischop proferyd hym fi ve shillings and the man askyd a 35 and it came to pass, as he spoke these things, a certain woman / om the crowd, li4 ing up her voice, said to him: blessed is the womb that bore thee and the paps that gave thee suck (“factum est autem cum haec diceret extollens vocem quaedam mulier de turba dixit illi beatus venter qui te portavit et ubera quae suxisti”). luke 11:27. (latin text / om the douay-rheims translation of the latin vulgate bible). 36 but i suff er not a woman to teach, nor to use authority over the man: but to be in silence (“docere autem mulieri non permitto neque dominari in virum sed esse in silentio”). i timothy 2:12. 153 visions, power, and margery kempe selim 18 (2011) nobyl. the erchebischop, answeryng, seyd, “i wil not waryn so mech on hir body.” (staley 1996: 128) here, through the archbishop’s bartering over the value of margery’s body, we see that the prevailing discourse on woman ends by defi ning her in material terms of exchange value, reinforcing the polarity of spirit/matter dualism and limiting the feminine to the realm of the corporeal. in the midst of these trials, margery eƭ oys numerous spiritual conversations with christ. imprisoned, this time in the town of beverley, she hears him call to her audibly: the seyd creatur, lying in hir bed the next nyth folwyng, herd wyth hir bodily erys a lowde voys clepyng, “margery.” wyth that voys sche woke, gretly aferyd, and, lying stille in sylens, sche mad hir preyerys as devowtly as sche cowde for the tyme. and sone owr merciful lord ovyral present, comfortyng hys unworthy servawnt, seyd unto hir, “dowtyr, it is mor plesyng unto me that thu su+ r despitys and scornys, schamys and reprevys, wrongys and disesys than yif thin hed wer smet of thre tymes on the day every day in sevyn yer. and therfor, dowtyr, fere the nowt what any man can seyn onto the, but in myn goodnes and in thy sorwys that thu hast suff ryd therin hast thu gret cawse to joyn, for, whan thu comyst hom into hevyn, than schal every sorwe turnyn the to joye.” (staley 1996: 130-131) whether this visionary experience actually has a visual element is diffi cult to say because margery does not defi ne what “owr merciful lord ovyral present” means in clear sensory terms, but she does makes a point of distinguishing this episode 6 om others in the same section of the book in which jesus has spoken in her soul rather than audibly.37 margery has been subjected by the masculinist clerical system to the oppressive application of the discourse of misogyny that ultimately reduces her to a mere body; nevertheless, here kempe insists on the physical reality of 37 for example, in york she “sat in a chirche of yorke, owr lord jhesu crist seyd in hir sowle, ‘dowtyr, ther is meche tribulacyon to thewarde’” (staley 1996: 120). 154 rebecca dark selim 18 (2011) this spiritual vision. all of margery’s supernatural conversations highlight her possession of a highly developed spiritual nature (in spite of misogynist assertions to the contrary), but this one is clearly characterized as both spiritual and corporeal, and the juxtaposition of this particular visionary account with the antifeminist degradation of her examinations for heresy functions to revise rather than to elide the power of discursive ties between the feminine and the body. instead of allowing misogynistic discourse to polarize and marginalize her, kempe deploys it in cooperation with the authorizing power of dream discourse to integrate spirit and body.38 in this way, on the diegetic level margery eff ectively authorizes both her resistance to masculine control and her rebuke of the system trying to impose it on her, while kempe’s rhetorical combination of the two discourses extradiegetically reiterates the propriety of the message of her text and its authority. like her predecessors hild, christina, and leoba, margery kempe is a visionary woman who is able to exercise power that should not, theoretically, be available to her. unlike these other english visionaries, however, margery kempe is and remains vocationally separate & om the patristic system of the church, and her sanction does not have the same reciprocal eff ect with masculine hegemony that we see in their texts—even if her gi' is sometimes used in aid of its representatives.39 for example, on the insistence of a certain monk, margery reveals his secret sins and prompts him to 38 for a discussion of the confl ation of other binaries such as the active and contemplative lives or the mystical body and the social body in the book, see fredell (1996). for a view of the book as a collaboration between margery and the scribe that bridges the masculine/feminine divide, see harding (1993). 39 jessica barr argues that margery holds affi rmation and resistance to ecclesiastical authority in productive tension that requires “constant negotiation” (2010: 210). as i do, barr asserts that dream theory is an important aspect in the authorization of visionary women; however, she examines the visionary text cross-generically, contextualizing it in terms of the literary dream vision rather than in terms of historical continuity of rhetoric and discourse. 155 visions, power, and margery kempe selim 18 (2011) repentance, a% er which he becomes a better man (staley, 1996, pp. 39–40). a% erwards, the monk is “made suppriowr of the place,” but this is because of his reformation, not due to his association with margery. margery, however, does get a good meal and some gold as thanks for her assistance. another example of the use of margery’s visionary gi% in regard to a communal, church-centric event occurs when parishioners of the church of st. nicholas, established as a chapel of the parish church of st. margaret, seek papal permission for a baptismal font in their church. margery “had be revelacyon that thei schuld not have it” and prayed boldly that they would lose the dispute (staley 1996: 68). here we might read a reciprocal distribution of power / om the authorized visionary to the church that sanctions her, as it does seem that her visionary power buttresses the claims of the site she prefers. however, kempe characterizes the dispute as being about “gold anow” (both the money the st. nicholas parishioners have put into winning their suit as well as the money to be accrued / om off erings given in association with rites) rather than the spiritual superiority of st. margaret’s. margery vision here is less about spiritually authorizing st. margaret’s and more about keeping undisturbed the profi ts associated with it and with the trinity guild, which had a chapel in the church and of which she was a member (beckwith 1993: 106). in addition, margery is a singularly independent member of her own parish, especially because she refuses to stay put. as sarah beckwith observes, “what upsets [her fellow parishioners] most […] is the fact that she goes on pilgrimages when she has no money to support herself, that she gives away other people’s money, and that she wanders about on her own all across the country and in other people’s countries, as well” (1993: 101). margery’s atypical connection to her parish, her / equent trips in search of additional, outside spiritual insight and counsel, and her many pilgrimages prevent her / om establishing a fi rm identifi cation with any single church entity or site. thus, the visionary authority made possible by the rhetorical combination of discourses remains largely limited 156 rebecca dark selim 18 (2011) to advancing margery’s interests, both material and spiritual, and to % eeing her % om strict obedience to the masculinist system of the church. the book of margery kempe, then, demonstrates rhetorical similarities in its use of dream discourse and discourse on women with the texts of earlier english visionary women, and i argue that this rhetorical continuity shows the continued importance of dream theory across the middle ages in the authorization of women, even a& er the resurgence of a doctrine of discernment of spirits. why margery’s visionary authorization does not cooperate with and reauthorize an entity of the church as does that of her predecessors is a question worthy of further study. one possible explanation is that margery’s unsealed body is somehow unacceptable as a source of sanction, but hild, too, had been married, and other mothersaints such as st. bridget, one of margery’s models, make this argument untenable. perhaps anxiety over the “rapid proliferation of female claims to divine inspiration” that caciola partly credits for the increased focus on discerning spirits in the late middle ages is also refl ected in margery’s failure to fully embrace or be fully embraced by a clerical entity with whom she might enter into a reciprocal power-sharing relationship (caciola 2003: 16).it is certain that margery’s visionary authority was subjected to a diff erent level of scrutiny % om that of her predecessors becauseshe lived in a time when the discernment of spirits doctrine, which includes many of the same anxieties and ambiguities found in dream theories, had fully developed. nevertheless, analysis of this text in light of its rhetorical similarities to earlier english medieval texts suggests to me that dream theories played an independent and very important, though o& en unacknowledged, part in the sanction 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dark selim 18 (2011) antiquity and the early middle ages. university park (pa), the pennsylvania state university press: 255–277. shklar, r. 1995: cobham’s daughter. modern language quarterly 56.3: 277–304. staley, l. 1994: margery kempe’s dissenting fictions. university park (pa), the pennsylvania state university press. staley, l. ed. 1996: the book of margery kempe. kalamazoo, medieval institute publications. talbot, c. h. ed. 1998: the life of christina of markyate a twel! h century recluse. toronto, university of toronto press. voaden, r. 1999: god’s words, women’s voices: the discernment of spirits in the writing of late-medieval women visionaries. rochester (ny), york medieval press. warren, n. b. 2010: the embodied word: female spiritualties, contested orthodoxies, and religious cultures, 1350–1700. notre dame (in), university of notre dame press. watt, d. 1997: secretaries of god. cambridge, d. s. brewer. watt, d. 2007: medieval women’s writing. malden (ma), polity press. york, b. 2006: “carriers of the truth”: writing the biographies of anglosaxon female saints. in j. crick, s. hamilton, & d. bates eds. writing medieval biography 750–1250: essays in honor of professor frank barlow. woodbridge, boydell and brewer: 49–60. zimmerman, o. j. ed. 1959: saint gregory the great: dialogues. new york, fathers of the church, inc. • received 17 oct 2012; accepted 11 jan 2013 selim05.pdf andrew breeze, selim 5 (1996): 127—131 richard rolle’s tagild ‘entangled’: welsh tagu ‘choke’, tagell ‘snare’ tagild ‘entangled’ and tagillyng ‘entanglement’ are peculiarities of the prose of richard rolle (c. 1304-1349).1 oed, s. v. tagle, quotes four in stances of the forms. for tagle itself it quotes newcastle upon tyne, public libra ry, ms th. 1678, a manuscript found ‘tumbling about in a drawer among old ma gazines and newcastle dirt’ by j. t. fowler, who described it in notes and queries, fifth series, i (1874), 41-2.2 the manuscript contains rolle’s english psalter and commentary on the canticles in a northern dialect close to the author’s original, givin g the readings quoted in oed, ‘na man may wit hou many vices ar pat men ar tagild with’ for psalm 39: 16, and ‘swa paire affecciouns ar ay tagild with som lufe pat drawes eame fra goddes lufe’ for habbakuk 3: 31. other manuscripts (mostly southern) here read tak ild (a scribal variant?) or tangild (a nasalized phonetic variant). in the light of the celtic etymology argued below, the reading snaryd in the oxford, bodleian library, ms bodley 467 copy of the english psalter is of special interest. the noun tagillynge figures in the thornton manuscript (lincoln, cathedral library, ms 91) text of desyre and delit, which speaks of how joy in christ draws man’s thoughts from his soul ‘that he may hafe ryste in goddes lufe, wlthowtten tagillynge of o per thynges’ (here longleat house ms 29 has taryynge).3 elsewhere, describing the gifts of the holy spirit, rolle speaks of 1 on the dates, see n. watson, richard rolle and the invention of authority (cambridge, 1991), reviewed by s. s. hussey in notes & queries ccxxxviii (1993), 80-1. 2 n. r. ker, medieval manuscripts in british libraries (oxford, 1969-92), iii. 491-2, and cf. a handlist of manuscripts containing middle english prose in oxford college libraries, ed. sarah ogilvie-thomson (cambridge, 1991), 107-8, reviewed by e. g. stanley in notes & queries, coxxxvii (1992), 388-9. 3 cf. yorkshire writers, ed. carl horstmann (london, 1895-6), 1. 46, 136, 196; english writings of richard rolle, ed. hope emily allen (oxford, 1931), 57; richard rolle, prose and verse, ed. sarah ogilvie-thomson, eets 293 (oxford, 1988), reviewed by siegfried wenzel in notes & queries, ccxxxv (1990), 73-4. richard rolle’s tagild, welsh tagu, tagell ____________________________________________________________________ 133 counsel as ‘doyng away of worldes rytches and of delytes and of al thynges pat man may be tagild with in thought or dede’, where the reading of two ma nuscripts (london, british library, ms arundel 507 and the thornton manuscript) contrasts with that of cambridge, university library, ms dd. v 64, which has tacit, with cit written over an erasure.1 tagild and tagillynge are, then, amongst the many words used by rolle which are rare or unknown in other writers.2 oed links tagle with scots taigle ‘entangle, impede, hinder’, earliest attested in 1635, and the various senses of tangle and entangle (quoted from the early sixteenth century onwards). to these instances can be added another from a fifteenthcentury scots poem, in the bannatyne manuscript (edinburgh, national library of scotland, ms adv. 1.1.6) of c. 1568, beginning ‘o wicket wemen, wilfull and variable’, which declares women are ‘turnit fra trewth and taiclit with treichery’.3 although rolle’s tagle almost certainly represents the ancestor form of english (en)tangle (and scots taigle), its etymology has been a puzzle. oed comments, ‘probably of scandinavian origin, and cognate with swedish dialect (bornholm) taggla ‘to disarrange, bring into disorder’. others are more cautious. tolkien comments ‘obscure’; onions and the 1973 edition of sod, ‘of obscure origin’; hoad, ‘of uncertain origin’. yet tagle is now again described, without citation of evidence, as ‘probably of scandinavian origin’.4 nevertheless, the semantic difficulties in relating rolle’s tagle to the obscure bornholm dialectism taggla ‘to disarrange’ make another approach poss ible. it is argued here that ttagle (> scots taigle) is not a scandinavian loanword in english but a celtic one, deriving from a cumbric cognate of welsh tagu ‘to choke’, tagell ‘throat; snare’; bre ton taga ‘to choke’; old irish *tachtaid ‘he chokes, he strangles’. 1 horstmann, i. 197; fourteenth century verse & prose, ed. kenneth sisam (oxford, 1921), 43; allen, 84, 116. 2 horstmann, ii. xl n. 1. 3 secular lyrics of the xivth and xvth centuries, ed. r. h. robblns (oxford, 1952), 225; medieval english lyrics, ed. theodore silverstein (london, 1971), 154. 4 j. r. r. tolkien’s glossary to sisam, s.v. tagyld; the oxford dictionary of english etymology, ed. c. t. onions (oxford, 1966), 902; the shorter oxford english dictionary, 3rd edn (oxford, 1973), 2242; the concise oxford dictionary of english etymology, ed. t. f. hoad (oxford, 1986), 482; the new shorter oxford english dictionary, ed. lesley brown (oxford, 1993), 3216. andrew breeze ____________________________________________________________________ 134 these cognate forms are widely represented in celtic. in irish our evidence ranges from a ninth-century gloss in a copy of priscian in switzerland (nom thachtar gl. angor ‘strangling’ in st gallen, stiftsbibliothek, ms 904) to the present, where stáisiún craolachain a thachtadh is ‘to jam a radio station’.1 middle welsh tagell is proved to derive from a british original by the cornish place-name element *tagell ‘constriction, narrow neck’: hence it is likely the form also existed in cumbric. the history of the brittonic forms is as follows. the sense ‘choke, strangle’ is shown as original by the cognate verbs in welsh, breton, and irish. the stem of tagell is characteristic of words for tools, such as middle welsh gwäell ‘skewer’, tröell ‘whorl’, ysgubell ‘broom’, as well as for the female of species (hwyfell ‘salmon’, iyrchell, ‘roe-deer’); personal names (gwynnell, mechell); and rlver-names (crafnell, llyinell). the same celtic stem features in gaulish mosella, the river moselle.2 a standard welsh dictionary defines tagell as ‘gill (of fish), throat, double chin; snare’.3 but ‘double chin’ is an error. it is a misunderstanding of tagell hir in a poem by iolo goch (fl. 1345-1400) on a beautiful girl. unexplained in the first critical edition of iolo’s work, tagell was glossed ‘double chin’ (!) in the second. johnston alters this to ‘lower part of the jaw or chin (gtn)’, but this still wrong.4 the correct translation of tagell hir is ‘a long neck’. a short neck was not admired at this date. muscatine notes that poets admired ‘a rather tall heroine, with smooth, white neck’; the lancashire lass of ‘mosti ry den by rybbesdale’ in the harley lyrics had ‘swannes swyre swy pe wel ysette / a sponne lengore pen y mette’, a swan’s neck a span 1 foclóir gaeilge-béarla, ed. giall ó dónaill (baile atha cliath, 1977), 1190; joseph vendryes, lexique étymologique de l’irlandais ancien: lettres t-u (paris, 1978), t 4-5. 2 john morris -jones, a welsh grammar (oxford, 1913), 233; r. j. thomas, enwau afonydd a nentydd cymru (caerdydd, 1938), 92; geiriadur prifysgol cymru (caerdydd, 1950-), 1209. 3 y geiriadur mawr, ed. h. m. evans & w. o. thomas, 5th edn (llandysul, 1971), 403. 4 cywydwdau iolo goch ac eraill, ed. henry lewis et al., 1st edn (bangor, 1925), 3; 2nd edn (caerdydd, 1937), 423; gwaith iolo goch, ed. d. r. johnston (caerdydd, 1988), 323. richard rolle’s tagild, welsh tagu, tagell ____________________________________________________________________ 135 longer than the poet had seen before; the damsel oiseuse in the roman de la rose had a neck assés gros et lons par raison (line 540).1 in welsh, a nun described by hywel ap dafydd of raglan (fl. 1450-80) had a mwnwgl hir feinwyn ‘a long, fine, white neck’.2 a passage on usury in a translation by sion conwy (d. 1606) of leonard wright’s a summons for sleepers (london, 1589) makes the sense of tagell clear. it says those who borrow from need no more commit sin than a woman who is raped, or a seafarer jettisoning cargo in a storm, or a traveller giving thieves his purse befo re they cut his throat (torri i dagell).3 having clarified the semantic range of welsh tagell, we can turn to the cornish evidence. this consists of the place-name tintagel ‘fort of aconstric tion’, in north cornwall. first attested as tlat.agol in ge offrey of monmouth’s historia regum britanniae (c. 1137), the later pronunciation [d z] is explained by norman influence (the name being best known through french romances). the tagell ‘constriction’ here is the narrow neck of land joining this spectacular defensive site to the cornish mainland.4 the verbal element *tak‘choke, strangle’ was, then, well attested in celtic; tagell ‘neck, constriction’ is known in early welsh and cornish; and the sense tagell ‘snare’ was also known at an early date (a full account here must await completion of geiriadur prifysgol cymru).5 1 charles muscatine, chaucer and the french tradition (berkeley, 1957). 18; early middle english verse and prose, ed. j. a. w. bennett and g. v. smithers, 2nd edn (oxford, 1968), 114; le roman de la rose, ed. daniel poirion (paris, 1974), 56. 2 cywyddau dafydd ap gwilym a’i gyfoeswyr, ed. ifor williams and thomas roberts, 2nd edn (caerdydd, 1935), 39; dafydd ap gwilym, fifty poets, tr. h. i. bell and david bell (london, 1942), 138; barddoniaeth yr uchelwyr, ed. d. j. bowen (caerdydd, 1957), 85; the oxford book of welsh verse, ed. thomas parry (oxford, 1962), 105; a. g. breeze, hywel ap dafydd o raglan and obwv, rhif 59’, llên cymru, xvii/1-2 (1992), 137-9, at 138. 3 rhyddiaith gymraez (caerdydd, 1954-6), ii. 136, and cf. the dictionary of welsh biography (london, 1959), 1115. 4 on site and name, see c. a. r. radford, cultural relatlonships of the celtic world, proceedings of the second international congress of celtic studies (cardiff, 1966), 3-37, at fig. 6; e. g. bowen, britain and the western seaways (london, 1972), plate 36; k. r. dark, the plan and interpretation of tintagel. cambridge medieval celtic studies, ix (1985), 1-17, at 2, 6; o. j. padel, cornish place-name elements (nottingham, 1985), 214, and his cornish place-names (penzance, 1988), 163, 195. 5 on welsh snares, see the chirk codex, ed. j. g. evans (llanbedrog, 1909), 97; robert richards, cymru’r oesau canol (wrecsam, 1933), 147; llyfr blegywryd, ed. andrew breeze ____________________________________________________________________ 136 northern middle english tagle ‘entangle’ would develop naturally as a borrowing of *tagell from cumbric, spoken perhaps as late as c. 1100; and modern english (en)tangle could be seen, not as a loan from scandinavian, but as from a previously unrecognized celtic loanword in english.1 andrew breeze university of navarre, pamplona * † * s. j. williams and enoch powell (caerdydd, 1942), 80; the taws of hywel dda, tr. g. m. richards (liverpool, 1954), 82. 1 on cumbric, see k. h. jackson, angles and britons in northumbria and cumbria, in angles and britons (cardiff, 1963), 60-84. selim03.pdf 7 roger lass, selim 3 (1993): 7-25 interpreting vs. disappearing: on texts as historical objects1 1 polemical setting much of the factual material in this paper will be familiar to readers of selim, though the implications i draw may be novel. my intention is to re open debate on certain issues generally taken as settled a long time ago. for this reason (as well as because this is the kind of thing i seem to write) the paper is both idiosyncratic and waspishly polemical. the rhetorical stance is one of treating complex issues with a kind of pseudo-naive innocence, seeing what would happen if one asked daddy about the emperor’s clothing. it never hurts to look at even the most obvious things again, and remind ourselves of what we once had to learn with difficulty and now accept as unproble matic. as long as people have been seriously editing older texts, it has been customary to ‘repair’ the often intractable messes presented by older mss, to make them useful, palatable, easily appreciated by readers, etc. such tinkering comes in both (rela tively) benign and ma lignant types, but the latter far outnumber the former. to set the cat properly among the pigeons, i suggest first that regardless of the qualifications of the editor involved, any emendation of older texts (or even worse, the filling of lacunae left by destroyed text) 1 this is an expanded and more technical version of material to appear in lass (forthcoming: ch. 2), here aimed at a specifically anglicist and medievalist audience. 8 is a destructive and ultimately indefensible procedure. and second, that ‘normalization’ of teaching texts as usually practiced is also harmful, and even though it appears to serve pedagogical goals, serves the wrong ones. this is so because of the peculiar kind of object an early ‘text’ is, and an important class of insights any such object fails to afford if it is treated in a certain way. if the priggishness underlying these remarks were to embed itself in editorial practice, it would make older texts much harder to read, and greatly complicate the task of ‘literary appreciation’ for students, making the texts -asobjects an even more alien life -form than they are already. this is pre cisely as it should be; it’s only proper that the in terpretation of an old english text, for example, should in every way be more difficult, more tentative, more full of gaps and puzzles, than that of a modern one. this is not to suggest that we oughtn’t to have editions with rich textual apparatus as well as explanatory and ‘intertextual’ notes; far from it. what i would argue for is an enrichment of these guides to appreciation, and a radical impoverishment of the tampering actually done with texts as they appear on the page. to take an extreme case, if a piece of text is garbage, then the garbage ought to stay in the version we read, as an inseparable part of it, and be (conjecturally) sorted out only in notes. what underlies this claim is a pair of positions either pro foundly reactionary or radical, depending on your point of view. first, a text (or any other heritage) from an older his torical period is an autonomous object, and our duty toward it is (a) to accept it as a contin gent surviror from the past, with all its problems, and (b) to try and experience it as closely as possible to the way it might have been experienced in its own time. i’m not silly enough to think this can be done; but one can get a lot nearer this ideal by confronting a clean text, with lots of background material--in its proper place. at least we can do our best to look at the object as it was orig inally pres ented, in precisely the language it was written in. 9 my rationale is not dissimilar to that behind the movement for ‘authentic’ performances of early music (even as late as beethoven or berlioz). if a lis tener of the day could not have heard the sounds we make on modern instruments, then it could be argued that we are not actually listening to the music in ques tion if we hear it that way. (this view is sometimes dis missed by critics as klangfarbmaterialismus, but there is a lot to be said for it.) are we for instance really ‘hearing mozart’ if we have string-playing with continuous vibrato, valved in stead of natural horns and trumpets, no harpsichord continuo, pitch a half-tone too high, timpani with padded sticks instead of hard ones? in such a case we are creating an acoustic object that the composer could not have imagined nor his audience heard; the object is remanufactured ‘on the basis of’ the orig inal, but more a translation than a faithful copy. it provides a very different experience from the kind it could originally have induced. so i suggest in the first instance that it might be a good idea to rid ourselves of the romantic desire to ‘remake’ past art objects and other things in our own image (to deprive ourselves of the undisciplined luxury of deconstruction, and start respecting artifacts as artifacts); if all old things have to be modernized, what’s the point of the past at all? at least from one perspective, the delight of the old is in its old ness, not what we ‘make of it’; our job is to attempt, however ineptly, to remake our own consciousness on the model of older ones, not to remake those on a new model. without this attempt we fail to amplify our experience, and confine ourselves to the familiar and selfgenerated. the second point is lin guistic, and more important to my mind than this merely aesthetic one. my main concern here is the falsification of the linguis tic past produced by over-editing. the primary value of older texts is as ‘samp les’ or ‘representations’ of the languages they are written in; they lose a certain vital historical import when seen through too many sets of spectacles. from the lin guistic point of view, there is much to be said for leaving texts, garbage and all, the way they have come down to us, and little 10 if anything to say for editorial tampering. i will illustrate this point (which has a serious as well as a cranky dimension) with a familiar and particularly loathsome example, and then draw some more general conclusions. 2 what’s in a word? let us look at some strategies for dealing with an intractable problem. older text corpora may contain lexical items that appear only once (hapax legomena), and apparently have no descendants. interpreting such forms may be near impossible; they are often simplex and therefore compositionally opaque (unlike say a unique compound both of whose elements are independently attested); they may have no apparent near or distant cognates either. to what extent are such items really ‘historical data’, and how should we treat them? should we give them some interpretation, no matter how conjectural? should we just leave them there flagged as cruxes? or should we dis appear them? (the reason i use this stage-magician’s verb will become clear.) in particularly horrid cas es an item of this kind may have multiple wit nesses in a textual tradition. the one to be dis cussed here has four: is this buried history or folie àquatre? the anglo -saxon chronicle for the year 937 contains a linguistic object commonly taken to be a poem and usually called ‘the battle of brunanburh’.1 on this interpretation (see remarks in the next section), what are pre sented as lines 10b-13a read as follows (corpus christi ms 173: text from dobbie 1942: 17): hettend crungun 1 or, to anticipate a kind of problem taken up immediately below, maybe it should be brunnanburh. the corpus christi ms 173 has brunanburh with a second <n> added above the line after the <u> in a later hand, and cotton tiberius b. iv has brun nanburh (dobbie 1942: 16). 11 sceotta leoda and scipflotan fæge feollan, feld dænnede secga swate … which can be translated near-literally as (the) enemies died, men of the scots and ship -floaters [= vikings] doomed, fell, (the) field ?-ed (with) men’s blood … the gloss ‘? -ed’ indicates that while the other lexical items in the text are known from elsewhere in oe, dænnede is a hapax. so for that matter are the readings of the other witnesses, mss cotton tiberius a. vi, cotton tiberius b. i (dennade), and cotton tiberius b. iv (dennode). most student editio ns read dennode, but dobbie uses corpus 173 as his copy-text and re tains the reading (see below). these three forms represent the same verb, apparently; at least nobody has (for good parsimonious reasons, i suppose) suggested two unknown forms, and the consensus is that these are variants of one item (the -ede/ade/-ode variation is more or less expectable.) three of the witnesses agree on the nuclear vowel (<e> as against <æ>), and a medial geminate <nn>.1 the morphology is also transparent: whatever this/these verb(s) is/are, the forms are all on syntactic grounds 3rd person singulars, and on morphological grounds preterites belonging to the class ii weak conjugation. this is clear because a thematic weak preterite (-a-de, -o-de) ending after a heavy root 1 corpus, aside from its idiosyncratic <æ>, seems to hesitate about the medial consonant. at least the second <n> is added above the line, in another (apparently contemporary) hand (dobbie, 147). if this is, as seems likely, the work of a corrector, then whatever this verb is it must have been known to somebody besides the first scribe, since there was clearly a ‘wrong' version, and the ‘right' one had medial /-nn-/. 12 syllable must be class ii.1 this class of verbs standardly has the infinitive ending -ian (as opposed to normal class i -an); hence one could say that dennode, dennade are preterite 3 singular word -forms of a lexeme whose dic tionary headword wo uld be the infinitive dennian (so hulbert 1959, clark hall 1960, holthausen 1968). since none of these forms occur anywhere except in versions of brunanburh 12b, how can we find a gloss? there are different sorts of attempts to deal with it. hulbert (1959: 223) suggests dennode = ‘became slip pery’, presumably following the unsupported conjecture of bosworth-toller; holthausen 1968 s.v. dennian gives ‘fließen (?)’, with skr dhanvati ‘it flows’ as a possible cognate. clark hall (1960) gives ‘to stre am (?)’, pope (1966: 158) has ‘dennian, wk.v.ii. become wet, flow?’, but says properly ‘meaning doubtful’ (the standard euphemism for ‘unknown’). this word (or ‘word’) exemplifies a common problem. is it a ‘real’ word, or is it a mistake, copied in accurately from some (perhaps corrupt) original, and then perpetuated, or what? all attempts at glossing (and even holthausen’s stab at a possible etymo logical connection) are ultimately based on conjecture from context. after a battle, what would a fie ld do ‘with blood’? well, given the characteris tic rhetoric of old germanic battle poetry, it certainly might run or flow or stream or become slippery. a non-word (in the sense that only a form exists, with no extra-contextual backup for a meaning) is being interpreted simply by trying to make sense of it; this is little more than low-level cleverness, and except for holthausen’s attempt involves no real argument, and is not intellectually respectable. 1 in class i (the commonest), preterites are athematic after a heavy root (deµm -de ‘he judged'), and thematic after a light (frem -e-de ‘he performed'). there is a small class of verbs in /-r/ which belong to class i historically, but for reasons not relevant here have thematic preterites after light roots (herian ‘praise', nerian ‘save', preterites her-e-de, ner-e-de); they also, again irrelevantly, have an infinitive ending that looks like class ii. 13 holthausen appears to apply this kind of strategy: if there’s no attestation in the language in question, look for a putative cognate, i.e. a form whose phonological shape could be reasonably related, and which has something like what you think might be the right semantics. apparently there is nothing in attested germanic, but there is one sanskrit shape that sort of fits: dencould = ie */dhan-/ or */dhen-/, since */e, a/ merge in sanskrit. a pie shape */dhen-/ would give pgmc */pen-/, which would give oe /den-/. the gemi nate is still to be accounted for (holthausen does not deal with this); they are rare in class ii except as the result of assimilation (e.g. oe blissian ‘rejoice’, cf blèµíe ’blithe’, and the noun bliss with its alternant bèµps, and os blèµ?sea). so much for attempts at interpretation. they are of course all (more or less) hopeless, if in holthausen’s case with some sort of min imal support. but scholars (rightly in principle, if often dreadfully wrongly in practice) abhor vacuums as much as nature does, and sometimes do naughty things to fill them. since the late 19th century many have attempted to make something out of this crux; and the bulk of them have not tried to find an etymology, but rather assumed an error, and replaced the offending object with a familiar one that is at least similar, and has a (more or less) solid meaning. that is, rather than interpreting the (multiply attested) form, or abandoning it as hopeless, they disappear it by emending the text, and tell us ‘what must have been meant’. this is only one step less criminal than another common text -editor’s ploy: ‘restoring’ lacunae resulting from destruction of text by inventing material that ought to have been there. but it is of interest, since it dis plays the same strategies as the other attempts, but with less justification. here is a sample of the suggested replacements for dennode and its friends (the individual arguments are not really to the point here; for full dis cussion and references see dobbie, 147): (a) dengode, dengede ‘manured’ < dengian, a variant of dyngian ‘to dung’ (cf. g düngen). the line then reads ‘the field was manured with the 14 blood of men’, which seems to me at least a most un-oe kind of conceit. the ms readings are then based on an original error of substituting an <n> for a <g>. but if so, why did the corpus corrector bother to put in another <n>? this suggests that indeed there was ‘such a word’, and that it had been mis spelled, and the only thing the corrector was unhappy about was the single <n>. if the <æ> is original, the <e>-variant is kentish, and the language of the mss is not; but there is evidence that at least two of them have connections with canterbury (dobbie, xxxvf). (b) deµanian ‘to steam’. the root (not to mention the verb) is itself unattested, but could be connected with gothic dauns ‘odor’. verbs of this class are often denominal (lass 1993), so this is not out in principle. but the meaning of the gothic form is being stretched, and there are no traces of gmc */íaun-/ in old english. this falls fo ul as well of the ‘correction’ of <n> to <nn>, and the <nn> in the other witnesses. (c) dyn(n)ede ‘resounded’. this makes very little sense, and is even less like an old germanic metaphor than the manure above. (though cf. genesis 4.10, ‘uox sanguinis fratris tui clamat ad me de terra’, which the author would surely have known.) the vocalism is manageable: at the time of the sources (10th-11th c.) confusion of <a> and <æ> is not unlikely, and that of <e> and <æ> possible but less so. and a writing of <e> for <y> would be just possible on the grounds of the kentish connection ((a) above), since /y(:)/ had gone to /e(:)/ in kentish, as had /æ(:)/. (e) íaµnode ‘became wet’. from an attested class ii verb, and cf. paµn ’moist’. this is palaeographically reasonable, since in most oe hands the letters <d> and <í> differ only in the latter having a cross-stroke. but we still need a different vowel, and the geminate <nn>. 15 (f) dunnode ‘became dark’. also attested class ii. this, like dynnede, would require only an initial error in the vowel; but in this case the corpus dænnede is much more difficult, because there is no likelihood whatever of a ‘kenticizing’ of an orig inal /u/ <u> to <e> or <æ>. dobbie remarks, after a nice discussion, that ‘either dunnode or … íaµnode is defensible, but in view of other possibilities the text has not been emended’. good for him. at least one of the other possibilities, in my opin ion the only correct one, is to leave the text as it is, and re frain from any sugges tion at all except one that would give the existing lemma an etymology, and take that with a good deal of salt. but why should one not be allowed to emend texts, and take the result of the emendation as a second-order witness? surely production of second-order ((re)constructed) witnesses is a vital part of his tory -making (cf. lass 1980: ch. 2, appendix, lass 1986, forthcoming, ch. 1). isn’t this is in fact precisely what we do when we reconstruct, on the basis of attested witnesses, a protoform, e.g. ie */dhan-/ or */dhen-/ on the basis of dennian and skr dhanvati, etc.? one obvious motivation for not emending is that emendation (unlike re construction) is destructive; it obliterates part of the record, and substitutes for it an invention of another time, place and culture. rather than filling an epistemic gap, as (properly constrained) linguis tic reconstruction or interpre tation of documents do, it falsifies the record, and produces corrupt secondorder witnesses through a pro cedure that is not principle -driven, but dependent only on weak (usually flabby and aesthetic rather than methodologically controlled) argument. but the real motivation is largely a matter of constraints, i.e. limitations on what kind of past objects we can be allowed to make; or to put it another way, the deductive consequences of our abductive guesses. in a case like this, without the power of ‘hard’ methods, we have very little procedural help to tell us when we are producing nonsense, and almost nothing in the way of a 16 critical armoury for testing our guesses. we can talk to some extent about likelihoods of particular kinds of scribal error, and suggest palaeographic grounds for (putative) misreadings. but we do not have anywhere near as secure an array of reconstructive methodologies and critical protocols for this as we do for say phonological reconstruction, e.g. compara tive method, etc.1 (there are of course no methodologies for filling lacunae in texts!) there is another difference too, and probably a more important one. in reconstructing say a proto-ie segment, we are reconstructing a type, not a token , i.e. we operate on ‘system’ level (in the sense of lyons 1977: ch. 1). in trying to emend a text, we are dealing with a token, in the sense that the text is (a representation of) a particular, unique utterance. there is no reconstructive technique that can pro ject at utterance level; we may take texts as utterances, and look for the kind of variation that is typical of certain kinds of utterances in certain kinds of situations, i.e. treat a text as a ‘transcription’ in some sense (cf. lass 1992), subject it to variationist analysis, etc. but we still come out with constructs at type level. an attempt however to reconstruct an individual’s word -choice is as fatuous as producing texts in a proto-language, or reading poems aloud in a re constructed pro nunciation with ‘expression’, supras egmentals and all. not that this stops people from doing it, but they shouldn’t. as herbert penzl very properly puts it (1991: 62), ‘our methods permit reconstruction of phonemes, morphemes, phrases, syntactical rules, vocabulary forms, but not of speakers and their language acts, such as e.g. the creation of written texts’.2 1 there are working principles for editing that often give good results, e.g. difficilor lectio praeferenda est; but in this case the ‘more difficult' reading is in fact the unknown original, so that on these grounds too it should stand. 2 this holds a fortiori for ‘texts' written in protolanguages (whether real ones like indo european, or increasingly dubious ones like ‘nostratic', ‘amerind', ‘proto-world', or whatever), as well as for ‘reconstruct ion' of texts in their supposed original dialects, when the witnesses come down to us in something else. as penzl says of such efforts (1991: 61), ‘their scholarly value is zero, even if there is no question of the learning and competence' of their perpetrators. 17 3 and what, for that matter, is a ‘text’ anyhow? the last section was basically about ‘words’. despite the familiar theoretical problems of defining ‘word’ as a grammatical category, most of us have fairly useful intuitions about what they are, good enough for practical work anyhow. etymological dictionaries, gloss aries, commentaries, etc. generally seem to assume that whatever phonological level spelling might access (phonemic, morphophonemic, on occasion allophonic), the morphological input is not in ques tion: orthographies spell words. and if texts utilize such systems, this implies in a way that texts are made of words too, since the main sources of our words are texts. this however is oversimple; there are traditions that do not always write in the ‘normal’ way, but take different-sized elements as inputs. even modern english sometimes does this: ‘contractions’ like don’t, weren’t are not really morphological syntagms, but pieces of syntax: not ‘words’ but constructions of auxiliary and negator. the lack of space and the apostrophe are signs of phonological cliticization. if we take an ‘orthographic word’ as a piece of an orthographic utterance surrounded by space, then these are in fact words in the textual sense, and there is not necessarily a direct ma pping (with re spect to boundaries) from morphology onto orthogra phy. old english does this kind of thing to a much greater extent; and this may give us some evidence about supra segmentals, or at least about writers’ intuitions about suprasegmental constituents like tone-groups, etc. in many old english texts, for instance, light elements like prepositions, conjunctions and determiners are often writ ten as if part of the following major category item. the beowulf manuscript (zupitza 1959) has forms like the following (second oe citation with conventional editorial word-divisions, first english gloss literal, following ‘word’-divisions in the original): 18 (i) îa com ofmore = îa com of more (710) then came frommoor ‘then came from the moor’ (ii) insele pam hean = in sele pam hean (713) inhall the high ‘in the high hall’ (iii) com pa torecede = com pa to recede (720) came then tobuilding ‘then he came to the building’ (iv) huseman scaía = hu se man-scaía (737) howthewickedness injurer ‘how the wicked-injurer’ (v) íawæs onuhtan = ía wæs on uhtan (126) thenwas inmorning ‘then there was in the morning’ the word -divisions in the second versions (those that appear in printed editions, and to some extent even in zupitza’s transcription of the ms) are presumably based on independent occurrences of the forms with spaces around them in other texts (as well as modern survivals and cognates). the reading of man-scaía and mæl-ceare as compounds depends on prosodic evidence; they alliterate on /m/, and according to the oe rules as we understand them the first syllables should there fore bear primary stress.1 the scribe then takes what looks like potential phonological cliticization and writes it; on the other hand he normally separates what ought to be first 1 reading the sequence <man-> in man scaía as representing the lexeme maµn ‘wickedness' rather than man(n) ‘man' is in fact a secondary inference, based apparently on metrical argument; but if man(n) indeed ends in a geminate, as it probably does, then mann and mãn are met rically equivalent, and the compound could mean ‘harmer of men'. even what lexeme is being represented is not entirely clear. 19 elements of compounds from seconds, even affixes from stems (see below). perhaps even more distressing, there is virtually no punctuation, and what there is, while usually coinciding with major syntactic boundaries, often does not, but may signal line-ends or caesuras, or even, as far as we can tell, nothing much in particular. one might add of course that even though the text is in verse, and conventionally printed as such, it is written throughout as prose, with little indication of line breaks. here for instance are lines 99ff in the standard edition ((klaeber 1950):1 swaµ íaµ drihtguman dreµamum lifdon, eµadiglèµce, oí íæt aµn ongan fyrene frem(m)an feµond on helle; wæs se grimma gst grendel haµten, mæµre mearcstapa, seµ pe moµras heµold, fen ond fæsten … [‘so the noble retainers lived in joys/blessedly, until one began/to commit crimes, a fiend from hell;/the grim spirit was named grendel,/famous marchstepper, who held the moors,/ fen and fastness …’] the manuscript reads: swaía driht guman dreamum lifdon eadig lice oííæt an ongan fyrene frem 1 klaeber, like many editors, marks length as well, making the text even less like the original, and falsifying the orthographic system. length is never consistently marked in oe, though it is sporadically indicated in some traditions by vowel-graph-doubling or accents (see e.g. krapp & dobbie 1936: xxiv on the exeter book). there is however a good reason for doing this at an early stage in the teaching of old english, since etymological identification is an essential part of what the student of the history of english ought to learn, and the visual repetition of macrons is a useful way of fixing this information. 20 man feond on helle was segrim ma gæst grendel haten mære mearc stapa se pe moras heold fen 7fæsten literally, more or less sothe noble men in -joys lived blessed ly tothat one began crime t odo fiend in hell was the grim m spirit grendel called famous march stepper who that moors held fen &fastness there are two matters of interest here. first, it would seem reasonable to assume that the scribe was (generally) writing ‘by ear’ (since such conventions are not universal in oe), and that therefore he perceived certain adverbs and prepositions as clitics, and contrariwise certain (what we consider) affixes as independent ‘words’. he also seems to have expected the reader to be able to track the structure of the text by the alliteration, and to construe it without the help of punctuation or sentence-division. second, this says something sobering (for those not familiar with the actual properties of certain historical sources) about the kind of artifact a modern ‘text’ is, with respect to what it purports to represent. this makes any modern edition problematic: especially considering the kind of fairly loose, rather paratactic syntax of this kind of old english.1 the modern editor t hat is has to make choices in a reading text which are frequently not the only possible ones; there is a rich (and often not very edifying) literature concern ing alternative punctuations of texts from traditions of this kind. the only thing that’s clear is that (on uniformitarian grounds: there are no languages 1 for an interesting treatment of some of the syntactic problems raised by unpointed or minimally pointed oe texts, see dunning & bliss 1969: §§i,1, ii. 21 that typically produce utterances made of continuous unbounded syntactic strings) we can’t possibly assume that the syntactic structure of the text is mirrored in the writing in the same way that the segmental-phonological and (at times) the suprasegmental are. texts like this then tell us things we are very interested in knowing, and fail to tell us bigger things that we’d like to know, and in many cases there’s no way of finding out. aside from decisions that essentially amount to parsing for the reader, modern editions even make special claims about genre; the lineation as ‘verse’ is essentially a second-order construct (based to be sure on a long tradition that is essentially well founded, if problematic in details); but the visual experience for the modern reader (no matter how well versed in the language) is essentially different from that of the contemporary reader, since in the editions even the page layout itself defines a genre. for old english anyhow we don’t actually know what constituted a ‘poem’ as opposed to a piece of highly alliterative prose, for instance; lineation of poetry to show what it is comes later in the english tradition.1 as, one might add, does giving poems titles (none of the poems in the exeter book or the junius manuscript, for in stance, have original titles).2 so ‘texts’, as we find them in editions that students (and all too often scholars and historians of the language) read, are already very different kinds of objects from what was pres ented to their contemporary readers. they may also fail, and this is much more serious, to represent anything like the state of the language in which they are actually written. if as is often the case, texts are ‘normalized’ (or as penzl puts it ‘redialectalized’), this irons out variation. and this may produce a kind of object that could not in fact 1 the distinction between verse and prose was certainly clear to old english speakers (though there appears to be no special word for the latter); the exeter book for instance is described in a list of donations to exeter cathedral as being ‘on leoíwisan geworht', literally ‘in song-manner made' (krapp & dobbie 1936: ix). 2 interestingly, two later hands have added titles to the junius ms poem we now know as genesis, ‘genesis in lingua saxania', and ‘genesis in anglico' (krapp 1931: xviii). 22 have been written by anybody in the tradition the text comes from. let us re turn for instance to brunanburh: this text is not written in the kind of language one learns from the grammars (indeed practically no texts are, a point i will return to in a moment). in any pedagogical grammar one might use for begin ning students, it would become clear at an early stage that ‘the preterite indicative plural ending’ is -on; this is what appears in the paradigms (though other forms may be given in notes), and indeed this is what appears in the ‘normalized’ edition in pope (1966). but this is not actually the case for any real witness. in dobbie’s copy-text for instance, there are 4 occurrences of on, as opposed to 7 of -un and 10 of -an. that is, the ‘standard’ ending amounts to only 18% of the tokens in the text, and the one that is (confusingly, but importantly) a homograph (and homophone?) of the infinitive ending and the bulk of the oblique forms of weak nouns, -an, constitutes 45%. nearly half the tokens of this category are not what the student has been taught should occur, and if it were not for the syntax could be taken as infinitives or noun forms.1 but it is an important fact about the language of this text (or nearly any other oe or other old germanic one) that the orthography is not codified, and that it may tell us things about the language that are of interest and importance for historical study. ‘literary appreciation’ is not so primary that texts should be presented in forms totally alien to the way they were originally experienced: and, much worse, in essentially ‘different languages’. (this is surely the case of those in pope 1966, which were the first ones i read; it was only later that i discovered the much more interesting texts in the various avatars of sweet’s reader, with their textual apparatus that was itself an education in the nature o f variation in old english.) 1 one might also note that one dative plural in this text (lafan 6b) also has -an instead of expected -u m , and another (wundun, 43b) has -un. for a dative plural in -on one has to turn to another witness (íeodon, ms cotton tiberius b. iv, 23b); all of which helps make the point. 23 this view has some pedagogical implications. students must of course start some where, with a few handles to get hold of. the standard grammars (which are in themselves based on pseudo-codified versions of languages which were not codified in that way by their speakers) are a useful, perhaps necessary begin ning: provided variability and gaps in knowledge are made clear at the outset, and students are warned that in the first texts they read they will find ‘exceptions’ to the rules they’ve learned. so normalizing grammars with (preferably rather late) west saxon lemmata have their role to play at the outset, and indeed knowledge of this tradition is an essential part of the whole business of getting acculturated to old english studies. but the first real texts the student encounters should be pres ented unnormalized, or at worst with original and edited texts (lightly normalised, with vowel-length marked, and maybe even palatalization) on facing pages. (i know of no student grammar that does this, but i could be wrong.) this way they come to experience the language with all its warts from the beginning. and in fact get some experience of what they are actually writ ten in.1 there are some good arguments, i think, even for getting students of old english and similar languages, at a quite early stage in their careers, to read texts in ms or literal unpunctuated, uncapitalized transliteration.2 this will 1 some normalizers are more horrendous than others. f.p. magoun (1960) uses the ‘early west saxon' forms in holthausen for his lemmata, and includes them in his texts, so that poems of exeter book age have <oe>, etc. this is a case of ‘in affecting holthausen he writ no language'. one learns to use holthausen only after learning the history of the language, and for very special purposes. 2 an exemplary presentation of texts (even for early learners) with minimal interference is bravo et al. (1992), which punctuates minimally as well, and dispenses with editorial macrons in the texts themselves. (it may sound odd, but to my mind this textbook by spanish scholars comes much closer in the way it punctuates to what oe syntax really feels like than most editions by english or german speakers.) i might add that at some point in a serious student's education there ough t to be some contact with actual mss and some palaeographic training, even little excercises in ‘editing', so that they can get some feel for what editors have actually done. it's very interesting to see what students make out of a text when they have not only to turn it into modern letter-shapes, but 24 help disabuse them of the idea that the literary (or at least scrib al) culture of the writers was as close to their own as tarted-up editions might suggest, or even that the languages of the texts were the kind of codified standards that most of them will be speakers of. much of our ‘textual’ data (as the previous section has suggested) is also second-order, not first-order, built on the shakiest of foundations, and less trustworthy than the results of standard lin guistic reconstruction. in short, emending, normalizing, and other kinds of over-editing falsify and traduce under the guise of making accessible, and commit the worst kind of anachronism while pretending to ‘represent’ past objects. worse, such pro cedures produce pseudo-data, and prejudice (or even disenable) our reading of historical monuments. if we really hate mozart played like mozart, and would rather hear it played like tchaikowsky, why not listen to tschaikowsky, and stop pretending we’re hearing mozart? roger lass university of cape town references bravo, a., garcía, f., gonzález, s. 1992. old english anthology. oviedo: universidad de oviedo. clark hall, j. r. 1960. a concise anglo-saxon dictionary. cambridge: cambridge university press. dobbie, e.v.k. 1942. the anglo-saxon minor poems. new york: columbia university press. dunning, t. p. & bliss, a. j. 1969. the wanderer. london: methuen. gloss, translate, and punctuate. i can't think of a better way of get ting to grips with what old english syntax is really like. 25 holthausen, f. 1963. altenglisches etymologisches wörterbuch.2 heidelberg: winter. hulbert, j. r. 1959. bright’s anglo-saxon reader, revised and enlarged. new york: holt. klaeber, fr. 1950. beowulf and the fight at finnsburg .3 boston: heath. krapp, g.p. 1931. the junius manuscript. new york: columbia university press. krapp, g.p. & dobbie, e. v. k. 1936. the exeter book . new york: columbia university press. lass, r. 1980. on explaining language change. cambridge: cambridge university press. lass, r. 1986.conventionalism invention and ‘historical reality’: some re flections on method. diachronica 3,1.15-42. lass, r. 1992. front rounded vowels in old english. in f. colman, evidence for old english: material and theoretical bases for reconstruction (= edinburgh studies in the english language, 2), 88-116. edinburgh: john donald. lass, r. 1993. old english -ian: inflectional or derivational? vienna english working papers 2,1.26-34. lass, r. forthcoming. language change and historical linguistics. cambridge: cambridge university press. lyons, j. 1977. semantics. 2 vols. cambridge: cambridge unviersity press. magoun, f. p. 1960. the anglo-saxon poems in bright’s anglo-saxon reader. cambridge, mass.: harvard university, department of en glish. penzl, h. 1991. did henric van veldeken (1145-ca. 1200) write in a ‘german’ dialect? in t.f. shannon & j.p. snapper, the berkeley conference on 26 dutch linguistics 1989. issues and controversies, old and new, 57-66. lanham: university press of america. pope, j. c. 1966. seven old english poems. indianapolis: bobbs-merrill. zupitza, j. 1959. beowulf. reproduced in facsimile from the unique manuscript british museum ms. cotton vitellius a. xv.2 eets 245. london: oxford university press. * * * selim07 (2).pdf ____________________________________________________________________ 214 wright, laura 1996: sources of london english. medieval thames vocabulary. oxford, clarendon press. sources of london english would be too broad a title for a book which concentrates its study on “some middle english technichal vocabulary concern ed with life on the river thames” as is stated in the introduction. hence the addition of a convenient subtitle, medieval thames vocabulary to make explicit that this is one of the possible sources for the characterisation of london english. in fact, it covers manuscripts ranging from the 13 th to the 16 th century which are classified as of a business writing type, a very specific text type that deals with an even more specific semantic field. this is the reason why, when studying london english, an academic work of this kind must be accompanied by the analysis of literary and other non-literary writings. the point is that the author herself seems to agree on this matter when she briefly mentions previous studies based on literary sources without disre gard ing them. i claim that any language or dialect studied from a diachronic standpoint must be tackled taking into account all sorts of available manuscripts, independently of register or style if any can be traced. this observation made, i consider the book a careful and detailed work whose main aim is to offer a new perspective and to outline future linguistic research as a way of throwing new light on the origin and evolution of standard english. the book contains an introduction and four chapters. in the initial part, laura wright justifies the basis and purpose of her work, to study the english of medieval business documents, and, what is more remarkable at this stage, she approaches the situation of standard english in the late middle ages. the traditional view (fisher 1977)1 that the standard variety of english is the direct outcome of chancery english2 is challenged and dis cussed by modern theories (davis 1983; wright 1996b; 1997)3. as she p uts it (1996: 3): 1 fisher, j. h. “chancery and the emergence of standard written english in the fifteenth century”. speculum 52 (1977): 870-899. 2 during a conference on multilingualism in the late middle ages held in aberystwyth (wales) in september 1997, professor benskin himself refuted firmly the traditional theories which, to this respect, i mentioned when reading a paper of mine. 3 their theory evinces a more individualistic conception of the rise of standard english, at least, at the very beginning of the process. ____________________________________________________________________ 215 chancery english is just one functional variety of written english, with a very limited readership, whereas standard english has come to be multifunctional. it is not adequate to suggest that this diversity of function could have arisen solely from chancery documents, without at least investigating other text types. fisher’s claim that chancery english can be regarded as the immediate ancestor of standard english has been amply criticised by norman davis who in his article “the language of two brothers in the fifteenth century”1 states that it is hard to support evidence of a written standard in view of the writings of some high status members of society even at this date being, hence, unpredictable the degree of influence exerted by the chancery. he goes even further when he concludes that “the part played by chancery in its evolution can hardly have been decisive” (davis 1983: 28). likewise, wright (1996b)2 shows to be reluctant to accept the migration theory, first put forward by ekwall (1956)3 and later adopted by many historians of the language, that people from the central and east midlands came to london influencing, consequently, the variety of this area. she claims that the northern features found in the london speech are not the corollary of a migration process because “there is already a population of norse-influenced speakers on the doorstep” (1996b: 113). the grammatical study of medieval thames vocabulary reinforces her views on the standardisation phenomenon in late fouteenth century england: there is no identifiable ‘london usage’ or ‘precursor to standardis ation’; but individual scribes do have stable writing habits. note that this does not mean that they always chose the same morphological form or spelled a word in the same way, on the contrary, they usually chose more than one form, but the ratios at which they chose that form were stable (1996b: 112). 1 this article was published in e.g. stanley and douglas gray (eds.). five hundred yeats of words and sounds: a festschrift for eric dobson. cambridge: d. s brewer, 1983: 23-28. 2 wright, l. “evolution of standard english”. in toswell, m. j. and e. m. tyler. studies in english language and literature: ‘doubt wisely’. papers in honour of e. g. stanley. london: routledge. 1996: 99-115. 3 ekwall, e. studies on the population of medieval london. stockholm: almqvist and wiksell. 1956. ____________________________________________________________________ 216 chapter 1, “business documents” depicts the status of medieval latin and anglo -norman1 and their respective macaronic vers ions. the term 'macaronic' implies the documents under analysis were written in a mixture of english + anglo -norman or english + latin. the exsistence of macaronic writings complies with the unavoidable interaction of speech habits from members of both linguistic communities. in line with this revision, there follows a morphological account of these writings concluding that code switching and overlapping of forms constitute the hallmarks of what the author calls 'macaronic'. she also contends it can be re garded as a functionally dis tinctive style with its own characteristics. this chapter ends listing the london local records —preserved at the corporation of london records office— which conform the primary sources of the research. chapter 2, “methodology”, provides the reader with an explanation of the methods and editorial procedures employed in the next chapter, “vocabulary survey”, to wit, the core of the linguistic investigation. in chapter 3 (“vocabulary survey”) there is a first classification of the semantic field “medieval thames vocabulary” containing subsequent lexical groupings. the main topics in connection with the river encompass different types of constructions, terms for workers, objects, the very states or situations of the river and, activities such as fishing and shipping. the reader may, in turn, find subclas s ifications which contain several terms for the materials used in the constructions or even for the tools employed; in addition, specific lexicon on fishing in the river includes terms for the common mechanisms to trap fish and different names for fish found in the thames. vocabulary for states of the river im1 basing her assumptions on a transcript of the 1421 inquisition of the river thames, (wright, l. “medieval latin, anglo-norman and middle english in a london civic text: an inquisition of the river thames, 1421”. in trotter, d. a and stewart gregory (eds.) de mot en mot. aspects of medieval linguistics. essays in honour of william rothwell. cardiff: the u of wales p in conjunction with the modern humanities association research. 1997: 223-260), the author advocates the influential status of anglo-norman in medieval england so as to explain the presence of most of the words contained in a middle english corpus. this postulate embodies faithfully william rothwell’s principles concerning the development and effects of anglo-norman on the growth of other languages as he himself demonstrated in “the ‘faus franceis d’angleterre’: later anglo-norman”, in ian short (ed.), anglo-norman anniversary essays. anglo-norman text society occasional publications 2. london: anglo-norman text society. 1993: 309-330; or in “from latin to anglo-french and middle english: the role of the multilingual gloss”. modern language review 88/3, 1993: 581-599. ____________________________________________________________________ 217 plies states of the water, the river bank and its inlets. objects found or put into the river are also mentioned. names for fishing and acces sories of ships can be traced as well and, finally, names for the various jobs of people working in the river. each of the terms in the survey is followed by a definition, the reference to the source or sources where it has occurred, a list o f quotations illustrating the previously mentioned meaning, the variety of spellings traced, the etymology of the terms and references to those terms in other dictionaries — mainly the middle and the oxford english dictionaries. the comprehensive characterisation of the lexical items leads us to chapter 4, “analysis of headwords”, in which the author offers a compilation of the most outstanding linguistic traits found in her corpus of data. the analysis is carried out from three different viewpoints: orthographical, phonological and morphological. there seems to be a logical reasoning behind the inclusion of these aspects in the final remarks of the survey since the semantic one has already been covered, and more intra -systemic information can be profitable for the purpose of the investigation. as a conclusion, i would like to pinpoint the theoretical line of argumentation about standarisation in the late middle ages she has adumbrated in the introduction and, in like manner, emphasise the careful organisation of this academic work, the brevity and clarity in the expression of ideas as well as the detailed description of each of the items, which has presumably meant a considerable effort. her in -depth and thorough observation of the items of a particular semantic field elicited from medieval documents evinces some relevant linguistic traits of the period. for all these reasons, those who are seriously interested in middle english lexicon and standarisation will find laura wright’s book stimulating, useful, easy to read and most valuable for further research on the field. begoña crespo university of a coruña selim04.pdf antonio bravo & bruce mitchell selim 4 (1994): 133-139 interview: «on old english studies today» a. bravo garcia & bruce mitchell bravo: in this series of questions, i’d like to touch on the various fields of old english studies in which you are particularly interested. let me start with punctuation. do you think that we can produce the definitive interpretation, the right reading of a poem, by means of modern marks of punctuation? mitchell: the short answer is “no”. before elaborating on this, i’d like to thank you for this opportunity of addressing your readers in spain and elsewhere and to say that i shall do my best to answer your questions with fairness and frankness. both are essential: distortion of another’s views by careless reading (or for some worse cause) and silence when one sees what one takes to be errors are two failings a scholar should avoid. one must say what one thinks, come what may. now for a longer answer to your question. we have no native informants and therefore no intonation patterns for old english. modern english punctuation is not designed for old english. its use demands that editors make decisions about the placing of stops and semi colons without supporting evidence, for example when they meet the ambiguous demonstrative/relative se or ambiguous adverb/conjunctions like *a and *onne. its use also breaks up what i believe to be the large unit of old english poetry —the verse paragraph— by interrupting the flow of the poetry. my latest attempt to meet this problem can be seen in an invitation to old english and anglo-saxon england (oxford: blackwell, 1994), where i punctuate the texts by using the stop at the end of the verse paragraph only, abandoning the semi -colon, and using the more flexible raised stop. bravo: this leads me on to a more fundamental question: have old english poems fixed meanings? antonio bravo & bruce mitchell ____________________________________________________________________ 134 mitchell: no poem has a fixed meaning. i recently wrote that “i am prepared to concede that most modern interpretations of beowulf might have been felt or thought by one anglo -saxon or another.” but i understand the point of your question: some people write as if old english poems do have fixed meanings. there is more than one piece of work bearing the title “the meaning of the poem x” or words to that effect. bravo: some of your expressions about allegory seem to reject this topic so frequently used in old english criticism: “allegory, like alcohol, is potent and addic tive stuff.” do you in fact reject the idea that old english poems can be allegorical? mitchell: by no means. there are several old english poems in which allegory is made explicit and others in which it can quite reasonably be detected. but some allegorists write as if theirs was the only possible in terpretation of the poem in question. i have argued elsewhere about the dangers of pan-allegorism. bravo: it has been said that old english poetry was orally composed and that consequently it is formulaic and not lettered. do you agree? mitchell: this view, as far as i know was a corollary of the strict oralformu laic theory which i have just dismissed. to those who accepted it, old english poetry was an oral art and critics were therefore bound to apply to it criteria suitable for the criticism of orally composed texts. i believe that old english poetry should be judged by the same standards of criticism as any other poetry provided that the obvious differences in language, background, and cultural context, are properly considered. we must not close our eyes to new critical approaches. but equally we must build on the past. we must not jettison all the good work that has been done and disregard the foundations laid by those who preceded us. ____________________________________________________________________ 135 bravo: a few years ago i was present at one of your lectures. the theme was “old english as a garden from which one can at will pick blossoms of different kinds”. can you explain this remark? mitchell: the subject of the lecture was “old english poetry: garden or compost-heap?” in it i argued that some modern critical approaches to old english poetry are likely to destroy the great variety of flowers in the garden be reducing them to a uniform compost. among the composters i numbered the strict oral-formu laists, the pan-allegorists, and the pan-chris tianizers who see a christian reference in every mention of a ruin, a ship, or whatever; to whom repeated half lines, which should be treated in their own context, must carry the same associations so that, because the phrase heah ond horngeap in andreas 668 refers to the temple of the lord in jerusalem, its use in beowulf 82 makes heorot a christian symbol; and who argue (in the words of one of them) that “anglo -saxon man thinks of himself as a creature of god with a rational soul.” in an invitation to old english and anglosaxon england i have extended the garden image to old english literature: in part iv the garden of old english literature, i offer plants from the prose and blooms from the poetry. bravo: when you say “what we need is more knowledge of old en glish not the lucubrations of people ‘with a limited knowledge of old english’”, are you rejecting the modern literary interpretations? mitchell: not necessarily. not all of them. this quotation comes from bruce mitchell on old english (oxford: basil blackwell, 1988), p. 335, and should be read in context. but the basic point is clear: scholars who wish to pronounce on old en glish literature or syntax or any other topic have a duty to achieve more than “a limited knowledge” of the language. bravo: is this compatible with what you wrote in “1987: postscript on beowulf”: “feeling is not out of place when one is concerned with poetry. antonio bravo & bruce mitchell ____________________________________________________________________ 136 indeed, when i contemplate the great variety of totally irreconciliable interpretations of beowulf which have been produced by thinking, i am tempted to go further and to claim that feeling rather than thought should be paramount”? mitchell: i believe so. i have always encouraged all my pupils, no matter how limited their knowledge of old english to respond emotionally to the poetry. but i did not encourage them to submit articles for publication. bravo: in the last few years in some places teachers are introducing computers to teach old english grammar and syntax. what does a teacher like you, who has written a monumental old english syntax and (with fred c. robinson) a guide to old english for students, think about this? mitchell: anything which encourages more people to learn old en glish has my support. in an invitation to old english and anglo-saxon england, i try to teach the language by comparing it with modern english and by introducing anglo -saxon literature, history, archaeology, arts and crafts, place-names, the heroic life, and the impact of christianity, through old en glish quotations and texts. but in an age when all young people are computer-literate, computer programmes can, i am sure, play a part. indeed, i have seen stimutating programmes which go far beyond teaching merely grammar and syntax. but some of them involve spending a long time on one poem. the acid text must be: how soon can a user re ad old english with some understanding? i don’t see much point in programmes which involve paradigm exercices as if old english were a spoken language or which put superficial gimmickry (*mimickery?) before solid learning. bravo: you have spent more than forty years studing and teaching old english. can you tell us the development of old english studies in these last decades? ____________________________________________________________________ 137 mitchell: a full answer to this question would require more space than is available here. i gave my own reactions to these developments in “19471987 forty years on”; see on old english, pp. 325-44. bravo: let us speak about the future. what is your opinion about the recent critical studies on language and literature, the new organization and projects related to old english? mitchell: this question too demands a long and difficult answer which i have already to some extent given in “1947-1987 forty years on”. here i shall try to answer it by imagining the reactions of the great henry sweet, who died in 1912. if he were re -incarnated, he would blink with as tonishment at the developments in the study of semantics, syntax, and other aspects of the language; of anglo -latin; of manuscripts and sources; of his tory and literature; of archaeology, arts, and crafts; of methods of teaching; and of the uses to which computers are now being harnessed. he would no doubt be very pleased at most of the work which has been and is being done. he would — perhaps he is now looking through my eyes — be disapointed at the general absence of annotated or critical bibliographies (as opposed to mere lists) and especially at the fact that the new series of annotated bibliographies announced by boydell and brewer “covers old and middle en glish literature outside those major subject areas already served by existing bibliographies”. which major areas of old english literature, he might reasonably ask, are “already served” by annotated bibliographies? he would not be impressed by the fact that such work is now in many quarters apparently regarded as a service in dustry, not “real scholarship” like that in volved in producing yet another esoteric interpretation of the wive’s lament or some other literary text. he would share some of the disquiet i have expressed above and elsewhere about some current developments in old english literary studies and would nod with approval (as i do) at the answer fred c. robinson gave in reply to the last question you asked in your interview with him (selim 1 (1991), 143-7). and finally he would, i think, regard as some thing antonio bravo & bruce mitchell ____________________________________________________________________ 138 appro aching the scandalous that, when time is available for a plethora of new literary “interpretations”, klaeber’s beowulf and the anglo -saxon poetic records have not been revised since 1950 and 1931-1953 respectively and that for the first series of ælfric’s catholic homilies we still have to rely in 1994 on thorpe’s edition published in 1844. bravo: finally i shall, if i may, ask a more personal question. what was your reaction on finding that in the phrases “the progressive isolation of his work” and “his frank disregard for ‘the new methodologies and their institutionalization as disciplines’”, the word “his” meant “bruce mitchell’s”? mitchell: these are quotations from an excellent resume by thomas n. hall in old english newsletter 26.2 (1993), 10-11 of a review of my contribution to old english studies by christina von nolcken in modern philology 89 (1991) 25-35. i am grateful for her compliments and good wishes. but she presents a false diagnosis of my attitudes and motivation. i am able to bear the suggestion that i am the only man in step with equanimity but i have to say that i have never felt “threatened” by “the new developments” and have never had a “fear” of being “undervalued”. i do not concede the truth of the coment that “[he] seems to have thrown all his usual fair-mindedness to the winds” (p. 32) in my attacks on the new methodologies and in judging them by their results. how else can methodologies be judged? i venture to suggest that anyone who wishes to retain any scholarly integrity has a duty to remain isolated from the demand defined by von nolcken (p. 33): the demand that those entering the profession quickly establish themselves encouraged them to seek the wide-reaching hypothesis, the argu ment that dazzled. in their haste they also all too often worked at the expense of the data and without due regard for previous scholarship. if to have produced a guide to old english (first alone and then in happy collaboration with fred c. robinson), old english syntax, on old english, a ____________________________________________________________________ 139 critical bibliography of old english syntax, and an invitation to old english and anglo-saxon england (with its new system of punctuation and its new form of glossary), and to be producing (again in collaboration with fred c. robinson) “beowulf”: a student’s edition, is evidence of “progressive isolation”, then i am content to be isolated or (as i could put it) to have my feet on the ground in the narrow way rather than my head in the clouds above the broad way. antonio bravo bruce mitchell university of oviedo university of oxford * † * selim02.pdf 198 mann, jill: geoffrey chaucer. atlantic highlands, n. j. humanities press international, inc., 1991. xv+222 pp. professor mann’s absorbing and suggestive study of chaucer forms part of the series of feminist readings currently being published by humanities press international, in which, according to an anonymous preliminary note, each contributor “… takes on the challenge of reassessing the problems inherent in confronting a ‘phallocentric’ literary canon, by investigating the processes involved in the translation of gender difference into the themes and structures of the literary text”. (p. vii) it is the aim of the series, we are likewise informed, to assess the applicability of various theories of gender difference ‘to the writing of the more influential male writers of the literary tradition’ (p. viii), among whom figure, for example, shakespeare, joyce, hawthorne, lawrence, milton, etc. chaucer, an influential writer if ever there was one, is, so far, the only mediaeval author to be included in these monographs written by women scholars, and it would be difficult to think of anyone more eminently suitable for this particular critical task than professor mann, to whom we are already indebted for a series of scholarly and insightful studies on chaucer, and on the mediaeval period in general her geoffrey chaucer contains a brief preface and introduction, five chapters on, respectively, women and betrayal, anti-feminism, the surrender of ‘maistrye’, suffering woman, suffering god and the feminised hero, and a brief conclusion. there is a useful bibliography, the primary sources included therein revealing once 199 again, as in professor mann’s earlier writings, the impressive scope of her knowledge of the cultural background of the period. given the series to which this study belongs, the author’s declarations, in her preface, concerning the aims and perspectives of her book are particularly useful, and deserve quoting in full: “as for the kind of ‘feminist reading’ that this book represents, i should make it clear that it is not tied to any particular school of feminist criticism, though i have formed many of my arguments in mental dialogue with their imagined representatives”. (p. xii) and further down: “i have tried to describe chaucer’s ‘feminism’ in his own terms rather than ours, not with the narrow historicist aim of keeping him bounded in the past, but rather to avoid bounding him in the orthodoxies of t he present. rather than patronisingly awarding him praise to the extent that he managed to anticipate modern views or demands, i want to allow his text to speak in ways that can tell us something new as well as confirm what we already believe”. (p. xii) her hope is that contemporary consciousness of feminism and feminist issues will make the modern reader more sensitive to what he sees as “the significance and the importance of the rôle that chaucer gives to women” (p. 4), for, through the different chapters of her study, professor mann makes what she admits to be “the large claim” that woman in his work “… is at the centre instead of at the periphery, where she becomes the norm against which all human behaviour is to be measured”. (p. 4) 200 reminding us, for example, that “male heroes are, … few and far between in chaucer. in the canterbury tales, the moral high ground is occupied by constance, griselda, cecilia, prudence, and no man is accorded the central and dominating position in the narrative that they enjoy”. (p. 165) sir thopas is “unceremoniously blunded out of the way” in favour of prudence! the exceptions, as she demonstrates in chapter five, will be the feminised (my italics) heroes, troilus, theseus and less significantly the man in black. the first chapter deals with the polarities of “woman betrayed” and “woman betraying”, with reference to the important influences of ovid and le roman de la rose, and the implication in such works that “male betrayal and female deceit are set in a causal relationship” (p. 6), and goes on to make the telling point that chaucer is obviously identifying more with the ovidian dido in her house of fame than with aeneas and his destiny, conceiving of her, therefore, “as an exemplary victim of male deceitfulness” (p. 11) who occupies in his version of the story the centre of the aeneid, and proving at the same time that he was aware of “the writer’s responsibilities towards women as literary subjects” (p. 12). for a “feminist reading”, chaucer’s approach to dido is important since he exploits a wellestablished story of male heroism in order to offer his readers a woman’s point of view. this commentary on chaucer’s presentation of woman betrayed is followed by a masterly analysis of his handling of the classic example of woman betraying, criseyde. after some comment on chaucer’s choice of this apparently anti-feminist subject, the author analyses with great perceptiveness how the poet, in fact, “rescues the betrayal” 201 from such an interpretation, by underlining the importance for chaucer of the human capacity for change. viewed from this perspective, troilus and criseyde, she says, is his “most extended and most profound exploration of human changeability” (pp. 22-23), and she goes on to investigate the poem from this point of view, convincing us, for example, that “criseyde’s yielding to diomede … ironically repeats and mirrors her yielding to troilus” (p. 29). human changeability, she asserts, is reflected positively in criseyde’s “pite” for troilus, and negatively in the “slydynge of corage” which leads to her betrayal of him. the chapter closes with a detailed analysis of the legend of good women, a work that professor mann sees as more serious than is generally believed, and one which, for her, constitutes a “riposte to misogyny … adopting a sigle -mindedness and refusal of compromise which mirrors its own intransigence” (p. 32). the importance of the word “pite” is again invoked: “the word ‘pite’, together with its cognates and synonyms, is a leitmotiv in the legend” (p. 39), and there follows a suggestive discussion of the values of “pite” in this text. it is, for example, an emotion alien to the aggressive menfolk in these tales who are responsible for the two rapes and the three suicides which for professor mann are “indicative of chaucer’s wish to give emotional seriousness to his work by representing female suffering in its most extreme forms”. (p. 44) in her second chapter, the author focuses on the merchant’s tale and the wife of bath’s prologue for her discussion of anti-feminism in chaucer, not, however, before examining in some detail the most outstanding sources of the medieval tradition of anti-feminist literature: st. jerome’s against jovinian, theophrastus’s dissuasio, maltheolus’s lamentations, deschamps’s miroir de mariage and, especially interesting in the context of a “feminist reading”, heloise’s dissuasion 202 against marriage as reported by peter abelard in his historia calamitatum (the fruit, however, of a very special set of circumstances), with all of which chaucer would have been familiar. thus professor mann sees the merchant’s tale as a dramatised version of theophrastus, although, of course, january has no real intention of being dissuaded from marriage. there is an illuminating discussion of the workings of the ironic mode in this tale, by means of which a double vision of marriage is displayed, and the quandary of the selfish male caught between “two stereotypes of woman -as purveyor of ‘paradys terrestre’ or purgatorial shrew’ (p. 64) is amusingly evoked. the importance of the rôle played by pluto and proserpina in this tale is emphasised, pluto, as professor mann delightfully puts it, being “probably the only example in literature of a hen-pecked rapist”! (p. 66), and this is followed by a convincing analysis of may’s true character, she, like proserpina, testifying “to the ability of women to look after themselves”. (p. 69) when it comes to manipulating men, may is as resourceful as the wife of bath whose prologue, it is suggested, was never intended to be an attempt on chaucer’s part to represent how women feel, but rather “the most extensive and unadulterated body of traditional anti-feminist commonplace in the whole of the canterbury tales” (p. 70), a contention which is then supported by confronting a series of the wife’s passages with their anti-feminist sources, the discussion concluding with the affirmation that the wife of bath uses “anti-feminist satire as a blunt instrument with which to beat her husbands into submission”. (p. 78) the double structure of her tirade is underlined: “within the speech of the wife bullying her husbands, we can hear the speeches of countless husbands bullying their wives”, (p. 79) and there is an illuminating analysis of the jankin episode, ending with his surrendering of “maistrye”, a topic which constitutes the subject of the following chapter, and, of course, which brings the wife’s tale to a conciliatory close. 203 the following chapter begins, precisely, with a detailed analysis of the wife of bath’s tale, obviously a major exponent of the theme of the surrender of “maistrye” and a tale which professor mann gives reasons for believing can only be told as a fairy tale. there follows an interesting discussion of the ending of the tale which she interprets “as a visionary glimpse of mutuality in male -female relationships” (p. 92). this discussion leads naturally to an analysis of the same theme as it is developed in troilus and in the franklin’s tale, but not before the presentation of an insightful exploration of the theme of courtship, involving allusions to and exemplification from dante, andreas capellanus and the pamphilus. the question of who has the “maistrye” in troilus and criseyde is then examined in detail, and the conclusion is drawn that “love has dissolved everyday power structures and replaced them with his own”, (p. 102) both lovers surrendering the “maistrye” by mutual accord. this discussion likewise has illuminating things to say about the rôle played by pandarus in the love-affair, and this la tter is then explored within the context of marriage, as exemplified by the franklin’s tale which reflects the same attitude of mutual respect and patience, “the male surrender of ‘maistrye’ is reciprocated by female fidelity and humility: dorigen promises to be his ‘humble trewe wyf’ (p. 111), with, obviously, as professor mann points out, chaucer’s complete approval. patience is a key word in this chapter and its interpretation and scope are interestingly explored, not only with reference to the franklin’s tale, but also to chaucer’s tale of melibee, a tale which rarely receives such close critical attention. translation though it may be, professor mann sees the tale as having “special authority by being told by chaucer himself” (p. 121). melibee, like the arthurian knight and arveragus, surrenders the “maistrye” to prudence and harmony is 204 likewise achieved. the chapter closes with a suggestive evocation of chaucer renouncing “authority over his literary creation”: at the heart of his master-work he places a dramatised enactment of his own surrender of ‘maistrye’, both masculine and poetic. (p. 126) the reference is to the sir thopas episode. the fourth chapter focuses on the situation of the suffering woman as exemplified by constance, virginia and griselda, and an interesting parallelism is established between women’s submission to cruel, arbitrary men, and that of man’s “thraldom” to god. there follow a profound exploration of the meaning of power at human or divine level, and a series of insightful comments on the aforementioned tales, involving, again, definitions within the chaucerian texts of such abstractions as suffering, power, pity and patience, and, in the case of the clerk’s tale, as investigation of the values of the word “ynogh”, fruit of professor mann’s earlier article on “satisfaction and payment in middle english literature’, (1983). in accordance with the importance conceded to reciprocity and mutual understanding between the sexes in chapter three, the final chapter of this book concentrates on chaucer’s conception of men, and, in particular, of those male characters she sees as “feminised heroes” because they possess the same qualities as the chaucerian heroine: pity, self-control, adaptability, receptiveness, etc. a good example for her thesis is troilus (skilfully contrasted with pandarus’s aggressive, assertive masculinity) who, of course, like so many mediaeval heroines is the victim of betrayal, and a case is made for a similar feminisation (though in different circumstances) of mars (complaint) and the man in black in the book of the duchess. the fullest development of “an ideal of feminised masculinity” (p. 171), 205 however, for professor mann, is theseus in the knight’s tale whose conquest of an amazon queen “culminates not in enslavement but in a marriage” which “symbolises the union of masculinity and femininity in each partner”. (p. 171) the author analyses again in detail the workings of pity and piteousness in the duke, pointing out, for example, similarities with dante’s interpretation of pietà in the convivio, and concluding that: ‘womanly pitee’ does not mark a division between female and male; it is the highest virtue of the male hero. (p. 177) the brief and objective conclusion presents us with some examples (mainly in fabliau-tales) of traditional gender rôles being played in the canterbury tales -the miller in the reeve’s tale, chantecleer and pertelote, the couple in the shipman’s tale, but the purpose of this book is essentially to stress chaucer’s originality in “creating models of both female and male behaviour that erase traditional gender boundaries and dissolve the power-structures on which they rest” (p. 180). for this author, therefore, “a feminist reading of chaucer needs … to recuperate chaucer’s careful integration of activity and passivity into a fully human ideal that erases male/female role divisions”. (p. 185) in a wry aside to her suggestive discussion of the relative values of activity and passivity, professor mann points out that “commitment to activity is … implicit in criticism itself”, since critics tend to conceive of their task as that of “pinpointing … where and why things go wrong”, (p. 184) but it would be difficult, i think, to adopt this approach to her convincing assessment of this “major subject of a major poet”. this reader, at least, found herself actively concurring with the arguments and analyses set forth in this wise and objective study and constantly admiring the scholarship and the literary insight which 206 has gone into its making. one is only too sorry that the limits of the book (imposed, presumably, by the series it belongs to) did not permit discussion, as the author herself points out, of the prioress and her tale, the book of the duchess and the parliament of fowls, and we can but hope that these “casualties” will be attended to by professor mann in the near future. patricia shaw university of oviedo * * * godden, malcolm & lapidge, michael eds: the cambridge companion to old english literature. cambridge, cambridge universit y press, 1991. 298 pp. this book is an excellent guide which serves as an introduction to anglo-saxon literature for students and also for the specialist; and the reader will find suggestive ideas that will make him reflect about the literary facts of the old english period, from the eighth century to the norman conquest. it is known that old english literature is made up of a body of texts written between approximately the eighth and eleventh centuries, but also it is necessary to see it as the “meeting point of two major cultural traditions”. this idea has been perfectly captured by the editors of this book; consequently there is a series of chapters dedicated to anglosaxon culture and language that serves as an introduction and epilogue, the rest of the studies centering on the analysis of the litera207 ture from these two perspectives: the germanic -pagan tradition with its legends, its poetic technique, its beliefs and its conception of epic heroic of life; and the christian world with its latin culture, its history, and its monotheistic and theocentric religion. the readers of this book will not find a traditional history of old english literature, like that of c. l. wrenn, a study of old english literature, (london, 1967) nor a critical history like that of s. b. greenfield and d. g. calder, a new critical history of old english literature, (new york and london, 1986), nor does it deal with a series of studies based on history, rhetoric, genre or other perspectives like that of k. sisam, studies in the history of old english literature, (oxford, 1953) this history of old english literature is a volume of fifteen works of eminent professors of old english language and literature from the united kingdom, the united states, germany, canada, and italy, in which the literature offers us not only a mode of poetic expression, but a window into a different world of beliefs, myths, anxieties, and perspectives. the work is divided in four parts: history, language, germanic themes, and christian themes. the anglo-saxon history forms two chapters, one on the society, the other about the culture; p. wormald offers us a vision of anglosaxon society and its relationship with the literature, in his work anglo-saxon society and its literature; and p. landinara shows in her essay the world of anglo-saxon learning the cultural world that develops in england after the arrival of the missionaries guided by augustine of canterbury, and the influence of the christian culture which took place in the following centuries there are three chapters that deal with the anglo-saxon language in its broadest meaning. h. gneuss centers his work on the presentation of a brief, but precise grammar, to introduce students into the 208 complicated study of a synthetic language with emphasis on those characteristics that distinguish this older stage of the language from modern english. as gneuss points out, a knowledge of this language is convenient in order to understand and appreciate the literature of the anglo-saxon period. donald g. scragg studies the nature of the verse, its structure, and the rhetorical language that appears in anglosaxon poetry. janet bately, in her work, the nature of old english prose, analyses the nature of anglo-saxon prose and its dependency on the latin models, on which it is based, in order to develop its topics and structures; at the same time she studies the didactic and moral perspective of the primitive english prose that has as its first writers king alfred, ælfric, and wulfstan. the literature, as a reflection of the germanic society, is represented in the first place by r. frank, germanic legend in old english literature. this essay shows how the anglo-saxons looked for their germanic identity although it only appears reflected in brief fragments like the finnsburh fragment, waldere, widsith, deor, and beowulf. but even though we only have a very small part of epic verse, especially if we compare it with the religious poetry, these lines are sufficient to show that, poets of germanic legend conjured up for their contemporaries a magnificent, aristocratic descent, a proud history embodying current hopes and fears, a pleasant dream transmitting the desert of daily existence into a landscape rare and strange. k. o’brien o’keeffe in his work, heroic values and christian ethics, studies the heroic values of the germanic character and the christian ethic centering this topic especially in the battle of maldon, and analyzes the ambiguity of the term, ofermode, that can be interpreted with a religious meaning of “pride” or with a heroic significance of “excessive courage”, and he ends with this reflection: the heroic idiom of the battle of maldon is anything but naive. its use suggests at once admiration, nostalgia and 209 regret admiration for the greatness of a secular magnate, nostalgia for the heroism of a brighter day, and regret that such heroism makes death its companion. john d. niles centers his study on primitive popular beliefs, pagan survivals and popular be lief, and in a brief form but with precision makes manifest the germanic -pagan identity of certain texts such as beowulf or the rune poem, and invites us to consider that rather than dismissing the pagan english as superstitious, we might consider them as possessed of animistic beliefs that in their essential features are well known among early and so-called primitive peoples of the world. the essence of animism is the belief that the world is alive in all its parts. the last work of this germanic part is beowulf, a study that the editors, with wise judgement, entrusted to professor fred c. robinson, a great expert in the language and the literary style of this epic poem. the complexity of this piece is resolved with great mastery and clarity as robinson is conscious that the work is for students, this, however, does not prevent him from showing us, once again, his erudition and precision in the analysis of an anglo-saxon text, and from pointing out how to read a germanic, barbaric epic as all in the poem is measured and carefully weighed, f rom the grandest speech or action to the smallest syllable. the last part of this book shows the importance of the great transience that the christian religion had in the culture and in the anglosaxon literature. j. b. trachern, in his study, fatalism and the millenium, shows us the great preoccupation of the anglo-saxon society towards the end of the millenium. the “wyrd”, pagan destiny, and the “metod”, christian destiny, play an important role in all of the anglosaxon literature as is shown here and that consequently will be reflected in the old english texts. c. fell analyses in perceptions of 210 transience, the anglo-saxon elegies. the author points out that the elegies combine the germanic and the christian traditions, but puts special emphasis on the tradition of christian latin writers and in the influence of these in the texts of elegies. m. mcgatch, continuing with his traditional topic of religious influence in anglo-saxon literature, shows us in his work that the anglo-saxons considered this life as a transit to eternity. in perception of eternity, gatch analyses the judgement day and makes various allusions to the dream of the rood and the phoenix in order to show his thesis: for many anglo -saxons there was light and clarity about the future. they could describe in vivid detail and after life in which the soul was separated from the body and journeyed to rest or torment. and beyond that they could depict the eventual return of christ, the resurrection of all the bodies to be reunited with their souls and the last judgement, inaugurating the eternal reign of god with the saints. m. godden begins his chapter with this sentence: the old testament … captured the anglo -saxon imagination in some unexpected ways … and this is what he proposes to show throughout his work. according to godden, the biblical poems are a sample of the interest that existed among the anglo-saxons for this type of literature, but also the author reminds us of the allegorical value of all these works, for the anglo -saxons the old testament was a veiled way of talking about their own situation … often the old testament offered them a means of considering and articulating the ways in which kingship, politics and warfare related to the rule of god. b. roux studies the influence of the new testament in some poems of cynewulf and his school in christ i, ii and iii as well as in the 211 dream of the rood, and concludes by saying they are not stories about christ’s life, but meditations on salvation history, designed to show the significance of the gospel events for those who read or hear them. the work of m. lapidge the saintly life in anglo-saxon england shows us the philosophy of the concept of the saint in the anglo-saxon world. the allusion that lapidge makes to the process of the sanctification of st. swithun and st. æthelwold teaches us a relevant aspect for the understanding of anglo-saxon hagiography as a literary genre, its importance and diffusion. the broad anglo-latin erudition of lapidge is a guarantee for this study where he puts emphasis on the fact that saints were therefore a much more prominent aspect of anglosaxon spirituality than they could conceivably be in a modern, mechanized society. the cumbersome apparatus for knowing them and appealing to them … was an urgent necessity in an age when other kinds of spiritual comfort were few. if we would understand the spiritual universe of the anglo -saxons, therefore, we must learn to understand that apparatus. in conclusion, few books of anglo-saxon literature unite a number of such relevant professors and essays as in this work, whose purpose is expressed in the prologue: the collection aims to provide. orientation and guidance for those approaching the study of all old english literature for the first time. but in these studies there are also new ideas that open new roads to other interpretations, and in any case, this book will enrich our knowledge of a literature distant only in time. certainly this book does not need to be recommended, the prestige as professors and scholars of its editors, m. godden and m. lapidge, 212 as of all the contributors to this book is a total guarantee of the value. without any doubt, we have before us one of the best books about anglo-saxon literature that has been written from a didactic perspective. a. bravo university of oviedo * * * patterson, lee: chaucer and the subject of history. london, routledge, 1991. xiv+489 pp. professor lee patterson offers a challenging reading of chaucer. it appears to be distilled from the historical scholarship condensed over the last two centuries, as well as the author’s own work on the subject at least since 1976, the date of the earliest of his articles now collected. the book is also rooted in the latest developments in medieval literary historicism, to which the author has also contributed his negotiating the past: the historical understanding of medieval literature (madison: univ. of wisconsin press, 1987), and, as he declares in the introduction, it belongs to the decade in which margaret thatcher said that “there is no such thing as society, only individuals exist”. a recent title like the disenchanted self: representing the subject in the canterbury tales (berkeley: univ. of california press, 1990), by h. marshall leicester jr, also comes to mind. 213 there is, of course, no novelty in exploring the historicity of chaucer’s works. a. j. p. taylor wrote that “true history began with sir walter scott”, even though ivanhoe, he added, “is simply lay figure in fancy dress”, rather than a convincing picture of the middle ages. in turn, g. m. trevelyan’s english social history: a survey of six centuries from chaucer to queen victoria suggests that english social history actually began with chaucer. the opinion of both historians, widespread among many others, echoes the one expressed by the retrospective review, whose editor henry southern (possibly the author of this anonymous essay) was a chaucerian enthusiast, in 1823: indeed, works of imagination, when its higher attributes are employed upon local scenes and contemporary subjects, are fre quently more instructive than the most elaborate pages of history. yet chaucer obviously did more than reflect contemporary scenes, as patterson shows. the tenth anniversary issue of the journal literature and history, created in 1975 with the intent of providing a forum for the discussion of such a linkage, includes an article about “the uses of literature in nineteenthand twentieth-century british historiography”, whose conclusion is that “historians are unable to come to grips with the past as it is embodied in the texture -that is, in the language and structureof a piece of literature as a whole.” to a writer who is acutely aware of the relevance of the speaking subject and his language to the content of his narrative, local colour and historical realism are relatively insignificant. by analysing not only the historical background, but also the “texture” of chaucer’s key works, patterson is able to demonstrate precisely this: that rather than merely recording historical detail chaucer presents history working. in other words, he shows how history was written and spoken in his own time, 214 along with what patterson calls “the irreductible selfhood that constitutes the essence of human life.” in fact, patterson’s argument is twofold. it seems that he chose a deliberately ambiguous title for his book, since it is both about the subject in history, i. e., the ways in which chaucer presents the individual in the process of constructing a self-defined historical identity, and about history as a subject, i. e., chaucer’s own view of history. something more fortuitous, i dare point out, is an accidental but happy resemblance between patterson’s book as it stands and the canterbury tales, for the collection of articles was also made of separate pieces which were progressively assembled into a unified work. probably some of the earliest articles were written before the idea of the book had taken shape (in fact the earliest dated article provides the basis for the last chapter), and then, when it did, they were adapted to fit the pattern of those which were more consciously written to be collected. however noticeable may still be the fragmentary origin of the book in minor details, the final effect is one of completeness. even if “chaucer’s plenty” is, of course, not analysed in all its aspects with the same attention, just as not all the fourteenth-century social types are represented in the tales, patterson’s choice is representative enough. as the american scholar says to justify why his final chapter should deal with the pardoner, his selection of chaucer’s works for analysis is “at once arbitrary and inevitable.” five out of the eight chapters of the book focus on the canterbury tales, and particularly on those tales in which the ideology or the subjectivity of the teller are most dramatically projected, because it is in them that the object of study, “the mutual construction of history and subjectivity”, becomes most evident. the first two chapters, which are mainly centred on anelida and arcite (a bold attempt to give proper assessment to a work generally neglected) and troilus and criseyde but also refer to 215 the rest of chaucer’s earlier works, lead directly to the interpretation, in chapter 3, of the knight’s tale. thus the first of the tales is approached mainly in terms of the recurrent pattern of theban history as explained in the previous chapters, a violent pattern which the knight, as an ideal member of the fourteenth-century aristocracy, tries to conceal behind a shield of heraldry but actually exposes. what patterson calls “thebanness”, a destructive recursiveness of fraticidal rivalry, is seen as a recurrent topos underlying chaucer’s sense of history throughout his works, and it gives unity and a remarkable cogency to his study. chapter 4, which is the briefest and the weakest one, presents the legend of good women as chaucer’s conclusive reaction against courtly values. hence it is merely functional as a bridge to the general idea behind the tales, and consistent with the poet’s probable chronology of composition. finally, the remaining four chapters look into the key parts of chaucer’s masterpiece: the miller’s tale, the wife of bath’s prologue and tale, the merchant’s and shipman’s tales, and the pardoner’s prologue and tale . the intertextuality of the last one with some medieval interpretations of the judas, cain and oedipus legends recalls once again the repressed temporal recursion that theban history was seen to symbolize, bringing the argument of the book full circle. the treatment of the miller and the function of his tale suggests that the ideology of the 1381 rising was possibly much closer to chaucer’s concern than is indicated in his purely passing allusion to the shrill shouting of “jakke straw and his meyne” in the nun’s priest’s tale (incidentally, one of chaucer’s major works in which patterson finds no use at all, for he does not mention it even once). in principle i find it hard to see the miller actually staging “a political program that turns against the governing classes (…) its own instruments of ideological control”, or that a miller could be regarded as a member of the peasant class (patterson himself doubts it), but the 216 amount of evidence that this chapter provides about the involvement of millers in the rising and their contemporary representations as leaders of the peasantry makes patterson’s political interpretation very stimulating. moreover, this view is supported by the work of m. m. postan, georges duby and many other modern historians who have proved that the class that really threatened the aristocracy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was not the bourgeoisie, as both whig historians and those patterson calls “neo-smithian marxists” assumed for over a century, but the prosperous peasantry. patterson, therefore, deploys compellingly the vast width of literary and historical information that a task like his demands. other notable examples are his digressions in the third chapter about the importance of heraldry and astrology for the self-representation of the aristocracy, who depended for their very existence on symbols more than any other class, or that about confessional literature in the last chapter. in each case, as happens with the prologues of some of chaucer’s tales, what seemed an excursus on the part of the author is eventually revealed as central to the ultimate target of study, that is, “chaucer’s constitution as a poet” and “as a man at once in and out of history.” thus the argument of chaucer and the subject of history is constructed forcefully, positing a plausible interpretation of the evolution of chaucer’s attitude to his society through the subject living in it, and dutifully reminding us that the poet’s position between his service at noble households, the squirearchy and the middle classes, fitted him for a privileged understanding of social representations. the greatest strength of the book probably lies in the close connections it makes between history, social class and the language that produces it. these are, as stated above, the connections historians disregard when they use the tales. the assumption that the miller has a political mind to destroy the official view of secular history championed by the knight helps patterson to explain “the triumph of the sub217 ject” in chaucer’s collection. however, the miller does not really try to establish a new social order (hence patterson’s assertion that he has a “political program” goes too far; in fact, perhaps as far as it would go to say that the 1381 rising had one), he just opens up the repressive control of aristocratic history so that the flaunting subjectivity of the wife of bath, here seen as socially indetermined, may be released, together with that of the bourgeois merchant, whose “instability of social identity” (since, unlike the church and the court, the bourgeoisie lacked an institutionalized form of discourse) also precipitates “an ideology of the subject.” while the wife of bath and the merchant have to borrow their discourse from other classes, or use the inelegant idiom of the market-place, the pardoner possesses the sophisticated language of the church. yet even this does not prevent him from falling into the despair inherent in “the gap between self-representation and self-presence”, for, as patterson insists, the confession always fails to fulfil its promise of restoring the penitent to the original wholeness that man lost through sin. the pardoner is not just a hypocritical, impenitent sinner; more importantly, he is regarded as an allegory of the human condition, suffering from the same “oedipal privations” as the old man in his tale, who knocks mother earth in vain with his (phallic) stick for admission, while the murderous revellers stage once again the pattern of theban history. this freudian interpretation, as it was made relevant to language by jacques lacan, and then to history by deconstruction, fits patterson’s historicist analysis admirably. thus the pardoner is seen as using “alienated language” of “the fallen world of history”, in which meanings are forever deferred, and so unstable that “collions” and “relikes” can be synonyms for all he may care for, in his castrating despair. the original meaning, the purity of historical origins, is never reached, just as, one is tempted to add, the pilgrims never reach canterbury in chaucer’s world of mutable history. in short, patterson 218 puts to work lacanian and derridean theories to prove the effect of “the chaucerian fascination with origins, and especially with origins imagined in terms of the theban legend.” the theban hermeneutics of betrayal and destruction leading only to endless repetition is also a symbol of the limitations of language, which never reaches a transcendental signified. however, it is precisely “in and through language” -in the words of benveniste that patterson quotes“that the subject constitutes itself”, that is, as historicists old and new would agree, his history. hopefully a lame summary like the one preceding will suffice to account for the nature of patterson’s achievement. all chaucerians will profit from his study, and so will all students of fourteenth-century culture. the book, being abreast with modern literary criticism and medieval historiography, performs a major stage in the extension of the new historicism from renaissance to medieval studies, a trend already witnessed in his own edition of literary practice and social change in britain 1380-1530 (berkeley: california univ. press, 1990). it is both sophisticated and clear in the points it makes. it will, i believe, bequeath to medieval english studies at least the memorable concept of “thebanness”, and a powerful notion of the chaucerian subject and its relation to the historicized speech that makes it up. as the author on the basis of his historicist principles modestly recognises, this is “very much a book of the 1980s.” yet it is one that leaves a definitive impression. whatever we make of chaucer’s view of history in the 1990s, it will be an expansion of this book and the scholarship in which it is rooted. rubén valdés miyares university of oviedo 219 * * * 220 burnley, david: the history of the english language. a source book. london, longman, 1992. xvii+373 pp. (paper £ 11.99). this publication is a new tool for the student who is supposed to follow an introductory course in the history of english. very little else has appeared in this special field of english applied historical linguistics since t. pyles and j. algeo published their origins and development of the english language (1964). but for such an introductory course i assume that we are to conceive the use of this work in conjunction with a series of more detailed textbooks as dr. burnley’s the history of the english language is really what it declares itself to be: a source book . the book is divided in five sections which correspond to five conceptual and chronological periods in the history of the english language: old english (700-1100), early middle english (1100-1300), later middle english (1300-1500), early modern english (1500-1800) and modern english (1800-1920). each section is devoted to a different span of time: the first section covers four hundred years, sections two and three two hundred years each; section four, four hundred years and section five just one hundred and twenty years. each section includes an introduction of similar extension summarizing the main characteristics of the period but all the sections contain a different number of texts, as we are to find seven old english ones, eight early and eight later middle english, sixteen early modern english, and ten modern english texts. if we are to consider both early and later middle english within the more extensive name of middle english, then it is obvious that this book is concerned primarily with middle and early modern english. every section presents the 221 same arrangement: a brief prologue to the texts selected, then the texts themselves and finally they are followed by explanatory notes. the short introduction to each of the periods surveyed in the history of the english language comprehends short explanations about graphemics, phonology, morphology and lexicology. syntax is treated only occasionally, however we can see that some texts are especially devoted to it: text 5, ælfric’s de temporibus anni is just one good example. as an instance of the topics covered in the first introductory sections, we may mention several in the old english part: thus the odd letters are listed (thorn, eth, yoght, ash, wynn), then we find some notes on the differences between the strong and weak conjugations, the strong and weak declensions of nouns, definite and indefinite declension of adjectives, and finally the main features of composition and derivation of the old english lexicon. but there is more to be added: one of the best points of the history of the english language is that its author combines in his commentaries and notes historical, palaeographic, literary, social and other commentaries, and therefore the book is extremely rich in the possibilities that it offers to its readers. this is uncommon in source books of any nature, and it is a remarkable achievement of dr. burnley’s that he has paid special attention to poetic language, verse characteristics and poetic diction, as in texts 6 and 7 (brunanburh and maldon), to authorial and rhetorical procedures in text 9 (ormulum), or to morphonological variation and legal style in text 13 (the 1258 proclamation of henry iii). we can note as well that the texts selected and commented in the book seem to follow a chronological order in every section of the volume. they also follow the principle of representing regional and social variation whenever possible. 222 section 1 in the book deals with old english. it defines an ample concept. and actually it also incorporates some definitive opinions such as the following one (p. 1): apart from the runic alphabet, which had been used in earlier germanic society for inscriptions on all kinds of objects, from weapons to standing stones, the earliest speakers of english, despite artistic skills evident in archeological discoveries like those at sutton hoo and from kentish ceme teries, were both pagan and illiterate. though one may share dr. burnley’s appreciations, it might be slightly preposterous to consider whether being unlettered might have been an acceptable term to describe the earliest speakers of english during the historical period covered in the discussion (old english: 700-1100), as what we can precisely conclude from archaeological evidence is that the anglo-saxons were not illiterate: inscriptions are what remains, but an awful lot has surely been lost. on the other hand being pagan was no doubt something highly undesirable for christian writers during the anglo-saxon era, but i wonder whether it would be so any longer. in any case the pagans alluded to by dr. burnley have very little to do with the educated classical pagans from whom all western education ultimately derives. this reversal of values is worth some consideration, as illiterate people still constitute a significant majority of the world’s population today, whereas true pagans are significantly scarce in our times. we may note some minor errata in the book. for instance, on p. 3 the neuter ‘pæm feorran lande’ may be ‘pæµm feorran lande’ a macron on pæµm(campbell § 708); on p. 4: neuter an forms are also printed without the macron: aµn (campbell §§ 682-683). andwe can also point out that throughout the book we find typographical 223 problems: some letters in the times roman and times italic fonts lead to confusion, as, for instance, ‘æ’ appears to look like œ, whereas in other occasions it is printed as æ. the first part of the old english section opens with a set of dialectal samples (vespasian psalter and lindisfarne gospel glosses) which though they are the earliest examples of old english in the book, might have been placed at the end of the section on account of their difficulty. that sequence may allow much freedom to the user of the book as it is not compulsory to read through the texts in their actual order, but one has to assume that the numbering of the texts constitutes a guide to the reading procedure. it is also surprising that in text 3 ‘cædmon’ -really bede on cædmonthe author has not placed the different extant versions of the hymn and further dialectal evidence in old english. then follows text 2, an excerpt from the ms hatton version of king alfred’s cura pastoralis including a facsimile of fol. 1v that the author uses for a very intelligent introduction to palaeographical problems, and a side-by-side translation of the same. this translation is missing in the case of the two texts under 1, and i wonder whether most contemporary students of english would be able either to read competently the original latin version or to recognize the biblical passages under consideration. a translation, just as those included for texts 2 to 17, should have been incorporated. the disposition of the translations might be considered awkward: the original texts appear on the even pages of the book whereas translations are printed on the odd pages. theoretically, as this is a source book of the history of the english language, it would not be unlikely to think that the emphasis should be placed first on the texts themselves rather than on their commentary. this is precisely the author’s practice throughout the book, as in its discourse the disposition 224 of the textual evidence is preceded by a short introduction, and then the text itself is followed by notes printed in smaller type. there is also no evident justification for such translations to stop at text 17 (the pearl), as for instance the commonly edited sample from thomas wilson’s the arte of retorique (text 24) including the ‘inkhorne letter’, may call for a modern rendering as well. in this same sense one may also ask why on pp. 20-21 the principle that modernizes ælfred kyning to king alfred has not been applied to wæferí (weferth, even waeferth?). in this text we also find that angelcynn has been transformed into england without further commentary. section 2 starts on p. 63 with a review of sound and form changes from old english to middle english and with a series of reflections on scandinavian and french influences together with an account of the problems and variety in the spelling. changes that occurred before the norman conquest are also discussed (p. 65). the texts selected span from the chronicle entries for 1127 and (of course) 1137 (number 8) to kyng alisaunder (number 15). they include the ormulum, vices and virtues -a work that would be worth editing anew as the eets volumes edited by f. holthausen in 1888 are incomplete and out of date-, ancrene wisse, a kentish sermon, a royal proclamation by henry iii, and a bodleian ms laud 108 sample of the south english legendary. the third part of a history of the english language deals with later middle english. the author discusses first the intensity and extent of the influence of norman and central french on the english lexicon, and then explores the effects of chancery english and early printed texts -mainly caxton’sin the creation of a standardized literary language. chaucer, lydgate and skelton are presented as three consecutive pillars in the establishing of a model. dr. burnley also in225 corporates ideas on the consequences of the expansion of education for a social standard. however, one may wonder about the exact meaning to be derived from a statement like this (p. 135): during the century [15th c.] many grammar schools were founded, and although universities existed in britain only in oxford, cambridge, st. andrews and glasgow, the proportion of young men who attended them was relatively high, so that proficiency in latin was more widespread among the lay population than ever before. particularly as the author continues his line of thought in the following way (p. 135): familiarity with latin among a potential audience contributed to the development of later fifteenth-century prose and poetry. the texts in this section are very useful, and again, one must point out the wise combination of traditional samples: pearl, chaucer, paston letters, malory, together with original ones: robert mannyng’s chronicle, wycliffite writings, skelton as a representative of aureate prose, and, chiefly, bokenham’s mappula angliæ. section 4 is the most considerable one in the book. the author introduces an account of the many 16th century controversies: purists and conservative speakers against those who borrow at will; chaucerisms, inkhorn terms and rhetoric patterns; also some linguistic landmarks such as cawdrey’s dictionary; all are interspersed in the general issue of the reflection of grammarians on the english language and their different programs of standardization. the main early modern english grammatical points analysed are 3rd person pronouns, 3rd person verbal endings and the uses and abuses of auxiliary do. two other recent publications may complete (and compete) with a history of the english language in these aspetcs: the english translation of manfred görlach’s einführung ins 226 frühneuenenglische (1991), and gert ronberg’s a way with words. the language of english re naissance literature (1992). the texts illustrating early modern english comprise samples from thomas wilson’s rhetorique and puttenham’s arte of english poesie, from the diary of henry machyn, the correspondence between elizabeth i and james i, between lady brilliana harley and her relatives, and by fanny burney. to these we must add texts by more literary names: lyly, nashe, shakespeare, dekker, donne, milton, pope, defoe and johnson. we may cast a critical eye on a couple of controversial points in this section. on p. 210 there is a note to line 19 in text 25, where we read: my lord russell ys sune the genitive inflexion -ys [oe -es] has become a syntactical marker of possession which may be attached to groups. it is sometimes erroneously interpreted as the genitive third-person pronoun. one may question a) whether the genitive inflexion is really -ys or just merely -s. and also b) whether we can dismiss as easily as dr. burnley does the possibility of interpreting ys in lord russell ys sune and similar -and extremely abundantexpressions as that genitive third-person pronoun because, although infrequent, that genitive expression also appears headed by her and their. these ‘dative’ constructions are also normally repudiated by most 16th century grammarians, which may be further proof of their widespread use. we may also quote that ben jonson condemns it in his grammar, though the title of sejanus appeared in print as sejanus his fall. section 5, modern english (1800-1920) finally presents a view of the rise and spread of english worldwide. the industrial revolution and its educational and social consequences seem to have triggered the establishing of a definitive social standard by means of the prescriptive tradition defended by public schools. rp and bbc english 227 are contrasted with the concepts of non-standard and sub-standard, and dr. burnley also provides a very illuminating description of former (historical) uses of words while he examines the oxford english dictionary and its evolution: this is especially well expanded by texts 44 and 45. english overseas, and specifically, american english, are treated sparingly. texts in this section are assorted once more: carlyle illustrates modern euphuism; dickens, popular dialect; emily brontë and d. h. lawrence, regional dialect; darwin, scientific prose; henry sweet, the study of languages; some letters, colloquial english of different social registers. and at last, text 49 is a whole diachronic review of english by means of biblical examples. a section listing references and background reading finishes the book. this is possibly the weakest part of the book: i expected further information on available critical editions of the texts in the work, as that information does not appear in the introduction or notes to each of them. such bibliographical sources are only testimonial here. i also expected to find at least one complete and comprehensive grammar handbook for each section, in the same way as a. campbell’s old english grammar is quoted for the old english part. in the middle english section we fin r. jordan’s handbook of middle english grammar: phonology, and t. mustanoja’s incomplete middle english syntax, but morphology and lexicology manuals are not represented. this is even more evident in the early modern english and modern english sections. it is possible though that we are to understand that the references under the heading ‘general’ are to be considered as ‘background reading’ and then that the other sections are references quoted in the book or used by the author. many readers will have mixed feelings about the history of english language. a source book: it could have been more ambitious, but we must also agree that its author has fully achieved the aim he declares (p. x): 228 a source book does not try to usurp the role of a fully explanatory and discursive history of the language, nor replace the information and advice which can be offered to the student by a teacher. it seeks only to make conveniently available to students and teachers alike a resource which can be used to illustrate the development, and something of the variety, of the english language used in britain through nearly thirteen centuries. that he has achieved, and we can add indeed that ‘soplice he lærde, swilce he anweald hæfde, and na swa swa hiera boceras and sundorhalgan.’ references campbell, a. 1959: old english grammar. oxford university press, oxford. görlach, m. 1991: introduction to early modern english. cambridge university press, cambridge. jordan, r. 1974: handbook of middle english grammar: phonology. mouton, the hague. mustanoja, t. 1960: a middle english syntax, part i: parts of speech. helsinki. pyles, t. & algeo, j. 1989[1964]: the origins and development of the english language. harcourt brace jovanovich, new york. ronberg, g. 1992: a way with words. the language of english renaissence literature. ed. arnold, london. s. g. fernández-corugedo university of oviedo * * * 229 230 burrrow, john & turville-petre, thorlac: a book of middle english. oxford, b. blackwell, 1992. xii+303 pp. (paper £ 12.95, hardback £ 30.00). a book of middle english, as its authors state in the preface, has been designed as a companion to bruce mitchell and fred robinson’s popular and widely used a guide to old english, whose 5th edition has also appeared this year (blackwell, 1992). they also declare that their book is not to be thought of as a comprehensive introductory course to middle english, as it should be read in conjunction with an edition of chaucer. a book of middle english is really more a natural successor than a mere companion, and it is a most welcome volume because it provides not just a much needed handbook for beginners, but also an enjoyable textbook for teachers of middle english. the book seems to have been designed as an introductory and selfsufficient undergraduate course to provide a panorama of middle english language and literature, and this, no doubt, it achie ves remarkably well. however, one is tempted to point out that its prices are a cause for reflection. this is a most important setback for a volume that should become a set text: the paper edition is not notably inexpensive (£ 12.92), and the hardback edition is considerably overpriced (£30.00), as for instance one may buy at a cheaper cost the classic handbook of middle english by f. mossé (baltimore, johns hopkins press, £ 24.00). one may also assume that libraries and institutions might consider buying paper copies and then rebinding them in cloth: this is considerably less expensive than buying the original hardback from blackwell’s. from the student’s and the institutional points of view the paper edition is especially interesting as its ten 231 gatherings are well sewn, and the book is not particularly prone to come to pieces easily. burrow and turville -petre have adopted a traditional division for their book of middle english: a grammatical introduction, the anthology of texts -including their notes-, and a glossary. in this they conform to the disposition of the series started by a guide to old english. the first part of the book is then subdivided into an introduction to the concept, periods and varieties of middle english (both temporal and regional varieties), followed by an explanation of middle english sounds, lexicon, inflexions and syntax. here the order is not so conventional, as many other handbooks tend to present their chapters on vocabulary after they have discussed the morphological points under consideration. we shall come back to this section below. there is also an excellent chapter reviewing middle english metre (section 6, pp. 56-61). it is concise and to the point, and it will be very well received both by students and teachers of mediæval english literature. the volume also includes a most important section (chapter 7, pp. 62-64) discussing the edition of mss middle english texts and editing these for students. this revealing discussion benefits from the extensive experience of the authors’ past editorial work and from their formidable learning. they explain their transcription procedures, their ‘fairly typical’ editorial problems (p. 63), and illustrate the difficulties and responsibilities that editors are confronted with. they also conclude this chapter with a very honest proof of the most important intellectual predicaments that editors and authors of old and middle english have to undergo when preparing a joint effort: discussion and independence of opinion. this is especially rewarding for students who should be encouraged to discuss middle english data or any other 232 following a similar and parallel methods. the challenging question of punctuation is their final commitment (p. 64): since the two present editors do not agree on this matter, and since in any case issues would not have been as clear-cut for a medieval reader or listener, we have adopted in our text a light and non-committal punctuation. it would have been an interesting idea to advance in the first introductory pages some of the reflexions presented and developed in section 7, as the correct comprehension of the authors’ editorial principles and their discussion are extremely important and noteworthy. a select bibliography (section 8, pp. 65-70) completes the initial matters. the bibliography, though, presents gaps that one has to attribute to the comprehensive and preparatory nature of the volume. however, everything that a beginner may need for further study is recorded and commented with great care. part two: prose and verse texts presents 14 texts representing an ample perspective and covering a wide span of periods and dialects that range from traditional ones such as the chronicle entry for 1137 (pp. 73-78) -that one may also find in hall (1920: 6-8), dickins & wilson (1951: 3-6), mossé (1952: 133-135), or bennet & smithers (1961: 207-210)or the owl and the nightin gale, sir gawain, etc. to others of greater rarity whose interest is especially enhanced by this book, as they are texts not usually availa ble in other handbooks and anthologies: such are for example the passages from the cloud of unknowing (pp. 130-138), trevisa’s dialogue between a lord and a clerk (pp. 213-220) and the york play of the crucifixion (pp. 249259). editors always have to choose between their own likes and dislikes and what we may call set texts -i.e. those appearing in most selections. one may say that a remarkably even result has been 233 achieved by burrow and turville -petre in their options, though absences are also evident: no chancery texts are offered, and the balance between prose and verse is much in favour of poetry. every middle english anthology must have an end and its limits and purposes should be subject to a plan as careful and thorough as the one observed by the authors of a book of middle english. in this respect we must praise the authors’ sensible placement of illustrative notes together with the text they refer to: this avoids the irritation of the reader who is otherwise forced to turn several pages on and then search for the appropriate notes at considerable loss of time and effort whenever a difficulty is found. careful textual notes and a comprehensive glossary that ‘aims to include all words that might cause difficulty to the reader, but expla nations in the notes are not repeated here’ (p. 265), complete the volume. we have found that the glossary may also be used with other texts not included in a book of middle english which present a similar extension and difficulty, and this makes it even more valuable. several points might have been further discussed. for instance, the concept of middle english that the authors introduce on page 3 is vague from the chronological point of view as they do not state clearly their termina, although they seem to favour 1100/1150 and 1450/1500. they appear to base their discussion on the tradition established by the 19th century german philologists, but they list bennet & smithers early middle english verse and prose, and one would feel inclined to assume that then they would establish a difference between early and late middle english, which they do not -at least in a straightforward way. there is also a significant omission in their discussion as the principles established by bruce dickins and r. m. wilson in their early middle english texts (1951: 136), seem to underlie the ideas found on pp. 3-4 of a book of middle english and 234 this source is not included in their ‘select bibliography’. although burrow and turville -petre later expand their reasons and justification for the concept of middle english (p. 6) which appears to be implied in this book, but is never made explicit, and they allude to the need of differentiating between early and late middle english, they do not provide a definition of of these concepts. they even say that (p. 6): the texts represented in this book span a period of about 250 years, and even in the middle ages 250 years was a long time. actually, if text 1 would represent the state of english about 1137 and text 14 may represent a mid 15th century stage (cca 1450), the span covers more than 300 years, and though there is an implicit agreement with their terminus a quo (1450/1500), it seems irregular to devote a section to the varieties of middle english which deals first with regional dialects and then with the chronological aspects, rather than determining first the span and scope of the corpus and then defining it as the authors happen to imply. the presentation of the regional variation of their texts is much more convincing and their map (p. 7) is an excellent way of presenting them to the reader: it is actually much clearer than mossé’s lists (1952: 2-4). however, section 2 in the first part (pronouncing middle english), is clearly inferior in detail to other middle english handbooks. burrow and turville -petre share with some other authors a primary description of 14th century english phonology rather than that of the whole middle english period they have established (1100/11501450/1500). c. jones’ a history of english phonology may prove a valuable complement in these aspects section 3 (vocabulary) is much more accurate and thoroughly enjoyable. it will help to attract many students who would otherwise have thought that middle english had little to do with their own lan235 guage. it is section 3 and sections 4 (inflexions) and 5 (syntax) that form the core of the grammatical introduction to middle english and together with the introduction where we may find the best and most interesting work of the book. for instance, the explanation (p. 20) of what is an inflectional system is extraordinarily well illustrated, and even the most obtuse mind will be able to understand at once what inflexions are and what are their uses. various detailed paragraphs on some especial difficulties of middle english such as noun inflexions: early southern texts (p. 22), the indefinite article (p. 28), etc. are particularly gratifying. the same could be said about their careful explanation of syntactic problems: the use of pou/pe (p. 41); the expression of indefiniteness (pp. 41-42); shall and will (p. 46); or word order (pp. 52-53). on the whole a book of middle english is an excellent textbook that will be listed immediately in all bibliographies for students of middle english. it is a useful and enjoyable book, and its authors, i think, should be proud to have contributed in the direction of the statement of the dominus in trevisa’s dialogue (p. 214) : ‘speche ys no¥t yknowe bote ¥if hyt be lurned.’ references bennet, j.a.w. & smithers, g.v. 1968: early middle english verse and prose. oxford university press, oxford. dickins, b. & wilson, r. m. 1951: early middle english texts. bowes & bowes, cambridge. hall, j. 1920: selections from early middle english: 1130-1250, 2 vols. oxford university press, oxford. jones, c. 1989: a history of english phonology. longman, london. mitchell, b. & robinson, f. c. 1992[1964]: a guide to old english. b. blackwell, oxford. mossé, f. 1952: handbook of middle english. johns hopkins university press, baltimore. 236 s. g. fernández-corugedo university of oviedo * * * selim04.pdf mª josé lópez couso & isabel moskowich-spiegel, selim 4 (1994): 48-58 some editions of the bruce. a comparative account1 the bruce by john barbour has been traditionally regarded as the landmark of scottish literature. several editions of the work have been made since the earliest printed version of the late 16th or the first years of the 17th century. such editions are based on, at least, two different manuscripts. in what follows, it is our intention to make a review of the most representative printed versions of the bruce in the course of time and their use of the extant manuscripts. the literary type to which the poem can be ascribed is that of romance, one of the most widespread and popular genres in medieval western europe. the bruce contains about 13550 lines in octosyllabic rimed couplets composed after the french metrical tradition, whilst by its theme it can be classified as belonging to the so-called ‘matter of britain’. as usually happens with romances of this kind, real historical events appear mixed with fic tion. although there are various opinions as to the degree of fidelity to historical events, it could be maintained that the bruce deals basically with real persons and real situations. the poem recounts the life and deeds of robert bruce (1274-1329), nationalist hero of scotland who would later become the first stuart king. one of the best known episodes of his life is that dealing with the battle of bannockburn (1314). as regards the author,1 his exact date of birth is not known,2 though it can be affirmed that he was archdeacon of aberdeen in the times of chaucer. 1 this research has been funded by the consellería de educación e ordenación universitaria da xunta de galicia. this grant is hereby gratefully acknowledged. the authors also thank the department of english language of the university of edinburgh, especially dr. john anderson and dr. fran colman, for their help and research facilities. mª josé lópez couso & isabel moskowich-spiegel ____________________________________________________________________ 48 in pinkerton’s words, “our author is not only the first poet, but also the earliest historian of scotland” (1790: x). the dialect is usually considered to be northern english. barbour himself tells us that he is writing in inglis in the following lines: this wys the spek he maid, persay; and is in inglis toung to say. (book iv, 252-253) nevertheless, this question has raised much discussion. from a linguistic point of view, we could safely maintain that the language spoken north of the tweed before the 15th century does not differ substantially from that spoken in northern england. in view of this, barbour’s language can be characterized as northern english, though some scholars define it as early scots, a definition which smiths (1902: xiii) considers more political than philolo gical.3 the date of composition of the poem is provided by the author in book xiii, lines 699-704: and in the tyme off the compiling off this buk, this robert wes king. and off hys kynryk passyt wes five yer; and wes the yer of grace a thousand, thre hundre, seuenty 1 mackenzie is of the opinion that the name barbour is plebeian (meaning ‘barber’). it contains a norman french ending which has led some scholars to think that he was of norman origin. however, an older form of the name, barber(e), seems to have been fairly common in some areas of scotland. 2 the estimation is that he was born ca. 1320. 3 this debate can be exemplified by the positions supported by kay (1986: 39) and templeton (1973: 5). the former affirms that there is little evidence to speak of scots as different from english until the 15th century; by contrast, templeton maintains the label ‘early scots’, though recognising that it is almost indistinguishable from northern english at that time. ____________________________________________________________________ 49 and fyve; and off hys eld sexty. the poem is extant in two different manuscripts, ms g. 23 in the library of st. john’s college, cambridge (known as ms c), written in 1487 and the manuscript in the advocate’s library at edinburgh (known as ms e), completed in 1489. though both texts are very similar, some passages are mis sing in either one or the other. thus, ms c lacks the lines corresponding to the three first books and part of book iv (lines 1 to 56) according to a later division of the text by pinkerton. ms c contains also two poems of the same hand, the second of which is by lydgate and has been turned into lowland scots. in ms e, written in 1488, the bruce appears side by side with the wallace. most scholars attribute both mss to the same scribe. the earliest manuscript (c) was completed on august 18, 1487 by one john de r., chaplain. in its turn, at the end of ms e we are informed that the copy was raptim scriptus by john ramsay at the request of simon lochmalony, a fife vicar. the coincidence between the initials of both names gives grounds for believing that one and the same person wrote both copies. this is the opinion held by w.w. skeat (1884: lxviii) and douglas (1964). by contrast, mackenzie believes that the manuscripts need “but a slight examination to show that they are from different hands” (1904: ix). differences in the spelling and in personal names constitute the evidence on which mackenzie grounds his belief that “there is thus not the faintest reason for supposing but one scribe to have been at work” (1904: x). at any rate, it is difficult to ascertain this since, as agutter (1987: 75) puts it, older scots seems to have had a more or less standardized orthography, in the sense that, according to our present understanding, few texts give orthographic clues about the provenance of author or scribe. mª josé lópez couso & isabel moskowich-spiegel ____________________________________________________________________ 50 concerning the earliest printed versions of the poem, mackenzie mentions a late 16th century copy (ca. 1571) of which no traces are left. the first extant edition is that by andro hart (1616), known as h. it is based upon ms e but with a modernised language. its most outstanding peculiarity is the fact that it contains 45 new lines not found in either mss c or e. these lines are usually taken as an interpolation also appearing in a later edition by the same author (1620). a series of modernised versions appeared from 1620 onwards until john pinkerton’s rendering of 1790. the latter will constitute a model for many of the subsequent editions of the poem. the same as hart’s, it is based upon ms e though with an important difference, namely, that pinkerton did not use a modernisation but decided to give the reader “the very language and orthography of it’s (sic) author” (1790: vii). to this purpose he used a transcript made for him directly from ms e. as a matter of fact, he himself regards his version “the first genuine edition published from a ms dated 1489” (in the title) and adds notes and a small glossary to it. another worthnoting innovation is his division of the poem into twenty books, which he justifies as considering it easie r for the reader to handle. the poem was not originally divided in such a way, but into sections of different length up to about 200 lines, separated by a space in which a large capital letter was inserted. in this respect, the only difference between mss c and e is that the former exhibits one single column per page whereas the latter shows two. at any rate, pinkerton’s division has been followed by many other editors who also adopt his numbering of the lines. nonetheless, pinkerton’s rendition is considered not utterly reliable by skeat who accuses him of occasionally misreading and misprinting words which are clearly written in the ms (1884: lxxxiii). as opposed to this, jamieson’s edition (1820) is considered a much more careful one both by skeat (1884) and by mackenzie (1909).1 in spite of this, 1a second edition by jamieson appeared in 1869 sharing many of the characteristics of the first one. ____________________________________________________________________ 51 many misprints are found, a fact which can be easily explained on the grounds that the ms does not make a clear distinction between ‹ u › and ‹ n ›, ‹ c › and ‹ t › and ‹ s › and ‹ f ›. though also based on ms e, this version differs from pinkerton’s in its division of the 13,550 lines which he redistributes into fourteen books instead of twenty. he also adds a dictionary containing many of the words used in the bruce. however, this word -list presents the problem of referring to the former division in twenty books in stead to his own fourteen-fold one. between jamieson’s two editions, cosmo innes edited another one in 1856. this is the first time that an editor uses readings from ms c, though it is considere d “clearly the older and the better of the two extant mss” (skeat, 1884: lxxi). innes follows no previous edition and not even one single ms but a collation of both c and e. 1 as far as spelling is concerned, he uses his own modernisation of the original orthography of the poem. contrary to pinkerton’s and jamieson’s editions, this one is not divided into books but in cantos (150 paragraphs following the divisions of the manuscripts). finally, w.w. skeat is the last of the editors of the bruce that we will be consid ering here. he is responsible for two editions of the poem: one in the early english text society and another in the scottish text society (1884), the latter being based upon the former, as he himself affirms in his preface. to judge from his use of all the available material (both mss and editions), skeat shows his intention to provide the reader with a wide range of information and a complete version of the poem. he uses basically ms c, but when this seems deficient to him, he resorts to ms e or even to hart’s edition. for the sake of accuracy, he even selects some 280 lines from wyntoun’s orygynale cronykil of scotland, finished about 1420, which, though present in ms e (absent in c), appear here in a better form. 1notwithstanding this, he seems to prefer ms c. mª josé lópez couso & isabel moskowich-spiegel ____________________________________________________________________ 52 concerning spelling, skeat’s version is characterised by a mixture of modernisations (‹ th › instead of ‘thorn’) together with retention of original graphemes such as ‘yogh’. most subsequent editions of the bruce have been mainly based upon skeat’s due to its precision and compre hensiveness, as acknowledged by mackenzie (1909). as an illustration of the differences between the above mentioned renditions, some extracts of the poem have been analysed. the first four books of the poem have been disregarded since they are not present in ms c. among the remaining, we have selected book xx because it contains some of the in terpolated lines attributed to hart. it should be noted that our corpus corre s ponds to book xx in pinkerton’s and skeat’s editions, but to book xiv (lines 587-1210) in jamieson’s and to paragraphs cxlv-cl in innes’s (p. 466 of his own edition).1 the editions used for our analysis are, on the one hand, that made by skeat for the scottish text society (1884) because of its use of ms c and for the interpolations attributed to hart (1616), and on the other, the one by pin kerton (1790) because it refers to ms e. in what follows, some of the most outstanding differences between these two editions are commented. 1) it is a feature typical of scots that the graphemes ‹ y › and ‹ i › are used to represent both /i/ and /i: /. this means that these graphemes are interchangeable mainly in the vicinity of minims (above all ‹m, n, u ›). the scribe working in ms c seems to be much more regular than that of ms e in this respect (mackenzie, 1909: 512). an alternative use of both ‹ y › and ‹ i › can be observed in examples like the following: mycht (line 3), payit (line 26), king (line 41), hym (line 31). 1skeat is of the opinion that the omission of lines 44-49 in book xx in ms c and in some editions is not intentional but an unconscious gap on the part of the scribe or editor due to the coincidence in the line-endings: line 44 ends with ser and the same word appears in line 50. ____________________________________________________________________ 53 however, differences in the distribution of ‹ y › and ‹ i › can be also appreciated in a look at the first lines of the poem in the two manuscripts: lines 3, 28 and 32 show kyng (in c) and king (in e); line 4 shows ficht (in c) and fycht (in e); his (c) and hys (in e) appear in lines 3 and 6; line 2 contains reparit in c and reparyt in e. 2) ‹ u ›, ‹ v › and ‹ w › occur indiscriminately in mss c and e to represent both vocalic and consonantal sounds; ms c seems to prefer ‹ v › and ‹ u › and ms e ‹ w ›: ms c ms e line 15 cheuelry chewalry line 29 throu throw line 40 valour walour line 43 sevin sewyn line 53t housand thowsand nevertheless, some coincidences such as tour1 (line 39), syluir in c and siluer in e (line 54), awn(e) (line 21) indicate that different spellings cannot be described as characteristic of one or the other ms, but as mere tendencies of the scribe at work. 3) the use of diacritic ‹ y › or ‹ i › to signal long vowels is a feature typical of northern middle english that can also be found in the bruce, as in mair (line 245). sometimes, length is also shown by adding a final ‹ e › which is not pronounced, as in queyne (line 110) and some differences can be observed in the two editions following the different mss.2 but again, this is not a generalised use since in some cases one ms shows diacritic ‹ y › or ‹ i › and the other does not: sone (e, line 1) and soyne (c, line 1). 1 this word appears spelt towre in h. 2 ms c shows bare while e shows bar (line 18). mª josé lópez couso & isabel moskowich-spiegel ____________________________________________________________________ 54 4) the ‹ h › of some words of latin origin seems to have been silent, to judge from the fact that it was sometimes dropped out as in ost (e, lines 5, 6 and 19 vs. host, c). 5) metathesis of /r/ is also characteristic of northern middle english. thus, for example, in line 6, e shows there while c shows thre. 6) sometimes a different spelling of the preposition of can be observed. accord ing to mackenzie (1909: ix) of is typically found in southern middle english, whereas off is more often used in the north (lines 13, 23, 31). 7) final ‹ve › appears sometimes as final ‹ f ›, probably representing a devoicing of /v/ to /f/, as in gave (e) vs. gaf (c) (line 25), five (e) vs. fiff (c) (line 38). 8) skeat’s edition of the poem preserves the grapheme ‘yogh’ whereas pinkerton seems to prefer ‹ y › to represent the palatal phoneme /j/. ‘yogh’ had almost disappeared in me usage, but it underwent a revival later on in scots where it was fixed by printers as ‹ z ›. a few instances of this usage are: e young/ying vs. c ¥oung (line 31, 41), e yer vs. c ¥e(i)r (line 38, 43). 9) some differences can be appreciated in the use of the graphemes ‹ s ›, ‹ ß › and ‹ ¥ › to represent indiscriminately the phonemes /s/ and /z/. for instance, ms e uses caithis whereas scatheß is found in ms c. in his turn, hart uses the digraph ‹ s s › instead of ‹ ß ›: scathess. however, ms e seems to prefer ‹ ¥ › and ‹ s › while ms c more often resorts to ‹ ß ›. 10) although the most obvious differences between the mss under consideration are those related to spelling, some others deserve attention as well. concerning lexicon, a couple of examples drawn from the first lines of the poem show us that ms c contains typically scandinavian forms, whereas their southern english equivalents are recorded in ms e as well as in hart’s edition. thus, in line 12, ms c exhibits at instead of that (in e and h). similarly, ms c makes use of the preposition till in line 32, while to is found in the same line in ms e and in the edition by hart.1 1 also mon (c) vs. sall (h), line 170, can (c) vs. gan (e), lines 144 and 354, and i (c) vs. ik / ic / i (e). ____________________________________________________________________ 55 as shown above, the differences that can be detected in the various renderings of the poem are not essential and may be due to some tendencies of the scribes already found in the mss. of course, in our analysis, some editors have proved to be far more careful than others in their work. in this sense, skeat seems to be a more conscious and, thus, reliable editor than pin kerton. mª josé lópez couso (university of santiago de compostela) isabel moskowich-spiegel (university of coruña) references agutter, alex, 1987: “a taxonomy of older scots orthography” in macafee (75-82). aitken, a. j. & mcarthur, tom (eds.), 1979: languages of scotland, edinburgh: chambers. douglas, archibald a. h. (ed. and tr.), 1964: the bruce. an epic poem written around the year a. d. 1375, glasgow. grant, william & dixon, james main, 1921: manual of modern scots, cambridge university press. jamieson, john d. d. (ed.), 1820: the bruce and co: published froma ms. dated 1489, with notes and a memoir of the life of the author [to which is added] wallace, or the life of sir wm. wallace of ellenslie, from a ms. dated 1488, edinburgh, (2 vols). kay, billy, 1986: scots, the mither tongue, edinburgh: mainstream pu blishing company. mª josé lópez couso & isabel moskowich-spiegel ____________________________________________________________________ 56 macafee, caroline & macleod, iseabail (eds.), 1987: the nuttis schell essays on the scots language presented to a. j. aitken, aberdeen university press. mackenzie, w. m. (ed.), 1909: the bruce, london: adam & charles black. mcdiarmid, m.p. “the gododdin and other heroic poems of scotland” in mcclure, j. derrick (ed.), 1983: scotland and the lowland tongue. studies in the language and literature of lowland scotland in ho nour of david d. murison, aberdeen university press, (1-17). mcdiarmid, m. p., 1988: “the metrical chronicles and non-alliterative ro mances” in jack, r. d. s. (ed.), the history of scottish literature. origins to 1660 (mediaeval and renaissance), aberdeen university press, (27-38). pinkerton, j. (ed.), 1790: the bruce; or the history of robert i, king of scotland. written in scottish verse by john barbour, london (3 vols). skeat, w. (ed.), 1884: the bruce or the book of the most excellent and noble prince robert de broyss, king of scots compiled by master john barbour, archdeacon of aberdeen, a. d.1375, scottish text so ciety, edinburgh. smith, g. gregory, 1902: specimens of middle scots, edinburgh: william blackwood and sons. templeton, janet m., 1973: “scots: an outline history”, in aitken, a. j. (ed.), lowland scots. association for scottish literary studies. occasional papers, 2, (4-19). toda, fernando, 1992: “from sebell and the grunye to sevilla and la co ruña: translating barbour’s bruce into spanish”. selim, 2 (154-170). toda, fernando, 1993: “teaching middle english through early scots”, papers from the ivth international conference of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature, (285-292), santiago de compostela. ____________________________________________________________________ 57 ward, a.w. & waller, a. r. (eds.), 1967. the cambridge history of english literature, vol. ii. cambridge university press. westergaard, elisabeth, 1924: studies in prefixes and suffixes in middle scottish, oxford university press. * † * selim07 (2).pdf ____________________________________________________________________ 238 old and middle english bibliography 1996-97 allen, valerie & a. axiotis, eds. chaucer. macmillan, 1997. anderson, george k. the literature of the anglo-saxons. oup/ sandpiper books. reprint. 1997. andretta, helen ruth. chaucer’s troilus and cryseide: a poet's response to ockhamism. studies in the humanities: literature -politics society, vol. 29. peter lang, 1997. archibald, elizabeth & a. s. c. edwards, eds. a companion to malory. arthurian studies, 37. boydell & brewer, 1997. arthur, ross g. & noel l. corbett, trans. & eds. the knight of the two swords: a thirteenth century arthurian romance. university press of florida, 1996. berthelot, anne. king arthur, chivalry and legend. thames & hudson, 1997. biggam, c. p. blue in old english: an interdisciplinary semantic study. costerus ns 110, editions rodopi, 1997. bisson, lillian m. a chaucer resource book: the poet and the late medieval world. macmillan, 1997. bjork, robert e. & d. niles, eds. a beowulf handbook . univ. of exeter press, 1997. boardman, stephen. the early stewart kings: robert ii and robert iii, 1371-1406. tuckwell press, repr. 1997. brewer, charlotte. editing piers plowman: the evolution of the text. cup, 1996. breeze, andrew. medieval welsh literature. four courts press, 1997. ____________________________________________________________________ 239 britnell, r. h. the closing of the middle ages. england, 1471-1529. blackwell, 1997. bruce, webster. scotland in the middle ages: the making of an identity. macmillan, 1997. bruce, webster. the wars of the roses. ucl, press/ taylor & francis, 1997. burgess, glyn. two medieval outlaws: the romances of eustace the monk and fouke fits waryn. boydell & brewer, 1997. burnley, david; charlotte brewer; n. h. keeble. courtliness and literature in medieval england. longman, 1997. burton, t. l. & r. greentree. chaucer’s miller's, reeve's, and cook's tales: an annotated bibliography 1900-1992. university of toronto press, 1997. byrne, john. & michael herity. the irish . blackwell, 1996. carley, james p. & felicity riddy. eds. arthurian literature, vol. xv. d. s. brewer, 1997. cartlidge, neil. medieval marriage: literary approaches 1100-1300. boydell & brewer, 1997. chadwick, h. sonia. the first english . blackwell, 1996. chance, jane, ed. gender and text in the later middle ages. university press of florida, 1996. chartier, roger, alain boureau & cécile dauphin. correspondence: models of letter-writing from the middle ages to the nineteenth century. blackwell, 1997. clanchy, m. t. abelard: a medieval life . blackwell, 1997. classical and medieval literature criticism, vol. 20. gale, 1997. consoli, joseph p. ed. & trad. the novellino or one hundred ancient tales: an edition and translation based on the 1525 gualteruzzi “editio princepts”. garland pub. 1997. cooper, helen; sally mapstone. eds. the long fifteenth century: essays for douglas gray. oup, 1997. ____________________________________________________________________ 240 copeland, rita; david lawton & wendy scase. new medieval literatures. vol. 1. oup. 1997. cox catherine s. gender and language in chaucer. univ. press of florida. 1997. cox, john d. & david, s. kastan. a new history of early english drama . columbia university press, 1997. craun edwin d. lies, slander, and obscenity in medieval english literature. pastoral rhetoric and the deviant speaker. cup, 1997. darrah, john. paganism in arthurian romance. boydell & brewer, 1997. davis, craig r. beowulf and the demise of germanic legend in england. garland, 1996. dixon-kennedy, mike. arthurian myth and legend: an a-z of people and places. blandford, gbr, 1997. dixon-kennedy, mike. heroes of the round table. blandford, gbr. 1997 dumville, david. the celts. blackwell, 1996. duby georges. women of the twelfth-century. vol 1: women of the twelfth century. blackwell, 1997. duby georges. women of the twelfth century vol. 2: noblewomen in the middle ages. blackwell, 1997. dyas, dee. images of faith in english literature 700-1500. longman, 1997. economou, george, trans. william langland’s “piers plowman”: the c version. univ. of pennsylvania press, 1997. faith, rosamond. the english peasantry and the growth of lordship. tuckwell, 1997. fenster, thelma. ed. arthurian women: a casebook . garland, 1997. fisiak, jacek, ed. studies in middle english linguistics. mouton de gruyter, 1997. fisiak, jacek, ed. middle english miscellany: from vocabulary to linguistic variation. poznan, motivex, 1996. ____________________________________________________________________ 241 fowler, david d, et al. eds. the governance of kings and princes: john trevisa’s middle english translation of the “de regimine principum” of aegidius romanus. garland medieval texts, vol. 19. garland pub. 1997. frantzen, allen j. & j. d. niles, eds. anglo-saxonism and the construction of social identity. univ. press of florida, 1997. gasiorowski, piotr. phonology of old english stress and metrical structure. peter lang, 1997. gimenez bon margarita & vickie olsen. eds. proceedings of the 9 th. international conference of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. pórtico librerías. zaragoza, 1997. gneus, helmut. english language scholarship: a survey and bibliography from the beginning to the end of the nineteenth century. medieval and renaissance texts and studies 3. binghamton, n. y. 1996. gold, barbara k. et al. eds. sex and gender in medieval and renaissance texts: the latin tradition. suny, state university of new york press, 1997. goodrich, peter. law in the courts of love. routledge, 1996. grossinger, christa. picturing women in late medieval art. manchester u. p. 1997. grotans, anna a. & d. w. peter, eds. the st. ga ll tractate: a medieval guide to rhetorical syntax. columbia, sc: camden house, 1996. hahn, tom & a. lupack, eds. retelling tales. boydell & brewer, 1997. hanawalt, barbara a. of good and ill repute: gender and social control in medieval england. oup, 1997. hanna iii, ralph. the index of middle english prose: handlist xii; smaller bodleian collections. boydell & brewer, 1997. hanna iii, ralph. & t. lawler, eds. jankin’s book of wikked wyves. vol. 1. the primary texts. univ. of georgia press, 1997. head, pauline e. representation and design: tracing a hermeneutics of old english poetry. suny. state university of new york press, 1997. ____________________________________________________________________ 242 heather, peter. the goths. blackwell, 1996. hebron, malcolm. the medieval siege: theme and image in middle english romance. oup, 1997. heck, david. angels and angelology in the middle ages. oup, 1997. hickey, raymond & s. puppel, eds. language history and linguistic modelling: a festschrift for j. fisiak on his 60th birthday. 2vols. mouton de gruyter, 1997. hooke, della. the landscape of anglo-saxon england. leicester univ. press. 1997. horden peregrine & nicholas purcell. the corrupting sea. man and environment in antiquity and the middle ages. blackwell, 1997. howell, margaret. eleonor of provence. blackwell, 1997. howes, laura l. chaucer’s gardens and the language of convention. univ. press of florida, 1997. howlett, d. r. ed. dictionary of medieval latin from british sources. fascicule v: i-j, k-l. oup, 1997. hutchinson, gillian. medieval ships and shipping. tuckwell press, 1997. jimura, akiyuki, yoshiyuki nakao, masatsugu matsuo, eds. a comprehensive textual comparison of troilus and criseyde: benson’s, robinson’s root’s and windeatt’s editions. hiroshia university, 1996. kanno, masahiko, m. agari & g. k. jember, eds. essays on english literature and language in honour of shun’ichi noguchi. tokyo: eihosha, 1997. keynes, simon. ed. the liber vitae of the new minster and hyde abbey winchester, british library stowe 944 together with leaves from british library cotton vespasian a. viii and british library cotton titus dc. xvii. early english manuscripts in facsimile 26. rosenkilde and bagger, 1996. kiernan, kevin. electronic beowulf. (2 cd-rom discs) the british library, 1997. ____________________________________________________________________ 243 knight, alan e. ed. the stage as a mirror: civic theatre in late medieval europe. boydell & brewer, 1997. krantz, m. diane f. the life and text of julian of norwich: the poetics of enclosure. studies in the humanities: literature -politics society. vol. 32. peter lang, 1997. lacy norris j. ed. the new arthurian encyclopaedia. garland, 1996. lacy, norris j. & g. ashe. the arthurian handbook . 2nd. ed. garland pub. 1997. lambert, malcolm. the cathars. blackwell, 1997. larrington carolyne, ed. women and writting in medieval europe: a sourcebook . routledge, 1996. larson-miller, lizette, ed. medieval liturgy: a book of essays. garland medieval casebooks, vol. 18. garland pub. 1997. lass, roger. historical linguistics and language change. cup, 1997. law, vivien. grammar and grammarians in the early middle english . longman, 1997. lionarons, joyce tally. the dragon in medieval german litrature. hisarlic press/ drake international, 1997. looze, laurence de. pseudo-autobiography in the fourteenth century: juan ruiz, guillaume de machaut, jean froissart, and geoffrey chaucer. univ. press of florida, 1997. lucy, norris; geoffrey ashe; dera mancoff. the arthurian handbook . garland, 1997. lynch, andrew. mallory's book of arms: the narrative of combat in le morte darthur. arthurian studies, 39. boydell & brewer, 1997. maggenis hugh. images of community in old english poetry. cup, 1996, matsuda, takami. death and purgatory in middle english didactic poetry. boydell & brewer, 1997. ____________________________________________________________________ 244 matsushita, tomonori, ed. a glossarial concordance to william langland’s the visio of piers plowman. (b text). 3 vols. tokyo, yushodo press. 1997. mcdonald, william c. & william plail. eds. fifteenth-century studies. vol. 23. camden house, 1997. mcnamee, colm. the wars of the bruces: scotland, england and ireland, 1306-1328. tuckwell press. mcpherson, ian & ralph penny. eds. the medieval mind: hispanic studies in honour of alan deytermond. tamesis book, 1997. minnis, a. j., c. c. morse & thorlac turville -petre, eds. essays on ricardian literature: in honour of j. a. burrow. oup, 1997. momma, h. the composition of old english poetry. cup, 1997. morgan, gwendolyn a. ed. medieval ballads: chivalry, romance, and everyday life. a critical anthology. peter lang, 1996. mortimer, richard. angevin england 1154-1258. blackwell, 1996. nagy. joseph f. conversing with angels and ancients: the literary myths of medieval ireland. four courts press, 1997. nevalainen, terttu, and helena raumolin -brunberg, eds. sociolinguistics and language history: studies based on the corpus of early english correspondence. amsterdam & atlanta. rodopi, 1996. nevalainen, terttu, and leena kahlas -tarkka, eds. to explain the present: studies in the changing english language in honour of matti rissanen. société néophilologique de helsinky, 1997. nishimura, masahito, ed. tsuda, masaru, program. a rhyme concordance to il filostrato. toyohashi university, 1997. nilsen, don l. f. humor in british literature, from the middle ages to the restoration: a reference guide. greenwood press, 1997. north, richard. heathen gods in old english literature. cup, 1996. ____________________________________________________________________ 245 oergel, maike. the return of king arthur and siegfried the nibelung: a comparative study of the significance of national myth in the 19thcentury english and german literature. w. de gruyter, 1997. oguro, shoichi; richard beadle and m. g. sargent, eds. nicholas love at waseda. proceedings of the international conference 1995. d. s. brewer, 1997. oka, fumiko. investigations on courtly words and others. tokyo, kokubunsha, 1997. o’keeffe katherine o’brien. ed. reading old english texts. cup, 1997. orchard, andy. cassell dictionary of norse mythology and legend. cassell, 1997. owen, d. d. r. william the lion: kingship and culture. tuckwell press, 1997. palmer, caroline. ed. arthurian bibliography iii: author listing and subject index, 1978-1992. boydell & brewer, 1997. pearsall, derek. ed. chaucer to spenser: an anthology. oxford, blackwell, 1997. pfeffer, wendy. proverbs in medieval occitan literature. university of florida press, 1997. pickering, o. s. ed. individuality and achievement in middle english poetry. d. s. brewer, 1997. pollington, stephen. first steps in old english: an easy to follow language course for the beginner. anglo -saxon books. heffers, 1997. proceedings of the british academy, vol. 94, 1996. lectures and memoirs. oup, 1997. raby, f. j. e. a history of secular latin poetry in the middle ages. oup, repr. 1997. ramat, paolo & anna giacalone ramat. the indoeuropean languages. routledge, 1997. ____________________________________________________________________ 246 raw, barbara c. trinity and incarnation in anglo-saxon art and thought. cup, 1996. richmond, v. b. the legend of guy of warwick. garland studies in medieval literature 14. garland, 1996. rösener, werner. peasants in the middle ages. blackwell, 1996. ross, charles . the custom of the castle: from malory to macbeth. university of california press, 1997. salde, michael n. & j. e. jost, eds. chaucer yearbook iv. boydell & brewer, 1997. seymour, m. c. a catalogue of chaucer manuscripts, vol. ii: the canterbury tales. ashgate, 1997. shepherd, steven h. a. ed. middle english romances: a norton critical edition, new york. 1996. shimizu, aya. a study of the arthur in the english legends. saitama, dolphin press, 1997. southern, r. w. scholastic humanism and the unification of europe. volume iii: disunity, decline and renewal. blackwell, 1997. spence, sarah. texts and the self in the twelfth century. cup, 1997. sponsler, claire. drama and resistance: bodies, goods, and theatricality in late medieval england. university of minnesota press, 1997. stafford, pauline. queen emma and qween edith: qweenship and women's power in eleventh century england. blackwell, 1997. sutherland, kathrin, ed. electronic text: investigation in method and theory. clarendon press, 1997. taylor, paul b. chaucer’s chain of love. fairleigh dickinson up 1997. tharaud, barry. beowulf. revised ed. univ . press of colorado, 1996. thomas, charles. the picts. blacwell, 1996. thornton, david & k. s. b. keats -rohan, eds. doomsday names. boydell & brewer, 1997. ____________________________________________________________________ 247 trotter, d. a. de mot en mot: aspects of medieval linguistics. university of wales press, 1997. tolan, john victor, ed. medieval christian perceptions of islam. garland, 1996. tomasch, sylvia & gilles, eds. text and territory: geographica imagination in the european middle ages. university of pennsylvania press, 1997. toswell, m. j. & e. m. tyler. studies in english language and literature. (in honour of e. g. stanley). routledge, 1996. tristram, hildegard l. c. ed. medieval insular literature between the oral and the written ii. continuity of transmission. tübingen, g. narr verlag, 1997. turville -petre. thorlac. england the nation: language, literature and national identity, 1290-1340. clarendon press, 1997. wallace, david. chaucerian polity: absolutist lineages and associational forms in england and italy. stanford univ. press, 1997. weeb, diana. pilgrims and pilgrimage in medieval europe. tauris academic studies, 1997. weever, jacqueline ed. chaucer name dictionary. garland, 1996. wehlau, ruth. the riddle of creation: metaphor structures in old english poetry. studies in the humanities: literature -politics society. vol. 24. peter lang, 1997. williams ann. the english and the norman conquest. boydell & brewer, 1997. woolf, rosemary. the english religious lyric in the middle ages. oup/ sandpiper books. repr. 1997. wright, laura. sources of london english: medieval thames vocabulary. clarendon press. 1996. young, allan. robert the bruce's rivals, the comyns: 1213-1314. tuckwell press, 1997. ____________________________________________________________________ 248 antonio bravo university of oviedo * † * selim05.pdf andrew breeze, selim 5 (1996): 119—121 a celtic etymology for old english claedur ’clapper’ claedur is a rare word. it occurs only in the oldest english glossaries, where it figures as claedur (épinal), cledur (erfurt), and cleadur (corpus).1 glossing crepacula ‘clapper’, it is itself glossed as a ‘board (tabula) by which birds are frightened away from cornflelds’.2 although claedur is unrecorded elsewhere, it is paralleled by cladærsticca, claderstecca, cladersticca, and clederstico ‘clapper stick’, which gloss anate, perhaps a corrupt form of amite ‘with a rod’ (used for bird catching, but taken by the glossator as a bird -scarer).3 more dubious is a link with clidern ne, clidrinnae. pheifer sees these rare glosses of strepitu as possible derivatives of cladær-, claedur, which he translates as ‘clatter’ .4 yet the fact is that the origins of this whole group have been unclear. discussing the verb clatter, the oxford english dictionary notes that claedur, cledurt and cleadur ‘appear to be connected, but are not phonetically identical’. holthausen in turn re lates cladurand cleadur to clidrenn which he links 1 the corpus glossary, ed. w. m. lindsay (cambridge, 1921), 49; t. n. toller, an anglo-saxon dictionary: supplement (oxford, 1921), 127; old english glosses in the épinal-erfurt glossary, ed. j. d. pheifer (oxford, 1974), 13; henry sweet, a second anglo-saxon reader, 2nd edn, ed. t. f. hoad (oxford, 1978), 20, 29; and cf. the épinal. erfurt, verden and corpus glossaries, ed. bernhard bischoff and others (copenhagen, 1988). pheifer was the first to give the correct reading cledur for erfurt. 2 dictionary of medieval latin from british sources (london. 1975), 515; pheifer, 73. 3 lindsay, 15; toller, 127; pheifer, 8, 66; sweet, 9, 10. 4 toller, 128; pheifer, 49, 122; sweet, 84. andrew breeze ____________________________________________________________________ 124 with gothic klismo ‘klingel’ (the ‘tinkling cymbal’ of i corinthians 13: 1).1 this suggestion re ceives no support from feist.2 since attempts to explain claedur as germanic are unsatisfactory, could it be from welsh cledr or cledyr ‘stave’, which it resembles in form and meaning? the history of cledr supports this hypothesis. welsh cledr, defined as ‘stave, rod, rafter, beam, post, rail’, is cognate with middle breton clezr ‘cross bars under a cart frame’, modern breton klerenn ‘latte de bois’, mlddle irish clithar ‘shelter, protection’.3 cledr also occurs in early welsh poetry as ‘pillar (of battle)’. lines writ ten about 800 say of prince urien, oed cledyr cat kywlat rwyt ‘he was a prop in war, a snare of the enemy’; in an elegy of the later ninth century, a powys princess declares her brother was cledyr kat callon argoetwis ‘the support in battle, the heart of the men of argoed’.4 in another context, early welsh laws in the thirteenth-century black book of chirk value every pole, rod, and rail ( k elederen) of a house at ‘a legal penny’.5 another rail or support, the breast bone. is called cledyr y dwy vron ‘stave of the breast’ in the twelfth-century tale of peredur.6 dafydd ap gwilym (d. 1349?) calls his sword coethaf cledren adaf ‘the hand’s finest handle’, showing a context for cledren close to that of old english claedur ‘clapper, bird -scarer’. another sense of cledr comes in dafydd’s description of a ruin, heb na chledr na chlwyd ‘without rafter or covering’.7 william salesbury’s welsh-english dictionary of 1547 translates kledyren as ‘a sparre’. in modern welsh, cledr and cledren mean ‘stave, pole, pillar, rail’.8 1 ferdinand holthausen, altenglisches etymologisches wörterbuch, (heidelberg, 1934), 50, 51. 2 sigmund feist, vergleichendes wörterbuch der gotischen , 3rd edn (leiden, 1939), 313. 3 geiriadur prifysgol cymru (caerdydd, 1950-), 493; joseph vendryes, lexique etymologique de l'irlandais anclen: lettre g (paris, 1987), 1201. 4 early welsh saga poetry, ed. jenny rowland (cambridge, 1990), 421, 478, 435, 487. 5 geiriadur, 493. 6 geiriadur, 493; cf. the mabinogion, tr. gwyn jones and thomas jones (london, 1949), 217. 7 gwaith dafydd ap gwilym, ed. thomas parry (caerdydd, 1952), 377, 381; j. p. clancy, medieval welsh lyrics (london, 1965), 90. 8 h. m. evans & w. o. thomas, y geiriadur mawr, 5th edn (llandysul, 1971), 88. a celtic etymology for old english claedur ____________________________________________________________________ 125 cledr ‘stave’ agrees in meaning with old english claedur ‘clapper’, that would consist of a piece of wood with hinged blocks on each side. such clappers were used as both toys and bird -scarers in ancient times.1 they still survive in the liturgy, replacing bells on good friday, as with the huge clappers or matracas (<arabic matraqa ‘hammer’) used at seville that day to create ‘a most awful din’. as regards phonology, welsh e, at times more open than english e, was usually taken into old english as e, but also as æ (thus æsce, the river axe, somerset).2 if borrowed from cledr, english claedur and cledur would accord with this, cleadur in corpus resulting from later back mutation.3 the main difficulty for claedur <welsh cledr is cladærsticca, claderstecca and cladersticca ‘clapper stick’, where the first a is problematic. yet, if we take claedur as a loan from celtic (and not from germanic *cladur with second fronting), cladærcould be regarded as showing retraction before a back vowel, which later disappeared through ‘suffix ablaut’.4 the process would be clædur> *cladur> cladær-. this coincides with the common sense view that claedur ‘clapper’ represents the original borrowing, cladærrepre senting a later stage, after addition of germanic -sticca. if these arguments are correct, we can show claedur and cladærto be of non-germanic origin, and thus unrelated to modern english clatter or (?) old englis h clidrenn. the original meaning of claedur was ‘stave (with clappers)’, not ‘rattling noise’. we also reveal a new celtic loan in old english. claedur and cladærthus join trymide ‘strengthened’ (corpus 577), sercae ‘tabard’ (épinal-erfurt 18), loerge ‘weaver’s beams’ (éplnal 1), and uuannan ‘pallid’ (épinal 576) as welsh loans in the earliest glossaries. it is curious to see celtic culture featuring there mainly in military terms and words for tools. 1 the oxford classical dictionary, 2nd edn, ed. n. g. l. hammond & h. h. scullard (oxford, 1970), 1083. 2 john morris -jones, a welsh grammar (oxford, 1913), 12; k. h. jackson, language and history in early britain (edinburgh, 1953), 281-2; e. p. hamp, the development of modern welsh syllabic structure, the bulletin of the board of celtic studies, xvii (1956~8), 30-6, at 32-3; d. s. evans, a grammar of middle welsh (dublin, 1964), 1. 3 alistair campbell, old english grammar (oxford, 1959), 86. 4 campbell, 61; pheifer, lxiv, lxxix-lxxx. andrew breeze ____________________________________________________________________ 126 andrew breeze university of navarre, pamplona * † * selim06.pdf ____________________________________________________________________ 155 swanton, michael 1997: the anglo-saxon chronicle, translated and edited by michael swanton (dent, london); xxxvi + 364 pages; isbn 0-460-87867-0; £ 12.99 in the united kingdom only. this paperback edition of professor swanton’s translation of the anglosaxon chronicle will be warmly welcomed. it was first issued in hardback in 1996, and immediately became the version of the chronicle which all students of early english history and literature had to have. the material of the chronicle is stirring stuff. it is the first continuous history of any modern european nation in its own language. compiled over several centuries, it describes the invasion of post-roman britain by the en glish; the development of their society; their conversion to christianity from the year 597 onwards; the viking attacks of the ninth and tenth centuries, and the english response to them (sometimes cowardly, sometimes heroic); and the norman conquest of 1066. the writing of the chronicle was continued at peterborough, in the english midlands, until the year 1154. the annals for these last years provide an unforgettable picture of the atrocities committed in king stephen’s reign, when people said openly that ‘christ and his saints slept’. professor swanton provides a fitting treatment of this venerable document. his translation, which effectively replaces the one made in 1953 by norman garmonsway for the everyman series, shows differing versions of the chronicle text on facing pages. he provides full commentary and up-todate bibliography. his work on the last is especially valuable, since it enables historians and others to update themselves on the enormous amount of re search that has been published on the chronicle in recent decades. his translation also comes complete with maps, genealogical tables, and some excellent photographs. these last range from a picture of the dragon from a real viking ship, to a gold ring worn on the finger of king alfred’s grandfather. the ring was found in 1780 in a cartru t at laverstock, just outside salisbury. (one wonders how it was lost, and who lost it.) it is typical of the unexpected things to be found in this edition that professor swanton should tell us this. ____________________________________________________________________ 156 in short, michael swanton’s version of the chronicle has now become the essential edition of this text. the results of his labours will be with us for many years. his translation should be found in the library of every institution that takes the study of early england and its language seriously. andrew breeze university of navarre * † * selim 20.indb eneas caro partridge, selim 20 (2013–2014): 263–275issn: 1132–631x refreshing the legend of sherwood forest: manipulation of history and tradition in ridley scott’s robin hood (2010) robert bresson once said “le cinéma n’est pas un spectacle, c’est une écriture,”1 and 53 years later the theory still holds true. ridley scott has both rewritten and spectacularised robin hood in his 2010 movie (robin hood), in which he tackles the mythos fr om a new perspective by presenting the origins rather than just another spin-off . in the process, he rewrites the legend in such a way that it fi ts modern audiences at the same time that recedes in time into the more obscure robin hood that fi rst appeared in english justices the 13th century.2 it is there that one might fi nd the originality of the piece, since, as hollywood has accostumed us already, it takes some liberties with the historical and philological sources. the script for the movie was originally meant to be based on an original screenplay by ethan reiff and cyrus voris called nottingham (martel 2010). the plot centered around the sheriff of nottingham rather than the traditional hero. the sheriff was robert tornham, a historical sheriff of cyprus who in the script was invited to be sheriff in england by richard the lionheart as payment for his good deeds in the siege of cyprus. this back story provides a more emotional view of the famous antagonist, in opposition to a more terrorist-like view of the endearing merry men, who now carry chaos into the otherwise tranquil sherwood forest. the plot of this fi rst script tried to steer clear of the most standard robin hood elements and into something more of a csi 1 cahiers de cinéma, october 1957, p. 5. 2 it should be noted, though, that the earliest literary appearences of robin hood are the ballads in william langland’s piers plowman (c. 1360–87): “i kan noght parfi tly my paternoster as the preest it syngeth, but i kan rymes of robyn hood and randolf erl of chestre” (v.395). eneas caro partridge 264selim 20 (2013–2014) show of the middle ages. the sheriff sets out to investigate a series of strange murders in sherwood forest, which lead him to chase robin hood, only to fi nd out in the end that the mighty hero was being fr amed. reiff himself asserted that he and his team used real 12th-century source material to research medieval english forensic investigation techniques. “we didn’t make too much up out of the blue,” he affi rmed (reiff 2010). unfortunately that was not to hold true with the version that would actually see the light. with the signing of ridley scott and russell crowe, brian helgeland was hired to rewrite the script. it was not a one-time conversion, but a series of adaptations that saw many ideas, most of them new to the traditional depiction of the legend. at one point the project took a fight-club-esque twist which contemplated robin and the sheriff being the same person (horowitz 2008). why such a fr esh idea, and perhaps the most original robin hood plot to date, was turned into a rather forgettable movie is anyone’s guess. it seems that scott did not like any of the original ideas, and thus settled for a more traditional approach. allegedly, scott’s fascination with archery aided in the fi nal product, which was a very dramatic alteration of the plot, as explained in by hollywood screenwriter william martel (martel 2010). the fi nal cut answers to ridley scott’s ideas, which shape the remake almost entirely: robin is an evermighty bowman belonging to richard the lionheart’s army as head of a specialized archery division where he fi ghts amongst alan-a-dale and will scarlet (coincidentally represented as a “scarlet” headed welsh), who are returning home fr om the crusades only to fi nd that john i has taken the throne and is ruling with an iron fi st. needless to say, archery is an important element in the fi lm, and key to the elaboration of the characters. the result is the accommodation of more traditional characters and a name change that falls in line with the plethora of robin hoods already out there (carroll 2010). as a matter of fact, walter scott already pictured this scenario: in his 1820 novel ivanhoe, we see robin fi ghting against john lackland in order to restore richard refr eshing the legend of sherwood forest 265 selim 20 (2013–2014) the lionheart’s throne. certainly this is no coincidence, and ridley scott surely was familiar with walter scott’s work. while the execution of the fi lm may leave some things to be desired, and the story may have nearly nothing in common with the original script, the project does present a few refr eshing elements on the over-exploited theme that douglas fairbanks popularized. despite its low scores on imdb3 and rotten tomatoes,4 the fi lm peaked as the second-highest grossing medieval-themed movie ever, only surpassed by kevin costner’s 1991 robin hood: prince of thieves, and it scored over $320 million during its fi rst month. the fi lm attempts to move away fr om the more conventional, hackneyed version of the man in green tights by telling the origin of the famed hero rather than one his exploits, perhaps infl uenced by a spat of prequel movies that have proved fairly successful in recent years, be it the famed star wars prequel trilogy released between 1999 and 2005, or red dragon (2002), prequel to silence of the lambs. the project is, thus, new enough to pique the interest of the audience yet close enough to the more traditional versions to make it recognizable. the primary fallout, however, lies in the everpresent tradition of trying to understand medieval england through postmillennial western eyes. this is understandable since it carries a great deal of modern baggage, ranging fr om jungian psychoanalysis to women’s rights movements. this all contributes to the transformation of classical or medieval models of heroism, rendering them anachronistic in many ways. the fi lm’s relevance fr om a critical perspective lies precisely in its reshaping of the traditional elements. the divergence in tradition granted the fi lm 3 internet movie database is an online database and rating platform for movies, television, and video games owned by amazon.com and one of the top 50 websites in terms of traffi c, with over 52 million registered users. 4 rotten tomatoes is a fi lm review aggregator and forum owned by warner bros. subsidiary flixter. though not as massive as imdb, it is a highly popular website amongst fi lm fanatics. eneas caro partridge 266selim 20 (2013–2014) low acclaim by critics. these “inaccuracies,” however, are somewhat of a tradition in itself for most fi lms, especially in scott’s own (let us not forget the dynastic liberties in gladiator [2000] or the complete remaking of history in kingdom of heaven [2005]), and yet ridley scott’s robin manages to remain unlike the majority of his predecessors, retaining some the original script’s initial spirit. we see a sheriff of sherwood forest (matthew macfadyen) that is more pathetic, almost pitiful, that seems to want the audience to feel sorry for him; and the odious godfr ey (mark strong) usurping the role of the main antagonist. russell crowe is a darker and heft ier robin than other hollywood icons, and the fi gure that emerges in this fi lm is closer to the older, more violent tradition of the legend. in fact, ridley scott redraws some of the central characters in the traditional plotline (like marian and friar tuck) and introduces a new fi gure (walter loxley) which forces a redefi nition of robin’s identity, more in touch with the earlier appearances of the 13th and 14th centuries. the fi gure of maid marian is one that has a long history of interpretations. in the kevin costner epic robin hood: prince of thieves (1991), she is a maternal cousin to the sovereign, while in the bbc tv show adaption of 2006 she is the daughter of the former sheriff and was betrothed to robin before he left for the holy land. the majority of marians out there are those of dainty women or princesses, save for the occasional and not mainstream feminist prototype, as in the forestwife novels by theresa tomlinson. at the end of the pathway lies ridley scott’s marian (cate blanchett), a strong powerful woman, of noble origin yet skilled in combat techniques and fairly independent. one would not expect less nowadays, when female characters are rising rapidly as heroic fi gures. the popular response to the surge of female warrior characters is thus divided between those who favor the claim to power of historically submissive female characters, and those who see that the heroic virtues attributed to these women are but male traits crudely transplanted. however, maid marian remains true to refr eshing the legend of sherwood forest 267 selim 20 (2013–2014) her early appearances in the 16th century: “a bonny fi ne maid of a noble degree” who searches for robin hood “with quiver and bow, sword, buckler and all, /thus armed was marian most bold” (child 2003: iii.219) friar tuck (mark addy) undergoes a similar rewriting. in ridley scott’s fi lm he appears as the traditional fat, bald and jovial monk with a great love of ale, but with the swordsmanship, archery skills and hot-headed temper that characterised him in the original versions of the 16th century. thus, the literary tuck provides a perfect character for ridley scott and his signature combat set pieces as well as the go-to comic relief, which is actually a role oft en played by him in the earlier original appearances. he provides moments of gratuitous absurdity at times, especially when he fi rst robs a chariot with the bishop’s grain and later ravages some french soldiers with beehives (fr om which he distills illegal honey mead). the truth, however, is that the original friar tuck is much more along the lines of the rest of the characters in the fi lm. this makes sense so as to keep the coherence of the plot: even though his original character came out of the 16th century may games, he truly belongs to the darker early middle ages, giving more unity to the combination of personalities in the fi lm. scott also makes what appears to be a clever yet obscure wink to the robin hood universe that may well have a pivotal importance in the future development of the story by introducting walter loxley (max von sydow), maid marian’s father-in-law in the fi lm. the fr ame of an “origin story,” especially one that has not been approached yet, allows for this kind of reinterpretations and complications. this character means a redefi nition of the hero’s identity through a clever shift ing of names: in the fi lm, robin is never hood, but longstride. marian’s father-in-law, whose name is sir walter of loxley, claims to have fought with longstride’s father in past years. sir walter loxley is of noble origins, come to decadence because of rising taxes and bad management of the realm. in later fl ashbacks, we see that robin’s father was, in fact, fr iends eneas caro partridge 268selim 20 (2013–2014) with walter and died because of his obstination in seeking victory against the tyrannical rule of the king (one previous to john i). the name robert/robin de locksley (or loxley) has been attributed to robin hood ever since his fi rst appearances so it comes as a curious coincidence that walter’s son, robert de loxley, should die in the arms of robin longstride, and that the latter is now occupying the sentimental role of walter’s son. but perhaps it is not that farfetched of an idea. returning to walter scott’s ivanhoe, robin hood is a saxon nobleman that goes by the last name locksley. this information has two key elements: the fact that he goes by the name locksley, and that he should be of saxon origin. by using the name loxley in such a way, ridley scott is referencing the original and ambiguous identity of the hero and the result is a possible reformatting of the basic historical story structure: that robin hood is not one man but, at least, two. longstride’s mission to return the remains of loxley’s son, killed by the french, establishes a connection between the two and triggers the conversion of crowe’s character into the famous hero. robin hood is an entity, a leader that fi ghts for justice, not just one person, but many individuals who occupy the role. this theory then implies that it is not until robin longstride takes the role (unknowingly, one assumes) that the legend becomes such and that the historical implications become more than a few skirmishes against the royal forces. it is not until the end of the movie, when robin has proved himself worthy of the legend, that he is referred to as “robin of the hood.” the fi lm, in any case, is not devoid of familiarity. even though the plot is centered around the genesis of the fi gure of hood, and one may even infer a total twist of the popular story, there is abundance of archetypal motifs to which the audience can relate. the usage of previously known bits of a story is a strong element in most prequels or “origin” stories, since it allows the public to relate on a satisfaction-based level by allowing some to understand and some to obliviously pass these references. the strongpoint is refr eshing the legend of sherwood forest 269 selim 20 (2013–2014) made evident in that these references create but a second layer to the fi lm, even though it can be easily followed and enj oyed by those who are not familiar with them. it makes the invented origin much more plausible in the eyes of the spectator, and also attracts more spectators. the other notable element is walter scott’s presentation of robin as a saxon nobleman, which has darker implications that may seem at fi rst hand. at one point in the fi lm we have a germanic or anglo-saxon funeral, that is, a ritual burning on a pyre. not only would it be unlikely that a christian lord be burnt on a pyre rather than buried, it was also illegal and contrary to the teachings of the church. it is curious, however, that these characters were to be associated with germanic images if we were to look at it through a whiggish approach to history.5 whig historiography asumes that the past is but an inevitable path, winding progressively towards an ever-greater liberty and enlightenment. it thus focuses on successful ideas, rather than failed theories. it originates during the 17th century, right around the time robin hood’s legend is becoming standardised and gentrifi ed. in the whig view of history, germanic and anglo-saxon imagery has a positive connotation attached to liberty and democratic values in opposition to the conceived notion of tyrannical rule, associated with the normans and the catholics, as is the case in stories like walter scott’s ivanhoe. the introduction of a germanic funeral in the fi lm now seems more logical, just as logical as the fact that robin should be a saxon nobleman. in fact, 5 whig historiography originates in the 18th century as a result of the loss in popularity of the constitutional monarchy in england. before whig history, the model society of england were the normans as well as the arthurian myth, through which the crown was legitimized. the original historiographic source was, thus, geoff rey of monmouth’s historia regum britanniae (c. 1130). aft er whig history becomes mainstream, the focus centers on anglo-saxon views of society as a means to justify british history as a march of progress whose inevitable outcome is the constitutional monarchy. the historical source becomes wace’s roman de brut (c. 1150) and anything french or norman (e.g. monmouth’s historia) would seem as opposing and thus a hindering of england’s progression. eneas caro partridge 270selim 20 (2013–2014) the movie plays with this notion: the spectator fi rst encounters robin fi ghting with richard the lionheart, one would asume, thus, that he is either a norman or a sympathetic to the cause. but through climactic fl ashbacks we learn that his father was a nobleman that fought for liberty against the norman kings. this implies a subtle allegory: robin fi ghts for the normans but later learns he is not one of them, a cathartic moment in which he decides to oppose the absolutist king john i in order to restore the balance claimed by the noblemen to which his father belonged. the absolute monarchy of the normans dueling the mutually dependent saxon law of the people. this is textbook whig historiography. this theory is further justifi ed in the story by the exaggerated french antagonism or by the fact that fr ee people under danelaw became persecuted under norman law in sherwood forest (reddish 2012). even the music in the fi lm hints at this: a subtle score with clear celtic and germanic infl uences that backs the action. the germanic-style funeral is but a way of inferring that these noblemen where saxons themselves, and thus exalting the saxon or germanic roots of “the good guys.” not surprisingly, scott not only invents robin’s origin, but also a good part of english medieval history in the process. many fi lms have done so in order to accommodate a plot that would not make sense otherwise, changing the course of history on the way. there again lies some of the originality of the fi lm. though some of the historical pretensions of scott’s fi lm are rather preposterous, they are also made to seem strangely possible, including the stellar appearances of other-timely gadgets. this is mere hollywood entertainment, where there is an innate need to spectacularize and give a more epic touch to the story. this need of grandiose spectacle is not new to hollywood, and is especially abundant in previous ridley scott fi lms. movies like the aforementioned kingdom of heaven (2005) or tristan & isolde (2006) have taken liberally on their source materials. refr eshing the legend of sherwood forest 271 selim 20 (2013–2014) first and foremost, the french invading the lands of england by crossing the english channel may look implausible to an audience with a basic knowledge of british history, as the intermittent war between the english and french crowns in the medieval period was fought mostly on continental soil. the episode is made even more unbelievable as we see the french disembarking in the beaches of southern england in specialised landing ships in a scene more worthy of saving private ryan than 13th century england. the mere consideration of a possibility of this happening is ludicrous, since the fi rst example of a specialized landing craft of any sort appeared in 1920, well over 700 years aft er the fi lm takes place. the fi lm’s narrative, however, is not without historical basis. there was indeed an attempt at invasion in 1216, in the context of the first barons’ war, as the noblemen who rebelled against john off ered the throne to prince louis of france and asked him to invade england. scott, instead, has the barons help the king to repel the french. this rewriting of a historical event is not surprising, taking into account mr. scott’s idea of their gaulois neighbours. the animosity towards the french is rather amusing and over the top. it seems a bit stereotypical, especially since the action is set in a time when the diff erences between one and the other weren’t that clear. that the director is english does not help hide this fact: we see king philip of france slurping oysters in the midst of a war in what we can interpret as a brazen attempt at separating the “good” factions fr om the “evil” ones. it is fairly anachronistic as well, for this image fi ts more into the “freedom fries” era of post-9/11 anti-french sentiment than in the 1200’s. the amusement reaches its peak when the french, being french, have their chefs serving soup (cassoulette or pot au feu, one imagines) in the middle of the siege, one of whom, on a mere whim, picks up a crossbow and kills richard the lionheart, changing the course of british history forever. again, scott attributes post-millennial perspectives conceived for post-millennial spectators to medieval events. although seemingly comical, the idea that an ordinary, anonymous person can have eneas caro partridge 272selim 20 (2013–2014) such an impact on history is a rather attractive democratic notion, one that is exploited by robin hood (assuming he was anonymous at the time, which the fi lm also implies) during the rest of the movie, which loads robin with trappings of heroism that prove his democratic attitude, sometimes paralysing the narrative. as a. o. scott sumarises in his new york times article, “[robin hood] is for liberty though—the english kind, by the way—so if you have anything bad to say about him, you’d better say it in french” (scott 2010). this idea of populism is not strange to either scott nor crowe, since we see the same process exploited in movies like gladiator. some might even argue that the character of robin hood too closely ressembles that of maximus in the 2000 fi lm. as happened in gladiator, he is actor to a world-changing historic event: as a roman he plotted to overthrow the emperor himself, and as robin he will become the percursor of magna carta. just one more historical liberty in hollywood’s long lived tradition. robin is not directly responsible for the signing of the 1215 document, but, according to the fi lm, he took a fi rst draft of the charter to the king in 1199, who then proceeds to burn it aft er swearing on his mother’s life (apparently the only reasonable french person in the fi lm) that he would sign it. in mr. scott’s words: “[i]f there were to be a sequel to robin hood, you would have a constant enemy throughout, king john, and you would follow his reign of 17 years, and the signing of magna carta could be robin’s fi nal act.”6 we can assume then that this was meant as segue for future fi lms more than as a history lesson. having magna carta be something belonging to the lower classes is another democratic notion that befi ts modern times, but in reality it was a vindication of the privileges of the barons against those of the king (bartlett 2000; ramos 2004). hardly something a mason, as it is implied in the fi lm, would be able to conceive, let alone enact. 6 sunday times interview, april 3rd , 2010 refr eshing the legend of sherwood forest 273 selim 20 (2013–2014) in all fairness, scott and his team did put some eff ort into making the fi lm seem, at the very least, historically plausible. erin mccarthy wrote a piece for popular mechanics7 in which we learn that, “to make sure it was historically accurate, designers hit the books—and the museums, including the british museum in london and the royal armories in leeds” (mccarthy 2010). the result is a set of weapons that mostly look realistic. some incongruencies arise fr om the over-elaborated siege ram, or the helmet worn by crowe’s character, which is somewhat of an every type of helmet and none at the same time. but perhaps the most serious problem when we approach the fi lm is one that involves not only the director, but also the spectators. it is a problem that aff ects not this fi lm in particular, but almost all of the fi lm reinterpretations of famous legends, stories or traditions. to remold the legend of robin hood in this manner is to look upon a legend that started out with a very basic and obscure plotline through contemporary eyes. the result is that there is oft en a comparison between versions, one is usually that is better or worse than another because it does or does not respect that general structure that was established long ago. perhaps a modern idea of authorship makes us believe that anything that modifi es the original story is of inferior quality, but in reality the obscure origins of the legend provide a lot of room for innovation and remodelation. the story has evolved with each time period having a diff erent view, consequence of the cultural values and ideals of the time. in this way, 21st century rewritings of the robin hood legend are going to be diff erent, and that is the natural course of events. the weight of ridley scott’s version on the overall course of the legend will not be determined until many years fr om now. perhaps the originality of the plot will be undermined by medieval purists, perhaps its historical inaccuracies will weigh the fi lm down, 7 popular mechanics is a classic magazine regarding science, automotive and technology. its fi rst issue dates fr om 1902 and is published by hearst corporation. eneas caro partridge 274selim 20 (2013–2014) or perhaps it may remain as one version that tied together loose strings that elevate its relevance to history and continue a popular tradition. only time will tell; at least the success of scott’s version makes clear that robin and his men still have some merry years to go. eneas caro partridge universidad de sevilla references bartlett, r. 2000: england under the norman and angevin kings, 1075– 1225. oxford, clarendon press. carroll, l. 2009: ridley scott reveals new name for “nottingham” and it’s back to basics. retrieved fr om: www.moviesblog.mtv.com, 17/06/2013. child, f. j. 2003 [1882–1898]: the english and scottish popular ballads (10 vols.). new york, dover publications. fleming, m. 2007: scott set for “nottingham.” retrieved fr om www. variety.com, 04/03/2013. hahn, t. 2000: robin hood in popular culture: violence, transgression, and justice. cambridge, d.s. brewer. hill, c. 1997: liberty against the law: some seventeenth-century controversies. london, penguin: ii. 5-6 horowitz, j. 2008: russell crowe will play robin hood and the sheriff in ridley scott’s “nottingham.” retrieved fr om www.moviesblog. mtv.com, 27/09/2008. holt, j. c. 1989: robin hood. london, thames & hudson. holt, j. c. 1992: magna carta. cambridge, university press. holt, f. c. 1960: the origins and audience of the ballads of robin hood. past & present 18: 89-110. refr eshing the legend of sherwood forest 275 selim 20 (2013–2014) knight, s. 2009: robin hood: a mythic biography. new york, cornell university press. schmidt, a. v. c. ed. 1978: the vision of piers plowman: a complete edition of the b-text. london, everyman. martel, w. 2010: robbing from the poor (writer). retrieved fr om www. sex-in-a-sub.blogspot.com, 20/05/2013. mccarthy, e. 2010: designers recreate medieval weapons for new robin hood. retrieved fr om www.popularmechanics.com, 22/04/2013. ramos pluma, a. 2004: carta magna: licencia para oprimir a los pobres. la verdad sobre la historia. mexico df, reader’s digest méxico. reddish, s. & mallet, l. 2012: according to ancient custom: research on the possible origins and purpose of thynghowe sherwood forest. paper presented at the national museum of iceland, reykjavík. reiff , e. 2010: interview by allen wright for robin hood, bold outlaw of barnsdale and sherwood. retrieved fr om www.boldoutlaw.com, 22/05/2013. scott, a. o. 2010: rob the rich? give to the poor? retrieved fr om www. nytimes.com, 22/05/2013. scott, r. dir. 2000: gladiator. dreamworks skg and universal pictures. scott, r. dir. 2005: kingdom of heaven. twentieth century fox. scott, r. dir. 2010: robin hood. universal pictures. • selim05.pdf reviews: april mcmahon 1994 ____________________________________________________________________ 153 mcmahon, april m. s. 1994: understanding language change. cambridge: cambridge university press. xi + 361 pp. (paper £ 11. 95). understanding language change reveals itself to be such a surpris ingly comprehensive book on historical linguistics and related disciplines that it undoubtedly deserves to be highly rated. it must be stated clearly from the start that mcmahon’s book is not exclusively on the history (=development) of languages; instead, it can be said to be a linguistics book which pays special attention to the question of language change. understanding language change is an exhaustive and thoroughly researched study on precisely language change. according to the author, very little linguistics knowledge is reported to be required by the nonspecialists to follow the explanations of the various issues analysed in the book (p. xi). the organization of the book is as follows: apart from an opening “preface and acknowledgments” section, the book is divided into twelve chapters, bib liography and index. chapter one is an introduction to the book. from chapter two to chapter seven, mcmahon deals with purely grammatical features attested in language change. this block of chapters displays traditional his torical linguistics practice. on the other hand, chapters eight to twelve are devoted, each, to a topic associated in a way with the kind of ideas presented in the pre ceding chapters. a direct link with traditional historical linguis tics cannot be easily traced, but the reader has the welcome opportunity to experience a new perspective of language change not always observed by other scholars. in chapter one (introduction) the question is raised as to how languages resemble each other to a certain extent, thus enabling the lin guist to make up groups. examples are extracted from many languages: english, german, french, latin, kannada, tamil, tulu, malayalam and some others. the author illustrates the rele vance -and the advantage for the purpose of linguistic analysis of arranging languages into affinity groups by rendering the same sentence into different languages and assessing how similar or how different these sentences appear to be. languages such as welsh, irish gaelic and scots gaelic (celtic languages) exhibit similar features, which are in turn difreviews, francisco martín ____________________________________________________________________ 154 ferent from those of german, old english and swedish (germanic languages) on the one hand, or from those of old church slavonic, russian and polish (balto-slavic languages) on the other (p. 4). from these preliminary ideas, the author sets out not to reconstruct languages but see how languages evolved from earlier into later, more modern stages. this is, perhaps, one of the most obviously diverging points from traditional historical linguistics textbooks. in her own words, our topic here will be (…) language change. that is, we shall concentrate on the development of earlier stages of languages into later ones, and the mechanisms in volved, rather than on the reconstruction of hypothesised past language states from present or recorded ones. (p. 7) the reader is then told to be aware of the author’s stance on the question of language change. firstly, mcmahon finds it difficult to come to terms with the label “language”: she rejects a purely linguis tic definition in favour of recognizing that language is “rather a socio -political matter” (p. 8). secondly, the author adheres to the idea that synchronic and diachronic linguistics are inevitably connected. she builds her idea upon the belief that, past events may cast light on present situations, so that we may understand current systems better by considering how they came to be. (…) [h]istorical linguistics may be able to illuminate synchrony, the study of a single language state, through diachronic work: understanding language change means understanding language better. (p. 10) a caveat is in order here: the division of the book in chapters does not mean that the issues under consideration should be assessed in isolation. the contents of the grammar-oriented chapters (chapters two to seven) need be completed with that of the topic -oriented ones (chapters eight to twelve). only in this way will the reader come to a full grasp of mcmahon’s purpose. chapters two and three are devoted to the study of change in phonetics and phonology. after making the reader familiar with jargon (terms such as assimilation, dissimilation, epenthesis, loss, weak ening and metathesis), the author provides us with three different lin guistic viewpoints on the subject of reviews: april mcmahon 1994 ____________________________________________________________________ 155 sound change, namely: the neogrammarians, the structuralists, and the ge nerativists. firstly, the neogrammarians held that sound change is re gular and exceptionless (the regularity hypothesis), and the motivation for it was to be found in a mixture of biological and psychological reasons. examples of sound change in this light are grimm’s law and vern er’s law. secondly, the structuralists tried to go a step further and explain -not simply describe, as was the case with the neogrammarianssound shifts by invoking the structure of systems and the function of language (p. 20). the great vowel shift is the example provided following neogrammarian prin ciples. finally, the author reviews some rule changes proposed by the genera tivists within their understanding of language as a rule -governed system: rule addition, rule loss, rule reordering, and rule inversion. for mcmahon, the genera tivists’ appro ach has no explanatory content: it is but an account of the matter through ru les. at this point the author seems impelled to justify her alignment with the view adopted by structuralists, and to discard the other two proposals. the reason is simple: mcmahon’s concept of language bears similarities with the kind of motives given by the structuralists for language change. the functions of language determine its change. regrettably, the exposition of both the neogrammarians’, and, above all, the genera tivists’ views on the question of sound change is clearly biased. worth mentioning is the author’s failure to clearly explain the basic tools used by the latter in their analyses (contrary to her initial purpose: “the majority of general linguistic terms will also be defined as we go along” (p. xi)): rule notation and concepts such as “underlying representation” (called “underlier” at this point in the text, although corrected later on) have been left unexplained, features such as “obstruent” and “continuant” are dropped without further comment, pro cesses such as “feeding” and “ble eding” call for less cryptic definitions (p. 39). a negative opinion of the ge nerativists’ contribution to language change is put forth in these terms: [generativist grammarians] wrote formal phonological rules which reflected completed changes; but these are only restatements of the effects of the change, and are essentially non-explanatory. (…) [they] omitted from consideration structuralist explanations of change, which centred on the structure and function of the system. (p. 43) reviews, francisco martín ____________________________________________________________________ 156 once sound change has been reviewed, the author addresses the question of transmission, i.e., the spread of a certain change through the speech community. she tries to balance what seem to be two opposing stances: (i) sound change is lexically abrupt but phonetically gradual (neogrammarian view), and (ii) sound change is phonetically abrupt but lexically gradual (lexical diffusion theory). mcmahon in troduces lexical phonology (lp) as the best way to account at one time for both diverging strategies, and welcomes the idea that diachrony and synchrony should not be treated independently. furthermore, lp conceives sound changes not to be isolated from but intima tely linked to, say, the morphologic behaviour of the words affected by the change. closely related to the idea just mentioned, the author devotes chapter four to survey some cases of morphological change. her basic tenet is that “morphological facts cannot (…) be divorced entirely from syntactic or phonological, or indeed semantic concerns” (p. 69). to illustrate this point, mcmahon resorts to the case of foot-feet: the change in the plural form (*foots) is partly due to the phonology, not to the morphology. analogy is the author’s main concern as regards morphological change. she provides a definition for the term and surveys some special cases of analogy, namely: analogical extension (<-s> plural formation in modenglish), analogical levelling (regularization of [z] in modenglish choose/chose/chosen, or [r] in modgerman küren/kor-koren/ gekoren), and sporadic analogy (cases of contamin ation, back-formation and folk etymology). analogy is analysed from the viewpoint of two linguistic schools: ge nerativism and structuralism. as macmahon says (p. 81), the former constructed a formal, rule-based theory of analogy as simplification of phonological rules. there follows an introduction to kiparsky’s (1978) view of analogy, which identifies it with rule re ordering. all in all, she does not think well of this mo del: “the generative attempt to formalise analogy entirely, and to lo cate it in the grammar as simplificatory rule change, is ultimately obscurantist” (p. 84). however, the structuralists’ view of iconicity is in line with the author’s concept of language change. for her, iconicity “seems to favour related surface elements which are similar in form as well as in meaning, and which more generally binds language to the non-linguistic world” (p. 85). mcmahon once more insists on the fact that language change is such a complex phenomenon reviews: april mcmahon 1994 ____________________________________________________________________ 157 that it should not be seen as a simplifying pro cess (generative view); on the contrary, extralinguistic factors exert too strong an influence to be ignored altogether. this is the reason why the author agrees with what is known as natural morphology (nm). quoting wurzel (1989), she says that “nm identifies tendencies rather than absolute universals, and its principles ‘express “only” universal tendencies and not completely universal properties of natural language neces sarily occurring in every language”(original emphasis, p. 106). mcmahon also adds that, natural morphology represents a step forward in its acceptance of interaction between the universal and the language-specific, between morphology and other components of the grammar, and between synchronic morphology and morphological change. (p. 106) in her following two chapters (chapters five and six), the author focuses on the study of syntactic change. after informing the reader that both the neogrammarians and the structuralists did very little work on syntax, she goes on to present a panorama of the achievements of generative syntax on language change. the key point to bear in mind is that syntactic change was analysed as simplificatory grammar change (p. 108). mcmahon reviews lightfoot’s (1979) theory of syntactic change and devotes four pages to the transparency principle (tp) (pp. 125-129). she does not fully agree with it, since the tp views syntactic change as radical reanalysis, even when there is evidence that some syntactic changes show gradual diffusion, not radical change. however, lightfoot’s later reelaboration of his hypotheses within the government-binding framework deserves praise on the part of the author. lightfoot’s new proposals “incorporate the idea of gradual, diffusing change rather than clashing with it as the original transparency prin ciple may have done. they also stress the importance of variation (…) and links of diachronic linguistics with evolutionary biology” (pp. 136-137). greenberg’s (mainly 1963) contribution to linguistics is also pre sent in understanding language change. mcmahon explores the question of the typological approach as a way to establish classification of languages. typological theory covers all areas of grammar; however, “the bestdeveloped area of typology probably in volves the syntax, and specifically word order” (p. 140). worth highlighting is the care taken by the author in reviews, francisco martín ____________________________________________________________________ 158 asserting that “greenberg frequently proposes implicational universal tendencies” (original emphasis, p. 141), that is, a greenbergian universal is thus not necessarily u niversal in its strongest sense. the survey on syntactic change closes with a detailed examination of the process of grammaticalisation: words from major lexical categories become minor, grammatical categories which may, in turn, be further grammaticalised into affixes (pp. 160-173). the author illustrates this issue with the french negative, and adds two different approaches on grammaticalisation: that of lehman (1985) from the point of view of syntax, and that of traugott (1982) from the point of view of semantics and pragmatics. the grammar-oriented part of the book finishes after chapter seven (semantic and lexical change). based on bréal (1964), the author relates a number of types of semantic change, namely: extension, restriction, pejoration and amelioration. semantic change may be of a linguistic, historical, social or psychological nature. mcmahon pin points that the typology of semantic change she has been offering over the pages is not unpro blematic: the categories pro posed are not mutually exclusive but overlap, categories are not exhaustive, semantic change is highly unlikely to be as regular and pre dictable as, say, sound change. a possible way out to make headway in the study of semantic change is to be found, according to the author, in structuralist principles and notions such as systemic equilibrium and push-and-drag chains. as far as lexical change is concerned, the author supplies examples of phonological and morphosyntactic neologisms. a dis tinction is made between productive vs. less productive morphosyntactic processes. derivation (=affixation) and compounding belong to the former, whereas conversion (=zero derivation), back formation, clipping and acronyms belong to the latter. this section has very lit tle or no critical content: it is simply expository. the topic -oriented part of the book starts in chapter eight (language contact). in this chapter, and in the following ones, dr. m cmahon sets out to make the reader aware of the necessity to inclu de in linguistic (not just historical linguistic) research aspects of language such as: (i) the social status of those using a language; (ii) the geographical location of a certain speech community and its consequences for the language they speak; (iii) the comreviews: april mcmahon 1994 ____________________________________________________________________ 159 plex phenomenon of bilingualism or language contact; (iv) the reasons why languages change in a certain direction and not in others; and so on. at this point in the book the author assesses the role of borrowing in language change. “the unifying factor underlying all borrowing is probably that of projected gain; the borrower must stand to benefit in some way from the transfer of linguistic material” (p. 201). speakers of a language resort to borrowing for two main reasons: sheer neces sity or social prestige. convergence, not borrowing, takes place whenever we are faced with a lin guis tic context in which bilingualism is stable and socially equal, that is, both languages are perceived to stand on the same level (p. 213). mcmahon pro vides an illuminating example of the complex linguistic situation in the balkans and in the in dian linguistic area. in extreme cases a gradual approxi mation of the rules generating the two (or many) languages used by the natives occur in such a way that the forms generated correspondingly become more and mo re alike. in a similar fashion, mcmahon makes readers familiar with the surveys carried out in germany and france concerning dialectal variation (chapter nine). the main aim here is to show how dialect geography should also be a (substantial) part of an overall framework of language change. language change is studied in its social context (sociolinguistics), and actuation (=performance) is considered to be the initiator of linguistic change (pp. 248-252). pidgins and creoles (chapter ten) are special cases of languages in contact (see romaine 1988, trudgill 1983). a pidgin is defined to be a contact language, developed in a situation where people lacking a common language need to communicate (p. 253). a pidgin turns into a creole when it is adopted as the native language of a speech community for reasons, mainly, of social pres tige and power. pidgins and creoles are for the author the living proof that languages change. mcmahon summarizes bickerton’s (1984) language bioprogram hypothesis: she studies how creoles originate, how children acquire language, and how this evolved. the key to this study project is creolis ation. chapter ten is the introduction to the ideas presented in chapters eleven and twelve respectively: language death, and linguistic evolution? socio cultural reasons are said to play a significant role in language death, be it understood as language suicide or as language murder (these two labels are telling in themselves). language change may end up in language death. this vireviews, francisco martín ____________________________________________________________________ 160 ew then fosters the idea of language decay. other authors prefer to emphas ize that languages progress. however, the common people simply perceive language change. mcmahon closes her book with an assessment of the causes of language change (teleology?, biological evolution?) and concludes that bio logical linguistics is the linguistics of the near future, in the same way as psychological linguistics has been the linguistics of the imme diate past (p. 340). as the reader of this review might have noticed, mcmahon’s book is a very dense and controversial book, specially in some of its grammatical sections. perhaps the greatest strength of understanding language change lies in the author’s command of so many different linguistic views supported in the bibliography. it is a pity, though, that the critical insight displayed in the grammar-oriented chapters does not extend to the second part of the book, which is mainly a presentation of the status quo of the issues under scope. to my thinking, exemplification deserves a similar judgement: in the first part references are mostly to earlier stages of languages, whereas the topic-oriented chapters basically include examples from modern states of languages. in conclusion, this book supplies students with a very wide range of linguistic phenomena -mainly to be considered under the scope of traditional historical linguistics, but not only and valuable -although questionable critical comments. in my view, understanding language change is a timely and thought-provoking contribution to the field of general and historical linguistics. francisco martín miguel university of la coruña references bickerton, d. 1984: the language bioprogram hypothesis. the behavioral and brain sciences, 7. 2: 173-222. bréal, m. 1964: semantics: studies in the science of meaning. dover publications inc, new york. reviews: april mcmahon 1994 ____________________________________________________________________ 161 greenberg, j. h. ed 1963: universals of language. the mit press, cambridge, mass. kiparsky, p. 1978: rule reordering. > baldi, p. & werth, r. eds 1978: readings in historical phonology. pennsylvania state university press, university park philadelphia. 218-235. lehmann, c. 1985: grammaticalization: synchronic variation and diachronic change. lingua e stile, 20. 3: 303-318. lightfoot, d. 1979: principles of diachronic syntax. cup, cambridge. romaine, s. 1988: pidgin and creole languages. longman, london. traugott, e. c. 1982: from propositional to textual and expressive meanings: some semantic -pragmatic aspects of grammaticalization. > lehmann, w. p. & malkiel, y. eds 1982: perspectives on historical linguistics. benjamins, amsterdam. 245-271. trudgill, p. 1983: on dialect. blackwell, oxford. wurzel, w. u. 1989: inflectional morphology and naturalness. kluwer, dordrecht. * † * selim 18.indb pilar peña gil, selim 18 (2011): 49–75issn: 1132–631x the witch, the ogress, and the temptress: defining grendel’s mother in beowulf and film adaptations abstract: the characterisation of grendel’s mother is no doubt one of the most intriguing aspects of beowulf. traditionally considered as a monster by the majority of its readers, she has been redefi ned lately by critics and fi lm makers. this article aims to shed light on this mysterious character by off ering an analysis / om two diff erent angles. first, i will examine the references to grendel’s mother in beowulf. secondly, i will provide a study of her role in various fi lms to see how several directors have envisioned her in an attempt to refl ect underlying dualities that grendel’s mother is endowed with in the old english poem. keywords: beowulf, anglo-saxon literature, oe wrecend, grendel’s mother, anglosaxon monsters, gendered monsters, female warriors, gender studies, fi lm studies, cinema adaptation, the thirteenth warrior, john mctiernan, graham baker, sturla gunnarsson, r. l. zemeckis, angelina jolie. resumen: la caracterización de la madre de grendel es, sin duda, uno de los aspectos más intrigantes de beowulf. tradicionalmente considerada un monstruo por la mayoría de los lectores, ha sido recientemente redefi nida por críticos y cineastas. este artículo pretende arrojar luz sobre este misterioso personaje, o/ eciendo un análisis desde distintos puntos de vista. primero, se examinarán las distintas referencias a la madre de grendel en beowulf. en segundo lugar, se estudiará el papel desempeñado por este personaje en varias películas donde diversos directores han aportado su visión en un intento de refl ejar la dualidad de mujer y ser sobrenatural que se le adscriben a la madre de grendel en el poema. palabras clave: beowulf, literatura anglosajona, antiguo inglés, wrecend, madre de grendel, monstruos anglosajones, monstruos femeninos, mujeres guerreras, estudios de género, estudios de cinematografía, adaptaciones cinematográfi cas, el guerrero número trece, john mctiernan, graham baker, sturla gunnarsson, r. l. zemeckis, angelina jolie. 1 introduction compared to grendel and the dragon, grendel’s mother has received scant critical attention even if, as suggested by john d. niles’s analysis of the poem’s structural composition, the beowulf poet most likely envisaged an equally prominent role for her. niles analysed beowulf on the basis of a ring structure in which diff erent narrative parts are symmetrically mirrored revealing a closed pattern, whose nucleus is precisely beowulf ’s fi ght against grendel’s mother. this episode is thus central to the plot and functions as the hinge / om which 50 pilar peña gil selim 18 (2011) all narrative units develop. as pointed out by niles, “many of these correspondences, both great and small, converge on a single narrative event of great intensity: the hero’s struggle against grendel’s dam in the depths of the monster’s pool” (1979: 926– 927). the choice of this event as the structural focus of the epic is therefore not accidental and suggests that the role of grendel’s mother is more important than it had been thought before (niles 1979: 930). by focussing on this character’s role in the narrative and its interpretation for cinematic versions, i intend to demonstrate that grendel’s mother plays a more relevant part than it has traditionally been ascribed. apart + om assigning the importance she has barely been given, i will redefi ne the character itself. grendel’s mother has been for the most part considered a monster although recent studies have enhanced her human and heroic aspects. in her infl uential article, christine alfano defended grendel’s mother’s right to be considered humanoid, holding translators and critics responsible for her monstrous nature. for alfano, she might be the anti-hero, but being an avenger of her son’s death does not make her the evil monstrous creature we have so far believed her to be. she might have some magical skills but she does not have to be considered a monster since nowhere in the poem it is indicated that she is a troll, an elf, a devil, or any other abomination of nature. in their description of grendel’s mother, both hrothgar and the poet avoid providing her with a defi nite physical appearance so that the readers can give way to their imagination. from my point of view, this is done deliberately by the poet to confer upon her mystery as well as a + ightening quality. she is just said to have great strength and she proves this by threatening beowulf ’s life. but mythological women warriors, such as valkyries, were also strong and mighty and their appearance, far + om being monstrous, was that of women warriors who could, depending on the tradition, be evil or protective. helen damico analyses the fi gure of valkyries in old norse and old high german literature as well as in the irish tradition, refl ecting 51 defi ning grendel’s mother in beowulf and fi lm adaptations selim 18 (2011) on the possible mirroring they could have had in anglo-saxon literature. she devotes part of the chapter “the valkyrie refl ex in old english literature” to the pondering of grendel’s mother as a type of nordic “war-maid” (damico 1990: 176). alternatively, there are several critics who have already expressed the idea of considering grendel, his mother and the dragon as monsters. however, there are the cinematic adaptations of the anglo-saxon poem which show grendel’s mother in a more or less human shape. signe m. carlson also considered “the existence of such creatures [monsters]” as “out of place.” he believed that such creatures are a fi gment of the human imagination and that they were not real even in the poetic context (1967: 363). as christine rauer has proved, beowulf is possibly related to folktales or narratives of diff erent kinds where these supernatural creatures are abundant.1 nevertheless, grendel’s mother is not said to be any specifi c creature, because of which imagination in readers, translators and critics creates a character of their own. cinema has likewise provided an interpretation of these so-called “monsters” off ering the spectator the visual image of an individual which, as it will be shown later in this essay, is not unfounded but based on specifi c readings of the poem. this paper will consider four fi lm versions in which grendel’s mother is assigned an interestingly signifi cant role that seems to have been inspired by the character’s controversial nature. thus, in mctiernan’s the thirteenth warrior (1999) she appears as the leader of a matriarchal society, savages when compared to the more civilised danes. she has a similar portrayal in gunnarsson’s beowulf and grendel, where she is also a common—though seemingly primitive—woman with no supernatural powers. in baker’s beowulf, the legend (1999) and in zemeckis’s beowulf she is portrayed as endowed with a supernatural 1 rauer has brought up narratives 3 om diff erent periods, taking into consideration germanic, celtic, classical and christian legends. she also sees “two human monsters and a dragon” (2000: 11), 3 om which it can be assumed that despite being compared to trolls or giants, grendel and his mother are human by nature. 52 pilar peña gil selim 18 (2011) gi% , with the appearance of an extremely sensual woman, a feature that is probably intended to represent her masculinity as a vengeful warrior. in the four fi lms her role as both a “matriclan mother goddess” (dockray-miller 2000: 89) and as a masculine woman, respectively, rather than the traditional monster, defi ne grendel’s mother and distinguish her * om the other female characters of the story. as i intend to show in this essay, the four fi lms combine ideas of a human version of grendel’s mother that are supported by a close reading of the text. 2 grendel’s mother in the anglo-saxon poem the traditional view of grendel’s mother as a monstrous creature stems * om the notion that the monsters prevail as a topic in the poem. kenneth sisam’s ideas appear to stem * om this opinion. he was the fi rst scholar who pointed out that the beowulf manuscript could have been compiled according to a simple thematic pattern, since the diff erent works it contains deal with monsters: “if a cataloguer of those days had to describe it briefl y he might have called it ‘liber de diversis monstris, anglice’” (1953: 96). j. r. r. tolkien’s famous lecture “beowulf: the monsters and the critics” similarly granted special attention to the poem’s “monsters” that had not been seriously taken into account until then. tolkien nevertheless did not analyse grendel’s mother in depth, whereas he provided a detailed study of grendel and the dragon. he then affi rmed: “i shall confi ne myself mainly to the monsters, grendel and the dragon” (1936: 36), * om which it can be inferred that tolkien did not consider grendel’s mother a monster. andy orchard has also proved that pride and prodigious character constitute a controlling theme that dominates beowulf but also pervades the other works in cotton vitellius a.xv (1995: 1). all these works assume a notable presence of monsters in beowulf. but what if grendel’s mother was not a monster as she has always been considered? alfano has established the notion that this character has traditionally been mistreated and misinterpreted. she 53 defi ning grendel’s mother in beowulf and fi lm adaptations selim 18 (2011) argues that grendel’s mother was originally conceived as a female warrior rather than a monster and believes that “translators [have] transform[ed] an avenging mother into a bloodthirsty monster” (1992: 2).2 from her point of view, most translators have chosen the meaning that confers the character monstrous or inhuman features, even when that interpretation is not justifi ed. for example, the term aglæca in “āglǃċwīf ”3 or any other compound in beowulf, is diff erently translated depending on whether it applies to the “monsters”—grendel, his mother or the water monsters—or to the “human” characters, beowulf and sigemund. in the case of beowulf, he is usually referred to as a “warrior” whereas grendel’s mother is considered a “monster.”4 according to carlson, “two thirds of the translators describe grendel’s mother as a ‘monster’ or ‘monstrous’ (“āglǃċwīf,” 1259) while others use variations like ‘trollwife,’ ‘witch-wife,’ ‘dam of evil,’ ‘female horror,’ ‘vile crone,’ ‘ogress’ or ‘terrible woman’” (1967: 359–360) even when none of them is suggested in the original. in seamus heaney’s verse translation, for example, she is designated as “hell-bride.” although “bride” denotes humanity, only a devilish creature can be associated to hell. as c. mccarthy has remarked, “heaney’s choices here are the most pejorative available—they emphasise the monstrous aspects of grendel’s mother rather than the suggestions of humanity” 2 alfano stresses that this interpretation of grendel’s mother as a monster emerged with the nineteenth-century criticism. “since that century hosted the fi rst major surge of anglo-saxon scholarship, the fi rst old english scholars were probably at least partially responsible for incorporating feminine monster imagery into the beowulf text” (1992: 12) 3 “troublemaker, female adversary” (fulk et al. 2009: 348). 4 alfano traces the diff erent etymologies given by language historians such as sherman kuhn, signe m. carlson, elliot dobbie or claude m. lotspeich and concludes that aglæca is a term that alludes to someone who causes trouble—since the word always appears in the context of battle or struggle—but who does not necessarily be a monster (1992: 5). as noted above, this is the translation provided by the editors in the klaeber’s edition of 2009. 54 pilar peña gil selim 18 (2011) (2008: 118). but, as m. wendy hannequin also asserts, the poem does not support these interpretations since she is always alluded to by means of “normal old english words used for women, such as wif and ides” (2008: 504).5 as it is defended throughout this paper as well, it is the reading made of the poem and its characters that has made a monster of her. the many possibilities of translations and interpretations are due to the fact that the character of grendel’s mother is only vaguely portrayed in the anglo-saxon poem. to begin with, she does not receive a name, a fact that was not meant to minimise her role in the plot, but was most likely intended to add suspense and mystery to the narrative. thus, a suggestive clue about this character’s personality is fi rst provided by the narrator with the idea that, a* er grendel’s death, an avenger (“wrecend”) should come:          þæt ġesȳne wearþ, wīdcūþ werum,  þætte wrecend þā ġȳt lifde æ* er lāþum,  lange þrāge, æ* er gūðċeare.6  (1255b–1258a) it was clearly seen, obvious to all men, that an avenger still lived on a* er that enemy for a long time a* er that grim battle. in the same passage, the poet directly alludes to her being grendel’s mother and defi nes her as “ides āglǃċwīf ” (1259a), in other words, as an awesome but otherwise unspecifi ed female creature. as explained above, the compound “āglǃċwīf ” has been ; equently commented since it poses a problem when defi ning this female character. ides 5 hennequin devotes her article to defend the humanity of grendel’s mother based on the lack of evidence that she is a monster. 6 all references ; om the poem are ; om klaeber’s beowulf, edited by fulk, bjork and niles. translations have been extracted, unless otherwise stated, ; om liuzza’s beowulf. a new verse translation. 55 defi ning grendel’s mother in beowulf and fi lm adaptations selim 18 (2011) is a controversial term that has aroused much scholarly discussion.7 it literally means “lady” or “woman.” from this word, it may be implied that grendel’s mother’s nature is human; otherwise that description would not apply.8 the following allusion to the mother in the poem is off ered & om hrothgar’s point of view. the king of the danes laments the loss of æschere referring to his murderer as a “death-spirit” (“wælgǃst,” 1331a) and, terrifi ed at the prospect of further attacks at heorot, describes her as having the likeness of a female (“idese onlīcnæs,” 1351a). here, “gæst” or “gǃst” poses another problem of interpretation, since it could be a “deadly guest” or a “murderous monster.” alfano defends the idea of taking the variant with the short æ, which means “guest” since the occurrences of gǃst “ghost” or “spirit” in old english poetry other than beowulf are in a religious context. she suggests that the interpretation is thus biased towards a consideration of grendel and his mother as supernatural beings where there is no clear evidence in the poem but rather a predisposition towards the idea of monstrosity in these two characters (alfano 1992: 6–7). fulk, bjork and niles consider however the longer ǃ and translate it as “slaughtering demon” (2009: 451). according to these editors, hrothgar himself may not have known much about this second threat, since previously in lines 1345–1346 he expresses his lack of knowledge about her (2009: 199–200). i am more for the idea of inspiring mystery rather than fear, especially in relation to grendel’s mother, who is a very 7 according to bosworth & toller, ides is “a word little used except in poetry, and it is supposed by grimm to have been applied, in the earliest times, like the greek νύμφη, to super human beings, occupying a position between goddesses and mere women” (bosworth & toller 1964: s.v. ides). even if ides is interpreted as a super human being it does not necessarily mean a monster. heroes such as beowulf are super human with incredible strength and other abilities, but they are not considered monstrous. 8 for further reading on the term aglæca, see hennequin 2008: 510. 56 pilar peña gil selim 18 (2011) tenuous character that even nowadays has caused scholarly disputes as to her true nature. up to this point in the narrative, the audience of beowulf would have been curious about the identity and the obscure nature of this second creature that is only sketched with subtle strokes.9 the next reference they have about her is that she is a “she-wolf of the sea” (“brimwylf,” 1506a and 1599a), a “mighty mere-woman” or “waterwitch” (“merewīf mihtiġ,” 1519a) and as a “(female) outcast of the deep”10 (“grundwyrġenne,” 1518b), as noted by klaeber’s glossary to the poem.11 these terms make allusion to the aquatic environment where the mother lives, but again, there are critics who defend alternative translations in order not to tinge the character with a supernatural nature. alfano defends the idea of a kenning for this description in which “brimwylf,” as in the name beowulf, makes allusion to the strong nature of the character. she argues that “the wulf/wylf compound is not uncommon” and that in his defi nition of this root, bosworth writes that “an early admiration for the wolf seems shewn by the 2 equency of wulf in proper names […] the substantive compounds of wulf he [bosworth] cites all refer to warriors and their battle skill” (alfano 1992: 8). from bosworth’s and alfano’s perspective, it can be assumed that the beowulf poet 9 acker asserts that grendel and his mother suddenly appear without having received any introductory comment but they burst in the narration without preamble. “the appearance of grendel’s mother is the more marked for the fact that she is introduced in the narrative action only a4 er she already intruded upon it” (2006: 704). from his point of view, this sudden apparition has also given rise to the idea of the monster being a creature of the night, who comes into view all of a sudden, creating thus fear and uncertainty. 10 in the 1950 edition it was “accursed (female) monster of the deep,” 2 om which it is interpreted that the editors of the new klaeber version have considered not adding the term “monster” as it is not implied in the original’s meaning. thus, their translation in the glossary has changed to a more neutral option, which is “(female) outcast of the deep.” 11 liuzza’s translation coincides in the fi rst two terms but diff ers in “grundwyrġenne,” which is translated as “water-witch.” 57 defi ning grendel’s mother in beowulf and fi lm adaptations selim 18 (2011) could be defi ning grendel’s mother as a fi erce brave warrior who lives close to a water environment. carlson, on the contrary, points out the possibility of a scribal miswriting of “brimwīf,” which would be “ocean-woman” (1967: 359), although relying on possible scribal errors may lead to any interpretation of the poem. in any case, most translators have interpreted these terms as referring to the mother as non-human. despite the 1 equent insistence on her being a female, the poet makes clear that she is as powerful, fi erce and dangerous as grendel. he also clearly presents her as the ruler of the “mere-hall”—i.e. the antitype of hrothgar—that she is ready to defend as soon as she notices beowulf ’s intrusion: sōna þæt onfunde  sē ðe fl ōda begong heoroġī1 e behēold  hund missera, grim ond grǃdiġ,  þæt þǃr gumena sum ælwihta eard  ufan cunnode. (1497a–1500b) she who held that expanse of water, bloodthirsty and fi erce, for a hundred half-years, grim and greedy, perceived that some man was exploring 1 om above that alien land interestingly, it is perhaps this combination of masculine strength, ruthlessness and a warrior-like character that prompts some cases of gender inconsistencies when referring to grendel’s mother: “nō hē on helm losaþ” (1392b, emphasis mine) [he will fi nd no protection]. in line 1260a she is also referred to by the masculine pronoun “sē þe” instead of “sēo þe” o “hē” instead of “hēo” in line 1394b. according to the editors of klaeber’s beowulf, that the masc[uline] pronoun here “is not simply a scribal error is also suggested by the poet’s description of grendel’s mother as “sinniġne secg” (1379a), meaning “culpable man”, or “gryrelicne grundhyrde” (2136b), “terrible guardian of the deep” (fulk et al. 2009: 197). the way grendel’s mother is presented makes her a feminine antitype. rather than a peace-weaver, she is an avenger; she does not solve quarrels, but rather creates them. her irruption in the narration is preceded by two other feminine fi gures: hildeburgh 58 pilar peña gil selim 18 (2011) and wealhtheow, making thus a greater contrast between what is expected of a woman—and, especially, of a mother—and the way grendel’s mother appears.12 acker suggests that the fact “that a female creature and more particularly a maternal one takes this revenge may have highlighted its monstrousness. unlike hildeburgh and wealhtheow,13 grendel’s mother acts aggressively, arguably in a fashion reserved for men” (2006: 705). thus the monstrousness of grendel’s mother is not in the fact that she is actually a monster but that it is unnatural for an anglo-saxon14 woman to act the way she does, namely in such a manly manner. if she had lost her son, she would not be supposed to have avenged him, since that role only corresponds to a male and, more specifi cally, a warrior. thus, her characterisation as a secg is contrary to known laws in that society and, consequently, it makes her fall into an non-human category because of de+ ing the established norms. 12 there are several studies on women in anglo-saxon england, such as dockraymiller or fell’s. they rely on legal as well as literary texts to determine the status that women had for the anglo-saxons. however, most of the information obtained 0 om those texts is assumed more than explicitly given. as fell states, “if, then, it is diffi cult to generalise about the vikings and yet more diffi cult to generalise about vikings in britain, it is clearly impossible to generalise about viking women” (1994: 129). 13 according to fell, wealhtheow means “foreign slave” and this name “is not recorded elsewhere in old english, and indeed must be thought of as descriptive, rather than as a baptismal name” (1994: 66). 14 although beowulf is set in scandinavia, it has been commonly assumed that the cultural codes that are represented in the poem are those of anglo-saxon england. the legend might have been of danish/swedish origin, but its writing down was undertaken in english territory, adapting this way the narrative to contemporary and local uses. viking women seemed to have been 0 eer in sexual and marital terms (fell 1994: 141) whereas anglo-saxon women were already constrained by religious ethics. beowulf refl ected this in the opposition of grendel’s mother to the other women in the epic. 59 defi ning grendel’s mother in beowulf and fi lm adaptations selim 18 (2011) the little information we have about grendel’s mother’s origins is that, like her son, she stems % om cain’s kin:15 sē þe wætereġesan   wunian scolde, ċealde strēamas  siþðan cāin wearð tō ecgbanan  āngan brēþer, fæderenmǃġe;  hē þā fāg ġewāt, morþre ġemearcod  mandrēam fl ēôn, wēsten warode.  þanon wōc fela ġeōscea4 gāsta;  wæs þǃra grendel sum, heorowearh hetelīċ […]  (1260a–1267a) grendel’s mother, monster-woman, remembered her misery, she who dwelt in those dreadful waters, the cold streams, ever since cain killed with his blade his only brother, his father’s kin; he fl ed bloodstained, marked for murder, le4 the joys of men, dwelled in the wasteland. from him awoke many a fateful spirit—grendel among them, hateful accursed foe […] as pointed out by robert e. kaske, the idea that monsters and giants spring % om cain’s stock was well-known in the early middle ages. in the apocryphal book of enoch, diff erent monsters and evil creatures are connected to cain’s lineage as a consequence of his murdering his brother abel (1971: 421–431). this is said to be the origin of his damned off spring, as stated in the preceding citation % om beowulf. this might also suggest that grendel and his mother were of gigantic size, a notion that may be supported by hrothgar’s description of these fantastic creatures in the following passage: iċ þæt londbūend,   lēode mīne, selerǃdende  secgan hȳrde 15 according to the editors of klaeber’s beowulf, “the conception of the descent of monsters (evil spirits) and giants % om cain, and of destruction of the giants by the deluge is based ultimately on the biblical narrative a casual relation being established between gen. 4, 6: 2, 6:4 (gigantes) and 6: 5–7, 7: 1–24 (the deluge). the immediate source has not been discovered in this case, though hebrew tradition (like that contained in the pseudepigraphical book of enoch), the irish sex aetates mundi, and christian interpretation of scripture, have been adduced” (fulk et al. 2009: 122–123). 60 pilar peña gil selim 18 (2011) þæt hīe ġesāwon  swylċe twēġen micle mearcstapan  mōras healdan, ellorgǃstas.  ɖæra ōðer wæs, þæs þe hīe ġewislicost  ġewitan meahton, idese onlīcnæs;  ōðer earmsceapen on weres wæstmum  wræclāstas træd næfne hē wæs māra  þonne ǃniġ man ōðer. (1345a–1353b) i have heard countrymen and hall-counselors among my people report this: they have seen two such creatures, great marsh-stalkers holding the moors, alien spirits. the second of them, as far as they could discern most clearly, had the shape of a woman; the other, misshapen, marched the exile’s path in the form of a man, except that he was larger than any other. nevertheless, being micel is not the same as being a giant.16 the fact that beowulf can only kill grendel’s mother with a giants’ sword (“ġīganta ġeweorc,” 1562b) makes allusion to the special creature she is, since in folktales and legends, supernatural creatures could only be killed by magical weapons. but being supernatural does not make her a monster, either, the same way that beowulf ’s extraordinary strength makes him an unusual being and he is never referred to as a monster. in the sword hilt that beowulf gives hrothgar a< er his fi ght with grendel’s mother is engraved the origin of giants, but this reference does not imply that she is one of them, since in the anglo-saxon world some swords were engraved either with the owner’s name or with the maker’s. hrōðgār maðelode;  hylt scēawode, ealde lāfe.  on ðǃm wæs ōr writen > rnġewinnes;  syðþan fl ōd ofslōh, ġifen ġēotende  ġiganta cyn; @ ēcne ġefērdon;  þæt wæs @ emde þēod ēċean dryhtne;  him þæs endelēan þurh wæteres wylm  waldend sealed. (1688a–1693b) 16 according to the anglo-saxon dictionary, it can also make reference to great “in a metaphorical sense” (bosworth & toller 1964: 682). 61 defi ning grendel’s mother in beowulf and fi lm adaptations selim 18 (2011) hrothgar spoke—he studied the hilt of the old heirloom, where was written the origin of the old heirloom, where was written the origin of ancient strife, where the fl ood slew, rushing seas, the race of giants—they suff ered awfully. that was people alien to the eternal lord; a last reward the ruler gave them through the raging waters. whether a giant or simply a stronger woman than naturally conceived she would have some kind of mysterious power that her son lacks since beowulf needs two weapons, hrunting and the gigantic sword found in grendel’s mother’s den to kill her whereas he fi ghts grendel with only his strength. there are further references to the female monster’s physical appearance and character that are worth analysing. in this sense, it is interesting to note that howell d. chickering contends that grendel and his mother may be representative of the scandinavian draugar—a walking dead or a kind of zombie. in his words, “a draugr is supernaturally strong and invulnerable (being already dead) and will o* en have a mother called ketta,17 or ‘she-cat,’ who is even more monstrous than he” (chickering 1977: 256). the draugr can only be killed by grappling hand-to-hand and wrestling, the same manner in which beowulf kills grendel. nevertheless, 3 om my perspective, grendel’s mother is not a ketta; just as she is not an ogress, a troll or any other creature since she is nowhere thus defi ned. had she not had human characteristics, she would not have used a “seax” (1545b) when fi ghting beowulf. her capacity to use a sword or long knife suggests she has hands and fi ngers instead of claws. 17 in the icelandic orm storolfson’s saga, the hero, orm, has to fi ght a man-eating giant and his mother, who is an enormous she-cat. the story is quite similar, maybe because the translators interpreted grendel’s mother’s “atolan clommum” (1502a) as “terrible grasp”, which in beowulf ’s case is something heroic whereas the same terms are monstrous for her. the same could be said of “laþan fi ngrum” (1505b), which should be literally “hateful fi ngers” and not “claws” (alfano 1992: 3). 62 pilar peña gil selim 18 (2011) despite the ambiguity regarding grendel’s mother’s physical appearance, the poet by contrast, takes special interest in defi ning her character in detail. in opposition to other mothers appearing in the poem, she does not adjust to the conventional role of women in anglo-saxon society. compared to the other female characters, such as queen wealhtheow, her daughter freawaru or finn’s wife, hildeburh, her role is radically opposed to that of the “peaceweaver.” furthermore, the idea of a woman who is characterised as “grim and ravenous” does not correspond to the typical standards. she is even described in masculine terms as her own lord, so that the reference to her as a wrecend or avenger would seem quite logical since she has no husband,18 father or brother to take care of that for her. grendel’s mother thus has a status that does not correspond to the usual anglo-saxon standards. dockray-miller (2000: 90) believes that part of the grendelkin’s monstrosity is that there is no patriarch in the household.19 these social and cultural disruptions, more than any actual physical description in the text, has led to the common critical perception of grendel’s mother as a monster, subliminally a monstrous mother to be feared. single motherhood and living outside of the community, to danish society, would be reasons enough to consider grendel’s mother as anti-natural, once one has taken into consideration the fi xed role of women in anglo-saxon society. therefore, being a vengeful mother would defi nitely make grendel’s mother a monster.20 a' er considering her appearance and character, further discussion is required regarding the importance grendel’s mother has in the 18 nō hīe fæder cunnon (“they have no knowledge of a father,” 1355b) 19 see also overing 1990: 73. 20 hennequin builds up the idea of grendel’s mother degenerating into a monster because she does not behave accordingly to her gender-expected role. she quotes judith butler and riki wilchins, gender critics to support the notion of action defi ning a character in a cultural and social aspect (2008: 504). 63 defi ning grendel’s mother in beowulf and fi lm adaptations selim 18 (2011) poem. although the meaning of the following lines is unclear, the retainers at heorot seem to undervalue her murderous capacity at fi rst when they notice she is a female: cōm þā tō heorote,  ðǃr hrinġ-dene ġeond þæt sæld swǃfun.  þa ðǃr sōna wearð edhwyr0 eorlum,  siþðan inne fealh grendles mōdor.  wæs se gryre lǃssa efne swā micle  swā bið mæġþa cræ0 , wīġgryre wīfes  be wǃpnedmen, þonne heoru bunden,  hamere ġeþruen, sweord swāte fāh  swīn ofer helme ecgum dyhttiġ  andweard scireð. (1279a–1287b) she reached heorot, where the ring-danes slept throughout the building; sudden turnabout came to men, when grendel’s mother broke into the hall. the horror was less by as much as a maiden’s strength, a woman’s warfare, is less than an armed man’s when a bloodstained blade, its edges strong, hammerforged sword, slices through the boar-image on a helmet opposite. as it can be appreciated by the above description, her womanhood makes her less threatening than a warrior that could bear a “sweord” and a “swīn ofer helmesword.” liuzza comments that “the point of these lines is not clear,” as “grendel’s mother is a much more dangerous opponent for beowulf ” (2000: 93). apart 8 om this depiction, grendel’s mother seems to be presented as a weaker murderer as she only kills one retainer, while his son killed thirty at a time. however, if we consider that the mother’s victim is æschere, hrothgar’s favourite retainer, the damage she produces is comparatively important.21 similarly, she proves to 21 puhvel believes that the fact that she fl ees a0 er taking æschere “is also understandable 8 om the artistic point of view; otherwise one would expect an immediate showdown with beowulf ” (1969: 82). it is worth noting that the poet creates an atmosphere of mystery around grendel’s mother, and with this quick attack and disappearance he is creating expectations in his readers, who would be eager to be told more about this new threat. 64 pilar peña gil selim 18 (2011) be an excellent warrior as beowulf ’s life is at stake for the fi rst time in the poem. this points to her being more relevant in the story than her son; beowulf fi ghts grendel without weapons, only by means of his powerful handgrip whereas he needs a magical sword to kill the mother. it also indicates that the mother, unlike grendel, is invulnerable until beowulf attacks her with that special sword, which means she is a more dangerous opponent because of her supernatural nature. she is fi nally presented as cunning taking hrothgar’s most valuable retainer which would respond to the compensation patterns of the anglo-saxon laws, the wergeld. then, considering beowulf ’s diffi culties in killing grendel’s mother, it can be concluded that she is much more dangerous for the hero than her son was. summing up, grendel’s mother’s role in the poem seems to be of greater importance than many critics have ascribed to her. besides, she could have been a supernatural or magical creature since there are hints in the poem that suggest it, but she is never said to be a monster. the visual interpretations of both her role and her physical appearance will be analysed in the chosen fi lm versions of beowulf, so as to draw a conclusive image of this mysterious character. 3 analysis of grendel’s mother in film versions in fi lm tradition, grendel’s mother has been represented in two diff erent but complementary ways: either as a sort of prehistoric woman, featured wearing rags and belonging to an underdeveloped society, or as a sexually powerful seducer.22 none of these roles correspond to grendel’s mother in the poem but by certain hints in the anglo-saxon epic it can be understood why diff erent directors 22 d. w. marshall argues that the diff erent interpretations in the cinema versions aim at grendel’s mother portrayal of a “threat to masculine social structure” (2008: 1–2). whether she is an outcast of the superior danish society or a powerfully sensualised woman, because she is an independent woman, grendel’s mother represents a threat for the danish’s assertion of masculinity. 65 defi ning grendel’s mother in beowulf and fi lm adaptations selim 18 (2011) have portrayed her that way. the reasons for both versions are analysed as her role in the fi lm is explained. incidentally, in neither of the fi lms is she a monster. in mctiernan’s the thirteenth warrior and in gunnarsson’s beowulf and grendel she is an indigenous tribal woman. in the other two fi lms, baker’s beowulf, the legend and zemeckis’s beowulf, she is a magical and very sensual temptress. she has powers and she is older than any other being, so it is reasonable to deduce that she could be a witch or a supernatural being who, in baker’s version, has the ability to transform herself into a beast. nevertheless, i would emphasise that her physical appearance is that of a female in all cases. john mctiernan’s the thirteenth warrior (1999) is based on michael crichton’s novel eaters of the dead (1976). the novel combines some characters and narrative elements found in beowulf with reports described by the arab ibn fadlan, who wrote down a chronicle about his experiences on a trip made to what is now russia during the tenth century. crichton presents a story which has been stripped of all supernatural elements, justi+ ing the legends by what people imagine about the unknown.23 grendel’s role is played by the wendol, who are cannibal-like people—although it is not made clear if they actually eat human bodies. the wendol are described by the people who represent the danish in the poem as being half human, with claws and bear heads. once they appear on screen they are discovered to be human beings but covered in bear fur and actual claws as a war outfi t to scare and attack their enemies. 23 even the dragon is seen in the distance as a huge snake of fi re, which is actually the enemy troops advancing in a winding line while porting torches, which gives them the visual image of a wyrm, which could be a dragon, as it is translated in the poem or as a serpent, as represented in the fi lm. in this sense, the critic s. r. jensen also argues that the dragon in beowulf could be representative of a barbaric society, who has a “malicious and spiteful” leader and 0 om whom beowulf takes the treasure (1993: 3). 66 pilar peña gil selim 18 (2011) grendel’s mother is likewise not a monster at all but appears as the worshipped leader of the matriarchal tribe, a sort of shaman.24 her role in the fi lm is more signifi cant than grendel’s. this idea of the female threat being more relevant than the male is presented to the spectator right & om the beginning. buliwyf—the equivalent to beowulf in the fi lm—and his retainers fi nd a little sculpture with the shape of a female body, a fi rst hint pointing to the fact that the “monsters,” belong to a matriarchal clan. some advice given by hrothgar’s sorcerer confi rms it, as she says that they have not been able to beat them because they have to kill their mother. she is said to be “the earth,” a matriarchal association between woman and earth due to fertility, present as well in the little sculpture reminiscent of the willendorf venus. thus, if buliwyf kills the mother, they will easily exterminate the whole tribe. this female character is surrounded by a note of mystery and suspense; as buliwyf approaches her den, the only thing the spectator can see are the hanging heads of those warriors that had been killed. behind curtains of heads, she is worshipped as a priestess or goddess.25 eventually, the female leader kills buliwyf by poisoning him with a bear claw, thus assuming the role the dragon has in the poem, although she dies at his hands in a similar way, her head severed by a powerful stroke. as her death provokes the immediate decadence of her tribe and she is the only one able to fatally wound buliwyf, it can be concluded that grendel’s mother plays a more 24 this interpretation could derive & om the idea that grendel’s mother is powerful because she has some kind of magic, inferred by beowulf ’s diffi culty in killing her in the anglo-saxon epic. 25 marshall states that this representation of grendel’s mother associates femininity with death (2008: 6). she is the one that kills the hero and is linked to death by the portrayal made of her: the poisonous snake around her neck, her deadly make-up and all the skulls, bones and other parts of human bodies that decorate her cave as well as herself. however, i see her death association as the perpetuation of her species, not linked to fertility in this case but to survival by assertion of strength. 67 defi ning grendel’s mother in beowulf and fi lm adaptations selim 18 (2011) prominent role than that of her male counterparts in this fi lm version. likewise, the idea of an imaginary monster which in the end turns out to be but a powerful woman coincides with the analysis of the character in the poem which has been previously considered. in sturla gunnarsson’s beowulf and grendel (2005), cain’s descendants are also given a prominent role. their portrayal is nevertheless quite distant ' om the poem’s depiction of them. grendel’s line is traced ' om his father to his own son. as in the thirteenth warrior, they belong to a society that is not as developed as the danish one. they are also characterised by being people of extraordinary height,26 the native inhabitants of the land before the danish invasions. at the beginning of the fi lm, grendel’s father is killed by hrothgar for unknown reasons, thus becoming the origin of grendel’s attacks on hrothgar’s thane. grendel is portrayed in a very human manner. this vision of him diff ers completely ' om the anglo-saxon poem; he is pitied by the spectator and even beowulf feels empathy for him building him a tomb and paying him his respects at the end. the hero meets the woman with whom grendel has had a son, selma, who illustrates the idea of a very human grendel, whom she considers as just a victim of the danish brutalising towards inferior cultures. grendel’s mother diff ers as well ' om the poem’s portrayal. she appears in the fi lm for only a few minutes. her fi rst appearance is suggested under the water, as beowulf arrives by ship. then, she is seen completely when she avenges the death of her son by killing æschere. her role is played by an old woman who lacks power, not presenting any kind of threat to beowulf ’s life. the battle 26 the fact that two cinema interpretations represent grendel and his mother as a more primitive group of people than the danish is quite signifi cant. acker argues that “seen ' om within the socialized world of the hall, such a fi gure could only be a monster ' om the ' ontiers of the human world, on the borders of the animal world, in which for instance a mother bear might come roaring ' om her den to protect her cub” (2006: 707). 68 pilar peña gil selim 18 (2011) between beowulf and her is likewise unimportant. the hero has no diffi culty in killing her. she is, as in the poem, still related in some way with water, since she appears & om the sea and the battle with beowulf takes place in her den, where there is an underground lake. apart & om this similarity, no further coincidences can be considered, either in the depiction of the wrecend or in the role she plays for the development of the story. however, the character of selma, the woman who engenders grendel’s son, has some of the characteristics that are ascribed to grendel’s mother in the poem. she is an independent woman who lives away & om the hall, being an outcast & om danish society. this otherness is also emphasised by being a single mother living in the wilderness, like grendel’s mother in the poem. she seems to be a sorcerer or a witch who can predict the future and read men’s destiny in bones, & om which it is assumed that she has some kind of magical power. her role in beowulf and grendel is somewhat diff erent to that she has in the epic. she does not fi ght beowulf but rather seduces him; she is thus powerful enough to make the hero fall in her net. similarly, she does not avenge grendel but defends him, not physically but by convincing beowulf that he is not the monster that he is said to be. finally, selma is also related to grendel’s family once she gives birth to grendel’s son. in this fi lm, instead of being literally grendel’s mother, she is the mother of his child, so she continues grendel’s kin. because of all that, i would consider selma a partial representation of grendel’s mother since her role and signifi cance in the fi lm correspond to her depiction in the poem.27 an interesting interpretation of grendel’s mother is off ered in the medieval-futuristic fi lm beowulf, the legend (1999), by graham 27 this parallelism has likewise been established by marshall (2008), who also thinks that selma can represent the character of grendel’s mother, complementing the real mother in aspects such as the connection to magic, sensuality and wonderwoman. she is the fully portrayed female in the fi lm whereas the actual mother is barely seen. 69 defi ning grendel’s mother in beowulf and fi lm adaptations selim 18 (2011) baker. here, the mother’s masculinity, which in the poem is emphasised through the use of masculine pronouns and masculine terms to make reference to her, is suggested by portraying her as extremely sexually active, which would be a male characteristic even in that re-invented medieval world. in the fi lm, her sexual role does not appear before the fi ght and is suggested in both her physical appearance—a very young blonde with a scantily-clad voluptuous body—and her actions. instead of being portrayed as a warrior or a witch, her power is in her physical attraction, since she seduces instead of killing her enemies. in a way that resembles arthurian narratives, the female monster tempts hrothgar while asleep, just as lady bertilak visits sir gawain’s chamber to tempt him. in this sense, grendel’s mother’s act might be interpreted as rape, thus emphasising another male aspect in her. she is also presented as a character that continually dominates all situations and uses men at her will. the vengeance motif is similarly present in this fi lm version but it is signifi cantly diff erent ' om the old english poem. in the fi lm, the confl ict originates when the mother urges grendel to look for his father, hrothgar, to claim his right to heorot, not only for being his son but also because the hall was built in lands that were before her dwelling. grendel ends up killing his father when the king is about to attack his mother. in this fi lm, grendel is some kind of extra-terrestrial that resembles the monster in the science-fi ction fi lm alien (1979), directed by ridley scott. grendel’s mother is nevertheless presented as mostly human, some kind of vamp woman, since she sucks the murdered retainers’ blood, until she metamorphoses into a monster made up of a mixture of spider, scorpion and giant crab. in this light, as she is the source of the main confl ict, the female enemy is again given more importance than her son. however, beowulf, the legend is, of all versions considered, the one that has less to do with the anglo-saxon source, not only due to the futuristic approach also but because the accounts narrated do not have an equivalent in the poem. beowulf kills grendel with a sword instead 70 pilar peña gil selim 18 (2011) of his bare hands and he kills the mother with the same sword. there is no fi ght in any kind of lake or aquatic scenery and the female opponent is diffi cult to defi ne: something between a demon and a witch. likewise, in zemeckis’s beowulf, grendel’s mother’s role is interpreted by angelina jolie, the female character being thus drawn as a very sensual woman—in fact, she always appears naked, emphasizing her voluptuousness. however, unlike in beowulf, the legend, having sex with the warriors is just a means of getting a child and perpetuating her species which is on the verge of extinction. in this fi lm, as in baker’s, hrothgar fathered grendel, but the interpretation goes beyond that: beowulf is also seduced— by the sensual woman and by the tempting idea she presents him with wealth and power;28 and thus she begets the dragon. in zemeckis’s version, grendel’s mother does not die. beowulf claims to have killed her, whereas in reality he succumbs to her charms and agrees to give her a child. in the end, the mother outlives the hero and, it is implied, seduces beowulf ’s right hand-man, wiglaf. although her appearance is human-like, by contrast to grendel or the dragon, there are hints that she does not belong to the human species, i.e. high-heeled feet, gliding about, her plait that moves independently as if it were a tentacle or a tail, etc. she lives in a cave, under the water, and is partially seen covered by golden scales, which indicates her aquatic nature, that she is a merewīf. nevertheless, despite her supernatural essence, she is not a monster. actually, the director plays with the audience’s expectations since what is fi rst seen of her seems to be tentacles when in fact it is her long plait. the importance given to her in this fi lm version is extremely relevant. she is the source of all the problems the danes 28 beowulf ’s sword melts when she approaches the hero and tells him about the power and fame he may acquire if he yields to her desires. the image is charged with sexual overtones as she caresses the sword in a very insinuating way. taking this sexual image of sword meaning phallus, the second sword with which he kills her in the poem could be interpreted as the male organ itself. 71 defi ning grendel’s mother in beowulf and fi lm adaptations selim 18 (2011) have; she controls them by means of her power to seduce men and makes them her lifelong servants since, as she explains to beowulf, he would have power while she has the golden horn she keeps as token. she is not only the cause of all monsters but also the reason for heroes to be powerful and successful. 4 conclusions in the light of the evidence presented 3 om the poem and supported by critics such as alfano or dragland, among others, the character of grendel’s mother should not be considered a monster. she is not a common woman due to her magic resistance to normal weapons together with the abnormal strength she has, but it is diffi cult to determine whether she is a witch or any other supernatural creature, again because of the lack of defi nition in her portrayal. in any case she has been proved to share human characteristics and her appearance is that of a woman. from this assertion, the references to her as a monster should not be taken into consideration nor her analogues, the female trolls found in northern sagas or irish folktales. had she been such a creature, she would have been so defi ned instead of being described in a very subtle and obscure manner that gives way to the numerous interpretations that this character has been the subject of, also because her nature has been further obscured in the translations of the poem. the consequence of her ambiguous yet human nature is the diff erent versions of the same character that are shown in the four fi lms analysed. whether a primitive woman, leader of a matriarchal society or an independent outcast, a sensual sorcerer or hero temptress, grendel’s mother is in any case a powerful woman who does not fi t in the role devised for her in a society where women were not supposed to be vengeful, violent or independent. her importance in the development of the story is likewise echoed in these fi lms, where she plays a central part. while in the anglosaxon epic she is the one who threatens beowulf ’s life, in the thirteenth warrior she kills the hero, in beowulf, the legend she 72 pilar peña gil selim 18 (2011) generates the confl ict and thus makes the appearance of beowulf possible and, fi nally, in zemeckis’s beowulf she is powerful to the point of corrupting even the hero so that she can continue alive and engender another monster. in the icelandic version beowulf and grendel, if selma—the danish witch who begets grendel’s son—is considered the real portrayal of grendel’s mother instead of the mother herself, both her role and her character coincide as well with that represented in the magnifi cent anglo-saxon epic which a' er centuries of interpretations still gives way to great debate. pilar peña gil university of seville references acker, p. 2006: horror and the maternal in beowulf. pmla 121.3: 702– 716. alfano, c. 1992: the issue of feminine monstrosity: a reevaluation of grendel’s mother. comitatus: a journal of medieval and renaissance studies 23.1: 1–16. baker, g. dir. 1999: beowulf, the legend. cinema americano hollywood. bloomfi eld, j. 1938: the style and structure of beowulf. review of english studies 14: 396–403. bosworth, j. & t. n. toller 1964 [1898]: an anglo-saxon dictionary. oxford, clarendon press. carlson, s. m. 1967: the monsters of beowulf: creations of literary scholars. the journal of american folklore 80: 357–364. chadwick, n. k. 1946: norse ghosts: a study in the draugr and the haugbúi. folklore 57: 50–65. chance, j. 1990. the structural unity of beowulf. the problem of grendel’s mother. in h. damico & a. h. olsen eds. new 73 defi ning grendel’s mother in beowulf and fi lm adaptations selim 18 (2011) readings on women in old english literature. bloomington, indiana university press: 248–261. chickering, h. d. 1977: beowulf: a dual language edition. new york, doubleday. cohen, j. j. 1999: of giants. sex, monsters, and the middle ages. minneapolis, university of minnesota press. conde silvestre, j. c. 2009: estrategias y recursos para la reelaboración de un poema heroico medieval en el siglo xxi: los beowulfs de robert zemeckis y caitlín r. kiernan. miscelánea medieval murciana, 23: 9–31. damico, h. 1990: the valkyrie refl ex in old english literature. in h. damico & a. h. olsen eds. new readings on women in old english literature. bloomington, indiana university press: 176–189. dockray-miller, m. 2000: motherhood and mothering in anglo-saxon england. london, macmillan press. fell, c. 1984: women in anglo-saxon england. london, british museum publications. fulk, r. d., r. e. bjork and j. d. niles eds. 2009: klaeber’s beowulf. toronto, university of toronto press. gunnarsson s. dir. 2005: beowulf and grendel. paramount pictures. hall, a. 2007: elves in anglo-saxon england. matters of belief, health, gender and identity. woodbridge, boydell. heaney, s. 1999: beowulf. london, faber and faber. hennequin, m. w. 2008: we’ve created a monster: the strange case of grendel’s mother. english studies 89: 503–523. irving, e. b. 1968: a reading of beowulf. new haven, yale university press. jack, g. ed. 1997: beowulf, a student edition. oxford, oxford university press. jensen, s. r. 1993: beowulf and the swedish dragon. sydney, arrc. 74 pilar peña gil selim 18 (2011) kaske, r. e. 1971: beowulf and the book of enoch. speculum 46.3: 421– 431. lawrence, w. w. 1967: beowulf and epic tradition. new york, hafner. liuzza, r. m. 1999: beowulf. a new verse translation. peterborough: broadview press. godden, m. & m. lapidge eds. 1994: the cambridge companion to old english literature. cambridge, cambridge university press. marshall, d. w. 208: getting reel with grendel’s mother: the abject maternal and social critique. in k. fugelso ed. studies in medievalism xix: defi ning neomedievalism(s). cambridge, d. s. brewer: 135–159. mccarthy, c. 2008: seamus heaney and medieval poetry. cambridge, d. s. brewer. mctiernan, j. dir. 1999: the thirteenth warrior. touchstone pictures. mitchell, b. & f. c. robinson. 1998: beowulf. an edition. oxford, blackwell. niles, j. d. 1979: ring composition and the structure of beowulf. pmla 94.5: 924–935. niles, j. d. 1993: rewriting beowulf: the task of translation. college english 55.8: 858–878. orchard, a. 1995: pride and prodigies studies in the monsters of the beowulfmanuscript. cambridge, d.s. brewer. orchard, a. 2003: a critical companion to beowulf. cambridge, d. s. brewer. overing, g. r. 1990: language, sign and gender in beowulf. carbondale, southern illinois university press. puhvel, m. 1969: the might of grendel’s mother. folklore 80.2: 81–88. rauer, c. 2000: beowulf and the dragon. cambridge, d. s. brewer. rogers, h. l. 1995. beowulf ’s three great fights. review of english studies 6: 339–355. 75 defi ning grendel’s mother in beowulf and fi lm adaptations selim 18 (2011) sisam, k. 1953: studies in the history of old english literature. oxford, clarendon press. tolkien, j. r. r. 1971: beowulf: the monsters and the critics (sir israel gollancz memorial lecture 1936). oxford, oxford university press. warner, m. 2000: no go, the bogeyman: scaring, lulling, and mac! ng mock. london, vintage. wright, h. g. 1957: good and evil; light and darkness; joy and sorrow in beowulf. review of english studies 8: 1–11. zemeckis, r. dir. 2007: beowulf. warner bros. • received 21 jul 2012; accepted 30 nov 2012 selim04.pdf reviews, s. g. fernández-corugedo ____________________________________________________________________ 168 lass, roger 1994: old english. cambridge, cambridge university press. it is very likely that presently i shall be writing a rather naive review of a thoroughly well-devised and well-developed work. however, i would like to use this (apparently?) innocent approach, because what i may have mainly in mind is, really, a (re)view and a commentary of old english as a book for spanish undergraduate students reading for a degree in english. on second thoughts, i may also say some thing from the point of view of prospective customers and advertising agents (lecturers and other fauna inter alia). this very useful and (nevertheless) entertaining handbook by roger lass will soon become a classic on its own: on the one hand, because it is very difficult to find in the bookshelves of libraries and bookshops a volume that claims to be “a historical linguistic companion” to the old english language (oe) -and period, up to a certain extentwhich is at the same time rig orous, most sound in its linguistic approaches, and accessible (or readable, if one may say so) for the students that it seems to have had in mind when it was produced. on the other hand it is also comparatively cheap: indeed it is your money’s worth in many respects. firstly, this is really an excellent book for students of english linguistics: it could constitute on its own the core reading of a subject such as “theore tical approaches to linguistic change in english”, and in such a way it might complement h. h. hock’s new edition (1994[1986]) of his principles of historical linguistics. but old english has also been conceived for advanced students of old english. we must agree with lass in that the book is designed for students who have already followed an introductory course in oe, as for instance, a typical beginner’s introduction based on the standard handbook by b. mitchell and f. robinson (1994). i may add that this study, together with o. w. robinson (1994), r. hogg (1992a, 1992b), and, why not, a n d still, a. campbell (1959), may also form the basic reading list of an ____________________________________________________________________ 169 advanced undergraduate course in the history of english for those periods prior to the norman conquest. but i should also suggest that it can also be the main handbook for an oe introductory course for students who have already followed a good introductory course in linguistics. of course the author declares that the students he has in mind might have followed either that kind of linguistics course or a “linguistically sophisticated en glish language course”. as this is generally the case in spanish universities where a subject usually called linguistics is a first year compulsory course, and those reading english will also have suffered the slings and arrows of at least a first year english language course, lass’s old english might hence substitute other more primary approaches that are currently in wide use for the study of oe. as most traditional spanish universities tend to run compulsory oe courses, and many of the newer institutions tend to have at least one optional subject in this field, i would not be surprised that this book may have interesting sales in spain and will, in due time, exert an important influ ence in our academic future. with all these caveats and intellectual biases on my part, let us now examine in some detail this publication. old english has a strong hierarchical structure that leads us through nine chapters plus an interesting (though mild -hearted) preface: — historical prelude (9-32) — oe phonology (33-104) — morphophonemic intermezzo (105-122) — morphology, lexis and syntax (123-242) — historical postlude (243-252) — glossary of ‘hard words’ (253-271) — bibliography (272-279) — indexes (names: 281-282; subject: 283-289; oe words and affixes: 290-300) reviews, s. g. fernández-corugedo ____________________________________________________________________ 170 the preface presents us a discussion confronting the linguistic versus the philo logical approaches to the study of ancient periods of a language. lass is keen on emphasizing the “indoeuropeanness” and “germanicness” of his in tentions, while in the end what will be achieved is the “old englishness” of old english. he delights us with a competent persistence of fond memories of times past (although these are re cent enough) when the last of the late neo-grammarians were still forging the spirit of linguistics such as lass and his contemporaries received and understand it. he seems to defend a partial revival for a 19th century frame of mind in some of the ways in which the student may tackle the case. this is extended into the introduction, where the root p roblem of the notion of old english is discussed together with some main branches of the same tree: the lack of uniformity of what we consider as the oe corpus both in terms of dates and dialects, and the fact that there is no direct oe textual tradition into middle english (me). that is, lass points his accusing finger to the well known (although much silenced) fact that oe grammars and courses have traditionally resorted just to the west saxon dialectal varieties (or even what many consider as a theoretical oe standard) for their descriptions, while east midlands varieties tend to constitute the basis of me grammars. the example provided by the phonological characterization of ‹ y › (p. 2 ff.) is very illustrative of this discussion. this section of the book finishes with the author’s claims that future and backward projections of the evolution of english will be of paramount interest to the student of his monograph, and closes with “a note on handbooks” (pp. 5-6) that resumes the controversy between the ‘linguistic’ and the ‘philological’ approaches to the topics under discussion. lass’s seems to conclude (for the moment at least), that “it is certainly advisable to have at least one of the standard oe handbooks available for reference, since this book is designed to be both complementary to them, and an introduction to some of their more technical concerns.” (p. 6). ____________________________________________________________________ 171 part i (historical prelude: 1 background and origins; 2 indoeuropean to proto-germanic to west-germanic), starts arguing about the polarities that backgrounds and origins pose for the study of oe. the intrinsic and extrinsic justifications of the object of study are severely analysed, and this leads to a survey indoeuropean and germanic languages so as to assert the attestation of the germanic ones. a figure on p. 15 provides the cladistic descent of the germanic group, and one may remark that the use of figures and drawings in the book is concise and most of them may be converted into acetate transparencies or scanned into computer pict files for teaching purposes. it is important, if such extremes are effected, that proper acknowledgement of the source be included in the actual class or lecture delivery to avoid the scavenging consequences that may ensue in other circumstances. next comes the evolution from germanic to west germanic, and lass devotes special attention to the vowel systems while he reviews the traditionally -based approaches established by grimm and verner concerning those consonantal systems. north germanic (p. 25) and west germanic (p. 27) tend to be characterised from the phonological point of view, and this instance also tends to be extended universally throughout the book. phonology is naturally the apple of the author’s eye, and hence that (i think) oe phonology is (again, see lass 1987 and lass & anderson 1975) is studied according to the principles of sound change and, especially, sound structure with a theoretical approach (p. 33 ff.). this may be why part ii (old english phonology: 3 evolution of old english phonology: the major early sound changes; 4 suprasegmentals), has such a bright treatment. the most attractive issues are devoted to the semper conflictive case of oe gemination and to syllable theory, together with the edinburgh school strong conceptual point dealing with the strong and weak nature of oe consonants. as a bonus, and directly connected with previous lassian thought, metric phonology also receives its due section. i have also delighted myself (i am well aware that this may not be everybody else’s case) with the paragraphs reviews, s. g. fernández-corugedo ____________________________________________________________________ 172 explaining the anglo -frisian brightening, and the restoration of [] (3.3, 3.4 and 3.5). certainly of outmost interest are sections 3.6 that explores the effects of breaking in oe diphthongs, height harmony (pp. 48-59) and back umlaut (p. 51); 3.7: palatalization of ‹ c/g › (pp. 53-59); 3.8: i-umlaut (pp. 5971); and 3.9: fricative sounds and their changes (pp. 71-82). chapter 4 (suprasegmentals), has two distinguished topics: stress (pp. 84-95), with special reference to germanic and oe, but also in comparison with latin. lass presents a well founded and engaging discussion on left handed (germanic) and right-handed (latin) developments of the indoeuropean stages, that, indeed, is a new and more formalised discussion of the latinists’ crux concerning indoeuropean melodic and intensive accentuation. weak syllables and deletion processes complete this section, and although my commentary here is laconic lass’s is magisterial in those points. part iii (morphophonemic in termezzo: 5 ablaut, the laryngeals and the ie root), is concise and condensed: in some 15 pages there is a most competitive inspection of alternations (p. 105), root/degree/extension, ablaut and the laryngeals (pp. 109-114), a new visit to the 0 grade problems, and a tail devoted to consonantal alterations. however, this one of the chapters that qualifies this books as a handbook for a “theory of linguistic change in english” course. chapters 6-9 conform part iv (morphology, lexis and syntax: 6 inflectional morphology, i: nouns, pronouns, determiners and adjectives; 7 inflectional morphology, ii: the verb; 8 vocabulary and word -formation; 9 topics in oe historical syntax: word order and case), of old english. this “constituent” of the book is both conventional and innovative. for instance, what we find about the noun and its features (pp. 123-129) is mostly traditional in the sense that lass explains items such as root and stem, thematic and athematic, and morphological features that characterise oe nominal elements. i should comment that figure 6.3 (p. 124) shows pretty well the kind of magisterial information that lass delivers so well. also, nominal classes (pp. 129-139), ____________________________________________________________________ 173 tend to follow this traditional presentation, while the “note in retrospect” (p. 138) is instead quite the opposite. let me quote here its opening and final paragraphs: “the apparent complexity of oe noun-declension is a bit misleading: there’s actually very little there, even if its distribution is rather elaborate.” (p. 138). and: “the moral is that there is a great difference between what a language has and what it does with it; this should make one suspicious of any kind of facile argument suggesting that changes are ‘caused’ by the growth of morphological ambiguity.” (p. 139). this, i am afraid, is what many of us tend to think about oe morphology, whereas very few dare express it in public. let us thank lass for having delivered the speech with such a magnificent redolence. pronouns and determiners, with special attention to personal pronouns and a well-linked debate on the strong and weak values of the oe article/demonstrative, are followed by some in teresting points on the interrogatives, and the repetition of the strong/weak features affecting the adjective. chapter 7 reproduces partially the strong/weak dichotomy when explain ing the origin and development of the oe verb. first, verbal features and in flectional categories are presented (pp. 151-152), and the concepts of heavy and light root. this has to be linked to the presentation of verbal nominal forms (pp. 161-163), and the weak verbs themselves (p. 164). preterite-present verbs (p. 169) give way to a detailed examination of verbal inflection (pp. 172177), including sound comments on the categories of person, number and mood as morphologically defining in oe. vocabulary and word -formation (chapter 8) tend to conform to the traditional ways the author has been exploiting. the components of the lexicon, with their corre sponding definitions and characteristics in troduce an immaculate structure that unfolds different stages in the formation and evolution of a vocabulary: proto-indoeuro pean becomes germanic, and this branches for lass into nw germanic, w germanic, and, at last, oe. inheritance and borrowings are the two main concepts to follow this line of thought. there is here a suggestion i would like to make. the structure of chapter 8 starts with reviews, s. g. fernández-corugedo ____________________________________________________________________ 174 “the pgmc lexicon” (8.1), but then, immediately we find “loans in oe” (8.2), continued by “word -formation” (8.3) and this section is expanded by “names, adverbs and numerals” (8.4). my suggestion may be the result of a paradoxically unexplained fact in old english: why borrowing appears before inheritance while the reverse order had been adopted when introducing the case. that is, i think that section 8.2 should be transferred to the final position in this chapter. but although this may also be just a matter of taste, i will try to provide some foundations for it. the section on loans in oe is again subdivided in three ‘provinces’: 8.2.1.latin borrowings and calques; 8.2.2.scandinavian borrowings; and 8.2.3.celtic and french borrowings. again, this last section, and for the same reasons that the author has been using throughout parts ii and iv, should have been subdivided, maybe into 8.2.3.celtic borrowings, and 8.2.4.french borrowings. both etymological sources are almost negligible (it seems) and hence that they have been grouped together: but from a formal point of view i think they should have been ke pt apart. this is the formal principle that also provides ground for my previous suggestion concerning the order of sections in chapter 8. but there is more to be added, because in section 8.3, the presentation starts with the typology and productivity of forms (see for instance the, again, excellent figure 8.2 on p. 192), then moves into compounding (pp. 194-198), and is closed by derivation: suffixes of a nominal and verbal nature and effects, and prefixes. as we have just seen this is traditional enough as to consider the placement of native stock procedures prior to imported (borrowed) ones. the only justification that i find coherent enough for the order of this chapter is pre cisely section 8.4: proper names, adverbs and numerals, as it can be considered an expansion and exemplification of different special word -formation procedures of oe. chapter 9 studies oe syntax by means of a semi -conventional approach through word order and case . the dilemmas of reconstruction (pp. 216-217) and the typical/topical cruxes of constituents order (pp. 217-224), tend to follow this conventional (or traditional) trend that i have been using as a ____________________________________________________________________ 175 leading line for my own dis cussion. i must admit that, on the other hand, and hence my label of “semi -conventional”, lass’s ideas on clausal bracing, v2 order and wackernagel’s law (pp. 224-228), are what the reader will find most attractive and controversial. the second as pect in this chapter that must be emphasized from the point of view of innovative and future discussion in the field concerns the syntax of oe cases. lass prefers a (mainly) compara tive approximation that involves not just oe, but also latin, german and classical greek. in this sense, figure 9.17 (p. 232) explains case syncretism in a most synthetic way. now that i have turned (again) to figures, i should also remark that representing the intersections of case-functions/senses (p. 240, figure 9.22), as a final summary of lass’s survey of oe cases in detail, and particularly his view of the genitive (pp. 235-237), and the dative (pp. 237240). the last part of the body of old english, part v (historical postlude: 10 the dis solution of old english) is both a mixture of topics not previously covered and a declaration of principles for further research. while ‘stasis, flux and transition’ seem most appropriately arcane and thus connecting old english with the remote world of the old english peoples, there is a double textual analysis (pp. 244-245: st. matthew 8:20 as in the west saxon gospels and in a wycliffite version, and an except from the anglo -saxon chronicle) in order to establish the great difficulty that most scholars (at least those sensible enough to communicate with lass) have in proposing clearcut divisions when talking about old and middle english. but this section has also some other attractive features: merging (pp. 246-247), the treatment of new diphthongs (pp. 247-249), and, why not, the comely figure (fig. 10.4, p. 248) repre senting the seven new diphthongs and their collapsation into some later five, are part of the opening session that then deals with quantity adjustment and the collapse of the weak vowels systems. this is partially circular, as lass returns to some arguments used in section 3.6, but this results in a better understanding of the process (i think). in the end, lass reviews, s. g. fernández-corugedo ____________________________________________________________________ 176 decides that (p. 252): “at the very least we can say that any language that looks like this does not look a whole like old english as we know it, but does begin resembling the language we speak now.” if we ju mp back to the introduction, where the notion of oe was under close scrutiny, a now re examine what roger lass is proposing at the end of old english, my own conclusion is that, surely i must be mistaken and lass will correct me in his next general boxing of ears, this handbook is traditional enough and innovative enough as to reach both people with senior education and people who are about to start being educated in old english. i really must say two more things concerning this handbook as this has resulted a rather binary review. firstly, some very brief notes about the glossary. i tend to be a quick reader, and hence i occasionally miss things, but i have not been able to find terms which i think should be there, for example «stasis», especially because the concept that lass uses in the book, as on p. 243, is not what i call standard. then, whereas «homorganic» is present, «heterorganic» is not. also, «lenition» appears only under the heading of «weakening», but not on its own. some more cross-references would be in teresting too. secondly, and lastly, two even briefer notes on the list of references, or rather, the list of references and the index of names. not surpris ingly, there are no spanish authors in the bibliography, the reasons for that are well known and i will not vent some of them here again, but i dare suggest that at least juan de la cruz’s introductory book on oe (1986) might have attracted the attention of the author’s. then, i just wonder why there are no bibliographical references (anywhere, or at least i have not been able to track them down) to editions of some oe authors or authors that used in old english for illustrative and methodological purposes. i will just mention ælfric, athelstan and wulfstan among the former, and cæsar and tacitus (both mentioned as early as on p. 13) among the latter. we all know that there are not very many authoritative editions of such authors, but nevertheless, it is not, strictly speaking, and just to mention one instance, exactly the same to ____________________________________________________________________ 177 read the germania in the oxford edition (olgilvy & winterbotom 1975), or reading it in the les belles lettres edition. my biased and partial review of old english has now come to an end. to quote roger lass is always academically correct (at least from my point of view). let us then cite him once more: “and this is as good a place as any to stop.” (p. 252), and tell the students to go and buy this book at once. s. g. fernaåndez-corugedo university of coruña references campbell, a. 1959: old english gramma r. oxford university press, oxford. cruz, j. de la 1986: iniciación praåctica al inglés antiguo. alhambra, madrid. hock, h. h. 1991[1986]: principles of historical linguistics. mouton de gruyter, berlin. hogg, r. m. 1992a: a grammar of old english i: phonology. b. blackwell, oxford. hogg, r. m. ed. 1992b: the cambridge history of the english language i: the beginnings to 1066. cambridge university press, cambridge. lass, r. & anderson, j. m. 1975: old english phonology. cambridge university press, cambridge. lass, r. 1987: the shape of english. dent & sons, london. mitchell, b. & robinson, f. c. 1994[1982]: a guide to old english. b. blackwell, oxford. reviews, s. g. fernández-corugedo ____________________________________________________________________ 178 robinson, o. w. 1992: old english and its closest relatives. a survey of the earliest germanic languages. routledge, london. winterbotom , m. & ogilvie, r. m. 1975: tacitus: germania. oxford university press, oxford. * † * selim05.pdf andrew breeze, selim 5 (1996): 132—137 middle english sness ‘cluster’: middle irish popp ‘shoot, tendril’ middle english bobbe ‘bunch, cluster’ is quoted by oed from three northern texts sir gawain and the green knight, the prose life of alexander, and the wakefield pageants. in the first the bobe (line 206) is carried by the green knight hlmself: but in his on honde he hade a holyn bobbe, ? at is grattest in grene when greuez ar bare.1 this holly bob is probably a peace-token, rather than evidence for the knight’s ancestry as an ‘old vegetation god’.2 it contrasts with the wondere grete bobbls of grapes (almost too heavy for a man to carry) of the prose life of alexander in the fifteenth-century ‘thornton manuscript’ (in the library of lincoln cathedral), mentioned amongst the marvels alexander sees in the east.3 in the wakefield second shepherds’ play, the ‘bob of cherys’ offered to the child at bethlehem is a marvel of another kind, an instance of midwin ter fertility corre sponding to the miraculous birth of christ.4 though oed gives no etymology for bob, it compares it with irish baban ‘tassel, cluster’, gaelic baban, babag. this celtic parallel is ignored by later writers: gollancz, cawley, onions, davls, hoad, and brown merely describe 1 sir gawain and the green knight, ed. j. r. r. tolkien and e. v. gordon, 2nd edn (oxford, 1967), 6-7. 2 j. a. burrow, a reading of sir gawain and the green knight (london, 1965), 1617; a. c. spearing, the gawain-poet (cambridge, 1970), 179 3 on this text, see j. e. wells, a manual of the writings in middle english (new haven, 1916), 105; h. s. bennett, chaucer and the fifteenth century (oxford, 1947), 314; the oxford book of late medieval verse and prose, ed. douglas gray (oxford, 1985), 462. 4 the wakefield pageants, ed. a. c. cawley (manchester, 1958), 62, 113. andrew breeze ____________________________________________________________________ 138 bob as of unknown origin.1 yet a celtic etymology for bob is not to be dis missed out of hand, even though enquiry should not start with modern irish babán, bobán ‘tuft, bob’, it self probably influenced by english bob.2 we should look instead at mlddle irish papp, popp ‘shoot, tendril’, which (like bob) is used of plants, especially vines, and which is described by vendryes a ‘terme technique, qui se rattache evidemment au latin pampinus «tige de la vigne», mais qui a du subir l’ influence d’un mot enfaantin du type lat. pappa «bout de sein, mamelon», papula «bouton, pustule»’.3 the earliest citation of irish popp in the royal irish academy dic tionary is from the destruction of da derga’s hostel, a ninth-century saga surviving in the book of the dun cow, of c. 1100. the reference is to a warning vision of three men in green cloaks, a bowl by the mouth of each, and a sprig of cress (popp do birur) in each bowl.4 a ‘homily addressed to kings’, perhaps of the late eleventh century, in dublin, royal irish academy. ms 23. p. 16. the ‘speckled book’ written c. 1410 in the tipperary region, mentions pappe agus blatha na finemna, the ‘shoots and flowers’ of the vine.5 a pseudo-biblical history in the same manuscript mentions deis cruithnechta na pupu oenchoire dofhinemain, a portent of wheat growing on springs of vines, resembling man geseah hwætes eare weaxen on treowum in the old english martyrology.6 amongst later citations of popp in the ria dictionary is one on the form and shoots of the vine (fuath fínemna … cona papib) in the medieval irish history of alexander and philip of macedon; the context for 1 sir gawain and the green knight, ed. israel gollancz, eets o.s. 210 (london, 1940), 137; cawley, 137; the oxford dictionary of english etymology, ed. c. t. onions (oxford, 1966), 103; tolkien and gordon, 167; the concise oxford dictionary of english etymology, ed. t. f. hoad (oxford, 1986), 44; the new shorter oxford english dictionary, ed. lesley brown (oxford, 1993), 251. 2 foclóir gaeilge-béarla, ed. niall o donald (baíle átha cúath, 1977), 73, 117. 3 joseph vendryes, lexique étymologique de l’irlandais ancien: lettres m n o p. (paris, 1960), p-4. 4 dictionary of the irish language (dublin, 1913-76); lebor na húidre, ed. r. i. best & o. j. bergin (dublin, 1929), 239; togail bruidne da derga, ed. eleanor knott (dublin, 1936), 41. 5 the passions and the homilies from leabhar breac, ed. robert atkinson (dublin, 1887), 159; j. f. kenney, the sources for the early history of ireland: ecclesiastical (new york, 1929), 739-40 6 j. e. cross, portents and events at christ’s birth: comments on vercelli v and vi and the old english martyrology, anglo-saxon england, ii (1973), 209-20, at 218; martin mcnamara, she apocrypha in the irish church (dublin, 1975), 18. middle english sness, middle irish popp ____________________________________________________________________ 139 popp here thus resembles that of bobbis in the thornton manuscript life of alexander.1 there seems no semantic reason why middle irish popp ‘sprig, shoot, tendril’ should not give middle english bobbe ‘bunch, cluster’. as regards phonology, it should be noted that primitive old irish had no p, and in loan words substituted c for it. hence old irish casc ‘pascha, easter’, corcur ‘purpura’, etc. even when b + h > p in native irish words, so p in loanwords could be retained, its pronunciation still caused some difficulty, so that in initial position it was not clearly distinguished from b-. thus we have ninthcentury glosses bóc for póc ‘kiss’ (in the st gallen priscian) and bellec for pellec ‘small bag’ (in the karlsruhe priscian).2 the ria dictionary entry for p lists other such confusions between initial b and p in old and middle irish. it also notes this phenomenon in modern irish, citing the dictionary of the clare schoolmaster peter o’connell (1746-1826; see dnb), who described pfor bas a colloquialism. in his account of goedelic dialects, o’rahilly described the feature as characteristic of modern manx and scottish gaelic, as also of ulster and mayo irish.3 but if we are to present a convincing case for irish popp > english bobbe, we must show evidence for p> bin medieval irish. such evidence exists. one example is bellec < latin pellicium or pellicia ‘leather bag’.4 in the transferred sense ‘bridle bit’ this occurs in the eighth-century cattle raid of fróech (beilge oir ‘golden bridle -bits’),5 the twelfth-century colloquy ot the ancients also mentions bridles of silver with golden bits (co mbéilgibh óir fris).6 other possible in stances are blae ‘open space, green’ and bláesc ‘shell’. plae and blae have been derived from late latin plagia (in gregory of tours), giv ing french plage, spanish playa ‘beach’. plae is cited by the ria dictionary from a ninth-century hymn to st bridget by broccan, and the 1 cf. robin flower, the irish tradition (oxford, 1947), 137. 2 henry lewis & holger pedersen, a concise comparative celtic grammar (göttingen, 1937), 62; rudolf thurneysen, a grammar of old irish (dublin, 1946), 570-1; k. h. jackson, language and history in early britain (edinburgh, 1953), 125-7. 3 t. f. o’rahilly, irish dialects past and present, 2nd edn (dublin, 1972), 148-9. 4 joseph vendryes, lexique étymologique de l’irlandais ancien: lettre b (paris, 1981), 30. 5 táin bó fraích, ed. wolfgang neid, 2nd edn (dublin, 1974), 2. 6 silva gadelica, ed. s. h. o’grady (london, 1892), i. 99; cf. ii. 107. andrew breeze ____________________________________________________________________ 140 glossary of cormac, king-bishop of cashel (d. 908), while blae figures in two texts in the book of the dun cow: the wooing of emer, where cú chulainn boasts he was not brought up for blaí óerirlainde ‘on the floor of a front yard’ by some peasant, and the sick bed of cú chulainn, where fand the fairy sings of how she saw him driving a splendid course in his chariot over the plain (álaind lúadam lúades blaí).1 although olmsted has challenged the derivation of blae from plagia, it remains a posslbility.2 bláesc ‘shell’, compared with welsh blisc, pilscyn ‘shell (of nut or egg)’, middle breton plusquenn ‘rind (of an apple)’, modern french éplucher ‘to peel’ (from gaulish), is more problematic.3 o’rahilly saw it as a survival in irish from ivernian, a hypothetic pre goedelic brittonic language in ireland. but vendryes comments that the different forms, ‘exposé à des accidents variés’, allow no sure etymology.4 as regards non-initial p > b, we are on firm ground with the entries in the ria dictionary for píb < latin pipa ‘pipe’, the variant pobul < latin populus ‘people’ (cf. modern irish an phoblacht ‘the republic’), and the variant puball < latin papilio ‘tent’. the last figures in the borders place-name peebles, of cumbric origin, but first attested in a gaelic version as pobull.5 yet the most conclusive evidence for the existence of *bobb as a variant of popp giving english bobbe is early irish bobba, a variant of popa (< latin papa) ‘master, sir’. the ria dictionary gives two in stances of bobba, in the ‘tripartite life’ of st patrick written c. 900 (where it is used in address to the 1 best & bergin, 119, 311; compert con culainn, ed. a. g. van hamel (dublin, 1933), 28; serglige con culainn, ed. myles dillon (dublin, 1953), 21; t. p. cross and c. h. slover, ancient irish tales, 2nd edn (dublin, 1969), 158, 191. 2 vendryes, lettres m n o p. p-10; vendryes, lettre b, 55. 3 the poetical works of dafydd nanmor, ed. thomas roberts (cardiff, 1923). 190; delw y byd, ed. henry lewis & p. diverres (caerdydd, 1928), 116; llyfr blegywryd, ed. s. j. williams & enoch powell (caerdydd, 1942), 3; ystorya de carolo magno, ed. s. j. williams. 2nd edn (caerdydd, 1968), 29; vendryes, lettre b. 56. 4 cf. t. f. o’rahilly, early irish history and mythology (dublin, 1946), 205-7; d. h. greene, the making of insular celtic, in proceedings of the second international congress of celtic studies (cardiff, 1966), 123-36, at 133-4; vendryes, lettre b, 56. 5 w. j. watson, the celtic place-names of scotland (edinburgh, 1926), 383; jackson, 553; vendryes, lettres m n o p. p-9, 12, 17; the names of towns and cities in britain, ed. w. f. h. nicolaisen (london, 1970), 149; a. a. m. duncan, scotland: the making of the kingdom (edinburgh, 1975), 64: g. w. s. barrow, the anglonorman era in scottish history (oxford, 1980), 33. middle english sness, middle irish popp ____________________________________________________________________ 141 saint), and in the t ext of the cattle raid of cooley in dublin, trimity college, ms h.2.16, the fourteenthand fifteenthcentury yellow book of lecan, where cú chulainn uses it to his charioteer.1 if bobba for popa existed, it is likely *bobb for popp did too. this would enable us to derive middle en glish bobbe from popp with confidence. like malt (<mart) ‘ox fattened for slaughter’ in sir tristrem, raith ‘three months’ in cursor mundi, car (<cerr) ‘left’ in the awntyrs off arthur, and skeyne (< scían) ‘knife’ in docu~ents as remote from the celtic fringe as the cely letters, bobbe would be a medieval english borrowing from goedelic.2 since bob ‘bunch, cluster’ remains characteristic of scots english, and is still (according to oed) the name in scotland for a nosegay, posy, or small bouquet of flowers, the celtic etymology pro posed here should cause no surprise.3 andrew breeze university of navarre, pamplona * † * 1 cf. táin bó cúailnge from the yellow book of lecan, ed. john strachan & j. g. o’keeffe (dublin, 1912); kenney, 24, 342-4; bethu phátraic ed. kathleen mulchrone (dublin, 1939); vendryes, lettres x n o p, p-4. 2 cf. vendryes, lettres m x o p. m -21; the awntyrs off arthure at the terne wathelyn, ed. ralph hanna (manchester, 1974), 138; the cely letters 1472-1488, ed. alison hanham, eets o.s. 273 (london, 1975), 277. 3 for a further early sense of bobbe, ‘grub or lava of a fly or beetle used for bait’ (which qed attests only from 1589), see a treatise of fysshynge wyth an angle (c. 1420) in gray, 150. selim 19.indb margaret tedford, selim 19 (2012): 111–141issn: 1132–631x eorðscræf, eglond and iscealdne sæ: landscape, literalism and metaphor in some old english elegies abstract: this article explores the depictions of landscape in the old english elegies the wife’s lament, wulf and eadwacer, the wanderer and the seafarer. for many years scholars have debated how to interpret these depictions and have been deeply divided over whether landscape is to be understood literally or metaphorically in old english poetry. this article reassesses these poems to argue for a more complex interaction between the literal and fi gurative aspects of landscape setting than has thus far been appreciated. keywords: landscape, old english poetry, the wife’s lament, wulf and eadwacer, the wanderer, the seafarer, isolation. resumen: este artículo explora las descripciones paisajísticas en las elegías anglosajonas the wife’s lament, wulf and eadwacer, the wanderer y the seafarer. durante muchos años los estudiosos han debatido cómo interpretar estas descripciones y se han dividido acerca de si en la poesía anglosajona el paisaje debe entenderse literal o metafóricamente. este artículo reconsidera estos poemas y defi ende una interacción más compleja entre los aspectos literales y fi gurativos de escenario paisajístico de lo que se ha hecho hasta ahora. palabras clave: paisaje, poesía anglosajona, the wife’s lament, wulf and eadwacer, the wanderer, the seafarer, aislamiento. 1 introduction – literal and metaphorical landscapes landscape settings in old english poetry have been a subject of heated debate throughout the twentieth century, and indeed continue to be so into the twentyfi rst. this is particularly the case for the so-called “elegies” of the exeter book which feature a lone speaker situated in a typically harsh and unpleasant physical environment.1 links between the speakers’ interior emotions and the exterior landscape have been seen by many as evidence that the physical setting should be interpreted fi guratively.2 1 “elegy” is a much debated term and it is deeply uncertain whether one may legitimately say there is a genre of elegy in old english. see further greenfi eld 1966, klinck 1992, mora 1995, orchard 2010 and battles 2014. 2 for example, anderson 1937-1938 on the seafarer. see also higley 1993: 40, n. 27 for more on allegorical interpretations. margaret tedford 112selim 19 (2012) despite an argument made by eric stanley in 1955 that polarised views on literal and allegorical interpretations demonstrated a misconception of anglo-saxon thought on the literal and fi gural, these views are still predominantly entrenched within scholarship.3 in discussing the wife’s lament (wl), michael lapidge describes the setting as a “mental landscape, not a physical one,” thereby dismissing entirely the possibility of any literal associations (1997: 34). likewise, emily jensen (1990: 450) also sees an unbridgeable distance between the literal and the metaphorical in her analysis of the “earth-cave” in wl, stating that interpretation depends entirely on whether one reads eorðscræf as a literal sign, a word or a thing that calls up its linguistic or historical associations with words or things in other texts, poetic and non-poetic; or one reads eorðscræf as a metaphoric sign, a poetic image that calls up its own immediate metaphoric context and, perhaps, other similar metaphoric contexts. in contrast, scholars such as karl p. wentersdorf (1981) and william c. johnson (1983) use historical and archaeological evidence to try and explain the ambiguity of certain physical settings in poetry, an approach which has provided some invaluable insights, yet it may be argued that sometimes such focus on the literal nature of a particular aspect can eclipse the meaning of the poem as a whole. this reduction of the debate to two opposing camps may seem simplistic, yet it is rare to come across an argument that combines the two. stanley’s 1955 article has been seen by many as the defi nitive questioning of the debate (higley 1993: 38), yet his views are not unproblematic. he argues that [f ]ew will deny that with the old poets the processes of nature may be symbols of their moods: but it is not the fl ower that gives the thought; with the oe. poets it is the thought that gives the fl ower. and the fl ower that is born of the mood may 3 “they treated allegory in a manner revealing a relationship of fact to fi gure so close that the fi gure was only an aspect of the fact, and not separable fr om it” (stanley 1955: 452). landscape, literalism and metaphor in some old english elegies 113 selim 19 (2012) take on suffi cient concreteness to appear capable of existence without and outside the mood (1955: 427). in this interpretation the interior thought of the speaker creates the external environment, and thus the physical landscape becomes merely an externalisation of the speaker’s emotions and is not a separate entity capable of infl uencing the speaker’s internal state. stanley makes this even more explicit in saying: “the processes of nature do not, as a rule, lead to thoughts, but rather they use the processes as symbols of moods: a concrete scene may be little more than a description of a mood” (1955: 452). truthfully, this does not really settle the debate, as the landscape setting becomes reduced to having only symbolic function, and there is only a one-way fl ow of infl uence fr om the speaker’s mind to the physical world. in this article i will argue that in many cases the metaphorical and spiritual dimension to the physical environment of these poems is in fact dependent on the literal descriptors and their associations; the landscape has a literal validity while at the same time possessing a deeper level of symbolic signifi cance. i will demonstrate that in these poems the physical and metaphorical are in dialogue with one another, and that it is the complex interplay between them that contributes to the vivid depictions of landscape setting that are found in many old english poems. i would contend that the relationship between the interior “person” and the exterior “landscape” may be more correctly viewed as a two-way process, each infl uencing the other. thus the depiction of landscape is infl uenced by the speaker’s interior thoughts and does have a symbolic function, yet it must also be recognised as being separate fr om this interiority, and having a function in its own right. nicholas howe describes “imagining” a landscape as relating “the features of one’s topography to one’s psychological and spiritual lives; it means that the seemingly stable distinctions between the ‘in here’ of the self and the ‘out there’ of the landscape can sometimes be crossed or confused for expressive purposes” (2002: 91). here howe appears to argue for a similar kind of complex margaret tedford 114selim 19 (2012) interplay between thought and landscape that i mentioned above, yet he fails to go beyond a suggestion that the lines between internal and external may become “blurred,” and does not suggest how one may infl uence the other. while he is certainly questioning these categorical divisions of “physical” and “mental” landscapes, implying that these boundaries are actively broken down for a purpose, the argument is not fully followed through with textual analysis. similarly, antonina harbus in her analysis of the seafarer is notable in her argument for a confl ation of actual and metaphorical travel in the poem and a link between the mind and physical travel (2012: 44, 46). however, this argument is limited to a single poem and her analysis is focused primarily on representations of the mind rather than landscape. in this article i will use the descriptions of the physical landscape as my starting point for investigating the relationship between speaker and surroundings. i wish to expand upon the work of these scholars who recognise the problematic nature of these categorical divisions by re-evaluating four oft enstudied elegies fr om the exeter book, and demonstrating exactly how the relationship between landscape and interior emotions is articulated. the seafarer (sf ), the wanderer (wand.), the wife’s lament (wl) and wulf and eadwacer (we ) each feature solitary speakers in a state of isolation, who in diff erent ways relate their internal emotions to their external environment. by looking at two poems with male speakers and (perhaps the only) two with female speakers, i will be able to examine possible similarities and diff erences in the poems’ articulation of gendered interiority.4 the 4 for more on the speakers’ female identities see horner 2001: 29. clearly, it would be possible to expand my analysis to include other “elegiac” poems. aside fr om the obvious word limitations, these poems contain some of the most recognised landscape imagery in old english poetry alongside solitary speakers, thus providing the most source material for my investigation. notable omissions include the husband’s message, as there is more than one speaker, and the ruin, which primarily deals with man-made structures in the landscape. i have chosen to focus on the lone speaker and predominantly “natural” physical environments. landscape, literalism and metaphor in some old english elegies 115 selim 19 (2012) focus here is “isolation” and not “exile” primarily because i think there is a more defi nite link between isolation (in the sense of separation fr om something) and physical location. exile is a more debated and complex subject, being related to a certain social code and the trappings of heroic society. in many cases the two go hand in hand, yet for the purposes of this study the former will be taken as the primary focus.5 to be isolated physically—i shall discuss issues of psychological isolation in later sections—is essentially spatial. it is initiated by the act of separation, a removal fr om one space to another, resulting in the occupation of a new location that is either partially or totally removed fr om human society. this relationship between human interiority and the physical landscape is key in understanding how landscape is used as a poetic setting, whether metaphorically, literally, or, as i will argue, a combination of the two. in the remainder of this article i shall compare the relationship between the isolated individual and the external environment by examining certain specifi c landscape features of the chosen poems, including the eorðscræf and underground environment in wl, the fenland “islands” of we, and the seascapes of wand. and sf, thus providing several examples of solitary speakers within diff ering landscapes. 2 below the earth – sub-terranean dwellings my discussion begins with what is possibly one of the most arresting and debated details of physical setting in all of old english poetry, the eorðscræf to which the speaker of wl is confi ned. the specifi city of this location has been recognised by many scholars, including martin green (1983: 125), who argues that [t]he oak tree and the earth-hall are such concrete entities in a poem that is otherwise devoid of all concrete detail, they force themselves on the reader as potential carriers of meaning. 5 see further bjork 2002, gordon 1954, greenfi eld 1955, rissanen 1969. margaret tedford 116selim 19 (2012) these details are not easily ignored, particularly as the image of the eorðscræf and actreo are repeated in lines 28 and 36. the features and limits of the wife’s environment are extremely detailed and defi ned: heht mec mon wunian  on wuda bearwe, under actreo  in þam eorðscræfe. eald is þes eorðsele;  eal ic eom ofl ongad. sindon dena dimme,  duna uphea, bitre burgtunas  brerum beweaxne, wic wynna leas. (27–32a) i was commanded to dwell in a grove of the wood⒮ , under an oak tree in the earth-cave. old is this earth-hall; i am seized with longing. there are dark valleys, high moors, bitter fortifi ed buildings, overgrown with brambles, a joyless dwelling place.6 this location is anything but vague. the speaker is situated spatially in a grove of the wood⒮ , under the oak tree, in the earthcave. thus we have not only the details of the physical environment but spatial markers that show her place within it. while scholars such as michael lapidge interpret these details of landscape as mere refl ections of the speaker’s interior emotions (1997: 34), one cannot overlook the fact that the sheer concreteness of these images makes it diffi cult to accept that they are simply interior projections (see green 1983: 125). nicholas howe has argued that in spite of the ominous atmosphere that may be conj ured by the description in this poem, it “relies heavily on the precise demarcation of natural features, such as one notes in the boundary clauses of anglo-saxon charters” (2008: 67). his observation encourages us to look at this poem in the context of the society that produced it, and not assume it to be sketching a vague atmosphere in the vein of romantic and later poetry (2008: 67). in order to analyse the description of this environment accurately, we 6 all translation mine, unless indicated otherwise. landscape, literalism and metaphor in some old english elegies 117 selim 19 (2012) must fi rst begin with the terminology used in the text. the term eorðscræf itself is probably one of the most debated in scholarship. in a general sense it can be translated as “earth-cave” or “earth-cavern” (bosworth-toller: s. v. eorðscræf ). the old english translation of psalm 62:9 in the paris psalter translates inferiora terre as eorðscræfu; here the context shows it to be a place where the wicked are sent.7 in six out of the ten other occurrences of the word in the old english corpus it explicitly means “grave” (johnson 1983: 71–72). because of this, and the fact that the speaker is mysteriously bound to this location, several scholars have argued that she must be dead and speaking fr om the grave (lench 1970: 15; johnson 1983: 69). their arguments oft en hinge on the “surreal landscape” and the fact that the wife appears to have no sustenance and her movement is associated with the dawn (johnson 1983: 69; lench 1970: 16). while the associations with death and the grave are plausible and certainly fascinating, i think to argue defi nitively for the speaker being dead is at risk of being over-literal, particularly because there is no real reason in such a short poem to include unnecessary details like how she feeds herself. the association with the dawn also has a parallel in wand.: “oft ic sceolde ana uhtna gehwylce / mine ceare cwiþan,” “oft en, alone, at every dawn i had to mourn my sorrows” (8–9). in a simple sense the dawn may simply be a time for such grief, for being alone, as it is a liminal time between sleeping and the action of the day. bosworth-toller translates úht as “the time just before daybreak,” a time of “betweenness” and privacy that may also have associations with the mysterious and the world of the dead. indeed, while it is useful to investigate the archaeological evidence for diff erent kinds of subterranean dwellings, as paul battles does (1994), the associations with death and the grave are diffi cult to ignore. even if the wife is not dead, it does not mean the associations of the term eorðscræf with the grave are irrelevant, 7 see eorðscræf in toronto dictionary of old english online. margaret tedford 118selim 19 (2012) as the poet and contemporary audience would be aware of all of its meanings simultaneously. a. c. bouman does not explicitly argue for her being dead, yet accepts that such associations are a key element to the emotion of the poem: “the eorðscræf may just be part of the suggestion of this dreary place. but as it is said that the wife can never calm her care of mind nor all her longing, she may well think of this grove as the place where it is her destiny to die” (bouman 1962: 55).8 this is a space of perpetual enclosure that she has no hope of ever leaving, and “forþon ic æfr e ne mæg / þære modceare minre gerestan” (“because of this i cannot ever rest fr om my sorrow,” 39–40). to be perpetually enclosed in a certain space implies the same perpetual separation fr om any other space. in this poem the speaker’s isolation is an entrapment, a confi nement in a space that is separated fr om humanity, and particularly fr om her lord. line 29 has an interesting duality to its syntax: “eald is þes eorðsele, eal ic eom ofl ongad” (“old is this earth-hall, i am entirely seized with longing”). the balancing of these two half-verses implies a connection between the two. as michael green states, “[t] he parataxis of this line links the age of the cave with the deep intensity of the speaker’s present longing and misery” (1983: 126). thus her current emotional state seems as perpetual as the cave. this is a prime example of how external features in the poem infl uence the emotional state and are important in the refl ections of the speaker, rather than they themselves being a product of the speaker’s emotions. the other aspects of the speaker’s environment must also be addressed, in particular the specifi cation of actreo, “oak tree,” which makes us question why this tree was included and not another. that the speaker is situated under this oak tree is repeated twice (28, 36), both times in the same phrase as eorðscræf, and i think the 8 wand. 83–84 mentions one of the ways men may die as “sumne dreorighleor / in eorðscræfe eorl gehydde” (“a sad-faced man concealed one in an earth-cave”). landscape, literalism and metaphor in some old english elegies 119 selim 19 (2012) associations of both should be seen as part of a cumulative eff ect of connotation. if the eorðscræf has associations with the grave, the oak tree has strong connotations in germanic pre-christian culture. traditionally it is the sacred tree of the germanic peoples and the site of cultic activity (luyster 1998: 245).9 alaric hall has drawn attention to several interesting analogues for this scene in wl, one being the eighth-century frank’s casket, where the inscription on one of the illustrated panels appears to refer to a woman confi ned to a wood, sitting either in or on “the sorrow-mound” (hall 2002: 2; becker). this comparison indicates the possibility that the motif of a banished woman was connected with a certain environment and that this motif may have been known in anglo-saxon england. hall also draws attention to certain biblical mentions of oak trees and caves: in gen. 35:8, for example, rebecca’s nurse dies and is buried “under an oak: and the name of that place was called, the oak of weeping.”10 likewise 1 chron. 10:12 also describes a burial under an oak and ez. 6:13 refers to pagan worship connected with oak trees. thus it appears that in both the pagan and christian infl uences in anglo-saxon culture there is an association between the oak tree, death and pagan activity. combined then with the image of the eorðscræf as it is in wl, this specifi c detail in the environment points to an explicit creation of poetic “mood” or atmosphere external to the speaker’s own emotions, though the two correspond. the place she is banished to is a place associated with death and paganism, providing her with no external consolation, no way to interpret her surroundings in spiritual terms as perhaps the male elegiac speakers can. sarah semple’s analysis of the illustrations of hell in the harley 603 psalter and other contemporary manuscripts provides another interesting insight into anglo-saxon perceptions of burial 9 parallels may also be found in other pagan cultures such as the celts and the greeks. for example, in lucan, bellum civile 3.426–452, caesar felled a sacred grove near marseilles. 10 all biblical quotations fr om douay-rheims. margaret tedford 120selim 19 (2012) mounds and underground dwellings (2003). in these manuscripts the depictions of hell are centred on self-contained hollow mounds where a single person or small group are tormented by demons: “it comprises a living-dead existence, trapped within the earth, oft en within a hollow beneath a hill or mound” (semple 2003: 240). this description is very similar to the kind of “living-dead existence” experienced by the wife in wl, “entombed” within the earth-cave. within the earth-cave the speaker has limited movement; she does walk through her dwelling but can go no further: “þonne ic on uhtan ana gonge / under actreo geond þas eorðscrafu” (“when at daybreak i walk alone under the oak tree, throughout these earthcaves,” 35–36). the restriction of her movement is seen in the next two lines: “þær ic sittan mot sumorlangne dæg, / þær ic wepan mæg mine wræcsiþas” (“there i must sit the summer-long day, there i can only weep over my exile,” 37-8). she may be able to walk around for a short time but she always returns to the position of sitting. sitting is a static, passive action connected with waiting, and many scholars have associated it with the “elegiac mood” (hall 2002: 4). riddle 75 appears to contrast swift ne, “the swift one,” with ane… idese sittan, “a woman sitting alone,” perhaps indicating an association between the female gender and sitting.11 hall argues that it is “likely that an anglo-saxon audience, presented with a woman in eorðscræfe, would immediately have in mind a set of associations of love, banishment, paganism and sanctuary” (hall 2002: 4). these associations, combined with those of death and the grave, serve to imbue this setting with an atmosphere of enclosure and hopelessness. i think the fact that the physical detail of the eorðscræf has such strong connotations is evidence that the setting does not need to be viewed as an extension of the speaker’s emotions but may equally be seen as something external that can actually infl uence her psychological state. 11 see also magennis 1986: 452, fn. 39. landscape, literalism and metaphor in some old english elegies 121 selim 19 (2012) regardless of whether one interprets the eorðscræf as a cavelike dwelling within a raised mound, or a sunken dwelling, the key aspect of the setting is that the speaker is clearly situated underground, within the earth.12 she is living in a space that is unusual for a human being, one that is connected with ideas about death and secrecy. 3 land out of water: islands on the earth and in the mind the only other poem in the exeter book widely considered to have a female speaker, apart fr om wl, is wulf and eadwacer (we ). this poem is also similar to wl in its oft en-discussed ambiguity. the intentional elusiveness of the plot allows contrasting lines of interpretation, though the most common is to read the poem as the female’s response to her lover wulf ’s exile.13 in spite of this ambiguity of plot, the physical setting for the poem appears fairly defi nite—the speaker is on an island but not the one that holds her lover wulf, which is surrounded by fens.14 thus the central feature of the poem’s setting is the location of iege or eglond (4, 5), and i would argue that this setting is vital in constructing the isolation of the speaker and her separation fr om her lover. the speaker in we shares certain of the characteristic miseries of the wife’s exile in wl, such as separation fr om a loved one and physical confi nement, even though there is no indication that she has been ordered to remain in her location like the wife (wl 15). stacy s. klein has argued that “female elegiac speakers characterize exilic life as a separation fr om their lovers. these women do not mourn loss of place but loss of person” (2006: 124). 12 for an overview of various interpretations, see battles 1994: 267–268 and harris 1977. 13 i do not wish to enter into discussions of narrative plot here. for an overview of current interpretations, see baker 1981. 14 as the speaker is said to be on a separate island similar to wulf ’s, the implication is that this island would be among fenland as well. margaret tedford 122selim 19 (2012) to an extent this is true, as they do not speak of their memories of the trappings of heroic life like the male speakers of wand. or sf, yet the focus placed on the female speakers’ location and environment indicates that they have a great deal to complain about regarding their current place of existence. shari horner argues that the female speakers are even more embedded in the physical than their male elegiac counterparts who ultimately reject the physical in favour of the spiritual. the female speakers reach no such spiritual conclusion but instead “willingly express both emotion and physical discomfort” (horner 2001: 34). both of these women exist in physical environments that enclose and entrap; thus their environment is in some ways responsible for the prolonging of their misery, as there is no way out of it.15 in we a sense of enclosure and entrapment is articulated in terms of separation, of physical barriers that prevent travel and connection (klein 2006: 121). the speaker presents her situation succinctly: “wulf is on iege, ic on oþerre.  / fæst is þæt eglond, fenne biworpen” (“wulf is on one island, i on another. that island is inaccessible, surrounded by fens,” 4–5). the half-lines in line 4 are separated into two clauses that mirror one another: wulf is balanced with ic, iege with oþerre, and the same preposition on is used to position the two characters. the balancing of these terms indicates a close identifi cation between the two characters, yet the sharp division between the two half-lines emphasises that they are separated. the question has oft en been raised as to whether these are literal islands or a metaphor for emotional distance, with most scholars agreeing with stanley b. greenfi eld that all the imagery in the poem is symbolic (greenfi eld 1986: 13): the use of […] the pathetic fallacy of rainy weather and weeping, the island that is “fast” and the one simply “another”—such aesthetic features, among others, give this poem its special 15 horner 2001 relates the enclosure of the speakers to female monasticism. landscape, literalism and metaphor in some old english elegies 123 selim 19 (2012) fl avour in embodying the theme of separateness and the attempt to bridge it.16 while i agree that the features of the two islands contribute to the theme of separation in a metaphorical way, i have diffi culty in accepting the idea that the setting is simply a projection of the speaker’s interior feelings. the explicit detail that one island is surrounded by fens and occupied by “wælrowe weras” (“bloodthirsty men,” 6) seems to point to the actual description of wulf ’s environment. it is also unlikely that she would sit weeping in line 10 if her lover was not physically separated fr om her between his “seldcymas” (“seldom comings,” 14). kelley m. wickham-crowley (2006: 87) has demonstrated that waterlogged land was a prevalent feature of england aft er the migration period, and argues that …  the prevalence of fens, water meadows and other waterlogged areas surely shaped the anglo-saxon imagination and response to landscape in a way that we have since noted but under-emphasized. these areas are both an uncertain, hybrid space between the land and the sea, and physical impediments to travel. the fens around wulf ’s island make it an impermeable enclosure, and as he is cut off fr om the speaker, so she is enclosed in a space without him. in felix’s vita guthlaci, the saint chooses a fenland location for his life as a hermit, showing the guaranteed isolation of such an environment (wickham-crowley 2006: 96). the location of the east anglian fens which forms the setting for felix’s vita has been shown by archaeologists to have “consisted of a shift ing mosaic of fr esh and brackish water, peat fen, and fen carr around drier, open, wooded ‘islands’ ” (ballantyne 2004: 189). within this fenland of east anglia place names with eg derivatives are common, indicating that these wooded pieces of land raised above the marsh were considered to be islands as much as traditional sea-bound islands. the combination of the term eglond with the detail “fenne 16 see also calder 1975. margaret tedford 124selim 19 (2012) biworpen” (“surrounded by fens”) in line 5 lends credence to the possibility that the setting in we is a similar environment to the east anglian fens of guthlac. it is possible that the speaker in we and her lover live in diff erent parts of such a waterlogged area, a place of danger and enforced isolation where the diffi cult landscape exacerbates problems in their relationship. in some ways the fens in we function in the same way as the “bitre burgtunas brerum beweaxne” (“bitter fortifi ed buildings, overgrown with brambles”) in wl 31. they are both obstacles to travel and enclose the subject within an impermeable landscape, although one environment is natural and the other a man-made structure being reclaimed by nature. not only is the speaker’s movement hindered by her physical environment, but she is depicted as sitting, seemingly either unable or unwilling to move. this is paralleled by the restriction of the wife’s movement in wl 37–38, where she must continually sit through interminable sumorlang days. the woman in we likewise appears to be in a continual state of non-movement, and is dependent on wulf ’s movements instead of her own: wulfes ic mines widlastum  wenum dogode17, þonne hit wæs renig weder,  ond ic reotugu sæt […] wulf, min wulf,  wena me þine seoce gedydon,  þine seldcymas. (9–10, 13–14) i followed my wulf ’s far wanderings in expectation, when it was rainy weather, and i sat weeping […] wulf, my wulf, my hoping for you, your seldom coming has caused my illness. wulf ’s “far wanderings” are contrasted with her sitting position, his movement with her stasis. the speaker’s perception of her 17 dogode is notoriously diffi cult to translate. it appears to be the pret. sg. of a verb dogian but is not found elsewhere. its meaning is uncertain, possibly “suff ered” or “followed.” i translate it as “followed” here in conj unction with the “expectation” of wenum. landscape, literalism and metaphor in some old english elegies 125 selim 19 (2012) environment may be infl uenced by her interior feelings of isolation, and thus she may notice and emphasise aspects such as the rain and the two islands. however, observation of her surroundings may in turn also contribute to her inner emotions as they reinforce her physical separation fr om wulf. thus the relationship between the interior “person” and the exterior “landscape” may be more correctly viewed as a two-way process, each infl uencing the other. the setting of the iege and eglond are intimately connected with the theme of isolation. the term eglond may literally be translated as “water-land,” thus it is an environment centred around the dividing power of water. this landscape is not conducive to travel, and thus enforces the separation between the speaker and wulf. the idea of water as an agent of isolation is a major theme in wand. and sf, although these poems are not centred around a body of land within water but the endless expanse of the ocean. 4 among the icy waves: seascapes and interior thought from the early part of the twentieth century, scholars have been divided over whether the sea-voyages depicted in these two poems are literal or allegorical.18 i would argue that they demonstrate the same blend of the literal and metaphorical that has so marked the poems discussed previously in this article, and in fact are two of the most fascinating examples of the blurring between exterior and interior realities. the opening passage of sf launches immediately into a description where the speaker’s environment and interior feelings are mixed together: bitre breostceare  gebiden hæbbe, gecunnad in ceole  cearselda fela, atol yþa gewealc,  þær mec oft bigeat nearo nihtwaco  æt nacan stefnan, þonne he be clifum cnossað.  calde geþrungen 18 see further orton 2002, whitelock 1950, higley 1993: 40. margaret tedford 126selim 19 (2012) wæron mine fet  forste gebunden, caldum clommum,  þær þa ceare seofedun hat ymb heortan. (4–11a) i have endured bitter anxiety of heart, experienced many places of sorrow in a ship, terrible rolling of the waves, where the anxious night watch oft en seized me at the prow of the ship when it strikes on the cliff s. oppressed by cold were my feet, bound by fr ost with cold bands, where the sorrows surged hot about my heart. the cearselda, “places of sorrow,” the speaker visits in the ship are ambiguous, as they could be both literal places that bring sorrow, or they could be “places of sorrow” in the mind. lines 8–11 accumulate a striking array of imagery, connected both to the speaker’s physical experience and his inner emotions. the fr ostbound and cold-affl icted feet are mirrored by the “hot” sorrow that affl icts his heart. the interior feeling follows the exterior in sequence, implying that they are inseparable for the speaker. he goes on to later refer to wræccan lastum, “the paths of exile,” that follow the ice-cold sea (14-5). this phrase is also both literal and metaphorical: the sea is the path for someone banished fr om land, yet the idea of “exile-path” carries with it a host of associations such as loss of societal status and isolation fr om the heroic world. this emphasis on coldness and being bound by it is also a major feature in wand., with lines 32–33 echoing those in sf: “warað hine wræclast, nales wunden gold, / ferðloca fr eorig, nalæs foldan blæd” (“for him is the exile-path, in no wise twisted gold, a fr ozen heart, in no wise the fr uits of the earth”). in these lines the exile-path on which the two speakers travel is made the conceptual counterpart of “twisted gold,” thus presenting it symbolically as the opposite to the heroic life where a man’s lord was also his goldwine, “goldfr iend” (wand. 22). bosworth-toller translates the term ferðloca as “soul’s enclosure” or “breast,” and the fact that it is described as “fr ozen” doubly emphasises this idea of an enclosed interior world. throughout wand. the sea and the weather associated landscape, literalism and metaphor in some old english elegies 127 selim 19 (2012) with it are viewed as agents of physical binding and restriction: “waþema gebind” (“the binding of the waves”), “hrið hreosende hrusan bindeð” (“the rushing snowstorm binds the earth,” 57, 102). yet at the same time we have many images of the enclosure of the heart and mind: forðon domgeorne  dreorigne oft in hyra breostcofan  bindað fæste. swa ic modsefan  minne sceolde (wand. 17–20). therefore the eager for glory oft en bind fast a sad heart in their breast. i must do likewise with my inner feelings. just as the body is bound by the cold weather on the sea, the speaker’s inner feelings are bound within him and he does not dare to disclose them to anyone (9–11).19 thus he experiences a turbulent psychological state while he travels on the sea as an exile, and this leads to a situation where interior and exterior experiences are linked. the speaker in wand. experiences a blurring of mental and external realities, most clearly seen in lines 39–53: ðonne sorg ond slæp  somod ætgædre earmne anhogan  oft gebindað, þinceð him on mode  þæt he his mondryhten clyppe ond cysse,  ond on cneo lecge honda ond heafod,  swa he hwilum ær in geardagum   giefstolas breac. ðonne onwæcneð eft   wineleas guma— gesihð him biforan  fealwe wegas, baþian brimfuglas,  brædan feþra, hreosan hrim ond snaw  hagle gemenged. when sorrow and sleep both together oft en bind the wretched solitary one, it seems to him in his mind that he embraces and 19 it is notable that the female speakers in wl and we make no mention of needing to bind their feelings. see horner 2001: 32. margaret tedford 128selim 19 (2012) kisses his lord, and on his knee lays hands and head, as before in days past he sometimes enj oyed gift s fr om the throne. then he awakens again, the fr iendless man, sees before him the fallow waves, sea birds bathing, spreading their wings, fr ost and snow falling, mingled with hail. here he is “bound” by sorrow and sleep, things that aff ect both body and mind, and we have an interesting depiction of dreaming and memory. his dream-memories of a heroic past and a companionship with his lord, are interrupted by his physical reality, a reality where his only companions are sea birds that are indiff erent to him. he is bound by his feelings and circumstances but the embrace of his lord is not binding but fl eeting. the coldness and winter weather is a recurring theme, and has oft en been interpreted by scholars as a symbolic extension of the speaker’s feelings. indeed, earlier in the poem the speaker describes how he “hean þonan / wod wintercearig” (“went thence wretched with winter-sorrow,” wand. 23–24). this appears to be a clear instance of fi gurative language; the physical winter is outside him and this metaphorical winter is within him. this instance is not necessarily evidence that the winter landscape is an externalisation of inner emotions; rather, the speaker appears to identify with his exterior surroundings, again reinforcing the idea of a two-way relationship between the mind and the environment. images of winter are common in old english poetry as both a synecdoche for “year” and a metaphor for adversity, through which wisdom is conventionally gained (anderson 1997: 238). the speaker in sf “iscealdne sæ / winter wunade” (“dwelt a winter on the icecold sea,” 14–15). it would appear that “winter” here refers to the literal season, and the context of the surrounding lines shows that it is indeed a time of adversity, one of isolation, storms and ice that a land-dweller cannot understand (12–17). in wand. the term “winter” also appears as a synecdoche for “year:” “forþon ne mæg wearþan wis wer, ær he age / wintra dæl in woruldrice” (“therefore, a man may not become wise before he has had his share of winters in the earthly kingdom,” 64–65). here “winter” as both a period landscape, literalism and metaphor in some old english elegies 129 selim 19 (2012) of time and the experience of adversity is connected to wisdom, a wisdom which is eventually found in the speaker of wand. in its fi nal lines. it is clear in sf that the tale of the speaker’s experience on the sea-voyage is both a physical and mental experience.20 there are many indications that the exterior landscape and weather infl uence interior thought. this is particularly true of the proximity of physical description to thoughts and feelings in lines 31–38: nap nihtscua,  norþan sniwde, hrim hrusan bond,  hægl feol on eorþan, corna caldast.  forþon cnyssað nu heortan geþohtas,  þæt ic hean streamas, sealtyþa gelac  sylf cunnige; monað modes lust  mæla gehwylce ferð to feran,  þæt ic feor heonan elþeodigra  eard gesece. the shades of night darkened; it snowed fr om the north, fr ost bound the earth; hail fell on the world, coldest of grains. therefore the thoughts of my heart are troubled now, that i should test myself, the high waters, the tossing of the saltwaves; the mind’s desire at all times urges the spirit to travel, so that, far fr om here, i may seek the land of foreign people. the fi rst two and a half lines of this passage consist of observations of the cold weather and environment. this is followed by forþon, a term found fr equently in this poem, and one that implies causation (orton 2002: 354).21 it appears that the speaker’s interaction with his physical environment stimulates the next sequence of thought. they are heortan geþohtas, “thoughts of the heart,” demonstrating that the external experience aff ects the emotional centre of his being. cunnige may mean “should try,” “test” or “explore.” the inclusion of sylf, literally, “myself,” alongside hean streamas and sealtyþa, 20 see harbus 2010. 21 for the range of interpretations of forþon, see higley 1993: 41–45. margaret tedford 130selim 19 (2012) emphasises this link between the physical journey and the mental / spiritual one; he is testing or exploring both the sea and himself. then in lines 36–38 we have the modes lust, the “mind’s desire,” as the impetus behind travel. many scholars have taken these lines to be metaphorical, anticipating the christian consolation of the latter part of the poem, and view this as the soul’s journey rather than the beginning of a new physical expedition.22 i do not entirely agree that this proposed journey is purely metaphorical, as the speaker is clearly troubled over the physical aspect of the journey in lines 33– 35, yet there is recognition on the speaker’s part of a metaphorical or spiritual aspect to his proposed journey. the ambiguity here is, i believe, deliberate, and representative of a growing awareness on the speaker’s part of the psychological “journey” that may be stimulated by his physical travel. a similar passage expressing the infl uence of external factors on interior thought is found in lines 48–55a: bearwas blostmum nimað,  byrig fægriað, wongas wlitigiað,  woruld onetteð— ealle þa gemoniað  modes fusne sefan to siþe,  þam þe swa þenceð on fl odwegas  feor gewitan. swylce geac monað  geomran reorde, singeð sumeres weard,  sorge beodeð bitter in breosthord. the groves receive blossoms, cities become fair, the fi elds become beautiful, the world is quickened23—all of these admonish the eager of mind, the heart to the journey, for him who intends to set out, far over the paths of the sea. likewise the cuckoo exhorts in its mournful voice, summer’s watchman sings, announces sorrow, bitter in the heart. 22 see diekstra 1971, salmon 1960, orton 1982. 23 “quickened” in the sense of “hastened” rather than “come to life.” landscape, literalism and metaphor in some old english elegies 131 selim 19 (2012) here the description moves to a depiction of summer and growth on land, yet its infl uence is the same as winter’s—to encourage the speaker to undertake a new sea-voyage. the landscape features gemoniað, “admonish,” his mind and heart; thus they exert infl uence over his perception and actively encourage a choice made in his psychology. the prevalence of present tense verbs in this passage emphasises that his observations and thoughts are nearly simultaneous, and that this is not part of his memory. the fi gure of the cuckoo is also actively involved both in heralding summer’s arrival and in turning the speaker’s thoughts to the sorrow in the world, something that infl uences his later refl ections on the transitory nature of the world: “ic gelyfe no / þæt him eorðwelan ece stondeð” (“i do not believe that this earthly wealth will continue eternally,” 66–67). this detail has an echo in another poem in the exeter book, the husband’s message, where the cuckoo singing mournfully is an impetus for the wife to begin her journey (22–25). this interaction between the physical environment and the speaker’s internal thoughts culminates in one of the most fascinating images of psychological activity in old english literature: forþon nu min hyge hweorfeð  ofer hreþerlocan, min modsefa  mid merefl ode ofer hwæles eþel  hweorfeð wide, eorþan sceatas,  cymeð eft to me gifr e ond grædig,  gielleð anfl oga, hweteð on wælweg  hreþer unwearnum ofer holma gelagu.  forþon me hatran sind dryhtnes dreamas  þonne þis deade lif, læne on londe. (58–66a) therefore now my heart roams beyond my breast, my understanding of mind, with the sea-fl ood wanders widely over the whale’s home, the corners of the earth, comes again to me eager and greedy; the lonely fl ier cries, incites the heart, irresistibly on the whale’s path, over the ocean’s fl ood. therefore the joys of the lord are dearer to me than this dead life, transitory on land. margaret tedford 132selim 19 (2012) if forþon here implies causation,24 then the previous passage of the exhortation of the summer and the cuckoo has caused this activity of the inner being, then this activity in turn infl uences the speaker’s movement to christian belief. the maritime setting that we have seen so far in the poem is entwined with the activity of the mind— the mind roams with the sea-fl ood. some scholars have understood this passage to be an allegorical depiction of the journey of the soul, yet i would have to agree with orton (2002: 366) that it is rather a “mental anticipation of his voyage to come.” orton (ibidem) points to the fact that hyge and modsefa apply to the centres of mental or emotional activity in old english and […] it is tendentious to take them as referring to the immortal soul, for which the old english is sawol or gast. this interpretation is also more appropriate in terms of the previous passages where the speaker’s environment has provoked him to contemplation. there is evidence of a spiritual development, yet it is clear fr om the use of forþon, which implies a connected series of ideas, that it is through mental contemplation that the speaker comes to appreciate the joys of god. similarly, the speaker in wand. gains wisdom and so makes the transition fr om anhaga to snottor on mode through his experiences and contemplation of the physical world around him. in lines 73–77 is able to contemplate the future by observing the present world: ongietan sceal gleaw hæle  hu gæstlic bið þonne ealre þisse worulde wela  weste stondeð, swa nu missenlice  geond þisne middangeard winde biwaune  weallas stondaþ, hrime bihrorene,  hryðge þa ederas. the wise man can perceive how terrible it will be when all this world’s wealth stands waste, as now in diverse places 24 it is possible to translate it as “because.” either this translation or “therefore” imply a sequence of related events, one the cause of the next. landscape, literalism and metaphor in some old english elegies 133 selim 19 (2012) throughout this middle-earth walls stand shaken by the wind, fr ost-covered, the buildings swept by snow-storms. as the future tense in bið is correlated with the present in nu, the speaker is able to link the present with the future through looking at the physical world and the eff ect of the harsh side of nature on the world of men. the speaker continues to refl ect on the death of warriors and the destruction of the halls so integral to heroic society, a destruction that is brought about by the physical world: þas stanhleoþu  stormas cnyssað, hrið hreosende  hrusan bindeð, wintres woma,  þonne won cymeð, nipeð nihtscua,  norþan onsendeð hreo hæglfare  hæleþum on andan […] her bið feoh læne;  her bið fr eond læne; her bið mon læne;  her bið mæg læne (101–105, 108–109). storms strike the rocky slopes, the driving storm binds the earth, the noise of winter, when the darkness comes, the shades of night grow dark, fr om the north in enmity sending fi erce hailstorms to men […] here wealth is transitory; here a fr iend is transitory; here a man is transitory; here a kinsman is transitory. lines 101–105 are observations of destructive weather in the world, with the focus again on winter and storms. jennifer neville notes that it is the very harshness of the physical world that is key to the speaker’s turning to god: “it is not sinfulness but the threat to survival in the hostile physical environment that motivates the seeking of god” (1999: 51). the speaker’s observations lead to the gnomic utterances of lines 108–109, and again it is the contemplation of the physical that leads him to mental and spiritual wisdom. nicholas howe’s reading of these lines (2008: 71) argues for the repeated term her as a literal referent to the sea: margaret tedford 134selim 19 (2012) one can read them as deeply moving in their steadied confr ontation with the radical emptiness of the sea. for the sea off ers no sense of place to hold one long on earth; there one can see no familiar landmarks. this reading of the seascape setting emphasises the centrality of this location in the poem; it is essential for the speaker to reach the gnomic conclusions of the latter part of the poem, as his constant movement upon the sea has forced him to recognise the transitory nature of many things in the world. the speaker’s transformation fr om the anhaga of the fi rst line to a man of wisdom is complete in line 111: “swa cwæð snottor on mode—gesæt him sundor æt rune” (“thus spoke the man wise in mind—he sat apart in private counsel”). his isolation here seems voluntary, and without the feelings of torment that marked his exile earlier in the poem. this image of sitting is very diff erent fr om those seen earlier in wl and we, where the sitting position of the women implied a forced inactivity, “one of helplessness and dejection” (wl 37; we 10; magennis 1986: 443–444). magennis 1986: 449 has viewed this line as an expression of the speaker’s adoption of a christian contemplative life: the verb “gesæt” with the accompanying phrase “æt rune” suggests the contemplative life which the speaker embraces, and it contrasts this with the active life in the world which has been vividly evoked in the fi rst part of the poem. the speaker’s wisdom is thus associated with the kind of christian contemplation and isolation fr om the world that is typically the domain of the monastery. he has rejected the world of the heroic warrior that was denied him and come to a life of christian mental and spiritual activity. yet it must be recognised that he would not have reached this point without the experiences of his physical journey and contemplation of the natural world. the speaker of sf also comes to this kind of contemplative wisdom, as the poem concludes with a homiletic passage on the transitory nature of the world of men. this wisdom is landscape, literalism and metaphor in some old english elegies 135 selim 19 (2012) similarly gained fr om his experiences on the sea-voyage, through contemplation of the physical and symbolic aspects of his exile that leads him to the hope of a lasting home in heaven (117–122). this wisdom and its consequent consolation could not have been reached without the experiences detailed in the fi rst part of the poem, as can be seen when the speaker constantly repeats how the men on land cannot understand these things (12–13, 27–30, 55–57). if the land-dweller cannot understand the physical experiences of the exile on the sea, then he cannot interpret them in the same way and come to the same enlightenment. these two poems are similar in many ways, both focusing on an exile within a seascape setting who observes his physical surroundings and is able to come to the consolation of christian hope. yet the most striking aspect of them is the interaction between the physical landscape and the psychology of the speakers. the breakdown of the “inner” and “outer,” and the confl ation of the literal and metaphorical, defi nes these poems and marks them out as among the most complex and fascinating in the old english corpus. 5 conclusion the aim of this article has been to demonstrate that in these “elegiac” poems of the exeter book (wl, we, wand., sf ) there is a complex, dynamic relationship between the theme of isolation and the physical landscape settings. these poems feature solitary speakers or protagonists, and as such they have a greater emphasis placed on interior thoughts and feelings. within such texts, landscape is used for a purpose, “to represent the psychic life of characters and thus move their audiences inward” (howe 2008: 64). for such isolated characters there is risk in disclosing their feelings openly (see wand. 8–14), yet their engagement with their environment opens up a window into their interior mind. this is not done through abstraction and allegory but through a complex melding of the physical and metaphorical where the exterior world and the interior mind are in dialogue. margaret tedford 136selim 19 (2012) in wl we saw how the accumulation of associations surrounding the eorðscræf and actreo created a landscape of entrapment and oppression connected to death and paganism. this environment was not simply a projection of the wife’s feelings, but her surroundings infl uenced her emotional state, reinforcing her feelings of enclosure and isolation. the island setting of we is key in constructing the speaker’s separation fr om wulf. like the wife in wl, her environment exerts infl uence over her thoughts and emotions, increasing her awareness of her isolation. finally, the speakers in wand. and sf endure exile upon the sea where their physical journey leads to their gaining of wisdom and christian consolation. in these two poems there is a fascinating exploration of mental processes, which are stimulated by the speakers’ observation of their physical surroundings and contemplation of their experiences journeying on the sea. in all four of these poems the supposed division between “physical” and “mental” landscapes is broken down through a confl ation of the literal and metaphorical. previous scholars have typically been divided over the interpretation of these oft enstudied texts, adhering to the view that the depiction of landscape is either literal or metaphorical. in this study i have aimed to demonstrate that this is not the case. rather, the two work together simultaneously in a way that helps to articulate the interior world of the solitary fi gure. these texts are psychologically complex, and the key to their interpretation lies in understanding the relationship between the characters and their landscape settings. landscape in old english poetry cannot be dismissed as a mere expression of “mood;” it must rather be understood as a carefully constructed setting that exerts its own infl uence over the mental state of the poems’ speakers. margaret tedford queen’s university belfast landscape, literalism and metaphor in some old english elegies 137 selim 19 (2012) references anderson, s. o. 1937–1938: the seafarer: an interpretation. k. humanistika vetemskapssamfundets i lund arsberättelse 1. lund, gleerup. anderson, e. r. 1997: the seasons of the year in old english. anglosaxon england 26: 231–263. baker, p. s. 1981: the ambiguity of ‘wulf and eadwacer’. studies in philology 78.5: 39–51. ballantyne, r. 2004: islands in wilderness: the changing medieval use of the east anglian peat fens, england. environmental archaeology 9: 189–198. battles, p. 1994. of graves, caves, and subterranean 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penitent’s prayer. anglia 73: 413–466. toronto dictionary of old english. http://www.doe.utoronto.ca wentersdorf, k. p. 1981: the situation of the narrator in the old english wife’s lament. speculum 56.3: 492–516. landscape, literalism and metaphor in some old english elegies 141 selim 19 (2012) whitelock, d. 1950: the interpretation of the seafarer. in c. fox & b. dickins eds. the early cultures of north-west europe (h.m. chadwick memorial studies). cambridge, cambridge university press: 261–272. wickam-crowley, k. m. 2006: living on the ecg: the mutable boundaries of land and water in anglo-saxon contexts. in c. a. lees & g. r. overing eds. a place to believe in: locating medieval landscapes. pennsylvania, pennsylvania state university press: 85–110. • received 24 feb 2014; accepted 09 may 2014 selim04.pdf ana mª hornero corisco, selim 4 (1994): 74-93 an analysis of the object position in ancrene wisse and the katherine group ancrene wisse and the katherine group have been considered as twin texts since 1929, when j. r. r. tolkien stated that ms corpus christi college cambridge 402 and ms bodley 34 —containing ancrene wisse and the katherine group, respectively — presented a consistent and regular phonology, morphology and orthography. these prose works were claimed to be the exponents of the so-called ab language.1 this paper, being a part of a larger research project, tries to prove the lack of uniformity of such ab language. at the same time, but in a parallel way, the aim is to find out to what extent has the french language influenced on the prose of these six 13th century works. previous research on the influence of french upon the ab language has just made reference to lexical borrowings. this is intended to be, therefore, a new and more comprehensive approach, that had been waiting for so long to be made. the aim of this paper is to provide an analysis of an aspect of the word order usage in the ancrene wisse and the katherine group: the position of the object with re spect to the verb. an attempt is made to show which word order patterns are common or unmarked and which are uncommon or marked in the corpus, by tabulating their frequency of occurrence. the distribution of clauses and their classification has been made following kubouchi’s model (1975).2 1 note the following abbreviations throughout: aw = ancrene wisse; sk = sancte katerine; sm = seinte margarete; si = seinte iuliene; sw = sawles warde; hm = hali mei?had. 2 kubouchi, t., 1975: “word order in the ancrene wisse.” hitotsubashi journal of arts & sciences. tokyo. ana mª hornero corisco ____________________________________________________________________ 74 the material used for this analysis is the english text of the ancren riwle as pre sented in cccc ms. 402, edited by j. tolkien.1 for the analysis of the katherine group, s. d’ardenne’s edition of ms. bodley 34 has been taken.2 the sample under analysis is a 15% for each of the six prose works, the margin of error being thus remarkably minimized.3 1058 sentences (practically the whole sample) have been analysed for the study of the object position in the six prose works. they are distributed as follows: ancrene wisse : 667 sancte katerine : 85 seinte margarete: 113 seinte iuliene : 67 sawles warde: 38 hali meiíhad : 88 independent clauses type1: independent clauses which are not introduced by a coordinate conjunction or adverbials in ancrene wisse the svo order is by far the most frequent (67.7%). next comes osv (12%) and in the third place ovs (7.2%). sancte katerine presents the svo order as the most frequent (46.6%), followed by vo (33.3%). seinte margarete shows osv order as the main (69.2%), followed by svo (19.2%) in seinte iuliene the most frequent order is svo (80%) 1 tolkien, j. r. r., ed., 1962: the english text of the ancren riwle. ancrene wisse (cccc ms. 402 ) [e. e. t. s., o. s. 249], oxford university press, oxford. 2 d’ardenne, s. t. r. o. ed., 1977: the katherine group edited from ms. bodley 34. société d’edition “les belles lettres”, paris. 3 a part of the beginning, a part of the end and two parts of the middle were selected for each of the prose works. ____________________________________________________________________ 75 sawles warde presents the same frequency for it (80%), followed by sov (20%) hali meiíhad has svo as the most frequent, too (69.2%), followed by osv (15.3%). as can be seen, with the exception of seinte margarete, all the works present the svo order as the most frequent for this type 1 of independent clauses. table i shows how this order reaches the highest rate of occurrence (61.7%) for the six prose works, in type 1 of independent clauses. osv is next in frequency, reaching a 17.9% of the whole for the same type of sentences. a tendency can be said to be present in all of them to strengthen the basic pattern svo, already present in old english, and of the utmost importance in modern en glish. french may have had an effect in the consolidation of that order pattern, since that order becomes more firmly established in the development of its history. moignet 1(1988: 356) mentions it: l’ordre sujet-verbe-complément devient assez vite prépondérant, dans l’histoire du français. il est quasiment de règle quand l’utilité ne se fait pas particulièrement sentir de lier la phrase à ce qui précède ou à mettre en relief un élément complément (…) for brunot2(1966: 268) this pattern also “était déjà la plus fréquente en ancien français”. type 2. independent clauses introduced by adverbials a) starting with ne 1 moignet, g., 1988: grammaire de l’ancien français. klincksieck, paris. 2 brunot, f., 1966: histoire de la langue française. tome i. librairie armand colin, paris. ana mª hornero corisco ____________________________________________________________________ 76 in ancrene wisse the most frequent pattern is vso (53.8%), followed by vo (35.8%). the only order present in sancte katerine is vso (100%). seinte margarete presents vos all the time (100%). no clear preference is shown in seinte iuliene for either of the following patterns: vos (50%) and svo (50%). in sawles warde only vso is found (100%). the same applies to hali meiíhad: vso (100%). for this type 2a of clauses there seems to be a general agreement in the pattern vso, which reaches the highest frequency, except in seinte margarete —again being slightly different from the rest— and seinte iuliene. as a contrast, sancte katerine, sawles warde and hali meiíhad offer this as the only possiblity in type 2a of independent clauses. table i shows how vso gets the highest percentage (56.3%), very much above the other order patterns. it is the most used in the six prose works for this type 2a of independent clauses. vo follows, with a 29.2%. b) starting with any other adverbial this time the most frequent order in ancrene wisse is svo (48.1%), followed by vso (29.6%). in sancte katerine svo (66.6%) is the most widely used order, followed also by vso (16.6%) and sov (16.6%). in seinte margarete svo presents the highest percentage (50%). in seinte iuliene ov (50%) and vo (50%) are equally distributed. both sawles warde and hali meiíhad do not present any object for this type of clauses. seinte iuliene is again different from the rest; it can be argued that a more traditional order is present in it, since the object precedes the verb in a 50% of the occurrences. the most frequent order in the six prose works for this type 2b of independent clauses is, therefore, svo. ____________________________________________________________________ 77 type 3. coordinate clauses which are introduced by a coordinate conjunction a) introduced by ant, ah and thah in ancrene wisse vo (65.8%) appears as the most frequent order, followed by svo (21.1%). sancte katerine presents vo (59.2%) as the most used pattern, followed by svo (22.2%). in seinte margarete vo (50%) is the most frequent, also followed by svo (23.3%), like the works above. in seinte iuliene vo (77.7%) presents the highest frequency, too, followed at a long distance by svo (11.1%). sawles warde shows svo first (45.4%), followed by vo (27.2%). hali meiíhad, like the other works above, shows a preference for vo (61.9%), followed by svo (19%). there is a general agreement in the choice of order pattern for this type of coordinate clauses. table i shows the unquestionable preference for the vo order, which presents the highest frequency of occurrence (62.9%), followed at a considerable dis tance by svo (21.5%). it has often been stated that old english usually presented the order sov after ond and ac, that is, the so-called subordinate order. but this usage surely did not survive that perio d. and, supposing it had survived after old english, what seems absolutely certain is that it is not reflected in the six prose works under study (its presence is limited to two occurrences in ancrene wisse and sancte katerine and only one in seinte margarete, seinte iuliene and hali meiíhad). the superiority of vo in this type of coordinate clauses coincides with the usage, at that very moment, of the french language. brunot (1966) states that this order pattern is the most frequent in old french when the subject is not present. the syntax of that romance language may have played an imporana mª hornero corisco ____________________________________________________________________ 78 tant role in the preference for the svo pattern, rather than for the native sov pattern. b) introduced by for, oîer and me the most frequent order in ancrene wisse is svo (52.3%), followed by vo (23.8%). in sancte katerine all the patterns show the same frequency: svo (33.3%), vs (33.3%) and svoc (33.3%). in seinte margarete the most usual is svo (75%), followed at a distance by osv (25%). seinte iuliene presents the same frequency for svo (50%) and vso (50%). in sawles warde and hali meiíhad there is only one pattern for this type of clauses: svo (100%). all the prose works coincide in their more or less frequent use of the svo pattern for the type 3b of independent clauses. this can be observed in table i, where the highest rate of occurrence (57.6%) corresponds to this order. type 4. imperative and interrogative sentences the most frequent order in ancrene wisse is vo (43.4%), followed by vo s (16.1%). sancte katerine shows a preference for vo (66.6%), followed by vso (33.4%). in seinte margarete vo is the most ususal (44.4%), followed by svo (22.2%). seinte iuliene shows svo as the most frequent (41.6%), followed by vso (33.3%). in sawles warde the only order pattern present is vo (100%). ____________________________________________________________________ 79 hali meiíhad shows vo (66.6%) as the most frequent, followed at a great dis tance by vos (22.2%). all the prose works, with the exception of seinte iuliene, agree to choose preferably the vo pattern for imperative and interrogative sentences. so it is seen in table i, where vo presents the highest frequency (45.1%) for this type 4 of independent sentences. this order pattern is the commonest in old french syntax, both for interrogative sentences, where the pronoun régime is postponed (moignet, 1988), and for impera tive sentences (brunot, 1966). therefore a possible influence of the french syntax in the consolidation of that order pattern should be considered. dependent clauses type 1. clauses with the subject and verb in ancrene wisse svo (63.6%) is the most frequent order, followed by osv (24.3%) and sov (10.6%). in sancte katerine svo is the most usual, too (67.8%), followed at a great dis tance by osv (17.8%). seinte margarete also presents svo (56.7%) as the most frequent, followed by osv (24.3%) and in the third place sov (18.9%). in seinte iuliene the most usual pattern is svo (83.3%), followed by osv (16.6%). the same happens in sawles warde, where svo reaches the highest percentage (66.6%), followed by osv and sov (16.6% each of them). in hali meiíhad svo is also the most frequent (55.8%), followed by osv (23.5%), sov (17.6%) and ovs (2.9%). all the prose works present the svo pattern as the most frequent, a very significant fact when dealing with subordinate clauses, for which the order sov used to be the usual one in the past. but the sov pattern is relegated to ana mª hornero corisco ____________________________________________________________________ 80 a third position (11.8%), whereas svo reaches a 63.3% and its immediate follower, osv, a 23.2%. trying to find a possible parallelism with old french, we face, on one hand, a punctual distinction made by togeby1(1974: 61): dans les subordonnées, l’objet se place après la verbe si le sujet est un substantif (...). mais si le sujet est un pronom, l’objet se place volontiers entre celui-ci et le verbe on the other, brunot’s hesitation (1966: 268): ici, l’usage demeure encore très variable pendant toute cette première période.(...) partout on rencontre des exemples contradictoires in any case, all the works under study have taken a step towards a more innovative prose. seinte margarete remains more traditional, as its lower frequency in svo and higher frequency in sov prove. table iii shows the general agreement in choosing the svo order as the most fre quent —with a high frequency sometimes (sawles warde: 62.2%), lower other times (seinte margarete: 36.9%). thus it can be concluded that this kind of prose is gradually trying to get rid of those patterns which tied it to the native tradition. even if this stage only witnesses slow transitions, some features of modernity and innovation are already reflected in the different order patterns that have been shown for the various types of clauses, some of which may have been reinforced by imitation to the french model. all in all, the most frequent order patterns in the 1058 clauses under analysis, are, as table iii shows: svo (43.1%), followed by vo (23.9%) and in the third place osv (12%). sov remains the fifth, with a 5.9%. sov, so frequent in old english, decreases its use considerably, while the other patterns become more usual. whereas in old english the object, be it a 1 togeby, k., 1974: précis historique de grammaire française. akademisk forlag, copenhague. ____________________________________________________________________ 81 pronoun or a noun, came before the verb, in the early middle english period the object-noun starts to be rejected before the verb, the pronoun being preferred in this position. after examining the occurrences of the object in the six prose works, whenever sov is pre sent the following can be observed: ancrene wisse: type 1: so(pron)v: 5 occurr. so(n) v: 3 occurr. type 3a: » 2 » 0 subordinate: » 21 » 4 sancte katerine: type 1: » 1 » 1 type 2b: » 0 » 1 type 3a: » 1 » 1 subordinate: » 2 » 0 seinte margarete: type 3a: » 1 » 0 subordinate: » 3 » 4 seinte iuliene : type 3a: » 1 » 0 sawles warde : type 1: » 2 » 0 type 3a: » 1 » 0 subordinate: » 2 » 0 hali meiíhad : type 3a: » 1 » 0 subordinate: » 4 » 2 none of the prose works with the exception of sancte katerine, which seems more traditional in this respect presents for type 3a of independent clauses the pattern so(n)v, so current in old english. the highest number of occurrences of so(n)v is localised in subordinate clauses. sawles warde does not present that order pattern in any of its clauses. ana mª hornero corisco ____________________________________________________________________ 82 all the works show a number of pronoun-objects superior to that of noun-objects. this fact coincides with the usage in old french. b. lee1 (1974: 64) states: old french, like modern french, usually placed pronominal objects before the verb. therefore the pattern so(pron)v is itself an inheritance from the english tradition, but it may have been reinforced by the practice of the french syntax. the development of the english language gives a gradual boost to the svo order, although the sov pattern will still be present in modern english poetry. examples: “ ® since that i me repent of my lost years” “or youth led me, and falsehood me misguided” (quot. kellner, 1892: 291).2 as for the osv order (12%), the third with the highest frequency in the six prose works, it is convenient to point out that when the object is placed first in the clause, the subject follows it and precedes the verb more frequently than the ovs order. the productivity of the latter tends to diminish, given that it belongs to an earlier stage of the language. thus, in ancrene wisse there are 25 occurrences of ovs, as against 77 of osv. in sancte katerine there are 4 occurrences of vs versus 6 of osv here the preference is not so marked -. in seinte margarete there is 1 occurrence of ovs versus 30 of osv.in seinte iuliene there is 1 occurrence of ovs versus 2 of osv. in sawles warde, 2 occurrences of osv; and in hali meiíhad 1 occurrence of ovs versus 8 of osv. 1 lee, b. g., 1974: linguistic evidence for the priority of the french text of the ancrene wisse. mouton, the hague. 2 kellner, l., 1892: historical outlines of english syntax. macmillan & co., london. ____________________________________________________________________ 83 (table iii shows likewise, for each of the six prose works, the frequency of occurrence of ovs and osv). this time, however, the influence of the french language cannot be said to be present in the increase of the osv order, since ovs was the norm in old french. according to brunot1 (1969: 447): en ancien français, quand la phrase commence par un complément (...), le verbe le suit immédiatement, et le sujet se trouve rejeté après le verbe last, but not least, we are left with the question concerning the position of the object with respect to the verb. j. williams 2 (1986: 233) gives some general lines: between the years 1000 and 15000 the frequency of an accustive object before a verb decreased markedly: ca. 1000 1200 1300 1400 1500 52% 53% 40% 14% 2% in the six prose works under analysis we observe a very marked preference for the object after the verb, for all types of clauses (see table iv). in some cases, nevertheless, the results should be pres ented with a certain caution. for instance, in seinte margarete vo and ov show the same frequency. in its subordinate clauses the vo order is not much more frequent than ov, thereby leading to the conclusion that its prose is of a more traditional character. seinte iuliene does not show a clear preference for either pattern in type 2b of independent clauses, although it does for the rest. 1 brunot, f. & bruneau, c., 1969: précis de grammaire historique de la langue française. masson et cie, paris. 2 williams, j. m., 1975: origins of the english language. free press, new york. ana mª hornero corisco ____________________________________________________________________ 84 with these two exceptions, the vo order is practically consolidated in the prose written during the early thirteenth century, after the results of the sample analysed for this study. ana mª hornero corisco university of zaragoza ____________________________________________________________________ 85 appendix table i a) independent clauses type 1 order aw sk sm si sw hm occur. % ov 0 0,0% ovs 9 1 1 1 1 13 6,6% osv 15 18 2 35 17,9% ovcs 0 0,0% osvc 0 0,0% sov 8 2 2 12 6,1% vo 6 5 1 1 13 6,6% voc 1 1 0,5% vos 0 0,0% svo 84 7 5 8 8 9 121 61,7% vso 1 1 0,5% svoc 0 0,0% total 196 100,0 type order aw sk sm si sw hm occur. % ov 1 1 2,1% ovs 0 0,0% osv 0 0,0% ovcs 0 0,0% osvc 0 0,0% sov 0 0,0% vo 14 14 29,2% voc 0 0,0% vos 2 1 1 4 8,3% svo 1 1 2 4,2% vso 21 3 2 1 27 56,3% svoc 0 0,0% total 48 100,0 ana mª hornero corisco ____________________________________________________________________ 86 type order aw sk sm si sw hm occur. % ov 1 1 2,4% ovs 0 0,0% osv 0 0,0% ovcs 1 1 2,4% osvc 1 1 2,4% sov 1 1 2,4% vo 4 2 1 7 17,1% voc 0 0,0% vos 0 0,0% svo 13 4 3 20 48,8% vso 8 1 1 10 24,4% svoc 0 0,0% total 41 100,0 type order aw sk sm si sw hm occur. % ov 2 1 3 1 1 8 3,4% ovs 3 1 4 1,7% osv 4 1 1 6 2,5% ovcs 0 0,0% osvc 1 1 0,4% sov 2 2 1 1 1 7 3,0% vo 81 16 15 21 3 13 149 62,9% voc 3 1 1 5 2,1% vos 1 1 0,4% svo 26 6 7 3 5 4 51 21,5% vso 1 1 1 1 4 1,7% svoc 1 1 0,4% total 237 100,0 ____________________________________________________________________ 87 type order aw sk sm si sw hm occur. % ov 1 1 3,0% ovs 3 1 4 12,1% osv 1 1 3,0% ovcs 0 0,0% osvc 0 0,0% sov 0 0,0% vo 5 5 15,2% voc 0 0,0% vos 0 0,0% svo 11 1 3 1 2 1 19 57,6% vso 1 1 2 6,1% svoc 1 1 3,0% total 33 100,0 type a order aw sk sm si sw hm occur. %µ ov 9 1 10 7,0% ovs 9 9 6,3% osv 1 1 0,7% ovcs 0 0,0% osvc 0 0,0% sov 0 0,0% vo 43 2 4 2 1 12 64 45,1% voc 1 1 2 1,4% vos 16 1 4 21 14,8% svo 8 2 5 15 10,6% vso 12 1 1 4 1 19 13,4% svoc 1 1 0,7% total 142 100,0 ana mª hornero corisco ____________________________________________________________________ 88 table ii b) subordinate clauses order aw sk sm si sw hm occur. % ov 0 0,0% ovs 1 1 2 0,6% osv 57 5 9 2 2 8 83 23,2% ovcs 0 0,0% osvc 0 0,0% sov 25 2 7 2 6 42 11,8% vo 0 0,0% voc 0 0,0% vos 1 1 0,3% svo 149 19 21 10 8 19 226 63,3% vso 3 3 0,8% svoc 0 0,0% total 357 100,0 % total sum 667 85 111 66 37 88 1054 1054 ____________________________________________________________________ 89 table iii aver. order aw sk sm si sw hm % ov 1,9% 1,2% 2,7% 3,0% 0,0% 2,3% 2,0% ovs 3,6% 4,7% 0,9% 1,5% 0,0% 2,3% 3,0% osv 11,4% 7,1% 27,0% 3,0% 5,4% 11,4% 12,0% ovcs 0,1% 0,0% 0,0% 0,0% 0,0% 0,0% 0,0% osvc 0,1% 0,0% 0,9% 0,0% 0,0% 0,0% 0,2% sov 5,2% 8,2% 7,2% 1,5% 10,8% 8,0% 5,9% vo 22,9% 27,1% 19,8% 36,4% 10,8% 29,5% 23,9% voc 0,7% 0,0% 1,8% 0,0% 0,0% 1,1% 0,8% vos 2,8% 1,2% 0,9% 3,0% 0,0% 4,5% 2,6% svo 43,8% 43,5% 36,9% 42,4% 62,2% 37,5% 43,1% vso 7,0% 5,9% 1,8% 9,1% 8,1% 3,4% 6,3% svoc 0,1% 1,2% 0,0% 0,0% 2,7% 0,0% 0,3% svoc 0,0% 0,0% 0,0% 0,0% 0,0% 0,0% 0,0% total 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100,0 % ana mª hornero corisco ____________________________________________________________________ 90 table iv: summary of the analysis a) independent clauses type aw sk sm si sw hm 1. ov 25,8% 20,0% 50,0% 20,0% 20,0% 23,0% vo 74,2% 80,0% 50,0% 80,0% 80,0% 77,0% 2a ov 2,5% 0,0% 0,0% 0,0% 0,0% 0,0% vo 97,5% 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 2b ov 7,4% 16,6% 0,0% 50,0% 0,0% 0,0% vo 92,6% 83,4% 100,0 50,0% 0,0% 0,0% 3a ov 8,9% 18,5% 20,0% 7,4% 9,0% 9,5% vo 91,1% 81,5% 80,0% 92,6% 91,0% 90,5% 3b ov 19,0% 33,3% 25,0% 0,0% 0,0% 0,0% vo 81,0% 66,7% 75,0% 100,0 100,0 100,0 4. ov 28,2% 0,0% 11,1% 0,0% 0,0% 5,5% vo 71,8% 100,0 88,9% 100,0 100,0 94,5% b) subordinate clauses ov 35,0% 28,5% 43,2% 16,6% 33,3% 44,1% vo 65,0% 71,5% 56,8% 83,4% 66,7% 55,9% ____________________________________________________________________ 91 references brunot, f., 1966: histoire de la langue française. tome i. librairie armand colin, paris. brunot, f. & brunea u, c., 1969: précis de grammaire historique de la langue française. masson et cie, paris. d’ardenne, s. t. r. o. ed., 1977: the katherine group edited from ms. bodley 34. société d’edition “les belles lettres”, paris. foulet, l., 1982: petite syntaxe de l’ancien français. honoré champion, paris. gardner, f., 1971: an analysis of syntactic patterns of old english . mouton, the hague. kellner, l., 1892: historical outlines of english syntax. macmillan & co., london. kubouchi, t., 1975: “word order in the ancrene wisse” hitotsubashi journal of arts & sciences. tokyo. lee, b. g., 1974: linguistic evidence for the priority of the french text of the ancrene wisse. mouton, the hague. menard, ph., 1976: manuel du français du moyen âge, i: syntaxe de l’ancien français. sobodi, bordeaux. mitchell, b., 1985: old english syntax, vols. i, ii. clarendon press, oxford. moignet, g., 1988: grammaire de l’ancien français. klincksieck, paris. togeby, k., 1974: précis historique de grammaire française. akademisk forlag, copenhague. tolkien, j. r. r., 1929: “ancrene wisse and hali meiíhad”. essays and studies by members of the english association, xiv. tolkien, j. r. r. ed., 1962: the english text of the ancren riwle. ancrene wisse. (cccc ms. 402) [e.e.t.s., o.s. 249], oxford university press, oxford. williams, j. m., 1975: origins of the english language. free press, new york. ana mª hornero corisco ____________________________________________________________________ 92 * † * selim 15.indb m. r. rambaram-olm, selim 13 (2005-2006): 69—82 is the title of the old english poem the descent into hell suitable?1 abstract the author studies and reevaluates the traditional acceptance of titles of oe poetry in the example of the case of the exeter book’s the descent into hell, also known as the harrowing of hell. keywords: old enhlish poetry, descent into hell. resumen la autora estudia y reevalúa la adaptación tradicional de los títulos de la poesía del inglés antiguo en el ejemplo de la obra titulada el descenso a los infiernos del libro de exeter, concocido también cono la liberación del infierno. palabras clave: poesía del inglés antiguo, descent into hell. all too often we unquestioningly accept the titles of old english poetry that were given by an early editor, and such a title might well color our interpretation of a poem. this is especially true when dealing with anonymous old english poetry, in which scholars are left with little or no details about an author and sometimes have the dubious task of naming an untitled medieval text. scholars have often been left with the complicated and challenging task of trying to interpret anonymous texts, while also providing them with suitable names; however, when an anonymous poem is misinterpreted by an editor and then also named by that editor, the results are often that the editorial name endowed on the poem somehow reflects the gross misinterpretation of the text. such is the case for the exeter book’s the descent into hell, which has been given a name that might be unsuitable and might not clearly represent the poem as a whole, since past editors seem to have misread the poem’s central theme. 1 i would like to thank professor graham caie for his comments on this paper, as well as the lynne grundy memorial trust fund for their generous support. m. r. rambaran-olm 72 the poem preserved on folios 119 verso -121 verso of the exeter book has been generally known as the descent into hell, ever since late commentators made a slight editorial change from the previous title the harrowing of hell. although there was a recognition that the name of the poem was not fitting and an attempt was made to rectify the matter regarding the title, the new suggestion and the generally accepted title today is no more suitable than its predecessor. the issue about the title has not yet been resolved satisfactorily and the existing title of this exeter book poem has obviously been unsettling for more recent scholars as well. nearly forty years ago, richard trask recognized that the current title was unsuitable and, suggested the title ‘christ and john’ to replace the current title.2 while trask points out that the title hardly does the poem justice, he only alludes to the issue in passing and does not press the matter. in the following paper i hope to outline why the current name of the exeter book poem is unsuitable and recommend titles that would be more appropriate for it. according to the oxford english dictionary one of the main definitions of the term “title” in reference to literature is: the name of a book, a poem, or other [written] composition describing; an inscription at the beginning of a book, describing or indicating its subject, contents, or nature, and usually also giving the name of the author, compiler, or editor, the name of the publisher, and the place and date of publication.3 while the oed gives us a straightforward definition and outlines the basic function of a title, john fisher explores the definition and function of a title 2 trask suggests that “taking the speaker in the latter half of the poem to be john the baptist, the poem might on a literal level be called simply ‘christ and john.’” “the descent into hell of the exeter book.” neuphilologische mitteilungen, 72 (1971), p. 425. 3 “title, n.3” the oxford english dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. oed online. oxford university press. 28 sept. 2006 http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50253513. is the title of oe the descent of hell suitable? 73 in greater detail. in fisher’s appropriately named article called “entitling” the critic argues: while titles are names, they are a good deal more than just names. they are not necessarily descriptions, although they can contain descriptive elements. they are names for a purpose, not merely for the purpose of identification and designation, in spite of the important practical role which indexical names play in the designative process. the unique purpose of titling is hermeneutical, [as] titles are names which function as guides to interpretation. (j. fisher 1984: 288) by ‘hermeneutical,’ fisher elucidated that it “is to allow for interpretive discourse, so if the title does not allow for interpretive discourse, it is nothing more than a label.” (j. fisher 1984: 288) if he is correct in his assertion that there is a significant and meaningful connection between titles and the literary works they correspond with, and furthermore, titles, themselves, function as guides to interpretation, then the current title the descent into hell functions as a guide to misinterpretation. one reason why the poem was given its current title by early editors was because they based their title on a misunderstanding of the poem’s major theme. certainly the poem does deal with one of the extended accounts of salvation history found in the gospel of nicodemus,4 in which christ freed the 4 it should be noted that the account of christ’s descent is not mentioned in the bible, apart from a number of vague references scattered throughout. see ps. 68:18; matt. 12:40, eph. 4:7-11, rom. 10:6-7, phil. 2:9-11, col. 2:15, i cor. 15:55, 1 pet. 3:19. for various allusions to god appearing as conqueror of the lower regions see: ps. 24, isa. 42:7, 45:2, 53:8-9 and hos. 6:2, 13:14. christ’s descent is generally considered a legend, fully exploited in the apocryphal evangelium nicodemi, but the story itself is not an actual component of salvation history. the concept of redemption history rings more clearly through the echoes of baptism that dominate the poem, something of which i discuss further in this paper. see also trask’s “the descent into hell of the exeter book,” and zbigniew izydorczyk’s “the inversion of paschal events in the old english descent into m. r. rambaran-olm 74 ancient just from their long captivity in hell and, further, the poem is inextricably linked to the easter liturgy. from this, it seems that the editors have assigned the poem the title, the descent into hell. since early commentators had also established that the main source for the poem must have been the apocryphal text the gospel of nicodemus,5 critics attempted to hell,” neuphilologische mitteilungen, 91 (1990), pp. 439-445. see also footnote 6 for a more detailed description of the gospel of nicodemus. 5 the gospel of nicodemus is comprised of two parts known separately, as the descensus christi ad inferos and acta pilati, and together as the acta or gesta pilati or gospel of nicodemus. the basic authority of the text rests in the name of nicodemus, the secret follower of christ (see: john 3:1-10; 7:50-1; 19:39), who, along with joseph of arimathaea, is a leading character in the narrative. as a whole, the text is comprised of sixteen chapters dealing with the trial, death, descent, resurrection and ascension of christ. the narrative of the saviour’s descent to hell, included in chapters 12-15, involves two first-hand accounts of his harrowing narrated by two men, karinus and leucius, who are raised from the dead after witnessing the spectacle themselves. by combining the names of the two eye-witnesses, some scholars have hypothesized that a second century christian named lucius charinus may have written the apocryphal text, although no confirmed author has ever been established with certainty. for further discussion on the theory of authorship in descensus christi ad inferos see w. h. hulme’s the middle english harrowing of hell and gospel of nicodemus. london: early english text society, 1907, p.lxi. although a primary function of the gospel of nicodemus was used to prove to unbelievers that christ resurrected, the apocryphal text’s earliest audiences, undoubtedly would have included believers from the early church; and its widespread appeal led to the original latin text being translated into greek, armenian, coptic, syriac and georgian. although the text was never accepted as canonical, it became one of the most popular of the new testament apocrypha, gaining widespread appeal by the middle ages. not only do anglo-saxon and several middle english translations exist, but the story of the descent proved to be a popular theme to depict in both art and drama spanning the course of the entire medieval period. dating of the acta pilati has proven to be a difficult task, since the two portions of the text probably originated at different times and in complete independence of each other. attempts to pin down the text’s composition as a whole vary anywhere from the first to the sixth century ad. hulme asserts that “the descensus is the older of two [parts] and probably received its literary form as early as the second or third century” (the middle english harrowing of hell and gospel of nicodemus. p.lxi), however this is still uncertain. the acta pilati has proven no less troublesome to date, and among the many complications surrounding the dating of the text is saint justin martyr’s 2nd-century allusion to christ’s trial before pilate, in the apologist’s apologia prima, which bears close resemblance to the account recorded in the apocryphal text. despite the similarity between the two texts no tangible evidence can verify whether the early christian writer was referring to an actual record or not, and most attempts to establish a date of composition for the gospel of nicodemus have been unfruitful. for further discussion on the author, composition, provenance and narrative is the title of oe the descent of hell suitable? 75 draw comparisons between the two works, while not only speculating that the poet’s concern was to tell the story of christ’s descent, but also concluding that the poem’s title should somehow reflect this connection with its main source. however, in naming the poem first the harrowing of hell and then afterwards the descent into hell, the only achievement editors made was in indicating the basic setting or backdrop of the poem, while in the process neglecting to point out the main emphasis of the poem.6 as some scholars have noted, the poem can appear inadequate when compared to typical narratives involving the harrowing of hell, especially those that closely follow the account described in the gospel of nicodemus. m. bradford bedingfield (2002: 145) explains that the central elements of the harrowing in its narrative developments include: the appearance of a light in the darkness of hell, the complaints/questions of the devils into the abyss, the plaints of the faithful (including the likes of abraham and david, and often several of the prophets) to be freed, and then of adam and, especially, eve, who invokes her daughter mary. quite frequently, the harrowing is followed by an account of the end of the world. of the apocryphal gospel of nicodemus, see: g. c. o’ calleaigh’s “dating the commentaries of nicodemus.” the harvard theological review, vol. 56. no. 1. (jan., 1963), pp. 21-58; see also the gospel of nicodemus. ed. h. c. kim. toronto: the pontifical institute of medieval studies, 1973; see also thomas hall’s ‘the evangelium nichodemi and vindicta saluatoris in anglo-saxon england,’ two old english apocrypha and their manuscript sources. ed. j. e. cross, cambridge: cambridge university press, 1996, pp. 36-81. 6 within the poem, there is very little reference made to the physical description of hell and only the half line ‘under bealuclommum’ (the descent into hell. l. 65b) explicitly describes the grimness of the underworld. references to john’s anguish and suffering in hell provide a sense of the psychological effects of suffering in the underworld (ll. 85-6, 98, 107), however, any sort of detailed description of hell is absent, apart from typical descriptions of the underworld as dark place (l. 55a). m. r. rambaran-olm 76 unlike the apocryphal text of the gospel of nicodemus or other prose or poetic works in which the central theme is concerned with christ’s descent,7 the poem of the exeter book gives one brief line to christ’s actual entrance into hell. as readers, we are not presented with a grandiose or spectacular image of christ’s descent, in which the savior, leading a heavenly host, bravely and mightily breaks through the gates of hell with divine strength and force in order to free the righteous from hell. the narrator, not to distract us from the main message, simply, yet eloquently, explains in one brief line “ac þa locu feollan / cluster of þam ceastrum; cyning in oþrad.”8 not to understate the dramatic events, the poet’s choice to condense the description of christ’s descent into hell into one line of poetry functions to move the action along quickly and efficiently without detracting from the main message of the poem that focuses, not simply on salvation history, but a contemporary and timeless salvation message for readers. just as the poem shares little resemblance with other harrowing accounts in terms of describing christ’s actual descent, the poem also contains no verbal responses by the devil and his minions, no personification of hell itself, and no dialogue between satan and hell. for those familiar with the harrowing account presented in the gospel of nicodemus, the dramatic episode involving a verbal exchange between satan and personified hell is both fascinating and remarkably comedic as the ancient enemies not only anticipate christ’s grand entrance, but attempt to deflect their failure at not being able to keep him out, by hurling insults and accusations at one other.9 however, 7 see especially: christ i & ii, christ & satan, guthlac b, dream of the rood, etc. 8 the descent into hell. ll. 39b-40. all quotes from the poem are taken from: the exeter book. ed. by george philip krapp & elliott van kirk dobbie. new york: columbia university press, 1936. 9 two separate comedic examples within evangelium nicodemi include: “inferus et mors et impia official eorum cum crudelibus ministries expauerunt in propriis regnis agnitam tanti luminis claritatem dum christum repente in suis sedibus uiderunt, et exlamauerunt dicentes: “victim sumus a te.”“ (xxii. 1) “tunc inferus suscipiens satan principem cum nimia increpatione dixit ad eum: “o princeps perditionis et dux exterminationis beelzebub, dirisio angelorum dei, sputio iustorum, quid hec facere uoluisti? in cuius exicium is the title of oe the descent of hell suitable? 77 in the poem of the exeter book the poet makes no mention of satan’s response and/or reaction to christ’s appearance, in fact satan does not speak at all, while hell, itself, remains a static, but grim location, “shrouded in darkness”, as the narrator states in line 55a. moving towards the peak or climax of traditional harrowing narratives, satan and his minions verbalize their defeat in a huge spectacle, while the righteous, represented by adam and eve, articulate gratitude, humility and praise for their redeemer who has come to free them. yet, in the exeter book poem, adam and eve remain silent with the multitude of the righteous and the only hint at satan’s defeat comes in three lines that summarize the saviour’s motivation for his journey. the lines read: “geseah he [iohannis] helle duru hædre scinan, / þa þe longe ær bilocen wæron, / beþeahte mid þystre.”10 apart from those aspects which are briefly summed up or altogether missing from the exeter book poem, another key component is also omitted that is usually found within works that deal with the harrowing of hell. christ, who is obviously the central figure within the harrowing narratives, often compellingly expresses his purpose, reprimands satan, and comfortingly addresses the righteous as well. however, in the exeter book poem, the saviour does not speak and apart from the poem’s narrator, who opens the poem and closes it with a final message of thanksgiving to god, john the baptist is the sole and central speaker within the text. here again, the inclusion of john the baptist as the one who receives christ in hell and as the one who speaks on behalf of the saints demonstrates a complete departure from harrowing narratives both in literature and artistic depictions.11 throughout the history of harrowing accounts, adam is consistently presented as the first to receive christ and address him on behalf mortis nobis tanta spolia promisisti? ignorasti ut insipiens quid egisti...” (xxiii.1). evangelium nichodemi. two old english apocrypha and their manuscript source. ed. j. e. cross. cambridge: cambridge university press, 1996, pp 220-224. 10 the descent into hell ll. 53-55a. 11 “fysde hine þa to fore frea moncynnes; / wolde heofona helm helle weallas / forbrecan ond forbygan, þære burge þrym /onginnan reafian, reþust ealra cyninga” (ll. 33-36). m. r. rambaran-olm 78 of humanity, while the exeter book poem, alone, depicts john the baptist performing adam’s usual duties, while adam himself remains silent amongst the crowd of saints. finally, there is no mention at the end of the poem of the end of the world or judgment day. rather, in the closing lines of the exeter book poem, the narrator graciously thanks christ for the hope that he gives us through his baptism and through his example, essentially urging us to hasten on our own journey towards salvation through baptism. with an exhortation of praise, the narrator concludes the poem by declaring: “oferwurpe þu mid þy wætre, weoruda dryhten, bliþe mode ealle burgwaran, swylce git iohannis in iordane mid þy fullwihte fægre onbryrdon ealne þisne middangeard. sie þæs symle meotude þonc!” (ll. 133-137). so what, in the end, would be the point of leaving out seemingly climactic, exciting, and traditional details of the harrowing account? basically, i believe that the departure from the apocryphal text is deliberate on the part of the poet who uses the scenario of christ’s descent as a backdrop in order to present a message focused on the journey towards salvation. this, of course, does not mean that the harrowing account is not significant within the poem’s structure, but certainly it is not the principal theme of the text. in actuality, the direction that the poet takes readers on is a different journey, if i may say so. mimicking the two marys at the beginning of the poem, who journey to christ’s tomb early in the morning, likewise following christ’s crossing into hell, and understanding john’s connection with baptism while being reminded not only through his words, but through his role in christian history and furthermore, by grasping the narrator’s closing utterance of thanksgiving which inspires readers on a journey towards salvation through their own baptism, readers are reminded of the christian message of salvation, while also being prompted to serve and praise god through prayer and deeds like john the baptist. so, ultimately, although the seed of the poem comes is the title of oe the descent of hell suitable? 79 from the apocryphal text, the poem flourishes into a christian message of hope drawing on an allusion of the soul’s journey, the path to salvation through baptism and the associations to the resurrection and rebirth that every christian receives through baptism. since the main focus of the poem has to do more with john’s prayer of praise and thanksgiving and less to do with christ’s actual descent, the title the descent into hell does nothing but impoverish readings of the poem since readers’ immediate expectation is to read a poem which deals significantly with this episode. in the same vain, if the title does not impoverish a reading and one is able to recognize the poem’s central theme, then, at the very least, the title can mislead readers into judging the poet’s ability to convey the story of christ’s descent effectively and accurately while also concluding that the poet’s fresh approach to the harrowing account is both “confusing and perhaps a clumsy”, as t. a. shippey suggests.12 however, the poem is not confusing in the least if it is read as somewhat of a lyrical rhapsody with a brief introductory setting that is appropriate to the actual theme and central message. essentially, because the narrative is concerned more about christ’s reception in hell and the text is almost exclusively a “hymn of thanks, praise and exhortation spoken [or sung] by john the baptist,” (trask 1971: 425); it should be viewed on its own merits as an innovative approach in dealing with the salvation message, and should simply not be viewed as a failed attempt to describe christ’s descent into hell. there is an obvious means to an end, and although the poet’s use of language and structure is subtle rather than blatantly obvious from the onset, the outcome for readers could and should be rewarding in terms of discovering the theme and message within the poem for themselves. 12 shippey asserts that “when allowance has been made for the modes of ‘typological understanding’, the descent into hell remains a confusing and perhaps a clumsy poem (though the opposite view is stoutly maintained by both thomas hill and richard trask...).” shippey (1976: 42) further exclaims that the poem’s “originality, is not denied, nor (if this is compatible with clumsiness) its self-assurance.” m. r. rambaran-olm 80 a change in the title might not have been enough to convince some critics of the poem’s merits, such as william mackie, who in his edition of the exeter book suggests that the poet was amateurish, that “the poem is nothing more than incoherent babbling” and further argues that the poem must have been a fragment.13 however, e. v. k. dobbie asserts that “there is nothing in the text as it stands in the manuscript which would warrant our considering it anything but a complete poem.” (krapp & dobbie 1936: lxi) as readers, we do not have to look too hard to discover that the poet has a different agenda other than to relay the harrowing of hell account to readers. if we return to john fisher’s definition, that titles share a close relationship with texts and provide a means to interpretation, and also by looking at the exeter book poem on its own merits without comparing it to texts that are mainly concerned with the apocryphal account of christ’s descent, titles that are more fitting for the exeter book poem and meet the criteria previously mentioned are: “john the baptist’s prayer”, or perhaps “john’s prayer of praise and thanksgiving” or simply “john’s prayer”. while christ’s descent is integral to the poet’s message because it provides the setting for the narrative, the only speaker in the poem is john the baptist whose obvious connection with baptism and message of hope and gratitude outweighs the brief reference to christ’s harrowing, so it is really john’s message that is at the core of the text. another possibility would be to emphasize the lyrical elements that clearly ring throughout the poem with a fitting title like “john’s song.” prayer, liturgy and lyrical worship are driving forces within the poem, so indicating at least one of those themes more overtly in the title would signify, more precisely, what the poem is about and help facilitate readings and interpretations of the poem. the emphasis on prayer and liturgy calls out in 13 mackie exclaims that “the harrowing of hell, give[s] the most trouble to a translator, since it is difficult to give a sensible rendering of lines or passages that can never have been anything but incoherent babbling.” the exeter book. part ii: poems ix-xxxii. london: oxford university press, 1934, p. vii. is the title of oe the descent of hell suitable? 81 blatantly obvious ways, not only via the text itself, but also by means of where the poem is located within the exeter book. it is no coincidence that the text is nestled in between two other poems that deal with prayer and salvation, being preceded first by the poem resignation which deals with prayer for patience and humility along a journey corrupted by trials and satan’s temptations, and then followed by alms-giving, a short poem concerned with personal salvation. although scholars have established that a single scribe recorded the works within the exeter book manuscript, it is unclear and may remain so whether the scribe was also the anthologist who compiled the individual works within the manuscript. still, roy liuzza argues that the scribe or the anthologist ordered the poems as they are in the manuscript, because they fit together sensibly and the thematic links are too strong to be accidental.14 since the manuscript is arguably laid out in sections dealing with different themes, the anthologist obviously had something else in mind that critics of the poem as we know as the descent into hell have overlooked. overall, a new and more appropriate title like any of the ones i have suggested, would function then as part of the text itself in a way, essentially, to indicate what exactly is at the core of the poem, while welcoming readers to begin their journeys through the text, as opposed to distracting them from discovery and meaning. although i am by no means suggesting that the exeter book poem is the greatest of old english poems, comparable to the likes of the dream of the 14 liuzza explains: “the poems… of the exeter book represent a manuscript sequence, poems perhaps by different authors but deliberately set and probably altered to be read as a series. manuscript divisions and stylistic differences are less important than the thematic concatenations that bind the poems together… the model of textual unity suggests that an additional interpretative richness may be achieved by reading old english poetry as the medieval reader would have read it, in series in its manuscript context; ‘monkish interpolation’, as it cannot be avoided, should be recognized, understood, and embraced. the textual unity [of the exeter book] extending from christ i to juliana and perhaps beyond share a certain thematic, and to an extent stylistic, harmony that can only be called codicological or scribal unity.” (1990: 10-11). m. r. rambaran-olm 82 rood, the poem in question is indeed more than just “babbling”15 and a more suitable title, like any of my proposed titles, would indicate that the poet’s message is not lost and that the poem, although a relatively short, modest piece, is strikingly attractive and has value within the corpus of old english poetry. what i have attempted to highlight is that the poem is valuable, not just because of its age, but because of its content, theme, message and the glimpse, readers catch, into the mind of one innovative, creative and perhaps peculiar anglo-saxon poet. perhaps, my objective is not to give the poem a title per se, but more fittingly to illustrate that the poem is entitled to a name that it has been long due. to furnish the poem with a name that is more fitting would be to warrant it value on its own merits without having to compare it to supposed sources, while also acknowledging that its main theme is not so unclear and confusing. m. r. rambaran-olm university of glasgow references adams, hazard 1987: titles, titling, and entitlement to. the journal of aesthetics and art criticism 46.1: 7-21. bedingfield, m. bradford 2002: the dramatic liturgy of anglo-saxon england. woodbridge: the boydell press. cross, j. e. ed. 1996: evangelium nichodemi. two old english apocrypha and their manuscript source. cambridge: cambridge university press, 220-224. fisher, john 1984: entitling. critical inquiry 11.2: 286-298. 15 as mackie suggests. see footnote 13. is the title of oe the descent of hell suitable? 83 hall, thomas 1996: the evangelium nichodemi and vindicta saluatoris in anglo-saxon england. two old english apocrypha and their manuscript sources. j. e. cross ed. 1996: 36-81. cambridge: cambridge university press. hill, thomas d. 1972: cosmic stasis and the birth of christ: the old english descent into hell, lines 99-106. journal of english and germanic philology 72: 383-9. the holy bible. a translation from the latin vulgate in light of the hebrew and greek originals. authorized by the hierarchy of england and wales 1959. london: burns and oates. hulme, w. h. 1907: the middle english harrowing of hell and the gospel of nicodemus. london: early english text society. izydorcyzk, zbigniew 1990: the inversion of paschal events in the old english descent into hell. neuphilologische mitteilungen 91: 439-447. saint justin, martyr. apologia prima. the first apology of justin martyr, addressed to the emperor antoninus pius. prefaced by some account of the writings and opinions of justin martyr. john kaye ed. 1981. london: griffith, farran, brown. kim, h. c. ed. 1973: the gospel of nicodemus. gesta salvatoris. toronto: pontifical institute of medieval studies. krapp, george philip & elliott van kirk dobbie eds. 1936: the descent into hell. the exeter book. new york: columbia university press. liuzza, roy m. 1990: the old english christ and guthlac texts, manuscripts, and critics. res 41.161: 1-11. mackie, william ed. 1934: the exeter book. part ii: poems ix-xxxii. london: oxford university press. o’calleaigh, g. c. 1963: dating the commentaries of nicodemus. the harvard theological review 56.1: 21-58. m. r. rambaran-olm 84 the oxford english dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. oed online. oxford: oxford university press. 28 sept. 2006. <http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50253513>. shippey, t. a. 1976: poems of wisdom and learning in old english. cambridge: d. s. brewer. trask, richard 1971: the descent into hell of the exeter book. neuphilologische mitteilungen 72: 419-435. * † * selim06.pdf javier díaz vera, selim 6 (1998): 51—63 on the linguistic status of medieval copies and translations of old english documentary texts 1. orientation the future linguistic atlas of early medieval english (laeme) will for the first time provide a full survey of linguistic variation in early middle en glis h texts written between 1150 and 1300. differences between this project and the previous linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english (lalme) are many, and derive mostly from the scarcity of written material from the early period arrived to us. laing (1993: 2-6) proposes the following classification of the bulk of surviving texts from this period: 1. documentary texts: (a) copied old english documents (b) post-conquest documents 2. literary texts: (a) copied old english literary texts (b) early middle englis h literary texts 3. glosses as can be seen, texts originated in the old english period have acquired a central role for the compilation of laeme. in this paper, i am proposing an analysis of a group of copied old english documents that intends to account ____________________________________________________________________ 52 for the principles underlying their inclusion as dialect informants in a largescale survey on early middle english. ____________________________________________________________________ 53 2. anchor texts in early and late middle english since the publication in 1986 of lalme, documentary texts of known date and local origin (such as charters, writs and grants) have become a central source for the study of linguistic variation in middle english. these documents constitute the basis for the creation of a dialectal matrix into which many other texts of unknown origins are progressively incorporated. the impressive number of vernacular “anchor” texts written in england between 1350 and 1500 allowed the compilators of lalme to create a complex and reliable network of issogloses that are the previous step for the precise localis ation of the mass of literary texts. however, the situation becomes much more complex when turning to early middle english. the norman conquest of england meant an abrupt disruption in the use of written english, that was almost completely replaced by latin and french (southern 1973: 2). for this reason, the number of postconquest documents is too low to provide a similar network of localised ma terial, that would eventually permit the localization on linguistic grounds of other early middle english litera ry manuscripts and the compilation of the future laeme. according to pelteret (1990), while documents in the vernacular contin ued to be produced in england between the norman conquest and the end of the reign of henry ii (with a total of 148 surviving texts, most of which do not show significant degrees of linguistic variation in relation to documents from the anglo -saxon period), only a few original documents were drawn up in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.1 in this situation, it is obvious that the developing of a network of isoglosses that permits the localization of the bulk of early middle english texts requires the utilization of other types of manuscripts. in a recent paper preliminary to the compilation of laeme, laing (1991) has suggested that both literary texts in early middle english localized on extra-linguistic grounds (such as ormulum, layamon, or the corpus version of ancrene wisse) and medieval copies and translations of old english doc1 laing (1993) lists a total of 20 different manuscripts with original documents in early middle english written during this period. ____________________________________________________________________ 54 uments of known origins should be included into the category of “anchor” texts, in order to allow the “placing” of the remaining linguistic profiles. anacronistic as it may sound, the idea of copies of old english texts being treated as a basic source of information of dialectal diversity in the early middle english period represents one of the most solid methodological prin ciples the laeme project lies on. the numerical predominance of these documents as respects other types of anchor texts is too obvious to deny them a major role in a research of these characteristics. for this reason, a deeper in sight into the linguistic profiles represented by copies of old english documents is needed, that will account for their different levels of modernization and their linguistic relation to contemporary early middle english texts. 3. chronological and dialectal variation in copied old english documents the corpus chosen for this research consists of the following seven copies of anglo -saxon writs made in the south west midlands between the middle of the 11th century and the beginning 15th century (harmer 1952; sawyer 1968): 1. london, british library, additional charter 19802 (wo c11b1). 2. oxford, bodleian library, dep. c. 392 (gl c13a2). 3. glocestershire record office, d 4431 (gl c13b2). 4. worcester, herefordshire and worcestershire record office, ba 3814 (wo c13b2-c14a1). 5. herefordshire, diocesan registry, registrum ricardi de swin field (he c14a1). 6. london, public record office, c 53, charter rolls, 6 edward ii, nº 27 (wo c14a1). 7. oxford, bodleian library, ms. rawlison b. 329, f. 104 (he c15a1). one of the most important advantages inherent to the study of this type of legal documents lies on the striking parallelism among all the documents included in the corpus, which allows a detailed comparisons of the whole ma ____________________________________________________________________ 55 terial. further, since the original documents were written in late west saxon, patterns of linguistic innovation can be easily detected. the following para graphs extracted from our seven documents respond to the prototypical opening found in most anglo -saxon writs. as can be seen here, words and structures are systematically repeated in all of them: a. 1. eadward kyning gret harold eorl & ælfgar eorl 2. edward king gret mine bissopes and mine eorles (…) 3. [lacking] 4. edward king gret alfgar herl. & richard. 5. edward kynge gret eldred erchebissop and begard bíssop and harald eorl 6. + eadward cyng gret wulfstan í. & ælfgar eorl. & ricard minne huscarll 7. edward kyng gret alfred eurl. and harald eurl. b. 1. & ealle pa íegnas on wigeraceastrescire (…) freondlice. 2. & alle mine peigenes (…) freondliche. 3. [?w]ytey alle myn yenes 4. & alle myne peynes on wyrcestrechyre. wythynne porte & bouten frendlyche. 5. and alle myne peynes of herefordshíre and of saloppshíre 6. & ealle mine pegnas. on wigrecestrescire freondlice. 7. and all his undurlynges in herefordshire ffrendelich. the anglo -saxon double graphs <ea> and <eo> are maintained exclu sively in texts 1 and 6, while copies made from a less conservative perspective (such as text s 3, 4, 5 and 7) present <a> and <e> in their place. text 2 represents an intermediate stage: the copyist maintains anglo -saxon <eo> in the words eorles and freondliche, but prefers to substitute it for <a> in the form alle. graphs <i> and <y> are interchangable in texts 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7, but their use corresponds to the orthographical rules of late west saxon in texts 1 and 6. moreover the graph <g> of the word oe pegen, which is found in texts 1, 2 and 6, has been substituted in texts 3, 4 and 7 by <y>. ____________________________________________________________________ 56 finally, the consonant <ch> is used in less conservative texts for the adverbial suffix -lic (which maintains its anglo -saxon orthography in literatim copies). this same graph is sporadically used in text 4 for oe sc (wyrcestrechyre, l. 2), that appears as <ss> in 2 (bissopes l. 1, also found in text 5, l. 4). our analysis can be now completed by comparing the central and final paragraphs of these seven documents: a. 1. & ic cyíe eow p ic habbe geunnen wulfstane munuce p. .b. 2. & ic cupe eow p ic wolle p 3. pat ich alfred king habbe hy i¥une stening mine goude mete hom 4. & ich quype ou pat hy chulle pat wolfstan (…) 5. and ich coupe ow pat ich habbe ¥euen 6. & ic cyíe eow & ic habbe geumen alfstane munece p 7. and i do yowe to understonden that i woll that the prestes in hereford b. 1. rice into wihgeraceastre mid sace & mid socne toll 2. he beo his saca wurí. & his socnes. ofer his lond & ofer his men. & tolnes wrth. 3. to seinte trinitote of fescampe 4. wyrpe on semtolne & of chyptolne into seynte marie munstre 5. seynte marie moder crístes munstres (…) pat hoe boe on hore sake worpe and hore sokene of hore lond 6. he beo his sace weorde & his socne. & tolles & teames ofer his land & ofer his menn 7. (…) that they haue euere soke and sake ouere alle heore men and alle c. 1. & team binan burhge & butan swa full & forí swa hit ænig his foregenga fyrmæst (…) on eallan 1ingan misbeode. 2. (…) swa full & swa forí. swa ænig his forgengena toforen him formest weren on cnutes kinges daie. 3. al so fair and al so goud so he me an and stod. ____________________________________________________________________ 57 4. so ful & so forph so he haued pat o per ping. 5. (…) bynne burch and wít outentolles (…) and ich nulle ¥e pawyen pat enyman pys abreke by myne froshype. 6. binnan porte & buton. & ic nelle gepafian & him ænig man ænig unlage beode. 7. heore londes withynne bourgh and wtoute so full and so forth so they formest hadde ynne alle thynges. as can be seen here, while the graph <p> is used in texts 1-6 with great regularity, <í> is found only sporadically. similarly graphs <æ>, <ea> and <eo> are more frequent in texts 1 and 6. moreover, these two texts have re tained the old english nominal and verbal morphemes from their originals, which definitely discards them as dialectal informants. texts 2, 3, 4 and 5 are much more interesting from a diachronic perspective. a compromise between conservative and innovative forms is present in these copies, which, in spite of their archaistic appearance, show clear signs of linguistic modernization with the apparent scope of making them understandable to contemporary readers. further, these four copies represent two different levels of orthographic innovation, that can be accounted for on chronological and scribal arguments; discrepancies between them affect the graphs <a> (for oe aµ), <c> (for oe c=), intervocalic <f> and the personal pronoun, that display the following distribution: (a) oe aµ is maintained as <a> in text 2 (swa l. 8, 9), but appears as <o> in texts 3 and 4 (so l. 5). (b) in text 2, oe c= appears as <c> in final position (ic l. 4), but is substituted by <ch> when intermediate (freondliche l. 4, muchell l. 9); the copyists of texts 4 and 5 use <ch> throughout (ich l. 3, frendlyche l. 3, chyptolne l. 4). (c) oe f in intervocalic position is maintained in text 2 (ofer l. 5), and substituted by <u> in text 4 (haued l. 5). (d) oe eow is written eow in text 2; texts 4 and 5 present the modernized forms ou and ow in its place. ____________________________________________________________________ 58 moreover, texts 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 (which is the latest and the most modern ized version) share the following serie s of linguistic innovations, for which a dialectal origin can be claimed: (a) generalized use of the graph <o> before nasal consonants. (b) confusion in the use of <i> and <y>. (c) use of the form alle for late west saxon ealle. (d) ellimination of nominal morphemes, with the only exception of es, that is used for the sg. gen. and for the plural. (e) maintainance of h-forms for the 3rd person plural of the personal pronoum (except in text 7). in order to represent all these linguistic data the following questionnaire has been deviced, that intends to reflex the different levels of conservatism detected in these copies: txt 1 txt 2 txt 3 txt 4 txt 5 txt 6 txt 7 oe í/p í/p p (í) p/y p (th) p (th) í/p th oe æ æ æ a(æ) e a æ e oe a+n a o o o o(a) a o oe aµ a a a o o/a a(o) a/o oe i/y i/y i, y/u i, y/u i, y/u i, y/u i,y/u oe ea ea ea a a a/e ea a oe eo eo eo e o (eo) eo e (eo) oe vfv f f/u u u oe g= g g y y 3 g y oe c= c c/ch ch ch c oe sc= sc ss sc ch sh/ss sc sh all ealle alle ealle alle alle alle all you eow eow ou ow youwe they he hy hoe they them hom hem ____________________________________________________________________ 59 from the questionnaire, it becomes clear that the seven documents described here represent three different approaches to the copying of old en glish texts, which we will refer to as literatim-copy (i.e. copies with prevailing west saxon forms, as texts 1 and 6), modified old english (copies where a significative number of west saxon forms has been maintained, as in texts 2 and 3) and diachronical transla tion (copies thoroughly modernized, as in texts 4, 5 and 7). these categories correspond roughly to three different scribal attitudes towards old english texts, based on the scope of the linguis tic innovations introduced by the copyists (díaz 1994: 459-465). 4. orthographic tradition in early middle english literary anchor-texts according to the methodology adopted for the compilation of laeme, the data extracted from copied old english documents are to be combined with the linguistic profiles corresponding to literary texts in early middle english localised on extralinguistic grounds, in order to get a complex of isogloses complete enough as to permit the progressive placing of the re maining manuscripts. in the case of the south west midlands, the number of literary texts confidently localized is relatively high, and includes the following manuscripts: 1. cambridge, corpus christi college 402 (wigmore, he c13a2): ancrene wisse. 2. london, british library, harley 2253 (leominster, he c14a2): prose and verse in latin, french and english. 3. london, british library, harley 3376 (worcester, wo c13): verse piece attributed to the “tremulous hand”. 4. oxford, bodleian library, bodley 34 (sc 1883) (leodbury, godstow and much cowarne, he c13a1): saints’ lives of the katherinegroup. ____________________________________________________________________ 60 5. oxford, bodleian library, digby 86 (redmarley d’abitot, gl c13b2): 22 eme poems. 6. oxford, corpus christi college 59 (llanthony priory, gl c13b2): 3 eme poems. in order to determine the linguistic relations between both groups of texts, the previous questionnaire has been applied to these six texts with the following results: ms 1 ms 2 ms 3 ms 4 ms 5 ms 6 oe í/p p, í p (í) th p, í _ p (í) oe æ e ((eo)) e e e ((eo)) e e oe a+n o o o o o o oe aµ o ((a)) o o a o o oe y u u u u ((e)) u ((e)) u oe ea ea ((a)) e e ea e e oe eo eo e eo eo e e oe vfv u u u u u u oe g= ¥ ¥ g ¥ ¥ ¥ oe c= ch ch ch ch ch ch oe sc= sch sh sch sch sh, s all all / (eall) alle all al you ow ou ow they hi hue thei hi hy, hoe (pey) them ham hem ham hem a brief comparison between these two groups of profiles shows that most of the typically anglo -saxon orthographic conventions maintained in litera tim-copies of old english documents (i.e. texts 1 and 6) are avoided by copyists working on literary early middle english texts. text 3, which was ____________________________________________________________________ 61 probably written at the beginning of the 13th century, shows some significative coincidences with literatim-copies, such as the use of the graphs <eo> and <g> (for oe g=). moreover, in the cases of cccc 402 (ms a of ancrene wisse) and bodley 34 (katherine-group) a relation can be established between these two groups of texts based on the use of the double graphs <ea> and <eo> and the partial maintainance of the distinction between í and p. other conservative graphs in these two manuscripts are the sporadic use of <a> for old english aµ and the appearance of the form ealle. in spite of the presence of these archaistic features, the number of linguis tic innovations in these two texts is far from scarce. the combination of conservative and innovative graphemes in cccc 402 and bodley 34, as repre sented by the homogeneus variant of early middle english traditionally refered to as ‘ab-language’, has been recently stressed by smith (1992: 586). innovations (a)-(d) are exclusive to these two manuscripts, while (e)-(h) can be found in the six texts studied here: (a) use of <e> and sporadic <ea> for oe æ; the use of <ea> in these words is to be attributed to mercian influence (smith 1991: 54), while <e> (which also appears in most south-west-midlands texts) reflects the regional development of west germanic a (díaz forthcoming). (b) sporadic use of <e> for oe y (only in bodley 34). (c) use of <sch> for oe sc. (d) use of the pronominal forms ow, hi and ham. (e) generalization of pre-nasal <o>. (f) use of <u> for oe y. (g) use of the graphs <¥> and <ch> for oe g= and c=. (h) alforms are used for oe ealle. other innovations exclusive to non-ab texts are the use of <o> for oe aµ and <e> for both oe ea and eo. although most of these features have been detected in modernized versions of old english texts (i.e. texts in modified old english and translations into middle english), their use in these texts is far from general, with the old forms frequently predominating over the new ones. ____________________________________________________________________ 62 5. conclusions from this discussion, it becomes obvious that the deep differences between both types of linguistic material would make of this combination of data under the generic category of anchor texts an extremely controversial task. on the one hand, copied old english documents represent different levels of linguistic archaism, while middle english literary texts witness a slow but continuous separation from the anglo -saxon orthographical traditions. on the other, all the texts included in the second group were written between c1210 and c1325 (which roughly corresponds to the period traditionally re ferred to as early middle english), while copied old english documents span the period between c1050 and c1425 (i.e. from late old english until late middle english). for these two reasons it seems clear that while literary anchor-texts can be confidently taken as representative of the linguistic habits of the 13th and 14th centuries, copied old english texts act rather as markers of the numerous processes of orthographical maintainance occurring during this period. however, the fact that the few early middle english literary texts geographically localized offer first-class evidence of the state of the language during this perio d can not account for the neglect of copied old english texts as dialectal informants. copies of anglo -saxons charters and writs witness more confidently than any other type of material the language used during the period immediately after the norman conquest. as markers of the transition between late old and early middle english, most of them include information on the dialectal reality of both periods and, what is more important, about the traditional orthographies of anglo -saxon monasteries, offering thus a solid starting-point for the creation of a dialectal matrix that will serve as a basis for the study of diatopic variation in old and early middle english and, eventually, for the compilation of the future laeme. javier e. díaz vera universidad de castilla -la mancha ____________________________________________________________________ 63 references díaz, j. e. 1994: cambio lingüístico y tradición ortográfica en inglés medio temprano: 1050-1350. diss. ph.d.; universidad complutense de madrid. díaz, j. e. forthcoming: from domesday book to lay subsidy rolls: placenames as informants of linguistic change. studia anglica posnasiensa 30. harmer, f. e. 1952: the ward bequest: anglo-saxon writs. manchester: manchester university press. ker, neil ripley 1957: catalogue of manuscripts containing anglo-saxon. oxford: oup. laing, margaret 1991: anchor texts and literary manuscripts in early middle english. regionalism in late medieval manuscripts and texts. ed. felicity riddy. cambridge: d. s. brewer. 27-52. laing, margaret 1993: catalogue of sources for a linguistic atlas of early medieval english. woodbridge: boydell & brewer ltd. mcintosh, a., m. l. samuels & m. benskin. 1986: a linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english. aberdeen: aberdeen university press. pelteret, d. a. e. catalogue of post-conquest vernacular documents. woodbridge: boydell & brewer ltd. sawyer, p. h. 1968: anglo-saxon charters: an annotated list and bibliogra phy. london: royal historical society guides and handbooks. smith, j. 1991: tradition and innovation in south-west-midland middle en glish. regionalism in late medieval manuscripts and texts. ed. felicity riddy. cambridge: d. s. brewer. 53-66. smith, j. 1992: a linguistic atlas of early middle english: tradition and typology. history of englishes: new methods and interpretations in historical linguistics. ed. matti rissanen et al. berlin: mouton de gruyter. 582-591. ____________________________________________________________________ 64 southern, r. w. 1973: the sense of the past. transactions of the royal historical society xxiii. * † * selim03.pdf 183 clayton, mary (1990): the cult of the virgin mary in anglo-saxon england. cambridge: cambridge university press. xiii + 299 pp. (£ 35.00). the cult of the virgin in anglo -saxon england is a topic which has never before been examined in any detail, but as mary clayton has proved, has significant bearing on the history of church, liturgy, art, history and old en glish poetry and prose. this book provides a wide-ranging exploration of the cult of the virgin from the seventh century to the eleventh century, and a valuable study of the first artistic manifestations and literary examples in en glish language dealing with mary. dr. clayton describes the development of mary and devotion and doctrine from c. 700 to the conquest, by discussing anglo -saxon feasts of the virgin, liturgical texts, prayers, monastic dedications, art and old english literature. the volume falls into nine sections; in the first chapter, the author suggests that the cult of the virgin mary seems to have reached england largely from rome as the early dedications to mary are in imitation of roman dedications, the feasts came from there, mediterranean images provided models for english ones and liturgical texts, drawings and paintings were imported into england from italy. it is worth mentioning that there was a period at the end of the seventh century and at the beginning of the eighth century when eastern popes brought with them the more enthusiastic oriental devotion to mary, all the popes from sergius 687-701 to zachary 741-752 were either syrian or greek except one. moreover, we must take into account that quite probably some works on mary were transmitted through visigothic channels, perhaps along the syria -spain-ireland route so well trodden by modern scholars. in any case, interest in and devotion to mary flourished in anglo saxon england in late seventh and eighth centuries; but chiefly in the tenth and eleventh centuries mary was the most important saint of the benedictine 184 reform and she became the patron saint of almost all the reformed houses as dr. clayton suggests in the introduction of this volume. in the second chapter the author surveys the development of the feasts of the virgin and traces their introduction into anglo -saxon england. by means of this section we know that anglo -latin scholars, mainly bede, were familiar with all four roman feasts: purification, annunciation, assumption and na tivity; moreover, some texts from c. 750-900 such as the old english martyrology, alcuin’s libellus precum and æthelwulf’s de abbatibus, perpetuate the roman pattern. later, two new eastern feasts were introduced into england c. 1030 at winchester, the centre of marian devotion: conception and presentation in the temple; their adoption must be the result of a certain eastern influence on anglo -saxon devotion. the development and study of these feasts proves the influence of the virgin in anglo -saxon church, culture and society as mary clayton pointed out. chapter three, the cult of the virgin in the liturgy, takes up the study of the english texts for the holy mass, offices and liturgical prayers. liturgical texts were imported by the first missionaries and later by anglo -saxon bookcollectors such as benedict biscop. most texts were centred on the introduction of the four principal feasts (purification, annunciation, assumption and nativity) chiefly in the seventh and eighth centuries. from the tenth century onwards two liturgical feasts (conception and presentation), and other liturgical prayers and devotional practices were developed. evidence for liturgical celebration on mary comes mainly from the antiphons in alcuin’s florilegium de laude dei, which was compiled at york c. 790. much more survives from the period of the benedictine reform. the regularis concordia provides for a saturday mass for the virgin as well as daily suffrages after lauds and vespers. during the eleventh century texts and benedictions for the marian feasts were also compiled especially at winchester. frequently, benedictions, prayers and other public religious manifestations show clearly that the author was drawing on the apocryphal narratives on the virgin mary. 185 the study of these liturgical texts shows a strong concern for the virgin in anglo -saxon period, and as a conclusion dr. clayton says: by the end of the anglo -saxon period, the english church was celebrating not only the principal feasts of the virgin, with the extra feasts of her conception and presentation in the temple, and composing texts for all these occasions, but they had also adopted new optional devotional practices which testify to a strong interest in mary (89). in chapter four the author considers the development of private prayers to mary written in latin before the conquest. the importance of private prayers for the anglo -saxons is easy to overlook and as we would expect, prayer was strongly emphasized in monastic commu nities, and there is ample evidence to suggest that prayer was important for other social groups as well. dr. clayton studies the private prayers dealing with mary begin ning with a passage in aldhelm’s poem in basilica beatae mariae semper virginis c. 685, and other texts in which scholars and writers appeal for mary’s interces sion. then the author considers the development of these prayers in some manuscripts mainly the english prayer books, the book of nunnaminster, british libray ms. harley 2965, and the book of cerne, cambridge university library ms. ll. 1, 10 from the ix century. mary is invoked in many other private prayers as we can appreciate in manuscripts coming from the early as well as the late anglo -saxon period, and from the north and west of england, and in the latter half of the tenth century and eleventh century from the south, chiefly from glastonbury, canterbury, abingdon and winchester where it is possible to find the most interesting group of marian prayers of the eleventh century. in chapter five dr. clayton considers the marian dedications of the cathedrals and monastic churches of anglo -saxon england. it is known that the fullest enumeration of anglo -saxon church buildings is contained in the 186 domesday book of 1068,but, as dr. clayton suggests, this document is extremely uneven in its records for the different counties of england and this is why it is not of great help. the author departs from the dedications of the english cathedrals as they are well documented in almost every case as are the dates of their foundations; moreover, dr. clayton studies the history of the monastic houses following an outstanding work written by d. knowles and r. n. hadcock, the medieval religious houses: england and wales. the author finally suggests that … the overwhelming number of dedications or rededications to mary associated with the benedictine reform suggests that this dedication was regarded almost as a hallmark of the reform, an outward sign of a truly monastic, celibate community (135). mary clayton also examines very briefly in this chapter the possession of relics of mary, and in her opinion by the tenth and eleventh centuries many english churches and monasteries must have been in possession of relics and she mentions three lists of relics from winchester, bath and exeter. in the last section of this chapter the author looks at the question of pilgrimage to walsingham, the only marian pilgrimage in england thought to date from the pre -conquest period. chapter six deals with the virgin in anglo -saxon art. the author pro vides, after a brief introduction on the artistic treatment of the virgen mary in the first centuries of our era, a survey of the paintings, drawings, carvings and other artistic manifestations in anglo -saxon england. the first reference we have about christian art in england is a description of the works brought from rome by benedict biscop in bede’s historia abbatum and it includes an “imaginem … beatae dei genetricis semperque virginis mariae, simul et duodecim apostolo rum” (146). dr. clayton examines first the early representations from northumbria and the midlands, including the coffin of st. cuthbert and the franks casket. 187 then the author describes in five sections the illuminated manuscript: manuscript illumination of the early tenth century: the æthelstan psalter, canterbury manuscripts of the late tenth and eleventh centuries, manuscripts associated with the sacramentary of robert of jumièges, and other manuscripts with anglo -saxon miniatures. in this chapter dr. clayton also considers the ivories from the tenth and eleventh certuries, and the virgin in monumental art after the benedictine re form, including eleventh century crosses with carvings of the virgin. apart from these manifestations which have survived there is some evidence that much more has clearly been lost, partic ularly wall paintings, wood carvings and embroideries. in any case, anglo -saxon art testifies to the marian enthus iasm in england mainly after the benedictine reform. chapter seven considers the virgin in old english poetry. most of this section is based on the references to mary in the christian epic poem christ i or the advent lyrics. the focus of advent, which adheres strictly to biblical and patristic traditions rather than apocryphal legends “is on [mary’s] role in the incarnation and on the attempt to understand christ’s divine and human parentage” (205). dr. clayton surveys the different interpretations proposed by scholars who have studied this text, mainly s. rankin’s article, the liturgical background of the old english advent lyrics: a reappraisal, and j. j. cambell’s edition the advent lyrics of the exeter book, and finally she suggests that “in the poetic works in which she does figure, mary’s role is entirely subbordinated to her son’s and there is little or no trace of an apocriphal-type in terest in her. in this the anonymous poetry differs greatly from the anonymous old english prose” (209). mary clayton mentions very briefly other references to the virgin in old english poetry such as in the dream of the rood, the versified creed, and judgement day ii, a very close translation of bede’s poem de die iudicii. in 188 fact, old english poetry contains very few references to mary and a possible explanation, as dr. clayton suggests, is that the age of the benedictine re form was largely an age of prose (209). chapter eight is devoted to exploring the references to the virgin in old english prose. from the beginning of the benedictine reform we have numerous vernacular texts written in prose dealing with the virgin mary, chiefly in homilies. before this period our only substantial evidence for the cult of the virgin in old english prose is that of the old english morphology, a narrative martyrology composed some time between the second half of the eighth century and the end of the ninth;as dr. clayton suggests “the old en glish martyrology, then, testifies to a developed interest in marian legends and to the availability of such texts in ninth century england” (217). there are ten homilies written in old english for feasts of mary and the author surveys the analogies and sources of these texts and she mentions ambrosius autpertius, haymo, st. augustine, bede, pseudo-augustine sermo xx, jerome and gregory. ælfric’s homilies with references to mary are particularly dis cussed in this section and dr. clayton suggests that ælfric’s orthodoxy is evident throughout his work: “in treating of the virgin’s life on earth ælfric almost always delberately confines himself to the bible or biblical exegesis … although its description of mary’s spiritual as sumption is obviously not based on the new testament, it follows the liturgy for the feast in interpreting suit able passages from the song of songs as a description of her assumption” (261). in the last chapter, dr. clayton sums up the previous sections and she emphasizes the fact that the cult of the virgin is an unexpectedly important aspect of anglo -saxon spirituality, art and literature; finally she suggests that the earlier cult is chiefly an anglian one based on roman doctrine which begins with aldhelm and bede, whereas the latter cult is concentrated in the south and is a product of the benedict reform. 189 altogether, all students and scholars of anglo -saxon culture and old en glish literature will surely find an immense amount to interest them in this authoritative volume. but one would have liked dr. clayton to spend a few more pages on literary comments. moreover, at least from a spanish point of view, the reader would have liked a more accurate analysis on the possible spanish influence, especially ildefonsus of toledo’s views on mary and isidore of seville, on the virgin cult in anglo -saxon england, mainly in the first period; but this is a subject that suggests further paths of investigation. a. bravo university of oviedo * * * selim 18.indb andrew breeze, selim 18 (2011): 165–168issn: 1132–631x orosius’s ormesta and john capgrave replete with quaint and sometimes bizarre learning, abbreuiacion of cronicles by john capgrave (1393–1464) owes many details to its compiler (gray 2008: 167– 168). discussing late antiquity, he says for example that orosius, “messagere betwix jerom and augustin,” wrote “a book onto seynt augustin: it is clepid ormesta mundi.” capgrave’s editor notes that the title is not in capgrave’s source, by martinus polonus or marcin z oprawy (c. 1208–1278/9); identifi es orosius’s work as historia adversus paganos and dates it to 417; and explains ormesta mundi as perhaps \ om or[osii] m[undi] ist[ori]a (+mundi), the last word repeated in error (lucas 1983: 65, 266, 396). this etymology is not credible. ormesta, used of works by orosius in the fi j h century and gildas in the sixth, is not a dubious latin acronym but breton, or breton latin. yet, as authorities disagree on its origin, a \ esh account is needed. it begins with a ninth-century latin life of st pol (fi rst bishop of léon in brittany) by the breton monk wrmonoc, who remarked that gildas in a book “which they call ormesta britanniae” wrote de ipsius insulae situ atque miseriis (we shall return to those “miseries”). ormesta here was explained by cuissard in 1883 as \ om a breton cognate of welsh gormes “oppression,” with -ta perhaps “added to latinize the word,” a view accepted by later scholars (williams 1899–1901: 319, 417). another approach was, however, initiated by sir ifor williams, in relating early welsh armes “prophecy, prediction; calamity, tribulation, loss” to middle irish airdmes “act of calculating; estimate, opinion” (williams 1922–1924: 23–36). two derivations are the result. one takes early irish forbas, forbais, forfess “oppression, siege,” welsh gormes “oppression,” and old-breton latin ormesta “misery” as of the same origin (pedersen & lewis 1937: 47). in fl at contradiction is the other, that ormesta 166 andrew breeze selim 18 (2011) britanniae (another name for de excidio britanniae) contains a breton cognate of middle irish airdmes “act of calculating; estimate” and welsh armes “prophecy; calamity, loss” (gpc s.v.). it is certainly not strange that orosius’s book should have a breton name. like gildas, he was read in breton schools, and several manuscripts of him have old breton glosses (jackson 1953: 62, 65). as for his subject, this was brilliantly summed up in a passage too long to quote in full, but beginning “orosius taught, as no other historian, that the past was horrible,” and continuing, “he holds that humanity always did suff er and always will; that the condition of its existence is war, plague, famine, and fi re;” and that “the human tragedy can only be seen for what it is if we discard the notion of an ideal and heroic past” (wallace-hadrill 1971: 145). no surprise, then, if ormesta mundi as a title for his history in a manuscript 3 om fleury (near orleans) should parallel that of de miseria hominum elsewhere. ifor williams cited the last, as also wrmonoc on gildas as writing de ipsius insulae situ atque miseriis, as evidence that ormesta is 3 om the breton cognate, not of welsh gormes “oppression by an alien race or conqueror, tyranny, violence; encroachment, intrusion, attack,” but of welsh armes “prophecy; calamity, tribulation.” the senses “calamity, tribulation” go better with miseria than does that of “oppression by aliens” (williams 1972: xlv–ix). yet medieval latinists take no notice. although citing ormesta as a title for gildas’s work in cambridge, pembroke college, ms 25, and as one for orosius’s in texts by ordericus vitalis, roger bacon, and ranulf higden, they still derive ormesta 3 om a old breton cognate of welsh gormes (howlett 2003). they repeat what cuissard proposed back in 1883. so we say again that, while welsh gormes “oppression by aliens” does not suit orosius’s polemical intent, welsh armes “tribulation” does. a4 er romans blamed christians for the empire’s fall, orosius wrote to show how disaster had ever been, even in the good old days of paganism. that is why one breton called his catalogue of woe ormesta mundi “calamity of the world,” when another referred 167 orosius’s ormesta and john capgrave selim 18 (2011) to gildas’s treatise de ipsius insulae situ atque miseriis as de ormesta britanniae “calamity of britain.” the use of celtic-latin ormesta for orosius’s book is not remarkable. he was known to britons and bretons alike. this writer has shown that (even though anglosaxonists pass it over) a cornishman dictated the old english orosius to a west saxon scribe (breeze 2007: 367–368, godden & irvine 2009: 5, 136–137). orosius was read too in wales, where one bard embellished his verses with orosian place-names in regions 0 om turkey to bangladesh (haycock 2007: 409). the celtic aspects of orosius’s ormesta are hence clear, just as they are for gildas (here owing much to the prophet jeremiah; george 2009: 20–25). when, therefore, capgrave referred to ormesta mundi, he cited a breton-latin form meaning “calamity of the world,” not “oppression of the world;” and certainly not or[osii] m[undi] ist[ori]a (+mundi). andrew breeze university of navarre, pamplona references gpc = geiriadur pri! sgol cymru. caerdydd, university of wales press. breeze, a. 2007: the old cornish gloss on boethius. notes and queries 252: 367–368. george, k. 2009: gildas’s “de excidio britonum” and the early british church woodbridge, the boydell press. godden m. & s. irvine eds. 2009: the old english boethius. oxford, oxford university press. gray, d. 2008: later medieval english literature. oxford, oxford university press. haycock, m. ed. 2007: legendary poems " om the book of taliesin. aberystwyth, cmcs. 168 andrew breeze selim 18 (2011) howlett, d. r. ed. 2003: dictionary of medieval latin ! om british sources, fascicule viii: o. oxford, oxford university press. jackson, k. h. 1953: language and history in early britain. edinburgh, edinburgh university press. lucas, p. j. ed. 1983: john capgrave’s abbreuiacion of cronicles (eets os 285). oxford, oxford university press. pedersen, h. & h. lewis 1937: a concise comparative celtic grammar. göttingen, vandenhoeck & ruprecht. wallace-hadrill, j. m. 1971: early germanic kingship in england and on the continent. oxford, clarendon press. williams, h. ed. 1899–1901: gildae de excidio britanniae, fragmenta, liber de paenitentia, accedit et lorica gildae. london, honourable society of cymmrodorion. williams, i. 1922–1924: medd, medr, armes, &c. bulletin of the board of celtic studies 1: 23-36. williams, i. ed. 1972: armes prydein. dublin, dublin institute for advanced studies. • selim04.pdf reviews, antonio bravo ____________________________________________________________________ 156 robinson, fred c. 1993: the tomb of beowulf and other essays on old english. oxford, b. blackwell. ix + 335 pp. blackwell has published a nicely -presented collection of essays on old english by fred robinson under the title the tomb of beowulf and other essays on old english. professor robinson is a distinguished philologist well known in the last three decades for original and stimulating works on old english language and literature. most scholars and students of old english studies knows, among many other of his works, a guide to old english (with bruce mitchell) 5th ed. blackwell 1992, his book beowulf and the appositive style, a bibliography of publications on old english literature to the end of 1972, and his edition of old english poetic texts, vol. xxiii, early english manuscripts in facsimile (with e. g. stanley). the volume under review divides twenty three essays into five parts, in cluding three new articles on the literary interpretation of beowulf, a commentary and analysis of ezra pound’s translation of the seafarer, and a brief history of composition in old english after the anglo -saxon period. the rest of the essays are reprinted, some with revisions. in some cases there is an “afterward 1992” in which he draws attention to a study of the essay which appeared since the original essay was published. the twenty three articles collected here vary in length but not in quality because robin son’s detailed analysis provides useful insights into old english language and litera ture. though the volume varies widely in terms of subject and approach, most of the articles deal with literary in terpretation, historical and cultural background, as well as significance of names and naming. the first part deals with literary interpretation of beowulf: “the tomb of beowulf”, “elements of the marvelous in the characterization of beowulf: a reconsid eration of the textual evidence”, “history, religion, culture: the 157 background necessary for teaching beowulf”, and “an introduction to be owulf”. the titles of the es says are explicit enough to show what they are dealing with, sometimes with textual evidence, sometimes with the analysis of the background of the most important epic poem written in old english. the first essay, “the tomb of beowulf”, gives the title to the volume, and it shows the vast scholarship of the author. robinson suggests that the second rite described at the end of beowulf may have had a significance beyond confused redundancy. i shall supply evidence to suggest that at least some in the poet’s audience would have seen in the final ceremony of the poem suggestions of an apotheosis. king beowulf’s bereaved subjects, i will suggest, are so overawed by their fallen leader’s accomplishments and so unwilling to accept the finality of his death hat they turn desperately to the pagan resources available to them to accord him ultimate veneration and, perhaps, recruit his protective force beyond the grave. such an act would be a closing parallel with the act of the danes at the beginning of the poem in lines 175-88, where in a time of crisis they turn to their heathen gods with propit iatory sacrifices. (6) robinson shows how the cultural background in anglo -saxon england causes the anglo -saxons to be familiar with the concept of deifying a deceased hero, such as beowulf, in order to see whether manifestations of tomb cult and of apotheosis in their culture bear any resemblance to the event described at the end of beowulf. in the following two articles robinson studies the marvelous elements in beowulf, reconsidering textual evidence, and the usefulness of knowing his tory, religion and culture as the background necessary for teaching beowulf. the author suggests doing an exercise in order to project oneself imaginatively into another people’s mind and language. this exercise constitutes one of the greatest rewards of literary study; the world of beowulf, says the author, “is worth the effort” (51) reviews, antonio bravo ____________________________________________________________________ 158 the last article of the first part was originally the “prologue” of beowulf: a verse translation with treasures of the ancient north by marijane os born. according to robinson, the poet of beowulf was able to establish at the end of the poem a place for the noble pagan in the collective memory of christian anglo -saxons. after reading the poem we are left with a delicately poised contradiction and a sad uncertainty which for many centuries has darkened men’s broodings about the after-life. based on this fact, the author observes the analogy of the conflicting feelings in beowulf’s poet and the spanish writer and philosopher unamuno who presents the subject of life after death in a moving philosophical meditation in his book del sentimiento traågico de la vida. (on the tragic sense of life). unamuno acknowledges that there may after all be no afterlife, and hence no meaning in human exis tence; this realization urges the author to the following sentence y si es la nada lo que nos estaå reservado, hagamos que sea una injusticia esto. (and if it is oblivion that is reserved for us at the end of this life, then let us act in such a way that this will have been an injustice!) reflecting on this philosophical thought, robinson writes: the devout christian who composed beowulf could never have uttered directly such a desperate sentiment as this, but through the indirections of poetry he has suggested something very like it. (67) the second part of the volume offers various literary interpretations on some old english poems, but chiefly on the battle of maldon: : “ two aspects of variation in old english poetry”, “understanding an old english wisdom verse: maxims ii, lines 10 ff.”, “artful ambiguities in the old english book-moth riddle”, “god, death, and loyalty in the battle of maldon”, “some aspects of the maldon poet’s artistry”, “literary dialect in maldon and the casley transcript”, “lexicography and literary criticism: a caveat”. all these articles cover a broad range of topics and they seek to reaffirm the enduring value and indispensability of traditional methods of study old english: paleography and codicology, textual study, language, and literary 159 analysis, in a word, “close reading”. all these articles are well known as they were published in some of the most renowned and quoted journals, and in certain books containing old english essays. some of these articles are frequently quoted, for example, “god, death and loyalty in the battle of maldon”, while others are less well-known as “understanding old english wisdom verse®” in this article, however, we can find out a perfect example of “close reading”, and robinson gives us an acute interpretation of the poem maxims ii ; the author analyses lines 10 ff. soth bith swicolost, sinc lyth deorost, gold gumena gehwam. “truth is most tricky; treasure, gold, is most pre cious to every man”. robinson recalls a text written in libro de buen amor by the spanish poet juan ruiz who expresses with wry wit the miraculous powers of money: fazié muchos priores, obispos e abades arçobispos, dotores, patriarcas, potestades; muchos clerigos necios daåvales denidades; fazié verdat mentiras, e mentiras, verdades. “it made many curates, bishops and abbots, archbishops, savants, patriarchs, potentates; it gave high honors to many simpleton priests; it turned truth into lies, and lies into truths” robinson points out that the text from old english maxims ii is probably the anglo-saxon version of the sentiment expressed by the spanish poet, that money makes truth out of lies and lies out of truth. modernist concerns with feminist studies are not overlooked in this volume, in fact robinson makes tentative explorations in some of the newer directions which literary investigation have recently taken. the following es says are introduced in part iii: “the prescient woman in old english litera ture”, “the old english poetry: the question of authorship”, “a metronymic in the battle of maldon ?”, “european clothing names and the etymology of girl”. reviews, antonio bravo ____________________________________________________________________ 160 in the first article robinson shows various examples of the effect of the germanic conception of woman on an anglo -saxon audience’s understanding of a work of lit erature. his analysis is clever and penetrating, and demonstrates the association between women and wisdom. it is interesting to take into account what robinson says at the end of this essay: nothing is to be gained and something will be lost if we pretend that our modern way of viewing women in the role of counsellors and prophets is the same as an anglo-saxon’s would have been. remembering the difference between the two will improve our understanding of a literature which, though it has often been described is quintessentially masculine, is in fact concerned extensively with women. (163) robinson in the essay “old english poetry: the question of authorship” analy ses the possibility that some anglo -saxon women might have written some literary texts, and he suggests that women writers and poets among the anglo -saxons would not be an isolated phenomenon in the germanic world. the author quotes an anglo -saxon nun of heidenheim, named hygeburg, who composed hagiography, and a nun named berhtgith who wrote poems, and edward the confessor’s queen edith who was celebrated and distin guished for verse and prose, among others. we know that old en glish litera ture is anonymous in most cases, but as the author of this article says: we should not pretend to know that women did not write them (judith, the riddles, poems in which the speaker is a woman, various liturgical and religious texts and meditations, etc.) but we should not pretend to know that women did not write them and continue to read these poems with the tacit assumption that they are all the products of male authorship. (169) part iv deals with names and onomastic interpretations in old english literature: “the significance of names in old english literature”, “personal names in medieval narrative and the name of unferth in beowulf”, “anglo 161 saxon onomastics in the old english andreas”, “some uses of name meanings in old english poetry”. it is known that many writers have used fictive names, (even modern writers like henry james, nabokov, etc. ), as a literary device and means of expressing judgments about their characters. robinson studies the significance of certain names in old en glish epic as unferth, one of the most ambiguous characters in beowulf; the author also analyses the onomastics in old english religious poems like andreas and exodus, and bases his ideas in the commentaries of the fathers, such as the spanish scholar isidore of seville who spells out the connection among the various significations of seth’s name. robinson suggests to study medieval onomastics bearing in mind the difference between the literary names of the old english literature, subtle, learned, artful, and that of our own writers today tending to be spontaneous and obvious, and the author concludes: we must study to understand and appreciate these distinctions before we can fully reclaim this important aspect of the anglo-saxon aesthetic mode. (218). in part v robinson groups essays on old english in the 20th century: “the might of the north: pound’s anglo -saxon studies and the seafarer”, “ezra pound and the old english. translational tradition”, “the afterlife of old english: a brief history of composition in old english after the close of the anglo -saxon period” and “medieval, the middle ages”. the first two articles deal with pound’s translation of the seafarer. it is known that some poets, such as r. lowell, t. s. eliot, w. h. auden, and w. s. merwin, among others, knew and were influenced by pound’s the seafarer. robinson analy ses this translation and tries to answer the question: “why did pound succeed where so many before him had failed?”. after a close study of the translation, robinson concludes with this sentence: genius discerns possibilities in material which others had found unpromising and by renovating it lends it greatness. (274). in the essay “the afterlife of old english” the author gives a survey and brief history of some texts written in old english after the norman conquest. reviews, antonio bravo ____________________________________________________________________ 162 it is worth mentioning robinson’s comment on the poem beowulfes beorh written in old english by the famous scholar n. f. s. grundtwig in 1861. in this text grundtwig re grets england’s alienation from its northern origins and expresses the hope that through poetic monuments the english may re dis cover their germanic brotherhood with the danes. robinson’s concern in the last essay is with terms “medieval” and “middle ages”, not with the period itself. he offers observations on the pro nunciation and spelling of these terms as well as on their origin and the puzzling question: why english has a plural noun, “middle ages”, whereas other major european languages have a singular, for example, “edad media” in spanish. in dealing with the origin of the term middle english, he mentions among others julian of toledo in the seventh century who speaks of his time as a “tempus medium”, but as the author points out, the context of this phrase shows that this is not our concept; in fact, the fathers of the church are referring to the “middle” as the period between the incarnation and judgment day. finally, robinson gives some attention to the meaning, and popular usage of terms like “medieval” and “middle ages” in various languages of europe, and he draws some conclusions from this. a list with 44 entries of essays and notes by robinson, not included in the volume, closes the tomb of beowulf; there is also a list of memoirs of old english and medievalist scholars written by the author in various journals. the volume is superbly laid out and printed, and remarkably free of misprints. those who love old english, and readers in general, can appreciate how robinson displays his usual clarity and masterly common-sense in arguing for the simplest explanation, but even those who disagree with robinson in some respects will find these essays impressively -argued and well-documented. the author is to be congratulated on bringing a work to a successful volume that he himself calls a number of previously published essays which i think still to be of interest to students of old english. 163 taken altogether, the volume under review mirrors the richness of mind and spirit of its author and the volume leaves one with admiration for the quality of robinson’s works; in this book, in one way or another, he expresses his ideas and feelings on old english summed up in the following lines from an interview with him at yale few years ago: the one branch of english literature which is least vulnerable to this attack, however, is, i believe, old english, because scholars and students of old english literature have never been persuaded to abandon the primary texts and go over to “theory”. if we medievalists continue to put literature in the center and to explore what the great writers of the past have had to say, then i believe we can be a light unto other literary scholars, showing them the way to recover from this malaise of nihilistic “theory” which has poisoned literary study in the past decade. (selim 1(1991) p. 147) antonio bravo university of oviedo * † * selim05.pdf reviews: ann hagen 1994 ____________________________________________________________________ 145 hagen, a. 1994 (1992, 1993): a handbook of anglo-saxon food, pro cessing and consumption. oxford: anglo-saxon books. the 1994 edition has a comprehensive index. a specialised press, a small press, an interesting book. as the author indicates in her abstract-preface: “as anglo -saxon food: processing & consumption has not been treated as the main subject of any simi lar multidisciplinary re search before …”, she has set out to do the treating through both primary and secondary sources. that is, she has drawn on archaeology, classical and me dieval documents as well as literary texts, studies related to biochemistry and ethnography. it could even be said that, almost inadvertently, ann hagen in cludes spin offs from current feminist theory. the book itself is what it claims to be —a handbook. it smacks of a doctoral dissertation too close to its writing, with a scaffolding of notes and references that seems all too apparent. this might have been avoided by a careful rewriting with an too to weaving at least some of the referrals to other authorities into the text itself. the reading could have become smoother and more engaging if more than a subject-verb -complement syntax had been used. even with a handbook both this syntactical scheme coupled with a tendency to use various repetitions of the exact same quote to make practically the exact same point seem awkward. one of these quotes, perhaps the most bothersome, is the reference to the baker taken from the colloquy. on three occasions we hear the baker answering the question: ‘can we live without you?’ with ‘yo u may for a period of time, not for long, or very well. indeed without my trade every table would seem empty, and without bread all food turns to loathing. ’ (p. 71, 94 and 121). although the quote is used with varying emphasis, it is the same quote. yet, with a handbook as with a dictionary, consecutive reading is not the primary aim. supposedly, this type of reiteration, used on several occasions with other citations, can be excused. apart from the few stylistic drawbacks of this 189-page book, the effe ct of the whole is one of interest and enjoyment. the author is not at all stingy with her use of old english text backups, nor does she make the person who reviews, mary farrell ____________________________________________________________________ 146 is unfamiliar with the! reading of such texts suffer. she diligently and generously translates the texts into contemporary english. this is, in fact, part of the fun for those of us whose anglo -saxon has gone rusty. for those who find ohs and ahs in the discovery of etymology that shows relationships to present-day usage, there are numerous occasio ns to be delighted: “beorma (yeast)” has its re latives in our beer and brew. (p. 15) from records of wills, and gifts, and orders for monasteries and noble feasts, ann hagen had deduced the importance and frequency of certain foodstuffs as well as their all-over or seasonal availability. she gives us recipes from the medicinal leechdoms, recipes, some of which make us chuckle, others which sound surprisingly familiar. her editorial comments are few, yet at some points we are led to the conclusion that the anglo -saxons had greater culinary imagination than their later conquerors, the normans. “the anglo -saxon cuisine seems to have made use of herbs, fruits, and to a lesser extent, flowers as an accompaniment to meat. ” (p. 121). the descrip tions of hunger, es pecially when related to women and children, are often emotionally heightened as well. yet our author re mains straightforward in treating what she set out to treat: processing and consump tion of food in anglo -saxon times. her table of contents run through such topics as “drying, milling and bread making” “dairying, ” “butchery, ” “preservation & storage” and “methods of cooking. ” in the section on consump tion, subjects such as “food short ages and deficiency diseases. ” and “adulteration: damage caused by dietary elements” remind us somehow that what our modern age looks back to with nostalgia is all but nonsensical. people have always tried to adulterate and preserve food with one method or another, and often these were and are harmful to some degree. it seems that starving was and is worse, besides the handbook itself, which is a demonstration of careful and orderly thinking, the author offers then four fecund appendices on subjects related to fo od customs: a treats fasting; b, fasting by saints and fasting as penance; c, entertainment at feasts with a section on minstrels, one on mu s icians, and one on dancing, juggling and jesting. appendix d offers a chro nology of famine years from 439 through 1099. finally, the index is complete and well crossreferenced, and the bibliography is rich in suggestions for further in quiry. reviews: ann hagen 1994 ____________________________________________________________________ 147 for a study of monastic, courtly, town, and family systems of liv ing and eating this book is recommendable. it is full of details that enlighten our understanding both of the anglo -saxons over several centuries, and the importance they gave to the second and third of human needs: thirst and hunger for mere survival, and then that need that invites us to survive, the need for aes thetic and entertainment. mary e. farrell universitat jaume i (castelló) * † * selim06.pdf ____________________________________________________________________ 172 de la cruz, j., cañete, a. & miranda, a. 1995: introducción histórica a la lengua inglesa . málaga, ágora. introducción histórica a la lengua inglesa offers us a clear and detailed account of the history of the english language from its origins to its present stage. this study is the result of a group effort by a team of malaga university who aimed to write a book for their spanish undergraduate students of english philology and, as such, it successes in providing the students with an overall perspective of diachronic linguistics. professor de la cruz stands out as an eminent and distinguished figure for his previous and very rigorous works on historical linguistics and, among many others, we could mention his articles “old english pure prefixes. structure and function”, “the origins of the germanic phrasal verb”, “linguistic scholarship and the linguistic interpretation of old english data” and his books la prosa de los anglosajones, iniciación práctica al inglés antiguo or historia del inglés, this one co-written with a. cañete. the book begins with a “shock” for the reader. the authors very wittily have included a passage from the old english apollonius and from the spanish medieval libro de apolonio both with their modern translations into english and spanish. the object of this shock pages are, beyond all doubt, to capture the student’s attention and to provoke “an automatic impression of proximity and alienation that is skilfully exploited by the authors and helps both to arouse and maintain the interest of the reader” (fernández-corugedo 1993: 192). with regards to the book’s structure, it is divided into two different parts. the first part is composed of up to three different units or chapters. chapter 1 (17-24) involves a general introduction in which the authors employ a figure of the human brain remarking the areas in which human beings usually store the capacity of communication. this introduction is followed by a general historymeter used to illustrate the chronological location of important events and a map of the main linguistic families around the world. ____________________________________________________________________ 173 chapter 2 (25-38), as many other books concerning the same field (de la cruz & cañete 1992: 45-84; fernández 1982: 37-72; berndt 1984: 16-30) contains an elaborated description of the external history of the english language from its origins to the early modern age as the authors are especially interested in depicting the circunstances which actually favoured the standardization of contemporary english. although further accounts could have been provided on its subsequent development, the authors prefer to cite some other specialized references. chapter 3 (39-60) closes the first part of the book. following the line of previous books (brook 1972: 28-58) it is concerned with the description of the indoeuropean to concentrate afterwards on the germanic and the detailed description of its varieties and phonological and morphological peculiarities. this chapter finishes with a stock list of words showing the scandinavian and french influence on english lexicon, on the one hand, and on english morphotactics, on the other. the french influence on vocabulary conforms an in-depth analysis since, just like baugh’s a history of the english language (1971: 200-213), it is divided for a better understanding into various semantic fields, that is, governmental and administrative words, ecclesiastical words and those connected with army, law, art, meals and social life. this first section as a whole has proven itself to be of great interest for the reader as it succeeds in providing the reader with a valuable background to set in the study of language itself. nevertheless, it must be regarded to be, with the exception of some maps and diagrams, as almost a mere word -byword reproduction of the introductory section found in de la cruz and cañete’s previous book historia del inglés. the second part comprises the foremost of the book and it is subdivided, as the authors explain using the simile of the “magic box”, into three different sections which may be summarized as follows: section a (63-131): words section b (135-138): operations section c (141-186): orthography and pronuntiation section a is devoted to an extensive analysis of the different parts of speech, that is, nouns (63-75), adjectives (77-83), pronouns (85-99) and verbs ____________________________________________________________________ 174 (101-131). whereas some other manuals on this field (bourcier 1981; barber 1972) usually begin with the study of these grammatical cathegories in old english to proceed with the subsequent stages of english or even carry out a retrospective historical analysis (strand 1994), this book differs from these methods and opts to present us the analysis both synchronically and diachronically at the same time. thus, following the line of peters (1968: 126172), it is a step-by-step explanation of these parts of speech presenting the history of each part independently. this methodology happens to be very profitable for didactic purposes since, with the help of illustrations and paradigmatic charts, it affords a valuable knowledge of the internal development of english which enables the students to set in some further and more specific readings on the subject. section b (135-138), though somewhat reduced in its content, manages to exhibit a proficient explanation of the various sentential functions of english, that is to say, negative and interrogative sentences (135-136) on the one hand, and relative and phrasal complementation (137-138), on the other. section c (141-186) involves the historical development of the orthogra phy and pronuntiation of english. this section follows the same methodology of section a and displays both synchronically and diachronically the development of consonants (141-152) and vowels (153-186) covering in detail all the various stages of english history, from the complex system of old english to the modern situation in contemporary english, along with consonantal orthographic and phonological innovations of middle english, its subsequent development and a clear-cut description of the vowel system both before and after the so-called great vowel shift. taking into account that this book has been designed as a course book for university students, the authors have profitably enclosed a twofold glossary which happens to be very helpful for didactic purposes. on the one hand, there is a thematic glossary (187-190) functioning as in index which undoubtedly speeds up the student’s needs to consult a specific subject. on the other, the book also incorporates a diachronic glossary (191-200) which becomes of great help for the reader when studying the historical development of the english orthographical system, enabling them the possibility of self-training activities. ____________________________________________________________________ 175 the last pages of the book deal with references (201-204). this bibliography is structured into three different parts. first of all, the authors cite what they consider to be the main source to carry out any type of english study (ywes). second, a selection of the basic and most important dictionaries of english. and, third, a general bibliography which comprises more than 150 entries thus offering the reader a wide variety of sources for future readings and researches on historical linguistics. the bibliography, though very exhaustive itself, turns out to be somewhat irregular in its presentation. i am referring, in fact, to those entries written by a same author in which we can observe the use of inverted commas instead of a continuous three-dash line flush with left margin followed by a period, as they are customary cited. furthermore, there are some other flaws in the book. in -text citations are not wholly systematic throughout the text. for instance, on page 12 we come across a reference to swanton’s book anglo-saxon england and, paradoxically, it is not listed in the general bibliography. likewise, on page 185 the authors cite jespersen and we never get to know which of jespersen’s books they are actually following, either growth and structure of the english language or a modern english grammar on historical principles. in this sense, the authors should have used not footnotes but in -text citations to allude to references and this method would have undoubtedly provided the text with a more systematic fo rm of citation. the book also contains some spelling mis takes like that on page 166 in ffrere instead of frere, or that on page 47 in simplifacatoria instead of simplificatoria, and surprisingly, this one happens to be present in historia del inglés as well. furthermore, the book is accompanied by textos y vocabularios para la introducción histórica a la lengua inglesa . this is a complementary handbook containing a selection of pedagogically created old and middle english texts with some remarks on their vocabulary, grammar or pronuntiation. un fortunately, this handbook is now being re -edited owing to the typographical slips found in the first printing. all in all, despite all these minor drawbacks of minimum importance which i am sure that will be corrected and amended in future editions of the book, introducción histórica a la lengua inglesa has proven to be very efficient as a text book for university students as well as for any reader to acquire an ____________________________________________________________________ 176 overall and profound perspective on the history of english. and, in this sense, we must congratulate the authors for their clear-cut methodology and presentation of data. javier calle martín university of málaga references barber, c. l. 1972: the story of language. pan books, london. baugh, a. c. 1971: a history of the english language. routledge & kegan paul, london. berndt, r. 1984: a history of the english language. veb verlag enzyklopädie leipzig, leipzig. bourcier, g. 1981: an introduction to the history of the english language. stanley thornes, cheltenham. brook, g. l. 1972: a history of the english language. andre deutsch, london. cruz fernández, j. m. de la & cañete, a. 1992: historia del inglés. edinford, málaga. cruz fernández, j. m. de la 1972: the origins of the germanic phrasal verb. indogermanische forschungen 77.1: 73-96. cruz fernández, j. m. de la 1975: old english pure prefixes. structure and function. linguistics 145: 47-81. cruz fernández, j. m. de la 1983: la prosa de los anglosajones. universidad de málaga, málaga and salamanca. cruz fernández, j. m. de la 1986: iniciación práctica al inglés antiguo. alhambra, madrid. ____________________________________________________________________ 177 cruz fernández, j. m. de la 1989: linguistic scholarship and the linguistic interpretation of old english data. actas del i congreso de selim. oviedo: 28-47. fernández-corugedo, s. g. 1993: rev. of historia del inglés, by j. m. de la cruz & a. cañete. selim 3: 189-197. fernández, f. 1982: historia de la lengua inglesa . gredos, madrid. peters, r. a. 1968: a linguistic history of english . houghton mifflin company, boston. strang, b. m. h. 1994: a history of english . routledge, london and new york. * † * selim06.pdf alison buckett rivera, selim 6 (1998): 103—116 motherhood in the wife of bath it has been generally assumed that the wife of bath was childless, although there are those who contest this assumption, namely mary carruthers in her essay “the wife of bath and the painting of the lions”.1 in this essay i propose to give evidence which proves that alisoun almost definitely had no children. before giving my reasons for viewing her as childless, it is neces sary to give a description of the family and to explain how important it was considered to be in medieval england. we also need to look at the role of women within the household and family, the purpose of marriage as well as views on sex and love. fertility, pregnancy, childbearing, and child -rearing also need to be assessed. by taking into account the general views on and common practices concerning these activities in the middle ages, i hope to show that from the way she talks it was very unlikely that alisoun was ever a mother and that she was far from typical of a woman of her age and class. i shall draw on information given us from the real life autobiography of margery kempe, who was from the same class and era, to show how even a woman as distainful of sex, professionally active and well travelled as she, could not avoid fourteen pregnancies. this for me shows that the wife of bath was very untypical of her sex and class for being childless. at the heart of every english household, was the same basic unit: the family, in particular the nuclear family. this consisted of the husband, wife, and their dependent offspring. for a couple belonging to the lower echelons of society, two or three children would have been typical, while the upper classes tended to have far more. take for example thomas howard, the second duke of norfolk (1443-1524), who had ten children by his first wife and 1 carruthers, m. (1979) "the wife of bath and the painting of the lions" in feminist readings in middle english literature the wife of bath and all her sect, london: routledge, 1994, 49-50. ____________________________________________________________________ 105 thirteen by his second.1 the reasons for this difference lay in social and economic factors. medcalf states that in the absence of contraception, the fertility of a woman was governed by the age at which she married and the time of her menopause or death. for all social groups menopause came at roughly the age of 40, but death often came earlier, with the average expectation of life standing at around 35 to 40. furthermore, the rates of infant mortality were high for all classes, with approximately 30 to 40 per cent of all children dying before the age of 15. therefore, one of the variables in determining family size was the age at marriage. as it was rare to live with one’s in -laws, a couple who wished to marry had to be able to set up home independently. this meant they needed to have sufficient income. among the upper classes this income was usually pro vided by the parents and parents -in-law. the future married couple were formally endowed by a marriage settlement. this external endowment meant that the gentry and nobility could marry younger than the lower classes. men tended to do so at 22 to 23 years of age and women at 17 or 18.2 although other factors will be taken into account later, this early age of marriage helped to provide women with more childbearing years (provided they lived long enough). it is interesting to note that the wife of bath was married to her first husband at the age of twelve but how typical this was remains to be seen. at first she does not make clear exactly what that first marriage entailed for she simply says for, lordinges, sith i twelve yeer of age,/ thonked by god that is eterne on live,/ housbondes at chirche dore i have had five-3. although child marriages did take place during this era, the settlement of property being the reason for them, the newly wed couples rarely lived together until they were in their late teens. moreover, they were not considered marriages de facto until sexual intercourse had taken place and it is doubtful, though not impossible, that alisoun would have been expected to have sexual relations with her older husband or whether she was even capable of them due to her 1 medcalf, s. ( ed.) (1981) the later middle ages, london: methuen and co. ltd., 230. 2 ibid. 231. 3 chaucer, g. the wife of bath’s prologue, lines 5-7 ____________________________________________________________________ 106 being so young.1 what was more common between partners of such a young age were espousals de futuro , in which the couple were betrothed to each other in order to cement an alliance between the families of each. what was always at stake was property, as was the case with the wife of bath. marriage was totally utilitarian for the chief objective of it was gain, not love as we understand it today. as medcalf states: money figured so largely because of the economic realities of the times. now we assume that wealth will be earned; the late middle ages … assumed it would be inherited. and the vehicle of inheritance was the family, whose central institution was marriage.2 the wife of bath belonged to the bourgeoisie, not to the gentry. as she was lower down the social scale, although not of low birth, she was allowed more freedom of choice with later marriages. her first three husbands were “rich and old” but as she had made her fortune through them she was able to choose with her last husband, and so married a clerk half her age which i took for love, and no richesse (526). the second highly important reason for getting married was for producing children to inherit the property belonging to the family and to carry on the family name. as we have seen, the upper classes tended to marry earlier and therefore had more childbearing years in which to produce children. in the case of the wife of bath we are told her first three husbands were old and rich, so it would have stood to reason that they would have been keen to pro duce heirs. we are not told at what age she married husband number two and three, but it is probable that at least with her third husband she would have been at childbearing age even if this was not the case with the first and possibly second one. when she is defending herself for marrying so many times she actually says: but wel i woot, expres, witute lie, god bad for to wexe and multiplie; that gentil text i well understonde. eek wel i woot, he seyde myn housbonde 1 laslett, p. (1983) the world we have lost further explored london: routledge, 82. 2 medcalf, s. op.cit. 232. ____________________________________________________________________ 107 sholde le te fader and mooder, and take to me. but of no nombre mencion made he, of bigamie, or of octogamie; why sholde men thanne speke of it vileynie? (27-34) however, no mention of her having children is ever made even though she gives one of the reasons for marriage as being procreation: god bad for to wexe and multiplie (28). were she chaste in her relationships with her husbands there would be more credence to the assumption that she was childless. we know she was not chaste for she tells us i graunte it wel, i have noon envie, / thogh maidenhede preferre bigamie. / it liketh hem to be clene, body and goost; / of myn estaat i nil nat make no boost (95-98). from this we can deduce that she was sexually active with her husbands. although, as already mentioned, in real life she would probably not have been expected to maintain sexual relations with her husband if she was only twelve, she does go on to say that she was sexually active with them all: i shall seye sooth, tho housbondes that i hadde, as thre of hem we re goode, and two were badde. the thre wee goode men, and riche, and olde; unnethe mighte they the statut holde in which that they were bounden unto me. ye woot wel what i meene of this, pardee. as help me god, i laughe when i thinke how pitously a night i made hem swinke! and, by my fey, i tolde of it no stoor. they had me yeven hir lond and hir tresoor; me neded nat do lenger diligence to winne hir love, or doon hem revernce. they loved me so well, by god above, that i ne tolde no deyntee of hir love? (195-208) perhaps her first three husbands were impotent, for unnethe mighte they the statut holde / in which that they were bounden unto me (198-199) and she goes on to say that she made them work hard at night. furthermore, she had become rich once she had married them and so no longer felt the need to court them. she was only willing to take trouble to provide them pleasure if she wanted some material gain with which they could provide her. here is a good point at which to comment on the position of women in the household and family in medieval england. as already mentioned, the family ____________________________________________________________________ 108 was the central institution of society. the household was the main unit of activity and the family and family relationships were the chief channels through which wealth was transmitted. within the family it was the husband who had complete authority. the male was considered superior to the female and so within marriage the wife was expected to be humble, obedient and submissive in all things. however, we know that this model did not apply to the wife of bath, for she nagged and manipulated her husbands in order to get what she wanted. traditionally a woman was expected to comply with her husbands sexual demands whether she wanted to or not, whereas we know that with her first three husbands she only did so when they were willing to provide her with something in return. sexuality also needs to be discussed, for the wife of bath’s prologue and tale deal with this topic in detail. a woman was not expected to have a sexuality. in the christian world, due to interpretations of the fall of mankind and eve being the cause of it for introducing sin into the world, all women were expected to atone for the original sin. the major way of doing so was through childbirth, of which i shall speak in detail later, but also through the ideal of a woman being pure, virginal and unsexed. women were feared for being temptresses and matrimony was not considered to wholly surmount this. virginity was the ideal. in the fourth and fifth centuries the cult of exalt ing the virgin mary appeared. she was seen as the new eve, a virgin pro tected throughout life from every physical or spiritual contamination. mary became the model of behaviour, an ideal unattainable to any other woman. therefore, women were expected to follow her example. sex was for procre ation only, not for enjoyment. on the other hand, it is important to point out that much of the literature written for and about women in this period was largely the product of a male clerical élite anxious to promote the church ideal of celibacy while at the same time troubled by their own feelings about sexuality, which were then projected onto women. the wife of bath’s attitude, then, is laughably quite the contrary. she makes no bones about her views on virginity and sex in general. although it is not necessarily a pleasure with her first three husbands she does say: in wyfhod i wol use myn instrument as frely as my makere hath it sent. if i be daungerous, god yeve me sorwe! ____________________________________________________________________ 109 myn housbonde shal it have bothe eve and morwe, whan that him list come forth and paye his dette. an housbonde i wol have, i wol nat lette, which shal be bothe my dettour and my thral, and have his tribulacion withal upon his flessh, whil that i am his wyf. (149-157) these are not the words of a woman who tolerates sex in order to engender children. in fact, other than her comment on god bidding man to wexe and multiplie (28), she never mentions that the purpose of sex is procreation. neither does she view herself as in need of re demption for eve’s sins. on the contrary, she enjoys doing the very “crime” eve is accused of having committed. although a woman was expected to be obedient and submissive, which the above shows alisoun was not, she was, however, permitted to act as her husband’s business partner and had to assume responsibility for the conduct of his affairs when he was away. she was also frequently required to act for him in a legal capacity. in this sense the wife of bath acts in a way that was typical of a merchant’s wife. alisoun was a cloth maker in the west of england, which at the time was a highly lucrative trade. she would have been re sponsible for overseeing the whole process of cloth manufacture; buying the wool, contracting the labour of the various artisans involved in manufacture, and sending bales of finished broadcloths to bristol and london for export. many of the women that took part in this entrepreneurial activity in england in chaucer’s day were widows, who carried on after their husband’s deaths, some of them becoming extremely rich.1 other important factors to be taken into account when considering the evidence that exists to prove whether the wife was or was not childless are pregnancy, childbirth and infant feeding practices. fertility also needs to be mentioned again as this is affected by infant feeding practices, not only by age of marriage and the onset of menopause, as medcalf suggests. mary carruthers’s view is that there is not a shred of evidence to support the “fact” that she is childless. according to her the reason she does not mention any offspring is that chaucer intended the text to be about wifehood, not motherhood. she adds that wifehood and motherhood were not linked concepts at 1 carruthers, op. cit., 24. ____________________________________________________________________ 110 the time, as they are today, for wives had little to do with the nurture of their children. this is partially true and i shall develop this argument further in due course. however, it is also necessary to make clear the burden most women of the wealthier classes had to endure due to continual pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum problems, three “states” that few managed to es cape from, especially those women coming from the class to which alisoun belonged. returning to the comment that a woman of her class would not bring up her own children; this is true to a certain extent because her offspring would have been cared for by a wet nurse. this was common practice among wealthy and also noble families throughout western europe in the middle ages. furthermore, from the eleventh century onwards the use of wet nurses by the wealthy apparently increased. this may well have been one of the reasons for the increased fertility among the european aristocracy which also dates from this time.1 if a mother did not breastfeed her own child she could not receive the contraceptive effects that continued, unsupplemented breastfeeding produced. therefore, she would have become fertile possibly only weeks after the birth of a child and consequently would have become pregnant again within a short amount of time.2 as infant mortality was so high, the upper classes were probably aware of, and welcomed, an increased number of children because this would ensure sufficient infants being born, in the hope that at least some or even one would survive to inherit their parents’ property and business(es). surely in the case of the wife of bath and her husbands this would also have been their aim. yet, she only mentions her own covetousness for her husband’s goods and her own need for entertainment. furthermore, had she been a mother it would be most unusual for her not to mention this even though the prologue deals with her husbands and marriage as opposed to pregnancy and parenthood. even if she did not bring up her children herself, which admittedly she almost certainly would not have 1 fildes, v. (1990) wet nursing a history from antiquity to the present oxford: basil blackwell, 34. 2 breastfeeding on demand (with no restrictions on feeding times) and with no food supplements, produces post-partum amenorrhoea, which acts as a contraceptive because it prevents a new pregnancy or at least lengthens the space of time between one pregnancy and another. (jelliffe, d. b. and jelliffe, p. (1978) human milk in the modern world, oxford: oxford university press, 117-127). ____________________________________________________________________ 111 done, she would have spent a considerable amount of time pregnant, especially for the very reason that she would not have been provided with the contraceptive effects of breastfeeding. the state of being pregnant and the after effects of childbirth would have affected her behaviour, health, sense of identity and perhaps her philosophies on life. most mothers in the twentieth century would probably agree that once one has a child she no longer thinks solely of herself, her enjoyment or her profit because she now has a new life to answer for. it would be erro neous to suggest that a mother in england in the middle ages should have exactly the same attitude towards parenthood as a woman in the late twentieth century. furthermore, the fact that infant mortalit y was high and that women of the wealthier classes did not breastfeed their own children might have caused mothers to have a colder, more distanced attitude towards their children.1 but the fact remains that primordial maternal feelings had to have existed, for without them the future of a race is put in jeopardy and for this i consider that the most callous, self-interested woman would give at least a minimal reaction to becoming a mother. furthermore, having children would have affected her relationships with her husbands and their reactions to her, but no hint of this is given in the text. a brief look at pregnancy and childbirth in the middle ages reinforces what i have said above, for both states could not help but have an effect on a woman’s life. as mentioned previously, women were expected to atone for eve’s sin through childbirth. the religious emphasis given to procreation and the lack of reliable contraception ensured that the lives of many women were dominated by a cycle of pregnancy and childbirt h. there was little chance of special treatment, except for the restrictive kind, due to superstitions and tra ditional beliefs dating from the romans and greeks, and antenatal care was almost non-existent. although certain herbal remedies may have been used to 1 the close mother-child bond which forms when a newborn baby is placed on its mothers stomach and breastfeeds straight after birth, would not have taken place. calostrum, the highly nutritious first milk, present in a mother’s breasts during the first few days after birth, would not have been given to the child due to beliefs that it was unclean and dangerous. had babies been given this, they would have had more chance of survival, as it contains antibodies which give protection against many illnesses. ____________________________________________________________________ 112 help in pregnancy and childbirth there were also dangerous practices, such as bleeding, which only served to debilitate the mother.1 so far as diet was concerned, women always fared worse than men. as the husband was considered the bread-winner and the master of the house, he always received more than anyone else. women were served last and often consumed the worst of what was available and the least. even pregnant women received little consideration and this lack of decent nutrition meant that some mothers were too weak to endure labour and that they gave birth to under-weight children, many of whom died before or just after birth. if we also take into account the fact that many women fasted as a religious penance, for example margery kempe, it is easy to see that pregnancy was beset with risks and suffering that would affect the behaviour of any woman. yet the wife of bath makes absolutely no mention of anything concerning such experiences. although birth was viewed as a natural event and not a case for obstetric intervention, as it is today, a woman was aware that she could die in child birth and she often prepared herself for this during pregnancy. moreover, the web of superstitious beliefs that a pregnant woman had to contend with would have filled all but the most strong-minded with fear and trepidation. the christian view of childbirth was that pain was the natural punishment for eve’s sin, thus attempts to relieve it were often condemned. this is not to say that childbirth was always a hellish experience in the middle ages, for, as in the twentieth century, different women must have reacted in different ways. however, due to superstition, religious beliefs, lack of nutrition and hygiene, a woman risked major problems for herself and offspring durin g childbirth, and these risks often resulted in the death of the infant and or the mother. only a woman who has not been through childbirth could choose to omit it from an autobiography. although alisoun’s text is not exactly that, it does talk about her life and the things which she holds dear. i suggest that it is because she never went through any of these major, life changing experiences that she does not give even the slightest mention to them. returning to the subject of infant feeding, it is true that the wife of bath would almost definitely have employed a wet nurse and they would have 1 carter, j. and duriez, t. (1986) with child birth through the ages edinburgh: mainstream publishing, 19-20. ____________________________________________________________________ 113 shared the same house as each other. this was common practice from the eleventh century onwards.1 neither was it only the highest classes that carried out this practice, for in the later middle ages it was established practice even for artisans and small shopkeepers to employ wet nurses. those wealthy parents who did put their children out to nurse usually did so quite close to the child’s home, so that the parents could keep in contact in case of illness or other problems. for all the above mentioned reasons i cannot agree with carruthers in that there is no shred of evidence to prove that the wife of bath was not a mother. in order to back up further my premise that alisoun was childless and to show how very untypical she was of a woman of her age and class in the middle ages, i would like to give the example of margery kempe (c.1373 to c.1438), whose autobiography, the first ever written in english, gives us in sights into the lot of a bourgeois woman in this era. both she and the wife of bath were similar in that they were free to own property, run a business, and to enter a guild. the wife of bath’s prologue and tale take place while she is on a pilgrimage, although besides this religious act we are not given any reason to believe that she is a devout follower of religion. margery, on the other hand, is devoutly religious and spends her life in search of spiritual salvation, doing penance by wearing hair shirts, going on pilgrimages as far a field as jerusalem, and fasting. probably one of the major differences between her and alisoun is that margery wants to be chaste and spends many years trying to persuade her husband to give up having sexual relations with her. her autobiography tells us that he would have his will and she obeyed, with great weeping and sorrowing that she might not live chaste …2 she finally gets this wish in 1413 when, after she offers to pay his debts, he agrees to let her take the vow of chas tity.3 in margery’s autobiography much emphasis is placed on her spiritual life and relatively little is written about her pregnancies and children, with the 1 fildes, v. (1990) wet nursing: a history from antiquity to the present oxford: oxford university press, 34-44. 2 windeatt, b.a. (trans) the book of margery kempe, harmondsworth: penguin, 1985, 46. 3 delany, s. (1975) "sexual economics, chaucer’s wife of bath and the book of margery kempe" in feminist readings in middle english literature ed., evans, r. and johnson, l., london: routledge, 1994, 76-78. ____________________________________________________________________ 114 exception of the birth of her first child, to which a great deal of importance is accorded in the first chapter. even so, it is common knowledge that margery was pregnant fourteen times. if all fourteen children were carried full term, she would have been pregnant for a total of 126 months out of 240 months, or just over half the time between her twentieth and fortieth birthdays.1 i cite the details above to show that despite her loathing of sex, her spirituality, her pilgrimages and active life as a businesswoman in the textile trade, margery was unable to avoid spending a large part of her life pregnant. furthermore, we know that her first pregnancy was difficult and the birth traumatic. she was sick for eight months afterwards and was given to hysteria and visions, in which she felt herself being pawed at and threatened by devils.2 perhaps i should reiterate before comparing alisoun with margery, that the wife of bath is a character created by chaucer. in many ways she does not come across as real, if by this term we mean someone who is true to life, credible. there is no doubt that she is also a comical character, who succeeds in making laugh all those who read her prologue. however, even taking into account that she is fictional and comical, perhaps if she had been created by a woman she would not have been made childless. the example of margery kempe shows us what the reality was for a woman of her class and age in england in the middle ages. moreover, she spent over twenty childbearing years of her life married, somewhat less time than alisoun, yet during that time she was almost continuously pregnant. the aim of her autobiography was to talk of her spiritual life, but she could not avoid giving mention, albeit scarce, to her states of pregnancy. i suggest that if the wife of bath had been a mother, like margery, she could not have avoided mentionin g this fact somewhere, even though her text was concerned with marriage and not motherhood. had this been the case perhaps she would have been a more mature character and not how robert j. meyer views her as: “an overgrown child stubborn, self-centred, retentive innocent and incapable of the emotional and intellectual sophistication, the 1 howes, l. (1992) notes and documents on the birth of margery kempe’s last child in modern philology vol.90 no.2 november 1992, 224, note 12. 2 evans, r. and johnson, l. (ed) op. cit., 90-91. ____________________________________________________________________ 115 unselfish and understanding, which characterize a mature love re lationship.”1 finally a comment should be made on alisoun’s last two husbands. why she married her fourth husband is unclear from her prologue, but as carruthers suggests, we may assume it had something to do with “ricchesse”, as her fifth husband, jankyn, is the only exception she makes to this rule. we also know that by the time she is married to husband number four she is financially independent. but it is with her fifth and last husband that she marries for love and to him she gives the “maistrye” of her property. the ups and downs of this marriage are not what concern us here, but a note on his age is relevant. she is forty when she marries him and he is twenty. by this stage she may well have been going through the menopause, as medcalf explains. however, margery kempe gave birth in her forty first year. alisoun’s first four husbands were older than her and it is possible that one or a number of them were impotent or sterile. on the other hand, it is unlikely that all four of them would have been. neither can we rule out the possibility that alisoun was infertile and this in fact would probably be the easiest and most logical explanation if, of course, she had really existed. in the middle ages infertility was equated with lack of grace and consequently manuals and almanacs for the childless abounded. despite the constant burden placed on women by pregnancy and childbirth, due to the fact that redemption was thought to come through childbirth and also because of the obsession with getting heirs, the childless woman was considered to be the most disadvantaged.2 in the case of alisoun, she comes across as childless, but never as disadvantaged because of this. in fact, children never seem to have entered her mind, which for the all the reasons cited above, would have been highly unlikely in reality. there also remains the possibility that she had been pregnant on one or more occasions, but that she became sterile due to a miscarriage or abortion. the use of contraceptive methods need not be ruled either. although there was a dominant set of family practices aimed at producing children the dread 1 meyer, r. j. "chaucer’s tandem romances: a generic approach to the wife of bath’s tale as palinode" in the chaucer review vol.18, no.3 university park and london: the pennsylvania state university press, 232. 2 carter, j. and duriez, t. op.cit. p. 19. ____________________________________________________________________ 116 of childbirth and ill health were two reasons why women may have chosen to control their fertility.1 in fact, mclaren points out that, in chaucer’s parson’s tale he tells of a woman taking potions, drynkynge venenouse herbes thurgh which she may not conceive; of using pessaries and suppositories, by placing certeine material thynges in hire secree places to slee the child; unnatural intercourse, by which man or womman shedeth hire nature in manere or place ther as a child may not be conceived; and even abortion.2 by looking at what the wife of bath says or rather does not say in her prologue and also by reviewing the situation of women and particularly those of alisoun’s class in the middle ages in england, i hope to have shown the extreme improbability of her ever having had children. had she been a real person pregnancy and childbirth, if not the birth of live children, would have been impossible to avoid for a woman as sexually active as she has informed us she was. the only possibility remaining to us, besides the unlikelihood of all her husbands being sterile, is that she herself was. alison buckett rivera university of corunna bibliography carter, j. & duriez, t. 1986: with child birth through the ages edinburgh: mainstream publishing. chaucer, g. 1951: the canterbury tales london: penguin.. evans, r. & johnson, l. 1994: feminist readings in middle english litera ture the wife of bath and all her sect london: routledge. fildes, v. 1986: breasts, bottles and babies, a history of infant feeding edinburgh: edinburgh university press. 1 mclaren, a. (1990) a history of contraception from antiquity to the present day, oxford: blackwell, 115. 2 chaucer, g. parson’s tale, 575-6. ____________________________________________________________________ 117 fildes, v. 1990: wet nursing: a history from antiquity to the present oxford: basil blackwell. howes, l. 1992: notes and documents on the birth of margery kempes’s last child. modern philology vol. 90 no.2 november. jelliffe, d. b. & jelliffe, p. 1978: human milk in the modern world oxford: oup. laslett, p. 1983: the world we have lost further explored london: routledge. mclaren, a. 1990: a history of contraception from antiquity to the present day oxford: basil blackwell. medcalf, s. 1981: the later middle ages london: methuen and co ltd. meyer, r. j. chaucer’s tandem romances: a generic approach to the wife of bath’s tale as palinode. the chaucer review vol.18, no.3 university park and london: the pennsylvania state university press. tigges, w. 1992: “lat the womman telle hire tale” a reading of the wife of bath’s tale. english studies 1992, 2, pp.97-103. windeatt, b. a. trans 1985: the book of margery kempe, harmondsworth: penguin.. winny, j. ed. 1965: the wife of bath’s prologue and tale cambridge: cambridge university press. * † * selim06.pdf ____________________________________________________________________ 189 bjork, robert e. & john d. niles eds. 1997: a beowulf handbook. exeter: university of exeter press. a beowulf handbook tries to present a general survey of all the major is sues in beowulf studies, from old controversies such as the “christian and pagan elements” or the date and provenance of the poem to discussions that have arisen more recently, such as the question of “gender roles” or the impact of “contemporary critical theory” on readings of the poem. the book is arranged into eighteen individual chapters (each dealing with one of these major themes) in charge of well-known scholars, from those we can associate with the traditional methods of anglo -saxon studies, such as thomas shippey, to those that work with modern literary theory, as seth lerer or katherine o’brien o’keeffe. as it is told by the editors in the preface, every chapter begins by a very brief summary of its contents, followed by an annotated chronology of the different scholarly trends on the matter in question since the very beginnings of beowulf studies till 1994. the core of each chapter includes three main points: first, a general description of the different scholarly reactions to the problem under consideration. then, the current state of opinion and, finally, an analysis of what, from the point of view of the contributor, is still to be done in the subject. this book differs thus in organization from the other guides to beowulf criticism we had to resort to before, such as nicholson’s an anthology of beowulf criticism (1965) or peter s. baker’s beowulf: basic readings. (1995). these were both collections of essays that have become essential points of reference in beowulf studies, such as tolkien’s “beowulf: the monsters and the critics” or benson’s “the pagan coloring of beowulf “. each essay logically offered only the author’s individual vision on the topic, whereas the chapters in a beowulf handbook attempt a general overview, reviewing all important positions. the project is well executed and, as the editors claim, very useful for “college or university instructors who teach beowulf and are unfamiliar with all the problems attendant on this enterprise” (ix), who can find here a good ____________________________________________________________________ 190 overview of the main problems raised in scholarly discussion of the poem. however, the condensation most of the discussions present might make them useless, or at least quite boring for the specialist, who would already be aware of these main problems. on the other hand, they may perhaps be an incomprehensible mess for “nonspecialists who wish to read beowulf with a basic understanding of the poem” (ix). we find, for instance, many para graphs like this: sutherland (1964) sees beowulf as based on the gospel of john as set out in the liturgical lectionary. delasanta and slevin (1968) argue for a christological purpose by which the poet seeks to perfect the pagan heroic ideals through submerged references to christ. ziegelmaier (1969) … seeks liturgical symbolism of baptism at work … (244). in this short paragraph, the reader receives a big amo unt of information, somewhat difficult to assimilate and assess if, as it indeed happens, he/she is hardly ever told upon what ground each scholar decided to formulate his/her own opinion or the arguments put forward to uphold it. this is not in fact very useful for the beginner, who would have to turn to the different references provided in order to understand the basis of the dis cussion. but this is a problem that cannot be easily solved since, if we were to be explained every single view, this handbook would have needed two or three volumes at least. the newcomer to the field of beowulf studies would be somewhat puzzled to find, in the contributor’s personal account, apparently contradictory affirmations. irving, for instance, writes first about the “three different accounts of pagan funeral rites of a kind known to be frequently condemned by christian authorities” (178), claims that “the danes are said to engage in actual worship of heathen gods”(178), and affirms that “the danes were pagan”(178). however, he later announces hrothgar, king of the danes, to be “the most thoroughly christian speaker of the poem.” (185). this in itself confusing enough but, what would the beginner think when he/she, trying to review irving’s discussion, finds on page 178: “the domi nant strategy of the poem might be summed up as ‘let’s assume these old ____________________________________________________________________ 191 heroes were much like us in their beliefs’.”? who, may the contemporary reader ask, are “us”? and what beliefs do “we” share? some discussions lack objectivity, since they are colored by the contributor’s own opinion, so the reader would be unconsciously led by it. irving (again!), for instance, is quick to dismiss fred c. robinson’s beowulf and the appositive style (1985), judging it as “misguided and unsuccessful” (187). however, he dedicates a page and a half to praise an article of his own: “the nature of christianity in beowulf.”(185-86), while he normally dedicates no more than a brief paragraph to other scholarly views. special mention deserve the last three chapters (by alexandra h. olsen, seth lerer, and marijane osborn respectively), devoted to relatively new as pects of beowulf criticism, as “gender roles” (chapter 16), the impact of “contemporary critical theory” in the discussion of the poem (chapter 17), and “translations, versions, illustrations” (chapter 18). these three chapters especially caught my attention both because of their novelty and their intrin sic interest. i found particularly interesting the third and fourth points of chapter eighteen, devoted to “shape shiftings: beowulf in new forms” and “illustrations of beowulf” respectively. in the former, osborn deals with “actual creative adaptations of beowulf into other genres”(351) as comic -books or fairy -tales together with short stories, novels, and even symphonies. in the latter, we find some examples of illustrations that are indeed “creative”, such as a “native-american beowulf” or a cover drawing from a comic book called “beowulf: dragon slayer”, showing our hero fighting “the serpent of satan” accompanied by a young woman carrying a sword (in the role of wiglaf, i suppose.). one of these drawings should have been used in the cover illustration of the handbook, since they are both much more appealing than the grendel we find there, who looks very much like the beowulf we have on page 164 by the same author, but with more hair (or feathers, rather!). the list of translations we find in this chapter is good, though the spanish reader will not fail to notice some errors, as the claim that lerate and lerate’s (1986) is the most recent spanish translation, actually being that by angel cañete (1991). ____________________________________________________________________ 192 the few problems mentioned notwithstanding, i agree with the editors that this handbook has great value both as a teaching aid and as a source or guide for “graduate and advanced undergraduate students who, in scrutinizing the text of beowulf face a daunting task, although an exilarating one” (ix), such as myself. in judging the final utility of this handbook, it seems inevitable to borrow bjork and obermeie r’s words when they claim: “all we can say with assurance when asked when, where, by whom, and for whom the poem was composed is that we are not sure. the quandary we thus find ourselves in with these first, essential questions about the poem, of course, has serious ramifications for most, if not all other, interpretations of it” (33). this is similar to a sentence by james w. earl, with which i would finish any beowulf handbook: we cannot safely use the poem to help us interpret anglo -saxon history; we cannot assume the poem is representative of any period, or even, finally, representative of anything at all. this, i think, is the most important thing to take into account by anyone, whether specialist or not, who writes or reads on beowulf criticism. setmaní valenzuela universidad de sevilla works cited baker, peter s. ed. 1995: beowulf: basic readings. new york & london: garland. benson, larry d. 1995: the pagan coloring of beowulf. > baker 1995. cañete, angel 1991: beowulf. málaga: universidad de málaga. earl, james w. 1994: thinking about beowulf. stanford: stanford university press. ____________________________________________________________________ 193 irving, edward b. 1984: the nature of christianity in beowulf. ase 13: 7-21. lerate, luis & jesús lerate 1986: beowulf y otros poemas anglosajones (siglos vii-x). madrid: alianza. nicholson, lewis e. ed. 1963: an anthology of beowulf criticism. notre dame: university of notre dame press. robinson, fred c. 1985: beowulf and the appositive style. knoxville: university of tennessee press. tolkien, j. r. r. 1963: beowulf: the monsters and the critics.> nicholson 1963: 51-103. * † * selim04.pdf jesús serrano reyes, selim 4 (1994): 20-47 the host’s idiolect introduction chaucer’s characters are well drawn. chaucer individualizes the speech of his charecters and, for many of them, he devised what have been called ‘special languages’. these special languages may well be described as an id iolect, the term used to describe the speech-habits of an individual, in contrast with a dialect, which describes the speech-habits of a group. chaucer’s interest in the accuracy of his characters’ speech is clear in some parts of the canterbury tales: “for this ye knowen al so wel as i: whose moot reherce as ny as evere he kan everich a word, if it be in his charge, al speke he never so rudeliche and large, or ellis he moot t elle his tale untrewe, or feyne thyng, or fybde wordes newe.”1 it shows that any characters speak as they like, according with the social class they belong, their own personalities, the people they address, etc. all of these characteristics in chaucer’s work let us to find idiolects. and we can find one of his best effects by contrasting two or more idiolects. 1 the riverside chaucer, edited by la rry d. benson. 3rd edition. oxford: o.u.p., 1991. general prologue, i. 730-736. (p. 35). an important quotation confirming the same idea is in the miller’s prologue, i. 31683186. (p. 67). all the following quotations are from the same edition of the riverside chaucer. ____________________________________________________________________ 19 i am going to describe the host’s idiolect. he is a curious, interesting and relevant character in the canterbury tales. many approaches can be done from different perspectives when someone studies this character, not only his idiolect but the host as representative of an uncritical contemporary audience, the host as governour, the relation of the host to the narrator, and so on. the aim of this article is to demonstrate the host’s idiolect existence and to describe it. following this hypothesis the work is divided into three main parts. first, an in tent to demonstrate how chaucer considers the host a special character. the second part consists of a description of the host’s idiolet. the third and last part is dedicated to a brief summary of my hypothesis, suggesting the re ader to be aware of the possible studies which can be made from chaucer’s work. i. the host, a special character there is no doubt about the certainty in the title above. the readers only have to consider the host’s function in the canterbury tales. he appears in many prologues of the tales and he may be considered as the judge, the arbitrator. let us read chaucer’s own words decribing the host’s function, when he is called by chaucer “maister of ceremonies”: “a semely man oure hooste was withalle for to been a marchal in a halle.” (i. 751-752) but there are more factors and textual references to strengh this idea: chaucer’s consideration of the host. when the author has already mentioned all the pilgrims, he “has forgotten” the host: “ther was also a reve, and a millere, jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 20 a somnour, and a pardoner also, a maunciple; and myselfther were namo”. (i. 542-544) chaucer mentioned himself and did not speak about the host. he said that there were nobody else. why? because he considered the host not like a pilgrim but like “our host”. that is relevant: chaucer refered to the host with these words: “oure hooste”, whenever he is cited. at last, chaucer described the host when the general prologue is about to finish, but after saying: “also i prey yow to foryeve it me, al have i nat set folk in hir degree heere in this tale, as that they sholde stonde”. (i. 743-745) and, at once, after these words, chaucer described the host: “a semely man oure hooste was withalle for to been a marchal in a halle. a large man he was with eyen stepea fairer burgeys was ther noon in chepeblood of his speche, and wys, and wel ytaught and of manhod hym lakkede right naught. ekk therto he was right a myrie man.” (i. 751-757) at the beginning, the host is called “maister of ceremonies” and the whole following description is refered to the charecteristics of a good maister of ceremonies: strong (“large man”), rash speaker (“blood of his speche”), a good man (“manhod”), polite (“wel ytaught”) and glad (“a myrie man”). we can aply these characteristics to the host’s idiolect. here there is no negative evaluation of the host’s character. chaucer saw him just with posi____________________________________________________________________ 21 tive values. nevertheless, the reader can bring out some negative aspects re ading the host’s swearings expressions and rude words. the author of the canterbury tales pampered this character. indeed chaucer’s descriptions about the host’s speech are significative enough to belive that:: “he gan to speke as lordly as a kyng.” (i. 3900) “® and with that word he sayde, as curteisly as it had been a mayde,” (vii. 445-446) most scholars accept the theory where the host is considered a real person who was named henry bailly as the cook calls him in his prologue. this person appeared in the subsidy rolls for southwark in 1380-81, list “henry bailif ostyer” (innkeeper) and his wife “christian”. he was a man of subs tance who represented his borough in parliament in 1376-77 and 1378-79 and held other public offices. although he refered to his wife as “goodelief”, in southwark records the wife of the real harry baily (or bailly) is named christian. so it seems to be a chosen name from “ironic malice”. there are many evidences to demonstrate the host is a special character in the canterbury tales. he, basically, is a special and particular maister of ceremonies who had the exacting task of managing protocol and directing the service at feasts. and this feast, if we take the allegoric interpretation considering the pilgrimage as our life itself, is our life and the host is a mentor, a leader, a judge … but this is only one of the many interpretations. what it is clear is that this special character shows a “special language” which can be described as an idiolect because the host’s speech-habits are well determined and individualized. ii.the host’s idiolect jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 22 some characters have distintive linguistic characteristics which are more subtle than habitual phrases but which serve the same purpose of individualizing the character in a way that is easy to recognize. some features of the host’s speech are shared by some other characters but no one of those characters is as well individualized as the host. the host’s idiolect has a powerful variety and an unusual contrast. all the linguis tic qualities are heightened by this contrast and variety. henry bailly is cheerfully disrespectful to everybody and his speech is substandard and colloquial but he shows ext reme courtesy towards some persons depending on the social class they belong and then his speech is almost painfully correct. all of these characteristics and more than these ones will be explained in the following chapters. 1.formal/informal speech the formal and informal speech depends on the persons the host addres ses. it is important to take into account two circumstances: * the host speaks in the prologues or epilogues. although he does to stop the tale when chaucer tells his tale. * the host’s function in the tales as a maister of ceremonies and as an arbitrator or judge. besides he is henry bailly, an innkeeper, a pilgrim. these two considerations suppose a limitation or a condition to the host’s speech and they lead the host to use formal or informal speech. this pilgrimage is a competition and it implies rivality and fighting. so the arbitrator must be strong. on the other hand a pilgrimage is a trip: personal relations must be fluent and they must be kept within a bearable peace. the pilgrimage is a game by means of words. so words are very important because they are the substance. speech is the heart of the matter. and the speech is the blood of life. and life is a game, a pilgrimage, a fighting, a competition and a trip. as life is variety, speech is variety: the canterbury ____________________________________________________________________ 23 tales are a collection of different tales which are told by different players pilgrims -beings-fighters using differents speeches. 1.1. formal address 1.1.1. he addresses the group when henry bailly addresses the wh ole pilgrims group he uses formal speech: “now lordynges, trewely, ye been to me right welcome, hertely” (i. 761-762) this is the first time he addresses the group to welcome them. “lordynges” implies a formal address very suitable to speak to a numerous group of people. “lordynges, quod he, “i warne yow, al this route, the fourthe party of this day is gon…” (ii. 16-17) at this situation he addresses the group to go faster not in the way but in telling tales. he prepares them to give a quotation by seneca. “and seyde, “ goode men, herkeneth everychon!” (ii. 1.164) he addresses the group “good men” to give his opinion about the man of law’s tale. his words are deferential. “seyde in this wise: “lordynges everichoo, now lakketh us no tales mo than oon. fullfilled is my sentence and my decree; i trowe thatwe han herd of ech degree; jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 24 almost fulfild is al myn ordinance.” (x. 15-19) here he finishes his task as maister of ceremonies. this is the last tale precisely because it is the parson’s tale. two outstanding ideas must be brought out from the above quotations, when the host addresses the group: * formal speech is inevitable because the group is all the mankind and because, following the host’s function, a judge, an arbitrator must be p olite with the players if he wants to be respected by them during the game. * he is a maister of ceremonies in the pilgrimage. he addresses the group to: open the game (welcome) -go faster (games rules) -give opinions (enlivening the game) -sermonize (his own particip ation in the game) -close the game (farewell) 1.1.2. he addresses persons individually when the host addresses individual characters there are two speeches: formal or informal speech, depending on the social class the person belongs, chaucer’s consid eration and the situation. there are three persons who represent their high social status and chaucer holds them in high steem. the knight, representing the values of honour, loyalty, nobility, courtesy, formal speech and gallantry. the prioress who re presented the catholic church in its virtues of spiritual values, no corruption, no business and the christian tradition. the man of law who represented wise words, respect and legality. the parson is pampered by chaucer in the ____________________________________________________________________ 25 general prologue, but the host has a trouble because of his swearwords and because he is not respectful. all the knight’s characteristics have been taken from chaucer’s text in the general prologue when he describes the knight. but what is more important is to point out chaucer’s evaluation of the knight’s speech: “he nevere yt no vileynye ne sayde. in al his lif unto no maner withgt.” (i. 70-71) so the knight’s speech is a formal speech and this characteristic is associated to the knight’s social class as a high and positive value by chaucer. the host addresses him: “sire knyght, qod he, “my mayster and my lord,” (i. 837) the host’s words are significant enough to avoid more explanations about the formal speech when he addresses the knight. another important and intersting character whose status obligues the host to addresses him formaly is the man of law. let us have a look to chaucer’s description in the general prologue. it is very relevant to match the descrip tions from the general prologue and the host’s consideration to the same characters. we can find interesting similarities. chaucer’s portrait of the man of law can be summarized: chaucer describes him as a “sergeant of laws”. it is important because chaucer’s intention is to high the character’s status. a sergeant of law was a lawyer who belonged to the highest order in his profession. he is prudent, wise, well endowed with superior qualities, judicious and with much dignity. the man of law’s speech is a formal and wise speech as chaucer describes it: “ he semed swich, his wordes weren so wise” jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 26 (i. 314) the man of law’s tale has a highly elaborated style. such a style is well suited to the man of law who uses all the devices recommended by the me diaeval rhetoricians to move our piety for the heroine, almost as if she were pleading her case in a court of law. the man of law, like the knight, is concerned with the problem of the alternation of joy and sorrow in human life. when the host addresses him his speech is extremely formal: “sire man of lawe, quod he, “so have ye blis”.” (ii. 33) this address suggests that the host does not recognize the special status of the sergeant of law, so the terms “sergeant” and “man of law” seem to have been interchangeable. in addressing the man of law, the host uses a number of legal terms: “froward, sumytted, cas, juggement, acquiteth, bibeeste, devoir”. it shows the real consideration to this character’s status. the host tries to imi tate his vocabulary. so chaucer’s opin ion (“his wordes were so wise”) and the host’s act of speech agree. the prioress is the only character with the man of law and the knight, who is formally addressed by the host in a special high consideration. the rest of the characters are considered colloquialy with familiarity or with in formal address. chaucer’s description of the prioress in the general prologue considers her good manners, her excellent department, her friendly bearing, the manners of the court, dignified in behaviour, worthy of respect, moral sense and solicitude and compas sionate. nevertheless, there is a litle touch of irony when chaucer decribes her manner at dinner and her compassionate which is bordering on sentimentality. the host adresses her: ____________________________________________________________________ 27 “as courteusly as it had been a mayde, “my lady prioresse, by you leve, so that i wiste i sholde yow nat greve” (vii. 446-448) so there is no blunder for the host’s formal address. his words are so smooth that he tries not to make her the most subtle hurt with his words. 1.2. informal address the host has two different suitable styles to adress the pilgrims depending on the persons and the situations. when he addresses formally he uses a more distintive style which icludes even flattering and when he addresses informaly he uses a rude style which involves not only colloquial expressions but rude words, oaths and swearwords. he goes from the flattering to the in sult. the substandard nature of his speech is made clear quite widely when he addresses most of the characters. his informal speech is supported by the grammatical aspect represented by the second person singular (“thou” or linked with a verb: “hastow”) and his habit of adderessing people their names of occupations. another way of informal addressing is calling people by their names, although it implies more a familiarity than informality. sometimes, informal address has the proposal of involving people in a friendly atmosphere. we have all the aspects in the the miller’s prologue when henry bailly addresses the monk “sir monk” (i. 3.118), showing the formal address with “sir” and the same of the occupation”monk”. after that, because the miller is drunken, the host, trying to mantain a friendly relation addresses the miller “robin, my leve brother” (i. 3.129), and inmediately, when the miller insists on telling a tale, the host swore: “tel on, a devel wey!, / thou art a fool” (i. 3.134-3.135). here we are the host’s variety, flexibility and versality to be able to cope. jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 28 informal address is sometimes mixtured with an apparrent formal address, but it is all the cases a deceit to get irony. apart from this aspect the host’s informal address can be characterized by: a) an informal and derisive address, using the second person singular, the proper names or the occupations. b) a familiarity atmosphere when he addresses people “ye”, “frend”, proper names (“roger”, “john”) or the occupations. in addressing a single person, the forms historically appropiate to the second person singular, “thow, thee, thy(n)” are often replaced by the plural “ye, yow, youre(s) (and “ye” as subject takes a plural verb). this is a matter of social usage of some complexity, and a brief statement that would cover all occasions hardly possible. it is approximately true that the plural forms imply greater fromality and politeness; yet they can be used even in intimate conversation, or within a family cultivated society. i am going to show those quotations i consider important for the host’s in formal address. i will comment only all of those quotations which can add new contributions to those i have already explained. “now tellen on, roger; looke that it be good, for many a pastee hastow laten blood,” (i. 4345-4346) “roger” is the cook. the familiarity is a subtle strategy to critize him his petty theft. here we have the host’s language in the address whic h is used to flatter the cook in order not to let him to be angry. the host follows his slo gan “ful ofte in game a sooth i have herd seye”. but let us see what happens with this apparently formal o familiarity. we have the same character, the cook, in another situation which makes the host change his attitude and his speech. the cook have drunk a lot, while they ____________________________________________________________________ 29 have travelled along and many other pilgrims have already told their tales, and the host tries to awake him. “awake, thou cook, quod he, god yeve thee sorwe” (ix. 14) at this situation “thou”, the second person singular shows us the informal and less respectful address. “sir parisshe prest, quod he, “for goddes bones” (ii. 1166) here we have another similar situation. the parson, a well admired character by chaucer, is now highly esteemed by the host, with a formal address. but the parson gets angry because of the host’s habit of swearing. and then the situation and the speech change: “oure hooste answerde, “oh jankin, be ye there? i smelle a lollere in the wind”, quod he” (ii.1172-1173) there is an informal address. we can smell it. a powerful irony is pre sent. “jankin” is the diminutive of sir john, a derisive name for a priest. “lollere” means a heretical follower of wyclif’s doctrines. it is an insult because the real lollards were almost unanimously opposed to pilgrimages. “smelle” implies a gibe and a disdain. humor, a bitter humor is used like a appropiate weapon to the parson’s status. therefore, the host addresses the parson: “sire preest, quod he, “artow a vicary? or arte a person? sey sooth, by thy fey! be what thou be, nebreke thou natoure pley,” (x. 22-24) jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 30 he continues on swearing (“by thy fey”). informal address is obvious with the usage of the second person singular “thou”. it betrays the host’s strong personality and authority. “oure hoost tho spak, “a sire, ye sholde be hende and curteys, as a man of youre staat;” (iii. 1286-1287) irony is under formality again. the host with one of the worst loved characters for chaucer. (we remember the biographical episode when chaucer hit a friar with a stick). “sire”is just pure irony. after this word the host requests the friar to speak according with his status, that is to say, these words imply a social criticism against all those friars whose behaviors were not appropiate to his status because they had forgotten their vows of chastity and poverty. i am going show a representative example of the host’s attitude of addressing people: “where shal i calle yow my lord daun john, or daun thomas, or elles daun alon? of what hous be ye, by your father king? i vouwe to god, thou hast a ful fair skin;” (vii. 1929-32) once again the “maister of irony”. he plays with the proper names as king himself which one is the best one for the monk. he goes from the irony using formality (“my lord daun john”) to the in formal second person singular (“thou”). and after this mockery words he will make a picture of the monk (which is a fright) comparing him with a strong cock in at subtle atmo sphere of sexual connotations. ____________________________________________________________________ 31 2.swearwords henry bailly is the most enthusiastic swearer on the pilgrimage. perhaps innkeepers were traditionally given to swearing. this fact does correspond to chaucer’s words describing the host in the general prologue (“boold of his speche”). the maister of ceremonies pours out obscenities not only when he swears but when he is angry (as when the pardoner finished his tale). “the host is the most enthusiastic swearer on the pilgrimage”: this sentence can be demonstrated by different ways: chaucer’s words and the opinions from two pilgrims (the pardoner and the parson). the first one is obviously easy to be illustrated. two examples: “oure hooste lough and swoor, “so moot i goon,” (i. 3114) “oure hooste seyde, and swoor, “by goodes bones””.” (iv. 1212a) and there are more quotations which can be cited to show chaucer’s words describing the host’s swearwords. the second one is supported by the host’s companions’ opinions. the pardoner refers to him: “i rede that oure hoost heere shal bigynne, for he is moost envoluped in synne.” (vi. 941-42) considering he is the man who has more sins if anyone judges his speech. besides, the parson’s opinion is more evident when he censures henry bailly because of his swearwords in the epilogue of the man of law’s tale: “the parson him answerde, “benedicite! what eileth the man, so synfully to swere?” (ii. 1170-71) jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 32 swearing was endemic, even among church dignataries. but there were limitations. here we have chaucer’s words when he describes the prioress in the general prologue; irony is present: “hire gretteste ooth was but by seinte loy!” (i. 120) considering chaucer’s irony when he says that her greatest oath was “by seinte loy” chaucer may be supposed to be fond of oaths. the reader must notice the contrast with chaucer’s description of the knight: “he nevere yet no vileynye ne sayde in al his lyf unto no maner wight.” (i.70-71) in the description of the knight there is no irony. the knight has never said any swearword. let us comment the parson’s words again. the host assumes that the parson’s objection to swear indicates he is a llollard, but though the llo llards raised special objections to the taking of oaths, orthodox preaches were equally opposed to casual swearing and cursing. nevertheless, henry bailly has trouble with any oath involving “corpus” 1 and with saints’ names 2. so the host has many malapropisms, mainly with “corpus” and the saints’ names. it can be the result of an excesive usage of oaths or chaucer’s mis atributions. there are many swearwords, some of them are meaningful and others are casual oaths. a more detail study of the vast usage of swearing by the host will exceed the space of this work. 1 see: the monk’s tale, vii. 1906; the physician’s tale, vi. 314; the shipman’s tale, vii. 435. 2 see: the pardoner’s prologue , vi. 310. ____________________________________________________________________ 33 3.obscene expressions. irony and humor when henry bailly is angry the “maister of ceremonies” becomes a rude man. and when he is angry because someone picks a quarrel with him, he is another man. then his speech changes into a weapon to hit against his enemy. he says in the pro logue of the monk’s tale: “for i am perilous with knyf in honde” (vii.1919) he is dangerous with his speech as i am going to show with his own words. let us read the episode with the pardoner: “but, by the croys wich that seint eleyne fond, i wolde i hadde thy coillons in myn hond in stide of relikes or of seintuarie lat kutte hem of i wol thee helpe hem carie; thet shul be shryned in an hogges toord!”. (vi. 951-55) the host says to the pardoner’s he is going to cut his testicles and to put into a pig pat as they were reliquies to be kissed. “coillons” is a french word very similar to another in catalan language. the host is neither the maister of ceremonies nor the “maister of irony”: he is henry bailly, the innkeeper. he threatens with speech vio lence the pardoner. this episode shows the versatility of the host’s speech. he can speak as a king or as a maid (as chaucer describes his speech) or he can speak as a muleteer. irony and humor are present when he describes people. three significant examples are enough to show his irony and humo r. all of them are related with women and sex and in all the descriptions the characters look like frights. jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 34 the first descrip tion is from chaucer, as a pilgrim, in the prologue to sir thopas: “he in the waast is shape as wel as i; this were a popet in an arm t’enbrace for any womman, smal and fair of face. he semeth elvyssh by his contenaunce, for unto no wight dooth he daliaunce.” (vii. 700-704) it could have been written by valle inclaån. chaucer is a likely puppet (“popet”) to embrace for any woman, small and fair of face. it is really a particular and special description. and it is not a casual description. the host makes all of them similar, with the same style. these descriptions have nothing to do with chaucer’s descrip tions. the host’s idiolect is well drawn. the monk is a cock (“corn”), and women are hens. the monk is a fright, a sexual enemy for husbands. “religion hath take up al the corn of tredyng, and we borel men been shrympes of fieble trees ther comen wrecched ympes. this maketh that oure hennes been soskelendre. an feble that they may nat wel engendre. this maketh that oure wyves wole assaye religious folk, for ye mowe bettre paye of venus paiementz than mowe we; good woot, no lusseburghes payen ye!” (vii. 1954-62) the host’s wife is a wild animal. the description is made reproducing textual words form his wife and describing a situation: “and crieth, “false coward, wrek thy wyf! ____________________________________________________________________ 35 by corpus bones, i wol have thy knyf, and thou shalt have my distaf and go spynne!” (vii. 1905-1908) henry bailly’s troubles with his wife affect his ideas about women. but any readers can notice an obvious contradiction here: the host as a coward man has nothing to do with his brave speech and personality. we can read some lines and consider the episode between the pardoner and the host: a convincing explanation for this contra diction requires a deeper study, although it is clear this is a special language effect to emphasize the host’s wife malice giving her a masculine behaviour. 4.the host as a philosopher formal speech is relevant not only when the host addresses someone but when he sets up as an expert in tales, philosophy, astronomy, women, wine, etc. the readers can be surprised when they see that the host does not like moral tales and he preaches the pilgrims with his “wisdom”. he always wants people to tell a funny tale, he hates moral stories: “tel us a tale of myrthe, and that anon” (vii. 706) “for we schal han a predicacioun, this llollere heer wil prechen us somwhat” (ii. 1175.76) “telle us swich thyng as may oure hertes glade” (vii. 2811) jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 36 the host asks for funny tales nearly any time. but we can drawn the real host’s idea about tales reading some lines from two different passages. the first one is from the general prologue when he shows his intention: “tales of best sentence and moost solaas” (i. 798) the second one expresses the same idea in the prologue of the monk’s tale, when the host considers that his audience can be bored and sick of his sermons: “but be nat wroothm, my lord though that i pleye ful ofte in game a sooth i have herd seyel” (vii. 1963-64) “teaching taking pleasure in it”: that is his device. “carpe diem” is another suggestion. the host preaches from two different proposals: scholarship and social criticism. the first one shows the following themes in the following parts. these references have the value of being representative texts of his more formal speech with a touch of false erudition. an erudite host has nothing to do with the henry bailly descripted until now. the host as a scholarship is an artificial character. it does not match: * quotation from seneca: time is gold. in the man of law’s tale. * quotations of wisers: audience and opinions. the nun’s priest’s tale. * his own words: natural gifts which cause death. the pardoner’s tale. * quotation from salomon: everything has its time. the clerk’s tale. social criticism always carries an ironic language and humor. the characters which are touched by this criticism are become into frights. these social criticism are from the following parts: ____________________________________________________________________ 37 * about the cook’s pilfering: the cook’s prologue * about tales like sermons: the man of law’s epilogue * about moral tales: prologue to melibee * about wives like wild animals: the monk’s prologue * about clergymen’s sexual attributes: the monk’s prologue * about moral tales: the nun’s priest’s prologue * about moral tales: the clerk’s prologue * about astute women: the merchant’s prologue * about vicies (wine): the manciple’s prologue all of these references suggest that the host is a “wel ytaught” man and a critical observer of his society. this host’s role matches with this character, it is not false or articifial. he expresses his opinions with humor, sharp ness, irony and bravery (brave deed and boast). he is not a shy man, on the contrary he is a glad and daring man who sometimes is insolent disrespectful, proud, bold and arrogant. 5.metalanguage the best description, picture or definition about the host’s proposal when he speaks can be got from his own words. but before that, let us consider his companions’ opinions about the host’s speech. chaucer, not as a pilgrim, but as a narrator describes his speech twice in two sit uations. perhaps because the host’s speech is an unusual speech there: “he gan to speake as lordly as a kyng” jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 38 (i. 3900) “as curteisly as it had been a mayde” (vii. 446) on the other hand, there is one character with negative opinion of the host’s language: the parson. he does not like the host’s swearwords: “what eyleth, the man, so synfully to swere?” (ii. 1171) after these declarations from the host’s companions about his speech, let us see the host’s own thought about the usage of language, his preferences and capability. “seyde i nat wel? i kan nat speke in terme;” (vi. 311) henry bailly recognizes his language limitations: he cannot speak in technical language (“in terme”) when he speaks about the physician’s world. so he considers that he speaks in plain language and every pilgrim should do in that way. in the clerk’s prologue the host’s words are significant: “ telle us som murie thyng of aventures. youre termes, youre colours, and youre figures, keepe hem in stoor til so be ye endite. heigh style, as whan that men to kynges write speketh so pleyn at this time, we yow preye, that we may understonde what ye seye.” (iv. 15-20) the host uses the first person plural “we” as the majestic plural to in volve the whole group in the request. this resort implies the host’s worry to ____________________________________________________________________ 39 emphasize that they belong to a plain social class and any erudite speech will show the evidence of pompousness. apart from this consequence on using the majestatic plural, one very important point can be pointed out: people must adapt his speech to his status but giv ing priority to the situation and to the audience. the clerk (a student from oxford) is supposed to be able of an erudite language but the host asks for him to avoid figures of speech (“colours”), technical terms (“terms”), rhetorical devices (“figures”) and a high style. they are pilgrims on the way, not kings in royal palaces. these words which had been said by the host himself lead us to unders tand more openly the host’s idiolect. he does not belong to a high social class but he can speak, in chaucer’s words, “as lordly as a kyng”. he adapts his speech to the people and to the situations: he has a plain language with the pilgrims (formal or informal) and when the situations make him angry his speech goes down to the muleeter’s quality and level. he is a maister of ceremonies, a “mais ter of irony and humor”, but he is henry bailly, an innkeeper, a man, a pilgrim on pilgrimage. 6.«woman» in the host’s speech an important first consideration is the fact that the host does not separate his opinion of his wife from his opinion of women. woman is a devil, a wild animal, a guilty being whose unic value is the sexual pleasure which must be taken out by men. they are dangerous puppets. there is one exception: the prioress, but she is not a sexual being, she is only religion, spiritual valu es. my idea is supported by chaucer’s words in the prologue of the prioress’s tale describing the host’s speech when he addresses the prioress: “as curteisly as it had been a mayde” (vii. 446) jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 40 it is significant. chaucer does not refer to the host with the personal pro noun “it”, it is applied to the prioress; that is, a neuter pronoun: there is no sexual implication. and, indeed, she is a maid, a person who had not had sexual relations. i am going to comment all the host’s references to women. all of them show that the above statements are true and not speculations: “this were a popet in an arm t’embrace for any womman, smal and fair of face” (vii. 701-702) the host describes chaucer as a puppet in women’s arms. so man is weak sex. in the same text henry bailly says that chaucer’s figure looks like his. this comparation suggests that my generalization has a real basis. the adjectives “smal and fair” have sexual connotations. “i hadde levere than a barel ale that goodelief, my wyf, hadde herd this tale!” (vii. 1893-94) his wife and, by extension, all women are compared with a barrel of beer. of course, a barrel of beer is much more important for the host. “goodelief” is an ironic name meaning “good life”, that is, the opposite for the host’s point of view. henry bailly’s real wife was named “christian”.1 “this maketh that oure wyves wole assaye religious folk, for ye mowe bettre paye of venus paimentz than mowe we.” (vii. 1959-61) 1 see the chapter “the host, a special character” ____________________________________________________________________ 41 “oure” and “we” are majestic plural to involve all women an men. women are avid of sex and adultery. “thee were nede of hennes, as i wene, ya, moo than seven tymes seventewe” (vii. 3453-54) women are hens and men are semental animals (cocks). numbers implie derisive sense, abuse: women are sexual objects. no comments. “algale this sely mayde is slayn, allas! allas, to deere boughte she beatee! wherfore i seye al day that men may see that yiftes of fortune and of nature been cause of deeth to many a creature” (vi. 292-96) although there are pagan references (“fortune and of nature”), this was the official doctrine of the catholic church in that time: woman was the dangerous object of desire, the guilty being because of her beauty. beauty, as a antural feature, was a sin. it was cause of death. “and seyde, “lat the womman, telle hire tale” (iii. 851) although the determiner “the” exists, the word “woman” is a general statement. what is meaningful in this quotation is the address. the host does not addresses the wife of bath’s as he does with men. he does not address sayin g her name, occupation, etc. why? because she is representative of all women. when he addresses the prioress “my lady prioresse” he does not address a woman but a status. “lo, whiche sleightes and subtilitees jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 42 in wommen been! for ay as bisy as bees been they, us sely men for to deceyver” (iv. 2421-23) “but of hir tonge, a labbyyng shrewe is she, and yt she hath a heep of vices mo.” (iv. 2428-24) men are innocent creatures (“sely men”) and women are gossip and vicious. women deceive innocent and poor men. this is the host’s picture. “or hastow with some quene al nyght yswonke?” (ix. 18) these words are said by the host to the drunken cook. relationships between men and women are bad or utilitary relationships, that is, the hell or the heaven (heaven for women, of course). woman is a wife, that is, a wild animal; woman is a trollop, gossip, guilty of men’s sins, because of their beauty… the only positive consideration is for the prioress because she is not a wife or a sexual object, that is, she is not a woman but a social and religious status: an idea without body (flesh). the host’s diolect implies a sex differenciation in language. answering to chambers’question: “why do men and women play different roles in the spreading of lin guistic changes?”1, and aplying the anwswers to the host’s idiolect because he repre sents a well differenciated male speech i considered that all the factors which involve our actual society are the same for the host’s society: 1 chambers, j. k. and trudgill, p., dialectology. cambridge: cambridge university press, 1980, p. 98. ____________________________________________________________________ 43 * women had fewer opportunities for achievement and they are therefore likely to signal their social status by how they appear and behave (including linguistically) than by what they do. * women tend, perhaps as a result of fewer occupational opportunities and a greater tendency to stayed at home, to participate in less cohesive social networks. * women (excepting the wife of bath) are encourage to a much greater extent to be correct, discreet, quiet and polite in their behaviour (only those who belong to a religious community). pressures on women to use ‘correct’ linguistic forms are therefore greater than those on men. (this also manifests itself in different attitudes towards swearing by men and woman). men, on the other hand, appear at some level of awareness to be favourably disposed than women to low status speech forms. this may well be because of the connotations of rougness, toughness and ‘masculinity’ (our host) associated with working class language. iii.conclusions “when ways of speaking can be associated with groups of people, they constitue a dialect; when they can be associated with an individual, they form an idiolect”. brook’s 1 definition can be applied to the host as a special character whose characteristics and individualized speech-habits form an ideolect. the most important points can be summarized now: * the host is a special character for chaucer assuming an important role not only as a character but as a device for the narrative structure. so, this differenciation implies individual chatacteristics not only in his 1 brook, g.l: the laguage of dickens. london: andre deutsch, 1970, p. 168. jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 44 function in the work, but in his speech. chaucer’s worry of the accuracy helps to develop a whole medieval world of different speeches. * the function as a master of ceremonies does not imply a conventional courtesy. sometimes, the host is henry bailly, anot her pilgrim, a man, and his speech does not work as a functional element in the work (pilgrimage). * appropiateness of the style of speech to the occassion is a permanent characteristic. the host’s speech is characterized by flexibility and versatility to be able to cope. if he speaks formally and, suddenly, he gets angry, he changes his speech form the the flattering (speaking as a king) to the insult (speaking as a muleteer). * describing the host’s idiolect by means of adjectives may produce a final portrait of the character: strong, ironic fluenty speaker, well taught, masculine, glad, obscene, critic… * the formal and informal speech is sometimes completely separated and somentimes these two ways of speech are mixtured because there are irony and gibe under the formal speech. * address makes up a relevant cue to study the host’s idiolect. irony can blur the readers. * a widely morphological and syntactic study may have provided more characteristics. the personal pronouns can help to find out formal or informal speech: “thou” for informal and “ye” for formal. the word “now” is excessively used by the host because of his worry for the present moment to control and organize the game-pilgrimage-life-trip -fighting-competition. “i”, the first person singular is excessively used by the host to reafirm his authority and personality in the middle of a conflictive trip. ____________________________________________________________________ 45 -most verbs are: to tell, to say, to speak, to hear, to pray. the great aboundance of these verbs shows that the host works following his function: a maister of ceremonies. -most adjectives are related with “good”, indicating a positive meaning. it suggests a contrast with the apparent and continuous host’s blast. it would (as the usage of the verbs demonstrates) show that the host succeded at his work as a maister of ceremonies. * the host as a philosopher does not match with the general portrait that the reader can bring out, although he cites some aut horities (seneca, solomon). there is a contradiction between the host’s dislike of the moral tales and his “sermons” to the pilgrims. * the host is a “maister of irony” and a sharpen social critic. * when the host describes some characters (chaucer, the monk and his wife) he creates special descriptions which may be matched to valle inclan’s frights. * “masculinity” is a suitable word to describe the host’s consideration of woman at his time. woman, except when she belongs to a religious social status (the prioress) is a wild animal, a sexual object, a dangerous puppet for men. the prioress is not a woman but an idea without body, a social status. i hope to spark off the readers’ attention to these interesting aspects from chaucer’s work. studying an idiolect reveals many secrets from the characters and it can help to know more about the author’s language. this is just another starting point. jesús serrano reyes university of coårdoba jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 46 references benson, l. d. ed. 1991: the riverside chaucer, 3rd edition. oxford: oxford university press brook, g. l. 1970: the language of dickens. london: andre deutsch. chambers. j. k. & trudgill, p. 1980: dialectology. cambridge: cambridge university press. * † * selim05.pdf reviews, jorge luis bueno ____________________________________________________________________ 162 montes, catalina; fernández, maría pilar & rodríguez, gudelia 1995: el inglés antiguo en el marco de las lenguas germánicas occidentales, madrid, consejo superior de investigaciones científicas. 513 pp. the csic press has published recently a very interesting analysis about old english and its relation to the western germanic languages, written by prof. catalina montes, dr. pilar fernández and dr. gudelia rodriguez. this book forms part of a greater editorial project -patronized by the university of sala mancawhich intends to publish a series of handbooks about the old indoeuropean languages following the methodological approach adopted on this study. this work is an introductory analysis which pro vides the university student with a basic and initial knowledge of diachronic linguistics, specially of old english, old saxon, and old high german in their relation t o the primitive germanic language, or proto-germanic. this is precisely one of the main singularities of this work because until now the spanish academic community had not been provided with a study relating the proto-germanic to the afo rementioned germanic languages. this study has a very well-defined structure. it is divided in six parts: introduction (9-28) phonetic and morphological evolution of the old western germanic languages (29-178) old english (179-486) bibliography (487-500) abbreviations (501-502) general index (503-513) following the tradition set up by previous works on diachronic linguistics, in our own environment (fernández, 1982: 37-72; cruz & cañete, 1992: 45-84) as well as abroad (hogg, 1992: 1-24; robinson, 1992: passim), this handbook begins presenting some considerations about external history. reviews: catalina montes & al. ____________________________________________________________________ 163 they are brief, perhaps, in comparison with the wide thematic scope of the volume, but very useful from a didactic point of view (in the style of the excellent linguis tic and historical summaries offered by hans frede nielsen in his work on the dialectal interrelations in the germanic languages). the introduction -elaborated by dr. montes is a good historical and lin guis tic résumé of what we could call “status ques tionis”. as a sort of methodological background, this section -subdivided in four parts sets forth some brief questions about defining the boundaries of the germanic area, both in his torical (subsection ii, pp. 11-18) and linguistic terms (subsection iii, pp. 18-26), and also brings up the problems about what dialects must be treated and what textual sources we must rely on when dealing with them. the author herself offers in detail (subsection iv, pp. 26-27) the basic research guidelines the work in tends to follow. she also explains -just as o. w. robinson did the exclusion of bibliography about indoeuropean, exception made of those books re lating it to the germanic tongues. the new and thorough study re cently pre sented by dr. f. r. adrados brings this bibliographical question up to date. the second chapter, due to its length and contents, constitutes one of the main pillars of the handbook. in this section dr. fernández deals with the relations between old english, old saxon and old high german, adopting germanic as a starting point. beginning with indoeuropean and its subsequent evolution into germanic -mainly in the epigraphs devoted to the study of the vocalic and consonantal systems this chapter offers an exhaustive lin guis tic taxonomy of the germanic languages analyzed. this section is stated as a descriptive analysis in the line of hans krahe’s superb handbook, which comple te the parts related to old english, old saxon and old high german offered, f.i., in the works of robinson and nielsen. perhaps, the in clusion of an additional epigraph would have been necessary, as a sort of complement to this taxonomic and highly descriptive section, as well as a summary of the conclusions obtained after studying the re lation between old english, old saxon and old high german. at the end of this chapter we are given an appendix -summing up the nominal, adjectival, pronominal and verbal inflections of germanic, old english, old saxon and old high germanand a list of the germanic words mentioned in this chapter. as a mo dest pro reviews, jorge luis bueno ____________________________________________________________________ 164 posal for fu ture editions, we suggest the addition of an index with cross-references to complete the apendix and the quite large table of contents. the third chapter is the thematic heart of the book we are reviewing. dr. rodriguez undertakes the task of making a descriptive analy sis of old en glish an enta geweorc indeedwhich intends to be a re vision of all its basic topics in its traditional classification (hogg, 1992; mitchell & robinson, 1994; quirk & wrenn, 1957; fernández, 1982). that is to say: spelling, phonology, morphology, syntax and dialectology. this chapter is written with a less taxonomic style than the previous one, and it is clearer and more reflective when pre senting the data. compared with the rest of the sections, the syntactic part and the one dealing with old english dialects are somewhat reduced. just as in the second chapter an appendix and a new list of words are included. the university student will find this very useful. finally, we are faced with the bibliography, which is very useful in its contents but quite lineal in its ordering. bearing in mind that this handbook is in tended as an introductory course it would have been useful to organize bibliographical items in different sections to facilitate the subsequent desire for further reading. guided by the praiseworthy toil of making a comprehensive analy sis, the authors offer a table of contents too exhaustive in its descrip tion. as we have poin ted out before -taking into account its future use as an introductory handbookthe addition of an index at the end of the book would have been desirable, as well as the shortening of the table of contents as it can be found in the tra ditional handbooks on diachro nic linguistics (mitchell & robinson, 1994; hogg, 1992). it is anecdotic to mention the irregular placing of the abbrevia tion list, at the end of the book, when it commonly appears at the begin ning. if we leave these unimportant trifles aside -which will be undoubtedly mo dificated in the next editionswe must congratulate the authors of this handbook for having presented to us an exhaustive taxonomic and relational analysis of old english, old saxon and old high german. although it is not in novative in the analyzed data, it is original in the way of presenting them. we also think that this handbook is a very good methodological introduction for the rest of the manuals which will be offered soon. it also foresees a good fu ture for that research project on the preverbation in the old germanic languareviews: catalina montes & al. ____________________________________________________________________ 165 ges, which was presented to the academic community by prof. montes and dr. fernández in selim 4. jorge luis bueno alonso university of oviedo references adrados, f. r; bernabé, a & mendoza, j. 1995: manual de lingüística in doeuropea i: prólogo, intro ducción, fonética, madrid, ediciones clásicas. cruz, j. m. de la & cañete, a. 1992: historia del inglés, málaga, edinford. fernández, f. 1982: historia de la lengua inglesa , madrid, gredos. hogg, r. ed 1992: the cambridge history of the english language i: the beginnings to 1066, cambridge, cup. krahe, h. 1977: lingüística germánica, madrid, cátedra. mitchell, b. & robinson, f. c. 1994: a guide to old english , oxford, blackwell. montes, c. & fernández, m. p. 1994: preverbation in the old germanic languages: a research pro ject. selim 4: 94-117. nielsen, h. f. 1984: the germanic languages: origins and early dialectal interrelations, tuscaloosa, university of alabama press. quirk, r. & wrenn, c. l. 1957: old english grammar, london, methuen. robinson, o. w. 1992: old english and its closest relatives. a survey of the earliest germanic languages, london, routledge. * † * selim journal of the spanish society for mediaeval english language and literature revista de la sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval nº  oviedo,  edited by dirigida por trinidad guzmán & s. g. fernández-corugedo universidad de oviedo & sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval oviedo – murcia  maría beatriz hernández pérez, selim  (): –issn: 1132–631x both human and divine: the conflict between confession and gossip in the book of margery kempe abstract the study deals with the book of margery kempe both as an instance of confessional practice as well as of gossip. in the consideration of the book as a confession addressed to readers, it might be read according to hagiographic and didactic patterns. however, in such a case, we would perceive contradictions with the didactic aim of this model. the stronghold of doctrinal confessional secrecy would be demolished by this autobiography, as it forces readers to debate the degree of fictionalization of the work and to doubt the author’s motives. as gossip, it would be inserted into a wider web of reprisal and counter-reprisal communal activity as it offers more gossip than truth in the revelation of secret knowledge as it would represent a subversive reaction to the misgivings of the church. kempe surmounts the very limits of hagiography and challenges those between biography and autobiography. keywords: book of margery kempe, hagiography, biography, autobiography, didactic patterns. resumen este estudio trata del libro de margery kempe tanto como ejemplo de práctica de confesión como de cotilleo. si se considera como confesión dirigida a sus lectores, puede leerse siguiendo rasgos hagiográficos y didácticos.sin embargo en ese caso percibiríamos contradicciones con la intención didáctica de ese modelo. la fortaleza doctrinal del secreto de confesión quedaría destruida por este autobiogra ía, ya que fuerza a los lectores a debatir el grado de ficcionalización de la obra y a dudas de los motivos de su autora. como cotilleo, se insertaría en un panorama más amplio de apreciación y contra-apreciación de la actividad comunitaria ya que oece más cotilleo que verdades en la revelación del conocimiento secreto ya que representaría una reacción subversiva ante los desmanes de la iglesia. kempe trasciende los límites de la hagiogra ía y lanza un reto a los de la biogra ía y la autobiogra ía. palabras clave: libro de margery kempe, hagiogra ía, biogra ía, autobiogra ía, rasgos didácticos. i: a/    a utobiographic discourse has been conceived of as a reliable literary label since the last decades of the th century.1 characterized by its many-fold nature, it was first separated ¹ although, according to nussbaum (: ) the term was first used at the end of the th century by william taylor, in  robert southey refers with it to francisco vieira’s poetry. therefore, it was first for poets and writers to realise the particularities of the genre, which would be later accounted for and conveniently dissected by historical studies. anderson (: ) states that “by the th century there was a definite hierarchy of values in relation to self-representation with memoirs occupying a lower order since they involved a lesser degree of ‘seriousness’ than autobiography”. it would be in the early th century when georg misch’s 164 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim  () om its biographical matrix and dissected by critics according to its diverse manifestations: letters, journals, reminiscences, diaries…, which would render autobiography as a form involved in a process of self-creation (eakin ). this contemporary fascination with autobiography is linked to a general interest or even obsession (hamilton : ) with memory among western societies (huyssen : ). such interest in memory has been associated to the divergent temporal categories in modernity and postmodernity: while modernity is linked with a future-oriented temporality bound to the idea of progress, “postmodernity is connected, rather, with a temporality that folds the future back onto the past” (radstone : ). autobiographic discourse has also been regarded om a historical perspective which has analyzed the response to a historically determined understanding of the self. thus, spengeman (: –) has claimed for the study of the conditions in which autobiographers have produced their depiction of themselves in order to understand the different style in the rendering of their self-portraits. it is om this stance that the study of some historical circumstances accounting for the production of the book of margery kempe is approached.2 together with julian of norwich’s revelations of divine love, this early fieenth century work has been hailed as representing the english participation in the female mystical history of autobiography in antiquity () highlighted the concept of individuality that pervaded the self-presentations of egyptian inscriptions, greek love lyrics and early-christian confessions. broughton (: ) states that liz stanley was the first critic to make “[…] the idea that a narrative produced by a self writing about itself, and one produced by a self writing about another being, were formally distinguishable om each other” widely acknowledged. as for the idea of a female autobiographic tradition, see jelinek (). ² this is an updated version of a paper read at the xix selim conference held at the university of castilla-la mancha (almagro ). i deeply appreciate the comments made at the time as well as the detailed and tactful corrections of selim referees. 165 confession and gossip in the book of margery kempe selim  () movement which rose on the continent in the late middle ages and furthered the consolidation of a female authorial voice. although its protagonist’s peculiarities have oen been misread as responding primarily to psychological drives, in this article i try to present some specific practices, namely confession and gossip, as more general contributory causes of kempe’s characteristic style. recent approaches stressing the role of language in the constitution of the self have paid attention to the historically determined processes through which certain discourses would end up creating a particular fiction of the self and of subjectivity. such is the case with confession, perceived of as a set of historically oriented and conditioned discourse practices that bring about a specific sense of the self. although misch had established the origin of autobiography in ancient egypt, frecero (: ) reminds that most studies agree on the crucial contribution to the genre of st augustine’s confessions, which has come to be regarded as the paradigm for all representations of the self in a retrospective literary structure. […] every narrative of the self is the story of a conversion or, to put the matter the other way around, a conversion is only a conversion when it is expressed in a narrative form that establishes a separation between the self as character and the self as author. when he told his life story in terms of a conversion ³ the only manuscript (bl, ms additional ), written in , belonged and was annotated by members of the carthusian monastery of mount grace (yorkshire); some of the agments were also inserted in a seven-page pamphlet printed by wynkyn de worde and reprinted by henry pepwell in . margery kempe must have been born in , being the daughter of the five times mayor of the town of lynn, john brunham. the experiences explained in her book are those that took place once margery got married to john kempe. although she refers to giving birth as crucial to her spiritual awakening, only exceptionally are her children described. her book details her stubborn inner and outer struggle to affirm her saintly identity by imitating some of the attitudes of continental th and th century female mystic women, most of whom had confided their spiritual experiences to confessors. 166 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim  () om paganism to christianity, augustine was at the same time establishing a literary genre, the confession, or narrative of the self. howarth () has already advanced the idea of self-transformation or “becomingness” as the key to autobiographic writing, which radstone (: ) clearly sees as characteristic of confession: “[…] the confession’s enactment of a purging of the past is in the service of ‘becoming’. since confession produces self-transformation, each act of confession alters the view of the central protagonist offered to the reader by the confessing narrator”. in narratological terms, therefore, autobiographic discourse would be based on the distinction between the self as author and as character, involving the development of a temporal distance between the outer narrating voice and the inner diegetic dimension: the implied author would present him or herself as controlling the flexible temporal limits that might exist between the moment of narration, the present, and that which is being recounted, the past. margery kempe presents her book as the result of a series of confessional moments which define its autobiographic nature as subject to the operations of self-concealment and revelation. lynn staley (: ) clearly distinguished in the book an author, whom she calls kempe, different om the unstable creature presented throughout the narration, whom she calls margery. according to this, the diegetic extremes are clearly stated and no possible delusions of fusion of both persons allowed. margery the character does not ⁴ “just as we commonly distinguish between will, the layabout, and langland, the author, or between the pilgrim geoffrey and the poet chaucer, so in this study i draw a distinction between margery, the subject, and kempe her author. […] since julian of norwich and margery kempe are two of the major prose writers of england’s late medieval period, it seems grudging to define their achievements in terms of the stereotypes of gender: placidity, on the one hand, and hysteria, on the other”. 167 confession and gossip in the book of margery kempe selim  () have to coincide with kempe the author, and the autobiographic chimera of a progressive and coherent evolution of personality om the former to the latter is never fulfilled. in this sense, the book, oen referred to as the first autobiography in english (petroff : ), would differ greatly om previous latin male autobiographies, namely, om st augustine’s, guilbert de nogent’s or peter abelard’s, in which critics have detected the production of becomingness in linear progression as akin to christianity’s model of history. brodski (: ) refers to the male capacity to represent the individual evolutionary drives of history in contrast to the lack of that mirroring attitude in women: the (masculine) tradition of literature beginning with augustine had taken as its first premise the mirroring capacity of the autobiographer: his universality, his representativeness, his role as spokesman for the community. but only a critical ideology that reifies a unified, transcendent self can expect to see in the mirror of autobiography a self whose depths can be plumbed, whose heart can be discovered, and whose essence can be definitively known. no mirror of her era, the female autobiographer takes as a given that selfhood is mediated; her invisibility results om her lack of a tradition, her marginality in male dominated culture, her agmentationsocial and political as well as psychic. gender conditions have actually been found to shape the traditional regard on margery kempe more as a literary character than as a literary author. notwithstanding this, in trying to discern kempe’s authorial self-consciousness, many of the recent works revolve around this issue: is the book of margery kempe devised as autobiographic or is it rather another instance of hagiography in which author and character are clearly distanced? if autobiographic, why does not kempe follow the medieval male pattern known to her? feminist critics (stanton : ; mason : ; schenck : ) implicitly give an answer to this last question, as they detect in female autobiographies no evolutionary drives leading 168 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim  () the characters to a full and definitive development of the self: more oen than not, the boundary between past and present is, consequently, weakened. therefore, if on the one hand, the book of margery kempe could be regarded as exemplary of the “vague, confused, agmentary” style of female autobiography, on the other hand, many critics still prefer to adjust its limits to the model of a specific kind of biographyhagiography. formally, the main difference between them rests on the presence or absence of correlation between character and narrator, since otherwise both modes coincide in being individual life accounts written for the public consumption. in this article i argue that this mixed nature of the book of margery kempe may be due to the fact that it not only rests on literacy but on specific forms of orality as well: those of gossip and confession. whereas confession has been the concern of literary critics for quite a long time, gossip has just been considered as a secondary linguistic practice, just recently receiving attention om pragmatic approaches and hardly any om literary standpoints. in order to understand the links between them, the importance of secrecy should be highlighted as well, since this concept pervades both realms (bok ) and makes them especially pertinent among medieval discourse practices. in her substantial examination of gossip, spacks (: ) detects its resemblance to fiction: ⁵ aers and staley (: ) refer to the powers of sanctity: “the symbols of christian sanctity held immense power in the culture we study even as they were themselves bound up with all the sources of social power: gender, class, status, military, legal, literary—the political in its broadest sense. they were essential components of the paradigms through which human beings formed their specific identities and lived out their specific lives”. see lochrie’s depiction of margery’s religious background and the symbolic motives which might have inspired her into sainthood (, chp. : “the body as text and the semiotics of suffering”). another possibility is that of margery performing the type of “the fool of god” (r. maisonneuve : ), although no indication is given of how she may have received this eastern christian model. 169 confession and gossip in the book of margery kempe selim  () what, in the economics of gossip, is offered, what received? point of view, information; also reassurance. participants assure one another of what they share: one of gossip’s important purposes. gossip may involve a torrent of talk, yet its most vital claims remain silent. seldom does anyone articulate the bonding that it generates or intensifies. the sensibility that gossip helps to create is dual: a mode of feeling and of apprehending which rises, as it were, in the space between the talkers, enveloping both. the comparable experience associated with reading fiction helps to account for cases of youthful (or mature) addiction. […] more than other sorts of literary activity, reading novels establishes a tie resembling that of gossip, since what reader and narrator share is a set of responses to the private doings of richly imagined individuals. m  memory being the stuff autobiography is made of, the truth is that when analyzing female authors’ approaches to their past, feminist critics have found the “self ” or “auto” elements ambiguous. cosslett, lury and summerfield (: ) coincide with spence () and kuhn () in regarding these memory texts as not showing a definite individual source: “memory [too, then] is intersubjective and dialogical, a function of personal identifications and social commitments. while it may be uniquely ours it is also objectified, a matter of public convention and shared rituals”. therefore, most feminist critics strive to understand the interaction through which the different selves are formed within social ames. such interaction between the social and the individual or intersubjectivity seems especially applicable to the medieval perception of the self, in which the subject is clearly enmeshed in the dynamics of communal progress. pierre bourdieu () has dealt with the concept of habitus as the capacity of the members of a society to unconsciously internalize all those beliefs and aspects of culture that are socially determined and through which the group articulates its social practices and representations. claire sponsler (: ) states 170 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim  () that “[…] most people absorb the ‘socialized subjectivity’ that is the habitus and live it out quietly, without much awareness on their part or on the part of observers that their behavior is pre-shaped by existing social structures”. regarding kempe’s portrait of margery, we might confirm this is also the case: externalization of the habitus rarely happens. lynn staley (: ) further emphasizes the way the author kempe molds her character margery by exposing her to the limits of expression of those internalized communal habits: when kempe’s portrait of the community is compared with what we are coming to understand of the period, it becomes clear that she provides a highly selective vision of a social reality that is designed to reinforce margery’s centrality in the community. in so doing, she dramatizes that conflict between internally perceived and externally imposed codes that lies at the heart of the late medieval literature of social and religious dissent. precisely, the practices of confession and gossip in the book of margery kempe may be regarded as examples of the protagonist’s internalised public habits; they will lead us to further examination of the generic effects the addition of this exercise of memory had on the particular autobiographic nature of the book. both confession and gossip coexist as forms both of social cohesion and of individual differentiation. close in its linguistic nature, both respond to the individual need for secrecy in order to resist social pressure as well ⁶ we cannot forget that margery also presents herself as someone well integrated in the social dynamics of the fieenth-century. stubborn as she seems in her persistence in ruling herself according to god’s wishes and not the community’s or the church’s, she is not a marginal woman: “by dwelling on her supposed marginalization and her eccentricity, a certain modern preference for reading teaching narratives about heroic underdogs may risk implicitly accepting some of her medieval detractors’ strategies for regarding her as marginal. […] her specific criticisms of unbecoming conduct in episcopal households (,) only serve to underline kempe’s unspoken larger conservatism—despite all her noisy disruptiveness—in social and political terms” (windeatt, : ). 171 confession and gossip in the book of margery kempe selim  () as to enjoy being in possession of knowledge about the others. this handling of secrecy has been regarded by michel de certeau (: ) as a web of tactics that is constantly being woven with regard to the self in its connection to the other: secrecy is not only the state of a thing that escapes om or reveals itself to knowledge. it designates a play between actors. it circumscribes a terrain of strategic relations between the one trying to discover the secret and the one keeping it, or between the one who is supposed to know it and the one who is assumed not to know it. karma lochrie’s thorough study of the uses of secrecy in the middle ages also reminds (: –) that this particular set of tactics was clearly associated to gender and cultural differences: gossiping was considered in the middle ages to be a vice […] usually associated with women, particularly their loquaciousness, bodiliness, secrecy, and their susceptibility to deception. gossip was also associated with a kind of insurrectionary discourse on the part of women as a marginal medieval community, one that existed alongside but also in resistance to  a variety of institutionalized, written discourses. this particular practice defined itself as different om written culture and therefore as a kind of challenging female parody of masculine language.⁸ as such, it would be felt as threatening and liable to be ⁷ as miller (: ) states: “[…] in a world where the explicit exposure of the subject would manifest how thoroughly he has been inscribed within a socially given totality, secrecy would be the spiritual exercise by which the subject is allowed to conceive of himself as resistance.” ⁸ gossip has been contrasted with the foucaultian depiction of confession () as a form of masculine domination availing of this female need to speak. both call for an individual who needs to verbalise a secret. their effect, though, would differ, confession leading to spiritual health, whereas gossip would cause further and divergent harm: since its revelations would involve someone else’s secret, not the teller’s, it would change the attitude of the listener as well as the moral portrait of the teller. 172 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim  () subjected by male control, increasingly sensitive to the discursive capacities of female groups.⁹ female utterance was thus presented as potentially dangerous and leading to a wrong use of language, embodied by gossip itself. however, the effect of its setting aside as vicious and subversive accentuated the secret nature of this kind of discourse, an attribute that women would internalise and reproduce as part of their character: in order to overcome its liminality and secrecy, the discourse of gossip claimed instead “to speak in the world’s voice” (lochrie : ),¹⁰ acquiring an undeniable capacity to spread its power.¹¹ ⁹ in reference to the process of female discrimination in late medieval england, hanawalt (: ) confirms how the church hierarchy regarded both beguines and prostitutes as marginal, since they “moved beyond the prescribed space”. religious women who would travel about the city and undertake pilgrimages would be particularly suspicious in their spiritual, social and generic marginality, and the church advised specifically about their uncontrolled speech. thus, jean gerson complain in  against st bridget of sweden’s canonisation and warned against these roving women whose liminality gave them the possibility to speak too much. see morriso (: ). ¹⁰ meaning the intersection of the social and individual, gossip incorporates both the particularities of relationship as well as the general need for information. one of its effects is creating the participants’ apprehension about the limits of the realms of the public and the private. epistemologically, this intersection raises questions, according to spacks (: ): “gossip as a phenomenon raises questions about boundaries, authority, distance, the nature of knowledge; it demands answers quite at odds with what we assume as our culture’s dominant values”. gossip can thus be at odds with the dominant values—in a subversive stance that fosters intimacy and conveys a mode of linkage among women—while it can also reinforce some of its tenets. ¹¹ “only reluctantly do most people confess pleasure in discussing other people’s private affairs. even lacking consciousness of immediate aggressive impulse, they may partake in infantile fantasies about language’s magical power of destruction; to gossip can evoke the terror of the self as agent or as victim of such power. if i talk about them, perhaps they will talk about me; if i expose, may i not be exposed?” (spacks : ). 173 confession and gossip in the book of margery kempe selim  () as for confession, in the late middle ages it had become a cra, a skill or technique of self-production and self-representation. in his history of auricular confession, lea noted that in augustine’s times the penitent dealt directly with god with no need of an intermediary ( i: ). augustine had acknowledged three ways to remit sins: baptism, prayer, and penance. watkins ( ii: ) underlined that for augustine the last category was to be applied to crimes such as adultery, homicide or sacrilege, being these of such serious nature that they called for public humiliation devised in the most dramatic and impressive of manners, so that its didactic goal be fulfilled.¹² by the early th century, when kempe was issuing her book, this first model of public penance coexisted with a modern conception of confession, that of “the power of the keys”, based on the supremacy of the priest’s imposition of penitence and on the spread of auricular, private and secret confession. according to root (: ): “the spoken confession gradually begins to subsume the functions of the other aspects of the sacrament of penance. tears of contrition and works of satisfaction can be easily translated into words”. by turning confession compulsory at the fourth lateran council (), the church reinforced both its surveillance and didactic aims when making the private conversation between priest and sinner not only a way to examine and puri the conscience but also to stress its doctrinal program: confession not only meant cleansing the soul but also receiving further knowledge, an extra spiritual training conveyed secretly to the penitent, and thus liable to be sensed as alluring to the public eye. the paradoxical closeness between confession and gossip is best illustrated by the physical ¹² also chenu (: ) refers to how satisfaction was more important than contrition, which expressed the subjective individual repentance, taken into account especially om abelard onwards. 174 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim  () space where confession took place, “in the church before the altar with witnesses not far off ” (lea i: ). that is, sinners would speak privately to the confessor but they would stand in full sight quite near the rest of the congregation in church. consequently, although privacy was intended in this new model, also the public exposition of the penitent when kneeling down to utter the sins called for future deviation into gossip. the intersection of orality and literacy throughout the book of margery kempe stands as one of the main reasons for the fascination¹³ this work arouses (jenkins : ). the interlace of both systems of transmission in the book allows for its partaking of the two generic modes: autobiography and biography, set as a written parallel response to the oral enactment of confession and gossip. in the setting of this binary reality, the axis conformed by gossip and confessionderiving om their commerce with secrecywould respectively stand as parallel (within orality) to that of biography and autobiography (within literacy). within orality, confession would be closer to the literacy realm than gossip due to its exclusively individual nature, which is shared by both written modes, as seen on table . such interlace is particularly relevant throughout the book, becoming a strategic narrative and ideological resort kempe may have used when facing the possibility of being censured by the ecclesiastical hierarchy.¹⁴ the scheme of the alternative set of ¹³ “there is a fascinating blend of voices—written and spoken—in the book. margery is referred to throughout the text in the third person singular; she is ‘þis creature’; but the text includes at least two remarks in the first person, as well as the possessive adjective ‘owyr’ throughout, and at times it is impossible to untangle the referent” (carolyn dinshaw : –). ¹⁴ despite that, as sarah rees jones (: ) explains, kempe’s book belongs to a didactic tradition of literary pieces intended to instruct religious addressees, mainly confessors, janette dillon (: ) reminds that, despite such ediing 175 confession and gossip in the book of margery kempe selim  () table . orality and literacy in the book of margery kempe o    s    l     o     i     c     1s t p er so n 3r d pe rs on a ut ob io gr ap hy c on fe ss io n b io gr ap hy g os sip 176 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim  () dictations to the scribes who will take down those recollections of her adult life is interspersed with the pervasiveness of margery’s confession to a diversity of priests and members of the church. therefore, the presence of confession as an agent of individuation of this woman cannot be denied and becomes om the diegetic dimension a feasible cause and precedent of the dictation carried out as she recounts her experiences to the scribes.¹⁵ accordingly, either as part of her memories or as an actual and current performative utterance, the notions of confession and gossip pose a surface and a structural connection through which the woman establishes her particular bond with readers and with herself: as a member of a lay or a religious community, any reader, in fact, might have access to the spiritual narration echoing margery’s common practice of conveying her secrets to priests. the ecclesiastical authority held so far by the members of the church might be translated to the reader, also embedded and aware of the dynamics of confession and gossip.¹⁶ sincerity and revelation remain as persistent and charismatic motives that shape her behavior both in the religious and in the lay spheres, as one may see when rapidly surveying the chapters that reiterate these topics: aim, “[…] the book of margery kempe embraces disobedience more equently and openly than any other female revelations.” ¹⁵ janet m. mueller (: ) observes the importance of the ethics of sincerity for margery’s diegetic authority: “one major aspect in which female spirituality, selfhood, and authorship come together is in the formation of blocks or sequences of narrative that address the question of giving credence to margery, to what she says and does: the authorial imperative she faces at the outset of her book—in rhetorical terms, the necessity to use ethos effectively in self-presentation—is exactly the challenge margery presents herself as having to face in life.” ¹⁶ isabel davis (: ) reflects on the importance of the reader in defining margery’s final profile: “indeed, the reader is incorporated into a community with christ, a community which knows better than margery herself what is most advantageous for her.” 177 confession and gossip in the book of margery kempe selim  () the fist agments are decisive in shaping her confessional nature as well as in portraying her as enmeshed in the communal web of gossip. in the prologue, her complaint against the influence of backbiters’ remarks on the second scribe can be heard, and in the ensuing account this tandem of confession and gossip will define her relationship with the community, with god and with readers: sche was so usyd to be slawndred and repreved, to be cheden and rebuked of the world for grace and vertu wyth whech sche was indued thorw the strength of the holy gost, […] for evyr the mor slawnder and repref that sche sufferyd, the mor sche incresyd in grace and in devocyon of holy medytacyon, of hy contemplacyon, and of wonderful spechys and dalyawns whech owr lord spak and dalyid to hyr sowle, techyng hyr how sche schuld be despysed for hys lofe, how sche schuld han pacyens, settyng all hyr trost, alle hyr lofe, and alle hyr affeccyon in hym only. […] than was ther so evel espekyng of this creatur and of hir wepyng, that the prest durst not for cowardyse speke wyth her but seldom, ne not wold wryten as he had behestyd unto the forseyd creatur. and so he voyded and deferyd the wrytyng of this boke wel onto a iiii yer or ellys mor, notwythstandyng the creatur cryed oen on hym therfor. at the last he seyd onto hir that he cowd not redyn it, wherfor he wold not do it. he wold not, he seyd, put hym in perel therof. (tbmk i, prol.: ls. – & –) from the beginning, margery’s account highlights confession and gossip: she is harassed by the devil (¶ ) that tells her she does not need a human confessor, since she has god.¹⁷ she presents the whole community talking about her aer her failure in the brewing and milling businesses (¶ ), and later on, when her attitude to shri ¹⁷ aer giving birth and in fear of dying, she searches for one, but this confessor rebukes her for being too slow in her narration, so she decides to cease the confession; she goes mad and stays like that for over half a year till christ brings her back to her senses. 178 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim  () radically changes (¶ ) her exacerbated religiosity makes people leave her aside:¹⁸ anoon as it was noysed abowt the town of n. that ther wold neythyr man ne best don servyse to the seyd creatur; than summe seyden sche was acursyd; sum seyden god toke opyn veniawns upon hir; sum seyd on [thyng]; and sum seyd another. and sum wyse men, whos mend was mor growndyd in the lofe of owyr lord, seyd it was the hey mercy of our lord jhesu cryst clepyd and kallyd hir om the pride and vanyte of the wretthyd world. […] sche yaf hir to gret fastyng and to gret wakyng; sche roos at ii or iii of the clok and went to cherch, and was ther in hir prayers onto tym of noon and also al the arnoon. and than was sche slawnderyd and reprevyd of mech pepul for sche kept so streyt a levyng. (tbmk i,  & : ls. – & –) this general rejection is explicitly shown in other several instances: when she (¶ ) has to convince a monk of her sincerity; later on, when, having to face a congregation at canterbury who accused her of not being ank (¶ ), she tells the parable of the sinner whose confessor had imposed as a penitence to have people paid in order to discredit him.¹⁹ beyond the motive of sincerity, the rivalry among important women for a proper confessor is another cause of dispute (¶ ): the anchorite of preaching friars reveals that important ladies have tried to persuade him to abandon margery: and he seyd to hir: ‘i have herd mych evyl langwage of yow styth ye went owt, and i have ben sor cownseld to leve yow and no mor ¹⁸ later on (¶ ), through a iendly talk with the virgin and christ, again confession becomes a key concern: the virgin tells them she must have a good confessor, master r., om norwich. honesty in the form of a sudden confession defines her when her husband asks her if she would prefer seeing him dead to having sex with him: margery is not aaid to give an affirmative answer. ¹⁹ this episode poses a crucial question to readers: is margery alerting of the possibility that she might be playing her mystical role as part of some penitence, just as the protagonist in the parable is? is the reader, consequently, to believe in that crazy stance of hers, being this her innermost indirect confession? 179 confession and gossip in the book of margery kempe selim  () to medyl wyth yow, and ther is behyt[e] me gret enschepys wyth condycyon yf i leve yow. and i answeryd for yow thus: yyf ye wer in the same plyte that ye wer whan we partyd asundyr, i durst wel say ye wer a good woman, a lovere of god, and hyly inspyred wyth the holy gost. “and i wyl not forsake hyr for no lady in this reme, for to speke wyth the lady and levyn hir, for rathar i schuld leve the lady and speke wyth hir, yyf i myght not fon bothen, than i schuld don the contrarye.”’ (tbmk i, : ls. –) she loses the acquaintance she enjoyed with a woman in her community on account of confession (¶ ): a widow seeks advice om her as to what to do with her confessor: margery thinks the widow is in love with him and advises her to have him replaced by the hermit at lynn. another instance in which gossip and confession coalesce is that of god sending her to talk to a respectable lady that will only converse with her in her confessor’s presence (¶ ), margery confiding that this lady’s husband is in purgatory. another example of the spread of rumours against her is reported: when coming back to england om her italian journey (¶ ) she visits not only master richard caister of st. stephen, but also another hermit who abruptly inquires aer the baby which she had conceived and given birth to during the journey. the passage reveals the power of hearsay: and therfor sche went to hym in purpose to mekyn hyrselfe and drawyn hym to charite yyf sche myth. whan sche was come to hym, he wolcomyd hir hom schortly and askyd wher sche had don hir chylde, the whech was begotyn and born whil sche was owte, as he had herd seyde. and sche seyd: ‘ser, the same childe that god hath sent me i have browt hom, for god knowyth i dede nevyr sithyn i went owte wherthorw i shylde have a childe.’ (tbmk i, : ls. –) as also shown by this agment, a constant source of anxiety throughout the book is margery’s search for ecclesiastical representatives and for the proper confessor. this motive will be underscored in her pilgrimage to the holy land and italy, where 180 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim  () a local english priest takes the side of suspicious fellow pilgrims against her. in contrast to the kind attitude of some important members of the english church, the leicester steward interrogates her in latin (¶ ) and (¶ ), at the archbishop’s home many call her a lollard and a heretic; she explicitly accuses them of slander, and again the link between gossip and confession is revealed when she is accused in ont of the archbishop of york by an enemy preaching iar of having been intimate of lady greystoke and having suggested her to leave her husband (¶ ).²¹ back to her sacred conversations (¶ ), among her many concerns when crying, she asks god for a new confessor who can also read the scriptures to her. the newcomer gets ill (¶ ), so she must go to other men’s and women’s homes to listen to the readings. though she seems to be on good terms with these attendants to the reading sessions (¶ ), gossip re-emerges against her iendship with one of the white iars who had helped her in her swoons, which makes her confessor suggest ²⁰ the figure of a good priest om england links this part of the book devoted to pilgrimage to the english local echoes of the first part: despite the disdain of other fellow travelers, this priest will believe her (¶ ). other instances of ecclesiastical acceptance may be found: chapter fieen presents her husband escorting her when talking to the bishop of lincoln, who listens to her confidences joyfully and says that her visions should be written. in a iendly relationship with another member of the hierarchy, archbishop arundel (¶ ), she asks him to let her choose a confessor and take the eucharist every sunday. much later, about to take ship for santiago om bristol (¶ ), the bishop of worcester calls for her on account of her being john brunham’s daughter. she stays and he listens to her in confession before departure. ²¹ to this, she answers that she never advised such thing, but had instead told the lady a story which she now repeats and the audience finds a good one. kempe, however, decides not to include it for readers. 181 confession and gossip in the book of margery kempe selim  () she should stop seeing those doctors in theology and specialists in canon law:²² and than sum envyows personys compleynyd to the provincyal of the white frerys that the sayd doctowr was to conversawnt wyth the sayd creatur, for-as-mech as he supportyd hir in hir wepyng and in hir crying, and also enformyd hir in qwestyons of scriptur, whan sche wolde any askyn hym. than was he monischyd, be vertu of obediens, that he schulde no mor spekyn wyth hir, ne enformyn hir in no textys of scriptur, and that was to hym ful peynful, for, as he seyd to sum personys, he had levar a lost an hundryd pownd, yyf he had an had it, than hir communicacyon, it was so gostly and uteful. whan hir confessowr perceyvyd how the worthy doctowr was chargyd be obediens that he schulde not spekyn ne comownyn wyth hir, that he, for to excludyn al occasyon, warnyd hir also, be verty of obediens, that sche schulde no mor gon to the eys, ne spekyn wyth the sayd doctowr, ne askyn hym no qwestyons as sche had don beforn. (tbmk i, : ls. –) the constant harassment margery is exposed to not only reflects the communal view about these independent women, but as well the internalization of these social demands and religious models, since even margery may have been carried away by gossip:²³ the ²² so when margery and one of these doctors—master aleyn—meet in the street they don’t dare to talk openly. in fact, she complains to god that all iends have been taken away om her: in compensation, god sends the priest of the our lady chapel at lynn, who becomes her confessor. she predicts the future of various priests in the community (¶ ) and spends her days dictating the book, so she has less time to pray and go out, and states that god likes her present confessor, master robert (¶ ). one of the last references to her confessor is in the second chapter of book ii, when, in leading her daughter-in-law to the port, she tells god she would like to accompany her (with her confessor) through the journey to germany, but is divinely warned not to say a word to him about this voyage. ²³ in detecting the social concern about margery’s whereabouts as a dissenter, john arnold (: ) refers to these habits: “[…] in arresting kempe it was not just ‘heresy’ but other possible transgressions that sprang to mind: perhaps that 182 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim  () book displays a variety of responses, both om the priestly and the lay groups, with regard to the quality margery has attained, namely, her capacity to share god’s secrets, which enables her to guess the hidden wishes of her fellow women, or the whereabouts of the souls of the dead. however, though sometimes she confides part of those sacred conversations, on other occasions the transcendental dialogues are eluded and remain secret, even to readers.²⁴ the result is a book in which memory has been selectively guided by a vested interest in a particular image of herself: her portrait alternates the depiction of her zeal for the divine with the recollection of human grievances. t     when trying to account for the protagonist’s stance regarding secrecy, a feasible possibility is that of a kempe depicting a deranged incongruous margery in order to show the discrepancies in the confessional model. at the outset of the book, the greatest question is expressed in the devilish temptations margery suffers: if she already had god to talk to, what is it that a priest might give her; what the use of confession? for sche was evyr lettyd be hyr enmy, the devel, evyrmor seying to hyr whyl sche was in good heele hir nedyd no confessyon, but don penawns be hirself aloone, and all schuld be foryovyn, for god is mercyful inow. and therfor this creatur ontymes dede greet penawns in fastyng bred and watyr, and other dedys of almes wyth devowt preyers, saf sche wold not schewyn it in confessyon. and, whan sche was any tym seke or dysesyd, the devyl seyd in her she […] had abandoned her husband; or possibly that she was a runaway nun; or simply that she was a woman ‘out of place’. it is simply not clear what brought margery to the mayor’s attention […]” ²⁴ thus (¶ ), she says that what the virgin has shown her is of such high nature that she is ashamed to utter a word of it to anyone except the hermit. 183 confession and gossip in the book of margery kempe selim  () mende that sche schuld be dampnyd, for sche was not schrevyn of that defawt. wherfor, ar that hir chyld was born, sche, not trostyng hir lyfe, sent for hir gostly fadyr, as iseyd beforn, in ful wyl to be schrevyn of all hir lyfetym, as ner as sche cowde. and whan sche cam to the poynt for to seyn that hing whech sche had so long conselyd, hir confessowr was a lytyl to hastye and gan scharply to undyrnemyn hir, er than sche had fully seyd hir entent, and so che wold no mor seyn for nowt he myght do. (tbmk i, : ls.–) this passage shows the individual effect the dichotomy of the confessional model entailed for christians: the ancient doctrine, based on penitence, and that of the power of the keys, clash in the book. the former, resting on the preeminence of inner contrition and public penance, still weighted on personal consciousness and so, margery is tempted by the suggestion that her sins are god’s business, not the church’s, and challenges the ecclesiastical authority when postponing confession. this grows to be the origin of her madness and of subsequent spiritual renewal: the confession crisis evolves into the discovery of her divine private dimension: she is reborn spiritually through confession, and the writing of the book simply becomes the last step in the reshaping of a saintly identity,²⁵ once christ himself guides her as to who the adequate confessor in the future might be. another reminder of the old penitential system is the emphasis placed on a mysterious awful first sin which hovers but is never solved. the confession of this particular secret marks a dividing line ²⁵ in the first chapters she still persists in the old habits, and interprets all the mishaps taking place as signs of god’s will: her failure in starting the milling business, as well as in the love affair with an old acquaintance of her. it is, in fact, god who speaks directly through his actions, not through the voices of the priests. although confession soon becomes the means to remain in contact with the divine sphere and with herself as a renewed soul, god’s actions never cease to be interpreted as judgement on her behaviour. 184 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim  () in her narrative reconstruction: her first twenty years of life simply disappear om the account, deemed insignificant by her when compared to this particular secret. the conflict between concealment and revelation is in fact the drive of the whole process the book rests on, and the one that animates her spiritual transformation: later on, although margery will bring us into her spiritual landscape, we shall not be revealed all her secret conversations with christ; nor shall we ever hear what this particular first awful sin consisted in. the exacerbation of her religious attitudes, which might be read as a response to her sense of guilt, require proportional penitence: all the screaming, crying, exaggerated fasting, constant failures in worldly matters, pilgrimage and lack of belief om ecclesiastical representatives become instances of god’s imposed penitence on her. all this taken into account, the character’s traits would echo the ancient confession system, whereby suffering and endurance would be the proper penance for a huge sin that is confessed only once in a lifetime. the fact that she cannot perform her first confession correctly (aer giving birth and in danger of death, the moment would be the proper one) would indicate the shiing point and reversal towards the second model. kempe portrays a margery who undergoes a conversion crisis: thenceforth, her sense of sinfulness is such that she will never overcome the fall (the main precedent of this despairing attitude being that of judas) and will turn to the second model, based on regular cleansing under the confessors’ surveillance: unable to forgive herself, she needs to test the resistance of the sacrament: the lenient voice of priests will confirm her future redemption only momentarily, since her sense of guilt supersedes the benign effects the sacrament had been granted. 185 confession and gossip in the book of margery kempe selim  () t    theoretically, the utterance of the hidden sin should bring relief to the penitent and his or her divided self would be whole again, and one with the religious community. in margery’s case, however, once confession becomes a habit it allows no respite to the penitent: her sense of guilt does not disappear and words must somehow be echoed and performed in the fashion of gossip: whether or not there is such a thing as a sin to confess, the revelation process must go on, and even the third person device in the voice of the priestly narrators emphasizes this attitude. margery must define herself as a sinner; but the bigger the equency the more redundant the sins and the more meaningless the shape of the penitent. secrets represent a locus of resistance of the individual in ont of the public (miller ), and in this sense, margery would be using the excuse of the prime sin to start a new identity through which she, as a confessing pious creature, stands against the multitude of neighbors and pilgrims and suffers their contempt.²⁶ in this sense, we must bear in mind that public humiliation was a common hagiographic topos whereby saints confirmed divine predilection through the rejection of the community or representatives of institutional authority. in the book of margery kempe, the part that used to be assigned to pagan rulers or enemy jews in old hagiographic accounts is given to those priests listening to the gossip of the people who consider her a hypocrite and resent the indiscriminate familial ²⁶ she would be opposing the principles of confession and gossip: in the latter, the dynamics of revelation/concealment mean the feeling of superiority of those who keep the secret om the ignorant ones, as well as the pleasure of disclosing that which had been concealed so far. at both moments (silence and disclosure) the identification between the subject and the secret takes place. in contrast to this, the power relationship displayed in confession is different: the person who ignores the content of the secret, the confessor, is granted the power to forgive, thus feeling superior to he or she who reveals it. st thomas aquinas had given priests the power to utter the “ego te absolvo”, thus acting as god’s mediators. 186 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim  () intimacy she claims to hold with the divine congregation.²⁷ in her attempt to present herself as a soon-to-be saint, margery reproduces in her own discourse the third person echo, and points out the capacity of neighbors and priests to fabricate an image of her that contrasts with her will to be sincere. however, the degree of veracity she wants to convey in her autobiography is threatened by the very fact that the stories she tells also derive and articulate gossip or aspects of it: she places herself in other people’s mouths, repeats the accusations coming om them, includes her misgiving about other women neighbors and their confessors, ustrates any hope in readers of getting substantial reliable information… consequently, against the tradition in hagiography, many of the anecdotes margery confides cannot certainly be presented as an example to be posed to other christians: they are simply minor idle talk. by forcing the boundaries of confession to those of gossip, by becoming an addict to it, the paradoxes of the sacrament are revealed. this way, kempe uses the confessional model in her autobiography as a means to refer to the wider system of gossip, which configures the individual as much as confession does and reveals the inconsistencies of a complete, closed and coherent selfportrait as a saint. here, what the others think of margery is not simply integrated as a hagiographic topic, but as the means through which we see her caught in the endless web of fictionalization, a web she reenacts constantly when hinting at the possible existence of a secret, of a common shared piece of information between her and priests, christ, saints, iends… hard as she tries to recreate herself ²⁷ regarding the book as a “spiritual autobiography” (), carolyn dinshaw (: ) recalls that it is precisely her emphasis on piety, her direct communication with the divine, as well as her correction of clerics that turned her into a suspect to the eyes of the church. 187 confession and gossip in the book of margery kempe selim  () as a saint,²⁸ her need to speak betrays her. although her public saintly mission compels her to cry and shout, to censure important people and reveal the future publicly, she otherwise talks about the divine and confides some of her most intimate thoughts and fantasies as a mere human being, in whispers. her way to react to the imposition of confessionthat inaugurates her new spiritual life and the book as suchis a subversive one, in which incoherence, lack of conviction, constant derision, forgetfulness… hint at the unstable limits between the individual and the communal. the book exposes thus the paradox of secrets: they dissolve when publicly revealed and when losing the possibility of being revealed all.²⁹ therefore, they must be guessed, hinted at, advanced through gossip, which represents this middle way chosen by the author. as said before, kempe intensifies margery’s sense of guilt by exposing her to the highest of humiliations: only the conontation with the community’s gossip will do to reconcile her divided self with god.³⁰ in this battle, readers are invited to take margery and the divine congregation’s side, while acknowledging as well the ²⁸ although diane watt (: ) states that kempe had rejected st. bridget’s prophetic model and replaced it by st. katherine of alexandria’s debating stance, sara salih (: ) reflects on kempe’s strategy to have margery play the saint through the device of social rejection: “if margery is to be properly slandered, then the exchange must appear to be her idiosyncracy, shocking to a public which likes its holy women bodily and suffering and which will thereby unknowingly constitute margery’s sanctity precisely by refusing to recognise it. margery thus substitutes slander for bodily suffering” ²⁹ its nature is a contradictory one: the will not to speak depends on the existence of listeners. secrecy rests thus on that will for silence and the likelihood that such silence be broken. ³⁰ the book as the ultimate shriing act becomes a metaphor of the encounter of the confessional subject and the gossiping community, and of the failure to present a reunified self. it renders the confession of the constant fall of god’s chosen creature into the pit of disbelief in which the community places her: 188 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim  () common suspicion aroused against her. but since kempe does not recreate the sense of a gradual development of the character and leaves readers in constant dissatisfaction, she implicitly invites them to develop an alert and inquisitive attitude as well. finally, it is kempe’s capacity to draw even readers to the vortex of doubt and hearsay that enlivens the character as a human being and justifies her autobiography beyond the limits of hagiography. c in order to retrieve some of the positions held so far, the perspectives of the book as an instance of the confessional practice as well as of the gossip habit may be summed up as follows: the . book as confession it could be regarded as the tangible effect of penance imposed by christ himself in margery’s “old age” for her sinful attitude, according to the early medieval penitential system whereby, in old age or at the verge of death, the great penitential act was undertaken by the sinner. thus the book of margery kempe would be the reenactment of the memory of her spiritual life as a confessing subject, now uttered anew at the end of her life as she dictates it to scribes. as confession addressed to readers, the book might be read according to hagiographic and didactic patterns. however, in such a case, we would perceive contradictions with the didactic aim of this model. the stronghold of doctrinal confessional secrecy would be demolished by this autobiography, as it forces readers to debate the degree of fictionalization of the work and to doubt the author’s motives. margery won’t ever stop confessing since she never stops seeing herself as a sinner. 189 confession and gossip in the book of margery kempe selim  () the . book as gossip it would be inserted into a wider web of reprisal and counter-reprisal communal activity. as such, the book offers more gossip than truth in the revelation of secret knowledge. in this withstanding attitude to refer to petty trivial knowledge, it would convey the author’s retaliation to the imposition of confession. perceived as part of the dynamics of gossip, the book would represent a subversive reaction to the misgivings of the church: aer all, priests as well as scribes participate both as confessors and as victims of margery’s bad reputation in the neighborhood: they represent both confession strictures and the vice of gossip. the book would also stand as her particular outspoken revenge for the oral spreading out of her reputation as a fake and a hypocrite by neighbors, some priests and pilgrim companions: she claims sincerity all through the book, even at the expense of narrative coherence. the individual that results om the initial imposition of confession, margery, tackles with her recent identity as a profound devoted christian and presents this new self as a most conflictive one to the community, to the church and to herself as a self-narrator. the book of margery kempe claims to imitate a hagiographic account in which orality and literacy represent the unstable grounds whereon the discursive production of an individual woman is enacted: a victim of gossip and confession, one who experiences these two systems as complementary in oppression. in so doing, kempe surmounts the very limits of hagiography thus challenging those between biography and autobiography. maría beatriz hernández pérez universidad de la laguna 190 maría beatriz hernández pérez selim  () r aers, david & lynn staley : the powers of the holy: religion, politics, and gender in late medieval english culture. the pennsylvania state university press, 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methods. routledge, london & new york, –. root, jerry : “space to speke”: the confessional subject in medieval literature. peter lang, new york. salih, sarah : margery kempe’s bodies: piety, work and penance. in john arnold & katherine j. lewis eds.: a companion to the book of margery kempe. d.s. brewer, cambridge, –. spacks, patricia meyer : gossip. chicago & london, university of chicago press. schenck, celeste : all of a piece: women’s poetry and autobiography. in bella brodski & celeste schenck eds.: life/ lines: theorizing women’s autobiography. cornell university press, ithaca & london, –. spence, j. : putting myself in the picture: a political, personal and photographic autobiography. candem town, london. spengeman, w.c. : the forms of autobiography. yale university press, new haven. sponsler, claire : drama and piety: margery kempe. in john arnold & katherine j. lewis eds.: a companion to the book of margery kempe. d.s. brewer, 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kempe. d.s. brewer, cambridge, –. ! microsoft word 2019article_3_disciacca claudia di sciacca, selim24 (2019): 53–104. issn 1132-631x / doi https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.24.2019.53-104 feeding the dragon: the devouring monster in anglo-saxon eschatological imagery claudia di sciacca university of udine this essay deals with two intertwined eschatological motifs of the literary and iconographic culture of early medieval england: the devouring devil, especially in the guise of a dragon, and the mouth of hell, fashioned as the jowls of a zoomorphic monster, arguably a distinctively english adaptation of the anthropomorphic mouth of hell of classical descent. the following analysis will outline the intricate, creative interplay of crucial themes of christian eschatology and demonology, on which the imagery of the demonic devouring dragon and the mouth of hell can be said to ultimately rely. in particular, it will be argued that the coalescence of these two widespread motifs into the distinctively anglo-saxon imagery of the zoomorphic mouth of hell may have been triggered by the cosmology and eschatology of two apocrypha especially popular in early medieval england, the seven heavens apocryphon and the gospel of nicodemus, especially its section on the descensus ad inferos. the discussion of relevant textual, manuscript, and iconographic evidence will afford intriguing insights into the shaping of this syncretic blending, as well as hinting at the milieu where such a blending may have been if not initiated, then at least endorsed and popularised. keywords: anglo-saxon eschatology; apocrypha; mouth of hell; source studies; manuscript studies 1. the devouring monster the imagery of the devouring evil monster is an immemorial, syncretic one. influential tales of classical mythology feature heroes that feed themselves to 54 claudia di sciacca their monstrous opponent in order to kill him from within.1 such is the case with perseus and heracles in their strikingly similar feats to free andromeda and hesione from their respective kētos,2 a greek term denoting a sea-monster with a composite, but fundamentally serpentine, body conceptually overlapping with the drakōn in the greek and roman imagination.3 other possible classical antecedents include jason confronting the serpent of colchis to gain the golden fleece4 or menestratus tearing apart the dragon that plagued the city of thespiae thanks to the fishhooks covering his breastplate.5 germanic mythology also features cruel, greedy beasts ready to destroy and devour men and even gods, although it is unclear to what extent such animal figures and the episodes of monstrous consumption of which they are protagonists reflect a pagan cosmology or whether they betray judaeo 1 being swallowed and then spat out by a monster is a form of initiation ritual which has been transposed in numerous myths: see v. propp, ‘ritual laughter in folklore (a propos of the tale of the princess who would not laugh [nesmejána]’, in v. propp, the theory and history of folklore, ed. by a. liberman and trans. by a. y. martin et al., theory and history of literature 5 (minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press, 1984), pp. 124146, esp. 131. see also l. radermacher, ‘wahlfischmythen’, archiv für religionswissenschaft 9 (1906), pp. 248252. 2 on the heracles-hesione episode, see d. ogden, perseus (london and new york, ny: routledge, 2008), pp. 9397, and d. ogden, drakōn: dragon myth and serpent cult in the greek and roman worlds (oxford: oup, 2013), pp. 118123, esp. 122123. in the version of the andromeda tale contained in the second-century bc poem alexandra, perseus allows the kētos to devour him so that the hero can slay it from the inside: ogden, perseus, pp. 6799, esp. 9293, and ibid. drakōn pp. 123129, esp. 129. on other graeco-roman dragon-fights, albeit not necessarily featuring the swallowing of the hero, see c. rauer, beowulf and the dragon: parallels and analogues (cambridge: brewer, 2000), pp. 4547, and ogden, drakōn, pp. 26147. 3 see liddell-scott, ss.uu. drakōn and kētos are, in turn, the two terms with which the septuagint most often renders the old testament monsters per excellence, leviathan and rahab: see below, pp. 6465. [h. g. liddell and r. scott (ed.), a greek-english lexicon, 9th ed. revised and augmented by h. s. jones (oxford: clarendon, 1968), available online at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus%3atext%3a 1999.04.0057.] 4 the episode of jason swallowed —in his case probably unwillingly— and disgorged by the serpent is attested in a series of images, including the one depicted on the famous douris cup (c. 480470 bc), but is unparalleled in the literary tradition: see ogden, perseus, pp. 6365, and ibid. drakōn, pp. 5863, esp. 5859. 5 ogden, drakōn, pp. 6566. the devouring monster 55 christian influences or are, finally, common to both traditions.6 oðinn keeps two wolves, geri and freki, that haunt the battlefield and devour corpses, and, more relevantly, at ragnarök, the most vicious of all germanic wolves, fenrir, son of loki and the giantess angrboða and brother of the miðgarðsórmr or world serpent7 and the death-goddess, hel, will devour oðinn himself. oðinn will then be avenged by his son víðarr, who will tear fenrir’s mouth apart by placing one foot on the wolf’s lower jaw and pulling the upper jaw with one hand.8 at ragnarök, the hell-hound, garm, will break its fetters and engage in a final confrontation with the god tyr in which both contenders will perish, and two wolves, sköll and hati hródvitsson, will devour the sun and the moon (although it is possible that all these different wolves are ultimately just one, namely fenrir, as relevant sources are not unambiguous in this regard).9 in sum, although the viking underworld is inhabited by many a snake,10 and dragon-fights intersperse much scandinavian legend and 6 a. pluskowski, ‘apocalyptic monsters: animal inspirations for the iconography of medieval north european devourers’, in b. bildhauer and r. mills (eds.), the monstrous middle ages (cardiff: university of wales press, 2003), pp. 155176, esp. p. 157; e. o. g. turville petre, myth and religion of the north: the religion of ancient scandinavia (london: weidenfeld and nicolson, 1964) pp. 281285; a. orchard, cassell’s dictionary of norse myth and legend (london: cassell, 2002), s.u. ‘ragnarök’, pp. 285286. according to adams, much animal imagery in the late antique and early medieval germanic world was in continuity with the classical past and, in turn, moved seamlessly into the christian world, especially as far as the predator-and-prey iconographic motifs are concerned: see n. adams, ‘between myth and reality: hunter and prey in anglo-saxon art’, in m. d. j. bintley and t. j. t. williams (eds.), representing beasts in early medieval england and scandinavia (woodbridge: boydell, 2015), pp. 1352. 7 the miðgarðsórmr is a giant snake that lives in the ocean lying coiled around the earth; his fatal antagonist is the god thor and, after an unsuccessful attempt by thor to land and kill the serpent during a fishing expedition, the two will ultimately kill each other at ragnarök: turville petre, myth and religion of the north, pp. 7576, and orchard, dictionary, ss.uu. ‘midgard-serpent’ and ‘thor’, pp. 252253 and 351354. 8 turville petre, myth and religion of the north, p. 60, and orchard, dictionary, ss.uu. ‘fenrir’, ‘freki’, and ‘vídar’, pp. 108109, 117, and 380381. 9 turville petre, myth and religion of the north, pp. 60 and 280285, and orchard, dictionary, ss.uu. ‘garm’, ‘hati hródvitsson’, ‘hel’, ‘ragnarök’, ‘sköll’, and ‘tyr’, pp. 125, 173, 182183, 284286, 329 and 365366. 10 one such reptile monster is the dragon-like níðhögg that sucks the corpses of the dead and gnaws at one of the three roots of the world-tree yggdrasil: orchard, 56 claudia di sciacca mythology,11 all in all the nordic pagan apocalypse assigns a particularly prominent role to lupine devourers rather than reptile ones.12 that such viking imagery must have been quite current among the anglosaxons is attested by some stone reliefs of the danelaw. what is probably the earliest surviving stone cross in england, the rothbury cross, northumberland, dated to the first half of the ninth century, shows a hell scene where animals and humans are entangled in a coil of biting reptiles,13 and in the tenth-century great clifton cross, cumberland, ribbon animals bite each other with squared jaws.14 the gosforth cross, cumberland, dated dictionary, ss.uu. ‘nídhögg’ and ‘yggdrasil’, pp. 263 and 403404. on the relationship between the tree of life and the dragon across various cultures, see d. e. jones, an instinct for dragons (london and new york, ny: routledge, 2000), pp. 121134. drakontes were associated with the earth and the dead, particularly the heroic dead, also in classical antiquity: see ogden, drakōn, pp. 247270. 11 for a synopsis of the most popular dragon-fights in scandinavian tradition, see rauer, beowulf and the dragon, pp. 4145. see also the investigation of serpent motifs within the vikings’ zoomorphic repertoire and their symbolic resonance in the scandinavian cultural psyche by s. brunning, ‘“(swinger of) the serpent of wounds”: swords and snakes in the viking mind’, in bintley and williams, representing beasts, pp. 5372. as in other cultures, in the scandinavian medieval world too serpents were ambivalent symbols with both positive and negative connotations: see ibid. pp. 6870. the same ambivalence can be detected in the old english poem solomon and saturn i, where the letters of the paternoster attack the devil who is defined as draca (line 26) and goes about in wyrmes lic (‘in serpent’s form’, line 152); however, the letters themselves are described as wyrma wlenco (‘pride of serpents’, cccc 41, line 82) or wyrma welm (‘surge of serpents’ cccc 422, line 82): see d. anlezark (ed. and trans.), the old english dialogues of solomon and saturn, anglo-saxon texts 7 (cambridge: brewer, 2009), pp. 6061, 6465 and 6869. on the solomon and saturn texts, see below, pp. 8384, esp. n. 128. 12 ‘the end days described in skaldic verse and snorri’s prose have a distinct lupine theme running all the way through’: pluskowski, ‘apocalyptic monsters’, p. 157. 13 see the relevant entry by r. cramp in the corpus of anglo-saxon stone sculpture online at http://www.ascorpus.ac.uk/catvol_search_results.php?id=459. see also j. hawkes, ‘the rothbury cross: an iconographic bricolage’, gesta 35 (1996), pp. 7794. 14 the scene in question is generally interpreted as a depiction of christian hell, although scandinavian mythology likewise supplies several potential antecedents and the entire carving on the stone has been considered as a powerful expression of the scandinavian jellinge style: see the relevant entry by r. n. bailey in the corpus of the devouring monster 57 to the first half of the tenth century, depicts at least three scenes which have been associated with the ragnarök, including a man facing a monstrous head, which has been interpreted as the confrontation between víðarr and fenrir.15 the thorvald cross, a mid-tenth to early eleventh-century stone cross at kirk andreas on the isle of man, shows a lupine monster devouring a male figure with a raven perched on the shoulder, most probably the devouring of oðinn by fenrir at ragnarök.16 anglo-saxon stone sculpture online at http://www.ascorpus.ac.uk/catvol2.php?page num_urls=97. on the jellinge art, see d. m. wilson and o. klindt-jensen, viking art, 2nd ed., nordic series 6 (minneapolis, mn: university of minneapolis press, 1980), pp. 95118. 15 see the relevant entry (gosforth 01) by r. n. bailey in the corpus of anglo-saxon stone sculpture online at http://www.ascorpus.ac.uk/catvol2.php?pagenum_urls=90. see also wilson and klindt-jensen, viking art, p. 106 and plates xlxli, and pluskowski, ‘apocalyptic monsters’, pp. 158159 (pluskowski dates the cross to the mid-tenth century, but i here follow bailey’s dating). inside the gosforth church, a carved stone slab (gosforth 06) from the first half of the tenth century shows the episode of thor’s fishing expedition against the miðgarðsórmr and associates it with a stag crushing a serpent: see the relevant entry by r. n. bailey in the corpus of anglosaxon stone sculpture online at http://www.ascorpus.ac.uk/catvol2.php?pagenum_ urls=95. see also turville petre, myth and religion of the north, pp. 7576 and plate 22, and pluskowski, ‘apocalyptic monsters’, p. 159. on thor and the miðgarðsórmr, see above, n. 7. according to a long-standing tradition, the stag was an enemy of snakes and as such was subsequently interpreted as a christological symbol: see the relevant entry in latin physiologus, where the stag is defined as inimicus draconi: f. carmody (ed.), ‘physiologus latinus, versio y’, in the university of california in classical philology 12 (1941): 95134, at pp. 131132. in isidore of seville’s etymologiae (xii. i.1819), stags are said to be inimici serpentium: j. andré (ed. and trans. into french), isidorus hispalensis. etymologiae xii, alma (paris: les belles lettres, 1986), pp. 5153. the surviving text of both the old english and the old high german physiologus is defective and does not include the entry on the stag, but the old icelandic one does and it preserves such a tradition: see halldór hermannson, ed., the icelandic physiologus, islandica 27 (ithaca, ny: cornell university press, 1938), p. 20. 16 pluskowski, ‘apocalyptic monsters’, p. 158. for an alternative christian interpretation of the carving, see f.-x. dillmann, ‘fenrir, fenriswolf’, in rlga 8, pp. 367375, at 370. [rlga: reallexikon der germanischen altertumskunde begründet von j. hoops und herausgegeben von h. beck et al., 2nd ed., 37 vols. (berlin and new york: de gruyter, 19682008.] 58 claudia di sciacca the judaeo-christian tradition also abounds in evil, monstrous beasts that are often described as ravenous. in the scriptures the verbal stem bl‘ ‘(lit.) to gulp down, swallow (something edible)’ is often used figuratively to mean ‘to destroy, remove someone quickly (so they may no longer be found in their place)’, thereby forcefully conveying the utter domination of one party by another, which often results in the swift, brutal destruction of the former by the latter.17 in particular, bl‘ occurs in contexts that have to do with the elimination of the righteous or innocent who is persecuted without just cause, such as israel oppressed by its enemies (hos 8:8; is 49:19; lam 2:16; ps 124:3), or the inhabitants of jerusalem attacked by nebuchadnezzar (jer. 51:34), or, in general, the devout overcome by the wicked (hab. 1:13; prov 1:12; ps. 35:25). indeed, yahweh himself can be the devourer, swallowing israel’s adversaries (ps 21:10) or, alternatively, having the earth open up and swallow the foolish pharaoh and his army (ex 15:912) or those who have rebelled against him (num 16: 30, 32, 34, and 26:10; dt 11:6; ps 106:17), and the messiah’s ultimate triumph is described in terms of his swallowing up (is. 25:78) or biting (hos 13:14) death in eternal victory. finally, the hebrew verb can even be used to describe yahweh’s testing of his righteous servant, by taking everything away from him except his life, as in the case of job (job 2:3, 8:18, 10:8, 37:20). in both the old and new testament the devouring monster is often pictured as a wild animal, such as the wolf or the lion. in the bible, wolves are depicted as ruthless predators and ravenous devourers, and the most evil people or institutions are compared to them.18 the lion, on the other hand, is characteristically ambiguous, in that it can have both positive and negative symbolic connotations.19 in the old testament, the lion stands for 17 j. schüpphaus, ‘bāla’, theologisches wörterbuch zum alten testament, i, cols. 658661, and ‘swallow’, in l. ryken, j. c. wilhoit, and t. longman iii (eds.), dictionary of biblical imagery (leicester and downers grove, il: inter-varsity press, 1998) (henceforth dobi), pp. 831832. 18 see dobi, s.u. ‘wolf’, p. 958. the most relevant biblical references are gen 49:27; jer. 5:6; eze. 22:27; zeph 3:3; matt. 7:15; lk 10:3; jon 10:12; acts 20:29. 19 for a survey of the ambivalent symbolism of the lion from the classical world to chivalric literature and late medieval heraldry, see l. paglieri, ‘il leone e il drago in alcuni testi medievali’, in f. e. consolino, f. marzella, and l. spetia (eds.), aspetti del meraviglioso nelle letterature medievali: medioevo latino, romanzo, germanico e celtico, culture & société médiévales 29 (turnhout: brepols, 2016), pp. 281291, esp. pp. 281289. the devouring monster 59 ferociousness and destructiveness, but also for majesty.20 indeed it can represent yahweh himself in his destructive wrath and his voice is paired with the lion’s roaring (hos. 5:1415, 11:10, 13:7; amos 1:2; is 31:4, 38:13; jer 25:38; lam 3:1011). it is a symbol of the tribe of judah (gn 49:9; exe 19:29), hence also of king david and the messiah. (eventually, in the physiologus, the lion is given pride of place being assigned the first entry of the work and therein christ is defined as spiritalis leo de tribu iuda.)21 similarly, in the new testament the lion alternatively represents both the devil that preys on humanity as a roaring lion (1 pt 5:89), and christ as the conquering lion of revelation juxtaposed to the lamb (rev. 5:56), since in the new millennium the lion will lie down with the lamb (is 11:6). in the psalms especially, the lion’s mouth is synonymous with both physical and spiritual torment,22 and the famous verse from ps 90 (91):13, conculcabis leonem et draconem came to epitomise christ’s conquest of the devil in the desert (mt 4:6 and lk 4:1011).23 thus, the psalmist’s ‘powerful, almost visceral’ image of triumph over enemies was interpreted by christians as an image of triumph over sin, evil and the devil,24 thereby consolidating 20 see dobi, s.u. ‘lion’, pp. 514515. the lion is generally a positive symbol in the book of proverbs and the books of kings. 21 carmody, ‘physiologus latinus’, pp. 103104, quotation at p. 103. in etymologiae xii.ii.36, isidore also introduces the lion as princeps omnium bestiarum, ‘prince of all wild animals’, and seems to attribute to the lion many of the same christological connotations found in the physiologus: see andré, etymologiae xii, pp. 8691. in the early german versions of the physiologus too the lion is described as a christological symbol: see f. maurer (ed.), der altdeutsche physiologus: die millstätter reimfassung und die wiener prosa (nebst dem lateinische text und dem althochdeutschen physiologus), altdeutsche textbibliothek 67 (tübingen: niemeyer, 1967), pp. 25 and 91. 22 see ps 22:21 and its echo in st paul’s 2 tim. 4:17. in general the psalms particularly emphasise the lion’s ruthlessness and ferocity: see e.g. ps 7:2, 10:9, 17:12, 22:13, 35:17, 57:4 and 58:6. 23 christ, in turn, will bestow upon the apostles the power to trample serpents: see mk 16:18 and lk 10:19. the pairing of lions and snakes or dragons as the direst of creatures is not limited to ps 90 (91) but it is also attested in sir 25:16 and is 30:6, and akkadian literature refers to the snake as an earth-lion: see dobi, s.u. ‘lion’, p. 514 and j. w. van henten, ‘dragon’, in k. van der torn, b. becking, and p. w. van der horst (eds.), dictionary of deities and demons in the bible, 2nd ed. (leiden and boston, ma: brill, 1998) (henceforth ddd), pp. 265267, at 266. 24 k. m. openshaw, ‘weapons of daily battle: images of the conquest of evil in the early medieval psalter’, art bulletin 75 (1993), pp. 1738, quotation at 19. 60 claudia di sciacca the symbolic association of the lion and the dragon with the demonic and the hellish. notably, in the insular tradition of symbolic illustration of the psalter, the lion and the dragon occur repeatedly, whether jointly or singularly, as the vanquished antagonists of christ or, rather, his prefiguration, david.25 in one of the most lavishly decorated psalters from anglo-saxon england, the tiberius psalter,26 the scene of christ’s rescue of the progenitors at the harrowing of hell shows adam and eve emerging from a pronounced leonine hell mouth that has been considered as one unique version of the zoomorphic hell mouth.27 in both classical antiquity and the ancient near east where the bible originated hell was an underworld realm, the perception of which, 25 k. m. openshaw, ‘the symbolic illustration of the psalter: an insular tradition’, arte medievale 2nd ser. 6 (1992), pp. 4160; ibid. ‘images, texts and contexts: the iconography of the tiberius psalter, london, british library, cotton ms tiberius c. vi’ (unpubl. phd diss., university of toronto, 1990), esp. chpts. 56; ibid. ‘the battle between christ and satan in the tiberius psalter’, the journal of the warburg and courtauld institutes 52 (1989), pp. 1433; ibid. ‘weapons of daily battle’; and m. mcnamara, the psalms in the early irish church, journal for the study of the old testament supplement series 165 (sheffield: sheffield academic press, 2000), pp. 147150. 26 ms. london, bl, cotton tiberius c. vi (s. xi3/4, prob. mid 1060s, winchester om?): h. gneuss and m. lapidge, anglo-saxon manuscripts: a bibliographical handlist of manuscripts and manuscripts fragments written or owned in england up to 1100, toronto anglo-saxon series 15 (toronto: utp, 2104), no. 378 (henceforth gneuss & lapidge), and e. temple, anglo-saxon manuscripts 9001066, a survey of manuscripts illuminated in the british isles 2 (london: harvey miller, 1976), no. 98; for bibliography on the illustration cycle, see also above, n. 25. the illustration of the harrowing of hell is at fol. 14r: for commentary on this picture, see openshaw, ‘the battle between christ and satan’, pp. 1922, and j. bradley, ‘you shall surely not die’: the concepts of sin and death as expressed in the manuscript art of northwestern europe, c. 8001200, library of the written word 4. the manuscript world 2, 2 vols. (leiden: brill, 2008), pp. 237238. a digital reproduction of the tiberius psalter is available online at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/fulldisplay.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_ tiberius_ c_vi. 27 the illustration of the harrowing of hell in the tiberius psalter is the first appearance of the harrowing in a specifically english cycle of christological scenes; it is also an illustration that may have been influenced by the gospel of nicodemus: k. tamburr, the harrowing of hell in medieval england (cambridge: brewer, 2007), pp. 110111 and 148. the devouring monster 61 however, often oscillated between a local denotation proper and a personal one, implying a personification or deification of death.28 hence the entrance to the realm of death could be pictured as a door (the virgilian ianua ditis or ostia ditis or plautus’ ianua orci), or as a deep pit (ps. 88:46), but also as the greedy jaws of a hungry, relentless enemy (cf. the virgilian fauces orci with hab 2:5 and is 5:14).29 the entrance to the underworld is still depicted as either a cave in the ground or an anthropomorphic mouth in the utrecht psalter, a carolingian production of the first half of the ninth century that reached england by the end of the tenth or beginning of the eleventh century and whose lavish iconography proved extremely influential on late anglo-saxon manuscript art.30 similarly, in the harley psalter, the illustrations of which are derivative 28 on the classical tradition, see at least j. n. bremmer, ‘hades’, in brill’s encyclopaedia of the ancient world new pauly, v, cols. 10761077 [h. cancik and h. schneider (ed.), brill’s new pauly: encyclopaedia of the ancient world. antiquity, 15 vols. and index (leiden: brill, 20022010)] and w. mackauer, ‘orcus’, in pauly wissowa neue bearbeitung, xviii.1, cols. 908928 [a. f. von pauly et al. (ed.), paulys realencyclopädie der classischen altertumswissenschaft: neue bearbeitung, 34 vols. (stuttgart and waldsee: metzler and drückenmüller, 18941972)]; see also g. p. schipp, ‘orcus’, glotta 39 (1960), pp. 154158. on the biblical tradition, see at least dobi, s.u. ‘death’, pp. 198199; j. n. bremmer, ‘hades’, j. f. healey, ‘mot’, and h. m. barstad ‘sheol’ all in ddd, pp. 382383, 598603 and 768770. on the parallels in the depiction of the classical and biblical underworld, see mackauer, ‘orcus’, cols. 927928. 29 on the fauces orci, see mackauer, ‘orcus’, cols. 927928 and schipp, ‘orcus’, pp. 154 and 157. unlike classical antiquity, the bible does not deify death or the underworld but personifies them as an inescapable, greedy foe: healey, ‘mot’, p. 599 and barstad, ‘sheol’, pp. 768769. in canaanite myths, in particular, the god of death mot is a voracious consumer of gods and men, with an enormous mouth that he opens from the earth to the heavens and with an appetite to match, and descent into the gullet of mot is the equivalent of descent into the underworld: see healey, ‘mot’, p. 599. however, “there appears to be no textual support for the claim that personifications of death or the underworld in the hebrew bible reflect [canaanite mythology]” and they can rather be taken to derive from the daily experience that death is ubiquitous and has a great appetite for the living: barstad. ‘sheol’, pp. 768769, quotation at 768. 30 see gneuss & lapidge, no. 939; a digital reproduction of the whole manuscript is available online at http://objects.library.uu.nl/reader/index.php?obj=1874-284427&lan =en#page//11/51/45/11514575807329943918974580038627186786.jpg/mode/1up. 62 claudia di sciacca of the utrecht psalter, the entrance to hell is depicted as either a fiery crater (fols. 30r, 33v, 72r) or an anthropomorphic head (fols. 1v and 51r).31 however, around the same time as the utrecht psalter is supposed to have crossed the channel, in england one of the key anglo-saxon codices, the junius book, was being illustrated with two of the earliest specimens of the zoomorphic hell mouth in anglo-saxon manuscript art.32 from the middle or second half of the eleventh century onwards, this new take in the longstanding tradition of the iconography of hell seems to become a distinctive trademark of illustrated english psalters,33 that is the single typology of books where one finds the great majority of manuscript illuminations depicting the while there are many examples of the gateway to hell as a pit or fissure in the ground (e.g. fols. 35r, 53r, 66r, 79r, etc.), at least two illustrations depict it as the mouth of an anthropomorphic head: see fols. 9r and 59r: e. t. dewald, illustrations of the utrecht psalter, illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages (princeton, nj: princeton university press, 1932), pp. 11 and 46, plates 15 and 94. 31 london, british library, harley 603, s. x/xi or xi1, canterbury christ church: gneuss & lapidge, no. 422. a digital reproduction of the codex is available online at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/fulldisplay.aspx?ref=harley_ms_603. 32 oxford, bodleian library, junius 11, s. x2 and xi1, south england (canterbury christ church?): see gneuss & lapidge, no. 640, and n. r. ker, catalogue of manuscripts containing anglo-saxon (oxford: clarendon, 1957; reissued with supplement 1990) (henceforth ker), no. 334. the two illustrations of the mouth of hell are found at pp. 3 and 16; a complete digital reproduction of the codex is available online at https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/inquire/discover/search/#/?p=c+8,t+junius %2011,rsrs+0,rsps+10,fa+,so+ox%3asort%5easc,scids+,pid+d5e3a9fc-abaa-4649-ae48be207ce8da15,vi+. 33 see j. galpern, ‘the shape of hell in anglo-saxon england’ (unpubl. phd diss., university of california, berkeley, 1977), chpt. 3; p. sheingorn, ‘“who can open the doors of his face?”: the iconography of the hell mouth’, in c. davidson and t. h. seiler (eds.), the iconography of hell, early drama, art, and music monograph series 17 (kalamazoo, mi: medieval institute publications, 1992), pp. 119; g. d. schmidt, the iconography of the mouth of hell. eighth century britain to the fifteenth century (selinsgrove, pa: susquehanna press, and london: associated university presses, 1995), esp. chpts. 1 and 3; but cf. also t. h. ohlgren’s review of the latter in jegp 96.iii (1997), pp. 434437. bradley argues that the mouth of hell as such was an anglo-saxon invention, before which the entrances to hell were described as caves or volcanoes: see bradley, ‘you shall surely not die’, pp. 235236, esp. n. 167. bradley’s argument is, however, flawed by his not taking into account the motif of the anthropomorphic hell mouth in both classical and biblical tradition. the devouring monster 63 descent.34 here the animal jaws could portray realistic features, as is the case with the above-mentioned tiberius psalter,35 or hybrid, unspecified ones, as is the case with the rather diminutive but definitely not anthropomorphic hell mouth in the paris psalter,36 the large gaping mouth in the st albans psalter,37 the formidable double-headed jaws of the winchester psalter,38 the kētos-like hell mouth in the douce psalter,39 the toothy and fiery maw of the royal psalter,40 up to the long-tusked jowls of the early fourteenth-century 34 tamburr, the harrowing of hell, p. 148. 35 see above, p. 60. 36 paris, bnf, lat. 8884, s. ximed, canterbury?: see gneuss & lapidge, no. 891, and ker, no. 367. the illustration in question is found at fol. 3v; a digital reproduction of the whole manuscript is available online at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8451 636f/f1.item. 37 hildesheim, dombibliothek st godehard 1, c. 11191123, st albans abbey: c. m. kauffmann, romanesque manuscripts, 10661190, a survey of manuscripts illuminated in the british isles 3 (london: harvey miller, 1975), no. 29, pp. 6869. the mouth of hell is illustrated at p. 49: for a digital reproduction with transcription and translation of the whole codex, see the website of st albans psalter project https://www.abdn.ac.uk/stalbanspsalter/english/index.shtml. 38 london, british library, cotton nero c.iv, s. xiimedxiii2, winchester: see a. g. watson, catalogue of dated and datable manuscripts c. 7001600 in the department of manuscripts, the british library, 2 vols. (london: british library, 1979), no. 539; n. r. ker, medieval libraries of great britain: a list of surviving books, 2nd ed. (london: offices of the royal historical society, 1964), pp. 177 and 200, and kauffmann, romanesque manuscripts, no. 78, pp. 105106. the mouth of hell illustration is found at fol. 24r; a digital reproduction of the whole manuscript is available online at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/viewer.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_nero_c_iv_fs001r. 39 oxford, bodleian library, douce 203 (sc 21867), s. xii3/4, north england: see kaufmann, romanesque manuscripts, no. 94, p. 117, and e. solopova, latin liturgical psalters in the bodleian library: a select catalogue (oxford: bodleian library, 2013), pp. 3039. the harrowing of hell is at fol. 14r; a digital reproduction of the illustration cycle of the codex is available online at https://iiif.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/iiif/ mirador/2a38415e-ff16-401c-986d-d5fc680ced11. 40 london, british library, royal 1 d x, c. 12001220, oxford: see g. f. warner and j. p. gilson, catalogue of western manuscripts in the old royal and king’s collections, 4 vols (london: british museum, 1921), i, p. 18. the mouth of hell illustration is found at fol. 7r; a digital reproduction of the whole manuscript is available online at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/viewer.aspx?ref=royal_ms_1_d_x_fs001r. 64 claudia di sciacca gough psalter.41 2. the devil as dragon amidst the many beasts, whether real or wondrous, haunting the christian imagination, it is the dragon, however, that will establish itself as the most powerful personification of the devil. it has been argued that the dragon is “the oldest, the first, the most basic monster”, a sort of universal predator across all human cultures,42 although the picture is in fact more complex and the dragon or its more realistic antecedent, the snake, are also ascribed positive connotations in both classical antiquity43 and judaeo christian tradition.44 41 oxford, bodleian library, gough liturg. 8, c. 13001310, winchester and east anglia: see l. freeman sandler, gothic manuscripts, 12851385, 2 vols., a survey of manuscripts illuminated in the british isles 5 (london: harvey miller, and oxford: oup, 1986), no. 42, ii, 4849. the harrowing of hell scene is at fol. 62v; a digital reproduction of the miniature cycle of this codex is available online at https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/inquire/discover/search/#/?p=c+6,t+gough%20liturg .%208,rsrs+0,rsps+10,fa+,so+ox%3asort%5easc,scids+,pid+b4b78b85-e040-438bab12 -cb0726fd7463,vi+. 42 g. mchargue, the beasts of never (new york, ny: delacorte, 1988), p. 27; see also jones, an instinct for dragons, pp. 1-24. for folkloric traditions concerning dragons see d. ogden, dragons, serpents & slayers in the classical and early christian worlds: a sourcebook (oxford: oup, 2013), pp. 271280, and, with a special focus on anglosaxon england, rauer, beowulf and the dragon, pp. 4951. 43 in classical antiquity the serpent was associated with medical lore (and the greek god of medicine, asclepius): see ogden, drakōn, pp. 310382. 44 during the exodus yahweh sent fiery serpents to punish the israelites who had spoken against moses, but eventually he suggested to moses that he should erect a standard with a copper snake to heal those who repented from the deadly bites of the serpents (num 21:46 and 79). a christian bestiary such as the physiologus qualifies the serpent as prudens ‘wise’ and describes its shedding of the skin as a symbol of spiritual rebirth: see carmody, ‘physiologus latinus, versio y’, pp. 110111. in the germanic world too, the dragon is not an exclusively negative creature: through contact with the dragon’s blood, sigurd becomes invincible and acquires knowledge of animal speech, and a positive connotation for the dragon is implicit in its presence in heraldry (in particular in slavic and celtic areas and, especially, in wales): paglieri, ‘il leone e il drago’ pp. 289291. on the modern tradition of the ‘house snakes’ as bringers of good fortune in europe, india and the far east, see ogden, drākon, pp. the devouring monster 65 in the old testament, the three terms for the monster threatening the divine order of the world, leviathan, rahab and tannîn, all ultimately seem to denote a monster of reptile form, whether a coiling serpent or a dragon proper, often associated with the sea.45 (notably, the septuagint eliminates the proper names leviathan and rahab and renders them instead simply by the terms drakōn, most commonly, and then kētos and ophis.)46 if the book of job clearly distinguishes between leviathan (job 3:8 and 40:254126), rahab (job 9:13 and 26:1), and tannin (job 7:12), elsewhere they seem interchangeable, although the biblical texts do not provide a single, homogeneous portrait of them, but vacillate between the mythical and the real.47 whatever its exact name and looks, the old testament monster(s) has/have been interpreted in the light of the ancient near eastern primeval combat myths, where creation results from a fight against a monster embodying the forces of chaos, most often of reptile form and associated with the sea.48 however, this association has proved problematic, since the biblical account of creation is ambiguous in that darkness and chaos are first outside creation and then dialectically incorporated into it, with the separation of land from sea and the division of light from darkness; hence leviathan, rahab and 303305. finally, dragons are definitely positive symbols in far eastern cultures: see jones, an instinct for dragons, pp. 79 and 149167. 45 see j. w. van henten, ‘dragon’, c. uehlinger, ‘leviathan’, k. spronk, ‘rahab’, and g. c. heider, ‘tannin’, all in ddd, pp. 265267, 511515, 684686 and 834836, respectively. see also bob becking, “leviathan”, in j. a. weinstock (ed.), ashgate encyclopedia of literary and cinematic monsters (farnham and burlington, vt: ashgate, 2014), pp. 377379, and dobi, s.u. ‘monsters’, pp. 562565. 46 see liddell-scott, ss. uu. on kétos, see above, p. 54, and ogden, drākon, p. 384. 47 cf. e.g. is 27:1, where leviathan is identified as a coiling and twisting serpent but also as a sea-dragon; is 51:9, where rahab is identified as a dragon; job 26:1213, where rahab is identified as a twisting snake; finally, job 41:612, the most formidable description of leviathan, depicted as a gigantic fanged, scale-covered and fire-spitting reptile, a sort of hybrid between a crocodile and a dragon. 48 see d. scoggins ballentine, the conflict myth and the biblical tradition (oxford: oup, 2015), pp. 2272. see also n. frye, the great code: the bible and literature, ed. a. a. lee, collected works of northrop frye 19 (toronto: utp, 2006), pp. 209210; b. f. batto, slaying the dragon: mythmaking in the biblical tradition (louisville, ky: westminster/john knox press, 1992), pp. 8285, 129134, 146148, and 171173; j. day, god’s conflict with the dragon and the sea (cambridge: cup, 1985), p. 141178; and ogden, dragons, serpents & slayers, pp. 257262. 66 claudia di sciacca the like may be thought of either as enemies of god outside his creation or as creatures of god within it.49 while the psalms abound of references to the act of creation as an act of victory (as though there had been some kind of malignant force that opposed creation),50 in the book of job, and consistently only there, satan the adversary is a tolerated visitor at god’s court, and leviathan is a creature of whom god seems to be rather proud.51 in the most iconic swallowing episode of the bible, a reptile sea-monster or kētos swallows the prophet jonah, and his three-day-long captivity within the monster’s belly was then typologically interpreted in the gospels as a prefiguration of christ’s own passion and death before resurrection (mt 12:3842 and lk 11:2932).52 notably, the jonah cycle is the single most widespread iconographic motif in the pre-constantine church,53 and the sea monster that swallows the prophet is often depicted as a giant reptile.54 49 g. j. riley, ‘devil’, j. w. van henten, ‘dragon’, and uehlinger, ‘leviathan’, all in ddd, pp. 244249, esp. 244246, pp. 265267, esp. 265, and pp. 512514 respectively; and dobi, s.u. ‘monsters’, pp. 562563. 50 see m. klingbeil, yahweh fighting from heaven: god as warrior and as a god of heaven in the hebrew psalter and ancient near eastern iconography, orbis biblicus et orientalis 169 (freiburg and göttingen: universitätsverlag and vandenhoeck und ruprecht, 1999), pp. 38157. according to scoggins ballentine, however, in the bible the conflict myth was historicized and the motif of the primordial chaos-kampf was employed in service of socio-political ideologies, i.e. to promote king david and his dynasty as well as the birth of the israelite nation and its deliverance from egypt and babylon: see her the conflict myth, pp. 73126; see also dobi, s.u. ‘monsters’, pp. 564565. 51 uehlinger, ‘leviathan’, in ddd, pp. 512513, and frye, the great code, pp. 209 and 212213. this ambiguity is linked to the inherent paradox of evil, which is a powerful and positive force in time, but which by itself is pure negation or nonbeing; indeed, the dragon of revelation is defined as “the beast that was, and is not, and yet it is” (rev 17:8): see frye, the great code, p. 209. 52 t. m. bolin, freedom beyond forgiveness: the book of jonah re-examined, journal for the study of the old testament supplement series 236, copenhagen international seminar 3 (sheffield: sheffield academic press, 1997), pp. 1820. 53 bolin, freedom beyond forgiveness, pp. 2124; however, the iconographic cycle is clearly not based on the new testament reading of jonah’s episode as a prefiguration of christ’s resurrection, since the emphasis is rather on the scene of jonah at rest. 54 r. calvino and n. ciavolino, ‘la raffigurazione di jonah nella primitiva arte cristiana’, asprenas 31 (1984), pp. 525538, and w. wischmeyer, ‘zur entstehung und bedeutung des jonasbildes’, in actes du xe congrés international d’archéologue chrétienne the devouring monster 67 the devil as the supernatural adversary of god and tempter of mankind is essentially a post-exilic and new testament concept.55 if in the old testament the combat of the urzeit between the god of ordered creation and the monster threatening it is largely implicit or ambiguously phrased or functional to topical political issues,56 the new testament culminates with the confrontation of the endzeit between god’s champion, st michael, against the great dragon of revelation, which explicitly and unambiguously represents the devil as god’s main antagonist (rev. xii.79 and xx.710).57 according to dendle, “[b]y anglo-saxon times it was common to identify lucifer (the morning star from isaiah 14:12ff) with satan, and those with the devil, and all three with the serpent of genesis and the dragon of revelation”.58 indeed in old english draca, ‘(lit.) dragon’ is also one of the terms for ‘devil’, and the dragon is the third guise taken by devil in his sensational shape-shifting during his fight against the letters of the paternoster in the solomon and saturn prose paternoster dialogue.59 even more relevant to this study is an analogous metamorphosis into a dragon that satan undergoes as a consequence of the harrowing of hell in the niðrstigningar saga or ‘the story of the descent’, the earliest old norse translation of the gospel of nicodemus, or, actually, of the second section of this apocryphon, the (= studi di antichità cristiana 37) (thessalonica: etaireia makedonikōn spoudōn, 1984), pp. 707719. 55 see d. f. watson, ‘devil’, in d. n. freedman et al. (eds.), the anchor bible dictionary of the bible, 6 vols. (new york, ny, and london: doubleday, 1992), ii, 183184; see also riley, ‘devil’, and c. breytenbach and p. l. day, ‘satan’, both in ddd, pp. 244249 and 726732. 56 see above, p. 65 and n. 50. 57 the imagery of the combat myth was already extended to the exodus and, ultimately, to the day of the lord in is:2427 and 51:910 and daniel 7: see dobi, s.u. ‘monsters’, pp. 564565; uehlinger, ‘leviathan’, pp. 513515; frye, the great code, pp. 210211; and a. y. collins, the combat myth in the book of revelation, harvard theological reviews series 9. harvard dissertations in religion 9 (missoula, mt: scholars press, 1976). 58 p. dendle, satan unbound: the devil in old english narrative literature (toronto: utp, 2001), p. 10. 59 see doe, s.u. draca 1.a, and anlezark, the old english dialogues of solomon and saturn, pp. 7277, at 72, lines 1011; eventually, the devil will also assume the shape of a whale called leviathan: ibid. lines 1415. [doe = a. cameron et al. (ed.), dictionary of old english, online [ai] at http://tapor.library. utoronto.ca/doe/] 68 claudia di sciacca descensus christi ad inferos.60 in medieval spirituality the confrontation with the devil, in its multifarious personifications,61 is not relegated to doomsday but also unfolds in the history of mankind, or rather permeates it, since all along human history the ciuitas dei coexists with the ciuitas diaboli.62 indeed, this conflict is constantly re-enacted in the daily life of the individual christian, especially those most engaged in the pursuit of the imitiatio christi, namely the saints. as described by paul in his epistle to the ephesians vii.1117, the route to salvation is 60 on the niðrstigningar saga, see the recent edition and english translation by d. bullitta, niðrstigningar saga: sources, transmission, and theology of the old norse ‘descent into hell’, toronto old norse and icelandic series 11 (toronto: utp, 2017). satan’s metamorphosis into a dragon is attested in both the older and younger redaction of the saga: see ibid. § xxi.1, pp. 141 and 157. on the gospel of nicodemus and the descensus, see below, p. 87, and on the niðrstigningar saga, see below, pp. 9293. 61 the late antique and early medieval understanding of the devil was one of a shifting, almost zelig-like creature: see at least dendle, satan unbound, p. 103; j. t. noetzel, ‘medieval demons’, in weinstock, the ashgate encyclopedia, pp. 131133; e. neubacher et al., teufel, in m. buchberger and w. kasper (eds.), lexikon für theologie und kirche, 11 vols., 3rd ed. (freiburg: herder, 19932001), ix, cols. 13601370; p. golinelli, diabolus in figura: trasformazioni demoniache e incontri col santo nell’agiografia medievale, in il diavolo nel medioevo. atti del xlix convegno storico internazionale, todi, 1217 ottobre 2012 (atti dei convegni del centro italiano di studi sul basso medioevo  accademia tudertina n.s. 26 (spoleto: fondazione centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2013), fondazione centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, spoleto 2013, pp. 217264; p. c. almond, the devil. a new biography (ithaca, ny: cornell university press, 2014), pp. 111117; and l. pasquini, il diavolo nell’iconografia medievale, in il diavolo nel medioevo, pp. 479518. in the anglo-saxon tradition, the most graphic example of the protean nature of the devil is the abovementioned fight against the letters of the paternoster in the solomon and saturn prose paternoster dialogue: see above, n. 59; but cf. also guthlac a or juliana or the old english lives of st margaret and indeed many more anglo-saxon hagiographies: see dendle, satan unbound, pp. 87114 and c. di sciacca, ‘battling the devil: st margaret in the early middle english seinte margarete’, filologia germanica – germanic philology 7 (2015), pp. 3379, at 4755 and 6465. 62 see st augustine’s de ciuitate dei, xxi, 1: b. dombart and a. kalb (eds.), s. aurelii augustini de ciuitate dei, 2 vols. ccsl 4748 (turnhout: brepols, 1955), ii, 758759. see also t. gregory, principe di questo mondo. il diavolo in occidente, economica laterza 695 (bari: laterza, 2014), pp. 5766, and ibid. ‘il diavolo nell’occidente medioevale’, in il diavolo nel medioevo, pp. 128, esp. 2128. the devouring monster 69 inevitably agonistic: like christ in the desert, every christian is summoned to fight the predatory devil, and the more so the most advanced members of his spiritual militia.63 hence, the confrontation with demonic emissaries can be considered a veritable hagiographic topos.64 with the identification of the (sea) monster and other ravenous beasts of the old testament with the devil of the new testament, the voraciousness of the former became a typical attribute of the latter,65 and, in turn, of the demonic contender of the saint in hagiographies. the clash —dialectic and otherwise— between the saint and the devil is a defining component of the founding text of the hagiographic genre, the vita antonii.66 in particular, st antony is also attacked by demons that have taken 63 on the enduring and pervasive miles christi ideal, from the martyrs’ heroics to its shaping of monastic spirituality to the crusades, see, amongst others, d. brakke, demons and the making of the monk: spiritual combat in early christianity (cambridge, ma and london: harvard university press, 2006); k. allen smith, war and the making of medieval monastic culture, studies in the history of medieval religion 37 (woodbridge: boydell, 2011), pp. 71111, and c. r. moss, the other christs: imitating jesus in ancient christian ideologies of martyrdom (new york, ny and oxford: oup, 2010), pp. 87111. on the militaristic imagery and language pervading hagiography, see at least p. brennan, ‘military images in hagiography’, in g. clark et al. (ed.), reading the past in late antiquity (rushcutters bay: australian national university press, 1990), pp. 323345. in particular, on the militaristic metaphor conveying the asceticism of hermit saints as a new form of martyrdom, see c. di sciacca, ‘“concupita, quaesita, ac petita solitudinis secreta”: the desert ideal in bede’s vita s. cuthberti and ælfric’s life of st cuthbert’, in hagiography in anglo-saxon england: adopting and adapting saints’ lives into old english prose (c. 9501150), ed. l. lazzari, p. lendinara, and c. di sciacca, fidem. tema 73 (barcelona and madrid: brepols, 2014), pp. 121181, esp. 124128, and c. pietri, ‘saints et démons: l’héritage de l’hagiographie antique’, in santi e demoni nell’alto medioevo occidentale (secoli vxi), settimane di studio del centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo (713 aprile 1988) 36 (spoleto: cisam, 1989), pp. 1792, rptd. in christiana respublica. éléments d’une enquête sur le christianisme antique, publications de l’école française de rome, 234 (rome: école française de rome, 1997), pp. 12351310, esp. pp. 13001304. 64 p. dinzelbacher, ‘der kampf der heiligen mit den dämonen’, in santi e demoni nell'alto medioevo occidentale, pp. 647695, and golinelli, ‘diabolus in figura’. 65 see, e.g. 1 pe. 5:8, where the devil is compared to a roaring lion prowling in search of victims to devour. 66 on the vita antonii, traditionally, though not universally, attributed to athanasius 70 claudia di sciacca on the appearance of wild beasts and try to bite the saint but do not quite go as far as devouring him and are soon chased away by his words.67 the earliest attestation of the devouring demonic monster is afforded by the letter of the churches of lyon and vienne, relating the persecutions against the christian communities of the two gaulish cities in 177 and addressed to their brethren in asia and phrygia.68 although the letter is known indirectly through the transcript included by eusebius of caesarea in his historia ecclesiastica, v.i.3ii.8, and the emphasis on the demonological elements might indeed be a later addition to the original account,69 it is nevertheless relevant to this discussion that in the letter as we know it the devil is repeatedly described as a greedy beast eager to swallow the martyrs and being forced to disgorge them alive when he realises that they are destined to heaven. what ultimately saves the lyon and vienne martyrs from the devil’s gluttony is their being christian, in other words, their participating in christ’s own victory over the devil. the soteriology of christus victor was staunchly advocated, amongst many early fathers of the eastern church, by iraeneus, a greek-speaking native of asia minor, who was priest in lyon during the persecution and bishop of the city afterwards, and the letter seems to be of alexandria, see bhg, no. 140; ed. g. j. m. bartelink (ed. and french trans.), vie d’antoine, sources chrétiennes 400 (paris: éditions du cerf, 1994); for an english translation, see t. vivian and a. n. athanassakis with r. a. greer, the life of antony. the coptic life and the greek life (kalamazoo, mi: cistercian publications, 2003), pp. 51259 [bhg: f. halkin, bibliotheca hagiographica graeca, 3rd ed., subsidia hagiographica 8a (brussels: société des bollandistes, 1957); id., auctarium, subsidia hagiographica 47 (brussels: société des bollandistes, 1969); id., novum auctarium, subsidia hagiographica 65 (brussels: société des bollandistes, 1984)]. for relevant chapters recounting various demonic attacks st antony is subject to, see bartelink, vie d’antoine, §§ 2133, pp. 192228. 67 bartelink, vie d’antoine, §§ 9:511 and 52:34, pp. 160163 and 276277. 68 j. behr, ‘gaul’, in m. m. mitchell and f. m. young (eds.), the cambridge history of christianity. i: origins to constantine (cambridge: cup, 2006), pp. 366379, at 368376. 69 the greek text of the letter is ed. by a. p. orbán (with facing page italian translation by s. ronchey) in a. a. r. bastiaensen (ed.), atti e passioni dei martiri (milan: mondadori, 1987), pp. 5995 and commentary at pp. 397404. for a summary of the debate on the authenticity of the letter see moss, the other christs, pp. 93 and 189. the devouring monster 71 clearly influenced by iraeneus’s teaching.70 indeed, according to another church father, gregory of nyssa († 394), christ himself was swallowed by the devil, in that, veiled by his human flesh, he deceptively offered himself to satan as bait to capture and vanquish him definitively.71 hence, the popular bait-and-hook metaphor in which the conflict between god and the devil for the salvation of humankind was articulated throughout the middle ages.72 in the west, the image of the fish-devil snatching at the bait-christ was employed by no less an exegetist than gregory the great in both his homily for easter day and the moralia in iob.73 ælfric, in turn, presumably drew on the former in the general explanation of the divine scheme of redemption in his own homily for palm sunday in the first series of the catholic homilies.74 3. a formidable dragon-fighter, st margaret of antioch the dracomachia is one of the most sensational and successful elaborations of the hagiographic topos of the fight with the demonic.75 indeed, in early 70 the classic study on the christus victor motif and the related ransom theory is by g. aulén (trans. by a. g. herbert), christus victor: an historical study of the three main types of the idea of the atonement (london: spck, 1931). for an updated discussion, see n. e. lombardo, the father’s will: christ’s crucifixion and goodness of god (oxford: oup, 2013), pp. 132143 and 181239, and pietri, ‘saints et démons’, pp. 12661269. 71 e. mühlenberg (ed.), gregorii nysseni oratio catechetica, gregorii nysseni opera iii.4 (leiden: brill, 1996), § 24, pp. 1820. 72 aulén, christus victor, pp. 5153, and lombardo, the father’s will, pp. 181239; see also m. schapiro, ‘“muscipula diaboli”, the symbolism of the mérode altar piece’, the art bulletin 27.iii (1945), pp. 182187, esp. 182183. 73 see r. étaix (ed.), gregorius magnus: homiliae in euangelia, ccsl 141 (turnhout: brepols, 1999), no. xxv, pp. 204216, esp. §§ 79, pp. 212-215, and m. adriaen (ed.), s. gregorii magni moralia in iob, 3 vols., ccsl 143, 143a, and 143b (turnhout: brepols, 19791985), xxxiii.vii, iii, 16841685. 74 ch i. 14: ed. p. clemoes, ælfric’s catholic homilies: the first series. text, eets ss 17 (oxford: oup, 1997), pp. 290298, esp. pp. 295296, lines 161179, and relevant commentary in m. godden, ælfric’s catholic homilies. introduction, commentary and glossary, eets ss 18 (oxford: oup, 2000), pp. 109119, esp. 117. see also tamburr, the harrowing of hell, pp. 2021. 75 ogden, drakōn, pp. 196256 and 383426; p. boulhol, ‘hagiographie antique et 72 claudia di sciacca christian hagiography dragon slaying seems to be ‘a well-established, familiar, almost recreational activity’ by the beginning of the fifth century.76 one of the most popular dragon fighting saint in the medieval west, and especially so in medieval england, is st margaret of antioch, whose legend introduces a distinctive, indeed unique, narrative twist into the commonplace hagiographic tradition of the dracomachia, in that the dragon actually swallows the saint who eventually emerges unscathed from the monster’s belly by making the sign of the cross.77 the flamboyant demonology of st margaret’s legend has long attracted the attention of scholars and previous scholarship has already pointed out its ultimate debt to a complex net of judaeo-christian apocryphal traditions.78 in particular, as far as the swallowing dragon motif is concerned, i have argued that it shows significant analogues with the cosmology of two apocrypha that have been traced to egyptian gnosticism, the seven heavens apocryphon and the pistis sophia.79 the seven heavens apocryphon is so-called because it describes the démonologie: notes sur quelques passions grecques (bhg 962z, 964 et 11651166)’, analecta bollandiana 112 (1994), pp. 255303, esp. 262267 and 269274; m. white, ‘the rise of the dragon in middle byzantine hagiography’, byzantine and modern greek studies 32.ii (2008), pp. 149167, esp. 157162; rauer, beowulf and the dragon, pp. 174193; and s. j. e. riches, ‘encountering the monstrous: saints and dragons in medieval thought’, in bildhauer and mills, the monstrous middle ages, pp. 196218. 76 ogden, drakōn, p. 395. 77 on the legend of st margaret in medieval england, see h. magennis, ‘margareta, passio’, in f. m. biggs, t. d. hill, p. e. szarmach, and e. gordon whatley (eds.), sources of anglo-saxon literary culture, i: abbo of fleury, abbo of saint-germain-després, and acta sanctorum (kalamazoo, mi: medieval institute publications, wmu, 2001), pp. 318321 (henceforth saslc aass); m. clayton and h. magennis (ed. and trans.), the old english lives of st margaret, csase 9 (cambridge: cup, 1994) (henceforth oelm); j. dresvina, a maid with a dragon: the cult of st margaret of antioch in medieval england (oxford: oup, 2016), t.-a. cooper, ‘why is margaret’s the only life in london, british library, cotton tiberius a. iii?’, in p. e. szarmach (ed.), writing women saints in anglo-saxon england, toronto anglo-saxon series 14 (toronto: utp, 2013), pp. 5581; di sciacca, ‘battling the devil’, and ibid. ‘the old english life of st margaret in london, british library, cotton tiberius a. iii: sources and relationships’, forthcoming in jegp 118.iii, pp. 354389. 78 see a survey of the relevant literature in di sciacca, ‘battling the devil’, pp. 4447. 79 di sciacca, ‘the old english life of st margaret’, pp. 368374. the devouring monster 73 journey and purgation of the souls, both blessed and sinful, through seven heavens,80 until they reach the throne of god and are there handed over by st michael for the lord to pass his judgment. the sinful souls are then plunged into hell, which is also a composite region, consisting of twelve walls, above which there are twelve fiery dragons,81 and the sinful soul is progressively swallowed and then spewed out from the outermost dragon to the lower one, until it reaches the chief devil, satan, bound on his back at the bottom of hell.82 the attestations of the seven heavens apocryphon in the west are concentrated in the british isles and in insular centres on the continent. it survives in variant forms in a latin epitome among the apocrypha priscillianistica;83 in three irish versions contained within the fís adomnáin or vision of adomnán,84 the liber flauus fergusiorum,85 and the third or 80 on the relevance of the number seven in jewish and early christian cosmology and eschatology, see a. y. collins, ‘numerical symbolism in jewish and early christian apocalyptic literature’, in her cosmology and eschatology in jewish and christian apocalypticism, supplements to the journal for study of judaism 50 (leiden: brill, 1996), pp. 55138, esp. 6263, 6976, 8384, 87, 9293, 9599, 101104, 110, 119120 and 122127. 81 on the relevance of the number twelve in jewish and early christian cosmology and eschatology, see collins, ‘numerical symbolism’, pp. 7880, 84, 108 and 127134. 82 the classic study on the seven heavens apocryphon is r. willard, two apocrypha in old english homilies, beiträge zur englischen philologie 30 (leipzig: tauchnitz, 1935; repr. 1967), pp. 130. more recently see c. d. wright, the irish tradition in old english literature, csase 6 (cambridge: cup, 1993), pp. 218221; ibid. ‘seven heavens apocryhon’, in sources of anglo-saxon literary culture: apocrypha, ed. f. m. biggs, instrumenta anglistica mediaevalia 1 (kalamazoo, mi: medieval institute publications wmu, 2007), pp. 1011 (henceforth saslc apocrypha), pp. 7879; and the studies collected in j. carey, e. nic cárthaigh and c. ó dochartaigh, eds., the end and beyond: medieval irish eschatology, 2 vols. (aberystwyth : celtic studies publications, 2014), esp. part i. afterlives and afterworlds. ii. the seven heavens, i, 155306 (henceforth the end and beyond). 83 the homily in question is item no. 2 in ms. karlsruhe, badische landesbibliothek, aug. perg. 254, s. viii/ix, novara; ed. and trans. j. carey, ‘the reichenau seven heavens homily’, in the end and beyond, pp. 189195. on the apocrypha priscillianistica, a collection of homiletic pieces, see c. d. wright, ‘apocrypha priscillianistica’, in saslc apocrypha, pp. 7374. 84 this vision dates to s. x/xi and has been defined as “the most vivid and elaborate account of the afterlife to have come down to us from medieval ireland”: j. carey, 74 claudia di sciacca modern recension of the cosmological treatise in tenga bithnua or the ever-new tongue86; finally, within one of the old english versions of the apocalypse of thomas, a popular apocryphon where christ purportedly reveals to the apostle thomas the fifteen signs that will herald the day of judgement.87 though these five surviving witnesses obviously agree in ‘the seven heavens in fís adomnáin’, in the end and beyond, pp. 197200, at 197. the most recent edition of fís adomnáin is in j. j. colwell, ‘fís adamnáin: a comparative study, with introduction, text and commentary based on the lebor na huidre’ (unpubl. phd diss., university of edinburgh, 1952); a new critical edition by j. carey is forthcoming in apocrypha hiberniae ii: apocalyptica 2, ed. m. mcnamara et al., ccsa (turnhout: brepols), and an english translation based on this forthcoming edition has already been published in carey, ‘the seven heavens in fís adomnáin’. 85 the liber flavus fergusiorum is ms. dublin, royal irish academy, 23 o 48, a twovolume collection of religious tracts, saints’ lives, passions and homilies and some legendary episodes from the ulster cycle and the tale of fortinbras, written c. 14371440. the seven heaven text or na seacht neamha is found in volume b, fol. 20v; the most recent edition and facing-page translation is by c. ó dochartaigh, ‘na seacht neamha in the liber flavus fergusiorum’, in the end and beyond, pp. 201209. 86 ed. and trans. e. nic cárthaigh, ‘the seven heavens in the modern recension of in tenga bithnua’, in the end and beyond, pp. 211283. this recension is preserved in thirty-nine manuscripts, the earliest of which possible dates from s. xv. the treatise itself was originally composed in s. ix or x; an edition and facing page translation of the first and second recension of the in tenga bithnua are in j. carey (ed. and trans.), apocrypha hiberaniae ii, apocalyptica 1: in tenga bithnua, ccsa 16 (turnhout: brepols, 2009). 87 cameron no. b3.4.12.1; ker, no. 32 art. 12; ed. m. förster, ‘a new version of the apocalypse of thomas in old english’, anglia 73 (1955), 636. this version of the apocalypse of thomas is the third item in a group of six vernacular homilies added onto the margins of ms. cccc 41: on this codex and its marginalia see below, n. 103. for a recent discussion of the apocalypse of thomas, especially its insular tradition, and relevant bibliography, see at least cavt, no. 326 [cavt: j.-c. haelewyck, clavis apocryphorum veteris testamenti (turnhout: brepols, 1998)]; t. o’sullivan, ‘the apocalypse of thomas’, in the end and beyond, pp. 567591, and f. m. biggs and c. d. wright, ‘apocalypse of thomas’, in saslc apocrypha, pp. 7172. interestingly, in the apocryphal acts of thomas, the saint also confronts a dragon and, as in st margaret’s demonic encounters, thomas interrogates the monster about its kin and ultimately causes it to burst open: see ogden, dragon, serpents, & slayers, pp. 202204, and ibid. drakōn, pp. 386387. the dragon-slaying episode is recounted in §§ 3033 of the greek acts of thomas, a text that, like the seven heavens apocryphon, betrays gnostic influences: see r. a. lipsius and m. bonnet (eds.), acta the devouring monster 75 significant places and betray what must have been a shared source, they are all independent from each other.88 the old english seven heavens text89 is the most detailed of the five surviving version of the seven heavens apocryphon in its description of the peculiar itinerary of the sinful soul to its final destination. in addition, it also contains the most thorough portrayal of satan bound with fiery bonds at the bottom of hell and in a position that resembles christ’s cross:90 sio helle hafað iserne weal 7 .xii. siðum. h[e] beliet ða helle, 7 ofer þam .xii. fealdum þara wealla wæron .xii. dracan fyrene. se grimma engel sende[ð] þa synfullan sawla þam ytemestan dracan 7 he hi forsweolgeð 7 eft aspiweð þam niðeran dracan, swa hira æghwylc sendeð oðrum in muð þa sawla, ðe bioð gebundene mid þam bendum ðara eahta synna ealdorlicra. se yetemesta draca þæt is þæt ealdordeoful se [bið] gebunden onbecling mid raceteage reades fyres to tacne cristes rode in hellegrunde. (the hell has an iron wall and twelve sides. it surrounds the hell, and above the twelve folds of these walls were twelve fiery dragons. the grim angel sends the sinful souls to the outermost dragon and he swallows them and spews [them] out again to the lower dragon; so each one of them sends the souls, who are bound with the bonds of the eight cardinal sins, to the other into [his] mouth. the outermost dragon, that is the chief devil, he [is] bound on his back with chains of red fire as a sign of christ’s cross at the bottom of hell.) these swallowing dragons can be said to be highly syncretistic creatures, in apostolorum apocrypha, 3 vols. (leipzig: mendelssohn, 18911903), ii.2, 147150; for an english translation, see a. f. j. klijn, the acts of thomas: introduction, text, commentary, 2nd ed., supplements to novum testamentum, 108 (leiden: brill, 2003), pp. 9098. on the knowledge of the acts of thomas in anglo-saxon england, see f. m. biggs, ‘martyrdom of thomas’, in saslc apocrypha, pp. 5556. 88 for a comparison between the five texts, see j. carey, ‘the seven heavens: introduction’, in the end and beyond, pp. 155170. the relationship between the old english version of the apocryphon and the other surviving witnesses is reviewed by n. volmering, ‘the old english account of the seven heavens’, in the end and beyond, pp. 285306 at 286287. 89 cameron no. b3.4.12.2; the most recent dedicated edition with facing page english translation is by volmering, ‘the old english account of the seven heavens’, pp. 298301, with notes at pp. 302306. 90 volmering, ‘the old english account of the seven heavens’, pp. 300301. 76 claudia di sciacca that they have been associated with the ‘monster of hell’, a motif popular in medieval insular eschatology, whose ‘ultimate progenitor’ has, in turn, been identified with the dragon parthemon of several latin redactions of the visio s. pauli,91 possibly the most popular and influential of all apocryphal apocalypses in the west.92 this ‘pauline’ element is intriguing, since the cosmology of the seven heavens texts has been traced to a gnostic apocalypse of paul from the coptic library of nag hammadi.93 more recently, the gnostic background of the seven heavens has been confirmed,94 but the closest antecedent of the apocryphon has rather been identified with another egyptian gnostic text, the pistis sophia. the pistis sophia is a third-century treatise95 featuring a gigantic serpentine 91 volmering, ‘the old english account of the seven heavens’, pp. 288 and 305, and wright, the irish tradition, pp. 156165, quotation at 165. 92 for an overview of the visio s. pauli and its circulation in the insular world, see at least wright, the irish tradition, pp. 106174 and a. dipaolo healey, ‘apocalypse of paul’, in saslc apocrypha, pp. 6770. on redaction xi of the visio, in particular, and its crucial impact in anglo-saxon england, see f. m. biggs, ‘apocalypse of paul’, in saslc apocrypha, p. 70, and t. o’sullivan, ‘the vision of saint paul: redaction xi’, in the end and beyond, pp. 397415, with the edition of the latin text and facing page english translation at pp. 404415. 93 j. stevenson, ‘ascent through the heavens, from egypt to ireland’, cambridge medieval celtic studies 5 (1983), pp. 2135, esp. 3033 where stevenson compares the nag hammadi text with the latin redactions of the visio, from which the nag hammadi text is demonstrably distinct. cf. also dumville, who before stevenson had supposed that the seven heavens apocryphon as we know it must have relied on a lost coptic version of the visio pauli: see d. n. dumville, ‘towards an interpretation of fís adamnán’, studia celtica 1213 (19771978), pp. 6277, esp. 6769. 94 j. carey, ‘the seven heavens and the twelve dragons in insular apocalyptic’, in m. mcnamara (ed.), apocalyptic and eschatological heritage: the middle east and celtic realms (dublin: four courts press, 2003), pp. 121136; c. touati, ‘the “apocalypse of the seven heavens”: from egypt to ireland’, in the end and beyond, pp. 171187, esp. 176183. cf. r. bauckham’s denial of any connection of the seven heavens apocryphon with gnostic egypt in favour of a significant relationship with an armenian apocryphon, the questions of ezra: see r. bauckham, ‘the apocalypse of the seven heavens: the latin version’, apocrypha 4 (1993), pp. 141175, and carey’s counter-arguments in his ‘the seven heavens and the twelve dragons’, pp. 127133, and ibid. ‘the seven heavens: introduction’, pp. 156157. 95 c. schmidt (ed.) and v. macdermot (english trans. and notes), pistis sophia, nag hammandi studies 9 (leiden: brill, 1978). the devouring monster 77 monster, the dragon of the outer darkness, that encircles the earth and bites its own tail.96 when the soul reaches the dragon, the latter takes its tail from its mouth in order to swallow the soul, which now has to go through twelve chambers of punishment inside the dragon’s body, each provided with its own gate and presided over by an archon with bestial features; once the soul has completed its ordeal of atonement, the dragon again takes its tail from its mouth and disgorges it.97 this composite structure of the underworld and the kind of circuit of purification and punishment the soul has to go through has been associated in particular with the gnostic sect of the ophites.98 however, 96 the circular snake biting its own tale is a sort of universal symbol of eternal return, on which see m. eliade, le mythe de l’éternel retour. archétypes et repetition (paris: gallimard, 1949), pp. 167194, and j. jacobi, complex, archetype, symbol in the psychology of c. g. jung, the international library of psychology. analytical psychology 2 (london: routledge, 1999), pp. 127198, esp. 185 and 197; in the germanic world such an archetype is represented by the miðgarðsórmr, on which see above, n. 7. the theme of circularity and roundness strongly marks the seven heavens cosmology: see touati, ‘the “apocalypse of the seven heavens”’, pp. 179183. 97 pistis sophia, iii, § 102 in schmidt and macdermot, pistis sophia, pp. 256262. see also j. carey, ‘the sun’s night journey: a pharaonic image in medieval ireland’, journal of the warburg and courtauld institutes 57 (1994), pp. 1434, at 2425, and ibid. ‘the seven heavens and the twelve dragons’, pp. 133135. however, the soul can escape the torments of the twelve chambers and quickly be delivered by the dragon if it knows the names of the twelve gates: pistis sophia, iii, § 130 in schmidt and macdermot, pistis sophia, pp. 327331. 98 carey, ‘the seven heavens and the twelve dragons’, pp. 134135, and touati, ‘the “apocalypse of the seven heavens”’, pp. 179183. jewish apocalyptic lore also included the motif of the ascent to heaven and a composite structure of the latter that included hell, as attested, for example, by the ethiopic enoch or 1 enoch, 2 enoch, the testament of levi and the ascension of isaiah: see a. y. collins, ‘the seven heavens in jewish and christian apocalypses’, in j. j. collins and m. fishbane (eds.), death, ecstasy, and otherwordly journeys, suny series in religious studies (albany, ny: suny press, 1995), pp. 5792, rptd. in a. y. collins, cosmology and eschatology in jewish and christian apocalypticism, supplements to the journal for study of judaism 50 (leiden: brill, 1996), pp. 2154, esp. 2430 and 3642. however, these texts seem to lack the testing and purificatory nature of the ascent and the hellish region hosted within the heavens is ‘prepared’ for the punishment of the sinful after doomsday: cf. touati, ‘the “apocalypse of the seven heavens”’, pp. 175 and 177. in 3 baruch, a jewish compilation that underwent some christian reworking, the third heaven contains a serpent whose belly is hades and here the punishment of the 78 claudia di sciacca it is perhaps fairer to say that this vision of the otherworld is highly syncretistic in that it is paralleled in other esoteric doctrines of graeco-roman egypt and, further back, in the ancient indigenous egyptian doctrines of the afterlife.99 intriguingly, the environment “that might well have fostered such a fusion of elements” has been pinpointed by carey in the heterodox monastic communities thriving in fourthand fifth-century egypt and whose “hybrid heritage lived on in the apocrypha of the coptic church”.100 4. the swallowing dragon in anglo-saxon england whereas there is no evidence for the circulation of the pistis sophia in anglosaxon england, we are on somewhat firmer ground when it comes to the tradition of the seven heavens apocryphon. the unique old english version of the apocryphon is probably just the tip of a wider iceberg, in that it can arguably have been derived from the translation of a now lost latin exemplar, the closest parallels of which have been detected with the latin homily of the apocrypha priscillianistica and the irish fís adomnáin.101 the ultimate origin of the latin homily and, albeit more tentatively, also of fís adomnáin, has in turn been traced to irish circles on the continent, which leaves the floor open for speculation about the possible route of transmission of the apocryphon to england.102 in addition, while the old english piece is uniquely attested, it has been argued that the scribe working on its manuscript witness, cambridge, corpus christi college wicked seems to occur immediately after death: see collins, ‘the seven heavens’, pp. 4346. 99 carey, ‘the sun’s night journey’, p. 25, n. 70; ibid. ‘the seven heavens and the twelve dragons’, pp. 135136; and touati, ‘the “apocalypse of the seven heavens”’, pp. 173183. 100 carey, ‘the sun’s night journey’, p. 32. 101 see carey, ‘the seven heavens: introduction’, pp. 164, 170 and 190, and volmering, ‘the old english account’, pp. 286287. 102 both carey and touati have posited a route from egypt to ireland via visigothic spain: see carey, ‘the sun’s night journey’, pp. 3233, and touati, ‘the “apocalypse of the seven heavens”’, pp. 185186. the wider context of such a route and possible alternatives to it are discussed in c. di sciacca, finding the right words: isidore’s synonyma in anglo-saxon england, toronto old english series 22 (toronto: utp, 2008), pp. 6266. the devouring monster 79 41,103 probably copied a pre-existent work; in other words, the extant corpus text is unlikely to be the original old english translation of the apocryphon.104 thus, if we take into account the alleged latin exemplar and the original lost old english translation, in all probability the anglo-saxon tradition of the seven heavens apocryphon was wider than its unique surviving witness would give credit for. this assumption is corroborated by a brief latin epitome of the seven heavens, containing the list of the names of the heavens, apparently derived from a version of the reference bible, the major hiberno-latin biblical commentary,105 which is attested in a late tenth 103 gneuss & lapidge, no. 39; ker, no. 32; m. r. james, a descriptive catalogue of the manuscripts in the library of corpus christi college, cambridge, 2 vols. (cambridge: cup; 1912), i, 8185, and the entry on the parker library on the web website with full digital reproduction of the codex available at https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/ catalog/qd527zm3425. the main item of the codex is a copy of the old english version of bede’s historia ecclesiastica (s. xi1), to which a slightly later hand (s. xi1 or ximed) added a number of marginalia both in latin (mass sets, office chants, prayers, charms) and in old english (homilies, charms, a medical recipe, fragments from the old english martyrology and the poem solomon and saturn i): see ker, no. 32, arts. 218; james, a descriptive catalogue, i, 8285; and volmering, ‘the old english account’, pp. 290296. see also r. j. s. grant, cambridge, corpus christi college 41: the loricas and the missal, costerus, 17 (amsterdam: rodopi, 1978); s. l. keefer, ‘margins as archive: the liturgical marginalia of a manuscript of the old english bede’, traditio 51 (1996), pp. 147177; t. a. bredehoft, ‘filling the margins of cccc 41: textual space and a developing archive’, the review of english studies n.s. 57 (2006), pp. 721732; and k. l. jolly, ‘on the margins of orthodoxy: devotional formulas and protective prayers in cambridge, corpus christi college 41’, in s. l. keefer and r. h. bremmer, jr. (eds.), signs on the edge: space, text and margins in medieval manuscripts, medievalia groningana n.s. 10 (leuven: peeters, 2007), pp. 135183. the seven heavens text is contained within a vernacular version of the apocalypse of thomas, which in turn is the third item in a set of six homiletic marginalia: see d. g. scragg, ‘the corpus of vernacular homilies and prose saints’ lives before ælfric’, anglo-saxon england 8 (1979), pp. 223277, rptd. with addenda in p. e. szarmach (ed.) with the assistance of d. a. oosterhouse, old english prose: basic readings, basic readings in anglo-saxon england 5 (london: garland, 2000), pp. 73150, at 86, and ker, no. 32 art. 12; see above, p. 74 and n. 87. 104 volmering, ‘the old english account’, pp. 286287. 105 c. d. wright, ‘pauca problesmata de enigmatibus ex tomis canonicis (reference bible)’, in f. m. biggs, t. d. hill, and p. e. szarmach with the assistance of k. hammond (eds.), sources of anglo-saxon literary culture: a trial version, medieval 80 claudia di sciacca century miscellaneous liturgical manuscript, london, british library, royal 8.c.iii, from canterbury, st augustine’s (fol. 62v).106 the seven heavens apocryphon proved an influential source in anglosaxon homiletics, as echoes of its idiosyncratic cosmology and eschatology have been detected in a number of old english anonymous homilies. fiery dragons that swallow and then regurgitate the sinful soul en route to its afterlife destination feature in be heofonwarum and be helwarum, a composite anonymous homily for the third sunday after epiphany, and in the so-called macarius homily and napier xxix, two composite anonymous homilies relating a post-mortem vision. in be heofonwarum and be helwarum hell is described as having twelve fiery walls, each guarded by a fiery dragon and each dragon swallows and then spits out the sinful soul until it is ultimately led to satan.107 as has long been established, this picture of hell is clearly very similar to the surviving versions of the seven heavens apocryphon, albeit more concise than the cccc 41 piece and not directly related to any of them.108 in particular, as wright has noted, the seven heavens section of be heofonwarum features a detail, namely the fire of hell is nine times hotter than the fire of doomsday,109 unparalleled in all the other surviving versions of the apocryphon but present in the pistis and renaissance texts and studies 74 (binghamton, ny: center for medieval and early renaissance studies. suny, 1990), pp. 9092, esp. 9091. on the influence of the reference bible in anglo-saxon england, see at least j. e. cross, ‘towards the identification of old english literary ideas – old workings and new seams’, in p. e. szarmach, with the assistance of v. darrow oggins, sources of anglo-saxon culture, studies in medieval culture 20 (kalamazoo, mi: medieval institute publications, 1986), pp. 77101, esp. 7983. 106 wright, the irish tradition, p. 219, and ibid. ‘seven heavens apocryphon’, p. 78. on the royal codex, see gneuss & lapidge, no. 475. 107 cameron no. b3.2.5; gneuss & lapidge, no. 86; ker, no. 56 art. 10 and no. 153 art. 4; ed. l. teresi, ‘be heofonwarum 7 be helwarum: a complete edition’, in early medieval texts and interpretations: studies presented to donald g. scragg, ed. e. m. treharne and s. b. rosser, mrts 252 (tempe, az: acmrs, 2002), pp. 211244, at 226229, esp. 228, lines 4052. 108 for a comparison of the relevant description in be heofonwarum with the seven heavens texts, see willard, two apocrypha, pp. 2429; wright, the irish tradition, pp. 219221; and volmering, ‘the old english account’, pp. 287289. 109 teresi, ‘be heofonwarum 7 be helwarum’, p. 228, lines 5556. the devouring monster 81 sophia, where different kinds of fires are arranged in a numerical gradatio.110 moreover, be heofonwarum and be helwarum includes eschatological themes popular with anglo-saxon anonymous homilists, the so-called three utterances exemplum, the monster of hell, and the motif of the men with tongues of iron, which have been traced to the same literary milieu as the seven heavens.111 the ‘macarius homily’112 and napier xxix113 also feature a dragon that swallows and then regurgitates the sinful souls,114 as well as attesting to another eschatological motif, namely that of the sinner’s body that starts to sweat profusely and change its colour when reproachfully approached by its departing soul.115 as has been already shown, such a motif can ultimately be 110 wright, the irish tradition, p. 220. 111 on these three themes, see wright, the irish tradition, pp. 215218, 156165, and 145156, respectively. 112 cameron no. b3.4.55; gneuss & lapidge, no. 66; ker, no. 50 art. 2; ed. and trans. into italian r. zaffuto, ‘edizione e analisi dell’omelia “ic bidde and eadmodlice lære men þa leofestan” (ms. cambridge, corpus christi college 201)’ (unpubl. phd diss., university of rome 3, 1999), pp. 178197. 113 cameron no. b3.4.26; gneuss & lapidge, no. 637; ker, no. 331 art. 22; ed. a. s. napier, wulfstan: sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen homilien nebst untersuchungen über ihre echtheit, sammlung englischer denkmäler in kritischen ausgaben 4 (berlin: weidmann, 1883; rptd. with an appendix by k. ostheeren, 1967), pp. 134143. the analogue with the seven heavens apocryphon in napier xxix has been noted by a. j. kabir, paradise, death, and doomsday in anglo-saxon literature, csase 32 (cambridge: cup; 2001), pp. 290291, and volmering, ‘the old english account’, p. 289; i discussed the parallel passage in both the ‘macarius homily’ and napier xxix and their link with the seven heavens tradition independently in c. di sciacca, ‘due note a tre omelie anglosassoni sul tema dell’anima e corpo’, in r. gendre and v. dolcetti corazza, i germani e gli altri. i, bibliotheca germanica. studi e testi 12 (alessandria: dell’orso, 2002), pp. 223250, at 243249. on the textual relationship between the ‘macarius homily’ and napier xxix, on the one hand, and between the latter two with other old english eschatological homilies, see also c. di sciacca, ‘the “ubi sunt” motif and the soul-and-body legend in old english homilies: sources and relationships’, jegp 105.iii (2006), pp. 365387, at 365381. 114 zaffuto, ‘edizione e analisi dell’omelia’, p. 192, lines 116118, and napier, wulfstan: sammlung, p. 141.2325. 115 zaffuto, ‘edizione e analisi dell’omelia’, p. 184, lines 9697, and napier, wulfstan: sammlung, p. 141.3. 82 claudia di sciacca traced to the three utterances apocryphon,116 and is most extensively attested in old english in another anonymous composite eschatological homily, vercelli iv.117 notably, vercelli iv too features a dragon, called satan, whose throat is the place where witches and wizards receive their eternal punishment,118 and contains an allusion to the ‘heaven of the holy trinity’, the seventh heaven.119 also, it is worth pointing out that a variant text of vercelli iv is attested among the marginalia of ms. cccc 41, the only witness of the old english seven heavens apocryphon.120 furthermore, another two anonymous homilies echo the cosmology of the seven heavens apocryphon in that they both imply a composite or multilayered structure of heaven. in an easter homily, in die sancto pasce, mention is made of a seventh heaven as the heaven of the holy trinity,121 while in a rogationtide homily, in uigilia ascensionis, it is said that the heavens are seven.122 notably, both homilies abound in eschatological themes, often of apocryphal origin. the easter homily can be considered an assemblage of popular motifs, including the sunday list, that is a list of the major biblical events happening on a sunday, the harrowing of hell, and judgement day.123 116 di sciacca, ‘due note a tre omelie anglosassoni’, pp. 236243; on the three utterances apocryphon, see above, n. 111. 117 cameron no. b3.4.9; gneuss & lapidge, no. 941; ker, no. 394 art. 4; ed. d. g. scragg, the vercelli homilies and related texts, eets o.s. 300 (oxford: oup, 1992), pp. 87107. on the textual relationship of vercelli iv with the ‘macarius homily’ and napier xxix, see di sciacca, ‘due note a tre omelie anglosassoni’, pp. 232243. 118 scragg, the vercelli homilies, p. 92, lines 4547. cf. volmering, ‘the old english account’, p. 289. 119 scragg, the vercelli homilies, p. 94, lines 90103; see also wright, ‘seven heavens apocryphon’, p. 78. 120 this version of vercelli iv is the first of the six homiletic marginalia of the corpus codex: ker, no. 32 art. 9, and scragg, ‘the corpus of vernacular homilies’, p. 86; see also above, n. 103. 121 cameron no. b3.2.27; gneuss & lapidge, no. 50; ker, no. 38 art. 32; ed. c. a. lees, ‘theme and echo in an anonymous old english homily for easter’, traditio 42 (1986), pp. 115142; the seventh heaven is mentioned at p. 118, lines 3639; relevant commentary is at pp. 132133. 122 cameron no. b3.2.42; ker, no. 57 art. 45; ed. j. bazire and j. e. cross, eleven old english rogationtide homilies, toronto old english series 7 (toronto: utp, 1982), pp. 5765, esp. 64, line 90, and relevant commentary at pp. 58 and 61 n. 13. 123 see lees, ‘theme and echo’, pp. 118119, lines 3186, and pp. 122123, lines 138171, and relevant commentary pp. 130138. on the sunday list, see c. d. the devouring monster 83 the rogationtide homily contains a description of the horrors of hell, echoing apocryphal apocalypses such as, firstly, the visio s. pauli and, secondly, the apocalypse of thomas and the apocalypse of peter, as well as a description of heavenly bliss.124 finally, a seven-heaven cosmology is also implied in the above-mentioned solomon and saturn prose paternoster dialogue, where the heart of the paternoster is said to shine twelve thousand times brighter than all the seven heavens,125 according to a numerical pattern that can be paralleled in the description of the twelve-fold wall of hell, presided over by twelve dragons, in the old english version of the seven heavens apocryphon126 and that has been considered an “irish symptom”.127 notably, one of the old english solomon-and-saturn texts, albeit fragmentary, features among the marginalia of ms. cccc 41, namely the first 95 lines of the poem solomon and saturn i, where benefits of the knowledge of the paternoster are praised, especially its power against evil, and the poem breaks off shortly after the prayer is hypostatized and its individual letter engages in a combat against the devil.128 the enumeration of the virtues of wright, ‘sunday lists’, in saslc apocrypha, pp. 7980, and on the motif of the harrowing of hell, see below, pp. 8599. 124 see bazire and cross, eleven old english rogationtide homilies, pp. 6264, lines 3875 and 79106. on the apocalypse of thomas, see above, p. 74 and n. 87, and on the apocalypse of paul, see above, p. 75 and n. 92. on the apocalypse of peter, see f. m. biggs and c. d. wright, ‘apocalypse of peter’, in saslc apocrypha, p. 71. the description of the heavenly bliss is phrased according to a distinctively insular inexpressibility topos as best attested in vercelli ix: see wright, the irish tradition, pp. 232233. 125 anlezark, the old english dialogues of solomon and saturn, p. 74, line 65. 126 see above, p. 75. 127 on the enumerative style in the insular world, see wright, the irish tradition, pp. 49105, 218221 and 251252. 128 ker, no. 32, art. 5; ed. and trans. anlezark, the old english dialogues of solomon and saturn, pp. 6065 and relevant apparatus criticus and commentary at pp. 9697 and 99108. for a comparative analysis of the cccc 41 fragment and the full text of solomon and saturn i in ms. cccc 422 (gneuss and lapidge, no. 110, and ker, no. 70a), see k. o’brien o’keeffe, visible song: transitional literacy in old english verse, csase 4 (cambridge: cup, 1990), pp. 4776. the above-mentioned solomon and saturn prose paternoster dialogue is uniquely attested in ms. cccc 422, where it immediately follows the poem solomon and saturn i and precedes a solomon and saturn poetic fragment and the poem solomon and saturn ii: for an overview of the anglo-saxon solomon and saturn texts, see k. o’ brien o’keeffe, ‘solomon and 84 claudia di sciacca the paternoster in solomon and saturn i, in particular, has been compared to a list of the virtues of god in vercelli iv, as one of the most relevant examples of the marked litanic style and numerically patterned sequences shared by the poem and the homily, which have been traced to hiberno-latin liturgical or devotional sources.129 last but not least, the imagery of the dragon devouring its victim was also popularised by the dialogi by gregory the great,130 one of the most influential and widespread hagiographic compilations and a major source for demonology in the medieval west.131 the dialogi proved especially popular in anglosaxon england132 where they were also translated into old english by werferth, bishop of worcester under king alfred’s patronage.133 in the saturn, poetic’ and ‘solomon and saturn, prose’, in bease 2, pp. 438439 [bease 2: m. lapidge et al. (ed.), the wiley blackwell encyclopedia of anglo-saxon england, 2nd ed. (chichester: wiley blackwell, 2014)]; anlezark, the old english dialogues of solomon and saturn, pp. 1257; p. p. o’neill, ‘on the date, provenance and relationship of the “solomon and saturn” dialogues’, anglo-saxon england 26 (1997), pp. 139168; and j. e. cross and t. d. hill (ed.), the prose solomon and saturn and adrian and ritheus: edited from the british library manuscripts with commentary, mc master old english studies and texts 1 (toronto: utp, 1982), pp. 313. on the literary milieu of the old english solomon and saturn texts and, especially, their debt to irish sources both contentand style-wise, see wright, the irish tradition, pp. 233257, and anlezark, the old english dialogues of solomon and saturn, pp. 1528; see also below, n. 152. 129 cf. anlezark, the old english dialogues of solomon and saturn, pp. 6265, lines 6667 and 7783, and scragg, the vercelli homilies, p. 97, lines 172183; see also wright, the irish tradition, pp. 262264. 130 a. de vogüé (ed.) and p. antin (trans. into french), grégoire le grand. dialogues, 3 vols., sources chrétiennes 251, 260 and 265 (paris: éditions du cerf, 19781980). 131 gregory, principe di questo mondo, p. 44. 132 on the success of the dialogi in anglo-saxon england, see at least m. gretsch, ælfric and the cult of saints in late anglo saxon england, csase 34 (cambridge: cup, 2005), pp. 136141, including a summary of the scholarly debate on the authorship of the dialogi, and k. dekker, ‘king alfred’s translation of gregory’s dialogi: tales for the unlearned?’, in r. h. bremmer jr, k. dekker, and d. f. johnson (eds.), rome and the north: the early reception of gregory in germanic europe, mediaevalia groningana n.s. 4 (leuven: peeters, 2001), pp. 2750. 133 h. hecht (ed.), bischof waerferths von worcester übersetzung der dialoge gregors des grossen, 2 vols., bap 5 (vol. i: leipzig: wigand, 1900, and vol. ii: hamburg: gand, 1907; rptd. in one volume darmstadt: wissenschaftliche buchgesellschaft, 1965) the devouring monster 85 second book of the dialogi (ii.xxv.2), devoted to st benedict, a rebellious monk eager to leave the monastery, hastily turns on his heels as he is confronted by a big dragon, his mouth wide agape, ready to devour him as the monk is about to exit the minster134. a similar scene occurs twice in the fourth book, where a dragon lurks by the deathbed of a sinful monk, again ready to devour the sinner. in the former passage (iv.xl.45), the dying monk cries out to his brethren that the dragon has already swallowed his head,135 while in the latter (iv.xl.11) the situation is somehow inverted as it is now the dragon who has put his head into the dying monk’s mouth to draw the monk’s living spirit to him.136 all the three relevant passages of the latin source-text were quite faithfully rendered into old english in werferth’s version, so they provide three further attestations of the motif of the swallowing dragon in the vernacular.137 moreover, the anecdote from dialogi, ii.xxv.2 was rendered into old english by ælfric and included into his own life of st benedict,138 and he also rendered the exemplum in dialogi iv.xl.45 in his twenty-first sunday after pentecost, although ælfric’s free handling of his source-text does not allow to identify the latter with the dialogi or, rather, with the two of gregory’s homeliae in euangelia containing another two versions of the exemplum.139 134 de vogüé, dialogues, ii, 212. two similar episodes are recounted also in gregory’s epistula xi.26: see d. norberg (ed.), s. gregorii magni registrum epistularum, 2 vols., ccsl 140 and 140a (turnhout: brepols, 1982), ii, 898901, at 900, lines 6189. 135 de vogüé, dialogues, iii, 140. another two versions of this anecdote are found in gregory’s homiliae in euangelia xix.7 and xxxviii.16: see étaix, homiliae in euangelia, pp. 142152, at 149152, and 359378, at 376378. 136 de vogüé, dialogues, iii, 146. 137 hecht, übersetzung der dialoge gregors, pp. 156, 324325 and 326327. 138 ch ii.11: ed. m. godden, ælfric’s catholic homilies: the second series. text, eets ss 5 (oxford: oup, 1979), pp. 92109, at 103, lines 376392. see also the commentary and notes to the text in ibid. introduction, commentary and glossary, pp. 429448. 139 ælfric’s homily is ch i. 35, ed. clemoes, the first series, pp. 476485, at 483484, lines 219258. on the two homilies by gregory attesting to the anecdote of dialogi iv.lx.4-5, see above n. 135, and for a discussion of ælfric’s sources, see godden, introduction, commentary and glossary, pp. 289298, esp. 296297. 86 claudia di sciacca 5. the harrowing of hell and the gospel of nicodemus if we move back to st margaret’s legend, the dragon’s swallowing of margaret and her emerging from inside the dragon’s belly (like a sort of christian jonah) after making the sign of cross has been likened to the harrowing of hell,140 when satan entices christ into hell only to be inevitably vanquished when christ sets his cross —the sign of victory— in the midst of hell. the harrowing of hell was an extremely popular narrative and iconographic motif (although the literary and artistic treatment of this theme did not necessarily evolve along the same lines),141 and especially so in anglosaxon england where “poets, homilists, and visual artists are remarkable for the variety of both their depictions and applications of the harrowing of hell”.142 since late antiquity, the story of christ’s descent into hell was variously elaborated in a series of spurious greek143 and latin sermons,144 but the chief 140 cooper, ‘why is margaret’s the only life?’, pp. 7475. on the origin and development of the harrowing of hell, see j. a. macculloch, the harrowing of hell: a comparative study of an early christian doctrine (edinburgh: t. & t. clark, 1930), and on its attestations in early medieval england, see j. j. campbell, ‘to hell and back: latin tradition and literary use of the “descensus ad inferos” in old english’, viator 13 (1982), 107158, and tamburr, the harrowing of hell. 141 tamburr, the harrowing of hell, pp. 155156. 142 tamburr, the harrowing of hell, p. 82. 143 see the sermo de baptismo (cpg iii, no 5520; pg 86.i: 371380); the sermo in illud: tu es qui uenturus es, an alium exspectamus? (mt xi:3) (cpg iii, no 5521; pg 86.i: 379384); the sermo in diabolum et orcum (cpg iii, no 5524; pg 86.i: 383406); the sermo de aduentu iohannis in infernum et de ibi inclusis (cpg iii, no 5522; pg 86.i: 509525); the sermo de christi passione (aka in paraskeven) (cpg iii, no 5526; pg 62: 721724), all five attributed to ps-eusebius of alexandria; the homilia in diuini corporis sepulturam (aka in sancto et magno sabbato) (cpg ii, no. 3768; pg 43, 439464), among the spuria of epiphanius of salamis (†403); finally, the sermons in uenerabilem crucem (cpg ii, no. 4525; pg 50:815820) and in triduanam resurrectionem domini (cpg ii, no. 4526; pg 50:821824), both among the dubia et spuria of john chrystostom: see macculloch, the harrowing of hell, pp. 174198; campbell, ‘to hell and back’, pp. 129132; a. kartsonis, anabasis: the making of an image (princeton, nj: princeton university press, 1986), p. 74, n. 104; and z. izydorczyk, ‘two newly identified manuscripts of the “sermo de confusione diaboli”’, scriptorium 43 (1989), pp. 253255. all these sermons deal with the events of christ’s passion and/or resurrection, with particular emphasis on christ’s descent into hell the devouring monster 87 ultimate source for the harrowing has generally been considered the gospel of nicodemus.145 this apocryphal gospel was the most widespread new testament apocryphon throughout medieval europe, as attested by the impressive number of both latin manuscripts surviving (over 400) and vernacular translations, as well as by its impact on both the literary culture and the visual arts.146 the gospel of nicodemus has an intrinsic composite nature and complex textual history. composed sometime between the second and the sixth century probably in greek, in its most widespread western form the apocryphal gospel consists of two latin texts, the acta pilati and the descensus christi ad inferos, which originally circulated independently before being conflated sometime between the fifth and eighth centuries to form a unique and vivid narrative of the trial, passion and crucifixion of christ and the harrowing of hell.147 and the exchange between satan and hell, with the former, deceived by christ’s human nature, trying to convince hell to detain him (see, especially, the sermo in diabolum et orcum, while the theme of satan’s deception and gullibility in thinking christ a ‘normal’ mortal is crucial to the sermo de baptismo). notably, in the sermo in diabolum et orcum hades is defined by the devil as �χ����σ��� or insabiatilis (pg 86.i: 399b), and in the homilia in diuini corporis sepulturam it is death that is defined by satan as �����σ��� or insabiatilis (pg 43:452c). 144 the most relevant of the latin sermons that mediated the harrowing of hell to anglo-saxon england was pseudo-augustine sermo 160 de pascha (cpl, no. 368; cppm i, no. 945; pl 208:925932): see t. n. hall, ‘the euangelium nichodemi and vindicta saluatoris in anglo-saxon england’, in j. e. cross (ed.), two old english apocrypha and their manuscript source: ‘the gospel of nichodemus’ and ‘the avenging of the saviour’, csase 19 (cambridge: cup, 1996), pp. 3681, at 5556 and relevant bibliography at p. 55, n. 69, and f. m. biggs and j. h. morey, ‘gospel of nicodemus’, in saslc apocrypha, pp. 2931, at 3031. 145 cant, no. 62 [cant: m. geerard, clavis apocryphorum novi testamenti (turnhout: brepols, 1992)]; bhg, no. 779t and bhg nouum auctarium, no. 779tb-te (recension a); bhg, no. 779u, v, and w (recension b). 146 on the latin tradition of the gospel of nicodemus, see z. izydorczyk, manuscripts of the euangelium nicodemi: a census (toronto: pims, 1993). on the dissemination of the gospel, see the comprehensive volume ed. by z. izydorczyk, the medieval gospel of nicodemus: texts, intertexts, and contexts in western europe, medieval and renaissance texts and studies 158 (tempe, az: arizona board of regents for arizona state university, 1997). 147 see z. izydorczyk, ‘the unfamiliar euangelium nichodemi’, manuscripta 33 (1989), pp. 169191, at 170176; ibid. ‘introduction’, in his the medieval gospel of 88 claudia di sciacca the gospel of nicodemus enjoyed a special and enduring popularity in england throughout the middle ages: “no european nation between the tenth and fifteenth centuries showed as sustained a fascination [with the gospel of nicodemus] as the english did”.148 five versions have survived from the anglo-saxon period: two of them are in latin and are attested in two north french manuscripts which reached england before the conquest, london, british library, royal 5.e.xiii149 and saint-omer, bibliothèque municipale 202.150 another three are in old english, that is the so-called nica,151 nicb152 and nicc.153 both the latin and the vernacular versions of nicodemus, pp. 120; hall, ‘the euangelium nichodemi and vindicta saluatoris’, pp. 3747; and bullitta, niðrstigningar saga, pp. 35. 148 hall, ‘the euangelium nichodemi and vindicta saluatoris’, pp. 5758. on the gospel of nicodemus in anglo-saxon england, see above, nn. 140 and 144. 149 s. ixex; north france or brittany; prov. england by s. xmed: gneuss & lapidge, no. 459, and hall, ‘the euangelium nichodemi and vindicta saluatoris’, pp. 4849. 150 s. ix2; north-east france; prov. england (exeter?) by s. ximed: gneuss & lapidge, no. 930.5, and j. e. cross and j. crick, ‘the manuscript: saint-omer, bibliothèque municipale, 202’, in cross, two old english apocrypha, pp. 1035; the latin text of the gospel of nicodemus is ed. with english translation and facing page old english text by j. e. cross, ‘texts and translations: evangelium nichodemi’, in cross, two old english apocrypha, pp. 138247. the st omer codex is the most conservative witness to paul the deacon’s homiliary to have circulated in england up to the twelfth century, but its first two items are a copy of the latin a recension of the gospel of nicodemus and of the mombritius-version of the passio s. margaretae [bhl 5303], on which see more below, pp. 8991. [bhl: (socii bollandiani,) bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis, subsidia hagiographica 6 (brussels: société des bollandistes, 1898-1901); novum supplementum, ed. h. fros, subsidia hagiographica 70 (brussels: société des bollandistes, 1986).] 151 cameron no. b8.5.2.1; contained in ms. cambridge, university library, ii.2.11 (s. xi3/4, exeter): gneuss & lapidge, no. 15; ker, no. 20 art. 11; and hall, ‘the euangelium nichodemi and vindicta saluatoris’, pp. 4951; ed. as base text (a), with english translation and facing page latin text from the saint-omer manuscript, by cross, ‘texts and translations: evangelium nichodemi’, pp. 138247. nica is the earliest old english version of the gospel of nicodemus and the closest to the lost archetypal old english translation as well as one of the two earliest vernacular versions in europe together with the old church slavonic version: see hall, ‘the euangelium nichodemi and vindicta saluatoris’, pp. 4950. 152 cameron no. b8.5.2.2; contained in ms. london, british library, cotton vitellius a.xv, pt i (s. xiimed): ker, no. 215 art. 2, and hall, ‘the euangelium nichodemi and the devouring monster 89 the gospel of nicodemus that circulated in pre-conquest england all attest to the latin recension a, also known as the majority text, by far the most widespread latin recension of the gospel.154 in particular, all three old english versions have been shown to derive ultimately from the latin a-text in saint-omer, bm 202.155 vindicta saluatoris’, p. 52; ed. w. h. hulme, ‘the old english version of the gospel of nicodemus’, pmla 13 (1898), pp. 457542, at 471515. nicb corresponds very closely to nica and has been collated as b in cross’s edition of nica: see above, n. 151. nicb is immediately followed in the vitellius manuscript by an old english solomon and saturn prose dialogue, which, however, is only partially related to the other solomon-and-saturn texts (on which see above, n. 128), and belongs instead to the joca monachorum genre: ed. cross and hill, the prose solomon and saturn, pp. 2534, with translation and commentary pp. 59129. 153 cameron no. b8.5.3.1; contained in ms london, british library, cotton vespasian d. xiv (s. xiimed, canterbury or rochester): ker, no. 209 art. 31; hall, ‘the euangelium nichodemi and vindicta saluatoris’, pp. 5253; and c. di sciacca, ‘london, british library, cotton vespasian d. xiv, fols. 4169: a case study of an english postconquest miscellaneous manuscript’, in r. h. bremmer jr and k. dekker (eds.), fruits of learning: the transfer of encyclopaedic knowledge in the early middle ages, storehouses of wholesome learning iv. mediaevalia groningana n. s. 21 (leuven: peeters, 2016), pp. 135159; ed. r. d.-n. warner, early english homilies from the twelfth-century ms vesp. d. xiv, eets os 152 (london: k. paul, trench, trübner & co., 1917), pp. 7788, and w. h. hulme, ‘the old english gospel of nicodemus’, modern philology 1 (19031904), pp. 579614, at 591610. nicc is a pretty drastic homiletic digest of the apocryphon and has been collated as c in cross’s edition of nica: see above, n. 151. 154 for a convenient and updated discussion of recension a see bullitta, niðrstigningar saga, pp. 612. besides the majority text, another three latin recensions have been identified, i.e. b (originated in northern italy, the earliest witnesses dating to s. xi), c (originated in spain in s. ix), and t (a hybrid text conflating a and c, probably originated in north france in s. xii1): see bullitta, niðrstigningar saga, pp. 1217; on the latin tradition of the gospel of nicodemus, in general, see above, n. 146. 155 j. e. cross, ‘saint-omer 202 as the manuscript source for the old english texts’, in cross, two apocrypha, pp. 82104, esp. 8287, 9097 and 100104; a. orchard, ‘the style of the texts and the translation strategy’, ibid. pp. 105130, esp. 105108 and 123130; and e. v. thornbury, ‘building with the rubble of the past: the translator of the old english gospel of nicodemus and his flawed source’, in j. roberts and l. webster (eds.), anglo-saxon traces, medieval and renaissance texts and studies 405. essays in anglo-saxon studies 4 (tempe, az: acmrs, 2011), pp. 297318. 90 claudia di sciacca i would argue that the intertwined imagery of the devouring demonic monster and of the mouth of hell in its anglo-saxon elaborations may ultimately have originated from some conflation between the apocryphal traditions attested in the seven heavens apocryphon and the gospel of nicodemus, especially the section of the latter concerning the descensus ad inferos. this hypothesis seems to me to be supported by both the manuscript evidence and the thematic correspondences that run through the two apocrypha and the derivative homilies and hagiographies. as to the manuscript evidence, it should be pointed out that the codex containing the old english version of the seven heavens apocryphon, cccc 41, also features an easter homily that includes an adaptation of the harrowing of hell narrative (nicd).156 (it may be worth remembering that one of the old english anonymous homilies attesting to the seven heavens cosmology is an easter homily, in die sancto pasce, which also feature the harrowing of hell scene.)157 indeed, the six homiletic marginalia of the cambridge manuscript on the whole can be considered as a small compendium of apocryphal eschatology and demonology, their recurring themes being the fate of the soul, doomsday, and the resurrection.158 what is more, their thematic (and, at times, also stylistic) consistency suggests a shared literary milieu, namely one that was imbued with apocryphal lore and with a 156 cameron no. b8.5.3.2; ker, no. 32 art. 13; ed. hulme, ‘the old english gospel of nicodemus’, pp. 610614. a version of this easter homily is also attested in ms. cambridge, corpus christi college 303: see below, p. 91. 157 see above, p. 82. 158 the six vernacular homilies, all anonymous, are: a version of vercelli homily iv, on which see above, pp. 8182; an abbreviated vernacular adaptation of version b2 of the transitus mariae by pseudo-melito, uniquely attested in cccc 41: cameron no. b3.3.21; ker, no. 32 art. 11; ed. m. clayton, the apocryphal gospels of mary in anglosaxon england, csase 26 (cambridge: cup, 1998), pp. 216228; the version of the apocalypse of thomas which includes the seven heavens apocryphon, uniquely attested in cccc 41, on which see above, p. 74; nicd, on which see above, n. 156; a homily on st michael, the christian dragon slayer per excellence, uniquely attested in cccc 41: cameron no. b3.3.24; ker, no. 32 art. 17; ed. and trans. r. j. s. grant, three homilies from cambridge, corpus christi college 41: the assumption, st michael and the passion (ottawa: tecumseh, 1982), pp. 4277; finally, a homily on palm sunday based on the account of christ’s passion in mt 26 and 27, uniquely attested in cccc 41: cameron no. b3.2.19; ker, no. 32 art. 18; ed. and trans. grant, three homilies, pp. 78110. the devouring monster 91 discernible hiberno-latin background.159 secondly, two manuscripts circulating in early medieval england, saintomer, bm 202 and cambridge, corpus christi college 303, contain both the gospel of nicodemus and the life of st margaret, the flamboyant demonology of which has been associated with the apocryphal traditions and imagery of the seven heavens and the harrowing of hell. the saint-omer codex is a key witness of the latin tradition of the gospel of nicodemus, in general, since it is one of the earliest extant witnesses of the majority text, and of the anglo-saxon manuscript tradition of the gospel, in particular, since it has been demonstrated to be the exemplar of the lost archetypal old english translation from which the three surviving old english versions of the apocryphon, nic a, nicb and nicc, independently derive.160 what is more, the latin text of the gospel in the saint-omer manuscript is immediately followed by a copy of the most widespread latin recension of the life of st margaret, the so-called mombritius version.161 cccc 303 is a post-conquest compilation of (mostly ælfrician) homilies and saints’ lives,162 containing another version of the vernacular adaptation of the gospel of nicodemus fashioned within an easter homily also attested 159 volmering, ‘the old english account’, pp. 292296. 160 see above, pp. 8889. 161 version 1 (a); bhl, no. 5303; and oelm, pp. 79. the saint-omer codex must have reached england by the mid-eleventh century: see above, n. 150. however, there survives at least another earlier anglo-saxon witness of the mombritius version, which attests to its circulation in england as early as the end of the ninth century or beginning of the tenth, i.e. paris, bibliothèque nationale de france, lat. 5574 (s. ix/x or x1/4, mercia?, prov. france, s. xii): see gneuss & lapidge, no. 885.5 and oelm, pp. 9596; the text of the life of st margaret in the paris manuscript is ptd. in oelm, pp. 192223. 162 ker, no. 57; r. gameson, the manuscripts of early norman england (c. 1066  c. 1130) (oxford: oup, 1999), no. 57; james, a descriptive catalogue, ii, 95100; oelm, pp. 9294. see also e. treharne, ‘cambridge, corpus christi college, 303’, in the production and use of english manuscripts 1060 to 1220, ed. by o. da rold, t. kato, m. swan and e. treharne (university of leicester, 2010), available at https://www.le.ac.uk/english/em1060to1220/mss/em.cccc.303.htm (15 february 2019), and the relevant entry on the parker on web website with full digital reproduction of the codex available at https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/catalog/ fr670md2824. 92 claudia di sciacca among the marginalia of cccc 41 (i.e. nicd),163 as well as one of the two surviving complete old english versions of the life of st margaret.164 interestingly, the life of st margaret and the gospel of nicodemus are also associated within the icelandic manuscript tradition. indeed, in the late fourteenth-century codex, am 233,165 the niðrstigningar saga166 is wedged between the margrétar saga, an old icelandic version of the life of st margaret,167 and the kross saga, an icelandic version of the inuentio s. crucis.168 such a cluster resonates meaningfully with the anglo-saxon texts under consideration and their manuscript contexts, in that the soteriology of the cross and related imagery is a key doctrinal aspect underlying them. in the earliest manuscript witness attesting the life of st margaret in anglo-saxon england, paris bnf lat. 5574, the saint’s life is preceded by an (incomplete) copy of the inuentio s. crucis (bhl no. 4169) and of the exaltatio s. crucis (partly as bhl no. 4178),169 and cccc 41 contains many an item concerning the cross, including an entry for the invention on the cross, celebrated on 3rd may, and, later on in the codex, an office for the invention, both in latin.170 163 ker, no. 57 art. 17. this vernacular adaptation of the gospel of nicodemus is known as nice, cameron no. b8.5.3.3, ed. hulme, ‘the old english gospel of nicodemus’, pp. 610614. on nicd, see above, n. 156. 164 cameron no. b3.3.14; ker, no. 57 art. 23; ed. and trans. oelm, pp. 149180. see also above, n. 77. 165 bullitta, niðrstigningar saga, pp. 2831. 166 the text in question in the arnamagnean codex (fols. 28ra28vb) is the older (defective) redaction of the niðrstigningar saga: ed. bullitta, niðrstigningar saga, pp. 133153; see also above, n. 60. 167 the text contained in the arnamagnean codex (fol. 27rb) is the older (defective) redaction of the margrétar saga: see k. wolf, ‘margaret of antioch. 1. margrétar saga’, in her the legends of the saints in old norse-icelandic prose, toronto old norse and icelandic studies 6 (toronro: utp, 2013), pp. 217219 and relevant bibliography. 168 k. wolf, ‘ii. kross saga: inventio crucis. 1. inventio crucis’, in her the legends of the saints, pp. 8385 and relevant bibliography. 169 on the paris manuscript, see above, n. 161. on the inventio s. crucis and the exaltatio s. crucis in anglo-saxon england, see f. m. biggs and e. g. whatley, ‘iesus christus, inventio sanctae crucis’, and e. g. whatley, ‘iesus christus, exaltatio sanctae crucis’, in saslc aass, pp. 264267 and 259263, respectively. 170 the former occurs at p. 60 and the latter at pp. 224225: james, a descriptive catalogue, i, 8384. in both bede’s martyrologium and the old english martyrology, the invention of the cross is also commemorated on 3rd may: see h. quentin (ed.), the devouring monster 93 the theme of the cross occurs repeatedly in the old english homilies and hagiographies that have been discussed. the old english seven heavens piece is the only extant version of the apocryphon detailing that satan is bound on his back at the bottom of hell with chains of red fire to tacne cristes rode, “as a sign of christ’s cross”, that is, in a position resembling the very symbol that overpowered him as if according to a kind of contrapasso.171 the binding of satan makes up the climactic scene of the harrowing of hell and, notably, the old norse niðrstigningar saga supplements the latin base-text by specifying that the bonds holding satan are made of fire (meþ elldiglom bondom), in an intriguing parallel with the anglo-saxon tradition.172 even if the detail of the cross-position of satan in the old english text is unparalleled in the niðrstigningar saga, the key role of the cross in the redemption of mankind, the deliverance of adam and the patriarchs from the captivity of hell and, ultimately, in satan’s defeat is given great emphasis in the harrowing of hell,173 and especially so in the niðrstigningar saga, where a lengthy interpolation (§xxi.1) recounts that satan has been caught on the cross like a fish on a hook, with christ’s blood acting as the bait fatefully deceiving the devil.174 the combination within the niðrstigningar saga of the bait-and-hook metaphor175 and the soteriology of the cross, in turn, finds an echo in st margaret’s legend, where the motifs of the demonic dragon fatefully feeding on the body of the saint and that of the cross as a seal singling out and, at the les martyrologes historiques du moyen âge: étude sur la formation du martyrologe romain (paris: lecoffre, 1908); repr. uomini e mondi medievali. reprints centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 5. i (spoleto: centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2002), pp. 17119, and c. rauer (ed. and trans.), the old english martyrology: edition, translation and commentary, anglo-saxon texts 10 (cambridge: boydell & brewer, 2013), pp. 9495 and relevant commentary at p. 257. 171 see above, p. 75. the fire of hell is described as red (readum fyre / mid readum lige) also in be heofonwarum 7 be helwarum, while there the chains fastening satan are simply fiery (mid fyrenum receteagum): see teresi, ‘be heofonwarum 7 be helwarum’, p. 228, lines 41, 44, and 52. 172 bullitta, niðrstigningar saga, p. 146. the latin antecedent of the niðrstigningar saga has been traced to the latest of the latin recensions of the gospel of nicodemus, i.e. t: see above, n. 154. 173 tamburr, the harrowing of hell, pp. 3032. 174 bullitta, niðrstigningar saga, pp. 141143. 175 see above, pp. 7071. 94 claudia di sciacca same time, protecting the saint, are two vital, intertwined facets of the narrative.176 indeed, it has been argued that st margaret’s legend represents the most significant attestation to the apotropaic and soteriological efficacy of the sign of the cross in anglo-saxon england, in particular the vernacular version of the life of st margaret in cccc 303.177 notably, in the miscellaneous ms. london, british library, cotton tiberius a.iii, containing the other complete old english life of st margaret,178 many a text concerns the soteriological and apotropaic efficacy of the cross.179 in particular, an item of the tiberius collection traditionally classified as a charm against cattletheft,180 can rather be considered a cross devotion because it contains “a performative appeal to the cosmological [power of the] cross” to deliver thieves to justice, thanks to its legendary power to reveal what has been illicitly hidden.181 this ‘charm’ also occurs —though not identically— in 176 see di sciacca, ‘battling the devil’, pp. 5662, and ibid. ‘the old english life of st margaret’, pp. 360361. references to the protective power of the cross against demonic attacks are also scattered across the vita antonii: see bartelink, vie d’antoine, §§ 35:23, 53:2, 78:5 and 80:24, pp. 230, 276278, 334 and 338. the sinful monk who envisions a dragon trying to devour him on his deathbed in dialogi iv.xl.45 is also advised by his brethren to sign himself against the demonic vision: see above, p. 85 and n. 135. 177 d. f. johnson, ‘the crux usualis as apotropaic weapon in anglo-saxon england’, in c. e. karkov, s. l. keefer, and k. l. jolly (eds.), the place of the cross in in anglo-saxon england, publications of the manchester centre for anglo-saxon studies 4 (woodbridge: boydell, 2006), pp. 8095, at 9394. see also above, n. 164. 178 cameron no. b3.3.16; ker, no. 186 art. 15; ed. and trans. oelm, pp. 109148. see also above, n. 77. 179 di sciacca, ‘the old english life of st margaret’, pp. 379383. see also below, n. 197. 180 ker, no. 186 art 28; ed. t. o. cockayne (ed. and trans.), leechdoms, wortcunning, and starcraft of early england: being a collection of documents, for the most part never before printed, illustrating the history of science in this country before the norman conquest, rerum britannicarum medii aevi scriptores 35 (london: longmans, green, reader, and dyer, 18641866; repr. nendeln: kraus, 1965), iii, 286. 181 t.-a. cooper, monk-bishops and the english benedictine reform movement: reading london, bl, cotton tiberius a. iii in its manuscript context, studies and texts 193 (toronto: pims, 2015), pp. 140141 and 157161, quotation at 158. on the porosity of “the walls that separate intercession, invocation, incantation”, see r. m. liuzza, ‘prayers and/or charms addressed to the cross’, in k. l. jolly, c. e. karkov, and s. larratt keefer (eds.), cross and culture in anglo-saxon england: studies in honor of the devouring monster 95 another four anglo-saxon manuscripts,182 including the very marginalia of ms. cccc 41, the witness of the old english seven heavens apocryphon.183 the cross is also the protective sign (gr. sphragís, lat. signaculum) imposed at baptism with which the baptizand is marked on her/his forehead to show that s/he henceforth belongs to christ’s flock as well as to the militia christi.184 as christ defeated the forces of evil by his suffering on the cross, george hardin brown, medieval european studies 9. santa crux/haliga rod series 1 (morgantown, wv: west virginia up, 2007), pp. 279323, esp. 291296 and 317320, quotation at 296. see also h. foxhall forbes, heaven and earth in anglosaxon england: theology and society in an age of faith, studies in early medieval britain (farnham and burlington, vt: ashgate, 2013), pp. 8086; l. olsan, ‘the inscription of charms in anglo-saxon manuscripts’, oral tradition 14.ii (1999), pp. 401419, esp. 402403; and jolly, ‘on the margins of orthodoxy’, pp. 173174. 182 cooper records the occurrence of the ‘cattle-theft charm’ in three codices besides tiberius a.iii, i.e. rochester, cathedral library, a. 3. 5, the so-called textus roffensis, at fol. 95 (early 1120s, rochester: ker, no. 373); cambridge, corpus christi college 383, at p. 87 (s. xi/xii, prob. london, st paul’s: gneuss & lapidge, no. 102; ker, no. 65), both legal books, and cambridge, corpus christi college, 190, pp. iiixii, 1294, at p. 130 (s. xi1, worcester?, prov. exeter by ximed: gneuss & lapidge, no. 59; ker, no. 45a), one of archbishop wulfstan’s ‘commonplace books’: see cooper, monk-bishops, p. 299. however, this ‘charm’ also occurs in yet another manuscript, namely cccc 41: see below, n. 183. finally, two seventeenth-century copies of the ‘charm’ survive in london, british library, harley 438 and cotton julius c.ii: see olsan, ‘the inscription of charms’, p. 409. storms collates the versions of the charm in tiberius a.iii, cccc 190, and harley 438 for his item 11a (old english with facing page modern english translation), and versions from the textus roffensis and julius c.ii as item 11b (old english text only): g. storms (ed.), anglo-saxon magic (the hague: nijhoff, 1948), pp. 202205. 183 ker, no. 32 art. 7; james, a descriptive catalogue, i, 8384; ed. grant, cambridge, corpus christi college 41, pp. 56; a semi-diplomatic transcript is in jolly, ‘on the margins of orthodoxy’, pp. 157158, and an english trans. is in olsan, ‘the inscription of charms’, pp. 415416. for an analysis of the structure and content of the ‘charm’ as well as of its overlaps with the versions in other manuscripts, see grant, cambridge, corpus christi college 41, pp. 714; olsan, ‘the inscription of charms’, pp. 408410; and jolly, ‘on the margins of orthodoxy’, pp. 154161. 184 j. daniélou, the bible and the liturgy (notre dame, in: the university of notre dame press, 1956), pp. 5469, esp. 5456. on baptism in anglo-saxon england, see at least m. bradford bedingfield, the dramatic liturgy of anglo-saxon england, anglo-saxon studies (woodbridge: boydell, 2002), pp. 171190, and foxhall forbes, 96 claudia di sciacca through the imposition of the baptismal sphragís/signaculum the christian participates in christ’s victory and is made fearful to and inviolable by demons.185 in particular, the baptismal sign of the cross prevents the christian from being “swallowed by the horrible dragon”, as specifically stated in a fundamental patristic text on the baptismal liturgy and its symbolism, the catecheses ad illuminandos by cyril of jerusalem († 386).186 indeed, baptism plays a crucial role in st margaret’s legend, in that margaret’s sanctity is acquired and sanctioned by two subsequent baptisms she goes through, namely a ritual of self-baptism while tortured in a water vessel, and then the most definitive form of baptism, the martyrs’ baptism of blood.187 on the other hand, the harrowing of hell has rich baptismal associations too.188 in the third catechesis, cyril of jerusalem explicitly likens the immersion in the baptismal font and the ensuing purification to christ’s defeat of satan and death at the harrowing of hell.189 heaven and earth in anglo-saxon england, pp. 103111. 185 daniélou, the bible and the liturgy, pp. 56-63. on the theology of the sphragís in anglo-saxon literary culture, see t. d. hill, ‘the sphragis as apotropaic sign: andreas 13341344’, anglia 101 (1983), 147151, and johnson, ‘the crux usualis’. 186 see in particular catechesis iii. xii: ‘sed gratiae inuocatio obsignans animam, non permittit in posterum te ab horrendo dracone deglutiri’ (‘but the invocation of grace, placing a seal upon your soul, makes you proof against the dragon’s maw’): w. k. reischl and j. rupp (eds.), s. patris nostri cyrilli, hierosolymorum archiepiscopi, opera, quæ supersunt, omnia, 2 vols. (munich: lentner, 18481860), i, 6487 (greek text with facing page latin translation); the relevant passage is at pp. 80 (greek) and 81 (latin); english translation by l. p. mccauley and a. a. stephenson, the works of saint cyril of jerusalem. i: catecheses 112, fathers of the church 61 (washington, dc: catholic university of america press, 1969), p. 115. 187 see di sciacca, ‘battling the devil’, pp. 6264, and ibid. ‘the old english life of st margaret’, pp. 379380 and 383384. 188 one of the spurious greek sermons elaborating on the theme of the harrowing of the hell is a sermo de baptismo: see above, n. 143. 189 catechesis iii. xi: “quando igitur conterenda erant capita draconis, descendens in aquas, ligavit fortem, ut potestatem acciperemus calcandi supra serpentes et scorpiones. […] accurrit vita ut in reliquum mors recluderetur, et salutem consecuti omnes diceremus: ubi est mors victoria tua, ubi est inferne stimulus tuus? per baptismum solvitur mortis stimulus” (“when, therefore, it was necessary to crush the heads of the dragon, descending into the water, he [christ] bound the strong one, that we might receive the ‘power to tread upon serpents and scorpions’. […] life came running up, that the maw of death might be stopped and all we who were saved the devouring monster 97 indeed, the harrowing of hell was associated formally and liturgically with the baptismal rite par excellence of the early church, that administered on easter eve, when the birth to christianity of the catechumen compellingly paralleled christ’s rebirth at resurrection.190 redemption and rebirth are often described in terms of coming out of water both in the old and the new testament (e.g. the story of noah’s ark, the crossing of the red sea, the baptismal ritual, and so on), and the symbolism of the baptismal immersion and emersion implies that the catechumen is sort of separated into a mortal part that drowns and an immortal part that escapes.191 in one of the key passages on baptism of the new testament, st paul’s romans 6:114, baptism is explicitly interpreted as a re-enactment and appropriation, on the part of the individual christian, of the death and resurrection of christ.192 although the exact timing of the harrowing of hell was far from unambiguous, as it could be placed anytime between late holy friday and late holy saturday or early easter sunday, the liturgy of easter eve was ultimately key to establish the idea that the harrowing and the resurrection were pretty much contemporary;193 hence the conflation of their commemoration at the might say: ‘o death, where is thy sting? o grave, where is thy victory?’ baptism draws death’s sting.”): reischl and rupp, cyrilli hierosolymorum opera, i, pp. 7880 (greek) and 7981 (latin); english translation by mccauley and stephenson, the works of saint cyril of jerusalem, p. 115. 190 tamburr, the harrowing of hell, pp. 710, and bradford bedingfield, the dramatic liturgy of anglo-saxon england, pp. 139156. in a homily for holy saturday, preceding vigils, bede relates the miracle of christ’s healing of the deaf-mute (mk 7:3137), but makes recurrent references to baptism, especially the upcoming baptism for catechumens in the audience: ed. d. hurst, bedae uenerabilis opera. pars iii: opera homiletica. pars iv: opera rhythmica, ccsl 122 (turnhout: brepols, 1955), pp. 220224; trans. by l. t. martin and d. hurst, bede the venerable: homilies on the gospels, 2 vols., cistercian studies series 110111 (kalamazoo, mi: cistercian publications, 1991), ii, 5157. 191 frye, the great code, pp. 195196 and 213. 192 a. y. collins, ‘the origin of christian baptism’, in her cosmology and eschatology, pp. 218238, esp. 235238. see also ioh 3:38, col. 2:12, tit 3:5 and 1 pet 3:21. 193 as frye has put it, “the hero who comes to deliver us from [death] has to be absorbed into the world of death —that is, he has to die. [in the gospel narrative of christ’s passion and death on the cross] sin and death are symbolically transferred by the hero to the demonic world, hence the resurrection, including the harrowing of hell of later legend, effects a total separation of the world of life from the world of death”: frye, the great code, p. 214. 98 claudia di sciacca easter vigil.194 in anglo-saxon england, in particular, the paschal context of the harrowing of hell is further corroborated by the textual evidence, besides the liturgical associations, in that this motif mostly occurs within easter sunday homilies.195 easter week liturgy also put a premium on the veneration of the cross, since the good friday office culminated in the adoratio crucis, a ritual that, dating back to the veneration of the relics of the true cross in jerusalem at least from the fourth century, eventually spread throughout the church.196 in anglo-saxon england, this common liturgical practice developed in a distinctively lengthy and dramatic ritual from as early as the seventh century and was eventually laid out extensively and detailedly in the regularis concordia.197 194 bradford bedingfield, the dramatic liturgy of anglo-saxon england, pp. 139144. in the old english martyrology, the harrowing of hell is commemorated on 26 march, typologically the date of holy saturday, and this entry is apparently the earliest english description of the harrowing: see rauer, the old english martyrology, pp. 7477 and relevant commentary at pp. 249250. notably, in the eastern church, the story of jonah became an integral part of the easter vigil as one of its staple old testament readings at least as early as the fifth century: g. bertonière, the historical development of the easter vigil and related services in the greek church, orientalia christiana analecta 193 (rome: pontificium institutum studiorum orientalium, 1972), pp. 5965 and 130132. 195 three vernacular versions of the gospel of nicodemus, nicc, nicd and nice, are all easter sunday homilies: see above, pp. 8891. the harrowing of hell motif also occurs within two anonymous easter sunday homilies, namely the above-mentioned in die sancto pasce, on which see above, p. 90, and blickling vii: cameron no. b3.2.26; ker, no. 382 art. 7; ed. r. morris, the blickling homilies of the tenth century, eets os 58, 63 and 73 (london: trübner, 18741880; rptd. with corrections in one volume london: oup, 1997), pp. 8397; see also tamburr, the harrowing of hell, pp. 7177. ælfric too connects the harrowing of hell to resurrection in his sermo de initio creaturae (ch i. 1) and homily for palm sunday (ch i. 14): see clemoes, ælfric’s catholic homilies, pp. 178189, esp. 188189, lines 276293, and 290298, esp. 296297, lines 184194, and relevant commentary in godden, introduction, commentary and glossary, pp. 713, esp. 13, and 109119, esp. 118; cf. tamburr, the harrowing of hell, pp. 2021 and 7778. on ælfric’s homily for palm sunday, see also above, p. 71. 196 bradford bedingfield, the dramatic liturgy of anglo-saxon england, pp. 123139. 197 t. symons (ed. and trans.), regularis concordia (london and new york, ny: nelson, 1953), p. xlvi and chpts. xliiivi, pp. 4145. for a discussion of the good the devouring monster 99 notably, in the anglo-saxon understanding of the cross and commemoration of the crucifixion, in general, and in the liturgy of the adoratio crucis, in particular, the cross is portrayed not so much as a symbol of christ’s suffering as an emblem of his redeeming power.198 in other words, the cross is the uexillum that stands not for a dying christ, but for a christus victor who through his sacrifice on the cross defeats death, darkness, and ultimately satan at the harrowing, as well as bestowing the same power onto all christians through the imposition of the cross at baptism.199 friday adoratio crucis, see s. l. keefer, ‘the performance of the cross in anglosaxon england’, in cross and culture in anglo-saxon england, ed. jolly, karkov, and keefer, pp. 203241, and cooper, monk-bishops, pp. 131133. as mentioned above, ms. tiberius a.iii, containing one of the two surviving old english lives of st margaret, the theme of the cross is pervasive; in particular, the good friday service, besides being attested in its entirety within the copy of the regularis concordia, is also drawn on in two cross devotions (ker, no. 186 arts. 10c and 30) and it is the subject of a detailed explanation in ælfric’s second old english letter to wulfstan (ker, no. 186 art. 29). furthermore, another five cross devotions (ker, no. 186 arts. 10cg) are strategically positioned at the very centre of the tiberius miscellany, celebrating the apotropaic and soteriological power of the cross: for a convenient survey of all these texts, see di sciacca, ‘the old english life of st margaret’, pp. 379383. finally, the so-called cattle-theft charm, occurring both in tiberius a.iii and cccc 41, can also be considered a cross-devotion: see above, pp. 9495. 198 bradford bedingfield, the dramatic liturgy of anglo-saxon england, pp. 133139. this triumphant interpretation of the cross is best epitomised by the dream of the rood: see tamburr, the harrowing of hell, pp. 3738, and bradford bedingfield, the dramatic liturgy of anglo-saxon england, pp. 136139. on the devotion to the cross in anglo-saxon england, see further s. mcentire, ‘the devotional context of the cross before a.d. 1000’, in szarmach and darrow oggins, sources of anglo-saxon culture, pp. 345356, rptd. in r. m. liuzza (ed.), old english literature: critical essays (new haven, ct: yale univ. press, 2002), pp. 392403; s. l. keefer, ‘the veneration of the cross in anglo-saxon england’, in m. bradford bedingfield and h. gittos (eds.), the liturgy of the late anglo-saxon church (london: boydell press, 2005), pp. 143184; and the three volumes ed. by karkov, keefer, and jolly, the place of the cross in anglo-saxon england; jolly, karkov, and keefer, cross and culture in anglo-saxon england; and s. l. keefer, k. l. jolly, and c. e. karkov (eds.), cross and cruciform in the anglosaxon world. studies to honor the memory of timothy reuter, medieval european studies series 11 (morgantown, wv: west virginia university press, 2010). 199 on the militarism associated with the harrowing and on the depiction of christ at 100 claudia di sciacca 6. another anglo-saxon cradle of apocrypha? anglo-saxon eschatology and cosmology has long been shown to depend on a creative conflation of motifs derived from an eclectic range of apocryphal sources, often of ultimate eastern origin and irish transmitted.200 scragg famously located the library on which “the greatest number of [anglo-saxon] homiletic manuscripts” relied at canterbury, st augustine, and posited that such a library must have been encompassing a wide and eclectic collection of eschatological and apocryphal literature.201 the anglo-saxon manuscript tradition of both the seven heavens apocryphon and the gospel of nicodemus adds to this picture in that these two apocrypha seem to have a special connection to eleventh-century exeter. saint-omer bm 202, the homiliary containing as its first two items the latin text of the gospel of nicodemus to which the three vernacular versions of the apocryphon have been traced and a latin life of st margaret, reached england from saint-bertin by the mid-eleventh century and was probably housed at exeter during the episcopacy of leofric (10501072).202 moreover, this codex has been identified with the full spelboc wintres and sumeres, “full homiliary for winter and summer”, listed as item 21 in the inventory of books bequeathed by leofric to exeter cathedral chapter.203 similarly, ms. harrowing as a warrior-king, especially in the old english poem descent into hell, see tamburr, the harrowing of hell, pp. 1443, esp. 3437. on christus victor and militaristic language and imagery in hagiography, see also above, pp. 6869 and n. 63. 200 see the fundamental study by wright, the irish tradition. see also m. mcnamara, the apocrypha in the irish church (dublin: dias, 1975); ibid. the bible and the apocrypha in the early irish church (a.d. 600a.d. 1200): collected studies (turnhout: brepols, 2015); and the two collections of essays mcnamara (ed.), apocalyptic and eschatological heritage, and d. g. sragg and k. powell (eds), apocryphal texts and traditions in anglo-saxon england, publications of the manchester centre for anglosaxon studies 2 (woodbridge and rochester, ny: boydell & brewer, 2003). 201 scragg, the vercelli homilies, pp. lxxiv and lxxviiiix. 202 see above, n. 150. 203 cross and crick, ‘saint-omer, bibliothèque municipale, 202’, pp. 3135; cf. m. lapidge, ‘surviving booklists from anglo-saxon england’, in m. lapidge and h. gneuss (eds.), learning and literature in anglo-saxon england: studies presented to peter clemoes on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday (cambridge: cup, 1985), pp. 3389, rptd. with corrections, additional references and a ‘postscript’ in m. p. richards (ed.), anglo-saxon manuscripts: basic readings, basic readings in anglo the devouring monster 101 cambridge, ul, ii.11.21, which attests to the earliest old english translation of the gospel of nicodemus, nica, is a late eleventh-century codex produced at exeter in leofric’s days.204 it also bears a leofric’s ex-dono inscription and has been identified with the englisc cristes boc, ‘gospel in english’, listed as item 14 in leofric’s booklist, since the codex contains indeed the old english version of the gospels.205 ms. cccc 41, the only witness of the old english seven heavens apocryphon, written at an unidentified southern english centre, was eventually donated to exeter by leofric as it features his ex dono inscription.206 finally, the manuscript containing the ‘macarius homily’, cambridge, corpus christi college 201, pp. 179272, also originated in exeter in the time of bishop leofric and was probably once part of a larger volume comprising another two exeter codices of the second half of the eleventh century, cambridge, corpus christi college 191 and 196.207 to exeter is also associated the manuscript tradition of another apocryphon, the vindicta salvatoris, that combines legends connected with the gospel of nicodemus and that was often transmitted as an appendix to the latter.208 the earliest known latin text of the vindicta salvatoris is attested in ms. saint omer, bm 202, and, as with the gospel of nicodemus, the saint saxon england 2 (london: garland, 1994), pp. 87167, esp. 132139, at 134 and 137. 204 see above, n. 151. 205 lapidge, ‘surviving booklists’, pp. 134 and 136137. 206 lapidge, ‘surviving booklists’, pp. 133134, n. 104. both lapidge and cross and crick are sceptical that this manuscript could be identified with an item in leofric’s inventory: see ibid. and cross and crick, ‘saint-omer, bibliothèque municipale, 202’, p. 32, n. 49. on cccc 41, see also above, n. 103. 207 on cccc 201, see above, n. 112; see also the relevant entry and digital reproduction on the parker on the web website available at https://parker.stanford. edu/parker/catalog/cr485km1781, and e. treharne, ‘cambridge, corpus christi college, 201’, in the production and use of english manuscripts 1060 to 1220, available at https://www.le.ac.uk/english/em1060to1220/mss/em.cccc.201.htm (15 february 2019). on cccc 191, see gneuss & lapidge, no. 60 and ker, no. 46; see also the relevant entry and digital reproduction on the parker on the web website available at https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/catalog/ rs890dd0432, and w. green and t. kato, ‘cambridge, corpus christi college, 191’, in the production and use of english manuscripts 1060 to 1220, available at https://www.le.ac.uk/english/em1060to1220/ mss/em.cccc.191.htm (15 february 2019). on cccc 196, see below, n. 213. 208 see t. n. hall, ‘vindicta salvatoris’, in saslc apocrypha, pp. 3133, and ibid. ‘the euangelium nichodemi and vindicta saluatoris’, pp. 5881. 102 claudia di sciacca omer latin text demonstrably provided the exemplar to which all the three extant old english translations of the vindicta salvatoris can ultimately be traced.209 two of these three vernacular versions immediately follow the old english version of the gospel of nicodemus in mss. cambridge, ul, ii.2.11, an exeter codex, as mentioned above,210 and london, bl, cotton vespasian d.xiv.211 the third old english version of the vindicta salvatoris is contained in the above-mentioned cccc 196,212 an exeter codex of the second half of the eleventh century,213 featuring as its main text an extensive fragment of the 209 cross, ‘saint-omer 202 as the manuscript source’, pp. 8284, 8789 and 97104; orchard, ‘the style of the texts’, pp. 105123; and thornbury, ‘building with the rubble of the past’, pp. 297311. 210 on this mansucript, see above, pp. 100101. this version of the vindicta salvatoris is cameron no. b8.5.4.1; ker, no. 20 art. 3; ed. as base text a with facing page latin text and english trans. by j. e. cross, ‘texts and translations: vindicta salvatoris’, in cross, two old english apocrypha, pp. 248293; it is the oldest translation of the vindicta salvatoris into any vernacular and is based on a lost archetypal old english translation made from the latin text in saint-omer 202: see hall, ‘the euangelium nichodemi and vindicta saluatoris’, p. 76, and above, n. 209. the old english version of the gospel of nicodemus in the cambridge codex is nica (ker, no. 20 art. 11): see above, p. 88. 211 on this codex, see above, n. 153. this version of the vindicta salvatoris is cameron no. b8.5.4.3; ker, no. 209 art. 32; ed. b. assmann, angelsächsische homilien und heiligenleben, bap 3 (kassel: wigand, 1889; rptd. with a supplementary introduction by p. clemoes, darmstadt: wissenschaftliche buchgesellschaft, 1964), pp. 193194 and notes at 265266; it is much shorter than the other two versions and apparently attests to a divergent redaction: see hall, ‘the euangelium nichodemi and vindicta saluatoris’, p. 77, and above, n. 209. in this codex the vindicta salvatoris is wedged between an old english version of the gospel of nicodemus, nicc (ker, no. 209 art. 31), and an old english version of the fifteen signs before doomsday derived from the apocalypse of thomas (ker, no. 209 art. 33): see above, pp. 74 and 88. 212 this version of the vindicta salvatoris is ker, no. 47 art. 2; ed. assmann, angelsächsische homilien und heiligenleben, pp. 181192 and notes at 265266, collated as d in cross, ‘texts and translations: vindicta salvatoris’, pp. 248293; it is most probably an independent copy of the lost original old english translation of the apocryphon: see hall, ‘the euangelium nichodemi and vindicta saluatoris’, p. 77, and above, n. 209. 213 gneuss & lapidge, no. 62 and ker, no. 47; see also the relevant entry and digital reproduction on the parker on the web website available at https://parker.stanford. edu/parker/catalog/yk433sj8017, and e. m. treharne, ‘cambridge, corpus christi the devouring monster 103 old english martyrology and presumably identifiable with the martyrlogium listed as item 18 in leofric’s inventory of books, as well as with the martelogium latinum et anglicanum of the exeter catalogue of 1327.214 last but not least, leofric’s exeter has been posited as “the most likely place for the original composition” of the old english translation of both the gospel of nicodemus and the vindicta salvatoris.215 in sum, the cues pointing towards late eleventh-century exeter as a centre nurturing an active interest in apocrypha, especially, though not exclusively, the gospel of nicodemus and the related vindicta salvatoris, are numerous and significant. 7. the devouring dragon and the mouth of hell: some conclusions the foregoing discussion has attempted to outline the intricate, creative interplay of crucial themes of christian eschatology and demonology, on which the two popular motifs of the demonic devouring dragon and the mouth of hell can be said to ultimately rely. the bait-and-hook metaphor, the soteriology of the cross, christus victor, the baptismal symbolism, and the harrowing of hell were syncretically blended with elements of diverse origin —from classical mythology to the celtic monster of hell to the wolves and dragons of germanic lore— in the attempt to convey the mystery of christ’s own passion and resurrection as well as the afterlife destiny of the individual christian and its topography.216 as the first part of this essay has traced, the theme of the devouring monster, visualising the unrelenting rapaciousness of death and/or of the underworld, can be said to be immemorial and cross-cultural, being rooted in college, 196’, in the production and use of english manuscripts 1060 to 1220, available at https://www.le.ac.uk/english/em1060to1220/mss/em.cccc.196.htm (15 february 2019). 214 ker, p. 76 and lapidge, ‘surviving booklists, pp. 134 and 137. 215 j. e. cross, ‘introduction’, in his two apocrypha, pp. 39, quotation at 9. 216 the dramatic rituals of baptism of the adoratio crucis contributed to the personal appropriation of christ’s redemption and to the identification with those freed from hell: see bradford bedingfield, the dramatic liturgy of anglo-saxon england, pp. 145149, and above, pp. 9599. the western church and the anglo-saxons, in particular, interpreted the harrowing of hell as a figura for judgement day: see tamburr, the harrowing of hell, pp. 4483, and kartsonis, anabasis, pp. 160164. 104 claudia di sciacca the universal experience of the inevitability and ruthlessness of death. the main argument that has been put forward, however, is that elaborations of these motifs —themselves widespread and common— ultimately coalesced into the distinctively anglo-saxon imagery of the zoomorphic mouth of hell, and what triggered such a coalescence may well have been the special currency enjoyed in early medieval england by the apocryphal cosmology and eschatology of the seven heavens and of the gospel of nicodemus, especially the descensus ad inferos. the anglo-saxon textual and manuscript tradition of both apocrypha offers intriguing insights into the shaping of this syncretic blending, as well as hinting at the milieu where such a blending may have been if not initiated, then at least endorsed and popularised. as is often the case in quellenforschung, the present conclusions, though rooted in textual and contextual evidence, are admittedly partial. only a comprehensive survey of the attestations of the devouring dragon and the zoomorphic mouth of hell in both the anglo-latin and old english corpora, in both prose and verse, as well as of their iconography in the visual arts will afford the full picture, and enable us to further our understanding of the anglo-saxon literary and theological milieu in which the seven heavens apocryphon, the gospel of nicodemus and related texts positioned themselves. author’s address dipartimento di lingue e letterature straniere (dile) università di udine via mantica 3 33100 udine, italy received: 2 october 2018 e-mail: claudia.disciacca@uniud.it revised version accepted: 2 may 2019 selim03.pdf 124 rubén valdés, selim 3 (1993): 117-148 the wonder tale pattern of sir orfeo the medieval english lay of sir orfeo has a long and complex history linking it to sources and antecedents in various cultures: the hellenistic myth of orpheus and eurydice, its interpretation by boethius, king alfred’s old english translation of boethius, the influence of gaelic and welsh legend, and anglo -norman romance narrative. ultimately, it is the origin of the popular ballad of “king orfeo” recorded in the shetlands in the nineteenth and mid-twentieth century. the ballad is probably a far derivation of some unknown version of sir orfeo or of the scottish king orphius, through a long process of oral transmission, and its existence is a witness to the grip and durability of the medieval lay in the mind of traditional tellers and singers. in spite of such a variety of sources, and of the fact that sir orfeo is surely the most sophisticated rendering of the myth before robert henryson’s orpheus and erudices, the story pattern of the lay is quite simple, and coincides to some extent with variants of the orphic myth found among primitive peoples, and with widespread folktales about the hero’s journey to the otherworld in quest of his beloved.1 most tellingly, it fits the morphology that vladimir propp established from a selection of one hundred russian wonder tales.2 it 1 see mircea eliade, le chamanisme et les techniques archaiques d1extase (paris: 1957), pp. 195, 219, 281, 331, 351-352. stith thompson, the folktale (1946; rpt. berkely and los angeles, ca.: university of california press, 1977), pp. 265, 351. 2 i have used the spanish edition: vladimir propp, morfología del cuento , trans. from french by f. díez del corral (madrid: akal, 1985). the best english translation from russian is: v. propp, morphology of the folktale. 2nd ed. (austin and london: university of texas press, 1968). following aarne and thompson’s general classification of the types of folktales (see thompson, op. cit., pp. 481-487), i have 125 is my purpose to apply a proppian analysis to sir orfeo, so as to show both how the poem conforms to a folktale pattern, and how the pattern itself foregrounds and and clarifies many of its shades of meaning. needless to say, propp’s extremely influential kind of analysis has been criticized and thoroughly revised many times since it first appeared, well over sixty years ago. it had its heyday when scholars like greimas and todorov1 transformed it to apply not just to wonder tales, but to all tales and even to narrative in general, and it has been apparently set aside from the critical mainstream with the disuse of structuralist poetics. yet propp’s morphology is still found useful as it was originally conceived, regardless of the structuralist method that succeeded it. an interesting instance of compliance with propp’s original design is the way david buchan has applied it to child’s supernatural ballads,2 which proves that the morphology of the russian scholar may still be tenable for tales which seem directly based on an oral tradition, such as the lays and the ballads. buchan’s classification focuses on the action of characters, defining tale role as “the interactive function served by a character in a narrative”,3 which is not far departed from propp’s approach and his definition of character decided to adopt the term “wonder tale” instead of “folktale” for the tales that the russian call skazka. “folktale”, being too ample a term, would include animal tales and popular types of jokes and anecdotes that do not fit as easily into propp’s pattern, while “fairy tale” would be too narrow. propp’s skazka correspond more closely to what aarne and thompson’s index classifies as “ordinary folktales”, but this term is, in my opinion, rather imprecise. 1 algirdas j. greimas, sémantique structurale (parís: larousse, 1966). tzvetan todorov, the fantastic: a structural approach to a literary genre, trans. r. howard (ithaca: cornell university press, 1975). 2 david buchan, “talerole analysis and child’s supernatural ballads”, the ballad and oral literature (harvard english studies, 17), ed. j. harris (cambridge, mass. : harvard university press, 1991), pp. 60-77. 3 buchan, op. cit., p. 62. 126 function from the point of view of its meaning in the development of plot. from a basic distinction of three taleroles, namely those of the bespeller (who casts a magic spell), the bespelled (who undergoes it) and unspeller (who lifts it), buchan establishes six “minigenres” of supernatural ballads, and then some subgroups. thus the ballad of “king orfeo” is a “type” of the minigenre called “otherworld being”, and it is included in the first of its two subgroups, that of the land-based otherworld being who abducts a mortal to the otherworld from where he or she is, after a time, liberated (when it is wa ter-based, its contact with the mortal ends with the death of one or the other). finally, buchan makes a general comment on folk literature, and especially the supernatural ballads, that we shall also find relevant to the lay of sir orfeo: “they exemplify (…) the methods by which a traditional community passes on its practical human wisdom, educates its members, and tries to mantain the mental balance of individuals and consequently the psychological equilibrium of the group”.1 it is easy to perceive just this struggle for mental balance in sir orfeo’s sojourn in the wilderness, although this and the other nuanced episodes of the lay are totally lost in the ballad, with its reduction of the narrative to essentials. buchan’s overall classification accounts safisfactorily for the ballad; but for the lay, we should turn to a fuller pursuit of propp’s plan applied to sir orfeo, supplementing it with the main specific information and scholarship about the poem, so as to effect a comprehensive new reading on these grounds. variants of sir orfeo survive in three manuscripts, of which the auchin leck ms., dated about 1330, is accepted as more reliable than the fifteenth century mss. harley 3810 and ashmole 61, which may have been based on 1 ibid., p. 76. 127 some lost intermediate versions.1 the question of sources for the auchinleck version has been the object of a debate whose main topics are the allusions to a lai d’orphey made in french and anglo -norman romances of the twelth and thirteenth centuries,2 and kittredge’s rooting of the story of fairy abduction in the ninth-century irish tale tormarc etaine,3 a gaelic connection that has roused eager research for other celtic analogues of, and elements within, the lay.4 our present study aims at no direct contribution to this debate on sources, but assumes it as evidence of the complex process of transmission, probably of an oral nature mostly, along which the lay must have absorbed the sort of folk pattern that we are going to explore. the existence of many of the ele ments of this traditional pattern make sir orfeo differ radically from the boethian, ovidian, and virgilian accounts of the myth of orpheus and eury dice that were far more widespread in medieval written culture. the only part of sir orfeo that has little bearing on the present analy sis is the general prologue to the lay (lines 1-21) that precedes it in some editions, being a sort of editorial introduction that belongs to a written culture rather than to one based upon oral performance, like propp’s wonder tales or the ballads. it was presumably included in a missing folio at the beginning of the 1 for the question of manuscripts, see sir orfeo, ed. a.j. bliss (1954; oxford: clarendon press, 1966), pp. ix -xv. this is still the standard edition of the work, and the one i am using for the present study. 2 in the romance of florence et blancheflor, the lai de l’epine and the prose lancelot. see bliss, op. cit., pp. xxxi-xxxii. 3 cf. g.l. kittredge, “sir orfeo”, american journal of philology, vii (1886), pp. 176202. 4 the other most important contributions are r.s. loomis, “sir orfeo and walter map’s de nugis”, modern language notes, li (1936), pp. 28-30, and c. davis, “notes on the sources of sir orfeo”, modern language review, xxxi (1936), pp. 354-357. for a full and more recent account of the state of the question see burke j. severs, “the antecedents of sir orfeo”, studies in medieval english literature in honour of professor albert croll baugh, ed. macedward leach (philadelphia: univeristy of pennsylvania press, 1961), pp. 187-207. 128 auchinleck sir orfeo, but it is extant in the lay le freine of the same ms. and in the other two mss. of sir orfeo.1 it tells us that lays were sung by the old breton kings about marvels they heard, and then written down: “we redep oft and findep ywrite,/ and pis clerks wele it wite,/ layes pat ben in harping/ ben yfounde of ferli ping…” (1-4). then it lists a number of subjects that the lays deal with, among which the “ferli ping” is the most outstanding: “and mani per bep of fairy” (10). thus while providing general but valuable information about the lays, which chaucer may indeed have used for the franklin’s tale as laura h. loomis suggested,2 the prologue plays no narrative role, and the tale itself begins, significantly, with an oral formula, “ac herknep, lordinges …” (23), in sharp contrast with the previous “redep… ywrite” (1). the part that begins thus is precisely what corresponds to the first of propp’s functions. before proceeding to present our analysis under epigraphs taken from propp’s morphology, it should be remarked that he studied the wonder tale from the point of view of character, and defined this tale as a narrative development starting with a damage or lack suffered by the hero, going through a fixed sequence of intermediate character functions, and ending in a dénouement which typically leads to a wedding. what matters is the sequence, not the presence of all the functions in a single tale, which is extremely unusual. therefore we are just going to comment on those functions that may be found in the poem, as well as those that play a significant role through their very absence. the roman numerals mark the sequential order, and only the presentation has no number in the sequence, because it is purely descrip tive and devoid of narrative action. the main functions are called by letters of the 1 the relationship between the prologues of these two lays was established by gabrielle guillaume, “the prologues of the lay le freine and sir orfeo”, modern language notes, xxxvi (1921), pp. 458-464. 2 cf. laura h. loomis, “chaucer and the breton lays of the auchinleck manuscript”, studies in philology, xxxviii (1941), pp. 14-33. 129 latin alphabet, whereas the greek letters stand for the preliminary functions that prepare the main narrative action. in addition, each function has a number of variants, which are designated with numbers attached to the function letters, and only relevant ones will be noted. the letters and variant numbers are given in brackets after the definition of the function they repre sent. presentation of the hero and his initial situation (a). this first preliminary function falls into two distinct parts, the first of which (lines 23-38) was missing from the auchinleck ms. but is supplemented in modern editions with a.j. bliss’s reconstruction from the corresponding lines in ms. harley 3810. it deals with sir orfeo’s wonderful skill as a harper, which will account for the role and significance that his harp will have in his subsequent adventure. it is interesting to note that, in contrast with other versions of the orphic myth, sir orfeo’s musical skill is no divine gift, even though he is later presented as the son of parents “? at sumtime were as godes yhold” (45), but a personal talent of his own: “himself he lerned for to harp/ and leyd thereon his wites scharp” (29-30). in henryson’s orpheus and erudices the hero learns his musical skill ascending to the heavenly spheres, before using it in hell to rescue his wife; in our poem the sense of harmony that medieval thinking associates with music can be viewed as a human quality that the hero possesses in himself from the start. once sir orfeo has been qualified as a human being, with his harp as the symbol of his personality, the second part of the presentation (39-56) qualifies him in the social context as a king of traciens, “as winchester used to be called”, as the narrator states with a peculiarly realistic touch (47-49). just has the harp best qualifies him personally, the family bond that defines him is the love he feels for his queen dame heurodis, a circumstance that will also provide a logical justification for his subsequent reaction as he loses her. at this point it will be noted that, in spite of some minor faults of style and dic tion in the poem, it is remarkably blameless from a purely narrative point of 130 view. the present analysis will try to show how every single episode, and almost every detail in the narrative, has a justification in the whole. as opposed to many medieval romances, sir orfeo has been consistently praised for its narrative economy,1 and, as we shall see, even its seemingly conventional descriptive passages aim at important dramatic effects. i. parting: one of the members of the family leaves the house to go for a walk (b3). the narrative action begins in a seemingly conventional way, in a fine may morning, as dame heurodis and her maidens seek solace in a blooming spring garden (57-68). however, this idyllic description will have a narrative function to perform: it contrasts with the horror that will be shown hiding beneath the pleasant landscape, contrast being a central dramatic device throughout the poem. ii. prohibition: some kind of taboo is imposed on the hero (g1). just as the poem contains enough cues to account for logical links of human motivation in the narrative, it refrains from explaining what today we regard as the supernatural and irrational. the taboo is not made explicit in the tale, but only its existence can explain what happens to heurodis for falling asleep under an “ympe tre” (literally, a grafted tree, that is, a garden tree) just before noon: “in an undrentide” (65). the passage where this occurs (69-76) ends with a sense of finality: “so sche slepe til after none, /? at undertide was al ydone.” scholars have pointed out that this episode, given its consequences, must have its origin in the violation of a sacred tree or g rove in druidic religion,2 or, less convincingly, in the belief in the noon-day demon of me dieval 1 see especially n.h. keeble, “the narrative achievement of sir orfeo”, english studies, lvi (1975), pp. 193-206. 2 constance bullock-davies, “‘ympe tre’ and ‘nemeton’”, notes and queries. new series, ix (1962), pp. 6-9. 131 mythology.1 there are many recorded examples of the perils of sleeping outside on may day, and also of sleeping beneath a tree, in irish folklore and british supernatural ballads2, bearing a closer cultural corre spondence to sir orfeo than the christianized legends of the lustful noon-day demon. iii. transgression: the taboo is broken and the aggressor arrives (d1). this basic function is put to great drama tic effect in the poem, which accounts for its relative length (77-174). first of all we have the contrast between the peaceful orchard were heurodis had fallen asleep and her horror on awaking from her dream: she shrieks, wrings her hands and feet, scratches her eyes until they bleed, tears her beautiful dress, and is driven out of her mind. her maidens, who didn’t dare to wake her up before, now run away to the palace for help, believing her mad. the reader of the poem, like sir orfeo, is kept in suspense, which is another characteristic device of the poem, as to why she is in such a state, until she is sufficiently recovered from her ghastly distress to talk to her husband. when sir orfeo sees her, the conventional description of the courtly lady is implied forcefully by contrast in the dreadful transforma tion that he notices in her: her graceful quietness, her white body, her red lips, her delicate fingers and lovely eyes haven all been turned to give her the appearance of one possessed by an evil power. the use of dialogue in this episode is another quality seldom to be found in simple folktales, or even in medieval romance, as also happens with the consistent way in which things are presented through the hero’s subjectivity. it is only when she is able to disclose her dream to him that we learn what has happened. 1 john b. friedman, “eurydice, heurodis, and the noon-day demon”, speculum , xli (1966), pp. 22-29. 2 see dorena allen, “orpheus and orfeo: the dead and the taken”, medium ævum , xxxiii (1964), p. 102, note 1. 132 heurodis has been visited in her dreams by emissaries of the king of fairy, and then by the king himself with an impressive company of armed knights and of damsels in white attire riding snow-white horses. actually, the word “fairy” is not used yet; instead, the concept is hinted at through the unearthly beauty of the company, in the whiteness of the damsels, and in the crown of the king, made of a single precious stone that shines like the sun. he forces her to ride on a palfrey by his side, and shows her his kingdom. there is no suggestion that he wants to make her his mistress, as would normally happen in the ballads, in the lays of mary de france, or in the legends about the lustful noon-day demon. the fairy king announces that she will be abducted to live with them (not “him”: he speaks in plural) for ever more, and later on we are told that he already has his own queen, who is “fair and swete.” in fact the fairy royal couple make the mirror effect of an otherworldly counterpart to sir orfeo and heurodis. there is, therefore, no apparent motivation for the abduction, except that she has broken an ancestral taboo by sleeping under a fruit tree at noon, and so laid herself under the power o f fairy. sir orfeo is not influenced by the sensuality of courtly love in this respect.1 we are rather in “the primitive world of popular belief, a world in which men are forever surrounded and threatened by cruel and capricious beings”,2 and even more so than in the gaelic tochmarc etaine, since in this alleged antecedent of sir orfeo the fairy prince midir who abducts etain from the king of ireland is said to have been her husband in a previous exis tence, thus providing an actual amorous motivation for t he abduction. after taking her back to the orchard where they had found her, the king of fairy imposes on her what propp would consider the inverse prohibition (d2), that is, a strong injunction, which in the present tale is complementary of 1 this opinion is explicitly supported by kenneth r.r. gros louis in “the significance of sir orfeo’s self-exile”, review of english studies, xviii (1967), pp. 248-249. 2 allen, op. cit., p. 110. 133 the transgression: unless she returns on the following day to the same tree and at the same hour of the day, she will be found however she tries to hide herself, she will be torn to pieces, and then abducted all the same. this vio lent threat is counterpointed to the initial courtesy and splendorous courtliness of the visitors. it carries echoes of the ritual dismemberment in some of the cults studied by j. f. frazer, and also of the tearing apart of orpheus himself in some of the classical traditions.1 functions iv to vii, defined respectively as interrogatory (e), information (z), deceit (h) and complicity (q), may take a prominent part in little red riding hood, for instance, when the heroine is interrogated by the wolf in the forest, but they are neither present nor relevant in sir orfeo. the absence of these functions, which does not alter the fixed arrangement of the rest, might suggest that the aggressor in our tale does not need to deceive his victim, since she has already yielded herself to him by unwittingly sleeping under the tree at noon. thus the stage is sufficiently set for the main action. viii. misdeed: the aggressor harms one of the members of the family, in our case by causing the hero’s wife to dissapear suddenly (a 7). once again the poem appears carefully elaborated in this basic function so as to create a fully dramatized and meaningful episode. sir orfeo is determined to prevent heurodis from being taken from him. he carries his weapons and “ten hundreth kny¥htys … wele armyd, talle men and stoute” (183-184) to the spot at which she is to await her fateful appointment. sir orfeo’s army makes a tight 1 according to an extended tradition (aristophanes: frogs, 1032; ovid: metamorphoses x i, 1-85; conon: narrations, 45) orpheus was torn limb from limb by the maenads. the motif of dismemberment, though not central to the plot of sir orfeo, is recurrent and prominent enough to suggest some archetypal significance. frye mentions orpheus as an example of sparagmos: see northorp frye, anatomy of criticism (1957; princeton, n.j.: princeton university press, 1971), p. 148. the presence of this motif is also one of the elements that serve to support a psy choanalytical approach to sir orfeo. see next note. 134 defensive formation (“scheltrom”) around the tree, but heurodis is spirited away from among them. the very suddenness of her vanishing contrasts with sir orfeo’s previous detailed precautions, and with the massive physical presence of his knights: “ac ¥ete amiddes hem ful ri¥t/ ? e quen was oway y tvi¥t,/ wip fairi forp y-nome/ -men wist neuer wher sche was bicome” (191194). here the poet uses the word “fairy” for the first time, impliying it is the word that came to the mind of sir orfeo and his men in the face of something that escaped their reason. viiia. lack: a member of he family is bereft of something, in this case his wife (a1). this subfunction is contained in the previous one and, like all the rest, endowed with narrative meaning and interlocked within the sequence: “? e king into his chaumber is go,/ and oft swoned opon pe ston,/ and made swiche diol and swiche mon/ ? at nei¥e his liif was y-spent” (196-199). sir orfeo’s sorrow is duly stressed not only because it agrees with the nature of his love as previously defined in the poem, or because it is the conventional reaction of a bereft romantic lover, but more significantly, because it will justify his subsequent behaviour, nearly amounting to madness. mumford’s jungian reading of this lay,1 according to which the fairy king’s in trusions 1 marylin r. mumford, “a jungian reading of sir orfeo and orpheus and erudices” scottish studies, iv (1986) (proceedings of the iv international conference of scottish language and literature, medieval and renaissance, stirling, 1984), pp. 291-302. although the psychological substance of sir orfeo falls outside the scope of my study and is, therefore, only mentioned in passing, its relevance to this proppian analysis must be noted. propp himself was too conscientious a scholar to anticipate the last consequences of his own formalist analysis. he did not consider as his duty to decide whether, since as he thought the morphology of folktales is so uniform even in distant countries, they all derive from a common source. he preferred to leave such speculations to historians (his own contribution to this field was his istoricheskie korni volshebnoj skazki, leningrad, 1946) and psychologists. what he did suggest was that the unique source could be psychological, under a socio -historical aspect (propp, morfología , p. 141). this could help to explain why the lay sir orfeo adopted a wonder tale structure without being a folktale: in its process of oral transmission the lay might well have adapted itself to the psychological structure of wonder tales. research into 135 into sir orfeo’s kingdom represent the “violent outburst” of libidinal energy into the conscious world,1 is not altogether distorting. the poem pro vides enough cues to be read as the fable of man struggling to regain his psychic balance after a disturbance in his conscious, rational life.2 ix. movement of transition: the news of the misdeed or lack spreads, the hero receives a petition or is ordered to do something, and he is either sent away or allowed to leave (b). this mediating function takes the form of a vow and a political arrangement on the part of sir orfeo, as soon as he re alises that “ther was non amendment” (200) to his life as a king without his beloved queen. in the poem this function is closely associated with the one that follows immediately. the psychological meaning of myths and tales was a line of investigation that c.g. jung popularized, and mumford’s jungian reading is an important contribution to the understanding of sir orfeo, though somewhat forcing modern psychology on a medieval text, and simplifying it in an attempt to extend the same reading to robert henryson’s extremely different version of the myth. mumford actually admits that her reading is more illuminating in the case of sir orfeo. this must be because it is far closer to folk narrative than henryson’s literary work. the psychological approach to sir orfeo may be supplemented by an interpretation based on primitive celtic religion, as the one suggested in note 49 below. 1 ibid., p. 296. 2 medieval writers also tended to interpret the myth of orpheus on what today we would regard as psychological terms, although at the time these could only take the form of moral allegory. one of the most representative views is perhaps that of william of conches (1080-1145), who perceived it as a platonic drama of the soul occurring between mind (orpheus) and passion or desire (eurydice). he was, like most medieval commentators of the myth, influenced by boethius. for a summary of this stage in the development of the myth, see john b. friedman, “oraia-phonos and eur -dike in hell”, orpheus in the middle ages (cambridge, mass.: harvard university press, 1970), pp. 86-145. in sir orfeo, whose narrative seems little affected by moral or allegorical concerns, the most important duality suggested is not between mind and passion, or even between opheus and eurydice, but between the conscious and the unconscious worlds of the soul, represented by sir orfeo and the king of fairy respectively. 136 x. beginning of contrary action: the “hero -seeker” accepts a task, or, as seen here, he simply decides to act (c). sir orfeo announces that he will leave the court, go out into the wilderness to live among the beasts, and not see a woman any more. the pathos of the king’s renunciation for love had already appeared in this orphic tradition in the anglo -saxon translation of boethius,1 but here it is charged with a sense of public responsibility that will account for the presence of the final episodes of this tale, which do not occur in any of the previous stories about orpheus. sir orfeo does not forget the needs of the nation, even though he does not think he will ever return again to his kingdom. hence his appointment of his high steward to manage the affairs of state during his absence, and his disposal that a parliament be summoned to choose another king when they receive the news of his own death. such inclusion of parliament is certainly an addition of the english poet (not likely to have been found in the “lai d’orphey”, given its french culture and early date), and it makes perfect sense with the portrait of sir orfeo as a fair king. his virtue as a monarch, in turn, serves to motivate the sincere sorrow and loud weeping in his royal hall, whose members kneel before him begging him to stay. xi. departure: the hero leaves his house (). sir orfeo forsakes the kingdom and all his possessions, taking with him only a pilgrim’s mantle (“sclavin”) and his harp. it would be all too tempting to see this as the begin ning of a conventional quest, since it is such a common motif both in me dieval romance and in folktales like those used by propp for his morphology. however, sir orfeo’s sojourn in the wilderness can only be called a quest in the limited sense that, eventually, he will find the object that moved him to leave the court, that is, heurodis, and also, perhaps, in that it can be understood, like most quests, as a movement of the hero towards self-knowledge, or as a rite of transition. but it is not a quest if that means a deliberate attempt 1 see severs, op. cit., p. 192. 137 to find the lost object. sir orfeo leaves his kingdom because he is hopeless, not because he hopes to find his wife. her disappearance is felt as too final to create any firm expectation of recovery on the part of the hero, from whose point of view we should look at events in the tale. it is important to bear his hopelessness in mind in order to understand the depth of his suffering and the danger threatening his sanity, which is central to the meaning of the tale and made quite explicit in its narrative form. xii. first function of the donor: the hero is submitted to a test, which will prepare him for the reception of a magic object or aid. in our particular case, the variant of this function could only be the first of ten that propp dis tiguishes: the donor submits the hero to a test (d1). the presence of this function is one of the most problematic because the tale does not have a character acting as donor, but it is worth considering, because of the ques tions it raises about the ultimate significance of sir orfeo’s self-exile, and about the specific role of his harp as a magic object. the question of by what virtue sir orfeo will be able to find heurodis after over ten years of hopeless self-abandonment in the wilderness, is not answered by the text itself. we ought to compare it with the question of why heurodis was abducted for sleeping under a tree at noon, which has been discussed above: the answer can only be found in the cultural background of the work. in the case in point the answer could perhaps be found, somewhat less plausibly, in christian, not in pagan belief. as a medieval author, the poet of sir orfeo can be safely assumed to be a christian, and the donor of his tale, if there is one, can be no other than god. however, the lay makes no explicit reference to him or his divine grace, except in set exclamations such as “lord! who may telle pe sore/ ? is king sufferd ten ¥ere and more?” (263-264). the only answer the lay provides for this rhetorical question is that same phrase: “lord!”. indeed, one might argue that if sir gawain had “no one to talk to on the way but god” in sir gawain and the green knight (line 696: “ne no gome bot god bi gate wyp yo karp”). sir orfeo is in a similar plight, for even the beasts of the forest, 138 who come readily to listen to his charming music, run away from him as soon as he stops harping (279-280). yet “lord!” may not be anything in the lay beyond the mere exclamation, without conscious religious meaning, and perhaps we should leave the entity of the donor open to question. nevertheless, the motif of the sojourn in the wilderness, being common in biblical episodes,1 medieval hagiography and related romances, lends itself to christian interpretations. at least one critic has argued the possibility that the ten years sir orfeo spends in the wilderness constitute a kind of penance, and through it, he receives a gift of grace: heurodis is returned to him.2 yet a recent study of the middle english penitential romance does not treat sir orfeo as one, and only alludes to it for comparison with sir gowther.3 in fact, such mo ral readings have little bearing on sir orfeo as it has come down to us, since it does not demand them explicitly: unlike sir gowther and sir gawain, sir orfeo is never presented praying to god during his exile. saying that sir orfeo contains no explicit christian didactism is not to deny its background of christian lore in the medieval sense. a boethian echo has been perceived here,4 although this can also be proved only in a general sense: its sense of tragedy. what the lay does emphasize is that its hero goes through a profound human experience “when he pat hadde ben king wip croun/ went so pouerlich out of toun” (235-236). the long contraposition in the poem between the comforts that he had had as a king and the misery of his life in the wilderness (241-256) is reminiscent of “de casibus” stories about powerful men who are dashed down the wheel of fortune (chaucer’s 1 see friedman (1970), op. cit., p. 190. 2 gros louis (1967), op. cit., p. 247. 3 see andrea hopkins, the sinful knights: a study of middle english penitential romance (oxford: clarendon press, 1990), pp. 10-11, 158-161. 4 by james f. knapp, “the meaning of sir orfeo”, modern language review, xxix(1968), pp. 263-273. 139 monk’s tale comes readily to mind), and therefore of tragedy in the boethian sense; furthermore, the contrasts between wealth and poverty are commonplace in the homiletic tradition. in so far as giving sir orfeo’s misfortune a final meaning may be possible, the boethian philosophy that had a great impact on medieval christianity can be the most viable way of doing it. for a contemporary audience, who may or may not have been aware of the pagan superstition behind heurodis’ abduction, it is more likely to have been understood simply as a very bad stroke of misfortune, perhaps motivated by the pride of a king, and also as a dramatic illustration of “the precariousness of the human condition” in the light of christian pessimism.1 the insufficiency of sir orfeo’s attempt to defend heurodis with his powerful army pointed to the vanity of material means against the supernatural or irrational. subsequently the tale, like the corresponding classical legends, focuses on the redeeming power of the best human qualities. unlike the boethian orpheus and his classical models, sir orfeo does not fail, and he is able to surmount both human frailty and fate; and, as knapp notes, “unlike the saint, (…) orfeo comes away from his journey with a deeper awareness, not of god, but of the fragile beauty of that human world for which he is willing to suffer so much pain”.2 as for who stands for the donor in the lay, we shall briefly conclude in reference to the next function, that god’s grace seems to have less to do with it than the hero’s personal response to this perilious world, that is, his spiritual sense of integrity, which has been seen embodied in his harp,3 as the decisive complement of his fleshly love for heurodis. 1 d.m. hill, “the structure of sir orfeo”, medieval studies, xxiii (1961), pp. 136-153. 2 knapp, op. cit., p. 270. 3 see keeble, op. cit., p. 199. 140 xiii. the hero’s reaction: he passes the test (e1). i think the most accurate way to understand in modern terms how sir orfeo passes the test is by resorting to some kind of psychological explanation. on the one hand we have to bear in mind that fine music was highly regarded both by celtic poets and medieval scholars: the former believed it to be endowed with magic powers, while the latter conceived of the universe as composed by the cre ator with four contrary elements in an harmonious arrangement, which man could try to evoke with music. sir orfeo’s harp begins to have a significant narrative function as the only thing that preserves his conscious identity during the ordeal. on the other hand we have hill’s interpretation,1 according to which the description of sir orfeo’s harmonious music filling the forest (272278) contrasts with the noisy “rout” of the king of fairy and his hunting party that the hero could hear “oft in hot undertides” (282), suggesting a threat of insanity in the form of hallucination. in this view sir orfeo would be on the brink of madness, either madness as the mental disturbance which primitive peoples explain as caused by supernatural interference, or the madness motivated by lost love, which is conventional in several romances.2 that sir orfeo’s visions do not feel real or rational to him is suggested by the fact that, in spite of the magnificient display of hunters and dogs, the fairy hosts he sees never take any prey (287-288); nor does the great riding host he sees at other moments seem to be going anywhere. we can easily infer that only his harping can protect him from such delirant visions.3 1 hill, op. cit., pp. 138, 144. 2 ibid., pp. 152, 157. 3 the mythological origin of these visions could perhaps be traced to the primitive conception of odin as the german storm giant wode leading a furious army through the sky, which represents the procession of the homeless dead. it takes the form of a wild hunt as it was recorded in the anglo -saxon chronicle under the year 1127: “the huntsmen were black, huge, and hideous, and rode on black horses and on black hegoats, and their hounds were jet black, with eyes like saucers, and horrible. this was seen in the very deer park of the town of petersborough, and in all the woods that stretch from that same town to stramford, and all through the nights the monks heard them 141 the poem implies a mental process of gradual readjustment in the way it arrages the presentation of the hero’s successive visions, which appear graded in a particular way. the next vision he has is far less disquieting than those of the hunting party hunting nothing and the wandering army: it is of a pageant of dancing knig hts and ladies “queynt pas and softly” (300). but the vision that seems to mark a definite recovery in sir orfeo’s sense of personal reality is the final one. he sees a group of lady falconers chasing their game along a river, but this time they are taking preys: “ich faucoun his pray slou¥” (313). so far he had remained passive, but now, “perhaps encouraged because their actions are intelligible”, as owen has pointed out,1 he is moved from suffering to action. he decides to follow the falconers, who do not appear as remote as the previous visions. owen2 has also perceptively noted that, by following these ladies, sir orfeo is actually violating the oath he had taken, ten years before, never more to see a woman, and that it is proper that his first positive movement should involve a self-release from the repressive vow. indeed, it is as if the enchantment had been waiting for a human ges ture, even a failing, to begin to dissolve itself, for only after committing this little infidelity to his pledged troth to his lost wife, is he able to see her among the falconers. thus some psychological complexity is in volved in the basic function of the hero passing the test. he passes it not simply by suffering or faith, but by being true to himself, the harper and the man, against all odds. it may be recalled that sir gawain’s human failing is also forgiven in the end by all but himself, and it is part of his success as a humanized hero. sounding and winding their horns.” the anglo -saxon chronicle, trans. by g.n. garmonsway (london: dent, 1953), p. 258 1 lewis j. owen, “the recognition scene in sir orfeo”, medium ævum , xl (1971), p. 31. 2 ibidem. 142 function xiv in propp’s sequence, the hero’s reception of the magic object (f), has been implied in the previous discussion. his harp thus appears as the symbol of his corageous human will and resolution, and there fore as his best asset to recover his lost personal balance, a recovery he needed in order to rescue heurodis more successfully than the orpheus in other versions of the myth. but the most significant action of the harp belongs to functions that are still to come up in our tale. xv. journey between two realms: the hero is led near the whereabouts of the object of his quest (g3). when sir orfeo sees dame heurodis she cannot speak to him or he to her because they are still under the enchantment, but her recognition is signalled by silent tears streaming down her face (325327), as she notices his deranged looks. after all, he has spent ten years liv ing like a wild man of the woods of medieval folklore. as the falconers notice their mutual recognition, they urge dame heurodis to ride away with them, but sir orfeo’s determination to recover his wife will not be hindered b y fear of death “-of liif no dep me no reche” (342). the lady falconers become his unwilling guides as he follows them through a rock into “a fair cuntray/ as bri¥t so sonne on somers day” (351-352), whose brightness immediately recalls the noon-time heat of the garden where heurodis was abducted, and of the moments in which sir orfeo had his hallucinations in the forest. the hollow hill sir orfeo has entered, the green plain of fairyland, and the brilliance and splendour of the fairy castle he sees are traditional in folklore.1 the fairy realm is also described with the characteristics of many marvellous lands of romance, which, in fact, tend to be idealized versions of medieval landscapes. however, the convention has a special significance in this lay. the fairy realm seems a mirror image of sir orfeo’s own kingdom, more 1 allen, op. cit., p. 102, note 1. actually, the description of the otherworld as a place full of brigthness and light is quite widespread in medieval literature. the most outstanding example in the english context is pearl. for instance, its otherworldly woods: “wip schymeryng schene ful schrylle pai shynde.” 143 familiar than his first troubling visions, because the land has a magnificient castle with its strong battlements, a ditch, and a porter at its gate. in spite of its material inaccessibility, it also gives a feeling of reality that can be conquered, whatever hardship this may involve for the hero. although it impresses him as “the proude court of paradis” (376) would (some of its details recall medieval descriptions of heaven), we know from the beginning of the lay that the music of his harp could also make one feel as in “on of pe joies of paradis” (37). the pleasant sight of the castle, however, prepares a violent contrast with the horrors that sir orfeo will behold inside its walls .1 the fact that the hero has reached a place that he can approach on his own human terms is also shown in the way he gets into the castle. he is able to convince its porter to let him in, saying that he is a simple minstrel who wants to entertain the lord of the house. yet the impression of reality is unsettled as soon as he is inside. the ghastly spectacle he then sees has been identified as a faithful picture of what one would expect to find in a “sid”,2 the place where the fairy kept their victims, wh ich has substituted the classical hades and the christian hell of the more extended versions of the orphic myth.3 there sir orfeo sees those human beings as they were found when 1 friedman (1970), op. cit., p.192, finds a similar contrast in some analogues of the orphic legend, such as barlaan and iosaph. 2 see allen, op. cit., p. 109. 3 constance davies, “classical threads in ‘orfeo’”, modern language review, lxi (1961), pp. 161-166, tries to make a case for the classical, esp ecially virgilian, filiation of the descrip tion of the otherworld in the lay. but her points appear rather weak in comparison with the bulk of evidence about celtic and folk analogues gathered by allen, op.cit. another theory that stands isolation is that of bruce mitchell, “the fairy world of sir orfeo”, neophilologus, xlviii (1964), pp. 155-159, who argues that the place described in this passage “is not particularly un pleasant”, except for a few lines that might have been added by some scribe following conventions. this opinion has been expressly refuted by allen, op.cit., pp. 103-104, and by many other scholars including knapp, op.cit., p. 263 and a.m. kinghorn, “human interest in the middle english sir orfeo”, neophilologus, l (1966), pp. 359-369. 144 they were taken by fairy, neither dead nor alive (389-390): they appear as if frozen at the moments in which people were most liable to be taken, such as suffering a violent death and dismemberment (391-392, 396-398), wives giving child-birth (399), and people who had gone mad (394), that is, suffering a kind of spiritual dismemberment which seems to have been the fate that sir orfeo has just managed to avoid. finally, he notices heurodis, still sleeping under the “ympe-tre” (407). thus the hero has arrived at the counterpoint of the garden where the action of the tale had begun. xvi. combat: the hero and the aggressor face each other in a combat or competition (h). this function, which in the tales of propp’s corpus generally takes the form of a duel, competition or game, appears under a peculiar form in sir orfeo. although in tochmarc etaine an actual competition in the form of a series of chess games takes place between the mortal and the fairy for etain, in our tale the function is transformed more according to its orphic core. moreover, sir orfeo has no chance of equal competition against the great supernatural power that characterizes the king of fairy in this tale, except by using his harp. when sir orfeo kneels before the king offering his service as a musician, the danger the hero is in appears forcibly suggested by the fairy king, as he reminds him that no-one had gone to his realm before without being sent for (421-428). what the king does not suspect is that the harp is sir orfeo’s most powerful weapon. this role of the harp will also come as a surprise if we expect to find an actual combat of some sort in this function. perhaps it would be less surprising if we bear in mind the parallel functional role that the hero’s sword has in sir gowther,1 another english medieval lay with structural features of folktale (in this case the source of the 1 the comparison has been made by hopkins, op. cit., pp. 159-160, who presents sir gowther’s sword as the symbol of his potentiality for good and evil. in my reading sir orfeo’s harp might be regarded as a symbol of his potentiality for good, while evil is embodied in the uncertain world he lives in, where a man’s fortune may change tragically overnight. 145 story has been traced to an actual folktale of french origin known as “robert the devil”). then the king of fairy assents to being entertained by the humble harper that has so boldly arrived at his court.1 function xvii, the mark that the hero receives (i), has no bearing on our tale, but the one that follows it immediately is a direct consequence of the previous function of “combat.” xviii. victory: the agressor is defeated (j). this is another function that appears in a modified fo rm, without an exact correspondence with any of propp’s examples of variants for it. it rather fits the special way in which the lay presents the combat. what happens is that sir orfeo plays so well that the king promises to pay him largely and “what it be” (450) (“whatever it may be”). the situation is a very common folktale motif generally known as the “rash promise.” the person who makes the promise without considering its consequences, unwittingly submits himself to the one who has received it, as when, in chaucer’s franklin’s tale, dorigen promises to yield to aure lius’ love if he can remove the rocks from the coast of brittany. but whereas aurelius will renounce for noble reasons the power the rash promise pro vides him with, the fairy king must keep it, so as not to tarnish his own sple dorous power. thus his rash promise marks the moment of sir orfeo’s vic tory over him. moreover, it precludes his laying down any condition on heurodis’ re lease, such as the one the rulers of hades impose on the classical orpheus. hence in the lay we do not find the passage in which orpheus breaks the condition of not looking back at eurydice before leaving the underworld and so loses her for ever, because it aims at no such tragic ending. 1 an alternative way of interpreting this function is to regard it as a combat of wits, a common motif in medieval literature. indeed, in a sense sir orfeo outwits his fairy opponent by appearing as a simple minstrel. in owe this suggestion to professor patricia shaw. 146 xix. reparation: the initial damage is repaired or the lack supplied for (k). the meaning of the tale in this respect has become too complex for only one of propp’s proposed variants of this function to account for it. to some extent our hero will be able to achieve heurodis through his cunning (k1) in eliciting the rash promise,1 but also as a result of preceeding actions (k4), that is, his capacity to pass the test of his self-exile, and also thanks to the magic object (k5), his harp. none of these reasons can be singled out as unique. besides, we have to add the outstanding topic of honour and generosity in the lay. suspense, which is kept throughout the episode of sir orfeo’s visit to the royal court, is enhanced by the fact that the king, contrary to expectations derived both from the orphic myth and the motif of the rash promise, denies sir orfeo his reward. with haughty sarcasm he says that sir orfeo, being “lene, rowe and blac” (459), would make too sorry a couple with the lovely heurodis. his sarcasm has a realistic justification in that sir orfeo’s appearance would present the effects of his years in the wild living on a diet mainly of roots (255-260), an appearance that enables him to pass for a wandering minstrel, while dame heurodis is still peacefully asleep in her garden, as she was the moment she fell under the fairy spell. the fairy king’s unexpected refusal results in an emphasis on the fact that he will not be defeated by sir orfeo’s skill or cleverness alone. heurodis’ liberation ultimately depends on the king of fairy’s goodwill, sense of honour and generosity, which are a reflection of those of sir orfeo, and the qualities that the franklin’s tale also expresses pointedly. thus when the hero appeals to the king’s honour to keep his promise (463-468), he receives what he asks for without grudge. the poem underplays the potentially emotive moment of dame heurodis’ salvation and her meeting with her husband, because this is not a dramatic climax in the tale. it simply states that “his wiif he tok bi pe hond, /and dede 1 see previous note. 147 him swipe out of pat lond, /and went him out of pat stede” (473-475). it seems that his wife is of little avail to him until he becomes the king again, and she his queen. the definitive focus of the poem, contradicting expectations derived from the myth of orpheus, but complying with the wonder tale pattern, is on the hero’s return home, rather than on the rescue itself. xx. return: the hero comes back (). modern scholars have been at pains to defend the necessity of the final section of sir orfeo,1 in which the hero returns with his wife to winchester and recovers his kingdom after testing the loyalty of the steward he had left in charge of it. no such section occurs in the classical myth. most justifications of its presence are based on the structural similarity and thematic contrast between sir orfeo’s adventure in the fairy castle, and that in his own castle, which he will also approach dis guised as a poor minstrel.2 indeed, it is its rich play of symmetry and contrast between two worlds that gives the poem much of its psychological poignancy. just as sir orfeo is faced by his fairy alter ego before, he faces his political one later, taking the significance of the magic adventure down to earth. the poem never repeats its themes without adding a new narrative function and significance to them, and only the harp and the threat of bodily dismemberment can be said to remain stable leit motifs . our own analysis, by attending to the progressive sequence of character functions, stresses the continuous evolution of the hero, and accounts for the presence of the final 1 thus keeble, op. cit., p. 203, says that h.m. smyser “spoke for many when he opined that the final section ‘robs the poem of structural integrity.’” there is a thesis about the origin of the last section by howard nimchinsky, “orfeo, guillaume and horn”, romance philology, xxii (1968), pp. 1-14. tracing the origin of this section to analogous episodes in king horn and guillaume d’anglaterre, this critic assumes that “the testing of the steward, although it performs an artistic function within sir orfeo, is merely a superaddition to the work.” nimchinsky, op. cit., p. 11. 2 see especially george kane, middle english litera ture (1951; london: barnes & noble and methuen, 1970), pp. 81-84; bliss, op. cit., p. xliii; hill, op. cit., p. 151. 148 section as responding to a basic pattern of folktale, while also valuing its posititive artistic contribution to the whole poem. after some functions that appear in pieces of propp’s corpus with no bearing on sir orfeo, particularly the persecution of the hero (xxi: pr) and his being rescued (xxii: rs), the next function that comes up in the lay follows logically from the hero’s return. xxiii. arrival incognito: the hero arrives home without being noticed (o1). in propp’s examples the hero takes lodgings at the house of an artisan (a goldsmith, a taylor, a shoemaker…) and becomes his apprentice, before turning up at his own house. in sir orfeo he stays with his wife at a beggar’s cottage, and in king orphius, the sixteenth-century fragments of a scottish version of the lay, they are lodged by a well-to-do citizen.1 it is this burgess who, quite appropriately, makes the derisive comments on the contrast between the lovely queen and her grim and haggard consort, instead of the king of fairy as in sir orfeo. as propp often notes, each teller is free to modify these details of content, which may actually have some effect on the dramatic power of the tale, but without affecting the basic narrative pattern. in other words, while the descriptive details and attributes of characters may vary greatly from version to version, the sequence tends to resist all such modifications dictated by the memory and imagination of each teller, and as far as we can tell from the extant fragments the tale of king orphius, though with a markedly different style of presentation, is the same as that of sir orfeo. xxiv. deceitful pretensions: a false hero asserts lying claims (l). this dramatic circumstance does not actually occur in our tale, yet, due to its be1 cf. marion stewart, “king orphius”, scottish studies, xvii (1972): see lines 54-54 of her edition, and p. 152 of her commetary. 149 ing an extremely common motif in tales, especially in those which also contain function xxiii, it may play its own part in spite of its absence. in view of the great many examples from history, legend and popular literature of acting kings trying to usurp the throne of the rightful king while he is away, such deceitful pretensions could be expected as natural in sir orfeo’s steward.1 moreover, the audience of sir orfeo, accostumed to look at the events in the tale from the point of view of its hero, may well suspect the steward of pretending to stay as king. that this is what sir orfeo fears is confirmed by his precautions before presenting himself back at his own court. sir orfeo asks the beggar for news about the kingdom. the beggar, who does not know he is the king, repeats to him a summary of the events we already know: how the queen was taken by fairy, how the king then abandoned the town, and, finally, “hou pe steward pe lond gan hold, / and oper mani pinges him told” (495-496). in short, we are left in suspense as to whether the “many other things” sir orfeo learns from the beggar includes any clue about the steward’s actual pretensions. thus function xiv performs its role by keeping the suspense. xxv. difficult task: the hero is proposed a difficult task, or he proposes to perform a dangerous task (m). this entails one of the most common 1 many examples could be adduced to disconfirm the opinion that “the reader has no reason to suspect that the acting king might be unfaithful” (nimchinsky, op. cit., p. 11). the episode of the hero returning home who finds someone trying to usurp his place is as old in literature of oral origin as the odyssey. there are famous cases of usurping villains in the english middle ages, like those of john lackland and mortimer, which passed from history to legend and then into literature. the examples are multiplied in popular narrative, particularly in the ballads. the ballad of “the lord of lorn and the false steward” (child, 271) and plenty of other popular ballads repeat the circumstance of the usurpation, making up a whole story-type that has been called “the fair unknown”: see david c. fowler, a literary history of the popular ballad (durham, n.c.: duke university press, 1968), p. 55. however, our definitive evidence is provided by one of the variants of the ballad of “king orfeo” (child, 19), in which the steward appears as sir orfeo’s nephew, and is about to be crowned while the hero is away. 150 episodes of folktales according to propp, although the tasks proposed are so varied that they defy a precise definition of content. sir orfeo proposes the difficult task of entering his hall in disguise to test his steward’s loyalty, a dangerous mission if the steward proves false and tries to get rid of the rightful king. he borrows the beggar’s rags for the purpose, and these, together with his own shrivelled appearance, make a perfect disguise. as he walks on the streets of his own town burgesses and ladies marvel at the beard of this “beggar”, which by now reaches his knees (507). incidentally, the episode is remiscent of those folktales in which a king wanders about his kingdom in disguise so as to learn about the real feelings of his subjects. then sir orfeo meets the steward on the street, and begs him for mercy, introducing himself as a “harpour of hepenisse” (513). the steward welcomes him for the sake of his lost king, who was also a harper (517-518). yet sir orfeo cannot know whether he is speaking truly, and how he will react once he gets to know that his king is alive and back to recover the position he has been enjoying for ten years. xxvi. fulfilled task: the task is accomplished (n). at the hall the steward sits surrounded by his lords, as a king would do (in king orphius the steward is actually called “king” in this episode). there are many musicians entertaining the court, including several harpers (521-513). sir orfeo sits still and waits until they finish their performance. then he starts playing, and his harping naturally has the same effect it had in the forest among the animals and in the fairy castle: everyone is moved by its charm, and all eyes are turned on the man who is making such a wonderful melody. the steward, in particular, fixes his eyes on the harp, probably because its music reminds him of his lord’s instrument. it is appropriate that sir orfeo should be recognized for his harp, the image of his best qualities. the steward then asks the harper where he got the harp and how, which is surely the question sir orfeo had been expecting in order to “assay” his faithfulness: “forto asay pi gode wille” (568), as he will explain later on. in order to do so, he tells him he has 151 found the harp ten years before in the wilderness, by the body of a man who had been torn to pieces by lions and wolves. here we have once again an allusion to the threat of dismemberment that is recurrent throughout the lay. this confirmation of sir orfeo’s death would probably have made the steward effective king by the will of parliament, but his reaction clears him of any suspicion that his role might have aroused. the extre me grief the steward suffers on hearing the news of his master’s death (542-549) is similar to that of sir orfeo when he lost heurodis. thus the loyalty that sir orfeo has learned through his own bitter experience at the personal level has now proved possible at the political level, too. xxvii. dénouement: the hero is recognized (q). sir orfeo reveals his identity to the steward with a speech of great rhetorical finesse. he addresses the steward as a wise beggar would address him to praise his loyalty to his king (557-576). by the time he finishes his speech, all the lords know who he is. he has thus revealed himself through his wisdom and eloquence, and as a conclusion he promises the best reward for the man who has deserved to take the crown after his death. even reading the poem as we do today, one could almost hear the sound of the harp that might have accompanied a minstrel’s recitation of this emotive passage of the lay. as if his speech had held back the great happiness of the courtiers on finding their good king alive, the joy bursts out as soon as sir orfeo finishes talking. the steward overturns the table in an exalted gesture of joy (578), falls at the feet of his king, and then all the lords follow suit. the scene has all the emotional emphasis that was witheld when sir orfeo had been able to rescue his lady. they give the king a good bath, shave his beard and dress him as becomes a king (584-586). then they bring the queen from the beggar’s cottage into the town in a great procession “wip al maner menstraci” (589). a great melody celebrates the return of the royal couple (590-592), signifying the restoration of harmony. 152 that the steward passes the assay and proves “a trewe man” (554), in stead of the false hero one would have expected, is a telling feature that dis tinguishes the lays of the “gentel bretons” (as chaucer understood them) from many folktales.1 in fact, it precludes the presence of two characteristic functions of wonder tales: the discovery or unmasking of the false hero or aggressor (xxviii: x) and his punishment (xxx: v), because the “false hero” proves true, and even the aggressor (the king of fairy) is finally true to his rash promise, besides its being a supernatural power beyond reach. thus the ending, though not solving altogether the threats that will always exist beyond human reason, is one of absolute reconciliation without vengeance. it celebrates the power of man’s best qualities to surmount the dangers of his own alter ego, without the need for a scapegoat, that is, without the righteous, but wild punishment that characterizes many folktales.2 xxix. transfiguration: the hero receives a new appearance (t). this is another function whose presence in sir orfeo rouses stimulating speculation. apart from magical transformations (t1) and humorous or rational derivations of this function (t4), heroes may be built a new magnificient palace to live there as princes (t2), or dressed in new clothes (t3). the new royal robes that sir orfeo is given have already been mentioned above. but perhaps the detail that suggests this function most definitely is his new coronation: “now king orfeo newe coround is” (593). it could mean that he is given his crown again, but it also implies being crowned anew, becoming king in a renewed fashion. the profound experience sir orfeo has gone through in the poem points to the latter interpretation. he does not merely re ceive the old crown 1 the point is made particularly by david v. harrington, “redifining the middle english breton lay”, medievalia et humanistica. new series, no. 16 (1988), p. 93 2 the endin g of lai le freine and that of “cinderella” make a telling comparison: both have a similar underlying plot, but in the later folktale the false heroines, cindirella’s stepsisters, have their eyes picked out by doves, while nothing of the sort happens in the lay. see note 51. 153 he used to wear. he cannot be the same man after his personal tragedy of loss, the ordeal of his life in the wilderness, his perilious journey to fairyland and his walk on the streets of his own kingdom as a beggar.1 he cannot be the same king either, because he must have learnt much about the frailty of human happiness, about humility, and about the great necessity and power of faithfulness and loyalty. but the poem, as usual, does not tell. it just invites its audience, us, to wonder, and it does so precisely through its underlying wonder tale pattern. as we have noted before, its narrator has been justly praised for his exceptional restraint from explicit didactism and moral comment. he simply allows the action to develop as if “of its own volition”,2 and it is this same development that plays with its many shades of meaning. xxxi. wedding: the hero gets married and ascends the throne. in the present case, the hero who had lost his wife has his marriage renewed (w 2). sir orfeo’s coronation is together with his wife: “now king orfeo newe 1 sir orfeo’s experience lends itself to a religious interpretation. suffice it to quote from a study of the celts which compares the druids with shamans of primitive cults: shamans, according to mircea eliade, one of the leading european religious historians, came to office by vocation or appointment. in either event they needed a summons that came to them in dream, ecstasy, trance or vision. they themselves might even die in the process and then experience a return to life. it happened in this way: inner voices urged the young adept to seek the solitude of the forest; there he encountered apparitions that made him behave as if he were going mad. in a dream, he experienced his own dismemberment... when he finally left the woods, his clo thes were torn, his face bleeding, the hair of his head mat ted. ‘only after ten days,’ says a russian ethnologist who has studied the phenomenon in siberia, ‘does he again manage to stammer out some coherent words.’ what had happened was, so the experts say, nothing less than the disintegration of profane man in the ‘psychic chaos’ of madness and the birth of a new personality … such phenomena would seem to reflect a pattern basic to all religions, in their primary aim of overcoming death. gerhard herm, the celts (1975; london: book club associates / weidenfeld & nicolson, 1976), p. 153. 2 keeble, op. cit., p. 195 154 coround is, / and his quen, dame heurodis, /and lived long afterward” (593595) -happily ever after, as we are tempted to add. thus everything that has been seen to apply to his new coronation must also apply to the renewed royal marriage. sir orfeo and dame heurodis must be enriched as a royal couple through their past experience in the same measure as the hero is improved both as man and as king. then we are told that the steward succeeded them (596), and when the harpers of “bretaine” heard about this wonder (“marauile”), they “made herof a lay of gode likeing” (598-599). indeed, “gode is the lay, swete is pe note” (602), and worthy of the bretons whose gentleness and intelligence chaucer honoured. * * * the analysis of sir orfeo that now concludes has tried to show ways in which form may clarify meaning, along with ways in which form opens questions about meaning. at the level of form it has pointed out a remarkable correspondence between the structure of the lay and the basic morphology of wonder tales according to propp’s study. thus our resulting scheme accord ing to propp’s functions would be as follows: ab3(g1)d1d2a7a1bc(d1)e1(f)g3(hj)ko1(l)mnq(x)t3w2 and propp’s overall scheme for his corpus of wonder tales: h j abgdezhqabcdefg i kpr-psolqxtuw m n the comparison between both schemes suggests a few comments. first of all, the attested fact that the equivalent functions in the lay follow the sequence of propp’s morphology very closely. this is very important, because 155 what identifies the pattern is the sequence, not the presence of all the functions. secondly, that mo st of the functions are actually present in the lay, which is very unusual in folktales: its pattern is closer to the archetype than that of most real folktales. functions h-j, i, and m-n very seldom appear in the same tale, though they are not mutually exclusive (otherwise, as propp notes, there would be three different patterns instead of one), yet in sir orfeo we have both h-j (combat and victory) and m-n (difficult task and fulfilled task), and in the order they are likely to adopt when both appear. those functions whose presence may be more arguable because they appear less explicitly, or in quite a modified form, have been given in brackets. but even these functions have been seen to play a definite role in the narrative development, and to be naturally interlocked within the sequence. thirdly, as many as half of the functions which present variants fit the first and most common of them in propp’s listing, which denotes another remarkable coin cidence. finally, the wonder tale pattern has been seen to solve the greatest critical crux regarding the structure of sir orfeo, that is, its addition of the final section to the original myth of orpheus and eurydice. in view of the pattern, it no longer looks like a superaddition, but like a fully integrated part of the tale. at the levels of genre, style, subject matter and meaning, we must pay attention to the interplay between folktale and romance in sir orfeo. on the one hand it presents many features that appear very commonly in folktales, such as the is olation of the hero in the forest; the praise of suffering, perseverance, courage and humility; the draw to a happy ending; the absence of explicit motivation, explanation and authorial comment, and an apparent simplicity that produces various significances and encourages multiple interpretations.1 1 i owe these comments to professor douglas gray and his seminar at my university in march 1992. i am thankful to him for suggesting the view of sir orfeo as a folktale, which was the starting point for the present article. the reference i make in note 48 above was also taken from his talk. 156 on the other hand, the english lay differs from most folktales in a number of significant ways. its degree of detail, its careful handling of mo tifs, its meaningful exploitation of symmetrical episodes, and ma ny other lit erary qualities relate it more closely to other great english works of the fourteenth century, including the “lay” of sir gawain and the green knight,1 than to tales of oral origin like the ballads. in spite of the probable oral elaboration of its pattern, sir orfeo is an altogether different thing from a folktale in style and detail. there are many medieval english works contain ing perhaps more folktale motifs than it does, for romances abound in wicked step-parents, ill-used and isolated heroes and heroines who pass tests of endurance, false heroes who are unmasked, recognitions of true heroes, exemplary punishment of aggressors, and happy endings in weddings. some of these stories also call themselves breton lays, like emaré (much closer to the standard lay than its elaborate analogue, chaucer’s man of law’s tale) or havelock the dane.2 king horn , often considered as an archetypal ro mance, is also full of folktale motifs, including the return of the harper-king dis guised as a minstrel and the exemplary punishment of the false hero (he is quartered). but most of these examples are basically romances which would have to be recycled and deprived of many episodes to fit into propp’s pattern, whereas sir orfeo does so without distortion of meaning, even if its style is that of a romance writer. 1 the gawain -poet calls his own romance “laye” in fit i, line 30. smithers goes a long way in trying to prove the origin of sir gawain and the green knight in some lost breton lay. see g.v. smithers. “story patterns in some breton lays”, medium ævum , xxii (1953), pp. 89-91. 2 this romance is sometimes called “the lay of havelock” because its french source, the lai d’haveloc, calls itself “a lay made by the bretons”, probably to follow a fashion or to appeal to a larger public after the success of marie de france’s lays. see mortimer j. donovan, the breton lay: a guide to varieties (notre dame, in.: university of notre dame press, 1969), pp. 100-104. 157 as for its meaning, it is the form of sir orfeo that has revealed it as a challenging, interrogating text. its folktale simplicity of plot becomes a powerful literary device in the hand of a sensitive romance writer. i do not think it possible or necessary to provide a closed interpretation of it, although i have mentioned some possible answers to the questions that rise from its wonder tale pattern. the poem, being artful in style and suggestive detail, would not have left so many loose ends in its meaning if it did not expect the audience to react to them positively. why was heurodis abducted? how was sir orfeo able to find her, in other words, is there a donor, and if so, who is he? why is the function of combat modified the way it is? why does the steward prove a true man instead of a false hero, and why is the aggressor not punished? how is the hero transfigured through his experience? scholars have disagreed in the answer to many of these questions, which proves that interpretation is, to a great extent, a personal or circumstantial matter. therefore what i have offered can only be tentative solutions given by the wonder tale pattern, the cultural milieu of the work, and its genre, the breton lay, which may actually be regarded as a subgenre of romance that appears peculiarly related to the folktale. thus the abduction has been seen as perhaps best explained by popular belief of celtic origin and also by a boethian idea of human predicament; the donor might be god, who rewards sir orfeo’s suffering and abnegation but, since god’s grace is not referred to in any open way, we can also consider sir orfeo himself as the embodiment of the highest human potentialities, of the god within man, which is in turn symbolized by his harping; there is no combat where one would expect it, but the struggle of endurance and courage against blind fate, and there is no false hero and no punishment, because the english breton lays are generally distin guished by their faith in the human capacity for being assayed and found as good as gold. rubén valdés miyares university of oviedo selim02.pdf 110 spanish references in the canterbury tales introduction traditionally, a strong continental influence on chaucer’s works, mainly italian and french has been widely accepted. some leading scholars (among them professor boitani’s and professor muscatine’s works can be cited as excellent samples) have devoted time and effort to demonstrate this foreign influence. but we are not accustomed to hearing of any relationship betweeen the great british genius and any spanish influence.1 it would be of extraordinary importance for us, spaniards and followers or students of chaucer to realize that there indeed exists such a relationship. it is our endeavour in this article to pose the question of this possibility and to try to show a rational, fair foundation of our argumentation in favour of this relationship. we shall limit our enquiry to the canterbury tales only for reasons of space and time. the title of the article is indicative of our claim as we believe that through these textual references we have been able to track down this supposed influence. 1.see, however, patricia shaw: “the presence of spain in middle english literature.” a paper read at the esse inaugural conference, norwich, sept. 1991, and to be published in heft 1, band 229 of the archiv für das studium der neueren sprachen und literatu ren, 1992. 111 our starting point lies parallel with the chaucerian assumption that many readers can interpret the same text in different ways as is explic itly suggested in troilus and criseyde, book iii, lines 13311336; book v, lines 1793-1798, i.e., we shall try to make this underlying relationship transparent and relevant. following our hypothesis this article is divided into three parts. first, a list of quotations pointing out those words, by means of bold letters, which refer explicitly to spanish persons, subjects, topics or circumstances. this list includes a total number of 62 quotations given per tale and each is accompanied by the line in which they occur in the riverside chaucer edition of 1991 as well as the corresponding page. the second part consists of an attempt to search for this spanish influence in chaucer while explaining most of the textual references quoted. apart from a brief introduction, the commentary is split up into three headings: spanish historical events, spanish ge ographical places and spanish authorities. this last heading includes subject matters such as medicine, religion, classical literature and moral philosophy. the third and last part is dedicated to a brief summary of our hypothesis suggesting that the reader should be aware of any possible spanish influence in chaucer. i.quotations a.prologue 1." in gernade at the seege eek hadde he be of algezir, and riden in belmarye." 1 2."ther nas noon swich from hulle to cartage. 1.the riverside chaucer, edited by larry d. benson. 3rd edition. oxford: o.u.p., 1991. v. 56-57. (p. 24). all the following quotations are from the same edition of the riverside chaucer. 112 hardy he was and wys to undertake; with many a tempest hadde his berd been shake. he knew alle the havenes, as they were, fro gootlond to the cape of fynystere, and every cryke in britaigne and in spayne. his barge was the maudelayne." v.404-410.(p. 30) 3."wel knew he the olde esculapius, and deyscorides, and eek rufus, olde ypocras, haly, and galyen serapion, razis, and avycen, averrois, damascien, and constantyn, bernard, and gatesden, and gilbertyn." v.429-434.(p. 30) 4."she hadde passed many a straunge strem; at rome she hadde been, and at boloigne, in galicia at seint-jame, and at coloigne." v.464-466.(p.31) 5."with hym ther rood a gentil pardoner of rouncivale, his freen and his compeer, that streight was comen fro the court of rome." v. 669-671. (p. 34) b.the reeve’s tale 6."for by that lord that called is seint jame , as i have thries in this shorte nyght swyvwed the milleres doghter bolt upright, whil thow hast, as a coward, been agast." v. 4264-4266. (p. 83) 113 c.introduction to the man of law’s tale 7."wel kan senec and many a philosophre biwaillen tyme moore than gold in cofre; for ‘los of catel may recovered be, but los of tyme shendeth us,’quod he." v. 25-28. (p. 87) d.the man of law’s tale 8."noght trowe i the triumphe of julius, of which that lucan maketh swich a boost, was roialler ne moore curius than was th’assemblee of this blisful hoost." v. 400-403. (p. 93) 9."yeres and dayes fleet this creature thurghout the see of grece unto the strayte of marrok, as it was hire aventure." v. 463-465. (p. 94) 10."forth gooth hir ship thurghout the narwe mouth of jubaltare and septe, dryvynge ay somtyme est, ful many a wery day, til cristes mooder -blessed be she ay!hath shapen, thurgh hir endelces goodnesse, to make an ende of al hir hevynesse." v. 944-952. (p. 100) e.the wife of bath’s prologue 11."now by that lord that called is seint jame , thou shalt nat bothe, thogh that thou were wood, be maister of my body and of my good; that oon thou shalt forgo, maugree thyne yen." v. 412-415. (p. 109) 114 f.the wife of bath’s tale 12."reedeth senek , and redeth ekk boece; ther shul ye seen expres that it no drede is that he is gentil that dooth gentil dedis." v. 1168-1170. (p. 120) 13."glad poverte is an honest thyng, certeyn; this wole senec and othere clerkes seyn." v. 1183-1184. (p. 121) g.the friar’s tale 14."wel be we met, by god and by seint jame !" v. 1443. (p. 125) h.the summoner’s tale 15."whilom ther wa an irous potestat, as seith senek , that durynge his estaat," v. 2017-2018. (p. 133) i.the merchant’s tale 16."ther nys no thyng in gree superlatyf, as seith senek , above an humble wyf." v. 1375-1376. (p. 155) 17."senek , amonges othere wordes wyse, seith that a man oghte hym right wel avyse to whom he yeveth his lond or his catel." v. 1523-1525. (p. 157) 18."straw for thy senek , and for thy proverbes!") v. 1567. (p. 158) j.the franklin’s tale 115 19."his tables tolletanes forth he brought, ful wel corrected, ne ther lakked nought, neither his collect ne his expans yeeris, ne his ootes, ne his othere geeris, as been his centris and his argumentz and his proporcioneles convenientz for his equacions in every thyng." v. 1273-1279. (p. 185) k.the pardoner’s tale 20."senec seith a good word doutelees; he seith he kan no difference fynde bitwix a man that is out of his mynde and a man which that is dronkelewe, but that woodnesse, yfallen in a shrewe, persevereth lenger than doth dronkenesse." v. 492-97. (p. 198) 21."now kepe yow fro the white and fro the rede, and namely fro the white wyn of lepe that is to selle in fysshstrete or in chepe. this wyn of spaigne crepeth sbtilly in othere wynes, growynge faste by, of which ther ryseth swich fumositee that whan a man hath dronken draughtes thre, and weneth that he be at hoom in chepe, he is in spaigne, right at the toune of lepenat at the rochele, ne at burdeux toun and thanne wol he seye "sampsoun, sampsoun!" v. 562-72. (p. 197) 22."but certes, i suppose that avycen wrooth nevere in no canon, ne in no fen, 116 mo wonder signes of empoisonyng than hadde thise wrecches two, er hir endyng." v. 889-92. (p. 201) l.the shipman’s tale 23."i thanke yow, by god and by seint jame !" v. 355. (p. 207) m.sir thopas 24."his heer, his berd was lyk saffroun, that to his girdel raughte adoun; his shoon of cordewane." v. 730-32. (p. 213) n.the tale of melibee 25."… for hir deeth, yourself to destroye./ senek seith: "the wise man shal nat take to agreet dis confort for the deeth of his children,/ but, certes, he sholde suffren it in pacience as wel as he abideth the deeth of his owene propre persone." v. 984-85. (p. 217) 26."mesure of wepyng sholde be consid ered after the loore thet techeth us senek :/ ‘whan that thy frend is deed,’ quod he, ‘lat nat thyne eyen to moyste been of teeris, ne to muche drye; although the teeris como to thyne eyen, lat hem nat falle;/ and whan thou hast forgoon thy freen, do diligence to gete another freend; and this is moore wysdom than for to wepe for thy freend which that thou hast lorn, for therinne is no boote.’/" v. 991-93. (p. 217) 117 27."yeveth me audience./ for piers alfonce seith, whoso that dooth to thee oother good or harm haste thee nat to quiten it, for in this wise thy freend wole abyde and thyn enemy shal the lenger lyve in drede.’/" v. 1053. (p. 219-220) 28."…/apres, le philosophere dit, en mauvais conseil les femmes vainquet les hommes; et par ces raisons je ne dois point user de ton conseil.]"/" v. 1062. (p. 220) 29."…/ for the book seith that ‘the wise man maketh no lesyng whan he turneth his corage to the bettre.’/" v. 1067. (p. 220) 30."…/ and senec seith that ‘whoso wole have sapience shal no man dis preyse, but he shal gladly techen the science that he kan withouten presumpcion or pride;/ and swiche thynges as he noght ne kan, he shal nat been ashamed to lerne hem, and enquere of lasse folk than hymself.’/…" v. 1071-72. (p. 220) 31."…/ the thridde is this, that he that is irous and wrooth, as seith senec, ne may nat speke but blameful thynges,/…" v. 1127. (p. 222) 32."…/ the book seith, ‘whil that thou kepest thy conseil in thyn herte, thou kepest it in thy prisoun,/ and whan thou biwreyest thy conseil to any wight, he holdeth 118 thee in his snare.’/…" v. 1143-144. (p. 222) 33."…/ for seneca seith: ‘if so be that thou ne mayst nat thyn owene conseil hyde, how darstou prayen any oother wight thy conseil secrely to kepe?’/…" v. 1147. (p. 222) 34."…/ and seneca telleth the cause why: ‘it may nat be,’ seith he, ‘that where greet fyr hath longe tyme endured, that ther ne dwelleth som vapour of warmnesse.’/…" v. 1185. (p. 223) 35."…/ and peter alfonce seith, ‘make no felawshipe with thyne olde enemys, for if thou do hem bountee, they wol perverten it into wikkednesse.’/…" v. 1189. (p. 223-224) 36."…/ and piers alphonce seith, ‘if thou hast myght to doon a thyng of which thou most repente, it is bettre "nay" than "ye"/…" v. 1218. (p. 224) 37."…/ and senec seith, ‘if thy conseil is comen to the ceris of thyn enemy, chaunge thy conseil.’/…" v. 1226. (p. 225) 38."piers alfonce seith, ‘ne taak no compaignye by the weye of a straunge man, but if so be that thou have knowe hym of a lenger tyme./ and if so be that he falle into thy compaignye paraventure, withouten thyn assent,/ enquere thanne as subtilly as thou mayst of 119 his conversacion, and of his lyf bifore, and feyne thy wey; seye that thou [wolt] thider as thou wolt nat go;/ and if he bereth a spere, hoold thee on the right syde, and if he bered a swerd, holld thee on the lift syde.’/" v. 1309. (p. 227) 39."for senec seith that ‘the wise man that dredeth harmes, eschueth harmes,/ ne he ne falletth into perils that perils eschueth.’/…" v. 1319-320. (p. 227) 40."…/ senec seith, ‘a man that is well avysed, he dredeth his leste enemy.’/…" v. 1324. (p. 227) 41."…/ the book seith that ‘somme folk han greet lust to deceyve, but yet they dreden hem to be deceyved.’/" v. 1328. (p. 227) 42."…/for senec seith thus: ‘that maister,’ he seith, is good that proveth shrewes.’/…" v. 1437. (p. 230) 43."certes," quod prudence, "if ye wol werke by my conseil, ye shul nat assaye fortune by no wey,/ ne ye shul nat lene or bowe unto hire, after hte word of senec;/ for ‘thynges that been folily doon, and that been in hope of fortune, shullen nevere come to good ende.’/ and, as the same senec seith, ‘the moore cleer 120 and the moore shynyng that fortune is, the moore brotil and the sonner broken is, she is.’/…" v. 1446-449. (p. 230) 44."…/ for senec seith, ‘what man that is norissaed by fortune, she maketh hym a greet fool’/ …" v. 1455. (p. 230) 45."after the comune sawe, ‘it is a woodnesse a man to stryve with a strenger or a moore myghty man than he is hymself,/ and for to stryve with a man of evene strengthe that is to seyn, with as strong a man as he is it is peril,/ and for to stryve with a weyker man, it is a folie.’/" v. 1481-483. (p. 231) 46."…/ for senec seith that ‘he putteth hym in greet peril that stryveth with a greeter man than he is hymself.’/…" v. 1488. (p. 231) 47."…/ and therfore seith senec that ‘a man shal nevere vengen shrewednesse by shrewednesse.’/…" v. 1531. (p. 232) 48."and yet seith this pamphilles moreover that ‘they that been thralle and bonde of lynage shullen been maad worthy and noble by the richesses.’/" v. 1561. (p. 233) 49."piers alfonce, ‘oon of the gretteste adversitees of this world is/ whan a free man by 121 kynde or of burthe is constreyned by poverte to eten the almesse of his enemy.’/…" v. 1566. (p. 233) 50."…/ for seint jame seith in his epistles that ‘by concord and pees the smale richesses wexen grete,/ and by debaat and discord the grete richesses fallen doun.’/…" v. 1676-77. (p. 235) 51."…/for senec seith, ‘the is the remissioun and foryifnesse, where as the confessioun is.’/… v. 1775. (p. 237) 52."…/for senec seith that ‘he taht overcometh his herte overcometh twies.’/… v. 1857. (p. 239) 53."for senec seith, ‘he overcometh in an yvel manere that repenteth hym of his victorie.’/… v. 1866. (p. 239) o.the monk’s tale 54."de petro rege ispannie o noble, o worthy petro, glorie of spayne, whom fortune heeld so hye in magestee, wel oghten men thy pitous deeth compalyne out of thy land thy brother made thee flee, and after, at a seege, by subtiltee, thou were bitraysed and lad unto his tente, where as he with his owene hand slow thee, succedynge in thy regne and in thy rente. 122 the feeld of snow, with th’egle of black therinne, caught with the lymrod coloured as the gleede, he brew this cursednesse and al this synne. the wikked nest was werker of this nede. noght charles olyver, that took ay heede of trouthe and honour, but of armorike genylon-olyver, corrupt for meede, brogthe this worthy kyng in swich a brike." v. 2375-390. (p. 246-247) 55." in yowthe a maister hadde this emperour to teche hym letteture and curteisye, for of moralitee he was the flour, as his tyme, but if bookes lye; and whil this maister haddde of hym mais -tryr, he maked hym so knnoyng and so sowple that longe tyme it was er tirannye or any vice doste on hym uncowple. this seneca, of which that devyse, by cause nero hadde of hym swich drede, for he fro vices wolde hym ay chastise discreetly, as by word and nat by dede"sire," wolde he seyn, "an emperour moot nede be vertuos and hate tirannye-" for which he in a bath made hym to blede on bothe his armes, til he moste dye. this nero hadde eek of acustumaunce in youthe agayns his maister for to ryse, which afterward hym thougthe a greet grev-aunce; 123 therefore he made hym dyen in this wisw. but natheless this seneca the wise chees in a bath to dye in this manere rather than another tormentise; and thus hath nero slayn his maister deere." v. 2495-2518. (p. 248) 56."lucan, to thee this storie i recomende, and to swetoun, and to valerius also," v. 2719-720. (p. 251) p.the manciple’s tale 57."reed salomon, so wys and honourable; reed david in his psalmes; reed senekke." v. 344-45. (p. 286) q.the parson’s tale 58."for, as seith seint ysidre, "he is a japere and a gabbere and no verray repentant that eft soone dooth thyng for which hym oghte repente."/" v. 88. (p. 288) 59."…/ and lo, what seith seneca in this matere? he seith thus: "though i wiste that neither god ne man ne sholde nevere knowe it, yet wolde i have desdayn for to do synne."/ and the same seneca also seith, "i am born to gretter thynges than to be thral to my body, or than for to makes of my body a thral."/" v. 143-44. (p. 290) 60."…/ another is to be benigne to his goode subgetis; wherfore seith senek , "ther is no thing moore covenable to a man of heigh es 124 taat than debonairetee and pitee./ and therfore thise flyes that men clepen bees, whan they maken hir kyng, they chesen oon that hath no prikke wherwith he may stynge." /" v. 466-67. (p. 302) 61."…/ ther is a maner norice, as seith seint ysidre, that whan men maken fir of thilke tree and covere the coles of it with asshen, soothly the fir of it wol lasten al a yeer or moore./ " v. 550. (p. 305) 62."…/ and therfore seith seneca, "thy prudence sholde lyve benignely with thy thralles."/" v. 759. (p. 314) ii.commentary chaucer’s knowledge of some spanish geographical places, some historical events, some merchandise made in spain and some important spanish authorities in astronomy, literature, philosophy and religion does not need any proof, the best way of confirming it lies in reading his canterbury tales. it is true that the attitude of the reader is also very important in order to discover in the text all this spanish world that we are seeking. the quotations, made in our first part, are for us real evidence of the presence of this spanish atmosphere that had an influence in a certain way on our beloved author. certainly we can affirm that chaucer was strongly influenced by séneca and that he had a sound knowledge of pero alfonso and st. james and slighter knowledge of lucan, st. isidore of seville, averroes and avycena. 125 we can easily guess that he was aware of fourteenth century news from spain related with political-historical events and with spanish merchandise familiar to his contemporaries. thus, he knew about the siege of algeciras in 1343, which was a famous event all over europe, in which some english knights fought. his a treatise on the astrolabe and the references to astrological and astronomical knowledge in the canterbury tales had a basic foundation in that time which was the alphonsine tables known by chaucer. all this background about spain in the fourteenth century may have been acquired in two ways: indirect knowledge and direct knowledge. the first method involves two elements: news and means of communication through which news can travel. chaucer may have had three means: pilgrimage, books and the english intervention in the spanish events of that time. the three most important shrines of pilgrimage then were jerusalem, rome and st. james of compostela in galicia. many english pilgrims went along the pilgrims‘ road to st. james of compostela following the french routes. it is important to remember that part of western france (it should be borne in mind that the black prince was also the prince of aquitaine) was english in the period when the english took part in the spanish fratricide fighting (pedro i against enrique ii). knowing chaucer’s sensitivity and capacity for absorbing the events of his time, as can be seen in the canterbury tales, it goes without saying that this event brought chaucer in touch with the spanish scene. books were another means of learning about spain and the spaniards. possesing a book at that time depended on the social class to which a person belonged. chaucer’s status fitted into the right category. international relationship was possible for commercial, political and religious motivations. the third mechanism to obtain information in an 126 indirect way was the english contribution to spanish life of that time. the black prince helped pedro i "the cruel" in the war against his bastard brother enrique "the fratricide". the duke of lancaster married constanza, one of pedro’s daughters and claimed the crown of castille and leon. chaucer was at their service. this is enough to understand the possible ways through which chaucer may have had an acquaintance of spanish affairs. the direct way to acquire a kind of spanish background may have been by means of chaucer’s own experience. a safe-conduct was issued by the king of navarre from february 22nd to may 24th 1366 to allow chaucer and some of his servants to go through the territory of navarre.1 neither spanish nor english scholars recognize any spanish influence in chaucer’s works, although everybody agrees with a community of ideas and mutual intellectual overlapping in europe recognizing a french and italian but not a spanish influence. why? the answer is not only because chaucer visited italy and france several times but also because some authors have devoted their time and energy to bring to the fore these foreign debts. if it is true that he came to spain too, our effort only rests on showing this spanish influence. this is our purpose, so let us consider these spanish references in the canterbury tales thinking not only about their number and frequency but of what is implied by them. 1.spanish historical events 1.1.the siege of algeciras in granada.(quotation 1) 1.honore-duverge, suzanne, "chaucer en espagne? 1366", recueil de travaux offert a m. clovis brunel. paris: 1955, 9-13. 127 henry of lancaster, the count of salisbury and other english knights took part in the siege of algeciras, helping alphonso xi,1 who had gathered troops from germany, italy, navarre and france, against the arabian invaders. the siege lasted from august of 1342 to march of 1344. this historical event was well known all over europe. chaucer and his family were directly connected to the english royal family who took part in this event. his knowledge was indirect as he had just been born. this area of spain was a polemical area at that time for political and economic reasons, the straits of gibraltar being an important commercial route: many kingdoms were interested in holding power in them. we think that it is significant that chaucer mentions nearly all the places in this area: gibraltar, algeciras, granada and ceuta. he was well informed because he was a man with diplomatic and commercial missions. this allusion takes place in the introduction of the knight. this character is so important to chaucer (the knight belongs to the first stage, the nobility), from a social point of view, that he has the honour of opening his tales. the fact that this character had fought in granada at the siege of algeciras seems an important feature of his personality and it implies that this spanish reference has a positive connotation for chaucer himself. so we can deduce that our poet did not maintain any prejudice against spanish affairs. 1.alphonso xi (salamanca 1311-gibraltar 1350) was king of castile and león from 1312 to 1350. he led the siege of algeciras and not alfonso ix as is written in the riverside chaucer, "explanatory notes", v. 57, p. 801. alphonso ix (zamora 1171villanueva de sarria 1230) was king of león from 1188 to 1230. obviously he could not take part in the siege of algeciras from 1342 to 1344. 128 as the prologue is meant to appear as a kind of introductory preparation for the reader/hearer, we can logically assume that this spanish mention, with which any of chaucer’s contemporaries were familiar, held a positive value. nothing particularly interesting in reference to this point is mentioned by the four translations into spanish we have consulted. two of these are by prof. guardia masso, bilingual edition bosch, 1978 and ed. cátedra, 1987; two by juan g. de luaces, one in ed. iberia in two volumes, 1973 and the other in ed. planeta, 1984. 1.2.the tragedy of pedro i (quotation 54) chaucer is one of the few writers who refers to this spanish king by praising him. most historians and chroniclers refer to him in recognizing his atrocities. not in vain was his nickname pedro el cruel. although the black prince was aligned with king pedro at the battle of najera they were not always in agreement with each other. pero lópez de ayala says:" …siempre ovo entre el rey don pedro e el principe poca avenencia"1 further on, he narrates how the king, called "the cruel", wrongly killed his prisoners after the battle of najera (1367) and the black prince answered: "señor pariente, a mi parescer que nos tenede maneras mas fuertes agora para cobrar vuestro regno, e le registes en tal guisa que le ovistes a perder. e yo vos consejaría de cesar de facer estas muertes, e que buscásedes manera de cobrar las voluntades de los señores, e caballeros, e fijosdalgo, e cibdades e pueblos de este vuestro regno; e si de otra manera vos gobernásedes segund primero lo faciades, estades en gran peligro de perder el vuestro regno, e vuestra persona, e llegarlo a tal estado, que mi señor e padre el rey de inglaterra, nin yo aunque quisiéramos nos vos po1.lopez de ayala, pero, crónicas. barcelona: planeta, 1991, p. 365. 129 dríamos valer."1 the black prince calls pedro a "relative". this can be relevant in order to understand how chaucer refers to this spanish king with praise. but there is another important reason for understanding chaucer’s point of view: the marriage of the duke of lancaster to constanza of castille, pedro’s daughter in 1371 and the duke of lancaster’s claim to the crown of castilla and león after his father in law’s death. lópez de ayala writes about this event of 1374: "ca el rey don enrique se rescelaba del duque de alencastre, porque casara con doña constanza, fija del rey don pedro e de doña maría de padilla, allabase el dicho duque de alencastre rey de castilla e de león, e traía armas de castillos e leones…"2 the spanish reference in the monk’s tale: "de petro rege ispannie" gives a clue to dating the tale. pedro i was murdered by the bastard enrique ii in 1369. the tale may have been written in the period from 1371 to 1388, when the duke of lancaster married costanza and began to claim the crown of castilla and león. chaucer had to defend his lord’s claim. it was impossible to express the point of view of recognizing pedro i as "the cruel" and not as "the just" as his few admirers called him. chaucer could not write against his lord’s father in law. the year 1388 appears to be a key date because chaucer could not say pedro i was a victim and his brother enrique was the murderer as chaucer refers to them in the monk’s tale because of a decisive and curious historical episode narrated by lópez de ayala: "otrosí que los dichos rey de castilla e duque de alencastre e la duquesa doña constanza, su mujer, farían sin ningún engaño que se 1.lopez de ayala, pero, op. ct. p. 367. 2.lopez de ayala, pero, op. ct., p. 475. 130 ficiese casamiento por palabras de presente del infante don enrique, fijo promogénito del rey don juan de castilla, con doña catalina, fija de los dichos duque e duquesa; e que del día quel trato fuese jurado e firmado, fasta dos meses publicamente señelizarían el dicho casamiento en faz de la iglesia e que se consumaría lo más aina que ser pudiese.." and further on: "otrosí, que fasta dos meses primeros siguientes del dicho trato ficieses el rey cortes e jurara en ellos a los dichos infante don enrique su fijo, e doña catalina, así como su mujer, por herederos suyos de castilla e de león."1 so pedro’s i granddaughter, catalina, and enrique’s ii grandson got married. all the fighting and claims were finished and sealed by a blood tie. taking into consideration this event it does not seem probable to us that chaucer wrote this spanish reference, as with this marriage bond neither was pedro i "the cruel" nor was enrique ii "the fratricide". obviously this period of time from 1371 to 1388 implies the date of the monk’s tale. we believe that the most suitable circumstances for writing this tale were after the wedding and a claim to the crown of castilla and león: 1371 or the following years. chaucer writes this catalogue of short stories, as he himself establishes in line 110, in order to learn. our story "de petro rege ispannie" comes after zenobia’s and it mainly consists of high praise of king pedro. 2.spanish geographical places quotation number 1: granada and algeciras. quotation number 2: cartagena and finisterre. quotation number 4: st. james of compostela quotation number 5: rouncesval. 1.lopez de ayala, pero, op. ct., p. 634-635. 131 quotation number 9: straits of morocco. quotation number 10: gibraltar and ceuta. quotation number 19: alphonsine tables. quotation number 21: lepe. quotation number 24: shoes made in córdoba. there are nine references to twelve spanish locations and, we think, they are highly relevant. all the places can be classified depending on the reason why they are mentioned. four reasons seem to be the general explanation of these references: political-economical reasons, trade between spain and england, the shrine of st. james and the astronomical scientific importance of the alphonsine tables. 2.1.the political-economical reasons have already been pointed out above when explaining the algeciras siege. thus gibraltar, ceuta belong to this conflictive area. 2.2.trade between england and spain. chaucer’s knowledge of wines is obvious. references to wine appear in nearly all the tales. chaucer refers to the wine of lepe and the shoes made in córdoba. many spanish products were imported to england in the middle ages, especially oil, cereals and wine. wine from lepe was imported from early 1304. wendy childs writes about it: "southern shipping on the channel routes was even rarer but not missing altogether: ships from seville called at england as early as 1304 and a few continued to come in the fourteenth and 132 fifteenth centuries, supported in the latter half of the fifteenth by odd vessels from sanlucar, cádiz and lepe"1 andalusian ships went directly to england and "buques ingleses que van a andalucía: mucho más numerosos, llevan paños como producto de exportación casi único, y vino como cargamento de retorno."2 leather products made in córdoba were famous from the moorish invasion of spain. "andalucia era uno de los centros productores de cueros más importantes de españa."3 in the translations into modern spanish consulted we see that while professor guardia translates our quotation number 24 as "sus botas eran de cuero español", j. g. de luances says "usaba zapatos de cordobán". chaucer’s allusions can be explained by remembering two factors: his family connection with the wine trade and because in 1374 he was made controller of the customs and subsidies on wool for the port of london. in this sense robinson says: "furthermore the customs seems to have offered opportunities to enrichment beyond the actual salary. he may have received income from the flees, and sum as the value of a shipment of wool that had been confiscated when its handlers tried to dispose of it without acquiring a license or paying the duty."4 1.childs, wendy, anglo -castillian trade in the later middle ages. manchester: 1978. 2.ferreira priegue, elisa mª, "el papel de galicia en la redistribución de productos andaluces visto a través de los archivos ingleses", actas del ii coloquio de historia medieval andaluza.hacienda y comercio. sevilla: exma. diputación de sevilla, 1982, p. 243. 3.otte, enrique, "el comercio exterior andaluz a fines de la edad media", actas del ii colo quio de historia medieval andaluza. hacienda y comercio. sevilla: exma. diputación de sevilla, 1982, p. 224. 4.the works of chaucer, edited by robinson. p. 1024. 133 so it is clear that chaucer knew the swindles mentioned in quotation number 21 about the wine from lepe which was mixed with others, because of his occupation at that time trying to prevent such swindles. in the case of quotation number 21, it is worth noting the strikingly contradictory versions in spanish. thus while guardia masso renders "por lo que manteneos apartados del vino, blanco o tinto, no importa, y muy especialmente alejaos del vino blanco de lepe que se vende en fish street y en cheapside. pues de un modo misterioso este vino español parece contaminar los vinos que se crian cerca de él y de la mezcla se desprenden vapores de tal fuerza que después de beber tres vasos un hombre que se cree en su casa de cheapside se encuentra en españa (no en la rochela o en burdeos, sino en la mismisima villa de lepe) repitiendo "sansón,sansón" luaces says "así, guardaos del vino, blano y del tinto, y en particular del blanco de lepe, que venden en chepe y en fish-street. porque este vino de españa deslìzanlo sutilmente en otros vinos que cre cen aquí cerca, y de ellos emana tal aroma que basta que un hombre beba tres tragos para que, cuando piensa estar en su casa de chepe, se halle en españa y en el mismo lepe, que no en la rochela o en burdeos. y entonces es cuando la nariz rurunea: "sansón, sansón". comparing these two versions we are delighted with the excellency and the misery of that difficult and exciting task of translation. 2.3.the shrine of st. james of compostela in galicia 134 pilgrimages must be considered one of the most important occupations in the middle ages, not only from a religious but a cultural, economical and political point of view. the shrine of st. james was the nearest one for english people, except, of course, canterbury. chaucer’s spanish references about: finisterre, st. james of compostela, galicia and rouncesval imply that the pilgrims’ road to st. james of compostela was one of the main meeting centres. this argument is strengthened by a continual invocation to st. james in the canterbury tales for swearing. nevertheless, galicia was an important focus for merchants and pirates at that time. chaucer, by citing all the natural bays given in quotation number two, shows himself to be familiar with this fact. another important quotation is number five where rouncesval is mentioned. once again spain and england are linked not only by the royal blood bond, trade and political relationships but by a religious organization. st. mary rouncesval at charing cross in london, depended on the agustinian hospital of our lady of roncesval in spain on the pilgrims’ road to compostela. spanish and english connections are not few and not a coincidence. chaucer as a good observer of his time knew this and spanish references are necessarily present in his work. on the other hand, the tradition of st. james was known early by english people. in the eighth century st. adhelmo, abbot of malmesbury (a municipal borough in wiltshire, by the river avon) and later on bishop of sherbourne (in the county of dorset, by the river yed) wrote these verses: "hic quoque jacobus, cretus quitore vetusto/ delebrum sancto defendet tegmine celsum;/qui clamante pio ponti de margine crhisto/ linquebat propium panda cum pupe parentem/ primitus hispanias convertit dogmate gentes, / barbara divinis convertents agmina dictis/ quae priscos duodum ritus et lunda facia,/ daemonis horrendi deceptae fande, colebant;/ plurima hic praesul pa135 travit signa stupends/ quae nunc in chartis scribuntur rite quadratis/"1 the cult of st. james had grown in england a long time before chaucer. 2.4.the astronomical scientific importance of the alphonsine tables was known by chaucer. he liked astronomy and astrology. his a treatise on astrolabe and the abundant references in the canterbury tales, including the canon’s yeoman’s tale are good evidence to make us think so. quotation number 19 about the alphonsine tables made in toledo ("tables tolletanes") reveals chaucer’s knowledge of them. alphonso x, king of castile and león (1221-1284) gathered to gether christian and arabian wise men and commanded them to make the famous tables. they were finished in toledo in 1252 and were adapted to the oxford meridian and latitude in the fourteenth century. this book and libros del saber de astronomía, whose contents: "libro del astrolabio redondo y del libro del astrolabio llano" in the fourth book, were the foundation for everyone who was interested in learning these sciences. again the two versions into spanish consulted differ. as pedro guardia says: "sacó sus recien corregidas tabulas toledanas de astronomía y todo lo que necesitaba…" luances says: "trajo sus tablas toledanas muy bien corregidas, sin que en ellas faltase nada…" so spanish scientific works in the middle ages were another contribution linking spain to england and europe although it seems hard for people to recognize it. 3.spanish authorities 1.enciclopedia uviversal. madrid: espasa y calpe, 1973. tomo liv, p. 246. 136 chaucer, as an educated man of his time, knew all the most important spanish authorities who were basic intellectual foundations of western civilization. these spanish authorities known by chaucer were so important that they represented outstanding sources for the european civilization. 3.1medicine 3.1.1.avycena (quotations 3, 22) avicenna was a philosopher and a physician, (980-1037). although he was not born in spain, al andalus was the most important place to spread his doctrine all over europe. he was called "the prince of the physicians" at that time. although his fundamental work was book of the canon of medicine, he also wrote excellent treatises on mathematics, astronomy, and other subjects. avycena is mentioned by chaucer as a basic reference to an intellectual man, with not only a knowledge of literature but also of other sciences. his mention corresponds to the same reason for quoting our next authority who happens to be a spaniard from córdoba. 3.1.2.averroes (quotation 3) averroes was a spanish moslem philosopher, astronomer and physician who was born in córdoba in 1126. he was more famous as a philosopher than as a physician. nevertheless, his medical works were spread widely from his time to the renaissance. his most famous work was the kitab alkulliyat al.tibb (a treatise of the universal medicine)." esta obra sería traducida al latín a mediados del siglo xiii por bonacossa (1255) con el título de colliget y editada en venecia en 1482."1 antonio arjona says that there are three uncom1.arjona castro, antonio, "la medicina andaluza durante los reinos de taifas y las invasiones africanas. apogeo de la medicina arábigo -andaluza", axerquia. revista de 137 pleted manuscripts of the hebrew translations, made in the fourteenth century, in paris, florence and oxford. probably chaucer’s knowledge of averroes was not by reading his work but from oral information. one way or another, the source was a translation in latin. medicine is a science and diseases are not caused by divine will. this is in chaucer’s text:"he knew the cause of everich maladye."1 notice that "everich" is said which means that there are no possibilities for divine causes. and on the same page: "his studie was but litel on the bible". so god has nothing to do with the causes of illness. corroborating this text antonio arjona says: "una respuesta ingenua e insuficiente, dice averroes, sería decir " que los días del hombre están contados" y que una vida larga y breve no guardan relación con regímenes buenos y malos. pero no es así, es preciso conocer las causas."2 further on dr. arjona says that averroes followed aristoteles’ theory about the four "elemental qualities": hot, moist, cold and dry as we can find in chaucer’s prologue:"hoot or coold, or moyste, or drye."3 3.2.religion 3.2.1.st. isidore of seville (quotations 58, 61) st. isidore was archbishop of seville, a scholar and the "second apostle of spain". he lived during the v and vi centuries and died in estu dios cordobeses. córdoba: exma. diputación provincial de córdoba, 1989. nº 19, p. 206 1.the riverside chaucer, edited by larry d. benson. 3rd edition. oxford: o.u.p: 1991. v. 419. (p. 30). 2.arjona castro, antonio, op. ct., p. 209. 3.op. ct. v. 420. (p. 30). 138 636. he was not only a compiler of the greek and roman civilizations but an original and productive writer like st. bede in england. there are two catalogues of his works: prenotatio librorum divi isidori by a contemporaneous friend called st. braulius and de viris illustribus by st. ildefonso. among the dogmatic works the best one is sententiarum libri tres which was highly appreciated during the middle ages. chaucer might have read it according to the quotations about penance (quotation 56) and resentment (quotation 60). chronica mundi, a historical work, in which he narrated the history of the world from the beginning to 615.it was a source for the venerable bede’s most important work. his most outstanding work is etimologias. st. isidore starting from an etymologic point of view goes on dealing with all the wisdom about god, man, arts and the universe. over one thousand manuscripts exist of this work. chaucer must have known st. isidore’s works, at least, etimologias and sententiarum libri tres. that is why he mentioned st. isidore as an authority when he refers to resentment and penance. it is relevant that chaucer knew the first apostle of spain, st. james, and st. isidore who is considered the "second apostle", in spite of not being one of the twelve apostles. 3.2.2.st. james (quotations 4, 6, 11, 14, 23) when chaucer mentions st. james he refers to three different aspects: the shrine of st. james of compostela in galicia, " st. james" as a swearword and st. james as an apostle who wrote an epistle of the christian doctrine. this ample range of possible references were common ground in the middles ages. 139 we have already referred to the first aspect about the shrine of st. james of compostela at 2.3. let us see the second possibility. "st. james" as a swearword implies an analysis of human speech. through this we can discover the importance of chaucer’s reference.1 swearing is a suitable act for speaking and not for writing. chaucer was very concerned about the accuracy and impartiality of the text that he wrote. apart from any possible irony here we have his own words: " whoso shal felle a tale after a man,/ he moot reherce as ny as evere he kan/ everich a word, if it be in his charge, / al speke he never so rudeliche and large, / or ellis he moot telle his tale untrewe,/ or feyne thyng, or fynde wordes newe."2 so chaucer is merely a recorder of talk. he’s a truthful witness. swearing is a habit, a repetitive action, almost carefree. it is related to feelings and passion. most of the time it is a reflex action of speech. therefore, swearwords (quotations 6, 11, 14, 23) imply a close rela tion between the person and the meaning of the swearword, although sometimes it is mainly in the speaker’s mind and not in the act of speaking itself. for example, if we say :"for god’s sake", the meaning is not in the words but in the expression, the attitude to which the speaker and the listener are involved. swearwords correspond much more to a functional, attitudinal message of language than to realistic semantic sense. these words are full of meaning in our minds but we say them not for the meaning but to show our feelings and attitude. chaucer’s speech, among others, contained spanish swearwords or, at least, people of his time used them and he, as a good social notary, shows them to us in his works. usually, swearwords are not ex1.we do not agree with the following opinion from the riverside chaucer: "… but there seems no special significance in mentioning him here", in the "explanatory notes", v. 4264, p. 852. 2.op. ct. v. 731-736. (p. 35) 140 clusive to one person but to a social group or to more than one person. we have a record of "st. james" as a swearword. but the people who swore were not english, they were spanish fighting against the english and spanish in the battle of nájera (1363). pero lópez de ayala narrated this episode: "e tan recio se juntaron los unos con los otros, que a los de la una parte e a los de la otra cayeron las lanzas en tierra: e juntarónse cuerpos con cuerpos, e luego se comenzaron a ferir de las espadas e hachas e dados, llamando los de la parte del rey don pedro e del príncipe de gales por su apellido, guiana, sant jorge; e los de la parte del rey don enrique, castilla, santiago."1 in the canterbury tales we find english people swearing by st. james: chaucer himself or the wife of bath (a temperamental character); the summoner (another temperamental character) in the friar’s tale; alan (another one) in the reeve’s tale or the monk (a perfect rascal) in the shipman’s tale. st. james as an apostle has nothing to do with spain. he may be confused with st. james called "the greater", st. john’s (the evangelist) brother, who is considered the patron saint of spain. the one who wrote the epistle was called "the minor" and was st. judas’ brother. 3.3. classical literature 3.3.1. lucan (quotation 8, 56) he was born in córdoba in 39 a. c. and was seneca’s nephew. they had common characteristics as writers and as nero’s "servants". both were accused of pison’s conspiracy and both were ordered to commit suicide by the same method. both were masters 1.perez de ayala, pero, op. ct., p. 352. 141 treating human tragedy in literature. lucan was under his uncle’s influence, mainly in those episodes of his pharsalia in which human horror is pathetic. the descriptions of the battle of pharsalia and the tesalian wizard’s spell are horrifyng scenes which might have been imitated from his uncle. a relevant factor is the positive treatment for lucan when chaucer wrote about cesar’s triumph "of which that lucan maketh swich a boost,"1 chaucer considered lucan as a good "photographer" of the reality who knew how to emphasize that majestic moment. this idea is corroborated in the monk’s tale considering lucan as a historian "that of this storie writen word and ende."2 chaucer’s importance is based on the fact that he is the first writer who mentioned the word "tragedy" at that time in english. italian influence in the early 1370’s may be an explanation to his contribution but seneca’s and lucan’s influences must be taken into account because they were very important authors dealing with tragedy in literature. let us not forget the fact that both were spaniards and chaucer was quite familiar with them. 3.4. moral philosophy 3.4.1. pero alfonso (quotations 27, 32, 35, 36, 38, 48, 49) he was a converted jew, born in huesca whose famous book disciplina clericalis was widely distributed in french, italian, english and german. it was a typical work in the middle ages like the "exempla" books. it was the first collection of these books compiled in spain. 1.op. ct. v. 401. (p. 93). 2.op. ct. v.2721 (p. 251). 142 this spanish author "pasó algún tiempo en inglaterra donde llegó a ser médico de enrique i".(1.110)1 --another link between spain and england--. chaucer may have read this book in latin. its appearance in the canterbury tales only corresponds to melibee’s tale. seneca and pero alfonso are the two spanish authorities whom chaucer mentioned repeatedly. there are references to seneca in many tales. the fact that pero alfonso is cited only in this tale can be explained by the special characteristics of melibee’s tale: the need for moral examples and the plot where two persons are involved: the adviser (prudence) and the one who is advised (melibee). disciplina clericalis contents "sententiae" and "examples", structured by a narrative thread based on a dialogue: a father who is the adviser and his son who is advised. pero alfonso’s work is a suitable source for this tale. all the quotations show the same themes, except the one misattributed to pamphilus in the riverside chaucer’explanatory notes"2 and quotation 32. the themes are: enemies, friendship and advice, i.e., the nuclear basis of the tale. 3.4.2. seneca (quotations 7, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 57, 59, 60, 62) seneca was, without any doubt, one of the most important classical authors who served as a source for many writers in the middle ages. there were many misattributions when writers quoted seneca: they sometimes quoted seneca where he was not the author and they sometimes did not quote seneca when he was. this meant that 1.deyermond, a.d., historia de la literatura española. tomo i. barcelona: ariel, 1979, p. 177. 2.op. ct., v. 1561. (p. 927). 143 seneca was considered a great philosopher, an important source of wisdom. that greatness itself made someone unable to know seneca’s works as well as being able to quote accurately. besides when someone has not read seneca’s original works but translations or mere compila tions it is easy to make mistakes. seneca’s moral philosophy was a continuous source for chaucer. although those misattributed quotations1 exist, seneca’s name is mentioned in them. it implies a recognition of the spanish author’s relevance. the recognition of this importance for chaucer is easy to find in the canterbury tales. chaucer told a senecan tale in the summoner’s tale and chaucer told more about seneca than about nero when he is writing about nero in the monk’s tale. all the misattributed quotations are found in melibee’s tale as in this tale there are more than a hundred and sixty four quotations. seneca hs been an inspiration for many great english authors. we agree with luis astrana’s words :"advirtamos el influjo decisivo que poco a poco ha ido ejerciendo nuestro lucio anneo séneca sobre shakespeare. este influjo, patente desde las dos citas de phedra en tito andrónico (ii,i, 133-5 y iv, i, 82-3) ha seguido manifestándose en infinitas semejanzas (situaciones, frases, pensamiento, metáforas) de diferentes comedias, singularmente en el mercader de venecia (iv, i, 189-90 y iv, i, 196-97), que rememora dos pasajes del tratado de clementia (i, iii, 3 y i, ix, 9), y se intensifica en las grandes tragedias. la mención del inmortal filósofo y poeta trágico en hamlet, por 1.these misattributed quotations are: 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 51, 53. the quotation 37 is not identifified in séneca. and the quotation 50 is not from st. james but from séneca (epistolae 94.46). 144 boca de polonio: "seneca canot be too heavy nor plautus too light", indica lo muy presente de su lectura."1 in any case, and important as it is, a more detailed study of the vast chaucerian debt to seneca would exceed the space of this article. threfore, we prefer to leave it for a future publication. iii.conclusions spain and england have been linked by many bonds, mainly in the middle ages. chaucer’s work is a mirror in which we can easily find all these links interwoven in a real network of influences. traditionally there have never been a clear declaration about what is an evident fact: a spanish and english mutual bond. nobody, as far as we know up to now, has tied up all these spanish and english connections and relationships. and this is within anyone’s reach: just reading chaucer’s canterbury tales. obviously all these bonds are not explicitly narrated by chaucer because it was not his intention. but we think they are not difficult to discover for a good reader if he wants to do so. ties between spain and england in the canterbury tales can be elicited from the already mentioned quotations: * a royal blood bond: quotation number 54 about "de petro rege ispannie" implies a historical background. before chaucer’s time, edward i was married to leonor de castilla. after chaucer’s time, henry viii was married to catherine of aragon. in chaucer’s time, chaucer’s patron, john of gaunt, married constanza of castile, 1.shakespeare, william, hamlet. introducción de luis astrana marín. madrid: afrodisio aguado, 1957, p. 11-12. 145 "petro’s" daughter. later on, enrique’s (trastamara) grandson married the duke of lancaster’s daughter. aren’t these links enough? * trade bonds : quotations 21 and 24 show the commercial rela tions (wine and leather) which were usual and common at that time. chaucer’s occupation as a controller of customs and subsidies on wool is historical relevant data. in fact, chaucer himself told us about these bonds. * political bonds : quotations 1, 9 and 54 reveal an intense political relationship at that time. they were mainly based on war treaties. english intervention in spanish affairs affected chaucer. the safeconduct (see note 2) shows chaucer’s involvement in these political relations. we may think he was a pilgrim or a diplomat but in any case it seems to us evident that he was a beneficiary of the good spanish and english political relationship. * religious bonds: quotations 4, 5, 6, 11, 14 and 23 show two kind of bonds: the spanish knowledge through the pilgrims road to st. james of compostela and the spanish religious organization, agustinian hospital of our lady of roncesval, which had a branch in london, st. mary rouncesval at charing cross. pilgrimage was a commercial, political, human, cultural and religious basis of relationship. st. james of compostela was the nearest and the most important shrine for english pilgrims excepting canterbury. * cultural bonds : quotations 3, 7, 8, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 25 and the following quotations from 26 to 62. chaucer as a genius and as a scholar showed us the importance of the cultural relationship. hence the numerous quotations. not only séneca who influenced many other english writers like shakespeare but pero alfonso maintained strong links between spain and england. pero alfonso was in england as a scholar in the english royal court (see page 27). even sciences like astronomy or medicine were bonds for both countries. 146 all the human aspects in the western european civilization were present: political, economic, cultural, religious and royal consanguineous bonds. and links imply relationship. relationship can imply reciprocal influence. let us hope that these reflections may have sparked off an interest in a possible spanish influence on chaucer’s works in you, friendly reader. antonio león sendra jesús serrano reyes university of córdoba * * * selim05.pdf andrew breeze, selim 5 (1996): 122—126 old english hreol ‘reel’: welsh rheol ‘rule’ hreol ‘reel’ is attested in late old english as a gloss on alihruz ‘reel’ (from xix. xxix of st isidore of seville’s etymologies) it also figures in gerefa, a text on estate management attributed in its final form to archbishop wulfs tan, and linked with the church’s lands in worcestershire, which covered over half the county.1 gerefa lists the word amongst necessities for making cloth: linen flax, spindle, reol, yarn -winder, and so on.2 old english provides the forms hreol (in the supplement to ælfric’s glossary), reol, and riul. middle english contains few instances of reel used in its literal sense, though oed quotes late examples from the laud troy book and promptorium parvulorum. yet the verb reel is fairly common. langland uses it at c.ix.81 in describing poor widows who card wool, wash and patch clo thes, scrape flax, rele (wind yarn on a reel), and peel rushes to make lights.3 the verb reel is also used figuratively in barbour’s bruce, the alliterative morte arthure, and the work of the gawain-poet with the various meanings ‘roll; turn suddenly; sway in combat; wheel about; stagger; prance wildly, run riot’. typical is an oed citation from barbour, on a battle-line wavering, becoming unsteady, and giving way: ‘the king … saw thame re land to and fra’. association of reel in these senses with old english hreol, proposed cautiously by oedand gollancz, is accepted without query by norman 1 dorothy bethurum, episcopal magnificence in the eleventh century, in studies in old english literature in honor of arthur g. brodeur, ed. s. b. greenfield (eugene, oregon, 1963), 162-170, at 168; janet bately, the nature of old english prose, in the cambridge companion to old english literature, ed. m. r. godden & michael lapidge (cambridge, 1991), 71-87, at 73. 2 h. r. loyn, anglo-saxon england and the norman conquest (london, 1962), 113. 3 piers plowman, ed. d. a. pearsall (london, 1978), 164. andrew breeze ____________________________________________________________________ 128 davis.1 as we dis cuss the transla tion ‘roll’ below, it is worth noting exactly how the gawain-poet employs this verb. he uses it six times. at sir gawain 229 the green knight ‘reled hym vp and doun’; at 304 ‘runischly his rede y ¥en he reled aboute’; at 1728 a hunted fox swerves, ‘ofte reled in a¥ayn, so reniarde watz wyle’; at 2246 the green knight tells gawain they can sway in combat as they wish, ‘here are no renkes vs to rydde, rele as vus likez’. at patience 147 jonah’s ship slews round in a hurricane, ‘hit reled on roun vpon pe ro¥e ypes’; at 270 jonah rushes down the whale’s throat: he glydes in by pe giles pur¥ glaymande glette, relande in by a rop, a rode pat hym po¥t. ay hele ouer hed hourlande aboute, til he blunt in a blok as brod as a halle.2 at 229 tolkien and gordon, after napier, refer nym to eyes, translating ‘rolled them up and down’, and ‘rolled’ at 304 also. but the first is challenged by andrew and waldron, who prefer the interpretation ‘swaggered’ of earlier editors.3 oed declines to give an etymology for hreol describing it as without cognate in other germanic languages, sense and form being against a connection with old norse hræll ‘weaver’s beam’. this caution is not shared by continental scholars, who derive hræll from germanic *hranhila-, hreol from *hrehula-, both related to old en glish hrægl, old high german hregil ‘gewand’, greek kerkis ‘spitzes gerät zum festschlagen des gewebes’, lithuanian krekls ‘hemd’, and even russian kresat ‘mit dem feuerstahl feuer schlagen’, ukrainian kresnuty ‘feuer schlagen’, and sanskrit kresati ‘feuer schlagen’.4 1 sir gawain and the green knight, ed. israel gollancz, eets os 210 (london, 1940), 169; sir gawain and the green knight, ed. j. r. r. tolkien & e. v. gordon, 2nd edn (oxford, 1967) 207. 2 patience, ed. j. j. anderson (manchester, 1969), 40. 3 poems of the pearl manuscript, ed. m. r. andrew & r. a waldron (london, 1978), 216. 4 julius pokorny, indogermanisches etymologisches wörterbuch (bern, 1948-59), 618-619; jan de vries, altnordisches etymologisches wörterbuch, 2nd edn (leiden, 1962), 263. old english hreol: welsh rheol ____________________________________________________________________ 129 but it seems oed’s scepticism is well-founded, and that old en glish hreol ‘reel’ is actually to be derived from welsh rheol ‘rule’. the etymology of rheol was established long ago as being via reol <ryol <rywol <rwyol from latin regula (with long e), which also gives cornish rowl, breton reol, and old irish riagol.1 support for the welsh etymology is given by the forms ryol, in a life of st beuno and translations of geoffrey of monmouth of the thirteenth century, and rywoli and rwyoli, in poems by llywarch ap llywelyn (fl. 1173-1220), the ‘poet of the pigs’.2 rhywolus ‘orderly’ still features in the work of dafydd ap gwilym (fl. 1330-60).3 rheol normally means a religious rule, as in the welsh exemplum (containing a middle english snatch) of the wolf who tried a monastic vocation, but could not stop thinking of lambs and rams.4 yet a vital clue for our purposes occurs in a translation made c. 1300 of promptuarium bibliae by peter of poitiers (d. 1205), where the regula aurea of joshua 7: 21 appears as ryol eur.5 the authorized version here reads ‘wedge [literally ‘tongue’] of gold’; modern bibles read ‘bar’ or ‘ingot’; but in classical latin regula means ‘rule, bar, staff, lath, stick’, and this is how it is understood in welsh. the development of modern english reel <old english hreol <old welsh *reol <latin regula ‘stick’ becomes clear once we understand that early reels actually were sticks. reels rotating on an axle reached england only about 1300. this is made clear b y the histories of technology, which prove the stickreel was known in early times. schlie mann found an 11-inch stickreel at troy, with a great quantity of carbonized woollen yarn still wound on it lengthways; similar reels have been found in the prehistoric lake villages of switzerland; and the stick-reel is used even now in many countries. a devel1 ifor williams, nodiadau iethyddol, y beirniad vi (1917-8), 273-6; henry lewis yr elfen ladin yn yr iaith gymraeg, (caerdydd, 1943), 7; k. h. jackson, language and history in early britain (edinburgh, 1953), 331; brut y brenhinedd, ed. b. f. roberts (dublin, 1971), 51; j. vendryes. lexique etymologique de l’irlandais ancien: lettres r s (paris, 1974), r26. 2 the life of st david and other tracts, ed. john morris -jones (oxford, 1912), 26; henry lewis & holger pedersen, a concise comparative celtic grammar (göttingen, 1937), 62; brut dingestow, ed. henry lewis (caerdydd, l942), 320. 3 gwaith dafydd ap gwilym, ed. thomas parry (caerdydd, 1952), 491. 4 chwedlau odo, ed. ifor williams, 2nd edn (caerdydd, 1957), 5, and cf. bella millett, ‘the origins of ancrene wisse’, medium ævum, lxii (1992), 206-28, at 226. 5 y bibyl ynghymraec, ed. thomas jones (caerdydd, 1940), 19. andrew breeze ____________________________________________________________________ 130 opment of it, the cross-reel with two bars criss-cross, one usable as a handle, is shown on a hallstatt urn from sopron in northwest hungary; but the turn ing reel reached europe only in the late twelfth century, arriving together with the spinning wheel. both came from indla. early evidence for the spinning wheel in europe comes from parls, where it was used from about 1268, and from speyer in the upper rhineland, in a trade statute of 1298. an english spinning wheel is represented in the luttrell psalter of c. 1338. as for the turning reel, a caricature of c. 1310 from the ypres ‘book of trades’ shows a monkey winding a hank of thread onto one.1 since the turning reel does not predate the spinning wheel, the old english hreol must have been a stick-reel. hence its name can be derived from velsh rheol ‘stick, rule’, enabling us to identify reel as another previously unrecognized celtic loanword in english. is this argument agreeing with the chronology of welsh and en glish changes in sound? jackson, citing æt hroden (the river roden, shropshire) from a charter of 975, and hris for ‘rhys’ in the anglo-saxon chronicle for 1052, felt that welsh unvoiced r (for which the grapheme rh is a sixteenthcentury invention) did not effectively exist before the tenth century, since it is not shown in english spelling before then. the variants spellings rheol, reol, riul in late old english sources accord with this interpretation, anglo -saxons at that date perceiving welsh unvoiced l only intermittently. as for the development wy> yw> y>e, jackson felt the evolution of ei from welsh long e was not finished until the later seventh century.2 because time would be needed for the various stages from old welsh *ruiol to rheol, old english hreol, riul from welsh rheol, ryol is likely to be a late borrowing, perhaps of the tenth century. since hreol occurs in gerefa, a west midland text, and possibly re flects the influence of welsh spin ning girls (riddle 12 in the exeter book being evidence for welsh slavewomen in anglo -saxon england), it can be re lated to cader ‘cradle’ and baban ‘baby’ in the ab dialect as a domestic word taken by english from the language of welsh servants (probably wo men).3 1 f. j. mone, zunftordnungen einzelner handwerker, zeitschrift für geschichte des oberrheins, xv (1863), 281, cited in r. j. forbes, studies in ancient technology (leiden, 1955-72), iv. 158, 168-70; a history of technology, ed. c. j. singer et al. (oxford, 1954-8), ii. 208. 2 jackson, 330-5, 477, 479-80. 3 e. j. dobson, the origins of ‘ancrene wisse’ (oxford, 1976), 115. old english hreol: welsh rheol ____________________________________________________________________ 131 such an origin influences interpretation of the middle english verb reel. because the stick-reel was twitched or jerked from side to side as yarn was wound on it, the original figurative sense of reel must have been ‘waver, swerve, twist round’. a sense ‘roll’ could not develop until the turning reel was known. this strengthens a case for translating ‘swagger’ at sir gawain and the green knight 229, while at 304 the sense may be that the eyes of the green knight darted about, rather than ‘rolled’. yet a reading of patience 270 shows the poet knew the later sense ‘turn, rotate’. jonah, washed into the whale’s mouth, tumbles head over heels down its gullet, with lines 270-1 describ ing the same action, as ay ‘always’ proves. the passage reveals the gawain-poet’s gift for visualizing movement or action, as with the raising of the axe at 421-6 of sir gawain, or the lady’s entering the bedroom at 1182-1203.1 since relande at patience 270 certainly means ‘rolling’, the turning reel must have reached the cheshire staffordshire area by the poet’s time, bringing the extended sense ‘roll, rotate’ to the verb reel. so line 270 of patience must, somewhat unexpectedly, reflect the arrival in the rorth-west mid lands of me dieval new technology and its associated textiles manufacturing revolution. andrew breeze university of navarre, pamplona * † * 1 marie borroff, sir gawain and the green knight: a stylistic and metrical study (new haven, 1962), 120-9; a. c. spearing, the gawain poet (cambridge, 1970), 91-2, 231; andrew & waldron, 37; p. a. m. clemoes, action in beowulf and our perception of it, in old english poetry: essays in style, ed. d. g. calder (berkeley, 1979), 147-68, at 147-8. selim04.pdf ____________________________________________________________________ 179 old and middle english bibliography 1992-1994 abou-el-haj, barbara. the medieval cult of saints: formations and transformations. cambridge university press. 1993. alford, john a and m. t. tavormina, eds. yearbook of langland studies. 6. camden house. 1993. alford, john a and m. t. tavormina, eds. yearbook of langland studies vii. colleagues press. 1994. astell, ann w. job, boethius and epic truth. cornell university press. 1994. auwera, j. van der and e. könig eds. the germanic languages. routledge. 1993. bartlett, robert. medieval frontier societies. oxford university press. 1992. baumgartner, emmanuelle and i. short. eds. la geste du roi arthur. uge. 1993. barr, hellen. signes and sothe: language in the piers plowman tradition. boydell & brewer. 1994. beadle, richards. ed. the cambridge companion to medieval english theatre. cambridge university press. 1994. bisson, lillian m. a. chaucer resource book: the poet and the late medieval world. macmillan. 1994. boh, ivan. epistemic logic in the later middle ages. routledge. 1993. antonio bravo ____________________________________________________________________ 180 bolton. w. f. ed. the penguin history of literature: i the middle ages. penguin books. 1993. bravo, antonio & pedro gonzalo abascal heroes y santos en la literatura anglosajona. servicio de publicaciones universidad de oviedo. 1994. bravo, antonio, fernando galvaån and s. g. fernaåndez-corugedo. eds. old and middle english studies in spain. servicio de publicaciones universidad de oviedo. 1994. brewer, charlotte and a. g. rigg. eds. piers plowman: facsimile of the ztext. boydell& brewer. 1993. brewer, elisabeth. and t. h. white. the once and future king. boydell & brewer. 1993. bromwich. rachel, a. o. h. jarman and b. f. roberts. eds. the arthur of the welsh: a collaborative study of the arthurian legend in medieval welsh literature. repr. university of wales press. 1993. burnley, devid & m. tajima. the language of middle english literature. 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(university of bamberg studies in english linguistics. vol. 32.) peter lang. 1993. antonio bravo university of oviedo * † * selim09.doc manuela romano, selim 9 (1999): 45—56 anger in old english 1. introduction1 this paper is the second part of a broader research pro ject which intends to study the metaphorical mappings for the most basic emotion concepts (friendship, love, anger, joy, fear and sorrow) in medieval germanic languages 2. the paper presents a study of the scope of metaphor which forms the abstract concept of anger in old english; that is, it analyses the range of application of particular source domains to the target domain of anger to see how this abstract concept was conceptualised in this period of the language. the aim of this paper is, thus, twofold: first it intends to contribute to the reconstruction of the conceptual system of the time and second, it intends to find out how much of the conceptual structure of this well-studied contemporary category is physiological and, thus, universal and how much culture specific of this period of the language. as far as the theoretical framework is concerned, the study follows the recent trend in linguistic theory which considers synchrony and diachrony to be two complementary processes of language rather than two opposing 1 abbreviations: æadmon … admonitio — æhex … hexameron — æhom … ælfric, homilies — æchom … ælfric, catholic homilies — æls … ælfric, lives of saints — ælet … ælfric, letters — benrgl … benedictine rule — beo … beowulf — conf … confessionale pseudo-egberti — cp … gregory the great, pastoral care — dan … daniel — el … elene — gdpref … gregory the great, dialogues — gena, b … genesis — gutha, b … guthlac — hom … homilies — jday … the judgement day — jn … john — jud … judith — jul … juliana — law … laws of england — libsc … defensor, liber scintillarum — lsmald … the battle of maldon — mem … benedict of aniane, memoriale — met … the meters of boethius — monca … monastic canticles — msol … solomon and saturn — nic … gospel of nicodemus — pps … the paris psalter — prec … precepts — prov … proverbs — ps … psalms — wan … wanderer — whom … wulstan, homilies. 2 until the moment the scope of metaphor for friendship in old english and old norse has been studied in around 95 terms and 1200 contexts. see romano (forthcoming). manuela romano 44 dichotomies (geeraerts 1983, 1997; traugott 1989, traugott and heine 1991; sweetser 1990; bybee et al 1994). it intends, therefore, to show how synchronic theory can help to explain diachronic issues, in the case under study, the reconstruction of the human conceptual system of a medieval germanic culture and, vice versa, how the analysis of older stages of languages can help to explain and corroborate synchrony, in this case metaphor theory. metaphor theory has been widely applied to emotion terms in contemporary languages in the work of lakoff & johnson 1980, johnson 1987, lakoff & kövecses 1987, lakoff & turner 1989 and kövecses 1990, but systematic studies of the mappings and submappings of emotion terms in older periods of languages seem to lack until the moment. also, dictionary definitions of emotion terms tend to show more vagueness and circularity than other more concrete words1. thus, trying to define emotion terms, as we know, is anything but a simple task in a contemporary language. with no informants to describe what they feel when they are angry and with the restrictions imposed by written data this task seems almost impossible. nevertheless, with the help of linguistic theory and the tools of linguistic corpora of older periods of languages much more than initially thought can be achieved. the starting point of this research was, thus, the fact that this vagueness and circularity present in contemporary dictionaries also exists in the anglo -saxon ones (bosworth & toller 1991; clark 1984). the linguistic material used in this study comes mainly from the toronto microfiche concordance to old english (healey and venezkey 1980). the corpus comprises around 40 terms meaning ‘anger’, ‘rage’, ‘wrath’, ‘to become angry’, ‘to rage’, ‘furious’, etc. on the whole, around 900 contexts belonging to the anglo-saxon records (ix to xii centuries approximately) have been studied. all word classes have been analysed, but it is nouns and verbs together with their prepositional, verbal and adjectival collocations which have given us the most interesting information. examples of the most prototypical members of the category anger in old english are: 1 it is not the purpose of this study to try to delimit the polysemy shown by most of the members of this category. the vagueness and circularity of emotion terms seems even more patent in anglo-saxon, where a term such as anda, for instance, can mean ‘grudge’, ‘enmity’, ‘envy’, ‘vexation’, ‘fear’ and ‘horror’ in addition to ‘anger’. in most cases, nevertheless, contextual clues have helped to decide. anger in old e nglish 45 nouns: æbylgp, anda, eornes, gebelg, gewed, gram, ierre, teona, torn, wielm, wrap verbs: æbylgan, awendan, gebelgan, gramian, iersian, rabbian, styrman, wrapan adjectives/adverbs: ellenwod, grame, ierrenga, ierremod, tornmod, wede, wrape, wrapmod 2. analysis and discussion that abstract concepts such as anger are metaphorically understood in terms of concrete concepts is a well-known fact in the literature (black 1962, reddy 1979, lakoff & johnson 1980, johnson 1987, lakoff & kövecses 1987, lakoff & turner 1989, kövecses 1990, etc.). we also know, because of the great number of lexical terms belonging to this category in old english as well as to the work done in many contemporary languages that anger is a highly productive, embodied and universal category. six large metaphorical systems have been identified by lakoff and kövecses (1987) as sourc e domains for anger in contemporary american english: ‘heat’, ‘active enemy’, ‘dangerous animal’, ‘natural force’, ‘living organism’ and ‘entity/presence’ metaphors; in addition to the physiological metonymy: ‘increase in body temperature stands for anger’. in this work we concentrate mainly on the physiological effects of anger and on the heat, dangerous animal metaphor systems, which are the most productive in the data analysed. 2.1. physiological effects of anger in oe as in contemporary american englis h, the folk theory of the physiological effects of emotions is reflected by a great number of linguistic expressions found in the oe corpus: 2.1.1. anger is physically visible manuela romano 46 ? anger is ansienne ‘visible’ (psglj 101.11) ? anger is acyped ‘shown, revealed’; ætiewad ‘manifested’ (pps 88.40; pps 137.7; cp 21.165.9) 2.1.2. anger provokes interference with accurate perception ? anger ablent… mod/heortan ‘blinds the mind/heart/person’ (æhom.i, 39 606.1; libsc 15.6; gdpref 3(c) 15.206.25) ? one becomes hygeblind ‘mentally blind’ (jul 58) ? one becomes anræd, geangsumod ‘single minded’ (jul 89; mald 42) 2.1.3. anger produces general physical agitation ? one/one’s mind/body is gebysgod/onstyred/gedrefed/acweht ‘agitated, disturbed, excited, moved… ’ with anger. (æhom. i, 39 584.18; cp 21.159.6; benrgl 65.3; mem 120.25; cp 40.293.9) ? anger… welwiap on weden heortnesse ‘makes you roll in madness’ (cp 40.289.4) 2.1.4. anger increases body temperature ? anger is hate on hrepre ‘heat in the breast’ (jud 92) ? smic, fyr, forbærnde gleda vek cola astah fram ansyne ‘smoke, fire, burning flames like fire rise from the face’ (psglf 17.9) 2.1.5. to be angry is to be in an upright/agressive position ? one on yrre uppriht astynt ‘stands upright in anger’ (beo 2089) 2.1.6. other physiological effects ? anger is shown by cohhetan ‘coughing’, cirman hlude ‘crying out loud’, gristbitian ‘gnashing the teeth’, styrman ‘roaring’ and grin ‘snare’ (jud 269, beo 2550, jud 220, pps 57.5) anger in old e nglish 47 2.2. anger is heat as in contemporary american english, one of the most productive source domains from which anger in old english as a target domain in herits its mappings is the ‘heat conceptual system’. in the old english corpus we find that the two main metaphorical subsystems of this source domain: anger is fire and anger is the heat of a fluid in a container are equally important and developed. 2.2.1. anger is fire ? anger can onælan, swindan, biernan, gledan, onbærnan, ontendan, forniman: ‘burn’, ‘consume’, ‘kindle’, ‘ignite’, ‘devastate’ like fire (psglf 78.5; psglf 118.139; libsc 15.9; cp 21.151; cp 49.381.22; pps 77.23; pps 87.7; pps 78.7; æls 54; monca 1 15.8) ? anger should be adwæscan ‘put out’, extinguished’ (cp 56.435.8) ? anger is ofen fyres ‘an oven of fire’ (psglf 20.10) ? anger forwisnian ‘withers’, ‘dries up the earth’ (pps 128.4) ? anger is on fyre ‘on fire’ (monca 15.8) 2.2.2. anger is the heat of a fluid in a container in old english, as in contemporary american english, two metaphors are combined within this metaphorical subsystem: the heat of a fluid metaphor and the body is a container for the emotions metaphor. 2.2.2.1. anger is a hot fluid ? anger gewealdan, pindan, ‘wells’, ‘seethes’, ‘swells’ (prec 83; pps 111.9) ? one shouldn’t let anger prowigean ‘explode’; forlætan ‘let go’ (gena,b 2421; homs 38 23.v) ? anger is wielm, hygewælm ‘a hot boiling liquid’, ‘that which wells in the heart’ (cp 40.289.19; gena,b 980) manuela romano 48 ? as anger decreases it can acoligan ‘grow cold’ (cp 20.149.24) 2.2.2.2. anger rises ‘from a container’ ? anger can upahebban, awegan, astandan, astigan ‘rise’, ‘be lifted up’, ‘ascend’ (cp 34.235.5; nic(a) 536; gena,b 980; pscaj 6.7; psca i 6.7) 2.2.2.3 the body is a container for the emotions ? one is afyllede ‘filled’ with anger (æchom i, 37 572.23; æls 183; æchom ii, 31-32 246.141; æhom 11 103; æhom 12 33; ælet 6 39; gutha, b 205) ? anger is on heortan ‘in the heart’ (whom 10c 97; homs 13 111; conf 3.1.1 2.27; æadmon 1 5.22; gena,b 979) ? anger is on mode ‘in the mind (cp 49.381.22; gena,b 60) gena,b 337; gena,b 405; gena,b 745; gena,b 2261) ? anger is on breostum ‘in the breast’ (gena,b 980); it is let of breostum ‘out of the breast’ (beo 2550) ? anger comes of eagum ‘out of the eyes’ (beo 724) ? anger is on gaste ‘in the soul’ (pps 105.25) 2.3. anger is a wild/dangerous animal a second major source domain from which oe anger is created is the ‘wild/dangerous animal system’. ? anger can etan ‘eat’, ‘devour’ (jn(wscp) 2.17); ehtan ‘attack’, ‘harass’ (æhom i, 27 390.4); atrian ‘poison’ (benrapp 1.84); forswelgan ‘swallow up’ (pps 57.8; psglk 123.3; pscaf 5.7); forgripan, gelæccan ‘seize’, ‘assail’ (pps 58.12; pps 68.24; æls 531); ondrædan, bregan ‘provoke fear, terror’ (jday ii 15; whom 2 46); gegripan ‘snatch’ (psgld 68.25; psgli 77.38); onsigan ‘assail’ (æchom i,18 246.16); preagan ‘threat’ (psglf 7.7); torendan, anger in old e nglish 49 toslitan ‘tear in pieces’ (pps 123.7; cp 40.289.4); feallan ‘fall on’, ‘attack’ (homu 16 11) ? anger is repe, frecne and ferpgrim ‘fierce, violent and savage’ (jul 140) 2.4. other minor source domains 2.4.1. anger is a person/enemy ? anger can benæman ‘take away’, ‘rob happiness… ’ (æhom i, 39 606.1); ascyrian ‘separate’, ‘cut off from god, good… ’ (benr 72.1); beswican ‘deceive’, ‘seduce’ (æhex 449) ? one should nerian ‘protect, ‘defend oneself from’ anger (æhom ii, 9 76.115) 2.4.2. anger is a place/location ? one is on andan/yrre/graman… ‘in anger’ (dan 339; dan 712; el 967; beo 705; whom 6 37) ? anger is a place oncyrran/acyrran fram‘to turn away from’ (psfr 84.4; pps 105.19; psglf 84.4); awendan ‘turn from’ (psgli 88.47) 2.4.3. anger is a living organism/plant ? anger can awecan ‘be born’, ‘spring forth’ (benr 65.15); weorpan ‘grow’ (dan 549; msol 490); weaxan ‘grow’, ‘floerish’ (lawiveg 1.2) 2.4.4. anger is a (cutting) instrument ? anger is to totwæman, brecan ‘break with’, ‘scatter’ (æhom i, 17 240.24; æhom ii 19 175.27); swingan ‘beat, strike with’ (conf 3.1.1 2.4); towearpan… towendan mid graman ‘destroy with anger’ (gen 19.25); fortredan ‘to tread down with’ (monca 13.3) ? anger can purhfaran ‘traverse, penetrate the body’ (psglf 87.17) manuela romano 50 ? anger is scearp ‘sharp’ (pps 58.7) 2.4.5. anger is a liquid ? anger is a liquid which one can ageotan ‘pour’, ‘shed on somebody’ (pps 68.24; pps 78.6; psgld 68.25); toslupan ‘disolve’, ‘melt’ (met 29.84) ? anger is wine: it can oferdruncan mod ‘overdrink the mind’ (cp 40.295.3; libsc 28.13) 2.4.6. anger is an entity/force ? anger can astyran, lædan ‘guide’, ‘control’ (ls 8 114; cp 35.237.21); onstyran ‘move’, ‘disturb’ (cp 21.159.6); gebysgian ‘oppress’, ‘overcome’ (æhom i, 38 584.18); towyrpan ‘destroy’ (cp 35.245.18); swencan ‘torment’, oppress’ (cp 40.295.23); oferswipan ‘overcome’ (cp 43.313.17); wemman ‘injure’, ‘destroy’ (cp 43.313.22); apenan, astreccan ‘expand’, ‘extend’, ‘stretch out’ (psglc 84.6; psgli 84.6); swican ‘give way’, ‘go away’ (æhom 22.255); wunian ‘dwell’, ‘exist’ (homu 51 11); besmittan ‘pollute’ (pps 106.16) 2.4.7. anger is an object ? one can niman ‘carry’, ‘take away’ (æhom i, 1 26.21; cp 33.222.7); healdan ‘hold’ (whom 10c 97; conf 1.4.72); aworpan ‘throw away/out’ (homs 13 111); asendan ‘send away’ (monca 1 15.8); onwealdan, habban ‘have’, possess’ (cp 26.185.10; gena,b 694); gewyrcan ‘make’, construct’ (cp 10.63.11; el 511); beran ‘bear’, ‘carry’ (beo 710); fordon ‘destroy’ (æhom i, 4.16); gemetan ‘find’, ‘encounter’ (æls 183); tostencan ‘scatter’ (met 29.84) anger in old e nglish 51 2.4.8. anger is a disease ? one can gepafian, prowian ‘endure’, ‘suffer’ (libsc 4.50; gena,b 2421; homs 49 180) anger. 2.5. ontology of anger in old english the ‘prototypical scenario’ or ontology of anger in old english is similar to lakoff & kövecses’ (1987) findings in contemporary american english in that we find a contradiction between the fact that from a socially accepted point of view anger should be controlled and, at the same time, revenged and rewarded. nevertheless, the great majority of contexts which appear in the old english corpus show that the first attitude must have been socially more accepted than the second. some examples are: ? one should astyran ‘guide’, ‘control’ (ls 8 114); gemetgian ‘moderate’, ‘measure’ (cp 40 291.23); pingian ‘conciliate’, ‘settle’ (cp 10.63.11); stillan ‘clam’, ‘appease’ (cp 46.353.17; psglb 84.4)); beorgan ‘avoid’, ‘beware of’ (prec 32); oferswipan mid gepylde ‘overcome with patience’ (æls 341); metgian ‘weigh in mind’ (prov 1 1.22); dyrnan ‘hide’, ‘repress’ (pps 76.8); gecirran to manpwærnysse ‘convert to gentleness’ (æchom i 25 362.29); næfre… acypan ‘never reveal’ (wan 112); lipigian ‘appease’ (æchom ii, 41 306.60); settan ‘settle’ (psglf 20.10); toslupan ‘mitigate’ (met 29.84) anger ? a woman should be polemod ond steapig… nan mon ne seah hire wrap ‘patience and steady… no one should see her wrath’ (ls 18.1 363) versus ? one should gepreagan ‘punish’ (mem 120.25); wrecan ‘revenge’ (gena,b 54; gena,b 2033) anger manuela romano 52 3. conclusions as pointed out at the beginning, this work intends to show how the abstract concept of anger was conceptualised in a medieval germanic culture: old english. further research on other medieval cultures, both germanic and non-germanic, is needed in order to corroborate my preliminary conclusions: ? anger in oe is a gestaltic category which has a very rich conceptual structure constructed on the basis of the interaction of a great number of different source domains of which the ‘heat’, ‘dangerous animal’ and ‘enemy’ metaphor systems are the most important. ? the conceptual metonymies and metaphors which help to understand anger in old english are, in general, very similar to those of a contemporary language like contemporary american english. this proves that the contemporary folk theory of anger has been working for at least the last ten centuries, which indicates that it is motivated, embodied and even universal. ? anger in old english also presents specific metaphorical systems – such as anger is a liquid or anger is a cutting instrumentwhich show differences in the conceptualisation of the emotion from contemporary cultures. finally, with the identification and analysis of metaphorical systems of older periods of languages –such as the project under researchi wish to help not only in the reconstruction of the conceptual structure of these periods, but also in the explanation and corroboration of synchronic linguistic theory, in this case metaphor theory. manuela romano universidad autónoma de madrid references anger in old e nglish 53 bosworth, j, & toller, t. n. 1898[1991]: an anglo-saxon dictionary. oxford: oup. benveniste, e. 1969: le vocabulaire des institutions indo-européenes vols.i and ii. paris. black, m. 1962: models and metaphors. ithaca, new york: cornell university press. buck, c. d. 1949/1988: a dictionary of selected synonyms in the principal indo-european languages. chicago: university of chicago press. bybee, j., r. perkins & w. pagliuca 1994: the evolution of grammar. tense, aspect and modality in the languages of the world. chicago: the university of chicago press. clark, j. r. 1894/1984: a concise anglo-saxon dictionary. toronto: university of toronto press. geeraerts, d. 1983: prototype theory and diachronic semantics: a case study. indogermanische forschungen 88, 1-32. geeraerts, d. 1997: diachronic prototype semantics. a contribution to historical lexicology. oxford: clarendon press. healey, a. and venezky, r. 1980: a microfiche concordance to old english . toronto: university of toronto press. kövecses, z. 1990: emotion concepts. new york: springer. lakoff, g. & johnson, m. 1980: metaphors we live by. chicago: chicago university press. lakoff, g. & kövecses, z. 1987: ‘the cognitive model of anger inherent in american english’. in d. holland and n. quinn (eds.), cultural models in language and thought. new york: cup, 195-221. lakoff, g. & turner, m. 1989: more than a cool reason. a field guide to poetic metaphor. chicago: chicago university press. romano, m. (forthcoming) the scope of metaphor for friendship in old english and old norse: a contrastive analysis. manuela romano 54 sweetser, e. 1990: from etymology to pragmatics (cambridge studies in linguistics 54). cambridge: cup. traugott, e. 1989: on the rise of epistemic meaning: an example of subjectification in semantic change. language 65, 31-55. traugott, e. and b. heine 1991: approaches to grammaticalization vols. i and ii. amsterdam: john benjamins. * † * selim05.pdf luis alberto lázaro, selim 5 (1996): 18—28 some speculations about chaucer’s spanish literary sources it is common knowledge that geoffrey chaucer was widely read and his writ ing is packed with examples of the influences of his reading. that is why a larg e amount of literary criticism on chaucer has been occupied in analysing and dis cussing his sources, and his references to other writers. most critics have shown the french and italian influence on chaucer’s work, his debt to classical and patristic literature or his acquaintance with the bible. yet, it is not so common to read about the importance of a spanish influence on chaucer. in the last few years, however, several scholars have detected and explained the exis tence of spanish literary references in his writings. in this re gard, some dis tinguished names have been mentioned: petrus alphonsus, st. isidore of seville, seneca, lucan, ramón llull, juan ruiz, fray juan garcía de castro jeriz, don juan manuel; and various comments have been made about chaucer’s acquaintance with spanish lit erature, as well as his direct access to its texts. the discussion of literary influences and sources is always difficult because we tend to engage in speculative questioning which is seldom illustrated with reliable evidence. this is particularly obvious, as is well known, in medieval literature, where the word “source” is often a deceptive term it should not be understood as a particular text which provides the inspiration for another work, since the medieval writer indiscriminately draws from a varied literary inheritance. therefore, this paper simply aims to put forward some reasonable conjectures regarding the spanish sources in chaucer, that is to say, his possible familiarity with the above-mentioned authors from spain, his hypothetical knowledge of the spanish language and the role that spanish literature, on the whole, played in his work. the starting point of this discussion might be the trip to spain that chaucer is supposed to have made in 1366. some biographers, historians and some speculations about chaucer’s spanish literary sources ____________________________________________________________________ 19 literary critics claim that chaucer might once have visited spain when he was in his mid-twenties and they mention a safe conduct issued by king charles ii of navarre to a “geffroy de chauserre” with three unnamed companions, allowing him to travel through the kingdom from february 22 until may 24. it has been suggested that the trip to spain might have been some sort of diplomatic mission from the black prince’s court in aquitaine to that of navarre or to the court of pedro in castile.1 unfortunately, we do not know for certain the purpose of his visit, or the duration of his stay, or whether he really went at all; consequently it is not easy to presume the mark that this journey left on him or how it might have affected his future literary career. what is an unquestionable fact is that there are some scattered references to famous spanish men of letters in chaucer’s collection of stories the canterbury tales. all the same, we can immediately tell that these allusions to spanish medieval scholarship are not great in number nor distinguished for their importance in the general context of chaucer’s work. moreover, the circumstances in which they appear show that chaucer’s real and direct knowledge of the spaniards mentioned in his tales is doubtful, to say the least. in the first place, the name of the spanish-arab averroes is inclu ded in the general prologue as part of a long list of medical authorities of all times that the doctor of physic is familiar with (429-434). we are not surprised to spot the name of this eminent scholar from córdoba (1126-1198), then an important cultural and political centre of muslim spain,2 in chaucer’s book, but it is interesting to see how this influential philosopher is named among the most famous physicians of antiquity, such as hippocrates, traditionally regarded as the fa ther of medicine; galen, the founder of experimental physiology, or rhazes, one of the most celebrated physicians in the islamic world. it is of course true that averroes learned medicine and was the personal physician of the caliph, but he is more widely known for his series of commentaries on 1 for accounts and explanations of this possible trip see martin m. crow, 63-65; john gardner, 152-153; derek brewer, 86-89; joseph strayer (ed.), 280; george kane, 12; s. s. hussey, 4; suzanne honoré-duvergé; thomas jay garbaty; antonio león, 122; fernando galván, 107-111; bernando santano, forthcoming. 2 it must be recalled that averroes wrote in arabic and, therefore, he is often included, with other spanish muslim writers, in a special branch of arabic literature, rather than in the spanish literature whose texts are written in the vernacular. luis alberto lázaro ____________________________________________________________________ 20 aristotle’s works and on plato’s republic, and as the philosopher who integrated islamic traditions and greek thought.1 then, in the tale of melibee chaucer refers to the spanish writer petrus alphonsus six times (1053, 1144, 1189, 1218, 1309, 1566). in this prose tale chaucer tries to epitomize what the great moral, religious and philosophical treatises of all times have to say about the topic of revenge, quoting from a large selection of authorities such as st paul, st augustine, st gregory, seneca, cicero, etc. petrus alphonsus is included as one of these authorities. he was a baptized jew of aragon, originally known as moses sefardi, who in the twelfth century wrote a collection of novellas entitled disciplina clericalis. this work was widely known and translated into different european languages in the late middle ages. nevertheless, it is very likely that chaucer did not know this popular spanish writer firsthand, since, as is commonly agreed, his tale of melibee is a translation of the french livre de melibée et de dame prudence, generally attributed to re naud de louens, which is in turn an abridged translation of the thirteenth-century albertano of brescia’s liber consolationis et consilii. besides, chaucer’s knowledge of petrus alphonsus’s book was not very profound as is demonstrated by a quotation inserted in the tale of melibee which is misattributed to pamphilus (1561), the hero of the twelfth-century latin dramatic poem known as pamphilus de amore. accord ing to robinson’s explanatory notes, it belongs to disciplina clericalis (744). furthermore, chaucer names st. isidore of seville twice in the parson’s tale (89 and 551). in this prose sermon on penitence and the true nature of the seven deadly sins, the parson cites isidore’s sententiarum libri tres, a handbook of morals and theology in the form of collected sentences, and also the famous encyclopaedia of human and divine subjects entitled etymologies. though the immediate source of the parson’s tale has not been identified, it seems again that chaucer has followed some intermediate sources, rather than the original spanish texts. several critics argue that the material on the deadly sins comes from either the somme des vices et des vertus by frére lorens or an untraced version of the summa seu tractatus de viciis of guilielmus peraldus, whereas the material on penitence was taken 1 see miguel cruz hernández, abu-l-walid ibn rusd (averroes): vida, obra, pensamiento, influencia or oliver leaman, averroes and his philosophy. some speculations about chaucer’s spanish literary sources ____________________________________________________________________ 21 from some version of raymund of pennaforte’s summa casu um poenitentiae (robinson 766). professor patricia shaw, in her article entitled “the presence of spain in middle english literature” also mentions another instance of chaucer’s debt to st. isidore when she refers to the fact that the monk’s definition of tragedy is taken from the etymologies. shaw, once more, questions chaucer’s intima te knowledge of the spanish scholar, since he could have taken this source “either directly, or through nicholas trevet’s commentary on boethius which chaucer certainly knew” (47). similarly, piero boitani, in a lecture given at the university of león (spain) in 1992 during the fifth international conference of the spanish society for english medieval language and literature, suggests that it is through boccaccio that chaucer picks up st. isidore’s concept of fable and uses it in the nun’s priest tale. on the other hand, antonio león sendra and jesús serrano reyes from the university of córdoba (spain) have conducted a thorough study of all the spanish references in the canterbury tales, making up a list of quotations from chaucer’s work that allude to spanish persons and subjects. in their es say, they come to the conclusion that chaucer’s relationship with spain was extremely important and that he “knew all the most important spanish authorities who were basic intellectual foundations of western civilization” (131); among these spanish intellectuals they include petrus alphonsus, of whom it is said that chaucer had a “sound knowledge” (120), st. isidore of seville, averroes, avicenna, seneca and lucan. the conclusions of this interesting essay seem, however, a bit generous and far-fetched. as stated above, references to the work of petrus alphonsus and st. isidore are confined to six quotations in the tale of melibee and two in the parson’s tale, respectively, and chaucer quotes them indirectly, following intermediate sources rather than the original texts. we have also seen how averroes is quoted once among other outstanding physicians and never as a philosopher. in addition, we should not include avicenna in the list of spanish authorities since, as the authors of the research work admit, he is not from spain; in fact, avicenna is a persian physician who is generally cons idered to be one of the most famous and influential philosopher-scientists of is lam. similarly, references to such classical figures as seneca and his nephew lucan should not be taken into account here; although they were born in luis alberto lázaro ____________________________________________________________________ 22 spain they are usually considered part of the latin culture both were educated and lived most of the time in rome during the emperor nero’s reign, and their latin writings follow the roman literary traditions. it is forc ing the argument to claim these two writers as spanish; rather, they are part of the ancient roman civilization, and in that sense, they are present in chaucer’s writ ings as many other classical authors continuing with the conjectures of other critics on the spanish literary sources in chaucer, i should mention robert p. miller’s study entitled chaucer: sources and backgrounds, where a connection is es tablished between chaucer and the majorcan mystic and missionary ramón lull, author of the chivalric manual le libre del orde de cauayleria (c. 1276). about this book, robert millers remarks that: “perhaps no other contemporary work expres ses so clearly the feelings associated with the code to which chaucer dedicated his knight” (180). but, once more, chaucer was not really familiar with the spanish text or the author because, according to miller, the theories of chivalry embodied in his knight seem to be taken from a popular fourteenthcentury french manual translated from a latin version of ramón lull’s book (180). a similar line of thinking leads professor santiago gonzález to an analo gous conclusion in his article “a marian miracle in england and spain: alfonso x’s cantigas de santa maría nº 6 and chaucer’s the prioresss’ tale”. it presents a comparison between these two narra tive poems found in the medieval spanish and english cultures which deal with the same episode of a child -singer murdered by a jew, but the author claims that it is “most unlikely that chaucer might ever have had access to the poems of the castilian king” (152); he suggests, on the contrary, that both chaucer and alfonso x shared a common latin source and each writer adapted this marian legend to his own vernacular tradition. another academic from the university of michigan, thomas jay garbáty, in his article entitled “the pamphilus tradition in ruiz and chaucer”, discuss es the sources of troilus and criseyde and proposes that before going to italy and reading boccaccio’s filostrato, chaucer was influenced by two other similar courtly love stories: the twelfth-century latin dramatic poem some speculations about chaucer’s spanish literary sources ____________________________________________________________________ 23 pamphilus de amore and the endrina episode in the libro de buen amor1 by the spanish poet juan ruiz, archpriest of hita (c. 1283-1350). after offering several specific parallels between the spanish story and troilus, garbáty mentions chaucer’s trip to spain and suggests the “strong” possibility that chaucer had “heard the recitation of the endrina episode from the libro de buen amor of juan ruiz” (463). he adds that, though chaucer might not have understood castilian, he should not have had trouble following the narrative with some help in translation, because he already knew the direct source for the endrina episode, the pamphilus (463, note 14). i should not neglect the possibility that chaucer might have known of the exis tence of ruiz’s libro de buen amor and that, if he came to spain at all, he might have heard a minstrel reciting these popular stories. what is mo re difficult to accept is that he might have understood the recitation in spanish so well as to keep particular details in store and use them afterwards in the compos ition of his troilus and criseyde, even if he already knew what the plot of the story was and had some simultaneous translation done for him. anyone who has been in a foreign country with a different language is aware of the difficulties one faces trying to follow an everyday conversation in an ordinary situation. now, imagine chaucer trying to grasp the meaning of this poem with all the subtlety, intricacy and refinement typical of the poetic language. in addition, juan ruiz’s language is especially rich, colourful and spontaneous, full of colloquial expressions, idioms and old sayings, making it imposs ible to be understood by a foreigner who comes to spain for just a few weeks.2 martha s. waller presents another interestin g proposition, arguing that some passages from the physician’s tale are drawn from a spanish source, a 1 the oldest extant manuscript of this fine collection of light verse has been dated at 1330. it contains the famous episode of the love affair between don melón and doña endrina, in which a bawdy convent trotter has t o intervene. 2 although i have references of other unpublished works which examine parallelisms between chaucer and juan ruiz, i have not been able to read them and, therefore, i ignore the argument they advance. these works are an m. a. dissertation written by m. luisa díez arroyo entitled tratamiento del amor en el libro de buen amor del arcipreste de hita y troilus and criseyde de chaucer (university of oviedo, 1989), and a forthcoming article by dionisia tejera llano, “la dimensión social de la religión dutante la edad media retratada en dos escritores importantes: chaucer y juan ruiz, arcipreste de hita,” actas del v congreso de selim (university of león). luis alberto lázaro ____________________________________________________________________ 24 glossed castilian version of aegidius romanus’s de regimine principum1 written for the instruction of the infante pedro at the court of alfonso xi of castile by fray juan garcía de castrojeriz and entitled regimiento de príncipes. waller illustrates her argument with some narrative and verbal parallels between the english and the spanish text that imply chaucer had an actual knowledge of the spanish language. this critic offers two possible explanations for chaucer’s access to a copy of castrojeriz’s work: either chaucer dis covered the book during his hypothetical journey to spain, or he borrowed it from the spanish princess constance of padilla the daughter of peter i of castile and second wife of john of gaunt who lived at the english court. as to chaucer’s knowledge of spanish, waller maintains that chaucer might have learned it before he was sent to spain or he could have picked it up during his sojourn in this country: the man who could learn enough italian on his two brief official visits to italy (six and twelve years later) to read boccaccio and dante ought, on the basis of his knowledge of french and latin, to have been able to acquire some command of spanish relatively rapidly, especially since he would still have been in his early or middle twenties in 1366. glending olson, from cleveland state university, refutes this theory and states the passages from castrojeriz’s regimiento that chaucer might have used in his physician’s tale are in fact derived from john of wales’s thirteenth-century preachers’ aid, the communiloquium. it is indeed more likely that chaucer should have used the latin text by john of wales and not the castilian book by castrojeriz. it is tempting, but in view of our limited knowledge, too risky to speculate that chaucer knew spanish before coming to spain; and it is highly unlikely that he could have learned enough spanish in just a few weeks so that he could then tra nslate several passages from the spanish original. if he ever came to spain, the safe conduct would have allowed him to stay for no more than three months, and much of that time he would have been travelling through the kingdom of navarre and castile on slow rough roads with his three unnamed companions. that means that he would have had little time to learn and practice the language and little hope of 1 this text was written about 1285 and meant to be a guide for the future king philip the fair of france. some speculations about chaucer’s spanish literary sources ____________________________________________________________________ 25 reaching the advanced level that would allow him to translate from spanish. besides, he did not need to learn spanish to conduct diplomatic negotiations in castile, since french was the language used by spaniards and en glishmen to communicate orally.1 finally, the programme of the ninth international congress of the new chaucer society held in dublin two years ago included a paper by jesús serrano reyes entitled “spanish modesty in the canterbury tales: chaucer and don juan manuel”. the author of this paper, who at that time was writing his doctoral thesis on the same topic, argued that chaucer had been influenced by one of the most important prose writers of fourteenth-century spain, don juan manuel. to support his hypothesis he drew an analogy between the first lines from chaucer’s retractions and a few lines from don juan manuel’s prologue to libro de los enxiemplos del conde lucanor et de patronio (1328-35), a treatise of morals in the form of 50 short tales. both texts offer a simi lar expression of false modesty in which the authors attribute the virtues of their works to god and their defects to their own incompetence. this libro del conde lucanor, which antedates the decameron, greatly influenced the development of spanish prose fiction, yet we do not know to what extent it may have influenced other english writ ers who followed, in cluding chaucer. firstly, we can say that some critics have denied the authenticity of the retractions (robinson 16); but even if chaucer certainly wrote the passage, he might be using one of the widespread formulas to express false modesty that many other writers had been using for centuries. ernst robert curtius offers an excellent catalogue of rhetoric formulas in literatura europea y edad media latina; here he states that those formulas associated to false modesty used in the middle ages date back to cicero and are usually combined with other formulas of devotion to god, especially in diplomatic writings (129). chaucer could simply be using two standard ways of expressing humility and devotion in his retractions, as boccaccio does at the end of his decameron when he addresses his audience and says that his work has been possible thanks to “la divina grazia”, and not because of his own merits: “non già per li miei meriti” (vol ii, 735). 1 fernando galvan refers to this idea in “medieval english literature: a spanish ap proach”, and gives some evidence (106). luis alberto lázaro ____________________________________________________________________ 26 in view of all these arguments and propositions, i am led to believe that it is highly improbable that chaucer knew the work of any outstanding me dieval spanish writer directly. in the two tales he quotes spanish writers petrus alphonsus in the tale of melibee and st. isidore of seville in the parson’s tale chaucer benefits from french or latin translations, rather than from the spanish original text. although some works by ramón lull, juan ruiz, fray juan garcía de castrojeriz, alfonso x, don juan manuel, and even the re ligious narrative poetry of gonzalo de berceo, show some thematic and formal features that bring chaucer’s work to mind, there is no convincing evidence that these spanish writers exerted a direct influ ence on chaucer. the similarities between them might be explained simply by the homogeneity and continuit y of the medieval western literary tra dition. a long stay in spain might have brought chaucer into direct contact with the spanish literary world, but, unfortunately, his short trip to spain still re mains a subject for conjecture. and even if this journey were not a pure fic tion, he would not have stayed there long enough to gain any kind of knowledge of the spanish literature or the spanish language. anyone needs more than a few weeks in the country to learn its language, and, of course, much more effort and time to make head or tail of its poetic language. there is no real possibility that chaucer read spanish in any meaningful way. therefore, we should not exaggerate the influence of spanish lit erature on chaucer. the spanish element is scarce in his work because he showed little insight into contemporary spanish culture and its literary world. we only have to count the number of times different scholars are quoted in the two tales in which spanish authors are cited to see the ensuing proport ion; then, if we do the same calculation, taking now into account chaucer’s whole output, we have a clear view of the rather secondary role that spanish literature plays in his work. chaucer’s lack of knowledge and/or interest in spanish literature might be attributed to the cultural situation of the time. although castile was fully in tegra ted into fourteenth-century western european life and culture, spanish civilization in general was still rather marginal in a country like england, where the literary background was dominated by french and italian authors. the stra ined diplomatic relations between england and spain during chaucer’s tisome speculations about chaucer’s spanish literary sources ____________________________________________________________________ 27 me1 did not favour cultural exchange either. and although some spanish names rank among the greatest philosophers, theologians, historians, transla tors, and poets of the middle ages, chaucer sought the influence of the canonical mas ters of his time, that is to say, the great classical writers, the italian poets of the trecento and the always influential french authors. spanish writers were not regarded as “canonical mas ters” in fourteenth-century england. luis alberto lázaro university of alcalá de henares works cited boccaccio, giovanni 1950: decameron. biblioteca universale rizzoli, mila no. boitani, piero forthcoming: my tale is of a cock: the problems of the plain sense of things. actas del v congreso de selim. university of león. brewer, derek. 1978: chaucer and his world. eyre methuen, london. chaucer, geoffrey 1957: the works of geoffrey chaucer. ed. f. n. robinson. 2nd ed. houghton, boston. crow, martin m. & clair c. olson, eds 1966: chaucer life records. oxford. curtius, ernst robert 1955: literatura europea y edad media latina. vol. i. trad. margit frenk alatorre & antonio alatorre. fce, méjico. galván, fernando 1989: medieval english literature: a spanish approach. actas del i congreso de selim articles and papers of the first international conference of the spanish society for english medieval language and literature. patricia shaw & al. eds servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de oviedo, oviedo. 98-111. 1 from 1369 to 1389 the castilian king enrique ii was deeply involved in the hundred years’ war against england, while john of gaunt, through marriage to princess contance, claimed the crown of castile and tried to invade spain. luis alberto lázaro ____________________________________________________________________ 28 garbáty, thomas jay 1967a: chaucer in spain, 1936: soldier of fortune or agent of the crown? english language notes 5: 81-87. garbáty, thomas jay 1967b: the pamphilus tradition in ruiz and chaucer. philological quarterly 46: 457-470. gardner, john 1977: the life and times of chaucer. alfred a. knopf, new york. gonzález, santiago 1994: a marian miracle in england and spain: alfonso x’s cantigas de santa maría nº 6 and chaucer’s the prioresss’ tale. medieval studies: proceedings of the iiird international conference of the spanish society for medieval english language and litera ture. l. a. lázaro & al. eds publicaciones de la universidad de alcalá, alcalá de henares. 151-175 hernández, miguel cruz 1986: abu-l-walid ibn rusd (averroes): vida, obra, pensamiento, influencia. publicaciones del monte de piedad y caja de ahorros de córdoba, córdoba. honoré-duvergé, suzanne 1955: chaucer en espagne? (1366). recueil des travaux offert à m. clovis brunel. société de l’école des chartes, paris. 9-13. hussey, s. s. 1985: chaucer: an introduction. 2nd ed. methuen, london. kane, george 1984: chaucer. oup, london. leaman, oliver 1988: averroes and his philosophy. clarendon press, oxford. león, antonio & serrano, jesús 1992: spanish references in the canterbury tales. selim 2: 106-141. miller, robert p. ed 1977: chaucer: sources and backgrounds. oup, new york. olson, glending 1989: juan garcía de castrojeriz and john of wales: a note on chaucer’s reading. speculum 64: 106-110. santano, bernardo forthcoming: chaucer’s role in the castilian civil war (1366): an examination of his journey to spain. actas del v congreso de selim. some speculations about chaucer’s spanish literary sources ____________________________________________________________________ 29 shaw, patricia 1992: the presence of spain in middle english literature. archiv 229. 1: 41-54. strayer, joseph, ed 1983: dictionary of the middle ages. v. 3. scribner, new york. waller, martha s. 1976: the physician’s tale: geoffrey chaucer and fray juan garcía de castrojeriz. speculum 51: 292-306. * † * selim07 (2).pdf ____________________________________________________________________ 218 poster, carol and richard utz, eds. 1996: disputatio. an international transdisciplinary journal of the late middle ages. vol. i. the late medieval epistle. evanston, illinois: northwestern university press. 229. the record of the letter as a tool of formal report and display goes back to the birth of rhetoric. the literary tradition ascribes to corax of syracuse the invention, and to tisias the development and later expansion, of a specific formal pattern that shows a new discursive style. both corax and tisias compelled by the multiple litigations that the tyrants of syracuse had to confront during the 5th century bc, devised an unknown judicial rhetorical system based on a discursive “disputatio” between two definite subjects: an accuser and an accused (james j. murphy, medieval eloquence, berkeley, 1978; g. kennedy, art of persuasion in greece, princeton, 1963, 26). however, this re lationship intended as a strictly formal one, gave rise to some kind of individual attitudes and ways of acting, especially within the classic greek society, where oratory was profiled as an instrument to be fre quently used in social, cultural and political issues, since it emphasised the primacy of spoken expression, where the presence/ absence of a subject became more remarkable, over written one. what at the beginning happened to be an accepted and suitable path of oral transmission for any kind of mes sages, rhetorical or not, began to appear in written documents. this migration was questioned by plato who consid ered writing as a disturbed and untrue transcription of oral performance, with a greater degree of formalisation. aristotle found a point of equilibrium in this connection between oral and written performances, and in his work de interpretatione (i, 1) asserts: “the spoken words are symbols of mental experiences, while the written words are symbols of the spoken words”, giving thus way to the idea that the written can be a legitimate and truthful vehicle of the spoken expression. once he establishes the legitimacy of the written text, the stagiran, in his ars rhetorica (1358b, 1-20) develops in a clear way a theoretical system of discourse, suitable to be applied to any kind of expression, will it be oral or written. there are three clearly defined and distinctive types of discourse: a) or deliberative speech, whose ____________________________________________________________________ 219 end is advice and dissuasion; b) or judicial speech, whose end is accusation or defence; c) or demonstrative speech, whose end is praise and censorship, a type that fits better into interpersonal discourse. this last type of speech is explained in detail in the work attributed to cicero, rhetorica ad herennium, where spoken speech is divided into six specific and basic parts: exordium, narratio, divisio, confirmatio, confutatio and conclusio. this division is followed closely and without any important modifications by the medieval “dictatores” and makes up the ground for the subsequent conformation of the ars dictaminis. in this way all those theoretical principles became a formal pattern of reference for style and property of discourse, in all kinds of critical and political works, in their use in literary texts, and in the epistolary texts. all the studies in the present collection, show the confluence between tradition and modernity, in a wide period of time and in a genre, the epistolary. they all deal with the problems outlined when we want t o establish, from a pragmatic point of view, where is the subject who writes and which is the real message behind what he/ she says. we have seen that the epistolary tradition is created not only by the forms and standards described mainly by aristotle and cicero, but also by the imp licit controversy between form and subjectivity. the rising of the “economic” subject, due to the change from a market economy to a monetary one, dragged, especially in the 14th century, the rising of the literary subject (ricardo j. sola, dinámica social en the canterbury tales. zaragoza, 1981), masculine as well as feminine and stressed his/ her presence in all areas of life. the issue consists in establishing if the awareness of this “change” and this “presence” are just conclusions of our post-modern era, in which new sociological, linguistic, pragmatic and feminist thinking check this dissociation between text and context and confirm that the meaning of a text is indebted to the context in which it is given, or if they were already detected and unveiled by the commentators and literary authors of the period that is analysed. in line with the foregoing, the article of martin camargo, “where’s the brief: the ars dictaminis and the reading/ writing between the lines” (117), presents a clear and introductory view of the letter as a means of spoken and written transmission, listing the most important definitions of the classic standard accomplished by medieval “dictatores”, as guido faba, in summa ____________________________________________________________________ 220 dictaminis (1228-1229) or conrad de mure, in summa de arte prosandi (1275-1276). the revision features three formal conditions in a letter: the authenticity, the confidentiality and the fact of making present the absent to whom the letter is sent. this shows that the dictatores were aware of the possibility of distortion of the message, due to three actors/ subjects of the pro cess: the properly said remittent or sender, his/ her secretary or notary who drafts the letter and, occasionally, the bearer or mediator who can add commentaries on the missive to the addressee. camargo confirms that, “… such treatises do not and cannot tell us all that we need to know about medieval letters.” (1), a widespread opinion among the specialists on the medieval treatises, and he adds that the main reason for this uniformity is that they are centered “…more on form than on function.” (1), paying attention to “… how to construct an epistolary text” (1), depreciating the importance of the “context”. in this sense, camargo highlights the differences pointed out by the first known “dictator”, caius iulius victor, in the fourth century ad, between informal discourse, sermo, and the formal speech of the letter, or epistola. the interaction of these elements in the communication act reveals, camargo says, “… that the tensions masked by the dictatores’ confident as sertion of the three officially sanctioned functions of a letter were actually felt by medieval “writers” and “readers” of letters” (9). a good example of the fact that this meaningful perception exists and of its literary use is seen in two well-known narrative poems of the period, la chanson de roland and troylus & criseyde, where the letters are not only mere formal expressions, but rather conceal attitudes and feelings. georgiana donavin reinforces this opinion in her collaboration, “locating a public forum for the personal letter in malory’s morte darthur” (19-36), and emphasises the importance that even malory grants to this epistolary art, including a series of letters in his morte darthur (1469). this inclusion, however, it is not only a reflection of the interest existing in the period by this manner of communication, due to “… widespread instruction in literacy and the advent of a standard language… “ (19), but also, says donavin, attests the importance of the letter as structural and functional ele ment in the narrative composition. thus we pass from the “real” letter to the “fictional” letter in a fabulated world, a much freer and independent world, but where the essential question is to es tablish the manner by which fiction is related to life. as a form of transmission of feelings referred to a past era, the letter ____________________________________________________________________ 221 stimulates, in this fictional world, a series of intimate episodes that balance between the love, the revenge, and the redemption of the protagonists. the ciceronian literary canon is taken into account, the aristotelian norms are followed, but the messages between arthur and king mark, at a time in which public letters are frequently used to uncover any type of scandal, exhibits the mixture between traditions and contemporary events, the existing tensions between what is public and what is private. the “divine letters” of the grail quest tale function as dissuasory advice for sinners, and as a pro posal to maintain the sanctioned social order. the letters of the unfortunate elaine of astolat are of praise for lancelot, and remind the hero the arthurian ideal of “jantilwomen and wydowes socour”. the letters of gawain are, again, a praise of and a request to lancelot and discover the close kinship and tuning in of both gentlemen. that is to say, the tensions that appear in the different groups of letters, carefully analysed by donavin, confirm the certainty of the existence and awareness of that subjectivity at the level of fiction, though illustrate the tensions between literary text, “a written form”, and social context, the “proper audience and public”. the step from the classic exordium to the salutatio and the medieval captatio benevolentiae, accomplished by one of the most important dictatores of the period, albericco de montecassino, is seen by grant m. boswell in “captatio benevolentiae: a note on the relationship of prayer and meditation treatises to the artes dictaminis” (147-152), as an achievement that is not limited to the area of the ars dictaminis. treatises on prayer, like de modo orandi by hugo de san victor, or on meditation, like scalae meditationis by wessel gansfort, include intentional manners to obtain that captatio that exceed the purely formal aspects of the rhetorical standards. sometimes these manners are expressed as a plea to the audience to capture its attention and interest, with a clear influence of augustinian doctrine. regardless of the fact that the writer addresses an outer one, other people, or an inner one, oneself, “these two treatises suggest an interesting connection…” (151) between the medieval epistolary art and …”other materials found in works on prayer and meditation…” (151). françois rigolot,”l’émergence de la subjectivité littéraire modern e: les epîtres de l’amant vert de jean lemaire de belges” (153-159), analyses two peculiar epistles by jean lemaîre de belges (c. 1473 c. 1525), a politician and french diplomat in the reign of louis xii. in them a parrot, “l’amant vert”, ____________________________________________________________________ 222 speaks to its dame, margarita of austria, and in its words, “… sur le mode de l’ironie… (157)”, one guesses the pain suffered by the animal feeling her forthcoming absence due to a trip that margarita is going to take. in the second, once the animal is dead, the fowl comments to her all it has been able to see and observe in hell and in the elysean fields. in this way, with a new stylistic resource, "lemaire met en scène un sujet énonciateur” (158), that is hidden, to mask under such an appearance the real subject, though, in rigolot’s opinion, it does not solve completely the balance between animal and man, and “l’identité de ce sujet locuteur est problématique… “ (158). romuald i. lakowsky in “sir thomas more’s correspondence: a survey and a bibliography” (161-179), makes a vast revision of sir thomas more’s letters and the critical studies on them. he emphasises more’s specific dissertation on the ars rhetorica in one of his epistles, letter to dorp , and also his ars poetica, letter to brixius, in which more shows himself as a practitioner of the “elogium” and a follower of the current medieval rhetorics. more confirms his preference for the letter-prologue, antecedent of the modern pro logue, already used by king alfred, as an example in which the speaking subject is present with greater strength and genuineness. lakowsky understands correctly that the problem between formality and subjectivity has entered definitely in a settling process in which we find such figures as luther and erasmus, and that more, “a prolific letter writer”, is precisely an excellent example of this tuning. nadia margolis in “the cry of the chameleon”: evolving voices in the epistles of christine de pizan (37-70), takes us to the feminine subject, and so, to a radically different approach to the problem, since she does not only deal exclusively with the distinction between form and subjectivity, but also with the possibilities and limitations of the woman as a proponent of this kind of discourse. margolis discovers that the different poetic voices that emanate from christine de pizan’s letters outline, in the epistolary genre, a proper discourse in which is given a certain conjunction between the formal standards known and feminine subjective expression. in the courtly genre, in french, as well as in the dictamen, in latin and the genre of humanist epis tolography, we see the use of tradition, especially in the dictamen and its later evolution, characterised by an attempt to abandon the donatist conventions, started in the most important work of the grammarian and commentator donatus, ars minor, and priscianist ones, coming from the most meaningful ____________________________________________________________________ 223 works by the also grammarian priscian, as de metris fabularum terentii or institutiones grammaticae. on the other hand, the use of three formal conventions, prose, metric verse and rhythmic prose, reflects christine’s formal concern with the new and emerging grammars in the different vernacular languages. this personal concern with formal problems of the expression, that have a clear reference in the rhetorical treatises by matthew de vendôme, ars versificatoria, geoffrey of vinsauf, poetria nova, and john of garland, de arte prosayca, metrica et rithmica, do not prevent, however, margolis says, the presence of feminine subjectivity. in spite of eustache morel deschamps’s influence, with his work l’art de dictier, in which versification is transformed into a part of the rhetoric and in connection with musical style, christine appears as a emerging symbol of this feminine subjectivity with new ideals but whose “… very identity found itself often caught between cruelly arbitrary notions of “first” and “second” place: socially as a woman and widow with connections to the royal court but not noble herself and sympathetic to the lower classes… “ (40). margolis warns us of the commented fact of the multiple voices in the text, but points out that there are especially two of them that are heard above the rest: that from the ancient gods and her own voice. through them, christine releases a series of distinctive emotions, criticises the courtly mores, that measure in a different way adulterous love, and reproaches the generalised corruption of the era that weakens especially the most unfortunate and poor. to do this, she appeals to the ancient science, a fact that allows also the attack on her contemporaries, recapturing the topic of the "golden age” in which the right government and justice were prevailing, something which recalls us hesiode’s aspirations. in her search of peace, christine designs a form of moral literature with a nationalist scope in mind and with a deep desire for the end of the wars, in an era characterised by the constant warlike confrontations. her compassionate voice urges the “cure for the malady within france’s body politic” (55) with the remittance to “the ovidian love-sickness repertory” (55), evoking also that of "ubi sunt”, and missing, again, the golden age “ruled by reason” instead of “violence and chaos”, a search, no doubt, of the “pax augusta”, like the one in which horace, virgil, tibulus or propertius, those who conceived the prince august as a hope of peace, were also engaged in their moment. in the case of christine, she finds consolation in christian pray, when she remembers the ____________________________________________________________________ 224 suffering of the widows of the wars and uses for this “the prison motif, a fa miliar courtly lyrical image here fused with the christian-platonic one of the body-as-tomb or prison” (58), as well as that of the stoic acceptance of the uncontrolled evils that we cannot avoid. continuing in this line, yvonne leblanc, in “queen anne in the lonely, tear-soaked bed of penelope: rewriting the heroides in sixteenth-century france” (71-87), shows the fascination and confusion of fourteenth and fifteenth century readers and writers with ovid’s heroides, a collection of love letters evoking a female voice in which “a commentator erroneously states” the ovidian moralizing spirit, or catalogues his heroides as a “redemptive work, an act of penitence by a chastised poet” (72). these thirteenth epistles were translated, imitated and reproduced in different ways and with several functions by sixteenth century french writers, la vigne, marot, andrelini and cretin. in them, the exotic environment and the christian tone are intermingled, as well as the ancient and new ideas of chastity. the abandonment motif, taken from the ovidian character, ariadna, assumes a new dimension, since the loneliness of her french counterpart provokes some real fears, as compared to the imaginary ones expressed in the ovidian original. the new french “pentesilea”, belle amazonne, for example, is at the end more fragile than her latin precedent. the ovidian letters are remembered in all the possible circumstances and variants, especially when they are used to define and label moral attitudes, proposing the difference between those rejectable models, like that of phaedra, and those morally required ones, like that of penelope, used by fausto andrelini to describe louis xii’s wife, anne, faithfully awaiting “the return of her victorious husband from the war” (82). albrecht classen and malcolm richardson review the panorama of woman in germany and england, and by extension in all europe, focusing on the social, economic and cultural evolution of the feminine subject, censured since antiquity by masculine authority and who must fight sternly in order to “be” a literary subject. in this sense, classen, “female explorations of literacy: epistolary challenges to the literary canon in the late middle ages” (89-121), confirms that the circles of noble women who had the chance of entering the standard level of culture and acquiring the sufficient intellectual capacity and learning, opted for the epistolary genre, considered as marginal, to exchange personal experiences. we may question the genuineness of their feelings expressed in the letters, due, in part, to the need of ____________________________________________________________________ 225 concealing the feminine subject behind a “high degree of formalism”, but it is clear that the themes of the letters deal with multicoloured aspects, political as well as economic, and close to them more personal and intimate as pects. on the other hand, richardson in his contribution, “women, commerce, and writing in late medieval england” (123-145), insists on the difficulty that women had to establish themselves as an economic subject both in the rural as well as in the urban medium. though she performs a series of tasks in the economic and labour fields due to the temporary absences of man, either because of war or because of businesses, the fact is that she does not, in the end, assume an independent and autonomous social and economic role, or find a series of limitations: “… women were mostly limited to occupations compatible with child care; trades which required travelling, for example, were closed to them.” (125). yet classen and richardson’s contributions impress the reader with the amount and variety of topics, themes and devices that women used in order to express their subjectivity. we might conclude this review by recognising that the scholars in this collection echo the significance in the epistolary genre of an emerging modern spirit whose most meaningful key consists in detecting the awareness and presence of one or several intentional subjects in the interior of an apparently formal and objective structure. all the difficulties enclosed in the recognition of this subjectivity, are increased when the remittent is a woman, though it seems now clear that it was precisely women who with greater strength broke free from the rhetorical formalisms and used all the emotional possibilities than the letter provided to her. it is true that this point of view opens the path for a suggestive and interesting analysis, but it is an issue that needs a wider and deeper research in order to limit and define, in a clear and “impartial” manner, the real role and influence of this “new” woman emerging within a given masculine cultural world, a role that the classic referents had obviated or accommodated. in all cases, however, the writers in this collection make it clear that, though the authors of the epistles are aware of the existence of a permanent debt to classic models, there is also a clear purpose to revise this tradition and use what was frequently done in a more hidden than open way, yet motivated by the social and economic circumstances . janet luehring and richard j. utz’s final comprehensive bibliography copes with the rhetorical studies at large and the epistolographic ones in par____________________________________________________________________ 226 ticular, emphasises the rhetorical and thematic aspects as well as its rele vance in all the european cultures, and includes such out-of-hand places like eastern countries and russia. the temporal spectrum analysed is rather wide, covering a span of time from the twelfth until the sixteenth century, and so, we should not talk of uniformity but rather of a process in which we still need to explain the role played by adjacent cultural worlds, besides the classic, that flowed into european mainland in the middle ages, the christian, the jewish and the arab -not to forget the “andalusí heritage”worlds. josé maría gutiérrez arranz & ricardo j. sola buil universidad de alcalá de henares * † * selim 20.indb issn: 1132–631x rafael j. pascual, selim 20 (2013–2014): 49–79 three-position verses and the metrical practice of the beowulf poet abstract: this article assesses the authenticity of the three-position ss verse type in beowulf on the basis of its unambiguous incidence both in beowulf and in a larger corpus of old english poetry. the fi rst part of this essay examines the metrical confi guration of thirteen verses fr om beowulf that have recently been identifi ed as instances of the ss pattern. in doing so, it demonstrates that nearly all of them furnish a standard four-position metrical structure. the second part discusses the empirical obstacles to accepting the formal legitimacy of the three-position ss pattern in old english verse, thereby reaffi rming the validity of the stricture of traditional sieversian metrics against verses consisting of less than four metrical positions. keywords: old english metre, textual criticism, beowulf, old english literature, early germanic poetry. resumen: este artículo analiza la autenticidad del verso de tres posiciones ss en beowulf en base a su incidencia inequívoca tanto en beowulf como en un corpus más grande de poesía inglesa antigua. la primera parte de este ensayo examina la confi guración métrica de trece versos de beowulf que han sido identifi cados recientemente como ejemplos del patrón métrico ss. así demuestra que casi todos ellos tienen una estructura convencional de cuatro posiciones métricas. la segunda parte discute los obstáculos empíricos que impiden aceptar la legitimidad formal del patrón de tres posiciones ss en la poesía inglesa antigua, reafi rmando así la validez de la prohibición de la métrica tradicional sieversiana contra versos de menos de cuatro posiciones métricas. palabras clave: métrica inglesa antigua, crítica textual, beowulf, literatura inglesa antigua, poesía germánica inicial. probabilistic reasoning governs the study of the metrical practice of the beowulf poet. considerations of relative probability enable editors and metrists to identify scribal corruptions, recover authorial readings, and understand the metrical regularities that the poet meticulously imposed upon his work.1 the role of probability in these matters can readily be illustrated by the scholarly response to the words hrēas blāc, which appear in line 15 on folio 188r of the beowulf manuscript. at this point, beowulf is describing ongentheow’s death, and the transmitted text of the poem would have him state that the swedish king hrēas 1 for in-depth discussions of the role of probabilism in old english philology, see fulk 2003 and 1992: §§8–23; on the balancing of metrical probabilities in textual criticism, see fulk 1996. 50selim 20 (2013–2014) rafael j. pascual blāc, “fell pale,” aft er eofor’s blow. if the manuscript evidence were taken at face value, hrēas blāc should constitute a verse by itself and an apparent two-position verse pattern ss should then be regarded as the genuine outcome of the poet’s metrical practice. although the sense, syntax, and alliteration exhibited in hrēas blāc are sound, it is improbable that the beowulf poet composed a verse of this sort. in the surviving corpus of approximately 30,000 lines of old english poetry, verses unambiguously featuring the ss stress contour are virtually non-existent. if old english poets considered the ss pattern an authentic verse type, we should expect to fi nd more evidence for the authenticity of this type than a few dubious attestations. to regard hrēas blāc as an authentic verse generates a gross improbability: it forces one to believe that the systematic avoidance of a legitimate metrical pattern in so large a corpus of poetry is entirely due to accident. the most probable explanation for the apparent existence of a handful of verses exhibiting the ss pattern is that these verses are the products of scribal corruption, not authorial practice. editors of beowulf unanimously regard hrēas blāc as a corrupt verse requiring emendation; metrists rightly conclude that this verse does not refl ect the metrical practice of the beowulf poet. by the same token, verses exhibiting a rarely attested threeposition ss pattern have traditionally been considered unmetrical and regarded as the consequences of scribal error. according to the tenets of sieversian formalism, the rationale behind the unmetricality of the ss pattern is its failure to comply with the most basic rule of old english metre, the four-position principle (sievers 1885: 220–222, 270; 1893: §§8, 14.2).2 in the word-foot theory, the ss pattern corresponds to a foot, and hence it 2 the four-position theory of old english metre is laid out in cable 1974: 84– 93. for some qualifi cations to cable’s original analysis, see cable 1991: 39. for a concise summary of the four-position principle, see stockwell & minkova 1997: 67–69; fulk 2002: 337–340; 2012a: 558; and pascual forthcoming. three-position verses and the metrical practice of the beowulf poet 51 selim 20 (2013–2014) cannot stand as a verse by itself (russom 1987: 13, 28–29).3 this traditional stance has recently been questioned by eric weiskott in his essay “three-position verses in beowulf ” (2013). he gathers thirteen verses that purportedly feature the three-position ss pattern fr om the poem and contends that they furnish suffi cient evidence for metrists to accept it as a genuine metrical type. of these thirteen verses, he focuses the body of his essay exclusively on one of them, beowulf 2150a lissa ġelong (a longstanding crux in old english metrical studies), and relegates the remaining twelve to a list in a footnote without detailed commentary. further, he tries to overcome the diffi culty posed by the nonconformity of the ss pattern to the four-position principle by proposing an analogy with the expanded type d verse (i.e., type d*). since sieversian metrics accepts type d* verses, whose metrical structure apparently fails to comply with the four-position principle, the inability of the ss pattern to conform to that principle would not constitute suffi cient grounds for being considered unmetrical. rather, he maintains, although the poets would have perceived the ss pattern as anomalous when it was fi rst developed, it would have been reinterpreted as a regular type over the course of the history of old english metre. the present article subjects weiskott’s case for the authenticity of the three-position ss pattern in beowulf to critical scrutiny. the fi rst part examines the metrical structure of the twelve verses that supposedly feature the ss pattern, which weiskott summarily consigned to a list in a footnote. close analysis demonstrates that these verses either genuinely feature a four-position metrical confi guration or are corrupt manuscript readings. consequently, it becomes clear that weiskott’s case for the authenticity of the ss type is predicated exclusively on the evidence aff orded by a single verse, lissa ġelong—an untenable position, for reasons made 3 on the word-foot theory and the explanatory power it brings to old english metre, see russom 1987 and 1998. 52selim 20 (2013–2014) rafael j. pascual clear below. the second part assesses his comparison of the ss pattern with type d* and the supposed reinterpretation to which the catalectic ss type would have been subjected over the course of old english metrical history, along with other methodological issues raised by weiskott’s essay. the conclusion is that his argumentation fails to make a convincing case for the authenticity of the ss pattern, which, judging by its virtually non-existent incidence in the surviving corpus of old english poetry, must have been considered unmetrical throughout the anglo-saxon period. 1 manuscript evidence and metrical structure 1.1 syntactically uncommon four-position verses due to their syntactic complexity, the two parallel gnomic verses 183b and 186b, wā bið þǣm ðe sceal and wēl bið þǣm þe mōt,4 have presented certain diffi culties to metrists, who have sometimes scanned them as instances of the three-position ss pattern.5 this scansion is at odds, however, with hans kuhn’s fi rst metricosyntactic rule, the law of germanic sentence particles (1933: 8),6 the operation of which reveals that these two verses have a standard four-position metrical confi guration. the three-position analysis must then be disallowed on that basis, since beowulf faithfully conforms to the regularities observed by kuhn.7 4 “wrong to one who must” and “well to one who is permitted.” 5 so, for example, bliss (1967: §86), momma (1989: 425), and hutcheson (1995: 254). sievers (1885: 267; 1893: §85, n. 10), pope (1966: 371), and getty (2002: 225), on the contrary, would scan them as atypical four-position verses with a half-stress on þǣm. 6 summaries of kuhn’s fi rst law can be found in campbell (1970: 94), lucas (1990: 294), kendall (1991: 17–18), hutcheson (1992: 129), momma (1997: 56–64), orton (1999: 289 n. 11), fulk (see pope 2001: 136–138; 2012a: 558–559; 2012b: 389), and terasawa (2011: 95–96). 7 on the regular compliance of beowulf with kuhn’s fi rst law, see for example lucas (1990: 294), orton (1999: 289), and fulk (2012b: 389–390; 2014). three-position verses and the metrical practice of the beowulf poet 53 selim 20 (2013–2014) kuhn’s fi rst law states that all the unstressed sentence particles of a verse clause must be placed together in the fi rst drop of that clause, either directly before the fi rst lift , or between the fi rst lift and the second;8 the direct implication is that a sentence particle not found in that clausal position is stressed. for example, in beowulf 2134b hē mē mēde ġehēt,9 which constitutes a clause by itself, the sentence particles hē and mē, two personal pronouns, should be unstressed because they appear in the fi rst drop of the clause immediately preceding the fi rst lift , the root syllable of the noun mēde. that the root syllable of mēde is the fi rst lift of the verse clause and that therefore hē and mē are unstressed is confi rmed by the participation of mēde in the alliterative scheme of the line.10 the remaining sentence particle, the fi nite verb -hēt, should then take stress, since it is found outside its prescribed place in the clause besides hē and mē. this must indeed be the case, since according to traditional sieversian metrics no verse ends in more than one unstressed syllable (see, for example, pope 2001: 141; and terasawa 2011: 35). thus, the application of kuhn’s fi rst law reveals that the stress contour of this verse is ss, corresponding to a standard type b. the metrical contour of hē mē mēde ġehēt is transparent because that verse is syntactically simple. in wā bið þǣm ðe sceal and wēl bið þǣm þe mōt, on the contrary, there is a verse-internal clause boundary, as is indicated by the presence of two verbs in each of them (bið and sceal in 183b, and bið and mōt in 186b). in both instances, the indirect object of the main clause, the dative pronoun þǣm, is modifi ed by a dependent relative clause. the 8 sentence particles are semantically independent words that, unlike stress-words, usually fail to receive rhythmic stress. particles include fi nite verbs, personal and demonstrative pronouns, demonstrative adverbs, and some conj unctions (see pope 2001: 136–137; and terasawa 2011: 27–28). 9 “he promised me reward.” 10 the on-verse is mǣrðo fr emede. in old english poetry, the fi rst lift of the off verse must participate in the alliteration of the line, while the second must not. 54selim 20 (2013–2014) rafael j. pascual occurrence of a clause boundary within a verse is an infr equent syntactic feature in beowulf, which has obscured how kuhn’s law of sentence particles applies in these two verses.11 as a result of this syntactic complexity, the stress contour of these two parallel verses has not always been obvious to metrists. if the position of the clause boundary within the verse is correctly established, however, kuhn’s fi rst law can be seen to operate regularly in these two verses, which leads to the recognition of their four-position metrical confi guration. the establishment of the clause boundary can in turn be achieved by means of a comparison with, for example, beowulf 2600b–2601b sibb’ ǣfr e ne mæġ / wiht onwendan / þām ðe wēl þenċeð.12 these three verses accommodate a sentence that also consists of a main clause with its indirect object, þām, modifi ed by a dependent relative clause, ðe wēl þenċeð. one might well suppose that the clause boundary falls between þām and the relative particle ðe. nevertheless, the metre and the alliteration of these verses, in conj unction with kuhn’s fi rst law, show that it falls between onwendan and þām, and that the beowulf poet must have regarded the pronoun þām as part of the relative clause by which it is modifi ed. the alliteration of l. 2061, which is on /w/, indicates that wēl is the fi rst lift of the off -verse, so that þām and ðe, which immediately precede it, must be unstressed (like hē and mē in hē mē mēde ġehēt). this means that þām must be part of the clauseinitial drop of the relative clause. if it were part of the main clause, it would receive stress for being outside its prescribed position in the fi rst drop besides the unstressed syllables -fr e and ne, thereby spoiling both the metre of the verse and the alliteration of the line. the lack of stress of þām thus indicates that it must have become associated with the relative particle ðe, both of which are 11 according to kendall, there are forty one instances of verse-internal clause boundaries in beowulf (1991: 89–90). 12 “nothing can ever change ties of kinship for one who thinks rightly.” three-position verses and the metrical practice of the beowulf poet 55 selim 20 (2013–2014) treated by the beowulf poet as an unstressed integral unit at the onset of the relative clause.13 the treatment of the particles þām and þe as a clause-initial unit in 2601b furnishes compelling evidence that the beowulf poet must have also regarded them as such in both wā bið þǣm ðe sceal and wēl bið þǣm þe mōt. if þǣm þe is a clause-initial unit, then the immediately preceding word, bið, must be clause-fi nal. the verse-internal clause boundary between the main clause and its dependent relative clause can then be established between bið and þǣm, which allows us to observe how kuhn’s fi rst law operates. in regular compliance with the law, the clause-initial unit þǣm ðe must be unstressed, since it is placed in the fi rst drop of the relative clause, immediately before the fi rst lift , which in both instances is occupied by a verse-fi nal fi nite verb that has been promoted to a stressed position (sceal and mōt).14 the fi nite verb bið, being at the end of the main clause, must then receive stress, since it fails to adhere to kuhn’s fi rst law: it is not either directly before the fi rst lift (wā and wēl), or between the fi rst lift and the second, since there is no second lift besides bið itself. as we can see, then, the workings of kuhn’s fi rst law suggest that the two gnomic verses 183b and 186b have the stress contour of a standard type e, sss, and that therefore they regularly comply with the four-position rule of old english metre.15 given the demonstrable reality of 13 the same situation can be appreciated, for example, in beowulf 1838b–1839b feorcȳþðe bēoð / sēlran ġesōhte / þǣm þe him selfa dēah, where the alliteration of selfa indicates that þǣm þe must be unstressed and hence clause-initial. 14 kendall’s transformational rule states that in a clause-initial segment which lacks stress-words (as in þǣm ðe sceal and þǣm þe mōt), sentence particles acquire metrical stress fr om right to left in accordance with the stress and phrase rules of old english until the fi rst valid metrical contour emerges (1991: 96; cf. fulk’s comment in pope 2001: 138, n. 18). 15 this explanation is endorsed by the editors of klaeber iv (fulk, bjork & niles 2008: 129). russom also scans these two verses as instances of the sss pattern (1987: 120). 56selim 20 (2013–2014) rafael j. pascual kuhn’s law of germanic sentence particles (donoghue 1997), the three-position scansion of 183b and 186b is untenable. these two verses possess a four-position metrical confi guration and cannot be adduced as evidence for the existence of the ss pattern in beowulf. 1.2 four-position verses with an unresolved lift in the coda weiskott’s ss scansion of another three verses in beowulf must also be rejected. the verses in question are 845a nīða ofercumen,16 954a dǣdum ġefr emed,17 and 2430b hrēðel cyning.18 metrists have traditionally held that these atypical verses feature an unresolved second lift ,19 and that they are therefore type a verses that comply with the four-position principle (see, for example, pope 1966: 272; russom 1987: 46, 51 and 117; and fulk 1992: §§207–209).20 the three-position analysis of these verses requires us to assume that their second short stressed syllable and its unstressed successor undergo resolution. although these three verses are exceptional under any of the two interpretations, the three-position analysis is demonstrably less probable for a number of reasons. most saliently, it demands credence in an improbable coincidence. verses with an unresolved lift in the coda can be found in other poems as well.21 some examples are tempel gode (exodus 391b);22 16 “overcome by violence.” 17 “performed with deeds.” 18 “king hrethel.” 19 these verses are atypical because a short second lift is usually preceded by a monosyllabic lift or half-lift , not a drop. see, for example, pascual forthcoming. 20 bliss scans 845a and 954a as instances of the ss pattern. fulk has demonstrated, however, that bliss’s acceptance of three-position verses is misguided (see fulk 1992: §210). 21 the coda of the verse comprises the last full lift and all subsequent syllables. the linguistic material preceding the coda of a verse is its onset (fulk 1992: 201, n. 60). 22 “temple for god.” three-position verses and the metrical practice of the beowulf poet 57 selim 20 (2013–2014) on ġenimeð;23 loth wæs āhreded;24 eorlum bedroren;25 scēawa heofon26 (genesis a 1209a, 2085b, 2099a, and 2191a); scride and færelt (metres of boethius 28.11b);27 wildne fugol (solomon and saturn 315a),28 among several others.29 as we can appreciate, it is the second stressed syllable that is systematically short, never the fi rst. this regular distributional pattern suggests that these verses have a four-position metrical structure with an unresolved lift in the coda of the verse. if the metrical confi guration of all these verses were ss with a resolved second lift , as the three-position analysis requires, it would be remarkable that this verse type is never realized with resolution occurring in the fi rst lift . the three-position analysis of these verses would thus compel one to believe that the absence of threeposition ss verses with a resolved fi rst lift , like the hypothetical *guma ġehēt or *guma mē ġehēt,30 is accidental. it seems far more probable that the non-occurrence of verses like *guma ġehēt is an indication of their unmetricality. and since the only possible scansion for the non-occurring *guma ġehēt is ss,31 it follows that ss is not a valid metrical analysis for attested verses like nīða ofercumen. thus, unless one is ready to give credence to extreme 23 “away takes.” 24 “loth was liberated.” 25 “bereft of warriors.” 26 “behold the sky.” 27 “course and orbit.” 28 “wild bird.” 29 sievers lists twelve such verses (1885: 458). for a few more examples, see schabram 1960. 30 “a man promised;” “a man promised me.” 31 verse-initial resolvable sequences must necessarily undergo resolution (see suzuki 1995: 26; pascual forthcoming). 58selim 20 (2013–2014) rafael j. pascual coincidences, it is necessary to regard these verses as relatively atypical instances of a regular type a metrical confi guration with a short second lift . another reason to credit the traditional four-position analysis for verses like nīða ofercumen is that it receives independent support fr om a well-known fact of all indo-european metrical systems, namely that they tend to demand more fi xed structures toward the end of the verse.32 a clear expression of this tendency can be appreciated, for example, in the ability of non-verse-fi nal drops to accommodate a variable number of syllables, while only one unstressed syllable is allowed to occupy a verse-fi nal drop, as has been stated above.33 this characteristic feature of indo-european metres manifests itself even more evidently in the application of fulk’s law, according to which the metrical value of disyllabic sequences with a short penultimate syllable under tertiary stress is determined by their position within the verse.34 in the onset, they occupy a single metrical position; but if they are in the coda,35 then each of their two syllables must constitute a single metrical position on its own. although an exhaustive explanation of exceptional verses like nīða ofercumen falls beyond the scope of the present essay, the preceding discussion should have suffi ced to make it clear that there are good metrical reasons to expect an unresolved lift in the coda of the verse. thus, the ss scansion is not tenable for verses like nīða ofercumen, and hence they cannot be off ered in support of the authenticity of the ss verse pattern in beowulf. 32 foley refers to this phenomenon as “right justifi cation” (1985: 12; see also fulk 1992: §226). 33 see p. 53. 34 fulk names his law “rule of the coda” (1992: §§221–245). notice that although “tertiary stress” is here retained as a useful concept, the application of fulk’s law demonstrates that ictus at the tertiary level is exclusively predicated on syllable quantity (fulk 1992: §268). 35 see fn. 21 above. three-position verses and the metrical practice of the beowulf poet 59 selim 20 (2013–2014) 1.3 miscellaneous four-position verses weiskott’s ss scansion for 881a ēam his nefan,36 1728a hwīlum hē on lufan,37 736a ðicgean ofer þā niht38 and 940b dǣd ġefr emede39 must likewise be rejected. in the fi rst instance, 881a, it is probable that the poet regarded ēam as a non-contracted disyllabic word with the stress contour ss, refl ecting prehistoric old english *ēa-am, descended in turn fr om the proto-germanic compound *awahaim (holthausen 1963: 84, s.v. éam).40 the stress pattern of 881a would therefore be sss, corresponding to a rhythmical type e with resolution of its second lift . indeed, the circumfl ex diacritic above ēam printed in klaeber iv indicates that its editors endorse this scansion. further, the traditional four-position interpretation for this verse is predicated upon compelling philological evidence that the three-position analysis neglects. in the prehistoric old english form *ēa-am, a hiatus separates a diphthong ending in a back vowel, ēa-, fr om an unstressed vowel, -a. hiatuses of this kind underwent contraction at some point between the late seventh and the early eighth century (campbell 1964: §235.2; hogg 2011: §5.131). since the composition of beowulf can be reliably dated to the period 685–725,41 36 “uncle to his nephew.” 37 “sometimes he in delight.” 38 “consume beyond that night.” 39 “deed accomplished.” 40 see also fulk, bjork, and niles 2008: 330, n. 3. 41 beowulf is the only poem in the old english corpus with regular and extensive adherence to both parts of kaluza’s law. this means that the poet was aware of the distinction between etymologically short and long desinences that became indistinct ca. 725 in mercia and ca. 825 in northumbria. because the language of beowulf is less conservative than that of the épinal-erfurt glossary (ca. 685) and because dialectal indications point to mercian composition, fulk has concluded that beowulf was most likely composed between ca. 685 and ca. 725 (1992: §§406– 421; 2007a: 268; 2007b: 317–323; see also clark 2014 and neidorf & pascual forthcoming [2015]). the law originates in the observations of max kaluza (1896). 60selim 20 (2013–2014) rafael j. pascual it follows that the non-contracted form must still have been within easy reach for the poet at the time he composed beowulf. therefore, the four-position scansion for 881a not only is metrically regular, but also preferable on a philological basis. with respect to 1728a hwīlum hē on lufan, the three-position analysis is based on the assumption that the entire line features a transverse alliterative scheme of the type ab : ba, which would involve promotion of hwīlum to a stressed position.42 this assumption is open to doubt, however, not only because transverse alliteration is very infr equent in old english poetry (terasawa 2011: 18),43 but also because it would entail a breach of kuhn’s fi rst law, an extremely uncommon situation in beowulf. since hwīlum is a sentence particle that appears in the fi rst drop of its clause, in complete obedience to kuhn’s fi rst law, it must be unstressed. accordingly, this verse scans as an a3 type with its alliterating lift occupied by the short stressed syllable lu-.44 remarkably, even in the improbable case that ēam scanned as a monosyllable and that hwīlum bore a stress, verses 881a and 1728a would not unambiguously feature the ss pattern, since the ss pattern with an unresolved lift in the coda would still be a more probable explanation for them, as has been argued in the previous section. neither of these two verses therefore carries any conviction as an authentic instance of the ss pattern. the stress pattern traditionally posited for beowulf 736a ðicgean ofer þā niht, is the four-position sss, corresponding to a heavy type a with primary stress on þā, secondary stress on niht, and featuring double alliteration. the three-position scansion of this verse is based on the premise that þā is unstressed. this premise, 42 the off -verse is lǣteð hworfan. 43 r. b. le page considers that this line features transverse alliteration (1959: 435), but see the criticism raised by terasawa (2011: 25). 44 type a3 verses with a short lift are occasionally found in beowulf and elsewhere (fulk, bjork & niles 2008: 330). three-position verses and the metrical practice of the beowulf poet 61 selim 20 (2013–2014) however, is not supported by the evidence. there is a similar verse elsewhere in old english poetry, judith 306a þeġnas on ðā tīd,45 and in both instances the alliteration of the line is on /þ/.46 the three-position interpretation thus neglects the fact that in these two verses promotion of þā to a stressed position results not only in a metrically regular verse, but also in an acceptable alliterative scheme. furthermore, the assignment of primary stress to þā and secondary stress to niht in 736a is supported by the occurrence in beowulf and elsewhere of a signifi cant number of parallel verses in which niht takes secondary stress and is preceded by an alliterating monosyllable (hutcheson 1995: 159, n. 3). this can be transparently appreciated in verses like beowulf 517a seofonniht swuncon,47 exodus 63a hēht þā ymb twā niht or andreas 185a nū bið fore þrēo niht.48 thus, in the absence of a substantial number of unambiguous instances of the ss pattern, it is not justifi able to adduce beowulf 736a as authentic evidence of that pattern. with regard to 940b dǣd ġefr emede, this verse as it stands in the manuscript scans as a regular four-position type a verse with resolution of the second lift . in order to make it conform to the ss pattern, weiskott assumes that the form ġefr emede is a scribal substitution of authorial ġefr emed, which would in turn undergo resolution. the emendation of ġefr emede to ġefr emed, which has never been proposed by any editor in the history of beowulf textual criticism, has no rational basis and cannot be accepted. the manuscript reading ġefr emede is grammatically unquestionable: it is a past participle declined as an accusative singular feminine adjective, in perfect agreement with the noun it modifi es, the feminine i-stem 45 “warriors at that time.” griffi th scans it as a regular four-position verse with alliteration on þā (1997: 141). 46 beowulf 736b and judith 306b read þrȳðswȳð behēold and þearle ġelyste respectively. 47 disyllabic seofonis resolved and counts therefore as a single syllable. 48 see also fulk 1992: §199 for further commentary on verses of this sort. 62selim 20 (2013–2014) rafael j. pascual dǣd, the direct object of its clause. the single reason adduced by weiskott in support of his emendation is that there is one verse in the whole poem, 476a, in which the past participle of ġefr emman is uninfl ected: fǣrnīða ġefr emed.49 if this line of reasoning were accepted, we would be obliged to change, for example, beowulf 216b wudu bundenne to wudu bunden, since this is the only occurrence in the whole poem in which the participle of bindan is infl ected. but we would then be altering a metrically regular verse to a verse with the unmetrical ss confi guration. indeed, the poet’s choice of the infl ected form of the participle of bindan in this single instance is most probably motivated by the demands of metre: since resolution of verse-initial wudu is unavoidable, the uninfl ected form bunden would make the verse fall short of a syllable (cf. mitchell 1985: §36; and terasawa 2011: 80). a similar metrical rationale is most likely behind the poet’s use of the infl ected participle of ġefr emman in dǣd ġefr emede: he infl ected the participle in this instance precisely to avoid the unmetrical ss pattern. weiskott’s emendation of dǣd ġefr emede to dǣd ġefr emed refl ects an antiprobabilistic mode of reasoning: it gratuitously corrupts an authorial four-position verse, for no reason other than to increase the apparent evidence for the authenticity of the ss contour. 1.4 corrupt manuscript readings the previous three sections have accounted for the four-position metrical confi guration of nine out of the thirteen instances that weiskott adduced as evidence for the ss pattern. the present section considers the remaining four items, which are in actuality corrupt manuscript readings. one of them is rǣhte ongēan, at the beginning of line 7 on folio 149r (corresponding to l. 747b). taken 49 the past participle ġefr emed in 476a must depend upon the accusative singular neuter pronoun hwæt in 474b, since fǣrnīða is genitive plural. the uninfl ected form ġefr emed is therefore the only grammatically correct possibility. weiskott’s line of reasoning, however, seems to be based on the false assumption that ġefr emed ought to be infl ected. three-position verses and the metrical practice of the beowulf poet 63 selim 20 (2013–2014) at face value, it should constitute a verse featuring the threeposition ss stress contour. but this reading is suspect on textcritical grounds, since it is immediately preceded by an erasure of fi ve letters at the end of line 6 (zupitza 1959: 36). since the fi rst of the damaged letters is an h, weiskott argues that the scribe copied the word handa by eye-skip to 746a, and that he then erased it intentionally to achieve the purportedly correct three-position reading (2013: 483, n. 4). several problems present themselves. first, if rǣhte ongēan were an authentic verse by itself, the verbal form rǣhte would lack an object (robinson 1996: 56). consequently, it would have to be assumed that the noun phrase hiġeþīhtiġne rinċ is used ἀπὸ κοινοῦ by the beowulf poet as the grammatical object of two distinct verbs, the preceding nam and the following rǣhte. this interpretation must be rejected, since ἀπὸ κοινοῦ constructions are not a genuine feature of old english verse (fulk 2003: 3–9). second, and even more important, the three-position analysis neglects the well-known fact that the erasure preceding ræhte coincides with an erasure at exactly the same place on the following leaf (zupitza 1959: 37).50 this clearly suggests that it was something spilt on the vellum that obscured the words preceding ræhte, not the deliberate hand of the scribe. the reading ræhte ongean can then be reliably considered defective. indeed, this is the stance adopted by the editors of klaeber iv, who fi ll the fi ve-letter gap in the manuscript by adding hē him, two sentence particles that not only restore the syntax and sense of the passage, but also make a standard fourposition type b verse. another two readings that weiskott presented as authorial ss verses in beowulf are grētte þā (corresponding to 652a),51 and ġeġnum fōr (corresponding to 1404b).52 but surely these two readings are corrupt, since trisyllabic verses of any kind are virtually 50 see also pope (1966: 372), and fulk (1992: §209). 51 “addressed then.” 52 “had gone forward.” 64selim 20 (2013–2014) rafael j. pascual non-existent in the old english poetic corpus. the evidential force of their absence is so compelling that the stricture against verses with less than four syllables is regarded by practically all metrists as “the most basic and universal of the metrical rules” (amos 1980: 15),53 and even the most conservative editors of old english poetry emend trisyllabic verses on that single basis. further, plausible sources of scribal confusion for these two readings have been readily identifi ed. in regard to 652a, the source of error suggests itself clearly aft er comparison with 2516a ġegrētte þā: the similarity between geand grelikely led the scribe to overlook geas he copied fr om his exemplar (andrew 1948: 141). this is in fact the position uniformly endorsed by editors of beowulf, who emend the text at this point by adding the prefi x ġe-. with regard to ġeġnum fōr, to consider it authentic would neglect the fact that trisyllabic sequences with an ss stress contour and with an alliterating fi rst lift occurring within the second half of the line are invariably either preceded by a minimum of one unstressed syllable or followed by exactly one unstressed syllable both in beowulf and elsewhere in old english poetry. since ġeġnum fōr does not admit any other element aft er fōr, at least one unstressed element seems to have been dropped accidentally by the scribe immediately before ġeġnum. the editors of klaeber iv supply þǣr, a relative conj unction that not only makes for a regular type b verse, but also improves the syntax of the passage. there remains only one supposed instance of the ss pattern in beowulf to be considered: 2150a lissa ġelong. although its source of error is debatable, the three-position analysis for this verse has been nonetheless repeatedly questioned. geoff rey russom, for example, has proposed an attractive four-position interpretation, according to which the letter a should be construed not as the infl ectional ending for genitive plural, but as the lexically prominent adverb ā 53 see also sievers 1885: 268ff ., 312; bliss 1962: §15; pope 1966: 318–320; 371–372; fulk 1996: 5; 1997: 39; terasawa 2009; 2011: 49–52. three-position verses and the metrical practice of the beowulf poet 65 selim 20 (2013–2014) “always” (1987: 117–118). that way, the verse would read liss ā ġelong, with the stress contour of a rhythmical type e. additionally, the editors of klaeber iv have suggested that ġelong is perhaps a scribal substitute for an authorial dialect form that would have resulted in an original four-position verse (fulk, bjork, and niles 2008: 234). nevertheless, this verse is clearly unique in that none of the plausible sources of error has achieved clear consensus among metrists. the diffi culty that lissa ġelong has traditionally posed to experts in old english metre is used by weiskott as a lever for his argument in support of the metricality of the ss verse type. he focuses the entire body of his essay exclusively on the resistance shown by lissa ġelong to consensual emendation, while relegating the other supposed instances of the ss pattern to a list in a footnote, as if the mere lack of a universally accepted source of error for lissa ġelong somehow validated the dubious three-position interpretation of the other twelve verses. the strategy followed by weiskott might be rhetorically eff ective, but it is unwarranted in proper metrical argumentation, where, as has been argued at the beginning of this study, the authenticity of a verse type is established not on the basis of an isolated and relatively ambiguous manuscript reading, like hrēas blāc or lissa ġelong, but on the strength of a statistically signifi cant incidence of unambiguous instances in the surviving corpus of old english poetry. this and other related methodological issues are treated more extensively in the next part of the present article. 2 incidence and authenticy when weiskott’s ambiguous corpus of thirteen verses is taken fr om its marginal location in the footnotes and is examined carefully, it becomes noticed that only two of the supposed instances of the ss pattern are trisyllabic. such an insignifi cant incidence in an already insignifi cant corpus indicates that the ss type is inauthentic, since the occurrences of ideal realizations of a genuine metrical pattern ought to outnumber those of marked 66selim 20 (2013–2014) rafael j. pascual realizations. for example, four-syllable type a verses like hringa fenġel,54 in which each syllable constitutes a single metrical position, were regarded by poets as ideal realizations of the four-position ss pattern, as is indicated by their outstanding incidence in old english poetry. on the other hand, fi ve-syllable type a verses like monegum mǣġþum55 or swǣse ġesīþas56 were perceived as acceptable, marked variants of the same metrical type. consequently, their incidences, though substantial, are not as high as those of the four-syllable realization. the situation is exactly the opposite with regard to weiskott’s corpus: it consists of only a handful of verses, the majority of which could not count as ideal realizations. according to his scansion, fi ve verses would show protracted drops (183b, 186b, 736a, 747b and 2150a); another six would have a resolved second lift (845a, 881a, 940b, 954a, 1728a and 2430b); and only the remaining two would be ideal trisyllabic realizations of the three-position pattern (652a and 1404b). had the ss pattern been an authentic metrical type at the disposal of old english poets, the body of verses that could have been gathered would be much larger, and the proportion between ideal and marked realizations would be the converse. thus, it is precisely the character of weiskott’s own corpus of evidence that betrays the inauthenticity of the pattern it aims to validate. trisyllabic verses featuring an ss pattern are vanishingly rare in the surviving corpus of old english poetry. in fact, some syllabic sequences with the ss stress contour for which there are good linguistic reasons to be expected are never found as independent verses. such absence is indicative of the unmetricality of the ss pattern, because an authentic verse type would inevitably have resulted in a signifi cant number of linguistically probable ideal 54 “prince of rings.” 55 “to many nations.” 56 “dear comrades.” three-position verses and the metrical practice of the beowulf poet 67 selim 20 (2013–2014) realizations. for example, trisyllabic verses like *swǣs ġesīþ,57 which consists of a monosyllable followed by an iambic disyllable, are systematically absent fr om the records. words with the stress contour of swǣs, however, are extremely common in both old english language and verse; and words with the stress contour of ġesīþ, though not as fr equent, are also common in the language and easily found in other metrical contexts. clearly, the nature of the stricture against the occurrence of the sequence *swǣs ġesīþ in verse must be other than linguistic. the recursive incidence of similar verses like swǣse ġesīþas (beowulf 29a, 2040a, 2518a; cf. 1934a) suggests that the restriction is purely metrical: verses like *swǣs ġesīþ do not occur because they are prohibited by the metrical system. that the ideal realization of the ss pattern is unmetrical is perhaps the clearest indication that the entire pattern must be inauthentic. to argue that the ss type is authentic in beowulf is thus to fi ght an inevitable defeat against the virtually non-existent incidence of its ideal trisyllabic realizations both in beowulf and in the rest of old english poetic monuments. the problems with weiskott’s argument do not end here. he states that the traditional prohibition of sieversian metrics against three-position verses is unwarranted, given the legitimacy accorded to type d* verses like beowulf 770a rēþe renweardas,58 whose metrical confi guration (sss) apparently consists of fi ve positions (2013 passim). or, to put it another way, weiskott maintains that since an apparently non-four-position pattern like type d* is regarded as authentic by sieversian metrics, then the restriction traditionally held by metrists against another non-four-position pattern like ss must be arbitrary. but, on the contrary, it is weiskott’s charge against sieversian metrics that is demonstrably baseless. the foundation on which the edifi ce of sieversian metrics is constructed is essentially empirical. thus, an apparently problematic verse type 57 “dear comrade.” 58 “fierce guardians of the house.” 68selim 20 (2013–2014) rafael j. pascual like d* is nonetheless considered authentic in sieversian formalism on account of its statistically signifi cant incidence. according to a. j. bliss’s scansion, there are 146 unambiguous instances of that type in beowulf.59 since the appearance of that type is restricted to the on-verse, its incidence in the whole poem is of approximately 4.6%. the regularity indicated by such a substantial fi gure cannot be ascribed to scribal corruption. the presence of 146 verses unambiguously featuring the same metrical structure must necessarily refl ect the metrical practice of the beowulf poet. the authenticity that sieversian metrics accords to type d* is therefore supported by strong empirical evidence. this point can be further illustrated by reference to another well-known verse pattern that also seems not to comply with the four-position principle: type a3, as in beowulf 106a siþðan him scyppen,60 which apparently comprises three metrical positions. its statistical incidence is once again the reason why it is accepted as an authentic verse type by sieversian metrics. calvin b. kendall counts 315 unambiguous instances of type a3 in beowulf (1983: 14). since instances of type a3 can occur only in the on-verse, its incidence in the whole poem amounts to approximately 10%. it cannot reasonably be doubted that this fi gure results fr om the application of the principles governing the metrical practice of the poet. the authenticity of this verse type, like that of type d*, is therefore founded on its statistically substantial number of occurrences. the genuine existence of types d* and a3, however, does not compromise the authenticity of the four-position principle, which is still able to account for the metricality of more than 85% of the remaining verses in the poem. it is on the basis of the empirically demonstrable reality of types d* and a3, on the one hand, and of the four-position principle, on the other, that the sieversian theory 59 this fi gure has been calculated using vickman 1990. 60 “aft er him the lord.” on the loss of fi nal d in scyppen, see klaeber iv, “language and poetic form,” §20.7. three-position verses and the metrical practice of the beowulf poet 69 selim 20 (2013–2014) of old english metre is constructed. thus, although type a3 has sometimes been analysed as a three-position pattern, traditional metrists categorize it as an acceptable variant of the basic fourposition metrical confi guration (cable 1974: 20–31; fulk 2002: 339, n. 10). the theoretical harmonization between type d* and the four-position principle has been provided by both tom cable and seiichi suzuki, who convincingly account for type d* as a surface manifestation of an underlying four-position pattern (cable 1991: 37, 138–139, 143; suzuki 1992; 1995: 21–22). the case for the authenticity of the ss pattern, on the contrary, lacks empirical justifi cation. a cursory glance at the incidences of types d* and a3, on the one hand, and at the incidence of verses that according to weiskott feature the ss pattern, on the other, suffi ces to substantiate this claim. since according to him there is no metrical restriction on ss verses preventing them fr om occurring in the off -verse, the incidence of his thirteen verses in beowulf amounts to 0.2%, a fi gure that starkly contrasts with the 4.6% and 10% incidences of types d* and a3. these fi gures demonstrate that the incidences of the three verse types are not comparable. if the ss type had been considered authentic by the poet, it is improbable that he would have produced such an insignifi cant quantity of three-position verses. as we can see, then, the mere calculation of the pertinent statistics confi rms that the allegation of arbitrariness levelled by weiskott against sieversian metrics is fr ivolous. the sieversian acknowledgement of the authenticity of types d* and a3 is as empirically justifi ed as its rejection of the genuineness of the ss pattern, since the two positions are determined exclusively by their diff erential incidences in the corpus of old english verse. with an incidence slightly above 0%, the plea for the authenticity of the ss pattern seems to be based on nothing but wishful thinking. yet weiskott’s argument is faulty in a more fundamental way. if the results of metrical research are to be trusted, the incidence 70selim 20 (2013–2014) rafael j. pascual of a certain verse type can be calculated only according to the number of unambiguous instances that occur in the corpus under study. as has been argued in the fi rst part of the present article, however, at least twelve out of weiskott’s thirteen instances do not unambiguously feature the ss pattern. weiskott himself seems to be aware of this fact when he states that the verses he gathers “are always diff erently explained or emended” (2013: 483). that the traditional explanations of these verses are summarily dismissed by weiskott is unsurprising, given his belief that the restriction of sieversian metrics against the ss pattern is arbitrary. but genuine metrical studies do not proceed that way. the authenticity of a verse type can be gauged only by the number of its unambiguous instances, since an authentic verse type would have resulted in a signifi cant number of verses of that type for which no coherent alternative explanations could be proposed. since the only instance that could be unambiguously adduced in support of the authenticity of the ss pattern in beowulf is lissa ġelong, the actual incidence of unambiguous occurrences in the poem is 0.01%. thus, the ss pattern is far too infr equent in beowulf to admit its metricality. as fulk has put it, “scribal transmission is too uncertain to permit a single example of a metrical type to carry much weight” (1992: §209). another argument advanced by weiskott in support of the authenticity of the ss type in beowulf is that the pattern in question is authentic in old norse verse (2013: 484, n. 4). yet once again, his argument is contradicted by the evidence. the ss pattern has traditionally been considered a genuine metrical type in fornyrðislag due to its statistically signifi cant presence in eddic poetry, especially in some poems. for example, according to suzuki’s count, the heroic sigurðarqviða in scamma, at 568 verses, contains 29 instances of the ss pattern; and the mythological poems hyndlolióð and rígsþula, at 294 and 296 verses respectively, three-position verses and the metrical practice of the beowulf poet 71 selim 20 (2013–2014) contain 21 and 59 occurrences (2009: 31).61 therefore, the respective incidences of the ss verse type in these eddic poems are 5.1%, 7.14%, and 20%. faced with statistics such as these, eduard sievers naturally accepted the type as formally legitimate in fornyrðislag, since such substantial incidences cannot have accidentally resulted fr om the scribes’ unstable practice (1893: §45.2). these fi gures starkly contrast with the trivial 0.2% incidence to which weiskott’s corpus of thirteen instances would amount if they unambiguously featured the ss pattern. indeed, weiskott seems not to have calculated these statistics before advancing his argument: it is diffi cult to see how he could have ever proposed the purported parallel between the presence of the ss type in old norse and in beowulf had he reckoned them. weiskott also argues that the ss pattern would have been subjected to a gradual process of regularization over the history of old english metre. although this is certainly the case with the ss pattern in old norse, weiskott’s argument runs counter to the course of old english metrical history, which is inextricably linked to the history of the old english language. in old norse, the unstressed short vowels of many words had been dropped by the beginning of the ninth century, as a result of which many four-syllable verses became trisyllabic (gordon 1957: 276; russom 1998: 34). for example, a trisyllabic verse like þrymsquiða 17/2 þrúðugr áss,62 whose stress contour is ss, might conceivably have originated in a regular four-position type a verse with the proto-norse disyllabic u-stem *ansuʀ in the place of monosyllabic áss. aft er the loss of unstressed short vowels, the poets would have reinterpreted these trisyllabic verses as regular, thereby composing new verses with a three-position metrical 61 on the development of the ss type in old norse verse, see also suzuki 2011 and 2014. 62 “mighty god.” 72selim 20 (2013–2014) rafael j. pascual confi guration, like rígsþula 43/5 meirr kunni hann,63 a foursyllable verse featuring the three-position ss pattern.64 this interpretation is substantiated by the abovementioned incidences of the ss type in some eddic poems composed in fornyrðislag. many of the changes that took place in the old english language, however, were conducive to the converse tendency (lehman 1956: 88–93). for one, the development of epenthetic vowels produced an increase in the number of syllables of a signifi cant amount of words. further, as a consequence of the reduction in the number of compounds that came about with the decline of the poetic tradition, the language of poetry was patterned on that of prose, which substantially increased the number of unstressed function words in the line. hence, contrary to weiskott’s argument, non-early old english poetry was an unlikely context for the regularization of the catalectic ss metrical type to occur.65 the incidence of the ss pattern in a larger corpus of old english poetry also contradicts the notion that it became regularized later in the period. in his monumental a history of old english meter, fulk endeavoured to determine the chronological signifi cance of a set of metrical and linguistic archaisms by studying their distribution throughout a corpus of more than fourteen thousand lines, containing poems that can be externally dated to both the early period, like cædmon’s hymn, and the late period, like the battle of maldon or durham. excluding beowulf fr om this corpus, the number of verses with an unambiguous ss stress 63 “he knew more.” 64 winfr ed p. lehman lists a series of phonological and morphological changes in the old norse language that contributed to the appearance of the catalectic ss type in fornyrðislag metre (1956: 80–84). 65 the increase in the number of unstressed function words in late old english verse has long been recognized. see, for example, russom 2002, where the expansion of the line is treated as an indication of late composition. see also cable 1991: 41–65; fulk 1992: §§290–317; russom 2004: 292–297, 2012; and hartman 2014. three-position verses and the metrical practice of the beowulf poet 73 selim 20 (2013–2014) contour is three: genesis a 2217b ǣniġ ne wearð,66 2695 lāre ġebearh67 and elene 534a fr īġneð ymb ðæt trēo68 (fulk 1992: §§210–211). or, to put it another way, the incidence of unambiguous occurrences of the ss type in such an enormous body of verse is of approximately 0.01%, exactly the same as the incidence in beowulf. this fi gure unequivocally indicates that the poets perceived the three-position ss pattern as unmetrical throughout the history of old english metre, and that therefore the four unambiguous instances found in the large corpus of verse analysed by fulk, including beowulf, are not authorial. as fulk has put it, “the underlying four-position pattern remains unchanged over the history of old english verse, fr om cædmon’s hymn to durham. even poems like maldon that diff er widely fr om the standard of beowulf in numerous details do not violate the four-position pattern” (1992: §208). 3 conclusion at the beginning of his essay, weiskott asserts that “verses of the form ss occur in beowulf ” (2013: 483). of course, ss verses occur in the transmitted text of the poem, alongside many corrupt forms requiring emendation.69 their occurrence in beowulf, however, is a hypothesis to be tested, not an indisputable fact upon which an argument can be constructed. the present essay has demonstrated that the ss metrical type fails to pass the test of authenticity. as we have seen, there are four unambiguous occurrences in a corpus of approximately 28,364 verses. this means that its overall incidence in such a substantial body of poetry, at 0.01%, is almost non-existent. to regard it as authentic, therefore, would compel us to believe that the poets’ systematic avoidance of that type is an accident—an 66 “no [son] was.” 67 “by cunning protected.” 68 “asks about that tree.” 69 see, for example, the errors surveyed in lapidge 2000 and neidorf 2013. 74selim 20 (2013–2014) rafael j. pascual extremely improbable coincidence. it is far more probable that the reason why the poets systematically avoided the ss pattern is that they considered it unmetrical on account of its three positions, and that consequently the few unambiguous instances of the ss type that have happened to be recorded are the products of scribal error. this hypothesis has the complementary virtue of accounting for the metricality of the vast majority of verses found in the surviving poetic manuscripts. weiskott’s claim (2013: 485) that treating ss verses as authentic would be a gain for textual criticism and metrical study is plainly mistaken. in actuality, crediting his untenable hypothesis would cause textual critics to regard scribal errors as authorial readings and lead metrists to misapprehend the principles that govern the metrical practice of the beowulf poet. rafael j. pascual universidad de granada references amos, a. c. 1980: linguistic means of determining the dates of old english literary texts. cambridge (ma), medieval academy of america. andrew, s. o. 1948: postscript on beowulf. 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comparative prosody: in memoriam mikhail gasparov. bern, peter lang: 373–400. suzuki, s. 2014: the meters of old norse eddic poetry. berlin and boston: de gruyter. terasawa, j. 2009: beowulf における3音節以下半行について [notes on halflines of three or fewer syllables in beowulf ]. in k. karasawa ed. ベーオウルフとその周辺 : 忍足欣四郎先生追悼論文集 [essays on beowulf and other medieval english literature in memory of kinshiro oshitari]. yokohama, shumpusha: 278–293. terasawa, j. 2011: old english metre: an introduction. toronto, university of toronto press. vickman, j. 1990: a metrical concordance to beowulf. with a preface by r. d. fulk. binghamton, center for medieval and early renaissance studies, state university of new york at binghamton (=old english newsletter subsidia 16). weiskott, e. 2013: three-position verses in beowulf. notes and queries 60 (4): 483–485. zupitza, j. 1959: beowulf: reproduced in facsimile fr om the unique manuscript british museum ms. cotton vitellius a. xv. 2nd ed. rev. by n. davis. oxford, oxford university press. • received 12 may 2014; accepted 21 may 2014 selim09.doc ricardo sola, selim 9 (1999): 111—122 the canterbury tales and its dramatic background chaucer wrote the canterbury tales, a collection of tales that show some particular features totally new in the literary tradition of the period. it has been generally accepted the fact that chaucer modifies in very important aspects the literary sources at his hand to make a literary work full of realism, humour, irony and dramatic interplay. even if we compare chaucer's collection with boccaccio's we see strong and important differences between the two, being the most relevant of them, as sklovsky pointed out, the design of the frame (1971: 119-124). as we know the tales in il deccamerone are told using a static frame, while those in the canterbury tales move inside a dynamic one. in the latter the pilgrims, the tellers, travel towards canterbury and in their very detailed way enjoy themselves with the telling of the tales, as in a game. in il deccamerone we hear two voices: the author/narrator and the tellers, the flo rentine gentlemen and ladies; but in the canterbury tales we hear several voices: the authorial voice, the narrator's, the pilgrim chaucer and the rest of the pilgrims. these voices are not merely reporting and narrating, but also arguing among them, discussing about different topics and subjects, and commenting about the excellence or ugliness of the stories, abusing each other, and so on and so forth. the pilgrims are described as individuals as well as types: a knyght ther was, and that a worthy man, that fro the tyme that he first began to riden out, he loved chivalrie, trouthe and honour, fredom and cursteisie. (c.t. 43-46) everyone in either the inner or the outer audience would be familiar with the typical portrait of the type, and that means that a social and literary conventional pattern is behind the mere lines and words, as jill mann showed (1973). ricardo sola 110 from this point of view it seems most difficult to explain the following lines that describe the real knight in the group of people in front of the audience: but to tellen yow of his array, his hors were goode, but he was nat gay. of fustian he wered a gypon al bismotered with his habergeon, for he was late ycome from his viage, and wente for to doon his pilgrymage. (c.t. 73-78) all the prilgrims in the general prologue, the host and later the author/narrator/pilgrim chaucer are depicted with these two perspectives. we have a tradition for the first, but ¿do we have one for the second? quoting once again roberth scholes and robert kellog in their book the nature of narrative they state: all art is traditional in that artists learn their craft from their pre decessors to a great extent. they begin by conceiving the poss ibilities open to them in terms of the achievements they are acquainted with. they may add to the tradition, opening up new poss ibilities for their successors, but they begin, inevitably within a tradition (4). it seems that the assumption that any writer belongs to a tradition is an unquestionable axiom in literary criticism and textual analysis. aristotle said so in his de poetica and horace in arte poetica when in their analysis of epic poetry and tragedy they proposed homer as a model for other writers. later in time t.s.eliot insisted on this debt of the individual artists to a received and given tradition when he stated in his essay "tradition and individual talent" that a situation of a cultural and literary vacuum is not possible in creative writing. tradition always exists and any poet or artist must have this "historical sense", being the seminal difference the acceptance or the rejection, and so modification of such tradition (49-52). once we have considered that there is a tradition surrounding or pre ceeding the writer we can repeat our previous question about chaucer and the canterbury tales: which tradition do they belong to? or which tradition are they following?. many years ago, as i have pointed above, jill mann des cribthe canterbury tales and its dramatic background 111 ed in her book chaucer and medieval estates satire (1973) the catalogue that stayed as a background for the depiction of the pilgrims in the "ge neral prologue", while claes schaar in the golden mirror (1967) developed a systematic study of descriptive literary techniques at the back; bryan & demp ster in their recollection sources and analogues of chaucer's canterbury tales (1958) studied and showed the debts of chaucer's work to other authors and to a classical and medieval narrative tradition; d.w. robertson in his a preface to chaucer (1969) explored the learned and mythological tradition in which chaucer was inserted, and w.w. curry in chaucer and the medieval sciences (1960) the scientific one, etc., just to mention a few. very recently piero boitani and jill mann in their anthology the cambridge chaucer companion (1987) have developed with the help of other chaucerians scholars more modern approaches and, let us say, posmodern analysis studying chaucer's works and retaking the same facts and evidences pointed out in previous studies, some of which i have already quoted. but in some way, i think, they miss the chance specially when dealing with the canterbury tales and the opportunity to explain the reason for such "rich individual variety and interplay", as they seem to be repeating old concepts, ideas and themes in more modern terms and expressions. let us have a brief look to some of the contributions in the anthology which more clearly deal with the topic i am proposing here. benson in his article " the canterbury tales: personal drama or experiment in poetic variety" settles his point with a well-known and right statement: for many, the clearest signals of the variety of the canterbury tales are the sharply differentiated tellers and their intricate re lationships before, after, and sometimes during the tales. no other story -collection has a frame that is so lively and dynamic (93). this, in fact, supports his view that the collection of tales reveals a sharp ly interplay among a group of speakers/tellers, but next the question is to choose between personal drama or experiment in poetic variety to justify it. it seems that benson is in favour of dramatic interplay and so he brings kit tredge's much quoted definition of this design and develops what he calls "dramatic theory": ricardo sola 112 kittredge argued that the individual tales are not told in chaucer's own voice, but that each is a dramatic expression of the personality of its particular teller: "the pilgrims do not exist for the sake of the story, but vice versa . structurally regarded, the stories are merely long speeches expressing, directly or indirectly, the characters of the several persons they are more or less comparable, in this regard, to the soliloquie s of hamlet or iago or macbeth (94). once kittredge and benson have stated that the tale is an extension of the personality, ideas and behaviour of the teller they inmediately think of character, not type, and in order to explain what character is they refer as a way of example to hamlet, iago and macbeth we may say to a literay tradition -. the important fact to notice here is that none of the scholars link the "acting and doing" of the tellers to a narrative tradition for there is none. further on benson goes on saying: given such diverse and energetic portraits it is all too easy to imagine the canterbury tales as fully developed and psychologically complex characters, like those we know from realistic novel or popular film (96). on the one hand the dynamism and complexity of the characters in the canterbury tales take the scholars to the field of performance, to the field of film, as well as to the idea of character as it is seen in realistic fiction. on the other, benson does not explain the needs and reasons why chaucer moved from a static and "energetic portraits" into "complex characters", so establishing an opposition between passive portraits and active characters. finally benson adds: scholars have even argued that chaucer must have had real-life models and suggested specific names, but the latest studies confirm what some earlier readers understood the general prologue describes types rather than specific individuals (96). following aristotle's rules a character first must be life -like and so in connection with real known people, and second a character must be a universal, a type. this takes the thread of our analysis to the topic of realism, some thing that is used by many chaucerians scholars to support the idea of chaucer's modernity and originality. and its is true, but let us have a look at bloomthe canterbury tales and its dramatic background 113 field's essay "chaucerian realism". again bloomfield starts with a general assesment: there is good reason why realism in general is such a popular subject in literary theory and criticism, for in one way or another one might say that it is central to any discussion of literature even art. as the ancient theory of imitation or mimesis testifies, art must claim to be real in some sense if it is to be taken at all seriously. the whole problem lies, of course, in what sense or senses art is real (180). aristotle's concept of mimesis, as we know, is not concerned with metaphysical thought as may in plato but with the factual evidence that men are naturally imitative, they enjoy imitating and learn by imitation. so the content of literature is not everything that can be imitated, but its effect is mediated by the manner of imitation or representation, that is to say, its form. we do not simply react to what we are shown but rather to how we are shown it. then bloomfield touches upon another important aspect, very much studied by formalist critics in the 60s: a basic realism in narrative is concerned with the establishment of an air of truth or plausibility to a tale. narratives use such s trategies to avoid the accusation of lying. this type of realism may be called "authenticating realism" and is to be found in one way or another in almost all narratives (181) a piece of literature is a thing in its own right, different from those other things it imitates or represents, and it is the manner of imitation what determines the kind of realism in art. in chaucer's canterbury tales there are two basic authenticating devices: the dream-vision pattern that helps to establish the distance between dream and reality, in the opposite way as bloomfield suggests, and the individual interplay of the pilgrims, as kittredge explains it, but considered as a "dramatis personae" not as narrative characters. we see how the theoretical frame that the contributors to boitani and mann's companion use is based on criteria and judgements not radically different from the ones already known to us, nor do they completely explain ricardo sola 114 from the point of view of a literary tradition the rising of this new individual characterization. when the british dramatist anne devlin came to the university of alcalá de henares (1994), she was talking about her last play after easter (1994), and she declared: "i love working in the theatre, in the space of the theater, because it's very different. it's very close to standing up in a public square and telling a story. i have to say that the origins of after easter began with me standing up in a music room in corpus christi college, in oxford, and reading the play that i was beginning to write to a group of visiting oversea academic drama teachers and students. from that audience experience of them listening to the story i was telling i decided i was able to explore that in relationship to the audience." then she added: "i come from an oral story -telling tradition and i always describe myself as a storyteller. even in theatre." the recognition of the dra matist that a play has a narrative component gives us way to think that a narrative may have a theatrical component too. it is the same idea that andré helbó, quoting roland barthes, points out when he explains how the process of "representation", which is thought of as a peculiar of drama — i. e. a dramatic process of representation — also works when we read a story, a narrative or a fiction: la conciencia de la representación se incluye en el origen del hecho estético. dicha comprensión se halla históricamente asociada a la tradition narrativa (41). (the awareness of representation is in cluded in the origin of aesthetic fact. such way of understanding has been historically associated to narrative tradition). it is important to emphasize that both helbó and barthes are referring to the process of "reading" as a process in which the reader represents (perfoms we may say) in an imaginary stage built in their mind the geographical environment and the features of the characters as they are depicted in the story. in my opinion and following that argument we can conclude that the reverse operation is acceptable too: the writer imagines, represents and performs in the canterbury tales and its dramatic background 115 an imaginary stage built in his mind the plot and, then, expresses it in narrative sequence. one of the most important problems we face in modern literary history is when we try to explain the artistic innovations of the past in terms of contemporary critical criteria. so that when dealing with character in the middle ages we inevitably pass through the conceptions drawn by the ranaissance writers and most important the romantic idea of individuality and the modernist and postmodernist conflict between subject and art. there is nevertheless a basic point i want to state and is the fact that subject and identity in the middle ages, and specially in the xivth century, appeared as a result of the development of the economical and social structures which primed a social relationship based on the private enterprise and free will of the subject against a collective pattern of thinking and believing imposed upon the individuals. the cultural and literary expressions had to accomodate to this social and economic condition and frame; there was a literary subject because there was first an economical one. although dante in la divina commedia deals with the subject's understanding in a historical and specific time, langland in piers plowman takes subjectivity as one of his topics, though it is a religious identity that shows the struggle between the inner and the outer, and then the struggle against hierarchy and dogma, and in sir gawain and the green knight the knight identity is unveiled when his private decisions make him responsible for his sins, moral and knightly, and his repentance, in chaucer as patterson says, character is the result of a conjunction of the specific and the general: it (dryden) has also assumed that the key to his meaning resides in the proper understanding of his characters: how we interpret troilus and criseyde will be determined by how we understand the three protagonists; and the canterbury tales are habitually read as indexed to the ethical register of their tellers. in fact, the controversies that have traditionaly preoccupied chaucer criticism have focused not on the legitimacy of this procedure but rather on the terms of its practice. on the one hand is a self-proclaimed "historicism" that insists on the priority of stylistic and iconographic traditions, rhetorical programs, and a required exemplary meaning; on the other a "criticism" that privileges mimetic accuracy and commonsense psychology. in both cases ricardo sola 116 chaucerian character is seen as a conjunction of the specific (whether derived from stylistic imitation, rhetorical precept, or empirical observation) and the general (whether taken to be authoritative truths or universal human nature). (15) but patterson still collides with the same ideas he wants to criticize and returns once more to a kind of thematic subject vs history level which does not explain the stylistic design of the canterbury tales. surely it is chaucer who better expresses this dialectical tension between subject and history, between the inner and the outer-self, between canon and parody in the canterbury tales and troilus and criseyde choosing dramatic dialogue and theatrical performance to represent this conflict, and so making the character, the subject, the "dramatis personae" more relevant than story and narrative in front of the audience: and whan that he was out at dore, anon he planed awey the names evrychon that he beforn had written in his tables; he served hem with nyfles and with fables. " nay, ther thou lixt, thou somonour!" quod the frere "pees", quod oure hoost, "for cristes mooder deere! tel forth thy tale, and spare it nat at al." "so thryve i," quod this somonour, "so i shal!" (c.t. 1755-1764) in the middle ages there was one only possible definition of character, both in tragedy and epic, and it followed the features described by aristotle and horace. although aristotle conceives of action as more important than character in tragedy and comedy he also thinks that epic narrative is inferior to drama in this process of imitation or "mimesis", so that it is in drama where character and action are better developed. there is, however, one important distinction to bare in mind: fable is the combination of incidents, and character is what makes us ascribe certain moral qualities to the agents. in the same way character in a play is what reveals the moral purpose of the agents. to put it in other words character is what unveils psychological complexity, i.e., individual identity versus individual type. sklovsky says, "… pro bablemente, el carácter, tal como lo comprendemos nosotros, surge como re sultado de la contraposición del hombre corriente al "personaje" (… surely, character as we understand it, arises as a result of the opposition between the canterbury tales and its dramatic background 117 common man and the individual", and he goes "… aquí, en la percepción de la diferencia empieza a crearse el carácter" (… here, in our perception of the difference character appears)(128). horace goes even further when he says that characters must be suitable for the genre, and the ques tion, once again, is: what kind of genre do the characters in the canterbury tales belong to? there is not a specific genre, a particular literary tradition to refer to, and, in some sense, to support "authenticating realism", since saying that "chaucer had real-life models" is to miss the point twice: first insisting upon the obvious i.e. that realism in literature always means looking at real life, and second forgetting that literary patterns and forms can also be models for other literary works. so in the canterbury tales the combination of the specific and the general, the life -like individual and the type was possible through the contextual and intertextual reference to the only one literary expression that used "mimesis" and character as "dramatis personae", the medieval theatre. to support this pose two important clues are given, one by tydeman when he comments some aspects of "closet theatres" and quotes: richard axton suggests that this mode of separation between actors and narrator would mean that the cast (probably professional players) would not need to learn complicated latin speeches, simply improvising to the narrator's story -line, while the learned author or narrator avoided the stigma of too close an association with the acting fraternity (27-28). chaucer wrote the canterbury tales having in mind a stage, i.e., interplay of narrator and actors. the other clue is given by hans-jürgen diller when in his paper presented in the selim annual conference held in cordoba showed intertextuality in action between medieval stage and medieval painting and glass-working: the drama, to which i want to turn now, is a richer medium that the ones considered so far, because it combines word and image. the image, moreover, is a living image…like the other verbal media, it can represent speech (which the pictorial media cannot). but over and above the verbal and the pictorial media, it can represent action iconically as developing in time(51). ricardo sola 118 diller sees the interaction between drama and the pictorial media as a kind of process in which the former acts as a model for the latter, so that when the medieval glass-worker builds a biblical scene in the gothic glass window of the church he looks at theatrical representation not to biblical narrative. it is not surprising, then, that derek brewer (1974) pointed out the paralelism between the design of the tales and the design of a gothic cathedral, each tale being the equivalent to one of the scenes represented in the gothic glass windows of the church. we readers realize the truth of that when we see that chaucer in the canterbury tales, as the narrative proceeds, is showing more and more interest in "theatrical interplay" and less in the telling of the story, as it happens when we reach the prologues to "the manciple's tale" and "the canon's yeoman's tale" there is no time now to enter deeper into the particular analysis and study of the canterbury tales as a peformance. it is enough to say that the realistic details and features described in them belong to the world of theatre more than to a specific narrative tradition. to put it in other way, chaucer is thinking of a stage when he describes the tabard inn, and of theatrical characters when he describes the pilgrims. chaucer is following the "closet theatre" pattern, with a narrator and a mime, all of them in the stage being in turn protagonists and audience. even more, when chaucer uses humour and irony is taking advantage of the parodic element, explained by aristotle and bajtín as a constitutive element of comedy in front of tragedy, as a constitutive element of the popular against the established, courtly literary taste. ricardo j. sola buil universidad de alcalá de henares references bajtín, mijail 1974: la cultura popular en la edad media y renacimiento. 1965. barcelona: barral editores. the canterbury tales and its dramatic background 119 bloomfield, morton w. 1987: chaucerian realism. p. boitani and j. mann 1987: 179-94. benson, larry d., ed. 1989(1987): the riverside chaucer. oxford: oup. boitani, piero, and jill mann, eds. 1987: the cambridge chaucer companion. cambridge: cup. brewer, d. s., ed. 1970: chaucer and chaucerians. critical studies in middle english literature. 1966. london: thomas nelson & sons limited. bryan, w. f., and germaine dempster, eds. 1958: sources and analogues of chaucer's canterbury tales. atlantic highlands, n.j.: humanities press. curry, w. c. 1960: chaucer and the medieval sciences. london: george allen & unwin. david benson, c. 1987: the canterbury tales: personal drama or experiments in poetic variety? p.boitani and j.mann 1987: 93-108. diller, hans-jurgen 1993: the medium is half the message: the isolation of christ in medieval drama, art and devotional writing. actas del ii congreso de la sociedad espanola de lengua y literatura inglesa medievales. ed. antonio león sendra. córdoba: servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de córdoba. eliot, t. s. 1960: the sacred wood. university paperbacks 11. london: methuen. helbó, andré et al., ed. 1978(1975): semiología de la representación. teatro, televisión, comic. barcelona: gustavo gili. kittredge, g. l. 1915: chaucer and his poetry. cambridge, mass. mann, jill 1975: chaucer and medieval estates satire. cambridge: the syndics of the cup, 1975. patterson, lee. chaucer and the subject of history. madison, wisconsin: the university of wisconsin press, 1991. robertson, d. w., jr. a preface to chaucer. studies in medieval perspectives. 1962. princeton, n.j.: princeton university press, 1969. ricardo sola 120 schaar, claes. the golden mirror. studies in chaucer's descriptive technique and its literary background. lund: gleerup, 1967. scholes, robert, and robert kellog. the nature of narrative. 1966. london, oxford, new york: oup, 1978. sklovski, victor. sobre la prosa literaria. reflexiones y análisis. trans. carmen laín gonzález. barcelona: planeta, 1971. tydeman, william. the theatre in the middle ages. western european stage conditions, c.800-1576. cambridge: cup, 1978. * † * selim06.pdf ____________________________________________________________________ 157 baker, peter s. ed. 1995: beowulf: basic readings. norfolk & london: garland publishing. beowulf: basic readings is the first book in a series of volumes that collect classic and recent essays in the field of anglo -saxon studies. (brase: basic readings in anglo-saxon england. general editors c. t. berkhout, p. e. szarmach and j. b. trahern.) in this first volume p. s. baker selects essays that show the development in beowulf studies from the 1960s to the present, from the new criticism to the methodologies that go under the labels “post-structuralist”. most of the articles deal with literary criticism, but the reader can also find studies of metrics, textual criticism, analogies and history; these articles have been part of the standard reading list for the last two decades. the anthology starts with “beowulf” an essay written by e. g. stanley in 1966, a work reprinted repeatedly in anthologies and volumes.1 the author points out that beowulf is a sophisticated text and rejects the idea that the poem was a primitive text simple and merely based on oral-formulaic structures, and composed by an illiterate bard. the author studies the complex style of the poem, both its small and its large structures, and points out that the poem’s sophistication makes extemporaneous composition unlikely: the excellence of the poem is in large measure due to the concord between the poet’s mode of thinking and his mode of expression. an associative imagination works well in annexive syntax, each in the cause of the other’s excellence. at the same time, he is good with the smaller units, the words and formulas which all anglo saxon poets hand to handle. (p. 25) stanley also suggests that beowulf is a great poem because the christian poet chose to write of the germanic past and his success lies in that choice: “the elements of old english poetic diction, the words and the traditional phrases feel at home in the world which they find celebrated in song.” (p. 29) 1 this essay first appeared in continuations and beginnings: studies in old english literature, ed. eric gerald stanley. london, nelson, 1966, pp. 104-40. ____________________________________________________________________ 158 the article written by larry benson “the pagan coloring of beowulf”1 accepts the view that the poem was essentially pagan; he attempts to show that the christian audience in the eighth century was inherited in the primi tive history of their ancestors and they felt admiration for their pagan kings and heroes. when benson wrote this article many critics did not see beowulf as essentially pagan, they thought that the poem consisted of a pagan core and later christian interpolations. benson, instead, see beowulf as the unitary product of one poet’s imagination. the author reconsiders the “pagan coloring” of the poem against the background of latin accounts of the english missions to the continent. this was the period when the english church was engaged in an intense missionary activity on the continent and many english monks went to christianise to the frisians, danes, old saxons and other germanic tribes, and the study of this attitude “can shed considerable light on the problems raised by the pagan elements in the poem revealing artistry where we thought we detected blunders. (p. 37) the author of the article in sists in the same idea at the end of his work as he suggests: we owe the survival of the poem to its touches of paganism, for the only manuscript in which it survives was written at that other moment in english history, around the year 1000, when english churchmen were again concerned with the fate of their heathen kinsmen in northern europe. (p. 47) the third article of the volume is “beowulf and the margins of literacy”2 written by eric john; as a historian he examines beowulf as a source of in terest from a historical point of view. the author does not read beowulf as a christian exegesis or an allegory, following goldsmith’s interpretation, or as an outstanding work as a literary text, following sisam’s ideas, the author bearing in mind such interpretations says “so different, so absolutely contra dictory, are their conclusions, it is difficult to believe they (goldsmith and sisam) are writing about the same poem” (p. 51). john prefers to read beowulf as a feudal poem shot through with the values of a warrior society. he thinks that beowulf is essentially “a poem written from, about, the class of re tainers; 1 this essay first appeared in old english poetry: fifteen essays, ed. robert p. creed. providence, brown university press, pp. 193-213. 2 this essay first appeared in the bulletin of the john rylands university library of manchester, 56 (1973-74) pp. 388-422. ____________________________________________________________________ 159 it seems to me that the poem has nothing of the hallmark of the learned clerk in it. it seems to me impregnated with the social and personal experience of the retainer.” (p. 73) the author rejects the christian influence and patristic interpretations. we need, i think, to rest the theological beowulf for a while, and try out a less familia r sociological beowulf. at the same time we must realise, in my view, that some of the poem, including the qualities that would really enable us to make secure judgements on its literary merits, has been lost irretrievably. it is obvious that we ought to know just how good a knowledge of weapons and fighting the poet had: did his first audience approve his acumen or deride his ignorance? (p. 74) fred robinson is present in this anthology with one of his most influential and known studies “elements of the marvellous in the characterisation of beowulf: a reconsideration of the textual evidence”1 the author points out that elements of the marvellous are not uncommon in beowulf as we can see in the poem a fire -breathing dragon, sea monsters and ogres from the race of cain. robinson examines in a close reading three passages, the descent into grendel’s mere, the return from frisia, and the swimming feat with breca. in these passages, the author suggests that the text does not support the traditional point of view that the hero’s strength is superhuman; his interpretation is that beowulf is a very strong hero, but actually he is nothing more than a man. “the poet’s concern to portray beowulf as a man rather than as a superhuman is revealed in his repeated allusions to the hero’s physical limitations and vulnerability.” (p. 79) robinson presents some examples, in lines 739 and ff. we can appreciate that the hero is incapable of preventing grendel from killing the geatish warrior hondscioh. in other text the hero confesses to king hrothgar that he lacked the strength to hold the monster in the hall and kill him there. even in the last section of the poem we can notice beowulf’s suffering and death as a human and not as a romance hero. robin son argues (p. 80): 1 this essay first appeared in old english studies in honour of john c. pope, ed. robert b. burlin and edward b. irving. toronto, university of toronto press, 1984. pp. 119-37. the present reprint incorporates some revisions by the author. ____________________________________________________________________ 160 if we return to the text of beowulf and examine each of the three occasions where beowulf seems to be temporarily endowed with supernatural powers, we will discover a strange insubstantiality in the evidence for such endowments. in fact, i am convinced that the supposed evidence for a superhuman beowulf is largely a fiction of editorial interpretation and comment and that beowulf throughout is conceived of as a heroic man and not as a romance hero. greenfield studies beowulf from a formalist point of view in “the authenticating voice in beowulf.”1 it is known that greenfield was a formalist in the tradition of the new criticism and his essay shows his preference for this methodological analysis. greenfield hears in beowulf an “authenticating voice that tends to stabilise meaning in the text, if not the text itself”. the author identifies four ways the narrator’s voice responds to the events and character’s of the poem: by distancing them, by contemporizing them, by making ethical judgements, and by stressing the limitations of human knowledge. the voice authenticates a “literalness” in the text, therefore this “voice” does not invite to a symbolic, typological or allegorical interpretation. greenfield suggests that the secular, concrete, social meaning probably dominated the audience response, and that the poet had a concrete, human interest in legendary material rather than an intellectual interest in theological allegory. the authenticating voice in beowulf, in greenfield’s opinion, obviously is not allegory or abstract ideas derived from exegetical interpretations: i should like to advance the hypothesis that the patristic exegetical mode of thought and analysis is but a sub-species of a more universal way of viewing human experience, a way that is embedded in the narrative mode itself, a way that is especially suited for, but not limited to, the epic genre. (p. 108) marijane osborn in “the great feud: scriptural history and strife in be owulf.”2 appreciates the positive feelings of the anglo -saxons towards their ancestors, an idea repeatedly expressed by stanley, benson and robinson among others. this article represents a modern trend towards viewing the poem as the work of a christian looking sympathetically, albeit with regret, at 1 this essay first appeared in anglo-saxon england 5 (1976) pp. 51-62. 2 this essay first appeared in pmla 92 (1978) pp. 973-81. ____________________________________________________________________ 161 the pagan past. osborn thinks that the poet distinguishes “between the levels of knowledge, the bound of the secular world of the poem and that perceived from our initiated christian perspective”(p. 112). the author argues that the christian audience understood certain passages as “scyld’s funeral” and “the creation song” recited at heorot in a way that the pagan inhabitants of the poem’s world could not; she says that there is no pagan-christian problem in beowulf, as many critics have pointed out, “rather than being in apposition, these two elements form an epistemological scheme embracing both secular and spiritual understanding like that presented more traditionally in the wanderer.” (p. 122) c. j. clover in his article “the germanic context of the unferth episode.”1 offers an analysis of the “flyting”, a narrative set-piece common to beowulf and several scandinavian sources. ( a “flyting” consists of an exchange of verbal provocations between hostile speakers in a predictable setting). clover analyses the norse “flyting” as a mythological or heroic unit that may stand alone e. g. lokasena or be embedded in and subordinate to a larger context, the “ferocious ferryman” episode in the nibelungenlied. the author points out different characteristics that can be found in a “flyting”, such as the setting of the debate, the contenders and dramatic situation, the structure, the content (most “flytings” consist of boasts and insults) and outcome. once clover has presented this literary convention in scandinavian and germanic contexts he analyses the relationship of the unferth episode to the norse “flyting” and he notices analogies in situation and in the nature of the speeches, in tone and in the use of sarcasm, in the emphatic i/you contrast and the use of names in direct address, in the combat metaphor and in the matching of personal histories and in such correspondences of detail as the charges of drunkenness and fratricide and the hell curse. at the end of the article clover suggests (p. 147): the recognition of the unferth episode as a “flyting” illuminates certain of its puzzling aspects … it further makes more compre hensible his subsequent camaraderie, which need not be interpreted as a shame -induced mea culpa as bonjour believes nor as 1 this essay first appeared in speculum 55 (1980) pp. 444-68. ____________________________________________________________________ 162 an act of disguised treachery, but simply as a resumption of normal deportment after his temporary stint as formal interrogator. roberta frank analyses in her article “skaldic verse and the date of beowulf.”1 the probable influence between the large corpus of surviving skaldic verse from the tenth century and beowulf. frank suggests that the central tale of beowulf could have come from the lips of the english-scandinavian settlers of the danelaw and not from the wellspring of folk memory. it is known that the english and danes in the north soon coalesced into one nation. re cent scholarship tends to stress assimilation and mutual tolerance and even attraction of the two peoples. in the tenth century in the east of england there were two different peoples speaking closely related languages and working within similar political and ecclesiastical structure, therefore there was an appropriate context to develop a poem such as beowulf. the author says that if we accept that the poem came into existence between 890950, that is to say, in alfred or alfred’s successors’ period, solves far more problems than it poses. certain passages in beowulf become more explicable if we accept an author and an audience from the tenth-century, for example, the description of grendel’s mere, as we have a text with specific verbal parallels in the conclusion of the sixteenth blickling homily, and some critics have pointed out that beowulf was influenced by the homily and not vice versa. frank repeats once and again the same idea about a late date for beowulf explicitly expressed in these lines. “nothing in the bits and pieces of informa tion extracted from skaldic verse was found incompatible with a date for beowulf in the late ninth or the first half of the tenth century; and some facts were more compatible with this period than with any other.” (p. 169) colin chase is present in the volume with the article “beowulf, bede, and st. oswine: the hero’s pride in old english hagiography,”2 an essay where chase develops some of the ideas expressed in “saint’s lives, royal lives, and the date of beowulf” edited in his well known book the dating of beowulf. (1983) the author argues that beowulf was probably written in the viking age (x th. century) because the hagiographical literature seemed more 1 this essay first appeared in the dating of “beowulf. ed. colin chase. toronto, university of toronto press, 1981. pp. 123-39. 2 this essay first appeared in the anglo-saxons: synthesis and achievement. ed. j. d. woods and david a. e. pelteret. waterloo, ontario, wilfrid laurier university press, 1985, pp. 37-48. ____________________________________________________________________ 163 informed by the heroic sensibility than did that of the age of bede. chase based his views on two accounts of st. oswine’s death, one from be de’s historia ecclesiastica and the other from anonymous eleventh-century retelling of bede’s story. after comparing both accounts chase demonstrates that the heroic ideal was alive in late anglo -saxon england, but also sheds light on the long-running debate concerning the propriety of beowulf’s decision to fight the dragon. the author, the same as benson and robinson, reads beowulf against the background of the anglo -saxons’ understanding of their own present and past. moreover, chase points out that the vita oswine supports the identification of a conflict in beowulf between the heroic code and the royal responsibility, but it does not support the allegorical or didactic idea that the hero is himself infected with pride or avarice. kevin s. kiernan, in his article “the legacy of wiglaf: saving a wounded beowulf,”1 summarises the complex linguistic and palaeographical arguments of his renowned book beowulf and the beowulf manuscript. (1986) kiernan dates beowulf in the first decades of the eleventh century, in the reign of cnut. the author suggests that the poem was under revision at the time it was copied, thus the poem, as we have it today, is contemporary with the manuscript. moreover, the dating of the script cannot be restricted to the opening years of the eleventh century because if one follows ker, he says, there is no palaeographical evidence for excluding the writing of beowulf manuscript during or even sometime after the reign of canut the great 10161035. at the end of the article kiernan summarises his well known idea about the very late date in old english period for beowulf with these lines: the current state of the text on this folio indicates that it was still in a draft stage when the poem’s old english history came to an abrupt halt. it is well to remember that at this time anglo -saxon history was about to come to an abrupt halt too. the poem remains unfinished on this folio to this day, making the manuscript, at least in part, an early eleventh-century record of an early eleventh-century poem. (p. 211) 1 this essay was delivered as a lecture at the university of kentucky in 1983; it was printed in the kentucky review 6 (1986) pp. 27-44. for the present reprint s the author has added annotations both supplementting and updating the text. ____________________________________________________________________ 164 g. l. overing examines three of the women of beowulf: hildeburh, wealhtheow and modthryth, in his article “the women of beowulf: a context for interpretation.”1 critics have noticed the absent of love and romantic passion in old english poetry; passion, in fact, is located only in the bonds of loyalty and friendship between men. women have a very small role in old english literature, and in beowulf many critics think that they are marginal, excluded figures. however, in the last two decades some articles and books have been published emphasising the role of women in anglo -saxon culture and literature. overing’s project is to see what happens when one approaches beowulf with a set of desires different from those that have dominated criticism of beowulf in the past. the author of the article is not concerned only with the desires of the poem’s characters but also with the reader’s desires. desire, on the other hand, has been a prominent topic in recent discussion of old english literature, including obviously beowulf; we desire with the assis tance of the post-modern modes of literary criticism. as overing says “my broader aim will be to suggest a context for interpretation of the poem in which the operation of desire that of the characters within the narrative and that of the critics without may be acknowledged and revalued”(p. 219). at the end of the article overing has interpreted the women of beowulf following her own desires identified with feminine form of desire and suggests how new questions might be brought to language “by the conscious examination of the interplay of our own desire with that of the text.” (p. 254) m. blockley and t. cable present in this volume an article based on the new philology: “kuhn’s law, old english poetry, and the new philology”. the authors analyse the laws formulated by kuhn to demonstrate the neces sity of reformulating the categories of sentential stress upon which it cru cially relies. h. kuhn made some observations about the positions in clauses of germanic poetry of a category of words he called “particles” and from these observations he developed two laws governing the placement of these words. kuhn’s first law (satzpartikelgesetz) states that all particles in a clause must be grouped together in a dip either before or immediately after the first stressed word; they may not be distributed both before and after the 1 this essay is based on the final chapter, “gender and interpretation in beowulf” of language, sign, and gender in “beowulf” carbondale and edwardsville: southern illinois university press, 1990. the author has revised it for separate publication. ____________________________________________________________________ 165 first stressed word; and they must not be placed after the initial stressed word if it is preceded by a proclitic or an unstressed prefix. kuhn’s second law (satzspitzengesetz) states that if a clause begins with a metrical dip, the dip must contain a particle; a proclitic or an unstressed prefix alone cannot pre cede the first stressed word. blockley and cable demonstrate in their article the inadequacy of kuhn’s law as descriptions of old english poetic syntax and sketch the outlines of a metrical and syntactic theory that will account for the evidence more adequately; they suggest that “our basic argument is that the levels of syntactic representation and of metrical representation must be kept distance.” (p. 263) in the last part of their assay blockley and cable place their theory in the context of the study of english metrics, and also in the context of the new philology, the recent movement that aims to reformulate medievalists’ traditional approaches to the text in light of post-modern developments in literary theory and related disciplines. they argue that knowledge of current main stream linguistics is a proven way of gaining new insights into the structure of a death language. to finish with, they say: there is a certain bedrock stability to the interaction of sound and syntax in old english poetry, a stability which generations of readers have intuited, the task of the philologist is to find the description that make those intuitions explicit. (p. 278) despite the learned and sometimes passionate arguments the question about dating beowulf remains open. one of the implications of our ignorance concerning the date of beowulf is that it discourages any close interpretation of the poem that depends on a specific period of anglo -saxon history; there fore, the poem is of little use, except in a general way, in the interpretation of that history. r. m. liuzza examines the date of beowulf in “on the dating of be owulf” under two headings, the internal evidence of meter and language, and the external evidence of historical context. in both cases the arguments are circular and often undermined by the instability of the evidence on which they are based. in his opinion the establishment of the poem’s date is itself an act of interpretation “one of the hermeneutic activities most productive of knowledge of the poem and its meaning.” (p. 295) liuzza points out that ____________________________________________________________________ 166 metrical tests for dating old english poetry are not reliable in more than a vague way of establishing a chronology of the old english poetic corpus; actually, many critics today criticise the faith in the metrical and textual evidence because there are many problems in using a purely inductive descrip tive system for the purpose of dating old english poetry. on the other hand, as liuzza says, “metrical tests for dating tend to subsume all variation under historical causation, thereby ignoring or severely restricting the extent of in dividual control in a poet’s work.” (p. 288) liuzza suggests that anglo -saxonists have much to say about the interdependent relation between text and context: because trying to draw a conclusion on this matter is one of the most ancient and important questions of our field … when we talk about the dating of beowulf we are talking nothing less than the philosophical foundations of our discipline. (p. 295) this volume will very likely become a standard book for those students and scholars of old english and more specifically of beowulf because they will surely find many “classical” ideas but also some thought-provoking suggestions. antonio bravo university of oviedo * † * selim03.pdf 190 hogg, richard (general ed.): the cambridge history of the english language. cambridge: cambridge university press. volume i: the beginnings to 1066. edited by richard m. hogg (1992). xxii + 609 pp. (£60.00). volume ii: 1066-1476. edited by norman blake (1992). xxi + 703 pp. (£ 65.00). writing a review on a major work such as this one -namely "the first multivolume work to provide a full account of the history of english" (presentation) is a task which remains necessarily incomplete. this is so for two obvious reasons: one, only the first two volumes are available; two, each chapter is worth reviewing in itself, for reasons that will become evident in what follows. any overall judgement must wait then till the complete series is published; even so, these two books contain sufficient elements to predict a sucessful result for a most ambitious project. and project is really the key word: it has been carefully planned and scheduled from the very beginning as is shown by the detailed contents of all the forthcoming volumes. but as a matter of fact, this was only to be expected from the general editor, who, besides his well known perceptiveness, expertise, and insightful knowledge, has added to the assets of this work volume editors and contributors such as norman blake, roger lass, john algeo, vivia n salmon, cecily clark, malcolm godden, elizabeth closs traugott, manfred görlach, matti rissanen, dieter kastovsky, john wells, james milroy, david burnley, braj kachru, suzanne romaine, robert burchfield, dennis baron, david denison... to mention just a few. together with the advisors appearing in the acknowledgements (f.i. john anderson, angus macintosh, robert stockwell, jacek fisiak, m. l. samuels, donka minkova, fran colman, don scragg … among others) they form a most impressive list, very difficult to improve, if not impossible. in the general editor’s preface (usefully included in every volume) the aims and methods of the work are clearly explained. it attempts to remedy the 191 lack of an intermediate work between scholarly specialist works and the introductory textbooks to the whole history of english or to a single period. however, richard hogg and his fellow authors are not just providing "a solid discussion of the full range of the his tory of english both to the anglicist who does not specialise in the particular area to hand and to the general linguist who has no specialised knowledge of the history of english" (p. xv). it is much more than this and perhaps the most stimulating aspect of these volumes is that this is done by scholars who have been (and are) producing the leading research in english historical linguistics for the last thirty years. richard hogg has very wisely encouraged them to "write their contributions in the way they see most fitting whilst at the same time taking full account of developments in linguistic theory" (p. xvii), though each one of them generally read the whole volume. with such contributors and approach, the imme diate consequence are first-hand research studies in most chapters, which, as has been said above, would deserve specific comment. for the sake of clarity and brevity, in the present review only general aspects of each one are considered, leaving reappraisal in depth for prospective individual reviewing. the distribution of materials among the different volumes has two directions: the first four volumes have been divided chronologically; thus, the first one covers the beginnings till the norman conquest; the second goes from this till 1476 (caxton’s editio princeps of the canterbury tales); volume iii (edited by roger lass) will reach the declaration of independence of the u.s.a. whereas volume iv (edited by suzanne romaine) will consider developments up to the present day. whilst these four volumes cover the his tory of whatever was standard english at a given moment (i.e. classical west saxon included), the last two volumes are geographically based -hence re flecting the peculiar centripetal evolution of english in the last three centuries when compared to former periods: volume v (whose editor is robert burchfield) will deal with dialects in england and english in scotland, wales, ireland, australia, the caribbean, new zealand, south africa and south asia, 192 and volume vi (edited by john algeo) will be entirely devoted to english in north america. this organiza tion is due to the view that the causes for the rise, spread and even decadence of languages are not intra -linguistic facts (nonsense is hogg’s word for that view) but political, cultural and economic events. what perhaps is not made quite clear in the preface (though implicitly as sumed in the kind of approach) is that these have the power of affecting only very marginally the internal evolution of a language, which possesses its own specific mechanisms. conversely, change never affects to the same extent the various areas of language: depending both on intra and extra linguistic factors, developments in syntax, phonology, lexicon, etc., will be more or less extensive, slow or apparent in each period of its history. this is very effectively re flected in the organization of each volume of the series as, though following the same basic plan, chapters vary from volume to volume, not only in subjects, but also in the space allotted to them, according to "the importance of that topic during the relevant period" (p. xvii). hence the differences between the two volumes reviewed here: both have chapters devoted to phonology and morphology, syntax, semantics and vocabulary and onomastics, which, of course, leads unavoidably to comparison. but on top of this, volume i has one more chapter dealing with the linguistic background of english which i am afraid leads to disappointment after the introduction to the book. hogg’s discussion of the sources for old english is masterly: by sticking to the highly commendable habit of making a critical analysis of the evidence available prior to drawing any conclusion from its study, he not only gives a lesson in historical linguistics research in general, but also emphasizes an aspect of earlier stages of english we some times tend to forget: that what we are bound to find in any case is a distorted image, but although the ultimate reasons for this are beyond our control (a limited and unexpandable body of data) there is still a great degree of distortion produced in the different stages of scholarly work (i.e. text editing) regarding which we should be both aware and exigent. consequently, the introductory 193 account of texts, history and culture of the anglo -saxon period, besides being compre hensive and relevant, is placed against a stimulating background. after this, a chapter such as "the place of english in germanic and indoeuropean" does not seem to maintain the general level of excellence of both volumes. it is not just particular aspects such as the following statement: "the aim of historical linguistics consists in following up the development of a given language through its history" as the discipline would be very incomplete indeed without enquiries into the causes for that development and connections to general his torical linguistic theory. perhaps its main weakness lies in the contrast with the rest of the chapters, written by authors whose main fields of research are precisely the topics they are dealing with. it is not surprising, therefore, that crucial innovations in indoeuropean studies should be omitted (meillet’s, trubetzkoy’s or, as usual, spanish works) or that, when others are mentioned (the discovery of hittite, f.i.), they are just ig nored when coming to the actual reconstruction of the germanic ancestry of old english. applying the greco-aryan model could be useful in practical approaches illustrating the classical comparative method, but it might not be theoretically acceptable for the germanic languages. apart from this, i have already observed that topics are organised in analogous ways: phonology and morphology, syntax, lexis and semantics, literary language and onomastics. furthermore, in this case, the respective chapters have the same author. the late cecily clark studies this area in great depth, considering, besides the traditional fields of anthroponymy and toponymy plus foreign influences, the relevance and function of linguistic mechanisms. besides the tracing of individual data (always exciting in itself) what has interes ted me most in these chapters has been the way clark uses them not only as an additional basis for historical or cultural deductions, but also as an example of the actual functioning of the english language through the above mentioned mechanisms: how it evolved and how, even in an area so permeable to foreign influences as this one, particularly in middle en glish, we 194 are able to recognize features specific to the english language, from the obvious adaptation to native phonological patterns to the preference for the short forms of full names in all periods (p. 566). another difference between the two volumes, significative owing to the specific planning of the work, is their length: the second one has almost a hundred pages more than the first one. this presumably accounts for the considerable larger amount of materials (both primary -texts and secondary sources -studies -) available for the me period when compared with oe. but that those extra pages are dis tributed in fewer chapters also shows that certain topics have been perceived (it could not be otherwise in a period full of crucial changes) as more controversial than their parallels in oe. this is particularly true of the sections devoted to phonology and morphology, where that corresponding to me is substantially longer (32 pages more) than its oe counterpart. having been written by richard hogg and roger lass respectively, it is natural that both should continue the same line of assessment of the evidence and methods of reconstruction outlined in the introduction to the first volume; and that, though, as usual, hogg tends to be clearer, their accounts should be displayed within connected theoretical frameworks basically of their own, though always offering contrasting judgements from other authors. some of their views might perhaps be challenged; for instance, hogg’s treatment of gender is too simplified as his section on morphology is biased towards phonological rather than functional as pects. but their works are in the end both revealing and stimulating, not only as regards what has been mentioned, but also because of their authors’ concern with systematic language change; i.e. they do not list individual pronunciations, declension or case endings. rather, they consider the various relevant systems and subsystems, defined according to modern parameters of analysis (contrasting features, morphophonemic alternations) and how and why they evolved through time. the extensive use of diagrams and schemes contributes greatly to the clarity and usefulness of the exposition -in this respect, lass’s work 195 relies much more on them, providing, at the same time, a more complete treatment of morphological matters. norman blake’s sharp remark on syntax being "the cinderella of me lin guistic studies" (introduction to volume ii) does not hold true for the oe period, as is shown by the large and upto-date bibliogra phy quoted by elizabeth closs traugott. in spite of the difficulties posed by the great influence of latin, she still believes in the possibility of identifying autonomous patterns of syntactic development. for this purpose she has selected those constructions which "highlight differences between oe and later stages of the language" (p. 169) but the selection is in fact so wide that most issues have been covered. the same kind of contents plus clearer references to transforma tional grammar (still a favourite approach in english historical syntax) appear in the account of me syntax by olga fischer: and although she explic itly admits to having followed the same structure as traugott’s work, she has improved substantially on the former’s organization by treating negation and interrogation separately from complex sentences. another difference is that, whereas traugott has relied exclu sively on prose, arguing that it is less likely than poetry to be influ enced by literary conventions, these have changed enough in me to allow fischer to employ poetry as well -though this always implies a risky grounding. finally, both chapters coincide in offering practical appendices: a summary of the main changes during the oe period and a list of me source texts, this latter being remarkably useful for research on account of the exhaustive data provided. thomas toon’s essay in oe dialectology focuses almost exclu sively on orthographical and phonological matters, after the usual considerations on historical events and their relationship with the amount and significance of manuscripts, the trends towards standard ization. perhaps the most appealing aspect is the section dedicated to variation and dialectology, where current trends in the mechanisms of sound change are discussed and illustrated with a profusion of statistical data. the detailed study of the principles and methods for dialectology plus the recent history of the subject in me studies is 196 fully developed by milroy in the second volume of the series. this is hardly surprising given that me in milroy’s own words "exhibits by far the greatest diversity in written language of any period before or since" (p. 156). on these grounds his question whether "the label me does not refer to a coherent entity, but to a complex series of divergent, rapidly changing and intertwin ing varieties retrospectively seen as transitional between oe and modern english" (p. 157) is fully justified. he has also expanded the scope of his study by considering grammatical variation and by analysing texts from different sources. his concluding remarks, with the allusions to the social motivations of language change are also wort h mentioning. "exhaustive" is the adjective which best suits dieter kastovsky’s work on oe vocabulary and semantics. after previous notes on the concept of word, terminology used and lexical variation, issues such as loanwords, dialectal, social and stylistic stratification of the vocabulary, word formation and semantics are revised, bearing the same conclusion: that there are properties which remain specifically english in spite of the vast quantities of foreign vocabulary acquired in the course of time: stem variability through ablaut and morphophonemic alternations, word formation through compounding, certain affixes, etc. the analogous chapter on me keeps a similar structure, though david burnley also pays particular attention to processes of semantic change and the structure of the lexicon. both essays benefit greatly from the prevalence of the evaluation of the various topics over long lists of lexical items -which, as a matter of fact, can easily be found in other works. no serious study of the history of english would be complete without special chapters on the literary language. only in modern times have other types of written records surpassed literature in the quantity of materials -and this has, in many respects, constrained the bulk of evidence for historical lin guistics to literary texts. enquiries on the nature of literary language and its evolution throughout the various stages of english have consequently their own place in this work. and it is most rewarding to see that both malcolm 197 godden and norman blake trascend the limits of the dichotomy linguistic vs. literary studies which, unfortunately, can sometimes be witnessed in many academic forums. godden is more explicit in this respect: [literary language] is, however, of particular importance to historical linguists because it shows the language being tested to the full, being used by individuals who think seriously about the right choice and use of language and are prepared to employ the full range of possibilities and even to invent, or to break the boundaries of ordinary dis course (p. 490). godden focuses basically on what is native to oe lit erature (i.e., not only non-germanic but also non-english) and finds it in a very specific poetic language. on the other hand, blake has care fully traced the foreign models which influenced me literary traditions; both have done it by setting out from detailed linguistic analy ses. and the result is that, together, by producing a most attractive picture of medieval english literature, they p rovide one of the best arguments against those who deny the immediate interest of medieval studies in general. my final remarks concern general aspects, and more specifically, those sections with which scholarly works of this kind are usually furnished: in dexes, bibliographies, etc. it is maybe a matter of personal preference, but separated onomastic and subject indexes might have been more useful; and the same could be said of bibliographical lists, which would perhaps be more helpful if, besides their present division in primary and secondary sources, had also made further divisions such as general linguistics, handbooks on the history of the language, specific studies, etc., even with the presence of particular sections of further reading after each chapter. but this is a very minor objection to otherwise exhaustive and absolutely up-to-date bibliographies in both volumes, with rewarding entries such as some works by juan de la cruz -and also absences like charles jones’s history of english 198 phonology. the "glossary of linguistic terms", also included in each volume, is an additional asset for a series whose first two issues are already a must for any scholarly work, course, etc on old and middle english historical linguistics. but this, of course, also implies that the third and subsequent volumes of the series are awaited with avid interest. trinidad guzmán university of león * * * selim03.pdf 27 juan de la cruz, selim 3 (1993): 26-42 old english noun declensions abstract the old english declensions have traditionally bewildered students for various reasons, but perhaps two of these merit special attention. (1) the apparent incoherence between the ‘historic’ labels attached to them in the light of historical reconstruction and their actual forms as they appear in the language. (2) the fact that many students of old english have had some training in latin -a language with neat and clearly marked paradigms. this obviously makes it even more puzzling for them to understand the ‘historic’ labels of the old english declensions let alone the actual ‘indo-european’ links between one declension system and the other. this paper aims at clarifying the situation and purports to justify both the labellings and the historic links in a comparatively simple way. o. introduction the ‘historical’ labels attached to the oe. noun declensions have traditionally bewildered beginners to the subject. they appear to them opaque or, worse still, confusing. so, the newcomer to the field faces, for example, the great ‘a declension’ of masculines and neuters (including the stems in -ja and -wa) and the also great ‘o˜ declension’ of feminine nouns (including the stems in -jo˜ and -wo˜), when the fact is that the n. s. of the great ‘a declension’ appears without any -a ending at all and the n. s. of the great ‘o declen28 sion’ appears in some cases with a final -u and in other cases without any final vowel whatsoever. it is not necessary to mention here the long list of ‘a masculines and neuters’ (se cyning, se song, thaet bearn, that huµs, etc.) nor the equally long list of ‘o feminines’ (seµo giefu, seµo laµr, etc.). the puzzle pre sented by such labels (a declension, o˜ declension) is aggravated by the observation made in many handbooks that the oe. ‘a declension’ corresponds to the ‘second latin declension’ (masculines in -us and neuters in -um whereas the oe. ‘o˜ declenslon’ corresponds to the first latin declenslon (feminines in -a). the situation is similar with regard to the other old germanic languages. schematically then we have: germanic (oe. included) latin masculines in -a = masculines in -us (cf. gk. os) neuters in -a = neuters in -um (cf. gk. -on) feminines in o˜ = feminines ln -a (cf. gk. -a) clever students must surely be intrigued both by the ‘labels’ attached to the oe. declensions and even more so by the correspondence posed if they are not accompanied by some explanation. a knowledge of latin does not solve the problem at all. on the contrary, it may frustrate the interested student even more. note that latin is a language with neat and clearly marked paradigms (first declension in -a: rosa. porta, puella …, second dclension in -us, un: hortus, lupus, templum, donum …). as against the oe. state of affairs. on the other hand, the rather limited school acquaintance with the common indo-european origin of latin and germanic, even though revised in most university syllabuses, is not enough to solve the riddle of the corre spondences. it is these considerations that have moved me to make known some personal reflections on the subject of the oe. declensions, always bearing in mind the needs and frequent perplexity of our pupils. the historical data that we need have not completely disappeared from the oe. paradigms. although scarce, they are a perennial testimony to the past. i shall 29 concentrate on the the two great declensions i have already referred to. this will confirm the validity of the correspondences and provide a justification for the ‘historical labels’. 1. a brief synopsis of the oe. noun declensions the two ‘great’ oe. declensions we have referred to are also known as the two great ‘vocalic declensions’ because of their vowel stem. they are the most important of the so-called strong declensions (the term ‘strong’ is not a particularly happy one and refers to their relative degree of inflectional complexity). these two ‘great’ oe. declensions and the so-called weak declension of nouns constitute the great bulk of oe. nouns. the ‘weak’ declension has an ‘n stem’ and corresponds to one of the various types of consonant stems that we have in the third latin declension. cf. n. s. nomen, g. s. nominis, which corresponds exactly to oe. n. s. nama , g. s. naman. from the point of view of the beginner, the oe. weak declension of nouns is easy and neat, since the n,s. is always -a in masculine nouns and -e in feminine and neuter nouns (there are only three neuter nouns in this declension). cf., for instance, se nama , already mentioned, se moµna, se wita, seµo sunne, seµo heorte, thaet eµare, that eµage. in addition to the three great declensions considered so far, the two great strong vocalic declensions and the great weak declension (or ‘consonant declension’), there are other strong vocalic declensions with fewer elements. two of these, although with comparatively few elements, are nevertheless traditionally considered ‘major declensions’ together with the three ‘great ones’. the two declensions concerned are the so-called ‘i declension’, and the so-called ‘u declension’, which correspond to the third and fourth latin declensions respectively, both with vowel stem. (remember that the oe weak declension in ‘n’ also corresponded to the third latin declension but, of course, to one of its consonant varieties). as i have said, there are few 30 recorded oe. nouns that belong to these declensions. only nine nouns are known to belong to the ‘u declension’. this is due to the fact that many of the nouns that originally belonged to this declension have joined the great ‘a declension’ and ‘o declension’ and follow their inflectional patterns.1 the same applies to the ‘i declension’. examples of elements still remaining in the ‘i declension’ are se wine, se cyre, se lyre …, with -e as a relic of a stem in -i, seµo dæµµd, seµo speµd, seµo tèµd …, without any visible testimony of stem vowel -i. examples of the ‘u declension’ are se sunu, se sidu, seµo duru … with maintenance of the stem vowel -u, and seµo hand with no vis ible testimony of stem vowel -u. the remainder of the oe. declensions, known as ‘minor declensions’, are outside our scope. the old english noun declensions (excepting the ‘minor declensions’)2 the great declensions by reason of the number of elements: ‘a declension’ (masc. cyning, biscop …, neut. bearn , scip -n. ac. pl. scipu-);’o declension’ (fem. giefu, laµr, weard ); ‘n declension’ or ‘consonant declension’ or ‘weak declension’ (masc. moµna, g. s. moµnan; fem. sunne, g. s. sunnan; neut. eµare, g. s. eµaran. other so-called ‘major declensions’: ‘i declension (masc. wine, fem. dæµµd , neut. gedrync); ‘u declension (masc. sunu. fem. duru, hand). 1 de la cruz, j., 1986: iniciacioån praåctica al ingles antiguo, madrid, p. 23. 2 de la cruz j, 1983: la prosa de los anglosajones, maålaga and salamanca, p. 298. 31 2. the old english noun declensions within the indo-european framework needless to say, the correspondence between the ‘great’ oe. declensions and the latin declensions is not an exclusive phenomenon of these languages. it can also be found if we compare any two or more of the old indo-european languages. in point of fact, a certain amount of ‘reconstruction’ is possible thanks to the comparative method. such reconstruction is what enables us to say that the basic oe. noun declensions with the historical lables ‘a declension’, ‘o declension’, ‘i declension’ and ‘u declension’ are the oe. representatives of the indo-european nominal flexion with vowel stem, which of course has other representatives in other indo-european languages, for instance, latln. the same applies to the oe. weak noun declension with consonant stem (‘n declension’). cf. the following distribution: (i) declensions with pure stem vowel indo-european -a˜ = germanic and oe. o˜. note that the indo-european vowel is long and does not correspond to germanic short a. ide. a˜ corre sponds to germanic o˜! the declension concerned corresponds to the first latin declension. the quality changes but the quantitity is maintained (at least originally). indo-european -o = germanic and oe. a. note that the indo-european vowel is short and does not correspond to germanic o˜. ide. o corresponds to germanic a! the declension concerned corresponds to the second latin declension. the quality changes but the quantity is maintained. indo-european -i (there is also stem vowel -i ˜ = germanic and oe. i. the declension concerned corresponds to the third latin declension. indo-european -u (there is also stem vowel -u˜). the declension concerned corresponds to the fourth latin declension. 32 (ii) declensions with consonant stem 1/ ide. plosive, 2/ ide. -s, 3/ ide. nasal = germanic and oe. n,1 4/ ide. liquid, 5/ ide. mixed group of 3/ and 4/. 3. correspondence and change it is self-evident that a considerable percentage of the words of the indo-european languages share one and the same root. one significant case is the indo-european root ulquo-/luquo-2 ‘wolf’ with ide. ‘o stem’: (singular) n. *ulquos/luquos, oe. wulf,3 l. lupus;4 ac. *ulquom/luquom, oe. wulf, l. lupum; g. *ulquosio/luquosio, oe. wulfes, l. lupè µ;5 d. *ulquoµi/luquoµi, oe. wulfe, l. lupoµ; abl. *ulquoµd/luquoµd, l. lupoµ. (plural) 1 this is the stem of the so -called 'weak declension'. there are other consonant stemmed declensions. see reference in note 2. 2 sanskrit vrkah, lithuanian vilkas, and goth. wulfs, etc., represent ide. *ulquo. l. lupus and gk. lykos represent ide. *luquo. the only difference between ide. *ulquo and ide. *luquo is the metathesis 'ul-/lu-'. 3 the <f> does not represent the regular development of ide. *quas illustrated in cases llke ide. *quo= goth hwas 'who', oe. hwaµ. the <f> of wulf is due to labial assimilation by reason of a preceding [w]. 4 this is not the regular development of ide. *quin latin. cf. l. quis, quinque, etc., whlch lllustrate the ordinary development of ide. *quin latin as against osco-umbrian <p>: osco-umbrian pis = l. quis 'who'. l. lupus 'wolf' must be a loan-word from osco-umbrian. 5 note the the elements in square brackets are all innovations. see explanation in the sections dealing with the first and second latin declenslons. 33 n. *ulquôs/luquôs, oe. wulfas, l. lupi; ac. *ulquoµns/luquoµns, oe. wulfas, l. lupoµs; g. *ulquôm/luquôm, ingl. ant. wulfa, l. lupoµrum, d. /abl.1 oe. wulfum, l. lupè µs. we can see a perfect coincidence of stem and paradigm: oe. wulf and l. lupus. they do not only share the same root and stem but also follow the same declension pattern. nevertheless, given the vicissitudes of linguistic evolution, we should not be surprised if elements which share one and the same indo-european root do in fact follow one inflectional type in one language and quite a different one in another. an interesting case is that of oe. wylf and l. lupa ‘she-wolf’. they certainly share the same root which they in turn share with wulf and lupus. the only difference between both sets is the stem vowel. it so happens, however, that oe. wylf and l. lupa do not exactly represent the same stem. l. lupa is a comparatively recent formation with a pure ‘a stem’, whereas oe. wylf represents a stem in ‘ja˜’ = germanic ‘jo˜’. note also that wylf ‘she-wolf’ shows the effect of i-mutation (hence the vowel <y*as against wulf ‘wolf’. cf. ohg. wulpa ‘she-wolf’ anf skt. vrkè µ ‘she-wolf’. here follows the complete paradigm of ide. *ulquia˜ ‘shewolf’, with ‘ja˜’ stem, and their equivalents in old english and latin: (singular) n. ulquiaµ *ulqui´ *ulquè µ,2 oe. wylf, cf. l. lupa; ac. *ulquiaµm *ulqui ´m *ulquè µm, cf. l. lupam; g. /abl. *ulquiâs, oe. wylfe, cf. l. [lupae; d. *ulquiaµi, oe. wylfe, cf. l. lupae. (plural) n. ulquiâs, oe, wylfa, cf. l. [lupae; ac. *ulquiaµns, oe. wylfa, cf. l. lupas; g. *ulquiâm, oe, wylfa, cf. l. [lupaµrum; d. abl. oe. wylfum, cf. l. [lupè µs. 1 some languages show a -bhending while others show an -mending. the latter is the case of germanic. 2 cf. ohg. wulpa < *wulbi, and sanskrit vrkè µ. 34 as a matter of fact, many elements correspondlng to one and the same indo-european root do not necessarlly follow the same lnflectional pattern in the various indo-european languages. cf. the following examples of corre spondence ‘latin gothic old english’ l. genus, generis (neuter, 3rd decl., stem ‘-s’) goth. kuni, kunjis (neuter, decl. vowel stem ‘-ja’ = 2nd l. decl. in ‘-um’) oe. cynn, cynnes (neuter, decl. vowel stem ‘-ja’ = 2nd l. decl. in ‘-um)’. l. pecus, pecoris (neuter, 3rd decl., stem ‘-s’) goth faiåhu, faiåhaåus (neuter, decl. vowel stem ‘-u’ = 4th l. decl. in ‘-u’) oe. feoh, feµos (neuter, decl. vowel stem ‘-a’ = 2nd l. decl. in ‘-um’). l. cor, cordis (neuter, 3rd decl., stem ‘plosive’) goth. haiårto, haiårtins (neuter, decl. consonant stem ‘-n’ or ‘weak declension’ = 3rd l. decl. in ‘nasal’) oe. heorte, heortan (feminine, decl. consonant stem ‘-n’ or ‘weak declension’ = 3rd l. decl. in ‘nasal’). l. auris, auris (feminine, 3rd l. decl., stem ‘llquid’) goth. aåusoµ aåusins (neuter, decl. consonant stem ‘-n’ or ‘weak declension’ = 3rd l. decl. in ‘nasal’) oe. eµare, eµaran (neuter, decl. consonant stem ‘-n’ or ‘weak declension’ = 3rd l. decl. in ‘nasal’). l. dens, dentis (masculine, 3rd l. decl., stem ‘plosive’) goth. tunthus, tunthaåus (masculine, decl. vowel stem ‘-u’ = 4th l. decl. in ‘us’) oe. toµth, toµthes (masculine, decl. with ‘morphemic mutatlon’ in g., d., singular and n., ac., plural). l. pes, pedis (like dens) goth. fotus, fotaåus (like tunthus) oe. foµt, foµtes (like toth). l. genu, genus (neuter, 4th l. decl. stem ‘-u’) goth. kniu, kniwis (neuter, decl. vowel stem ‘-wa’ = 2nd l. decl. in ‘-um’) oe. cneµo(w), cneµowes (neuter, decl. vowel stem ‘-wa’ = 2nd l. decl. in ‘um’). l. gena, genae (feminine, 1st decl., stem ‘-a’) -goth. kinnus, kinnaåus (feminine, decl. vowel stem ‘-u’ = 4th l. decl. ln ‘-us’), oe. cinn, cinne (feminine, decl vowel stem ‘o˜’ = 1st l. decl. in ‘-a’). 35 the opposite case is lllustrated by l. manus, manus and goth. handus, handaåus, oe. hand, handa. although the latin root of manus is obviously not the same as the gothic and old engllsh root, the noun both roots repre sent makes reference in all three languages to the same concept ‘hand’ and also in all three languages it is feminine and follows the same indo-european inflectional pattern: the vowel stem declension in ‘-u’. neither should we be surprlsed, after the previous exploration, at the possibility of many types of both paradigmatic and extraparadigmatic influences which are often responsible for the establishment of new forms which can then replace one or more of the orlginal forms in a given paradigm. the latln forms enclosed in square brackets in our illustration of the first two latin declenslons with vowel stems (section 2.) are all innovations. here is a possible explanation: the first latin declension the original g. s. was in -s (the indo-european ending was -es/os). hence the existence of relics of the type pater familias and mater familias. the ending -ae, a development of earlier -ai (lupai > lupae, viai > viae), is an analogical formation which replaces the form in -as. the original abl. s. was identical to the g. s. in all stems, the only exception being the ‘o stems’, that is, the second declension. therefore here we have another innovation. see below, in archaic latin, the influence from the second declension. the g. pl. was not the original form. the ending -aµru m comes from the pronominal inflection ide * -aµsoµm). the d. pl. and abl. pl. are not the original forms either, since the majority of the indo-european languages show either an ending with -bh or an ending with -m-. the -bhending is the one we see in l. -bus in the 3rd and 4th declensions and even in the old forms in -aµbus attested in the 1st declension, such as deaµbus and filiaµbus from dea and filia respectively, instead of 36 diè µs, filiè µs. these forms in -is are analogical and come from the 2nd declension. 37 the second latin declension. the ending of g. s. in indo-european was *-sio. this is precisely the origin of the germanic genitive. cf. goth. wulfis, oe. wulfes, osax. wulfas, etc. this is therefore the origin of the so-called ‘genitivo sajoån’ in spanish grammars of english and which only recently is intruding into spanish shop names in our modern cities, as the ubiquitous paco’s and company bear wit ness to. we leave for the moment the disputed question as to the possible adverblal origin of the old ending * -sio. the indo-european abl. s. was in * -eµd/-oµd. the result of -oµd was -oµ in latin and this explalns l. lupoµ. archaic latin shows relics of an ending with -din some adverbs and also in analogical formations of the 1st and 4th declensions. cf. the case of abl. s. sententiaµd = classical latin sententiaµ. the ending of n. pl. comes from the pronominal inflection and the g. pl. is analogical of the 1st declension. for the same reason as in the 1st declension, the d. pl. and abl. pl. are not the original forms either. the endlng -è µs may come from the indo-european locative and/or instrumental. note that the d. pl. endings of the germanlc declensions point to an indo-european instru mental which, as in the case of the indo-european d. pl. and abl. pl., also possessed one variety with -bh and another with -m-. hence the germanic forms of the type oe. cyningum. linguistic evolution may have even more devastating effects, to the extent of completely obscuring the paradigms themselves. this is particularly the case of the two great stem vowel declensions in old english, as we shall see in more detail in our next section. 38 4. the case of the two first stem vowel declensions. as pointed out in section 2., the stem vowels of these two great declensions appear qualitatively reversed in the germanic languages. moreover, they are already very deteriorated in old english, since the oe. declensions have lost a considerable amount of phonic substance in the process from the original indo-european inflectional pattern to the historical data of old en glish. in order to facilitate the visibility of this phenomenon it is necessary to reconstruct the missing steps and this we will do in the remainder of this paper. so, to justify the traditional nomenclature of the two great declensions as well as their cross-linguistic correspondence, the discusslon of each declenslon is preceded by a reconstruction synopsis with the elements which will serve as our points of reference. we shall exemplify the case of ide. *ghebha ‘gift’. we illustrate first the ide. endings, then the hypothetical ide. forms and finally the attested gothic and old english forms: (indo-european reconstruction of vowel stems in -a˜ = germanic -o˜) (singular) n. ide. -ø (ghebhaµ), goth. giba, oe. giefu; ac. ide. -m (ghebhaµm), goth. giba, oe. giefe; g. /abl. ide. -es/-os (ghebhâs), goth. giboµs, oe. giefe; d. ide. ei (ghebhaµi), goth. gibai, oe. giefe. (plural) n. ide. -es (ghebhâs), goth. giboµs, oe. giefa; ac. ide. -ns (ghebhaµns), goth. giboµs, oe. giefa; g. ide. ôm (ghebhâm/ ôm), goth. giboµ, oe. giefa; d. /abl. ide. (-bh-/-mr), goth. giboµm, oe. giefum. the important correspondence ‘indo-european a˜ = germanlc o˜’ is absolutely clear in cases like l. maµter, oe. moµdor, or like l. fraµter, oe. broµthor. nevertheless, such an important correspondence may appear obscure or even invislble when the vowel ln question is part of an inflectional 39 ending and as such in final position. this is due to the fact that the strong word initial stress which characterizes the germanic family of languages tends to weaken the quality of the vowels of the inflectional endings. in some cases such strong word initial stress is responsible for thelr complete disappearance. even so, the correspondence ‘indo-european a˜ = germanic o˜’ can be clearly seen in gothlc. cf. the indo-european endings marked with a circumflex accent in the reconstruction synopsis. with this accent we represent a stressing which, it is assumed, fell on some long vowels and diphthongs and prevented them from succumbing to the general process of germanic word-end weakening. for this reason the ‘a’ which possessed such stressing (â) survives as o˜ in final position in germanic. so we have goth. g. s. and n. pl. giboµs since it comes from ide. * ghebhâs. the ac. pl. is also giboµs from ide *ghebhas for *ghebhaµns. however, the n. s. and ac. s. is giba since, coming from ide. *ghebhaµ, *ghebham, without the aforementioned stressing, does not survive as ‘o’ in germanic. it undergoes shortening, which in the east domain of germanic (gothic) follows the general tendency towards opening and hence the change from ‘o’ to ‘a’. as far as old english is concerned, n. s. giefu is due to the opposite tendency in west and north germanic, whereby the shortening materializes in subsequent closeness. hence the fact that we have ‘u’ instead of ‘a’. the contrast between giefu and laµr, both feminine nouns belonging to the same declension, is easily explained in old english, where the ending -u is kept only in short stem elements, never in long stem elements. remember that a stem is long when its vowel is long or when the vowel, although short, is followed by two consonants. oe. giefu is therefore an interesting testimony of the correspondence ‘indo-european a˜ = germanic o˜’ as well as of the correspondence ‘lndo-european feminine declension in -a˜ = germanic feminine declension in -o˜’. we are not so lucky with the rest of the declension. ac. s. giefe is the regular and normal result of oe. * -om: -a > -ae > -e. g. s. giefe is an analogical formation; the regular development of ide. 40 *ghebhâs in old english, after the common germanic period, would have been giefa with -a. d. s. giefe is the result of regular development: -ai > -ae > -e. the development of n. pl. is parallel to that of g. s. so we have giefa . the ac. pl. adopts the ending of the n. pl. (the regular development would have been giefe ). the development of the g. pl. is perfectly regular and it is also giefa . lastly, in the d. pl. we have the endin g -um as in the whole of west and north germanic. we can now appreciate the tremendous importance of gothic and the tes timony of the old english n. s. of the feminine ‘o˜ declension’, when the noun is short stemmed. we refer, of course, to the invaluable witness of the -u ending. in the synopsis that follows we shall exemplify ide. *ulquo ‘wolf’ and ide. *iugo ‘yoke’. we illustrate first the ide. endings, then the hypothetical ide. forms and finally the attested gothic and old english forms: (indo-european reconstruction of vowel stems in -o = germanic -a) (ide. *ulquo) (singular) n. ide. -s (ulquos), goth. wulfs, oe. wulf; ac. ide. -m (ulquom), goth. wulf, oe. wulf; g. ide. -sio (ulquosio), goth. wulfis, oe. wulfes; d. ide. -ei (ulquoµi), goth. wulfa, oe. wulfe; abl. ide. -oµd/-eµd (ulquoµd). (plural) n. ide. -s (ulquôs), goth. wulfoµs, oe. wulfas; ac. ide. -ns (ulquoµns), goth. wulfans, oe. wulfas; g. ide. -ôm (ulquôm), goth. wulfeµ, oe. wulfa; d. /abl. ide. (-bh-/-m-), goth. wulfam, oe. wulfum. (ide. *iugo) (singular) n. ide. -m (iugom), goth. juk, oe. geoc; ac. ide. -m (iugom), goth. juk, oe. geoc; g. ide. -sio (iugosio), goth. jukis, oe. geoces, d. ide. -ei (iugoi), goth. juka, oe. geoce, abl. ide. -oµd/-eµd (iugoµd). 41 (plural) n. ide. -a (iugaµ), goth juka, oe. geocu; ac. ide. -a (iugaµ), goth. juka, oe. geocu; g. ide. -om (iugôm), goth juke, oe. geoca; d. /abl. ide. (-bh-/-m-), goth. jukam, oe. geocum. the correspondence ‘indo-european o = germanic a’ is absolutely clear in a case like l. octo ‘eight’, goth. ahtau. (the initial diphthong in oe. eahta ‘eight’ is due, as is well known to students of old english, to a later development). however, the situation is very different in the realm of declension endings. here the short vowels in final position tend to disappear by reason of the strong stressing of germanic initial syllables in general, as we have already said. so, the a that we see, for example, in oe. n. pl. and ac. pl. wulfas, g. pl. wulfa , is no witness of the correspondence ‘indo-european o = germanic a’. such an a cannot be the original -a of the stem. this, being short, would have disappeared at the end of a word, exactly the same as in goth. n. s. wulfs or oe. n. s. wulf. cf. the second u of l. lupus, ultimately from ide. *luquo for *ulquo. therefore, what we have in oe. n. pl. and ac. pl wulfas, g. pl. wulfa, is the result of the contraction of the stem vowel + the ending. cf. our previous synopses. i must conclude this section with an important observation. the n. pl. and ac. pl. of the indo-european neuter declension in ‘o’ coincides with the n. s. of the indo-european feminine declension in ‘a˜’. also the n. pl. and ac. pl. of the germanic neuter declension in ‘a’ coincides with the n. s. of the germanic feminine declension in ‘ o˜’ if the noun in question is short -stemmed. the reason is simple. the n. ac. pl. neuter has the ide. ending -aµ, which was originally a collective form with singular meaning, exactly identical with the ide. ending -a of the n. s. of the indo-european feminine ‘a˜ declension’. so, the explanation we have given concerning giefu <n. s. feminine) is equally valid for geocu (n. ac. pl. neuter). this is the same case of l. rosa (n. s. feminine) and templa (n. ac. pl. neuter). the testimony of the n. ac. pl. of the oe. neuter ‘a declension’ in nouns with short stem is most revealing. these nouns, which maintain an -u ending in the plural, afford an exact 42 parallel of the latin situation, for in old english as in latin such an ending coincides with that of the n. s. of the great feminine declension (the oe. feminine declension in ‘o’ and the l. feminine declension in ‘a˜’). cf. thaµ geocu, thaµ scipu, etc., as against thaµ laµr, thaµ bearn , etc., just the same as seµo giefu as against seµo wylf. 5. conclusion the reconstructed history of the germanic declensions or, more precisely, their ‘pre -history’ is responsible for (1) the qualitative reversal which the tra ditional nomenclature points to (‘ide. feminine nouns in -a˜ = germanic feminine nouns in -o˜’ and ‘ide. masculine and neuter nouns in -o = germanic mascullne and neuter nouns in -a’) and (2) the prima facie dis agreement between what the nomenclature expresses and the real morphology as it has come down to us in the texts. the historical-comparative method, in the context of which the study of old english first grew, helps explain the termi nological tradition. for us, latin speakers, and ln so far as we should be pre pared not to renounce our legacy, the old english noun declensions should not be anything remote or enigmatic but an eloquent re minder of the common indo-european origin which they share with the latin declensions and the declension systems of the other old indo-european languages. to put it briefly, it is our common indo-european origin that they epltomize. may this thought be useful to us now when we are crossing the threshold of the new ‘old europe’, both from the point of view of her re -found and refounded hlstory and from the point of view of her decisive project of mutual understanding and co-operation with other peoples. juan de la cruz university of maålaga 43 references agud, a. & fernández álvarez, m. p., 1988: manual de lengua góticaa, salamanca. beck, g., 1969: "über die gotischen genitiv plural endungen", lingua, 23, pp. 55-65. de la cruz, j., 1986: iniciación práctica al inglés antiguo, madrid. de la cruz, j., 1983: la prosa de los anglosajones, málaga and sala manca. de la cruz, j. & cañete, a., 1992: historia del inglés, málaga. campbell, a., 1959: old english grammar, oxford. dahl, i., l968: substantival inflexion in early old english , lund. dahl, i., 1971: "entwicklungstendenzen im germanischen kasussystem", untersuchungen zur germanischen und deutschen sprachgeschichte, oslo. fernández álvarez, m. p., 1988: manual de antiguo alto alemán, salamanca. krahe, h., 1953: lingüística indoeuropea, madrid. krahe, h., 1963: indogermanische sprachwissenschaft , ii, berlin. krahe, h., 1971: lingüística germánica, madrid. lockwood, w. b., 1969: indo-european philology: historical and comparative, london. 44 must, g., 1952: "the gothic genitive plural in -e", language, 28, pp. 218-221. nielsen, h., 1981: old english and the continental germanic languages: a survey of morphological and phonological interrelations, innsbruck. o’neill, w., 1978: "the evolution of the germanlc inflectional systems: a study of the causes of language change", orbis, 27, pp. 248-286. prokosch, e., 1938: a comparative germanic grammar, baltimore. specht, f., 1944: der ursprung der indogermanischen deklination, gottingen. streitberg, w., 1974: urgermanische grammatik , heidelberg. vendryes, j., 1927: "sur le genitif pluriel des sustantifs en germanique", indogermanische forschungen, 45, pp. 364-369. villar liébana, f., 1974: origen de la flexión nominal indoeuropea, madrid. wardale, e., 1922: an old english grammar, london. wright, j., 1899: a primer of the gothic language, oxford. * * * selim09.doc amelia fraga, selim 9 (1999): 79—90 on the use of the old man figure in a medieval and a renaissance text in his book, the ages of man, j.a. burrow reminds us that the virtues of old age most frequently mentioned in the writings surviving from anglo -saxon england are those that homilists and hagiographers call: maturitas, gravitas, and above all sapientia assuming that «true wisdom will come, in the natural course of things, only with advancing years.» (burrow, 1986: 107) possibly the best remembered presentation of this idea in old english is found at the beginning of a gnomic passage in the wanderer (ll. 62-65), where the speaker reflects on the fact that day by day this world decays and falls away and, for that reason, no man can become wise until he has passed many winters in the kingdom of the earth: swaµ pes middangeard ealra doµgra gehwaµm dreµoseí ond fealleí. foríon ne mæg wearían wi¬s wer æµr heµ æµge wintra dæµl in woruldriµce. this connection between old age and true knowledge is a topic repeatedly mentioned by hrothgar in his so–called sermon to beowulf (ll. 1700–84), it is found also in widsith as a whole, and in several other old english texts.1 but by the time we get to the renaissance period and to one of shakespeare’s greatest tragedies in particular, we come across a witty character like the fool in king lear, who seems to know too well that it is perfectly possible to find a man advanced in age and unwise at the same time. 1 carolyne larrington (1993: 211) calls hrothgar’s sermon a ‘homily’ which constitutes ‘the climax of the theme of wisdom in beowulf’ and she considers it a vividly personal message, not a sermon of generalized import. amelia f raga 78 in one of the fool’s first dialogues with his master, this shrewd observer of events remarks: fool. if thou wert my fool, nuncle, i’d have thee beaten for being old before thy time. lear…how’s that? fool…thou should’st not have been old till thou hadst been wise. (act i.v. 38-42) having been an absolute monarch always accustomed to getting his own way, lear is old but certainly not wise, or at least not at the beginning of the play, probably because he has not yet suffered any of those losses that, according to the old english poet, bring about true wisdom. professor burrow (1986: 165) points out also that anglo -saxon writers far from ignoring the physical handicaps of old age, mention the topic of incomoda senectutis quite frequently in several of the pre -conquest texts that have come down to us. but, on the whole, it seems that old english authors tend to stress the moral and spiritual superiority of the old. does this state of affairs change in the late medieval and renaissance period?1 to be frank, i cannot really answer this complex question, but would like instead to centre my attention in the following on two well-known literary texts where the figure of an impressive old man appears. these texts are chaucer’s pardoner’s tale and marlowe’s doctor faustus in spite of all the differences between the medieval tale and the eliza bethan play, they both contain a brief but decisive passage where an old man full of spiritual and moral superiority is depicted. he represents, in both narratives, an important biblical theme: the christian paradox of moral strength ma nifesting itself in physical weakness.2 my aim here is simply to analyse and, if possible, to compare the role played by these two exemplary figures in both works. for reasons that will 1 alicia k. nitecki (1982: 76) states that a convention of veneration of age and its wisdom did exist in the fourteeth century and chaucer himself used it in his depiction of egeus in the knight’s tale. 2 see st. paul’s ii corinthians, 12: 9, 10. on the use of the old man figure in a medieval and a renaissance text 79 become clear, this brief comparative analysis is based on the b-text (1616) of the marlovian play. it is a well-known fact that doctor faustus has been preserved in two early versions, the 1604 a-text —reprinted with a few minor changes in 1609 and 1611— and the 1616 b-text. it is equally well-known that there are important differences between these two versions. according to david bevington and eric rasmussen who are responsible for a fairly recent edition of both texts in modern spelling, the so–called a and b texts are: …the products of strikingly different conditions of authorship and collaboration, revision and expansion, theatrical management, fashions in taste, religious and political ideology, censorship, and still more.1 it seems then, that in spite of all the arguments in favour of one text or the other, we must face the fact that the play in its full, original form has probably been lost for ever and that neither version which survives is a faithful transcription of the original2 while it is generally accepted that when writing doctor faustus marlowe had at least one collaborator, there is no unanimity among scholars as to what exactly is the work of marlowe’s collaborator in each of the extant texts. taking all this into account, it is probably wiser to follow warren’s advice (1981: 129) that each version should be taken on its own merits. this is particularly helpful when studying a passage, such as the old man’s episode, which has been preserved in both texts. there are remarkable textual differences between these two versions that result in at least two possible readings of the play’s ending. it has been argued that in the b-text faustus is irrevocably damned after this episode whereas in the a -text the possibility of his salvation still exists after it. (warren, 1981: 136) the old man in the pardoner’s tale has been a matter of debate among chaucerian scholars for decades, even so he still is, and probably always will be, an enigmatic figure. as far as i know, his role in the tale has not been 1 d. bevington and e. rasmussen (eds.), (1993: ix). all quotations of the text are from this edition. for more information about editions of the play, see pp ix-xiv in particular. 2 this is not new, and was already stated by michael j. warren in 1981. amelia f raga 80 compared with that played by the old man in doctor faustus, probably because the latter is a much simpler character. this and other reasons notwithstanding, my point is that there are similarities in the presentation of both these figures and in the meaning of the spiritual message they convey, a message that in both cases is finally rejected. the sudden apparition of a mysterious old man takes place in the tale, and in the play as well, when the stories are drawing near their respective conclusions. in both cases, this apparition marks the beginning of a crucial passage for the denouement of the plot.1 the three rioters in chaucer’s tale are not far from their town when they suddenly come across a poor old man who humbly greets them with these words: «now, lordes, god yow see!» (l. 716). thus expressing the hope that god will grant them his protection. instead of a polite answer to his gentle greeting the old man gets back two rude questions from one of the youngsters and is forced to answer them to the best of his ability.2 though he has travelled widely, it seems that this mysterious character has been unable to find anyone in the world who «wolde chaunge his youthe for myn age…» (l. 726).this declaration on the part of the old man implies, among various other things, that the general opinion about old age and the way of portraying it had probably changed by the late middle ages from what seemed to be the dominant convention during the anglo -saxon period.3 the experienced old man in chaucer’s tale is not talking exclusively about his own life or lamenting his present situation by drawing special attention to it. though he uses metaphors and quotations from the bible he is trying to convey a message about the life and death of a christian in this 1 in christopher dean’s words (1968: 47) the old man «is responsible for a crucial twist in the direction of the narrative». though it must be acknowledged that charles a. owen (1953) does not situate the crucial passage in the pardoner’s tale here, but rather at the point where the revellers find the pile of gold under the oak tree. 2 according to the text, it is the proudest of the rioters who —using the familiar ‘thou’ instead of the polite ‘you’— asks the old man these two rude questions: «what, carl, with sory grace!/ why artow al forwrapped save thy face?/ why lyvestow so longe in so greet age?» (ll. 717-19). see f.n. robinson (ed.) (1957: 152), all chaucerian quotations are from this edition. 3 alicia k. nitecki (1982: 81) sees the old man as a victim of a corrupt world that clings to youth and rejects old age. she also points to the affinity of this passage with the fourteenth-century meditative lyrics. on the use of the old man figure in a medieval and a renaissance text 81 world and about the way he should behave towards others, particularly when they are old and weak. in matsuda’s words (1992: 315) he «functions as a mirror of selfknowledge to the young and proud rioters.» he is trying to teach them a moral lesson about charity, one of the theological virtues. but, as we all know, the three arrogant youngsters learn nothing from this meeting with the old man and thus waste a precious opportunity. they had already rejected, or at least ignored, the good counsels the inn-keeper and the tavern -boy had tried to give them earlier as, at that point while still in the tavern, the drunken rioters were only interested in creating an unholy brotherhood with the absurd purpose of killing death. before letting the old man continue on his way —the one that in spite of all the difficulties will lead him to salvation— the rioters force this godfearing man to tell them the way that will inevitably lead them to death. physical death which, in this case, implies eternal damnation as they are already in a state of spiritual death. the old man’s mission is not to point to the «crocked wey» but quite the opposite, in fact the rioters know the path of sin too well. as a. c. spearing tells us (1994: 37), death for the revellers lies within themselves, in their own cupiditas symbolized in the tale by the heap of gold. in contrast with the rioters’ love of money, the old man’s lack of interest in material possesions is evident as he would exchange them all for a simple shroud to wrap himself in. the other mysterious old man who appears at the end of doctor faustus also speaks out of charity and shows a similar lack of interest in material possesions. this is implicit in the text when he tells faustus that he does hot envy him (act v.i.48). at the beginning of act v we discover that wagner, faustus’s servant, is about to inherit all of his master’s property, including the house, the golden plate and «two thousand ducats ready coined», as he says with deep delight.1 whereas for the old man, the hero’s most valuable possesion is undoubtedly his immortal soul; he mentions it four times in his 1 in his excellent article on the opposition between the old man and the rioters, john m. steadman (1964:129) points to the fact that chaucer also stresses the treasure’s visual appeal (concupiscentia oculorum) and the revellers fascination with it in the following lines: «but ech of hem so glad was of that sighte, / for that the floryns been so faire and brighte, / that doun they sette hem by this precious hoord.» (ll. 773-75). amelia f raga 82 relatively short speech, he calls it «amiable soul», that is, worthy to be loved by god, and his final words before leaving the stage are these: «faustus, i leave thee, but with grief of heart, / fearing the enemy of thy hapless soul». (act v.i.63-64) his fear derives from the fact that he sees faustus in a state of spiritual death, incapable of repenting and approaching his physical death which is soon going to take place. but faustus has never been able to accept death as an inescapable part of man’s life on this earth. apparently his disappointment with medicine at the beginning of the play is due to the fact that physicians cannot raise the dead or make men escape the plague and live eternally… (act i.i.19-24). a life without death in a plague-ravaged country was exactly what the rioters were looking for when they set off in search of death to kill him: «deeth shal be deed, if that they may hym hente!» (l. 710). and indeed in the bible, christ’s victory on the cross was precisely mors mortis, the death of death, as prophesied in hosea 13:14, but that was christ’s privilege. this denial of death or the inability to understand it, is a characteristic faustus shares wit h the rioters. needless to say, the doctor from wittenberg like any renaissance tragic hero is meant to be taken as an individual, he is perhaps «the first figure on the english stage who deserves to be called a character» (r. gill, 1986: xix), whereas the three rioters whose names we never know, tend to be interpreted as simple prototypes of vicious young men. however, in both works a whole way of life is clearly condemned. for that reason, at the end of the play the chorus warns the audience not to go beyond the boundary of lawful things.1 there is no need to stress the contrast between faustus and the old man in the b-version of the play. it is similar to the sharp contrast we saw in chaucer’s tale, though here, the old man’s speech is simple and direct, and the soliciting tone of his kind rebuke —as he calls it — seems to move faustus at first. however, he is soon dominated by despair and mephistopheles 1 helen cooper (1989: 275) stresses the homiletic function of the story and the fact that it condemns a whole way of life rather than just three individuals. as regards the final lines of the play, their moralistic tone is so evident that it is difficult not to take them at face value. in brockbank’s words (1962:119) «the epilogue is a due and weighty warning against emulating ‘forward wits’ who ‘practise more than heavenly power permits’»; yet they leave the wise still to wonder at the enticing depth of unlawful things. on the use of the old man figure in a medieval and a renaissance text 83 seizes this opportunity to give him a dagger in the hope that he will stab himself. the old man prevents his suicide and insists on his clear message: «then call for mercy and avoid despair» (act v.i. 60). the idea of suicide is always unacceptable for a christian; this is something the old man in chaucer’s tale knows well when he says: «and therfore moot i han myn age stille, / as longe tyme as it is goddes wille.» (ll. 725-26).this in no way means, as it sometimes has been said, that he cannot die, it simply indicates that for the old man as for all those who believe in god, life rests solely in his hands. although he has been able to dissuade him from suicide and make him think about his sins for a moment, the old man’s influence on faustus is very limited. once left alone he will return to his previous ideas of despair and will not only renew his bond with lucifer but he will even ask mephistopheles to torment the poor old man who has been so sympathetic and generous towards him: «torment, sweet friend, that base and agèd man…» (act v.i 79). this shows the depth of his degeneracy and moral blindness. the devils have no power over the old man’s soul as «his faith is great», while faustus has no faith in god and is dominated by the devils even if he does not realize it.1 he asks again for «heavenly helen», as he calls helen of troy, and once she is brought into his presence he seems to have no other interest in the world but her. faustus utters then his famous speech of wonderment over her beauty and seems to forget entirely the existence of the old man (who does not reappear in the b-text), just as the rio ters in the pardoner’s tale forget the mysterious old man they have encountered as soon as they discover the treasure. in his still frequently quoted article, w. w. greg (1946: 106) argued that, at this point, and due to his sexual relationship with an evil spirit in the form of helen, faustus commits the sin of demoniality. as a result of it, the balance between possible salvation and inminent damnation has been upset and he seems to be irrevocably lost. this is the dominant impression one gets from the b-text which is usually considered nearer the morality play.2 it has been 1 the rioters are also dominated by devils throughout the story. according to the text, it is the devil who puts in the youngest reveller’s mind the idea of buying poison to kill his two fellows (ll. 844-48). 2 see m. warren (1981:145), d. bevington and e. rasmussen (1993: 9-10 and 72-77) where marlowe’s play is also considered close to a number of calvinist morality plays of the 1560s and 1570s. see also d. m. bevington, (1962: 152-169); v. thomas and w. tydeman (1994: 11) state also that, when composing doctor amelia f raga 84 noted (bevington and rasmussen, 1993: 127) that the presence of devils like lucifer and beelzebub right from the start of the final scene (act v.ii) «lends a determinism to the tragedy not found in the a -text version». strictly speaking, faustus’s damnation is due to the fact that he cannot repent and accept god’s mercy, as he tells one of the scholars in the final scene of the play: «the serpent that tempted eve may be saved, but not faustus» (act v.ii.45). thus he rejects the spiritual message and moral advice he is offered by the old man, that is, he rejects god’s grace, and turns instead to helen in the hope that she will make him immortal with a kiss: «here will i dwell, for heaven is in these lips, / and all is dross that is not helena» (act v.i.99-100). but far from moving him away from the physical to the ideal, the kiss confirms him on his path to damnation (brandt, 1985: 119) and becomes a kiss of death, a symbolic suicide (sachs, 1964: 641). faustus centres all his interest in helen just as the rioters had done with the heap of gold. it could be argued that their sins are different, avarice in one case and lust in the other, but that is irrelevant. my point is that in both stories there is a similar rejection of the spiritual —embodied in the old man— in favour of the material. even if, as said before, the figure of the old man depicted by marlowe or his collaborator is apparently quite simple and undoubtedly less enigmatic than chaucer’s old man, it is also a character that admits an allegorical interpretation as the embodiment of god’s mercy towards the sinner or the penitent.1 the essence of his exhortation being that there is still time to amend one’s way and repent. faustus, marlowe followed, to some extent, the broad design of the native morality play. 1 marlowe’s old man is not normally interpreted allegorically but seen simply as an old man full of good will, whereas the old man in the pardoner’s tale has been variously interpreted throughout the present century and still is the object of much attention. my colleague m. barbeito(1983) has seen him as partly allegorical and partly realistically conceived, whereas other critics such as w.j.b. owen(1951) or j.m. steadman(1964) have favoured a literal interpretation of this character. m. pittock(1974), on the other hand, viewed him as totally symbolic and not realistically conceived. the old man has also been related to st. paul’s vetus homo (romans 5: 12-21) or seen as having affinities with the wandering jew and, more recently, has even been interpreted as an evil figure who places temptation in the way of the rioters and then disappears (a. h. olsen: 1983, 370). these are just a on the use of the old man figure in a medieval and a renaissance text 85 at least in the b-text of the play it is quite clear that the old man repre sents faustus’s last opportunity to be saved, a precious opportunity that as usual he is going to waste. there is a sense of wasted opportunity throughout the play. it has been argued (orn stein, 1968: 1383) that the protestant god marlowe presents, in his entirely orthodox work, is more a deity of power than of lo ve. that is not, however, the god the old man talks about, but a merciful god who sends faustus an angel with «a vial full of precious grace.» (act v.i.58) in the pardoner’s exemplum god’s name is frequently taken in vain by the three rioters, who are constant in their use of blasphemous language. in contrast, the old man makes several allusions in his message to a loving and protective god (ll. 715, 726 and 748), and even prays to him to save the corrupt youngsters: «god save yow, that boghte agayn mankynde, / and yow amende!» (ll. 766-67) as regards style, both fragments have a trait in common which also favours a comparison between them, their strong sense of narrative speed. this is probably more obvious in the play, but we should remember that chaucer’s tale has been considered a model of short story with a high proportion of direct speech, and a dialogue in which not a word is wasted (robinson, 1957: 11). the medieval tale and the elizabethan play that we have been looking at, were composed, as we all know, under very different social, political and religious circumstances.1 even so, in the use made in both texts of the conventional wise persona motif in the figure of an old man, it is possible to find more than simple resemblances. this seems to indicate that the train of few examples taken from a long list of interpretations that have been put forward in the last forty years. 1 with the growth of calvinism in reformation england the circumstances in which marlowe composed his play were quite different from those in chaucer’s catholic england. nevertheless, if as s.s. hussey argued, following d. w. robertson, (1971: 177-78) much of chaucer and indeed of medieval literature in general, is concerned with demonstrating the augustinian antithesis between caritas, love of god, and cupiditas, love of any earthly good for its own sake, could we not find the same train of thought underlying doctor faustus in general and the old man’s episode in particular? though, as already indicated in note 4, the socio-political circumstances were not even the same in 1604 and in 1616 when the a and b versions of the play were printed. amelia f raga 86 thought behind these two works (augustinian or calvinist) might not have been, after all, as different as we might have previously thought. maría amelia fraga fuentes universidad de santiago references barbeito, m. 1983: dos problemas formales en the canterbury tales. atlantis 5, 39-53. bevington, d. m. 1968: from mankind to marlowe. harvard up. cambridge, massachusetts. bevington, d. and e. rasmussen eds. 1993: doctor faustus a-andb-texts. manchester university press the revels plays, manchester. brandt, b. e. 1985: marlowe’s helen and the soul-in-the-kiss conceit. pq, 64, 118-121. brockbank, j. 1962: the damnation of faustus. in leech, c. ed. 1964: marlowe: a collection of critical essays. prentice hall, new jersey, 112-119. burrow, j. a. 1986: the ages of man: a study in medieval writing and thought. clarendon press. oxford. cooper, h. 1989: oxford guides to chaucer: the canterbury tales. oup. oxford. dean, c. 1968: salvation, damnation and the role of the old man in the pardoner’s tale. chaur 3, 44-49. gill, r. 1986 ed.: christopher marlowe: doctor faustus. a & c black new mermaids, london and new york. greg, w. w. 1946: the damnation of faustus. leech, c. ed., 1964, 92-107. hussey, s. s. 1971: chaucer: an introduction. methuen. london. on the use of the old man figure in a medieval and a renaissance text 87 krapp, g. p. and dobbie, e. v. k.1936 eds.: the anglo-saxon poetic records iii. columbia up. new york. larrington, c.1993: a store of common sense: gnomic theme and style in old icelandic and old english wisdom poetry. clarendon press. oxford. matsuda, t. 1992: death, prudence, and chaucer’s pardoner’s tale. jegp 91, 313-324. nitecki, a. k. 1982: the convention of the old man’s lament in the pardoner’s tale. chaur 16, 76-84. olsen, a.h. 1983: they shul desiren to dye, and deeth shal flee fro hem. nm 84, 367-71. ornstein, r. 1968: marlowe and god: the tragic thology of doctor faustus. pmla 83, 1378-1385. owen, c. a. 1953: the crucial passages in five of the canterbury tales: a study of irony and symbol. in m. andrew 1991 ed. critical essays on chaucer’s canterbury tales. 51-66, university of toronto press. toronto and buffalo. owen, w. j. b. 1951: the old man in the pardoner’s ta le. res n.s.ii. 5, 4955. pittock, m. 1974: the pardoner’s tale and the quest for death. essays in criticism 24, n.2, 107-123. robinson, f. n. 1957 ed.: the works of geoffrey chaucer. oup. oxford. sachs, a. 1964: the religious despair of doctor faustus. jegp 63, 625-647. shippey, t. a. 1976: poems of wisdom and learning in old english . d. s. brewer, cambridge. spearing, a. c. 1994 ed.: the pardoner’s prologue and tale. cup. cambridge. originally published in 1965; the 1994 is a revised edition. steadman, j. m. 1964: old age and contemptus mundi in the pardoner’s tale, mæ 33 n.2, 121-130. amelia f raga 88 thomas, v. and w. tydeman 1994 eds.: cristopher marlowe: the plays and their sources. routledge. london and new york. warren, m. j. 1981: doctor faustus: the old man and the text. english literary renaisance 11, 111-147. * † * selim05.pdf reviews, belén méndez naya ____________________________________________________________________ 148 mitchell, b. 1995: an invitation to old english and anglo-saxon england. oxford: blackwell. xx + 424 pp. these are “hard times” for the study of the so-called “dead languages”. while greek and latin struggle for survival in spanish secondary schools, in british universities old english (henceforth oe) is not in very good health either. as a result, the most immediate aim of bruce mitchell’s book, an invitation to old english and anglo-saxon england is, as he himself states in the fore word, “to increase the popularity of old english, to make it, in the dictio nary sense of the word, both ‘of or carried on by people’ and ‘liked and admired by people’, people including university students and general readers.” (viii). as will be seen, this does not intend to be a new handbook on oe grammar for university students, since the classic mitchell & robinson’s a guide to old english (henceforth guide) serves this function perfectly. it is much mo re than that. dr. mitchell’s new publication approaches the study of old english from a totally different perspective, in a way that the student of the his tory of en glish will have her/his attention drawn from the language of the period to the people who spoke it, and, conversely, the reader interested in the literature, history, and culture of the oe period will be naturally drawn to the study of the language of the time. in fact, as the author himself admits, it is pre cisely to the latter that the book is chiefly geared: “here i am more concern ed with helping those who do not know oe than with pleasing those who do” (ix). with this in mind, grammar (whose ‘difficulty’ frequently deters literary or historical students from diving into the original) has been reduced to a minimum. however, despite the divulgative style of the work, the book turns out to be a very interesting tool for the oe scholar as well. in the initial pages of the book (“how to use this book”) bruce mitchell invites us to what “may turn out to be either a splendid banquet or a cheeseand wine-tasting party,” depending basically on the reader’s interests (p. 1). we readers are offered, and i will go on using mitchell’s gastronomic image, a menu consisting of five different courses preceded by an appetiser, the in troduction. the introduction takes us from indo-european to the dawn of the reviews: b. mitchell 1995 ____________________________________________________________________ 149 english language, using vocabulary as a guideline. this is a recognition that the reader will be more familiar with the vocabulary of present-day english than with the grammar. in these first pages we find brief mentions, among other topics, of the reconstruction methods of comparative linguistics, and even a very simplified and clear account of grimm’s law (p. 11). part i briefly deals with spelling, pronunciation and punctuation. para graphs §1-8, on spelling and pronunciation, are parallel to ##5-9 in guide. given that the book intends to be “an invitation,” there is no room here for a detailed account of oe phonology, which is a deterrent, for instance, for literature students. in fact, the only two sound-changes mentioned in the book are grimm’s law and i-mutation. however, and in contrast to guide, some space is devoted to the subject of punctuation. paragraphs §10 and 11 set out the punctuation system which will be used in the oe fragments reproduced in the book. of particular interest is dr. mitchell’s decision to avoid strong punctuation in the case of adverbs/conjunctions like pa or ponne, pre s erving the potential ambiguity and thus enabling the literary scholar to grasp the richness of interpretation in the original text. the description of the language in the anglo -saxon period can be found in part ii, which is entitled “other differences between old and modern en glish.” the account of the structure of oe starts with the lexis since, in mit chell’s opinion, “the factor which above all makes oe seem a foreign language to those trying to read it today is neither its inflections nor its word -orders nor its syntax but its vocabulary” (p. 25). the following pages offer, in a most didactic and divulgative tone, a description of the structure of oe vocabulary, with a mention of all the methods of vocabulary enlargement. the subsequent sections, c to j, are devoted to morphology and syntax and follow the general outline of guide, except for the presentation of paradigms. these are left for part v and are only meant “for those who would like them.” the main concern of part ii is to acquaint the reader with morphological notions such as case, synthetic vs. analytic devices, weak and strong verbs, among others, as well as with syntactic topics like word -order. likewise, we find here a pre sentation of every part of speech. the clarification of such basic concepts as s, o, oi, etc. -done in a most humorous way in ##29 ff. may seem some what simplistic to the linguistics scholar, but clearly responds to a reality in brit ish universities, and increasingly also in ours, where there reviews, belén méndez naya ____________________________________________________________________ 150 are students taking a degree in english who lack the most basic grammatical concepts. in part iii, “an introduction to anglo -saxon england,” which is the longest section in the book, the reader is offered a comprehensive account of various aspects of the life in the england of the period. section a, literature, pro vides a catalogue of oe poetry and prose which would fit much better, in my opinion, in part iv. section b pre sents the major historical events from the arrival of the romans to the norman conquest by means of seven annotated extracts from the anglo-saxon chronicle. alongside the notes on the text, the reader may find explanatory commentaries on history in the footnotes. section d gives a detailed account of place names. sections c and e are longer than the remainder of the chapter. section c, on archaeology, arts and crafts, occupies almost 100 pages in which dr. mit chell relates the information drawn from archaeological findings to passages in oe literature. thus, we can see how archaeology may illuminate some obscure poetic passages (see, for in stance, §213, in which the description of the coppergate helmet clarifies the interpretation of freawrasnum ‘with lordly chains’ in beowulf 1451) and, conversely, how literary texts may help us to fully understand some archaeological findings. here the reader may find rele vant information about most anglo -saxon arts and crafts (weapons and their relevance, jewellery, sculpture, shipbuilding, and a very interesting section on ma nuscripts). when possible, the description of all these topics is accompanied by textual evidence in which dr. mitchell shows us once more his eru dition and his thorough knowledge of oe sources. while section c is concerned with arts and crafts, the society of anglo -saxon england is depicted through the use of texts in section e. intimations about the warrior’s life and ideals can be gathered from anglo -saxon heroic poetry. other re cords, such as wills or legal charters, provide some information about the role of women, marriage agreements, etc. ev eryday life, monastic life, medicine, and other as pects of anglo -saxon life are also dealt with. space in the book is limited and consequently, some topics just get a passing mention. however, the lists for further reading offered all along the book enable the reader in teres ted in so doing to deepen her/his knowledge on a given subject. part iii as a whole, as a result of its interdisciplinary character, is very easy to read and extremely interesting, particularly for those who, like the author of this re view, spend too much time in trying to unfold the intricacies of oe syntax. i especially reviews: b. mitchell 1995 ____________________________________________________________________ 151 appreciate the fact that the writer of such scholarly work as old english syntax is able to switch to a mood and style so completely different as that suitable to a national geographic reporter, thus leading us readers into a fascinating world. if part iii is a gem for the historian, the contribution of part iv is also re markable, particularly for the student of oe. this chapter, “the garden of old english literature,” is an anthology of annotated oe texts, both from pro se and poetry. one of the best points in this selection is that it contains texts which are rarely included in readers, such as ‘medical’ texts about the formation of the foetus or about sex-determination during pregnancy (texts 25 and 26 respectively), a charter forged by the monks in the early 11th century (text 28), and a fragment of a letter from a monk to his superior (text 30). the anthology of poetic texts is preceded by an introductory note on alliteration and the major stylistic devices of oe poetry. there follows a collection of annotated fragments from the most significant poetic pieces, some (particularly the wanderer, the seafarer and the dream of the rood) preceded by a lengthy commentary. when relevant, there are cross-references with part iii of the book. paradigms are presented in part v, without any reference whatsoever to sound changes, except for i-mutation. this, however, may cause some confu sion. for instance, in order to avoid mentioning west saxon syncope, dr. mitchell states that the second and third person present indicative forms of strong verbs “are often contracted” (#520). since the term ‘contracted’ is used, in the following para graph, to allude to “contracted strong verbs,” (those which “originally had a medial h which was lost” §521), it would be better to say, in the case of syncope, that the ending is often reduced (‘reduction’ being precisely the term mitchell & robinson use in guide §112. 2). likewise, in §524, the single <m> in fremest and fremep is attributed to i-mutation (e ven though i-mutation affects the whole of the paradigm) in order not to complicate things by referring to west germanic gemination. it would have been pre ferable just to note the irregularity (as he does in the case of the endings ap, /-iap of weak verbs class 2 in §526), or to leave it unexplained, as in the case of the preterite system of fremman. we may also note some mi nor errata in this part. for instance §515 reads “other common strong verbs, which, like weorpan (§513), change a medial vowel are …” the examples that follow ceosan, ceas, curon, coren and cwepan, cwæp, cwædon, cweden, together reviews, belén méndez naya ____________________________________________________________________ 152 with the later forms frore and forlorn are illustrations of vern er’s law, with the corresponding change in a medial consonant. thus, after going through hors d’ouevre and five succulent courses, it’s time for the dessert, a glossary of all forms o ccurring in the 51 texts reproduced in the text, preceded by a complete and up-to-date thematic bibliography, which even includes two sections on fic tion and poetry about the anglo -saxon period. i cannot resist enlarg ing dr. mitchell’s poetry list with some poems by jorge luis borges, ‘‘un sajón (449 a. d.)’, ‘hengist cyning’, ‘‘fragmento’, ‘a una es pada en york’ or his various pieces dedicated to ‘a un poeta sajón,’ all of them included in his collection, el otro, el mismo first published in 1964. likewise, i am sure that, if dr. mitchell had known that his ‘in vitation’ would also be accepted by spanish and latinoamerican readers, he would have undoubtedly included borges’s delicious literaturas germánicas me dievales in his biblio graphy. on the whole, an invitation to old english is an excellent and enjoyable book, of great value for both students of the his tory of english and those interested in the anglo -saxon period. thank-you very much, dr. mitchell, for me it certainly was a banquet. belén méndez naya university of santiago de compostela references borges, j. l. 1978 (1966): literaturas germánicas medievales. madrid: alianza editiorial. “el libro de bolsillo” nº 738. borges, j. l. 1993 (1964): el otro, el mismo . in obras completas, iii. 4 vols. madrid: círculo de lectores. mitchell, b. 1985: old english syntax. 2 vols. cambridge: cup. mitchell, b. & f. robinson 1992. a guide to old english . 5th edition. oxford: blackwell. * † * selim05.pdf juan camilo conde silvestre, selim 5(1996): 63—77 the spaces of medieval intertextuality: deor as a palimpsest the 42 lines contained in folios 100r and 100v of the exeter book (exeter, cathedral library ms 3501) have remained one of the most enigmatic texts in the old english corpus, ever since benjamin thorpe first edited the ma nuscript and entitled them deor, the scald’s complaint (1842). the conundrum of these lines does not exclusively lie on textual factors or possible in terpolations by subsequent copyists, as might be the case of other medieval works. on the contrary, the analysis of the late tenth-century extant version evinces a very careful design which may allow us to consider it an attempt to preserve a highly valued text as literature. it is well known that the extract is divided in to clearcut sections marked by capital letters and separated by a re peated re frain, which is properly punctuated to detach it from the words which follow. the main reason for the mystery of deor seems to be, rather, a very allusive manner of expression which could have been familiar to a contemporary audience acquainted with the traditions it embodies, but distresses the modern reader and seems tangential for his or her perspective (wrenn 1967: 81). furthermore, the amalgamation in these lines of a basically heroic theme with a lyric frame and a very persuasive insistence on its proposition as if the speaker wished to cause some kind of unspecified effect has in clined scholars to pro pose a varied range of generic epithets: from a wisdom lyric, “… suggesting the ability of the mind to control itself and resist its surroundings” (ship pey 1972: 78; boren 1975), to a sophisticated christianized charm against a social, personal or unknown misfortune (bloomfield 1964); from a scop begging poem (eliasson 1966; 1969), to a consolatory work, directed either to relieve the speaker’s own suffering (forster, 1937: 117-121; pearsall 1977: 5), or to hearten someone who, because of misfortune, has become depres sed in spirit (malone 1933: 1). in either case, all critics agree that the poem whether it be didactic, consolatory, protective or mendicant is firmly grounded on his torical experience juan camilo conde silvestre ____________________________________________________________________ 66 and legendary knowledge, and progresses by the combination of topics belonging to a germanic tradition of “infortuniis illustrium virorum”, to use the clas sical label proposed by conybeare in his illustrations of anglo-saxon poetry (1826: 239). the different exempla are connected to one another by the famous re frain: ? æs ofereode; pisses swa mæg.1 this idea is so widespre ad that most criticism has been directed towards unveiling the allu sions the poem makes to other texts of the germanic world. in this respect, there are some voices which regard it as an interesting example of the intertextual drive in recent critical theory; as a practical instance of “… the lesson … that no text is an island, that every work is a response to a conversation or dialogue that it presupposes but need not mention” (frank 1991: 101). in this paper i would like to explore the possibility of applying this concept to an early me dieval poem. alt hough i assume the difficulty, implied by frank herself, of connecting literary works that are “… the preserved tips of icebergs that melted away long ago” (1991: 101), i understand that this attempt may shed some light both on the enigma of deor and on the operation of textual transference in the medieval period. deor opens with an allusion to the adversity of welund, the elf-smith of the scandinavian völundarkviía and ? iírikssaga. however, the message is conveyed by means of typically exile formulas which merely inform that he wræces cunnade (l. 1b) [“experienced the persecution of exile”], earfopa dreag (l. 2b) [“endured hardship”], hæfde him to gesippe sorge and longap (l. 3) [“had with him as company sorrow and longing”] and wean … onfond sippan hine niíhad on nede lenge (l. 4b-5) [“experienced misery after niíhad lay fetters on him”]. in line 7, the refrain reveals that he had overcome his hard ship. such brief and stereotyped references imply that the original 1 all references to the poem are from malone ed. 1933: deor. exeter: u. of exeter p. (1977). while critics agree in considering the refrain as a “… key to the poem’s meaning for its audience” (hill 1983: 18), there are differences of opinion regarding the textual correlates of each neuter demonstrative in genitive singular. those who assign deor to the genre of charm or catalogue it as a scop begging poem believe that the first genitive pæs refers to the temporary situation described in the lines preceding it, while the second one pisses refers to any current circumstance which requires a solution (isaacs 1968). nevertheless, those who consider the poem as a consolatory piece, relate pæs to the exemplum which has just been given, and pisses both to the particular unknown misfortune affecting the individual listener, and to the adversity of the speaker, clearly rendered in the last section (ll. 35-42). this helps the poem to extend its soothing message from the personal domain to the universal one (malone 1933: 17; mandel 1977: 1-9; swanton 1987: 42-43). the spaces of medieval intertextuality: de or as a palimpsest ____________________________________________________________________ 67 audience was expected to be fully conversant with oral legends on the captivity of welund by king niíuír of the niárar, with his having been hamstrung and forced to serve as the royal smith, and with his conclusive vengeance by ravishing bö ívildr, the king’s daughter, killing his two sons and presenting their skulls, eyeballs and teeth in the shape of bowls, gems and brooches to the royal fa mily (malone 1933: 4-5). the misfortune of bö ívildr herself beadohild in the old english text functions as a second exemplum of surmounted distress in deor. the reasons for her affliction are concisely mentioned in lines 8-15: hyre bropra deap (l. 8b) [“the death of her brothers”], hyre sylfre ping … pæt heo eacen wæs (ll. 9b-11a) [“her own affair … that she was pregnant”], and particularly her inability to ponder calmly hu ymb pæt sceolde (l. 12b) [“how regarding that should be”]. the allusive technique permits us to infer that the contemporary audience was expected to be familiar with the above-mentioned cycle of orally transmitted legends, and thus was possibly aware that beadohild’s disgrace was partially overcome when, as a result of her rape, she gave birth to the hero widia (see: waldere ii: l. 4b, l. 9b; widsith, l. 124b, l. 130b). the references of lines 14-17 are more puzzling. although the speaker appeals to the knowledge of non-identified external sources of information we … gefrugnon (l. 14) [“we … have learnt”] a number of textual problems impinge on the interpretation of mæíhilde’s discomfort. provided that the correction of monge to mone (l. 14b) proposed by malone (1933: 9) is accepted, so that this hapax legomenon is rendered as the noun meaning “moan”, and that the apposition geates frige (l. 15b) is related to the passionate feeling of a certain gaute (hill 1983: 43), then it is not difficult to link these lines to the pre vious ones as another exemplum of someone who suffered distress and overcame it. line 17, however, makes clear that the source of anguish was, in this case, a painful love affair: hi seo sorglufu slæp ealle binom [“that dis tres sing love robbed her of all sleep”]. we may also assume that both speaker and audience shared the knowledge required to understand the passage. not only does the former embrance the listeners by using the first person plural personal pronoun, but he also hints in the brief space of two lines at a story which might have stirred the expected connotations in the minds of the latter. the pre sent state of knowledge does not allow us to sort out whether this source was an early oral version of the story of gaute and magnild as retold juan camilo conde silvestre ____________________________________________________________________ 68 in nineteenth-century scandinavian ballads (malone 1933: 8), a narration of the in ces tuous affair of the queen of the continental angles, as the wellknown digres sion of beowulf informs (ll. 1932-1962) (eliasson 1965), or if it is associated with the legend of hogena, hild and heoden included in sturlu son’s skaldskaparmal (49-50) and in the german kudrun (5-8) (norman 1937).1 the existence of external sources of information is announced again in lines 18-20: ? æt wæs monegum cup (l. 19b) [“that was known by many”]. however, their contents are still very enigmatic: îeodric ahte prittig wintra mæringa burg (ll. 18-19a) [“theodric held the stronghold of the maeringas for thirty years”]. malone draws on frankish history to interpret these lines and proposes that îeodric is either the eldest son of the chieftain clovis, theodoric i (d. 533 or 534), or, more plausibly, sigiwald theudebert (d. 548) in frankish history who, accord ing to the historia francorum (iii, 13: 16, 23), fled to lombardy in order to avoid being punished by the above-mentioned king. he returned after thirty years to discover that his prosecutor had been his own father who, thinking that he was an illegitimate son, had re pudiated him; thus he changed his name to theodoric the son wolfdietrich in mhg legends (1933: 9-10). the same author claims that the rök inscrip tion a runic monument of the early ninth century mentions the same theodoric as sk ati marika, chief of the maeringas. the family name may re fer either to the tribe in southern tirol which was ruled by sigiwald as exiled king for thirty years, or to the emperor’s retainer, berchtung von meran, whose family brought up wolfdietrich after his repudiation (malone 1934). although this 2 gaute’s vain efforts to avoid magnild’s his bride’s drowning in the vending or skotberg river constitute the subject of traditional scandinavian ballads recorded in the 1850s in norwegian and icelandic versions. although both sources diverge in minor details, they tell how the former built a high and strong bridge which fell down anyway, and picture the recovery of his bride’s body after a faithful and tireless mourning accompanied by the music of the harp (malone 1937). the possibility that geat in these lines is offa’s son, and that they allude to the story of the latter’s wife’s distress after her incestuous affair has been pointed out by elias son to support his view of deor as the begging poem of an anglian scop (1966; 1969). finally, the implied reference to the expedition of heoden against king hogena after having snatched hild, the latter’s daughter, and the possibility that deor refers to the valkyrie-like activity of the maid, who, at night, raised up the slain to fight the next day, was first mentioned by norman (1937). the three approaches suit the scant and ambiguous textual evidence provided by the poem, so that their accuracy must be sought somewhere else; the close analy sis of intertextual connections may give some clues in this respect. the spaces of medieval intertextuality: de or as a palimpsest ____________________________________________________________________ 69 solution agrees with the previous stanzas by offering another example of surmounted misfortune, due to exile in this case, other critics believe that it is more feasible to understand that the proper name alludes to theodoric the ostrogoth (454-526), as all other uses of the name in oe texts do. hill supports the hypothesis by examining the cycle of legends about the famous king, compiled in the ohg hildebranslied (c. 800) (1983: 100). in this poem he is reputed, unhistorically, to have been in exile for thirty years. hill as sociates the mæringa burg with the city of ravenna, the citadel of the ostro goths, as suming that other sources, particularly notker labeo’s prolo gue to the translation of boethius’s de consolatione philosophiae (c. 1000), describe the gothic king as ruler of the “megothorum et ostrogothorum” (hill 1983: 93). either solution confirms the point of view that these sections of deor functioned as mere hints to remind the listeners of well-known legendary or his torical episodes which may have helped them to fill up the brief allusions with the expected signification. however, the identification of îeodric with the gothic king does not fit in with the portraits of overcome dis grace offered in previous sections. even though we are not sure that the anglo-saxons were familiar with traditions circulating in the continent which depicted theodoric the ostrogoth as a disgraceful exile, we do know that he was appreciated in early medieval england as a tyrant and, as martyrologies prove, the cruel murderer of pope john i (d. 526) and boethius (d. 524). the structural problem is resolved when the following section (ll. 21-27) is reached. rather than another exemplum of misfortunes outlived, this is the illustration of a tyrannical chieftain: ermanaric, king of the ostrogoths (d. c. 375). the final reference to an external, non-identified source opens the stanza we geascodan (l. 21a) [“we have learnt”] but, in this case, the speaker engages in a longer rendering of the effects of this king’s wylfenne gepoht (l. 22a) [“wolfish thought”]: sæt secg monig, sorgum gebunden, wean in wenan, wyscte geneahhe pæt pæs cynerices ofercumen wære (ll. 24-26) [many a warrior sat, bound by sorrows, expecting misery, wished constantly that the kingdom was overthrown] juan camilo conde silvestre ____________________________________________________________________ 70 it is clear that distress and misfortune did not affect the powerful king, but in stead his subjects, who could only expect to be freed from their troubles by the former’s defeat and death. the accurate message conveyed by these lines does not hinder the possibility that both speaker and audience had other sources of information in mind. descriptions of ermanaric as cruel a king are found, for instance, in icelandic eddic poetry where he is said to have had his son hanged and his own wife trampled to death by horses on account of their supposed liaison. similarly in the eleventh-century mhg würzburg chronicle, ermenrich is described as “more cunning than all in guile, more generous in gifts” (hill 1983: 83). a christian reflection on the nature of adversity (ll. 28-34) follows this exemplum. these lines, in the tradition of other oe gnomic and elegiac verses, remark that fortune, whether good or evil, derives ultimately from god, and that its nature wendep geneahhe (l. 32b) [“changes constantly”]. they also function as a bridge between “… the factual germanic past and the reflective pre sent” (condren 1981: 74) by leading, without the intervention of the re frain, to the conclu sive section where the details of deor’s story are exposed. the speaker tells in the first person that he has been the scop of the heodeningas for a long time, but heorrenda, a rival skilled minstrel leoícræftig monn (l. 40a) has recently supplanted him in the favour of his lord, so that the latter londryht gepah pæt me eorla hleo ær gesealde (ll. 40b-41) [“has received the proceeds of a state, which formerly the lord of noble men had granted to me”]. the autobiographical statement is closely tied to the background of the previous sections. firstly by means of the allusion to well-known figures of the germanic legendary, historical or literary traditions. in this case, the audience is confronted with the story of heoden, king of the heodeningas in continental anglia (see: widsith, l. 21), whose minstrel horant enjoyed a wellreputed fame as poet, as later written sources also reveal: saxo grammaticus’s gesta danorum (vi), the scandinavian guírúnarkviía (magoun 1942: 1-5), or the mhg poem kudrun (hill 1983: 17; norman 1965: 210-211). secondly, both sections are linked by the final refrain ? æs ofereode; pisses swa mæg which, in light of the preceding exempla, and through in sis tent repetition, pro claims the possibility that deor the scop will enjoy a similar triumph to those previously outlined: in due time he will rise above a kind of earthly misfortune whose nature is reversible. finally, the confluence of this personal section with the preceding passages contribute to the poem’s organic unity. the spaces of medieval intertextuality: de or as a palimpsest ____________________________________________________________________ 71 the hardship of losing his position to another poet makes deor analogous to welund, beadohild and geat, who suffered disgrace or dis honour, and correlates his lord to the cruel kings theodoric and ermanaric, who we re liable for the harsh conditions of their subjects (condren 1981: 75-76). the review of the structure of deor sanctions the hypothesis that the poem relied on the expectation that the audience was able to make use of germanic history and traditional legends in order to fill in the gaps which mere hints in the text leave open. the meaningful existence of deor depends, therefore, on the connections that may be drawn from its brief and ambiguous references, which “… in addition to their literal meaning, constitute a large balloon allu sion floating at some distance from the poem” (condren 1981: 63). in other words, deor’s significance could only be grasped if those addressed understood that they were required to stimulate their knowledge of other texts, and to activate the mechanism of intertextuality. in any literary text of the early middle ages the impulse towards intertextuality must first be seen in the context of orality: a primeval mode of exis tence of the text which relies on the aesthetics of identity and operates in an “additive, aggregative, redundant, copious and tra ditionalist” way (ong 1982). within this prevalent state, the medieval literary work unfolds through a previously established junction of textual and extratextual codes, so that form and content conform to the expectations of an audience already acquain ted with well-known rules of literary production and reception (lotman 1970: 268-269). in the words of the french medievalist paul zumthor, the aesthetics of identity “… fonctionne par assimilation de stéréotypes pourtant ja mais automatisés, flottant dans le milieu instable de l’expérience vécue”, and is consequently erected on “… une trame continue, horizontale, successive” of in tertextual relations (1983: 252). zumthor proposes that medieval intertextuality or “intervocalité”, as he prefers to call it exhibits itself on three main discoursive spaces: a) the space of the hic et nunc hearing of the text, which is ruled by “… un code plus ou moins rigoureusement formalisé, ma is toujours en quelque manière incomplet, entrouvert sur l’imprévisible”; b) a dis coursive space of intertextual modulation, where “… chaque discours se définit comme le lieu de transformation (par et dans une parole concrète) d’énoncés venus d’ailleurs”; and c) the space of the textual surface itself, “… engendré par les relations qui s’y nouent” (1987: 161). juan camilo conde silvestre ____________________________________________________________________ 72 the first space opens intertextuality to the social performance of the text by exposing the textual surface to explicit or implicit references to the hic et nunc of oral poetic communication (zumthor 1983: 83). the allusions usually differ from one performance to another, but some of them may eventually abide in the written versions. thus, in deor the use of the first person plural personal pronoun and the pre supposition that speaker and audience shared non-identified sources of information (ll. 14, 19b, 21a) are worth noticing. the second space is also connected to typical features of medieval orality; the oral text is the common property of the me mbers of the social group where lit erature is produced and received, to such an extent that the individual poem becomes a mere manifestation of this wider discourse, from which it can borrow freely. the process leads to a “… mouvement perpétuel fait de collisions, d’interférences, d’échanges, de ruptures” (zumthor 1987: 168). this space of “intervocalité” accounts for the repeated use of formulas as a dis course strategy -”mémoriel et verbal” which, within the aesthetics of identity, aims to frame the individual poetic utterance in the whole speech of the community (zumthor 1987: 217). just by way of an example, the recourse to a formulaic style connected to images of exile in the opening lines of deor ll. 1b, 2b, 4a, 4b could be pointed out. at the same time, this intertextual drive promotes the use of allusions to raise expectations in the audience which may bring the poem to the intended semantic closure. the references to welund (l. 1a), niíhad (l. 5a), beadohild (l. 8a), mæíhilde (l. 14a), geat (l. 15b), îeodric (l. 18a), eormanric (l. 22b), heoden (l. 36b) and heorrenda (l. 39b) not only give a clue to the oral transmission of deor, but they implicitly directed the original audience and may still direct the modern reader to the common social dis course which has survived in other written versions of me dieval germanic texts: the scandinavian völundarkviía, ? iírikssaga and guírúnarkviía , the oe poems waldere, widsith and beowulf, or the mhg kudrun and hildebranslied, among others. the recurrent availability of formulas, exchanges, transfers and interferences derives from an original stage of “oralité primaire et immédiate” (zumthor 1983: 36), or, using the label recently proposed by doane, on a primary setting of genuine orality. at this stage the text “… calls attention to itself as language and is made up of more or less predetermined, more or less flexible … elements that conform themselves to familiar and expected genres and contents” (1991: 79). however, zumthor himself is adamant that the pro cess the spaces of medieval intertextuality: de or as a palimpsest ____________________________________________________________________ 73 is not neces sarily brought to an end when the oral tradition is fixed in writing; on the contrary, this type of intertextuality remains at the second stage of “oralité mixte” (1987: 172), when “chirographs” are created that descend from previous oral production. furthermore, the mutual penetration and interpretation of the oral text and the technology of litera cy result, according to doane, in the formation of “interfaces” which, by definition, exploit this and other kinds of intertextual relations (1991: 86). firstly, the dependence of primary orality on the aesthetics of identity, when the text is merely one manifestation of discoursive practices common to all members of the community, results in a generated relationship between the orally produced text hic et nunc and the precedent material. the latter, therefore, actuates as a global “infratext”, “… an invisible structuration that organizes any actual manifestation of speech … always recursive, unified within the flow of the voice” (doane 1991: 102-103). however, when the products of oral tradition interact with written techniques and the text becomes an “interface”, the sources are consciously referred to by poets, and audiences are drawn to them critically, with an understanding of the meanings and functions of traditional language, formulas and themes (doane 1991: 81). if the idea that “interfaces” started to appear in england from the eighth century onwards is accepted, then the extant chirographic copy of deor must be regarded as a typical instance of mixed orality, as a text produced in writing when the oral tradition was still alive. in this sense, the puzzling allusive technique used throughout the poem and the necessity to fill in the ambiguous gaps by reference to germanic history and legend are just surface manifestations of the discoursive space of intertextual modulation proposed by zumthor. this was unconsciously actuated at the stage of primary orality, but was consciously and critically retained when the text interfered with written literary practices. a consideration of the textual relations of deor with other medieval works may support the status of the poem as an “interface” and complete the analysis of intertextual transference and interferences. the connections which function exclusively within the third space distinguished by zumthor, that of the written textual surface, are specially illuminating in this enterprise. recent scholarship has explored the relationship between the written copy of deor and the tra nsmission in england of boethius’s de juan camilo conde silvestre ____________________________________________________________________ 74 consolatione philosophiae (c. 524), either in the original latin version, or in the anglo-saxon translation encouraged by king alfred.1 this perspective is supported in the striking structural parallelism between boethius’s de consolatione and the poem. the whole situation of the speaker in deor can be placed on the same level with the remembrance of past joys in present sorrow on which the former author insists. as boren has stated, both works begin with a concern for the sorrows of misfortune, and it is only after the grief has been expelled that the process of recovery starts. in both cases this is represented as “… a movement of the intellect from obsessive concern with the particularities of private experience to a comprehension of those philosophical generalizations which offer the only opportunity for understanding and thus enduring the misfortunes of this world” (1975: 270). similarly, boethius’s remarks on the wisdom of nature’s established plan (book 1, prose 6; book 4, prose 5; book 5, metre 1, etc) could have been echoed dres sed up in christian garments in the general reflections on adversity of the anglo -saxon text (ll. 28-34). parallels of greater detail can be observed when the overall message of the poem, particularly as the self-contained re frain summarizes it ? æs ofereode; pisses swa mæg is compared to the arguments pro duced by boethius in book 2, prose 3 of his work: si numerum modumque laetorum tristiumque consideres, adhunc te felicen negare non possis. quod si ideirco te fortunatum esse non aestimas, quoniam quae tunc laeta uidebantur abierunt, non est quod te miserum putes, quoniam quae nunc creduntur maesta praeterunt (quoted from bolton 1972: 222).2 3 as early as 1911, lawrence had qualified the poem as “a consolatio philosophiae of minstrelsy”, obviously leaning on the title of boethius’s work (1911: 23). nevertheless, the connections between both texts have not been explored until the last decades of this century, when markland (1968) and kiernan (1978) have proposed that the structure of deor derives from king alfred’s version of de consolatione. bolton agrees that the five exempla of the poem correspond to the false gifts of fortune in the latin text, but does not see the necessity of relating it to the anglo-saxon enterprise (1972). whitbread, finally, assumes a relationship with the consolatory tradition inaugurated by boethius, but obviates both the intermediacy of king alfred and the direct knowledge of the latin version, proposing instead that a non-identified sermon inspired the composition of the poem (1970). 4 “if you thought of all the things that have happened to you, what kind of things they were, and whether they were happy or unhappy things, you would not be able the spaces of medieval intertextuality: de or as a palimpsest ____________________________________________________________________ 75 the comparison between the latin lines and king alfred’s transla tion might also be of interest from the standpoint of the intertextual connections of the medieval poem: áif pu nu forpam cwist pæt pu ges ælig ne sie pæt pu nu n æfst pa hwilendlican arwyrpnessa pa blipnessa pe pu ær hæfdest penne ne eart pu peah un¥esælig forpam pe pa unrotnessa pe pu nu en eart swa ilce ofergap swa pu cwist p æt pa blissa ær dydon (quoted from markland 1968: 2) [if you now say that you are not happy because you do not have temporary honours and the joys which you formerly had; then you are not, however, unhappy, because the sorrows that you are now in, will likely pass away, just as you say that the enjoyments formerly did]. markland (1968: 2-3) and kiernan (1978: 335-336) have noticed that the orig inal latin verb praeterire is rendered as the old english ofergan in king alfred’s version, and conclude that the use of the preterit of this verbal form ofereode in the refrain of the poem may allow one to consider the early west saxon text as the “hypotext” which ultimately promoted the written composition of deor. if this is so, the intimate connection between the three “chirographs” confirms the unfolding of a proper hypertextual relation which projected the soothing message conveyed by boethius into a new circuit of meaning adapted to the germanic weltanschaung (genette 1982; clayton and rothstein 1991: 22-23). in the latin original (book1, prose 3), philosophy had urged boethius to replace the classical examples of misfortune anaxagoras, socrates or zeno with others who were still remembered and celebrated by the author’s contemporaries: seneca or soranus. the translators of king alfred’s circle seem to have followed this advice when they replaced the reference to fabricius (book 2, metre 7) with that of welund (whitbread 1970: 171). this practice together with boethius’s hint may have encouraged the compositors of deor to rely on exempla from germanic antiquity, better known to the intended audience. in this sense, in addition to the story of welund and beadohild, the passage on geat and mæíhild (ll. 14-17) the to say you have not been fortunate up to now. on the other hand, if you do not consider that you have been lucky because your one time reasons for rejoicing have passed away, you cannot now think of yourself as in misery, because the very things that seem miserable are also passing away” (watts trans. 1969: 60). juan camilo conde silvestre ____________________________________________________________________ 76 scandinavian lovers may have been stirred by the classical legend of orpheus and eurydice in boethius’s original (book 3, metre 11), as a further attempt to adapt the latter’s examples to a new germanic mi lieu. structural, thematic and textual parallelisms between the three works may contribute to sort out other ambiguities raised by brief allusions in the lines of the poem. the relationship between deor and boethius sanctions the explanations of îeodric and the mæringas in lines 18-19a as references to theodoric the ostrogoth and the inhabitants of his kingdom respectively. the preface to king alfred’s translation clearly mentioned that the former was a cruel king who punished boethius to death (tuggle 1977: 236). thus, the possibility that the compositors of deor knew the preceding old english version and therefo re drew several examples and topics from it reinforces the establishment of a hypertextual relationship between the three texts and confers the side utility of clearing up obscure passages to the analysis of intertextual transference. in summary, the definition of deor as a typically medieval “interface” between oral production and writing helps to explore the diverse intertextual spaces which lie under the surface of the poem’s composition. these can be related to the different stages of orality which have coexisted in the extant written copy. rather than ascribing the references of its ambiguous allusions singularly to either an early stage of primary orality or a later one of purely written composition, this standpoint permits us to define the text as a visible palimpsest (doane 1991: 104), in which reverberating voices from the past th e global oral “infratext” common to all members of the community are consciously referred to under the pressure of a written “hypotext”. eventually, this analysis supports the idea that part of the aesthetic appeal of medie val texts lies in their intertextuality, so that most literary expectations created by these puzzling documents can be sorted out only by stepping from text to text (jauss 1979). this methodological tenet should be borne in mind when dealing both with written “interfaces” and with their possible dependence on earlier stages of pure primary orality. juan camilo conde silvestre university of murcia the spaces of medieval intertextuality: de or as a palimpsest ____________________________________________________________________ 77 references bloomfield, h. w. 1964: the form of deor. pmla 79: 534-541. bolton, w. f. 1972: boethius, alfred and deor again. mod. philology 69: 222227. boren, j. l. 1975: the design of the old english deor. anglo-saxon poetry. essays in appreciation for john c. mcgalliard (eds l.e. nicholson & d. warwick frese). university of notre -dame press, 264-276. clayton, j. & rothstein, e. 1991: figures in the corpus: theories of influence and in tertextuality. influence and intertextuality in literary history (eds j. clayton & e. rothstein). madison: the u. of wisconsin press, 3-36. condren, e. i. 1981: deor’s artistic triumph. studies in philology 78: 62-76. conybeare, j. j. 1826: illustrations of anglo-saxon poetry. london: harding & lepard. doane, a. n. 1991: oral texts, intertexts and intratexts: editing old english. influence and intertextuality in literary history (eds j. clayton & e. rothstein). madison: the u. of wisconsin p., 75-113. eliasson, n. e. 1965: the story of geat and mæíhild in deor. studies in philology 62: 494-509. eliasson, n. e. 1966: two old english scop poems. pmla 81: 185-192. eliasson, n. e. 1969: deor: a begging poem? medieval literature and civilization. studies in memory of g.n. garmonsway (eds d.a. pearsall & r.a. waldron). london, 55-61. forster, l. 1937: die assoziation in deor’s klage. anglia 61: 117-121. frank, r. 1991: germanic legend in old english literature. the cambridge companion to old english literature (eds m. godden & m. lapidge). cambridge: cup, 88-106. génette, g. 1982: palimpsestes: la littérature au second degré. paris: seuil. hill, j. ed 1983: old english minor heroic poems. durham: durham & st. andrews medieval texts. juan camilo conde silvestre ____________________________________________________________________ 78 isaacs, n. d. 1968: structure and excellence: deor and the critics. structural principles of old english poetry. knoxville: u. of tenessee press, 107-114. jauss, h. r. 1979: the alterity and modernity of medieval literature. new literary history 10: 181-230. kiernan, k. 1978: deor: the consolation of an anglo -saxon boethius. neuphilologische mitteilungen 79: 333-340. lawrence, w. w. 1911: the song of deor. modern philology 9: 23-45. lotman, i. m. 1970. the structure of the artistic text. ann arbor: michigan slavic cont (1977). magoun, f. p. jr. 1942: deors klage und guírúnarkviía. englische studien 75: 1-5. malone, k. 1934: the theodoric of the rök inscription. acta philologica scandinavica 9: 76-84. malone, k. 1937: the tale of geat and mæíhill. english studies 19: 193-199. malone, k. ed 1933: deor. exeter: u. of exeter p. (1977, 4th ed.). mandel, j. 1977: exemplum and refrain: the meaning of deor. the yearbook of english studies 7: 1-9. markland, m. f. 1968: boethius, alfred and deor. modern philology 66: 1-4. norman, f. 1937: deor: a criticism and an interpretation. modern language review 32: 374-381. norman, f. 1965: problems in the dating of deor and its allusions. franciplegius. medieval and linguistic studies in honor of f. peabody magoun jr (eds j.b. bessinger & r.p. creed). london: allen and unwin, 205-213. ong, w. j. 1982: orality and literacy. london: methuen. pearsall, d. 1977: old english and middle english poetry. london: r&kp. shippey, t. a. 1972: old english verse. london: hutchison. swanton, m. 1987: english literature before chaucer. london: longman. the spaces of medieval intertextuality: de or as a palimpsest ____________________________________________________________________ 79 thorpe, b. 1842: codex exoniensis. a collection of anglo-saxon poetry. london: society of antiquaries. [new york: ams press, 1975] tuggle, t. t. 1977: the structure of deor. studies in philology 74: 229-242. watts, v. e. trans. 1969: boethius. the consolation of philosophy. harmondsworth: penguin. whitbread, l. 1970: the pattern of misfortune in deor and other old english poems. neophilologus 54: 167-183. wrenn, c. l. 1967: a study of old english literature. london: harrap. zumthor, p. 1983: introduction á la poésie orale. paris: seuil. zumthor, p. 1987: la lettre et la voix. de la litterature médiévale. paris: seuil. * † * selim07 (2).pdf ____________________________________________________________________ 195 o’keeffe o’brien katherine. ed. 1997: reading old english texts. cambridge, cambridge university press. xi+ 231 pp. reading old english texts focuses on the critical methods currently being used and developed for reading and analysing texts written in old english. the book is arranged with nine chapters in charge of well known scholars. moreover, each chapter engages with current work on old english texts from a particular methodological stance. the authors are all experts in old english language and literature. each section includes a brief historical background and a definition of the method under consideration; furthermore, we find in this volume an illustration of the ways in which texts are read through this approach. the larger issues raised by the interactions between the separate chapters are a major focus of the introduction written by the editor k. o’brien o’keeffe who give us a brief historical background to the approach. from the very beginning o’keeffe informs us about the main interest of the volume, and she says “this is a book about ways of reading old english, each of which presupposes a set of interpretative practices” (1). it has been suggested that our fin -de-siècle looks back on a century of prodigious changes and on intellectual movements which present us with stunning changes in looking at the world. “our challenge in looking forward” says the editor, “is to think of the ways in which these new perspectives help us to ask new questions in old english” (17). in chapter one, the comparative approach, m. lapidge shows how the comparative analysis is accessible to any student of literature who is versed in at least two languages. the application of the comparative approach re quires no lengthy apprenticeship in the vocabularies of the latest theoretical movements because this kind of analysis is immediate and direct and may be practised by any reader who possesses a wide literary culture, and in the case of old english has been practised by critics of very various ability “since the time when old english literature first emerged as a subject of interest in its own right” (20). lapidge points out that this method has been practised since ____________________________________________________________________ 196 old english first came to light in the early nineteenth century and in various guises is flourishing today. (frank 1987, orchard 1995) traditionally scholars of anglo -saxon culture, such as w. p. ker (1904) or h. m. chadwick (1912) followed a “cultural relativism” (viktor zhirmunsky 1967). once the new criticism came to be practised by students of old english literature in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, interest in the comparative works done by ker and chadwick among others, inevitably waned. therefore, students of comparative literature were obliged to rethink the theoretical bases on which their discipline rested (wellek 1963, fokkema 1982), and was redefined with a wider conception of the discipline. “it cannot be confined to a single method: description, characterisation, interpretation, narration, evaluation, are used in its discourse just as much as comparison” (wellek 1970). in the last three decades, the comparative method has embraced various post-modern critical approaches, semiotics, deconstruction or psychoanalysis to mention only three. the comparative method yielded sig nificant results analysing motifs, types and theme s, including those of kin ship, commitatus, exile, community, drinking, feasting, the hall, treasures, weapons, beasts of battle, fate, “ubi sunt”, consolation, “sapientia et fortitudo”, and many others. (greenfield -robinson 1980). but it is in the study of literary genres that the comparative method has yielded more significant re sults, and lapidge illustrates this assertion by considering four genres of old english: gnomic, enigmatic, epic, and lyric verse. the essay shows how the development of the comparative method in volves more than placing two texts side by side. it is known that current comparative work in old english has taken more culturally informed directions than in previous decades, and combines textual and cultural analysis. in order to prove this fact, lapidge offers a demonstration of the comparative method in his reading of two apparently dissimilar epic moments in beowulf: grendel’s descend into fear at the recognition of beowulf’s grip and turnus realisation that he is about to lose his battle against aeneas. here, the purpose of the comparative approach is to accentuate the distinctive and individual features of a particular work of literature. lapidge is optimistic about the future of this approach and he says: “though it (the comparative approach) has a long and distinguished past, therefore, the comparative approach may also be said to have a bright future in anglo -saxon studies” (35). ____________________________________________________________________ 197 d. scragg in chapter 2, source study, shows how source studies work in a textual culture in which borrowing ideas was the dominant intellectual practice. we know that old english literature did not have authors, in the modern sense, and the anglo -saxon culture did not have a concept of ideas in the way that copyright law construes them as intellectual property. in this milieu source study seeks to make discriminations. the main interest in source analysis is to establish levels of borrowing for further studies of the stylistic difference of a particular old english text and “let us see what forms the poets imagination imposes on his given material and gives us the clearest idea of the poet he is” (irving 1983). scragg points out that in the first half of this century source studies were essentially historical and were wedded to a rather mechanical reflex of positivism, but in the last decades, he says, source analysis is most interested in cultural concepts and principles, looking for the vehicles for transmissions of ideas, the manuscripts moving to and from the continent or the traces of intellectual exchange with the irish or the continent. on the other hand, the term “source” must be confined to written texts or material that may be thought to have reached the author in written form, even if no manuscript copy survives (40). old english source studies began in the nineteenth-century as an adjunct to establish an authoritative text, and an author's sources were seen as a “scientific” evidence. scragg writes very briefly about various international projects associated with sources such as a handlist of anglo-saxon manuscripts by helmut gneuss, which aims to describe the contents of all manuscripts written or owned in england before 1100. another project mentioned by scragg is sources of anglo-saxon literary culture saslc, organised in the united states; this project aims at a scrupulous search for evidence of knowledge of all classical, patristic, and carolingian texts in anglo saxon england; at the same time, the project tries to correct and improve the volume written by ogilvy (1981 (1967)). the approach remains similar to that of ogilvy in that the latin authors are listed alphabetically, but the scope of the inquiry is much wider taking in oral and written material and evidence from booklists as well as from surviving manuscripts. the work is supported by detailed bibliographical lists and though the entries are by individual scholars they follow a standard formula. the completed work is expected to be published in four volumes and also perhaps electronically, as scragg says ____________________________________________________________________ 198 “this work will become one of the most significant works of scholarship of its generation.” (53) alongside saslc there is another international project fontes anglosaxonici: a register of written sources used by authors in anglo-saxon england. this project and saslc project are complementary; the first one works backwards from texts written in england to their sources in english, latin or greek, while saslc works forward from latin authors to anglo saxon england. all these projects can provide vital information, says scragg "such vital information as that which distinguishes transgressive texts from those which support the dominant ideology can be best gained from an in sight into the materials that anglo -saxon authors worked with” (56). d. donoghue in his essay language matters looks at the claims of philology and linguistics in their studies of old english and the apparent division between these disciplines. donoghue points out that current practitioners of philology consciously distance themselves from the claims of positivism, erecting, testing and modifying their hypotheses with clear understanding of the subjectivity involved. donoghue examines the dichotomy between philological and linguistic approaches to old english language and old english texts, illustrating how both combine in contemporary writing on old english and how both continue et renew and reinvent their engagements with the subject. philologists direct their work to textual editing and to compiling reference works such as grammars and dictionaries, they study mainly old english narrative poetry taking into account empirical data and they keep their theories on a descriptive level (mitchell 1985). linguistics, on the other hand, move from a sampling of fata to a theory in the hope of establishing rules “with sweeping explanatory power”; linguistics prefer prose with identifiable dates as the closest approximation to the spoken language. in fact, in 1992 were published three books that blurred the traditional division; r.d. fulk’s a history of old english meter, richard m. hogg’s a grammar of old english , and the cambridge history of the english language vol. 1 edited by hogg. in these books we can appreciate the fusion of the two methodologies in different ways and actually hogg admits that he does not find the philology-linguistics debate helpful, and sees instead a symbiotic relationship between the empiricism of one and the theoretical orientation of the other. ____________________________________________________________________ 199 donoghue works in his essay through an argument on kuhn’s law, both to illustrate the specific process of thinking in an approach through language, and to demonstrate some ways in which such an approach connects itself with current questions in palaeography and editing. as donoghue says: “it would be wise for those revisiting kuhn’s law satzpartikelgesetz to consider not just metrical and syntactic theory but also a specialised kind of reception theory to which the manuscript context might point” (75). n. howe presents in his assay historicist approaches the various ways in which scholars of old english literature have use history in the service of their reading and he examines historicist approaches in two planes: the kinds of narratives they use and the ways in which they deploy their evidence. he analyses briefly theories and forms of historicism and he considers three well known books written by girvan (1935), huppé (1959) and tolkien (1936). the volume written by girvan presents a portrait of social conditions in seventhcentury england as a theoretical model and then he finds these same conditions depicted in beowulf. huppé, on the other hand, draws its exegetical-patristic framework from augustine’s writings in order to set old english poetry within the christian ideal of “caritas” in an anglo -saxon audience. both critics believe that the text must be read within the accepted hegemonic ideas and forms of its culture. tolkien, however, studies beowulf as a historical poem about the pagan past, but he thinks that this epic poem is above all a literary text because his author has written it with a poetical and not with a historical interest. in the last decades critics, as robinson (1985), follow philological-formalist methods and they depart from verbal texture of the poems. howe agrees with this methodology and suggests in the article that modern readers must guard against the overly generalised and allencompassing forms of reading used by critics such as girvan or huppé. to illustrate the ways in which historicist reading can illuminate an old english text, howe presents aelfric’s colloquy and in his reading shows the ways in which historicism attempts to negociate the gap between past and present. we can appreciate in his essay a protest against “dead” history. he points out that the facts that may well help us best historicize old english texts come first from the language in which these same texts are written and then from the physical manuscript contexts in which they survive. howe tell u s: ____________________________________________________________________ 200 anglo -saxonists must turn to the language itself and perform a kind of linguistic ethnography or archaeology, a reading of the culture through its words and its grammar. in a direct sense, historicist criticism of old english texts is most likely to be illuminating when it grounds itself in a sense of the language and yet also ventures beyond the self-imposed proscriptions of traditional philology (89). a. orchard examines various models for approaching the distinction between oral and written elements in old english in his essay oral tradition. orchard shows the ways in which the hypothesis for orality in old english argued on the basis of homeric and south slavic poetry that formulas were the guarantee of oral origin. last century some german scholars have noted that old english verse is fundamentally formulaic relaying heavily on re peated words and phrases. these theories were wholly submerged in the immediate wake of the widespread application of the so-called “oral formulaic” theory to old english poetry in the 1950s and 60s. the logic of this theory relied on milman parry and albert lord who had sought to demonstrate that homer was an illiterate bard. in 1953 magoun applied oral formulaic theory to beowulf and suggested that the poem was an oral text composed entirely of formulas, large and small; therefore, beowulf is formulaic and not a lettered poem. in the last two or three decades, however, many critics have suggested that old english verse does not rely simply on the verbatim repetition of inflexible formulas, but rather on the recognition of related formulaic systems. more recently, crit ics have suggested that orality and literacy are interacted in subtle ways. orchard tries to show how this method can be extended to old english prose texts. in his study about wulfstan’s sermons, the author states that repetition occurs at the level of phrase, theme and larger passages. orchard also studies the repetition technique in some exeter book riddles, 30, 36 etc., some of them are the product of a written transmission while others may re flect some oral elements; this fact shows the difficulties in determining how repetition and variance function in a scribal culture and the contradictory in herent in any study of the oral tradition in anglo -saxon england. his further brief analysis of the metrical preface of the pastoral care, which may be alfred's work, shows how the metrical text demonstrates some oral elements ____________________________________________________________________ 201 besides his “literacy”. to sum up, orchard's main interest is to show how old english texts reflect the complex interaction between orality and literacy. p. e. szarmach presents, in his essay about the recovery of the original texts, a theoretical discussion and a contribution to the decline and fall of the “absolute” text; he shows how the various choices an editor can make in preparing an edition affect what we can read in the text and how the text means. szarmach points out that reading old english texts requires an understanding of how any text we read has come into being in the way we read it. he says that it requires some understanding of the manner in which texts came to be preserv ed, how they were transmitted, the circumstances under which they were copied, and the relevant factors under which they received the printed form which aids our reading. szarmach divides his essay in four sections: the one and the many: optimism and recensionism, instability of texts, the special case: oral literature, and towards an electronic future for editing. szarmach, in dealing with the editions of old english texts, analyses two main traditions of textual criticism, the “optimist” edition, (the editor presents the best text of a given work), and the “recensionist” edition or “eclectic” text; in this case the editor attempts to recreate the author's texts choosing readings from various witnesses. szarmach points out that these methods are practically irrelevant for old english studies and a theoretical bother because in most cases we have only one text. when the author is re ferring to the “instability of texts, he presents three examples: in the first one, he study the different interpretations given by thorpe and godden in their editions of aelfric’s catholic homilies and how the different treatments of the text can influence the meaning. in the second example he shows the editorial interpretations of the terms “mod-thrydo waeg” in beowulf l. 1931b; the problem is to know how many verbal units we have in this expression or weather this terms represent the name of a female character. in the third example the author analyses the opening of the wife's lament, an ambiguous text as there is no “consensus omnium” whether the feminine singular forms “geomorre” and “mynre sylfre” are referring back to a woman or to an alle gorical figure rendered in feminine grammatical form. the possible existence of a female voice means “that the poem could be the earliest such poem in the middle ages, antedating by hundreds of years a more ready documented later medieval tradition” (136). in the third section of his article, szarmach presents the fact that old english literature is basically an oral literature, and ____________________________________________________________________ 202 therefo re editors must be aware that there is another level of mediation beyond those which a lettered transmission history imposes; the editors and the readers, is suggested, must keep in mind that there was an oral tradition in old english literature that had its impact on the written tradition. finally, szarmach tell us about the future of the electronic editions and he suggest that the product will contain five grand categories: text, glossary, in tertext, graphics and bibliography; at the same time, modern technology makes possible the inclussion of other categories such as sound, video, etc. on the other hand, szarmach points out that the creative editor has moved “to the fore directing meaning intrusively”, as the editors may affect the meaning of the texts they edit on the grand level of version or on the local textual level of word choice. “if the computer is the wave of the future” he says, “then the user/ reader will have his/ her day, and democracy, not expertise, will rule” (143). clare lees in her essay at a crossroads: old english and feminist criticism analyses the relationship between feminist criticism and anglo -saxon studies in four sections: feminist origins and omissions, history, methodology, difference; gender, genre and identity, and elene’s voice. it is known that feminist criticism, mainly in its more radical forms shares with other postmodern theories a certain scepticism about narratives of origins. in the last three decades, however, feminist critics have participated in many studies about the relation between feminism and old english texts. lees offers a preliminary sketch on the history of feminism in anglo -saxon studies. the author explores the ways in which feminist approaches to old english texts draw attention to the presuppositions of the discipline; her analysis of femi nist scholarship on old english addresses questions of method. she addresses a critical methodology issue: how the feminists negotiate between the methods and techniques of conventional studies and the strategies of feminist theory and praxis? her question is relevant for old english studies since it addresses the ways in which political desire and objective technique may be made to work productively together. lees in the last section of her essay suggests that reading women also requires reading men, and the representation of masculine warrior culture in the surviving texts points out to the constructed and gendered aesthetics of the canon of old english writings. lees suggests that cynewulf’s elene can be read following various strategies of feminist criticism to produce readings which show the ____________________________________________________________________ 203 operations of gender and agency in old english literature. the author explores the relation between gender, genre, and the formation of belief in culture, her reading of elene points to how both genre and gender intersect in elene's representation as a christian figure and how the meaning of that figure is further nuanced by exploring the connections ad disconnection between allegory and gender. carol b. pasternack deals with the applicability of post-modern theories to the reading of old english texts in her essay post-structuralist theories: the subject and the text. it is known that structuralism broke the idea that texts directly represent culture or society, and that the meaning in language is constructed rather than natural and is constructed differently for each language and culture. post-structuralist theories (derrida’s deconstruction, barthe’s and kristeva’s semiotics and textuality, lacan’s psychoanalytic theory of the subject and foucault’s study of culture) are based on the principle that rather than any natural or universal concept, the relational structure of thought generates meaning, and that structures of thought are structured into and by the linguistic system of a culture and so can be analysed as texts. in her essay, pasternack study five sections: deconstruction and the textual basis of perception, semiotics and textuality, the post-structuralist subject, an archaeology of culture through texts, and the anglo -saxon subject in beowulf. the author shows how a number of these approaches, semiotics and textuality, psychoanalysis, deconstruction etc., have provoked new forms of his torical analyses, not only of the old english texts themselves, but also of the culture which produced them and the culture which receive them. she fo cuses her essay on the subject and the text taken into account the post-structuralist thought. in her reading of the poem beowulf, the author addresses the vision of the heroic past using post-structural analyses of the language and an acceptance of the contradictions individual words seem to embrace, and urges a form of historicism in which past and present are constructed to reflect on each other. peter baker opened his essay old english and computing: a guided tour, asking whether the computer had produced a theoretical revolution in literary studies or had merely enabled scholars to do more effectively what they had ____________________________________________________________________ 204 being doing all along. his essay is divided into six sections in order to cover the various electronic resources used in old english studies nowadays: the dictionary of old english and the electronic text; ansaxnet: the global conversation; hyportext, the world -wide web and the electronic edition; ready reference: the database; digital imaging and the electronic beowulf, and finally conclusion: back to the beginning. baker presents a brief survey of the history of the computer in old english scholarship that goes back to the 1960’s and 1970’s. j.b. bessinger produced two well known concordances: a concordance to beowulf and a concordance to the anglo-saxon poetic records). the most ambitious of these projects, however, was undertaken at the university of toronto under the direction of angus cameron who proposed to generate an electronic database containing everything written in old english, 3.000.000 words contained in the 2000 surviving old english texts. the result was published in two works, a michrofiche concordance to old english (1980) and a michrofiche concordance to old english: the high frequency words (1985). the michrofiche concordance made an immediate impact in the world of old english scholarship. baker’s survey prompts the question whether these resources mark a revolution in studies within old english or whether they merely allows us to do more of what we were doing before and more quickly; his answer is a cautious “yes” an a provocation to further discussion. it is obvious that the computer offers rapid access to unprecedented quantities of information and it permits us to look at information in new ways, but as baker says: it cannot tell us what information is important, if it can organise information, it cannot tell us how it should be organised. such decisions remains the province of human thought, and it is from thought -aided but never led by the tools we make that all theoretical revolution must arise. in conclusion, o’keeffe states that “this is a book about ways of reading old english,” and in other paragraph she says “the approaches presented in this volume are offered not as a prescriptions for method, but rather as overviews of ways of reading and invitations to explore further work” (16). these aims no doubt have been achieved by the volume, certainly we are ____________________________________________________________________ 205 dealing with a timely book taking into account the interest in the theory, method, and practice of critical reading in recent years. moreover, the essays have a presentation and explanation with a scholarly and didactic approach; reading old english texts is a very good book for the student of old english language, literature and culture; in fact, they are concerned to explain their method and its application to a broad undergraduate scholarship who can discovered many suggestions for future works. finally, we are faced with a brief bibliography organised in different sections to facilitate the subsequent desire for further reading. a. bravo university of oviedo references chadwick, h. m. 1912: the heroic age. cup. cambridge. fokkema, d. w. 1967: comparatve literature and the new paradigm. canadian review of comparative literature. 9: 1-18. fulk, r. d. 1992. history of old english meter. philadelphia. girvan r. 1935. bowulf and the seventh century. methuen, london. greenfield s. & f. robinson. eds. 1972: a bibliography of publications on old english literature to the end of 1972. university of toronto press, toronto. huppé, b. 1959: doctrine and poetry: augustine’s influence on old english poetry. state university new york press, albany. magoun, f. 1953: oral-formulaic character of anglo-saxon narrative poetry . speculum 28: 446-67. mitchell, bruce 1985: old english syntax. blackwell, oxford. ____________________________________________________________________ 206 ogilvy, j. d. 1981 (1967): books known to the english, 597-1066. harvard university press, cambridge, mass. robinson, f. 1985: beowulf and the appositive style. university of tennessee press, knoxville. tolkien, j. r. r. 1936: beowulf: the monsters and the critics. pba 22. wellek, r. 1963: concepts of criticism. yale university press, new haven. wellek, r. 1970: discriminations: further concepts of criticism. yale university press, new haven. zhirmunsky. v. 1967: on the study of comparative literature. oxford slavonic papers 13 i-13. * † * selim06.pdf ____________________________________________________________________ 178 morrall, e. j. ed. 1996: piccolomini, aeneas silvius (pius ii): the goodli history of the ladye lucres. oxford: eets oup. xlii + 73 pp. hardback. this text has been scrupulously edited, criticised and annotated, in a study carried out by professor morrall that unites conscientious scholarly analysis of the work, its sources, author, period and general characteristics with accessible commentary to illustrate its richness and literary worth. however, this volume is the consequence of another editing process, that which professor morrall intended to carry out on “the earliest german version of this product of early italian humanism” (p. v). consequently, the edition of this english version highly benefits from the wide-ranging literary scope and proficiency of this scholar. nearly half of the volume’s contents is devoted to the critical apparatus that surrounds the main text, a sixteenth century translation into english of the historia duobus amantibus (1444?). the author was silvius piccolomini, who would become pope pius ii, but was a layman at the time. the goodli history is an anonymous translation, published c. 1553, of the historia. the story tells the amours between lucres, a noble lady of sienna married to menelaus, and eurialus, a visitor in the city accompanying the emperor sigismund. a bawd is employed to convey messages until pandalus, a cousin of menelaus’s, eases the way for eurialus after his promise of a noble title in the emperor’s court. eurialus must eventually leave sienna with the emperor, and although he returns briefly, the separation literally kills lucres, while he lives mournfully ever after. morrall’s edited volume consists of a brief preface, a list of contents, a list of sigla and abbreviations, an introduction, a select bibliography, the goodli history text, notes on the text, a glossary, an index of proper names, and a list of concordance of the english and latin editions. interspersed in the text are three plates, whose origin is specified in the list of contents. already in the preface professor morrall states the amount of latin originals and vernacular versions he encountered in the process of edition, a knowledge which enables him to fundament his critical preference for one ____________________________________________________________________ 179 particular version, that by john day (1553?), as he explains later. he also advances how in silvius’s work the convention of the medieval romance is transformed in very enriching ways, since the original tale’s plain structure does not make for a religious dimension, which an ecclesiastic of the stature of pope pius ii would be inclined to pursue, while realism is made prominent in opposition to sentiment. the list of sigla is a comprehensible listing of the early printed editions of the goodli history, which morrall nominates a, b and c, for those editions of john day (1553?), john kynge (1560) and william copland (1567), and the most frequently cited latin versions of the historia duobus amantibus, four in all. in the introduction these a, b and c printed versions of the goodli history, and the four latin versions of the historia duobus amantibus are contextualised and commented on. the introduction offers a fine piece of critical research, and comprises five subsections: 1. the author, 2. the printed editions and the latin source, 3. the text, the characters and their prototypes, 4. the language and vocabulary of the translation, and 5. editing the text. thus morrall scrutinises every aspect of the text and its origins, its meaning and literary worth. in a review of piccolomi’s life morrall offers ample information on this figure that seems to have played a paramount role both on the political and religious spheres at a time when an ecclesiastic schism had to be sealed up and the fall of constantinople to the turks was rather recent. in 1442 he had been appointed poet laureate in frankfurt by the future emperor frederick iii; he also moved to vienna to be a secretary in the imperial chancery. he was likewise a committed scholar, whose knowledge of the latin classics and the previous italian generation was to provide him with the germ of this story of adulterous love between lucres and eurialus. other works of pic colomini’s were already known in england, mostly his de miseriis, which alexander barclay adapted in one of his eclogues (1514?). at about the same time, a first translation of the historia was published, although only a fragment exists. in subsection number 2, the printed editions and the latin source morrall explains the details (visible signatures, erasing, staining, binding, leaf size, number of lines per page, occurrence and appearance of ornamented initials, ____________________________________________________________________ 180 type colour, etc.) of the three earliest complete translations that exist of the historia (day’s, kynge’s and copland’s, as mentioned), and are compared in the light of these details. the wording is accessible even to the neophyte, a fact that should encourage students not very competent in early english texts to approach this particular one. this accessibility of phraseology and presentation is in my view one of the constants throughout the volume, and one of its principal advantages. morrall’s edition process proves marked by thoroughness and logic: “to demonstrate error and thus enable the editor to choose the best of the three english versions as a base for an edition it is necessary to investigate the text used as a source for the transla tion. this proved to be a latin version in a printed edition” (p. xv). he argues that his choice of the text for his edition was conditioned by their respective proximity to the latin original source for the translation, even though, as he maintains, all three have broadly the same text, and repeat approximately the same errors. most of these had already been noted by h. h. gibbs, who had produced a diplomatic reprint of william copland’s translation in 1873. morrall’s sifting process has undoubtedly been a patient and devoted one. he collated forty printed latin editions, and the conclusion of this process points to a 1488 edition by gerard leeu of antwerp, which shows a parallelism between its deviations from the original and the speech corruptions in the english translation. in addition to this, john day, the first printer of this translation, also had connections with antwerp, on both the religious and professional levels. subsection number three centres on the text and its characters and is by far the amplest in the introduction, which leads one to think of morrall as a scholar concerned as much, if not more, with strictly literary concerns (crossreferences, adaptations, intertextuality) as with editorial ones. because of its nature, this third section reads easily and throws interesting data on the pro tagonists of the tale and the tale itself. morrall reflects on the story as it appears in the english translation, as opposed to its longer latin original. in it the tale is preceded by letters to mariano sozzini and caspar schlick, which endow the tale with a realism heightened by an authorial indication that eurialus is an alias for schlick himself. sozzini was piccolomini’s friend and former teacher at the university ____________________________________________________________________ 181 of sienna; schlick was the imperial chancellor. however, these letters could serve precisely to make for a realism which a fictitious story lacked. in any case, since they are absent from the english translation, their documentary nature in this roman à clef is equally lost. by eliminating also a passage on the illicit ways by which men obtain their titles, morrall considers the translator is obscuring the author’s critical intention in writing this story, which is none other than warning the young of the perils of love’s frivolities. the characters, morrall discusses, may have been reflections of real life personalities. the moral purpose is built up in morrall’s view by piccolo mini’s choice of names for his protagonists, eurialus being the best example for his indebtedness to one of virgil’s trojan warriors, passionate and devoted, and to a gladiator created by juvenal who fathers an illegitima te child. morrall maintains that piccolomini only felt some sympathy for his male character towards the end of the story, which has eurialus withering away after news of lucres’s death of sadness has reached him. the author’s opin ion of the heroine is more positive, as seen already in her name. unlike the legendary roman lucretia, she does not commit suicide, but the theme of the broken heart runs parallel with multiple mentions to classical and legendary cases of women who in lady lucres’s position took t heir own lives, such as medea, ariadne and dido. piccolomini may have been partaking here of a debate held by the church and the humanists over the topic of suicide, one of the participants being coluccio salutati with his declaratio lucretiae (c. 1367), which evidently provided piccolomini with a name for the lady. in letting lucres die of dejection, he avoids making her an adulteress and a murderer. the reading public were ready to receive lucres with sympathy, morrall maintains, as they in deed did, to judge from the editions that ensued the first, since she had been created also a cultured and eloquent humanist. morrall goes on to examine the characters of pandalus and eurialus, who have each a correspondent in boccaccio’s filostrato, although of a different nature. he maintains the indebtedness of piccolomini’s work to that of boccaccio’s, in spite of the differences, the most important one being the reversal of roles in the pairs. it is criseida that abandons troilus, which she does for a new lover. troilus’s nobility and faithfulness are opposed to eurialus’s cynicism and fickleness, but also criseida outdoes eurialus in cruelty. structural ____________________________________________________________________ 182 and lexical proximity are proof morrall uses to stress the relationship between both works, for “the humanist parallels reinforce the thesis that the historia is indeed a roman á clef and based upon a genuine amorous adventure while being heavily indebted to literary models” (p. xxxiii). in the fourth section, dealing with the language and vocabulary of the translation, morrall gives ample evidence of his knowledge of literary fig ures, or rhetorical figures of speech, which come very helpfully accompanied by an explanation of their meaning and of course by examples. these figures, he says, constitute a sign of both the translator’s skills in adjusting these fig ures from the latin source and his ear for rhythm and musical effect. overall morrall considers the translation fluent and idiomatic, and that in spite of the occasional mistranslation. the reader perhaps misses in this introductory subsection a general outline of the characteristics of the english language at this particular time when the translation was carried out, more so once morrall states that the abundant rhetorical figures are “clear signs of a developing literary language” (p. xxxiii). in this period english was the object of serious attempts at cultivation and regularisation, when a conscious effort was being made to reproduce the standard of london and the court. this brought english to a state recognisable for the modern reader, mostly owing to the effects of the great vowel shift, on the pronunciation level, and to the eventual consequences of the printing press, on the spelling level. the spirit of the age, however, had spread to its language, distinguished by a plasticity people used to mould and categorise words at their will. new words, variation in pronunciation and spelling still prevailed, but would be settled with modern english. again, i am bearing in mind the beginner in early english, who would appreciate to have these general notions at hand prior to reading the text. even if these constitute basic knowledge of the development of the english language, it would represent no great effort to very cursorily point them out. finally, a fifth subsection deals with the technical aspects of the text edition. the text itself is presented within a clarifying framework, the only critical additions being line numbers and a notation system (of the type [a.i], [a.ii] … up to [h.iii]) to specify the gatherings of the original. the first are obviously used to identify lines that the later notes interpret in the section following the text. the latter show which gathering of the latin original ____________________________________________________________________ 183 commences with the line they are annexed to. both aids occur to the left of the main text in the even pages and to the right in the odd ones, following a system that does not hinder the reading of the text. a further convention, a vertical line, is used to mark the end of a page. all these points are clearly expounded by the author in the fifth and final section of the introductory es say (pp. xxxvii-xxxix), together with the minor alterations (misprints and little errors) he may have decided to emend in the edition. morrall’s own words explain that “the principal intention in editing this text has been to reproduce as closely as possible the book as originally printed by john day (a)” (p. xxxvii). the select bibliography comes preceded by the notice that certain entries must be looked for in the list of abbreviations and the notes to the introduction and the text. while acknowledging the appropriateness of having each reference and footnote specified where it is most necessary, i defend the use of comprehensive bibliographies, which do not demand too great an effort and provide the work with a sound bibliographical back-up that both the specialised scholar and the beginner like to find in one separate section. a difference is made between the use of footnotes and endnotes. the first are used to refer to variants between the early printed editions of the goodli history. no numerical reference appears in the body of the text to warn the reader of a footnote specification: this on the one hand allows for a fluent reading of the text, but on the other forces the reader to check the footnotes for an eventual explanation of specific points where he may need help. endnotes broadly serve to compare the translated version with the latin originals, and to provide commentaries on the author’s classical or legendary allusions. they are preceded by morall’s explanation of his methodological procedure. in their format they result rather straightforward: location is sig nalled by the page and line numbers separated by a stroke, and followed by the word(s) or sentence(s), in bold type, object of the explanation. otherwise, like the footnotes, they are not announced by a numerical superscript in the main text, this disadvantage being stressed here by the fact that these notes appear all at the end of the text, which forces the reader to continually move backward and forward in search of the translation’s affinities with the latin source or other type of extra information. ____________________________________________________________________ 184 overall, this is an accomplished edition of a translation into english of a latin original, with as much attention paid to the text itself as to the careful method followed in the critical apparatus. sections are clearly delineated and the conventions adopted explained, cross references to other sections made only when they may be necessary or explanatory. it is, i believe, a conscientious work of textual edition aided by accessible elucidation, virtues both of which turn this edition into an appealing object of study for scholars and students alike. on the whole, a volume worth reading both for the high scholarly criteria and the delightful tale of eurialus and lucres of sienna. eva m. pérez rodríguez university of oviedo * † * selim03.pdf 160 andrew breeze, selim 3 (1993): 150-153 a britonnic etymology for luche ‘throw’ in patience 230 luche is an extremely rare middle english word. it seems known only from line 230 of patience, where jonah is tossed into the sea: tyd by top and bi to thay token hym synne, into that lodlych loghe thay luche hym sone. that is, ‘quickly by head and toe they took him then, they pitch him forthwith into that terrible sea.’1 although editors agree on the translation ‘pitch’, the origin of luche has remained obscure.2oed s. v. lutch says nothing on etymology, merely noting the word’s survival in yorkshire, and citing a definition ‘to lift’ from a sheffield dialect gloss ary of 1888. med refers to old french lochier ‘to shake, hang, nearly fall’ and eslochier ‘to shake down, dislodge’; but it is difficult to accept this, since middle english normally retains french o in borrowings, as in propre, cofre, supposen, noble, rose, host, rost, and so on. 1 the oxford book of medieval english verse, ed. celia and kenneth sisam (oxford, 1970), 217. 2 patience, ed. j.j. anderson (manchester, 1969), 94; poetry of the age of chaucer, ed. a. c. and j. e. spearing (london, 1974), 129; the poems of the pearl manuscript, ed. m. r. andrew and r. a. waldron (london, 1978), 331; macmillan anthologies of english literature: the middle ages, ed. michael alexander and felicity riddy (london, 1989), 302. 161 as no satisfactory etymology for luche ‘pitch, throw’ is known, it is worth investigating a link with welsh lluch ‘drift (of snow, sand, etc.); cast or throw, fling’; lluchio ‘to throw, cast away, hurl, fling’; and lluwchio ‘to d rift (of snow), drive (of snow), blow a blizzard; cover (with ashes, dust, etc.); hurl, pelt (with stones, etc.).’1 these words are closely associated, lluwch being a natural development in medieval welsh of lluch.2 the history of the welsh forms is as follows. the oldest evidence for them occurs in a poem by cynddelw (fl. 1155-1200) on the warband of owain gwyynedd (d. 1170), which includes the line llary einnyawn lluchdawn llochessid ueirtyon ‘generous einion, showering down gifts, harboured poets’.3 lliw lluch ionawr ’the hue of a january snowdrift’, in a poem by gruffydd ap dafydd ap tudur (fl. 1285-1300) requesting a bow, is the earliest instance of lluch in the sense ‘drift’; it is odd that the basic meaning ‘a cast or throw, fling’ is unknown before the late nineteenth century, when it is recorded in gwynedd dialect.4 the verb lluchio is first attested with the sense ‘to throw, cast away, hurl, fling’ in the welsh bible of 1588, where 2 samuel xvi. 13 contains the phrase lychiodd lwôch iw erbyn ef ‘cast dust at him’ (modified to fwriai lch in the 1620 edition); lluchio in the sense ‘to cover ground with drifts (of snow, dust, etc.)’ appears earlier in a poem by tudur aled (fl. 1480-1526) requesting a horse, a powerful ‘lion’ leaving behind it 1 geiriadur prifysgol cymru (caerdydd, 1950-), 2216, 2217, 2232. 2 breuddwyd maxen, ed. ifor williams (bangor, 1907), 15-16; john morris-jones, a welsh grammar (oxford, 1913), 118; e. p. hamp, ‘the allophones of medieval welsh [x]and [ü]’, the bulletin of the board of celtic studies, xvi (1954-6), 284-5; d. s. evans, a grammar of middle welsh (dublin, 1964), 1-2. 3 the poetry in the red book of hergest, ed. j.g. evans (llanbedrog, 1911), col. 1393; llawysgrif hendregadredd, ed. john morris-jones and t.h. parry-williams (caerdydd, 1933), 173. 4 j. g. evans, col. 1254; o. h. fynes-clinton, ‘words in colloquial use in the bangor district’, the bulletin of the board of celtic studies, i (1921-3), 91-102, at 98; geiriadur, 2216. 162 llwch o’r rhiw’n lluchio’r heol ‘dust from the slope drifting over the road’.1 finally, the modified form lluwch ‘driven snow, snow-drift’ occurs in the work of dafydd ap gwilym (fl. 1330-60): ‘not white is the foam of lake or snowdrift (lluwch) … compared with the countenance of my darling, by mary!’.2 is it phonetically possible to relate modern welsh lluch [lix] and modern yorkshire dialect lutch [luts] ?. there is no problem as regards [l], which in welsh fully evolved from [l] probably only by the tenth century; while in old and middle welsh the sound represented by u was a long central rounded ü, which developed in late british from a long unrounded u.3 that is in accord with the form of middle english luche if a loan from brittonic. as for the ch of welsh lluch, this indicates an original british -cc-.4 because the change cc>ch is common to welsh, cornish and breton, it must have occurred before their separa tion, and thus be no later than sixth century.5 the earliest evidence for the change is found in the inscriptions broho (…) at llandysul, twelve miles north of carmarthen in south-west wales, and brohomagli, from near pentrefoelas, seven miles south-east of betws -ycoed in north wales.6 both inscriptions, containig celtic *brocco‘foremost, keen’ with ch spelt h, date from the mid sixth century.7 a sense ‘what is blown by the wind, drift’ would easily develop from a word originally meaning ‘throw, hurl’. hence it is likely that middle english 1gwaith tudur aled, ed. t. gwynn jones (caerdydd, 1926), 428; geiriadur, 2217. 2gwaith dafydd ap gwilym, ed. thomas parry (caerdydd, 1952), 138. 3 morris-jones, 13; k. h. jackson, language and history in early britain (edinburgh, 1953), 305, 480; d. s. evans, 1-2. 4 morris-jones, 133; henry lewis and holger pedersen, a concise comparative celtic grammar (göttingen, 1937), 53. 5 jackson, 565. 6 v. e. nash -williams, the early christian monuments of wales (cardiff, 1950), 100, 125 (where ‘holyhead railway’ should read ‘holyhead road’). 7 jackson, 566. 163 luche ‘pitch, throw’ is the result of a loan from brittonic of the ancestor form of lluch(io) before c. 550, when the geminated stops cc still existed in british; that these were fronted in primitive old english (compare the palatalized form crycc ‘crutch’); and then assibilated in late old english, giving middle and modern english [t*].1 in other words, luche and yorkshire dialectal lutch seem due to english borrowing from brittonic during the fifth or early sixth century; we may compare loghe ‘sea’ which, also in patience 230, is certainly a loan from celtic. luche and lutch are therefore evidence for early celtic influence on the anglo -saxons, perhaps of a military kind. since a word meaning ‘throw, hurl, pelt’ has obvious implications for fighting, the english may have learnt the word from british allies or enemies. andrew breeze university of navarre, pamplona * * * 1 alistair campbell, old english grammar (oxford, 1959), 174-6, 196-7. selim 20.indb simon d. keynes, selim 20 (2013–2014): 121–166issn: 1132–631x england and spain during the reign of king æthelred the unready abstract: this paper focuses attention on a small group of silver pennies of æthelred ii, king of england, minted c. 990, found at roncesvalles in northern spain, and a silver dirham of the caliph hisham ii of córdoba, minted c. 1000, found on the site of an important abbey which fl ourished at the same time in south-western england. no direct connection can be made between the two fi nds; but their signifi cance is explored here as evidence for contact of some kind between england and spain in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. keywords: æthelred the unready, ælfr ic of cerne, hisham ii, córdoba, anglo-spanish relations, pilgrimage, coinage. resumen: este artículo presta atención a un pequeño grupo de peniques de plata acuñados hacia 990 por etelredo ii, rey de inglaterra, y hallados en roncesvalles (norte de españa), y a un dirham de plata acuñado hacia 1000 en nombre del califa hisham ii de córdoba y encontrado en el sitio de una importante abadía que fl oreció por aquel tiempo en la inglaterra suroccidental. no se pueden hacer conexiones directas entre los dos hallazgos, pero aquí se estudia su relevancia como prueba de algún tipo de contacto entre inglaterra y españa a fi nales del siglo décimo y principios del undécimo. palabras clave: etelredo ii, ælfr ic de cerne, hisham ii, córdoba, relaciones angloespañolas, peregrinación, numismática. historians of anglo-saxon england might once have been predisposed, of their nature, towards an “insular” outlook on the past. of course it has long since become axiomatic that any aspect of the subject is best approached not only in its british context but also in wider dimensions. it is in part a matter of direct contact: of englishmen crossing the channel on journeys to foreign parts, under a variety of circumstances, and for whatever reason; or of missionaries, envoys, learned men and merchants travelling to england, again for one reason or another. it is also a matter of indirect infl uence: the impact on the english of whatever had been seen, absorbed, or brought in fr om overseas. it is a matter, furthermore, of analogies, contrasts, and similarities; of observing what questions or methods are driving historical enquiry in one context, and of considering whether anything similar might apply in england. the importance of the “continental” dimension is simon d. keynes 122selim 20 (2013–2014) self-evident already in the fi ft h century, and it remains so thereaft er, indeed until the english eventually succumbed to it to 1066. 1 england and spain about the year 1000 an historian of anglo-saxon england could venture overseas to italy, france, germany, the low countries, scandinavia, hungary, byzantium, jerusalem, even india—and fi nd something to say (in certain contexts a great deal) about contacts, connections, contrasts, and analogies. yet what about england and spain? although the works of isidore, bishop of seville (d. 636), of julian, archbishop of toledo (d. 690), and others, were well known in anglo-saxon england,1 there is little if any evidence of direct contact between visigothic spain and any of the english kingdoms in the seventh or early eighth century. the landscape changed following the arab conquest of the greater part of the iberian peninsula in the fi rst half of the eighth century; yet it was well known that the arabs had been halted by charles martel, at tours, in 732,2 and there must have been some awareness also of the christian polities which survived or emerged in the north. the range of overseas contact during the reign of king æthelred the unready was mapped by james campbell in 1978, raising questions which still await further exploration (campbell 1986; see also keynes 2006: 83–84, with references). my purpose here is to explore two pieces of evidence which are less visible, but which extend the horizons further. the evidence itself is numismatic; and attention was fi rst drawn to it, 1 knowledge of learned works in anglo-saxon england is assessed by lapidge 2006, on the basis of pre-conquest book-lists, the contents of surviving manuscripts, and citations in the works of anglo-saxon authors which indicate direct knowledge of identifi ed texts; see lapidge 2006: 309–313 (isidore) and 317– 318 (julian), with references. for spanish infl uence on the early english church, see also hunter blair 1970: 130–138, 246. 2 bede, historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum, v.23, conceivably (if updated aft er 731) with reference to charles martel’s victory over the “saracens” in 732; cf. wallacehadrill 1988: 199. england and spain during the reign of king æthelred the unready 123 selim 20 (2013–2014) in the 1950s, by michael dolley (mateu y llopis & dolley 1952; dolley 1957; scarfe beckett 2003: 55, fn. 39; and especially naismith 2005: 207–209, challenging the received wisdom). in each case, however, the signifi cance of the evidence depends not so much on the coins themselves, as on wider associations suggested by the context in which coins of this period were found. it is arguable, moreover, that the two pieces of evidence, though separate, inform each other, and that their signifi cance is enhanced when they are assessed in combination. before looking more closely at this evidence, it might be helpful to compare england and spain in general terms. in the middle of the eighth century, at about the time when the arabs became fi rmly established in spain, the peoples known collectively as the english were distributed among seven identifi able polities: the “anglian” kingdoms of the northumbrians, the mercians, and the east angles; the “saxon” kingdoms of the west saxons, the east saxons, and the south saxons; and the kingdom of kent (keynes 1995, 1999, 2014). the power of the mercian kings was nearing its height; but the balance began to change in the 820s, and by the middle of the ninth century the rulers of the west saxons had extended their authority south-eastwards into kent, sussex, and essex. the seven kingdoms were thus reduced to four: northumbria, mercia, east anglia, and an enlarged kingdom of wessex (with its southeastern extension). not long aft erwards, in the 860s, the position was changed by the intensifi cation of the viking raids; and by 880 the anglian kingdoms of northumbria, mercia and east anglia had succumbed to the danes. in wessex, king alfr ed had managed to fend off the invaders, and had been recognised as king in what remained of the kingdom of mercia; indeed, he was described by contemporaries in the later 880s, and in the 890s, as king “of the anglo-saxons,” refl ecting the emergence during these years of a new polity, somewhere between the kingdom of the west saxons and the kingdom of the english. alfr ed’s son edward the elder and his grandson æthelstan built upon these “alfr edian” foundations, simon d. keynes 124selim 20 (2013–2014) taking the fr ontier up to the river humber, in 920, and further north to the river tweed, in 927, in this process turning alfr ed’s kingdom “of the anglo-saxons” into æthelstan’s kingdom “of the english.” needless to say, there were diffi culties, and complications. for the twenty years which followed the death of king æthelstan, in 939, little could be taken for granted; but the unifi ed kingdom of the english was re-established with the accession of king edgar in 959, and became more securely grounded in the 960s. a map representing england, c. 1000, shows a basic distinction between an area regarded as “english” and an area regarded as “danish;”3 and while all manner of tensions and complications lurked beneath the surface, the degree of political unity which had been achieved by that time was impressive. the “spanish” analogy for anglo-saxon england in the tenth century lies in part with the christian kingdoms of northern spain, and in part with the caliphate of córdoba in the south.4 a visitor coming fr om england would have passed fr om southwestern france into the territory of the kingdom of pamplona/ navarre (collins 1999: 687–691, 2012: 205–213; for catalonia, see zimmermann 1999: 440–449 and jarrett 2010). the story of this kingdom is told in terms of rulers who stand in a clear line of succession fr om 905 onwards, though the written record is meagre. it is interesting to note, at the same time, that the benedictine monastery at san martín de albelda, was founded apparently in the early 920s by sancho garcés i (905–925), and became a centre of some signifi cance in the second half of the tenth century.5 salvus, 3 keynes 2001; a series of maps representing various stages in the development of anglo-saxon england is available on the “kemble” website (www.kemble.asnc. cam.ac.uk). 4 for spain in this period, see kennedy 1996, kennedy 1999, collins 1999, and collins 2012, all with further references. for catalonia, see jarrett 2010 and collins 2012: 224–237. see also gerli et al. 2013. 5 for the monastery at albelda, see bishko 1948, with ubieto arteta 1960. england and spain during the reign of king æthelred the unready 125 selim 20 (2013–2014) abbot of san martín in the 950s, was important not only as an author in his own right, but also through his pupils, who were responsible for the production of the renowned “codex vigilanus (albeldensis),” written and illuminated at albelda by the monk vigila, and others, in the mid-970s.6 a visitor fr om england might travel further west fr om pamplona/navarre through the county of castile into the kingdom of león, perhaps reaching as far west as santiago de compostela (collins 1999: 670–687, 2012: 138–165 on león and 238–256 on castile; for the charters, see also collins 1990: 124–125). the written record is richer, providing a basis for deeper understanding of dynastic complications, of driving narratives (including interaction with the caliphate), and of the operation of royal government. during the last two decades of the tenth century, the christian north was attacked fr equently by the forces of the caliphate of córdoba, including the sack of león in 988 and the sack of santiago de compostela in 997;7 but in the early eleventh century the caliphate itself began to collapse fr om within. sancho garcés iii “the great” (1004–1035), ruler of the kingdom of navarre, was able to take advantage of the situation, extending his power to east and west. further to the south lay the caliphate of córdoba, under its umayyad rulers. abd al-rahman iii was emir fr om 912 and caliph of córdoba fr om 929 until his death in 961 (kennedy 1996: 87–99, 1999: 646–651; collins 2012: 130–137 on the expansion of córdoba and 166–174 on abd al-rahman). he came to be renowned for his patronage of learning, and for the development of fi rm institutions of government; he was also the builder (fr om c. 936) of the great palace complex at madinat al-zahra, about 8 kilometres west of córdoba, in the foothills of the sierra morena, commanding a 6 for the contents of the “codex vigilanus” (el escorial, ms. escurialensis d.i.2), see antolín 1910–1923: i.368–404; see also díaz y díaz 1979: 63–70. 7 see below, fn. 9. simon d. keynes 126selim 20 (2013–2014) fi ne view south across the guadalquivir valley.8 abd al-rahman iii’s son, al-hakam ii, caliph fr om 961 until his death in 976, presided over a period of stability, and also proved to be an eff ective and even an enlightened ruler; he is said to have accumulated a library comprising many thousands of books, and to have written a history of al-andalus (kennedy 1996: 99–106, 1999: 651–653; see also collins 1990: 110, 2012: 174–185, and 190–191 about the library). al-hakam ii was succeeded by his son, hisham ii, born in 965 and caliph fr om 976 to 1009, and again fr om 1010 to 1013 (collins 2012: 185–187, 189, and 199–201). hisham was, however, overshadowed by his ḥājib (grand vizier) ibn abi amir, known later as al-mansur (“the victorious”), and by other offi cers of state (kennedy 1996: 109–122 and kennedy 1999: 653–656; collins 2012: 185–195). it was al-mansur who masterminded the aggressive policy (jihād) adopted in the 980s and 990s towards the christians in the north, culminating with the sack of santiago de compostela in 997.9 he was also responsible for extending greatly the capacity of the magnifi cent tenth-century mosque at córdoba, and for the construction of a new palace complex, at madinat al-zahra, east of the city;10 the reconstructed remains of the caliphal baths, in córdoba, show modern tourists where more of the plotting and scheming might have taken place. no less extraordinary are the surviving objects fr om the period of the tenth-century caliphs, including several closely associated with the caliphs themselves (holod 1992, with dodds 1992: 190–213). at the same time a 8 on the building, destruction and rediscovery of madinat al-zahra, see vallejo triano 1992 and 2005: 11–26. 9 for the campaigns of al-mansur in the 980s and 990s, see smith 1988: 76–79 and melville & ubaydli 1992: 56–59. see also kennedy 1996: 109–122, isla 2001 and collins 2012: 191–194. 10 dodds 1992a. the arches make their impact even (or perhaps especially) as they survive incorporated within the later christian cathedral, following the “reconquest” of al-andalus in the thirteenth century. england and spain during the reign of king æthelred the unready 127 selim 20 (2013–2014) christian community continued to thrive at córdoba in the later tenth and early eleventh centuries,11 and is represented, for example, by the funerary inscription for a 75-year-old woman, dated 1020, fr om haza de los aguij ones.12 yet al-mansur had also weakened the prestige of the umayyad dynasty itself; and in the eleventh century the caliphate fr agmented into taifas (kennedy 1999: 656– 662; collins 2012: 194–195, 201–204). an historian of anglo-saxon england straying into this territory notices much that is quite naturally or more strangely familiar, whether in terms of the nature and quality of the available evidence or in terms of the driving forces behind the unfolding patterns of events. the physical remains of the tenth-century caliphate of córdoba which await the modern visitor to southern spain are more impressive than anything available for the tenth-century monarchy in anglo-saxon england;13 but of course equivalent buildings do not survive in the english context. in other respects, the anglosaxonist feels almost at home. the position of córdoba, with its magnifi cent roman bridge across the guadalquivir river (and seville further downstream), evokes the particular signifi cance of london, and the river thames, in the development of the kingdom of the english in the tenth century. there are analogies for king æthelstan and king edgar, for aspects of government, and for the problems likely to arise when a youthful king came to the throne in the aft ermath of a period of strong rule, surrounded by older family members, and holders of high offi ce, all pressing their own interests. whether there was any direct contact between england and the iberian peninsula is of course a diff erent matter. it may be that 11 on christians in córdoba, see hitchcock 2008: 41–51. 12 the inscribed stone is on display in the archaeological museum at seville. for such inscriptions, see collins 1990: 113–114. 13 the quality of the buildings and objects of the tenth and eleventh centuries is well represented in dodds 1992, which accompanied an exhibition held in that year at the metropolitan museum of art, new york. simon d. keynes 128selim 20 (2013–2014) nothing of the kind is recorded for the later eighth, ninth and tenth centuries; but that is not to say there was none. trade routes by land and sea connected one part of the european mainland to another, and what applied to merchants going about their business applied equally to pilgrims, envoys, outcasts, and brigands.14 indirect routes for the transmission of information fr om spain to england, at high levels, would have been via agencies in germany or france, perhaps in some cases meeting in rome. in 953 john, monk of gorze, was sent by otto i as an envoy to abd al-rahman iii, and resided at córdoba for three years; john became abbot of gorze in 960, and died in 974.15 his story is inseparable fr om that of recemund (rabi ibn sid al-usquf [the bishop]; see christys 2002: 108–134, collins 2012: 92–93), a christian (mozarab) who served abd alrahman iii as secretary, who was sent as an envoy fr om córdoba to ottonian germany in the mid-950s, where he interacted with liudprand of cremona, and who aft er his return to al-andalus, as bishop of elvira, presented the “calendar of córdoba” to al-hakam ii. also in germany, hrotsvitha of gandersheim (c. 935–c. 1002) wrote the passio s. pelagii, about a ten-year-old boy fr om galicia who had been executed by order of abd al-rahman iii in the mid-920s.16 the frenchman gerbert, monk of aurillac, studied for a short time in catalonia, where he learnt much fr om atto, bishop of vic, about mathematics and other branches of learning as taught in córdoba in the days of al-hakam ii; gerbert served later 14 for the background, see mccormick 2001. in a late tenth-century iranian tract (hudud al-‘alam), britain is described as “an emporium of rum and spain,” i.e. “the storehouse of goods fr om byzantium (rum) and spain (al-andalus),” whatever that might mean; see minorsky 1970: 8, 158. i am grateful to rory naismith for drawing this reference to my attention. 15 for the primary account (vita iohannis abbatis gorziensis, chs. 121–135), see smith 1988: 62–75 (text and translation). for further discussion, see wormald 1988: 26–29, hitchcock 2008: 41–47, and collins 2012: 82–84. 16 on the development of the cult of st pelagius of córdoba, see christys 2002: 94–101, with collins 2012: 155. england and spain during the reign of king æthelred the unready 129 selim 20 (2013–2014) as tutor to otto, son of the emperor otto i, and to the emperor otto iii, eventually succeeding pope gregory v as sylvester ii (999–1003; riché 1987; guyotjeannin & poulie 1996; collins 2012: 136–137). given connections of such kinds reaching fr om germany and france into spain, and back, it is easy to imagine how stories of the christian kingdoms in the north, and of the caliphate in the south, might have reached anglo-saxon england, perhaps in some cases prompting a wish for direct contact and better information.17 although one should not forget the example of john of gorze, one might expect any visitor fr om england in this period to gravitate towards northern spain. in this connection it would be as well, therefore, to bear in mind the numismatic evidence. the point of departure for a recently published survey of the coinage of the christian polities of the iberian peninsula, across the whole of the period fr om c. 1000 to c. 1500, is determined by the fact that coin production did not start in pamplona/navarre until the early eleventh century, and did not appear further west, in león/ castile, until some time later.18 the authors look back at earlier coinages which circulated in the peninsula, including carolingian issues as well as the gold dinars and silver dirhams minted in the names of tenth-century caliphs of córdoba; and it is clear that use was made during this period, in the christian kingdoms of the north, of the gold and silver coinage of the caliphate.19 an english visitor to northern spain in the late tenth or early eleventh century, accustomed to the well regulated coinage of his own country, 17 on england and germany in the tenth century, see keynes 2006: 83–84, with references. the (ottonian) dowgate hill brooch (british museum), found (most interestingly) in london, is symbolic of the same connections. 18 crusafont et al. 2013: 15–16 (pamplona/navarre) and 16–17 (león/castile). for the earlier visigothic coinages (to 714), see grierson & blackburn 1986: 39–54. 19 crusafont et al. 2013: 6–8, 25. for the coinage of the caliphate, see miles 1950, frochoso sánchez 1996, and canto garcía et al.: 2007. on caliphate dirhams, see cano ávila & martín gómez 2004, 2009. simon d. keynes 130selim 20 (2013–2014) might well have noticed the diff erence; he might also have noticed the dirhams. 2 silver pennies of king æthelred found in the pyrenees the fi rst object for special attention is a small parcel of anglosaxon silver pennies, found at puerto de ibañeta, in the pyrenees, on the border between france and spain. in 1934 some graves were uncovered in the ruins of a medieval chapel at this place, which had been destroyed by fi re in 1884.20 one of the graves contained a group of six pennies of æthelred the unready, king of the english fr om 978 to 1016. three of the coins (figures 1–3) are now in the museotesoro de la real colegiata de roncesvalles (nos. 842–844), and featured in an exhibition of coinage fr om late antiquity to the early middle ages held in the museo de navarra, pamplona, in 2001;21 the others are now untraced.22 five of the six coins were pennies of king æthelred’s so-called first hand type, bearing on one side an image of the king, identifi ed as “æthelred rex anglorum,” and on the other side a representation of the hand of god, with the letters alpha and omega to each side. the inscriptions on the reverse reveal that two of the fi ve first hand pennies were minted at london, one at winchester, one at totnes (in devon, in the south-west), and one at exeter (also in devon). the sixth was a penny of king æthelred’s so-called second hand type, which is 20 mateu y llopis 1950. the hoard is included in the list of hoards and single fi nds, for navarre, in crusafont et al. 2013: 516. 21 marot salsas 2001: 72, with 329 (no. 77), illustrating the three coins in the museo-tesoro de la real colegiata de roncesvalles. see figures 1-3. 22 the (supposedly northumbrian) copper coin associated in some way with the hoard (mateu y llopis 1950: 209; mateu y llopis & dolley 1952: 89, fn. 2; crusafont et al. 2013: 516, recorded as a styca of king eanred) does not appear to survive. it is most unlikely that a ninth-century northumbrian coin was associated with the pennies of king æthelred; and in its absence it must be left aside, as an object of unidentifi ed origin and unknown signifi cance. england and spain during the reign of king æthelred the unready 131 selim 20 (2013–2014) very similar to first hand, but with additional features on each side; it too was minted at exeter, in the south-west. figure 1: “first hand” penny, totnes (museo-tesoro de la real colegiata de roncesvalles, no. 843) silver pennies of king æthelred, which survive in large numbers, represent the products of a monetary system which had developed during the course of the tenth century, in the unifi ed kingdom of the english, and which had been signifi cantly reformed in the early 970s, in the closing years of the reign of king edgar (d. 975). some of the basic principles behind the new arrangements (such as uniformity of design) must have been determined fr om the outset, but aspects of its operation are likely to have been determined by unfolding circumstances, as the years passed, allowing scope at all times for modifi cation and innovation. edgar’s so-called reform or small cross type was introduced a couple of years before he died, and was followed by what proved to be the sole, small cross, type of his son edward the martyr, and by what is known as æthelred’s first small cross type (so-called to distinguish it fr om his later types with similar designs). when a design or type was changed, dies for coins of the new type were issued to the moneyers currently active at some or all of the mints currently in operation, at much the same time although not always simultaneously; and, aft er periods which simon d. keynes 132selim 20 (2013–2014) proved during æthelred’s reign to be of roughly six years, the type already in use was replaced by a new type, with various diff erences. the relative order of the successive types is well established, and the changes of type can be dated quite closely; but it was a system which was intended to serve the interests of those who controlled it, and it is unlikely that they would have tied themselves to any infl exible arrangements.23 figure 2: “first hand” penny, winchester (museo-tesoro de la real colegiata de roncesvalles, no. 844) the fi ve pennies of the first hand type found in the grave at puerto de ibañeta would have circulated in england during the early to mid-980s; the second hand type was introduced probably in the mid-980s, so the presence of one second hand penny alongside the fi ve first hand pennies suggests that the coins, as a group, came together in the midor later 980s. the fact that two of the first hand pennies were minted in the south-west, at totnes and at exeter, with two others fr om london and one fr om winchester, and the fact that the (newer) second hand penny was minted at 23 for one instance of such fl exibility, arising fr om particular circumstances, see keynes & naismith 2012: 196–201. for a signifi cant reappraisal of the “reform” of the coinage in the late tenth century, see naismith forthcoming; for further discussion, see keynes forthcoming. england and spain during the reign of king æthelred the unready 133 selim 20 (2013–2014) exeter, give the group a “south-western” identity. the coins do not seem to have formed part of a larger treasure, generated by commerce or by some other activity; rather, they seem to represent a small and compact parcel of coins drawn fr om those circulating in south-western england in the late tenth century, perhaps the remaining contents of a purse carried by an englishman who had left south-western england at about this time (c. 990), made his way southwards through france, and died while crossing the pyrenees fr om south-west france into north-eastern spain (or on his way back fr om spain to england). whatever the case (whether coming or going), he died, and was buried alongside others in a hospice of some kind by the side of the road. figure 3: “second hand” penny, exeter (museo-tesoro de la real colegiata de roncesvalles, no. 845) the hoard of silver pennies of king æthelred the unready, found in a grave at puerto de ibañeta, is perhaps the earliest tangible evidence for the presence of an englishman in spain. yet one could not fail to be impressed, at the same time, by the location of this grave. it lies on one of the major routes between south-western france and north-eastern spain, which would have been used for journeys of many kinds in both directions. if a traveller were to be heading north-east, fr om pamplona (for example) into france (and simon d. keynes 134selim 20 (2013–2014) beyond), he would soon be climbing up into the pyrenees. a high point on one such crossing is roncesvalles; and puerto de ibañeta, where the hoard was found, lies a hundred metres higher up in the mountains, a couple of kilometres further along the way fr om spain into france. it is of course an area with powerful associations. we read in the annales regni francorum how charlemagne led his army into spain, in 778, in order to assert his power across the border, culminating with his attack on pamplona and his subjugation of the people;24 the story of the basque ambush on the rearguard is told in the “revised” version of the annals, adding how it “shadowed the king’s view of his success in spain.”25 in his life of charlemagne, einhard describes the incident in greater detail, naming roland, “the lord of the breton march,” among the dead.26 the place where the action took place was named already in the eleventh century as roncesvalles; and the stories gave rise in due course to the chanson de roland (mckitterick 2008: 134, 226, fn. 57). the route across the pass at ibañeta was used also by pilgrims travelling fr om south-western france across the pyrenees, and further west into spain, en route for the shrine of the apostle st james the greater at santiago de compostela. following earlier tradition (represented by isidore), st james (brother of st john) had been represented by aldhelm of malmesbury, in the early eighth century, and by the compiler of the old english martyrology, in the ninth century, as the apostle who had converted the men of spain to christianity.27 the legend developed further in the ninth 24 for the annales regni francorum (arf), see scholz 1970, and mckitterick 2008: 24–56, with further references. 25 arf 778, in scholz 1970: 56–58 (with map). 26 einhard, vita karoli, ch. 9, in dutton 1998: 21–22; for allusions in the astronomer’s life of louis the pious, see mckitterick 2008: 21, 26. 27 aldhelm, carmen ecclesiasticum iv.iv, in lapidge & rosier 1985: 43, 52; rauer 2013: 144–145, 275. england and spain during the reign of king æthelred the unready 135 selim 20 (2013–2014) century, especially in spain, and must have been widely known.28 the fi rst recorded pilgrim to santiago de compostela was godescalc, bishop of le puy-en-velay (935–955; bourbon 1965; lauransonrosaz 2004); and the evidence is of a kind which suggests another dimension in our appreciation of the wider context. on his journey through spain, in 950, bishop godescalc commissioned gómez, monk of san martín de albelda, to make a copy of de perpetua uirginitate mariae contra tres infi deles, by ildefonsus of toledo (d. 667). when godescalc collected the book, on his journey back to the auvergne, in january 951, gómez entered in it a detailed record of the circumstances in which the book had been commissioned and delivered.29 albelda de iregua lies just south of logroño, where the bishop might have joined the main route leading further west to santiago de compostela; and we are reminded in this way that pilgrims passed close to a religious house which in the tenth century was one of the centres of benedictine monasticism in northern spain. the monk gómez, of san martín de albelda, produced the book for godescalc in 950–951; some years later, in the mid-970s, the monks vigila, serracino and garcía, also of san martín de albelda, produced the so-called codex vigilanus, with its images of king sancho garcés ii, his consort urraca fernández (d. 1007), and his brother ramiro, and with its extraordinary collection of texts.30 one can but assume that enthusiasm for the pilgrimage spread as returning pilgrims passed on reports by word of mouth. in his life of abbo, abbot of fleury, the monk aimoin of fleury mentions an altar dedicated to st james [the greater] among six which received special attention there; on which basis it has been suggested that abbo felt particular devotion to james, and might even have visited 28 on the cult of st james, and the origins of pilgrimage to santiago de compostela, see fletcher 1984: 53–77, 78–101; see also collins 2102: 112–118. 29 paris, bn lat. 2855, fols. 69v–71r (facsimile online): printed in delisle 1868: 516, and in díaz y díaz 1979: 279–280 (appendix i); see also blanco garcía 1937: 11–13. 30 for the codex vigilanus, see above, fn. 6. simon d. keynes 136selim 20 (2013–2014) the shrine at santiago de compostela.31 all that matters for present purposes is that compostela is known to have been a destination for pilgrims already in the mid-tenth century; and the fact that it was sacked by al-mansur, in 997, and the bells taken back to córdoba, points in the same direction.32 the fi rst person said to have travelled as a pilgrim fr om england to santiago de compostela did so c. 1100 (fletcher 1984: 96). the fi rst recorded instance of something cannot of course provide more than a terminus ante quem for the beginning of whatever is at stake; and, given the example of bishop godescalc, it may be that our man fr om the west country was en route there, c. 990, or on his way home, taking english participation back into the anglo-saxon period.33 like a modern pilgrim, setting out fr om france along the “way of st james,” he might have begun the fi nal stage of the journey at s. jean pied-de-port, in the foothills of the pyrenees, walking (or riding) fr om there up into the mountains. aft er 20 kilometres he would have skirted round a mountain top, and found himself in the vicinity of what is now the chapel at puerto ibañeta (1,055m), still about 600 kilometres short of santiago de compostela. the person buried at ibañeta might have been caught up in zeal “to be a pilgrim;” or perhaps he been prompted to leave home by the onset of viking raids, which had begun (or resumed) in the 980s.34 at the same time, one should not discount the possibility that the 31 defourneaux 1949: 65, 66. for aimoin’s vita et passio sancti abbonis, see bautier et al. 2004: 106 (ch. 15). 32 see above, fn. 9. 33 the small parcel of coins fr om puerto de ibañeta is included in balaguer 1994: 30–36 (no. 2). 34 mateu y llopis & dolley 1952 made the connection with the pilgrimage, but then contemplated the rather wild notion (described as a “faint possibility”) that the pilgrim was a scandinavian, that his coins were part of the proceeds of raiding in the late 980s or early 990s, and that he was now on his way to spain to do battle against the (muslim) infi del. england and spain during the reign of king æthelred the unready 137 selim 20 (2013–2014) pilgrim was a priest, or a monk, and that advantage would be taken of opportunities to visit other religious houses along the way. 3 a dirham of hisham ii (c. 1000) found at cerne abbey i turn now fr om the small parcel of silver pennies of king æthelred the unready, found at ibañeta, in north-eastern spain, to a silver dirham of hisham ii, caliph of córdoba, and a contemporary of king æthelred, found at cerne abbas, in south-western england. it was claimed in the early twelft h century that cerne abbey, in dorset, had been founded by st augustine in the early seventh century, and that it was associated also with the hermit st eadwold, brother of edmund, king of the east angles (d. 869).35 the place is better known today for the “cerne giant,” a large fi gure (180 feet or 55 metres tall) of a naked man wielding a club, cut into the chalk hillside overlooking the abbey. the fi gure is supposed by some to have originated as a romano-british representation of hercules, in which case it might follow that the abbey was founded in deliberately close proximity to an ancient landmark of a particular kind; but if simply the product of a seventeenth-century imagination, one would be left with the possibility that the other associations (assuming that they were recognised already in the tenth century) had been enough to attract attention. it seems that a small religious house was established at cerne during the reign of king edgar (959–975).36 it was associated fr om the outset, or soon came to be associated in some way, with æthelweard, ealdorman of the western shires,37 and his son æthelmær. the former held high offi ce during the reigns of edward the martyr (975–978) and æthelred the unready (978–1016); he is known above all for his latin version of the 35 william of malmesbury, gesta pontifi cum anglorum, ii.84 (winterbottom & thomson 2007: i.290–292, ii.128). 36 for further details, see the entry for cerne on the “kemble” website (above, fn. 3), under “archives;” see also yorke 1988. 37 for this style, see sawyer 1968: no. 891, with keynes 2013: 116–118. simon d. keynes 138selim 20 (2013–2014) anglo-saxon chronicle, and died c. 998 (gretsch 2013: 205–209). æthelmær was conspicuous among those attending royal assemblies fr om the late 980s until c. 1005, when he appears to have “retired” to eynsham abbey in oxfordshire; he emerges again into view as ealdorman in the south-west, during the closing years of æthelred’s reign.38 at æthelmær’s request, and with the approval of ælfheah, bishop of winchester (984–1006), ælfr ic, a monk and mass-priest of winchester, was sent fr om winchester to cerne (probably to act there as master of the school).39 ælfr ic seems to have remained at cerne for several years (which is to say that he is not known to have been based anywhere else), though no doubt he would have maintained other connections.40 it is thus presumed to have been at cerne that ælfr ic wrote the two series of his “catholic homilies,” dedicated to archbishop sigeric (990–994), and at cerne too that he wrote his “lives of the saints,” for æthelmær and for his father ealdorman æthelweard.41 in or soon aft er 1005 ælfr ic was appointed abbot of the abbey which æthelmær had founded at eynsham; and he was active there for another fi ve or ten years (keynes 2007: 160– 170, keynes 2009). cerne abbey was thus the place where, across the 15-year period fr om c. 990 to c. 1005, ælfr ic lived his religious life, absorbed the contents of the books in his library, and transmitted his learning through his own teaching and writings; and it is this, quite simply, that gives anything which can be associated with cerne, during this period, an interest of its own. 38 for æthelweard and æthelmær, see keynes 1980: 191–192, with keynes 2002, available online on the “kemble” website, tables lxii (ealdormen) and lxiii (thegns), and keynes 2009: 451–454; see also cubitt 2009: 171–184. 39 for ælfr ic’s statement to this eff ect, see clemoes 1997: 174, with godden 2000: xxix–xxxvi and 4–5. 40 for ælfr ic’s career, see wilcox 1994: 2–15 and godden 2004 and 2014. for the context in dorset, see hall 2000, wilcox 2005. 41 for further discussion, see gneuss 2009: 6, hill 2009: 51–60, and gretsch 2013: 205–209. england and spain during the reign of king æthelred the unready 139 selim 20 (2013–2014) as we have seen, ælfr ic had been sent fr om winchester to cerne, at æthelmær’s request, some time between mid-october 984 (when ælfheah became bishop of winchester) and late october 994 (when archbishop sigeric died). the record of the abbey’s property tempore regis eadwardi (1066) and tempore regis willelmi (1086), provided in domesday book, provides good evidence of the development of the abbey’s endowment across the fi rst hundred years of its existence. in a league-table of religious houses in dorset, cerne was second only to shaft esbury, and comfortably ahead of the other houses at milton, abbotsbury, sherborne, cranborne and horton (knowles 1963: 702–703; hill 1981: 154). important evidence bearing on the composition of the community at cerne in the late 980s and early 990s is provided by a manuscript of the “first series” of ælfr ic’s “catholic homilies,” arguably written there c. 990;42 but the documentary evidence is meagre. the abbey’s endowment by 1066 amounted to a total of more than 120 hides; on which basis one might have hoped to fi nd a considerable number of royal diplomas preserved among the abbey’s muniments, as title-deeds for its separate estates, perhaps complemented by some vernacular records. the only surviving charter relating to cerne abbey before domesday book (1086) is a text, copied probably fr om a single sheet into the thirteenth-century cartae antiquae rolls, which purports to record the abbey’s foundation and endowment.43 it is dated 987, and takes the form of a record, in latin, of a declaration by æthelmær, son of æthelweard, and thegn (satrapa) of king æthelred, by which he made known to the king, and to archbishop dunstan, bishop ælfheah, the bishops 42 bl royal 7 c xii. for the palaeographical and linguistic evidence, see scragg 2012 and 2014: 145. 43 kew, national archives, c 52/21, no. 16, registered in sawyer 1968: no. 1217. it is not clear in what circumstances or for what purpose a copy of this charter was enrolled among the cartae antiquae rolls (kew, na, c 52); see further below, fn. 45. simon d. keynes 140selim 20 (2013–2014) and all the “wise men” (sapientiae) of the english people, that he had founded and endowed the monastery at cerne (cernel) for the king, himself, “and for the beloved soul of my father” (pro dilecta mihi animula mei genitoris), as best he could;44 and that a few years later he had increased the endowment with other lands, including the reversion (aft er his days) of the estate (uilla) of cerne itself, the reversion of the estate (uilla) at esher (æscere), as well as (with immediate eff ect) four other estates. although it is quite likely that the person who created this charter had access to genuine pre-conquest material, in latin and in the vernacular, it is hard to believe that it existed in this form in the late tenth century. perhaps, having fastened on a credible date (987), a later monk of cerne fabricated a text which looked back fr om that date to an earlier period, and for good measure incorporated some other (perhaps later) acquisitions, in order to provide the abbey with its own charter of foundation. it is possible that the act of fabrication arose fr om the abbey’s particular interest in land at esher, surrey;45 it is also possible that the charter was the product of a wish or need at cerne to establish its historical identity with help fr om records found among its ancient muniments. we may pass over the abbey’s history in the middle ages.46 if only to judge fr om the testimony of a disaff ected monk of cerne, in 44 compare æthelmær’s vernacular declaration to the royal assembly in 1005, embedded in the diploma for eynsham abbey; see keynes 2009: 461–462. 45 ealdorman æthelweard had granted an estate of 20 hides at esher to his son æthelmær, who gave it to eynsham, together with the adjacent estate at thames ditton; keynes 2009: 472–473. the estates were not retained by eynsham, and part of esher was given by william i to the abbot of la croix-saint-leufr oy (as recorded in domesday book). cerne abbey’s residual interest in esher emerges fr om the curia regis rolls for 1219–1220, which show that the abbot attempted to recover land at esher fr om the abbot of la croix-saint-leufr oy, apparently without result. 46 for an account of cerne abbey, see page 1908: 53–58. see also vale & vale 2000: 15–25. england and spain during the reign of king æthelred the unready 141 selim 20 (2013–2014) 1535, the abbey deserved the fate it suff ered in 1539 (see bettey 1988). the site was allowed thereaft er to fall into disrepair, and was soon being plundered for building materials. early in the 18th century the site passed into the hands of the pitt family, of stratfi eld saye, in hampshire.47 little now remains of the abbey itself. the main buildings stood just north of the present village (cerne abbas), on the eastern part of the present churchyard, which is itself detached fr om and to the north of the fourteenth-century parish church of st mary. in other words, the abbey lay at the foot of “giant hill,” in apparent association of some kind with the unexplained earthworks immediately north and east of the site. by the middle of the eighteenth century, the surviving remains comprised a porch to the abbot’s hall (c. 1500), a fi ft eenth-century building known as the “guest house” (which when fi rst built might have been an earlier abbot’s hall), and a fi ft eenth-century barn further north. another prominent building on the site of the abbey, formerly known as the abbey house or abbey farm (now the “manor house”), incorporates some older fabric which might once have been part of the abbey gatehouse. a fourteenth-century tithe barn, long since restored and converted to domestic use, stands some distance to the south-west of the main abbey site.48 it is oft en the case that useful information on the fate of an ancient abbey, and of its buildings, treasures, books, estates, and muniments, in the period fr om the dissolution of the monasteries in the late 1530s to the mid-nineteenth century, can be recovered fr om the writings of antiquaries active in the early modern period. 47 the pitt-rivers family estate archive is accessible in dorchester, dorset history centre (d-pit). it includes d-pit/p/5 (map of cerne in 1768) and d-pit/p/6 (map of cerne in 1798), both of which are available online. the site was sold by the pitt-rivers family in 1919, and changed hands again in 1937. it belongs now to the barons digby, of minterne house, minterne magna, just north of cerne abbas. 48 for an authoritative description of the abbey site, and the standing remains, see royal commission on historical monuments 1952: 74–85 (“cerne abbas”), with maps and plans; see also vale & vale 2000: 23–25 (with illustrations). simon d. keynes 142selim 20 (2013–2014) much of their work is readily available in the books they published; and more is to be found among their surviving papers, now widely dispersed. the natural points of departure are the county-bycounty surveys in camden’s britannia, published (in latin) fr om 1586, and available in english translation fr om 1610.49 this great work led in turn to the more detailed county histories which began to proliferate in the seventeenth century, and also to expand. dorset received close attention in the mid-eighteenth century fr om the antiquary john hutchins (1698–1773).50 hutchins’s work was taken forward by richard gough (1735–1809);51 and in his role as editor of hutchins, gough became part of the research network which had the printer-publisher john nichols (1745–1826) at its centre.52 in the 1760s hutchins was gathering material for his history of dorset, and recorded for these purposes what was to be seen at cerne. “of the conventual church there is not the least remains. it is supposed to have stood e of the abby house, perhaps parallel with the church yard.” he refers also to “a broken stone, no doubt brought hither out of the abby church, which serves for a step,” which carried an incomplete inscription referring to the last abbot.53 hutchins died on 21 june 1773; at which point gough 49 for william camden (1551–1623), and his britannia, see herendeen 2007, and his entry on camden in odnb 2004 (online); see also keynes 2014. 50 bettey 1994; sweet 2004; and bettey’s entry on hutchins in odnb 2004 (online). 51 see sweet’s entry on gough, in odnb 2004 (online), and the several papers “in celebration of richard gough (1735–1809),” in bodleian library record 22.2 (2009). 52 for collaboration between gough and nichols on dorset, see pooley 2009, esp. 144 and 146. 53 oxford, bodleian library, ms. gough dorset 8 (sc 17874), pp. 67–77. there are some drawings and engravings of cerne (1769, 1793) in oxford, bodleian library, gough maps 6 (dorset) (sc 17503), refl ecting interest in the abbey buildings as well as in the giant. england and spain during the reign of king æthelred the unready 143 selim 20 (2013–2014) took over and saw the history through its fi nal stages. the account of cerne in the fi rst edition, largely if not entirely the work of hutchins himself, does not contain any suggestion that there had been recent digging or building operations on the site, and one imagines that it was based on his own observations.54 in the later 1770s and early 1780s gough worked on an edition of camden’s britannia, translated fr om the latin edition published in 1607, but substantially augmented for each county by his own additions. gough’s manuscript, as prepared for the printer, survives in three large volumes,55 and the edition itself was published in 1789. in his account of cerne, gough remarks that “all its remains are a gateway and a noble stone barn,” and like hutchins he says nothing of recent fi nds.56 the accounts of cerne abbas published in 1774 (hutchins/ gough) and 1789 (camden/gough) suggest, albeit only in their silence, that digging and salvaging operations on the site of the medieval abbey (presumably for building materials) had not made much of an impact there in the 1770s and 1780s. a diff erent impression emerges fr om subsequent editions of these works, suggesting that digging at cerne intensifi ed in the 1790s. gough inserted additions and notes of various kinds in his own copy of the 1789 edition of camden’s britannia, in ways which suggest that he was actively engaged in a fairly random process over an extended period; though there is no obvious sign here of incoming information on cerne.57 however, a sentence added by gough in the edition of britannia published in 1806 refers explicitly to recent digging on the abbey site: “all its remains are a gateway and a noble 54 hutchins 1774: ii.286–296 (cerne). gough’s copy of this work, in oxford, bodleian library, gough dorset 3–4 (sc 17906–7), contains his occasional notes, as well as some accounts; but nothing useful for present purposes. 55 oxford, bodleian library, mss. gough gen. top. 34–6 (sc 17623–5). 56 camden ed. gough 1789: i.50. 57 oxford, bodleian library, gough gen. top. 372–3 (sc 17675–6). simon d. keynes 144selim 20 (2013–2014) stone barn. some defaced monuments of abbots were lately dug up in the site of the monastic church.”58 by this time gough was in fact also engaged on the production of a second revised and augmented edition of hutchins’s history of dorset.59 in this case, a large amount of material relating directly to the making of the new edition has survived, including four volumes of gough’s correspondence in the bodleian library,60 and other material now in the library of the dorset county museum, dorchester.61 there is so much, indeed, that one can but wait to see what it might reveal, in detail, about the ways in which information came to gough about various places in dorset. by may 1806 the sheets which included cerne, in the third volume of the second edition, were already being circulated for comment,62 and by early february 1808 the printing of the volume as a whole was nearly fi nished. alas, however, the entire stock, save only the one copy already in the author’s hands, was destroyed in the fi re which ravaged nichols’s printing offi ce and 58 camden ed. gough et al. 1806: i. 68. 59 for hutchins’s work on the second edition, see douch 1973: xiii; see also below, fn. 64. 60 the three volumes of gough’s general correspondence for the second edition, including his draft replies, are oxford, bodleian library, ms. top. dorset d. 3 (sc 53893) [a–c]; ms. top. gen. d. 3 (sc 25533) [d–o], not including nichols; and ms. top. dorset d. 4 (sc 53894) [p–y]. another volume, containing correspondence between gough and his son-in-law, gen. bellasis, about hutchins’s dorset, is ms. gough gen. top. 42 (sc 47263). 61 the items in the dorset county museum library include the only surviving copy (gough’s own) of the fi rst printing of what was to be the third volume of the second edition of hutchins, which escaped the fi re at the printer’s works on 8 february 1808 (below, fn. 63). i am grateful to the museum staff for their responses to my queries (e-mail, 3 july 2014). 62 letter fr om the clergyman-antiquary thomas rackett to richard gough, 26 may 1806 (oxford, bodleian library, ms. top. gen. d. 3 (sc 25533), fol. 152). england and spain during the reign of king æthelred the unready 145 selim 20 (2013–2014) warehouse on 8 february 1808, and it was not until 1813 that the volume was reconstructed, printed and published.63 richard gough’s account of cerne, written presumably c. 1805 and known in the form as published in 1813, contains a tantalizing account of the various traces of the medieval abbey which had come to light during operations of one kind or another over a period of years, perhaps especially since 1790.64 the “monuments of two abbots” had been dug up in the abbey ruins, and were laid across a ditch. other fr agments of monuments had been dug up at various times in the churchyard and the adjoining fi eld. in 1790, or thereabouts, when men were digging in the fi eld, the remains of a “sepulchral chapel or shrine” were found at the west end of the church, over what seemed to be a woman’s grave; nearby were some coffi ns “with effi gies of monks,” which were left alone. fragments of monuments had been found fr equently “near the centre of the present churchyard” (of the parish church); the south transept of the abbey was presumed to have been nearby. a “pavement of fi ne glazed fi gured tiles,” now covered with turf, lay in the north-east corner of the churchyard, thought to be the fl oor of a chapel at the east end of the old church. various stone fr agments “which must have been brought over fr om the abbey” could be recognised in the town. the “deepest foundations” of the abbey incorporated the remains of “a former handsome building;” a hoard of “large irregularly formed pieces (of gold)” had been found c. 1740 in 63 in his account of the fi re in the gentleman’s magazine, for february 1808, pp. 99–100, nicholas lists the concluding volume of hutchins’s dorset fi rst among the volumes then in the press, and describes it as “nearly fi nished.” 64 hutchins 1796–1815: iii.314–315. substantially the same text was used many years later in hutchins 1861–1873: iv.27, with necessary modifi cations. for example, the phrases “and now laid across a ditch” and “was lately dug up” in the 2nd edition (1808/1813) were changed in the 3rd edition (1873) to “in 1810 laid across a ditch” or “dug up about 1810;” but a signifi cant use of the phrase “about 20 years ago,” in the 2nd edition (referring to c. 1790), was left as it was, creating a false impression that there had been further digging in the 1850s. simon d. keynes 146selim 20 (2013–2014) an old abbey wall; and a seal of the abbey “was lately dug up” in a garden. the use of the ground as the parish cemetery would impede or prevent further investigation, leaving one largely reliant on this account. it is likely, however, that some of the special objects found at cerne in the late eighteenth and fi rst half of the nineteenth centuries would have remained on the site. some might have passed into the collection formed before 1884 by general foxpitt-rivers (1827–1900), and may be lurking to this day in the pittrivers museum, at oxford; other objects, certainly fr om cerne, including two medieval stone carvings and six tiles, are registered and illustrated in the catalogue of general pitt-rivers’s “second” collection, formed in the later 1880s and 1890s, and were displayed in the pitt-rivers museum at farnham, dorset (bowden 1991).65 what, then, of the dirham fr om cerne? it would appear that john nichols had mentioned it in conversation with, or in a letter to, richard gough, probably in may 1806. for in a supplementary response, dated 30 may, gough remarks: “i forgot to say that if you could convey the silver coin you mention at cerne in any safe way by mr penny or any other hand i will return it the same way.”66 assuming that the dirham and the silver coin were one and the same, it is clear that gough appreciated its importance. it may be, however, that it had come to light too late for inclusion in the account of cerne in the second edition of hutchins, and might anyway have been considered worthy of more detailed discussion than would be appropriate in that context. in due course gough 65 the catalogue of the farnham collection is cambridge, university library, ms add. 9455/1–9, on which see thompson & renfr ew 1999. for the items fr om cerne, see add. 9455/2, p. 337 (two stone carvings and six tiles), dated 22 sept. 1887. in 1975 the “wessex collections” fr om the pitt-rivers museum at farnham were given by hm treasury to the salisbury and south wiltshire museum; items fr om the collection are displayed in the archaeology galleries which opened there in july 2014. 66 letter fr om gough to nichols, 30 may 1806, cited here fr om the database of the nichols archives project. i owe this reference to the kindness of julian pooley. england and spain during the reign of king æthelred the unready 147 selim 20 (2013–2014) addressed a formal report to nichols, in his capacity as editor of the gentleman’s magazine, dated 1 september [1807].67 mr. urban, sept. 1 [1807] the coin (fig. 10) was found in the ruins of cerne abbey, dorset. it has a very fair legend on both sides; and, by a ring of silver-wire affi xed to it, seems to have been used as an amulet by some person with whom it was probably interred. the legend is on one side of the area the usual symbol of there is one god. on the margin of the same side: “in the name of god this drachm was struck at andalusea (cordovia) in the year (a. h.) 320” (rather doubtful). on the area of the reverse: “munwaya billah, emperor of the faithful,” with a continuation of the symbol; in the margin, “mohammed is the prophet of god,” &c. yours, &c. d. h. it was common practice for letters of antiquarian import to be addressed in this way to the editor of the gentleman’s magazine;68 and in this instance the initials “d. h.” are known to signify richard gough.69 the letter as published was accompanied by an engraving of a drawing which showed both sides of the coin (see figure 4). it must have been known, in late 1807, that the third volume of the second edition, containing the account of cerne abbas, would be published in 1808; so it may be that the dirham had only recently come to light, and that gough thought it suffi ciently interesting to draw attention to its existence separately. clearly, much might turn 67 gentleman’s magazine 77 (1807), pt ii, p. 916, with engraved plate (p. 913). it would be interesting to fi nd the original letter, and with it the original drawing; but my search has not yet produced the desired result. 68 the second volume of gough’s correspondence (above, n. 81) contains a letter fr om “hd,” dated 15 september 1796, apprising “mr urban” of a roman coin, which is illustrated, found at frampton, dorset, and asking readers for “any information relative to its date.” 69 for gough’s numerous contributions to the gentleman’s magazine, see kuist 1982: 64–74. simon d. keynes 148selim 20 (2013–2014) on the exchange in may 1806, if only the letters and any associated documentation could be found. figure 4. cerne abbas dirham of hisham ii (389 ah, 998–999 ad) fr om the gentleman’s magazine (october, 1807) unfortunately, the dirham itself is not known to exist. if by any chance it passed into gough’s own collection, it is not visible in the catalogue of his “museum,” sold at auction in july 1810;70 nor has it been identifi ed in any of the major collections in london, oxford or cambridge. one can but hope, therefore, that it might yet be found in one or other of the two pitt-rivers collections, in oxford or salisbury.71 the dirham is readily identifi ed, however, on the basis of gough’s engraving, as a silver dirham of hisham ii.72 on the obverse, the inscription in the three lines of the central fi eld is an expression of islamic faith; the inscription in the outer circle specifi es the mint (al-andalus) and the year in the islamic calendar 70 museum goughianum: a catalogue of the collection of prints, drawings, coins, medals, seals, painted glass, etc., of r. gough, sotheby’s sale catalogue, 19 july 1810 (london, 1810). 71 see above, fn. 47. 72 miles 1950, and frochoso sánchez 1996: 82–84 (dirhams of ah 389–390). see also canto garcía et al. 2007. england and spain during the reign of king æthelred the unready 149 selim 20 (2013–2014) (anno hegirae). on the reverse, the inscription in the three lines of the central fi eld identifi es the caliph; the inscription in the outer circle is a further expression of faith. the date on the obverse was read by gough, in 1807, as ah 320, though he considered his reading “rather doubtful.” the date was read by dr john walker, for michael dolley, in 1957, as ah 390 (dolley 1957: 242). the coin (as depicted in gough’s engraving) has been re-examined for present purposes by professor pedro cano ávila, of the university of seville; and the date is read by him as ah 389 [friday 23 dec. 998–tuesday 12 dec. 999].73 the dirham was said by gough to have “a ring of silver-wire affi xed to it,” suggesting (to him) that it had been used as an amulet by its owner. in other words, it seems that the coin had been pierced, and that a wire had been run through the hole (or holes) so that the coin could be mounted or suspended in some way for a decorative purpose. figure 5: a dirham of hisham ii (private collection), similar in type and date (ah 390, 999–1000 ad) to the one found at cerne abbey (known only fr om the engraving in figure 4) 73 i am most grateful to professor cano ávila for confi rming the identifi cation of the coin fr om cerne, on the basis of the engraving published in the gentleman’s magazine, as a dirham of hisham ii (ah 389), citing frochoso sánchez 1996: 198 (389.38 d). simon d. keynes 150selim 20 (2013–2014) a set of ten dirhams of al-hakam ii and hisham ii, each of which is pierced twice, apparently for attachment to a headband, formed part of the early eleventh-century hoard of precious objects found at lorca, murcia, in the nineteenth century (now in the victoria and albert museum, london; gómez-moreno 1951: 338–341; see figure 5). piercing indicates that a dirham was being used for a purpose other than currency; and on the evidence of this hoard it was practised in spain, and perhaps imitated as well. so what might the presence of this coin at cerne signify ? although gough made no reference to the coin in his account of cerne, as published in 1813, it is reassuring to know that it had come to light in the context of the serious and well informed interest taken by a distinguished antiquary in the site of the medieval abbey. it could have been found anywhere on the site of the abbey, dropped by accident by its original owner rather than buried with him in the abbey’s cemetery; for while gough might have been told that it had been found in the graveyard, he says no more than that it might have been used as an amulet by the person with whom it was “probably interred.” the problem is, of course, that one has no idea for how many years the dirham had circulated in spain, or in what circumstances it came to england; nor could one hope to know for how long it remained above ground in england, before it came to be lost or buried at cerne. the great majority of the arabic or “kufi c” coins found in anglo-saxon england are of the abbasid dynasty, coming ultimately fr om the eastern islamic empire; it is altogether more unusual to fi nd an umayyad dirham among them, fr om al-andalus.74 a famous gold coin of off a, king of the mercians (757–796), seems to have been modelled on an abbasid dinar of ah 157 (ad 773–774), which probably owed its presence in south-eastern england to commerce (chick 2010: 55 (type 1 a), with naismith 2010). the presence of eighthand 74 for a survey of this material, see scarfe beckett 2003: 54–59, extended, in greater depth and detail, by naismith 2005. england and spain during the reign of king æthelred the unready 151 selim 20 (2013–2014) ninth-century arabic coins in england, including one fr om spain found at hamwic (southampton) and another fr om spain found among a signifi cantly larger number of abbasid dirhams in the cuerdale hoard, is attributed to the agency of scandinavians (in their various capacities).75 however, the umayyad element in coinhoards deposited in scandinavia and eastern europe increases in the late tenth century (c. 1000), a phenomenon attributed to renewed or increased involvement of scandinavians in their particular brand of aggravated commerce.76 the dirham found at cerne, which is in fact the only coin of the tenth-century caliphate of córdoba found in england, seems to be included in this picture as if it were evidence of the same kind, and is thus interpreted, with those found in scandinavia and elsewhere, in terms of the same forms of activity, in the late tenth century, leading fr om the iberian peninsula to germany, england, and scandinavia.77 it is arguable, however, that the dirham fr om cerne should be regarded as a diff erent and special case.78 its interest lies only in part in the fact that it is an umayyad dirham fr om al-andalus, of a certain date (c. 1000), found in england; it lies also in the circumstance that it would appear to have found, as a singleton, in the graveyard of the religious house at cerne, in dorset, and thus in a context which separates it fr om vikings, or fr om major trade 75 for the former, see brown 1988. for the latter, see lowick 1976: 21–22 and 24–25, with warhurst 1982, no. 1108. 76 linder welin 1965; noonan 1980; barceló 1983: 11–14; kromann 1988, with discussion of the heligholmen hoard at 246–247; mikolajczyk 1988: 262. 77 the early work by linder welin, cited in dolley 1957, led to her own publication in 1965, which was itself followed by various other publications in the 1980s. 78 i follow naismith 2005: 207–208, 209, who suggests that the dirham fr om cerne (no. 31 in his list) might represent a souvenir of travel through frankia to spain, possibly to santiago de compostela, adding that “single fi nds fr om southern and western england are less likely to represent viking activity,” and that the “rarity, value and diff erence” of islamic coins may have made them “objects of wonder as much as objects of value.” simon d. keynes 152selim 20 (2013–2014) routes, and associates it with something altogether more distinctive. perhaps, for the sake of argument, we may be allowed to pursue a line of wishful thought. a visitor to spain fr om elsewhere in europe would notice the islamic coins, which were so completely diff erent in appearance fr om anything with which he was familiar. he would have no idea how to read the inscriptions, but might be curious enough to ask; and it would have come as no surprise to be told that they were suff used with expressions or statements of religious import. it may be that on his return, knowing his dirhams to have been been minted in córdoba, he had one of them pierced and mounted, perhaps in such a way that it could be suspended around his neck, to remind himself of what he had seen, or perhaps to indicate to others that he had been far afi eld. the crucial point, of course, is that the dirham was found, whether loose or buried, at an abbey which at precisely this time, through its association with ælfr ic, was enj oying its moment of glory. a person who had set off in the late 990s fr om england through france into spain, might have gone there on pilgrimage to santiago de compostela, or to see for himself the splendours of córdoba, in response to reports which were coming to england fr om france and germany. it is conceivable, for example, that a monk or priest fr om cerne, or a layman associated in some way with the abbey, travelled to spain, c. 1000; that he picked up a dirham of hisham ii in the north of spain, perhaps while engaged for his own part (like others) in an act of pilgrimage, or that he ventured south into al-andalus, and picked one up there; and that he returned home safely to cerne, with the dirham in his pocket or still displayed around his wrist or neck. ælfr ic of cerne is not known to have travelled overseas, at any point in his career, though it would be as well (albeit on slender evidence) to allow the possibility that he might have done so. a passage inserted by ælfr ic into his homily for the first sunday aft er easter has been interpreted as evidence that he might once have england and spain during the reign of king æthelred the unready 153 selim 20 (2013–2014) seen silkworms, in italy;79 and if silkworms had spread to places other than italy, before the end of the tenth century, the passage might also point elsewhere.80 at another point in the same inserted passage, ælfr ic remarks, drawing again (so it would seem) on his own experience, that he would not wish to travel across land, or ride to hirede (perhaps to another monastery, or back to his own, or conceivably to the royal court), without knowing where he could stay on the way.81 if ælfr ic was not as stationary as one might suppose, his example might serve as a symbolic reminder that others in his circle might have had occasion to venture abroad, for one purpose or another. the owner of the dirham of hisham ii is most likely, anyway, to have been a man who once visited, lived near or was buried at cerne, perhaps as a member of the local society in this part of dorset, or a member of the monastic community; and in either case, the dirham might casually or deliberately have identifi ed its owner as one who had journeyed to spain. 4 widening horizons the two pieces of evidence discussed above contribute usefully to our understanding of the reign of king æthelred the unready (978–1016). the small parcel of king æthelred’s “hand” pennies 79 the suggestion was made by j. c. pope, cited by gatch 1977: 86–88, 229, fn. 9. for the passage in question, see clemoes 1997: 533–535, with godden 2000: 134–135. i am grateful to professor godden for enlarging on his allusions to this passage (godden 2014: 210, and odnb), and for further discussion. 80 for sericulture, see mccormick 2001: 723, fn. 127. according to accounts of sericulture on the internet, the main silk-producing centre in tenth-century europe was andalusia. 81 clemoes 1997: 535, with gatch 1977: 88 (monastery), and godden 2000: 135 (royal court, or assembly). it is tempting for a historian to prefer godden’s suggestion, that ælfr ic envisaged travel to a royal assembly (whether as abbot of eynsham or, before that, as a prominent member of the community at cerne); but one has to allow that gatch’s interpretation is also credible. for royal assemblies, see keynes 2013: 33–38, 140–157, and roach 2013: 45–76. simon d. keynes 154selim 20 (2013–2014) found in a burial in an old chapel at puerto de ibañeta provides evidence of an englishman, perhaps fr om one or other of the “western provinces” of england, under the control of ealdorman æthelweard, who passed through southern france into northern spain in about the year 990, bound quite possibly for the shrine of st james at santiago de compostela; but he seems not to have made it home. for its part, the “ringed” dirham of hisham ii (c. 1000), caliph of córdoba, found in the early nineteenth century at cerne, in dorset, is most naturally understood, in its particular context, as an object brought back to the south-west among the eff ects of another englishman who had been travelling in spain, whether in the christian north or in the muslim south; who returned; and who was perhaps buried in the graveyard of a small religious house at cerne, in the opening years of the eleventh century. the two fi nds do not constitute evidence of direct contact between king æthelred the unready, on the one hand, and his counterparts in the iberian peninsula (whether christian or muslim), on the other. far fr om it. they are, however, the equivalent for historical purposes of two annals in an imaginary manuscript of the anglo-saxon chronicle. one might have recorded how in 990 a man fr om the western shires set out on a pilgrimage to spain, but did not return; another might have recorded how, in 1005, some other man, renowned for a successful expedition to distant lands, died, and was buried at cerne abbey. such evidence would have attracted far greater attention, and would have been of its nature much easier to handle. one might be inclined to say of such written evidence that the information was recorded because it was exceptional; so there is a sense in which the numismatic evidence is more compelling, especially when the two fi nds are taken in combination. one person apparently fr om south-western england is known to have been to spain in the late tenth century, but did not return, and another person fr om south-western england, who may be presumed to have been to spain in the early eleventh century, is known to have returned. we could not be so england and spain during the reign of king æthelred the unready 155 selim 20 (2013–2014) lucky as to have found evidence of two special cases; so there must have been others like them. it is then up to the historian to press the evidence as far as it might be considered reasonable to go, and to speculate further. there was movement between england and spain in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, just as there was movement between england and other parts of the continental european mainland. some of the traffi c might have arisen fr om the development of pilgrimage to the shrine of st james the apostle, at compostela, as an undertaking to set beside pilgrimage to the shrine of st peter the apostle at rome. some of it might have brought contact of some kind between members or representatives of religious houses in england and their counterparts in spain, at places like san martín de albelda. the small parcel of pennies found at puerto de ibañeta is enough to show that the english have been visiting spain, as pilgrims if not as holiday makers, for at least a thousand years; the dirham found apparently in a graveyard at cerne abbey could be seen in the same context, suggestive of a pilgrim who returned, or it could be pressed further, suggestive of overseas contact leading to the circle of one of the most learned men of his day. simon d. keynes university of cambridge acknowledgements earlier versions of this paper were given at the university of seville, 21 march 2012, and at selim xxv, university of córdoba, 12 december 2013. i should like to thank mercedes salvador bello for organizing the seminar in seville and for her good offi ces as co-editor of selim (revista de la sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval). i should like also to thank prof. dr. javier martín párraga, of the university of córdoba, professor simon d. keynes 156selim 20 (2013–2014) pedro cano ávila, of the university of seville, mercedes jover hernando, director of the museo de navarra, and ricardo ros arrogante, author of the catálogo general de la moneda de navarra, siglos ii a.c. al xix d.c. photos of the anglo-saxon coins are courtesy of the museo-tesoro de la real colegiata de roncesvalles and its director, assunta recarte zabalza; thanks must be extended to the chapter of roncesvalles. i am indebted to rory naismith for much valuable discussion, and to the following in various connections: andrew breeze, roger collins, malcolm godden, jonathan jarrett, michael lapidge, julian pooley, nigel ramsay, elina screen, and tom shippey. references antolín, g. 1910–1923: catálogo de los códices latinos de la real biblioteca del escorial. 5 vols. madrid, imprenta helénica. barceló, m. 1983: why and how did andalusian coins travel to europe during the emirate and the caliphate fr om 98/716–717 to 403/1012– 1013. revue de l’occident musulman et de la méditerranée 36: 5–18. bautier, r.-h. et al. ed. 2004: l’abbaye de fleury en l’an mil. 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anglo-saxon england, 871–978: assemblies and the state in the early middle ages. cambridge, cambridge university press. ros arrogante, r. catálogo general de la moneda de navarra, siglos ii a.c. al xix d.c. tafalla, altaff aylla. royal commission on historical monuments 1952: an inventory of the historical monuments in the county of dorset, i: west dorset. london, h. m. stationery offi ce. sawyer, p. h. 1968: anglo-saxon charters: an annotated list and bibliography. london, royal historical society. scarfe beckett, k. 2003: anglo-saxon perceptions of the islamic world. cambridge, cambridge university press. england and spain during the reign of king æthelred the unready 165 selim 20 (2013–2014) scholz, b. w. 1970: carolingian chronicles: “royal frankish annals” and nithard’s “histories.” ann arbor (mi), university of michigan press. scragg, d. 2012: sin and laughter in late anglo-saxon england: the case of old english (h)leahtor. in s. mcwilliams ed. saints and scholars. cambridge, d. s. brewer: 213–223. scragg, d. 2014: mapping late anglo-saxon manuscripts and documents. in g. r. owen-crocker & s. d. thompson eds. towns and topography: essays in memory of david h. hill. oxford, oxbow books: 142–146. smith, c. 1988: christians and moors in spain, i: 711–1150. warminster, aris and phillips. sweet, r. 2004: antiquaries: the discovery of the past in eighteenth-century britain. london, hambledon. thompson, m. & c. renfr ew 1999: the catalogues of the pitt-rivers museum, farnham, dorset. antiquity 73: 377–393. ubieto arteta, a. 1960: cartulario de albelda. valencia, gráfi cas bautista. urbanczyk, p. ed. 2001: europe around the year 1000. warsaw, institute of archaeology and ethnology-polish academy of sciences. vale, v. & p. vale 2000: the parish book of cerne abbas: abbey and aft er. tiverton, halsgrove. vallejo triano, a. 1992: madinat al-zahra: the triumph of the islamic state. in j. d. dodds ed. al-andalus: the art of islamic spain. new york, metropolitan museum of art: 26–39. vallejo triano, a. 2005: madinat al-zahra: offi cial guide to the archaeological complex. córdoba, junta de andalucía-consejería de cultura. wallace-hadrill, j. m. 1988: bede’s “ecclesiastical history of the english people:” a historical commentary. oxford, clarendon press. warhurst, m. 1982: merseyside county museums, sylloge of coins of the british isles 29. london, british academy. simon d. keynes 166selim 20 (2013–2014) wilcox, j. ed. 1994: ælfr ic’s prefaces. durham, durham medieval texts. wilcox, j. 2005: ælfr ic in dorset and the landscape of pastoral care. in f. tinti ed. pastoral care in late anglo-saxon england. woodbridge, boydell and brewer: 52–60. winterbottom, m. & r. m. thomson, ed. 2007: william of malmesbury, “gesta pontifi cum anglorum” / the history of the english bishops. 2 vols. oxford, clarendon press. wormald, p. 1988: æthelwold and his continental counterparts: contact, comparison, contrast. in b. yorke. ed. bishop æthelwold: his career and infl uence. woodbridge, boydell and brewer: 13–42. yorke, b. 1988: æthelmær, the foundation of the abbey at cerne and the politics of the tenth century. in k. barker ed. the cerne abbey millennium lectures. cerne abbas, cerne abbey millennium committee: 15–26. zimmermann, m. 1999: western francia: the southern principalities. in t. reuter ed. the new cambridge medieval history, iii: c. 900–c. 1024. cambridge, cambridge university press: 420–455. • received 17 jul 2014; accepted 10 sep 2014 selim04.pdf nicholas jacobs, selim 4 (1994): 7-19 conflictus ovis et lini. a model for the owl and the nightingale a fair amount of the detail of the late xii or early xiii c. debate-poem the owl and the nightingale has by now been assigned to identifiable sources; as time goes by more will no doubt come to light. a source for the idea of the debate itself is in its nature more elusive. on the one hand the search is hardly worth pursuing: we know of a rich tradition of latin debate-poetry in the centuries leading up to the composition of the poem, and, given the popularity of the form, there seems no need to look for a specific model. on the other hand no close parallel has so far been proposed from among the surviving examples of latin debate. in drawing attention to a text which offers, i believe, interesting formal and thematic parallels to the owl and the nightingale, i hope to make some advance towards defining a tradition and a context into which the poem can be fitted. the conflictus ovis et lini, a poem of 770 lines in leonine elegiacs, is preserved in four copies, at basle, brussels, munich and lambach (upper austria); copies are also known to have existed at trier and at blaubeuern (between stuttgart and ulm). the attribution to hermannus contractus made by the anonymus mellicensis, who was writing near ratisbon shortly after 1130, is evidently wrong;1 the correct attribution is probably given by an in cipit and a brief dedicatory epilogue at the end of the ba sle text, from which it emerges that the poem was addressed to udo, archbishop of trier from 106678, by one winrich, librarian and master of the cathedral school there from 1 it was accepted by the only editor so far of the complete text, max haupt, ‘hermanni contracti conflictus ovis el lini’, zeitschrift für deutsches altertum, xi (1859), 215-38, who knew only the brussels and lambach mss. nicholas jacobs ____________________________________________________________________ 6 1068-75 and 1080-81.1 the only objection to this attribution, a refe rence at 122 to nostra flandria, operates a fortiori against the swabian hermannus: win rich himself may have been of flemish origin. he is perhaps better known for a vig orous expostulation against the malpractices of pope gregory vii addressed to gre gory between october 1080 and august 1081 in the name of thierry, bishop of verdun.2 the literary qualities of the poem have not made a great impression on readers. whereas haupt is prepared to allow that it is ‘nicht ganz leer an in halt’, raby characterizes it as being ‘of inordinate length and tediousness’.3 this is not altogether fair. the work is technically accomplished: the difficult metrical form is carried through consistently, modified only by the substitution of assonances for rhymes in some seven per cent of the lines,4 and the sense is not generally recondite, though technical terms are employed when required and a few words used which smell of the schoolroom.5 the comic introduction promises a lightness of touch which the debate itself, at times long-winded and a little pedantic, never quite fulfils, but there are enough touches of wit, if again often of a rather schoolmasterly kind, and enough curious in formation to retain a reader’s interest. 1 j. werner, ‘verse auf papst innocenz iv und kaiser friedrich ii’, neues archiv der gesellschaft für ältere deutsche geschichtskunde, xxxii (1906-7), 591-601, at 6024. for details of the career of winrich, see a. van de vyver and ch. verlinden, ‘l’auteur et la portée du conflictus ovis el lini’, revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, xii (1933), 59-81. 2 wenrici scholastici trevirensis epistola sub theoderici episcopi virdunensis nomine composita, ed. k. francke, mgh libelli de lite i (1891) 284-99. 3 f. j. e. raby, secular latin poetry (2nd ed., oxford, 1957), ii, 298. 4 i count 57 out of 770, including cases of assonance on a final vowel, allowance made for obvious errors. 5 note in particular 372 nolis from nola ‘little bell’, a word of extreme rarity probably given currency only by the opportunity it afforded for jokes at the expense of p upils who mis pronounced the second person singular of the present subjunctive of nolo. ____________________________________________________________________ 7 the poet, as in the case of o& n, represents himself as a fortuitous spectator of the debate —in this case at the edge of a field of green flax in summer. a sheep, separated from its flock, finds its way into the flax, which, unders tandably enough, vociferously resents the intrusion, asking why it of all crops should be chosen to be trampled and defecated on by such a stinking beast (15-18). the sheep replies that any other crops might be spared such indignities because they provide food for man or beast; the flax, which is patently good for nothing else, should be glad to make itself useful as a bed or latrine for her (19-22). the flax retorts by mocking the undignified manner in which the sheep is shortly to be stripped of her one valued attribute: tied up and shorn, tail and all, down to her mangy skin by some disgusting old woman (23-30). the terms are thus set for a debate in which the chief fo cus of interest is the utility to man of the two disputants. the sheep replies to the flax’s insult by describing in detail the way in which the flax is in turn to be treated (35-60): pulled up by the roots, put to rot in water, beaten and torn to shreds. the flax replies that other natural commodities equally benefit man only as a result of such rough treatment: man does not in any case waste his energy on worthless things (63-72). besides, the preparation of sheepskin is hardly aes thetically pleasing: the smell of a tanning-vat is enough to drive people from their homes (79-92). the first exchange thus ends with dishonours more or less equal. the sheep now points out that, unlike the flax, she provides for two basic human needs: clothing and food (95-100). clothing is passed over for the time being, but the variety of dairy products afforded by sheep is described at some length (101-22). a culturally conditioned dislike for mutton must be assumed to explain the complete lack of reference to meat.1 the flax cannot in honesty deny this point, but observes that the sheep is not the only source either of milk or of cloth and accuses her of claiming all the credit for benefits for which others are responsible (123-34). this seems a rather 1 i have only anecdotal evidence for a distaste for mutton or lamb in german-speaking cultures, but i am assured that within living memory it was hardly ever eaten. nicholas jacobs ____________________________________________________________________ 8 disingenuous evasion of an unanswerable point, but the flax swiftly moves on to argue that wool is an inferior fabric. all would wear linen if they could: it is honoured by being worn next to the skin, whereas wool is relegated to the utilitarian function of keeping the weather out. linen is thus treated as a friend, wool as a servant (139-60). wool, however, the sheep replies, is pro duced by no other animal (165-6; again, not an answer to the point at issue) and is in any case after all a high-class material, as is shown by the different colours in which woollen cloth is pro duced —whether natural or dyed— among the several nations of europe, a subject pursued at length for over thirty lines (167-210). the flax responds, quite reasonably, that the possibility of dying wool as such (213-4), and that, besides, the natural colour of linen is intrinsically pleasing in a way that of wool is not (219-22). linen, besides, is used for many things beside clothing —towels, tablecloths, cushions, sheets, curtains and so forth— and, a final stroke, the thread necessary to sew or repair even woollen clothing (223-68). but if the earthly nobility wear linen next to the skin, saints, the aristocracy of heaven, favour wool (273-84). furthermore, the sheep points out, sheepskin has other uses: parchment is necessary for books, and if there were no books there would be no liturgy, no church, no pope (285-96); all human knowledge is written on parchment (297-304); so that omnia novit ovis, per oves haec percipit orbis; ipsa dei patris mystica novit ovis (305-6). this is a neat but plainly dishonest point. even her despised guts are a source of benefit, for as harp -strings they not only afford delight, as in the hands of the great musicians of antiquity, but also serve the glory of god, as in the hands of the psalmist and the eldest of the apocalypse (307-22). to this the flax replies that, if music is an issue, the bleating of sheep is not notably melodious (323-6), which is a debating point, and then addresses the serious arguments one by one. the parchment made from sheepskin is an inferior product: better is made from calves or kids (327-30). holy men indeed wear woollen underclothes, but that is expressly for the sake of discomfort: by the same token one might prefer ashes to wheat or stones to bedding (333____________________________________________________________________ 9 42). the honour given in scriptute to the sheep as the source of david’s harp -strings is outweighed by the pre -eminence given to linen in the rituals pre scribed in leviticus: here follows another long digression on these and specially on the vestments of the high priest (343-96). the sheep replies that she knows the law of moses well, having studied books more assiduously than the flax (397-8, repeating the spurious argument used earlier at 305-6), and that sheep, not flax, are described for sacrifice (401-22); a catalogue of the ten plagues of egypt leads up to the supreme instance of the passover, in which the sacrificial lamb played the central part (423-76). at this point the sheep urges the flax to submit to her judgement and recognize the folly of its arguments (477-8). the impropriety of a disputant’s claim to act as judge in his own case is instantly seized on by the flax, in a response reminiscent of the procedural points raised by the owl against the nightingale (479-80); it then returns to the substantive point. the sheep’s reference to the passover and the exodus was confined strictly to the literal level, and the inevit able point is now made that the mosaic sacrifices a merely a fig ure, but that the ritual use of linen is carried over into the new dispensation (481-90): even the basest part of flax, as of sheep, is put to good use —in this case in the wicks of lamps and candles (491-6). linen, again, has as many liturgical uses for christians as for jews (497-508). in a brief facetious digression we are told that angels and apparitions of the blessed appear in white robes —thus in linen; the sheep may, however, take comfort in the fact that there is indeed one angel who is conventionally dressed in black —thus in wool (509-16)! returning to the point, the flax answers the argument concerning the passover with a reference to its figural significance: linen is used above all in the white vestments of eastertide, which even those who, as previously argued, wear wool as an ascetic practice wear over their habits at that season (517-28). wool has no place on such occasions (529-34). it is the sheep’s turn to confess herself beaten, for the judgment to which she must submit is not that of her adversary but that of holy church herself (535-44). nicholas jacobs ____________________________________________________________________ 10 the sheep is temporarily nonplussed —and shows it by blushing— but nevertheless finds an argument with which to continue (545-6). whatever the case may be regard ing eucharistic vestments, the roman pallium at least is made of wool, and so are the hangings used in church at high seasons (54974). but, most important of all, the lamb occupies the highest place in the vision described in the fifth chapter of the apocalypse, which is here paraphrased at length (575-620). this lamb is god; and just as the lamb of god reconciles sinners to the father, so the sheep undertakes, if the flax recognises the error of its ways, to act as mediatrix for it before the throne of grace (621-6). it is now the flax which is reduced to silence (627-8), but once again the sheep has confused the literal and the figural, and it is this lapse, rather than the undoubted blasphemy of her peroration, that the flax now takes up. st john’s vision no more means that there is really a lamb in heaven that st peter’s in acts x means that there are really frogs there (629-40); christ is no more (641-8) a sheep than he is a worm, a serpent or a lion.1 we are next given a long and at first sight irrelevant disquisition on the redemption and its benefits as transmitted through the eucharist. the significance of all this is that the corporal, in which the consecrated elements are enfolded at mass, is a linen cloth, in token of the linen clothes in which the lifeless body of christ was wrapped (649-734).2 here we have the decisive argument in the debate, in 1 the text refers to omnia quadrupia, et serpentia terrae, et volatilia caeli; the frogs, which do not figure among the creatures allegorized in bede’s commentary, may be poetic licence. for the worm, see ps. xxi [xxii]: 7 ego autem sum vermis, et non homo read as prefiguration of the passion; for the serpent, joh. iii: 14 et sicut moyses exaltavit serpentem in deserto, ita exaltari oportet filium hominis; for the lion, apoc. v: 5 ecce vicit leo de tribu iuda, radix david, in the very passage alluded to by the sheep in her previous speech. 2 see enciclopedia cattolica (vatican city, 1948-54), iv, s.v. corporale. for its form, symbolism and supposed powers, see joseph braun, die liturgischen paramente (2. aufl., freiburg im breisgau, 1924), pp. 205-9. i am grateful to fr donal kerr and to ms etáin ó síocháin, st patrick’s college, maynooth, for photocopies from this elusive book. ____________________________________________________________________ 11 that, though the corporal is itself only a symbol, the body and blood of christ which it enfolds are really present; and to enfold them is an honour for the flax to which the sheep cannot aspire. the sheep has no answer, beyond continuing to assert the identity between herself and the lamb of god, claiming that the privilege granted to the corporal is thus in her gift, and threatening to withdraw it if the flax does not show her proper respect (730-40). the fallaciousness of this argument confirms the decisiveness of the flax’s final argument. but that in turn suggests that the debate is not an end in itself: rather, that it is to be situated in the context of some controversy connected with the corporal, indeed that the underlying purpose of the debate is connected with the reassertion of the claims of traditional practice in its use. the matter is at first sight an unimportant one: so far as i am aware there was no major controversy regarding the use of the corporal in the eleventh century. but a context for the poet’s concern is supplied by the coincidence in that century of two quite unrelated developments. first, there was a tendency in the course of the century for the corporal to be reduced in size to some thing like its modern dimensions: this is in part due to the innovative use of altar-cloths,1 a liturgical use of linen towards which the flax is notably nonchalant, remarking quod linum sacras circundat vestibus aras / nec magni facio nec nihil esse puto (489-90). secondly, in the third quarter of the century, thus at the very time when col was being composed, the controversy was at its height regarding the teaching of berengar of tours, who denied, or more precisely was reasonably supposed to have denied, the real pre sence of christ in the eucharist.2 van de vyver and verlinden, in an article 1 enciclopedia cattolica, ibid.: ‘introdottasi l’abitudine di coprire l’altare con due, tre tovaglie e diminuite d’altra parte le offerte, il corporale fu accorciato così che sino dal edioevo appare già ridotto alla forma presente.’ 2 on the berengarian controversy, see r. w. southern, ‘lanfranc of bec and berengar of tours’, in studies in medieval history presented to f. m. powicke, ed. r. w. hunt, w. a. pantin and r. w. southern (oxford, 1948), pp. 27-48, and the various papers collected in auctoritas und ratio: studien zu berengar von tours, ed. p. f. ganz and r. b. c. huy gens, wolfenbütteler mittelalter-studien (1990). nicholas jacobs ____________________________________________________________________ 12 published in 1933,1 correctly identified the berengarian controversy as pro viding the material for much of the poem, but curiously, perhaps because they were more interested in its testimony concerning the flemish cloth trade, failed to pursue its significance, citing only four lines (695-8) which express a rather commonplace opposition between faith and reason. given, however, that the corporal, as we have seen, represents the shroud in which christ’s body was wrapped, it was almost inevitable that someone would eventually make a debating point against the supporters of berengar by associating the diminished size of the corporal with a lack of respect for the consecrated elements and thus with the denial that christ was really present in them. it thus appears that the whole debate is really designed to lead up to the reassertion of orthodox eucharistic doctrine against berengar and his confe derates. there may even be political ramifications. we have seen that in 1080 or 1081 winrich composed an address to gregory vii in which he complains of his conduct in the course of his dispute with the emperor. the issues of cle rical celibacy, oaths of allegiance and investitures are here discussed in a somewhat intemperate, if lucid and erudite manner. this is not, however, the only attack on the pope attributed to win rich, for in the dedication to udo appended to col, which survives only in the basle manuscript and in which the author identifies himself, the archbishop is praised highly on the grounds that ecclesiae fures vigil indefessus agebas. the objects of udo’s vigilance are evidently ‘thieves within the church’; and though it appears that udo maintained an independent position in the dispute, it is hard not to see here a veiled allusion to the investiture controversy. now we know that by 1080, afhis error is reported thus in 1050: qualiter ... astruant corpus domini non tam corpus esse quam umbram et figuram corporis domini (theoduin, bishop of liège, to henry i, pl 146, 1439b); his numerous recantations demonstrate that this was indeed the doctrine imputed to him, whatever he may have thought he was teaching. 1 see a. van de vyver and ch. verlinden, ‘l’auteur et la portée du conflictus ovis el lini’, revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, xii (1933), 59-81. ____________________________________________________________________ 13 ter henry’s second excommunication, his supporters were accusing gregory himself of having once embraced the berengarian heresy; this wild accusation has been explained, by the fact that, both before and after his election as pope, he had taken a measured view of berengar’s teaching rather than condemning it out of hand; he did not, indeed, force a comprehensive recantation until 1079.1 so long as the epilogue in the basle manuscript is authentic, we may see in the warning to priests and, especially, bishops at the end of the col2 to treat the corporal with due respect —with the implication that disres pect for it implies disbelief in the real presence— the germ of the slander which was later to be directed openly at the pope himself. the parallels with o& n are suggestive rather than conclusive; their effect in many cases is to bring into perspective the differences between the two poems, in most cases in favour of the later work. an instance is afforded by the summer setting: this is a familiar convention and there is no need to turn to col in search of a source for o&n, but whatever the source the contrast is evident —the wealth of detail in the latter, much of it remarkably circumstantial, as in the reference to the breche or clearing where the debate takes place and the precise description of the adjacent vegetation;3 shows the possibilities of bringing a comnonplace to life. winrich by contrast knows that flax in summer resembles tall grass, but that is all. the common theme of utility to man is a more interesting parallel, though it is perhaps sufficiently obvious in a debate of this kind not to be much more 1 h. e. j. cowdrey, ‘the papacy and the berengarian controversy’, in auctoritas und ratio, pp. 109-38, at 133.3. 2 719-22 at tu qui terris medius caelestia iungis, ad tantum cautus uade, minister, opus. discute rem sollers, quid tu sis quidque quod offers, quos habeas sacri participes operis; 729-30 pontifices aliis praefert lex sacra ministris: ipsi quid faciant solicite videant. the reverence paid to the corporal is nowhere better exemplified than in the elaborate provisions made for its laundering, on which see braun, pp. 207-8. 3 13-28; on the clearing of forests as characteristic of the earlier middle ages in england, see for example m. m. postam, the medieval economy and society (london, 1972), ch. 2. nicholas jacobs ____________________________________________________________________ 14 significant. once again, where in the latin poem the argument is over little more than the respective merits of the disputants, and that largely confined to a discussion of clothing and textiles, the comparable discussion in o&n is much wider in scope, ranging from purely aesthetic considerations concerning the nature of music to theological arguments over its proper use, the re spective merits of cheering young lovers and comforting abandoned wives or poor people, the practical problems of controlling mice and the art of ma king scarecrows; and while utility to mankind remains the central considera tion it is only one of a number of issues raised. the controversial issue of the corporal, it is true, gives col a focus lacking in o&n, but the poem remains dis tinctly monotonous beside the variety of its english counterpart. some parallels may suggest a closer relationship. in both cases the neces sarily adversarial form of the debate is elaborated with an evident interest in legal procedure: in col this is evident in the alacrity with which the flax seizes on the sheep’s incautious claim to act as judge in her own case (47980), in o& n in the owl’s objections to the nightingale’s attempt to supple ment her case with an additional charge outside the agreed forms (551-5) and her alleged resort to battle at the end (1668-1706). once again it is o& n which makes imaginative use of a motif used quite perfunctorily in the latin poem, for the whole substantive debate is formally structured on the pattern of a legal action, complete with charges, counter-charges, responses and citations of authority and precedent. in contrast to the somewhat unstructured pointby-point argument of col.1 in a similar way, each of the disputants in win rich’s poem is shown as being temporarily discomfited by the opposing argument, before pulling itself together and responding to the challenge; in both cases (545-6, 627-8) the description is brief and formal and bears no re lation to the real position of the relevant disputant. in o& n by contrast, even though the owl sometimes loses her temper, it is always the nightingale who is reduced to confusion: her responses are analysed in detail and the shifts to 1 see j. w. h. atkins, ed., o&n (cambridge, 1922), pp. 1ii-1v. this is not to deny that the debate eventually gets out of hand. ____________________________________________________________________ 15 which she has recourse shown up for what they are (391-410, 659-706, 12917), with the consistent effect of alerting the reader to the weakness of her plausible arguments. the form of the conclusion in the two poems shows similarities as well as differences. in both the debate remains formally undecided and the dis putants go off to re ceive judgment —the church dignitaries of col being once again a less imaginative choice than o& n’s faintly absurd neglected genius nicholas of guildford, perhaps the author’s own caricature of himself— but, whereas in the former the flax appears to have won with an unanswerable argument, readers of o& n have been left with the impres sion of a more balanced conclusion.1 this may be an illusion given that if the owl’s claim to do good even by her death (1611-17) is really a stultiloqium, as the nightin gale claims (1649-52), the whole foundation of the christian religion is threatened;2 but, even if the poet finally favours the owl, the conclusion is suggested, as one might expect, in a more complex way than in col. a more specific and less predictable parallel lies in the element of gratuitous scatology in both poems: true to form, o& n develops at length and with disconcerting enthusiasm (91-138, 583-96) what is the subject of a rather veiled reference in col (11-12, 18). again, the flax’s suggestion (213-20) that its own pleasing natural colour is somehow better than the range of artificial colours with which wool is disguised calls to mind the nightingale’s claim (711-12, 805-36) that her one skill is worth all the abilities the owl can muster. perhaps more significant still is the sheep’s curious claim (297-306, 397-8) that, because parchment is made of sheepskin, she knows everything that is 1 see g. stanley, ed., o&n (london and edinburgh, 1960), p. 22, whose observation that ‘the nightingale’s case ... is not enough ... the owl’s ... is not everything’ is exemplary. my earlier cursory judgment (‘the typology of debate and the interpretation of wynnere and wastoure’, res, n.s., xxxvi (1985), 481-500, at 483) that a balanced conclusion is intended in col cannot, i think, be sustained. 2 atkins, op. cit., pp. xliv-xlv, on the stultiloquium. cf. here i cor: 22-3 quoniam et iudaei signa petunt, et graeci sapientiam quaerunt: nos autem praedicamus christum crucifixum, iudaeis quidem scandalum, gentibus autem stultitiam. nicholas jacobs ____________________________________________________________________ 16 written in books. we can make sense of this at one level by assuming a figurative sense for novit ‘is connected with’, but that is not all that the sheep is claiming, and the claims she makes are curiously reminiscent of the owl’s claim to understand astrology and to be able to foretell the future (1189-1214, especially 1208 ich con inoh on bokes lore). the flax does not nail the fallacy, whereas the nightin gale, in one of her few philosophically cogent ripostes, does (1321-30), her image of an ape reading a book (1325-8) being particularly interesting in this context. these similarities, i would suggest, leave open the possibility that the author of o& n may have been familiar with col, or something like it, and that at least part of the idea for his own debate may have come from such a source. but how could an englishman writing at the end of the twelfth century or later1 have known winrich’s poem? the distribution of surviving manuscripts is not such as to suggest that it was well known outside imperial territory, but if the inference that it was an assault on the berengarian heresy be accepted it may be supposed to have had a wider circulation than the mere jeu d’esprit of an obscure lotharingian cleric. a more open piece of anti-papal polemic, if it were right to see col in such a context, would of course have become topical at various junctures in angevin england, but any such animus in the poem would, one suspects, have been hard to recognise outside the immediate context of its composition. the best chance of its having been known, directly or indirectly, in xii c. england depends on its status as a contribution controversy of the previous century. in conclusion we may consider the problem of the irrelevance and longwindedness by which have been troubled in both poems. in each case much of what is said seems superfluous to the point at issue: we do not, it seems, need to know about the intellectual status of astrology and prognostication, 1 on the date, see f. tupper, ‘the date and historical background of o&n’ , pmla, xlix (1934), 406-27; n. jacobs, ‘o&n and the bishops’, medieval literature and antiquities: studies in honour of basil cottle , ed. myra stokes and t. l. burton (cambrldge, 1987), 91-8. ____________________________________________________________________ 17 about the sociology of adultery, about the colours favoured by the clothtrade in eleventh-century europe, about the vestments of the jewish high priest, about the plagues of egypt, about the heavenly vision of john the divine, and so on. yet we might after all want to know about these things, and the authors evidently supposed that their readers would: their apparent irrelevance to what we suppose to be the subject of debate may be counterbalanced by the evident pleasure taken by the poets in the rehearsal and, more particularly, the versification of such knowledge. if we allow that a wide-ranging discussion of multifarious issues is as much part of the subject-matter of the poems as the ostensible debates, it may be possible to see generic as well as formal and material parallels between the two poems , in that both straddle the boundary between debate and miscellany1 in a way that suggests that there was a ready audience for hybrid works of the sort. and if so, the way may be open for modern readers to appreciate and to enjoy both in ways that have not hitherto been obvious. nicholas jacobs jesus college, oxford * † * 1 miscellany is the best term i can devise for a compilation comprising varied disquisitions on learned or quasi-learned topics and disparate accounts of often curious matter: something less formal than an encyclopaedia but more structured than a commonplace-book. walter map’s de nugis curialium might stand as an example. some such generic category seems desirable in order to account for these elements in such poems as jean de meun’s continuation of the roman de 1a rose or chaucer’s hous of fame, where it is grafted on love-vision, or even in piers plowman, where it converges with what is characterized by morton w. bloomfield, piers plowman as a fourteenth century apocalypse (new brunswick, nj, n.d.), pp. 23-4, as ‘encyclopedic satire’. selim06.pdf ____________________________________________________________________ 194 old and middle english bibliography 1995-97 aers, david & l. staley. the powers of the holy: religion, politics and gender in late medieval english culture. university of pennsylvania press, 1996. alamichel, marie -francoise & d. brewer. eds. the middle ages after the middle ages in the english -speaking world. boydell & brewer, 1996. alford, a. j. & j. simpson. eds. yearbook of langland studies 9. boydell & brewer, 1996. allen, cynthia l. case marking and reanalysis: grammatical relations from old to early modern english. clarendon, 1995. alston, r. c. order and conexion: studies in bibliography and book history. boydell & brewer, 1996. anderson, theodore m & stephen a. barney. eds. contradictions: from beowulf to chaucer: selected studies of larry d. benson. scolar press/ashgate p. c., 1995. astel, ann w. chaucer and the universe of learning. cornell university press, 1996. baker, j. h. and j. s. ringrose. eds. catalogue of english legal manuscripts in cambridge university library. boydell & brewer, 1995. baker, peter s. & michael lapidge. eds. byrhtferth’s enchiridion. eets, ss 15. oup, 1995. barber, r. the knight and chivalry. boydell & brewer, 1996. ____________________________________________________________________ 195 barrat, alexandra. ed. the seven psalms: a commentary on the penitential psalms translated from french into english by dame eleanor hull. eets, os 307. oup, 1995. barron, w. r. j. & s. c. weinberg. eds. and tr. layamon’s brut. longman, 1996. beckwith, s. christ’s body: identity culture and society in late medieval writings. routledge, 1996. bichoff, b. & michael lapidge. biblical commentaries from the canterbury school of theodore and hadrian. cambridge university press, 1994. bisson, thomas n. ed. cultures of power. twelfth century europe. university of pennsylvania press, 1995. blis, alan. the scansion of beowulf. western michigan university, 1995. boffey, j & a. s. g. edwards, eds. the works of geoffrey chaucer and the kingis quair, bodleian library, oxford, ms arch. seldon. b. 24. boydell & brewer, 1996. boffey, j. & j. scatterwood. eds. texts and their context: papers from the early book society. four court press. irl. 1996. braun pasternack c. the textuality of old english poetry. cambridge university press, 1995. brewer, c. & a. g. rigg. eds. piers plowman: z-text, bodleina library, oxford, ms bodley 851. boydell & brewer, 1996. brewer, d. & j. gibson. eds. a companion to the gawain-poet. boydell & brewer, 1996. britton, derek. english historical linguistics 1994: papers from the 8th in tern ational conference on english historical linguistics. j. benjamin publishing c. edinburgh, 1995. ____________________________________________________________________ 196 burguière, a and c. klapisch-zuber. eds. history of family life. vol. i remote words and ancient worlds. blackwell, 1995. carley, j. p. & f. riddy. eds. arthurian literature xiii. boydell & brewer, 1995. carley, j. p. & f. riddy. eds. arthurian literature xiv. boydell & brewer, 1996. carlson, d. r. english humanist books: writers and patrons, manuscript and print. university of toronto press, 1996. chambers, e. k. the mediaeval stage. (originally published by oup, 1903) dover, 1996. cherchi, paolo. andreas and the ambiguity of courtly love. university of toronto press, 1994. chibnall, marjorie. anglo-norman england 1066-1166. blackwell, 1995. clark a., j. goebel, t. bestul and w. polard eds. vox mystica. essays on aspects of mystecism in honour of valerie lagorio. boydell & brewer, 1995. clark, cecil. words, names and history. boydell & brewer, 1995. clark, f. m. theme in oral epic and in beowulf. garland, 1995 conde silvestre j. c. crítica literaria y poesía elegíaca anglo-sajona: las ruinas, el exiliado errante y el navegante. universidad de murcia, 1994. conde silvestre, j. c. and a. sanchez pérez. an introduction to the history of the english language. i. old english. universidad de murcia, 1996. conner, p. w. ed. the anglo-saxon chronicle 10: the abingdon chronicle a. d. 956-1066. boydell & brewer, 1996. ____________________________________________________________________ 197 copeland, r. ed. criticism and dissent in the middle ages. cambridge university press, 1996. cornelius, r. die altenglische interlinearversion zu de vittiis et peccatis in der ms. british library, royal 7 c. iv. peter lang, 1995. cross, j. e. ed. two old english apochrypha and their manuscript source: the gospel of nichodemus and the avenging of the saviour. cambridge university press, 1996. cubbin, g. p. ed. the anglo-saxon chronicle 6: ms d. boydell & brewer. 1996. davis, n. ed. beowulf, british museum ms cotton vitellius a xv. boydell & brewer, 1996. deskis, susan. beowulf and the medieval proverb tradition. medieval and renaissance studies, 1996. doyle, a. i. ed. the vernon manuscript, bodleian library ms eng. poet. a. i. boydell & brewer, 1996. dronke, p. the medieval lyric. boydell & brewer, 1996. dumville, d. n. the anglo-saxon chronicle: ms f, british library ms cotton domitian a. viii. boydell & brewer, 1995. duncan, t. g. ed. medieval english lyrics: 1200-1400. penguin, 1996. duby, georges. love and marriage in the middle ages. blackwell, 1994. earl, james w. thinking about beowulf. stanford university press, 1996. edwards, r. r. & v. ziegler, eds. matrons and marginal women in medieval society. boydell & brewer, 1995. ____________________________________________________________________ 198 evans, angela care. the sutton hoo ship burial. (revised edn. british museum press, 1994. ferster, j. fictions of advise: the literature and politics of counsel in late medieval england. university of pennsylvania press, 1996. fisiak, jacek. ed. linguistic change under contact conditions. mouton de gruyter, 1995. flood, john l. ed. the german book 1450-1750. university of toronto press, 1995. flower, r. & h. smith, eds. the parker chronicle and laws, corpus christi college cambridge, ms 173. boydell & brewer, 1996. given-wilson, chris. ed. an illustrated history of late medieval england. manchester university press, 1996. glassgold, peter, ed. boethius: the poems from “on the consolation of philosophy” translated out of the original latin into diverse historical englishings. sun & moon, 1994. gneuss, helmut. language and history in early england. variorum gbr., 1996. godden, malcolm, s. keynes & m. lapidge. eds. anglo-saxon england. vol. 25. cambridge university press, 1996. gollancs, i. ed. pearl, cleanness, patience and sir gawain, britis museum ms cotton nero a. x. boydell & brewer, 1996. guerin m. v. the fall of kings and princes: structure and destruction in arthurian tragedy. cambridge university press, 1995. gunnell, terry. the origins of drama in scandinavia. boydell & brewer, 1995. ____________________________________________________________________ 199 hagen, ann. a second handbook of anglo-saxon food and drink: production & distribution. hockwold cum wilton, norf: anglo -saxon books, 1995. hahn, t. ed. sir gawain: eleven romances and tales. medieval institute pub., 1995. hallissy. m. a. companion to chaucer’s canterbury tales. greenwood pub., 1995. hanna iii, r. ed. the ellesmere manuscript of chaucer’s canterbury tales. boydell & brewer, 1996. hanna iii, r. pursuing history: middle english manuscripts and their texts. figurae: reading medieval culture, 1996. harpr-bill, c. ed. anglo-norman studies xvii: proceedings of the battle conference 1995. boydell & brewer, 1996. hill, joyce. ed. old english minor heroic poems. revs. ed. dep. of eng. stud. univ. of durham, 1994. hillman, r. self-speaking in medieval and early modern english drama: subjectivity, discourse and the stage. macmillan, 1996. hofstra, t., l. a. j. r. howen, and a. a. macdonald, eds. pagans and christians: the interplay between christian, latin and traditional germanic culture in early medieval europe. mediaevalia groningana, 16. forsten, 1995. holder, arthur g. bede: on the tabernacle. university of pennsylvania press, 1995. horden, peregrine and nicholas purcell. the mediterranean world. man and environment in antiquity and the middle ages. blackwell, 1995. ____________________________________________________________________ 200 houwen, l. a. j. r., and a. a. macdonald, eds. loyal letters: studies on mediaeval alliterative poetry & prose. mediaevalia groningana, 15. forsten, 1995. hughes andrew. medieval manuscripts for mass and office. university of toronto press, 1995. hutcheson, b. r. old english poetic metre. boydell & brewer, 1995. jackson, w. h. chivalry in twelfth-century germany. the works of hartmann von aue. boydell & brewer, 1994. jane, angela w. conquering the reign of femeny. gerder and genre in chaucer’s romance. boydell & brewer, 1995. jimura, akiyuki, yoshiyuki nakao and masatsugu matsuo, eds. a comprehensive list of textual comparison between blake’s and robinson’s editions of the canterbury tales. university of education press, 1995. jones, frederic j. the structure of petrarch’s canzoniere. a chronological, psychological and stylistic analysis. boydell % brewer, 1995. kanno, masahiko. studies in chaucer’s words: a contextual and semantic approach. eihosha, 1996. kay, c. & j. roberts with l. grundy, eds. thesaurus of old english. king’s college london medieval studies, 1995. kelly, h. andy. chaucerian tragedy. boydell & brewer, 1996. ker, n. r. ed. the winchester malory. boydell & brewer, 1996. ker, n. r. ed. british museum ms harley 2253. boydell & brewer, 1996. ker, n. r. ed. the owl and the nightingale, jesus college, oxford, ms 29 and british museum ms cotton caligula a ix. boydell & brewer, 1996. ____________________________________________________________________ 201 ker, n. r. ed. facsimile of ms bodley 34, st. katherine, st. margaret, st. juliana, hali meithhad, sawles warde. boydell & brewer, 1996. kiernan, kevin s. beowulf and the beowulf manuscript. rev. edn. university of michigan press, 1996. klassen, norman. chaucer on love, knowledge and sight. boydell & brewer, 1995. klitgard, e. chaucer’s narrative voice in the knight’s tale. copenhagen, 1995. kohlhoff, d. the life and times of john trevisa, medieval s cholar. university of washington press, 1995. lambdin, l. c. & r. t. lambdin, eds. chaucer’s pilgrims: an historical guide to the pilgrims in the canterbury tales. greenwood pub., 1996. lapidge, michael. anglo-latin literature, 600-899. hambledon, 1995. lapidge, michael. anglo-latin literature, 900-1066. hambledon, 1995. lapidge, michael. ed. archbishop theodore. cambridge university press, 1995. laskaya, a. & e. salisbury, eds. the middle english breton lays. medieval institute pub. 1995. 1995. lázaro, l. a., j. simón, r. sola. eds. medieval studies. proceedings of the iiird. international conference of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. universidad de alcalá de henares, 1996. lerer, seth. chaucer and his readers: imagining the author in late medieval england. princeton u. p. 1996. lester, g. a. the language of old aan middle english poetry. macmillan, 1995. ____________________________________________________________________ 202 leyser, henrietta. medieval women. a social history of women in england 450-1500. weidenfeld and nicholson, 1995. linsell, tony. anglo-saxon mythology, migration & magic. pinner, mddx.: anglo -saxon books, 1995. mack, peter & a. hawkins. geoffrey chaucer: the nun’s pries’s tale. oup, 1996. magennis, h. images of community in old english poetry. cambridge university press, 1996. marx, c. w. the devil’s rights and redemption in the literature of medieval england. boydell & brewer, 1996. mccully, c. b. & j. j. anderson. eds. english historical metrics. cambridge university press, 1996. mcdonald, w. c. & w. plail, eds. fifteenth century studies, vol. 22. camden house, usa., 1996. milfull, inge b. the hymns of the anglo-saxon church. a study and edition of the durham hymnal. cambridge university press, 1996. millet, bella. annotated bibliographies of old and middle english litera ture: ii. ancrene wisse, the katherine group, and the wooing group. d. s. brewer, 1996. mooney, linne r. the index of middle english prose. xi. trinity college, cambridge. boydell & brewer, 1995. niwa, yoshinobu. the function and development of prefixes and particles in three early english texts. the beginning of the phrasal verb. vol. ii. kinseido, 1995. noel, william. the harley psalter. cambridge university press, 1996. ____________________________________________________________________ 203 oguro, shoichi, tetsuo kimura and isao akama. a concordance to the metrical version of mandeville’s travels. meikosha, 1995. oizumi, akio. ed. a biblioraphy of writings on chaucer’s english. 3rd. edn. olms -weidman, 1995. orchard, andy. the poetic art of aldhelm. cambridge university press, 1994. orchard, andy. pride and prodigies. studies in the monsters of the beowulf manuscript. boydell & brewer, 1995. otaka, yorio and hideka fukui, eds. apocalypse anglo-normande. cambridge trinity college ms. r. 16. 2. centre de recherches anglo -normandes, 1995. page, r. i. chronicles of the vikings: records, memorials and myths. british museum press, 1995. page, r. i. runes and runic inscriptions. collected essays on anglo-saxon and viking runes. boydell & brewer, 1995. pattie, t. s. manuscripts of the bible. university of toronto press, 1995. pears all, d. & k. scott, eds. piers plowman, bodleian library, oxford, ms douce 104. boydell & brewer, 1996. pearsall, d. ed. studies in the vernon manuscript. boydell & brewer, 1996. peltere, d. a. e. slavery in early medieval england from the reign of alfred until the twelfth century. boydell & brewer, 1995. percy, t. ed. reliquies of ancient english poetry (1765) 3 vols. routledge, 1996. philips, h. an introduction to the canterbury tales. macmillan, 1996. ____________________________________________________________________ 204 remley, paul g. old english biblical verse: studies i n genesis, exodus and daniel. cambridge university press, 1996. rigby, s. h. chaucer in context: society, allegory and gender. manchester university press, 1996. rosethal, joel t. old age in late medieval england. university of pennsylvania press, 1996. salda, m. n. & j. jost, eds. chaucer yearbook: a journal of late medieval studies, ii. boydell & brewer, 1996. santano moreno, b., adrian r. birtwistle, l. g. girón. eds. papers from the vii international conference of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. universidad de extremadura, 1995. seymour, m. c. a catalogue of chaucer manuscripts. vol. i: works before the canterbury tales. scholar press, 1996. sheingorn pamela. the book of sainte foy. university of pennsylvania press. 1995. sims -williams, p. britain and early christian europe: studies in early medieval history and culture. aldershot, hants: variorum, 1995. singman, j. l. and w. mclean. daily life in chaucer’s england. greenwood pub. 1995. smith, jermy. a historical study of english: function, form and change. routledge, 1996. smyth, alfred p. king alfred the great. oup, 1995. southern, r. w. scholastic humanism and the unification of europe. v. ii the heroic age. blackwell, 1996. stevenson j. the “laterculus malalianus” and the school of archbishop theodore. cambridge university press, 1995. ____________________________________________________________________ 205 streitberger, w. r. court revels 1485-1559. university of toronto press, 1995. sturdy, david. alfred the great. constable, 1995. surtz ronald e. writing women in late medieval and early modern spain. university of pennsylvania press, 1995. tavormina, m. t. & r. f. yeager, eds. the endless knot: essays on old and middle english in honor of marie borroff. boydell & brewer, 1995. tavormina, m. t. kindly similitude. marriage and family in piers plowman. boydell & brewer, 1995. taylor, jane h. m. and lesley smith. women, the book and the word. boydell & brewer, 1995 terasawa, j. nominal compounds in old english: a metrical approach. anglistica vol. xxvii. copenhagen, 1994. thompson, n. s. chaucer, boccaccio and the debate of love: a compara tive study of the decameron and the canterbury tales. oxford at the clarendon press, 1966. tieken-boon van ostade, ingrid. the two versions of malory’s morte darthur. multiple negation and the editing of the text. boydell & brewer, 1995. troyan, scott d. textual decorum: a rethoric of attitudes in medieval 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literature: seizing the sword. macmillan, 1996. yamakawa, kikuo. studies in english historical syntax. kenkyusha, 1996. antonio bravo university of oviedo * † * selim03.pdf 76 pedro gonzalo & antonio bravo, selim 3 (1993): 72-102 sapientia et fortitudo in the anglo-saxon epic heroes and in ælfric’s english saints sapientia et fortitudo. concept. in his study on sapientia et fortitudo in beowulf, r. e. kaske1 mentions e. r. curtius’s sketch of the development of this “formula” in the graecolatin-christian tradition.2 after suggesting its supposed origin in homer and further adaptation by virgil, e. r. curtius points out its subsequent fossiliza tion and decline to a rhetorical topos: (…) expressing sometimes a combination of the two heroic virtues in a single heroe, sometimes a separa tion of them anticipating the later tragedy of “rodlanz est proz ed oliviers est sages” (roland is brave and oliver is wise).3 1 vid. r. e. kaske: “sapientia et fortitudo as the controlling theme of beowulf” in l. e. nicholson (ed). an anthology of beowulf criticism, university of notre dame press, notre dame, 1966, pp. 269-310. reprinted from studies in philology 55, 1958, pp. 423-457. 2vid. e. r. curtius: europaische literatur und lateinisches mittelalter, a. francke ag verlag, bern, 1948. trans. w. r. trask. european literature and the latin middle ages. new york, pantheon books, 1953. rpr. 1973. 3 r. e. kaske: op. cit. p. 270. 77 several references are then enumerated of the various appearances of both terms in the literature previous to the composition of beowulf that pre sumably suggested the theme for this poem. but we have to point out that this topic has received only incidental attention in beowulf studies.1thus both words are cited by statius; in dares and dictys; in fulgentius mythographus’s interpretation of the opening line of the aeneid; in a poem of alcuin, and in other carolingian pieces as can be found in the monumenta germaniae historica.2 however, e. r. curtius’s reference that, according to r. e. kaske, may have been most present in the beowulf-poet’s mind is contained in the etymologiae of st. isidore of seville: heroicum enim carmen dictum, quod eo virorum fortium res et facta narrantur. nam heroes appellantur viri quasi aerii et caelo digni propter sapientiam et fortitudinem.3 a brief analysis of the content of both virtues will result in a better understanding of their close relationship and mutual dependence. we can justify in this way the reasons why we have considered sapientia et fortitudo as a concept used to characterize the epic and christian heroes 4. we shall try to show in this paper how this concept is also present in ælfric’s lives of english saints, namely: st. edmund, st. oswald, st. alban, st. swithun and st. æthelthryth. in this way we intend to give one more reason for the considera 1 vid. e. otto: typische motive in den weltlichen epos der angelsächsen. berlin, 1902. f. klaeber: “die christlichen elemente im beowulf, iii” anglia xxxv(1912). m. e. goldsmith: the mode and meaning of beowulf. the athlone press. london, 1970. pp. 217-19, 222, and more recently j. d. niles beowulf: the poem and its tradition. harvard university press. cambridge, mass. 1983, pp. 224-34. 2 vid r. e. kaske. op. cit. p. 269. 3 w. m. lindsay (ed). isidore of seville. etymologiarum sive originum libri xx. oxford, 1911. bk i, 39, 9; also viii, 11, 98; x, 2. 4 this concept is frequent in many of the old english religious-heroic poems, as for example in andreas 624-5, 919, 1495-7, 1577-9; guthlac 156-8, 184, 1109; judith 145-6, 333-4; juliana 431-2, 547-51; elene 934-5; genesis 1151-2; exodus 12-4; daniel 666. 78 tion of characteriza tion techniques in these five saints similar or analo gous to the models provided by the epic heroes, as far as this epic “formula” is concerned. as r. e. kaske suggests,1 alongside many other critics,2 the christian elements that can be noticed in anglo -saxon epic literature, especially the heroes’ wisdom and fortitude have a clear origin in the christian patristics of the preceding centuries 3 and, particularly, in st. augustine’s writings. it is natural to think so, owing to the enormous influence that this father of the church exerted on the development of western christian philosophy and theology throughout the middle ages until st. thomas aquinas.4 the latter in turn echoes augustinian thought by compiling and systematizing the former’s prolific work, and not infrequently explaining those matters of little clarity or doubtful interpretation. 1vid. ibid. p. 280 (and especially, notes 24 and 25). 2 cf., among others, l. l. schücking: “the ideal of kingship in beowulf,” in l. e. nicholson (ed.): op. cit., pp. 35-49; reprinted from modern humanities research assotiation bulletin iii, 1929, pp. 143-154; m. padgett hamilton: “the religious principle in beowulf,” in l. e. nicholson (ed.): op. cit., pp. 105-35 reprinted from publications of the modern language association of america 61, 1946, pp. 309-331; more recently ph. b. rollinson “the influence of christian doctrine and exegesis on old english poetry: as estimate of the current state of scholarship.” ase 2(1973)276-80; d. berkeley “some misapprehensions of christian typology in recent literary scholarship.” studies in english literature 1500-1900, 18(1978)1011. 3 on patristics’ influence on old english vid m. e. goldsmith op. cit.; d. w. robertson “the doctrine of charity in mediaeval literary gardens: a topical approach through symbolism and allegory” speculum xxvi(1951); and m. w. bloomfield “patristics and old english literature: notes on some poems.” comparative literature 14(1962)1-21. 4 on st. augustine’s influence on christian thought throughout the middle ages, vid. h. rondet: la gracia de cristo , herder, barcelona, 1966; on p. 110 he states: “en adelante, la historia de la teología de la gracia en occidente, no será mas que una historia de la interpretación del agustinismo. “with respect to the recapitulation and developments of the augustinian doctrine carried out by st. thomas aquinas, vid . j. i. saranyana: historia de la filosofía medieval, universidad de navarra, pamplona, 1985, especially pp. 66-7 and 216 ff. 79 it is not surprising, therefore, that the works of st. augustine were known by english ecclesiastics during the old english period, and that they were present in the poets’ minds at the time of portraying their characters as wise and brave, judicious and courageous.1 wisdom is defined by st augustine in three different ways that somehow complement each other. the first one is: sapientia est via recta, quae ad veritaem ducat.2 the second definition establishes a relationship between wisdom and happiness: sapientiam rerum humanarum divinarumque scientiam dicamus, sed earum quae ad beatam vitam pertineant.3 finally, this sentence is completed and explained: sapientiam mihi videtur esse rerum divinarumque, quae ad beatam vitam pertineant, non scientia solum, sed etiam diligens inquisitio. quam descriptionem si partiri velis, prima pers quae scientiam tenet, dei est; haec autem quae inquisitione contenta est, hominis. illa igitur deus, hac autem homo beatus est.4 from the patristic point of view, wisdom, by means of which we are wise, is a participation of divine wisdom.5 it is considered as a science that inquires into causes and first principles, judges and orders everything. focusing 1 vid b. f. huppé: doctrine and poetry: augustine’s influence on old english poetry. suny press. albany 1959. 2 st augustine: contra academicos, v, 14. the edition consulted was the one published by biblioteca de autores cristianos, (bac) madrid, 1951. 3 ibid ., viii, 23. 4 ibid. 5 vid. st augustine: de libero arbitrio, ii, 17, 46 (the edition used was the one published by biblioteca de autores cristianos, madrid, 1951): quamobrem quantacumque bona quamvis magna, quamvis minima, nisi ex deo esse non possunt. cf. beowulf, ll. 1724-7 where wisdom is also considered as a gift of god. 80 specifically on the concept of wisdom that here concerns us, wis dom in human affairs is called prudence. prudence is subordinated to wis dom, that is to say, the former exerts its function on those things known and ordered by the latter. prudence deals with those things through which happiness is reached, whereas wisdom deals with the object of happiness. the connection between wisdom and prudence and the achievement of happiness may, there fore, be inferred, as well as how the latter one depends on the exercise of the former ones. as st augustine states: nemo enim beatus est, nisi summo bono, quod in ea veritate, quam sapientiam vocamus, cernitur et tenetur.1 the wise man is, according to this father of the church, the one who seeks after and inquires into the truth -god is the truthduring his life. he is happy while his search lasts and his reward is the possession of what he has desired and, as st augustine says, et extremo die vitae ad id quod concupivit adipiscendum reperiatur paratus, fruaturque merito divina beatitudine, qui humana sit ante perfructus.2 for this reason, the prudence of the wise man is the best defence against wrongdoing; it is lost whenever the mind ignores the truth and the will does not pursue the righteousness of the action to which the reason moves it. but the wisdom of the prudent man increases whenever his actions are fair and righteous.3 in this sense, st augustine asks himself what makes a man pass from good to evil.4 the answer is none other than pride: initium omnis peccati superbia, et initium superbiae hominis apostatare a deo.5 it is this sin, the beginning of any behaviour against god, together with a malevolentis1 st. augustine: de libero arbitrio, ii, 9, 25. 2 st. augustine: contra academicos, viii, 23. 3 cf. r. e. kaske: op. cit. p. 280, and also st. augustine: de libero arbitrio, iii, 24, 723. 4 st. augustine: de libero arbitrio, iii, 25, 76. 5 eccle. 10, 14-15. 81 sima invidia, that makes man lose the gift of wisdom and, as a result, depraves him. fortitude has to do with the existence of evil. fighting evil either by re sisting or by attacking it -sustinendo et aggrediendo is the concern of fortitude which, as st augustine points out, is an “unquestionable witness” of the presence of evil.1 this virtue is, therefore, a passional movement moderated by the will which is, in turn, informed by reason. it leads the courageous man to obtain the arduous good, refraining the fear of evil that may oppose him and moderating an excessive audacity or rashness. the bonum arduum at which fortitude aims as its proper goal requires the courageous man’s disposition to be able to receive a wound, that is, any sort of aggres sion against his will, or in other words, anything that upsets and oppresses or is somehow negative and painful. it can certainly be said that the most radical wound is death as j. pieper suggests: de este modo la fortaleza está siempre referida a la muerte, a la que ni un instante cesa de mirar cara a cara. ser fuertes es, en el fondo, estar dispuesto a morir. o dicho con más exactitud: estar dispuesto a caer, si por caer entendemos morir en el combate.2 for this reason, the proper and supreme act of christian fortitude is martyrdom.3 1 cf. st. augustine: civitas dei, 19, 4; the edition counsulted was published by biblioteca de autores cristianos, (bac). madrid, 1977. 2 j. pieper: justicia y fortaleza , rialp, madrid, 1968, p. 201. 3 cf. ibid. pp. 202-8. vid. also m. prümmer: manuale theologiae moralis, 2nd vol., herder, barcelona, 1961, paragraph 622: cum igitur sustinere sit principalis actus fortitudinis, facile in telligitur, actum martyrii esse excellentissimum actum fortitudinis, quia martyres christiani fortissime sustinuerunt dolorissimam mortem propter amorem dei. 82 going on with the analysis of the definition of this virtue that has been mentioned above, we consider it interesting, because of the study of this characteristic in ælfric’s english saints that we shall do later, to point out the fact that to be brave is not the same as not to be frightened. in other words, fortitude as a virtue is incompatible with a certain kind of absence of fear: the intrepidity of the one who estimates reality wrongly. on the contrary, fortitude entails the brave man’s fear of evil, because what characterizes its nature is not the ig norance of fear, but the decision of to not permit that fear to prevent the achievement of good or even the promotion of evil.1 thus the martyr faces death, not because he despises his own life or loves it little, but because he will not allow the fear of transient evils to make him abandon the supreme good: the love of god, in this case. from all that has been said so far, it could be as serted that only the one that behaves honestly resisting what is painful or harmful is actually brave. facing what opposes us may be carried out in two ways: resisting and attacking; and as said before the principle act of fortitude is not attacking but resisting. this is so because it is much more difficult to restrain fear, which impels us to act in one direction or another, than to moderate such an impulse, since danger leads to fear and to re press its moderation. in other words, to resist implies a long period of time, and it is more arduous to stand firm against evil for a long time than to attack it suddenly. finally, remains to be shown the interdependence of both virtues, wisdom (prudence) and fortitude, to justify in this way the reason why sapientia et fortitudo has been considered as just one characteristic of the epic and christian heroes. j. pieper declares this mutual relationship in a definite way: la prudencia y la justicia preceden a la fortaleza. y ello no sig nifica ni más ni menos que lo siguiente: sin prudencia y sin justicia no se da la fortaleza; sólo aquel que sea prudente y justo puede además 1 cf. j. pieper:: op. cit. pp. 224-5. 83 ser valiente; y es de todo punto imposible ser realmente valiente si antes no se es prudente y justo. tampoco será posible, en consecuencia, hablar de la esencia de la fortaleza, si no se tiene a la vista la relación a la prudencia implicada por dicha virtud (…) sólo el prudente puede ser valiente. la fortaleza sin prudencia no es fortaleza.1 he also gives us the clue that allows us to appreciate the explanation of the pre vious statements: la prudencia tiene dos rostros. el uno -que es cognoscitivo y “mensurado"está vuelto a la realidad; el otro -que es resolutivo, preceptivo y “mensurante"mira al querer y al obrar. en el primero se refleja la verdad de las cosas reales; en el segundo se hace visible la norma del obrar. es de advertir que la relación que dice la prudencia a la realidad antecede por naturaleza a la relación que este ábito dice a la acción. la prudencia “traduce", conociendo y dirigiendo, la verdad de lo real en la bondad del operar humano (…) la fortaleza es así fortaleza en la medida en que es “informada” por la prudencia.2 in other words, the double aspect of prudence consists, firstly, in an objective knowledge of reality, that is, in the apprehension of truth (wisdom) and it is consequently said that prudence is measured by the real world. sec1 ibid. p. 213. 2 ibid . pp. 217-8. vid. also a. millán puelles: fundamentos de filosofía, rialp, madrid, 1962, pp. 661-2: after defining fortitude and enumerating the virtues attached to it (integral parts of fortitude), namely: trustfulness, magnanimity, magnificence, patience and perseverance, this author says: “todas estas virtudes son, por supuesto, tales en cuanto regidas o determinadas por la prudencia, la cual distingue al confiado del temerario, al magnánimo del ambicioso, al paciente del pusilánime, al perseverante del obstinado, etc. “ 84 ondly, it provides the right proportion of the human will and conduct; in this sense, prudence measures the human actions directed to the combat for achieving good, even at the expense of the risks it may involve (fortitude). it is obvious that the first thing that is demanded from the man who acts is to possess a knowledge of reality; this must be a guiding knowledge aimed at the election of the way of acting that is the most convenient to the goal of the action in tended. this guiding knowledge constitutes the essence of prudence. it is in this sense that j. pieper considers that prudence informs fortitude: the brave man will hardly risk his peacefulness and even his life in s ecuring good and resisting or attacking evil, if he does not have a knowledge of what good he must exert himself to obtain, and what evil he must oppose and which means he has to use in order to get the former and reject the latter. actual fortitude entails, therefore, a right and real evaluation of things, not only those that one risks, but also those that one hopes to protect or posses.1 this close unity of both virtues in a single human being is already outlined by st augustine. he states that every wise man is brave and that he fears neither physical death nor pains.2 he also adds that the wise man’s actions are moderated by the virtue and the law of the divine wisdom.3 wisdom and fortitude are likewise noticeable at the moment of martyrdom which constitutes, as said above, the highest expression of the exercise of fortitude 1 vid. j. pieper: op. cit. p. 220: “aquella jactancia griega a la que pericles dio expresión en las nobles sentencias de su discurso en memoria de los caídos, encerraba también una verdad que es propia de la sabiduría cristiana: “porque tal es nuestra condición: afrontar libremente los más grandes riesgos, después de haber pensado mucho lo que hay que hacer. para otros, en cambio, el valor es solamente hijo de la ignorancia, mientras el pensamiento es padre de la cobardía. “ (tucídides: guerra del peloponeso , libro 2). “ 2 st augustine: de beata vita (the edition published by biblioteca de autores cristianos, madrid, 1950 was used): omnis namque sapiens fortis est; nullus autem fortis aliquid metuit. non igitur metuit sapiens aut mortem corporis aut dolores. 3 ibid. (…) id est ut quidquid agit non agat nisi es virtutis quodam praescripto et divina lege sapientiae, quae nullo ab eo pacto eripi possunt. 85 by which the martyr desists from the good of preserving his own life for a superior good: the eternal bliss: honoramus sane memorias eorum tanquam sanctorum hominum dei, qui usque ad mortem corporum suorum pro veritate certarunt, ut innotesceret vera religio.1 sapientia et fortitudo in the epic heroes this formula sapientia et fortitudo for describing the epic heroes appears abundantly in the anglo -saxon epic literature, and kaske claims that in beowulf the poet used this concept with a high degree of consciousness as the controlling theme of his narrative.2 but j. d. niles pointed out: perhaps we have gone wrong, however, by assuming that the poem has a controlling theme. is there a controlling theme for the canterbury tales, wordsworth’s prelude, or pound’s cantos ? can a major literary work have a controlling subject, or, lacking even this, a controlling author, but not controlling theme?3 niles, however, suggests that “the twofold theme of sapientia et fortitudo is therefore present in the poem..”4 this topic can be seen wh en the poet of beowulf introduces king hrothgar’s speech by conferring on him the quality of a wise man: tha se wisa spraec / sunu healfdenes. ll. 1698b-9a;5 (then the wise man, the son of healfdene (hrothgar) spoke), in fact, in be1 st augustine: civitas dei, viii, 27, 1. 2 kaske: “beowulf” in critical approaches to six major english works. ed. r. m. lumiansky and herschel baker philadelphia: university press. 1968, pp. 18-31. 3 j. niles. op. cit. 1983 pp. 225. 4 ibid. p. 302. 5 all references to beowulf and the religious epic poems are from the anglo -saxon poetic records. 6vols. eds. g. p. krapp and e. v k. dobbie. new york 1931-53. 86 owulf, words and compounds related with the formula “sapientia et fortitudo” are numerous.1 certain heroes, beowulf, hrothgar, wulfgar…, are described as “modsefa”, f. robinson commenting on this word says: a meaning for the compound which combined the senses “wisdom” and “courage” (sapientia et fortitudo) would not be inappropiate.2 perhaps the admiration of the latin historian tacitus for the natural concatenation of both virtues in the audacious barbarian warriors of the lands known as germania3 has something to do with their further literary development in the germanic epic poems. in any case, what is evident is the large number of passages where heroes are shown as brave and courageous, indefatigable fighters for the sake of their people and who never retreat when combatting evil. however, this bravery is neither blind courage nor the rashness of the one who underestimates danger, nor even contempts for those precautions that are taken by whoever seeks victory but that are forgotten by whoever fears nothing because loses nothing. the anglo -saxon epic hero is, on the contrary, prudent and this means, above all, that he keeps his eyes open to reality and he makes use of common sense. for example, before the fight against grendel, beowulf watches carefully the criminal movements of the hellish creature he must defeat and then he springs on to it at the right moment. again beowulf displays his prudence when he realizes the difficulty of the struggle against the dragon and he orders, as a wise precaution, that an iron shield should be forged to hold back the fire thrown by his enemy. 1 this quality of the wise king applied to beowulf and the danish king appears in other passages of the poem: snotor hæleth (l. 190b), snotor guma (l. 1384a), snot(t)ra fengel (ll. 1475a and 2156a), se snotera (snottra) (ll. 1313b and 1786b); he is also referred to as frod (ll. 279a, 1306b, 1724a and 2114a) and thone wisan (se wisa) (l. 1318a and the text quoted). 2 trans: all this physical strength you govern restrainedly with wisdom. ll. 1705-6. 3 vid. tacitus: germania , vi, 6. the edition consulted was published by the loeb classical library, heinemann, london, 1970. 87 and as l. l. schücking says, the hero performs these demands of pru dence, namely: to order present matters, to foresee the future once and to record the past once “in an exemplary fashion as his arrangements and speeches indicate.”1 on the other hand, gravity of speech is an important part of the hero’s prudence and as a. brodeur suggests “speech illustrates the hero’s wisdom and political insight.”2 beowulf, for example, is designated on many occasions as se wisa ,3 and this wisdom is manifested in extraordinary oratorical qualities (wis wordcwida); and to be gifted as an orator is always well-becoming to a germanic king.4 the poet’s threefold distinction between bodily strength, mental wisdom, and wise speech, goes back to good medieval precedent, for example bede’s reference in historia ecclesiastica 5, 12 to those who in omni verbo et opere et cogitatione perfecti sunt”. whoever is wise and prudent, in addition to being a good orator, can also teach others the knowledge he already possesses. this is the case of the deserted vassal in the wanderer that yearns to return to the teaching, larcwidum,5 of his lord. hrothgar is also lavish in giving advise, sometimes slipping into a sermon-like style that refers us to ecclesiastical sources.å6 it is, however, this kind of speeches that gives us information about the conception of life that the epic hero has, and they prepare us for the mo ment when he will face death. accordingly, the numerous maxims appearing in the speeches of the 1 l. l. schücking: op. cit. p. 47. 2 a. g. brodeur. the art of beowulf. university of california press. berkeley. 1959. p. 178. 3 vid. beowulf, ll. 1318, 1400 and 1698. 4 cf. l. l. schücking: op. cit. in l. e. nicholson (ed.): op. cit. p. 42. 5 the wanderer, l. 38 (the edition consulted was r. f. leslie: the wanderer, manchester university press, manchester, 1985). 6 vid. beowulf, (hrothgar’s sermon) ll. 1700-84. 88 characters in beowulf serve the purpose of supplying a particular conception of the germanic epic world as e. tuttle hansen says: the number, range and structural and thematic importance of the gnomic sayings in beowulf suggest that aphoristic didacticism is embraced by the epic for a serious and pervasive purpose: the speaker’s extensive and emphatic display of his gnomic repertoire akin (…) to hrothgar’s display of his parental wisdom in the “sermon"affords him an authoritative, generalizing (and inherently pessimistic) voice with which to establish the epic’s prevailing attitude towards the nature and meaning of the human experience it narrates.1 the danish king’s sayings show his view of reality and the pro fundity with which he judges the anxieties and sorrowful events of any sort that are habitual companions of man on earth. take as an example the following dis course of hrothgar: eft sona bith thæt thec adl oththe ecg eafothes getwæfeth oththe fyres feng, oththe flodes wylm oththe gripe meces, oththe gares fliht oththe atol yldo, oththe eagena bearhtm forsiteth ond forsworceth. semninga bith thaet thec, dryhtguma, death oferswytheth.2 1 e. tuttle hansen: “hrothgar’s “sermon” in beowulf as parental wisdom, anglo -saxson england 10(1982), pp. 55-6. 2 beowulf, ll. 1761-8. it is worth quoting j. r. r. tolkien’s comparison between this passage of beowulf and lines 66 to 71 of the seafarer (j. r. r. tolkien: “beowulf: the monsters and the critics,” proceedings of the british accademy 22(1936), pp. 245-95 in l. e. nicholson (ed.): op. cit., pp. 92-3): the seafarer says: “ic gelyfe no / 89 beowulf also shows in his speeches an expert knowledge of the vital experience of man and, particularly, of the germanic epic hero. as m. gold smith says “the evidence in my opinion shows the beowulf’s wisdom manifests itself in speeches rather than in actions.”1 he expresses this wis dom, like hrothgar, by using a formulaic or sentential language. for in stance, about the aim of heroic deeds, he says: selre bith æghwæm, thæt he his freond wrece thonne he fela murne. ure æghwylc sceal ende gebidan worolde lifes; wyrce se the mote domes aer deathe; thæt bith drihtguman unlifgendum æfter selest.2 ll. 1384b-9. with regard to the matter that is being dealt with here, it is interesting to quote e. tuttle hansen’s comment on this last passage as it draws a relationship between beowulf’s wisdom and fortitude and king hrothgar’s: the hero’s words reminds us not only that he embodies what is the “better” and “best” course of action for all brave men to choose, in the light of human mortality, but also that beowulf thæt him eorthwellan ece stondath. / simle threora sum thinga gehwylce / ær his tiddege to tweon weortheth: / adl oththe yldo oth the ecghete / frægum from weardum feorh oththringeth. “ (i do not believe that material riches will last eternally for him. one of three things will ever become a matter of uncertainty for any man before his last day, ill-health or old age or the sword’s hostile violence will crush the life from the doomed man in his heedlessness). 1 m. goldsmith. op. cit. p. 220. 2 trans. it is a finer thing in any man that he should avenge his friend than that he should unduly mourn. each one of us must live in expectation of an end of life in this world: let him who can gain good repute before death, that is the finest thing thereafter for the lifeless man. ll. 1384b-9. 90 himself is not simply a symbol of youthful fortitudo in contrast to hrothgar’s sapientia. even in his youth beowulf understands and can authoritatively articulate the heroic principles that motivate his actions throughout the poem. 1 beowulf is the first example, according to l. l. schücking, of a design of a personality turned towards the ideal of sobrietas or mensura .2 the hero is presented as uniting in a certain ideal manner pride with modesty, devotion to god with self-confidence, daring with caution, the desire of riches but without being greedy; he is also pious, thankful and reverent towards the elderly. these characteristics, at least some of them, also appear embodied in other anglo -saxon heroes. byrhtnoth in the battle of maldon, for example, hurls himself into the fight furiously after having kept a moment before an attitude of re straint at the vikings’ attacks.3 it certainly cannot be thought in these cases that there may exist any sort of contradiction in the heroes, or a vital duality resulting from a split personality. on the contrary, virtue re aches its optimal point in a happy medium; 4 its right position is halfway between its opposite vices: the blindness of the ignorant and the vanity of the conceited, which have nothing to do with the true prudence of the wise man; the cowardice of the pusillanimous and the temerity of the presumptuous, which fail to act according to the true fortitude of the brave man. in the battle of maldon different passages highlight this epic theme from several points of view. firstly, and recalling what was mentioned about the double aspect in which fortitude may be carried out, the saxon leader byrht1 e. tuttle hansen: op. cit. p. 57. 2 cf. l. l. schücking: op. cit. pp. 46-7. 3 vid. the battle of maldon, l. 138 (the edition consulted was d. g. scragg.: the battle of maldon, manchester university press. manchester 1991(1981). 4 on the classic sentence in medio virtus, vid. a. millán puelles: op. cit. pp. 658-9. 91 noth prepares his men for the battle by showing them the most suitable way of resisting the enemies’ assaults and exhorting them with wise advice to re pel firmly the attack. a summary of this part of the poem, extending to line129, is line 127: stodon stædefæste, stihte hi byrhnoth. (they stood steadfast, byrhtnoth was in command of them) then the chieftain himself steps forth to the hand-to-hand fight and dies praising god while incessantly addressing his troops with words of exhortation.1 we have to point out, however, that byrhtnoth’s ofermod (pride) has worried many readers and critics such as j. r. r. tolkien,2 and more recently d. scragg who maintains an adverse judgement and have argued that byrhtnoth is not a wise hero: “tolkien was undoubtedly right in regarding the term as pejora tive”;3 but others have argued that ofermod in a heroic context has an older meaning such as “great courage” a virtue essential to noble rulers.4 secondly, leofsunu, dunnere, offa and the other loyal comrades of the fallen chieftain, following his example, spring bravely to the fight after having encouraged their fellow warriors with words that are a reminder of their thankfulness for the large number of presents received from their lord, of their loyalty, and a call to wipe away the offence caused by the loss of their leader. it is worth mentioning part of the brief discourse of byrhtwold because of its lapidary character, which is another way of expressing the common lore of a people: hige sceal the heardra, heorte the cenre mod sceal the mare, the ure maegen lytlath her lith ure ealdor eall forheawen, 1 a. bravo. “prayer as a literary device in the battle of maldon and in the poem of the cid. “ selim 2(1992) pp. 31-47. 2 j. r. r. tolkien. “the homecoming of beorhtnoth, beorhthelm’s son. “ essays and studies 6(1953) pp. 1-18. 3 d. scragg. op. cit. p. 187. 4 g. clark. “the battle of maldon, a heroic poem. “ speculum 43(1968) pp. 52-71. 92 god on greote. a maeg gnornian se the nu fram this wigplegan wendan thenceth.1 ll. 312-16. it is worth pointing out, in contrast with the two previous para graphs, how the concept of sapientia et fortitudo deteriorates in the behaviour of those characters in the poem that subordinate the good at which the battle is aimed (either fame for victory or expulsion of the invaders) to particular in terests, such as the preservation of their own lives in the case of the deserters and the desire for gold in the case of the vikings. the poet significantly does not concede the use of speech to any of the traitors that leave the battle -field. he simply mentioms their names: godric and his two brothers, godwine and godwig, the three of them odda’s sons. lines 186-7 describe this hurried desertion in which godric rides away on the steed that had belonged to his lord. it is possible to interpret this episode as an inadvertence due to his haste to get away, or as an irony highlighting godric’s ingratitude to byrhtnoth, or even as a conscious theft resulting from his greediness. in any case, it is obvious that the behaviour of these warriors is not in line with the ideal of a wise and brave man, apart from the fact that they breach the obligation of loyalty imposed by their lord’s generosity. the result is the division of the troops because of the confu sion caused by such a cowardly attitude of a part of them. the viking pirates in turn fight moved by a desire of loot; thus, for in stance, they offer peace in return of a tribute (ll. 29 ff.); a warrior approaches the dying byrhtnoth to snatch his valuable objects (ll. 159 ff.) they are daring and fierce to do evil and, consequently, their speeches contain words full of arrogance, such as the viking messenger’s, or they plot tricks to advance 1 trans. “most courageously he enjoined the warriors, resolution must be the tougher, hearts the keener, courage must be the more as our strength grows less. here lies our lord all hacked down, the good man in the dirt. he who now thinks of getting out of this fighting will have cause to regret it for ever. “ 93 positions when realizing the determination of the saxo ns who defend the bridge. such attitudes of the epic hero’s enemies, opposite to the ideal of wisdom and fortitude, are not surprising. the poet seems to intend to establish a comparison between antithetic traits. when the true good that the wise and brave king seeks, such as peace, his subjects’ welfare and, in short, the ordinata concordia l. l. schücking talks about,1 is overlooked, then it is quite easy to fall into the small-mindedness of the one who seeks after particular goals that are far from the common good, such as the desire of riches, origin not infrequently of the intro duction in man’s heart of the sin fo pride. pride is in turn, as said earlier, the cause of the loss of wisdom as it makes the wise man grow vain and, consequently, it deviates the brave man’s efforts towards wicked purposes. in connection with this, it seems interesting to quote h. d. chickering’s comments on beowulf’s pride: to his mind, the important values are courage and strength. yet, when the dragon’s ravages begin, beowulf’s first thought is that somehow he has transgressed “against the old law” (2330). as far as scholars can determine, this phrase refers to “natural law.2 later on, considering hrothgar’s speech on the misfortunes that the sin of pride brings to man, he comments: hrothgar’s sermon is a long speech, placed in a commanding position in the poem. it crowns beowulf’s adventures in denmark by cautioning him about the future. for these reasons, it raises ques 1 cf. l. l. schücking: op. cit. p. 41. 2 h. d. chickering: beowulf: a dual-language edition, anchor books, new york, 1989, p. 272. 94 tions of in terpretation that affect our whole view of the poem. be owulf himself is as silent as the poet and makes no answer to hrothgar’s warning. do we dare conclude then that beowulf succumbs to pride in the dragon fight? does he set too great a value on earthly goods in seeking the dragon’s hoard?1 these questions, however, could be answered negatively, in our opinion, by quoting j. r. r. tolkien: “the supreme quality of the old heroes, their valour, was their special endowment by god, and such could be admired and praised",2 as well as l. l. schücking: “beowulf, who kills the dragon, is the good shepherd who perishes in protecting his flock.”3 r. e. kaske pointed out that sapientia et fortitudo can be considered as a single theme common to epic heroes and, sometimes, it is manifested separately in two different characters, but complementing each other, as in the case of roland and oliver in the chanson of roland. it also seems suitable now to state that in the battle of maldon cunning and cowardice, as the opposites of wisdom and fortitude, appear separately in two types of characters, but somehow related to each other. cunning is manifested in the pirates’ boastful and deceitful words, whereas cowardice is the main quality of the deserters. this would not be a complete study of the anglo -saxon epic heroes’ wis dom and fortitude if we did not mention other factors that impel heroes to wield their weapons and fight heroically against their oponents, in this way showing off their bravery and physical strength. on the one hand, hrothgar is found to be a king, germanic and christian at the same time. he is perhaps one of the most pious epic characters as shown by his typically christian speeches on the vices to be rejected and the 1 ibid. pp. 276-7. 2 j. r. r. tolkien: op. cit. (1966) p. 100. 3 l. l. schücking: op. cit. p. 40. 95 virtues to be practised by the good king, as well as by his frequent words of praise to god, for instance, his gratitude to god when considering beowulf as a deliverer expressly sent by the almighty. we should also remember byrhtnoth’s prayer to god before falling dead in maldon; and there are a number of phrases in both poems that point to the belief in an afterlife in which god will judge men according to their acts. on the other hand, not all the motives constituting the knowledge that moves these characters to act are christian principles of an augustinian or boethian kind, but they belong to the common set of ethic values that shape the social code of the anglo -saxon peoples and which tacitus had already described in his germania at the end of the first century. in this sense, it may be noticed throughout old english literature an obvious amalgam of christian and germanic elements.1 thus, for instance, be owulf trusts his own physical strength as much as the divine grace and the cause of his victories over grendel and its mother is a combination of both factors (vid. ll. 967-8, 1056-7, 1270-4, 1553-6). moreover, the use of this mighty strength serves what seems to be the final objective of his acts and the reason why he undertakes heroic enterprises: to win fame among men as the last line of the poem clearly states: leodum lithost ond lof-geornost. (the most kindly to his people and the most eager for fame) this germanic characteristic is also dis closed in the hero’s reply to hrothgar’s noble warrior unferth, who in turn feels envy because he has found someone whose deeds are more famous than his. the firmly rooted concept of loyalty within the germanic comitatus about which tacitus talks in chapter xiii of his germania, plays as well an important role in the conduct of epic heroes. this trait consists in the establishment of a bond between lord and vassals, by means of which the former 1 j. niles. “pagan survivals and popular belief “in m. godden and m. lapidge eds. the cambridge companion to old english literature. cambridge university press. cambridge. 1991. p. 141. 96 commits himself to hand in valuable objects generously to his intimate circle of warriors and these ones give him in re turn their unrequestioning fidelity which may even lead them to give up their own lives. this germanic ethic of loyalty is complemented by another no less important obligation: the revenge for the death of the lord or of any othe member of the same kin. both obligations may occasionally be in conflict as in the finnsburh episode in beowulf; sometimes the crime must remain unpunished either because it has been commited within the same family, as in the case of herebeald, king hrethel’s elder son, or because it has been a legal death as it is the case of the old man that mourns for his son executed on the gallows and which serves beowulf to exemplify the sorrow for the loss of the beloved ones (vid. ll. 2435-70). there are numerous examples of loyalty to the leader of the people in the epic poems. suffice it to quote the words of exhortation pro nounced by the faithful followers of byrhtnoth before rushing to the fight in order to revenge their lord’s death in maldon, as well as their contempt for those who cowardly deserted the battlefield forgetting the presents liberally given to them by byrhtnoth in the hall.1 and also the spiteful comment made by beowulf’s comrade wiglaf when he becomes aware of the flight of the other warriors who accompanied the old king to the unfortunate encounter with the dragon (vid. ll. 2864-91); eventually he exclaims: death bith sella eorla gehwylcum thonne edwit-if.2 all these characteristics: search for fame, loyalty, revenge, are a main part of the social ethic code of the germanic peoples and, consequently, of the anglo -saxons. together with the christian beliefs also shared by the epic 1 f. robinson. “god, death and loyalty in the battle of maldon” in m. salu et r. t. farrel eds. j. r. r. tolkien, scholar and storyteller. cornell university press. ithaca. 1979. pp. 76-98. see also r. woolf “the ideal of men dying with their lord” ase 5(1976) pp. 63-81. 2 trans. death is a better thing for any man than a lifetime of scorn. beowulf, ll. 2890b1. 97 hero they provide a more definite outline of the whole knowledge and ways of viewing reality which impels these characters to act in one or another direction in order to achieve those aims that they consider as good. to get them they will spare no sufferings and will never retreat when facing pain or fear to lose their lives. the profile of sapientia et fortitudo is, therefore, more clearly shaped as a theme characterizing the epic hero’s personality when alive and also before death. sapientia et fortitudo in ælfric’s english saints three of the english saints whose lives are told by ælfric are martyrs, namely: st alban, st oswald and st edmund. martyrdom, as mentioned earlier, means the highest expre ssion of christian wisdom and fortitude. to the christian hero it is in the christian faith that the source of good is found, as it is a participation of god, supreme good. this conviction, taken as norm of conduct, leads him to subordinate everything else, even his own life, to the defence of the spiritual good of his people when this is menaced. it is at this moment that the martyr’s fortitude comes into effect and, sheltered by his trust in god’s power, he does not hesitate in comfronting death for the sake of their subjects (in the case of st alban in order to save the priest hidden in his home). this is not, however, the only reason that invites a saint to accept death. the peace of the nation threatened or invaded by cruel enemies, the punishment or disapproval of injustice and loyalty to his own vassals, as in beowulf and in the battle of maldon, are a part of the set of motives that in turn permit an analogous approach of the maryr to the epic hero. this fact allows to discover occasionally chara cterization techniques in ælfric similar to the epic poets’. firstly, a similarity can be observed in the manner of presenting the heroes’ enemies. the introduction, for example, of the emperor diocletian in 98 the passio sancti albani, as the instigator of the persecution against chris tians, implies the description of the danger that st alban has to face, highlighting and anticipating, at the same time, his bravery. his loyalty to the fugitive priest, who converts him to the faith in christ, leads him to give himself up to an unusually bloodthirsty opponent: sum hæthen casere wæs gehaten dioclitianus se wæs to casere gecoren theahthe he cwealmbære wære æfter cristes acennednysse twam hund gearum and syx and hundeahtatigum ofer ealne middaneard and he rixode twentig geara rethe cwellere swa that he acwealde and acwellan het ealle tha cristenan the he ofaxian mihte and forbærnde cyrcan and berypte tha unscæththigan and theos arleasa ehtnyss unablinnendlice eode ofer ealne middaneard ealles tyngear oth thæt heo to engla lande eac swylce becom and thær fela acwealde tha the on criste gelyfdon.1 this extract brings to mind other similar ones in beowulf, such as those describing the murderous cruelty of grendel (ll. 710-3) and its mother (ll. 125865), as well as the devastating power of the dragon (ll. 2312-21). diocletian and the three monsters are featured as enemies of men and godes andsaca. in connection with this fact, it is possible to interpret these pas sages as a struggle between the forces of evil and good in whose ranks the reprobate 1 all references to ælfric’s lives of english saints in old english are based on w. w. skeat:: ælfric’s lives of saints, early english text society, 2vols. oxford university press, london, 1966. trans. there was a heathen emperor named diocletian who was chosen to be emperor over all the earth, though he was a destroyer of men, two hundred and eighty six years after christ’s incarnation, and he reigned twenty years, a cruel murderer, so that he killed, and bade kill, at the christians whom he could find out, and burned churches, and robbed the innocent, and this impious persecution spread unceasingly over all the earth fully ten years until it came also even to england, and there killed many who believed in christ. vol. i, p. 414. 99 and the just take part respectively.1 used as characterization techniques, all these fragments, included ælfric’s, enhance the moral value and physical strengh of heroes, who have to confront enemies against which, and accord ing to their distructive qualities and potency, other men’s efforts have failed (cf. beowulf, ll. 750-4). references similar to the ones mentioned, although not so long, to the wickedness of the rivals of ælfric’s saints can be found in the lives of king oswald and king edmund. in the former, the author presents the cruel pagan leader cadwalla as a murderer and outrageous persecutor of the northumbrians. after the battle that will put an end to his misdeeds, the cause of cadwalla’s depravation is explained: pride, thonne modigan cedwallan, (the proud cadwalla) through wich the wende thæt him ne mihte nam werod withstandan.2 (who thought that no army could withstand him). this vice is, as said earlier, the origen of man’s deviation from true wis dom. against it hrogthgar speaks (beowulf, ll. 1700-84) using formulae inspired by latin patristics, above all augustinian, because it causes man’s heart to grow vain, which in the epic, and now in the hagiography, brings about bloody acts. so it is confirmed by hrothgar in the above-mentioned speech where he comments on heremod’s lamentable behaviour (ll. 1709-21). therefore, the contrast is evident between the attitude of the pagan characters and the christian heroes that ælfric presents. on the one hand, the former lack the true wisdom that originates in the knowledge of the faith in christ and, as a result, they are proud and use their energies in acts of cruelty to men and in persecuting god by eliminating his servants. on the other hand, st alban’s and st oswald’s wisdom and fortitude is rooted in the knowledge of the christian doctrine and in the confidence in the divine power. only in this way can the courage, they display before their fierce enemies, be understood. this faith in christ makes st alban be dauntless: ac 1 cf. m. padgett hamilton: op. cit. pp. 133-4. 2 w. w. skeat: op. cit. vol. ii, p. 126. 100 albanus næs afyrht for his feondlicum threowracan for than the he wæs ymbgyrd mid godes wæpnum.1 the same can be said of st oswald: oswold him com to and him cenlice withfeaht mid lytlum werode ac his geleafa hine getrymde and crist him gefylste to his feonda slege.2 as a wise man of irreproachable to the narration of his vita and passio: eadmun se eadiga, eastengla cynincg, wæs snotor and wurthfull and wurthode symble mid æthelum theawum thone ælmihtigan god.3 ælfric insists that the wisdom of the saint is rooted in the obserbance of the faith: wæs symble gemyndig thære sotham lare (was always mindful of the true doctrine); and expresses in a homiletic tone which the support of faith is: humility: gif thu eart to heafodmen geset ne ahefe thu the, ac beo betwuix mannum swa swa an man of him.4 then he enumerates the fruits accompanying this virtue; they can be summed up in the king’s solicitude for his people: he wæs cystig wædlum and wydewum swa swa fæder and mid welwillendnysse and tham rethum styrde.5 the above-mentioned augustinian thesis are, therefore, confirmed by these pas sages of st edmund’s life and even completed with the comment that draws a dividing line between the presentation of his happy reign and the in troduction of the peace-breaking event: and gesæliglice leofode on sothan geleafan (and lived happily in the true faith). 1 trans. but alban was not offrighted by his fiendly threats because he was girded about with god’s weapons. ibid. vol. i, p. 416. 2 trans. oswald came to him and fought boldly against him with a little army, but his faith strengthened him and christ helped him to the slaughter of his enemies. ibid. vol. ii, p. 126. 3 t rans. edmund the blessed, king of the east angles, was wise and honourable, and ever glorified, by his excellent conduct, almighty god. ibid. p. 314. 4 trans. if you are made a chief man, exalt not yourself, but be among men as one of them. ibid. p. 314. 5 trans. he was bountiful to the poor and to widows even like a father, and with benignity guided his people ever to righteousness, and controlled the violent. ibid. pp. 314-6. 101 the abrupt change that takes place in the content of the narration imme diately after the mentioned passages, as well as the introduction of the new characters that will cause the king-martyr’s death, produce a deliberate contrast meant to attrack the reader’s or listener’s attention towards the utterly opposite behaviour of those who lack the wisdom and fortitude animating the righteous life of the main character of the narration. it will serve to present a dichotomy similar to that established between hrothgar’s above-mentioned discourse against heremod’s misconduct and the qualities of the wise ruler, or between the desertion from maldon and the faithful self-denial of byrhtnoth’s comrades. the viking pirates, hingwar and hubba, also show the notes of cruelty and impiety that have just been indicated. the custom of plundering and murdering, hergiende and sleande wide geond land swa swa heora gewuna is,1 is differently practised by each of them. hubba raides northumbria and we are insisted on his cruelty. as to hingwar, he invades st edmund’s kingdom; he is said to murder men, women and children, not even christians can get away from his criminal impetus. his thirst for blood is compared to that of a wolf prowling in search of a prey: swa swa wulf on lande bestalcode and tha leode sloh.2 the menacing speech addressed to king edmund by the viking leader’s messanger shows that the main reason that impel hingwar to carry out such atrocities is the undue desire for riches, which is the cause of sin, particularly the sin of pride, as mentioned earlier: nu het he the dælan thine digelan goldhordas and thinra yldrena gestreon ardlice with hine.3 the danish chieftain’s pride is manifested in the arrogant threats with which he intends to intimidate the king and in the excessive confidence he 1 trans. harrying and slaying widely over the land as their custom is. ibid. p. 316. 2 trans. like a wolf stalked over the land and slew the people. ibid. p. 316. 3 trans. now he commandeth thee to divide thy secret trasures and thine ancestors’wealth quickly with him. ibid. p. 318. 102 seems to have in his own warfare capacity; the messanger goes on to say: and thu beo his undercyning gif thu cucu beon wylt for than the thu næfst tha mihte thæt thu mage him withstandan.1 a summery of all the crimes committed by both viking leaders, hingwar and hubba, seems to be contained in the descriptive stroke characterizing them as geanlæhte thurh deofol, (as sociated by the devil) which simultaneously diagnoses the cause of their persistent depravation. ælfric wishes to make clear that the origin of man’s depravation has to be situated in the sin of pride, the leading exponents of which is satan. accord ingly, we find similar references in the descriptions of the monsters that dis turb the peace in beowulf.2 however, st edmund’s sapientia et fortitudo is again perceived in his reaction to the previous provocation of the danish envoy. firstly, we can talk about the wise king who adopts the pru dent decision of asking his bishop for advise about the most appropriate manner of reply ing to hingwar:3 hwæt tha eadmund clypode ænne bisceop, the him tha gehendost wæs and with hine smeade hu he tham rethan hinguare andwyr1 trans. and thou shalt be his underking, if thou desire to live because thou hast not the power that thou mayst withstand him. ibid. p. 318. 2 an enumeration of the epithets applied to the two water-monsters in beowulf, and their connotations in relation to satan and his followers, can be found in m. padgett hamilton: op. cit. pp. 123 ff. an interpretation is made in this same paper, quoting st gregory the great: moralia, book 4, library of fathers of the holy catholic church, oxford, 1845, p. 196, about the biblical convention which makes no distinction between earthly and otherworld servants of the devil: now as this same saviour of us is one person with the assembly of the good, for he him self is the head of the body and we are all the body of the head; so our old enemy is one person with the whole company of the damned (…) and so it is meet that all that is said (…) of our old enemy should be applied to his body, i. e. to all wicked persons. “ 3 a thorough study on the christian virtue of prudence can be found in j. pieper: prudencia y templanza, rialp, madrid, 1969, pp. 39-109. vid. especially pp. 55, 63-65 where thoughtlessness and lack of deliberation in decisions are considered as contrary to this virtue, and pp. 104-7 where asking for advise is analysed as an integral part of prudence. 103 dan sceolde.1 secondly, once st edmund has reflected on the matter and made up his mind, ælfric introduces his reply to the bishop emphasizing the king’s bravery: tha cwæth eadmund cyning swa swa he ful cene wæs2 this superlative, ful cene, marks in turn a sharp contrast not only with hingwar’s dreadful threats, but also with the frightened bishop’s irresolute resignation: tha forhtode se bisceop for tham færlican gelimpe, and for thæs cyninges life, and cwæth thæt him ræd thuhte thæt he to tham gebuge the him bead hinguar.3 the contrast is also made between the king’s decision and the bishop’s exhortation to surrender: eala thu leofa cyning thin folc lith ofslæ gen, and thu næfst thone fultum thæt thu feohtan mæge, and thas flotmen cumath, and the cucenne gebindath, butan thu mid fleame thinum feore gebeorge, oth the thu the swa gebeorge thæt thu buge to him. 4then the king addresses the messenger in the following terms that again insist on the hero’s fortitude and courage: næs me naefre gewunelic thæt ic worhte fleames, ac ic wolde swithor sweltan gif ic thorfte for minum agenum earde.5 all these texts from the life of st edmund show with vigorous quick strokes the essential components taking part in this character’s trait of wis dom and fortitude. in short, we are in the presence of a wise and prudent king, pious to god and benign to his people, just with wrongdoers at the same time as liberal with the needy, to the extent of being considered as a fa ther to his subjects. 1 t rans. so then king edmund called a bishop who was handiest to him, and consulted with him how he should answer the savage hingwar. op. cit. vol. 2. p. 318. 2 trans. then said edmund the king, full brave as he was. ibid. p. 318. 3 trans. then the bishop feared for this terrible misfortune and for the king’s life, and said that it seemed best to him that he should submit to that which hingwar bade him. ibid. p. 318. 4 trans. alas, thou dear king thy people lie slain, and thou has not sufficient forces with which thou mayest fight and these seamen will come and will bind thee alive unless thou save thy life by means of flight, or thus save thyself by yielding to him. ibid. p. 318. 5 trans. it was never my custom to take to flight, but i would rather die, if i must, for my own land. ibid. p. 320. 104 l. l. schücking talks of the fatherly quality as well-becoming to the royal dignity and as characteristic of the ideal monarch. in particular, and because of its similarity to the description of st edmund (swa swa faether), i quote this paragraph of his: attila’s benevolence toward his associates, the “anxious love” with which he as paterfamilias assists hostages and treats them like his own sons, so that walther may address him as “best of fa thers” -all of this agrees entirely with the basic character of the ideal king, which is now satisfactorirly known to us and which one cannot designate otherwise than by the word “fatherly".1 the confidence in god’s power and the loyalty to his nation are the premises of such fortitude as to permit him not to hesitate at the moment of giving up his life for the sake of those he has served. as we can see, the parallelism between ælfric’s english saints and the anglo -saxon epic heroes is manifest in some of these characteristics. little can be said about st swithun’s sapientia et fortitudo. in the case of this bishop, ælfric himself complains repeatedly about the neglect of those who lived around him and did not leave a written record of his life. nevertheless, it is possible to pick out some information about his wisdom, considered a s the set of values he defends and as shaping a way of understanding reality. the miraculous deeds he works and the admonitions he pro nounces in different visions will provide some hints of what this characteris tic was like when he was alive, because as ælfric says: ac god hæfth swa theah his lif geswutelod mid swutelum wundrum and syllicum tacnum.2 1 l. l. schücking: op. cit. p. 45; vid. also pp. 39 and 46. 2 trans. but god hath nevertheless brought his life to life to light by manifest miracles and wondrous signs. op. cit. vol. 1, p. 442. 105 st swithun seems to value the loyalty of those subject to authority. so it is gathered from the message he makes known to the blacksmith in a vision. briefly, st swithun asks the blacksmith to express the monk eadsige and some other monks, who had been expelled from the monastery of winchester, due to their ill-behaviour, by bishop athelwold, his desire that they will give up their proud attitude and return to the obedience of their superiors: tha onscunode se eadsige athelwold thone bisceop and ealle tha munecas the on tham mynstre wæron, for thære utdraefe the he gedyde with hi, and nolde gehyran thæs halgan bebod (…) he gebeah swa theah binnan twam gearum to tham ylcan mynstre and munuc wearth thurh god.1 it is worth pointing out in this episode a certain reminiscence of that as pect of the germanic social ethic code that is present in the epic poems, by means of which the warrior’s loyalty and the leader’s generosity are closely related. the handing out of valuable presents, either weapons or precious metals, was one of the chief motives that stimulated the faithfulness of the members of the comitatus to their leader. st swithun also appears to want to reward the loyalty of the monks by giving them a huge treasure like the one they will find once they have opened his tomb. this loyalty and its natural concomitant, the lord’s solicitude for his vas sal, is rewarded by st swithun by conceding the favour of the cure of the dying servant after having listened to his lord’s prayer in which a promise of a better loyalty to god is made if the miracle is performed: eala thu halga swithun, bide thone hælend, thæt he lif forgife thysum licgendum cnihte, 1 trans. at that time this eadsige shunned bishop athelwold and all the monks who were in the minster because of the ejection that he had made regarding them, and would not obey the saint’s command, though the saint was of wordly kindred to him. he retreated however within two years to that same monastery, and became a monk through (the grace) of god. ibid. p. 446. 106 and ic beo thæs the geleaffulra tham lifigendan gode, eallum minum dagum gif he deth this thurh the.1 the holy bishop, like in the case of the epic heroes, also wishes fame. as he himself says to the blacksmith in the above-mentioned vision, his remains have to be translated into the church since it has been granted to bishop athelwold thæt ic on his timan beo mannum geswutelod.2 in the light of these words, the episode of the hidden treasure in his tomb could be interpreted as a new element that will help to spread his fame. in addition, the innumerable miracles he works also serve this purpose. thus st swithun’s message to a certain man to warn the lazy monks of winchester not to interrupt their singing of the te deum in his honour, ends with a promise to perform so many miracles: thæt nan man ne mæg gemunan on life thæt ænig man gesawe swylce wundra ahwær.3 if, as we have seen so far, the sapientia et fortitudo of the previous four ælfric’s saints can be understood as completely shaped by the christian teachings on the heroic exercise of these virtues, although somewhat tinged with a slight epic hue that allows to compare them with the heroes of the old english epic poems, in the case of st æthelthryth we can now observe different circumstances that should be taken into account. on the one hand, we do not find in this holy woman any of the traits that adorn the female characters in epic poems such as beowulf and widsith: for example, wealhtheow and alhilda, respectively. both are characterized as collaborators in pacifying rival nations (alhilda is designated fælre 1 trans. oh thou holy swithun, pray to jesus that he may grant life to this sick servant and i will be for this the faithfuller to the living god all my days if he does this through thee. ibid. p. 462. 2 trans. that in his time i should be made known to men. ibid. p. 444. 3 trans. that no man shall be able to remember in his lifetime that anyone hath seen such miracles anywhere. ibid. p. 456. throughout the narration of the life of ths holy bishop there are frequent references to the innumerable miracles done through his intercession, vid. pp. 440, 450, 464, 466-8. in w. w. skeat: op. cit. vol. i. 107 freothuwebban), and as generous in handing out pre sents. however, neither of these qualities is noticed in the life of st æthelthryth, unless her two successive marriages to the alderman tondbyrht and to king ecfrid have served pacifying purposes between opposed families, which the text does not say explicitly.1 st æthelthryth can be considered as an example of wisdom and fortitude that fully coincides with the evangelic model that extols the excellence of celibate over marriage. with regard to this subject, aldhelm’s massive treatise de virginitate, a work dedicated to abbess hildelith and her nuns, was well known in anglo -saxon period. st æthelthryth’s fortitude is placed accordingly in the preservation of her own virginity during both marriages and in her disposition to take the veil, thus choosing the divine wisdom which makes her give up all worldly goods in order to devote herself to the service of god and the care of her sisters of religion: tha lyfde hire se cynincg theah the hit embe lang wære thæs the heo gewilnode, and wilfrid bisceop tha hi gehadode to mynecene, and heo syththan on mynstre wunode sume twelf monath swa, and heo syththan wearth gehahod eft to abudissan on elig mynstre, ofer manega mynecena, and heo hi modorlice heold mid godum gebysnungum to tham gastlican life.2 in the same way as hrothgar or st edmund were assigned the fatherly quality, because of the advice and warnings on how to lead an honest life, 1 cf. beowulf, ll. 1160-1231; widsith, ll. 5-6 and 97-102. (k. malone ed. widsith, rosenkilde and bagger, copenhagen, 1962). 2 trans. then the king permitted her, though it was rather long (first) to do that which she desired, and then bishop wilfrid gave her the nun’s veil, and she lived afterwards in a convent (at coldingham) about twelve months, and she was then again instituted as abbess in the monastery of ely, and (set) over many nuns, whom she trained as a mother by her good example in the religious life. ibid. p. 434. 108 and because of the exerc ise of charity towards subjects, re spectively, st æthelthryth also partakes of the motherly trait (modorlice) since she in structed her sisters with a good example. as a matter of fact, wisdom qualifies for teaching the knowledge one possesses and it also establishes in the wise person a certain fatherhood (or motherhood) over those who are taught. in sum, the formula sapientia et fortitudo, as a mediaeval rhetorical topos expressing a combination of two heroic virtues, was adapted to the english saints whose lives are told by ælfric, namely st alban, st oswald, st ed mund, st. swithin and st æthelthryth; all these saints were born in england and they lived in a germanic context, except st alban; therefore, they were described by ælfric with certain germanic characteristics and heroic virtues, in many cases analogous to the models provided by the epic hero in old en glish literature. pedro gonzalo abascal & antonio bravo eoi león—university of oviedo. * * * selim06.pdf ____________________________________________________________________ 167 pollington, stephen 1997: first steps in old english . norfolk: anglosaxon books. pollington’s first steps in old english was inspired by macrae-gibson’s course learning old english . this work, similar to other valuable booklets prepared by university teachers but, unfortunately, unavailable in bookshops, marked a route followed by first steps, though the latter has developed and extended the seminal idea leading to a complete book. first steps in old english is addressed to absolute beginners with no or little knowledge of linguistics and old english who want to follow a sel-study approach to old english literature. with this reader in mind, pollington has avoided those linguistic matters that are not really fundamental for an immediate translation and understanding of old english prose texts. theoretical discussion on linguistic topics concerning old english sound changes, semantics or lexicon are absent from this volume, and syntax and spelling are reduced to a minimum, being morphology the core of the book. the first part of first steps, the old english course itself, is divided into eighteen lessons which the author refers to as sections. each section follows a similar layout: presentation of the topics, questions for comprehension, practical exercises, vocabulary and translations. the understanding of the topics, presented in an accesible way, is regularly tested by the use of certain questions that invite the reader to think about the text. apart from these comprehension questions, pollington inserts what he calls “practice”, a subsection to drill the reader in the constructions just studied in the relevant lesson. two parts called “vocabulary” and “exercises” are also included at the end of each section. the latter consists in translations from and into old english, graded according to difficulty, which can be corrected with the key in the fourth part of the book. contents are introduced gradually and they remain unexhausted in one section. in this way, different grammatic al categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) are dealt with simultaneously, making it possible for the reader to have at her/his disposal the necessary elements to understand and construct sentences in old english from the very beginning. pollington has, in fact, ____________________________________________________________________ 168 adopted the system used in handbooks for modern languages which allows the reader to become familiar with the language in a natural way. the reader does not only study the forms in isolation but also observes how they interre late with other ele ments in the sentence. the combination of words in sentences gives the author the opportunity to mention topics such as word order, impersonal constructions, negation or subordination. in this part – “old english course”-, pollington has been quite consistent with the initial idea of designing a basic handbook, restricting to the notes any additional information on semantic issues, paleographical data, sound changes or dialectal forms other than west saxon. however, i think some phenomena could be better understood if they were described in detail, or otherwise the reader might get the impression that these phenomena occur arbitrarily. this is the case of i-mutation or i-umlaut. pollington mentions forms affected by i-mutation just as deviations from the rule, without presenting explanations as to why this is so. if, on the contrary, the sound change were explained in plain terms, these forms would immediately become understood by the student. in the second part of this book, “old english grammar”, pollington offers information on pronunciation,1 and a glossary of grammar terms which, according to the author himself, will help the reader to approach other traditional handbooks. besides, under the name “accidence” he presents tables with the paradigms already described in the previous part. if the reader has reached this point successfully, s/he will be ready to face the old english prose texts selected for her/him in the third part. to guide her/his first steps, pollington parses the text identifying the form and syntactic function of the elements. this process helps to understand the structure of the text but will be dropped gradually at the same time as the reader becomes more confident. two glossaries close this book; the first one includes the words in the selected prose texts, and the second one makes reference to the words used in the translations at the end of each section. the dispersal of words in three different places –let’s remember that after each section there is a 1 the selected texts are included in an audiotape cassette (ærgeweorc) which can be used in conjunction with first steps in old english. ____________________________________________________________________ 169 “vocabulary” where other wo rds are listedis one of the drawbacks of this volume. it seems more convenient and timesaving to have just one glossary at the end of the book with all the words used in the translation exercises and in the selected texts. all in all, the author is successful in providing a self-study handbook addressed to a reader whose main concern is to manage the necessary tools to read old english prose texts at her/his own pace. through pollington’s book, solid foundations are set so that the student can move on to other handbooks suggested by pollington, such as mitchell and robinson’s guide to old english or sweet’s reader. for students who feel unconfident about their translation abilities and want to read original old english texts, the author recommends parallel texts in modern english. however, he warns of the danger cast by translations, since great reliance on them may lead to missing the taste of genuine old english prose. a last piece of advice put forward by pollington is directed to practised readers who want to continue with old english: they will need a deeper knowledge of the language and pursue higher courses on old english. pollington’s main contribution is to have widened a limited range of published handbooks on old english for beginners, such as blakeley’s teach yourself old english or magennis and herbison’s discovering old english . pollington’s achievement, however, is not only quantitative but also qualitative, as i will try to show below. blakeley (1964) offers basic notions on old english. methodology followed in her book, though, is different from pollington’s. it is more traditional in its conception and gives more information on changes affecting old english, especially phonological changes. besides, it seems to address a student with linguistic background and concern. a more recent book for self-study is magennis and herbison’s (1990). their point of departure is similar to that of pollington, as stated in the preface to their work: the aim of this book is to enable the modern reader who has little or no previous knowledge about the earlier stages of english and little formal knowledge about language in general, to experience a number of short old english texts in the original language. (magennis & herbison 1990: v) ____________________________________________________________________ 170 the layout of the book, however, is also different from pollington’s first steps. the authors do not include practice, questions or translations in the middle of the theoretical component of the course, but follow a conventional thematic organization, i.e., to study every grammatical category separately, and postpone translation exercises to the end of the course, which, in my opinion, is less attractive to the beginner. besides both books focus on different aspects. whereas pollington devotes most of his book to explain the language (the exercises show his interest to check the reader’s comprehension), magennis and herbison are more concerned with the guided readings/texts. a similar work directed to a student with no linguistic knowledge, but more interested in the language rather than in the literature, is an electronic guide available in the web which “… will provide a basic introduction to old english with exercises” (jebson 1997). this guide, still under construction, is similar to pollington’s in the way it includes exercises in the middle of sections or at the end of each lesson. altogether, first steps in old english is good and comprehensive, and at the same time entertaining and user-friendly, a combination difficult to find in works of this sort. indeed, there is no need to struggle on the way to enjoy old english literature! alicia rodríguez álvarez university of las palmas de gran canaria references blakeley, l. 1964: teach yourself old english .the english universities press, london. jebson, t. 1997: learning old english. <http: //lonestar.texas.net /˜jebbo/ learn-as/ contents.htm>. ____________________________________________________________________ 171 macrae-gibson, d.1984. learning old english: a progressive course with text, tape and exercises. published by the author, university of aberdeen. magennis, h. & herbison, i. 1990: discovering old english. guided readings. ultonian press, belfast. mitchell, b. & robinson, f. c. 1964: a guide to old english . blackwell, oxford & cambridge (mass). pollington, s. 1997: ærgeweorc. old english verse and prose read by stephen pollington. norfolk: anglo-saxon books. whitelock, d. 1970: sweet’s anglo-saxon reader. clarendon press, oxford. * † * microsoft word 2020article_4_gcampo.docx mariano gonzález campo, selim25 (2020): 61–119. issn 1132-631x / doi: https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.25.2020.61-120 the norn hildina ballad from the shetland islands: scandinavian parallels and attempts at reconstruction/translation mariano gonzález campo st. paul gymnas the shetland islands, together with the orkney islands, were until the nineteenth century a remarkable reservoir of the so-called norn language, an extinct insular variety of old norse closely related to icelandic and, specially, faroese. norn was preserved in these north-atlantic british islands in form of single words, proverbs, or prayers. however, the longest and most complete text in norn is the shetlandic hildina ballad, collected on the small island of foula in 1774 by george low and consisting of thirtyfive stanzas. in this article i intend to offer a comparative approach to this norn oral text refering to its scandinavian parallels and the attempts at reconstruction and translation carried out by several scholars such as marius hægstad, sophus bugge, william g. collinwood, norah kershaw, or eigil lehmann. keywords: norn language; old norse literature; reconstruction; scandinavian balladry; shetland islands; translation eit lukkeleg tilfelle hev berga for oss den eller den visa som elles vilde ha vore burtkomi. knut liestøl (1937) “norn ballad deserves recognition, says linguist” stated the newspaper the orcadian on january 3, 2008 (p. 12). this headline was due to the then recent publication of gaeme davis’ book the early english settlement of orkney and shetland (2007), where this british linguist tried to prove, among other things, that there was a saxon settlement in both the orkney and shetland islands from as early as the fourth century ad. according to davis, this early saxon 62 mariano gonzález campo settlement in the (now) scottish islands had an important influence on the language and culture developed there by old norse newcomers, i.e. the speakers of what later was to be called norn, a word which seems to have its origins in the adjective norrœnn (hægstad 1910: 53; indrebø 1951: 279; barnes 1984a, 1984b, 1998, 2004). in his book, davis devotes some eighteen pages (out of 132) to attempting a new approach to a long forgotten, and underrated, product of the north atlantic oral culture: the hildina ballad, the norn ballad which “deserves recognition”. the orcadian’s headline is quite striking because it is only now, almost two centuries and a half after that shetlandic ballad was written down, that it has attracted some attention. the rather familiar story about an abducted princess and the ensuing conflict, although unique in its form and language, had so far usually gone quite unnoticed even in specialized academic journals. in this article, then, i will try to offer a brief introduction to the hildina ballad as well as an overview of the scandinavian parallels and attempts at reconstruction and translation that some reputed scholars have tried to make since the nineteenth century. thus, my aim is not only to offer an introduction to this shetlandic oral story, but also to substantiate davis’ claim that the ballad deserves recognition, as well as further research in order to understand better both its particular origins and the dynamics of the transmission, composition, and interpretation of oral literature within a general folkloric context. 1. the hildina ballad: context of discovery of the 6,289 islands that form the british archipelago (moore 2005: 1), only one of them enjoyed the privilege of preserving one of the most interesting documents for the study of scandinavian balladry: the island of foula (from old norse fugloy), located twenty miles west off mainland shetland and inhabited nowadays by some twenty-five people. from the point of view of ballad studies, this remote spot in the north atlantic was put on the map in 1774, when a scottish clergyman named george low1 started a tour around the orkney and shetland islands to collect information on several matters related to natural history. however, many other 1 george low was born in forfarshire (now angus, in the east coast of scotland) in 1747 and died 49 years later, in 1795. he was appointed reverend in stromness, in the orkney islands. the norn hildina ballad 63 folkloristic, ethnographical, or simply antiquarian issues also attracted low’s restless attention. his four-month long trip (from may 4 to the beginning of september) resulted in a posthumous book entitled a tour through the islands of orkney and schetland containing hints relative to their ancient, modern and natural history collected in 1774, edited by john anderson in kirkwall in 1879.2 as low himself narrates in the part of the book devoted to his visit to the island of foula (low 1879: 95–117), he arrived there on july 4 and departed on july 11. during this one-week stay in the so-called “bird island”, low collected most of his material regarding the norn language. this included, for example, a version of the lord’s prayer (somewhat different to its orcadian counterpart published by james wallace in a description of the isles of orkney, 1683), a list of thirty norn words with their english translation, and, last but not least, the only extant version of the now called hildina ballad, which was then titled the earl of orkney and the king of norway’s daughter: a ballad. unfortunately, george low did not have any knowledge of the norn language, so his transcription of the ballad has a good amount of misunderstandings and, probably, gaps. moreover, low was not a trained folklorist and studies in oral tradition had not developed yet in his time. therefore, it would be absurd to expect from him a ballad written down or registered following highly skilled methods, such as the ones suggested by ruth finnegan’s oral traditions and the verbal arts: a guide to research practices (1991). nevertheless, low does offer us some useful —if scant— glimpses of information concerning the discovery of the hildina ballad. as he points out: the following song is the most entire i could find, but the disorder of some stanzas will show that it is not wholly so. the subject is the strife between a king of norway and an earl of orkney, on account of the hasty marriage of the earl with the king’s daughter in her father’s absence. here it is worthy to be observed that most of the fragments they have are old historical ballads and romances, this kind of poetry being more greedily swallowed and retentively preserved in memory than any others, and most fitted to the genius of the northerns. in this ballad i cannot answer for the ortography. i wrote it as an old man pronounced it; nor could he assist me in this particular. this man (william henry, a farmer in guttorm, in foula) has the most knowledge of any i found; he spoke of three kinds of poetry used in norn, and repeated or sung by the old men; the ballad (or romance, i suppose); the vysie or vyse, now commonly sung to dancers; 2 the book was reprinted in 1978 by melven press (inverness) without the original introduction. this entailed a remarkable loss of relevant information. 64 mariano gonzález campo and the simple song. by the account he gave of the matter, the first seems to have been valued here chiefly for its subject, and was commonly repeated in winter by the fire side; the second seems to have been used in publick meetings, now only sung to the dance; and the third at both. let it be remarked that the following ballad [i.e. the hildina ballad] may be either written in two long line or four short line stanzas. (low 1879: 107) in this short account, low does not say a word about the hildina ballad’s position among the three types of “poetry used in norn” —or maybe it was william henry who did not provide the information. was it considered a ballad or a romance? was it considered a vysie or a vyse (cf. old norse vísa)? or was it considered a song? on the other hand, his statement —or maybe again william henry’s3— that the hildina ballad may be either written in two long-line (couplet) or in four short-line (quatrain) stanzas can be quite misleading, as couplets and quatrains use different methods of composition concerning rhythm and rhyme. it goes without saying that this poses serious problems when one tries to reconstruct the hildina ballad. scant as it may be, however, this small piece of information is enough to bring the image of faroese ballads to our minds and allow us to make some comparisons with them (cf. thuren 1902, gonzález campo 2008). after the transcription of the ballad, low (1879: 113–114) gives a summary of its contents, something which comes as a useful guideline to any attempt at translating and/or reconstructing it: a literal translation of the above i could not procure, but the substance is this: — ‘an earl of orkney, in some of his rambles on the coast of norway,4 saw and fell in love with the king’s daughter of the country. as their passion happened to be reciprocal, he carried her off in her father’s absence, who was engaged in war with some of his distant neighbours. on his return, he followed the fugitives to orkney, accompanied by his army, to revenge on the earl the rape of his daughter. on his arrival there, hildina (which was her name), first spied him, 3 as rendboe (1993) remarks, it should be considered that, as stated in the original (not john hunter’s) introduction to a tour through the islands of orkney and schetland, william henry drank a certain amount of spirits while reciting the ballad. this might have affected both the recital and the explanations he gave concerning the oral tradition in foula. 4 as hægstad (1900: 31) remarks, in this summary low gives data that are not in the ballad or that are told there differently. the norn hildina ballad 65 and advised her now husband to go and attempt to pacify the king. he did so, and by his appearance and promises brought the king so over as to be satisfied with the match. this, however, was of no long standing, for as soon as the earl’s back was turned a courtier, called hiluge, took great pains to change the king’s mind, for it seems hiluge had formerly hoped to succeed with the daughter himself. his project took, and the matter came to blows; the earl is killed by hiluge, who cut off his head and threw it at his lady, which, she says, vexed her even more than his death, that he should add cruelty to revenge. upon the earl’s death, hildina is forced to follow her father to norway, and in a little time hiluge makes his demand to have her in marriage of her father; he consents, and takes every method to persuade hildina, who, with great reluctance, agrees upon condition that she is allowed to fill the wine at her wedding. this is easily permitted, and hildina infuses a drug which soon throws the company into a dead sleep, and after ordering her father to be removed, set the house on fire. the flame soon rouses hiluge, who piteously cries for mercy, but the taunts he had bestowed at the death of the earl of orkney are now bitterly returned, and he is left to perish in the flames.’ such is the subject of the ballad, which might have been built on a true story, tho’ now lost. it, however, shews the genius of the people, that tho’ they were cut off from the rest of the world they had amusements, and these correspondent to the manners of the northerns, among whom nothing was more common than the recital of the acts of their fathers. most or all of their tales are relative to the history of norway; they seem to know little of the rest of europe but by names; norwegian transactions they have at their fingers’ ends. the fact that, as low himself claims, “most or all of their tales are relative to the history of norway” makes us think that the hildina ballad might have a norwegian origin. furthermore, the action taking place in orkney makes it quite feasible that the ballad as we know it nowadays was originally shaped there. orkney was indeed a very productive cultural centre during the middle ages, as some poems composed by orcadians —such as bjarni kolbeinson’s jómsvikingadrápa, rögnvaldr kali and hallr þórarinsson’s háttalykill, and the anonymous málsháttakvæði and krákumál— show, not to mention the orkneyinga saga, one of the most important icelandic documents concerning orcadian history and politics (see, for example, jesch 2005, 2006b; renaud 1988). its preservation in the shetlandic isle of foula might thus be due to fortuitous circumstances, not because that island was the original place of composition of the ballad —although the local culture might have reshaped or influenced it. 66 mariano gonzález campo according to its plot and motifs, the hildina ballad was included by jonsson, solheim & danielson (1978: 239) among the so-called “ballads of champions”, representing the “blood revenge” type,5 with the following classification and description: e97 hildina-kvadet — woman’s lover killed by rival, and she takes revenge shetl the earl of orkney islands takes hildina, a king’s daughter, to his home while her father is away. the king returns and pursues them to the orkneys. hildina advises the earl to become reconciled with her father. the earl tries to, but hiluge, who wants hildina for himself, prevents reconciliation. hiluge kills the earl, cuts his head off and throws it on hildina’s lap. he then asks for her hand, and the king gives his consent and tries to persuade his daughter. hildina gives in on the condition that she may serve the wine at their wedding. she gives all the men a sleeping-draught. they fall asleep, and hildina has her father carried out of the house and then sets fire to it. hiluge and his men lose their lives. 2. the hildina ballad: scandinavian parallels the fact that the hildina ballad was recited and written down in foula does not necessarily mean that it is an original product from that or any of the other shetland islands. despite the efforts of jakob jakobsen (1897, 1928–1932) and hugh marwick (1929),6 our data about the norn language are so scarce that it is almost impossible to put the lexicon of the hildina ballad within the wider context of the set of western scandinavian dialects known as norn, which were mainly spoken in the orkney and shetland islands, but also in caithness (thorsen 1954) and the hebrides (christiansen 1938). be it as it may, it seems quite clear that our ballad has a chiefly scandinavian background concerning not only its language but also the plot and most of the motifs it uses. although 5 the other “blood revenge” types of ballads of champions in the types of the scandinavian medieval ballad are: ásmundur sterki, tróndur jógvansson, virgar berkilsson, sjúrður av nøríki, svend af vollersløv, grimmars kvæði, and snæúlvs ríma. it is interesting to note that, excepting svend af vollersløv, which also has danish, icelandic, and swedish versions, the rest are only found in the faroe islands. 6 an interesting criticism of the methodology used by jakobsen in his etymologisk ordbok over det norrøne sprog på shetland can be found in bugge (2005). the norn hildina ballad 67 some continental7 and celtic8 parallels can be established as well, it is my aim here to focus on some of the medieval scandinavian texts and oral traditions that may have helped to shape the hildina ballad, a story which, although it sounds quite familiar within det norrøne folkeviseumrådet, as liestøl (1937) would put it, it is rather unique as it does not have any close counterpart among the 838 types of ballads registered by jonsson, solheim & danielson (1978). three main literary categories can be used here in order to try to establish the nordic parallels of the hildina ballad: a) the fornaldarsögur b) old norse texts dealing with poetic issues c) scandinavian ballads9 of course, it would be extremely risky to state that those parallels were actually used by the composer/composers of our ballad, as there is no safe way to demonstrate it empirically, but at least they might give us a helping hand in exploring the scandinavian background of the ballad and its place within a wider nordic cultural context. if it is true that the hildina ballad is unique, it should also be crystal clear that unique is not a synonym for rare. 7 for example, kershaw (1921: 219) states that “there can be little doubt that the subject of the ballad is the story of hethin and högni. after this, however, the narrative deviates from any other known version of the story. it would rather seem that —as in the german kudrun— two stories, originally distinct, have been brought together in one poem.” 8 on the celtic influence in the hildina ballad through motifs like “throwing of the head” or “king and goddess theme”, see especially baranauskiené (2007). grüner-nielsen (1939: 152, 163) also remarks the presence of celtic elements in the ballad such as the theme of the everlasting battle or the use of the word glasburyon, which “synes sproglig afhængig af keltisk ‘glastonbury’.” 9 the orkneyinga saga would deserve a chapter of its own as a possible historical source for some of the characters that might lie behind the plot of the hildina ballad. for example, would it be possible to consider hildr/ragnhildr —the daughter of king hrólfr nefja of norway, who married rögnvaldr mœrajarl according to chapter 4 of the orkneyinga saga— a historical inspiration for the hildina of the ballad? as the daughter of a norwegian king, the mother of the legendary göngu-hrólfr (founder of normandy) and the wife of an influential jarl in orcadian politics, she had every chance to become an interesting character for medieval singers of tales. 68 mariano gonzález campo a) parallels in the fornaldarsögur the first scholar who tried to make some sense of the hildina ballad was peter andreas munch. he did so by translating some words or sentences into old norse and danish, as well as by pointing to some scandinavian parallels back in 1839, i.e. well before low’s manuscripts about his tour of the orkney and shetland islands were published by joseph anderson in 1879.10 later on, other scholars such as hægstad (1900, 1901), kerwick (1921), or grüner-nielsen (1939) also tried to establish some parallels with other scandinavian stories similar to that in the hildina ballad. regarding the texts classified as fornaldarsögur, all the aforementioned scholars agree that the story of högni and heðinn, as it is known from the heðins saga ok högna (also called sörla þáttr11) is one of the most obvious parallels with our shetlandic ballad.12 chapters 7 and 8 of sörla þáttr show very close parallels with an important part of the plot of the hildina ballad. this is a summary of the story: there was a king named hjarrandi, who had a son named heðinn. this son was a great sea-king and he pillaged all over the mediterranean until twenty kings paid tribute to him. one day he met a beautiful woman sitting on a chair who called herself göndul. she told him of högni, and agitated him to test his strength against the northerner. heðinn took three hundred men, and sailed both a summer and a winter until he arrived in denmark in spring. when the two men met they tested each other’s strength and entered sworn brotherhood. as heðinn was unmarried, högni betrothed him to his daughter hildr, his only child. hildr’s mother was hervör. heðinn soon met the beautiful woman again who asked him about what had happened since the last time. she gave him a magic potion and told him to crush högni’s wife with the prow of his ship and to kidnap hildr. he did so and met the beautiful woman again. she gave him a new horn to drink and he fell asleep. in his dream, he heard göndul say that she put him, högni and their men under spells according to the wishes of óðinn. högni hunted heðinn and found him on an island named háey (=hoy, in the orkneys). heðinn offered to give everything back to högni and to sail away 10 however, low’s hildina ballad had already been published by james headrick in 1808, in the second editon of history of the orkney islands by dr. barry. this was in fact the text used by munch. 11 i follow jónsson’s edition (1954). 12 at this point, it should be clear that by ‘shetlandic ballad’ i mean a ballad recited and written down in the shetlands, not necessarily a ballad which was originally composed there. the norn hildina ballad 69 to serkland and never come back. högni, however, declared that nothing could atone the betrayal that heðinn had committed. the two armies started to fight and even though they cut each other all over, they stood still fighting and fighting for 143 years, so strong were the spells of göndul, until óláfr tryggvason arrived at the island. the name hildr, the kidnapping of hildr by heðinn, and the fight between heðinn and the army of hildr’s father in the orcadian island of háey (=hoy) are the most striking parallels between sörla þáttr and the hildina ballad. furthermore, another fornaldarsaga titled illuga saga gríðarfóstra displays some interesting parallels as well. this is the synopsis of the story:13 the story begins in denmark where there was a king called hringr, the son of skjöldr dagsson. it lauds hringr’s qualities as well as those of his son sigurðr. the mother was sigríðr, the daughter of vilhjálmr of valland. not far from where they lived there was a farmer called sviði whose wife was hildr and son illugi. this illugi played often with prince sigurðr. the two boys became close friends and swore to avenge one another. however, the king had an incompetent advisor named björn who was treacherous and cunning, but skilled in seiðr and a great warrior who ably defended denmark for the king. björn was jealous that sigurðr loved illugi so much, so he slandered illugi in front of the king and the prince, but sigurðr refused to believe him. one summer, sigurðr, björn and illugi went a viking expedition to scotland and orkney. the pillaging was good, and in the autumn they steered home to denmark. however, a great storm arose and they were driven away to large bay called gandvík. in the bay it was cold and björn asked illugi to cross a fjord to fetch firewood. if he succeeded it would prove him a better advisor and he would get björn’s ring. illugi, however, declined and said that he would go for wood anyway. when he had crossed the fjord, he found a cave and soon its inhabitant came. it was a troll woman named gríðr. she could not be called beautiful at all. when illugi said that he came searching for fire, she replied that he would get none unless he said three truthful words and slept with her daughter. the daughter was stunning and illugi immediately fell in love with her. the truthful words, he chose to say were that she was hideous, the hall was beautiful and so was the daughter. gríðr said that since he preferred the daughter to her, he could go to bed with the girl. illugi was surprised that she was not enjoying the act, and soon he found out why because gríðr grabbed him by the hair, put a knife to his 13 according to jónsson’s edition (1954). 70 mariano gonzález campo throat and said that she would kill him for seducing the girl. however, when illugi showed no signs of fear, she asked him to go back to bed remarking that she had never met anyone less afraid of dying. gríðr said that he would have the girl whose name was hildr, and then she told him her story: she said that there was a king áli in álfheimr whose queen was álfrún. their daughter’s name was signý and she was a very able girl. she was married to a king named eiríkr who died during an expedition in the west, leaving her with a very beautiful daughter named hildr. signý then returned to her father, but the mother soon died and the father remarried with a woman named grímhildr who was just as evil as she was beautiful, and so were her daughters that she had before marrying king áli. rumours began to spread in the kingdom and as soon as a man disappeared mysteriously this was attributed to grímhildr. grímhildr murdered the old king by poison, became the ruler and soon her tyranny had laid the whole kingdom waste. she then banished signý and her daughter hildr from the kingdom putting a curse on them that they had to live alone in a cave. all the men who saw hildr would fall in love with her, but signý would murder them, and every night seven sisters would maim and mutilize her. in this condition they would live until she found a man who was not afraid of dying. gríðr said that she was signý and as he had delivered them from the spell after eleven years, illugi would marry her daughter. then seven giantesses arrived with short swords and attacked gríðr cutting her in the body and in her heart. illugi threw himself into the fight to defend gríðr, killed all seven of them and burned them in the fire. gríðr gave illugi gold and he returned to the ships with fire. the other men were glad to see him, but björn slandered hildr and said that she was an evil troll. sigurðr told björn to keep quiet. later at night björn disappeared and in the morning they found him dead hanging from the mast of the ship. this was how gríðr punished him for calling her daughter a troll. sigurðr then sailed back to denmark with the ships laden with booty. later, king hringr died by illness and sigurðr inherited denmark. signý came to denmark to join them and was well received by illugi and hildr. illugi told sigurðr everything about signý and sigurðr decided to marry her. they had many children and lived long. but illugi lived longest even though he and hildr never had any children. in this case, the most obvious parallels with the hildina ballad are the name illugi, the name of illugi’s bride (hildr), and the character of the treacherous royal adviser (björn). however, it is interesting to note here that in the shetlandic ballad hiluge (=illugi) takes the role of björn, while illuge comes closer to the role of the earl of orkney. the norn hildina ballad 71 b) parallels in old norse texts dealing with poetic issues in this context, i must emphasize the existing relationships between the hildina ballad and pedagogic or instructional texts such as the orcadian háttalykill and snorri sturluson’s skáldskaparmál and háttatal, where allusions to the hjaðningar legend —included in the aforementioned sörla þáttr as the fight ensuing from hildr’s abduction by heðinn— can be found (helgason & hotsmark 1941; pálsson 1984, 1998; faulkes 1991, 1998; jesch 2006b). stanza 23 of háttalykill enn forni makes the following mention to the hjaðningar legend (helgason & holtsmark 1941: 26, not normalized text): hver red hilldi at nema? hveir daglæingis bæriast? hværir sijd arla sættast? hværir siolingum atte? hedin red hilldi at næma hiadnengar æ beriast þeir sijd arla sættast saman hilldr lidi atte. the name of hildr and the allusion to her abduction by heðinn are the most significative parallels with the hildina ballad according to sörla þáttr’s more extended version of the everlasting battle of hjaðningavíg. as jesch (2006b: 2) points out, “the question-and-answer form of the stanzas (unique in this poem) may suggest that some instruction in this myth [i.e. the hjaðningavíg] was needed. there is later evidence, in the form of the hildina ballad, to support the orkney connection, and indicating that a version of the story was later known throughout the northern isles.” chapter 50 of snorri sturluson’s skáldskaparmál deals with the hjaðningavíg, first giving a good summary (cf. sörla þáttr) of the situation that led to the battle and proceeding afterwards to reproduce five stanzas from bragi skáld’s ragnars drápa loðbrókar, where poetry is used to narrate the battle. the third stanza, for example, says the following (faulknes 1998: 73, with minor adaptations): letrat lýða stillir landa vanr á sandi —þá svall heipt í högna— höð glamma mun stöðva, er þrymregin þremja þróttig heðin sóttu 72 mariano gonzález campo heldr en hildar svíra hringa þeir of fingu on the other hand, in stanza 49 of his háttatal, snorri sturluson alludes again to the hjaðningar legend in this way (faulknes 1991: 23, with minor adaptations): hjaldrremmir tekr hildi (hringr brestr at gjöf) festa, hnígr und högna meyjar hers valdandi tjald; heðins mála býr hvílu hjálmlestanda flestum, morðaukinn þiggr mæki mund hjaðninga sprund c) parallels in scandinavian ballads inspired by hægstad (1900, 1901) and grüner-nielsen (1939), and based on jonsson, solheim & danielson’s the types of the scandinavian medieval ballad (1978), i have been able to identify up to fifty-three types of nordic ballads (out of 838) which show several parallels with the hildina ballad concerning plot and/or motifs.14 here is a list of those types of ballads together with a brief summary, origin, and classification code according to jonsson, solheim & danielson’s handbook. a few remarks are also in order. the parallels in plot and/or motifs are in bold type:15 14 grüner-nielsen (1939: 159–165) identified four well-known motifs in the hildina ballad: medbejler og ond raadgiver (rivals and the evil counsellor), det afhuggede hoved (the chopped head), indebrænding (killing a person burning him inside a house), and den evige kamp (the everlasting battle). 15 note on the symbols and abbreviations used in this list: + = a closer relationship to the hildina ballad (according to plot and/or motifs) = a more distant relationship to the hildina ballad (according to plot and/or motifs) var. = variation d = denmark n = norway f = faroe islands s = sweden i = iceland the norn hildina ballad 73 (a) ballads of the supernatural: + a41 ribold og guldborg (d, i, n, s): a knight persuades a maid to leave the country with him. they are pursued by her family, and a fight ensues during which the knight kills her relatives. at this she forgets that he has forbidden her to use her name during the fight and calls out to him. he is then mortally wounded. he takes her to his home where he dies. she (and his mother) dies from sorrow. + a42 hildebrand og hilde (d, s): a girl tells the tragic story of her life. she escaped from home with a knight. her relatives pursued them, and the knight requested her not to mention him by name during the ensuing fight. when he was about to kill her youngest brother she forgot her promise and called his name, whereupon her betrothed was killed. she was severely punished by her family. (c) historical ballads: c10 herr lavrents og bengta sunesdatter (d): the swedish judge lars loves bengta, who has been placed in a convent* by her family. lars abducts her and takes her to norway where they marry. after some years lars falls ill. he calls for his wife, and before he dies he advises her to return to her brother in sweden. when bengta returns her brother is very cold towards her at first, but he changes his mind and promises to share his estate with her. (var.: she rejects his offer and enters a convent.) [*cf. hildina ballad: in a glas buryon.] c15 magnus algotsøn (d, n, s): torstein davidsson arranges for his wedding with ellensborg, who is loved by folke algotsson*. folke rides to her home. his arrival is announced by a page-boy. ellensborg covers her head, but folke recognizes her by her eyes as soon as he enters the room. after a short talk (var. d, n: in which he reminds her that she once promised herself to him) he takes off with her behind him in the saddle. the page-boy tells torstein davidsson what has happened. d, n: torstein follows folke with an escort. a fight ensues, and torstein loses (var. d: he is killed) [*cf. amorous triangle among hiluge, hildina, and the jarl of orkney in the hildina ballad.] 74 mariano gonzález campo (d) ballads of chivalry: d3 brud og bejler (d): a maid sees erik, her suitor, approach and asks her family to bid him welcome. they refuse, and she goes out herself and greets him, asks him to stay and offers herself in marriage. they get engaged. var.: erik has to fight for her. + d18 peder hjemfører sin jomfru (d): peder breaks into a maid’s bower at night and promises her a wonderful existence in the land of bliss, if she will only become betrothed to him. then he takes her to his ship and they sail to his father’s country where they celebrate their wedding. d27 klerks kvæði (i): a cleric from the pope’s court travels widely. a king’s daughter invites him to her table. when they get into bed she warns him of her father. he then persuades her to come with him to his own country. the king and the queen wake up late to find their daughter gone. the king writes a letter to the sarracens’ country requesting that they be burnt. d35 morten venstermand (d): morten’s betrothed has been taken to a convent by her seven brothers in order to prevent her marriage. the king gives morten permission to take her out of the convent*. morten persuades his uncle to help him**, and together they get the girl out. they invite the king to the wedding. [*cf. hildina ballad: our glas buryon burttaga.] [**cf. hildina ballad: for frinda sin spir de ro.] d36 herr mortens klosterrov (d, i): morten is sent abroad by his family because he wants to marry a penniless girl. when he returns the girl is in a convent. morten decides to get his betrothed out of convent* and asks for help and advice from his brother** (i: servants). he pretends to be dead (d: and his brother takes him to the convent where the girl is). while his betrothed is supposed to watch over him the body he takes her away. all the other nuns wish that such an angel would come for them, too. [*cf. hildina ballad: our glas buryon burttaga.] [**cf. hildina ballad: for frinda sin spir de ro.] d37 herr karl på ligbåre (d, n, s): sir karl asks his mother to advise him on how to get the girl he loves (var. d, n, s: out of the convent). she tells him to pretend to be dead and to send for the girl to watch by the corpse. she comes, and in the presence the norn hildina ballad 75 of what she thinks is a dead man she admits to loving him. at this karl gets up from the bier and gives orders for their wedding to be prepared. (var. d, s: all the other nuns wish that such an angel would come for them, too.) d50 vilgår hertugson (n): vilgår and signe have pledged their troth, but signe’s father makes her marry a king. during the wedding vilgår arrives (var. and pours out wine for all the guests until they get drunk and fall asleep). he then leaves with the bride on his horse. d59 riddara kvæði (i): a knight sees a beautiful lady in a tower and goes in to her. she tells him not to stay if he wants to keep his life, but he stays anyway and falls asleep by her side. he is awakened by the clamour of weapons. with the lady in his arms he fights his way out and rides off with her. d64 rige herr tord (d): sir peder and his daughter have a talk, and he asks her to stop mentioning sir tord. when she disobeys he beats her. the girl sends her brother to tord to return his gifts and to tell him that she is dying. tord comes over immediately and asks her how she wants her father to die. she does not want him punished if he will only allow them to get married. their wedding ceremony takes place. d65 riddar feller far til møyi (n): a conversation between two lovers is overheard by the girl’s father. she advises her lover to fight, but if possible to save her father’s live. after the fight the young couple leaves together. + d76 skógarmanns kvæði (i): an outlawed knight has been on a visit to his betrothed, but in the morning they must flee because her father is expected. they take a boat but are caught in a storm. they must swim ashore, and he loses his weapons. three hostile knights approach and fight with the man. armed only with an oaken cudgel he finally succumbs. that night the maid kills the three knights in revenge and then enters a convent. + d78 herr hjælmer (d, n, s): hjælmer has seduced a maid (var. d, s: she is the king’s daughter. var. d, n, s: he has also killed her father or var. d: her uncle or mother). hjælmer meets the maid’s brothers who accuse him of seduction (var. d, n, s: and manslaughter). hjælmer kills all the brothers except one, ole, who begs for his life. hjælmer spares him, but is treacherously killed by him. ole takes hjælmer’s head 76 mariano gonzález campo to his sister to show that her lover is dead. she stabs ole to death (var. d, n: poisons him). (var. d: ole gives his sister to hjælmer in marriage) d140 bejlekunsten [1] (d, s): a young man goes to his foster-mother (var. s: mother) and asks for advice on how to court a maid. his mother tells him to dress well and to be polite and attentive to the girls. d158 bóthildar kvæði [1] (i): the farmer pétur gives a feast for the king and his men. logi, the groom, comes to pétur and wants his daughter bóthild. pétur replies that this will not be for as long as he lives. logi gives pétur a cut with his sword, and pétur promises him his daughter in marriage. bóthild wakes up and wonders if no one can help her. then she kills logi herself. she enters a convent. + d159 bóthildar kvæði [2] (i): the king hears bóthild sing and sends for her. she comes with her brother who is killed when he will not give his sister to the king. bóthild wants to take vengeance. she asks her maidservant (var. i: foster-mother) to mix a poison-draught and makes the king drink her health. he dies and bóthild enters a convent. d161 ridder stig og skottekongens datter (d): sir stig sails to scotland and stays there for some time. one day he sees the king’s daughter on her way to church. he pretends to be a poor fisherman and she tells him who she is. he is happy to have found her and takes her to his ship. he sails home to denmark and marries her. d163 palle bosøns død (d, f, n, s): palle finds out from a servant that the girl he loves is going to church. he stops her carriage and takes her to his home in spite of her warnings. shortly after they have got into bed, her betrothed (var. f, s: her kinsman, the king, var. n: her father) arrives, and palle is killed. (var. n: after having slain his bride’s betrothed, var. n: and father) (var. f: before he is killed, palle asks his bride to have the two sons she will bear him take revenge) (var. d: she marries her betrothed, var. d, n, s: she refuses to marry him and enters a convent.) (var. d, n: she has a child by palle, var. n: and dies in child birth) (var. s: she says that the child she will have by palle will revenge its father. var. f: palle’s two sons grow up and revenge him) d172 knud af borg (d, f, i, n): (n: a maid has two suitors, the king and knud af borg. she chooses knud. f: the king hears about knud’s beautiful wife and goes to visit knud to look at her.) the king goes to knud’s wedding (d, i: knud invites the king in spite of his bride’s warnings. f var. n: the king challenges knud to defend his the norn hildina ballad 77 bride.) the king kills knud (d: orders his men to do it). the king takes the bride to bed with him, but she makes him promise not to touch her the first few nights. once he falls asleep she kills him. (var. f: before going to bed with the king knud’s widow arranges a funeral for her husband. by the grave she kills the king.) (var. i: she dies from sorrow.) d222 brøðurnir (f): steffan goes to his brother roland’s house and is met by roland’s wife, hilda. she says that roland will be away until christmas. she and steffan spend the night together. when steffan wakes up roland stands by the bed and asks what his brother is doing there. steffan replies that hilda was as willing as he was. hilda gives steffan a coat of mail and the two men fight. they are both killed. d236 arne og den untrue bruri hans (n): arne’s mother tells him that his betrothed has a lover, jonas. in order to find out if this is true arne says that he is going away. his betrothed sends for jonas at once. arne surprises them and cuts off jonas’ head. d237 bonde høg og hustrus boler (d): ebi declares his love to sir bonde’s wife and offers her gold. she is pleased and wishes her husband were dead. her maidservant reproaches her. bonde listens to all this. ebi returns from a love-meeting with bonde’s wife and meets the husband, who kills him. bonde shows his wife her lover’s severed head. the he takes the maidservant for his mistress. d238 sigvord kongesøn (d): sigvord, a king’s son, takes kirstin out of a convent and promises her to be faithful. she warns him that if he fails her it will mean his death. she lives with him as his mistress for many years. one day he comes home and tells her that he is engaged to a noble-woman. she gives him a beverage made from herbs, and he falls ill. he tries to be reconciled to make her save her life, but she lets him die. d241 stolt elins hævn (d): a knight conducts her bride home. elin serves the wine during the wedding and later she hides in the bridal chamber. she hears the bridegroom tell his bride that elin has been his mistress. the bride tells him he ought to have married elin instead. when the man has fallen asleep elin stabs him to death. she spares the bride and advises her to return to her father. d245 herr peders slegfred (d, f, n, s): sir peder is about to celebrate his wedding. he does not want kirstin to go, but she decides to be there. she wears her best clothes and jewellery to the wedding. d, f, var. s: the bride asks who she is and is told that kirstin was peder’s mistress. d, f: she says that peder ought to have married kirstin instead. 78 mariano gonzález campo var. d: kirstin steals into the house at night. she stabs the bridegroom to death, but she spares the bride because of her kind words. var. d, f, var. s: kirstin hangs herself in the orchard, and when peder hears about this he takes his life. the bride dies from sorrow. n, var. s: kirstin sets fire to the house and both bride and bridegroom die. d247 hyrde og ridderfrue (d, f, s): sir themme hears a shepherd sing a song which reveals to him that the shepherd is his wife’s lover. themme has the shepherd hanged at once (f: cuts his head off). d, f: he tells his wife what he has done. d: she gets furious and tells him that all her twelve sons are the shepherd’s sons. f: she keeps him awake at night by crying over the shepherd. d, f: themme kills his wife. d327 hertugen af skare (d): the king’s son woldemor abducts hyllegierd from a convent and takes her to his country. his mother the queen will not give her approval to their marriage, and woldemor goes away with his betrothed. the queen sends them poisoned wine. woldemor drinks it and dies. the same night hyllegierd is delivered of three children. she dies, and only one of the children survives. + d337 alexanders kvæði (i): alexander raids king hringur’s country and abducts his daughter. the king comes with his navy to get her back. in the ensuing battle the king kills alexander. when the king is going to take his daughter home she says that a young knight will revenge alexander’s death. d350 magna dans (i): the king of sweden surprises his daughter with her lover and kills him. the daughter gets a son, magne. when magne is twelve years old his mother tells him of his father’s death and urges him to take revenge. magne finds his grandfather and is refused damages for his father. he kills the king and two of his men. his mother summons the people to an assembly. nobody dares accuse magne, who becomes king after his grandfather. +/d352 liden engel (d, n, s): (d, n: engel has eloped with malfred against her family’s will.) engel and malfred are told that her brother (s: engel’s rival for malfred) is approaching. they take refuge in the nearest church, but the brother sets fire to it. malfred gets out, but engels dies. var. d, n: malfred has a son who wants to revenge his father’s death. var. d: he sets fire to his uncle’s house and thus kills him in the way his father died. var. d, n: he kills the uncle with his sword. d385 tistram og jomfru isolt (d): var.: tristran is about to enter the emperor’s service. he is warned not to fall in love with isolt. when he arrives at the court the emperor’s the norn hildina ballad 79 daughter isolt sees him and falls in love with him. they meet in secret, and isolt’s mother tries to stop this. (var.: she intends to poison them, but the lovers refuse to drink. var.: tristan forces her to drink herself, and she dies). tristan and isolt escape together and get married. var.: a woman is told (var.: dreams) that her son and daughter will want to marry each other. she sends her daughter to be brought up by the emperor’s wife. when her son tristan is grown up he enters the emperor’s service, but is warned not to fall in love with isolt. when he meets her they fall in love anyway. they are told that they are brother and sister but still want to escape together. the emperor builds a tower and puts isolt in it. when tristan tries to get her out of there the emperor’s wife poisons them, and they die in each others arms. d386 tístrams táttur (f): tristan and isolt are in love, but his parents are opposed to a marriage between the two. they send their son to the king of frakkland (france) with a letter asking the king to marry his daughter to tristan, and to kill him if he refuses. tristan has sworn to be faithful to isolt and rejects the proposal. he is executed. when isolt is told she goes to frakkland, burns the king in his house, and dies from sorrow by tristan’s body. (e) heroic ballads: e21 jallgríms kvæði [2] (f): jallgrímur wants to try his strength in fight and is told about a mountain giant. he goes to find him. they fight, and jallgrímur saves his life only by promising the giant his son when he gets one. the giant spares him and also gives him a magic sword which will help him in fights. jallgrímur goes to ireland to try to get the king’s daughter. his proposal is scornfully rejected by the irish king. in the ensuing fight jallgrímur kills a number of the king’s men as well as the king himself and his son. he marries the king’s daughter. she bears him two sons. when the boys are twelve years old jallgrímur tells them to go from ireland to his father’s country to fight the giant. the boys set out and manage to kill the giant. one of the boys marries a girl they find in the giant’s castle. both become rulers of the country. e39 guttormur í hattarmóti (f): margreta marries guttormur. they are invited to margreta’s parents. they go in spite of suspicions. (var.: on the way their ship is caught in a storm, but guttormur stops it by means of magic.) when they arrive, margreta’s mother, the queen, has guttormur killed. margreta gives birth to a son, whom she sends away so that he may be out of the queen’s way. (var.: she also has a daughter, and both margreta and the daughter are killed by the queen.) the son, magnus, wants 80 mariano gonzález campo to revenge his father’s death. his father’s sister ata gives him advice, which helps him avoid his grandmother’s attempts to poison him. he sets fire to the house, and she is burnt to death. magnus then sets out against his grandfather. helped by ata’s advice he subdues the wild animals watching his grandfather’s castle, and then he kills him. he succeeds his grandfather as king. e54 frændehavn (d): ellind is married far from home (var.: to the man who killed her father). after eight years she prepares a feast for her brothers. they are well received by ellind’s husband, but at night he kills them all in their sleep and offers ellind their blood to drink. ellind takes revenge by killing all her husband’s sons (var.: sisters and brothers) and offering him a drink of their blood*. then she kills him too (var.: and her child by him). [*note that hildina pays hiluge back in revenge with the same cruelty.] e55 høgna táttur (f): gudrun gets married to king artala. she wants to take revenge for sjúrður’s death and invites her brothers to a banquet. their mother grimhild warns them, and they are also warned by a person they meet on the way, but they do not listen. they arrive and are invited to sit down at their sister’s table. she has poisoned their drinks, but høgne discovers this. gudrun induces her son to strike høgne, and høgne gets up and kills the boy. gudrun urges artala to kill her brothers, she uses magic, and everyone is killed except høgne. a warrior turns himself into a dragon and pours poison on høgne, who feels that he is about to die. he asks an earl’s daughter, helvík, to sleep with him before he dies. he tells her that she will have a son. she must call him høgne, and he will revenge his father’s death. e56 grimilds hævn (d): lady kremold sends a message to her brothers and invites them to her home. their mother warns them that kremold means to betray them, and they are also warned by persons they meet on the way, but they do not listen. kremold receives them well, but later she eggs her men on, and the feast ends in a fight. +/e80 rings kvæði (f): ringur, son of king valdimann of girtland, goes to sjóland to propose to the king’s daughter. he is accompanied by pætur the dane. the king rejects ringur’s proposal contemptuously and kills some of his men. finally a fight breaks out, and the king is taken prisoner. ringur lets him go at his daughter’s request, and then marries the daughter. var.: while ringur is away from home sjúrður, the emperor of saksland, arrives in girtland to propose to kristin, ringur’s sister. her father, king valdimann, asks sjúrður to await ringur’s return to get his consent. sjúrður threatens the norn hildina ballad 81 to take kristin home as his mistress, and there is a fight. valdimann is killed. kristin tries to defend herself, sword in hand, but is finally defeated by sjúrður’s men and taken to saksland. when she meets sjúrður she falls in love with him, and they are married. ringur returns to girtland and finds what has happened. he goes to saksland to take revenge for his father’s death. in the ensuing fight sjúrður is taken prisoner. pætur the dane wants to kill him, but ringur prevents this and goes to see his sister. sjúrður is set free, but ringur takes their newborn son back to girtland with him. he gives the boy the name of valdimann after his father. e92 ásmundr sterki (f): king ásmundur goes to gjøtland to propose to the king’s daughter elin. in the entrance to the castle he kills an ogre and saves its tongue. his proposal is accepted by the king, but a rival prince karvilín of sweden, arrives and claims to have killed the ogre. ásmundur shows him the tongue. karvilín challenges him to fight, and ásmundur kills him. then he goes to see elin and wants to marry her, but she says that he must first defeat karvilín’s father, king ranild. ranild arrives with an army. ásmundur kills nearly all of his men, but ranild begs for mercy and is spared. ásmundur marries elin and takes her home. he receives tax from sweden. e93 tróndur jógvansson (f): sjúrður asks the king for his daughter margreta’s hand, but the king does not think him good enough. sjúrður talks to margreta herself, and she accepts him. meanwhile another suitor, tróndur jógvansson, arrives and is accepted by the king, but margreta does not want him. at the king’s suggestion the two rivals fight, and sjúrður kills tróndur. tróndur’s father jógvan arrives to revenge his son. sjúrður and margreta both fight him, and finally sjúrður kills him although he begs for mercy. sjúrður and margreta are married, and sjúrður succeeds jógvan as king. e94 virgar bekilsson (f): gyrðilin decides to propose to a duke’s daughter, hilda, although he is told that virgar bekilsson has already proposed to her. when gyrðilin arrives he meets virgar and challenges him to a fight. virgar kills him and all his men except aðal, who turns out to be virgar’s brother. together they go to the duke’s house to find hilda, but she has been carried away by an ogre. virgar and aðal go to the ogre’s cave. in the ensuing fight aðal is devoured by the ogre before virgar manages to kill it and save hilda. he takes her home and marries her. later brandur arrives with his son to revenge gyrðilin’s death. after a long and violent fight virgar kills brandur, his son and all his men. e95 sjúrður av nøríki (f): sjúrður, son of the king of norway, and king gion of ireland both arrive to propose to the princess júli. she prefers sjúrður, but gion 82 mariano gonzález campo challenges him to a fight. gion is killed. sjúrður and júli are married and return to norway. they have two sons, one of them called grimmar. gion’s father, king ívar, goes to norway to revenge his son. sjúrður kills ívar and decides that his son grimmar shall marry ívar’s daughter herga. grimmar proposes to her, and she tells him to get the consent of her kinsmen first. while he is away an earl from sweden proposes to herga and is accepted. grimmar returns during their wedding, kills the earl and marries herga. the king of sweden comes to revenge the death of his earl. in the fight he kills grimmar, but the young champion hilmir kills him. after a year hilmir marries herga. e96 svend af vollersløv (d, f, i, s): svend af vollersløv wants to marry lissebet, but she chooses to marry villiam. svend is very jealous, and shortly after villiam’s wedding to lissebet he kills him. lissebet gives birth to a son and names him after his father. (var. d, f, i, s): when young villiam grows up his mother tells him who killed his father. he sends a message to svend af vollersløv to meet him at the assembly. svend refuses to give villiam damages for his father’s death, and villiam kills svend. he tells his mother that his father is now revenged. (var. d, f): villiam seduces svend’s sister (var. f: wife). her brother (var. f: father) arrives to take revenge. villiam kills him (var. f: spares his life after killing all his men). villiam marries the woman he seduced. +/e98 grimmars kvæði (f): king haraldur of ongland goes to propose to hilda, daughter of king grimmar of gardarike. king grimmar is away at war. haraldur does not wait to get grimmar’s consent, and he and hilda return to ongland and marry. hilda gets three sons. later haraldur wants to visit grimmar. he leaves his youngest son gormundur at home and brings the two others. he helps grimmar win a war, but while he is away grimmar prepares to take his life. he gives haraldur so much to drink that he falls asleep and then sets fire to the house. haraldur and his sons are killed. haraldur’s men return to gormundur and hilda with the news. later hilda marries the emperor sjúrður and gets the son haraldur by him. gormundur goes to gardarike to revenge his father’s death on grimmar. (var.: grimmar tries to stop gormundur’s ship by magic). grimmar and gormundur fight, and both use magic against the other. finally gormundur defeats grimmar but spares his life and sends a message to hilda. she sends her son haraldur to gardarike, where he kills grimmar. gormundur succeeds grimmar as a king, and haraldur returns to ongland. -/+ e99 snæúlvs ríma (f): the king of jorsaland is dying and decides that his younger son magnus will succeed him because grimmar, the elder, is a bad man. after a quarrel magnus sends grimmar out of the country. later the two brothers propose to svanhild, the norn hildina ballad 83 daughter of the king of uppland. she chooses magnus, and they are married. they return to jorsaland and bring svanhild’s brother, who marries magnus’ sister. grimmar, who is still in uppland, and svanhild’s father lay plans to kill magnus. the king invites him for christmas. in spite of svanhild’s warnings magnus accepts the invitation and goes to uppland with two of his sons, leaving the third, sniolvur, behind. magnus and his men are given so much to drink that they fall asleep, and then grimmar sets fire to the house. magnus and his sons manage to get out of the burning house. they fight hard for their lives, but grimmar kills them with treachery. svanhild gets the news and urges sniolvur to take revenge. sniolvur goes to uppland accompanied by his cousin ringur. when they arrive they meet a man by the name of harra-svein who tells them that grimmar celebrates his daughter’s wedding. he helps them join the celebration in disguise. they put the lights out and sniolvur manages to get away with the bride while ringur gets involved in a fight. sniolvur returns and helps him get out of the house. then he puts fire to the house, and his grandfather, the king of uppland, is burnt to death. sniolvur and ringur meet grimmar and fight with him. grimmar tries to kill sniolvur by treachery, but ringur saves him and kills grimmar. sniolvur returns to jorsaland, and ringur becomes king of uppland. +/e140: herr hylleland henter sin jomfru (d, f, n):16 the king’s daughter has been carried away by an ogress. the king promises to give his daughter to the man who can bring her back, and hylleland volunteers. he goes to the mountain where the ogress lives, and she says he may spend one night with the princess, but in the morning he must lose his life. hylleland sleeps with the princess, and in the morning the ogress arrives to kill him. var. n: hylleland kills the ogress and all her relatives. var. d: hylleland uses runic magic to make the ogress change her mind, release the princess and let them leave with rich gifts. var. f: the princess and hylleland make a wooden dummy which the ogress tries to kill instead of hylleland. he laughs at her mistake, and this makes her relent. she lets them leave with rich gifts. when the king’s men see 16 it should be noted that this is the danish version of the norwegian kappen illugjen and the faroese kappin illhugi. the name of the princess is hillelille (little hild) in the norwegian version and hilda in the faroese one. in these ballads illugjen/illhugen comes close to the role of the jarl of orkney in the hildina ballad, whereas the king’s evil counselor (björn) plays the role of hiluge in the shetlandic ballad. these danish, norwegian, and faroese ballads are closely related to illuga saga gríðarfóstra (see, for example, liestøl 1915 and erlingsson 1975, with conflicting interpretations about the relationship between this fornaldarsaga and related ballads). 84 mariano gonzález campo them return they want to attack the ogress, but hylleland defends her. var. d, f, n: hylleland and the princess are married. e162 (n): venill fruva og drembedrosi: a king remarries. his new wife, drembedrosi, is of giant kin, and she wants to marry her brother to her stepdaughter venill. she threatens to turn the girl into a barren tree if she does not accept. venill is taken into the mountain to celebrate her wedding. she tries to postpone the ceremony by various means, and when it eventually takes place she pours out mead to the guests until everyone falls asleep. she sets fire to the house and escapes. when she gets back home she exposes her stepmother to her father the king, who kills drembedrosi. -/+ e164 artal kongur í atlandi (f): king artal wants to ravage the country of king gudmund. he learns magic from a witch and marries her. he goes to gudmund’s country, kills him, and returns home. hákun, foster-son to gudmund, sets out to get revenge. artal and his wife try to stop him by a storm, but hákun uses counter-magic and gets ashore. he kills artal and the witch. ringarálvur, brother of the witch, arrives to revenge his sister’s death. he fights with hákun, but they find out that they are brothers and make up. ringarálvur goes to atland to propose to hilda, but she says she would rather marry the earl of langalund. ringarálvur kills the earl and forces hilda to marry him. holdi, the earl’s father, wants to revenge the death of his son. in the ensuing battle ringarálvur is victorious and kills holdi and all his men. after this, ringarálvur goes to a giant’s cave. he fights with the giant, and by magic means ringarálvur wins the fight. he kills the giant and takes his gold. (f) jocular ballads: f23 sorte iver (d, f, n): iver black is derided (var. f: is turned down by the woman he proposes to) because he is so black. he asks his mother how he might seduce a certain woman*, kirsten (var. f: the one who turned him down), and his mother advises him to pretend to be the clergyman. dressed like the clergyman iver is let into kirsten’s room and spends the night with her. in the morning he tells her who he is. var. d, n: she asks him to stay, for he is not so black after all. [* advice from a relative also in the hildina ballad.] f24 germand smed og præstens datter (d, i, s): germand the blacksmith proposes to the clergyman’s daughter, but she rejects him spitefully, saying he is too dirty. germand the norn hildina ballad 85 asks his mother’s advice*. she tells him to go to the clergyman’s daughter disguised (var. d: as a blind man, var. i: as an old woman, var. i, s: as a beggar). in this disguise germand manages to get into the girl’s bed and sleep with her. in the morning he tells her who he is. var. d: she wants to marry him, but he says nobody will want her for a wife now. [* advice from a relative also in the hildina ballad.] 3. the hildina ballad: attempts at reconstruction george low wrote down the hildina ballad from william henry’s lips without knowing the norn language spoken in the shetlandic island of foula, nor any form of the norn language for that matter. moreover, it seems that the ballad was quite worn out when low found it. all this led to several problems, for instance: words written down that maybe did not exist in norn, a deficient phonetic transcription of the words pronounced by henry, or a mistaken arrangement of the verses of the ballad. in other words, low’s —and the world’s— only extant version of the hildina ballad is not a reliable document. for this reason, there were some early attempts to (re)elaborate a version closer to a supposed original by scholars such as svend grundtvig, axel olrik, moltke moe, or sophus bugge with the assistance of jakob jakobsen, a faroese linguist specialized in the norn language of the shetland islands.17 however, it was marius hægstad —the norwegian author of the influential vestnorske maalføre fyre 1350— who took the lead in 1900 with the, so far, most comprehensive linguistic study of the hildina ballad, titled hildinakvadet med utgreiding um det norske maal paa shetland i eldre tid. in his study, hægstad claimed that low’s main mistakes were: 1) sometimes he divided one word into two or used fragments of a word as if they were independent (e.g. vanna ro instead of vannaro = vandaráð? vinaráð?); 2) sometimes he created a word out of two independent words (e.g. elonden instead of e londen = í löndum?); 3) in some cases, he split a word in fragments and merged them into other words (e.g. vod lerdin instead of 17 some interesting letters sent by bugge either to jakobsen or to olrik about his plans to publish a more reliable version of the hildina ballad can be found in kruken (2004, vol. 1, p. 212; vol. 2, pp. 562, 600, 608; vol. 3, pp. 738, 740, 743. the pages refer to the parts of the letters where the hildina ballad is explicitly alluded to). 86 mariano gonzález campo vodler din = völlr/völlin þinn?); and 4) in many instances, low arranged the verses of the ballad in a wrong way by putting a word in the previous or following verse or by putting a verse in the previous or following stanza. although hægstad managed to produce a linguistically much more reliable interpretation of the hildina ballad than low, in 1984 the norwegian scholar eigil lehmann tried to go one step further and normalize the ballad, drawing inspiration from v. u. hammershaimb’s etymological approach to the faroese language.18 as lehmann (1984: 7–8) points out: so tidleg som 1808 var visa [i.e. hildina ballad] prenta av ein james headrik [sic], i 1838 av nordmannen p.a. munch. andre som hev arbeidt med kvædet er dansken svend grundtvig, nordmannen sophus bugge, færøyingen jakob jakobsen, nordmannen moltke moe og dansken axel olrik. desse hev mest bala med å føra kvædet attende i gamalnorrøn form. ei “attføring” etter axel olrik frå 1898 er å finna i ei utgreiding um kvædet av dansken hakon grüner-nielsen i heidersskriftet til gustav indrebø 1939. men mætaste arbeidet er gjort av normannen marius hægstad i boki ‘hildina-kvædet’, som kom ut år 1900. han hev like vel ikkje gjort nokon freistnad på “attføring” so som hine. ein freistnad som ikkje er gjord, men som me hev teke oss fyre i dette arbeidet, er å føra kvædet yver i ei skriftform som knyter til norrøn tradisjon men er serleg tilmåta til målføret – i so måte eit sydestykke til det som v.u. hammershaimb gjorde med færøymålet. in the following table 1 we can see a comparison of hægstad’s and lehmann’s attempts to reconstruct the hildina ballad from low’s original version. 18 although faroese had a rich oral tradition, it lacked a consistent written form —or any important form of written language for that matter— until hammerhaimb, and later jakob jakobsen, tried to create a normalized written faroese based on several etymological guidelines mainly inspired by icelandic purism. a couple of interesting anthropological approaches to the normalization process of modern faroese can be found in wylie & margolin (1981, esp. chapter 4) and nauerby (1996). the norn hildina ballad 87 table 1. hildina ballad: attempts at reconstruction george low (1774) marius hægstad (1900) eigil lehmann (1984) 1. da vara jarlin d’orkneyar for frinda sǐn spur de ro whirdi an skildè meun our glas buryon burtaga. 1. da vara iarlin o orkneyar for frinda sǐn spurde ro, whirdì an skildè meun or vannaro eidnar fuo or glasburyon burtaga 1. dað var jarlin 'tá orkneyar fyr frænda sín spurdi ráð hvorti hann skuldi meyen ó vandaráð hennar fá (ór glasborgin burttaga) 2. or vanna ro eidnar fuo tega du meun our glas buryon kere friendè min yamna men eso vrildan stiendi gede min vara to din. 2. “tega du meun our glasburyon, kere friendè min, yamna meun eso vrildan stiendu, gede min vara to din.” 2. tegur dú meyn ór glasborgin kæri frændi mín jamnan me’n hesor verilden stendur gedið mun varða til din. 3. yom keimir cullingin fro liene burt asta vaar hon fruen hildina hemi stu mer stien. 3. yom keimir eullingin from liene; burt asta vaar hon fruen hildina, hemi stu-mer stien. 3. eðlingin kemur av leiðing heim burtu stað var hon frún hildina eyðin stóð meyarstein 4. whar an yaar elonden ita kan sadnast wo an scal vara kundè wo osta tre sin reithin ridna dar fro 4. “whar an yaar e londen ita kan sadnast wo, an scal vara heindè wo osta tre, sin reithin ridna darfro.” 4. hvar hann jar í londom hetta kann sannast á hann skal varða heingdur á hásta tré sem rédin renna ífrá 88 mariano gonzález campo 5. kemi to orkneyar jarlin vilda mien sante maunis i orknian u bian sian i lian far diar. 5. “kemi to orkneyar iarlin, sante maunus vilda mien, i orknian u bian sian, i lian far di an.” 6. hann gevur drottningin kinnpustur undir kinn fyr sannu fóru tárir á hennar hvitrani kinn 6. an gevè drotnign kedn puster on de kin firsane furu tworare wo eder whitranè kidn. 6. an gevè drotnign kednpuster onde kin; fir sane furu tworone wo edner whitrane kidn. 5. kemur til orkneyar jarlin —sante mognus vil dað mein— í orkneyom ogh býr hann síðan í leiðang far dú enn’. 7. in kimerin jarlin u klapasse hildina on de kidn quirto vult doch, fiegan vara moch or fly din. 7. in kimer in iarlin u klapa se hildina onde kidn; “quirto vult doch fiegan vara moch or fy din?” 7. inn kjemer orknøy-jarlen og klappar si hildina unde kinn: “kvåre vilde du feigan vera meg elder fa’er din? 8. elde vilda fiegan vara fy min u alt sin ans namnu wo so minyach u ere min heve orkneyar kingè ro. 8. “elde vild-a fiegan vara fy min u alt sin ans namn u wo; so min yach u ere min heve orkneyar lingè ro. 8. “helder vilde eg feigan vera får min og alt han å so skal eg og herren min yve orknøyar lengje rå.” 9. nu di skall taga dor yochwo and u ria dor to strandane nir u yilsa fy minu avon blit an ear ne cumi i dora band. 9. nu di skall taga dor yoch wo and u ria dor nir to strand, u yilsa fy minu avon blit; an earni cumi i dora band.” 9. “nú dið skal taga dor jog á hand ogh ríða dor ni’r til strand ogh heilsa faðir mínom avarblítt han gerni komi á dora band the norn hildina ballad 89 10. nu swaran konign so mege gak honon i muthi whath ear di ho gane mier i daute buthe. 10. nu swara an konign —so mege gak honon i muthi—: “whath ear di ho gave mier i daute-buthe?” 10. nú svarað ‘om konungin —so migið gakk honom í móti— hvad eigir dé að geva mér í dótturbóti? 11. trettì merkè vath ru godle da skall yach ger yo u all de vara sonna less so linge sin yach liva mo. 11. “trettì merkè vath ru godle, da skall yach ger yo u allde vara sonnaless, so linge sin yach liva mo.” 11. trettí merkur ved reuðu golli dað skal jag dér ljá ogh aldri að vara sonolous so leingi sem jag liva má 12. nu linge stug an konign u linge wo a swo wordig vaar dogh mugè sonè yacha skier fare moga so minde yach angan u frien rost wath comman mier to landa. 12. nu linge stug an konign, u linge wo an swo: “wordig vaar dogh mugè sonè; yach askier fare moga so. 12. nú leingi stóð han konungin ogh leingi á han sá: verdig jar dog (mugi) sonar jag askir fyri mág að sjá. 12b. “so minde yach angan ufrien rost, wath com an mier to landa.” 12b. so mundi jag engan úfrín ráðst hoád komi han mér til landa 13. nu swara hiluge hera geve honon scam taga di gild firre hildina sin yach skall liga dor fram. 13. nu swara hiluge —hera geve honom scam—: “taga di gild firre hildina sin yach skall lega dor fram: 13. nú svarað illugi —herra gev’ onom skamm! tagið dé geld fyri hildina sem jag vil legga dor fram 90 mariano gonzález campo 14. estin whaar u feur fetign agonga kadn i sluge feur fetign sin gonga kadn i pluge. 14. estin whaar u feur-fetign a gonga kadn i sluge,— estin whaar u feur-fetign sin gonga kadn i pluge.” 14. hestin hvar og ferfettingin að ganga kann í slóði -----ferfettingin sem ganga kann í plógi 15. nu stienderin jarlin. u linge wo an wo dese mo eke orknear so linge san yach lava mo. 15. nu stiender in iarlin u linge wo an swo: “dese mo eki orknear, so linge san yach lava mo.”— 15. nú stendur han jarlin ogh leingi á han sá: “dessi má ekki orkneyar so leingi sem jag liva má.” 16. nu eke tegaran san sot koningn fyrin din u alt yach an hilhugin widn ugare din arar. 16. “nu eke tegar an san sot, koningn fyrin din; u alt yach an hilhugin u garedin arar widn.” 16. nú ekki tegur han samsátt konungin faðirin din og helt jag han illugin á gerðin aðrar vinna 17. nu swarar an frauna hildina u dem san idne i fro di slo dor a bardagana dar comme ov sin mo. 17. nu swarar an frauna hildina, u dern san iden i fro: “di slo a bardagana, dar comme ov sin mo!” 17. nú svarar ‘om frúen hildina í deim sama sinni frá: “dé sláið dor í bardaganom dar komi áv sem má”. 18. nu jarlin an genger i vadlin fram u kadnar sina mien geven skeger i orkneyan. 18. nu iarlin an genger i vadlin fram u kadnar sìna mien, gever skeger i orkneyan 18. nú jarlin han gangur á vallin fram ogh kannar sína menn: gævi skeggir í orkneyum 19. han u cummin in u vod lerdin fronde fans lever vel burne mun. 19. “han u cummin in u vodler din; frinde hans lever velburne mien.” 19. “han er komin (við úfriði) inn á vollin din; frændi f(aðir din) s leybir velborni menn.” the norn hildina ballad 91 20. nu fruna hildina on genger i vadlin fram fy di yera da ov man dum dora di spidlaikì mire man. 20. nu fruna hildina, on genger i vadlin fram: “fy di yera da ov mandum dora, di spidla ikì mira man.” 20. nú frúen hildina hon gengur í vollin fram “faðir, dið gerið dað av manndón dora: dið spillið ekki meiri mann.” 21. nu sware an hiluge crego gevan a scam gayer an jarlin frinde din an u fadlin in. 21. nu sware an hiluge —erego gev ana scam—: “yayer an iarlin frinde din an u fadlin in.” 21. nú svarar hann illugi —herreguð gevi honom skamm— “heghar han jarlin frændi din han er fallin han.” 22. nu fac an jarlin dahuge dar min de an engine gro an east ans huge ei fong ednar u vaxhedne more neo. 22. nu fac an iarlin dahuge —dar minde an engin gro—. an cast ans huge ei fong ednar, u vaks hedne mere meo. 22. nú fakk 'an jarlin da høggið dar mundi han eingin grjó han kastað hans huguð í fang hennar ogh vaks henni meiri mjó. 23. di lava mir gugna yift bal yagh fur o lande gipt mir nu fruan hildina vath godle u fasta bande. 23. “di lava mir yugna, yift bal yagh fur o landi; gipt mir un fruan hildina vath godle u fasta bande.” 23. “dé lovað mér hjónagift bel jag fór áv landi gipt mér nú frúen hildina ved golli ogh fastabandi.” 24. nu bill on heve da yals guadnè borè u da kadn sina kloyn a bera do skall fon fruna hildina verka wo sino chelsina villya. 24. “nu billon heve day alty uadn è borè, u da kadn sina kloyna bera; do skall hon fruna hildina 24. “nú bel han hevir dað jarlsbarn borið ogh dað kann sín kláðin bera dá skal hon frúen hildina 92 mariano gonzález campo verka wo sino chelsina villya.” ad sjalvs sína vilja gera.” 25. hildina liger wo chaldona u o dukrar u grothè min du buga till bridlevsin bonlother u duka dogha. 25. hildina liger wo chaldona wo dukrar u grothè; min du buga till bridlevsin, hon lothir u duka dogha. 25. hildina liggur á tjaldenom eughað druknar í grádi me’n dei búga til brulleubsins í drekka dágha hon ládur. 26. nu hildina on askar feyrin sien di gava mier livè ou skinka vin ou guida vin. 26. nu hildina on askar feyrin sien: “di gava mier live ou skinka vin, ou guida vin.” 26. —nú---hildina —askar faðirin sin —dið gevið mér leyvi að skeinka ogh gýda vín. 27. duska skinka vin, u guida vin tinka dogh eke wo jarlin an gougha here din. 27. “du ska skinka vin u guida vin; tinka dagh eke wo iarlin, an gougha here din.” 27. “dú skal-- —skeinka ogh gýda vín; teink dog ekki á jarlin enn góða herri din.” 28. watha skilde tinka wo jarlin gouga herè min hien minde yagh inga forlskona bera fare kera fyrin min. 28. “wath a skilde tinka wo iarlin an gouga herè min, hien mindi yagh inga forlskona bera fare kera fyrin min.” 28. “hóad jag skuldi teinka á jarlin góða herri min hé’n mundi jag einga fárskonna bera fyri kæra faðir min.” 29. da gerde on fruna hildina on bar se mien ot on soverin fest, fysin u quarsin sat. 29. da gerde on fruna hildina, on bar se mien ot; on sover in fest fysin, fysin u quar sin sat. 29. dað gerdi hon frúen hildina hon bar sé méðin ád hon sávir inn fyst faðir sin ogh hvar sem —sad. 30. da gerde un fruna hildina 30. da gerde un fruna hildina, 30. dað gerdi hon frúen hildina the norn hildina ballad 93 on bard im ur hadlin burt sien on laghdè gloug i otsta jatha port. on bar dim ur hadlin burt; sien on laghdè gloug i otsta jath a port. hon bar deim ór hallin burt síðan hon lagdi glóðhough í otsta gadaport. 31. nu iki visti an hiluge ike ov till do eldin var commin i lut u stor u silkè sark ans smo. 31. nu iki visti an hiluge ike ov till do eldin var commin i lutustor u sìlkisark ans smo. 31. nú ekki visti han illugi ekki áv til dá eldin var komin í lopthúsdor ogh silkiserk hans smá. 32. nu leveren fram hiluge du kereda fraun hildina du gevemir live u gre 32. nu lever en fram hiluge “du keresta fraun hildina, du geve mir live u gre.” 32. nú leybur fram han illugi “dú kæri dað, frúen hildina, dú gevi mér lív ogh grið.” 33. so mege u gouga gre skall dogh swo skall lathì min heran i bardagana fwo. 33. “so mege u gouga gre skall dogh swo, sin shall lathi min heran i bardagana fwo. 33. “so migið ogh góða grið skalt dog s(j)á ---lad mín herran í bardagan fá.” 34. du tuchtada lide undocht yach swo et sa ans bugin bleo dogh casta ans huge i mit fung u vexemir mise meo. 34. du tuchta da lide undocht yach swo etsa ans bugin bleo; dogh casta ans huge i mit fung, u vexe mir mire meo.” 34. “dú tókti dað lídið um dótt jag sá hetsa hans búgin bljó; dog kastað hans huguð í mitt fang ogh vaks mér meiri mjó.” 35. nu tachtè on heve fwelsko ans bo vad mild u stien dogh skall aidè misè koningnsens vadna vilda mien. 35. nu tachtè on heve fwelsko ans bo vad mild u stien. “dogh skall aldè mirè koningnsens vadne vilda mien.” 35. nú takti hon yvi følska hans bá ved møld og stein: “dog skal aldri meir konungsins barni valda mein.” 94 mariano gonzález campo 4. the hildina ballad: attempts at translation as mentioned before, the first scholar who tried to make some sense of the hildina ballad was peter andreas munch in geographiske og historiske notitser om orknoërne og hetland (1839), but he only managed to render about half of the ballad into old norse and danish. it was not until hægstad’s study in 1900 that a more or less reliable version of the hildina ballad became available. as a matter of fact, hægstad’s version has been the main reference for all the translations of the ballad into a few modern languanges. so far, there is one german translation by j. e. poestion (1914), two norwegian (nynorsk) translations by marius hægstad himself (1901) and eigil lehmann (1984), and three renderings into english by w. g. collingwood (1908), norah kershaw (1921),19 and graeme davis (2007).20 in contrast to the german and norwegian translations, the english versions have been published more than once.21 the three tables below offer a comparison of the ballad’s translations, following a chronological order. 19 however, kershaw only translated the first twelve stanzas of the ballad. 20 davis’s translation can also be considered an attempt at creative reconstruction or rewriting, as he offers quite a free version of the ballad. 21 apart from more recent online editions, collingwood’s translation has also been published by graham & graham (1998), whereas kershaw’s rendering was published as well by leach (1946) and davis (2007). davis’s own version was also published by the newspaper the orcadian on january 3, 2008. oddly enough, syndergaard (1995) only mentions leach’s english version, which, as mentioned above, is actually kershaw’s. the norn hildina ballad 95 table 2. hildina ballad: attempts at translation (i) sophus bugge (c. 1897) marius hægstad (1901) w. g. collingwood (1908) 1. það [sic] var jarlinn af orkneyjum af frænda sína spurði ráð: hvert hann skyldi meyna or glasborginni burttaka eða vinaráð fá. 1. det var jarlen or orknøyom, han spurde sin frende um raad, um han skulde den møyi or vanden hennar faa, — or glasborgi burttaka 1. it was the earl of orkney of his friend has taken rede whereby to bring a maiden forth of her perilous need — from the broch of glass to save her. 2. “tekr þú meyna or glasborginni, kæri frændi minn, jamnan meðan æ svo veröldin stendr getit mun vera til þín.” 2. “teker du møyi or glasborgi, kjære venen min, so lenge som denne verdi stender, skal spyrjast mannskapen din.” 2. “take ye the maid from the broch of glass, dearest friend of mine, and aye as long as the world may stand shall be told this deed of thine.” 3. [her] kemr øðlinginn frá leiðinni [heim], burt á stað var hon frúin hildina, [tómr] stoð meyarsteinn. 3. heim kjemer edlingen fraa leiding med sine menn. burte og vekk var fru hildina; heime stykmôr stend. 3. homeward comes the noble king from the hosting as he rides, but gone is the lady hildina; at home her step-dame bides. 4. “hvar hann er í landinu, ef þat kann sannast á: hann skal verða hengdr á hæsta tré sem rótinn rennr þar frá.” 4. “kvar han er i landi dette kann sannast paa, han skal verta hengd i det høgste tre som rotom renner ifraa.” 4. “whoever in all the land be he is guilty of this thing, he shall be hanged on the highest tree that forth of root may spring!” 96 mariano gonzález campo 5. “kemr til orkneya [sic] jarlinn, —valda man, sankti magn(u)s— í orkneyjum þér bíðið síðan [bana] í leiðangs-ferð í ár.” 5. “kjemer jarlen til orknøyar, st. magnus kann styra det so: han vert der verande all si tid; far difor etter han no.” 5. “if the earl be come to orkney, st. magnus will keep him there, for his home is aye in orkney; then forth with thy hosting fare.” 6. hann gefr dróttningunni kinnpúst under kinn; fyrsandi fóru tárir á hennar hvítrinni kinn. 6. daa gav han dronningi ein kinnhest under kinn; med sanno rann det taaror paa hennar kvitare kinn. 6. whereat he gave the queen a clout on the cheek in wrath and spite, and o but the tears went coursing adown her cheek so white. 7. inn kemr hann jarlinn ok klappar sær hildina undir kinn: “hvárt vilt þú feigan vera mik eða föður [sic] þinn?” 7. inn kjemer den jarlen, klappar hildina under kinn: “kven vil du no feig skal vera, eg eller fa’er din?” 7. in came the earl and fondled hildina’s cheek in glee: — “now whether of us are ye fainer of— your father, or of me?” 8. “heldr vilda’k feigan vera föður [sic] minn, ok alt sem hans nafn á; svá mun ek ok, herra minn, hava orkneya lengi ráð. 8. “heller vilde eg fâr var feig og alt som hans namn er paa; daa skulde eg og min hæve herre orknøyar lenge raa”. 8. “i would sooner be fain of my father and of aught that he can say, so shall i and my lord have orkney to rule for many a day. 9. nú þér skal taka yðr hauk á hönd, ok ríða yðr niðr til stranda; 9. no skal du taka ein gangar fram og rida deg ned til strand, 9. “now shalt thou take thy horse in hand and down to the water wend, the norn hildina ballad 97 ok heilsa föður mínum afar-blítt hann er nýkominn í yðru [l]andi. og helsa fâr min ovende blidt; maa henda de semjast kann.” and greet my father fair and blithe; he will gladly be thy friend.” 10. nú svarar hann konungrinn, svo mikit gekk honum í móti: “hvat eruð þit í hugi gefa mér í dótturbótum? 10. no svara konongen —so mykje gjekk honom imot— “kva hev du aa gjeva meg i dotterbot?” 10. then said the king —for a many came riding to meet him there— “what gift hast thou gotten to give me in fee for my daughter fair?” 11. “þrjátíu merkr við rauðugulli, þat skal ek gera hjá, ok aldri [skaltu] vera sonalauss, svá lengi sem ek lifa má.” 11. “tretti merker i raudegull, det skal du hjaa meg faa, og aldri vera sonelaus, so lenge som eg liva maa.” 11. thirty marks of gold so red is the gift that i will give; forbye for a son ye never shall lack the while that i may live.” 12a. nú lengi stóð hann konungrinn, ok lengi á hann sá: “verðugr vart þú mági, syni, ek á skarð fyri mága.” 12. no lenge stod den konongen, og lenge paa honom saag: “du er jamgod med mange søner, eg ynskjer me semjast maa. 12. now long stood the king before him, and long on the earl looked he:— “well worth many a son art thou! i would that it so might be! 12b. “[vilduð þér frúna hildina geva mér til handa] svá mundi [o]k engan frændorrust þóat koma mér til landa.” 13. [og fer det som eg ynskjer det, at du gjeng meg til hande,] daa skulde eg ingen uven ræddast, um han kom meg til lande.” 13a. [“when orkney’s earl and norway’s king in league together stand so need i fear no foe soe’er might come within my land.”] 98 mariano gonzález campo 13. nú svaraði hillugi, herra [guð] gefi honum skamm: “takið þit gjöld fyri hildina sem ek skal leggja yðr fram.” 14. no svarar hilluge —herre, gjev honom skam—: “tak vederlag for hildina som eg vil leggja fram: 13b. then up and spoke illugi — the lord to him give shame!— “this fee shall ye take for hildina as i shall set the same:— 14. hestarnir verða fjörutíu, er ganga kann í slóði, [hestarnir verða] fjörutíu, sem ganga kann í plógi.” 15. kvar ein hest og firføting, so før at ei horv han drog,— kvar ein hest og firføting som ganga kann for plog.” 14. “every horse and four-foot beast that trails a load [in snow]; every horse and four-foot beast that in the plough can go.” 15. nú stendur [sic] hann jarlinn, ok lengi á hann sá: “þessi má ekki orkneyjar, svá lengi ek lifa má. 16. no stender han, jarlen, og lenge paa honom saag: “dette vinn ikkje orknøyar, so lenge eg liva maa. 15. then stood the earl before him and a long look on him cast: “never shall orkney grant that gift the while my life may last!” 16. nú ekki tekr hann samsátt, konungrinn faðir þinn; ok helt ek hann hillugin vildi ok gerast herra þinn.” 17. no tek han ikkje mot semja god, konongen fa’er din. eg tenkte meg og at hilluge ber anna uti sitt sinn.” 16. “now never more his troth and trust will the king thy father yield; and sore i doubt me illugi would plough his neighbour’s field.” 17. nú svarar hon frúin hildina í því sömu [s]inni ífrá: 18. no svarar fru hildina or døri si inne ifraa: 17. and the lady hildina answered him, as behind the door she sat: the norn hildina ballad 99 “þit sláið yðr í bardagana, þar komi af sem má.” “so fær de stridast med odd og egg, det gange av som det maa.” “then meet him in the battle, and come what will of that!” 18. nú jarlinn hann gengr í völlinn fram, ok kannar sína menn: “göfgir skeggjar í orkneyjum, [verjast viljum vér enn].” 19. no jarlen han gjeng paa vollen fram og kannar sine menn, dei gjæve skjeggjar i orknøyom, [velborne menn]. 18. forth goes the earl to the field of war and orders his array— the peaceful orkneybeardies [for the fearsome battleplay] 19. “hann er komin [med [sic] ófriði] in [sic] á völlinn þín; frændi [h]ans hleypir velbornir menn.” 20. “kongen, han er komen; paa vollen din han stend. venen hans driv paa flugt dei velborne menn.” 19. “he is marching through thy fields, lady, [he has broken garth and wall,] and all his friends are following and thy noble folk they fall!” 20. nú frúin hildina hon gengr í völlin fram: “faðir, þit gerið þat af manndómi yðar, þit spill’ ekki meira manna.” 21. no fruva hildina ho gjenger i vollen fram: “fâr, aa gjer no eit manndomsverk, og spill ikkje fleire mann!” 20. now lady hildina hies her forth to the field of strife:— “father, for manhood’s sake forebear, and stay this waste of life!” 21. nú svarar hann hillugi, [h]erra gúð [sic] gefi honom skam [sic]: “þegar hann jarlinn frændi þinn, hann er fallin [sic] enn.” 22. no svarar han hilluge —herre gud gjev honom skam—: “ja, naar jarlen, venen din, ogso er fallen, han.” 21. then up and spoke illugi — the lord god him requite!— “no sooner than the earl, thy love, has fallen in the fight.” 100 mariano gonzález campo 22. nú fekk hann jarlin[um] þat höggit, þar mundi hann enginn grœða, hann kasti hans höfði í fang hennar, ok vexti henni meiri mœði. 23. no fekk jarlen daudehogg —det saaret kunde ei gro— han kasta hans hovud i fanget hennar, daa voks det stort hennar mod. 22. then gat the earl his deathstroke— no hand could heal him more. he cast his head into her arms, and o but her heart was sore! 23. “þit lofaði mér góða giftu, bili ek fór ór landi: gipt mér nú frúna hildina við gulli ok festar bandi.” 24. “de lova meg gifta, um djerv eg fór or lande. gjev meg no fru hildina med gull og festebande.” 23. “grant me to be the bridegroom, so bold have i followed thee; to the lady hildina wed me now with gold and festing-fee.” 24. “nú bili hon hefir þat jarlsbarnit borit, ok þat kann sín klæðin at bera, þá skalt [h]on frúna hildina verka á sinum [sic] sjálfssína vilja.” 25. “no bidlund have du til barn er boret og det kann sine klæde bera, daa skal fruva hildina faa sjølvs sin vilje gjera.” 24. “forbear thou then till the bairn be born, and fair in swaddling dight; then shall lady hildina order this even as she deemeth right.” 25. hildina liggr á tjaldinu, ok hon hjúfrar ok grætr: meðan þeir búa til brullaupsins bæði daga ok dökkar [n]ætr. 26. hildina ligger paa tjeldet, og augo dimme ho græt, men daa dei bur til brudlaupet, ho daae i drykken læt. 25. on tapestry fair hildina lay, her eye was dim with dole; but while they dressed the bridal-feast she brewed a drowsy bowl. 26. nú [kemr hon] hildina, 27. ho hildina ho beder fa’er sin; 26. then up and spoke hildina, the norn hildina ballad 101 hon æskir föður [sic] sinn: “þér gefid [sic] mér leyfi at skenkja [mjöð] ok gjóta vín?” “du gjeve meg løyve aa skenkja vin, aa fylla i vin.” and prayed her father dear: — “now grant me leave to fill the cup and pour the wine so clear.” 27. “þú skalt [hafa leyfi] at skenkja [mjöð] ok gjóta vín, þenk þú ekki á jarlinn þann göfga herra þinn. 28. “du skal skenkja vin og fylla i vin; men tenk no ikkje paa jarlen, den gode herren din.” 27. “and who but thou should fill the cup, and pour for us the wine? but think no more upon the earl, that worthy lord of thine.” 28. “hvat skyld ek þenkja á jarlinn, göfga herra minn, heðan mundi ek engra forlaganna bera fyri kæra föðurinn [sic] minn.” 29. “um eg tenkte paa jarlen, den gode herren min, eg vilde daa ingi svikkanna bera fram fyre fa’er min.” 28. “upon the earl, my worthy lord, though ever should i think, yet shall i bring my father dear no draught of ill to drink.” 29. þat gerði hon, frúin hildina, hon bar svá mjöðinn at; hon svæfir hann fast föður [sic] sinn, ok hvern sem [inni] sat. 30. det gjorde fru hildina, ho fram den mjøden bar; ho svæver so fast inn fâren, fâren og alle som var. 29. thus wrought the lady hildina— she bore the wine around, and fast asleep her father lay, with his folk upon the ground. 30. þat gerði hon frúin hildina, hon bar þeim or höllinni burt; siðan hon lagði glœðurnar i [sic] ýtsta gátt á port. 31. det gjorde hildina, ho bar deim or halli burt; sidan lagde ho eld og glod i ytste op i port. 30. thus wrought she: —her father and all his folk forth of the hall she bore thereafter fire she laid alow to the outermost gate of the door. 102 mariano gonzález campo 31. nú ekki vissi hann hillugi ekki af til þá: eldrinn var kominn í loft ok stóð á silkiserkinn smá. 32. no ikkje visste han hilluge noko av til daa elden var komen i lofthusdør og silkeserken hans smaa. 31. and nothing illugi heeded, and nought he knew at all, till the fire came in at the loft-house door, on his silken sark so small. 32. nú hleypr hann fram hillugi [hann vissi sér engi lið]: “þú geri þat, frúin hildina, þú gefi mér líf ok grið.” 33. no springer han hilluge fram, [stod uti borge-led]: “aa, kjæraste du fru hildina, du gjeve meg liv og grid!” 32. then up illugi started, [and the flame around was rife]: “thou dearest lady hildina, o grant me peace and life!” 33. “svá mikinn ok góðan grið skalt þú [af mér] sjá: sem þú lét minn herran í bardaganum fá. 34. “like mykje og like god grid skal du no sjaa, som du sjølv lét herren min i striden dykkar faa. 33. “so much of good peace shalt thou behold, [to ease thee in thy pain;] as thou thyself wouldst give my lord upon the battle-plain. 34. þú þóttist þar lítið um, þóat ek sá at, [ek] sá hans búkinn blœða þú kastaðir hans höfði í mitt fang ok vextir mér meira mœðu.” 35. det tyktest deg lite, endaa eg saag kroppen hans all i blod, du kasta hans hovud i mitt fang, daa voks det stort mitt mod.” 34. “little ye recked though yonder i looked on his body all bloodied o’er, but cast his head into my arms, and o but my heart was sore!” 35. nú þakt hon hefir fölska hans bæði við mold ok stein: 36. no tekt ho heve oska hans baade med mold og stein. 35. and as she took both mould and stone on the embers for to fling:— the norn hildina ballad 103 “þú skalt aldri meira konungsins barni valda mein.” “du skal aldri meir konongsens barn valda mein.” “never now shalt thou work thy evil will on the daughter of a king!” table 3. hildina ballad: attempts at translation (ii) j. e. poestion (1914) norah kershaw (1921) eigil lehmann (1984) 1. es war ein jarl auf den orkneys; er holte beim freund bescheid, ob wohl er aus den nöten erlösen soll die maid und aus der glasburg nehmen. 1. it was the earl from orkney, and counsel of his kin sought he, whether he should the maiden free from her misery. 1. da va jarlen tå orknøyar han spurte sin frænde um råd korte han skulde møyæ or vandará hennar få — (or glasborgjæ henne taka): 2. “nimm, lieber freund, aus der glasburg die maid du nur; dann geht dein ruf von mund zu munde, so lange die welt besteht.” 2. “if thou free the maid from her gleaming hall, o kinsman dear of mine, ever while the world shall last thy glory still shall shine.” 2. “teker du møyæ or glasborgjæ kjære frænde min fræg jamnan med denne verdæ ho stender skal gjetord ganga um deg.” 3. der könig kehrte vom kriege zurück in die lande sein; verschwunden ist frau hildina, die stiefmutter steht allein. 3. home came the king, home from the ship's levy the lady hildina she was gone, and only her stepmother there found he. 3. edlingjen kjemer av leidang heim —tôtte da skamm og mein— burte stad var fru hildina øyden stod møyarstein. 104 mariano gonzález campo 4. “wo immer er weilt in den landen, —das schwör’ ich! — ihr genoß soll hängen am höchsten baume, der wurzeln je entsproß.” 4. “be he in whatever land, this will i prove true, he shall be hanged from the highest tree that ever upward grew.” 4. “kvar han er i londom —detta kann sananst på— han skal verta hengd i da hægsta tre som røter renna ifrå.” 5. “kommt heim der jarl nach orkney, dann wirkt’s sankt magnus aus, daß bort er auch immer bleibe; drum zieh’ aufs neue zum strauß!” 5. “if the earl but come to orkney, saint magnus will be his aid, and in orkney ever he will remain— haste after him with speed.” 6. alt so gjever han dronningjæ kinnpuster unde kinn for sanno runno tåror på hennar kvitare kinn. 6. der königin verseßt er hierauf einen backenstreich, daß über die weißen wangen ihr tränen sließen sogleich.— 6. the king he stood before his lady, and a box on her ear gave he,— and all adown her lily white cheeks the tears did flow truly. 5. “kjemer til orknøyar jarlen —sante magnus valdar mein; i orknøyarne då bur han sidan du fare i leidang enn’.” 7. der jarl tritt zu hildina und streichelt die wange ihr: “wem wünschest den tod du lieber, dem vater oder mir?” 7. the earl he stood before hildina, and a pat on her cheek gave he,— “o which of us two wouldst thou have lie dead, thy father dear of me? 7. inn kjemer orknøyjarlen og klappar si hildina unde kinn: “kvare vilde du feigan vera meg elder fa’er din? 8. “des todes sei lieber mein vater mit all seiner sippe dann, 8. “i would rather see my father doomed, and all his company, 8. “helder vilde eg feigan vera far min og alt han å — the norn hildina ballad 105 daß lang ich mit meinem gebieter auf orkney herrschen kann. if so my own true lord and i may long rule in orkney. so skal eg og herren min yve orknøyar lengje rå.” 9. doch nehmet ein roß und reitet zum strande, damit ihr vielleicht, wenn freundlich ihr grüßt meinen vater, euch noch miteinander vergleicht.” 9. “now do thou take in hand thy steed, and ride thou down to the strand; and do thou greet my sire full blithely, and gladly will he clasp thy hand.” 9. “no skal de taka dykk øyk å hånd og ri’a dykk ned til strand og helsa far minom avar-blidt gjedna kjem han i dykkar band.” 10. dem jarl entgegnet der könig —er war nicht so hart gesinnt—: “was habt ihr wohl als buße zu geben mir für mein kind?” 10. the king he now made answer —so sore displeased was he— “in payment for my daughter what will thou give to me.” 10. då svara ‘om konungjen —so mykje rann honom i hug— “kva heve du å gjeva meg atter i dotterbot?” 11. “wohl dreizig mark ich euch gerne in rotem golde geb’; auch sollt einen sohn ihr niemals vermissen, so lang ich leb’.” 11. “thirty marks of the red gold, this to thee will i give, and never shalt thou lack a son as long as i may live.” 11. “tretti merker med raude gull skal du hjå meg få og aldri å vera sonalaus so lengje som eg leva må.” 12. gar lange stand der könig und lange sah er ihn an. “du wärst schon wert mir viel söhne; drum schlag’ ich ein; wohlan!” 12. now long stood the king, and long on the earl gazed he:— “o thou art worth a host of sons; thy boon is granted thee.” 12. no lengje sto han konungjen og lengje på han såg: “jamgod er du med vaksen son og havande mann til måg.” 106 mariano gonzález campo 12b. “vil du vera i sona-stad og ganga meg til handa, då ræddest eg ingjen fiendsmann um han kjøme hjå meg til landa.” 13. hilugi sprach dagegen —schmach ih, daß er es tat!—: “nehmt buße für hildina nur so, wie ich euch rat: 13. då svara han illugje —herregud gjeve honom skamm!— “tak de bot fyre hildina som eg vil leggja dykk fram. 14. an pferden und an ochsen, was taugt als pfluggespann, an pferden und an ochsen, was egge ziehen kann.” 14. hesten kvar og firføttingjen som ganga kann i slogje, hesten kvar og firføttingjen som ganga kann i plogje.” 15. es steht der jarl gar lange, blickt lang auf den könig hin: “das können die orkneys nimmer, so lang ich am leben bin.” 15. stender no lengje jarlen og lengje på han såg: “detta ber ikkje orknøyar so lengje som eg leva må.” 16. “dein vater will nichts wissen von billigent vergleich. wie ich’s gedacht hab’, spielte hilugi uns diesen streich.” 16. “no teker’an ikkje ved samsått konungjen fa’er din, no meinar eg at han illugjen på onnorleis åtgjerd vinn.” the norn hildina ballad 107 17. dem jarl darauf entgegnet hildina aus ihrem haus: “dann schreitet lieber zum kampfe, fällt er wie immer aus!” 17. då svarar honom fru hildina i same sinne som so: “da må de slåst i bardagje og koma kva koma må. 18. der jarl geht auf den kampfplaß und ordnet seine schar, die kecken orkneymannen [erprobt in sturrm und gefahr] 18. no jarlen gjenger å vollen fram og kannar sine menn. gjæve skjeggjar i orknøyom verja seg anna sinn. 19. “es drang in deine felder der könig ein voll wucht, wohledle männer treibt auch sein freund schon in die flucht.” 19. “no er illugjen komen inn på vollen din. frænden hans fa’ er din løyper velborne orknøymenn.” 20. hildina geht auf das schlachtfeld, den vater anzuflehn: “seid menschlich nun und laßt nicht mehr männer zugrunde gehn!” 20. hildina gjenger i vollen fram og talar til fa’eren sin: “fa’er de gjere da åv manndom dykkar de spille ‘kje meire menn.” 21. jedoch hilugi —schmach ihm!— er wendete sogleich ein: “da muß vorerst dein freund noch, der jarl, gefallen sein.” 21. no svarar han illugje —herregu’ gjeve honom skamm— “ikkje fyrr jarlen herren din fyrst er fallen han.” 108 mariano gonzález campo 22. er fiel, zu tod verwundet. den kopf warf in den schoß hilugi selber hildinen. da ward ihr grimm wohl groß. 22. so gav han jarlen da hoggje som ingjen mann kunde grøda, han kasta hans hovud i fangje hennar då gjordest for stor hennar møda. 23. “versprech sie mir, dann folg ich euch kühn auch außer land. gebt mir hildina zum weibe und gold als unterpfand!” 23. du heve lova meg hjonagift dann tid eg fór åv lande. gjev meg no fruva hildina med gull og med festarbande. 24. “geduld, bis das kind geboren und kleider trägt, mein freund! dann soll hildina handeln, wie ihr’s am besten scheint.” 24. fyst ho heve da jarlsbarn bore å da kann sine klæ’e bera då skal ho fruva hildina åt sjølvs sinom vilja gjera. 25. hildina liegt auf dem teppich und weint sich die augen krank; dann mischt sie für die hochzeit schlafkräuter in den trank. 25. hildina ligger på bruratjeld auga tårar og græter medan dei bur til brudlaupsbord i drikka dåe ho læter. the norn hildina ballad 109 26. nun bittet frau hildina: “o, lieber vater, mein, erlaub mir einzuschenken und nachzufüllen den wein!” 26. inn so kjemer ho hildina og skjer fa’eren sin: “fa’er de gjeve meg løyve å skjenkja og bjoda vin.” 27. “schenk ein den wein und fülle ihn nach auch, willst du’s gern; doch denk an den jarl nicht weiter, an deinen gütigen herrn!” 27. du skal hava løyve mitt te skjenkja og bjoda vin; tenk då ikkje på jarlen dan gode herren din.” 28. “sollt’ an den jarl ich denken, an meinen gütigen herrn, liegt schädlichen trunk zu reichen dem vater mit doch fern.” 28. um eg so skulde tenkja på jarlen, go’ herren min so munde eg ingjæ fårskål bera for kjære fa’er min.” 29. dies tat auch frau hildina; sie trug den met herein und schläferte fest den vater und all die andern dort ein. 29. da gjorde ho fruva hildina ho bar dan mjø’en åt so svæver ho fyst fa’er sin og kvar som inne sat. 30. dann trug sie aus der halle hinaus noch mann für mann 30. da gjorde ho fruva hildina ho bar deim or hallæ burt, 110 mariano gonzález campo und legte bei den tore zuäußert feuer an. sidan lagde ho glodhaug i ytste gateport. 31. hilugi weiß nichts von allem; es kamen des brandes loh’n zur bodenhaus-tür und erreichten sein kurzes seidenhemd schon. 31. ikkje visste han illugje åv seg fyrr enn då elden var komen i lofthusdør og i silkjeserkjen hans små. 32. da springt empor hilugi, [sieht sie und spricht zu ihr:] “o teuerste frau hildina, schenk leben und frieden mir!” 32. no løyper fram han illugje og feller for hildina kne: “du nenne da, fruva hildina, du gjeve meg liv og gre’” 33. “so viel und guter frieden soll dir gewährt nun sein, wie meinem herrn in der schlacht du selbst ließest angedeih’n. 33. “so mykje og godig gre skal du sjå, som du lét min herre i bardagen få.” 34. dir schien’s sogar ein geringes, daß ich ihn sah im blut; du warfst sein haupt in den schoß mir… da ward mir noch schwerer zu mut.” 34. “du tôtte da lite då, at eg såg istad hans bukjen bløda; dei kasta hans hovud i mitt fang, da vart meg for stor ei møda.” 35. dann hat sie seine falschheit 35. so takte ho yve osko hans the norn hildina ballad 111 bedeckt mit erde und stein. “du sollst einem königskinde nie mehr zum schaden sein!” både med mold og stein: “du skal aldri meir konungsens dotter valda mein.” table 4. hildina ballad: attempt at reconstruction/translation graeme davis (2007) once upon a time the earl of orkney asked his brother “from out her glass pavilion should i steal our king’s daughter?” “my brother if you take this maiden from out her glass pavilion your deed shall be remembered for years a million million.” thus when the king came home from viking voyage a winner the step-mother was still at home, but there was no hildina. “i swear by all that’s holy that wherever he may be i’ll hang him by his neck from the very highest tree.” to good st magnus’ church in orkney fled the earl, to orkney sped the king, to save his little girl. meeting the married lady there he boxed her round the ears soon down her white cheeks there flowed a flood of tears. the earl embraced hildina, and kissed her on the cheek, “my darling wife, between us two, whose death would you now seek?” “not to my father but to you i swore my lasting vow, and so by that we both may rule, us two in orkney now.” “go to your horse and overtake my father on the beach, greet him kindly, clasp hands, his blessing to beseech.” the king made a stern reply, his anger did not falter, “i want to know what bride price can you give me for my daughter?” “thirty marks of burnished gold shall i unto you give, and you will never lack a son for as long as i may live.” 112 mariano gonzález campo long stood the king, gazed on the earl for long, “you’re worth a thousand sons my man, though what you did was wrong.” now among the king’s companions was the swarthy hilunge, to wed the beauteous hildina his dream for many a day. again and again and craftily hilunge spoke to the king, again and again the king did listen, once more to this thing. now for a long time the king looked at the earl standing near “you may not orkney; a long time ago i betrothed my daughter dear.” “i will take nothing against his will from the king your father, instead to give hilunge his rights, that would i rather.” hildina looked from the one to the other, turned pale, one would die in the fight, that fate would not fail. now the earl stepped forward onto the duelling ground and the king turned his face from orkney, looked around. “now one of us must die, ‘tis either thee or me,” the blows rained down, down fell the earl orkney. now lady hildina steps on the grass where soon a corpse must lie, “father by all that’s holy do not let a brave man die.” but hilunge answered her: “call odin’s maidens here, for death draws nigh the earl, this man your husband dear.” now the earl felt the axe bite through his neck, a clean kill hilunge threw the head into her arms; she grew more angry still. “you promised me marriage if i voyaged far from our land now with golden dowry and strong vows give me hildina’s hand.” now were her eyes downcast as he looked upon the king for the lady hildina against her will must take a golden ring. soon that time came, though hildina wished it never, with that man to be joined, husband and wife forever. now hildina asked her father “may i serve the wine, choose who will get the best, who the worst, when we come to dine?” “both the best and the worst as you rightly think, both earls and freemen this day must drink.” a drugged wine she gave them, both to earls and to freemen, their eyes were heavy, sleep came over them. the norn hildina ballad 113 then the lady hildina went in, her face was set, she saw her father and the guests asleep, on the benches where they sat. then the lady hildina went in, dragged her father across the floor, laid him on the grass outside and fastened close the door. now hilunge awakes as the fire begins to rage, the smoke is black and thick, the banquet hall a cage. now a scream breaks from the throat of hilunge, “oh lady hildina, let me live another day.” “so may you cry out, now you should believe, that same mercy you showed in the battle you shall receive, you did not care for him or me, that was clear for all to see, that you threw his head at me, that angered me. now receive a heavy fate, for soon to death you yield, the king cannot help you now, on this battlefield.” all this for once upon a time the earl of orkney asked his brother “from out her glass pavilion should i steal our king’s daughter?” 5. some concluding remarks with two serious attempts at reconstruction —or three, if we also take davis’s version into consideration— and six attempts at translation, the hildina ballad still remains a text that is chiefly interesting from the linguistic point of view. the aim of those translations and reconstructions has been to try to understand the original story and, in some instances (munch, grundtvig, olrik, bugge), to get an idea of how it may have sounded in old norse. this overlooks the fact that the ballad as we know it is just a local norn product, not necessarily an old norse relic. that is why, understandably, i have included sophus bugge’s norse version among the translations —and not the reconstructions— of the ballad. in this sense, the following statement of grüner-nielsen (1939: 165) is still valid: 114 mariano gonzález campo den omstændighed, at professor marius hægstad o.1900 af hensyn til en af sophus bugge bebudet publikation lod sig nøje med at udgive og vurdere hildinavisen mere som shetlandsk sprogmindesmærke end som vestnordisk folkevise, har vist bevirket, at visen siden ligesom er gaaet i glemme indenfor den nordiske viseforskning, og at man paa forhaand har betragtet visen som et folkelig produkt, der højst havde lokal interesse. if this piece of norn oral tradition is to be taken at face value and treated as a highly interesting anthropological22 —and not merely linguistic— document, then it should be interpreted within the cultural and chronological context in which it was discovered and written down, as well as within the wider concept of det norrøne folkeviseumrådet, as liestøl (1937) calls it. as some reputed scholars like lord (2000) or colbert (1989) state, looking for a supposed original when dealing with dynamic, oral compositions is not only a waste of time, but also representative of a sort of disdain for the composition to be studied and understood. oral narrative is constitutive of social life itself or, as niles (1999: 19) puts it, “the idea of poetry as a voiced social transaction is one of the foundational elements of the art of homo narrans”. given this, a literaryanthropological —and not purely linguistic— approach to the hildina ballad is necessary if we really wish to understand why this ballad was still preserved and recited in norn after centuries of scottish domination in the orkney and shetland islands. this literary-anthropological approach would make it possible to unveil the issues of cultural identity that might lie behind the hildina ballad. as niles (1999: 2) also states, “it is chiefly through storytelling that people possess a past”, and the past is one of the main elements used to build up identities. in the case of the hildina ballad, it seems quite clear that this product of norn oral tradition can be interpreted as a symbol of cultural identity, although we have not yet found its actual significance: may the ballad have been used, in the ritualized milieu of its recitation, to strengthen cultural links with scandinavia within a context of scottish rule? in this sense, the study of and quest for nordic analogues of the ballad would be very enlightening as to how scandinavian that late norn product still was, i.e. how scandinavian the shetlandic society of foula still was. on the other hand, the ballad might be also interpreted as a symbol of 22 note that we use the adjetive anthropological, not ethnographical, as we think that the study of the hildina ballad poses interesting questions about the dynamics of human oral culture and its implications in other areas such as identity or politics, and not only questions of mere local nature. the norn hildina ballad 115 confrontation of the shetland and orkney islands against norway. the orcadian jarl dying at the hands of the norwegian counsellor of a norwegian king after abducting a norwegian princess may symbolize a social vindication of an identity that was no longer norwegian, but neither was it scottish; it was simply norn. if this was so, we may have here an example of an underlying political conflict developing into a love story or a story of revenge, as solberg (2008: 131) explains concerning medieval scandinavian ballads in general. it is almost impossible to know when the hildina ballad was composed for the first time. this is, if one can speak of a very “first time” when dealing with what is possibly an amalgam of many stories told at different times. the only thing we know for sure is that the ballad that was still recited in 1774 was a rather worn out version, not only because george low “could not procure a literal translation of the ballad” (low 1879: 113),23 but also because “the disorder of some stanzas” shows that the ballad was no longer complete by the time he wrote it down (low 1879: 107). on the other hand, the fact that it does not have any refrains is a typical feature of those ballads which have lost their connexion with dancing (christophersen 1952: 6), and a ballad with no dance is somehow just a fossil.24 fortunately, we have at least a terminus post quem and a terminus ante quem that make it possible to estimate a feasible date of composition for the hildina ballad as we know it today. as anderson (1979 [1873]) already pointed out in his introduction to the english translation of the orkneyinga saga, the mention of saint magnus of orkney (sante maunis) in stanza 5 of the ballad implies that it cannot have been composed before magnús erlendsson’s canonisation in 1135. that would be the terminus post quem. on the other hand, the name hildina is a variation of the old norse hildr/hild, or maybe a form influenced by the name helena, as hægstad (1900: 85) remarks. however, it should be considered that, according to indrebø (1951: 323), between the years 1530 and 1800, but especially between 1600 and 1800, there was a stort namne-brot in the names of norwegian origin. one of these changes was the addition of the ending 23 this most likely implies that william henry could not give him a literal translation of the ballad, as he only knew it by heart without understanding it completely. in this case, we are facing an example of what language death theories call the ‘folklorization’ phase of a language on its way to extinction (crystal 2000). 24 that faroese ballads are still danced is one of the main reasons to explain their popularity among folklorists, as they show the literary conditions in the middle ages in a living way (müller 1994: 96). 116 mariano gonzález campo -ina to many female names (hansina, larsina, bolina, olina, malina, talina, gorina, or gurina, etc.). although indrebø does not mention the name hildina in his examples, it is clear that it belongs to this category. the name hildina would then imply that our ballad may have started to be performed in its current form from about 1530 or most likely from 1600, i.e. just 174 years before william henry recited it for george low. that would be its terminus ante quem. thus, despite the fact that it was not a very old ballad in 1774, it was already quite worn out, as mentioned before. a fast process of decay indeed. can the search for analogues of the hildina ballad help us find its moment of splendour from a creative point of view and relate it to the social, economical, and cultural conditions of the orkney and shetland islands at that time? would it be possible to compare that hypothetical moment of splendour with the sociocultural conditions of 1774, when the ballad was written down by george low? if the answer is affirmative, then it could be possible to learn much about the relationship between the so-called —from a scandinavian perspective— western islands and scandinavia in the eighteenth century, and how it influenced issues of cultural identity. it would allow us to explore to which extent oral narrative “is and for a long time has been the chief basis of culture itself” (niles 1999: 2). references anderson, j. ed. 1973 [1873]: the orkneyinga saga. edinburgh, the mercat press. baranauskiené, r. 2007: reflections of celtic literary tradition in shetlandic ‘hildinavisen’. zmogus ir zodis (man and the word) 9.2: 72–82. barnes, m. 1984a: norn. scripta islandica 35: 23–42. barnes, m. 1984b: orkney and shetland norn. in p. trudgill ed. language in the british isles. cambridge, cambridge 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orkneyinga saga. reykjavík, hið íslenzka fornritafélag. helgason, j. & a. holtsmark eds. 1941: háttalykill enn forni. copenhaguen, ejnar munksgaard. heusler, a. 1922: über die balladendichtung des spätmittelalters, namentlich in skandinavischen norden. germanisch-romanische monatsschrift 10: 16–31. hægstad, m. 1900: hildinakvadet med utgreiding um det norske maal paa shetland i eldre tid. oslo, grøndal & søns bogtrykkeri. hægstad, m. 1901: hildinakvadet. syn og segn: 1–14. hægstad, m. 1910: upphavet til ordet ‘norsk’. maal og minne 2: 51–52. indrebø, g. 1951: norsk målsoga. bergen, john griegs boktrykkeri (p. hovda & p. thorson eds.). jakobsen, j. 1897: det norrøne sprog på shetland. copenhague, wilhelm priors hofboghandel. jakobsen, j. 1928–1932: etymological dictionary of the norn language in shetland. londres/copenhague, david nutt/vilhelm prior (reprinted: new york, ams press, 1985). jesch, j. 2005: literature in medieval orkney. in o. owen ed. the world of orkneyinga saga. kirkwall, the orcadian limited: 11–24. 118 mariano gonzález campo jesch, j. 2006a: norse literature in the orkney earldom. in i. brown, t. owen clancy, s. manning & m. pittock eds. the edinburgh history of scottish literature, vol. i: from columba to the union (until 1707). edinburgh, edinburgh university press: 77–82. jesch, j. 2006b: norse myth in medieval orkney. in j. mckinnell, d. ashurst & d. kick eds. the fantastic in old norse/icelandic literature. sagas in the british isles. prepint papers of the thirteenth international saga conference, durham and york 6th12th august, 2006. vol. 1. durham, the centre for medieval and renaissance studies/durham university: 435–444. jonsson, b. r., s. solheim & e. danielson 1978: the types of the scandinavian medieval ballad. oslo, universitetsforlaget. jónsson, g. ed. 1954: fornaldarsögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. reykjavík, íslendingasagnaútgáfan. kershaw, n. 1921: stories and ballads of the far past. cambridge, cambridge university press. kruken, k. ed. 2004: sophus bugges brev. 3 vols. øvre ervik, alvheim og eide. leach, h. g. 1946: a pageant of old scandinavia. new york, princeton university press/american-scandinavian foundation. lehmann, e. 1984: hildina-kvaedet: ein etterøknad og ei tolking. frå fjon til fusa: 7– 60. liestøl, k. 1915: norske trollvisor og norrøne sogor. oslo, olaf norlis forlag. liestøl, k. 1937: det norrøne folkeviseumrådet. maal og minne: 81–129. lord, a. b. 2000: the singer of tales. cambridge (mass.), harvard university press (s. mitchell & g. nagy eds.). low, g. 1879: a tour through the islands of orkney and schetland containing hints relative to their ancient, modern and natural history collected in 1774. kirkwall, william peace & son (j. anderson ed.). marwick, h. 1929: the orkney norn. london, oxford university press. moore, d. w. 2005: the other british isles: a history of shetland, orkney, the hebrides, isle of man, angelsy, scilly, isle of wight and the channel islands. jefferson (north carolina), mcfarland & company. müller, u. 1994: the living tristan: the faroese ‘tistram-ballad’. tristania xv: 87– 98. munch, p. a. 1839: geographiske og historiske notitser om orknoërne og hetland. samlingar til det norske folks sprog og historie 6: 79–133, 475–524. nauerby, t. 1996: no nation is an island. language, culture, and national identity in the faroe islands. århus, snai-north atlantic publications/aarhus university press. niles, j. d. 1999: homo narrans. the poetics and anthropology of oral literature. philadelphia, university of pennsylvania press. the norn hildina ballad 119 pálsson, h. 1984: a florilegium in norse from medieval orkney. in a. fenton & h. pálsson eds. the northern and western isles in the viking world. survival, continuity and change. edinburgh, john donald publishers: 258–264. pálsson, h. 1998: snorri sturluson and the everlasting battle. in h. fix ed. snorri sturluson: beiträge zu werk und rezeption. berlin, walter de gruyter: 44–56. poestion, j. e. 1914: das lied von hildina. zeitschrift für den deutschen unterricht 28 part ix: 592–595. renaud, j. 1988: archipels norrois. orcades, shetland et hebrides dans le monde viking. göppingen, kümmerle verlag. rendboe, l. 1987: det gamle shetlandske sprog (nowele supplement vol. 3). odense, odense universitetsforlag. rendboe, l. 1993: shetland’s hildina ballad: its discovery and further discussion (prepublications of the english department of odense university 68). odense, odense universitetsforlag. rendboe, l. 2007: the development of shetland norn. nowele 50/51: 183–247. solberg, o. 2008: the scandinavian medieval ballad: from oral tradition to written texts and back again. in e. mundal & j. wellendorf eds. oral art forms and their passage into writing. copenhagen, museum tusculanum press: 121–133. syndergaard, l. e. 1995: english translations of the scandinavian medieval ballads. an analytical guide and bibliography. turku, the nordic institute of folklore. thorsen, p. 1954: the third norn dialect — that of caithnes. in w. d. simpson ed. the viking congress, lerwick, july 1950. aberdeen, university of aberdeen: 230– 238. thuren, h. 1902: tanz, dichtung und gesang auf den färöern. sammelbande der internationalen musikgesellschaft 2: 222–269. towrie, s. 2008: norn ballad deserves recognition, says linguist. the orcadian 3 january 2008: 12. wylie, j. & d. margolin 1981: the ring of dancers. images of faroese culture. philadelphia, university of pennsylvania press. author’s address department of social anthropology university of bergen nygårdsgaten 124 5008 bergen received: 18 june 2019 e-mail: marca@stpaulgymnas.no revised version accepted: 17 june 2020 selim05.pdf javier pérez guerra, selim 5 (1996): 91—106 syntax and information hand in hand? on extraposition and inversion from late middle english to contemporary english1 0. introduction. syntactic topics it is generally assumed that the word -order changes which led to the presentday syntactic configuration of english sentences took place and mainly fin ished during the me period. in this paper,2 i shall investigate the principles governing two relevant configurational operations common both to contemporary and to earlier english: subject in version and subject extraposition. to that end, i will use data from the periods following the standardization of the english syntax, namely late middle english (lme henceforth) and early modern en glish (abbreviated as emode or emod). with the aim of justifying the selection of the research topics just mentio ned, i will assume the following principles: (a) english declarative speech is, formally speaking, a verb -second language, irrespectively of the deep pattern one wants to ascribe to it. (b) if, as a consequence of (a), the verb occupies the second position of a sentence, then every element occurring in pre verbal position in declarative utterances will be said to go in first position. i will use the label ‘syntactic topic’ (or simply ‘topic’ henceforth) for that constituent(s) in first position, partially drawing on halliday’s (1967, 1985: 39) 1 the research which is here reported has been funded by the spanish ministry of education and science through its dirección general de investigación científica y técnica (dgicyt), grant number pb-0619. this grant is hereby gratefuly acknowledged. 2 a preliminary version of this paper was delivered at the glasgow conference of the european society for the study of english (esse/3) in september 1995, as “dummy and null topics from late middle english to contemporary english. some remarks on extraposition and inversion.” javier pérez guerra ____________________________________________________________________ 94 systemic concept of ‘theme, and even more on downing and locke’s (1992: 222) proposal. (c) the justification of the syntactic topics of english sentences is absolutely relevant as far as the configuration of english (external) word order and english syntax are concerned. that granted, let us move to a further matter, that is, the splitting of the whole set of syntactic topics in english into five classes: (i) lexical subjects (external arguments on most occasions), which are said to constitute the unmarked option in english declarative sentences; (ii) complements and modifiers (adjuncts); (iii) sentence modifiers (the so-called disjuncts, conjuncts, etc.; (iv) dummy, representative, anticipatory, expletive or pleonas tic subjects, that is, grammatical items such as it or there, whose only goal is to be slot-fillers so as to maintain the non-pro -drop principle postulated by the theory of grammar. as far as contemporary english is concerned.1 since arguments have been levelled against the characterization of these dummy elements as subjects, i shall prefer the (more neutral) label ‘dummy topic’; (v) absence of subjects, that is, sentences with covert first position, or if one prefers, with verbs located initially. in order to couch this class in the terminology suggested in (iv), i will use the la bel ‘null topic. ‘ in the course of this research, as already pointed out, i will examine two illustrations of, respectively, types (iv) and (v) in the near his tory of the en glish language: subject-extraposition & it-insertion —hence abbreviated as ex/it— and subject-inversion —inv— reflected in (1) and (2) respectively: 1 in haegeman’s (1991: 53) words, “[i]t is not a referring expression: it does not refer to an entity in the world, a person or an object; it cannot be questioned (…). on the basis of these observations we formulate the hypothesis that it plays no role in the semantic make-up of the sentence and that its presence is required (…) simply for some structural reason”. see postal & pullum (1988) for a detailed account of english dummy items. syntax and information hand in hand? ____________________________________________________________________ 95 (1) yt was enacted ordeigned and graunted by auctorite of the same p~liament, that for x. yeres then next folowyng sev~all comyssions of sewers shuld be made to dyv~s p~sones, (q m4 sta law stat2 p. 524)1 (2) and wyll ye se this more manyfestly by . iij. lykenesses. (q e1 ir serm fisher p. 316)2 to round off this introduction, a final note seems in order here. in actual fact, the different ‘folders’ of the classification specified in (i) to (v) above are not exc lusive at all. for instance, most of the examples with dummy and null topics like (3) and (4) comprise preverbal constituents which deserve topical characterization according to my definition of topic: (3) notwithstanding certaine it is, that if those schoole men to their great thrist of truth, and vnwearied truaile of wit, had ioyned varietie and vniuersalitie of reading and contempla tion, they had prooued excellent lights, (q e2 ex educ bacon p. 20v)3 (4) to whom is apropred loue and charite, (q m3/4 ir serm royal p. 10)4 whether we opt for a gradation in terms of central and modifying topics or for a multiple configuration of the syntactic topics in the vein of, for instance, systemic studies, i contend that subjects are core topical elements, and thus both their ‘dumminess’ and their ‘covertness’ must be treated as specific thematic systems on their own. 1. collecting the data. the concept of ex the data have been collected from two popular computerised corpora: the helsinki corpus of english texts for the lme and emode sections, and the lancaster-oslo/bergen corpus of contemporary english for the contempora ry samples (pde). i explored the first seven one-spaced ascii 1 the statutes of the realm. printed by command of his majesty king george the third in pursuance of an address of the house of commons of great britain, vol. ii, dawsons of pall mall, london, 1963 (1816). 2 mayor, j. e. b. ed. 1935 (1876): sermons by john fisher. the english works of john fisher, bishop of rochester. part 1, early english text society, london. 3 bacon, f. 1970 (1605): the twoo bookes of the proficience and advancement of learning (1605), theatrvm orbis terrarvm, amsterdam. 4 ross, w. o. ed. 1940: middle english sernons, edited from british museum ms. royal 18 b. xxiii, early english text society, london. javier pérez guerra ____________________________________________________________________ 96 print-out pages of every prose sample, which amount to the totals pictured in table 1. table 1: temporal and numeric distribution of the data periods sections words explored corpus totals corpus late middle meiv (1420-1500) approx. 98,000 213,850 w emodi (1500-1570) approx. 98,000 190,160 w early modern emodii (1570-1640) approx. 100,000 189,800 w helsinki emodiii (1640-1710) approx. 97,000 171,040 w contemporary 1961 approx. 160,000 ± 1,000,000 w lob the relevant examples fall into three groups: ex/it,1 witnessed in (1) above; inv2; and ex. i have preferred to split the inv type into proper inv and ex, the former comprising those declarative sentences in which the subject immediately follows either the full verb -group or the first verbal element, as in (2) above. on the contrary, those examples including material between the verb and the postverbal subject have been labelled ‘ex,’ as instanced in (5) and (6): (5) nowe schewe+t [vs]object +tan +tis word ‘oure’ +te largenesse and +te curtesye of god oure fadre, (q m3/4 ir relt vices4 p. 100)3 (6) thatnexus is [euil wonne]subj. compl. who shal blame reynart (q m4 ni fict reynard p. 9)4 1 in this paper, i will treat ex/it as a homogeneous thematic system, even though i am aware of the fact that ex/it of clauses and ex/it of nps are usually accounted for in different ways in the relevant literature — for a quick review of the literature on extraposition, see, among others, reinhart (1980), baltin (1982), mccawley (1988) and iwakura (1994), who evaluate traditional studies such as rosenbaum (1967), ross (1967), higgins (1973), williams (1975), or emonds (1976). 2 for a quick summary of the theoretical proposals couched in the generative tradition, refer to, for instance, mccawley (1970), baltin (1982), chomsky (1986), coopmans (1989), rochemont & culicover (1990), who criticize emonds (1976), stowell (1981) and safir (1985) in detail, and authier (1992). 3 francis, w. n. ed. 1942: the book of vices and virtues. a fourteenth century english translation of the somme le roi of lorens d’orleans, english text society, london. 4 blake, n. f. ed. 1970: the history of reynard the fox. translated from the dutch original by william caxton, english text society, london. syntax and information hand in hand? ____________________________________________________________________ 97 this ex-class is a two -pronged pattern: on the one hand, it resembles inv on the basis that there is no preverbal subject, either lexical or dummy; and, on the other, it is similar to ex/it since it is formally identical to the latter, except for the dummy element. in fact, as pointed out in, for instance, visser (1970), butler (1980) or traugott (1992), the appearance of hit, either dummy or demonstrative, was optional in these constructions in oe. put more graphically, sentences like it is a pity that he went and is a pity that he went were both possible in oe. 2. distribution of ex/it, ex and inv for reasons of space, three related patterns have been left out of the picture, namely the thematic system of subject-inversion after direct-speech quotes (7), subject-inversions in stage directions or asides (8), and the connection between ex/it and right-dislocations like (9). (7) “yea i se,” quoth i, “that … (q e2 xx philo boethel p. 57)1 (8) (^enter mistris^) page, (^mistris^) ford, (^master^) page, (^master^) ford, pis toll, nim, quickly, host, shalow. (q e2 xx come shakesp p. 43)2 (9) it must come now the showdown between anne vardon and her greatest enemy (lob l22 p. 82)3 nevertheless, since the systems in (7) and (8) should be doubtlessly regarded as part of the general one of inv, i have just for the record included them in table 2, which portrays the number of attested examples (under #) and the percentages (under %) with re spect to the whole number of clauses identified in the material selected: table 2: ex/it, ex, inv, quotes and stage directions ex/it ex inv quotes stage dir. total # % # % # % # % # % claus. 1 pemberton, c. ed. 1899: boethius. queen elizabeth’s englishings of boethius. early english text society, london. 2 the merry wives of windsor. mr. william shakespeares comedies, histories and tragedies. a facsimile edition prepared by h. hoekeritz with an introduction by c. t. prouty, geoffrey cumberlege & oup, london. 3 (anon) “whispering tongues blamed her.” secrets, march 4, 1961 (9-11). javier pérez guerra ____________________________________________________________________ 98 lm e 132 2. 6 21 0. 4 304 6. 1 34 0. 6 0 0 4940 emodi 86 2. 1 45 1. 1 334 8. 2 74 1. 8 0 0 4048 emodii 116 1. 9 4 0. 0 164 2. 8 118 2. 0 7 0. 1 5846 emodiii 101 2. 2 4 0. 0 123 2. 7 14 0. 3 8 0. 1 4468 pde 219 3. 1 0 0 84 1. 2 45 0. 6 0 0 6876 totals 654 2. 5 74 0. 2 1009 3. 8 285 1. 0 15 0. 0 26178 if we put aside the figures corresponding to the quotes triggering inversion and the stage directions, both strategies being highly dependent on the type of text and still operative in pde as minor thematic systems, table 2 makes it possible to assess that ex/it is an active system during the periods under re s earch in about 2-3 per cent of the clauses.1 on the contrary, inv decreases dra matically, its occurrence frequency going from 6.15 per cent in lme and 8.25 in emodei to simply 1.2 per cent in cont. english.2 this is in keeping with jacobsson’s (1951), fischer’s (1992), breivik & swan’s (1994) and ky tö & rissanen’s (1993) testimonies of the decline of the inv system. as far as ex is concerned, the numbers attest that its use is very re stricted in both lme and emode, the zero examples found in pde not being surprising at all. apart from concluding that the extraposition of subjects and their re placement with, for instance, dummy its has succeeded in the history of the en glish language, the data in table 2 purport further interesting facts. ex/it is a consolidated thematic system in pde, compara ble to, for instance, the topicalization of objects (3.3 per cent of the cases, as pointed out in pérez guerra (forthcoming)). inv, far from being as important as in lme and emodei, re mains a residual system in our time, possibly limited to a few grammatical environments which automatically trigger inversion. let us underscore the fact that in the first two periods under consideration, an average number of 7 clauses out of one hundred illustrated some sort of subject-inversion, whereas less than 2 are depicted in pde. these conclusions are not at odds with the fixation of word -order at all. the consolidation or, better, continuation of the system ex/it does not wreak havoc with the establishment of a, formally speaking, sv order, since it 1 h0=‘time does not affect ex/it.’ correlation results: r-squared=0.13. 2 h0=‘time does not affect inv.’ correlation results: r-squared=0.71. syntax and information hand in hand? ____________________________________________________________________ 99 plausibly incorporates the subject it in first position and, subsequently, the verb. in saying this, i do not mean that ex/it is used as a means of supporting and fixing sv word -order, which is rejected in, for instance, butler (1980), but simply that the resulting structure with it as a dummy item in me is in keeping with the succeeding configuration of english declarative sentences, and thus is not repudiated by ‘analogical’ reasons. on the other hand, as best i can determine, the fact that simple ex (without it-insertion) no longer holds in pde in none of the 6,876 examples identified in my database demonstrates the tendency already mentioned towards ‘subjected’ sentences, and the avoidance of, let us say, strange material in postverbal position not easily interpretable 1 --not internally subcategorised by the predication, not necessarily agreeing with verb, not bound to any pro subject, not prosodically detached from the sentence like a dislocated element. with respect to inv, even though it skews previous judgements on the succeeding word -order pattern, it is maintained alive almost as a, in stucky’s (1987: 379) words, “lexically signaled configurational variant” and not as the “permutational variation” it used to be in earlier english. put another way, inv in contemporary english is mostly determined by triggering devices, whereas in me and emode (and also in oe, as pointed out by butler (1980)) the scope of the system was wider, which due to space restrictions i will not have the opportunity to show. in the following sections, i shall limit myself to showing the re sults of re search in progress concerning two variables: (a) the length of the postverbal subject (§2. 1), and (b) the sort of information it carries (§2. 2). 2. 1. length of postverbal segments table 3 reflects the average length (number of words) of the postverbal subject in the three systems under discussion. it must be mentioned that when t h e rightward constituent comprised 15 words or more, it was given the conventional value of   — in further calculations,   is numerically translated 1 h0=‘time does not affect ex.’ correlation results: r-squared=0.39 (0.6 if the emodi data are dis regarded). javier pérez guerra ____________________________________________________________________ 100 as 17. the data between brackets stand for the lowest and highest values registered. table 3: length of postverbal subjects ex/it inv ex lm e 12 (2- ) 3. 1 (1- ) 7. 3 (1- ) emodi 11. 6 (2- ) 5. 4 (1- ) 11. 2 (2- ) emodii 10. 7 (1- ) 4. 1 (1- ) 11 (4- ) emodiii 11. 8 (2- ) 6 (1- ) 12. 7 (7- ) pde 12. 7 (2- ) 6. 6 (1- ) no instances syntax and information hand in hand? ____________________________________________________________________ 101 in view of this table, some concluding remarks seem in order: in broad outline, as ascertained when i dealt with table 2, the strategy ex/it shows little variation with respect to the length of the postverbal subject (1112 words). this feature helps us demonstrate that the system was already fixed, at least, in me.1 ex is more similar to ex/it rather than to inv on the grounds of the length of the rightward subject. as pointed out above, ex was a clear alternative to ex/it in oe, which is also corroborated in the ligh t of the results in lme and emode. whereas ex/it and ex can mostly be explained by, at least, principles of the sort of ‘heavy subjects tend to be extraposed, the figures of inv show smaller subjects, and even short subjects in lme. unlike in oe (see stockwell (1984: 576)), it seems to be the case that, in the periods under research, the system is less dependent on subject length, even though a tendency towards longer subjects is observed in the course of the emode period, which, i recognise, does not fall within the purview of the tentative explanation that inv is lexically justified. 2. 2. communicative potential of postverbal seg ments to capture the informative content of the rightward subjects in the systems under research, i applied the classification pictured in table 4 to every postverbal constituent functioning as the ‘logical subject’ of the sentence. although the typology created ad-hoc may be considered too simplistic since, for instance, it does not individualise repetitions, or the l-type may be presumed too vague, i strongly believe that it proves sufficiently functional for the syntactic purposes of this study. table 4: informative typology referring extralinguistically referring (e) referentiality of the segment element is not textual but extralinguistic (deictic [=prince’s (1979, 1981) situationally inferrable]) or universal. inguistically referring (r) given, shared segment; the constituent is explicitly mentioned in the previous two -three sentences [=prin ce’s (1979, 1981) textually evoked] 1 h0=‘time does not affect the length of the ex/it segment.’ correlation results: rsquared=0.12. javier pérez guerra ____________________________________________________________________ 102 low referring (l) only some semantic features or a non-head part of the constituent are r [=prince’s (1979, 1981) inferrable] in the previous two-three sentences, or the distance be tween the segment and its previous semantic or linguistic referent is longer than two -three sentences. nonreferring properly nonreferring (n) new, unshared segment; it is neither semant ically nor linguistically evoked in the previous two -three sentences. postreferring (p) the referent of the segment must be found after it (in the following one-two sentences) syntax and information hand in hand? ____________________________________________________________________ 103 examples (10) to (14) illustrate the classification just suggested: (10) and her ys not to be forgotyn of my parte the myghtye and fa therlye pro vydence of god, who never fayellethe any man that trwelye putes hym truste yn hyme. (q e1 nn bia mowntayne p. 204)1 [ex: e postverbal segment, since god, etc. belongs to the register of permanent knowledge] (11) and bee it further enacted by the authority aforesaid that if such sheriff goaler or keeper of prison being duely su~moned to appeare before the said justice or justices of the peace shall (…) refuse (…) such sheriff goaler or keeper (…) shall … (q e3 sta law stat7 p. 75)2 [ex/it: r postverbal segment, since sheriff goaler or keeper of prison was mentioned in the immediate pre -text] (12) & were made & edefied diuerce temples in his name which after were des troied by the commandment of king alexander of macedone who perauenture had enuye of his glorie (q m4 xx pref caxton p. 35)3 [inv: l postverbal segment, since his name is r] (13) aftyr hir tubele & hir gret fere it xuld ben schewyd vn-to hir sowle how +te felyngys xuld ben vndyrstondyn. (q m4 ir relt kempe p. 55)4 [ex/it: n postverbal segment, since how the feelings should be understood is informatively brand-new] (14) as is +tis word ‘+tat is,’ (q m3/4 ir relt vices4 p. 102) [inv: p postverbal segment, since this words is followed by its referent] the results of the application of the typology in table 4 to the examples in the database are sketched in table 5. 1 nichols, j. g. ed. 1859: the autobiography of thomas mowntayne. narratives of the days of the reformation, chiefly from the manuscripts of john foxe the martyrologist, camden society, london. 2 the statutes of the realm. printed by command of his majesty king george the third in pursuance of an address of the house of commons of great britain, daw sons of pall mall, london, 1963 (1820). 3 crotch, w. j. b. ed. 1956 (1928): the prologues and epilogues of william caxton. early english text society, london. 4 meech, s. b. & h. e. allen eds. 1940: the book of margery kempe, early english text society, london. javier pérez guerra ____________________________________________________________________ 104 table 5: communicative potential of postverbal subjects (percentages) lm e emodi emodii emodiii pde r 31. 0 55. 1 40. 2 43. 5 36. 8 e ex/it l 22. 1 15. 5 22. 4 27. 1 39. 6 n 46. 7 29. 4 37. 3 29. 2 23. 5 p r 32. 1 11. 8 24. 8 10. 6 11. 4 e 1. 6 0. 6 0. 5 0 inv l 13. 7 5. 6 26. 7 16. 9 34. 5 n 52. 0 81. 8 45. 9 72. 1 54. 0 p 0. 4 5. 7 1. 7 0. 2 r 14. 8 8. 4 9. 0 e 0 3. 3 ex l 31. 6 27. 9 38. 6 n 53. 5 60. 2 52. 2 100 p 0 as far as the sort of information carried by the extraposed or inverted constituent is concerned, different proposals can be found in the literature. for instance, the rightward segment in an ex/it construction is usually surmised to be informatively unshared or new, on the basis that the structure keeps track of the general principle of end-focus — see, among others, hinds (1975) drawing on charleston (1960), enkvist (1979), creider (1979) or mccawley (1988). on the contrary, there are some others (svoboda (1968), for instance) who believe that the extraposed subject is constructionally marked as thematic, which is in keeping with its given informative content. table 5 throws some light onto the aforementioned alternatives and, in fact, casts a great deal of doubt on the generalised assumption. the extraposed segments in ex/it constructions are, from emode to pde, in more than 70 per cent of the cases, either fully (r) or semi(l) referring, and only nonre ferring (n) in scarcely 25 out of one hundred examples. it must, however, be mentioned that in lme the percentages of r, n and l were much more balanced, not only in the ex/it system but in the others as well. if we add the re sults of r and l segments in each of the three systems, we will reach the conclusion that, in broad outline, 45-50 per cent are referring (r+l) and 45-50 are nonreferring (n) at all. in consequence, from a communicative point of view, syntax and information hand in hand? ____________________________________________________________________ 105 the differences between ex/it, inv and ex in lme were somewhat blurred according to my data.1 going back to the decrease of nonreferring postverbal subjects in the ex/it system (just 23. 5 per cent in pde), especially divergent if compared to the results shown by inv and ex, we must conclude that end-focus does no longer hold as the best justification of the ex/it system, but syntactic heaviness and length, as already witnessed in the previous section. regarding inv and ex, we again come across contradictory views about the degree of predictability of the postverbal subjects. quirk et al (1985) analyse inversion as an end-focus operation, which lets the extraposed or in verted subject be interpreted as the (generally unshared) focus of the sentence. similarly, stockwell (1984: 576) speaks of inverted subjects as “new or suprising”. takahashi (1992: 138) joins the pragmatic fuctions of these segments, to wit, counter-expectation, surprise, emphasis, suspense and vivid ness, in his “subtopically -pre sentational-focus-emphasizing function”. and, in the same vein, jacobsson (1951) and birner & ward (1992) assert that the constraint that verbs in inv structures are pragmatically unimportant follows from the fact that the sentence final position is reserved for informatively new segments, and the verb position (sentence initial position) for given segments. on the contrary, green (1980) holds that in most cases of inversion it is the last part of the sentence that contains old information. in view of table 5, a first scrutiny reveals that in those periods of which i have enough data ex and inv behave much alike, that is, in more than 50% of the examples the postverbal material is absolutely nonreferring (n), and the levels of full referentiality are dramatically lower. more specifically, only 1011% of the entries in emodeiii and pde are r as far as inv is concerned. once we embrace the view that the ex strategy disappears since its goal is perfectly accomplished by either ex/it or inv under the new conditions of, particularly, word-order in english, the data in table 5 marshal the fact that two strong communicative tendencies must be identified with respect to the two succeeding systems. whereas the postverbal subjects in ex/it do not u sually contain brand-new information, those belonging to inv constructions 1 h0=‘the thematic system (ex/it, inv, ex) does not affect referentiality (r+l versus n) in lme.’ at 95%-significance two-factor anova-test, f=0.035 and p=0.96, which leads us to reject h0. javier pérez guerra ____________________________________________________________________ 106 do more easily. thus, a daunting consequence arises here: informative conditions by themselves do not justify ex/it, whilst it seems to be the case that they are perfectly capable of characterising inv. the mo st obvious flaw of the second part of this statement is how to conciliate the fact hinted in previous sections that inv is, historically speaking, more and more grammaticised, with the consideration that, at the same time, it is the informative configura tion of english sentences (old information precedes new information) that best describes inv. in this paper i will not attempt the major issue of support ing either one or the other alternative, but will simply reflect the tendency shown by inv towards an increase of partially referring subjects (l), from 13. 7 in lme to 34. 5 in pde, which could possibly evidence an inclination against the communicative explanation and, thus, in favour of the lexically configurational one. 3. concluding remarks in this paper i have dealt with the thematic systems of subject-extraposition plus it-insertion and subject-inversion, which illustrate the classes of dummy and null syntactic topics, respectively. in treating the aforementioned systems, the identification of a third one, subject-extraposition without it-insertion proved pertinent. this third strategy comprised those verb -first examples containing material between the verb and the rightward subject. the relevant proposals found in the literature were confronted with actual data taken from the helsinki corpus and the lob corpus, which made it possible to trace the evolution of the systems from the end of the middle en glish period to present-day language. a statistical presentation of two variables concerning the postverbal subjects, namely their ‘length’ and their ‘communicative potential’ led to interesting conclusions, some of which re jected part of the generally as sumed proposals. to sum up, once extraposition without dummy -insertion has dis appeared as a configurational alternative, two opposite strategies can be observed. on the one hand, the system involving subject-extraposition with dummy -insertion, consolidated in the language as early as in me times, was shown to mostly follow the principle of ‘h eavy-subject shift, as demonstrated by the average length of the subjects (11-12 words). on the other hand, the tendency of placing segments carrying unshared information seemed to be syntax and information hand in hand? ____________________________________________________________________ 107 the rationale tentatively governing subject-inversion, the postverbal subjects in inverted structures conveying brand-new information in more than half of the cases, even though the data showed a progressive increase of semi referring subjects in later periods. consequently, ex/it was described as an exclusively syntactic device which not only fills the subject position with a dummy ele ment, as required by sv conditions, but also succeeds in offering a pattern in which heavy subjects do not appear preverbally. unlike ex/it, the vast majority of inv-cases cannot be explained by the length-explanation, the communication-based justification not being conclusive either. further research on the contexts accepting inv would demonstrate that the configurational possibilities of inverted structures have noticeably decreased during the period under research. this, in my opinion, points out towards the characterisation of inv as a grammaticised strategy, on its way to abandoning the ‘club’ of the thematic systems. javier pérez guerra universidade de vigo references authier, j. -m. 1992: iterated cps and embedded topicalization. linguistic inquiry 23.2: 329-36. baltin, m. 1982: a landing site theory of movement rules. linguistic in quiry 13: 1-38. birner, b. j. & g. l. ward. 1992: on the interpretation of vp inversion in american english. journal of linguistics 28.1: 1-12. breivik, l. e. & t. swan. 1994: initial adverbials and word order in english with special reference to the early modern english period. ed. d. kastovsky studies in early modern english , mouton, berlin (11-43). butler, m. c. 1980: grammatically motivated subjects in early english . texas linguistic forum 16. javier pérez guerra ____________________________________________________________________ 108 charleston, b. 1960: studies on the emotional and affective means of expression in modern english , francke verlag, bern. chomsky, n. 1986: barriers, mit, cambridge, mass. coopmans, p. 1989: where stylistic and syntactic processes meet: locative inversion in english. language 65.4: 728-51. creider, ch. a. 1979: on the explanation of transformations. ed. t. givon syntax and semantics 12: discourse and syntax, academic, ny. downing, a. & p. locke. 1992: a university course in english grammar, prentice hall, new york. emonds, j. e. 1976: a transformational approach to english syntax: root, structure preserving, and local transformations, academic, new york. enkvist, n. e. 1979: marked focus: functions and constraints. eds s. greenbaum, g. leech & j. svartvik studies in english linguistics for randolph quirk , longman, london (134-52). fischer, o. 1992: syntax. ed. n. blake the cambridge history of the english language. vol ii, cup, cambridge (207-408). green, g. 1980: some wherefores of english inversion. language 56: 582-601. haegeman, l. 1991: introduction to government & binding theory, blackwell, oxford. halliday, m. a. k. 1967: notes on transitivity and theme in english, part 2, journal of linguistics 3: 199-244. halliday, m. a. k. 1985: an introduction to functional grammar, arnold, london. helsinki corpus of english texts, u. of helsinki (department of english), helsinki. higgins, f. r. 1973: on j. emonds’s analysis of extraposition. ed. j. p. kimball syntax and semantics 2 , seminar: new york (149-195). hinds, j. 1975: passives, pronouns, and themes and rhemes. glossa 9.1: 79106. syntax and information hand in hand? ____________________________________________________________________ 109 iwakura, k. 1994: the distribution of cp-trace and the expletive it. linguistic analysis 24: 122-141. jacobsson, b. 1951: inversion in english with special reference to the early modern english period. uppsala. kytö, m. & m. rissanen 1993: by and by enters [this] my artificiall foole: searching syntactic constructions in the helsinki corpus. eds m. rissanen, m. kytö & m. palander-collins early english in the computer age: explora tions through the helsinki corpus, mouton, berlin (253-66). lancaster-oslo/bergen corpus of british english , university of oslo (department of english), oslo. mccawley, j. d. 1970: english as a vso language. language 46: 286-99. mccawley, j. d. 1988: the syntactic phenomena of english . vols, 1, 2, the u. of chicago press, chicago. pérez guerra, j. forthcoming: topicalization and left -dislocation from late middle english to contemporary english. actas del xviii congreso de aedean, u. de alcalá de henares, alcalá de henares. postal, p. m. & g. k. pullum. 1988: expletive noun phrases in subcategorized positions. linguistic inquiry 19.4: 635-70. prince, e. f. 1979: on the given/new distinction. cls 15: 362-76. prince, e. f. 1981: topicalization, focus-movement and yiddish movement: a pragmatic differentiation. proceedings of the annual meeting, berkeley linguistic society 7: 249-64. quirk, r., s. greenbaum, g. leech & j. svartvik. 1985: a comprehensive grammar of the english language, longman, london. reinhart, t. 1980: on the position of extraposed clauses. linguistic inquiry 11: 621-24. rochemont, m. s. & p. w. culicover. 1990: english focus constru ctions and the theory of grammar, cup, cambridge. rosenbaum, p. 1967: the grammar of english predicate complementation, mit, cambridge, mass. javier pérez guerra ____________________________________________________________________ 110 ross, j. r. 1967: constraints on variables in syntax. (ph. d., indiana university linguis tics club, bloomington. safir, k. 1985: syntactic chains, cup, london. stockwell, r. p. 1984: on the history of the verb -second rule in english. ed. j. fisiak historical syntax, mouton, berlin (575-92). stowell, t. 1981: origins of phrase structure. mit phd. stucky, s. u. 1987: configurational variation in english: a study of extra position and related matters. eds g. huck and a. ojeda syntax and semantics 20: discontinuous constituency, academic, ny (377404). svoboda, a. 1968: the hierarchy of communicative units and fields as illustrated by english attributive constructions. brno studies in english 7: 49-99. takahashi, k. 1992: constructionally presentational sentences. lingua 86: 119-48. traugott, e. c. 1992: syntax. ed. r. hogg the cambridge history of the english language (vol. 1), cup, cambridge (168-287). visser, f. t. 1970: an historical syntax of the english language. part i: syntactical units with one verb, e. j. brill, leiden. williams, e. s. 1975: small clauses in english. ed. j. p. kimball syntax and semantics 4 , academic, new york. * † * selim04.pdf catalina montes & mª pilar fernández, selim 4 (1994): 94-117 preverbation in the old germanic languages: a research project 1. introductory background western linguistics remains basically dependent on the assumptions about language and language study that were elaborated in the late antiquity, on the basis of the aristotelian philosophy of speech and of science in general. the descriptive approach rests on the practice of description and classification of nature, and takes language as one more among the objects of human experience in relation with the so-called external world. science aim has thereafter been to provide accurate descrip tions of what exists and, if possible, causal connexions between the identified entities in every domain of knowledge. despite the fact that the aristotelian consideration of linguistic categories takes place in the context of the theory of tragedy, i. e., within the fra mework of literary aesthetics, his terms and concepts were soon taken as parts of a naturalistic account of what language or speech consists of. such an account was of no immediate practical use, and a descriptive grammar in our modern sense came only several centuries afterwards. the main concern among greek linguistics was the philological study of their own classics, whose texts show significant dialectal divergences. from the old greek grammars only two main theoretical works survive: dionisius thrax’s modest tekhne grammatike and appolonios dyscholos’s discursive syntax, who conceived syntax for the first time as the study of morphological element collocations rather than as the study of their connective properties. the late latinity has provided the european scholarship with the model of grammatical activity in two works: donatus and priscianus’s grammars, catalina montes & mª pilar fernández ____________________________________________________________________ 94 dependent on the aristotelian logics and based on the subject-predicate utterance core. this paradigm assigns the free use of cases in greek and latin, so to say, the protagonism of the whole syntax. a scheme of action soon raised, as the ontological correlate to the grammatical system of case complements (subject, object, receiver, cause, qualitative determination). within the humanistic tradition, scaliger’s work is a good account of both the grammatical and the ontological basic categories in terms of a general theory of action. the use of verbs with preverb as a means of conveying meaning not otherwise lexicalized was, to a large extent, dead in classical latin: verbs and preverbs were rigidly bound into plainly lexical units. productivity in this domain is word -making, not sentence-making. but in old greek, vedic, sanscrit, hittite and in modern germanic and slavonic languages it is quite the opposite: there is an important lin guistic productivity which consists of the syntactic innovation in the verb -preverb connection. here we can distin guish two main streams of linguistic innovation: a conceptual and more static one, consisting of the finding of new words whether by connecting id iomatic or greek-latin roots with existing suffixes or by combining extant words in new composites, and a dynamic, syntactic way of conveying new meaning by a pro ductive combination of rather abstract and unspecific verbs with rather abstract and general, but highly determined, particles. both ways are in a quite different relation with the concept of time in language: the former aims at getting new entities provided with some ontological consistency (here we surprisingly find the sanscrit use of nominal composites to express context bound facts, composites which are, so to say, only parole elements, despite the nominalization and substantialization usually implied); the latter, the pre vervation method, does not point at temporal permanence: it builds the utterance for the momentary occurrence and, in this case, the speakers are immediately creative, even if they make their combinatios in a highly codified way. the role of active prevervation is so central in such languages that in the language acquisition stages children often go through a period of expression building largely based on it: some lexical units are replaced by the preverbs ____________________________________________________________________ 95 most frequently connected with them (a lamp is called an (“on”) by german children). but as linguistics is based, as we have seen, on the grammatical habits of a language which lacked productive syntactic preverbation, the dominant syntactical model remains fixed on the nominal-verb core of the verb with its nominal complements. modern linguistics has to overcome a serious conceptual difficulty when aiming at representing the central role of prevervation in the syntax of some indo-european languages. the research team formed at the university of salamanca for the “indoeuropean prevervation project” has, as its main goal, the comparative study of this syntactical and lexical procedure in most ancient and mediaeval indoeuropean languages showing this feature in one or another evolutive stage, as a means to correct the dominant models of describing the central expres sion patterns in such languages. the germanic languages considered gothic, old high german, old english, old norse, old saxonplay a heuristically important role in this respect, because the germanic languages show a very strong productivity of that procedure along their whole history and, being spoken by the linguists in the project, it is possible a direct lin guistic sensibility for their immediate appreciation of such constructions me aning. 2. the empirical basis the research is based on an exhaustive case sample of motion verbs with preverb in the rigveda, dr. ana agud’s previous work. this scholar has also developed the main lines of the project. thereafter some verbal roots expressing motion have been selected, following the criterion of taking the main indo-european motion roots correlates (roots: *er“run”;*ghengh“go”, “come”; *gwem“go”, “come”;*k werp “go”, “go back”;*per“go”, “travel”; catalina montes & mª pilar fernández ____________________________________________________________________ 96 *steigh“go up”, “go down”; *tregh“run”; *wendh“go back”), and the roots with highest frequency in each language. among the extant texts, we have selected those which can be hold as the most representative of spontaneous speech: narrative, spoken discourses. of course, between literary composition and spontaneous oral language there is a fundamental difference which cannot be obliterated by any linguistic method whatsoever. the grammar we are building from our corpus is the one of the written language, depending on that of the oral language in an unspecifiable way. for the germanic languages we have also taken the bible, having in mind that the bible is the only extant text in gothic. the chosen texts are as follows: gothic: the bible; old high german: tatian, isidor, die benediktinerregel; old english: king alfred’s translation of cura pastoralis, the anglosaxon chronicle, the bible, aelfric and wulfstan’s sermons; old saxon: heliand; old norse: not selected yet. 3. information scheme a computerized information card has been designed, containing the fo lloing items: textual localization of the sentence, literary gender, metrical scheme, preverb specification (in numeral code) and position feature specification (before -after, joint-separate), verbal root, its morphological characterization (augmentation, reduplication, vocalism state, primary and derivative suffixes, person, tense and modality), main characteristics of the syntactical construction (number and kind of comple ments, particles, sentence type, dependent clauses). the card also contains the sentence in full and, for some ____________________________________________________________________ 97 languages, a suitable standard translation into the nearest language (sanscrit, avestan, hittite, gothic, old high german and old saxon into modern german, old english into modern english, etc.). in the case of translations, the sentences are recorded in both languages. the file is processed by a special program on dbase iv basis, which allows combined searches of part or the whole of the features registered, the program, that we have named rama -indra, has been developed by some colleagues of the faculty of physics, at the university of salamanca. it has easy routines for adding and deleting data, consulting and analysing. the card lists, ordered upon various criteria (root, preverb, etc.) are easily reached. the printing of the cards containin g the texts renders the philological study of the texts simple. 4. information process: goals first, we are looking for statistically significant correlations among the features selected. the underlying hypothesis is that there must have been an effective influ ence of the syntactical phenomenon of preverbation upon the development of the morphological verbal systems themselves. this influence could be indirectly detected by the study of frequency or collocations. we have seen, for instance, that in sanscrit imperative uses of motion verbs are without exception preverbed. such correlations could provide meaningful glances at the development of morphological categories occurrences. here, of course, results can only be rightly evaluated if comparative evidence can be adduced. secondly, we are trying to get a “fresh perspective” on the syntactical sense of preverbation by concentrating attention on it and by considering the rest of syntax as its circumstance. this is certainly onesided, but this change of perspective will be productive, we think, so far as it represents the complementary onesidedness to the usual syntactic and semantic perception. catalina montes & mª pilar fernández ____________________________________________________________________ 98 ____________________________________________________________________ 99 5. information processing: method leaving aside the prejudgment against the central role that particles play in the verbal expression structuration, we look at the text series assembled by one correla tion or the other and try to find semantic similarities and differences. here we have no prejudged analysis method: each researcher, facing each language and kind of text, must find the most significant features of the constructions under exam, and then in form the other researchers, in order to undertake corresponding searching processes in cognate languages. the method rests open. the basis is a systematical analysis of constellations among the features fixed on the cards. first, we play rather freely with them, just to obtain the random significant statistics. surprises arise: in the rigvedic research, the most advanced so far, we have observed that one constellation of two pre verbs is represented with only one root, and all the occurrences are directly or indirectly related to the god indra. such evidences show the possibility of application of this research to plainly philological aims. this is quite consequent: we are not examining oral speech, and the correct approach to the written language is the philological one. we conceive the available systems of grammatical description as alternative approaches to the linguistic object. the different syntactical frameworks of european or american structuralism, generative grammar, valency and dependence grammar, functional grammar, etc. can be taken as a suitable way of description when the facts observed and the interest they raise just meet into a constellation that suggests pre cisely one of these frames and not another. none of them is the right one in itself, each is good enough for a given purport. so the methodological definition of the description aims must be a conscious one, because only the aims determine and justify the selection of a conceptual alternative for the description. in this sense, it is an “open method”, especially open for the philological perspective. we postulate that inguistic descriptions are of little worth in catalina montes & mª pilar fernández ____________________________________________________________________ 100 themselves, and we try to put them at the service of the better understanding of texts. our comparative perspective has this purpose too. 6. state of the general project at present only preliminary work has been done in most of the fields. it includes the software preparation, wh ich must be specific for each language processed, the discussion of bibliography about preverbs, and methodological debates regarding the card design. only the rigvedic research shows a complete file of the occurrences and some analyses on the preverb upa-. this work provides the cues for a better planning of other files which are being composed now. for the germanic languages we distinguish between primary and secondary pre verbation, which diachronically represent two complete cycles of just the same p henomenon. differential research should be done in this domain. 7. state of the west germanic languages research: gothic die gotische bibel (the gothic bible) is the most advanced study in this particular field of the germanic languages. pilar fernaåndez aålvarez, who had previously written a grammar of gothic, is applying her perfect knowledge of the text to this new study. it has been computerized, following the edition of w. streitberg (heidelberg, 1971). the card for this language, the same as for the other germanic ones, includes localization (author, chapter, verse, type of sentence), preverb kind, position and number, verb morphology (tense, person, modality) and sentence or clause type. 21 different pre verbs bound to the selected motion verbs (gaggan “go”; galeipan “go”, “come”; qiman “come”; rinnan “run”; steigan “go up”; pragjan “run”; wandjan ““go back”) have been found: af-, afar-, ana-, and-, at-, bi-, du-, faur-, faura-, fra-, ga-, hinder-, inn-, mip-, pairh -, ufar-, und-, ur-, us-, ut-, ____________________________________________________________________ 101 wipra , in alphabetical order, and the occurrences have been fixed, both of these verbs and their preverbs. so far the results are as follows: gaggan occurs 22 times, with the preverbs: af-, afar-, at-, du-, faur-, faura-, ga-, inn-, mip-, pairh-, ufar-, us-, ut-, wipra-. qiman occurs 40 times. it appears with: ana-, faura-, fra-, ga-, mip-, us-. leipan, which is never found unprefixed, occurs 174 times, with the preverbs: af-, bi-, ufar-, us-, ga-, inn-, pairh-, mip-, hindar-. steigan occurs 22 times, with: at-, us-, ufar-, ga-. pragjan appears only once, with the preverb bi-. rinnan presents 38 occurrences , with the following preverbs: du-, ur-, bi, ga-, und-, at-, and-. wandjan occurs 35 times, with: ga -, us-, at-. from this point the research is advancing, even if it is too early to offer conclu sions. 8. old high german for old high german some texts have already been computarized: tatian (e. sievers’s edition, paderborn, 1892), isidor (h. eggers’s edition, tübingen, 1964) and die benediktinerregel (u. daab’s edition, tübingen, 1959). the research, the same as that in gothic is being carried out by mariåa pilar fernaåndez aålvarez, who has also written a grammar of old high german. the preverbs found in the corpus, 20 (23 forms), are the following: ab-, ar/er-, bi-, fora-, fur-/for-, furi-, fram-, gi-, in-, int-, nidar-, thuruh-, ubar-/obar-, uf-, ufar-, umbi-, uz-, widar-, zi-, zuo-. catalina montes & mª pilar fernández ____________________________________________________________________ 102 the partial results refer only totatian: this text icluding the verbs: faran “travel”; gangan “go”, “come”; queman “ go”, “come”; stigan “go up”, “go down”; wenten “go back”; werban “go”, “go back”, with the following pre verbs and occurrences: gangan occurs 207 times, with: ar-, bi-, fram-, furi-, gi-, in-, int-, ubar-, uf-, umbi-, uz-, uuidar-, zi-, zuo-. faran appears 36 times, with the preverbs: ab-, ar-, fur-, fora-, furi-, thuruh-, uuidar-. queman occurs10 times, with: ar-, bi-, fora-, fram-, obar-, uf-, uz-. stigan presents 62 occurrences, with the preverbs: ar-, gi-, in-, nidar-, uf-, wenten occurs 17 times, with: gi-, uuidar-. werben occurs 9 times, with the preverbs: ar-, gi-, uuidar-. the number of occurrences in each of the preverbs has been fixed, but, the same as regarding gothic, the doubtful instances must be reexamined before any results can be taken in mind as data. 9. old english no old english text has been computarized yet. most time has been spent in reading and discussing the numerous studies published, even if none of them covers the field of our research (the reference is given in the bibliography accompaning this paper), and in the careful selection of the texts. the bible has been chosen to enable the comparison with gothic. alfred’s translation of cura pastoralis allows the comparison with latin (the same as the texts in old high german), and is at the same time a good example of the free use of the latin texts, characteristic in old english if compared with the other germanic languages, a phenomenon due in part to the vague ____________________________________________________________________ 103 sense of many of the prerverbs in the historic al time, which enables a choice not determined by meaning. the anglo-saxon chronicle allows the study of the preverb evolution in old english, embracing all the period, in cluding older material than that of the time in which it was written and the peterborough chronicle going as far as the beginning of middle english. aelfric and wulfstan’s sermons are representative of the spoken discourse, the one especially chosen for 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(ed.), die vortragsreise, bern 1958, 9-38. kempcke, g., “die bedeutungsgruppen der verbalen kompositionspartikeln anund aufin synchronischer und diachronischer sicht”, pbb 87, 1965, 392-416; 88, 1966, 267-305. kjellman, n., die verbalzusammensetzungen mit durch-, lund 1945. kluge, f., “zur altgermanischen sprachgeschichte. die verbalpartikeln in der zusammensetzung”, zvspf 26, 1883, 68-82. kolde, g., die verbale be-komposition in prosatexten des 14.-17. jahrhunderts, göttingen 1964. krämer, p., “zum problem der aktionsarten im deutschen. versuch einer terminologischen klärung mit hilfe der diachronie”, strukturen und interpretationen. festschrift für b. horacek , philologica germanica 1, wien 1974, 212-225. krámsky, j., “verbal aspect in english and german as compared with lzech”, cizí jazyky ve skole, praga 3, 1957, 351-352. kuhn, h., review in if 62, 1934, 159-161 of gruber, h., das adverbale uzpräfix im gotischen und althochdeutschen. ein beitrag zum problem der präfix-komposition (jenaer germanischen forschungen 13), jena 1930. kühnhold, i., review in pbb 91, 1969, 426-429 of hundsnurscher, f., “das system der partikelverben mit ausin der gegenwartssprache”, eichinger l. m. (ed.), tendenzen verbaler wortbildung in der deutschen gegenwartssprache, hamburg 1982, 1-32. catalina montes & mª pilar fernández ____________________________________________________________________ 110 kühnhold, i., “zum “system” der deuts chen verbalpräfixe”, neue beiträge zur deutschen grammatik , mannheim-wien-zürich 1969, 94-99. kühnhold, i., “über das verhältnis von aufund er-”, germanistische studien, innsbruck 1969, 327-335. kühnhold, i., “beobachtungen zu den verbalpräfixen ab-, aus-, ent-”, studien zur syntax des heutigen deutsch. festschrift für p. grebe, düsseldorf 1970, 269-274. kühnhold, i.-wellmann, h., “präfixverben”, deutsche wortbildung. typen und tendenzen in der gegenwartssprache, i, düsseldorf 1973, 141362. kurth, r., “zur gebrauch der sogenannten geabstrakta”, pbb 75, 1953, 314320. lawson, r. h., “the prefix gias a perfectivizing future significant in ohg tatian”, jegp 64, 1965, 90-97. lawson, r. h., “gias futurizing prefix in the shorter old high german interlinear work, nphm 67, 1966, 234-242. lawson, r. h., “a reappraisal of the function of the prefix giin old high german tatian”, nphm 69, 1968, 272-280. lawson, r. h., “the verbal prefix gein the old high german and middle high german benedictine rules”, jegp 67, 1968, 647-655. lawson, r. h., “preverbal k ein the earliest old alemannic”, jegp 69, 1970, 568-579. leden, a., “bedeutungen und gebrauchsmöglichkeiten einiger komposita: ausgehen, herausgehen, hinausgehen und eingehen, hereingehen, hineingehen”, eichinger l. m. (ed.), tendenzen verbaler wortbildung in der deutschen gegenwartssprache, hamburg 1982, 183-196. lehmann, w., das präfix uzbesonders im altenglischen, mit einem anhang über das präfigierte westgerm. *o(*a-) = ein beitrag zur germanische wortbildungslehre, kiel 1906. ____________________________________________________________________ 111 leinen, r., über wesen und entstehung der trennbaren zusammensetzung des deutschen zeitwortes mit besonderer berücksichtigung des gotischen und althochdeutschen, strassburg 1891. lenze, j., das praefix biin der altenglischen nominalund verbalkomposition mit gelegentlicher berücksichtigung der anderen germanischen dialekte, kiel 1909. leopold, m., die vorsilbe verund ihre geschichte (germanistische abhandlungen 27), breslau 1907. lepinoy, p, “fonctions de la part icule be-”, mélanges pour j. fourquet, münchen-paris 1969, 163-175. lindemann, j. w. r., “old english preverbal ge-”, jegp 64, 1965, 65-83. lindemann, j. w. r., old english preverbal ge: its meaning, charlottesville: univ. press of virginia 1970. lipka, l., “ein grenzgebiet zwischen wortbildung und wortsemantik: die partikelverben im englischen und deutschen”, interlinguistica. festschrift für m. wandruszka, tübingen 1971, 180-189. lorusso, a. m., “aspetto e modo dell’azione nella struttura funzionale del verbo gotico”, annali, facoltà de lettere, univ. perugia 4, 1966-67, 559-583 lorz, a., actionsarten des verbums im beowulf, würzburg 1908. lüngen, w., das präfix on(d)in der ae verbalkomposition mit dem anhang über das präfix od-/ud-, kiel 1911. marache, m., “die gotischen verbalen gakomposita im lichte einer neuen kategorie der aktionsart”, zfda 90, 1960, 1-35. marchand, h., “notes on english prefixation”, nphm 55, 1954, 294-304. marchand, h., on the analysis of substantive compounds and suffixal derivatives not containing a verbal element”, if 70, 1965, 117-145. catalina montes & mª pilar fernández ____________________________________________________________________ 112 marchand, h., “die präpartikelverben im deutschen: echte präfixbildungen, synthetische präfixbildungen, pseudo-präfixbildungen”, sprache und geschichte. festschrift für h. meier, münchen 1971, 313-326. marckwardt, a. h., “the verbal suffix -ettan in old english”, language 18, 1942, 275-281. marcq, p., “un point particulier du système des prépositions spatiales du gotique: les rapports entre faur, faura; wipra ; afar; hindar”, mélanges pour j. fourquet, münchen-paris 1969, 209-220. mclintock, d. r., “über germanische abstraktbindungen vom typus gaskota-”, pbb 91, 1969, 1-27. mirowicz, a., die aspektfrage im gotischen, wilno 1935. mungan, g., die semantische interaktion zwischen dem präfigierenden verbzusatz und dem simplex bei deutschen partikelund präfixverben, frankfurt-bern-new york 1986. niwa, y., “the preverb geadded to niman in the oe gloss to the lindis farne gospels”, studies in english literature 1966, 65-79. niwa, y., old english preverbal ge-, tokyo 1973 (in japanese). niwa, y., “on the collective meaning of oe preverb ge-, studies in english litera ture 1974, 155-167. öhmann, e., “beobachtungen im umkreis der homonymie. das deutsche verbalpräfix ver-”, festgabe für u. pretzel, berlin 1963, 327-337. pietsch, p., “einige bemerkungen über gebei verben”, pbb 13, 1888, 516-518. pilch, h., “das ae. präverb ge-”, anglia 71, 1953, 129-139. pilch, h., “der untergang des präverbs geim englischen”, anglia 73, 1955, 37-64. pollak, h. w., “studien zum germanischen verbum i. über aktionsarten”, pbb 44, 1920, 417-419. ____________________________________________________________________ 113 pollak, h., “über gabeim gotischen verb”, pbb 96, 1974, 1-28. pollak, h., “über gotische verben mit doppeltem ga-”, pbb 96, 1974, 12-16. pollak, h., “zur methode der ermittlung von bedeutung und funktion der altgermanischen vorsilbe ga-”, nphm 76, 1975, 130-137. purtscher, f., die untrennbaren partikeln im ahd. tatian, leipzig 1902. pusch, l. f., “smear=schmieren/beschmieren: bemerkungen über partitive und holis tische konstruktionen im deutschen und englischen”, in nickel, g. 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aspekt”, fuf 28, 1954, 27-30. richter, g., die ahd. missa -bildungen und ihre entwicklung zum neuhochdeutschen, leipzig 1961. catalina montes & mª pilar fernández ____________________________________________________________________ 114 richter, g., “zur bedeutungsgeschichte der ahd. missa -bildungen”, pbb 85, 1963, 313-334. rice, a., gothic prepositional compounds in their relations to their greek original, lang. diss. nº 11, philadelphia 1966. röhling, m., das präfix oferin der altenglischen verbalund nominalkomposition mit berücksichtigung der übrigen germanischen dialeckte, heidelberg 1914. rolffs, fr. w., gotisch disund du-, breslau 1908. romm, s. m., die kategorie des aspekts und die semantik der verbalen prä fixe in der modernen deutschen sprache, moskau 1951. rooth, e., “das verb eratmen bei goethe und seine stellung im system der verben mit er-präfix”, mélanges de philologie offerts à m. j. melander, uppsala 1943, 161-197. rooth, e., über die ausdrukskraft und die aktionsarten der deutschen verbalzusammensetzungen mit er-, saltjö-duvnas 1964. rosen, h., old high german prepositional compounds in relation to their latin original, lang. diss. nº 16, philadelphia 1966. rothwell, w., “a study of the prefix de / des in anglo -norman and some consid erations arising therefrom”, tphs 1966, 24-41. russell, p., “preverbs, prepositions and adverbs: sigmatic and asigmatic”, tphs 1988, 144-172. saltveit, l., “präposition, präfix und partikel als funktionell verwandte grö ßen im deutschen satz”, linguistische studien iv, sprache der ge genwart 24. festgabe für p. grebe, düsseldorf 1973, 173-195. samuels, m. l., “the geprefix in the old english gloss to the lindisfarne gospels”, tphs 1949, 62-116. scherer, ph., “aspect in gothic”, language 30, 1954, 211-223. ____________________________________________________________________ 115 scherer, ph., “aspect in the old high german of tatian”, language 32, l956, 423-434. scherer, ph., “aspect in the old english of the corpus christi ms”, language 34, 1958, 245-251. scherer, ph., “the theory of the function of the gothic preverb ga-”, word 20, 1964, 221-245. scherer, ph., “tense modification in gothic”, festschrift j. alexander kerns, the hague 1970. schlachter, w., “ein aktionsartkriterium der neuhochdeutschen”, zdw 17, 1961, 1-51. schmidt, g., studien zum germanischen adverb , berlin 1962. schmitz, w., der gebrauch der deutschen präpositionen, münchen 19685. schröbler, i., “bemerkungen zu bedeutung und funktion von after, ana, ânu, ander, aba. aus der werkstatt des ahd. wörterbuches”, pbb 66, 1942, 278-291. schwarz, h., präfixbildungen im deutschen abrogans. analyse und systema tik , göppingen 1986. seebold , e., “gt. gasinpa “reisegefährte” und gasinpi “reisegesellschaft””, pbb 96, 1971, 1-11. seip, e. , “die gotischen verba mit dem präfix and-”, giessener beiträge zur deutschen philologie x, gießen 1923, 1-24. senn, a., “verbal aspects in germanic, slavic and baltic”, language 35, 1949, 402-409. sizova, i. a., “morfologiceskoj status gotskich preverbov i ich klassifikacii”, zeitchrift für phonetik, sprachwissenschaft und kommunikationsforschung 33, 1980, 535-540. catalina montes & mª pilar fernández ____________________________________________________________________ 116 sprengel, k., a study in word -formation: the english verbal prefixes foreand preand their german counterparts, tübingen 1977. stanley, e. g., “the prenominal prefix gein late old english and early middle english”, tphs 1982, 25-66. steinhauser, w., “die ahd. vorsilbe uoim kreise ihrer lautverwandten”, zmf 27, 1960, 101-115. streitberg, w., “perfective und imperfective actionsart im germanischen”, pbb 15, 1891, 70-177. streitberg, w., “zum gotischen perfektiv”, if 21, 1907, 193-196. streitberg, w., “zum perfektiv”, if 24, 1909, 311-314. swaay, h. a. j., het prefix ga-, gi-, geen zijn invloed op de “actionsart” meer bijzonder in het oudnederfrankisch en het oudsaksisch, utrecht 1901. tellenbach, e., vergleichende untersuchung nhd. und nnl. bildungen mit dem präfix ver-, leipzig 1971. trinka, b., “some remarks on the perfective and imperfective aspects in gothic”, donum natalicum schrijnen, nijmegen-utrecht 1929, 496-500. vañó-cerda, a., “die adverbiale modifikation durch das präfix zer-”, spra chwiss. 12, 1987, 293-310. wedel, a. r., “the verbal aspects of the prefixed and unprefixed verbal forms of standen, sizzan/sezzan, lickan/leckan in the old high german benedictine rule”, jegp 73, 1974, 169-175. wellander, e., die bedeutungsentwicklung der partikel abin der mittelhochdeutschen verbalkomposition, uppsala 1911. west, j., “proklitische verbalpartikel und ihr gebrauch in bezug auf das verbale aspektssystem der gotischen”, zdph 100, 1981, 331-338. west, j., “the semantics of preverbs in gothic”, if 87, 1982, 138-165. ____________________________________________________________________ 117 wilmanns, w., deutsche grammatik , ii: wortbildung, berlin-leipzig 19302, 115-174. wolf, a., das präfix -uz im gotischen und im deutschen verbum, breslau 1915. wolfrum, g., “studien zu ahf. bî und zur problemgeschichte der präpositio nen”, pbb 92, 1970, 237-324. wolfrum, g.-ulbricht, e., “syntaktische studien zu ahd. avur. aus der werkstatt des ahd. wörterbuches”, pbb 81, 1959, 215-241. wrenn, c. l., “gothic usqiman”, donum natalicum schrijnen, nijmegenutrecht 1929, 492-495. wunderlich, d., “an investigation of lexical composition the case of german beverbs”, linguistics 25, 1987, 283-331. wuths, actionsarten der verba bei cynewulf, weida i. thür. 1915. yoshida, k., “a study of the gothic preverb ga-”, gk 78, 1981, 85113.yoshiota, j., “the influence of the latin version on the gothic version in the case of prepositions”, jies 14, 1986, 219-229. zifonun, g., zur theorie der wortbildung am beispiel deutscher präfixverben, münchen 1973. zintl, j., “zur syntax von hinaus/hinein, heraus/herein”, eichinger l. m. (ed.), tendenzen verbaler wortbildung in der deutschen gegenwartssprache, hamburg 1982, 135-172. zutt, h., “bedeutungsdifferenzierung durch präfigierung in den übersetzungen notkers des deutschen”, litterae medii aevi 1988, 93-100. * † * selim05.pdf reviews, s. g. fernández-corugedo ____________________________________________________________________ 166 fox, anthony 1995: linguistic reconstruction. an introduction to theory and method. oxford: oxford university press. xvii + 372 pp. (hardback £ 35.00, paperback £ 10.95). linguistic reconstruction appears in the series ‘oxford textbooks in lin guis tics’ as a landmark for future volumes. this book is not only an excellent undergraduate handbook, it is possibly the best state-of-the-art coursebook for subjects connected with historical linguistics and especially with the his tory of the english language. dr. fox states (p. vi) that “this book originated as a two -page handout which was distributed to students in a brief general course on historical lin guis tics … the handout was intended to supplement this discussion and exemplify the methods. that it has expanded to its pre sent book-length size is due part to a dissatisfaction with the materials available to students, but also in part to my own growing interest in this topic, and my desire to explore both the origins and development of the methods, and the current state of this area of linguistic theory and methodology.” these aims, no doubt, have been achieved by the book. but i think that some emphasis is also to be made on the clear-cut distinctions and expository clarity and brevity that the author uses in his presentation and explanation of the history of linguistic though in relation to linguistic change, together with a scholarly and very much didactic approach to the main points under scope. in a book of these chara cteristics, it only normal that its users will also find aspects that could be different —although not necessarily better. for in stance i have found slightly disappointing that biblio graphical references to particular languages are not just scarce, but almost non existing at all. i know that this is a general handbook on general (or universal) topics dealing with his torical linguistics, but the very essence of the comparative approach implies the use of particular languages. hence that i presume that some further information for the student who would follow other courses dealing with or related to historical linguistics or the history of particular languages would call for a supplementary effort in this area. thus i have been unable to find allusions to r. hogg’s books on old english (1992a, 1992b) or on metrical phonology, or to denison’s english historical syntax (1993), and i am also unable to procure myself information about other specific bibliography on either reviews: anthony fox 1995 ____________________________________________________________________ 167 the history of english or on that of any other major western language from the sources quoted in the book (not even on german, being dr. fox’s main foreign field —see fox 1984—, unless we may consider that grimm’s deutsche grammatik and other 19th c monographs quoted are quite enough). a second connected point that called some attention refers to the dis cussion of the indo-european stages of origin, evolution and extension. fox offers a magisterial discussion of the english review of the problem since vic tor gordon childe put it fo rward in 1926, to colin renfrew’s 1987 sugges tive ideas. however, when the insular perspectives are confronted with other opinions, mostly originated in germany, but also in spain (tovar 1954 is quoted, but nothing later by the same tovar —as his 1982 monograph—, or by other spanish scholars attached to german linguistic thought such as ro dríguez adrados —1976, 1982—, or villar liébana —1971, 1991—, etc.), or in italy (for example g. devoto 1962; or the earlier g. bonfante —although fox quotes a s eminal article of his published in word in 1945); there is very little else than brief mentions. even the french school of indoeuropeists is partially ignored. all the question of the so called altindoeuropäisch that in the end appears to have implied the retraction of european history some 3,000 years back from the dates considered usual until some 10 years ago, would call for further discussion and illustration in this section of the work. especially because this point will reappear later in the book (pp. 279-291) when fox deals with glottochronology, although that second context is not directly linked with the discussion on “old indo-european.” it finally resurrects in pages 308-321 where fox comes again on the original homelands of the indoeuropean peoples. in these matters, h. h. hock’s (1991[1986]) principles of historical linguistics is still better in scope and aims than the present handbook. it is also more detailed than linguistic reconstruction in matters dealing with new versions or a rephrasing of grimm’s and verner’s laws (see fox pp. 21-23) and the problems of the methodological approaches to reconstructing sound systems. however, fox’s book is much better than hock’s when re viewing summarily the main philo logical schools, their thought and the impact and effect that have caused on other contenders, together with a clear-cut presentation of morphological and lexical problems. the abundance of fig ures in many chapter —for example chapters 4 (19 figures), 7 (19 figures) and 9 (15 figures)— is also worth commenting, because all of them are impeccable and very useful. reviews, s. g. fernández-corugedo ____________________________________________________________________ 168 another minor point that concerns the list of references is both a strong dependency on english-speaking sources: although this is not just normal, it is also natural in the sense that the book is aimed at younger students, and a scarcity of recent items: there are less than 10 books or articles later than 1992 out of some 430 entries. it might be the case that nothing else in teresting enough was published while the book was being finished. something that happened by march 1994 according to the author. to finish with this critical plaint about books on books, there is a most laudable point in linguistic reconstruction: that the author pro vides an interesting reading list at the end of each chapter that will encourage reader to pro vide themselves with further ammunition from other sources. although fox’s commentaries on the further references he selects for implementing his own discussion are listed without commentary, i.e. these “further reading” items are “as it is”, they are helpful in different ways. on the one hand we are offered a shortlist of the sources that fox considers to be more reliable or at least interesting, and on the other the list is enigmatic and non committed enough to allow speculation about why this is on the list and why that (that is listed in the final references) is not. occasionally some clues may appear in the notes or in textual cross-references, but in most cases the reader’s own interpretation seems to be favoured. linguistic reconstruction is divided in 12 chapters that we can consider under three points of view. there is a first introductory chapter (pp. 1-16) where fox argues in favour of the imperious need that future graduates in languages have of historical linguistics. he also states his views on the pro blems and methodology and poses iron-hot questions on the status, scopes and limits of the discipline. in the end he is a firm defender of the faith, and although many of us were previous believers, his reciting of an agnostic creed for comparison and reconstruction leaves us much reassured in it. chapters 2 to 6 (pp. 17-121) form the second part of the volume. this part is devoted to the comparative method, and its execution in the volume is excellent: background and development since the 19th c (chapter 2); the modern 20th c times (chapter 3); and immediately a thorough discussion on procedures both basic and applied of the is sues studied (chapters 4 and 5). chapter 6 is finally devoted to models alternative and official: stammbaumtheorie, wellentheorie, regularity, analogy, etc. reviews: anthony fox 1995 ____________________________________________________________________ 169 chapters 7 to 12 (pp. 145-329) discuss reconstruction, the second topic under fox’s approach. internal division is similar to that of the previous section: a historical development (chapters 7 and 89 now grouped with a more formal (or formalized) approach, plus specific examples (chapter 9) with well peppered illustrations from a variety of languages both ancient and modern. then (chapter 10), new trends implying typology and reconstruction, and (chapter 11), quantitative methods (much in vogue today). it is particularly in fox’s analyses and discussion of statistical procedures where i find him most brilliant and scholarly. fox appears to be in favour of quantification … provided that qualification and probabilistic razors were applied on the sheer possibilities provided by mass data. i think that it is not just witty and remarkably intelligent on the part of the author’s, but it als o helps the reader to understanding his (i think) profound respect for the intellectual work of other people. the final chapter on reconstruction, culture, and society, and es pecially in section 12.3 (prehistoric homelands, pp. 308-322) brings back the issues of language origin and development. fox is coherent and aims home: “… the prospect of learning something not only about the forms of reconstructed language but also about the society and culture of its speakers is an appealing one. here, as elsewhere in reconstruction, we can accept the method as a poss ible source of information, but must be cautious in interpreting the results in his torical terms.” (p. 326). actually, we should also mention that secion 4.6, the conclusion to chapter 4, together with section 8.5 —a conclusion to both re construction and the comparative method—, are excellent epit omes that help the reader to abstract summarily what the author has established as the es sential points of his discussion. lisguistic reconstruction is then not just very good reading for the general student of historical linguistics, it is an excellent book for the more advanced or the professionally oriented towards these matters that since a century and a half ago have been central to the study of languages in academic curricula. in a way, it is a battlecry for our origins and a whole handbook on the stra tegies and logistics of how students should be taught and encouraged to work on their own (let us remember the selectvive and select “further reading” sections at the end of each chapter) by means of offering facts and plaus ible interpretation. reviews, s. g. fernández-corugedo ____________________________________________________________________ 170 s. g. fernández-corugedo university of coruña references childe, v. g. 1926: the aryans, a study of indo-european origins. kegan paul, trench & trubner, london. denison, d. 1993: english historical syntax. longman, london. devoto, g. 1962: origini indeuropee. instituto italiano di preistoria e pro tois toria italiana, firenze. fox, a. 1984: german intonation: an outline. clarendon press, oxford. hock, h. h. 1991[1986]: principles of historical linguistics. mouton de gruyter, berlin. hogg, r. m. 1992a: a grammar of old english i: phonology. b. blackwell, oxford. hogg, r. m. ed. 1992b: the cambridge history of the english language i: the beginnings to 1066. cambridge university press, cambridge. renfrew, c. 1989[1987]: archeology and language; the puzzle of indo-european origins. penguin books, harmondsworth. rodríguez adrados, f. 1976: lingüística indoeuropea. 2vv. gredos, madrid. rodríguez adrados, f. 1982: the archaich structure of hittite: the crux of the problem. journal of indo-european studies 10: 1-35. tovar, a. 1954: linguistics and prehistory. word 10: 333-350. tovar, a. 1982: die indoeuropäisierung westeuropas. innsbruck univers ität, innsbruck. villar liébana, f. 1971: lenguas y pueblos indoeuropeos. istmo, madrid. villar liébana, f. 1991: los indoeuropeos y los origenes de europa. gredos, madrid. selim06.pdf javier calle martín, selim 6 (1998): 64—84 stereotyped comparisons in the language of geoffrey chaucer 1. introduction the works of geoffrey chaucer exhibit the frequent appearance of structures like as stille as any ston, as swyft as thought or as white as chalk and, on the grounds of the unexpectedly large corpus gathered from his writings (of more than four hundred examples 1), we considered it to be of great interest to devote our attention to study them. kerkhof (1982: 376-89) outlines some cases of stereotyped comparisons in chaucer and it was precisely from his suggestions that the idea for this article arose. therefore, this paper will deal with the so-called stereotyped comparisons2, that is, highly hyperbolic comparisons with a chiefly collo quial origin, fossilized and lexicalized in a language owing to their repeated use in a given linguistic community. these comparative structures show an intrinsic relationship between the adjective and the noun acting as the second member of the comparison in the sense that, owing to their fossilized status, the appearance of the former re quires the presence of the latter and vice versa. the continuous occurrence of these stereotypes may demonstrate that many of them might have been already fossilized in the middle english period. actually, they were very appealing to the poet, who decided to include them in his poetry as well as in his prose. in fact, chaucer realized that this 1 the task of compiling was also eased by the recent edition of chaucer’s works on cd-rom. chaucer: life and times. 1995: primary source media limited. 2 these structures can also be labelled using various terminology. gutierrez diez prefers to name them fossilized similes , gonzález calvo intensive comparisons, beinhauer lexicalized comparisons and hyperbolic expressions. however, we agree with mayoral’s terminology namely stereotyped comparisons, the term which we will be using in the course of the paper. ____________________________________________________________________ 66 type of comparison transmitted comic tinges to his writings, humour could be subtly included, and that provided him with a skilful and effective way to secure the constant interest and attention of his audience. thou comest hoom as dronken as a mous1. wbt, 246. and seint jerome, whan he longe tyme hadde woned in desert, where as he hadde no compaignye but of wilde beestes, […] for which his flessh was blak as an ethiopeen for heete, and ny destroyed for coold, […]. parst, 344. hir mouth was sweete as bragot or the meeth, or hoord of apples leyd in hey or heeth. milt, 3261-62. thus, in this paper2 we intend (1) to trace the origin of stereotyped comparisons; (2) to carry out a syntactic analysis; and finally (3) to analyse those elements forming the second member of the comparison. 2. origin with regard to their origin, stereotyped structures were not new in the middle ages. chaucer came about these types of combinations through various sources, most of them adapted from old english, latin, french or italian, that is, from the languages that the poet learned in his lifetime. chaucer’s biographers (dillon 1993: 1-24) suppose that in his youth the poet attended one of the three schools surrounding the river thames, where he had the possibility of getting acquainted with classical languages and their literature, and this fact could have helped him to come across these kind of comparative structures that he used later as calques or loan translations. quid magis est saxo durum?. ovid. ars amandi, 473. 1 the riverside chaucer, edited by larry d. benson. 3rd edition. oxford: oup, 1991. all the following quotations are from the same edition of the riverside chaucer. 2 the examples quoted constitute a brief summary of a major corpus drawn from the complete works of geoffrey chaucer, and this corpus has been the primary source of information for the data included. ____________________________________________________________________ 67 som tyrant is, as ther be many oon, that hath herte as hard as any stoon. chaucer, mert, 989-90. et iacebat immobilis et nihil aliud quam dormiens cadaver. apuley, asinus aureus, vi, 21. yet troilus for al this no word seyde, but longe he ley as stylle as he ded were. chaucer, tr, i, 722-23. after this initial learning period, he was given a position of great responsibility in the court. in fact, the post of ambassador affected his literary career by getting in contact with the literary movements of the continent and, particularly, with these comparisons which offered him a wide range of possibilities to be used in his own language. accordingly, we have carried out a research of european medieval writings to prove the influence of these languages and we have been able to verify how, even though he was a poet of unlimited genius, he was also directly influenced by the stereotypes from the continent, as can be seen in the following examples. blanche comme fleur de liz. de lorris, le roman de la rose (rr), 1028. his nayles whitter than the lylye flour. chaucer, npt, 2863. pur ço francs si fiers come leuns. la chanson de roland, 1888. whan he hym knew, and hadde his tale herd, as fiers as leon pulled out his swerd. chaucer, knt, 1597-98. poi, procedendo di mio sguardo il curro, vidine un’ altra come sangue rossa , mostrando un’ oca bianca piú che burro. dante, la divina commedia, inferno, 17, 61-63. wel loved he garleek, oynons, and eek lekes, and for to drynken strong wyn, reed as blood;. chaucer, gp, 63435. the parallelism and analogy amongst the stereotypes of these medieval languages is obviously non-casual and this coincidence leads us to suppose that some of them have a traditional character and have managed to filter ____________________________________________________________________ 68 through into european folklore to be spread afterwards into all the languages by means of literature. if we attempt to trace their origin, we come to the conclusion that they are to be found in classical literature. however, along with these adaptations from european folklore, many examples of our corpus show a distinctive and unique character in each language whose origin has to be found in colloquial language and which always responds to the speaker’s point of view (bein hauer 1968: 257-58). that is, apart from the task of imitating those models from the past, the internal mechanism of each language will allow its users to invent and devise its own stereotypes, projecting its own culture and, in these cases, the process of fossilization and lexicalization will be influenced by the political, economical or social situation of the moment. thus, the first of the examples below shows a stereotype, fossilized owing to a specific geographical feature of france (the river loire) whereas the second one can only be contextualized in an english environment. la reconnait trop sombre et trop profonde et d’un courant plus rapide que courant de loire. chrétien de troyes, perceval, p.58. […] hadde alwey bawdes redy to his hond, as any hawk to lure in engelond. chaucer, frt, 1339-40. therefore, the process of invention in each language becomes clearer when analysing specific adjectives, like green. […] aussi vert comme une cive. de lorris, rr, 200. ful fade and caytif was she eek, and also grene as ony leek. rr, 211-12. myn herte and alle my limes been as grene as laurer thurgh the yeer is for to sene. mert, 1465-66. whereas de lorris uses the word cive (‘spring onion’), chaucer prefers leek and laurer. this duality may be explained by the differences found in the products of each country. the inexistence of a one-to-one relationship between the adjective and the second term can be obviously explained by the specific diversity found in the production of each country (cf. nowadays the spanish stereotyped comparison más colorado que un tomate and its english counterpart as red as a beetroot). thus, every language shows a ____________________________________________________________________ 69 natural tendency to develop its own stereotyped comparison and chaucer was clearly conscious of this fact when translating from french. et si n’ot pas n’ed orlenoiz. de lorris, rr, 1217. hir nose was wrought at point of devys. chaucer, rr, 1215. moult clere stoit aussi froide comme puiz ou comme fontaine. de lorris, rr, 110. cleer was the water, and as cold as any welle is, soth to seyne […]. chaucer, rr, 116-17. in the first example above, chaucer omits the french reference to the orléans whereas in the other he prefers the anglosaxon word well to the french term fo(u)ntain because perhaps that stereotype with the second term well was already lexicalized and fossilized in his own language. thus, the poet in his translation of de lorris’s le roman de la rose makes all the changes necessary to avoid the possible ambiguity that the original text could cause. as hatim (1990: 223) points out, “the translator has not only a bilingual ability but also a bi-cultural vision. translators mediate between cultures […] seeking to overcome those incompatibilities which stand in the way of transfer of meaning”1. all in all, once we have mentioned the two possible origins (classical and colloquial), we should notice that chaucer makes far greater use of the second. these stereotyped comparisons of colloquial origin are always under a process of continual movement of lexicalization and new stereotypes are constantly being fossilized in every language. therefore, it must be clear that the catalogue available for these stereotypes should be richer than those in herited from tradition2. 1 chaucer tends to adapt his translations to his english audience in order to make them more comprehensible, otherwise most of his verses would have been ambigu ous for his audience. let us mention a. bensoussan’s recent translation of r. redoli’s brilliant chisnetos ("la beata aquejada de picores") in which the french professor opts to translate the spanish name ‘encarna’ into french as ‘conception’, conveying thus the same connotations that the spanish term contains (cf. his conference held at the university of málaga on march 12th under the title of "la traducción lúdica"). 2 notice that stereotypes nowadays may be spread even quicker than in the middle ages owing to the powerful influence of the mass media. therefore, the catalogue of examples compiled from present-day english requires a constant attention and compilation to have it up-to-date (calle and miranda 1997). ____________________________________________________________________ 70 3. syntactic analysis 3.1. patterns the syntactic analysis of these stereotyped structures reveals the different patterns that the constituents exhibit in the sentence structure. chaucer does not always use the same syntactic structure and, depending on the verse he is writing, he uses what we are going to label regular order, on the one hand, and complex order, on the other. in a regular order the adjective1 is sorrounded by both members of the comparison (first and second term) and, therefore, it responds to the following structure. first term comp-element second term noun as … as/so … as/also … as -er than/more … than noun and jason is as coy as is a mayde; […]. lgw, 1548. five arowis were of other gise, that ben ful foule to devyse, for shaft and ende, soth for to telle, were also blak as fend in helle. rr, 971-74. his coomb was redder than the fyn coral, and batailled as it were a castel wal. npt, 2859-60. for present tyme abidith nought; it is more swift than any thought. rr, 5023-24. this regular pattern is more abundant in chaucer’s writings, but some times the poet alters this regularity to acommodate his poetry to the metrical, stylistical and rhyming rules of the verse, making use of structures consid ered to be more complex from a syntactic point of view. thus, five main p atterns can be found. 1 throughout this paper we will use quirk’s terminology as comp-element to refer to adjectives as the heads of comparisons, either in the form of equality or superiority (quirk et al. 1972: 765-68). ____________________________________________________________________ 71 a) the first term is inserted in the comp -element, that is, between the adjective and the second particle. the pattern used in this case responds to the following structure: {so/as + adjective + first term + as} + second term1. nas nevere yet seyn thyng to ben preysed derred, nor unde cloude blak so bright a sterre as was criseyde. tr, i, 174-76. b) chaucer also collocates the verb within the comp -element, forming the pattern {so/as + adjective + verb + as} + second member. and she, for sorwe 2, as doumb stant as a tree. mlt, 1055. in addition, we may also locate examples in which more than one verb can be placed in the position mentioned. the next case illustrates the adjective (faire) followed by two verbs (lye and brenne), both placed within the bounds of the comparison, that is, between the constituents of the comp -element. yet wole the fyr as faire lye and brenne as twenty thousand men myghte it biholde3. wbt, 1142-43. c) this third possibility conveys the combination of the previous ones, for the poet places the first term and the verb between the adjective and the second particle which constitute the comp -element, showing the pattern {so/as + adjective + verb + first term} + second member. however, we should also bear in mind that chaucer makes use of some freedom in the collocation of the verb and the first member of the comparison since sometimes the verb precedes it and in others the subject does. this variability between these two sentential elements responds to rhyming and metrical causes. the verse used by chaucer, iambic pentameter, consists of five feet of two syllables (stressed and unstressed, respectively) and that is precisely what the poet aims to manage with this variability of positions: the maximum perfection of his pentameters. 1 we should observe that this type of ordering is very closely related to the contemp orary clauses of consequence, such as he was so noble a man that …, it was so difficult a task that …, etc. 2 it should be taken into account that, in this case, for sorwe is also inserted between the first term and the comp -element. 3 notice that the presence of the numeral in this example adds even more hyperbolic connotations to the stereotype. ____________________________________________________________________ 72 to gróund(e) / déd she / fálleth / ás a / stón. aa, 70. this same pattern is also observed in comparisons of superiority. a fáirer / sáugh i / néver(e) / nóon than / shé. clt, 1032. d) sometimes a subordinated clause (of time, of place, etc.) can be positioned within the comp -element structure. ther nys, ywis, no serpent so cruel, whan man tret on his tayl, en half so fel, as womman is, whan she hath caught an ire. smt, 2001-2. like the subordinated clause, other elements may appear functioning as proper adjective complements. and but i be to-morn as fair to seene as any lady, emperice, or queene that is bitwixe the est and eke the west. wbt, 1245-47. e) finally, we have observed another pattern which is considered to be more interesting from a linguistic point of view for a complete alteration in the natural sequence of constituents occurs: the second member of the comparison preceeds its comp -element (its adjective). this structure is very peculiar and characteristic of poetry and chaucer, a master of this art, makes a profitable use of it. the rhetorical figure which occurs here is that generally known as hyperbaton (mayoral ramírez 1993: 655). love is a thyng as any spirit free. wommen, of kynde, desiren libertee. frant, 767-68. furthermore, this pattern admits the appearance of other sentential ele ments between the comp -element and its second term. as any wezele his body gent and smal. milt, 3234. chaucer tends to use these stereotyped structures when he is describing places and characters. by placing the comp -element at the end of the line, he emphasizes the quality described by the adjective because, as such, it generally constitutes a stressed syllable in the prosodic structure of the line. be sides, the poet als o alters the regular pattern owing to rhyming necessities. it is quite significant that in the seven examples found with this pattern the adjective is made to rhyme with another word forming couplets. upon his hand he bar for his deduyt an egle tame as any lilye whyt. knt, 2177-78. ____________________________________________________________________ 73 3.2. position of stereotyp ed comparisons next, we will study those positions of the stereotyped comparisons within the scope of the verse. thus, three positions have been observed: they may head the line, end it, or even be s plit on two verses. the position adopted by the stereotype, which is never arbitrary, chiefly depends on the metrical and rhyming characteristics of each line. this explains chaucer’s preference to place as fiers as leon at the beginning, to make a perfect consonantic rhyme between the words herd and swerd . whan he hym knew, and hadde his tale herd, as fiers as leon pulled out his swerd. knt, 1597-98. this situation is also observed in the two following examples in which the stereotyped comparison is placed at the end and on two lines to make the words sloo and free rhyme with two and me, respectively 1. ful smale ypulled were hire browes two, and tho were bent and blake as any sloo. milt, 3245-46. and yeven hym my trewe herte as free as he swoor he yaf his herte to me. sqt, 541-42. finally, it is important to mention those stereotypes which show an unusual type of combination. we are referring to those cases in which the comp -element and its second term do not constitute a comparative clause but, on the contrary, both appear together and generally the second member pre ceding. although the surface structure does not show any comparative formula, we are in fact dealing with a variant of stereotyped comparisons since the deep structure reveals the presence of a term which perfectly denotes the quality of the adjective in a maximum and hyperbolic degree. he hadde a beres skyn, col-blak for old. knt, 2142. thus, these structures must be considered as another form of stereotyped comparison. they constitute an advanced level of fossilization and lexicalization since formulae like col-clak or snow white are in fact equivalent to the 1 although rhyme is very important, we cannot forget that prosody plays its counterpart importance since another syntactic distribution would have broken the perfection of chaucer’s pentameter. ____________________________________________________________________ 74 stereotypes blak as coal and white as snow, however, the former shows a more advanced level of assimilation appearing jointly 1. these lexicalizations usually take place with hue-adjectives, such as reed, white, blak, and so on. a somonour was ther with us in that place, that hadde a fyr-reed cherubynnes face, […]. gp, 623-24. two corones han we, snow white and rose reed, that shynen cleere […]. snt, 253-54. 3.3. equality versus superiority 3.3.1. frequency it is well known that the constituents required for the occurrence of a stereotyped comparison are (1) an adjective, (2) a second term or referent and (3) the correlative particles/morphemes employed to mark the degree of comparison or intensification, such as more … than or -er than for superiority, as … as for equality and less … than for inferiority, which is the least commonly used and most difficult to hear. as jespersen (1969: 224) points out, “comparisons with less are not very frequent; instead of less dangerous than, we often say not so dangerous as, and whenever there are two adjectives of opposing meaning, we say […] weaker than rather than less strong than”. according to this fact, although the majority of the examples collected in our corpus appear in the comparison of equality2 as/so … as (81.73%), the superiority construction (more/-er than) is also found but in a lesser degree 1 from a diachronic point of view, this type of combination has been present in all the stages of the history of english (cf. shakespeare, tit, ii, ii, 76). sometimes examples may be found showing the complete assimilation of the adjective and its referent, appearing together: now whenas darkesome night had all displayd / her coleblacke curtein over brightest skye, […]. spenser. the faerie queene, book 1, canto 4, 389. notice that espejo muriel (1990) cites similar structures in her detailed analysis of hue adjectives in spanish, with examples like verdemar or verdemontaña. 2 this tendency towards the use of the degree of equality is something inherent in the english language because it has followed the same pattern in all the stages of its history. notice, however, the opposite direction followed by spanish with its preference for the degree of superiority since the baroque period (beinhauer 1973: 259). ____________________________________________________________________ 75 (18.26%). the following example s illustrate how the same stereotype is used with both constructions. his nayles whitter than the lylye flour, and lyk the burned gold was his colour. npt, 2863-64. and over that his cote-armour as whit as is a lilye flour, in which he wol debate. th, 866-68. these two examples are not isolated. chaucer’s literary production is full of similar contrasts, like fressh as may and fressher then the may with floures newe; as hard as any stoon and harder than is a ston. the existence of these alternative constructions with the same stereotypes (equality versus superiority) made us think over their semantic value to check whether they were completely synonymous or not, that is, if any distinction could be taken into account to justify the use of one or the other. 3.3.2. semantic value the state of the art can be summarized as follows: on the one hand, some specialists led by beinhauer (1968: 249-50) defend that it is unnecessary to establish any kind of semantic difference between both types of structures since they are virtually felt to be synonyms. on the other hand, chantraine de van praag (1982: 815-16) thinks it is compulsory to make a semantic distinction between the comparison of equality and that of superiority, labelling the former ‘qualitative’ and the latter ‘quantitative comparison’, that is, the more (adjective) than comparison seems to be more dynamic and hyperbolic and intensifies the expression much more than that with as … as. given such opposed points of view, we are left to adopt the most reasonable interpretation and we actually believe that the only difference is to be found just in the frequency with which they appear (as … as is more frequent) considering that from a semantic point of view forms like as hard as any stoon and harder than any ston mean very hard and both can be offered as free variants for the same meaning (zuluaga 1980: 149). moreover, the lack of any kind of semantic difference may also be demonstrated analysing some examples translated by chaucer. estoit plus noir que meure. de lorris, rr, 941. ____________________________________________________________________ 76 blak as bery or ony slo. chaucer, rr, 928. the example mentioned illustrates that chaucer is not concerned with the degree of the original french adjective (equality being more frequent than superiority) and tends to translate it using the degree of equality. therefore, if there had been any semantic difference in the middle ages, chaucer’s modus operandi would have been somehow different. thus, the choice of a particular structure must never be considered to be a question of semantics but the contribution of equal forces, that is, the intrinsic tendency of every language and even metrics whose powerful influence is decisive in the choice of a specific degree of the comparison, as shown in the following examples. his náyles / whítter / thán the / lylie flóur. npt, 2863. an égle / táme as / ány / lílye / whyt. knt, 2178. 4. analysis of the second term next, the second member of the comparison will be studied from a double perspective, that is, (1) from a morphosyntactic and (2) from a semantic point of view. first, we will analyse the second term of stereotyped comparisons from a morphological and syntactic point of view to observe the nature of its constituents. a) it has been observed that the second member may be a noun. in fact, the presence of a noun is essential so that these comparative structures may be regarded as stereotypes, otherwise, they could never have been fossilized. he is as angry as a pissemyre [sic] though that he have al that he kan desire. sumt, 1825-26. although the head of the second term is generally a noun, however, this noun can be extensively complemented by any kind of phrase specifying the head. the purpose of this complementation is to emphasize the high gradual dimensions of the stereotype. mayoral ramírez (1993: 651) asserts that the ____________________________________________________________________ 77 noun phrase forming the second member can be expanded, lengthened or extended by any type of complementation: adjectival phrases, prepositional phrases, relative clauses, that is, formulae used with the aim of highlighting the hyperbolic character of the stereotyped structures. hir flesh was tendre as dew of flour hir chere was symple as byrde in bour. rr, 1013-14. ful ofte his lady from hire wyndow doun, as fressh as faukoun comen out of muwe. tr, iii, 1783-84. soul as the turtle that lost hath hire make. mert, 2080. in these stereotypes, the referent usually expresses a high and hyperbolic degree of comparison. however, in most occasions an isolated noun is not able to transmit that high intensity and it resorts to the complementation by other gramatical categories which help to define more precisely the meaning of the stereotype. therefore, it is not the same to say * soul as the turtle that soul as the turtle that lost hath hire make; the former being completely meaningless whereas the latter emphasizes that high degree of isolation that the comparison conveys. sometimes the second term may function as the subject of a sentence, the verb of which is sometimes omitted depending on the metrical and stylistic necessities of each line. in fact, we are dealing with a poetic license on the part of the poet. and of creseyde thou hast seyd as the lyste that maketh men to wommen lasse triste that be as trewe as ever was any steel. lgw, 332-34. but doutelees, as trewe as any steel i have a wyf, though that she poure be. mert, 2426-27. there are significant differences between the examples mentioned above for the former includes a verb functioning as the main one whereas the latter makes use of the copular verb been on two occasions, as a main one and as the verb of the second term of the comparison. the two verbs that usually appear with the second term of the comparison are been and don. and eke this hous hath of entrees as fele as of leves ben in tress in somer, whan they grene been. hf, 1945-47. ____________________________________________________________________ 78 but nathelees, his purpos heeld he stille as lordes don whan they wol han hir wille. clt, 580-81. ye ride as coy and stille as dooth a mayde were newe spoused, sittynge at the bord. clt, 2-3. obviously, the presence of these verbs with the second term of the comparison, despite the fact it may be omitted, is due to the metrical circunstances of that specific line. therefore, the presence of these sentences in the structure of the second member of the comparison helps to specify and highlight the dimensions of the stereotype. b) although the grammatical category that usually appears in the referent is that of a noun, we can also find examples where an adjective makes up the second term. in these cases, it is necessary to es tablish some differences because this is just a comparative structure which could never be interpreted as a stereotype. that is, the following example formulates a casual comparison (with an adjective as referent) which could rarely manage to fossilize or lexicalize. it as long was as it was large. rr, 1351. thus, stereotyped comparisons can only be regarded as such when the second term of the comparison counts on the obligatory presence of a noun, otherwise, it is just a casual form of comparison with scarce possibilities of lexicalization. moreover, from a semantic point of view, we realize that it is not completely accurate to consider them a comparison in the fullest sense as the relationship established between the constituents does not serve as an expression of a measurable and gradual quality. on the contrary, they generally express a quality actually voiced in the highest degree and, therefore, are semantically equivalent to a proper superlative and, in some cases, the degree of the adjective is so extreme that they can be considered as hyperbolic. as the following example shows, nothing can be blinder than a stone and, as such, they are regarded as hyperbolic. this januarie, as blynd as is a stoon, with mayus [sic] in his hand, and no wight mo, into his fresshe gardyn is ago […]. mert, 2156-58. ____________________________________________________________________ 79 nevertheless, on some occasions it should also be observed how chaucer uses the same adjective for comp -element and for the second term. undoubtedly, this procedure of using the same adjective twice in the same compara tive structure pretends to put even more emphasis on the relationship between the comp -element and its second member, usually an object which contains that quality in its intrinsic nature. his voys was murier than the murie orgon. npt, 2851. whit was this crowe as is a snow-whit swan. mant, 133. the poet is here comparing a quality (murie and whit) and the appearance of the same adjective in the second member of the comparison illustrates how these compared elements (orgon and swan) contain that quality in the highest sense. porto dapena (1973: 356) remarks that stereotyped comparisons, either equality or superiority, are equal to real superlatives when the second term contains the quality expressed by the adjective in the highest, and in these cases the maximum degree is highlighted by the presence of the same adjective in the referent. this type of combinations, although scarce in chaucer’s works, should be taken into account for they could have been a precursor t o the present-day expression whiter than white1. besides the componential analysis of the second term, we can also study the semantic field to which the noun constituting the second term can be re lated to. accordingly, three main groups can be found2 on the grounds that they can be related to a natural, cultural and social context. a) the first group contains those nouns referring to nature. thus, the natural environment provides the poet with a wide variety of ele ments traditionally considered stereotypes of a given quality and, in particular, those nouns used for naming animals, plants and natural phenomena become the most numerous group. […] have herte as hard as dyamaunt stedefast and nought pliaunt. rr, 4383-84. 1 cf. oxford english dictionary. 1993. 2nd ed. on compact disk. oup, oxford. 2 mayoral ramírez (1993: 650-51) establishes a similar group classification in his analysis of spanish stereotypes, however, he prefers to omit those ones referring to the social context of the period. thus, his grouping turns out to be somehow incomplete. ____________________________________________________________________ 80 for ay as bisy as bees been they, us sely men for to deceyve, and from the soothe evere wol they weyve. mert, 2422-24. […] he seith nat ones nay, but was as glad therof as fowel of day, […]. sht, 37-38. this strem you ledeth to the sorweful were there as the fish in prysoun is al drye. pf, 138-391. b) a second group, which is less numerous than the former, includes nouns denoting famous and mythological personages. these references can be taken from the bible, on the one hand, and from the classical literature, on the other. latin and greek allusions, however, clearly domain owing to the humanistic education of the poet in london. […] for thou shalt, by thin owene experience, konne in a chayer rede of his sentence bet than virgile, while he was on lyve, or dante also […]. frt, 1517-20. ful ofte tyme i rede that no man truste in his owene perfeccioun, but he be stronger than sampson, […]. parst, 955. and but i do, god take on me vengeance as foul as evere hadde genylon of france. sht, 193-942. in fact, these cultural allusions are suitable and adequate for stereotyped comparisons for they always refer to famous and, therefore, they fulfill the lexicalization requirements: to provide hyperbolic and superlative meaning necessary to this kind of structures. c) third, a large group of second terms contains nouns such as boos, noble, bacheler which reflect the social environment of the poet, that is, instruments or even ways of thinking of chaucer’s me dieval england. a brooch she baar upon his lowe coler 1 cf. also rvt, 3926; milt, 3807; rr, 546; hf, 1681; npt, 2859; etc. 2 cf. also bd, 661-62; tr, i, 454-55; bd, 1080-82; frant, 1109-10; hf, 1232; phyt, 49; cyt, 1413; npt, 3362-65; etc. ____________________________________________________________________ 81 as brood as is the boos of a bokeler. milt, 3265-66. ful brighter was the shynyng of his hewe than in the tour the noble yforged newe 1. milt, 3255-56. yong, fressh, and strong, in armes desirous as any bacheler of al his hous. sqt, 23-24. […] hym oghte nat be tiraunt ne crewel as is a fermour, to doon the harm he kan. lgw, 377-782. 5. conclusions as a conclusion of our analysis, we would like to highlight those features which directly or indirectly ease the process of lexicalization of these stereotypes. one. we have already mentioned the colloquial origin of these structures. it is the individual who is continually and unconsciously creating and banishing them owing to the speech-acts of a given linguistic community. therefore, lexicalization and fossilization must be regarded as an active and everchanging process which always depends on the speech-act of that specific community. however, that speech-act on the part of the individual is not the only element favouring the process of lexicalization. other intrinsic linguistic forces must be considered as affecting not only the pro cess but also the degree of fossilization that a given stereotype can acquire in a language. two. the rhetorical figure of alliteration plays a significant role because in most occasions the comp -element exhibits the same alliterative sense as the second term. examples of this type abound in all the stages of english (cf. as stille as stoon. tr, iii, 699); in 1 biggam’s analysis of the social implications of hue adjectives conforms perfectly to the process of lexicalization of stereotyped comparisons. biggam (1993: 50) asserts that "yellow hair indicates beauty in men as well as women, when combined with brightness". thus, this stereotype reflects the social values of a given culture. 2 cf. also rr, 2694; clt, 1198; hf, 1348; cyt, 617; sumt, 2090; milt, 3261-62; mert, 1673; sumt, 2267-68 ____________________________________________________________________ 82 shakespeare we come across as swift as swallow (tit, iv, ii, 174) and in contemporary english as snug as a bug in a rug, as big as bull-beef, as flat as a flawn or stable as a stone (calle and miranda 1997)1. thus, the existence of such consonantism directly eases the process of fossilization: it is produced with more speediness and effectiv eness because it allows the speaker of a given language the task of memorising. so, its degree of appearance in the speech-act of the community is undoubtedly potentialized. three. another linguistic feature to be considered as influencing the process of lexicalization is prosody. many stereotyped comparisons respond to a same metric pattern in which one stressed sylla ble is followed by an unstressed one (sóft às sílk, thíck às glúe). this pattern based on the alternative use of stressed and unstressed syllables speeds up the oral component of the stereotype and this fact produces a more effective and widely spread lexicalization. in fact, through the compilation of the examples in contemporary english (calle and miranda 1997), we have realized that the ma jority of the present-day stereotypes are formed by monosyllabic and bisyllabic adjectives and, as such, it demonstrates that the shorter they are, the quicker they manage to lexicalize. the only exceptions found in current english are as different as chalk to cheese and as slippery as an eel, whereas the rest of the stereotypes compiled contain one-or-two-syllable adjectives. four. nowadays, we count on another extralinguistic characteristic. in fact, the decisive influence played by the mass media can make a given stereotype fossilize with extreme rapidity compared with the dim and difficult process of fossilization found in the medieval society. all in all, the process of lexicalization operating in the would -be stereotyoped comparisons must be understood as something open and dynamic, as 1 all these cases have been analysed in our conference held in thessaloniki (greece) on april 11th 1997. cf. calle martín, j. and miranda garcía, a. stereotyped comparisons in contemporary english: origin, analysis and classification. 11th international symposium on theoretical and applied linguistics . diss. aristotle university of thessaloniki (greece), 1997. ____________________________________________________________________ 83 the contribution of equal and parallel forces occur. it is something changeable for the speaker tends to use these comparative metaphors and, in most occasions, he/she devises and makes them up according to the needs of the message (gonzález calvo 1985: 137) and, as such, the community will have the capacity of banishing and creating new ones at the same time. if chaucer himself had ever referred to these stereotypes, we dare say he would have defined them as chaungynge as a fane (clt, 996) and as swift as thought (hf, 1924) to emphasize their mutability. right now new stereotyped comparisons might be being coined which, beyond any doubt, will be the object of future studies. javier calle martín university of malaga references alighieri, dante 1942: la divina commedia. 6th ed. g. c. sansoni, firenze. apulée 1940: les métamorphoses. 2 vols. societé d’édition ‘les belles le tres’, paris. beinhauer, werner 1968: el español coloquial. ed. gredos, madrid. benson, l. d. ed. 1991: the riverside chaucer. 3rd ed. oup, oxford. bensoussan, albert 1996: la traducción lúdica. diss. university of malaga. biggam, c. p. 1993: aspects of chaucer’s adjectives of hue. the chaucer review 28.1: 41-53. burnley, david 1985: a guide to chaucer’s language. macmillan, london. calle martín, j. & miranda garcía, a. 1997: stereotyped comparisons in contemporary english: origin, analysis and classification. 11 international symposium on theoretical and applied linguistics. diss. aristotle university of thessaloniki, thessaloniki (greece). ____________________________________________________________________ 84 calle martín, j. 1996: la comparación estereotipada en la obra de geoffrey chaucer. university of malaga, malaga. chantraine de van praag, j. 1982: intensidad expresiva de las compara ciones estereotipadas. actas del cuarto congreso internacional de hispanistas. university of salamanca, salamanca. 815-16. chaucer: life and times. 1995: primary source media ltd. chrétien de troyes 1987: perceval ou le roman du graal. gallimard, cher. dillon, janette 1993: geoffrey chaucer: writers in their time . macmillan, london. espejo muriel, mª del mar 1990: los nombres de los colores en español. estudio de lexicología estructural. university of granada, granada. gonzález calvo, j. m. 1985: sobre la expresión de lo ‘superlativo’ en es pañol (ii). anuario de estudios filológicos, 8: 113-45. gutiérrez díez, f. 1995: idiomaticidad y traducción. cuadernos de filología inglesa 4: 27-42. hatim, basil & mason, ian 1990: discourse and the translator. longman, london and new york. jespersen, otto 1969: essentials of english grammar. george allen & unwin, london. jonin, pierre ed. 1985: la chanson de roland. gallimard, cher. kerkhof, j. 1982: studies in the language of geoffrey chaucer. leiden university press, leiden. lorris, guillaume de 1985: le roman de la rose. barcelona. mayoral ramírez, j. a. 1993: sobre construcciones comparativas en el lenguaje poético de los siglos xvi y xvii. estudios filológicos en homenaje a eugenio de bustos tovar. eds. j. a. bartol hernández & al. 2 vols. university of salamanca, salamanca. 641-56. mustanoja, t. 1960: a middle english syntax. societé neophilologiqué, helsinki. oxford english dictionary. 1993: 2nd ed. on compact disk. oxford: oup. ____________________________________________________________________ 85 quirk, randolph et al. 1972: a grammar of contemporary english . longman, london. redoli morales, r. 1996: chisnetos. atenea, malaga. * † * selim08.doc jorge luis bueno, selim 8 (1998): 157—170 eald is ? es eorî sele, eal ic eom oflongad: psychology, space / time and ecology in the wife's lament 1. preliminary words if we consider any given poetic text through the practical bases of the last analytical level of the theoretical triad of literary anthropology1, we are finally faced with a series of parametres which are responsible for the building of the weltanschauung hidden in the text. if the revised text is the wife's lament -one of the most relevant extant poems belonging to the old english elegiac discourse-, after a carefull abstraction of its (para)linguistic rituals and symbols 2, it could be said that its thought-world spins around the three parametres we intend to describe in the present article: psychology, space/time and ecology. 2. the personal/psychological expression considering the text as a whole, the personal/psychological expression stated in the poem is highly important, being one of its most relevant thematic parametres. we find a female poetic narrator -as it happened to be the case with wulf and eadwacerwho, from the very beguinning of the poem, wants 1 to enhance any theoretical/practical aspect of literary anthropology the reading of our previous analysis (specially 1996, 1997 & forthcoming c) is recommended. the bibliographical references listed there are also very useful. 2 the wife's lament receives a full literary anthropological treatment in the fifth chapter of a forthcoming volume (university of vigo press). this volume presents the definitive results of the research that we have been carrying out during the last three years. partial excerpts of these results have been offered in several articles (bueno forthcoming a, b & c) whose reading is recommended. for preliminary results of the wife's lament bueno 1998: 344-390 can also be consulted. jorge luis bueno 154 us to perceive that the expression of her mental distress, of her suffering, constitutes the thematic core of her poetic discourse: ic pis giedd wrece bi me ful geomorre, minre sylfre sií. ic pæt secgan mæg, hwæt ic yrmpa gebad, s ippan ic up weox, niwes o ppe ealdes, no ma ponne nu. a ic wite wonn minra wræcsipa.1 (1-5) these first five lines have an introductory character2 as a way of presenting the topic which builds the text (greenfield 1969: 166, strauss 1981: 270272). the personal character of both the psychological expression and the misfortunes which are going to be presented is set clear from the very beguinning if we consider how the personal pronoun is used in these lines. repetition of first person singular pronominal forms -shown in bold type in the previous quotationdoes not happen at random. they mark the personal intention of the narrated discourse. from the first lines in which a psychological description is made -"geomorre", "sií", "yrmpa", "wite", "wonn"-, the female narrator is setting the boundaries of her discourse, establishing a personal/psychological background for its development. thus, from a reflection on her own present sadness -and having warned us about the presentness ("niwes", "nu") and the pastness ("ealdes") of the misfortunes of her ongoin g narration-, she thinks about her past personal sufferings in the lines following the introduction: ærest min hlaford gewat heonan of leodum ofer ypa gelac; hæfde ic uhtceare hwær min leodfruma londes wære. 1 trans: "i sing this song about myself, full sad,/my own distress, and tell what hardships i/have had to suffer since i first grew up,/present and past, but never more than now;/i ever suffered grief through banishment (hamer 1970: 73)". all the translations offered in this article are robert hamer's. if it is not indicated otherwise all subsequent translations come also from hamer's edition. the anglo-saxon text have been always taken from krapp & dobbie's edition (1936: 210-211) 2 devoting the first lines to develop a short introduction of the themes of the poem is a well known poetic tool which appears very frequently in anglo-saxon poetry. karl wentersdorf (1981: 493-494) points out many cases of this usage: the battle of brunanburh, the fates of the apostles, vainglory, and the wanderer . in the germanic tradition hildebrandslied is also quoted as an example. psychology, space / time and ecology in the wife’s lament 155 îa ic me feran gewat folgaí secan, wineleas wræcca, for minre weapearfe. ongunnon pæt pæs monnes magas hycgan purh dyrne gepoht, pæt hy todælden unc, pæt wit gewidost in woruldrice lifdon laílicost, ond mec longade. het mec hlaford min herheard niman, ahte ic leofra lyt on pissum londstede, holdra freonda. forpon is min hyge geomor, ía ic me ful gemæcne monnan funde, heardsæligne, hygegeomorne, mod mipendne, morpor hycgendne. blipe gebæro ful oft wit beotedan pæt unc ne gedælde nemne deaí ana owiht elles; eft is pæt onhworfen, is nu * * * swa hit no wære freondscipe uncer. sceal ic feor ge neah mines felaleofan fæhíu dreogan. heht mec mon wunian on wuda bearwe, under actreo in pam eoríscræfe. 1 (6-28) as these lines show, the female narrator basically chooses an almost exclusively psychological point o f view to describe her past remembrances. the narrated facts are described as long as they cause mental distress and suffering to her, and to express that is the key point of her poetic discourse. so, her husband's exile worries her -"uhtceare"-, her own departure is also distressing -"wineleas wræcca, for minre weapearfe"-, the plans that have been set to bring them apart are also responsible for her suffering -"lifdon 1 trans: "for since my lord departed from this people/over the sea, each dawn have i had care/wondering where my lord may be on land./when i set off to join and serve my lord,/a friendless exile in my sorry plight,/my husband's kinsmen plotted secretly/how they might separate us from each other/that we might live in wretchedness apart/most widely in the world: and my heart longed./in the first place my lord ordered me/to take up my abode here, though i had/among these people few dear loyal friends;/therefore my heart is sad. then had i found/a fitting man, but one ill-starred, distressed,/whose hiding heart was contemplating crime,/though cheerful his demeanor. we had vowed/full many a time that nought should come between us/but death alone, and nothing else at all./all that has changed,,and it is now as though/our marriage and our love had never been,/and far or near forever i must suffer /the feud of my beloved husband dear./so in this forest grove they made me dwell,/under the oak-tree, in this earthly barrow (op. cit.: pp. 73, 75)". jorge luis bueno 156 laílicost, ond mec longade"-, and all the following situation is giving us a past context in which the female poetic narrator has suffered from mental and psychological distress that has saddened her -"forpon is min hyge geomor" -. the past facts described through psychological means lay increasing emphasis on the narrator's mental state, emphasis which keeps on increasing in the following lines, when we go back to present time: eald is pes eorísele, eal ic eom oflongad, sindon dena dimme, duna uphea, bitre burgtunas, brerum beweaxne, wic wynna leas. ful oft mec her wrape begeat fromsip frean. frynd sind on eorpan, leofe lifgende, leger weardiaí, ponne ic on uhtan ana gonge under actreo geond pas eoríscrafu. ? ær ic sittan mot sumorlangne dæg, pær ic wepan mæg mine wræcsipas, earfopa fela; forpon ic æfre ne mæg pære modceare minre gerestan, ne ealles pæs longapes pe mec on pissum life begeat.1 (29-42) in the natural environment in which she has been forced to live -whose thematic connotations will be dealt with later on-, the poetic narrator insists on expressing her present anguish. the loneliness she lives in, the remembrance of her loved one, her longing state, make her present situation a dis tressing moment. that is why she suffers, and through that psychological expression she shares her suffering with us. in the following lines there is a small change of tone which adds an element that has already appeared in other poems (bueno 1997, bueno forthcoming b & c): extrapola tion/universality. 1 trans: "old is this earth-cave, all i do is yearn./the dales are dark with high hills up above,/sharp hedge surrounds it, overgrown with briars,/and joyless is the place. full often here/the absence of my lord comes sharply to me./dear lovers in this world lie in their beds,/while i alone at crack of dawn must walk/under the oak-tree round this earthly cave,/where i must stay the length of summer days,/where i may weep my banishment and all/my many hardships, for i never can/contrive to set at rest my careworn heart,/nor all the longing that this life has brought me (op. cit.: p. 75)". psychology, space / time and ecology in the wife’s lament 157 a scyle geong mon wesan geomormod, heard heortan gepoht, swylce habban sceal blipe gebæro, eac pon b reostceare, sinsorgna gedreag, sy æt him sylfum gelong eal his worulde wyn, sy ful wide fah feorres folclondes, pæt min freond siteí under stanhlipe storme behrimed, wine werigmod, wætre beflowen on dreorsele. dreogeí se min wine micle modceare; he gemon to oft wynlicran wic. wa bií pam pe sceal of langope leofes abidan.1 (42-53) at the beginning of these lines the narrator moves away from her individuality to make a general philosophical statement. thus, she informs the young men about the importance of having a very strong character to positively endure -"blipe gebæro"sufferings and misfortunes of all kind when they appear. from a position of knowledge -as she has described her own feelings-, she warns us that anyone can be subject to pain, that the narrated feelings can be shared by anyone, either contemporary hearers or present day readers. after describing -also from a psychological viewpointher husband's distress in his exile dwelling (46b -52a), the poem ends with the same philosophical tone as these final excerpt began: "wa bií pam pe sceal/of langope leofes abidan". that is to say, all the things we have been told by the female narrator can be shared by all those who are in her state. the universality of this poetic discourse is -in our opinionone of the main reasons for our pre sent interest in the poem. the emphasis set on her mental state -and on her husband's in the last lines-, the extreme density of the narrated emotions or the psychological expression of the reactions to those emotio ns, clearly reveal that the personal/psychological expression is the basic thematic parametre of the wife's 1 trans: "a young man always must be serious,/and tough his character; like wise he should/seem cheerful, even though his heart is sad/with multitude of cares. all earthly joy/must come from his own self. since my dear lord/is outcast, far off in a distant land,/frozen by storms beneath a stormy cliff/and dwelling in some desolate abode/beside the sea, my weary -hearted lord/must suffer pitiless anxiety./and all too often he will call to mind/a happier dwelling. grief must always be/for him who yearning longs for his beloved (op. cit.: p. 75)". jorge luis bueno 158 lament , and interacts as such with the other two we have found, binding thus the poem's conceptual world. 3. space / time: distance, mental journey and everlasting present the space/time perceptions obtained in the wife's lament compose a very interesting parametre because both concepts are perfectly inserted within the thematic structure of the poem and interact with the rest of its existing parametres. as far as the space concept is concerned, we can talk about a double real/metaphorical perspective, just as the one found in the seafarer, although less marked. the real perspective is more directly observed in the text, and it shows greater thematic relevance. all through the poem, there is a constant insistance on expressing a certain sense of physical separation of both lovers, caused by two real journeys: the husband's seafaring -"ærest min hlaford gewat heonan of leodum/ofer ypa gelac (6-7)"-1, a classical paradigmatic exile topic, and the wife's journey on his search -"îa ic me feran gewat folgaí secan (9)" -.2 the dread of separation has always been present in the female narrator's mind, and has been responsible for a good deal of her distressing state: ongunnon pæt pæs monnes magas hycgan purh dyrne gepoht, pæt hy todælden unc, pæt wit gewidost in woruldrice lifdon laílicost, ond mec longade.3 (11-14) when physical separation has already taken place, we can say that anguish and grief come as a result from their being appart, hence the important connection between space and psychology.4 in fact, when the female 1 trans: "for since my lord departed from this people/over the sea (op. cit.: p. 73)". 2 trans: "when i set off to serve and join my lord (op. ict: p. 73)". 3trans: "my husband's kinsmen plotted secretly/how they might separate us from each other/that we might live in wretchedness apart/most widely in the world: and my heart longed (op. cit.: p. 73)". 4 note that in wulf and eadwacer this space/psychological connection also took place (bueno forthcoming c). another example of this connection appears in the old norse poem helreiíbrynhildar (renoir 1977: 4) psychology, space / time and ecology in the wife’s lament 159 narrator is talking from the loneliness of her new natural background, one of the things that distress her mostly is the memory of such absence, of their not being together: "ful oft mec her wra pe begeat / fromsip frean (32b-33a)".1 thus, the distressing mental state results directly from the separation both from her husband and from the rest of human beings, because she is without her "hlaford/felaleofan" and "wineleas", that is, without friends, with no people who can relieve her isolation and her anxiety. the use of dual pronouns "unc" (12, 22), "uncer" (25) and "wit" (13, 21) is reinforcing the feeling of closeness, of the spacial/spiritual union that exists between the narrator and her husband, and emphasizing the painful separation of something so strongly joined (renoir; 1977: 15). here is where the metaphorical perspective appears, the journey carried out through memory with the mind when re membering her husband and the time passed with him (green;1983: 128), a remembrance of past happiness which is often strengthen when contrasted with her present anguish (32b -33a). the imagination serves the poetic narra tor as a powerful loophole from her natural isolation, not only by remembering her husband's absence and the past happier times but also by imagining her husband's present sufferings in the icy places depicted at the end of the poem. he is also using the mind to reme mber happier dwellings-"he gemon to oft/wynlicran wic (51b -52a)"-.2 thus, both perspectives are combined in one single thematic aim establishing a very clear connection between space and psychology, because it is the separation what causes and modulates her suffering and her mental/psychological distress, expressed all through the poem. the time perception in the wife's lament is built around a contextual present -a given "now", a "nu"from which several past references are made. however, it is in the pre sent circumstances where the text lays its emphasis (1-5, 29-53), from the very beginning: ic pis giedd wrece bi me ful geomorre, minre sylfre sií. ic pæt secgan mæg, hwæt ic yrmpa gebad, s ippan ic up weox, niwes o ppe ealdes, no ma ponne nu. 1 trans: "full often here/the absence of my lord comes sharply to me (op. cit.: p. 75)". 2 trans: "and all too often he will call to mind/a happier dwelling (op. cit.: p. 75)". jorge luis bueno 160 a ic wite wonn minra wræcsipa.1 (1-5) it is true that several past deeds are told (6-28), as they are highly interesting to express the reasons for present suffering -so both temporal perspectives are combined-, but, although "niwes oppe ealdes" sufferings are narrated, it is the present psychological expression -the "nu"what draws the narrator's attention, because her suffering has never been greater than at the present moment. even in the middle of the past narration the present psychological expression is mentioned -"forpon is min hyge geomor (17b)" -. that insistance on the present, on the expression of current anguish, seems to be a negation of the future, and on the ongoing verses some critics (green 1983: 125-129) have placed the female narrator tra pped in a sort of "everlasting pre sent": ? ær ic sittan mot sumorlangne dæg, pær ic wepan mæg mine wræcsipas, earfopa fela; forpon ic æfre ne mæg pære modceare minre gerestan, ne ealles pæs longapes pe mec on pissum life begeat.2 (37-41) it seems that the days are repeating this neverending cycle, that there is nothing but more long summer days in which to keep on being lonely sat to remember past sufferings. in this sense,the wife's lament presents a basically present time perception, which emphasizes the closeness of expressed deeds and provides an easier and faster identification with the feelings transmitted. we think that the interaction between psychology and space (distance as a cause for suffering, hence the importance of the psychological expression) / time (present, as it is the background for the psychological expression) perceptions is a very clear fact, which contributes to the building of the conceptual world of the poem. 1 trans: "i sing this song about myself, full sad,/my own distress, and tell what hardships i/have had to suffer since i first grew up,/present and past, but never more than now;/i ever suffered grief through banishment (op. cit: p. 73)". 2 trans: "where i must stay the length of summer days,/where i may weep my banishment and all/my many hardships, for i never can/contrive to set at rest my careworn heart,/nor all the longing that this life has brought me (op. cit.: p. 75)". psychology, space / time and ecology in the wife’s lament 161 4. ecology: nature as background the natural element plays an important role as a background for the psychological expression narrated in the poem, interacting with the other parametres that build the conceptual world of the wife's lament. there are two moments -both framed within the present-time part of the text (29-53)in which this is very clearly seen. the first one covers the part in which the poetic narrator thinks about her present emotional situation (29-41), totally placing her psychological expression in a very precisely depicted natural atmosphere: heht mec mo n wunian on wuda bearwe, under actreo in pam eoríscræfe. eald is pes eorísele, eal ic eom oflongad, sindon dena dimme, duna uphea, bitre burgtunas, brerum beweaxne, wic wynna leas . ful oft mec her wrape begeat fromsip frean. frynd sind on eorpan, leofe lifgende, leger weardiaí, ponne ic on uhtan ana gonge under actreo geond pas eoríscrafu. ? ær ic sittan mot sumorlangne dæg, pær ic wepan mæg mine wræcsipas , earfopa fela; forpon ic æfre ne mæg pære modceare minre gerestan, ne ealles pæs longapes pe mec on pis sum life begeat.1 (27-41) the detailed physical definition of the place, of the natural background, is by no means unconscious, bearing in mind the great amount of terms -shown in bold typeused to describe the environment. in a process of particulariza tion carried out through the text, the poetic narrator moves from the general 1 trans: "so in this forest grove they made me dwell,/under the oak-tree, in this earthly barrow./old is this earth-cave, all i do is yearn./the dales are dark with high hills up above,/sharp hedge surrounds it, overgrown with briars,/and joyless is the place. full often here/the absence of my lord comes sharply to me./dear lovers in this world lie in their beds,/while i alone at crack of dawn must walk/under the oaktree round this earthly cave,/where i must stay the length of summer days,/where i may weep my banishment and all/my many hardships, for i never can/contrive to set at rest my careworn heart,/nor all the longing that this life has brought to me (op. cit.: p. 75)". jorge luis bueno 162 "on wuda bearwe"to the particular -"actreo", "eoríscræfe", "eorísele"-, clearly stating the place as she states the expression of her feelings explicitly. many terms for the psychological expression appear in the quoted excerpt underlined-, connecting thus nature with psychology. in the woods, in that very cave in which she lives 1, the poetic narrator reveals her thoughts to us, and every descriptive element of nature is linked with its psychological correlate. thus, it could be said that the protective environment provided by nature, conditions, worsens, and makes real the narrator's state of mind, because terms such as "dimme" and "brerum bewaxne" characterize the background and describe metaphorically the narrator's mental distress (green 1983: 125). the second moment is placed at the final lines of the text, when the poetic narrator depicts in her mind the unfavourable natural environment her husband has arrived to by sea: sy ful wide fah feorres folclondes, pæt min freond siteí under stanhlipe storme behrimed, wine werigmod, wætre beflowen on dreorsele. dreogeí se min wine micle modceare; he gemon to oft wynlicran wic.2 (46b-52a) the narrator gives us the traditional wintry germanic locus, both adverse and icy, as the natural background for her exiled husband in a distand land "fah feorres folclondes"-. as it happened before, this natural background helps to increase her husband's sufferings. thus, in this cold unfavourable environment -"under stanhlipe storme behrimed"her husband expresses his 1 some critics have been very worried about discovering the exact meanings of the terms "actreo", "eoríscræfe" or "eorísele". emily jensen (1990) and joseph harris (1977) have devoted some articles to discuss it and karl wentersdorf (1981) offered a very good summary of the basic meanings given to these terms and their connections with sanctuaries, caves, places for shelter, etc. all of them quote tacitus' descriptions in germania of several underground buildings used by the germanic tribes as places for storage and/or shelter. 2 trad: "since my dear lord/is outcast, far off in a distant land,/frozen by storms beneath a stormy cliff/and dwelling in some desolate abode/beside the sea, my weary hearted lord/must suffer pitiless anxiety./and all too often he will call to mind/a happier dwelling (op. cit.: p. 75)". psychology, space / time and ecology in the wife’s lament 163 psychological distress, his grief -"dreogeí se min wine/micle modceare"-, and tries to remember happier places using his mind as we saw before. after seeing this, we can conclude that the natural environment in the wife's lament appears as a background for the narrator's psychological expression and for her husband's, through her-, increasing and conditioning such expression. we believe that the interaction between the different parametres that build the thought-world of the poem -psychology, space/time and ecologyhas been more than evident. 5. conclusion as it happens with almost every anglo -saxon elegiac poem, the interpre tative difficulty of some of their parts has forced the critics to offer a wide variety of readings and interpretations. the wife's lament is also a good example of this feature, and there have been many opinions about the narrator's character -male/female, despite being this fully established up to now, there are some differing voices -, the speaker who acts in the poetic discourse -if it is a woman with one, two or three different men-, the good or bad behaviour of the husband towards his wife, the kind of building hidden under the terms "actreo", "eoríscræfe", "eorísele", or the possible christian allegoric condition of the poem1. as it happened with other elegies too -i.e. wulf and eadwacer-, searching for sources of the original story is a very difficult task, and in most occasions the allocation of a given source is a matter of unprovable guesswork until the mentioned texts appear2. in the end, following jane curry's words (1966: 189), "we are forced back to the poem". the analysis of the conceptual world in the wife's lament has shown us its build ing parameters, and has stated the importance of the psychological expression for its understanding. this eminently personal-featured psychological expression is 1 jane l. curry (1966) and lee ann johnson (1971) offer very good summaries of all these interpretations. we refer the reader to both articles for full bibliographic references. for a vast majority of critics, some of these views -specially the chris tian/alegorical oneare somewhat biased, because they look for excessive complexity in a text that is not so complex in our opinion. we think that this complexity-to-befound distract the critics from what the text really offers.(curry 1966: 187). 2 it is true that there are many analogue texts for the wife's lament. stanley greenfield (1969: 165), jane l. curry (1966) and dorothy bray (1995) revise those most frequently used by critics. however, there are cases in which critics hazard a connection with a text that has as many differences as points in common, hence the extreme difficulty of using not very clear sources to build textual interpretations. jorge luis bueno 164 the central point of the text, always in interaction with the other two parame ters: space/time and ecology. everything in the text is placed to make us see the expression of the narrator's distress, feelings, and sufferings, as something that forms part of human experience. the prominent thematic centre in the wife's lament is the expression of several personal emotions, which could be universally shared by means of our swift identification with themby those who face the text. we do not deny the existence of other provable interpretations and/or meanings, but it is equally undeniable -if you follow what has been exposed in this articlethat these three parameters, with the psychological one playing the leading role, are the most directly inferable from the text and the responsible for the building of its conceptual world. curiously enough, some critics (e.g. green 1983: 125-126, jensen 1990: 453) have pointed out that the paratactic structure of line 29 -eald is pes eorísele, eal ic eom oflongadwould combine the age of the cave (nature/ecology) with the deep intensity of the narrator's suffering (psychological expres sion) and the space/time span of both. so, in one single line we are faced with the three parametres which build the thought-world of this text, according to the interpretation herein stated. this peculiar fact encourages us even more to keep on considering them as the three thematic bases upon which the wife's lament offers -and had been offering since it was first sung its poetic weltanschauung to those who cared about reading or hearing the everlasting beauty of its lines. jorge luis bueno alonso university of vigo works cited bolton, w. f. 1969: the wife's lament and the husband's message: a reconsideration reconsidered. archiv für das studium der neueren sprachen und literaturen, 205: 337-351. bray, d. a. 1995: a woman's loss and lamentation: heledd's song and the wife's lament. neophilologus, 79: 147-154. psychology, space / time and ecology in the wife’s lament 165 bueno alonso, j. l. 1996: la lingüística estilístico-estadística como base del estudio antropológico del texto". martín vide, c. ed. lenguajes formales y lenguajes naturales xii. barcelona, ppu: 401-406 bueno alonso, j. l. 1997: anthropology and old english: linguistic, symbolic and conceptual bases of the wanderer. giménez bon, m. & olsen, v. eds. proceedings of the ixth international conference of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. zarautz/zaragoza, itxaropena/pórtico librerias: 32-41. bueno alonso, j. l. 1998: aportaciones a la hermenéutica antropológicoliteraria: bases lingüísticas, simbólicas y conceptuales de la poesía elegíaca del inglés antiguo. oviedo, university of oviedo, ph. d. dissertation. bueno alonso, j. l. 1999 (forthcoming b): proxemics, chronemics, passing of time and the psychological expression of the self ('ic') as key elements of the seafarer's thought-world: a literary anthro -pological reappraisal. bringas, a., gonzález, d., pérez, j., rama, e & varela, e. eds.woonderous lytterature selim studies in medieval english literature. vigo, university of vigo press, isbn 84-8158-122-4. bueno alonso, j. l. 2000a (forthcoming a): verbal and nonverbal communication in the seafarer. navarro, p. & hornero, a. eds. proceedings of the xth international conference of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. zaragoza, university of zaragoza press/in stitución fernando el católico. bueno alonso, j. l. 2000b (forthcoming c): new trends, old paths or vice versa: a literary anthropological approach to wulf and eadwacer. selim 7: 51-82. chase, d. 1986: the wife's lament: an eighth century existencial cry. university of south florida quarterly, 24. 3-4: 18.20. curry, j. l. 1966: approaches to a translation of the anglo -saxon the wife's lament. medium aevum, xxxv. 3: 187-198. fitzgerald, r. p. 1963: the wife's lament and the search for the lost husband. journ al of english and germanic philology, 62: 769-777. green, m. 1983: time, memory and elegy in the wife's lament. green, m. ed. the old english elegies: new essays in criticism and research. rutherford, fairleigh dickinson university press: 123132. hamer, r. 1970: a choice of anglo-saxon verse. london, faber & faber: 7375 harris, j. 1977: a note on eoríscræf/eorísele and current interpretations of the wife's lament . english studies, 58: 204-208. jorge luis bueno 166 howlett, d. r. 1978: the wife's lament and the husband's message. neuphilologische mitteilungen, lxxix: 7-10. jensen, e. 1990: the wife's lament eoríscræf: literal or figural sign?. neuphilologische mitteilungen, xci: 449-455. johnson jr, w. c. 1983: the wife's lament as death-song. green, m. ed. the old english elegies: new essays in criticism and research. rutherford, fairleigh dickinson university press: 69-81. johnson, l. a. 1971: the narrative structure of the wife's lament. english studies, 52: 497-501. krapp, g. & dobbie, e.v.k. eds. 1936: the anglo-saxon poetic records iii: the exeter book . new york, columbia university press. leslie, r. f. ed. 1988: three old english elegies: the wife's lament, the husband's message, the ruin. manchester, manchester university press. mitchell, b. 1972: the narrator of the wife's lament: some syntactical problems reconsidered. neuphilologische mitteilungen 73: 222-234. renoir, a. 1977: a reading of the wife's lament. english studies, 58: 4-19. strauss, b. r. 1981: women's words as weapons: speech as action in the wife's lament. texas studies in literature and language, 23: 268285. wentersdorf, k. p. 1981: the situation of the narrator in the old english wife's lament. speculum, 56: 492-516. * † * selim08.doc rubén valdés, selim 8 (1998): 101—115 griselda’s sisters: wifely patience and sisterly rivalry in english tales and ballads the present study is aimed at two widespread themes in traditional english narratives: the twin sisters separated at birth who vie with each other for the same man, a tale which is best known in medieval literature as the lay le freine, and that of the patient wife, well-known in english through chaucer’s the clerk’s tale. both stories seem to have common mythological roots, marked folktale features, and a long survival in popular ballads. after tracing a possible genealogy and analysing the variants so as to show how the two stories are related, we will account for the significance of their themes within english culture. 1. hazel tree and ash tree: a tale of origins the oldest extant version of our stories in english is the lay le freine copied in the auchinleck ms (c. 1330), which is a translation of marie de france’s twelfth-century lay fresne. its spanish editor ana maría holzbacher (1993: 37) calls it an example of ‘feminine docility’ in love. indeed, the heroine fresne is always obedient to the man (gurun) who takes her from the convent near which she had been abandoned as baby inside an ash tree (‘fresne’ in marie´s french), even when, after years of cohabitation, he decides to degrade her from lover to servant, in order to marry a rich lady called le codre (marie’s french for ‘hazel tree’). in one of the passages missing in the english version,1 sir gurun’s feudatories compare the two ladies using the metaphor of trees: 1 these passages are usually supplied by english editors in henry w. weber’s translation of old french in counterfeit middle english. see sands, ed. 1986: 244, lines 341-8. rubén valdés 98 sire, funt il, ci pres de nus ad un produme per a vus; une fille ad, ki est sun heir: mut poëz tere od li aveir! la codre ad nun la damesele; en cest païs nen ad si bele. pur le freisne que vus larrez en eschange le codre avrez; en la codre ad noiz e deduiz, li freisnes ne porte unke fruiz! (holzvbacher, ed. 1993: 152, lines 331-40. my italics) they oppose the two ladies by reminding their lord that, unlike ash trees, hazel trees are fruitful of nuts and delight (‘la codre ad noiz e deduiz’), an allusion to the fact that la codre has a wealthy father (‘un produme’), whose heiress she is (‘un fille ad, ki est sun heir’), and so gurun will have many lands through her (‘mut poëz tere od li aveir!’), whereas he had none of fresne (‘li freisnes ne porte unke fruiz!’), whose family and fortune are unknown. fortunately la codre turns out to be fresne’s twin sister, and, as fresne is recognised by her rich family, the lord marries her. the metaphor of trees must be central to the meaning of the lay fresne. it was probably a very old motif by the time marie translated (or so she claimed) her lays from the breton language. in his imaginative search fo r the feminine sources of bardic poetry robert graves (1961: chapter 15) refers to a conflict between the hazel as the irish tree of eloquence and wisdom, and the ash tree of woden, the germanic god of wisdom. thus the conflict between hazel and ash reproduces the clash between celtic and germanic cultures that took place in france as well as britain. both trees are wednesday (‘woden’s -day’, a word suggesting the final victory of germanic culture and its ash tree) in graves’ reconstructed tree-calendar. as for the reason why two trees should vie for wisdom, it may be sought in a more recent quest for the great goddess that graves and many other poets recreated: anne baring and jules cashford (1991: 498) trace the problem back to the biblical dissociation of the tree of knowledge from the tree of immortal life by the father-god yahweh. the dissociation and subsequent fall from eden is, in baring and cashford’s view, a key stage in the setting up of a patriarchal imagery that weakened and distorted an orig inal goddess myth, wherein there was only one tree with two griselda’s sisters: wifely patience and sisterly rivalry 99 qualities, and therefore no conflict. whether we agree entirely with such mythological explanations or not, the fact remains that the confrontation between women for marriage is, as we shall see, a re current theme in traditional narratives, and that it might have originated in a founding myth of patriarchy: the splitting of twin trees of the same root or family by a powerful lord, god, or husband, for whom the sister-trees spend all their feminine wisdom and energy. the tree metaphor of the lay fresne was forgotten in the english tradition, as in the course of the fourteenth century french ceased to be a major lit erary medium in england,1 and the word ‘fresne’ (or ‘freine’, as it was writ ten in england) became meaningless. the variants of tale are often surpris ing and tend to distort it beyond recognition. for instance, the only spanish version of fresne is the ‘romance de espinelo’, in which the separated twins are brothers (not sisters) and the hero is named after the ‘espino’ (‘thorn tree’ instead of ash tree) where he was abandoned. the closest post-medieval english cognate of both the story and the name of ‘freine’ is the ballad of ‘fair annie’ [child 62d], dated as late as 1769.2 in this ballad the old motif of the twins separated at birth by their mother to avoid shame has dis appeared, though in some variants [child 62f], perhaps to follow the fashion of many contemporary ballads, they add the explanation that the heroine had been abducted by a scottish lord. but, as in the medieval lays, the conflict between the sisters for the man is solved when they recognise each other and the one just arrived renounces the lord and shares the family’s ship -loads of gold with fair annie, so that he can find her acceptable as his bride. in a more distant analogue of the story, ‘the twa sisters’ [child 10], the sisters’ rivalry goes to the extreme of murder. in some variants [child 10a] the elder sister murders the younger as they see their fa ther’s ship come sail 1 the state of french in relation to english as a cultural vehicle is reflected in the auchileck ms, many of whose items, such as the lay le freine are english poems translated from french, and one item (20. xxvi. ‘the sayings of the four philosophers’) in macaronic anglo-norman french. this suggests that the producers of the ms expected its readers to be vaguely familiar with french. see the auchinleck manuscript, ed. d. pearsall and i.c. cunningham (london: the scholar press / the national library of scotland, 1979). 2 our ballad references are all to the english and scottish popular ballads, 5 vols., ed. by f.j. child (1882-1898; reprt. new york: dover, 1965). ballads are cited with their number of order and the letter of variant in child’s classification between square brackets: [ ]. rubén valdés 100 ing in (perhaps the father was going to deprive the elder daughter of her rights of primogeniture because he liked the younger one better?). in others [child 10b, c, d, etc.] the motive is explicit, for a suitor has given the elder a gold ring but the younger his true love: he would marry the heiress but love the fairer one. the questions of inheritance and dowry become dramatically decisive in the ultimate, violent, confrontation between sisters. 2. patience rewarded: the order of patriarchy the popular tale of griselda seems to answer a question that fresne left behind: what would happen if the other sister did not come and give the hero ine the necessary dowry and portion of their father’s land? what if the lord actually married the heroine despite her poverty? the answer is in patient suffering. as peter burke (1994: 164) sums it up, in traditional culture ‘most popular heroines were objects, admired not so much for what they did as for what they suffered.’ in patricia shaw’s memora ble classification of the roles of women in medieval english literature (1989: 210), the first principal role of young women is ‘that of the patient and longsuffering wife, the victim, frequently, of the machinations of an older man or woman.’ when it is older women that victimise the heroine, they are professor shaw’s ‘lither ladies’, ‘the precursors, therefore, of the snow white and cindirella bogey-women familiar to us from childhood’ (ibid). when they are men, they are often the heroine’s own husband. medieval culture made an analogy between a wife’s relation to her husband and (the soul of) man’s relation to god, and the christian model of patience with god is job. in the canterbury tales job is first cited ironically in the wife of bath’s role -reversal, when she has got the upper hand of her husband wilkyn: ‘syth ye so preche of jobes patience. / suffreth alwey, syn ye so wel kan preche’ (iii.436).1 the biblical figure appears in another ironic context when the fiend mentions him to the summoner in the friar’s tale (iii.1491). but it is in the clerk’s tale that job’s figure becomes central, since grisilde’s patience his associated with his, when the clerk argues that women’s humility and patience is always greater than men’s (iv.932). the 1 line quotations of the canterbury tales refer to the riverside chaucer , ed. larry d. benson (oxford: oup, 1988). griselda’s sisters: wifely patience and sisterly rivalry 101 wisdom of women about patience and its high cost is confirmed in the tale of melibee as his wife prudence advises him not to wreak rash vengeance upon the men who have just beaten her up and wounded his daughters (vii.999). finally, the parson’s tale makes job a more universal exemplum of penitence (x.176). in sum, job may be the model of man’s patience and humility towards god, but it is wives that best understand these virtues, despite chaucer’s remarks on the impossibility of finding real griseldas any more (iv.1177-1188). indeed, professor helen cooper (1989: 191) has noted that chaucer’s grisilde, in comparison with some analogues to the tale specifically designed as allegories to show god’s treatment of the soul, ‘makes the husband less an analogy for god than a contrast to him.’ furthermore, by heightening the pathos of her situation, the master poet encourages readings like that of e. t. hansen (1992: 191), according to which walter’s own self-confident role as husband is severely disturbed: galled by the unbearable way in which this woman eludes his tyranny by refusing to resist and define it, he can only torture her again and again, seeking to determine her elusive identity as well as his own, to find the other griselda, someone he can master in order to find himself. griselda’s fortitude transcends the weakness and submission patriarchy expected of wives, therefore undermining the god-husband’s identity. he virtue (and hansen reminds us of the connection of the word with latin vir, ‘man’) makes her like patriarch job, manly, strong. a subversion of patriarchal roles continues in various degrees throughout the ballad versions of griselda’s story, and most explicitly in ‘child waters’ [child 63] when the pregnant heroine ellen dresses up as a page boy to face the tests her man will put her through.1 nevertheless, the suffering of such heroines perhaps leaves the symbolic order of patriarchy more insecure and laden with guilt, but formally intact. tales and ballads of the griselda type probably kept their illustrative effect as role models for 1 the motif of cross-dressing is very common in ballads, and also in medieval hagiography. for men it had a mystical meaning, while for women it was more a practical device to overcome the limitations society imposed on them. see caroline w. bynum, holy feast and holy fast: the religious significance of food to medieval women (berkeley: university of california press, 1987: 291). rubén valdés 102 patient wives, along with their potential for deconstructing those models. likewise, they might present exempla of what godly husbands should not be, or, for that matter, of what god should not be, by making too satanic ‘the godlike, otherworldly character of child waters, without which his testing of fair ellen would be intolerable’ (fowler 1968: 181). yet, whether he is a god or a demon, he stays in power. some ballads which bear certain similarities to ‘child waters’ might be regarded as re -writings of it from women’s point of view, since they all seem to belong to the period after minstrels and poets had been largely replaced by women in the oral transmission of ballads. the outstanding example is, of course, mrs brown of falkland, whose repertory included also versions of ‘fair annie’ and ‘child waters’ (but these two can be traced, as we have seen, to earlier times), as well as a ballad like ‘willie o douglas dale’ [child 101a], which fowler (1968: 302) considered in some respects ‘an anti-“child waters”’, because a noble lady elopes with a man of lower degree and he is the one to serve her in submission to all her whims. others deal with lost patience and revenge. in ‘lord thomas and fair annet’ [child 73] he hesitates wavers between the fortune of the nut-brown girl and the beauty of fair annet; finally, the jilted nut-brown girl stabs fair annet at the altar. finally, in ‘lord thomas and lady margaret’ [child 260], she poisons him. as in the case of the story of rival sisters, in the stories of patient brides there is a tragic extreme in which the tensions that patriarchy both generated and tried to contain, break out murderously. 3. folktale patterns: kindred stories for a comprehensive view of the narrative aspects of english tales of suffering wives in their medieval and post-medieval stages, it will be useful to compare the narrative form of lay le freine and ‘fair annie’ on the one hand, and the clerk’s tale and ‘child waters’ on the other. that the four stories are related is illustrated by fowler (1968: 105 and 283) in his suggestion that ‘fair annie’ may be an epitomised version of ‘patient griselda’ (rather than of fresne) sung by sixteenth and seventeenth-century minstrels. this relationship becomes most apparent when they are reduced to their bare narrative structure. propp’s morphology (1968) has been applied to child´s griselda’s sisters: wifely patience and sisterly rivalry 103 collection of ballads (beatie 1978; buchan 1991), proving that they fit into common folktale patterns.1 it will be noticed that the ballads, by focusing on the emotional core and on pure narrative action, tend to reduce the story to essentials by making most of the circumstances and motivations implicit, in stead of explaining them. some of these, particularly the dowry, are cultural motivations that the logic of propp’s morphology brings to the fore as latent or virtual functions of the narrative: lay le freine fair annie 1. initial situation (a). the envious wife of a knight accuses another lady of lay ing with two men because she bore twins. [preliminary functions, here presented in lower case letters, are not essential, so the ballad doesn’t include any] 4. violation (d). the knight rebukes his wife for speaking calumnies lest they should be cursed for this violation of good conduct. 9. preliminary misfortune (i). her slander brings about the punishment of bearing twins herself. 10. villainy / lack (a). the mother asks the midwife to get rid of one of the twins so as to avoid shame. [this abandonment will cause the heroine’s lack of dowry and so her poor marriage prospects.] [the reason for the heroine’s separation from her rich family is not told in most ballads (and when it is, it seems to be a late addition, like her abduction by a scottish lord in child 62f), but her lack of dowry is essential to understand her plight.] 11. mediation (b). the midwife intercedes to spare the baby’s life. 1 for the aims of the present study we prefer this analy sis according to themes and motifs to one based on structure and formula, such as david buchan, the ballad and the folk (london: routledge & kegan paul, 1972) or flemming g. andersen, commonplace and creativity: the role of formulaic diction in anglo-scottish traditional balladry (odense: odense university press, 1985). rubén valdés 104 12. contrary action (c). the baby girl is abandoned inside an ash tree near a convent with her mother’s cloak and ring. 13. departure (). a knight falls in love with freine and takes her to live with him ‘as if she had been his wedded wife’ (line 310). the ballad begins by telling that fair annie has given her maidenhood and borne children to her lord, 14. testing (d). the knight, following the advice of his counsellors, takes a rich wife, le codre. the ultimate ordeal is having to prepare everything for the wedding, even the bed. who has now decided to take a rich wife. she is suffering as she and her children watch the bride’s ship. she has to lay the tables for the wedding banquet and even to make the bridal bed. 15. reaction (e). she endures it all in silence and behaves as a perfect servant and hostess, and lays her own cloak on the bridal bed to make it look richer and worthy of her lord. she endures her suffering alone, but she cannot help crying and taking her harp to sing her lament. 27. recognition (q). freine’s repentant mother sees the cloak and realises who she is her sister the bride recognises her, renounces to the marriage and gives her gold. 28. exposure (ex). the mother confesses. 31. wedding / reward (w). the wedding is annulled so that the lord can marry freine. [fair annie now has a proper dowry] in comparison with these straightforward narratives, chaucer’s tale of griselda and its ballad counterpart are more elaborate, novelistic treatments of the same source of drama, namely, the inequality of man and woman in society, sex and marriage. the theme of the twin sisters separated at birth is replaced in griselda’s story by her separation from her own children, her daughter replacing freine’s sister as the lord’s new bride. in ‘child waters’ the theme disappears altogether, and it is the lord’s mother that recognises, griselda’s sisters: wifely patience and sisterly rivalry 105 not her noble birth, but the fact that s he is giving birth to the lord’s first child, and that he is to marry her. the clerk’s tale child waters (percy folio ms) 1. initial situation (a). walter, marquis of lombardy, is convinced by his councellors to take a wife so as to have a descendant. 2. reconnaissance (e). he sees beautiful grisilde and will have no other, even though her father old janicula is poor. fair ellen tells child waters she is pregnant of him. 8. complicity (h). she subjects herself to the morganatic wedding by pledging absolute obedience. he offers her two counties for their son to inherit, but she’d rather have his love. 10. villainy / lack (a). her promise (and her lack of marriage portion) leaves her at his mercy. her refusal of his offer leaves her at his whim, for he doesn’t seem willing to marry. 13. departure (). she leaves her father’s home to marry walter. walter makes a journey north allowing ellen to follow him dressed up as his foot -page. 14. testing (d). some years later, longing to test her constancy, he removes from her their daughter, then their son, and later still he announces he will cast her off and take a wife of higher birth. she runs barefoot after his horse, then he makes her swim across a deep, cold river, and then tells her that the fairest lady in the town they are reaching will be his paramour. waters’ sister pities the foot -page and asks her brother to let ‘the boy’ sleep with her, but he refuses ellen all comfort and tells her to go to town and fetch him a prostitute. 15. reaction (e). she endures all the ordeals with patience and without any complaint. ellen endures all the hardship despite her advanced pregnancy & sleeps meekly at the foot of waters’ bed. rubén valdés 106 18. task (m). before being expelled, grisilde must prepare the household for walter’s new wedding and even give her opinion about his new bride. in the morning, he orders ellen to go down to the stable and see to his horses. there her childbirth starts and she must suffer it alone. 19. solution (i ). as grisilde says she has never seen a lovelier bride and humbly begs him not to put his new wife to trials as he did to herself, he is at last moved to pity. waters’ mother hears ellen’s moans, calls him and, as he sees the woman’s suffering, endurance and love, he is moved to pity her. 27. recognition (q). walter tells grisilde that his new bride was actually their daughter whom he said he had killed, and the page she brought their son. (waters and his mother recognise ellen as the his own child’s rightful mother) 31. wedding / reward (w). grisilde’s rags are now definitely replaced by rich robes, and her father and children are restored to their rights. waters tells ellen he will marry her at once. thus reduced to their episodic structure, the four tales appear to be re lated and make up a type of their own. among the widespread story types that stith thompson (1977: 117-8) classified, it is ‘the substituted bride’ that most closely resembles ‘fair annie’, but not ‘child waters’, which has very few analogues outside britain (see child, vol.ii: 84), except in other versions of the very popular tale of griselda. the type called ‘the black and white bride’ (type 403 in aarne & thompson 1981: 132-4) has a limited resemblance to our ballads, but it involves magic, a wicked stepmother, and more importantly, a fierce competition between two brides. virtually the same applies to type 510, ‘cinderella and cap o’ rushes’ (ibid: 175). only the griselda story itself (type 887, ibid: 302) really bears a close correspondence with all four of the studied versions, its hallmarks being the godlike man who puts his woman to terrible tests, its realism (no magic is involved), and the fact that women’s co-operation prevails over their rivalry. griselda’s sisters: wifely patience and sisterly rivalry 107 4. recurrent themes and their cultural significance the extremes of ‘fidelity and innocence’ (the epigraph under which aarne and thompson classify the griselda type of tale) and the heroine’s re bellion in later ballads such as ‘lord thomas and lady margaret’ [child 260] is finely balanced by the women’s positive action in ‘child waters’ and ‘fair annie.’ in the oldest versions of the griselda story, including petrarch’s, chaucer’s and the broadsides in pepy’s collection, it is griselda’s patience alone that wins the day. in ‘fair annie’, however, her life is saved by a kind midwife, her rights as wife are saved by her sister’s recognition (and in the lay by her mother’s confession). in ‘child waters’ the lord’s sis ter first intercedes for her in vain,1 and it is eventually his mother that, by urging him to go down to the stable and find ellen in labour, practically makes waters take responsibility for ellen and their new-born infant: and that beheard his mother deere, shee heard her there monand. she sayd, ‘rise up, thou childe waters, i think thee a cursed man. for in thy stable is a ghost, that grievouslye doth grone: or else some woman laboures of childe, she is soe woe-begone.’ [child 63a, stanzas 37-38] with these words waters’ mother seems to suggest that either he accepts the existence of the pregnant woman, or the curse of guilt will torment him like a ghost. far from being a wicked would -be mother-in-law, his mother is the one who brings to an end the heroine’s ordeals. undoubtedly the intervention of women like mrs brown of falkland in the transmission of the story also put an end to its heroine’s loneliness against her man. by chaucer’s time griselda’s patience was regarded as dead and buried in with her in italy. yet society changed only to confirm the inequality of men and women in marriage, patriarchy being reinforced by the culture of protestantism in britain. the existence of at least two different seventeenth 1 not in all versions. in mrs brown of falkland’s version [child 63b] it is waters’ mother than suspects the foot -page’s fat belly. rubén valdés 108 century printings of the griselda story in broadside form, previous to the first version of ‘child waters’, confirms the continual popularity of the theme. the end of these broadsides completely overlooks chaucer’s envoy, making grissel’s husband the marquis celebrate her as a role model: the chronicles of lasting fame, shall evermore extol the fame, of patient grissel my most constant wife.1 no less remarkable is the parallel existence of broadside ballads such as ‘a warning for all desperate women. by the example of alice dauis who for killing of her husband was burned in smithfield …’ or ‘the vnnatural wife: or, the lamentable murther of one goodman dauis, lockesmith …’, or ‘anne wallens lamentation, for the murthering of her husband john wallen…’.2 meanwhile puritan treatises such as william gouge’s of domesticall duties (1622) hammered on the idea that ‘the wife’s first duty was obedience, an obedience based not merely on logical acceptance, but on her deep belief in the naturalness of her subordination to her husband’ (sharpe 1997: 67). likewise cleaver’s extremely popular marriage treatise explained that the wife must obey, for ‘if she be no subject to her husband, to let him rule all household, especially outward affaires: if she will make head against him, and seeke to haue her owne waies, there will be doing and vndoing. things will goe backwarde, the house will come to ruine’.3 shrewish wives and scolds who did not suffer in silence like griselda were privately disciplined by their husbands, or publicly derided in cucking and charivari. such ideas and the stories they inspired rest upon certain marriage rites and customs. as early as the twelfth century the anglo -norman ceremony of marriage included the confirmation of the bride’s dowry, her father’s handing her over to the bridegroom, and the groom’s imposition of his ring on her 1 final lines of both ‘a most excellent and vertuous ballad of the patient grissell’ and ‘an excellent new ballad of patient grissel’, in the pepys ballads: facsimile volume i, ed. w.g. day (cambridge: d.s. brewer, 1987), pp. 34-35 and 520-521. 2 ibid, pp. 120-127. 3 robert cleaver, a godly forme of household government for ordering of priuate families, according to the directions of gods word (london: printed by thomas creede for thomas man, 1603), p. 88. griselda’s sisters: wifely patience and sisterly rivalry 109 (brooke 1989: 248-9), similar to the lord’s gift to his vassal in the feudal ceremony of homage. in the same context the principle of primogeniture was es tablished, under which both the elder and the younger children suffered, according to lawrence stone (1979: 71): ‘the latter normally inherited neither title nor estate … and they were therefore inevitably downwardly mobile … as for the elder sons, their entrepreneurial drive was sapped by the certainty of the inheritance to come.’ there are echoes of the resulting tensions between younger and elder sisters sublimated in the generous renunciation of one for the other in ‘fair annie’ and, in the opposite extreme, in the fratricide of ‘the twa sisters.’ in addition, it followed from the dowry system, ‘which governed the structure of the english family at all levels of the propertied classes from the sixteenth century on through the nineteenth century’, that the head of the family, normally the father, had ‘great power in controlling the marriages of his children, since he alone could provide the necessary portions for his daughters’ (stone: 72). so far as social history can be learned from the rich hoard of scottish songs, mary hamilton (1995: 105) tells us that ‘there were many more songs of tenderness in marriage than of strife.’ the business side of marriage, however, the bargaining and scheming with daughters’ tochers (dowries), is also widely demonstrated by the words of several songs, and so are the hardships of the tocherless girl (hamilton: 86 and 88-90). as the modern dichotomy between money and interest did not exist (stone: 70), a bride without dowry was rather worthless for a man of property. hence the cruelty of husbands to their wives in griselda stories: first attracted to them by the girl’s beauty, that is, by lust, they subsequently made her compensate with human worth for what she had not been able to provide materially as a bride. as a result, the humble feminine creature has to prove morally, even physically in her sheer endurance, superior to the god. to sum up, griselda type stories in their various aspects not only drama tise the culture of wifely obedience and sisterly rivalry, but also imagine some solutions and alternatives within their patriarchal order. the continuity of their themes from the middle ages to the modern period suggests that the renaissance did not involve a very substantial change in popular mentalities. the themes reveal key facets of traditional women’s culture across a long time span: their attitudes to the sort of marriage to which they were confined, the drama of winning a husband either through submissiveness or fierce rubén valdés 110 competition, of resisting the ordeals of sexual inequality, sometimes thanks to the co-operation among women, other times through the heroine’s endurance. in the last analysis, the stories throw into disarray patriarchal notions of ‘the weak sex’, showing that this tag actually referred to the disadvantageous social condition involved by the dowry system. rubén valdés university of oviedo references aarne, antti & stith thompson 1961: the types of folktale. suomalainen tiedeakatemia, helsinki. baring, anne & jules cashford 1991: the myth of the goddess: evolution of an image. arkana / penguin, harmondsworth. beattie, bruce a. 1978: traditional structures and the structure of tradition: a functional system of ballad classification. ballads and ballad research. ed. patricia conroy. university of washington press, seattle. benson, larry d. ed. 1988: the riverside chaucer. oup, oxford. brooke, christopher 1989: the medieval idea of marriage. oup, oxford. buchan, david 1991: talerole analysis and child’s supernatural ballads. the ballad and oral literature. ed. joseph harris. harvard university press, cambridge, mas. burke, peter 1994 (1978): popular culture in early modern europe. the scolar press, aldershot, hants. child, f. j. ed. 1965 (1882-1898): the english and scottish popular ballads, 5 vols. dover, new york. cooper, helen 1989: oxford guides to chaucer: the canterbury tales. oup, oxford. fowler, david c. 1968: a literary history of the popular ballad. duke university press, durham, n.c. graves, robert 1961: the white goddess: a historical grammar of poetic myth. faber, london. hamilton, mary 1995: clarsach, cramasie and crowdie: a social history in scottish song. bonspiel books, montrose, angus. griselda’s sisters: wifely patience and sisterly rivalry 111 hansen, e.t. 1992: chaucer and the fiction of gender. university of california press, berkeley. holzbacher, ana maría ed. 1993: maría de francia: los lais. sirmio, barcelona. propp, vladimir 1968: morphology of the folktale. university of texas press, austin . sands, donald b. ed. 1986 (1966): lay le freine. middle english verse romances. university of exeter press, exeter. sharpe, j. a. 1997 (1987): early modern england: a social history 15501760. arnold, london. shaw, patricia 1989: loathly ladies, lither ladies and leading ladies: the older woman in middle english literature. articles and papers of the first international conference of the spanish society for english mediaeval language and literature (selim). ed. p. shaw, a. bravo, s. gonzález & f. garcía. servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de oviedo, oviedo. stone, lawrence 1979: the family, sex and marriage in england 15001800. penguin, harmondsworth. thompson, stith 1977 (1946): the folktale. university of california press, berkeley. * † * selim06.pdf ____________________________________________________________________ 185 blake, norman francis 1996: a history of the english language. houndmills: macmillan. (xv + 382 pp.) como es tradición y muestra de honrado comedimiento por parte de los eruditos en la materia, asistimos a la publicación de ‘otra’ historia de la lengua inglesa, esta vez a cargo del prolífico y ameno norman blake. el manual pretende cubrir las necesidades del lector no especializado, sea o no universitario. es éste un objetivo difícil de satisfacer y que requiere enorme esfuerzo por parte del autor, dado que el espectro de necesidades que genera un público de tales características no es sólo amplio, sino, sobre todo, diverso. así en virtud de la divulgación, blake adopta un tono narrativo en el que se encuentra cómodo y en el que el lector más relajado se embarca con facilidad. sin embargo, el carácter continuado del texto resulta en ocasiones formalmente enojoso para el universitario que persigue un dato concreto. por otra parte, las limitaciones que toda obra general naturalmente establece impide en este caso prescindir de ciertos pormenores ineludibles para el es tudiante y de menor interés quizá para otro tipo de lectores. en este sentid o, el mencionado tono narrativo oscurece la claridad expositiva a que normalmente obliga la descripción de sistemas fonológicos en evolución, por poner un fácil ejemplo. con todo, estos aspectos formales no deben empañar una obra sólida y personal, como tampoco deben hacerlo dos erratas tipográficas (pp. 318 y 319), sorprendentes en las siempre cuidadas ediciones inglesas, de las que dejamos constancia sin más. la obra que nos ocupa rezuma ecos de las cualidades personales de su autor, deja ver su sólida formación literaria y estilística, su conocimiento de la tradición, y su talante nunca dócil a lo establecido. y en la intersección de tales rasgos radica, desde luego, su mayor virtud. quizá debamos ver en ello también la base de la polémica que pueden suscitar algunas cuestiones menores (relativas a la fechación de ciertos cambios, o a afirmaciones como la que se recoge en la p. 35 acerca de la idea de jerarquización lingüística que podía estar presente en la mente de la mayoría de los anglosajones). pero volviendo a sus logros, el libro se abre con una reflexión, ya anunciada en el congreso de valencia de 1992 y en el correspondiente artículo ____________________________________________________________________ 186 publicado con posterioridad,1 sobre la naturaleza y la cronología del inglés y de la historia de la lengua inglesa. al decidirse por acometer la historia detallada del estándar y revisar la periodización de la historia del inglés estable ciendo como criterio el grado de estandarización logrado en distintas fases, blake consigue por una parte proponer explícitamente lo que otros apuntaban desde distintas periferias —al constituir obligado tema de estudio pero sin incardinar aún en el seno de la disciplina—, y por otro disolver un debate tradicional sobre la arbitrariedad y el carácter no lingüístico de los criterios seleccionados para dividir una unidad supuestamente difícil de fragmentar de manera coherente. esta historia de la lengua inglesa es la historia del estándar inglés británico, cuyos sucesivos episodios vienen marcados por la modificación de las actitudes observables social y lingüísticamente con respecto a la normalización del idioma. además de este cambio de perspectiva global, absolutamente acertado y acorde con la investigación que desde hace más de quince años se está llevando a cabo sobre la historia del inglés, queremos destacar variaciones más sutiles, análogas en importancia y similar muestra del talento del autor, con respecto al peso que conceden a ciertas cuestiones otros manuales tradicionales. así, en el libro cobra especial relevancia el periodo comprendido entre los siglos xi y mediados del xiii; la relación anglo escandinava se equipara abiertamente a la anglo -normanda, o se recuperan las relaciones comerciales vigentes entre inglaterra y holanda en diversos momentos de la historia. sutilmente novedosa e igualmente atractiva resulta en segundo lugar la complicada trama que blake va urdiendo a través de las líneas en torno a las relaciones observables entre lengua hablada y lengua escrita, particularmente la brecha que se abre poco a poco entre teoría poética y norma lingüística. el artículo que blake cita en la nota 10 de la página 334 confirma que éste es un tema que le ha mantenido atento en los últimos tiempos y cuyos detalles consigue transmitir en este libro más general. junto a esto y como tercer gran punto de interés del libro, creo que merece la pena destacar el detenimiento que blake concede a diversos textos metalingüísticos que se han producido a lo largo del tiempo sobre el inglés. la consideración más pormenorizada de lo 1 blake, n., 1994, ‘premises and periods in a history of english’, en fernández, et al., eds., 1994, english historical linguistics 1992, amsterdam: benjamins ____________________________________________________________________ 187 habitual de obras como las de lowth, trench, cobbet y otras anteriores y posteriores, es quizá exigencia ineludible de la nueva perspectiva, pero no por ello resulta menos destacable el trabajo realizado. en esto también, blake es receptivo a un nuevo corpus de investigación histórica y divulga un nuevo canon de cuestiones que deben atenderse en manuales sobre la materia. aunque de principios actualizados, la obra de blake es una historia de la lengua que se mueve dentro de la tradición, en la que lo extralingüístico, la literatura y ahora lo sociolingüístico, el léxico y la fonología aportan el aliento que va animando el relato y la línea de estudio previo. blake, pro fundo conocedor de la bibliografía tradicional que indirecta y rigurosamente reivindica, ha seleccionado una serie de estudios necesarios y certeros de los últimos veinte años para articular sus reflexiones renovadoras, pero no se hace eco, ni pretende, de las complejas perspectivas que hoy en día afectan a la explicación del cambio lingüístico, una tarea acometida desde tradiciones distintas a la suya y de la que el libro de smith, j., 1996, an historical study of english. function, form and change, puede ser buen ejemplo. el libro, con todo, abunda en detalles individuales que por romper con lo habitual, como ya se ha dicho, mueven a la reflexión o en algún caso a la controversia. ocupándonos ya de aspectos más formales, controvertida resulta, sin duda para quien no lo conozca, la manera en que blake recoge sus deudas in telectuales, a veces sigilosame nte en el cuerpo del texto, otras de manera excesivamente general, otras en la correspondiente nota final. la obra carece de una sección bibliográfica convencional, aunque sí incluye una relación de lecturas recomendadas por temas. como conclusión a cada uno de los capítulos, blake comenta un texto breve que a su juicio resulta significativo y representativo de lo expuesto. el comentario es algo más rutinario que el tono general del libro y creo que tanto por razones pedagógicas como por las divulgativas se echa en falta la traducción de los tres primeros. el destinatario del texto, por último, puede remitirse a un glosario básico de términos técnicos y a una tabla de símbolos fonéticos que se incluyen al final. todo libro de blake siempre resulta oportuno, intelectualmente valiente, académicamente satisfactorio y en cierta medida provocador; es evidente que en todos encuentra el autor ocasión para sus guiños intelectuales y el lector materia para disfrutarlos. ____________________________________________________________________ 188 paloma tejada caller universidad complutens e * † * selim09.doc guzmán mancho, selim 9 (1999): 91—99 structural elements of christ’s exile and return figuræ in ormulum’s latin text xiv1 the style of ormulum is diffuse and repetitive. this is the commonplace opinion when judging the stylistic attributes of this text. baugh’s illustrates well this claim: “he is a master of the art of writing without making the thought advance. he repeats himself shamelessly without so much varying the phrase” (1985: 159). nonetheless, to approach repetitio as a technique of textual compositio may offer new insights. in fact, this rhetorical technique together with the periodus syntactic structure and numerology are evidenced to play an important role in the discourse construction of the text selected. furthermore, the second sententia of the late 12 th c. liber viginti quattuor philosophorum, i.e. “dios es una esfera infinita cuyo centro se halla en todas partes y su circunferencia en ninguna” (lucentini 2000: 47), may well justify the motivation of the discourse structure of the ormian excerpt. the latin text xiv in ormulum covers leaves 209-219 of the original ms. in the 2 nd modern edition this latin text extends to 531 lines 2 (holt 1878: lxxxiv). the source of the biblical paraphrase is mathew 2:19-23. both ms. and holt’s edition provide the incipit of the original biblical passage for this text: “but when herod was dead, behold, an angel of the lord appeareth in a 1 this essay is a revised version of the paper entitled “mirroring god's word through allegory: repetition, circularity and christian symbolism in the ormulum's latin text xiv”, presented at the selim conference held at jaen university in oct. 2000. i thank jesús cora for his insightful comments. 2 as it is costumary, i have followed holt’s edition to quote verses from ormulum (1878). i have omitted orthographic marks, such us the double acute accent for ut; and have considered the two hemistiques of the septenarious as a versual unit for the numerological analysis. guzmán mancho 90 dream to joseph in egypt; saying, arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of israel” 1 (kalbfleisch 2000). the argumentum for the narratio of this latin text is subsequently divided in nine pericopes: ormin explains the meaning of (1) jesus’ return to his own people after herod died (ll. 8403-26); (2) the angel’s unsaid word to joseph about the land of israel they should travel (ll. 8427-44); (3) joseph’s change of mind about settling in jerusalem after he discovered that archelaus had ascended king (ll. 8445-58); (4) the angel’s word to joseph about the land they thence should seek (ll. 8459-78); (5) the town christ came to live (ll. 8479-96); (6) the holy family’s exile to egypt and return to israel2 (ll. 8497-752); (7) christ’s seven years’ stay in egypt (ll. 8753-844); (8) christ’s attitude towards hi mother and his fossterrfaderr after settling in nazareth (ll. 8845-56); and (9) the reason why christ complies the prophecy for the nazarisshe mann (ll. 8857-72). due to its length, the stylistic traits of the sixth pericope are of special relevance. ormin composes his text on rhetorical and numerological grounds. on the one hand, ormin’s verba fit within the rhetorical structure of repetitio, provid ed repetitio is understood as the reiteration of the dichotomy resverba both at the opening and closing textual passages. additionally, ormin seems to apply the classical notions of rhetorical compositio to his text, as his sentences may de described according to the classical syntactic types: oratio perpetua and periodus. lausberg defines oratio perpetua in the following terms (1991: 305): la oratio perpetua…consiste en la inserción paratáctica de las oraciones en la sucesión natural de sus contenidos. se trata de la parataxis de las oraciones principales y, en todo caso, de la inserción de algunas oraciones secundarias continuativas … el pensamiento avanza rectilíneo sin que sea dable divisar un fin… la oratio perpetua lleva en sí algo de informe, pues le falta la redondez. 1 this incipit reproduces the 19th and part of the 20th lines from the original biblical passage. 2 the holy family’s exile is the topic of the previous latin text xiii. structural elements of christ’s exile and return figuræ in ormulum 91 in turn, periodus “es la unión más perfecta de varios pensamientos en una oración…el período es una formación circular…de suerte que los elementos conceptuales, incompletos al principio y necesitados de integración, no se completan ni se integran en el conjunto del pensamiento hasta la conclusión del período…la conclusión se hace esperar” (op. cit.: 306). on the other hand, ormin seems to subject his compositio to a numerological pattern, a practice brought about on the grounds of the coincidence of the number of verses and what this number symbolizes; this metaphor becomes, then, the topic of the numerologically delimited text. this compositive technique may be viewed from the modern notion of iconicity, which studies “the natural resemblance or analogy between the form of a sign…and the object or concept…it refers to in the world or in our perception of the world” (fischer 2000). the source for the numerological approach can be traced to st augustine, as he states that “many…numbers and combinations of numbers are used in the sacred writings, to convey instruction under a figurative guise, and ignorance of numbers often shuts out the reader from this instruction” (de doctrina christiana 2, 16). repetitio abounds in this sixth pericope. the sixth pericope opens and ends mentioning the biblical figurae (cf. auerbach’s figural interpretation 1998) (ll. 8497-506; ll. 8741-52): ? att josæp barr pe laferrd crist / wipp sannte mar¥e hiss moderr, / firsst ut off issraæless land / inntill hæpene egippte, / 7 tatt he barr himm efft onn¥æn / inntill hiss a¥henn birde, / inntill judisskenn peode land / ut off hæpene egippte, / ?att wass don purrh pe laferrd crist / forr mikell ping to tacnenn……all puss shall pa beon filledd all / ?att uss wass ær bitacnedd, / ? ær josæp barr pe laferrd crist / ut off hiss a¥henn birde / ut off judisskenn follkess land / ?att he wass borenn inne, / 7b arr himm inntill hæpenn land, / inntill hæpene egippte, / 7 sippenn barr himm efft onn¥æn / inntill hiss a¥henn birde, / inntill judisskenn follkess land, / swa summ icc habbe shæwedd. the closing paragraph repeats the same idea as the opening paragraph with little variation: that is, that joseph took jesus out of his people and brought him to egypt—i.e. exile—, and took him back again to israel—i. e. return— signify many a thing. guzmán mancho 92 repetitio and periodi structure ormin’s interpretation of the holy family’s exile to egipte (ll. 8507-8534). ormin divided this section in three sentences, according to the number of paragraphus written. the first one follows the pattern of an oratio perpetua. in fact, josæp himself is presented as the figura of both the apostles’ missionary preaching (ll. 8508-12) and the taking of christ out of his people to heathen lands (ll. 8513-17). this second consummation closes with the reproduction of the actual figura , that is, josæpess bisne (l. 8519). the second sentence of this exile figura follows a two -member periodus pattern. ormin expounds that: “forr affterr patt tatt jesu crist / wass sti¥henn upp till heoffne [p] / [a] ?att la pe judewisshe follc / all masst forrwarrp to lefenn” (ll. 8519-8522). the periodus is of a temporal nature, as the pro tasis (p1) establishes a temporal frame, with afterr, for the apodosis (a); that is to say, christ’s ascension succeeded to the jews’ rejection of christianity. the third sentence underlies a three member periodus pattern. he writes: “7 forr patt te¥¥ forrwurrpenn pa / to lefenn uppo criste [p], / [a] ?e posstless forenn sone anan / till hæpenn follc to spellen / [a] 7 b ærenn swa pe laferrd crist / ut off hiss a¥henn birde / utt off judisskenn follkess…” (ll. 8525-30). in this example, the periodus is of a causal nature, as the protasis provides the reason for the resulting apodoses: that is, the jews’ rejection to follow christianity resulted in both the apostle’s missionary preaching, and bringing christ out from his people to the heathen. the exile theme may also be connected to the sarepta episode but no explicit mention is given thereof (ll. 8619-8696). the source for elijah’s episode with the sarepta widow can be read in 1 kings 17: 8-16. furthermore, the mentioning of this same passage by christ seems to be the reason for the uprising in nazareth and his expulsion from the city, as is recorded by luke 4: 25-26. hence, these new testament verses may justify ormin’s relation between christ’ exile to egypt and the sarepta episode. this passage is structured on a repetitio basis, as this technique is employed to open and close it: on the one hand, the passage begins explaining that elijah prayed god that it should not rain, and that yearning 1 i follow garavelli’s notation system for the members of the periodus (1991: 314). structural elements of christ’s exile and return figuræ in ormulum 93 was fulfilled (ll. 8619-22). on the other hand, the episode ends with the fulfillment of elijah’s petition that it should rain again because “helyas pe prophete / att drihhtin mihhte winnenn wel / all whattse he wollde ¥eornenn” (ll. 8689-91). furthermore, the whole sarepta episode may show traces of an exemplum. mosher indicates its basic elements: “a brief narrative; human characters” (1966: 6). he also argues the absence of exempla in ormulum because any bisne ormin mentions serves the purpose of thematic introduction for further exposition—a practice to be traced to the collection of old english homilies—(op. cit.: 51). but, one should not forget the exemplum’s moralizing and edifying intention for the audience. hence, the sarepta passage qualifies well for an exemplum-candidate because its contents are not further explained; its 39 lines bear the stamp of a narrative— that is the passage follows a time -line succession of events —and the characters, elijah and the widow, are human. moreover, the moralizing element is manifest in the tropological sense as an act of charity (sayre 2000), confirmed by the numerological interpretation if its total number of lines: 39, a number which, according to allendy, represents “l’organization et la solidarité du cosmos, s’exprimant par l’harmonie des relations entre les parties (3 + 9 = 12)” (1948: 385). so to practice the virtue of charity, or solidarity, seems to be the underlying message of this exemplum. the holy family’s return is a figure of the conversion of the jews by enoch and elijah’s preaching, the consummation of which will take place in the 2 nd advent of christ. this figural prophecy appears in the text twice: in ll. 8535618 and ll. 8697-740. given that enoch and elijah’s return and the conversion of the jews are each signs of the antichrist (mchugh 2000), each figural prophecy is composed with the aid of these two signs. the confirmation of this textual division derives from the coincidence of the number of lines for each individual apocalyptic sign: both signs in the first section extend to 21 lines each, while the second one has 11 lines each. however, the selection of these numbers is not arbitrary. number 21, according to allendy, “est le nombre de destruction ou plutôt de terminaison universelle, parce que, comme 2 s’est séparé de 1, il faut qu’il ait un moyen de s’y réunir s’il le veut” (1948: 368). in turn, number 11 “[est] le nombre de la transgression de la loi, parce qu’il dépasse d’un le nombre dix, guzmán mancho 94 qui est celui du décalogue. il [st. augustine] en fait ‘l’armoirie du péche’” (op. cit.: 322). these are definitions which fit well into the depiction of conversion of the jews and return of enoch and elijah as the consummation of the end of times with the arrival of the antichrist. in addition, each one of these four resulting textual divisions is composed by means of a circular structure. this is true as the central verse mentions the apocalyptic sign, which is the theme of the divided text. the central verses are the following: for (1) “? att mann shall spellenn to patt follc [judisskenn], / 7 turrnenn hemm to criste” (ll. 8555-6); for (2) “? ær drihhtin godd himm [e¥¥noc] hafepp don / to libbenn pære i blisse” (ll. 8597-8); for (3) “7 i patt karrte wass he [helyas] brohht / till pær he wunenn shollde” (ll. 8697-8); and for (4) “7 ta shall patt judisskenn follc / ?urrh pe¥¥re spell beon turrnedd” (ll. 8707-8). the central verses for the divisions (1) and (4) picture the conversion of the jews, whereas for (2) and (3) represent the kidnapping of enoch and elijah, respectively. therefore, it could be claimed that ormin employs numerologically iconic language to create circular structures. in all, it is more than obvious that repetitio creates a circular structure, as the end of the sentence or passage finishes with the same res-verba as that in the openin g parts. moreover, agreeing with lausberg’s claims about the circular nature of the periodus (cf. supra), it is possible to claim that ormin employs the repetitio and periodus rhetorical techniques to organize some sections of his texts on a circular superstructure basis. in the other sections, though these rhetorical techniques are noticeable, the structure of the discourse is created by means of numerology. in sum, ormin’s repetitio, periodi and numerologically divided texts are all techniques employed to construct circular superstructures. so long as ormin’s circular discourse is a metaphor of a given symbol it could be claimed that ormin’s discourse is iconic. so, it should not surprise to find ormin’s motivation to use language iconically if the divine sphaera infinitia is taken into consideration. though lucentini recently edited the medieval text liber viginti quattuor philosophorum (2000), it seems that allain de lille is the first author to gather together the first two sententiae of the liber…in his summa quoniam homines and the regula caelestis iuris around 1160-65 (op. cit.: 35). this book comprises twenty-four definitions of god together with a commentary. for the purpose of this paper, the second definition is of relevance: “dios es structural elements of christ’s exile and return figuræ in ormulum 95 una esfera infinita cuyo centro se halla en todas partes y su circunferencia en ninguna” (2000: 47). this sententia helps explain ormin’s resulting text. on the one hand, the sententia claims the non-existence of limits to the divine sphere, the circumference. but, for the case of a human auctor the textual beginning and end do not prevent the text from limits. ormin overcomes this difficulty by means of creating a circular structure within these textual limits, as it has been shown. on the other hand, the sententia proposes that the spherical center is everywhere. ormin’s continuous composition of circular structures in the encircled exegesis may be interpreted as the will to write a text without an identified center. hence ormin’s multiple circular texts can be interpreted as a metaphor of this center-less divine sphere. it may be claimed that ormin textually accommodates this three-dimensional definition into his two-dimensional textual support. it is pretty venturous to claim that ormin had access to this technical literature, as little is known about his sources 1—morrison (1984) lists the poss ible bibliographic references in orm’s library (e.g. the glossa , the pseudo-anselm enarrationes in matthæi evangelium, beda’s in lucae expositio evangelium) and the probable ones (e.g. jerome’s de nominibus hebraicis and isidore’s de natura rerum and etymologiae)—. but the time of allain de lille’s publication of the liber… and the period of ormin’s education seems to coincide2. additionally, the multicircularity of this sixth pericope makes hypothetically possible the influence of the sententia of the liber…on the structure of this excerpt. at any rate, the presence of circular superstructures in the ormian homiletic discourse still awaits to be re searched on. a close reading to the sixth pericope of the xiv latin text of the ormulum may shed some light on the stylistic traits of the ormian discourse. ormin seems to employ classical rhetorical techniques and patristic techniques to compose his text. a rhetorical and numerological analysis of this text has proved that ormin composes his text with circular structures in mind. this method of composition may be accounted for with the aid of the intellectual 1 additionally, lucentini writes that the liber…: “parece haber sido compuesto… en la zona de influencia de la escuela de chartres y de gilbert de la porrée [en la francia medieval]” (2000: 13). 2 this idea derives from parkes’ argumentation about the writing of the ormulum based on paleographic evidence: the 1170s and early 1180s (1985: 122). guzmán mancho 96 and theological context contemporary to ormin. this way, his repetitio may seem more justified. guzmán mancho alcalá university bibliography allendy, r. 1948: le symbolisme des nombres. chacornac frères, paris. auerbach, e. 1998: figura . trotta, madrid. baugh, a. 1985: the middle english period (1150-1500). the middle ages. routledge, london. fischer, o. et al. 2000.10.08: iconicity: definition. http: //www.es.unizh.ch/ iconicity/icondef. garavelli, b. m. 1991: manual de retórica. cátedra, madrid. holt, r. 1878: the ormulum with the notes and glossary of dr. r. m. white. clarendon press, oxford. kalbfleisch, c. 2000.10.08: king james version of the bible. http: // www. cforc.com/kjv. lausberg, h. 1991: manual de retórica literaria. vol. 2, gredos, madrid. lucentini, p. 2000: el libro de los veinticuatro filósofos. siruela, madrid. mchugh, j. 2000.05.14: general judgement. http: //www. newadvent.org/ cathen/ 08552a. mosher, j. 1966: the exemplum in the early religious and didactic literature of england. ams press, inc., new york. morrison, s. 1984: new sources for the ormulum. neophilologus, 68: 115127. structural elements of christ’s exile and return figuræ in ormulum 97 parkes, m. 1983: on the presumed date and possible origin of the manuscript of the ‘orrmulum’: oxford, bodleian library, ms junius 1. five hundred years of words and sounds, edited by e. stanley et al. brewer, cambridge. saint augustine: the confessions, the city of god, on christian doctrine. 1996. encyclopædia britannica, inc., chicago. sayre, e. 2000.05.14: sarepta. http: //www.newadvent.org/cathen/13476a. * † * selim07 (2).pdf jordi sánchez, selim 7 (2000, for 1997): 153—160 chaucer's knight and the hundred years war it is not surprising that the gallery of portraits which constitute the general prologue commences with the description of the knight, since according to ramon llull a knight 'of eche thousand [men] was chosen,' for being 'moost loyal / most stronge / and of most noble courage / & better enseyned and manerd than al the other' (byles 1926: 15, caxton's trans.). furthermore, this same character will be chosen to begin the tale -telling game. such a privilege allows him to establish the narrative tone for the contest, thereby becoming a central figure of the canterbury tales. the interpre tation of his portrait, however, has generated noteworthy dissension among the critics. traditional approaches have viewed the knight as representative of the ideal of knighthood, lover of 'trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie' (kt, l. 46). nevertheless, among these critics there is a division between those who regard the knight as an anachronistic figure among the group of pilgrims (e.g. herz 1964 and robinson 1957), and those who see him as a re alistic picture of the adventurous fourteenth century knight (keen 1983, mann 1973 and manly 1907). in contrast to the traditional position, an antithetical opinion which regards the knight as a medieval mercenary has been proposed; this is essentially founded on a singular interpretation of the description presented by chaucer in the prologue (jones 1985 and mitchell 1964). in this paper, i as well will focus on the depiction of the knight in the general prologue in order to define the ideological viewpoint that informs the knight's actions and omissions, with the objective of attaining a better understanding of his personality, and, therefore, of his intentions as narrator. the first feature to stand out in the knight's portrayal is the formidable list of campaigns in which he has participated; these adventures have brought him to the contemporary boundaries of 'cristendom'. this is not so astonishing if we take into account how, in the general prologue, each pilgrim is described as the epitome of the social group he or she represents. ____________________________________________________________________ 154 nonetheless, in this case, the degree of hyperbolization seems excessive to me, not so much for its historical magnitude as for its narrative extension.1 jill mann (1973: 111-2) argues that the function of such a roll call of battles is 'to evoke the exotic aspects of foreign travel, the romance of battle in far-off lands.'2 from a merely historical standpoint, this catalog of campaigns (16 lines) constitutes an inventory of the scant successes obtained in the fourteenth century by european chivalry over the heathen. the fact that the knight, model of chivalry, has devoted his life -long career to fighting the infidel in crusades, apparently represents an indisputable religious commitment that would turn him into a soldier of god. however, this is just the first duty of a knight,3 for the second chivalrous concern is 'to mayntene and deffende / his lord worldly or terreyn' (byles 1926: 29, caxton's trans.). chaucer explains that 'ful worthy was he in his lordes werre' (kt, l. 47), yet this statement contains an ambiguity: is he referring to god or to his feudal lord?4 it does not seem plausible to come up with a clear-cut explanation of this line. we should, therefore, direct our attention to the implications inferred from the rest of the description: it is queer that there is no single allusion to the english victories of crécy (1346), calais (1347), poitiers (1356), and nájera (1367). these mark the celebrated triumphs of english knighthood, and their conspicuous absence is extremely significant, particularly for chaucer's contemporary audience, who are immersed in the never-ending french war. terry jones utilizes this omission to reaffirm his criticism of the knight; however, his conclusions show a certain narrowmindedness for not discovering other motivations for the knight's behavior 1 a similar degree of exaggeration is found in the portrait of the man of law, but in this case its exposition is limited to two lines: 'in termes hadde he caas and doomes alle / that from the tyme of kyng william were falle' (i. 323-4). 2 muriel bowden (1959: 51) considers the enumeration of battles as 'a chapter of romance'. 3 in john gower's words, 'ecclesie prima debet defendere iura' (vox clamantis, v. 5, ed. macaulay 1902, vol. 4) 4 traditionally that line has been interpreted as an allusion to god, mainly because the detailed list of battles that follows only contains campaigns religiously inspired (e.g. hatton 1968). other critics have proposed a more patriotic reading, suggesting that the lord is indeed the king of england (robinson 1957: 652). but jones (1985 ff.) assumes that line refers to the lord who has hired the knight as a mercenary. ____________________________________________________________________ 155 except for economical ones.1 i will try to identify the presumable reasons that would justify the knight's attitude. the knight's non-involvement in the hundred years war would ostensibly contravene the chivalrous ideal that he is believed to represent. why does he not take part in those battles? at first sight we may think that he is one of those qui mettent leur entente a faire lointains voiages, entre ceulx qui sont acoustumez, qui tousjours veulent aler pour veoir nouvelles et estranges choses et pou arrestent et ne peuent mie trouver ne estre es fais d'armes si tres lointains voiages ne quierent mie et qui plus s'arrestent et attendent les faiz d'armes de guerre (geoffroi de charny, eds. kaeuper & kennedy 1996: 90). it seems evident that our knight must have developed a certain taste for traveling and knowing foreign countries; for instance, he has just come from a journey ('he was late ycome from his viage', kt, l. 77), and has already set off for canterbury. nonetheless, his motivations for undertaking distant cru sades are beyond mere wanderlust: he goes to accomplish objectives which are religiously sound, putting his life at risk. charny's comment on this kind of knight is emphatic: 'devons nous telz gens qui ainsi ont esté en lointains et estranges voiages volentiers oïr, veoir et honorer; car vraiment nulz ne peut aler en telx lointains voiages que le corps ne soit en peril maintes foiz' (ibid., emphasis mine).2 hence, it may be deduced that participation in this sort of campaign was praiseworthy; conversely, to devote all his energies to fighting the heathens when his help would have been so necessary for his country looks more contemptible. despite the knight's failure to fight in the french war, chaucer closes the enumeration of campaigns in the knight's depiction by stating that 'though that he were worthy, he was wys' (kt, l. 68). these two concepts are essential for both the characterization of the knight and his identification with the chivalric ideal. before continuing with this analysis, i would like briefly to 1 jones (1985: 101) concludes that 'at a period of crisis for the english nation, he has failed to serve his own country with spectacular single-mindedness and has ranged all over the known world in search of fat pickings'. 2 this observation sanctions the capacity of the knight to narrate remarkable stories, and implies a certain positive inclination on the part of his audience to listen to him. ____________________________________________________________________ 156 refute the interpretation that terry jones (1985: 101) gives of the previous line, intrigued by its concessive nature: 'if worthiness and wisdom are both desirable moral qualities, why does chaucer put in that little word though?'. the explanation for chaucer's election of this conjunction is provided by geoffroi de charny in his treatise: si devez savoir que se uns homs avoit sens assez et il ne fust preudoms, cilz deus[t] se convertir du tout en mal. et se uns homs estoit preudoms et ne fust mie assez saiges, tele preudommie est bonne mais non mie tant vallable ne de si grant merite como li saige de droit sens naturel qui sont vrai preudomme (kaeuper & kennedy 1996: 154). this quotation lucidly resolves the meaning of line 68: the roll call of battles attests to the worthiness of our knight, but chaucer stresses the fact that he is one of the few who despite being worthy, is also wise, thus elevating him to a personage of 'grant merite'. the term 'worthy' is present in the very first line of the knight's descrip tion ('a knyght ther was, and that a worthy man', kt, l. 43), and is used three times further (ll. 50, 64, 68). chaucer has given enough evidence of what is expected from a worthy knight: 'si bona mi licia fuerit, deus astat in illa / vincat vt invicto miles in ense suo' (gower, vox clamantis, v. 475-6, ed. macaulay 1902, vol. 4). conversely, we find out that he is wise only because chaucer declares so, although he does not give any exp licit evidence. what are the imp lications of chaucer's statement? hatton (1968: 79) as serts that a wise knight is aware of the values and principles that govern the order of chivalry, and 'thus he restrains and shapes his worthiness in accordance with these ideals'. hence, such a faculty of wisdom is fundamental in determining the legitimacy of a cause, the step prior to entering in battle, as gower argues (mirour de l'omme ll. 24013-18, ed. macaulay 1899, vol. 1): mais cil q'au droit se voet armer et sur les guerres travailler, estuet a guarder tout avant pour la querelle examiner, qu'il ne se face a tort lever, don ert la cause defendant. ____________________________________________________________________ 157 reflection on the justice of war was not for a soldier a gratuitous act, since for him, not only his reputation was at stake but also his standing in the afterlife. the english dominican friar john bromyard comments c. 1390 that 'in bello corporali maximum est periculum corporum et animarum', and adds that those who are successful 'deum et sapientiam habentes adiutores'.1 the previous exposition of the chivalric imp lications of the concept 'wise' will assist us to better understand line 68. after the enumeration of chivalric actions undertaken by the knight, an inventory which proves his worthiness, the omission of any reference to the hundred years war imp licitly evinces his wisdom: the knight doubts the justice of that war. what factors have influenced the knight, endowed with wisdom, to make that decision? according to the generally accepted chronology of chaucer's works, the general prologue was composed in 1388-92 (benson 1987: xxv). at that time many voices rallied against the war in france, generating a debate in english and french society (barnie 1974, ch. 5). the source of this dissatisfaction with war was twofold: on the one hand, the dubious morality of this war, fought between christians; on the other hand, the irrationality of going on with a conflict which was not providing substantial benefits to either side, though it required an important cost both human and economical (allmand 1988: 25). logically, the knight would be more concerned with the issue of the justice of this war, equipped with denunciations such as gower's: 'set magis in fratres, signat quos vnda renatos, / pro mundi rebus publica bella damus' (vox clamantis, iii. 665-6, ed. macaulay 1902, vol. 4).2 having established the knight's ideological stand with relation to the hundred years war, i must consider now its historicity. some chaucerian critics, with an historical approach to the knight's crusades, have attempted to identify him with a real-life model (manly 1916: 165-238). however, none of these searches stood scholarly scrutiny. furthermore, none of the in dividuals pointed out could have been a prototype for chaucer, since, as terry jones 1 summam predicantium (basel, c. 1485), under 'bellum', chapter 23; source identified following allmand (1973: 38-9). 2 nonetheless, this attitude was not prevailing at all: in 1393 j. colwull and j. netton 'universitati cantebrigiensis, theologie professores' assert that 'bellare pro defensione iusticie tam contra infideles quam contra cristianos est factum sanctum et licitum et dicere oppositum est erroneum' (capes ed. 1916: 377); source identified following allmand (1973: 20). ____________________________________________________________________ 158 (1985: 100-1) attests, a characteristic common to all of them is that at some point in their careers they had fought the enemies of england. does this mean that chaucer has portrayed an unreal character? in 1369 jean froissart, in his chroniques, records the case of a french knight, sir aymenions de pumiers, who decides not to participate in the war with england, and instead opts to go on crusading, a more honorable solution: tout en tel manière se départi de la ducé d'aquitainne messires aymenions de pumiers, qui estoit chevaliers dou prince, et dist que, la guerre durant, il ne s'armeroit, ne pour l'un roy, ne pour l'autre. si s'en ala li dessus dis oultre mer, en cippre et au saintsépulcre et en pluiseurs aultres biaus voiages (lettenhove ed. 1867-1877: vii2, 420). our knight, therefore, is not the only one to have reservations about the war, although this is not a widespread position. to sum up, chaucer has chosen for his pilgrimage an extraordinary figure who embodies a particular representation of the chivalrous ideal of his time, even if it defies the official stance: because he is engaged on crusading expeditions, disregarding his obligation to his country, and also because he ques tions the legitimacy of the hundred years war and decides not to take part. now it is possible to understand chaucer's rationale for including the entire list of the knight's successes: on the one hand it attests to his worthiness, and on the other, it counterbalances the omission of the english victories mentioned above. this character's experienced outlook and exciting life bestow upon him those meritorious credentials which herald a magnificent tale. jordi sanchez marti cornell university works cited ____________________________________________________________________ 159 allmand, c. t. 1973: society at war: the experience of england and france during the hundred years war. harper & row, new york. allmand, c. t. 1988: the hundred years war: england and france at war c. 1300-c. 1450. cambridge university press, cambridge. barnie, j. 1974: war in medieval english society. social values in the hundred years war 1337-99. cornell university press, ithaca. benson, l. d. & al. eds. 1987: the riverside chaucer. houghton mufflin, boston. bowden, m. 1959: a commentary on the general prologue to the canterbury tales. macmillan, london. bromyard, j. c. 1485: summam predicantium. basel. byles, t. p. ed. 1926: the book of the ordre of chyvalry, translated and printed by william caxton from a french version of ramón lull's “le libre del orde de cauayleria” together with adam loutfut's scottish transcript. [eets], oxford university press, london. capes, w. w. ed. 1916: registrum johannis trefnant, episcopi herefordensis, a.d. mccclxxxix-mcccciv. the canterbury and york society, london. cook, a. s. 1916: the historical background of chaucer's knight. transactions of the connecticut academy of arts and sciences 20: 165-238. hatton, t. j. 1968: ch aucer's crusading knight, a slanted ideal. chaucer review 3: 77-87. herz, j. s. 1964: chaucer's elegiac knight. criticism 6: 212-24. jones, t. 1985: chaucer's knight: the portrait of a medieval mercenary. methuen, new york. kaeuper, r. w. & kennedy, e. eds. 1996: the book of chivalry of geoffroi de charny. philadelphia university press, philadelphia. keen, m. 1983: chaucer's knight, the english aristocracy and the crusade. english court culture in the later middle ages. ed. v. j. scattergood & j. w. sherborne eds. st. martin's press, new york. ____________________________________________________________________ 160 lettenhove, k. de ed. 1867-1877: oeuvres de froissart. brussels. macaulay, g. c. ed. 1899-1902: the complete works of john gower. 4 vols. oxford. manly, j. m. 1907: a knight ther was. transactions and proceedings of the american philological association 38: 89-107. mann, j. 1973: chaucer and medieval estates satire: the literature of social classes and the general prologue to the canterbury tales. cambridge university press, cambridge. mitchell, c. 1964: the worthiness of chaucer's knight. modern language quaterly 25: 66-75. robinson, f. n. ed. 1957: the complete works of geoffrey chaucer. 2nd edn. london, 1957). * † * selim 15.indb teresa marqués-aguado, selim 13 (2005-2006): 47—68 old english punctuation revisited: the case of the gospel according to saint matthew1 abstract punctuation has been traditionally neglected by scholars and editors of old and middle english texts due to the apparent ambiguity and lack of consistency of the system, to the extent that it is often silently modernized in contemporary editions. however, recent studies have shown that there exists certain regularity in the use of these punctuation marks. in the light of this, the aim of this paper is to offer an account of the use and function of such marks in the old english version of the gospel according to saint matthew (cambridge university library, ms corpus christi college 140). for this purpose, the analysis is organised into four levels: macrotextual, sentential, clausal and phrasal. keywords: function, modernization, old english, punctuation, the gospel according to saint matthew. resumen tradicionalmente, la puntuación ha recibido escasa atención por parte de académicos y editores de textos en inglés antiguo y medio debido a la aparente ambigüedad y falta de consistencia que muestra tal sistema, hasta el punto de que se moderniza en las ediciones contemporáneas. sin embargo, estudios recientes han mostrado que existe una cierta regularidad en el uso de los signos de puntuación. de acuerdo con esto, el objetivo del presente artículo es ofrecer un análisis de los usos y funciones de dichos signos en la versión en inglés antiguo del evangelio según san mateo (cambridge university library, ms corpus christi college 140). para ello, el análisis se organiza en cuatro planos: macrotextual, oracional, frasal y sintagmático. palabras clave: función, inglés antiguo, modernización, puntuación, evangelio según san mateo. introduction punctuation in old and middle english manuscripts has eluded detailed study, which could be put down to a number of attested facts, among them: a) the lack of systematization in punctuation, as practices may vary from scriptorium to scriptorium, from scribe to scribe and from text-type to text-type, so that, as mitchell has pointed out, “each manuscript and / or text may demand individual treatment” (1980: 412), a view also shared by heyworth when signalling the non-systematic introduction of these marks in many manuscripts (1981: 139); b) the overlapping functions of punctuation marks in 1 the present research has been funded by the spanish ministry of science and technology (grant number hum2004-01075/filo). this grant is hereby gratefully acknowledged. teresa marqués aguado 50 old and middle english (lucas 1971: 19); and c) the outstanding differences between the mediaeval and pde punctuation systems (zeeman 1956: 11). however, this situation changed in the 1970s after the publication of two ground-breaking articles, by lucas (1971) and arakelian (1975), as both concluded that punctuation in these early periods was far from haphazard, even though the latter also hinted that 100% consistency should not be expected (1975: 616). more recently, other scholars have contributed to the study of old and middle english punctuation, evincing the existence of certain tendencies in the use of punctuation within the same hand, i.e. particular symbols are likely to feature sentential relations (e.g. nominal, adjectival and adverbial clauses). this is the case of heyworth (1981) or mitchell (1980), as well as gradon (1983), parkes (1978), alonso-almeida (2002), rodríguezálvarez (1999), calle-martín (2004), esteban-segura (2005) and calle-martín and miranda-garcía (2005). two recurrent issues in the literature on historical punctuation are invoked: its function and its modernization. as for its function, there has been a traditional opposition between the grammatical and the rhetorical ones. the first one refers to punctuation as a means to make grammatical structures explicit and, therefore, to convey the correct meaning. on the contrary, the rhetorical function implies that punctuation indicates the pauses that should be introduced when reading aloud. lucas added a third function to this catalogue, the macro-textual one, according to which punctuation helps to clarify “the arrangement and lay-out of the text” (1971: 5). this issue of function has been dealt with by several scholars, such as arakelian, who attributes punctuation a grammatical function (1975: 615)2, as opposed to parkes (1992: 36) or morgan (1952: 164), who opt for the rhetorical one. in general, the received view seems to veer towards the 2 in the 13th century, bene of florence argued against the possibility of punctuation being used to mark intonation or accent, although he was not against the rhetorical function of punctuation (parkes 1992: 45). old english punctuation revisted 51 rhetorical function, as blake (1979: 67) or strang (1994: 343-345) defend. likewise, grünberg, when analysing the west-saxon version of the gospels, concludes that the grammatical function should be excluded, asserting that “in considering these symbols it should be clearly borne in mind that they served to denote intonation: the gospels were used for liturgical reading” (1967: 27)3. nevertheless, this is not a clear-cut distinction, as some other scholars have highlighted. this is the case of zeeman (1956: 18), harlow (1959: 2) or mitchell (1980: 393), who defend that it is a combination of both functions that we find in most texts. regarding modernization, the dilemma lies not only on whether punctuation should be modernized or not4, but on how this process should be eventually carried out, given the unlikeness between the mediaeval and the pde systems: whereas in mediaeval punctuation the rhetorical function plays an important role, in pde punctuation is essentially syntactic (quirk 1999: 1611; blake 1979: 67). in this line, mitchell offers three possibilities: “the manuscript punctuation, modern punctuation, or a compromise between the two” (1980: 388), clearly preferring the first one for scholarly audiences5. contrary to his opinion, most modern editions have modernized punctuation without making explicit the criteria followed. a revealing example is goolden’s edition of the old english apollonius of tyre (1954). as opposed to these methods, the uses of either critical apparatuses for punctuation variants (heyworth 1981: 155) or of functional equivalents (alonso-almeida 2002: 227-228; calle-martín 2004: 421) have been recently proposed as transparent methods to modernize manuscript punctuation. in this vein, calle-martín suggests that “the modern equivalent, therefore, depends on the ultimate 3 although the use of the rhetorical function is obvious, the grammatical one should not be excluded when analysing this text, as we argue in the conclusions. 4 for instance, blake opposes modernization (1979: 70). 5 ronberg also concluded that when editing renaissance literary works, texts should be presented “in accordance with the original views of rhetorical syntax, suggested so powerfully by the original punctuation” (1995: 61). teresa marqués aguado 52 function of each mark of punctuation” (2004: 421), so that the classification of uses will be useful to propose modern counterparts for mediaeval punctuation (marqués-aguado 2005: 333-339). these counterparts will be ultimately drawn from quirk’s description of the uses of pde punctuation marks (1999: 1609-1639) and from truss’ account of pde punctuation usage (2003). in the light of this, the present study analyses the punctuation found in the west-saxon version of the gospel according to st. matthew, which is found in the corpus manuscript (folios 2r-45v), housed in the corpus christi college library (cambridge) under the reference 140. the results obtained from the study of punctuation in context will help us to deal with the function it fulfils, as well as to offer a proposal for modernization, as suggested above. methodology in order to describe the uses of punctuation marks in context, the complete set of examples must be first obtained. for this reason, we resorted to the annotated version of the gospel, where each item of the text was provided with the vowel-length marker so as to prevent ambiguity, as in the case of minimal pairs, such as þõ vs. þe. the annotations, in turn, comprised not only the lemma, but also the tag (which included information as regards class and accidence) and the translation into pde (marqués-aguado 2005). this version was taken as input for the oec (old english concordancer miranda-garcía & al. 2006), which is a software tool purposely designed to retrieve morphosyntactic information from properly annotated old english corpora. in our case, all the instances of punctuation symbols were obtained from the application, together with a context of 5 words before and after each of them so as to determine their uses. these examples were pasted onto an excel spreadsheet, separating the different marks to prevent confusion. moreover, each example was split into three parts (the context before the mark, the mark itself and the five words following it) which were subsequently allocated to three cells of the same row. finally, these examples were sorted old english punctuation revisted 53 according to the first word after the mark so as to ease the subsequent task of classification. inventory of punctuation marks the symbols found in this version of the gospel according to st. matthew, which was probably written in the 11th century6, illustrate the system of positurae which was developed in the 8th century and was used until the 11th. with the term positurae we refer to the set of punctuation marks that progressively replaced the latin system of distinctiones. the ultimate reason for this gradual substitution is to be associated with positurae’s univocal marking to distinguish a statement from a question and with their eye-catching value (parkes 1992: 37). this system comprises four marks, which are found in the text under study with the exception of the punctus interrogativus: the punctus versus (;) (1,053 occurrences), which is the most common one. the punctus elevatus (ঠ) (344 occurrences)7. the punctus (.) (995 occurrences), which is sometimes placed slightly above the line of writing. in addition to these three positurae, the use of the section marker (represented here by the paraph ڧ¶ڦ) has to be noted. it may appear either in isolation, thus separating chapters, or in conjunction with the tilde (represented here by ڧ~ڦ), which is placed in the margin of the folio to highlight the presence of the former. uses and functions of punctuation marks once the examples of punctuation marks have been obtained, a classification of their uses becomes essential in order to fulfil our initial objectives. for 6 this date has been suggested by skeat (1871: vi) and liuzza (1994: xxvi). 7 the use of the punctus elevatus might be taken as a stylistic feature in favour of the existence of two hands (or two different people inserting punctuation marks) in the text, since less than 40 examples are found from chapter 21 onwards (11.62%). teresa marqués aguado 54 practical purposes, these will be grouped according to four levels (namely, macro-textual, sentential, clausal and phrasal). in each case, a commentary on the possible function of punctuation, as well as a proposal for modernization, will be offered. the numbers between brackets in front of the examples serve to identify them, the references of which include both the folio and the lines where they are found. 1) macro-textual level the macro-textual level is concerned with macro-textual units, i.e. chapters, paragraphs and sense-units. the prevailing marks at this level are the punctus versus and the section marker. the latter normally co-occurs with positurae, since it is chiefly intended as a visual marker. the main uses of punctuation at this level comprise: a) to separate chapters the punctus versus is the commonest marker to separate chapters, as shown in (1), since 25 out of the 28 chapters of this gospel are marked off in this way8. chapter divisions are sometimes (11 instances) additionally indicated by means of the section marker without the tilde, as illustrated in example (2)9: (1) òã gemiltsode hõ him. and hyra õagan æthrãn. and hig sďna gesãwon. and fyligdon him; and þã hõ genõalƥhte hierusalem. and cďm tď bethfage tď oliuetes dĭne þã sende hõ hys twõgen leorningcnihtas (f.29v, 20-25) (2) tď his rípe; ¶ and tďsomne gecígydum (f.13r, 27) b) to separate paragraphs paragraphs in the gospel must be understood as merely physical units, that is, they do not necessarily contain a complete thought, as in current usage 8 the end of the remaining 3 chapters is signalled by means of a punctus elevatus (f.21v, 8 – chapter 14), ø (f..23r, 20-21 – chapter 15) and a punctus (f.45v, 9-10 – chapter 28). 9 the distribution of the section marker to separate chapters is an uneven one, as it appears in chapters 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 22, 24, 26 and 27. old english punctuation revisted 55 (quirk 1999: 1624). paragraphs in the text are usually indicated by the presence of the punctus versus, as seen in example (3). the exception is f.2v, 12, where the punctus is found10: (3) and hí gegaderigað hys gecorenan. of fõower middaneardes endum of heofona hõahnyssum oð hyra gemƥru; leornigeað bígspell be þãm fíctrõowwe þonne hys twig byþ hnesce and lõaf ãcennede. gõ witun ঌ sumor ys gehende (f.36r, 14-20) c) to mark semantically-independent sense-units sense or topic changes are introduced in 6 occasions by means of the section marker accompanied by the tilde, along with either the punctus (1 example) or the punctus versus (5 instances), as observed in example (4) below: (4) ~ þƥr byþ wďp and tďþa grist|bitung; witodlíce manega synt gelaþode and fõawa gecorene; ¶ òã ongunnon þã pharisei rƥdan ঌ hig woldon þone hƥlend on hys sprƥce befďn (ff.32r, 27 32v, 4) however, the section marker is not compulsory, and in that case the punctus versus appears isolatedly (5): (5) eornostlíce ealle cnõoressa fram abrahame oð dauid. synd fõowertyne cnõoressa. and fram dauide oð babilonis gelõorednysse fõowertyne cnõoressaঠ and fram babilonis gelõorednesse oð críst. fõowertyne cnõoressa. sďþlíce þus wæs crístes cnõores; òã þæs hƥlendes mďdor maria wæs iosepe beweddod. ƥr hí tďsomne becďmun hõo wæs gemõt on innoðe hæbbende. of þãm hãlegan gãste; (f.2v, 8-18) punctuation may also be used to call attention to what follows, i.e. a conclusion or explanation of the preceding fragment, which may highlight an important idea from the religious standpoint. more than half of the examples retrieved include the punctus versus, as in example (6). the section marker, along with the punctus versus, is also encountered on two occasions, as in (7): 10 in the first four chapters, all paragraphs end with a latin inscription in a different hand. given their probably late date of insertion, they have not been taken into consideration. teresa marqués aguado 56 (6) twõgen bõoþ on bedde. ãn byð genumen and ďþer byð lƥfed; wacigeað witodlíce forþãm þe gõ nyton on hwylcyre tíde õower hlãford cuman wyle; (f.36v, 7-10) (7) ~ ¶ ; se þe nys mid mõ hõ is ongõn mõ. and se þe ne gaderaþ mid mõ hõ tďwyrpð; (f.17r, 23-25) the analysis of punctuation at the macro-textual level indicates that the different markers help to clarify the general layout of the text in large units, thus fulfilling the macro-textual function referred to by lucas (1971: 5). as far as the equivalence with pde punctuation marks is concerned, the oe positurae can be rendered by a full stop or by a colon when dealing with conclusions or explanations (quirk 1999: 1621-1624). 2) sentential level at sentential level, independent sentences as well as the relationships established between clauses are included. in this case, the function of punctuation will be dealt with at the end of the section, unlike the proposal for modernization, which is individually suggested for each use. the main uses at this level comprise: a) to mark independent sentences punctuation may be used at sentential level to mark independent sentences, both simple and complex ones, as in examples (8) and (9), respectively, where the punctus versus accomplishes this function. notice that in example (8) the subordinate clause precedes the main one, and between them a punctus elevatus has been inserted. the other two positurae are used sometimes: for instance, the punctus may appear to signal the end of interrogative sentences (10): (8) eornustlíce þonne ðĭ þíne ælmessan sylleঠ ne blãwe man bǵman beforan þõ swã líceteras dďð on gesomnunegum and on wícum ঌ hí sín geãrwurþode fram mannum; sďð ic secge õow hí onfõngon hyra mõde; sďþlíce þonne þĭ þíne ælmessan dďঠ nyte þín wynstre hwæt dď þín swǵþre ঌ þín ælmesse sǵ on díglum and þín fæder hit ãgylt þõ se þe gesyhþ on díglum; (f.8r, 1-7) old english punctuation revisted 57 (9) sďþlíce ic secge õow bĭton õower rihtwísnyss mãre sǵ þonne þƥra wrítera and sundorhãlgena. ne gã gõ on heofonan ríce; gõ gehǵrdon ঌ gecweden wæs on ealdum tídum; ne ofslõh þĭঠ se þe ofslíhð se byþ dďme scyldig; (f.6v, 1519) (10) þã embe þã endlyftan tíde hõ ĭtõodeঠ and funde ďþre standende. and þã sƥde hõ; hwǵ stande gõ hõr eallne dæg ídele. þã cwƥdon hig forþãm þe ĭs nãn mann ne hǵrode; (f.28v, 4-7) in cases such as the ones described above, the stop is to be taken as the most appropriate modern counterpart (quirk 1999: 1623). question marks should be used for questions (truss 2003: 141). b) to mark juxtaposed sentences though syntactically independent, juxtaposed sentences retain semantic links between them. for this purpose, the three positurae overlap and we may encounter not only statements —see example (11)—, but also commands or questions: (11) ealle heora worc hig dďð ঌ menn hí gesõon; hig tďbrƥdaþ hyra healsbæc and mƥrsiað heora rõafa fnadu; (f.33v, 12-14) special attention should be devoted to the connection established between the sentences constituting the genealogy of jesus christ, which are signalled by means of any of the three positurae—there are 40 instances—, as in (12). similarly, there is an enumeration of miracles marked with puncti elevati (13). the beginnings of the 9 beatitudes are highlighted with puncti versi, as observed in (14). in this example the punctus elevatus is used to mark the beginning of a subordinate clause, as we will discuss in sub-heading d): (12) ãbia gestrǵnde asaঠ asa gestrǵnde iosaphath; iosaphath gestrǵnde ioram. ioras gestrǵnde oziam; (f.2r, 14-16) (13) blinde gesõoþঠ healte gãðঠ hrõofe synt ãclƥnsudeঠ dõafe gehǵraþঠ (f.15r, 1719) (14) õadige synt þã gãstlícan þearfanঠ forþãm hyra ys heofena ríce; ôadige synt þã líðanঠ forþãm þe hí eorðan ãgun; (f.6r, 10-12) teresa marqués aguado 58 in any case the likeliest pde equivalents are either the stop or the semicolon, which relates semantically-linked sentences lacking connectors (quirk 1999: 1623). question marks should be inserted at the end of questions. c) to mark coordinate clauses coordinate clauses can be signalled by means of whichever positurae. in (15) the copulative coordinator and is preceded by a punctus versus, whereas the clauses introduced by the correlative coordinators ne… ne (16) and oþþe… oþþe (17) are marked by either a punctus or a punctus elevatus: (15) manega wítegan and rihtwíse gewilnudon þã þing tď gesõonne þe gõ gesõoþ and hig ne gesãwon; and gehǵran þã þing þe gõ | gehǵrað. and hig ne gehǵrdon; (f.18v, 25 – 19r, 1) (16) witodlíce ne wífiað hig. ne hig ne ceorliaþ on þãm ƥryste (fol.33r, 4-5) (17) ne mæg nãn man twãm hlãfordum þõowian oððe hõ sďðlíce ƥnne hatað and ďðerne lufaþঠ oððe hõ bið ãnum gehǵrsum. and ďðrum ungehyrsum; (fol.8v, 22-24) and may introduce main (18) and subordinate (19) clauses when followed by an adverb or a subordinator, and it may also appear in anastrophes11 (20): (18) òã herodes ঌ gehǵrde ðã wearð hõ gedrõfed and eal hierosolimwaru mid himঠ and þã gegaderode herodes ealle ealdras þƥra sãcerda and folces wríterasঠ (f.3r, 12-15) (19) gyf þín hand oððe þín fďt þõ swícað. ãceorf hyne of and ãwurp fram þõ; betere þõ ys ঌ þĭ gã wanhãl oþþe healt tď lífe. þonne þĭ hæbbe twã handa and twõgen fõt. and sǵ on õce fǵr ãsend; and gyf þín õage þõ swícað ãhola hyt ĭt 11 anastrophe is defined in the oxford english dictionary as “inversion, or unusual arrangement, of the words or clauses of a sentence” and in the diccionario de la real academia de la lengua as “inversión en el orden de las palabras de una oración”. according to its greek etymology, anastrophe refers to the practice of changing the standard element order for the sake of emphasis. here we refer exclusively to prepositional anastrophes wherein the preposition follows the object. in this case, the preposition is termed postposition (fakundiny 1970: 31; mitchell 1985: 448). old english punctuation revisted 59 and ãwurp hyt fram þõ; betere þõ ys mid ãnum õage on lífe tď gãnne | þonne þĭ sí mid twãm ãsend on helle fǵr; (ff.25v, 22 – 26r, 1) (20) hõ genõalƥhte þã and hig æthrãn. and him tď cwƥþ. ârísað and ne ondrƥdaþ õow (f.24v, 10-12) from these instances we may conclude that the most suitable pde counterparts are either the comma (quirk 1999: 1615) or no punctuation symbol at all. d) to mark subordinate clauses the different types of subordinate clauses are associated with different punctuation marks. thus, for instance, the punctus versus is almost exclusively used in direct speech12, although other marks are also possible in this context, as pointed out in (20). in (21), for instance, direct speech begins after a punctus versus, and it finishes with the same mark: (21) and hõ sƥde him; cumað æfter mõ and ic dď ঌ gyt bõoð manna fisceras; and hí þƥrrihte forlõton hyra net and him fyligdon; (f.5v, 17-19) the same pointing is observed with vocative expressions which are included within direct speech and introduced by the interjections õalã, wã or lã. in this case, the punctus versus appears in 33 examples —as in (22)—, whereas the remaining 7 are preceded by either a punctus elevatus or a punctus. nevertheless, there are also examples where punctuation is missing (18% of the instances), as shown in (23): (22) òã andswarode hõ him; ôalã gõ ungelõafulle and þwǵre cnõores hĭ lange bõo ic mid õow (f.25r, 5-6) (23) þã se hƥlend hyra fãcn gehǵrde þã cwæð hõ lã lícceteras hwǵ fandige gõ mín ætgǵwað mõ þæs gafoles mynyt. (f.32v, 10-12) 12 as for direct speech, warner (1982: 158) places it outside the boundaries of subordination. however, quirk includes it in the chapter on complex sentences and examines several arguments to consider it subordinate (1999: 1020-1024). teresa marqués aguado 60 parables are also included in speeches. of the 10 instances found, 4 begin after the verb cweþan followed by a punctus (24), whereas the other 6 are independent sentences inserted within a longer speech, wherein a punctus versus appears, as in (25). notice that in this example, a punctus is found after gelíc, although this is the only instance: (24) hõ rehte him þã gǵt ďþer bígspel þus cweþende. heofena ríce is geworden gelíc senepes corne (f.19v, 3-5) (25) þã hõ funde ঌ ãn dõorwyrðe meregrot þã õode hõ and sealde eall ঌ hõ ãhte and bohte ঌ meregrot; eft is heofena ríce gelíc. ãsendum nette on þã sƥ and of ƥlcum fisccynne gadrigendum (f.20r, 11-13) in turn, most relative clauses introduced by invariable þe or by the demonstrative se, sõo, þæt lack punctuation (26), and only some examples are preceded by the punctus (27). in (28) the end of the relative clause is marked with a punctus, maybe in an attempt to prevent confusion, owing to the repetition of the verb gŭþ. likewise, punctuation is also absent between headless clauses (introduced by se þe and usually placed in front of the main clause) and main ones, although, again, the punctus may appear. both possibilities are illustrated in (29): (26) sďðlíce þã hyt ƥfen wæs cďm sum welí mann of arimathia þæs nama wæs iosep. se sylfa wæs þæs hƥlyndes leorningcnihtঠ (f.44r, 14-16) (27) sďþlíce se þe beswícð ƥnne of ðyssum lǵtlingum. þe on mõ gelǵfað. betere him ys ঌ ãn cwyrnstãn sí tď hys swǵran gecnytt. and sí besenced on sƥs grund; (f.25v, 16-19) (28) ne ongyte gõ ঌ eall ঌ on þonne mĭþ gƥþ. gƥð on þã wãmbe and byþ on forþgang ãsend (f.22r, 19-20) (29) sďþlíce se þe sõgð hys brõðer þĭ ãwordena. hõ byð geþeahte scyldig; se þe sõgð þĭ stunta se byþ scyldig helle fǵres; (f.6v, 20-22) regarding adverbial clauses, the punctus is by far the most widely used mark (30), as it more than triples the instances of the punctus elevatus (31), as well as (8) above. no punctuation is also possible, as in (6): (30) geblissa þĭ gďda þõowa and getrǵwa. forþãm ðe þĭ wƥre getrǵwe. ofer fõawa (f.37v, 14-15) old english punctuation revisted 61 (31) gyf þĭ wylt bõon fullfremedঠ gã and becǵp eall ঌ þĭ ãhst and syle hyt þearfum and þonne hæfst þĭ goldhord on heofone. (f.27v, 22-24) in most cases, the pde equivalent is the comma —especially where the subordinate precedes the main clause—, or ø. inverted commas (quirk 1999: 1630-1631) are also required for direct speech. as for the specific function of punctuation at this level, we can find cases in which the grammatical function prevails, as in uses a), b) and c), and others where the rhetorical function plays an important role, as in anastrophes or the beatitudes. nevertheless, in subordination both functions meet. 3) clausal level at this level, punctuation is employed to signal the relations established within the clause domain, where the punctus clearly prevails over the punctus elevatus. in this case, the pde counterpart will be offered at the end of this section, together with the discussion about the function of punctuation. the main uses listed here are the following: a) to distinguish the vocative expression from the rest of the clause vocative expressions are distinguished from the rest of the clause by means of puncti elevati and, mostly, by puncti (32), although 6 of the 22 examples found lack punctuation, as in (22) and (23) above, and (33) here: (32) and þonne hõ gewordyn byð gõ gedďð hyne helle bearn. twǵfealdlícor þonne õow; wã õow blindan lãttõowas. gõ secgeað swãnmn hwylc swã swereþ on temple ঌ hõ ys nãht (f.34r, 5-8) (33) wã õow bďcyras and pharisei líccetteras forþãm. gõ befarað sƥ and eorþan (f.34r, 2-4) in (33), forþãm should be taken as an adverb of result and not as a conjunction of cause, because, if the latter (either forþãm or forþãm þe), punctuation comes first most of the times, as commented in relation to subordinate clauses. teresa marqués aguado 62 b) to mark elements belonging to the same clause the punctus (and, occasionally, the punctus elevatus) fulfils this function in the following contexts: 1. to separate different elements. for instance, in (34) and (35) it separates the vp from the np. (34) sďþlíce þã se hƥlend inõode on capharnaum. þã genõalƥhte hym. ãn hundredes ealdor. hyne biddende and þus cweðende (f.10v, 14-17) (35) ঌ wƥre gefylled. þæs wítegan cwyde ic ãtǵne mínne mĭþ mid bígspellum (f.19v, 14-15) (36) nĭ þín cyning þõ cymð tďঠ gedæfte. and rít uppan tamre assene and hyre folan. (f.30r, 6-7) the last example included under this sub-heading, (36), is an instance of anastrophe (type c according to mitchell 1985: 447) which has passed unnoticed to bosworth, who even rearranges the word-order, rewriting it as òín cyning cymþ to ðé (1991: 383). we assume that punctuation here averts the reading þe cymð to gedæfte where þe is a relative particle rather than a 2nd person pronoun. actually, it clearly indicates that preposition tď does not govern adjective gedæfte, thus highlighting the preposition stranding, as well as the rhetorical and grammatical values. 2. to distinguish a long element from the subsequent one. a clear example is (37), where the punctus marks the np: (37) eornostlíce ealle cnõoressa fram abrahame oð dauid. synd fõowertyne cnõoressa (f.2v, 8-9) 3.to relate the two particles in correlative constructions such as fram… oþ / tď, þe… þe, and… and, ne… ne, ãn… ďþer, and ãn… ãn old english punctuation revisted 63 in spite of not being fully systematic throughout the gospel, these constructions are rendered by means of puncti (38), excepting ãn… ãn, which entails the use of the punctus elevatus followed by and (39): (38) ঌ ofer õow cume ƥlc rihtwís blďd þe wæs ãgoten ofer eorþan. fram abelys blďde þæs rihtwísan. oð zacharias blďd barachias suna (f.34v, 21-24) (39) sõge ঌ þãs míne twõgen suna sittan ãn on þíne swíþran healfeঠ and ãn on þíne wynstran on þínum ríce; (f.29r, 10-12) all in all, the function of punctuation at clausal level is the grammatical one, excepting vocative structures, where punctuation also signals the end of their rising tone, and could therefore be also interpreted as a rhetorical marker. as for the pde counterparts, ø is the most common one, though commas may be encountered with vocatives and when marking long elements (quirk 1999: 1627-1628). 4) phrasal level at this level, the scope of punctuation marks comprises the different elements of a given phrase. the inventory used at this level comprises both the punctus elevatus and the punctus. once again, both the proposal for modernization and the function will be discussed at the end of this section. the most important uses are the following ones: a) to relate the elements belonging to a noun phrase punctuation is used to mark the relations established within one np. for instance, the punctus elevatus is used twice in order to highlight the connection either between a determiner and the head (40), or between a noun and its noun complement. as for the punctus, it enhances the connection between the noun and either a genitive or, mostly, an apposition (41): (40) and þonne sďna finde gyt ãneঠ assene getíggede and hyre folan mid | hyreঠ (ff.29v, 26 – 30r, 1) (41) and hí nemnað his naman. emanuhel (f.3r, 1) teresa marqués aguado 64 b) to enumerate phrases there is a clear example of enumeration, which is a list of evil actions (hence, all of them np’s), joined by means of puncti elevati and, especially puncti, as shown in (42): (42) of þƥre heortan cumaþ yfle geþancasঠ mannslyhtas. unrihthƥmedu. forligru. stale. lõase gewitnyssa. tãllíce word þis synt þã ðing þe þone mann besmítað; ne besmít þone mann þõah hõ unþwogenum handum ete. (f.22r, 22-26) c) to mark coordinate phrases under this heading we include phrases coordinated by inserting both punctuation and a coordinator. these coordinators are copulative for the most part, although adversative and disjunctive ones are also present. we may refer to, for instance, the full list of the twelve apostles, whose names are connected by inserting puncti and the coordinator and (43), where enumeration is also present. although the punctus clearly prevails, the punctus elevatus may also be found, as in (44). this tendency clearly contrasts the results rendered for copulative clauses, where any of the three positurae may appear: (43) òis synt sďðlíce þƥra twelf apostola naman; se forma is simon þe ys genemned põtrus. and andreas hys brďðor. iacobus zebedei. and iohannes hys brďður. philippus. and bartholomeus. thomas. and matheus. puplicanus and iacobus alphei and taddeus. simon chananeus. and iudas scarioth þe hyne belƥwde; (f.13v, 3-9) (44) òĭ sďðlíce þonne ðĭ fæste smyra þín hõafod. and þwõah þíne ansǵne ঌ þĭ ne sǵ gesewen fram mannum fæstendeঠ ac þínum fæder þe ys on díglumঠ and þín fæder þe gesyhð on dǵglum hit ãgylt þõ; (f.8v, 17-18) d) to mark off the word ū given its shortness, the word ŭ is graphically separated from the immediate text to prevent confusion in 3 out of 10 occurrences. it is enclosed by puncti, which are a visual device employed to separate them from the surrounding old english punctuation revisted 65 context (45), although grünberg also suggested that these instances “possibly mark a more solemn intonation” (1967: 27-28): (45) ne gewít fram þƥre. ƥ. ƥrþãm ealle þing gewurðan (f.6v, 9-10) with the exception of d), whose function has already been described, it is the grammatical function that prevails at this level, excepting enumerations, which may also belong to the field of rhetoric. according to this description, only enumerations imply the insertion of commas (quirk 1999: 1619). conclusions in the previous section, the uses of punctuation marks in the gospel according to st. matthew have been classified into four levels and discussed accordingly, specifying the role of each mark. taking into consideration the information offered here, some conclusions may be drawn from the study of the punctuation system: first. particular and consistent uses have been identified, thus revealing that the use of mediaeval punctuation is far from haphazard. in this vein, punctuation symbols can be allocated to particular levels: the section marker is an exclusively macro-textual indicator and the punctus versus is virtually restricted to the macro-textual and sentential levels, whereas the punctus elevatus and the punctus frequently overlap, although the latter is more common, especially at clausal level. therefore, symbols might be ranked according to the level where they are found. second. notwithstanding this classification of symbols and their clear consistency at macro-textual level, for instance, overlapping is still to be noted at some points, as in the above-mentioned genealogy of jesus christ or the examples of juxtaposition and coordination. this phenomenon reveals that consistency relates to the function and uses of punctuation symbols, and not necessarily to a particular mark, as rodríguez-álvarez has noted in relation to teresa marqués aguado 66 15th-century legal documents (1999: 29). nonetheless, the uses and functions outlined here for the different marks are not fully consistent in all the contexts identified, as arakelian suggested (1975: 616). third. in view of this analysis, the prevailing function of punctuation in the gospel should be determined. on the one hand, the high number of vocative structures, instances of direct speech, etc., feature a text to be orally transmitted, and would thus indicate a prevalence of the rhetorical function. so does the use of discourse markers or the punctuation inserted in central religious tenets such the beatitudes. on the other hand, punctuation in juxtaposition is eminently grammatical, as well as that found at phrasal level. however, the general tendency for punctuation is to mark both syntactic relations and pauses. this is the case of subordination, as discussed above. this mixture of functions suits to the main aim of the gospel: this is a religious text aimed at christening people, whose main access to culture was via oral transmission (rhetorical function), so that the message had to be properly organised in order to convey the orthodox doctrine of the church (grammatical function). fourth. as regards modernization, functional equivalents have been sought. there is not a one-to-one relationship between an 11th-century punctuation symbol and a pde equivalent, owing to the limited repertory of punctuation marks, which gives way to overlapping. table 1, divided into the four levels dealt with here, summarizes the proposal for modernization. the punctuation marks for each use have been ranked according to their frequency. old english punctuation revisted 67 table 1. proposal for modernization punctuation marks uses and functions pde counterpa rt ; / ¶ to separate chapters . ; / . to separate paragraphs . ¶ / ; /. to mark semantically-independent senseunits . / : ; / ঠ / . to mark independent sentences . / ? ; / ঠ / . to mark juxtaposed sentences . / ; ; / ঠ / . to mark coordinate clauses , / ø ; / ঠ / . to mark subordinate clauses , / “”/ ø . / ঠ to distinguish the vocative expression from the rest of the clause , . / ঠ to mark elements belonging to the same clause , / ø . / ঠ to relate the two particles in correlative constructions ø ঠ / . to relate the elements belonging to an np ø ঠ / . to enumerate phrases , . / ঠ to mark coordinate phrases ø / , . to mark off the word ŭ ø in the light of this analysis, as well as of those carried out by other scholars, more texts belonging to the old and middle english periods should be revised, bearing in mind that modernization, though complex, is possible, and that punctuation is not haphazardly used, but follows a relatively systematic set of principles. teresa marqués aguado university of málaga teresa marqués aguado 68 references alonso almeida, f. 2002: punctuation practice in a late medieval english medical remedybook. folia linguistica historica 12. 1-2: 207-232. arakelian, p. g. 1975: punctuation in a late middle english manuscript. neuphilologische mitteilungen 76: 614-624. blake, n. f. 1979: the english language in medieval literature. methuen, london – new york. bosworth, j. & t. n. toller 1991[1898]: an anglo-saxon dictionary. oxford university press, oxford. calle martín, j. 2004: punctuation practice in a 15th-century arithmetical treatise (ms bodley 790). neuphilologische mitteilungen 4: 407-422. calle martín, j. & a. miranda garcía 2005: aspects of punctuation in the old english apollonius of tyre. folia linguistica historica 26: 45-64. esteban segura, m. l. 2005: the punctuation system of the west-saxon version of the gospel according to saint john. linguistica e filologia 21: 29-44. fakundiny, l. 1970: the art of old english verse composition. review of english studies 21: 129-142. gradon, p. 1983: punctuation in a middle english sermon. in stanley, e. g. & d. gray eds. five hundred years of words and sounds. a. s. brewer, cambridge: 39-48. grünberg, m. 1967: the west-saxon gospels: a study of the gospel of st. matthew with text of the four gospels. scheltema & holkema nv, amsterdam. harlow, c. g. 1959: punctuation in some manuscripts of ælfric. review of english studies 10, 37: 1-19. old english punctuation revisted 69 heyworth, p. l. 1981: the punctuation of middle english texts. in heyworth, p. l. ed. medieval studies for j. a. w. bennett. clarendon press, oxford: 139-157. liuzza, r. m. ed. 1994-2000: the old english version of the gospels. 2 vols. oxford university press, oxford. lucas, p. j. 1971: sense-units and the use of punctuation-markers in john capgrave’s chronicle. archivum linguisticum 2: 3-24. marqués aguado, t. 2005. el evangelio según san mateo en sajón occidental: edición electrónica, estudio léxico y sistema de puntuación. unpublished ma dissertation. university of málaga, málaga. miranda garcía, a., j. calle martín & d. moreno olalla 2006: the old english apollonius of tyre in the light of the old english concordancer. in renouf, a & a. kehoe eds. the changing face of corpus linguistics. rodopi, amsterdam – new york: 81-98. mitchell, b. 1980: the dangers of disguise: old english texts in modern punctuation. review of english studies 31, 124: 385-413. mitchell, b. 1985: old english syntax. 2 vols. clarendon press, oxford. morgan, m. m. 1952: a treatise in cadence. the modern language review 48: 156-164. parkes, m. b. 1978: punctuation, or pause and effect. in murphy, j. j. ed. medieval eloquence. studies in the theory and practice of medieval rhetoric. university of california press, berkeley los angeles – london: 127-42. parkes, m. b. 1992: pause or effect. an introduction to the history of punctuation in the west. scolar press, hants. quirk, r., s. greenbaum, g. leech & j. svartvik 1999[1972]: a comprehensive grammar of contemporary english. longman, london. teresa marqués aguado 70 rodríguez álvarez, a. 1999: the role of punctuation in 15th-century vernacular deeds. folia linguistica historica 19, 1-2: 25-51. ronberg, g. 1995: they had their points: punctuation and interpretation in english renaissance literature. in jucker, a. h. ed. historical pragmatics: pragmatic development in the history of english. john benjamins, amsterdam – philadelphia: 55-63. skeat, w. w. ed. 1871-1887: the old english gospels in anglo-saxon and northumbrian versions. cambridge university press, cambridge. strang, b. m. h. 1994[1970]. a history of english. routledge: london – new york. truss, l. 2003: eats, shoots and leaves. the zero tolerance approach to punctuation. profile books, london. warner, a. 1982: complementation in middle english and the methodology of historical syntax. croom helm, london. zeeman, e. 1956: punctuation in an early manuscript of love’s mirror. review of english studies 7. 25: 11-18. * † * selim07 (2).pdf ____________________________________________________________________ 227 lass, roger. 1997. historical linguistics and language change. cambridge studies in linguistics 81. cambridge: cambridge university press. (xxiii + 423). paperback. this is a major work on a major subject -and a major work in many senses. the first and more immediate, because it is “a kind of retrospective on nearly three decades of both being a historical linguist and worrying about the epistemic pretensions of what historical linguists do” (xiii). and if the author of such retrospective is roger lass, then, there are reasons to expect that his account of “how a specialist practitioner sees what he does” (xiii) will contain major insights, reflection and questioning on the subject. the work is, therefore, of theoretical nature and it came out at the right moment in the development of the discipline. after many years of expansion, growth, in cursions in new fields (sociolinguistics or pragmatics, f.i.) and, above all, the arrival of the new technologies which have brought about unsuspected tools and possibilities for research, the need to stop and think again on the “big questions” regarding theory was being felt among the historical linguists. in this respect, lass's work heralded in the conclusions of the 10 th conference on english historical linguistics held in manchester almost a year after its publication. most of the big names of the trade were there -lass included, of courseand his lecture, just as most of the plenary lectures and sessions imparted by them clearly showed the shift towards theoretical thought in pre sent and future work. historical linguistics and language change, avidly read when it was first published, deserved revisiting and thinking it over in the light of this trend -particularly, when it is already present in the bibliographical references of most works on english historical linguistics recently published. the book is not intended to be exhaustive, the author says, but deals with just a selection of issues. the list of the seven chapters covering those issues will show that hardly anything “important, interesting and tractable” (xiv) in historical linguistics has been left out: the past, the present and the historian; written records: evidence and argument; relatedness, ancestry and comparison; convergence and contact; the nature of reconstruction; ____________________________________________________________________ 228 time and change: the shape(s) of history; explanation and ontology. they are preceded by a preface (far longer than the general prologue is) where his position and main views are already stated, so that nobody can feel deceived afterwards. these are basically three: — historical linguistics belongs “to a general science of historically evolved systems, whose principles are more or less the same, regardless of the kind of system evolved” (xvii) — humans are not primarily “language builders” but end users (xviii) — languages are populations of variants moving through time (xviii) here is a second reason why i have used the adjective “major” for hlalc and thus attention will be paid in this review to each chapter individually, as many important subjects of our trade as historical linguists are contained in them. the first chapter goes in depth into the view of re searchers of any kind (biologists, linguists, historians, philosophers) as mythmakers -i.e. “they use metaphors to structure their particular epistemic field in their cognitive or explanative aim” (6). departing from the often forgotten truism that “all human knowledge is flawed, provisional & corrigible” (29) lass discusses the nature of our object of study (language in the traditional sense) and the nature of our work. interpretation happens in all cases, he says, and from his constructivist approach to cognition, denies (quite rightly in my view) the possibility of a “completely neutral account of facts” even when studying “direct witnesses.” the author proceeds immediately to support his thesis in his evaluation of the sources for historical linguistics in the second chapter written records: evidence and argument. i must warn that this is one of my favourite chapters in the book (the other is the final one). the list of issues dealt with is illustra tive: the nature of writing systems, the meaning of graphs in early texts, types of evidence such as the testimony of grammarians and phoneticians, metrics and rhyme, glosses and glossaries, and the representativeness of the textual evidence preserved. and typically in lass, his argumentation and exemplification are extremely detailed -one learns as much from the conclu sions as from the analyses themselves. the whole chapter is a brilliant and wellfounded lesson on good practice for philologists, where the distance between writing and speech is carefully described and assessed in every field ____________________________________________________________________ 229 relevant for linguistic change: orthography, writing systems, literary materials, modern editions of early texts… particularly appealing part 2.5.2., devoted to glosses and translations and part 2.7: “desperate remedies: interpreting vs. disappearing”. as for the first, the argumentation behind “stangella is not the oe word for pelican at all” (85) is a careful assessment of the nature and function of reference materials. the second challenges the validity of emendation for historical linguistics: “trying to reconstruct an individual's word choice is as fatuous as writing texts in a proto-language or reading ancient poems aloud in a reconstructed pronunciation” (100). both (as any other point in the chapter, really) throw light on important theoretical issues regarding the diffraction which always happens when looking back to past stages of languages and its causes. chapter 3, “relatedness, ancestry and comparison” revisits the basic neogrammarian topics from perspectives, which take this work to multidis ciplinary fields and ambitious theoretically risky waters: the mathematical theory of chaos, evolutionary biology, biosystematics. lass makes linguistic families depend on genuine historicity, where systems are characterised by “sensitive dependence on initial conditions” and by having replicators (heritable items), variation and selection processes. as such, since the ontological bases are similar, lass uses the cladistic terminology -which provides an updated and empowered description of genealogical connections among languages. he concludes that the neogrammarian methods are still indis pensable, when employed rightly, with all the necessary caveats and in the light of new developments in linguistic theory, in order to trace good linguis tic history. it could not be otherwise, as structural relations are what define language histories, in so far as they are also the defining core of languages. this argument is pursued in the following chapters: chapter 4 convergence and contact and chapter 5 the nature of reconstruction. “endogenous change” is discussed in the first of these two chapters. the hypothesis that “even if a language could be totally isolated from any contact whatever … it would change in just the same way … as any other language” (208) seems to be a logical consequence of the theoretical assumption that languages are systems subject to imperfect self-replication. there are, however, two unclear points here: one, is it really the case with natural languages -i.e. can we find a language which has remained isolated long enough to test the hypothesis? second, why is replication imperfect? ____________________________________________________________________ 230 the classic explanation in “biology for beginners” points to combinatory reasons -plus various kinds of factors, which increase the frequency of certain basic combinations. what are those factors in the case of (supposedly) isolated languages? social interaction within a closed community, certainly -plus a host of intrinsic forces of the languages themselves. how are those forces favoured or handicapped in the case of non-isolated societies (the vast majority)? this, however, is not to deny that certain basic in-built properties of human languages cannot be neutralised by extra -linguistic circumstances. but i think that the above-mentioned question should have been addressed to in a clearer way. phonological change is dissected in chapter 5 -the nature of reconstruction. after all, this book is by roger lass, and being of the kind it is, a long chapter on historical phonology seasoned by a re -consideration of the gr eat vowel shift was to be expected. his aim is to investigate how much and what can be reconstructed -and he applies the cladistic concepts explained in chapter 3 to the methods both of comparative and internal reconstruction. the general conclusion is that sound change continues to be, as always, the most fertile ground for reconstructive theory, followed by morphological evolution (particularly when connected directly with phonology). of course, if what one wants to prove is that the neogrammarian model is still valid. at first sight, this seems either a bit of a cheat or a circular argument, but what lurks here is really the old question: why should we be able to construct phonological histories so nicely whereas things become increasingly difficult when we proceed to morphosyntax? why, if phonology evolves far more quickly than morphology or syntax, can we recognise family likenesses among languages there… but it is so hard to do the same in morphosyntax? lass quite sharply points out that in one case we are dealing with individual items, and in the other, with paradigms. i would also consider the fact that phonological change is most directly connected with physical constraints consequently, directionalities are, in this respect, far more predictable. additionally, we have to take into account that the kinds of evidence we need for our reconstruction are radically different: in the first case words, at most tone groups; in the second, texts. and as far as texts are concerned, lassís remarks on proto-languages are indirectly a warning at the blind faith ____________________________________________________________________ 231 which some tend to place in corpus linguistics. locating the key difference between proto-languages and living languages in the possibility of producing native utterances and/ or texts and not in the completeness of the material evidence available clearly leads to the conclusion that collections of corpora are per se condemned to perennial incompleteness (in this sense whether corpora are made of living or dead languages is irrelevant). in my view, the new technologies have allowed the processing of overwhelming statistical data which are illuminating in many ways (confirming or rejecting hypotheses, forewarning new possibilities or tendencies…) but bad theoretical models provide bad interpretations of the best data available and emphasis on good epistemological tools is, then rightly made in hlalc. more particular aspects are, to me, questionable: for example, his consid eration of absolute constructions, dative of possession and non-accusative verb -objects in indo-european languages as possible morphoclines, without clarifying whether some kind of linguistic area might be involved. more anecdotally, i partly agree with lass in that many historical novels or new texts in extinct languages is not a serious pursuit as a form of activity in linguistics (274). but it is amusing, and can produce very illustrative allegories very much, by the way, like many fierce defences of the real existence of the great vowel shift. this chapter and the following one (chapter 6: time and change: the shape(s) of history) are probably the densest and most difficult of the book. this is due partly to the nature of the themes discussed and partly to lass's propensity to what he himself acknowledged once as pomposity (1987: xvii). this becomes particularly acute when facing major theoretical enterprises, as it is the case here, above all, in chapter 6. after having identified the main perceptions of language change (change as loss, flux, creatio ex nihilo, degeneration, progress) and having placed them in their corresponding theoretical backgrounds. the author goes back to his re -consideration of linguistic change in the wider frame of general science. he distinguishes between classical newtonian time and non-reversible of thermodynamic time as a key point in the identification of the possible directionality of changes. he places linguistic evolutions in the second type, in so far as they move through cycles: the history of any dynamical system (= any evolving ensemble where variation of a parameter setting produces a change of state (293). other notions include attractors of various kinds and chreods or autocatalytic devel____________________________________________________________________ 232 opmental patterns.this model is also employed to discuss in this light lin guistic novelty, and more particularly, the origin of language (another of the big questions) and what he calls junk . the problem of the origin of human language remains, for the most part unsolved (through recent anthropological research has provided suggesting hints) -but what is clear is that the kind of languages we can observe and re construct are already very sophisticated entities where real structural invention is, for the most part, not possible. what seems to happen, rather, is that languages produce junk (noise, redundancy, exceptions…) very much like biological systems, which needn’t have any function in particular, but, may, if the occasion comes, be employed to serve other roles or integrate new systems. this is explained by adapting again a term form palaeobiology: exaptation, which denotes “the co-optation during evolution of structures originally developed for other purposes” (316). the idea is certainly compatible with the more recent views on evolution as opportunistic and very much depending on the many possibilities of the very moment (and therefore, chaotic, cf. arsuaga & martinez: 1988). this is, doubtless, a daring view: the interpretation of linguistic history in the same terms of other evolutionary sciences (biology, basically) may, perhaps, be questioned from cert ain theoretical positions. personally, i am not completely convinced that such a step can be given, since i am not sure either of up to what point living organisms, species, languages and language families can be equated. but in any case, i find it extraordinarily vivid as an image and as a metaphorical representation of what we know about the evolution of languages. it also provides, in my opinion, more powerful and parsimonious insights into the subject than any other which simple assumes therapy or progress as reasons for change. in any case, my feeling is that considerable thought must be devoted to lass’s proposal in this line -even in the case that the concept had to be rejected in the end, much will be learnt from the whole research process. chapter 7 (explanation and ontology) ought to be better described as a cocktail in which the issues of the whole work are revisited in generalisations regarding the nature of change, the logical structure of explanation, and a vindication of the duties of historical linguistsî change is of course a sublu____________________________________________________________________ 233 nary axiom (325) and in order to reach any satisfactory knowledge about it we need to think about the logical structure of explanation. lass distin guishes here between explanation as a technical term in academic discourse and loosely everyday uses -and states that rigorous positive types of explanations cannot be applied to the history of cultural artefacts. the huge temporal frame for most truly structural linguistic changes, and the fact that most languages show plenty of undesirable configurations cast suspicion on the idea that languages evolved either prophilactically or therapeutically in directions somehow embedded in the human ability to speak (whatever this may consist of). lass typically labels this as romantic nonsense while he clearly distin guishes between over-refined sensibility and lack of linguistic knowledge (341). he advocates the need to remember that a language, as a means of communication is a shared system employed for a variety of purposes. the need to separate structure and function leads him to deny the possibility of speakers to assess the directionality of variation in their output, since for them languages are by and large a non-focal historical given (361). i think lass is right for the most part in his discussion of sociolinguistic approaches to change -but i’m still under the impression that speakers may, up to a point, make choices among variants because of social patterns of behaviour (i.e. prestige) rather than any kind of linguistic feelings. how many of these choices lead to structural changes must probably be further investigated. in this same line of argumentation, the notion of lethal variants should have been explained as well, for a basic issue lies behind: how can we decide which is lethal in language -impeding communication, perhaps? the chapter -and the workfinishes with an envoi in which the basic ideas advanced in the preface are re -stated again in the light of everything he has written so far. he insists on the role of the linguistic historians as model builders -models valid till more powerful explanations and better evidence are produced. he also advocates a clear distinction between what should be the primary concern of any good description of language change (system, structure) and social, pragmatic approaches which, however interesting, and illuminating, and attention deserving, are complementary. i very much suspect that this is and will be the main trend of theoretical historical linguistic thought for years to come. ____________________________________________________________________ 234 hlalc deserves, for me, the adjective major because all that have been said so far -but there are other reasons with which i will finish this review. in the first place, because lass’s work has always been interesting and stimulating -in the sense that it has always raised not only controversy, but also further questioning about new paths for exploration. even if you dissent from his views (as i do, quite radically, about mozart and tchaikovsky) his points are very often challenging: you generally end up by digging up from them suggestive ideas, mew paths or keys to face problems. his work is also peculiar as he allows to percolate more from personal experience than many would: but who said this is wrong? in any case, in this work that experience allows us to see a true scholar at work, always ready to consider argumentation regarding his work and to revise not only conclu sions, but also methods and theoretical models. good examples are the beginning of footnote 1 to chapter 7 (i am grateful to all t he reviewers and attackers of lass (1980) for giving me important and often distressing things to think aboutî; his revision of drifts and major state changes in page 301 (this has been interpreted, (mistakenly) as a kind of orthogenesis or directed evolution -notoriously in lass 1974, which i regret, but was not smart enough then to avoid-); and notably in point 7.2 in which the author revisits an earlier self, and is not entirely satisfied by what he sees, but not entirely repentant). the unmistakably lassian touch appears in this work at its best: the customary detailed, often intricate argumentation furnished with all sorts of long examples, and all this topped with the usual ironical, unorthodox (and generally very much to the point) remarks of the type: the velaric ingressive airstream used in clicks is the mechanism for biologically necessary opera tions like sucking or cigarette smoking (318). i find this combination of scholarship and humour very nice, and not only because of the old chestnut that one should not trust people who take themselves too seriously. i like it above all because roger lass has always reminded me of archpriest ripamilán, a highly commendable character in la regenta. he is notorious, among other things, because he adored dancing rigadoons privately, but for him clarin has one of the very rare laudatory remarks of la regenta: he knew how to deal seriously with serious matters (my translation). ____________________________________________________________________ 235 references arsuaga, j. l. & martínez, i. 1998: la especie elegida. madrid: editorial temas de hoy. lass, r. 1987. the shape of history. london: j. m. dent & sons. trinidad guzmán university of león — + — addenda: a dialogue between the reviewer [tg] & roger lass [rl] [tg] third: additional questions and comments i did not include in my review. of course, i'm including them here simply because i'd like you to have them; don't answer them if you don't feel like it, after all most are silly: 1.as far as “quanta and phonetic gradualism: a few suggestions” (5.2.2) i wonder what the ro le of phonetic labs and their results can be in this “fineness of grid”? [rl] a big role. i've been reading some very intersting computational phonetic stuff from a former student of mine at oxford, and i think this is the direction real research in phonology ought to go. [tg] 2.i'm not sure that “syntax is not learned, but constructed -or generated” (p. 265) as opposed to phonology and morphology. by each genera tion? as you may imagine, i have first-hand evidence now about language acquisition by kids (poor chaps, two linguists as parents!) and i feel they also ____________________________________________________________________ 236 learn syntactic structures in a similar way they learn morphological facts -but i may be wrong. [rl] i agree, to a large extent. did i really say that, or was i outlining other peoples' positions? [tg] 3.6.3.3. p. 297: would you consider mass media or social climbers as “attractors” ot is it, perhaps, mixing theoretical approaches (socio ling–uis – tics and the like) a bit too much? [rl] must think about this one. 'attractors' are more abstract than people. [tg] 4.same section, following page, long-term cycles of change. since you like biology and following with your footnote 44 (p. 382): i have re cently been reading about large genetic patterns in the evolution of living beings someting like, a fifth finger in human hands located in the same genetic map and arrangement as other anatomic features (appendix, maybe?) and therefore depending one on the other. [rl] yes. but there are different kinds of patterns. the 5th finger, etc. is a kind of le ftover from the original bottleneck that allowed only the five-digit limb to get through, so the map itself is a survival. this isn't so much a pattern as a residue. patterns of development are something different, but i don't want to say anything, as i'm still confused. [tg] 5.polygenesis -monogenesis of languages. this is one of the points i'm most intrigued about at the moment. that's why i'm reading about anthropology (extremely popular in spain, after atapuerca's findings, by the way). they appartently make human language connected with the loss of the ability to breath and drink at the same time (they do not specify whether good wine or simply milk and water). if you feel like having a look into this there is a good web page in english: http://www.mncn.csic.es/atapuerca/bienve.htm since i don't think their books have been translated into english. they, by the way, also cherish the opinion that evolution and change tend to be rather haphazardous. [rl] well of course there's a relation between language as we now have it and restructuring of the velum and larynx. in newborn babies the larynx is in ____________________________________________________________________ 237 the high position it is in adults of other primates, shoved up against the velum, and it drops later on in postnatal development. but though this was an enabling feature, surely the brain software, development of the left hemi sphere, etc. had to be at least simultaneous. it wouldn't do too much good to have a nice speechd apparatus without a brain to give it input. i'll look at the website. thanks. [tg] 6.6.4., p. 311. on the simplification of ie case-system. my jaime says his friend the indo-europeanist would ascribe himself to the thesis that there were fewer cases in ie -the evolution therefore being rather different. this view is becoming increasingly popular here. [rl] i know there's a debate. is primitive ie more like hittite or sanskrit? so far the evidence seems to me more in favour of the latter; though in some families like uralic there's the opposite pattern. finnish, the 'lithuanian of balto-finnic', with 16 cases clearly developed from an ancestor with only 5. roger lass, university of cape town trinidad guzmán, university of león * † * selim09.doc mercedes salvador, selim 9 (1999): 57—68 the evening singer of riddle 8 (k-d) although various bird solutions have been offered for exeter r.8 (k-d), wyatt’s “nightingale” has not been seriously challenged so far.1 the etymological correspondence between oe nihtegala (“the night singer”) and textual “æfensceop” (5a), as pointed out by that scholar (71), cannot be haphazard. the riddle however presents some obscure aspects which have hindered the unanimous acceptance of this solution. this paper sets out to demonstrate that these textual peculiarities in fact constitute no obstacle to the maintainance of “nightingale” as the most probable answer to this riddle. to begin with, the clues of r.8 do not seem to be as obscure as those found in other texts of the collection, since most of them point to a bird whose main characteristic is its singing abilities. the notorio us capacity of this bird was already much celebrated in classical literature, and r.8 constitutes a further sample of this poetic tradition. notably, the first four lines of the riddle as well as 6b and 7a are no doubt devoted to the description of the bird’s exceptional warbling. ic purh mu p sprece mongum reordum, wrencum singe, wrixle geneahhe heafodwo pe, hlude cirme, healde mine wisan, hleopre ne mipe, eald æfensceop, eorlum bringe blisse in burgum, ponne ic bugendre stefne styrme; stille on wicum sittaí nigende. saga hwæt ic hatte, pe swa scirenige sceawendwisan 1 actually, it was dietrich who first thought of this bird as a probable answer for this riddle although he hesitated between “nightingale” and “pipe” (1859: 462). later, he changed his mind and put forward “wood-pigeon” instead (1865: 239). wyatt’s edition however favoured dietrich’s “nightingale, ” which was in turn supported by trautmann and williamson. a recent discussion of this text is provided by hill, who regards “starling” as a probable solution to this riddle. mercedes salvador bello 56 hlude onhyrge, hæle pum bodige wilcumena fela wope minre.1 the expressions “mongum reordum” (1b) and “bugendre stefne” (6b -7a) clearly refer to the nightingale’s ample voice register. similarly, “wrencum singe” (2a) and “wrixle geneahhe / heafodwo pe”(2b-3a) allude to the bird’s excellent capacity to modulate the tone when singing, a distinctive quality which had already been expounded by pliny in his natural history: modulatus editur sonus, et nunc continuo spiritu trahitur in longum, nunc variatur inflexo, nunc distinguitur conciso, copulatur intorto, promittitur revocato; infuscatur ex inopinato, interdum et secum ipse murmurat, plenus, gravis, acutus, creber, extentus, ubi visum est vibrans--summus, medius, imus… (x.xliii.81-82)2 tupper pointed out the similarity between the beginning of r.8 and the opening lines of aldhelm’s r.22 (“acalantida”) which also describe the vocal abilities of this bird: “vox mea diversis variatur pulcra figuris, / raucis onis numquam modulabor carmina rostris; / spurca colore tamen, sed non sum spreta canendo” (1-3).3 as in r.8–“healde mine wisan, hleopre ne mipe” (4)–, 1 the edition of this text is from krapp and dobbie. mackie (1934) translates the riddle as follows: “i speak from my mouth with many voices, sing with modulated notes, often change my speech, call out loudly, keep to my custom, do not refrain from sound. an old evening poet, i bring to men bliss in the cities. when i cry out in a voice of varying pitch, they sit quiet in their dwellings, listening. say what i am called, who, like a woman jester, loudly mimic the habits of a buffoon, and announce with my voice many welcome things to men” (99). 2 rackham’s translation: «the sound is given out with modulations, and now is drawn out into a long note with one continuous breath, now varied by managing the breath, now made staccato by checking it, or linked together by prolonging it, or carried on by holding it back; or it is suddenly lowered, and at times sinks into a mere murmur, loud, low, bass, treble, with trills, with long notes, modulated when this seems good--soprano, mezzo, baritone … » (345). 3 the edition of this text is by pitman. lapidge’s translation: “my glorious voice warbles with various melodies: i shall never sing my songs with a harsh-sounding beak. for all that i am dusky in colour, yet i am not to be scorned for my singing” (lapidge and rosier 74). as pointed out by erhardt -siebold (183), these lines in turn parallel those in alcuin’s poem “de luscinia”: «spreta colore tamen fueras non spreta canendo, / lata sub angusto gutture vox sonuit, / dulce melos iterans vario modulamine musae / atque creatorem semper in ore canens.» (7-10) [spurned though you were / for your colour, for your singing you were not spurned; / your swelling voice sounded in your narrow throat, / repeating its sweet tunes in different the evening singer of riddle 8 (k d) 57 the nightingale is also said to sing uninterruptedly in alcuin’s poem “de luscinia”: “hoc natura dedit, naturae et conditor almus, / quem tu laudasti vocibus assiduis…” (19-20).1 lines 10b and 11 of r.8–“hælepum bodige / wilcumena fela wope minre”– probably allude to the tradition that considers the nightingale as a typical harbinger of spring. as pfeffer states, “the true nightingale’s song is remarkable only during its mating season in the spring… its song is not at all distinctive during the winter” (93). thus, it is probably due to the fact that the bird has traditionally been associated to spring that aldhelm’s r.22 also makes a reference to this: “sic non cesso canens fato terrente futuro; / nam me bruma fugat, sed mox æstate redibo” (4-5).2 despite its clear allusion to the etymology of oe nihtegala, the term “æfensceop” (5a) has however posed some problems as several scholars seem to be reluctant to accept the notion of the nightingale as a typical night singer. yet the reputation of this bird as a nocturnal singer is well attested in classical and medieval literature. for example, pliny’s natural history explains that this bird sings incessantly by night at the beginning of spring: “luscinis diebus ac noctibus continuis xv garrulus sine intermissu cantus densante se frondium germine…” (x.xliii.81).3 alcuin’s poem on the nightingale similarly refers to this: “noctibus in furvis nusquam cessavit ab odis / vox veneranda sacris, o decus atque decor” (11-12).4 although we could conjecture that the owl might also fit the condition established by the æfensceop clue, in literary tradition the nightingale’s reputation as a night melodies, / always singing odes to the creator.] (godman’s edition and translation 145) 1 “this was the gift of nature and of nature’s kindly creator / whom you praised with unceasing voice …” (godman 145). 2 lapidge’s translation: “thus i do not cease singing in the face of a frightening future fate: for winter puts me to flight, but i shall return as soon as summer comes” (lapidge and rosier 74). the reputation of the nightingale as a harbinger of spring was also kept throughout the middle ages as can be observed in chaucer’s parliament of fowls: “the nyghtyngale, that clepeth forth the grene leves newe …” (351-52). in medieval english lyrics, the bird is also frequently associated with spring: “when pe nyhtegale singes pe wodes waxen grene; / lef ant gras ant blosme springes in aueryl, y wene” (brook 63). 3 “nightingales pour out a ceaseless gush of song for fifteen days and nights on end when the buds of the leaves are swelling …” (rackham 345). 4 godman’s translation: “on gloomy nights your adorable voice never ceased / your sacred songs, my pride and beauty” (145). mercedes salvador bello 58 singer seems to surpass that of the owl because of the ceaseless character of the former’s singing customs in spring. this idea can be for instance observed in the owl and the nightingale, in which the owl accuses the nightingale of singing endlessly during the whole night: “ac thu singest alle longe night / from eve forth hit is dai-light…” (331-32).1 these passages thus confirm the widespread knowledge of the nightingale as a traditional night singer as the expression “eald æfensceop” seems to suggest.2 the key term “æfensceop” however clearly implies a comparison to a poet or scop, as williamson for example has pointed out: “each nightingale has a repertoire of songs and the singers compete with one another… nightingales are said to practice often and to imitate verses…” (155). he supports this assumption on a passage from pliny’s natural history: [luscinis] plures singulis sunt cantus, nec iidem omnibus, sed sui cuique. certant inter se, palamque animosa contentio est… meditantur aliae iuveniores versusque quos imitentur accipiunt… (x.xliii.82-3).3 in alcuin’s “de luscinia,” the nightingale is even personified as a devout christian who continuously sings continuously to praise god: “felix o nimium, dominum nocteque dieque / qu i studio tali semper in ore canit” (1116).4 the identification of the nightingale with the poet is also a well-known cliché in medieval vernacular poetry of western europe. as pfeffer for example explains, “for the occitan troubadours, the nightingale is perceived as a parallel to the poet inciting the troubadour to sing or reminding the poet 1 a famous literary reference to the nocturnal singing habits of the bird can be found in juliet’s speech trying to convince romeo to stay longer: «wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day. / it was the nightingale and not the lark / that pierc’d the fearful hollow of thine ear. / nightly she sings on yond pomegranate tree. / believe me, love, it was the nightingale.» (romeo and juliet iii.v.1-5). 2 i thus agree with williamson ( 157) that “eald” simply indicates familiarity. 3 rackham’s translation:“the birds [nightingales] have several songs each, and not all the same but every bird songs of its own. they compete with one another, and there is clearly an animated rivalry between them … other younger birds practise their music, and are given verses to imitate …” (345). 4 “how happy is he who both day and night / with such zeal always has songs for the lord on his lips!” (godman 145). furthermore, the comparison of the nightingale with a poet is actually quite frequent in later latin lyrics like the carmina burana, as pfeffer points out (89). the evening singer of riddle 8 (k d) 59 of his unhappiness in love and his inability to compose” (90). given that the metaphorical association of this bird with the figure of the poet became commonplace in medieval literature, we might assume that the term “æfensceop” constitutes an early example of this literary convention. so far, the identification of the riddlic creature as the nighingale seems to be unquestionable. nevertheless, a major problem posed by this text is the presence of what seems to be a runic character between the end of r.7 and the beginning of r.8, above the word “reordum” (1b).1 as there are occasional cases of runic -like marks which have been regarded as probable extra-textual clues giv ing up the answer to other riddles, some editors have thought of the possibility that the rune of no.8 might also be pointing to the initial letter of the solution. r.6 (sun) is the clearest example of runic clues of this kind, as two sigels are found above the term “crist” (2a) and at the end of the poem, respectively. those runes have both been interpreted as the initial letter of oe sunne (or lat. sol), the answer to this riddle.2 in the case of r.8, the extra -textual mark has been read by most editors as runic cen so that different solutions have been proposed depending on this initial letter, often ignoring the evidence of the term “æfensceop” and the other clues of the riddle. on this basis, scholars have offered lat. cicuanus or catanus (jay), oe cuscote (wood-pigeon), and oe ceo (chough,), among other tentative answers.3 nevertheless, williamson questions the validity of this argument, as he observes that, if the mark were really a rune, it would rather be “closer to ur than to cen” (154).4 he also notes: “the song-birds must be judged as they fit the descriptive language of the riddle, not as the in itial letters of their names correspond to the elusive ‘rune’” (154). following wyatt’s interpretation of “æfensceop” as an allusion to oe nihtegala, williamson thus sticks to the proposal “nightingale” (156), although he does not offer a conclusive explanation for the relationship between the marginal letter 1 see chambers’ facsimile edition (fol. 103a). williamson provides a discussion on this marginal mark (154-56) and offers comparative plates (53). 2 for further possible cases of runic clues of this kind, see williamson’s comments on r.17 and r.14. 3 see williamson (153) for a detailed account of the different solutions provided for this riddle. 4 see williamson’s comparative plates (53). mercedes salvador bello 60 and the riddle solution:1 “i believe the mark to have been made by a postmedieval peruser of the text who thought himself to be making a ‘rune-like’ letter indicating the solution of the following riddle, ‘nightingale’” (156). to shed light on the confusion caused by so-called “rune,” it would be interesting to bring förster’s opinion into consideration. in the facsimile edit ion of the exeter book , he points out that “editors have sometimes mistaken modern casual scribbling for runes,” arguing that the mark in r.8 “is really a modern imitation of the old n in ne beom” as found in the foregoing manuscript line (chambers 64, note 29). williamson conversely contends that the mark cannot be that “modern,” “since it appears in the manuscript transcription made by robert chambers [in 1831]” (156), concluding that “the mark is long and thin and resembles very little the n in this or any other medieval text that i have seen” (156). indeed, the mark must have been placed as an in tentional post-scribal clue pointing to the solution. however, i would rather follow förster in so far as the mark is closer to an n than to a rune, since it clearly lacks the characteristic sharp stroke of runic ur or cen as found, for example, in cynewulf’s signature in christ 805 (fol. 19b).2 with the exception of its slightly increased length, the extra -textual mark certainly agrees with förster’s description of letter n in the codex: “rather tall and narrow, the first minim beginning with a wedge and the down strokes turning up on the line with a slight tick” (chambers 85).3 besides, the unusual length of the letter and the thin stroke are most probably due to post-scribal handwriting. hence, trautmann does not only state that this mark is an n but also suggests the plausibility that this letter could likewise hint at the solution nightingale: “es ist aber wirklich ein n, und ich nehme dies für eine weitere be stätig ung der lösung ‘nihtegale’” (71). according to this, the mark could be considered as a marginal n, written by a later scribe, such as the two sigels of r.6. we may still wonder why the scribe decided to add an n in r.8 instead of the corresponding runic nyd in accordance with the two sigels of r.6. a tentative answer to this question is that sigel perfectly functions as a clue pointing directly to the solution, since the runic character by itself embodies the 1 muir, the most recent editor of the manuscript, surprisingly does not offer any explanation for the presence of this controversial mark. 2 see williamson’s comparative plates for these letters (53). also, note by contrast the square-like stroke of the runic sigels in r.6 (fols.102b and 103a). 3 see also conner (71) for a description of this letter in the exeter manuscript. the evening singer of riddle 8 (k d) 61 hidden term (sun), adding a cryptic hint for a learned audience who would know the meaning of the rune. in the case of r.8, textual “æfensceop” already plays with the etymology of the solution, whereas nyd might actually confuse the reader as that rune could not be substituted by the term of the solution as occurs in r.6. the definitive acceptance of “nightingale” as the solution of r.8 still pre sents a further complication to take into account. in line 9, “scirenige” and “sceawendwisan” are two obscure terms which have provoked much contro versy. cosijn (128) interpreted “scirenige” as a variation of scericge, meaning “actress,” a reading supported by trautmann (6). thus, cosijn emended textual “scirenige” to sciernicge, citing a passage from the life of st. pelagia at the shrine 140.11: “sea pilagia wæs æryst mima in antiochia íære ceas tre, íæt is scericge on urum gepeode.”1 the correspondence between oe scirenige in r.8, as a variant of scericge, and lat. mima led some scholars to infer that this term could be pointing to a mimicking capacity on the part of the riddlic bird. following this argument, tupper, for example, discarded “nightingale” in favour of “jay,” on the basis that the latter “is a mime and imitates the s peech of buffoons–in other words, that the bird possesses the power of mimicry” (85). this conjecture is shared by mackie (1933)2 as well as by krapp and dobbie. in their arguments, there is however no strong basis to as sume that the correspondence mima/scirenige implies that the bird posses ses a mimicking ability. in this sense, it is worth noting that ælfric’s glossary equates “mimus oííe scurra” to oe “gligmann” (no.9, 302), meaning “gleeman, musician, minstrel, jester, player, buffoon” (bosworth and toller 227). interestingly, this entry occurs right after lat. “poeta” which is glossed as “sceop oííe leoíwyrhta” (no.8, 302). the juxtaposition of these terms in the list clearly reveals that mimus was considered semantically close to poeta or scop. this idea suggests that, if the connection between scirenige and lat. mima is to be accepted, it does not necessarity imply a mimicking capacity but rather musical and poetic activities performed by a scop or min strel. the equation scirenige/mima observ ed in the passage cited by cosijn there fore does not invalidate the solution nightingale. 1 cited by bosworth and toller (830). 2 as we can see in mackie’s inappropriate translation (1934) of the closing lines of the riddle: “say what i am called, who, like a woman jester, loudly mimic the habits of a buffoon …” (99). mercedes salvador bello 62 the etymological complexity of the term still requires further attention as bosworth and toller display two meanings for the term scire–“of light, clearly, brightly” and “of the voice, clearly” (837)–which seem to have been overlooked. as regards the first meaning, scire usually appears in contexts related to light as occurs, for example, in christ: ponne mid fere foldbuende se micla dæg meahtan dryhtnes æt midre niht mægne bihlæmeí, scire gesceafte… (867-70).1 as for the second meaning, the sole example mentioned by bosworth and toller is precisely the passage found in r.8.2 the phoenix poet uses a similar expression connecting the semantic field of sound with that of light when he refers to the excellent quality of the mythical bird’s warbling with the phrase “beorhtan reorde” (128b): [he] wrixleí woícræfte wundorlicor beorhtan reorde, ponne æfre byre monnes hyrde under heofonum, sippan heahcyning, wuldres wyrhta, woruld stapelode, heofon ond eorpan.” (127-131a)3 as regards “-nige,” grein associated the second compound of this controversial term to “nigende” (8a) in r.8 and to the verb hnigan (“to bend, bow down, incline, descend, decline, sink,” bosworth and toller 547). the term “scirenige” could be read literally as “declining brightly” or “declining light” (?), in other words, it might be the poet’s coinage to provide a further 1 bradley’s translation: “then with sudden swiftness upon the midnight, round about earth’s inhabitants and this shining universe will mightily blare the great day of the puissant lord …” also in a context related to light, the term occurs in andreas: “oípæt dryhten forlet dægcandelle / scire scinan”(835-836a). 2 they however read “scire cige” (“brightly call, ” 837) instead of manuscript “scirenige.” wyatt accepted this interpretation. 3 “he modulates his singing more wondrously, with clear voice, than ever a son of man heard below the heavens since the exalted king, creator of glory, founded the world, the heaven and the earth” (bradley 288). tupper (85) also pointed out the similarity between “wrixleí woícræfte” (127a) in the phoenix and “wrixle geneahhe / heafodwope” (2b-3a) in r.8. the evening singer of riddle 8 (k d) 63 clue alluding to the bird as a night singer or as a hint at the latin name of the bird, luscinia. a similar wordplay reference to the bird occurs in isidore’s etymologiae, in which luscinia is associated to the light of the emerging morning: “luscinia avis inde nomen sumpsit, quia cantu suo significare solet diei surgentis exortum, quasi lucinia” (xii.vii.37).1 a parallel etymological correspondence is also suggested in the description of this bird in the medieval bestiary, in which the term lucinia is associated with lucerna (lamp): “the nightingale bird, lucinia, takes this name because she is accustomed to herald the dawn of a new day with her song, as a lamp does (lucerna)” [white 139]. in this sense, we might tentatively conjecture that “scirenige” could have been selected, or even coined, by the riddler in order to suggest the latin etymology of the term luscinia, and thus associate the singing of the nightingale once more with the declining of light, i.e. night. bosworth and toller’s second meaning relates “scirenige” to the semantic field of sound. thus, taking “scirenige” as a compound made of scire (“of the voice, clearly”) and hnigan (“to bend, bow down, incline, descend, decline, sink”), this term could be pointing to the bird’s modulating voice, literally meaning “voice bending,” in other words, a further reference to the bird’s capacity to modulate its voice. in short, given that no other instances of scirenige have been recorded in the oe literary corpus, these two readings of the word cannot be fully demonstrated although they however leave out all other speculations of the meaning of the term as “actress” or “mime,” thus making cosijn’s emendation to sciernicge unnecessary. the term sceawendwisan,2 usually identified with sceawendspræc (glossed as lat. scarilitas), constitutes a final obstacle to the solving of the riddle as “nightingale,” since some editors claim that the adjective “scurrilous” would rather apply to a chattering bird such as the jay.3 this controversy derives from the scholars’ assumption that sceawendwise is a synonym of sceawendspræc. however, the fact that the two terms share the first compound is not at all indicative of a synonym relationship between them. according to 1 my translation: the nightingale is called so because it announces the coming of the morning (luscinia) as if it were called lucinia. 2 according to bosworth-toller, “a jesting song, song of a jester” (827). 3 williamson avoided this problem arguing that “given the absence, however, of any well-defined dramatic tradition in anglo-saxon england, we should be careful of assuming a one-to-one correspondence between the lemma and the gloss” (154). mercedes salvador bello 64 bosworth and toller, sceawendwise means “a jesting song, song of a jester” (827) and, regardless of its lexical closeness to sceawendspræc, this seems to be the meaning that best suits the other clues of the riddle. williamson like wise does not agree with the equation sceawendwise/sceawendspræc and translates the first as “showing words” or “words that reveal a story” (154) in accordance to the identification of the bird as a poet or minstrel. in this sense, it is worth recalling the description of the nightingale’s warbling in pliny’s natural history in which the bird is considered as “garrulous” as he sings incessantly during spring time: “luscinis diebus ac noctibus continuis xv garrulus sine intermissu cantus densante…” (x.xliii.81). to conclude, the analysis of r.8 has intended to show that the problematic aspects pointed out by editors constitute no impediment for the solution “nightingale.” the manifest insistence on the creature’s exceptional singing skill strongly supports this reading. furthermore, as the key hint “æfensceop” and parallelisms with latin texts suggest, the riddlic bird has been traditionally reputed as a nocturnal singer, a distinctive feature that in turn generated the etymology of the bird name. with regard to the conflictive extra-textual mark, this paper has tried to demonstrate that it is not a rune but a post-scribal n. whatever its origin is and whoever wrote it is something we do not know but the fact is that the letter must have been placed with the clear intention of pointing to the solution “nightingale.” finally, the study of the obscure terms scirenige and sceawendwisan has shown that they might actually be further references to the nightingale’s warbling compared to a human scop singing or reciting verses. for all these reasons, i am convinced that the evening singer of r.8 must be the nightingale. mercedes salvador bello universidad de sevilla references bosworth, joseph, and t. northcote toller 1898 (repr. 1972). an anglo-saxon dictionary. london. rev. & enl. addenda by a. campbell. bradley, s. a. j. (trans.) 1981. anglo-saxon poetry. london: dent. the evening singer of riddle 8 (k d) 65 brook, g. l. 1956 (repr. 1978). the harley lyrics. manchester up. benson, larry d. (ed.) 1987. the parliament of fowls. the riverside chaucer. boston: houghton mifflin. chambers, r. w. (ed.) 1933. the exeter book of old english poetry. with introductory chapters by max förster and robin flower. london: lund and humphries. conner, patrick w. 1993. anglo-saxon exeter: a tenth-century cultural history. woodbridge: boydell. cosijn, p. j. 1898. anglosaxonica. iv. beiträge 23: 109-30. dietrich, f. 1859. die räthsel des exeterbuchs: würdigung, lösung und herstellung. zeitschrift für deutsches altertum 11: 448-90. dietrich, f. 1865. “die räthsel des exeterbuchs: verfasser; weitere lösungen.” zeitschrift für deutsches altertum 12: 232-52. dunn, charles w. and edward t. byrnes (eds.) 1990. middle english literature. the owl and the nightingale. new york: garland. erhardt-siebold, erika von. 1925. die lateinischen rätsel der angelsachsen. heidelberg: carl winter. godman, peter, (ed. & trans.) 1985. poetry of the carolingian renaissance. london: duckworth. grein, christian w. m. 1857-58. bibliothek der angelsächsischen poesie. 2 vols., göttingen. hill, david 1999. riddle 8: a problem of identification or a problem of translation. medieval life 11: 22-23. krapp, george phillip and dobbie, elliott van kirk (eds.) 1936. the anglosaxon poetic records. the exeter book . vol.3. ny: columbia up. lapidge, michael and james l. rosier (eds.) 1985. aldhelm: the poetic works. cambridge: cup. mackie, w. a. 1933. notes on the text of the exeter book. modern language review 28: 75-78. mackie, w. a. (ed.) 1934. the exeter book . vol 2. london: oup. mercedes salvador bello 66 muir, bernard j. (ed.) 1994. the exeter anthology of old english poetry: an edition of exeter dean and chapter ms 3501. exeter: u of exeter p. oroz reta, j. and m. a. marcos casquero, (eds.) 1983. etimologías. vol.2. madrid: biblioteca de autores cristianos. pfeffer, wendy 1989. spring, love, birdsong: the nightingale in two cultures. beasts and birds of the middle ages. eds. willene b. clark and meradith t. mcmunn. philadelphia: u of pennsylvania p. pitman, james hall (ed. & trans.) 1925. the riddles of aldhelm. new haven: yale up. pliny, 1967. natural history [historia naturalis]. eds. & trans. h. rackham and w. s. jones. vol.3. london: heinemann. salvador bello, mercedes 1994. the bird riddles of the exeter book . unpubl. m.a. thesis, university of seville. trautmann, m. (ed.) 1915. die altenglischen rätsel. heidelberg: winter. tupper, fr. (ed.) 1910. the riddles of the exeter book . boston: ginn. white, t. h. (trans.) 1954. the book of beasts. new york: putnam. williamson, craig, (ed.) 1977. the old english riddles of the exeter book . chapel hill: u north carolina. wyatt, a. j. (ed.) 1912. old english riddles. boston: heath. zupitza, j., (ed.) 1880 (repr. 1966). ælfrics grammatik und glossar. berlin. * † * selim08.doc mercedes salvador,selim 8 (1998): 205—221 the arrival of the hero in a ship: a common leitmotif in oe regnal tables and the story of scyld scefing in beowulf1 1. introduction anglo -saxon genealogical regnal lists have traditionally been regarded as an extremely valuable report of political and historical events.2 they have also aroused considerable interest as they have usually been viewed as a cultural phenomenon of the mythical period of the invasions. indeed, germanic legendary figures contained in them are very much responsible for the great deal of critical debate that they have provoked. however, like germanic lore in oe literature, genealogical tables are rather controversial and obscure. for example, when similar regnal tables from different sources are compared, they have usually puzzled critics as they seem to lack coherence in many cases.3 besides, it is generally assumed that the numerous mythical characters mentioned in these lists are presented in a rather eclectic and artificial way. as regards formal order, the last scholarly viewpoint is that genealogical lists were compiled according to concrete organizational criteria.4 as for the thematic content of anglo -saxon genealogical tables, far from presenting random legendary material, they were skilfully created in the taste of wellkown mythical and symbolical motifs which were similar to those employed in earlier or contemporary literary works.5 1 i want to thank prof. mª josé mora (university of seville) for her kind contribution to this paper providing ideas and bibliography. 2 one of the most complete works on the subject is by sisam. see also dumville. 3 plummer already noted some of the discrepancies found in genealogical lists stat ing: "it is lost labour to try and reconcile these inconsistencies" (1899: 2). 4 for instance, hill (1988) has demonstrated that the layout of some regnal lists responds to consistent numerical patterns that derive from germanic folk-lore. 5 see, for example, davis for a thorough analysis of the cultural background of oe genealogical tables. mercedes salvador 202 it is precisely on this second issue that this paper will concentrate as it aims at demonstrating the existence of a basic leitmotif that is present in oe regnal tables as well as in the opening passage of scyld scefing in beowulf: a legendary hero who comes from the sea in a boat, conquers a land and finally becomes a king, consequently founding a dynasty. this thematic pattern is recognizable in the stories of some of the mythical characters that shape up anglo -saxon genealogies: hengest and horsa, cerdic and cynric, and scyld and sceaf. the study of these legendary figures also reveals that there are several literary devices which are recurrent in their stories such as the use of alliteration for both the heroes' names and the place of landing, as well as the strong metaphorical load that is always present in their names. finally, this paper will analyze the co-occurrence of this genealogical material in king æthelwulf's pedigree to illustrate how the mythical and symbolical features present in royal lists were manipulated in order to legitimize a monarch's right to reign. 2. hengest and horsa: the jutish tradition the genealogical line of hengest and horsa is recorded in various sources as the comparative tables offered by chambers show (199). according to the laud chronicle (oxford, bodleian library, laud 636), these two brothers came to britain invited by king vortigern to help him fight the picts. however, the ones that initially were allies turned out to be enemies, so that hengest and horsa ended up conquering the land. the chronicle then relates how hengest--after horsa's death in battle --became king, and was succeeded by his son æsc. in the entry for the year 449, the laud chronicle draws their ancestry back to woden asserting their continental origin: of angle comon se á syíían stod westig betwix iutum ond seaxum, east angla, middel angla, mearca, ond ealla norphymbra. heora heretogan wæron twegen gebro íra, hengest ond horsa pæt wæron wihtgilses suna. wihtgils wæs witting, witta wecting, wecta wodning. fram pan wodne awoc eall ure cynecynn, ond su íanhymbra eac.1 1 the edition of the anglo-saxon chronicle cited throughout this paper is from plummer (1892). the translation of the passages quoted is from swanton. “from angeln, which has stood waste ever since between the jutes and the saxons, came a common leitmotif in o e regnal tables 203 in his historia ecclesiastica (i.15), bede narrates the arrival of hengest and horsa.1 he likewise acknowledges them as the founders of a dynasty of kings and gives them a pedigree carried up to woden, which is identical to the one provided in the laud chronicle: duces fuisse perhibentur eorum primi duo fratres hengist et horsa, e quibus horsa postea occisus in bello a brettonibus hactenus in orientalibus cantiae partibus monumentum habet suo nomine insigne. erant autem filii uictgisli, cuius pater uitta, cuius pater uecta, cuius pater uoden, de cuius stirpe multarum prouin ciarum regium genus originem duxit.2 the apparently simple legend of hengest and horsa reveals significative connotations if it is regarded in its metaphorical dimension. apart from constitutin g the typical couple of brothers with similar names --such as romulus and remus--the fact that both oe hengest and horsa mean the same (i.e. horse) is noteworthy.3 plummer considers the possibility that hengest and his son's name æsc could be "abstractions from 'y í-hengest' and 'æsc' in the sense of ship" (1899: 11). similarly, davis interprets the name hengest in the the east angles, middle angles, mercians, and all the northumbrians. their commanders were two brothers, hengest and horsa, that were sons of wihtgils. wihtgils was witta's offspring, witta wecta's offspring, wecta woden's offspring. from that woden originated all our royal family, and [that] of the southumbrians also.” (swanton 13) 1 further in the same work (ii.5), bede mentions hengest as the ultimate ancestor of æthelberht of kent. the same pedigree is extended to woden in anglian genealogical tables as illustrated, for example, in the list found in cotton vespasian b.vi (dumville 31): “aepelberht [>] uihtreding / uihtred [>] ecgberhting / ecgberht [>] erconberhting / erconberht [>] eadbalding / eadbald [>] epilberhting / epilberht [>] iurmenricing / iurmenric [>] oes[…] / oese [>] ocging / ocga [>] hengesting / hengest [>] uitting / uitta [>] uihtgilsing / uihtgils [>] uegdaeging / uegdaeg [>] uodning / uoden [>] frealafing.” 2 all the references to bede's historia ecclesiastica are from colgrave and mynors. “their first leaders are said to have been two brothers, hengist and horsa. horsa was afterwards killed in battle by the britons, and in the eastern part of kent there is still a monument bearing his name. they were the sons of wihtgisl, son of witta, son of wecta, son of woden, from whose stock the royal families of many kingdoms claimed their descent.” (49-51) 3 there are plenty of examples in myth and literature in which the names of heroic founders are echoed by place-names. in this sense, the story of the brothers hengest and horsa reminds that of romulus and remus, the mythical founders of rome. similarly, brut is considered the founder of britain in geoffrey of monmouth's historia regum britanniae and many other works. mercedes salvador 204 sense of "stallion," "denoting the attributes essential to their chosen profes sion: speed, strength, virility" (27). according to this, he argues that hengest is associated with woden since the scandinavian cult of this god implied "the worship and sacrifice of stallions" (27). however, plummer's idea seems more accurate if we bring to mind the text of the laud chronicle concerning the arrival of the two brothers: "ond on peora dagum gela íode wyrtgeorn angelcin hider ond hi pa coman on prim ceolum hider to brytene on pam stede heopwinesfleot." 1 considering that the term hengest is used in compounds such as mere-hengest and yí-hengest, which are typical kennings for ship, it can be inferred that the names of hengest and horsa were probably intended as metaphorical allusions to the ones who came in a sea-horse. the mention of the place of landing which either alliterates or bears a certain resemblance with the heroes' names is another relevant aspect to take into account. in the case of hengest and horsa, this place of arrival is "ypwinesfleot," according to the parker version of the chronicle, which obviously does not alliterate with the heroes' names. however, in the laud ms. the spelling of this place-name is "heopwinesfleot," which suggests a delib erate attempt to make it alliterate with hengest and horsa.2 3. cerdic and cynric: the west-saxon tradition the account of the arrival of cerdic and cynric as narrated in the chronicle also contains all the thematic elements that have been discussed so far. to begin with, cerdic and cynric constitute the usual alliterative couple of heroes.3 like hengest and horsa, they came from the continent in ships and were considered the founders of a royal house as recorded in the parker chronicle (year 495): "her cuomon twegen aldormen on bretene, cerdic ond 1 "in their days vortigern invited the angle race here and they then came here to britain in three ships at the place ebba's creek" (swanton 13). 2 like the legendary heroes, these original places also become mythical. plummer establishes the equivalent of this landing place with "ebbsfleet in thanet" noting that this was "the landing-place of augustine at a later time" (1899: 10). he also adds: "if the saxons really landed there, then the origin alike of our nationality and our christianity is closely bound up with that little spot" (1899: 10). thus, it is not striking to find it as the legendary place where the founders of one of the anglosaxon dynasties first landed. 3 wheeler also points out that "the names of the kings and princes whose battles are recorded [in the chronicle] usually occur in pairs. sometimes the names of the pairs are alliterative" (170). among these, he cites cerdic and cynric. a common leitmotif in o e regnal tables 205 cynric his sunu, mid v scipum in pone stede pe is gecueden cerdicesora, ond py ilcan dæge gefuhtun wip walum."1 the chronicle reports how cerdic and cynric conquered wessex and, as in the case of hengest and æsc, cerdic became king and so did his son cynric. the list of their ancestry traced back to woden is also presented in the parker chronicle under the y ear 552: cerdic wæs cynrices fæder, cerdic elesing, elesa esling, esla giwis ing, giwis wiging, wig freawining, freawine freopogáring, freopogar branding, brand bældæging, bældæg wodening.2 thus, as in the case of hengest and horsa, cerdic's genealogical line in the chronicle links the latter with a continental ancestor of the woden lineage and, thus, confers him the authority to reign and be the founder of the west-saxon dynasty of the gewissae. the high degree of elaboration of this genealogical list is clearly recognizable if the list is displayed as presented by chambers (316): [cynric cerdicing], cerdic elesing, elesa esling, esla giwising, giwis wiging, wig freawining, freawine friíugaring, friíugar bronding, brond bældæging, bældæg wodening as hill states, "the historical genealogies follow the principle that every son's name should alliterate with that of his father. this was in fact customary 1 "here [i.e. in 495] two chieftains, cerdic and cynric his son, came to britain with 5 ships at the place which is called cerdic's shore and the same day fought against the welsh" (swanton 14). 2 “cerdic was cynric's father; cerdic elesa's offspring, elesa esla's offspring, esla gewis' offspring, gewis wig's offspring, wig freawine's offspring, freawine frithugar's offspring, frithugar brand's offspring, brand bældæg's offspring, bældæg woden's offspring.” (swanton 16). this gewis mentioned in cerdic's pedigree is the one who would give the name "gewissae" to the west-saxon dynasty as recorded in bede's historia ecclesiastica (iii.7). this name is also included in the prologue of snorri's edda together with a list of names which is similar to that in the chronicle: "odin's second son was called beldegg, whom we called baldr …his son was brand, his son friodigar, whom we call frodi, his son was freovin, his son wigg, his son gewis, whom we call gavir" (trans. by faulkes 1986: 4). mercedes salvador 206 among the anglo -saxon royal families" (1988: 164). the result of this is that the alliterarive pattern of cerdic's genealogy--as shown in the parker chronicle under the years 494, 552, and 597--has been established in pairs to the extent that chambers asserted that it was very similar to poetic structure.1 this served chambers to claim the authenticity of this genealogy: like the mnemonic lists in widsith, these lines are probably very old. their object is clearly to connect the founder of the west-saxon royal house with woden … the lines must go back to times when lists of royal ancestors, both real and imaginary, had to be arranged in correct verse; times when such things were recorded by memory rather than by writing. they are preliterary, and were doubtless chanted by retainers of the west-saxon kings in heathen days. (316-17) however, this alliterative pattern clearly points to an artificially created pedigree following the poetic rules rather than a list of actual ancestors. in this sense, this table is a clear sign of the literary elaboration with which genealogical lists were produced. the names of cerdic and cynric also contain symbolical connotations that provide information about how genealogies were skilfully fabricated. plummer comments that the name cerdic has a celtic origin: it is curious to find the traditional founder of the west-saxon kingdom, the source to which all west-saxon pedigrees are traced, bearing the name cerdic, certic, so like the welsh ceredig, ceretic. (1899: 12) it would not be very surprising if this name had been taken from a welsh legendary chieftain; probably genealogists were aware of the fact that this name had been adopted from the celtic tradition so that they contrived a way to assimilate it. thus, cynric, cerdic's son, constitutes a suspiciously genuine west-saxon name which was surely intended to provide credibility to the presence of cerdic's name in west-saxon regnal lists. it must be borne in mind that the transformation of a continental chieftain into an insular king 1 as indicated by chambers, "every line attains double alliteration in the first half, with one alliterating word only in the second half" (316). a common leitmotif in o e regnal tables 207 had to be supported genealogically; otherwise the origin of his kingship would be dubious. plummer similarly argues that the name cynric may have originated in the necessary transition from alderman to king: "it is possible that the name cynric is an abstraction from this establishment of the 'cynerice'" (1899: 13). it can also be inferred that the etymology of this name could well point to the one who belongs to a cyn, in other words, the one of noble stock.1 thus, the in sert ion of an originally welsh name would be supported with the succes sion of a west-saxon name alliterating with cerdic, and a very suggestive meaning--binding the origins of kingship to that dynasty--which would conceal the celtic provenance of cerdic. as with hengest and horsa, the genealogist justified the right to kingship elaborating a pedigree which claimed that the new monarch came from the glorious ascendancy of the continent. the credibility thus depended on the genealogist's skilful use of the mythical ma terial. as regards the place-name, the manipulation is again quite evident since the chronicle tells us that cerdic and cynric landed at a place called cerdicesora , a name that not only alliterates but also contains the name of the so-called mythical founder.2 in sum, as in the case of hengest and horsa, the account of the arrival of cerdic and cynric combines all the elements that denote the existence of the leitmotif that was defined above. 1 the etymology of cynric conjures up the story of king cynewulf who was murdered by his relative cyneheard as narrated in the chronicle (year 755). the conflict to legitimize political power is well-represented in the suspicious emphasis of the two characters' names with cyn. furthermore, this episode ends with the chronicler's insistence that both characters were of noble lineage: "ond hiera ryhtfæderencyn gæp to cerdice" (as found in ms. a) ["and their direct paternal ancestry goes back to cerdic" (swanton 48)]. 2 they are also said to have fought the britons at cerdicesford (year 508 and 519) and cerdicesleag (year 527, cerdicesford in ms.e). a similar pattern can be found in the account of ælle's arrival (year 477): "her cuom ælle on breten lond, ond his iii suna cymen, ond wlencing, ond cissa mid iii scipum, on pa stowe pe is nemned cymenesora…" ["here ælle and his 3 sons, cymen and wlencing and cissa, came to the land of britain with 3 ships at the place which is named cymen's shore… (swanton 14)]. also, in the entry for the year 501, t here is a further interesting pas sage in which the name of one of the chieftains is contained in a place-name:" her cuom port on bretene ond his ii suna bieda ond mægla mid ii scipum on pære stowe pe is gecueden portesmupa…" ["here port and his 2 sons, bieda and mægla, came with 2 ships to britain at the place which is called portsmouth …" (swanton 14)]. mercedes salvador 208 4. scyld and sceaf: the scandinavian ancestry in regnal lists and beowulf as a result from the invasions of danes and their subsequent establishment in the british isles, antiquarians surely perceived the necessity to incorporate scandinavian legendary material to oe genealogical lists. thus, scyld and sceaf compose the third pair of heroes with alliterating names that is usually included in many regnal tables, and is obviously the most explicit representative of the myth of the hero coming in a boat.1 as murray indicates, "by the late ninth and tenth centuries scef and scyld were regarded as the ancestors of the west-saxon dynasty" (103). like cerdic and cynric, scyld and sceaf are usually associated in a fa therson relationship.2 the symbolical content of this myth is extremely rich to the extent that it has also found a place in epic literature. thus, the opening lines of beowulf present the story of scyld scefing who arrived in a boat when still a child and would later become king of the danes: him ía scyld gewat to gescæphwile felahror feran on frean wære. hi hyne pa ætbæron to brimes faro íe, swæse gesipas, swa he selfa bæd, penden wordum weold wine scyldinga; leof landfruma lange ahte. … … … 1 chambers offers a broad discussion of all the sources and varying motifs in which this myth is present (68-86). murray analyzes the connection between beowulf and the figures of scyld and sceaf as danish ancestors of the west-saxon kings in order to question the early date and anglian origin that are sometimes ascribed to the poem. 2 chadwick affirms that the connection between scyld and sceaf is a product of ge nealogical lists as "originally scyld had nothing to do with sceaf" (277). likewise, he considers that scefing is not a surname neither a patronymic given the lack of evidence of sceaf as a personal name in oe. however, the presence of a certain sceafa as king of the longobards in widsith (32) made chambers consider the possibility that this could be the reference to the historic king upon whom the legend later developed (311). furthermore, the existence of the scandinavian counterpart of scyld, skjoldr (the eponymous ancestor of the skjoldungar) also supports the idea that all these names stem from older legends that were later incorporated to works such as the skjoldunga saga and the prologue to snorri's edda (see faulkes 1978-79 on this issue). for these reasons, it is not surprising to find scyld and sceaf as independent characters in genealogical lists. a common leitmotif in o e regnal tables 209 nalæs hi hine læssan lacum teodan, peodgestreonum, pon pa dydon pe hine æt frumsceafte forí onsendon ænne ofer y íe umborwesende.(26-46)1 this passage from beowulf describes scyld's funeral in a boat, surrounded by weapons and treasures. as chambers states "scyld scefing then, like tennyson's arthur, comes from the unknown and departs back to it" (70).2 chambers's words are the most accurate to explain the importance of the scyld episode: scyld's mysterious origin is intended to expre ss his quasidivine nature. the beowulf-poet--as well as genealogists in general--was aware of the fact that a mythical founder of a dynasty could not be born and die as a normal human being. after the description of scyld's funeral, the poem goes on with the account of his descendant beaw whose son halfdan would in turn continue the royal line founded by scyld.3 in this sense, the beowulf-poet was surely following the pattern set by early historical sources and genealogical lists. as campbell had already noted: the beginning of beowulf indeed shows affinity with the genealogical literature which was so popular in the early old english period. the beowulf poet made his epic spring from a genealogy … (1971: 290) according to this, the scyld passage in beowulf can be considered as a genealogical prelude which is meant to supply authority and credibility to the events that are about to be narrated. this does not necessarily mean that scyld was a real person but the beowulf-poet knew that he could make the story more interesting if he related the main characters to important royal houses and historical or legendary figures that were surely known to the au 1 the text of this passage is from dobbie's edition. as translated by chickering (4951): “scyld then departed at the appointed time, / still very strong, into the keeping of the lord. / his own dear comrades carried his body / to the sea's current, as he himself had ordered, / great scylding lord, when he still gave commands; / the nation's dear leader had ruled a long time. / … … … / no lesser gifts did they provide him / --the wealth of a nation-than those at his start / who set him adrift when only a child, / friendless and cold, alone on the waves. 2 this story also recalls the arrival and departure of lohengrin in a boat drawn by a swan. 3 for a thorough analysis of the mythical figures contained in æthelwulf's genealogy, see chadwick. mercedes salvador 210 dience. in murray's words, "a poem beginning in the manner of beowulf would be bound, and surely would be intended, to catch the attention of an audience or patron with west-saxon connections" (107). this idea is supported by the fact that the names of some of the characters mentioned in the starting lines of beowulf are found in several royal lists. the scyld scefing episode seems to arise from a conscious or unconscious equation present in the mind of the author and the audience of beowulf, as well as in the minds of genealogists: the nobler the pedigree of a character or a king proved to be, the nobler his acts would be. as with the preceding cases, the scyld scefing story is related to an allit erative place-name which is regarded as the original continental realm of this legendary king. the reference to the land of scedenig appears in beowulf (1686) although it is not directly associated with the scyld scefing passage.1 however, scedenig suspiciously alliterates with scyld sceafing providing a connection which is explicit in other accounts of this legend. for example, in the 10th-century chronicle of æthelweard a place called scani has been identified with scedenig: ipse scef cum uno dromone aduectus est in insula oceani que dicitur scani, armis circundatus, eratque ualde recens puer, et ab incolis illius terrae ignotus. attamen ab eis suscipitur, et ut familiarem diligenti animo eum custodierunt, et post in regem eligunt.2 similarly, william of malmesbury's de gestis regum anglorum (12th century) provides a version of this legend in which a place known as scandza is directly associated with a mythical king sceaf:3 sceldius [fuit filius] sceaf. iste, ut ferunt, in quandam insulam germaniae scandzam, de qua jordanes, historiographus gothorum, lo 1 according to klaeber, it is the "name of the southernmost part of the scandinavian peninsula (skane), applied to the danish realm" (439). 2 the edition and translation of this passage is from campbell (1962): “and this sceaf arrived with one light ship in the island of the ocean which is called skaney, with arms all round him. he was a very young boy, and unknown to the people of that land, but he was received by them, and they guarded him with diligent attention as one who belonged to them, and elected him king” (33). 3 despite the lack of alliteration as regards scani and scandza, the closeness with the heroes' names is obvious. a common leitmotif in o e regnal tables 211 quitur, appulsus navi sine remige, puerulus, posito ad caput fru menti manipulo, dormiens, ideoque sceaf nuncupatus … (ii.116)1 although no early version of the scyld -sceaf myth has been preserved, and scedenig in beowulf is not linked to the opening episode, æthelweard and malmesbury present a story with certain fixed elements that also appeared in the preceding myths and cannot be held fortuitous. the names of the two characters involved in this myth also present clear emblematic features. for example, the expression "posito ad caput frumenti manipulo" (with a handful of corn at his head) from malmesbury's version adds significant connotations to the name sceaf. chambers argues that this name could have originally referred to an ancient pagan corn -god.2 with re gard to this, hill argues that scyld (mne shield) and sceaf (mne sheaf) compose the emblematic representation of the anglo -saxon coronation formula "pax et habundantia salutis" according to which scyld scefing is the one "who brought the protection of the shield (pax) and the prosperity of the sheaf (abundantia)" (41). 5. the conflation of the three genealogical traditions: king æthelwulf's pedigree the genealogical tradition evolved so that the scope of the lists was enlarged when it was convenient. this is the case of king æthelwulf's pedigree in which the genealogist's aim to establish the authority of the monarch over a multicultural society is evident. thus, the parker chronicle (year 855) illustrates how the main genealogical traditions--together with the list of biblical 1 the latin edition is from stubbs and the translation quoted is by stevenson: “sceld [was the son] of sceaf, who, as some affirm, was driven on a certain island in germany called scandza (of which jornandes, the historian of the goths, speaks), a little boy in a skiff without an attendant, asleep with a handful of corn at his head, whence he was called sceaf …”(97) 2 chambers mentions the example of the god of vegetation, sämpsa pellervoinen, in the finnish kalevala as a possible parallel (84-85). he also points out that oe beow--scyld scefing's son in beowulf--means "grain": "it is highly probable that beow (grain) the descendant of sceaf (sheaf) was originally a corn divinity or corn fetish…" (87). mercedes salvador 212 patriarchs1--are conflated in the royal pedigree of æthelwulf, alfred the great's father: ond se æthelwulf wæs ecgbrehting, ecgbryht ealhmunding, ealh mund eafing, eafa eopping, eoppa ingilding; ingild wæs ines bropur west seaxna cyninges … ond hie wæron cenredes suna, cenred wæs ceolwalding, ceolwald cu paing, cupa cupwining, cupwine ceaulining, ceawlin cynricing, cynric cerdicing, cerdic elesing, elesa esling, esla giwising, giwis wiging, wig freawining, freawine fripogaring, fripogar bronding, brond bæld æging, bældæg wodening, woden fripowalding, fripuwald freawining, frealaf fripuwulfing, fripuwulf finning, fin godwulfing, godwulf geating, geat tætwaing, tætwa beawing, beaw sceld waing, sceldwea heremoding, heremod itermoning, itermon hrapraing, se wæs geboren in pære earce; noe, lamach, matusalem, enoh, iaered, maleel, camon, enos, sed, adam. primus homo et pater noster est christus, amen.2 one of the most relevant features in this list is the fact that sceldwa --a variant form of scyld--is connected genealogically to noah, although they are s eparated by three other ancestors. since the story of scyld scefing in beowulf tells us of a hero who comes in a boat over the sea and becomes the king of a nation, the parallel with noah's story is quite evident. being one of the biblical patriarchs, noah is the visible head of a genealogical line, and the founder of a new race of men after the flood. with regard to this, hill argues 1 the biblical names that appear in this list are drawn from adam's descent in luke iii.36-38, not from genesis v, as was generally assumed before magoun pointed it out. 2 “and that æthelwulf was egbert's offspring, egbert ealhmund's offspring, ealhmund eafa's offspring, eafa eoppa's offspring, eoppa ingeld's offspring; ingeld was the brother of ine, king of wessex …and they were the sons of cenred; cenred was ceolwald's offspring, ceolwald cutha's offspring, cutha cuthwine's offspring, cuthwine ceawlin's offspring, ceawlin cynric's offspring, cynric cerdic's offspring, cerdic elesa's offspring, elesa esla's offspring, esla gewis' offspring, gewis wig's offspring, wig freawine's offspring, freawine frithugar's offspring, frithugar brand's offspring, brand bældæg's offspring, bældæg woden's offspring, woden frithuwald's offspring, frithuwald freawine's offspring, freawine frealaf's offspring, frealaf frithuwulf's offspring, frithuwulf finn's offspring, finn godwulf's offspring, godwulf geat's offspring, geat tætwa's offspring, tætwa beaw's offspring, beaw sceldwa's offspring, sceldwa heremod's offspring, heremond [sic] itermon's offspring, itermon hrathra's offspring--he was born in the ark: noah, lamech, methuselah, enoch, jared, mahalaleel, cainan, enos, seth, adam the first man, and our father who is christ. amen.” (swanton 66) a common leitmotif in o e regnal tables 213 that the direct connection between noah and scyld stems from the widespread apocriphal belief that noah had a fourth son who was born in the ark: an anglo -saxon antiquarian would not have had to invent the concept that noe had a fourth son; the conception was current. and such an antiquarian, perhaps influenced by the story that scef or scylf was brought to his people as an infant on a boat, hypothesized that the first ancestor of their kings was indeed born(e) on a boat--the ark of noe. (1986: 383) in this respect, it is interesting to quote the last part of æthelwulf's genealogical list in mss. b and c of the chronicle (london, british library, cotton tiberius a.vi and cotton tiberius b.i), in which a son of sceaf is directly made noah's offspring without the intermediary characters recorded in the parker version: "itermon ha íraing, hapra hwalaing, hwala bedwiging, bedwig sceafing, id est filius noe, se wæs geboren on pære earce noes." 1 but this association is even more evident in the genealogical lists from cotton tiberius b.v (late 10th century) and the so-called textus roffensis ii (12th century). in both texts sceaf occurs as noah's son: "se scef wæs nóes sunu and he wæs inna íære earce geboren." 2 the similarity of the name shem (noah's son in genesis) to sceaf surely provoked the parallelism. genealogists deliberately established this direct connection between noah and sceaf because they noticed the emblematic possibilities of associating the two stories. it is clear that the intention was to equate sceaf to the biblical patriarch and thus raise him to the category of a sort of germanic patriarch. the fact that the genealogical tables discussed above are drawn for æthelwulf, alfred the great's father, is very significative. these pedigrees are included in a similar way as an introduction to asser's biography of king alfred. since asser's genealogical introduction was intended to exhibit the credentials of a pan-germanic leader of "the angles and the saxons" as well 1 "itermon hathra's offspring, hrathra hwala's offspring, hwala bedwig's offspring, bedwig scef's offspring, that is the son of noah: he was born in noah's ark" (swanton 67). 2 this scef was noah's son and he was born in the ark (my trans.). the text is from cotton tiberius b.v, as edited by chambers (203). an almost identical version is found in textus roffensis ii. mercedes salvador 214 as of "all the christians" (keynes and lapidge 67), this is a very good example of how genealogies were manipulated in order to legitimize a king's right to rule. asser's intention was to present alfred as a great authority among authorities since his pedigree sums up all the traditions mentioned above. his west-saxon ancestry is well represented by cerdic, cynric and gewis. furthermore, sceldwa appears as a representative of the danish share of alfred's pedigree, and the biblical characters provide a christian background to the genealogical list. even though the connection with hengest is wanting here, alfred's jutish blood is declared in the mention of his maternal descent from osburh, who is said to be "descended from goths and jutes" (keynes and lapidge 67). the genealogical material contained in alfred's pedigree thus makes him the perfect monarch and asserts his authority as king of all the angles and the saxons. compared to the other pedigrees in the chronicle, alfred's ancestry is the one that presents a higher degree of elaboration and manipulation since genealogists were aware of the fact that alfred had to be distinguished from the kings who had preceded him. 6. conclusions the study of these three myths in anglo -saxon regnal lists and the opening passage of beowulf has proved that there is a recurrent thematic pattern which presents the story of the heroes (or the hero) who arrive from northern lands in a boat and become the ancestors of anglo -saxon dynasties. the beowulf passage, the chronicle accounts, and the genealogical lists analyzed share several common traits such as the alliterative names of the mythical figures and place-names, and the strong symbolical connotations of the onomastic material. in this sense, this paper has demonstrated the so far neglected literary scope of genealogical tables which are very close to the uses of germanic lore in oe poetry. we could even affirm that genealogical regnal tables actually constitute schematic representations of the same myths that are found in beowulf and other anglo -saxon poems.1 finally, the analy 1 similarly, the anglo-saxon chronicle--despite its being a collection of annals, i.e. written to describe historical facts--has also proved to be endowed with literary features. a common leitmotif in o e regnal tables 215 sis of æthelwulf's genealogical list shows the conflation of the three traditions and the implicit presence of the thematic leitmotif of the hero's arrival in a boat in the connection with noah. to what extent genealogists were dealing with historic characters is something that is extremely difficult to prove. yet the important point is that these mythical heroes were alive in the minds of the authors of regnal lists as well as in the minds of the audience of beowulf who associated them with germanic legends that could help consolidate a king's ancestral authority. mercedes salvador bello university of seville references campbell, a. (ed. & trans.) 1962. the chronicle of æthelweard . london: nelson's medieval texts. the use in beowulf of earlier heroic verse. campbell, a. 1971. the use in beowulf of earlier heroic verse. england before the conquest: studies in primary sources presented to dorothy whitelock . peter clemoes and kathleen hughes (eds.). cup. chambers, r. w. 1959. beowulf: an introduction to the study of the poem. supplement by c. l. wrenn. cambridge: cup. chickering, howell d. 1977. beowulf: a dual language edition. new york: doubleday. colgrave, b. and r.a.b. mynors (eds. and trans.) 1969. bede's ecclesiastical history of the english people. oxford: clarendon. davis, craig r. 1992. cultural assimilation in the anglo-saxon royal genealogies. anglo-saxon england 21: 23-36. dobbie, elliott van kirk (ed.) 1953. beowulf and judith. the anglo-saxon poetic records, vol. iv. new york: columbia up, 1953. dumville, david 1977: kingship, genealogies, and regnal lists. early medieval kinship. p. h. sawyer and i. n. wood (eds.). leeds: university of leeds press: 72-104. faulkes, anthony 1978-79. descent from the gods. medieval scandinavia 11: 92-127. faulkes, anthony (trans.) 1987. edda. anthony faulkes london: dent. mercedes salvador 216 hill, t. d. 1986. scyld scefing and the stirps regia: pagan myth and christian kingship in beowulf. magister regis: studies in honor of r. e. kaske. a. groos et al. (eds.). new york: fordham university press: 37-47. hill, thomas d. 1987. the myth of the ark-born son of noe and the westsaxon royal genealogical tables. harvard theological review 80: 379-383. hill, thomas d. 1988. woden as "ninth father": numerical patterning in some old english royal genealogies. germania: comparative studies in the old germanic languages and literatures. daniel g. calder and t. craig christy (eds.). exeter: brewer: 161-74. keynes, simon and michael lapidge (eds.) 1983. alfred the great. harmondsworth: penguin. klaeber, fr. (ed.) 1950. beowulf and the fight at finnsburg . lexington: heath. magoun, f. p. 1951. king æthelwulf's biblical ancestors. modern language review 46: 249-50. malmesbury, william 1887-89. de gestis regum anglorum. william stubbs (ed.). london: rolls series 90, vol. i. murray, alexander callander 1981. beowulf, the danish invasions, and royal genealogy. the dating of beowulf. c. chase (ed.). toronto: university of toronto press. plummer, charles (ed.) 1892 and 1899. two of the saxon chronicles parallel. oxford: clarendon, 2 vols. sisam, kenneth 1953: anglo-saxon royal genealogies. proceedings of the british academy 39: 300-307. stevenson, joseph (trans.) 1854. the history of the kings of england. the church historians of england, vol.iii. seeleys. stubbs, william (ed.) 1887-89. de gestis regum anglorum. london: rolls series 90, vol. i. swanton, m. j. (trans.) 1996. the anglo-saxon chronicle. london: dent. wheeler, g. h. 1921. the genealogy of the early west saxon kings. english historical review 36: 161-71. * † * selim06.pdf manuel aguirre, selim 6 (1998): 5—31 “beot”, hybris, and the will in beowulf 1. pride-words in beowulf why is aeschylus’ prometheus punished for his daring, why is beowulf praised for his? codes of conduct prevalent in the respective cultures make it necessary that the culture hero’s foremost deed of courage should be sanctioned by the community in the anglo -saxon text, but condemned (though sympathized with) in the greek. those codes concern, among other things, the propriety of certain human attitudes towards society and the cosmos, and towards the gods, forces, or principles that are thought to rule these. the poem beowulf is infused with an ethical code which governs the conduct of king, retainer and comitatus, and central to which stands the issue of pride and its various manifestations. the semantic field of ‘pride words’ in beowulf contains the following1: ahliehhan to laugh, exult begylpan to boast, exult beot boast, threat, vow, pledge; danger beotian to threaten; to boast, vow, promise deall proud, famousd dolgilp foolish boasting, foolhardiness gal lust, luxury, wantonness, folly, levity; gay, light, wanton; proud, wicked 1 only those words are included of which at least one sense relates to the semantic field. thus mod belongs in because in at least one sense, ‘pride’, it belongs in our field; stip-mod (‘stout hearted, firm, resolute, brave, stubborn, stern, severe’) is excluded because no sense given it by the dictionary belongs. for the rest, this is an open semantic field which drifts into other fields such as those of terms for speech, for various states of mind, courage, anger, exultation; glory; power; wealth; promis ing; and so on. ____________________________________________________________________ 6 galnes frivolity, wantonness, lust galscipe excess, luxury, lasciviousness, wantonness, pride gielp, gilp, gylp glory, ostentation, pride, boasting, arro gance, vainglory, haughtiness gilpan, gylpan to glory, boast, to desire earnestly; exult, praise gylp-cwide a boastful speech gilp-hlæden covered with glory, proud hremig clamorous, exultant, lamenting, boasting, vaunting hyge pride; thought, mind, heart; courage; disposition, intention mod soul, heart, mind; courage; mood, temper; greatness, magnificence; pride, arrogance modig of high or noble spirit; bold, brave; proud, arrogant modpracu impetuous courage, daring oferhygd pride, arrogance; proud onmedla arrogance, presumption wlencu pride, arrogance, haughtiness, glory, pomp, splendour; bravado; wealth; daring wlonc proud, high-spirited, bold in addition, the following, though not found in beowulf, are important within the semantic field of pride-words in oe: bælc belch; pride, arrogance bælcan to cry out, vociferari hreman to boast, exult, call out in exultation or lamentation; lament, murmur hygeteona deliberate injury or offence, insult hygepryp pride of heart or mind, insolence modignes pride, arrogance; magnanimity ofermetto pride, arrogance, haughtiness ____________________________________________________________________ 7 ofermod pride, insolence pryte pride, haughtiness, pomp upahefednes elevation, uplifting; pride, exultation, pre sumption, arrogance most of these denote emotions, attitudes, propensities, states of mind. two nouns, beot and gylp, differ from the rest in that they designate speech acts (both are characteristically spoken) and not only convey attitudes but also entail illocutionary force (obviously the verbs carry speech-act connotations where some of the corresponding nouns do not; in the case of bælc, bælcan the verb seems to lack the pride-sense that is found in the noun). this is particularly clear in the bosworth-toller entry for beot, where three main senses are distinguished: i. a threatening, threat, command, menace ii. peril iii. a boasting, boasting promise, promise. of these, i. and iii. constitute speech acts while ii. shifts the semantic emphasis onto an entailment of ‘threat’. what we intend is to examine these two terms and show what the community’s and the poet’s disposition towards their respective speech acts reveals about the status of the individual’s will in beowulf and, by extension, in the anglo -saxon culture that produced the poem. we shall then compare our findings with the semantics of greek hybris, and draw an inference as to the different cultural attitudes towards the forces that are thought to shape and govern the universe in each case. from this an argument will be produced to situate beowulf in the light of christian and pagan standpoints regarding the will. 2. gylp let us begin by examining some instances of the use of gylp. after be owulf’s death wiglaf upbraids his cowardly retainers with the following words: 2873-4 ‘nealles folccyning fyrdgesteallum ____________________________________________________________________ 8 gylpan porfte’ the people’s king had no reason at all to boast about comrades in arms 1. in the context, this means ‘they failed him miserably’. similar sentiments are conveyed by the poet as he surveys the scop’s account of the fight at finnsburg, where hildeburh lost both son and brother to the jutes: 1071-2 ne huru hildeburh herian porfte eotena treowe. indeed, hildeburh had no cause to praise the loyalty of the jutes. in other words, ‘they betrayed her and hers’. herian porfte belongs with gylpan porfte in a pattern made up of an infinitive followed by a form of purfan and occupying one half-line, and here we have an instance of formu laic language. this is not the place to enter the very complex and by no means resolved discussion of the formula, but a word on the subject will be necessary for our purposes. in a ground-breaking study of homeric epic composition, milman parry (1930) defined the formula as “a group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea” (1930: 80). the epic singer, he argued, does not memo rize his long song, but neither does he ‘create’ it on the spot. rather, he is able to compose a version of it because he structures his themes into one-line and half-line formulas -into a highly codified language which preexists his text , and within which alone he frames his narrative. subsequent researches led lord (1960) to the additional concept of the formulaic half-line, defined as one which “follows the basic patterns of rhythm and syntax and has at least one word in the same position in the line or half-line in common with other lines or half lines” (1960: 47); lord conceived the formulaic half-line as a more ‘relaxed’ version of the formula whereby the singer employs a familiar structure but varies some of the words by selecting them from what he called a system of options (and which might also be labelled a paradigm). seeking to transpose these insights onto anglo -saxon epic poetry, other scholars since magoun (1953) have questioned both the definition and the scope of the formula, and the latest consensus position seems to be that, whereas the 1 all translations are taken from swanton 1978. ____________________________________________________________________ 9 concept of the formula itself is too narrow, the notion of formu laic language makes a great deal of sense.1 the poet (i abstract here from the thorny issue of whether we are discussing an oral or a literate text) composes according to a formulaic principle of ‘systems’ from which he selects items to fill the slots provided by the formulaic (half-)line. this principle offers him not only metrical and rhythmic but also ideational and thematic frames within which an endless number of narrative performances can be fitted; the specific combinations of words that result may (or not) be ‘new’ (‘original’, felicitous, striking), the line and half-line structures are not.2 in this perspective, herian porfte and gylpan porfte above constitute variations on a formulaic half-line that pivots on a verb porfte on which depends the infinitive that precedes it. additionally (and this goes beyond the notion of formulaic half-lines, but still merits the label of ‘formulaic language’), both clauses depend on an earlier negation -nealles, ne-. we find another example in 2363-4: nealles hetware hremge porfton fepewiges the hetware had no cause at all for exultation in the conflict of troops. the general idea is ‘they failed of their purpose (to defeat the hero)’. here purfan is in a plural past form, and the predicate it governs is an adjective rather than an infinitive; for the rest, the negative element is a constant, and hremge porfton remains within the confines of the half-line. a further in stance of formulaic language occurs in the following statement by beowulf after his successful expedition to the mere: 2005 ff. ‘ic pæt eall gewræc, swa begylpan ne pearf grendeles maga […] uhthlem pone’ 1 see o’brien o’keefe (1996) for a survey 2 no reduction or demeaning of the poet’s ‘creative’ power is to be inferred, rather the strategy seems not to differ much from what the average english poet has been doing since the renaissance when composing (whether extempore or through laborious writing and revising) in iambic pentameters; the pentameter operates as a framing device which does not so much constrain the poet as give him both rhythmic and semantic, even thematic, possibilities. ____________________________________________________________________ 10 ‘i avenge everything, so that none of grendel’s kin […] will have cause to boast of that predawn clash’ in other words, grendel and his race have failed dismally. in these negative contexts, purfan functions as an implicative verb, its negation having connotations of failure, of ‘not living up to standards’; 1 and such connotations attach, negatively, to herian, hremge and (be)gylpan: as the non-fulfilment of a boast amounts to failure, so reference to an imaginary boast is used similarly in a litotes to disparage the fact that such a boast was not and would not have been possible. he who fails to live up to his pledge, or he who cannot achieve what he might have wanted to boast of, are open to contempt; while he who fails to receive the support he might have wanted to praise or boast of is to be pitied. both contempt and pity denote clearly negative attitudes, on the part of wiglaf, the scop, beowulf and the poet himself, towards individuals who cannot fulfil their boast or who are not even in a position to utter it. though we have surely moved beyond the boundaries of the formu laic half-line, at least in so far as the construction swa begylpan ne pearf is differently ordered, has a different tense, and adds swa, the whole remains familiar; if not formulaic, it still displays a strong cohesion between the three key elements: a negation, a form of purfan, and a dependent predicate of boast, praise or exultation. to consider this cohesion, let us look at a different type of example. if the narrator’s was a disparaging view in the previous cases, it changes when the boaster achieves his purpose, as is shown by cases where gylp appears in predictable correlation with specific verbs: 828-9 hæfde east-denum geatmecga leod gilp gelæsted, swylce oncyppe ealle gebette […]. the prince of the geatish men had fulfilled his boast to the east danes, and so remedied all the distress […]. the verb gelæstan occurs elsewhere with other nouns taken from a paradigm of things-that-canbe-fulfilled: 1 the idea recurs in a simpler construction in which gylpan is employed without an accompanying purfan: 2583-4 hrepsigora ne gealp / goldwine geata; gupbill geswac / nacod æt nipe, swa hyt na sceolde, / iren ærgod. said of beowulf when his sword proves unable to wound the dragon, the sentence carries the same connotations of failure (the weapon’s) and the same implicit regret on the narrator’s part. ____________________________________________________________________ 11 1706-7 ‘ic pe sceal mine gelæstan freode, swa wit furpum spræcon’. ‘i shall fulfil my friendship towards you, just as we spoke together a short time ago’. 2989-90 he pam frætwum feng ond him fægre gehet leana mid leodum, ond gelæste swa he accepted the trappings and courteously promised him rewards among the people, and fulfilled it thus. one fulfils one’s friendship towards another; one carries out one’s boasts and promises. whereas there is nothing formulaic about the last three examples, they exhibit a strong degree of cohesion between words of pledge (gylp, gehetan; indirectly, sprecan) and the verb gelæstan. though not formulaic, this verb is at any rate a collocate of those terms. hoey (1991: 154) defines “collocation” as designating a type of textual cohesion consisting in the fre quent co-occurrence of two -or morelexical items (the ‘node’ and its ‘collocate’). the argument is that we do not learn and produce words in isolation but as part of contexts within which alone their meaning is generated; this is to say that we learn and produce language in ‘chunks’ rather than in single units. on the different level of poetic production, this was precisely parry’s and lord’s claim for the art of yugoslav epic singers (see lord 1960: 35 ff.). it follows that formulaic language, and the formula as a special in stance of this, are themselves special (poetic) instances of collocation, in stances in which cohesion is close to reaching an upper limit; they are still flexible in that they allow for paradigmatic variation, the upper limit being probably found in the proverb or the cliché, which admit of practically no variation. the point is important: uses of node terms like gylp, gylpan with collocates like purfan or gelæstan evince supra -personal attitudes towards the values expressed by these collocations; in a way somewhat comparable to that of gnomic utterances, they convey aspects of a standard, socially sanctioned value-system: boasts are to be fulfilled; not doing so amounts to failure. this -the collocative constructions are sayingis a matter not only of public knowledge but of universal validity. ____________________________________________________________________ 12 3. beot much the same emerges from an analysis of beot. consider the scene where, seeking to humiliate beowulf, unferth taunts him with a biased account of the already legendary bet between the hero and breca, when each vowed to out-swim the other on a tempestuous (and monster-infested) sea:1 506-24 ‘eart pu se beowulf se pe wip brecan wunne, on sidne sæ ymb sund flite, pær git for wlence wada cunnedon ond for dolgilpe on deop wæter aldrum nepdon? […] […] beot eal wip pe sunu beanstanes sope gelæste’ ‘are you the beowulf who contended against breca, competed in swimming on the open sea, where in your pride you two explored the flood, and risked your lives in deep water for the sake of a foolish boast? […] the son of beanstan in fact accomplished all he had boasted against you’. the main point here is that, whatever unferth’s motivations, and however distorted his account of the events, he is right in claiming that, whereas the two young men engaged in a “foolish boast” (for dolgilpe), yet it behoved them to carry it out; he thus approves of breca’s fulfilment of the boast, even if the latter was initially unwise, and berates beowulf for not living up to it. this is confirmed by the beot-gelæste collocation, as by the fact that be owulf, too, in rising to the challenge and turning the tables on unferth, acknowledges that the boast had to be fulfilled, and that they both honoured it: 535-8 ‘wit pæt gecwædon cnihtwesende on gebeotedon -wæron begen pa git on g eogopfeorepæt wit on garsecg ut 1 we need not go into the function of this scene, which is a clear instance of flyting, or of unferth himself -he fulfils the role of the trickster, raising strife much as loki does in various scandinavian texts (see e.g. snorri sturluson’s edda: skaldskaparmal 1, 33; see simek 1984: 193 ff.), much as efnisien does in the mabinogion: branwen daughter of llyr). a complementary view would hold that unferth is the donor who, in fairytales, tests the hero before giving him the help or magic object he is in need of (here, the sword hrunting which beowulf is to receive from unferth just before his battle against grendel’s mother). on the fairytale structure of the poem and on unferth’s donor-like status, see barnes 1970. ____________________________________________________________________ 13 aldrum nepdon; ond pæt geæfndon swa’. ‘as boys we two came to an agreement and boasted -we were both then still in our youththat we would risk our lives out on the ocean; and we did just that’, even while admitting (twice in three lines: ‘cnihtwesende’ (lit., ‘we being boys’), ‘wæron begen pa git/ on geogopfeore’, ‘we were both then still in our youth’) that they were very young at the time, i.e., that the boast was indeed a foolish one. as the wanderer poet puts it (70-2): beorn sceal gebidan, ponne he beot spricep op-pæt collen-ferhp cunne gearwe hwider hre pa gehygd hwerfan wille. a man must wait before he utters a pledge until that person of bold spirit is fully aware which way his mind’s thinking wants to turn (bradley). a boast must not be uttered hastily or lightly, for it is a weighty thing. the gnomic nature of this assertion conveys a definite attitude towards boasts on the community’s part. they, as much as the narrator, expect the boaster to carry out what he has pledged himself to do. this emerges from the early scene where hrothgar vows to build a great hall where he shall rule and give riches away: the hall erected, he beot ne aleh (80), ‘he did not neglect his vow’; here ne aleh is another implicative, equivalent to porfte, and the action of dispensing riches is viewed with approval by the poet and later contrasted, by hrothgar himself, with the miserly conduct of heremod, who ended up sharing his wealth with no-one (1709 ff.). the battle of maldon, too, speaks of eadric as acting rightly when he stands by his lord ready for battle: beot he gelæste (maldon 15), ‘he fulfilled his vow’, which is of a formulaic piece with gilp gelæsted (beowulf 829); and again, when byrhtnoth falls, one of his retainers harangues the rest, urging them to make good their oath (maldon 212-4): ‘gemunap para mæla pe we oft æt mædu spræcon, ponne we on bence beot ahofon, hælep on healle, ymbe heard gewinn’ ____________________________________________________________________ 14 ‘let us call to mind those declarations we often uttered over mead, when from our seat we heroes in hall would put up pledges about tough fighting’ (bradley). thus the important thing about beot is not that it should not be uttered but that it must be honoured. warriors who fail to do so are contemptible; warriors who would utter a boastful pledge must reflect before doing so not because boasts are not agreeable to god or some other superhuman power, but because of the burden of having to comply with them. and if an enemy utters beot, it is not the gods’ responsibility to punish him, but the hero’s alone to make him eat his words, as we learn from waldere (i, 26), when hildegyth praises the hero’s sword and urges him on against his antagonist: ‘[mit] py pu gu phere scealt beot forbigan’ ‘with it you shall put down the boasting of guthhere’ (bradley). the thrust of my argument so far is that the sympathies of characters and society may lie on the side of caution in the utterance of a boast, but, more importantly, on the side of fulfilment once the boast has been uttered; while contempt or pity characterize their reaction towards failure or refusal. like wise, the attitudes of narrator and audience in maldon, in the wanderer, in beowulf are essentially in harmony with those of their fictional heroes and societies: the audience are expected to agree with the sentiments expressed or displayed by the characters, and this is borne out by the collocative bond between beot, gylp etc. and verbs of fulfilment like gelæstan, geæfnian, or ne aleogan, as by the collocative bond between gylpan and a negated implicative like purfan; by the ethical consensus entailed by statements such as wanderer 70-2; and, in general, by the sorrowful or contemptuous attitude displayed towards failure in living up to one’s boast. 4. beowulf’s double boast let us now examine one particular instance of beot. twice does beowulf boast that he will fight grendel without weapons. the first of these two pas ____________________________________________________________________ 15 sages runs from ll. 433 to 441; lines 440b -1 do not actually touch on the boast, but will be relevant to the discussion later on: 433-41 ‘hæbbe ic eac geahsod pæt se æglæca for his wonhydum wæpna ne reccep. ic pæt ponne forhicge, swa me higelac sie, min mondrihten, modes blipe, pæt ic sweord bere o ppe sidne scyld, geolorand to gupe; ac ic mid grape sceal fon wip feonde ond ymb feorh sacan, lap wip lapum. pær gelyfan sceal dryhtnes dome se pe hine deap nimep’. ‘also, i have heard that in his recklessness the monster disdains weapons. therefore, so that my leader hygelac may be glad at heart on my account, i scorn to carry sword or broad shield, yellow disc, into battle; but i shall grapple with the enemy with my bare hands and fight to the death, foe against foe. he whom death then takes must trust to the judgment of the lord’. the hero claims that ‘he has heard’ -and no-one in the audience gainsays this that grendel ‘disdains weapons’, and therefore he himself will scorn to carry sword or shield. the second passage runs from line 675 to 685a, but again i will include the closing lines 685b -7 for reasons to be given later: 675-87 gespræc pa se goda gylpworda sum, beowulf geata, ær he on bed stige: ‘no ic me an herewæsmun hnagran talige gupgeweorca ponne grendel hine; forpan ic hine sweorde swebban nelle, aldre beneotan, peah ic eal mæge. nat he para goda, pæt he me ongean slea, rand geheawe, peah pe he rof sie nipgeweorca. ac wit on niht sculon secge ofersittan, gif he gesecean dear wig ofer wæpen. ond sippan witig god on swa hwæ pere hond, halig dryhten, mærpo deme, swa him gemet pince’. then before the great man got on to his bed, beowulf of the geats spoke vaunting words: ‘i do not reckon myself inferior in warlike vigour, for deeds of battle, than grendel does himself; therefore i will not put him to sleep, take away his life, with a sword, although ____________________________________________________________________ 16 i easily could. he knows nothing of such noble matters -that he might strike against me, hew at the shield -renowned though he may be for hostile deeds. but in the night we both shall dispense with the sword, if he dare seek a fight without weapons. and then may the wise god, the holy lord, assign the glory to whichever side seems to him appropriate’. again he utters ‘some vaunting words’ (gylpworda sum), claiming for a fact -and again no-one contradicts this that grendel knows nothing of weapons, and so he will dispense with them too, so as to make it a fair fight. over 200 hundred lines later, while beowulf is slowly wrenching grendel’s arm out of its socket, his men rush to his aid, only to discover -what they did not know before that grendel has become invulnerable to swords through magic: 801-5 pone synscapan ænig ofer eorpan irenna cyst, gupbilla nan gretan nolde, ac he sigewæpnum forsworen hæfde, ecga gehwylcre. no war-sword, not the choicest of iron in the world, would touch the evil ravager, for with a spell he had rendered victorious weapons, all blades, useless. now this is an extraordinary coincidence: in an entirely innocent manner the hero had hit upon the one way of defeating grendel. granted that this is a familiar motif in folklore: the hero, often a simpleton, unerringly performs the one unlikely action which can overcome his supernatural adversary.1 but the specificity of the condition -grendel can only be defeated by brute forceand the inconsistent reasons beowulf gives for his decision -grendel disdains weapons; grendel knows nothing of weaponscast a large shadow on this ‘coincidence’. the bare -handed combat and the monster’s invulnerability to swords are related. the hero does not know (in fact, he remarks that he will use no sword to slay the monster, peah ic eal mæge (680), ‘though i easily could’) -all the more praise to him, then, for his daring choice. but can the poet have been ignorant of the causal link between the two facts? can he 1 and is there not one more shred of evidence here to support the hypothesis of folkorigins for the poem? ____________________________________________________________________ 17 have been ignorant of the traditional motif of swords that fail before a numi nous adversary?1 the motif reappears in 1522 ff. after beowulf dives into the mere with the sword hrunting, he comes face to face with the ogress, and as he hacks at her he realizes hrunting cannot avail him. he then trusts in his own strength, which nearly costs him his life, until he manages to get hold of her sword; this is presented as ealdsweord eotenisc (1558), ‘an ancient sword made by giants’, and with it he easily beheads both her and her (already dead) son. it becomes clear that the grendel-kin cannot be wounded by man-wrought iron, but are helpless before swords of a non-human origin. the motif reappears once more in 2575 ff. there the hero faces his third and most formidable enemy, the dragon, and as we saw above, on this occasio n he cannot boast of a glorious victory because once more his sword (nægling) fails swa hyt no sceolde, ‘as it should not have done’. just then, wiglaf rushes in wielding a sword described as ealdsweord eotenisc (2616); and while beowulf’s blade actually shatters against the dragon’s head, wiglaf’s sinks easily somewhere below the head. we can say that all three monsters share this characteristic, that they are invulnerable to human swords but can be killed by non-human weapons. the author uses the motif explicitly and deliberately twice. we can therefore not claim that he was ignorant of it. now to return to the first fight: he has the right ingredients, he twice makes the point about his hero’s not using weapons against grendel, and he must have known that a causal link exists between the monster’s invulnera bility and the need for a hand-to-hand combat. in other words, the motif is there, in a submerged manner. why did he not avail himself of it? why did he choose instead to let beowulf opt for a wrestlin g match? as was said earlier, all the more glory to the hero who decides to go unarmed into the fight on the claim that his enemy scorns weapons or knows nothing of them. but there is something more. for had beowulf known that grendel could not be hurt by iron, the decision as to the proper manner of fighting would have been taken out of his hands, and he would have been forced to wrestle him; as it is, beowulf freely chooses to wrestle him without being aware of a reason for having to do so. in replacing the conventional motif with a heroic 1 on this motif, see garbáty 1961, lüthi 1975 (1987: 48). ____________________________________________________________________ 18 boast, the poet enhances the strength and confidence of his hero; he lays the ground for a gradual erosion of this confidence in subsequent battles (see below); above all, he highlights the function of the will: in providing merely ad hoc motivation (and an inconsistent one, to boot: does grendel scorn weapons, or does he know nothing of them?) for his hero’s repeated boast, the poet makes sure we grasp the utterances in 433-40a and 677-85a as issuing from choice, not necessity. he stresses the arbitrary nature of the pledge; he replaces a deed that would be merely imposed upon the hero with one which is willed by him. the double boast becomes a token of an outrageous arrogance: it pulverizes the notion of measure, of human limitations, of decorum; it is excessive. yet its excess does not rate censure but commendation on the part of his hosts. the poet, too, sanctions this excessive language, and we know this because we know that he sanctions boastful speech (see above), but also because in both instances he is careful to wrap his hero’s vaunting words in discretion by having him, immediately after his boasts, humbly appeal to the judgment of the lord in 440b -1, to god’s will in 685b-87. these religious references, by juxtaposing beot to a socially accepted system of values (christian ones), leave us in no doubt as to the poet’s attitude towards his hero’s boast. beot is a freely performed act: it is willed. it conveys a determination to achieve some difficult thing against all odds, and thus entails an exertion of the will. when beot consists in a pledge of loyalty, it places no less than the individual’s life on the line. at its most dramatic, beot is an outrageous challenge against the order of things. it thus entails some manner of opposition, a disposition to disrupt some convention, to run a risk, to perform some exces sive deed, to forgo some safeguard, or just to step beyond what is commonly feasible or acceptable, thus committing the speaker to an action which will place him beyond some accepted limit: a transcending, or a transgression. furthermore, beot carries important moral connotations: it must not be uttered lightly, but once uttered it must be honoured; society sanctions fulfilment and frowns upon renuence or failure. we may conclude that the culture for which beot is an important part of the accepted code of conduct is a culture existing in a considerable degree of tension between the established order of things and a determination to transcend that order. ____________________________________________________________________ 19 5. hybris in an impressive, and exhaustive, study (hybris 1992), fisher argues that the greek term hybris, whether appearing in literary or non-literary texts, primarily stems from juridical discourse. he opposes the ‘traditional’ view, according to which hybris is held to be essentially an offence against the gods […]; it is the act, word or even thought whereby the mortal forgets the limitations of mortality, seeks to acquire the attributes of the gods, or competes with the gods, or boasts overconfidently (hybris: 2), and argues instead that the term concerns notions of transgression against another’s honour: hybris is essentially the serious assault on the honour of another, which is likely to cause shame, and lead to anger and attempts at revenge. hybris is often, but by no means necessarily, an act of violence; it is essentially deliberate activity, and the typical motive for such infliction of dishonour is the pleasure of expressing a sense of superiority, rather than compulsion, need or desire for wealth. hybris is often seen to be characteristic of the young and/or of the rich and/or upper classes; it is often associated with drunkenness. hybris thus most often denotes specific acts or general behaviour directed against others, rather than attitudes (ib.: 1). the most extreme types of hybris are seen as behaviour essentially antithetical to and threatening the fundamental bases of, civilized living in communities; […] excessive love of violence and war, failure to respect the obligations toward s kin and friends, or to control oneself at dangerous social occasions, especially those in volving drink […]. [such behaviour was often attributed] to a variety of mythological or putatively ‘historical’ figures who oppose,1 1 the text says "who operate", but this does not make sense, and fisher’s book is unfortunately plagued with misprints and omissions. ____________________________________________________________________ 20 from the margins or from ‘outside’, the divinely appointed social order (ib.: 500).1 in fact, twenty years before fisher’s study, pierre chantraine’s dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (published in 1968 and reprinted in 1984) had already recognized just this fundamental legal sense of the word: hybris: violence injuste, provoquée par la passion, violence, démesure, outrage, coups portés à une personne, le terme ayant une valeur juridique […] hybris est un terme important pour la pensée morale et juridique des grecs. chez homère, il caractérise la violence brutale, qui viole les règles (1150). thus prometheus commits hybris when he steals the fire of the gods and gives it to humankind, and again when he shouts defiance against vengeful zeus. on the other hand, in a play such as aeschylus’ the persians no amount of ingenuity can erase the fact that it is zeus who “chastises thoughts which are too proud” (persians 827-8), or the fact that xerxes’ crime consists not merely in dishonouring the greeks but in “harming the gods with overbold and reckless deeds” (ib.: 831-2). and our problem becomes how to reconcile this undeniable offense against the gods with the juridical notion of honour; is it perhaps the honour of the gods that is outraged? i believe the answer is to be obtained elsewhere. fisher acknowledges that hubristic behaviour was lavishly attributed to invaders, and thus not only the persians but also the seven against thebes, as well as the giants and titans who sought to overrun olympus, are credited with hybris (fisher 503); he also points out that the central image of hybris in the persians is that of the yoke: the yoke of slavery threatened on greece and intimated by that “major symbol of improper ‘yoking’ throughout the play [which] is the attempt to erase the natural boundary between europa and asia, ‘to yoke’ the sea at the hellespont” with a vast pontoon (fisher 257). and one point which time and again crops up in discussions of greek tragedy and of hybris is that the two are bound up with the commission of “acts of the greatest dishonour against men and, in xerxes’ case, against gods and the natural order as well” (fisher 261), with “brutal violence which violates the rules” (chantraine), 1 tantalos, ixion, sisiphus, salmoneus, odysseus’ cyclops and penelope’s suitors are given by fisher as among those hybris-led figures who oppose the divinely established order. ____________________________________________________________________ 21 with acts such as “crossing limits beyond which there is danger” (ewans1), with acting “outside the bounds by which all human activity should be limited” (dihle 1982: 188) (my emphasis). hybris in this light constitutes a transgression of the appointed order, whether social, natural, divine or cosmic; and though the term may have originated in the realm of juridical discourse -the etymology of hybris is obscure -, its use in epic and drama often transcends a purely le gal sense and, without in the least excluding the latter, enters the moral and religious dimensions where the fundamental concept is that of the boundary transgressed. in other words, hybris is not simply excessive pride but a transgression of the social, natural, divine, or cosmic order, and hence an act which must be countered by the forces of order, not only by way of punishment but equally in prevention of greater evil. hybris is a violation of kosmos -in all the senses of the greek word: ‘order’, ‘form’, ‘universe’, ‘social world’, ‘arrangement’, ‘ornament’, ‘honour’, ‘glory’ (chantraine)-, thereby attracting upon itself a moral retaliation, nemesis, because it threatens to plunge the world into chaos. several similarities can be found between beot and hybris. to begin with, both are actions. the one is a speech act, the other a deed which may be verbal: of capaneus’ boast (the seven against thebes) that he will sack the city “whether god wants it or not” (426-7), we are told it “exceeds the power of mortal thought” (425), and we are further advised that his words “swell like waves and spatter zeus” (443). this is a description of perlocutionary language, of a language which affects reality. of astakos, a champion sent against proud tydeus in the same play, it is said that “he hates all words that go too far” (410). the notion of transgression is there in both instances, and attached to a language which exceeds the limits imposed by the powers governing a proper relationship between human and god. in the second place, both are acts to the performance of which the will is central: they are voluntary deeds. in the third place, both involve -factually or by intentiona transcendence or transgression of limits, a going beyond some pale. as a result, 1 "precisely the tragic dimension of xerxes’ position -and of agamemnon’sis that in pursuing the goals which an agathos had to pursue qua agathos, they were obliged to cross limits beyond which there is danger (crossing the hellespont, sacrificing iphigeneia to artemis), and chose paths which led to disaster" (ewans 1996: xxii). ____________________________________________________________________ 22 both expose the agent to dangers arising from this going beyond the pale.1 the major difference between them lies in the attitude the community exhibits towards the agents. the greeks consider it a moral duty to refrain from hybris, and the hybristes is urged -however much sympathy he may deserveto retreat from his position lest he bring nemesis upon himself and his. the anglo -saxon culture, on the other hand, may chide the utterer of beot for lightly engaging in a weighty pledge, but expects him in any case to carry it out. hybris consists in a manifestation of the individual’s will which involves the violation of a set of norms and which must therefore be curtailed: it is a moral duty to refrain from hybris. beot consists in a manifestation of the in dividual’s will which has as its intended result a transcending the expected run of things, and which must be fulfille d. in the case of hybris, proper behaviour demands the repression by the individual of his inclination. in the case of beot, proper behaviour demands care in the vow, but fulfilment once the vow has been uttered. hybris is seen to be destructive, not so much because it denotes arrogance or because it defies the gods, but because it challenges the accepted order: stability is under threat by hybris. by contrast, in the case of beot there is a conviction that the order of things is inimical to the individual’s purposes, and a conviction that the individual’s will may be legitimately employed to mo dify it. thus challenging breca means defying both the natural elements and the limitations of human nature; facing the dragon means engaging an enemy no-one has dared face before; determining to fight grendel without weapons means freely giving oneself an unreasonable handicap. both beot and hybris constitute a defiance against the order of things. to the proposition ‘the world is thus and thus’, the agent in both cases replies: ‘i challenge that’. but whereas hybris entails punishment and a welcome restoration of equilibrium, beot receives the sympathies and encouragement of comitatus, poet and audience alike. whereas the greek outlook tends to respect the order of things and fears to upset it, the anglo -saxon sees with satisfaction attempts at modifying it, regrets or condemns failure to do so after the promise has been made, and 1 furthermore, hybris is associated with drunkenness; and it is worth noticing that beot, too, is often uttered over drinks; whether this link is significant will largely depend on the degree of symbolism we are willing to attach to drink, the cup, the drink-bearers, the drink-benches and so on in the germanic and classic traditions (see aguirre 1996). ____________________________________________________________________ 23 views disparagingly those forces which seem to thwart such aspirations. and this is where the notion of fate becomes central to our enquiry. 6. wyrd scholars have for some decades sought to render oe wyrd as ‘event’, ‘deed’, ‘fact’ and to minimize destinal readings. few of us want to be caught arguing for a concept of ‘germanic fatalism’ which was fashionable until the nineteen-twenties (stanley 1964). no such concept need be appealed to, however, by a translation of wyrd as ‘fate’, and in many instances this is the only sensible translation. as i have argued the point elsewhere, i will limit myself to stating without proof that wyrd means “fate”, and that, whether we read it or not as personification (a goddess of fate), it occupies a central place in beowulf.1 let us for a minute return to beowulf’s boast to fight grendel single -handedly. were he to arm himself against grendel, and were his sword to fail him in his hour of need, this fight would not differ from the second one, and a sense of progression towards disaster would not be created. by altering the inherited motif in the first fight while respecting it in the second and third, the poet allows himself an initial image of a supremely confident beowulf acting out of an indomitable will and awakening our admiration. but this supreme confidence is going to be subsequently whittled down by stages over the next two fights, gradually eliciting from us a very different kind of reaction: not so much admiration for the unconquerable power of the hero’s will as for his desperate courage. the will does not weaken, its effectiveness d oes. one way to look at the poem is in terms of this growing futility of the heroic that will in the face of a power beyond the hero’s control -the power of fate. futility is here meant, of course, in the sense of practical results obtained. morally, beowulf’s conduct is impeccable, his courage never slackens. but wyrd, fate, does not appear as a moral agent, rewarding appropriate conduct or punishing the transgression of some divine law -wyrd is no providential principle, rather it constitutes an impersonal, blind force acting according to 1 see aguirre 1995 and aguirre (forthcoming). ____________________________________________________________________ 24 pre -established patterns and moving inexorably towards destruction; wyrd is not divine justice, but sheer inevitability. and the only thing which may avert fate, we are told -and only temporarily at thatis either the will of god or the will of man, as manifested in a display of courage: 572-3 wyrd oft nere p unfægne eorl, ponne his ellen deah. fate will often spare a man not yet destined for death, when his courage is good.1 1056-7 […] nefne him witig god wyrd forstode ond pæs mannes mod […] if wise god and the man’s courage had not averted that fate. but of course, ultimately, not even the will of man will be enough. for just as it is not human action that brings about a retribution -as it still is in aeschylus and in the iliad-, so it is not human action that can effectively alter the course of wyrd. in contrast to nemesis, which is an explicit agent of moral retribution, wyrd, the force which leads all to dissolution in the anglo saxon poem, is simply in the nature of things -almost another term for it is entropy; this is why no moral law stands in the way of the individual’s transgressing an abstract order -but equally, no moral law guarantees success as a reward to the heroic exertion. an act of courage which averts that which was preordained is precisely what the utterer of beot intends. the extreme, most dramatic kind of beot we have been considering here is a challenge entailing, in principle, some such deed as will alter the foreseeable and the certain, the conventional and the acceptable. but in spite of several glorious victories, the poem is so constructed as inexorably to lead the hero, and his people, to failure and disas ter.2 failure, let us insist, not because beowulf’s bravery or determination waver, but because his self-sacrifice fails to obtain the desired result. not only is he abandoned by those he sought to protect, but the last word is on the side of hopelessness, as the geats bury the treasure he had tragically 1 on the view that fæge is used in an effort to divest wyrd of some of its attributes, see my forthcoming "after word comes weird". 2 on the notion that the poem’s structure contributes to establishing the presence of overwhelming fate, see bonjour 1950: 33-4, 42, 44-6, 69, passim. ____________________________________________________________________ 25 striven to obtain, thereby -in spite of the noble king’s effort surrendering to their fate. and disaster: wiglaf’s forebodings of doom as a result of the warband’s inability to hold to their central oath of loyalty (another beot) are followed by the geatish woman’s predictions of defeat and captivity on the occasion of beowulf’s funeral; her words of mourning for a dead hero are also a dirge for his doomed nation. courage is then one key to alter that which was ordained; yet in spite of great exertions, courage eventually proves not enough. it will be resorted to, by the bravest, to the last, perhaps because there is nothing else. but in the end the best of efforts will not halt the run of things: gæp a wyrd swa hio scel (455), ‘fate will always go as it must’. the drift of my argument is that this poem strives towards a transcendence of wyrd . this is the reason so much emphasis is placed, here as elsewhere in old english heroic poetry, on the individual’s will, as manifested in his beot and in subsequent acts of bravery against some unspecified but overpowering order of things. m.swanton makes this point explicitly for beowulf: beowulf dismisses his comitatus, but continues to act in the light of the ethical requirements of that group. he believes for an instant -the instant of beotthat he may overcome the dragon, that he may peserve the way of life they all know. the hero defies his fate, but in a spirit of resignation: fate will go always as it must; a man can achieve so much, and no more; he cannot, after all, live for ever. his decision may seem to be brought about by pride but, unlike the classical hybris, it is external and clear, not what he but society expects (swanton 1978 (1990: 27)). and e.v.gordon put it lucidly in a statement on the germanic epic: [for the hero of old norse literature] the heroic problem of life lay primarily in the struggle for freedom of the will, against the pains of the body, and the fear of death, against fate itself. the hero was in truth a champion of the free will of man against fate […]. as it happens, however, the most definite statement in germanic litera ture of heroic doctrine is not in norse but in the anglo -saxon poem the battle of maldon. the old retainer, byrhtwold, making his last stand, exhorts the survivors who are with him: ‘the mind must be the harder, the heart the keener, the spirit the greater, as our strength grows less’ (gordon 1927 (1990: xxx f.)). ____________________________________________________________________ 26 ‘do i dare disturb the universe?’, asks t.s.eliot’s prufrock. beowulf and byrhtwold dare the universe every time they utter a b oast. beot is not simply a matter of swearing to do something, but of a significant, sustained, and tragic (because of its ultimate futility) effort to push the borders of the established order further and further away from us, and to assert the individual’s will at the centre of an all-too-ordered cosmos. in all this, there is no question of a ‘fatalistic strain’ in germanic thought. what may happen is that, as the christian doctrine emerges with a viable formulation of the human existence in terms of fre e will, dispersed or rarified tendencies in that direction on the part of the anglo -saxon culture may acquire impetus and a focal point: perhaps for the first time, a firm leverage is obtained against the traditional view, and dissatisfaction with this view grows in direct proportion to the possibilities of a viable alternative. at a certain point in this process, the culture concerned may begin to speak of fate -under whatever name as of a force which thwarts human aspirations. whether it may turn out that ‘fatalism’ is an important cultural concept only in those societies which have (recently) embraced christianity, is beyond the scope of this article to elucidate. my point is that beowulf represents a glimpse into a new way of thinking -a way of thinking not clearly formu lated -one which christianity is to foster but which in beowulf cannot quite be sustained. the stupendous notion that the future depends on individual acts and not on some pre -established pattern, that it is possible to modify the individual’s destiny by acts of will -this notion had been developed by the fifth century, and seems to be getting hold -whether or not under christian influenceof the germanic culture of our poem. its concern with freedom of the will places beowulf squarely in the middle of a current of thought which runs parallel to, and at points merges with or is influenced by, christian tra dition since augustine. in the work of this philosopher, especially in de libero arbitrio, the design of a christian model whic h enshrines the triumph of the will is virtually complete, and will not be challenged for over a thousand years. christianity was aware that the only way of transcending the earlier, myth-bound culture was to extol the individual will and thus the possibility for endless innovation and modification of the human universe. beowulf is not yet there: the poem has not made the transition -for if it had, it would be aware of a purposeful order of things arranged providentially for the benefit of the human cause. there is no sign of providence in the ____________________________________________________________________ 27 poem except where translators choose to render wyrd as “providence” -a choice which (mostly) reads modern notions into an ancient text. in its outlook vis -à-vis fate, beowulf is not quite a christian poem but rather repre sents a liminal stage in the struggle between a mentality which accepts pre established patterns (such as is conveyed by the term hybris) and another which seeks to emancipate itself from such patterns (as manifested in the christian fostering of the will). in between these two, the mentality evinced in the concept of beot cherishes the individual’s will yet succumbs to the pre established. and so the poem is shaped by a tragic combination of acceptance and (ultimately failed) revolt. 7. a literature of the will there is no such concept as free will in the iliad or in the plays of aeschylus. this statement does not mean that determinism rules classical greek texts, merely that the will does not exist as a separate category of the human mind. “the notion of will has no corresponding word in either philo sophical or non-philosophical greek” (dihle 1982: 18).when the physician diocles ( + 300 b.c.) sought to define the psychological aspects of an empty stomach, he referred on the one hand to the animal instinct of hunger, on the other to the reasoning leading to a decision to eat: our term “will” denotes only the resulting intention, leaving out any special reference to thought, instinct, or emotion as possible sources of that intention. greek, on the other hand, is able to express intention only together with one of its causes, but never in its own right (ib.: 24). that is, the will appears to the greeks as the culmination of either a ratio nal process or of instinct, which for them is the irrational. and so the discussion of the will is fundamentally bound up with issues of the intellect, knowledge, epistemology: the twofold psychology that explains human behaviour on the basis of the interaction of rational and irrational forces and has no ____________________________________________________________________ 28 room for the concept of will prevails throughout the greek tradition from the time of homer onwards (ib.: 27). in early anthropological theories, the greeks tended to attribute tenacity and stubbornness, that is to say qualities of the human will in the modern view, to the irrational part of man’s personality (ib.: 177). this explains why xerxes’ decision to invade the hellas is blamed by darius and the queen on a) ignorance, b) a daimon’s influence and c) a sick mind (persians 274-51). against such an ideological background, hybris, understood as “acting outside the bounds by which all human activity should be limited” (ib.: 188), is attributed to ignorance of one’s real position. if, for us, the will is involved in hybris, for the greeks the intellect is central to it; and tragedy ensues because the characters cannot make decisions that will effectively change the course of events: in a greek tragedy everything that could have been otherwise has already happened before the play begins, and it is impossible at any point in the play to call out to the hero, ‘don’t choose this, choose that’. he is already in the trap. in an elizabethan tragedy, in othello, for example, there is no point before he actually murders desdemona when it would be impossible for him to control his jealousy, discover the truth, and convert the tragedy into a comedy (auden & pearson 1950 (1977: xxix)). we may well speak of two historically differentiated types of literature in medieval times. the first is a literature of memory, or of ritual, which fundamentally repeats pre -established patterns and does so according to pattern; action is in it pre -programmed, outcomes are known in advance by the audience, much material is repeated, extensive use is made of formulaic language; this literature may be best represented by the early epic or the fairytale, and is reflected in the medieval historian’s preoccupation with ‘inventing’ nothing and appealing to ancient authority instead. the second is a literature of the will, or of action, in which the individual’s decisions shape his own destiny; the ballad, the later european epic (e.g. the spanish poema del cid) and the romance are easy examples of this; repetition and formulaic language may abound here too, but the central concern is with the hero’s ____________________________________________________________________ 29 ability to assert his purposes and carry them out against all odds, culminating in success. no literary class or genre is ‘pure’, and we need not expect any given text to accommodate itself to either type. but if one were to venture sweeping statements, it would make much sense to say that the middle ages, especially after the 11th century, witness the flowering of a literature of the will, manifested in the romances, in the love poetry of the troubadours, in the lais of marie de france, as well as in so many texts of direct christian inspiration (hagiographical narrative, dante’s commedia, mariological texts, and so on). classical greek literature (again with all kinds of restrictions) is by and large associated with the first type. the difference between the two types becomes clear when we compare e.g. achilles and gawain. the options confronting achilles -to die young and famous, to live long in obscurityare redolent of fate: he does not so much decide upon a course of action as accepts one or other destiny. sir gawain’s choices only lead him to further choices: at every turn a new course of conduct is open for him to follow or reject. furthermore, it is never his long-term destiny that is at stake, nor will he die at the end of the standard gawa in-romance, for the narrative stops at the point where the hero succeeds (or, as in sir gawain and the green knight, is chastised), in a celebration of the will. beowulf occupies a middle position. it has advanced beyond the first type in its recognition of the importance and value of the will in shaping the individual’s destiny; it falls short of the second type in its failure to shake off the trappings of ritual, of a formu laic reality, of a cosmic fate. manuel aguirre universidad autónoma de madrid ____________________________________________________________________ 30 references aeschylus. see ewans 1996. aguirre, manuel 1995: some thoughts on the semantics of old english wyrd, in santano & al (eds.) papers from the vii international selim conference, cáceres, university of extremadura: 9-21. aguirre, manuel 1996: life, crown, and queen: gertrude and the theme of sovereignty, in the review of english studies. aguirre, manuel (forthcoming): after word comes weird: wyrd and collocation in old english. to appear in english as a human language (ed. j. van der auwera). auden, w. h & pearson, norman holmes (eds.) 1950: elizabethan and jacobean poets. harmondsworth: penguin books 1977. barnes, daniel 1970: folktale morphology and the structure of beowulf. speculum 45: 416-34. battle of maldon, the. see pope (ed.) 1966. beowulf. see swanton 1978. bjork, r. e. & niles, j. d. (eds.) 1996: a beowulf handbook . exeter: university of exeter press 1997. bonjour, adrien 1950: the digressions in beowulf. oxford: basil blackwell. bosworth, joseph and toller, t. northcote 1898: an anglo-saxon dictionary. oxford: oxford university press 1991. bradley, s. a. j. (tr.) 1982: anglo-saxon poetry. london: dent 1987. chantraine, pierre 1968: dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque. paris: éditions klincksieck 1990. dihle, albrecht 1982: the theory of will in classical antiquity. berkeley: university of california press. ewans, michael (tr.)1996: aeschylus’ suppliants and other dramas. london: everyman. ____________________________________________________________________ 31 fisher, n. r. e. 1992: hybris: a study in the values of honour and shame in ancient greece. warminster: aries & phillips. garbáty, thomas j. 1961: the fallible sword: inception of a motif. journal of american folklore 75: 58-9. gordon, e. v. 1927: an introduction to old norse (2nd edition revised by a. r. taylor). oxford: oup. 1990. hoey, michael 1991: patterns of lexis in text. oxford: oup. lord, albert b. 1960: the singer of tales. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. lüthi, max 1975: the fairytale as art form and portrait of man (tr. j.erickson). bloomington: indiana up 1987. mabinogion, the (tr. g. jones & t. jones). london: dent 1978. magoun, francis p. 1953: the oral-formulaic character of anglo -saxon narrative poetry. speculum 28: 446-67. o’brien o’keefe, katherine 1996: diction, variation, the formula. bjork & niles (eds.) 1996: 85-104. parry, milman 1930: studies in the epic technique of oral verse-making. i: homer and homeric style. harvard, mass.: harvard studies in classical philology 41. pope, john c. (ed.) 1966 seven old english poems. new york: norton 1981. simek, rudolf 1984: dictionary of northern mythology (tr. a.hall). cambridge: d. s. brewer 1996. stanley, e. g. 1964: the search for anglo-saxon paganism. cambridge and totowa, new jersey: d. s. brewer / rowman & littlefield 1975. swanton, m. (ed. and tr.) 1978: beowulf. manchester: manchester u. p. waldere. in old english minor heroic poems (ed. j. hill). durham, durham medieval texts 4, 1983. wanderer, the . see pope (ed.) 1966. * † * selim07 (2).pdf ____________________________________________________________________ 207 bravo, antonio 1998: fe y literatura en el período anglosajón, ss.vii-xi (la plegaria como texto literario). oviedo: servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de oviedo. 217 pp. isbn 84-8317-077-0. bravo, antonio 1998: los lays heroicos y los cantos épicos cortos en el inglés antiguo. oviedo: servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de oviedo. 280 pp. isbn 84-8317-073-6. desde que el dr. antonio bravo publicó su último libro, en colaboración con pedro gonzalo, hace ya cuatro años1 todos los estudiosos de la lengua y de la literatura del inglés antiguo hemos estado esperando con impaciencia una nueva monografía suya. habida cuenta de la calidad de los dos nuevos trabajos que ahora nos ofrece, todos nos hemos exp licado el porqué del transcurso de estos años y hemos dado por merecida la espera. acabamos de recibir los resultados de las investigaciones del dr. bravo en forma de dos libros que presentan a la comunidad académica sendos estudios sobre dos cuestiones fundamentales para la literatura anglosajona y aparentemente muy distantes entre sí en lo que a ámbito investigador se re fiere, lo que nos da una buena prueba de la positiva ubicuidad investigadora del dr. bravo. cualquiera que conozca mínimamente la obra publicada del autor enseguida se habrá dado cuenta de que los dos temas básicos de estas monografías -i.e. la literatura de temática cristiana y la poesía épicason dos obsesiones investigadoras en la obra del dr. bravo, si se me permite el uso de la palabra obsesión en el más benéfico de los sentidos. de ahí que se pueda deducir que lo que ahora nos ofrece es resultado no sólo de cuatro años de laboriosa tarea sino también de muchos más años de maduración y reflexión sobre la poesía épica y los textos donde se pone de manifiesto la fe cristiana de los anglosajones. el primero de los volúmenes objeto de esta reseña recoge bajo el título de fe y literatura en el período anglosajón, ss.vii-xi (la plegaria como texto literario) un denso y completo estudio sobre la plegaria como recurso liter1 bravo, a. & gonzalo, p. 1994: héroes y santos en la literatura anglosajona. oviedo: servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de oviedo. ____________________________________________________________________ 208 ario en los escritos anglosajones. buen conocedor del tema, el dr. bravo re aliza en este libro una taxonomía completa de la plegaria y de su funcionamiento literario, algo que de una forma más breve ya nos anunció hace unos años en un original artículo 1 que sin lugar a dudas fue el germen de este libro que ahora se publica. en aquel artículo ya se era consciente de la necesidad de un estudio más extenso de la plegaria como recurso/ texto lit erario: se podría seguir analizando el resto de las plegarias que se observan en la narrativa anglosajona, plegaria ante la tortura, plegaria para pedir un milagro, plegaria durante un viaje, etc., y en todas ellas se observará que presentan un lenguaje poético; cons ecuentemente, la plegaria se transforma así en un recurso literario que ha de ser estudiado y tenido en cuenta para la valoración y análisis del texto en que apare ce dicha plegaria (ibid p. 6). el tema de la plegaria como expresión literaria que realzaba el valor de las obras anglosajonas se convirtió en un leitmotiv científico para el dr. bravo. en este y en otros artículos que vinieron después 2, el autor fue trazando las líneas maestras de un estudio más amplio y profundo que creemos siempre estuvo presente en su mente. en cierto modo, esta también ha sido otra espera que ha finalizado con la obra que ahora se presenta, cuya estructura se articula en torno a una in troducción y cinco capítulos (i: la ple garia como manifestación de la fe en los escritos anglosajones, ii: la plegaria litúrgica, iii: la plegaria privada en latín y en inglés antiguo, iv: la plegaria narrativa en inglés antiguo, v: las funciones de la plegaria narrativa), además de ofrecernos una bibliografía final sobre el tema. tras ofrecer en la introducción (7-16) un breve tratamiento del tema que nos ocupa, en el que se pone de manifiesto la escasa atención que la crítica especializada ha dedicado al estudio de la plegaria como posible recurso 1 bravo, a. 1989: una taxonomía de la plegaria como recurso literario en el inglés antiguo. proceedings of the second international conference of the spanish society for english medieval language and literature. eds. a. león, m. c. casares & m. m. rivas. córdoba: universidad de córdoba. 1-7. 2 bravo, a. 1992a: prayer as a literary device in the battle of maldon and in the poem of the cid. selim: journal of the spanish society for english medieval language and literature 2: 31-46. bravo, a. 1992b: la plegaria de byrhtnoth como recurso literario. actas del xiii congreso de aedean. vitoria: 215-222. ____________________________________________________________________ 209 narrativo en la literatura anglosajona, el autor entra en materia en el primer capítulo (17-32) definiendo la condición de reveladora de la fe que la ple garia posee en los textos anglosajones a partir de lo que se nos muestra en diferentes textos religiosos de la época, fundamentalmente en las obras de aelfric y beda. en el segundo capítulo (33-46) se definen los márgenes de la plegaria litúrgica, y por medio de sus ejemplos más característicos -el credo, el padre nuestro , los himnos litúrgicos y los salmosse demuestra cómo se la puede considerar como fuente, base y origen de la plegaria narrativa. el capítulo tercero (47-94) -con un excelente manejo de las fuentes utilizadas, algo que por otra parte constituye la tónica general de toda la monografía aborda la descripción, sobre todo estructural, de las plegarias de carácter privado escritas no sólo en latín sino también en la lengua vernácula de los anglosajones, definiéndose las diferentes partes de su estructura básica (invocación, comentario, peticiones y fórmula final) así como sus posibilidades de modificación y las diversas formas de adaptación al inglés antiguo tanto en prosa como en versode los textos latinos, con especial atención a la versión en prosa del padre nuestro hecha por wulfstan, a diferentes paráfrasis en prosa de aethelstan y aelfric, al poema a prayer, al himno de caedmon y a diversas paráfrasis poéticas tanto literales -lord's prayer i & iiicomo libres -lord's prayer ii, the advent lyrics, el credo-. tras haber analizado lo que podríamos denominar “fundamento religiosolitúrgico de la plegaria”, el autor lleva a cabo en el capítulo cuarto (95-165) una exhaustiva taxonomía de la plegaria narrativa en inglés antiguo. a través del estudio de un corpus textual muy amplio -elene, juliana, beowulf, the battle of maldon, the blicking homilies, the old english martirology, andreas, daniel, azarias, y un largo etcétera se definen de una forma muy completa y extensa hasta diez tipos de plegaria narrativa: plegaria ante la muerte inminente de un personaje (97-109) plegaria dicha ante la tortura (109-120) plegaria que se emite durante la batalla (120-126) plegaria ante la muerte durante la batalla (126-133) plegaria para pedir una curación o liberar a alguien de la muerte (133-138) plegaria para protegerse de las tentaciones del maligno (138-144) ____________________________________________________________________ 210 plegaria penitencial y de arrepentimiento (144-150) plegaria que se reza para pedir un milagro (150-155) plegaria que se utiliza como epílogo de una obra narrativa (155-161) otras plegarias narrativas (162-165) después del exhaustivo esfuerzo de catalogación y análisis, sólo le resta al autor describir las funciones literarias de las plegarias narrativas descritas, cosa que realiza magníficamente a lo largo del quinto y último capítulo (167206), llegando a la observación definitiva de la plegaria como recurso literario. la bibliografía ofrecida (207-217) es muy completa y cubre todos los aspectos tratados en la monografía, aunque hubiera sido deseable una separación entre obras críticas y ediciones de los textos utilizados, en pro de un mayor didactismo en la exposición del amplio y actualizado catálogo de tra bajos citados. en definitiva, el dr. bravo nos ha ofrecido con esta monografía un rig uroso estudio -cuya lectura recomendamos encarecidamente a todos los in teresados en la materia que viene a cubrir un hueco existente en los estudios sobre literatura anglosajona, y que sin lugar a dudas era necesario realizar. de carácter alg o más didáctico, orientado al estudiante universitario aunque también le será útil a todo aquel que quiera aventurarse por los caminos de la épica-, y no por ello menos necesario, es el segundo volumen al que dedicamos esta reseña. bajo el título de los lays heroicos y los cantos épicos cortos en el inglés antiguo, el dr. bravo desarrolla un punto de vista muy personal sobre una serie de poemas épicos cortos cuya clasificación siempre ha sido bastante controvertida, pues la crítica especializada nunca se ha puesto muy de acuerdo a la hora de definir su condición: ¿son poemas épicos a pesar de su corta extensión?, ¿son elegías?, ¿poemas líricos?, ¿acaso constituyen otro tipo de composición? el dr. bravo zanja la cuestión desde el principio con una hipótesis de partida: un grupo de poemas son lays hero icos y otro grupo son cantos épicos históricos de corta extensión. esta personal división va a marcar la estructura de toda la monografía, pues esta se articula en torno a una introducción de carácter genérico, seguida de tres partes ____________________________________________________________________ 211 principales dedicadas al estudio de los lays heroicos, de los lays hero icos que aparecen en beowulf, y de los cantos épicos históricos. en la introducción (9-44) el dr. bravo desarrolla una serie de puntos de partida -en forma de cuatro epígrafes de carácter general y de impre scindible conocimiento para aquel que se acerque por vez primera al ámbito de la épica anglosajona. de este modo, en el primero de los epígrafes el autor nos confronta los conceptos de lay heroico y de canto épico corto, dentro del entorno general de la épica anglosajona. tras definir y catalogar los poemas dentro de sus respectivos conjuntos y dar sus razones para ello, se nos ofre cen tres epígrafes generales que deben estar en todo manual que desarrolle cuestiones sobre poesía épica anglosajona. como ya hiciera en anteriores manuales 1 -aunque en esta ocasión aporta una visión renovada del tema -, el dr. bravo revisa la estructura del verso heroico, el lenguaje literario de la épica, y el mundo cultural de los poemas épicos. así, el lector ya queda convenientemente introducido al mundo del verso épico, al que se accede en mayor profundidad en las siguientes partes de la monografía. en el siguiente capítulo se desarrolla un estudio de los lays heroicos (4589), que para el autor son widsith, deor, the batle of finsburh y waldere. se subdivide el capítulo en cuatro partes que glosan los poemas de forma in dividual, y haciendo gala de una muy acertada estructura didáctica -teniendo en cuenta el carácter de manual universitario que tiene la presente monografía-, cada parte trata los mismos aspectos en cada poema: ms y génesis, lugar y fecha, estructura, fuentes, comentario, interpretaciones y estilo. esta división analítica permite cubrir de forma exhaustiva todos los elementos dignos de mención en cada uno de los poemas objeto de estudio. el siguiente capítulo (91-140) está dedicado a los lays heroicos que forman parte del poema cumbre de la poesía épica anglosajona: el beowulf. comenzando con una introducción general sobre el poema beowulf, que constituye una revisión somera y una actualización de los conceptos básicos ya expuestos en su día 2 sobre la génesis del texto, sus fuentes, su estructura y 1 bravo, a. 1982: literatura anglosajona y antología bilingüe del antiguo inglés. oviedo: servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de oviedo. 65-77. bravo, a. 1987: la épica anglosajona. oviedo: servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de oviedo. 17-75. 2 bravo, a. 1981: beowulf. estudio y traducción. oviedo: servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de oviedo, 11-96. ____________________________________________________________________ 212 las principales interpretaciones históricas y/ o alegórico-cristianas, se pasa al análisis individual y pormenorizado de los cuatro lays heroicos hallados en beowulf: el lay del rey scyld, el lay de sigesmundo, el lay de finn y el lay de offa. el siguiente capítulo -última parte del grueso central de la monografía se dedica al estudio de los cantos épicos históricos de carácter breve (141-181). esta categoría la integran dos poemas individuales, the battle of maldon y the battle of brunanburh , y cinco poemas épicos insertados en la crónica anglosajona, the capture of the five boroughs, the coronation of edgar, the death of edgar, the death of alfred y the death of edward . se comienza analizando estos últimos y se concluye esta parte con el estudio completo de los dos primeros, en el que se repite la estructura didáctica anteriormente utilizada. la monografía concluye ofreciéndonos los textos en inglés antiguo de los poemas analizados y una traducción al español de todos ellos en verso libre. teniendo en cuenta el tono didáctico del manual, hubiera sido deseable unificar ambos apartados y haber confrontado ambos textos, de tal forma que en una página tuviésemos el texto original y en la otra apareciese la traducción al español. también hubiera sido muy útil la numeración de los versos. de todas formas, las traducciones ofrecidas son muy útiles para el lector no especializado, y superan en todos los casos a las versiones -algunas de ellas en prosaque el mismo autor ya había ofrecido en ocasiones anteriores 1. por último, la bibliografía (265-280) que se ofrece es básica pero suficientemente completa para el objetivo introductorio y didáctico de la monografía. de nuevo -y esto ya es obsesión de carácter personalhubiera sido didácticamente conveniente la división temática de la bibliografía para facilitar al lector universitario posteriores búsquedas de información. en definitiva, este libro sorprende por su claro afán de realizar, sobre la base de una división genérica muy particular y original, un estudio didáctico a la par que riguroso y actualizado de los lays heroicos y los cantos épicos cortos del inglés antiguo, que sin lugar a dudas es altamente recomendable como manual de cabecera para todos aquellos estudiantes universitarios de 1 bravo 1982: 111-156, 224-226 y 1987: 283-312, op. cit. ____________________________________________________________________ 213 filología inglesa que tengan entre sus asignaturas alguna dedicada al estudio de la literatura épica anglosajona. ambos libros reseñados aúnan en dos espléndidos trabajos, muy distintos en carácter y talante, las dos facetas que caracterizan al dr. bravo como investigador y divulgador de la lengua y de la literatura de los anglosajones: rigurosidad e innovación científicas, y exhaustividad y concreción didácticas, pues no sólo hay que realizar trabajos densos e innovadores para la comu nidad académica de medievalistas sino también hay que ser coherente con el lado docente de todo investigador universitario y cubrir los huecos prácticos que la falta de manuales sobre ciertos temas provocan en el día a día de las aulas universitarias españolas. esperamos que en el futuro el ejemplo del dr. bravo incite a otros investigadores a desdoblar su producción científica como él lo ha hecho con estas dos monografías. esperemos, también, que no tengan que transcurrir otros cuatro años para que las nuevas inquietudes y obsesiones investigadoras del dr. bravo vean la luz en forma impresa. jorge luis bueno alonso universidad de oviedo * † * selim07 (2).pdf javier calle martín & antonio miranda garcía, selim 7 (2000, for 1997): 83—96 on the quantity of <i> in old english words ending in -lic and -lice 1. introduction the phonology of old english may be characterized as having quantity or weight (lass 1994: 36) and, as such, it exhibits a vowel inventory which comprises a contrast between durationally long and short vocalic items 1. this contrast, however, happened not to be wholly systematic and overspread among the anglosaxons as they often failed to recognize this durational feature in the pronunciation of syllables. stutterheim (1968: 449) thus mentions that “length is not a relevant feature in the vowel systems of the og languages” and, similarly, jones (1989: 15) refers to the lack of standardization in old english on this respect stating that “the relative durational contrast […] was one which speakers had no way of predicting, the length of the vowels having to be specified in the language’s lexicon as being arbitrarily long or short”. actually, this was particularly true in the case of old english adjectives and adverbs ending up with -lic and -lice, respectively. we began to realize the lack of stability in the orthography and pronunciation of these types of items when implementing an automatic morphological analyser of old english (miranda et al. 1997) since the computer needed to be provided with a standard rule on this respect in order to generate a reliable and proficient morphological tagging. jones (1972: 52) thus affirms that “the orthography […] represents the vowels sounds underlying the alternants” and thus he 1 in some manuscripts an acute accent is occasionally used to highlight some long vowels but this device was not systematic and it might be interpreted as a sign of emphasis. notice that the same diacritic is also found in some dictionaries and grammars (cf. bosworth and toller 1991; skeat 1993). some other authors, however, employ a macron to indicate the presence of long vowels whereas short ones are commonly left unmarked (cf. pæt instead of dæµlan, etc.). ____________________________________________________________________ 84 dis tinguishes between the abstract level (which stands for the orthographic representation of the vowel <i>) and the superficial level (which is realized by the phonological rules of that vowel, that is, [i] and [i:]). therefore, on the grounds of the number of references consulted, we turned out to realize that there are serious controversies concerning the vowel length of adjectives like gelic, cynelic or sweltendlic and of adverbs like wurplice, lustlice or soµp lice. therefore, in the course of this paper we intend to present (1) an overview of the current state of disagreement found in the specific literature and (2) in troduce our own viewpoint proposing to interpret these types of adjectives and adverbs as exclusively long. 2. state of the art various sources such as grammars, primers and dictionaries have been examined for our purposes and, on account of the data obtained from their analysis, we have finally come to the conclusion that scholars usually interpret the pronunciation of these word items from four different points of view, which may be reported as follows: 1. first of all, there are scholars who believe that both -lic and -lice are phonologically pronounced with a weak syllable. campbell (1959: 263; 275), among some others, supports this point of view and employs adjectives and adverbs like dæglic, heofonlic, stronglic and mihtelice, respectively, and all of them orthographically represented without the macron. campbell (1959: 263) thus reckons that a process of shortening of long vowels occurred in the second element of compounds and this fact explains why in these types of words “the formative element -lic underwent early shortening”. 2. secondly, we have also found those specialists who think that both -lic and -lice should be phonologically uttered as long. this view has been actually followed by several scholars. for instance, brook (1955), in his account on the formation of adverbs from adjectives in -liµc (sic), definitely decides to make use of the long <i> and, as such, he mentions words like lufliµce, freµondliµce eornostliµce, etc. (brook 1955: 56-57). this point of view is also supported by the well-known dictionary of old english by bosworth and toller (1991). an anglosaxon dictionary is actually ____________________________________________________________________ 85 reputed to be one of the masterpieces on the subject and it is significant that the authors prefer to use the long vowel both with adjectives and adverbs. therefore, they maintain the same vocalic quantity in pairs of words like leofliµc/ leofliµce, freµondliµc/ freµondliµce, wisliµc/ wisliµce, etc. furthermore, bradley’s dictionary of middle english (1994) has also been reviewed for our purposes and, likewise, we could notice how he phonologically assigns a long syllabic quantity to those adjectives and adverbs in -liµc, -liµch and -liµche as he systematically conceives them pronounced as exclusively long. skeat (1993) also agrees with bradley’s procedure and resolves to represent these types of words with a long syllable (cf. æµrliµc and æµrliµce) and, similarly, lass (1994: 207) employs geliµc and geliµce both uttered with a long vowel. 3. thirdly, we have also noticed those who consider that there are significant phonological differences between the pronunciation of adjectives and adverbs. one of the most relevant examples is clark hall’s creditable dictio nary of old english (1894) in which the author exp licitly maintains that adjectives are in all cases pronounced with a short vowel whereas adverbs are always to be uttered as long. clark hall therefore provides us with contrasts like leoflic/ leofliµce, freµondlic/ freµondliµce, wiµslic/ w^msliµce or soµplic/ soµpliµce, etc. 4. finally, there is another group of scholars who do not dare to afford a definite solution towards the phonemical representation of this vowel and, on the contrary, they tend to remain somewhere in -between. this is particularly the case of mitchell (1995) who does not make use of the macron throughout the course of the book as in hrædlice (1995: 52) and, paradoxically, in the glossary enclosed at the end of the book he represents both adjectives and adverbs with a long vowel. fernández (1982) should also be included within this trend of thought since he paradoxically illustrates -liµc and -liµce with the macron on pages 181 and 334; but he sometimes also employs the short form of the vowel <i> on pages 225 and 399, and in some others he clearly hesitates about the length of the vowel and represents it both with the macron and the symbol of short vowels (p. 247). additionally, we could mention the book of c. montes et al. (1995) in which the authors plainly affirm that adjectives and adverbs in -lic/ -lice are not always pronounced either short or long but, on the contrary, the quantity ____________________________________________________________________ 86 of the vowel in these cases will exclusively depend on the stress and emphasis of each word, that is, “el sufijo lice puede tener vocal larga o breve dependiendo de la fuerza acentual” (montes et al. 1995: 328). therefore, this reason explains why words like freµondliµce, hwætliµce, speµdliµce and stearliµce are to be conceived as long whereas heard lice, holdlice and lætlice could be understood both with a long or a short vowel. this controversy, however, is not solely exclusive of old english since a similar process has been observed in the case of wulfila’s gothic. thus, the kind of <i> which operates in adjectives and adverbs in -lic/ -lice is orthografically represented in gothic by means of <i> and <ei>, that is, lihts and leihts (agud et al. 1988: 31-32) and, obviously, the graphemic opposition between these graphs of gothic completely coincides with the phonemic opposition between long and short <i>. therefore, a conflict has arisen in the last forty years about the phonological status of the length of these two vowels, that is, “philologically oriented linguists posit a length contrast while structuralists have come to agree that length has no distinctive function in the vowel system” (venneman 1971: 90). on the one hand, there is a group of scholars, venneman in the lead (1971), who believe that there is a clear-cut differentiation between the phonetic realization of <i> and <ei> in gothic, being two distinct sounds which reflect a different vowel length. according to this fact, venneman argues that the few occurrences of mutual substitution between these two graphs are clearly the result of scribal errors 1. thus, he comes to recognize the existence of length and quantity in gothic and, therefore, they understand the p honological system of wulfila as a set of short vowels (/i/, /ai/, /a/, /au/, /u/) and its counterpart of long ones (/ei/, / eµ/, /aiµ/, /aµ/, /auµ/, /oµ/, /uµ/). 1 notice that venneman partially defends his point of view tracing these graphs back to the greek language stating that “in the forth century <ei> always represented a long high front vowel, while <i> could represent a short or long front vowel” (venneman 1971: 92). agud, on the other hand, rejects the greek antecedent of these vowels in the following terms: “no es probable que las correspondientes grafías griegas reflejen diferencias cuantitativas […] pero lo cierto es que en gótico <ei> nota consecuentemente el resultado de la antigua <i>, del diptongo <ei> y de la contracción de dos <i>” (agud et al. 1988: 32). ____________________________________________________________________ 87 on the other hand, there is another set of scholars, especially marchand (1955), hamp (1958) and jones (1958), who defend that gothic vowels do not reveal a length contrast but, conversely, they argue that the only differences found in wulfila’s vowels are found to be a matter of tenseness and tone. actually, it is particularly significant the fo llowing quotation by marchand in which he states that the graphic system clearly evinces that there was no quantity and length in gothic: as to wulfila’s failure to signal the […] difference between aµ and a, uµ and u, it has already been pointed out that none of the alphabets presumably known to wulfila afforded a means of signalling two a-sounds or two u-sounds, since they all used one sign for all a-like sounds and one sign for all u-like sounds. it may well be, however, that the distinction had disappeared in wulfila’s dialect […] the evidence of the graphic system indicates that there was no such difference” (marchand 1955: 85). as a consequence and contrary to the opinion held by venneman, they phonologically understand the vowel system of gothic as an unique set in which all the vowels are uttered with the same length but with slight differences in tone and tenseness1. thus, this system could be represented as follows: /ei/ /i/ /u/ /e/ /o/ /ai/ /au/ /a/ all in all, the vowel system of wulfila’s gothic is found to be in continuous discord owing to the lack of evidences and facts leading to a systematic description. as in old english, the question of length, and especially in the case of these adjectives and adverbs in lihts/ leihts, remains somehow open waiting for new approaches on the matter. 1 agud & al. observe on this respect that “tipológicamente este sistema de ocho o nueve timbres con sólo uno interior no resulta demasiado verosímil” (1988: 34). ____________________________________________________________________ 88 3. discussion the overall picture presented above allowed us to realize the serious controversy found in the specific literature. it is now our intention to present our own contribution on the subject and, on account of the large corpus of examples drawn from texts of the old and middle english period1, we have been tempted to think that both liµc and liµce should be interpreted as exclusively long. thus, our assumptions have been mainly based on the following hints: 1. first of all, we should take into account the formation of these adverbs ended up with liµce in old english. on the one hand, these types of adverbs were frequently formed from adjectives in liµc by means of the addition of the suffix -e (identical in origin with the -e found in the instrumental case of adjectives), as in geliµc > geliµce, freµondliµc > freµondliµce, etc. however, on the other hand, the suffix liµce as a whole was reinterpreted during the old english period as an adverbial ending in itself and thus it was also used to form adverbs from adjectives which did not end in -liµc, as in heard liµce2 and even from nouns such as freµondliµce ‘in a friendly manner’ or eornostliµce ‘earnestly’ (hogg 1992: 396-397). as me ntioned above, there are specialists (cf. clark hall 1996) who think that adjectives in -liµc are to be always conceived as short whereas adverbs in -liµce should be interpreted as long. however, according to the formation of these types of adverbs in old english, we are inclined to believe that there does not exist any justification which allows us to interpret adverbs formed with the suffix -liµce as long and those ones shaped with the suffix -e as short. this point of view happens to be misleading since it would directly imply the existence of two variants of the same lexeme in old english. from an etymological point of view, however, both forms -liµc and -liµce are derived from the same germanic root -liµka, which was usually added to nouns with the meaning of ‘a kind of’, ‘a sort of’, etc. moreover, in old germanic the word -liµka was considered to be pronounced as long, that is why we do not come to agree with clark hall’s point of view since the ety1 the texts consulted were the old english holy gospels and the old english apollonius of tyre, on the one hand, and the ormulum and chaucer’s complete works, on the other. 2 notice that in these cases oe counts on several adverbial doublets, that is, those ones with the suffix -e (hearde) and those with -liµce (heardliµce) (lass 1994: 207). ____________________________________________________________________ 89 mological base leads us to consider -liµc and -liµce both with the same origin and, obviously, with the same length. this statement can also be supported attending to the length of the vowel in other germanic languages, for in stance, in old scandinavian (-liµk), old high german (-liµk), middle high german (-liµch), old frisian (-liµk) or old teutonic (-liµko) where the presence of the long vowel is observed (cf. feist 1923; krahe 1977: 208-209; oed 1993). 2. secondly, another hint inducing us to regard these adjectives and adverbs with a long vowel is based on the orthographic representation which these forms acquire in some texts of the period. one of the most outstanding examples is that of the old english holy gospels in which it may be noticed that the translator of the latin version sometimes employs an acute accent in order to denote a longer syllabic quantity than the rest of the syllables. some extracts are now illustrated where this procedure occurs: sume cwædon he hyt is; sume cwædon nese. ac is him gelíc [sic]; (the gospel according to st. john, 9, 9). sóplíce [sic] ic eow secge p pes ferde geriht-wisud to his huse. (the gospel according to st. luke, 18, 14). 3. thirdly, the ormulum also turned out to be a valuable asset for our purposes as the system of spelling devised by the author provides us with sig nificant clues on the phonological nature of the vocalic quantity of -liµc and -liµce. as mossé certainly reports, “the real interest aroused by the ormulum comes from the system of spelling invented by the author and methodically (italics added) used by him throughout this book […]” (mossé 1952: 165) as he “used a system of orthographic representation designed to characterize, in a very systematic way, many features of his phonological system” (jones 1972: 55). as a matter of fact, the word methodically employed by mossé turns out to be a key concept here as it depicts the high level of consistency and stability of the author’s spelling. thus, the author of the ormulum systematically duplicates the consonant after a vowel when the syllable is thought to be short whereas an only consonant follows the vowel when the latter is phonologically uttered as long. therefore, from an orthographical point of view, it ____________________________________________________________________ 90 happened to be very significant that the author of the ormulum as a general rule tends to represent these types of adjectives and adverbs with just one <c>/ <¥>1 indicating thus that in the middle ages, or at least in the northern dialect in which it is written, the vowel <i> was generally pronounced as long. notice, for instance, the form acquired by the adjectives blipeli¥ and unnse¥¥enndli¥ compared with the consonantal repetition of words such as moderr, himmsellfenn or unnderr: annd tatt te laferrd jesu crist was borenn her to manne ? att time patt hiss moderr wass i pewwdom unnderr laferrd, ? att dide he forr to shæwenn swa unnse¥¥enndli¥ mecnesse, to tæchenn purrh himmsellfenn swa annd purrh hiss hall¥he bisne ? att ¥uw pirrp beren blipeli¥ ? ewwdom off ¥ure laferrd (the ormulum, 3608-16). 4. another valuable source of information has been provid ed by chaucer. methodologically, we proceeded to compile all the adjectives and adverbs in -lich and -liche2 available in chaucer’s complete works in order to subsequently accomplish an analysis of these forms both from a rhyming and a metrical point of view. chaucer’s rhyme, on the one hand, turned out to be a valuable asset for our purposes as, following jones’ statement, “rhyming evidence can […] be important in showing historical homophony” (jones 1972: 53). therefore, we proceeded to examine chaucer’s poetry in order to locate those lines in which -lich and -liche appeared at the end of a line and to identify which words were mainly employed by chaucer to rhyme with them. we could thus observe that the only rhyming word appearing with these types of adjectives and adverbs was rich/ riche, that is, an adjective whose first vowel is phonologically realized as long (cf. bradley 1994: 506) and consequently, a 1 in the ormulum the form -lic is frequently used before a vowel and -li¥ is preferred when a consonant follows. 2 notice that these items may also be represented in chaucer as -lych and -lyche. ____________________________________________________________________ 91 complete phonetic equivalence is found between the two items of the rhyme. some examples are now illustrated on this respect: for, as of trouthe, is there noon her lyche of al the women in this worlde riche (anel, 76-77). yit mot he doon bothe ryght, to poore and ryche, al be that hire estaat be nat yliche, […] (lgw, 388-89). apart from the rhyming evidence, on the other hand, metrics also happened to be very helpful as a way to interpret the quantity of -lich and -liche. thus, from a metrical point of view we proceeded to analyse chaucerian iambic pentameters in which these types of adjectives and adverbs occured in order to realize chaucer’s tendency towards the use of stressed or unstressed syllables in these word items. as a result, we could notice that chaucer actually takes advantage of this situation using both of these forms according to his metrical needs. although chaucer makes use of a certain freedom on this respect, it should be accounted that we have obtained a large number of chaucer’s lines in which the forms -lich and -liche are considered to be long. some examples are illustrated in cluding their metrical analysis to show how chaucer actually regarded them uttered as long: and áungellych hys wínges gán he spréde (lgw, 168). he félte_a cóold swerd sódeynlíche glyde (knt, 1575). but tréwelích, as yét me líst nat pléye (tr, v, 987). and háve_a mántel róiallíche_ybóre (gp, 378). as we have shown above, chaucer clearly tends to use these adjectives and adverbs ending up with -lich and -liche with long quantity and, therefore, it should be taken as another hint which directly persuades us to think that they were actually so in the old english period. however, their development into contemporary english does not seem to definitely support our hypothesis about the length of these types of adjectives and adverbs as we ____________________________________________________________________ 92 find forms such as truly or wisely as opposed to manlike or womanlike. this double development may be described as follows: on the one hand, contemporary english displays a set of of adverbs built by means of the addition of the suffix -ly. nowadays, this group is regarded to be the most productive as the majority of present-day adverbs are basically formed using this suffix, for example, truly, bitterly, happily or soothly (now obsolete). historically, these types of adverbs are considered to be directly derived from the old english long forms -liµc and -liµce. today, however, ly -adverbs are pronounced with a short vowel since, as jespersen (1961: 128) and gimson (1970: 103) state, it is the result of the gradual loss of the original secondary stress and the consequent shortening of the vowel (‘freond,liµce > ‘friendly). on the contrary, although less frequent in appearance, present-day english also counts on another set of adverbs formed by means of the suffix like, such as manlike, queenlike, womanlike, etc. in which the suffix is mainly employed to convey the meaning ‘a sort of’, ‘in the manner of’, etc. these types of structures started to develop in the second half of the xv century and they were basically formed adding the suffix -liche in the south whereas -like was prefe rred in the northern dialects. ? ær wass sene patt ¥ho wass soplike godess moderr (the ormulum, 6445). and augellych hys winges gan he sprede (chaucer, lgw, 168). from a historical point of view, this suffix is also directly derived from the old english long -liµc and -liµce and it was the great vowel shift itself which turned them into the contemporary form -like phonetically represented as [laik]. therefore, in jespersen’s terms, “the vowel was often long, result ing in a dipthong” (jespersen 1961: 66). therefore, independently of their origin and the form that these adverbs have acquired in contemporary english, both types of adverbs must be accounted to have developed from the same old english suffix and the diachronic evidence seems to allow us to consider both as having long quantity or weigth. that is, on the one hand, like -adverbs are nowadays ____________________________________________________________________ 93 pronounced as long maintaining thus the same quantity inherited from old english whereas, on the other hand, adverbs in -ly have clearly undertaken a shortening process mainly caused by the gradual weakening of its original secondary stress. in fact, the shortening of the vowel is widely accepted (cf. jespersen 1961; gimson 1970; oed 1993) and, therefore, it implies to consider the vowel <i> as etymologically long. 4. conclusions all in all, in the course of this paper we have attempted to outline the rather controversial issue concerning the length of these types of adjectives and adverbs in old english. various sources were reviewed for the purpose and an outstanding state of disagreement has been found in the specific literature. nevertheless, we realized that there are certain clues which plainly afford us definite evidences about their length in old english (such as their germanic etymological origin, their development into contemporary english, etc.). finally, it should be acknowledged that, in general, the question of length in old english actually arises serious controversies amongst the specialists as it was a feature not wholly standardized and precis e in the anglo -saxon period. therefore, length stands out as an issue in which new researching is further needed in order to reach an overall and systematic description of the subject. javier calle martín & antonio miranda garcía university of malaga ____________________________________________________________________ 94 references agud aparicio, a. & fernández álvarez, m. p. 1988: manual de lengua gótica. salamanca: universidad de salamanca. beck, r. c. 1978: final long vowels in gothic. studia linguistica, 29: 16-23. bosworth, j. and toller, t. n. 1991: an anglosaxon di ctionary. oxford: oup. bradley, h. ed. 1994: a middle english dictionary. oxford: oup. brook, g. l. 1955: an introduction to old english . manchester: manchester university press. campbell, a. 1959: old english grammar. oxford: clarendon press. clark hall, j. r. 1996: a concise anglo-saxon dictionary. toronto: university of toronto press. feist, s. 1923: etymologisches worterbuch der gotischen sprache. halle: verlag von max niemeyer. fernández, f. 1982: historia de la lengua inglesa . madrid: gredos. gimson, a.c. 1970: an introduction to the pronunciation of english . london: edward arnold. hogg, r. m. ed. 1992: the cambridge history of the english language. vol. 1. cambridge: cup. jespersen, o. 1961: a modern english grammar on historical principles. 7 vols. london: george allen & unwin ltd. jones, ch. 1972: an introduction to middle english . new york: holt, rinehart & winston. jones, ch. 1989: a history of english phonology. london & new york: longman. krahe, h. 1977: lingüística germánica. madrid: cátedra. lass, r. 1994: old english: a historical linguistic companion. cambridge: cup. ____________________________________________________________________ 95 miranda garcia, a., triviño rodríguez, j. l. and calle martín, j. 1997: maoet: a morphological analizer of old english texts. proceedings of the xth international conference of the spanish society for english mediaeval language and literature (selim) . zaragoza, 1618 october 1997. forthcoming. mitchell, b. 1995: an invitation to old english and anglo-saxon england. oxford: blackwell. montes, c. et al. 1995: el inglés antiguo en el marco de las lenguas germánicas occidentales. madrid: consejo superior de investigaciones científicas. mossé, f. 1952: a handbook of middle english . baltimore & london: johns hopkins university press. oxford english dictionary. 1993: 2nd. ed. on compact disk. oxford: oup. primary source media. ed. 1995: chaucer life and times. cd-rom. skeat, w. w. 1871: the gospel according to saint mark . cambridge: cup. skeat, w. w. 1878a: the gospel according to saint john. cambridge: cup. skeat, w. w. 1878b: the gospel a ccording to saint luke. cambridge: cup. skeat, w. w. 1887: the gospel according to saint matthew. cambridge: cup. skeat, w. w. 1993: the concise dictionary of etymology. hertfordshire: wordsworth. stutterheim, c. f. p. 1968: gothic and phonology. lingua, 21: 443-454. venneman, t. 1971: the phonology of gothic vowels. language, 47.1: 90132. * † * selim05.pdf jesús serrano reyes, selim 5 (1996): 29—45 spanish modesty in the canterbury tales: chaucer and don juan manuel1 now i beg all those who listen to this little research, or read it, that if there is anything in it that they like, that they consider it as a starting point; and if there is anything that they dislike, i beg them to advise me and give me their opinions to improve it. introduction a relationship between chaucer’s canterbury tales and some spanish medieval authors has been habitually considered as a result of a community of ideas. the popular and traditional background, latin translations and compilations could without any doubt well be a common source of inspiration. chaucer and some spanish authors may have shared some common characteristics, but there are many historical events and some textual evidence which can lead us to think that chaucer was influenced by, at least, one spanish author, don juan manuel.2 the method lies in the application of a literary analysis by taking into account the structure of the text, the morphosyntactic and lexical characteristics and applying halliday’s system to the extracts where the influence is suppos ed to exist. afterwards it will be necessary to demonstrate non-evidence of a common formula in the medieval texts showing many examples which do not have a common formula but a common function: to preach to people or from 1 a part of this article was read at the ninth international congress of the new chaucer society, held in dublin (july 23-27, 1994). 2 don juan manuel’s influence on chaucer’s canterbury tales has been demonstrated in an recent dissertation: serrano reyes, j. l., didactismo y moralismo en geoffrey chaucer y don juan manuel: un estudio comparativo textual. córdoba: servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de córdoba, 1995. spanish modesty in the canterbury tales ____________________________________________________________________ 31 another point of view, the “authorial ‘ captatio’ device applied by writers in order to make the hearer-reader pay close attention to the author.”1 nevertheless i do not have enough time to show the examples of the mediaeval texts. i. historical context el conde lucanor was widely known in many spanish courts. “las copias manuscritas parecen haber sido abundantes: “la noticia más antigua de ser leído este libro, es la que consta en el registro 3. 168, folio 139, en donde la reina doña maría pide a ferrán lópez de stuñiga ‘los libros que se clamavan el uno florença el otro el conde lucanor el otro de las ystorias despaña’.”2 as john england says: “when one thinks of the scarcity of ma nuscripts of medieval castilian literature, the survival of five in this case suggests that el conde lu canor was something of a ‘best-seller’ ”.3 edward, king of portugal, (1391-1438) who was philippa of lancaster’s son, organized the famous library of “tower of tumbo “ainda constam do catálogo a confessio amantis, de gower, em traduçao do cónego lisbonense roberto paine, a obra poética do arcipreste de hita, e o livro del conde lu canor, de d. joào manuel.”4 1 gonzález fernández -corugedo, santiago 1993: 91-102. the author of this work shows some texts from different western literary traditions. he includes, among them, both chaucer’s retraction and don juan manuel’s prologue. his conclusion has nothing to do with mine: “the importance of the rethorical model that seems to have been common to all the western tradition” (pag. 97). i disagree and my conclusion is the real evidence of an influence. it does not mean that there was not a community of ideas at that age. nevertheless fernández -corugedo notices the parallelism but does not consider the possibility of an influence and he just says: “it is also remarkable that two authors such as chaucer and the infant don juan manuel wrote passages that though presently in chiasmatic disposition, as ab has become bamust have the same model” (p. 99). i do not agree: they did not have the same model, so they were not influenced by the same author. don juan manuel’s passage was the model. 2 giménez soler, andrés 1932: 676: “it seems that the handwritten copies were abundant: the oldest news showing that this book had been read is the one which is in the register 3.168, sheet 139, where queen mary asks ferrán lópez de stuñiga for ‘the books which were called the one of florence, another el conde lucanor and the other one of the history of spain.” 3 england, j. 1977, p. 69. 4 cidadi, hernani 1975: 93: “where the catalogue of confessio amantis, by gower, translated by the lisbon canon robert payne, a poetic work by arcipreste of hita, and the book of count lucanor, by juan manuel are listed.” jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 32 we also already know that chaucer was in spain in 1366. chaucer was in france and italy and was influenced by authors from both countries.1 was he influenced by any spanish authors? don juan manuel had died only eighteen years before chaucer’s stay in spain. this spanish book may have come to chaucer’s hands in different ways: * through john of gaunt’s wife, constance of castile who was peter’s (“the cruel”) daughter or any of the spaniards at the court of leicester. * through henry iii of castile, who married john of gaunt’s daughter catherine, and was don juan manuel’s greatgrandson because his grandmother was doña juana manuela, don juan manuel’s daughter. * through chaucer’s friends who took part in the english in tervention in spain at that time. * through henry of lancaster, john of gaunt’s father in law, who took part in the siege of algezir with don juan manuel (august, 1342march, 1344). were don juan manuel and his el conde lucanor not famous enough as not to be known and read by a genius like chaucer who was well aware of european culture, including spanish culture? (“senec, piers alfonce, seint ysidre, averrois, lepe, gernade, cartage, fynystere, spayne, saint-jame, rouncivale, jubaltare, septe, tables tolletanes, cordewane, petro rege is1 honoré-duvergé, suzanne 1955: 9-13. here is announced the discovery of the record of chaucer’s trip to spain: “a tous ceux qui ces presentes lettres verront salut. savoir faison que nos avon donne et donnons loyal sauf ser conduit et suave gande jusques a la feste de penthecoste prouchain venant a geoffroy de chauserre escuir englois en sa compaignie trois compaignos avec leurs varlez chevaux et bens quelconques troussez ou a trousser en males ou dehors pour aler venir demorer se remuer converser et retorner par tout ou il lui playra par touz noz villes forteresses por passages et destroiz tant de jour que de nuit …” you can find more details about this historical background in: garbáty, thomas, j., “chaucer in spain, 1366: soldier of fortune or agent of the crown?”, english language notes 5, (1967): 8187; baugh, albert, c. “the background of chaucer’s mission to spain”, chaucer und seine zeit, ed. arno esch, (1968): 55-59; and russel, p. e., the english inter vention in spain and portugal in the time of edward iii and richard ii. oxford, 1955, p. 15. spanish modesty in the canterbury tales ____________________________________________________________________ 33 pannie, cataloigne, aragon” are explicit references in chaucer’s poetry).1 don juan manuel had a strong and close kinship not only with the king peter and his daughter constance but with the lancaster house: * don juan manuel’s father was edward i’s brother in law. * edward i was don juan manuel’s uncle. * edward ii was don juan manuel’s cousin. * edward iii was don juan manuel’s nephew of cousins. * john i of castile was don juan manuel’s grandson.2 * henry iii of castile, who married john of gaunt’s daughter, was don juan manuel’s greatgrandson. * john i of portugal, who married philippa lancaster, was don juan manuel’s grandson. ii. textual analysis readers only have to look at the two texts and they can easily recognize the similarity. but a detailed analysis will show not only that they are the same words but that the words have the same word function, the same author’s in tention, the same literary effects, and the same structure to such an extent that i consider that chaucer was quite clearly influenced by don juan manuel. 1. the structure of the message another powerful similarity lies in the structure. the equality of the sentence elements is so noticeable that anyone might suppose that it had been caused 1 see león sendra, a. & serrano reyes, j. l. 1992: 106-141. 2 garcía garcía, a., nieto cumplido, m., and others collect in their catálogo de los manuscritos e incunables de la catedral de córdoba, a manuscript by alphonsus xi in appeal to clemente vi for a dispensation of a fourth consanguinity degree in order to marriage his son henry and joan, don juan manuel’s daughter: inc. significant s.v. humilis et devotus filius vester alphonsus quod cum secundus filius eius et domina j. domini j. filia sint per. des. et cum non obstatibuset clausulis oportunis ut in forma. 4241.(f. 186 v.). jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 34 by chance, by the use of a common formula or by in fluence. the third possibility is p roposed by this work. let us look at the structure: chaucer’s retraction … that if ther be any thyng in it that liketh hem, that therof they thanken oure lord jhesu crist, of whom procedeth al wit and al goodnesse / and if ther be any thyng that displese hem, i preye hem also that they arrette it to the defaute of myn unkonnynge and nat to my wyl, …1 don juan manuel’s prologue et lo que y fallaren que no es tan bien dicho, non pongan culpa a la mi entençión, mas pónganla a la mengua del mio entendimiento. et si alguna cosa fallaren bien dicha o aprovechosa, gradéscanlo a dios, ca el es aquél por quien todos los buenos dichos et fechos se dizen et se fazen.2 yo digo i prye et si that if et que and if fallaren ther be fallaren ther be y in it lo any thyng alguna cosa any thyng que hat bien dicha o aprovechosa that liketh non es tan bien dicho displese gradescánlo they thanken pongan arrette a dios oure lord jhesu crist la culpa it por quien of whom a la to the todos los dichos al wit mengua faute 1 benson, larry d. ed. 1991, x. 1081-1082, p. 328. 2 blecua, j. m. ed. 1991: 51. spanish modesty in the canterbury tales ____________________________________________________________________ 35 et fechos and al godnesse del mio of myn se dicen et se fazen procedeth entendimiento unkonnynge non pongan. nat la culpa a la mi intención to my wyl both texts share the same structure. it is a dual structure, divided into two parts. the whole structure starts from the words “yo digo” … “i preye”. in the case of don juan manuel these words are imme diately before those i have cited (see appendix). after that a dichotomy follows: good (the column on the left) and evil (the column on the right). each step in the structure shows a parallelism even in the connective elements like “et si” … “that if” or “que … that”. so the authors are interested in shielding their works against accusations of immorality. the message consists of a typical sermon ending. duality is repre sented by a religious idea: good and evil. good is represented by god and subtly connected with the authors’ works. evil is represented by mankind. 2. morphosyntactic and lexical approach 2. 1. verbs chaucer’s verbs: don juan manuel’s verbs: ther be-ther be fallaren-fallaren liketh-thanken (bien) dicha-gradéscanlo displese-arrette no es(tan bien) dicho-pongan preye procedeth es (aquel por quien) dizen-fazen repetition is another similarity. both authors twice repeat verbs of similar meaning. the duality shown in “the structure of the message” is supported by the verbs “liketh / (bien)dicha” which implies one way (the way of good) and “displese / (non bien) dicho” which implies the other way (the way of evil). both implications are consequences of the readers’ or hearers’ perception of the works. this perception is expressed by couples of verbs: “ther bether be / fallaren-fallaren”. so there is a clear parallelism in the strategy which jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 36 is the basis of the logical argument in the texts. chaucer wrote one verb (“procedeth”) whose meaning has, seemingly, nothing to do with don juan manuel’s verbs (“es -es-dizen-fazen”), because “of whom procedeth” is equivalent to “el es por quien”. this occurs according to the meaning but not to the subject or object involved, that is, the spanish author’s verbs are related to god like “procedeth” with “lord jhesu crist”. the verb “preye” has its parallelism in the preceding line of don juan manuel’s text, “digo” (see appendix). the semantic fields show the typical terminology which can be used by preachers: “preye-herkne-rede-thanken / dizen-fazen-dicho-dichagradés canlo”. 2. 2. nouns chaucer’s nouns: don juan manuel’s nouns: thyng cosa lord jhesu crist dios wit dichos (se dizen) goodnesse fechos (se fazen) dafaute mengua unkonnynge entendimiento wyl entençión don juan manuel’s nouns have their equivalents in chaucer’s nouns, following the dual meaning of the sermon: good and evil. “wit” may be understood as “intelligence”, the capacity of speech and “goodnesse” may be understood as “deeds” to maintain the meaning which both authors meant to express, that is, the antinomy of “words and deeds”. this antinomy is in the intention. this is a topic in religious speech (sermons), expressing this idea: words must be followed by deeds (works), faith without deeds is a dead faith. the meaning of the most important nouns related to god implies a positive value: “goodnesse-wit / dichos-fechos”; and the meaning of nouns related to men implies a negative value (“mengua-culpa / defauteunkonnynge”). 2. 3. syntactical approach spanish modesty in the canterbury tales ____________________________________________________________________ 37 although the main clause is the same in both texts, don juan manuel’s text contains it in the preceeding line: “… yo, don iohan, “1. it is “i preye” in chaucer’s text. * conditional clause: “et … fallaren” / “and if … thyng” * relative clause: “que … dicho” / “that … them” * sustantive direct object clause: “non … entençión” / “that … unkonnynge * adversative clause: “mas … entendimiento” / “and nat … wyl” * conditional clause: “et si … aprovechosa” / “if … it” * sustantive direct object clause: “gradéscanlo … dios” / “that … hem” * relative clause: “por quien … fazen” / “of whom … goodnesse” * causal clause: “ca … aquel” this significant parallelism shows that both texts are supported basically by the same syntactical structure. the construction of the sentences followed the same steps. the introductory words in many clauses are the same but they are implied in other ones like before “gradéscanlo” where “que” is implicit or in “non … entençión” where “que” is implicit too. explicit “that” is characteristic of english syntactical rules. 3. halliday’s system : language functions into lit erary effects2 3. 1. the text in its context chaucer’s retraction and don juan manuel’s prologue share these characteristics: * they are moral, didactic sermons with an explicit intention: 1 see the complete text in the appendix. 2 for the systemic linguistics approach we have used the following basic bibliography: halliday, m. a. k. 1985; 1986; halliday, m. a. k., “dimensions of discurse analysis: grammar”, handbook of discourse analysis , vol. 2. london: academic press london, 1985. halliday, m. a. k. & hasan, r. 1976; kress, g. 1976; muir, j. 1972. i cannot sufficiently express my gratitude to professor halliday who instructed me in systemic linguistics and gave me his advice and opinions on the application of the systemic method to this work. jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 38 chaucer: for oure book seith: “al that is writen is writen for our doctrine”, and that is myn entente.1 d. j. manuel: “et entre las palabras entremetí algunos exiemplos de que se podrían aprovechar los que los oyeren.” * the authors’ intention was that the books were to be read or heard: chaucer: “now preye i to hem alle that herkne this litel tretys or rede …” d. j. manuel: “… et entre las palabras entremetí algunos exie mplos de que se podrían aprovechar los que las oyeren.”; “… et los que lo leyeren …” * both authors wrote about the salvation of the soul, but chaucer about his own soul and the spanish author for his readers’ or hearers’ salvation: chaucer: “… studie to the salvacioum of my soule, …” d. j. manuel: “… et para el salvamiento de sus almas et aprovechamiento de sus cuerpos.” * they wrote using the first person singular: chaucer: “now i preye …” d. j. manuel: “… yo, don iohan …” * both authors addressed god, although chaucer wrote “god” and “lord jhesu crist” and d. j. manuel always wrote “dios”. * chaucer mentioned all his works and d. j. manuel did not, although he cited all his works in the general prologue. many other similarities can be found between the whole texts, but i have only highlighted the most evident ones. so there is a parallelism between the two texts, and especially in the parts i am going to analize applying halliday’s system. 3. 2. ideational components: transitivity functions 1 see the appendix with chaucer’s retraction and don juan manuel’s prologue for the following quotations. spanish modesty in the canterbury tales ____________________________________________________________________ 39 these are the two texts i shall analyze with the clauses numbered for easy reference and the processes underlined: don juan manuel’s prologue: “… 1 et lo que y fallaren 2 que non es tan bien dicho, 3 non pongan culpa a la mi entençión, 4 mas pónganla a la mengua del mio entendimiento. 5 et si alguna cosa fallaren bien dicha o aprovechosa, 6 gradéscanlo a dios 7 ca el es aquel 8 por quien todos los buenos dichos et fechos se dizen et se 9 fazen.” chaucer’s retraction: “… 1 that if ther be any thyng in it 2 that liketh hem, 3 that therof they thanken oure lord jhesu crist, 4 of whom procedeth al wit and goodnesse. / 5 and if ther be any thyng 6 that displese hem, 7 i preye hem also 8 that they arrette it to the defaute of my unkonnynge and nat to my wyl.” don juan manuel’s prologue participants process clause nº ellos: senser (implicit) fallaren: mental, perception 1 lo: phenomenon fallaren: mental, perception 1 lo: carrier (implicit) es: relational / attr. intensive 2 ellos: senser (implicit) pongan: mental, reaction 3 culpa: phenomenon pongan: mental, reaction 3 ellos: senser (implicit) póngan(la): mental, reaction 4 la: phenomenon póngan(la): mental, reaction 4 ellos: senser (implicit) fallaren: mental, perception 5 cosa: phenomenon fallaren: mental, perception 5 they: senser (implicit) gradéscan(lo): mental, reaction 6 lo: phenomenon gradéscan(lo): mental, reaction 6 el: carrier es: relational / attr. equative 7 aquel: carrier es: relational / attr. equative 7 ellos: senser (implicit) dizen: mental, verbalization 8 dichos: phenomenon dizen: mental, verbalization 8 ellos: actor (implicit) fazen: material, operative 9 hechos: goal fazen: material, operative 9 chaucer’s retraction participants process clause nº thyng: carrier ther be: relational, atributive 1 that: senser liketh: mental, reaction 2 hem: phenomenon liketh: mental, reaction 2 they: senser thanken: mental, reaction 3 oure lord: phenomenon thanken: mental, reaction 3 jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 40 whom: senser procedeth: mental, perception 4 wit-goodnesse: phenom. procedeth: mental, perception 4 thyng: carrier ther be: relational, atributive 5 that: senser displese: mental, reaction 6 hem: phenomenon displese: mental, reaction 6 i: senser preye: mental, verbalization 7 hem: phenomenon preye: mental, verbalization 7 they: senser arrette: mental, reaction 8 it: phenomenon arrette: mental, reaction 8 there are some interesting literary effects. i propose to look at those which imply a parallelism: * there is no process of action in either texts, excepting “fazen” in don juan manuel’s prologue. nevertheless it may be considered necessary to support the sermonizer’s argument trying to make a generalization: spiritual “dizen” implies words, intelligence) and material (“fazen” implies deeds). it is the unique material process to reinforce the idea of linking words and deeds: words are as vanishing without good deeds as is said in the bible. so there is no direct action but an allusion to action. mental and relational pro cesses show the authors’ intention by means of a sermon. the authors wanted the readers or hearers to perceive, to react and then to relate. these three actions are not material actions but intellectual or mental actions in the readers’ or hearers’ minds. the spanish and english writer expected the addressees to perceive their works and then, depending on their perception (“liketh” “displese”) to react in a positive or negative way and to relate the positive re action with god and the negative reaction with their ignorance. so, mentalperception, mental-reaction and relational processes are suitable for a moral, didactic speech. * the possible negative perception by the hearers or readers is hidden in our two authors. namely, don juan manuel wrote the phenomenon “lo” with the relational process “es” and chaucer wrote the phenomenon “it” which has the same equivalence. it does not intro duce an explicit word to mention the dislike of the addressees. * the verbs are all transitive except “to be”. this implies the necessary existence of goals which lead us to a purpose. all goals are explicit, which means explicit purposes. so, the authors’ intention is explicit, too. transitive verbs, except “procedeth” can be classified as inherently goal verbs. there spanish modesty in the canterbury tales ____________________________________________________________________ 41 fore, the explicit meaning in the message runs from the root to the branches. this characteristic involves a clear plain language and, hence, plain hearers and readers. * implicit sensers imply that the author cannot control the readers’ or hearers’ reaction after the perception of his text. it shows the alternative “to be or not to be”, that is, to like or dislike. the authors had to give a solution to this dilemma in the hearers’ and readers’ reaction. all sensers in don juan manuel’s text are implicit (“ellos”) and they are the readers and the hearers. chaucer wrote explicit senser “they” with mental-reaction process (“thanken” and “arrette”). it is significant because it may show that chaucer knew his possible audience, although explicit can be a grammatical characteristic in the english language. when chaucer wro te “hem” with the mental process “liketh” and “displese” its real function is more of an actor than of a goal. * the apparent difference between “fallaren” and “ther be” is just because they are different words but not different meanings. both words imply the description of the same idea: there is something for the readers and hearers (the work) which can be evaluated. the difference lies in the author’s implication in this evaluation. chaucer wrote a relational process which was repeated twice (“ther be”), the first one related to the mental process “liketh” and the second one to the mental process “displese”. so, the real implication is the same as in don juan manuel’s text when he wrote “fallaren” twice. * there is a repetitive process: hem: phenomenon crist: phenomenon they: senser whom: senser readers or hearers of chaucer’s work are situated at the same level as god. there is a succesive exterchange of roles between men and god, a sort of dia logue: men receive good (pleasure) through chaucer’s work and they thank god who is now the receiver (phenomenon) and then he gives “wit and goodnesse” to men. the same idea is brought out by this device: chaucer’s work implies holy indulgences. so chaucer’s intention in his retraction appears to be to try to save his moralism and didacticism. the same occurs with d. juan manuel’s intention. jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 42 iii. conclusions * a mere reading is enough to notice the similarity between the two texts. * historical events, circumstances and royal bonds offered fitting conditions for a spanish influence at that time. * the textual analysis gives clear proof of the equality of both texts: the dual structure of the message, meaning good and evil and the same morphosyntactic and lexical characteristics. * halliday’s system shows the identity in the process system used by the spanish and english authors, revealing the existence of mental-perception-reaction process to strengthen the power of the sermon language. * the non-existence of a mediaeval common formula used in the pro logues and epilogues demonstrates that the similarity of both texts are not by chance, and the suspicion of a common formula is changed into a suspicion of a “copy” or a source of inspiration. i trust this analysis has turned this suspicion into a certainty. * the topic of modesty was widespread in the middle ages and its source dates from the rhetorical system in the classical period: the forensic speech. nevertheless, mediaeval authors used different words to express the same ideas. chaucer and don juan manuel are the two authors who, to my knowledge, share the same or similar words, when they use the topic of modesty. don juan manuel used similar words to express modesty in: el conde lu canor, el libro de los estados, libro enfenido and crónica abreviada. appendix the bold letters show the texts which share the similarity. chaucer’s retraction heere taketh the makere of this book his leve now preye i to hem alle that herkne thi litel tretys or rede, that if ther be any thyng in it that liketh hem, that therof they thanken oure lord jhesu crist, of whom procedeth al wit and al goodnesse. / and if ther be any thyng that dis plese hem, i preye hem also spanish modesty in the canterbury tales ____________________________________________________________________ 43 that they arrette it to the defaute of myn unkonnynge and nat to my wyl, that wolde ful fayn have seyd bettre if i hadde had konnynge. / for oure book seith, “al that is writen is writen for oure doctrine”, and that is myn entente. / wherefore i biseke yow mekely, for me that crist have mercy on me and foryeve me my giltes; / and namely of my translacions and endit ynges of wordly vanitees, the whiche i revoke in my retracciouns: / as is the book of troilus; the book also of fame; the book of the duchesse; the book of seint valentynes day of the parlement of briddes; the tales of caunterbury, thilke that sownen into synne; / the book of the leoun; and many another book, if they were in my remembrance, and many a song and many a leccherous lay, that crist for his grete mercy foryeve me the synne. / but of the translacion of boece de consolacione, and omelies, and moralitee, and devocioum, / that thanke i oure lord jhesu crist and his blisful mooder, and alle the seintes of hevene, / bisekynge hem that they from hennes forth unto my lyves ende sende me grace of verray penitence, confessioun and satisfaccioun to doon in this present lyf, / thurgh the benigne grace of hym that is kyng of kynges and preest over alle alle preestes, that boghte us with the precious blood of his herte, / so that i may been oon of hem at the day of doom that shulle be saved. qui cum patre et spiritu sancto vivit et regnat deus per omnia secula. amen. heere is ended the book of the tales of canterbury, compiled by geffrey chaucer, of whos soule jhesu crist have mercy. amen.”1 don juan manuel’s prologue en el nombre de dios: amén. entre muchas cosas estrañas et marabillosas que nuestro señor dios fizo, tovo por bien de fazer una muy marabillosa; ésta es [que] de quantos [ommes] en el mundo son, non a uno que semeje a otro en la cara; ca commo quier que todos los ommes an essas mismas cosas en la cara, lo unos que los que los otros, pero las caras en sí mismas non semejan las unas a las otras. et pues en las caras, que son tan pequeñas cosas, ha en ellas tan grant departimento, menor marabilla es que aya departimiento en las voluntades et en las enteciones de los ommes. et assí fallaredes que ningún omme non se semeja del todo en la voluntad nin en la entençión con otro. et fazervos he algunos enxiemplos porque lo entendades mejor. todos los que quieren et desean servir a dios, todos quieren una cosa, pero non lo sirven todos en una manera: que unos le sirven en una manera et otros en otra. otrosí, los que sirven a los señores, todos los sirven, mas non los sirven todos en una manera. et los que labran et crían et trebejan et caçan et fazen todas las otras cosas, todos las fazen, mas non las entienden nin las fazen todos en una manera. et así, por este exienplo, et por otros ayan voluntades et entençiones, que atán poco commo se semejan en las caras, tan poco se semejan en las entençiones et en las voluntades; pero todos se semejan en tanto que todos usan et quieren et aprenden mejor aquellas cosas de que se más pagan que las otras. et porque cada omme aprende mejor aquello de se más paga, por ende el que alguna cosa quiere mostrar [a otro], dévegelo mostrar en la manera que entendiere que será más pagado el que la ha de aprender. et porque [a] muchos ommes las cosas sotiles entienden bien, non toman plazer en leer aquellos libros, nin aprender 1 benson, larrry d. ed. 1991: 328. jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 44 lo que es escripto en ellos. et porque non toman plazer en ello, non lo pueden aprender nin saber así commo a ellos cumplía. por ende, yo don johan, fijo del infante don manuel, adelantado mayor de la frontera et del regno de murçia, fiz este libro compuesto de las más apuestas palabras que yo pude, et entre las palabras entremetí algunos exiemplos de que se podrían aprovechar los que los oyeren. et esto fiz segund la manera que fazen los físicos, que quando quieren fazer alguna melizina que aproveche al fígado, por razón que naturalmente el fígado se paga de las cosas dulçes, mezcla[n] con auquella melizina que quiere[n] melizinar el fígado, açúcar o miel o alguna cosa dulçce; et por el pagamiento que el fígado a de la cosa dulçe, en tirándola para sí, lieva con ella la melezina quel a de aprovechar. et esso mismo fazen a qualquier miembro que aya mester alguna melizina, que siempre la dan con alguna cosa que naturalmente aquel miembro la aya de tirar a sí. et a esta semeiança, con la merçed de dios, será fecho este libro, et los que lo leyeren [si por] su voluntad tomaren plazer de las cosas provechosas que y fallaren, será bien; et aun los que lo tan bien non entendieren, non podrán escusar que, en leyendo el libro, por las palabras falagueras et apuestas que en él fallarán, que non ayan a leer las cosas aprovechosas que son y mezcladas, et aunque ellos non lo des[e]n, aprovecharse an dellas, así como el fígado et los otros miembros dichos se aprovechan de las melizinas que son mezcladas con las cosas de que se ellos pagan. et dios, que es complido et complidor de todos los buenos [fechos], por la su merçed et por la su piadat, quiera que los que estte libro leyeren, que se aprovechen dél a serviçio de dios et para salvamiento de sus almas et aprovechamiento de sus cuerpos; así commo el sabe que yo, don iohan, lo digo a essa entençión. et lo que y fallaren que non es tan bien dicho, non pongan culpa a la mi entençión, mas pónganla a la mengua del mio entendimiento. et si alguna cosa fallaren bien dicha o aprovechosa, gradéscanlo a dios, ca el es aquél por quien todos los buenos dichos et fechos se dizen et se fazen. et pues el prólogo es acabado, de aquí adelante començaré la manera del libro, en manera de un grand señor que fablava con un su consegero. et dizían al señor, conde lucanor, et al consege ro, patronio.1 jesús l. serrano reyes university of córdoba bibliography adams, kenneth ed 1993: rimado de palacio. madrid: cátedra. alvar, carlos ed 1984: demanda del santo graal. madrid: editora nacional. 1 blecua, j. m. ed., 1991: 48-52. spanish modesty in the canterbury tales ____________________________________________________________________ 45 baugh, albert c. 1968: the background of chaucer’s mission to spain. chaucer und seine zeit, arno esch ed.: 55-59. benson, l. d. ed 1991: the riverside chaucer. oxford: oup. birch, david 1989: language literature and critical practice. ways of analysing text. london: routledge. blecua, a. ed 1976: el libro de buen amor. madrid: espasa y calpe. blecua, j. m. ed 1982: don juan manuel. obras completas. i, ii. madrid: gredos. blecua, j. m. ed 1991: el conde lucanor. madrid: castalia. cacho blecua, j. m. ed 1987: amadis de gaula. madrid: cátedra. cañas, jesús ed 1988: el libro de alexandre. madrid: catedra. carndona de gibert, a., guarner, l., rafel, l. eds 1973: mio cid. zaragoza: aubi. carter, r. 1982: language and literature. london: george and unwin ltd. cidadi, h. 1975: liçoes de cultura e literatura portuguesas. i. coimbra. corbella, d. ed 1992: libro de apolonio. madrid: cátedra. cortines, j. ed 1984: cancionero i, ii. madrid: cátedra. curtius, e. r. 1976: literatura europea y edad media latina. i, ii. madrid: fondo de cultura económica. davidse, c. 1987: m. a. k. halliday’s functional grammar and the prague school. functionalism in linguistics, ed rené dirven & vilem fried. amsterdam / philadelphia: john benjamins publishing company. deyermond, a. d. 1979: historia de la literatura española 1. la edad media. barcelona: ariel. garbáty, t. j. 1967: chaucer in spain, 1366: soldier of fortune or agent of the crown? english language notes 5: 81-87. jesús serrano reyes ____________________________________________________________________ 46 garcía garcía, a., nieto compludo, m. & al. 1976: catálogo de los manuscritos e incunables de la catedral de córdoba. córdoba: monte de piedad y caja de ahorros de córdoba. garzanti, a. ed 1980 decameron, vols. i, ii. italy: garzanti. giménez soler, a. 1932: don juan manuel. biografía y estudio crítico. zaragoza: tipografía la académica de f. martínez. gonzález, c. ed 1983: libro del caballero cifar. madrid: cátedra. gonzález fernández-corugedo, s. 1993: authorial ’captatiotechniques’ in some medieval works. actas de selim 2, córdoba. halliday, m. a. k. & hasan, r. 1976: cohesion in english . london: longman. halliday, m. a. k. 1985: a short introduction to functional grammar. london: edward arnold. halliday, m. a. k. 1985: dimensions of discurse analysis: grammar. handbook of discourse analysis, vol. 2. london: academic press london. halliday, m. a. k. 1986: language as social semiotic. london: edward arnold. honoré-duvergé, s. 1955: chaucer en espagne? 1366. recuil de travaux offert a’ m. clovis brunel. paris. kress, g. 1976: halliday: systemic and function in language. london: oup. langland, j. 1977: ¿et non el día del lodo?: the structure of the short story in el conde lucanor. > i. macpherson ed juan manuel studies. london: tamesis. lacarra, m. ed 1989: sendebar. madrid: cátedra. lacarra, m. j. ed 1980: disciplina clericalis. zaragoza: guara editorial. luaces, j. g., ed 1973: el decamerón. barcelona: plaza & janés. macpherson, i. & tate, b., eds 1991: el libro de los estados. madrid: castalia. spanish modesty in the canterbury tales ____________________________________________________________________ 47 martín, j. l. ed 1991: crónicas. barcelona: planeta. morley, g. d. 1985: an introduction to systemic grammar. london: macmillan. muir, j. 1972: a modern approach to english grammar: an introduction to systemic grammar. london: batsford. pujals, e. 1982: drama, pensamiento y poesía en la literatura inglesa . madrid: rialp. russel, p. e. 1955: the english intervention in spain and portugal in the time of edward iii and richard ii. oxford. serrano reyes, j. l. 1995: didactismo y moralismo en geoffrey chaucer y don juan manuel: un estudio comparativo textual. córdoba: servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de córdoba. victorio, j. ed 1983: cantar de roldán. madrid: cátedra. victorio, j. ed 1990: poema de fernán gonzález. madrid: cátedra. * † * selim09.doc antonio león & jesús l. serrano, selim 9 (1999): 123—143 chaucer and montserrat we should like to begin our paper with the following words of l. d. benson (1991: 795) which, to our knowledge, have not yet been refuted:1 the discovery that chaucer visited spain has led to speculation about his knowledge of spanish literature. we cite them to establish the possibility of taking them backwards, that is, from text to historical circumstances. a record can lead to a comparative lit erary analysis and a literary analysis can lead to the research of a historical record. a profound analysis of chaucer’s the house of fame reveals that this autobiographical work has its historical basis on a visit to montserrat. the aim of this paper is to present research, in progress, based upon the hypothesis of chaucer’s visit to montserrat, with the house of fame as the main source to support this hypothesis. we propose to show, by means of a close textual analysis, some cross references which are hidden in chaucer’s text and that allude to historical events of the mid fourteenth century. the finding of some important historical data in montserrat which may not only be the connexion but also the support of some literary references in chaucer’s text, justifies our search. actually, this research has led one of the authors to think about the house of fame , from a geographical point of view, in a totally different way from what has been imagined in the past; thus, (león sendra, 1994: 96): 1 we take advantage of this occasion to announce the first exception to this quotation as a doctoral thesis dissertation has been completed [1995], bringing into evidence the spanish literary influence in chaucer's poetry: didactismo y moralismo en geoffey chaucer y don juan manuel: un estudio comparativo textual by jesús luis serrano reyes. (supervised by antonio r. león sendra). antonio l eón & jesús l . serrano 122 al principio del libro el narrador afirma su intención de describir la morada de la fama situándola geográficamente, la referencia a es paña es una mera hipérbole figurativa que indica más un matiz de lejanía y de dificultad que una localización concreta. (versos 111418) our research work aims at a novel interpretation of this difficult work of art. we agree with davenport (1988: 74) when he suggests that chaucer in sists on contrastive human knowledge through reading and self-experience. we claim that this self-experience (that is, his trip to catalonia in 1365) is his real source of inspiration. chaucer himself indicates it, as if he were remembering, when he says: and yif, devyne vertu, thow wilt helpe me to shewe now that in myn hed ymarked ys(1101-1103).1 this important poem does not have all the characteristics to be considered as a dream vision, as brian stone (1983: 11) states: when the dream begins the poet is often led on by a guide, perhaps into a paradisal park or garden of love, where an action or debate about love, most often with allegorical characters and in terpretation, takes place. the end comes with the poet-dreamer waking, and bringing from his dream a truth about love as about a sacred mystery. the poem “begins in an orthodox style”, according to the tenets of dream visions, but from the end of book i the author’s concern with love and other new elements breaks the concept of dream vision. we shall attempt to contribute to resolving the difficulty of the interpretation of this poem, as paul g. ruggiers (1959: 295) confirms: the views of many writers who have dealt with the poem have tended to leave its meaning unresolved, and the steady accumula tion of theories, while not obscuring the intention of the work, has 1 all quotations from chaucer are from the riverside chaucer (l. d. benson 1991). chaucer and montserrat 123 unfortunately not clarified into an unified whole a poem in which chaucer’s rapidily developing powers are revealed at every turn. we shall follow the structure of a journey in our analysis. if professor boitani (1988: 52) states that the poem is a splendid journey through tradition, mythology, literature and poetry, we shall add chaucer’s self-experience, that is, his journey to montserrat. edwards (1989: 111-2) refers to the “hous and site” as an imaginative space of abstract language and poetry. for us, it is a real and historical place. the house of fame is a book of unknown factors. and it is quite difficult to find texts where the readers possibly know more things about the contents than the author-narrator himself. we give two examples: the first, when the narrator says “ne where i am, ne in what contree (475), and there is no explicit answer to this question, as if it were a pragmatic or a rethorical ques tion. there is a description of the place from which we can deduce the answer. the second example is the identification of the “man of gret auctorite” (2158) at the end of this unfinished poem. no good evidence has yet been found and it remains undiscovered. dieter mehl (1968: 63) says about it: and just as illusionary, it seems to me, is the conviction of some critics that the ‘man of gret auctorite’ who appears in the closing lines of the poem would have settled the matter satisfactoryly by providing some few words of wisdom. we hope to clear up most of these enigmas, giving a cohesive support to our hypothesis. in any case our study has nothing to do with the message of the poem. we agree with jordan (1987: 46) in defining the poem as: a brilliant mosaic, a literary entertainment, sanctioned by its clas sical --and in book 2 its ‘scientific’-erudition and rendered ceaselessly engaging by the narrative skills of its presentation. we also agree with lisa kisser (1991: 40) when she comments: so, by candidly refusing to assert any authority or truth and by demonstrating the inevitable personal slant in all human visionary discourse, the house of fame subtly reveals the dubiousness antonio l eón & jesús l . serrano 124 (and pretentiousness) of other poet’s claims that they are recording revelatory or historical reality objectively. our contribution only aims at establishing the possibility that chaucer used his trip to catalonia as a source of inspiration for his house of fame. chaucer’s division in three books corresponds to the phases of any journey, any pilgrimage: book i is the departure, book ii is the journey, and book iii is the arrival and stay in the house of fame . we defend the exis tence of chaucer’s stay in montserrat sustaining this hypothesis on the different details offered by chaucer’s work which fit two aspects: first, the his torical events related to the english intervention in spain between 1365-1366; secondly, the description of the house of fame which matches not only montserrat’s physical features but also many of its characteristics, such as the choir school tradition, the inn, the orology configuratio n, the pilgrimage, and other local cultural elements. “of december the tenthe day”, (lines 63 and 111), a date repeated twice at the beginning of the first book is the date of the dream; that is, the date of the departure.1 we focus our interest on the historical background concern ing the great white companies, as baugh (1968: 59) defines them: these were large organized bands of fighting men, whose leaders entered into agreements with any one who needed their services and was willing to pay their price. their ranks included germans, dutch, spanish, bretons, and others, with a high percentage of gascons and english. this is a key definition for our work as we will cite some important references to these free companies of mercenaries. in 1365 everybody (the 1 antonio león (1994:94) has already commented this in his article «chaucer y la fama»: “la historia propiamente dicha del libro primero empieza en el verso 111: of decembre the tenthe day con una alusión temporal, ya recogida al final del proemio, línea 63: the tenthe day now of decembre, que cuando menos nos produce una cierta sonrisa irónica si no un signo de extrañeza. el 10 de diciembre no parece la fecha más idónea para este tipo de sueños que evoca un mes caluroso, por lo menos de abril o mayo, donde la parafernalia climática nos encuadraría mejor ese sueño activo del que habla en el poema. posiblemente chaucer está induciendo al oyente/lector a interpretar su mensaje en la justa medida entre imaginación y realismo.” chaucer and montserrat 125 french king, enrique de trastámara, the kingdom of aragon and the church) was interested in getting rid of them out of france.1 spain and england had concluded a political and military alliance in 1362 and king pedro i sent his adviser martin lópez de có rdoba by november 1365 to ask for aid under this agreement, complaining of the participation of the english and the gascon knights in the great white companies which were allied to enrique de trastámara. baugh includes in his article how: on december 6 edward despatched under the great seal a letter to these soldiers of fortune.2 he reproduces part of this letter, showing the proposal of edward iii to forbid the english knights and soldiers to attack castile. baugh (1968: 67) gives more information about the letter: by the time this letter would have arrived, the companies were already at perpignan and some of them in aragon. calveley, one of those to whom the letter is addressed, had arrived at barcelona by november 4. we are trying to cover a gap, the period of time called “the empty years” (1360-1366) in the biography of chaucer. reading chaucer life -records3 we see that most of chaucer’s missions abroad were diplomatic missions. chaucer, at that time, may have been in the black prince’s service in aquit aine. chaucer’s mission was probably to deliver edward iii’s letter or, perhaps, as garbaty4 titles his article concerning chaucer’s stay in spain in 1366 with the safe -conduct by carlos ii, he was an agent of the crown. the secre cy of the mission can be better understood by reading baugh’s words (1968: 61) when, referring to the payment of large sums of money to the great white companies, he comments: the discussions had to be carried on with great secrecy, at least in the earlier stages, in order not to give pedro the cruel warning of 1 see r. delachenal 1909-33: p. e. russell 1955; albert c. baugh 1968. 2 in a note he cites the source: foedera (record ed., iii, ii, p. 779). 3 martin m. crow & clair c. olson, chaucer life-records. (oxford: clarendon press, 1966). 4 thomas j. garbaty 1967. antonio l eón & jesús l . serrano 126 his impeding danger. how secret they were can be judged by the fact that when pedro iv laid the plan for a joint invasion of castile before the courts or catalan parliament at barcelona in the middle of 1365, the members were first sworn not to reveal anything that was said. perhaps it was also in the interest of secrecy that the real purpose of the invasion was concealed under the cloak of crusade against the moors in the south, although this may have been, as has been suggested, only a pretext to secure the collaboration of the pope and the financial support of the church. within this context what honoré -duvergé1 suggested may be significant, that is, that chaucer may have joined the forces of trastámara. and it is also significant that chaucer’s view of spain was that of a country in which to go on “a crusade against moors”. thus anthony goodman (1987: 74) says: alfonso xi’s campaigns against the moors reinforced the english view, formed in the thirteenth century, that cas tilian kings and nobles had a special role, a divinely ordained task, in defending and extending the boundaries of cristendom. but the succession struggles between pedro i and enrique of trastamara had a shattering effect on this ideal view… english knights were once more seeking to go on crusade in large numbers. but pedro’s policies discouraged them from going against granada. bertrand du guesclin’s justification for invading castile in 1366 in support of enrique -with leading english knights in his comp anywas a means of re-opening the way to granada. we can also take the spanish geographical references in the canterbury tales:2 “jubaltare and septe” (945), “strayte of marrok” (464-65), “gernade” (404), “algezir, belmarye” (405) to support this idea. goodman (1992: 137) again but from a different source comments on gaunt’s view of spain as follows: was gaunt aware that his great-great-grandfather, fernando iii was a saint and a hero of the reconquiesta? the memory of castile as the great crusading power had long persisted in english noble 1 suzanne honoré-duvergé 1955. 2 see antonio r. león sendra & jesús l. serrano reyes 1992 chaucer and montserrat 127 circles: the house of lancaster associated itself with the revival of his reputation by alfonso xi in the 1340s. chaucer was, without any doubt, very close to these “english noble circles”. we think that chaucer could have visited barcelona with the great white companies in 1365 and, perhaps, agreeing with honoré -duvergé he may have joined the forces of trastámara under “the cloak of a crusade against the moors”, or he may have been on that side as a spy of the english crown. this last hypothesis finds support in chaucer’s the house of fame , when the narrator, that is, chaucer, manifests the reason of his stay: “but what doost thou here than?” quod he. quod y, “that wye y tellen the, the cause why y stonde here: somme newe tydynges for to lere somme new thinges, y not what tydynges, other this or that, of love or suche thynges glade. for certeynly, he that me made to comen hyder, seyde me, y shoulde bothe here and se in this place wonder thynges. (1883-1893) we consider t hat this is the key to the answer: for certeynly, he that me made/ to come hyder he was obliged to be there. so he was sent there, but what for? somme new thinges, y not waht/ for to lere these two factors borne out by the quotation above and the term “spy” which appears several times (lines 704, 706, 944, 1128, 1320, 1475, 1689) lead us to, think that he may have been an agent of the crown. there are two possible reasons to explain chaucer’s mission to spain between 1365-1366; firstly, to deliver a letter (it is significant that the eagle is jove’s messenger in the text as chaucer himself is edward’s messenger), and antonio l eón & jesús l . serrano 128 secondly, to spy and reconnoitre the whole situation in spain. we may never know the exact nature of his mission, but we believe that chaucer’s departure “the tenthe day of decembre” of 1365 was not a dream but an autobio graphical detail. his destination was barcelona where, as baugh (1968: 63) says: “on january 1, 1366 pedro iv feasted all the leaders of the companies.” an ironical (close and far away connotations at the same time) refe rence to a pilgrimage happens to be just few lines after this date: as he that wery was forgo on pilgrimage myles two the corseynt leonard. (115-117) it is important to notice that for the reference to the taking of troy in book i, the narrator has his source from some words in a “table of bras” (142), but, basically, the main source is a painting on the wall (line 211). we find the following quotation from albareda’s historia de montserrat:1:“entre las telas era notable la que figuraba la toma de troya, con figuras pequeñísimas”. it is also significant how the “hous and site” where the dreamer is in book i is called: “temple ymad of glas” (120) and “chirche” (473). and the narrator says about this church: but not wot i whoo did hem wirche, ne where i am, ne in what contree, but now wol i goo out and see, ryght at the wiket, yf y kan see where any styring man that may me telle where i am. (474-79) it is clear he was in an unknown country, and the only clue is that, for al the feld nas but of sond as smal as man may seyet ly in the desert of lybye. (486-88) anselm m. albareda (1974: 142) includes the words of a preacher from the xiv century: 1 anselm m. albareda 1974. chaucer and montserrat 129 vuestros ojosdecía un predicador del siglo xivpueden ver y contemplar cómo esta devota cámara de nuestra señora maría está situada y puesta en un lugar muy desierto y alto. at the end of book i he sees the eagle which will carry him to the house of fame. the flight takes the whole of book ii. the eagle, the v ehicle for the narrator to montserrat, with “wordes to comforte” (572) him, says twice: “seynte marye” (573). albareda (1974: 31) includes the extract of a document of 1285, where it is said: “aquel lugar es llamado santa maría de montserrat”. immediately after these comforting words, the eagle shows him and us the aim of the journey: and ther caas that betyd the is, is for thy lore and for thy prow (578-79) in this quotation the key term is the aim of learning as when the narrator is asked for the reason of his stay there (lines 1884-1894). the eagle gives him and us new information in the following words: and noght oonly fro fer contree that ther no tydynge cometh to thee, but of thy verray neyghebores, that duellen almost at thy dores, thou herist neyther that ne this (647-651) certainly, aquitania was in the neighbourhood of catalonia. and there is an anticipation of the place in the eagle’s confession of its own objective: and therfore joves, thorgh hys grace, wol that i bere the to a place which t hat hight the hous of fame (662-663) in the whole work we observe the highlighting of several themes that in terconnect, overlap and somehow relate the text to montserrat. one of them is height, a high place, a mountain summit, which is applied many times with reference both to the house of fame and to the eagle. nevertheless, the eagle, although he can fly very high, will not land at the house of fame. the antonio l eón & jesús l . serrano 130 narrator will have to climb the high mountain. this is a very interesting and important idea to back up our hypothesis as we will explain further on. it is necessary to point out the importance of this reiterative idea. the narrator emphasizes the idea of the height of the house of fame not only with the repetition of the word “high”, but with other literary resources such as litotes as in line 1117: hier stant ther non in spayne, or using a metaphor as in the following passage: hir paleys stant, as i shal seye, ryght even in myddes of the weye betwixen hevene and erthe and see. (713-715) montserrat is in that middle path, between the earth, the sky and the sea. any visitor knows the possibility of a beautiful view, from the top of the mountain, not only of part of aragon and valence, but of the balearic islands too. and this allusion is brilliantly developed at the end of book ii, when the narrator “adoun gan loken thoo” (896) and describes what he sees. so realis tic is the narration that when they are arriving at the venue, the eagle tells geoffrey: now up the hed, for al ys wel; seynt julyan, loo, boon hostel! se here the hous of fame, lo! (1021-1023) and here we find another important hint. it is well known that “seynt julyan” is the patron of hospitality. pilgrimages to montserrat were very fa mous as from the 12th century. the wish of the eagle (“boon hostel!”) is perfectly justified. albareda (1974: 146) encourages this justification: hasta nuestros predicadores del siglo xiv exhortaban a los fieles a la paciencia y a no preocuparse demasiado por la falta de habitaciones, naturalmente insufic ientes para el número de peregrinos que pernoctaban en montserrat. and montserrat is quite near, so that they can hear the murmur of the pilgrims: chaucer and montserrat 131 “what?”, quod i, “the grete soun,” quod he, “that rumbleth up and doun in fames hous, full of tydynges, bothe of fier speche and chydynges, and of fals and soth compouned (1025-29) they come near the house of fame: and with this words both he and y as nygh the place arryved were as men may casten with a spere. i nyste how, but in a strete he sette me fair on my fete, and seyde, “walke aventure or cas that thou shalt fynde in fames place? (1046-1053) here again we find a very important quotation. why did the eagle not set him down in the same house of fame, instead of “in a strete”, from where he had to go “on his fete”, if the eagle could fly so high? we have found a reasonable answer to this apparent paradox, following the argumentation of our hypothesis. we consider that chaucer did what pedro iv did on arriving at montserrat on 29th april, 1344. here are the king’s own words, included in albareda’s book (1974: 290-91): partimos de aquí cabalgando, fuimos al trote hasta el pie de la cuesta de montserrat donde descabalgamos y ordenamos que las bestias fuesen por el llano de monistrol y alli nos esperasen. y nos, con nuestros compañeros subimos dicha cuesta a pie. chaucer arrived at montserrat borne by an eagle following his literary text, but we think that he actually arrived on a horse and then he had to continue on foot in order to climb up the “cuesta”. after being set “in a strete” he could see the house of fame (“i wol yow al the shap devyse”, 1113), but it was very high and far away: in al that hous that yonder ys (1064) loo, to the hous of fame yonder (1070) antonio l eón & jesús l . serrano 132 the horses waited for pedro iv and the eagle, parallely, for chaucer too: and here i wol abyden the (1086), the eagle said. at the end of book ii our author is “in a strete” (1049), walking up to montserrat, and at the beginning of book iii the narrator takes up the plot again relating how he approaches montserrat and how difficult it was to climb the mountain: i wol yow al the shap devyse of hous and site, and al al the wyse how i gan to thys place aproche that stood upon so hygh a roche, hier stant ther non in spayne. but up i clomb with alle payne, and though to clymbe it greved me. (1113-1119) he was right when he comments that there is no such high place with “hous and site” in spain. chaucer is quite explicit on referring to the location of the place: “so high a roche,/ hier stant ther non in spayne” and “it greved me”. a preacher’s words in the xiv century, included in albareda’s (1974: 142) historia de montserrat, confirms chaucer’s difficulty in climbing up: esta devota cámara de nuestra señora santa maría está situada y puesta en un lugar desierto y alto y tiene sus entradas muy ásperas y peligrosas, de donde los peregrinos que aquí vienen pasan afanes, peligros, trabajos y grandes aflicciones. the impressive appearance of this “high a roche” leads the narrator to wonder about the rock composition: “for hyt lyk alum de glass” (1124). we read in “the textual notes of the riverside chaucer (n. 1124, p. 1141): “potash alum in its crystalline form”. it is well known that the stones in montserrat have this same silver or greyish appearance. the crystalline form was perceived because of the ice as it was winter. at first sight it seemed to be of steel: chaucer and montserrat 133 but at laste aspied, and found that hit was every del a roche of yse, and not of stel (1128-30) when the narrator sees the house for the first time he comments: al was of ston of beryle, bothe the castel and the tour (1184-85) beryl is a mineral of different colours: yellow, green white, blue. we find an exact parallel in the encyclopaedia espasa y calpe (1942: 778) when describing the mountain: por su aspecto petrográfico y caracter paleontológico, el macizo del montserrat puede dividirse en tres zonas bien distintas: infe rior, media y superior. the first includes “calizas verdosas y margas amarillentas […], arcillas y margas verdosas, rojiza s”; the second “arenisca gris azulada […], una banda de arcilla rojiza, alternando con otra de caliza amarillenta arenosa”; the third “capas arcillosas y areniscas arcillosas rojizas”. the same encyclopaedia (792) gives us the following important information: “todo el edificio está construido con sillares de piedra de la misma montaña”. although napoleon’s invasion of spain caused the destruction of many documents and important works of art we should like to point out the importance of the romanic church and the cloisters which are highlighted by albareda (1974: 94) as being the most important elements of the history of montserrat. the main entry and the facade is full of “babewynes, pynacles, ymageries, tabernacles, compasses, kervynges, corbetz “ following the lines 1187-1200 and 1301-1304. following our simile of a pilgrim we figure that chaucer was standing at the entrance, still outside the church, when he hears and watches a real military parade, with musicians and dancers: ther herde i pleyen on an harpe, (1201) …… …… … tho saugh i stonden hem behynde, antonio l eón & jesús l . serrano 134 after fro hem, al be hemselve, many thousand tymes twelve, that maden lowde mynstralcies in cornemuse and shalemyes, and many other maner pipe, that craftely begunne to pipe, bothe in doucet and in rede, that ben at festes with the brede; and many flwte and liltyng horn, and pipes made of grene corn, as han thise lytel herde-gromes that kepen bestis in the bromes. is baugh’s (1968: 63) information of any significance here?: “on january 1, 1366 pedro iv feasted all the leaders of the companies”. the words “doucet” and “festes” underline the obvious answer to our question. among these people, the quotation “pipes of the duche tonge” (1234) reveals to us the presence of the dutch in the great white companies. and among the dances, “reyes” (1236), which is a spanish word and not a word translated from dutch as is suggested in the “explanatory notes” of the riverside chaucer (n. 1235-26, p. 986), gives us another backing for our hypothesis: we consider that “reyes” is, certainly, a round dance, the catalonian “sardana”, which is danced by a circle of dancers with their hands raised and joined, forming the shape of a king’s crown. on the other hand, there is a direct allusion to catalonia: and alle that used clarion in cataloigne and aragon, that in her tyme famous were to lerne, saugh i trumpe there. (1247-250) we think that the verb “to lerne” shows an implicit reference to the old famous choir of montserrat. chaucer continues describing the feast showing that there were wizards, sleight-of-hand artists, conjurors, witches, enchantres ses, etc. also when chaucer says: i gan romen til i fond the castel-yate on my ryght hond chaucer and montserrat 135 which that sowel carven was that never such another nas (1293-96), apart from the strong indication implied in the same term ‘romen’ as a pilgrimage lexical item we think that he is referring to jaime de viver’s crafts manship, following the information given by albareda (1974: 54): frente a la que después fue cámara abacial, levantó un esplendido portal, conocido con el nombre de la reja. then, following our pilgrimage simile, he enters (“but in i wente”, 1307) and ther mette i crynge many oon, “a larges, larges, hold up wel! god save the lady of thys pel (1308-1310) the pilgrims singing the famous “salve” and wearing their typical clothes are described when they come out of viver’s hall in the following lines: and faste comen out of halle and shoken nobles and sterlynges. and somme corouned were as kynges, with corounes wroght ful o f losenges (1314-1317) but these pilgrims, kings at arms, are not only the soldiers prepared to in vade castile, but also: that pursevantes and heraudes that crien ryche folkes laudes (1321-22) these “ryche folkes laudes” were famous in montserrat. and a few lines below we find another reference to the great white companies: of famous folk that han ybeen in auffrike, europe, and asye, (1338-39) most of the leaders were famous for their military campaign in these places. when chaucer continues describin g the hall we again find new parallels: antonio l eón & jesús l . serrano 136 ne of the halle eke waht nede is to tellen yow that every wal of it, and flor, and roof, and al was plated half a foote thikke of gold, and that nas nothyng wikke, but for to prove in alle wyse, as fyn as ducat in venyce, if which to lite al in my pouche is? and they were set as thik of nouchis ful of the fynest stones faire that men rede in the lapidaire, as grasses growen in a mede. but hit were al to longe to rede the names, and therfore i pace. (1342-1355) albareda (1974: 151) writes: de los siglos xii y xiii, no tenemos referencia alguna del tesoro montserratino. en el siglo xiv, en cambio, son frecuentes las alu siones a las joyas de montserrat. se decía a los peregrinos: “si queréis mirar el altar y la sacristía y las paredes de esta devota capilla de nuestra señora santa maría, allí veréis el testimonio y recuerdo de todas estas cosas. allí hay muchos relicarios de oro y de plata, muchos cálices y palios y muy ricas vestiduras y otros riquísimos ornamentos; mu chas lámparas de plata y otros objetos ricos y devotos.” following albareda’s words we find that “las joyas de más valor eran guardadas en el monasterio, y no se mostraban a todos los visitantes”. chaucer, who may have been one of these “visitantes”, expresses the same idea: but in this lusty and ryche place that fames halle called was, ful moche prees of folk ther nas, ne crodyng for to mochil prees. (1356-59) when he sees and describes the goddess fame, the parallelism with santa maría de montserrat is surprisingly close. the most attractive aspect for him is the place where she is: chaucer and montserrat 137 but al on hye, above a dees, sitte in a see imperiall, that mad was of a rubee all which that carbuncle ys ycalled, y saugh, perpetually ynstalled, a femynyne creature. (1360-65) all these details, the high dais, the chair, and the “perpetually ystalled femynyne creature” can be applied to santa maría de montserrat. and at first sight (“for alther-first”, 1368), he sees a little statue, because it is “al on hye” and he says : me thoughte that she was so lyte that the leghte of a cubite was lengere than she seemed be (1369-71) following espasa y calpe (1942: 791) we informed that “el conjunto mide 95 cm. de alto por 35 de ancho.” really “she was so lyte”… although the divine image has suffered many changes, and we cannot find “hir fet she erthe reighte” (1374), but on her right hand, nor “weren on the bestes foure/ that goddis trone gunne honoure/ as hohn writ in th’apocalips” (1383-85), we can deduce from the main front of the old church of santa maría that the beasts represent the four evangelists. today we can identify the “burned gold hyt shoon to see” (1387). apart from “the perry and the richesse” he says: and lord, the herenyssh melodye of songes ful or armonye i herde aboute her trone y songe. (1395-97) albareda (1974: 163) is our source once again to support our hypothesis to demonstrate how this musical practice was an important and particularly characteristic element of montserrat: antonio l eón & jesús l . serrano 138 la presencia constante de un coro de voces blancas, de un grupo de jóvenes instruidos en el arte musical, permitió a montserrat in corporar, sin restricciones, los adelantos de todas las épocas a las solemnidades del culto. when chaucer says he saw “fro the dees, many a peler” (1421), we think that he might be referring to elaborate rich candles. a stained glass window of josephus, who is cited “upon a piler stonde on high” (1430) can be seen by present day visitors. when chaucer was about to leave the church, he saw different groups of pilgrims “that ther come entryng into the halle” (1527) from “sondry re giouns” (1529), and of “alleskynnes condiciouns” (1530). these nine groups of pilgrims or companies who asked for the favours of the goddess fame entered in an orderly fashion as the groups of pilgrims usually did. albareda (1974: 141) reiterates this idea: “cerca del monasterio se ordenaban procesionalmente”. so great was the number of pilgrims that been al the dores opened wide, and be nyght echon unshette (1952-53) this same idea is included in albareda’s work (1974: 30) when he states: la afluencia de peregrinos era inintermitente; las puertas de la iglesia no se cerraban de noche ni de día. at the end of book iii, lines 2145-2154: for i saugh rennynge every wight 2145 as faste as that they hadden myght, and everych cried, “what thing is that?” and somme sayde, “i not never what.” and whan they were alle on an hepe tho behynde begunne up lepe, 2150 and clamben up on other faste, and up the nose and yën kaste, and troden fast on o thers heles, and starnpen, as men doon aftir eles. chaucer and montserrat 139 this seems to have a close relation with a local habit in catalonia: to form human towers by standing on the shoulders of one below as a proof of ability and risk taking. finally, following the development of our hypothesis of chaucer’s historical inspiration for his house of fame we claim that the “man of gret auctorite” (2158) was pedro iv, who had gone up to montserrat according to albareda (1974: 290): en 1343, antes de emprender la campaña contra jaime iii de mallorca, subió a la montaña santa y, al besar la mano de la virgen, se puso en el dedo uno de los anillos que llevaba a la ima gen, como prenda de protección. at that time, 1366, the campaign was against pedro i, el cruel. antonio r. león sendra & jesús l. serrano reyes universidad de córdoba bibliography albareda, a. m. 1974: historia de montserrat. barcelona, l’abadía de montserrat. baugh, a. c. 1968: the background of chaucer’s mission to spain. in chaucer und seine zeit, arno esch ed, tübingen, pp. 55-69. armitage-smith, s. 1904: john of gaunt, westminster: archibald constable. benson, l. d. 1991: the riverside chaucer. oxford, oup. boitani, p.1988: old books brought to life in dreams: the book of the duchess, the house of fame, the parliament of fowls. in the cambridge chaucer companion edited by p. boitani & jill mann, cup. antonio l eón & jesús l . serrano 140 crow, m. m. & c. c. olson 1966: chaucer life -records, oxford, clarendon press. davenport, w. a.1988: chaucer: complaint and narrative, cambridge: brewer. delachenal, r. 1909-33: histoire de charles v, 5 vols. paris. delany, sh. 1972: chaucer’s house of fame: the poetics of sceptical fideism, university of chicago press. edwards, a.1989: the dream of chaucer, duke university press. garbaty, th. j. 1967: chaucer in spain, 1366: soldier of fortune or agent of the crown? eln 5: 81-7. goodman,a. 1987: sentiment and policy: english attitudes to spain in the later middle ages. in estudios sobre málaga y el reino de granada en el v centenario de la conquista. edited by j. e. lópez de coca. málaga, diputación provincial, pp. 73-81. goodman, a. 1992: john of gaunt. the exercise of princely power in 14th c. europe, new york, saint martin press. honoré -duvergé, s. 1955: chaucer en espagne? 1366. receuil de travaux offert à m. clovis brunel, vol ii. paris, 2: 9-13. jordan, r. 1987: chaucer’s poetics and the modern reader, u. of california press. león sendra, a. r.1994: chaucer y la fama. estudios ingleses de la universidad complutense 2: 91-100. león sendra, a. r. & j. l. serrano reyes 1992: spanish references in the canterbury tales. selim 2: 106-144. minnis, a. j. 1982: chaucer and pagan antiquity. cambridge: d.s. brewer. patterson, l. 1991: chaucer and the subject of history, london: routledge. ruggiers, p. g.1959: the unity of chaucer’s house of fame. in chaucer: modern essays in criticism, edited by wagenknecht, oup. wimsatt, j. i. 1991: chaucer and his french contemporaries. toronto: university of toronto press. chaucer and montserrat 141 * † * selim08.doc norman blake, selim 8 (1998): 9—34 the literary development of the reynard story in england the most significant aspect of reynard the fox in medieval england is what little impact his story had on the literature of the period; and even in the art field the reynard story is hardly a frequent feature in manuscript illumination or carving. it is only with the publication of william caxton’s reynard the fox in 1481 that a full version of his story is found in middle english. however, there are indications that reynard’s exploits were known in england, and it is appropriate to consider first those few traces that he left before caxton’s time. in what follows it should be borne in mind that parts of the reynard story may have been known in french or latin versions in me dieval england and that representations of foxes and other animals which owe their symbolism to the reynard stories are found in various forms. the earliest text with a complete fox story is a poem of 295 lines, now known as the fox and the wolf. probably written c.1250, it survives in a single manuscript. it reproduces the outlines of the story found in branch iv of the roman de renart, which is usually assumed to be its source, though there are significant differences between the english poem and the roman. the two animals in the fox and the wolf are introduced as ‘a fox’ and ‘a wolf’, though the names reneward and sigrim (from isegrim) occur incidentally. two features near its end set the english poem apart from the roman: the fox does not eat any hens when he enters the barn in which they sleep, and his attempts to persuade chanteclere the cock to come down from his perch are unsuccessful. the fox leaves the barn hungry and disappointed. although this scene has similarities with that in the roman, it has some differences. one is the wolf’s confession. the wolf in the english version says he once found the fox in bed with his wife, which suggests seduction, whereas in branch va of the roman the wolf claims that the fox had raped his wife. n orman f . b lake 6 though this poem may be an adaptation of branch iv of the french roman, it also drew on other branches. the english poet treated the roman very differently from the german and flemish adaptors who took over much more of the french text into their works to reflect the overall approach of the roman. the english poem, however, is relatively brief, introduces the animals without names, and refers to their names only incidentally. in these re spects it is more like a fable than the roman which is a conte à rire. the english poem contains two halves: in the first the fox is unable to deceive chanteclere to make him come down from his perch, but in the second he is able to deceive the wolf, who jumps into the bucket and thus lets the fox es cape from the well. the fox and the wolf may thus be a fable illustrating the dangers of deceit with a warning to its readers not to be taken in by plausible villains. collections of fables, mainly in latin but occasionally in french, were available in england and may have provided the impetus for this poem, even if the story came from the roman. another short poem, now called a song on the times also found in a single manuscript, introduces the fox and the wolf. this poem, usually dated to the early fourteenth century, is a complaint about the perversion of justice through bribery. in it the lion is the king of the beasts, the fox and the wolf are his courtiers, and the simple ass represents the lowest class. the fox, wolf and ass are accused of various crimes in the lion’s court such as stealing sheep and poultry. the fox and wolf bribe the king and so escape any punishment, whereas the ass does not and is found guilty, even though as a grass-eating animal he had assumed his innocence would be self-evident. although the animals are not named, the roles they play echo what is found in the roman, though that can hardly be a direct source. this poem, too, is more of a metrical fable than anything else. the best known work about the fox in medieval english is chaucer’s nun’s priest’s tale, part of his canterbury tales, written towards the end of the fourteenth century. the canterbury tales survives in over eighty manuscripts and has been frequently edited since the first edition issued from william caxton’s press c.1476. the story of the fox and his exploits with chanteclere have remained a feature of english literary life because of the popularity of this work, which may have inhibited further developments of the reynard story in england. in chaucer’s tale, chanteclere is flattered by the fox, daun russell, into shutting his eyes while he sings loudly; as soon the literary development of the reynard story in e ngland 7 as he does so, the fox seizes him by the throat and rushes off with him towards his lair. the fox’s theft is proclaimed by chanteclere’s wife, and a posse of people set off in pursuit of the fox. chanteclere notices this and suggests to the fox that he should utter a speech of defiance to his pursuers. as soon as he starts to do so, chanteclere escapes from the fox’s mouth and flies to a branch of the nearest tree. attempts by the fox to entice him down fail, and so the fox has to depart empty-handed. the tale finishes with a suggestion that it is more than just a story of a fox and a cock: but ye that holden this tale a folye as of a fox or of a cok and hen, taketh the moralitee, goode men. many scholars have seen in this message a warning against the sin of flattery with an indication as to how one can learn from one’s mistakes. such a message is typical of fables, though similar ones are not uncommon in other literary forms. chaucer seems to have used two main sources: a version of the fable about the fox and the cock as told briefly in the fables of marie de france and the story as told in the roman. it is, however, quite possible that chaucer himself was familiar with neither of these sources, which may have been combined in a version of the fable as found in a preacher’s handbook of exempla. for preachers in the middle ages collected illustrative stories like this one to serve as possible examples with which to embellish their sermons, as such stories provided both the excitement of the narrative as well as the moral which the tale illustrated. nevertheless, some passages in the tale are verbally so close to equivalent passages in the roman that chaucer may have had access to a manuscript version of the roman, even though evidence for the circulation of the roman in england is slight. it is possible that chaucer had access to the version of the reynard story known as renart le contrefait, but evidence to confirm this hypothesis is lacking. it is with caxton’s edition of reynard the fox in 1481 that the reynard cycle becomes available in english. before this time, as we have seen, stories about the fox, the wolf and the cock were known in england and sometimes n orman f . b lake 8 appeared in english writings, but there was no full account of the fox and his adventures as found in the roman de renart and other european literatures. as caxton is such an important person as regards the dissemination of the reynard story, it is desirable to say a few words about his career. born in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, caxton was apprenticed as a mercer to william large, who became in 1439 the lord mayor of london. the london mercers were the primary driving force of the merchant adventurers company, that associatio n of merchants responsible for the trade between england and the continent through which so many fortunes were made. on finishing his apprenticeship, caxton joined in this trade and spent most of the middle years of his life on the continent, particularly in present-day belgium and holland. he became governor of the english nation at bruges about 1462, a position which implies status and wealth in the officeholder. caxton remained in this office until he left bruges for cologne in 1471. as a merchant caxt on principally dealt in finished cloth, though he would also have handled a wide range of other goods including manuscripts. flanders was at that time one of the most important centres for the production of manuscripts, and many of them found their way to england through the merchant adventurers. the booktrade across the channel was well established. in 1469 caxton started to make a translation of a french text, and since this was the first translation he made it was done presumably with an eye to future publication. printing had not by this time reached the low countries, but it was established in cologne. it was there that caxton went in 1471 to acquire a printing press and its secrets. he stayed in cologne for eighteen months before returning to bruges where he set up a press and printed his own translation of the history of troy, the first book to be printed in english. in 1476 he moved his press and publishing business to england where he set up a shop at westminster. he continued to translate and print books there until his death in 1492. the majority of books translated and printed by caxton were french texts in prose which were available in manuscript or printed form in the low countries and france. they included romances, religious works and didactic material. his edition of reynard the fox is different since it is a translation of the dutch prose van den vos reinerde; it is the only work translated and printed by caxton which was not in french or latin. since the roman was still available and read at this time, the question arises why caxton should the literary development of the reynard story in e ngland 9 have translated a work from dutch rather than from french. the question must be asked since dutch was not a courtly language and a work translated from that language would have none of the fashionable status conferred on a book translated from french. although he often includes information about his choice of a particular text in its prologue or epilogue, he does not do so in this case. however, from what we know of caxton’s working practices, we may assume that he would have translated a french text if he had one suit able for his purposes. he may have known the roman, but he is unlikely to have translated that because it is in verse. he printed poems, but he made no verse translations. he may have been unfamiliar with the roman altogether, though that seems somewhat improbable in view of its wide circulation on the continent. it seems likely that he knew of the dutch prose version and that appeared to be the most convenient text to translate, because it was in prose in a language he knew well. this dutch prose version had been printed in 1479 by gerard leeu at gouda, and is in its turn a prose adaptation of the dutch poem reinaert ii. this poetic version contained material which is not basically part of the reynard story, such as the parable of the man and the snake, and it also re used in its second half episodes found in the earlier part so that this continuation is repetitive and somewhat long-winded. this difference between the first part which is racy and light and the continuation which is laboured and wordy may still be detected in caxton’s translation. after his return to england caxton maintained contact with the publishing houses on the continent and many books printed in france and the low countries were translated and printed by him very quickly, as is true of this book. it is not improbable that a copy of the gouda edition was in caxton’s hands at westminster within three to six months of its appearance. presumably he decided that as a new–ly published text it was likely to be of interest to his readers. there was no english competition, though the popularity of the canterbury tales and the occasional use of the name reynard both by chaucer and other authors suggest that english people knew sufficient about the fox and his escapades to make an edition of reynard the fox financially viable. caxton appears not to give details of the book’s printing; at the end of his colophon he merely states: n orman f . b lake 10 for i haue not added ne mynusshed but haue folowed as nyghe as i can my copye whiche was in dutche and by me william caxton translated in to this rude and symple englyssh in thabbey of westmestre. fynysshed the vj daye of iuyn the yere of our lord m.cccc.lxxxj and the xxj yere of the regne of kynge edward the iiijth as caxton seems to refer only to the translation, it is widely assumed that his fynysshed refers to the completion of the translation and not to the printing. so most bibliographical works list reynard the fox as c.1481. but ‘finished’ can be used by caxton to mean either the translation or the printing, and the latter may be more appropriate here, because we know that he finished translating mirror of the world on 8 march 1481 and siege of jerusalem on 7 june 1481. as there would be insufficient time for him to finish translating reynard the fox on 6 june 1481, it is reasonable to accept the printing was concluded on that day. the story of reynard the fox follows the normal pattern. the wolf, the hound and the cat complain to noble the lio n about the fox, who is not pre sent at court. various messengers are sent to summon him, but they are tricked and humiliated by him. eventually the fox comes to court and there confesses; he is condemned to death. as he faces death he deceives the lion with a story of hidden riches and is able to incriminate the wolf and the bear through his lies. the wolf and the bear have their shoes plucked off and given to reynard. he then leaves the court, ostensibly as a pilgrim, but it is not long before he is back to his old tricks. he kills the hare and sends his head back to the lion with the ram, who is so foolish as to implicate himself in the death. at the court various animals come to noble the lion to complain about reynard, just as had happened at the beginning of the story, for this stage marks the beginning of that continuation which was first added in reinaert ii. eventually reynard comes back to the court to answer the charges made against him and he carries all before him with the help of the ape. but then the wolf complains against the fox and challenges him to a dual. the fox, who follows the advice of the ape as to how he should prepare himself and fight, finally overcomes the wolf despite the latter’s superior size and strength. through this victory which is achieved by dubious means the the literary development of the reynard story in e ngland 11 fox regains the king’s friendship and departs with honour from the court. there then follows an injunction to understand the book in the correct way: in lyke wyse may it be by this booke that who that wyl rede this mater though it be of iapes and bourdes yet he may fynde therin many a good wysedom and lernynges by whiche he may come to vertue and worship. this was the version which was to remain popular in england for many years to come. even so, it should be remembered that other versions of the story were known in fables, and it was only gradually that caxton’s story would drive the other forms out. to underline this last point, the morall fabillis by robert henryson, a scottish poet who died about 1508, appeared short ly after caxton’s work. it is a collection of versified fables, each of which concludes with a moral. among the fables in this collection are those of the fox in the well, the prosecution of the fox, and the fox and the herrings. all reflect stories found in the roman, but the scottish version often contains details which not found there. this is not surprising since henryson drew on a wide range of sources, in cluding a french isopet or poetic version of aesop’s fables, chaucer’s nun’s priest’s tale and caxton’s edition of reynard the fox. some of the names given to the animals in henryson are significant. the fox is called lawrence, a name characteristically applied to foxes in scotland, but the wolf is known as waitskaith, a name found elsewhere only in caxton’s reynard the fox, though there it is not clear what animal it refers to. henryson had a variety of sources, english, scots and french, upon which he could draw, and it ia noteworthy that even after caxton’s time he still considered it worthwhile t o write fables using episodes from the reynard story. during the middle ages england knew of the reynard story mainly through fables and examples used in sermons and other didactic literature. it is doubtful if the full cycle of the story as found in the french roman and hence in many other european literatures was known to many in england, if it was known at all. it was only with the publication of caxton’s reynard the fox that a full version of the cycle became available in english. since this version was available in a printed edition, it must soon have become relatively well n orman f . b lake 12 known, for it is probable that caxton printed at least two hundred copies of a book like this. an obvious sign of its influence is its use by the craftsman who made the misericords in bristol cathedral in 1528, though the artist may have used a later edition of this work rather than caxton’s editio princeps. this is the first time in england that the reynard cycle was used to form the basis of a series of carvings or paintings by an english artist. as we shall see caxton’s text was frequently reprinted and modernised over the years to come; his version remained the one known to english people. at the same time editions of the canterbury tales were constantly produced, and so the nun’s priest’s tale also enjoyed a wide readership. it was from these two texts that english people in the following centuries appreciated the story of the fox. before going on to discuss the way in which caxton’s edition was re printed and adapted by later publishers, it is important to say a few words about it. the text is a translation from dutch and when he made the transla tion caxton took over many dutch words and spellings from his original. some of these forms are attributed to carelessness or haste, as when caxton’s edition has end for ‘and’. others may have been deliberately introduced because caxton was ignorant of an english equivalent as when he introduces the word forwynterd in the sense of ‘reduced to straits by the winter’. normally caxt on does try to use english spelling conventions for dutch words, but occasionally the dutch forms are retained. the dutch verb ruymen is normally spelt in caxton’s edition as rome, but once he has the form ruymed. naturally these dutch words and spellings tended to be eliminated in later editions. caxton’s version is divided into forty-three chapters, a division which follows that found in the gouda edition. later versions will make alterations to this organisation. finally caxton’s edition contains no illustra tions, as is also true of the gouda edition although illustrations were not uncommon in manuscript versions of the roman and in many early printed books. indeed, it might be said that the illustrations were one of the features which helped to make printed editions of the reynard story popular. caxton had not started to use woodcuts by this date and so there are none in his 1481 edition. all editions of the reynard story in england up to 1550 follow caxton’s version fairly closely in most respects. it is possible that other editions were printed which have left no trace, but this remains mere speculation. caxton the literary development of the reynard story in e ngland 13 himself produced a second edition of reynard the fox in 1489. this second edition is in almost all particulars identical with the first. it survives in a sin gle copy now in the pepys library, magdalene college cambridge. its main point of interest is that it lacks a couple of leaves at the end and these have been supplied in a seventeenth-century hand. the question is whether this addit ion represents what was in caxton’s edition or whether it is an antiquarian reconstruction of the sort of thing caxton might have included in his epilogue. the latter seems the more likely theory, and this addition probably exhibits seventeenth-century interest in caxton and the reynard story. an edition by richard pynson from the last five years of the fifteenth century survives in a single copy found in the douce bequest at the bodleian library, oxford. it too lacks some of its final leaves which might have told us more about the time and circumstances of the edition. caxton’s second edition and pynson’s first edition are not illustrated and both are reprints of caxton’s first edition and maintain its features closely. naturally they make alterations to the spellings and to the words borrowed from dutch, although such changes are not many. although it does not survive, it has been suggested that wynkyn de worde, caxton’s foreman and successor in the publishing business, published an edition of reynard the fox about 1499. this is an important edition because it introduced woodcuts into a printed english version. the existence of this edition can be deduced from the existence of the woodcuts which are found in later editions of the text, for it must be remembered that there was a great deal of co-operation among early printers who sold or hired out woodcuts to one another. woodcuts represented a capital investment which needed to be re -couped. if a series of woodcuts was used only in a single edition, that would make their use very expensive. so they were re -used in many editions of the same text and even included in quite different texts for which they had not been designed. it has been shown that there originally existed a series of forty-three woodcuts and that these must have belonged to wynkyn de worde. the fact that there were forty three is significant, for the early editions of reynard the fox contained forty-three chapters. there was one woodcut for each chapter; and it was usual for printers to put a woodcut at the head of each chapter. the woodcuts for de worde’s edition were based on those produced by the haarlem master for the antwerp edition of reinaert de vos published by gerard leeu about 1487. n orman f . b lake 14 a second edition by pynson survives in some fragments in the national library of scotland. from its type it is dated to between 1501 and 1505. these fragments represent an edition which was illustrated with woodcuts, and the woodcuts are from de worde’s. little else is known about the edition because of its fragmentary state. the same applies to de worde’s second edition of reynard the fox, usually dated c. 1515, which survives in a fragment in cambridge university library. this edition was illustrated with the same series of woodcuts used in de worde’s first and pynson’s second edition. woodcut illustration appears to have become the accepted norm in editions of reynard the fox. both these editions probably contained the standard forty-three chapters with one illustration per chapter and reproduced the text as found in caxton’s editions with some modernisation and updating. as a general principle it may be suggested that any new edition was based on the most recent edition immediately before it. hence improvements and changes in the language of one edition are likely to be reflected in all subsequent editions. the vocabulary of these editions shows a distinct trend of modernisation. words in caxton’s 1481 edition which reflect dutch words in the gouda text are gradually replaced: romed gives way to voyded and skrabbyng to scrapynge. even older english words are replaced as they are accepted as being archaic: wende becomes thought, and fordele becomes vauntage. less common phrases, some of which imitate dutch, are replaced by more idiomatic phrases: she said se wel to is changed to she bad hym take hede, and to fote becomes on fote. the last edition of this early phrase of reynard the fox in england is that published by thomas gaultier in 1550 which survives in several copies. this maintains the model of forty-three chapters and is in most respects simply a modernised copy of caxton’s original version. it was produced in octavo in stead of folio as previous editions had been, and this might suggest that the nature of the text was changing or rather the way publishers saw it. the smaller format might suggest that this was a book which was popular in its appeal. caxton produced books for the upper end of the vernacular market books which would appeal to the reading tastes of a fashionable clientele. gradually reynard the fox came down in the world and was being presented as a text you could take around in your pocket and which had pictures to decorate the story and widen its appeal. this may mark the beginning of its apthe literary development of the reynard story in e ngland 15 peal more as a children’s book or as a book which was more suitable for a less refined audience. the next edition, which i have not seen since it is in private hands, has no name of publisher or date of printing. the type used suggests a date about the middle of the sixteenth century. more importantly from a textual point of view this edition is close to that published by gaultier in 1550. most of the linguistic changes found in gaultier are also found in this edition, but the printer has made additional changes as well. this suggests that the edition is later than 1550, since as we have seen changes made in one edition appear in subsequent editions. it is recorded in the stationer’s register that editions of reynard the fox were printed in 1560 by william powell and in 1586 by edward allde, though neither of these editions is now extant. so it may well be that this anonymous edition is one of these two missing editions; if so, it is likely to be the former. this anonymous edition differs in some important ways from preceding ones. where early editions had contained forty-three chapters, this one contains fifty-eight; and where early edition had fortythree illustrations, this contains fifty-five. this edition therefore marks the end of what might be called the first phase o f reynard the fox production in england. although the text is substantially unchanged, modifications are now being made to the presentation of the material and these modifications herald even more substantial changes which will be introduced in subsequent editions. it is not clear why this edition has fifty-eight chapters, though it does allow for more woodcuts to be introduced. of the fifty-five woodcuts, nine are found twice so there are only forty-six different pictures. these are divided into thirty-five tall (12.5 cm high and 9 cm wide) and eleven wide (7.5 cm high and 11 cm wide) woodcuts. some of these wide woodcuts re peat illustrations found among the tall ones and are presumably copies of them. the thirty-five tall woodcuts are part of the series which belonged to wynkyn de worde and were used to illustrate his editions, and faults in the woodcuts can be found both in the de worde editions and in this anonymous edition. in other words, the woodcuts had been handed down among the publishers of reynard the fox so that they remained available for new editions. this contributes to a sense of continuity and sameness among the early editions. n orman f . b lake 16 in the seventeenth century numerous editions of reynard the fox continue to appear, though there are striking changes to record. what is noteworthy is that so many editions were issued, since reynard the fox is not a book normally associated with the literary development and taste of this century. we need to remember that each century continues to produce books which occupy a low level of literary visibility and which inhabit, as it were, a substra tum of the literary scene. books at this level were perhaps more popular and common than those which figure in the literary histories of the period. the earliest seventeenth-century edition to have survived is that by edward allde about 1620 in london. there may have been editions prior to it, but none have survived or are otherwise recorded. this edition was reprinted, often with revisions, regularly during the seventeenth century, for editions have been recorded for 1629, 1640, 1654, 1656, 1662, 1681, 1694, 1699 and 1701. furthermore continuations or sequels to the story are found. a continuation, or, second part, of … reynard the fox appeared for the first time in 1672, and this sequel was added to the first part and issued together with it in 1681. in this second part the author killed off reynard, and so when someone else wanted to issue a new continuation, it had to be about reynard’s son, who was called reynardine. the fortunes of this son, in a work called the shifts of reynardine the son of reynard the fox, was first made public in 1684. this development of a hero’s activities by creating a son who carries on in much the same way as his father is a typical publishing expedient of this century. this development does not exhaust the seventeenth century’s response to the story of reynard the fox, for in addition to these editions, that century saw the publication of a versified version by john shurle y and the appearance of at least five abridged accounts. it is time now to look at these various developments in greater detail. the 1620 edition marks many important changes in the presentation of the reynard story. the book is offered under the title the most delectable history of reynard the fox, and the title page refers to the story being ‘newly corrected and purged from all the grosenesses both in phrase and matter’ as well as ‘augmented and inlarged with sundry excellent moralls and expositions vpon euery seuerall chapter’. it is indeed this emphasis on morality which is the most noticeable feature of the text. this point is emphasised in a new epistle to the reader which is inserted at the beginning of the volume. this contains the following comments: the literary development of the reynard story in e ngland 17 thou hast here (courteous & friendly reader) the pleasant and delightfull history of reynard the foxe, which in an humble & lowe style (coutched to the natures of beasts it treateth on) beareth in it much excellent morallitie & hidden wisdome, worthy both thy re gard in reading and thine applycation in the course & comercement of thy life and actions, for the ayme at which it bendeth is the ouerthrowe of vice and the aduancement of the good & vertuous. now forasmuch as hitherto it hath flowne into the world (like sybilla’s loose papers) couered with much obscurity & darknes, i haue for thy more ease and contentment, to euery seuerall chapter annexed the morals and expositions of such darke places as may either holde thy iudgement in seeking to winde out of a laborinth so dark & curious. as the editor notes here, each chapter is provided with a moral. this moral is added in a smaller type in the margin, at some convenient point for the printer. as some idea of what these morals are like i include that which is attached to the first chapter dealing with the court of noble the lion and the attack of various animals upon reynard. howsoeuer a vicious man perswads him self to escape punishment by absenting himselfe from the presence of the maiestrate, yet he deceiues himselfe, & by his contempt, animates his enemies to be more bolde in their compaintes against him; as appeares heere by the wolfe who (althogh worse than the fox) yet armed with his absence and the seasonablenes of the time for free libertie of speech, takes opportuntiy to say the worst he can against him, & by the example makes others of fearefull nature doe the like. and therefore let no wise man shrinke from his iust triall, but either defend his owne innocence, or else submit to mercy, for dead men and absent finde slacke aduocates. no one reading the 1620 edition can avoid these morals, and so the story is presented in a quite different way. the tale was being made re spectable. the editor of this edition also modernised the language of the work. although this was a process which had been going on since the first edition, this time there was a more thorough revision of the language so that the tale was made more contemporary in its tone. the story line was unchanged, but n orman f . b lake 18 the packaging has been improved. this can be seen from the opening, which in caxton read: it was about the tyme of penthecoste or whytsontyde/ that the wodes comynly be lusty and gladsom/ and the trees clad with leuys and blossoms and the ground with herbes and flowris swete smellyng and also the fowles and byrdes syngen melodyously in theyr armonye. in the 1620 text this opening has now become: about the feast of penticost (which is commonly called whitsontide) when the woods are in their lustyhood and gallantry, and euery tre e cloathed in the greene and white liuory of glorious leaues and sweet smelling blossomes, and the earth couered in her fairest mantle of flowers, which the birdes with much ioy entertaine with the delight of their harmonious songs. here words like gallantry and mantle as well as adjective and noun combinations like glorious leaues, fairest mantle and harmonious songs give the passage a seventeenth-century feel in its style. the passage is much longer than that found in caxton because it has been expanded and elaborated. the 1620 edition differs from earlier ones in it organisation into chapters. caxton’s version and most subsequent editions had forty-three chapters. the 1620 edition has arranged these into twenty-five chapters by regrouping much of the material. this edition is also provided with woodcuts, but for the most part they are the same woodcuts which had been used in earlier editions. they are scattered throughout the text, and do not necessarily occur immediately after the chapter-heading: they include both the wide and the tall varieties. new woodcuts were not provided. the appearance of the same woodcuts and the general similarity of the text make the continuity between the 1620 edition and previous ones quite marked. the editions which followed in the seventeenth century were almost exact reprints of the 1620 edition so that there is little to record in the development of the story until the publication of the first continuation in 1672. that continuation is anticipated in the 1620 edition, which concludes with the comment ‘but if all thinges sute to my wisht imagination, i shall then be encouraged to salute the world with a second part, clad in some neater english, deeper matter, and if not more, yet the literary development of the reynard story in e ngland 19 euery whit as pleasant morals’. there is no reason to suppose that the sequel was composed by the editor of the 1620 edition, whether that was edward all-de or someone else. a continuation, or, second part of the most pleasant and delightful history of reynard the fox was published by richard brewster in 1672, though the author is unknown. this edition is provided with woodcuts, but they are all from the original series found in the first part and consequently are not always very appropriate as illustrations of the new story. this contin uation is about two -thirds of the length of the first part; it is divided into thirty-two chapters; and it is provided with marginal comments to highlight the morality of individual episodes. the story is concerned with reynard as a crafty courtier and hence differs in tone from the original version. caxton’s translation and its subsequent modernisations dealt with the evils of everyday life, for reynard was presented more as an ordinary citizen than as a courtier. he had to answer to the king for his actions, but his evil deeds were mostly perpetrated outside the court. the continuation is rather more political since it focusses on corruption in high places, and it may even contain veiled references to contemporary political happenings. the continuation is narrower in its moral focus, which aims at probity in the ministers of the crown rather than at good behaviour among the population generally. the story develops as follows. reynard is made the chief favourite of noble the lion and uses this power quite shamelessly to promote his own in terests. he has isegrim promoted to chief prelate in succession to bellin the ram who was executed in the first part, even though isegrim is totally unfit ted for his position. the bear and the cat plan reynard’s death because of isegrim’s elevation, of which they are jealous, but they both drop their plans when reynard extends patronage to them as well. reynard uses his position to enrich himself with the aim of ultimately usurping the throne. he suborns many nobles with this wealth, and when he judges the time right he calls an as sembly at which he proposes an armed rebellion against noble. the plot is betrayed by the leopard and the panther, and noble acts quickly to quell the rebellion. many rebels are captured and reynard is besieged in his castle malepardus. after a spirited resistance he is captured, tried for treason, found guilty and duly executed. as may be realised from this brief synopsis, the tale is very different from that of the first part. although in some ways better orn orman f . b lake 20 ganised and more cohesive in tone and morality, it is rather lifeless in its characterisation. the animals have become little more than dull allegorical figures. the liveliness of the folktale which is so much a feature of the first part is missing. furthermore, reynard himself is no longer a swaggering and cunning rogue who is never at a loss for a way to extricate himself from a difficult situation. in the continuation he is little more than a crooked courtier who tries to outwit his king, but is caught out. at his trial he offers no defence; he is a character without spirit or interest. it is difficult to imagine many readers succumbing to the attraction of sin from reading this continuation. in 1684 the second sequel to the story of reynard the fox appeared under the title the shifts of reynardine the son of reynard the fox. this volume was also published by edward brewster, though the author is unknown. as the first sequel ended with the death of reynard, this continuation deals with his son. the volume is divided into thirty-three chapters, which come to about the same length as caxton’s original version, but it contains no woodcuts. the author is apparently different from the person who wrote the first sequel. no doubt the story of reynardine is meant to parallel that of his fa ther reynard, and he certainly perpetrates some unpleasant deeds, but his sheer zest for evil can in no way match that of his father. he is rather a pale reflection of his father, and it may well be that the seventeenth century was too concerned with morality to be able to portray evil convincingly. the story also loses much of its medieval flavour because the names have been changed. most of the original continental names have been abandoned to be replaced either by english ones or by names which have more than a touch of augustan allegory in them. when reynardine assumes the role of doctor, he calls himself doctor pedanto. the story proceeds like this. before reynard died, he gave his wealth to his sons, reynardine and volpus, enjoining on them the duty to revenge him on firapel and sly -look who had betrayed him and caused his death. volpus is soon killed, but reynardine goes to another country where he becomes a novice in the monastery at manton. he is expelled for stealing, but keeps his habit and is able to exploit his dress by selling indulgences to the gullible. losing the habit in a trap, he decides to return to his own country, where he is advised by the ape to become a doctor. in due course firapel falls ill, and reynardine treats him with an overdose so that he dies, and so achieves his first revenge. he quarrels with the ape, who denounces him publicly, and so the literary development of the reynard story in e ngland 21 he is forced to flee. but he has his ears and tail cut off by a mountebank, and is so unrecognisable that he can return to his own country once more where he takes service with sly -look under the name crabron. he poisons sly -look to complete the revenge for his father. he makes such a show of sorrow for his master’s death that the king makes him one of his purveyors. he is able to maintain this position for a time by eliminating those who could betray him. ultimately he is unmasked, and he makes a full confession under torture. when he is on the scaffold he manages, as his father had done, to win a reprieve through a lieing speech. he continues his escapades for a time, but is caught again and finally executed after another confession about his whole life. the king decrees that all foxes will be banished for ever, but this kind of edict cannot be enforced. however, reynardine does not have the same in terest for readers that his father had. it may be that the rather tame conclusion in which morality is ultimately justified undermines some of the previous wickedness. that wickedness itself never manages to capture the spirit and flavour of the original story, although some of the episodes are clearly modelled on that version. there is ultimately a lack of inventiveness and imagination. the delicate balance between the human and animal kingdom is dis rupted as the animals become increasingly allegorical manifestations of human failings. if these sequels indicate that the reynard story was becoming more popular, the opposite is suggested by the appearance in 1681 of a verse adaptation by john shurley. this edition was printed by t and g passinger in london. it has two title pages. the second refers to ‘the most delightful history of reynard the fox: in heroic verse, much illustrated and adorned with allegorical phrases and refined english, containing much wisdom and politics of state, under the fabling discourse between birds and beasts, with a moral explanation of each hard and doubtful place or part, being not only pleasant but profitable, as well to the learned of the age, as others’. there then follows the epistle to the reader, which is signed by john shurley. among other things this epistle claims: in this piece as in a crystal mirror, may the politick statesman see his shadow, the flattering courtier learn how to behave himself, and time his adulations as occasion offers it self, in order to find best acceptance and acquire the ends he aims at. … wherefore knowing that such pleasant fables are acceptable to most, i have n orman f . b lake 22 presumed to put them into heroic verse, in the sweetest, still, and smoothest language now in vse, what has been formerly written of this kind, having been old english, composed of harsh and unintelligible words, but in this explained by moral, and largely augmented, suitable to the times. the text contains about 4,000 lines of augustan verse arranged in twentyfour chapters. each chapter heading is followed by a verse argument before the text itself begins. there are some woodcuts, but these have been grouped together in twos and threes. each chapter has a moral, which as in the 1620 edition is placed in the margin. the moral to chapter one is: in what kind so ever a wicked man imagines to escape just punishment by absconding from justice, yet he only flatters himself with what will not avail him, and gives his enemies leave by his absence to magnifie his crimes and render them greater than in deed they are, as in this is made manifest. the moral is clearly based on that found in the seventeenth-century prose editions. in order to get some idea of the style of the verse, i quote the opening lines of this new version: about the feast of pentecost, when all the suns’ bright rays shone on this earthly ball, when trees were in their gaudy liv’ry dress’d, and smiling flowers each fragrant field possess’d, when balmy sweets perfum’d the gentle air, and blosming spices scented from afar. here the augustan style becomes more marked. almost every noun has an adjective to qualify it, and that adjective is often bisyllabic and ends in ing or -y. the balance between smiling flowers and fragrant field in line four is typical of much verse written at this time. the effect is to raise the general tone and literary merit of the story, though the narrative retains its es sential characteristics for it has been borrowed from the prose accounts of the period. the poem ends with an attack on the flattery of servile courtiers whose presence detracts from true wisdom in courts. the literary development of the reynard story in e ngland 23 a second verse rendering was published in london in 1706 where it was printed for john nutt. its title is the crafty courtier: or the fable of reinard the fox: newly done into english verse. the versifier is unknown, but he used as his source the latin version of hartmann schopper, first published in 1567 and based on the low german text of 1498. the text is divided into four books, containing 37, 9, 14 and 12 chapters respectively. each chapter has an argument at its beginning, and the last two books have general intro ductions. there is also a conclusion. no morals are attached to the text, though the whole is understood to be a moralistic and satiric work. the text covers the same story as told by caxton, but differs in some respects because of its different source. the names of the animals are different: the cat is usually malkin, the badger grevincus, and the king is referred to as caesar. court life and politics are the primary aims of his satire, but the author has literary pretensions. his opening with its echo of virgil gives a good idea of the style and approach: nor arms i sing, nor of adventurous deeds, nor shepherds playing on their oaten reeds, but civil fury, and invidious strife, with the false pleasures of a courtiers life. to whom ye muses, will my theme belong, and whom, shall i invoke to aid my song? during the course of his work he refers to such authors as chaucer, john dennis, congreve, and samuel butler. he exhibits his poetic expertise by writing some parts, particularly the exempla in book 3, in octosyllabic stanzas usually rhyming aaabcccb. he sets the courtier’s life against the idyllic life of the countryman, here named collin: happy, ah collin! in thy humble state, they oftner envy thee, than thou the great. it is in fact a typical eighteenth-century attack on the life of the court as compared with the country, though it is strange to see it clothed within the story of reynard the fox. the conclusion, when it comes, is absolutely expected: n orman f . b lake 24 plain is the lesson of our humble tale: that fraud, and flattery at court prevail. however, because this work was taken from a different source its effect on the development of the story in english was restricted. an adaptation of this version by david vedder was published in 1852, but otherwise it appears to have had little impact on english accounts of the fox. the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth witnessed the production of abridged versions of the reynard story. these editions are usually small and portable, and probably represent a further stage in the popularisation of the story. their number is uncertain because they have not yet been studied bibliographically. what may be the earliest is the most pleasant history of reynard the fox printed for j conyers in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, perhaps about 1685. this abrid gement was made by taking the first part of the reynard story up to his first re lease by the lion and the final chapter as the subject matter. a different abrid gement was made by adding to this first part an account of reynardine, the son of reynard, which is introduced as a second part. the latter appears to have been the more common form, and i shall examine a version produced about 1700. it could be said that these abridgements became the standard form of the reynard story in the eighteenth century and drove the 1620 text off the market. although an abbreviated version, the edition produced in 1700 still tries to appeal on literary and cultural grounds. it has the title the history of reynard the fox and reynardine his son. in two parts. it adds to this ‘with morals to each chapter, explaining what appears doubtful or allegorical: and every chapter illustrated with a curious device, or picture, representing to the eye all the material passages. written by an eminent statesman of the german empire, and since done into english, dutch, french, italian, &c.’ the reference to the german original could well mislead the unwary that it lay immediately behind this edition, whereas of course it lay over two centuries before. the adaptor has included a preface to the reader, which contains the following comments: here, as in a mirror, the politick statesman may see his counterfeit, the flattering parasite how to carry himself even, and sail with all the literary development of the reynard story in e ngland 25 winds; the powerful and mighty, how weak it is to rely wholly on strength, when they have a subtle enemy to deal with; and those that trust fawning friendship, are convinc’d, that in adversity but few will stand by them: … therefore receive it not as a trifle, but as a work of weight and moment, which cost much sound judgment and labour in compiling, and being done into english, it varies little from the original. this preface is signed ‘d.p.’, which in some editions appears as ‘p.d.’, though it is not known to whom this refers. the book itself is small, approx. 7 x 11 cm, and contains 168 pages. over two-thirds of the text is devoted to reynard with the rest to reynardine. part one has eight chapters, and part two seven. each chapter has a title, a woodcut, the text and a moral. the woodcuts are naturally small, though they reproduce the subjects of those found earlier. the morals can be lengthy, that for chapter one being: by this we see however wicked men flatter ’emselves with escaping unpunish’d by hiding ’emselves from justice, yet it the more proves their guilt, by inboldening, in their absence, their enemies to complain against ’em. which is demonstrated by the wolf, who, as guilty as the fox, nevertheless takes this time to make his complaints against him; and so gives encouragement to others, who in all likelihood otherwise would not have done it. the brock’s pleading for the fox, denotes, that rich men and flatterers, tho’ never so vicious, rarely want any advocate to excuse ’em, tho’ they shame ’emselves in doing it, as the brock did, when the cock appear’d with his fresh complaint against the fox, &c. it can be seen that this is based on the morals introduced into the 1620 edition. there is little that is new in this edition, though when the cock brings in his dead wife the adaptor breaks into some wretched verse: coppel, chanticleer’s dear wife, who by a traytor lost her life; pray come with him, you to weep are able, for her, whose unjust death was lamentable. perhaps one might also add that the printing of this and similar editions shows many infelicities, as though it was set up in a hurry or by apprentices. n orman f . b lake 26 from page 48 speeches are given in italics, though this is not so before. the whole of chapter 2, part 2, is in italics (pp.124-9). the final part of the text (pp.157-68) is printed in a smaller type as though to accommodate all the text in a set number of pages. the effect is of a book which is cheap and popular. in the eighteenth century the reynard story takes another step towards popular dissemination by the appearance of chapbook versions. chapbooks are small editions, usually of no more than twenty-four pages, in which a story is abbreviated to its bare bones so that the work can be sold cheaply. the style of such chapbooks is not necessarily low or vulgar; on the contrary, some of them try to aim at a more elevated style. they were also published in different parts of the country to be sold at local fairs and other gatherings. because they were produced cheaply in a small format, not many of them survive because they must in many cases have been read out of existence. at least two editions of the reynard chapbook are extant today. one was published in london, in bow lane, about 1750. its title page contains the title, the history of reynard the fox, a woodcut depicting the lion sitting in judgement which is based on earlier models, and the reference to the place of printing and publication; there is no date. the volume consists of twenty-four pages, and the material is divided into ten chapters. the story is confined to the first part, which corresponds to the original reinaert i, but it is considerably reduced. the style is by no means popular, as the opening reveals: it was when the woods was cloathed with green attire, and the meadows adorned with fragrant flowers, when birds chaunted forth their harmonious songs, the lion made a great feast at this palace of sanden, and issued a proclamation for all the beasts and birds to come thereto without delay, on pain of his contempt. the link with earlier versions is clear enough. there are in this volume a few woodcuts, but not one for each chapter. the pictures were less important now than they had been. the other example was printed in newcastle about 1780, it is generally believed. this is still a chapbook, but rather more elaborate than the london example. the volume has two title pages. the first has the title the most the literary development of the reynard story in e ngland 27 pleasant history of reynard the fox, to which it adds the comment ‘giving an account of the many cruelties committed by him, and the complaints made to the king: his being summoned to court, where he was tried and condemned to die, and his getting a reprieve; with the many stratagems he used to obtain his life, &c.’ this is followed by the woodcut of the king in judgement, and the note ‘printed in this present year.’ the second page is blank; the third has the title again followed by the chapter heading and text. it contains in all twenty-four pages and is divided into twelve chapters. the story, as can be seen from the subtitle, is the same as that found in the london chapbook. it is not a reprint of that version, because the style has been ele vated, as may be seen by comparing its opening with that of the london text: it was when the woods were cloathed with green attire, and the meadows adorned with delicate and fragrant flowers, and birds sweetly chanting forth their harmonious songs in the entrance of a fine delicate spring, the lion, king of beasts, intending to celebrate the feasts of orpheus in great state and ceremony, and keeping open court in his stately palace of sanden, sent forth his royal proclamation. like the previous chapbook this one contains no morals, and has no elaboration of the story at all. it may be said to have reduced the story to its basic narrative, though presented in an elevated style, which was allowed to stand by itself without any moralising promptings from the editor. from the middle of the nineteenth century a variety of different trends can be detected in the development of the reynard story in english. perhaps the most important is the emergence of translation once again. after caxton’s initial translation of the dutch version, only the verse version of 1706 made use of a continental original. from 1840 onwards translations of continental versions became more common. this is partly because of goethe’s reworking of the original story and the immense reputation which goethe and his work had throughout europe. goethe’s text was translated and adapted into english versions frequently during the second half of the nineteenth century. it would probably be true to say that these adaptations of goethe were aimed at the more literary end of the market and reclaimed some of the ground which n orman f . b lake 28 had been lost as the intended readership of reynard’s exploits had sunk in both class and age. it is important to note that translations from other languages were not common. translations from dutch occur only in the twentieth century, and then reflect an academic curiosity more than anything else. there is no translation in english of the roman de renart at all, even though the roman is the original version of the story. it cannot be just because the roman is in verse, though that may be a contributory cause, or because of its length. it may be because it was too medieval and amoral for the nineteenth century. more importantly perhaps, a good edition of the roman was not made until the present century, and that must have been the major deterrent for most would-be translators. another trend was the continuation of adaptations of the reynard story; they occur in a variety of forms. some are metrical re-tellings. others are school versions. there are even versions written in words of one syllable for use in elementary reading. presumably the exciting pace of the narrative and the general moral reading which had become attached to it in so many versions made it a work suitable for classroom use. this applied throughout the english-speaking world, for many of these versions were made in america. as an example of this genre, we may consider a very early version of this schoolbook trend by considering a version printed by edward ryland about 1775. this volume has the title the pleasant and entertaining history of reynard the fox represented in a moral light. it contains new copperplates specially made for the volume, though the subjects are the same as those found in the earlier woodcuts. this volume contains an introduction and each of the twelve chapters contains a moral at the end. though the story itself is in prose, the introduction and the morals are in couplets, written in a condescending tone to the young. the following is taken from the introduction: attend, ye youths, of infant mold, to what the following sheets unfold! and let each little rip’ning maid, con o’er the morals here display’d; … pray don’t imagine, little readers, we in the fox’s cause are pleaders; too well we know his subtle ways the literary development of the reynard story in e ngland 29 to give the wily culprit praise; so print his various pranks to shew, what foxes on two legs may do; however, the tone of the moral verse is not repeated in the prose narra tive which is an elevated version of the story as handed down in other texts as the opening passage reveals: in that pleasant season of the year, when nature, proud to display her own beauties, puts on her best attire, cloathing the woods in green, inspiring the warblers of the grove to sing, and painting the meads and plains with flowers; at this happy time, the noble lion annually invited all his subjects to court, to enjoy luxuriant festiv ity. what the young readers were to make of this is not clear. the editor may have felt able to compose morals in verse, but he could not adapt the level of his story to children’s tastes. however, not all the metrical adaptations should be regarded as primarily intended for instructional purposes. one of the most familiar is of course the version by john masefield, poet laureate, known as reynard the fox or the ghost heath run which was published in 1921 together with illustrations by g d armour. this poem has very little connection with the reynard story as it had been passed down from caxton’s first edition, for it describes a hunt and some of the ensuing events and consequences. it merely illustrates the attraction which reynard had for many readers and how that quality could be exploited in different ways. the most significant development was the onset of antiquarianism which brought with it a desire to go back to the roots of a particular literary genre so that the original version of a given story could be brought into circulation once more. this trend coincided with the growth in the mania for collecting incunabula so that the prices paid for caxtons increased considerably. hence many scholars wanted to strip away the accretions of the intervening centuries to present caxton’s text as it had been published in 1481. the earliest reprint of caxton’s text in modern times was that by w j thoms for the percy society in 1844. in 1878 edward arber produced a diplomatic reprint in his english scholar’s library. other private presses also produced versions of n orman f . b lake 30 caxton’s edition. the kelmscott press issued an edition by h sparling in 1892 and a privately printed version was produced for bibliotheca curiosa in 1894 in a text prepared by e goldsmid. these editions attempted to reproduce caxton’s text faithfully, though they achieved this aim only with limited success. many of them, for example, produced the text in a modernised spelling and punctuation, and the level of accuracy in them sometimes left something to be desired. it was only in the present century that the text has been reproduced accurately with the original spelling and punctuation. the version published by the early english text society in 1970 accomplished this aim, and so caxton’s edition is once again available. a facsimile of caxton’s second edition has been produced recently, but as yet there is no facsimile of his first edition. generally speaking the renewed scholarly interest in caxton’s reynard the fox has tended to drive adaptations off the market, though school versions are still occasionally produced. n. f. blake university of sheffield * † * selim05.pdf todd runda, selim 5(1996): 78—90 beowulf as king in light of the gnomic passages there is no doubt that beowulf was exceedingly brave. he was received by the danes as a great warrior; he saved hrothgar’s people from shame and doom by destroying grendel; he avenged hrothgar’s chief thane by slaying grendel’s mother; he was rewarded with the great treasure of a hero; he was later made king, and went en to fight the dragon single handedly. however, despite his abilities, beowulf has been criticised by many important, well-respected, modern -day scholars, especially in regard to h is decision to fight the dragon. the argument is that, as king, his decision to fight the dragon alone was an unwise one with serious consequences not only for himself, but for the rest of society. w. f. bolton, for instance, interprets beowulfs actions as avaricious (p. 150), j. r. r. tolkien presents him as exces sively proud (p. 1), and margaret goldsmith, who wishes to interpret beowulf as a christian poem, sees him as unsuccessful in christian terms (p. 98). leyerle, at best, sees beowulf as a victim of the “fatal contradiction at the core of [the anglo saxon] society,” (p. 89). taken from a twentieth-century point of view, these interpretations may be quite valid. however, we would all recognise that basic mores within western civilisation have changed drastically in just this century. is it really fair, then, to judge beowulf, who lived in a society of warriors over a thousand years ago, by our standards? rather than merely accepting a critic’s opinion of what ought to be considered right or wrong in anglo -saxon socie ty, we should look to the culture itself for a correct interpretation of what was considered appropriate or inappropriate. one way to get a better picture of the beowulf author’s intent is to review the gnomic passages that are scattered throughout the work. as wisdom literature, these passages should pre sent the values of its author and his society just as the proverbs in the old testament of the bible relate the jewish values of the time or ben franklin’s sayings re flect important values in 18th century america. in light beowulf as king in light of the gnomic passages ____________________________________________________________________ 81 of the gnomic expres sions of beowulf; beowulf is an ideal, both as hero and king. it is important to understand that the beowulf poet was a most deliberate writer he constructed his poem carefully, both the parts and the whole, in some respects very clearly and in other ways inconspic uously. the abrupt scene changes near the beginning of the poem, which contrast the joyful hall of heorot with the approaching grendel; the selection of fighting scenes, each one furt her from the safety of society; and the subtle mention of the progres sively decreasing number of beowulf’s comitatus (ll. 207, 1641, 2406, 3170; howlett, p. 317) are all examples of the thematic intent of the author. accord ing to adrian bonjour, even the digressions, or episodes, which have often been faulted as distracting from the story, may be very useful and may contribute to the value of the work of art: they may add to the colouring of a poem, they may provide-just as some digressive scenes in a play--a welcome relaxation from tension; they may also serve as a foil to a given situation and, in some cases, possess a symbolic value contributing to the actual effect and understanding of the poem itself” (p. 12). he goes en to examine the digressions in beowulf and asserts that their purpos e--whether they relate moments in the life of beowulf and/or the geatish nation, historical events not geatish, or themes of a biblical nature -is to point to the more immediate situation of the main action of beowulf; either directly or indirectly, and to support the structural and thematic unity of the poem. given the deliberate nature of beowulf overall, it is logical to believe that the wisdom literature of the poem also contributes to the structural and thematic unity of the poem, and that the author was as intentional in regard to the wisdom passages as he was to any of a number of other aspects of the poem, such as have been mentioned thus far. in response to the criticism of some of the most important and highly regarded scholars in the field, i will examine beowulf’s character in light of the gnomic passages in beowulf to show that, in fact, he was a good leader, acting in a way that is not only acceptable but commendable in anglo -saxon society. todd runda ____________________________________________________________________ 82 the gnomic expressions fall under the strictest definitions of wis dom literature, whose purpose is to answer questions like, “what is the world like?” and “what is good for man?” they are characterised as pithy utterances. technically, they differ from proverbs in that the latter are popular expres sions while the former are not (williams, p. 7). however, such a distinction is artificial; many gnomes are proverbial in nature, that is, they relate world -realities in short expressions, and through exposure and propagation may very well become proverbs. consider, for instance, the gnome in beowulf’ 572b -73, which we will examine more closely later: 572 wyrd oft nereí unfæµgne eorl, bonne his ellen deµah!1 “fate often saves an undoomed man, when his courage is good.” this passage would be as at home in a book of proverbs, grouped with other sayings concerning fate and/or courage, as in an epic poem; it expresses a view based en experience which would readily have been assented to by most anglo -saxons. since the wisdom literature of a society represents the commonly shared values of that society, it seems reasonable to judge the character of beowulf in light of the gnomic expressions in beowulf. blanche williams finds twenty-three gnomes in beowulf (p. 29); kemp malone counts twenty-eight, though he takes liberties in in cluding a couple of passages in which the wisdom is obscure or implied (e.g. 1282b84, 227277). in comparing the two lists, i also count twenty-eight gnomic passages, about half of which indicate proper action within society. though some of these statements are uttered by beowulf himself, most of them are related by the poet, and few of them are meant to point directly to beowulf within the context of the poem. however, since the gnomes, as wisdom literature, pre sent the ideals and outlook of the anglo -saxon society, they all apply to be owulf indirectly (with the exception of two, which are truths about women in particular); his actions either correspond to or contradict what was considered proper within anglo -saxon society. 1 all of the anglo-saxon citations come from klaeber’s beowulf and the fight at finnsburg, 3rd edition with supplement, d. c. heath and company (boston), 1941. beowulf as king in light of the gnomic passages ____________________________________________________________________ 83 the first gnomic portion relating proper action comes early in the poem. it is in reference to beow, scyld scefing’s son, and his generosity in gift -giving: 20 swaµ sceal (geong g)uma goµde gewyrcean, fromum feohgiftum on fæder (bea)rme, pæt hine on ylde eft gewunigen wilgesiµpas, ponne wig cume, leµode gelæµsten; lofdæµdum sceal in mæµgpa gewh ære man gepeµon. “so should a young man with free-handedness, with handsome goodly gifts in his father’s lap, bring it about that afterwards, in his maturity, well-wishing retainers stand by him when war comes, tribesmen serve him. by praiseworthy deeds a man shall prosper in his country.” we can assume that beowulf followed the conventions of gift -giving properly, not only in his youth, but throughout his entire life. as this passage indicates, had he not been generous when he was young, he would not have had such a hearty group of “well-wishing retainers” to accompany him en his venture to fight grendel. also, when he return ed, he handed the treasures that hrothgar had given him over to hygelac, to be distributed by him. we know that beowulf was generous in his old age as well, because wiglaf plainly says so in his complaint to his cowardly companions. in fact, therein lies the irony of the gnomic statement-beowulf was meeting the conditions that appro priate action required of him, yet, when he fought the dragon, his men did not stand by him. there is a complementary gnomic passage in ll. 2764b -66, which warns against avarice and miserliness. 2764 sine eµaíe maeg, gold en grund(e) gumcynnes gehwone oferhiµgian, hyµde seµ íe wylle! “easily may treasure, gold in the ground, overpower each of mankind, hide it who will.” it is difficult to understand how beowulf can be seen as avaricious. first, his generosity is clearly attested to in several places in the text. more than that, todd runda ____________________________________________________________________ 84 he fought the dragon, which itself epitomised avarice. bolton asserts that be owulf was avaricious because he wanted to win the goldhoard: “the goldhoard is a dramatic and extreme example of all earthly riches” (p. 150). however, beowulf did not want the treasure for himself, but for his people (ll. 2794-98); he wanted to put it back into circulation within society. the hoarding of treasure was so serious a matter because distribution of treasure was one of the main elements that kept a society functioning properly --to hoard it, as the dragon was doing, was a threat to society. thus, beowulf’s fight with the dragon was a fight against avarice, not an exhibition of it. the next gnomic utterance is the well-known statement by the coastguard upen his meeting beowulf: 287 æghwæpres sceal scearp scyldwiga gescaµd witan, worda ond worca, seµ pe weµl penceí. “the sharp -minded fighting man, he who thinks well, ought to be a good judge of each [of two things]: words and deeds.” by this statement, the coast-guard implies that his own judgement is good, that he can see that beowulf is a good warrior and intends no harm to the danes. however, beowulf himself exhibits good judgement in this passage as well. he understands that the coast-guard, with his haughty greeting, is only doing his job, and, so as not to offend, he submits to the coastkeeper’s demands. not only is beowulf a good judge of words, he is very skilful in speaking, as is demonstra ted in his flyting with unferth. when confronted with unferth’s challenge, beowulf immediately knew that unferth was speaking foolishly, and he was easily able to justify himself to unferth, hrothgar, and the rest of the danes. despite the scholarly criticism, beowulf’s best judgement is seen at the end of the poem in his decision to fight the dragon alone: apparently, he was familiar enough with the character of the members of his troop to know that they were not re ady for such a challenge. wiglaf comments that beowulf chose them for their bravery, but he had enough discernment to know that, by the time they reached the barrow, they were not up to the fight. as john d. niles points out, the outcome might have been much worse had an entire troop of coward ly men entered the lair (p. 241). thus, beowulf’s decision to beowulf as king in light of the gnomic passages ____________________________________________________________________ 85 fight the dragon alone--for certainly he had to be fought--was one based en his good judgement of his men. the gnomic expression in ll. 1838b -89 is uttered by beowulf. he says: 1838 feorcyµp íe beµoí seµlran gesoµhte pæµm pe him selfa deµah. “far-off countries are better visited by he who is himself strong.” though he is speaking to hrethric, encouraging him to visit the geatish kingdom, the application to beowulf himself is evident, and it is particularly appropriate here, as he prepares to leave the danish kingdom. through his strength of character, he won the confidence of king hrothgar; through his physical strength, he killed two monsters, gained the respect of a nation which had been terrorised for twelve years, and won great treasure for his liege-lord back home. the following two passages stress propriety in kinship relationships. here the poet states right action in positive and negative ways, as he did in the gnomes concerning treasure, where he both emphasized th importance of generosity and warned against avarice. thus, he writes, 2600 sibb’ æµfre ne mæg wiht onwendan pæµm íe weµl penceí. “nothing can and also ever set aside kinship for him who thinks well.” 2166 swaµ sceal mæµg doµn. nealles inwitnet oµírum bregdon dymum cræfte, deµaí reµn(ian) hondgesteallan. “so ought a kinsman do, not at all weave a net of evil for the other with hidden cunning, contrive death for his comrade.” the poet allows us to know beowulf in regard to both the positive and negative statements. beowulf’s attitude toward his kinsmen is seen in his service to hy gelac. certainly, he loved him and served him because he was his lord, but that he was related to him stre ngthened his loyalty to him. in fact, in his todd runda ____________________________________________________________________ 86 greeting to hrothgar he introduced himself first as hygelac’s kinsman, and second as his thane. thus, when hygelac, battling alongside beowulf was slain, beowulf returned to his homeland earm aµnhaga “forlorn and alone”; certainly, he felt that loss of mæµgdryhten “kinsman lord” deeply, as was normal and appropriate according to the gnomic utterance in 3174b -77, which says, 3174 swaµ hit gedeµ(fe) bií, pæt mon his winedryhten wordum herge, ferhíum freµoge, ponne heµ forí scile of liµchaman (læµded) weorían. “so it is fitting that one honor his friend and lord, leve him in heart, when he must be led forth from the body.” after hygelac’s death, beowulf was asked to rule the kingdom in pla ce of the rightful heir, the young heardred. however, instead of seizing the opportunity, as most would probably have done--perhaps killing heardred in the pro cess in order to secure his position--beowulf opted to honour his kinsman, support ing him and advising him until he was capable enough to rule himself. in fact, that beowulf never “contrived death” for his kinsmen or comrades is almost unusual for someone of his position and age. in deed, it seems not to have been an easy accomplishment. men and women were frequently plotting against kinsmen and comrades, either for personal gain or because of conflicting obligations. for instance, despite his seemingly honourable position in hrothgar’s service, un ferth heµ his maµgum næµre / aµrfæst æt ecga gelaµcum “was not honourable to his kinsmen at sword -play” (ll. 1167b1168a); heremod also killed his beµodgeneµatas “table -companions” and eaxlegesteallan “shouldercomrades”; modthryth had her suitors killed; signy, sigmund’s sister, plotted against her husband in order to avenge the death of her father and brother; and the list goes on.1 beowul’s conduct in this regard was re markably exemplary, so much so that he himself recognized the fact and made special reference to it while he was dying (ll. 2741-43). 1 phillpotts cites several examples (pp. 8-10) of people who plot against kinsman and comrade because of divided loyalties. beowulf as king in light of the gnomic passages ____________________________________________________________________ 87 the next three gnomic passages are concerned with the importance of honour and glory before death. that these statements are uttered by three different speakers --beowulf, wiglaf, and the narrator --demonstrates the importance of this concept within the society. again, it is important that we not view such an attitude with twentieth century eyes. tolkien accuses beowulf of excessive pride because of his decision to fight the dragon alone, and, certainly, one of the reasons that beowulf fought alone may have been to achieve glory in battle (though it is doubtful that that was his only reason). even so, to possess great confidence and desire for glory in such situations was not a negative characteristic in the mind of an anglo -saxon but, rather, just the opposite. edward b. irving notes the resemblance of anglo -saxon “pride” to the greek hybris (p. 462), which was definitely a heroic virtue. striving for glory was not only acceptable for a warrior within anglo -saxon society, but expected, as the following gnomes indicate. the first of these is from ll. 1384b -89, and is really a three-part piece of wisdom. 1384 seµlre bií æµghwæµm, pætt heµ his freµond wrece, ponne heµ fela murne. ure æµghwylc sceal ende gebiµdan worolde iiµfes; wyrce seµ pe moµte doµmes æµ deµa pe; pæt bií drihtguman unlifgendum æfter seµlest. “[1] better for everyone, that he avenge his friend than that he mourn much. [2] each of us is destined to come to the end of worldly life; 131 he who may should acquire glory before death; that is best afterwards for a man not living.” the second part of this quotation links the other two in a very practical way. it looks back to the first part as a comfort to anyone who has lost a comrade. it presents death as a part of life, which everyone will endure, and because of this, there is no need to mourn much. (implicit here is also an idea which is more conspicuous in the wanderer, that is, that it is proper for one to bind such thoughts up in his breast-coffer and not allow them to be known in public.) it als o looks forward logically and practically to the third part: since we are all destined to die, we should strive for glory here in this life, which entails todd runda ____________________________________________________________________ 88 taking an active part in the important aspects of society, one of which is battle. “that is best afterwards.” the other two gnomes which also encourage seeking glory in battle have bearing en the character of beowulf in regard to all of the fights that he has ever undertaken, but particularly in regard to his decision to fight the dragon: 1534 swa sceal man doµn, ponne heµ æt guµíe gegaµn penceí longsumne lof; naµ ymb his liµf cearaí “so should a man do when he thinks to win long-lasting glory in battle; he cares not for his life.” 2890 deµaí bií seµlla eorla gehwylcum ponne edwiµtliµf! “for every man of rank, death is better than a life of shame.” nobody would argue that beowulf did not achieve a great glory throughout his life in the battles which he fought, including his victory over all three of the monsters in the poem. despite this he is criticised for his decision to fight the dragon. he took similar risks as in his other fights --he could have fallen in any of them--and made similar preparations in regard to these risks, yet, ultimately, a good warrior “cares not for his life.” the poet relates this fight because it fits thematically with the other monster fights, but also because it shows that beowulf died as honourably as he lived. he acts consistently throughout the poem, throughout his life, always aware of what was expected from a warrior and a leader, and always ready to perform those duties, had he not fought the dragon, what would have happened? perhaps the dragon would have attacked again, perhaps several times, and beowulf might have been presented with a situation not unlike hrothgar’s. we are told that no one blamed hrothgar for not being able to stop grendel, that there was no shame in it, but no matter what anyone says or does not say, there must have been some amount of shame for any king who was terrorised for twelve years. the mere fact that the poet makes a point to mention it indicates his defence against the natural inclination to see hrothgar as an inadequate king. in any case, beowulf’s people --not to mention the audience of the poem — know him as greater than hrothgar. they would feel great disappointment in beowulf as king in light of the gnomic passages ____________________________________________________________________ 89 beowulf had he not decided to fight the dragon, and, as the gnomes indicate, it is better for him to die winning glory than to live in shame. the next utterance may be the most representative of all the gnomes in beowulf, because it combines the two essential types of wisdom presented in the gnomic statements, wisdom relating proper action, as well as a statement concerning metaphysical reality. it says: 572 wyrd oft nereí unfæµgne eorl, ponne his ellen deµah! “fate often saves an undoomed man, when his courage is good.” we have already seen that a man must be courageous in order to fight well and win glory in battle, to bring honour to himself and his lord. however, the anglo -saxons also understood that ultimately there is a higher reality which controls the events that take place on earth. of the gnomes in beowulf which present an anglo -saxon worldview, three speak of death as inescapable (ll. 1002-08; 2265-66; 259091), and the rest speak of fate (ll. 455b; 3062b -65), god (ll. 700b-02a; 730b-31; 1057-62; 2855-59; 3054b-57), or fate and god (ll. 183-88; 2291-93a). the relationship between fate and god in beowulf is too complex to discuss here, but, as these gnomes indicate, the anglo saxons at the time beowulf was written were fatalistic, insofar as they believed in the sovereignty of a higher power or powers. that is not to say, though, that they were futilistic. fate and god, at least in the mind of the beowulf poet, could be influenced. for instance, the stopping of grendel is attributed to the combined action of wise god and coura geous beowulf. then a gnomic statement is presented: 1057 metod eallum weµold gumena cynnes, swaµ heµ nuµ giµt deí. forpan bií andgit æµghwæµr seµlest, ferhíes forepanc. “god had control of men [thenj just as he does now. therefore, discern ment is best, forethought of mind.” todd runda ____________________________________________________________________ 90 hence, it is because of god’s sovereignty--forpan--that man is encouraged to use discernment and exercise forethought of mind. beowulf undertook all his ventures --no less his fight with the dragon-with the understanding that man’s actions work in conjunction with fate and the will of god. there was resignation in beowulf’s attitude to the final judgement of god--to refuse to acknowledge god’s judgement would be impious, as phillpotts asserts (p. 23). however, there was not resignation in the apathetic sense in beowulf at all, as she implies; rather, he strove with great zeal to kill the dragon even after he had been mortally wounded. had be owulf been re signed to fate in the sense that phillpotts suggests, perhaps he would not have even tried to fight the dragon at all. as it stands, beowulf, because of his courage, did venture to fight, and, though he was killed himself, he was succes sful in his undertaking, and heµold on heµahgesceap “he held to his high des tiny.” any “impression of universal melancholy” (phillpotts, p. 22) comes not from beowulf’s actions or his belief in fate and god, but from the fact that there was no one strong and courageous enough to replace him after he died. the last gnome in reference to proper action presents somewhat of a crux in the interpretation of beowulf’s character, depending on how it is interpreted. it is a statement by wiglaf after beowulf’s death: 3077 oft sceall eorl monig anes willan wræµc aµdreµogan “often shall many a man suffer distress anes willan.” the problem is how to interpret anes willan . klaeber interprets it “for the sake of one man,” which makes good sense in the context. such a statement would simply imply that many men mourn when a comrade --especially a winedryhten “lord and friend” like beowulf--dies. however, kemp malone provides the equally possible rendering, “on account of one man’s self-will,” in his survey of the gnomes, a tra nslation with which tolkien and goldsmith would likely agree. if the gnome is to be translated in that way, it is a direct comment upon the character of beowulf, who, then, may be understood as excessively proud and, thus, a poor king. in choosing which interpretation is to be accepted it only makes sense to appeal to the other gnomic passages beowulf as king in light of the gnomic passages ____________________________________________________________________ 91 and the general attitude toward beowulf throughout the entire poem. if the poet is as deliberate and consistent i have argued, it does not make sense that the pre s entation of beowulf’s character in light of one gnome would contradict the attitude toward him in light of all the other gnomic passages. hence, in this case, it makes much more sense to interpret the passage in terms of beowulf’s character rather than the other way around. to disregard the wisdom literature of beowulf in interpreting be owulf’s actions is to disregard the world -view of the anglo -saxon society at the time of the beowulf poet. those critics who do so fail to understand the values of a different culture. they are unable to see that striving for glory in battle could be an honourable thing; that to kill a treasure -hoarder may not be an act of avarice, but preservation of one of the fundamental elements of society; that a belief in god and fate may mean an opportunity to work with them for the good of the community. beowulf is not a twentieth-century western work. as niles so aptly puts it, “[beowulf’s] people ... honour him ‘as is proper’ for what the narrator calls his ‘courageous deed’ (ll. 3173-74), and there is no reason why critics should fail to do the same” (p. 240). todd runda university of seville works cited klaeber, fr. ed 1941: beowulf and the fight at finnsburg. 3rd ed with supplement. boston: d. c. heath and company. bloomfield, morton w. 1984: the tradition and style of biblical wisdom literature. biblical patterns in modern literature. ed. david hirsch. chico, ca: scholars press, 1984. 19-30. bolton, w. f. 1978: alcuin and beowulf. an eighth century view. new brunswick, nj: rutgers university press. bonjour, adrian 1950: the digressions in beowulf. oxford: basil blackwell. todd runda ____________________________________________________________________ 92 crenshaw, james ed 1976: prolegomenon. studies in ancient isrealite wisdom. new york: ktav. 1-60. goldsmith, m. 1960: the christian theme of beowulf. medium ævum 29: 81101. howlett, d. r. 1974: form and genre in beowulf. studia neophilologica 46: 309-25. irving, edward b. 1961: the heroic style in the battle of maldon. studies in philology 58: 457-67. leyerle, john 1965: beowulf the hero and the king. medium ævum 34: 89102. malone, kemp 1960: words of wisdom in beowulf. humaniora: essays honoring archer taylor. eds wayland d. hand & gustave o. arlt. locust valley, ny: augustin, 1960: 180-194. niles, john d. 1983: beowulf: the poem and its tradition. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. phillpotts, bertha s. 1928: wyrd and providence in anglo -saxon thought. essays and studies 13: 7-27. tolkien, j. r. r. 1953: the homecoming of beorhtnoth beorhthelm’s son. essays and studies 6: 1-18. williams, blanche c. 1914: gnomic poetry in anglo-saxon. new york: columbia university press. * † * selim andrew breeze, selim 11 (2001-2002): 169—176 four middle english notes: calf 'shank', silk 'prey', clanvowe's cuckoo, and william worcestre's 'donyton' 1. an irish-norse etymology for calf 'fleshy part of shank' the oxford english dictionary records calf 'fleshy hinder part of the shank of the leg' from the fourteenth century, citing the classic instance from the description of the reeve in the general prologue to the canterbury tales: fful longe were his legges and ful lene, ylyk a staf; ther was no calf ysene. oed takes calf as apparently borrowed from norse kálfi, of unknown origin, though adoption from irish or gaelic calpa 'leg, calf of leg' has been conjectured. later dictionaries differ. hence de vries described old norse kalfa 'bone' as a poetic word which gave kalfi 'calf (of leg)', modern icelandic kálfi. he derived kalfa itself from kalfr 'calf, young of cow', seeing an analogy for an animal-name used for a body part in norse mús 'mouse; muscle'. but de vries, despite citing björkman for derivation of english calf (of leg) from norse, noted falk and torp's doubts here (björkman 1900-2: 214; falk & torp 1910-11: 488; de vries 1962: 298). onions stated that english calf was borrowed from kálfi, which he described as of 'unknown origin, whence also irish and gaelic calpa' (1966: 136). lesley brown derives calf from norse kálfi 'of unknown origin' (1993: 319). english calf (of leg) is surely from norse kálfi, just as leg is from norse leggr 'hollow (limb-)bone; leg'. but where is kálfi from? here we take issue with de vries. we shall try to show that kalpa and kálfi are from irish colpthae 'shank; calf', and not vice versa, as onions thought. kálfi would thus be a celtic loanword in scandinavian, and calf a word of irish origin andrew breeze 170 that reached english via norse. it would here resemble english cross, from norse kross, from middle irish cross, itself from low latin *crox (vendryes 1987: 246-247). middle irish colpthae 'thick part of leg between knee and ankle; animal's shank', modern irish colpa 'calf; handle (of flail), cudgel', and scottish gaelic calpa 'calf of the leg' are well attested. early evidence here occurs in the seventhcentury life of st patrick by muirchú. this refers to ostium colpdi, inber colptha or the mouth of the river boyne, where (in irish tradition) colpda was drowned (hogan 1910: 285, 457; de paor 1993: 183). here may be mentioned the village of colp south-east of drogheda on the east coast of ireland, and the epithet colpthae in the names of aed colpdai and dond colptha. occurring so early, the irish word cannot be from norse. it also figures in irish saga. in the ninth-century cattle raid of cooley, queen medb is visited by the prophetess fedelm, of distracting beauty, whose golden hair reaches down to a da colptha 'the calves of her legs' (best & bergin 1929: 143; vendryes 1987: 156-7). in the tenth-century tale of king rónán, unwelcome visitors come as he is drying a cholptha frisin tenid 'his legs at the fire', from which murder results (dillon 1946: 45; greene 1955: 6). on the origin of colpthae, celticists agree it is from old irish colba 'pillar, column, support', which occurs in a seventh-century hymn to st bridget by ultán of ardbraccan, who calls her lethcholba flatha la patraic 'co-pillar with st patrick of heaven's kingdom' (stokes & strachan 1901-03: ii, 326). the semantic development would be from 'column, support', to 'lower leg, shank', to 'fleshy part of shank, calf'. as for colba, pedersen thought it cognate with middle welsh celffeint 'decayed stump', related to greek kolos 'docked, stunted' and russian kolz 'pole, post', from indoeuropean *cel'break, cut, split' (geiriadur 1950-2002: 457; vendryes 1987: 157). nevertheless, it may rather be linked with early modern welsh colfen 'branch, bough' as a loan from vulgar latin columa 'column' (noted by quintilian), or as a cognate of latin columna 'column' and celsus 'high' from indo-european *cel'exalted' (geiriadur 1950-2002: 543; vendryes 1987: 157). four middle english notes 171 whatever colba's origins, its early use suggests old norse kalfa 'bone' and icelandic kálfi 'calf' are from middle irish colpthae 'shank; calf': not the reverse. if so, it is reasonable to take english calf (of leg) as a norse loanword of irish origin, like cross. 2. an irish etymology for silk 'quarry, game' in the land of cokaygne london, british library, ms harley 913 is a franciscan miscellany compiled in ireland near the beginning of the fourteenth century (pearsall 1977: 295; wada 2003: 222-30). one poem in it is the land of cokaygne, a lively satire on irish monks, which contains the word silk, perhaps more difficult to explain than one might think. the location of the satirized monastery casts light on this problem. heuser took the 'monastery' as the franciscan friary at kildare; smithers objected, pointing out that the poem's 'wel fair abbei / of white monkes and of grei' must have been cistercian; despite that, bennett stated 'it is folly to read these scenes as satirical or as alluding to a particular irish abbey' (bennett & smithers 1968: 341; bennett 1986: 17). however, jeffares has vindicated smithers by identifying the abbey as inishlounaght, otherwise known as suir (1982: 11). this cistercian house was founded in 1148 on a site by the river suir some two miles west-southwest of clonmel in county tipperary, in southern ireland. it was dissolved in 1540, but a few fragments of it still survive (killanin & duignan 1967: 174). the crux silk occurs at line 150 of the land of cokaygne, in a passage (bennett & smithers 1968: 143) which helps identify the 'wel fair abbei' as inishlounaght. another abbei is therbi– forsoth, a gret fair nunnerie, vp a riuer of swet milke, whar is gret plente of silk. now, the name 'inishlounaght' derives from inis 'water meadow' and leamhnacht 'new milk, sweet milk', which the poet alludes to in his 'riuer of andrew breeze 172 swet milke'. inishlounaght was the scene of an incident in 1228 (not the 1260s, as jeffares claims), when stephen of lexington was making a visitation of irish cistercian houses. after his representative was wounded by henchmen of the prior of inishlounaght, who ambushed him from behind a hedge by 'the house of the nuns which adjoined the abbey', stephen came himself, restored order, and closed the convent of nuns. he closed similar convents of nuns adjoining the cistercian abbeys of jerpoint (near kilkenny) and mellifont (near drogheda). gwynn and hadcock consider the inishlounaght nuns 'probably lived well away from the monks' enclosure, possibly serving in the almonry or lay infirmary beside the outer gate and chapel' (gwynn & hadcock 1970: 135, 318). but fr colmcille took a bleaker view. remarking that events at inishlounaght almost pass belief, he describes the nuns' house as joined to the abbey, and the monks and nuns as sharing living accommodation (griesser 1946: 14; conway 1968: 117-118). it is hard to believe the lives of monks and nuns were innocent, and easy to see how they might give rise to the poet's ribaldry (watt 1972: 54-60). this evidence shows the cistercian abbey of the land of cokaygne was based on that of inishlounaght. the pun on leamhnacht also shows the poet knew irish. when this point is grasped, we can explain the line 'wher is gret plente of silk'. commentators have taken silk here in its obvious sense. yet this reading is unnatural. if the cokaygne nuns wore silk habits, the poet expresses this most oddly. nor should we assume silk was found in the region. although the poet indulges in fantasy, this seems a strained reading of the text at this point. could silk thus be a hiberno-english word borrowed from irish? if we consult the dictionaries, we find old irish selg 'hunting; quarry, prey, game', modern irish seilg 'hunt, chase; game, prey, quarry'. irish seilg (a cognate of welsh hela) is a common word at all periods. in modern irish, mála seilge is a 'game bag', and seilg an lae is a 'day's catch' of fish (geiriadur 1950-2002: 1844; o dónaill 1977: 1084). this suggests an explanation of silk in our poem. the poet apparently refers to fish in the river or game on its banks. this interpretation of silk makes sense in its context. when talking of the countryside we might refer to game or fish as abundant, but hardly to silk as abundant. four middle english notes 173 if the explanation of silk as 'quarry, game' is correct, we identify an irish loan in the land of cokaygne, which we can add to russin 'afternoon snack' earlier in the poem, as well as to corrin 'can, pot', daisser 'sprinkler', and tromchery 'animal's liver' in a satire on dubliners in the same manuscript (bennett & smithers 1968: 337; breeze 1993: 16; breeze 1996: 150-2). 3. the name of 'cuckoo' in clanvowe's boke of cupide in his the boke of cupide, sir john clanvowe (c. 1341-91) plays upon the name of the cuckoo. at line 185 of the poem, warning of possible abandonment by a sweetheart, the cuckoo tells the nightingale, “and then shalt thou hoten as do i.” the nightingale at once replies, ffye!' quoth she, 'on thi name and on the. the god of love ne let the neuere ythe [thrive]! in his edition of the poem scattergood echoes skeat in explaining this as a pun on cuckoo and cuckold (1975, 46, 84). but roscow disagrees. he points out that the context is one of love, not marriage; that the nightingale is female, so can hardly be cuckolded; and that evidence that cuckoo meant cuckold at this date is lacking (1998: 183-184). roscow is surely right. but he does not explain what clanvowe actually meant by 'hoten as do i'. the answer to this seems given by the oed entry for cuckoo. this notes the meaning 'fool' as applied to a person, originally with reference to the bird's monotonous call. the earliest example (of 1581) makes this clear: 'this lesson you learned of your cowled coockowes, to braule alwayes with bare names.' the allusion is not to adultery or laying eggs in the nests of others, but to (allegedly) fatuous utterance. english dialectal gowk 'cuckoo' also means 'fool, half-wit', for which the oldest evidence in oed is the adverb gowkedly of c. 1570. gowk is from old norse: its german cognate gauch now means 'fool, simpleton; oddity, oddball', the original sense 'cuckoo' surviving in dialect alone. a third oed entry, for obsolete yeke 'cuckoo', notes cognate middle low german gok 'simpleton' (a fourth, of goky 'fool' in piers plowman, may also be relevant andrew breeze 174 here). so the use of words for 'cuckoo' to mean 'fool' is an old one. if (as seems likely) it existed in english long before the attestations given in oed, this would explain clanvowe's allusion. the cuckoo's warning would thus not concern adultery. he merely warns how abandonment by a sweetheart might make one look a fool. this more delicate explanation, making perfect sense in the context, accords with the poem's emphasis on the simplicity of the cuckoo's song, which he calls 'trewe and pleyn' (118), so that 'euery wight may vnderstonde me' (121). it also accords with what roscow calls the 'conventional courtly treatment of romantic love' of clanvowe's poem, which is careful to avoid sordidness. in short, it suggests clanvowe's meaning was more subtle and innocent than editors have thought it. 4. william worcestre on 'donyton', suffolk on 8 november 1428, john mowbray, second duke of norfolk, was coming from dinner with cardinal beaufort at london bridge when his barge sank (gairdner 1876). william worcestre (1415-before 1485) lists various gentlemen with him who survived, but adds that some sixteen of his household drowned. one of the dead was 'john of pysale of "donyton" where lord bardolf dwelt' (harvey 1969: 360, 361). the identity of 'donyton' has puzzled editors. but reference to dnb solves the problem. its entry for thomas bardolf (1368-1408), warrior, mentions his son-in-law sir william phelip (1383-1441). phelip, who fought at agincourt and became treasurer of henry v's household and chamberlain to henry vi, was created baron bardolf in 1437. his main residences were at erpingham (ngr tg 1931) in norfolk and dennington (tm 2867), suffolk. phelip was not lord bardolf in 1428, when the accident happened; and he had long been dead by the time worcestre wrote. however, it was as lord bardolf that he was remembered. so 'donyton' is surely dennington in north-east suffolk, two miles north of framlingham, where the great castle of the mowbrays still stands. the location of 'donyton' thus not only shows where the luckless john of pysale came from; it also underlines the east anglian connections of the mowbray family in the early fifteenth century. four middle english notes 175 andrew breeze universidad de navarra references bennett, j. a. w. 1986: middle english literature. clarendon press, oxford. bennett, j. a. w. & g. v. smithers eds. 1968: early middle english verse and prose, 2nd ed. clarendon press, oxford. best, r. i. & o. bergin eds. 1929: lebor na huidre. royal irish academy, dublin. björkman, e. 1900-02: scandinavian loans in middle-english. m. niemeyer, halle. breeze, a. c. 1993: middle english tromchery. notes and queries 238: 16 breeze, a. c. 1996: middle english daisser. éigse 39: 150-152. brown, lesley 1993: the new shorter oxford english dictionary. clarendon press, oxford. conway, c. 1968: comhcheilg na mainistreach móire. sáirséal agus dill, baile atha cliath. de paor, l. 1993: saint patrick's world. four courts press, dublin. de vries, j. 1962: altnordisches etymologisches wörterbuch. 2nd ed. a.j. brill, leiden. dillon, m. 1946: the cycles of the kings. oxford university press, london. falk, h. s. & a. torp 1910-11: norwegisch-dänisches etymologisches wörterbuch. c. winter, heidelberg. gairdner, j. ed. 1876: the historical collections of a citizen of london. camden society, london. greene, d. ed. 1955: fingal rónáin. dublin institute for advanced studies, dublin. geiriadur prifysgol cymru 1950-2002: gwasg prifysgol cymru, caerdydd. andrew breeze 176 griesser, b. 1946: registrum epistolarum stephani de lexinton. analecta sacri ordinis cisterciensis 2: 1-118 gwynn, a. & r. n. hadcock 1970: medieval religious houses: ireland. longmans, london. harvey, j. h. ed. 1969: william worcestre. itineraries. clarendon press, oxford. hogan, e. 1910: onomasticon goedelicum. hodges-figgis, dublin. jeffares, a. n. 1982: anglo-irish literature. macmillan, london. killanin, m. m. & m. v. duignan 1967: the shell guide to ireland. 2nd ed. ebury press, london. o dónaill, n. ed. 1977: foclóir gaeilge-béarla. oifig an tsoláthair, baile atha cliath. onions, c. t. ed. 1966: the oxford dictionary of english etymology. clarendon press, oxford. pearsall, d. a. 1977: old english and middle english poetry. routledge, london. roscow, g. 1998: clanvowe's boke of cupide, lines 185-186. notes and queries 243: 183-184. scattergood, v. j. ed. 1975: the works of sir john clanvowe. d. s. brewer, cambridge. stokes, w. & j. strachan eds. 1901-03: thesaurus palaeohibernicus. cambridge university press, cambridge. vendryes, j. 1987: lexique étymologique de l'irlandais ancien: lettre c. centre national de la recherche scientifique, paris. wada, y. 2003: an englishman saved by sir piers of bermingham?. in y. wada ed. peregrinator. shohakusha, tokyo. 222-230. watt, j. a. 1972: the church in medieval ireland. gill and macmillan, dublin. four middle english notes 177 * † * selim01.pdf 87 morgain the fay and the lady of the lake in a broader mythological context a great affective chasm separates morgain as she appears in the beginning of english arthurian literature, in geoffrey of monmouth and layamon, and her nature in the later medieval tradition, as seen in sir gawain and the green knight. in the former she appears as the leading lady in one of the best known scenes of medieval english literature, a beautiful young fairy, all sweetness, coming on stage after arthur has been fatally wounded in battle to take him to the edenlike island of avalon. there she will heal him to live on after death in a heavenly existence from which it is hoped he will one day return again to bring his heroic help to the problem-beset world his once and future subjects still inhabit. in the latter she is arthur’s wily, old rival and secret ennemy, the force of wildness and evil that opposes the christian morality and civilization that arthur’s court stands for. it is not the green knight himself who wants to cut off sir gawain’s head, we learn in the surprise ending, but the ominous morgain, a figure whose name alone seems to conjure up the realm of evil. laura hibbard loomis observes that “the might of morgan le fay (vs. 2446) was, for gawain himself, a sufficient explanation and exculpation for all that he had endured and made him able to part from the green knight “on most friendly terms.”1 how can such a radical change be explained? where did such a sweet, young goddess go 1.see laura hibbard loomis, “gawain and the green knight,” in r.s. loomis, arthurian literature in the middle ages: a collaborative history (london: oxford university press, l959), p. 535. 88 wrong? in france, of course, and not long ago alexandre micha wondered in print about why before the french prose romances she was a “feé et guérisseuse” while in them and thereafter she is a “magicienne et une ensorceleuse”.1 the present study addresses the same question. prof. micha proposes that morgain’s thorough schooling, a later addition to the fairy’s traditional character, offended the medieval sense of women’s proper role. the idea is similar to the explanation offerred for the creation of the archetypal femme fatale in the character of vivianne/niviane, destroyer of merlin, by reference to the medieval topos of the scholar made a fool of by a comparatively ignorant yet clever young woman of whom he is enamoured, as was commonly believed to have happened to virgil and aristotle.2 still, this explanation for the change in morgain is not entirely satisfying, as one is left with the question of how and why such a totally attractive figure, at least to a male hero like arthur and, one supposes, to a male audience in general, could have been a candidate for such a switch to a woman who not only uses her power to accomplish the hero’s destruction but is also a rival to arthur’s kingship. something must be, one feels, behind the topos, something that triggers the topos, something derived from traditional attitudes toward women, some image rooted in the forest primeval oh, perilous hunt of myth and psychology. dame prudence urges us to stop here, rather than plunge into the murky depths of mythologically oriented criticism. 1.alexandre micha, étude sur le “merlin” de robert de boron: roman du xiii siècle (geneva: droz, l980), p. 55. 2.see carlos garcía gual’s introduction to geoffrey of monmouth, vida de merlín (madrid: siruela, l984). 89 and yet, somewhat like the irresistibly tempting ring of power guarded by the rhine maidens, the suggestive possibilities of myth call to us. if one could only use it judiciously, not letting it destroy us by leading us to jump to conclusions or to select out from the bewildering cornucopia of fables it offers what will fit our pre-conceived ideas, if we only knew better what it meant and how much of it survives in some signicant way in the hard texts we have in our hand, we might better understand the amazingly persistent appeal of arthurian literature -which even its renaissance aficionados berated for being “far from reason and sense”,1and more specifically, why its delicious maidens often turn into loathly ladies and viceversa.2 the case against the mythological approach has been summed up by carlos garcía gual. while “romanistas” stick to written texts, which provide something resembling a secure base, “celtistas” make extensive use of oral tradition, which is difficult to date and “no siempre bien comprendida de los escritores, doctos clérigos que toman sus noticias de un trasfondo mítico celta y que transforman los «cuentos de aventura» en relatos corteses para ofrecerlos así a su público refinado.”3 the most intrepid reply, albeit undeniably quixotic, to the objections raised by this school of criticism has been succinctly expressed in this inaugural issue of the selim journal by prof. maría luisa dañobeitia: “some events hardly make sense unless an 1.the phrase was used by elis gruffydd in commenting on the birth of taliesin. see patrick ford, the mabinogi and other medieval welsh tales (berkeley: university of california press, l977), p. 165. 2.see patricia shaw, “loathly ladies, lither ladies and leading ladies: the older woman in middle english literature,” actas del primer congreso internacional de la sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval (s.e.l.i.m.) (universidad de oviedo, l988), pp. 209-243. 3.see garcía gual, pp. xvii-xviii. 90 exhaustive analysis is done of the underlying philosophy of life and religion of the ancient celtic races...”1 audeamus igitur, calling for strength on our lady condwiramurs, or dulcinea, and ask the question: could the topos of the scholar outsmarted and pushed onto the next boat to humiliation and death by the woman he lusts for, as well as the remarkable change in morgain that occurs in the evolution of arthurian literature, have grown out of a tradition familiar to author and reader alike because derived from pagan mythology and surviving in folklore? might the sort of problematic relationship between a hero and a powerful woman that emerges have been suggested, or reinforced, or shaped, by a preexisting pattern that, when recognized, would put it in a new light? it has been a long time since another lady, lucy paton, published in 1903 her study that became this century’s standard reference on the subject of morgain’s and the lady of the lake’s celtic mythological origins. r.s. loomis, as part of his monumental contribution to arthurian studies, continued and enriched her research, but followed, as he always did, a norm of focusing on the breton tradition, complemented by the welsh and irish mythologies closely tied to it.2 however, just two years ago hilda ellis davidson has finally given us a more comprehensive study of the myths and symbols of all of pagan europe.3 it is a solidly-grounded book that, at last, puts aside a fear of taking a broader view of european mythology, a fear provoked by the earlier overgeneralizations made by the dazzled pioneers in the 1.maría luisa dañobeitia, “two sides of a triangle: the beginning of gawain’s pentangle in sir gawain and the green knight,” elsewhere in this volume, note 3. 2.see the references in r.s. loomis, “the legend of arthur’s survival,” in loomis, pp. 64-71. 3.h.r. ellis davidson, myths and symbols in pagan europe (syracuse: syracuse university press, l988). 91 field, and makes wide-ranging comparisons that establish connections among scandinavian, germanic and celtic religion and folklore. it was the norman french, after all, who transformed morgain and created vivianne. on digesting the information prof. ellis davidson has gathered and organized, one comes to the conclusion that the early morgain, in the form with which she enters the arthurian world created by geoffrey of monmouth and layamon , while still thoroughly celtic and undeniably present in the irish and welsh tales, offers a dimension that is more prominent in germanic and scandinavian traditions. the difference in the lady’s character is simple, apparently unimportant, but it points in a different direction. in ellis davidson’s words, morgain is an otherworldly being, and when heros are with her or with similar ladies they are not subject to the frustrations of this world, including that of not getting along with one’s woman. still, to be blunt about it, although in happy circumstances and with charming ladies, they are dead (the fact that the celts were fond of the idea of the dead returning for visits notwithstanding). i would stress, though, that morgain did not kill them, that her primary function is to “heal”, not of course for a continuing life in this world but for a new life in the other, and in general to make them feel better there. in scandinavian and germanic myths, too, these fair maidens exist, and we are familiar with them under the name of valkyries. ellis davidson’s description is similar to the wagnerian conception: “battle goddesses ... attendant on the god odin ... sent to carry out the will of the god in apportioning victory in battle and deciding which warriors must fall.... her duty was to conduct dead kings and heroes to odin. in the edda poems we find another aspect portrayed. she appears here as the spirit wife of the hero, appearing to announce his future greatness as a leader, to urge him to heroic deeds, perhaps to present him with his sword, and finally to receive him as husband and lover 92 after he dies in battle.”1 they often are encountered in groups, having been compared to bees by the anglo-saxons, and there are several lists of their names.2 i would like to underscore three of these maidens’ traits. first, they escort heros, that is warriors, to a heavenly home after death in battle and personally administer the pleasurable rewards for their valor and strength; the men stay on there forever in a sort of unending bachelor party where worrying about anything is unthinkable. secondly, valkyries are attendants on the god of battle, and although they themselves as goddesses wear armor and provide weapons, they are part of the world of men and warfare. a third quality of valkyries that seems particularly relevant to the arthurian tradition is that they, like tinkerbell and the boys who haven’t grown up whom she takes to never-never land, get around by flying. as ellis davidson points out, valkyries are related (in some way i wish we could define more thoroughly) to ravens, who eat the dead on the battle field, and to the wise spirit wives of the shamans3 who in pre-historic gaul, as to this day in siberia, went into trances and sent out their spirits to roam the world beyond the normal human limits of time and space in order to bring back powerful knowledge to set things right in the here and now. the shape-shifting druids, as has often been recognized of late, believed they gained knowledge in a very similar way, as “the song of taliesen” makes clear. the valkyries, too, have hidden knowledge, though it is limited to foretelling the hero’s life and then bringing him to healing once and for all when he enters valhalla. their supernatural powers, like the early morgain’s, are beneficient. 1.ellis davidson, p. 92. 2.see ellis davidson, p. 96. 3.see ellis davidson, p. 96. 93 a comparison with the description of morgan as drawn by geofrey of monmouth in his vita merlini in the scene of arthur’s death reveals that for him her shamanistic and healing nature was paramount: “morgana es su nombre, y conoce la utilidad de todas las hierbas para la curación de los cuerpos enfermos. también conoce el arte de mudar su figura, y como dédalo sabe cortar los aires con plumas nuevas. cuando quiere, en bristo, carnoto o papias se deja caer del cielo en nuestras playas, y esta ciencia dicen que han aprendido sus hermanas: morónoe, mázoe, gliten, glitonea, gliton, tirónoe, titen y titon, famosísima por su cítara.”1 a similar concept of morgain is visible in the bataille loquifer (c. 1180), in which morgain and two of her sisters, also fairies, take the hero through the air to a luxurious avalon, where he encounters the greatest arthurian knights: arthur, gawain, and yvain.2 the morrígan, whose name immediately recalls the arthurian character, presents several similarities to vallkyries. “in irish tradition also we find female spirits associated with battle and death. they appear in the tales under the collective name of morrígan, which may be used either of a single goddess or of a group of three. there is a strong erotic element in the morrígan, as in the scandinavian valkyries who offer themselves to warriors. the name has been interpreted as great queen, or demon queen; other names given to the battle goddesses are nemain (frenzy), badb and macha (both probably meaning crow).”3 the grouping of geoffrey’s nine heavenly hostesses in three groups of three, each of which begins with a distinctive letter, seems to recall this goddess’s triple nature. one 1.geoffrey of mommouth, vida de merlín, ed. garcía gual, p. 33. 2.see r.s. loomis, “the legend of arthur’s survival,” in loomis, p. 65. 3.ellis davidson, p. 97. 94 notable difference is that she does not always fly, but then one of her alter egos, badb, is associated with birds.1 in layamon’s account of arthur’s death the name for the morgainlike goddess is argante. jean markale informs us that budicca, the british woman warrior who leads a revolt against the romans, was breton and offerred sacrifices and thanks to a war goddess called andrasta or andarta. he goes on to say, “pues bien, hay una diosa andarte cuyo culto está atestiguado entre los voconces de la drôme.”2 i find the comparatively short phonetic distance from andarte to argante suggestive. in the mabinogian the name of the god bran, whose head presides over an otherworldly feast after the battle in which he is killed, means “crow,” the same valkyrie -related bird in whose shape arthur was popularly believed to live on.3 in establishing connections that point toward the goddesses who in several versions accompany morgain when she comes to heal arthur, idris llewelyn foster calls attention to the link between morrígan and crows. in the didot perceval ravens are revealed to be urbain’s mistress and her maidens, while in other contexts they are his mother: “if, therefore, the correspondence of morrigan, modron, and morgain la feé is established, then owain’s (= urbain’s) ravens in rhonabwy’s dream can be recognized as the helpful forms of his mother modron and her sisters (or companions).”4 1.since a conflation of badb and macha would yield mab, shakespeare’s inheritance of this tradition seems a reasonable hypothesis. 2.see jean markale, druidas (tradiciones y dioses de los celtas) (madrid: taurus, l989), p.126. 3.on arthur’s survival as a crow see the references in r.s. loomis, “the legend of arthur’s survival,” in loomis, p. 65, n. 6. 4.idris llewelyn foster, “culhwch and olwen and rhonabwy’s dream,” in loomis, p. 43. 95 a final observation on valkyries, by way of a possible objection, might be that they were not sisters, but helpers and eventually lovers, of the men they nurtured, while morgain came to be considered arthur’s sister or half-sister. still, in myth divine syblings sometimes mate. in any case, as owain’s story shows, help from an affectionate sister or mother, even if she is not a lover, could still be a comforting, valkyrielike prospect. geoffrey, in his historia, does not mention morgain in his account of arthur’s death, saying merely that he was “carried off to the isle of avalon, so that his wounds might be attended to.”1 in the vita merlini, as we have seen, morgain appears, but she is not presented as a relative of arthur’s: “allí nueve hermanas gobiernan según ley que no está escrita a los que a ellas de nuestras partes llegan. la mayor de ellas es sabia ....”2 layamon’s arthur does not refer to argante as a relative: “and i will fare to avalun, to the fairest of all maidens, to argante the queen, an elf most fair, and she shall make my wounds all sound, make me all whole with healing draughts.”3 if we hypothesize, then, that there is a healthy dose of valkyrie in the initial arthurian morgain, do we encounter an anti-valkyrie, an alternative image of woman, that might explain morgain’s later aberration? ellis rejects dumézil’s often cited three-part division of indo-european divinities, a scheme that assumes that myth reflected a social structure of warriors, priests and producers, and maintains that, while its social orientation does reflect what we now know about 1.geoffrey of monmouth, the history of the kings of britain, transl. lewis thorpe (harmondsworth: penguin, l986), p. 261. 2.geoffrey of monmouth, vida de merlín, p. 32. 3.wace and layamon: arthurian chronicles, trans. eugene mason (london: everyman’s library, l962), p. 264. 96 european mythology, a two-part one fits the data better. “the difficulty in applying dumézil’s theories to scandinavian evidence, however, is that the norse deities refuse to fit satisfactorily into the niches which he has provided for them, and the same is true of the celtic gods.... on the other hand, the dichotomy between the ruling and war gods on one hand and those associated with fertility and the land on the other appears to be an essential part of the structure, and helps to explain the distinction between the two groups of scandinavian deities, aesir and vanir.”1 from this perspective it seems logical, as we pursue the broader question of morgain in arthurian tradition, to ask whether, then, there are two basic sorts of western european goddesses that become sexually involved with men. ellis davidson seems to say as much when she affirms that irish heroes marry either battle goddesses or rivers.2 the vanir, earth spirits and fertility goddesses, were associated more with women, who were active in their cult, while the much more commonly male gods responsible for imposing order on the world and war-making, the aesir, reflect predominantly male social roles. the vanir were concerned with bringing forth life and not surprisingly had a particular dislike for violence. as far as the availability of this worldview to storytellers in the middle ages, the evidence is clear that the male gods faded sooner and more completely than the vanir, while the later were transformed and long remained alive in popular culture. and it is not beside the point to add parenthetically that the vanir included both a male god, freyr, as well as a goddess, frejya, and it has been the latter that survived more strongly. 1.ellis davidson, pp. 200-201. 2.see ellis davidson, p. 203. 97 the fertility goddesses, let me hasten to add, are not unrelated to the battle goddesses, and in attempting to differentate them i find that, especially in surviving literary works, the two categories overlap in some important regards. for example, both sometimes appear at a man’s birth or entrance into puberty, predicting his future and making him gifts.1 one is reminded of the alven that appear in layamon at arthur’s birth. similarly, even if we return to myth, there are fair maidens , again particurly well known in the scandinavian tradition and seemingly corroborated by archeological remains of ship graves, who recall valkyries in that they take the dead to heaven, but whom ellis davison identifies with fertility goddesses and who come for the dead in ships.2 the circumstance that it is by ship that morgain arrives at the sea shore and then departs with the expiring arthur would seem clearly derived from celtic myths, identified by lucy paton, derived, in turn, from this broader tradition. ultimately the two probably come, one can dare to suggest in 1991, from the same pre-historic goddess that is currently the subject of so much study and discussion, i.e., from one centrally important earth mother, now thought to have split into more than one personality to produce several goddesses. in a study related to the more general discussion of the theme of the creation of patriarchy, in which this figure has been traced back to the ancient near east, maría luisa dañobeitia has argued that the pentangle in sggk, and so the sinister morgain whose power it ostensibly combats, is related to ancient rites in honor of a goddess who combined fertility, eros and thanatos.3 1.see ellis davidson, pp. 92 and 123. 2.see ellis davidson, p. 118. 3.see maría luisa dañobeitia, “a triple progression in the pentangle: a study of sir gawain and the green knight,” in actas del primer congreso internacional de la sociedad española de lengua y literatura inglesa medieval (s.e.l.i.m.), (universidad de oviedo, 1988). 98 jean markale has pursued the idea of such an ur-divinity with real élan: “rodeada de terribles y eficaces dioses auxiliares, revestida de múltiples nombres, partícipe de las tres funciones indoeuropeas, maestra de poesía, de magia y de profecía, sabia en técnicas diversas, madre de todos los dioses, un poco ninfómana y animada de furor guerrero, triple diosa pero siempre mujer única, probablemente heredera de la gran diosa de los tiempos prehistóricos, así se presenta la minerva céltica. su complejidad es tan grande como la del dagda.”1 closer in time and space to arthur, descriptions of the irish other world show lug, the god of war, sitting in state accompanied by the goddess who represents the sovereignty of ireland, just as odin is attended by the valkyries. but as patrick ford and likeminded critics have sought to demonstrate, this goddess is essentially the same as rhiannon of the mabinogian, the continental epona, the horse goddess of fertility.2 if we follow this line of thought, supposing that fertility goddesses were not originally separate from battle goddesses, it becomes apparent that, at least in their role as escorts for the dead, they may be thought of as the non-warrior’s version of the valkyrie. in a period when the gods and goddesses had split into distinct and even opposed personalities and functions, at the hour of death they would have provided the protection of maternal divinities who were especially comforting in that they formed part of the woman’s or the farmer’s world. but the subject at hand is not caste differences between these two, essentially similar and nurturing imges of women, but rather more 1.see markale, p. 130. 2.see ford, p. 9. 99 fundamental distinctions that bring us closer to the threatening morgain of sggk. many myths and tales from folklore involving fertility goddesses, particularly prominent in gaul and britain, do not stress the escorting of the dead to the next world and the joys of existence there. on the contrary, such figures are very much part of the vexations of living in this world, attracting men with the alluring possiblities of sexual pleasure and the wealth of fertility but at the same time taking away control over their own fates and often destroying them. while they may at the end take them to the other world, the focus is on the shock experienced when pleasure is followed by the anxieties and horror of being done in by the desired woman herself, not on the comfort of being carried off to be healed afterwards. the lai of graelent, whose widespread basis in folklore has been thoroughly documented,1 can serve as a good example. the lady, who turns up in a pool and says she loves the surrounding land, obviously has immense, supernatural powers, which include both the attraction of her face and body and her cornucopialike wealth, with which she outfits and supports her man until he fails to honor the one requirement she lays upon him. thereupon she lets him, like a lovesick fool, drown himself while trying to recover her, only resuscitating him and taking him off to fairyland at the insistent request of her horrified servants. connections to fertility goddesses are not hard to find in such a story. just as valkyries move through the air, these goddesses, known in roman europe as “mother earth,” or “the mothers,” inhabited water and were worshiped at shrines near it.2 there, sacrifices of gold, as well as fruits of the earth, were thrown into the water in the hope of receiving in return the multiplied wealth and fruitfulness magically 1.see the references in ernest hoepffner, “the breton lais,” in loomis, pp. 112-21. 2.on the earth mothers and their cult see ellis davidson, pp. 110-111. 100 brought about by the combination of earth and water. this is the source of graelent’s rent money. but the sexual pleasure and wealth are dependent on the goodwill of the lady and so part of the nervewrackingly perishable while maddeningly desirable good things of this world, not the perfect and enduring ones provided by one’s valkyrie in valhalla. examples of this sort of powerful water goddess can be adduced from many european cultures, but let us consider another one, less widely known but still celtic. in northwestern spain there is a robust folklore surrounding, in galicia, donas, and in asturias, xanas, whose similarities to nymphs in other western european myths were pointed out early in this century.1 these attractive young women live outdoors, usually in water or caves, where they can be spotted on the summer solstice or at other magical moments combing their red hair with a golden comb or hanging out their washing. they can be recognized as preternatural by both the fact that they are said to be enchanted and their magical powers. like irish fairies, they steal human babies and raise them out of society, substituting their own infants to be raised by women. like rhine maidens, they guard golden treasures. these they offer, along with their fair hand, to men of their choosing who have come across them and are willing to try to disenchant them, though they come with strings attached. the man must pass a test the answer to a riddle or the faithful observance of a single prohibition and if he fails, as he almost invariably does, the girl either is not freed from or returns to her enchanted, i.e., magical, state. at the same time all the gold she has given the man turns into something worthless or repulsive. 1.see eliseo marías pinto, correspondencies entre les lleendes gallegues y asturianes. el so estudiu comparativu so los motivos del folclor celta (oviedo: lliga celta d’asturies, l987), pp. 29-32; and aurelio de llano roza de ampudia, del folklore asturiano: mitos, supersticiones, costumbres (oviedo: instituto de estudios asturianos, l983), pp. 29-50. 101 some tales stress that the couple was living happily together until the man could no longer avoid breaking the one rule, whereupon the fairy mercilessly abandoned him.1 donas have the additional trait of setting a date for the disenchantment, but then turning into a frightening, dragonlike snake which on the appointed day the man must dare not only to approach but even to kiss three times in order to return the lady to her more beautiful, alternative form.2 the men are usually not up to it and so lose everything the woman so tantalisingly offers. similarly, chrétien de troyes’s yvain fights for and wins the lady of a fountain, who comes with the wealth of a kingdom, but she breaks with him when he proves himself unable to meet the one condition she sets upon him. the word ‘xana,’ often pronounced ‘xiana,’ was shown by menéndez pidal to derive from the latin ‘diana.’3 it appears that the pre-roman xanas were assimilated to that classical goddess. the similarity, i would argue, is both real and germane to our larger subject. the story of diana, artemis in greek, and actaeon, has long been one of the better known plots of classical mythology. a hunter, actaeon comes across artemis in the woods, where she is bathing in a pool. avoiding being seen himself, he watches her and becomes filled with desire. she, virgin goddess of the hunt who does not submit to men, becomes angry when she discovers the presence of her unwanted admirer. turning him into a stag, she watches with satisfaction as his own hounds tear him to pieces. 1.for example, “el viudo y la xana,” “el pastor y la xana,” and “la xania del castiellu de aguilar,” llano roza de ampudia, pp. 42-47. 2.on such goddesses’ dual aspects see ellis davidson, p. 111. on fairy ladies in irish popular tradition who both seduce and resist see p. 112. 3.cited in llano roza de ampudia, p. 30. 102 while it might be objected that artemis does not manifest any interest in a sexual realationship with the man who encounters her, it should be remembered, first, that she was also the goddess of childbirth and at a school consecrated to her in athens adolescent girls learned how to become wives and mothers. while artemis seems to represent the attitude of young girls fearful of men, society assumed that those fears should and would be overcome. secondly, even though she may actively reject the man’s desire for her, she has provoked it. from the male perspective, illustrated by renaissance love poetry in which men accuse women of cruelty because they refuse to quench the passion their beauty has kindled, she has created the man’s need and then fails to meet it. the implied attitude is explicit in graelent, where we learn later that the lady has intentionally bathed naked near where the hero would pass in order to attract him. i began by joking that morgain went wrong in france. laura hibbard loomis has pointed out the time and place more specifically. just as in sggk morgain is an old witch who seeks to have the hero’s head cut off and to that end sends a young woman to try to seduce him, similarly in the prose lancelot she uses her magic charms with the purpose of destroying the hero and, once again, sends a young woman to seduce him. morgain is the lurking power of wild and deadly impulses that always threaten to, and eventually do, devour the measured joys of camelot, and her portrait is already drawn in the much earlier french work.1 the parallels, indeed are close and numerous. just as the green knight goes hunting to arrange for gawain and his seductive wife to be alone in the mornings prior to the grisly appointment at the green chapel, in the french model morgain sends her most beautiful maiden to travel cross-country alone with lancelot as his guide to the 1.see laura hibbard loomis, in loomis, p. 535. 103 dolerose tor. both young women are provoctive dressers and skillful, non-stop talkers; morgain’s maid even sings lays to him: “ beles paroles et rit et gabe et joe en chevalchant. de totes les choses le semont de quoi ele le cuide eschaufer, si se deslie sovent por moster son vis et son chief qui de tres grant bialté estoit et chante lais bretons e t autres notes plaisans et envoisies, et ele avoit la vois et haute et clere et la langue bien parlant et breton et francois et mains autres langages.”1 in both cases there are three assaults on the hero’s chastity, mainly set in bed, and for reasons of duty he can neither accept the offer nor refuse it with blunt discourtesy. we sympathize with these two famous lovers at the same time we laugh at their predicament. and if the proposition by the green knight’s wife is notoriously brazen, her french counterpart is even more self-assured and direct: “et por ce que vos estes buens chevaliers et je suis bele damoisele, por ce vos requier je et pri que vos gisés a moi orendroit...”2 the negative version of morgain had been sketched out in some detail a few years earlier than even the prose lancelot, about 1190 in hartmann von aue’s erek, and he clearly did not invent it. paton’s and roger loomis’s studies on morgain show what contradictory figures she could represent, and one comes to the time-honored conclusion that fairies and witches are two sides of a coin that is women’s power. but the question a study directed toward her origin as she appears in sggk calls for us to ask is whether or not the specific image of the dangerous water fairy was an essential element in the prose lancelot, whether a sinister lady of a stream, or a fountain, or a lake was part of the author’s picture of women and 1.lancelot: roman en prose du xiiie siécle, ed. alexandre micha, 4 vols. (paris, droz, 1978), i: 317. 2.lancelot, i: 318. 104 contributed to his decision to opt for and develop the frightening instead of the comforting version of morgain, both of which traditions he knew. it now turns out, as everyone knows, that lancelot is associated with a certain lady of the lake. he did not appear in the historia regum britanniae along with gawain and keu and the rest of the boys; instead, as jean frappier has shown, he had separate roots in folklore: “the most primitive feature of his biography was his childhood in the palace of a fay, who stole him from his mother and reared him on an island of the sea or at the bottom of a lake.”1 in chrétien de troye’s lancelot of the lake, written ten years before hartmann von aue’s erek, the fay adheres to the traditional xanalike pattern, steals him from his mother when he is a baby and raises him outside of society. this unconventional upbringing in a woman’s world makes him what he is, the devoted servant of ladies. chrétien insisted that the story was not his, that its form and content were dictated by the countess of champagne,2 and certainly it represents much more of a woman’s love fantasy than a man’s. charles foulon also suggests a move away from inherited attitudes when he observes that, “chrétien lighted his torch at the flame of wace, ... but that, beginning with lancelot, his indebtedness steadily waned.”3 the lady of the lake, however, is not herself the femme fatale, that role being turned over to guenevere. in fact, she is a strangely benevolent and socialized water goddess, in her actions more a valkyrie than a dragon lady, for after selflessly raising her adopted son she herself takes him away to court, the world of warriors, and there asks that he be made a knight to serve his lord. we know there was a 1.jean frappier, “the vulgate cycle,” in loomis, p. 296. 2.jean frappier remarks that, “it is the current opinion that chretien followed the countess’s instructions with reluctance: after all, the lancelot is a sort of palinode, a recantation of cligés.” see “chrétien de troyes,” in loomis, p. 175. 3.charles foulon, “wace,” in loomis, p. 102. 105 reaction against the book’s over-all tone of exaggerated deference to women, but was there also a reaction against its defanged portrayal of a water goddess? before looking in more detail at the magical ladies in the prose lancelot let us turn to another romance written not long after lancelot of the lake and which is closely tied to the prose lancelot in plot, characters and the presence of similar anti-feminine sentiments. i am referring to the suite du merlin, in which morgain, as in the prose lancelot, is a wicked sorceress who directs her powerful arts toward arthur’s destruction. micha’s focus on her extensive education, somehow tied up with her evil nature, is easy to justify in the text. she is arthur’s sister, and when she was young, “on the recommendation of the whole family, the king sent the daughter named morgan to school at a convent. she was so gifted that she learned the seven arts and quite early acquired remarkable knowledge of an art called astronomy, which she used all the time. she also studied nature and medicine, and it was through that study that she came to be called morgan the fay.”1 merlin shows his susceptibility to dangerous women by falling in love with first her and then, as the amorous side of his character evolves, with a woman who unmistakably recalls a water fairy, vivianne. jean markale proposes that the latter’s name derives from boinn-bé finn, a gaulish water goddess.2 in the suite the name is niviane, and her ties to artemis are explicit. merlin tells her the story of a young woman from roman times named diana, an independent spirit who likes to hunt. an ardent admirer named faunus convinces her to live with him by a lake she 1.the prose merlin and suite du merlin, trans. samuel n. rosenberg, in romance of arthur ii, ed. james j. wilhelm (new york: garland, l986), p. 248. 2.see markale, p. 129. 106 likes, but she is fickle and after two years she tires of him, cruelly liquidating him to make way for another lover by pouring molten lead on his body while he is beneath the waters of her lake. that she is the lady of the lake is stressed by merlin’s paternalistic ending to the story, in which she is killed in punishment and the lake, into which her body is thrown, given her name. niviane is not deterred and proceeds to imitate merlin’s metafictional heroine, with the important difference that she succeeds where her role model failed, cleverly doing in merlin and getting away with it, too. now that, one can imagine the anonymous author wishing chrétien were still around to be told, is a real lady of the lake. as niviane, using magical spells symbolic of the power her sexual attractiveness gives her, seals up merlin to be buried alive she gloats in the best fabliau style: “look how the enchanter is enchanted.”1 merlin cries out from his tomb: “his cry came from the sharp pain he felt when he realized that he was being killed by a woman’s cunning and that a woman’s craft had defeated his own.”2 the prose lancelot echoes the myth of the water fairy just as explicity and, in relation to morgain, more insistently. the narrator introduces her with the information that she was arthur’s sister and the woman who knew the most about enchantments, so much, in fact, that many foolish people said she was not a woman at all, but a goddess.3 we learn later that it is not learning that corrupted her, but rather lust, for as soon as she came of age she was “si chaude et luxuriose que plus chaude feme ne convint a querre.”4 while serving as one of guenevere’s ladies in waiting she has an affair with a 1.suite du merlin, p. 265. 2.suite du merlin, p. 265. 3.see lancelot, i: 275. 4.lancelot, i: 300. 107 nephew of the queen, who royally threatens and cajols the young man to break off what is really just a lark. finding herself pregnant and abandoned, morgain misguidedly if, indeed, showing real pluck searches the whole country until she finds merlin, whom she seduces as though she were rhiannon with not only her fair person but also “molt grant avoir et molt bele chevalcheure.”1 in return he teaches her powerful magic, which she uses vindictively against guenevere whenever possible. learning, then, is only a means in this view of morgain, there being other base origins and ignoble ends to her actions. a woman badly wounded in love, reminiscent of orgelleuse in wolfram’s parzival, she creates a magical valley of no return, also known as the valley of the false lovers. in it become trapped all knights who undertake the adventure, since any who has ever been unfaithful to his lady in thought, word, or deed faces the prospect of living out his days and dying there, unless someday, of course, some perfect lover should choose to enter the valley and release all the captives. it is rather like valhalla, with walls of air, plenty of food, drink and men’s sports, a celestial prison where fallen knights, killed by morgain for their perverse male falseness, are living on in the afterlife. the knights’ sweethearts, however, are at liberty to come and go as they like, acting the role of mobile valkyries, but with no odin to obey or any mandatory attentions to their lovers. it is a woman’s remodeling of valhalla, with women in charge, when they choose to be, of men who cannot leave or misbehave, a fantasy very much along the lines of the feminist fin amour that characterizes chrétien’s lancelot. yet in the palace at the center of the valley lies on her luxurious bed a morgain who is unquestionably as much a water fairy as a 1.lancelot, i: 301. 108 valkyrie. at the entrance to the enchanted region there are two dragons, as well as a deadly, cliff-lined pool to be crossed; the latter’s frightening nature is stressed. in going across it on a plank lancelot is preceded by some days by the duke and by yvain. the former overcomes the two dragons but, reeling with fear, is knocked into the dark and roiled waters by his three opponents. he feels himself drowning and on being pulled out and opening his eyes cannot tell if he is alive or dead. he fails, as it were, to kiss the snake three times, but like graelent is brought out to a post-drowning land of love. yvain, too, falls in, and the sergeant-at-arms escorts him to the enchanted jail. lancelot slays the two dragons, then, like yvain in chrétien’s romance bearing his name, defeats the guardian in this case the three guardians who protect the pool and keep anyone else from gaining access to the lady of the land. this test of bravery and prowess passed, the pool and its defenders vanish, and the purely symbolic nature of the episode is revealed. then it is a wall of fire with two guardians that block his way. he kills one, while the other flees, throws himself from its high banks into a pool, and miraculously emerges on the other side, taunting him to follow. begged by an accompanying damsel to desist so as not to drown, he replies that he was raised in the water and so has an advantage over other men, an aside that calls the reader’s attention to his feminine upbringing and consequent skill in matters of love. he plunges in fully armed, pursues his enemy to a pavillion, turns over morgain’s bed to get at him, and finally presents her with the severed head, a feat emblematic of how it is gawain finds himself in bed with the green knight’s wife, yvain with escalados the red’s, and of wooing in general in many celtic tales. several pages later, after leaving the valley and having successfully just said no to morgain’s beautiful substitute, he comes to another pool in a steep ravine, in which lie the bodies of two courtly lovers, he 109 dispatched by her husband and she by dispair. no one has been able to retrieve them, but lancelot is such a perfect lover that he can and does, thus making it possible for them to have a decent burial. the valley of the false lovers, it is apparent, is tied up in an essential way with pools that the sorceress uses to kill practically anyone who plunges into love. in sum, the morgain of the prose lancelot, who represents a very closely followed model for her counterpart in sggk, takes the heavenly, essentially valkyrielike qualities of geoffrey and layamon’s morgains and gives them a different value, equating them with the characteristics of a water goddess, desirable and desirous but dangerously powerful, smart, devious, and vengeful. the sweetly mothering, or sistering, virgin has become the man-eating siren. if i have successfully made the case that this image of women is in part responsible for the late morgain, then the question arises of why this tradition was less important in the early period of arthurian literature. two plausible explanations come to mind. first, the vanir were associated not with the nobles, about and for whom most narrators wrote, but with non-warriors, whose fears and fantasies were less commonly recorded in “high” literature. secondly, tales of femmes fatales let a nightmarish version of unpleasant realities, i.e., that women have always had real power in the realm of love and children, intrude on a heroic male fantasy in which, inspite of an unfaithful wife and a treacherous son-surrogate, the fallen hero gets a golden parachute and a more tender woman than his ex-wife ever was. this rosy view of how a man’s life may well turn out strikes me as appropriate in the context of the twelfth-century creation of the ideal of chivalry. by the different time of sggk, and in the different place of the french prose romances, a more tragic sense of chivalry rang truer. 110 clark colahan whitman college, wa. * * * selim05.pdf dionisia tejera selim 5 (1996): 7—17 the matter of israel: the use of little children in the miracles of the holy virgin during the middle ages chaucer’s interest in the individual peculiarities of his, otherwise, stock characters have led many critics to consider him as a forerunner of renaissance individualism, but, in fact, this conclusion might be but the consequence of our 20th century prejudiced approach to ideas about society. i believe that chaucer was a child (a very educated one) of his own age, and, although the topics he dealt with, were not only medieval but of all times, the viewpoint was medieval: he was medieval in his view of human and divine love, he was so too in his approach to religion or to society which, in his time, was very much the same, and he had the cruelty of the age and the same prejudices; in no other tale can these characteristics be seen as clearly as in the prioress’ tale. i am going to discuss it in comparison with the same story written by gonzalo de berceo included in los milagros de nuestra señora . the jews played a very outstanding role in europe all through the middle ages. in the dark ages they were the dwellers of towns, much of the evidence can be seen from the “responsa” literature. throughout the dark and mid dle ages efficient urban colonists in both the mediterranean area and north and west europe but the jews were not only the traders, they also supplied the court with doctors, astronomers and officials and, even as a religious belief, judaism was tolerable in all christendom until the preaching of the 1st crusade in 1095, thereafter the position of the jews deteriorated almost everywhere. they were still the best urban colonists, had useful trading networks, possessed rare skills, accumulated wealth quickly and were easy to tax. they flourished under the carolingians. the emperor louis the pious, around 825, gave them a number of charters as inducements to settle, there was too, it is true, periodic trouble persecutions in france 1007, for example, forced conversions in mainz in 1012but on the whole jewish communities did well and dionisia tejera ____________________________________________________________________ 8 spread specially throughout the rhine basin, and from the lower rhine to england after 1066. however an accumulation of anti-jewish feeling seems to have built up for some time and the preaching of the first crusade at clermont-ferrand in 1905 unleashed it. the antisemitic ideology and folklore which helped to detonate the first crusade riots proved to be simply the plinth on which a vast superstructure of hostile myth and rumour was built. in 1144 there occurred an ominous incident at norwich. the incident is very succinctly mentioned in the anglo saxon chronicle. the laud chronicle sates for 1137:1 now we want to say something of king stephen’s reign. in his days the jews of norwich brought a christian child before easter, and tortured him with all the same torments with which our lord was tortured. on good friday they hanged him on a cross because of his love for our lord, and afterwards buried him. they thought that his death would be conceale d2 but our lord 3 showed that he was a holy martyr, and the monks took his body and buried him with great ceremony in the monastery church and wonderfully and in various ways he performs miracles through our lord. he is called st. william.4 by this time the open mindedness of the first part of the middle ages. had giv en way to a most cruel age: the time of religious fundamentalisms that was but the result of a great economic crisis that in england had been the consequence of a devastating civil war. (i q uote from the chronicle again): i know not how to, nor am i able to tell of all atrocities nor all cru elties which they wrought upon the unhappy people of this country. it lasted throughout the nineteen years that stephen was king and always grew worse and worse. at regular intervals the levied a 1 i am using n. garmonsway’s translation as it is the most modern one i had available. 2 the same as chaucer’s child. 3 in chaucer’s tale the holy virgin. 4 our knowledge of the details comes primarily from a hagiography: the life and miracles of st. william of norwich, compiled by thomas of monmouth, a monk of norwich priory short afterwards. the matter of israel ____________________________________________________________________ 9 tax known as “tenserie” <protection money> upon the villages, so that you could easily go a day’s journey without ever finding a village inhabited of a field cultivated. then was corn dear, and flesh and cheese and butter, for there was none in the land. the wretched people perished with hunger; some who had been great men, were driven to beggary while others fled from the country.1 in norwich the chief activity of the jews was money lending on the security of lands and rents. in these circumstances, only naturally, the affair of the child william was made the occasion for an anti-jewish demonstration. in the christian towns people took their opportunity to turn against their money lenders. slowly the legend expanded, canonisation -not yet centrally controlled by rome was conferred by popular clamour. and since the body of a saint of this exciting type brought wealth to the church which owned it by attracting pilgrims, gifts and endowments accusations of ritual murder tended to be made whenever a child was killed in suspicious circumstances near a settlement of jews: the case of hugh of lincoln (specially mentioned by chaucer) took place in 1144, there were other cases at gloucester in 1168, bu ry st. edmunds in 1181 and bristol 1183. the preaching of a new crusade always brought antisemitic sentiments to the boil. the 3rd. crusade launched 1189-90, in which england figured largely because richard lionhearted led it, whipped up the mob fury that had already been aroused by the ritual murder charges. in fact the first great hecatomb of jews in western europe took place in england in 1190 as well as the first mass expulsion in 1290 which became the model for other expulsions: france 1306, spain 1492, lithuania 1495, portugal 1495. in the early middle age, and even as late as the early 14th century, spain was the safest latin territory for jews. it had been from the 8th to the 11th centuries the most successful of jews settlements. when the muslims invaded the country in 711 the jews helped them to overruled it. when córdoba became the capital of the ummayid dynasty who made themselves caliphs the jews were treated with extraordinary favour and tolerance. during the reign of the great caliph abd-al-rahman iii (912-61) his jewish court 1 the anglo-saxon chronicle. n. garmonsway’s translation. laud chronicle 1137. dionisia tejera ____________________________________________________________________ 10 doctor hisdai ibn shaprut, brought to the city jewish scholars, philosophers, poets and scientists who never left the country and made it the leading centre of jewish culture in the world. the development of the cult to the holy virgin is parallel to the rise of oral public preaching and sermons. clerics and monks needed tender and pathetic anecdotes in order to elaborate their sermons. up to the 11th century the cult to the holy virgin had not been of great importance, now the devotion to the mother of christ starts one of the most important phenomena of our culture: the holy virgin is identified with the “new eve” who comes to redeem us of the sins that had been introduced into the world by the “first eve”. she is now consid ered as the necessary mediator between god and the sinning human beings who would be utterly unable to reach christ and the entrance to heaven if left to their own resources, without her intercession no one could be reconciled with god. she wa s the owner of the special graces called “gra tiae gratis datae” or graces for the sanctification of the others. the initiator of this movement according to joel saugniex: “literatura y espíritu medieval” is saint anselm of canterbury who died in 1109.1 his writings, which changed the spiritual climate of the middle ages, are a long celebra tion of the gra ces of the holy virgin, a beautiful and noble lady thoroughly praise-worthy, thus she was immediately related to the development of courtly love. gonzalo de berceo the earliest known castilian poet was a simple monk who drew on scripture and latin sources but who decided to write in “roman paladino” that is, in the vernacular, so he could be understood by his neighbours next door: “en qual suele el pueblo falar a su vecino”,2 and who lived 1195-1264, thus almost contemporary of the ritual murders of the english children. he used martyrdom as the topic for one of his most moving miracles of the holy virgin. the success of berceo is based on his ability to approach the daily life to the listener. he leaves theological abstractions in order to send a clear message where the lyric emotion works directly on the feelings of the listeners, when he describes sinners he is never too harsh on them, his popular language is expressive and direct, his images imme diate, so his stories, achieve a great realism. in all probability he had drunk more than a “vaso 1 of course he forgets the previous influence of ildefonsus of toledo and isidore of seville. 2 berceo, gonzalo de: obras. publicaciones del instituto de estudios riojanos, 1977. the matter of israel ____________________________________________________________________ 11 de bon vino” in the company of the jews of his own town, so his story is surprisingly tender to a little boy of the universally hated race of jews. he transforms the cruel story into a moving tale in which the hero is not a chris tian but a little jewish child, el judiezno (this is a very affectionate diminutive in spanish), this little child who plays in the street in the company of his christian friends is the only one who has the vision of our lady and only naturally was irresistibly attracted by her: “pagosé d’ella mucho/ quanto más la catava de la su fermosura/ más se enamorava.”1 his jewish mother is a good and suffering woman who tries, with all her might, to defend her child from his irate husband. the evil jew is just one cruel father which answers to the ingenuity of his son as if he had been posses sed by the evil: “fazie’ figuras malas como demo niado.”2 at the denouement of the story the one sinning jew is punished, the holy virgin saves the little jewish child from the furnace and there is no mention of the christians taking their revenge. by the time chaucer wrote the canterbury tales the jews had been banished from england for such a long time that we might be tempted to assert that he based his story just on literary sources. but perhaps the most outstanding characteristic of chaucer is that he was a man of his time writing for the people of his own day -his curiosity is never antiquarian, when he draws on sources to other than contemporaries it is always to bring the topic to his own time. it is true that england “had got rid” of jews much before chaucer was born, but the topic o f children being brutally killed by them, was all but forgotten. william of norwich and hugh of lincoln were very popular saints of his time, worshipped all through the country. that chaucer is quite conscious of this is clearly seen in his mention of hugh of lincoln: “likewise murdered so/ by cursed jews.”3 so he clearly wrote a tale to suit the taste of the age, cruelty and filthiness being always sure ingredients that would be enjoyed by a wide audience. this would not prove that chaucer was unnecessarily cruel or specially filthy or ironic on the prioress, the tale, as we have seen has a historical background which is much more cruel than fic tion. 1 berceo’s el judiezno p. 351, v. 358. 2 berceo’s el judiezno p. 352, v. 361. 3 chaucer’s canterbury tales: the prioress tale. dionisia tejera ____________________________________________________________________ 12 chaucer wrote the canterbury tales during the last 14 years of his life. during the medieval period the literary themes were shared by writers in all european countries. on the other hand chaucer had (in all probability) visited spain early in 1368 while he was at the service of the black prince whose victory in najera meant the ascent of pedro i el cruel to the thrown of castile (cf. the monks tale). more over chaucer’s wife phillipa was a lady -inwaiting to edward iii’s queen and to constance of castile, john of gaunt’s 2nd wife. there is therefore little doubt that chaucer knew the work of his cas tilian contemporaries and that he must have had a curiosity for the works the simple monk who had written his naive stories, in exchange, for a glass of good wine. the two stories the judiezno by berceo and the prioress’ tale by chaucer have a great similarity, the differences however are not only those of time and country but of two great writers with very different personality who leave their own print on the account of the same story. both tales follow the same pattern: a child at school is fascinated by the figure of the virgin and undergoes a mystical experience; he is severely punished because of his christian behaviour, his mother in desperation cries for help, the holy virgin bestows her grace on him as a reward for the child’s devotion to her. the central figure of both stories is the holy virgin: she is praised, re spected and worshipped. her virginity identified with the “mater redemp tion’s” characteristic is describe the virgin as “gratiae gratis datae”: chaucer: … our dear and blissful lady … she will hear us when we turn to her and pray for help and comfort on our dying day.1 berceo: … una bella figura … una fermosa suenna, tal es sancta maria que es de gracia plena por servicio de gloria por deservicio da pena.2 1 chaucer’s the prioress tale p. 190 l. 92. 2 berceo’s el judiezno p. 351, v. 357. the matter of israel ____________________________________________________________________ 13 however chaucer adds a new diminution to the story associating clearly martyrdom with the idea of virginity, innocence and chastity: … o martyr wedded to virginity …1 … great god, that to perform thy praise hast called the innocent of mouth, how great thy might this gem of chastity, this emerald …2 thus the character of the story -teller the prioress comes to life, and the prioress reveals herself emphasizing the one quality, chastity, that in a child is, obviously, redundant -the reader receives a clear mes sage: she is mo re concerned with herself than with the child and even with the holy virgin, in fact the prioress does not seem to have a clear idea or rather a christian idea of the holy mary and her mira cles, and transforms her in a sort of kindly fairly who has to use a charm, not to save the child as should be expected, but to destroy the evil forces of which the jews are a very clear symbol. but chaucer is never simple, he had introduced this fairy tale characteris tic in the 1st lines of the story. while berceo confers realism to his tale setting it on a real city: “ en la ciudad de borges acaecio”. chaucer gives it the “folk tale” perspective of “once upon a time and in a far off country”: in asia once there was a christian town which long since …3 both towns have a very important coincidence, they have a christian school where children learn “to read and sing”. chaucer: a little school stood for the christian flock and the instruction suited for their ear, that is to say in singing and in reading.4 berceo: tenía en essa villa, como era menester un clérigo una escuela de cantar y leer.5 1 chaucer’s the prioress tale p. 190, l. 92. 2 chaucer’s the prioress tale p. 191, l. 120-23. 3 chaucer’s the prioress tale p. 187, l. 1-2. 4 chaucer’s the prioress tale p. 188, l. 8-12-13. 5 berceo’s el judiezno p. 351, v. 354. dionisia tejera ____________________________________________________________________ 14 berceo does not seem to find it strange that the little jew attends willingly and spontaneously to this christian school: venía un judiezno natural del lugar por savor de los ninnos, por con ellos jogar.1 perhaps that was not such an extraordinary thing in spain in the days of berceo. both little children are very well characterized: they are real children, in nocent, naive and spontaneous their misfortune will be provoked by actions which they do not christian mass with his school companions and takes the holy communion. quando van corpus dómini prender la yent christiana prisole al judiezno de comulgar grant gana, comulgó con los otros el cordero sin lana.2 and chaucer’s christian child sings a song in latin, which of course he cannot understand, on his way to school unaware that he is crossing the jewish quarters: … this child would go along the jewish street and, of his own accord daily and merrily he sang his song …3 in both stories the climax is of course, the miracle of the holy virgin: berceo’s “judiezno” who has been thrown into a furnace is not burned, and chaucer’s little christian though, cruelly tortured and murdered, still sings after his throat has been cut. berceo: el fuego prqe bravo fue de grand cosiment no linuzio nin punto, mostroli buen talent; 1 berceo’s el judiezno p. 351, v. 355. 2 berceo’s el judiezno p. 351, v. 356. 3 chaucer’s the prioress tale p. 189, l. 64-66. the matter of israel ____________________________________________________________________ 15 el ninnuelo del fuego estorció bien e gent, fizo und grand miraclo el rey omnipotent.1 chaucer: lying with carven throat and out of sight began to sing o alma from the ground.2 the social background is given in the two stories by the eyewit nesses of the miracles. in the spanish tale the author does not establish a difference between jews and christians: preguntarolí todos, judios e christianos como podió venzer fuegos tan sobrazanos;3 they are the good citizens who are horrified of the action of one evil neighbour: prisieron al judio, el falsso desleal, al qe a su fijuelo fiziera tan grand mal,4 in chaucer’s tale the witnesses are just the representatives of the christian society, who are the judges of the crime committed by the whole community of jews who stand collectively as a symbol of pure evil: a shameful death in torment there and then on all those guilty jews … evils shall meet the evils they deserve.5 the last stanza of the prioress’ tale, very naturally brings to the memory of her audience the martyrdom of their popular st hugh of lincoln, stressing on the very same final judgement of all the cursed jews and while berceo’s story has a very clear moral: that the holy virgin is the only judge who would re 1 berceo’s el judiezno p. 352, v. 365. 2 chaucer’s the prioress tale p. 191, l. 124-25. 3 berceo’s el judiezno p. 352, v. 368. 4 berceo’s el judiezno p. 353, v. 371. 5 chaucer’s the prioress tale p. 192, l. 143-45. dionisia tejera ____________________________________________________________________ 16 ward good deeds, but also punish sinful people because she is essentially just: nunca repoyo’ ella a los que la quisieron ni les dió en refierta el mal que le ficieron.1 the christians of chaucer’s tale condemn the jews of the town to a terrible and shameful death: … to be drawn apart by horses. then he hanged them from a cart.2 we have seen that the story: the martyrdom of little innocents has been used throughout the middle ages. and treated with very few differences by quite different writers, and as the story gets more and more cruel as times advance it is no wonder that the same tale, with much more embroidery, was used even in the renaissance: in australia three children were found drawn in a river and the jews were accused of the murder, in 1421 the archduke imprisoned all the jews in vienna and put a hundred of them to the fire to please the populace. these events were repeated in trent 1475 when the child simon died drawn in the river adipio. after the subsequent hecatomb the villa gers erected a statue of the little child in frankfurt on the bridge leading to saxenhausen. the problems were extended to ratisbone 1480 and passau 1478. at the end of the 19th century a study published in l’osservatore catolico recorded no less than 150 examples of the same ritual crimes. it does not seem strange that when the catholic kings in spain wanted to get rid of a population that had been such an important social element for centuries they do not have to change the motive, the old model still works: the story of “el santo niño de la guardia” is a repetition of the ritual murder of william of norwich, that took place in a little town in spain in 1491. on the next year the jews were banished from the country for ever. dionisia tejera llano 1 berceo’s el judiezno p. 353, v. 371. 2 chaucer’s the prioress tale p. 192, l. 146-47. the matter of israel ____________________________________________________________________ 17 university of deusto (bilbao) bibliography artilles, j. 1964: los recursos literarios de berceo. ed. gredos, madrid. baer, yitzhak 1981: historia de los judios en la españa cristiana. alcantara, madrid. 2 tomos. berceo, g. 1986: el libro de los milagros de nuestra. señora . publicaciones del instituto de estudios riojanos, logroño. chaucer, g. 1977: the canterbury tales, penguin classics. ellis, roger 1986: patterns of religious narrative in the canterbury tales. croom helm, london. garmonsway, g. n. 1984: the anglo-saxon chronicle. everyman’s library, london. historia 16 -año xviii nº 202 pp. 44-58. johnson, j. 1988: a history of the jews. harper perennial, new york. * † * selim 15.indb f. j. álvarez lópez, selim 13 (2005-2006): 95—113 the anglo-saxon chronicle, 755: an annotated bibliography of the cynewulf and cyneheard episode from plummer to bremmer1 abstract for more than a century, anglo-saxonists of all generations have shown their concern with the so-called ‘story of cynewulf and cyneheard’ writing numerous articles and editing now and again the entry for 755 in the anglo-saxon chronicle. the interests shown range from merely historical studies of this and other sources to prove (or distprove) its historical accuracy to literary studies of the annal’s style and its similitude to other contemporary scandinavian accounts. the aim of this annotated bibliography is to offer, in chronological order of publicaction, a comprehensive analysis of the several studies and editions publiched from the nineteenth century (plummer 1892-99) to the very first years of the twenty-fist century (2005). keywords: anglo-saxon chronicle, bibliography, cynewulf, cyneheard. resumen durante más de un siglo, anglosajonistas de todas las generaciones han mostrado su interés en la llamada ‘historia de cynewulf y cyneheard’ produciendo numerosos artículos y editando una y otra vez la entrada para el año 755 de la crónica anglosajona. los intereses mostrados abarcan desde estudios meramente históricos de ésta y otras fuentes documentales para probar (o rebatir) su veracidad histórica, hasta enfoques más literarios acerca del estilo del anal y su similitud con otros relatos escandinavos contemporáneos. la finalidad de esta bibliografía comentada es ofrecer, en orden cronológico de publicación, un análisis general de estos estudios y ediciones publicados desde el siglo diecinueve (plummer 1893-99) hasta los primeros años del siglo veintiuno (2005). palabras clave: crónica anglosajona, bibliografía, cynewulf, cyneheard. 1.1.introduction the main topic of this annotated bibliography concerns the so-called ‘story of cynewulf and cyneheard.’ my aim is to offer, in a chronological order of publication, a broad view of the different opinions established by generations 1 i would like to thank dr alex r. rumble for his helpful comments and dr jorge l. bueno alonso who encouraged me greatly in the process of revision of this bibliography. f. j. álvarez lópez 98 of anglo-saxonists around this particular annal which, although it deals with facts that took place between the years 755 and 784 (757 and 786, to be exact),2 was undoubtedly written down at the end of the ninth century (or beginning of the tenth) in the form we have today (see j. bately 1991: xxii). the scope of this analysis ranges from plummer’s influential edition of two of the saxon chronicles parallel (1892-9) up to the latest editions and articles in 2005. for the sake of practicality, i have decided to divide all the references into three clearly defined sections. the first offers most editions (that i am aware of) of the annal in its original language or translated into present-day english.3 the second section presents the bulk of the commentary dealing with the annal and its different critical trends (kinship vs. comitatus, oral tradition, saga connections, etc.). finally, a considerably shorter section closes this bibliography in which i offer a number of references which, not being essential for the study of the entry, do treat it in some way relevant to its understanding. thus, they range from editions of other medieval texts (such as the chronicles of æthelweard and gaimar) to more general studies on the anglo-saxon chronicle which briefly refer to this story.4 2 check ch. plummer, ed. 1952: 44, 56. it is more widely discussed by j. bately 1991: 32-5. 3 i have excluded here translations into other languages although i might hereby refer to the only version that i know of in one of my mother tongues: jorge l. bueno alonso (forthcoming): la épica de la inglaterra anglosajona: historia y textos del auge de mercia al declive de la monarquía, 750-1016 (vigo: university of vigo press). 4 i have also refrained from including in the main body of the bibliography the numerous works of mainly historical nature which cite the annal for 755 or at best retell its plot. among those we might find h. m. chadwick 1905: studies on anglo-saxon institutions. (cambridge: cup), p. 363; w. hunt 1908: cynewulf. in l. stephen & s. lee, dictionary of national biography (london: smith elder & co.), vol. 5, p. 372; ch. oman 1910: a history of england. vol. i. england before the norman conquest. (london: methuen), pp. 3356 and 338-9; r. h. hodgkin 1939: a history of the anglo-saxons. second edition (london: oup), vol. ii, pp. 393-5; p. hunter-blair 1963: roman britain and early england (edinburgh: nelson), pp. 251-2; f. stenton 1971: anglo-saxon england. third edition (oxford: oup), p. 208; d. whitelock 1991: the beginnings of english society. revised edition (london: penguin), pp. 32 and 37-8; h. r loyn 1991: anglo-saxon england and the norman conquest. second edition (harlow: longman), pp. 308-9; heather edwards 2004: cynewulf the asc 755: an annotated bibliography 99 the anglo-saxon chronicle has survived in seven manuscripts, each of them identified by plummer with a letter from a to g. a is considered to be the most important5 and the oldest, its earliest hand dating from the late ninth century or ‘very early tenth.’6 for more than a hundred years, scholars have discussed the possible relationships between all the extant copies in an attempt to define their origins.7 it has always been accepted that it was during the last part of the ninth century, ‘in the reign of king alfred, when the chronicle assumed its present form.’8 dorothy whitelock lists a group of possible sources which the first compiler might have ‘had at his disposal’. among them, she mentions ‘some epitome of universal history which has not been identified,’ bede’s historia ecclesiastica, some ‘northern annals,’ genealogies and ‘some sets of earlier west saxon annals.’ (whitelock 1955: 115) however, when she comes to discuss in more detail the annal for ad 755, she refers to: another type of source […] in which the circumstantial account of the feud between cynewulf and cyneheard has plainly been added to an earlier written source, though the incident may have been handed down by oral narrative for some time before it was put in writing. (whitelock 1955: 115). (d. 786). oxford dictionary of national biography, (oxford: oup) at [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/6990]. 5 r. fowler 1966: 3. (old english prose and verse. london: routledge). 6 d. whitelock 1979: 109. (english historical documents, c. 500-1042. london: eyre & spottiswoode). also n.r. ker 1957: 57-58, (catalogue of manuscripts containing anglo-saxon (oxford: clarendon press); where he describes it as an ‘upright hand s. ix-x.’ also bately (1991: 2); c. e. wright 1939: 26. (the cultivation of saga in anglo-saxon england. edinburgh: oliver & boyd); e. treharne 2004: 20. (old and middle english: an anthology. oxford: blackwell). 7 see bately (1991: 2); and plummer (1892-9: xxxvii-cii). 8 stenton (1971: 19). also in whitelock (1955: 114-115). f. j. álvarez lópez 100 certainly, many commentators have dealt with the possible sources of this ‘precious bit of old english prose narrative.’9 one of the main trends here seems to have been the association of this passage with the genre of the old norse sagas, especially after c. l. wrenn’s article ‘a saga of the anglosaxons.’10 nevertheless, in recent years, we find examples of voices which have successfully established a clear separation from that ‘scandinavian connection’ and demonstrated that despite some structural similarities (paratactic constructions, sudden change into direct speech) there is not enough textual evidence to sustain a comprehensible bond.11 another theme often related to this entry is that regarding the dichotomy of kinship and comitatus. with a few exceptions,12 scholars have commonly found this story as one of the best illustrations of the early germanic heroic tradition in anglo-saxon literature. the determination to fight for one’s lord (even when he is dead) against members of the same kin if necessary, is shown by most actors in this story and has placed this ‘most familiar of all old english heroic tales’ (shippey 1985: 221) at the same level of significance as the more celebrated epic poems, namely, the battle of maldon and beowulf. finally, more contemporary lines of thought seem to have also found its way through the scholarship devoted to the merantune episode. such is the case of the feminist reading offered by nina rulon-miller (1997: 113-32), with particular attention to the female character whom cynewulf decided to visit on that deadly night. 9 f. p. magoun (1933: 374); also c. l. wrenn (1940-1: 243). 10 wrenn (1940); fowler (1966: 4); wright (1939). 11 the main example of this ‘disagreement’ is represented by f. heinemann, (1993: 57-89). regarding the lack of evidence for the ‘saga connection’ see r. w. mcturk (1981: 81-127) who, despite an impressive effort is unable to come up with enough evidence to support his claim that ‘c&c is … comparable to an icelandic saga.’ (p. 81). 12 see, for example, s. d. white (1989: 1-18). the asc 755: an annotated bibliography 101 1.2.editions and translations plummer, charles 1952[1892-9]: two of the saxon chronicles parallel. 2 vols. vol. ii. (oxford: clarendon press), pp. 44-8. notes to plummer’s much praised edition of the annal (on pp. 46-50, vol. i). some of his comments on this entry may seem somewhat general (‘arrangements of a saxon house,’ p. 45) but he offers good references to other sources like æthelweard’s chronicle or bede’s historia ecclesiastica, and so it has commonly been accepted as the departure point for any research concerning this annal. his linguistic observations are also valuable as he gives a detailed description of some difficult grammatical structures and the different readings found in the various manuscripts. bright, james w. 41903: an anglo-saxon reader. (london: swan sonnenschein), pp. 14-15, 202-3. the author gives brief comments, mainly drawn from previous or contemporaneous scholars (earle, sweet ..., p. 202) to his edition of the annal from the parker chronicle. nevertheless, it appears to be hardly useful from a modern point of view. flower, r. & h. smith eds. 1941: the parker chronicle and laws (corpus christi college, cambridge, ms 173). early english text society, original series 208 (london: oup). although this is the only facsimile edition of this manuscript so far, it offers an excellent quality in its plates (see fol. 10a and fol. 10b for the annal ad 755). as the editors acknowledge in the preface, due to its wartime publication, the work unfortunately lacks an introduction with some remarks on the manuscript and its context. a new, perhaps digital, edition in full colour with such introductory notes would be desirable these days. f. j. álvarez lópez 102 whitelock, d. 1955: english historical documents, c. 500-1042. (london: eyre and spottiswoode), pp. 114-16, 162-3. considered one of the chief translations of the annal, this work offers valuable notes and comments on the whole chronicle, particularly on its sources as well as pointing out some alternative readings. though she dedicates one paragraph to the 755 entry and its possible sources (p. 115), it does not offer much new information. she also provides a short bibliography with some items mentioned here (p. 130). both of these were utterly removed from the second edition published in 1979. mitchell, b. & fred. c. robinson 72007[1964]: a guide to old english. (oxford: blackwell), pp. 220-3. in this book for elementary students of old english, the authors offer an edition of the entry accompanied by some preliminary comments on the annal in which they identify the most general topics of study around it (‘the heroic choice’, ‘oral tradition’, ‘spontaneous syntax’, etc., p. 220). it is certainly useful for students of the language, although the notes avoid going into any kind of detailed discussion. fowler, r. 1966: old english prose and verse. (london: routledge), pp. 46, 126-7. mainly introductory comments to fowler’s own edition of the old english text. he makes fairly general remarks without going into deep discussion. however, he successfully pinpoints the most relevant thematic arguments discussed to that moment (oral origin of the story, heroic values, etc.), as he emphasizes the literary nature of the account. there are a few references to previous scholars as well as a brief bibliography on p. 126, both of them the asc 755: an annotated bibliography 103 lacking some key references. the text itself seems to follow the conventional patterns established both morphologically and in its division into paragraphs. whitelock, d. ed. 1970[1967]: sweet’s anglo-saxon reader in prose and verse. fifteenth edition. (oxford: clarendon press), pp. 1-3. this is an influential edition of the annal in its original old english version with a few introductory notes. after a reference to its oral tradition, whitelock offers a rather negative view on the ‘unsophisticated’ style (p. 1) of the account which contrasts sharply with the importance that scholarship has conventionally given to this text. there is also some information on the manuscript tradition of the chronicle. garmonsway, g. norman ed. 1972: the anglo-saxon chronicle. (london: dent) a comparative translation of three different copies of the chronicle: namely, the parker and laud versions as well as the text from the f manuscript (cotton domitian a.viii) with certain references to other codices in the footnotes. garmonsway’s annotations are primarily focused on rather general issues such as the chronological dislocation of the annal, the definition of an anglo-saxon burh and certain minor differences between manuscripts. more discussion on deeper topics would have been desirable and more profitable for the reader’s understanding of the story and its implications. although the few names given refer to relevant figures (stenton, plummer, magoun), they appear to be slightly out of date. bately, janet ed. 1986: the anglo-saxon chronicle. a collaborative edition. vol. 3. ms a. (cambridge: d.s. brewer). a broad description of the manuscript is given in the introduction to this excellent edition of ms. a: corpus christi college, cambridge, ms 173. f. j. álvarez lópez 104 despite the fact that there is no direct reference to the 755 annal, the information about scripts, hands, layout and the different items in the book, as well as the study of the relationships between the different surviving manuscripts, make it worthy of consultation. magennis, h. & i. herbison 1990: discovering old english. (belfast: ultonian press), pp. 56-63. despite being a mere edition of the text (from ms. a) for students of old english accompanied by some conventional and introductory comments, the editors are able to develop the theme of the heroic tradition to a certain extent after praising the narrative virtues of the ‘first short story in english’ (p. 56). it is interesting to note that they divide the annal into three main parts, though apparently without following any specific pattern, only to make it easier for non-advanced students of the language. a useful layout is used as each of these portions is accompanied by a glossary on the same page and a list of valuable textual notes facing the entry. bravo, a., f. garcía & s. gonzález eds. 1994[1992]: old english anthology (oviedo: servicio publicaciones universidad de oviedo), pp. 291-3. this edition of the old english text is preceded by a short introduction mainly aimed at those interested in the chronicle as a whole. it offers some information on the different editions of the whole text as well as on the number of surviving manuscripts and their stemma. in the back of the anthology (pp. 456-7), the editors inserted another short note on this particular entry alluding rather broadly to its origin and offering only three bibliographical references and a few semantic and linguistic footnotes on the text itself (such as andred, pryfetes flodan or the narrative switch into direct style). some commentary on other problematic issues such as the heroic struggle between kin and king as well as further bibliographical details seem to be missing. the asc 755: an annotated bibliography 105 swanton, michael transl. and ed. 2000[1996]: the anglo-saxon chronicles (london: phoenix), pp. 46-50. as the author states in the introduction (p. xxx), his edition follows the same pattern used by earle and plummer (see p. 3 above). this double page layout with the translation of a and e (and references to the rest of the surviving copies where necessary) offers a mere update of garmonsway’s work (see p. 5 above). however, swanton presents one of the latest efforts to bring the most important source of anglo-saxon culture closer to both scholars and students of the period. treharne, elaine ed. 2004: old and middle english, c.890-c.1400: an anthology. second edition (oxford: blackwell), pp. 20-3. a very useful edition and translation of some annals from the chronicle with a short introduction in which the editor gives a rather general view of the whole work referring briefly to its possible origin, structure and educational aim. she also comments on the two extracts edited: the annals for 755, ‘the story of cynewulf and cyneheard’ and for 855-78, ‘the death of edmund’ and ‘alfred’s battles with the vikings.’ as she states in the introduction (p. xv), the ‘explanatory annotation’ preceding the bilingual rendering of these entries includes some ‘bibliographical information for students:’ some simple but accurate notes and a few bibliographical references, mainly on its latest editions. marsden, richard ed. 2004: the cambridge old english reader. (cambridge: cup), pp. 245-50. an edition of the vernacular text found in ms. a, accompanied by a critical apparatus dealing with both semantic and linguistic issues relating to the annal. the text itself is preceded by an introductory discussion where the f. j. álvarez lópez 106 editor refers to the main critical trends around this story. within only four paragraphs, he is able to skilfully pinpoint the main issues on the possible origin of the story, its key linguistic features or the semantic struggles the reader may be left with due to the so-called paratactic style. he also lists some useful bibliographical references as further reading. 1.3.commentary magoun, f. p. 1933: cynewulf, cyneheard and osric. anglia 57: 361-76. the author offers a new division of the paragraphs of the text ‘to facilitate reference within this paper and to emphasize […] the well-balanced structure of the episode’ (p. 363) as well as a list of all the ‘dramatis personae’ (p. 365), which is supported by a discussion of his new arrangement. nowadays, it may seem slightly out-of-date, although he is the first scholar to have openly admitted a possible connection with the old norse/icelandic sagas (plummer had just hinted at it very briefly – see p. 3 above) despite not pursuing the idea any further. wright, c. e. 1939: the cultivation of saga in anglo-saxon england. (edinburgh: oliver & boyd), pp. 26-7, 78-80. though much cited by later commentators, wright only dedicates two short fragments of his work to the annal. there he accepts its oral origin and its saga-like theme, structure and style, which prompts him to state that ‘the short introductory passage formed probably no part of the story in its originally saga-form’ (p. 80). unfortunately he is unable to give evidence to support this. he also renders a ‘fairly literal translation’ (pp. 78-80). wrenn, c. l. 1940-1: a saga of the anglo-saxons. history 25: 208-15. ‘there is one famous passage in the anglo-saxon chronicle which […] does bear a quite remarkable resemblance to an old icelandic saga in its stylistic the asc 755: an annotated bibliography 107 features’ (p. 210). the author gives an extensive definition of ‘saga’ and applies its various features to the chronicle annal after rendering his own translation. although some of his arguments are plausible (‘allusiveness’, ‘colloquial language’, ‘conciseness’, p. 22), he describes the story’s origin with a disappointing ‘very speculative explanation’(p. 213). despite being frequently referred to when discussing the saga-like origin of the annal, it appears to have lost most of its significance after heinemann’s article (see item 21). moorman, c. 1954: the anglo-saxon chronicle for 755. notes and queries 199: 94-8. moorman’s aim is to find the ‘connection’ used by the chronicler to give ‘his entry […] some sort of structural and thematic unity’ (p. 94). the british hostage plays that central role as he is identified by this commentator both as the swain and the ealdorman’s godson. extremely critical about magoun’s article (see p. 7 above), his proposal is tremendously doubtful and exceptionally implausible for he relies entirely on mere assumptions. towers, t. h. 1963: thematic unity in the story of cynewulf and cyneheard. journal of english and germanic philology 62: 310-316. in order to establish the thematic unity of the annal, the author examines and finally rejects the earlier proposals by magoun and moorman (see pp. 7 and 8 above). in his opinion ‘the political concept in this chronicle is much more sophisticated than the comitatus, and it comprehends the comitatus’ (p. 315). thus, that ‘political interest’ (p. 316) would give the story its ‘thematic harmony’ (p. 312). his argument is plausible in that a political background seems obvious behind the main action of the entry. however, he fails to consider appropriately the thematic relevance of some other elements, such as the heroic values in the dialogues prior to each fight or the theme of revenge. f. j. álvarez lópez 108 battaglia, f. j. 1966: anglo-saxon chronicle for 755: the missing evidence for a traditional reading. publications of the modern language association of america 81: 173-8. the author describes the annal as ‘a coherent narrative of internecine strife between branches of cerdic’s family tree.’ (p. 178) therefore, in his view the ‘missing evidence’ of the title comes to be the blood ties between sigeberht, cynewulf and cyneheard. however, his innovative reading depends to a great extent on later renderings of the story, mainly that of geoffrey gaimar, a twelfth-century chronicler (p. 176). he focuses his discussion, perhaps too much, in trying to justify the behaviour of the ‘kinsmen’ (p. 176) inside the burh with cyneheard as not betraying the comitatus spirit. waterhouse, r. 1969: the theme and structure of 755 anglo-saxon chronicle. philologische mitteilungen 70: 630-40. after establishing a new set of divisions and subdivisions of the text, waterhouse offers a rather unclear study of the annal’s structure based on a number of parallelisms and contrasts within her numerous sections and around the ‘ideal of comitatus-loyalty to one’s lord’ (p. 640). consciously ignoring ‘the historical accuracy … of the events recounted’ (p. 631), she probably goes further than the annalist in searching for a net of connections and interconnections within the account’s otherwise uncomplicated structure. wilson, j. h. 1977: cynewulf and cyneheard: the falls of princes. papers on language and literature 13, 3: 312-17. ‘in this paper, (wilson is) concerned with the […] interpretation of the entry and its dramatic quality’ (p. 312). he studies the dramatic implications of the ‘tragic catastrophe’ of the falls of the three royal characters (i.e., sigebryht, cynewulf and cyneheard) in order to obtain a ‘fuller understanding of the episode and a fuller appreciation of the accomplishment of the chronicler.’ (p. the asc 755: an annotated bibliography 109 317) he focuses mainly on the moral implications of ‘their attempts to elevate themselves in the defiance of authority and established order’ (p. 314), which eventually leads them to a fatal end. he offers a rather reduced view of the whole entry as he willingly ignores other current interpretations (‘comitatus’, ‘blood relationships’, ‘political overtones’, p. 317). mcturk, r. w. 1981: “cynewulf and cyneheard” and the icelandic family sagas. leeds studies in english 12: 81-127. the author attempts ‘an investigation of the claim made so often that c&c is in one way or another comparable to an icelandic saga’ (p. 81). although, in this highly elaborate article he carries out a dense formal and stylistic study of the annal in the light of previous literary theories regarding the icelandic sagas, he obtains not entirely successful results as he is unable to establish an effective connection between this entry and the icelandic tradition: ‘while the evidence for the formal characteristics […] in c&c is not overwhelming, it is perhaps rather more impressive than the evidence for oral style […]. over half of the twenty laws […] seem to be closely followed.’ (p. 113). shippey, t. a. 1985: boar and badger: an old english heroic antithesis? leeds studies in english 16: 220-39. the author studies here three pieces of the old english heroic tradition (the story of cynewulf and cyneheard, waldhere and the battle of maldon) in order to ascertain the response of an heroic ‘champion’ when under pressure, as he responds either with the ‘fury and impetus’ of a boar or with the ‘doggedness’ and ‘cost-effective defence’ of a badger (p. 225). besides examining cynewulf’s behaviour at the doorway (as a boar), he affirms the fictional nature of the king’s reaction to the sight of the usurper judging by the contextual difficulties of the moment (it happened at night). his proposal as regards this entry resides mainly in a sensible interpretation of the text and the possible annalist’s aims concerning the character of the king. f. j. álvarez lópez 110 white, s. d. 1989: kinship and lordship in early medieval england: the story of sigeberht, cynewulf and cyneheard. viator 20: 1-18. the author offers a reappraisal of the ‘codes’ ruling the loyalties of warriors in terms of kinship and lordship. departing from the traditional interpretation of the story (‘the decline of kinship and family’, p. 18), he sets out to offer a deeper study of this type of political relationship in the context of early medieval societies. his conclusions (‘it seems impossible to locate the definitive appearance of a society founded primarily on contract’, p. 18) seem not entirely convincing, as he rests his argument on the fact that ‘this author’s written text is not a definitive, impartial, or complete statement of law or custom’ (p. 7). the number of references given in the footnotes is certainly noteworthy. heinemann, f. j. 1993: “cynewulf and cyneheard” and landnámabók: another narrative tradition. leeds studies in english 24: 57-89. with the aim of ‘dispos(ing) of the notion that “cynewulf and cyneheard” resembles a saga’ (p. 58) the author establishes clearly the three main differences (intertextuality, treatment of subject matter and narrative voices, pp. 58-64) between this form of composition and a chronicle. next, he uses ‘three types of entries narrating extended conflict in landnámabók’ (p. 65), an old icelandic narrative chronicle, to test his claim ‘that sagas tell us more about the past than can any summary of their plot’ (p. 65). in the end, after establishing a clear link between this annal and those entries in landnámabók, he concludes that this ‘is not a saga but a rather tantalising summary of a complicated story that we are no longer able to reconstruct completely’ (p. 82). he successfully challenges all previous scholars who found this entry’s source in the icelandic saga tradition as he is able to establish a strong differentiation between the two. the asc 755: an annotated bibliography 111 johansen, j. g. 1993: language, structure and theme in the “cynewulf and cyneheard” episode. english language notes 31, 1: 3-8. in this commentator’s opinion, the purpose of the ‘structural subdivisions’ established by the annalist ‘is to focus our attention on the courage and prowess of cynewulf and his men, and […] to glorify those ideals and the individuals who live up to them’ (p. 7). his discussion does not seem to add anything really innovative to the current study of the annal and some of his assumptions appear to be questionable (‘cynewulf’s armies were large and splendid’, p. 3; ‘[osric’s band] penetrated … into the very chamber where cynewulf himself had been trapped earlier’, p. 4). besides, the references given in the footnotes also lack some significant names. kleinschmidt, harald 1996: the old english annal for 757 and west saxon dynastic strife. journal of medieval history 22, 3: 209-24. ‘this article seeks to place the unusual entry for 757 in the parker chronicle into the context of eighthand ninth-century controversies about hereditary succession in the kingdom of wessex’ (p. 209). as he explains, the author offers a deep historical study on the ‘dynastic legitimacy’ of the descendants of ine as a means to justify the alleged attitude of the ninth-century annalist against the three royal characters of the entry. thus, he arrives at the dubious conclusion that they ‘appear as villains and could be blamed for misgovernment and misbehaviour from the point of view of an insider critic because they belonged to a branch of the west saxon stirps regia which … had lost its struggle over rules for succession … in 802’(p.224). the impressive bibliography offered is certainly remarkable as it concerns a wide range of topics such as the succession to the other anglo-saxon kingdoms (p. 216), sutton hoo (p. 211), or beowulf (p. 217). bremmer, rolf h. jr. 1997: the germanic context of “cynewulf and cyneheard” revisited. neophilologus, 81, 3: 445-65. f. j. álvarez lópez 112 ‘what i propose here is a macro-contextualization that leads us away from the intermediate context of the annal’ (p. 447). this ‘macro-contextualization’ is based on three main points of discussion (uncle-nephew relation, wif’s role and the offer of feorh and feoh) which he seeks to explain by using a good number of examples from other literary traditions (such as those from iceland, frisia or lombardy). the first of his topics (an uncle-nephew relation between cynewulf and cyneheard) seems dubious, as bremmer fails to comment on the same relationship between cynewulf and sigebyrht twenty-nine years before. similarly, his explanation of the role of the female character (‘who falls prey – being raped – to the machinations of men thrusting for power’, p. 456) is, as the author admits, based on ‘speculation’ (p. 455). scragg, d. g. 1997: wifcyþþe and the morality of the cynewulf and cyneheard episode in the anglo-saxon chronicle. in roberts, j. & j. l. nelson with m. godden eds., alfred the wise: studies in honour of janet bately on occasion of her sixty-fifth birthday. (cambridge: d. s. brewer), pp. 179-85. scragg offers an interesting study around the meaning of the unique word wifcyþþe. he concludes that ‘the message of the piece is … arguably not a broadly moral one about heroic values but a specifically christian one’ (p. 184), and states that wifcyþþe offers ‘an opprobrious moral comment (which) may thus be regarded as changing the import of the annal’ (p. 185). however, as he rests his christian reading mainly on the figure of osric’s godson, miraculously the sole survivor from the last fight, he seems unable to fit the female character into his innovative interpretation. rulon-miller, nina 1997: “cynewulf and cyneheard”: a woman screams. philological quarterly 76: 113-32. ‘my concern in this essay is the woman cynewulf was visiting at merton’ (p. 113). from this starting point, the author applies a feminist reading to the the asc 755: an annotated bibliography 113 annal in order to ‘clean’ it from the traditional ‘androcentric’ interpretations which have placed ‘the woman at merton at best as a trivial event and at worst as “the cause of it all.”‘ (p. 124) her alternative analysis of the story seems to lack textual supporting evidence from the short piece as she claims, for instance, ‘the interpretation of sigeberht’s unryhtum dædum as “sexual misbehaviour”‘ (p. 121). hill, john m. 2000: violence, law and kingship in the annals of west saxon feud. in hill, j. m., the anglo-saxon warrior ethic. (gainesville: university of florida press), pp. 74-92. departing from an unlikely theory where the annalist of 755 would have made up this story from ‘some kind of outline of the incident’ (p. 74) and in response to alfred’s political interests, hill goes on to discuss the plot and all of its turns quoting the opinions of some relevant scholars and focusing all the time on ‘the question of rightful, […], legal deposition or expulsion of kingship’ (p. 74) in wessex. the main argument to support his innovative theory has to do with the ‘number of common features’ (p.74) that this annal shares with those narrating the story of æthelwold, alfred’s nephew (901 and 905). it is also remarkable the number of times he refers to other heroic narratives, especially beowulf, in order to establish some kind of generic heroic behaviour. conde silvestre, j. camilo 2004: the limits of history and fiction in the 755 entry of the anglo-saxon chronicle. in rodriguez, a. & f. alonso eds., voices of the past: studies in old and middle english language and literature. (a coruña: netbiblo), pp. 165-172. ‘“cynewulf and cyneheard” may be considered as a benchmark to explore the fading limits between factual and fictional narratives both theoretically, from the perspective afforded by contemporary literary theory, and genetically, by tracing the process back to the internal development of medieval chronicles.’ f. j. álvarez lópez 114 (p. 167) this quotation summarises what the author intends to accomplish in this article: a systematic application of contemporary literary theory to the entry in order to define the limits between reality and fiction. it represents an innovative attempt to tackle such a complicated issue in this particular entry obtaining interesting results: however, his conclusions seem to rest upon theoretical assumptions (‘the limits of history and fiction were blurred when texts of factual intention … started to make use of narrativity,’ p. 170) rather than upon textual evidence. 1.4.other useful references bell, alexander ed. 1960: geffrei gaimar, l’estoire des engleis. anglonorman text society, vols. xiv-xvi (oxford: b. blackwell), pp. 5761. this is the only edition of the twelfth-century compilation of previous material by geffrei gaimar who produced a chronicle in verse for his norman audience. his account of the cynewulf and cyneheard episode (ll. 1804-1916) has been sometimes quoted as it varies considerably from that in the anglosaxon chronicle (for instance, here cynewulf and cyneheard are presented as uncle and nephew). in the critical apparatus, the editor gives different readings found in the other extant manuscripts of gaimar. campbell, a. ed. and transl. 1962: the chronicle of æthelweard. (london: nelson), pp. xxiii, 22-5. campbell’s notes in the introduction warn the reader of the misreadings and misinterpretations made by æthelweard when he translated this annal into latin. his layout, with the latin text facing the modern english one, is considerably helpful. it has been widely cited by those scholars who argue about the identity of the wifcyþþe on merantune, as a result of the unfortunate translation made by æthelweard. the asc 755: an annotated bibliography 115 bately, janet 1978: the compilation of the anglo-saxon chronicle 60 bc to ad 890: vocabulary as evidence. proceedings of the british academy 64, 93-129. this is a study of the vocabulary in the ‘890 chronicle’ (p. 96), as the author calls it. on pp. 106-7 we find the only mention of the annal for 755. here she deals with its origins and nature with exceptional brevity, giving no more than one single reference (wrenn, p. 8 above). more interested about the ‘number of differences of usage between this account and other pre-885 annals’ (pp. 106-7), she does not offer any new relevant information for the study of the entry. o’keefe o’brien, k. 1991: heroic values and christian ethics. in godden, m. and lapidge, m., eds, the cambridge companion to old english literature. (cambridge: cup), pp. 107-25. in her commentary on the ‘unusually detailed representation of conflicts implicit in the heroic ethos,’ (p. 110) the author highlights ‘the focal point of the story … on social order,’ (p. 111) and the fact that it ‘focuses on the tensions created by the conflicting demands of kin and group, of king and usurper and of loyalty and self-interest’ (p. 111). this often-cited article places the entry into the wider context of the heroic tradition as it emphasizes the common features of its main anglo-saxon examples: namely, beowulf, the battle of maldon and the annal for 755. bremmer, rolf h. jr. 2005: old english heroic literature. in johnson, d., & treharne, e., eds, readings in medieval texts. interpreting old and middle english literature. (oxford: oup), pp. 75-90. within this general overview of the main examples of heroic texts in old english literature, the author refers to this entry (pp. 86-7) by recounting its plot and commenting rather briefly on the main heroic features of the story: f. j. álvarez lópez 116 ‘loyalty and revenge’ (p. 87). this is undoubtedly a good place to start for students interested in the heroic tradition surrounding early anglo-saxon england, but it appears somewhat broad from a scholastic point of view. francisco josé álvarez lópez university of manchester – universidade de vigo * † * selim06.pdf jesús l. serrano reyes, selim 6 (1998): 117—145 john of gaunt’s intervention in spain: possible repercussions for chaucer’s life and poetry1 there are many spanish references in the canterbury tales about historical events, geographical places and quotations from spanish authorities.2 spanish marks can be found not only through explicit allusions but in the implicit contents of the text, as i will show further on in the house of fame , in the canterbury tales, and in the book of the duchess. nevertheless, the importance of the relationship between chaucer and spain has traditionally been overlooked by readers and scholars. the publication of a short article, “chaucer en espagne? (1366)” by suzanne honoré -duvergé (1955: 9-13) revealing that chaucer visited spain with a safe -conduct granted by the king of navarre, shed a light on the obscurity of the period from october 1360 to june 1367. but this discovery “has led to speculation about his knowledge of spanish literature”3. an interesting question arises from benson’s (1991: 795) statement: if chaucer had a strong influence from france and italy, why could not he have any spanish influence, considering his stay in spain? 1 i cannot sufficiently express my gratitude to professor martin m. crow for his advice and great interest in this article and his encouragement to continue researching on chaucer and spain. 2 readers can find more information in: leon sendra, antonio & serrano reyes, jesús, “spanish references in the canterbury tales,” selim 2 (1992): 106-141. 3 benson, larry d., ed. “explanatory notes”, the riverside chaucer, 3rd edition, (oxford, 1991),p. 795. all chaucer quotations will be from this edition. about the spanish literary influence on chaucer’s work see jesús l. serrano reyes, didactismo y moralismo en geoffrey chaucer y don juan manuel: un estudio comparativo textual, córdoba: servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de córdoba, 1996. ____________________________________________________________________ 119 it is necessary to know as much as possible about chaucer’s relationship with spain in order to determine the real historical background to show the minimum conditions for a literary influence. i propose to clarify some important historical events about the english in tervention in spain (xiv century), focusing on those in which chaucer may have been involved, and giving a connection between chaucer’s texts and the historical context. the possibility of chaucer’s stay in montserrat (barcelona) in 1366 and my argument showing that philippa chaucer may have died in spain (1386-87) may be important enough to bring the reader to a new reading of chaucer’s texts. i will contribute new historical information by means of pero lopez de ayala’s chronicles,1 avoiding the excessive repetition of the historical background,2 and, in any case, considering the old re searches from a new point of view. i will try to demonstrate how chaucer may have been involved in the events and how he reflected not only the events but his attitude through his poetry. i start from 1366 following a historical linear period. what did chaucer visit spain for? as baugh (1968: 69) says “we may never know the precise nature of his mission”. the only real document is the one mentioned above which has been included by martin m. crow and clair olson (1966: 64) in chaucer life -records, and we cannot deduce any clear reason for his journey. several possible explanations have been suggested for chaucer’s journey. following baugh (1968: 56), suzanne honoré -duvergé believes “that chaucer may have joined the forces of trastamara and taken part in the military campaign”. there is a mistake in this opinion and as crow and olson (1966: 65) state: 1 all ayala quotations are from martin, j. l., ed., pero lópez de ayala. crónicas. barcelona: planeta, 1991. 2 for general historical background see russell, p.e. the english intervention in spain and portugal in the time of edward iii and richard ii, (oxford, 1955); armitage-smith, s., john of gaunt: king of castile and leon; duke of aquitane and lancaster; earl of derby, lincoln, and leicester; seneschal of england. 1904; rpt. london: constable & co., 1964; goodman, a., john of gaunt: the exercise of princely power in fourteenth-century europe. new york: st. martin’s press, 1992. ____________________________________________________________________ 120 the sympathy of the english court seems at the time to have been with the cause of don pedro. another possibility was offered by crow and olson supposing that chaucer was a simple pilgrim to the shrine of st. james. baugh (1968: 56) refuses both possibilities and about the second one he thinks that: travelling with three companions (not separately identified), with servants, horses, and an amount of luggage that seemed important enough to be included in the permission, suggest a more official mission. in view of the war, clearly have chosen to go by way of navarre when english pilgrims to compostella habitually went to coruña in galicia by sea. the purpose of chaucer’s mission is not easy to define, and perhaps will never be known with certainty. this argument is not consistent enough to reject crow and olson’s opin ion: pilgrims went to galicia through the “french way”1 and many pilgrims arrived at galicia from england by ships, most of the times, in those which went full of pilgrims to import wine and went back to england in ships to export wool.2 this is my hypothesis: chaucer went to spain to persuade english knights to abandon he nry of trastamara because the english military forces would fight on the side of king peter. baugh suggests the same idea but with no document to support it, and casting doubt on this possibility. i will give some information about the political situation which surrounded the english intervention to provide the necessary insight to understand my hypothesis. i will expound my hypothesis focusing the interest on sir hugh calveley, the most important english knight in the “gran companye”, during the closest period of time to the date of chaucer’s safe -conduct. the castilian king peter was an ally of england under the mutual treaty of 22 june 1362, which was ratified by edward iii (february 1, 1363) and by king 1 see vazquez de parga, lacarra, j. m. & uria, peregrinaciones a santiago, (madrid, 1948). 2 see tate, brian, el camino de santiago, (barcelona, 1987) and the interesting book by wendy r. childs, anglo-castilian trade in the later middle ages . manchester: manchester university press, 1978. ____________________________________________________________________ 121 peter (september 28, 1364). this political and military alliance forbade english knights the participation in the forces on the side of trastamara. the companies invaded castile and calveley’s most important steps might be significant to support my hypothesis: a) december, 1365. du guesclin and most his forces reached barcelona shortly after december 25. calveley was already there.1 b) february, 1366. it was the middle of february before all were in saragossa, including pedro iv. c) march, 1366. early in march calveley opened the attack by turning north and following the course of the ebro, passed through the southern tip of navarre, and reached alfaro in castilian territory. when the town refused to surrender he pushed on to calahorra. d) march, 1366. by march 16 trastamara was declared king. on march 26 he was officially crowned at a monastery on the outskirts of burgos. peter, the cruel, had fled from seville to galicia and finally to bayonne asking for the black prince’s help. the anglo -castilian treaty had already been invoked2 when king peter sent his adviser martín lópez de córdoba to england in november, 1365.3 baugh (1968: 66) includes in his article how edward iii sent a letter to calveley and other english knights on december 6, 1365, addressed to: noz cheres & folialx, johan de chandos, visconte de seint salveur, hughe de calverle, nichol de dagworth, & willliam de elmham, chivalers.4 1 all these quotations on calveley’s steps are from baugh (1968: 55-69). 2 see garbaty, t. j., “chaucer in spain, 1366: soldier of fortune or agent of the crown?”, mln 5, (1967): 81-87. i am most grateful to professor garbáty for his valuable advice concerning this article. 3 see rades y andrada, f., chrónicas de las tres órdenes y cavallerías de santiago, calatraua y alcántara. (toledo, 1572), fol. 29v. 4 baugh includes part of the letter and give the following reference in the note 21: “the letter is printed in foedera (record ed.), iii, ii, p. 779”. ____________________________________________________________________ 122 it is clear, as baugh (1968: 69) states, that the letter “had failed to reach them in time.” edward iii may have tried other ways to convince “them”. i do not agree with baugh’s (1968: 69) final statement “whether he ever caught up with them is doubtful.” was chaucer successful in his mission? ayala (j. l. martín ed. 1991: 341) answers the question: … mosen hugo de caureley, que era un caballero inglés con quatrocientos de caballo de su compaña, que tenía consigo de inglaterra, partió del rey don enrique, e fuese para navarra, por quanto su señor el príncipe de gales venía de la otra parte, e non podía ser contra el. e el rey don enrique, como quier que sopo que el dicho mosén hugo partía del, e le pudiera facer algund enojo, non lo quiso facer, teniendo que el dicho caballero facía su debdo en se ir a servir a su señor el príncipe, que era fijo de su señor el rey de inglaterra.1 ayala shows the arguments which convinced not only sir hugh calveley but henry of trastamara himself because they were the arguments signed in the anglo -castilian treaty of 1362. chaucer’s success is beyond all doubt. but ayala’s chronicles (j. l. martín ed. 1991: 344) reafirm this success even more, because calveley not only abandoned henry of trastamara, he took part in the battle of najera against him: de la parte del rey don pedro fue ordenada la batalla en esta guisa. todos vinieron a pie, e en la avanguardia venía el duque de alencastre , hermano del príncipe, que decían don juan, e mosén juan chandós, que era condestable de guiana por el príncipe, e mosén raúl camois, e mosén hugo de caureley, e mosén oliver, señor de clison, e otros muchos caballeros e escuderos de inglaterra e de bretaña.2 1 “the knight hugh calveley, who was an english knight with four hundred cavalry men in his company, who came from england, abandoned king henry, and went to navarre because his lord, the prince of wales came from the other side and he could not fight against him. and when king henry knew that this hugh had left him, and he might get angry, he did not, considering that the knight did his duty in going to serve his lord the prince, who was the son of the king of england.” 2 “on the side of king peter, the batle was planned as it follows: everyone was on foot, and the duke of lancaster, who was called john, the prince’s brother, was in the vanguard with the knight john chandos, who was the military chief of guiana, ____________________________________________________________________ 123 and some days after the victory of najera: otrosí el príncipe de gales envió luego al rey de aragón por mensajero a mosén hugo de caureley, un caballero de inglaterra a tratar con él sus amistades.1 so, after the battle sir hugh calveley is at the black prince’s service as a reliable person. william mccolly (1988: 84) contributes information confirming that calveley abandoned henry of trastamara in spite of his links to him and his ally peter iv of aragon: to reward calveley for his role in the defeat of pedro the cruel in 1366, henry of trastamara gave calveley the county of carrion and the title of count of carrion. after najera (1367), and one more on the castilian throne, pedro confirmed the grant. calveley was such an important figure at the aragonese court that he married an aragonese princess, the doña constanza. this fundamental role to keep a latent alliance between the english and the aragonese court was not only supported on calveley’s marriage but in the aragonese king’s interest. in 1366, as suárez fernández (1970: 444) says, peter iv was very attentive with the english leaders: las tropas inglesas y francesas indistintamente, comenzaron a pasar por cataluña en enero de 1366. pedro iv hizo objeto de es peciales atenciones a los capitanes británicos para conservar un puente tendido hacia la amistad inglesa.2 chaucer’s success may have been rewarded as it is clearly reflected in a document where he is considered “dilectus valectus noster”, and tout (1929: 384) shows that: and raul camois, and sir hugh calveley, and oliver, lord of clison, and other many knights and squires from england and brittany.” 1 j. l. martin ed. (1991: 360): “and afterwards the prince of wales sent sir hugh calveley, a knight from england, as a messanger to the king of aragon to treat his leagues with him.” 2 the english and french forces started passing through catalonia in january, 1366. peter iv paid special attentions to the british captains to keep an open way to the english friendship. ____________________________________________________________________ 124 in 1367, and probably earlier, he was yeoman or “valectus” of the king’s chamber, and afterwards had the higher rank of the squire of the chamber. it was, however, usual to employ chamber officers on delicate missions at home and abroad. is there any connection between chaucer’s texts and these historical events? where and how are they reflected? i will show two texts: the two stanzas in the monk’s tale about “petro, glorie of spayne”, which will be commented further on, and the two explicit spanish references in the house of fame.1 whan i was fro thys egle goon, i gan beholde upon this place. and certein, or i ferther pace, i wol yow al the shap devyse of hous and site, and al the wyse how i gan to thys place aprocche that stood upon so hygh a roche, hier stant ther non in sp ayne. (1110-1117) in “the explanatory notes” of the riverside chaucer (p. 986, n. 1116-17) we can read that “baugh (45) suggests the rock of gibraltar, but there is no indication chaucer went that far south.” this is, certainly, a high rock, but there is no evidence of the important variety of elements (“castel, tour, pynacles, ymageries, tabernacles, pilers, …”) included in “the hous of fame for to descryve-” (1105) by chaucer. i believe the “hygh roche” is montserrat, a high mountain, 35 kilometres fro m barcelona. the following quotation from an encyclopaedia shows a general parallelism with the description of the “hygh roche”, (montserrat): … las aguas tanto pluviales como procedentes de la fusión de las nieves, ejercen en dichas grietas su acción química y mecánica, a la vez erosiva y desnudadora, asurcándoles y ensanchándoles de continuo, y dando a las rocas esas formas caprichosas y 1 on this matter may be of interest the reading of two papers presented in selim conferences: the first, antonio león sendra & jesús l. serrano reyes, “chaucer and montserrat” in castellón, 1995; the second, jesús l. serrano reyes, “‘els castells humans’: an architectural element in the house of fame” in vitoriagasteiz, 1996. both papers will be published in the forthcoming proceedings. ____________________________________________________________________ 125 fantásticas de columnas y fortalezas, de monstruos y gigantes, de aves y de fieras, etc. tales filigranas de escultura, que tanto sorprenden y admirán a viajeros y turistas son el resultado combinado de las energías internas y de los agentes destructores atmosféricos. aparte de esta rara y admirable fisonomía externa, presenta en su interior una estructura caótica y cavernosa semejante a los antros del averno.1 there are many rocks in montserrat which are called, depending on their shapes, “bewitched giant”, “dead head” “flutes”, etc., and caves of saltpetre like the “virgin room”, which show the original morphology of the mountain. apart from these natural shapes, there are many carvings in some places of the mountain, for instance, the sculptures on the rocks forming “los misterios”2 and the “via cruxis”. all of them constitute part of the devotion place whose heart is the famous monastery of montserrat. it was a benedictine monastery in the x century. baugh (1968: 63) informs that sir hugh calveley was in barcelona by november 4, 1365, and “on january 1, 1366 pedro iv feasted all the leaders of the companies”3 in barcelona. chaucer starts his “story” in the “book i” of the house of fame with this verse: “of december the tenthe day” (111). it may have been a real date of 1365 according with the historical data. edward iii sent a letter to the en glish leaders on 6 december, 1365. the tenth of december may have been the date of chaucer’s departure. the poet says at the end of “book i”: myn eyen to the hevene i caste. thoo was i war, lo, at the laste, that faste be the sonne, as hye 1 enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo americana. vol. xxvi. barcelona: espasa y calpe, 1973, p. 780. “rain waters and the water from melting snow, exert their chemical and mechanical actions on the mentioned fissures, erosive and bare, furrowing and expanding them continually, making the rocks those odd and fantas tic shapes of columns and fortresses, of monsters and giants, of birds and wild animals, etc. such carving watermarks, which make an intentive impression and admiration to travellers and tourists, are the result of the internal powers and the destructive atmosperic agents. apart from this odd and admirable external face, it has a chaotic and cavernous structure like the caverns of the hell.” 2 “the misteries”. 3 ayala confirms it. see j. l. martín ed. (1991: 310-311). ____________________________________________________________________ 126 as henne myghte i with myn yë, me thoughte i saugh an egle sore, but that hit semed moche more then i had any egle seyn. (495-501) there is a parallelism between this eagle and the one included in a viro lay, an unsigned literary work widespread in the xiv century, which begins “aygla capdalt volant pus altament”.1 it was dedicated to the virgin of montserrat and appears in every anthology and history of montserrat. it may have been a poem to sing. the eagle carries chaucer to montserrat, that is, … to a place which that hight the hous of fame, to do the som disport and game, in som recompensacion of labour and devocion. (662-667) montserrat is well known as a place of devotion. the pilgrimage dates from the xii century. people went there to pray to the virgin of the monastery (“pel”): ther mette i cryinge many oon, “a larges, larges, hold up wel! god save the lady of thys pel,” (1308-1310) when the eagle saw “the hous of fame” cried out: “seynt julyan, loo, bon hostel!” (1022),2 wishing chaucer a good lodging. hospitality was a characteristic of montserrat where there were enough rooms to lodge the pilgrims. the altitude of the “hygh roche” is emphasised from the beginning: “be twixen hevene and erthe and see,” (715). people can see from the top of montserrat (saint jerome’s viewpoint) not only barcelona and the sea but valencia, aragon, the french pyrenees and the balearic islands: 1 “eagle of high head that flies very high.” 2 “seynt julyan” is the patron saint of hospitality. ____________________________________________________________________ 127 and y doun gan loken thoo, and beheld feldes and playnes, and now hilles, and now mountaynes, now valeys, now forestes, and now unnethes grete bestes, now ryveres, now citees, now tounes, and now grete trees, now shippes seyllynge in the see. (896-903) chaucer himself says how difficult was to climb the mountain: “to clymbe it greved me” (1119).1 what did the “companies” go to barcelona for? peter iv used to go to montserrat to pray to the virgin before a campaign. he went in 1343 before attacking majorca: subió a montserrat el rey don pedro iv el ceremonioso para encomendar a la virgen, por medio de los monjes y ermitaños, la empresa de mallorca.2 it was winter (from november to february) when they were there. chaucer reflects it: but of what congeled matere/ hyt was … (1126-27), they were almost ofthowed so that of the lettres oon or two was molte away of every name, (1143-45) i have cited above “la fusión de las nieves”3 describing montserrat. calveley and his companions were feasted in barcelona by peter iv. they prepared the attack against castile. when the spanish kings visited their cities, in the middle ages, some ceremonial activities, as nieto soria (1993: 1 montserrat is a mountain with these measurements: 10 kilometres long, 5 kilometres wide, 26 kilometres perimeter and 1236 metres high. 2 enciclopedia universal ilustrada europea americana, 786. “king peter iv, the ceremonious, went up to montserrat to entrust the campaing of majorca to the virgen by means of the monks and the hermits”. 3 “the melting snows”. ____________________________________________________________________ 128 129-120) shows, were organized, such as “danzas de espadas”1, and these activities had “una innegable dimensión propagandística”2. chaucer describes the stage: ther saugh i famous, olde and yonge, pipers of the duche tonge, to lerne love-dances, sprynges, reyes, and these straunge thynges. tho saugh i in an other place stonden in a large space, of hem that maken blody soun in trumpe, beme, and claryoun; for in fight and blod-shedynge ys used gladly clarionynge. ther herde i trumpen messenus, of whom that speketh virgilius. there herde i trumpe joab also, theodomas, and other mo; and alle that used clarion in cataloigne and aragon, that in her tyme famous were to lerne, saugh i trumpe there. (1233-1250) there are many elements in the text which reflects the historical situation: peter iv, henry of trastamara and calveley with other free lances were in a public festivity before attacking castile. it is well known that the companies included dutch. chaucer mentions them: “pipers of the duche tonge”. the stage shows another site for the forces “stonden in a large space” which implies the great number of men ready for the war. all musical instruments are for war: “for in fight and blod-shedynge”; and, among the famous “theodomas, messenus” and “joab”, the trumpets from “cataloigne and aragon” are mentioned as “in her time famous”. chaucer may have been impressed by that pompous and public festivity as it is reflected in the description of the house of fame . he, a good observer, described that show, having his ears and eyes as the best instruments 1 “sword dance”. 2 “an undeniable propaganda dimension”. ____________________________________________________________________ 129 to perceive it, and the narrator confirms it repeating persistently the verbs “saugh” and “herde”. there is an interesting word to research: “reyes”. the riverside chaucer1 gives this explanation: “reyes (translating a dutch word) are ring dances”. i do not know which dutch word is, but it is a spanish word meaning “kings”. it may have been a spanish dance like the “sardana”, the tipical catalan dance, where men and women dancing make a wheel. there is a very important and significant festivity in spain called “reyes”, which is celebrated on 6 january. many churches included the performance “officium stellae” in the night offices, in “ reyes”, in the middle ages. and chaucer continues describing the feast with “jugelours, magiciens, tragetours, phitonesess, charmeresess, wicches, sorceresses, exorsisacions, fumygacions …” (1259-1264). it is well known that peter iv, the host, was called “el ceremonioso”2 and that he loved not only literature but alchemy and astrology. this is just a bit example of the many parallelisms to support this hypothesis but there is a short space in this article to expound the whole compara tive analysis.3 chaucer may have taken edward iii’s letter to calveley or not. his safe conduct from 22 february to 24 may, by charles ii of navarre, implies just the failure of the english king’s letter to make calveley and other english knights abandon henry of trastamara. goodman (1992: 46) narrates how: in january 1367 carlos allied with enrique of trastamara and closed the pyrenean passes to the black prince. at the end of january the latter sent gaunt to meet carlos at st jean pied de port and to scort him to a conference with the prince and pedro at peyrehorade. there the king one more changed sides and the terms for an alliance were reaffirmed. setting out in mid -february, the army struggled through snow-covered passes till they reached the shelter of roncesvalles. 1 “explanatory notes”, 986. 2 “the ceremonious”. it is very significant according with the description of the ceremony. 3 i will expound this hypothesis in forthcoming articles. ____________________________________________________________________ 130 chaucer was not of the party. he was probably trying to follow calveley and his english companions. ayala (j. l. martín ed. 1991: 341) shows how while henry of trastamara was in haro, “ordenando sus gentes para la batalla”1, sir hugh calveley abandoned him. this conflict was the origin of john of gaunt’s claim to the throne of castile. it is necessary or at least highly desirable to give a short explanation. the duke of lancaster, who had fought at najera (1367), would marry constance of castile, peter’s daughter. this policy of marriage was suggested by sir guichard d’angle as braddy (1935: 77) points out: moreover, he was instructed with and succeded in the negotiations for the marriage alliance. afterwards, he was present when the nuptials of the duke and constance were solemnized at rochefort. shortly after this marriage, the duke of lancaster claimed the crown of castile and leon. the process of this claim lasted sixteen years. the history of this period of time is included in ayala’s chronicles. i think that from the beginning the idea of no success was quite clear for the duke of lancas ter. he tried to get as much as possible from this conflict. there were two important interests: the duchess constance wanted to avenge the murder of her father, and the duke of lancaster wanted to re cover what his father-in-law did not pay. but the intensity of the claim in creased depending on the real possibility of a victory. so there were no important acts until 1386 when portugal gave the duke of lancaster the opportunity of fighting together against castile. in 1373, as ayala (j. l. martín ed. 1991: 466) shows, the duke of lancaster was claiming not the crown but the price of it: el rey don carlos de navarra vino al rey don enrique a madrid, e fabló con él, que el rey de inglaterra e el príncipe de gales serían sus amigos, e que se tirase de la liga del rey de francia, e que el rey de inglaterra e el príncipe dexarían la guerra que avían con él, e non ayudaría a las fijas del rey don pedro que estaban en inglaterra; e para esto el rey don enrique diese al príncipe de gales alguna suma de dineros por la debda que le debía el rey don pedro de los gajes que ovieron de aver él e los otros señores e gentes de armas, los 1 “preparing his forces for the battle.” ____________________________________________________________________ 131 quales él pagara por venir con el rey don pedro a castilla. e que faciendo el rey don enrique esto, el príncipe dexaría todas las otras demandas del regno de castilla, e así lo faría el duque de alencastre, que era casado con doña constanza, fija del rey don pedro.1 henry of trastamara did not pay any attention to this blackmail. eek plato seith, whoso kan hym rede, the wordes moote be cosyn to the dede. (a 741-742) in 1374, ayala (j. l. martín ed. 1991: 475) informs that henry of trastamara had news about the duke of lancaster’s preparations to invade castile from aquitanie: e llamábase el dicho duque de alencastre rey de castilla e de león, e traía armas de castillos e de leones.2 “this kyng” (1314) as he was called at the end of the book of the duchess is an interesting example of propaganda at that age. this time, as in 1381 when the duke of cambridge (“mosén aymón”),3 tried it once again, the results were the same: the loss of many men obliged them to retreat before fighting. in 1385, following ayala’s chronicles (j. l. martín ed. 1991: 607), the king of portugal gave the duke of lancaster the last chance of getting what he wanted long ago: el maestre davis, que se llamaba rey de portogal, avía enviado mensajeros a inglaterra, especialmente al duque de alencastre, … 1 “king charles of navarre met king henry in madrid, and he talked with him that the king of england and the prince of wales would be his allies and he should leave the agreement with the king of france and then the king of england and the prince would leave the war against him, and they would not help the daughters of king peter, who were in england, in exchange for some amount of money for the prince of wales because of the debt which king peter had contracted with him and other knights who were paid to come with king peter of castile. and if king henry did so, the prince would give up to the other claims of the kingdom of castile, and the duke of lancaster, who was married to constance, king peter’s daughter, would do the same.” 2 “ and this duke of lancaster was called king of castile and leon, and he brought coats of arms of castles and lions.” 3 he had married to elizabeth, constance’s little sister. ____________________________________________________________________ 132 por los cuales le facía saber cómo el rey de castilla fuera des baratado, e avía perdido muchas gentes suyas de las mejores que en el regno de castilla avía, e que agora tenía tiempo de se venir el dicho duque para castilla.1 on the other hand, the results of the parliament of 1385 in england may have helped gaunt to decide as is reflected in palmer’s (1971: 480) article: there is something equally curious about the fact that no grant was made to john of gaunt. he was the only one of the king’s uncles who did not benefit from his nephew’s liberality at this time.” ayala (j. l. martín ed. 1991: 614) narrates how the duke arrived at galicia on july 25, 1386, with his family: dende a pocos días llegáronle nuevas al maestre davis cómo el duque de alencastre era aportado con pieza de navíos e de gentes en la villa de la coruña, que es en galicia, día de santiago, e cómo tomara y algunas galeas que falló del rey de castilla, e que la gente que el dicho duque traía eran mil e quinientas lanzas, e otros tantos archeros, e todo de muy buena gente. e traía consigo su mu jer doña constanza, que era fija del rey don pedro, e una fija que avía della, que decían doña catalina. e traía otras dos fijas que el duque oviera primero de otra mujer con quien fuera casado antes, fija de otro duque de alencastre e conde de dervi que fuera antes que dél, e a la mayor decían doña phelipa, la cual casó entonce con el maestre davis que se llamaba rey de portugal, segund adelante diremos, e a la otra decían doña isabel, la cual casó entonce con un caballero que venía con el duque, que decían mosén juan de holanda, que fuera hijo de la princesa e de mosén thoma s de holanda, e era entonce mosén juan de holanda en esa cabalgada, e el duque de alencastre fízole su condestable.2 1 “… the grand master davis, who was called king of portugal, had sent messengers to england, especially to the duke of lancaster, to communicate how the king of castile had been defeated and had lost many soldiers, the best ones in the kingdom of castile, and how this duke would have the chance to come to castile.” 2 “the grand master davis had news few days ago of how the duke of lancaster had arrived with ships and military men at the town of la coruña, which is in galice, the day of st. james, and how he took some ships of the king of castile, and the militarymen were 1500 lances and a like number of archers and all of them were ____________________________________________________________________ 133 ayala gives important information: john of gaunt’s wife and his daughters went with him. one was catherine, constance’s daughter, and the others were blanche’s daughters. as is well known, the duke of lancaster granted a pension of ten pounds a year to chaucer’s wife philippa, for her services to his wife constance in august 1372. it was when they were just married. if philippa was in cons tance’s service, she ought to be in her service in galicia in 1386. constance’s husband’s daughters were to marry important men and her own daughter catherine would marry henry iii of castile. constance’s need of household chores might be important enough to get rid of philippa, who was very well paid and highly esteemed.1 the duke of lancaster and the king of portugal, as ayala (j. l. martín ed. 1991: 616) shows: acordaron que pasado el invierno deste año, luego al comienzo del verano siguiente entrasen en castilla con todo su poder. e de allí adelante cada uno comenzó a reparar sus gentes, e se apercivía para aquel tiempo. pero en este medio ovo en galicia mortandad grande en los ingleses, en tal guisa, que los mas e las mejores capitanes que el dicho duque de alencastre avía traido consigo murieron allí, e otros muchos de los archeros e gentes de armas.2 good. and he brought with him his wife constance, who was the daughter of king peter and a daughter who had been born of her, who was called catherine, and he brought other two daughters who the duke had of anot her woman he married before, who was daughter of another duke of lancaster and earl of derby, the elder was called philippa, who married the grand master of davis, who was called king of portugal, as further on we tell, and the other daughter was called elisabeth, who married then a knight who come with the duke, who was called john of holland, who was son of the princess and thomas of holland, because the duke of lancaster made him his military chief.” 1 on march 19 1386 she was admitted to the fraternit y of lincoln cathedral, a custom for the royal family. 2 “they decided that after the winter of that year at the beginning of the next year they would enter castile with all their power. from that moment they began to prepare their troops for that time. but in those days a high number of victims happened among the english, so that the greatest and best captains who were brought by the duke lancaster, died there, and many other archers and military men.” ____________________________________________________________________ 134 they would be in galicia from july 25 1386 until the next summer. but instead of increasing their power making preparations for the attack they were defeated, before fighting, by the worst enemy: “pestilence”. so they did not wait until the summer, and in march 1387 they invaded castile. ayala (j. l. martín ed. 1991: 627) narrates the situation: después que entró en castilla, siempre ovo grand mortandad en sus compañas, en guisa que perdió muchas gentes de las suyas; e segund se sopo por cierto, morieron trescientos caballeros e escuderos, e uchos archeros e otras gentes.1 philippa chaucer might be among ‘otras gentes’ checking this event with martin crow and virginia leland’s (1991: xix) information: philippa chaucer, to whom he had been married for at least twentyone years, disappeared from the records after 18 june 1387 and is presumed to have died. if chaucer married philippa in 1366, (the same year he was in spain), he became a widower when philippa chaucer died in spain in 1386-1387. so, she probably died in spain of “pestilence”. it may have had very negative repercussions for chaucer. the duke of lancaster and the king of portugal could not stand mo re than two months in castile from march 1387, as ayala (j. l. martín ed. 1991: 628) narrates: e el tiempo que andovieron por castilla estas compañas pudo ser fasta dos meses poco más o menos.2 they knew that two thousand french soldiers were near them and they went back to portugal. they stayed there until, at least, the end of 1387. the king of castile, john i, sent ambassadors to troncoso, a village in portugal, where john of gaunt was, and he accepted the king of castile’s proposals: 1 “after entering castile, there was great mortality in his company, so that he lost many of his people, and as it was well known, three hundred knights and squires and many archers and other people.” 2 “and they stayed over castile about two months.” ____________________________________________________________________ 135 his daughter catherine would married the king’s heir, henry, and he and his forces would leave portugal and would go to bayonne. may chaucer have been in spain again? (1386-1388). it may not be a mere coincidence that, after twelve years, he left the customs and the free rent house in algate. it is true that his patron had less power being in spain, but it is not less true that chaucer might be necessary. negotiations between the duke of lancaster and the king of portugal had just started on arriving at galicia. moreover, before invading castile in march 1387 ayala (j. l. martín 1991: 625) informs that el duque envió un caballero que decían mosén tomás de persy1 al rey de castilla, e allí se trató el casamiento del infante don en rique, fijo del rey don juan, con doña catalina, fija del duque de alencastre e de doña constanza, su mujer.2 john of gaunt, as i have already mentioned, had in mind the idea of a negotiation to get money. so, diplomacy was more effective and fruitful than war. in this case diplomatic servants were mo re essential even than soldiers. war was useful to press, it was just a token on the chessboard. ayala (j.l. martín ed. 1991: 615) shows how before thomas percy was sent to the king of castile, this king had sent his ambassador, secretly, to the duke of lancaster: le dixo el dicho prior al duque de alencastre secretamente3, que la razón porque él más viniera a él era que el rey don juan de castilla le enviaba decir que el duque non avía más de una fija de su mujer doña constanza, fija del rey don pedro, que llamaban doña catalina, a que el rey don juan avía un fijo, e que se ficiese casamiento dellos e serían herederos de los regnos de castilla e de 1 this was one of chaucer’s friends who took part in the english intervention in spain. he was fighting in galicia in 1385, probably preparing the duke of lancaster’s arrival on july 25, 1386 (st. james’ day): “fue en 1385 tomada por los ingleses bajo el mando de sir thomas percy, la villa de rivadavia”. amador de los ríos, historia social, política y religiosa de los judios de españa y portugal, ii (madrid, 1984), 330, n. 3. (“rivadavia village was taken by the english troops in 1385 under the command of sir thomas percy”) 2“the duke sent a knight, who was called thomas percy, to the king of castile, and there they treated the marriage of the infant henry, the son of king john, with catherine, daughter of the duke of lancaster and constance, his wife.” 3 “secretamente” shows john of gaunt’s diplomatic strategy. ____________________________________________________________________ 136 león, e cesaría esta quistion e guerra. e el duque lo oyó de buen talante e plógole 1 dello.2 two key dates can help to support the suspicion of chaucer’s stay in spain (1366-1387?): in may of 1387, as robinson (1957: 1026) refers, his royal annuity was transferred to another person. the transfer was made at chaucer’s request, so that is possible that he sold it for a sum of ready cash a rather more drastic way of raising money than borrowing on one’s life insurance, but not entirely dissimilar. about may of 1387 the king of portugal and the duke of lancaster left castile because of “pestilence”. perhaps chaucer needed money to make a doctor rich as he wrote in the general prologue: “he kepte that he wan in pestilence” (i442). we know, through suárez fernández (1970: 469) that between march and may: una parte de las fuerzas, mandadas por sir john holland, regresó a gascuña con sorprendente salvoconducto de juan i para atravesar castilla.3 the second key date is 5 july 1387 when he was given a safe -conduct to accompany his friend william beauchamp to calais. he may have gone to meet his patron who travelled from the port of lisbon to bayonne. if the records about his wife had disappeared after 18 june 1387 and she was dead, was this travel concerned it? in any case, if chaucer did not help his patron from the spanish ground, he did from his poetry. there are two books where we can find chaucer’s attitude in defence of his patron’s claim: the canterbury tales and the book 1 “plógole” reafirms what i have said in the preceding note. 2“this prior said to the duke of lancaster secretly that the reason for which he had come to him was that king john of castile had sent him to say that the duke had only one daughter of his wife constance, the daughter of king peter, who was called catherine and that king john had a son and if the they married they would be heirs of the kingdoms of castile and leon, and this affair and this war would be stopped. the duke listened in a good mood and was pleased with this.” 3 “part of the forces, under the command of sir john holland, went back to gascony with a surprising safe-conduct of john i to pass through castile.” ____________________________________________________________________ 137 of the duchess. both chaucer’s works show how the author upholds the duke of lancaster’s interests. there are two parts in each one which can be considered as speculations because of the vagueness and the many possible interpretations. these are the cases of the tale of melibee and a part about hunting in the book of the duchess. the explicit references defending his patron’s claim are represented by the stanzas about king peter, in the monk’s tale and the last part of the book of the duchess (1311-1323). i am going to start commenting the tale of melibee and its possible his torical connections to the duke of lancaster’s intervention in spain with manly and edith ricket’s (1940: 371-72) words: undoubtedly the work was popular, not merely because of its proverbs but also because the situation discussed was a not uncommon experience in the middle ages. i reject, as lawrence (1940) does, hotson’s (1967) interpretation consid ering the tale as a political tract to dissuade john of gaunt from invading castile in 1386. the black death and the two thousand french soldiers were, as i have mentioned above, enough to convince him. nevertheless, stiwell’s (1944: 434) opinion about the “vagueness of the melibeus as an allegorical figure” can be changed into a certainty when some historical events and circumstances are supported by chaucer’s text. so, some of these connections can lead us to think that the tale of melibee was written as a consequence of the war against france and spain at that age. chaucer’s text was not created to teach or to advise john of gaunt, chaucer’s patron and his actions may have been chaucer’s source of inspiration. the hundred years’ war was long enough to apply any interpretation from the tale of melibee, as stiwell (1944: 436) shows: english foreign policy in the 1380’s and ‘90’s resolved itself into disagreement between aggressionists and non-aggressionists. it might be more probable that chaucer reflected in his poetry those events closer to him. hence his patron’s intention and actions were connected to spain from the battle of najera in 1367, and his claim of castile from 1372 to 1388, it is not a wild deduction that a tale such as this one can be interpreted through the point of view of the duke of lancaster’s intervention ____________________________________________________________________ 138 in spain. john of gaunt learnt by experience the difficult theme of peace versus war. after the truce of 1375 in france, everybody held him responsible for the disaster because england lost many territories. the duke of lancaster’s trajectory in the intervention is a succession of failed attempts; he gets money and his daughter’s marriage. when he arrived at galicia on august 25 1386 “he hasketh wel that wisely kan abyde “ (vii, 1054). so he decided to play the role of melibee and followed “prudence”: the king of portugal and he would wait until the next march, 1387 to begin the attack. but why did not he invade spain before? because, perhaps, someone advised him: for al be it so that ye be myghty and riche, certes ye ne been but allone, / for certes ye ne han no child but a doghter, / ne ye ne han bretheren, ne cosyns germayn ne noon other neigh kynrede / … but thyne enemys been there, and they han manie children, betheren, cosysns and oother my kynrede. (vii, 1365-1372) as “it is a woodnesse a man to stryve with a strengen1 or a moore myghty man than he is hymself” (vii, 1481). the duke of lancaster gave up the crown of castile. and his counsellors may have advised him: “if thou hast myght to doon a thyng of which thou most repente, it is bettre ‘nay’ than ‘ye’” (vii, 1218). and “the dissensioun bigynneth by another man, and the reconsilyng bygynneth by thyself” (vii, 1691). this can show easily how he made negotiations secretly with the king of castile before invading castile through benavente and how quickly they went back to portugal. so, the duke of lancaster was a good melibeus and his “wounded doghter” (his in heritance and heir or his wisdom for military conflicts) would recover from her wounds. the book of the duchess shows another text where chaucer upholds his patron’s claim. considering the possible date of composition in 1374 can help to understand the meaning of chaucer’s work. but there are not any documents to demonstrate the real date. although some scholars, among them condren (1971 & 1975), propose 1376 date for the composition, there some significant events which can lead us to think of 1374 as a proper date. 1 “pestilence”: two thousand french soldiers and the castilian forces were a “peril”. ____________________________________________________________________ 139 condren sees the eight-years sicknes s (30-43) as a period of grief after blanche’s death, but this period of time could be considered as a bad period for his own marriage (1366). then we have 1374 as the date for composition. besides, as i have already mentioned, there are some other important events which are not speculations. on 13 june 1374 john of gaunt granted chaucer with ten pounds “in consideration of the services rendered by chaucer to the grantor.” the same year, as crow and leland (1991: xv) show: king edward granted the poet a gallon pitcher of wine daily for life. the wine, it is suggested, may have been the reward for a poem presented to the king during the festivities. on 10 may 1374 chaucer obtained a free house rent in algate. on 18 june 1374 the duke of lancaster ordered an alabaster tomb for blance. it was a great year for remembering blanche. in 1373 we have seen how the king of castile received menaces from the duke of lancaster. and it is in 1374 when he considered that “talking is not the same as actually doing”, and “e llamábase el dicho duque de alencastre rey de castilla e de león, e traía armas de castillos y de leones”, as ayala (j. l. martín ed. 1991: 475) narrates. it is clear that john of gaunt was called “king of castile” by his partisans as ayala shows. but what is more interesting and important is that chaucer calls him “this kyng” (1314) at the end of the book of the duchess. it is at the end of the book where there more biographical elements of john of gaunt.1 chaucer is clearly defending his patron’s interes ts. following this important mention, a necessary question appears: if chaucer calls him “a man in blak” during the poem and he calls him “kyng” only once at the end, is there any latent background in the book which led chaucer to conclude that “a man in blak” was a “kyng”? certanly, i think that this content exists. i consider the hunting as an allegory of john’s of gaunt’s attempt to invade spain at that time (1374). the hunting starts being chaucer at home (england) after describing war scenes of troya and the le roman de la rose. then he went out (out of england, aquitanie). the dogs (soldiers) and the hunters (knights) got ready. the “hert” (the crown of castile) escaped and the hunting is stopped 1 “long castel” (1318) means “lancaster”; “seynt johan” (1319) means “st. john’s day”; “ryche hil” (1319) means “earl of richmond”. ____________________________________________________________________ 140 because of the “defaute” of a dog (john of gaunt lost many soldiers in aquitanie). ayala (j. l. martín ed. 1991: 476) supports this interpretation: pero luego sopo que el duque de alencastre non venía a castilla, antes por el grand trabajo que pasaron en francia él e sus gentes, llegados a burdeos, donde se iban para inglaterra.1 “with that me thoughte that this kyng / gan homwarde for to ryde.” (vii, 1314-1315). and finally, there is another text in which chaucer defends his patron’s interest explicitly. chaucer wrote two stanzas in the monk’s tale about “petro, glorie of spayne”. i am not going to pay attention to the possible sources of chaucer’s story. it may have been sir guichard d’angle as it is suggested by braddy (1935), the duchess constance2 or one of her attendants. what i consider really interesting is the content and chaucer’s attitude and intention on writing the two stanzas: o noble, o worthy petro, glorie of spayne, whom fortune heeld so heighe in magestee, wel oghten men thy pitious deeth complayne! out of thy land thy brother made thee flee; and after, at a sege, by subtiltee, thow were bitraysed and lad unto his tente, where as he with his owene hand slow thee, succedynge in thy regne and in thy rente. the feeld of snow, with th’egle of blak therinne, caught with the lymerod coloured as the glede, he brew this cursednesse and al this synne. the wikked nest was werkere of this nede; noght charles olyuer, that took ay hede of trouthe and honour, but of armorike genylon-olyuer, corrupt for meede, 1“but later on he knew that the duke of lancaster did not come to spain because of the great difficulties that they had in france, they had arrived to bourdeaux from where they would leave to england.” 2 this possibility apart from skeat is suggested by henry savage, “chaucer and the ‘pitous deeth’of ‘petro, glorie of spayne’”, speculum 24 (1949): 357-375. ____________________________________________________________________ 141 broghte this worthy kyng in swich a brike. (vii, 2375-2398) both french traitors, duguesclin and his nephew oliver of mauny were well known at that time because of their tricks. when the king of navarre, charles ii, the bad, had made an agreement with peter, the cruel, and the black prince to let them pass through his territory in 1367 and fight on their side, he deceived them with oliver of mauny’s help. it is not necessary to support that d’angle was chaucer’s source, taking into account that his reasons to hate duguesqlin because he and oliver were quite hated by english. chaucer was worried about a possible misattribution: “noght charles olyuer” 1. why did chaucer dedicate one of the two stanzas to the two traitors? because he was interested in showing that his patron’s father-in-law was murdered in 1369. it was not fair play. he was “bytraysed”. the rights of “thy regne” and “thy rente” had been got by means of treachery and an murder. chaucer’s first line is very difficult to be shared by historians or even by his contemporaries.2 chaucer used “noble”, “worthy” and “glorie” because he may have written the stanzas from 1369 (the king’s death) and catherine’s wedding in 1388. during this period chaucer wrote these stanzas not only in favour of the duchess constance’s feeling but to defend his patron’s claim. if there were two versions of the stanzas, one containing “thy bastard brother made thee flee” and the other without “bastard”, i agree with savage’s (1949: 364) opinion that the bastard version therefore, must have been written at some time earlier than 1386, when there was no need to conciliate the usurp ing house of trastamara. 1 this knight was very famous. he took part in the battle of najera. 2 so much is this the case that even the black prince did not have a high regard for peter, the cruel, after the battle of najera, in moments of celebration and victory: “… luego que la batalla fue vencida, aquel día, e dende adelante siempre ovo entre el rey don pedro e el príncipe poca avenencia.” lopez de ayala, pero (j. l. martín ed. 1991: 365). (“after the battle was won, that day, and in future, there was a little agreement between king peter and the prince”). the fundamental cause was peter’s cruelty. ____________________________________________________________________ 142 but, in my opinion, chaucer might be aware of the negotiations between john of gaunt and the king of castile in 1386. there are two reasons for this suggestion: first, chaucer’s friend thomas of percy was sent to reach agreement about the marriage between catherine and henry iii. on the second place, chaucer omitted “bastard”, but he shows peter as a victim and his brother as a murder. “petro” is only related to receptive clauses (“thow were bitraysed and lad”), he is not an actor but a beneficiary of two opposite re sults: “magestee” and “deeth”. the actors of these results are “fortune” and “he” (his brother). however, his brother is the actor-subject of the verbs: “made” (“thy broher”) and “slow” (“he”).1 these two factors lead to think that the possible date of composition was 1386-1387: from the negotiations to the agreement in 1388. it is very significant that both parts in the negotia tions, as ayala tells in his chronicles, defended the genealogical tree, as rightful and legal to become king of castile. within this debate, in 1386, the bishop john of aquis, following ayala (j. l. martín ed. 1991: 623), defended the duchess constance’s right, among other with these word s: otrosí dice que el dicho rey don alfonso casó una su fija bastarda, que decían doña beatriz …2 he tried to demonstrate that henry of trastamara was peter’s bastard brother. but after this discussion thomas of percy was sent to the king of castile. ayala does not tell any more about the results, but in 1387, after the duke of lancaster’s retreat to portugal, john i of castile sent ambassadors to troncoso (a village in portugal) and john of gaunt accepted the conditions: he would leave portugal and would go to bayonne where they would reach agreement about the wedding of their heirs and the amount of money that the duke of lancaster would receive. it seems that in this interval of time chaucer may have given up to write “bastard ”, according with his patron’s policy. 1 an interesting analysis for these two stanzas could be made, in more detail, using halliday’s systemic analysis, but it should be too long. readers interested in this systemic linguistics approach can read the basic book: halliday, m. a. k., an introduction to functional grammar. (london, 1985), and an example of this analysis in jesús l. serrano reyes, “spanish modesty in the canterbury tales: chaucer and don juan manuel”, selim 5, 29-45. 2 the word underlined is mine. (“that king alphonsus married a bastard daughter who was called beatrice.”) ____________________________________________________________________ 143 according with savage (1949: 623), “chaucer was sensitive to changing winds at court.” moreover, there are some details in the text that reveal chaucer’s defence of his patron’s interest. seemingly, john of gaunt claimed the crow of castile but what he was conscious of being able to get was money and a little more. henry of trastamara is accused of usurper (“out of the land thy brother made thee flee”, 2378), murder (“where as he with his owene hand slow thee”, 2381), and thief (“succedynge in the regne and in thy rente”, 2382). it is noticeable that chaucer wrote “in thy regne” and “in thy rente” and not “in the regne” and “in the rente”. the possessive is very eloquent: he was meaning that “regne” and “rente” were peter’s, and that was to say john of gaunt’s. the use of “rente” is a redundancy in those historical circumstances: to have a kingdom implied to have a rent. chaucer shows his patron’s real in terest by means of this redundancy. the long and important english intervention in spain during the xiv century and one document showing that chaucer visited spain in 1366 should lead chaucerians to research the presence of spain in both chaucer’s life and work. jesús luis serrano reyes university of córdoba references armitage-smith, s. 1964: john of gaunt: king of castile and leon; duke of aquitane and lancaster; earl of derby, lincoln, and leicester; seneschal of england. constable & co. london. baugh, a. c. 1968: the background of chaucer’s mission to spain, chaucer und seine zeit. tübinggen: 55-69. braddy, h. 1935: the two petros in the ‘monkes tale’, publication of the modern language association 50, 69-80. ____________________________________________________________________ 144 benson, l. d. ed. 1991: the riverside chaucer, 3rd edition. oup, oxford. childs, w. r. 1978: anglo-castilian trade in the later middle ages. manchester university press, manchester. crow, m. m. & v. leland 1991: chaucer’s life in the riverside chaucer. chaucer, ed. larry d. benson, 3rd edition. oup., oxford, xi-xxii. crow, m. m. & c. olson eds. 1966: chaucer life -records. clarendon press, oxford. condren e. 1971: the historical context of the book of the duchess: a new hypothesis, the chaucer review 5, 195-212. condren e. 1975: of deaths and duchesses and scholars coughing in ink, the chaucer review 10, 87-95. espasa y calpe ed. 1973: enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo americana. vol. xxvi. barcelona. garbaty, t. j. 1967: chaucer in spain, 1366: soldier of fortune or agent of the crown?, modern language notes 5, 81-87. goodman, a. 1992: john of gaunt: the exercise of princely power in fourteenth-century europe. st. martin’s press, new york. halliday, m. a. k. 1985: an introduction to functional grammar. edward arnold, london. honore -duverge, s. 1955: chaucer en espagne? (1366). recueil de travaux offert a’& m. clovis brunel mémories et documents publiés par la societé de lécole des chartes, nº xii, vol ii. paris, 9-13. hotson, j. l. 1967: the tale of melibeus and john of gaunt, studies of philology xviii, 429-452. lawrence, w. w. 1940: the tale of melibeus, essays and studies in honor of carleton brown. leon sendra, a. & serrano reyes, j. l. 1992: spanish references in the canterbury tales, selim 2, 106-141. maccolly, w. 1988: sir gawain and the green knight as a romance á clef, chaucer review 23, 78-92. ____________________________________________________________________ 145 manly, j. m. & e. rickert 1940: the text of the canterbury tales, ii. martin, j. l. ed. 1991: pero lópez de ayala. crónicas. planeta, barcelona. nieto soria, j. m. 1993: ceremonias de la realeza. propaganda y legitimación en la castilla trastámara . nerea, madrid. palmer, j. j. n. 1971: the parliament of 1385 and the constitutional crisis of 1386, speculum xlvi, 477-490. rades y andrada, f. 1572: chrónicas de las tres órdenes y cavallerías de santiago, calatraua y alcántara . toledo. rios, j. a. de los 1984: historia social, política y religiosa de los judios de españa y portugal, ii. turner, madrid. robinson, f. n. ed. 1957: the works of geoffrey chaucer. oxford. russell, p. e. 1955: the english intervention in spain and portugal in the time of edward iii and richard ii. oxford. savage, h. 1949: chaucer and the ‘pitous deeth’of ‘petro, glorie of spayne’, speculum 24, 357-375. serrrano reyes, j. l. 1997, spanish modesty in the canterbury tales: chaucer and don juan manuel, selim 5, 29-45. serrano reyes, j. l. 1996: didactismo y moralismo en geoffrey chaucer y don juan manuel: un estudio comparativo textual. servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de córdoba, córdoba. stiwell, g. 1944: the political meaning of chaucer’s tales of melibee, speculum 19, 434-456. suarez fernandez, l. 1970: historia de españa. vol. i. gredos, madrid. tate, b. 1987: el camino de santiago, barcelona. tout, t. f. 1929: literature and learning in the english civil service in the fourteenth century, speculum 4, 365-389. vazquez de parga, lacarra, j. m. & uria 1948: peregrinaciones a santiago, madrid. selim05.pdf carole p. biggam, selim 5 (1996): 109—115 old english ? eru and modern english tharf-cakes in a recent article in notes and queries,1 andrew breeze tackles the mystery word peru which occurs in a list of commodities which the king was entitled to receive from an estate at westbury -on-trym, formerly in gloucestershire. the source text is a grant of the reversion of land at westbury and henbury to the church of worcester, granted by king offa of mercia at a date of 7936.2 by presenting evidence from similar lists in the welsh and breton records, breeze convincingly argues that peru means ‘loaves’. i propose to make a further suggestion in support of this argument, namely, that peru is a cognate of oe peorf, me therf and mode tharf, adjectives meaning ‘unleavened’.3 these adjectives are cognate with on pjarfr ‘unleavened, insipid’ and ohg derp ‘unleavened’. significantly for the following discussion, oe peorf also occurs as a noun meaning ‘unleavened bread’. also relevant are oe íeorfling, me therfling-bred and mode therfling, tharfling ‘unleavened bread or loaf’, as well as mode tharf-cake ‘a cake of unleavened bread; now spec. a flat circular cake of oat-, rye-, or barley-meal, unleavened, and sometimes flavoured with butter and treacle; in the latter case = parkin’. îeorfling is first attested in c. 1050, and tharf-cake dates from the fourteenth century. 1 andrew breeze, old english ? eru ‘loaves’ in a westbury charter of 793-796. notes and queries, ccxl (new series, xlii), no. 1 (1995), 13-14. 2 p. h. sawyer, anglo-saxon charters (london, 1968), no. 146. 3 old english definitions will be taken from joseph bosworth and t. northcote toller, an anglo-saxon dictionary (oxford, 1898), middle english definitions are from hans kurath and sherman m. kuhn, ed., middle english dictionary (ann arbor, 1956-), and modern english definitions are from j. a. simpson and e. s. c. weiner, ed., the oxford english dictionary, 2nd ed., 20 vols (oxford, 1989), hereafter referred to as oed. carole p. biggam ____________________________________________________________________ 114 the obvious difficulty in connecting the old english forms peru and, peorf is the apparent loss of -f and this problem must now be addressed.1 ? eru occurs in the phrase, vl lang pero ‘six long pero’, in a list of commodities due to the king.2 the context makes it clear that the mystery word must be in the plural, and it is to be interpreted, therefore, as a neuter noun with short stem. 3 if peru had a paradigm like scip, which would be typical of short stemmed neuter nouns, it would have a nominative singular form * per, but, if it had the rare paradigm demonstrated by searo, for example, it would have a nominative singular in *pero or *peru. if my suggestion, based an breeze’s insight, is correct, the nomi native singular would, indeed, be *per, but after the loss of final -f from the earlier perf. to find an explanation for this loss, i further suggest that oe peorf ‘unleavened’ had a close etymo logical, semantic, and phonological connection with the old english verb *purfan which expresses need and obligation. the oed describes the loss of final -f in tharf, thar, a verb which, today, survives only in scots, and which derives from oe *purfan. the loss of final -f occurred in mid dle english, the process apparently beginning with the second person singular of the present tense which was pearft in both old and early middle english. the difficulty of pronouncing three contiguous consonants re sulted in the form peart tu and then per tu, which left the impression in the minds of middle english speakers that the verb stem was per-.4 the new stem spread by analogy to other parts of the verb, and was, eventually, so well es tablished that thar became confused with dare. the earliest recorded example of final -f loss in tharf, however, is given in the oed as c. 1290, and this is considerably later than the date of peru. the grant in which the word peru appears occurs in three manuscripts, one of which dates to the seventeenth century, and has not been considered here,5 and one of which does not include the list of commodities in which peru oc1 i gratefully acknowledge the kindness of james m. y. simpson of the department of english language, university of glasgow, in discussing philological points with me. 2 benjamin thorpe, diplomatarium anglicum aevi saxonici (london, 1865), p. 40. 3 dorothy whitelock, ed., english historical documents c 5001042, 2nd ed. (london, 1979), p. 507, note 16. 4 variant spellings resulted in the additional stems of par-, porand pur-. 5 london, british library, cotton vitellius c ix, fo. 130v. old english ? eru and modern english tharf-cakes ____________________________________________________________________ 115 curs.1 the sole source for peru is, therefore, a manuscript of the first half of the eleventh century, london, british library, cotton tiberius a xiii, often referred to as hemming’s cartulary.2 from internal evidence, ker believes that tiberius i, the part of the manuscript in which the westbury grant occurs, dates to ‘not much, if at all, later than 1016’.3 it must now be considered whether it is reasonable to project back the known loss of -f in tharf from c. 1290 to c.1016. the dislike of three contiguous consonants was not limited to middle en glish. campbell includes six types of consonant loss in old english from such groups, one of which includes the loss of -f, and he writes ‘groups of three or more consonants were often reduced in oe in pronunciation, though the full form generally continues to be writ ten’.4 it is suggested, then, that the sporadic reduction of tharf, thar recorded for middle english had also occurred in late old english.5 clearly, the reduction was not carried out by all speakers in either old or middle english, and both forms are instanced into the nineteenth century.6 for some speakers of old english, the stem per was, apparently, well-es tablished, since peru exhibits a short -stem case ending. if the stem had been understood as perf, the nominative and accusative plu rals would have had a zero case ending, that is, perf, unless uncertainty over this word had resulted in an irregular paradigm for some speakers. it is also possible that the reduction of perf indicates extreme familiarity with this word in certain circles, since zipf’s law shows how, the more frequently used a word is, the more 1 london, british library, cotton nero e i, pt 2, fo. 181v. 2 the westbury and henbury grant appears on fos. 48-9. 3 n. r. ker, ‘hemming’s cartulary’, in studies in medieval history presented to frederick maurice powicke, ed. r. w. hunt, w. a. pantin and r. w. southern (oxford, 1948), p. 49-75, at p. 69. he later gave the date as s. xii, meaning c. 1025. see n. r. ker, catalogue of manuscripts containing anglo-saxon (oxford, 1957), p. 250. 4 a. campbell, old english grammar, corrected 1st ed. (oxford, 1962), p. 190-2. the example of -f loss is íorleas from íorfleas, at p. 192. 5 i am referring here to the date of the manuscript of the westbury grant, and avoiding any assump tions about the form this word took in the original late eighth century text. 6 see the oed under tharf-cake. carole p. biggam ____________________________________________________________________ 116 susceptible it is to being shortened in speech.1 the word may have been a rarity for some speakers of old english, but to a scribe working on estate records, a word concerning payments in kind to the king may have been constantly on his lips. it is just possible, therefore, that peru represents a pronunciation common among estate managers and record keepers. in his article, breeze writes ‘… it is likely the six westbury loaves were of the best quality, for the king’s table’.2 this is certainly a reasonable assump tion, but how can it be reconciled with the fact that unleavened bread is heavier and more difficult to digest than leavened bread, and that it is usually made from types of cereal grain, such as barley, oats and rye? which are generally considered to be inferior to wheat? quotes from modern times leave us in no doubt of the general opinion of tharf bread: they never gat owse better than thaaf keahyk ( 1850), and as thodd’n as a tharcake ( 1740).3 the edd, in fact, shows that the adjective tharf acquired some fairly uncomplimentary connotations in the context of human personality, for example, ‘lumpish’, ‘reluctant’, ‘forbidding’, ‘unsociable’ and others.4 this unfavourable impression of unleavened bread is not evident in anglo-saxo n sources, mainly because of its religious significance. this type of bread had an important religious role among the he brews, and, after their conversion to christianity, the anglo -saxons would have been well aware of this from several passages in the bible. they would read, for example, in exodus 12: 15-20 that the hebrews were commanded by god to put all leaven out of their houses and eat only unleavened bread for seven days during the passover, and, in the new testament, they would read that christ wa rned his disciples to ‘take heed and beware of the leaven of the pharisees and of the sadducees’.5 ælfric shows that this concept of leaven as a metaphorical contaminant of pure unleavened bread was well understood in anglo -saxon england: ? eorfe hlafas we bringaí gode to lace, íonne we buton yfelnysse 1 george kingsley zipf, human behavior and the principle of least effort: an introduction to human ecology (new york, 1949). 2 breeze, ‘old english ? eru’, 14. 3 joseph wright, the english dialect dictionary, 6 vols. (oxford, 1898-1905), vi, p. 75. hereafter referred to as edd. 4 edd, vi, 74. 5 matthew 16: 6. old english ? eru and modern english tharf-cakes ____________________________________________________________________ 117 beorman, on íeorfnysse, syfernysse and soífæstnysse faraí.1 ‘we bring unleavened loaves to god as an offering, wherefore we depart without the leaven of wickedness, in purity, cleanliness and truth’. thus the biblical tradition must have suggested to the anglo -saxons that unleavened bread was purer and of higher status than leavened bread. i now return to my earlier suggestion that the semantic connection of peorf, adjective and noun, was much closer to the verb *purfan than is evident from dictionaries of old english. one semantic feature of *purfan concerns obligation, expressed by bosworth and toller as ‘to need to do some thing … where the need is based on grounds of right, fitness, law, morality, etc., to be bound to do something because it is right, etc., … with the idea of compulsion, or where the in evitability of a consequence is expressed … to be obliged, … to owe’.2 this sense of obligation, presumed to be present in peorf explains the use of the word for a type of bread connected with religious observances, and with dues payable to the king from certain estates, and it is easy to understand that such bread, because of its purpose rather than its digestibility, would be a high status commodity. the suggestion that peorf included a semantic element concerned with obligation does not necessarily contradict heyne’s theory that the old en glish, old norse and old high german adjectives indicated flatness.3 on pjarfr is defined by zoëga as ‘unleavened (of bread), fresh (of water), insipid, flat’,4 and de vries declares the etymology uncertain, but suggests the pres ence of semantic elements concerning rigidity (‘steif, starr’), bitterness of taste (‘bitter, scharf, sauer’) and firm strength (‘wohlernährt, fest’).5 i suggest that the superordinate semantic concept is a sense of compression similar to the effects of a weight restraining a person or object. unleavened bread is flat, as though it had been compressed, a body of fresh water sits, apparently heavy and unmoving as though compressed, and quite unlike the apparent 1 malcolm godden, ed., ælfric’s catholic homilies: the second series (london, 1979), p. 120, lines 364-6. 2 bosworth and toller, anglo-saxon dictionary, under purfan, meanings ii: 2 and 3, and iii. 3 moriz heyne, funf bücher deutscher hausaltertümer von den ältesten geschichtlichen zeiten bis zum 16. jahrhundert: ein lehrbuch, 3 vols. (leipzig, 1899-1903). see vol. 2, p. 2689. 4 geir t. zoëga, a concise dictionary of old icelandic (oxford, 1910). 5 jan de vries, altnordisches etymologisches wörterbuch, 3rd ed. (leiden, 1977).s carole p. biggam ____________________________________________________________________ 118 reaching upwards of the waves of the sea. the reconstructed verb *purfan representing a sense of obligation, indicates the weight of unavoidable duty on those who are thus restricted. it is understandable that the abstract sense of the weight of obligation should result in a metaphoric application to a flattened and dense object. once this application was made to unleavened bread, the semantic implications connected with taste would follow. another semantic feature of *purfan concerns being in need, expressed by bosworth and toller as ‘to be in need, have need of some thing’.1 poverty and need also result in the sense of a weight bearing down on the needy person, and it is common to speak of ‘a pressing need’. this sense may also have been present in peorf when used of the flat breads made by poorer families who did not have access to the preferred wheat flour.2 such bread, and its terminology, must have had a history reaching from the saxon habitation of northern germany to the uncomplimentary modem comments on tharf-cakes quoted above.3 the twin concepts of the need to render dues to high-ranking persons, and being in need oneself, as contained in *purfan resulted in the apparent contradiction of unleavened bread being of high status in anglo -saxon england and of low status in later times, although the latter sense may also have been present in the pre -conquest period. finally, it is possible that one other example of oe peorf without final -f is extant. in the old english translation of leviticus 8: 2, god tells moses to take aaron and his sons, and all the people, to the doors of the tabernacle, with animals, ritual clothes, anointing oil, and peorfe hlafas ‘unleavened loaves’.4 at verse thirty-one of the same chapter, after the ritual clothing of aaron and his sons, and the sacrifice of the animals, moses tells them to cook the meat and … etaí pær pa … crawford gives the equivalent latin phrase from the vulgate text as … ibi comedite eas … and, presumably, regards k as a transla 1 bosworth and toller, anglo-saxon dictionary, under purfan meaning i. 2 ann hagen, a handbook of anglo-saxon food: processing and consumption (pinner, 1992), p. 9. hagen discusses leavened and unleavened bread on p. 7-9. see also ann hagen, second handbook of anglo-saxon food and drink: production and distribution (hockwold, 1995), p. 361. 3 f. w. grube, ‘cereal foods of the anglo-saxons’, philological quarterly, 13 (1934), 140-158, at p. 151. 4 s. j. crawford, ed., the old english version of the heptateuch (london, 1922), p. 291. old english ? eru and modern english tharf-cakes ____________________________________________________________________ 119 tion of ibi ‘there’.1 however, a footnote reveals that pær pa is an amendment of the manuscript pæra,2 and i suggest this indicates a form simi lar to peru. the major dictionaries of old english show how peorf can appear, not only as perf, as shown above, but also as pærf, so the variant vowel is no problem. my suggestion is that the edited phrase etaí per pa, ‘eat there then’3 need not have been amended from the manuscript reading etaí pæra which i would translate as ‘eat unleavened loaves’. i take pæra be a neuter genitive plural, and to be understood as a partitive genitive.4 i also take it to be a loose translation of a part of the vulgate text which has been omitted by crawford, presumably because he believed it to have been ignored by the translator. after ibi comedite eas, the vulgate has panes quoque consecrationis edite … ‘eat also the loaves of the consecration …’ if my suggestion is correct, the old english version was slightly more succinct than the latin original. the latin ‘… coquite carnes ante fores tabernaculi et ibi comedite eas panes quoque consecrationis edite …’, meaning ‘… cook the meats before the doors of the tabernacle and eat them there, eat also the loaves of the consecration …’ was translated into old english as ‘… seoíaí eowwerne mete beforan íæs temples dura [and] etaí pæra …’, meaning ‘… cook your meat before the doors of the temple and eat the unleavened loaves …’ it is interesting to note that, if i am right, the standard old english spelling of peorf at leviticus 8: 2, appears in what i presume to be the spoken form pær just a few verses later at leviticus 8: 31. c. p. biggam university of glasgow * † * 1 crawford, the old english heptateuch, p. 29. 2 the form is pæra in both the manuscripts containing leviticus: london, british library, cot ton claudius b iv, and oxford, bodleian library, laud misc. 509. 3 the latin phrase ibi comedite eas can be translated ‘eat them there’ because the text has ‘meats’ in the plural, but the old english has ‘meat’ in the singular. 4 lass mentions the use, albeit inconsistent, of the germanic partitive genitive with verbs of eating and drinking. see roger lass, old english: a historical linguistic companion (cambridge, 1994), p. 237, note 27. selim09.doc alicia rodríguez, selim 9 (1999): 11—20 segmentation of 15th-century legal texts: a reconsideration of punctuation until now most of the studies on punctuation of late middle english manuscripts have dealt with literary or religious works, and the main concern has been to discern whether the ultimate end of punctuation marks was to in dicate pauses ”used on a rhetorical, liturgical or oral basis “ (blake, 1977: 67) or to set off sense units; in other words, to decide if pauses were rhetorical or grammatical. however, legal documents have generally been neglected by researchers, and on those few occasions when scholars have given a verdict, this has not been very favourable. jenkinson (1926: 154), for example, considered punctuation of legal documents “casual, knowing no rule and treating all symbols as practically interchangeable”, and petti (1977: 25) remarked that “while in literary manuscripts, under the influence of printing, punctuation increased in range and frequency […], the trend was quite the reverse in legal documents. punctuation is almost completely absent from them by the early 15th century, and the pattern of minimal punctuation has persisted in english legal use”. whereas jenkinson underlined the arbitrary character of medieval punctuation, petti highlighted its inconsistent use. the present paper aims to demystify this prevailing conception of fifteenth-century punctuation in legal texts. my intention is not to reject categorically the abovementioned statements, but to notice that certain limitations and restrictions should be made since, first, most of the editions of legal deeds and records have not transcribed punctuation accurately, and therefore do not prove valuable sources for a study of punctuation, as jenkinson herself (1926: 158) comments; and, second, a vast amount of manuscripts remains still unpublished and many a surprise might arise through the study of documents issued by certain offices. the manuscripts selected for the present analysis constitute a body of nearly sixty fifteenth-century legal texts written in english and produced in alicia rodríguez 8 the dialectal area of durham, according to the lalme. most of them are kept in durham university library, some in durham county record office, and only one in durham dean and chapter library. a close analysis of these manuscripts reveals two relevant facts: 1. marks of punctuation are used quite systematically and reflect a clear concern for marking-off word-groups and indicating syntactic relationships 2. segmentation was not founded on the use o f punctuation marks but on other mechanisms: a first group of mechanisms well spread in 15th-century texts in general, and a second group of characteristic mechanisms of legal texts. the methodology we followed was relevant to come to these conclusions and, in a way, it was suggested by zeeman (1956: 11), who recommended an approach to medieval punctuation free from expectations and prejudices and, above all, flexible enough to recognize the validity of a system which is just different. obviously marks of punctuation cannot constitute a sound basis for the segmentation of texts into sentences -as it is at presentand although we do not disregard them, we have to find other mechanisms that assume the function of separating sentences. we will call these mechanisms “mechanisms of segmentation” and we find that scribes made use of different types of strategies to indicate the beginning of a new sentence, strategies which make the identification of sentences easier. a group of link words, mostly adverbs such as “first”, “then”, “also”, “moreover”, “furthermore”, the conjunction “and” and the latin word “item” constitute the first group of mechanisms of segmentation. “item” and “et” were already used in latin charters to indicate the beginning of new sentences, although “et” was the most popular (ikegami, 1990: 215-216; mcgovern, 1972: 236), popularity which was inherited by its english equivalent “and”, present at the beginning of most sentences. as ikegami comments, the use of “and” to introduce new sentences does not only belong to the realm of legal prose; in fact, ikegami (1990: 209) considers it “one of the characteristics of the prose style in me” popularized mainly segmentation of 15th century legal texts 9 through its use in legal writs. the following examples show the use of these link words at the beginning of sentences: thyr endentures made at doresme the -xvj . day of septembre… and ouer the said -x li the said priours and couent grauntes… and in case the said sir dauy die or decese wythin the said… and also hitt is acordit betwen the parties abouen said… and all the premysse wele and trewly to be fulfild… thys indentur mayd betwix thomas bewluffe… and yf so be yat ye sam thomas dissis… and also if so be ye sam jon dissys… and also ye sam thomas and jon ar agreyd at ye sall no catell… also ye sam jon perkyn byndys hym selfe… also ye sayd jon sall lefe ye place tenand mette… also yai er agreyd and ye for sayd thomas fully content… into witnes of ye qwyll thyng… wretyng in darlyngton in ye fest of saynt martyn in wyntyr… this indenture maid be twix robert dalton… that is to say the said thomas rauffe & crystofer… item pe said robert will that john dalton… item the saide robert will pat his said feffees… item pe said robert will pat his said feffees… and efter pe charge borne of pat said preste… and pe said john shall be bondyne in on obligacyon… item pe said robert will that it be all way so prouyded… gyffen at westaukland pe xxviijo day of octobre… a second group of mechanisms of segmentation includes some fixed expres sions that could be used in any document whatever its nature. these expressions introduce a new sense unit and are used to present agreements: item it is accordit… and also it is acorded… itt is allso agreid… or to refer to any eventualities: alicia rodríguez 10 and if… and also if… and in case… apart from these conventions used to indicate the beginning of new sentences, in some documents, a construction which can present slight variations is repeated whenever a new sentence begins. in the following extracts that re produce the beginnings of all the sentences in some documents, or selected parts of documents, we have marked these constructions in italics (note that dots indicate the beginnings of sentences): • thir endenturis made at durham… . • item the said jamys sall pay in the [thre] [.v. ] last yheer… . • item the said jamys sall pay ilke yhere… • item it is accordit thatt the said jamys sall pay… / • alsua thay ar accordit . at the said jamys sall make… . • alsua thay ar accordit if it happynis thatt the said jamys… • in wyttnese of the wh ilke thyng thatt theer condicions… • day yheer and place beforsaid • this indenture made at duresme the xth day of january… • and if hit happyn the forsaid some of… • and the forsaid john raket and his assignes shall haf fre isshewe… • also the sayd john raket and his assignes shall haf fre licence… • and the forsaid john raket and his assignes the seyd parcell of ground… • and the forsaid john raket and his assignes shall haf tymber… • and hit shalbe lefull to the forsaid john raket and his assignes… • and the forsaid john and his assignes the sayd houses at the end of his terme… • in witnesse herof to the one partye of thies indentures… • the day yere and place abouesaid the following document, apart from the repetition of a structure at the beginning of sentences, presents an additional peculiarity which helps to identify the beginning of a new sentence, that is, the arrangement of the initial parts of new sentences in parallel structures. this syntactic organization of the beginnings of some sentences in parallel structures contributes to an easy segmentation, especially when the length of sentences is considerable, as in legal documents. the appearance of a structure parallel to a previous one calls the reader's attention showing immediately that a new segmentation of 15th century legal texts 11 sentence begins. in this example we have underlined and marked with capital letters the elements of these parallel structures. • this indenture made betwix…• be fore whiche mariage to be hadd a the saide john trolhope sall make a sure & sufficient estate… b c d • and also the saide john trolhope sall take ane estate… • and b' c' d' pat possessions pat the saide john trolhope sall purches … • for the whiche mariage the saide william sall pay a c li… a'' b'' c'' d'' • and if it happen pat the saide isabell dye within the yere … • and if the saide isabell dye pat than the issue hadd… e f • and if the saide john dye liffyng the saide isabell… • and where e' f' pat there er indentures made be twix… • made at york the day and yere abouen saide… these parallel structures usually follow the same syntactic pattern but it is not always so. in the following excerpt the first verb of the structure ijkl is copulative whereas the verb in the parallel structure i'j'k'l' is transitive. however, though syntactic relationships differ the parallelism is obvious: •this endentur made be twene rauf… • for the whilk mariage a the said rauf schall paye to the said john the fadir fourscore marc b c d e & fife… • for the whilk mone the said john the fadir schall giff alicia rodríguez 12 a' b' c' to the said john the son & to his wife landis & tenementis … • and d' e' the said john the fadir schall alene no land ne rent… • and also he byndis èhym? to the said rauf be this writyng… • and if it happen f the said john the son and his wife to dye… • and if it happen g h f' the wyfe of the said john the son to die …• and also it is acorded that g' h' john the son of john trolhope aforsaid schall be in the gouernaunce y j k of the said john his fadir… • and the said rauf schall haue l i' j' in gouernaunce his said doghter… • and to all thes couenants & k' l' condicions aforsaid … • witnesse wherof… • èmade? writen the morne eftir the fest of seint hillary … a different strategy that may help to mark off sentences is the diplomatic composition of the texts. the composition of the documents follow a fixed pattern, what text linguistics call a script, built on a set of formulas that recur with slight variations. these formulas themselves constitute not only legal clauses but also syntactic clauses. examples of these formulas are the formulas of corroboration: and to all and til ylkane of ye couenants beforesaide… ye forsaide x & y be yir present endentures faste byndes yaim segmentation of 15th century legal texts 13 and all the premysse wele and trewly to be fulfild on the part of the said… the [said] same… has bodily sworn apon a bouke and to all thes couenants & condicions aforsaid to be duely keped the said parties byndis thaym and all thoos to be doon… and this acord and awarde to fulfill and doo the said parties ar assured ayther of thaym by the troughte in thayr bodies the formulas that express the sealing of documents: in ye wyttenesse of whilke thyng to thir presentes endentures ye parties abouen saide entrechaungeabily haues sette yaire seals witnesse wherof the said x to on part of this endenture toward the said y remaynyng has set to his sele and to one oder part of this endenture toward the said x remaynyng the said y the fadir has set to his sele in to ye wyttnes of yis wryting both ye forsayd x & ye forsayd y to ye partys of yis jndentur has putt yer seallys or the final formulas with the date and place of production of the document: gyffyn ye… day of… in ye ¥ere of ye kyngdome of kyng… efter ye conquest of ingland… wreten and giuen… day of… yhere of kyng… vndre the sealles of the arbitrours aforesaid yevin at… the day and the ¥eyre afoyr sayd gyffen the day and yhere a fore said the previous formulas are shared by all legal documents, but there are some other specific formulas typical of certain documents. in leases, for alicia rodríguez 14 example, the warranty clause expresses the owner’s willingness to defend the rights of the lessee: & also yer sall no catell bot horse com with in ye orcharde and also ye sam x and y ar agreyd at ye sall no catell bot horse com with in ye orchard and in marriage articles, especially after the 15th century, a formula expres sed the bridegrooms’ fathers’ renunciation of all his properties except a rent or an estate for his maintenance: and the said john the fadir schall alene no land ne rent that come or schall come to hym be any of his auncestr and the said john trolhope thelder shal not alien eny landes or tenementes that now er comen or shal come to hym by the disceesse of eny of his auncestres we started this paper dealing with the role of punctuation, but given the evidence that the use of punctuation marks was not at all consistent, we decided to look for other marks of segmentation. now we resume the topic of punctuation, and we wonder which function it can have in these organized texts where information is so well arranged fo llowing a set pattern according to contemporary formularies. a study of the texts segmented into sentences in accordance with the examined criteria leads to the following considerations about the use of punctuation in the corpus: a) out of 57 texts, 16 do not present any mark of punctuation and 41 show a different degree of use. out of these 41, in 32 documents marks of punctuation are used to mark off sentences. b) when we say that marks of punctuation are used to mark off sentences we do not mean that sentences are always separated by means of punctuation marks, since in some texts only two sentences are separated by them. the use of punctuation is not evenly extended in the corpus. segmentation of 15th century legal texts 15 c) different marks of punctuation can indicate the beginning of sentences since these marks do not have exclusive uses. however the mark of punctuation most frequently used to mark off sentences is the stop, and the virgule (/), the double virgule (//), the combination of double virgule and stop (//.) and the punctus elevatus ('5) appear less frequently. d) in general, marks of punctuation within the sentence do not respond to an arbitrary use; on the contrary, their positions indicate syntactic relationships or relevant word orders. e) regarding our main concern, the segmentation of texts into sentences, punctuation marks also help other mechanisms used by the scribes to indicate the beginning of a new sentence. therefore “arbitrary” is not the best adjective to qualify the use of punctuation in our corpus. instead, we should talk of a supporting function. we cannot overestimate the function of punctuation since it is not really relevant for the division of the texts into sentences, but we cannot disregard it without a preliminary study. we can summarize all that has been said with the following conclusions: 1. the division of texts into sentences in 15th-century legal texts is not always realized indicating the end of a sentence by means of a full stop and the beginning of a new sentence by a capital letter. there is a wider range of punctuation marks: the virgule, the double virgule, the punctus elevatus, and the capital letter may or may not appear. besides, the use of these marks is not uniformly extended: many sentences are not preceded by any mark of punctuation and when they are, these marks can also be used within the sentence since there is no specialization of punctuation marks. likewise, capital letters may be used in the middle of a sentence. 2. consequently, there are other conventions to indicate the beginning of a new sentence. these conventions can be grouped into different types. one group includes adverbs as well as conjunctions that announce a new sentence (“and”, “also”, “item”, “moreover”, “furthermore”). these link words can also be used in non-legal contemporary texts. a second group consists of specific mechanisms of legal texts such as fixed expressions and formulas, which can also be introduced by link words. these mechanisms are alicia rodríguez 16 the basic marks of segmentation and punctuation plays a secondary role supporting these mechanisms. 3. finally, the results of this paper are restricted to the documents of a corpus produced by scribes working in durham. however, and despite the geographic limitation of the corpus, we cannot obviate a relative regularity in the use of these conventions, among them punctuation, which, according to some scholars, was inexistent. therefore, not only for their questioned regularity, but also for their function as marks of certain syntactic constructions, the study of these conventions -punctuation marks, clichés, fixed expressions, formulas and link wordsconstitutes an aspect we cannot neglect in the field of me manuscripts. alicia rodríguez alvarez universidad de las palmas de gran canaria references blake, n. 1977: the english language in medieval literature, london, j. m. & sons ltd. ikegami, k. 1990: on the 'lineages' of the 'and' construction in the late me prose -sermons and wills. pp. 209-225 in jin, k., m. ide, t. kishida et al. eds. 1990: studies in english philology in honour of shigeru ono. tokyo, nan'un-do pub. jenkinson, h. 1926: notes on the study of english punctuation of the sixteenth century, the review of english studies 2: 152-158. macgovern, j. 1972: the documentary language of mediaeval business, a. d. 1150-1250, classical journal 67: 227-239. mcintosh, a., m. l. samuels & m. benskin 1986: a linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english , 4 vols., aberdeen, aberdeen up. petti, a. 1977: english literary hands from chaucer to dryden. london, arnold. segmentation of 15th century legal texts 17 zeeman, e. 1956: punctuation in an early manuscript of love's mirror. the review of english studies n. s. 7: 11-18. * † * selim09.doc alfonso fernández & gabriela garcía, selim 9 (1999): 69—78 britain’s time: sir thomas malory’s morte d’arthur, book vii in this paper we aim at analyzing the category “time” in one of the books included in sir thomas malory's version of the story of king arthur and his court of knights. in particular, we will study book vii -“sir garethis tale of orkeney that was callyd bewmaynes by sir kay”from the above mentioned novel, morte d'arthur (15th. century), one of the most outstanding examples of the “matter of britain” in the isles. we have divided our paper into two parts, the first one being a theoretical revision of the concept of time, focusing our attention on four basic types and their relationship with the medieval consideration of “reality”. at last, the second section will contain an exploration of the way time was represented in the tale and of the narrative structures present in it. to start with, we have assumed the statement by jacques le goff (1965: 223) which claims the existence of more than one representation of time inside the medieval conscience. that's why it is convenient to establish a typology of the notion of time in the middle ages, taking into account that it has to be very closely related to two factors which dominated the historical conscience of the medieval man: the real and the “marvellous”. by that time, two kinds of reality co-existed; one of them physical and apprehensible, the life people lived day by day, a life to work, love, meet other people, learn, and a threatening or hostile life, in fact, because of the frequency of wars or illnesses which caused a great harm to the whole population. side by side with it and perfectly embedded in the very heart of the medieval universe, there was another reality, equally threatening but much more attractive, inherited from ancient pre -christian times, fully accepted as part of the social daily order. we are talking about “the marvellous”, a world where it is easy to discover all kinds of supernatural elements, magic, prodigies, every mystery surrounding man in his life journey. and this alfonso f ernández & gabriela garcía 68 medieval man finds the mixture of both worlds absolutely natural. there seems to be no problem to accept them, without even the slightest doubt towards that remnant of the imagination composed by fairies, witches, eschatological phenomena and extra -ordinary adventures. since we have stated that time is one of the constitutive parameters of the notion of reality, it has to subsequently be structured paying close attention to the kind of reality it is related to. this way, we will have two great time blocks, each one of them linked to the worlds already described: the time we will call real and the marvellous. at the same time, these could be divided into more specific units, i.e. real time into chrono-historical and liturgical-christian and marvellous time into mythological and epic. we shall study these in detail: a) real time (chrono-historical + liturgical-christian) medieval men, with their daily lives fully controlled by the christian church, did not perceive the chrono-historical time (that is, the normal series of events happening in the years or days of their lives) as the only one possible since they were taught from the very beginning to rule their existence according to the standards suggested by priests and the sacred scriptures. thus, every christened individual was made familiar with the concept of “eternity”, which meant an immeasurable portion of time, god's personal attribute and the highest human aspiration. that is, we are dealing with an infinite time which was superimposed and ruled over earthly or historical time. also, people's activities were organized according to the religious calendar, which imposed on them some free days related to important dates in christ's life. medieval men felt that the only authentic, valid time was the christian one, because it not only arranged their lives, but also brought along a projection for the future. a future which, even if unknown, gave their existence a new meaning. this way, the medieval man was guided by a religious calendar which had previously included nature's rhythms (a fact that indicates the pre -eminence of agricultural economy in the middle ages) and adapted them to the necessities of the church. indeed, the timing of the events was submitted to the sequence of the seasons, hidden under the names of the liturgical periods (advent, easter, whitsuntide…). despite the repetition, year by year, the malory’s morte d’arthur book v i i 69 same periods could have been understood as a constant cycle in time which started, ended and re -started again, the individual perceived time as “linear and irreversible” (guriévich, 1990: 133) because he considered chronological time in relation to that future temporal situation of “eternity” and directed his efforts to achieve that goal. b) marvellous time (mythological + epic) the so-called mythological time comes from the mythical past that we may find in the conscience, in the imaginary of each individual. this mythical past was the time in which the key historical events had taken place and the great heroes performed their praiseworthy deeds. the individual started liv ing a mythological time the very moment that an archetypal figure -let's name it mythwas recalled and revived in the present as if it were a tangible reality. such a representation of the myth “froze” the real time and imposed an extra temporal time, out of any logical parameter, where the past became the content of the present and there were no clear limits between both temporal subcategories. medieval men judged possible a supernatural marvellous life co-existing with their natural real life. so, they also accepted as logical the reversal of the usual and linear course of time, since they believed it was a product of the other side of reality. the epic heroes and other inhabitants of the marvellous life usually go along a time which does not affect them physically, in which coincidence rules over them and forces them to move in an abstract and parallel world to prevent any limitation from regulations or dis positions belonging to real life. time seems to be “haunted”, “bewitched”, a dimension in which simultaneity dominates and is not aware of present, past and future, melting them in a great “continuum” deprived of any logical rule. time gets fractured into adventures where such a category becomes condensed, consecrating the instant, the moment as its central element. an in stant which ceaselessly lasts in time in a cyclical way, when it gets renewed in every adventure happening by chance inside this marvellous reality. this is the point that shows the major difference between real and marvellous time, the preference of the last one for the moment which comes into existence right now, to the detriment of a promise which may occur in an uncertain future. to sum up, we can recognize in the dialectic opposition real time / maralfonso f ernández & gabriela garcía 70 vellous time the essence of a society which manifests a subjacent conflict: the confrontation between a christian ideology that tries to control every part of life, making everything uniform according to its rules and, on the other hand, the social imaginary of the middle ages, from a pagan tradition, which refuses to be tyrannized by the church and emerges as an alternative, a compensation to an extremely brief, insignificant and regularized life. the temporal context given by certain religious days (whitsuntide or the assumption of the virgin) as final deadline to get objectives, to culminate or start new adventures is a repetitive landmark which sustains the temporal processes in the arthurian adventure, with some characteristics diverging from the common liturgical order. sir gareth's fable in book vii is a very good example to enter the temporal scope in which arthurian heroes use to act. his adventure seems to be defined by a proverbial game of ambiguity and concealment as regards the identity of the knight called “bewmaynes”. the character's strange resolution of not revealing his origin to king arthur and his knightly court situates us in front of a long way in which two parallel processes take place: first, the achievement of the general consideration of the court and the designation of bewmaynes/gareth as heroic knight of the round table; second, bewmaynes/gareth's own quest for an identity in the marvellous setting of the court. the means to obtain those objectives is none but the uncertain itinerance in the search for adventures ruled by the courteous conventions belonging to the chivalric game. “each game creates a world” (núñez ramos, 1992: 40) and the one in the arthurian cycle uses the marvellous world as its paradise. of course, the concept of time is not free from that idea1. there's no spatial or temporal restriction constraining the knightly journey. the logic directing the series of events depends only on an angular factor: chance, coincidence. the final motivations to solve conflicts, the meeting of the beloved lady or the participation in jousts and battles are nothing more but the framework to arrange the precise elements for the journey and its inevitable unforeseen consequences. a series of coincidences renders possible the innumerable 1 aparece la hiperbolización fantástica del tiempo, se alargan las horas, los días se reducen a instantes y el tiempo mismo puede ser hechizado. […] lo eternamente inesperado deja de serlo. lo inesperado es esperado y sólo esperan lo inesperado. (bakhtin, 1986: 349 & 346) malory’s morte d’arthur book v i i 71 encounters of gareth and other knights and, with it, the subsequent jousts. in prototypical locations with a nearly abstract value, such as forest/open country, darkness/brightness, close/open, castle/valley, inside/outside-, the temporal sequence becomes the consecutive meeting of the wandering character and the other competitors in irrelevant “topoi”. as in lancelot's, tristram's or gawain's journeys, gareth lives in a “dynamic time” which governs his progress when going through frontiers and crossroads. the pattern of construction of scenes is repeated with significant insistence: a challenge responding to an outrage or insult, formulated as a condition for the passage or simply evidenced in the very act of beginning the attack, means the starting point for the reiterative fight, with the opponent's final death or pardon. the circumstances or motivations for the encounter have no real importance; the joust possesses value in itself. established as a ludicrous and sacred ritual, the adversarie s play in search for their heroic identity. the consecration of that instant freezes both opponents' time in a crisis with only one meaning, the one given by the chivalric game. in that “static time” of the dual confrontation, winning only grants the continuity of the winner in the circular eternity of adventure. in guriévich's opinion (1990: 163), “deed time breaks the course of the current time in the novel: the instant of the adventure is unique, it is the time when the hero has got his chance of being d istinguished”. with a rhythm that increases all along the journey, the repetition of violent meetings is suspiciously emphasized. the figure of the hero is no doubt joined to a paradox: the one contrasting his obsessive auto-affirmation with the frailty of his entity as a character. in the ecstasy of the fight, the arthurian knight reaches the ephemeral glory of his deeds, a glory always in question, waiting for a new encounter, a new crisis where he may defend his place in the round table. once and again, the arthurian world constitutes a game of hierarchies where gareth aims at being equal to tristram, wade or lancelot. the hero's identity comes from his noble birth, but it is in the static time of the joust or tournament when he confirms or loses his feeble condition of archetype. and therefore y pray you, rebuke me no more, and whan ye se me betyn or yoldyn as recreaunte, than may you bydde me go from you shamfully, but erste, i let you wete, i woll nat departe from alfonso f ernández & gabriela garcía 72 you; for than i were worse than a foole and i wolde departe from you all the whyle that i wynne worshyp. […] a! fy for shame, fayre damesell! sey ye nevir so more to me, for and he were as good a knyght as ever was ony i shall never fayle hym in his moste myght, for other i woll wynne worshyp worshypfully othir dye knyghtly in the felde. (vinaver, 1991: 189 & 197) after the extraordinary frequency of the fightings, the identity of the forms or the recurrent setting clichés (forest, black lands, big river with only one possibility of crossing, wh ite tower, dangerous castle, etc.), malory's tale reveals so great a disdain for temporal specification that this turns into atemporal the events he is narrating. the itinerance of the hero happens in an indefinite place and time, since in this game, rules pay only attention to the conflict between knights or between these and their ladies. the rest of the circumstances and the scene surrounding the schematic narrative nucleus tends mainly to simplification. in favour of gareth's great care for acquiring a status of chivalric hero, the inventory of his deeds, the comments of other characters about him, the way he is usually introduced to strangers, the narration of the knights he has defeated seem to appear everywhere. all of them are excuses to summarize his deeds, in an effort to stop the “tempo” of the narration to recall whatever happened before. this is the moment when gareth accumulates the features of his worthy identity, which starts with his royal origin: ‘he is a noble knyght, truly, madam,’ seyde the dwarff, ‘and but a yonge man, but he is as lykly a man as ever ye saw ony.’ ‘what is he, and of what kynne,’ seyde the lady, ‘is he com, and of whom was he made knyght?’ ‘madam,’ seyde the dwarff, ‘he was kynges son of orkeney, but his name i woll nat tell you as at this tyme; but wete you well, of sir launcelot was he made knyght, for of none other wolde he be made knyght, and sir kay named hym bewmaynes.’ ‘how ascaped he,’ seyde the lady, ‘frome the brethyrn of sir persaunte?’ malory’s morte d’arthur book v i i 73 ‘madam,’ he seyde,‘as a noble knyght sholde. first he slew two bretherne at a passage of a watir.’ ‘a!’ seyde she, ‘they were two good knyghtes, but they were murtherers. that one hyght sir gararde le breuse and that other hyght sir arnolde le bruse.’ ‘than, madam, he recountird at the blak knyght and slew hym in playne batayle, and so he toke his hors and his armoure and fought with the grene knyght and wanne hym in playne batayle. and in lyke wyse he served the rede knyght, and aftir in the same wyse he served the blew knyght and wanne hym in playne batayle.’ ‘than,’ sayde the lady, ‘he hath overcom sir persaunte of inde that is one of the noblest knyghtes of the worlde?’ ‘trewly, madam,’ seyde the dwarff, ‘he hath wonne all the four bretherne and slayne the blak knyght, and yet he dud more tofore: he overthrew sir kay and leffte hym nye dede uppon the grounde. also he dud a grete batayle wyth sir launcelot, and there they departed on evyn hondis. and than sir launcelot made hym knyght.’ (vinaver, 1991: 194) finally recognized by his lady, king arthur and the knights of the court, and by his own brother, gawain, gareth flees one more time, among the general surprise, unable to recognize himself, compelled by the certainty that he is lacking something which prevents his total commitment. maybe the character thinks that the tale of the excesses of his behaviour accelerates his inclusion in the chivalric legend. shown as an example in the oral stories told to the court every whitsuntide, remembered as part of the list of the most distinguished heroes, gareth, in his effort to stop his ephemeral pilgrimage through history and make it everlasting, looks for the protection offered by the collective memory. the knight is not ignorant of the value of such mechanisms as the constant repetition and increasing of his deeds. the ones around him are mere spectators of those marvellous fights and conquests and they participate in the game in such a condition. gareth reaffirms himself in each joust, moved by his internal wish to crystallize as a legendary character in front of every possible witness. alfonso f ernández & gabriela garcía 74 than the heroude cryed as he were woode, and many herowdys with hym: ‘this is sir gareth of orkenay in the yealow armys!’ thereby all the kynges and knyghtes of kynge arthurs party behelde and awayted; and than they presed all knyghtes to beholde hym, and ever the herrowdys cryed and seyde: ‘this is sir gareth, kynge lottys son of orkeney!’ (vinaver, 1991: 217-218) if pervivence in time due to legend constitutes the ultimate priority of each arthurian hero, we can also be certain that their presence in malory's narration has been very intimately linked to itinerance. without this casual movement, their identity is condemned to death and oblivion. sir gareth of orkney exists as long as he plays the game of adventure 1. the hero's wedding and, with it, dame lyonesse's subsequent request to king arthur so as to keep her husband gareth out of the tournament which completes the nuptial celebrations mean the end of every possibility of gareth's permanence in the narration. out of the game and the journey, he disappears from the tale. then, other knights will have their own opportunities to show us their abilities. but whan this justis was done, sir lameroke and sir trystrams departed suddeynly and wolde nat be knowyn; for the whych kyng arthure and all the courte was sore dysplesid. and so they helde the courte fourty dayes with grete solempnyté. and thus sir gareth of orkeney was a noble knyght, that wedded dame lyonesse of the castell parelus. (vinaver, 1991: 226) 1 el juego aparece entonces como el automovimiento que no tiende a un final o una meta, sino al movimiento en cuanto movimiento, que indica, por así decirlo, un fenómeno de exceso, de la autorrepresentación del ser viviente. (gadamer, 1991: 67). el juego produce la satisfacción del encuentro con uno mismo y con el mundo, frente a la sensación de sometimiento, control exterior, dependencia y escisión que va unida a las conductas utilitarias y al uso de las proyecciones recibidas y nunca del todo asumidas. (núñez ramos, 1992: 36) malory’s morte d’arthur book v i i 75 this way, the arthurian world renews its hero -characters. after sir lamerok's and sir tristram's leaving, they will be the agents who are going to guarantee the preservation through some more books of king arthur's court. alfonso fernández garcía (university of oviedo) gabriela garcía teruel (university of vigo-ourense) bibliography bakhtin, m. 1986: problemas literarios y estéticos. ciudad de la habana, editorial arte y literatura. bal, m. 1985: teoría de la narrativa. una introducción a la narratología. madrid, cátedra. belevan, h. 1976: teoría de lo fantástico. barcelona, anagrama. gadamer, h. g. 1991[1977]: la actualidad de lo bello. barcelona, paidósice/uab. guriévich, a. 1990[1984]: las categorías de la cultura medieval. madrid, taurus. huizinga, j. 1972[1954]: homo ludens. madrid, alianza-emecé. le goff, j. 1965: la civilisation de l'occident médiéval. paris. le goff, j. 1985: lo maravilloso y lo cotidiano en el occidente medieval. barcelona, gedisa. núñez ramos, r. 1992: la poesía. madrid, síntesis. rubio tovar, j. 1994: lo imaginario y lo maravilloso en la literatura medieval. anthropos, 154-155: 121-124. ruiz-doménec, j. e. 1993: la novela y el espíritu de la caballería. barcelona, mondadori. todorov, t. 1970: introducción a la literatura fantástica. buenos aires, tiempo contemporáneo. alfonso f ernández & gabriela garcía 76 vinaver, e. ed. 1991[1971]: malory: works. oxford, oup. * † * selim09.doc eugenio olivares, selim 9 (1999): 101—109 gauvain and gawain: the two sides of the hero according to a. w. thompson (1959: 215), gerbert de montreuil was the name of the writer who made a continuation of chretien de troyes' perceval between 1226 and 1230. all along the approximately 17000 lines that make up the gerbertone of the names given to the poemperceval is again the main character and, as in the romance by chretien, we have gauvain playing a starring role. however, if the poet from troyes still depicted gauvain with much consideration, gerbert de montreuil seems determined to deprive the knight of any single trace of nobility: this is so to such an extent that the knight even rapes a lady (1922-25: ll. 12632-9). the fall of gauvain is confirmed by his adventures in the arthurian romances written later on in france. two centuries later, at the end of the alliterative poem sir gawain and the green knight, the hero (after an almost perfect performance) is praised as "pe fautlest freke pat euer on fote ¥ede" (1967: l. 2363). to suggest a reason for such differing points of view and to trace the ups and downs of gawain is the purpose of the present paper. a proper place to begin our search of gawain might be his very first literary apparition, or better, we should say, the earliest recorded one. the anglo -norman william of malmesbury includes in his gesta regum anglorum (1125) the first reference to gawain, if we leave aside the mentions to gwalchmai in welsh texts and his presence in the archivolt of modena's cathedral. the passage referred to goes as follows: tunc in provincia walarum quæ ros vocatur, inventum est sepulchrum walwen, qui fuit haud degener arturis ex sorore nepos. regnavit in ea parte britanniæ quæ adhuc walweitha vocatur, miles virtute nominatissimus, sed a fratre et nepote hengistii, de e ugenio olivares 100 quibus in primo libri dixi, regno expulsus, prius multo eorum detrimento exilium compensans suum; (paris, 1888: 29-30) certainly, william of malmesbury provides little information about the character himself, though very positive indeed: walwen was nephew of king arthur, a king himself and a warrio r known by his prowess. much more detailed is the reference to the hero in geoffrey of monmouth's historia regum britanniæ (finished in 1137). in this well known chronicle gualguanus' kinship and courage are again mentioned, but the author also adds some new information. king loth, the hero's father, sent him to rome to be brought up by the pope: "erat tunc filius predicti loth gualguanus nomine .xii. annorum iuvenis obsequio sulpicii pape ab avunculo traditus. a quo arma recepit" (1929: ix, xi). these refe rences from the historia regum britanniæ are certainly enlightening about the hero's character, but so are some other episodes in which gualguanus does not appear. it was in the first half of the xiith century when fin'amors made its apparition in the courts of southern france, with its halo of delicacy and refinement. surely g. of monmouth knew the principles that ruled in the courts at the other side of the channel, so he decided to depict cærleon, king arthur's court, as the very centre of courtly armonysomething chrétien de troyes would later on imitate in his romances. quicumque vero famosus probitate miles in eadem erat, unius coloris vestibus atque armis utebatur. facetæ etiam mulieres, consimilia indumenta habentes, nullius amorem habere dignabantur, nisi tertio in militia probatus esset. efficiebantur ergo castæ quæque mulieres et milites pro amore illarum nobiliores, (1929: ix. xiii) oddly enough, gualguanusthe knight who will embody courtesy in later romances is left out of the picture: not a single reference is made by g. of monmouth to this knight in any, let us say, cortly episode. as w.a. nitze pointed, "clearly because to him gauvain was a military leader unconcerned with the cultural or chivalric setting" (1953: 221). this exclusion of the knight from this earliest courtly cærleon is certainly an important fact to keep in mind when studying gawain's later fall. gauvain and gawain 101 the next apparition of the knight will be in the work of an anglo -norman writer, wace's roman de brut (finished in 1155). though directly inspired in the historia regum britanniæ, wace's romance presents quite a different walwein. we have a clear reference to the knight's perfect modals, some thing merely suggested by g. of monmouth. walwein is not simply a brave warrior, but he is adorned with the virtues of the typical courtly knight. there fore he is "pruz e cuneüz" (1938-40: l. 9856) and always shows "mult grant mesure" (1938-40: l. 9859). even more important in the characterization of the knight is the fact that wace will, for the first time in the history of the hero, talk about walwein's attitude towards women. the knight himself, in a conversation with cador, claims that he prefers peace to war. "…mult sunt bones les gaberies e bones sunt les drüeries. pur amistié e pur amies funt chevaliers chevaleries…” (1938-40: ll. 10769-72) d. d. r. owen (1968: 125) suspects that the germ of gauvain's reputation as a "noble philanderer" throbs in these lines. the key to understand this change of perspective in the presentation of the knight is perhaps obvious: wace was sent to france to be brought up and he was much more than g. of monmouth-, a witness of french courtoisie, provençal lyric and fin'amors. la¥amon, when talking in third person about the sources of his brut, made the following comment: a third book he took and laid in the midst which a french cleric made, named wace, who well could write, and he [i.e. wace] gave it to the noble alie nor, who was the high king henry's queen. (wace and layamon, 1962: ix) he is obviously talking about eleanor of aquitaine, the most important supporter of fin'amors, the queen of troubadours. she and her daughter marie of france much favoured the extension of the new fashion to romance, playing the role of benefactors to several authors who evidently wrote texts much to the taste of these ladies. it is precisely in the work of the above mentioned la ¥amon, his brut (finished in 1190), where we can find gawain againthough certainly a diffee ugenio olivares 102 rent character. this text is specially illuminating for us because in it, the knight is again essentially a warrior without much refinement. totally opposed to wace's was la ¥amon's view, so much that r. s. loomis makes the following remark: …, for this man of god [la¥amon] was a barbarian at heart. he seems to belong in a milieu where the softening influences of woman-worship and courtesy were unknown. (1959b: 107) an illustrative instance of this is gawain's conversation with cador, an episode already referred when talking about wace. this time, peace is to be preferred not because love or women, but "for peace maketh a good man work good works, for all men are the better, and the land is the merrier" (wace and layamon, 1962: 230). even more in accordance with loomis' words is gawain's personal offering to his uncle arthur to punish guenevere's adultery: "…the queen i will, with god's law, draw all in pieces with horses" (wace and layamon, 1962: 260). it seems clear that whenever the knight was presented by an author under french influence, as in the case of wace, there were serious attempts to make him the embodiment of all the virtues of the new type of knight that was spreading in france, the knight lover. british authors, less exposed to these new models, remained loyal to the traditional knight, a warrior not specially fond of love affairs. when chrétien de troyes decides to write his arthurian romances he will not rely on gauvain to make him the epitome of love chivalry. surely because by his time there were other heroes who could fitt better in the new model, mainly tristan and lancelot. chretien's attitude towards arthur's nephew is ambiguous: while retaining his manners and his courage, gauvain is not able to reach the new standards of knightly perfection and this progressively diminishes his excellence. gauvain is surpassed by other knights who serve in the army of love. lancelot, cligès or erec are loyal lovers, devoted to only one lady, willing to fulfill her slightest whims. gauvain, on the other hand, is still the most courteous of knights but his courtesy has nothing to do with love. we might easily trace the evolution of gauvain's attitude towards women in chrétien de troyes' romances. in erec et enide and cligès he has no relationship with women at all, as in the historia regum britanniae. a gauvain and gawain 103 second step seems to be taken in the following two romances. in lancelot, he holds a conversation with a lady (1958: ll. 544-9) whose name the author does not bother to mention. lunette in yvain attracts the knight but she is not able to keep his heart for mo re than a week. finally, in the perceval, he becomes the passionate lover who always finds a lady willing to be with him, but with no sense of fidelity on his side. gauvain is perfect in everything but in love: in any of the referred romances he is able to culminate succesfully, that is according to the rules of fin'amors, a love affair. not only his attitude does not fitt within the strict rules of fin'amors, but it is a serious threat to them. the basis are laid for gauvain's degradation in the romances written after chrétien de troyes. the unknown author of sir gawain and the green knight did know for sure the romance tradition behind gauvain; then the question arises: why did he still choose him as the protagonist of a story in which moral purity was necessary not to lose your head? the answer might be precisely that he knew for sure all the romance tradition behind gauvain, including his first recorded apparitions in texts written in england in whichas we said at the beginning the hero was undoubtedly quite favoured. from his very apparition in sir gawain and the green knight (1967: l. 109), arthur's nephew is seen under a clearly favourable light: he is sitting next to queen guinevere. this location of the knight best exemplifies his grandeur within this court, something largely confirmed by his acceptance of the green knight's challenge (1967: ll. 339-61). during the initial scenes in camelot, only his uncle is superior to him; however we can not help feeling that the author is somehow trying to drive our sympathies more to "gode gawan" (1967: l. 109) than to this "sumquat childgered" arthur (1967: l. 86). the court is celebrating new year's eve (1967: ll. 60ff) and everyone is making merry; the atmosphere invites to games and refinement. gawain would surely be in his proper place. and sypen riche forth runnen to reche hondeselle, áe¥ed ¥eres -¥iftes on hi¥, ¥elde hem bi hond, debated busyly aboute ¥o giftes; ladies la¥ed ful loude, po¥ pay lost haden, and he pat wan watz not wrothe, pat may ¥e wel trawe. alle pis myrpe pay maden to pe mete tyme. (1967: ll. 66-71) e ugenio olivares 104 it seems clear that the gawain this poem will celebrate will be the knight of courtesy, whose attachment to this virtue was widely known in england. in the lines of richard coeur de lion, a poem dated around 1310, we find gawain among a list of courteous knights: many romances men make newe, of good knyghtes, strong and trewe; off theyr dedes men rede romance, bothe in engeland and in france; off roweland and of oliuer, and of euery doseper; of alisandre and of charlemain, off kyng arthour and off gawayn; how they were knyghtes good and curteys, off turpyn, and of ogier daneys. (madden, 1839: xxxviii) also chaucer, in his translation of the roman de la rose would also write: "as fer as gaweyn, the worthy,/ was preised for his curtesy" (1988: ll. 2209-10). even more famous is his reference to the knight in the squire's tale as "gawayn, with his olde curteysie" (1988: l. 95). courtesy, however, will not be the only virtue that will endow this knight. aware of the moral dangers implicit in certain interpretations of cortaysye (mainly adultery) the unknown author will present it as a part of a set of virtues and dispositions, all of them defined by the word trawpe (1967: l. 626). the poet uses the pentangle as a visible remainder of this whole, where no fissures can be found. for hit is a figure pat haldez fyue poyntez, and vche lyne vmbelappez and loukez in oper, and ayquere hit is endelez; and englych hit callen oueral, as i here, pe endeless knot. for¥y hit acordez to pis kny¥t and to his cler armez, for ay faythful in fyue and sere fyue sypez gawan watz for gode knawen, and as gold pured, voyded of vche vylany, wyth vertuez ennourned in mote; forpy pe pentangel nwe gauvain and gawain 105 he ber in schelde and cote, as tulk of tale most trwe and gentylest kny¥t of lote. (1967: ll. 625-39) christian and social virtues are present in the five points of the star. the emphasis on the moral excellence of the hero is a clear consequence of the grial poems. however the poet is able to avoid the moral rigorism of galahad and he depicts a knight that, though a good christian, softens what might have been a too hard celibacy by the fact that he is the knight of a lady. the unknown poet surely enjoyed some of the innovations of the poetry of courtly love. gawain, at the end of his career, will be a loyal and true fin'amans, the servant of the highest of ladies, the "quen of cortaysye" (pearl, 1921: l. 432), the virgin mary. her image is depicted in the inner part of gawain's shield, just as william ix of aquitaine did with the picture of one of his "amies" (riquer, 1948: 20). well we might put in the mouth of the gawain, the lines from this english love poem dedicated to the mother of god: wip al mi lif yloue pat may, he[o] is mi solas nyht and day, my ioie & eke my beste play and eke my louelongynge; al pe betere me is pat day ? at ich of hire synge. (brown, 1924: 13) the fourteenth century was a good moment to return his lost nobility to gawain, and england the best place to do so. the literature of fin'amors, which had treated the knight so badly, was dying away. besides, as maurice valency writes (1958: 188), fin'amors was never at home in england. at the same time a new model of knight was pushing forward: galahad, the grial hero, with all his christian virtues was replacing lancelot. a certain nationalistic feeling might have put the final touch in the whole picture. we must not forget that a french audience would surely appreciate much more a lancelot, than a gauvain, who after all was a foreigner. equally, in england it was lancelot the one who came from a foreign country, being gawain for the readers an old known character. as b. k. ray states, "he is the hero of medieval romance nearest to the english heart" (1926: 4). definitely, gawain might regain his past honour. e ugenio olivares 106 eugenio m. olivares merino universidad de jaén bibliography brown, carleton ed, 1924: english lyrics of the xivth century, oxford, clarendon press. chaucer, geoffrey 1988: the canterbury tales in the riverside chaucer. ed. l. d. benson, oup. loomis, r. s. ed, 1959a: arthurian literature in the middle ages. a collaborative history. oxford, clarendon press. loomis, r. s. 1959b: layamon's brut. in loomis 1959a: 104-11. madden, sir frederick ed, 1839: syr gawayne: a collection of ancient romancepoems by scotish and english authors, relating to that celebrated knight of the round table. london, richard and john e. taylor. montreuil, gerbert de. 1922-25: la continuation de perceval. 2 vols. les classiques français du moyen âge. ed. mary williams, paris, libraire ancienne honoré champion. monmouth, geofrey of 1929: historia regum britanniae. ed. acton griscom, new york, columbia u. p. nitze, w. a. 1953: the character of gawain in the romances of chrètien de troyes. modern philology 50: 219-25. owen, d. d. r. 1968: burlesque tradition and sir gawain and the green knight. modern language studies 4: 125-45. paris, g. 1888: romans épisodiques. in histoire litteraire de la france, xxx, paris, imprimerie nationale. 29-45. pearl 1921: ed. sir israel gollancz 1891, oup. ray, b. k. 1926: the character of gawain, oup. gauvain and gawain 107 riquer, martín de 1948: resumen de literatura provenzal trovadoresca. barcelona, seix barral. sir gawain and the green knight 1967: eds. j. r. r. tolkien and e. v. gordon 1925. second edition by norman davis. oxford, at the clarendon press. thompson, a. w. 1959: additions to chrétien's perceval. in loomis 1959 a: 206-17 troyes, chrétien de 1952: erec et enide. les classiques français du moyen âge 80. ed. m. roques. libraire ancienne honoré paris, champion. troyes, chrétien de 1957: cligès. les classiques français du moyen âge 84. ed. a. micha. paris, libraire ancienne honoré champion. troyes, chrétien de 1958: le chevalier de la charrette lancelot. les classiques français du moyen âge 86. ed. m. roques. paris, libraire ancienne honoré champion. troyes, chrétien de 1960: le chevalier au lion yvain. les classiques français du moyen âge 89. ed. m. roques. paris, libraire ancienne honoré champion. troyes, chrétien de 1985: li contes del graal. ed. martín de riquer. barcelona, biblioteca filológica. valency, maurice 1958: in praise of love. an introduction to the love-poetry of the renaissance. new york, the macmillan company. wace 1938-40: roman de brut. ed. i. arnold, paris, société des anciens textes français. wace & layamon 1962: arthurian chronicles. trad. eugene mason. london and toronto, everyman's library. * † * selim09.doc maría josé gómez, selim 9 (1999): 35—43 harold of england: the romantic revision of the last anglosaxon king the anglo -saxon past has exerted an alluring attraction on t he romantic mind, and both the interest for the legendary and the nationalistic search for the connections with a germanic and scandinavian heritage drew some authors into this age. by especially focusing on the vindication of the figure of king harold godwinson as a tragic national hero in tennyson's and lytton's harolds, this paper studies the nineteenth century version of the eve of the conquest. the fact that the romantics felt a fascination for antiquity, especially for the middles ages, comes proven b y the many works whose interests, topics, and settings deal with this "enchanted ground" as johnston called it (johnston, 1964). in literature, medievalism was in fashion for a long time; the works range from horace walpole's the castle of otranto (1765) or walter scotts' famous historical novels as ivanhoe (1819), to those of the late 1880s, like g. a. henty's wulf the saxon, when collections of historical fiction -sometimes even by the same prolific author-were common in the libraries of young middle -class boys. most oftently these novels, tales and stories stressed the adventurous and chivalric aspects of the so-called dark ages; fantasy and mystery coloured the approach to medieval times to such an extent that it developed into the particular subgenre of the gothic novel. the emphasis on the magical, however, was gradually superseded by other interests through the nineteenth century. as a consequence of the nationalistic trend pervading romanticism and victorian chauvinism, authors began to focus on historical subjects as an exertion of patriotism beyond just fancying the alluring gloom of the medieval atmosphere. from the renaissance research in early medieval england had been fostered by different groups of antiquarians. old english sermons and legal documents had been translated and edited. the ancient anglo -saxon law had been maría josé gómez calderón 34 invoked to support religious and political arguments during the anglican reform, the civil war and the revolution. in the end, the political rhetoric had coined the anglo-saxon myth, which regarded pre -conquest england as the golden age of freedom most unhappily overthown by the tyrannical norman yoke. according to this theory, 1066 was a crucial turning point in history whose sad consequences were still endured by the english people. at a popular level, however, the knowledge of those "merry old days" was fairly inconsistent. the references to the anglo -saxons appearing in political debates were somehow familiar but inaccurately understood by common people, whose ideas about the middle ages was a mess of folkish topics. as the 17th century pamphlets prove, some semilegendary fig ures as king alfred the great or canute had already entered popular imagery, but it is not until romanticism that anglo -saxonism spread out of elitist groups. nineteeth century people in general and the victorian middle -class in particular began to pay much attention to medieval history. literary works, specially fiction, contributed enormously to the popularisation of anglo saxon history . in many cases, these novels were oriented towards the young with the didactic purpose of educating them in history of the english people. as christopher hill argues in his influential article "the norman yoke" (hill, 1958: 111) “[…] for the middle class the free anglo-saxons were not dead. indeed, the years 1820-80, the years of the gothic revival, were in a sense their heyday". in victorian england, and after walter scott's example, many authors move away from the gothic and the excessively fantastic to offer their readers a more accurate and realistic rendering of life in anglo -saxon times. anglosaxon scholarship developed rapidly, so that, as modern historians claim "the achievement of british history in the midnineteenth century is the historiography of the early middle ages" (melman, 1991: 577). among the medieval topics, the romantics found the the conquest particularly appealing and devoted themselves to research in order to document their works properly. historical works by camden, freeman, sharon turner, palgrave and kemble were thoroughly consulted. these works, in turn, relied on medieval texts as the anglo -saxon chronicle and the twelve century accounts by william of mamelsbury and henry of huntingdon. the romantics also read the norman historians: they knew eleventh century works such as william of harold of e ngland 35 poitiers, gesta guillelmi ducis normannorum regis anglorum, william de jumiéges' gesta normannorum ducum; together with the bayeux tapestry that echoed poitier's gesta. indeed, the norman versions of the conquest were frequently quoted, but most ofently disregarded by the victorian english writers. this vindication of the anglo -saxon past brought back its old heroes. as it was pointed above, some of them had not been not completely forgotten as for example, alfred and saint edward. but the romantic taste for lost causes could not fail to find in king harold ii, the last anglo -saxon king, a true tragic hero. in fact, there are several novels devoted to harold and the eve of the conquest: charles macfarlane's camp of refugee (1844), about edward the confessor's reign, bulwer lytton's harold, the last of the saxon kings (1848), napier's novel of the same title in 1858, crake's chronicle of aescendune, emma leslie's gytha's message and henty's wulf the saxon in the 1880s. tennyson himself was so impressed by lytton's novel that he published harold in 1876, a drama inspired by it and dedicated to the novelist's son, the second lord lytton, viceroy of india; curiously, bulwer lytton's novel had been previously dedicated to tennyson's uncle d'eyncourt, m.p. the conquest, in these patriotic authors' opinion, deserved an epic treatment; as bulwer lytton put it, "the norman conquest was our trojan war" (lytton, 1913: ix). lytton's harold was very popular in its day; it is representative of the victorian saxon novel, hence the interest of studying in it the romantic revision of the saxon myth in nineteenth century england. to begin with, lytton sided with the anti-gothic, late romantic novelists of scott's school. even if accused of pedantry, lytton declares himself faithful to historical records: unlike those others who, as he said, "rest contented to turn history into flagrant romance" he chooses the historicist task of "extracting its natural romance from the actual history" (lytton: x). this eagerness for historicity had led lytton to fill the novel with notes and references to historians and to use words of the "saxon forefathers" such as "weregeld" or "ceorls". the question of language as the direct manifestation of the character of a people, and the purity and authenticity of english before being defiled by norman french were also very appealing to the nineteenth century interest in philology. lytton justifies himself, wondering: "would maría josé gómez calderón 36 any word from the modern vocabulary suggest the same idea, or embody the same feeling?" (xx). in the third edition of the novel and as his response to the general criticism for the excessive erudition in harold, lytton just argued: "i contented myself with the humbler task to employ romance in the aid of history" (xviii). the selection of the conquest as the topic for a novel also suited the racial nationalism of the victorians. the saxon resistance to the foreign invader found immediate sympathy; harold had ultimately died in the battlefield pierced in the eye by a norman arrow while fighting against the alien enemy. the last saxon king had therefore won the reputation of great hero of the nation. lytton portrays him as a virtuous and dedicated king. unlike william of normandy, he was always moved by his love for england and never by his personal ambition. nevertheless, the contemporary chronicles that lytton claimed to follow so accurately provide evidence of harold's misdemeanors and perjury, and present them as the cause of his defeat at hastings. they record how harold had promised william of normandy his help to obtain the throne of england, and had sworn it on the relics of the saints. as harold did not keep his sacred oath, he was excommunicated by the pope. here romantic chauvinism rewrites history and correct the chronicles: harold is still presented as the unquestionable hero because he was deceived and forced by the cunning normans. according to this explanation, william extracted the oath from harold while he was kept prisoner at the norman court. harold swore because he knew william would not let him go back to england, where he was needed, without having his promise. also, harold accepted because william threatened the lives of harold's brother and nephew whom he had as hostages in rouan. thirdly, when harold swore he did not know he was doing it on the saints' bones. as we can see, the nineteenth century version of anglo -saxon history rested then on the manichean opossition of races: the noble saxons versus the wicked normans represented by their leaders harold and william. harold the novel portrays england on the eve of the conquest as a free, natural, agrarian society where good vassals and lords were a happy family. this harmonious order seems to be disrupted by "the others", the normans usurping the position of the unfairly banished saxons. in the novel the racial harold of e ngland 37 tension is established only between saxon and norman; lytton does not dwell on the conflicts between the danish settlers and the anglo -saxons, and as for the celts, these were kept at a safe distance in the welsh and scottish borders. the scandinavians are equals and the danelaw contributes to the saxon state, while normans and celts are inferior peoples who attack it. the reason why lytton presented this racial division may have depended more on romantic than on medieval ideas. the old enemity with the french had been recently intensified by the napoleonic menace. the racial discourse of romanticism establishes the differences between england and france, as it associates the true english, that is, the descendant of the anglo -saxons, to the teutonic stock. among these peoples, saxons are likened to the scandinavians, "a magnificent race of men were those war sons of the old north" (17) as lytton said. right in the opening chapters of the novel, he celebrates the mixing of the germanic scandinavian and saxons, and at the same time rebukes the uncouth celts: [the scandinavians] had the same prodigious energy, the same passion for freedom, individual and civil, the same splendid errors in the thirst for fame and the "point of honour". and above all, as a main cause of civilisation, they were wonderfully pliant and malleable in their admixtures with the people they overran. this is their true distinction from the stubborn celt, who refuses to mingle, and disdains to improve. (17) harold's ascendancy is then the best, coming as he does from two castes of heroes: son of godwin, the most powerful saxon earl, his mother githa was the sister of king swein of denmark. from lytton's perspective, saxons and scandinavians are brethren, and the fact that harold hardrada of norway attacked england at the same time as william the norman advanced in the south did not make these scandinavians enemies as villanous as the normans. furthermore, lytton's only good remark about the normans was their scandinavian origin. but since they were baptised they forgot their old customs and turned into frenchified fanatic papists: those terrible heathens who spared neither priest nor altar, were the most redoubtable defenders of the christian church; their old language forgotten (save by a few in the town of bayeux), their ancestral names (save a few among the noblest) changed into maría josé gómez calderón 38 french titles, and little else but the undomitable valour of the scandinavian remained unaltered among the arts and manners of the frankish-norman. (18) the opossition of heathenism to the roman catholicism is also an interesting aspect of the romantic proteutonism. the implications seem to be that a religion that excommunicated such a great man as harold could be no good. lytton could not portray harold as the pagan hero who challenges religious opression without contradicting historical records too openly. then, he creates the character of hilda the "vala", the danis h sorcerer grandmother to harold's beloved edith. hilda is a worshiper of nature and the old germanic deities: close to the mysterious women of the gothic novels, she cast bones, read wells and runes, and invoked the spirits of old norse warriors. this turned out quite a controversial character for lytton, since as the preface to the third edition of the novel says, he had been criticised on account of this gothic slip. surprisingly enough lytton defends hilda on the bases of being "as much addressed to the reason as to the fancy, in showing what large, if dim, remains of the ancient "heathenesse" still kept their ground on the saxon soil" (xii). other romantic supernatural elements recur in harold: there are prophetic dreams, visions, a cross that bends against harold, and signs in the sky that predict the king's fate. the anglo -saxon chronicle records a comet appearing the day of the battle of hastings as an ill omen for the english. lytton makes a special use of the episode to characterize harold as the fa ted hero. in his version, harold was born under a bad star the same day as william of normandy; also, edith has a dream in which the stars fight and harold's is defeated. thus, harold's destiny is doomed by superior forces that escape human control. the characterization of harold as a romantic hero is completed by lytton's presentation of his stormy emotional life. harold's own brother tostig threatened the country, and he had to be eliminated him in the battlefield. a younger brother, wulfnoth, and the unhappy nephew haco were hostages in the norman court and harold's false oath was in part done to save them, as he had promised to their mother. and finally, harold had a most tragic love; he had to renounce edith, his bethroted, for the sake of england. lytton praises the sacrifice of harold's only passion as a proof of harold of e ngland 39 his heroicity; the only relationship they could keep was a sublime platonic love. it is important to notice that, contrarily, historical documents as the doomsday book say that harold and edit h's love was more than spiritual as she had children by him. harold subsequently married aldwyth, the widow of the defeated welsh king gryffith, in order to secure the loyalty of her troublesome brothers the earls morcar of northumbria and edwin of mercia. in a most romantic ending, lytton dramatizes the passage of the chronicles narrating how edith, who throughout the novel had acquired all the features of the true saxon heroine, was the only one who could recognise harold's maimed body on the field of has tings. lytton says: her hands bled as the mail gave way to her efforts; the tunic beneath was all dabbled with blood. she rent the folds, and on the breast, just above the silenced heart, were punctured in the old saxon letters, the word "edith"; and just below, in characters more fresh, the word "england". (553) as it has been discussed above, lytton's harold recovers anglo -saxon history and transforms it into a canonic romantic novel with heroes, battles, passions, and the fight for the freedom of the people against the foreigner. it influenced the subsequent approaches to the topic of harold and the conquest, as tennyson himself acknowledges in his harold. nevertheless, the latter introduces an important contrast. comparing lytton's to tennyson's works, we can see the modification the anglo -saxon myth suffered in one generation. in tennyson, the emphasis shifts from racialism and exacerbated patriotism to the more private sphere of inner conflicts. harold is still a national hero, and the conquest an unhappy event; but tennyson, instead of presenting the opossition saxon versus norman as the axis of his work, focuses on harold's personal feelings as this understands he cannot fight his own fate. he is a perjurer and knows he is doomed to die, he does not love the woman he married and loves edith who was supposed to take the veil. all these conflicts that torment harold appear in the following scene. harold has just rudely commanded his wife aldwyth to leave him alone with edith before going to the battle where he will die. edith: alas, my lord, she loved thee. harold: never! never! edith: i saw it in her eyes! maría josé gómez calderón 40 harold: i see it in thine. and not on thee --nor england-fall god's doom! edith: on thee? and thou art england! alfred was england. ethelred was nothing. england is but her king, and thou art harold! harold: edith, the sign in heaven--the suddent blast at sea--my fatal oath--the dead saints --the dark dreams --the pope's anathema --the holy rood that bow'd to me at waltham--edith, if i, the last english king of england — … (tennyson, 1888: 311) in later works harold the national symbol becomes second to harold the tragic hero. however, in spite of minor variations, the anglo -saxon past was still a mythic territory for the romantics. even though authors as lytton pretended some seriousness and historical rigour in their novels and condemned gothic works, these same writers perpetuated a false image of the middle ages. the nineteenth century public received therefore anglo -saxon myth under the pretense of anglo-saxon history, in a new turning of what hobsbawn sensibly called the "invented tradition" (hobsbawn, 1984). mª josé gómez calderón universidad de sevilla works cited hill, c. 1958: puritanism and revolution: studies in the interpretation of the english revolution of the seventeenth century. london, secker and warbugh. hobsbwaun e. and t. rogers 1984: the invention of tradition. cambridge, cup. johnston, a. 1964: enchanted ground: the study of medieval romance in the eighteenth century. london, university of london the athlone press. harold of e ngland 41 lytton, edward bulwer lord 1913: harold, the last of the saxon kings. london, new york, toronto, henry frowde oup. melman, b. 1991: claiming the nation's past: the invention of an anglo -saxon tradition. journal of contemporary history 26 [london, newbury park, new delhi, sage]. tennyson, alfred lord 1888: the works of alfred lord tennyson. vol.vii, london, macmillan. * † * selim ana laura rodríguez & eugenio contreras, selim 11 (2001-2002): 97—115 ongitan: a case study of evidentiality in old english perception verbs 0. introduction studies on evidentiality from a historical point of view are comparatively scarce, particularly in languages such as english, where evidentiality, though not grammaticalized, is mapped by some other means, such as specific lexical items. among them, perception verbs are particularly relevant. this study focuses on the evidential usage shown by the old english verb ongitan, the meaning of which is ‘perceive’. thus, this verb is the hyperonym of the category of perception verbs in old english. the category of evidentiality concerns the different linguistic resources speakers use to qualify the information rendered in a proposition. the qualification of that information may be broadly defined according to the following parameters: a) source of information; b) speakers’ attitude towards the information conveyed in the proposition; c) combination of a) and b). our point of departure is, however, the narrow definition of evidentiality as the study of linguistic means to express the origin or source of knowledge of the information presented in a proposition. that is, the parameter of source of information is taken as the main focus of study, as well as the consequences of its usage. this view does not ignore the well-known view that evidentiality overlaps with other grammatical categories such as epistemic modality. however, in this paper, due to the type of texts and data available for the study of old english, as well as to the fact that there have been quite few studies on this topic, we think, following willet (1986: 55) that before studying interaction between evidentiality and other grammatical areas, it is important to deal first with evidentiality itself. the study of the interaction between the evidential uses of perception verbs in old english and modality is, thus, out of the scope of this paper. ana laura rodríguez & eugenio contreras 98 this research is based on the study of more than 500 contexts related to ongitan collected from the toronto microfiche concordance and the helsinki corpus of english texts. in these texts, mainly narrative, the speaker or narrator does not reflect his own attitudes nor does he give direct justification for the information presented in the proposition, not even in those texts written in the first person such as the dialogues of boethius. actually, the speaker's evaluation of the facts can be seen in the evaluation of the actions developed by the narrative characters. consequently, there is a transfer of perspective from the actual speaker to that of the character that experiences the actions narrated. therefore, when studying old english texts for evidentiality we prefer to talk about the conceptualizer, following langacker (1987, 1991) so we can cope with not only those cases where the speaker is the main character as in letters, but also with those where the speaker's attitudes towards knowledge are given through the actions performed by the characters of the stories. 1. ongitan in old english as most old english lexical items ongitan is a polysemous word. the following synonyms are found in the bosworth-toller old english dictionary: ongitan/ongietan: forms: ongiotan, ongeotan; p. –geat, -get; pl –geaton, getan; pp. ongiten, -gieten meanings: 1. perceive 2. perceive, see 3. perceive by hearing 4. perceive, feel (pain etc) 5. feel, be of opinion, judge 6. know, hear of, find out 7. perceive, understand ongitan: a case study of evidentiality in oe 99 8. recognize, know 8.1 to take a person or thing to be what really is 8.2 to recognize a fact or circumstance as observed in the first four definitions, this verb refers primarily to the general act of perceiving by means of direct sensory perception that is, by the perception through one sensory mode i.e., visual, auditive or touch (feeling). in this sense it is related to other old english verbs of perception such as: 1. perceive, see oe (ge-) seon 2. perceive by hearing oe (ge-) hyran 3. perceive, feel (pain etc) oe felan on the other hand, there are other definitions where the perception is related to the outcome of an intellective process. it is the act of perceiving by means of a thinking process that leads to the ‘knowing’ result. this intellective process can be closer to the conceptualizer's experience or to the conceptualizer's stored knowledge as far as it is the outcome of the perception process, that is, the final ‘knowing’ situation. in this sense, ongitan is related to other intellective verbs, or verbs of knowing such as: 1. feel, be of opinion, judge oe deman, wenan 2. know oe cunnan, witan 3. perceive, understand oe understandan 4. recognize, know oe oncnawan in addition, there is one sense of ongitan which is closely connected to the idea of ‘coming to know something’ by means of the information obtained from other people: ‘hear of’, which in old english could also be rendered by the sensory verb old english hyran. another sense which means that the information is obtained by an intentional process on the part of the speaker is cunian ‘find out’. ana laura rodríguez & eugenio contreras 100 2. criteria for evidential / non-evidential usage in the selection of our corpus, our criteria for distinguishing the evidential versus the non-evidential usage of ongitan basically follows anderson (1986). however, we have adapted the criteria to make them suitable to be applied to the usage of a lexical item that has not been grammaticalized, and more specifically to an old english lexical element. the identification of the evidential function is based on the following points: (a) the lexical element shows the kind of justification for a factual claim available to the conceptualizer making that claim, the conceptualizer being either the speaker or a character. (b) the lexical element is not the main predicate of the proposition. it is a specification added to a factual claim about something else. this is specially clear when the lexical element is followed by a proposition which refers to a event or state of affairs, although we cannot exclude the possibility of an event being nominalized rather than rendered by a proposition. but we will not go into this topic in this paper. (c) the lexical element is not grammaticalized and the evidential function is not necessarily its primary meaning. on the other hand, the criteria to distinguish the non-evidential use of ongitan are the following: 1. the verbal lexical element is the main predication of the sentence 2. the lexical element does not refer to an event or situation, but to a concept, simple or complex. for example, in the case of a modern english perception verb the difference between i perceive your fear [non-evidential] and i perceive you are afraid [evidential]. 3. corpus analysis 3.1. non-evidential usage as a perception verb, ongitan can be found in non-evidential use, as shown in these examples: ongitan: a case study of evidentiality in oe 101 (1) hie geata clifu ongitan meahton (beo 1907) they could perceive [= see] the cliffs of the gauts(*) (2) hie ... bearhtm ongeaton, guðhorn galan (beo 1425) they ... the noise perceived [= heard], the war-horn singing. (3) fær ongeton (ex 452) fear perceived [= felt] in these cases, the hyperonymous verb ongitan can be rendered by more specific sensory verbs, as ‘see’ in example (1), ‘hear’ in example (2), and ‘feel’ in example (3). in all these examples, ongitan is the main predication of the sentence. 3.2. evidential usage on the other hand, evidential uses of ongitan show different types of source of information that can be classified according to the way the information was acquired. the typological classification here proposed, as shown in the following table, is based, among others, on willet’s (1986): direct/attested evidence indirect evidence f direct perception • visual observation f reported • from oral language: hearsay f inferred • inference from direct perception of evidence f mental construction • reasoning • deduction • belief (*) the present-day english version of the contexts included in this paper tries to maintain the original structure as close as possible. no proper translation is intended. however, slight changes in word order have been occasionally introduced to help easier understanding. ana laura rodríguez & eugenio contreras 102 3.2.1. direct/attested evidence f direct perception • visual observation (4) þa þæt ða ongeaton ða ærran gewinnan þæt se romanisca here wæs onweg gewite, ða coman hi sona… (bede 1 9.44.20) then, when the former enemy that perceived, that the roman army had retreated away, then they came soon... 3.2.2. indirect evidence f reported • from oral language: hearsay (5) ic ongeat (…) swa swa me sædon his forecwedenan geongran þæt sum wer wunne on þære hefigestan hatunge his gesacan (gd 2 (c) 27.158.21) i perceived … as (it) was said to me by his followers, that a certain man suffered in the oppressive hating of his enemy. (6) ic hit ongeat smeaþancollice fram þam cnihte, (…) þæt se ylca arwyrða mæssepreost aras of his ræste & (…) asettum his handum ofer hine (…) and him wæs sona sæl (gdpref and 3 (c) 35.247.19) i it perceived thoroughly from that servant (…) that this same honourable priest rose from his rest and (…) he set his hands over him (…) and he was soon healthy. we can also include in this category those examples where the knowledge obtained by the conceptualizer was acquired by hearsay, but where the volitional act of acquiring the information by those means is explicitly marked, as for example: (7) he þa acsiende smeaðancollice ongeat, þæt on ða ylcan tid wæs þæs biscopes forðfore…..(gd 2(c) 35.172.15) he then, inquiring thoroughly, perceived that at that same time was the departure of that bishop... ongitan: a case study of evidentiality in oe 103 f inferred • inference from direct perception of evidence (8) ða sona se ilca storm eft hwearf & cwom, se ðe … medmicel fæc gestilde, ond ealne þone dæg swiðe micel & strong wæs, þætte men sweotolice ongeaton meahton, þætte se medmicla fyrst þære stilnesse, þe ðær becwom… heofonlice forgifen wæs (bede 5 1.386.14) then soon the same storm again returned and came, which …rested for a short time and all that day very great and strong was, so that men could clearly perceive that the brief respite of that calm, that happened there … was heavenly granted. (9) ond æfter his æriste (…) him ætwyde ða wunda on his handum and on his fotum, þa gewundedan sidan, þæt hi þy soðlicor ongeaton þæt hit wæs soðlice his agen lichoma ðæt þær of deaðe aras. (mart 5 (herzfeld-binz) 562) and after his resurrection (…) [christ] showed them the wounds in his hands and in his feet and the wounded side so that they more truly perceived that it was truly his own body that had arisen after his death. f mental construction this category is characterized as the outcome of the conceptualizer’s mental process. it embraces the different types of evidential marking according to what they have in common, that is, the fact that they point to the result of a mental process as the main source of knowledge. it aims at grouping categories such as deduction and belief (chafe 1986), or reasoning (willet 1986). willet classifies reasoning as a ‘mental construct’. mental constructs are thoughts, beliefs or dreams, but he does not consider them as forming a subcategory. he includes them all within the category of reasoning which, in turn, is a subcategory within indirect evidence. however, what we suggest here is that belief should be integrated within a mental construction category within the indirect evidence type, but different from that of reasoning. • reasoning ana laura rodríguez & eugenio contreras 104 (10) ic ongeat þæt ðes middangeard wæs of swiðe manegum & mislicum þingum gegaderod (bo 35.96.12) i perceived (understood) that this world was from many and diverse things gathered. • deduction (11) þa þæt halige child ongeat þæt heora lifes ende tonealehte … (mart 5(herzfeld-binz) 1380 [jy15/a/11]) when the holy child perceived (realized) that the end of his life was approaching… • belief (12) ic ongite ðæt þis is swiðe riht racu þæt þu nu recst (bo 38.123.4) i perceive (think, believe) that this is a very right telling that you now tell (have told) (13) ongite & gelefe þæt wit on riht spyrigen (bo 38.118.12) i perceive and believe that we two rightly have investigated. 3.3. collocations of ongitan with sensory and intellective verbs once a first typology of the evidential usage of ongitan has been presented, a deeper study of this usage is found when analyzing its collocations with other verbs, with which it establishes semantic relationships. this enables us to set up the link between this hyperonymous verb and other perception verbs in evidential usage. moreover, collocations with other verbs shed light on their semantic specificity. the collected data allow us to propose the following classification: a) + sensory verb (vs) a.1) ongitan + vs a.2) vs + ongitan ongitan: a case study of evidentiality in oe 105 b) + intellective verb (vi) b.1) ongitan + vi b.2) vi + ongitan two types of word order can be distinguished in each subgroup. these types are important in the first group, since they are iconic to the sequence of actions and, therefore, they add information about the path towards the perception process itself. however, in the second group, the one including intellective verbs, the subdivision is not conceptually relevant, so this difference is only maintained at the formal level. a) ongitan + sensory verb in the first group, the sensory verbs that collocate with ongitan are (ge)seon, and (ge)hyran. we find two different orders of occurrence, one in which ongitan precedes the sensory verb and another one in which ongitan follows it. in this case, the word order is relevant for the conceptual interpretation of ongitan. a.1. ongitan + vs for the first type of combination, we may mention the following contexts: (14) he drihten þæt ongeat and geseah, þæt se deofol þone iudas lærde, þæt he hine belæwde (homs 22 (cendom 1) 66) he, the lord, that perceived and saw, that the devil taught that to jude, so that he betrayed him. (15) þa ongeat ic selfa & geseah of dæle þæt me þa earfeðu becwoman (alex 166) i myself perceived and saw from my part that that trouble was coming to me. (16) þær stodon mid wulfstane wigan unforhte, ælfere and maccus, modige twegen, þa noldon æt þam forda fleam gewyrcan, ac hi fæstlice wið ða fynd weredon, þa hwile þe hi wæpna wealdan ana laura rodríguez & eugenio contreras 106 moston. þa hi þæt ongeaton and georne gesawon þæt hi þær bricgweardas bitere fundon, ongunnon lytegian þa laðe gystas (beo 79-86) there fought with wulfstan warriors fearless, aelfere and maccus, two great in courage, who would not at this fjord take to flight, but stoutly against the enemy defended themselves while with their weapons they might wield. then they perceived that and clearly saw that this guarding of the causeway was a fierce encounter. in these examples, the source of information conveyed by ongitan is less specific than that expressed by the sensory verb, which clearly states the perceptual process that acts as the source of evidence available to the conceptualizer. the path of information is an inference closer to the field of experience than to the result of a pure intellective process. here the hyperonym perceive could be narrowed to the ‘awareness’ process rather than to the ‘understanding’ one. the examples also show that the action of ongitan is the result of an intellective process confirmed by a direct sensory process specified by the second verb. that intellective process is related to the act of ‘becoming aware of something’ which is also confirmed by direct sensory perception. the evidence of the inferential process is not necessarily expressed, although we may find some cases in which it is expressed, as can be seen in context (16). in addition, this inferential process is supported by a visual one explicitly stated by the specific sensory verb. what is common to all these contexts can be expressed in the following terms: from whatever i /we/they know and have experienced, i/we/they become aware of a certain event which i/we/they also see with our eyes a.2. vs + ongitan examples of ongitan occurring after the sensory verb are: (17) ... ac ða ða he nane fotswaðe on þam snawe ne geseah ða ongeat he þæt secuma wæs engel and na mann (æchom ii, 10 83.69) ongitan: a case study of evidentiality in oe 107 …but he no footsteps in the snow saw, then he perceived [realized] that the stranger was an angel and not a man. (18) þa cyrdon þa englas to ure sybbe & to ure lufan þa hie gesegon and ongeaton ðæt dryhten crist wæs gecyrred & ymbesald mid mennissce lichoman (ls 19 (purifmary) 154) when the angels returned to our peace and to our love then they saw and perceived [realized] that christ had returned & (was) surrounded with a man's body. in these contexts, the specific perception verb preceding ongitan contributes to the narrowing of the semantics of the hyperonymous verb as a more intellective process. in fact, the previous sensory verb highlights that the source of information that leads to the inference process is a sensory one. in most cases, ongitan in this position can be rendered by the modern english ‘realize’ or ‘understand’. in these examples, the direct perception of the situation by the conceptualizer followed by the subsequent inferential process is brought out. this can be paraphrased as: i/we/they perceive a situation directly and then i/we/they understand and realize that situation the path to the conceptualizer's knowledge is the direct sensory experience although the mode of knowledge is an intellectual one. in fact, two examples that clarify this relationship between source of knowledge and mode of knowing is found in the corpus, since they show that the direct perception of an event does not necessarily always refer to the mode of knowledge: (19) heo wæron stænenre heortan and flintenre, þæt heo þæt ongitan ne mihton, þæt heo þær gehyrdon, ne þæt na cweðan ne mihtan þæt hy þær gesawon (homs 40.1 (nap 49) 21) they had a stony and rocky heart so that they could not perceive what they heard there, neither could they say what they saw there. ana laura rodríguez & eugenio contreras 108 (20) ær hie wæron stænener heortan & blinde, þæt hie þæt ongitan meahton, þæt his ðær gesawon (homs 40.3 (mccavevercchom 10) 32) before they had a stony heart and were blind, so that they could not perceive what they saw there. in addition, it is important to notice the relationship between both perceptual verbs in terms of sequenced actions, since ongitan acquires a more intellective sense, therefore pointing to the mode of knowing, in contrast with the more specific perception verbs, which convey the source of knowledge. b) ongitan + intellective verb another group of interesting combinations of ongitan is that in which this verb collocates with what can be categorized as intellective verbs, more specifically those belonging to the subcategory of ‘knowing’. the most frequent verbs in these combinations are witan and oncnawan; cunnan is also found, but less frequently. as in combinations with sensory verbs, two different orders occur, one in which ongitan precedes the intellective verb and another one in which ongitan follows it. the interaction between these verbs, obviously, leads to the interpretation of ongitan as carrying more perceptual than intellective load. however, in this interaction, the experiential basis of the source of knowledge conveyed by this verb is downplayed. therefore, the intellective load of ongitan is stronger than in collocations with sensory verbs. b.1. ongitan + vi some of the contexts in which verbs of ‘knowing’ follow ongitan are: (21) þa þa onsittendas þara horsa mid langum geþersce hyra hors geswencton, þa ongeat & oncneow hyra an, þæt hy gehindrode wæron for þam gylte, þe hi þone odes man ær on wege his horses bereafedon & hine his siþes agældon. (gd 1 (h) 2.15.10) then the riders of those horses, with beats for a long time, outwearied their horses, then one of them perceived and knew that they were hindred for that guilt, that they deprived the man of ongitan: a case study of evidentiality in oe 109 god of his horses before, in the way and had delayed him in his journey. (22) sohte he mid fultum of angolþeode, þe he geare ongeat & wiste, þæt hi ða æfestnesse geleornad & onfongen hæfdon to bysene þære halgan romanisca cyrican & ðære apostolican (bede 5 19.470.9). he tried to find help for him from the people of the angles of whom he previously perceived and knew that they had learned and ... (23) ac se ælmihtega dryhten afyrde him þæt unrihte wrigels of hyra heortan onbyrhte hie mid leohte andgyte, þa hie þæt ongeaton & oncnawan meahton hwa him to helpe & to feorhnere on þas woruld astah. (homs 40.3 (mccabeverchom 10) 34). but the almighty lord removed those unright coverings from their hearts and illuminated them with the light of understanding and then they perceived and could know who sent him to help and nourish in that world. b.2. vi + ongitan there are quite a lot of examples with ongitan collocated after the verb of knowing: (24) þurh lac þære halwendan onsægdnesse he oncneow & ongeat heofon lice him forgifen weosan (bede 4 23.330.13) through favours of these saviours sacrifices he knew and perceived heavenly for him being forgiven. (25) cuðlice ic þæt ær wiste & ongeat, þæt ðis wæs riht weorðung soðra eastrana (bede 5 19.470.9) truly i that before knew and perceived, that this was the right honouring of the true easter. ana laura rodríguez & eugenio contreras 110 (26) ac we þæt cuðlice oncneowon & ongeton, þætte þæt tuddur growan ne weaxan meahte of swylcum geniscipe. (bede 1 16.70.6) but we that truly knew and perceived, that that offspring can increase not grow from such species. the collocation of ongitan previous to the verb of ‘knowing’ (contexts 20-23) seems to narrow the perceptual path of obtaining information as closer to an unspecified experience from which the information was inferred. this can be paraphrased as: i/we/they become aware/are aware of a situation and that has become part of my/our/their knowledge. in contexts 24-26, the source of knowledge seems to be supported by the ongitan process, which is then understood as an inference of unspecific reference. this inference is not confirmed by direct sensory experience, but it is related to information already stored in memory. this can be expressed as: i/we/they realize the situation and that is supported by my/our/their previous knowledge. 3.4. inferential ongitan: grammatical markers ongitan frequently occurs with a number of grammatical markers such as conjunctions, adverbs or prepositions. in these contexts, two functions can be distinguished: the introduction of the evidence (3.4.1.) and the introduction of the ongitan process (3.4.2.) 3.4.1. grammatical markers for the introduction of the evidence the situations or facts that lead to the ongitan process are placed either before or after the verb. however, these facts are occasionally highlighted. when this is the case, the evidence is introduced by different lexical grammatical markers, mainly conjunctions and prepositions. the use of these grammatical markers characterizes the status of that evidence in relation to the evidential verb. the evidence can be introduced as: ongitan: a case study of evidentiality in oe 111 a. a means towards the ongitan process b. a reason that leads to the ongitan process a. the evidence is introduced as a means towards the ongitan process þurh [through] (27) ... hie ongeaton þæt he wæs hælend crist, þurh þæt wundorgeweorc þe he lazarus awehte of deaþe... (homs 21(blhom 6) 8) ... they perceived that he was the holy christ, through that miracle, that he had lazarus brought from death. forþy [by that] (28) forðy he ongeat ðæt he ma mehte ðonne ænig oðer ….. (cp 17.113.14) by that he perceived that he had more strength than any other... be þam [by that] (29) be þam we magon ongitan & oncnawan þæt we synd ealle gebroðra & eac geswustra þonne we ealle to anum heofenlicum fæder swa ofte clypiað (whom 8b 61) by that we can perceive and know that we are all brothers and also sisters when we all to one heavenly father so again speak. midþy / mid þy [by, by means of, through] (30) mid þi þæt ongeat se eadiga andreas þæt hie to drihtene wæron gehwyrfede (ls 1.1 (andrewbright) 284) by that the blessed andreas perceived that they had turned to the lord b. the evidence is presented as the reason that leads to the ongitan process ana laura rodríguez & eugenio contreras 112 forþon þe [because] (31) halige men þonne ongeaton þæt he wæs soþ godes sunu; forþon þe god fæder stemn wæs gehyred æt his fulwihte, þus cweþende: þis is min se leofa sunu, on þæm me wel gelicode (homs 10(blhom 3) 56) the holy men then perceived that he was the true son of god, because the voice of god father was heard in his baptism, then saying: this is my beloved son, in whom i am well pleased. siþþan [since] (32) ic wende ðæt ic ære swiðe strong on mænegum cræftum, ac ic ongeat swiðe hraðe, siððan ðu me forlete, hu untrum ic wæs (cp 65.465.20) i thought that i was strong in many crafts but i perceived it very quickly since you forlet me how weak i was. in all these contexts the ongitan process is an inferential process whose experiential basis lie in the evidence introduced under the scope of the grammatical markers. the scope of these markers embraces the previous situations or states of affairs that constitute the evidence of the inferential process. 3.4.2. grammatical markers for the introduction of inferential ongitan the evidence, however, may not lie within the scope of grammatical markers. in this case, the inferential process is observed as a consequence or result of some previous situation or state of affairs. this instantiation of the inferential process is often marked grammatically by means of adverbs or correlatives. forþon [therefore, consequently] (33) forðon he ongeat þæt heo on monegum þingum godes cirican ungeþwærodon (bede 2 4.106.30) ongitan: a case study of evidentiality in oe 113 therefore /consequently he perceived that they in many things of the church of god differ. forþyþe [therefore, consequently] (34) gif he ne ongeate ðæt him wæs ðæs wana, ac forðyðe he ongeat ðæt sio ungeðyld oft dereð ðæm mannum ðe micle forhæfdnesse habbað (cp 43.311.25) if he did not perceive that he had that need, but therefore/consequently he perceived that often impatience damages other men that have great continence. þa ... þa [when…then] (35) þa þa onsittendas þara horsa mid langum geþersce hyra hors geswencton, þa ongeat & oncneow hyra an, þæt hy gehindrode wæron for þam gylte, þe hi þone odes man ær on wege his horses bereafedon & hine his siþes agældon. (gd 1 (h) 2.15.10) when the riders of those horses, with beats for a long time, outwearied their horses, then one of them perceived and knew that they were hindred for that guilt, that they deprived the man of god of his horses before, in the way and had delayed him in his journey. þæt [so that] (36) þy us sealde dryhten þæt ondgyt, þe he wolde, þæt we ongeaton his willan & ure sawle hælo ... (homu 9 (verchom 4) 88) the lord gave us the advice that we wanted, so that we perceived his will and the salvation of our soul ... þa [then] (37) se þa ongeat þa manigfealdan yfel þe se cyning ðeodric wið þam cristenandome and wið þam romaniscum witum dyde (bo 1.7.13) this then he perceived the many evils that the king theodoric did against the christendom and against the roman wise men. ana laura rodríguez & eugenio contreras 114 4. conclusion in the study of the oe hyperonymous perception verb ongitan both evidential and non-evidential uses have been found. the more basic nonevidential use gives way to a range of evidential functions. a typology of evidential functions has been established according to the way the information is acquired (cf. table 1). direct evidence involves a direct sensory process for the conceptualizer’s acquisition of information, namely, visual perception. the indirect evidence category involves three subcategories which show three sources of inference that differ in degree of detachment from pure sensory experience. it ranges from the most experiential basis of hearsay to the more intellective processes such as reasoning, deduction and belief, which rely on stored knowledge. the analysis goes on with the study of collocations of ongitan, which deepens into the distinction between sensory and intellective processes that constitute the two main categories of the conceptual structure of the verb. the collocations with both sensory and intellective verbs reveal a process of specialization of the evidential functions of this verb as an inferential process: according to the input information which triggers the inferential process, the mode of knowledge, basically intellective, will fluctuate towards either the more sensory end (relying on experiential basis) or towards the more intellective end of the conceptual structure. the last section shows a classification of the grammatical markers according to whether they introduce the evidence (conjunctions and prepositions) or the ongitan process (adverbs and correlatives). the study of the grammatical markers occurring with an evidential verb is not frequently considered in evidentiality research. however, the relevance of this aspect should be stressed if we consider specific characteristics of the use of the evidential verb. in the range of evidential uses of ongitan presented in this paper, the inferential process seems to acquire a special relevance. this relevance is mainly due to a flexibility inherent to the semantic space of our verb, derived from the oscillation between a more experiential and a more intellective pole. ongitan: a case study of evidentiality in oe 115 ana laura rodríguez & eugenio contreras universidad complutense de madrid references anderson, l.b. 1986: evidentials, paths of change, and mental maps: typologically regular assymmetries. evidentiality: the linguistic coding of epistemology. eds. w. chafe and j. nichols. ablex, norwood. 273-312. chafe, w. 1986: evidentiality in english conversation and academic writing. evidentiality: the linguistic coding of epistemology. eds. w. chafe and j. nichols. ablex, norwood. 261-272. langacker, r. 1987: foundations of cognitive grammar vol. 1, theoretical prerequisites. stanford university press, stanford. langacker, r. 1991: foundations of cognitive grammar, vol. 2, descriptive application. stanford university press, stanford. willett, th. 1986: a cross-linguistic survey of the grammaticalization of evidentiality. studies in language 12-1: 51-97. corpora healey, a. and r. venezky. 1980: a microfiche concordance to old english. toronto university press, toronto the helsinki corpus of english texts 1991: department of english. university of helsinki, helsinki bosworth j. and t.n. toller 1808 [1983]: an anglo-saxon dictionary. oxford university press, oxford. * † * selim12.doc carla morini, selim 12 (2003-2004): 109—125 the first english love romance without “love”! the old english apollonius of tyre the historia apollonii (henceforth abbreviated to ha), a romance composed either in greek or in latin during the third century, was handed down to us in three latin redactions,1 preserved in about 100 manuscripts, the earliest of which dates from the ninth century.2 this work was considered worthy of being preserved not only in latin but also of being translated and drawn up again —in verse and in prose— into different vernaculars from the tenth to the seventeenth centuries.3 its first translation into a vernacular language was made in anglo-saxon england (henceforth abbreviated to apollonius) during the tenth century. goolden has argued that there are in this translation only a few additions, which are to be attributed to an erroneous interpretation and thus to a poor translation of the latin source.4 1its rich latin textual tradition was collected for the first time by a. riese 1893 [1973] and more recently g. a. a. kortekaas 1984, vol. 3: 109-113. there are basically two hypotheses as to its origin put forward by scholars. according to the first hypothesis the work was initially compiled in greek during the third century a.d. and then translated into latin. it is based on the presence in the ha of references to certain places and events contained in the ephesiaca of xenophon (see archibald 1991: 32; kortekaas 1984: 109-113) or in euripides’ alcmaeon (see krappe 1924: 57-58). according to the second hypothesis the text was directly compiled in latin during the third century a.d., then between the fifth and the sixth centuries it was reworked from a christian perspective; see klebs 1899: 216. 2 see riese 1973 and kortekaas 1984. the latin version is first mentioned in the second half of the 6th century by venantius fortunatus (see manitius 1935: 324325; kortekaas 1984: 419-431). for reconstructing the history of this recension, see the very useful work written by archibald 1991: 182-216. for a detailed and recent study on the textual relationships existing among the three extant redactions, see kortekaas 1984: 59-96 3 on the history of this romance see archibald 1991: 182-216. on its entire tradition into vernacular languages: 182-216; see also archibald 1989: 24-40; 1991: 123-37; 1999: 229-37. 4 ‘deviations between the old english text and its source are, apart from this small point, entirely the casual results of a not too meticulous process of translation’ (goolden 1958: xx). carla morini 110 arguably, however, it could be considered an impressive prose work which, in varying degrees of proximity to its model, creates a quite different atmosphere and a better text than its source. the real novelties in the old english translation, which is not always a literal one, are the introduction and the omission of certain clauses or of simple words, the stressing and the adaptation of certain scenes, and its amplification with the introduction of new words or clauses, a process which seems, in my opinion, consistent with the intention of creating an exemplary text on matter of law.5 apollonius is also the first english romance concerning sex, love and marriage.6 it makes through the translator’s modifications a clear distinction between deceitful and immoral love, prohibited by religious and lay law— also punished by men— and honest love, which ends in marriage. it is my aim to analyse the way these two kinds of love are presented in apollonius, focusing on the points in which it departs from the latin source in the treatment both of the incestuous relationship between king antiochus and his daughter, and of the chaste/lawful relationship between apollonius and the princess, daughter of king arcestrates. the textual difference between the latin source and its old english translation could be understood in the context of the early medieval christian regulations concerning love and marriage. the only old english text of the ha is preserved in the ms cambridge, corpus christi college, 201, part b, written in insular minuscule by three hands around the middle of the eleventh century.7 it is a miscellaneous 5 see morini 2002: 199-216. 6 ‘es war der erste versuch, einen unterhaltenden prosaroman zu schreiben, eine liebesgeschichte zu erzähl (…) der mönch, der anfang des 11. jahrhunderts den apollonius in engl. prosa brachte, war damit allerdings seiner zeit um vierhundert aus voraus (…) der engl. prosaroman beginnt im 15. jahrhundert...’ (raith 1956: 48). 7 ms cccc 201, written in anglo-saxon insular minuscule, is bound from two different manuscripts; see ker 1990 [1957@: n° 49, (a, ff. 1-7, 161-67+ b, ff. 8160, 167-176) and 50. part a of the first manuscript contains the regularis concordia, bede’s de die judici, etc.; the second part of the ms (ker n° 50) contains the capitula of theudulf of orleans and other small pieces; for more details see whitbread 1959: 106-112. both codices were written in insular minuscule, and put together at canterbury in the second half of the eleventh century. while the second part of this manuscript (ker n° 50) was undoubtedly written at exeter, little agreement has been reached by scholars on the place of origin of its first part (a+b). see also budny 1997: 475-486; recently wormald (2000: 211-213) argues that this text was probably a work later than wulfstan, the first english love romance without "love"! 111 codex of wulfstan’s homilies, laws and ecclesiastical institutes, also containing a few texts of other genres.8 little agreement has been reached till now by scholars on the place of origin of its first part (a+b). york, winchester, worcester or some unidentified location in the south of england have variously been proposed as the place where it was compiled.9 as it is well known, the manuscript does not contain the entire translation of the ha, but only a copy from another exemplar of two fragments of it, respectively corresponding to chapters 1 to 22 (pp. 131 to 140) and 48 to 51 (pp. 141145) of the latin work. its text was written down by the same hand, from the first half of the eleventh century, that wrote down most of the texts contained in cccc 201b.10 mary richards has argued that there was a reason for sandwiching in ms cccc 201b pieces on christian duty in matters of faith and instructional texts with laws dealing with the same topic: they all had the function of instructional texts, in order to provide anglo-saxon england with useful sources (richards 1986: 171-92). according to bethurum and richards, this careful arrangement of “the entire codex was made under wulfstan’s written by another archbishop, one of his two immediate successors or someone in his entourage. 8 for a complete list of the texts contained in the ms 201 b and its description see ker 1990: n° 50, p. 91; whitbread 1959: 100. for a detailed description of this ms see james 1912: 485-486; fehr 1966 [1914@: xiv-xvi; cxxvii-cxxix (supplement to the introduction by p. clemoes); ker 1990: 82-90; whitbread 1959: 107-108; r. fowler 1972: xi-xiii; j. raith 1956: 4-8 and morini 2000: 15-17. the dating is that upheld by ker, but other scholars such as bethurum (1971 [1957@: 2) attribute it to the end of the eleventh century. 9 whitelock (1976: 25) in relation to the extant northumbrian priests laws, a work originating in and concerning the province of york, argued that the ms could have been compiled in york; see also bethurum (1950: 449-463), who first claimed wulfstan’s authorship for these laws. gneuss (1981: 5) claimed that the ms was originated in winchester. it is also argued that the ms did not originate at worcester, but only assembled there (whitbread 1959: 109-110). in the opinion of p. clemoes (fehr 1966: cxxix), this manuscript does not contain the standard form of writing which characterized the worcester scriptorium; that means that the peculiar spelling of its main hand has been introduced there, as well as other spellings, by wulfstan himself or by his secretaries. finally, according to fehr (1966: xvi), the manuscript was originated in canterbury. 10 ker 1990: n° 49b, 90. to different hands belong pp. 151-160 (genesis) and pp. 170-176 (latin rites for the confession) of the ms; see ker no. 49b, art°56 and 58. according to goolden (1958: xxxi) its scribe was a saxon (from essex) who introduced dialect forms into a west saxon copy.�raith (1956: 15) argues that it is not possible to define the dialect of the scribe. carla morini 112 supervision” (richards 1986: 178; bethurum 1971: 2).� but richards has also argued that apollonius has nothing to do with this plan: the romance, she suggested was added later by others, because it belonged to a genre, “a marvellous narrative” (richards 1986: 180-181), which wulfstan avoided.11 on the contrary, as i recently argued (morini 2000), it could also be a relationship between some of the juridical and religious statements handed down in ms cccc 201 b and the content of the fragments of the romance, which only concern four topics: rape and incest, marriage, free consent, and widowhood. in particular the fragments of æthelred’s laws contained in ms ccc 201 (v atr, pp. 48-52, and vi atr, pp. 126-130) mention the juridical situation of the widow, while the institutes of polity, civil and ecclesiastical (ms, pp. 40-43 and pp. 87-93) defines the norms for regulating the social behaviour of laymen and religious people in marriage, as well as in bachelorhood and in widowhood. finally, the handbook for the confession, chapters 1-14 (ms, pp. 115-121) concerns the penitence inflicted on the transgressor of the marriage canon, and on anyone who carries out violence on women, is described in detail. the translation of the ha was carried out in anglo-saxon england between the end of the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh centuries (raith 1956: 8; goolden 1958: xxxvii), while the surviving english tradition of the latin romance is more recent and is part of the so-called c redaction.12 11 but a relationship could also exist between some of the juridical and religious statements handed down in the manuscript and the content of the fragments of the oeha, which mainly concern four topics: incest and rape, love and marriage, free consent, and widowhood. see, for example, the fourth book, chapters 1-14 of the handbook for the confession (pp. 115-121 of the ms), where the penance inflicted on the transgressor of the marriage canon, and on anyone who carries out violence on women, is described in detail. the fragments of aethelred’s laws contained in the ms cccc 201 (v atr, pp. 48-52, and vi atr, pp. 126-130 of the ms) mention the juridical situation of the widow, while the institutes of polity, the civil and ecclesiastical (ms, pp. 40-43 and pp. 87-93) defines the norms for regulating the social behaviour of laymen and religious people in marriage, as well as in bachelorhood and in widowhood; see morini 2000: 17-22. 12 ms cambridge, corpus christi college 318, pp. 477-509: vita apollonii tyrii, s. xii; ms cambridge, corpus christi college 451, fol. 88a-105b: historia apollonii, s. xiii; ms oxford, bodleian library laud 247, fol. 204a-223a: liber apollonii, s. xiii; ms oxford, bodleian library, rawilson d. 893, fol. 194 (105), ch. 15-16; fol. 195 (106), ch. 31, s. xiv; ms oxford, bodleian library, rawilson c. 5010, fol. 260b-(31b); fol. 270b (41b), s. xiv. riese 1973: 125-73 was the first the first english love romance without "love"! 113 i quote here both the latin and the old english text from raith’s edition, who presents the reasonable hypothesis that the lost transcription of the latin text used for the old english translation could have been very close to the version contained in cccc 318, which was extant during the twelfth century.13 goolden (1958) on the contrary also published an artificial and “conflated” latin text,14 which is mainly based on the same manuscript cccc 318. but all the convergent variant readings with the anglo-saxon translation, preserved in many manuscripts belonging to all three recensions, are extant in goolden’s text. the old english translation begins, as does the latin text, with the narration of the incest episode, concerning king antiochus who seduces and rapes his daughter and sets to her suitors a riddle relating to his incest.15 but the translation introduces some modifications, which have been inserted as regards the presentation of the event, using the amplification of some particulars and the omission of others: � ch.1. sed dum pater deliberaret, cui potissimum filiam suam in matrimonium daret, cogente iniqua concupiscentia crudelitateque flamme�� lqflglw�lq�dpruhp�ilolh�vxh, et cepit eam aliter diligere quam quod patrem opportebat. qui <cum> diu luctatur cum furore pugne, cum dolore vincitur amore. excidit illi pietas, oblitus est esse se patrem, induit coniugem� sed dum sevi pectoris sui vulnus ferre non posset, quadam die prima luce vigilans irrupit cubiculum <filie>, famulos secedere longius iussit, quasi cum filia sua secretum colloquium habiturus�� glxtxh� uhsxjqdqwl� qrgxp� ylujlqlwdwlv�huxslw� perfectoque scelere cupit celare secrete. to discover the existence of this version; see now raith 1956: 85-91 and kortekaas 1984: 20-22. 13 see raith 1956. for other hypotheses see morini (forthcoming) “the old english apollonius of tyre and wulfstan of york.” leeds studies in english. 14 ‘über den wert eines solches conflated text kann man verschiedener meinung sein; hier jedenfalls bietet er alles, was zum verständnis des ae. textes wesentlich ist, während ein lat. text, der ausschließlich einer hs. folgt, für die meisten benutzer, des buches kaum von vorteil wäre’ (gneuss 1960: 366). 15 on this topic see archibald 1986: 259-72, and also 2001; for the incest topic in the me apollonius tale in gower’s confessio amantis, see bullón-fernández 2000. carla morini 114 ða gelamp hit sarlicum gelimpe, þa ða se fæder þohte hwam he hi mihte healicost forgifan, ìd�jhihro� �klv�djhq�prg�rq�k\uh�oxih mid unrihtre gewilnunge� to ðam swiðe þæt he forgeat þa fæderlican arfæstnesse and gewilnode his agenre dohtor him to gemæccan; and þa gewilnunge naht lange ne ylde, ac sume dæge on ærne mergen, þa he of slæpe awoc, he abræc into ðam bure, þar heo inne læg, and het his hyredmen ealle him aweg gan, swilce he wið his dohtor sume digle spæce sprecan wolde. hwæt! he ða on ðare manfullan scilde abisgode dqg� ìd� rqjhdq� zlqqhqgdq�i pqdq�plg�plfhouh�vwuhqjèh�hduirèolfh�rihufrp�� and þæt gefremede man gewilnode to bediglianne then it happened, through a painful misfortune, that while the father was thinking to whom he might give her, in preference to others, then he fell in love with her, (excited) by illicit desire, so violently that he forgot paternal piety, and desired his own daughter to himself for a mate; and that desire did not long delay; but one day, in early the morning, when he from sleep awoke, he broke into the room where she lay, and bade all his servants to go away from him, as if he would speak some secret speech with his daughter. he then engaged in that immoral crime, and the wriggling girl overcame with great difficulty; and sought to hide the committed crime � ch. 2 6hg�gxp�jxwwh�vdqjxlqlv� lq�sdylphqwr�fhflglvvhqw, subito nutrix introivit; et vidit puellam roseo rubore perfusam, asperso sanguine pavimento (…) ða gewearð hit þæt þæs mædenes fostor-moðor in to ðam bure eode, and geseah hi ðar sittan on micelre gedrefednesse (…) then it happened that the maiden’s foster-mother went into the room, and saw her there sitting in great distress (…) ch.3. et ut semper impiis thoris filie frueretur, ad expellendos nuptiarum petitores questiones proponebat. and to ðam þæt he þe lengc brucan mihte his dohtor arleasan bridbeddes, and him fram adryfan þa ðe hyre girndon to rihtum gesynscipum, he asette ða rædels. and in order that he might the longer enjoy his daughter’s impious bride-bed, and drive from him those who desired her in lawful marriage, he set then a riddle. the first english love romance without "love"! 115 every insertion or omission was added in order to stress the serious impiety of the king, and above all the illegality of his crime, and otherwise to emphasize the opposite lawful behaviour. first he gradually informs his reader about what is going to happen: initially he generically adds that gelamp hit sarlicum gelimpe ‘a painful misfortune occurred,’ caused mid unrihtre gewilnunge ‘by an illegal desire.’ then, he introduces the adjective unriht ‘illegal, unjust’ in order to offer a juridical judgment of the action that was being revealed. moreover, another sentence introduced by the translator —hwæt, he ða on ðare manfullan scilde abisgode— expresses the transition from intention to action, to the violence that is perpetrated against a nonacquiescent person (lat. repugnanti). it is particularly interesting to observe that the anonymous translator underlines that the rape had been perpetrated secundum legem, which means ‘against the will of the raped,’ introducing the adverb earfodlice ‘with difficulty’ and a complement mid micelre strengðe, which literally means ‘with a lot of strength.’ the adjective manful ‘sinful’ is added in order to mark clearly as immoral father’s action; the adjective riht (ch. 3: þa ðe hyre girndon to rihtum gesynscipum) ‘legal, juridical,’ introduced with a positive qualification to the latin noun nuptial (ch.3 ad expellendos nuptiarum petitores) underlines, in this case, the legality of the future marriage of the princess which could be contracted with one of her suitors, in opposition to the illegitimate relationship with her father, defined by the translator, as i have said before, as unriht (ch. 2). finally, at ch. 2 some particulars relating to rape and violence are omitted or modified: “sed dum gutte sanguinis in pavimento cecidissent; et vidit puellam roseo rubore perfusam / hi ðar sittan on micelre gedrefednesse.” it is worth noting that rape is described with a greater touch of delicacy than it is in the latin text. otherwise the oe text contains other enlargements concerning the lawful marriage between apollonius and princess:16 apollonius, invited at the court of king arcestrates, meets his daughter. the princess falls in love with him, gives him presents and obtains her father’s permission to study with him. finally she chooses him as husband. 16 as the latin source (ms ccc 318), the oe fragments give the name of the princess (that is the same of the king) only at the end of the romance, ch. 49. otherwise she is defined as maiden or the king’s daughter. carla morini 116 the translator emphasized that it is the princess, not her father, who chooses her husband of her own will. there are also significant differences in the expression of princess’ feelings towards apollonius in the old english text. it is worth noting that the love story between apollonius and the daughter of the king has been retold in old english without any “love words”: ch. 17 puella timens ne dpdwxp�vxxp non videret hora qua vellet (…) ða adred þæt mæden þæt heo næfre eft $sroorqlxp ne gesawe swa raðe, swa heo wolde (…) then the young girl was afraid she should not see apollonius any more, as she would have liked to do (…) � ch. 20 puella ut vidit dpruhv�vxrv��sic) ait: (…) mit þam þe þæt mæden geseah $sroorqlxp, þa cwæð heo (…) when the young girl saw apollonius she said (…) in the second fragment arcestrate, now the chief priestess of diana, recognizes the stranger as her husband, but the translator does not render any feeling. only plentiful tears express her emotions, as in the latin source. so the princess appears to be less passionate in the old english than in the latin text: “ ch. 49 et illa cum lacrimis voce magna clamavit dicens “ego sum coniunx tua arcestrates, regis arcestratis filia”. et mittens vh� lwhuxp� lq� dpsoh[x� hlxv� cepit dicere: tu es tyrius meus apollonius. heo ða micelre stæfne clipode and cwæð mid wope “ic eom arcestrate, þin gemæcca, archestrates dohtor þæs cynges, and þu eart apollonius min lareow”. and then crying in a loud voice broken by sobs, she said: “i am arcestrate, your wife, daughter of king arcestrates and you are apollonius, my teacher.” finally, it is also to be noted that there is an entire section that has been omitted by the translator: ch. 18. interposito pauci temporis spacio, fxp�qrq�srvvhw�sxhood� xood� udwlrqh� dprulv� vxl� xxoqxv� wrohuduh�� vlpxodwh� lqiluplwdwh� the first english love romance without "love"! 117 fhslw� ldfhuh. rex ut vidit filiam suam subitaneam valitudinem incurrisse, sollicitus adhibuit medicos. while he added a new passage, describing the princess as not lovesick, but “busy for learning”: ch.21 certe dixi vobis, quod non apto tempore me interpellastis. sed cum nubendi tempus fuerit, mittam ad vos. ch.21. soð is þæt ic eow ær sæde þæt ge ne comon on gedafenlicre tide mynre dohtor to bidanne; ac þonne heo mæg hi fram hyre lare geæmtigan, þonne sænde ic eow word. it is true what i said to you before, that you came not in right time to ask for my daughter; but when she can disengage from her studies, then i will send you news. thus the learned daughter of king arcestrates seems to represent the anglo-saxon woman, of noble rank, who loves song and the music of the harp and whose education was imparted by a teacher (lareow).17 the princess is able to write, as the translator emphasized many times, more in fact than the latin source: ch. 20. apollonius ait: “immo gratulor, quod abundantia litterarum studiorum meorum percepta me volente cui animus tuus desiderat nube.” puella ait: “magister, vl� dpduhv� dolores.” hec dicens istante amoris audacia vfulsvlw et signatos codicellos iuveni tradidit. pertulit apollonius in foro et tradidit regi. 6fulswl�hudqw sic. apollonius cwæð: na, ac ic blissige swiðor, ðæt þu miht ðurh ða lare, þe þu æt me underfenge�� � ìh� v\oi� rq� jhzulwh� jhflèdq, hwilcne heora þu wille. min willa is, þæt þu ðe wer geceose, þar ðu silf wille. ðæt mæðen cwæð: eala lareow��jli�èx�ph�oxirghvw� þu hit besorgodest. æfter þisum wordum heo mid modes anrædnesse dzudw� rèhu� jhzulw and þæt geinseglode and sealde apollonio: apollonius hit þa ut bær on ða stræte and sealde þam cynge. ç w�jhzulw z v�ìxv�jhzulwhq� apollonius said: “no, but i rejoice much more if you, through the instruction you received from me, could yourself declare in writing which one of them you want. my will is that you choose 17 see fell 1984: 114 see also murray 1928: 283-92; lazzari 1998: 613. for more details see morini 2004. according to bede, there were in anglo-saxon england as students quique viri ac feminae. carla morini 118 whom you will.” the maiden said: “oh teacher, if you loved me, you would be sorry about it.” after these words she, with steadiness of mind, wrote another letter and sealed and gave it to apollonius. then apollonius took it into the street and gave it to the king. the letterer was written in this way. while in the source lat. scribere (scripsit and scripti erant) occurs only twice, in the old english text the translator stresses repeatedly arcestrate’s writing and introduces a new clause (þe sylf on gewrite geciðan), using wordplay: awrat oðer gewrit, ðæt gewrit wæs þus gewriten.18 on the evidence of the comparison between the latin and the old english text, it appears clear that the translator has deliberately omitted almost entirely any word concerning the feeling of love in the young woman, as well as the entire passage which refers to her love-sickness. the rare exceptions are: ch. 18 sed puella de�dpruh�lqfhqvd inquietam habuit (…) et non sustinens dpruhp, prima luce vigilat, irripuit cubilum patris (…). ac þæt mæðen hæfde unstille niht und plg�ìduh�oxih�dq ohg and na leng he one gebad ðonne hit dæg wæs (…). but the maiden, inflamed with love, had a restless night and because she could not endure it any longer, at daybreak (…). ch. 20 puella ait: “magister, vl�dpduhv, dolores . hec dicens istante dprulv�dxgdfld scripsit�et signatos codicellos iuveni tradidit (…) þæt mæðen cwæð: “eala lareow, gif ðu me oxirghvw, þu hit besorgodest.”æfter þisum wordum heo mid modes anrædnesse awrat oðer gewrit and þæt geinseglode and sealde apollonio (…). the maiden said: “oh, teacher! if you did love me, you would be sorry of it.” after these words, she, with steadiness of mind, wrote another letter, sealed it and gave it to apollonius (…). while the translator also omitted amoris audacia, he translated lat. amares as lufodest, from lufian, a verb which recurs in old english with the broad meaning of ‘to love, to have affection for,’ merely used for expressing ‘love to god.’ it is worth noting that only in ælfric’s grammar 19 do we read a reference to love: te amo: ðe ic lufige (zupitza 1880). also oe lufu, 18 on the wordplay in apollonius, see morini forthcoming. the first english love romance without "love"! 119 lufe, mainly occurs in the old english corpus in the meaning of divine love, charity, affection, friendliness, feeling. it is also worth noting that arcestrate is the first female figure in old english literature to fall in love: ‘þa gefeol hyre mod on his lufe’: ch.17. sed dum pater deliberaret, cui potissimum filiam suam in matrimonium daret, cogente iniqua concupiscentia crudelitateque flamme��lqflglw�lq�dpruhp�ilolh�vxh. ða gelamp hit sarlicum gelimpe, þa ða se fæder þohte hwam he hi mihte healicost forgifan, ìd�jhihro� �klv�djhq�prg�rq�k\uh�oxih mid unrihtre gewilnunge� to ðam swiðe þæt he forgeat þa fæderlican arfæstnesse. then it happened, through a painful misfortune, that while the father was thinking to whom he might give her, in preference to others, then he fell in love with her, (excited) by illicit desire, so violently that he forgot paternal piety. ch. 17 puella ut vidit iuvenem omnium atrium studiorumque cumulatum, incidit in amorem. sodlice mid þy þe þæs cynges dohtor geseah þæt apollonius on eallum godum cræftum swa wel wæs getogen, þa gefeol hyre mod on his lufe. now, when the king’s daughter saw that apollonius was so well educated in all good arts, then she fell in love with him. it is also to be remarked that this is the first english occurrence of this expression, which was used twice by the translator; however the oxford english dictionary does not mention this occurrence.19 moreover, it is to be noted that, although the latin text very often uses the expression “love,” the translator reproduces with this word and its cognate adjective only the father-daughter feeling, evidently a concession to anglo 19 it is worth remarking that the oxford english dictionary, at the subst. love, also quotes to fall in love (38b)�� with the meaning “to fall (to be taken or caught) in love, to be enamoured.” here its first occurrence is dated in the 16th century (a. 1530, palscr, 544/2). moreover, under the verb “to fall,” the same dictionary (7f), in the occurrence “to fall in love,” quotes as its first occurrence a sixteenth century text (a. 1568, grafton, chron. i, 37), ignoring the fact that the expression had been in use in old english since the end of the tenth century! carla morini 120 saxon prudery. so the princess addresses the father with the words����bone rex et pater optime� (ch.15)��plq�vh�ohrihvwd�i ghu; care genitor (ch. 17): ohrid�i ghu; bone rex et pater optime (ch. 20): jrgd�f\qjf�dqg�plq��vh�� ohrihvwd� i ghu; pater piissime� (ch. 22): gx� dui vwd� i ghu. princess arcestrate also gives her father a kiss in the vernacular text: dedit osculum patri� (ch. 14)�� f\vwh� k\uh� i ghu�� the father addresses the daughter with these words nata dulcis, iuvenis (ch. 15): ohrih�grkwru; nata dulcis (ch. 16, ch. 22, twice): ohrih�grkwru; cara dulcis (ch. 18):�ohrih�grkwru. apollonius also addresses his daughter tharsia and king arcestrates in the same way: �� domina tharsia, nata dulcis (ch. 50): /hrih� grkwru� 7kdvld; bone rex et pater optime (ch. 15):�jrgd�f\qlqjf��vlf��dqg�plq�vh�ohrihvwd�i ghu. basically, it appears clear that the translator reacts prudishly to lust and sexuality, colours with diminished intensity the description of heterosexual love and reproduces only paternal and filial love. the feeling of love and lust is seldom mentioned and very rarely described in the old english literary corpus in general, the bulk of which is constituted, as it is well known, by male literary genres, heroic and elegiac poetry, the latter with the rare exception of the wife’s lament, and other possible frauenlieder (wulf and eadwacer, for example), homiletic or didactic prose, which are not likely to emphasize sex and the passion of love—with the exception of the sexual discourses made in some of the lives of saints or riddles. chastity and restraint were more strongly emphasized than sex and passion. thus, old english poetry is ‘largely asexual,’ with very rare exceptions. emotion is directly expressed by the female’s voice only in the wife’s lament,20 (min hlaford 5a “my lord,” min leodfruma 8a and mines fela leofan 26 ‘my only one beloved,” minre weaþearfe 10b “my woeful need” ), etc. 21 only in rare cases love and sexuality are recorded in oe works. in maxims ii, they are incidentally mentioned, as well as adultery: freoð hy fremde monnan, þonne se oþer feor gewiteþ. (l.102) they love strange men when the others depart away. 20 see swanton 1964: 271. emotion is less expressed in wulf and edwacer where the woman refers to her husband using the possessive adjective and pronoun. 21 see goepp 1938: 171; klinck 1982: 108; richards & stanfield 1990: 89. the first english love romance without "love"! 121 in maxims i. 99 one reads that “it is necessary to give the husband what his love asks” (þæs his lufu bædeð).22 moreover, it has been argued that about ten riddles referring to sexual themes were composed by one woman and that in every case such texts were destined to a female audience (whitehurst williams 1990: 137-145). at this point a further observation should be made. from the ninth-tenth centuries the lives of holy virgins already constituted an exemplary model of how to overcome sexual violence through the observance of chastity. the anglo-saxon cultured woman, in fact, listened to or read histories of heroines, as is particularly the case of the lives of virgin martyrs. ignoring peasant women, queens and wives are largely portrayed in a domestic role, either suffering or pleasant, in heroic poetry, always subject to male society and power. other very strong women are recorded in old english poetry, like elene, judith and juliana, who escape from the female passive role only by denying their sexuality. only later did a new genre of literature arise in order to spread an exemplary model of conjugal life in which the limits of the licit and the illicit had to be fixed. thus, the banishing of the emotional and sexual aspects of marriage from the apollonius seems to imply the desire by the translator to conform to medieval ethics which equated them with vice. these aspects were also rejected by the church and by the laws.23 in my opinion, the fragments of the apollonius, with its enlarged and cut parts, are to be considered as exercepta from the entire latin work in order to offer an exemplum of the legal / illegal way to view marriage and love, the legal / illegal behaviour of a father.24 the behaviour of antiochus and his daughter constitutes, in fact, a negative example, in contrast to that of king arcestrates and his daughter, which represents proper or legal behaviour, as has been underlined by the lexical amplifications introduced by the translator. moreover, the behaviour of king arcestrates is exemplary, both as a father and as king. princess arcestrate speaks of and demonstrates her own will unlike the other princess, the unlucky daughter of antiochus, who is passive and suffering, a victim who is 22 see krapp and dobbie 1936. on the exeter book see also gameson 1996: 135185. 23 see die gesetze der angelsachsen: i, v atr., 21, 21.1, 242; vi atr 26, 26.1: 254. 24 see archibald 1989: 24-40; and morini, forthcoming. carla morini 122 submitted to her father’s will. according to these juridical considerations, the censure of the conduct of king antiochus and the desire of king arcestrates to respect the will of his daughter in the choice of bridegroom appear to be perfectly in tune with the ideology of marriage sanctioned by the church and by the king to anglo-saxon society at the end of the tenth century; it constitutes an example of the way in which one should behave, as it was established by wulfstan in his own promulgation of ecclesiastical and lay duties.25 moreover, king antiochus is the bad character, drawn by instinct; apollonius and king arcestrates are the good ones, both civilized and religious. in conclusion, the old english text of apollonius reveals the sexual pessimism of the medieval christian church inherited from the fathers, who celebrated chastity and monogamy in marriage and considered sexual relations as evil and unclean. therefore this translation seems to be attached to a practical aim: that of depicting the model of a couple’s life as was allowed by the christian church in anglo-saxon england, by omitting any feeling and any words concerning marital love. carla morini università della calabria works cited archibald e. 1989: fathers and kings in apollonius of tyre. in images of authority: papers presented to joyce reynolds on the occasion of her seventieth birthday. ed. m. m. mackenzie & c. rouche. cambridge philological society, supplementary 16: 24-40. archibald e. 1986: the flight from incest: two late classical precursors of the constance theme. chaucer review 20: 259-272. archibald e. 1990: apollonius of tyre in vernacular literature: romance oder exemplum? 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[bibliotheca teubneriana]. teubner, lipsiae. swanton m. 1964: “the wife’s lament” and “the husband’s message”: a reconsideration. anglia 82: 269-290. richards m. p. & b. j. stanfield 1990: concepts of anglo-saxon women in the laws. in damico & olsen 1990: 89-99. whitbread l. 1959: ms. cccc 201: a note on its character and provenance. philological quarterly 38: 106-112. whitehurst williams. e. 1990: what’s so new about the sexual revolution? some comments on anglo-saxon attitudes toward sexuality in women based on four exeter book riddles. in damico & olsen 1990: 137-45. wormald p. 2000: archbishop wulfstan and the holiness of society. anglosaxon history: basic readings. ed. d. pelteret. garland publishing, new york-london: 191-224. zupitza j.1880 [with a foreword by. h. gneuss,1966] ælfric’s grammatik und glossar [sammlung englischer denkmäler in kritischer ausgabe, 1. weidmann, berlin; repr., weidmann, berlin. * † * selim12.doc lucía sinisi, selim 12 (2003-2004): 160—178 urbanization and pollution in an irish (?) town in the 14th century � in this article my intention is to offer a rather different interpretation from the ones so far provided by scholars who have analysed the medieval poem known as satire on the people of kildare by underlining the sociological and ‘environmentalist’ concerns of the anonymous author of this work contained in ms. british library harley 913. the latter is a parchment codex composed of 64 folia in 12mo, which can be roughly ascribed to the first quarter of the 14th century, the terminus post quem being 1308, year of the death of piers of birmingham, the fierce opponent of the irish in memoriam of whom a poem in the manuscript, which is now considered a mock-eulogy, is dedicated.1 its pocket-size measure (140 x 91 mm.) and the items it contains, which were described by wanley for the first time on the occasion of the cataloguing of the harley collection, catalogi librorum manuscriptorum angliae et hiberniae in unum collecti, cum indice alphabetico, which he started work on in 1708, and whose list was reproposed by heuser,2 would lead us to presume that it was destined for personal use. it is a trilingual miscellany, containing mainly latin texts, 16 poems written in english (but the number rises to 17 if we add the short five hateful things, on fl. 6v, which is not in wanley’s list) and two in french; a linguistic composition not infrequent in other miscellanies of english origin of that age, although in harley 913 the presence of french “is of too little importance to provide much compilatory stimulus” (scahill 2003: 31). needless to say they are all anonymous, except for the hymn swet jesus hend and fre (fl. 9r) where, in 1 for an evaluation of the literary connotation of the poem see benskin 1989. 2 heuser 1904. for subsequent lists of the texts of ms harley 913 see note 14 in cartlidge 2003. urbanization and pollution in an irish (?) town in the 14th century 161 the closing stanza, it is declared that the song has been written by friar michel kyldare, a datum which, along with a few others, has led to the conclusion that the compilation was put together in a franciscan environment, although, as heuser points out, there is no direct mention of his belonging to the franciscan order (heuser 1904: 79). as for its provenance, its links with ireland are widely recognized, thanks to some references to irish places and a few loan words of irish origin scattered in the texts, which bliss and long (1987: 720) have thus summarized: a list of franciscan provinces begins with the provinces of ireland, not with those of england; four irish towns (drogheda kildare, new ross, and waterford) are mentioned by name; one of the english poems lauds the excellence of pers de bermingham in the slaughter of the irish [...] a set of proverbs in norman french is attributed to the earl of desmond; the mythical and idyllic land of cockaygne is located ‘fur in see bi west spayngne’, the traditional position of ireland according to medieval geography; and finally, at least three irish loanwords are used in the english texts: corrine (irish coirín, ‘can’), eri (irish éraic, ‘compensation’), keperin (irish ceithearn, ‘band of soldiers’). a fourth word, russin, is equivalent in form to irish roisín, ‘lunch’, but the irish word may perhaps ultimately be of english origin. to this list it is necessary to add tromchery ‘liver’ – which andrew breeze has demonstrated may well be irish (breeze 1993: 16) – and in any case a thorough reassessment of the analysis of loan words is needed. the history of the manuscript can only be traced starting from the 16th century, thanks to an ex libris which can be found at fl. 2, where we read iste liber pertinet ad me georgium wyse, in which one can identify the person of george wyse, mayor of waterford in 1561 and bailiff of the same city in 1566. a further annotation can be read, though not very clearly, at fl. 29, iste liber pertinet ad ihoe lambard...waterfordie...; but nothing is known about what happened before that (bliss & long 1987: 721). its fame is based on the attribution of the english poems to the hiberno-english dialect put forward by heuser, who first edited them collectively in 1904, and repeated by lucia sinisi 162 mcintosh and samuels, albeit with some perplexities, in their prolegomena (mcintosh & samuels 1968: 8). the scarcity of documents in that dialectal variety for the medieval period has led to an increasing interest in the linguistic aspects of the manuscript more than in its content, and even when studies have been carried out on the texts on a literary point of view it has been the presence of the popular poem the land of cockaygne that has monopolized the critics’ attention. it is widely accepted, after michael benskin’s investigation on the number of scribes who intervened in the redaction of harley 913, that the majority of the texts in the codex are in a single hand (benskin 1990: 163-193) but, notwithstanding this peculiarity which should contribute in giving uniformity to the manuscript, “it lacks unity, even codicologically” (scahill 2003: 31). in an attempt to find some form of cohesion among the texts preserved in harley 913, in a recent article neil cartlidge, opposing the historicist perspective of wallace, for whom “medieval literature cannot be understood (does not survive) except as part of transmissive processes – moving through the hands of copyists, owners, readers and institutional authorities – that form part of other and greater histories (social, political, religious, economic)” (wallace 1999: xxi), states that perhaps the search for cohesion on a formal level, one which he defines as the “continuities of theme, image, phrase, form and style”, may prove to be more productive in order to understand the coherence that the compiler of harley manuscript 913 followed in putting together the collection. he re-examines in the course of his work the easy opinions expressed on the works contained in the manuscripts, comparing the english texts with the wider latin production, but at the same time he cannot resist the temptation of drawing an equally hasty conclusion by identifying in the sense of “festivity, order and community”, the common denominator linking the texts of harley 913, merely on the basis of an analysis of the formal aspects which would seem to characterize it (cartlidge 2003: 33-52). although cartlidge’s analysis has the merit of taking into account, for the first time, not only the english poems but the texts written in latin as well, giving greater breadth and renewed vigour to the inquiry, i still think that the whole manuscript deserves greater consideration and is still awaiting the publication of a comprehensive study in which each text, both in latin and in english and french, is analysed in meticulous detail so as to identify what urbanization and pollution in an irish (?) town in the 14th century 163 wallace refers to as the ‘greater histories’ which justify the composition and transmission of each of them; only after so doing will it be possible to understand the reasons for their presence in harley 913. to this end, i consider that the composition known as the satire on the people of kildare constitutes an exemplary starting point for an analysis that wishes to take into account the historical and ideological motivations underlying this literary production, since in my opinion it is strongly enmeshed in the social problems of its time, connected in particular with the urban, middle class setting, or rather its ‘municipal’ setting, a point on which i agree with cartlidge. its incipit is hail seint michel wiþ þe lange sper and it occurs in folia 7r8v of the manuscript, after the more famous the land of cockaygne and a very short poem of only 7 lines, bissop lorles, better known as five hateful things, and is immediately followed by the latin quondam fuit factum festus, or the abbot of gloucester’s feast. it was first published by thomas wright, who is responsible for the title, in reliquiae antiquae (1841), and it was proposed again by furnivall in 1858. it was of course included in the edition by heuser and a few years later (1929) in the book on anglo-irish literature by seymour, together with a modern english translation. more recently (1995) it was published by angela lucas, anglo-irish poems of the middle ages, here too together with the other 16 poems in the manuscript. hail seint michel is composed of 120 lines divided into 20 stanzas with an aabcdd rhyme, a metrical structure which corresponds to its conceptual content, but which is entirely original, since nothing similar can be found in other poems of that time. in the first line the poet introduces the victim of his invective, followed in the next line by the attributes which characterize him or her, the third and fourth lines generally contain a gibe, while the last two lines of each stanza, which normally rhyme together, contain a laudatory expression that the poet addresses to himself for his rhyming ability, or directly to his poetical artefact. starting from wright, who attributed to it a very misleading title (wright 1843: ii, 174), it has long been considered a satire against the people of an irish town and many opinions have been expressed in an attempt to identify the town which, on the other hand, is never mentioned in the poem: heuser seems inclined to identify it with dublin (heuser 1904: 150-153), and so do bliss and long (bliss & long lucia sinisi 164 1987: 728), while garbáty proposes athlone as the place of inspiration for the poem (garbáty 1963: 139-163). i do not want to minimize the results of these studies but, in my opinion, whatever the identity of the town may be, and regardless of whether or not the poem is about a real town, we should interpret the poem as expression of unease with – and thus substantially a condemnation of – the development of urban society with its rising mercantile class and the increasing differentiation in trades,3 a consumer society which find in the urban conglomeration the ideal place to thrive, with the well-known and devastating repercussions on both the moral and the environmental level. besides, the presumed date of composition comes in a period (13th century-beginning of the 14th century) in which there is, throughout most of europe, widespread urban expansion. without necessarily referring to the era of the communes in italy, but keeping within the geographical area of northern europe, and particularly ireland, the recent (but still far too limited) archeological excavations carried out in dublin, cork, waterford, wexford and drogheda, all attest, through the enlarging of their city walls, to considerable urban expansion which continued throughout the 13th century and only slowed down in some cases during the first quarter of the 14th century.4 the scenario to be found in the burlesque composition in french of the entrenchment of new ross, which is present in the last booklet of the harley manuscript, according to the reconstruction of the codex given by peter and angela lucas (lucas & lucas 1990: 286-99), in which the story is told of the building of new walls for the city in which all the social classes of the city take part, would not have been so unusual, therefore, in ireland at that time. if we take the example of waterford, which is linked in some way to the redaction of ms harley 913, according to barry (1987: 127) during the reign of john the city walls [...] were greatly extended westwards and southwards from their original 8-ha triangular shaped area. the construction and maintenance of the medieval extension to the walls of some 13 ha in area were paid for by 3 for a definition of the medieval town see “the english town in the middle ages” (holt & rosser 1990: 4). 4 barry 1987: 116-138. see also graham 1987 and bradley 1995. i am indebted to prof. john bradley for providing me with a bibliography on medieval irish towns. urbanization and pollution in an irish (?) town in the 14th century 165 regular murage grants to the city, throughout the thirteenth century, the first surviving one dating to 1224. that waterford was expanding dramatically throughout the thirteenth century was also reflected in the surviving customs returns on wool, woolfells and hides from 1275 to 1333. in these waterford was in second place after new ross in co. wexford [...]. it is no coincidence, then, if these items, the production of which was highly pollutant, are mentioned in our poem which has to do with environmental issues as much as with social questions. of particular interest, in this regard, are the tirades against those who pollute the environment which represent one of the first environmental protests in medieval literature in the english language. the resulting representation of the town is an evil-smelling, noisy place, inhabited by dirty and greedy individuals from which we can infer that the poet feels nostalgia for a world which is slowly and inexorably waning. the first victims are the saints, invoked and described in detail according to a well-known iconography. so st. michael is sneered at for the funny wings on his shoulders, st. christopher for the amusing story about baby jesus carried on his shoulders, st. mary magdalene pictured as a rich lady (not as a penitent as some other kind of iconography depicts her), st. dominic with his incomprehensible stick all crooked at the top, and lastly st. francis always followed by a sort of menagerie. surprisingly, cartlidge does not take into account these first five stanzas, which are highly irreverent towards the saints and which strongly characterize the poem. his failure to give due attention to this aspect leads him to define the poem as an estates satire, whereas the fact of opening the poem with such a strong element of insolence towards the protagonists of popular devotion should make us wary of classifying it in such terms. it is true that within the poem the various social classes are described and derided (however, it is also worth pointing out here that the nobility and the entire hierarchy of administrative and judicial officials are not mentioned at all), but we cannot ignore the inclusion of some five stanzas dedicated to saints, something which would be anomalous in the context of an estates satire. in my opinion, the poet’s attitude and the style of the poem remind us more of certain burlesque songs that are still in vogue in goliardic contexts in lucia sinisi 166 catholic countries (this is certainly true for italy) also in the light of the more or less explicit sexual references which heavily imbue the stanzas dedicated to the saints. moreover, the impression one has in observing the detailed descriptions of the saints’ attributes is very much that of a situation of ἔκφρασις. if we analyse, for example, the stanza about st. christopher who is depicted by the poet with his feet in the water with eels swimming around them: � � hail, seint cristofre wiþ þi lang stake! þou ber ur louerd jesus crist ouer the brod lake. mani grete kunger swimmeþ abute þi fete. hou mani hering to peni at west chep in london. (7-10) this hypothesis is confirmed if we compare the iconography described here of the bearer of christ with a fresco in a church in pickering, which depicts st. christopher with various types of fish, including an eel. it has been dated at about 1500, but i am sure that it would not have been hard to find similar ones around the beginning of the 14th century. another fresco in oaksey shows st. christopher with a mermaid!5 this should not be taken as meaning that the poet necessarily despises the saints themselves; the author’s attitude could be seen as an attack not against them as such, but rather against the iconography through which the christian religion is divulged, or more precisely, the naïve and popular form of art of the frescoes painted on the church walls in order to kindle popular devotion, which visually pollutes the town. but again, which town? every town which, around the end of the 13th century, saw the number of its inhabitants increase enormously in the process of urbanization, leading to a confluence inside its walls of all sorts of craftsmanship that could satisfy the needs not only of its population but also far beyond. and even those who should have been tied to a specific place – i am referring to the religious orders – go and increase the number of lay people residing in the town. so the carmelites, characterized here by their white copes, choose to reside in a city like drogheda which is well-known for its intense trading activities. the disapproval of the poet towards the 5 for images of saints on medieval english churches, see marshall 2004. urbanization and pollution in an irish (?) town in the 14th century 167 excessively worldly choice made by this order is more apparent if we consider its origins: set up in the 12th century (possibly after the third crusade) out of a spontaneous congregation of pilgrim-penitents coming from europe, who were gathered together at ‘elia’s fount’, in one of the valleys of mount carmel, in order to live as hermits in imitation of the prophet elia; obviously the rule written for them by the latin patriarch of jerusalem albert avogadro imposed not only the obligation to reside in the cell they were assigned to but also the shedding of any private property: both provisions are neglected by the representatives of this order in the poem who are not only far removed from leading a life restricted to their cells but who also appropriate, thereby committing sacrilege, the aspergilla of the churches that they encounter along their journey. � hail be ye freris with þe white copis! ye habbiþ a hus at drochda war man makiþ ropes euir ʒe beþ roilend the landis al abute of þe watir daissers ye robbiþ þe churchis. (32-34) the same attitude can be found in the williamites, or friars of the ordo eremiticus sancti wilhelmi, who abandon their hermit existence and flock to the city; it would seem that they do not have a well-defined identity: the poet puts them halfway between minor friars and preaching friars, but basically they tend towards the accumulation of wealth: hail be ye gilmins wiþ yur blake gunes! ʒe leuith þe wildirnis and filliþ þe tuniss. menur wiþ oute and prechur wiþ inne, yur abite is of gadering, þat is mochil schame. (37-40) in the following stanza the poet criticizes the benedictine monks for their love of drinking, but in this case the feeling one has is that we are dealing with a stereotype: hail ʒe holi monkes wiþ yur corrin late and raþe ifillid of ale and wine! depe cun ʒe bouse, þat is al ʒur care. with seint benet is scurge lome ʒe disciplineth. lucia sinisi 168 (43-46) equally stereotypical would seem to be the accusation made against the nuns of some unspecified monastery of st. mary whom the poet, using a marvellous metaphor, condemns for their weak respect for the vow of chastity: hail be ʒe nonnes of seint mari house, goddes bourmaidnes and his owen spouse! ofte mistrediþ ʒe ʒur schone, ʒur fete beþ ful tendre: daþeit þe sotter þat tawiþ ʒure leþir! (49-52) he does not neglect to mention the priests, characterized by their big books and flowing locks, notwithstanding the rule of the tonsure: hail be ʒe prestis wiþ ʒur brode bokes! þoʒ ʒur crune be ischaue, fair beþ ʒur crokes. ʒow and oþer lewid men deleþ bot a houue, whan ʒe deliþ holibrede, ʒiue me boute a litel. (55-58) the poet lashes out against easy religious callings that put religion in the hands of unscrupulous people, from whom nothing can be gained for the edification of souls. as a consequence of all this, moral pollution pervades the whole of society, from merchants to tailors to shoemakers, in a pyramidal sequence that sees carders at the bottom rung of the social ladder. the accusation against merchants is that of being extremely miserly. although they deal with precious things and various currencies, they give very little to the poor: hail be ʒe marchand wiþ ʒur gret packes of draperie, auoir depeise, and ʒur wol sackes, gold, siluer, stones, riche markes and ek pundes! litil ʒiue ʒe ther of to þe wrech pouer. (61-64) tailors cut and make clothes from the cloth that merchants trade in, but the clothes they sew for the town buyers are of very poor quality: hail be ʒe tailurs wiþ ʒur scharpe schores! to make wronge hodes ʒe kittiþ lome gores. urbanization and pollution in an irish (?) town in the 14th century 169 aʒens mid winter hote beþ yur neldes. þoʒ ʒur semes semiþ fair hi lestiþ a litil while. (67-70) shoemakers are directly linked to the production of clothes, but they do not just make shoes that protect their customers’ feet: in trying to satisfy the ever more sophisticated taste of the purchasers, they engage in the production of more and more extravagant shoes, using the skins of strange animals – selcuth bestis – which are rare and consequently expensive. although they deal with high quality products, the shoemakers themselves look hideous with their black teeth: hail be ʒe sutters wiþ ʒour mani lestes wiþ ʒour blote hides of selcuþ bestis, and trobles and treisuses, bochevampe and alles! blak and loþlich beþ ʒur teþ, hori was þat route. (73-76) i want to highlight here the use of the adjective hori, which will occur again in the text – as we shall see – in a context linked to the town’s problematic environmental situation. the poet will describe it more pointedly when he refers to the tanners, accused of making the town air smell foul with their stinking vats where the leathers are laid out to soak for months in a pestilential liquid: hail be ʒe skinners wiþ ʒure drenche kiue! who so smilliþ þer to, wo is him aliue, whan þat hit þonneriþ ʒe mote þer in schite. daþeit ʒur curteisie, ʒe stinkeþ al þe strete! (79-82) we do not know how aware the poet was of the risks that the presence of leather workers in the centre of a town constituted for public health; certainly he is annoyed by the horrible smell coming from their vats. but those risks were not ignored by the municipal authorities, at least in some parts of italy, for example, where the problem had been faced by local councils, insofar as an environmental perception of the problem was possible in the middle ages. as laures has pointed out in one of the very few studies on the subject (2000): lucia sinisi 170 the actual tanning process was generally conducted in open pits (and later in vats). the process was slow, but thorough, requiring some fifteen months before completion. the process obviously produced a large amount of chemical wastes which found their way into the commune’s waterways and sewer systems. one of the primary concerns of the statute-makers was to prevent this sort of abuse. the only real concern reflected in the legislation was the proper disposal of the waste products generated by that trade. the ferrarese statute-makers, almost as an afterthought, appended a statute to the end of the fourth book of the code of 1287. the statute simply states “that no leather worker or any other person can nor should in any way or at any time remove the flesh or hair (from any hide) or intestines next to the cesspool of the city of ferrara nor next to the po on the side of the city.” bassano was more explicit: leather workers were warned that they could not “strip the flesh from hides, wash hides, or place any waste in the streets or in the waters from the bridge of the brenta downstream to the end of the structure near the water on the bank of the campus marcius.” bassanese tanners were also warned to practise their trade within the city without creating nuisances by storing hides in or about butcher shops or by greasing the hides in the streets, porticos, or meadows of the town. again, there is a definite effort to restrict the area in which the tanners could practise their trade and dispose of their waste products, but no attempt to restrict the practice of the trade itself. verona, also concerned about water quality, insisted its leather workers should not work or soak leather or hides “in the river fossatum.” tanners, their apprentices, and equipment were also banned from the streets near the palace of the commune. the intent and problem of the municipal officials is clear. we know that some of the health precautions had also been adopted by the municipal authorities of dublin in relation to the production of hides; thus in the 13th century it is laid down that: “no sheep’s pell is to be sold or worked in the city; if worked, then he who worked it shall be subject to amercement, and the fur worked treated as fake. the same is to be done with regard to fraudulent cloth and inaccurate weights. there is no need to say anything here about the weighing of bread, but let such matters be handled as they were in times past. no currier is to cure leather beneath solars; if one does so, he is to be put in prison” (gilbert 1870: 232-39). it is interesting to note that the legislator does not bother to specify the regulations for the urbanization and pollution in an irish (?) town in the 14th century 171 selling of bread, since he refers to the assisae panis which were repeatedly updated by the specific legislative authorities which the poet explicitly refers to in the stanza dedicated to bakers. more dirt and bad smells are added by the potters who habitually work in mud and dust. they have to supply the firing chamber of the kiln with plenty of wood, so that they look frightening with their axes raised, their bodies covered with yellow mud, surrounded by flies which they sometimes swallow: hail be ʒe potters wiþ ʒur bole ax fair beþ ʒur barmhatres, yolow beþ ʒur fax. ʒe stondiþ at þe schamil, brod ferlich bernes fleiis ʒou folowith ʒe swolowiþ ynow. (85 -88) a mention of some forms of moral pollution is present in the verses dedicated to bakers and brewsters. the production of bread, like that of shoes – as we have seen in the stanza addressed to the shoemakers – is becoming more and more sophisticated in order to satisfy the tastes of town customers, but it encourages fraud because the bakers cheat on weight: hail be ʒe bakers wiþ ʒur louis smale of white bred and of blake, ful mani and fale! ʒe pincheþ on þe riht white a ʒens goddes law. (91-93) while the brewesters, who use all sorts of containers dipping their thumb deeper than they should do into the glass or beaker, skimp on the quantity of beer they pour: hail be ʒe brewesters wiþ ʒur galuns, potels and quartes ouer al þe tounes! ʒur þowmes berriþ moche awai, schame hab þe gyle. (97-99) in order to regulate the activities of these two categories various assizes had been held since the time of edward ii in order to fix the price of bread, according to its weight and quality, and of beer, according to its quantity.6 if 6 the assizes are collected in luders 1810-1828. lucia sinisi 172 we take as an example one of the assisa panis, which regulated the price, weight and quality of bread, we can have an idea of how the production of bread in those times had become more and more varied, depending on the kind of wheat or the weight of the loaf, so that we can appreciate better the verse “of white bred and of blake ful mani and fale”: “quando quarterium frumenti venditur per xiid. tunc panis quadrantis de wastello ponderabit sex libras & sexdecim solidos. panis de coket de eodem blado & de eodem bultello ponderabit plusquam wastellum de duobʒ solidis. de blado minoris precii ponderabit plusquam wastellum de quinqʒ. panis vero de siminello ponderabit minus de wastello de de duobʒ solidis, quia bis coctus est. panis [integro de quadrante de frumento] ponderabit coket & đī. panis vero de [trait] ponderabit duos wastellos. et panis de [omni blado] ponderabit duos coketos.”7 and so on, listing further differences in prices. the regulation of the production of beer, or assisa cervisie, prescribed a difference in price according to the place where the beer was sold, i.e. in town or out of town �� “quando quarterium frumenti venditur per tribʒ solidis vel quadraginta denaris, & ordeum pro viginti denaris vel duobʒ solidis, & quarterium avene pro [quindecim] denariis, tunc bene possunt braciatores vendere in civitatibʒ [duas lagenas] cervisie ad denaris, & extra debent vendere tres ad denarium. et quando in burgo venduntur tres lagene ad denarium extra debent vendi quatuor, & bene possunt; & ista assisa debet teneri per totam angliam.”8 7 the assize reported above is thought to be emanated during the reign of henry iii, possibly 1251. “when a quarter of wheat is sold for xiid., then wastel bread of a farthing shall weigh £vi and xvis. but bread cocket [of a farthing] of the same corn and bultel, shall weigh more than wastel by iis. and [cocket bread] made of corn of lower price, shall weigh more than wastel by vs. bread made into a simnel shall weigh iis. less than wastel. bread made of the whole wheat shall weigh a cocket and a half, [so that a cocket shall weigh more than a wastel by 5s]. bread of treet shall weigh ii wastels. and bread of [common] wheat shall weigh two great cockets. when a quarter of wheat is sold for 18d., then wastel bread of a farthing white and well baked shall weigh £4 10s. 8d. when for 2s., then £3 8s. when for 2s. 6d., then for 54s. 4d. ob. q. when for 3s., then for 48s [...]’ (luders 1810-1828: i, 199). 8 ³when a quarter of wheat is sold for 3s. or 3s. 4d. and a quarter of barley for 20d. or 2s. and a quarter of oats for 16d. then brewers in cities ought and may well afford to sell two gallons of beer or ale for a penny, and out of cities to sell 3 [or iv] gallons for a penny. and when in a town 3 gallons are sold for a penny, out of a town they ought and may sell four; and this assise ought to be holden throughout all england” (luders 1810-1828: i, 200). urbanization and pollution in an irish (?) town in the 14th century 173 the same laws were applied in the irish colonies which were under the jurisdiction of the crown and, as frame points out, “in ireland, where english law and administration were taken over wholesale, there was a deepseated tension between legal and institutional forms on the one hand, and social and political realities on the other” (frame 1981: 94). when one of these statutes was breached, the established punishment was set in the judicium pillorie, according to which “si pistor convictus fuerit, vel braciatrix convicta, qđ [istas assisas] non observavit, primo, secundo & tercio amercietur secundum quantitatem …., [&] non graviter deliquerit; & si graviter deliquerit pluries, & castigari noluerit, paciatur judicium corporis, scilicet, pistor collistrigium, et braciatrix trebuchetum vel castigatorium.”9 so when the poet warns the bakers of the risk of ending up on a fair pillori: “to þe fair pillori, ich rede ʒe, tak hede!” (94) and of the risk of the cucking-stool for the brewsters: “beþ iwar of þe coking stole, þe lake is dep and hori.” (100) he does so in accordance with the judicium pillorie. it is worth highlighting that in the last verse examined there is another mention of the hoary waters of the lake which so traumatize the poet, where – we can imagine – tanners and potters pour the evil-smelling liquids deriving from their production. the poet’s disgust for the deplorable environmental conditions of the city is all the more exasperated when in the following stanzas he describes the stalls of the female peddlers with their filthy merchandise along the bank of that filthy lake. they display all sorts of candles (i suppose mostly made of tallow), buckets and black cooking pots where presumably they cook food (tripe, cows’ hooves and sheep’s heads) which they offer to the customer in decidedly unhygienic conditions: hail be ʒe hokesters dun bi þe lake, wiþ candles and golokes and þe pottes blak, tripis and kine fete and schepen heuedes! wiþ þe hori tromcheri hori is yur inne. 9 “if a baker or a brewer be convicted, because he has not observed the assize of bread and beer, the first, second, and third times, he shall be amerced according to his offence; if it be not over-grievous; but if the offence be grievous and often, and will not be corrected, then he shall suffer punishment of the body, that is to wit, a baker to the pillory, and a brewer to the tumbrel, or some other correction”(luders 1810-1828: i, 201-202). lucia sinisi 174 (103-106) women peddlers, hockesters in our text, trecche or treccole in florence, regatières in 14th century french, regateras in spanish of the same period, were a highly despised category all over europe. according to antonio pucci, a florentine writer of that period, describing the famous market in florence in his poem la proprietà di mercato vecchio, they were hideous women: “sempre di più ragion vi stanno trecche: / diciam di quelle con parole brutte / che tutto il dì per due castagne secche / garrono insieme chiamandosi putte”.10 a later reference to trecche can be found in tommaso garzoni who, in la piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo, published in venice in 1588, affirms that they were so awful and such liars that “se dicessero il vero, gli cadrebbero i denti di bocca” (“if they said the truth their teeth would soon drop out of their mouth”).11 in piers ploughman the wife of covetise is the regrater rose, who, as langland says “has holden hokkerye all hyre lyf-tyme”(5:222); she had first worked as a weaver of woolen cloth, but used to cheat on the weight by which she paid the spinners she employed, later she became a brewester, but she used to mix good ale with poor quality beer (schmidt 1978: 49). our poet is so annoyed by their presence that in the last two lines of the verse he forgets to praise himself for his poetical skill and says instead: he is sori of his lif þat is fast to such a wif. (107-108) but the worst invective is reserved for the wool carders who are so rowdy that the poet would have one of them sit on a flax comb! fi a debles kaites þat kemiþ þe wolle, al þe schindes of þe tronn an heiʒ opon ʒur sculle! ʒe makid me sech a goshorne ouer al þe wowes, 10 “there are hocksters from more and more regions:/ of them we may say with rude words/ that for two dried chestnuts they spend the whole day/squawking and calling each other: bitch!” (my translation) (corsi 1969: 165; sapegno 1962: 404-405). 11 see the edition by g. b. bronzini, 1996: 367. urbanization and pollution in an irish (?) town in the 14th century 175 þer for ich makid on of ʒou sit opon a hechil! (109-112) from what has been said so far it is clear that the poet is basically depicting the society of his time which is becoming bourgeois and mercantile. we are in the early 14th century, a period of great expansion, both demographically and economically, which appeared to contemporaries to be never-ending. but, as we know, the end did come, in 1348, the year of the black death which marks an inexorable halt and the beginning of a reverse trend with people fleeing from the overcrowded towns and searching refuge in the countryside. but the poet, faced with the transformation of a society that he neither understands nor approves of, is unaware of the fate of the towns in the mid-14th century, and he gives vent to his unease. his ideal is not the town, the urban conglomeration, at all, but the countryside where the aristocracy live a refined and quiet existence, or at most by the monastery, a far cry from the noisy streets, the churches with their garish frescoes, the smoky, stinking inns, the cries of women peddlers and the hubbub coming from craftsmen’s workshops. by way of conclusion i would like to underline that the poet’s attitude is not one of severe reprimand of the bad habits spreading through the city, just as the punishment that he hopes will fall on the heads of the transgressors does not belong to the kingdom of heavens but to human justice; there are no visions of paradise as reward for those who have followed the straight and narrow path, but at the end of the poem there is an invitation to drink up, after all these are people who live in the town, there is nothing that can be done. although the poet is culturally aware of the evils deriving from modern city life, and he knows the laws that should regulate the society of his time, the tone is light-hearted, songlike, and, as we have seen at the beginning, irreverent. moreover, while the poem certainly contains substantial references to estates, it undoubtedly differs from the other works of its time (e.g. the french roman de fauvel, or the german der welsche gast by thomasin von zerclaere or, staying in the english domain, piers plowman and vox clamantis by john gower (and, to some extent, even the canterbury tales), which focus on this theme and where the author is morally engaged in re-establishing the tripartite estate order which lay at the heart of the early medieval conception of society, in the sense that the poet is not concerned with re-establishing the social order because he himself is subverting it by writing a transgressive song. lucia sinisi 176 lucia sinisi università di bari references barry, t.b. 1987: the archeology of medieval ireland. routledge, london & n.y. benskin, m. 1989: the style and authorship of the kildare poems – (i) pers of birmingham, in in other words: transcultural studies in philology, translation and lexicography. presented to hans heinrich meier on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday. ed. j. l. mackenzie & r. todd. foris, dordrecht. 57-83. benskin, m. 1990: the hands of the kildare poems manuscript. irish university review 20: 163-193. bliss a. j. & j. long 1987: literature in norman french and english to 1534. in medieval ireland, 1169-1534. ed. a. cosgrove. vol 2 of a new history of ireland. ed. f. x. martin, et al. clarendon, oxford. bradley, j. 1995: walled towns in ireland. dublin country house, dublin. breeze, a. 1993: middle english tromchery and irish tromchroí ‘liver.’ notes and queries 238: 16. bronzini, g. b. ed. 1996: tomaso garzoni: la piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo. l. s. olschki, firenze. cartlidge, n. 2003: festivity, order, and community in fourteenth-century ireland: the composition and contexts of bl ms harley 913. the yearbook of english studies 33: 33-52. corsi, g. ed. 1969: rimatori del trecento. unione tipografico-editrice torinese, torino. frame, r. 1981: colonial ireland,1169-1369. helicon, dublin. furnivall, f. j. 1854: early english poems and lives of saints, with those of the wicked birds pilate and judas. copied and edited from mss. in the british museum. transactions of the philological society, berlin. urbanization and pollution in an irish (?) town in the 14th century 177 garbaty, t. j. 1963: studies in the franciscan ‘the land of cockaygne’ in the kildare ms. franciscan studies 45: 139-163. gilbert, j.t. ed. 1870: historic and municipal documents of ireland, a.d. 1172-1320, from the archives of the city of dublin, etc. rolls series, 53. graham, b. j. 1987: urbanization in medieval ireland, ca. a.d. 900 to ca. a.d. 1300. journal of urban history 13: 169-196. heuser, w. 1904: die kildare gedichte. bonner beiträge zur anglistik 14; repr. darmstadt, 1965. holt, r. & g. rosser 1990: the medieval town. a reader in english urban history 1200-1540. longman, new york. laures, r. 2000: medieval response to municipal pollution. presented to the mid-america conference on history, 17-19 september 1992. the university of kansas, lawrence, kansas. <http://eserver.org/history/medieval-pollution.txt> lucas, a. 1995: anglo-irish poems of the middle ages. columbia press, dublin. lucas a. m. & p. j. lucas 1990: reconstructing a disarranged manuscript: the case of ms harley 913, a medieval hiberno-english miscellany. scriptorium 14: 286-299. luders, a., ed. 1810-1828: the statutes of the realm: printed by command of his majesty king george the third, in pursuance of an address of the house of commons of great britain, from original records and authentic manuscripts. 11 vols. publications of the record commission, london. mcintosh, a. & m. l. samuels 1968: prolegomena to a study of mediaeval anglo-irish. medium ævum 37: 8. marshall, a. 2004.07.4: medieval wall painting in the english parish church . <http://www.paintedchurch.org/panview2.htm>. sapegno, n. 1962: poeti minori del trecento. in letteratura italiana storia e testi, vol. 10. direttori raffaele mattioli, pietro pancrazi, alfredo schiaffini. r. ricciardi, milano-napoli. http://eserver.org/history/medieval-pollution.txt http://www.paintedchurch.org/panview2.htm lucia sinisi 178 scahill, j. 2003: trilingualism in early middle english miscellanies: language and literature. the yearbook of english studies 33: 18-32 schmidt, a. v. c., ed. 1978: the vision of piers plowman: a complete edition of the b-text. dutton, new york. seymour, st. john d. 1929: anglo-irish literature 1200-1582, cambridge university press, cambridge. vasina, a. ed. 1997-1999: repertorio degli statuti comunali emiliani e romagnoli (secc. xiixvi). fonti per la storia dell’italia medievale, vol.3. istituto storico per il medio evo, roma. wallace, d. 1999: the cambridge history of medieval english literature. cambridge university press, cambridge. wright, t. & j. o. halliwell eds.: 1841-43: reliquiae antiquae. scraps from ancient manuscripts, illustrating chiefly early english literature and the english language. william pickering, london. * † * selim08.doc ana belén fernández, selim 8 (1998): 223—238 middle english origins of present-day distinction in the pronunciation of word-final or pre-consonantal sequences or, oar, oor, our word -final or pre-consonantal sequences or/ore, oar, oor, our [and ar when the preceding sound is /w/], as in (1), (1) for, more, roar, floor, four; form, horse, board, court; quarter, warden; etc. may be pronounced, at least, in three different ways: • the usual pronunciation by rp speakers (whether from britain or elsewhere) is long open /o:/, alternating with the conservative (or oldfashioned) rp /oë/, that used to replace the r-lengthening by /ë/ as in (2) [cf. jones 1960; gimson 1970; wells 1982; etc.]: (2) for [fo:]-[foë], more [mo:], [moë], horse [ho:s]-[hoës], boar [bo:]-[boë], board [bo:d]-[boëd], etc. • in some regional accents (london, most of canada, etc.) one can hear, in the above spelling sequences, close [o(:)], either short or long, as in (3): ana belén f ernández 218 (3) horse [ho:s ]-[hoërs ]-[hòës ]; borne [bo:n]-[born]-[boën]; etc. (in cockney: door [do:wë]), etc. notice that in popular london or cockney, however, sometimes they are realised in open syllables as [o:wë]. • finally, there are other accents —birmingham, scottish and provin cial irish english and especially american english, including us south and western new england, the caribbean regions of guyana and barbados, etc.— in which some of the words with those spelling sequences are pronounced with an open vowel [o:] and some with a close vowel [o(:)], even when the pronunciation of the “r” has been reduced to [ë], as exemplified in (4): (4) horse [ho:s ]-[hors]-[hoës ] × hoarse [ho:s ]-[hors ]-[hoës ] born [bo:n]-[born]-[boën] × borne [bo:n]-[born]-[boën] wells (1982: 159-162) classifies the words containing those sequences in two sets 1: – the north set, “comprising those words whose citation form contains the stressed vowel [o:] in rp and the sequence [úor] in genam, or rather in that variety of genam which retains the opposition between [or] and [or]” (wells 1982: 159)2; and – the force set, "comprising those words whose citation form contains the stressed vowel [o:] in current mainstream rp and the sequence [or] in genam, or rather in that variety of genam which retains the opposition between [or] and [or]" (wells 1982:160).3 1 you can see the complete list of words belonging in each set in the appendix. 2 most of them followed by a consonant (subset b); only very rarely are they wordfinal (subset a) or prevocalic (subset c) [see appendix]. 3 distributionally, the words belonging in this set may appear in word-final position (subset a), preconsonantically (subset b: (bi) with current mainstream rp [o:], and (bii) with oldfash ioned rp [oë]), and prevocalically (subset c). for convenience i m e origins of -or, -oar, -oor and -our sequences 219 the contrasting values of both vowels in general american —open [o] in the north set, close [o] in the force set— can be observed in maps 43-44 and 45, respectively, of kurath and mcdavid’s (1961) study on pronunciation in the atlantic states. as i am sure that the difference in pronunciation must reflect a historical opposition between the two sets of words, this paper will try to identify the middle english sources of such present-day dialectal distinction. 1. /o::/ versus /o:/ as a present-day dialectal variant wells states that, historically, – the vowel in the north set "usually derives from middle english short /o/ plus /r/, via pre -r lengthening'', the usual spellings being "or" and, after "w", also " ar" (wells 1982: 159); and that – the vowel in the force set "usually derives from middle english long /o:/ […] in the environment of a following /r/, now lost in rp and other non-rhotic accents except prevocalically. less commonly it derives from middle english /o:/ or /u:/, also before /r/", the usual spellings being "or, ore, oar", and sometimes "oor, our" (wells 1982: 161). we surely remember that historical [o:], as well as [o:] or [u:] could be easily recognised in many words of the force set exhibiting the vocalic digraphs "oa" (e.g. boar), "oo" (e.g. floor), and " ou" (e.g. four) —all in subsets (a) and (bii), except for hoary in subset (c)—, since they normally correspond to an underlyin g middle english long vowel (whether open or close). a long open vowel, resulting from middle english open syllable lengthening (meosl), could also be ventured in words such as adore (subset a), oral and glorious (subset c), and other french and latin borrowings. [analogically extended, perhaps, to the open syllable vowel of borrowings after the meosl, as in boron, flora, stentorian, etc. in subset c]. reproduc e, in the appendix, wells’ lists of words belonging in each set (some 250 words altogether. note that shorn appears in both sets). ana belén f ernández 220 and it should also be remembered that the past participles borne, shorn, sworn, torn, worn (subset bi) which originally contained " -e-" between " -r-" and " -n" were also subject to the same lengthening. but many examples in subset (bi), where the context fails to indicate length in middle english, offer serious difficulties. as far as the north set is concerned, the historical short [o] can be intuitively recognised in the majority of the words (subset b). in fact, the spelling "or" (or "ar" preceded by [w]), in checked syllables, usually corresponds to an underlying short vowel: either originally (native wo rds and early borrowings) or analogically (later borrowings). but the historical short [o] of subset c is certainly hard to admit, since we all remember that the spelling " au" usually corresponds to a historically long vowel. besides, it seems rather strange that a good number of words which are structurally so similar, if not identical, could have such a different vowel. the table in (5) shows some of these striking structural similarities: the first column showing apparently historical short [o] (and open [or] in many present-day general american areas); the second, historical long open [o:] (a close [or] in the same areas of present-day general american): (5) north (historical [o]) force (historical [o:]) afford (oe –foríian), ford (oe), short (oe), resort (14), port (oe), sword (oe), sport (14), snort (14),tort (14), fort (14), report (14), support (14) assort (15), consort (15) deport (15), export (15), import (15), horde (16) lord (oe), cord (12), order (13), fortune (13), fortunate (13), porter (13), proportion (14) corporal (14), porpoise (14), mortal (14), chord (15), … m e origins of -or, -oar, -oor and -our sequences 221 stork (oe), york, fork (oe), pork (13) organ (13), cork (14), gorge (14) forge (14) torch (13), scorch (15), porch (13) north (oe), forth (oe) horse (oe), gorse (oe) force (13), divorce (14) remorse (14) [the numbers (13), (14), (15) indicate the century in which the borrowing was introduced in english.] but perhaps intuitions of the kind and more or less accurate recollections, or even the surface stru cture similarities we have just seen are not enough. maybe we should turn to what the specialists in the field of middle english and early modern english have said about this. let us then take a look at their explanations in order to identify the real middle english sources of such a dialectal distinction. 2. the doctrine of middle english specialists certain monographs and handbooks (and even dictionaries) of middle english offer sample transcriptions of some of the words listed in wells’ north and force sets. bliss (1952-53: 541) exemplifies his well-known monographic study (on vowel-length in middle english borrowings from anglo -norman) with some of the words appearing in wells’ sets, as can be observed in (6): (6) (north set): coµ?rde ‘cord’, cooµ?rse ‘corpse’, foµ?rme ‘form’, oµ?rdre ‘order’ and scoµ?rne ‘scorn’; (force set): despoµ?rte ‘(di)sport’, foµ?rce/foµrce, foµ?rge/foµrge, foµ?rt, poµ?rche/poµrche ‘porch’, p oµ?rk, poµ?rt, and s oµ?rt. ana belén f ernández 222 according to bliss, long vowels in these and other similar items were due to the anglo -norman lengthening of short vowels before [r] (though variant pronunciations with a short vowel could have survived as well). but —when the long vowel was preceded by the voiceless labial plosive and fricative [p, f] (e.g. force, porch)— one could find open and close variants, which reflect the present-day dialectal distinctions we are talking about. if bliss’s assumption is correct, then, we must understand that • anglo -norman borrowings with final or pre -consonantal “or” had at least two pronunciations (= one with a short and another with a long vowel); and those containing that sequence in the post-labial position as many as three pronunciations. while • native words with the same sequence, plus old english borrowings must have had only the pronunciation with short [o], no matter whether the vowel was preceded by a labial or not. let us take a look now at some of the standard middle english grammars: in luick’s (1921: §413) and wright’s (1928: §200) we find very few borrowings from wells’ sets; just the ones mentioned in (7), which coincide totally with wells’ historical characterisation of both sets: (7) (north set): fo‰¬rce, co‰¬rse ‘corpse’, fo‰¬rge, go‰¬rge, po¬‰rk, po‰¬rt (all with [o:] due to lengthening before [r + c]); (force set): ordre, and the native corn, horn, hors, norê, stork, storm, êorn (all with short [o]) mossé (1952), as well as brunner (1963) and weinstock (1968), simply ig nore the so-called anglo -norman lengthening i have just mentioned. in the glossary (at the end of his grammar) mossé does not indicate length in words belonging in wells’ force set such as the ones in (8): (8) afforce, disport/desport, forê, schorne (p.part. of sche¬‰re), etc. m e origins of -or, -oar, -oor and -our sequences 223 berndt’s (1960) section, devoted to length in borrowings from french, includes the words listed in (9) [taken from chaucer’s canterbury tales]: (9) (north set): acord , exhorte(n), forke, forme, fortune, horn, hors, lo¬rd/lord, mortal, ordre, recorde, remorse (force set): po‰¬rc, po‰¬rte, co‰¬rse/coors ‘corpse’(wells’ n word), born, divorce, fo¬rs (also fo‰¬rs), forth, … but he fails to account for the narrowing of long open [o:] to long close [o:] before final and pre -consonantal [r]. his remarks only concern the rais ing of long open [o:] in other contexts in words such as fool, move, prove, etc. and finally, jordan and crook’s (1974) account seems to me absolutely confusing. thus their transcriptions in §227 include the present-day north set and force set words listed in (10): (10) (north set): cors ‘corpse’, gorge, ordre ‘order’, torche ‘torch’ (all with short [o]) (force set): divorce, fors/force, pork, port (with short [o]); but coors, divorce, fors, forge (“probably with [o:]”). apparently, in native force set words, long close [o:] is found in the neighbourhood of labials and also before the homorganic cluster “rd”; but shortness prevails before “rn” and “rth”. 3. the doctrine of early modern english specialists regular histories of english usually ignore vowel length in this type of words or they mention it only in passing. thus, wyld (1927: 133) writes about “me [o] preserved in close syllables … [e.g. force]. prins (1974: 116) quotes force to exemplify the preservation of old french short [o] in middle english. and brunner (1962: 342) concedes that a long vowel may have been pronounced in force and port. ana belén f ernández 224 only ekwall (1975) admits that “before r-groups vowels in french words were often long in middle english and early modern english …” offering an incomplete classification of examples with long open [o:] and long close [o:] which roughly agrees with wells’ north and force sets, respectively, as shown in (11): (11) north set (with [o:]): corn, for, horse, morning, short, thorn; absorb, orb(it), cord, order, torch, gorge, organ, scorn, force set (with [o:]): divorce, force, remorse, porch, forge, pork, fort, port (plus derivatives like support), sport … as for the very well-known monographic studies on early modern english i will mention only two: dobson’s study of english pronunciation from 1500 to 1700, and kökeritz’s study on shakespeare’s language. dobson (1966) assumes that, in some of wells’ force set with short or long close [o]: — the short [o] of the past participles representing the torn -type (boren, pl. borne, etc.) may be due to an occasional lack of middle english lengthening because of the following syllabic “–en” (§13. 2a). whereas — the long close [o:] of the forí-type (ford, sword , etc.) was due to the voiced homorganic cluster [rí] or [rd] (§16 nn. l and 2). words adopted from french, however, which were pronounced with a close [o(:)] or open [o(:)] when a labial precedes, as in (12), must have had “either [o:] or [o:] beside [o]” in middle english: (12) force, forge, fork, form, fort, perform, porch, pork ; port, report, sport (also: §13.2b ii). but when no labial preceded, only two variants —with short open or with long open [o(:)]— existed, as in (13): m e origins of -or, -oar, -oor and -our sequences 225 (13) cord, cork, cor(p)se, sort, resort, scorn , etc. in his well-known study of the language of shakespeare, kökeritz (1953: 254) indicates several variants in the middle english pronunciation of “or” plus consonant: — [u] in corpse, perform (wells’ north set) or in forth (wells’ force set) — short [o] and long close [o:] in afford and ford (wells’ force set) and he claims, besides, that shakespeare’s rhymes such as the ones re produced in (14) indicate that ‘early modern english “or” is linked with me o¬‰r and o¬r’: (14) horse (north set) : force (force set)/ remorse (north set); short (north set) : report/sport (force set); etc. after this rather long excursus, can we reach any safe conclusion with re gard to our issue here? perhaps only that the data and the doctrine found in regular histories of english —as well as in specialised monographic studies [on middle and early modern english]— do complicate (rather than solve) our issue; i.e. the middle english sources of short [o] for wells’ north set of words and long [o:] for wells’ force set (both pronounced [o:] in current main stream rp; but [or]-[oë] and [or]-[oë] in genam and certain other variants of english. 4. a possible explanation as stated above, words containing the diagraphic spellings “our, oor, oar” [and perhaps also those with the spelling “or” which experienced a middle english open syllable lengthening) do not seem to present much of a ana belén f ernández 226 problem. but words with word -final or pre-consonantal “or(e)” are certainly problematic. but —if we are to take into account the contradictory evidence just mentioned1 (cf. 2 & 3 above)— one should conclude that “-or” and “or+consonant” had three different pronunciations, namely [o], [o:] and [o:], since the “o” in this sequence could be either short or long; and, if long, either close or open. in the case of close [o:] (which occurred after an initial labial plosive or fricative, in words such as fo¬rce, fo¬rge, po¬rch, etc.), one wonders, besides, why did it fail to produce the present-day standard english [u ë] as in boor(s), moor(s), poor(s) , spoor(s), etc., in which the root vowel was originally long. in the following lines, i will try to hypothesise (in a brief summary) what did actually happen in middle english to the sequences we are dealing with. • practically all words with present-day spellings “oar, oor, our” (whether final or pre-consonantal), as well as prevocalic “or”, belong in the force set, and are certainly long in middle english. • words with pre -consonantal “or” (=having either long or short vowel in middle english) may belong in either set. therefore wells’ north or force sets —reflecting present-day dialectal varieties of english— can hardly be primarily attributed to middle english differences in vowel quantity. • words with pre -consonantal “or”, exhibiting present-day quality distinction, however, (i.e. wells’ north set with open [o] and force set with close [o]) may reflect vowel-quality distinction in middle english. we should observe that, in practically all words belonging in the force set the final or pre-consonantal “or” is preceded by a labial obstruent (either [p], [b], [f], very rarely [v] and [w]). a possible impact of the labial consonant 1 actually, it seems to me that middle english data contained in kökeritz (1953), dobson (1968), cercignani (1981), etc., are not fully reliable, since the authors of those monographs reconstruct earlier pronunciations based not on middle english but on early modern english sources. m e origins of -or, -oar, -oor and -our sequences 227 on the subsequent vocalic distinction seems to be ignored in most histories of english, as well as in many specialised middle english grammars (wright, brunner, luick, ekwall, mossé, etc.). as i have just pointed out, however, middle english quantity distinction is only valid when the “or” reflects an old english long vowel or a vowel lengthened in an open syllable in middle english. thus, in force (an old french borrowing, ultimately from vulgar latin fortia), the pre-r lengthening of old -french/anglo -norman words would originate fo¬‰rs(e); and the subsequent post-labial raising (and narrowing), fo¬rs(e). the latter could explain the dialectal variants 1. other original short vowels in checked syllables continued being short throughout middle english, and later shortenings (second half of 13th century) before consonant clusters (except “ld, mb, nd, ng”) affected items such as eorpe > erthe ‘earth’, earnian > erne ‘earn’, etc. and so the new long vowels in checked sylla bles were also liable to similar shortenings. therefore, native words such as afford, ford, forth … —as well as foreign words like divorce, force, fort— must have been affected by this subsequent shortening, since it seems reasonable to believe that regular middle english speakers did not actually discriminate between native and foreign items with similar phonological structures. with cultivated speakers, however, the shortening perhaps did not completely abolish the contrast of vowel pronunciation in word s such as the ones in (15): (15) north (original short open [o]), sort (vowel lengthened to [o:]), ford (vowel directly lengthened to [o:], force (vowel lengthened to [o:] and then raised to [o:]). all this could explain why so many linguists ignore long force set variants, some of which also differed in quality from short north set variants. i think, therefore, that the present-day contrast between vowels in words with the pre -consonantal sequence “or” cannot be determined by a middle 1 neither the pre-r lengthening nor the post-labial raising/narrowing did affect standard english; actually middle english [or], [o:r], [or] and [o:r] would merge in [o:] in current mainstream rp. ana belén f ernández 228 english long or short vowel, as wells does. consequently, two tentative hypothesis could be formulated: 1.— the present-day dialectal contrast between north set and force set words with final or pre-consonantal sequence “or” reflects the early middle english quality distinction after non-postlabial and postlabial consonant of the vowel “o” (open and close respectively), no matter whether the vowel experienced lengthening before “r + consonant” or not. 2.— the new quality distinction of the vowel (if actually produced) must have been allophonic. actually, applying the shortening rule to the four words in (15), we would obtain the results expressed in (16): (16) north set force set early middle english word ho‰rs so¬‰rt fo¬rt fo¬rs shortening before cons. cluster [sort] [fort] [fors] result in late middle english [hors] [sort] [fort] [fors] although highly hypothetical, the explanation i have just put forward offers several advantages: first of all, it accounts for today’s contrast between words of the sorttype and those of fort-type above, as well as for the grouping of words such as horse (native) and sort (french borrowing) in the same set. secondly, since the difference is only allophonic, the middle english rhymes between words such as north and forth (belonging in different sets) can be regarded as correct. and, on top of that, my hypothesis seems to produce a good input to the rule of early modern english lengthening before “r + c”, a process which restored the original phonemic contrast after ‘short open [o]’ became a ‘long open [o:]’ and ‘short close [o]’ became a ‘long close [o:]’, as in (17), a dis tinction which survives in certain present-day dialectal variants of english, as wells (1982: 160, 162) reflects in his north and force sets. m e origins of -or, -oar, -oor and -our sequences 229 (17) [o] > [oµ?] ——> [horse], [north], [soµrt], etc. [o] > [o:] ——> [fo:rt], [fo:rs], etc. further questions may be raised, of course. one may be that the phonological structure of some of the north set words [for example the ones mentioned in (18)], is so similar (if not identical) to those of subset (bi) in the force set, that they should belong together: (18) north set: porpoise, fortify, fortress, fortune, fortunate, importunate, mortal, mortar, border, … force set: proportion, porter, portrait, borneo, divorce, … all of them are certainly french borrowings with “–or–“ preceded by a labial plosive or fricative, all of them have two or more syllables and their [o] was originally unstressed. moreover, the narrowing impact of the labial nas al [m] is not evident in several north words such as morn, remorse; and the presence of coarse and hoarse in the force set seems hard to explain. and, besides, some words —e.g. fork, form, etc.— had short and long forms in middle english, so their inclusion in the force set must be due to the operation of early modern english phonological rules, which were also re spons ible for the distribution of north vs. force words borrowed into english after 1500. but these questions are not within the scope of this paper1. ana b. fernández guerra universitat jaume i (castellón) references berndt, r. 1960. einführung in das studium des mittelenglischen. halle (saale): niemeyer. 1 to answer them we must refer to modern english rather than to middle english sources. ana belén f ernández 230 bliss, a. j. 1952-53. vowel-quantity in middle english borrowings from anglo -norman. archivum linguisticum 4: 121-147, 5: 22-47. brunner, k. 1962. die englische sprache. tübingen: niemeyer. brunner, k. 1963. an outline of middle english grammar. (trans. g. johnston). oxford: blackwell. cercignani, f. 1981. shakespeare’s works and elizabethan pronunciation. oxford: clarendon press. dobson, e. j. 1968. english pronunciation 1500-1700. (2nd ed.) oxford: clarendon press. ekwall, e. 1975. a history of modern english sounds and morphology. (trans. and ed. by a. ward). oxford: blackwell. fernández, f. 1993. historia de la lengua inglesa. madrid: gredos. gimson, a. c. 1970. an introduction to the pronunciation of english. bristol: e. arnold. jones, d. 1960. an outline of english phonetics. cambridge: heffer jordan, r. and e. crook. 1974. handbook of middle english grammar: phonology. the hague: mouton. kökeritz, h. 1953. shakespeare’s pronunciation. new haven: yale university press. kurath, h. and r. i. mcdavid, jr. 1961. the pronunciation of english in the united states. ann arbor: the university of michigan press. luick, k. 1921. historische grammatik der englischen sprache i. leipzig: tauchnitz. mossé, f. 1952. a handbook of middle english. (trans. a. j. walker). baltimore: johns hopkins. prins, a. a. 1974. a history of english phonemes. (2nd ed.) leiden: leiden university press. weinstock, h. 1968. mittelenglisches elementarbuch. berlin: walter de gruyter. wells, j.c. 1982. accents of english. i. introduction. cambridge: cambridge university press. wright, j. and e. m. wright. 1929. an elementary middle english grammar. london: oxford university press. wyld, h. c. 1927. a short history of english . london: murray. m e origins of -or, -oar, -oor and -our sequences 231 appendix north words (a) or, for, nor, thor; war; (b) thorpe. assort, cavort, consort, distort, exhort, resort, retort, short, snort, tort, cork, fork, stork, torque, york; scorch, torch; morph; gorse, horse, remorse; orb, absorb; accord, chord, cord, lord, record, george, gorge; corm, form, reform, storm; adorn, born, corn, horn, morn, porn, scorn, shorn, thorn; corpse; porpoise, torpid, torpor, fortify, fortunate, fortune, important*, corporal, importunate, mortal, mortar, shorten, tortoise, orchestra, orchid, dorking, torture, forfeit. morpheme, morphia, morphine, orthodox, torso; orbit, order, border, ordinary, organ, organism, organize, morgan; dormer, mormon, normal, ornament, corner, forward, fortress; quart, quarter, quartz, sward, swarm, swarthy, warble, ward, warden, wardrobe, warlock, warm, warmth, warn, warp, warsaw, wart; (c) aura, aural, laura, taurus. *the adjective important: “in accents other than genam usually a force word.” (wells 1982: 160) ana belén f ernández 232 force words (a) ore, adore, afore, before, bore, chore, core, crore, deplore, explore, fore, galore, gore, ignore, implore, more, ore, pore, restore, score, shore, snore, sore, spore, store, swore, tore, whore, wore, yore; boar, hoar, oar, roar, soar; floor, door; four, pour; (bi) deport, export, fort, import, port, report, sport; support, pork, porch, forth, divorce, afford, ford, horde, sword, forge, borne, shorn, sworn, torn, worn, portent, porter, portrait, proportion, borneo; (bii) coarse, hoarse, board, hoard, boarder; court, fourth, course, resource, source, mourn**, courtier, mourning; (c) oral, adorable, angora, aurora, borax, boron, choral, dora, fedora, flora, floral, glory, gory, moron, nora(h), porous, story, thorax, torus, tory, censorious, euphoria, gloria, glorious, gregorian, historian, laborious, memorial, meritorious, moratorium, notorious, pictorial, pretorian, stentorian, thorium, uxorious, victoria(n), other words in ‘-orial’, hoary, uproarious. **the items mourn and mourning “also sometimes with rp /uë/, genam /ur/.” (wells 1982: 162). * † * selim09.doc josé maría gutiérrez, selim 9 (1999): 143—34 the precepts of classical rhetoric in the letters of geoffrey chaucer’s troylus & criseyde in the middle ages the art of rhetoric was one of the main instruments to establish any kind of formal literary discourse through traslations and learned study. this praeceptum, that began in ancient greece, was transmitted to rome, and later on to medieval europe. rhetoric, then was the means witty orators transferred their experience to future generations giving direct suggestions of daily behaviour and daily speech. corax from syracuse is thought to have been the inventor of this art, that tysias, later developed and spread (murphy, 1974: 17). but it was aristotle who gave the most important definition of rhetoric. in his ars rhetorica he outlines the basis features stating them as the ability to discover every possible mean of persuasion: (aristotelis. ars rhetorica. a.2) “εστω δη η ‘ρητορικη δúναµισ περι εκαστον του θεωρησαι το εν δεχóµενον πιθανóν. aristotle says there are three types of rhetorical discourses: “deliberative”, “judicial”, and what he calls “’επιδεικτικóν”, whose aim is the praise and censorship. τhe latter is the most important for our discussion. in re ference to this, the greek author gives some characteristics of it. he points out that the target of those who praise or censure is beauty and shame. apart from that, those above mentioned don’t mind whether something convenient or harmful has been fulfilled, but frequently eulogize the person who has made something beautiful, even if rejecting its usefulness, as achilles was prais ed since he helped patrocle, though knowing that he, who could keep alive, was about to die, because it turns out that this death was more attractive and life less convenient (aristóteles, retórica: 195-6) josé maría gutiérrez arranz 144 the characteristics of this type of discourse can be applied to a specific one which is an authentically medieval invention, the ars dictaminis, that is, the epistolary art. the fact of sending oral messages from one person to another appears from the very first testimonies of western civilization. at the age of homer’s iliad greeks had developed intricate models of representation by ambassadors, legates and other messengers who transmitted the ideas from whom they were sent. this oral practice included written documents which were verbally read to the addressee. in spite of it, tradition insists on the fact language was essentially oral, and, again, aristotle (liber de interpretatione: 49) holds that “spoken words are symbols of mental experiences, while written words are symbols of spoken ones” εστι µεν οûν τα ’εν τη φωνη τϖν ’εν τη ψυχη παθηµατων συµβο λα, και τα γραφóµενα τϖν ’εν τη φωνη. in the ancient world any rhetorical doctrine about writing appeared. but, here, it is important to remember that most of the future analysts who tried to dis cuss about writing as a rhetorical art based their researches on one book, rhetorica ad herennium, attributed to cicero, which establishes the six parts of a spoken discourse: exordium, narratio, divisio, confirmatio, confutatio, and conclusio (cicerón, retórica a herenio: 31). these analysts we are going to focus on lived from 11th century to 14th century, so this fact confirms the increase of rhetorical studies in medieval age (murphy, 1974: 202-3). the first medieval rhetorician appeared in the 4th century bc, c. julius victor wrote ars rhetorica, and added three appendices: de exercitation, de sermocinatione, and de epistolis in the second one, he defends that regular rhetorical theory does not include the sermo, that is, the informal discourse, and in the third one, he distinguishes two types of letters: the official ones (negotiales), and the familiar ones (familiares). the official letters contain a serious language as the one which appears in discourses; the familiar letters do not include this kind of language, so they are short and clear. besides, these letters must be adapted to the occasion, in order to console or do the most appropiate thing for the situation. (murphy, 1974: 203-4). the next important analyst was albericus from montecassino, with his dictaminum radii. it is distributed in nine sections. he remembers that a dis course has got four parts: exordium, narratio, argumentatio and conclusio, the precepts of classical rhetoric in the letters of troylus & criseyde 145 following saint isidore from sevilla’s etymologiae. he insists on the importance of exordium and uses the word “reader” (lectorem) instead of “listener” (auditor). albericus is the first to point out the captatio benevolentiae, that is, to get the good will of the addressee. so the dictaminum radii concerns with the beginning of the writings and the colores or features of it. other analysts, as adalbertus samaritan or huge from bologna also regards the importance of “exordium” and “salutatio”. about 1135 an anonymous treaty, rationes dictandi, analyzes the five parts of the discourse (salutatio, benevolentiae captatio, narratio, petitio, conclusio). other authors discuss the parts of the treatise, but they do not bring anything new to the theory exposed by the first analysts and, obviously, by cicero. maybe the last important author was lawrence from aquileia, with his practica sive usus dictaminis, written about 1300, in which he presents seven descriptions in order to determine the nature of the letter: (murphy, 1974: 267). i. ad pontificem. ii. ad cardinales, patriarchas, archiepiscopos, abbates, patres, matres, avos, avunculos, amitas, matertas, novercas et magnos prelatos. iii. ad imperatores, reges, principes, duces, comites, marchiones, potes tates, milites, barones, castellanos et alios quoscumque magnos laicos. iv. ad minores quoscumque tam clericos quam laicos. v. ad archdiacones, presbyteres, priores, magistres, monachos et omnes alios huiusmodi. vi. ad amicos, fratres, cognatos, germanos, mercatores, notarios. vii. ad soldanos, haereticos, proditores, excommunicatores, falsos infidelos. summarizing all this information, we can conclude that the movement of dictamen intended to apply the ciceronian rhetoric to a concrete problem of composition: the writing of letters. although the theory of colores or features was included in this discussion, finally the more used stylistic doctrine in the “ars dictaminis ” was the cursus, based on the appearance of clauses (murphy, 1974: 273-4). so, with all this, our intention has been to show the josé maría gutiérrez arranz 146 first problem to focus on troylus & cryseide’s letters. the second part of this paper will be to search for an appropiate ideology of the mentioned ones. to the above purpose we must seek almost obligatorily to the most clear example of letters, close intentionally to chaucer’s ones: ovid’s heroides. this work is a collection of twenty-one love letters, conceived by ovid as epistulae, so the epistolary genre is always recognisible. the heroides submit, practically without any exception, to the rhetorical precepts. most of them include an initial greeting with the name of the sender (institulatio or superscriptio) and of the adressee (adscriptio) with a χαι′ρειν or salutem. in some occasions, the letter begins with a complaint or a reproach, and finishes with a closing formula (subscriptio) (moya del baño, 1986: vii-ix). the heroides have been treated and discussed as a pure rhetorical exercise or, on the other hand, as lacking in these features. anyway, there have been opinions in favour of the influence of suasoria or rhetorical exercise of persuasion, especiallly in letters 1-15. the structure of any one of this group can help us to discover this feature. for example, (oppel, 1968: 12) phaedra’s letter to hippolitus (heroide 4) includes a suasoria in verses 85164, in which she points out several arguments on behalf of he returns love (pérez vega, 1994: 15). (ovid, heroides iv, 52-5, v. v. 129-41) nec, quia privigno videar coitura noverca, terruerint animos nomina vana tuos. ista vetus pietas, aevo moritura futuro, rustica saturno regna tenente fuit. iuppiter esse pium statuit, quodeumque iuvaret, et fas omne facit fratre marita soror. illa coit firma generis iunctura catena, inposuit nodos cui venus ipsa suos. nec labor est celare, licet peccemus, amorem. cognato poterit nomine culpa tegi. viderit amplexos aliquis, laudabimur ambo; dicar privigno fida noverca meo. the precepts of classical rhetoric in the letters of troylus & criseyde 147 and, should you think of me as a stepdame who would mate with her husband’s son, let empty names fright not your soul. such old fashioned regard for virtue was rustic even in saturn’s reign, and doomed to die in the age to come. jove fixed that virtue was to be in whatever brought us pleasure; and naught is wrong before the gods since sister was made wife by brother. that bond of kinship only holds close and firm in which venus herself has forged the chain. nor, though we indulge our feelings, would it be difficult to conceal our love for each other. our fault can be covered under name. should someone see us embrace, we both shall meet with praise; i shall be called a faithful stepdame to the son of my lord. when having a look at troylus & criseyde’s letters, we can begin our analysis by checking pandarus’ advices to troylus in book ii, lines 1023-43. the former remembers the latter that as a premise to his writing: (troylus & criseyde, book ii, line 1023) […] thou art wys ynough. but, then, he suggests him (troylus & criseyde, book ii, lines 1024-9) i woot thow nylt it dygneliche endite, as make it with thise argumentes tough; ne scryvenyssh or craftyly thow it write; biblotte it with thi teris ek a lite; and if thow write a goodly word al softe, though it be good, reherce it nought to ofte. if we take into account the above mentioned features of a discourse appeared in the rhetorica ad herennium, in which cicero warns the orator to dominate certain abilities as inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria and pronuntiatio, we think that pandarus recommends troylus not to use a pompous language or style, but a tearful one. curiously, after mentioning the harpist’s comparison with troylus’ possible style, pandarus points out that (troylus & criseyde, book ii, lines 1037-43) ne jompre ek no discordant thyng yferre, as thus, to usen termes of phisik josé maría gutiérrez arranz 148 in loves termes; hold of thi matere the forme alwey, and do that it be lik; for if a peyntour wolde peynte a pyk with asses feet, and hedde it as an ape, it cordth naught, so were it but a jape. so pandarus confirms that it is essential to use a clear style and that, like cicero’s proclaimed as the orator’s concern, he must be able to talk about those themes which have been fixed by morals and laws in order to be used by citizens with the assent of the listeners, and whenever this can be obtained (alcina, 1991: 31). when discussing troylus’ letter (book ii, lines 1065-92), we can see that chaucer follows, more or less, the discourse’s p arts. (cicero, rhetorica ad herennium, i, iii, 4) inventio in sex partes orationis consumitur: in exordium, narrationem, divisionem, confirmationem, confutationem, conclusionem. exordium est principium orationis, per quod anumus auditoris constituitur ad audiendum. narratio est rerum gestarum aut proinde ut gestarum expositio. divisio est per quam aperimus quid conveniat, quid in controversia sit, et per quam exponimus quibus de rebus simus acturi. confirmatio est nostrorum argumentorum expositio cum adseveratione. confutatio est contrariorum locorum dissolutio. conclusio est artificiosus orationis terminus. invention is used for the six parts of a discourse: the introduction, statement of facts, division, proof, refutation and conclusion. the introduction is the beginning of the discourse, and by it the hearer’s mind is prepared for attention. the narration of statement of facts sets forth the events that have occurred or might have occurred. by means of the division we make clear what matters are agreed upon and what are contested, and announce what points we intend to take up. proof is the presentation of our arguments, together with their corroboration. refutation is the destruction of our adversaries arguments. the conclusion is the end of the discourse, formed in accordance with the principles of the art. lines 1065-1071 conform the exordium or beginning, in which we can observe that there is a captatio benevolentiae when troylus says: (troylus & criseyde, book ii, line 1070) «[…] he gan hym recomaunde unto hire the precepts of classical rhetoric in the letters of troylus & criseyde 149 grace». lines 1072-1085 include the narratio of the letter. this part reflects one of the types in which the narratio is divided: the one which is made out of a judicial cause, and we think that this one follows the subdivision based on the people. in this part, we can also guess some elements of suasoria, the device used by ovid in his heroides. troylus tries to convince cryseide: (troylus & criseyde, book ii, lines 1075-8) and pitousli gan mercy for to crye; and after that he seyde and leigh fu l loude hymself was litel worth, and lasse he koude. finally, lines 1086-1092 represent the conclusio or ending of the letter. cryseide’s answer does not contribute anything to a deep analysis of the letter, though we can guess that it could be divided into the cited parts. both lover’s letters in book v do bring elements of discussion. in troylus’ letter, lines 1317-1323 include the exordium: (troylus & criseyde, book v, 1317-23) right fresshe flour, whos i ben have and shal, withouten part of ellewhere servyse, with herte, body, lif, lust, thought, and al, i, woful wyght, in everich humble wise that tonge telle or herte may devyse, as ofte as matere occupieth place, me recomaunde unto youre noble grace. lines 1324-1407 can be divided into the first fourty-nine verses, which mean troylus’ pleadings to cryseide (that is, a captatio benevolentiae), (troylus & criseyde, book v, lines 1338-41) yow first biseche i, that youre eyen clere to loke on this defouled ye nat holde; and over al this, that ye, my la dy deere, wol vouchesauf this lettre to byholde; […] josé maría gutiérrez arranz 150 and they could even represent part of the narratio, as he tells her the cause of his letter. the final 35 verses of this group include a clear suasoria, then a clear ovid’s influence, when troylus insists on her coming back to troy. (troylus & criseyde, book v, lines 1324-30) liketh yow to witen, swete herte, as ye wel knowe, how longe tyme agon that ye me lefte in aspre peynes smerte, whan that ye wente, of which yet boote non have i non had, but evere wors bigon fro day to day am i, and so mot dwelle, while it yow list, of wele and wo my welle. at last, lines 1408-21 are the conclusio or ending of the letter. on the other hand, cryseide’s letter contains an exordium (lines 1590-96), (troylus & criseyde, book v, lines 1590-6) cupides sone, ensample of goddlyheede, o swerd of knyghthod, sours of gentilesse, how myght a wight in torment and in drede and heleles, yow sende as yet gladnesse? i herteles, i sik, i in destresse? syn ye with me, not i with yow, may dele, yow neyther sende ich herte may nor hele. a short narratio, in which she explains the facts (lines 1597-1603), (troylus & criseyde, book v, lines 1597-1603) youre lettres ful, the papir al ypleynted, conceyved hath myn hertes pietee, i have ek seyn with teris al depeynted youre lettre, and how that ye requeren me to come ayeyn, which yet ne may nat be; but whi, lest that this lettre founden were, no mencioun ne make i now, for feere. and then cryseide shows the pros and the cons of her coming back, that is a divisio, in which there is an enumeration (enumeratio) of the causes by which she cannot come back and an exposition (expositio) of these ones: the precepts of classical rhetoric in the letters of troylus & criseyde 151 (troylus & criseyde, book v, lines 1604-10) grevous to me, god woot, is youre unreste, youre haste, and that the goddes ordinaunce it semeth nat ye take it for the beste. nor other thyng nys in youre remembraunce, as thynketh me, but only youre plesaunce. but beth nat wroth, and that i yow biseche; for that i tarie is al for wikked speche. for i have herd wel moore than i wende, touchyng us two, how thynges han ystonde, which i shal with dissymeling amende. and beth nat wroth, i have ek understonde how ye ne do but holden me in honde. but now no force. i kan nat in yow gesse but alle trouthe and alle gentilesse. of course, lines 1625-31 mean the conclusio of the letter. as a summary of all this paper, we can conclude that chaucer reflects in the letters of troylus & cryseyde some of the precepts of classical rhetoric, when using some of the discourse’s parts contained first in cicero’s rhetorical works and then in medieval rhetoricians, and also some elements of ovid’s heroides, specially those related to rhetorical devices, as the mentioned suasoria. josé maría gutiérrez arranz universidad de alcalá de henares bibliography aristóteles 1990: retórica. trans. quintín racionero. biblioteca clásica gredos 142. madrid: ed. gredos. aristotelis 1978a ars rhetorica. ed. e. d. ross. scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca oxoniensis. oxford: oup. josé maría gutiérrez arranz 152 aristotelis 1978b categoriae et liber de interpretatione. ed. l. minio-paluello. scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca oxoniensis. oxford: oup. benson, larry d., ed. 1987: the riverside chaucer. 3rd. ed. oxford: oup. chaucer, geoffrey 1971: troilus and criseyde. trans. nevill coghill. london: penguin books. cicero m. t. 1981: [cicero] ad c. herennium. de ratione dicendi (rhetorica ad herennium) . trans. harry caplan. cicero’s works 1. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press. cicero, m. t. 1976: de oratore. loeb classical library. vol. 3. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press. 28 vols. cicerón, m. t. 1991: retórica a herenio. trans. juan francisco alcina. eras mo, textos bilingües. barcelona: ed. bosch. murphy, james j. 1974: la retórica en la edad media. historia de la teoría de la retórica desde san agustín hasta el renacimiento. berkeley, university of california press. oppel, e. 1968: ovids heroides: studien zur inneren form und zur motivation. erlanger-nüremberg. ovidio, p. 1986: heroidas. trans. francisca moya del baño. colección hispánica de autores griegos y latinos. madrid: consejo superior de investigaciones científicas. ovidio, p. 1994: cartas de las heroínas. ibis. trans. ana pérez vega. biblioteca clásica gredos. madrid: ed. gredos. * † * selim 15.indb begoña crespo & isabel moskowich, selim 13 (2005-2006): 181—200 medicine, astronomy, affixes and others: an account of verb formation in some early scientific works abstract the patterns of derivational morphology found in middle english in general should, theoretically, coincide with those found in an emerging functional variety of english from the same period (scientific writing). this scientific register has only been studied as such in the last decade or so, and often receiving a brief mention in more general works. at the same time, derivational morphology has not been considered as a tool to measure the degree of vernacularisation of late middle english scientific texts. in this paper we intend to examine the behaviour of verbs in late middle english scientific texts from the point of view of derivation and the degree of vernacularisation observed in them (previous work has focused on the analysis of nouns, arguing that they are the most frequent word-category with semantic content in scientific writing). the particular aspect of vernacularisation that concerns us here is the ability of writers to reanalyse and re-use elements of the language. to ascertain whether all fields of knowledge resort to the same linguistic devices, whe have used chaucer’s the equatorie of the planetis and astrolabe and compared it with a remedy book. keywords: derivational morphology, middle english, scientific register, vernacularisation. resumen los modelos derivativos encontrados en inglés medio deberían, en teoría, coincidir con los hallados en una incipiente variedad funcional del mismo periodo (el inglés científico). este registro científico ha sido objeto de estudio en la última década, a menudo, recibiendo una breve mención en trabajos más amplios. al mismo tiempo, la morfología derivativa no ha sido considerada una herramienta para medir el grado de vernacularización de los textos científicos en inglés medio tardío. en este artículo pretendemos examinar el comportamiento de los verbos en textos científicos de inglés medio tardío desde el punto de vista de la derivación así como el grado de vernacularización observado en ellos (trabajos anteriores se han centrado en el análisis de los nombres aduciendo que son la categoría léxica más frecuente en inglés científico). el aspecto concreto de la vernacularización que nos interesa es la capacidad de los autores para reanalizar y reutilizar elementos de la lengua. para comprobar si todos los campos del saber recurren a los mismos procesos lingüísticos, hemos usado the equatorie of the planetis y astrolabe de chaucer y lo hemos comparado con un remedy book. palabras clave: morfología, derivación, inglés medio, registro científico, vernacularización. the patterns of derivational morphology found in middle english should, theoretically, coincide with the patterns found in an emerging functional variety of english from the same period. marchand (1969), matthews (1974), fernández (1982), burnley (1992), kastovsky (1992) and dalton-puffer (1996), begoña crespo & isabel moskowich 182 as well as a number of classical authors, have done extensive work on the behaviour of the english morphological subsystem at different stages of its evolution. a complementary analysis of the scientific register has only been broached in the last decade or so, however, sometimes receiving only a brief mention in more general works (barber 1993; beal 2004). meanwhile, derivational morphology, mainly affixation, has not yet been considered as a tool to measure the degree of vernacularisation of so-called “late middle english scientific texts”. previous work on morphology and semantics has focused on the analysis of nouns, arguing that they are the most frequent word-category with semantic content in late-medieval scientific writing, which in turn relates to the primary function of scientific texts to transmit ideas -concepts, objects, etc. (sager & al. 1980). in this paper, we intend to examine the behaviour of verbs in late middle english scientific texts from the point of view of derivation and the degree of vernacularisation observed in them. the particular aspect of vernacularisation that concerns us here is the ability of speakers/writers to reanalyse and re-use elements of the language. the paper is divided into four sections. the first contains some preliminary observations about morphological analysis, middle english and the emerging scientific register. in section 2 we present the corpus of data, and in section 3 our analysis. the paper concludes with some final remarks in section 4. 1.middle english morphology and the emerging scientific register the productive combination of native bases and affixes in oe comes close to disappearing in the following period. although a detailed account of middle english derivational morphology shows the survival of a few residual oe prefixes and suffixes, it also demonstrates the influence of french, latin and greek in bringing about one of the biggest changes in the morphological and medicine, astronomy, affixes & others 183 lexical stock of the vernacular. legal texts, documents, wills, charts, and the like, written in french and latin, introduced a new, more non-germanic formal aspect to the english lexicon. language contact, both through oral and written media, favoured the introduction of new vocabulary items (either simple or complex) that, once assimilated by the discourse community, were used in combination with more familiar native bases (unknowable). the reverse also occurred: foreign bases were combined with native affixes (moisten). as adams (2001: 11) has recently claimed: “no account of english word formation can ignore the mixed nature of the english vocabulary and the circumstances in which this situation came about”. adams’s words remind us of the importance of taking into account the external history of the language to achieve a better understanding of how word-formation processes developed. it is towards the end of the 14th century when the vernacular began to displace french and latin from their usual contexts of use, with new functional varieties of english or registers appearing. we, like voigts (1989) and taavitsainen (2000), therefore believe that the vernacularisation of the english scientific register dates to the last quarter of the 14th century. this is why we have selected samples from the turn of the century: to study the behaviour of word-formation (derivation) in a particular functional variety of english at its earliest manifestation, and measure the level of vernacularisation of these first texts using derivation. for a complete examination of any linguistic aspect of a register or special language (to use sager & alii’s terminology), we must consider what other elements should be taken into account apart from the intra-systemic analysis itself. here are some pragmatic considerations proposed by two different authors that may be useful: a) according to halliday’s (1988: 140-141) systemic functional grammar, diatypic variation can be examined in terms of field (discipline or subjectfield), tenor (intended audience) and mode (oral or written). he defines begoña crespo & isabel moskowich 184 register as “a cluster of associated features having greater-than-random […] tendency to co-occur”. b) biber (1995: 1) proposes a definition of register as “any variety associated with particular situational contexts or purposes”. the difference between these two authors lies in the fact that for halliday the scientific register is the result of a realignment of lexico-grammatical elements, whereas biber focuses on the use of technical vocabulary, among other (morpho-)syntactic constructions, as a register marker. we will analyse both the intra-systemic and extra-systemic factors in question in our survey of derivational morphology in early scientific writing. 2.methodological concerns: procedure and corpus material three samples from two different disciplines have been used in our survey: a remedy book containing a compilation of medical recipes for medicine, and chaucer’s a treatise on the astrolabe and the equatorie of the planetis for astronomy. to make the total number of words for each discipline more or less equal, both the remedy book (20,788 words) and the astrolabe have been taken in toto, but, for the equatorie, only the sample included in the helsinki corpus has been considered. this gives a total of 21,544 words for the astronomy texts. graph 1 below shows the total number of words (42,332) per sample and discipline. sager, dungworth and macdonald (1980) state that sublanguages or special languages (what we term registers) contain primarily nouns and, secondarily, verbs. although their findings refer to present-day english, it is interesting to observe that this is also the case for pre-modern times, at the very birth of the scientific functional variety. 3.analysis of data medicine, astronomy, affixes & others 185 three aspects will be considered in our analysis of data: 1.type/token ratio of the verbal forms recorded to assess the presence of verbs as opposed to nouns. 2.etymology of verbs, in general and in relation to each discipline. 3.derivational morphology as an indicator of vernacularisation. 3.1.type/token ratio the samples in our survey comprise 42,332 words: 5,126 of them represent verbal forms (12.10 %), in contrast with the number of nouns (21.85%) found in previous works where the same text samples have been used (moskowich & crespo 2006). these figures, referring only to the number of tokens found, are probably a reflection of the fact that scientific writing is less concerned with the description of actions and processes than of artefacts or concepts. our figures confirm the claim by sager & al. mentioned earlier, that the lexical category verbs comes second in the ranking of word–classes used in this type of writing. this claim is also in line with the figures we have found for each discipline: medicine contains 2,979 tokens, whereas astronomy contains 2,147. the type of texts selected for the present study helps us to explain this circumstance. in medicine, the compilation of recipes belongs to the remedy book tradition, representing the lower layer of text-types alluded to by taavitsainen (2004). it is a practical guide in which the processes of selection of ingredients are described and directions for the preparation of different formulae (actions) are given to an audience with no academic training. by contrast, the two extracts of astronomy texts are more descriptive of ideas and objects and are addressed to a more educated audience1. the type/token analysis has revealed that there are 421 types and 5,126 tokens in our survey. to illustrate the most numerous types, we have listed 1 we believe that chaucer’s address to his son lewis is just a literary device to catch the readers’ attention. begoña crespo & isabel moskowich 186 those with more than fifty tokens. table 1 shows that all these types are of germanic (g, henceforth) provenance. at the other end of the scale we find instances of non-germanic (ng, henceforth) types with one single token: amenusen, amounten, aperceyven, causen, moisten, rollen, condescenden, costen, counsellen, desturben, dicen, enhauncen, erren, expansen, destroyen, intercepten, obseruen, sustenen, among others. within ng forms we can distinguish both derivative and nonderivative types, although derivation is more abundant. this is not the case with germanic types, where all of them are simple. g forms, however, are more amenable to combination with other parts of speech to create multiword verbs than ng forms. this is the case with taken (taken up, out, doun, awei, of, ouertaken), setten (down, ouer, upon) and lien (on, up, upon, doun, ouer). as burnley (1992: 445) has put it: this emphasis upon the particled verb as the focus of derivation is symptomatic of the change which took place during the fifteenth century by which the formation of verbs became concentrated on the production of particled verbs, and compound verbs ceased to be productive as a type of word formation. the reason for this may be that these verbs belong to the core vocabulary of the language. they are so internalised by the speaker that she/he is capable of reanalysing and combining them with different linguistic units to create new meanings and thus enrich the lexicon of the vernacular using native resources. we may therefore regard the addition of particles to verbal bases as a productive device of word-formation. 3.2 etymological analysis the etymological analysis of verbs will help us illustrate a number of pragmatic observations mentioned earlier. although we have consulted the middle english dictionary, the etymological classification of verbs has been medicine, astronomy, affixes & others 187 simplified by adopting a broad-based division of all occurrences into those of germanic (g) and non-germanic (ng) origin. there are, obviously, cases of unknown provenance (unk), and these have been recorded as well. a combination of origins has been proposed for derivative cases where a base and an affix are mixed. the origins of both elements may coincide (g+g; ng+ng) or not (ng+g; g+ng). switches into latin have been also included in our database as cs (code-switching). table 2 below exhibits the general figures calculated according to these parameters. our 5,126 verbal forms are distributed in such a way that germanic origin corresponds to 82.73% of all forms (4,241 tokens, either g only or g+g) and non-germanic origin to 16.32% (837 tokens, both ng or ng+ng). this testifies to the advance of vernacularisation in early english scientific writing, at least in relation to the levels of technicality observed in our texts. however, we should also point out that, with respect to the number of types of g and ng provenance, the proportion of ng types is higher. this shows that recourse to foreign terms ultimately proved necessary: lexical gaps in the transmission of scientific concepts had to be filled, but the terms used for the purpose were not yet sufficiently assimilated by the discourse community of the recipient language to be able to reanalyse them and use their components. the creation of new words out of non-native word stock is a common procedure in present-day english scientific language, but this was not the case in medieval times when borrowing was the preferred method (halliday 1978). derivative occurrences are more common in forms of a ng extraction, where they often take the form of cultural borrowings2. the unbalanced distribution of etymological origins can be appreciated more clearly in the two disciplines of our study when viewed separately. 2 according to scotton’s (1993) classification, cultural borrowings represent items introduced into the recipient language to designate new concepts, objects or processes. begoña crespo & isabel moskowich 188 tables 3 and 4 below display the number of tokens recorded in each case. we observe a predominance of g forms in both medicine and astronomy samples, though the difference between g and ng instances is smaller in astronomy texts. once again, this may be explained by the fact that the samples in our corpus are targeted at different kinds of addressee. an additional factor in this etymological imbalance is the underlying tradition in the remedy book, the compilation of medical recipes, which is missing in astronomy. the latter can be regarded as a newcomer in the vernacular. 3.3 word-formation affixation is the only word-formation process we have considered in this analysis. this means that all examples have been classified into simple forms (ø process), s (for suffixation), p (for prefixation), and s+p, ss or pp for forms combining both types of affixes, or “multiple affixation” in carstairsmccarthy’s terms (2002). finally, “other”, encompasses both compounding and multiword verbs. as halliday (1978: 195) states “creating new words out of native word stock […] has not played a very great part in the creation of technical registers in english”. in fact, a general examination of word-formation processes in our samples produced the results shown on table 5. the difference between simple and non-simple forms (91.74% vs 8.12%) is immense. at the level of non-simple forms the difference between derivatives (4.4%) and “other” (3.82%) is much less significant. notwithstanding, a slightly different picture (see graph 2) emerges from our discipline-based counts. to begin with, a lower percentage of simple forms has been found in astronomy along with a greater tendency to use derivative forms, although these “derivative” forms were taken in by language users as whole units, not yet identified as separable entities. the higher percentage of “other” in the medical sample can be explained principally, though not exclusively, on the medicine, astronomy, affixes & others 189 grounds of the scandinavian influence on middle english. all combinations of lexical verb + grammatical word (either preposition or adverb) of the type described in section 3.2 can be included here. we now proceed to combine both variables, origin + word-formation process, in each discipline, in the hope of obtaining a new perspective on the vernacularisation of early scientific writings (tables 6 and 7 below). data from the equatorie and the astrolabe manifest a clear tendency to employ simple occurrences of g origin (1,574), in sharp contrast to the 271 instances from ng strata. all switches occur in the astrolabe and correspond to the latin type nota, a carry-over from the underlying classical tradition of the instructional book3. the 205 derivative tokens are divided into those which combine germanic elements (g+g=80) and those which contain ng bases and affixes (ng+ng=125). the interaction of native and non-native elements is observed in “other” in the 7 instances of ng+g corresponding to 7 different types: ben descriued vp, ben deuided owt, tornen abowte, passen thorow, turnen vp, kowchen adown and passen owt. a special case of multiple affixation or derivation was found in just one form: condescenden. the technicality of the samples is not high enough to endow the texts with a higher degree of lexical complexity. as for the remedy book, because it exhibits fewer cases of affixation (21), it contains more simple verbal types of both g (2,405) and ng (406) origin, as well as a greater number of tokens grouped under the heading “other” (139), than the astronomy samples (see table 7). affixation is illustrated by the combination of bases of the same origin: g+g (ouerhelen, ouerkarven), ng+ng (refresschen, restoren); or different origins, as in ouerclose (g+ng). the application of vernacular word-formation patterns to foreign words is observed in ouerclose, but also in the 13 instances accounted for by the juxtaposition of ng+g forms: pouren into, pouren out, 3 the latin form coexists in our corpus with the same anglicised imperative note. begoña crespo & isabel moskowich 190 etc. verb compounds (ouerhelen, ouerclose, withdrawen, ouertaken) coexist with phrasal verbs (helen ouer, drawen out, drawen doun, turnen up, turnen about, taken awei, taken doun, etc.), a method inherited from old english times. the fact that phrasal verb formation was still operative in late middle english and in a particular register could be regarded as a symptom of the vernacularisation of science from a morphological point of view. on the whole, the scarcity of examples from g+ng or ng+g validates the perception of the language as being in a stage of change described by burnley (1992: 445-46) as follows: [ … ]after analysis of the word structure, there follows a period during which the word is stylistically differentiated from the rest of the lexis. it is synchronically recognisable by speakers of the language as foreign, and its affixes may be used to produce new formations with a restricted set of bases also perceived to be foreign. such affixes are productive only within a subset of the lexis. we propose to analyse the classification of derivational processes based on the classes of form involved4. these categories include: * class maintaining derivation produces lexemes that belong to the same class as the base from which they are derived, as in holden/biholden. prefixation is a type of form-maintaining derivation in english. * class-changing derivation produces forms that belong to a different class from that of the base from which they are derived. in english suffixation is a classchanging process, as in clarifie. of the 228 derivative tokens, only 5 contain a suffix. they correspond to the type clarifie that, as we can see, illustrates affixation of ng provenance by means of the suffix –fie (usually added to nouns or adjectives to form verbs). as in any other field or discipline written in the vernacular, each independent 4 some scholars disagree with this classification. lyons (1970), for example, believes that forms that have undergone class-maintaining derivation cannot be considered as belonging to exactly the same class because the derivative cannot, in turn, undergo the process of derivation by which it was formed. medicine, astronomy, affixes & others 191 suffix embodies the general patterns of the process in ng (mainly latin and french) and g (basically english) languages. –fie is attached to a bound base to form a verb. as harley (2006: 167) has noted: “none of the germanic suffixes alter the phonological shape of their stems like that”, meaning that latinate suffixes do. –fie suffixation is an example of class-changing derivation. as regards prefixes, we have already observed that the only combination of g+ng is found in medicine (ouerclose). all instances of a germanic base combined with a germanic prefix have been encountered in astronomy (85 in all), which would seem to contradict the general tendency in scientific discourse to use latinate forms. however, this may be due to the fact that they are all class-maintaining forms and, therefore, easily recognisable for the readership. there are 136 cases that illustrate the combination ng+ng; out of all of them, only 10 belong to the recipe compilation (including 4 instances of remeue and 2 of amenden). the ng+g combination does not occur anywhere in the samples of our corpus, further validating moskowich’s (1995) idea that scandinavian items were not perceived as foreign by english speakers in the middle ages. some of the prefixes in our data are used exclusively with verbal bases. this is the case of de-, (bauer 1983: 218) in distillen. others (vnderin vnderstonden, within withdrawen or forin forgeten) have undergone a process of lexicalisation, in some cases reinforcement (bauer, 1983: 56), already evident at the time our texts were produced. reis far more common with verbs (as in our examples refresschen, restoren, remeuen) than with nouns. finally, though a-, be-, and enare normally considered class-changing prefixes, our examples (assendith, beginne, beholde, behete, encressith) do not appear to confirm this tendency. in general, lexicon-increasing morphology demanded by socio-external conditions seems to correspond to the level of productivity of the vernacular. begoña crespo & isabel moskowich 192 further research may confirm that grammatical constraints affect the outcome of certain morphological processes (bauer 2004). 4. concluding remarks word-formation processes have been considered here as one of the possible indicators of the degree of vernacularisation in english scientific writing at its very birth as a new register within the language. the derivational processes undergone by other word-classes such as nouns, the most abundant category in the so-called scientific register, have demonstrated that such vernacularisation was well underway at the time. though less striking, results obtained with verbs also show that they too were adapting well in response to the need to transmit in the vernacular ideas and aspects of knowledge that had been always conveyed in latin. general word-formation patterns do not seem to vary for this specific use of english. however, in reference to tenor (type of readership) and field (discipline), we have observed some peculiarities. depending on the discipline examined, different etymological origins, combined in various ways, have been identified. likewise, the use of native or non-native morphological elements in each of the three extracts corresponds with the different levels of literacy and education among their respective readerships. the variables we have considered (etymology, discipline and wordformation process) have proved to be valuable tools in assessing the degree of vernacularisation of early scientific english. begoña crespo & isabel moskowich university of corunna references medicine, astronomy, affixes & others 193 adams, v. 2001: complex words in english. longman, pearson education limited, edinburgh. alonso almeida, f. forthcoming: a middle english medical remedy book from glasgow university library ms hunter 185. universitätsverlag c. winter, heidelberg. barber, ch. 1993: the english language. a historical introduction. cambridge university press, cambridge. bauer, l. 1983: english word-formation. cambridge university press, cambridge. bauer, l. 2004: the function of word-formation and the inflectionderivation distinction. in henk aertsen, mike hannay & rod lyall (eds.) words in their places. a festschrift for j. lachlan mackenzie. vrije universiteit, amsterdam. 283-292. beal, j. c. 2004: english in modern times. arnold, london. biber, d. 1995: dimensions of register variation. a cross-linguistic comparison. cambridge university press, cambridge. burnley, d. 1992: lexis and semantics. in norman blake ed. the cambridge history of the english language. vol. ii. cambridge university press, cambridge. 409-499. carstairs-mccarthy, a. 2002: an introduction to english morphology. edinburgh university press, edinburgh. dalton-puffer, ch. 1996: the french influence on middle english morphology: a corpus-based study. mouton de gruyter, berlin/new york. fernández, f. 1982: historia de la lengua inglesa. gredos, madrid. halliday, m.a.k. 1978: language as social semiotic: the social interpretation of language and meaning. edward arnold, ltd., london. begoña crespo & isabel moskowich 194 halliday, m.a.k. 1988: on the language of physical science. 2004. in webster, j. ed. 2004: the language of science. the collected works of m.a.k. halliday. continuum, london/new york 140-158. harley, h. 2006. english words. a linguistic introduction. blackwell, oxford. kastovsky, d. 1992: semantics and vocabulary. in hogg, r. (ed.), the cambridge history of the english language, vol. i, cambridge university press, cambridge. 290-408 kurath, h. & al. 1959-. middle english dictionary. http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/m/med/ lyons, j. 1970: new horizons in linguistics. penguin, harmondsworth. marchand, h. 1969: the categories and types of present-day english wordformation. beck, münchen. matthews, p. h. 1974: morphology. an introduction to the theory of wordstructure. cambridge university press, cambridge. middle english dictionary on-line: http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/m/med/ moskowich-spiegel fandiño, i. 1995: language contact and language change: the danes in england. revista alicantina de estudios ingleses. 8: 139-153. moskowich-spiegel fandiño, i. & b. crespo garcía 2006, forthcoming: lopwebbe and henne cresse: morphological aspects of the scientific register in late middle english. studia anglica posnaniensia 42. rissanen, matti & al. 1991. the helsinki corpus of english texts. diachronic part. helsinki university press, helsinki. (chaucer’s the equatorie of the planetis). sager, j. c., d. dungworth, d. & p. f. mcdonald 1980: english special languages. principles and practise in science and technology. oscar brandstetter verlag, wiesbaden. medicine, astronomy, affixes & others 195 scotton, c. m. 1993: duelling languages. oxford university press, oxford. skeat, w. w. ed. 1968: geoffrey chaucer’s a treatise on the astrolabe / addressed to his son lowys. edited from the earliest mss. published for the early english text society by the oxford university press, oxford. taavitsainen, i. 2000: science. the chaucer companion, ed. peter brown. blackwells, oxford. 378-396. taavitsainen, i. 2004: transferring classical discourse conventions into the vernacular. medical and scientific writing in late medieval english, eds. irma taavitsainen & päivi pahta eds. cambridge university press, cambridge. 37-72. voigts, linda e. 1989. scientific and medical books. book production and publishing in britain, 1375-1475, eds. jeremy griffiths & derek pearsall. cambridge university press, cambridge. 345-402. begoña crespo & isabel moskowich 196 graph 1. word counts and texts. 21,544 14,908 6,636 remedy book a strolabe equatorie graph 2. discipline-based affixation 2,819 21 139 0 1,884 205 27 1 0 50 100 150 200 250 1 2 medicine astronomy simple derivative other mder medicine, astronomy, affixes & others 197 table 1. types with more than fifty tokens type tokens ben 790 taken 553 maken 191 setten 190 don 189 lien 164 hauen 113 sayen 94 drinken 87 stampen 77 knouen 70 clepen 70 finden 59 geuen 53 schauen 51 table 2. the etymology of verbs origin tokens g 3,982 g+g 259 g+ng 1 ng 696 ng+ng 141 ng+g 20 cs 19 unk 8 total 5,126 begoña crespo & isabel moskowich 198 table 3. medicine table 4. astronomy origin tokens origin tokens g 2,407 g 575 g+g 129 g+g 130 g+ng 1 g+ng 0 ng 406 ng 290 ng+ng 15 ng+ng 126 ng+g 13 ng+g 7 cs 0 cs 19 unk 8 unk 0 total 2,979 total 2,147 table 5. word-formation processes forms % process tokens % simple 91.74 s 4,703 91.74 der 226 4.4 other 196 3.82 mder 1 0.01 nonsimple 8.12 total 5,126 medicine, astronomy, affixes & others 199 table 6. derivation in astronomy process origin tokens g 1574 g+g 0 g+ng 0 ng 271 ng+ng 0 ng+g 0 unk 0 s= 1,884 tokens cs 19 g 0 g+g 80 g+ng 0 ng 0 ng+ng 125 ng+g 0 unk 0 der= 205 tokens cs 0 g 0 g+g 50 g+ng 0 ng 0 ng+ng 0 ng+g 7 unk 0 other= 57 tokens cs 0 mder ng+ng 1 begoña crespo & isabel moskowich 200 table 7. derivation in medicine process origin tokens g 2,405 g+g 0 g+ng 0 ng 406 ng+ng 0 ng+g 0 unk 8 s=2,819 cs 0 g 0 g+g 5 g+ng 1 ng 0 ng+ng 15 ng+g 0 unk 0 der=21 cs 0 g 2 g+g 124 g+ng 0 ng 0 ng+ng 0 ng+g 13 unk 0 other=139 cs 0 mder ng+ng 0 * † * selim08.doc fernando galván, selim 8 (1998): 35—76 malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck1 malory's work is, after chaucer's, the most popular literary work from the middle ages that has been present among generations of readers for more than five centuries. the theme i want to address in this paper is closely re lated to the nature of malory's work as a compiler, adapter, abridger, condenser, rearranger, or translator --whatever the reader prefers to call him. but i am not going to discuss malory's own efforts, success and failures in his task with the "frensshe bookes" and his debated "originality", something that has been done with great proficiency by many scholars since the nineteenth century.2 my aim here is much more modest and can be described as an attempt to situate malory's work in the context of its reception throughout the centuries, and particularly during the 20th century, when a new malory has emerged as a consequence of the editions of his work. because, as larry benson said more than thirty years ago now (benson, 1968: 81), malory's work is "a critical 'discovery' of the twentieth century", or as d. s. brewer also wrote in 1970, alluding to benson's statement (brewer, 1970: 83): "the work of the last twenty years is greater than that of the preceding half millenium". the nature of malory's work itself is controversial, as is well known; and as the reader may have noticed, i have been referring to malory's work in singular, in the general sense of an author's oeuvre, thus avoiding the men 1 this paper was written as a response to professor patricia shaw's invitation to participate in the 8th international conference of selim, that took place at the university of castellón in september 1995. it has remained unpublished, and now i wish to offer it here as a homage to her memory. i also wish to acknowledge the financial support received from the spanish ministry of education, that allowed me to do research for the writing of this paper at harvard university in 1993 and 1994 (project codes 93-179 and 94-197). 2 for a brief, but detailed, discussion of malory's use of his sources see life, 1980: 10-14; a greater emphasis on malory's originality is found in the collection of es says edited by d. thomas hanks, jr., 1990 (see specially hanks's essay "malory, the mort[e]s, and the confrontation in guinevere's chamber", pp. 78-90). f ernando galván 32 tion of the work proper: is it morte darthur, a single, although complex, work in the caxtonian version, or is it rather what vinaver has called simply "malory's works, a group of eight different and independent tales"? although no real consensus seems to have been achie ved in this 'unity' debate,1 i think most would agree today with vinaver's position rather than with the more traditional one represented by caxton's edition. we cannot forget, however, as c. s. lewis put it so accurately on the occasion of vinaver's version of the winchester manuscript (life, 1980: 135), that "the new works of malory is the restoration; but the cathedral, our old familiar caxton, is still there. we should all read the works; but it would be an impoverishment if we did not return to the morte". notice also, much more re cently, the defense made by james w. spisak of caxton's version in his own edition (spisak, 1983),2 as well as his brief comments on this issue in the introduction to his edition of studies in malory (spisak, 1985: 9-10). moreover, another feature of malory's work that i think is worthwhile emphasizing on this occasion is that this characteristic of the work itself has been essential in its transmission through the centuries. i mean that --perhaps more than many other works -malory's morte darthur (let's call it like that, even though it may be misleading) has been read and known by millions of readers in these five centuries in adapted forms and under so many guises that the work itself seems to have acquired a life of its own, as if it were something independent from the form that the author gave it. that is, morte darthur has been read, perhaps by a majority of readers, not in the compila tion, adaptation or translation that malory made of his "frensshe bookes", but through other compilations, adaptations and translations made by many other authors.3 what has happened in spanish may be an indication of what has normally been malory's fate also in english and other languages. notice, then, that the first faithful translation (the only one that we can really call a translation) is published in spanish in 1985: muerte de arturo , by francisco 1 see merriman, 1973, specially pp. 186-88 for a bibliography on this controversy; as well as life, 1980: 15-19. 2 notice, however, that a severe criticism of this edition has been written by toshiyuki takamiya, revealing many inaccuracies in spisak's text (takamiya, 1985). 3 notice that the first edition, by caxton, is indeed a compilation itself, responding to caxton's interests and aims as a publisher; see on this elizabeth kirk, 1985: 275295. malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 33 torres oliver, in a complete edition in three volumes published by ediciones siruela. but of course, malory's tales were known to many readers in spanish before, through at least two previous literary adaptations: one from 1914 by manuel vallvé, entitled los caballeros de la tabla redonda; leyendas relatadas a los niños, published in barcelona by araluce in an illustrated edition of 128 pages, which is a translation based on malory as well as on tennyson's idylls of the king; and a second one from 1963, due to pilar grimaldo tormos: los caballeros de la tabla redonda, published by teide also in barcelona, in a 78-page juvenile edition with illustrations. all this naturally without forgetting walt disney's adaptations (in film and book formats) of t. h. white's stories, or many other hollywood (and more re cently also european) film adaptations of the arthurian tales, some derived from malory as well as from his french sources. another source is one that i'll tackle later, john steinbeck's version, the acts of king arthur and his noble knights (1976), translated into spanish by carlos gardini in 1979 and reprinted on numerous occasions since then: in 1980, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1992, 1993, 1994, by different publishing houses: editorial sudamericana, edhasa, salvat and círculo de lectores. two distinguished malory scholars have contributed decisively in mapping this picture of a multifaceted work in a continuous process of change and adaptation: first page west life in her splendid 1980 book sir thomas malory and the morte darthur. a survey of scholarship and annotated bibliography, and second and more important in this aspect, ten years later, barry gaines in his 1990 astonishing and extraordinarily documented sir thomas malory. an anecdotal bibliography of editions, 1485-1985. most of what i have tried to do in these pages would not have been possible at all without these two works, which are certainly two basic milestones in malory scholarship. malory's work was popular very early. its publication by caxton in 1485 was soon followed by several editions; between 1485 and 1634 no less than five complete editions with woodcut illustrations were published: two by wynkyn de worde (1498 and 1529), one by william copland (1557), another by thomas east (c. 1578) and finally another one by william stansby (1634) (for a detailed study of malory's editions, see gaines, 1969, 1974, 1984, as well f ernando galván 34 as gaines, 1990: 3-46). evidence of the popularity of the book is also provided by references to it during this period, some harshly critical from a moral perspective, such as roger ascham's comments in the scholemaster (1570), and others favourable to it, as sir philip sidney's praise in his defence of poesie.1 during the second half of the seventeenth century and the eighteenth century malory was not reedited, although he was not completely forgotten by educated people. the proof is that thomas warton, for instance, and others mention his work (see gaines, 1990: 13). the book was published again in the early nineteenth century; in 1816 two different editions were produced, both based on the stansby edition (1634). one was edited by alexander chalmers and published by walker and edwards in 2 volumes; although this edition was basically a reproduction of stansby's text, it was very popular, and no less than 5000 books were produced (2500 2-volume sets); among its readers we can mention, for example, wordsworth, keats, and tennyson. the second edition was better edited in three volumes by joseph haslewood, who took care in correcting some errors in stansby's edition and in avoiding what he considered immoral passages; but it was not successful, since chalmers's edition was generally preferred. of course many other editions and reprints followed, most of them in slightly modernized spelling: thus by robert southey (1817, although the edition proper was the work of william upcott, since southey was only responsible for the intro duction and notes); by thomas wright (1858, rpt. in 1866, 1889, 1893 and 1897); by edward strachey (1868, rpt. with revisions in 1868, 1869, 1891, and later; this edition was extensively corrected by strachey, who eliminated 1 cf. roger ascham's words in the scholemaster: "in our forefathers tyme, whan papistrie, as a standyng poole, couered and ouerflowed all england, fewe bookes were read in our tong, sauying certaine bookes of cheualrie, as they sayd, for pas time and pleasure, which, as some say, were made in monasteries, by idle monkes, or wanton chanons: as one for example, morte arthure: the whole pleasure of which booke standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open mans slaughter, and bold bawdrye: in which booke those be counted the noblest knights, that do kill most men without any quarell, and commit fowlest aduoulteries by sutlest shifts: as sir launcelote, with the wife of king arthure his master: syr tristram with the wife of king marke his vncle: syr lamerocke with the wife of king lote, that was his own aunte. this is good stuffe, for wise men to laughe at, or honest men to take pleasure at. yet i know, when gods bible was banished the court, and morte arthure receiued into the princes chamber. what toyes, the dayly readyng of such a booke, may worke in the will of a yong ientleman, or a yong mayde, that liueth welthelie and idlelie, wise men can iudge, and honest men do pitie"; as well as sir philip sidney's in defence of poesie: "i dare undertake, orlando furioso, or honest king arthure, will never displease a souldier" (quoted in gaines, 1990: xi). malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 35 some immoral words, phrases and even passages, in order to make the book available to all readers, children included, and was by far the most popular complete edition of malory's work in the 19th century); by h. os kar sommer (1889-1891); by ernest rhys (about 1892); by f. j. simmons (1893-94, rpt. in 1909 and 1927 with additions); and by israel gollancz (1897). on the other hand, the twentieth century has been, as i said earlier, the time for the "discovery" of malory's work, with a new (modern ized) edition by alfred w. pollard (1900, with many reprints since then); a reprint of the 1893 edition by f. j. simmons, published in 1906 by dent (known as the everyman edition), as well as many other reprints of 19th-century editions by rhys, by southey, or even earlier, as a. s. mott's edition in 1933 of wynkyn de worde's folio of 1498. but the best editions in this century are naturally those by eugène vinaver based on the winchester manuscript: 1947, 1948 (1st ed.), 1954 and 1967 (2nd ed.), which has been considered by most scholars the standard definitive edition, and has been reprinted several times later: 1971, 1973,1 until recently, when p. j. c. field produced a revised edition (1990), the 3rd edition of vinaver's version. however, we cannot forget other editions based on caxton's version, which have also been well published and distributed, such as those by janet cowen (1969) for penguin books; r. m. lumiansky (1982) for charles scribner's sons, which also uses the winchester manuscript and vin aver's edition; and james w. spisak (1983). i have mentioned so far only the complete editions, but although these give a good idea of the popularity of malory's work in the 16th, 17th, 19th and 20th centuries, they constitute but a partial proof of this popularity. that a work of the extension of morte darthur was edited and reprinted so many 1 notice that each of these two editions was printed in two different versions, one in 3 volumes, with extensive commentaries by the editor, and another in a single volume, with the complete text but very few commentaries and explanations. the first edition consists of: the works of sir thomas malory, in 1947, by the clarendon press of oxford (3 vols., cxv + 1742 pp. ), which was reprinted with corrections in 1948, and malory: works, in 1954, by oxford university press (xviii + 919 pp. ). the second edition is: malory: works, in 1967, by the clarendon press of oxford (3 vols., rpt. with corrections and additions in 1973), and malory: works, in 1971, by oxford university press (xv + 811 pp. ). f ernando galván 36 times in its entirety says a lot, i think, of the value it has had for many generations of readers; but another aspect of malory's reception during this period is the huge amount of abridgments, selections and adaptations, which have been probably much more effective in popularizing malory's tales. a substantial contribution to this popularity is certainly due to versions and adaptations for children. as barry gaines has commented (gaines, 1990: xi), t. s. eliot, for instance, referred to a juvenile version of malory which "was in my hands when i was a child of eleven or twelve. it was then, and perhaps has always been, my favorite book". john steinbeck also explained his attraction towards this book; he tells that shakespeare and pilgrim's progress came to him at the time he was a very little boy through his uncles and his mother's milk, but that his first experience as a reader was through malory, a malory in old spelling but a simplified malory nevertheless. these are his words (steinbeck, 1976: xi): […] one day, an aunt gave me a book […] i stared at the black print with hatred, and then, gradually, the pages opened and let me in. the magic happened. the bible and shakespeare and pilgrim's progress belonged to everyone. but this was mine --it was a cut version of the caxton morte d'arthur of thomas malory. i loved the old spelling of the words --and the words no longer used. perhaps a passionate love for the english language opened to me from this one book. i was delighted to find out paradoxes --that cleave means both to stick together and to cut apart; that host means both an enemy and a welcoming friend; that king and gens (people) stem from the same root. for a long time, i had a secret language --yclept and hyght, wist-and accord meaning peace, and entente meaning purpose, and fyaunce meaning promise. […] many other testimonies could be added to this, but i don't think it's neces sary. steinbeck's fascination for malory, which later in his life was to exert a great influence on his own work, is just another example of the vigour of malory's presence in contemporary life and literature. but what is relevant and i wish to emphasize now is that this influence, the heritage represented by morte darthur, is very often indirect because --as in t. s. eliot or steinbeck-the first (and for many, only) contact that most readers have had with malory's work is not any of the complete editions of his tales, but some other version, simplified, abridged, modernized, etc. malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 37 despite the general availability of complete editions in each generation, many readers have had access to malory through a version or adaptation of the original text, designed basically to shorten its length. the information gathered by gaines about abridgments and selections, as well as adaptations, is impressive. i don't have naturally the space here to discuss all this in detail, but let me give at least a general account of it, so that i can pass then to analyse one particular case more attentively. the distinction between abridgments or selections on the one hand, and adaptations on the other is not easy to make, and occasionally different authors classify particular texts in diverse categories. thus page west life, for instance, gives as the first abridgment the famous 19th century edition by james t. knowles (1862), the story of king arthur and his knights of the round table, while barry gaines includes this title in "adaptations". i will follow here gaines's classification, which seems to me more reasonable and transparent, as he is much more informative in his descriptions of each item than life. gaines presents fifty different abridgments, selections or editions of sin gle tales, although this number refers to completely different editions, not to reprints or slightly different versions of the same edition, which are many more and are also registered by gaines in detail. both abridgments and adaptations start by the middle of the 19th century, as a way of familiarizing ordinary readership (and specially --although not exclusively-children) with malory's work. many of them were originated by the popularity obtained by tennyson's idylls of the king (1859 --1st set: "enid", "vivien", "elaine" and "guinevere"-and 1872 --virtually the complete edition, with the exception of "balin and balan", published in 1885--). the first abridgment registered by gaines is by edward conybeare (1868), entitled la morte d'arthur: the history of king arthur. the editor explained (see gaines, 1990: 47) that the length and confusion in the structure of the original text constituted at that time "insuperable obstacles to popularity", and consequently his purpose was to abbreviate and rearrange the original text to make it more attractive to contemporary readers. this meant that "coarse passages" were cut out and that the whole structure was changed, in a new division in books and chapters, although no new material was intro f ernando galván 38 duced. this procedure was the one generally followed in the best abridgments of the 19th century, such as sidney lanier's the boy's king arthur (1880), henry frith's king arthur and his knights of the round table (1884), ernest rhys's malory's history of king arthur and the quest of the holy grail (1886), and charles morris's king arthur and the knights of the round table (1891).1 lanier's edition (1880) was specifically addressed to children, as is shown by the title. thus, some parts of the narrative were cut out, in order to avoid (quoted by gaines, 1990: 49) "monotonous repetitions of adventure and of combat", as well as those parts concerned with the love relationship between lancelot and guenever, and tristram and isolde, while the fact that galahad was lancelot's son by elaine, and mordred art hur's son by his sister was obscured. this edition was a big success, to the extent that by 1 may 1899 (almost twenty years later) sixteen reprints had been made, which amounted to 12,900 copies; and only five years later, by september 1904, this figure was 20,700. but of course its success cannot be measured by numbers alone, although these tell much about the popularity of lanier's edition; it is also important to notice, for instance, that it was through this edition that mark twain was first acquainted with the arthurian theme, which he was going to develop later in his well known book a connecticut yankee in king arthur's court.2 on top of that, let me add that it was lanier's edition the one which was translated into greek (1956) and hebrew (1966), so that the first versions of malory's work in these languages came through this abridgment (for details on these translations, see gaines, 1990: 130-131). frith's abridgment (1884) follows a similar line, cutting out aspects that did not seem convenient fo r children; as the author states in the introduction to his edition (quoted by gaines, 1990: 53): "writing for boys, we have pre served all the vigour and valour of the action, and as much of the original as our limits permitted, with a due regard to good taste and their improvement". 1 see lanier (1880) (more versions of this edition, with different illustrations, followed: 1917, 1950, 1960…); henry frit h (1884) (more versions, with other illustrations, followed this edition: 1912, 1928, 1932, 1955); ernest rhys (1886); and charles morris (1891) (other versions followed: 1896, 1908). 2 on this work and its significance in twain's oeuvre, see h. bruce franklin (1992), jane gardiner (1992); lyall powers (1985); gary scharnhorst (1989); and mary lyndon shanley & peter g. stillman (1982). malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 39 rhys's edition (1886), however, was not addressed specifically to an in fantile audience, so that the abridgment responded to other purposes, mainly to make the story more clearly available and its reading more pleasant to 19t h century readers, who otherwise might feel confused and dissuaded by an archaic language. thus seven of caxton's twenty-one books were cut out, and the spelling was revised in order to facilitate the comprehension of old vocabulary and phrases. finally, morris's edition (1891) was also a modernized version, published initially in three volumes and later in one and two -volume format (1896 and 1908 respectively). it was this edition the one that t. s. eliot read as a child, as can be ascertained from the copy with his signature that is kept in harvard's houghton library. the treatment followed is summarized by morris himself with these words (quoted by gaines, 1990: 55): in attempting to adapt this old masterpiece to the readers of our own day, we have no purpose to seek to paraphrase or improve on malory. to remove the antique flavor would be to destroy the spirit of the work. we shall leave it as we find it, other than to re duce its obsolete phraseology and crudities of style to modern english, abridge the narrative where it is wearisomely extended, omit repetitions and uninteresting incidents, reduce its confusion of arrangement, attempt a more artistic division into books and chapters, and by other arts of editorial revision seek to make easier re ading, while preserving as fully as possible those unique characteristics which have long made it delightful to lovers of old litera ture. as a partial conclusion, then, we can state that most nineteenth-century abridged editions responded to these motives: 1) cuts in particular episodes which were considered morally inappropriate for children, to whom many of these editions were addressed; 2) modernization of spelling and language in order to make the text more easily available to modern audiences; 3) rearrangement of books and chapters, so that the development of malory's narra tive were clearer; and 4) frequent use of illustrations, with the same aims. some of these features are also shared by twentieth-century editions, particularly by those conceived as school texts for secondary schools. these versions were occasionally enriched with questions for classroom use, and f ernando galván 40 were also very often illustrated. examples of these are many, but let me quote some of the most successful: one is selections from malory edited by agnes m. mackenzie (1915), with introduction notes and glossary. another one is dorothy m. macardle's selections from le morte d'arthur of sir thomas malory (1917); although this edition follows the original diction, it rearranges passages and chapters, and adds questions and exercises, as well as a glossary and notes, since the aim was (quoted by gaines, 1990: 62) "to give a consecutive and dramatic story in a small compass; to indicate, by means of notes, the imagined environment, and to suggest (by questions) how the story may be made the theme of a term's work in oral and written composition, recitation, play-making and acting". not specifically designed to teach, but also addressed to young audiences, was uriel waldo cutler's stories of king arthur and his knights (1904), which was very popular and has been reprinted many times,1 to the extent, for example, that the first polish version of malory's work (1937) was a translation from cutler's abridgment (details in gaines, 1990: 133; it is based on the 1933 edition published by harrap). cutler explained in his introduction (quoted by gaines, 1990: 59) that he had tried to choose "such stories as best represent the whole [and had modified] these only in order to remove what could possib ly hide the thought, or be so crude in taste and morals as to seem unworthy of the re ally high-minded author of five hundred years ago", and added furthermore: "it aims also so to condense the book that, in this age of hurry, readers may not be repelled from the tales merely because of their length". this kind of rewriting of malory for young readers was also carried out by henry burrowes lathrop in his abridgment malory's king arthur and his knights (1911), where (quoted by gaines, 1990: 60) "the morally barbaric or otherwise unsuitable parts have been omitted". other abridged editions which have been very popular throughout the century, are alfred w. pollard's version the romance of king arthur and his knights of the round table (1917), with famous illustrations by arthur rackham, and philip allan's the noble tale of the sangreal (1920), which is a faithful version of caxton's books 13 to 17 in modern spelling, punctuation and paragraphing. a curious selection of the end of the 1920s is women of the morte darthur by ann d. alexander (1927), which comprised twelve love 1 reprints in 1905 and 1914 by george g. harrap (london), and also by harrap but in different format in 1911 (tales from malory) and 1933 (king arthur and his knights), as well as by thomas y. crowell in 1924 and 1941. malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 41 stories from malory's work, which present (quoted by gaines, 1990: 64) "many types of femininity […], from the light woman to the saint, but the good predominate; for the morte d'arthur folks are true children of the age of faith, and with very few exceptions, struggle heroically to follow in the footsteps of the knight of bethlehem". another kind of abridgment or selection of malory's text, which is a privative feature of 20th century editions, is that oriented to university education, or to a general adult reader, most of them produced after world war ii. these were mainly selections of one or several tales, which normally pre served the totality of each tale, without any kind of emendation except occasional mo dernization of spelling. good illustrations of this type of edition are several by brian kennedy cooke: king arthur of britain (1946), sir lancelot (1951), the holy grail (1953), and the quest of the beast (1957). he was not really editing complete tales, but selections from several parts of malory's work concerned with the topic of each of his versions; his aim was to fight against the vision of malory given by 19th-century eds. for child ren, which he strongly deplored with these words (quoted by gaines, 1990: 67): a lamentable fashion arose towards the end of the last century of producing insipid special versions for children, illustrated with two-dimensional dummies in pasteboard armour, which kindly but undiscern ing aunts and uncles could pick up without effort on the christmas bookstalls. these things came between the late victorian or edwardian child and malory. and so the great work, which has some claim to be regarded as the earliest novel in our language, has fallen into some neglect. but surely better examples of this kind of selected editions are those by well known philologists, such as eugène vinaver or d. s. brewer. vinaver not only produced the best complete edition we have today of the winchester manuscript; he also edited several independent tales, such as the tale of the death of king arthur (1955), following his 1947 3-volume edition, and king arthur and his knights (1956), which was initially constituted by a selection of modernized fragments and later, in 1968, was reprinted with revisions and the addition of the complete last tale. r. t. davies also pubf ernando galván 42 lished a selected edition, in a modernized version: king arthur and his knights (1967), which follows vinaver's first edition (1947). other scholarly editions, addressed to a university audience, are those by d. s. brewer (1968) and p. j. c. field (1977). brewer edited in 1968 the last two books in a modernized version, with the title the morte darthur. parts seven and eight, which was --as gaines has shown -a reprint of the corresponding parts in vinaver's first edition. p. j. c. field edited the same tales: le morte darthur: the seventh and eighth tales (1977), although field preserved the original spelling, without any modernization. both editions are characteristically thought for university study, with additional material such as introductions, notes, commentaries and glossaries (brewer's is published as a volume of the collection of york medieval texts, edited by elizabeth salter and derek pearsall, and field's was printed in "the london medieval and renaissance series", under the general editorship of a. v. c. schmidt). i have been alluding so far to abridgments or selections. but a substantial amount of other versions of malory's work have b een in print since the early 19th century, versions that should be called "adaptations", since the editors have not merely rearranged, cut, and modernized spelling, punctuation and paragraphing, as in these selections i have been discussing. in the adaptations, their authors have introduced new material, have re -written malory, have combined caxton's text or the winchester manuscript with other texts, etc. the number of adaptations gathered by gaines in his bibliography is impressive, especially if we consider that he has made a selection, disregard ing many texts, such as all poetic adaptations and screen plays. he has left out of his selection well known books which in one way or another have nurtured on malory, works that have been extremely influential in spreading the popularity of the arthurian tales, such as tennyson's idylls, twain's a connecticut yankee in king arthur's court or t. h. white's the sword in the stone, the once and future king, etc.1 these, and others, are not 1 for details on the extensive bibliography produced on tennyson's adaptation, see specially roger simpson (1990), particularly chapter 5: "tennyson and the arthurian revival", pp. 190-254; and also the editions by christopher ricks (1969), and by john pfordresher (1973) (see the "introduction", pp. 1-64, for a detailed study of the genesis and development of the idylls). on t. h. white's adaptations the bibliography is also large; cf. c. m. adderley (1992); martin kellman (1991); adrienne kertzer (1985); alan macdonald (1993); marilyn k. malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 43 included because gaines considers they have gone far beyond malory, and that they are not truly adaptations of morte darthur but rather "recreations" of the arthurian cycle, malory not being its fundamental source. well, even after all these exceptions, the number of adaptations collected by gaines is 100; but again this figure does not reflect the whole number of editions and reprints, since some of these works were frequently reprinted and republished in slightly different form, under different titles some times, with other illustrations, occasionally even with some changes in the text, etc. the great majority of these adaptations are again mainly addressed to young audiences, although a few are also thought for adult readers. that is the case, for instance, of the first adaptation collected by gaines in the nineteenth century, which was a classic in the period, surely influenced by the popularity of tennyson's idylls: james thomas knowles's the story of king arthur and his knights of the round table (1862), which was reedited, with many changes and diverse illustrations, throughout the nineteenth century and even during the first half of the twentieth. knowles used caxton's text and simplified it, occasionally adding material from monmouth and other sources; he modernized the style and naturally, as we have seen with the other victorian versions (quoted by gaines, 1990: 78), "suppressed and modified where changed manners and morals have made it absolutely neces sary to do so for the preservation of a lofty original ideal". but most adaptations are indeed addressed to children, are accompanied by illustrations and experience frequent reprintings and further adaptations. some were so popular and so successful as william thomas stead's version king arthur and the knights of the round table (1899), in the famous series "books for the bairns", which in a later arrangement by robert s. wood (n. d.) was the basis for the first translation of malory's work into french (mlle. latappy, 1910). other adaptations were specially designed for boys and girls in the primary school, being written by influential education authorities in the nellis (1983); florence field sandler (1992); evelyn schroth (1983); evans lansing smith (1991); william e. tanner (1993); and sylvia townsend warner & trevor stubley (1988). see also some doctoral dissertations on this topic: susan elizabeth chapman (1990); angela lindley (1990); meredith jane ross (1986); and jimmie elaine thomas (1983). f ernando galván 44 early 20th century: thus dr. edward brooks's version the story of king arthur and the knights of the table round (1900), brooks being the superintendent of schools of philadelphia; or james baldwin's stories of the king (1910), since this james baldwin was superintendent of indiana primary schools and editor of school books at the american book company. also very popular as reading for children were mary macleod's version the book of king arthur and his noble knights (1900), reprinted extensively both in britain and the united states until the mid -sixties;1 or andrew lang's the book of romance (1902), which has been republished in different formats and titles: tales of the round table, tales of king arthur and the round table, etc. (see andrew lang, 1903, 1905, 1967 and 1968); or the version written and illustrated by howard pyle: the story of king arthur and his knights, originally published in installments in the children's magazine st. nicholas (november 1902-october 1903), and later reprinted in a variety of titles and formats, the latest collected by gaines being published in 1984.2 this version by pyle has been extraordinarily popular, and even mark twain -who was obviously familiarized with the arthurian tales -wrote this about these stories: "they were never so finely told in prose before. and then the pictures --one can never tire of examining them and studying them. long ago you made the best robin hood that was ever written and your morte d'arthur is going to be another masterpiece. it was a great idea. i am glad that it was born to you".3 the success of the first editions of this title was so great, that pyle added other volumes later: the story of the champions of the round table (1905), the story of sir launcelot and his companions (1907), and the story of the grail and the passing of arthur (1910) (all these titles 1 details about its numerous reprints and further adaptations and abridgments (sometimes under different titles) are provided by gaines, 1990: 84-87. 2 the story of king arthur and his knights, written and illustrated by howard pyle, st. nicholas, 30 (november 1902-october 1903), new york, scribners. reprints as a book are numerous: 1903 (by charles scribner's sons in new york and by george newnes in london, of which three facsimile editions have appeared in new york: one in 1965 by dover, another in 1978 by marathon, and the third in 1984 by scribner's); also in the howard pyle brandywine edition 1853-1933, which is a facsimile reprint with a frontispiece in color and a note by w.j. aylward, a former pyle pupil, with pen decorations by robert ball, new york: charles scribner's sons, 1933. more recent reprints, under diverse titles and with different illustrations, are pyle (1965, 1969 and 1979). 3 quoted in howard pyle: diversity in depth, wilmington, delaware art museum, 1973, p. 8, cited by gaines, 1990: 94. malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 45 have been reprinted on numerous occasions later, some of them very re cently: there are facsimile reprints published by scribner's sons in 1984 and 1985). his intentions were very clear: i wish to represent in my book all that is noble and high and great, and to omit, if it is possible, all that is cruel and mean and treacherous. unfortunately the stories of chivalry seem to be very full not only of meanness and of treachery, but of murder and many other and nameless wickednesses, that discolor the very noblest of the characters --such, even, as the character of king arthur himself … so i try to represent those which are known in the best possible light (quoted in charles d. abbott, 1925: 128, cited by gaines, 1990: 93-94). other adapters for children worthwhile mentioning are mary macgregor, whose version stories of king arthur's knights (1905) has been for a very long time one of the most popular among very young children; or henry gilbert's king arthur's knights (1911) published extensively in different series by nelson;1 or blanche winder's stories of king arthur (1925), reprinted until the late sixties (other editions following that of 1925, both in great britain and the united states, were produced in 1935, 1937, 1968, etc.); or finally two versions by the most famous children's writer, enid blyton: one entitled the knights of the round table, initially addressed to older children in 1930 and reissued again in 1950,2 and a second one called king arthur and his knights (1939) which is a much more simplified version for very young children (only 64 pages). the adaptations are so many and so diverse that i cannot refer to all of them; there are several editions in simplified versions for foreign learners (in longman and macmillan), for blind people in braille, and scripts for television 1 several reprints by nelson & sons, with some changes and slightly different titles: 1914, 1925, 1928, 1929, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1940, 1952. this book (or diverse versions of it) have been included in nelson's series such as "honour books", "nelson's classics", "classics series", "winchester classics series", "parkside classics series", "school classics series", and "favourite books". a facsimile reprint of the first edition was produced by bracken books in london in 1985. 2 this was reissued under the same title but with different illustrations: the knights of the round table, retold by enid blyton, illustrated by kathleen gell, london, latimer house, 1950, 96 pp. f ernando galván 46 series on the character of king arthur, etc.1 however, the most interesting adaptations from a literary point of view are perhaps those not specifically addressed to young audiences; among these, let me quote the following, which are relatively recent and have acquired a certain popularity: keith baines's sir thomas malory's le morte d'arthur, a modernized version, which was published with an introduction by robert graves (1962), john steinbeck's the acts of king arthur and his noble knights (1976), rosemary sutcliff's trilogy the lights beyond the forest: the quest for the holy grail (1979), the sword and the circle; king arthur and the knights of the round table (1980) and the road to camlann (1982), and marion zimmer bradley's the mists of avalon (1983). for obvious reasons, john steinbeck's adaptation has received some attention from critics and scholars specialized in steinbeck's production, although not much --as far as i know-from those working on malory.2 let me briefly examine what has been done on this. first, the work done by steinbeck and his aims. the american writer felt always fascinated with malory's work, from the time he was nine years old and received a copy of a simplified version of morte d'arthur,3 as i mentioned earlier. the interest in malory surely left a deep influence on his own work early in his career, as has been proved by scholars such as warren french, joseph fontenrose and arthur f. kinney, particularly with reference to tortilla flat (steinbeck himself pointed to the parallel with morte d'arthur in the preface he wrote for this novel), but not only in relation with 1 for details about these adaptations, cf. gaines, 1990: 111, 115, 116, 122 passim . 2 the main reviews and comments on steinbeck's work are the following ones, taken from life, 1980: 73: p. l. adams (1976a and 1976b); edmund fuller (1976); j. gardner (1976); g. a. masterton (1976 and 1977); m. s. cosgrave (1977); cynthia johnson (1977); derek mahon (1977); diana rowan (1977); t. a. shippey (1977); m. c. williams (1977); and john ditsky (1978). more recent essays are laura f. hodges (1992); andrew welsh (1991); and mary c. williams (1984). see also note 19 for a discussion on the influence exerted by malory on steinbeck's other works. 3 perhaps a copy of dr. edward brooks's the story of king arthur and the knights of the table round for boys and girls (1900); cf. steinbeck's words in a letter to mr. and mrs. david heyler, jr. (19 november 1956): "there has not been an edition of this since 1893, the dent edition of caxton, except for a cut version called the boy's king arthur in about 1900 which was the one i cut my teeth on. and there is no rendering of it into modern english" (in steinbeck & wallsten, 1975: 540). malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 47 tortilla flat, since this interest is also present in other works of fiction: cup of gold, in dubious battle and of mice and men.1 steinbeck's fascination with malory was so strong that he contemplated for many years a very ambitious plan: to rewrite morte d'arthur for the sake of those who found malory unpalatable to contemporary taste. i quote his own words, when he explained exactly what he intended: […] in our day, we are perhaps impatient with the old words and the stately rhythms of malory. my own first and continuing enchantment with these things is not generally shared. i wanted to set them down in plain present-day speech for my own young sons, and for other sons not so young --to set the stories down in meaning as they were written, leaving out nothing and adding nothing-perhaps to compete with the moving pictures, the comicstrip travesties which are the only available source for those children and others of today who are impatient with the difficulties of malory's spelling and use of archaic words. if i can do this and keep the wonder and the magic, i shall be pleased and gratified. in no sense do i wish to rewrite malory, or reduce him, or change him, or soften or sentimentalize him. i believe the stories are great enough to survive my tampering, which at best will make the history available to more readers, and at worst can't hurt malory very much (1976: xiii). according to this, then, steinbeck was pursuing none of the usual aims characteristic of the abridgments and adaptations i have briefly examined before, i. e., he did not want to rewrite properly, in the sense of reducing the original, or changing what he did not consider "appropriate", or softening or sentimentalizing the text, as many 19thand also 20th-century authors had done. his purpose was not moral, nor educational in the strict sense of the 1 cf. warren french (1961); joseph fontenrose (1963); arthur f. kinney (1965); as well as no. 5 of steinbeck monograph series, entitled steinbeck and the arthurian theme, edited by tetsumaro hayashi for the john steinbeck society of america (english department, ball state university, muncie, indiana, 1975). this volumen contains the following essays: warren french, "steinbeck's use of malory", pp. 411; arthur kinney, "tortilla flat re-visited", pp. 12-24; roy s. simmonds, "a note on steinbeck's unpublished arthurian stories", pp. 25-29, and "the unrealized dream: steinbeck's modern version of malory", pp. 30-43; as well as "a selected bibliography: steinbeck and the arthurian theme" by tetsumaro hayashi, pp. 44-46. f ernando galván 48 word. he simply wanted to put malory's language "in present-day speech". well, that is what he says he tried to do. what did he finally achieve? what is the result of many years of work on malory, because he was concerned -even if not working on it continuously -at least from 1956 (notice his letter to mr. and mrs. david heyler, jr. quoted earlier in note 18) to almost the end of his life in 1968? although he was worried and tried to work in this project during a period of about 12 years, steinbeck never finished it, and what he wrote was not published by him, but was only posthumously edited by his friend chase horton in 1976 under the title the acts of king arthur and his noble knights. moreover, it seems that the text which was published does not collect the totality of work completed by steinbeck on malory's version, since a steinbeck scholar, roy s. simmonds, studied for his 1975 paper "a note on steinbeck's unpublished arthurian stories" (1975a) the typescript of what steinbeck had called arthur, and the description he makes of it does not coincide with the final version edited by horton. steinbeck's book (from now onwards acts) comprises seven chapters; the titles are: "merlin", "the knight with the two swords", "the wedding of king arthur", "the death of merlin", "morgan le fay", "gawain, ewain, and marhalt", and "the noble tale of sir lancelot of the lake". the first six chapters, although the titles are not exactly the same, correspond to the six chapters into which vinaver divided the first tale in his edition of the works, that is, "the tale of king arthur"; and the seventh is naturally a rendering of the third tale in vinaver's edition, "a noble tale of sir launcelot du lake". however, roy s. simmonds mentions in his paper an eighth chapter, the longest of all, entitled "the tale of sir gareth of orkney", which would correspond logically to the following (fourth) tale in vinaver's edition. chase horton did not include this in his edition of acts and does not even mention it, despite the fact that simmonds had obviously examined it, and two copies of this typescript are preserved, one (the original) being held by mcintosh and otis, inc., and the other, a carbon copy, is found in the university of texas at austin, in the pascal covici-john steinbeck collection held by the humanities research center (see simmonds, 1975a: 25-26). it seems evident, then, that steinbeck was following vinaver's edition, and that he probably did not have the intention of working on the second romance, "the tale of the noble king arthur that was emperor himself through dignity of his malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 49 hands", according to vinaver because (quoted by simmonds, 1975a: 26) "the omission of the second romance is perfectly justifiable on the grounds that stylistically it is far too archaic to lend itself to the same treatment that steinbeck had given the other sections". what kind of work did steinbeck do, then? how could he do it, was he a scholar, could he read and understand the original text? these are questions that can be answered briefly before we pass to examine his achievements. i have already commented on his aims, quoting his own words from the introduction to the book. let me now quote him again, from a letter of 19 november 1956 to his literary agent elizabeth otis, where he explains clearly his method: i'm going to make a trial run --not removing all of the old forms, nor all the malory sentence structure, but substituting known simple words and reversing sentences which even now are puzzling. there are several things i will not do. i will not clean it up. pendragon did take the wife of cornwall, and that is the way it was. i think children not only understand these things but accept them until they are confused by moralities which try by silence to eliminate reality. these men had women and i'm going to keep them. on the other hand, i am going to keep the book and chapter heads and in these i shall keep the malory -caxton language intact. i think it is going to be fun to do. when i have some of it done, i shall with an opening essay tell of my own interest in the cycle, when it started and where it went -into scholarship and out again on the other side. in this essay i shall also try to put down what i think has been the impact of this book on our language, our attitudes, and morals, and our ethics. […] one other thing i do not want to do. there are many places in this book which are not clear, as poetry is not clear. they are not literal. i don't intend to make them clear or literal. i remember too well my own delight in conjecture (steinbeck, 1976: 297). about steinbeck's knowledge of middle english and his expertise in scholarship there is some controversy; some critics have pointed that he was f ernando galván 50 (frazier, 1969, cited by simmonds, 1975a: 27) "rather less-read than he claimed". but a scholar of the reputation of eugène vinaver no less, who met steinbeck on numerous occasions and was familiar with his project on malory, has written judgments like the following ones; referring to his scholarship he said: he was […] very modest about it, and anxious to learn as much as he could. he knew his malory very well indeed, and it was a fas cinating experience to talk to him about it. he could see in malory certain things that the so-called experts have consistently failed to see, for instance the stylistic discrepancies between the various parts of the work, indicative of its gradual growth.1 on steinbeck's version specifically, vinaver wrote: it is an admirable piece of prose --both steinbeckian and malorian- and would make a much more attractive book than any other adaptation i know of malory's romances … it would have been wonderful to have his version of the death of arthur story, which is the finest of them all.2 it seems that vinaver had seen some 100 pages of the total amount of about 500 that steinbeck completed before his death and his judgement was very favourable. in another letter to roy s. simmonds, vinaver added that the drafts he read were "by far the best thing of its kind written in english since the fifteenth century".3 steinbeck himself insisted several times that his work on malory was to be his greatest achievement and that he had been preparing for it almost all his life. in a letter to his boyhood friend john murphy dated 12 june 1961 he put it very clearly, foreseeing even the impossibility of the task: all my life has been aimed at one book and i haven't started it yet. the rest had all been practice. do you remember the arthurian 1 eugène vinaver, in a letter to roy s. simmonds, dated 25 july 1970, quoted in simmonds, 1975a: 27 2 eugène vinaver, in a letter to roy s. simmonds, dated 1 august 1972, quoted in simmonds, 1975a: 27. 3 eugène vinaver, in a letter to roy s. simmonds, dated 25 july 1970, quoted in simmonds, 1975b: 43. malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 51 legend well enough to raise in your mind the symbols of launcelot and his son galahad? you see, launcelot was imperfect and so he never got to see the holy grail. so it is with all of us. […] the setting down of words is only the final process. it is possible, through accident, that the words for my book may never be set down but i have been working and studying toward it for over forty years. only the last of the process waits to be done --and it scares the hell out of me (steinbeck & wallsten, 1975: 859). in short, then, steinbeck's work was not an improvisation. he was fully conscious of what he was doing, of the difficulties involved, and tried to pre pare himself for the task. his interest was so genuine that after the discovery and subsequent publication by vinaver of the winchester manuscript he studied the text and met the manchester professor in 1957 to discuss his plans. he even visited glastonbury and was so fascinated with the place that, with the help of the playwright robert bolt, re nted a cottage (discove cottage) in the area, and in march 1959 arrived in england with the purpose of writing his version of malory. as he wrote to vinaver, explaining his purpose in setting in somerset: to hear the speech and feel the air, to rub hands on the lithic tactile memories at stonehenge, to sit at night on the untouristed eyrie at tintagel and to find arthur's mound and try to make friends with the cornish fayries and the harsh weirds of the pennines. that's what i want, so that my book grows out of its natural earth (steinbeck & wallsten, 1975: 605). he and his wife stayed in the cottage for seven months; steinbeck wrote there approximately 2000 words per day, although a good deal of what he wrote went to the waste paper basket (about 500 pages according to his own information) (see simmonds, 1975b: 39). what steinbeck did with malory after this british visit is difficult to know with accuracy because he was very reluctant to talk about his work,1 although there are many passing references in his letters of subsequent years to this work in progress.1 1 as he said to michael ratcliffe in an interview for the sunday times ("cutting loose at sixty: by john steinbeck", sunday times, 16 december 1962, p. 20), he had been working on malory for several years, but "i don't like to talk about it, as f ernando galván 52 what is no doubt of great interest is to see through some of these letters the process of rewriting malory, how the original plan was evolving when steinbeck encountered the natural difficulties of adapting the 15th century language to contemporary english. i'll allude to some of this when i examine the text. in writing to vinaver while in discove cottage (27 august 1959) steinbeck feels frustrated when faced to the difficulty of the task (steinbeck & wallsten, 1975: 648): i have a dreadful discontent with any efforts so far. they seem puny in the face of a hideous subject and i use the word in a malorian sense. how to capture this greatness? who could improve on or change launcelot's "for i take recorde of god, in you i have had myn erthly joye--" there it is. it can't be changed or moved. or launcelot's brother ector di maris --"thou were the curtest knight that ever bare shelde! and thou were the trewest frende to thy lover that ever bestrayed hors and thou were the truest lover of a synful man that ever loved woman--" good god, who could make that more moving? this is great poetry, passionate and epic and with also the stab of heartbreak. can you see the problem? do you know any answer? i have no space here to delve into detailed analysis of malory's and steinbeck's prose, so i shall have to give simply an outline of the difficulties that steinbeck had to face in order to rewrite malory without being unfaithful to his prose and to the spirit of the work. i have found extremely useful two books which i think contain the best analyses done on malory's language: p. j. c. field's romance and chronicle. a study of malory's prose style (1971) and mark lambert's malory. style and vision in "le morte darthur" (1975). it would be very fruitful to study some of the devices examined by field and when i do i put it by, but it isn't going to be like t. h. white, that i do know" (quoted by simmonds, 1975b: 40). 1 see his letters, specially those to his agent elizabeth otis and to chase horton included in the appendix of chase horton's edition of the acts (pp. 297-364), but also the numerous letters addressed to many other friends and people collected in elaine steinbeck' & robert wallsten's edition of steinbeck. a life in letters (1975): pp. 540, 541-42, 544, 551, 552-54, 575-80, 591-92, 593-94, 598-99, 604, 611, 62124, 627-28, 632, 634, 635, 638, 640, 642, 647, 648, 649-50, 656, 749, 792-93, 794, 821-823, and 825. malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 53 lambert and compare them with what steinbeck did in his acts because it would tell us much of what we miss when we read this sort of adaptations. certainly, a common point between malory and steinbeck that can be perceived at first sight is the effort carried out by the american writer to pre serve the simplicity so characteristic, and so much praised by critics, in malory's prose. steinbeck's language in the acts is generally direct, clear, as he uses a simple vocabulary and a straightforward syntax. in this he coin cides with the features of malory's style described so convincingly by field in his book: both in narration and in description, as well as in dialogue, steinbeck seems to be fighting to preserve the values of the original text, without falling into clumsiness. notice, for instance, how he solves this pas sage in malory, which field cites as an instance of malory's abusive use of coordination to the extent that today it sounds childish or very primitive, or -as field puts it (field, 1971: 41)-"sub-literate" (vinaver, 1971: 67, quoted by field, 1971: 41): than the kynge and the quene were gretely displeased with sir gawayne for the sleynge of the lady, and there by ordynaunce of the queene there was sette a queste of ladyes uppon sir gawayne, and they juged hym for ever whyle he lyved to be with all ladyes and to fyght for hir quarels; and ever that he sholde be curteyse, and never to refuse mercy to hym that askith mercy. steinbeck's version is of course very simple, but avoids the extremes of the original (steinbeck, 1976: 87): the king and queen were displeased with him for killing the lady. then guinevere set an eternal quest on gawain that during his whole life he would defend all ladies and fight in their cause. and she further commanded that he should be courteous always and he should grant mercy when it was asked. steinbeck's effort at simplification and clarity is so extraordinary that eventually he avoids even the simple hypotactic constructions characteristic of malory. see, for instance, another passage discussed by field, who has pointed to the use of the adverbial clause of time to open a sentence, which is followed then by "abusive" coordination; steinbeck's version is even simpler, avoiding any hypotaxis whatsoever: f ernando galván 54 and as kynge arthure loked besyde hym he sawe a knight that was passyngely well horsed. and therewith kynge arthure ran to hym and smote hym on the helme, that hys swerde wente unto his teeth, and the knyght sanke downe to the erthe dede (vinaver, 1971: 22-23, quoted in field, 1971: 41). arthur saw a knight nerby well mounted on a good horse, and he ran at him and drove his sword through helmet and teeth and brain, and arthur led his good horse to king ban […] (steinbeck, 1976: 28) however, steinbeck occasionaly also likes to expand. as evidence of this, and of his ability to render dialogue and combine it with description, notice the following passage, which tells of the meeting of gawain and ettard. this excerpt --according to field (1971: 138-139)-is unique in malory for its transformation of the meeting between both characters in the sources used by malory, and also for its remarkable diction. the deliberate ambiguity in the use of language both by ettard and by gawain is strongly suggestive of these characters, and marks clearly the process of seduction. notice how steinbeck also makes use of this ambiguity in his version, renders fifteenthcentury colloquial language into equivalent contemporary idiom and recre ates the whole scene with additional details: "truly," seyde she, "that is grete pyté for he was a passynge good knyght of his body. but of all men on lyve i hated hym moste, for i coude never be quytte of hym. and for ye have slayne hym i shall be your woman and to do onythynge that may please you." so she made sir gawayne good chere. than sir gawayne sayde that he loved a lady and by no meane she wolde love hym. "sche is to blame," seyde ettarde, "and she woll nat love you, for ye that be so well-borne a man and suche a man of prouesse, there is no lady in this worlde to good for you." "woll ye," seyde sir gawaye, "promyse me to do what that ye may do be the fayth of your body to gete me the love of my lady?" "yee, sir, and that i promyse you be my fayth." malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 55 "now," seyde sir gawayne, "hit is yourself that i love so well; therefore holde your promyse. " "i may nat chese," seyde the lady ettarde, "but if i sholde be forsworne." (vinaver, 1971: 102, quoted by field, 1971: 138-139) "that is true," ettarde said. "he was a wonderful fighting man -but i hated him because i could not be rid of him. he cried and wept and moaned like a sick calf until i wished him dead. i like a man of decision. since you have slain him for me, i shall grant you anything you wish." and ettarde blushed when she said it. now gawain looked at her and saw that she was fair, and he re membered his faithless little damsel with loathing, and his vanity cried out for conquest. he smiled with confidence. "i will hold you to your promise, my lady," he said and he was pleased to see her cheeks turn rosy with excitement. she led him to her castle and set a bath for him with scented water, and when he was clad in a loose robe of purple cloth, she gave him food and win e and sat beside him so that her shoulder touched him. "now tell me what you wish of me?" she said softly. "you will find i pay my debts." gawain took her hand. "very well," he said. "i love a lady, but she does not love me." "oh!" ettarde exclaimed in confusion and jealousy. "then she is a fool. you are a king's son and a king's nephew, young, handsome, brave. what ails your love? no lady in the world is too good for you. she must be a fool." she looked into gawain's smiling eyes. "as my reward," he said, "i want your promise that you will do anything in your power to get me the love of my lady." ettarde controlled her face to conceal her disappointment. "i don't know what i could do," she said. "do i have your promise, on your faith?" "well --yes --yes. i promise, since i promised. who is the lady and what can i do?" gawain looked long at her before he replied, "you are the lady, you are my love. you know what you can do. i hold you to your promise. " f ernando galván 56 "oh!" she cried. "you are a trickster. no lady is safe with you. you have laid a trap for me." "your promise!" "i suppose i cannot help myself," said the lady ettarde. "if i should not give you what you ask i would be false to my oath, and i hold my honor above my life, my love.” (steinbeck, 1976: 147-148) more considerable expansions are found in steinbeck's version of the third tale, "a noble tale of sir launcelot du lake", where a simple para graph in malory becomes several pages in steinbeck's prose. this, as one steinbeck scholar (john ditsky) has commented, is an effect of the natural impatience felt by the novelist with the tiresome task of literal translation. it is then when steinbeck behaves exactly like malory with his "frensshe bookes", introducing new material --thus contravening his own initial purpose-and freely imagining new episodes. his innovations are occasionally rather bold, as when he introduces references to his own personal life and friends. this critic, john ditsky, has drawn our attention over the following passage in malory and steinbeck (second chapter of the first tale): and there sir kay the senesciall dud passyngely well, that dayes of hys lyff the worship wente never frome hym, and sir hervis de revel that dud merveylous dedys of armys that day with arthur (vinaver, 1971: 47). sir kay fought so well that day that the memory of his deeds has lived forever. and sir hervis de revel of the line of sir thomas malory distinguished himself, as did sir tobinus streat de montroy (steinbeck, 1976: 61). as ditsky explains, this intruder sir tobinus streat is none other than "steinbeck's old crony from earlier days in california, webster f. ("toby") street". ditsky adds (ditsky, 1978: 634): "what finer tribute to a former college roommate and drinking companion --the man who turned over to him the idea for to a god unknown when he himself had been unable to work it into a satisfactory play-than to place him in print and eternal glory, fighting alongside king arthur, and with distinction?". malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 57 nevertheless, steinbeck is constantly returning to his source, and his fidelity to malory's text is manifest in strict quotation. that is, sometimes he does not translate; he merely reproduces some sentences from the original. thus at the end of some chapters (second and third chapters of the first tale, and the end of the third tale), as well as within his text, when an episode is finished. he then appropriates malory's words, used in italics, and simply quotes: "here begynnith the fyrst batayle that ever sir gawayne ded after he was made knyght" (steinbeck, 1976: 83), or "and thus endith the adventure of sir gawayne that he did at the mariage of arthure" (steinbeck, 1976: 87); also when malory employs his typical device of the narrator who seeks the reader's complicity: "now leve we thes knyghtes presoners, and speke we of sir lancelot de lake that lyeth undir the appil-tre slepynge" (steinbeck, 1976: 226), and even in longer passages: now turn we back to yonge syr gaherys who rode into the manor of syr tarquin slayne by lancelot. and there he found a yoman porter kepyng many keyes. than sir gaherys threw the porter unto the grounde and toke the keyes frome hym; and hastely he opynde the preson dore, and there he lette all the presoners oute, and every man lowsed other of their bondys (steinbeck, 1976: 265).1 evidently, steinbeck tried to avoid archaic vocabulary and phrases, but in so doing he also had to abandon manners of expression which were typically medieval and that we consider today not even as "devices" but rather as "mis takes". for lambert, however, these presumed infelicities of medieval and malorian style are (lambert, 1975: 1) "as respectable and functional as any other rhetorical or stylistic devices", and should be taken into account as relevant features of the style of the period. one of these "mistakes" is the device lambert calls "confirmation", that is (lambert, 1975: 8), "a marked similarity between the vocabularies of narrator and character or of different characters in a relatively short passage". this is characteristic of medieval prose, and has an important role in the in terplay of direct and indirect styles. as an illustration of how steinbeck dealt with this 1 the original is slightly different in the beginning, but not much different; vinaver's edition reads: "and so they departed frome gaherys; and gaherys yode into the maner, and there he founde a yoman …" (the rest is exactly the same) (vinaver, 1971: 159). f ernando galván 58 kind of device, let us examine the following passage, briefly abridged by lambert, in the first tale: so after the feste and journeye kynge arthur drewe hym unto london. and soo by the counceil of merlyn the kyng lete calle his barons to counceil, for merlyn had told the kynge that the sixe kynges that made warre upon hym wold in all haste be awroke on hym and on his landys; wherfor the kyng asked counceil at hem al. they coude no counceil gyve, but said they were bygge ynough. "ye saye well," said arthur, "i thank you for your good courage; but wil ye al that loveth me speke with merlyn? ye knowe wel that he hath done moche for me, and he knoweth many thynges. and whan he is afore you i wold that ye prayd hym hertely of his best avyse." alle the barons sayd they wold pray hym and desyre hym. soo merlyn was sente for and fair desyred of al the barons to gyve them best counceil. "i shall say you," said merlyn. …"what were best to do in this cause?" said al the barons. "i shall telle you," said merlyn, "myne advys. there ar two bretheren beyond the see. … wherfor this is my counceil: that our kyng and soverayne lord sende unto the kynges ban and bors by two trusty knyghtes with letters wel devysed, that and they wil come and see kynge arthur and his courte to helpe hym in hys warrys, that he wolde be sworne unto them to helpe hem in theire warrys agaynst kynge caludas. now what sey ye unto this counceyle?" "thys ys well councelde," seyde the kynge (vinaver, 1971: 13, quoted by lambert, 1975: 12-13). and this is steinbeck's version: then arthur rested his knights and feasted them. and after a time, when all was in order, he marched back to london and called a general council of all his loyal barons. merlin foretold that the six rebellious lords would continue the war with raids and forays into the realm. when the king asked his barons what he should do, they answered that they would not o ffer their advice but only their strength and loyalty. arthur thanked them for their courage and support, but he said, "i beg all of you who love me to speak with merlin. you will know what he has done for me. he knows many strange and secret malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 59 things. when yo are with him ask him for his advice about what we should do. " the barons agreed to this, and when merlin came to them, they begged for his help. "since you ask i will tell you," merlin said. […] "what should we do then?" cried the barons. "what is our best course?" "this is my advice to you," said merlin. "across the channel in france there are two brothers […] i suggest that our king should choose two trusty knights and send them with letters to the kings ban and bors, asking their help against his enemies and promising them that he will help them against king claudas. now what do you think of this suggestion?" king arthur said, "it seems good advice to me." [my emphasis] (steinbeck, 1976: 17-18) we can appreciate that steinbeck has avoided the repetitive style of "confirmation", preferring elegant variation, although he retains a lesser degree of repetition, as in the case of the word advice. many other features could be mentioned: the use of adjectives, the stock phrases, the level of formality in speech, the descriptions, the creation of landscape and setting, etc. but suffice it for the time being to give an idea of the accomplishments and shortcomings of steinbeck's adaptation. further and more detailed analyses and comparisons between malory's and steinbeck's prose are still needed, but my impression is that steinbeck was not completely wrong in what he was doing. thus i cannot share the disappointment felt by some critics, like gaines, who says (gaines, 1990: 121) he is "left with a sense of a vision unfulfilled and a quest incomplete". true, his version was not faithful, was not a strict translation into modern idiom of malory's text, and was also far from being the sort of "re -creation" practised by that character in a famous borges' tale, pierre menard, who re -wrote chapters from don quixote through the apparently simple procedure of copying, in the 20th century, word by word, what cervantes had written in the 17th. f ernando galván 60 it seems that steinbeck, as he was progressing in his writing, felt more and more imbued with malory's spirit, and treated his text as the english writer had done with his french sources. steinbeck's merit is, in this respect, higher than many other adapters before him, who simply wanted to simplify and accommodate the text to specific audiences (mostly children). steinbeck was really re-writing malory, treating him almost as an equal, as a fellow novelist, although always from a position of respect and worship. he did not try to sentimentalize him, to soften him, to make him something different from what he was, as had been done by preceding adapters. he simply tried to be malory again writing in the twentieth century, no simple task indeed! let me finish with a quotation from one letter by steinbeck sent to chase horton in march 1959, which i think summarizes very well steinbeck's awareness of what he was doing (steinbeck, 1976: 330): malory wrote the stories for and to his time. any man hearing him knew every word and every reference. there was nothing obscure, he wrote the clear and common speech of his time and country. but that has changed --the words and the references are no longer common property, for a new language has come into being. malory did not write the stories. he simply wrote them for his time and his time understood them. and so you know, chase, suddenly in this home ground, i was not afraid of malory any more nor ever will be again. this does not lessen my admiration but it does not inhibit me either. only i can write this for my time. and as for place --the place has become not a little island set in a silver sea, but the world. and with that, almost by enchantment the words began to flow, a close-reined, taut, economical english, unaccented and unlocalized. i put down no word that has not been judged for general understanding. where my time cannot fill in, i build up, and where my time would be impatient with repetition, i cut. so did malory for his time. it is just as simple as that and i think it is the best prose i have ever written. i hope this is so and i believe it. fernando galván universidad de alcalá malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 61 works cited abbot, charles d. 1925: howard pyle: a chronicle, new york, harper. adams, p. l. 1976a: atlantic monthly, 238 november: 118. adams, p. l. 1976b: booklist, 73 15 october: 294, 316. adderley, c. m. 1992: the best thing for being sad: education and educators in t. h. white's once and future king. quondam et futurus: a journal of arthurian interpretations, 2, 1: 55-68. alexander, ann d. 1927: women of the morte darthur, twelve of the most romantic of the world's love stories selected from malory's morte darthur and illustrated by ann d. alexander, london, methuen, xvi + 252 pp. allan, philip 1920: the noble tale of the sangreal, drawn out of the french tongue by sir thomas malory, kt., and first printed by master william caxton, london, philip allan, xi + 209 pp. baines, keith 1962: sir thomas malory's le morte d'arthur. king arthur and the legends of the round table, a rendition in modern idiom, with an introduction by robert graves, decorative illustrations by enrico arno, new york, clarkson n. potter, 1962 [rpt in new york, bramhill house; and london, george g. harrap, 1963, 512 pp.]. baldwin, james 1910: stories of the king, illustrated by arthur becher, new york, american book; and london, appleton, 335 pp. benson, larry 1968: sir thomas malory's le morte darthur. r. m. lumiansky & herschel baker eds. 1968: critical approaches to six major english works, philadelphia, university of pennsylvania press. blyton, enid 1930: the knights of the round table, illustrated by thomas heath robinson, london, george newnes, 126 pp. blyton, enid 1939: king arthur and his knights, illustrated by macdowell, london, w. and a. k. johnston, 64 pp. bradley, marion zimmer 1983: the mists of avalon, new york, knopf, xi + 876 pp. brewer, d. s. 1968: the morte darthur. parts seven and eight by sir thomas malory, london, edward arnold, and evanston, northwestern university press, 166 pp. brewer, d. s. 1970: the present study of malory. forum for modern language studies, 6: 83-97 [rpt. in d. d. r. owen ed. 1971: arthurian romance: seven essays, new york, barnes and noble]. f ernando galván 62 brooks, edward 1900: the story of king arthur and the knights of the table round, for boys and girls, with thirteen illustrations by aubrey beardsley, philadelphia, penn publishing, 383 pp. caxton, william 1485: the noble and joyous book entytled le morte darthur, abbey westmestre. chalmers, alexander 1816: the history of the renowned prince arthur, king of britain, illustrations by thomas uwins, engraved by charles warren, london, walker & edwards, 2 vv., xxxii +468; xvi +488 pp. chapman, susan elizabeth 1990: a study of the genre of t. h. white's arthurian books. dissertation abstracts international, 50, 9: 2903a. conybeare, edward 1868: la morte d'arthur: th e history of king arthur, compiled by sir thomas mallory [sic], abridged and revised by edward conybeare, london, edward moxon, xx + 414 pp. cooke, brian kennedy 1946: king arthur of britain, from sir thomas malory's morte d'arthur, illuminated in the style of early english miniatures by anthony rado, leicester, edmund ward, 140 pp. cooke, brian kennedy 1951: sir lancelot, from sir thomas malory's morte d'arthur and other sources, illustrated after water-colours by w. russell flint, leicester, edmund ward, 192 pp. cooke, brian kennedy 1953: the holy grail, from sir thomas malory's morte d'arthur and other sources, illustrated from the "codice palatino" in the florence museum, leicester, edmund ward, 190 pp. cooke, brian kennedy 1957: the quest of the beast, from sir thomas malory's 'morte d'arthur' and other sources, illustrations in the text from "tavola rotonda" cod. pal. 556 by courtesy of the national library, florence, london, edmund ward, 215 pp. copland, william 1557: the story of the moste noble and worthy kynge arthur, london. cosgrave, m. s. 1977: horn book , 53 october: 561. cowen, janet 1969: le morte d'arthur, with an introduction by john lawlor, harmondsworth, penguin books, lv + 461 pp. cutler, uriel waldo 1904: stories of king arthur & his knights new york, thomas y. crowell, xviii + 322 pp. davied, r[eginald] t[horne] 1967: king arthur and his knights, a selection from what has been known as le morte darthur, london, faber and faber, and new york, barnes and noble, 271 pp. ditsky, john 1978: the friend at the round table: a note on steinbeck's acts. american literature, 49, 4: 633-635. malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 63 east, thomas c. 1578: the storye of the most noble and worthy kynge arthur, london. field, p. j. c. 1971: romance and chronicle. a study of malory's prose style, london, barrie & jenkins. field, p. j. c. 1977: le morte darthur: the seventh and eighth tales, new york, holmes and meier [and london, hodder and stoughton, 1978], iv + 284 pp. fontenrose, joseph 1963: john steinbeck: an introduction and interpretation, new york, barnes and noble. franklin, h. bruce 1992: traveling in time with mark twain. robert j. scholnick ed. 1992: american literature and science, lexington, university press of kentucky: 157-171. frazier, george 1969: john steinbeck! john steinbeck! how still we see thee lie and lie. and lie. esquire, 72 november. french, warren 1961: john steinbeck , new york, twayne. french, warren 1975: "steinbeck's use of malory", in tetsumaro hatashi, ed. 1975: 4-11. frith, henry 1884: king arthur and his knights of the round table, with original illustrations by f[rancis] a[rthur] fraser, london, george routledge, ix + 408 pp. fuller, edmund 1976: wall street journal, 19 november: 1. gaines, barry 1969: a forgotten artist: john harris and the rylands copy of caxton's edition of malory. bulletin of the john rylands library, 52: 115-128. gaines, barry 1974: the editions of malory in the early nineteenth century. papers of the bibliographical society of america, 68: 1-17. gaines, barry 1984: malory's castles in text and illustration. kathryn reyerson & faye powe eds. 1984: the medieval castle: romance and reality, medieval studies at minnesota 1, kendall/hunt, dubuque: 215-228. gaines, barry 1990: sir thomas malory. an anecdotal bibliography of editions, 1485-1985, new york, ams press. gardiner, jane 1992: "'a more splendid necromancy': mark twain's connecticut yankee and the electrical revolution", in prafulla c. kar ed. 1992: mark twain: an anthology of recent criticism, delhi, pencraft: 182-194. gardini, carlos 1979: los hechos del rey arturo y sus nobles caballeros: según la obra de sir thomas malory y otras fuentes, barcelona, edhasa [rpt. by the same publishers in 1980, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, f ernando galván 64 1986, 1988 and 1993; by salvat in barcelona in 1994; by editorial sudamericana, buenos aires, 1994; and by círculo de lectores, barcelona, 1992, under a slightly different title: los hechos del rey arturo y sus nobles caballeros: según los manuscritos de winchester de thomas malory y otras fuentes introduction by pedro sorela]. gardner, j. 1976: new york times book review, 24 october: 31. gilbert, henry 1911: king arthur's knights: the tales re-told for boys & girls, with 16 illustrations in colour by walter crane, london, t. c. and e. c. jack; and new york, frederick a. stokes, xi + 367 pp. gollancz, israel 1897: le morte darthur, four illustrations by aubrey beardsley, london, j. m. dent, 4 vols., 312; 308; 324; and 314 pp. grimaldo tormos, pilar 1963: los caballeros de la tabla redonda, barcelona, editorial teide, 78 pp. illustrations by mario logle and gabriele santini. hanks, d. thomas, jr. 1990: sir thomas malory. views and re-views, new york, ams press. haslewood, joseph 1816: la mort d'arthur, illustrations by william marshall craig, engraved by richard rhodes, london, r. wilks, 3 vols., xxiv + 326; xv + 331; xvi + 384 pp. hayashi, tetsumaro, ed. 1975: steinbeck monograph series, no. 5, entitled steinbeck and the arthurian theme , edited by tetsumaro hayashi for the john steinbeck society of america english department, ball state university, muncie, indiana. hodges, laura f. 1992: steinbeck's adaptation of malory's launcelot: a triumph of realism over supernaturalism. quondam et futurus: a journal of arthurian interpretations, 2, 1: 69-81. johnson, cynthia 1977: school library journal, 23 april: 84. kellman, martin 1991: t. h. white's merlyn: a flawed prophet. james gollnick ed., comparative studies in merlin from the vedas to c. g. jung, lewiston, ny, mellen: 55-61. kertzer, adrienne 1985: t. h. white's the sword in the stone: education and the child reader. perry nodelman ed., tochstones: reflections on the best in children's literature, vol. 1, west lafayetete, children's lit. assoc.: 281-290. kinney, arthur f. 1965: the arthurian cycle in tortilla flat. modern fiction studies, 11: 11-20 [rpt. in robert murray davis ed. 1972: steinbeck: a collection of critical essays, englewood cliffs, nj, prentice-hall: 3646]. malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 65 kinney, arthur f. 1975: tortilla flat re-visited. tetsumaro hayashi, ed. 1975: 12-24. kirk, elizabeth 1985: "clerkes, poetes and historiographs': the morte darthur and caxton's 'poetics' of fiction. spisak ed. 1985: 275-295. knowles, james thomas 1862: the story of king arthur and his knights of the round table, compiled and arranged by j[ames] t[homas] k[nowles], with illustrations by g[eorge] h[ousman] thomas, london, griffith and farran, iii + 325 pp. lambert, mark 1975: malory. style and vision in "le morte darthur" , new haven and london, yale university press. lang, andrew 1902: the book of romance, with numerous illustrations by h[enry] j[ustice] ford, london, longmans, green, ix + 384 pp. lang, andrew 1903: tales of the round table, based on the tales in the book of romance edited by andrew lang with 4 coloured plates and 21 other illustrations by h. j. ford, london, longmans, 174 pp. lang, andrew 1905: tales of king arthur and the round table, adapted from the book of romance by andrew lang, with introduction, notes, etc. by j[ohn] c. allen and twenty illustrations by h. j. ford, london, longmans, viii + 152 pp. lang, andrew 1967: king arthur: tales of the round table, illustrated by h. j. ford, new york, schocken books, 174 pp. lang, andrew 1968: king arthur: tales of the round table, pictures by charles mozley, new york, franklin watts. lanier, sidney 1880: the boy's king arthur, being sir thomas malory's history of king arthur and his knights of the round table, edited for boys with an introduction by sidney lanier, illustrated by alfred kappes, new york, charles scribner's sons, xlvii + 403 pp. latappy, mlle. 1910: le roi arthur et les chevaliers de la table ronde, illustrations de brinsley le fanu, paris, librairie larousse, "les livres roses pour la jeunesse, collection stead, new series no. 21. lathrop, henry borrowes 1911: malory's king arthur and his knights, an abridgment of le morte darthur, illustrated by reginald birch, new york, baker and taylor, xv + 421 pp. lewis, c. s. 1947: the morte darthur. tls, 7 june: 273-274 [rpt. in c. s. lewis 1966: studies in medieval and renaissance literature, cambridge, cambridge university press: 103-110]. life, page west 1980: sir thomas malory and the morte darthur. a survey of scholarship and annotated bibliography, charlottesville, university press of virginia. f ernando galván 66 lindley, angela 1990: biography and the critical reception of t. h. white's 'the once and future king'. dissertation abstracts international, 50, 8: 2499a. lumiansky, r. m. 1982: le morte darthur, new york, charles scribner's sons, xi + 750 pp. macardle, dorothy m. 1917: selections from le morte d'arthur of sir thomas malory, london, macmillan, xii + 117 pp. macdonald, alan 1993: a lost story of perversion: t. h. white's 'the witch in the wood'. library chronicle of the university of texas, 23, 4: 106129. macgregor, mary 1905: stories of king arthur's knights, told to the children with pictures by katharine cameron, london, t. c. and e. c. jack, x + 115 pp. mackenzie, agnes m. 1915: selections from malory, being an introductory reader in middle english for secondary classes, edited with intro duction notes and glossary, london, george g. harrap, 107 pp. [it contains caxton's book ix, chapters 1-9, and book iv, chapters 6-12 and 14-16]. macleod, mary 1900: the book of king arthur and his noble knights, stories from sir thomas malory's morte darthur, introduction by john w. hales, illustrated from drawings by a. g. walker, london, wells gardner, darton; and new york, e. & j. b. young, xxviii + 418 pp. mahon, derek 1977: new statesman, 93 11 february: 195. masterton, g. a. 1976: library journal, 101 15 october, no. 2178. masterton, g. a. 1977: choice, 14 march: 64. merriman, james douglas 1973: the flower of kings: a study of the arthurian legend in england between 1485 and 1835, lawrence, university of kansas press. morris, charles 1891: king arthur and the knights of the round table, a modernized version of the "morte darthur" by charles morris, philadelphia, lippincott [rpt. in 1892 in london by w. w. gibbings, 3 vols. 256, 256 and 255 pp.]. mott, a[drian] s[pear] 1933: the noble & joyous boke entytled le morte darthur, oxford, basil blackwell for the shakespeare head press, 2 vols. xxviii + 316; 373 pp. nellis, marilyn k. 1983: "anachronistic humor in two arthurian romances of education: to the chapel perilous and the sword and the stone", studies in medievalism, 2, 4: 57-77. malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 67 pfordresher, john 1973: a variorum edition of tennyson's 'idylls of the king', new york and london, columbia university press. pollard, alfred w. 1900: le morte darthur, london & new york, macmillan, 2 vols.; xxviii + 439; xix + 531 pp. pollard, alfred w. 1917: the romance of king arthur and his knights of the round table, abridged from malory's morte d'arthur, illustrated by arthur rackham, london & new york, macmillan, xxiv + 517 pp. powers, lyall 1985: mark twain and the future of picaresque. robert giddings ed. 1985: mark twain: a sumptuous variety, totowa, nj, barnes & noble: 155-175. pyle, howard 1902-1903: the story of king arthur and his knights, in st. nicholas, 30 november 1902-october 1903, new york, scribners. pyle, howard 1905: the story of the champions of the round table, written and illustrated by howard pyle, new york, charles scribner's sons; and london, george newnes, xviii + 329 pp. pyle, howard 1907: the story of sir launcelot and his companions, new york, charles scribner's sons; and london, chapman and hall, xviii + 340 pp. pyle, howard 1910: the story of the grail and the passing of arthur, new york, charles scribner's sons; and london, bickers, xviii + 258 pp. pyle, howard 1965: the story of king arthur and his knights, illustra tions by sergio leone, new york, grosset and dunlap, xvii + 320 pp. pyle, howard 1969: the book of king arthur, cover by don irwin, and illustrated by ron king, chicago, children's press, 192 pp. pyle, howard 1979: the story of king arthur and his knights, woodbury, bobley publishing, 400 pp. rhys, ernest 1886: malory's history of king arthur and the quest of the holy grail from the morte d'arthur, edited, with general introduction to the "camelot series," by ernest rhys, london, walter scott, xl + 330 pp. rhys, ernest 1892: the noble and joyous history of king arthur, edited by ernest rhys: morte d'arthur: the first nine books, london, walter scott, xv + 325 pp. [a second volume entitled: the book of marvellous adventures, & other books of the morte d'arthur, edited by ernest rhys: morte d'arthur: the last twelve books, london, walter scott, xiii + 384 pp.]. ricks, christopher 1969: the poems of tennyson, london, longman. f ernando galván 68 ross, meredith jane 1986: the sublime to the ridiculous: the restructuring of arthurian materials in selected modern novels. dissertation abstracts international, 46, 12: 3717a. rowan, diana 1977: christian science monitor, 12 january: 23. sandler, florence field 1992: family romance in the once and future king. quondam et futurus: a journal of arthurian interpretations, 2, 2: 7380. scharnhorst, gary 1989: mark twain and the millerites: notes on a connecticut yankee in king arthur's court. american transcendental quarterly, 3, 3: 297-304. schroth, evelyn 1983: camelot: contemporary interpretation of arthur in 'sens' and 'matiere'. journal of popular culture, 17, 2: 31-43. shanley, mary lyndon & peter g. stillman 1982: mark twain: technology, social change, and political power. benjamin r. barber & michael j. gargas mcgrath eds. 1982: the artist and political vision, new brunswick, transaction: 267-289. shippey, t. a. 1977: times literary supplement, 29 april: 536. simmonds, roy s. 1975a: a note on steinbeck's unpublished arthurian stories. tesumaro hayashi, ed. 1975: 25-29. simmonds, roy s. 1975b: the unrealized dream: steinbeck's modern version of malory. tesumaro hayashi, ed. 1975: 30-43. simmons, f. j. 1893-1894: the birth, life and acts of king arthur, with an introduction by professor [john] rhys and embellished with many original designs by aubrey beardsley, london, j. m. dent [issued in 12 monthly parts; 1500 copies on smooth grey-green paper to be bound in 2 vols. and 300 copies on dutch hand-made paper to be bound in 3 vols.], xc + 990 pp. [2nd ed.: london, j. m. dent, 1909; 3rd ed.: london, j. m. dent, 1927]. simpson, roger 1990: camelot regained. the arthurian revival and tennyson 1800-1849, cambridge, d. s. brewer. smith, evans lansing 1991: the narrative structure of t. h. white's the once and future king. quondam et futurus: a journal of arthurian interpretations, 1, 4: 39-52. sommer, h. oskar 1889-1891: le morte darthur by syr thomas malory, with an essay on malory's prose style by andrew lang, london, david nutt, 3 vols., x + 861; xxv + 338; vii + 230 pp. southey, robert 1817: the byrth, lyf, and actes of kyng arthur, with an introduction and notes by robert southey, edited by william upcott, malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 69 london, longman, hurst, rees, orme, and brown, 2 vols., xxxix + 383; 495 pp. spisak, james w. 1983: caxton's malory. a new edition of sir thomas malory's le morte darthur based on the pierpont morgan copy of william caxton's edition of 1485, berkeley and los angeles, university of california press, 2 vols., viii + 920 pp. spisak, james w. ed. 1985: studies in malory, kalamazoo, michigan, medieval institute publications, western michigan university. stansby, william 1634: the most ancient and famous history of the renowned prince arthur king of britaine, london, printed by william stansby, for jacob bloome. stead, william thomas 1899: king arthur and the knights of the round table, old stories re-told, illustrated by brinsley le fanu, london, "review of reviews" office, 62 pp. [reprints in 1908 by penn publishing in philadelphia, and with arrangements by robert s. wood under the title stories of king arthur's knights was published by stead's bairns' library in london in 2 volumes, n. d., 79 pp.]. steinbeck, elaine & robert wallsten, eds. 1975: steinbeck. a life in letters, new york, the viking press. steinbeck, john 1976: the acts of king arthur and his noble nights, new york, farrar, straus and giroux; and london, heinemann, xiv + 364 pp. [rpt. in paperback by ballantine new york, 1977 and by pan books london, 1979]. strachey, edward 1868: morte darthur, london, macmillan, xxxvii + 496 pp. [rpt. with revisions in 1868, 1869 and 1891]. sutcliff, rosemary 1979: the light beyond the forest: the quest for the holy grail, decorations by shirley felts, london, bodley head [rpt. in new york, dutton, 1980], 148 pp. sutcliff, rosemary 1980: the sword and the circle; king arthur and the knights of the round table, decorations by shirley felts, london, bodley head; and new york; dutton, 260 pp. sutcliff, rosemary 1981: the road to camlann, decorations by shirley felts, london, bodley head [rpt. in new york, dutton, 1982], 143 pp. takamiya, toshiyuki 1985: caxton's malory re-edited. poetica, 21-22: 48-70. tanner, william e. 1993: tangled web of time. william e. tanner ed., the arthurian myth of quest and magic: a festschrift in honor of lavon b. fulwiler, dallas, caxton's mod. arts: 49-62. f ernando galván 70 thomas, jimmie elaine 1983: the once and present king: a study of the world view revealed in contemporary arthurian adaptations. dissertation abstracts international, 43, 10: 3316a. torres oliver, francisco 1985: muerte de arturo , madrid, ediciones siruela, 3 vols., 950 pp. vallvé, manuel 1914: los caballeros de la tabla redonda; leyendas relatadas a los niños, barcelona, ediciones araluce, 1914, 128 pp. illustrations by j. segrelles. vinaver, eugène 1947: the works of sir thomas malory, oxford, clarendon press, 3 vols. cxv + 1742 pp. rpt. with corrections in 1948 1st ed. . vinaver, eugène 1954: malory: works, london, oxford university press, xviii + 919 pp. 1st ed. . vinaver, eugène 1955: the tale of the death of king arthur by sir thomas malory, oxford, clarendon press, xxvi + 146 pp. vinaver, eugène 1956: king arthur and his knights, selections from the works of sir thomas malory, boston, houghton, mifflin, xxi + 166 pp. the revised and enlarged edition, with the same title, was published by the same house in 1968 [xxi + 230 pp.], as well as by oxford university press in 1975 [xxi + 231 pp.]. vinaver, eugène 1967: malory: works, oxford, clarendon press, 3 vols. rpt. with corrections and additions, 1973 2nd ed. . vinaver, eugène 1971: malory: works, london, oxford university press, xv + 811 pp. 2nd ed. . vinaver, eugène 1990: the works of sir thomas malory, revised by p. j. c. field, oxford, clarendon press, 3 vols. cxlvii + 1768 pp. 3rd ed. warner, sylvia towsend & trevor stubley 1988: the book of merlyn: the unpublished conclusion to "the once and future king", austin, the university of texas press. welsh, andrew 1991: lancelot at the crossroads in malory and steinbeck. philological quarterly, 70, 4: 485-502. williams, m. c. 1977: new republic, 176 5 february: 34-35. williams, mary c. 1984: lessons from ladies in steinbeck's 'gawain, ewain, and marhalt'. avalon to camelot, 1, 4: 40-41. winder, blanche 1925: stories of king arthur, with 48 colour plates by harry g. theaker, london, ward, lock, 340 pp. [rptd. without the illustrations in 1935 by the same publishing house]. worde, wynkyn de 1498: the noble and joyous book entytled le morte darthur, westmestre [2nd ed. in london in 1529]. malory revisited: from caxton to steinbeck 71 wright, thomas 1858: la mort d'arthure, edited from the text of the edition of 1634, with introduction and notes by thomas wright, london, john russell smith, 3 vols. xliii + 304; xv + 356; xvi + 348 pp. [2nd ed.: london, john russell smith, 1866, 3 vols; 3rd ed.: london, reeves and turner, 1889, 3 vols.; 4th ed.: london, george routledge and sons, 1893; 5th ed.: london, gibbings, 1897, 3 vols.]. * † * selim 15.indb ignacio murillo, selim 13 (2005-2006): 83—94 cynewulf and cyneheard: a different style for a different story abstract one of the most important sources for the study of the old english period is the anglo-saxon chronicle. within that chronicle information is structured in entries: one for each of the years about which information is given. one of the entries which has attracted more attention is the one for the year 755. there we find the story of cynewulf and cyneheard. this story is written in a way that makes it different from the rest of early annals in the anglo-saxon chronicle: it is longer than any of them and has a very spontaneous syntax many times throughout the text. one of the reasons for this syntactic spontaneity could be the fact that this annal was made up using material from a story which, in turn, was part of an oral tradition. the knowledge about a germanic oral literature tradition like that of the later icelandic sagas has led scholars to the hypothesis that the anglosaxon chronicle entry for the year 755 could be the product of a similar germanic oral literature tradition which may have also existed in anglo-saxon england. keywords: english, old english, literature, anglo-saxon chronicle, entry for 755. resumen una de las fuentes más importantes para el estudio del período del inglés antiguo es la crónica anglosajona. dentro de esa crónica la información está estructurada en entradas: una para cada uno de los años sobre los que se da información. una de las entradas que ha suscitado más interés es la del año 755. en ella encontramos la historia de cynewulf y cyneheard. esta historia está escrita de una forma que la hace ser diferente al resto del primer grupo de anales de la crónica anglosajona: es un anal más largo que cualquier otro de ese primer grupo y presenta una sintaxis muy espontánea en muchas ocasiones a lo largo del texto. una de las razones de esta espontaneidad sintáctica podría ser el hecho de que este anal hubiera sido escrito utilizando material procedente de una historia que, a su vez, fuera parte de una tradición oral. el conocimiento sobre la tradición literaria oral de las posteriores sagas islandesas, también dentro del marco de la cultura germánica, ha llevado a los investigadores a la hipótesis de que la entrada de la crónica anglosajona para el año 755 podría enmarcarse dentro de una tradición literaria oral, igualmente de tipo germánico, que también podría haber existido en inglaterra en el período del inglés antiguo. palabras clave: inglés, inglés antiguo, literatura, crónica anglosajona, entrada para el año 755. the anglo-saxon chronicle entry for the year 755 is probably the one to which scholars have paid more attention. this entry is one of the multiple annals of the aforementioned chronicle, a year-by-year record of events which extends from 60 bc to the 12th century, dating the beginning of its compilation from the days of king alfred’s reign (9th century). ignacio murillo lópez 86 according to towers, “the story of cynewulf and cyneheard, the anglosaxon chronicle entry for 755, is unique among the pre-alfredian entries both for its artfulness and for its complexity”1 (1963: 310); and, as white has remarked, “in an unusually lengthy entry for the year 757, the anglo-saxon chronicle recounts a complex and well-crafted story, which the chronicler and his contemporaries presumably found interesting, dramatic, and perhaps even instructive and which modern scholars have never tired of retelling”2 (1989: 1). these are two of the ways in which the entry for the year 755 has been described. this particular entry, with its account of the story of cynewulf and cyneheard, has been the object of long discussions among scholars, mainly because of the nature of its style within the context of the anglo-saxon chronicle. after saying this, and in order to better understand the way in which this entry was written, we should analyse the whole literary context to which it belongs. first of all, we would have to say that not all the entries in the anglo-saxon chronicle follow the same stylistic and syntactic patterns. there are differences among them. according to cecily clark we could divide the chronicle before the conquest, into five main groups of annals, namely: “the initial alfredian compilation”, “the later alfredian annals”, “the annals for the reign of æthelred ii”, “the annals for the confessor’s reign”, and “the conquest” (1971: 215-235). as we can see, annals were written in different styles, and the style of an annal and its date of compilation seem to be related. about this cecily clark comments the following: “shifts of style in the chronicle must be related to stages in its compilation, some of which are 1 by pre-alfredian entries it is meant those annals giving information of the events which took place before the time of king alfred. nevertheless, all of them were written during the reign of this king. that is why other scholars like cecily clark include them under the category initial alfredian compilation. 2 according to some scholars, what is told under the anglo-saxon chronicle entry for 755 actually took place in 757. that is why here white talks about the entry for the year 757. however, he means the same story referred to by others as that of the entry for 755, that is to say, the story of cynewulf and cyneheard. cynewulf and cyneheard: a different style for a different story 87 revealed by changes of hand and ink in surviving copies” (1971: 215). having said that, we should consider the different styles in which the annals were written. first of all, the early annals, those under the umbrella term initial alfredian compilation in cecily clark’s article (1971), were written in a very plain style. they are normally very brief and their syntax is quite simple, relying mainly on parataxis. “adjectives are sparse, and adverbs rare or … absent, nor is there any complexity of syntax, just a chain of simple sentences rendering a series of simple propositions. furthermore, with the events noted all falling within a narrow range, vocabulary and phrasing are correspondingly restricted, annal after annal using the same semi-formulaic language” (clark 1971: 216). as examples of this group of annals, we can point out the entries for the years 1, 47, 83, 485, and 682 (plumer & earle 1892, 1: 4-38). however, within this group we find the entry for the year 755, which is the one we are dealing with here. this annal is also known as the story of cynewulf and cyneheard. 755. her cynewulf benam sigebryht his rices د west seaxna wiotan for unryhtum dædum, buton ham tún scire; د he hæfde þa oþ he ofslog þone aldor mon þe him lengest wunode. se offa wæs þincg ferþing, þinc ferþ ean wulfing, eanwulf osmoding, osmod eawing, eawa pybing, pybba creoding, creoda cynewalding, cynewald cnebing, cnebba iceling, icel eomæring, eomær ংngelþowing, ংngel þeow offing, offa wærmunding, wærmund wyhtlæging, wihtlæg wodeningঠ (plummer & earle 1892, 1: 46-50; parker ms. cccc 173 (ং).) after these entries syntax and style gradually gets more and more complicated. in this new group of annals we find the ones dealing with the danish invasion and the wars against the danes. an example is the entry for the year 871 (in plummer and earle 1892, 1: 70). ignacio murillo lópez 88 finally, some other annals, especially those about the conquest and the 12th century, are also quite complex in their syntax. an example is the entry for the year 1066, about the conquest itself (thorpe 1861, 1: 336). with regards to the layout of the entries of the anglo-saxon chronicle, one of the very few exceptions is the anal for the year 937 (plummer & earle 1892, 1: 106-108), which is written in verse instead of in prose. entries like this one are the exception rather than the rule. after having classified the different entries of the chronicle, we can say that one of the greatest exceptions to this stylistic classification is the annal for the year 755, where we find the story of cynewulf and cyneheard. this story has attracted scholars’ attention both from the historical and literary points of view, but it is the question of its distinctive style and of its uniqueness within the context of the anglo-saxon chronicle, which has led scholars to pay special attention to this particular entry. at this point some questions arise: what is the style of this entry like? and why was this entry recorded that way? the answer to these questions has been a very recurrent object of study. several reasons have been pointed out in an attempt to explain the striking difference between this and other annals. bruce mitchell and fred c. robinson say: “the narration is so swift and breathless, the selection of detail so deft, that some scholars have felt that the chronicler was recording a saga refined by many retellings in oral tradition” (1992: 208), and they also say: “supporting this view (and complicating the modern reader’s task in following the narrative) is the tale’s spontaneous syntax and free word-order, which require close attention to grammatical endings if the sentences are to be constructed accurately” (mitchell and robinson 1992: 208). some other comments on this entry are those by stephen d. white and those by francis p. magoun. stephen d. white says: “although it is unclear why such a long, elaborate story appears in a chronicle whose other entries for this century never exceed a couple of lines, the interest of modern scholars in the story is easily explained. students of early english literature have studied it closely, cynewulf and cyneheard: a different style for a different story 89 partly because it resembles passages from icelandic sagas and partly because it retreats, in a rhetorically effective way, a major theme in early medieval literature –the loyalty of warriors to their leaders” (1989: 4). on the same entry francis p. magoun comments the following: “the passage in question has long been famous and greatly admired by many critics of old english literature as a purple passage in the usually matter of fact annals. it may indeed be regarded as one of the few passages where oe prose suggests the art of the icelandic historical and family sagas” (1933: 361). these scholars suggest that this passage resembles the art and style of the sagas, and particularly, and as commented by two of them, of the icelandic sagas. this suggestion has been one of the most recurrent answers to the question of the unique nature of this text. saga is defined by the oxford english reference dictionary as “a long story of heroic achievement, esp. a medieval icelandic or norwegian prose narrative” (1996: 1271). it is also defined as “a series of connected books giving the history of a family etc.’ (1996: 1271), and finally as “a long involved story” (1996: 1271). resemble is defined by the same dictionary as “be like; have a similarity to, or features in common with, or the same appearance as” (1996: 1225). the icelandic sagas are a literary genre based on story-telling and an instance of germanic oral literature tradition. sometimes the stories told by these sagas have a historical background, but this historical background was normally lost before the story was written down, due to its nature as oral literature. now we could argue, what the point is for the comparison of an anglo-saxon text –the story of cynewulf and cyneheard– to an icelandic tradition like the sagas. normally the explanation given for this comparison has been the fact that, because of its similarities in style with the icelandic sagas, the nature of this entry is due to its result as an instance of another germanic oral literature tradition similar to that under the term icelandic sagas. this would explain the striking differences between the story of ignacio murillo lópez 90 cynewulf and cyneheard and the rest of the early entries of the anglo-saxon chronicle. the reference to the icelandic sagas is used as a comparison, which has allowed critics to draw a possible hypothesis to sort out the problem of the origin of the nature of this text within the context of an oral literature tradition in anglo-saxon england, which could have been similar to the one which developed later in medieval iceland. having this in mind, the possibility of the existence of a saga tradition in anglo-saxon literature, has been discussed by some scholars like cyril ernest wright, who says: “in only one instance has an anglo-saxon saga been handed down to us in the original vernacular, namely, the story of cynewulf and cyneheard in the anglo-saxon chronicle” (1939: 70). also, plummer & earle, have said: “the annal which most recalls the sagas is the slaying of cynewulf and cyneheard under 755; and that too may have been developed orally before it was written down” (1899, 2: xx). so, the fact that the story of cynewulf and cyneheard developed orally before it was written down, could be a possible answer to the question of why this story broke with the annal format of the pre-alfredian entries, which were shorter and not as developed as the one for the year 755. this is also quite important, because if we are dealing with the nature of the annal for 755, as opposed to that of the rest of the early entries, we should also analyse the style of those entries in order to find the reason why those early annals were written in that particular way. as it was pointed out above, the style of those early entries is quite plain, normally relying on parataxis, and following the same structure patterns all the time. about the origins of the early annals, cecily clark has pointed out: “annals evolved from notes in the margins of easter tables. necessarily brief, such notes, being adjuncts to the calendar rather than contributions to literature, cynewulf and cyneheard: a different style for a different story 91 were also factual and objective” (1971: 218). as an example of these notes in the margins of easter tables we find the following: “1087 obiit willelmus rex. 1089 obiit landfrancus archiepiscopus. 1096 iter incepit ierosolimitanum” (in clark 1971: 218). these examples, even though they are not taken from the early entries, illustrate the kind of texts from which the early annals are supposed to have developed. cecily clark also says: “at all events, many of the seventhand eighth-century annals consisting of only one line ... could have been derived from easter table notes” (1971: 219). this evidence is quite plausible, but not only that, some critics have also suggested that the story of cynewulf and cyneheard and their feud at merton, which could have derived from a possible oral saga tradition, was added to a previously existing entry. janet bately comments on this possibility like this: “the annal incorporating the story of the heroic confrontation between … cynewulf and cyneheard … contains features that demonstrate clearly that it was added as an afterthought or additional comment to an existing entry, and so need not be the work of the author of that entry” (1978: 106). according to this the first part of the 755-entry would be something similar to the rest of the early entries and it is only the account of the story of cynewulf and cyneheard which would have an oral origin. jane bately also suggests that the last paragraph of this particular entry –the one which begins with “ͦ þy ilcan geare mon ofslog æþelbald miercna cyning on seccan dune” (plummer & earle 1892, 1: 48)– “resumes as though the digression had never been made” (1978: 106). this fact provides us with evidence to see the story of cynewulf and cyneheard as an addition in the middle of what was the original entry. thus, the structure of the annal for the year 755 would be the following: 755. her cynewulf benam sigebryht his rices… se cynewulf oft miclum gefeohtum feaht uuiþ bretwalum د …ymb ·xxxi· wiñt þæs þe he rice hæfde د hiera ryht fæder cyn gæþ to cerdice د ignacio murillo lópez 92 …þy ilcan geare mon ofslog æþelbald miercna cyning on seccan dune د wihtlæg wodeningঠ (plummer and earle 1892, 1: 46-50; parker ms. cccc 173 (ং))3 taking this analysis into account, at this point one question arises. if the annal for the year 755 was written before –following the style of the rest of the early entries– and if the story of cynewulf and cyneheard –whose style is different– was added later, then, why was it added? the answer to this question may not be easy, but it is probably in the context of kinship and family ties where the reason for this lies. the compilation of the anglo-saxon chronicle seems to have started during the period ruled by king alfred the great. as bruce mitchell and fred c. robinson say, “around ad 890, during the reign of king alfred the great, anglo-saxon scholars compiled a year-by-year record of important events from antiquity to their own day” (1992: 212). king alfred the great was a member of the house of wessex, and ruled over the kingdom of the same name from 871 to 899. tracing back the genealogy of that dynasty (plummer & earle 1892, 1: 2-4) we would find the sort of table i have included in my appendix. king alfred the great belonged to the same family to which cynewulf, cyneheard, and sigebriht also belonged: the house of wessex. they were all the descendants of cerdic, who, according to the anglo-saxon chronicle, conquered wessex from the britons, and was, therefore, the first king of the west saxons. this fact can be seen as the source for a hypothesis which may explain the inclusion of the story of cynewulf and cyneheard in the anglosaxon chronicle. what is being suggested here is that the fact that the compilation of the chronicle began during the reign of king alfred the great, together with the fact that both cynewulf and cyneheard were relatives of 3 normal type: original entry. bold type: addition to the original entry. cynewulf and cyneheard: a different style for a different story 93 king alfred’s, probably led to the inclusion of this story under the entry for the year 755 –which had been previously written in an early-entry style. therefore, this passage could have been included because of the family ties existing between alfred the great, cynewulf, and cyneheard. finally, and as a conclusion, we would have to say, that the story of cynewulf and cyneheard, the anglo-saxon chronicle entry for the year 755, is probably the one which has attracted more attention from scholars, due to the fact that it breaks with the annal style followed by all the early entries in the chronicle. this has led scholars to look for a reason for this breaking with the general style of early annals, thus proposing the possibility of the origin and nature of this entry within the context of an anglo-saxon oral literature tradition, similar to that of the later icelandic sagas, which, according to scholars, this story seems to recall. ignacio murillo lópez universidad de salamanca references bately, janet 1978: the compilation of the anglo-saxon chronicle, 60 b.c. to ad 890: vocabulary as evidence. proceedings of the british academy 64: 93-129. clark, cecily 1971: the narrative mode of the anglo-saxon chronicle before the conquest. england before the conquest: studies in primary sources presented to dorothy whitelock. eds. peter clemoes & kathleen hughes. cambridge university press, cambridge. 215-235. ignacio murillo lópez 94 douglas, david c. & george w. greenaway 1953: 1042-1189. vol. 2 of english historical documents. ed. david c. douglas. 10 vols. eyre & spottiswoode, london. magoun, francis peabody 1933: cynewulf, cyneheard, and osric. anglia 57: 361-376. mitchell, bruce & fred c. robinson 1992[1964]: a guide to old english. 5th ed. blackwell, oxford & malden, massachusetts. pearsall, judy & bill trumble, eds. 1996[1995]: the oxford english reference dictionary. 2nd ed. oxford university press, oxford & new york. plummer, charles & john earle 1892-1899[1865]: two of the saxon chronicles parallel. 2 vols. 2nd ed. clarendon press, oxford. thorpe, benjamin 1861: the anglo-saxon chronicle, according to the several original authorities. 2 vols. longman, green, longman, and roberts, london. towers, tom h. 1963: thematic unity in the story of cynewulf and cyneheard. journal of english and germanic philology 62: 310-316. white, stephen d. 1989: kinship and lordship in early medieval england: the story of sigeberht, cynewulf, and cyneheard. viator 20: 1-18. whitelock, dorothy 1955: c. 500-1042. vol. 1 of english historical documents. ed. david c. douglas. 10 vols. eyre & spottiswoode, london. wright, cyril ernest 1939: the cultivation of saga in anglo-saxon england. oliver & boyd, edinburgh & london. cynewulf and cyneheard: a different style for a different story 95 appendix: the genealogical information about the house of wessex given in the anglo-saxon chronicle (plummer and earle 1892, 1: 2-4) can be arranged like this: the house of wessex woden | bældæg | brond | frithugar | freawine | wig | gewis | esla | elesa | cerdic* 1st | cynric 2nd | ceawlin 3rd | cuthwine | cuthwulf | ceolwold | cenred | ingild ine 12th cuthburh cwenburh | eoppa | eafa ignacio murillo lópez 96 | ealhmund | egbert 18th | æthelwulf 19th | æthelbald 20th ethelbert 21st ethelred 22nd alfred 23rd * cerdic ---------- ceol 4th ceolwulf 5th | cynegils 6th | cenwealh 7th centwine 10th | æ married to seaxburh 8th --------------------æscwine 9th --------------------ceadwalla 11th -------------------æthelheard 13th -------------------cuthred 14th -------------------sigebriht 15th [cyneheard’s brother] -------------------cynewulf 16th -------------------brihtric 17th key to the genealogical tree: a discontinuous line indicates non-specified family ties, even though, and, according to the text, they all go back to cerdic. vertical bars indicate a father-son or father-daughter family tie. boxes indicate a brother or sister family tie. the only daughters and sisters in this genealogical tree are cuthburh and cwenburh. the arrow indicates a husband-and-wife relationship. italics indicate those who were kings or queens of wessex. numbers indicate the order in which they succeeded to the kingdom of wessex. the only queen in this genealogical tree is seaxburh. the information in square brackets is not in the text from which this genealogical tree has been compiled. yet that information is found in the entry for the year 755. the compilation of the information about the house of wessex into the genealogical tree presented here is my own. * † * selim07 (2).pdf douglas gray, selim 7 (2000, for 1997): 5—31 fayttes of armes and of chyvalrye malory’s morte darthur, as caxton entitled it in his print of 1485, is well known and widely admired. this paper will try to relate it to an important part of its literary and cultural background, the fifteenth-century ‘literature of knighthood’ or ‘literature of nobility’, which is not well known and not admired at all. it was partly provoked by reading an examination script in which the candidate, discussing sir gawain and the green knight, remarked that ‘the fact that gawain’s armour freezes in the cold demonstrates the failu re of the code of chivalry as such’. i know that beneath the unfortunate word ing he (or she) was attempting to make an arguable point, but several things worried me. the tendency, for instance, to resort to rather absolute abstractions: the word code probably suggests something much more monolithic and legal than the not easily definable mélange of physical and ethical and practical ideals included under the term ‘chivalry’. it seemed to me also that the candidate probably thought the ‘chivalry’ was not only obviously insufficient and ‘flawed’-and therefore ought to be ‘criticised’ by any proper writer-but was also in decline, a symptom of the ‘waning of the middle ages’. i suspected that any celebration of the noble life would not be favourably received, and that works which ‘subverted’ it would certainly be preferred. i rather wanted to quote back a song from gilbert and sullivan’s iolanthe (which makes some gentle fun at the expense of the house of lords) when the lovesick lord tolloller and the peers plead: spurn not the nobly born with love affected nor treat with virtuous scorn the well-connected! high rank involves no shame, we boast an equal claim with him of humble name to be respected! ____________________________________________________________________ 6 … hearts just as pure and fair may beat in belgrave square as in the lowly air of seven dials. the majority of us, of course, are not nobly born, and do not share the enthusiasm of the medieval noble classes for warfare, hunting, and for ruling the lower classes as well as defending them. many of the nobly born loved fighting, whether in real wars or in the ritualised tournaments and pas d’armes, which were partly serious, partly ‘play’. they undoubtedly cherished their favoured position in the social hierarchy and their political power. no doubt their outlook was conservative and limited (sometimes deliberately). and the shortcomings and faults of actual fifteenth-century nobles are evident enough in chronicles and historical documents. warwic k the kingmaker was hardly a ‘parfit gentil knight’, and even the acknowledged ‘flowers of chivalry’ sometimes have distinct blots on their escutcheons. but what is important for the literary and cultural historian is to try to understand something of the role, tastes, and ideology of the english nobility (not only of the relatively few great and powerful families, but the lesser gentry who were becoming of particular importance in the literary culture)-as an audience for ‘courtly’ literature, as patrons, and, sometimes as authors or translators of it. ‘ideology’ is perhaps too grand a term for the overlapping and sometimes inconsistent patterns of thought involved ‘chivalry’ in all its variations (involving martial prowess, noble and courteous behaviour, piety and devotion), formal ‘religion’ (equally varied), and ‘learning’ (including occasionally the ‘new learning’ which was beginning to spread from italy). the english ‘literature of nobility’ (i.e. literature by, for, and concerning the noble classes) is an interestingly diverse web of works, forming a colourful background to ‘courtly’ fiction, of which the most characteristic form is the chivalric romance, still often read in french as well as in english, and, increasingly, in prose. the romance tradition was diverse and extensive, including not only the favourite old stories of arthur, alexander, troy and thebes, but the newer french and burgundian romances. in the later middle ages both social structures and the techniques of warfare were changing -although this is rarely directly reflected in romance, a form notoriously selective in ‘realism’. there we do not expect to find much about gunpowder or artillery, or the practicalities of active service -the ____________________________________________________________________ 7 provision of feathers for the archers of carts to carry the foodor the growing professionalism of soldiers and captains, or (in the hundred years war) the growing involvement of the civilian population and the shift from open warfare and great pitched battles to sieges of castles an towns.1 there were, however, some striking continuities: military orders of knighthood continue to be founded; chivalric personal encounters still take place in the midst of large campaigns. in the late medieval world some dissident voices (often, though not always, clerical ones) were raised against the excesses of war, and an anti-chivalric strand emerges in humanism which is the source of ascham’s condemnation of malory’s book for its ‘bold bawdry and open manslaughter’.2 there is popular burlesque (like the tourn ament of tottenham), and even within courtly romance some ironic and comic detachment -though that is usually fairly carefully ‘contained’ (as in the case of malory’s sir dinadan). courtly romance does not allow much space for voices expressing hostile or ‘subversive’ views -tough the bitter and sorrowful voices of the mothers of tristram and perceval do have a powerful resonancebut in the hands of its best practitioners it is made to reveal the horror as well as the glory of war. some of the strategies, techniques and problems of martial behaviour discussed in manuals are touched on in romances. there are also echoes and reflections of real-life situations and contemporary questions.3 reports of the death of chivalry in this period are greatly exaggerated. the continuing popularity of romance and of the related ‘literature of knighthood’ rather supports the view that there was ‘an indian summer of english chivalry’.4 it is significant that the period is flanked by the french text of frois sart’s chronicles (which end in 1400), a celebration of the ‘honourable enterprises, noble adventures and deeds of arms’ in the wars between france and england, and by its english translation by lord berners (printed 1523, 1525) of which the preface echoes froissart’s praise of the ‘famous acts’: 1 c. t. allmand, the hundred years’ war: england and france at war c.1300c.1450 (cambridge, 1985. see also allmand, ed., war, literature and politics in the late middle ages (liverpool, 1976). 2 robert p. adams, ‘bold bawdry and open manslaughter’, huntingdon library quarterly 23 (195960), 33-48. 3 examples include the middle english romance capystranus (the siege of belgrade), the french le jouvencel (the latter part of the hundred years war), the catalan tirant lo blanc (the siege of rhodes, 1444). 4 a. b. ferguson the indian summer of english chivalry (durham, nc, 1960). ____________________________________________________________________ 8 ‘what pleasure shall it be to the noble gentylmen of englande to se, beholde and rede the highe enterprises, famous ectes, and glorious dedes done and atchyved by their valyant aunceytours’.1 the chronicles are a good example of the limitations and of the breadth of sympathy of the ‘literature of nobility’. froissart is deeply committed to chivalric ideals, but also portrays with feeling the violence and horror of warfare -as in the black prince’s sack of limoges, in which three thousand men, women and children perished. there were captains and knights who were regarded as genuine ‘flowers of chivalry’, men who seemed to their contemporaries to embody its ideals. they were celebrated in ‘chivalric biographies’, sometimes a mixture of ro mance and chronicle. the best known is that by the ‘loyal serviteur’ of the chevalier bayard (1527), but there were others -of boucicaut, lalaing, la trémoille.2 the genre seems to have flourished in france: in england, apart from the account of the black prince by the chandos herald, the ‘flowers of chivalry’ -like sir walter manny (d. 1372) or sir john chandos (d. 1370) usually remain in the pages of the chroniclers.3 richard beauchamp, the earl of warwick (d. 1439), ‘the fadre of curteisy’, is commemorated by a splendid effigy on his tomb in his chapel in the church of st mary, warwick, and celebrated (long after his death) in a fine pictorial biography consisting of a series of ‘pageants’ from his life drawn in pencil and accompanied by explanatory commentaries, recording his ‘notable actes of chevalry and knyghtly demenaunce’. we see him being knighted, receiving the order of the garter, jousting, fighting, going on pilgrimage (and being honourably re ceived by sir baltirdam, ‘the soldans lieutenant’, who had heard that he was the descendent of sir guy of warwick, ‘whoes life they hadde there in bokes of their langage’), at calais meeting the emperor (who assures the king ‘that no prince cristyn, for wisdom, norture and manhode, hadde suche a no er knyght 1 ed. w. p. ker (london, 1901), i, p. 6; see george kane, ‘an accident of history: lord berner’s translation of froissart’s chronicles’, chaucer review 21 (1986), 217-225. 2 la tres ioyeuse plaisante et recreative histoire xomposée par le loyal serviteur des faiz gestes triumphes et prouesses du bon chevalier sans paour et sans reproche le gentil seigneur de bayart (ed. j. h. roman, paris 1878); le livre des fais du bon messire jehan le maingre dit boucicaut (ed. d. lalande, geneve, 1985); chastelain, livre des faits du bon messire jacques de lalaing, in oeuvres ed. kervyn de lettenhove, vol.8 (brussels, 1866); jean bouchet, le panegyric du chevallier sans reproche ou mémoires de la trémoille (1527, repr. paris, 1826). 3 the chandos herald is ed. m. k. pope and e. c. lodge (oxford, 1910). ____________________________________________________________________ 9 as he hadde of therle of warrewyk; addyng erto that, if al curtesye were lost, yet myght hit be founde ageyn on hym and so euer after, by the emperours auctorite, was called the fadre of curteisy’), and lying sick at rouen.1 an account of the acta of sir john fastolf (d. 1459), one of the last great english generals of the hundred years war, who had fought at agin court and rouen, was projected by his secretary william worcester, but only notes remain.2 in scotland (where the ‘heroic narrative, blending chronicle, epic and romance, seen in barbour’s bruce, had been continued in hary’s wallace (c. 1475-8) the poet dunbar promised to write the story of the vic tories of lord berbard stewart of aubigny, a famous scottish general in the service of the king of france, who played a prominent part in the invasions of italy and was praised as a ‘tres gentil et vertueux capitaine’ and a ‘grand chevalier sans reproche’. he visited scotland in 1508, but died in that same year. the longer poem remained unwritten, it seems, but we have and elo quent poem of welcome as well as a lament for this ‘flour of chevelrie’.3 the ‘literature of nobility’ contains some surprises for the modern reader. the work which gives me my title, the fayttes of armes and of chyualrye translated and printed by caxton in 1489-90 at the request of henry vii), specifically directed to ‘thende that euery gentylman born to armes & all manere men of werre captayns/ souldiours/ vytayllers & all other shold haue knowlege how they ought to behaue thym in the fayttes of warre & of bataylles’ is actually the work of a woman -the remarkable christine de pisan, whose books were well known among the literate and noble classes of fifteenth-century england.4 she is now better known for her other works, but her authorship of this one is perhaps not too surprising. she was an encyclopaedic, almost a ‘professional’ writer, and, like some of her male counterparts, ready to turn her hand to all kinds of subject at the request of a patron (in this case, ra ther vaguely, ‘noble men in thoffyce of armes’. she delicately alludes to the 1 ms bl cotton julius e iv, reproduced in a roxburghe club facsimile (1908). 2 k. b. mcfarlane, ‘william worcestre: a preliminary survey’, in j. conway davies, ed., studies presented to sir hilary jenkinson (oxford, 1957), 208-9. 3 douglas gray, ‘a scottish ‘flower of chivalry’ and his book’, words. wai-te-ata studies in english 4 (1974), 22-33. 4 ed. a. t. p. byles, eets 189 (london, 1932). see c. c. willard in essays in honor of louis f. solano ed. r. j. cormier and v. t. holmes (chapel hill, 1970). although christine makes a joke about herself as author of such a manual, i am not sure that the prologue is (a. barratt ed., women’s writng in middle english, london, 1992, p. 139) ‘a studied masterpiece of irony’. ____________________________________________________________________ 10 apparent unusualness of a woman writing this kind of material ‘this is a thyng not accustomed & out of vsage to wymen/ whiche comynly do not entremete but to spynne on the distaf and ocupie them in thynges of housold’but requests the noble state of chivalry not to take it amiss in the light of their lady minerva, who is said to have discovered the art of making harness of iron and steel.1 in fact, probably most of the ‘clerks’ who wrote similar treatises had as little actual experience of fighting as she did. it is a good and sensible work which seems to have been found useful. the french text of les faits d’armes survives in a number of mss and also made its way into print. like other books of this kind it is a compilation of ‘the doctryne gyuen by many auctors’, military advice drawn from a number of sources, classical and medieval. she uses the late latin epitoma rei militaris of vegetius, a work that was extremely popular in the middle ages (and es pecially in the later middle ages because of its discussion of attacking towns and castles), and the stratagemata of frontinus (first century ad), which contains historical anecdotes and exempla of use to generals. these treatises contain practical advice on a wide range of topics -sieges, truces, drawing up an army for battle, naval warfare, the use of spies, how to withdraw. christine adapts this with discrimination: thus she does not use the specifically roman technical information in vegetius (book ii). this material sometimes appears in translations of vegetius, but it is hard to see a sixteenth-century french general deriving much practical benefit from book ii, chapter 24, ‘comment on peult resis ter aux charriots a faulx et aux elephans en bataille’. she also made use of an equally popular medieval work, l’arbre des batailles, by the benedictine monk honoré bonet or bouve (c. 1343-c. 1400).2 the tree (‘l’arbre de deuil’) is sometimes pictured in the mss: ‘in its branches can be seen emperor and pope, rival kings, knights and serfs, all engaged in deadly conflict, while its branches and its trunk are drenched with blood’.3 bonet’s 1 and she was born in ‘grete grece’, whixh is now called apulia and calabria in italy (and christine is also ‘a woman ytalien’). christina in other words refers to minerva as ‘the goddes of armes’ (othea xc). in the city of ladies, among several references, she remarks (1, 38, 5) that nobles should remember ‘that the customs of bearing arms, of dividing armies into battalions, and of fighting in ordered ranks, came to them from a woman and were given to them by a woman’. 2 it was translated into scots as the buke of the law of armys by sir gilbert hay (1456), ed. j. h. stevenson, gilbert of the haye’s prose manuscript, vol. 1, sts 44 (edinburgh, 1901). 3 byles, p. xlvii. ____________________________________________________________________ 11 sorrow at the state of christendom probably struck a re sponsive chord in christine, who elsewhere laments the sad state of france, and is clearly no lover of war for its own sake. bonet’s interest in the laws of war and his relatively humane attitudes also find and echo. his condemnation of treachery (as against lawful stratagems) is emphasised by an addition -how can one trust that a safe conduct will be secure nowadays, ‘seeyng the lytel trouthe and fydelyte that this day renneth thrughe al the worlde’1 (a sentiment with which malory would have sympathised). like bonet, chris tine is opposed to pillaging: soldiers should be properly paid. sometimes she dis agrees with him. bonet allows the slaying of prisoners in the heat of battle; christine specifies only those that present a danger to the prince. she in cludes information from contemporary ‘wyse knyghtes that be expert in the sayde thynges of armes’ and she adds references to contemporary campaigns. she prefers peaceful negotiation, and quotes approvingly the wise king of france charles v (whom she greatly admires): when men said to him that it was ‘a gee shame… that with money he recouered his fortresses that som of his enemyes held and kept from hym wrongfully/ seeyng that he was of might grete ynoughe for to haue recouered thym by strengthe’, he replied, ‘it seemith me… that that which may be bought ought not to be bought with mannys blode’.2 at the same time she can imagine vividly the excitement of des perately defending a town against attackers (expanded from a bald statement in vegetius).3 like many others, she laments modern decadence –the ancients did not have their children brought up in courts to learn pride and lechery, nor to wear wanton clothing. young men should be educated for knighthood. out of her sources she weaves a fascinating mosaic of information (on sieges, guns and gunpowder, the stores required for a garrison of two hundred men), advice (e.g. on the problem of civilians –should an english student at paris be taken prisoner and held to ransom?).4 caxton had already printed before this ‘art of war’ another military book, the book of the ordre of chyualry (1483-5, dedicated to richard iii), which he translated from the french le livre de l’ordre de chevalerie, an expanded 1 byles, pp. 247-8. 2 byles, pp. 128-9. 3 see byles, pp. 175-7. 4 byles, pp. 226-9. ____________________________________________________________________ 12 version of a work by the catalan mystic and martyr ramón lull (1235-1315).1 this too was a popular and influential work. it is not a general treatise on war but a more narrowly focused disquisition on knighthood. it emphasises the connection of priesthood with knighthood and the symbolic significance of the knight’s weapons and armour (his spear is truth, his helmet shame, etc.). it was devised, it says, by an old knight who had become a hermit (similar to those found in the pages of malory), and given to a squire who was journeying to a court to be knighted. the various chapters discuss the beginning of chivalry and its ‘office’, how a squire should learn from a knight (as he does in a number of chivalric romances). a knight is a ‘defender of the faith and a defender of his lord; he must hunt, and exercise himself, but also follow virtue, for he should have courage of soul rather than strength of body’. lull’s vision of an ideal knight (combining virtue with social duty) is significant for the ‘shared ideology’ of the ‘literature of nobility’: ‘to a knyght apperteyneth to speke nobly and curtoisly/ and to haue fayr harnoys and to be wel cladde/ and to holde a good household/ and an honest hows… curtosye and chyvalry concorden togyder/ for vylaynous and foule wordes ben ageynst thordre of chyvalrye/ pryualte and acqueyntaunce of good folke/ loyalte & trouthe/ hardynesse/ largesse/ honeste/ humylyte/ pyte.’2 caxton says that he translated the book at the request of ‘a gentyl and noble esquye’, and goes on to lament how in these late days the order of chivalry has been forgotten. formerly the noble acts of the knights of england were renowned throughout the world, and the thought of king arthur and the knights of the round table whose noble acts ‘occupye so many large volumes’ provokes a famous exclamation: ‘o ye knyghtes of englond where is the custome an vsage of noble chyualry that was vsed in tho dayes/ what do ye now/ but go to the baynes & playe at dyse…’. they should read, he says, the noble volumes of the grail, lancelot, tristram, perceforest, percival, gawain, and many others; and recall the noble acts of later times –in what is a roll-call of english ‘floweres of chivalry’: richard the lionheart, edward i, and edward iii and his nobles sons, sir robert knolles, sir john hawkwood, sir john chandos, sir walter manny (‘read froissart’), and that victorious and 1 ed. a. t. p. byles, eets 168 (london, 1926). there is an independent scottish version by gilbert hay, the buke of the order of knychthede, ed. j. h. stevenson, gilbert of the haye’s prose manuscript, vol. 2, sts 62 (edimburgh, 1914). bl ms harley 6149 has a scottish version of caxton, compiled by adam loutfut (1494). 2 byles, p. 113. ____________________________________________________________________ 13 noble king harry the fifth and the captains under him –his noble brethren, montacute the earl of salisbury, ‘and many other whoos names shyne gloryously by their vertuous noblesse & actes that they did in thonour of thordre of chyualry’. how many knights nowadays, he asks, have the use and the exercise of a knight? caxton recommends to the king the holding of regular tourn eys, and to knights the reading of the treatise. it is an interesting testimony to the relevance which this material was thought to have, and to emotional aftermath of the loss of france (significantly richard iii is given his full title, ‘kyng of englond and of fraunce’) and the nostalgic memory of the great english knights of the past. both of these treatises were published after malory’s book was written, but their french originals were available earlier, together with many other examples of this kind of literature. and ‘arts of war’ continued to be written in the following century –by lord bernard stewart, who, helped by his secretary, made additions to la nef des batailles by robert de barsac or barsat, sometimes alluding to his own campaigns;1 by machiavelli, and others. around these rather specialised books there is a much larger group of works of advice and ‘good counsel’ (sometimes the literary equivalents of the actual wise counsellors so prized in medieval polity). these include the ‘court esy books’ that offer training in polite behaviour, good manners, and etiquette for young gentlemen and the young of the ‘emerging’ gentry.2 these also live on into the sixteenth century. although the english examples are generally very ‘practical’ and narrowly focused, much less self-conscious and intellectual than famous later italian examples such as castiglione’s cortegiano, they do give hints of ‘renaissance self-fashioning’ and of the high idealised courtesy of the faerie queene (courtesy, says one, came down from heaven when gabriel greeted mary). there are also ‘mirrors for princes’, books of advice for rulers, in the tradition of such influential manuals as de regimine principum of giles of rome or the secreta secretorum.3 these are common and were, it seems, read avidly: although the discussions of 1 gray, pp. 29-32. 2 a number are printed in f. j. furnivall, the babees book, eets 32 (london, 1868). see the study by jonathan nicholls, the matter of courtesy (woodbridge, 1983). 3 cf. k. bornstein, ‘reflections of plitical theory and political fact in fifteenthcentury mirrors for the prince’ in medieval studies in honor of lillian herlands hornstein ed. j. b. bessinger and r. r. raymo (new york, 1976), pp. 76-85. ____________________________________________________________________ 14 governance are primarily designed for kings and princes, the works seem to have been widely used for their practical general advice. this material oft en makes its way into other literary forms –thus the fifteenth-century scottish romance lancelot of the laik contains a long disquisition on the duties of a ruler. there is an even larger group of ‘educational’ works, concerned with more general moral advice. these are often neglected or ignored, but seem to form a significant part of the ‘literature of nobility’. here we find noblemen and gentlemen as translators and authors, and are able to place them in the intellectual currents of the time. examples include the dicts and sayings of the philosophers translated by earl rivers (anthony woodville, formerly lord scales, and an important political figure), printed by caxton in 1477.1 rivers says that the translation was suggested to him by louis de bretailles in 1473 on a pilgrimage to compostela. the french original, the dits moraulx of tignonville, comes ultimately from an arabic book, mokhtar el-hikam, which was translated into spanish in the first half of the thirteenth century and then into latin. it is a collection of the sayings and ‘sentences’ and ‘examples’ of famous ancient philosophers, pythagoras, for instance, says to an old man who was ashamed to learn, ‘whi hast thu shame for to lerne? cunnynge is more worth to the in the ende of thi dayes thanne it was in the begynnynge’. another english translation was made by stephen scrope (d. 1472) for his father-in-law sir john falstolf (a version which was corrected by william worcester, fastolf’s secretary and –probably scrope’s literary executor). scrope also translated another work of christine de pisan which was extremely popular in late medieval england.2 the epistre othéa (written c. 1400) is an encyclopaedic guide to the figures of ancient myth and legend presented in the form of a letter from othea, goddess of prudence, to the hero hector, offering him (and the medieval ‘good knight’) moral in struction in the ideals of chivalry, earthly and spiritual. its treatment of the ancient world owes nothing to the new humanist philological and archaeological learning of italy; in its enthusiastic engagement with the matter of the old stories and 1 see the facsimile edition by william blades (london 1877). other versions are ed c. f. bülher, eets 211 (london, 1941). four of the surviving mss contain pictures of the philosophers (e.g. diogenes with his barrel and a book and pencase). 2 ed. c. f. bülher, eets 264 (london, 1970). ____________________________________________________________________ 15 with their contemporary relevance it belongs to an older and wider tradition of ‘medieval humanism’.1 william worcester also stands in this tradition: ‘he read the classics as he studied modern authors, to use what they taught him. he was less interested in their manner than in their content’.2 he was a layman, a towns man’s son who may have belonged to the fringes of the gentry, and spent a busy life in the service of fastolf. he was an antiquarian -his itineraries foreshadow the great achievements of the following century and also a translator he turn ed a french version of cicero’s de senectute into english for his noble patron. his most direct contribution to the ‘literature of nobility’ however, is a very interesting one-the boke of noblesse, a work of vernacular propaganda which urges the revival of chivalry and the resumption of the war in france3. it seems to have been twice revised: probably originally designed to encourage henry vi to continue the warlike policy of his father, then revised for the yorkists in 1472 just before the hostilities were resumed, and finally with some additions offered to edward iv in 1475. it contains notable exempla of courage and chivalry in the manner of the treatises discussed above, uses a good deal of their traditional matter, and discusses many of the same ques tions: when it is lawful to make war on those of christian blood; the proper payment of soldiers; the need for young men to exercise themselves, etc. he cites ‘vegetius in his booke of chevalrie’ and christine de pisan (who, he thinks, wrote bonet’s tree of battles). the book’s bellicose tone and fierce reiteration of the english claims no doubt reflect the views of fastolf himself, who is referred to once or twice as ‘myne author’. his prudent provisioning of his men (providing enough corn for six months) is praised, and there is (in the account of publius decius a nice anecdote about the distinction fastolf used to make between a ‘hardy man’ and a ‘manly man’: hyt ys to remember that i hafe herd myne autor fastolfe sey, whan he had yong knights and nobles at his solace, how that there be twey maner condicions of manly men, and one ys a manly man called, another ys an hardye man; but he seyd the manly man ys 1 see douglas gray, ‘humanism and humanisms in late medieval literature’ in sergio rossi and dianella savoia, italy and the english renaissance (milan, 1989), and the refernces given there. 2 mcfarlane, p. 214. 3 ed. j. g. nichols (london 1860). ____________________________________________________________________ 16 more to be commended, more then the hardy man; for the hardy man that sodenly, without dicrecion of gode avysement, avauncyth hym in the felde allone, but he levyth hys felyshyp destrussed. and the manly man, ys polcie is that, or he avaunce hym and hys felyshyp at skirmisshe or sodeyn recountre, hee wille so discretely avaunce hym that he wille entend to hafe the ovyr hand of hys adversarye, and safe hymself and hys felyshyp.1 the english claims are supported by a list of the english triumphs of the past and (like caxton’s later ordre of chyualry) examples of great heroes, including arthur, edmund ironside, william the conqueror, richard the lionheart, edward i, edward iii, and henry v (to whose conquest of normandy a chapter is devoted). his rhetorical ‘exortacion of a courageus dis posicion for a reformation of a wrong done’ again makes us think of caxton: o then, ye worshipfulle men of the englisshe nacion, which bene des cendid of the noble brutis bloode of troy, suffre yey not than youre highe auncien couragis to be revalid ne desceived by youre said adversaries of fraunce a t this tyme, neither in tymr to come; ne in this manner to be rebucked and put aback, to youre uttermost deshonoure and reproche in the sighte of straunge nacions… for were ye not sometyme tho that thoroughe youre grete prowesse, corages, feersnes , manlinesse, and of strenght overlaid and put in subgeccion the gret myghte and power of the feers and puissant fighters of alle strunge nacions that presumed to set ayenst this lande?2 from quite a different tradition comes the declamacion of noblesse, a translation of a humanist dialogue on true nobility (the nobility of soul as against that of lineage) by buonacorso da montemagno made by john tip toft, earl of worcester (d.1470), who also translated cicero’s de amicitia.3 he had been at oxford with william worcester, but was of course from the high 1 nichols, p. 65. 2 nichols p. 9. as in the case of caxton’s lament quoted above, this is not concerned with the failure of any ‘code’, but with men’s failure to live up to the ideals of chivalry. 3 see r. j. mitchell, john tiptoft (london, 1938); douglas gray, ‘some preelizabethan examples of an elizabethan art’ in edward chaney and peter mack, eds., england and the continental renaissance: essays in honour of j. b. trapp (woodbridge, 1990). ____________________________________________________________________ 17 nobility. he became constable of england (and noted for his ruthlessness) and composed ordinances (1466) for the conduct of tournaments. he was apparently the first english secular lord after humphrey, duke of gloucester, to interest himself in the new italian humanism. on his way to the holy land he visited florence and attended some lectures. he collected books: those surviving include humanistic mss of newly discovered works by lucretius and tacitus, a humanistic commentary on juvenal alongside devotional works and lydgate’s fall of princes.1 tiptof’s library is distinctly different in content and taste from the typical english collections of the ‘literature of nobility’ of which we have a number of examples, some from the top of the social scale, some from the households of the gentry. the fine ms bl royal 15 e vi, which sir john talbot, the first earl of shrewsbury, and a famous ‘flower of chivalry’, presented to margaret of anjou when he scorted her to england for her marriage to henry vi in 1445, is a compendium of french works probably representative of the tastes of both recipient and donor. its contents include chansons de geste and ro mances, christine de pisan’s livre des faits d’armes, bonet’s l’arbre des batailles, a french translation of de regimine principium, chartier’s breviaire des nobles, genealogies and chronicles, and the statutes of the order of the garter, of which talbot was a knight. another splendid ms, bl royal 14 e ii, made in bruges for edward iv, contains le chemin de vaillance, by jean de couecy, christine de pisan’s l’epistre othea, chartier’s breviaire, and l’odre de chevalerie, the french version of lull’s treatise. from the east anglian gentry, we have an interesting example in the ‘grete boke’ (now ms bl landsowne 285) of john paston ii (d.1479). his father john i (d.1466) had established connections with fastolf, and on his death was named as one of the executors, an appointment which led to long litigation with others executors. john ii claimed fastolf’s caister state. he was a courtier, and in 1468 was in bruges with his brother. john iii, for the marriage of margaret of york to charles the bold. (the magnificant spectacles moved his brother to say in a letter, ‘i herd never of non lyek to it save kyng artourys cort’).2 john ii was interested in tournaments and in books. one he 1 see r. weiss, ‘the library of john tiptoft, earl of worcester’, bodleian quarterly record 8 (193538), 157-64, 234-5. 2 the paston letters and papers of the fifteenth century ed. n. davis (oxford, 1976), vol. 1, no. 330. ____________________________________________________________________ 18 possessed, ‘a boke de othea’ is perhaps the translation by scrope. he also possessed ‘tully de senectute and de amicitia’, and a copy of caxton’s print of the game and playe of the chesse (1475), an encyclopaedic ‘educational’ work.1 his ‘grete boke’ in particular shows his interest in chivalry and courtly literature and his connections with noble figures such as fastolf and anthony woodwille.2 compiled under fastolf’s directions, it is a commonplace book which includes such items as the form of the ceremony for creating knights of the bath, ordinances of war made by henry v and montacute the earl of salisbury, instructions for organising ‘jousts of peace’, the feat of arms performed by richard beauchamp, earl of warwick, against the three french knights at guines in 1415, and other challenges, feats of arms, tournaments and jousts and pas d’armes (e. g. at smithfield in 1467 between anthony woodville, lord scales, and antoine, grand bastard of burgundy, at bruges in 1468 (the year the paston brothers were there) the challenge of antoine, grand bastard of burgundy, to the pas à l’abre d’or), together with more substantial works an english translation of vegetius, and a book of governance of kings and princes (lydgate and burgh’s secrets of old philosophers from the secreta secretorum). against this background caxton’s evident interest in the ‘literature of nobility’ does not seem at all strange. it reflects the tastes of his patrons (nobles, knights, squires) and his own, and forms a substantial part of his publishing ‘list’. besides the treatises and books already mentioned, it in cludes ‘courtesy books’, moral works (like the translation by earl rivers of the moral proverbs of christine de pisan), the royal book (‘a book for a king’, but done at the request of a mercer, and therefore like other ‘mirrors for princes’ read by a much wider audience), chronicles, romances of troy (including his eneydos), and chivalric romances, including malory.3 it is to the fictional part of the ‘literature of knighthood’ that we must re turn. this is not as entirely separate and clearly demarcated as modern readers might suppose. the books of counsel we have been discussing have an 1 ed. w. e. a. axon (london, 1883). 2 bl ms lansdowne 265, ed. g. lester, sir john paston’s ‘grete boke’. a descriptive catalogue with an intro of british library ms lansdowne 285 (cambridge: brewer, 1984). 3 on the ‘chivalric’ additions made by caxton to hes own translations, see n. f. blake, caxton and his world (london, 1969), pp. 129131. ____________________________________________________________________ 19 obvious connection with the ideology of knighthood that infuses the chivalric romance. some romances (like lancelot of the laik ) have a closer connection. others draw both on such books and on real life experience. the best known example is le jouvencel of jean de bueil (1406-1477),1 an ‘autobiographical’ romance and a roman à clef, in which places and persons can be identified (the ‘grand capitaine’ is la hire, the jouvencel jean de bueil, baudoyn the duke of bedford, etc.). it is also a kind of moral bildungsroman in which a young poor gentleman comes to the highest honours through good conduct, patience and good fortune. it contains much advice on martial matters, and it also gives a sense of closeness to the actual combats of the hundred years war -in a surprise attack the soldiers crawl forward with their helmets covered so that they do not shine. it shares the material found in the practical handbooks, but endows it not only with a sense of realism but also with an enthusiastic , almost mystical, commitment to the ideals of comradeship and ‘felyship’. its famous eulogy of the just war and the soldier’s calling, which modern readers often find disturbing, would no doubt have been endorsed by many of the late medieval ‘flowers of chivalry’: war is a joyous thing. in it you hear and see many fine things, and learn much that is good. when it is in a good cause, it is just… and when war is undertaken in this cause it is a delightful calling, and good for young men. for they are loved by god and by the world. in war one loves and is loved… there comes a sweetness to the heart of loyalty and pity to see one’s friend who so valiantly exposes his body in order to accomplish the commandment of our creator. and then you are prepared to go and die or live with him, and for your love never abandon him. in this there comes a delight such that no one who has not experienced it can comprehend… there is certainly nothing as explicit as this in malory’s book, and when we turn to it from the ‘literature of knighthood’, although eventually we come to see some underlying similarities of great importance, at first it is the differences which we notice. it is not filled with disquisitions on tactics and the art of war. still less is it any kind of didactic manual. nor is it a roman à clef. attempts to find any close correspondence between actual english cam1 ed. c. favre and l. lecestre (societé de l’histoire de la france, pares, 1887). the work is described by its editors as ‘sous sa forme romanesque, un véritable traité d’education militaire et morale, appuyé d’exemples et d’allusions historiques’. ____________________________________________________________________ 20 paigns or political events and the events of the narrative have not been successful. no doubt some passages may well have been written with some thought to the troubled english situation (like the famous passage on the in stability of englishmen) but they are rather general (and safely so?). as peter field has said, ‘it is easier and more compatible with the generosity of spirit that informs the morte darthur to suppose that malory’s sympathies were aroused less by causes than by individuals behaving chivalrously in difficult circumstances’.1 it is perhaps legitimate to suppose a particular depth of feeling behind some remarks like ‘thenne stood the reame in grete stronge, and many wende to have ben king’, or the sympathetic introduction of the poor knight balin, or perhaps the tribulations of tristram as a prisoner.2 peter field has pointed out that at the end of his book malory added an allusion to crusading, where after lancelot’s death he made hector, bors, and his other companions go to the holy land as lancelot had already commanded, where they did ‘many bataylles upon the myscreantes, or turkes. and there they dyed upon a good fryday for goddes s ake’. it seems relevant, as field notes, that malory’s powerful uncle sir robert malory was prior of the hospital of st john of jerusalem from 1432 until his death in 1439/40, a great magnate and a crusader.3 even after peter field’s research, many questions about malory’s life and his role in the events of his time remain unanswered. the legal records do not exactly suggest a ‘flower of chivalry’, a ‘chevalier sans peur et sans re proche’, but it is not clear that the alternative extreme, a picturesque ruffian sitting in prison writing a nostalgic and idealised book of chivalry is any more likely. a member of the warwickshire gentry (and involved in characteristic networks of links with neighbours, kinsmen, and lords), perhaps with some military experience in gascony, he seems to have been ambitious and influential, and was increasingly involved (in a period when private quarrels overlapped with, or became, political ones) in national politics. the remarkable series of charges brought against him from 1443 would, if all proved true, add up to quite a criminal record even in those turbulent times. mostly they 1 peter field, the life and times of sir thomas malory (cambridge: d. s. brewer, 1993), p. 124. 2 field, pp. 1245. all quotations from malory are taken from the edition of e. vinaver (oxford. 1947); references are to the page numbers in vinaver. 3 field, pp. 8082. ____________________________________________________________________ 21 were not brought to trial -in those days accusations were easily and fre quently made. moreover, it is sometimes difficult to know if what is called theft or extortion is in fact that, or rather a forcible repossession (perhaps on the instructions of a superior). some charges, certainly, are exaggerated; others conjure up some entertaining vignettes -as the occasion on which (allegedly) he and his men led off seven cows, three hundred and thirty-five sheep and a cart through the quiet lanes of warwickshire. he seems to have acquired the reputation of a troublemaker, and perhaps more importantly, of one who could raise a body of armed men. like others, he followed different lords in turn. his various imprisonments seem to be politically motivated. the few, though flamboyant, ‘facts’ of his biography do not help very much in placing him in the cultural patterns of the time, beyond demonstrating that he led a different kind of life from that of a gentleman with chivalric interests like john paston ii or the great lords like rivers and tiptoft. his own book however does give us a few leads. not surprisingly, there is no hint of the intense interest in classical literature characteristic of a humanist like tiptoft, or even of the more practical engagement with if found in william worcester. this may be partly due to the nature of malory’s sources, but not entirely, i suspect. the nearest he comes to the topic of ‘true nobility’ not based on lineage is a remark of balin: ‘a, fayre damesell, … worthynes and good tacchis and also good dedis is nat only ain araymente, but manhode and worship ys hyd within a mannes person; and many a worshipfull knyght ys nat knowyn unto all people’ (63). consistently, ‘manhode and worship’ are qualities expected in those of noble birth (though they are not always found). noble birth may be ‘hyd within a mannes person’, but is there to be discovered -as it is in the case of sir gareth (where gawain and lancelot -but not kayare acute enough to recognise it early). sir torre, the son of pellinore and a peasant woman, derives his prowess, according to arthur, from his father. ‘manhode and worship’ and the other qualities that make up ‘chivalry’ are central concerns of the whole book.1 the most obvious, and the most important, difference between malory and the majority of the authors of the manuals is that he was a creative artist, who made an original work out of his translation of french and english books. and he was a creative artist of a very special kind. he was not an in 1 see the fine study by andrew lynch, malory’s book of arms (woodbridge, 1997). ____________________________________________________________________ 22 tellectual writer, with the studied self-consciousness of a chaucer, but one whose imagination was intensely dramatic. his own general reflections, when they occur, are not always very clear. much clearer and much more impressive is what emerges from his dramatic scenes -the confrontations and the reactions of characters, what actually happens, and what the deeds of men reveal. (it will be by now evident that ‘deeds’ -acts, faits, etc.is a key term and a key concept in the literature of knighthood). this, of course, means that it is not easy to extract a clear, unified, and coherent ‘ideology’ from the book, and very difficult to separate malory’s ethics or ideas from his literary techniques, structures, or characteristic features of style.1 what emerges is not a fully consistent ‘ethic’, but rather emotional and dramatic mirror or a chivalric world, a limited world, but one which is intensely perceived and felt . caxton’s enthusiastic preface to malory’s book fits in into the ‘literature of knighthood’ and into his own programme of the publication of chivalric works. acknowledging his audience’s request ‘from ‘many noble and dyvers gentylmen of tys royame of englond’) for the printing of the stories of the grail and of arthur, ‘whyche ought moost to be remembred emonge us englysshemen tofore al other crysten kynges’, and disposing of the ques tions about arthur’s historicity, he presents malory’s book as a model: … to the entente that noble man may see and lerne the noble actes of chyvalrye, the jentyl and vertuous dedes that somme knyghtes used in tho dayes, by whyche they came to honour, and how ther that were vycious were punysshed and ofte put to shame and re buke; humbly bysechyng al noble lordes and ladyes wyth al other estates, of what estate or degree they ben of, that shal see and rede in this seyd book and werke, that they take the good and honest actes in their rememnbraunce,and to folowe the same… it will be noted that he has ‘widened’ his audience to accord with the known readership of the literature of knighthood, and that he suggests an explicitly moral reading. but he also senses the inclusiveness of the book’s mo ral world. ‘for herein mey be seen noble chyvalrye, curtosye, humanyté, frendlynesse, hardynesse, love, frendshyp, cowardyse, murdre, hate, vertue, and synne… 1 see lynch 1256. ____________________________________________________________________ 23 what first strikes the reader of malory is his highly distinctive style and manner. he uses a limited vocabulary like that of his thirteenth-century french originals (from our point of view it is fortunate that he used these rather than the more elaborate french and burgundian romances fashionable in his own day), and by constant rhythmical repetition produces a style that is both mesmerising and emotional, and which gives a curious emphasis to certain ‘charged’ key terms of value. sometimes this is dome in a way which suggests almost a musical pattern of emphasis. when gareth defends himself to the king for having left his fellowship to help sir lancelot we have an elaborate descant on ‘worshyp’: ‘my lorde’, seyde sir garethe, ‘he made me knyght, and whan i saw hym so hard bestad, methought hit was my worshyp to helpe hym. for i saw hym do so muche dedis of armys, and so many noble knyghtes ayenste hym, that whan i undirstode that he was sir launcelot du lake i shamed to se so many good knyghtes ayenste hym alone’. ‘now, truly’, seyde kynge arthur unto sir gareth, ‘ye say well, and worshypfully have ye done, and to youreselff grete worshyp. and all the dayes of my lyff’, seyde kynge arthure unto sir gareth, ‘wyte you well i shall love you and truste you the more battir. for ever hit ys’, seyde kynge arthure, ‘a worshypfull knyghtes dede to helpe and sucoure antother worshypfull knyght whan he seeth hym in daungere. for ever a worshypfull man woll be lothe to se a worshypfull man shamed, and he that ys of no worshp and medelyth with cowardise never shall he shew jantilves nor for maner of goodnes where he seeth a man in daungere, for than woll a cowarde never shew mercy. and allwayes a good man woll do ever to another man as he wolde be done to hymselff’. (1114) the episode (which is a dramatic realisation of a chivalric doctrine found in the manuals) is brought to a conclusion by great feasting, and a remark from the narrator which seems to combine approbation with a hint of melancholy, nostalgia and, perhaps, bitterness: ‘and he that was curteyse, trew, and faythefull to hys frynde was that tyme cherysshed’. the reiteration of these words which embody chivalric norms emphasise the deeply felt values of a limited noble class, but also have a wider interest ____________________________________________________________________ 24 for ‘al other estates’ (as implied at the end of arthur’s speech) celebrating more generally noble and heroic qualities, letting us, as mark lambert says, ‘recognise more clearly in ourselves, not what true nobility is, but what it is like to view some kind of nobility as the centre and gauge of experience.’1 there are occasional general ‘statements’ from the narrator or from a character, ranging from malory on ‘vertuouse love’or arthur’s charge to his knights never to do outerage nothir morthir, and allwayes to fle treson, and to gyff mercy unto hym that askith mercy, uppon payne of forfiture of their worship and lordship of kynge arthure for evirmore; and allwayes to do ladyes, damesels, and jantilwomen and wydowes socour: extrengthe hem in hir ryghtes, and never to enforce them uppon payne of dethe. also that no man take no batayles in a wrongeful quarell for no love ne for no wo rdlis goodis… (120) (which is probably the nearest thing in the book to a ‘code’ of chivalry) to proverbs or remarks on matters of war. (sir john falstolf would have approved of the emphasis put by arthur and tristram on the value of prudence: ‘youre corrage and youre hardynesse nerehande had you destroyed, for and ye had turned agayne ye had loste no worshyp, for i calle hit but foly to abyde whan knyghtes bene overmacched’ (217); ‘mangode is nat worth but yf hit be medled with wysdome’ (700). more often, however, ‘sentence’ emerges from scenes, actions, what goes without saying. the voice of the narrator often sounds like that of a chronicler, sometimes blending with those of the characters, often sounding as if he was an eyewitness of the events he presents. ‘wit ye well i saw it done’ says the mysterious knight at the begin ning of a connecticut yankee at king arthur’s court: twain, the great paro dist of malory, has unerringly seized on a key feature of his technique. readers are carried along as if mes merised by this truth-telling voice with its insistent, often formulaic, repetitions of key-words and patterns. the syntax is simple and often paratactic. there is often ‘an impression of careful, accurate record -keeping’.2 1 mark lambert, malory: style and vision in le morte arthur (new haven, 1975), p. ix. see p. e. tucker, ‘chivalry in the morte’ in j. a. w. bennett, essays on malory (oxford, 1963). 2 lambert, p. 49. cf. lynch (p. 31), ‘the formulaic nature of the descreption functions as a guarantee of authority; the story follows an approved course, and ____________________________________________________________________ 25 the formulaic similes and phrases used in battle scenes (‘hurteled togydirs lyke two rammes’, ‘hurteled togedyrs as two wylde bullys’, etc.) give a plain generalised background to the violent actions, but one which is often suffused with emotion. and just as the characteristic plain and limited vocabulary allows malory sometimes to achieve a special effect by the use of and unusual word, so it is here with a suddenly vivid or realistically violent detail -arthur ‘gaff hym suche a buffette on his hede that the bloode com oute at hes erys, nose and mowthe’. a precise circumstantial detail will have the same function: (during a pause in the fighting) ‘they sette hem downe upon two molehyllys ther besydys the fyghtynge place, and aythier of them umlaced othir helmys, and toke the colde wynde’ (323). these are carefully used to build up the scene of horror at the end of balin and balan ‘thenne balan yede on al four feet and handes, and put of the helme of his broder, and myght not knowe hym by the vysage, it was so ful of hewen and bledde…’ (90). by this curious combination of the formulaic and the realistic, battle scenes are made genuinely exciting, not only because the outcome often hangs in the balance, but because we are made to share the reactions and the comments of participants and bystanders (and the occasional emotional choric exclamation of the narrator), and sometimes the thoughts of the knights themselves: ‘so at that tyme com in the knyght with the two swerdis and hes brothir, but they dud so mervaylously that the kynge and all the knyghtes mervayled of them. and all they that behelde them seyde they were sente frome hevyn as angels other devilles frome helle. and kynge arthure seyde hymself they were the doughtyeste knyghtes that ever he sawe, for they gaff such strokes that all men had wondir of hem… but allwayes kynge lotte hylde hym everin the fore-fronte and dud merveylous dedis of armys; for all his oste was borne up by nys hondys, for he abode all knyghtes. alas, he myght nat endure, the whych was grete pité!’. (76-7) malory can catch the excitement and the emotional tension of an encounter: simulates a general judgement shared by the knightly peer group in response to known events’. ____________________________________________________________________ 26 and than they foughte togiders, that the noyse and the sowne range by the watir and woode. wherefeore kynge ban oand bors mede hem redy and dressed thire shyldis and harneysse, and were so currageous that thir enemyes shhoke and byverd for egirnesse. and there are moments when, as in the jouvencel, we are made to feel close to actual medieval warfare, as when ‘the scowte-wacche by hir oste cryed: ‘lordis, to armes! for here be oure enemyes at youre honde!’’, or at the last battle when the pillagers come into the field to despoil the bodies of the dead.1 the battle scenes, it must be stressed, though not to the taste of many modern readers are absolutely central to the unfolding of the epic tale and to the creation of its emotional and moral world. there is often, alongside the horror and the suffering, a sense of exhilaration at the ‘merveillous dedes of armes’: so forewithalle kynge arthur sette upon hem in their lodgyng, and syre bawdewyn, syrekay, and syr brastias slewe on the right hand and on the lyfte hand, that if was merveylle; and alweyes kynge arthur on horsback lsyd on with a swerd and dyd maerveillous dedes of armes, that many of the kynges had grete joye of his dedes and hardynesse. malory’s sources presented him with a variety of military encounters, which by implication contain a number of the topics discussed in the manuals of the art of war. besides the individual fights, the common stock of romance, there are jousts and tournaments (sometimes large ones), mêlées, ambushes, sieges,2 and great pitched battles. for the large battles we are sometimes given an indication of the numbers involved. for instance, at the beginning 1 malory picks up this vivid detail from le morte arthur: the pillaging of the dead was a feature of medieval warfare, often casually recorded. froissart notes that when the king of france’s men look for the body of philip van artevelde after the battle of roosebeke (1382) the dead ‘had already been stripped from head to foot’. later, at flodden (1513), it was reported to wolsey that ‘king, bishops, lordes, knights, nobles, and others were not so soon slain but forthwith despioled out of thair harnais and array and lefte lying naked in the felde’. 2 see malcolm hebron, the medieval siege. theme and image in middle english romance (oxford, 1997). in malory sieges mostly serve as a background to other encounters, but there is some descriptive detail: ‘ther was many pavylions and tentys and a fayre castell, and there was muche smoke and grete notse’ (319); at the siege of joyous gard the defenders issue out to battle; at benwick ladders are set up. ____________________________________________________________________ 27 of the book the kings and their supporters hostile to arthur raise a great army: ‘hir hole oste was of clene men of armys: on horseback was fully fyffty thousand, and on foote ten thousand of good mennes bodyes’ (26). occasionally the disposition of an army is mentioned: sir tristam ‘lete his oste be deaparted in six batailles, and ordayned sir dynas the seneschall to have the voward, and the other good knights to rule the remenaunte’ (621). there are references to the ‘searching’ of wounds by surgeons, to foraging and ‘foreryders’, and a number of appreciative comments ‘that was well stryken’, seyde kynge arthure (129), ‘the rede knyghte was a wyly knyght in fyghtying, and that taught bewmaynes to be wise’ (323). the qualities of the good knight include physical courage, strength and athleticism (all of which have to be ‘proved’). the few detailed references imply something of an ideal promising young warrior described by christine de pisan (deriving from vegetius) ‘of whom the eyen and spirites were open and moevable/ that had a streyght hede a larg e grest grete sholders and well shapen armes long and bygge and wel made… bygge thyes/ leggis streyght… aboue al othir thyng… the vigour and courage and … the swift ness of the body…’ 1 thus when torre appears before the king he can be re cognised as a potential king: ‘he is ‘a fayre yonge man of eyghtene yere of age’, bigger than his brothers, and says aries the cowherd, ‘woll nat laboure for nothynge that my wyff and i may do, but allwey he woll be shotynge, ao casting dartes, and glad for to se batayles and to beholde knyghtes’ ‘than the kynge behelde hym faste and saw he was passyngly well made of his yerys’ (483). sir lamorak impresses tristam in battle because he is ‘so bygge and so well-brethed’, and tristam echoes this when he laments lamorak’s death: ‘hit was over grete pité, for i dare say he was the clennyst-myghted man and the beste-wynded of his ayge that was on lyve. for i knew hym that he was one of the best knyghtes that ever i mette wythal but yf hit were sir launcelot’ (698). outstandin g deeds of physical courage and fighting skill merit the word ‘prowess’ as arthur exclaims admiringly of lancelot, ‘jesu mercy… he ys a mervaylous knyght of proues !’ (1174).2 but to qualify as a 1 byles, p. 35. 2 it is arthur’s physical courage which at first is largely influential in drawing men to him: ‘all men of worship seyde hit was myrry to be under such a chyfftayne that wolde putte hys person in adventure as other poure knyghtes ded’ (54). see lynch, chapter 2. ____________________________________________________________________ 28 ‘flower of chivalry’ (as arthur is called by lamorak) or ‘chief of knighthood’ (as lancelot is called by sir persant) inner qualities are necessary. here malory’s dramatic narrative comes closer to the ‘literature of knighthood’, assuming the same chivalric ideology. characteristically this emerges from scenes, actions, comments from characters and the narrator, and through the repetition of his charged key-words. ‘worship is clearly very highly esteemed: it goes well beyond ‘prowess’, although that forms an important part of it. like other noble qualities it is not for him simply an abstract ethical ideal, but has a strong social dimension:it must be acknowledged by others; although it is an inner quality, its external appearance is important. like ‘honour’ (its near synonym) it seems to be an essential part of a good knight, which can be lost, or destroyed, through ‘shame’.1 it is intricately involved with ‘fellowship’ (another highly charged word). the book demonstrates the intensity of the bonds of loyalty to lord, companions in arms, and kinsmen, and also the tensions in them which may be aroused by personalities and events. in the end these become destructive, and lead to the final tragedy, and in the last books the phrase ‘the noble felyshyp of the rounde table is brokyn for ever’ is repeated like a mela ncholy leitmotif. throughout the work the emotional power of the bonds of knighthood is constantly in evidence. after a battle gawain and marhaus ‘toke of her helmys and eyther kyssed other and there they swore togdyrs eythyr to love other as brethirne’ (161). there are emotional partings and reunions, when ‘than was there grete joy amonge them’ (779). knightly virtues are often sharply contrasted with their opposites fidelity or ‘trouthe’ with treachery or treason, for instance. such virtues, although central to knighthood, are not restricted to any ‘courtly code’. ‘trouthe’, for instance, was not only celebrated in literature of other kinds, notably the epic, but was important in medieval life itself. characteristically malory’s interests are both closely focused on knightly society but also bear on a wider human society. ‘good’ knights and ‘bad’ knights are usually also sharply contrasted. against the ‘flowers of chivalry’ stand figures like the 1 ‘shame’ is also a strongly charged word, and given the same kind of emphatic repetition: thus palomydes rounds on morgan: ‘thes is a shamefull and a vylaunce usage for a quene to use, and namely to make suche warre uppon her owne lorde that is called the floure of chevalry that is crystyn othir hethyn, and with all my harte i woll destroy that shamefull custom’. ____________________________________________________________________ 29 cowardly king mark or mordred. more rarely, there are knights who stand between the extremes, like sir kay: when tristram meets him and learns his name (and instantly knows his reputation, how he is ‘named’) he states it explicitly -‘a, sir, ys that your name?’ … ‘now wyte you well that ye are named the shamefullysy knyght of your tunge that now ys lyvynge. howbehit ye ar called a good knyght, but ye are called unfortunate and passyng overthwart of youre tunge’ (488). more interesting are those ‘good knights ‘who are sometimes shown acting badly like some real-life ‘flowers of chivalry’) such as the black prince at limoges). the most notable case is, of course, gawain’s change into a grimly vengeful figure. eulogies of ‘good knights’ are sometimes very close to the chivalric bio graphy. the famous threnody of hector over lancelot, which is unusually ela borate and formal for malory, besides its repetition of his charged key-words, rehearses the qualities and achievements of a late medieval ‘flower of chivalry’: … thou were never matched of erthely knyghtes hande. and thou were the curtest knyght that ever bare shelde ! and thou were the truest frende to thy lovar that ever bestrade hors, and thou were the trewest emonge prees of knightes, and thou was the mekest man and the jentyllest that ever ete in halle emonge ladyes, and thou were the sternest knyght to thy mortal foo that ever put spare in the reeste (1259). all this, together with the evident delight in chivalric ceremonial, ritual and ‘game’, indicates an emotional with an admiration of the knightly life . but the story ends in disaster. this, i feel sure, involves something less abstract and more subtle than the ‘failure of the code of chivalry’. malory does not seem to endorse the austere condemnation of ‘earthly chivalry’ in the queste del graal, but many of his readers have felt that his narrative does not show that ideals of chivalry have their limitations. if malory thought this he does not say it explicitly. it is a question of having to trust the tale rather than the teller? to a certain extent it is, but it is a little more complicated. the teller’s voice is sometimes sad or perturbed, perhaps suggesting an awareness of some contradictions and tensions, but for much of the time it seems ‘innocent’ (like the voices of his paragons of chivalry), continually in sisting on the importance of fidelity, while the unfolding events reveal the tensions ____________________________________________________________________ 30 so cruelly felt by lancelot. a more clerkly writer may very well have felt impelled to express an ‘attitude’ about the conflict of loyalty he faces. however, as miko says, ‘judgement in malory is neither so rigorous nor so easy as a moral system might imply’.1 malory’s refusal to condemn, the generosity (or the ‘looseness’) of his ethical views (if indeed they can be called views) might distress a moralist like ascham, but can also be taken as an evidence of the inclusive breadth of a remarkable creative imagination. indeed, his treatment of the lancelot/ guinevere/ arthur relationship and the fall of the round table makes it a genuinely tragic story. he is concerned not to judge but to see the pity and the horror of it all. and elsewhere in the work, in spite of his liking for moderation, his sympathy can led him to an impressive portrayal of those who act ‘out of measure’, with tragic excess, like the maid of astolat. the battles are often against chaos (which threatens arthur’s kingdom at its beginning and at its end)in defence of order, and what c. s. lewis called the ‘civilisation of the heart’. that is overwhelmed by darkness and treachery. miko’s remark about ‘the inadequacy of any idealistic system’ and that ‘chivalry too easily ignores the fact that men are often petty creatures’,2 have a good deal of force, but are perhaps a little too abstract. malory’s book shows from the beginning examples of the pettiness and wickedness of men -and men, not exclusively knights. it is not simply a tragedy of knighthood but a tragedy of humanity. malory’s refusal to explain, to offer a framework of ethos increases the pathos of the end. his good knights ‘take the adventure’ with courage and fortitude. galahad’s message to lancelot ‘bydde hym remember of this world unstable’ clearly has great significance for malory, who seems to feel deeply the traditional view of the instability of this world, an instability which his book shows derives from a variety of causes, including destiny, chance, the characters and actions of men. he certainly had not read the iliad, but what has been said of its ending is true of his: ‘its humanity does not float in shallow optimism: it is firmly and deeply rooted in an awareness of human reality and suffering’.3 caxton was surely right to see the book as a mirror of chivalric, but also of human, life: ‘forherein may be seen noble chyvalrye, curtosye, humanyté, frendlynesse, hardynesse, love, frendshyp, cowardysse, murdre, hate, vertue, and synne.’ 1 stephen j. miko, ‘malory and the chivalric order’, medium aevum 35 (1966) 211. 2 miko, pp. 213, 221. 3 oliver taplin, homeric soundings (oxford, 1992), p. 283 (quoting colin macleod). ____________________________________________________________________ 31 douglas gray university of oxford * † * selim08.doc francisco alonso, selim 8 (1998): 171—191 ‘as it ys seyde to fore’. some linguistic evidence in the process of compiling middle english medical recipes1 1. introduction the aim of this paper is to describe the compilation of fifteenth-century english medical recipes. my main interest is to unravel those devices used by medieval compilers and scribes to arrange recipes in the medical manuscript book. the material used for such a study consists of one of the receptaria contained in ms hunter 185 (folios 17r-62r). the work is organised as follows: first, i describe medieval english medical books, then i present a description of ms hunter 185. after that, i intro duce the framework of discourse analysis (brown & yule 1996) which i in tend to apply in the data analysis which deals with the organisation of recipes. 2. medieval english medical books medieval english medical books are indexed normally according to two main parameters: their contents, and the needs of the audience. the first parameter is adopted in robbins (1970), in which the medical material is clas s ified into three different groups: prognosis, diagnosis and treatment. this classification does not completely satisfy our expectations, since, in the case of remedy books, for instance, these often contain recipes belonging to the three 1 i would like to thank mercedes cabrera and alicia rodríguez for the painstaking work of reading earlier drafts of this article. f rancisco a lonso 168 groups. thus, this indexing procedure results in a continuous repetition of the same recipe books in the three cataloguing groups. the second parameter, the audience, seems to be a more plausible criterion for indexation, because the audience required specific type of books which, depending on what the reader expects from them, showed a particular use of language and a specific structure. in this sense, voigts (1982) pro poses the division of the middle english medical material into two main groups. these groups are (a) remedybooks, and (b) learned treatises. the first group constit utes the bulk of medical books which contain handy information about the treatment of particular sicknesses in easy-to-follow steps. these steps present a fairly simple structure and plain language1, which sometimes included the use of latin and anglo -norman. the audience of this group is larger than that of learned treatises, as norri (1992: 33) points out: “vernacular remedy books have often been associated with lay healers, but these books were also owned by university-trained physicians.” learned treatises, however, were directed to a more limited type of audience such as university scholars. these books are based on classical and medieval medical tradition, and many are written in latin. however, latin was steadily being replaced by english by the fifteenth century 2, partly due to the growth of an incipient middle class bourgeoisie that demanded books of a more practical nature for their own instruction (parkes 1973: 563). thus, the need for translations and new written ma terial in english was urgent, if we consider that this middle class population owned very little knowledge, if any, of the latin language. this insufficient knowledge of latin was mainly due to the lack of proper instruction in that language, and whenever fifteenth-century people were instructed in latin, the methodology was oriented towards a specific use, and hence the instruction was far from integral, as claimed by rodríguez álvarez in her description of fifteenth-century elementary schools (1997: 39): el latín que se daba era mínimo, simplemente se pretendía que los niños pudieran leerlo y pronunciarlo correctamente para poder leer 1 for a detailed study of the structure and the language of the middle english recipe, see alonso almeida (forthcoming). 2 for the process of “englishing” of medical material, see voigts (1995: 184). l inguistic evidence in the compiling of middle e nglish medical recipes 169 textos devocionales y cantar himnos, pero la gramática y el sig nificado de los textos carecía de importancia. as said above, the remedybooks were aimed at a larger readership. thus, the number of these books was quantitatively significant, as can be seen by the extant copies in british and american libraries 1. this group has certainly enjoyed much editorial attention as pointed out by voigts (1982: 47) if compared with learned treatises. however, research in this area mainly in cludes studies on the description of the contents and the structure of these books and their indexing, but there is still much to be done on the writing of the medieval medical receptarium, at least, from a linguistic perspective. 3. ms hunter 185, ff. 17r-62r ms hunter 185 is a middle english medical recipe book which also contains a flora medica and an alphabetical list of simples. the manuscript is housed at the glasgow university library (hunterian collection, university of glasgow, glasgow). there is no evidence of authorship, or of ownership; although, according to young and aitken (1908: 132), on the vellum fly -leaf, there is what seems to be “probably the autograph of henry swinburne, b. c. l. (1560-1623).” ms hunter 185 was written by different scribes, all of them using late fourteenth-century anglicana, and anglicana formata. the folios object of this study are written by a single scribe using anglicana formata throughout. these folios present rubricated running titles and brown upper cases at the beginning of recipes in order to show the ordinatio. these visual aids are fundamental for the understanding of medical recipe compilations, since they constitute evidence of the scribe’s effort to show the thematic arrangement of recipes, as we will see later on in this paper. folios 17r-62r contain a number of medical recipes written in english and very few in latin. the nature of the recipes is varied, and they are organised generally following the traditional capitem ad pedem structure -type, that is, therapeutic remedies for the head are given at the beginning, and this is fol 1 see voigts (1995) and schmidt (1994). f rancisco a lonso 170 lowed by remedies for the eyes, the nose, the mouth, and other parts of the body up to the toes. the remedies presented are mainly waters, oils, plasters, salves, ointments, drinks, laxatives, and powders among others. 4. framework of discourse analysis in the analysis of the linguistic strategies used to compile recipes, i follow the discourse analysis model proposed in brown & yule (1996(1983)), henceforth b&y (1996). such model constitutes a significant contribution to text analysis for it provides points of view from previous discourse analysis theories, and offers clear descriptions of the strategies involved in the writing of discourse. substitution, ellipsis and referential expressions are the devices which appear recursively in ms hunter 185 as a way to establish textual cohesion. let us move on to the description of the aforementioned devic es according to b&y (1996). substitution and ellipsis are described as those techniques whose relationship with other parts of the texts “forces the reader … back into the text to look for a previous expression to substitute, in the case of substitution, or to provide, in the case of ellipsis” (1996: 193). thus, the use of those two strategies creates cohesive relations among different parts of the texts, since the reader needs the reference given elsewhere within the text so as to fully understand the in tended message. in order to illustrate these two concepts, let us concentrate on the following two examples taken from b&y (1996: 193): (1a) jules has a birthday next month. elspeth has one too. (1b) jules has a birthday next month. jules has too. the examples above show instances of substitution and elision. the word one in (1a) is not understood by the reader unless he goes back to the previous sentence for reference. thus, one stands for birthday, establishing a relation of dependence of the second sentence on the first one. in the same vein, in (1b), the omission of any pro -form which stands for birthday makes the reader to go back into the text in order to interpret the message conveyed l inguistic evidence in the compiling of middle e nglish medical recipes 171 in the second sentence, linking both sentences by means of a dependence relationship. the referential elements which may posit any interest for this study is anaphora. anaphora describes the relationship of two elements within the text where the second refers to the first element back in the text for interpre tation (b&y1996: 192). the following exemplifies this point: (2) look at the sun. it’s going down quickly. the previous example illustrates how the use of the anaphoric pronoun it links the second sentence to the one before. thus, the reader must go back in the text to be able to interpret such anaphoric pronoun. this time the referent is the word sun which is included as said above in the previous sentence. 5. organisation of recipes in ms hunter 185, ff. 17r-62r after the introduction of the description of the manuscript and the linguistic theoretical framework to be used here, let us turn to the analysis of the compilation of recipes. i analyse the extralinguistic strategies which link recipes in the manuscript, then i focus on the linguistic strategies which have the same linking purpose. chart 1 below illustrates graphically the manifestation of both extralinguistic and linguistic linking strategies. in chart 1, the extralinguistic strategies in ms hunter 185 are represented by means of the dotted arrow, whic h corresponds to the marginalia, and the bold type-face, which corresponds to the rubrics. the linguistic strategies comprise the organisation of recipes from head-to-toe structure, which is here represented by means of an arrow, and the subgroupings of recipes with a same topic, here represented by boxes. in addition, linguistic strategies in clude the use of referential expressions within the recipe boxes, which i describe in the chart by means of curved two -headed arrows and parentheses; and the use of cross-references in the manuscript, represented in the chart by means of dotted two -headed arrows. f rancisco a lonso 172 the presence of these strategies in ms hunter 185 are analysed below. i shall begin by presenting the extralinguistic elements, and finally, i will move on to the analysis of the linguistic elements. chart 1 key: rxa: recipes group a rxb: recipes group b rxc: recipes group c linguistic strategies: from-head-to-toe organisation ø ellipsis thematic boxes ( ) reference particles co-reference (anaphora, ellipsis , substitution) cross-referential expressions extralinguistic strategies: marginalia bold type-face rubrics 5.1. extralinguistic elements the organisation of the topic from head to toe requires visual techniques which help to reduce the time employed by the reader to locate the informa tion needed. those techniques are the use of rubricated running titles, and a marginal apparatus. the former facilitate the search of specific information. the entire title is written in red ink, including the key word, which indicates the recipe contents. it should be also noted that, in many cases, the title may contain up to four lines. besides, occasionally the title does not offer any indication of the purpose of the recipe. in the manuscript studied here, we can see how this represented a serious problem for the reader, as shown by the fact that the reader has underlined the key word in a long title and in the recipe body text 1: (3) 1 transcriptions mine. abbreviations have been silently expanded throughout. original spelling and punctuation have been retained in the transcription. bold typeface indicates rubrics. l inguistic evidence in the compiling of middle e nglish medical recipes 173 a good medicyne for to stanche blood whan ne a master veyne is cutte & pe wounde be la rge tak a pese of salt beef pe leue & non of pe fatte a muche as wil in pe wounde & let hit be leyd in pe hote asschis in pe fuyre • & let roste it til it be pur¥ hoot / & also hoot pruste hit in to pe wounde • & bynde hit faste • & hit schal staunche a noon • & neuere steyne more vp warantise (ms hunter 185, f.35r, ll. 2118-2126) (4) here it tellip wharfore pis oyneme nt is good this plaster is good for olde brusoures & for akyng of lymmes hit destruyep an hard posteme & it is so ueraynely good for broken bones pe surgerens of salerne vsep it for alle (…) (ms hunter 185, f. 49r, ll. 2784-2789) in (3), the reader makes clear what the recipe is for by means of underlin ing in a different coloured ink the key word veyne in the title. in (4), the reader must read through the whole recipe if he wants to know the use of the plaster described. this is the reason why the reader underlines the string good for broken bones pe. the latter, to indicate the location of specific pieces of information, is also a useful way to identify recipes. this visual aid consists in the addition of keywords, numbers, signs, or even, drawings to the margins of the manuscript, in order to indicate the purposes of a particular recipe. in ms hunter, marginal notes also seem to have been added by readers rather than by the scribe himself. this observation follows from my own preliminary palaeographical studies. the following examples illustrate this point1: (5) also for pe / scabbes of a mannes body • tak horho / ne celydoyne & warmot & sorel / de boys & helena campana • ana & seep hem in faire / rennyng water • til half be wasted & 1 heads in the manuscripts are here represented by the “face” symbol. f rancisco a lonso 174 perwith / wassch hem euery day wel ones til pe seke / be hool pourgh pe • grace of god also for / scabbes in a mon or in a womman § / tak pe rote of horshelue & seep it in / water til hit be nessche & tak olde sche / pes talwe & medle hem wel to gedre / in a mortere & do it in a lynnen clop / & anoynte pe sore a gayn pe fuyre & / he schal be hol also anoper for pe same / tak horhoue & seep it in rennynge / water til half be wasted & wessche pe / seke perwith pe water as hoot as he may /suffre • & anoynte hem with pe water oyne / ment pat is made of pese herbes tak / pe rote of pe rede dokke and of celi/ doyne & wermot also & sorell de boys / ana & bray hem to gedre & tempre hem / to gedre with mayes boter & make an / oynement per of & pat wil hele eny maner / of scabbes certayn also an other for / scabbes § tak pe rededokke rotis & pym / purnell & scabiose & sorell de boys & / selydoyne & stampe hem & tempre hem to / gedre with mayes boter & fry¥e hem / wel to gedre & streyne hem in to a clene / vessell & perto a good quantite of powder / of brymstone & fry¥e • hit wel to gedre til / it be cold & perwith anoynte pe seke til he / be hol (ms hunter 185, ff. 23v-24v) (6) for schorned heuedes and scattede / heuedes tak poo dolyon ij handfules / ar he be floured pe while he is tendre & / sep hym wel in to a potel of strong ly¥e / til half be wasted & panne let wessche pe / schaled hed in strong pisse ry¥t hoot & schaue / clene of pe scalles & let no¥t for no bledyng / & panne make a plaster of pe poo delyon & / let hit on pe hed wel warme & so let it ly / a day & a ny¥t & panne tak it of & tak rye / mele & rennyng water & mak a pap ri¥th / pykke & spred it on a clop pat wil ouer sprede pe / sore & ley it on pe sore hed & let it lye iij day / es • & iij ny¥t or it be remeued & tak it panne / of & wessche pe hed in strong pisse a ¥eyne / & schaue it clene to pe flessch & tak rede / oynones as mony as wil suffice for a p laster / ouer pe sore & let boyle hem wel in water / & stampe hem & tempre hem vp with jus of cala /mynte & tempre hem vp with olde barewes / grece faire j molte & j pured & vse pis last til / pe seke hed be hool for pys wil hele it sy / kyrly pourgh godes grace (ms hunter 185, f. 27r) l inguistic evidence in the compiling of middle e nglish medical recipes 175 (5) illustrates the remedies for the head highlighted by means of drawing a head in the margins, so that the reader interested in this specific bit of information can identify it in a very specific area of the text rather t han having to read through the whole manuscript. (6), which also shows remedies for the head, presents another drawing which could be identified as a head, though, in this case, its shape is less well outlined than in the previous example. these two drawings are attributed to a sixteenth-century owner of the book who presented it to one of his friends’ son who suffered from “a sore hedde”, possibly a scabby head, as indicated on the fly -leaf verso. thus, the book’s owner could have drawn the heads to indicate where to identify these specific remedies. having analysed the extralinguistic elements, let us move on to the following where i analyse the linguistic strategies which assist in the compila tion of recipes in ms hunter 185. 5.2. linguistic elements a first glance at the organisation of recipes in ms hunter 185 reveals a thematic organisation which arranges recipes from head to toe, in an attempt to establish some order to what apparently owns none. thus, the scribe offers remedies for the head in the first place, followed by remedies for the eyes, the nose, etc., and groups them according to their therapeutic function. this grouping, in turn, facilitates the consultation of the material in a short amount of time, since the reader can follow those lexical items which refer to the parts of the body in a descendant order. the ‘from-head-to-toe’ technique shows the organisation of the informa tion by contents, but sometimes the lack of tabula to indicate where to find specific information related to a part icular sickness rendered the searching task a difficult one. it should be noted at this point the practical nature of these books normally resorted to in order to find urgently therapeutic solu tions to cast out states of sickness. however, this type of organisation is, to a certain extent, arbitrary, and scribes very often ignored it in their own books. this irregularity in the orf rancisco a lonso 176 ganisation lies in the fact that scribes inserted recipes, say, for prognostication in between remedies for scabbed hands and headache, as seen below: (7) for wertes in mannes hondes or wommanes hondes o per in o per places • anoynte pe wertes whereuere pei be… for to wite ¥if a man schal lyue or dy¥e pat is jwounded take pe jus of … … for pe hedache tak & seep verueyne & beteyne & … (ms hunter 185, ff. 24v-25v, ll. 1650-1683) in relation to the thematic organisation, thematic subgroups can be also found. these subgroups (boxes in chart 1) are characterised by the presence of referential devices, namely co-reference (represented in chart 1 by means of a double -sided arrow) and cross-reference (represented in chart 1 by means of a dotted double -sided arrow). the former applies to those devices which establish a connection among the different recipes of a same group. the latter refers to those elements which connect recipes which may even belong to different groups. these elements are described below. 5.2.1. recipe groups as indicated above, recipes are normally grouped thematically, so that remedies for a specific sickness are gathered together. these recipes are tightly linked by means of cohesive ties, mainly anaphora, substitution and ellipsis as can be seen below. co-referential ties in recipe groups are given in the title of the recipes, and the understanding of the contents of the second and following recipes l inguistic evidence in the compiling of middle e nglish medical recipes 177 depends on the first recipe in a given group, both in the case of anaphora and ellipsis. the following instance exemplifies this aspect1: (8) for pe wormes in a mannes body pat men clepyth lubrikes tak beteyne & sauen & dry¥e hem & make poudere of hem & let pe seke drynke perof in hoot water & also sone as pe poudere is doune in to pe body it wil slee pe wormes & brynge hem oute sykerly for pe same tak syngrene & fe perfoye * & myntes & stampe hem & ¥ef hem drynke for pe same tak & drynke stancrop * with wormot (9) for to sle trenchis in a man nes body tak fayre bakoun & diseit smale morcelles pe mountance of a litel messe & tak a good handful of beteyne & wassch it clene & grynde it smale & take pe potel of gotes melke & do it in a fayre vessel & do perto py bakoun & py beteyne • let hem s epe to gedre til py bakoun be j • now¥ & let pe seke ete pat mete warme & he schal be hool certeyne for pe same tak a saucer * ful of jus of calamynte & as muche of centorie & of hony & of vynegre ana & pe ferpe part of a sponeful of salt & medle al pys to gedre & loke pat pey be ri¥t salt & boyle hem a litel ouer pe fuyre & do hem in a clene vessel & let pe seke vse perof fastyng a saucerful at ones & pe same day at vnderne & an o per at none & he pat schal vse pis medi cyne let hym be fastyng til mydouere noon & he schal be hool (ms hunter 185, ff. 40v-41r, ll. 2377-2405) 1 from now on, i will include the following symbol * in the examples in order to indicate where a new recipe within a group begins. f rancisco a lonso 178 in the previous recipes (examples in (8) and (9)), we can see how they are connected thematically by means of the string for pe same. in order for the reader to understand the purpose of the recipe, he must go back to the first recipe in the group for reference. thus, in (8), pe same refers back to the previous title in full for pe wormes in a mannes body pat men clepyth lubrikes, which exemplifies substitution and ellipsis. substitution consists here in the replacement of the entire meaning of the title in the first recipe by the word same, which is semantically identical, though the structure of the title of the first recipe is rather more complex than the pronominal string pe same, which is formed by a simple noun phrase. ellipsis is understood here in the sense that the head of the noun phrase pe same lacks an element of the nominal category such as the word sickness, or even the hyperonym thing. (9) also exemplifies a case of substitution and of ellipsis. in this sense, pe same stands for for to sle trenchis in a mannes body. the word same refers back to the entire title, and also the head of the noun phrase pe same is filled here by a pronoun, exactly in the same fashion as in (8). the fact that the recipes whose titles are for pe same needs the presence of a first title in full may be interpreted as their being less effective than the first one, though there is little evidence that the scribe intended so. sometimes, the title of the second and the following recipes in a group includes the latin word item ‘the same’. the interpretation of this latin ele ment, which manifests a new case of substitution, is found both in the first recipe of the group and in the very same title where it is included: (10) item for hym pat is scoldet on his pyntel pat is y clepid pe potegal § tak a lynnen clo p pat is clene and wassche & brenne it & make powder perof & tak oyle of egges & anoynte pe sore & put pe powder in pe holes when pei bep anoynted & pat schal helpe hem & make hem hool § (ms hunter 185, ff. 42r-42v, ll. 2471-2477) in this example, the latin word item refers back to line 2449 in the manuscript for scoldyng of a mannes pyntel. in addition, in this case, the l inguistic evidence in the compiling of middle e nglish medical recipes 179 reference for the word item is also found later in the same title, as the purpose of the recipe is repeated by means of a relative clause pat is scoldet on his pyntel. thus, the reader does not have to go back into the text for reference. many other recipes are introduced by means of the word also , which, in addition to representing an example of economy in language, it also stands as another case of substitution, and to some extent, of ellipsis, as can be seen in the following example: (11) for pe emeraudes so pat pei haue none grete pappes § tak welle cresses & stampe hem & steue hem in • a pot with oute water & make a plaster & ley to pe emeraudes § also for pe same * tak litarge of golde & make powdere perof & tempre hit vp with oyle of violet & make a plaster & ley perto also for pe same / * tak moleyne • & styue hit in good red wyn & make a plaster & ley perto § also * tak rewe & louache of eyper j lyke me che & grynde hem in a mortere & put perto hony & fry ¥e hem to gedre & mak a plaster & ley per to as hoot as he may suffre & alle pese medicynes bep gode for pe emeraudes (ms hunter 185, ff. 46r, ll. 2639-2654) in the previous recipes, the word also might be well replaced by the string “another medicine” or “another remedy”. in the second and third recipes in (11), also is followed by for pe same which, as seen above, stands for information given in the title of the first recipe for pe emeraudes so pat pei haue none grete pappes. in the last recipe in this group, the title also is an example of substitution and ellipsis. substitution here lies in the fact that it stands for the whole title in the first recipe, and the element which is elliptical is for pe same, whose meaning is included in also . the anaphoric pronoun another is also part of some of the titles of the recipes included in ms hunter 185. the following example illustrates the anaphoric use of another in our recipes: f rancisco a lonso 180 (12) for to make a buyle drawe to gedre and brek § tak galbanum & clense it at a fuyre & make per of a plaster & ley per to ij dayes or it be remoued also * an other for pe same tak a rosted ox non • & pe lylye rote & souredokkes & stampe hem to gedre with barewes grece & with oyle of olyue & make a plaster & ley to pe sore (ms hunter 185, f. 23r, ll. 1594-1601) in this example, an other refers to a new recipe which is good for to make a buyle1 drawe to gedre and brek , thus linking thematically the second recipe in the group to the first one. there is also the elision of the word medicine which normally collocates with the word another in the occurrences of the former in ms hunter 185, as seen in lines 1581-1582 also an oper medicyne which constitutes the first instance of the words <an oper> and <medicyne> in the manuscript. so far, the use of substitution, ellipsis, and anaphora have been described, especially those cases which serve the function of creating thematic groups of recipes within the receptarium, thus forming a clearer structure which gives shape to the remedybook. below, i shall describe the use of other dis course particles which link recipes belonging to different groups, mainly by means of cross-references (represented in chart 1 by means of a dotted double-sided arrow), and which also favour cohesion within the recipe book. 5.2.2. linking the recipe groups we have seen previously how recipes are tightly linked in groups by means of anaphora, ellipsis, and substitution. these devices show a high degree of frequency. however, linking particles, which establish connection among the different groups of recipes, are less frequent; though, admittedly, they still 1 <buyle> ‘swelling’. l inguistic evidence in the compiling of middle e nglish medical recipes 181 play a significant role in the process of compilation of recipes. these particles constitute evidence of a serious attempt to perform editorial work by the scribe. in other words, the presence of these particles shows that the scribe knew, and could handle, the material he was compiling to such an extent that he was able to establish cross-references among recipes 1. beforesaid (ll. 1338-1339) and its variants before j seid (l. 1413), jsayde aboue (l. 1593); and as it is seide be fore represent the majority of the internal cross-reference expressions employed by the scribe to make reference to re cipes given earlier in the receptarium. the following instances exemplify this point2: (13) for pe sa me a plastyr tak smalache wermot hony salt vynegre ana a saucerful & perto a quancyte of ry ¥emele & boyle hem to gedre & make a plastyr on a clo p & ley to pe sore & vse pis plaster & pe drynke be foresaid & pou schalt be hool • (ms hunter 185, ff. 17r-17v, ll. 1333-1339) (14) also for pe felon pat makep the to swelle take beteyne & camamylle heyhoue & egremoyne • ana an hanful & wessche hem & stampe hem wel • & take hertes grece & lyue hony of eyper a quantite & do perto barly mele half a quartron & frye hem wel to gedre • & let schaue pe hed & ley pe plaster a boue • as • hot as pe seke may suffre • & ¥ef hem to drynke plan 1 traditionally, receptaria are considered to be characterised by adaptation and accretion (voigts (1982: 44), norri (1992: 34), taavitsainen (1992: 329)); the latter implies some sort of pilling up of recipes as mere records of therapeutic knowledge. thus, the presence of these internal cross-references support the idea of an incipient editorial work by the scribe who carefully connects recipes in our manuscript. also, by means of these cross-references the scribe avoids the repetition of already -stated information such as how to mix the products in order to produce the medicine. 2 italics highlights the examples i refer to in the text. f rancisco a lonso 182 tayne pe same drynke pat is jsayde a boue for pe hed ache (ms hunter 185, f. 23r, ll. 1584-1594) (15) also an other for pe same tak pullyole de montayne pat is to say hillwort or brodewort a good handful & wessch hit clene & schere hit smal & do it in a mortere • & grynde hit smal & do perto half an vnce of poudere of peper & an vnce of poudere of comyn & med le hem to gedere haluendel be wasted & do perto also a potel of good wyn & penne • seep it as it ys seyde to fore & let pe pacient vse pis after mete & not before & but ones after none & at eue last & algate hoot & he schal be hool (ms hunter 185, ff. 33v-34r, ll. 2062-2074) (16) also for pe emaraudes a good medicyne / • tak a stool with a sege as hit is saide before for pe fluxe & ri¥t so vse pis medicyne for pe emaraudes as of pe hote tiles per he take p frank encens he schal take poudere of myrre & of encense • ana & ¥ef he haue grete pappes bynde a boute pe pappes a rede selkys pred faste bi pe grounde & kerue a wey pe pappes a boue pe prede • & pus serue hym ry ¥t boldelich & tak an • handful of wermot & wassch hit & stampe it & fry¥e hit with oyle of olyue & make a plaster & ley perto as hoot as he may suffre • & a noon as he be on his bed & a morwe vse pis stool with pe sege & with pese powdres & with jnne iij dayes he schal be hool on warantise bote loke pat he haue pis plaster durynge iij ny¥tes or iiij at pe moste • (ms hunter 185, ff. 45v-46r, ll. 2620-2639) l inguistic evidence in the compiling of middle e nglish medical recipes 183 in (13), the scribe offers a remedy for the fistula; this remedy is the second in his group and consists in the making of a plaster to cure the sick. in this case, this treatment must be applied together with a drink described in the previous recipe in the manuscript. instead of rewriting the making of the drink, the scribe uses the string pe drynke beforesaid which forces the reader to go back in the receptarium to find the information he needs. this time the location of such information represents an easier enterprise, since the reader looking for information on fistula might have read the previous recipe as well, since it is located just before it. however, two related recipes may sometimes be well aprt, as can be seen in (14) which contains information on swellings. here, the scribe connects this recipe with another found in lines 1573 to 15751 by means of the string pe same drynke pat is sayde aboue for pe hed ache. as one may suppose, the expression is sayde aboue is rather unspecific for any reader to find successfully the drink the scribe refers to. thus, the scribe adds the complement for pe hed ache in order to make clear the drink that should be prepared. (15) seep as it ys seyde to fore finds its referent in the previous recipe in the manuscript. the reader is told to perform the same action with the ingre dients as in the previous recipe, that is, the ingredients must be soaked in “good wyn from a potel” (l. 2057). finally, (16) shows a similar use of cross-reference expressions, where the reader must look back into the text in order to find the referent. in this case, the reader is told to use the same type of chair with a hole (normally used to help pregnant women when they give birth) which is described in a previous recipe in lines 2247-2249: “tak a stool with a sege pat is closed al a bowte & tak an hoot tyle pat is glowyng hoot & ley hit vnder pe sege & let pe seke sitte doun on pe sege & make pe sege on pis manere”. this recipe is found nearly 400 lines earlier in the receptarium, which indicates that the reader must locate the information without any other aid, save for the title in rubrics in line 2246 also for pe fluxe. 1 lines 1573-1575 reads: “also here is for pe felon tak & drynk plantayne & make powdere of pe same & ley per to.” f rancisco a lonso 184 sometimes, the reader is given more precise indications of where to find specific information: (17) for to make a drynke for alle manere of feuer oper posteme & for alle sekenesse pat is in mannes body pat euer may be holpe with eny medicyne tak euery day a quantite of pe powdere in pe recet be fore pat makep mencyoun of pe dropsie in pe wombe & tak jsope rose maryne • violet verueyne • beteyne herbe jon • monsere red planteyne pe whiche is a powdere anance sauge ffeperfoye • & ache ana an • handful & was sche clene pyn herbes & do hem in to a mortere • & stampe hem a litel • & do hem in to an erpen pot … (ms hunter 185, ff. 54r-54v, ll. 3029-3051) in this example, the scribe indicates the reader where to find the informa tion to produce the medicine to help the sick to overcome a state of fever. as happened in some of the examples described above, the recipe the scribe refers to is found very early in the text. thus, the scribe gives specific details to the reader so that he can find quickly the information required. in fact, the extra information given here pe dropsie in pe wombe coincides word -for-word with the rubricated title of the recipe the scribe mentions: “for pe dropsie in pe wombe & in pe feet…” (ll. 2559-2561). this may greatly benefit the reader in his search for this information. in ms hunter 185, the reader must also look forward, rather than backwards, into the text to find the information required. the only instance of this type is the following: (18) for to restore a¥eyn pe wombe whenne it is solible § tak an handful of hennecresses seed anoper of weybrode & gryn de hem in a mortere penne frye hem wel to gedre with schepes talwe & frank encens l inguistic evidence in the compiling of middle e nglish medical recipes 185 & make a plaster & ley to his nauel also hot as he may suffre • & let hym vse pis pat is jtolde next after (ms hunter 185, f. 37v, ll. 2239-2246) in this case, the string pat is jtolde next after compels the reader to go forward in the receptarium to find the second part of the treatment for the womb which is presented in the following recipe: “also for pe fluxe” (l. 2246). 6. conclusions the present study illustrates the strategies used by the medieval scribe of ms hunter 185 to connect medical recipes in a manuscript. such strategies in clude the use of specific visual elements, and the use of grammatical devices such as anaphora, substitution, ellipsis, and cross-references. as shown above, one of the aims of linking recipes is to create subgroups of recipes which cover particular information for specific sicknesses. thus, the scribe employs systematically the expressions also , an other, item, for pe same in the titles so as to group recipes with a similar therapeutic function. also, as seen earlier, by using such expressions in the second and following recipes in a given group, the scribe only needs to write in full the first title of the first recipe in that group; in this way, he avoids the repetition of the entire title in subsequent recipes. the use of internal cross-references, such as bifore saide, also sheds light to the process of compilation of recipes in the middle ages. these cross-references show that scribal work in the construction of the medical receptarium was far beyond the random compilation of recipes. quite on the contrary, cross-references constitute an indication that the scribe knew his material well, and hence that he was able t o establish connections among the recipes. it should be also noted that the scribe supplies extra -information in strings like as it is seide be fore or before j seid by adding phrases such as for pe fluxe or for pe hed ache, which clearly define the recipe he refers to. the inclusion of such phrases depends on the relation of proximity between the recipes involved: the larger the distance between recipes, the longer the cross-reference. f rancisco a lonso 186 the information included in this paper represents just the starting point towards further research in the field of linking particles in middle english recipe collections. the use of specific lexical items with linking function among recipes has been ignored here, but constitutes another area of research which might enlighten our understanding of medieval recipe compilations. francisco alonso almeida universidad de las palmas de gran canaria references alonso almeida, f. forthcoming: ‘gyf hyr pis medycyin’ analysing the middle-english recipe medical discourse. revista de lenguas para fines específicos 5/6. brown, g. and g. yule. 1996 (1983): discourse analysis. (cambridge textbooks in linguistics). cambridge university press, cambridge. norri, j. 1992: names of sicknesses in english, 1400-1550: an exploration of the lexical field. suomalainen tiedeakatemia, helsinki. parkes, m. 1973: the literacy of the laity. in david daiches and a. thorlby (eds.) the mediaeval world. aldus book, london. 555-557. robbins, r. h. 1970: medical manuscripts in middle english. speculum, 45: 393-415. rodríguez álvarez, a. 1997: documentos notariales vernáculos del condado de durham (siglo xv): estudio y edición. servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de córdoba y servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de las palmas de gran canaria, córdoba. schmidt, k. a. r. 1994: the index of middle english prose and late medieval english recipes. english studies, 75.5: 423-429. taavitsainen, i. 1994: on the evolution of scientific writings from 1375 to 1675: repertoire of emotive features. in f. fernández et al. (eds.) papers from the 7th international conference of english historical linguistics. john benjamins publishing co, amsterdam and philadelphia. 329-342. l inguistic evidence in the compiling of middle e nglish medical recipes 187 voigts, l. 1982: editing middle english medical texts: needs and issues. in levere, trevor editing texts in the history of science and medicine. garland, new york and london, 39-68. voigts, l. 1995: multitudes of middle english medical manuscripts, or the englishing of science and medicine. in m. schleissner (ed.) manuscript sources of medieval medicine. a book of essays. garland publishing, new york and london. 183-195. young, j. and p. h. aitken. 1908: annotated catalogue of manuscripts in the hunterian library. james maclehose and sons, glasgow. * † * selim teresa sánchez roura, selim 10 (2000): 123—143 convention vs. choice in securing the good-will of the reader: the cely letters abstract in the middle ages, the popular ars dictaminis, or the art of letterwriting, fluctuated between the principles of applied rhetoric and the freedom of personal choice. the most popular trend was the compromise arrived at by the school of bologna, with its ‘approved format’ for a letter, which spread throughout mainland europe from the 11th century onwards. ciceronian principles were applied to the question of letter-writing, and treatises were written, in which the main concern was not so much theoretical principles, but the presentation of model letters intended to be copied verbatim by the future writer. the situation was slightly different in england, where not many treatises were produced at any one time. yet letter-writing became increasingly popular there. modern linguistic research has focused on the study of medieval rhetorical treatises in general (murphy, camargo) and on the evolution of the genre in england (denholm-young, richardson) as well as on the analysis of surviving letter-collections in particular (davis, whigham, henderson). most recently, and particularly thanks to the compilation in helsinki of the corpus of early english correspondence, current research goes a step beyond purely linguistic analysis, to focus on sociolinguistic and pragmatic issues. the present paper is part of a wider personal project aiming at discovering the interface between language and society as revealed by the cely letters. in this sense, while providing a purely linguistic description for present purposes, my work follows a sociolinguistic/pragmatic line of analysis. thus, my ultimate aim is to study the expression of the medieval captatio benevolentiae as a pragmatic tool within the framework teresa sánchez roura 78 of brown and levinson’s politeness theory (1987) in the field of historical pragmatics. introduction the first aim of this paper, which is descriptive rather than theoretical, is to ascertain the level of linguistic flexibility, in terms of both structures and lexicon, present in the expression of the rhetorical element known as captatio benevolentiae, or the securing of the good will of the reader. the second aim, which is closely connected with the first, is to gauge to what extent captatio is formulaic or unfixed. norman davis defined captatio, understood as the opening passage of the letter only, as “a long sequence of conventional phrases and sentences constructed with minor variations upon a regular pattern” (1965: 236). in this paper we shall examine, in the context of the cely letters, not only that opening passage, which corresponds to the traditional view of captatio as one part of the letter, but also other aspects of captatio embedded throughout the remaining sections of the letter, which relate to the understanding of captatio also as a device, liable to be employed elsewhere. this eclectic combination of both characteristics, along the lines established by hugh of bologna in the 11th century, seems to render a more complete definition of what captatio really is, and that is the one adopted here. i propose the following taxonomy of topics dealt with under the heading of captatio benevolentiae:1 (1) address or direct praise of the reader. (2) commendation of the writer himself. (3) expression of gratitude. (4) notification of the health of those near the writer who are very close to the reader; or a desire to hear of the reader’s good health. (5) acknowledgement of having received a letter from the reader. 1 this has been dealt with in detail in sánchez roura, t (2001). convention vs choice in the cely letters 79 (6) notification of the main purpose of the letter, i.e. introduction of the exposition proper. (7) offer of service. (8) apology for finishing the letter at that point, not offering any more news. (9) pious valediction. (10) addition of the apologetic ‘in haste’. it must be noted that not all the above topics, or subsections, are present in one single letter –a matter which seems to be socially determinedbut the ordering of these is fairly standard. some topics are particularly associated with the second part of the letter: these are the commendation, gratitude, health, acknowledgement of receipt and the introduction of the body of the text. however, flexibility of location is apparent in the letters. the corpus of data used here consists of the collection of letters belonging to the cely family exclusively, covering the period between 1472 and 1488. the number of informants is around 37, all of whom are male, except one. they belong to the family circle as well as collaborators and friends. the corpus was chosen for the following reasons: these letters reflect the daily life of the late medieval english merchant, a position which involved dealings with people belonging to all social classes; the letters deal with a mixture of commercial and domestic affairs, which makes them highly attractive, and finally, the letters are autographed and not the product of the embellishments of a professional scribe. for the purposes of the present study, which aims to focus on the description of linguistic issues only at this preliminary stage, irrespective of social parameters, the letters have not been re-arranged in any way and they have been studied in the same chronological order presented by their last editor. following the above consideration of what items qualify as instances of captatio, their linguistics description may now be undertaken, in terms of syntactical structure and lexical items. it will then be possible to gauge the extent to which there is flexibility and variation, and this in turn will indicate indicate whether such elements are formulaic in wording or not. teresa sánchez roura 80 syntactic and lexical analysis of captatio benevolentiae in the cely letters (1) address we shall be looking at the address proper which occurs at the very beginning of the letter, and not at the honorifics employed throughout the letter; in any case, the latter are usually simple noun phrases of the type ‘your mastership’ or ‘your good lordship’ functioning as the objects of a verb. titles of address used as proper vocatives in the opening of the letter offer more interest because the syntactical structure is quite varied, from the simple ‘wellbeloved brother’ to more complicated structures of coordinated nps, as we shall see now. titles of address can be divided into two groups, depending on whether the np is simple or coordinated. the results of the study are reflected in the following tables: table 1. syntactic structure of titles of address: simple phrases. structure examples i. n syr, jorge cely, bedfelow, brother ii. adj wellbeloved iii. adj + n wellbeloved brother, worshipful sir iv. [adj+ and + adj] + n honorable and worshipful sir v. [adv + adj] + n right wellbeloved brother, right worshipful sir, right trusty friend vi. (a) [adv + (adj +and+ adj)] + n (b) adv + [adj+and+adj] or [adv+adj]+and+ adj (a)right reverent and worshipful father, right reverent and wellbeloved brother (b) right trusty and wellbeloved vii. [(adv + adj) + and + (adv + adj)] + n right reverent and heartily wellbeloved brother viii. (a) [(adv + adv) + and + adj] + n (b) [(adv + adv) + adj] + n (a)right interly and wellbeloved brother (b) right interly wellbeloved brother ix. (a) [adv + adj] + [n1 +and+ n2] (b) adj + [n + n] (a)right trusty sir and brother (b) reverent syr and brother convention vs choice in the cely letters 81 x. (a) [poss + (adv + adj)]+ n (b) [poss + (adj + and + adv + adj)]+ (n1 +and+ n2) (a)my full trusty friend (b)my trusty and very trusty friend and lover table 2. syntactic structure of titles of address: coordinated phrases. structure examples i.{adj+n} and {poss[(adv+adj) + n]} worshipful sir and my special friend ii. (a) {[adv+adj] + n} and {poss + [adj + n]} (b) {[adv + adj] + n} and {poss + [(adj + adj) +n]} (a)right worshipful sir and my reverent master (b) right worshipful sir and my singular good lord iii. {[adv + adj] + n} and {adj + n} right worshipfull sir and wellbeloved cousin iv. {[adv + adv] + adj} and {poss + [(adj + adj ) +n]} right heartily wellbeloved and my special good brother v.{[adv (adj +and+adj)] + n} and {poss +[ (adj +adj)+n]} right worshipful and reverent sir and my special good friend vi. {adj + n} and {poss + [adj + (n1+n2)]} reverent sir and my speciall friend and gossip vii. {[adj + and + adj] + n} and {poss +[adj+(n1+n2)]} reverent and worshipfull sir and my special friend and gossip the next step is to see what lexical items are used to fill the categories of adverb, adjectives and nouns. the adverb most often used is right, but interly, heartily, very and ful also occur. the last two are selected only after the possessive my, and when a second adverb is needed in a compound then the first two are selected. the two adjectives by far the most often used are worshipful and wellbeloved, which represent the opposite poles of politeness, followed by reverent; other adjectives, such as special, good and trusty seem to be context-dependent, since they are only selected if following the possessive; the adjectives singular and honorable are very rare in our data. the possessive used is always my, which is very rare in simple nps but by contrast it is almost obligatory in the second np of a compound, as can be seen in table 2 above. the nouns most often used are sir, master teresa sánchez roura 82 and brother, which logically reflect the fact that most letters were written between brothers or from inferior to superior; however, brothers could also be addressed as sir, and close collaborators could address each other as brother. other nouns used are father, cousin, gossip, friend¸lover, bedfellow and proper names. occasionally the adjective wellbeloved is nominalised. the most common collocations are between adjectives and nouns which denote either positive or negative politeness, such as wellbeloved brother/cousin/friend and worshipfull sir/ master; however, mixed types also occur, where a positively polite noun, such as father/ cousin /brother is associated with a negatively polite adjective, such as worshipfull; so the collocation worshipfull father is fairly frequent at the end of the 15th century. we may conclude that the titles of address offer a flexible syntactic structure, but with a rather limited set of lexical items, which is due to the reduced number of relationships among the senders and recipients of the letters in this corpus. (2) commendations a prototypical commendation usually opens a letter, with the writer commending himself directly to the reader, as in what we shall label as type 1: (1) i recomend me wnto you commendations may occur in other contexts (types 2, 3 and 4), which are usually embedded elsewhere in the text. we can define them as follows: type 2: the writer commends himself to someone else at the reader’s end, as in: (2) syr 1 pray you that ye woll recomaund me vnto my master youre fadere type 3: a third person commends himself to the reader via the writer, as in: (3) syr, my lord of sente jonys commende hym to you type 4: a third person commends himself via the writer to someone else at the reader’s end; this is a very rare circumstance, but occurs in: convention vs choice in the cely letters 83 (4) … say vnto hem that hary seyseld recomaunde hem vnto yowre brodere a binary distinction may be established according to whether commendations are realized by means of a verb or a noun, as in the prototypical structures: (5) i recomaund me vnto you (6) afftyr all dew recomendassyon pretendyng the basic formula s+v+o+pp as a simple main clause, which is almost invariably transcribed as ‘i recommend me unto you’ as in (5) above, is used to represent type-1 commendations, direct from writer to reader, as well as type 3, from a third person via the writer to the reader, as in (7) below: (7) syr, owr cosyn cowldayll recomendys hym and hys wyffe to you commendations of the 2nd and 4th types, whereby either the writer or a third person commends himself to a third party at the reader’s end, are embedded as a subordinate clause, typically the object of the verb ‘pray’.1 fluctuation in how to build this construction is apparent in our data, as we have the same number of instances for ‘pray + bare infinitive’, ‘pray+ toinfinitive’ and ‘pray+ that-clause’, as in the examples below: (8) i pray you recomend me to my brother robard (9) i praye you to recomend me to owr ostes (10) syr i pray you that ye woll recomaund me vnto my master youre fadere it may be said that the syntactic variation seen so far does not obey any pragmatic dictates since syntax is simply adapting itself to the message: the basic formula is needed for a direct message to the reader, whereas the subordinate construction is necessary to ask the reader to do something. however, further variations, involving the addition of optional adverbials in the vp, may be seen as choices made for a particular purpose, that is, choices which are pragmatic in the sense of trying to use the language to best effect. it is not a question of semantics only: the idea of ‘heart’, the element 1 there is even an example of type-2 commendation expressed in the imperative form: ‘comende me to twhessylton and aull good fellows’ teresa sánchez roura 84 most often used as we shall see below, in an attempt to demonstrate closeness and friendship, or positive politeness, is translated into different syntactic options, from a mere adverb to a longer pp with a clause embedded in it; thus, however friendly the overall tone tries to be, it will sound more or less deferential depending on the length of the expression. these variations seem to affect only type-1 commendations, since the clauses exemplifying types 2, 3 and 4 always exhibit the basic pattern.1 from this we may infer that types 2, 3 and 4 are sufficiently sincere by themselves, and that type-1 commendations seem to need extra strengthening elements to make them sound more convincing and less of a formula. the most popular construction by far, outnumbering even the unmarked one, is the addition of an adverb, either before or after the verb, as in2: (11a) i recomende me harttely wnto yow (11b) i louly recommend me vnto yowre masterschypp phrases of comparison are also attached, the most popular being those introduced by ‘as’, in comparisons of the ‘as….as’ type, as in:3 (12) i recommend me vnto you as hartely as i can the prepositions used to introduce optional pps are ‘in’ and ‘with’; the former introduces the expression ‘in … wise’ to indicate how the commendation is performed; it is either ‘in the best wise i can or may’ or ‘in as loving/hearty wise as i/heart can (think)’; ‘with’ is invariably used in the expression ‘with all my heart’. the noun ‘recommendation’ is always the head of the pp as in ‘after due recommendation…’, used to represent type-1 commendations exclusively, most often appended before the basic formula seen above (5), with or without variant extensions, the most common being the inclusion of the 1 the exceptions are items 94, 194 and 214, in which a third person commends himself to the reader via the writer (type 3) ‘heartily’. two of those instances are the only commendations from a woman to the writer. 2 it must be noted that the collocation of the adverb before the verb is subjected in 99% of cases to the inclusion of the phrase ‘after due reccommendations’ before the subject. 3 other constructions with ‘as’ are: ‘as heart can think’, ‘as lovingly as heart can device or think’, ‘as heartily as i can device or think’, ‘as heartily as i can or may’, ‘as tenderly as heart can think’ and ‘as lovingly as heart can think’. convention vs choice in the cely letters 85 adverb ‘lowly’.1 the effect created by such relatively verbose phrases is that of a more deferential and distant attitude on the part of the writer. the prototypical unmarked version is: (13) affter dew recommendacyon i lowly recommend me unto yowre masterschypp variation at this level involves modification of the noun ‘recommendation’ by means of a premodifier, invariably ‘all’, and a postmodifier, as in: (14) afftyr all dew recomendassyon pretendyng / had / precedyng either modifier may also be omitted, rendering something like “after due recommendation”. both the basic pattern and the variation are equally popular. the action of commending is invariably represented by the verb ‘recommend’ or its related noun ‘recommendation’, even though the vocabulary might have allowed other possibilities, such as ‘trust’ or ‘charge’ for example. semantic variation concerns the optional elements around the basic pattern as seen before, characteristic of type-1 commendations. this, in turn, means that types 2, 3 and 4 do not exhibit much semantic variation.2 the elements which are susceptible of variation are the pronouns referring to the reader, the adverbs in the main clause and the lexical items in the pps. let us see them in turn: (1) the pronoun of address: the prototypical ‘you’ of ‘i commend myself to you’ may change to an honorific term, such as the usual ‘your mastership’ or ‘your good lordship’, for example. this serves the purpose of enhancing the social distance between correspondents; (2) the adverb used to modify the act of commendation is most commonly ‘heartily’; however, ‘lowly’ is also very much used. this is a particularly interesting dichotomy from a pragmatic standpoint, in that it reveals a different approach on the part of the writer: positive politeness or warmth in the first case, negative politeness or deference, in an act of self-humiliation, in the second; and (3) variation in the pps revolves around the entity of 1 there are only a couple of instances in which the ‘after’ phrase comes at the end of the main clause (145, 192). 2 there is one instance of the use of the verb ‘beseech’ as a synonym of ‘pray’ in one type-2 commendation. teresa sánchez roura 86 ‘heart’ and its related adjectives and adverbs. in this sense, the ‘as’, ‘in’ and ‘with’ phrases are semantically parallel in so far as they all include terms connected with ‘heart, such as ‘hearty, heartily, loving, lovingly, tenderly’. we may conclude that commendations exhibit little syntactic and lexical variation, but that what little there is seems to be pragmatically determined. (3) gratitude gratitude to the reader is basically understood as being on the part of the writer himself, although there are instances of the gratitude of other people to the reader conveyed by the writer. a third type would represent the reader’s gratitude to someone else at the reader’s end. we shall label these as types 1, 2 and 3, as in: (15) hertely thankyng yowe of the greht cheyr and we1fayr þat i had wyth yowe (type 1) (16) and thay thanke yow of your greyt labor in byeng of ther stowe (type 2) (17) and i pray yow thanke them for me (type 3) instances of gratitude of type 1 exhibit two different structures, personal and impersonal, as in: (18) i comaund me to you, and i thank you hertely of the good lodgeng that ye fand vs at derford (19) i recomande me vnto you as herty1y as i can, thankyng you of your good will shewed vnto me at all seasons both structures are relatively frequent and the previous clause does not seem to preselect one or the other, unless, of course, the clause containing the gratitude message is a completely independent one, in which case the personal construction is selected, as in: (20) syr, i thanke you at hyt pleschyd you to leue me goos either structure may include the adverb heartily, but it seems to be more popular with the personal construction, which is coherent from a pragmatic point of view, since this personal construction is the more positively polite of the two, as in (18) above. convention vs choice in the cely letters 87 the verb thank may take two complements (very rarely just one), the prepositional one indicating the cause of the gratitude. there is fluctuation concerning the preposition used, which is either for or of, although of is the one more often used by far, as in: (21) and i thanke you of your grehyte coste and scheyr (22) and i thanke you for the grete coste that 3e dyd on me at your departyng type-2 instances of gratitude exhibit the personal structure only, as in: (23) and my godfather recomendys hym to yow, and thankys yow for yowr rememberans of hys stofe there is also fluctuation in the preposition which introduces the complement, which again can be either for or of indistinctly. type-3 instances of gratitude, whereby the writer thanks someone else at the reader’s end, are always embedded in a subordinate clause which is the object of the verb pray, with the verb thank in the bare infinitive form, as in: (24) and i pray yow thanke them for me there is no lexical variation in the expression of gratitude, which relies solely on the verb thank, which in turn may be modified by the adverb heartily exclusively. we can conclude that the expression of gratitude does not exhibit much syntactical flexibility and no semantic variation; it does show, however, instability concerning the choice of the preposition. so far, we have studied pattern and variation from a mere linguistic point of view, regardless of any sociological variable. but if we simply stop to analyse who says what in what way, it is probable that what looked like repetitive formulaic patterns may be the hallmark of one individual writer as opposed to the hallmark of the genre of correspondence. let us analyse the following topics in this light. (4) health matters the mention of health matters is an aspect of captatio which seems to be socially constrained in a very marked way, since it is only incorporated in teresa sánchez roura 88 the letters of those correspondents who are very close, and it is generally avoided by writers addressing the socially superior addressee. this can be stated since the basic social network of social relations among the principal correspondents is known, and by analogy the social standing of other writers of whom we know very little can be inferred. in this way, if a writer does not mention health at all, it is clearly the case that he is not close to the reader and vice versa, inclusion of health matters indicates less distance between correspondents. having said this, another difference between letters of family members and more sporadic writers must be mentioned, concerning how to address the health issue. close relatives and friends tend to inform each other about the health of those near them, who are close to the reader – whereas sporadic writers more deferentially inquire about the reader’s health. if we analyse the structures employed, patterns seem to emerge, although these are not uniform across letters, which would denote a general formulaic usage, but rather characteristic of certain writers. this suggests a personal style that repeats itself from letter to letter. in this way: a. richard cely seems to use the following: (25) (furthermore) informing you or please hyt you to wet / understand…at the making of this our father and mother were (an we all were) in good health, thanked be god. variations include basically the addition of a coordinated clause, as in …. (26) …and send you their blessings (27)… and desire greatly to hear of yours. (28) … and so we trust that you be. b. william cely never touches on this topic, except on three occasions: to acknowledge george’s illness, to inform of someone’s death and to let george know of his own sickness. the syntactic structures are all different: (29) be the whych i vnderstond ye be well mendyd off yowre grett sycknesse, wheroff 1 am ryghyt gladel, and i thanke god off yowre goode rekewer, (30) furdermore, plese hett yowre masterschypp to be enfformyd that margere ys dowghter ys past to godd. hytt was berydd convention vs choice in the cely letters 89 thys same daye, on whoys sowle jhesu hawe marsy. syr, i vnderstond hytt hadd a grett pang: what sycknesse hytt was i cannott saye, (31) i hawe byn a lyku1l dyssesyd, but i thancke godd i am amendyd and walkynge, and joysse hathe ben syke allso, butt nowe he ys weil mendyd, thanckyd be godd, c. the two other members of the family, the father, richard, and the more distant brother, robert, use the same basic structure as george: (32) at the making of this letter we were in good health… differences appear when thanking god, which the father states baldly, whereas the brother passivizes: (33) i thank god (34) blessed be god note however that richard the elder is not monotonous in his structures but exhibits variation: (35) desiring to hear of your recovering (36) youre moder and i desire for to hear of your recovering d. william maryon, thomas kesten and the rest of the sporadic authors seem to opt for: (37) desiring to hear of your welfare which in the more deferential letters is followed by a relative clause which is a prayer to god to preserve health. thus, (38) desiring to hear of your welfare, the which i beseech almighty jesus to preserve and keep unto his pleasure and yours. the nouns used to refer to different aspects of people’s well-being are the following: health and welfare by far, together with sickness, amendment, amending, recovering, prosperity. the adjective most often used to modify health is good, in collocation with the word health; others, used to modify the person himself are: hooll, merry, comforted, amendyd, sick, well mendid, sore sick and strong. other expressions, used to refer to a medical condition, are fare well, died, had a great pang, past to god, deceased. pattern and variation are also observable in the pious vocabulary embedded in the teresa sánchez roura 90 relative clause appended to the word health: the deity is usually god, the good lord, jesus, almighty god and almighty jesus, who are thanked or blessed; the deity is asked to keep, preserve, maintain, increase or continue the reader’s health, usually to his pleasure and onto the reader’s heart’s desire, which admits some variation, as in to your heart’s ease and will, to your most profit both of body and soul or to your pleasure. from the above it may be concluded that both pattern and variation are present throughout the letters as a whole, but it is my tentative suspicion that whereas pattern characterises the letters of an individual, variation is apparent between individuals. (5) acknowledgement of receipt it must be noted that only frequent correspondents acknowledge receipt of a letter, which they tend to claim to understand, usually repeating its contents. once again, pattern and variation seem to occur: the former, across letters by the same author, and the latter, across authors. this way, one individual’s mode of expression may be singled out. so, for instance: a. richard the younger fluctuates between: (39) sir, i haue ressauyd a letter from yow wrytt at and (40) … informyng you that i haue ressauyd a letter from you wryttyn at the way he finishes this sentence is quite variable, fluctuating between nothing at all and one of the following versions: (41) … the qweche i do whell wndyrstonde / the qweche i wnyrstond riught whell (42) … wherby i wndyrstonde … (43) … wherein i fynd that is, if regurgitation of the previously received letter is included, one of the structures above is selected. convention vs choice in the cely letters 91 he is not consistent either, in the amount of information he adds regarding the date and place of the letter received. b. william cely’s letters always conform to the same pattern. his acknowledgment of receipt is another example of this. he invariably introduces it in the following way: (44) furdermore plese hit yowre masterschypp to vnderstonde that i hawe receyued an letter ffrom yow the whych i hawe redd and weil vnderstond… if recapitulation of the letter is included, this is introduced by one of the following: (45)… be the tenour wherof i vnderstond… (46) … be the whych i vnderstond… (47) … howe that… slight variations include: (48) fyrddyrmore, lyke hytt yowre mastyrschypp to hawe yn knowlege that thys day i hawe receyued yowre lettyr (49) fyrdyrmore, lyke hyt yowre mastyrschypp to wytt that i hawe receyued yowre lettyr he sometimes includes the name of the bearer and details concerning when and where the letter was sent from. c. richard the elder is another author who seems to follow the same pattern from letter to letter. he introduces the acknowledgment of receipt abruptly, immediately following the opening greeting, linking it to this by means of ‘and’, as in: (50) …and i haue resayuyd a letter from the wrete (…)the weche letter 1 haue wyll understande euery ponte. he does not offer a recapitulation of a previously received letter, therefore his acknowledgements of receipt end in ‘understand’. only once does he topicalize the date of receipt, as in: (51) the laste day of octobor i haue resayuyd a letter from you, wrete at bregys the xxiij day of octobor, the weche letter i haue wy1 understand, teresa sánchez roura 92 d. william maryon introduces yet another structure which he selects quite often in his letters; this is: (52) ferdermor, and yt plesse yow, ye schall vnderstonde that i haue ressayved a letter from you wreten at calles the xxviij day of marche, the wyche letter i haue well vnderstonde that… he also uses to: (53) ferdermor, plessed you to wete that / plessed you to vnderstond that e. george cely also makes use of one and the same structure from letter to letter, along the lines of the one used by william above: (54) fordyrmor plesyth yt yow to vndyrstonde i resseywyd an lettyr ffrom yow wrytt at london the fforst day of may, the wheche lettyr 1 hawe rede and do whell vndyrstonde f. other isolated authors show a variety of structures: (55) … letyng you wnderstond / wit þat i resauyd a letter from you, be the whiche writtyng i ondirstond (56) certefyng you that i receyved a lettre from you (…). the tenour of which lettre i vnderstode ryght wele and therupon (57) … i haue receiued your kynde and louyng lettre and wel vnderstonde alle þingys þerynne contened as well as the already familiar: (58) fordyrmor plesythe ytt yower lordshyp to vndyrstond that y hawe ressaywyd an lettyr ffrom yowr lordshyp beryng datte at napullus the last day of novembyr derectyd to my broder rychard and me. lexical variation in the acknowledgement of receipt of a letter occurs with the ‘informing’ verb that opens the clause and at the end, to introduce the recapitulation, if any. in this way the verb most commonly used to acknowledge receipt is understand in expressions of the type seen above, followed by inform, let wit/understand, certify, have (in) knowledge and to be informed. recapitulation is also introduced by the verb understand in a majority of cases, in a variety of constructions as seen earlier. on the basis of the above it may be concluded that the syntactic structures exhibited show a constant patterning across letters by the same author, which varies across convention vs choice in the cely letters 93 authors. as mentioned before, the patterning may well define an author’s style but not the genre as a whole. there is not much lexical variation regarding the items selected to fulfil the different categories and functions in these clauses. (6) introduction of the exposition the body of the text is usually introduced in a way similar to the one used when dealing with health matters and the acknowledgement of receipt, namely one of the please it you to understand variations. now, if an author has already selected this expression earlier in the letter, he might resort to a different one to start the body of the letter proper, usually by means of a shorter form, such as furthermore, also or simply the honorific sir immediately followed by the main point of the letter. alternatively, he may repeat the same phrase again. the same happens whenever a new item of news is introduced later in the text: the author may either repeat the please it you to know phrase, he may simply use the honorific for each new point or he may simply start a new sentence with no connectors. concerning this topic, it seems that a pattern across authors pervades the letters, in favour of what may be called a formula; however, there is also a good deal of variation at the syntactical and lexical levels, although in the case of the “please it you to understand” formula it might be a case of unsettled syntax as opposed to true variation. before we proceed to the analysis of the various forms, it must be said that, once again, a pattern across the letters of one individual author does seem to be at work too, thus characterising his style. in this sense, the letters of richard the younger introduce the body of the text by means of the honorific sir, because he has already used the other formula to introduce health matters and acknowledgement of receipt. this contrasts sharply with the style of william cely, who as we know, hardly ever mentions either topic; thus, he feels free to use the “please it your mastership to understand” formula to introduce the body of the text. a formula which, together with the honorific sir and the connectors and, also and as for, he repeats throughout the text. teresa sánchez roura 94 the style of richard the elder boasts a direct and concise coordinator and, which he uses to link the main body of the text abruptly to the initial salutation. another form he uses is the open ye shall understand that… the other authors use a variety of resources, in many cases depending on how they have begun the letter. a variety of connectors are employed to link the main body of the text to the second part of the letter; such connectors are also used throughout the rest of the text whenever a new item of news is mentioned. they can be divided into four groups: a. very short ones: adverbs, conjunctions and nouns: also and sir further as for item furthermore as touching (the matter) item sir b. finite clauses: i understand by …. (that) ye shall understand (that) i lete you wit (that) the cause of my writing is this c. non-finite clauses (gerund): ascertaining you (that) certifying you (that) doing you to wit (that) informing you (that) informing you as for letting you understand / wit/ have in knowledge (that) d. others (with please and like) like it you to wit / to be enformed (that) like it your mastership to understand as for without it: pleased you to wit (that) convention vs choice in the cely letters 95 pleaseth you to understand / wit (that) with it: please it you please(th) it you to wit / understand / to be informed (that) different word-order: it please you it please you to wit / understand (that) if it please you to wit / understand (that) variation at the syntactical and lexical level is certainly available; patterning seems to be, once again, a question of stylistic characteristics of the individual writers, who opt for one way of expression and use it throughout their letters. (7) offer of services this aspect of captatio, as in the case of gratitude, is certainly free in sentiment and only included when it is really meant. there are very few instances of this in the cely letters. the wording varies from letter to letter, but two patterns seem to emerge, with and without an explicit conditioning undertone in the subordinate clause, as in: a. with explicit condition: (59) and ther be any thytige that 1 can do for yow in ingelonde… (60) ande if ther be any theng that 1 can do ar may ffor yow… (61) and yf het ly in my power… b. without explicit condition: (62) and anything pat i cane do vnto pleser… (63) and any servis that 1 can or may do for you here… (64) and sir, eny seruice that i can or may do for your maystership here… the main clause exhibits one of the following variations: teresa sánchez roura 96 (65) 1 wyll do yt wyth all my hartte (66) 1 am ande schal be at yowre comandement, (67) i schall do as moch that: schal be vnto your plesure, (68) ye shal fynde it redy (69) ye shall fynde me as redy to do it and as glad as any man on lyve (70) hyt schall be redde to my powhere (71) shall be r(e)dy atte your desyre, offers of service tend to end with a pious good wish, which becomes the usual valediction at the end of the letter. this is usually attached by means of a relative clause, as in the following instances: (72) … the weche conowthe god, ho haue yow in ys kepynge, amen. (73) … that knowleth jhesu, who kepe you. (74) … as knoweth owre lord, qwou send you good fortune wyth þe accomplichment off your good1y desyrys. (75)… by godys grace, who euer preserue you. (76) at knowith the blessid trynyte, whom i beseche to preserve you into good helthe, amen. (77)… be the grase of god, how haue you in ys kepe. (78)… and that god knows, how preserue. (79)… as oure lord god knowith, who y beseche to preserue you and youres in felicite long duryng. all instances of this pious valediction are slightly different, showing a wide range of syntactical structures and lexical items, from which it may be argued that this aspect of captatio does not seem to be formulaic. (8) end of news the announcement that the letter has reached its end is characterised by its abruptness and conciseness in all cases. the basic formula is: (80) no mor to you convention vs choice in the cely letters 97 this admits very little variation, either syntactic or lexical. syntactically, this phrase may appear either independently, as in (81) above, or as the direct object of a clause, as in: (81) i wryte no mor to you in either case, the pp at this tyme may be also added, as in: (82) no mor to you at this time (83) i write no mor to you at this time occasionally, william cely adds the honorific sir before the phrase and also occasionally the complement to you is omitted, as in: (84) no more at this tym (85) i wryte no more the bare expression ‘no more’ is rarely found. at the lexical level, the only variation present involves the substitution of the pronoun you for the honorific np your mastership. we may conclude that this part of the letter is certainly formulaic in wording, both syntactically and lexically. (9) pious valediction all writers include a pious valediction of some sort at the end of their letters. ‘of some sort’ refers to the actual length of the farewell. thus, correspondents within and outside the family who are on close terms and write to each other frequently will opt for a short form, whereas writers addressing a socially superior reader, or who write to each other sporadically, will opt for a longer, more deferential form, both of which we can see below: (86) but jhesu kepe you (87) but almighty jesus hath you in his blessed keping another characteristic of pious valedictions is their level of syntactic independence in the text. short farewells are usually independent clauses, linked to the rest of the text by a mere ‘but’ (in the sense ‘no more news except …). by contrast, longer sequences usually come at the end of a clause, to which they are semantically related, by means of a relative, as in: teresa sánchez roura 98 (88) by the grace of god, who have you… the prototypical valediction, among very frequent correspondents, is: (89) but jhesu kepe you variations of this are as follows: (90) but jhesu / our lord kepe (you) and all yours (amen) (91) but the trinity / almighity jesus have you (and (all) yours) in his (blessed) keping (92) jesu have you in keping (93) almighty god have us all in his blessed keping (94) but almighty jesu save you and kepe you (95) but almighty jesu preserve (you) and kepe you further variations include: (96) but the holy ghost be with you (97) but the holy trinity have you in his keping (98) but almighty jhesu preserve and kepe you and all yours long in good health and pro (99) jhesu kepe you and send you good health (100) but i pray to the trinity send you health and bring you well hither (101) but our lord send you long life and good to his pleasure and yours (102) but i pray jhesu that all things may be well conveyed (103) be the grasse of god, who have you and all yours in his keeping, amen / the which have you in his keping lexical variation occurs in both the names and adjectives used to refer to the deity (jhesu, our lord, the trinity, almighty god, holy ghost, holy trinity) and also the actions asked for (kepe, have in keping, send, save, preserve’). the pious valediction of the shortest type is a pattern of individual writers but also across writers, which would point towards its being formulaic; longer versions are based on the prototypical one with extensions that do not imply variation in the core structure of the expression. lexical items provide a limited degree of variation. convention vs choice in the cely letters 99 (10) ‘in haste’ the ‘in haste’ phrase seems to be formulaic in the case of richard cely the elder, who always includes it in his letters, with the variation ‘in great haste’. there are a few other authors who include it very sporadically, from which we may infer that its use was not stereotyped but of necessity. the ‘in haste’ phrase always comes at the end of the letter, between the attestation and the signature, and on three occasions it is used on the dorse of the letter, as a kind of urge to the bearer. concerning the reasons for the inclusion of the ‘in haste’ phrase, the writer may be referring to his writing in a hurried, careless manner due to something or other that needs his attention more urgently and will not let him devote more time to the letter; or he may be referring to the urgency to finish the letter because the bearer is waiting on the stirrup ready to depart. conclusions pattern and variation, or conventional formulae versus free choice, are terms which are closely interrelated rather than being mere opposites. in my view, an overall pattern, both at the syntactic and lexical levels, becomes clear when reading the cely letters. however, far from being the epitome of conventionalism, this pattern emerges precisely because of the choice each individual writer makes from among the possible variables the language offers. these he uses exhaustively throughout all his letters, producing what we could call his own personal formulae. in other words, due to the fact that the number of authors and writing contexts in the celys is somewhat limited, we become accustomed to certain expressions which we read repeatedly throughout the letters. these are not necessarily conventions of the genre, but rather the personal hallmark of each author, who has acquired a writing style which he exhibits in one letter after another, although depending to a certain extent on whom the addressee is. when such sociolinguistic variables as author and addressee have been taken into account, it has been shown that those writing styles do vary across teresa sánchez roura 100 authors, thus denoting the existence of variation and consequently free choice. a study of the pragmatic use and effect of these expressions (forthcoming) sheds light on this issue, in the sense that it seems to be the case that choices are made by the writer both before deciding whether to include a certain topic or not (e.g. health matters), and at the moment of giving it linguistic shape (i.e. deferential or warm). it is my claim that this also seems to support the hypothesis that such passages, i.e. most instances of captatio benevolentiae, are present for a purpose and not as a customary technique. teresa sánchez-roura university of santiago references brown, p. and s.c. levinson 1987: politeness: some universals in language usage. cambridge university press, cambridge. camargo, m. 1991: ars dictaminis, ars dictandi. brepols, turnhout. davis, n. 1965: the ‘litera troili’ and english letters. review of english studies 16: 233-44. denholm-young, n. 1969: collected papers of n. denholm-young. the university of wales press, cardiff. hanham, a. ed. 1975: the cely letters. oxford university press, oxford. henderson, j. r. 1993: on reading the rhetoric of the renaissance letter. in renaissance-rhetorik/renaissance rhetoric. ed. h.f. plett. de gruyter, berlin-new york. 143-62. murphy, j. 1974: rhetoric in the middle ages: a history of rhetorical theory from st agustine to the renaissance. university of california press, berkeley. nevalainen, t., and helena raumolin-brunberg 1995: constraints on politeness: the pragmatics of address formulae in early english convention vs choice in the cely letters 101 correspondence. in historical pragmatics. ed. a.h. jucker. john benjamins, amsterdam. 541-601 richardson, m. 1984: the dictamen and its influence on 15th century english prose. rhetorica 2/3: 207-26 sánchez roura, t. 2001: what’s left of captatio benevolentiae in 15thcentury english letters? a study of the cely letters. neuphilologische mitteilungen 102: 317-38 sánchez roura, t. 2002: the pragmatics of ‘captatio benevolentiae’ in the cely letters. journal of historical linguistics 3.2: 253-72 whigham, f. 1981: the rhetoric of elizabethan suitors’ letters. pmla 96.5: 864-82. * † * selim06.pdf andrew breeze, selim 6 (1998): 149—152 did sir thomas philipps (fl. 1489-1520) write i love a flower? amongst the freshest of early carols is one on the tudor rose, written for three singers and beginning ‘i love a flower of sweet odour’. questioned on the charms of marjoram, lavender, columbine, marigold, primrose, violet, daisy, gillyflower, rosemary, camomile, borage, and savory, the first singer at length tells the others that his love is the rose red and white. i love the rose both red and white.’ is that your pure perfite appetite?’ to here talke of them is my delite.’ ‘joyed may we be our prince to see and roses thre!’1 this delightful song survives with its music in london, british library, ms add. 5465, the ‘fairfax manuscript’ compiled in the first quarter of the sixteenth century and belonging to the musician robert fairfax (d. 1529), gentleman of the chapel royal.2 the lyric has been popular with antholo gists.3 yet its authorship has remained unclear, even though the name ‘sir thomas phelyppis’ occurs with it in the manuscript. chambers and sidgwick comment, ‘a certain sir thomas philips or ap philip was appointed sheriff of pembrokeshire in 1516, and a thomas phillippis, b.a., received a chantry at woodstock on jan. 9, 1518. he is probably the poet, as “sir” is often, in the 1 the oxford book of medieval english verse, ed. celia and kenneth sisam (oxford, 1970), 548. 2 e. k. chambers, english literature at the close of the middle ages (oxford, 1945), 98; the early english carols , ed. r. l. greene, 2nd edn (oxford, 1977), 307. 3 item 1327 in carleton brown and r. h. robbins, an index of middle english verse (new york, 1943), it appears in historical poems of the xivth and xvth centuries, ed. r. h. robbins (new york, 1959), 91-3 ____________________________________________________________________ 150 case of a priest, the equivalent of the cambridge dominus, which indicates b. a.’1 davies describes the song as ‘with music for three voices by sir thomas phillipps, who is otherwise unknown. the words may also be by him.’2 the sisams treat the poem as anonymous. greene is also sceptical, remarking that ‘no other composition by this sir thomas phelipps is known.’ he regarded chambers and sidgwick’s identification of the author as the priest thomas phillipps as ‘doubtful’.3 could sir thomas philipps, sheriff of pembrokeshire, thus have written the song? philipps’s life is known is some detail. his family’s home was cilsant, now a remote farmhouse in south dyfed, six miles north-east of whitland. he is described as having married joan dwnn, heiress of picton castle, near haverfordwest, before 17 october 1491. thereafter he prospered. he was esquire to the body of henry vii and was appointed a steward of the lordships of llanstephan and oysterlowe (= ystlwyf, west of llanstephan, in south dyfed) on 16 may 1509. on 7 september 1509 he was appointed coroner and escheator of pembrokeshire and the lordship of haverfordwest, in west wales. in the french war of 1513 he commanded 100 men and was knighted; on 16 october 1516 he became sheriff of pembrokeshire. he died before 8 december 1520, when his son john philipps, server of the chamber, succeeded him in his offices.4 it is true these records do not suggest sir thomas philipps, founder of the great pembrokeshire family of philipps, was a poet or musician. yet he was also the patron of the welsh bard lewys glyn cothi (fl. 1447-89).5 in a surviving poem, lewys praises thomas and joan for their hospitality at picton, elaborately comparing them to the heroic figures of welsh tradition, and 1 early english lyrics , ed. e. k. chambers and f. sidgwick (london, 1907), 342. 2 medieval english lyrics , ed. r. t. davies (london, 1963), 361-2. 3 greene, 480. 4 the dictionary of welsh biography (london, 1959), 752-3. 5 the poetical works of lewis glyn cothi (oxford, 1837-9), 301-4; lewys glyn cothi (detholiad), ed. e. d. jones (caerdydd, 1984), 51-2; cf. gwaith lewys glyn cothi, ed. d. r. johnson (caerdydd, 1995). ____________________________________________________________________ 151 speaking of the wines of mantes, normandy, bordeaux, la rochelle, speyer (near mannheim), and spain which they dispensed.1 he also says, tomas fal tîm sy felys, tymyr i holl wyr y llys. ferfain yw’r gwr cryf arfawg, un o ras ei enw yrhawg.2 that is, ‘thomas is sweet like thyme, a nature for all men of the court. the strong armed man is vervain [used as a medicinal plant in the middle ages], his name one of grace for long to come.’ the existence of a highly literate welsh poem in philipps’s honour suggests he had some interest in poetry. it also allows us to date his marriage to 1489 or before, as lewys almost certainly died that year. the political allusions of the english carol provide firmer support for sir thomas philipps’s links with it. editors agree that the white and red rose celebrates henry vii’s reconciliation of the houses of york and lancaster on his marriage to elizabeth of york in 1486. it is possible the lines ‘joyed may we be / our prince to see / and roses three!’ refer to prince arthur. he was born 20 september 1486 and was invested as prince of wales with much pomp on 27 february 1490 (john skelton writing a poem for the occasion), but died of the sweating sickness at ludlow on 2 april 1502, aged 15.3 what we know of sir thomas philipps accords with the dating of the english carol. his duties as esquire to the body of henry vii locate him at the court at the right time: as a welshman who profited by his fellow-welshman henry vii’s political success, he would have reason to share his sovereign’s joys. given the attribution to sir thomas philipps in the contemporary fairfax manuscript, we may associate poem and courtier with some confidence. sir thomas’s literary interests were maintained by his grandson richard philipps, whose collection of welsh proverbs, pedigrees, poems and tracts 1 e. d. jones, ‘lewis glyn cothi’, in a guide to welsh literature, ed. a. o. h. jarman and g. r. hughes, ii (swansea, 1979), 243-61, at 258 2 lewys glyn cothi, 52. 3 francis jones, the princes and principality of wales (cardiff, 1969), 128-30. ____________________________________________________________________ 152 on prosody and bardic privileges is now aberystwyth, national library of wales, ms peniarth 155.1 thomas philipps’s position at henry vii’s court means, then, that we can rule out the woodstock priest phillipps as author of the poem or composer of its music. the sole problem is the nature of the fairfax manuscript’s attribution. many of this manuscript’s attributions (cornish, fairfax, davy, banistre, newark, sheringham, tudor, turges, and browne) are to composers, not poets, though the composer may sometimes have written both words and music.2 hence it is more likely that philipps wrote the music of i love a flower than its words. (although the song may date from the 1490s, the as cription must also postdate 1513, when he was knighted.) we cannot be sure that sir thomas philipps wrote the poem i love a flower of sweet odour, though it remains possible. nevertheless, his recognition as probable composer of the music at least places him within a school of welsh musicians (john lloyd, robert jones, philip ap rhys, and john gwynedd) active in early tudor england, which in some aspects pointed the way to the achievements of tallis and byrd.3 andrew breeze university of navarre * † * 1 dictionary, 753; rhyddiaith gymraeg: detholion o lawysgrifau 1488-1609 (caerdydd, 1954), 60-4. 2 chambers and sidgwick, 299; chambers, 98; greene, 307. 3dictionary, 582, 752; glanmor williams, the welsh church from conquest to reformation (cardiff, 1962), 449. melissa j. venables, selim 22 (2017): 119–125. issn 1132-631x what’s the point?: comparing the ‘finn story’ in beowulf and the fight at finnsburh melissa j. venables university of nottingham beowulf has long been acknowledged as a story full of stories. one of the most famous occurs in the first third of the poem: at the celebration of beowulf’s victory over grendel, a professional poet or scop relates the story of how finn’s son and hnæf scylding in freswæle feallen, ‘fell in frisian slaughter’. this so-called ‘finn episode’ in beowulf is rarely studied without mentioning the fight at finnsburh, a fragmentary poem that seems to relate the same story in a different manuscript, now lost. but what does the finn fragment actually tell us about the story of the freswæle? does it do anything at all to help us interpret the episode? in this paper originally delivered at the 28 th selim conference, i will draw on socio-narratological analysis techniques to argue that the finn fragment sheds very little light on the detail of the episode and does not help us understand the story itself. however, it reveals that the beowulf poet has manipulated a story known to exist in the contemporary narrative habitus to make his own point. it also demonstrates the flexibility of narrative since the two versions are dramatically different: where the fragment celebrates heroic warrior culture, the episode dwells on the tragedy that results from ‘glorious’ battles. as this episode participates in the reflective nexus of stories told within beowulf, it also poses modern readers an interesting question: which other embedded narratives has the poet changed in order to manipulate the point of each story and of beowulf as a whole? keywords: beowulf; finnsburh; old english; comparative literature; socionarratology the finn episode in beowulf is rarely studied without reference to the fight at finnsburh or finn fragment. but what does the fragment actually reveal about the story? does it do anything to help interpret the episode? in this 120 melissa j. venables paper i will draw on socio-narratological analysis to argue that the finn fragment sheds very little light on the detail of the episode and does not help understand the story itself. however, it reveals that the beowulf poet has manipulated a story known to exist in the contemporary narrative habitus to make his own point. the type of analysis that will underpin this discussion relies on an examination of which elements in each story receive the most evaluation, whether from the narrator or from characters. following chambers (1984: 3– 10) and labov (1997: 404–406), i take the most evaluated elements of the narrative as an indication of what the story is really about, its point. the cumulative effect of the evaluations is related to the significance of the story and indicate what the storyteller is trying to say to the audience. evaluation in this sense can take a few forms. it includes explicit value judgements as well as implicit ones, and they can be delivered either through a character or through the narrator. direct evaluation is relatively easy to recognise. indirect evaluation is more subtle and subjective —it could include omission of detail, the tone used by a character or the narrator, what actions a character takes in reaction to something, and so on. point of view is bound up in determining who is evaluating what within a text; who expresses a value judgement is as important as the value judgement itself. therefore i have also focussed my analysis on whose points of view are represented in each narrative and taking that into account when looking at the layers of evaluation in the texts. as with all methods of literary analysis, this approach must be used with caution. cultural context and the nuanced connotations of the words and phrases in the text also impact evaluation; in the case of a foreign (or dead) language like old english, it is possible that a word or phrase a modern audience might interpret as being neutral actually carried some kind of value judgement to the poet and his original audience. however, it is still possible to use this evaluation-focussed approach as an additional tool to attempt understanding what these englishmen were trying to say 1000 years ago. as mentioned above, this paper focuses on the story of the battles at finnsburh between the characters finn and hengest. the text survives in two old english sources: in the so-called ‘finn episode’ in beowulf and in the the ‘finn story’ in beowulf and the fight at finnsburh 121 fight at finnsburh or ‘finn fragment’. 1 the manuscript for the finn fragment no longer exists, but the published version of an 18 th -century transcription survives (fulk, bjork & niles 2008: 279). the episode is located in lines 1062–1163a of beowulf, which survives in ms cotton vitellius a.xv. the story about the fight at finnsburh is the only embedded narrative in beowulf that survives independently in a roughly contemporary source in the same language; it is therefore not surprising that the episode and fragment are usually studied together. the story itself can be described as follows; the chief source for this outline is the episode in beowulf: a group of danes, led by hnæf scylding, is visiting finn’s hall in friesland. finn’s wife, hildeburh, is hnæf’s sister. for an undisclosed reason, there is a battle. there are heavy losses on both sides, including hnæf and his nephew, hildeburh’s son. the battle reaches a stalemate, at which point peace terms are offered. finn and hengest, who now represents the danes, swear to uphold a peace treaty. there is a joint funeral where hildeburh makes a point of burning her son alongside her brother. many or all of the frisians return to their homes for the winter; the danes remain at the hall with finn. hengest broods on revenge over the winter; come spring, the danes voice their complaints against finn until hengest leads them against finn and his remaining troops. finn and his men are slaughtered, the hall is plundered, and the danes go back to denmark with finn’s household treasures and hildeburh. the fragment reads like an action film. even though it does not encompass the entire narrative —indeed, it only covers part of the beginning of the story— it is clear that the narrative is very detailed, focusing less on the characters’ emotional responses and more on their participation in the battle. the language glories in the quality of the warriors, their splendid gear, and their ability to pay their lord back for all the gold and mead he had provided for them in the past. there are no allusions or complex figurative language, but rather direct descriptions of the action punctuated by evaluative statements indicating how glorious the whole business must be. it is impossible to say what the main point of the fragment is because it is fragmentary. however, all but one of the evaluative statements in the fragment praise the worth of the warriors, their gear, and their actions. the 1 the edition used for both texts can be found in r. d. fulk, robert e. bjork & john d. niles, eds., klaeber’s beowulf and the fight at finnsburg, 4 th edition (toronto: university of toronto press, 2008). all translations are my own. 122 melissa j. venables strong implication is that, whatever the point is, it includes a positive view of the secular heroic code and glory earned in battle. in contrast, the episode in beowulf is told in an extremely allusive fashion, skipping over details and focusing more on characters’ reaction to things than on describing the action of the narrative. the overall tone is very negative, communicating intense frustration over being unable to act and an intense grief that removes all glory from battle. the story ends in victory for the danes, but it rings hollow because of how much was lost; instead of praising the brave deeds of the warriors, the poet broods over them. three elements in the episode receive evaluation: the first battle and its effects, the peace treaty, and the second battle. the analysis can be summarised as follows; the episode is 99.5 lines long, so line count can also be interpreted as a percentage of the overall story. • the first battle takes up 31.5 lines woven through the whole episode. 16.5 are references to or descriptions of the battle and its impact; 15 lines evaluate the battle through the narrator, hildeburh, and the danes. • the peace treaty occupies the next largest amount of text with 21 lines, most of which appears in one central section; only 1.5 lines of this form an evaluation. • finally, the second battle occupies 12 lines, only two of which evaluate the event. the item that receives the most reference and the most evaluation is the first battle and resulting pain and loss. the lines and half-lines of reference are woven through most of the story and are entirely negative. the audience is never allowed to forget the event and its consequences. the battle is evaluated both through characters and through comments by the narrator. each opinion represented points to the same thing: human conflicts are complex, difficult to end in a satisfactory way, and result in tragedy even in victory. living warriors are praised, but in death, wæs hira blæd scacen ‘their glory was all departed’ (line 1124b). the episode appears in beowulf at a celebratory feast; given that its point is so pessimistic, it seems strange that the poet would include it at this point in the story. beowulf has killed grendel, and the danes have not yet been attacked by grendel’s mother. why, then, would a professional storyteller or scop at the feast relate such a depressing tale? this choice seems all the the ‘finn story’ in beowulf and the fight at finnsburh 123 stranger since we have physical evidence that a more appropriate version of the fight story existed in anglo-saxon england. however, it does not appear in the poem as direct speech, but rather as indirect speech. it is the external narrator paraphrasing the performance of hroðgar’s scop. although some editions and scholars mark the tale as direct speech, some arguing that it must be direct speech (e.g. williams 1924: 14– 18), i agree with more recent scholarship that this is not the case (e.g. marsden 2004: 273). the main evidence is the way direct speech is consistently marked throughout beowulf. of the forty-six instances of direct speech in the poem, all but six are marked with obvious speech verbs such as maþelian or sprecan, leaving no question of who is speaking or where the speech begins. the six instances without an obvious speech verb are introduced through some other construction indicating that a quotation is about to appear. in these cases, verbs relating to speech such as fricgan ‘to question’, in combination with personal pronouns in the speech itself, make it clear that direct speech is present. these introductions to direct speech are not present in the finn episode; instead, the poet uses mænan scolde ‘he was to speak [of]’, indicating that what follows is what the scop talked about, not what he said. this phrase is an indicator of indirect speech. therefore, the beowulf poet does not present the external audience with the exact story that the character-bound audience ‘hears’, but rather he presents us with a description of the story: we are not meant to think that we experience the same version of the story that the characters experience. we are free to imagine that the characters ‘hear’ a different, probably longer and more complete, version of the story within the world of the poem. the existence of the fragment supports this idea because it proves that real anglo-saxons knew a suitably heroic version of the finn story: there is no need to hypothesise that such a version existed. when it is understood that the episode is indirect speech and not exactly the words the banqueters are meant to hear, we can see what the poet is doing: he has selected a story appropriate for the celebration, but he has manipulated this paraphrase in order to say something different to the external audience. one important thing this achieves is that it opens the external audience to the possibility of interpreting stories that typically glorify warrior culture from a different perspective. this is the first criticism of secular-heroic culture that appears in beowulf, and it invites the external audience to question whether 124 melissa j. venables beowulf gained any glory through killing grendel. additionally, before beowulf’s arrival in denmark, many danes had died in the attempt to defeat grendel; were their deaths pointless —is their glory all departed? this critique also provides an alternate lens through which the audience can view and judge battles that happen later in the poem. the voices represented in the finn episode come together to criticise the warrior culture glorified in the finn fragment while still being a part of it. the story does not simply present a balanced view of the cycle of violence, where glory is juxtaposed with loss and lamentation; instead, it pronounces judgment, stating that the kind of loss resulting from battles deprives people of glory, and the end result is simply more violence and loss. but despite criticising the cycle of violence, the poet does not offer an alternative way of life. indeed, the idea of attempting peace without bloodshed is all but dismissed. the peace treaty itself is only described once as an important element —but not the heart— of the story, with very little direct evaluation. the implicit evaluation in the form of the treaty’s failure is overshadowed by references to the first battle; the characters bear the battle in mind for the rest of the episode, but the peace treaty is totally forgotten. this critique of secular-heroic culture does not come from an external, ‘monkish’ voice, but from voices anchored in the culture of the heterocosm: hildeburh, hengest, and the narrative voice relating the poem as a whole. this is only the first of several instances where the poet uses his characters and narrator to evaluate warrior society from within. the embedded narratives form a pattern of celebrating characters, such as beowulf and hroðgar, while judging the human conflicts in which they participate as ultimately futile and impossible to resolve. the poet —and also the character beowulf— seems to prefer monster fights: these are straightforward good-vs-evil scenarios that are easily resolved through annihilation of the enemy. human fights, on the other hand, have a tendency to flare up even after periods of peace. indeed, the poem ends with beowulf’s people on the brink of war; his death marks the end of a 50-year peace with the swedes just as spring marked the end of a winter-long peace between finn and hengest. it is worth noting that human conflicts were never far away in the poet’s world, either; his refusal to propose an alternative system can be seen as evidence that he is cynical about his own people’s ability to refrain from killing each other. even christianity’s message of peace did not stop the cycle of violence in medieval (or indeed, modern) england. his interest in monster fights acknowledges that humans have violent tendencies, and perhaps the poem is, at least in part, the ‘finn story’ in beowulf and the fight at finnsburh 125 an imaginative longing for monsters in the real world to provide an outlet for people’s aggression. this critique from within is emphasised by the jarring contrast between the fragment and the episode. we cannot know for certain whether the fragment is the typical representation of the finnsburh story, but it does provide a point of comparison anchored in a similar geographic and temporal location. the story of finnsburh was known outside beowulf as a glorious account of a battle, dwelling at least in part on the glorification of individual heroes as well as groups of warriors, and not as a tragic account attesting the human loss resulting from such a battle. by relating the story through indirect speech, the poet is able to maintain verisimilitude in his heterocosm while simultaneously taking the opportunity to present a quite harsh evaluation of the culture it represents. this raises some tantalising questions: which other embedded narratives has he changed so dramatically, which ones has he left in a more familiar form, and how do his modifications (or lack thereof) impact how we understand beowulf as a whole? references chambers, ross 1984: story and situation: narrative seduction and the power of fiction. minneapolis, university of minnesota press. fulk, r. d., robert e. bjork & john d. niles eds. 2008: klaeber’s beowulf and the fight at finnsburg, 4 th edition. toronto, university of toronto press. labov, william 1997: some further steps in narrative analysis. journal of narrative and life history 7: 395–415. marsden, richard 2004: the cambridge old english reader. cambridge, cambridge university press. williams, r. a. 1924: the finn episode in beowulf: an essay in interpretation. cambridge, cambridge university press. author’s address school of english – trent building the university of nottingham university park nottingham ng7 2rd united kingdom received: 7 december 2016 e-mail: melissa.venables@nottingham.ac.uk revised version accepted: 16 march 2017 selim07 (2).pdf ricardo sola, selim 7 (2000, for 1997): 161—180 dramatic perspective in chaucer’s the canterbury tales and troilus and criseyde one of the most important problems we face in modern literary history is when we try to explain the artistic innovations of the past in terms of contemporary critical criteria. so that when dealing with character in the middle ages we inevitably pass through the conceptio ns drawn by the renaissance writers, the romantic idea of individuality and the modernist and postmodernist conflict between subject and art. on the other hand roberth scholes and robert kellog in the nature of narrative state all art is traditional in that artists learn their craft from their pre decessors to a great extent. they begin by conceiving the possibilities open to them in terms of the achievements they are acquainted with. they may add to the tradition, opening up new possibilities for their successors, but they begin, inevitably within a tradition (4). it seems that the assumption that any writer belongs to a tradition is an unquestionable axiom in literary criticism and textual analysis. aristotle said so in de poetica when in his analysis of epic poetry and tragedy he proposed homer as a model for other writers. later in time t. s. eliot insisted on this debt of the individual artists to a received and given tradition and in his essay “tradition and individual talent” says that a situation of cultural and literary vacuum is not possible in creative writing. tradition always exists and any poet or artist must have this “historical sense”, being the seminal difference the acceptance or the rejection, and so modification of such tradition (49-52). there is nevertheless an important aspect in the fact that subject and identity in the middle ages, and specially in the xivth century, appeared as a result of the development of the economical and social structures which primed a social relationship bas ed on the private enterprise and free will of ____________________________________________________________________ 162 the subject against a collective pattern of thinking and believing imposed upon the individuals. cultural and literary expressions had finally to accomodate to this social and economic condition and frame. literary subject, lit erary character, authorship, the percepcion of self arose once the economic subject had been established. brewer uses the label “gothic spirit”(1970) to define the fourteenth century spirit and temper, meaning by that the introduction of realistic, lively characters, humor, irony, naturalistic tone given to plot and story, as well as the different attitude of the writer to his works, i.e. the rising of a new type of authorial voice. the fourteenth century is the time in which emerges subjectivity in the modern sense, the individual as protagonist and maker of his own life and historical and economic conditions, (j. kristeva 1974, juan carlos rodriguez 1974, max weber 1969) versus the individual patterned by history and society (lee paterson 1987, 1990, 1991. david aers 1988). this new perception of self in real life gave way to a new perception of self in lit erature, a dialogic, negotiated perception of the self. although dante in la divina commedia deals with the historical subject in a specific time and circumstances, and langland in piers plowman identifies subjectivity with religious identity showing the struggle between the in ner and the outer sides of the self, and in sir gawain and the green knight the knightly identity and subje ct is unveiled when his private decisions in front of different and axiomatic challenges make him responsible for his sins and his repentance, it is chaucer in the dualistic approach to the i the first to establish a true distance between the real and the fictional self, introducing an unknown category in poetic narrative tradition, the “dramatic” self, in the book of the duchess, the house of fame , and the parliament of fowls. this time the perception is dualistic and mimetic between fact and fiction, represented by the two i, the “ignorant narrator” and the learned diplomatic chaucer. this step forward allows the poet to use analogy, homology, and even a simulacrum of autobiography, and the opportunity of giving personal, authorial interpretation and control. this techniques and rhetorical device is not new and is closely connected though with variations to the classical (boethius, ovid, virgil) and bib lical narrative traditions. there were alsdo a wide spectrum of narratives and narrative traditions to which chaucer could refer to. yet we must distinguish ____________________________________________________________________ 163 between written, narrative tradition and oral, dramatic tradition, though also formal is less clear to show (bryan & dempster 1958, schaar 1967, mann 1975, bowden 1967, ruggiers 1967). chaucerian scholars who have studied the sources and analogues to chaucer’s works have fixed mainly their attention on social types and estates and the correspondent literary or historical or narrative tradition referring to them, i.e. scientific (curry 1960), classical (robertson 1962), always affecting the description, and this fact must be emphasised, of some narrative elements: nature, character, uses and customs, ideas and themes. as a result we have a complete analysis and classification of traditional patterns, relationships, debts, influences, and so on an so for, to explain all these elements that make a story, a narrative as such: character, action, plot, beginning-middle-end, literary topoi, literary genres, literary groups. following aristotle's rules a character first must be life -like and so in connection with real known people, and second a character must be a universal, a type. this takes the thread of our analysis to the topic of realism, some thing that is used by many chaucerians scholars to support the idea of chaucer's modernity and originality. and its is true, but let us have a look at bloomfield's essay “chaucerian realism”. bloomfield starts with a general assesment there is good reason why realism in general is such a popular subject in literary theory and criticism, for in one way or another one might say that it is central to any discussion of literature even art. as the ancient theory of imitation or mimesis testifies, art must claim to be real in some sense if it is to be taken at all seriously. the whole problem lies, of course, in what sense or senses art is real (180). aristotle's concept of mimesis, as we know, is not concerned with metaphysical thought as may in plato but with the factual evidence that men are naturally imitative, they enjoy imitating and learn by imitation. so the content of literature is not everything that can be imitated, but that side of nature wich effect may be mediated by the manner of imitation or representation, that is to say, its form. we do not simply react to what we are shown but rather to how we are shown it. then bloomfield touches upon another ____________________________________________________________________ 164 important aspect, very much studied by formalist critics (vid. todorov, lo verosímil) a basic realism in narrative is concerned with the establishment of an air of truth or plausibility to a tale. narratives use such strategies to avoid the accusation of lying. this type of realism may be called “authenticating realism” and is to be found in one way or another in almost all narratives (181) a piece of literature is a thing in its own right, different from those other things it imitates or represents, and it is the manner of imitation what determines the kind of realism in art. in chaucer's canterbury tales there are two basic authenticating devices: the dream-vision pattern that helps to establish the distance between dream and reality, the self and the percepction of the self, in the opposite way as bloomfield suggests, and the individual interplay of the pilgrims, as kittredge explains it, but considered as a “dramatis personae” not as narrative characters. although there is a rhetorical tradition at the background of this technique the kind of realism, i.e “mimesis” repre sented belongs to a dramatic tradition more than a narrative one. the theoretical frame that the contributors to boitani and mann's companion use is based on criteria and judgements not radically different from the ones already known to us, nor do they completely explain from the point of view of a literary tradition the rising of this new individual characterization. in chaucer as patterson says, character is the result of a conjunction of the specific and the general: it (dryden) has also assumed that the key to his meaning resides in the proper understanding of his characters: how we interpret troilus and criseyde will be determined by how we understand the three protagonists; and the canterbury tales are habitually read as indexed to the ethical register of their tellers. in fact, the controversies that have traditionaly preoccupied chaucer criticism have focused not on the legitimacy of this procedure but rather on the terms of its practice. on the one hand is a self-proclaimed “historicism” that insists on the priority of stylistic and iconographic traditions, rhetorical programs, and a re quired exemplary meaning; on the other a “criticism” that privileges mimetic accuracy and commonsense psychology. in both cases chaucerian character is seen as a conjunction of the specific (whether derived ____________________________________________________________________ 165 from stylistic imitation, rhetorical precept, or empirical observation) and the general (whether taken to be authoritative truths or universal human nature.(1991:15) but patterson still collides with the same ideas he wants to criticize and re turns once more to a kind of thematic subject vs history level which does not explain the stylistic design of the canterbury tales. surely it is chaucer who better expresses this dialectical tension between subject and history, between the inner and the outer-self, between canon and parody in the canterbury tales and troilus and criseyde choosing dramatic dialogue and theatrical performance to represent this conflict, and so making the character, the subject, the “dramatis personae” more relevant than story and narrative in front of the audience: and whan that he was out at dore, anon he planed awey the names evrychon that he beforn had written in his tables; he served hem with nyfles and with fables. “ nay, ther thou lixt, thou somonour!” quod the frere “pees”, quod oure hoost, “for cristes mooder deere! tel forth thy tale, and spare it nat at al.” “so thryve i,” quod this somonour, “so i shal!” (ct 1755-1764) in the middle ages there was one only possible definition of character, both in tragedy and epic, and it followed the features described by aristotle and although aristotle conceives of action as more important than character in tragedy and comedy he also thinks that epic narrative is inferior to drama in this process of imitation or “mimesis”, so that it is in drama where character and action are better developed. there is, however, one important distinction to bare in mind: fable is the combination of incidents, and character is what makes us ascribe certain moral qualities to the agents. in the same way character in a play is what reveals the moral purpose of the agents. to put it in other words character is what unveils psychological complexity, i.e., individual identity versus individual type. sklovsky says, “… probablemente, el carácter, tal como lo comprendemos nosotros, surge como resultado de la contraposición del hombre corriente al “personaje” (… surely, character as we understand it, arises as a result of the opposition between common man ____________________________________________________________________ 166 and the individual”, and he goes “…aquí, en la percepción de la diferencia empieza a crearse el carácter” (… here, in our perception of the difference character appears)(128). horace goes even further when he says that characters must be suitable for the genre, and the question, once again, is: what kind of genre do the characters in the canterbury tales and troilus and criseyde belong to? there is not a specific genre, a particular literary tradition to which we can refer to, and, in some sense, to support “authenticating realism”, saying that “chaucer had real-life models” is to miss the point twice: first insisting upon the obvious i.e. that realism in literature always means looking at real life, and second forgetting that literary patterns and forms can also be models for other literary works. so in the canterbury tales and troilus and criseyde the combination of the specific and the general, the life -like individual and the type was possible through the contextual and intertextual reference to the only one literary expression that used “mimesis” and character as “dramatis personae”: the medieval theatre. to support this pose two important clues are given, one by tydeman when he comments some aspects of “closet theatres” and quotes: richard axton suggests that this mode of separation between actors and narrator would mean that the cast (probably professional players) would not need to learn comp licated latin speeches, simply improvising to the narrator's story -line, while the learned author or narrator avoided the stigma of too close an association with the acting fraternity (27-28). chaucer wrote the canterbury tales having in mind a stage, i.e., interplay of narrator and actors. the other clue is given by hans-jürgen diller showing intertextuality in action between medieval stage and medieval painting and glass-working the drama, to which i want to turn now, is a richer medium that the ones considered so far, because it combines word and image. the image, moreover, is a living image…like the other verbal media, it can represent speech (which the pictorial media cannot). but over and above the verbal and the pictorial media, it can represent action iconically as developing in time(51). ____________________________________________________________________ 167 diller sees the interaction between drama and the pictorial media as a kind of process in which the former acts as a model for the latter, so that when the medieval glass-worker builds a bib lical scene in the gothic glass window of the church he looks at theatrical representation not to bib lical narrative. it is not surprising, then, that derek brewer (1974) pointed out the paralelism between the design of the tales and the design of a gothic cathedral, each tale being the equivalent to one of the scenes represented in the gothic glass windows of the church. we readers realize the truth of that when we see that chaucer in the canterbury tales, as the narrative proceeds, is showing more and more interest in “theatrical interplay” and less in the telling of the story, as it happens when we reach the prologues to “the manciple's tale” and “the canon's yeoman's tale”, or at the opening of troilus and criseyde where the rhetorical “invocatio” is used as an “introductio” to the play. as we know the tales in il deccamerone are told using a static frame, while those in the canterbury tales move inside a dynamic one (sklovsky). in the latter the pilgrims, the tellers, travel towards canterbury and in their very detailed way enjoy themselves with the telling of the tales, as in a game (josipovici). in il deccamerone we hear two voices: the author/ narrator and the tellers, the florentine gentlemen and ladies; but in the canterbury tales we hear several voices: the authorial voice, the narrator's, the pilgrim chaucer and the rest of the pilgrims (e.talbot donaldson). these voices are not merely reporting and narrating, but also arguing among them, discussing about different topics and subjects, and commenting about the excellence or ugliness of the stories, abusing each other, and so on and so forth. the pilgrims are described as individuals as well as types: a knyght ther was, and that a worthy man, that fro the tyme that he first began to riden out, he loved chivalrie, trouthe and honour, fredom and cursteisie. (ct 43-46) everyone in either the inner or the outer audience would be familiar with the typical portrait of the type, and that means that a social and literary conventional pattern is behind the mere lines and words (jill mann 1973). from this ____________________________________________________________________ 168 point of view it seems most difficult to explain the following lines that describe the real knight in the group of people in front of the audience: but to tellen yow of his array, his hors were goode, but he was nat gay. of fustian he wered a gypon al bismotered with his habergeon, for he was late ycome from his viage, and wente for to doon his pilgrymage. (ct 73-78) all the prilgrims in the general prologue, the host and later the author/ narrator/ pilgrim chaucer are depicted with these two perspectives. jill mann described in her book chaucer and medieval estates satire the catalogue that stayed as a background for the depiction of the pilgrims in the “general prologue”, while claes schaar in the golden mirror developed a systematic study of descriptive literary techniques at the back; bryan & dempster in their recollection sources and analogues of chaucer's canterbury tales studied and showed the debts of chaucer's work to other authors and to a classical and medieval narrative tradition. d.w. robertson in his a preface to chaucer explored the learned and mythological tradition in which chaucer was inserted, and w.w. curry in chaucer and the medieval sciences the scientific one, etc., just to mention a few. later piero boitani and jill mann in their anthology the cambridge chaucer companion have developed with the help of other chaucerians scholars more modern approaches and, let us say, posmodern analysis studying chaucer's works and retaking the same facts and evidences pointed out in previous studies, some of which i have already quoted. but in some way, i think, they miss the chance specially when dealing with the canterbury tales and the opportunity to explain the reason for such “rich individual variety and interplay”, as they seem to be repeating old concepts, ideas and themes in more modern terms and expressions. let us have a brief look to some of the contributions in the anthology which more clearly deal with the topic i am proposing here. ____________________________________________________________________ 169 benson in his article “the canterbury tales: personal drama or experiment in poetic variety” settles his point with a well-known and right statement: for many, the clearest signals of the variety of the canterbury tales are the sharply differentiated tellers and their intricate relationships before, after, and sometimes during the tales. no other story -collection has a frame that is so lively and dynamic (93). this, in fact, supports his view that the collection of tales reveals a sharply interplay among a group of speakers/ tellers, but next the question is to choose between personal drama or experiment in poetic variety to justify it. it seems that benson is in favour of dramatic interplay and so he brings kittredge's much quoted definition of this design and develops what he calls “dramatic theory”: kittredge argued that the individual tales are not told in chaucer's own voice, but that each is a dramatic expression of the personality of its particular teller: “the pilgrims do not exist for the sake of the story, but vice versa . structurally regarded, the stories are merely long speeches expressing, directly or indirectly, the characters of the several persons they are more or less comparable, in this regard, to the soliloquies of hamlet or iago or macbeth (94). once kittredge and benson have stated that the tale is an extension of the personality, ideas and behaviour of the teller they inmediately think of character, not type, and in order to explain what character is they refer as a way of example to hamlet, iago and macbeth we may say to a literay tradition -. the important fact to notice here is that none of the scholars link the “acting and doing” of the tellers to a narrative tradition for there is none. further on benson goes on saying: given such diverse and energetic portraits it is all too easy to imagine the canterbury tales as fully developed and psychologically complex characters, like those we know from realistic novel or popular film (96). on the one hand the dynamism and complexity of the characters in the canterbury tales take the scholars to the field of performance, to the field of ____________________________________________________________________ 170 film, as well as to the idea of character as it is seen in realistic fiction. on the other, benson does not explain the needs and reasons why chaucer moved from a static and “energetic portraits” into “complex characters”, so establis ing an opposition between passive portraits and active characters. finally benson adds: scholars have even argued that chaucer must have had real-life models and suggested specific names, but the latest studies confirm what some earlier readers understood the general prologue describes types rather than specific individuals (96). gower, the gawain poet, langland and the early chaucer all belong to t he tradition we have briefly described so far. their stories are made of topoi, prototypes, standard groups, story patterns, even though the self might be perceived as part of the fabulated and the conventional. chaucer breaks this traditional path in the canterbury tales due mainly to the parodic nature of his work: .when he describes the characters he makes a parody of both literary tradition and real individual. .when the pilgrims speak they make a parody of both social estate and his humorous counterpoint. .when chaucer describes chaucer he perceives himself as a parody of himself. the conclusion is that subjectivity, the perception of self in modern sense, in the middle ages is the outgrowth and source of parody, and when used in literature, as in chaucer’s the canterbury tales and troilus and criseyde, comes from comedy, the comic and parodic nature of some ele ments in medieval plays, such as noah's wife action and gesture in noah's flood, the complaining and locality of the shepherds in prima pastorum, and the interplays among the shepherds themselves and between the shepherds and the rags, mak and gyll, in secunda pastorum, for example. although kittredge describes the canterbury tales as a “human comedy,” with the pilgrims as dramatis personae, and lumiansky in of sondry folk applied the concept systematically to the entire poem pointing out that there was a “personal dramatic interplay” between the teller and the tale, ____________________________________________________________________ 171 considering the tale as an extension of the teller’s character and individuality,. i.e. subjectivity, still they both understood that chaucer was following a narrative tradition and in their interpretation moved within the limits of a written text. this “dramatic” approach is questioned by marshall leicester arguing that there is a misunderstanding between “written text” and oral performance: the objection to this “dramatic” model that i would particularly like to single out is its disregard for the poem's insistent, though perhaps intermittent, textuality, for the way the work repeatedly breaks the fiction of spoken discourse and the illusion of the frame to call attention to itself as a written thing (216). leicester claims that the “road-side drama” approach has a “central confusion: the confusion of voice with presence”, the confusion “that the voice in a text (is) traceable to a person, a subject, behind the language, an individ ual controlling and limiting, and thereby guaranteeing, the meaning of what is expressed” (216-217). leicester is trapped in the textuality of his text and unable to see that in real drama voice and presence cannot live without each other; he is trapped in the textuality of narrative traditions that he applies to chaucer. the case with troilus and criseyde being slightly different in quantity is similar in quality if we analise criseyde’s part in the “play”. it is generally assumed that women's characters as portrayed by the men writer's of the middle ages, and also the few women writers themselves, had very few personality possibilities. the women of the period are either virgin marys or shrews. there seem to be no women that possess a natural mix of human traits. there are the virgin marys, women who are completely innocent of everything and do not get out into society much… there are the shrews and they are more of a possession, as it the adulterous alison to her husband in chaucer's “the miller's tale” or the wife and daughter in “the reeve's tale”. even the woman in sir gawain and the green knight is also depicted as the deceitful tramp when she sets up gawain by giving him her undergarment, leading to his fall to the green knight. but romance brings forward a different type of women (katharina m. wilson 1984, mary b. rose 19860, carol m. meale 1993). ____________________________________________________________________ 172 in troilus and criseyde, chaucer makes up his mind and collects these three traditions, spiritual love, courtly love and sexual love depicting a parodical “dramatis personae” of those types of medieval women, the saint, the ideal lady, the passionate woman and the whore woman. he transforms any kind of superimposed or established behaviour and percolates these types of women into one more realistic, naturalistic and practical perspective. let us see how criseyde is described in the poem, how the author sees her, and how she finally unveils her truthful nature and personality. the first time criseyde is described by the author (tc i 99-105) is seen as an ideal, hyperbolic being: “nas non so fair”, “forpassynge every wight”, “aungelik”, “a thing inmortal”, “an hevenyssh perfect creature”. after being granted protection by hector she stays in troy keeping “hire honour” and “hire estat.” at the temple, criseyde is still beautiful but she is also a widow dressed in black, umatchable in her beauty, but “ful lowe and still allone, / byhynden other folk, in litel brede” (tc i 178-179). as we see, chaucer is following here all the good qualities that the courtly love system would attribute her as the lady of the romance where “the lady is regularly repre sented as perfect in all her attributes. the basis of this idea is, of course, the high social position of woman.” (dodd 7-8). yet criseyde has no high position by herself in troy’s society, she has the borrowed rank given to her by hector and this is her weakness in the conventional system. later on (i 281-294) troilus sees criseyde for the first time -through the eyes of the narrator-. she is the ideal woman, again, and her physical appearance and presence makes troilus almost faint, in front of that vision of love, “the nevere thoughte hym so good a syghte.” here troilus attitude and feelings suit well the predicaments of the courtly love system and so he suffers deeply, he is sleepless, he wants to kill himself, he is obssesed with how may win her will and retain her favour. he is the real lover of the romance who fulfills all the conditions established by andreas capellanus and chrétien de troies. troilus confesses his love for criseyde to pandarus, and pandarus seeing the critical situation in which the young knight is tries first to deter him from his pledge and obsession. pandarus tries to cool him down and describes woman -in the typical bourgeois viewas an object of love, as a fragile being that sooner or later suffers the assaults of the love and yields to it. either ce____________________________________________________________________ 173 lestial or real, criseyde, it is not an exception and her youth indicates that it is more appropriate and natural for her to follow the path of love. and for to speke of hire in specyal, hire beaute to bithynken and hire youthe, it sit hire naught to ben celestial as yet, though that hire liste bothe and kowthe; but trewely, it sate hire wel right nowthe a worthi knyght to loven and cherice, and but she do, i holde it for a vice. (tc i 981-987) in this way pandarus provides troilus and us with a most skeptical and realistic point of view establishing than the proper condition of the woman is rooted more in her carnal body than in her social image or spiritual shyness, and so he questions the standards of the courtly love system and stands in favour of the new more naturalist tradition as the modern view to order the relationship between women and men. once the plan has been designed pandarus approaches criseyde who describes her situation in the context of the trojan war and her personal restraints: she is a vidow as the wife of bath and she must moderate her natural impulses contrary to the wife of bath. i! god forbede!' quod she. ‘be ye mad? is that a widewes lif, so god yow save? by god, ye maken me ryght soore adrad! ye ben so wylde, it semeth as ye rave. it satte me wel bet ay in a cave to bidde and rede on holy seyntes lyves; lat maydens gon to daunce, and yonge wyves.’ (tc ii 113-119) criseyde protests her bad luck (tc ii 407-504), once she has known what her uncle pandarus’s words are leading to. altough the author, along book ii, seems to be building up a sort of moral image and reliable shape for criseyde, we do not really know if criseyde's feelings are sincere or if she is just facing serious menace on her social stability, very weak and delicate, let us say. being a vidow criseyde tries to behave as the perfect lady of the ro mance ____________________________________________________________________ 174 and as the perfect pure and chaste woman, yet the question is: does she believe in those two types of women, or is she just prentending? later on (tc ii 624-644) troilus is described, again, as the perfect knight of the ro mance but also as the worthy christian one, if we compare this description with the knight in the group of pilgrims. criseyde is at the window watching the comitive of knights and warriors who comes back from battle passing by her house. troilus is mong them. so at this point the author wants to make sure that both we listeners and criseyde perceive troilus as the brave, mild, gentil and truthful knight of the romance suitable and right for criseyde. but it is when crisyede in her room recalls troilus “manhood” that she seems to “see” troilus under the two conventional courtly love views: as a model of knighthood and as a likely lover. in fact, criseyde tries to convince herself that her luck, at the end, si not so bad. she and we are in front of a dual vision, a vision between what we see and what it is. we reach the turning point when criseyde in a systematic way thinks of the pros and cons of her relationship with troilus (tc ii 694-812). she unveils her thoughts but he does not speak it is the omniscient narrator who tells us what she is thinking and the reasons why she should reject or accept trolius approach. among other things she says that she does not want to get married -opposite to the wife of bathbecause husbands are always a nonsense and marriage is a noisy thing. is she insinuating that she prefers and adulterous relation? when the wife of bath insists upon the fact that sexual intercourse is blessed by the holy book, the bible, she links this heterodox statement with her own experience, her multiple marriages and husbands, so marking a radical difference, so far, with crisyede. both are willing to have lovers: the wife of bath through her husbands because husbands bring herm, besides sex, comfort and commodity; criseyde through an adulterous lover who will also bring her comfort, commodity, security and protection. it seems as if in both cases sex was used for other means but both women belong to different social strata, the wife is an independent woman, she earns her life and she is a member of the working middle -class”, criseyde would like to be independent but she is commited to the rules of the war and limited in her actions by her father's treason. we can touch and trust the wife of bath, but criseyde fakes away whenever we want to grab her. ____________________________________________________________________ 175 these words represent the climax of the action. criseyde who has been featured as an ideal lady, according to the courtly love system, a perfect woman according the bible and christian thought, even has been given an aurea of virginity and chastity, speaks by herself in the frame of her real state -a traitor’s daughter under hector’s protection-, she has nothing: no father, no friend, no rank, no virtue, except her body and her personal abilities. and criseyde considers becoming a feigning lover. with that she gan hire eyen on hym caste ful esily and ful debonairly, avysyng hire, and hied nought to faste with nevere a word, but seyde hym softely, myn honour sauf, i wol wel trewely, and in swich forme as he gan now devyse, receyven hym fully to my servyse, bysechyng hym, for goddes love, that he wolde, in honour of trouthe and gentilesse, as i wel mene, ek menen wel to me, and myn honour with wit and bisynesse ay kepe; and if i may don hym gladnesse, from hennesforth, iwys, i nyl nought feyne. now beth al hool; no lenger ye ne pleyne. (tc iii 155-168) crisyede accepts troilus’ love, and in a courtly manner she is going to be for him the ideal lady/ lover for his demanding knight. the fact the she says that her words and actions “are not feigning -sidney in his apology for poetry declares that dramatic action is a feigning actiondoes not mean she is not going to play her part in the performance (iii 170 and ff.), although she seems ready to play it happily and enjoyingly. it is at this point when the parodic nature of criseyde’s action transforms the whole “narrative” poem into a “play”, or at least makes us think of a theatrical tradition more than a narrative one. we may think that this perspective stands in front of what have been said so far by the scholars concerning this poem, and that our point of view risks deforming the true meaning of chaucer’s work, but the truth is that once criseyde is forced to part away from his supposed lover, she seems less tor____________________________________________________________________ 176 mented and troubled than troilus. she offers a practical diagnosis to the problem, unveiling her deeply concerns and interests (tc iv 1254-1415) when we realise that many of the reasons to calm down and fulfill destiny are a repetition of the ones given previously to accept troilus’s love and demand. just in this context we can read the author’s irony and trewe liche, as writen wel i fynde, that al this thyng was seyd of good entente, and that hire herte trewe was and kynde towardes hym and spak right as she mente, and that she starf for wo neigh whan she wente, and was in purpos euere to be trewe: thus writen they that of hire werkes knewe. (tc iv 1415-1421) so at this point we get to the conclusion and criseyde’s action and attitude are both clear. for the sake of her life she has been acting the parody, performing, playing her role of the ideal lady, the virtuous woman and the lusty lover. it sounds strange and extravagant but let us see how diomedes is taking troilus’s path and approaching criseyde exactaly in the same way as the former did: introducing himself as the perfect, gentle, worthy knight who promises deep feelings, strong friendship, honour and obedience. and listen to criseyde’s words: but natheles she thonketh diomede of al his travaile and his goode cheere, and that hym list his frendshipe hire to bede; and she accepteth it in good manere, and wol do fayn that is hym lief and dere, and tristen hym she wolde, and wel she myghte, as seyde she; and from hire hors sh’alighte. (tc v 183-189) these words take us round to the beginning of the play: different character, same action. v. a. kolve in chaucer and the imagery of narrative, deals with chaucer’s use of narrative imagery and visual art and his audience knowledge and application of such material. ____________________________________________________________________ 177 … the visual contexts of the canterbury tales, especially, in how a knowledge of the symbolic traditions current in the visual arts of the later middle ages can clarify and deepen our response to his narrative poems (1). in the medium of visual arts kolve acknowle dges both the alteration of such material through time and the inaccuracy of any claim which maintains that chaucer and his audience knew the same identical portraits. he works with the premise that both chaucer and his original audience would have known them and “understood” certain examples of narrative imagery. that is true but no so important since visual arts develop its narrative and symbolic iconography from medieval theatrical scenography. when he maintains that the iconographic image is “characteristically assimilated to the verisimi lar and mimetic texture of the whole” and that those two conditions are “dis covered within the images one forms in attending to the narrative action it self” (diller 60), we must assume that the reader or listener “represents” in his mind images, action and characters as in theatre, not real but mimetic, not pro totypical but individual, not the standard but the parodic, and that chaucer and his “audience-in-front-of-him” knew the same “dramatic portraits”. there is a strong connection between the depiction of characters in the canterbury tales and the depiction of characters in medieval theatre. the realistic details and naturalistic features described in the tales belong to the world of theatre more than to a specific known narrative tradition. to put it the other way round, chaucer sees a theatre performance when he describes the tabard inn and theatrical characters when he describes the pilgrims, and follows the “closet theatre” pattern, with a narrator and a mime, all of them on the stage, being in turn protagonists and audience, when he designs the structure of the collection. even more, when chaucer uses humour and irony, he takes advantage of the parodic element, considered by aristotle in poetics and bajtín in la cultura popular en la edad media y renacimiento as the constitutive element of comedy in front of tragedy, as the constitutive ele ment of the popular against the established, courtly and literary taste, as the constitutive element of subjectivit y. ricardo j. sola buil universidad de alcalá ____________________________________________________________________ 178 references aers, david 1988: community, gender and individual community: english writing, 1360-1430. london: routledge. aers, david ed. 1992: culture and history, 1350-1600. essays on english communities, identities and 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literary convention: a tradition. papers from the ivth international conference of selim. ____________________________________________________________________ 180 teresa fanego et al. servicio de publicaciones de la u.de santiago: santiago de compostela. spearing, a. c. 1976: medieval dream-poetry. cambridge: cup. tolkien, j. r. r., and e. v. gordon, eds. 1925: sir gawain and the green knight. second ed. revised by norman davis. oxford: oxford university press. tydeman, william 1978: the theatre in the middle ages. western european stage conditions, c.800-1576. cambridge: cup. weber, max 1969: economía y sociedad. 2 vols. madrid: gredos. wilson, katharina m. ed. 1984: medieval women writers. athens, ga: university of georgia press. * † * selim06.pdf javier martín arista, selim 6 (1998): 32—50 external control in functional syntax: formulating lme constituent order rules1 0. introduction following dik (1978: 20; 1989: 359) as regards functional patterns, connolly (1991) has explained me constituent order by means of expression rules of the kind used by functional grammar that are based on: syntactic templates, which specify the number of empty positions in a given structure; placement rules, which determine the insertion of major clause constituents in the syntactic slots of the template; and functional patterns, which describe the linearization of the major constituents of the clause. let us offer a simple illustration of connolly’s model. given a syntactic template such as (1.a), the placement rules in (1.b) turn out the functional pattern in (1.c): (1) a. px-py -pz b. insert constituent a into position px if condition ci holds insert constituent b into position py if condition cj holds insert constituent c into position pz if condition ck holds c. a -b-c connolly’s model is not only ingenious and elegant but also consistent with the philosophic underpinnings of the functional paradigm; moreover, it 1 the research resulting in this paper has been funded by the vicerrectorado de inves tigación de la universidad de la rioja through the research project 96pyb33jma, entitled aspectos metodológicos de la investigación lingüística en un paradigma funcional: diacronía y sincronía (1996). ____________________________________________________________________ 33 is based on an extensive quantitative analysis and has been rigurously tested through computer implementation. however, connolly’s approach is mainly syntactic: the stronghold of his study is syntactic description and explanation. this is no wonder since linearization is, along with constituency, the essence of syntax. our point is that a functionally -oriented syntax should be guided by the principle of external control, in the sense given by kuno (1980: 126): syntactic description should be based on non-syntactic explanation. connolly’s order rules, in contrast, are dependable almost exclusively on syntactic factors, for two reasons: firstly, because he attempts to provide an explanation for the drift sov-svo; and, secondly, because his main purpose is to be able to offer an implementation of the rules on the computer. in this paper we try to offer a more functionally -oriented study than connolly’s in two respects: in offering an external explanation of syntactic phenomena relating to the order of constituent in lme and in dealing with syntactic constructions with which connolly does not cope: passives, duplication, discontinuity, coordination and subordination. this paper is organized as follows 1: in section 1 we put forward the data yielded by our study of a corpus of one thousand lme examples. in section 2 we offer a sketchy view of the theoretical model we espouse in our discussion and we concentrate on syntactic discontinuity, relative order and absolute order problems. in section 3 we summarize the main points of the article. 1. the data 1 the following abbreviations appear in this paper: fg (functional grammar), s (subject), o (object), od (direct object), oi (indirect object), aux (auxiliary), v (verb) vf (finite verb), vn (non-finite verb), ag (semantic function agent), man (semantic function manner), loc (semantic function locative), temp (semantic function time), vf (verb in final position), x (a major constituent of the clause other than subject, object, verb, negative morpheme and auxiliary), neg (negative morpheme), top (topic), foc (focus), m (marked), um (unmarked), px (syntactic position number x), pf (clause-final position), vx (verb in syntactic position number x), decl (clause operator declarative), int (clause operator interrogative), neg (clause operator negative), imp (clause operator imperative) and opt (clause operator optative). ____________________________________________________________________ 34 from the methodological point of view, we suscribe to the view (found, among others, in givón (1984/1990, 1995)) that qualitative conclusions, that is, the explanation of linguistic phenomena in the synchronic and the diachronic dimensions, must be based on a quantitative study, that is, on a rig orous description of the data under scrutiny.1 the corpus of this study consists of one thousand lme (1300-1450) examples: one hundred instances have been extracted from chaucer’s transla tion of boetius’ de consolatione philosophiæ, book ii (in navarro et al. 1991: 101-126), quoted as chb; and another nine hundred have been taken from the wycclifite sermons, 1-70 (macintosh file by professor gonzález fernández-corugedo, universidad de la coruña), quoted as ws. given that the purpose of this study is to account for such phenomena as syntactic discontinuity in lme, we have put aside active constructions, in which syntactic discontinuity is far less fre quent than in (prose) passives. in this sense, passive constructions are older than their active equivalents and accept embraciated constituents, which is not the case with their active counterparts.2 as is well known, the reliability of a linguistic corpus largely depends on the choice rather than on the number of examples one selects for his study. consequently, we have selected examples that cover all the types found in visser’s (1984: 2165ff) repertoire.3 the figures in table 1 show that a vast majorit y of examples display syntactic continuity: x constituents do not break into the vf -vn continuum. this generalization applies both to independent and dependent clauses. the fig 1 see also hopper and traugott (1993: 32 ff) and harris & campbell (1995: 61 ff). 2 for a more detailed discussion, we refer the reader to martín arista (1995). 3 our examples conform to the these patterns (following visser’s own classification): (i) type pær beop pa wanigendan welras gefylde; (ii) type he wæs læred pis fram silvestre; (iii) type eadwine wearp ofslagen; (iv) type ic geaf him a book; (v) type to-morrow worp pe marriage i-mad of meede and of fæls; (vi) type wearp geworden; (vii) type she were worthy to be blamed; (viii) type be ruled by me; (ix) type he was given a book; (x) type hanged worpe he on an hok!; (xi) type sleep could be had in the wash-house; (xii) type it is said that john had an accident; (xiii) type there was quite a bit of fun poked at american scholars; (xiv) type gode be pancod; (xv) type hi wæron gederede; (xvi) type he is found treacherous/a traitor; (xvii) type mon him ofteah para clapa; (xviii) type he is wyrp eallra synna geclænsod and (xix) type he waes heafde becorfen. ____________________________________________________________________ 35 ures in table 1 show that most examples display syntactic continuity: x constituents do not break into the vf -vn continuum. this statement is applicable both to independent and dependent clauses. syntactic discontinuity usually turns up as discontinuity of degree 1, in other words, the verbal complex is only interrupted by one x constituent. it seems sensible, then, to describe discontinuous constructions as marked ones. if this remark is valid, several degrees of markedness might be distinguished, because, in the light of the statistical study, x constituents appear much more frequently between vf and vn than s. syntactic discontinuity examples total % continuous constructions (vf-vn) 871 1,000 87.1 discontinuous constructions (vf-x-vn) 129 1,000 12.9 degree of discontinuity 1 (vf-x-vn) 122 129 94.5 degree of discontinuity 1 (vf-s-vn) 12 122 9.9 degree of discontinuity 1 (vf-x-vn) 110 122 90.1 degree of discontinuity 2 (vf-x-y-vn) 6 129 4.6 degree of discontinuity 3 (vf-x-y-z-vn) 1 129 0.7 table 1: syntactic discontinuity in the corpus. as is displayed in table 2, the order vf -vn (copular verb -past participle) in preferred in lme in more than 97% of the cases, to the exclusion of vn -vf order. consequently, we describe vn -vf order, at least in decl clauses, as marked, vf-vn being described as unmarked. this generalization hold s both for syntactic continuity and syntactic discontinuity. however, as we shall see in the discussion, the order vn -vf is not marked with clause opera tors other than decl, such as opt. relative order of vf and vn examples total % vf-vn 972 1,000 97.2 vf-vn (syntactic continuity) 845 972 86.9 vf-vn (syntactic discontinuity) 127 972 13 vn-vf 28 1,000 2.8 vn-vf (syntactic continuity) 26 28 92.8 vn-vf (syntactic discontinuity) 2 28 7.1 table 2: relative order of vf and vn in the corpus. ____________________________________________________________________ 36 as table 3 shows, vn ---p1 constructions are more frequent than vf ---p1 ones. the figures demand a certain context since v1 constructions represent less than 5% of the clauses in the corpus. these figures evidence that v1 decl clauses are marked, as we have just suggested. there remains the question whether v1 opt, imp and int clauses are unmarked, as our reasoning leads to hold, or not. absolute order: v1 examples total % v1 43 1,000 4.3 vf---p1 19 43 44.1 vf---p1 (decl) 17 19 89.4 vf---p1 (neg) 2 19 10.5 vf---p1 (syntactic continuity) 4 19 21 vf---p1 (syntactic discontinuity) 15 19 78.9 vf---p1/vn ---p4 4 19 21 vn---p1 24 43 55.8 vn---p1/vf---p2 22 24 91.6 vn---p1/vf---p4 0 24 0 vn---p1 (syntactic continuity) 22 24 91.6 vf---p1 (syntactic discontinuity) 2 24 8.3 table 3: v1 constructions in the corpus. as regards vf and vn in p2, almost 75% of lme passive clauses are v2 clauses. as is shown in table 4, among the v2 cases, vf ---p2 cases constitute a great majority. v2, then, is the unmarked ordering. as we have already put forward, the unmarked order in decl clauses is s-v (vs. v-s), vf-vn (vs. vn vf) and vf-vn-x (vs. vf-x-vn). among the v2 cases, vf-2 clauses are almost 100%, which makes these instances unmarked with respect to vn ---p2 ones, which are considered as marked. table 4 also indicates the order of passive decl dependent clauses does not differ from the order of independent ones in lme. we can also see that vf ---p2 usually correlates with vn ---p4, as a result, as our discussion will show, of the presence of x in p3. ____________________________________________________________________ 37 absolute order: v2 examples total % vf---p2/vn ---p2 720 1,000 72.0 vf---p2 711 720 98.7 vn---p2 9 720 1.2 vn---p2 (independent clauses) 4 9 44.4 vn---p2 (dependent clauses) 5 9 55.5 vf---p2/vn ---p4 111 111 100 vn---p2/vf---p4 0 111 0 table 4: v2 constructions in the corpus. with reference to vf, this construction is relatively infrequent in the corpus (about 20%). practically all vf clauses are vn ---p4 clauses, as table 5 displays. in p4 templates vf is, therefore, marked. in o ur discussion we shall try to demonstrate that what is marked in these clauses is not vn: vn ---p4 is the result of the displacement caused by x constituents with special pragmatic relevance. this happens both in dependent and independent clauses. absolute order: vf examples total % vf---p4/vn ---p4 201 1,000 20 vf---p4 1 201 0.5 vn---p4 200 201 99.5 table 5: vf constructions in the corpus. 2. discussion for the discussion of the data we have just offered, we adopt the theoretical model of functional grammar as presented in dik (1978, 1989). as regards the treatment of the assignment of pragmatic functions, we re sort to the typology of pragmatic functions advanced by dik et al. (1981: 41ff), de jong (1981: 89ff) and dik (1989: 268ff). we have suggested elsewhere (martín arista 1994a, 1994b), that the typology of syntactic functions put forward by dik (1989) might be modified by following the proposals made in ____________________________________________________________________ 38 dezsó (1978) and halliday (1985).1 the model advanced in martín arista (1994a, 1994b) can be summarized as follows: we consider unmarked those constituents with special pragmatic relevance that are signalled by in tonation contour alone and marked those constituents with special pragmatic relevance that are signalled by the intonation contour of the clause plus a special position in the linear order of the clause. pragmatic function markedness is thus defined in terms of clause position of the constituent to which a given function is assigned (plus sentence stress assignment, in order to avoid circularity).2 with reference to the form and function of placement rules, we follow, in the first place, dik (1989). we also draw on connolly (1991: 27ff), who has modified the status of the functional pattern proposed by dik (1978: 20ff):3 connolly (1991: 57 ff) regards functional patterns as having derived -rather than primary status with respect to syntactic templates, which specify the number syntactic positions in the linear order of the clause. however, we do not take the template to be invariable, as connolly does, but as offering a variable number of empty slots in such a way that no structure -changing operation is needed.4 1 the distinction drawn by halliday (1985: 45) between marked and unmarked themes is of special interest for our purposes. in declarative clauses, theme is normally assigned to s. the construction in which the s bears the function theme is the unmarked option; when theme is assigned to constituents other than s in decl clauses, we come across instances of marked theme. for an alternative view, we refer the reader to hannay (1990) and mackenzie and keizer (1991). 2 this treatment is eclectic in the sense that it is coherent with the proposals by halliday (1985), cruttenden (1986), dik (1989) and bossong (1989). we have followed bossong as regards the existence of a markedness hierarchy but not as regards partial marking as a result of topm. another proposal on which we have drawn is made in bolkestein (1987). according to bolkestein (1987: 167) there is no incompatibility for clauses between offering focal information and being expressed hypotactically. we also follow bolkestein (1985: 1 ff) as regards the theoretical justification for a clausal treatment of top and foc, although we do not deny the exis tence of the top continuum advanced by givón (1983) and followed, to some extent, by dik (1989: 263 ff). a similar treatment is offered by mackenzie and hannay (1982: 43ff) and siewierska (1987: 147ff). 3 connolly’s proposal has been made after connolly (1983) and in a coherent way with the distinction he draws between -purely syntacticod and oi. connolly’s revision of dik seems to be based on the idea that placement rules and functional patterns do not occur satisfactorily for free-order languages like latin (connolly 1991: 50). 4 we follow de groot (1990: 189) as regards the difference between trigger (primary and secondary) rules and placement rules. a rather different proposal for the form ____________________________________________________________________ 39 as for the constituent x of functional patterns of the kind s-o-v-x, we have already stressed its importance for diachronic explanation in martín arista (forthcoming): given vn and x, x is the highlighted element in semantic, syntactic, pragmatic and phonological terms.1 and regarding markedness we suscribe to dik (1989), croft (1990) and givón (1995) the view that there is a correlation between structural (qualitative) and statistical (quantitative) markedness. we also follow bossong (1989: 27ff) for the hierarchy of markedness.2 given the evidence provided by the corpus, we propose, for lme, an as signment of unmarked pragmatic functions as follows: topum---p1 and focum---pf. this assignment, which corresponds to decl passive clauses, will be tested against the different clause operators and all the possibilities of constituent ordering. this proposal implies: (i) a displacement of focumbearing constituents towards the final position of the clause (with respect to the description we have advanced for oe pragmatic function assignment in martín arista (1995)); and (ii) a grammaticalization of top in clause-initial position when top=s. this explanation, which suits the pragmatic -rule-first principle that should govern a functional syntax, is coherent with the expla nation for markedness shift that is generally accepted: marked > un marked > grammaticalized. let us concentrate on the first place on syntactic continuity. in example (2.a), we assign topum in clause-initial position and focum in clause-final position. this pragmatic explanation is compatible with the data yielded by the corpus, according to which examples like those under (2) are statistically unmarked. (2) of placement rules (although it is also based on the description of syntactic templates put forward in connolly (1983)) is found in bakker (1990: 237). 1 this proposal is by no means new. its contribution may lie in the matching of all levels of linguistic description and in the functionalist methodology. we may refer the reader, for instance, to dik (1989: 345 ff). for an alternative view, see lightfoot (1991: 42 ff) and denison (1993: 25 ff). 2 bossong (1989: 27 ff) has dealt with the (morphemic) marking of top and foc and has drawn the conclusion that partial marking means that only top is marked whereas total marking covers both top and foc. for more detailed information, see gunkel et al. (1988: 285 ff) and andrews (1990: 9 ff). ____________________________________________________________________ 40 a. they schall wille pat it were destruyed (ws13) b. he was condempned to be deuoured with feers bestis (chb) c. in depe preson he was commaundyde to iy (chb) d. for avaryce maketh alwey mokereres to ben hated (chb) it is worth mentioning that all infinitive constructions, such as (2.b), (2.c) and (2.d), in our corpus display syntactic continuity. when dealing with marked constructions, it is necessary to resort to a markedness hierarchy (martín arista 1995) that accounts, at least, for two degrees of markedness, marked and heavily marked. we define this markedness hierarchy in the following way: (3) markedness hierarchy heavily marked = topm+focm marked = topm+focum/topum+focm unmarked = topum+focum our point is that this hierarchy, is applicable to the constructions we are commenting on. this is illustrated by example (4). we hold that the marked character of these constructions, which the corpus proves to be statistically marked, is due to the assignment of topm in interverbal position, focum being aligned in clause-final position. (4) a. … in whiche is pis horn picchid (ws27) b. pus was steuene martirud (ws40) c. pus, by monye resownys, was crist clepud of nazareth (ws42) so clauses, both decl like (5.a) and neg like (5.b), offer the same pattern as the examples in (4), thus constituting a sub-group with stable ordering, as is evidenced by the following examples: (5) a. so is it byfallen that thou art a litil departed fro the pees of thi thought (chb) b. so was not a ston left vpon anopur vndestruyed (ws19) ____________________________________________________________________ 41 it should be noted that, in stating that these clauses are marked, we agree with connolly (1991: 150). we do not follow connolly, however, as regards the description of clauses that qualify as vf -s-vn in which xloc is inserted into p1 as unmarked. our point is that xloc---p1 constructions were unmarked in oe, as a result of topum---p1 and focum---p3, but that they are marked in lme and mode. it does not seem advisable to describe lme xloc--p1 clauses as unmarked, given the statistical data drawn from the corpus and the assignment of pragmatic functions in similar clauses in oe and mode. to go on, we discuss relative order problems. we present two cases of vf-vn order, of which (6.a) is a correlate of syntactic continuity and (6.b) of syntactic discontinuity: (6) a. monye myraclis weron byfallen abowte pe byrpe of pis iohn (ws51) b. it is wel seyd pow mayst not see pis poynt of byleue (ws1) we explain the order of (6.a) as a result of the assignment of topum---p1 and focum---p4, which reflects the unmarked character of the clause. in (6.b), where vf-vn and syntactic discontinuity coexist, xman breaks into the vf -vn continuum. the marked character of (6.b) is not due to the vf -vn order, which is unmarked, but to the as signment of focm--xman in p3. as regards the order vn -vf, such linearization is not marked when clause operators other than decl are involved. there follow two examples of opt: (7) a. blessud be men of clene herte, for pei schal se god (ws68) b. blessud be mercyful men, for pei schal suwe mercy pat schal be comun to al pe chirche (ws68) examples (7.a) and (7.b) are described as unmarked, which we explain in terms of the assignment focum---p1 and topum---p3. in the discussion of absolute order problems we see, in the first place, to the effects of coordination. in example (8) the presence of vf in p1 is brought about by the coordinative structure in which the clause belongs: ____________________________________________________________________ 42 (8) and is al maat and overcomen by wepynge and sorwe for desir of the. in example (8) s, which is assigned topm, causes discontinuity of vf and vn, thus making the clause marked, focum is assigned to xreason in p5. a similar explanation can be put forward in cases like the following: (9) for yit ben ther thynges dwelled to the-ward that n o man douteth that they ne be more derworthe to the than thyn so owene lif (chb) the instances of coordination of infinitives also qualify as v-initial clauses: (10) a. crist hap ordeyned hise preestis bope to teche and preche his gospel, and not for to preye pus, and to be hyd in suche closettis (ws14) b. … and to ben helude of syknesse pat pei weron inne (ws14) in examples (8)-(10) v-initial has shown up as vf -initial. vn -initial clauses with clause operator opt are not marked in lme, as we have re marked with regard to example (7). example (11) is an instance of marked order in an opt clause: (11) be he kyld of iuste men (ws5) since the clause operator involved here is opt, we have regarded s in p2 as topm and xag in p4 as focm, which accounts in a satisfactory way for the highly marked character of this clause: it shows syntactic discontinuity of the type vf -s-vn and vf---p1. xag, on the other hand, follows vf, s and vn, which can be considered the straight order. as for v2, vf---p2 is the unmarked option, as the corpus evidences. we explain the statistically unmarked character of (12) as a result of the assig ment topum---s in p1 and focum---xloc in p4: (12) cresus was lad to the fyer to ben brend (chb) the following example also qualifies as v2, although what appears in p2 is vn: (13) ryght swich was sche whan sche flateryd the (chb) ____________________________________________________________________ 43 this clause is highly marked: xman is placed in p1, followed by vn in p2, vf in p3 and s in p4 (therefore, we have vn -vf and s-final). this is accounted for as a consequence of the assignment topm---s in p4 and focm---xman in p1. the following example is also marked: we find vn ---p2 in a vn -vf clause: (14) sai we pat he riuen es wit beistes wild (chb) we explain this ordering by resorting to the assignment focm---vn. consequently, it is not necessary to explain the vn -vf order in terms of dependent/independent clauses, which seems out of place in lme. as far as vf is concerned, vf is marked in p4 templates. this markedness is coherent with the assigment of focm to xloc, xtemp and xman in p3, on which we have already commented. let us see an example: (15) by sixe or sevene he shulde soone delyvered be (chb) the marked character of (15) is explained by means the presence of s in p2, which is assigmed topm, and xag in p1, which bears focm. moreover, vf follows vn in final position and xtemp follows aux, which dis places ytemp , vn and vf one position to the right. the next example also qualifies as vf. it is vn that comes in clause-final position this time. the construction is also marked: (16) a. by pis foule eresye is pe chirche disseyued (ws45) b. in pis prefold disseit ben monye men blyndud (ws45) c. by pis secounde lesyng is pe chirche disseyued (ws45) indeed, a focalised xag introduces the clause in (16.a), which undergoes syntactic discontinuity of the type vf -s-vn; and s is assigned topm. the same explanation can account for (16.b) and (16.c), in which focm is as signed to xloc in (16.a) and xag in (16.b). by stressing this we mean that vn (and less frequently vf) in final position is not itself marked; on the contrary, it is the result of the displacement caused by focalised and topicalised constituents that push vn (or vf) towards the end of the clause. this statement also applies to dependent clauses. otherwise, orderings like the one in (17) would have to be explained in clause-dependency terms, which does not seem advisable in the lme period: (17) ____________________________________________________________________ 44 a. … how pei weron specially doon (ws37) b. … in whiche eche part of pis rewme is monye weyes contenyd (ws11) c. such a man louep more godus of pis world pan he louep his god, for on hem his wylle is more set (ws22) we put down the markedness of (17.a) to the assignment of focm to xman in p3; as a result, vn is displaced towards p4. topum is assigned to s in p1. a similar explanation can be provided for examples (17.b) and (17.c). in (17.b) the presence of xloc in p1 can be attributed to the fact that this is a relative clause; vn is displaced to p5 by yman, which appears in p4; yman bears focm. in (17.c) all the constituents are displaced towards the right by xloc, which is topicalised and occupies p1, man occupying interverbal position p4 and bearing focm. in general, v2 equals vf ---p2 unless it is displaced by aux: (18) a. special knowyng schulde ben hyd (ws19) b. owre iugement schal ben hool (ws19) c. pei schal be reprouede (ws20) aux displaces vf, vn and x towards the right of the clause. this is the case with continuous and discontinuous passives, as the following examples illustrate: (19) a. … that may ben talcen im any wise (chb) b. … for panne schal cristus be reryd (ws12) as is shown in (19.a), p2, which is occupied by aux, is not vacant and vf is placed in p3, vn in p4 and xman in p5. the effect of aux is similar in the case of syntactic discontinuity, as is displayed in (19.b). in (19.b) we take topum to have being assigned to xman since this constituent is a pro noun, which suggests second reference; and s to bear focm in interverbal position. it should also be noted that by syntactic discontinuity we mean not only that vf and vn but also that aux and v are cut off by one or more constituents. in this sense, the example that follows is not marked with respect to ____________________________________________________________________ 45 syntactic continuity but it does show markedness as regards s position, which is clause-final: (20) whereuere his body were, schulden be gederude men (ws69) it is worth noticing that the whole loc clause is under focus in this utterance. thus, focm is assigned to xloc in p1 and topm to s in p5. after revising the role of aux in decl clauses, let us discuss the role of aux in clauses with clause operator neg. again, we draw our attention to syntactic continuity and discontinuity. in (21) neg and aux enter the clause structure: (21) ne shal the corn in his berne ben eten wid no muis (chb) in (21), neg occupies p1 and is assigned focum. as a result, aux is placed in p2 and s, which bears topum, in p3, which causes discontinuity in the verbal complex; xag follows vf and vn in p6. what follows from this explanation is that the assignment of pragmatic functions in lme neg passive clauses containing aux is the same as in neg opt and neg imp, that is, topum is assigned in p3 and focum in p1. this is tantamount to saying that clauses like the following are still marked in lme: (22) a. … pat ne it schal be schewed panne (ws17) b. … pat ne it schal be knowe panne (ws17) although both (22.a) and (22.b) are dependent clauses, we do not imply that this order is the result of subordination. drawing on dik (1989: 353) and givón (1993 vol i: 207) we suggest that the evolution of neg in terms of markedness from lme to mode might have been as follows: (23) a. lme neg-aux-s-vf-vn (unmarked) neg-s-aux-vf-vn (marked) s-aux-neg-vf-vn (marked) s-mod-neg-vf-vn (unmarked) b. mode s-mod-neg-vf-vn (grammaticalized) the hypothesis tentatively presented in (23) has two advantages: in the first place, it is statistically justified by the data extracted from our corpus; ____________________________________________________________________ 46 and, in the second place, it is compatible with the evolution marked-unmarked-grammaticalized on which we have already commented. let us turn to double neg clauses now. as is well known, double negatives, either nominal-verbal or verbal-verbal, were a common device in lme. our figures indicate that double negatives were statistically marked in lme. this explanation, however, could hardly resist diachronic comparison since there is no point in arguing for an evolution marked-unmarked-grammaticalized in double negatives, as these mode examples evidence: (24) a. *he was not given nothing b. *he not was not given anything neither does it seem sensible to state that the double negative was grammaticalized in lme clauses because, as a matter of fact, single negatives occurred more frequently than double negatives. the solution that we propose is to consider neg in p3 as a duplication of neg in p1, thus taking up no position in the clause and leaving vacant p3 for s. let us see an example: (25) ne wol noght ben cast thow with the lowde blastes of the wynd eurus (chb) in (25) we speak of markedness not because of the presence of double neg but because of the assignment of topm to s, which is placed in p5. 3. concluding remarks in this article we have formulated a number of placement rules that satisfy the requirements of -at leastlme passive clauses: (26) given p1-p4 and decl or neg topum---p1 focum---p4 given p1-p4 and opt, neg opt, imp or neg imp topum---p3 focum---p1 ____________________________________________________________________ 47 given p1-p4 and op int topum---p2 focum---p1 very briefly, what this proposal argues for is a grammaticalization of top in clause-initial position when top=s and a displacement of the constituents bearing focum towards clause-final position. there remains to demonstrate that these rules can explain the order of active clauses in an adequate way. our position on this respect is that they can since active clauses exhibit a lower degree of syntactic complexity in the sense that syntactic discontinuity is not a frequent phenomenon in active clauses. apart from their applicability, these rules have the advantage of being consistent with the basic tenet of a functionally -oriented syntax: syntactic rules must be based on external, i.e. non-syntactic, factors such as the as signment of semantic and pragmatic functions. javier martín arista universidad de la rioja references andrews, e. 1990: markedness theory. durham: duke university press. bakker, d. 1990: a formalism for functional grammar expression rules. > connolly & dik eds.: 45-63. bolkenstein, a. m. 1985: cohesiveness and syntactic variation: quantitative vs. qualitative grammar. > bolkestein et al. eds.: 1-14. bolkenstein, a. m. 1987: discourse functions of predications: the background/foreground distinction of tense and voice in latin main and subordinate clauses. > nuyts & schutter eds.: 163-178. bolkenstein , a. m., vet, c. & hannay, m. eds. 1985: syntax and pragmatics in functional grammar. dordrecht: foris. ____________________________________________________________________ 48 bossong, g. 1989: morphemic marking of topic and focus. belgian journal of linguistics 4: 27-51. connolly , j. 1983: placement rules & syntatic templates. > dik: 247266. connolly, j. 1991: constituent order in functional grammar: synchronic and diachronic perspectives. berlin: foris. connolly , j. & dik, s. eds. 1990: functional grammar and the computer. dordrecht: foris. conte, m. et al. eds. 1978: wortstellung & bedeutung. tübingen: niemeyer. croft, w. 1990: typology and universals. cambridge university press. cruttenden, a. 1986: intonation. cambridge: cambridge university press. denison, d. 1993: english historical syntax. london: longman. dezsó, l. 1978: towards a typology of theme and rheme: sov languages. > conte et al. eds.: 3-11. dik, s. 1978: functional grammar. dordrecht: foris. dik, s. 1989: the theory of functional grammar i: the structure of the clause. dordrecht: foris. dik, s. et al. 1981: on the typology of focus phenomena. > hoekstra et al. eds.: 41-74. dik, s. ed. 1983: advances in functional grammar. dordrecht: foris. givón, t. 1984/1990: syntax: a functional-typological introduction (2 vols.). amsterdam: john benjamins. givón, t. 1993: english grammar: a function-based introduction (2 vols.). amsterdam: john benjamins. givón, t. 1995: functionalism and grammar. amsterdam: john benjamins. givón, t. ed. 1983: topic continuity in discourse. amsterdam: benjamins. groot, c. de 1990: morphology and the typology of expression rules. > hannay & vester eds.: 187-201. ____________________________________________________________________ 49 gunkel, j. et al. 1988: on the functions of marked and unmarked terms. > hammond et al. eds.: 285-301. halliday, m. 1985: an introduction to functional grammar. london: arnold. hammond, m. et al. eds. 1988: studies in syntactic typology. amsterdam: john benjamins. hannay, m. 1990: pragmatic function assignment and word order variation in a functional grammar of english. working papers in functional grammar 38. amsterdam: university of amsterdam. hannay, m. & vester, e. eds. 1990: working with functional grammar: de scriptive and computational applications. dordrecht: foris. harris, a. & campbell, l. 1995: historical syntax in cross-linguistic perspective. cambridge: cambridge university press. hoekstra , t. et al. eds. 1981: perspectives on functional grammar. dordrecht: foris. hopper, p. & traugott, e. c. 1993: grammaticalization. cambridge: cup. jong, j. de. 1981: on the treatment of focus phenomena in functional grammar. > hoekstra et al. eds.: 89-115. kuno, s. 1980: functional syntax. > moravcsik & wirth eds.: 117-135. lightfoot, d. 1991: how to set parameters. cambridge, mass.: mit press. mackenzie, j. & keizer, e. 1991: on assigning pragmatic functions in english. pragmatics 1: 169-215. mackenzie , j. & hannay, m. 1982: prepositional predicates and focus constructions in a functional grammar of english. lingua 56: 43-57. martín arista, j. 1994a: funciones pragmáticas marcadas y no marcadas. miscelanea 15: 391-404. martín arista, j. 1994b: aspectos semánticos y pragmáticos de la operación de las reglas de expresión. > martín arista ed.: 193-238. martín arista, j. 1995: the prefield -postfield drift and the evolution of the english passive. revista canaria de estudios ingleses 30-31. ____________________________________________________________________ 50 martín arista, j.(forthcoming): the role of vn in functio nal syntax. martín arista, j. ed. 1994: estudios de gramática funcional. zaragoza: mira eds. moravcsik, e. & wirth, j. eds. 1980: syntax and semantics 13: current avnroaches to syntax. new york: academic press. navarro errasti, m. p. et al. 1991: setting up a presence-and-permanence glossary of native and non-native terms in medieval english i. universidad de zaragoza: servicio de publicaciones. nuyts , j. & schutter, g. de. eds. 1987: getting one’s words into line. dordrecht: foris. siewierska, a. 1987: postverbal subject pronouns in polish in the light of topic continuity and the topic/focus distinction. > nuyts & schutter eds.: 147-162. visser, f. 1984 (1963/1973): a historical syntax of the english language (4 vols.). leiden: brill. * † * selim carter revard, selim 11 (2001-2002): 5—26 was the pearl poet in aquitaine with chaucer? a note on fade, l.149 of sir gawain and the green knight no one really knows when, by whom, or for whom any one of the poems uniquely preserved in bl, cotton nero a.x were written—or whether they were all written by the same person. one thing we do know of the pearl poet, however, is that his dialect was fairly close to that of the manuscript's scribe, whose dialect was spoken on the craggy borders of cheshire. a result of these facts is that likely author/patron suspects lurk in many footnotes of the 1997 companion to the gawain poet, where scholars deplore the namelessness, or try to puzzle out the name, of the presumed single author—dating his poems, identifying his patrons, and explaining the sociopolitical meaning of it all.1 one persuasive 1986 essay, by edward wilson, makes a strong case that a stanley family were patrons of the gawain-poet, allowing a date for his work in the last decade of the fourteenth or first decade of the fifteenth century.2 wilson's essay is an exemplary piece of medieval scholarship— thorough yet brief, precisely documented, bold but not reckless. yet even this essay considers only the stanley family's residence and activities in staffordshire and cheshire, without noting participation by its members in soldiering and administration in france, which has seemingly been irrelevant to a poem whose language, to a modern audience wearing london spectacles, marks it as "english regional" or, at best, "english national." our tacit 20th-century assumption seems to have been: if he talked like that, he must never have been to london and learned standard english—and 1andrew, malcolm "theories of authorship," and bennett, michael "the historical background," 2 "sir gawain and the green knight and the stanley family of stanley, storeton, and hooton" carter revard 6 furthermore, like chaucer's prioress, his french was no doubt provincial and insular, though one might grant him a knowledge of priestly latin. lately, indeed, yoicks and tallyhos have been floating up from scholars flogging hobbyhorses well away from the crags and woods of olde gawain country, crashing through underbrush around castles of dukes, courts of princes, and the cloisters of westminster. john bowers, for instance, sets the pearl in the court and perhaps the crown of richard ii during the 1390s; frank grady links the poet of st. erkenwald not only to london—as did, of course, the poet—but to westminster abbey, and both grady and bowers would tie to his tail the clanking political struggles of the 1390s. others suggest that the poet was the clever pet of henry of grosmont, first duke of lancaster, or his son-in-law john of gaunt, or the despensers of tewkesbury, or roger mortimer, fourth earl of march and grandson of prince lionel; and they have proposed that the poet came from such families of that region as the mascys (masseys), cottons, stanleys, cradocks, swettenhams, or newtons among others.3 some six years ago, however, one lonely bugle rang out from the pas de roland, proposing that the poet, though he hailed from the nw midlands, did not forever abide in his home region or in london. in two 1996 pieces in notes and queries, andrew breeze, of the university of navarre in pamplona, showed that the pearl poet was familiar enough with certain "french" words, in forms and senses specific to dialects of southwestern 3 john m. bowers, the politics of pearl: court poetry in the age of richard ii (2001); frank grady, "st. erkenwald and the merciless parliament," (2000). against royal patronage or residence in london, thorlac turville-petre argues that in pearl the poet "de-regionalizes" and in sir gawain and the green knight emphasizes ubiquity of knightly values and skills over "local" aspects ("the pearl poet in his 'fayre regioun,'" (1997). scholars proposing links to a mascy family of the cheshire/staffordshire area include v. j. scattergood, who documents manuscript ownership and perhaps copying by a john mascy: "'iste liber constat johanni mascy': dublin, trinity college, ms. 155 (2001); scattergood cannot determine whether this john mascy was of the puddington, tatton, or cotton mascys. ann r. meyer argues that the poet's patrons were the despensers of tewkesbury, gloucestershire—even though their family base was in the southwest, they were feudal lords of macclesfield in cheshire—and suggests (2001: 420) that the pearl poet, geoffrey chaucer, jean froissart, and guillaume de machaut met in paris in april 1368, traveling from england to milan for the wedding of prince lionel to violante visconti. for more proposed patrons, see below. was the pearl poet in aquitaine with chaucer? 7 france, that he may well have lived there for some time: torres "towering clouds" (pearl 875, cleanness 951), enbaned "machicolated" (sggk 790), and tolouse "toulouse" (sggk 78, cleanness 1108). such familiarity would imply that the poet, though he was a cheshire man, in breeze's words "actually lived in south-west france with the english community at bordeaux or bayonne." breeze subsequently (in 1998) named the poet as someone from the same family that edward wilson had proposed as the poet's patrons: sir john stanley, k.g., who had supported richard, but turned and became an important supporter of henry iv and henry v, until his death in 1414.4 this proposal certainly put the cheshire cat among the pigeons, not to mention the vineyards of aquitaine and even, as mentioned, the pas de roland. could the pearl poet, then, have dwelt in aquitaine, long enough to pick up some terms from there—and, perhaps more important, to drop them casually into his poems as if his readers could be expected to "get" them easily and naturally, with no need for an occitanian dictionary? the first thing to say in trying to answer those questions is that, as michael bennett notes, many soldier-administrators, from the 1320s into the fifteenth century, served royal, princely, and noble masters both in southwestern france and in cheshire (and lancashire, staffordshire, derbyshire, shropshire and elsewhere in the northwest midlands). bennett (1997), for instance, names most of the usual suspects from the lineup we have just looked at—mascy, cradok, audley, and many others—as nw midlands men who did serve in aquitaine. there can be no doubt, therefore, that travel between cheshire and bordeaux or beyond would have been not only possible but completely unsurprising—for the poet as well as for his patrons. furthermore, any poet dwelling in or more than casually connected to a courtly household—whether that of edward iii, or one of his sons edward, john, or lionel, or his grandson richard—would have had to be fluent in french of some kind; and, if that poet were also a cleric either 4sir john stanley was a belted knight and astute political operator, continually involved in political and military dealings and maneuvers, whereas the poet was clearly a man expert in biblical and theological texts and commentaries, more likely a friar, monk, or chaplain-confessor than a knight-politico. yet sir john clanvowe was such a knight, but wrote a lollard treatise and a courtly poem before going off to die on a crusading mission, so one cannot rule out knights as possible authors of the pearl poems. carter revard 8 secular or monastic, as the pearl poet surely was, he must have been equally fluent in latin. common sense also suggests that a trilingual poet-cleric who served some years in a prince's familia in aquitaine would have been present at festivals and diplomatic feastings and travels, in consequence would surely have conversed with and heard the poetry and songs of poets in that region; and would naturally have been in contact with secular and regular clerics of the region. the black prince and his cohorts, after all, often stayed in monasteries or friaries during their military expeditions, even while the soldiers carried on with looting and burning and raping.5 and in the last decade or so, scholars have begun looking into the massive documentary evidence of the interfacings among the users of english, anglo-norman, and gascon/occitan dialects of french in aquitaine.6 and the pearl poet, though the most brilliant, would not have been the only alliterative poet to be fluent in french, if not also in latin. consider, for instance, the easy brilliance with which the poet of wynnere and wastoure could tranform the garter motto, hony soyt qui mal pence, into an alliterative line of west midlands english, hethyng haue the hathell that any harme thynkes.7 clearly this man used english by choice, not necessity. 5 see the life and campaigns of the black prince, ed. and transl. richard barber; and richard barber, edward, prince of wales and aquitaine; also, for detailed financial reports on the gascon campaigns from the prince's receivers and administrators, clifford j. rogers, the wars of edward iii, sources and interpretations. 6for instance, daniel trotter's "some lexical gleanings from anglo-french gascony" (1998) and w. rothwell, "stratford atte bowe re-visited" (2001). 7 t. turville-petre (1989: 44). ad putter (1996: 6-11) shows that the poet's mastery of latin underlies some famous english wordplay in sir gawain and the green knight. as for his possible travels, putter quite sensibly asks (1996: 5): "why...might not the gawain-poet, like chaucer, have traveled to italy?" even cloistered monks might travel: a john coton, priest and canon of haughmond abbey in shropshire, in april 1400 was made a papal chaplain (calendar of papal letters 1362-1404, p. 310), a position that "exempted him from the regular life and from obedience to religious superiors" and was being particularly sought from and granted by the popes during the schism as a source of desperately needed revenues, according to f. donald logan (1996: 51), citing thomas walsingham's gesta abbatum of st. albans abbey as noting that "in 1386 a carmelite friar, walter disse, was empowered by a papal bull to create fifty honorary papal chaplains to support the lancastrian crusade in spain," and that "white monks, black monks, canons and friars of all orders, in order to free themselves from the obedience of their superiors, sent money to rome to gain this honour and exemption." well before the schism, however, in 1343-8 the carmelite friar john reppes, prior of the was the pearl poet in aquitaine with chaucer? 9 and as for the pearl poet himself, we need only read carefully his sir gawain and the green knight and pearl, as bennett says (1997:81), to see that they ...reveal both a close knowledge of the aristocratic culture of the time, and a deep immersion in the worlds of chivalry and courtesy. the poet is an insider, a courtier's courtier, adding complexity and refinement to issues of faith and honour, and points of ethics and etiquette. moreover he assumes a courtly audience....indeed in his account of gawain's quest he adopts, to a surprising degree, the view-point of the royal court rather than the baronial household. 1. fade, l. 149 to breeze's linguistic evidence for the pearl poet's special knowledge of the french of aquitaine, we may add the word fade (sggk 149), used of the green knight at his first entrance into the hall at camelot: he ferde as freke were fade/ and oueral enker grene.8 this is not a new suggestion: g. v. smithers long ago proposed that fade must derive from a romance word fadus, fada "supernatural being of male (female) sex," but his suggestion was bluntly dismissed by kenneth sisam, who reaffirmed his 1927 support of henry bradley's account of fade in the oed; and smithers' suggestion carmelite friary in london, who was both confessor and secretary to henry of grosmont, earl of derby, had been made a papal chaplain with full privileges, and was an important diplomatic liaison with the pope during peace negotiations in the 1340s; as papal chaplain he was specially licensed to hear confessions and preach anywhere in england, to lodge at any carmelite house in england, and to keep for life, with his fellow and servant his chamber in the london carmelite friary (calendar of papal letters 1342-62, pp. 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 13, 29, 32-3, 36, 38, 113, 168). just before the schism, in 1365 and 1366, the "green squire" from cheshire, simon newton (see j. r. l. highfield, medium ævum 22, 1953, pp. 18-23) successfully petitioned the pope to make his brother richard and his kinsman walter podmore, prior of stone in lichfield diocese, honorary papal chaplains; while in april 1366 sir john chandos, titled "ambassador of the prince of aquitaine and wales" and "viscount of st. sauveur and constable of aquitaine," successfully petitioned the pope that his confessor john lyons, o.p. (diocese of bath), who had lately been made a papal chaplain, be granted the privileges and immunities of that office, "seeing that he has worked on the treaty of peace" (calendar of papal petitions 1342-1419, pp. 505, 507, 510, 522, 524, 534). 8vantuono (1999:12) carter revard 10 was likewise rejected by the med,9 although it has recently been adopted by william vantuono in his revised edition of sir gawain and the green knight—in his notes to lines 149-50, he translates he ferde as freke were fade as "he acted like an elvish knight."10 sisam in 1927 (p. 60) had pointed out that a word of the same form, fade, "is well attested; it is found in contemporary northern poems, often in alliteration; it is usually applied to warriors; and it rimes with hade (e.g., thrice in "sir perceval"), which is the rime-word in 'gawain'." however, the oed (second edition) in its entry for †fade, a1 says, "etymology unknown; the senses assigned are somewhat uncertain; and perh. the examples do not all contain the same word." its illustrative quotations from cursor mundi and the me romances sir perceval of galles and sir tristrem (the same passages cited by the med) must therefore be viewed with this cautionary note in mind: etymology admittedly uncertain, and some cited occurrences might involve different words taking the same form. this means, ineluctably, that the fade of sggk 149 need not be the fade(s) of cursor mundi, sir perceval of galles, and sir tristrem. so much, then, for sisam's first objection to a french derivation of fade. as for his second objection, that the only evidence cited by smithers for a french-derived fade was from an early thirteenth-century latin text, 9 g. v. smithers, notes and queries 195 (1950), pp. 134-36; kenneth sisam, notes and queries 195, p. 239; and see k. sisam, "'fade' in gawain, line 149," in times literary supplement, january 27, 1927 p. 60, and tls, march 17, 1927, pp. 193-4. smithers packs into his brief note extremely interesting testimony by gervase of tilbury (in his otia imperialia) of a catalan poet at the english court in late 12th and early 13th centuries, whose "magical" dancing horse is referred to by gervase as fadus—which, as smithers' careful philological analysis shows, most likely is a latin calque on a dialectal french form. the second edition of the oed cautiously notes of fade that its etymology is unknown, while the med suggests that fade is an adjective formed on the oe noun fa, "foe"—a derivation that surely presents difficulty both in sense and form, whereas (at least for sggk 149) derivation from occitan fado/a "supernatural being, fay" makes full and perfect sense both formally and semantically. the question that must then be answered, however, is how an occitan word could plausibly have got into an english poem transcribed in a cheshire dialect. the answer proposed here is that poet, patrons and early audience lived for some years in aquitaine. 10vantuono, sir gawain and the green knight, p. 161. he notes that other editors, except for cawley, follow sisam (and oed/med) and translate fade as "bold" or "doughty." was the pearl poet in aquitaine with chaucer? 11 gervase of tilbury's otia imperialia—which sisam thought unlikely to have been read by the poet—lexicographers since 1950 have supplied abundant evidence that fada, fado were in common literary use, in french and spanish lyrics and gests and romances of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and indeed are still used in modern times.11 the spanish forms would be hada, hado, so behind the pearl poet's fade (just as smithers proposed) would be occitan or catalan fada, fado. louis alibert has the following entry: fada, f. fée [regionally in foix, agenais, narbonne]; nymphe; sorcière; magicienne; femme rusée; femme qui charme. derivative: fadar, féer; enchanter; ensorceler; jeter un sort. fadarèla, fée.12 as for the catalan version, pompeu fabra defines fada as esser fantàstic que es representa sota la figura d'una doña dotada d'un poder sobrenatural; his exemplary phrase treballar com una fada (= "amb una habilitat meravellosa") looks parallel to the gawain poet's he ferde as freke were fade.13 and as for "standard" spanish, the diccionario illustrado de la lengua española entry for hada (de fada) says it is a "fantastic being in the form of a woman to whom are attributed magical powers and the gift of divination," and says of its literary use: las hadas desempeñan papel muy importante en las leyendas de la edad media, época en que se empieza a hablar de ellas. las más notables fueron melusina, morgana, viviana, la dama bianca, etc. tienen su origen en oriente; los persas las transmitieron a los árabes y éstos a los españoles.14 11 karl reichl, for instance, in 1997 cited for me lyrics a number of continental analogues, including portuguese cantigas de amigo; and in discussing the me maiden in the mor lay, reichl quotes as analogous a portuguese popular ballad, a encantada ("the enchanted maiden"). in this piece, collected in many widespread variants in the nineteenth century, a maiden is encountered in the wilderness by a knight, and when he asks what she is doing there, she replies (1997: 52): sete fadas me fadaram/ no ventre d'uma mae minha ("seven witches have bewitched me/ in my mother's womb"). fada, which reichl translates here as "witch," is a word for "enchantress, fay." 12dictionnaire occitan-français (1965). 13diccionari general de la llengua catalana (rev. josep miracle). 14 enciclopedia universal sopena, tomo cuarto, 1963. carter revard 12 joan corominas & josé pascual, diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, vol. g-ma, s.v. hado, fado, note that this corresponds in asturias to the vernacular fau in phrases referring to good or evil fortune experienced by a family, and cite occurrence in the alexandreis and elsewhere, and with gallician form fada (suerte, destino: 'por boa ou por mala fada'). they comment: en los libros de caballerías se aplicó hada a un ser femenino sobrenatural que intervenía de varias maneras en la vida de los hombres, y en este sentido permaneció el vocablo en la literatura maravillosa e infantil de hoy en día. para más ejs. del sentido etimológico, vid. el derivado enfadar. en portugal fado se ha aplicado a un tipo de canción popular, que comentaba líricamente el destino de las personas. 2. a cheshire poet—in aquitaine? if we accept that sggk 149 fade is an anglicized form of occitan fado/fada, whose reference to an enchanted or supernatural being the poet would expect his audience to understand, such ready understanding would imply familiarity of both poet and audience with the literature of that region of southwest france—a possibility that must seem very unlikely to scholars who have always located the poet in england. yet aquitaine is where the black prince and his large court lived, ruled and administered, tourneyed and conducted warfare, from 1362 until 1369, and where he had campaigned from 1355 onward; it is also where john of gaunt briefly (137071) succeeded the black prince as governor, and acquired his second wife constance of castile and with her a claim to be king of castile and león.15 it is entirely possible that the pearl poet was a servitor of the black prince, or his brother john of gaunt, or of gaunt's father-in-law—another english noble with long-term interests and frequent presence in that region—henry of grosmont, duke of lancaster. the case for henry of grosmont has 15see anthony goodman, john of gaunt (1992), esp. chapter 7, "gaunt and iberian affairs." the most detailed account of gaunt's involvement with aquitaine, spain, and portugal is p. e. russell, the english intervention in spain and portugal in the time of edward iii and richard ii (1955); for gaunt's 1370-71 lieutenancy of aquitaine, marriage to constance of castile in 1371, and beginning of close involvement with spanish and portuguse affairs, see russell, pp. 165-9. was the pearl poet in aquitaine with chaucer? 13 recently been urged again by w. g. cooke and d'a.j.d. boulton; and still more lately, leo carruthers has made a complex argument for roger mortimer, fourth earl of march and grandson of prince lionel—yet every argument for patronage by henry of lancaster, or john of gaunt, or edmund mortimer, would fit the black prince just as well.16 is there, however, any evidence linking the black prince to alliterative poetry, and can we name any of his servitors who produced such poetry? we might, for the beginning of an answer to these questions, look at a certain priest named henry cotton, who in a petition to king richard ii for himself and several other men, made from the dialectal heart of the gawain country at middlewich in cheshire, tells of their having served the prince from youth over many years, in france, aquitaine, and spain, and asks that he and the other men be compensated for the service—for which the prince had not paid them when he died—by granting them the franchise of middlewich, where they were then dwelling. the petition was at first granted, then withdrawn—because, as the king said, the people of middlewich objected, and other grants to the men were made instead.17 it is 16 w. g. cooke and d'arcy j. d. boulton, "sir gawain and the green knight: a poem for henry of grosmont?" (1999); leo carruthers, "the duke of clarence and the earls of march: garter knights and sir gawain and the green knight" (2001). see also, as noted above, richard barber (1978: 110-237) and clifford j. rogers (1999). 17 london, public record office, 36th annual deputy keeper's report, appendix 2.1 pp. 60, 128, 461: entries on the welsh recognizance rolls of chester, including (p. 461) a grant in october 1367 by the prince to thomas swettenham of middlewich, richard brothersone, and others (not including henry cotton) of the franchise of middlewich, for 3 years; and, pp. 60-61, an undated petition to the king (date uncertain, but 1377-1387) by a group of men including cotton and robert brothersone, but not swettenham, requesting the franchise of middlewich for long service to the prince; on july 26, 1387 the franchise is granted, then on september 11 it is revoked as prejudicial to the town's franchise of liberties; but in 1397 (september 29) robert brothersone—one of those who had asked for middlewich—is granted livery of the crown, with 6d. daily for life. perhaps henry cotton was retained to petition for the former retainers, as being closely connected (see note 22 below) to the family (and heirs) of sir john delves, a member of the black prince's council from 1348 to his death in 1369. the cotton/swettenham link is intriguing, since michael bennett—as reported by bowers in the politics of pearl (p. 82, note 26)—has stated that "if pearl can be connected with the court in the mid-1390s, the field of possible patrons can be narrowed considerably: sir john stanley, matthew swettenham, john macclesfield, and sir richard cradok." swettenham is 3 miles east of holmes chapel—"green chapel" country. was henry cotton a swettenham scribe? for gascon service of the swettenhams: bpr carter revard 14 worth mention here that in 1377, joan, widow of the black prince, was granted by their son king richard the lordship of macclesfield, the town of middlewich, and the manor of frodsham.18 but why should we think of henry cotton, a lawyer as well as priest, as in any way to be connected with the poems of the pearl manuscript? for one thing, henry cotton was a close associate of sir john delves (d. 1369), the sometime deputy justiciar of north wales and of cheshire, and governor of the black prince's council, who had travelled with the prince to aquitaine—and association with delves forges an interesting literary link, for the name of john delves appears on a legal roll containing a satiric alliterative lyric originally composed in a northern dialect, transmitted via the west midlands, and apparently copied onto its roll, between 1349 and 1369, in oxford, as i have shown in a paper in studies in the age of chaucer.19 cotton survived delves and the prince, living to do legal work 3 (london, hmso 1932), pp. 235, 254, 299, 386, 409, 449; for grant to john cotoun of office of parker of pecforton, p. 386. 18 london, pro, 28th annual deputy keeper's report, appendix 6, p. 70. could the pearl poet, or the scribe who copied his poems in a dialect used in or near the middlewich and macclesfield area, have been patronized by joan of kent as well as by her husband? to investigate this matter, one should examine the retinues of the black prince and princess joan, with special attention to their clerical retainers—and, of course, the retinues of such other possible patrons as henry of grosmont, john of gaunt, lionel of antwerp, and others. michael bennett discusses these in considerable depth. one might look, further, at clerics papally provided to benefices at the request of noble patrons, as recorded in the calendars of papal petitions and papal letters; these clerics could be traced further (in aquitaine; and in navarre and spain) in secular and regular clerical records of such patronage requests and grants. thereafter, cursive hands on relevant english documents could be compared with the hand(s) of the pearl manuscript—for even though its scribe is surely not the poet, to identify the scribe's hand in dated documents might let us trace his manuscript's provenance and patronage. admittedly, such an effort would take several years, and might not produce definitive results. 19 "the papelard priest and the black prince's men: audiences of an alliterative poem, c. 1350-1370" (2001). as barber notes (1978: 184), delves, a staffordshire/cheshire lawyer and administrator, was with the prince in angoulême in early march 1365 when the prince's eldest son edward (who died young) was born, and when "to celebrate the churching of the princess, the prince held a great tournament on 27 april." delves carried this news back to edward iii in england, news so pleasing that the king granted delves an annuity of forty pounds for bringing it. for the gascon trip by delves, see register of edward, the black prince (london, hmso, 1930-33), vol. 4, pp. 465, 540, 543; for the royal annuity, calendar of patent rolls 1364-7, p. 180. was the pearl poet in aquitaine with chaucer? 15 in the 1390s for delves' heirs and the circle of cheshire administrators who had been associates of delves in serving the prince in cheshire and aquitaine. further, it is well known that the name cotton recurs in discussions of the manuscript and its poems: for instance, clifford peterson, in 1977, noted that between lines 1544 and 1545, in the manuscript of sir gawain and the green knight, "cropping has left the last four letters of a longer word, written in a different hand than that of the poetic text," the four letters being o-t-o-n. observing that line 1544 reads, as i am, other euer schal, in erde ther i leue, peterson suggests that the cropped word names the place where the poet lived—and, since he wants to identify the poet as a certain john massey of cotton, he deduces that the cropped word was originally coton.20 presumably it could as well refer to the lawyer/priest henry cotton, as to john mascy of cotton. there is, furthermore, evidence that there were practicing poets in the military circle around the black prince. not only did the chandos herald, whose life of the black prince is well known, serve sir john chandos (a key knight for the prince in all his french campaigns),21 but at least one other 20 clifford peterson, "hoccleve, the old hall manuscript, cotton nero a.x., and the pearl-poet" (1977: 54-5) and see scattergood, "'iste liber constat johanni mascy': dublin, trinity college, ms. 155". according to george ormerod, the history of the county palatine and city of chester, volume ii, p. 404-5, sir george cotton (an esquire of the body for henry viii) in 1544 was granted the manor and chapel of poulton, which before the dissolution had belonged to dieulacres abbey, and also was granted combermere, including dodcote, the parish of childs ercall in salop; cliffe, in drayton; hales, in drayton; erdly grange, in staffordshire; winchull grange, in cheshire; newton grange, in ashburne; cotes grange, or cote field, in hartynton, in derbyshire. (i thank, for this reference, tanya joyce.) in his account of the gawain-poet's "landscape and geography," ralph elliott notes that the cistercian abbey of dieulacres "was originally founded at poulton (its "holy head"), near aldford, the...ancient fording place on the dee a few miles upstream from chester," and that in the fourteenth century not only were the monks "maintaining regular contact with their possessions in chester and across the dee, presumably following much the same route as gawain's likely course" (sc., in the poem, from camelot to bertilak's castle and the nearby green chapel), but they also had "a grange in the forest about five miles north of the abbey, at a place called swythamley park,...where the earls of chester [e.g.,the black prince and later his son richard ii] owned a hunting lodge on an eminence recorded as knight's low....just two miles from ludchurch" [which elliott would identify as the site of the green chapel]. (quoted here from elliott 1997: 117) 21 life of the black prince by the herald of sir john chandos, ed. mildred pope and eleanor lodge (1910; 1974). j. j. n. palmer, "froissart et le héraut chandos" (1982: 271ff), argues that the poem was written c. 1385 to draw support for gaunt's carter revard 16 poet of some note served the black prince and john of gaunt in spain and france between 1356 and 1370, as that poet himself says: walter of peterborough, a cistercian of revesby in lincolnshire—a poet of some fame who "wrote for both edward the black prince and john of gaunt, duke of lancaster; he may have been john of gaunt's confessor."22 walter efforts at that time to claim the crown of spain; see, further, the life and campaigns of the black prince, ed. and transl. richard barber (1986); and richard barber, edward, prince of wales and aquitaine (1978). over a decade ago, thorlac turville-petre plausibly suggested that the earliest surviving long poem of the "alliterative revival," wynnere and wastoure, was composed by a poet who was "part of the administration at chester castle dealing with the affairs of the black prince" (1989: 39). in two papers delivered in 1986 and in 1990, i have argued that the poem is directly linked to the black prince's 1353 and 1358 visits to his cheshire palatinate; the evidence shows that it best fits his visit of 1358. wynnere and wastoure, after all, begins with a reference to the founding of england by brutus, moves on to a vivid portrayal of (probably) edward iii and the black prince in a pavilion on the crest of a cliff, decorated with representations of the order of the garter—a description climaxing with an alliterative translation of the garter motto—and ends with the king proclaiming his intent not merely to do what in 1359-60 he actually attempted, i.e. conquer france and be crowned in paris, but go on to cologne (taking over the holy roman empire?), and perhaps as arthur almost did in the alliterative mort arthur become emperor of all christendom. in this way the poem begins and ends in prophetic mode, echoing especially the six kings prophecy that was influential in the period when edward iii was seeking the french throne. it is a reasonable inference that such portrayal implies royal or (more likely?) princely patronage. as for royal patronage of poets, there are apparent links between edward iii and a yorkshire poet writing alliterative celebrations of his victories—laurence minot, of whom t. j. james and john simons remark (1989: 10): "he should be seen as one amongst the increasingly large retinue of minor functionaries who thronged the later medieval courts and who decided to seek preferment through the production of laudatory poetry in a style which may have appealed to the king himself." they cite (1989: 10-11) documents suggesting that minot was under patronage of edward iii (and of his mother isabella and his wife philippa), and minot's poems deal with the military operations of edward iii in france and scotland during the period 1333-1352. the early fifteenth century manuscript uniquely containing minot's poems (british library, ms. cotton galba e.ix, folios 52-57) includes romances in english verse (ywain and gawain and the seven sages), moral and satiric poems in english, the prick of conscience, and the prophecies of merlin as well as the gospel of nicodemus. in short, it is reasonable to think that minot wrote alliterative verse (in yorkshire english) under royal patronage, and the author of wynnere and wastoure (in west midlands english) wrote under princely patronage. we should therefore not be surprised if it should turn out that the pearl poet, writing in a northwest midlands dialect, was under royal or princely patronage. 22rigg 1992: 276. see below for rigg's tripartite survey of manuscripts containing latin poetry by such medieval writers. with the black prince to gascony in 13556 went (as confessors?) friars richard de leominster (dominican) and richard was the pearl poet in aquitaine with chaucer? 17 accompanied the black prince and gaunt on the 1367 spanish expedition that culminated in the battle of najera, and wrote a narrative poem in latin describing that expedition and battle that was printed in 1859 by thomas wright.23 in his proem to that piece, walter refers to a previous poem of his which he called a theotecon, in praise of the virgin mary, a poem of 5,000 lines that he claimed to have written about the black prince's victory at poitiers in 1356. in his epilogue to the 1367 poem on the battle of najera (written at the command of his abbot), walter complains to john of marthon of not being properly rewarded for his poetry, and says perhaps he cast his pearl before swine: sed margarita numquam fuit ulla cupita,/ porco plus placita stercora dentur ita.24 we must here note that walter says he sent his poems savage (augustinian): black prince's register vol. 4, pp. 167, 205, 228, 239, 255, 283, 295, 352, 402. the name savage (of a family from "gawain country"?) is given prominence in sggk (lines 550-53) in a reference to sir doddinal le savage, alongside the names of lionel and the duke of clarence (see note 34 below). the augustinian friar richard savage was dead by 1358, but the prince kept in touch with friar richard leominster, giving him (p. 352) a tun of vermail wine in june 1360 for his oxford commencement in divinity. for gaunt, see goodman (1992), russell (1995) and walker (1990). 23wright (1859: 97-122). the chandos herald, of course, devoted a great deal of his life of the black prince to the prince's role and actions in the spanish expedition and the battle of najera: see barber (1986: 106-34). 24 wright (1859: 122). rigg describes and discusses contents of the two bodleian library manuscripts including walter's poems (mss. rawlinson b.214 and digby 166) in his "medieval latin poetic anthologies (iii)," mediæval studies 41 (1979); rigg's earlier pieces on such anthologies are found in mediæval studies vol. 39 (1977) and vol. 40 (1978). he suggests that digby 166 may have been written and put together in fourteenth century oxford, and notes that rawlinson b.214 was compiled and (mostly) copied by john wilde (who was also scribe/compiler of a musical manuscript, bl ms lansdowne 763), at the augustinian abbey of the holy cross in waltham, essex, some time after 1469. both manuscripts include not only goliardic satire, but historical material including political propaganda, and their contents overlap heavily with those of bl mss cotton titus a.xx and cotton vespasian e.xii, and bodleian mss. bodley 603 and bodley 851—much of whose assemblage of poetic texts, rigg suggests (ms vol. 49, pp. 503-5), may have taken place in oxford. wilde's post-1469 anthology (rawlinson b.214), rigg says (1977: 329), was compiled "with a clear plan in mind," pointing out that its first two texts are "trojan"—the st. albans chronicler thomas walsingham's dites ditatus and simon chèvre d'or's ylias—and that these "are clearly prolegomena to...recapitulations [by fifteenth-century english writers] of british history (which begins with brutus), and hence to the whole series of poems on edward third's wars and henry v." in other words, this monk-anthologist of waltham abbey shaped a book in which the history of england, beginning with brutus, led directly carter revard 18 to his good friend john de marthon, treasurer of the duke of lancaster: could this imply that john was a connoisseur of poetry or even himself a poet, and thus more likely to recommend walter's pearl as plesaunt to princes paye—prince john of gaunt, that is? more intriguing, could the monk-poet's highly-placed friend john de marthon be the john de marton, of the diocese of york, who in 1345 petitioned the pope for a benefice in the gift of the prior and chapter of durham, and for whom in 1355 henry of grosmont, duke of lancaster, petitioned the pope to provide a benefice in the gift of the abbot and convent of st. mary's, york—referring to him as john de marton, s.c.l., of the diocese of york?25 if these references were to the same man, we could infer that he was a cleric with advanced legal training who in 1345 was seeking a benefice, who by 1355 had found service with henry, duke of lancaster for which henry was requesting that he be provided with a benefice, and who at some time after 1355 moved on to serve as treasurer for henry's son-in-law and successor as duke of lancaster, john of gaunt—whether he moved around the time of the battle of poitiers (1356), which walter of peterborough, cistercian monk of revesby, celebrated in his latin theotecon; or in 1361 when gaunt married henry's daughter blanche; or shortly before 1366-7, when gaunt and the black prince were conducting the spanish campaign and fighting the battle of najera, which walter celebrated in another latin poem. most intriguing of all is the surname of this john of marthon. there is a vill of marton in the heart of the gawain country as ralph elliott has mapped it, perhaps ten miles east of middlewich, six miles southwest of macclesfield, nine or ten miles west of wildboarclough and eight or so from ludchurch, which elliott would identify with the green chapel where into the gests of english kings and princes, specifically edward i, edward iii and his sons edward, john, and lionel, and then onward to henry iv and henry v. we may well recall at this point that sir gawain and the green knight sets its account of king arthur's court at its height, and of a quest of the great sir gawain, knight of the round table, between full-circle references to the trojan war and brutus's founding of britain. 25 calendar of papal registers, petitions i, 1342-1419 (ed. w. h. bliss 1896: 96, 275). see goodman (1992: 228-9). simon walker (1990: 285) lists john marthon as gaunt's treasurer on the strength of the reference to him by walter of peterborough, but says the date of his service is "unknown." was the pearl poet in aquitaine with chaucer? 19 gawain nearly lost his head.26 on dialectal grounds the english of john de marton, if his surname truly marked him as from that vill,27 would far better match that of the pearl poet than would the dialect of walter of peterborough—and yet, in his proem to the battle of najera, walter's latin verses alliterate heavily, and a gloss on his theotecon carefully notes that it has exactly 5,000 lines—reminding us of the careful line-counting evident in the pearl poet's keeping his stanza-count to precisely 101 stanzas in both pearl and sggk (1212 lines for pearl, 2525 plus 5 for sggk).28 we see, in walter of peterborough, a monk who wrote long latin poems for both the black prince and john of gaunt, who was perhaps gaunt's confessor, who was much with them in france and spain: at poitiers in 1356, at najera in 1367. and we apparently see in the man to whom walter sent his poems, john de marthon, a york diocese cleric, servitor in 1355 of henry of grosmont, duke of lancaster, and by 1366-7 (apparently) treasurer in john of gaunt's household. what is documented for this monk-poet and his ducal-servitor friend was surely possible for the pearl poet. but walter of peterborough is not the only poet of note who was in aquitaine and navarre in the 1360s: geoffrey chaucer was there, quite possibly in the service of the black prince,29 though more likely still serving 26 see the maps provided by ralph elliott; on the ordnance survey road map #6, wales/cymru & west midlands, marton can be located in the 4y region, in a triangle with apices at macclesfield, congleton, and holmes chapel. 27 there are certainly other places named marton, and other clerics named john de marton at the time; for instance, there was a priory of marton in yorkshire (east riding); and there is a long marton in cumberland, where a john de marton was ordained acolyte in 1341 and subdeacon, deacon, and priest in 1342, while a frater john de marton was ordained priest in 1336 (register of john kirkby, bishop of carlisle 1332-1352, ed. r. l. storey (1993, 1995). the register of gilbert welton, bishop of carlisle 1353-62 (ed. r. l. storey 1999) shows a john de marton, chaplain, as longtime resident and functionary in the parish of long marton in cumberland—serving as proctor to instal a new rector in 1358, receiving gifts willed to him by deceased rectors in 1358, 1360 and 1362 (pp. 215-16, 336, 501). he of course could not have served john of gaunt; the point is that both placename and personal name are common enough. 28 see edward condren, the numerical universe of the gawain-pearl poet (2002). 29 after the present paper was at the journal, i dicscovered the excellent essay by professor eugenio m. olivares merino that makes a very persuasive case for geoffrey chaucer’s knowing of the spanish language, and discusses his presence in spain and france at the times when the pearl poet was, i believe, there; see “juan ruiz’s influence on chaucer revisited: a survey” (2004). there is obviously an important area of research for biographical and literary study opened by the carter revard 20 prince lionel, and soon to be serving their brother prince, john of gaunt. a document in the archives of navarre records that chaucer had a safe-conduct for the period february 22 to may 24, 1366 to allow him and three companions to travel through navarre, and as derek brewer has suggested, it seems likely that chaucer "was on some sort of official business," and quite possible that he had moved over from the service of prince lionel when his wife, the countess of ulster, died in 1363, to serve in the black prince's court in aquitaine.30 it is, therefore, possible that chaucer and the pearl poet were at the same time serving the black prince in aquitaine,31 study of professor olivares merino, and i hope my suggestions in the present paper may be seen as added evidence for the influence of french and spnish language and literature on both chaucer and the pearl poet. 30 suggested in 1978 by derek brewer, chaucer and his world (1992: 68-9); inferred also by derek pearsall, the life of geoffrey chaucer (1992: 51-55 and note 7, p. 319); and see donald howard, chaucer, his life, his works, his world (1987: 113-22). discussing chaucer's travels scott d. westrem (2000: 196-197) says: "chaucer's whereabouts are uncertain between late 1360 and 20 june 1367, when he is recorded as being a valettus to the king: he may have accompanied lionel to ireland in september 1361, joined part of the royal household in aquitaine or remained in england. in all likelihood he spent time in prince edward's entourage in aquitaine, for in the spring of 1366 he was in spain on unstated business; the letter of safe conduct from charles ii of navarre that chaucer and three 'compaignons' received for the period from 22 february to pentecost (24 may) was routinely given to pilgrims, and...he may have been under way to compostela or on a secret mission connected with pedro i of castile.... " in chaucer life-records, ed. martin m. crow and clair c. olson, it is pointed out (1996: 65) that the letter of safe conduct referred to by westrem "is preserved in a chancery register known as the cartulary of charles ii (charles le mauvais)," that "the french and spanish records of the cartulary...show that about 1366 there were in spain, especially in navarre, many englishmen, including the black prince..., as well as numerous english knights and esquires," and that documents in the cartulary for 1365-6 "refer also to safe-conducts granted by the king of navarre to various pilgrims who were on their way to or from the shrine of st. james of compostella." to put it facetiously, anyone wishing to do a bit of pearl-diving should trawl through this cartulary's personages and trace their affiliations. 31 chaucer had certainly served in the household of elizabeth, countess of ulster, wife of the black prince's brother prince lionel, from at least 1357, and had served under prince lionel in the french campaign of 1359-60 when chaucer was captured and had to be ransomed. lionel's troops were in the division led by the black prince: brewer (1992: 46-7, 57-61); pearsall (1992: 34-41). in 1362, lionel had been made the first duke of clarence, and the poet of sir gawain and the green knight is careful to list lionel and the duke of clarence among the knights at arthur's feast on all saints' day as gawain prepares to set forth on his quest for the green chapel (lines 550-53): was the pearl poet in aquitaine with chaucer? 21 and that we need to reconsider in the most profound way our notions of how some of the literary history of england actually was being created by two of the age's greatest poets, and the roles in that creation of princes and their retinues both in england and in aquitaine, during the period 1353-1376. it could well be that when chaucer makes his pilgrim parson speak as though he knows the alliterative tradition very well even as he dismisses it as "rum-ram-ruf," chaucer is paying a kind of tribute to the author of sir gawain and the green knight, and when another of his characters speaks of "gawain, with his olde courtesye," it was not only to romances in french that he was referring. perhaps there should be a sequel to the brilliant recent account of english/italian cultural relations offered by david wallace (1997) in his chaucerian polity, a sequel that would consider english poets and patrons and the matter of aquitaine. carter revard washington university, st. louis works cited alibert, louis 1965: dictionnaire occitan-français. institut d’études occitanes, toulouse. thenne the best of the burgh bowed togeder, aywan, and errik, and other ful mony, sir doddinal de sauage, the duk of clarence, launcelot, and lyonel, and lucan the gode.... as vantuono notes (1999: 176) in 1913 isaac jackson proposed that the poet was alluding here to prince lionel, and in 1959 d'ardenne "also associated the title duke of clarence with the contemporary lionel, who in 1368 was married to violante visconti, the niece of amadeus vi, count of savoy, known as the green count." chaucer may have attended that wedding in milan: see howard, chaucer (1987: 118-24). recently, leo carruthers has proposed (2001) that the patron for whom sir gawain and the green knight was written was roger mortimer, fourth earl of march (1374-1398), son of prince lionel's daughter philippa (1355-81) and therefore grandson of king edward iii. carruthers suggests (20001: 76) that in 551-2 the poet's reference to the duk of clarence,/ launcelot, and lyonel is "a flattering reference to the late prince lionel and his grandson roger mortimer." carter revard 22 andrew, malcolm 1997: theories of authorship. in brewer, derek & j. gibson. a companion to the gawain-poet. d. s. brewer, cambridge, 23-34. barber, richard 1978: edward, prince of wales and aquitaine. scribners, new york. barber, richard 1986: the life and campaigns of the black prince. st. martin's press, new york. bennett, michael 1997: the historical background. in brewer & gibson: a companion to the gawain-poet, 71-90. bliss, w.h. & c. johnson eds. 1897: calendar of entries in the papal registers relating to great britain and ireland: papal letters. vol 3: 1342-1362. hmso, london. bliss, w.h. & j. a. twemlow eds. 1902: calendar of entries in the papal registers relating to great britain and ireland: papal letters. vol 4: 1362-1404. hmso, london. bliss, w.h. ed. 1896: calendar of entries in the papal registers relating to great britain and ireland: petitions to the pope. vol 1: 1342-1419. hmso, london. bowers, john m. 2001: the politics of pearl: court poetry in the age of richard ii. d.s. brewer, cambridge. breeze, andrew 1996a: torres ‘towering clouds’ in pearl and cleanness. notes and queries n.s. 43.3: 264-6. breeze, andrew 1996b: the gawain poet and toulousse. notes and queries n.s. 43.3: 266-68. breeze, andrew 1998: "was sir john stanley (1350-1414) the gawain poet?" the plantagenet connection 6: 139-146. brewer, derek 1992: chaucer and his world. d. s. brewer, cambridge. brewer, derek & j. gibson 1997: a companion to the gawain-poet. d. s. brewer, cambridge. brown, peter 2000: a companion to chaucer. blackwell, oxford. calendar of papal letters 1342-62. bliss & johnson 1897. was the pearl poet in aquitaine with chaucer? 23 calendar of papal letters 1362-1404. bliss & twemlom 1902. calendar of papal petitions. bliss 1896. calendar of patent rolls,edward iii. vol 13: 1364-7. carruthers, leo 2001: the duke of clarence and the earls of march: garter knights and sir gawain and the green knight. medium ævum 70.1 (2001), 66-79. crow, martin m. & olson, clair c. ed. 1966: chaucer life-records. oxford university press, oxford. condren, edward 2002: the numerical universe of the gawain-pearl poet. university of florida press, grainesville. cooke, w. g. & boulton, d'arcy j. d. 1999: sir gawain and the green knight: a poem for henry of grosmont?. medium ævum 68.1 (1999), 42-54. corominas, joan & pascual, josé 1980: diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, vol. g-ma. editorial gredos, madrid. elliott, r. w. v. 1997: language and geography. in brewer and gibson, a companion to the gawain-poet , 106-117. enciclopedia universal sopena 1963: tomo cuarto. sopena, barcelona. fabra, p. 1996: diccionari general de la llengua catalana, 4th ed. rev. josep miracle. lópez llàusas, barcelona. goodman, anthony 1992: john of gaunt. st. martin's press, new york. grady, frank 2000: st. erkenwald and the merciless parliament. studies in the age of chaucer 22, 179-212. highfield, j. r. l. 1953: the green squire. medium ævum 22, 18-23. howard, donald 1987: chaucer, his life, his works, his world. e. p. dutton, new york. james, t. b. & j. simons. 1989: the poems of laurence minot 1333-1352. university of exeter, exeter. carter revard 24 logan, f. donald 1996: runaway religious in medieval england, c. 12401540. cambridge university press, cambridge. london, public record office. 36th annual deputy keeper's report, appendix 2.1. meyer, ann r. 2001: the despensers and the gawain poet: a gloucestershire link to the alliterative master of the northwestern midlands. chaucer review 35, 413-29. olivares merino, eugenio m. 2004: juan ruiz’s influence on chaucer revisited: a survey. neophilologus 88.1 (2004): 145-156. ormerod, george 1819: the history of the county palatine and city of chester. lackington, london. palmer, j. j. n. 1982: froissart et le héraut chandos. le moyen age 88. pearsall, derek 1992: the life of geoffrey chaucer. blackwell, cambridge, massachusetts. peterson, clifford 1977: hoccleve, the old hall manuscript, cotton nero a.x., and the pearl-poet. review of english studies 28, 54-5. pope, mildred & lodge, eleanor. eds. 1974 (1910): life of the black prince by the herald of sir john chandos. ams press, new york. putter, ad 1996: an introduction to the gawain-poet. addison wesley longman, new york. reichl, karl 1997: "the 'charms of simplicity': popular strains in the early middle english love lyric," in o. s. pickering, individuality and achievement in middle english poetry. d. s. brewer, cambridge, 39-58. register of edward, the black prince 1930-33: 4 vols, hmso, london. revard, carter 2001: the papelard priest and the black prince's men: audiences of an alliterative poem, c. 1350-1370. studies in the age of chaucer 23, 357-406. rigg, a. g. 1992: a history of anglo-latin literature 1066-1422. cambridge university press, cambridge. was the pearl poet in aquitaine with chaucer? 25 rigg, a. g. 1977: medieval latin poetic anthologies (i). mediæval studies 39, 281-330. rigg, a. g. 1978: medieval latin poetic anthologies (ii). mediæval studies 40, 387-407. rigg, a. g. 1979: medieval latin poetic anthologies (iii). mediæval studies 41, 468-505. rogers, clifford j. 1999: the wars of edward iii, sources and interpretations. boydell and brewer, woodbridge. rothwell, w. 2001: stratford atte bowe re-visited. the chaucer review 36.2, 184-207. russell, p. e. 1955: the english intervention in spain and portugal in the time of edward iii and richard ii. oxford university press, oxford. scattergood, v. j. 2001: 'iste liber constat johanni mascy': dublin, trinity college, ms. 155". in minnis, alistair, middle english poetry, texts and traditions. york medieval press, woodbridge, 91-102. sisam, kenneth 1927a: 'fade' in gawain, line 149". tls jan 27, 60. sisam, kenneth 1927b: 'fade' in gawain, line 149". tls march 17, 193-4. smithers, g.v. 1950: a crux in sir gawain and the green knight. notes and queries 195, 134-36. storey, r. l. ed. 1993-1995: the register of john kirkby, bishop of carlisle 1332-1352 and the resgister of john ross, bishop of carlisle 13251332. canterbury and york society. boydell, woodbridge. 2 vols. storey, r. l. ed. 1999: the register of gilbert welton, bishop of carlisle 1353-62. canterbury and york society. boydell, woodbridge. trotter, daniel 1998: some lexical gleanings from anglo-french gascony. zeitschrift für romanische philologie 114, 51-72. turville-petre, thorlac 1997: the pearl poet in his 'fayre regioun'. in minnis, a. j., charlotte morse, thorlac turville-petre eds. essays on ricardian literature in honour of j. a. burrow. clarendon press, oxford, 276-94. carter revard 26 turville-petre, thorlac 1989: alliterative poetry of the later middle ages. london, routledge. vantuono, william. 1999: sir gawain and the green knight. revised edition: notre dame university press, notre dame, in. wales/cymru & west midlands, ordnance survey road map #6. walker, simon 1990: the lancastrian affinity 1361-1399. oxford university press, oxford. wallace, david 1997: chaucerian polity, absolutist lineages and associational forms in england and italy. stanford university press, stanford. westrem, scott d. 2000: chaucer's travels. in peter brown ed. a companion to chaucer. blackwell, oxford. wilson, edward 1986: sir gawain and the green knight and the stanley family of stanley, storeton, and hooton", review of english studies, n.s. 37, 308-16. wright, thomas 1859: political poems and songs relating to english history, composed during the period from the accession of edward iii to that of richard iii. vol 1. rolls series. longman, green longman, and roberts, london. * † * selim06.pdf josé maría gutiérrez arranz, selim 6 (1998): 85—102 the classical and modern concept of auctoritas in geoffrey chaucer’s the canterbury tales1 and where as ye seyn that fortune hath norissed yow fro youre childhede, i seye that in so muchel shul ye the lasse truste in hire and in hir wit. for senec seith, “what man that is norissed by fortune, she maketh hym a greet fool.”2 chaucer makes use of the auctoritas whenever he wants to look for support and evidence. her quotations are mainly taken from the bible and the authors of classical antiquity are thought in the middle ages to be the most reliable references to exemplify “teachings”, “morals” and “behaviour”. in this essay, we will trace and analyze the concept of auctoritas from the classical point of view, commenting what latin authors think about the matter, and then we will see what late latinity authors hold about this concept. finally, we will show how chaucer applies the concept and why he does so. i 1 i owe a quite incalculable debt to dr. ricardo j. sola buil (amico aeterno et magistro doctissimo), for his permanent support and help in everything related to this paper. and also special thanks to dr. maría josé muñoz jiménez, lecturer in latin language and literature at the faculty of arts of complutense university (madrid), in searching for the appropriate bibliography of this paper. 2 larry d. benson, ed. the riverside chaucer. 3rd. ed. oxford: oup, 1987. the tale of melibee, v.v. 1452-5, p. 230. ____________________________________________________________________ 87 in the old latin period the concept of auctoritas is used in several contexts and with different meanings, depending on the author who uses it. cicero, for instance, from the juridical point of view, uses auctoritas as usus auctoritas or usucapio, i. e., when someone acquires something after a long possession, which implies the prescription of its old proprietor’s rights, either by force or by legal rights. in both cases the authority referred to is the document, written or oral, that regulates social relationships. relating to husband and wife 1: “cum mulier viro in manum convenit, omnia quae mulieris fuerunt viri fiunt dotis nomine” (when a woman comes under the manus (legal control) of her husband, all her property goes to the husband under the designation of dowry.) re lating to a foreigner or stranger.2 “indicant duodecim tabulae: aut status dies cum hoste, itemque: adversus hostem aeterna auctoritas” (this is proved by the usage in the twelve tables: “or a day fixed for trial with a stranger” (hostis). and again: “right of ownership is inalienable for ever in dealings with a stranger” (hostis)). it also means guarantee from a tutor” 3: “si m. marcelli tutoris auctoritas apud te ponderis nihil habebat,” (if the personal authority of the boy’s guardian marcus marcellus counted for nothing with you). relating to a public registry:4: “immo vero iis tabulis professus, quae solae ex illa professione collegioque praetorum obtinent publicarum tabularum auctoritatem” (he did report himself; and, what is more, out of all the declarations made at that time before the board of praetors, his alone was supported by documents which possess all the weight of official sanction). another use of authority refers to the personal prestige of someone based on knowledge or moral standing. rela ting to the lawyers’ opinion:5 “num destitit uterque nostrum in ea causa, in auctoritatibus, in exemplis, in testamentorum formulis, hoc est, in medio iure civili, versari?” (in these proceedings were not both of us unceasingly occupied with decisions, with precedents, with forms of wills, with questions, in fact, of common law all around of us?). relating to eulogistic position:6 “quantam putas auctoritatem 1 cicero. topica, iv, 23. 2 cicero. de officiis, i, 12, 37. 3 cicero. contra verrem , part ii, i, 55, 144. 4 cicero. pro archia poeta, iv, 9. 5 cicero. de oratore, i, 39, 180. 6 cicero. contra verrem, part ii, iv, 9, 19. see, also, cornelius nepos, miltiades, 8.4; cicero, contra verrem , part ii, iv, 27, 60; caesar, de bello gallico, 7, 77, 3; ci____________________________________________________________________ 88 laudationis eorum futuram, si in eum quem constet verum pro testimonio dixisse poenam constituerint?” (how much weight do you expect to be attached to their eulogy of you, after their decreeing the punishment of the man who has admittedly spoken the truth as a witness?) the authority also deals with the warfare matters, in which certain illustriores viri stand out: nothing more brilliant and authoritative concerning warfare:1 “nihil illustriore auctoritate de bellis, nihil de re publica gravius” (nothing more brilliant and authoritative concerning warfare, nothing more weighty concerning state affairs). to lead the campaign with great prestige:2 “quorum adventu magna cum auctoritate et magna cum hominum multitudine bellum gerere conantur.” (upon their arrival they attempted (to lead) the campaign with great prestige and a great host of men). finally, the main element in roman administration, together with the roman people, the senate, was another source of authority: to obey the authority of the senate:3 “is qui auctoritati senatus, voluntati tuae paruit, denique is tulit cui minime proderant.” (a ma n who obeyed the authority of the senate and your wishes, the man, in short, who stood to get least from them.). in disregard of the senate’s authority:4 “inde iter alexandriam contra senatus auctoritatem, contra rem publicam et religiones” (then he journeyed to alexandria, in disregard of the senate’s authority, in disregard of the in terests of the state, and the sanctions of religion). through the support of the senate:5 “quod ex auctoritate senatus consensu bonorum omnium pro salute patriae gessissem” (i had achieved for my country’s well-being by the union of patriots and through the support of the senate). ii cero, brutus, lii, 221; contra verrem , part ii, v, 32, 84-85; pro rege deiotaro, xi, 30; pro m. fonteio, 1; caesar, de bello gallico, 3, 8, 3. 1 cicero. pro balbo, i, 2. 2 caesar. de bello gallico, 3, 23, 4. see, also, cicero, contra verrem , part i, 17, 52; de officiis, iii, 30, 109; cornelius nepos, alcibiades, 3, 1-2. 3 cicero. pro murena, 47. 4 cicero. philippicae, ii, 19, 48. 5 cicero. de domo sua, xxxv, 94. see, also, cicero, contra verrem , part ii, iii, 7, 17; epistulae ad familiares, i, 2, 7; epistulae ad atticum, i, 19, 2; livy, ab urbe condita, ix, 7, 7. ____________________________________________________________________ 89 once we have checked the meanings of the word auctoritas in the ancient times, mainly in cicero and other classical writers, let us go to the middle ages and revise the uses of the concept of “auctoritas”. there are, at least, four groups in which we can divide the meanings of this word: the royal authority: “rex directa auctoritate praecepit comiti” 1 (the king warned his companion by means of his direct order); “qui sola faciende pacis intentione regali sola distinatur autoritate.”2 this with the only intention of making peace appointed a gift by his own order); “coram principe vel his, quos sua princeps auctoritate preceperit.”3 (in the presence of the prince or others, who the prince warned with his order). another meaning of authority is the established or social order: “haec omnia studuimus definire, quae praesenti auctoritate vulgamus.”4 (we have studied in order to define all of these things, which we spread with the pre sent order); “ut auctoritatis cum justitia et lege competente in omnibus maneant stabili firmitate, nec subsequentibus auctoritatibus contra legem elecitis vacuentur.”5 (in order to maintain the mandates in the appropriate justice and law for all the events and with a steady firmness, no resolution will be emptied against the law by subsequent mandates). besides, the church authority is included in this group: “archiepiscopi nostram auctoritatem (de manumittendis servis in presbyteros ordinandis), suffraganei vero illorum exemplar illius penes se habeant.”6 (the archbishops in accordance with our mandate (in the case of loosing servants for being ordained as priests), who indeed recommend those should have an issue like this); “obtulerunt excellentiae celsitudinis nostrae auctoritatem genitoris nos1 gregorius episcopus turonensis. historia francorum, lib. 9, c. 41. all the translations into english, in this second part, are mine. 2 lex visigothorum, lib. 2, tit. 1. 3 ib., lib. 6, tit. 1. vid., also, concilium valentinianum a. 585, concilia aevi merovingici et aevi caronlini, i p. 163; chlothovei praeceptum. (a. 511-561), c. 5, capitularia regum francorum, i p. 19; diplomata merovingica, no. 33 (ca. a. 657/658); lex visigothorum, lib. 6 tit. 1, charta eligii a. 632, scriptorum rerum merovingicarum, iv p. 748. cf. sickel, acta karolinorum, i p. 185. 4 edictum guntchramni a. 585, capitularia regum francorum, i p. 12. 5 chlothovei praeceptum. (a. 511-561), c. 9, capitularia regum francorum; vid., also, marculfus, lib. 1 no. 2, formulae, p. 42; diplomata merovingica, no. 10 (a. 625). 6 capitulum ecclesiasticum, a. 818/819, c. 6, i p. 277. ____________________________________________________________________ 90 tri, in qua continebatur.”1 (they displayed the mandate of our excellent height our father, in which it was included). the last group is related to any kind of document: “suas auctoritates ostenderent.”2 (they should show their records). iii these are the most common meanings of auctoritas in certain aspects or fields relating all of them with the official and monastic world. if we have a look at chaucer’s uses of the word, or maybe his characters’ uses in the canterbury tales, the relationship with these meanings is different. we will try to develop these uses, and then explain the possible reasons of them. in the introduction of the man of law’s tale, the host warns the pilgrims not to waste so much time in order to go on with the tales, and intends to exemplify his warnings remembering certain words by seneca: “wel kan senec and many a philosophre / biwaillen tyme moore than gold in cofre; / for los of catel may recovered be, / but los of tyme shendeth us, quod he.”3. in seneca it is available to find out these teachings: “omnes horas conplectere. sic fiet, ut minus ex crastino pendeas, si hodierno manum inieceris. dum differtur, vita transcurrit. omnia, lucili, aliena sunt, temp us tantum nostrum est.” (hold every hour in your grasp. lay hold of today’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon tomorrow’s. while we are postponing, life speeds by. nothing, lucilius, is ours, except time) .4 once she has introduced her story, the wife of bath discusses the possibilities women have to conceal a secret. she is not sure of this: “and in o purpos stedefastly to dwelle, / and nat biwreye thyng that men us telle. / but that tale is nat worth a rake -stele. / pardee, we wommen konne no thyng hele; / witnesse on myda wol ye heere the tale? / ovyde, amonges othere thyn1 diplomata charles ii le chauve, no. 61 (a. 845). vid., also, liber pontificalis, liberius, ed. mommsen, p. 77; pardessus, ii p. 423, no. 2 (a. 565). 2 thévenin, textes, no. 89 (a. 857). 3 introduction to the man of law´s tale, v. v. 25-28, p. 87. 4 seneca. epistulae morales ad lucilium. ed. & trans. richard m. gummere. vol. i. vol. iv of seneca´s works. loeb classical library. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, 1979. i, 1, 1-3, p. 2-5. ____________________________________________________________________ 91 ges smale.”1 following the wife’s advice, the answer to all this mistery is clear: according to ovid, in his metamorphoses, king midas was punished severely after the judge in which pan and phoebus contested who of them played more beautiful melodies. obviously, phoebus was the winner, but midas did not agree, and that was the reason for the king saw his ears growing overwhelmingly. he tried to conceal his secret, but fortune tricked him: the servant who used to cut the king’s hair dug a hole on the earth and whis pered what he has saw in it. unfortunately the forest where the secret had been buried betrayed the story: “creber harundinibus tremulis ibi surgere lu cus / coepit et, ut primum pleno maturuit anno, / prodidit agricolam: leni nam motus ab austro / obruta verba refert dominique coarguit aures.”2 (but a trick carpet of trembling reeds began to push up on the spot and, at the end of the year, when they were full grown, the reeds betrayed their gardener: for, when stirred by the gentle south wind, they uttered the words that had been buried, and revealed the truth about his master’s ears).3 in the tale itself, the old lady tries to convince the knight about some doubts he has. and she explains to him that: “ther shul ye seen expres that it no drede is that he is gentil that dooth gentil dedis,”4 and so in his life he must endure the neverending obstacles destiny prepares, and even be respectful to poverty, which does not mean feeling shameful: “thanne am i gentil, whan that i bigynne / to lyven vertuously and weyve synne. / and ther as ye of poverte me repreeve, / the hye god, on whom that we bileeve, / in wilful poverte chees to lyve his lif.”5 these ideas appear in certain authors like seneca, who advises lucilius not to behave wrongly with other people: “quem poena putaveris dignum” (whom you regard as deserving of punishment). moreover, seneca disagrees with anyone who boasts richness and oppulence: he will fe el happy with his disciple: “si contempseris etiam sordidum panem, si tibi persuaseris herbam, ubi necesse est, non pecori tantum, sed 1 the wife of bath´s tale, v. 945-82, p. 118. 2 p. ovidio nasón. metamorfosis. ed. & trans. antonio ruiz de elvira. vol. iii. 4th. ed.. alma mater. colección de autores griegos y latinos. madrid: c.s.i.c., 1994. xi, 146-93, p. 20-2. 3ovid. metamorphoses . ed. & trans. mary m. innes. london: penguin books, 1955. xi, 146-93, p. 250-1. 4 the wife of bath´s tale, v.v. 1169-70, p. 120. 5 the wife of bath´s tale, v.v. 1175-9, p. 120-1. ____________________________________________________________________ 92 homini nasci” (when you have learned to scorn even the common sort of bread, when you have made yourself believe that grass grows for the needs of men as well as of cattle).1 in the merchant’s tale, and after introducing the ageing knight of lombardy and his desires of marrying, the merchant discusses about the pros and cons of taking a wife and gives several famous opinio ns and examples of this: “ther nys no thyng in gree superlatyf, / as seith senek, above an humble wyf. / suffre thy wyves tonge, as catoun bit; / she shal comande, and thou shalt suffren it, / and yet is she wole obeye of curteisye”.2 cato’s words can be found in his biography. this comment is taken from a themistocles’ writing in which, discussing about women’s power, he said that: “pavntes a[nqpwpoi twn gunaikwn a[pcousin hmeis de; pavntwn anqpwvpon hmwn d ’ aiv gunaikes .” (all men rule their wives; we rule all men; our wives rule us). this argument also helped cato to defend that: “w guvnai aqhnaioi me;n apcousi twn ellhvnwn egw; d aqhnaivwn emou de; suv sou d ’ o uiovs.” (my dear wife, the athenians rule the greeks; i rule the athenians; you rule me; and our son rules you.)3 later, with his new wife, may, january found happiness. but this happiness would be only fictitious. the girl had met his real love, damian, and two furtive lovers have always means of tricking and that is something which was easy for them. the merchant remembers the noble ovid in order to dis play this universal rule: “o noble ovyde, ful sooth seystou, god woot, / what sleighte is it, thogh it be long and hoot, / that love nyl fynde it out in som manere? / by pyramus and tesbee may men leere”4 pyramus and this be’s story is a good example of these typical lovers’ tricks. both of them were the authentic symbols of beauty and, although they did not feel anything to each other, a passionate love began, and they had to fight against their families’ lack of appreciation. their only means to communicate their love was a small crack: “fissus erat tenui rima” (there was a crack, a slender chink), something 1 seneca. epistulae morales ad lucilium. vol. iii. ed. & trans. richard m. gummere. vol. vi of seneca´s works. loeb classical library. london: william heinemann ltd., 1971. cx, 2-4, p. 266-7; 12, p. 272-3. 2 the merchant´s tale, v. 1369-79, p. 155-6. 3 plutarch. lives: aristeides and cato. ed. & trans. david sansone. warminster, wiltshire: aris & phillips ltd., 1989. 35(8), 4-5, p. 106-7. 4 the merchant´s tale, v. 2125-31, p. 164. ____________________________________________________________________ 93 which was unknown to everybody except to the lovers: “primi vidistis amantes” (the lovers were the first to find it), who used appropriately: “murmure blanditiae minimo transire solebant.”1 (by this means their endearments were safely conveyed to one another, in the gentlest of whispers.)2 poor january insists on her wife’s demonstrations of love, but may cannot stand thinking about damian. one of january’s treasures, his garden, is the perfect witness of the gods pluto and proserpine presence, in a perfect day: “bright was the day, and blew the firmament;”, in which the stars were in a very specific position: “phebus hath of gold his stremes doun ysent / to gladen every flour with his warmnesse. / he was that tyme in geminis, as i gesse, / but litel fro his declynacion / of cancer, jovis exaltacion.” so, the gods’ presence intends to mistify the place: “and so bifel, that brighte morwe-tyde / that in that gardyn, in the ferther syde, / pluto, that is king of fayerye, / and many a lady in his compaignye, / folwynge his wyf, the queene proserpyna”.3 and the merchant tries to memorize the source when he read this: “in claudian ye may the stories rede”.4 the merchant shows his knowledge about the matter. the tragedy seemed to search for proserpine while, escorted by his sisters (venus included) in the fields, collecting flowers, a strange grumble came up from the darkest depths: it was pluto, and he wanted to rape the goddess who implores the rest of the goddesses: “rapitur proserpina curru / imploratque deas.” (proserpine is hurried away in the chariot, imploring aid of the goddesses). pluto behaves like a wild animal: “ille velut stabuli decus armentique iuvencam / cum leo possedit nudataque vis cera fodit / unguibus et rabiem totos exegit in armos.” (pluto is like a lion when he has seized upon a heifer, the pride of the stall and the herd, and has torn with his claws the defenceless flesh and has sated his fury on all its limbs).5 1 p. ovidio nasón. metamorfosis. ed. and trans. antonio ruiz de elvira. vol. i. 5th ed. alma mater. colección de autores griegos y latinos. madrid: c.s.i.c., 1992. iv, 55-77, p. 124-5. 2. cf., iv, 55-77, p. 95-6. 3 the merchant´s tale, v.v. 2219-29, p. 165-6. 4 the merchant´s tale, v.v. 2230-5, p. 166. 5 claudian. de raptu proserpinae. ed. & trans. maurice platnauer. vol. ii of claudian´s works. loeb classical library. london: william heinemann ltd., 1972. ii, 119-62, 204-13, p. 326-33. ____________________________________________________________________ 94 now, let us discuss the classical mentions in the tale of melibee. prudence’s reaction after the sordid attack of his husband’s foes: “this noble wyf prudence remembred hire upon the sentence of ovide, in his book that cleped is the remedie of love”1 means a deep philosophical answer to that horrible disgrace: “quis matrem, nisi mentis inops, in funere nati / flere vetet? non hoc illa monenda loco est; / cum dederit lacrimas animumque impleverit aegrum, / ille dolor verbis emoderandus erit.”2 (who but a fool would try to stop a mother weeping at her son’s graveside? that’s no place for advice. when her tears are all shed, when her heartache’s had appeasement, then use your words to ease the knot of pain.)3 prudence advises melibeus not to exceed in pain: “mesure of wepyng sholde be considered after the loore that techeth us senek”.4 seneca’s words are definite: although we can be stung with tears: “sed tantum vellicabit.” (it will be only a sting). it’s better to look for another person than to remember always the lost friend: “quem amabas, extulisti; quaere, quem ames. satius est amicum reparare quam flere.” (you have buried one whom you loved; look about for someone to love. it is better to replace your friend than to weep for him).5 melibee is recommended by prudence in several ways, following mainly seneca’s and cicero’s teachings. it’s better to avoid flatterings and flatterers: “amonges alle the pestilences that been in freendshipe the gretteste is fla terie. and therfore is it moore nede that thou eschue and drede flatereres than any oother peple.”6. the applied words are related to the fact that we should only trust in friends, and doing that way: “isdemque temporibus cavendum est, ne assentatoribus patefaciamus auris neve adulari nos sinamus” (under 1 the tale of melibee, v.v. 975-7, p. 217. 2 p. ovidi nasonis. remedia amoris. ed. e.j. kenney. scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca oxoniensis. oxford: oup, 1994. v.v. 127-30, p. 230. 3 ovid. the erotic poems. ed. & trans. peter green. london: penguin books, 1982. cures for love, v.v. 127-30, p. 242-3. 4 the tale of melibee, v.v. 990-2, p. 217-8. 5 seneca. epistulae morales ad lucilium. vol. i. ed. & trans. richard m. gummere. vol. iv of seneca´s works. loeb classical library. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, 1979. lxiii, 1, p. 428-31; 11-12, p. 434-5. 6 the tale of melibee, v.v. 1175-6, p. 223. ____________________________________________________________________ 95 such circumstances also we must beware of lending an ear to sycophants or allowing them to impose upon us with their flattery).1 another advice is that the power of an emperor is never eternal except he will love his people rather than the pain: “ther nys no myght so greet of any emperour that longe may endure, but if he have moore love of the peple than drede.”2 and we can find these words in cicero. people is always searching for just laws, for: “id si ab uno iusto et bono viro consequebantur, erant eo contenti” (if the people secured their end at the hands of one just and good man, they were satisfied with that). and this will be the essence of a key fig ure in every state: justice, which is a permanent condition in all situations: “omni igitur ratione colenda et retinenda iustitia est cum ipsa per sese (nam aliter iustitia non esset), tum propter amplificationem honoris et gloriae.” (justice is, therefore, in every way to be cultivated and maintained, both for its own sake (for otherwise it would not be justice) and for the enhancement of personal honour and glory).3 prudence warns about the horrible wounds a weasel can make, and re members ovid: “the litel wesele wol slee the grete bole and the wilde hert.”4. ovid changes the comparation, as he uses a viper instead of a weasel: “parva necat morsu spatiosum vipera taurum; / a cane non magno saepe tenetur aper”.5 (the bite of a minuscule viper kills the massive ox, and it’s often some lightweight dog that holds the wild boar at bay).6 prudence remembers him about fortune’s tricks: “what man that is norissed by fortune, she maketh hym a greet fool.”7 and seneca does it in the same way: he thinks that fortune helps to anyone who has a complete control on himself: “si qui habet illa, se quoque habet nec in rerum suarum potestate est” (only if he who possesses them is in possession also of himself, and is not in the power of that which belongs to him). sometimes, there 1 cicero. de offficiis. ed. & trans. walter miller. vol. xxi of cicero´s works. loeb classical library. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, 1975. i, 26, 91, p. 92-5. 2 the tale of melibee, v. 1191, p. 224. 3 cf., ii, 12, p. 208-13. 4 the tale of melibee, v. 1324, p. 227. 5 cf., remedia amoris, v.v. 421-2, p. 243. 6 cf., cures for love, v.v. 420-1, p. 251. 7 the tale of melibee, v. 1454, p. 230. ____________________________________________________________________ 96 is another enemy when you have a desire for something: that some kind of chance will turn against him. “nihil ex his optabilibus et caris utile esse, nisi te contra levitatem casus rerumque casum sequentium instruxeris” (there is no utility in all these desirable and beloved things, unless you equip yourself in opposition to the fickleness of chance and its consequences).1 prudence also thinks about someone who is extremely fearless, so that he can be considered in this way: “he putteth hym in greet peril that stryveth with a gretter man than he is hymself.”2 and, at that point, she is expressing a seneca’s opinion: the external appearance of a man can be a trap for anyone: “hominum effigies habent, animos ferarum” (they have the aspect of men, but the souls of brutes).3 to finish with this part of our paper, we will analyze three ideas by cicero. in the first, prudence talks against raising our own benefit at the expense of anyone: “no sorwe, ne no drede of deeth, ne no thyng that may falle unto a man, / is so muchel agayns nature as a man to encressen his owene profit to the harm of another man. / and though the grete men and the myghty men geten richesses moore lightly than thou, / yet shaltou nat been ydel ne slow to do thy profit, for thou shalt in alle wis e flee ydelnesse.”4. cicero does not want to take advantage of anyone in order to increase his properties: “nec vero rei familiaris amplificatio nemini nocens vituperanda est, sed fugienda semper iniuria est.” (still, l do not mean to find fault with the accumulation of property, provided it hurts nobody, but unjust acquisition of it is always to be avoided).5 the second one holds that one’s house should be open in order to show piety and devotion: “the goodes, of thyn hous ne sholde nat been hyd ne kept so cloos, but that they myghte been opened by pitee and debonairetee”.6 cicero remembers the great men who held a property and: “potiusque et ami cis impertientes et rei publicae, si quando usus esset” 1 cf., xcviii, 2, p. 118-9; 4-5, p. 120-1. 2 the tale of melibee, v. 1487, p. 231. 3 cf., ciii, 2, p. 188-9. 4 the tale of melibee, v.v. 1584-7, p. 233. 5 cf., i, 8, 25, p. 26-7. 6 the tale of melibee, v. 1620, p. 234. ____________________________________________________________________ 97 (rather, if ever there were need, sharing it with their friends and with the state).1 finally, prudence explains that there is nothing more beloved in a noble man than being kind, gentle and appeased: “ther is no thyng so comendable in a greet lord / as whan he is debonaire and meeke, and appeseth him lightly ”.2 seneca is thinking about three conditions a man should follow: “colendum autem esse ita quemque maxime, ut quisque maxime virtutibus his lenioribus erit ornatus, modestia, temperantia, hac ipsa, de qua multa iam dicta sunt, iustitia” (the more a man is endowed with these finer virtues temperance, self-control, and that very justice about which so much has already been said the more he deserves to be favoured).3 iv once we have discussed extensively the quotes in which chaucer’s characters apply classical writers doctrines, we will explain briefly what is the meaning of these uses. these auctoritates provide a simple and a more complicated background to the environment chaucer acts. on the one hand, on some of these quotations we can see the influence of several philosophical movements which survived in the middle ages, and which was a source of permanent discussion at that time. if we consider cicero’s and seneca’s appearance, the motivations and opinions of the characters in the tales are condit ioned by the auctoritates personal and philosophical idiosyncrasy. both the arpinian and the spanish philosopher devoted their lives to follow two main streams: epicureanism and stoicism, and this is the motivation chaucer’s characters are engaged. on the other hand, we must understand chaucer’s behaviour in using the classical auctoritates. when summarizing the previous works, willi erzgräber4 defends that chaucer acts in a “naïvely way” in the book of the 1 cf., i, 26, 92, p. 94-5. 2 the tale of melibee, v.v. 1859-60, p. 239. 3 cf., i, 15, 46, p. 48-51. 4 willi erzgräber. “auctorite” and “experience” in chaucer . intellectuals and writers in fourteenth-century europe. eds. piero boitani & anna torti. the j. a. w. bennett memorial lectures, perugia, 1984. tübingen: gunter narr verlag. cambridge: d.s. brewer eds., 1986. ____________________________________________________________________ 98 duchess, but, later on, we discover how he pretends to make up a poem which means to produce a more practic effect on the reader. blanche’s death could be the excuse “to write a religious consolatio”, but, finally, chaucer interprets the poem as a result of a “lex naturalis, a moral law that derives from the stoa and was a basic element of medieval moral theology.” in this sense, ovid’s appearance with his famous ceyx and alcyone’s tale helps to define the idea that “the good must be done and the evil avoided”: after her husband’s shipwreck, alcyone shows an excess of mourning, and this is something against this natural law. following this, the black knight has the intention of beheaving in the same way, and then, he is about to trespass this moral and philosophical law. finally, his returning to the castle denies the possibility of interfering in the commented rule. in troylus and criseyde, the main characters are altered from the original source of the poem, il filostrato by giovanni bocaccio. troylus laughs at the feeling of love, but when he realizes and discovers what this feeling re ally means, he is completely isolated and nobody can help him appropriately. criseyde is also a pure unloyal character, but his personality suffers from an evolution step by step until she is supposed to become a more than an individual woman, deeper psychologically than the italian model. in both characters, the experience, more than the “auctorite” has a definite influence in their lives.1 if we take into account the almost permanent influence of ovid in chaucer’s works, we must assume that both had common characteristics, as helen cooper thinks:2 “wit, good humour, urbanity, humanness”. the metamorphoses was an outstanding source of stories and commentaries for most of medieval writers, but chaucer changed the general opinion in contemplating ovid’s works as demystified opera to produce a christian doctrine. cooper holds that “chaucer’s ovid is the ovid of narrative”: his borrowings occur within two areas. the first has to do with tale -telling, as “chaucer takes over not only, for example, the dwelling of fama but the re vealing of the secret of midas’ ears and the crow’s punishment for scandalmongering. his other predilection is for stories of women in distress that 1 cf., p. 67-87. 2 helen cooper. chaucer and ovid: a question of authority. ovid renewed. ovidian influences on literature and art from the middle ages to the twentieth century. ed. charles martindale. cambridge: cup, 1988. ____________________________________________________________________ 99 could be developed for pathos”. his most striking divergence from ovid is “his refusal to countenance the idea of human metamorphosis into the less than human”. a crow may turn black, but at the conclusion of the stories of, e. g., ceyx and alcyone, “we are not told of nothing of the transformations that are ovid’s excuse for telling the stories at all”. even more, in this narra tive borrowings, chaucer uses claudian’s tale of the rape of proserpine, but both pluto and proserpine take up only to witness, as mere spectators, i. e., there is no reference to the rape of proserpine, while may commits treachery with respect to january, as it could be funny to think about a possible rape of may by damian. ceyx and alcyone story is read by the narrator before he falls asleep, and the overt excuse for the retelling is to give him the idea of praying to morpheus for sleep. helen cooper also says that “the dream itself mirrors in inverted from the story he has just read: it is a dream, not of a wife who has lost her husband, but of a knight, “clothed al in blak”, who has lost his lady”. the cause for chaucer’s devising the whole poem was the death of blanche, duchess of lancaster, and the poem functions “as an elegy for her and as a consolatio for the bereaved husband”. moreover, there is no more suggestion of an afterlife for the lady white than for alcyone. all of this means that chaucer, when ignoring such consideration as the truth of chris tian resurrection or about blanche’s ultimate destination, gives the suffering of loss its full weight, “with no attempt to mitigate the grief of the bereaved by considerations of the state of those who have passed to happier things”. this can be considered as another lex naturalis, different from the one dis cussed above: the one in which, following partially the pagan literary tra dition for which the world and the life beyond should mean a more positive place for the dead, chaucer makes that “the christian way to approach death will convey putting man and his sufferings, not god and his providence, in the centre of the picture”. death is something natural in the human life (that is the obvious lex naturalis), but there is no reference to a possible salvation, neither from the point of view of using alcyone’s sufferings nor from the more christian position. two special examples in the canterbury tales (apart from the previous analized one in the merchant’s tale) helps to understand this theory. the wife of bath’s inset story of midas and the manciple’s tale of the crow, “take the problem of the unreliability of language further”. in both stories, “the tidynges that are being told are true: midas does have ass’s ears, phoe____________________________________________________________________ 100 bus is indeed a cuckold”. some things are much safer kept hidden, even if they are true. the wife of bath, “with her relish for everything antifeminist, transfers the revelation of midas’ secret from his barber to his wife, so that she can conclude,” we kan no conseil hyde”. what is provided by the untold “remenant” of the tale is the fact that “it is the reeds that announce the secret to the world; as the wife has told it, “we wommen” are left with all the re sponsibility for tattling”.1 these brief explanations confirm the idea that chaucer has special and, therefore, personal reasons to use all these classical authors. we have dis cussed, in the first two parts of this essay, how the concept of auctoritas suffered from an evolution based rather in the different political situations than in the main characters who performed. the senate was changed by the monarchy and the church, the tabularum leges became the papal or royal documents. although our aim was to analyze the classical quotations which are closer to literary authorities than to other ones, anyway, we must remember that some of chaucer’s characters display a more accurate behaviour which is not far from certain means of knowledge: the host assume his role because the pilgrims do not forbid that role. in each case, chaucer tries to confirm his characters expectations, but, as an overall summary, he obeys his own concerns by withdrawing from the typical behaviours of his contemporaries with respect to those writers, as can be seen when using his favourite source: ovid. josé maría gutiérrez arranz university of alcalá de henares bibliography sources 1 cf., p. 71-81. ____________________________________________________________________ 101 caesar. the gallic war. ed. & trans. h. j. edwards. loeb classical library. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, 1979. cicero. topica. ed. & trans. h. m. hubbell. vol. ii of cicero’s works. loeb classical library. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, 1976. cicero. de oratore. vol. i. ed. & trans. e. w. sutton. vol. iii of cicero’s works. loeb classical library. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, 1976. cicero. brutus. ed. & trans. g. l. hendrickson. vol. v of cicero’s works. loeb classical library. london: william heinemann ltd., 1971. cicero. the verrine orations. vol. i & ii. ed. & trans. h. g. greenwood. vol. vii & viii of cicero’s works. loeb classical library. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, 1978, 1976. cicero. pro murena. ed. & trans. c. macdonald. vol. x of cicero’s works. loeb classical library. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, 1977. cicero. pro archia poeta. de domo sua. ed. & trans. n. h. watts. vol. xi of cicero’s works. loeb classical library. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, 1979. cicero. pro balbo. ed. & trans. r. gardner. vol. xiii of cicero’s works. loeb classical library. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, 1970. cicero. pro m. fonteio. pro m. marcello. pro rege deiotaro . ed. & trans. n. h. watts. vol. xiv of cicero’s works. loeb classical library. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, 1979. cicero. philippics. ed. & trans. walter c. a. ker. vol. xv of cicero’s works. loeb classical library. london: william heinemann ltd., 1969. cicero. de officiis. ed. & trans. walter miller. vol. xxi of cicero’s works. loeb classical library. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, 1975. cicero. letters to atticus. ed. & trans. e. o. winstedt. vol. xxii of cicero’s works. loeb classical library. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, 1980. ____________________________________________________________________ 102 cicero. the letters to his friends. ed. & trans. w. glynn williams. vol. xxv of cicero’s works. loeb classical library. cambridge, mas sachusetts: harvard university pres s, 1979. claudian. de raptu proserpinae. ed. & trans. maurice platnauer. vol. ii of claudian’s works. loeb classical library. london: william heinemann ltd., 1972. cornelius nepos. miltiades. themistocles. alcibiades. ed. & trans. john c. rolfe. loeb classical library. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, 1984. livy. ab urbe condita. ed. & trans. b. o. foster. vols. ii, iv & v of livy’s works. loeb classical library. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, 1967, 1982. ovid. the erotic poems. the amores. the art of love. cures for love. on facial treatment for ladies. ed. & trans. peter green. london: penguin books, 1982. ovid. metamorphoses. ed. & trans. mary m. innes. london: penguin books, 1955. ovidi nasonis. remedia amoris. ed. e. j. kenney. scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca oxoniensis. oxford: oup, 1994. ovidio nasón. metamorfosis. vol. i. ed. & trans. antonio ruiz de elvira. 5th ed. alma mater: colección de autores griegos y latinos. madrid: c. s. i. c., 1992. ovidio nasón. metamorfosis. vol. iii. ed. & trans. bartolomé segura ramos. 4th ed. alma mater: colección de autores griegos y latinos. madrid: c. s. i. c., 1994. plutarch. lives: aristeides and cato. ed. & trans. david sansone. warmin ster: aris & phillips ltd., 1989. seneca. epistulae morales ad lucilium. vols. i & iii. ed. & trans. richard m. gummere. vol. iv & vi of seneca’s works. loeb classical li brary. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, 1979; london: william heinemann ltd., 1971. ____________________________________________________________________ 103 suetonio tranquilo. vida de los doce césares. vol. iii. ed. & trans. mariano bassols de climent. colección hispánica de autores griegos y latinos. barcelona: ediciones alma mater, 1978. criticalbibliography benson, larry d. ed. the riverside chaucer. 3rd ed. oxford: oup, 1987. cooper, helen. chaucer and ovid: a question of authority. > ovid renewed. ovidian influences on literature and art from the middle ages to the twentieth century. ed. charles martindale. cambridge: c. u. p., 1988. erzgräber, willi. auctorite and experience in chaucer. > intellectuals and writers in fourteenth-century europe. eds. piero boitani & anna torti. the j. a. w. bennett memorial lectures, perugia, 1984. tübin gen & cambridge: gunter narr verlag & d. s. brewer eds., 1986. gaffiot, f. dictionaire latin français. paris: librairie hachette, 1934. niermeyer, j. f. mediae latinitatis lexicon minus. leiden: e. j. brill, 1976. niermeyer, j. f. mediae latinitatis lexicon minus. abbreviationes et index fontium. leiden: e. j. brill, 1976. wissowa, georg. paulys realencyclopädie der classischen altertumswissenschaft . stuttgart: alfred druckenmüller verlag, 1896. * † * selim05.pdf pedro gonzalo & antonio bravo, selim 5 (1996): 46-62 early christian funeral ceremonies and germanic funeral rites in old english epic it is obvious to say that the effect of any work of art depends not only on the author’s skill, but also on what is already present in the minds of its readers or hearers. our purpose in this essay is to suggest that the anglo -saxon audience of epic poems would have seen in the descriptions of the hero’s death and in the description of the hero’s tomb rites some analogies with the early chris tian funeral ceremonies and the christian cult of the saints. the audience of anglo -saxon epic was acquainted with the christian faith as well as with the liturgy and fu neral ceremonies as pointed out whitelock: “beowulf’s poet was composing for christians whose conversion was neither partial nor superficial. he expects them to understand his allusions to biblical events without his troubling to be explicit about them”(1951: 5). some critics, however, have overestimated the germanic influence on beowulf’s death. chadwick, for example, says: in the long account of beowulf’s obsequies beginning with the dying king’s injunction to construct for him a lofty barrow on the edge of the cliff, and ending with the scene of the twelve princes riding round the barrow, proclaiming the dead man’s exploits we have the most detailed description of an early teutonic funeral which has come down t o us, and one of which the accuracy is confirmed in every point by archaeological or contemporary literary evidence (we may refer especially to the account of attila’s funeral given by jordanes). such an account must have been composed within living memory of a time when ceremonies of this kind were still actually in use. (1907: i, 30) but we must bear in mind that the audience of beowulf was chris tian, though the poem in its first step must belong to the very earliest christian peearly christian funeral ceremonies & germanic funeral rites ____________________________________________________________________ 49 riod in england. it is known that in beowulf there are two ceremonies treating beowulf’s funeral, one in which he was cremated, revealing its germanic origin, and one in which he was buried with treasure. chambers says that the double ceremony simply shows the christian poet’s ignorance of pagan practice (1959: 122); at the same time, while archaeology provides little evidence of seventh century christianity, it also provides little evidence for paganism, and inhumations with eccentric orientations and rich grave-goods can no longer be assumed to be pagan as pointed out some scholars such as young (1977), morris (1983) and bullough (1983: 195-7); moreover, burial in and beside churches for very important people go back well into the seventh century, though they were not very religious chris tians. in fact, in theodore’s penitential it is assumed that even pagans might contrive to be buried in churches (wallace-hadrill: 1988, 120), and as sim-williams says: the church would not have been slow to realize that in return for providing the deceased with resting-places in holy ground it could divert some of their wealth from kinsmen and from the conspicuous waste of “pagan” rites, in the direction of soul-scot or more elaborate burial fees. in or about 804 the hwiccian noble æthelric bequeathed four estates to the community at deerhurst on the strict condition that he should be buried there. (1990: 64) in any case, most old english epic, and chiefly beowulf, must be considered as a production of the germanic world enlightened by the new christian faith. our procedure will be to survey the christian cultural background and to see whether christian funeral manifestations bear any resemblance to the funeral rites in anglo -saxon epic. the christian doctrines on the transcendence of the human soul and the final resurrection of the flesh are expressed in concrete terms by a profound respect to the corpse and the solemnity of all the cere monies mean to prepare it for its journey to eternity. from the earliest christian times, the catholic liturgy has always striven to ensure the suitable preservation of the deceased and the dignity of the grave. this special care for body and tomb, common to any human religion, was shared in those early times by both christian and pagan rites, which followed similar practices. thus, the dead bodies of both pagan roman dignitaries and famous christian martyrs were equally washed, pedro gonzalo abascal & antonio bravo ____________________________________________________________________ 50 anointed, wrapped in plain bandages or valuable clothing, perfumed, surrounded by candles and carefully placed in a reverently respected tomb. together with this particular treatment of corpses, special emphasis was placed on finding a safe place for the tomb in order to avoid profanation. in the early christian times, this concern was undoubtedly due to the pagan beliefstill strongly rooted in the newly -converted christians-that an unspoilt tomb was absolutely es sential for the deceased to enjoy a peaceful rest in the hereafter. christian obsequies shared many of the characteristics of the funeral rites of pagan rome. the church found no objection to preserving or imi tating some of them on the grounds of the common veneration in which the deceased were held in both cultures. thus, the funeral processions that escort ed the corpse to the grave were a sacred duty for the heathen. during the ro man re public, they took place by night, and mourners had to carry lit candles or torches. later, during the imperial period, obsequies began to be celebrated in the day, but the custom of the candles remain as a tribute to the dead person. the church kept these traditions as did not seem in the least repre hens ible. however, the pagan tradition of paying a group of women to pre cede the coffin and feign tears and sorrow while they sang the praises of the dead person was soon replaced with the chanting of hymns, psalms and prayers. in the midst of this accompaniment of lights, chants and also incense, the corpse lay in an uncovered coffin, or wrapped in a shroud, on a stretcher carried by people purposely appointed to such a job (lecticarii). dead bodies were buried outside the walls of towns, according to roman law. the grave normally faced east. this orientation of tombs was a consequence of the general belief that soul went up to heaven from the east. thus, we read passi eramus et exivimus de carne, et coepimus ferri a quattuor angelis in orientem in st. felicitas and perpetua’s acta: and when narrating st. benedict’s death, st. gregory says: via recto orientis tramite ab eius cella in caellum usque tendebatur (ruiz 1951). righetti briefly describes some funeral traditions that were popular during the first centuries of the christian era, though not always approved of by the ecclesiastical authorities. for example, the practice of putting a eucharistic particle in the mouth of the deceased was condemned in the third council of cartage in 398. however, this practice was later replaced by the custom of placing a box containing the holy host, and sometimes also a chalice with the early christian funeral ceremonies & germanic funeral rites ____________________________________________________________________ 51 consecrated wine, beside the body or in its chest. this practice was continued until after the year 1000. all these traditions originated in the superstitious fear, then widely spread among christians, that impious hands might plunder the mortal remains of the deceased and, consequently, disturb their eternal rest. the presence of christ in the form of the holy host would certain ly ensure inviolability. with the same aim, inscriptions with the names of angels and martyrs, relics, bells, amulets, etc. were placed in the tombs. (righetti 1955) another superstitious tradition was the so-called refrigerium, which was quite popular among christians and pagans until shortly after the sixth century. souls were believed to dwell together with their dead bodies in the same tomb and to feel the same need to eat and drink as the body when alive. for this reason, people used to bring different kinds of food and drink to the grave for the soul to satisfy its needs. the church made no objection to this tradition: the faithful gathered round the tombs of their dead relatives and celebrated a little banquet and the remaining food was distributed among the poor. however, the church strove to remove any sort of pagan echo from the christian refrigerium. thus, this rite expressed the perma nent union of the living faithful and the dead. especially, on the anniversary of the death or martyrdom, the refrigerium commemorated the participation of the deceased in the heavenly banquet. in addition to the solemnity of the funeral cere monies, the church also arranged that the memory of the dead person be periodically remembered. in this way the soul’s eternal bliss was supposed to be more easily obtained; or, if this had already been achieved, the soul could in turn pray to god in favour of the living. moreover, if the dignity of the dead person was such that his or her life could set an example to the living, the memory of their actions would have an edifying effect. finally, the memory of their holy martyrs, bishops, confessors, etc. on appointed dates and in well-known places contributed to increase their fame (lapidge 1991). the christian belief in the intercession of the living with god for the dead dates from the first century. it was a widely spread doctrine, even among the heathen, that souls needed to atone for their own faults before entering heaven and that the prayers and sacrifices of the living were of great help to that end. from the fourth century onwards, prayers for the dead were already being in cluded in the liturgical framework of the mass. this periodical prayer for the deceased echoed the one said during the funeral wake. in the daytime, pedro gonzalo abascal & antonio bravo ____________________________________________________________________ 52 and above all by night, the corpse was watched over, psalms were sung and texts from the holy scriptures were read. this wake could also be lengthened by reading out the entire psalter or by singing the litanies of the saints. all this ritual constituted the earliest antecedent of the commendatio animae. in fact, the commendatio can be found prescribed in the oldest rituals either for the vigil of the corpse, praesente cadavere, or for the third, seventh and thirtieth days post mortem and the anniversary. generally speaking, it was also used as a liturgical formula to intercede for the deceased. however, the main prayer for pleading with god on behalf of the dead was the celebration of the mass. the custom of officially saying the names of the deceased in the mass soon grew up alongside the frequent mention of the names of those dead christians whose recognised sanctity made them particularly suitable to be included in the prayers of the living. on the other hand, the names of those who died excommunicated (on the grounds of heresy, for example) were not mention in the mass prayers. various critics have pointed out that the worship of the saints is a contin uation of the cult of the ancient gods, and pagan heroes. in the classical literature the deification of heroes presents many instances. for example, alexander the great, after he was hailed as the son of amon-zeus by the oracle of amon in 332 bc, because increasingly convinced that he was a god and as such began demanding homage from his subjects; the roman emperors came to make similar pretensions, in fact, the distinction between god and hero was uncertain (hammond: 1970). many examples of deification are cited in different books and in all cases gods, heroes, ancient kings and rulers from different cultures were venerated as gods after their deaths. (robinson 1993: 3-19) some similarities between saints and heroes can be observed, mainly in the description of the lives of saints written by ælfric in old english (skeat 1966). it is known that the hero’s tomb was a place of worship in classical lit erature; hector, for example, was worshipped in the troad and at thebes, theseus in athens etc., the nation that kept his body was proud of it, built sumptuous temples in his honour and chose him as the people’s protector. if the hero’s burial place was known a memorial was erected, but if it was found, his body was ceremoniously carried in to the nearest town in a way that brings to mind the pomp surrounding christian translations of relics. the hero’s relics were similarly the object of worship, but it must be remembered early christian funeral ceremonies & germanic funeral rites ____________________________________________________________________ 53 that the reasons for both kinds of worship were different. in the case of the heroes, their civil merits were uniquely exalted and their cult was absolute: they were not subordinate to a superior being. contrarily, the worship of the saints is entirely subordinate to the worship of god and, in fact, originates in their supposed power of intercession with christ. to sum up, veneration for the saints and confidence in their me diation gave rise to the series of practices so far mentioned, the homage paid to their relics and tombs, the celebration of the anniversaries of their deaths and the prayers based on their efficacious intercession on behalf of the living. old english epic, mainly in beowulf and in the battle of maldon, contains such a large number of passages in which the elegiac tone is dominant that some critics have raised no objections to considering old english epic as elegiac poetry. in dealing with beowulf, tolkien says: beowulf is not a epic, not even a magnified lay, no terms borrowed from greek or other literature exactly fit: there is no reason why they should. though if we must have a term, we should choose rather “elegy”. it is an heroic elegiac poem; and in a sense all its first 3136 lines are the prelude to a dirge: him tha gegiredan geata leode and ofer eorthan unwaclicne. (1963: 85) these old english words precisely introduce one of the most representative passages of the elegiac character of the poem. the grief of the geat people accompanies the preparations for the funeral ceremo ny in which the hero’s body is arranged on a barrow and finally cre mated: him tha gegiredan geata leode ad on eorthan unwaclicne, helmum behongen, hildebordum, beorhtum byrnum, swa he bena waes; alegdon tha tomiddes maerne theoden haeleth hiofende, hlaford leofne. ongunnon tha on beorge baelfyra maest wigend weccan: wudurec astah sweart ofer swiothole, swogende leg, wope bewunden windblond gelaeg, oth thaet he tha banhus gebrocen haefde, hat on hrethre. higum unrote pedro gonzalo abascal & antonio bravo ____________________________________________________________________ 54 modceare maendon, mondryhtnes cwealm; swylce giomorgyd sio geomeowle aefter biowulfe bundenheorde song sorgcearig. saede geneahhe, thaet hio hyre hearmadagas hearde ondrede, waelfylla worn, wigendes egesan, hyntho ond haeftnyd. heofon rece swealg. (klaeber, 1950. ll. 3137-55) the people of the geats erected then on that high ground a splendid pyre hung about with helmets, with battle -boards, and with shining coats of mails, as he had asked: then the lamenting warriors laid in the midst the renowned king, their beloved lord. then the warriors proceeded to kindle upon the headland a most mighty funeral pyre. the wood-smoke climbed up black above the roaring flames, mingled with weeping, until, when the swirling of the turbulent air died down, the fire had by then destroyed his boneframed body scorched to its core. sad in their thoughts, the warriors grieved fo r the death of their lord. an old woman also, her hair bound up, anxious in her grief, sang over and again a melancholy tale, how she for her part sorely dreaded evil days, a multitude of violent deaths, the terror of troops, humiliation and captivity. heaven swallowed up the smoke. these lines provide a detailed account of the funeral honours given to beowulf’s body and tomb. chadwick asserts that there is enough literary and archaeological evidence to confirm that beowulf’s obsequies are an accurate description of an old teutonic funeral (1912). in beowulf the corpse is laid on a funeral pyre together with the hero’s helmets, swords and war gear. this is done by a group of the hero’s bereaved comrades, who will also carry out the painful task of lighting the fire that is to burn away their beloved lord. the scene closes with these words heofon rece swealg, “heaven swallowed up the smoke”, many critics have noted that the smoke from the cremation fire passing directly up to the heaven is a germanic pagan motif documented in the ynglinga saga. in addition to these ceremonies, a memorial barrow is erected on a headland so that all seamen can see it and know who is buried there. enclosed in a wall, beowulf’s memo rial also contains a huge treasure of gold and jewels. such is the description provided by the following lines: geworhton tha wedra leode hlaew on hlithe, se waes heah ond brad, early christian funeral ceremonies & germanic funeral rites ____________________________________________________________________ 55 weglithendum wide gesyne, ond betimbredon on tyn dagum beadurofes becn; bronda lafe wealle beworhton, swa hyt weorthlicost foresnotre men findan mihton. hi on beorg dydon beg ond siglu, eall swylce hyrsta, swylce on horde aer nithhedige men genumen haefdon. (ll. 3156-65) then the weders built a memorial barrow on the headland, which was high and broad and to be seen far off by those travellers of the ocean, and over ten days they built the monument to the famous man bold in battle for his striving. the remnants from the flames they buried in the walls in a way men of foremost skill could not worthily devise it. they placed within this barrow rings and jewels, all such ornaments as the brave-minded men had previously seized from the hoard. we can similarly draw a parallel between beowulf’s obsequies and the christian funeral ceremonies mentioned above. thus, three as pects can be noted in the attitude of those present in beowulf’s funeral: the lament for the loss of the hero, the funeral cortège (twelve noblemen on horseback) that exalts beowulf’s heroic deeds, and a final panegyric that summarizes his virtues: tha ymbe hlaew riodan hildedeore, aethelinga bearn, ealra twelfe, woldon care cwithan, ond kyning maenan, wordgyd wrecan ond ymb wer sprecan: eahtodan eorlscipe ond his ellenweorc; duguthum demdon, swa hit gedefe bith thaet mon his winedryhten wordum herge, ferhthum freoge, thonne he forth scile of lichaman laeded weorthan. swa begnornodon geata leode hlafordes hryre, heorthgeneatas; cwaedon thaet he waere wyruldcyninga, manna mildust ond monthwaerust, leodum lithost ond lofgeornost. (ll. 3169-82) pedro gonzalo abascal & antonio bravo ____________________________________________________________________ 56 then round the barrow rode twelve sons of noblemen, valiant in battle. they wanted to mourn and speak of their king, to utter a lay and speak about the man. they honoured his nobility and his deeds of courage, pro claimed them majestically, as it is fitting that one should do to extol which words and cherish in the heart one’s lord and friend when he must be led forth from his life, the body’s home. thus the people of the geats, his hearth-companions, bewailed the fall of their lord. they said that he was of all the kings of the world the kindest to his men, the most mild hearted of men, the best to his people, and the most eager for fame. expressions of grief and sadness are common among those pre sent, but they are more intimately shared by the members of the hero’s comitatus. the twelve horsemen riding round the barrow acclaim their dead leader with words of lamentation and remind the mournful audience of his bravery, strength and heroic deeds. accord ing to the poet’s words, a loyal comrade has to keep his lord’s memo ry in his heart and spread his fame at the same time. the concept of immortality from the point of view of the germanic epic tradition is based on the spread of one’s own fame after death. this mission is assigned to those who outlive the hero. fell, commenting on the elegiac as pects of germanic literature, says (1991: 175): the things that are laene are divisible into three: life itself, property and happiness. the first is a single entity, the other two composite. the poet of the the wanderer says: her bith feoh laene her bith freond laene her bith mon laene, her bith maeg laene. which summarized rather than translated, tells us that property, friend, man and kinsman are all “on loan” or transient (…) since people may outlive all those they love, the only rational course of action is to transfer their affections to the undying, to seek “frofre to faeder on heofonum (…)”. it is customary to cite in this context the parallel text from the old icelandic eddic poem hávamál, which offers the same wisdom in a pagan and secular context: deyr fé, deyja fraendr, early christian funeral ceremonies & germanic funeral rites ____________________________________________________________________ 57 deyr sjálfr it sama. it is somewhat simpler: “cattle die, kin die, one’s self dies”, followed by the reminder that the one thing that does not die is one’s reputation. it contrasts transient with permanent but both are human-centred, reputation being in the hands of the living. a similar attitude, in relation to this germanic heroic concept of immortality, can be noticed in byrhtnoth’s comrades’ behaviour in the battle of maldon. once byrhtnoth has died, his loyal warriors recall aloud some of the attributes, particularly the generosity and valour, for which he deserves fame, and then, they all rush into the battle to avenge their lord. they in turn achieve fame themselves by following byrhtnoth’s exhortations to fight the enemy and avenge his death even at the expense of their own lives: hi woldon tha ealle other twega, lif forlaetan oththe leofne gewrecan (ll. 207-8) conversely, as fell points out, the cowards who hurriedly desert the battlefield certainly save their lives but lose their good names (176); and at the same time a curse falls upon them. the last lines of beowulf show again the distressing atmosphere of desolation in which beowulf’s death has left his people, while at the same time vigorously depicting a sketch of beowulf’s most outstanding germanic epic qualities. words of praise for a dead hero are a common feature in all epic poems. they were not spared after byrhtnoth’s death, as has been noted. hrothgar also sings, in tones o f deep sorrow, the praises of æschere, killed at the hands of grendel’s mother: ne frin thu aefter saelum; sorh is geniwod denigea leodum. dead is aeschere, yrmenlafes yldra brothor, min run-wita ond min raed-bora, eaxl-gestealla, thonne we on orlege hafelan weredon, thonne hniton fethan, eoferas cnysedan. swylc scolde eorl wesan, (aetheling) aer-god, swylc aeschere waes! (ll. 1322-29) pedro gonzalo abascal & antonio bravo ____________________________________________________________________ 58 ask not of joy, sorrow has come afresh upon the danish people, æschere is dead, yrmenlaf’s elder brother, my chief adviser and my counsellor, a comrade at my shoulder when we guarded our heads in the fray, when the armies clashed the boarcrested helms. so an earl should be, a noble man, good from the start, as æschere was. as is typical of the anglo -saxon tradition, hrothgar begins his panegyric on æschere by mentioning his kin: he was yrmenlaf’s brother. then, he states his position within the comitatus: he was one of the danish king’s counsellors and confidants. he remarks on his loyalty as a war comrade and recalls the heroic deeds they both undertook side by side. finally, hrothgar holds him up as a model noble man. all this obviously contributes to æschere reputation as an excellent and famous member of hrothgar’s retinue. therefo re, sadness and mourning are perfectly justified, and so the possibility of showing any sign of joy is definitely ruled out by the king. this veto on joy is not only personal but also extends over the whole danish nation. accord ingly, lamentation for the loss of a loyal warrior, close to his lo rd, should be shared by all members of the comitatus and, in general, by those to whom the hero’s life must serve as a model. this general attitude of grief, common to both epic and elegy, seems to have a logical explanation if we take into account the anglo -saxon belief in wyrd. wyrd, as inexorable fate, is mainly re sponsible for human misfortune and disgrace throughout a man’s lifetime. it consequently plays a decisive role in building up the fatalistic atmosphere in which the death of heroes is swathed. after quoting line five of the wanderer: wyrd bith ful araed! trahern says: whatever the last line means(…), it is uttered by the narrator as a prelude to a catalogue of personal hardships involving the degeneration of societal bonds, the loss of loved ones, lords and kinsmen, and the destruction of what seems to have stood for civilization as the narrator knows it. as the end of the poem approaches, there is a moving ubi sunt passage (“where did horses, kinsmen, treasure giver, banquet seats and hall joys go?”) which seems to be answered in a rhetorically parallel catalogue, in which many of the same objects fill the blank in the formula “her bith … laene”: her bith feoh laene, her bith freond laene, her bith mon laene, her bith maeg laene. (1991: 162) early christian funeral ceremonies & germanic funeral rites ____________________________________________________________________ 59 this idea of transience expressed by the term laene brings gloom to the heart of the “lonely man” the poem talks about. on the contrary, stability and permanence are only provided by god in heaven. thus, the divine reward that the wanderer longs for in the first two lines: oft him anhaga are gebideth, / metudes miltse …, (“often the man on his own experiences grace, the mercy of the ordaining lord …”) is found in the last line, once all wordly things have eventually disappeared and everlasting peace and rest is reached: to faeder in heofonum, thaer us eal seo faestnung stondeth (“[consolation] from the father in heaven, where for us all the immutable abides”). it is understandable that the impossibility of changing the designs of fate made the epic wa rrior feel intensely anxious and unprotected. a feeling that became even more intense when he experienced the death of loved ones and the loss of wealth, land and hall. (fell. 180-82) according to pagan mentality, kin, wealth, land and hall were the main sources of happiness in life; therefore when they disappeared, grief and despair arose. if we, moreover, consider how frequently death and forfeiture occurred, it is easily understood that the elegiac aspect is significantly present in many of the literary works of the anglo-saxon period. as a result of this pagan outlook on life, the only consolation left to the epic hero is none other but the perpetuation of his memory after death by means of oral or written records of his heroic deeds. nevertheless, the pervasive christian influence on the literature of this period conveniently counteracted those germanic elements of the pagan past, and so the abovementioned final lines of the wanderer can be suitably quoted as an example of this. both notions of immortality are similarly intertwined in the seafarer. the following passage, for example, asserts that the best epitaph for a man is the praise of those who outlive him for having bravely fought against his earthly enemies and against the devil (that is to say, sin): forthon thaet bith eorla gehwam aeftercwethendra lof lifgendra lastworda betst, thaet he gewyrce, aer he on weg scyle, fremum on foldan with feonda nith, deorum daedum deofle togeanes, thaet hine aelda bearn aefter hergen, ond his lof siththan lifge mid englum. (ll. 72-78) pedro gonzalo abascal & antonio bravo ____________________________________________________________________ 60 for every man, therefore, praise from the living, speaking out afterwards, is the best of epitaphs: that, before he has to be on his way, he accomplishes gains against the malice of fiends, brave deeds in the devil’s despite, so that the sons of men may afterwards extol him, and his praise may endure for ever and ever among the angels. it is worth noting fell’s remarks on the combination of secular germanic and christian traditions in the previous lines: the praise of the living clearly includes heavenly and earthly voices. the two lines which speak of actions on earth carefully balance human activity against human foe with spiritual battle against the infernal. the following two lines, equally impartially, balance rewards in reputation among the children of men and among angels. anthropologists who tell us of shame cultures and guilt cultures might define the obsession with reputation among one’s peers as the latter. for the anglo -saxons, having inherited one set of values through secular germanic thought and acquired another through christian latin teaching, the one does not preclu de the other (…) the poet of the seafarer, in combining two tra ditions, the heroic if we may so define it, preoccupation with survival of honour after loss of life and the christian hope for security of tenure in heaven, is perceiving transience on two levels, or, at any rate, as contrasted with two types of permanence. (1991: 176) fell’s comments allow it to be affirmed that, from both an earthly and spiritual point of view, the chief aim of all actions and deeds carried out by an epic hero is the perpetuation of his memory among the people. accordingly, an elegiac atmosphere seems to offer a suitable setting to sum up the foremost epic traits of anglo -saxon heroes. thus, the lament of the mourners in beowulf’s funeral indicates the grief of a people that foresees its own destruction as a result of future invasions, since the wisdom and fortitude of its king and protector are no longer available: thaet ys sio faehtho ond se feondscipe, waelnith wera, thaes the ic wen hafo, the us seceath to sweona leoda, syththan hie gefricgeath frean userne ealdorleasne, thone the aer geheold early christian funeral ceremonies & germanic funeral rites ____________________________________________________________________ 61 with hettendum hord ond rice. (ll. 2999-3004? this is the feud and this is the hostility, the murderous hatred between them, which the swedish nation will visit upon us, accord ing to the pre monition i have, when they hear our lord is dead who once guarded the treasury, the kingdom and you brave shield -warriors against enemies. the hero’s death also brings out the germanic epic traits of alle giance and generosity. accordingly, beowulf’s vassals faithfully es cort their lord’s body and fulfil his wishes as to the disposition of the tomb while they proclaim the heroic deeds of their lord, from whom they have received so many gifts: nu is ofost betost, thaet we theodcyning thaer sceawian ond thone gebringan, the us beagas geaf, on adfaere. (l. 3007b-10a) now haste is the best thing, so that we may pay our respects to the people’s king there and escort him who gave us rings on his journey to the fu neral pyre. the fatalistic atmosphere which constitutes a substantial part of the ele giac tone of the old english epic, is now enhanced by the presence of birds of ill omen such as eagles and ravens, and beasts such as wolves as pointed out niles (1991, 133). known to be scavenging as man-eating creatures in the epic tradition, they all announce the fateful fulfilment of wyrd as can be seen in beowulf: ac se wonna hrefn fus ofer faegum fela reordian, earne secgan, hu him aet aete speow thenden he with wulf wael reafode. (ll. 3024b-27) instead, the black raven, greedy after men ordained to die, will croak a great deal, telling the eagle how well he had fared in his feasting as, with the wolf, he scavenged among the dead bodies. these three fragments mentioned above have been taken from the herald’s message announcing the sad news of beowulf’s death to the group of comra des that took part in the hero’s last exploit (ll. 2900-3027). as we have repeatedly pointed out in this study, this is an ele giac passage which pedro gonzalo abascal & antonio bravo ____________________________________________________________________ 62 sums up the most outstanding epic traits with which the anglo -saxon heroes were endowed. this lament over the dead hero’s tomb actually embodies a cult tradition inasmuch as it in volves the exaltation of the germanic virtues that the hero represents and simultaneously serves the twofold aim of spreading his fame and proposing a model of good ruler: swa he manna waes wigend weorthfullost wide geond eorthan. (ll. 3098b-9) since he was the most honourable soldier among men far and wide throughout the earth. to finish with, homage to heroes and veneration for saints gave rise to ceremonies and rites so far mentioned. therefore some similarities can be seen between the veneration in which both saints (particularly martyrs) and heroes we re held and its practical consequences. special reference should be made to the fact that belief in eternal bliss caused a twofold feeling in the saint’s followers with regard to his death: sorrow for such a loss, on the one hand; happiness, on the other, when considering the everlasting joy awaiting him. this latter aspect is not always obvious in the case of the anglo -saxon heroes. this assay shows, then, some analogies in the description of the funeral rites between anglo -saxon epic and the primitive christian ceremonies; these resemblances suggest a christian audience that still knew and felt certain enjoyment with the old germanic rites, for in stance, the description of the funeral of scyld scefing in the bosom of a ship, the ancestor of that danish royal house which is to play so large a part in the story of the poem, or the funeral rites of beowulf at the end of the poem as we have already seen; but as robinson says in dealing with the poem beowulf: for those in the audience who thought of pagan deification, the closing rites would have been a powerful culmination of the pervasive tension throughout the poem between inspiring heroism and the sad shame of heathenism. the poet reveres the exemplary conduct of beowulf and his people while deploring the pagan darkness which leaves that whole world in danger perdition. (1993: 18) early christian funeral ceremonies & germanic funeral rites ____________________________________________________________________ 63 pedro gonzalo abascal — antonio bravo universidad de león — universidad de oviedo references bullough, d. 1983: burial, community and belief in the early medieval west. > p. wormald, et al. eds 1983: 177-201. ideal and reality in french and anglo-saxon society: studies presented to j. m. wallacehadrill. oxford, oup. chadwick, h. m. 1907: cambridge history of english literature. cambridge. cup. chadwick, h. m. 1912: the heroic age. cambridge, cup. chambers, r. w. 1959: beowulf: an introduction to the study of the poem. 3rd. ed cambridge, cup. fell, c. 1991: perceptions of transience. > m. godden & m. lapidge 1991: 172189. godden, m. & m. lapidge eds 1991: the cambridge companion to old english literature. cambridge, cup. gordon, i. l. ed 1979: the seafarer. manchester. manchester university press. klaeber, f. ed 1950: beowulf and the the fight at finnsburg. boston, heath and co. lapidge, m. 1991: the saintly life in anglo -saxon england. > m. godden & m. lapidge 1991: 243-63. morris, r. 1983: the church in british archaeology. london, cba re search report 47. nicholson, l. e. ed 1963: an anthology of beowulf criticism. university of notre dame press, indianapolis. niles, j. d. 1991: pagan survivals and popular belief. > m. godden & m. lapidge 1991: 243-63. pedro gonzalo abascal & antonio bravo ____________________________________________________________________ 64 righetti, m. 1955: historia de la liturgia. madrid, bac. robinson, f. 1993: the tomb of beowulf. oxford, blackwell. ruiz bueno, d. 1951 actas de los mártires. madrid, bac. schücking. l. 1963: the ideal of kingship in beowulf. > l. e. nicholson ed 1963: 35-49. scragg, d. ed 1991: the battle of maldon. manchester, manchester university press. sims -williams, p. 1990: religion and literature in western england, 600800. cambridge, cup. skeat, w. w. 1966: aelfric’s lives of saints. oxford, eets oxford university press. 2 vols. tolkien, j. r. r. 1963: the monster and the critics. > l. nicholson ed 1963: 51-103. trahern, j. b. 1991: fatalism and the millennium. > m. godden & m. lapidge eds 1991: 160-171. wallace-hadrill, j. m. 1988: bede’s ecclesiastical history of the english people: a historical commentary. oxford, oup. whitelock, d. 1951: the audience of beowulf. oxford, oup. young, b. 1977: paganisme, christianisation et rites funéraires mérovingiens. archéologie médiévale 7: 5-81. * † * selim daniel murtaugh, selim 10 (2000): 197—204 the education of theseus in the knight’s tale considerable agreement has been reached on the general aesthetic of the knight’s tale, in which complexities arise from conventionality and the very two-dimensionality of characters like palamon and arcite make them vehicles of compelling themes of order and destiny. 1 and yet we have not reached such agreement on theseus, the tale’s central character. is he to be taken as a type of jovian wisdom, presiding over and resolving the disorderly passions of the other characters?2 or is he himself emotionally unstable, sadistic in his worst moments and machiavellian in what appear to be his best?3 is his closing theodicy successful and definitive, an honest failure, or a deliberate deception?4 each of these positions has been persuasively maintained, as have other positions in the rather large spaces between them. i would like to suggest that in evaluating theseus’s character we recognize a quality that he shares with no others in the tale, the ability to change over time in response to experience. medieval fiction much of chaucer, for example tends to represent character as static. it is this quality of palamon and arcite that so disappoints the unprepared modern reader. and yet the dynamic character who grows and changes as he achieves deeper insight is not uncommon in medieval fiction. he most frequently appears in the first person as a narrator-protagonist like dante or langland’s 1 prominent exponents of these qualities have been muscatine, underwood, jordan, burlin, and kolve. 2see gaylord, robertson (260-66), bolton, cooper, (79-81). 3 see neuse, webb, aers (174-95), and jones; jones condemns theseus and his approving knight-narrator, assuming an identification of viewpoints that the present study questions. 4 instances of the first view are gaylord and ruggiers (161). underwood and salter represent the second view. neuse and jones represent the third view. daniel murtaugh 144 will, two of the numerous progeny of boethius.1 (in contrast, chaucer’s own persona in his early poems seems a deliberate antithesis to this dynamic convention in his sturdy resistance to growth and insight.) the dynamic character sometimes appears in the third person as well. notable examples are gawain in sir gawain and the green knight and, i would argue, theseus in the knight’s tale. theseus grows from the rather naïve selfassurance he first displays on his return from scythia to a soberly ironic detachment that finally approaches that of the knight-narrator himself. let us first examine the knight-narrator, whose vision in the story, like saturn’s power in the universe, encompasses all the rest. his attitude toward the characters in his fiction seems oddly ambivalent. he frequently describes them and their doings with the traditional superlatives of romance. for example, the laments of the theban women are such that in this world nys creature lyvynge that herde swich another waymentynge… (901-02)2 arcite’s sorrow in exile surpasses that of any “creature/that is, or shal, whil that the world may dure” (1359-60). when the knights assemble for theseus’s grand tournament, … ther trowed many a man that never, sithen that the world bigan, as for to speke of knyghthod of hir hond, as fer as god hath maked see or lond nas of so fewe so noble a compaignye. (2101-05) and so on. and yet, as many critics have pointed out, there is an ironic detachment that transcends this naïve wonder and forces the latter’s mere conventionality on our attention. 1 in terms used by schless (209-10, in discussing troilus and criseyde), palamon and arcite are instances of “character revelation” while theseus is an instance of “character development,” a more “organic” process of change. 2 i follow the text of benson. the education of theseus in the knight’s tale 145 this can express itself gently, as when the knight assures us that the charming occasion of theseus’s tournament would draw as many noble knights today as it did then: ye knowen wel that every lusty knyght that loveth paramours and hath his myght, were it in engelond or elleswhere, they wolde, hir thankes, wilnen to be there to fighte for a lady, benedicitee! it were a lusty sighte for to see. (2111-16) the last couplet expresses the viewpoint of a spectator rather than a participant, a retired athlete content to watch and perhaps criticize younger men taking the field. a few lines later, in the catalogue of arms, there is a hint of something routine and no longer of vivid interest, confirmed when the knight cuts it short: ther is no newe gyse that it nas old. armed were they, as i have yow told, everych after his opinioun. (2125-27) a long life enables one finally to assimilate the vision of long centuries of history, in which all becomes flat, stale, and repetitious. the conspicuous use of explicit transitions and of the figure called occupatio has a diminishing effect on characters and events, right from the beginning when theseus appears amid the trappings of his scythian victory only to be brushed aside: and thus with victorie and with melodye lete i this noble duc to atthenes ryde, and al his hoost in armes hym bisyde. (872-74) “and certes,” the knight goes on, “if it nere to long to heere,” he would have told us all the wonderful deeds that so impressed boccaccio, chaucer’s source, deeds ticked off like headings in a table of contents or perhaps daniel murtaugh 146 better like marginal cues in a manuscript one riffles through quickly. a reader of old stories and of life learns perforce how to skim: i have, god woot, a large feeld to ere, and wayke been the oxen in my plough; the remenant of the tale is long ynough. (886-88) i will take my cue from the knight and consign most of the other examples of this skimming to a note.1 readers of chaucer know them well and know that they reinforce the pattern set in this one. these transitions and occupationes make a peculiar virtue of necessity. when chaucer’s knight says that he is skipping material, he speaks literally for his creator. chaucer gives us the whole plot of the teseida in about one fifth the lines of verse.2 so of course he must pull us from place to place, always a bit out of breath and watching the clock. but this serves his theme as well. the dismissive curtness with which he treats theseus, palamon, and arcite suggests that their grand exploits and gestures are only so much posturing, that if we dwell on them too long they will become boring. it seems that we simply cannot afford to take these heroes as seriously as they take themselves. the deprecation implied by the use of these formal devices reaches a disturbing extreme in the accounts of arcite’s death and funeral. arcite’s dying speech, with its cries against fate (“what is this world? what asketh men to have?”) and its noble resignation of emily to palamon (“foryet nat palamon, the gentil man.”) is followed by a ghastly account of his body’s collapse (2798-2807). then comes a cruelly abrupt occupatio: his laste word was, “mercy, emelye.” his spirit chaunged hous and wente ther, as i cam nevere, i kan nat tellen wher. therfore i stynte; i nam no divinistre; of soules fynde i nat in this registre, 1 lines 994-1000, 1187-90, 1198-1201, 1459-61, 2197-2208, 2261-64, 2809-16, 2919-66. i discuss the last two in detail. 2 see the “explanatory notes” in benson, pp. 827, 828, 831, 834, 838, for correspondences between the tale and boccaccio. the education of theseus in the knight’s tale 147 ne me ne list thilke opinions to telle of hem, though that they writen wher they dwelle. arcite is coold, ther mars his soule gye! now wol i speken forth of emelye. (2808-16) the occupatio not only skips over, it negates an ascent to the eighth sphere which boccaccio granted to arcite’s soul and which chaucer reserved for troilus. the cold dismissal not merely of arcite but of the appeals against his fate with which we cannot help but identify suggests an almost unearthly detachment. or else they suggest a defensive strategy in the face of a sorrow that is too great to bear. charles muscatine calls this sort of passage “a deftly administered antidote,” rightly distinguishing it from “an actively satiric strain” (187) but, perhaps, understating its forcefulness. the point seems to be that tragedy’s antidote here must be strong enough to sound like cruel satire. to yield to the tragedy is to become unfit for life which, indifferent to arcite’s tragedy just as it is to theseus’s triumphs, simply demands that we keep on going. the very finality of triumph or tragedy demands our dismissal of them. the narrator’s gesture of dismissal suggests that of the characters in the robert frost poem responding to the accidental death of a farmboy: they listened at his heart. little less nothing! and that ended it. no more to build on there. and they, since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.1 an even more disturbing occupatio occurs at the funeral of arcite. it is perhaps the best known instance in the tale, and it goes on for an astonishing forty-seven lines. of course, it calls attention to the details of the eighty-odd ottave of boccaccio’s eleventh book, which it skims over. but our attention is drawn more clearly to the rudeness with which all this healing ceremony is swept aside like so much rubbish. the negatives that commonly figure in an occupatio (“i will not speak about this and that because…”) are repeated so 1 “out, out --,” in frost: 136-37. daniel murtaugh 148 relentlessly that they come to express a larger negation, one of weariness and disgust. to give just a sample, the knight will not describe the mirre, th’encens, with al so greet odour; ne how arcite lay among al this, ne what richesse aboute his body is; ne how that emelye, as was the gyse, putte in the fyr of funeral servyse; ne how she swowned whan men made the fyr, ne what she spak, ne what was hir desir; ne what jeweles men in the fyre caste… i wol nat tellen eek how that they goon hoom til atthenes, whan the pley is doon; but shortly to the point thanne wol i wende and maken of my longe tale an ende. (2938-45, 2963-66) the extremity of this passage in its violation of even the somewhat loose decorum of the poem’s style suggests the conclusion of troilus and criseyde, which may have been written at about the same time. there the poignant beauty, the grandeur even in pain and defeat, of an old, pagan world and of the story it yielded are suddenly spurned and mocked by a narrator whose assent to them had been more complex and whole-hearted than the knight’s: lo here, of payens corsed olde rites! lo here, what alle hir goddes may availle! lo here, thise wrecched worldes appetites! lo here, the fyn and guerdoun for travaille of jove, appollo, of mars, of swich rascaille! lo here, the forme of olde clerkis speche in poetrie, if ye hire bokes seche. (tc, v, 1849-55) e. t. donaldson has shown how the last couplet of this stanza undoes “the work of the five lines preceding it.”1 the lure of the old story outlasts the narrator’s trumped-up scorn, and the last lines invite us to a sympathetic contemplation of what the earlier lines indict. the knight makes no such reversal as he presses on impatiently to the end of his story. he has an old 11 speaking of chaucer: 99. the education of theseus in the knight’s tale 149 man’s knowledge that the ceremonies that amplify our deaths are finally as empty as those that amplify our adolescent longings for girls like emily, that our very mourning, from a sufficiently detached viewpoint, proves to be a form of infatuation. an attachment to these ceremonial trappings and the passions that they seek to dignify must be abandoned for what? the love of christ who, the narrator of troilus assures us, “nyl falsen no wight, dar i seye,/that wol his herte al holly on him leye” and who obviates the search for “feynede loves” in this world (tc, v, 1845-46, 1848)? i think not. the knight’s assents to any destiny for the soul beyond this earth are perfunctory and no match for the chilly agnosticism with which he commits arcite’s soul to the questionable guidance of mars. in freeing us from illusion, the knight offers us something less exalted but more tangible: a sense of balance, the stoic’s poise in a world governed by an inscrutable and unstable fortune, in which it is ful fair a man to bere hym evene, for al day meeteth men at unset stevene. (1523-24) with this we can, like frost’s characters, turn to our affairs, knowing that the cruelty of our doing so is a necessary condition of life. this lofty detachment is what theseus must approach as the story progresses. it is a fairly distant goal as we first meet him returning from scythia. his response to the theban ladies’ weeping shows a hearty egotism: “what folk been ye, that at myn hom-comynge perturben so my feste with criynge?” quod theseus, “have ye so greet envye of myn honour, that thus compleyne and crye? or who hath yow mysboden or offended? and telleth me if it may been amended, and why that ye been clothed thus in blak?” (905-11) theseus quite unselfconsciously takes his own triumph to be a universal condition. he refers all others’ feelings to his own, and finds offense, even intentional offense, in the ladies’ discordant weeping. when he offers his help, he asserts his sense of universal control and his right to adjust the daniel murtaugh 150 scales of joy and woe. the eldest lady’s appeal to theseus quietly puts him in his place: she seyde, “lord to whom fortune hath yiven victorie, and as a conqueror to lyven, nat greveth us youre glorie and youre honour, but we biseken mercy and socour…” (915-18) theseus’s conquest and his joy in it are as much an accident of “fortune and hire false wheel,/that noon estaat assureth to be weel” (925-26) as the ladies’ woe. the universal order and the scales of joy and woe are in other hands. arcite reaffirms the theban lady’s judgment when he comforts palamon in prison: “fortune hath yeven us this adversitee. som wikke aspect or disposicioun of saturne, by som constellacioun, hath yeven us this, although we hadde it sworn; so stood the hevene whan that we were born. we moste endure it; this is the short and playn.” (1086-91) there is, of course, a telling irony in arcite’s all-too-accurate ascription of their troubles to saturn, but his remarks also carry forward a consistent pattern by which those who benefit or suffer at the hands of theseus look past him to a higher agency whose mere instrument he is. the narrator himself does the same thing when he brings theseus to the scene of palamon and arcite’s fight. the poem’s most strikingly brusque transition introduces its most boethian passage: up to the ancle foghte they in hir blood. and in this wise i let hem fightyng dwelle, and forthe i wole of theseus yow telle. the destinee, ministre general, that executeth in the world over al the purveiance that god hath seyn biforn,… for certainly, our appetites heer, the education of theseus in the knight’s tale 151 be it of werre, or pees, or hate, or love, al is this reuled by the sighte above. this mene i now by myghty theseus… (1660-65, 1669-73) he will tell us of theseus, but instead he spends some time telling us of destiny. theseus is interesting to us for his actions and their effects on palamon and arcite and their unfolding story. but theseus’s actions, at least when viewed as leading to these interesting effects, have their origins elsewhere. the narrator, with an old man’s detachment and insight, looks straight through theseus to explore those remoter origins of his interest and only then shortens his focal length to the athenian hero. he does so in a finely ambiguous line “this mene i nowe by myghty theseus.” the alogical association of his mightiness with the rule of “the sight above” in the preceding line confers upon theseus the momentary dignity of a “man of destiny.”1 but this dignity is ambiguous as well. to be a man of destiny is, under one aspect, to incarnate a superhuman force, to present to other men the compelling image of their own fortunes. under another aspect, it is to be the instrument, the mere tool, that lay readiest to hand when fortune set indifferently to her work. the latter aspect begins to seem the more relevant when we learn theseus’s motives for going out that day to his predestined appointment with palamon and arcite. he simply wanted to hunt deer. this disjunction of intention and resultant action characterizes theseus’s role at each turning point of the plot.2 he is, in fact, an instance of that general human condition lamented by arcite in a homely simile: 1 stanbury makes a generally similar comment on the ambiguity of theseus’s association with destiny: “‘this mene i’ refers literally of course to the general coincidence, that theseus should in effect be ruled by destiny and the driving fatality that should join his desire to hunt with the order of the stars. yet the phrase also suggests, of course, that theseus is destiny; that his sight rules. and in a sense, so it does, as the text moves increasingly to arrangements of visual spectacle that are under theseus’ purview. he watches: ‘under the sonne he looketh, and anon/ he was war of arcite and palamon’ (1997-98).” this controlling gaze of theseus, analyzed by stanbury in a generally lacanian manner, achieves its apogee of power in the tournament, “embodied as visual display below the gaze of theseus in the window – himself in a position of double visibility, poised to view the tournament but also to be seen as well by the people,” just before it is to be neutralized by saturn’s bolt. 2 a principal point of underwood’s essay. daniel murtaugh 152 we faren as he that dronke is as a mous. a dronke man woot wel he hath an hous, but he noot which the righte way is thider, and to a dronke man the wey is slider. (1261-64) his rage at discovering his enemies gives way before the tears of his ladies and his own good-humored consideration of palamon and arcite’s motives. with avuncular condescension he jokes about a passion that he is happy to have outgrown: “the god of love, a benedicite! how myghty and how greet a lord is he! ayeyns his myght ther gayneth none obstacles…. i woot it by myself ful yore agon, for in my tyme a servant was i oon. and therefore, syn i knowe of loves peyne and woot hou soore it kan a man distreyne, as he that hath ben caught ofte in his laas, i yow foryeve al hoolly this trespaas… (1785-86, 1813-18) it is a commonplace of medieval thought and a principal theme of the knight’s tale that venus and amor are among the principal agents of fortune. the man who comes under their sway has committed himself to one of the world’s corruptible delights with a devotion that resembles (and displaces) the religious. the man who is above fortune, who places his trust in the goods of the reason or of heaven, is, by the same token, immune to the blandishments of venus. but it is a false corollary to assume that immunity to these blandishments shows by itself a superiority to the fortune that they serve. to outgrow one subjection is not to outgrow the other. theseus’s confidence that he can not only forgive palamon and arcite but resolve their conflict and save them from the effects of their passion arises in great part from his sense that he is superior to erotic love and from the false inference that he is superior to fortune as well. the expression of this confidence is the grand tournament. the “noble theatre” erected for it is a small cosmos in which the contrary forces of fortune are resolved in a providential synthesis. shrines to venus, mars, and diana are contained in its larger design, and so, symbolically, are the the education of theseus in the knight’s tale 153 contrary wills of their devotees, palamon, arcite, and emily. within each shrine, the malign effects of each deity are the main themes of their elaborate murals. but these effects, with their tendency toward chaos and dissolution, are themselves resolved into, contained by, the order of art. they, like the tournament itself, are meant to present an esthetically realized image of destiny controlled by theseus’s benign and godlike providence. and, as the tournament is about to begin, theseus appears “at a wyndow set,/arrayed right as he were a god in trone” (2528-29). the sense of godlike creation and controlling power, as well as benevolence, informs his herald’s announcement of the tournament’s rules: “the lord hath of his heigh discrecioun considered that it were destruccioun to gentil blood to fighten in the gyse of mortal bataille now in this emprise. wherfore, to shapen that they shal nat dye, he wol his firste purpos modifye.” (2537-42) the rules, of course, will now exclude the weapons that typically bring combat to a mortal conclusion. the herald’s language is full of boethian resonance. theseus’s “heigh discrecioun” as he modifies “his firste purpos” suggests the first mover of boethius. and theseus is confidently disposed to do what only god can do (and what god has chosen not to do), to override destiny and “to shapen that they shal nat dye.” but the real order impinges on theseus’s benign alternative order. the grand designs of great men must give way to the petty quarrels of gods. the moment when this happens, when arcite is cut down in his moment of triumph by “a furie infernal” (2684), is introduced by a curious call to attention: the trompours, with the loude mynstralcie, the heraudes, that ful loude yelle and crie, been in hire wele for joye of daun arcite. but herkneth me, and stynteth noyse a lite, which a myracle ther bifel anon… (2671-75) daniel murtaugh 154 who is the knight-narrator hushing here? logic tells us that it must be his fellow pilgrims, and that this is one of those periodic calls on the wayward attention of the audience that are so common in the tail-rime romances. but logic is overruled by the immediate context, where the noise the “loude mynstralcie,” the yelling and crying of the heralds come from within the story. in a calculated breach of dramatic decorum, the knight looks into his story and into theseus’s arena. the narrative gesture is in its way as eruptive as pluto’s bolt, and its import is the same. both tell the crowd and theseus himself that they must stint their noise, that noise is all that their ceremony and their values amount to in the face of the saturnine reality that now reveals itself. with the downfall of arcite, theseus is called upon to abandon his illusions about controlling destiny. he is called upon to shoulder the burden of wisdom born by the knight-narrator and revealed in that ironic detachment from all the grand deeds and grand passions of the story. the call to wisdom is traumatic. for the first time in the story, we see theseus at a loss, forced to seek the aid and consolation of someone else. his father egeus offers him and his people the cold comfort that must suffice: “right as ther dyed nevere man,” quod he, “that he ne lyvede in erthe in some degree, right so ther lyvede never man,” he seyde, “in al this world, that some time he ne deyde. this world nys but a thurghfare ful of wo, and we been pilgrymes passynge to and fro. deeth is an ende of every worldly soore.” (2843-49) critics sometimes place egeus’s pilgrimage metaphor in the well-known augustinian tradition that makes our earthly life a pilgrimage to the heavenly jerusalem. our earthly life derives its only true meaning from its transcendent goal, according to this tradition, and so this world, in and of the education of theseus in the knight’s tale 155 itself, is a fit object of contempt.1 this is the wisdom that egeus would convey to the worldly athenians, so bemused in their dreams of love and martial glory. but the christian’s pilgrimage, miserable though it my be in its temporal dimension, is redeemed by the shining clarity of its eternal goal. the alert christian always has a sense of direction. egeus’s pilgrims, on the other hand, only wander “to and fro.” egeus cannot improve upon the agnosticism we noted in the narrator as he refused to speculate on the destination of arcite’s soul. the wisest voice in the tale conveys that agnosticism to theseus as the only adequate explanation of the collapse of his grand and well-meant designs. it is worth noting, too, how much egeus’s fatalism resembles that of palamon and arcite. the old man’s “pilgrymes passynge to and fro” recall arcite’s man “that dronke is as a mous”: “a dronke man woot wel he hath an hous, but he noot which the righte wey is thider, and to a dronke man the way is slider. and certes, in this world so faren we; we seken faste after felicitee, but we goon wrong ful often, trewely.” (1262-67) so youth and age agree in their fatalism. they differ only in their degree of resignation to it. it is in the age that intervenes, the age of theseus, that the sense of control over one’s destiny emerges. this sense is illusory and yet necessary, for the world demands of some of its children a purposeful will, fruitful in the works of civilization. these works include, in moments of extremity, gestures of reassurance and consolation. and these are now demanded of theseus. for the death of arcite is, to the people of athens, an intimation of meaninglessness and despair. “why woldestow be deed,” the women of athens cry, “and haddest gold ynough, and emelye?” (2836-37) the lament is, at first glance, absurd, and many readers only give it that first glance. but it really differs very little 1 see robertson: 374-75, and huppé: 72-73. daniel murtaugh 156 from the more common laments that still greet a young man’s death that he was so young, that he had so much to live for. there is the same naïve but necessary assumption that death comes only to those who are ready for it, that those upon whom we load life’s prizes will not betray our exalted sense of what we have bestowed by dying before they can enjoy them. unfairly, inevitably, we blame the dead for disabusing us. “human kind cannot bear very much reality,” as eliot said in a somewhat different connection, and a mature leader must sometimes bear it for his people, offering them something different. the ceremony of arcite’s funeral and the closing theodicy are what theseus offers. they are his last great constructive efforts. they express not the self-confident optimism of the tournament, but the chastened sense of how great are the needs of his people for order and meaning and how limited are his powers to meet those needs. both are gestures of consolation. neither will bear close examination. we have already discussed the knight’s subversion of arcite’s funeral. the circumstances surrounding theseus’s closing speech and certain details of its argument give rise to a similar questioning. the speech rationalizes and solemnizes the union of palamon and emily, but that romantic motive serves a political motive. theseus and his counselors desired “to have with certein contrees alliaunce,/and have fully of thebans obeisaunce…” (297376), and the marriage of palamon and emily is the most opportune means to that end. if we would idealize theseus, we might be tempted to pass over these lines in embarrassed silence. if we would denigrate him, we could produce it as an instance of his machiavellian cynicism. neither approach is satisfactory. theseus and his people, because they are not the one dead, must turn to their affairs. a statesman like theseus cannot act from pure motives. indeed, the effort to do so may be productive of harm. theseus has learned this in the course of the story. he has learned, as well, that the sense of acting from pure motives is still as necessary to his people as it once was to him. and so, statesman that he is, he represses the political aspect of his proposal, even though it has been the result of public deliberation (2970-74). they will have what they need from him: a healing, happy epilogue to a tragic love story. the education of theseus in the knight’s tale 157 a. c. spearing has pointed out an interesting discrepancy between theseus’s theodicy and what we know from earlier episodes about how the gods actually govern (76-77).1 theseus has jupiter governing all through his fair chain of love. but we have seen that jupiter could not control the quarrel of mars and venus and had to yield to the darker sway of saturn. we have seen, further, that no love links gods and men. mars and venus fear dishonor if they cannot keep promises whimsically given to arcite and palamon. saturn’s solution satisfies them mars no less than venus and arcite goes to his death. some of this seems present to theseus’s mind, because his assertions about universal order are really quite guarded. there is, indeed, a certain poignancy to the opening lines of his speech, coming simply from their being in the past tense: “the firste moevere of the cause above, whan he first made the faire cheyne of love, greet was th’effect, and heigh was his entente. wel wiste he why and what therof he mente, for with that faire cheyne of love he bond the fyr, the eyr, the water, and the lond in certeyn boundes, that they may nat flee.” (2987-93)2 nothing in these lines is inconsistent with the suggestion of entropy ever since that grand creative effort so long ago. nothing forbids the surmise that the first mover, like theseus, was disappointed with the way things turned out. theseus’s assertions about how the jovian plan works today the sureness with which our allotted days run out “in this wrecched world adoun” (2995) really do no more than adorn and palliate the words of 1 in the same vein, strohm notes theseus’s “quest for a reaffirmation of authority – both earthly and divine – in his projected faith in a benign heavenly hierarchy, ruled not by the malign and arbitrary saturn but by a more even-keeled ‘juppiter, the kyng,’ ” adding that “chaucer takes care that his audience understands theseus to be wrong…” (133, emphasis added). 2 in his prose translation of the consolation of philosophy, chaucer correctly translates the source of this passage, book 2, metrum 8, in the present tense. see benson: 420. daniel murtaugh 158 egeus: just as there never died a man who did not once live, so there never lived a man who did not die. the counsel that he draws from this shows a becoming lack of assurance.1 this is the mature theseus, no longer out to set all things right: “thanne is it wysdom, as it thynketh me, to maken vertu of necessitee, and take it weel that we may nat eschue, and namely that to us alle is due; and whoso gruccheth ought, he doth folye, and rebel is to hym that al may gye. and certeinly a man hath moost honour to dyen in his excellence and flour, whan he is siker of his goode name…” (3041-3049) the last three lines and the argument that they introduce show an edginess, a move to cover all bets, even if the various arguments one makes for an audience’s assent are not entirely consistent with one another. theseus is putting forth a rationalization in which he does not quite believe. he is responding to his people’s need for belief and hope. armed with these, they will greet “with alle blisse and melodye” (3097) the marriage of palamon and emily, imputing a benign purpose to the new upward swing of fortune’s wheel. in theseus chaucer gives a unique development to an idea embodied by characters as diverse as pandarus, nicholas the clerk, and the pardoner. each of these characters weaves elaborate schemes depending to a greater or lesser degree on his plausible rhetoric to control destiny. each would create a world of his own in which he reigns as a god, ironically detached, pleased by the intricate marvels that lie subject to his will. each soon learns his folly. the turn of fortune’s wheel reveals the larger order in which the projector’s most important role is likely to be as the butt of some cosmic 1 lawler cites what “at first glance seem[s] a mere pause for breath” in theseus’s speech (3000-02): “ther nedeth noght noon auctoritee t’allegge. / for it it preeved by experience, / but that me list declaren my sentence.” lawlor paraphrases thus: “all this is likely to be perfectly clear to all of you from your experience; it is just that i feel the urge to say what is on my mind.” he find in the lines “a sudden loss of [theseus’s] customary aplomb, as if he were speaking not so much to instruct others as to work out in words the meaning of his own experience” (86-87). the education of theseus in the knight’s tale 159 joke. some of this general meaning of pluto’s “furye infernal” emerges more clearly when we compare it to absolon’s hot coulter and the blunt obscenity of the host that silences the pardoner. frequently opposed to this type of character is the man or woman of trouthe, that unchangeable integrity that shows to best advantage when fortune’s wheel swings downward. troilus is the clearest example. true to the end to a love that has proven, like this world itself, to be mere fiction, troilus’s soul is projected by its purity clear beyond the planetary instruments of fortune’s sway. pandarus, after some frantic last-minute efforts to patch up the fiction he has promoted so enthusiastically, crumples with it. theseus is a harder case. like pandarus, he has promoted fictions throughout the story. early in his education by life these fictions center on himself and the sufficiency of his good will. he is the knight-hero who forestalls fate, righting the wrongs of the theban widows by conquest, untangling the web of passionate love in a grand tournament. but his last fiction centers on something unseen beyond the fixed stars, whose superior force he can no longer doubt and whose good will he must invoke perhaps invent in the tentative rhetoric of a ceremonial address. because he is a governor, he cannot set aside the fictions of order and purpose, nor soar above them like troilus. but, because experience has brought him the wintry insight of egeus and of the knight-narrator, he cannot rest on them either. i have argued that the contradictory aspects of theseus’s character are resolved in a reading that sees him developing and changing through the story. different resolutions of these same contradictions have been offered in the comprehensive and subtle analyses of h. marshall leicester and lee patterson, and it would be useful to distinguish my position from theirs. leicester’s analysis of the knight’s tale (221-382) takes up more than a third of a long book, and there are many aspects of it which i must simply commend rather than discuss. the following propositions, however, bear on the subject of this paper: daniel murtaugh 160 the tale is conveyed to us by a single voice whose contradictions are those discoverable in any single voice that honestly represents the polarities that define the subjective (1-14 and passim). the narrator’s voice presents us with a progressively more adequate image of theseus as governor until, in the “first mover” speech, the voices of the knight and theseus are one. the essential movement here is that of the knight’s voice which realizes theseus as we see him at the close (262-65 and 370-71). the knight, in his manipulation of narrative materials, and theseus, in his decisive exercise of authority, enact throughout the tale parallel programs of “demystification,” leading us to identify human agency rather than impersonal fortune as the spring of action and change in our lives (246, 250, 263-64). i agree with the first proposition, which is an instance of leicester’s central argument for a reconstituted, theoretically more sophisticated version of the “dramatic” way of reading chaucer. he objects to readings that see some parts of the tale as spoken by the first character described in the general prologue while other parts come from chaucer the poet. if the poem came to us simply as palamon and arcite, as cited in the legend of good women (f 420-21), we would struggle to make sense of its shifts of tone and its unstable attitude toward its subject without recourse to the theory that it is haunted intermittently by a voice other than chaucer’s. chaucer’s own attribution of it to the knight may well have come after it was written, when chaucer was populating the general prologue and asked himself what sort of character he (chaucer) sounded like when he gave voice to this tale. the invention of the knight leaves the voiced integrity of the tale undisturbed, although it does make explicit the obvious difference from the voiced integrity of the probably contemporaneous troilus and criseyde. this line of reasoning is quite simple, once leicester has pointed it out. my disagreement with the second proposition follows naturally from my belief that theseus grows over the course of the story (which, after all, spans some ten years). this is a development located within the story, not on its narrative surface, where, in fact, the knight maintains a fairly consistent stance toward which theseus moves. we see from the earliest lines the the education of theseus in the knight’s tale 161 knight’s confident and explicit stage management of theseus and the others, and we recognize in this a scope of vision denied to them. i believe, further, that the knight’s narrative acts, which he so consistently forces upon our attention, differ fundamentally in their efficacy from theseus’s chivalric acts, and so the two cannot be joined in the program of demystification attributed to them by leicester’s third proposition. we cannot evade the knight’s insistence that each turn in his story comes “by aventure or cas.” the insights shared by palamon, arcite, and egeus on this point are, as far as we know, correct. the problem, of course, is that they are also disabling. if we are to live in society that is, if we are to build a society we must construct habits of thought that connect our intentions with our desired outcomes through the medium of our actions. otherwise, action becomes impossible, and society unbuilds itself. 1 but the constructive activity, bearing as it does on habits of thought, is essentially rhetorical, a matter of discourse that persuades us that our actions are meaningfully related to our goals. this is the task of the mature governor, who deploys discourse rather than armies, who sustains the naïve faith of the community in its institutions from a point outside of its naïveté. his stance is, in leicester’s term, “disenchanted,” and leicester’s account of how theseus performs government in his last speech seems to me to be definitive. my point is that theseus arrives at this stance late. his earlier actions, as conqueror, as jailer and liberator, as benevolent master of the tournament, participate in the naïveté, the “enchantment,” that is the easy target of saturn’s bolt from hell. patterson’s analysis concentrates on the disenchantment with the chivalric ideal described by johan huizinga, arguing that it is this specific order, rather than order in general, that is the object of the tale’s attention, and that the attention is one of critique rather than celebration (167-174).2 1 cf. donaldson’s comment that the narrator “is, after all, an old soldier who has observed that deaths in battle have no connection with any recognizable system of earthly justice and that to expect a good man to avoid an ill end is to expose onself to paralyzing frustration” (chaucer’s poetry, 1066). 2 patterson cites huizinga, the waning of the middle ages, trans. f. hopman (london: edward arnold). a new translation by rodney j. payton and ulrich mattitzch entitled the autumn of the middle ages (chicago: university of chicago press, 1996) includes material omitted by hopman. daniel murtaugh 162 late fourteenth century chivalry is a visibly cosmetic artifice, in patterson’s view, and chaucer exposes the contradictions between its professed ideals and its founding brutality. patterson’s critique also targets a related contradiction “in a different register” between the mastery sought and the sense of determined impotence found in chivalry’s obsessive study of astrology (220). in palamon and arcite patterson finds “a chivalric consciousness so narrowed in scope as to have become frozen within a double posture of erotic need and martial violence” (213). moreover, theseus’s decision-making and the knight’s narrative strategies of “iteration and sectioning” and occupatio are, for patterson, trapped in the same iron ring of constructed fatality and unacknowledged obsolescence. patterson summarizes his argument with typical clarity and force: … chaucer shows that the narrowed consciousness and obsessive fixation of arcite and palamon are not the other against which theseus’s and the knight’s rationality is to be defined but a dark version of that very rationality itself. the same ambivalent vacillation between utter helplessness and unconstrained desire that characterizes the theban lovers marks both the cultural order imposed by theseus and the narrative organization articulated by the knight. in their narrow repetitiveness and yearning for finality both theseus and the knight unavoidably witness to the form of consciousness that characterizes the theban lovers. the suicidal rhetoric of the theban lovers is more subtly reenacted in theseus’s hapless decision making and still more subtly in the narrative strategies of the knight. and what links all three levels of analysis is the gap between structures of belief and historical experience, between late fourteenth-century chivalric ideology and the facts of life in chaucer’s england. it was noble culture’s inability to come to self-consciousness, to rewrite its own ideology in relation to socioeconomic change, that the knight’s tale records. (230) patterson certainly grants to the knight a single narrating voice, an internally consistent subjectivity. thus he would agree with leicester in opposing those readers who hear chaucer cutting in on the party line. but patterson’s version of the knight’s discursive integrity closes the knight off from the central insights of the tale, leaving them to the privileged inference of chaucer and his readers. the education of theseus in the knight’s tale 163 as a general principle, i think that it is risky to regard as “unreliable” a narrator as shifty as the knight.1 when a narrator is of more than one mind about his subject matter (so much so that some readers provide him with more than one head), he is ipso facto in a privileged position relative to his all-too-single-minded characters. in telling their story he is likely to convey to us the whole truth that they blindly inhabit. i would argue that the knight conveys the very truths that patterson identifies as central to the tale. he does so, moreover, in those very moments of narrative juncture that patterson sees as evasive subterfuge. for example, in a passage cited near the beginning of this essay, the knight tells us that he will “lete this noble duc to atthenes ride” without the aggrandizing details found in boccaccio because his narrative task gives him too large a “feeld to ere.” in such a moment patterson hears the narrator struggling to control recalcitrant material and “to articulate a world from which temporality and contingency have been banished. (213)” but surely theseus’s heroism has been rendered contingent and temporal (i.e., obsolete) by the impatient modernism of this narrator as he repackages an old story for the shortened attention span of the canterbury pilgrims. the knight’s dismissal of chivalry, expressed most clearly in these transitional passages, is no simple thing. as i noted above, the knight, looking back on a career as a chivalric practitioner, finds himself of more than one mind about it. he still responds to its gaudy allure.2 he can be drawn to “geeste ‘rim, ram, ruf, by lettre’” in the classic alliterative manner when he describes the clash of palamon’s and arcite’s superlative armies.3 but soon enough he calls our attention to the hollowness than lends volume to this noise, and he cuts it off with the rebuke (“stynteth noyse a lite”) that introduces saturn’s strike at arcite. finally, as i suggested earlier, the long occupatio that describes and discredits arcite’s funeral can be read as a 1 wayne c. booth defines a narrator as “reliable when he speaks for or acts in accordance with the norms of the work (which is to say the implied author’s norms), unreliable when he does not” (158-159, with further references in the index. 2 cf. leicester: 225-26, 241-42. 3 the deprecatory characterization of alliterative verse is that of the parson (x. 43). on the knight’s alliteration, see discussions cited in benson, note to 2601-16 (839). daniel murtaugh 164 palinode on chivalry’s entire elaboration of aggression and desire. and the point that i would stress here, in contrast to patterson, is that it comes to us consciously and deliberately in the knight’s own voice. chaucer speaks to us through him, not around him. we can plausibly speculate on the historical circumstances that called this voice into being and suggested the theme of theseus’s education. chaucer and his contemporaries could look back some thirty years to the triumphs of edward iii’s war against france, triumphs carefully elaborated with the trappings of chivalric myth. central to these events was the gallant black prince, edward’s eldest son who captured king john of france at poitiers and seemed to incarnate the spirit of arthurian romance. they could also look back on what followed in the 1360s and 1370s: the reversal of almost every victory of the war, the protracted egean gloom of edward’s senectitude, and the surrender of the black prince to dysentery, a wasting insult to his martial glory that suggests the fate of arcite. the voice that responds to this historical context belongs to a knight whose rust-stained tunic shows his indifference to the panoply that filled theseus’s arena, whose resumé skips over the largely canceled glories of crécy and poitiers to feature distant struggles toward the always postponed victory of the crusade. despite what we know (and what chaucer knew) about the corruption of the crusading impulse, the crusade retained its symbolic importance as an irreproachable goal and final cause of the chivalric enterprise.1 by uniting this enterprise with the grace of the redemption, the crusade gave knighthood its only means of transcending the inflexible necessity written in the stars. the devotion that brings the 1 fradenburg, in a very challenging lacanian reading of the tale finds that it embodies “the fantasy of chivalry… that powerfully recuperates the jouissance of aggressivity by rewriting it as incalculable, inscrutable love” (54). such a mordant judgment can encompass not only the dying arcite nobly resigning emily to palamon but also the knight soberly, humbly representing the crusading ideal. the question is not whether we can assent to this judgment but whether we can attribute it to chaucer. if i am interpreting fradenburg correctly, she implies that we can and thus would seem to come, by a different route, to something like jones’s position, discrediting the knight (see note 3). i doubt that we can do this. i think that we must consider chaucer to be sufficiently of his era to posit the knight’s crusading background as a value not to be questioned, as foundational in its way as the piety of his parson. the education of theseus in the knight’s tale 165 knight to this canterbury pilgrimage expresses his christian knighthood as clearly as his military exploits did. they represent his distinctive response to the bitter insight attributed to the black prince on his deathbed: “we are not lords here. everything that happens here must happen. no one can turn it aside.”1 but he does not speak of his devotion, whether expressed in prayer or in the siege of algezir. his narrative imagination – that of a christian looking back to a pagan time and placing himself just inside the verge of its aspiration – is captivated instead by the struggles of men who have not achieved grace and who cannot transcend necessity. their struggles do, after all, represent the daily reality of the human condition where the best response to necessity, the one that is both wise and practical, is to make a virtue of it. daniel m. murtaugh florida atlantic university works cited aers, d. 1980: chaucer. langland, and the creative imagination. routledge and kegan paul, london. benson, l. d. ed. 1987: the riverside chaucer. third edition. houghton mifflin, boston. bolton, w. f. 1967: “the topic of the knight’s tale.” chaucer review 1: 217-27. booth, w. c. 1961: the rhetoric of fiction. university of chicago press, chicago. burlin, r. 1977: chaucerian fiction. princeton university press, princeton. cooper, h. 1996: oxford guides to chauce: the canterbury tales. second edition. oxford university press, oxford. 1 chandos herald, la vie du prince noir by chandos herald, ed. diane b. tyson (tubingen: max niemeyer, 1975): lines 4114-16; cited by patterson, 214. daniel murtaugh 166 donaldson, e. t. 1975: chaucer’s poetry: an anthology for the modern reader. second edition. ronald press, new york. donaldson, e. t. 1970: speaking of chaucer. athlone press, london. fradenburg, l. o. 1997: sacrificial desire in chaucer’s knight’s tale. journal of medieval and early modern studies 27: 47-75. frost, r. 1969: the poetry of robert frost. ed. e. c. lathem. holt, new york. gaylord, a. t. 1974: the role of saturn in the knight’s tale. chaucer review 8: 171-90. huizenga, jan 1996: the autumn of the middle ages. trans. r. j. payton & u. mattitzch. university of chicago press, chicago. jones, t. 1980: chaucer’s knight: the portrait of a medieval mercenary. louisiana state university press, baton rouge. jordan, r. 1967: chaucer and the shape of creation. harvard university press, cambridge. kolve, v. a. 1984: chaucer and the imagery of narrative: the first five canterbury tales. stanford university press, stanford. lawler, t. 1980: the one and the many in the canterbury tales. archon books, new haven. leicester, h. m. 1990: the disenchanted self: representing the subject in the canterbury tales. university of california press, berkeley. muscatine, c. 1957: chaucer and the french tradition. university of california press, berkeley. neuse, r. 1962: the knight: the first mover in chaucer’s human comedy. university of toronto quarterly 31: 229-315. patterson, l. 1991: chaucer and the subject of history. university of wisconsin press, madison. robertson, d. w. 1963: a preface to chaucer. princeton university press, princeton. the education of theseus in the knight’s tale 167 robertson, d. w. & b. f. huppé 1964: a reading of the canterbury tales. state university of new york press, albany. ruggiers, p. g. 1965: the art of the canterbury tales. university of wisconsin press, 1965. salter, e. ed. 1962: the knight’s tale and the clerk’s tale. arnold, london. schless, h. 1974: transformations: chaucer’s use of italian. derek brewer, ed. writers and their background: geoffrey chaucer. geo. bell & sons, london: 184-223. spearing, a. c. ed. 1966: the knight’s tale. cambridge university press, cambridge. stanbury, s. [1995]: visibility politics in chaucer’s knight’s tale. access date 20 may 2002. <http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/conf/cs95/papers/stanbury.html>. strohm, p. 1989: social chaucer. harvard university press, cambridge. underwood, d. 1959: the first of the canterbury tales. elh 26: 455-69. webb, h. j. 1947: a reinterpretation of chaucer’s theseus. review of english studies 23: 289-96. * † * http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/conf/cs95/papers/stanbury.html isabel de la cruz-cabanillas & irene diego-rodríguez, selim 23 (2018): 163–183. issn 1132-631x abbreviations in medieval medical manuscripts isabel de la cruz-cabanillas & irene diego-rodríguez university of alcalá understanding the large number of abbreviations present in any medieval manuscript is one of the essential skills required by any knowledgeable palaeographer. english medieval manuscripts contain a great variety of abbreviations which were transferred from latin and applied to the vernacular. as a result, their reasonably standard latin system lost consistency. editorial practice should avoid intervention, as it may detract from the originality and the text distinct and stylistic features. however, it is crucial to expand abbreviations coherently to carry out further analysis from a historical linguistic perspective. thus, this article aims to demonstrate how the way in which a palaeographer transcribes specific abbreviations has an impact on the establishment of the dialectal provenance of a middle english manuscript. in order to do so, we shall analyse the abbreviations extracted from a corpus of medical manuscripts and bring to light their relevance as far as english historical dialectology is concerned. keywords: abbreviations; middle english; medical manuscripts 1. introduction this article deals with abbreviations in medieval medical manuscripts. firstly a clarification of what is understood by medicine and a revision of how the abbreviations issue has been covered thus far are needed. this revision, along with the examination of a corpus of abbreviations from late middle english medical manuscripts, will allow us to provide guidelines on how to transcribe abbreviations properly to make original texts keep their own linguistic flavour. the focus of the present study is on the english language, but code-switching in medical treatises was a common contemporary phenomenon, as scribes could integrate latin and english in an especially subtle way.  this explains 164 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas & irene diego-rodríguez why an example in latin may be brought to light to illustrate a specific point, as latin words and expressions appear intermingled with the english text. regarding the contemplation of medicine in the middle ages, wallis refers to the fact that apart from the word ‘medicine’, which was still in use in some expressions, medical knowledge could be referred to as physica (2010: 129): “physica’s primary meaning was ‘natural philosophy.’ hence, equating medicine with physica shifted the epistemological status of medical knowledge toward what modern doctors call basic sciences: anatomy, physiology, and pathology.” thus, physicians, whose name derive from physica, needed to be acquainted with what wallis calls “basic sciences”: anatomy, physiology, and pathology, but they should also be aware of the properties of plants and the effect of planets 1 on people’s health. the approaches to the study of medieval medical writings rely chiefly on two criteria: the type of text and the audience. regarding the former, robbins (1970) establishes three groups: a) prognosis: defined as “the astrological determination of the possibility of effecting a cure and the most favorable times for treatment” (1970: 395). b) diagnosis: following the european tradition, illness is mainly diagnosed by urinoscopy or inspection of urine. this is related to the theory of the four humours which affected the colour of the urine when superfluous humours were present and needed excreting. c) treatment or medication by means of herbs, bloodletting and empirical remedies: robbins (1970: 406) includes here obstetrical and gynaecological treatises written presumably for midwifes. if we take into consideration the audience of the medical texts, according to robins (1970: 394), the difference in the classification lies in the language. on the one hand, one finds the relatively university-trained physicians who could read latin, and on the other, “the on-the-job-trained surgeon, barbersurgeon, apothecary, apprentice, cunning man, wise woman, lay sister in a convent, and midwife”. nevertheless, voigts (1984: 322) and taavitsainen (1988: 134) contend that robbins’s classification is not accurate since even a short text can include all the information mentioned by robbins. thus, according to voigts (1984), medical writing could be divided into: 1. academic 1 the sun and the moon were considered planets from a medical point of view during the middle ages (bjork 2010: 197). abbreviations in medieval medical manuscripts 165 treatises; 2. surgical treatises and 3. remedybooks. likewise, remedybooks and materia medica are umbrella terms to refer to diverse kinds of treatises: herbaries are alphabetically ordered lists of plants with therapeutical effects; receptaria or recipe collections that were rooted in the western medical tradition from greek and latin physicians mainly and proliferated especially in fifteenth-century britain. pahta & taavitsainen (2004: 15) adopted a similar taxonomy, but augmented it in several ways: 1. specialised treatises which are aimed at learned medicine practitioners, as the texts deal with bloodletting, ophthalmology, embryology, urinoscopy, gynaecology, the plague and other diseases, and other encyclopaedic treatises. 2. surgical treatises consist of surgical manuals and anatomical description and have a particularly learned character, since they were originally compiled by university masters and used as university textbooks. 3. remedybooks and materia medica. remedybooks “comprise recipe collections with prognostications and charms, and other guides for maintaining health”, while materia medica include herbaries, which are alphabetically ordered lists of plants with therapeutic effects and some other texts, such as lapidaries, which often appeared next to herbaries and whose main purpose was to instruct on how to use gems or semiprecious stones to make recipes or amulets. finally, there are also astrological texts which include several pieces of works dealing with the influence of planets on peoples’ health: electionaries, lunaries 2 and destinaries, among others, and alchemy texts that could also include medical recipes, like cordial waters and elixirs, as well as the use of heavy metals to cure certain diseases. firstly, it is important to note the fact that there is a great diversity of genres and many of the materials have never been explored thus far. covering an extensive variety of medical genres will provide a wider overview of abbreviations in late medieval medical english manuscripts. most abbreviations will be present in other non-specialised medieval manuscripts, which will make the conclusions valid for the treatment of the topic in nonmedical writings. secondly, the main issue addressed in the article is the use of abbreviations and how to interpret them correctly, as their expansion will have an effect on the identification of the language depicted in the text. 2 see de la cruz-cabanillas & diego-rodríguez (2018a, 2018b) on the translation, circulation and transmission of some of these texts in the middle ages. 166 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas & irene diego-rodríguez it has traditionally been suggested that the medieval system of abbreviations aimed to “save time and space by allowing the scribe to drop letters from his writings of individual words” (hector 1958: 28). to serve this purpose, “many thousands of different abbreviations” (lowe 2006: 135) were employed during the late middle ages, and their use was “so widespread and often so careless that their extension is a matter of great difficulty” (denholmyoung 1964: 69). although “no new abbreviations were introduced” after the thirteenth century (hector 1958: 28), they started to be transferred from latin and applied to the vernacular without alteration. as a result, “many signs vary in significance according to the language of the manuscript in which they are employed” (denholm-young 1964: 70), and the relative consistency that characterised latin manuscripts disappeared. therefore, “while the common latin value usually gives us a satisfactory expansion there may be doubt in particular cases concerning the value they are to be assigned, and the editor must decide whether scribal variation in their use represents casual error, personal idiosyncrasy or permissible licence” (hewyworth 1972: 63). that is why middle english manuscripts and their abbreviations tend to represent “une source continuelle d’obstacles et d’erreurs” (chassant 1884: 1) for editors. this is mainly due to the fact that “some of the abbreviations have clear referents, but in more ambiguous cases the editor is put into situations in which he or she has to choose between variant spellings, or whether to consider a certain noun or verb inflected, or a particular abbreviation otiose or not” (honkapohja 2013). this explains why it is essential to be consistent in the expansion of abbreviation and follow the same criteria on all occasions, allowing the reader to learn about the editorial procedure the editors have adopted. being a controversial issue, editors may decide to leave the abbreviations as such and avoid deciphering them. in fact, an up-to-date revision of the topic is wanting, as the great majority of reference works related to this discipline mainly concentrate on a mere taxonomy of the various types of abbreviations and their different meanings. what is more, most studies on medieval abbreviations date to the nineteenth century, and academia has awarded very little attention to this subject afterwards. therefore, the main comprehensive works consulted by scholars are still chassant (1885) and cappelli (1899). both authors label the different kinds of abbreviations to subsequently enumerate them together with their meaning. trice-martin (1892) does not only offer this detailed list with the main latin abbreviations and their abbreviations in medieval medical manuscripts 167 meanings, he goes a step further and concentrates on english manuscripts distinguishing among: ‐ abbreviations of latin words used in english records ‐ abbreviations of french words used in english records ‐ glossary of latin words found in records and other english manuscripts, but not occurring in classical authors ‐ latin names of places in great britain and ireland ‐ latin names of bishoprics in england ‐ latin names of bishoprics in scotland ‐ latin names of bishoprics in ireland ‐ latin forms of english surnames ‐ latin christian names with their english equivalents books on english palaeography devote minimal attention to this topic. in this vein, hector (1958: 28–38), denholm-young (1964: 64–70), petti (1977: 22–25), brown (1993: 5), preston & yeandle (1999: ix–x), and clemens & graham (2007: 89–93) offer only a few pages on the correspondences of abbreviations. nowadays, new factors are slightly starting to be taken into consideration regarding plausible explanations for the use of abbreviations: 1) language independent communication in a multilingual environment; 2) the avoidance of using sacred names; and 3) the allegoric, ritualistic and occult purposes related to alchemical and magical symbols (honkapohja 2013). notwithstanding, in this article our focus is not on the function of abbreviations but on their proper expansion, as it will affect the localisation of the language of the text. gradually, scholars are giving the first steps towards bringing to light the complexity and importance of this field, which makes lowe’s claim that abbreviations will be valuable devices to ascertain “when and where a text has been written” (2006: 135). moreover, denholm-young mentions that the purpose of the study of abbreviations should be “not merely to be able to decipher old writings, but to discover their age and provenance” (denholmyoung 1964: 64). thus, abbreviations will be used as sources to localise a specific text. consequently, it is undeniable that the way in which the editor confronts and expands or, decides not to expand, the different abbreviations in english medieval manuscripts automatically influences the localisation of the language provenance of the manuscript. that is why the main aim of this 168 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas & irene diego-rodríguez article is to study the abbreviations that appear in late middle english medical manuscripts, in order to demonstrate the ways in which abbreviations have been, or have not been, expanded has an enormous weight on the analysis suggested by linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english (hereafter lalme) to establish the dialectal provenance of any late middle english manuscript. first, a classification of the abbreviations contained in the medical writings under consideration will be provided, followed by a thorough examination of how the way in which the editor deals with abbreviations influences the results provided by lalme. finally, the conclusions drawn from the discussion will be given in the corresponding section. 2. methodology to carry out the study of medieval abbreviations, a corpus of middle english medical texts has been especially compiled from different specialised medical libraries, chiefly british library, glasgow university library, and wellcome library. we have tried to cover as many as possible of the different genres included within the classification by pahta & taavitsainen (2004: 15), explained in the introduction section. thus, our corpus contains: a) specialised treatises dealing with ophthalmology: gul hunter 513 (ff. 1–37r). urinoscopy: gul hunter 328 tractatvs metricvs de vrinis (ff. 1r–44v). gynaecology: gul hunter 307 (ff. 115v–166v). other encyclopaedic treatises: bl sloane 141 (ff. 66r–86v) and wellcome 537 (ff. 48r–310v). b) materia medica, which include both herbaries and recipe collections. herbaries: gul ferguson 147 antidotarium nicholai (ff. 1r–55v); gul hunter 185 (f. 12v), flora medica (ff. 1r–6v); gul hunter 307 pharmacopoeia (ff. 167r–172v) and gul hunter 513 antidotary (ff. 37v–97v). recipe collections: gul ferguson 147 (ff. 63r–158r), gul hunter 185 (ff. 13r–67v), and gul hunter 328 alphabetical list of medicines and alphabetical list of remedies (ff. 45r–68v). abbreviations in medieval medical manuscripts 169 c) astrological texts: gul hunter 513 þe booke of ypocras (ff. 98–104v), and other parallel texts: bl additional 12195 (ff. 185r–190v) and bl harley 2378 (ff. 7r– 11v). gul ferguson 205 (ff. 49v–54v). the texts under consideration were first transcribed and then, the abbreviations were identified and classified according to petti’s taxonomy (1977), which follows the usual division into a) contractions; b) curtailments or suspensions; c) brevigraphs or special signs; and d) superior or superscript letters. petti also includes elisions, whose main abbreviation sign would be the apostrophe to denote a silent <e>. the apostrophe does not usually occur in this period, since it is in use by late sixteenth century (1977: 23). 3 where necessary, the concordance programme antconc was used to establish the real frequency of spelling forms in a given manuscript. concordance programmes are a powerful and reliable way of treating data efficiently. since this is a qualitative approach to the study of abbreviations, the number of occurrences is used just to account for the most common forms found in the texts to make decisions about the expansion of abbreviations. afterwards, the questionnaire offered by lalme was completed to examine how the way in which the editor expands the abbreviations influences the establishment of the dialectal provenance of the language of the treatise. this was done in the case of ferguson 147 (ff. 63r–91r), hunter 513 (ff. 98r–104v), additional 12195 (ff. 185r–190v), and harley 2378 (ff. 7r–11v). a word of warning should be said in regard to the use of lalme. taavitsainen & pahta (1997: 214–215) mention 1375 as the initial date for the presence of medical writings in vernacular english. this means that the main medical middle english texts date from the end of the fourteenth century and throughout the fifteenth century. in fact, the manuscripts in this study which were examined with the fit-technique established by lalme are fifteenthcentury copies. the precise time of composition of ferguson 147 cannot be determined. on the contrary, hunter 513 is dated in 1450 by means (1993: 17), but 1470 by the glasgow university library catalogue; harley 2378 goes back to 1480 (means 1993: 16), and additional 12195 dates to 1475 (means 1993: 9). this implies that two important caveats should be borne in mind. 3 we have just found two instances of apostrophe in ferguson 205, f. 49v and f. 50r, respectively. thus, elisions are not dealt with in this article. 170 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas & irene diego-rodríguez on the one hand, the fact that lalme covers the years 1350–1450, which places our documents right at the end, if not beyond the temporal limits of this work. on the other, due to the standardisation process the texts may represent a colourless use of language, where the local elements might be replaced with items with a wider currency. this fact is especially remarkable in the case of the parallel copies of þe booke of ypocras (hunter 513, additional 12195, and harley 2378). nevertheless, since no extralinguistic information on the manuscripts is available, it is considered a useful tool to determine the localisation of the language of the texts under scrutiny. 3. classification of abbreviations and linguistic implications of their expansion a. contractions according to petti (1977: 22), this was “the commonest method of abbreviation and consisted of the omission of one or more letters from the middle of a word”. here we find contractions of nomina sacra, especially when they appear in latin within the english text, such as ihu for ihesu, xri for xristi, sa for sancta (ferguson 147). 4 the absence of the letter is usually signalled by a suspension mark above a vowel. very often the omitted character is a nasal. thus, <m> has been omitted in womman (ferguson 147), or summe (hunter 307), and <n> in mannys (hunter 513) or foundement (wellcome 537), whereas in latin it can also signal the omission of several letters, as in dmi for domini (ferguson 147), or dni for dinari (hunter 328). the usual form to mark the omission is a bar, but petti (1977: 22) mentions an older variant, “though still in use in the late 15 th century, was a crescent-shape, often with a dot below”. when the abbreviation takes place at the end of a word, “in cursive hands there was a practice of making either the bar or the apostrophe part of the upward curve on the final stroke of a letter” (petti 1977: 22). when the word ends in <n>, this poses the problem whether the mark above the final letter is to be extended or it is just an otiose stroke. this happens very often with words containing the suffix in <-ion>, such as decoccion in hunter 328. here the 4 expanded abbreviations are signalled by underlining the omitted letters. abbreviations in medieval medical manuscripts 171 editor must decide whether the stroke going up and backwards is a decorative flourish or should be expanded. similarly, petti (1977: 22) refers here to the case of final <e> that is considered by him a curtailment and will be addressed in the following section. b. curtailments or suspensions this form of contraction entails shortening “the end of a word by one or more letters” (petti 1977: 22). thus, final <e> can be abbreviated in verbs like saithe, apperethe, and takethe (hunter 513), while in the case of crossed double final <l> it is a moot issue whether this should be expanded as -lle or just -ll. thus, an otiose mark crossing over the consonant in words like myddell and appell (hunter 513) contrasts with a single crossed <l> where omitted <e> is to be expanded in words, such as oleo (hunter 328, f. 46v). petti concludes stating that “it is particularly difficult to decide whether or not a final e or n is intended” (1977: 23). unlike this common suspension, a crossed <h> is rarely found, as in the word moche (ferguson 147, f. 107v). as the omission is usually signified by a bar, petti adds that “a bar above a final vowel, nasal or y generally indicated omitted m or n”, as in doun (wellcome 537), him (hunter 185), popilyon, coton, possyon or anon (ferguson 147). often final <n>, as it happened in the case of suffix <-ion> above, may show a bar on top of it or a kind of pompous stroke going up and backwards. it is always troublesome how to deal with this pompous loop. alonso-almeida (2014: 98), in the case of present-day english gallon in hunter 185 f. 51r, interpreted it as galoun. nevertheless, some other editors, when the final stroke parts from the line level of letter <n> may consider it an otiose stroke and the word would be rendered as galon instead. the editor needs to face the decision of whether the symbol above final <n> may be regarded as otiose, or it stands for the following different spellings: 1) the sign can be expanded and interpreted as the omission of the nasal consonant <n>. 2) it can also be considered an <e> as a diacritic mark. this can be illustrated by the parallel copies of þe booke of ypocras, where it is possible to find words from the astrological field containing the problematic signs previously explained. in harley 2378, means (1993: 246) has interpreted the line above the final <n> in saturne (f. 7r) as an abbreviation standing for a diacritic mark, probably because, when it appears expanded, it tends to show this final <e>. the word moon in additional 12195 shows the pompous stroke in the final <n>, which taavitsainen et al. (2005) have transcribed as mone (f. 172 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas & irene diego-rodríguez 187v). similarly, the present-day english word man presents the same sign and it has been expanded as mane (f. 187r), although it appears as man when it is not abbreviated. the editor’s decision will therefore have an influence on the establishment of the dialectal provenance of the manuscript following the methodology suggested by lalme, since man is associated to a large number of counties, whereas mane seems to be a more diagnostic spelling form, as can be seen in figure 1. unfortunately, since there is no rule of thumb to be followed on every single occasion, editors should revise the scribe’s practice in this and other similar words and adopt the most common practice found in the text. c. brevigraphs or special signs brevigraphs have often been compared to modern shorthand symbols. probably the commonest one is the version of the tironian note, which will develop into the ampersand. many of them have to do with different combinations of <r> related clusters, such as per, par, pre or pro, -ra, -er/-re, -ir/-ri, and -ur. the clusters with <s> are also common, especially in plural forms -es/-is, -ys, and -us. table 1 shows the abbreviation of <r> clusters, as well as <s> clusters along with the corresponding image and its transcription. 5 the expansion of the <s> clusters have implications for the identification of the dialect. the choice between -es/-is is not a simple one (voigts 1989: 94). in our opinion, brevigraphs should be expanded according to the spelling of the most frequent expanded form. nowadays, computer tools help the researcher in finding the real frequency of spelling forms, as this information is automatically retrieved by means of concordance programmes, such as above-mentioned antconc. for instance, to decide how editors should expand abbreviations for plural forms, the most widely used endings should be revised. thus, in the fifteenth century very often nouns in plural can take the ending is/ys or -es. in ferguson 147 forms, such as schepis, boxys, leuys, snaylys, þingis, monthys, or vermys, coexist with plural nouns in -es, both expanded and in an abbreviated form. thus -es is attested in plural forms, such as þinges, leues, gobbetes ‘a medicinal pellet’, and snayles. as it can be observed in the following examples, the same words can be made plural either by adding -is/ys or -es, as 5 the images in the tables are reproduced by permission of university of glasgow library, special collections. abbreviations in medieval medical manuscripts 173 figure 1. counties associated to man and mane 174 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas & irene diego-rodríguez table 1. brevigraphs and their transcription manuscript image transcription hunter 513 f. 98v -ra contrary ferguson 147 f. 7v hunter 185 f. 13r -er ginger -er þeron hunter 328 f. 63r -re vinegre hunter 513 f. 101v -ir virgo -ri capricornyo hunter 509 f. 2r ferguson 147 f. 83r -ur humour -ur togedur ferguson 147 f. 63r per .peper ferguson 147 f. 65v par parte hunter 513 f. 98v pre prelaytes hunter 503 f. 1r pro profunde ferguson 147 f. 82r hunter 513 f. 99r -es brestes -is planettis hunter 513 f. 98v -us venus hunter 328 f. 48r hunter 328 f. 49r con confort com compound abbreviations in medieval medical manuscripts 175 þingis/þinges, leuys/leues, snaylys/snayles show. all in all, even if the number of plural nouns in -is in this text outranks the other possible plural forms, we have transcribed the example in table 1 as -es because when in full, brestes does never appear as brestis. similarly, in þe booke of ypocras in hunter 513, the total number of plural forms is thirty-four, out of which twenty-four correspond to plural nouns in -es and ten to plurals in -is. however, the word planete does never take a plural in -es when expanded, which explains why in this specific lexical unit the same abbreviation has been transcribed as -is even if the number of plural forms in -es outnumbers those in -is. this way, the same abbreviation has been transcribed differently on account of the most frequent expanded form of the noun present in the same text. another hard decision is whether the superscript number 9, which clearly corresponds to -us in latin, should always be transcribed as such in native english words. an argument supporting its transcription as -us in english words in the case of ferguson 147 is the presence of this ending expanded in words like cornus, monthus, shepus, and gostus ‘juniper’. this ending is found expanded both in singular nous like clothus, clessus ‘a seed’, cropus ‘any part of a medicinal herb except the root’, brerecropus ‘a bud or shoot (of a plant)’, and in plural nouns, such as wormus and tymus. in fact, the forms -us in words are attested in some western linguistic profiles, according to lalme. as can be seen in figure 2, with some scattered forms elsewhere in the south, its distribution is clearly concentrated on the west midland area, specifically in the south-west midlands. as shown elsewhere (de la cruz-cabanillas 2018: 61–62), the plural forms in -us along with the other plural forms used in ferguson 147 (-ys, -es, -is, -uus) make this combination compatible with the linguistic profile 7300, which corresponds to south-east herefordshire on the border with gloucestershire. 176 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas & irene diego-rodríguez figure 2. map for -us in plural nouns according to lalme abbreviations in medieval medical manuscripts 177 another controversial abbreviation is -ur, which appears quite often in latin words, especially in medical recipes where the efficacy phrase is conveyed with the verb sanabitur, ‘will be healed’. in ferguson 147 this symbol is also displayed with native english words, such as aftur, watur, togedur, flour, or powdur. some other times the ending is found in full in anothur, botur, othur, lykur, plastur, rethur ‘an ox, a cow, bull’, safur, and soffur ‘suffer’. in fact, the presence of anothur expanded totals up to fifty-two instances out of sixty occurrences, which leads to the confirmation that the form is available within the scribe’s repertoire. the language may look weird with all those -ur endings, but lalme has attested this form instead of final -er in english native words in the following linguistics profiles: 1400, 1453, 1454, 4003, 4005, 4006, 4009, 4014, 4015, 4017, 4018, 4019, 5051, 5052, 5064, 5291, 5411, 5412, 5652, 5654, 5656, 5660, 5802, 5840, 6240, 6270, 7080, 7500, some of which share a wide variety of forms with the linguistic profile of ferguson 147 (de la cruz-cabanillas 2018: 54). as can be seen in figure 3, most of the aftur instances correspond to the west midland area with heavy concentration in the south-west part. there are other specific abbreviations that usually appear only in medical texts; many of them have to do with units of measure, but others are abbreviations of some common words in medical jargon like recipe or ana — see table 2. 178 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas & irene diego-rodríguez figure 3. aftur distribution according to lalme abbreviations in medieval medical manuscripts 179 table 2. units of measure and other specific medical words manuscript image transcription ferguson 147 f. 90v ana ferguson 147 f. 90v recipe hunter 328 f. 46v hondful hunter 328 f. 45r dragme ferguson 147 f. 91r ounce hunter 328 f. 49r pound hunter 328 f. 52r scripule ferguson 147 f. 90v semis hunter 328 f. 46v half a pound d. superior or superscript letters the use of superior letters is extremely common in english manuscripts for the vernacular. even a manuscript like ferguson 205, which shows very few abbreviations, contains superscript letters (see table 3). although some words, like ordinal and cardinal numbers, were already used in latin, most superscript letters correspond to english lexical units. their expansion is not troublesome, and the editor only needs to decide whether they will be expanded or not. as a result, we will find the following consistent abbreviations throughout the whole corpus: þou, þis, þat, þe, and with. 180 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas & irene diego-rodríguez table 3. superior or superscript letters in hunter 513 manuscript image transcription hunter 513 f. 98r þou hunter 513 f. 98r þis hunter 513 f. 98r þat hunter 513 f. 100r þe hunter 513 f. 98r with 4. conclusions in this article we have dealt with abbreviations in a corpus of medieval medical manuscripts in late middle english. after revising the treatment of the topic by previous scholars, we have adopted petti’s taxonomy to classify our data. the explanation is illustrated with the wide variety of abbreviations attested in medieval medical writings. since we have chiefly concentrated on the english language, latin abbreviations are not usually dealt with. the relevant issue here is not the quantification of the data but the qualitative approach to it. in case editors decide to expand abbreviations, we have advocated that the abbreviations must be expanded consistently, and clear criteria should be established to decide among the different options available for their interpretation. nowadays, the computer tools at the researchers’ disposal will allow for the establishment of the real frequency of expanded forms, which should lead editors in their quest to find the right expansion. thus, the most frequent expanded form should be taken into consideration in case there is doubt on how to read the abbreviation. abbreviations in medieval medical manuscripts 181 we have demonstrated how the expansion of abbreviations in a given way is not without consequences for linguistic purposes. the texts analysed with the lalme methodology can provide very distant results in linguistic terms depending on how editors read the existing abbreviations. thus, interpreting the abbreviation which resembles a number 9 as -us instead of -es or -is, when it appears in final position, has an influence on the localisation of the language. obviously, the provenance of the language is not determined on the examination of one single feature, but the -us ending for the plural will narrow down the search to some specific counties. likewise, the transcription of -ur instead of -er in some native english words will point to a given area. finally, the always troublesome expansion of the bar or flourished loop in final -n will provide different linguistic results. thus, despite of the fact that lalme has some flaws, it continues to stand as a valuable resource for localisation of the language of middle english manuscripts. as most abbreviations are also found in non-medical manuscripts, the conclusions drawn here from the analysis of the data can be applied to other non-medical texts. even if the corpus includes an alchemy text, this is a short extract containing only medical material, not properly alchemical. thus, the value of abbreviations in alchemical manuscripts deserves further research in the future, as alchemical writings may hide an occult purpose only accessible to expert alchemists unless abbreviations are properly deciphered. references alonso-almeida, f. 2014: a middle english medical remedy book from glasgow university library ms hunter 185. heidelberg, carl winter. antconc (version 3.4.0) [computer software]. 2014: a. laurence comp. tokyo: waseda university. http://www.laurenceanthony.net/. brown, m. p. 1993: a guide to western historical scripts from antiquity to 1600. london, british library. cappelli, a. 1899: lexicon abbreviaturarum quae in lapidibus, codicibus et chartis praesertim medii-aevi occurrunt. dizionario di abbreviature latine ed italiane usate nelle carte e codici specialimente del medio-evo. milan, hoepli. chassant, l. a. 1884: dictionnaire des abréviations latines et françaises usitées dans les inscriptions lapidaires et métalliques, les manuscrits et les chartes du moyen âge. paris, jules martin. chassant, l. a. 1885: paléographie des chartes et manuscrits du xi au xvii siècle. paris, jules martin. 182 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas & irene diego-rodríguez clemens, r. & t. graham 2007: introduction to manuscript studies. ithaca & london, cornell university press. de la cruz-cabanillas, i. 2018: mapping the language of glasgow university library manuscript ferguson 147. in m. j. esteve-ramos ed. textual reception and cultural debate in medieval english studies. newcastle upon tyne, cambridge scholars: 51–78. de la cruz-cabanillas, i. & i. diego-rodríguez 2018a: medical astrology in middle english: the case of þe booke of ypocras. in m. j. esteve-ramos ed. textual reception and cultural debate in medieval english studies. newcastle upon tyne, cambridge scholars: 79–99. de la cruz-cabanillas, i. & i. diego-rodríguez 2018b: the circulation and transmission of hippocratic lunaries in middle english. in m. stenroos ed. proceedings of the 10 th international conference on middle english. frankfurt am main, peter lang. denholm-young, n. 1964: handwriting in england and wales. cardiff, university of wales press. hector, l. c. 1958: the handwriting of english documents. london, edward arnold. hewyworth, p. l. 1972: the -us abbreviation in middle english manuscripts. scriptorium 26.1: 63–64. honkapohja, a. 2013: manuscript abbreviations in latin and english: history, typologies and how to tackle them in encoding. varieng, studies in variation, contact and change in english 14: http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/series/volumes/14/honkapohja/. lalme: a linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english. 1986: a. mcintosh, m. l. samuels & m. benskin comps., with the assistance of m. laing and k. williamson. 4 vols. aberdeen, aberdeen university press. http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/elalme/elalme.html. lowe, k. a. 2006 [1994]: palaeography. in k. brown ed. encyclopedia of language and linguistics. 2nd ed. london, elsevier: vol. 11: 134–141. means, l. 1993: medieval lunar astrology: a collection of representative middle english texts. new york, the edwin mellen press. memt: middle english medical texts [cd-rom]. 2005: i. taavitsainen, p. pahta & m. mäkinen comps. amsterdam & philadephia, john benjamins. the oxford dictionary of the middle ages: volume 1. 2010: r. e. bjork comp. 4 vols. oxford, oxford university press. pahta, p. & i. taavitsainen 2004: vernaculatisation of scientific and medical writings. in i. taavitsainen & p. pahta eds. medical and scientific writing in late medieval english. cambridge, cambridge university press: 1–22. petti, a. g. 1977: english literary hands from chaucer to dryden. london, edward arnold. abbreviations in medieval medical manuscripts 183 preston, j. f. & l. yeandle 1999. english handwriting 1400–1650. an introductory manual. asheville, pegasus press. robbins, r. h. 1970: medical manuscripts in middle english. speculum 45: 393–415. taavitsainen, i. 1988: middle english lunaries. a study of the gender. helsinki, société néophilologique. taavitsainen, i. & p. pahta 1997: the corpus of early english medical writing: linguistic variation and prescriptive collocations in scholastic style. in t. nevalainen & l. kahlas-tarkka eds. to explain the present: studies in the changing english languages in honour of matti rissanen. helsinki, société néophilologique: 209–228. trice-martin, c. 1892: the record interpreter: a collection of abbreviations, latin words and names used in english historical manuscripts and records. chichester, phillimore. voigts, l. e. 1989: the character of the carecter: ambiguous sigils in scientific and medical texts. in a. j. minnis ed. latin and vernacular: studies in late-medieval texts and manuscripts. cambridge, d. s. brewer: 91–109. voigts, l. e. 1984: medical prose. in a. s. g edwards ed. middle english prose: a critical guide to major authors and genres. new brunswick, rutgers university press: 315–335. wallis, f. ed. 2010: medieval medicine. a reader. toronto, university of toronto press. author’s address departamento de filología moderna university of alcalá c/ trinidad, 3 28801 alcalá de henares madrid, spain received: 23 february 2018 e-mail: isabel.cruz@uah.es, i.diego@edu.uah.es revised version accepted: 20 march 2018 selim12.doc jordi sánchez-martí, selim 12 (2003-2004): 181—189 the sowdoun of babyloyne: a description of the manuscript � � date and provenance the middle english romance the sowdoun of babyloyne is extant in a unique manuscript, garrett collection of medieval and renaissance manuscripts no. 140, princeton university library.1 de ricci and guddatfigge agree in giving c. 1450 as the approximate date of production for the manuscript. from the inscriptions on the front fly-leaf (see fig. 1 below), the more recent ownership history of this codex becomes retraceable. after the death of rev. dr. richard farmer (1735-1797),2 the book’s first known owner,3 it was purchased by george steevens (1736-1800)4 at the book sale i would like to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to the spanish association for anlgo-american studies for a patricia shaw research grant that made my visit to princeton possible, and to don c. skemer, curator of manuscripts at princeton university library, for assisting me in the examination of garrett ms 140. 1 other descriptions of this manuscript are in seymour de ricci, census of medieval and renaissance manuscripts in the united states and canada, with the assistance of w.j. wilson (new york: wilson company, 1935), 1:893, and gisela guddatfigge, catalogue of manuscripts containing middle english romances (munich: wilhelm fink, 1976), 301–2; guddat-figge had access only to a microfilm, which hindered her description (cf. loc. cit., n. 1). see also the phillipps manuscripts. catalogus librorum manuscriptorum in bibliotheca d. thomæ phillipps, bt., with an introduction by a.n.l. munby (london: holland press, 1968), p. 129, no. 8357, and catalogue of the literature and history of the british islands, part i, bernard quaritch no. 193 (london, october 1899), p. 25, no. 85. 2 on dr. farmer, see seymour de ricci, english collectors of books & manuscripts (1530-1930) and their marks of ownership, sandars lectures 1929–30 (cambridge: university press, 1930), 58, and william younger fletcher, english book collectors (london: kegan paul, trench, trübner, 1902), 235–37. 3 fol. 41v contains the following inscription by an unidentified 16th century owner: “this is john eteyes boke, witnes by john staff” (quoted. in guddat-figge, catalogue of mss, p. 301; see also de ricci, census, 1:893). jordi sánchez-martí 182 of 15 june 1798 for £1. 10s, after the priced copy of the catalogue in cambridge university library (cul).5 afterwards, the book was bought for £3. 4s (cul marked copy) by octavius graham gilchrist (1779-1823)6 at the sale of the bibliotheca steevensiana on 20 may 1800.7 the next owner of this manuscript was the great book collector richard heber (1774-1833),8 who obtained it for £35. 10s (cul) in 1824 after the dissolution of gilchrist’s library.9 next the book was sold to the famed bibliophile sir thomas phillipps (1792-1872),10 who bought it at the sale of the bibliotheca 4 on steevens, see de ricci, english collectors, 62–63, and fletcher, english book collectors, 240–44. 5 bibliotheca farmeriana. a catalogue of the curious, valuable and extensive library in print and manuscript of the late rev. richard farmer, d.d. [1798], p. 370, lot 8085; the manuscript is described as follows: ‘romance of the sowdon of babylanne, in verse, on vellum. see ms. note, by ritson’. the exact date of purchase is taken from the inscription on the manuscript (see fig. 1). for copies of this and other sale catalogues, see a. n. l. munby and lenore coral, british book sale catalogues 1676-1800: a union list (london: mansell, 1977). 6 on gilchrist, see dictionary of national biography, ed. leslie stephen (london: smith, elder, & co., 1890), 21: 344. 7 bibliotheca steevensiana. a catalogue of the curious and valuable library of george steevens, esq. (started on may 13, 1800), p. 76, lot 1203. the exact date of purchace is taken from the inscription on the manuscrip (see fig. 1). the description reads: ‘the metrical romaunce of the sowdon of babylone, and of ferumbras his son, who conquered rome, and kinge charles of fraunce, with xii. dosey peres toke the sowdon in the feelde, and smote of his heede, ms. on vellum’. 8 on heber and his library, see arnold hunt, “bibliotheca heberiana,” in antiquaries, book collectors and the circles of learning, ed. robin myers and michael harris, 83–112 (winchester: st paul’s bibliographies, 1996). 9 catalogue of the valuable library of the late octavius gilchrist, esq. sold by auction by mr. evans (1824), p. 37, lot 1112. the description reads: ‘the romance of the sowdon of babylone, and of ferumbras his sone who conquered rome, and king charles of fraunce, with xii dosy peres, toke the sowden in the feelde and smote of his heede. manuscript’. the catalogue entry adds the following note: ‘it is written upon parchment, and is of considerable antiquity. the sowdon of babylon, and his son ferumbras formerly enjoyed a high reputation among the lovers of legendary lore. mr. ritson (in a manuscript note at the beginning of the volume), traces an allusion to this romance in the metrical history of bruce; and mr. gilchrist refers to one in the works of sir david lyndsay, and thinks it is designated in the romance of richard cœur de lion. there is a plain allusion to it in skelton’s “ware the hawke”. this unpublished metrical romance is highly deserving the attention of collectors of early english poetry.’ 10 on phillipps, see de ricci, english collectors of books, 118–30, and a. n. l. munby, portrait of an obsession: the life of sir thomas phillipps, the world’s greatest book collector (new york: putnam, 1967). the sowdoun of babyloyne: a description of the manuscript 183 heberiana started on 10 february 1836.11 after the dispersal of phillipps’s extensive collection, the manuscript was sold by auction to quaritch, the renowned antiquarian firm,12 for £60 in 1898.13 the volume was advertised in quaritch’s catalogues of 1898, 1899, and 1902 at the published price of £80,14 and eventually sold in 1905 to robert garrett (1875-1961).15 in 1942 garrett donated to princeton university library 171 western manuscripts of his private collection, including that of the sowdoun.16 (see figure 1) 11 bibliotheca heberiana. catalogue of the library of the late richard heber, esq., part xi (1836), p. 162, lot 1533. the description follows closely that of the catalogue of gilchrist’s sale. 12 on quaritch’s firm, see the special number for the 150th anniversary of bernard quaritch, ed. by richard linenthal, the book collector 46 (1997), and de ricci, english collectors of books, 158–68. 13 bibliotheca phillippica. catalogue of a further portion of the famous collection ... of the late sir thomas phillipps, bart., by sotheby, wilkinson & hodge (1898), p. 127, lot 976. the description reads: ‘romance the sowdon of babyloyne, an ancient metrical romance in old english, manuscript, written in the fifteenth century, on vellum folio. xv cent.’ i quote the price that appears on the marked copy in cul of the catalogus librorum manuscriptorum in bibliotheca d. thomæ phillipps, bt., entry 8357/1533. 14 see catalogue of rare & valuable books and choice illuminated manuscripts from the libraries of the late earl of ashburnhan, the wilbraham family, sir thomas phillipps and the rt. hon. the earl of morley, bernard quaritch no. 180 (london, july 1898), p. 7, no. 15. the description reads, ‘fierabras. english metrical romance of the sowdon of babyloyne ... small folio, ms. on vellum, 41 leaves, 42 lines to the page ... about 1450’; catalogue of the literature and history of the british islands, part i, bernard quaritch no. 193 (london, october 1899), p. 25, no. 85, which adds the following information: ‘said to be the unique copy of the work of an english poet in the time of henry vi, beautifully written in a cursive hand and apparently complete with the exception of parts of a few lines on the second last page’; and a catalogue of ancient, illuminated, & liturgical manuscripts ranging from the viith to the xviiith century, bernard quaritch no. 211 (london, january 1902), p. 50, no. 101. 15 on garrett, see donald c. dickinson, dictionary of american book collectors (new york: greenwood press, 1986), 133–34, and garrett’s “recollections of a collector,” princeton university library chronicle 10 (1949): 103–16. 16 see harold dodds, “acceptance of the collection by president dodds,” princeton university library chronicle 3 (1942): 113–14; donald drew egbert, “the western european manuscripts,” princeton university library chronicle 3 (1942): 123–30, esp. 129; c. u. faye and w. h. bond, supplement to the census of medieval and renaissance manuscripts in the united states and canada (new york: bibliographical society of america, 1962), 310. jordi sánchez-martí 184 contents the garrett manuscript contains only the single copy of the romance known as the sowdoun of babyloyne (imev 950.1),17 composed c. 1400,18 and copied in an east midland dialect.19 the sowdoun is a translation of the original of the anglo-norman version that appears in british library, egerton ms 3028,20 and was edited for the first time by the roxburghe club in 1854.21 material it is a vellum manuscript measuring 275 mm by 203 mm, consisting of 41 leaves,22 and with the following collation: 110 (fols. 1-10), 26 (fols. 11-16), 310 (fols. 17-26), 46 (fols. 27-32), 510-1 (fols. 33-41).23 there is slight ruling (see figs. 2 and 3 below) that marks the left corners of the writing block of 266 mm high (between 39-43 lines) indented approximately 45 mm from the 17 see carleton brown and rossell hope robbins, the index of middle english verse (new york: columbia univ. press, 1943); rossell hope robbins and john l. cutler, supplement to the index of middle english verse (lexington: univ. of kentucky press, 1965); richard hamer, a manuscript index to the index of middle english verse (london: the british library, 1995). a transcript of the manuscript by george steevens is now in oxford, bodleian library, douce ms 175. see also h. m. smyser, “charlemagne legends,” in a manual of the writings in middle english, 1050-1500, ed. j. burke severs, 1:82–84 (new haven: connecticut academy of arts and sciences, 1967). for a brief literary description, see w. r. j. barron, english medieval romance (london: longman, 1987), 99–103. 18 see emil hausknecht, ed., the romaunce of the sowdone of babylone and of ferumbras, eets es 38 (london: trübner, 1881), xlv–xlvii. 19 see hausknecht, ed., the sowdone, xxxiv–xl. 20 see h. m. smyser, “a new ms of the destruction de rome and fierabras,” harvard studies and notes in philology and literature 14 (1932): 339–49, and “the sowdon of babylon and its author,” harvard studies and notes in philology and literature 13 (1931): 185–218. 21 apart from hausknecht’s edition for eets, the romance has also been edited by alan lupack in three middle english charlemagne romances, teams (kalamazoo: medieval institute publications, 1990), 1–103. extracts of the romance appear in specimens of early english metrical romances, ed. george ellis, 2nd ed. (london, 1811), 2:369–419, and in middle english metrical romances, ed. w. h. french and c. b. hale (new york: prentice hall, 1930), 239–84. 22 the book is paginated in ink and the current curator has added foliation in pencil. 23 note that, to my knowledge, the statement of collation of this manuscript is not provided in any previous publication. the sowdoun of babyloyne: a description of the manuscript 185 left margin, always in single columns. it is in good condition, and the text is complete and clearly legible, despite that margins have been cut off for fols. 2-4, 8-10, 13, 25-26, 34, 36, 38-40, wormholes have affected the last 18 leaves, and some signs of humidity are visible. the text is written in brownish ink except for line 370 (fol. 5r), copied by a later hand in black ink (see fig. 2 below, line 4). it was bound in english half-calf c. 1790,24 and on the spine it reads, “the romaunce of the [...]don of babylone / ms”. script here i describe the morphology of the scribe’s hand (hybrid secretary book-hand, mid-15th c.):25 secretary single compartment a (“what”; fig. 3, l. 6); uncial d is predominant (“affrayned”; fig. 3, l. 5) with occasional examples of looped anglicana d (“roulande”; fig. 3, l. 8); uncial e is preferred (“telle”; fig. 3, l. 1), but cursive reversed form of e is sparingly adopted (“the”; fig. 2, l. 2); double-compartment anglicana form of g (“kinge”; fig. 3, l. 10); the ascender of h is always looped, with otiose stroke in medial position (“brought”; fig. 3, l. 3), and with looped limb when ligatured (“myschaunce”; fig. 3, l. 11); the ascender of l always turns into a loop (“olyvere”; fig. 3, l. 2); two forms of r are used: right-shouldered and 2shaped r (“prisoneres”; fig. 3, l. 12); s is represented in three forms: long s in initial and medial position (“spake”; fig. 2, l. 1; “myschaunce”; fig. 3, l. 11), anglicana sigma s mainly in final position (“names”; fig. 3, l. 6; but cf. “saide”; fig. 3, l. 7), short b-shaped s in final position (“wos”; fig. 3, l. 2); simple secretary form of w resembling a double v (“were”; fig. 3, l. 6) and anglicana w similar to one looped l and one looped b (“worthy”; fig. 3, l. 2). decoration this manuscript is a plain volume with decoration limited to the use of special display script for the explicit (fol. 41r) and to the flourishing of a 24 see de ricci, census, 1:893. 25 guddat-figge describes it as ‘clear secretary’ (catalogue of mss, 301). for this description i follow the terminology in m. b. parkes, english cursive book hands, 1250-1500 (oxford: clarendon press, 1969) and anthony g. petti, english literary hands from chaucer to dryden (cambridge, mass.: harvard univ. press, 1977). jordi sánchez-martí 186 letter in the first line of some pages (cf. “roulande”; fig. 3, l. 1). the scribe did, however, make allowances for the later possible inclusion of three-line initials, with guide letters visible on the following folios: 5v, 7v, 8r, 9r, 12r, 13v, 19r (see fig. 3 above), 21r, 21v, 22r, 34v, 35r; there are two exceptions: the six-line opening capital on fol. 1 and a two-line initial on fol. 30v. although these capitals were never executed, three of them were outlined: b in brown ink (fol. 5v), and n (fol. 7v) and s (fol. 8r) in pencil. jordi sánchez-martí universidad de alicante the sowdoun of babyloyne: a description of the manuscript 187 figure 1. garrett ms 140, front fly-leaf26 26 all facsimiles from the manuscript are reproduced with the permission of princeton university library. jordi sánchez-martí 188 figure 2. garrett ms 140 fol. 5r the sowdoun of babyloyne: a description of the manuscript 189 figure 3. garrett ms 140 fol. 19r selim12.doc hanna rutkowska, selim 12 (2003-2004): 127—142 selected orthographic features in english editions of the book of good maners (1487-1507) 0. introduction in this paper i am going to discuss some tentative results of my research on the orthography in several late fifteenth and early sixteenth century editions of a book printed in english. i will compare the spelling systems of three printers: william caxton, richard pynson and wynkyn de worde as apparent in several editions of caxton’s translation of le livre de bonnes moeurs (itself a translation from latin) by jacques legrand published in 1487 as the book of good maners. the editions considered in this analysis were printed by richard pynson (1494 and 1500) and wynkyn de worde (1498 and 1507). for the purposes of the present analysis, i transcribed a sample of approximately 6,000 words from each edition (altogether approximately 30,000). this was possible owing to my temporary access to early english books online (at http://wwwlib.umi.com/eebo/), a still ongoing project carried out by the universities of michigan and oxford (launched in 1999), comprising, in one comprehensive database, the facsimiles of 100,000 books published in english between 1475 and 1700 – out of 125,000 listed in the catalogues of early english books, namely pollard & redgrave’s shorttitle catalogue (1475-1640) and � wing’s short-title catalogue (16411700). the findings discussed in the present paper are part of a larger project aiming to describe the orthography in early printed books in english. obviously, only further and more exhaustive research in this line, based on a larger corpus, can lead to definitive and compelling conclusions in the area under consideration. http://wwwlib.umi.com/eebo/ hanna rutkowska 128 1. rationale and assumptions english orthography in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is considered highly inconsistent (see, e.g., scragg 1974:64, salmon 1999: 15). in fact, it is generally assumed that it achieved the state of relative stability as late as the mid-seventeenth century. the role of printers as a factor contributing to the regularisation and rationalisation of spelling was most probably only secondary, i.e., it consisted in dissemination and reinforcement rather than establishment of spelling rules. these rules were the contribution of theoretical linguists (spelling reformers, grammarians and orthoepists) and schoolmasters (see brengelman 1980: 333 and also scragg 1974:64, salmon 1999:18), like cheke, smith, hart, gil, coote, and mulcaster, to name but a few, who wrote their treatises (not all of them were published) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. i decided to analyse the texts printed by pynson and de worde for several reasons. firstly, they are the earliest well known printers (beside caxton) and, despite being foreigners, they are likely to have had at least some influence on the general spelling practice – in view of their considerable outputs. secondly, i was interested in the degree of (in)consistency of their spelling systems, and whether they made any efforts to improve them (therefore i chose to analyse several editions of the same book). it should be remembered that in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries publications on the reform of english spelling were not yet available. also the first printer’s rule-book was published as late as 1683-4 (written by moxon), so the printers in the fifteenth and early sixteenth century were not greatly assisted in their efforts to regularise their own spelling. john hart, the best-known sixteenth-century spelling reformer wrote in his orthographie (1569, fo. 15r) that “[p]rinters altered spelling as they pleased merely to fill up the compositor’s line in printing”. that opinion was worth verifying. thirdly, according to brengelman (1980: 333) “there is no evidence that any sort of mutual dissemination of information about spelling among printers was taking place – not even within the same printing house”. that statement seems rather counterintuitive, and constituted a stimulus for the decision to check whether printers took into consideration earlier editions of a given book, while preparing their own ones. finally, the standardisation and selected orthographic features in english editions of the bgm 129 regularisation of spelling did not happen overnight. therefore one could expect that some signs of it should be traceable in early printed books. 2. criteria and variables for the analysis spelling reformers (and other theoretical linguists) in the sixteenth and seventeenth century developed several proposals concerning the reform of spelling (listed by salmon 1999: 21). since these proposals proved to be very influential in the course of time, they have been used in the present study as the criteria showing the degree of regularisation in the texts analysed. they include: a)� the establishment of etymological spelling, b)� orthographic distinctions between homophones, c)� morphological spelling (a consistent orthographic representation of the same morphemes), d)� the clear indication of vowel length (either by doubling letters representing vowels or by adding a final <e>). it is noteworthy that in these proposals spelling reformers advocate establishing functional interrelation between orthography and other levels of language structure, namely semantics, morphology and phonology (with the exception of the first criterion which was motivated socially rather than linguistically – as it testifies to the high prestige of latin). 3. results of the analysis 3.1. etymological spelling in the early modern english context ‘etymological’ means ‘neo-latinate’, and it usually consists in adding epenthetic consonants which make the relevant words look more similar to their latin ancestors. table 1a presents the printers’ orthographic variants of seven words: advise, assault, avenge, damned, default, doubt (a verb) and doubt (a noun). hanna rutkowska 130 table 1a: etymological spelling: orthographic variants1 caxton 1487 pynson 1494 de worde 1498 pynson 1500 de worde 1507 advise (verb) (t)aguyse (3) aguyse aguise auise aguyse (3) (t)aguyse (3) (t)aguyse (3) assault (noun) assauot assauote assauote assaute assauote avenge (verb) aguenge (3) ague~ge (2)2 auenge a uenge (3) ague~ge aguenge (5) aguenge (3) auenge (2) aguenge (4) ague~ge damned (past participle) damsned (2) da~sned damsned (3) damsned (2) da~sned damsned (3) damsned (2) da~sned default (noun) defaute defanote3 defaute defauote defaute (2) defaute (2) defaute (2) doubt (verb) douete (2) douete douet douete (2) douete (2) douete (2) doubt (noun) douete douete douete doute douete all the lexemes in question are reflexes of latin words, but their direct source of borrowing into middle english was old french. table 1b indicates their parent forms in both romance languages. in all cases the consonant clusters existing in latin were simplified in old french, and reintroduced in late middle english and early modern english. 1 if a given form occurred more than once in the text, the number of occurrences is provided within brackets. 2 the tilde was frequently used by the printers to represent <n> or <m>. 3 the graphemes <u> and <n> are occasionally confused in the editions under consideration. selected orthographic features in english editions of the bgm 131 table 1b: etymological spelling: the origin of words old french latin advise aviser advisere assault asaut *adsaltus < adsilire (popular latin) avenge à avengier ad vindicare damn dam(p)ner dam(p)nare default defaute *fallitus < fallere (popular latin) doubt doute(r) dubitare on the basis of the data in table 1a we can conclude that in the book editions under consideration etymological spelling was predominant in the words listed here already at the end of the fifteenth century. in caxton we can see only one exception to the rule – one instance of defaute does not contain the etymological <l>, preserving the old french spelling. in his edition of 1494 pynson corrected the evident typographic mistake in caxton (<n> used instead of <u>), but was less consistent than caxton as regards etymological spelling. pynson’s provenance (he was a norman by birth) could be considered a factor contributing to his preference for the variants showing the old french orthography. in 1500 he introduced slight changes in his spelling, which show some idiosyncratic consistency. namely, all the nouns lack the epenthetic consonants, but nearly all the verbs (with the exception of three occurrences of aduenge) have the neo-latinate spelling. in contrast, de worde uses etymological spellings consistently, default being the only lexeme for which he uses the old variant. possibly, he was not aware of the relation between that word and its latin ancestor. 3.2. orthographic distinction between homophones the orthographic distinction between the homophones is the second criterion taken into consideration in the present study. hanna rutkowska 132 table 2a shows that caxton and de worde (the latter only in his first edition) consistently distinguish between the lexemes than and then. on the contrary, the number of orthographic variants in pynson’s edition of 1494 testifies to the total confusion on his part as far as the differentiation between both lexemes is concerned. however, in the version of 1500, although he still clearly did not differentiate between than and then, pynson became more consistent, using <a> in all the instances. interestingly, in his remaining editions, de worde also uses the spelling with <a> to represent then in one instance. that apparent typographic mistake makes it likely that de worde consulted pynson’s edition of the book while preparing his own. examples 14 below show the changes applied in the successive versions of the sentence containing the forms of then. in 1507 de worde could have copied the sentence without reflecting on the meaning of the word. table 2a: than and then caxton 1487 pynson 1494 de worde 1498 pynson 1500 de worde 1507 than (conjunction, preposition) than (9) tha~ (2) than (10) tha~ than (11) than (11) than (11) then (adverb) thenne (7) the~ne (10) than (11) tha~ (2) thanne thenne then the~ne thenne (17) than (9) thanne (7)4 thenne (10) then (6) than 1)� “thenne constanci95 began to gyue laud vnto god” (caxton 1487) 2)� “thenne constancius began to yeue laude vnto god” (pynson 1494) 4 the differences in the total number of occurrences in tables 2a, 3a, 3b, 4c and 5 results from the fact that short fragments of the text are missing from pynson’s edition of 1500. 5 the <9> symbol represents a flourish sometimes used instead of the word-final <us>. selected orthographic features in english editions of the bgm 133 3)� “thenne constancius began to gyue laude vnto god” (de worde 1498) 4)� “than constancius began to gyue laude vnto god” (pynson 1500, de worde 1507) in table 2b the gemination of the letter representing the consonant is a contrastive feature in caxton and de worde, but not in pynson. it helps avoid homographs. in contrast, in table 2c caxton and de worde consistently allow for homography – the gemination of the letter representing the vowel is not a distinctive feature here. pynson shows some hesitation in 1494, but in 1500 the geminated form prevails. table 2b: son and sun caxton_148 7 pynson_149 4 de worde_149 8 pynson_1500 de worde _1507 son (noun) sone sonne sone sonne sone sun (noun) sonne (2) sonne so~ne sonne (2) sonne (2) sonne (2) table 2c: sea and see caxton 1487 pynson 1494 de worde 1498 pynson 1500 de worde 1507 sea (noun) see (3) see (2) se see (3) see (3) see (3) see (verb) see (5) see se (4) see (5) see (3) se (2) see (5) in table 2d the distinction between sins and signes is preserved in caxton and in pynson’s first edition, but in de worde (both editions) and in pynson 1500 the geminated form appears instead of the one containing the cluster <gn> (as a spelling variant of signes). it could have been due to a typographical error. however, other interpretations are also possible. on the hanna rutkowska 134 one hand, in view of the etymology of sign – from latin signum, via old french sine, signe, it is possible that de worde simply used a different orthographic variant of sign (without <gn>) which was copied in later editions. on the other hand, he could have misunderstood the meaning of the word in question and interpreted it as ‘sins’. table 2d: sin, sins and signs caxton 1487 pynson 1494 de worde 1498 pynson 1500 de worde 1507 sin (noun, sg) synne (7) synne (7) synne (6) syune synne (7) synne (7) sins (noun, pl) synnes (2) synnes (2) synnes (2) synnes (2) synnes (2) signes (noun, pl) signes (3) signes (3) sygnes (2) synnes sygnes (2) synnes sygnes (2) synnes 1)� “more i ansuere to the and saye that many other signes ben accomplysshyd” (caxton 1487) 2)� “moreouer i answere to ye & say yt many other signes be accomplisshed” (pynson 1494) 3)� “more i answere to the & saye that many other synnes ben accomplysshed” (de worde 1498) 4)� “more i anshere to the & say that many other synnes be accomplysshed” (pynson 1500) 5)� “more i answere to the and saye that many other synnes ben accomplysshed” (de worde 1507) moreover, table 2d provides some more evidence for the claim that the printers must have consulted each other’s editions during the preparation of their own ones. � selected orthographic features in english editions of the bgm 135 3.3. morphological spelling the third criterion in the present analysis is morphological spelling. this section deals with selected inflectional and derivational suffixes. 3.3.1. inflection tables 3a and 3b show the orthographic variants of the third person singular ending {-th} in the verbs appear and say, the occurrences of which constitute more than 50 per cent of all verb forms used in the text. table 3a: the suffix {-th} in the verb appear6 caxton 1487 pynson 1494 de worde 1498 pynson 1500 de worde 1507 <-eth> 17 17 18 31 <-ethe> 4 7 <-yth> 8 1 36 5 <-ith> 11 14 <-ithe> 1 table 3b: the suffix {-th} in the verb say caxton 1487 pynson 1494 de worde 1498 pynson 1500 de worde 1507 <sayth> 19 3 35 11 34 <saythe> 2 4 <saith> 15 15 17 <saithe> 1 2 <seith> 11 <seithe> 3 <sath> 1 <sayeth> 1 in the above tables one can see that caxton is not consistent in his use of the third person variants. in his edition of 1494 pynson seems to have been 6 the orthographic variants found in the editions include: apappereth(e), apperyth, ap(p)erith(e), appieryth (only caxton), appryth (only de worde). hanna rutkowska 136 completely negligent about his choice of orthographic forms. however, de worde showed impressive consistency in his first edition. in 1500 pynson’s consistency increased, i.e., the number of types of orthographic forms used by him was smaller. surprisingly, in his second edition de worde changed his usage considerably as regards the variants of the verb appear. moreover, that change in his usage, involving a decrease in consistency, seems to have been due to the influence exerted by pynson’s edition of 1500. 3.3.2. derivation tables 4a-c list the orthographic forms recorded for three derivational suffixes, i.e., {-ness}, a native suffix, as well as {-al} and {-ity}, borrowed from french and latin. table 4a: the suffix {-ness} caxton 1487 pynson 1494 de worde 1498 pynson 1500 de worde 1507 <-nesse> fraylnesse frailnesse mekenesse (3) fraylnesse mekenesse (2) fraylnesse mekenesse (3) fraylnesse mekenesse (2) <-nes> mekenes (3) clerenes clernes mekenes clerenes clerenes mekenes clerenes table 4 lists the occurrences of the two recorded orthographic variants of the suffix {-ness}, namely <-nesse> and <-nes>. pynson and de worde clearly favoured the longer variant, the one with the geminated <s> and the final <-e>, and did not change their usage over time. it is noteworthy that, in that case, pynson was slightly more consistent than de worde, i.e., the only exception to his rule was the single occurrence of clernes in his both editions. table 4b comprises the words containing the suffix {-al} (originally from latin {-alis}) in one of four forms recorded, <-al>, <-all>, <-el>, <-ell>. the differences among the printers are considerable. caxton used all the four endings, with some preference for single <l>. in 1494 pynson showed a marked preference for <-all>, with only two occurrences of <-al>. in selected orthographic features in english editions of the bgm 137 contrast, de worde used the variants <al>, <all> and <ell> (disregarding <el>) but attached them to different words than caxton. in 1500 pynson changed his consistent approach, applying all the four forms. his use of temporal and the introduction of <-ell> points to the likely influence from de worde 1498. in 1507 de worde chose an alternative type of consistency, i.e., he retained the geminated forms, both <-all> and <-ell>.7 apparently, he considered the endings containing <a> and <e>, respectively, to be distinctive (not interchangeable), if not morphologically, at least lexically; he avoided attaching different suffixal variants to the same root. table 4b: the suffix {-al} caxton 1487 pynson 1494 de worde 1498 pynson 1500 de worde 1507 <-al> princypal pryncypal mortal fynal temporal pryncypal fynal natural <-all> fynall principall (2) te~porall naturall mortall8 pryncypall fynall principall (2) pryncypall (2) fynall <-el> naturel temporel <-ell> temporell (2) temporell (2) naturell temporell temporell (2) naturell table 4c shows the forms of the suffix {-ity} (originally from latin {-itatem}), including <-ite> and <-yte>. caxton did not show much preference for any of the two forms, whereas pynson preferred <-ite>. pynson’s choice matches his general predilection for <i>, to the detriment of <y> in his editions. in contrast, de worde favoured <-yte>, and <y> in his editions.9 7 this conclusion about de worde’s preference for geminates confirms the findings of blake (1965: 69) who analysed a different document printed by de worde. 8 the sentence containing the adjective mortal is omitted three editions: de worde 1498 and 1507, pynson 1500. 9 for example, pynson’s diligent, principally, and glorifie, compared to de worde’s dilygent, pryncypally, and gloryfye, respectively. hanna rutkowska 138 however, one instance of humilite may be the result of influence from pynson’s previous edition. table 4c: the suffix {-ity} caxton 1487 pynson 1494 de worde 1498 pynson 1500 de worde 1507 <-ite> humylite (9) humilite humylite (3) humilite (11) humilite (1) humylite (8) humilite <-yte> humylyte (5) chastyte humanyte humylyte chastyte humanyte humylyte (15) chastyte humanyte humylyte (2) hu~mylyte chastyte humanyte humylyte (14) chastyte humanyte both in pynson’s and de worde’s use of the orthographic variants of suffixes, especially of {-al} in table 4b, one can see a tendency towards incresed consistency, interrupted by occasional influences from previous editions. 3.4. vowel length indication the criterion to be discussed in this section concerns the indication of vowel length. there are two basic ways of showing vowel length recorded in the editions: a)� doubling the letter representing the vowel and b)� adding the final <-e> in the syllable following the one containing the long vowel. the variants of do and so in table 5 show that the doubling of the letter corresponding to the long vowel did not prevail in those words. the only word, where it was consistently applied is flee (with merely one exception in caxton). in pynson the final single vowel is particularly frequent.10 in his paper, blake (1965: 67) wrote about pynson’s “very strong tendency to 10 see also table 2c. selected orthographic features in english editions of the bgm 139 double all final single vowels” in reynard the fox. apparently, no such tendency can be traced in the book of good maners. as regards the words ending in a consonant, there was no unanimity among the printers either. in the case of book, caxton hesitated between doubling the final letter and adding the final <-e>, without showing a marked preference for any of those measures, whereas in life he did not indicate the length of the vowel at all. in contrast, in his first edition pynson was surprisingly consistent with regard to book, i.e., he indicated the length of the vowel solely by adding the final <-e>. however, in the variants of life, no such consistency is evident. interestingly, in 1500 he introduced double marking of the vowel length in book (in the five instances of booke). also in this case mutual influences can be seen between pynson and de worde. the latter, in his edition of 1498, seems to have been as consistent as pynson in 1494, adding a final <-e> in all the instances of the word book. in turn, in his edition of 1507, he must have been influenced by pynson’s second edition, since he also introduced double marking in several instances. as regards life, pynson consistently added the final <-e> in it in 1500, and so did de worde in 1507. on the other hand, in 1500 pynson replaced <i> with <y> in two instances of the word life, which testifies to his being influenced by de worde’s edition of 1498. table 5: vowel length indication caxton 1487 pynson 1494 de worde 1498 pynson 1500 de worde 1507 book book (20) boke (24) boke (44) boke (44) boke (36) booke (5) boke (40) booke (4) do doo (9) do (2) doo do (10) doo (3) do (8) doo do (10) doo (3) do (8) so soo (2) so (19) soo (2) so (19) soo (7) so (14) soo (4) so (17) soo (9) so (12) flee flee (5) fle (1) flee (6) flee (6) flee (2) flee (6) life lyf (4) lif (3) life lyfe (4) lyfe (2) life (2) lyfe (4) hanna rutkowska 140 nevertheless, the use of final <-e> cannot always be explained as a measure indicating the vowel length. on the contrary, it is very frequently added for no apparent reason, for example in kynge, kinge, sonne ‘sun’, whiche, whyche, and suche. 4. conclusions to sum up, it must be admitted that the texts under consideration show a large degree of variation. it was certainly at least partly due to the fact that there was still no significant pressure from spelling reformers to regularise and rationalise the spelling. moreover, important differences can be seen in the printers’ consistency. namely, de worde seems to have been more consistent in his editions than pynson. however, also pynson made some improvements in that regard. on the whole, later editions are more convergent than the earlier ones, i.e., the differences in the distribution of variants are not so conspicuous. it seems that hart’s claim that printers altered spelling “as they pleased to fill up the compositor’s line in printing” (1569, fo. 15r) was too strong, though it might have been true of the use of tildes and contractions. at least in some cases, for example in the distribution of verb forms in the third person singular and of the variants of the {-al} suffix, the modifications introduced in the editions represent the printers’ conscious efforts aiming to reduce the degree of variation and make their spelling more consistent. thus, they did not always copy the text thoughtlessly. in view of the above findings, neither is it possible to agree with brengelman who wrote that there is no evidence “that any sort of mutual dissemination of information about spelling among printers was taking place” (1980: 333). in fact, the analysis of the similarities and differences among the editions of the book of good maners leads to the opposite conclusion, i.e., that the printers consulted one another’s works and that mutual influences between them were frequent. undoubtedly, the analysis presented above does not show an exhaustive picture of the early printers’ orthographic systems, and more research needs to be done regarding the distribution of particular graphemes, punctuation and capitalisation in the documents published by a larger number of printers. selected orthographic features in english editions of the bgm 141 as indicated in the introduction, the present study is part of a large project in progress. hanna rutkowska adam mickiewicz university references alston, r. c. ed. 1969: english linguistics 1500-1800: a collection of facsimile reprints. the scholar press, menston. blake, n. f. 1965: english versions of ‘reynard the fox’ in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. studies in philology 62: 63-77. brengelman, f. h. 1980: orthoepists, printers and the rationalisation of english spelling. journal of english and germanic philology 79: 332-354. hart, j. 1569: an orthographie. in alston 1969. lass, r. ed. 1999: the cambridge history of the english language. volume iii: 1476-1776. cambridge university press, cambridge. pollard, a. w., g. r. redgrave et al. 1976-91: a short-title catalogue of books printed in england, scotland and ireland and of english books printed abroad, 1475-1640. 2nd ed. bibliographical society, london. salmon, v. 1999: orthography and punctuation. in lass 1999: 13-55. scragg, d. g. 1974: a history of english spelling. manchester university press and barnes & noble books, new york. simpson, j. a. and e. s. c.weiner eds. 1992: the oxford english dictionary on cd-rom. oxford university press, oxford. wing, d. g., 1904-72: short-title catalogue of books printed in england, scotland, ireland, wales and british america and of english books hanna rutkowska 142 printed in other countries. bibliographic society of the university of virginia, charlottesville. * † * selim12.doc enrique bernárdez, selim 12 (2003-2004): 5—31 toward a common history of the germanic and european languages in the middle ages1 seeing the development of earlier forms of speech in the terms of the history of a particular language is something we just take for granted, even if we are principally ready and willing to deny the reality of such a view. at the same time, everybody is able to identify a considerable number of developments which are common to the history of ‘individual’ languages. for instance, the history of the western and northern germanic languages shows a number of points in common; not only in their prehistory, but also in the successive stages of their written use and their well-known modern histories. in a very interesting article which has served as one of the main sources of inspiration for this paper, horst haider munske (1995: 399) complains on wie sehr unsere neueren philologien im korsett genetisch begründeter sprachgruppen eingeschnürt sind, wie sehr insbesondere die philologien im bereich der germanischen sprachen (…) nunmehr auf eine nationalsprache bezogen sind und wie sehr dabei die eingebundenheit der sprachgeschichte unseres raumes in die europäische geschichte verlorengeht oder eine teleologisch geprägte darstellung findet. we tend to articulate the history of language in terms of individual histories of individual languages. this method, as perfectly well known, poses lots of problems, because the historical, geographical, but also ‘linguistic’ limits of a particular language are everything but clear: synchronically, and even more so diachronically. 1 this is a revised version of a plenary talk delivered at the selim conference in murcia, 2003. my thanks go to all those who offered me their comments, observations, and criticism. enrique bernárdez 6 some problems with the historical definition of national languages let me show a straightforward example of such difficulties. of course there was no afrikaans in the medieval period, so we tend to think that it would make no sense to include a chapter on that period in any geskiedenis van die afrikaanse taal. in fact, such histories begin with the dutch settlements in southern africa. however, the language did exist in the middle ages, too, only in a form we prefer to call dutch, nederlands, because the area were the dialects were spoken which would –in due time– ‘give birth’ to afrikaans, corresponds (more or less) to one where some present-day dutch dialects are still in use. as the name, afrikaans, refers to africa, it is fairly obvious that no such european language was ever spoken in southern africa in the middle ages: there was no medieval afrikaans. so, the right place for that chapter of the history of afrikaans is something like de nederlandse taal in de middeleeuwen, ‘the dutch language in medieval times’; it sounds extremely odd, however, because we prefer to refer to a language only when ‘it really existed’ and, moreover, the history of that language cannot in principle refer to a different language, even if its at the origin of the one we are studying: no chapter on the history of latin would (normally: there are exceptions!) find its place in a history of spanish. also, why not talk of ‘the english language of the third millennium bc’ (it is sometimes done, however, even if we use the term ‘indo-european’ instead of ‘english’)? in the middle ages it is quite difficult indeed to talk of the individual languages in an straightforward way, as things seem to have been quite mixed up at the time (when were they not, in fact?). we frequently lack information on certain periods of certain ‘languages’, but have a way of assigning historical labels which forces us to talk of middle frisian when there is really not much old frisian to begin with, and of an old icelandic which corresponds chronologically with other middle-languages while the language itself cannot be older than the end of the 9th century… a period which is not attested… in iceland, although it is the ‘same’ language elsewhere, in the form of west norse runic inscriptions, for example. moreover, it is frequently not quite clear in which language certain texts were written. we know about the rather indefinable language of the german toward a common history of the germanic and european languages 7 hildebrandslied, but something similar happened with the more-or-less-old dutch translation of the psalms. as it seems, medieval writers –poets, but also scribes, in a way– did not care much about the concrete language they were using: we know there existed no such notion as ‘national language’. for instance, did the limburgs (dutch? flemish? belgian?) poet hendrik van veldeke (12th c.) write in limburgs, in dutch, or in german? in fact, his language can be defined as a form of literary german with dutch-limburgish elements. but the same thing happens elsewhere. the catalan troubadours wrote in… catalan? in provençal? in some mixture? even the greatest of the catalan (and/or valencian) medieval poets, ausiàs march, used a language which is difficult to define precisely. but well, chaucer’s english also has at least some french in it. so, some of the most important literary texts of the middle-x period, everywhere in western europe were written in some kind of ‘mixed language’; or, more precisely perhaps, in a specialised language which did not necessarily coincide with the language of the territory: witness alfonso the learned using galician-portuguese for his non-religious, lyric poetry. of course, it is well known that the german minnesinger’s language is dialectically fairly indefinable, so that they were indeed using a ‘supraregional’ language. at the same time, their poems were sung to tunes which were frequently of french origin (or was it provençal?). but again, we all know a couple of things on the relations between the provençal troubadours and the north french trouvères, and the degree of coincidence in their metres, styles, melodies, but also language. according to the degree of possible intelligibility among the languages involved, the mixing yielded different results, and in the case of english, a nice combination of english and french words, metres, grammatical features, styles, and the like can be found. but well, these literary mixtures –and one should keep in mind that my catalogue has been far from complete– are typical of the intellectual atmosphere of western europe in the whole of the middle ages –and later, but also before the middle ages proper. it is impossible to write a history of any individual literature of medieval western europe –and beyond– without due consideration of the other literatures: or is there in fact one westerneuropean medieval literature, with many different particular forms of enrique bernárdez 8 expression? a very easy example: the english literature of the middle ages cannot be understood without a knowledge of latin and french literature, but also of the continental saxons (genesis?), the dutch (elkerlijck – everyman, but also the psalms) and the scandinavian (from beowulf to havelok… and so much more); needless to say, the italian, too. and others. quite frequently, one finds the same texts reproduced –more than translated– from south to north: the )uhqfk alexandreis, written in /dwlq, reappears in the &dvwloldq (or is it $udjrqhvh?) libre de aleixandre, but also in abbot brandur jónsson’s ,fhodqglf alexanders saga mikla (written in a language which they used to call dansk tunga, 'dqlvk). clearly, then, there is a cultural, including a literary, continuum. certainly, the christian church played a significant role, but not only the church: when we find western european cultural elements in non-christian areas, e.g. before the christian religion was inoculated through the teaching of missionaries and the decrees of kings, but also through the wounds opened by spears and swords (parts of both germanic and finnic scandinavia before the 12th c., but also the baltic countries, etc.), and they are not at all infrequent, it is not a matter of religion, but a matter of culture –and language. a common european playground so, there seems to have always existed a wide set of common elements in european culture and, correspondingly, in the individual european cultures: a set of relations, combinations, confusions, which are sometimes reinforced by the historical developments: first the expansion of agriculture, and (maybe with it) the indopeuropean peoples and especially their languages, then the roman empire, then christianity, then french culture, now anglo-american culture hand in hand with globalisation. of course, not just in a simple line: the roman empire goes together with christianity for some time, while the greek, arabic, and hebrew cultures, together with the kingdom of castile as their main intermediary and agent of continental transmission, also played a very significant role. and the normans settled in the british islands and normandy, but also in sicily, while the catalans made their presence felt in constantinople, where the normans had also been and which the turks –and islam– will conquer. toward a common history of the germanic and european languages 9 could anyone just think of writing purely separate national histories of the european… countries, without a common guideline? of the european states? however, we take as the default case the continuity of a certain number of national, political, religious, but also cultural and even linguistic units: let us call them france, spain, portugal, italy, sweden, germany, england (or the united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, plus the isle of man? or the british isles, or…?). we all know that these units represent no ‘natural’ units in any possible sense, witness the incredibly many changes in their borders, their forms of organisation, etc. through just modern times. of course, there is a certain competition around: which is the ‘oldest’ state in europe? the winner is… well, nobody can know for sure. the problem of the national language all these things are well known, although they also are –from time to time– the matter of considerable debate, not least due to the centrifugal tendencies of contemporary nationalisms, which try to emphasise the differences (what seems to me fully right in itself) while frequently reproducing the old schema of the centralistic states. this implies the need for a special, individual language –or form of a language, in the worst case, or ways of using the language in the best case– because otherwise an element is lost in the equation: a national (ethnic?) unit æ a cultural unit æ a political unit æ a linguistic unit to this, an unfortunate last element is added much too frequently: d� uholjlrxv�xqlw.2 but as for language, the old problems will be multiplied with the need to see these languages or forms of language as units which are moreover associated to a certain, more or less linear history. but then, if one has such a national-cultural and political unit, one also needs a (national, cultural, political) history, to which a history of the language has to be added. 2 all this is still visible in the developments within the european union, including the attempts, by rightist parties under the lead of pope john paul ii, to see the christian religion as one of the bases for the construction of europe, with its statelike organisation; language, on the other hand, is a still unsolved problem. enrique bernárdez 10 could it be that, for instance in present day spain, new, relatively independent histories have to be written for, say, andalusian, and canarian spanish? some people would like to see –and try to propose– the history of valencian as different from that of catalan, having just their latin origin as a common link, shared with spanish (i.e. castilian) and so many other languages. most people probably think that we can still talk of a history of the catalan language and a history of the spanish language, where separate mention would be made of the history of separate dialects, variants, or whatever: a history of canarian, bolivian, murcian spanish… the problem, for many people –including some politicians… and linguists– is that such a thing could ‘stink of dialectology’, with the corresponding devaluation of the language that is seen as corresponding to that ‘national unit’. let us think fractally for a moment. could it be that there is succession of ever-increasing units, corresponding to a single one of the highest order? say, a history of human language that could be split, at a second level, in a number of areal linguistic histories with, at a third level, a new split in a number of regional language histories, to end with the histories of individual languages and, finally, with the histories of the individual varieties of the individual languages? in fact, that is what we usually do. there are some attempts to write about somewhat approximating ‘common human language’ in terms of its general historical developments, and then the historical study of linguistic macrogroups, such as nostratic and the like, or greenberg and ruhlen’s prehistoric macrofamilies, or fortescue’s meshes; then there are the more concrete, individual ‘family groups’: indo-european+finnic, for instance, or semito-camitic, or uralic-altaic etc. then, a new step brings us to the traditional families: indo-european, finnic, semitic, athabaskan. then, to the groups and subgroups: germanic æ north-west germanic æ west germanic æ anglo-frisian æ anglian æ northumbrian æ newcastle english. toward a common history of the germanic and european languages 11 language and culture and their apparently separate histories but see that there is a difference with the situation of culture in general: there, we talked about influences, about the extension of fashions, habits, tendencies, in such a way that the individual cultures have to be seen as little more than idiosyncratic components, or elements, of a much wider reality. of course, culture is a matter of social relation and interaction, which freely crosses any political, linguistic, social, economic or ethnic borders. the same happens with literature. but when we go on to language, ‘genetics’ takes the place of ‘social interaction’, so to speak. that is: in the history of culture –and literature– nobody would think of drawing a more or less straight, uninterrupted line directly linking, say, indo-european culture and contemporary yorkshire culture; that is, present-day yorkshire culture (whatever it may be) cannot be defined as yorkshirean, northumbrian, anglian, anglo-frisian, westgermanic, north-west-germanic, germanic, old european, indo-european. however, the linguistic ancestry of the yorkshire dialect is taken to be precisely that, apart from some influences due to historical accident: the yorkshire dialect is an indo-european language, just in the same way as i am a bernárdez: everybody from individuals to languages and nations, apparently needs a well-defined line of descent. of course, that is not fully right, so that we first have to decide what we understand under ‘line of descent’. in my case, for instance, my male lineage goes back directly until, at least, the first quarter of the 15th century. and that is fine, because we use a male line of parental descent. that is, if i take my father, then my father’s father, then his father, his father, his father, etc., we could get to a direct ancestor of mine in the early 15th century, don nuño bernárdez, from ourense. it would be different if we took the female lineage, but it could also be definable as a straight line, as among the navajo, for instance. we just do not care for all the rest: there is no problem in my mother’s mother’s line being mixed up sometime back in the past, if i am only considering my male lineage. but of course, i have no idea whether a certain male bernárdez who appears in the records of my direct line of ancestry and who lived, say, in the mid 18th century, was the son of his father; biologically, that is. if he were not, my genetic line of descent would be enrique bernárdez 12 interrupted. in fact, we take legal ancestry as the only basis, and real genetic relations are just ‘assumed’. this is the reality. we just have to remember the many dynastic wars –in europe, but also elsewhere– that were due to this type of ‘accident’. but we take this not to be possible for languages: apart from such things as pidgins and creoles, and other ‘horrendous’ forms of language, as the pseudo-german rotwelsch or the spanish-gypsy caló,3 languages show an enviable decency in their lineage: in spite of everything, english is an indoeuropean language; it is even germanic (although it does not look much like the other germanic languages in so many respects), and west germanic. the same holds for all the other european languages, mutatis mutandis and ceteris paribus. confluent developments are readily accepted, but they are somewhat anomalous exceptions and, in the last term, they do not falsify the clear genetic lineage of languages: in the sprachbund of the balkan peninsula, in spite of the existence of developments which cross the genetic boundaries, macedonian continues to be (south) slavonic, whereas rumanian is a romance language, albanese is what it is and greek is greek. language meshes and the inevitability of language contact are things necessarily thus? i mean, is it necessarily so that we have to pay special –or even exclusive– attention to the genetic ancestry of languages when trying to analyse their history, taking for granted that a clear genetic ancestry is always there, unchanged and unchangeable, and that the accidents that may obscure its filiations are just that: accidents which do not alter the essence of things? linguists devoted to the study of language families with a much weaker scholarly tradition and also, most importantly, whose languages have only recently been attested, do not have things so clear all the time and have been forced to propose, as an important possibility, the idea that a language’s history cannot always be best understood in genetic terms. michael fortescue (1998; cited in bakker 2003), when studying the ‘language relations across 3 which has kept the original romani words, while using the grammar of spanish – with a few exceptions, such as the masculine-feminine opposition seen in gachógachí, caló-calí, etc., and little more. toward a common history of the germanic and european languages 13 the bering strait’, proposes a term, to add to the traditional ones of family, stock, and the like: mesh. this is the ‘term for a set of languages that share part of their histories, either because they are genetically related or because they have influenced one another in other ways, for instance because they were spoken in adjacent areas or by bilingual groups’ (bakker 2003: 151). in quite recent times, other scholars have shown the extent to which contact and diffusion over and across non-genetic borders can rapidly modify the structures of a language (aikhenvald 2003, schieffelin 2002). could it be that the linguistic situation in western europe, now as well as in the middle ages, were more a matter of a linguistic mesh than of a number of well-defined genetic groupings? it might thus be that in addition to the histories of the individual languages (english, etc.) or of the genetic groupings (history of the germanic, or of the west germanic languages, etc.) we should try to write the history of the western european linguistic mesh in the middle ages. and it is my idea that such an approach could be quite illuminating, also for the individual histories: some changes would be understood as more or less generalised tendencies, active in large parts of the european continent, independently of the genetic relations of the individual languages. dixon’s (1997: 29) position is similar: “the family tree model, while appropriate and useful in many circumstances, is not applicable everywhere and cannot explain every type of relationship between languages. we need a more inclusive model, which integrated together the ideas of family tree and of diffusion area”. within our entrenched genetic view of language history, it is frequently quite useful, when studying a particular change in a particular language, to look at similar developments in related languages; say, we can study old english breaking in the framework of the other germanic languages (howell 1991). and a reconstruction of common germanic sentence structure (hopper 1975) can provide us with many useful insights in the possible ways of development of the daughter languages. of course, all this is what genetic linguistics, for instance indo-european linguistics, or germanic linguistics, is about. enrique bernárdez 14 without leaving that genetic view, we can accept diffusion, language contact even between non genetically related languages, which would yield the possibility of ‘language mixing’, creolisation, and pidginisation. but this is not the point i am aiming at here. the european linguistic mesh my idea, and my proposal, is that the languages in europe, irrespective of their genetic affiliation, behave as a mesh, as a unit where changes can begin and extend in the same way as within a genetic group –a family– or a single language –which ultimately is also a group of variants. that is, the european languages develop –during the middle ages, as i shall mainly limit my observations to that period– in an unitary fashion and as a whole; i.e., there is no need to posit particular points or foci of origin for every single change: changes may arise at the same time, or closely at the same time, in different parts of the continent. the rationale for this proposal is that language –as any other cultural, or social phenomenon– allows individuals ‘to do things’. whenever the need arises to do something new, people try to find the best and easiest way to do it. linguistic changes among varieties or related and unrelated languages, therefore, take the form of invisible hand phenomena, similarly to the processes that take place among individuals in a linguistic, cultural, etc., community (keller 1990). of course, when language is involved a difficulty arises which is not always present in other forms of social interaction: languages can be, or be not, mutually intelligible, so that direct imitation is much more difficult across genetic boundaries. or, more precisely: we have to define a continuum of linguistic similarity and intelligibility, reaching from languages which, while not mutually intelligible, enjoy the benefits of bior multilingualism – remember that this, not strict monolingualism, has been the most frequent situation for centuries (or millennia)–, to languages which are only partially – or even just slightly– intelligible, to languages with a high degree of intelligibility. of course, the speed and scope of the ‘imitation’ will depend on the degree of intelligibility –among other things i shall not enter into here–: genetic relationship will be subordinate to this. toward a common history of the germanic and european languages 15 centring our attention, when doing language history, in the evolution of the individual languages and the genetic groups brings about the danger of seeing change teleologically: we know that linguistic change is not teleological except in an extremely abstract sense. but we tend to see changes in terms of the ‘final state’ achieved, i.e., most frequently in terms of some modern phenomena. for instance, we may take the received pronunciation of the originally long vowels (of middle english) as the concluding point of the great vowel shift. teleology, in this respect, would be interpretable as follows: «the changes that have affected the me vowels lead to the form xx». it is ‘as if’ the changes would have ‘intended’ to yield the present-day result. it does not matter much whether we choose as the final point in the development the cockney vowels, or the general american vowels, or whatever: the presentday vowels are there because they were due to a series of historical changes; or, inversely, the changes happen because they will lead to a certain result. similarly, the development of the perfect tenses in english, viewed as a purely internal development, leads to a certain result –which coincides with the modern values and uses of the tenses. that is, although nobody would express it in this way, it is as if the english language ‘were looking for’ its present-day state. and what if other languages undergo processes similar to those of english? we tend to see this coincidence in four possible ways: (a) as independent developments which yield similar results by mere chance; (b) as ‘false coincidences’, as the resulting stages are only superficially similar; (c) as the result of some inherent tendencies in the language group; (d) as the result of influence from one language on the other. an approximation to some case-studies but let us –much too briefly– examine a few changes of great importance in the history of english, which begin or develop during the middle ages. we shall see that very similar changes happen in other regions of europe, within the germanic group but also outside it: genetic boundaries do not seem to be of paramount importance in this respect. my point is that for reasons which can be sought in the european culture of a particular point of enrique bernárdez 16 time, and which influence the communicative needs of people, the languages develop the tools necessary to satisfy the new communicative needs felt over a wider or limited area. recent studies on processes of on-going linguistic change in a number of communities have shown that very rapid and dramatic social change which includes new communicative needs provokes –in an extremely short period of time, of simply a few years, or of one generation,4 the development and/or extension of new forms of expression: from the vocabulary to quite a number of important linguistic elements, including syntax and morphology. in fact, a rapid change in the communicative needs –that is, in the need to do something inside a society or a social group leads to a number of changes in the structure of the language –in the understanding that linguistic structures have to be viewed in terms of usage and as a result of usage, something that should not be controversial any more. marking the development of time when analysing the many deep changes in the new guinean language, bosavi kaluli, brought about by the action of fundamentalist christian missionaries, schieffelin (2002) emphasises the dramatic modification of the concept of time and its forms of expression in the new context of a previously practically unknown type of speech: authoritative monologue, as used by preachers, teachers, etc (both australian and converted and trained aboriginal). as she writes (page s6), these new [monologic] genres [i.e., sermon and lesson] aimed at shifting bosavi people away from their indigenous time-place orientation to a fundamentalist christian sense of time –one with no need for a bosavi past, a present charged with change, and a future that depended on choices made in the present. it was perhaps a need similar to that instilled into the kaluli what lead to the complete restructuring of the tense systems in the germanic languages, but also in so many other european languages: for a number of reasons (christianisation may be just one of them), the need arouse to be able to speak 4 the time that has been shown to be enough for a pidgin to change into a creole (voorhoeve, 1983). toward a common history of the germanic and european languages 17 about the passage of time, especially in relation to the present, which was now seen as some kind of ‘final stage’ to which everything previous has led, and which determines the future. this is the new philosophy of history that develops in the middle ages and extends its influence practically everywhere. and it is in clear opposition to a basically cyclic view of time, as in so many european pre-christian mythologies. let us first concentrate on the germanic languages. their expression of time was relatively simple and not very precise, the basic distinction being one between an action seen as non-actual, vs. an actual process; the so-called past tense showed that the process involved was not actual: it was not directly observable nor in any way related to the present. on the other hand, the socalled present, sometimes (better) non-past introduced the process as directly linked to the time of speech, whether in terms of time proper (something happening in the general temporal space of the present) or in its relation to the present moment (as in the extremely frequently occurring ‘historical present’ as used, e.g., in the icelandic sagas): there it serves a clear function of profiling. this system changed dramatically and new, very precise forms of marking the time of the event and its relation to the present were developed: systematically, by means of the use of auxiliary verbs, mainly those glossed as ‘to have’ and ‘to be’. just as in the romance languages (where they also are a new development on the base of a rather different low latin system) and even in greek (where there also exist perfect tenses built with the verb echō). in the history of the particular languages, say the history of english, explanations for this extremely important change are usually found in internal developments, sometimes including the possible effects of language contact. but it is striking that practically the same development occurs practically everywhere at practically the same time. and that nothing similar happens anywhere else. a similar development is identifiable in some modern celtic languages: irish tá an dinnéar ite ag seán ‘john has eaten dinner’ has the auxiliary (tá) and a past participle; the use of the preposition ag ‘at’ points to the identity of this auxiliary, which otherwise means ‘to be’ with the verb of possession, enrique bernárdez 18 as ‘john has it’ is expressed as tá sé ag seán. the welsh construction is different: yr wyf i wedi clywed y gwcw ‘i have heard the cuckoo’, has to be seen in the context of its periphrastic form of verb inflection, and the present tense equivalent to the above sentence just changes the auxiliary: yr wyf i yn clywed y gwcw: there was no free slot where a ‘perfect tense’ in this new sense and with this new form could fit. in the baltic, latvian has a compound perfect conjugation formed with the verb būt ‘to be’ and the past active participle, as in es esmu strādājis (fem. es esmu stradājusi), ‘i have worked’. serbo-croat uses a form that is quite similar to that of latvian: ja sam pevao (fem. ja sam pevala) ‘i sung/i have sung’, with the verb ‘to be’ (as in latvian and modern irish, there is no verb of possession proper) plus the active past participle; also in old russian. on the other hand, the romance language, romanian uses (phonetically reduced forms of) the verb a avea ‘to have’ with the past participle: (eu) am spus ‘i have said’; similarly in modern greek: écho chásei ‘i have lost’, with the verb ‘to have’ and a form that is identical with the 3rd person sg of the indefinite. it was a new development, as the koiné still used the classical forms with endings and reduplication and no compound tense. but other languages of the area, such as albanese, lack such compound tenses. in the far north, finnish also has compound tenses with the verb ole‘to have’ and the past participle active of the verb: olen saanut ‘i have received’ and similarly in saami: sån læ boattán ‘he has come’. as for the indo-european languages of india, some of them at least also show a superficially similar construction: cf. punjabi ó bár gya e ‘he has gone out’ with the auxiliary (e) and the past participle of the verb (bár gya). however, as the conjugation is basically carried out by means of auxiliaries (as in welsh), this ‘perfect tense’ construction occupies in the grammatical structures of the language a position that is quite different from that of the geographically european languages. why such perfect tense forms in languages of different types and genetic affiliation? we might think that it may be some kind of (semi-) universal tendency which can appear here and there depending on basically internal features and conditions of the individual languages; apart from being the development of earlier forms, for instance a generalisation of the latin toward a common history of the germanic and european languages 19 compound tenses to serve new functions whose original markers had been lost. interestingly, they are practically limited to the european area, although in some neighbouring languages something similar –but not quite identical– constructions may appear. thus, arabic has a kind of pluperfect tense, in modern written arabic and especially the dialects: egyptian arabic kaan ‛amal ‘he had done’, and similarly in maltese, or moroccan arabic; but it is not a real equivalent of the western european perfect, but a specialised relative tense pointing to the completedness of a process before some past point of reference. the perfect tense as such (he hecho, i have done, etc) is expressed with the arabic simple perfective: ‛amal ‘he worked/did/made’. in the much older, but related language, middle egyptian, there was nothing comparable with the european perfect, although constructions can be found which are –semantically, not formally– similar to the arabic ‘pluperfect’. these forms, however, are best analysed as serial constructions, of a type similar to what is found in a language not too distantly related to the semitic languages, hausa: in spite of the english gloss, ya riga ya tafi ‘he has (already) gone’ is simply two verbs: ‘he did/preceded he went’. and the perfect tense with to be/to have plus a participle –or anything understandable and describable in similar terms– will not be found anywhere else further south… or further east. this common development involves grammaticalisation and reanalysis of existing forms which adopt very similar forms a bit everywhere, but not quite exactly the same. a bit different is the following change, which may be seen to arise as a response to a new communicative need. marking social distance in chronological coincidence with the development of feudalism –and its cultural influence–, but in a process which will take several centuries to be completed, changes in the forms of address are observed. they are widespread and also affect the vocabulary, but here i shall limit my comments to the changes in the second person pronouns. enrique bernárdez 20 in the gmc languages (and latin, later romance, slavonic, finnic, etc.), the original system was a simple singular versus a simple plural, as in old english: þú – gé the common change implies everywhere the creation of honorific pronouns and brings about a number of restrictions –of a social nature– on the use of the non-honorific, singular pronouns. where do the new honorific forms come from? there appear to be the following main possibilities: (a) the plural pronoun used with a singular referent; (b) some third person pronoun (reflecting an honorific, nonpronominal, form of address), as in obsolete german er5 and italian lei; later, (c) the creation of a special pronoun, as spanish usted. as their frequency of use renders the originally highly honorific pronouns less and less meaningful, new forms are developed to keep honorific treatment at the desired level. whereas the first part of the change, i.e. the marking of social distance, is basically pan-european, this new development is language-specific, and depends heavily on the characteristics of the corresponding pronominal system, but also on other considerations. thus, while spanish develops a special form, usted, as the grammaticalisation of a more complex, nominal form vuestra merced, icelandic opts for a rather infrequent solution: the originally dual pronoun comes to serve the function of the non-honorific pronoun: þið6 whereas the originally plural form þér specialises as the honorific form of address. interestingly, the same happens in the first person: the icelandic equivalent of the latin honorific/majestatic nos is again the old plural: vér, whereas the old dual, við, is now used as the ‘general-purpose’ plural form. in other languages, a tendency develops that prefers to avoid the use of a personal pronoun whenever an honorific form of address has to be chosen; some other kind of term is then preferred, for instance a title, the name of a profession, etc., together with the elliptic use of direct, pronominal address: 5 which is seen as a form intermediate between sie and du (wahrig, s.v.) 6 from older it, with incorporation of the verbal 2nd person pl ending –ð, cf. swedish ni. toward a common history of the germanic and european languages 21 until quite recently, in high swedish the use of the honorific pronoun ni was not deemed sufficiently elegant in less formal situations, and a title was used instead; but the use of a third person singular pronoun, which could have served as the shortest form of reference when using titles, was strictly taboo. one could (and should) address an engineer as (herr) ingeniör, also in the definite form with postposed article, ingeniören, but no hann (‘he’) was acceptable, so that you have to repeat the title as often as needed. a similar form of treatment is also possible in formal situations in the spanish of many latin-american countries. the geographic scope of this development is quite significant, especially the use of the plural as the polite or honorific form with a singular referent: it appears everywhere in western europe: in all the germanic as well as the romance languages (including the peculiar romanian form dumneavoastră, literally ‘your (pl) lordship’, now used as a pronoun), the slavonic languages (cf. russian vy), or greek; but also in an isolated language like basque is found the distinction between the originally plural zu, now slightly honorific, and the singular hi, used only as a very familiar form of address. the situation varies in celtic: whereas non such distinction was available in either old or modern irish, it is current in modern welsh, were ti is the old singular, now used as the singular, non-polite form, while the old plural, chwi, in addition to its traditional use, is also employed as the singular polite form. farther away, the distinction is not found in finnish but is current in turkish (polite siz, pl/sg, versus intimate sg sen), but also in iranian (shomâ is both sg and pl, just like english ‘you’) and arabic (where the plural antum (masc.) / antunna (fem.) can be used as a polite form, instead of the usual anta (masc.) / anti (fem.)). interestingly, in the indian subcontinent the same process takes place: in punjabi, for instance, tung is singular, intimate, whereas the plural twsing is also used with a singular referent, as the polite form. as for urdu, a triple distinction exists, reaching from the marked, very intimate pronoun tu, through twm, a general-purpose polite form, to the honorific and formal ap; twm is a plural pronoun whereas ap is of nominal original. in most of these languages, the development is fairly recent, beginning in the late middle ages and continuing into the modern period. enrique bernárdez 22 in this way, we have a change affecting practically the whole of europe (plus some neighbouring areas where similar social conditions prevailed). my point is that the individual developments are best understood as particular manifestations of a single, common change (not as a number of coincidental, but independent changes), because: it happens at about the same time in all these languages (but it can affect other languages later, as a result of later linguistic diffusion from neighbouring or culture languages, etc.) it is related to similar social conditions which lead to the need to ‘do something’ in order to keep the social relations and distinctions clearly distinct. this (linguistic) process is obviously related to many other changes, both social (ranging from laws to clothing and social habits of many kinds, etc.) and linguistic, as the development of a wide array of possible –but socially driven– forms of address: titles, etc. the particular forms that the change can take in the different areas and their corresponding languages depend on the particular conditions reigning in that area (partially irrespective of whether there is one language or more, and their mutual relations and characteristics). as well as on the linguistic features of every individual language (witness the developments in icelandic, spanish, german, or italian). the common european change creates new pronominal systems in the individual areas and languages which then can become fully regularised although in most cases a disruptive factor will generally induce new changes: the use of the plural pronoun as an honorific singular or plural and as a nonhonorific (neutral?) plural (as in english you, french vous, etc.), or the blurring of other distinctions (italian lei is both the singular honorific 2nd person and the feminine singular 3rd person pronoun, while german sie is both honorific plural, 3rd person plural, and 3rd person singular, etc.) can lead to new changes in order to reinstate the plural-singular distinction, but this will basically depend on the particular conditions of each language. thus, whereas the sg/pl distinction is lost in english in the 2nd person, a rather uncomfortable situation which leads to new formations as you guys (nowadays a part of spoken standard american), y’all, youse and the like, the coincidence of the 2nd plural honorific sie and the singular feminine third toward a common history of the germanic and european languages 23 person sie in german can only very seldom lead to dangerous cases of ambiguity. similarly, changes in the social conditions can lead to the loss of the honorific-non honorific distinction, as has generally happened in the nordic languages, especially icelandic, where the honorific singular/plural form þér is nowadays of extremely rare occurrence, in a development which runs in the opposite direction as the english generalisation of you. needless to say, this is no ‘universal tendency’: it is indeed difficult to find languages outside this area –and that period– where something similar took place. there does exist a universal tendency to mark politeness in some personal pronouns,7 but the forms that such pronouns (or their equivalents in verbal forms, etc.) can adopt have nothing to do with this european change, which could be summed up as follows: a respected person has to be addressed as if (s)he were a group (may be because reference is made, not to the individual, but to the social group s/he belongs to). we have thus a change which meets all the conditions of ‘a single’ linguistic change; that is, it is just as unitary when seen at the level of a single language, say english, german, or icelandic, or at that of a group of genetically related languages (the romance languages) or even a set of not so closely related, but geographically linked languages (german and italian, with the use of a third person singular pronoun: viz. lei – er); there is also the influence of language contact, especially through the predominance of latin, then french, in the middle ages: but the changes cannot be explained in terms of french, whose influence on turkish was, to say the least, rather meagre. but at the same time it cannot be said that the change as a whole is a language-specific change that was then diffused, as in a classical wave model: a north-french development, for instance, expanding in all directions. this single point of origin can exist, of course, but more in a political than a linguistic sense: as the centre of expansion of a number of habitus (bourdieu’s term), i.e., a number of socially preferred, individually entrenched or embodied forms which lead everybody’s behaviour associated with the social conditions prevailing under feudalism. 7 as in the chinese opposition ní – nín, where the second form is polite and honorific. enrique bernárdez 24 on the other hand, those languages which lacked (and in some cases, still lack) this development can be explained, perhaps, in terms of their social isolation, being languages not used by those social groups where differentiation had to be made explicit; or geographical isolation; or both (as, say, in saami). marking things as clearly as possible one of the consequences of the development of a written form of language is that the communication partners loose the possibility of feedback. writers have to make their message as clear as possible in order to avoid misunderstandings. to do this, they can use the model of a number of (apparently) extremely well codified written languages with extremely high prestige: depending on the part of the old roman empire, latin or greek. both had a number of common features, derived mainly from their longestablished status as written languages (that is, as a monologic form of language); among them, the very precise ways of expression of, for instance, semantic intersentential relations. in other words, text markers, and most significantly, coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. this development is also the consequence of a well-known communicative need: argumentative texts develop in the written languages of the period; and that implies longer sentences, many more and more precise forms of relation, etc. all in all, the writer –as opposed to the dialogical speaker, who does not feel such a pressing need; but also the monological speaker, for instance in sermons etc.– has to mark in his text many elements which otherwise were left over for the communication partner to fill in. we know that in this respect the extreme development of subordination, also in the germanic languages, which begins in the low middle ages, as well as the creation of a well-defined, functionally clear set of conjunctions, are processes directly linked to the written language. suffice it to remember the difference in the construction of relative clauses in spoken and written english. again, more or less at about the same time, significantly common developments are visible in the european languages in this respect. it is clearly a matter of every language area and of every individual language, toward a common history of the germanic and european languages 25 trying to create the now necessary markers of intersentential relations, a piece of information that was previously left over to the reader’s pragmatic knowledge. the same process takes place all over western europe: new forms of subordination are investigated in the different written languages until a more or less stable system is achieved –in the early modern age. remember that there was the idea around, in centuries fortunately past, that saw subordination as a mark of cultivated language, as against coordination and similar processes that were deemed typical of the spoken genres, that is, of the non-developed, non-normative, non-cultivated forms of language. and we know that the types of conjunctional subordination that are a characteristic feature of the european languages may be a rarity, something basically limited to the written forms of language and the monologic genres based on it (as opposed to ‘free dialogue’). this development is not only observable in the germanic languages, as it appears again and again from greece to portugal, from finland to iceland, but also in the slavic languages: a period can be witnessed when speakers –sorry: writers– are trying to create the by then necessary set of conjunctional and textual markers. as for english, remember the proliferation of conjunctions (same in dutch, german…) and forms of subordination as opposed to the quite different system of textual markers in old english. again a generalised change, that (1) happens at about the same time in the different languages, (2) cuts across the borders of the individual languages and genetic groups and is directly linked to a set of social and cultural conditions, prevalent throughout europe (3) adopts specific forms according to the peculiarities of the individual languages and groups, and (4) has a subsequent history that depends on a number of internal circumstances. who dunnit? another change, much more limited in scope, seems to have affected mainly the germanic languages and those which, like french, lied within their area of influence; the baltic, slavonic, or finnic languages, as also the southern romance languages, are not affected: this is a general tendency which could be defined –provisionally– as ‘specifying the agent’, which is enrique bernárdez 26 articulated in two changes: (1) the presence of an explicit subject gradually becomes obligatory; (2) the ‘impersonal’ constructions change into personal forms of expression. old french, middle dutch, and middle high german, to mention only a few significant examples, saw a gradual increase in the frequency of the expressed subjects from the twelfth or thirteenth century onwards. similar changes can be observed in the other germanic languages of the period, with the partial exception of icelandic (and faroese). similarly, we witness the gradual diminution of the large number of impersonal constructions, ranging from atmospheric verbs to ‘real’ impersonals, that is, processes without a (known or possible) agent/responsible entity, and also those verbs whose human participant is a goal or an experiencer (as in oe me hungrode, me þyncþ, icelandic mig dreymdi, mér þótti). this development seems to be basically limited to the areas surrounding the north sea, from france to norway and back to england, and, as stated above, it is perhaps an internal development in germanic which also affects french (through contact?). icelandic, however, is essentially free from either process, so that even in the contemporary language the frequency of the explicit subject is much less than in any other germanic language, and the same types of impersonal construction (plus some new, additional ones) are still found nowadays. a central area around the coasts of the southern north sea seems to be the axis for this development, whose social or cultural rationale escapes us for the moment. the article the definite article may seem to ‘have been there since the beginning’, but we know it is a fairly new development all over europe. it appears in all the languages that belong to the following families: germanic, romance, greek, celtic, basque. outside europe proper, hebrew, arabic and all its dialects also use the definite article, but they have had it since much earlier than the western european languages. some of the slavonian languages of the balcans, as bulgarian, have also developed definite articles, as opposed to its lack in the rest of the group. in all the cases –except greek– the article is a new formation, as shown by the differences inside the families; not only the forms themselves, but the toward a common history of the germanic and european languages 27 type of construction: whereas in most of these languages the definite article is a (relatively) free morpheme preceding the noun, in the nordic group it takes the form of a suffix… with the exception of the western jutland dialects of danish, which follow the model of low german (saxon): [æ man’] versus standard manden [man’en] (ringgaard 1973). it is also a suffix in the slavonic languages bulgarian and macedonian, as well as in the romance language, romanian. in the geographical (and in great part, politically and culturally, too) east, the definite article is conspicuously absent: say in turkish or the indo-iranian languages, including modern persian, but also in the caucasus (georgian or chechen-ingush, to mention only two). the definite article looks like a mainly western-european feature with the solitary intrusion towards the south-east of hungarian (as opposed to the other fino-ugric languages of europe) and most members of the balkanic sprachbund, where the only slavonian languages with a definite article are found (slovenian seems to be in the process of acquiring a fully grammaticalised one, too); and quite interestingly, one of the three areas where the article takes the form of a nominal suffix: the extremes, i.e. germanic scandinavia, the balkans –with the exception of greek– and the south-west, i.e., basque. conclusion many more common changes could be mentioned, including some more that are also directly related to the middle ages. changes that go from general issues of language use to the development and organisation of new text genres or types, to matters of phonology, vocabulary, or syntax, but also morphology. in fact, most of western europe seems to function –apparently since the very beginning, quite clearly from the low middle ages, obviously from the 17th and 18th centuries– as a linguistic mesh were the genetic links are just one factor. we would not like to say that a certain change affecting, say, middle english, is just a number of independent changes in the different dialects, which happen to coincide. we look at the changes the other way round: the dialects ‘somehow’ represent different realisations of the same change, or tendency. of course, the realisation of the changes takes place independently, enrique bernárdez 28 but we still talk about the great english vowel shift as a single, although extremely complex, process this procedure is much more illuminating than the fragmentation in a never-ending number of apparently independent, though coincidental, changes: analysing the south-east english vowel shift, then the north-west english vowel shift, and so on and so forth. from this ‘supradialectal level’ which more frequently than not corresponds with that of the national language (whether real, historic, or prospective) we can jump to the genetic group (say, the common developments in the germanic languages during the middle ages); but we do it only exceedingly seldom, except for the purpose of reconstruction. we then do an immense jump to the purely universal tendencies, and can see a certain change (for instance the development of the definite article) as the result of a particular process of grammaticalisation involving reanalysis in the context of the lack of deictic force of some demonstratives. of course, all this is quite correct. but there are questions that cannot be adequately solved at any of those levels: why does there suddenly arise the apparent need to express clearly in communication ‘whatever may be expressed’ with the definite article? and why do the different languages make different options to achieve the same end? and why does the same change occur within more or less tightly related genetic groups, but also among completely unrelated languages which, however, share a geography, and many elements of the cultural and social life? it can be quite illuminating to throw a fresh look at the history of the (national) languages at a new level: that of the great european linguistic mesh. enrique bernárdez universidad complutense de madrid references aikhenvald, alexandra y. 2003: mechanisms of change in areal diffusion: new morphology and language contact. journal of linguistics 39: 129. toward a common history of the germanic and european languages 29 alvarado, salustio 1992: gramática histórica de la lengua rusa. don libro, madrid. bailey, t. grahame 1950: urdu. ed. j.r. firth & a.h. harley. the english universities press, london. bakker, peter 2003: review of fortescue 1998. linguistic typology 7-1: 151-156. bammesberger, alfred 1982: a handbook of irish. carl winter, heidelberg. berg, b. van den 1971: inleiding tot de middelnederlandse syntaxis: wolters-noordhoff, groningen. bergsland, k. 1961: samisk grammatikk. kirke-og undervisningsdepartementet, oslo. bernárdez, enrique 2004: ¿qué son las lenguas? alianza, madrid. bowen, john t. & t.j. rhys jones 1960: welsh. the english universities press, london. buch, a. de 1952: grammaire élémentaire du moyen égyptien. brill, leiden. budiņa lazdiņa, terēza 1966: latvian. the english universities press, london. dixon, r.m.w. 1997: the rise and fall of languages. cambridge university press, cambridge. fortescue, michael 1998: language relations across the bering strait: reappraising the archaeological and linguistic evidence. cassel, london & new york. herrero muñoz-cobo, bárbara 1998: gramática de árabe marroquí para hispano-hablantes. universidad de almería, almería. hopper, paul j. 1975: the syntax of the simple sentence in proto-germanic. mouton, the hague. howell, r.b. 1991: old english breaking and its germanic analogues. niemeyer, tübingen. javarek, vera & miroslava sudjić 1963: serbo-croat. teach yourself books, london. enrique bernárdez 30 jiménez zamudio, rafael 1998: gramática de la lengua sumeria. ediciones clásicas, madrid. keller, rudi 1990: sprachwandel. von der unsichtbaren hand in der sprache. francke, tübingen. kraft, charles h. & a.h.m. kirk-greene 1973: hausa. teach yourself books, london. lecomte, gérard 1968: grammaire de l’arabe. p.u.f., paris . lehmann, r.p.m. & w.p. lehmann 1975: an introduction to old irish. mla, new york�� lewis, g.l. 1953: turkish. teach yourself books, london. mitchell, t.f. 1962: colloquial arabic. the living language of egypt. teach yourself books, london. munske, horst haider 1995: ist eine europäische sprachgeschitsschreibung möglich? in andreas gardt, klaus j. mattheier & oskar reichmann, eds. sprachgeschichte des neuhochdeutschen. niemeyer, tübingen. 399-411. raynaud de lage, guy 1975: introduction à l’ancien français. sedes, paris. ringgaard, k. 1973: danske dialekter. akademisk forlag, københavn. sanz ledesma, manuel 1996: el albanés. ediciones clásicas, madrid. schackle, c. 1972: punjabi. teach yourself books, london. schieffelin, bambi b. 2002: marking time. the dichotomizing discourse of multiple temporalities. current anthropology 43, supplement: 5-17. ştefǎnescu-drǎgǎneşti, virgiliu & martin murrell 1970: romanian. teach yourself books, london. tejada, paloma 1999: el cambio lingüístico. alianza, madrid. thackston, w.m. 1994. an introduction to koranic and classical arabic. ibex, bethesda, md. toward a common history of the germanic and european languages 31 vincenot, claude 1975: essai de grammaire slovène. mladinska kniga, ljubljana. voorhoeve, jan 1983: de orsprong van het surinaams. in e. charry, g. koefoed, p. muysken eds. de talen van suriname. coutinho, muiderberg. wahrig, gerhard 1973: deutsches wörterbuch. bertelsmann, berlin. weijnen, a.a 1971: schets van de geschiedenis van de nederlandse syntaxis. van gorcum, prakke & prakke, assen. whitney, arthur h. 1956: finnish. teach yourself books, london. zubiri, ilari 1994: gramática didáctica del euskera. didaktiker, bilbo. zurdo, mª i. teresa 2002: lecture on the history of the german language, delivered at the department of english, universidad complutense, madrid. * † * microsoft word 2021notes_2_breeze-exeter.docx andrew breeze, selim26 (2021): 137–150. issn 1132-631x / issn-l 2792-3878 / https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.26.2021.137-150 exeter book riddles 48 and 59 and the malmesbury ciborium andrew breeze university of navarre most commentators on riddles 48 and 59 in the tenth-century exeter book relate them to church plate, the solution supposedly being a gold paten or chalice or pyx. yet these answers are not compelling. problems remain. recent discussion of the malmesbury ciborium and other twelfth-century ciboria in london or new york now permits a fresh approach. the solution to both old english riddles will be ciborium, a vessel of precious metal used to contain consecrated wafers or hosts at the eucharist. the malmesbury ciborium and similar pieces make this clear. round and made of gold, they had a shorter and squatter outline than a chalice; they possessed lids, inscriptions, and representations of bible scenes (the crucifixion amongst them); they were yet larger than a pyx (used not in services but to carry a few wafers only, as on visits to the sick). these aspects parallel those of the object in the two riddles: a ring-like item of gold which is gazed upon and revered by people in a hall, which makes no noise and yet conveys a message of salvation, and which (in the second riddle) displays christ’s wounds. if this analysis is sound, it deepens understanding of early english poetry. it also informs us on anglo-saxon goldsmiths, who produced magnificent works of art (as the literary sources prove) now lost, the gold having long been melted down for the purpose of exchange or as loot. study of the two poems indicates as well how philologists and experts on material culture can work together, especially for the exeter book’s other riddles. 1. introduction what follows has four main parts. in the first we discuss riddles 48 and 59 in the exeter book and answers proposed to them since 1859. in the second we refer readers to accounts of the twelfth-century malmesbury or morgan ciborium (in the pierpont morgan library, new york) and the similar warwick 138 andrew breeze ciborium and balfour ciborium (both in the victoria and albert museum, london). in the third we put this evidence together, proposing that the gallery exhibits allow the solution ciborium for the riddles. if so, it shows how postconquest works of art cast light on the vanished treasures of the anglo-saxon church, as well as on old english poetry. finally, we compare these results with a latin riddle by aldhelm (d. 709), where the answer is certainly ciborium. 2. the exeter book riddles 48 and 59 we start more than a century ago with wyatt’s editions of the two texts. first, riddle 48 (in its standard modern enumeration): ic gefrægn f[o]r hæleþum hring [ær]endean torhtne butan tungan, tila, þeah he hlude stefne ne cirmde strongum wordum. sinc for secgum swigende cwæð: ‘gehæle mec, helpend gæsta!’ ryne ongietan readan goldes guman, galdorcwide; gleawe beþuncan hyra hælo to gode, swa se hring gecwæð. second, riddle 59: ic seah in healle, hring gyl[d]enne men sceawian modum gleawe, ferþþum frode. friþospe[de] bæd god nergende gæste sinum se þe wende wriþan word æfter cwæð hring on hyrede, hælend nemde tillfremmendra, him torhte in gemynd his dryhtnes naman dumba brohte, ond in eagna gesihð gif þæs æþelan goldes tacen ongietan cuþe, dryht[en] dolgdon […] swa þæs beages benne cwædon. ne mæg, þære bene […] æniges monnes ung[e]fullodre, godes ealdorburg gæst gesecan, rodera ceastre. ræde, se þe wille, exeter book riddles 48 and 59 139 hu ðæs wrætlican wunda cwæden hringes to hæleþum, þa he in healle wæs wylted ond wended wloncra folmum. in notes upon the pair, wyatt stated that there was “little, if any, doubt” that chalice (after papers of 1859 and 1865 by franz dietrich) was the solution to both. he ruled out pyx because this object lacked the powerful symbolic quality of the chalice, “a sacred vessel consecrated with holy chrism”. after some dismissive comments on the second poem’s “vagueness and dullness of phrase”, wyatt (1912: 37–38, 43–44, 105, 108) translated its obscure lines 7–11 as “dumb, it brought vividly into his mind the name of his lord, and, into the sight of his eyes, if he could understand the token of the noble gold, the wounded lord”. so dietrich’s suggestion chalice has had a long career. yet this paper will fail if his oft-repeated answer is not rejected. difficulties of the texts are brought out in mackie’s eets edition of the exeter book, with these translations: i have heard of a bright ring announcing good tidings in the presence of men, though tongueless, and though it did not cry out with strong words in a loud voice. the precious thing, while keeping silent, said before men, ‘save me, helper of souls’. many men understand the mysterious saying, the charmed speech of the red gold, and may those that are wise entrust their salvation to god, as the ring said. gaps in his version of the second riddle underline its problematic nature: i saw men who were wise in mind and prudent in spirit gaze in a hall upon a golden ring. he who turned the ring round prayed to god the saviour for peace and happiness for his soul. the ring afterwards spoke words in the congregation, named the saviour of those who do good, and, though dumb, brought the name of the lord clearly into their remembrance and into the sight of their eyes, if one could understand the significance of the noble gold, the wounded lord […] as the wounds of the ring said. 140 andrew breeze when the prayer […] of any man is unfulfilled, his soul cannot go to god’s princely capital, the city of the skies. let him who will explain how the wounds of that wonderful ring spoke to men, when in the hall it was turned round and round in the hands of proud men. in his list of solutions, mackie (1934: 143, 151, 241) gave chalice or pyx as surely the answer to riddle 48, and chalice to riddle 59. the text of the riddles was tidied up in the anglo-saxon poetic records edition, with elimination of gaps left by previous editors. it was there noted how dietrich in 1859 solved the first as chrismal, regarded as “the pyx or vessel which holds the chrism”, with tupper thereafter proposing paten and wyatt chalice; chalice was universally accepted for the second, despite objections made in 1915 by moritz trautmann (cf. krapp & dobbie 1936: 205–206, 209–210, 347, 351– 352). yet if chalice is unsatisfactory, chrismal is still more so. seen on rare occasions only, a chrismal lacks the associations with scripture and daily worship that the two riddles surely imply. after that, stasis, with the answer on both poems in 1992 still appearing as chalice (santano moreno & birtwhistle 1992: 228, 229). recent scholars add details. for riddle 48, salvador-bello (2015: 359–360) observes that tupper’s 1910 suggestion paten was supported in 2006 by john niles, although she herself is undecided between paten or chalice. for riddle 59 she cites others on how this entity’s “wounds” allude “to the fact that the chalice bears an inscription” (2015: 376–379). one wonders. an inscription on metal might be taken as a ‘wound’. yet the comparison appears strained. a simpler explanation is offered below. as for corinne dale (2017: 39, 68), whose subject is eco-criticism and eco-theology (not man-made objects), she accepts the received answers (if noting dissent from them), adding that the “wounds” in riddle 59 are “markings on the chalice”. craig williamson similarly accepts “paten or chalice” for riddle 48 and chalice for riddle 59. his translations can be compared with those of mackie eighty-three years previous. this bright circle spoke to men, the tongueless treasure without voice — the ring wrought power in silence saying, ‘save me, healer of souls!’ let those exeter book riddles 48 and 59 141 who read the red gold’s silent song-craft catch the incantation, solve the song, and give their souls to god as the ring said. i saw heart-strong, mind-sharp men gazing in a hall at a golden ring. who turned the ring prayed to god for abiding peace, the hall-guests’ grace. the bright circle of gold spoke the name of the saviour of good men to the gathering, proclaimed to the eye and mind of man the most glorious token, spoke though dumb of the suffering king to all who could see in its bodied wounds the hard carving of christ. an unfulfilled prayer has no power in heaven; the dark soul will not find the city of saints, the throne of power, the camp of god. let the man who knows how the wounds of the strange ring spoke as it passed round the hall —twisting, turning in the hands of proud men— explain the riddle. williamson (2017: 546–547, 550, 1161, 1163) again takes the first as “paten or chalice” and the second as chalice, the wounds being “probably icons or inscriptions”. most recent are jorge l. bueno alonso (2021: 148, 152) and jennifer neville (2020: 27). although the former mentions ring for 48, he prefers paten or chalice, with chalice being “probable” for 59. the latter, in analysis of what she thinks is a poem on the sun (when it surely describes the chained door of a city gate), is certain that 48 is about a paten, and 59 “an inscribed chalice”. the above reveals continuity from dietrich in 1859 to neville and bueno alonso in 2021. there are yet unanswered questions, some of which disturbed trautmann in 1915 and are still troubling. chalices are round, no doubt; but they tend to be tall, so that hring or beag ‘ring’ seem a curious term for them. stranger are the words on wounds. no chalice or paten has been produced as evidence on that. it seems a forced reading of the text. nor, in poems allegedly about chalices, is there any reference to wine, which is also strange. hence the need for a different interpretation, modifying earlier ones. 142 andrew breeze 3. three early english ciboria let us turn from chalices and patens to ciboria. the word has a bizarre history. in classical latin it meant ‘drinking cup’, being borrowed from late classical greek kiburion, a word of egyptian origin for the seed-pod of the egyptian bean. the latin word makes a unique appearance in book two of horace’s odes, on how the poet gave his old friend pompeius varus a hearty welcome: “fill up light ciboria with care-soothing wine from mount masico; pour out perfumes from king-size shells!”. oblivioso laevia massico ciboria exple; funde capacibus unguenta de conchis. these ciboria were hardly real egyptian bean-pods (as some imagine), but cups which were shaped like them and used at parties (lewis 1901: 160). for such a convivial word christianity had a surprising new use. ciborium is explained in an eighth-century english glossary as ‘tomb’ (lindsay 1922: 39). the arresting change of meaning from ‘seed-case’ to ‘wine-cup’ to ‘grave’ (and then ‘vessel for consecrated hosts’) was clarified in braun’s monumental history of chalices, monstrances, thuribles, and the like (it includes the warwick ciborium, confusingly described as a pyx). the word ciborium has a basic sense ‘container’, and there was a natural graduation from the idea of the tomb as the body’s last container to that of the vessel which contained christ’s body, ready for distribution to the faithful, and with a lid to prevent the holy wafers inside from falling out (draun 1932: 280, 342, plate 50). chalices were tall; ciboria were lower and more bulbous. in addition, the wine within a chalice was not usually given to the faithful at celebrations of the eucharist from the seventh century onwards, so that luther eventually made an issue of the practice (dix 1945: 629). to the senses of ciborium given above is another, for a baldachino-like canopy over an altar, “a complete little house surrounding the place for the altar sacrament” (hirn 1957: 34). however, that meaning does not concern us here. information on the anglo-saxon church’s plate indicates further why chalice is not a satisfactory answer. a sumptuous benedictional from tenth-century winchester has an illustration of a bishop before an altar with chalice and paten. the chalice has a tall cup-like shape and is unadorned (wormald 1959: 30–31). it is hard to see it as a ‘ring’, harder to perceive its ‘wounds’. the same may be said in different ways of the seventh-century hexham chalice (seven exeter book riddles 48 and 59 143 centimetres high); the elaborate eighth-century chalice (twenty-seven centimetres high and of english design) presented by duke tassilo to kremsmünster, austria; or the ninth-century silver chalice found in 1774 at cornish tin-workings by trewhiddle, near st austell (thomas 1971: 198–199). none of these is much like a ring. other sources do not help either. a latin poem composed in about 690 by aldhelm for the abbess of withington (in present-day gloucestershire) details the splendours of her church, with a “brilliant jewelled chalice” amongst them (mayr-harting 1972: 193–194). if “virtually all endowments of this kind have perished”, there is “no lack of written evidence” on what has gone. peterborough abbey in the late tenth century had four chalices of silver, and there are indications of similar wealth at bury st edmunds, ely, abingdon, glastonbury, and worcester (hunter blair 1977: 191). the classic comment must yet be that of king alfred, reflecting how “before everything was ravaged and burnt” by viking attacks, “the churches throughout all england stood filled with treasures and books” (whitelock 1979: 889). there is still nothing in this to nail down the solution chalice (or paten) for the riddles. if we are to find an answer, it will have to come from after 1066, and specifically from the twelfth century. that brings us to the warwick, balfour, and malmesbury ciboria, their features conveniently summarised in a victoria and albert museum catalogue. all of them have six old testament scenes on their bowl, regarded as foreshadowing six new testament scenes on their cover; all are of similar date and are probably from the same workshop. the warwick ciborium (discovered in 1717, its lid already lost) was damaged in a warwick castle fire of 1871, and is now best appreciated from an early watercolour belonging to the society of antiquaries. amongst the six images on its bowl are ones of isaac’s carrying of logs, the sacrifice of isaac, and jonah and the whale. all three were related to christ’s passion. on the analogy of the two other ciboria, the cover would have shown christ’s carrying of the cross, the crucifixion, and the women at the sepulchre. on the balfour ciborium (18.3 centimetres high and of the 1160s) there appear (on its bowl) isaac carrying logs and the sacrifice of isaac, but now with samson and the harlot of gaza (not jonah and the whale); on the lid are the corresponding via dolorosa, crucifixion, and women at christ’s tomb. these subjects had known equivalents in twelfth-century wall-paintings at worcester and peterborough cathedrals. the malmesbury ciborium (19 centimetres high), now in new york, again shows isaac (carrying logs) and samson, but this time with moses and the brazen serpent (not the sacrifice of isaac). on the lid are the way of the cross, calvary, and women at the tomb. 144 andrew breeze the low rotund outline of all three vessels also contrasts with that of a chalice. finally, the lids have or had latin inscriptions (campbell 1983: 26–27). to those we shall return. before that, further accounts of anglo-saxon chalices again rule out the answer chalice. if the one from trewhiddle demonstrates the silver wealth of late ninth-century england, greater splendours are revealed by the tassilo chalice, given to the monastery of kremsmünster (and there to this day) by tassilo, duke of bavaria (until charlemagne deposed him in 778). this impressive gilt object has engravings of christ with the saints and a cast inscription on tassilo and liutpirc (his duchess). its features show the influence of english craftmanship (wilson 1991). the trewhiddle chalice is plain, the tassilokelch is ornate; yet the contrasts between them and our three english ciboria are marked. here are some of them. a chalice contained wine, not usually given to the laity at a medieval mass. a ciborium contained bread for distribution to communicants. the nature of a consecrated wafer should be stressed. at the consecration the bread miraculously became “the body of christ; what had been indeed the work of human hands became the holiest object in the universe” (kamerick 2002: 52– 53). hence, we submit, the powerful religious feelings conveyed by the two riddles. whereas the chalices are tall, the ciboria have a dumpy (almost bunlike) outline, being almost as broad as they are high. they present christ’s passion and have inscriptions on it. the nature of the last may be discovered from an edition of an old english poem and its bibliography. on the malmesbury ciborium, for christ bearing the cross, are the words sic a lap[idib]is cesus pia ducitur hostia ihesus, ‘jesus, like a man dead by stoning, is led forth, a blessed sacrifice’. for christ on the cross is the text ut vivas mecum felix homo dormio tecum, ‘i sleep with you [in death], o man, that you should live with me in bliss’. on the balfour ciborium for the crucifixion (also with allusion to the brazen serpent raised up by moses) is written in cruce mactatur, perit anguis, ovis revocatur, ‘on the cross he is slain, the serpent perishes, the sheep is reclaimed’ (rambaram-olm 2014: 110–111, 113–114). these phrases in mind, we return to the exeter book. exeter book riddles 48 and 59 145 4. comparison of the ciboria with the riddles even with a foot (and a pommel to lift the cover), the twelfth-century ciboria are (as noted) almost as wide as they are tall. they hence look more like a ring than a chalice does. they have inscriptions which certainly convey a silent message before men strongum wordum ‘with strong words’ or ‘in a loud voice’; words that some might think could hardly be stronger. other expressions relate to liturgy. the first riddle has the phrase gehæle mec, helpend gæsta, ‘save me, helper of souls’; the second tells how “he who turned the ring round / prayed to god the saviour for peace and happiness / for his soul”. the second and perhaps the first of these may be linked to psalm 51:2, “wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin”. at mass, after the bread and wine have been brought to him, the celebrant utters this phrase as he washes his hands before going on to the eucharistic prayer and consecration. what he says fits the solution presented here as no other proposal does. it accords too with the lines following, on how “the ring afterwards spoke words / in the congregation” and “brought / the name of the lord clearly into their remembrance / and into the sight of their eyes”. the bread has been consecrated, the faithful go up to the altar, standing or kneeling they receive on their tongues the communion wafers which the priest takes from a ciborium. at this point, before returning to the body of the church, the communicants had such a vessel clearly in “the sight of their eyes”. as for the images and phrases that they might see, these are equally urgent. the old serpent is vanquished, the sheep is saved. christ dies that humanity should live with him in bliss. in word and picture, christ’s wounds were manifested before the men and women at mass. we can say more. these objects are covered in gold leaf and are beautiful to look at. that explains the terms torhte, readan goldes, hryng gyldenne, ‘splendid’, ‘of red gold’, ‘a golden ring’. the lines on how if the prayer “of any man is unfulfilled, his soul / cannot go to god’s princely capital” also relate to the eucharist, and specifically to st paul’s warning on it: “but let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup” (i corinthians 11:28). if communicants do not do this, eating and drinking “unworthily”, they commit sacrilege. (on what that leads to, paul has sharp things to say.) if, then, we can assume that english ciboria of the tenth century had on them representations of christ, accompanied with inscriptions; that in this they resembled the tassilo chalice (designed on eighth-century english models); that, like twelfth-century english ciboria, they were covered in gold leaf (or 146 andrew breeze even made of gold); that, unlike chalices, they were not tall and did not contain wine; that they were handled by priests who were “proud” and who used them to give christ’s body to the faithful; that they brought the easter story before the eyes and imagination of worshippers, inspiring them to pray; then we could take the solution to riddles 48 and 59 as ciborium. such items were familiar to the clerics who wrote these poems. in the “hall” of a church, ciboria were every day “[t]urned round and round in the hands of proud men”, the form wlonc ‘proud, exultant, splendid’ here applying to the priests who handled those precious things. containing the body of christ, ciboria had profound religious associations; perhaps now not easy to grasp when one sees them displayed inside the glass case of a museum. whether ciborium is here correct or not, one thing that riddles 48 and 59 cannot possibly describe is an inscribed gold ring, despite arguments of professor peter orton in an unpublished talk preliminary to the 2019 iaupe conference at poznań, poland. it is true that anglo-saxons wore gold rings, some of which had pious inscriptions. yet there are four reasons why his proposed answer cannot be right. first, no ring, not even a bishop’s one, had a fraction of the religious authority possessed by an altar vessel. second, while a ciborium might show christ’s wounds in the most obvious way, no ring was likely to do that. third, rings are worn on fingers, but they are not usually passed round a hall; and (unless one came up close) one would not know the import of any religious inscription on them. a ciborum, seen by all at mass, was another matter. finally and (one might think) definitively, the riddlers call their items a hring, wriða, and beag. these all mean ‘ring’, and it would be a poor riddler who gave away his answer so ineptly. the answer ciborium remains. 5. ciboria and aldhelm’s riddle 55 there is a further comparison to make as regards riddle 55 in the collection by aldhelm (d. 709). it has been translated as follows, with the answer given as chrismal: i am revered as a house of nourishment and filled with a divine gift; but no one unlocks folding doors or opens an entrance, nor does a squared atrium support a roof. though gems blaze on the outside of my body, where a gold knob glistens with lustrous metals, my dull insides are adorned much more richly: christ’s exeter book riddles 48 and 59 147 most beautiful form burns there. the radiant glory of holy things shines so. there is no timber in this temple and the roofs do not rise on columns. (allen & calder 1976: 170) with citation of f. glorie’s (1968) edition of them (where the answer is correctly given as ciborium), this and the ninety-nine other enigmata in aldhelm’s collection have been regarded as composed fairly early in his career (lapidge & herren 1979: 13). item 55 certainly belongs to the group of poems there on “church furniture” (orchard 1999: 171). such texts are said to appear with “the solutions as titles or even concealed within the enigma” unlike the exeter book riddles (love 2016: 5). nevertheless, that the subject of aldhelm’s poem could be regarded even in 1976 as chrismal, containing holy oils, when it must be ciborium, containing consecrated hosts, indicates problems even here. that aldhelm could write a poem about a richly-decorated ciborium also naturally strengthens the case for ciborium as the solution to exeter book riddles 48 and 59. 6. conclusions if the above arguments are sound, two more exeter book riddles may be taken as solved. that should interest art historians on what anglo-saxon goldsmiths might produce for a great church, what it looked like, and how it was regarded. as a clue to pre-conquest treasures today all but lost, it should also interest researchers on other exeter book riddles. amongst such investigators are jennifer neville at royal holloway college and rafael pascual at oxford. the following shows how verses other than the above can sharpen our focus on early english life and learning. in this context we note how riddles 48 and 59 are not the only old english poems referring to details of goldware. cynewulf’s lives of st helen and st juliana allude to ‘appled gold’, as does the phoenix (by an unknown poet). although the phrase has puzzled scholars, equivalents in medieval welsh and irish indicate a meaning ‘apples or balls of gold’, used as gifts or personal adornments (breeze 1997). for the riddles themselves we can add these solutions (all prompted by dr jennifer neville’s innovative study of the material) to those listed in 2017 by craig williamson. number 4 in the exeter book is door of a city gate. the men and women styled in it as gromheort ‘angry at heart’ are marketfolk come to town, who at a winter dawn are shouting at the 148 andrew breeze gatekeeper to open up; the wearm limb [idese] ‘warm limb [of a woman]’ belongs to a female of a certain class, who uses it to seduce a foolish warder into letting her in after curfew. riddle 30 is about glass. it describes a glazier shaping molten glass with a blowpipe, and the resulting vessel admired at a noble banquet. riddle 39’s solution is hope, which has neither “blood nor bones” but gives comfort everywhere except in heaven (where it is superfluous) and hell (where it is useless). riddle 43 is not about body and soul, but an individual and his guardian angel, the “mother” mentioned therein being divine wisdom — compare the wisdom books of the old testament (breeze 2007). the answer to riddle 74 is not siren or cuttlefish. it is ceyx and alcyone, a loving married couple lost at sea and then transformed by the gods into halcyons or kingfishers. ovid tells their legend in book eleven of his metamorphoses, where the old english poet read it. riddle 95 is elucidated by the first chapter of the book of proverbs. it is about “instruction in wisdom”, with the passage on how she “uttereth her voice in the streets: she crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words” being echoed by the poet. finally, the exeter book’s latin “riddle”, which is no riddle, despite what is always said. it is a cornish-latin political prophecy on events of 927 or so, when the youthful athelstan was challenged by viking rebels at york and cornish rebels at exeter. its author therein foretold athelstan’s doom. (the king’s swift counter-measures soon led to another outcome.) for those weary of dragons and bloodbaths, the exeter book’s riddles conjure up other aspects of the anglo-saxons, whether a town gate by night and day, a glassblower at his furnace in the woods, scholars reading the vulgate or (in lighter mood) ovid’s metamorphoses, or priests and people at holy communion; the last of these apparently letting one solve numbers 48 and 59 in the collection as ciborium. references allen, m. j. b. & d. g. calder 1976: sources and analogues of old english poetry. cambridge, d. s. brewer. braun, j. 1932: das christliche altargerõt in seinem sein und in seiner entwicklung, münchen, max hueber. breeze, a. 1997: æpplede gold in juliana, elene, and the phoenix. notes and queries 242: 452–453. breeze, a. 2017. the exeter book’s riddle 43 and guardian angels. devon and cornwall notes and queries 42.2: 44–49. exeter book riddles 48 and 59 149 bueno alonso, jorge l. trans. 2021: adiviñas medievais do libro de exeter. cangas, galiza, rinoceronte editora. campbell, m. 1983: an introduction to medieval enamels. london, hmso. dale, c. 2017: the natural world in the exeter book riddles. woodbridge, d. s. brewer. dix, g. 1945: the shape of the liturgy. 2nd ed. london, a and c black. hirn, y. 1957: the sacred shrine. london, faber. hunter blair, p. 1977: an introduction to anglo-saxon england. 2nd ed. cambridge, cambridge university press. kamerick, k. 2002: popular piety and art in the late middle ages. new york, palgrave. krapp, g. p. & e. v. k. dobbie eds. 1936: the exeter book. new york, columbia university press. lapidge, m. & m. herren trans. 1979: aldhelm: the prose works. ipswich, d. s. brewer. lewis, c. t. 1901: a latin dictionary for schools. oxford, clarendon press. lindsay, w. m. ed. 1921: the corpus glossary. cambridge, cambridge university press. love, r. 2016: anglo-latin literature in the foreground. in p. e. szarmach ed. books most needful to know. kalamazoo, medieval institute publications: 1–35. mackie, w. s. ed. 1934: the exeter book: part ii. london, oxford university press. mayr-harting, h. 1972: the coming of christianity to anglo-saxon england. london, batsford. neville, j. 2020: sorting out the rings. in m. cavell & j. neville eds. riddles at work in the early medieval tradition. manchester, manchester university press: 21–39. orchard, a. 1999: enigmata. in m. lapidge, j. blair, s. keynes & d. scragg eds. the blackwell encyclopedia of anglo-saxon england. oxford, blackwell: 171–172. rambaran-olm, m. r. ed. 2014: ‘john the baptist’s prayer’ or ‘the descent into hell’ from the exeter book. cambridge, d. s. brewer. salvador-bello, m. 2015: isidorean perceptions of order. morgantown, west virginia university press. santano moreno, b. & a. birtwhistle eds. 1992: enigmas anglosajones del ‘codex exoniensis’. badajoz, universidad de extremadura. thomas, c. 1971: the early christian archaeology of north britain. london, oxford university press. whitelock, d. ed. 1979: english historical documents c. 500–1042. 2nd ed. london, eyre methuen. williamson, c. trans. 2017: the complete old english poems. philadelphia, university of pennsylvania press. wilson, d. m. 1991. the tassilo chalice. in l. webster & j. backhouse eds. the making of england: anglo-saxon art and culture ad 600–900. london, british museum press: 168. wormald, f. 1959: the benedictional of st ethelwold. london, faber. wyatt, a. j. ed. 1912: old english riddles. boston, d. c. heath. 150 andrew breeze author’s address departamento de filología universidad de navarra pamplona 31009 (spain) received: 30 april 2021 e-mail: abreeze@unav.es revised version accepted: 15 june 2021 selim08.doc eugenio olivares, selim 8 (1998): 117—146 ‘i be not now he ? at áe of speken’: middle english romances and the conventions of fin’ amors in his english translation of a. capellanus’ arte honeste amandi1 (the medieval treatise on the rules of the so called fin’amors),2 j. j. parry states that this text was never rendered into english during the middle ages (1941: 24). this fact might well support a point of view held by some scholars according to which fin'amors (as it was conceived in france from the xith to the xiiith century) never existed in england.3 this new concept of love was born 1 the liber de arte honeste amandi et reprobatione inhonesti amoris (or, simply, de arte amandi) was a three volume treatise written by andré le chapelain (c. 118486). it has been preserved in a xivth century manuscript now kept in the national library of paris. the first latin edition of this text dates from the begining of the xvith, tractatus amoris . a later one (1610) was entitled de erotica seu amatoria. the best latin modern edition was published in 1892; see: e. trojel. andreae capellani regii francorum de amore libri tres . havniae: libraria gadiana. this treatise was translated into french twice during the 13th century; guillaume de lorris drew upon it for the roman de la rose. the liber codifies the whole doctrine of fin’amors, containing practically all the elements of the cult. we know little about this andreas capellanus. he is thought to have been a chaplain at the court of marie, countess of champagne, daughter of eleanor of aquitaine, at whose request andré wrote the liber. 2 i will use fin'amors, rather than courtly love –from g. paris’ “amor courtois” (“etudes sur les romans de la table ronde” 1883: 519)– for provençal poets never used the second term, but rather the first: “the adjetive fin, fis, from latin fides, had the sense of faithful, honest, sincere, true” (valency 1958: 142). 3 such was the opinion of m. valency, who claimed that “true love was really never at home in england” (1958:188). much in the same vein we find gist's words: “it is true that the complete outline of the convention does not often appear in the english romances” (1947:106). recently, d. burnley has stated that “a literature illustrating full compliance with the code described by paris and lewis turns out, upon cool reflection, to be absent from england before the end of the fourteenth century” (1998:150). burnley also makes reference to the opinion held by reuters (reuters, a.h. 1991. friendship and love in middle english metrical romances. frankfurt, p. 195), who “comments on the difficulty of finding anything resembling courtly love in middle english romance before the time of chaucer” e ugenio olivares 114 among provençal aristocracy at the beginning of the xith century,1 but seldom did it permeate into lower levels of society, the middle classes or the peasantry. the love of a woman became the only pursuit in the life of the knight and a quasi-religious ethic was built around this quest. in 1883 g. paris published a most influential article on arthurian literature in which he provided the first explanation of how this new ethic manifested in french arthurian literature, focusing on chrétien de troyes’ lancelot. love was always illicit and furtive, a man-woman relationship in which the first was permanently in a position of inferiority, subject to the whims of the lady. the lover was always ready to fulfill every deed she asked in order to become worthy of the lady’s love. love was, to sum up, a virtuous art, a religion (paris 1883: 459-534). forty years later, c.s. lewis held true to paris’ definition when he offered what seems to be the best known systematization of the basic principles of this philosophy of life: “humility, courtesy, adultery, and the religion of love” (1936: 12). fin’amors was erected as a kind of parallel religion, framing and giving sense to all aspects in the knight’s life. in a more or less implicit way, the love for a lady (usually and preferably married) is presented as superior to the love of god, in such a way that all the virtues of the lover, especially his humility and his courtesy, are subject to this devotion. the lady, often mute, is placed on a pedestal, beautiful to behold and refined, unattainable, and, therefore, always desired.2 whether this ideal was simply a literary convention or it was really practised in the so called courts of love, i will not say. the truth is that it found an inmediate echo both in provençal love lyrics and in the roman courtois, the classic type of which are chrétien de troyes’ five romances, written between 1170 and 1190. plainly speaking, medieval ro mance began in the xiith century when clerks, working for aristocratic patrons, often ladies of royal birth such as eleanor of aquitaine and her daughters (marie de champagne and matilda, wife of henry the lion, duke of saxony), began to write for a leisured and refined (1998:174, n. 5). however, i do not think chaucer himself fully represented the conventions of fin’amors, either (olivares merino 1998: 208-14). 1 peter dronke opposed this assumption of novelty and claimed that “’the new feeling’ of amour courtois is at least as old as egypt of the second millennium b. c., and might indeed occur at any time or place (…) [it] is not confined to courtly or chivalric society, but is reflected even in the earliest recorded popular verse of europe” (1968: xvii). 2 fin’amors is for me, above all, the most accomplished manifestation of the masculine erotic ideal (olivares merino 1998: 74-77). m iddle e nglish romances and the conventions of f in’ amors 115 society. like the courtly lyric, romance was a vehicle for the new aristocratic feelings: in most of them, at considerable length, the authors narrated the necessary interaction between chivalry and love. due to the many contacts between the main countries of western europe, soon germany, italy or spain adopted this new fashion, each country gradually producing a good number of troubadours and romance writers to satisfy the taste of the new european courts. english poets also imitated the new conventions. their case, however, presents a distinctive and particular typology. leaving aside for now the issue of english love lyrics, the purpose of the present paper is to demonstrate how in england the rules of french fin’amors were never fully reflected in middle english romances. i. the queen of troubadours goes to england: an auspicious start several circumstances might have favoured the proliferation of the conventions of fin'amors among xiith century english aristocracy. all of them merge into one of the most influential characters of the eu rpoean late middle ages, eleanor of aquitaine (1122-1204), the granddaughter of william ix of aquitaine, the first known troubadour. this woman exercised an unquestionable influence in the development and popularisation of the new courtly sensibility in france. she was the great patron of the two dominant poetic movements of the time: the courtly love tradition, conveyed in the songs of the troubadours, and the historical matter of britain, best represented in chrétien de troyes’ roman courtois. one might well expect that the marriage of this queen with henry of plantagenet (1152), the heir to the english throne (proclaimed king in 1154 as henry ii), could probably contribute to the spreading of the new literary fashion in the british isles as she would later on do in france, while holding her court at poitiers (1170-74), ruling the duchy in the name of richard coeur de lion, her younger son. eleanor was probably the one who propitiated the combination of those elements that best define the roman courtois: fin’amors, chivalry and celtic myths (pernoud 1995: 116). when she was about 13 years old, her child imagination was probably amazed by the stories told by the welsh or breton jongleur breri (or e ugenio olivares 116 bleheris), known to have been at poitiers (c. 1135)1. these narrations, mainly from celtic traditions, were about heroes who suffered from spells and tests of their fairy mistresses (barron 1987: 31). once in england, she again heard about celtic heroes, mainly arthur and his warriors, this time in an epic setting: geoffrey of monmouth had long ago written his historia regum britanniae (c. 1136). to these raw materials the queen would add courtliness and fin’amors. the presence of the queen of troubadours in england did not pass unnoticed in the literary circles of henry ii’s court. exactly as it would happen in poitiers later on, she was a patroness, a source of inspiration and an influence in poetic creation. all the authors writing for her would certainly in clude in their texts those elements of the new love fashion she found so enjoyable. thomas of britain wrote his tristam and ysolt under her inspira tion,2 perhaps definitely for her.wace dedicated to her his brut,3 and it is generally belie ved that she is the noble lady to whom 1 r. s. loomis summed up in 1956 much of the information concerning this conteur, together with the sources (see: loomis, r. s. 1956. wales and the arthurian legend. cardiff: university of wales press, pp. 193-95). for a more recent account on breri, see: gallais, p. 1967. “bleheri, la cour de poitiers et la difusion de récits arthuriens sur le continent”. actes du viie congrés national de littérature comparée. paris: didier. 2 the anglo-norman poet known only as thomas of britain wrote a courtly version of the tristan story (1150-70). according to r. s. loomis, thomas’ tristam and ysolt was not written for eleanor but for her husband henry ii (1963: 84). however thomas’ attempt to resolve the tragic conflict in favour of the sovereignty of pas sion, turning the magic potion into a mere symbol, seems to suggest eleanor’s complicity rather than her husband’s. 3 wace (c. 1100-after 1174) was born in jersey but he was sent to france for his up bringing. in 1155 he finished his roman de brut, a poem probably dedicated to eleanor. this we conclude from the information contained in the brut (1190), a version of the latter written by layamon (fl. xiith century), a priest from worcestershire. when refering to the sources of his text, he makes the following statement: “boc he nom pe pridde, eide per amidden,/ pa makede a frenchis clerk wace wes ihoten, pe wel coupe writen,/ and he hoe ¥ef pare æ?elen ælienor/ pe wes henries quene pes he¥es kinges” (layamon 1989: ll. 14-23). wace certainly knew the tastes of the queen and his text is adorned with the elements of the new courtly fashion (loomis 1963: 40); as barron puts it, wace coloured his text “faintly as roman courtois ” (1987: 134). m iddle e nglish romances and the conventions of f in’ amors 117 benoît de sainte-more dedicated his romance of troy.1 (parry 1941: 13) leaving aside the three poets in parry’s quotation,2 it is also worth noting that the most relevant french writers of the time went to england. the troubadour bernard de ventadour (+1195?), whose poetry is considered the finest in provençal language, is known to have traveled throughout england around 1152 or 1155. the rumours about his love affair with eleanor will never be fully proven, but it seems they made her second husband uneasy. in one of her frequent visits to poitiers, eleanor welcomed bernard (recently expelled from ventadour) in her court, where he would stay for some time. henry ii himself “invited” him to leave poitiers and go to england.3 the earliest 1 benoît de sainte-maure (also spelled sainte-more) was a xiith century poet, probably from sainte-maure, near poitiers. he is the author of an old french poem in about 30,000 octosyllabic couplets, the roman de troie (c. 1165), the subject of which was given by henry ii to the poet who, then, dedicated his text to eleanor (barron 1987: 49). benoît’s poem, a travesty of the story told in homer’s iliad, is an immense baroque tapestry of greek lore and fable. his is the first version of the troilus and cressida story. benoît’s poem was widely popular in its day and it analyzed various forms of love: the rape of helen by paris; medea’s desertion by jason; briseida parted from troilus and seduced by diomedes; and, finally, polyxena wooed by achilles (barron 1987: 111-12). 2 the names of two minor authors should also be added to the list of those writing in henry ii’s and eleanor’s court, béroul and philip of thaon (pernoud 1995: 11617), though a direct link between them and the queen can not be established. béroul, a norman poet, also wrote a tristan poem (c. 1190), very possibly in england (barron 1987: 49). the cleric philippe de taon (early xiith century) had enjoyed the patronage of the english king henry i (1069-1135). he provides one of the first examples of “scientific” writing in anglo-norman literature: the cumpoz or comput, a kind of ecclesiastical calendar. he also wrote a lapidary and a bes tiary, both allegorical. his bestiary, a typical romanesque genre, is full of knights and ladies (pernoud 1995: 117). it seems, however, that the author dedicated it, not to eleanor, but to henry i’s second wife, adeliza or adelaide of louvain (barron 1987: 48; burnley 1998: 126). the name of another author can still be included here, one mestre thomas, a clerk associated with the court of henry ii. he is the author of the romance of horn (burnley 1998: 11), from which king horn derived. as in the cases of béroul and philip of thaon, an explicit connection with eleanor can not be made. for an edition of thomas’ romance, see: pope, m. k. (ed.). 1955-64. the romance of horn by thomas. 2 vols. anglo-norman texts 9-10, 12-13. oxford. 3 eleonor had just returned to poitiers and there was a rumour concerning the love between bernard and the queen. r.pernoud wonders: “¿se molestaría enrique, como antes eble de ventadour, por los homenajes que el trovador rendía a la reina? ¿llevaría por esto a bernard a inglaterra, prefiriendo poner el mar entre la reina y el poeta? es lo que habría de insinuar, el siglo siguiente, su biógrafo, uc de saint -circ” (1995: 113). walter map (1140?-1209?), a clerkman at the service of henry ii, did not have a very favourable opinion on eleanor. it is remarkable that he should refer e ugenio olivares 118 known french woman poet, marie de france (+1216?),1 must have spent some time in england –for she knew english (larrington 1995: 20)– where she probably wrote her literary works, all of them in french: the lais (before 1189), the fables (ysopets) and a version of st. patrick's purgatory (espurgatoire of saint patrice, after 1189). from her three surviving texts, the twelve brief lais are especially relevant for the present purpose. as barron has claimed, some (if not all) of these short stories, combining the central topics of courtly love poetry and chivalric spirit –everything adorned with the magic halo of celtic influence–, were written in england. besides, this same critic concludes, “henry ii was most probably the king to whom marie of france dedicated her lais” (barron 1987: 49).2 in light of this as sumption, one might reasonably suppose that marie de france also met queen eleanor. finally, chrétien de troyes (fl. 1165-80) himself, the creator of the roman courtois, is likely to have spent some time in england, for it seems it was there where he wrote his first romance, erec et enide (1170), at the behest of henry ii, to support his son geoffrey’s claim to the throne of brittany by stressing the “link” between the latter and king arthur.3 the poet from to her, when she was the queen-mother, in the following terms: “cui successit henricus matildis filius, in quem iniecit oculos incestos alienor francorum regina, lodouici piisimi coniux, et iniustum machinata diuorcium nupsit ei, cum tamen haberet[ur] in fama priuata quod gaufrido patri suo lectum lodouici participasset” (“to him henry, son of matilda, succeeded, and upon him eleanor, queen of the french, the wife of the most pious louis, cast her unchaste eyes, and contrived an unrighteous annulment, and married him, though she was secretly reputed to have shared the couch of louis with his father geoffrey”) (map 1994: 474-77). for further allegations made against eleanor and her misconduct, see: john of salisbury. 1956. hist. pontificalis. ed. m. chibnall. nelson’s medieval texts, pp. 52-53, 61; richard of devizes. 1963. chronicle. ed. j. t. appleby. nelson’s medieval texts, pp. 125-26. 1 what little is known about her is taken or inferred from her writings and from a possible allusion or two in the works of contemporary authors. the most plausible identification of her historical identity is that she was the illegitimate daughter of godefroy d’anjou and that she became abbes of shaftesbury around 1181. her surname, de france (first used by claude fauchet in a line in the epilogue to her fables [1581]), suggests that she was probably of french birth, rather than of french descent, i.e. a member of the anglo-norman aristocracy (larrington 1995: 20). 2 however, it is sometimes thought that this was henry ii’s son, the young king (died in 1183). 3 kibler states that the coronation of erec at nantes on christmas day presents similarities with a historical event that took place in england. in 1169 henry ii held a court with the purpose of marrying his third son, geoffrey, to the daughter of conan iv of brittany, constance. it also took place in nantes and in christmas day. apart from this, “the guest list at the coronation of erec includes barons from m iddle e nglish romances and the conventions of f in’ amors 119 troyes certainly met eleanor, either in england or in one of the queen’s stays in poitiers, being so impressed by henry ii’s wife that he might well have found in her the inspiration for erec et enide (pernoud 1995: 152). both marie de france and the poet from troyes were very popular in england and, as sanders writes, “the works of both poets seem to have circulated both widely and over a long period” in that country (1994: 40). eleanor’s second husband, ten years younger than her, could not help feeling himself seduced by the figure of king arthur, a kind of british mes siah, as geoffrey of monmouth had depicted him in his historia regum britanniae: this breton chief became a model for all christian knights, his fabled court the materialization of the feudal ideal of social harmony. henry ii was particularly moved by the arthurian legend: at his command some excavations were carried out in glastonbury. a rumour spread that excalibur, the sword of the king, had been found there. indirectly, henry ii contributed to kindle the interest of his people for those stories that narrated the deeds of the knights of the round table, deeds that would soon be adorned with love adventures and refined manners in the pages of chrétien de troyes’ ro mances, the very core of the arthurian canon. this fascination for the figure of king arthur did remain through the xiiith century and found a most accomplished manifestation in the person of edward iii: “his new order of chivalry [the order of the garter, founded in c. 1344] was a belated realization of long cherished military ideals and long fostered literary images” (sanders 1994: 39). certainly, it goes without saying that henry ii and his wife eleanor exercised such a wide and generous patronage,1 that the courtly romance all corners of henry ii’s domains” (kibler 1991: 6). besides, the thrones on which arthur and erec were seated, both gifts from bruianz des illes, had leopards sculptured in their arms. leopards were the heraldic animals in henry ii’s royal arms and bruianz des illes has been identified as brian of wallingford, the king’s best friend (kibler 1991: 6). but the presence of henry ii’s england seems not to be confined solely to erece et enide: “references to english cities and topography, especially in cligés but indeed in all his works, show that the britain of king arthur was the england of king henry ii plantagenet” (kibler 1991: 5). for other scholars who have pointed out chrétien de troyes’ links with the court of henry ii, see: cohen, g. 1931: chrétien de troyes et son oeuvre. boivin, paris, pp. 82, 89; holmes, u. t. jr. 1937: a history of old french literature from the origins to 1300. linker, chapel hill, p. 164. 1 eleanor’s daughters, marie of champagne and alix, were equally (if not more) influential (parry 1941: 13). under marie’s command, chrétien de troyes wrote his e ugenio olivares 120 tradition rapidly spread in the late xiith century; the great courts of europe were so cosmopolitan surely thanks to the periods of peace europe was enjoying.1 but this was not the case in england: “of all the genres of romanz only the full-blown roman courtois is missing [in england], though it seems unlikely that it would have been less welcome in eleanor’s english court than at poitiers” (barron 1987: 49). eleanor’s england might well have been a suit able audience for those romances in which the love of ladies (often married) was the only goal in the life of the knight; romances which the lady of the castle well described to sir gawain in the following terms: for to telle of pis teuelyng of pis trwe knyftez, hit is pe tytelet token and tyxt of her werkkez, how ledes for her lele luf hor lyuez han auntered, endured for her drury dulful stoundez, and after wenged with her walour and voyded her care, and broft blysse into boure with bountes awen– (sir gawain and the green knight, tolkien 1967: ll. 1514-519) however, leaving aside the romance-chronicle brut by layamon (c. 1220), the first middle english romance (king horn) was not written until c. 1225, when this genre was already beginning to show signs of a decline from its original form. it was not until the lower classes, who knew no french, “became more literate and prosperous that they created a considerable demand for written records of the romances which pleased them”, texts that were obviously written in middle english (loomis1963: 133). relying on the preserved manuscripts, it must be concluded that the “matter of britain” was not taken into england (exception again made of layamon’s brut) until the xivth century, with great appeal to english readers then.2 nevertheless, lancelot, one in which he was told to reflect the most accomplished type of a fin’amors relationship, the adulterous love between artur’s wife, guinevere, and lancelot, the best and most loyal of his knights. 1 focusing only in the “matter of britain”, apart from chrétien de troyes five french romances (1170-90), many romances were written in germany: the parzival (c. 1200) by wolfram von eschenbach and gottfried von strassburg’s tristan und isolde (c. 1210) (barron 1987: 237-38). in another german text, we find the archetypal tristan romance: eilhart von oberge's tristant (c. 1170-80). 2 generally speaking, let us point the following romances or groups of them: a) ywain and gawain (1300-50), which is a version of chrétien de troyes’ yvain; and sir perceval of galles (1300-40). b) four breton lays in english: sir orfeo (c. 1300); sir degare (1300-25); emare (c. 1400); and, finally, thomas chestre’s sir launfal m iddle e nglish romances and the conventions of f in’ amors 121 neither at that moment nor before did the ethos of fin’amors –ultimately defined by its quasi-religious intensity, its adulterous connotations and its joyful unfulfillment– widely satisfy the taste of the english romance readers. what follows is an attempt to explain the referred dearth. ii. the love topic in english romances romance, the most accomplished literary reflection of french courtly culture, soon spread to other parts of western europe. england, as stated before, saw a later flourishing of the genre, though the fashion would last until the end of the middle ages: many french romances were adapted into verse and prose from the late xiiith to the xvth and even xvith centuries. in general terms, the subjects dealt with were those found in french romance.1 in any case, it is necessary to talk about adaptations (or very liberal versions), imitations, naturalizations or reflections of the french models, but never mere translations. besides, from a formal point of view, english romances present a richer variety of verse forms: from the almost exclusive mode of the rhyming couplets, there is a shift into a remarkable diversity of metrical styles.2 in this sense, barron concluded that english romances show a modified conception (late xivth century). c) the gawain romances (xivth and xvth centuries), including sir gawain and the green knight (l375-1400). d) alliterative morte arthure (1350-1400); the stanzaic morte arthur (c. 1400); and malory’s morte darthur(c. 1470). a full account of the development of the “matter of britain” in england is given by barron (1987: 132-76). 1 i mean the three types of historical materials broadly defined as the “matter” of rome (legends from classic antiquity); the “matter” of france (the deeds of charlemagne and his knights or the fight against the invading muslims); and, finally, the “matter” of britain (the adventures of king arthur and his knights). barron also talks about the “matter of england”, made up of a body of national legend of the germanic stock (1987: 63-88). among the most outstanding romances from this last (and less known) group, we find king horn (c. 1225), havelok the dane (c. 1290), the tale of gamelyn (c. 1350-70) and athelston (c. 1355-80). 2 r. s. loomis makes a two-fold division of middle english romances: “the rimed english romances” (1963: 131-46) and “the alliterative english romances” (1963: 147-165). more recently, inés praga has preserved the same distinction, giving a detailed account of possible variations (1985: 244-46). m. mills does not make explicit reference to this two-fold division and he rather points out the range of metrical forms. he mentions various kinds of couplets, various types of alliterative lines and, finally, various stanza patterns. among these, he singles out the short rhyming-couplet and the twelve-line tail-rhyme stanza, as the most popular (1973: viii). e ugenio olivares 122 of the genre, different, but by no means inferior to the french models: “the result is an even greater variety of form and content” (1987: 57). this statement is further tinged by sanders, when he defines english romances as “simpler in form and more direct in address than their originals” (1994: 41). therefore, it is fairly justified to conclude that there are “some distinctively english modes of romance-writing” (mills 1973: vii). among these original features of english romance corpus, i would like to focus on the way in which the love topic is presented. love vs. action: being not a marginal topic, it is by no means the central aspect of the stories. in roman courtois (best exemplified in lancelot by chrétien de troyes) the whole narration depends on the relationship between the knight and the lady (it being developed along the patterns of fin’amors, as first systematized by a. capellanus); this is hardly the case in the english texts. love in them, though important, is not exclusively the primary concern of the plot: courage, heroism and military prowess are relevant in and of themselves, not merely as the necessary attributes of the perfect fin’amans. as a.b. taylor concluded: “they [english romance readers] liked to have a love theme running through a romance, but not as the supreme topic,” (1930: 250). m.a. gist (1947: 8) restates k. lippmann’s opinion when she claims that the ethics of english romances are not french, but anglo -saxon.1 the stress falls, rather than on love, on “courage, steadfastness, truthfulness, honor, prowess, nobility (edelmut), generosity, and manhood (menske)”. the same opinion is held by j. fellows: the modern connotations of the term “romantic” might lead us to expect that love between the sexes is the primary focus of these narratives, but this is not normally the case. such love provides the motive force for florys and blauncheflour alone among the ro mances in this volume. this is not to say that love and marriage do not play an important part in most romances, but usually they subserve other themes such as the hero’s growth to maturity (king horn, syr tryamowre), or are seen in relation to knightly prowess, 1 see: lippmann, k. das ritterliche persönlichkeitsideal in der mittelenglischen literatur des 13 und 14 jahrhunderts . leipzig: meerane in sachen, 1933, pp. 5672. see also: schücking, l. l. die englische literatur in mittelalter. handbuch der literaturwissenchaft 4. ed. o. walzel. wildpark-postdam, 1927, pp. 66. m iddle e nglish romances and the conventions of f in’ amors 123 honour (the erle of tolous) and loyalty (amis and amiloun). (1993: vii)1 english readers preferred rather strength, courage, marvellous incidents,… that to which we refer to nowadays as action. in 1924, laura h. loomis conducted a survey of those middle english romances that did not wholly fit within the traditional story -cycles or “matters”(those of rome, france and britain).2 the result of her research was a new thematic subdivision: “’romances of love and adventure’”; “’romances of legendary english heroes’”; and “’romances of trial and faith’” (mills 1973: vi). loomis’ division was by no means a clear-cut one, since she pointed out that the three ethos often appeared in different sections of the same romance. be it as it may, the heroic or edifying modes seem to prevail over the chivalrous (the essence of which is love), without wholly supressing it (mills 1973: ix). in order to exemplify what is being said, let me briefly focus on two ro mances in which love is one of the central concerns of the narration, particularly in the second text: king horn (c. 1225) and floris et blancheflur (c. 1250). in the first case, the story is not primarily a love-story, but one in which the overall structure is determined by the hero’s three basic motifs: “horn’s need to prove himself as a man and a knight, to avenge his father’s death and to regain his patrimony” (fellows 1993: ix). horn is in love with rymenhild but their final union subserves the last of the aforementioned mo tifs: it is a kind of culmination to horn’s success in regaining his royal status (fellows 1993: ll. 1279-90). besides, anticipating the argumentation that follows in the next heading, the relationship between the lovers frustrates two of the fundamental features of fin’amors: the lovers eventually marry and, besides, the reader often has the impression that it was rhymenhild who was courting horn and not the other way around! in floris et blancheflur the reader certainly finds a more french-like treatment of love: it is pasionate and 1 it is necessary to account for the exceptions to this statement. the theme of a knight who undertakes adventures to prove to his lady that he is worthy of her love, a typical task of the fin’amans, is mainly represented in two romances : ipomedon (1174-90) of hue de rotelande and the referred florys and blauncheflour (c. 1250). the first one, as m. mills remarks, is “unusual in its full-scale treatment of the refinements of chivalrous love” (1973: viii). the second one, even more so, focuses on passionate love to the exclusion of other values and considerations (fellows 1993: xi). 2 see: loomis, l. h. 1924. medieval romance in england. new york. e ugenio olivares 124 seems to exclude other values and considerations, even the religious and the chivalric. nevertheless, the author omits or condenses passages of descriptions, reflections and dialogues and he concentrates rather on practical action.1 in light of this, g. barnes stated that love is here subordinated to the engine by which floris achieves his goal (1984: 10-25). love vs. ‘fin’amors’: once it is remarked that love is not the main concern in english romances, a further clarification should also be made. when english romance writers describe the love of the hero, it is not presented according to the strict precepts of fin’amors as usually happens in the roman courtois. english romance readers would rebel against many of the conventions of this fashion: the lengthy descriptions of wooing scenes, the refinement and delicacies of knights and ladies or, at times, the sugary submission of the knight-lover were not much to the taste of the english audience. for english romance writers, as for their readers, love might be a most ennobling human feeling, but the pursuit of it was by no means an obsession or a kind of pathology. in a sense, the conception of love in english romances is more naturalistic, less endowed with quasi-mystic connotations, as in the french case. common sense and rationality are, in general terms, preserved in the minds of the lovers, who never let themselves be fully carried away by uncontrolled passion. king horn’s love for rymenhild is less sublime than that of lancelot for guinevere, but at the same time more realistic and closer to the everyday life of readers.2 in 1938, a study conducted by donnell van de voort was published.3 it dealt with the treatment given to love in medieval 1 ywain and gawain (entre 1300 y 1350) exemplifies the present statement, since it is an adaptation (never a translation) of chrétien de troyes’ ywain. the almost 7000 lines in the french text are transformed into little more than 4000 in the english version. this drastic reduction is achieved by the simplification, if not supression, of the wooing episodes and delicacies of the courtly system: “the poem is clearly the work of a minstrel catering for the sober, realistic audience of a provincial baron's hall, an audience whose sensibilities and sympathies were not adjusted to chrétien’s elaborate and subtle representations of courtly love or to highflown chivalric sentiment. the elegant and dilatory court romance of chrétien has become in the hands of the english minstrel a rapid-paced story of love and gallant adventure” (friedman and harington 1964: xvii). 2 this is also one of the main differences between provençal and english love lyrics (olivares merino 1998: 204-07). 3 see: love and marriage in the english medieval romance. nashville: privately printed. m iddle e nglish romances and the conventions of f in’ amors 125 english romances and it has remained for decades an influential work. m. a. gist summarized voort’s opinion on the present issue in the following terms: “in the ethics of sex and marriage the english romances do not follow the french pattern of courtly love” (1947: vii). already in the 70’s, h. a. kelly also made reference to voort’s text, sharing with this author the view that “those parts of the code of courtly love relating to a system of idealized immorality have no place in the english prose or metrical romances” (1975: 21). five years before, r. woolf had stated that “love can be said to be the chief subject of the romances. this love, however, is not courtly love” (1970: 274).1 love vs. adultery: in king horn and floris et blancheflur, marriage is presented as the perfect (and desireable) culmination of a true love relationship. when a. capellanus stated that the first rule of love was “marriage is no real excuse for loving” (1941: 184), he was establishing a pattern that many other romances were to follow, chrétien de troyes’ lancelot and the prose (or vulgate) lancelot (xiiith century) being the most emblematic ones. english romances rarely presented their heroes enrolled in adulterous love relationships. as early as 1947, g. mathew stated that “in fiction ro mantic love was very rarely associated with adultery”(71). french romances in which illicit love was somehow legitimated (flamenca, joufrois, châtelain de coucy,…),2 did not appeal to english readers, who rather pre ferred a less problematic treatment of the love theme.3 in sir degrevaunt (late xivthe 1 m. a. gist reports j. e. wells’ opinion (a manual of the writings in middle english. new haven, 1916, pp. 1-2) when he described english romances as less sophisticated, more sincere and democratic (1947: 2) a. mci. trounce defined english romances as “popular and religious in subject-matter, and lively in tone” (1932: 102). equally conclusive is b. ford, when he writes about “the lack of an audience interested in the refinements of amour courtois ” (1976: 161). 2 the provençal flamenca (c. 1234) is, probably, the most outstanding. it is a poem of more than 8,000 lines in which a lady by ingenious devices eludes the vigilance of her jealous husband: no book in medieval literature had more quickness of intellect or was more instructive about the manners of polite society in the xiiith century. the theme of “outwitting of the jealous husband”, common in the fabliaux (short verse tales containing realistic, even coarse detail, and written to amuse), is frequently found in xiiith-century romance and in lighter lyric verse. it occurs also in the châtelain de coucy, where it is combined with a more tragic, sophisticated, and far-fetched theme, that of the dead lover’s heart served by the jealous husband to the lady. 3 “for many the amusements of secular life, especially stories of amorous intrigue (according to the strictest doctrine incompatible with true piety), were equally ene ugenio olivares 126 century), the hero’s love for melydor is described following many of the conventions of fin’amors, but both marry at the end; the same happens in william of palerme (c. 1350). finally, the heroes in sir torrent of portyngale (c. 1400), sir eglamour of artois (c. 1350) and sir triamour (late xivth century) respectively marry desonel, cristabelle and the king of hungary’s daughter (mathew 1947: 132-3).1 the dearth of english romances starred by lancelot or tristan, the two adulterous lovers par excellence, is also symptomatic of this uneasiness with illicit love affairs. queen guinevere’s lover appears in only four english texts, all of them written in the xvth and xvith centuries. the first one is the stanzaic morte arthur (c.1400). the anonymous north-midlands poet did not want to modify the love between lancelot and arthur’s wife, a literary documented historical fact, but he made a lot out of it. whereas chrétien de troyes described its beneficial effects and the writer of the prose lancelot created “a frank glorification of idealized adultery” (loomis 1963: 92), the english poet dramatized the consequences of the affair: “is such a love compatible with the dynastic ideal which arthur embodied for an age which condemned sexual relations with the wife of the ruler as treason?” (barron 1987: 144). in le morte darthur by sir thomas malory (c. 1470), lancelot’s role is again essentially defined by the conflict between his love for guinevere and his loyalty to his lord (barron 1987: 151), a dilemma that leads to arthur’s dolorous death. although based on french romances (mainly the vulgate cycle [first third of the xiiith century]), malory's account differs from his models in its emphasis on the brotherhood of the knights rather than on fin’amors and on the conflicts of loyalty (brought about by the adultery of grossing. but, as said earlier, few specimens of this literature contraverted, and most maintained conventional medieval morality more or less strongly” (ford 1976: 96). 1 the awntyrs of arthure at the terne wathelyne was included by madden in his 1839 compilation of gawain-romances. in this text, composed in half or late xivth century (wells 1926: 61), the anonymous poet describes gawain and guinevere riding together, when suddenly a storm breaks. the queen’s mother’s ghost appears to them, dreadful to see, just to warn guinevere about the dangers of fin'amors, which have led her to her present state: “this es it to luffe pamoures, and luftis, and litys,/ that gerfe me lyghte and lenge so lawe in pis lake” (madden 1839: ll. 200-1). the adulterous falmouth squire is a short narration which, being supposedly based in real events, enjoyed great popularity in xivth century england. a boy insistently claims the grace of knowing whether or not his dead father has saved his soul. he is taken to heaven and then to hell, where he sees his father suffering terribly for he was an adulterer (stone 1971: 82-8). m iddle e nglish romances and the conventions of f in’ amors 127 lancelot and guinevere) that finally destroy the fellowship. only two late poems bear the name of the queen’s lover: the scottish verse romance lancelot of the laik (1482-1500), clearly derived from the vulgate-lancelot and, well into the xvith century, the ballad sir lancelot du lake.1 finally, it is worth remarking that in the most accomplished english arthurian ro mance, sir gawain and the green knight, lancelot only appears once, re ferred to in a long list of arthurian knights (l. 553).2 tristan’s case is even more telling, since (apart from malory’s references to him) he is the subject of only one romance, sir tristrem (late xiiith century), that derives from thomas of britain’s version of the legend.3 in the middle english text, the anonymous author avoids the courtly embellishments of his source, while delaying the meeting of the lovers for one third of the narration. tristan is not a passionate lover, but “a good knight whose career is blighted by a fatal error”, his affair with isolde (barron 1987: 154). iii. the reasons 1 there might also be other reasons, more irrational, to understand the unpopularity of lancelot in england. we can not forget that arthur and his knight are all english characters, whereas lancelot du lac was french, according to malory’s le morte darthur, born in bayonne, in the aquitaine region. as narrated in the the prose or vulgate lancelot, after the death of his father, king ban of benoic, lancelot was carried off by the enchantress vivien, the lady of the lake, who in time sent him to arthur's court. plainly speaking, the english audience would not find much pleasure in reading the amorous adventures of a french knight who went to the arthurian court and seduced the king’s wife! 2 i have already analysed the implicit contrast established by the pearl-poet between gawain and lancelot (olivares merino 1998: 239). 3 the legend was given the form in which it has become known to succeeding generations in about 1150-60 by an otherwise unknown old french poet whose work, although lost, can be reconstructed in its essentials from surviving versions based upon it. the main french versions (both fragmentary) are by the anglo-norman poet thomas (c. 1170) and the norman béroul (rather later and possibly composite. from these versions it can be inferred that the archetypal poem told the story of an all-absorbing passion caused by a magic potion, a passion stronger than death, yet unable to triumph over the feudal order to which the heroes belong. the story ended with iseult's death in the embrace of her dying lover and with the symbol of two trees growing from the graves of the lovers and intertwining their branches so closely that they could never be separated. thomas of britain’s poem was used by gottfried von strassburg in tristan und isolde (c. 1170-80), as well as being the source of the old norse, italian, and middle english versions of the story. e ugenio olivares 128 so far i have stated that, as far as the presentation of the love topic is concerned, middle english romances depart from their french models in the following aspects: the non exclusivity of love in the plots, the lack of interest in the refinements of fin’amors and, finally, the rejection of adulterous affairs. i would like to propose some reasons to account for these differences. many more might surely be added, but i consider these to be the most rele vant ones. the anglo-norman background: one important difference between continental and anglo -norman literature is that the fourth lateran council of 1215 led to an outpouring of doctrinal and devotional works for the laity in england not paralleled in france.1 religious houses caused lives of native saints to be written, and the nobility had a taste for romances about imaginary english ancestors, the matter of england. thus social and political differences prevented anglo -norman literature from being a mere imitation of its french counterpart. focusing on the present purpose, it is necessary to take into account the attitude of anglo -norman romance writers in order to better understand the special treatment given to the issue of love in middle english romances, for in many cases the first ones provided direct sources for the latter.2 anglo -norman literature had its fair shair of romances. apart from the xiith century versions of the tristan story by thomas and béroul, in this same century some romances were composed in the form of the chanson de geste; for example, romance of horn , by master thomas, a text from which 1 the fourth lateran council, the 12th ecumenical council (1215), generally considered the greatest council before trent, was years in preparation. pope innocent iii desired the widest possible representation, and more than 400 bishops, 800 abbots and priors, envoys of many european kings, and personal representatives of frederick ii (confirmed by the council as emperor of the west) took part. the purpose of the council was twofold: reform of the church and the recovery of the holy land. many of the conciliar decrees touching on church reform and organization remained in effect for centuries. the council ruled on such vexing problems as the use of church property, tithes, judicial procedures, and patriarchal precedence. it ordered jews and saracens to wear distinctive dress and obliged catholics to make a yearly confession and to receive communion during the easter season. the council sanctioned the word transubstantiation as a correct expression of eucharistic doctrine. the teachings of the cathari and waldenses were condemned. innocent also ordered a four-year truce among christian rulers so that a new crusade could be launched. 2 see: crane, s. 1986. insular romance: politics, faith, and culture in anglo-norman and middle english literature. berkeley, california; and weiss, j. 1992. the birth of romance: an anthology. london. m iddle e nglish romances and the conventions of f in’ amors 129 both the middle english king horn (c. 1225) and horn childe and maiden rimnild (c. 1320) were independently derived (fellows 1993: viii). yet another thomas wrote the roman de toute chevalerie, an independent version of the alexander romance and the source of the middle english ro mance king alisaunder (c. 1300). in the xiiith century the more courtly type of romance reappeared in amadas et idoine and in amis et amiloun, perhaps derived from the same source as the middle english poem amis and amiloun (late xiiith). c. b. west made a clarification which is very useful for my present concern: “the idea of marriage separated from love remains foreign to them [anglo -norman poets]” (1938: 168). leaving aside the referred tristan stories (both written under the patronage of eleanor), continental fin'amors was seen by anglo -norman poets, elsewhere prosaic, practical, insensitive, showing no enthusiasm nor sense of beauty, with a certain degree of suspicion. love, that irrational, blind and joyful force that subdues every other consid eration, is defined in an anglo -norman text in the following terms (in latin, anglonorman and middle english): amor est quedam mentis insania que vagum hominem ducit per devia; sitit delicias et bibit tristia, crebris doloribus commiscens gaudia. amur est une penseé enragiée ke le udif humme meyne par veie deveye, ke a seyf de delices et ne beyt ke tristece. love is a selkud wodenesse that the ideal men ledeth by wildernesse, that thurstes of wilfulscipe, and drinket sorwenesse, and with lomful sorewes menget his blithnesse (meyer 1876: 383). the moral background: when analysing the genesis of provençal love poetry, it has elsewhere been pointed out that it was the moral relaxation in the provence that conditioned the development of fin’amors precisely there e ugenio olivares 130 and not, initially, in northern france.1 the situation in england was very different, for there the influence of a very active church was felt everywhere. even running the risk of oversimplification, r.w. ackerman draws the following conclussion: but more importantly, all education above the elementary level, the grammar school in particular, was and continued to remain under the aegis of the church and was oriented toward the prepara tion of priests. again, from the parish church itself flowed and endless stream of dogma and moral exhortation. these christian influences were of primary significance to all aspects of medieval culture, and an understanding of them is crucial to a student of middle english literature. (1966: 38) something similar might be said concerning the end of the period that is being dealt with, for, as w.a. pantin remarked, “with all the faults and scandals of the times, and they were many, it was at the same time a profoundly religious period” (1955: 1-2).2 the moralising purpose of many english ro mances is now better understood, as is the fact that many of them present affinities with hagiographic narrations: sir launfal [end xivth c.], erl of toulous [c. 1400], emare [c. 1400], sir gowther [c. 1400] or sir orfeo [c. 1300], etc).3 m. a. gist, after highlighting that english romances were characterized by “didactic intention and conscious piety” (1947: 2), goes on to claim that some of the episodes in french romance were embarrassing for the 1 “the contrast between the two moralities (…) perhaps provides us with the key to the problem of social geography presented by these new preoccupations with romantic love. (…) it is beyond dispute, on the other hand, that in the south the church, especially during the first feudal age, was less rich, less cultivated, less active than in the northern provinces. no great works of clerical literature, no great movements of monastic reform emanated from that region. (…) it was also no doubt the reason why the higher ranks of the laity, being less subject to clerical influence, were relatively free to develop their own secular morality” (bloch 1961: 310). 2 in a less enthusiastic manner, h. s. bennet states that “chaucer’s england was catholic england, … the world in which chaucer grew up accepted the church and its teaching” (1990: 12). 3 “[the romances] were usually pious in their sentiments and often religious in their purport, even though the actions and emotions they displayed did not always accord with the orthodox christian ethical code. in fact, there was frequently no great difference between many medieval romances (in the sense of amorous adventures) and the equally numerous tales of saints and sinners” (ford 1976: 87). m iddle e nglish romances and the conventions of f in’ amors 131 english audiences (1947: 7-8).1 the moral conflicts arising from a too serious concern for the precepts of fin’amors should not be underestimated as a factor conditioning the peculiarities of middle english romance. as robertson reminds us, “that lechery or amorous passion is a destructive of chivalry is a commonplace of medieval thought from the twelfth century onward among both religious and secular writers on the subject” (1968: 7). therefore, the lack of interest in the refinements of courtly love might betray a certain degree of uneasiness with some of the implications (especially adultery) and intricacies of this code, since they brought about serious moral objections. a historical document from xivth century england might well illustrate this point. in 1346, after the english victory at crécy, thomas bradwardine2 gave a sermon in st. paul’s cathedral in which he explained the reasons for the french defeat: embracing a seventh error, they [the french] seem to emulate antique pagans worshiping hymen or cupid, the god of carnal love. soldiering in venus, associating themselves with the retinue of aphrodite, they think the vigour of their audacity to be probity, victory, or triumph. but they say that no one can be vigorous unless he is amorous, or loves amorously, that no one can fight strenuously to excess unless he loves to excess. but how profane is this foolishness, how false, insane, and wild!…they labor strenuously in arma to make for themselves a name like the name of the greatest upon earth…and why do they wish such a name? that they may be loved by foolish women. …and who gives them the payment and reward for their labors? who, except for the god for whom they fight, to whom they devote themselves, and whom they worship? and what payment or reward do they get for their 1 gist also mentions a. h. billings (see: a guide to english metrical romances. new york, 1901, p. xx), who defined english romances as more passionate and less las civious (1947: 2). 2 thomas bradwardine (c. 1290-1349) was archbishop of canterbury, theologian, and mathematician. bradwardine studied at merton college, oxford, and became a proctor there. in about 1335 he moved to london, and in 1337 he was made chancellor of st. paul’s cathedral. he became a royal chaplain and confessor to king edward iii. in 1349 he was made archbishop of canterbury but died of the plague soon afterward during the black death. bradwardine's most famous work in his day was a treatise on grace and free will entitled de causa dei (1344), in which he so stressed the divine concurrence with all human volition that his followers concluded from it a universal determinism. bradwardine also wrote works on mathematics. e ugenio olivares 132 pride? public and inmense disgrace. and for their lechery? a stinking and intense burning. (robertson 1968: 6)1 popular audiences: aware of the differences between french and english romances, a.b. taylor claimed that, in general terms, english romances were basically aimed at the common working folk (1930: 81), who were less learned (or interested) in the refinements of fin’amors and certainly preferred to read about heroic deeds and fiery battles: stories of courtly love make no appeal to the lower classes of any country, and to all classes of en glishmen, inheriting a strong vein of puritanism from the anglo -saxon stock, chastity would be a highly reverenced virtue: since most english romances were fashioned to suit the lower classes, it is not surprising that where tristam is the subject of one, and lancelot only of two, gawain is the hero of ten. (1930: 81) since the norman ruling classes were (well into the xiiith century) french speaking, the obvious consequence would be to claim that middle english romances were written only for those who were literate in english, the lower classes. it has also been argued that, as romances tend to appear in moral and didactic compilations, “they too would appeal to an audience of limited sophis tication anxious for instruction and moral edification” (barron 1987: 74).2 the level of material production of the great majority of romance collections also seems to suggest humble audiences. the modest manuscript compilations in which most english romances are preserved stands in open contrast with the richly illuminated french texts.3 though it would be an error to immediately identify the quality of the manuscripts containing ro mances with the social status of their patron or owner, it is remarkable that only two of these manuscripts might be associated with readership drawn from the 1 see: sermo epinicius. ed. h. a. oberman and j. a. weisheipl, arch. d'hist. doct. e. litt. d.m.a., xxv (1958), pp. 323-4. 2 for example, the british library ms harley 2253, the auchinleck ms (national library of scotland), the thornton ms 91 (lincoln cathedral library) or the british library cotton nero a.x. (barron 1987: 54-55). c. m. meale provides a complete index of manuscripts containing middle english romances (1994: 227-28). 3 few manuscripts fall into the cathegory of de luxe. from them, only four contain illustrations: british library cotton nero a.x.; oxford, bodleian library bodley ms 264; new york, pierpont morgan library ms m 876; and british library harley ms 326. (meale 1994: 213). m iddle e nglish romances and the conventions of f in’ amors 133 nobility: the bodley 264 (1994: 214-15) and the harley 326.1 therefore, medievalists have almost unanimously referred to “a popular english audience to whom the style and conventions of roman courtois would have been alien but whose pious and sentimental tastes approved the moral rectitude of the hard -working hero, a model apprentice-boy, and the idealized picture of monarchic rule” (barron 1987: 73).2 what all these scholars mean when talking about lower classes, audiences of limited sophistication or popular english audiences should be finally clarified. generallly speaking, they make reference to a wide spectrum of english society: from the ranks of rural gentry to the merchant élite of london -including wealthy merchants’ wives, whose literacy in english is occasionally assumed (meale 1994: 212). the bourgeoisie, “anxious for edification but also for the type of entertainment favoured by their social superiors” (barron 1987: 54), seems to conform the main body of english romance readers. the opening lines of havelok the dane appeal to an audience of “gode men/ wiues maydnes and alle men”, a clear reference to the gender of the potential readers, but one that places them “firmly in the middle classes” (meale 1994: 209). most of the compilations including romances seem to have been written for them. this fact will provide middle english romances with one of their most outstanding peculiarities: marriage as the culmination of love relationships. the remainder of the section will deal with this issue. bourgeois marriage and the rejection of adultery: through out this analysis, i have gradually arrived at the xivth and xvth centuries, the two periods when the majority of the middle english romances were written. this is now the england of chaucer, the gawain poet and malory. the bourgeoisie has become the most powerful social group; if england is still a rural country, 1 apart from these two, only the longleat ms 257 might be associated with the nobility (meale 1994: 215). 2 recently, c. m. meale has challenged the assumption that, since romances were written in middle english, they were only aimed at readers of low birth. she claims it is not possible to state that those for whom works in english were written were of a different class or were any less sophisticated in their tastes than those reading in anglo-norman. equally, we should not assume that everyone of gentle status would necessarily know french and not english (meale 1994: 210-11). for this scholar, all different social groups read romance in middle english, the gentry too (meale 1994: 220). e ugenio olivares 134 the cities have become centres both of population and economic power. the inhabitants of these cities constitute a heterogeneous mass, of whose diversity the canterbury tales provide ample evidence. nevertheless, these townpeople had two things in common: they made their living by practicing medieval arts and crafts and they occupied an intermediate position in the economic and social scale between the aristocratic landlords and the peas antry in the open country. as a response to this, the english aristocracy failed to define themselves as a separate élite, gradually opening its ranks to those of lower social standing. one of the consequences of the increasing weight of the middle -classes is particularly telling for the present purpose: marriage achieves a social importance that had not been so apparent in the previous decades. the union between man and woman had too often been viewed as a suitable way to unify kingdoms, to end feuds or to increase a family’s fortune. it would be naive not to take into account all these factors in the conformation of bourgeois marriage, but a change did nonetheless take place. the xiith century is a turning point in the doctrinal systematization of christian marriage. it was then that the sacramental character of the marital union was definitively confirmed.1 besides, the personal consent and the free choice of the individuals was a sine qua non requisite for the validity of the union. this had always been a given in the canonical regulation of christian marriage, but new emphasis was now being made on this condition, especially from the xiith century onwards.2 all these innovations contributed to conform a revitalised conception of marriage in xivth century england: 1 see: howard, g. e. a history of matrimonial institution. 3 vols. chicago, 1904. i, , vol. i, pp. 291-99. it was in the two ecumenic councils of lyon (1245 and 1274) that the church ratified that marriage was one of the seven sacraments; this had already been anticipated in the synod of verona (1184). a text by saint paul might well underline the sacramental nature of marriage, ephesians v, 22-32. especially relevant to assert the early certainty of the sacramentality of marriage are the testimonies by st. agustin (de bono coniugali, c. 24: pl 40, 394; and de nupt. et concup. 1, c. 7: pl 44, 424) and by the pope st. leon i magnus (epistola 92 ad rusticum, 4: pl 54, 1204). the eastern church had long ago assumed the sacramental status of marriage. 2 for long, the practise imposed by the ruling aristocracy had given little or no importance to personal free consent, particularly that of the wife. there are early records that testify how the church fathers condemned this practise; this is the case of st. john chrysostom or st. agustin. in his homily lxxiii, in matthaeum (pg 58, 678), the first one complains about those husbands who are only moved by ecom iddle e nglish romances and the conventions of f in’ amors 135 by the time that is of interest to this study the western church had arrived at a general theory and description of the ends and practice of marriage… these included an understanding of the purposes and agreement on the main qualities of marriage, a set of regula tions establishing a capacity of the individual and the couple, extremely important notions of consent as that which constituted the marital bond, and formalities for the public exchange of this consent. (sheehan 1971: 229) the truth is the courtly conception of love had left a deep imprint in the middle-class mentality. this love, a sublime feeling giving sense to human existence, was viewed as the basis of married life rather than its opposition. now that personal consent had been repositioned at the centre of the marital bond, marriage for love was the ideal culmination of man-woman relationships: “at least within this milieu a conventional theory of marriage assumed that it was not only compatible with romantic love but ideally an expression of it” (mathew 1947: 131).1 and so, these middle -class readers, who appar nomic interests when looking for a wife, as if it was all a matter of buying or selling, rejecting thus god’s gift. when choosing a wife, the saint goes on, the future husband must only take into account the virtues of the woman, her kindness, piety and abnegation; these will be the real treasures for him. st. agustine writes something similar in his enarratio in psalmum lv (pl 36, 658). the truth is, as gist points out, that other church fathers were not so insistent on personal consent (1947: 17). during the xiiith century personal consent was given its necessary importance. st. thomas aquinas stated that the absence of personal consent or its forcefulness annulled the union (summa theologiae, part iii (supplement), q. 45, art. 4; q. 47, art. 1). in the moral treatise handlyng synne by robert of brunne, much blame is put on those who force others to marry against their will: “yn pys, do fo men ful ylle/ pat wedden any afens here wylle;/ here wyl behouep to-gedre consente,/ are pe prest do pe sacrament./ ne pou ne shalt (not) do py myft/ pat two be weddyd wyth vnryft” (r. of brunne 1901 & 1903: ll. 11165-170). 1 similarly, though in a more didactic and doctrinal context, the treatise “how the gode man taught hys sone” (its present form dated at the end of the xivth century) shows how a father advises his son to marry for love and to take care of his wife, since she will be his companion. this idea is also found in some moral treatises by wyclif, particularly in “of weddid men and wifes” and “good wyfe wold a pylgremage” (mathew 1947: 129; for an edition of wyclif’s texts, see: arnold, thomas. select english works of john wyclif. oxford: 1871). from all these texts we may well conclude that the widely held assumption was that, in marriage, the husband was his wife’s lover and friend, but also her master. mutual service and respect were assumed to be the guides for the success of the relationship, though the wife’s submission was never questioned; the best formulation of this can be read in chaucer’s “the franklin's tale” (benson 1987): “thus hath she take hir servant and hir lord-/ servant in love and lord in mariage;/ thanne was he bothe in lordshipe and servage;/ servage? nay, but in lordship above,/ sith he hath bothe his lady and e ugenio olivares 136 ently would not have otherwise had interest in matters of chivalry, were also reading romances in which heroes fell in love with heroines (with little attention paid to the refinements of “courtliness”) and eventually married them. adultery seldom appeared, for it added no glamour to the affair.1 a clarification is required now in order to avoid a too naive pre sentation of middle class readers. it is true that the fabliaux, one of the most popular middle -class lit erary forms, were built around the comical possibilities of adulterous affairs, cuckholds and sexually active women. the average bourgeois reader might well have spent a good time reading these narrations in which adultery was central element. nevertheless, it was always assumed that they were nothing more than a comical, saucy tale: this is one thing, but to sanctify, to idealise, a love relationship which is illicit was quite another. his love;/ his lady, certes, and his wyf also/ the which that lawe of love acordeth to” (ll. 792-8). another illustrating example is provided in caxton’s the book of the knight of the tower, translated from the french xivth century livre du chevalier de la tour. after advising his daughters that they should never oppose their husbands in public, he goes on to say that the wise wife, if her husband has made a mistake, “when she shall fynd hym alone and tyme/ but that she may wel reprehende hym and aduyse hym in shewyng curtoysly that he had wrong and vnright with hym/ and yf he be a man resonable/ he shal conne her thanke/ and yf he be other/ yet hath not she done but her parte/ for right so shold a wyse woman do” (capitulo[sic]/ xvij. caxton 1971: 35). all these notions are very much influenced by pauline doctrine on marriage, as expounded in his letter to the ephesians: “mulieres viris suis sicut domino, quoniam vir caput est mulieres, sicut et christus caput est ecclesiae, ipse salvator corporis. sed ut ecclesia subiecta est christo, ita et mulieres viris in omnibus. viri, diligite uxores, sicut et christus dilexit ecclesiam et seipsum traddit pro ea, ut illa santificaret mundans lavacro aquae in verbo, ut exhiberet ipse sibo gloriosam ecclesiam non habentem maculam aut rugam aut aliquid eiusmodi, sed ut sit sancta et immaculata. ita et viri debent diligere uxores suas ut corpora sua. qui suam uxorem diligit, seipsum diligit; nemo enim umquam carnem suam odio habuit, sed nutrit et fovet ean sicut et christus ecclesiam, quia membra sumus corporis eius. propter hoc relinquet homo patrem et matrem et adhaerebit uxori suae, et erunt duo in carne una. sacramentum hoc magnum est; ego autem dico de christo et ecclesia! veruntamen et vos singuli unusquisque suam uxorem sicut seipsum diligat; uxor autem timeat virum” (v, 22-33). 1 d. w. robertson reports which the penalties for adultery were in late medieval england: “in late fourteenth-century london, for example, a man and a woman taken in adultery were required to be shaved, except for two inches of hair around the head, taken to newgate prison, and thence paraded publicly through the streets accompanied by minstrels more than half way across the city to be incarcerated in a small prison in the middle of cornhill called the tun” (1968: 1-2). m. a. gist goes on to mention even capital punishment: “the impression is given that death, administered either by due process of the law or by private revenge, was the usual penalty. nevertheless such severity is not typical of the medieval law” (1947: 111). m iddle e nglish romances and the conventions of f in’ amors 137 iv. conclusion sir gawain and the green knight was written in the background described in the present paper. in this romance, the anonymous author faces a problem that caused some degree of uneasiness to english writers: they enjoyed the conventions of fin’amors but at the same time they disliked some of its implications; w. o. evans well explained this dichotomy when, referring to the use that english authors made of the french love code, he claimed that “the essentials are lacking, but the incidentals are pre sent”(1966: 149). the gawain-poet guides his readers through an epoch of splendour and magnificence. along the corridors, halls and chambers of camelot and hautdesert, the audience has plenty of time to admire the glory and beauty of courtly society. but there is also another setting, uncourtly and wild, in which gawain is about to finish the days of his life: the green chapel. this gloomy place is the embodiment of all the threats and dangers latent, unseen, in the courtly system: gawain has to go there since the court accepted the green knight’s awkward christmas game; gawain will die there if he does not escape from the subtle web that the lady has knitted with her courtesy. the narrator’s feelings about the type of society described in courtly ro mances are contradictory: admiration and mistrust. with the exception of chaucer’s scattered incursions in the romance-genre, the gawain-poet goes beyond any other english romance writer in the description of the ethics of fin’amors; at the same time, he best shows its contradictions. one of the most relevant (and enjoyable) features of sir gawain and the green knight is the tension between the aforementioned focal points: on the one hand, the poss ible immoral implications of the courtly love code; on the other, the poet’s apparent satisfaction in the use of its glamour and beauty. between the two poles, ready to be literally cut in two in a solomon’s like decision, gawain, a courtly and christian knight. sir gawain and the green knight best illustrates one of the “problems that so much occupied the english mind: the rela tions of courtesy and love with morality and christian morals and the eternal law” (tolkien 1984: 105) a more accurate understanding of english romance will be achieved only if the features and modes of this literary corpus are analysed with some dee ugenio olivares 138 gree of independence from its french counterpart. besides, it is also neces sary to approach it keeping in mind the fact that, for all the reasons presented here, love was never viewed as either the only reason for man’s life, or a kind of ethic in itself. for the english mind, much more practical, the consequences of loving too much or without any other consideration made it a not very suitable life pursuit: gower, a fin’amors enthusiast but a moralist too, in his confessio amantis, always advised “such a weie/ as love and reson wolde acorde” (1978: book viii, ll. 2022-023). in a process that culminated in the xivth and xvth centuries, the common sense of the bourgeoisie re jected the values of the roman courtois. however, quite often, putting in practice the so called “suspension of disbelief”, they enjoyed travelling to those days in which heroes ignored the annoying advice of reason and made a religion of woman’s devotion. the lovers gently burn in a bright immola tion, while the reader admires, pities and, perhaps, condemns,…all at the time; but before closing the book, he will always be reminded that everything has been but a tale, for the heart is not the best counsellor in life. this is the final tuition we get from chaucer’s troilus and criseyde –after a devout compliance with the rules of the courtly code. eugenio m. olivares merino university of jaén bibliography ackerman, robert w. 1966: background to medieval english literature. random house, new york. st. thomas aquinas. 1955-8: summa theologiæ. 5 vols. bac, madrid. barnes, g. 1984: cunning and ingenuity in the middle english floris and blanchefleur. medium aevum 53: 10-25. barron, w. r. j. 1987: english medieval romance. longman literature in english series. longman, london. bennet, h. s. 1990: chaucer and fifteentyh-century verse and prose. the oxford history of english literature. clarendon press, oxford. benson, l. d. 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(ed.). 1839: the awntyrs of arthure at the terne wathelyne. in syr gawayne: a collection of ancient romancepoems by scotish and english authors, relating to that celebrated knight of the round table. ed. sir federick madden. richard and john e. taylor, london, pp. 95-127. walter map. 1983: de nugis curialum. courtiers’ trifles. eds. m. r. james. rev. by c. n. l. brooke and r. a. b. mynors. clarendon press, oxford. mathew, g. 1947: marriage and amour courtois in late fourteenth-century england. essays presented to charles williams. ed. g. mathew. clarendon press, oxford, pp. 128-35. meale, c. m. 1994: ’gode men/ wiues maydnes and alle men’: romance and its audiences. in readings in middle english romance. ed. c. m. meale. d. s. brewer, cambridge, pp. 209-25. meyer, p. 1876: “mélanges de poésie anglo -normande”. romania 4: 370-97. migne, j. p. (ed.). 1878: patrologiae latinae. 221 vols. paris, garnier fratres et migne. migne, j. p. 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[contains: the sege of melayne, emaré, octavian, sir isumbras, sir gowther and sir amadace]. olivares merino, e. m. 1998: del amor, los caballeros y las damas. hacia una caracterización de la cortaysye en sir gawain and the green knight. jaén, servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de jaén. pantin, w. a. 1955: the english curch in the fourteenth century. university of toronto press, toronto. paris, g. 1883: etudes sur les romans de la table ronde. lancelot du lac, ii. le conte de la charrette. romania 12: 459-534. parry, j. j. 1941: introduction. in andreas capellanus, pp. 3-24. st. paul. 1986: carta a los efesios. sagrada biblia. tomo viii: epístolas de la cautividad. eunsa, pamplona. pernoud, r. 1995: leonor de aquitania. trad. r. calderón montero. espasacalpe, madrid. praga, inés. 1985: romances medievales ingleses” estudios literarios ingleses: edad media. ed. j. f. galván reula. ed. cátedra, madrid, pp. 237-52 m iddle e nglish romances and the conventions of f in’ amors 141 robertson, d. w. 1968: “the concept of courtly love as an impediment to the understanding of medieval texts. the meaning of courtly love. ed. f.x. newman. state university of new york press, new york, pp. 1-18. sanders, a, 1994: the short oxford history of english literature. clarendon press, oxford. sheehan, m. m, c. s. b. 1971: the formation and stability of marriage in fourteenth century england: evidence of an ely register. medieval studies 33: 228-63. stone, b. (ed.). 1971: medieval english verse. penguin, harmondsworth. taylor, a. b. 1930: an introduction to medieval romance. heath cranton, london. tolkien, j. r. r. and gordon, e. v. (eds.). 1967: sir gawain and the green knight. second edition by norman davis. clarendon press, oxford. tolkien, j. r. r. 1984: “sir gawain and the green knight”. the monsters and the critics and other essays. ed. c. tolkien. houghton mifflin company, oston, pp. 72-108. trounce, a. mci. 1932: the english tail-rhyme romances. medium aevum 1: 87-108, 168-82. valency, m 1958: in praise of love. an introduction to the love-poetry of the renaissance. the macmillan company, new york. wells, j. e. 1926: a manual of the writings in middle english (1050-1400). yale u.p., new haven. west, c. b. 1938: courtoise in anglo-norman literature.medium aevum monographs 3. oup, oxford. woolf, r. 1970. later poetry: the popular tradition. the middle ages. sphere history of literature. ed. w. f. bolton. sphere books, london, pp. 267-312. * † * pérez lorido & casado núñez, selim 22 (2017): 45–75. issn 1132-631x early stages of the ‘his genitive’: separated genitives in old english rodrigo pérez lorido & patricia casado núñez university of oviedo in this paper we provide new evidence to demonstrate that the ‘his genitive’ or ‘separated genitive’, a grammatical phenomenon whose systematic presence dates back to the early middle english period (c. 1250), is more deeply rooted in the english language than has been believed, as a similar construction can be attested in a considerable number of old english texts. the arguments which negate the existence of the separated genitive in old english are critically reviewed in the study and reassessed in the light of fresh evidence retrieved from a large corpus of texts. the results of the analysis prove that —despite its very low frequency as compared to the flexive genitive— the separated genitive was a viable grammatical option in old english, and that the syntactic configurations that arose from it probably paved the way to the use of the ‘his genitive’ in the middle ages. keywords: his genitive; separated genitive; old english; middle english; possessor doubling; possessive dative; sympathetic dative; york corpus 1. introduction the study of the expression of possession across the history of english has focused mainly on the development of the old english genitive ending from a morpheme into a bound affix (allen 1992, 1993, 1997, 2004, 2008; janda 1980, 1981, 2001; rosenbach 2002), in which the ‘his genitive’ or ‘separated genitive’ is said to have played different roles according to different theorists. 1 1 allen (1992, 1993, 1997, 2004, 2008) for example, suggests that the hg played virtually no role at all in the process, whereas for janda (1980, 1981) the ‘his genitive’ 46 pérez lorido & casado núñez this construction, illustrated in the examples in (1) and (2) for middle english, is characterised by a syntactic configuration in which a noun phrase standing for the possessor is followed by a possessive pronoun 2 and another noun phrase standing for the possessed item or possessum: (1) þe þridde constantinus was heraclius his sone, and heraclioun his broþer ‘the third constantin was heraclius’s son, and heraclioun’s brother’ (polychronicon (lumby),vi,55.359) (2) þo was in norweie his erþ a king þat hehte compert ‘there was in norway’s land a king that was called compert’ (brut (brook & leslie), 293. 5635) concerning the rise of this grammatical phenomenon in english, there is some consensus in recent scholarship that the ‘his genitive’ originated in the early middle english period, as a result of the phonological identification of the ending -is/-ys/-es for genitive with the weak form of the possessive pronoun ‘his’ (originally invariable for gender and number and behaving syntactically exactly like the attached genitive). this later gave way (in the second half of the 16 th century) to the reanalysis of the possessive particle into a genuine possessive pronoun requiring agreement with the possessor n. the hypothesis of a phonological origin for the ‘his genitive’ is as early as wyld (1936: 314), and has been endorsed —among others— by janda (1980, 1981), 3 koptjevskaja-tamm (2003), and the author who has most extensively studied genitives in english: allen (1997, 2002, 2003, 2008). according to allen, no genuine examples of the ‘his genitive’ can be found prior to 1250, 4 and all was the main trigger of the change. other authors such as rosenbach (2002: 212–217) consider that the hg played just a contributory role in the transition of the genitive morpheme -es from inflection to clitic. 2 given the fairly diverging status of the possessive item in the different approaches to this phenomenon, it would probably be better to refer to it as ‘possessive particle’ or ‘possessive element’ rather than ‘possessive pronoun’. 3 he says, however, that “occasional uses of the periphrastic possessive adjective can be found in old english” (janda 1980: 249). 4 allen is categorical when she asserts that she has considered, discussed and, finally, dismissed the possible old english origins of the separated genitive (‘‘i take it as established that there is no evidence for a possessor doubling construction in either oe or very early me’’, allen 2008: 227). according to her, the earliest texts where the early stages of the ‘his genitive’ 47 apparent examples of separated genitives in old english can actually be put down to other linguistic processes and are amenable to other interpretations (allen 1997: 125–126, 2002: 3, 2008: 227). the large data gap existing between any putative examples of the separated genitive in old english — according to her— and the first middle english texts where its presence is systematic (c. 1250) also militates against any sort of continuity in the development of the phenomenon dating back to the old english period. on the other hand, traditional grammarians like jespersen (1894: 318–327), curme (1935: 136, 1931: 71), kellner (1956: 189–190), mustanoja (1960: 160–162), or the oxford english dictionary (oed), have placed the origin of the ‘his genitive’ or ‘separated genitive’ further back in the history of english —within old english (3)— more or less explicitly identifying it with the ‘possessor doubling’ or ‘external possessor’ construction of other germanic languages (4). (3) we gesawon enac his cynryn we saw enac his kindred ‘we saw enac’s kindred’ (old english heptateuch (marsden), numbers xiii, 29) (4) a. dem mann sein hut the-dat mandat his hat ‘the man’s hat’ (german) [de wit 1997: 89] b. mijn vader z’n vriend my father his friend ‘my father’s friend’ (dutch) [de wit 1997: 88] c. valère zenen boek valère his book ‘valère’s book’ (west flemish) [haegeman 2004: 216] presence of the ‘his genitive’ is systematic are genesis and exodus and layamon’s brut ms cotton otho c xviii (o), both dated around 1250. pérez lorido & casado núñez’s (2013a, 2013b) studies of layamon’s brut ms (o) confirm the extensive use of the ‘his genitive’ in this text, with 142 instances of this construction retrieved from their search. 48 pérez lorido & casado núñez d. de’n herrn sien naam is hillig the-obl lord-obl his name is holy ‘the name of the lord is holy’ (low saxon) [allen 2008:191] e. mannen sit hus man-the his-refl house ‘the man’s house’ (norwegian) [allen 2002:2] this position has been adopted by modern linguists such as traugott (1972: 125), ramat (1986), fischer (1992: 230), de wit (1997: 51–52), or seppänen (1997: 202–203). 5 for others, the question is simply unsettled (rosenbach 2002: 217). thus, despite being quite systematically cited in reference works, articles and monographs, the question of whether the ‘his genitive’ was available or not in old english and its continuity into middle english is largely unanswered. one striking problem in the existing literature on the topic is that the same examples of presumed old english ‘his genitives’ have been repeated over and over again (with the more modern accounts systematically retrieving examples from earlier sources) as no systematic, corpus-based study of the phenomenon has been carried out to the present date. one primary goal of this paper is therefore to provide a solid database of first-hand examples of separated genitives in old english that may help researchers make decisions and build theories with stronger factual support. this has been carried out by means of the systematic search of an extensive corpus of texts (see section 2 below), which has rendered a new set of interesting and illuminating examples, never quoted before. 2. corpus, data, and data collection the old english data for this analysis have been drawn from twelve texts in the york-toronto-helsinki parsed corpus of old english prose (taylor, warner, pintzuck & beths 2003) plus one additional poetic work (paris psalter, in the 5 some manuals and reference books like barber (1976: 200) or pyles & algeo (1982: 186–187) also adhere to this hypothesis, but they all lack a real discussion on the nature of the presumed separated genitives in old english and limit themselves to citing a few examples. early stages of the ‘his genitive’ 49 1932 edition of g.f. krapp) and marsden’s (2008) paper edition of the old english heptateuch. the prose texts cover a wide range of genres and styles (from homiletic and philosophical to annalistic and scientific) and represent both the alfredian tradition of the late 9 th century (orosius, cura pastoralis), and the later variety of old english represented by ælfric (homilies, lives of saints). our corpus also includes two scientific treatises from the early 11 th century (old english herbarium and old english medicina de quadrupedibus), which are rarely included in studies of this type. the prose texts amount to roughly 702,000 words, and are highly representative of the language of the period. seven of them are translations from latin (orosius [or.], cura pastoralis [cp], heptateuch [num], herbarium [herbar], quadrupedibus [quadru], bede’s history of the english church [bede], and boethius’ de consolatione philosophiae [bo], and six were originally written in old english (preface to the cura pastoralis [prefcura], anglo-saxon chronicle 6 [chrona, chrone, chronc, chrond], ælfric’s lives of saints [æls], homilies of ælfric [æhom], ælfric’s catholic homilies (first series) [æchomi], and homilies of wulfstan [whom]). for the texts included in the york corpus, data retrieval has been carried out using corpussearch2 (beth randall 2005). the methodology of the data collection consisted of searching the corpus systematically for the configuration np + possessive pronoun + np. this obviously rendered many instances of syntactic combinations not related to the separated genitive (appositions, ditransitive structures), which were discarded. the clear examples of separated genitives were recorded, and the dubious instances carefully scrutinised using any resources that might provide clarification on their meaning. this included checking up other mss of the text (if any), resorting to the latin original (if one), and using all the available historical sources as well as the philological information contained in the editions of the works analysed. the corpus analysis rendered the following results as regards distribution of the separated genitive across the different texts: 6 only mss a, e, c and d of the chronicle have been analysed. 50 pérez lorido & casado núñez table 1. texts in the corpus with possible separated genitives and type of possessive marker separated genitive possessive marker his possessive marker other than his paris psalter � � cura pref cura bede boethius orosius � � heptateuch � � a-s c (a) � � (e) � � (c) (d) herbarium � � quadrupedibus æhom � � (?) � æchom 1 æls wulfstan as we can observe, examples of separated genitives have been found in six out of the fourteen texts analysed. these involve both the possessive pronoun his and also the feminine singular hire/hyre and the plural heora/hiera forms. the total number of examples of presumed separated genitives in the corpus is fifteen, which you can see listed below (separated genitive constructions in italics). (5) a. þa gode his naman neode cigdan ‘who god’s name fitly called out’ (paris psalter [krapp (1932) 98.6]) b. we gesawon enac his cynryn ‘we saw enac’s kindred’ (old english heptateuch (marsden), numbers xiii, 29) early stages of the ‘his genitive’ 51 c. we ðær gesawon of ðæm entcynne enac his bearna micelra wæstma ‘there we saw the giants, the sons of enac, [which come] of the giant race’ (old english heptateuch (marsden), numbers xiii, 34) d. in danai þære ie, ðær asia & europe hiera landgemircu togædre licgað. ‘in the river don, there lie together the boundaries of asia and europe’ (coorosiu,or_1:1.8.18.105) e. affrica & asia hiera landgemircu onginnað of alexandria, ‘the boundaries of africa and asia begin in alexandria’ (coorosiu,or_1:1.9.11.113) f. nilus seo ea hire æwielme is neh þæm clife þære readan sæs, ‘the source of river nile is near the shore of the red sea’ (coorosiu,or_1:1.11.3.152) g. …oð hie abræcan arcadum heora burg. ‘…until they overcame the city of the arcadians’ (coorosiu,or_3:1.55.18.1082) h. her romane leone þæm papan his tungon forcurfon & his eagan astungon ‘in this year the romans cut out pope leo’s tongue and put out his eyes’ (cochrona-1,chrona_[plummer]:797.1.596) i. her romane leone þam papan his tungan forcurfan & his eagan ut astungon ‘in this year the romans cut out pope leo’s tongue and put out his eyes’ (cochrone,chrone_[plummer]:797.1.918) j. wið lendena sare & gif men his ðeoh acen genim… ‘against pain in the loins and if a man’s thigh(s) hurt take…’ (coherbar,lch_i_[herb]:1.27.113) k. gif men his wamb sar sy genime wegbrædan seaw ðære wyrte, ‘if a man’s womb is sore/painful, take…’ (coherbar,lch_i_[herb]:2.2.129) 52 pérez lorido & casado núñez l. gif men his leoðu acen oððe ongeflogen sy genim… ‘if a man’s limb’s hurt or are attacked by disease, take…’ (coherbar,lch_i_[herb]:3.1.227) m. …and him þyrste on þam wife hyre geleafan, ‘…and he thirsted after the woman’s faith,’ (coaelhom, æhom_5:242.832) n. …he het alætan ut þone halgan petrum his scip on ðære dypan. ‘...he commanded to let holy peter’s ship go out into the deep.’ (coaelhom, æhom_15:16.2142) (coaelhom, æhom_15:108.2190) 7 out of these fifteen examples, seven ((5a–f) and (5h)) have been more or less systematically quoted in the literature, but the rest represent new evidence. thus, the oed cites (5a, 5b) and (5e, 5f), jespersen (1894) (5e, 5f, 5g), curme (1931) (5b), 8 mustanoja (1960) (5a, 5b, 5d, 5f and 5h), pyles & algeo (1964) (5b, 5e, 5f), traugott (1972) (5f), de wit (1997) (5d, 5h), seppänen (1997) (5d), allen (1997) (5b, 5d, 5e, 5f), allen (2002) (5f), and allen (2008) (5a, 5e, 5f, 5h), with the more modern accounts —as we said before— systematically retrieving examples from the earlier sources. from a strictly numerical point of view, the sheer number of examples of presumed separated genitives in the texts (15) is obviously very low — especially if compared with the overwhelming frequency of the flexive genitive— but it is significant enough statistically so as not to count them as performance errors. moreover, the distribution across the corpus is very relevant: separated genitives appear in texts belonging to different genres and text types (from homiletic to annalistic to scientific) and in both translations from latin and texts written originally in old english. the lack of evidence of the separated genitive in the formally more developed genres and styles (philosophical or religious treatises with a clear argumentative style), such as the boethius or the cura pastoralis, may have to do with sociolinguistic aspects of the construction under discussion: we must remember that the ‘possessor doubling’ construction is dubbed as ‘colloquial’ and ‘typical of the spoken 7 this example is just a repetition of (coaelhom, æhom_15:16.2142). 8 curme’s (1931: 71) quotation is erroneous. he refers to example (5c) above as ‘numbers xiii, 29’, when that is actually the reference for (5b). early stages of the ‘his genitive’ 53 language’ in most of the languages where it is used today, 9 so it not surprising that it should not come up in the more elaborate old english prose texts. finally, the absence of the separated genitive in texts where the influence of latin is greatest (bede) must have to do with the essentially germanic nature of the construction (see section 3.2. below). 3. analysis 3.1. objections to old english separated genitives in previous approaches: the ‘left-dislocation’ hypothesis one of the most critical voices against separated genitives in old english is allen (1997, 2002, 2008), who contends that most known examples of this construction in old english are dubious, amenable to other analyses or simply mistakes (allen 1997: 125, 2002: 3, 2008: 225). her objections refer basically to two categories of examples: those where the possessor np is in the case required by the syntax of the sentence, which according to her allow for an alternative interpretation in terms of ‘left dislocation’ (like (5e) and (5f) above, repeated below as (6a, 6b)), and those in which the possessor n is in the dative case, which can be explained as ‘sympathetic datives’ (5h). we will focus on the first type now. (6) a. affrica & asia hierapl landgemircu onginnað of alexandria africa and asia their boundaries begin from alexandria ‘the boundaries of africa and asia begin in alexandria’ (coorosiu,or_1:1.9.11.113) b. nilus seo ea nom/sg/fem hire fem/sg æwielme is neh þæm clife þære readan sæs nile the river her source is near the shore of-the red sea ‘the source of river nile is near the shore of the red sea’ (coorosiu,or_1:1.11.3.152) 9 this is so at least in german and dutch, but not in norwegian (see allen 2002: 5 footnote). 54 pérez lorido & casado núñez these examples from the old english orosiuis are referred to by allen (2008), alongside (5d) above, as instances of left dislocation, where “the first np is mentioned to introduce the topic of the sentence and then the possessive pronoun picks up the topic” (2008: 226). 10 therefore, rough translations of the examples above would be, according to allen, africa and asia, their boundaries begin… instead of the boundaries of africa and asia begin... and river nile, its source is... rather than the source of river nile is.... this is particularly plausible —always according to allen— if we take into account the text from which this example is taken, the old english orosius, where examples of undoubted left dislocations do abound, like the often quoted example (7) below. 11 (7) europe hie onginð […] of danai ðære ie europe she begins […] at danube the river ‘europe, it begins […] at river danube’ (orosius 8, 23) however, for an explanation in terms of left dislocation to hold successfully it is strictly necessary that the genitive construction is in absolute initial position in the sentence, and allen (1997: 126) herself admits that “if the construction were other than left dislocation, we would expect also some comparable examples in an object position”. in our corpus, a considerable number of examples of separated genitives appear in object position (either preverbally or 10 this is apparently also the idea behind the notion ‘anacolutha’ mentioned by jespersen (1894: §248), mustanoja (1960: 162), and janda (1980: 249). even allen (2008: 227) toys with the idea that left dislocation (a sort anacoluthon) could have been the origin of the separated genitive of the eme period, “since such examples have just the sort of ambiguity which is necessary for reanalysis”, but she eventually disregards the idea, given the lack of a continuous record of left dislocations of this sort in object position from old to middle english. 11 but it is not less true that sentences like (7) form a minority of left dislocations in old english. in her comprehensive study of left dislocation, traugott (2007: 416) reports that most left-dislocated nominals in old english are followed by an adverbial or relative clause, and only 14.1% subject object left-dislocations have no finite clause following the preposed nominal. plus, the resumptive element is, according to traugott (2007: 419) typically a personal pronoun in old english (69.6% of subject left dislocations) although she admits that demonstratives and full nps (as in the examples (6) or (8) above) also occur in her data (2007: 435). early stages of the ‘his genitive’ 55 postverbally), and even within the set of standard examples from the orosius cited by allen (1997, 2008) as left dislocation, the peripherality condition required for left-dislocated constituents is not met. note (5d), repeated below as (8). (8) ðær asia & europe hierapl landgemircu togædre licgað there asia and europe their boundaries together lie ‘there lie together the boundaries of asia and europe’ (coorosiu,or_1:1.8.18.105) in this example we have a presumed left-dislocated constituent (asia and europe), which is preceded by a topicalised one (ðær), while most theories of syntax and information structure state that topicalisation and left dislocation are incompatible (gregory & michaelis 2001, szücs 2014). thus, the crosslinguistically improbable coexistence of topicalisation and left dislocation here opens the door to considering that asia & europe hiera landgemircu form a constituent, i.e. a separated genitive construction. other examples, such as (5k) from the old english herbarium ((9) below) as well as (5j) and (5l) above, which have np + poss + np structures in initial position, could possibly admit an interpretation of the initial np as having been left dislocated (leaving aside the important fact that the presumed dislocated nominal is in the dative case), but they have to face the shortcoming that they occur in subordinate clauses. (9) gif men dat/sg his wamb sar sy genime wegbrædan seaw ðære wyrte if man his womb sore be take plantain juice the herbs ‘if a man’s womb is sore, take the juice of the plantain herb’ (coherbar,lch_i_[herb]:2.2.129) left dislocation is infrequent cross-linguistically in subordinate clauses, 12 and so it is in old english. traugott’s (2007: 422) comprehensive corpus study of 12 johannessen (2014: 406) mentions in her study some examples of left dislocation in subordinate clauses in nordic languages, such as danish (i), swedish (ii) or norwegian (iii) [our highlighting]: (i) ved du om merete hun kommer med? (danish) know you whether merete she comes with? ‘do you know whether merete will come?’ 56 pérez lorido & casado núñez left dislocation in old english reports only thirty-four instances of embedded subject left dislocation examples out of a total of 283 (15.2%), and 9.6% instances of object left dislocation (5/52) (see examples below). (10) a. ðætte ða wif ðe ða geeacnodan bearn cennað ðe ðonne that those women that those conceived children conceive who then git fulborene ne bioð, ne fillað hie no mid ðæm hus ac byrgenna yet full-term not are not fill they not with that houses but tombs ‘that those women who prematurely deliver a child they have conceived, (they) do not fill houses but tombs’ (cocura, cp:49.383.33.2598) b. þæt […] þa det his lare and his word þe hie æt his sylfes that [...] those his teachings and his words that they at his own muþe gehyrdon, þa hie sceoldan mannum secgan. mouth heard those they should to-men relate ‘that […] his teaching and his words that they heard from his mouth, (those) they should relate to men’ (coblick,homs_46_[blhom_11]:119.67.1519) furthermore, the number of embedded left dislocations where the preposed nominal is immediately followed by the resumptive element, as in (9) above, is perhaps even lesser, although no statistics are provided by traugott. therefore, even though the possibility that (9) (as well as the analogous (5j) (ii) jag har en känsla av att ungdomarna nu för tiden dom inte vill... (swedish) i have a feeling of that youths now for time they will not… ‘i have a feeling that youths nowadays do not want to…’ (iii) han ville vite om bussen den stopper før motorvegen (norwegian) he wanted know if bus it stops before motorway ‘he wanted to know if the bus stops before the motorway’ early stages of the ‘his genitive’ 57 (5l)) is interpreted as left dislocation cannot be completely ruled out, the chances are in fact lean. notwithstanding the previous statements, the objections raised so far to the left dislocation analysis of separated genitives are not absolutely compelling, and that analysis is in fact possible for (5e) and (5f). the most important objection to the left dislocation hypothesis lies —in our opinion— in the several examples in the corpus where the presumed separated genitive is not in clause initial position but —contingently— in object position, as in (5b), (5g) and (5n), repeated here as (11a, 11b, 11c). (11) a. we gesawon enacnom/sg his cynryn we saw enac his kindred ‘we saw enac’s kindred’ (old english heptateuch (marsden), numbers xiii, 29) b. …oð hie abræcan arcadum dat-acc-gen?/pl heora burg 13 13 some more context is necessary here: this fragment is a part of the sentence …& hloðum on hie staledon, oð hie abræcan arcadum heora burg corresponding to the latin original speculati absentiam arcadum, castellum eorum repentina inruptione perfringunt ‘having speculated on the absence of the arcadians, they broke into their city [castellum eorum] by surprise’. the latin version, we believe, corroborates our hypothesis. this passage of the orosius is, in turn, a very much abridged account of the strife between the spartans and the arcadians following the peloponnese wars, in which the lacedaemonian leader archidamus iii defeated the arcadians at cromnus (364 bc). the broader context (læcedemonie [...] wæron winnende on thebane [...] & hloðum on hie staledon oð hie abræcan arcadum heora burg ‘the lacedaemonians [...] made war on the thebans [...] and stole up on them with small bands until they overcame the city of the arcadians’) refers somewhat elliptically to the alliance between the arcadians and the thebans, who had fought side by side since the times of the foundation of the arcadian league (370 bc) and campaigned together during epaminondas’s second invasion of the peloponnese in 369. therefore, reference to the thebans in the discourse immediately preceding the passage we are discussing and the subsequent (quite abrupt) shift in focus from thebans to arcadians is not really surprising. bately’s view on the fragment is not conclusive. she remarks in her notes that “...the translator appears to have misconstrued oh iii. 1. 2. arcadum, gpl. of arcades, ‘the arcadians’, as as. in apposition to castellum eorum” (1980: 247), pointing to a certain syntactic cohesion between arcadum and heora burg in line with our analysis, but the presumed status of arcadum as possessor np is somewhat negated by bately when she states that “...arcadum [is] apparently taken as the name of a town” 58 pérez lorido & casado núñez …until they overcame arcadians their city ‘…until they overcame the city of the arcadians’ (coorosiu,or_3:1.55.18.1082) c. …he het alætan ut þone acc halgan petrum his scip on þære dypan …he ordered to let out the holy peter his ship into the sea ‘... he commanded to let the holy peter’s ship go out into the sea’ (coaelhom,æhom_15:16.2142) one essential piece of evidence in our argumentation in this respect is (5m) (repeated below as (12)), where the possessive construction np + poss +np is the complement of a preposition. (12) …and himdat/sg þyrste on þamdat/sg wifedat/sg hyregen/fem/sg geleafan 14 …and to-him thirsted on the woman her faith ‘…and he 15 thirsted after the woman’s faith’ (coaelhom, æhom_5:242.832) (1980: 409. glossary), hinting that heora burg is an apposition to arcadum. we do not think, however, that the fragment can be interpreted as ‘..until they destroyed arcadum, their city’ for several reasons, both grammatical and pragmatic. firstly, the episode of the taking of cromnus was very popular at the time, as attested by xenophon (hellenica, 7, 1, 3), so mistaking ‘arcadum’ for ‘cromnus’ is unlikely. secondly, familiarity of the translator of the orosius with the proper name arcades (the arcadians) is proven by the presence of that name referring unmistakably to that social group only two lines later (þa hie longe fuhton, þa cleopade læcedemonia ealdormon to arcadium ‘when they had been fighting for a long time, then the lacedaemonian leader called on the arcadians’). 14 it is really surprising that the author should not have used the flexive genitive here (on þæs wifes geleafan). note also that agreement of the possessive particle hyre (feminine, singular) with the antecedent possessor np þam wife (neuter, singular) is made in accordance with natural gender and not with grammatical gender i.e. þam wife his geleafan. this is not too surprising taking into account the late date of the mss in which the text was copied (11 th century, according to pope (1967: 22–26)) and the incipient shift from grammatical to natural gender that was taking place at that time in the english language. 15 this example refers to a biblical passage in which jesus christ sits down by a well and asks a samaritan woman for water (john, 4), even though jews did not associate at that time with samaritans. for some reason, möhlig-falke (2012: 141) mistranslated the old english text as ‘and he [the devil, r.m.] desires woman’s faith’, when the anaphoric he actually refers to jesus christ. early stages of the ‘his genitive’ 59 this example can hardly be explained as anything but a separated genitive, and its presence in the local context of a prepositional phrase is significant, as it, firstly, renders the analysis in terms of left dislocation absolutely untenable, and secondly, provides evidence for the constituent status of the string np + poss + np. this hints at a certain grammaticalisation of the structure, and somehow detaches it conceptually from the ‘possessive dative’ or ‘sympathetic dative’ construction, which does not require strict adjacency between the possessor np and the np corresponding to the possessum (see section 3.2. below). returning to (11a, 11b, 11c), some doubts have been cast by allen (1997) on the true funcion of ‘his’ as external possessor or pleonastic element in (11a) we gesawon enac his cynryn (translation of latin stirpem enac vidimus). according to her (1997: 125), enac his cynryn should not be treated as an example of “noun + dependent third person possessive construction but as a latin genitive form”, following bately (1980: 156). it is interesting to note that if we accept this hypothesis, the example could be considered an ancestral instance of the early middle english ‘his genitive’ in which the separated possessive particle would have originated as a ‘detached’ genitive morpheme (albeit a latin one!) by confusion or near homophony between the ending -is and the weak form of the pronoun his. another possibility is that allen is simply referring to a scribal rearrangement of the lexeme enac(h)is 16 as two separate words in the spelling. evidence of the orthographic division of inflected words into two separate items in the old english scribal tradition is scanty, so we must give some room to the ‘metanalysis’ hypothesis. variation in the spelling between enac his and enachis/enachus in the different mss where the old english heptateuch was copied somehow bears out this hypothesis: ms british library, cotton claudius b iv and lincoln cathedral library 298 have enachus cynryn, and allen (1997: 126) herself mentions — once more quoting bately (1980: 157)— the bosworth-toller supplement (1921), where the line reads enachis rather than enac his. bodleian library, laud misc. 509 has, however, enac his. we reproduce that fragment of the ms below by kind permission of the bodleian library, oxford (figure 1). 17 16 regarding the ‘h’ in enoc(h), maetzner (1874) remarks that the forms enoc and enoch interchanged in cædmon and other anlgo-saxon writers. 17 marsden (2008: 145), who used this ms as the main source of his edition, amazingly corrected the fragment to enachis, as he did to enachis bearna (our example 60 pérez lorido & casado núñez figure 1. fragment of ms laud misc. 509, bodleian library, oxford let’s remember in any case that the kind of metanalysis we are talking about, based as it is on perceptual, hearer-oriented strategies, could well have operated in both directions i.e. from enachis into enac his and from enac his into enachis, so the variation in the spelling mentioned above does not necessarily rule out the possibility that ‘his’ in (11a) is a possessive pronoun part of a separated genitive structure. if we focus now on (11c) he het alætan ut þone halgan petrum his scip on þære dypan, it is obvious that we have opted for an interpretation of causative hatan in this example as a monotransitive infinitival verb controlling the complement alætan ut þone halgan petrum his scip on þære dypan (‘he commanded to let the holy peter’s ship go out into the sea’) [v+i], 18 rather than as a ditransitive control verb (‘he told the holy peter to steer his ship out into the sea’) [vosi]. the latin version (ut cessavit autem loci, dixit ad simonem: duc in altum) and the situational context of the action (jesus christ and peter on their own and the former addressing the latter) seems to argue for the second interpretation (this is the option taken apparently by van kemenade, milicev & baaven 2008: 9). however, we believe that there are strong syntactic reasons for considering that þone halgan petrum his scip in (11c) is a single constituent forming a separated genitive and not part of a ditransitive control structure. these reasons refer mainly to the restrictions that exist in old english on the position of the verb hatan and its (5c) above), where the manuscript clearly reads enac his bearna. we can hardly find an explanation for that. 18 we follow denison (1993: 165) in referring to ‘verb + infinitive’ and ‘verb + object/subject + infinitive’ combinations as v+i and vosi respectively. other authors such as timofeeva (2010) use the traditional aci (‘accusative cum infinitive’) label to refer to the former. early stages of the ‘his genitive’ 61 complements —including particles— in vosi constructions. in her study of causative hatan, timofeeva (2010: 116) remarks that the prevailing word order in the vosi construction in old english is hattan-acc/subj-v, and hatanacc/subj-o-v when there is a transitive infinitive involved. these patterns amount to more than 50% of the instances in her survey: (13) a. se cyng het þone arcebisceop wulfstan þærto boc settan the king made the archbishop wulfstan to-this a charter prepare ‘and the king made archbishop wulfstan prepare a charter to this end’ (codocu3, ch_1460_rob_83]: 8.126) [example form timofeeva (2010: 166)] b. ac he het his agene men hine sændan on ðone sæ but he made his own men him throw into the sea ‘but he made his own men throw him into the sea’ (comart3,mar_5_[kotxor]: ja19,a.21.176) [example from timofeeva (2010: 116)] timofeeva adds that patterns in which hatan immediately precedes the infinitive are rare (only three occurrences in her entire corpus). 19 therefore, the interpretation of (11c) as vosi would be unlikely in that respect. and it is even more unlikely if we take into account the position of the particle ut. as is well known (pintzuck 1991, fischer et al. 2000), the position of particles in old english has been used as a test for verb movement and underlying structure, where determining the position of the particle with respect to two verbal forms (finite + non-finite) was crucial. from these analyses it has been suggested that the presence of particles following the combination finite + non-finite verb may represent a linguistic innovation: 19 lowrey (2013: 23) cites (i) below, where the infinitive is immediately preceded by a causative other than hatan (lætan): (i) se mildheorta drihten, ðe læt scinan his sunnan ofer ða rihtwisan and unrihtwisan gelice... ‘the merciful lord, who lets/makes his sun shine over the righteous and unrighteous alike...’ (homilies, 406: 28) 62 pérez lorido & casado núñez (14) a. he wolde adræfan ut anne æþeling he wanted drive out a prince ‘he wanted to drive out a prince’ (chronb 82.18–19 (755)) [example from fischer et al. (2000: 196)] b. hw synd ða lytlan ðe he wolde habban up 20 to his rice? what are the little which he wanted have up to his kingdom ‘who are the little (ones) he wanted to raise up to his kingdom? (æchom i, 9.138.6) [example from fischer et al. (2000: 196)] we can say, therefore, that the pattern finite verb + infinitive + particle is not characteristically old english (rather, it is indicative of middle english word order). in the vosi constructions we are dealing with, which involve an infinitival verb, an accusative subject controller and an oblique object, particles occur very rarely (only nine tokens in the entire york corpus, according to pintzuk (p.c.)). 21 moreover, the only examples of the accusative controller plus the accusative object appearing after the infinitive plus particle would be the dubious (11c) and its verbatim repetition in line 108 of the pope (1968) edition of ælfric’s homilies. in the rest of cases (see below), the accusative subject controller immediately follows the verb hatan, with the accusative object of the infinitive either preceding (15) or following (16) it, and the particle following both. 22 20 let’s remember that in fischer et al.’s (2000) analysis the particle up in this example is considered a modifier of the pp, so the clause would not involve a particle as such but a modified pp. 21 thanks are due to susan pintzuk for pointing this out to us and for kindly searching the york corpus in search of the relevant evidence. 22 if we consider just intransitive infinitives, the distribution that we get for vosi structures involving particles in old english is this: 1) the accusative controller follows hattan/lætan and is followed by the infinitive + particle: (i) …and heton me gan forth oðþæt we becoman þær se cyning wæs …and made me go forth until we arrived where the king was ‘…and made me go forth until we arrived where the king was’ (coaelive,ls[agnes]: 358.1965) early stages of the ‘his genitive’ 63 (15) a. het us ærest adon ure dyrnan unðeawas and yfelan hatunge fram ure made us first expel our secret vices and evil hatred from our heortan aweg… hearts away… ‘(he) made us first expel our secret vices and evil hatred from our hearts’ (coaelhom, æhom_14:175.2097) b. …het heora ælcne geniman anne æmtige sester oððe anne wæterbuc …made each of them take an empty jar or a pitcher to þam gewinne forð to the battle forth ‘…commanded each of them to take forth an empty jar or a pitcher to the battle’ (cootest,judg:7.16.5694) 2) the infinitive follows hatan/lætan and precedes the combination accusative controller + particle: (ii) gif hær to þicce sie genim swealwan […] ahsan […] & læt sceadan þa ahsan on. if hair too thick is take swallow ashes and let scatter the ashes on. ‘if hair is too thick, take swallow ashes and spread them on.’ (colaece,lch_ii_[1]: 87.3.1.2076) 3) the infinitive follows hatan/lætan and is followed by a particle, as in the vosi interpretation of (11c) above. note however that in this example the control verb is lætan, not hatan, and that —crucially— the infinitive is intransitive: (iii) læt yrnan ofer þone rec let run over the smoke ‘let the smoke run over’ (colacnu,med_3_[grattan-singer]: 145.1.714) 64 pérez lorido & casado núñez (16) and het oðerne munuc awurpan ut þæt glæsere fæt mid ele and made the other monk throw out the glass plate with oil ‘and made the other monk throw away the glass plate with oil’ (cocathom2, æchom_ii,_11:104.422.2227) in [v+i] constructions, however, the combination hatan + infinitive + particle can be found in old english. see the example below from visser (1963–1973: §1227): (17) þa sende se cyng hider to lande & het abeodan ut xx þusendra then sent the king hither to land and ordered to call up 20 thousand engliscra manna. of-english men ‘then the king sent hither to this country and ordered twenty thousand englishmen to be called up’ (peterborough chronicle. an. 1094) therefore, we find it suspicious that (11c) should be the only vosi construction in the whole of the york corpus with the word order hatan + infinitive + particle + acc/subj + obj, especially when there is another interpretation whose syntactic structure is clearly attested in the old english language, i.e. v+i. timofeeva (p.c.) has suggested that the latin original and the fact that the text is written in ælfric’s rhythmical prose (which might do away with any syntactic restrictions on the positions of verbs and particles) argue for the ditransitive control interpretation of the fragment, but it is a proven fact (see pope (1967: 105) and more recently pascual (2014)) that the influence of poetic diction on the syntax of ælfric’s writings is much lesser than it has been assumed. the absolute syntactic exceptionality of (11c) as a ditransitive control structure, therefore, makes us think that the interpretation of (11c) as a separated genitive —though impossible to guarantee— is a very likely option. summarising this section, although some of the examples of presumed separated genitives in our corpus can in fact be analysed as left dislocation, we believe that the remarkable presence of periphrastic genitive constructions in object position and as prepositional complements is proof of the idiomaticity of the separated genitive in old english. to what extent it can compare with early stages of the ‘his genitive’ 65 the germanic ‘possessor doubling’ construction and what relation it bears to the ‘possessive dative or ‘sympathetic dative’ is something we will discuss now. 3.2. separated genitives, ‘possessor doubling’ and the ‘possessive dative’ construction the discussion of separated genitives in old english presents some terminological and conceptual fuzziness as regards the ‘possessive dative’ or ‘sympathetic dative’ and its connection with the germanic ‘external possessor’. 23 allen (2008: 228–229) denies old english presumed separated genitives the status of syntactically autonomous structure purported for the germanic ‘possessor doubling’ construction, alleging that a structure like (5h) above —reproduced here as (18)— should be better analysed as two separate nps in which the dative phrase is a ‘sympathetic dative’ and his tungon the direct object of the verb. 24 (18) her romane leonedat/sg/masc þæmdat/sg/masc papandat/sg/masc his tungon forcurfon here romans to-leo-the-pope his tongue cut out ‘in this year the romans cut out pope leo’s tongue and put out his eyes’ (cochrona-1,chrona_[plummer]:797.1.596) she suggests that “such a string would be liable to reanalysis as a single nomp in which the original ethic dative was interpreted as a possessor” (allen 2008: 228), but alludes to the paucity of instances of this particular construction to negate that such reanalysis had effectively operated within old english. she also comments that there exist in old english examples where we find the necessary juxtaposition between possessor and possessum nps to cause the 23 traditionally, the term ‘possessive dative’ has been used indistinctly for constructions involving the ‘sympathetic’ or ‘ethic’ dative and the ‘possessor doubling’ construction of germanic languages (see for example mustanoja 1960: 161). we will keep them as separate notions for the reasons mentioned above. 24 according to allen (2008: 228), the translation ‘cut his tongue to pope leo’ — though not idiomatic in pde— would represent better the syntax of the fragment than the translation ‘cut out pope leo’s tongue’. 66 pérez lorido & casado núñez structural ambiguity to produce the reanalysis as a single nomp (19 below), but that those examples have a determiner rather than a possessive pronoun. (19) her offa miercna cyning het æþelbryhtedat rexnom/? þætacc heafod ofaslean here offa of-mercia king ordered æþelberht king the head strike off ‘in this year offa, king of mercia, ordered æþelberht’s head to be struck off’ (chrona, 792) 25 we believe, however, that there is ample evidence in the examples from the corpus to suggest that the combination np dat + poss + np forms a constituent with a highly cohesive, grammaticalised structure, comparable to the ‘possessor doubling’ construction of other germanic languages. the first piece of evidence comes from the fact that the aforementioned syntactic combination may appear as the complement of a preposition (a traditional test for constituency), as in (5m), which we repeat again: (20) …and himdat/sg þyrste on þamdat/sg wifedat/sg hyregen/fem/sg geleafan …and to-him thirsted on the woman her faith ‘…and he thirsted after the woman’s faith’ (coaelhom, æhom_5:242.832) in addition to this, example (5k) from the herbarium —repeated below as (21a)— contains the string men his wamb, which appears in ms british library, harley 6258 b (dated c. 1150) as mannes wambe, with the inflected genitive replacing the dative construction. this points clearly to an interpretation of the pronoun ‘his’ in (21a) as syntactically dependent on the preceding noun. (21) a. gif mendat/masc/sing his wamb sar sy genime… if man his womb painful is take… ‘if a man’s womb is painful, take…’ (coherbar,lch_i_[herb]:2.2.129) 25 other mss of the chronicle also have a determiner between both nps: (i) her offa myrcena cinig het æþelbrihte þ heafod of slean (chrone, 792) (ii) her offa cing het æþelberhte ‘cinge’ rex þ heauod ofaslean (chronf, 792) early stages of the ‘his genitive’ 67 b. gif mannes gen/sg/masc wambe sor si nime… if of-a-man womb painful is take… ‘if a man’s womb is painful, take…’ (the old english herbarium (de vriend), 39: 4) so, what is actually the relationship between the old english separated genitive and the ‘possessive / sympathetic dative’? it is difficult to say with the limited amount of evidence available, but both constructions are probably related and it would not be at all surprising that the former had evolved from the latter. hübler’s (1998) study of the ‘possessive dative’ in old english states that it had an essentially expressive function (as opposed to other possessivemarking devices) and that by using the dative “the speaker sets a focus on the person-possessor and expresses his/her attachment to him/her” (1998: 40). he also mentions that the dative is ambiguous in its function as possessive: “it is adverbial and adnominal at the same time, i.e. it contracts a grammatical relationship with the verb and enters into a relationship of inherent possession with the noun” (1998: 24). this is the reason why in the old english ‘possessive dative’ construction the possessor np and the possessum need not be adjacent: (22) a. himdat stod stincende steam of ðam muðe to-him came stinking odour from the mouth ‘stinking odour came forth from his mouth’ (ælfric catholic homilies, p. 86) b. hæfde abrahame dat metod moncynnes breost geblissad had abraham destiny of-mankind breast delighted ‘the destiny of mankind had delighted abraham’s breast’ (caedmon, genesis 2922) [examples from hübler (1998: 19)] hübler (1998) also mentions that old english speakers had the choice between two form classes expressing possessivity: a possessive pronoun or genitive ending on the one hand, and a possessive dative on the other. both —he remarks— could even be used together, as in the following example: 68 pérez lorido & casado núñez (23) & let himdat pytan ut his eagan & ceorfan of his handa and let to-him gouge out his eyes & cut off his hands ‘and let his eyes gouge out and his hand cut off’ (chronf, 796) [example from hübler (1998: 24)] yuxtaposition of the possessor n and the np containing the possessive pronoun probably provided the reanalysis scenario proposed by allen (2008: 227–228) to give rise to a ‘possessor doubling’ construction in old english. this configuration is well attested in the early stages of other germanic languages, as burridge (1996) notes for dative constructions involving body parts in middle dutch: (24) a. als ghi dat werct soe seldi den dat sieken dat siin oren stoppen when you that work so shall:you to-the-patient his ears stuff met catoene with cotton ‘when you operate that (the drill), then you shall stuff the patient’s ears’ b. wanneer een mensche in arbeyt is, soe is hem dat sijn herte moere whenever a person at work is, so is to-him his heart tired ‘so whenever a person works, then his heart is tired’ [examples from burridge (1998: 684/696)] the same serialization structure (possessor np dat + possessive pronoun + possessum np) is found in 10 th -century german ((25) below): (25) du uuart demodat balderes uuolon sin uuot birenkit then was to-the balder’s colt his foot wrenched ‘then baldur’s colt wrenched his hoof’ (merseburger zauberspruch) [example cited from allen (2008: 188)] therefore, even though the ‘possessive dative’ or ‘sympathetic dative’ may have played a role in the development of the old english separated genitive (as it early stages of the ‘his genitive’ 69 probably did in other germanic languages), 26 we consider the latter a construction of its own, characterised by a high level of syntactic bondedness and cohesion, and with a clear constituent status. the similarity of the old english separated genitive with the germanic ‘possessor doubling’ construction is also patent if we observe that all undisputable examples of separated genitives in the corpus (this is, excluding those explicable as left dislocation or otherwise) have a possessor np in the dative case regardless of the case required by the syntax of the clause (subject in (5j), (5k), (5l); object in (5a), 27 (5g), 28 (5h), (5i) and object of a preposition in (5m)). 29 interestingly, in many of those examples the possessor n is a very common noun such as god in (5a), man in (5j, 5k, 5l) or wyf in (5m), whose inflection for genitive case was standard and unproblematical. this runs afoul of the hypothesis so often put forward (jespersen 1894: 320, kellner 1956: 189, mustanoja 1960: 160, pyles & algeo 1964: 187, traugott 1972: 125, fischer 1992: 230, seppänen 1997: 202) that the separated genitive was a marked grammatical option used in old english when the possessor n was an indeclinable noun or with substantives of a foreign origin, whose genitive morpheme would be difficult to handle by scribes. concerning those examples of possessive structures in object position in which the possessor np is not in the dative case but in the nominative ((5b) we gesawon enac his cynryn), or accusative ((5n) he het alætan ut þone halgan petrum his scip), we think that they might represent a step forward in the 26 in any case, it is not proved cross-linguistically that the doubling construction of germanic languages had necessarily emerged from the reanalysis of a juxtaposed dative np and one beginning with a possessor pronoun. allen (2008) —quoting ramat (1986)— says that there is the possibility that in languages with impoverished case marking the possessor is a sort of ‘nominativus pendens’, a nominative having no syntactic connection with the possessee, and […] that this type may be very old, belonging originally to spoken rather than written language. (allen 2008: 206) 27 we find allen’s (2008: 226) explanation of gode his naman as involving the instrumental case for gode in a ditransitive construction whose translation would be ‘called out his name to god’ far-fetched and unconvincing. 28 we assume that the inflection of the possessor n in arcadum heora burg is the default dative plural in -um used in old english. it is very improbable that it represented the latin third-stem genitive plural -um (arcades-arcadum). 29 obviously, in this example (on þam wife hyre geleafan) the dative case is ‘nondiagnostic’, as it is the case required by the preposition on. 70 pérez lorido & casado núñez development of the separated genitive in old english —closer in form to and perhaps antedating the medieval ‘his genitive’—, where the original casemarking requirements for the possessor np would be blurred. 30 this is obviously just a tentative explanation, and we cannot forget that all these examples allow —more or less marginally— for other interpretations apart from separated genitives. from what has been exposed so far we think we can conclude that the separated genitive existed de facto in old english, and that it essentially shared the characteristics of the germanic ‘possessor doubling’ construction. however, the very low frequency of the phenomenon in the corpus in absolute terms (much below the average incidence of the medieval ‘his genitive’) and the large data gap existing between the last attested instances of the separated genitive in old english (mid-11 th century) and the first examples of the systematic use of the medieval ‘his genitive’ (mid-13 th century) makes us think —in line with allen (2008)— that it is highly improbable that the old english ‘possessor doubling’ construction was the origin of the medieval ‘his genitive’. 31 nonetheless, we consider that the old english separated genitive played an important role in the development of the ‘his genitive’ from the point of view of language acquisition as it made the english speakers familiar with the syntactic configuration np + possessive pronoun + np which would later arise due to the independently motivated process of phonological identification of the morpheme -es with the weak form of his. when more texts and more periods of the history of english (especially the 12 th century) are studied we will probably be able to assess with more precision the role of the old english separated genitive in the process of reanalysis of the morpheme -es into the detached possessive marker ‘his’. 30 both texts from which these examples are taken were copied in fairly late manuscripts dating from the second half of the 11 th century. moreover, it is interesting to note that example (5l) above (gif men his leoðu acen oððe ongeflogen sy genim...) from ms british library; cotton vitellius c iii (dated mid-11 th century) appears in ms british library, harley 6258 b (dated about a hundred years later) as gif man his liðu acen (de vriend 1984, 43: 13), with the possessor n in the nominative case. 31 the hypothesis of the phonological origin of the ‘his genitive’ in the middle ages due to homophony between the morpheme -es and the weak pronoun ‘his’ is confirmed by the findings in the case studies of layamon’s brut ms o in casado núñez (2013) and pérez lorido & casado núñez (2013a, 2013b). early stages of the ‘his genitive’ 71 4. conclusions though the sheer number of examples of separated genitives in old english is very low if compared with the inflected genitive, their incidence and distribution across the corpus is significant enough as not to rule them out as performance errors. separated genitives occur in old english in all positions in the clause, including post-verbal object position and as prepositional complements, which rules out their analysis in terms of ‘left dislocation’, a major argument in allen’s (2008) approach. moreover, the statistical frequency and extent of the separated genitive in old english provides some basis to establish a certain continuity (in strict terms of syntactic configurations) with the examples of the genuine ‘his genitive’ which are found in the late 13 th century english texts. we propose that familiarity of speakers with the syntactic configuration np + poss + np resulting from the use of the separated genitive in old english paved the way for the use of the ‘his genitive’ in the middle ages, which —though instantiated by a completely different trigger (of a phonological nature)— produced essentially the same syntactic structure. finally, we think that there are reasons to believe that the old english separated genitive was originally very similar to the ‘possessor doubling’ or ‘external possessor’ construction of other germanic languages. although related to the ‘possessive dative’ or ‘sympathetic dative’, from which it possibly evolved, we consider that the old english separated genitive is a structure of its own, with a high level of bondedness and cohesion, and the same status of grammaticalised structure as the ‘doubling construction’ of its germanic relatives. the presence in the corpus of some sporadic examples of possessor nps in cases other than dative (this is, in the case required by the syntax of the clause and not by the syntax of the ‘doubling construction’) could be seen as a step ahead in the history of the construction in english and as a natural link between the older separated genitives (closer morphologically and syntactically to the germanic ‘doubling construction’) and the medieval ‘his genitive’, where the possessor np is usually unmarked for case. 72 pérez lorido & casado núñez references allen, c. l. 1997: the origins of the ‘group genitive’ in english. transactions of the philological society 95: 111–131. allen, c. l. 2002: the early english ‘his genitives’ from a germanic perspective. in p. collins & m. amberber eds. proceedings of the 2002 conference of the australian linguistic society. http://au.geocities.com/austlingsoc/proceedings/als2002/allen.pdf allen, c. l. 2003: deflexion and the development of the genitive in english. english language and linguistics 7: 1–28. allen, c. l. 2008: genitives in early english. typology and evidence. cambridge, cambridge university press. bately, j. ed. 1980: the old english orosius. 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[cdrom]. timofeeva, o. 2010: non-finite constructions in old english, with special reference to syntactic borrowing from latin. (ph. d dissertation) mémoires de la société néophilologique de helsinki, vol. lxxx. helsinki, société néophilologique. toller, t. n. 1921: supplement to the bosworth-toller an anglo-saxon dictionary. oxford, clarendon press. early stages of the ‘his genitive’ 75 traugott, e. c. 1972: a history of english syntax. new york, holt, rinehart and winston. traugott, e. c. 2007: old english left-dislocations: their structure and information status. folia linguistica 41/3–4: 405–441. van kemenade, a., t. milicev & r. h. baayen 2008: the balance between syntax and discourse in old english. in m. gotti, m. dossena & r. dury eds. english historical linguistics 2006: selected papers from the fourteenth international conference on english historical linguistics (icehl). volume i: syntax and morphology. amsterdam, john benjamins: 3–21. visser, f. t. 1963–1973: an historical syntax of the english language, 3 parts; 4 vols. leiden, a.j. brill. wyld, h. c. 1936: a history of modern colloquial english, 3 rd edition. oxford, basil blackwell. author’s address departamento de filología inglesa, francesa y alemana facultad de filosofía y letras universidad de oviedo c/amparo pedregal s/n e-33011 oviedo (spain) received: 13 july 2016 e-mail: lorido@uniovi.es revised version accepted: 12 december 2016 selim michael drout, selim 10 (2000): 3—43 anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition in the english benedictine reform1 in his will, which dates from between 931 and 939, near the end of the reign of king æthelstan, a certain wulfgar writes that he wishes to divide some of the lands he holds, with one part going “þam godes þeowum for mine sawle & for mines fæder & for mines ieldran fæder” (kemble 1838-49: 175-76).2 expressions of such concern are rare in the corpus of wills from before wulfgar’s time; they are also rare in the eleventh century.3 but between 925 and 992, ten of the twenty-four extant wills (42 %) mention ancestors and their souls.4 æthelstan’s coronation was held in 925; oswald 1 my thanks to allen j. frantzen, joyce hill, mercedes salvador and especially greg rose for generous assistance and encouragement. 2 s 1533. “…for the servants of god for my soul and that of my father and those of my elder fathers [ancestors]” (kemble 1839-49: 175-76). in order to avoid the confusion that plagues many other studies of the wills, in the text i will use the name of the primary testator while in footnotes i will cite the edition from which i draw the old english text, and i will also give the appropriate number (preceded by a capital s) from sawyer 1968. unless otherwise noted, translations are my own. i give a complete list of the anglo-saxon wills arranged in order of their probable dates of composition in appendix i. for the date of wulfgar’s will see sawyer (1968: 429). 3 among the wills dating from the ninth and early tenth centuries, only those of dunn (s 1514), which dates from 855, and king alfred (s 1507; 873-888) mention ancestors’ souls (though see below for a discussion of these wills). while the number of extant wills from 992-1066 is comparable to the number of wills from 925-992, only four of these twenty-seven wills (14.81%) mention ancestors’ souls: wulfric, 1000-1002; athelstan ætheling, 1014 (s 1503); leofgifu, 1035-1044 (s 1521); and ketel, 1052-1066 (s 1519) (though see below for a discussion of wulfric’s will). 4 wills mentioning ancestors’ souls from between 925 and 922 are: wulfgar, 931939 (s 1533); theodred, 942-951 (s 1526); ælfgar, 946-951 (s 1483); æthelric, (s 1501); æthelflæd, 962-991 (s 1494); ælfgifu, 966-975 (s 1484); ælfheah, 968-971 (s 1485); brihtric and ælfswith, 973-987 (s 1511); æthelgifu, 980-990 (s 1497); wulfwaru, 984-1016 (s 1538). michael drout 6 of worcester died in 992. these two dates mark the beginning and the end of the anglo-saxon benedictine reform of the tenth century.1 as figure 1 illustrates, the dates of wills that express concern for ancestors’ souls correspond closely with these dates, and this co-incidence is not a mere artifact of interval selection.2 it is no surprise that æthelwold, dunstan and oswald were concerned about the relationship of their political, cultural and 1 the basic history of the benedictine reform is outlined in stenton (1950: 428-54); see also knowles (1950: 16-82). it is traditional to date the reform as beginning between 939 and 946, when dunstan became abbot of glastonbury, and ending with the death of oswald in 992 (knowles 1950: 31, 70). but more recent scholarship has placed the beginning of the intellectual and cultural renaissance in the court of æthelstan (keynes 1985; gretsch 1991: 1-5, 426-27 and passim). see also yorke 1988; brooks & cubbitt 1996; ramsay et al. 1992; parsons 1975. the introduction and notes to lapidge & winterbottom 1991 are also exceptionally useful. although the reform continued to influence subsequent culture through the efforts of the second generation of reformers (most famously ælfric of eynsham and archbishop wulfstan), the expansion of the reform and the great influx of new converts to the monastic life can be said to have effectively ended with the death of oswald. 2 because we do not have single-year dates for a majority of the anglo-saxon wills it is impossible to construct a true stack histogram to represent them. figure 1 represents the number of wills plotted against time, giving each will as a range of potential dates. it is important when reading the graph to remember that each box, no matter how large, only represents one will, and that each will was in fact written during only one year in the range of dates represented by the box. the will of æthelgifu (s 1497), which is discussed below, is only listed once although it exists in multiple manuscripts with somewhat different contents. figures 2 and 3 are stack histograms, but they are constructed at the expense of the full range of possible dates for each will, since each will is plotted as a member of a decade-long set. figure 2a illustrates the distribution of wills in time if the earliest possible date for each will is chosen. figure 3a shows the distribution if the midpoint of each possible range of dates is selected. neither method can be entirely accurate, since the true date of one will might be close to the midpoint while another might be close to the lower bound (i have omitted including an upper-bound histogram, since the data are skewed by the presence of the “right wall” of the conquest, which tends to cause a clustering near 1066 that is probably not reflective of the data). both figures illustrate, as does figure 1, the tight clustering of wills mentioning ancestors’ souls in the 925-992 interval; this cluster is even more evident if the wills are plotted on a logarithmic scale, a method which eliminates some potential “noise” from the data. it is interesting that the absence in the 950’s of wills mentioning ancestors’ souls coincides with the reigns of eadred and eadwig, one king who, while he supported the reform, was weak and often ill (see below) and the other actively hostile to dunstan and, presumably, the reform. unfortunately there is not enough data to do more than merely note the interesting coincidence. anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 7 religious project to the past, but the influence of reform ideals upon the wider, secular culture has not been previously documented.1 in the following pages i will argue that this striking cluster of wills mentioning ancestors’ souls and the co-incidence of the cluster, in both time and geographic distribution, with the tenth-century benedictine reform provides evidence that the reform influenced the beliefs and practices of secular anglo-saxons. the specific language of the wills in question (even when that language is standard diplomatic), in addition, perhaps, to the propensity of female testators to refer more frequently to their ancestors, shows that ideologies important to reformed monasteries had been adopted by secular individuals as part of a grassroots pietistic movement which deeply valued the practice of donating property to obtain monastic devotions aimed at the remediation of ancestors’ souls. as a result of this penetration of reform ideologies into secular culture, individual anglo-saxons saw themselves being in direct contact with their predecessors through their intercession via masses, psalms and prayers purchased through their gifts to the monasteries. the evidence of the wills thus helps to explain the power of the idea (and ideal) of the past in anglo-saxon england, for that past was not only remembered, but actually re-animated through the active purchase of grace for departed ancestors, a purchase facilitated by the wills which document it. anglo-saxon wills as evidence depending upon which scholar is counting, there are between fifty-five and sixty-two wills extant from anglo-saxon england.2 this corpus of 1 the current scholarly consensus seems to be that the benedictine reformers saw themselves as restoring monasticism to its proper practice and rightful place of influence in a united english kingdom. they believed their monastic practice (influenced as it was by continental reform) was a restoration of unique and ancient english traditions arising originally from augustine’s mission and linked to the work of the great english scholars bede and aldhelm (gretsch 1999: 1-5, 426-27 and passim). 2 sheehan (1963: 21, n.11) and sawyer (1968: 414-31) both enumerate fifty-nine documents in their lists of wills. other recent scholars to examine the wills, brenda danet and bryna bogoch (1992), claim a corpus of sixty-two. because danet & bogoch do not list sawyer numbers or make citations of all the specific documents michael drout 8 vernacular wills has no parallel on the continent in the early medieval period and shows that the anglo-saxon fondness for using the vernacular was not limited to literature. the oldest will we possess, that of æthelnoth, the reeve at eastry, kent, and his wife gænberg dates from the beginning of the ninth century (robertson 1956: 4-7).1 the latest vernacular will, that of ulf and madselin, dates from between 1066 and 1068 (whitelock 1930: 94-97).2 nearly all the wills are found as later (thirteenthand fourteenth-century) copies by monastic scribes of earlier (and now lost) documents: only fifteen wills are preserved in contemporary form, and these are also nearly all of monastic provenance (whitelock 1930: xli).3 the absence from cartularies of wills dating from before the ninth century provides at least some evidence that the custom of writing wills was not adopted by the anglo-saxons until around 800.4 they consider, i have been unable to reconstruct with certainty their corpus. kathryn lowe’s unpublished 1990 cambridge ph.d. dissertation enumerates a corpus of sixty-two wills. lowe’s corpus is substantially the same as the one i use, which is drawn from the electronic sawyer, ed. s. e. kelly, available on the world wide web at: http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/users/sdk13/chartwww/esawyer.99/esawyer2.html. note however that old english transcripts of two wills which were in 1990 known only as latin translations (s1517 and 1532) have been identified by keynes 1993a. the only significant difference between my corpus and kelly’s is my reduction of some multiple-copy wills to one data point for statistical purposes. see appendix 1. the majority of the wills were first printed by kemble (1839-48). benjamin thorpe (1865) published some additions to kemble although, according to whitelock (1930: xlii), he included “several documents which are technically not wills.” e. edwards (1866) published an additional four wills, and w. de gray birch (188593) printed several wills in his collection of charters. a.s. napier and w.h. stevenson (1895) edited two more, and f.e. harmer (1914) edited and translated twelve of the earliest wills. in 1930, dorothy whitelock published the texts and translations of thirty-nine wills. after whitelock’s edition a few additional wills were edited by a.j. robertson (1956) and whitelock herself edited a second (and longer) manuscript of the will of æthelgifu for the roxburghe club in 1968. 1 805-832 (s 1500). tacitus is generally unreliable for matters anglo-saxon, and in any event tacitus wrote eight hundred years before the bulk of the evidence i discuss came into existence. nevertheless, and for what it may be worth, he does note in chapter 20 of germania that, among the germans, “heredes tamen successoresque sui cuique liberi, et nullum testamentum” (“nevertheless each person’s own children are his heirs and successors, and there is no testament”). 2 s 1532. 3 lowe (1990: 12-24) identifies twenty-three wills as pre-conquest. 4 contrast the sudden appearance of wills in the documentary record with the “almost continuous” series of royal charters “joining the seventh-century kingdom of kent http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/users/sdk13/chartwww/esawyer.99/esawyer2.html anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 9 written wills could only be produced by literate individuals with access to writing materials and almost certainly operating in some institutional context. such a context could be found in two institutions in the anglosaxon period—monastic scriptoria or the royal writing office.1 it does not seem possible, however, at this stage of our knowledge, to prove that the wills were produced by the royal writing office.2 george brown suggests to the england of william the conquerer” (stenton 1959: 2). it seems reasonable to assume that if wills had been in use pre-800 they would appear as copies in cartularies. the codex wintoniensis (london, british library, add. 15350), the cartulary for the old minster, winchester, contains documents dating to 680 (s 1428a), but includes no wills from before the ninth century. in addition, while there are many forgeries in the codex wintoniensis, there are not even any forged wills dating from before 800, strongly suggesting that anglo-saxon forgers did not believe that wills dating from before the ninth century would be accepted as genuine and thus supporting the idea that the custom of will writing arises after 800. the extant pre-900 single-sheet wills are all from kent and all from the archive of christ church, canterbury (s 1482, s 1500, s 1508, and s1510). of the three remaining pre-900 wills extant only in copies, two are from kent (s 1508, from christ church, canterbury and s 1514 from rochester). the will of king alfred is an exception, coming from wessex and found in the archive of the new minster, but this royal will cannot be taken as typical, and clearly the distribution of documents supports the idea that the wills are a kentish custom that only spread to the rest of england (and only that south of the humber) as a result of the benedictine reform. 1 although the existence of the royal writing office was once controversial—m. t. clanchy (1979: 17), for example, saw the production of texts as purely monastic— it is now firmly established. w. h. stevenson first proposed the existence of a royal writing office, but his 1898 sandars lectures in bibliography were never published (they are available on the world wide web, courtesy of simon keynes, at http://www.trin.ac.uk/users/sdk13/chartwww/steven%7e1/ stevint.htm). richard drögereit (1935) was the first scholar to publish an argument for the existence of a secretariat attached to the royal court during the years 931-963, and he identified the work of royal scribes from the reigns of æthelstan, edmund, eadred and edgar. t.a.m. bishop (1971) noted an additional royal scribe active in 956-57, during the reign of eadwig. simon keynes (1980: 17-55) demonstrated that the royal secretariat endured throughout the reign of æthelred. eric john (1982: 167) acknowledged that while the evidence is complicated and unclear, he was willing to accept a chancery as possible. more recently, david dumville (1993: 1-7) argues for the presence of a chancery and views such an office as intimately connected with the monasteries. 2 most wills are found as later copies in monastic cartularies. for example, the codex wintoniensis dates from 1130-1150 and the sacrist’s register of bury st. edmunds (cambridge, university library, ff. 2. 33) dates from the late thirteenth to early fourteenth century (davis 1958: 16, 120). because so many wills are later copies, we cannot identify the scribes of the original documents. there are a number of single-sheet wills for which scribes have been identified. for example, the scribe of the main text of s 1482 also wrote s 153, s 188, s 1268, and s 1436; the scribe of michael drout 10 that “spurred on by the ecclesiastical reform, other non-monastic centers, such as cathedrals with secular canons, produced texts both in latin and old english” (1995: 121). but these scribes were the exception rather than the rule and there is no specific evidence that they were associated with the wills. as far as our limited evidence can demonstrate, therefore, the wills should be seen as being in the main the products of monastic scriptoria, which were, seth lerer argues, the only institutions “that could foster a culture of textuality” in anglo-saxon england (1991: 8). upon the fortunes of the monastery, therefore, depended the fortunes of the wills, a link borne out by the distribution of anglo-saxon testaments, which is “most uneven as to time and place” (sheehan 1963: 23). nearly all the wills come from between the middle of the tenth century and the conquest, and nearly all owe their preservation to their containing bequests to the abbeys of abingdon, bury st. edmunds, christ church, canterbury and winchester.1 whitelock argues that written wills were more common than the existing manuscript distribution would indicate: “that great numbers of wills from anglo-saxon times have perished is shown not only by fairly frequent references in anglo-saxon documents from the ninth century onwards to wills no longer extant, but also by the distribution of those wills which have survived” (whitelock 1930: xli). the sample of extant wills, then, may be skewed by a bias towards the preservation of wills that record gifts to monastic foundations: it is at least theoretically possible that some or many anglo-saxons made wills did not name monastic foundations at all, and for this reason these wills were not preserved. but this caveat aside, it seems not unreasonable to use the existing corpus to attempt to determine patterns of inheritance in both time and space. the main text of s 1486 also wrote s 1494; the scribe of s 1500 also wrote s 41; the scribe of s 1533 also wrote the guild regulations in bern, burgerbibliothek 671, 76v; the scribe of s 1536 also wrote s 906. so while it is possible that some wills were written by royal writing office scribes, confirmation or refutation of this position is not yet possible. dumville (1992: 7981) argues that wulfgar’s will (s 1533) was likely written at the witenagemot “when scribal facilities and sufficient witnesses would have been available,” and that the will, written by æthelstan’s chancery scribes, was likely written on the royal estate at bedwyn. 1 the geographic distribution of the bequests listed in the wills is discussed further below and illustrated in figures 4-6. anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 11 the precise legal status of the anglo-saxon will has been the matter of some debate, and resolution is beyond the scope of this essay.1 the most substantial argument turns on the dispositive status of the will.2 a writ “is purely evidentiary… its publication does not appear to represent the act of conveyance itself. a dispositive counterpart is required” which is supplied by a diploma (keynes 1980: 141-42). the will, in contrast, has both elements of dispositive and evidentiary power. while it was not a substitute for the diploma or landbook, a written will could be used in litigation as evidence for an actual change of ownership (sheehan 1963: 4-16). diplomas and writs were issued by the court, but each will was created by an individual or married couple. thus, while their implementation often required the permission of the king, wills do record in some measure the desires of individual anglo-saxons. the degree to which we can use wills to identify individual desires depends upon how much freedom individuals had when creating a will. all of the wills exhibit four general characteristics: they attempt to influence the behavior of living people after the death of the testator; they attempt to provide for contingencies foreseen by the testator, including such events as the birth of a child or the death of an executor; they arrange, through the institution of alms of one sort of another, to provide for the soul of the testator; and finally, wills attempt to prevent the alteration of the document in which they are recorded. within this framework, the wills also tend to follow some formulaic conventions. a. campbell asserted that the wills are structured by “an old english legal jargon, which in view of the universal use of latin for other documents, must have evolved for the purpose of making wills” (1938: 133 1 see hazeltine (1930: i-xxi). hazeltine’s remarks as to the evidentiary status of wills are quoted or paraphrased without dissent in a number of influential general studies (greenfield & calder 1986: 114; stock 1983: 48-49). 2 sheehan’s project is to show through the history of the will the influence of christianity in the development of english civilization. he thus complicates the strictly legal history given by hazeltine, showing the connections between wills, alms and notions of the afterlife (sheehan 1963: 17). sheehan also explains the relationship between wills and other sorts of gifts (28-30), making important distinctions between post-obit gifts (any transaction in which the transfer did not take place until the testator’s death even though the gift may have been arranged long before), and gifts made verba novissima, that is, on the death-bed (31). michael drout 12 52). but the situation is actually somewhat more complicated. campbell’s often-quoted assertion that the scribes of the wills “provided a framework” ends up begging the question of whether or not scribes put into standardized phrasing the desires of testators or worked to structure and limit what and how a testator could bequeath.1 other cultural conventions may also have influenced the language of the wills. sheehan suggests that a will needed to be able to “be capable of defending the gift” against the opposition of family members, should they dispute the will (1963: 24). the ability of a document to “defend,” albeit in the hands of specific interested parties, suggests first of all that wills are not only evidentiary, and second, that the style of wills may have invested the documents with what danet and bogoch call “performative power.” that is, the specific phrases used in the wills, as well as the inclusion of “speech acts” such as curses may be linked to collocations that were powerful in the spoken culture of anglo-saxon england. the extra-textual power of these phrases may have increased the chances of a given testator’s wishes being followed (danet & bogoch 1992: 110-12). in any event, there are both near-universal elements and significant regional and temporal patterns in will diplomatic. for example, the prefatory clause of wills shows a range of variation with a distinctively regional character. there are four main forms of the prefatory clause:2 type 1: ic/n kithe … an/unnen. type 2: this/her is …cwide. type 3: her/ic swutelath on thisse ge/write … an … aihte. type 4: ic an … aefter minne daege (this type amounts to no prefatory clause, since it is the first dispositive clause of the will). 1 the question of how much the use of a linguistic formula limits the freedom of a person using it is fraught with literary-theoretical difficulties. nevertheless it seems reasonable to suppose that there is some significant difference between a cultural practice in which a testator tells a scribe what he or she wants to bequeath, the scribe then converting these wishes into formulaic prose, versus a situation in which the scribe, as representative of the monastery, tells the testator what is appropriate for him or her to donate and to whom the donation should be made. 2 for a discussion of one form of prefatory clause, see withers (1999: 119-22) and lowe 1991. anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 13 if we compare the distribution of these clauses by archive, we see: bury st. edmunds: type 1: 6 (33.33%) type 2: 4 (22.22%) type 3: 7 (38.89%) type 4: 0 other: 1 (5.56%) christ church, canterbury: type 1: 5 (71.43%) type 2: 2 (28.57%) type 3: 0 type 4: 0 other: 0 old minster, winchester: type 1: 1 (12.50%) type 2: 0 type 3: 5 (62.50%) type 4: 1 (12.50%) other: 1 (12.50%) new minster, winchester: type 1: 1 (14.385%) type 2: 3 (42.66%) type 3: 0 type 4: 2 (28.57%) other: 1 (14.385%) st. albans: type 1: 2 (50.00%) type 2: 0 type 3: 1 (25.00%) type 4: 1 (25.00%) other: 0 all others: type 1: 2 (12.50%) type 2: 3 (18.75%) michael drout 14 type 3: 6 (37.50%) type 4: 2 (12.50% other: 3 (18.75%) these differences are not merely an artifact of a particular chartulary style, since they exist in both original single sheets and chartulary copies and across archives. there are similar patterns in the term used for soul (“gast” is used interchangeably with “sawel” in 9th-century wills, but never in the later wills), dispositive verbs, presence or absence of symbolic or verbal invocation, presence or absence of anathema, sanction or blessing, and ratio of third person to first person in diplomatic. it is thus to some degree possible to distinguish by analysis of diplomatic between what elements of the will are required legal framework and what represent the choices of individual bequestors. mention of remediation of ancestors’ souls appears to be a variable that is individual to each bequestor. wills mentioning ancestors’ souls occur in the majority of archives but do not predominate in any of them, either in single-sheet wills or in cartularies.1 this distribution, coupled with the distribution in time discussed above, strongly supports the idea that the use of remediation diplomatic was an individual choice, perhaps influenced by the urging of a monastic scribe, but nevertheless a choice that an individual was free to make or not make. it is therefore reasonable to conclude that, despite all the difficulties created by an impoverished documentary record, wills can be used evidence for the desires of anglo-saxon testators, though they are also likely to represent to some degree the desires and cultural imperatives of the institutions by whose hands they were created and preserved: anglo-saxon monasteries from the ninth century to the conquest. the desires of testators and correlation with the reform years 1 wills mentioning ancestors’ souls are found in the archives of christ church, canterbury (2); bury st. edmunds (7); winchester, old minster (3); winchester, new minster (1); rochester (2); ramsey (1); bath (1); st. albans (1). anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 15 the reasons why anglo-saxons would choose to write wills (as opposed to simply bequeathing in the kind of oral ceremonies that danet and bogoch, hazeltine, whitelock and sheehan propose) are straightforward.1 written wills are more difficult to modify than remembered oral promises, and documents can last longer than memories. in fact the wills indicate that testators intended their wills to last for all eternity. many include curses that assume the permanence of the document.2 for example, wulfgyth writes in her will: and se þe mine quyde beryaui þe ic nu biqueþen habbe a godes ywithnesse beriaued he worþe þises erthliche meryþes and ashireyi hine se almiyti driyten þe alle shepþe shop and ywroyte uram alre haleyene ymennesse on domesday. and sy he bytayt satane þane deule and alle his awaryede yueren into helle grunde and þer aquelmi and godes withsaken bute ysweke and mine irfinume neuer ne aswenche (whitelock 1930: 86).3 this curse operates until the end of time, indicating that the testator desires to gain a form of eternal power—the ability to influence the fates of others and to constrain their behavior from beyond the grave. it is hard to imagine such trans-temporal power being exercised without the help of the technology of writing.4 1 seth lerer argues that anglo-saxons were aware of “textual power: the control that writings exercise over their readers and their world” (1991: 62). harnessing textual power for wills and other purposes would be a logical consequence of its recognition. 2 danet & bogoch (1992: 109-15) cite twenty-five curses in their corpus of sixty-two wills. 3 s 1535. “and he who takes away from my will which i have now declared in the witness of god, may he be riven of all happiness on earth, and may the almighty lord who created and wrought all creatures exclude him on judgment day from the fellowship of all the saints, and may he be given to the satan the devil and all his accursed heirs and there suffer with those god has forsaken without end, and never trouble my inheritors.” 4 it is important to remember, however, that not only does a document need to be preserved for long periods of time in order to project trans-temporal power, but someone must be able to read the document and must decide to obey it. both of these requirements are more difficult to ensure than much previous scholarship has assumed, and while anglo-saxon testators could not foresee the conquest and the changes in their language, they must have been aware, as we are today, that quite often the wishes of the deceased are not followed. michael drout 16 if an individual’s identity is in part constituted by his or her ability to influence other individuals, then the post-mortem influence enabled by written wills is a means of perpetuating individual identity after death. such perpetuation of identity through wills can be seen today in purely secular contexts, and suggests that perpetuation of identity may be a basic human desire. in the anglo-saxon period the perpetuation of identity after death was inextricably bound up with christian conceptions of the afterlife. thus, as sheehan argues, the use of wills was inextricably linked with the church.1 the church enabled the post-mortem perpetuation of identity by preserving the memory of individuals, by helping to enforce the execution of their desires, and by saying masses to aid their souls.2 the preservation of the memory of benefactors, particularly in continental monasteries, has been exhaustively documented.3 we know that such preservation was important to anglo-saxons as well as to individuals on the continent because the practice of recording benefactors’ names in a liber vitae was widespread 1 sheehan’s argument that “in many ways the history of the will in england is a supreme example of the part played by christianity in the growth of western civilization” is perhaps overstated, but his emphasis of the ecclesiastical context of anglo-saxon wills is a helpful counterbalance to an otherwise strictly legalistic approach to wills as an example of the evolution of a legal procedure (1963: 3 and passim). for an example of analysis focused almost exclusively on legal matters see hazeltine (1930: vii-xv). 2 the church could aid in the execution of a will if, for example, both a monastic foundation and an individual were named as beneficiaries. to preserve its own interest in any given will, a monastic foundation might very well insist that the entire will be carried out, thus thwarting family members or other interested parties opposed to the testator’s desires for his or her land or goods. 3 patrick geary notes that “in the ninth through eleventh centuries [monastic] cartularies protected not simply property rights both vis-a-vis tenant and royal authorities, but they also protected the memory of benefactors … “ (1994: 86). barbara h. rosenwein (1982: 32-50) has shown that bequests to reformed monasteries were a way for individuals in unstable times to associate themselves with stable and reliable communities. she also argues (1989: 141-43) that transfers of property between monasteries and secular communities were ways for individuals and communities to become “neighbors” of st. peter. megan mclaughlin argues that such bequests were not merely for the purpose of “acquiring more and more prayer” for the testators but were instead ways for individuals and families to form close ties with the monastic community: “the point of all these lists [of the names of benefactors], then, was not simply to preserve the names of certain individuals; it was, rather, to record them among other names” (1994: 101). anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 17 throughout anglo-saxon england.1 preservation of a name in a liber vitae clearly did work, as rosenwein, mclaughlin and geary have all shown, to create a community that included both monks and lay donors bound together by strong social and religious ties. but at least as important as the social ties that bound monks and laypersons together was the ability of the church to provide for the souls of the dead. the idea of almsgiving providing remediation for the souls of the departed has a firm biblical basis in acts 20:35 and ii corinthians 9:5-14. that anglo-saxons believed that the saying of prayers, the chanting of psalms and the commemoration of individuals in masses would aid the souls of the departed in the afterlife is obvious from simple inspection of the corpus of wills, the majority of which state that donations to a church or monastic foundation are given “for mine soule” (whitelock 1930: 34-37).2 wills throughout the period also request intercession for a handful of individuals either close to the testator or politically powerful: a spouse, king or lord. such donations are a structured and institutionally assisted form of almsgiving; the giving itself is beneficial for the soul, and a gift to a church foundation makes the alms even more valuable.3 that anglo-saxons would also want to provide for the souls of their loved ones seems a reasonable and common desire, and the ability of 1 for anglo-saxon libri vitae see gerchow 1988. the durham liber vitae (most of which dates from the ninth century and was written in lindisfarne) was printed in facsimile by the surtees society (surtees 1923). more recently, simon keynes has edited the liber vitae of the new minster and hyde abbey winchester (keynes 1996). 2 “for my soul.” the specific quotation is from the will of æthelflæd (s 1494), but the phrase or some variant with the same meaning is ubiquitous. 3 there were many gifts that were in a sense given to no one, and these gifts should be viewed as pure alms. for example, as david pelteret (1995: 110-25) notes, many testaments manumit slaves after the death of the testator. while contemporary readers may see post-mortem manumission as a rather cynical act (the testator enjoyed the value of the slaves’ labor during his life; when he was dead and no longer needed the labor, his soul benefited from the manumission), it does indicate the value anglo-saxons placed on almsgiving without a quid pro quo from any specific institution; there is no hint that the freed slaves are supposed to pray for the souls of their owner; the freeing itself is enough. the freeing of slaves as a means of remediation for a departed soul has a biblical basis in jeremiah 34:8-22, and a foundation in æthelstan’s laws, ordinances i and i.1 (liebermann 1898-1916: i.148). michael drout 18 monasteries to provide for the souls of the dead even as they provided for at least some of the spiritual needs of the living creates a continuum of monastic and lay memory, and a “corporate memory of a religious community” (keynes 1996: 50). new entries in a liber vitae are part of an ongoing book, a tradition of names and remembrances. yet until the middle of the tenth century (with only one clear and one ambiguous exception) anglo-saxon testators, while relying upon future generations to perpetuate their own memories, only looked forward; they did not in their wills look back to their predecessors. before the benedictine reform only two wills, those of dunn and that of king alfred, mention ancestors.1 dunn’s will, which dates from 855 and comes from kent, approximates the standard diplomatic of the mention of ancestors. dunn grants a title deed to his wife for her lifetime. upon her death she is to “geselle hit on ∂æs halgan apostoles naman sce andreas ∂am hirode ‘in’ mid unnan godes & his hal’l’gena for unc buta & eall uncre eldran” (whitelock 1930: 14-16).2 notice that while dunn does not specifically mention the souls of his ancestors, the care of their souls and memory is implicit in the grant to the foundation. no other ninth-century will mentions ancestors in general and only one, that of king alfred, mentions specific ancestral individuals. but we cannot take this will as typical. when alfred first mentions his ancestors he does not take into account their souls, but is rather concerned to justify his ownership of his inheritance. he writes: “ic ælfred cingc … smeade ymbe minre sawle þearfe & ymbe min yrfe þæt me god & mine yldran forgeafon & ymbe þæt yrfe þæt a∂ulf cingc min fæder us þrim gebroþrum becwæ∂” (harmer 1914: 15-19, 49-53, my emphasis).3 alfred may have had very good reasons well beyond those of simple piety for mentioning the ancestors from whom his power and wealth came from. youngest of five brothers, alfred was not—despite the chronicler’s suggestion, repeated by asser, that 1 s 1514 and s 1507. 2 “give it to the brotherhood in the name of the holy apostle st. andrew with the permission of god and his saints for both of us and all our ancestors.” 3 “i, king alfred, have thought about the needs of my soul and about my inheritance which god and my ancestors gave to me, and about that inheritance that my father king æthelwulf bequeathed to us three brothers.” see also keynes & lapidge (1983: 171-78 and 313-26). anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 19 he was anointed by the pope as such—expected to become king, and he faced political opposition at home in addition to his struggles with vikings (keynes and lapidge 1983: 69, 72-75). alfred may have wanted to remind readers (and hearers at any oral ceremony) of his legitimate claim to the throne. alfred also does not mention his ancestors’ souls, the standard formula for the post-reform wills that do place themselves within a tradition of inheritances, though he does specifically mention one ancestor, his father. alfred wishes two hundred pounds for both his soul and his father’s to be distributed among priests, poor servants of god, the distressed poor, and the church in which alfred’s body will be buried. alfred’s will foreshadows the more elaborated interest in ancestors’ souls found in the wills of the 930’s through the end of the tenth century, and expansion of alfred’s practice is consistent with the benedictine reformers’ predilection for building upon and developing alfredian institutions and customs.1 the next will to mention ancestors’ souls is that of wulfgar, noted above, who in his will (composed 931-939) bequeaths his land for his, his father’s and his ancestors’ souls (kemble 1838-49: 175-76).2 wulfgar’s interest in the souls of his ancestors marks the beginning of the cluster of wills with a similar focus. that this first will to mention ancestors’ souls dates from the reign of æthelstan is also consistent with recent scholarship that puts the foundations of the benedictine reform in æthelstan’s court.3 the next mention of ancestors and their souls appears in the will of theodred, bishop of london, who between 942 and 951 bequeaths property “for mine soule & for min louerde þat ic vnder bigeat and for min eldrene” (whitelock 1930: 2-5).4 both wulfgar’s and theodred’s wills, however, are 1 see below, and also, for example, gretsch (1999: 341-47 and 426-27). dumville also argues that the alfredian program of cultural and religious revival was planned to “mature in the time of later generations” (1992: 2). 2 s 1533. “for my soul and for [that] of my father and for [those of] my older fathers,” my translation. that wulfgar’s will is genuine is not in dispute. see dumville: “the will, on a small and separate sheet, was folded with the diploma; it has since been joined to it” (1992: 78 n106). see also keynes (1980: 14-19). 3 the case for æthelstan’s court as an incubator of the later reform movement is made by gretsch (1999: 332-83). see also lapidge (1993a: 18-24); keynes 1985 and dumville (1992: 204-05). 4 “for my soul and for my lord under whom i acquired it [the property] and for my ancestors.” michael drout 20 written before the real rise in power and influence of the benedictine reform, and it is after their wills that the corpus begins to be filled with mentions of ancestors. ælfgar’s is the first will from this tight cluster of wills mentioning ancestors’ souls. some time between 946 and 951 (i.e., after dunstan became abbot of glastonbury), ælfgar bequeathed estates in suffolk and essex to the monastic community which eventually became bury st. edmunds; to the community at stoke (probably stoke-by-nayland, suffolk); to st. mary’s, barking; to christ church, canterbury; and to st. paul’s, london. ælfgar instructs his daughter æthelflæd that he wishes her to grant an estate to a “halegan stowe” of her choice “for yre aldre soule” (whitelock 1930: 6-9).1 if æthelflæd has no children then she is to grant an additional estate to stoke “for yre aldre soule,” and she is in addition to do “so wel heo best may into stoke for mine soule and for ure aldre” (whitelock 1930: 69).2 ælfgar also grants an estate to his son (?) ælfwold, provided that he pay a food-rent every year to the community at st. paul’s “for vre aldre soule” (whitelock 1930: 6-9).3 the wills of ælfgar’s two daughters, æthelflæd and ælfflæd, indicate, as lowe has argued, that “ælfgar’s wishes seem to have been upheld” although each daughter had some latitude in the timing of her donations (1990: 188-96).4 there is no reason to explicate each and every will that mentions ancestors’ souls; the pattern is clear in both figure 1 and in the list of wills given in appendix 1. the wills from the height of the tenth-century reform period which mention ancestors’ souls are, in chronological order: wulfgar, theodred, ælfgar, æthelric, æthelflæd, ælfgifu, ælfheah, brihtric and ælfswith, æthelgifu, wulfwaru and æ∂elstan mannesson.5 this corpus is constructed by including all the wills which mention ancestors’ souls (either using familiar diplomatic terms like “eafora” for ancestors or by mentioning 1 s 1483. “a holy place” “for our ancestors’ souls.” 2 “for our ancestors’ souls;” “do good the best she may unto stoke for my soul and our ancestors’.” 3 “for our ancestors’ souls,” 4 s 1494 and s 1486. 5 s 1533, 1526, 1483, 1501, 1484, 1485, 1511, 1497, 1538, 1503a. anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 21 specific individuals) extant from the reform period bounded by the coronation of æthelstan and the death of oswald (925-992).1 only four wills after 992 mention ancestors’ souls, those of wulfric, æthelstan ætheling, leofgifu and ketel. but i believe that at least one of these (wulfric, which dates from between 1002 and 1004) should in fact be considered part of the reform-era group. the main body of the will of wulfric mentions ancestors’ souls, and the will also includes a coda in which the voice of the document switches from the first person to the third person and states:2 þis is seo freolsboc to þam mynstre æt byrtune þe æþelred cyning [æf]re ecelice gefreode. gode to lofe. & eallon his halgan to weorþunge. swa swa wulfric his geedstaðelode. for hine sylfne. [& fo]r his yldrena sawla. & hit mid munecon gesette. ~ þær æfre inne þæs hades menn under heora abbude. gode þeowian. æfter [san]ctus benedictus tæcincge. sic fiat (whitelock 1930: 48-51).3 this contextualization given by the coda clearly links the gift to the reestablishment of burton, which was a result of the monastic expansion brought about by the reform. the will of ælfflæd, the daughter of ælfgar, which, like the will of wulfric, dates from between 1002 and 1004 is a more complicated case. the 1 i have used the expanded version of the will of æthelgifu (s 1497) found in the twenthieth century in gloucestershire (whitelock 1968). this expanded version includes language about the remediation of souls. for a discussion of the textual problems of the various versions of the will of æthelgifu, see pelteret (1995: 11219, 330-34). see also keynes (1993a: 268) and (1993b: 305). although the will of siflæd exists in two versions (s 1525a and s 1525), i have only used it for one data point, since s 1525 appears to be a clarification of 1525a, and thus seems to represent the desires of only one testator, siflæd (remediation language is absent from both versions). 2 s 1536. the switch from firstto third-person cannot be in itself taken to indicate a switch from the desires of a testator to the framework provided by a scribe (or by tradition). the wills are approximately evenly divided between firstand thirdperson testaments, and this division does not seem to track very closely the temporal or geographic affiliation of the will. 3 “this is the charter-book for the monastery at burton which king æthelred freed for ever, for the praise of god and the honor of all his saints. just as wulfric reestablished it for himself and for the souls of his ancestors, and settled monks in it so that there ever after men of that order under their abbot would serve god in that place after the teachings of st. benedict. so may this be.” michael drout 22 will almost certainly relies upon the textual precedent of ælfgar’s will and in any event is written by the same scribe as ælfflæd’s sister æthelflæd’s will (which dates from between 962 and 991).1 but while ælfflæd mentions ancestors in her will a total of eight times, she never explicitly mentions their souls. instead she repeats several times that the estates in question have come from her ancestors. she also donates land to stoke, where, she notes, the bodies of her ancestors lie buried, and we could take this to mean that she is concerned for their souls. but given the scribal and textual connections between ælfflæd’s will and both ælfgar’s and æthelflæd’s as well as the ambiguity of her invocation of ancestors, it seems safest to include ælfflæd’s will among the eleventh-century wills that do not mention ancestor’s souls. even if wulfric’s and ælfflæd’s wills are not included in the reform-era group, there is still a robust statistically significant difference between the probability that a will from the reform era will mention ancestors’ souls and the probability that a later will will do so (see table 1a): 41.67% percent of the wills dating from the reform period mention ancestors’ souls, while a mere 14.81% percent of the wills in the eleventh century do so.2 if wulfric’s will is shifted to the reform period the percentages change to 44.00% for the reform-era corpus and 11.54% for the post-reform corpus with a probability of 99% that the data are significant (see table 1b).3 the sample size of wills from the period before the reform, a mere eight wills, is too small to use the χ2 test for statistical significance, but fisher’s exact test indicates that there is only a 76% probability that the differences between the two eras are artifacts of imperfect data.4 in summary, then, statistical analysis supports the observation that wills in the reform period are far more likely to mention ancestors’ souls than are wills in other periods. 1 ælfflæd’s will is s 1486, ælfgar’s is s 1483, and æthelflæd’s s 1494. 2 statistical analysis using the χ2 test shows that there is only a 5% chance that these results arise from random fluctuations in the data; in other words, the results are 95% likely to be reflections of actual differences (χ2 = 4.600 with 2 degrees of freedom). 3 if wulfric’s will is shifted, χ2 = 6.744 with 2 degrees of freedom. 4 and see above for an examination of how the two wills in this period which do mention ancestors’ souls (dunn and king alfred, s 1514 and 1507) are different from the wills of the reform period. anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 23 the temporal distribution of wills that mention ancestors’ souls is thus not inconsistent with the hypothesis that the tenth-century benedictine reform influenced testators’ desires. the geographic distribution of wills provides even more evidence for seeing the hands of æthelwold and dunstan at work (at least indirectly) in these wills. figures 4-6 illustrate the geographic distribution of the ecclesiastical beneficiaries of english wills.1 several trends are immediately obvious: none of the extant vernacular wills lists any donations to monasteries or cathedrals north of the humber. the pre-reform wills donate exclusively to foundations in the south east.2 after the coronation of æthelstan, gifts spread to houses in wessex and east anglia, and once the reform gets underway, the geographic range of gifts to ecclesiastical foundations spreads both north and west. the beneficiaries of wills that mention ancestors’ souls are reform-founding or reformed houses, including glastonbury, romsey, malmesbury, bath and ely, and the spread of these gifts tracks the spread of the reform relatively closely.3 the distribution of the few post-992 wills that mention ancestors’ souls also suggests that the memory of the reform remained strongest in winchester, 1 these maps come with several caveats. first, as is evident from simple inspection, the biases of the cartularies in which the wills are preserved are particularly evident in the geographic distribution of testaments. bury st. edmunds, canterbury and winchester are almost certainly over-represented (or rather, other houses are probably under-represented). also, because so many wills are not dateable to a single year there is significant flexibility in the chronological arrangement of bequests. i have therefore provided maps based on the mid-point of the date range for any given will (i.e., a will which we know dates from between 1002 and 1004 is plotted at 1003). this distribution of wills is perhaps easier to understand when viewed in color, so i have created graphics that can be viewed over the internet at http://acunix.wheatonma.edu/mdrout/wills.html. 2 the pattern of donations can be used to provide evidence as to the reputations of various ecclesiastical foundations, since donors often gave estates spread throughout england to monasteries that were likewise widely scattered. wulfric (s 1536), for instance, bequeaths “more than seventy estates spread over eleven counties” (sheehan 1963: 99); ælfgar’s will (s 1483) gives gifts to st. edmunds, bedericesworth; the community at stoke (probably stoke-by nyland, suffolk); st. marys, barking; christ church, canterbury; and st. paul’s, london (sawyer 1968: 414-15). 3 again, the lack of single-year dates for many wills makes this correspondence somewhat difficult to prove. but clearly as the reform progresses wills mentioning ancestors’ souls begin to give gifts to houses further afield from winchester, canterbury and london. michael drout 24 canterbury and london as well as at foundations created by the reformers such as ely and bury st. edmunds. the combined evidence of both the geographic and the temporal distributions of wills that mention ancestors’ souls supports the hypothesis that these wills were influenced by the cultural work of the reform. the use of the wills to locate testators as part of a continuum or tradition, by mentioning ancestors’ souls along with the souls of testators, also fits well with the intellectual concerns of the benedictine reformers. wills and the concerns of the benedictine reform the wills mentioning ancestors’ souls are linked in time and in geographic distribution with the benedictine reform. they are also linked with the reform movement in their mode of operation and the concerns they evince. most importantly, wills written during the reform period not only draw on the power of writing to make permanent the desires of testators, but they also assume that the permanence of the document will be guaranteed by monastic permanence. after the disasters of the ninth century, but before the height of the reform, it is difficult to identify any one institution that individual anglosaxons would have agreed was permanent. political collapse and viking raids had led to the demise of monasticism. secular institutions relied upon the familiar father-to-son transmission of name, power and property, but the persistence of any one lineage was no sure thing.1 reformed monks were representatives of a different sort of continuity, one that could be counted on to persist in a way that earlier monasteries had not. 1 father to son genealogy is a commonplace in anglo-saxon culture and most famously evident in beowulf, where “bearn ecgþeowes” (the son of ecgtheow) is beowulf’s most common epithet. such genealogy can also be found in the west saxon regnal lists and genealogies and the anglo-saxon chronicle (the cynewulf and cyneheard entry for 757, with its concluding list giving the genealogy of offa in terms of a series of “son of” formulations is simply the most famous example). for succession being far from simple and familial power being far from permanent, see dumville 1979 and 1977; see also sisam 1953 and davis 1992. anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 25 king eadred’s will, written between 951 and 955, provides for numerous contingencies; among others, if beneficiaries should die with or without children or if abbot dunstan should die before receiving his two hundred pounds.1 in addition, eadred arranges a secular, legal penalty: those failing to carry out his wishes will lose their estates, which will “þonne gane þæt land in þær min lic rest” (harmer 1914: 34-35).2 by naming the monastery as beneficiary, eadred is linking the post-mortem enforcement of his will not to his successor, or his family, but to the institution of the monastery. eadred seems to put some faith in the capability of the monasteries to endure, and his will is thus evidence for the mindset of a secular individual at the beginning of the reform. recall that eadred became king upon the death of his brother edmund in 946, when the rebuilding of english monasticism can hardly have progressed so far that the decay of monastic power in the ninth century would have been completely forgotten (stenton 1950: 355-59). but eadred almost certainly grew up in the court of æthelstan, the source of many of the reformers’ beliefs and ideas. moreover, dunstan was eadred’s treasurer, the holder of the king’s royal haligdom. eadred actively assisted the reformers and was certainly well aware of the current and immediate past circumstances of english monasticism.3 the king must have known that there existed on the continent monastic houses that had endured for several centuries. his ill health (attested by the vita s dunstani, william of malmesbury and john of worcester, as well as by the fact that eadred often did not attend the witan) is likely to have encouraged the king to think of his posterity and the care of his soul (stubbs 1874 [1965]: 31). thus eadred, who did not have sons to whom he could bequeath his kingdom, entrusted the monasteries with the perpetuation of his memory and social influence.4 1 s 1515. 2 “then go to that land [i.e., the monastic foundation] in which my body will rest.” 3 eadred was quite sympathetic to the early reform movement and gave dunstan and æthelwold the estates of a deserted monastery at abingdon (john 1966: 181). 4 i have not counted eadred’s will among those that mention ancestors’ souls because the mention of an ancestor, eadred’s mother, is written in such a way that seems to indicate that she is alive and that eadred thinks he will pre-decease her; eadred directly gives her various estates and booklands. michael drout 26 but while eadred was a supporter of the reform, the reform itself had not yet succeeded to the point where he would entrust only the monastery to preserve his memory. thus he hedges his bets, hoping that either the monastery or the secular social structure will preserve his memory and care for his soul. eadred also provides for elaborate contingencies, giving backup plans in the event that any of his various beneficiaries dies. in other words, he is not content to assume that monastic succession will ensure the continuity and memory of the institution of the monastery. instead he relies upon a succession of individuals, whom he names. wills and their links to monasteries provide continuity for the preservation of memory different from the father-to-son transmission of property that seems to have been the folk custom in anglo-saxon england. the practice of keeping a necrology (to which is linked the eternal prayers called for by the wills) extends the respect for the seniority of monks back into time and preserves an order or ranking past the deaths of individual monks.1 this sort of preserved cultural memory—aided as it is by the technology of writing—is significantly different from that promoted through father-to-son transmission. it is therefore of more than passing interest that while sixteen wills in the corpus mention ancestors’ souls, only two testators identify themselves as “the son of”: leofwine, who notes that he is “wulfstanes sunu,” and thurstan, “wine sune” (napier & stevenson 1894: 22).2 thus testators rarely label themselves as “son of” or “daughter of” even as they acknowledge their participation in a continuum of ancestors.1 1 for anglo-saxon necrologies, see gerchow 1988. ælfwine’s prayerbook, which dates from between 1023-1031, contains both a necrologic list and calendar (günzel 1993). for the date of ælfwine’s prayerbook see keynes (1996: 111). the regularis concordia commands that a letter in a certain form shall be sent to neighboring monasteries informing them of the death of a monk. the other monasteries are to sing various psalms and prayers for the deceased “et nomen eius notetur in anniuersariis” (“and his name is to be set among the anniversaries”), suggesting that records of the deaths of brothers were preserved (symons 1953: 67). 2 s1522 and s 1531. leofwine’s 998 will comes just after the brief era that keynes calls æthelred’s “period of youthful indiscretions,” 984-993, in which the king greatly reduced the power and freedom of the monasteries (keynes 1980: 176-86). perhaps this “anti-monastic reaction,” which d.j.v. fisher (1950-52) finds also in the brief reign of æthelred’s predecessor, edward the martyr, suggested to leofwine that genealogical methods for the perpetuation of inheritance provided a useful hedge against the vicissitudes of monastic fortune. thurstan son of wine, anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 27 providing additional support for the idea that the wills worked to replace father-to-son continuities with a different continuum is the evidence of the wills written by women. of the fifteen wills that mention ancestors’ souls, four—æthelflæd, ælfheah, æthelgifu and leofgifu—are by women.2 wills by women thus account for 25 percent of the testaments that mention ancestors’ souls even though women only account for 18.64 percent of the wills in the corpus (see table 2a).3 women also continue to mention ancestors into the post-reform period in disproportionate numbers; two of the four wills by women which mention ancestors’ souls, those of ælfflæd and whose will dates from 1043-45, had significant contacts in the danelaw: he notes a “felageschipe” with one “vlfketel,” and his will is witnessed by several other individuals with danish names (whitelock 1930: 80-82). thus thurstan may have been influenced by an anglo-danish practice of recognizing continuity not in ancestors who, while unnamed, were accessed through monastic prayers, but by the simple continuity of fathers to sons. i recognize that there are elements of special pleading in this portion of the argument. however, it does seem unusual that in the entire corpus of wills only these two individuals identify themselves as “son of.” such appellations were commonplace in other anglo-saxon contexts, most famously in beowulf. stephen o. glosecki (2000) argues that the presence of nephews as heirs in various wills indicates “traces” of an avuncular line of inheritance that he believes to have been the folkright in early germanic europe. i would point out that there are interesting links between wills naming nephews as benefactors and the danelaw. 1 the disinclination to use “son of” formulae may be another example of links between reformed monastic ideology and the wills. under the benedictine rule, a monk’s father and mother are not supposed to be particularly important to him once he had entered the monastery. chapter 54 of the rule, for example, forbids a monk to receive any gifts or letters whatsoever, whether from his parents or anyone else. the monk is supposed to give his obedience and allegiance to the abbot and the senior monks who have come before him into the order, rather than to his biological family. the rule twice mentions the duty of monks to reverence their seniors and love their juniors, first in the list of the instruments of good works that makes up chapter four (canons 68 and 69), and again in chapter sixty-three (16, 69) (hanslik 1977). 2 s 1494, 1484, 1485, 1497, 1521. 3 christine fell (1984: 95) claims that one quarter of the surviving wills are by women. but one can only reach this figure if wills from couples are counted as wills by women. there are a total of eleven wills by women: s 1513, 1539, 1525 and 1525a (taken as one will, see above n. 42 for explanation), 1484, 1497, 1538, 1486, 1495, 1520, 1521, 1535. there are an additional five wills by couples: s 1500, 1511, 1493, 1532, 1529. if wills by couples are taken as equivalent to wills by women, the percentages given above are somewhat different; the proportion of wills by women and couples which mention ancestors’ souls is 45.45%. see table 2b in the appendix for a presentation of the data. fisher’s exact test shows that there is only a 21% chance that these results are artifacts of random fluctuations in the data. michael drout 28 leofgifu, are written after 992.1 the propensity of women to mention their ancestors’ souls offers the intriguing possibility that women could, via written wills, find ways to participate in traditions of continuity from which the older, secular traditional practice of recognizing and naming father-toson relationships (like those in the royal genealogies) had excluded them.2 furthermore, the ways that women construct their wills and refer to their ancestors suggests that female testators were attempting to mobilize cultural power in somewhat different ways than their male counterparts. ælfflæd (already discussed above) describes her donations thus: “þonne synd þis þa land þæ minæ yldran þærto bæcwædon ofær minre swystor dæg. & ofær minne” (whitelock 1930: 38).3 in fact, ælfflæd mentions her ancestors (“yldran”) eight times in her will, and she distinguishes them from her father, whom she names specifically as granting lands in totham (whitelock 1930: 38). ælfflæd also attempts to mobilize the living to enforce the desires of the dead, calling upon ealdorman æthelmær to be her friend and protector and “efter minum dege gefelste ~ min cwide & mira yldran standan mote” (whitelock 1930: 38-41).4 it seems that ælfflæd is working to justify her decisions based upon her participation in a continuum of ancestors, hoping thus to ensure the support of her will. women are also more likely to invoke powerful patrons by name. for example, in the middle of her will æthelflæd mentions kings edmund and edgar as well as ealdorman brihtnoth (whitelock 1930: 35-37). ælfgifu asks bishop æthelwold to always intercede for her and for her mother (whitelock 1930: 20-23).5 these two phenomena, mentioning ancestors and invoking living men as supporters, suggest that women were (as we would expect) less able to participate in the father-to-son continuity and thus relied 1 s 1486 and 1521. 2 obviously “ancestors” can include mothers and grandmothers as well as male relatives. for traditions of female “matrilineal genealogy” and “maternal genealogy” in early english monasticism see dockray-miller (2000: 1-76). 3 “then these are the lands which my ancestors bequeathed to it [the community at stoke] after my sister’s days and after mine.” 4 s 1486. “and after the end of my days will help to ensure that my will and the wills of my ancestors may stand.” 5 s 1484. anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 29 upon other means—offered by the tradition of reform-era wills—to improve the chances of their wills being followed. regardless of gender, the majority of testators who refer to their ancestors seemed to believe in the efficacy of the monastery to save the souls of these individuals even when they were not explicitly named. in their attempts to make connections to “yldran,” testators linked themselves with traditions or continuities of identity that were to some degree an invention of the monastic reformers. every individual is of course descended from innumerable ancestors, but no one (except perhaps those kings, including king alfred, whose genealogies, are constructed as reaching back to germanic gods and biblical figures) can pretend to know who all of them are.1 by suggesting to testators that monks could pray for generic ancestors rather than specific individuals, the monastery invents a continuity of tradition that does not need to be substantiated by fallible human memory but is rather imminent in the mention of generic ancestors in a written document.2 of course, as part of the church, monasteries were party to the mechanisms by which individuals could achieve eternal life regardless of whether or not they were remembered by their descendants. but in the wake of the benedictine reform, monasteries position themselves as a significant link between the present and the past and thus, in the minds of testators, between the present testator and his or her future descendants. reformed monasteries could offer to testators the ability to aid their ancestors years after the testators had left the earth. by extension they offered the capability of providing for the souls of the living long after their deaths. in both cases the continuities and traditions so important to individual identity in the anglo-saxon period were accessed through the textual culture of the 1 for alfred’s genealogy see stevenson (1959: 2-4). note that alfred’s list of ancestors, and other similar lists in other contexts, preserve the names of only the direct male (putative) ancestors. 2 an interest in ancestors’ souls can be substantiated in a pre-christian, germanic context. the early eighth century king radbod of frisia was about to convert to christianity when he paused on his way to the baptismal font and asked st. wulframn if he (radbod) would see his pagan ancestors in heaven. wulframn replied: certum est dampnationis suscepisse sententiam” (“it is certain that they have received the sentence of damnation”). radbod, needless to say, withdrew from the font and did not convert to christianity (krusch & levison 1810: 668). michael drout 30 monastery, and the document of the will provides a physical record of the intended provision by the living of the spiritual welfare of the dead.1 conclusions: tradition and the reform a complete rehearsal of the evidence for the place of tradition in the cultural work of the benedictine reform is beyond the scope of this article, but it is useful to connect an analysis of the wills with the larger picture of the development of tenth-century culture. gretsch’s the intellectual foundations of the english benedictine reform synthesizes the scholarship that has gone into establishing the “pivotal role” of the vernacular in the benedictine reformers’ programme as well as their “fervent enthusiasm” for the hermeneutic style in latin (gretsch 1999: 4-5 and passim).2 gretsch shows that æthelwold and dunstan were especially concerned to link their cultural work to not only the current ‘state-of-the-art’ practices of continental benedictine monasticism but also to the tradition of unique english practices of hermeneutic latin (deriving from aldhelm) and vernacular translation (deriving from alfred). concern with maintaining traditional english customs and linking them with present practice is evident throughout the document mostly clearly identified with æthelwold and the reform, the monastic consuetudinary regularis concordia (symons 1953: 2-8).3 in the prologue to the concordia æthelwold writes that the synod composed the document after being moved by the advice of king edgar to develop one set of monastic customs for england: “sanctique patroni nostri gregorii documenta, quibus beatum augustinum monere studuit ut non solum romanae uerum etiam galliarum honestos ecclesiarum usus <in> rudi anglorum ecclesia decorando 1 of course the textual culture of the monastery was not the only way that continuities and traditions were accessed. but the monopoly the monastery held on the production and, more importantly, the preservation of textualized memory must have made the institution very important to anglo-saxons who wanted to preserve their memories for long periods of time. 2 for the “hermeneutic style” see lapidge 1993b. 3 for the reasons to prefer this edition to the 1984 edition by symons and t. spath see kornexl (1993: clxvi). see also symons 1975. anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 31 constituerit recolentes” (symons 1953: 2-3).1 monastic customs are to be gathered “colligentes, uti apes fauum nectaris diuersis pratorum floribus in uno alueario” from the continent (ghent and fleury, in particular), but the resulting creation is considered to be a part of the english tradition established by augustine’s mission from gregory the great (symons 1953: 2-3).2 the concordia also takes great care to cite particular liturgical customs as english and traditional (“usu patrem”).3 just one example of this concern for tradition and english practice spreading from monastic law and custom into literary culture can be found in the hexameters of the verse prologue to the “breviloquium de omnibus sanctis” (lapidge & winterbottom 1991: xviii-xix).4 these hexameters in hermeneutic latin are part of an acrostic poem for the name “vvlfstanvs” (wulfstan). lines 17-18 read: “versibus ecce cano, scriptis que tradita legi / et dominum in sanctis, uersibus ecce cano” (lapidge & winterbottom 1991: xviii-xix).5 the poet sees fit to mention that the things he is writing about are “things handed down in writing.” his poem not only celebrates such things, but he, by repeating them in the hermeneutic style makes himself a participant in a tradition.6 gretsch (1999: 425-27 and 1 “and recalling the letters of our patron st. gregory by which he strove to instruct the blessed augustine so that he might establish, by adorning, the noble customs not only of the roman, but also of the gallic churches, in the rude church of the english.” 2 “just as bees collect the honeycomb of nectar from diverse flowers of the meadow into one hive.” 3 paragraph 32, sentences 6-9 says that ringing bells at nocturns and vespers is “sicut in usum huisu patriae;” prayers for the royal house (8, 1) and the use of chasubles in lent and on quarter tense days (34, 29) are said to come from “usu patrem” (symons 1953: 29-30 and 31-33). 4 “short poem about all saints.” 5 “i sing in verses thing which i have read handed down in writing, and these verses i sing the lord present in his saints,” trans. lapidge and winterbottom 1991. 6 note that this is in some ways, to use the eric hobsbawm’s terms, an “invented tradition” since there had not been a continuous practice of writing in the hermeneutic style from the school of theodore and hadrian to the benedictine reform; the reformers were re-animating a moribund practice; see hobsbawm and ranger (1981: 1-14). for the school of theodore and hadrian and the discontinuities between their hermeneutic practice and later development of the hermeneutic style during the reform see lapidge 1996. see also gretsch (1999: 332-83). my use of hobsbawm’s terminology is not meant to suggest that i subscribe to his vaguely conspiratorial views of invented tradition as a means of oppression. i would suggest that the essays collected by hobsbawm and ranger michael drout 32 passim) has established that the reformers were concerned to create and develop a tradition in both latin and in old english glossing contexts (including the royal psalter and the glosses to aldhelm’s de virginitate). but this self-conscious creation of a literate tradition linking the glorious anglo-saxon past with the tenth century has not yet been proven to have spread to vernacular materials, with the possible exception of the document traditionally referred to as edgar’s establishment of the monasteries. this text, composed in old english by æthelwold as a preface to his translation of the benedictine rule, illustrates the ties between the reform project and the anglo-saxon past.1 eem connects bede with the reform project through a deliberate echo of his ecclesiastical history’s discussion of gregory the great’s mission to england and emphasizes the importance of the rule of st. benedict and the value of translation into the vernacular (lapidge 1988: 102-103). more importantly for the purposes of this study, eem makes a clear connection between participation in traditions of the past (gregory’s mission, bede’s historia) and a continuing practice into the future: “forþi, þonne, ic mid ealre estfulnesse mine æftergengan bidde & þurh drihtnes naman halsige, þæt hy þyses halgan regules bigenc a þurh cristes gife geycen & godiende to fulfremedum edne gebrencgen” (whitelock et al. 1981: 152).2 by creating a will that looked back to a testator’s ancestors and simultaneously placed an obligation upon a monastic house to commemorate the testator eternally in the future, a testator could interpolate himor herself into a continuum, a tradition of names and memories perpetuated across illustrate how very difficult it is to separate an “invented” tradition from some other (presumably ‘not-invented’) kind. 1 the document is printed and translated in whitelock et al. (1981: 142-54). for æthelwold’s authorship see whitelock (1970: 125-36). gretsch argues that eem was originally used as the preface to æthelwold’s translation of the benedictine rule and notes that eem is “a piece of original old english prose, not a translation” (1999: 122-24 and 230-33). note that the appearance of links to traditions of english monasticism in this document tells us little about the penetration of these ideas into the secular culture, since æthelwold was both the prime mover of the reform and the author of eem. 2 “therefore, then, i pray that my successors with all devotion and pray in the lord’s name, that they ever increase the observance of this holy rule through the grace of christ and may, improving it, bring it to its full perfection” (whitelock et al. 1981: 152). anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 33 generational boundaries. the testator who mentions his ancestors may therefore be seen as doing explicitly what æthelwold and other tenth-century practitioners of the hermeneutic style in latin are doing implicitly by imitating aldhelm or continuing the educational and cultural programs of alfred and æthelstan’s court. the co-incidence of concern for ancestors’ souls with the reform years, the geographic links between donations and the progress of the reform, and with the reformers’ clear efforts to emphasize the traditionality of their practice, all combine, it seems to me, to support the hypothesis that we see in the wills of the tenth century an expression of the revolution brought about by the benedictine reform. the wills show that the cultural concerns of highly literate, superbly educated monks had spread into the wider secular culture.1 by the mentioning their ancestors’ souls in their wills, individual anglosaxons were actively intervening with god on behalf of those individuals, named or unnamed. they were thus not only remembering the past, but actively participating in it, building a trans-temporal community of believers that was linked by memory, written record and cultural practice the same way that æthelwold, dunstan and the other intellectual leaders of the reform had linked themselves, through study and imitation, with aldhelm and bede. this interpretation of the wills suggests that in the tenth century, monastic concerns and ideologies had so penetrated anglo-saxon culture that even secular anglo-saxons were, to a great degree, seeing themselves through monastic eyes and creating a culture that reflected that vision. michael d. c. drout wheaton college, norton, ma 1 benjamin withers discusses “the legally binding formulas of the anglo-saxon wills” and their connection to architecture—an inscription in the anglo-saxon church at breamore in hampshire—and the rubrics of the old english prose genesis. he sees the rubrics’ use of will language as stressing “the text’s accurate and valid presentation of past events” and suggest that in eleventh-century england “the interests of ecclesiastical and secular society were closely intertwined.” while withers’ analysis focuses on later texts, he is noting a very similar process to the one i discuss above: elite monastic, ecclesiastical concerns are spilling over into the wider culture (withers 1999: 136, 135, and 139). michael drout 34 figure 1 anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 35 figure 2a michael drout 36 figure 2b anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 37 figure 3a michael drout 38 figure 3b anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 39 maps: the maps illustrate the geographic spread of bequests to monasteries and cathedrals (bequests to abbots are credited to their monasteries). squares indicate bequests that do not mention ancestors’ souls; triangles indicate bequests that mention ancestors’ souls. numbers refer to the list of wills in appendix 1. bequests were assigned to an interval based on the earliest possible date for each will. the difference between this method of plotting and a mid-point based method (i.e., plotting the will based on the midpoint of the range of possible dates) was trivial. if a midpoint plotting system were used, there would be no change in figure 4, and three wills, numbers 27, 28 and 30 would be shifted from figure 5 to figure 6. michael drout 40 figure 4 (map 1) anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 41 figure 5 (map 2) michael drout 42 figure 6 (map 3) anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 43 table 1a: comparison by period: numbers of wills mentioning ancestors’ souls years mention ancestors’ souls do not mention ancestors’ souls totals % mentioning ancestors’ souls 805-924 2 6 8 25.00 925-992 10 14 24 41.67 993-1066 4 23 27 14.81 totals 16 43 59 27.12 fisher’s exact test for 805-924 versus 925-992: p = .24 probability that data are significant: 76% χ2 for 925-992 versus 993-1066: 4.600 with 2 degrees of freedom probability that data are significant: 95% table 1b: comparison by period: numbers of wills mentioning ancestors’ souls (if wulfric’s will (s 1536) is counted as being in the 925-992 interval) years mention ancestors’ souls do not mention ancestors’ souls totals % mentioning ancestors’ souls 805-924 2 6 8 25.00 925-992 11 14 25 44.00 993-1066 3 23 27 11.54 totals 16 43 59 27.12 fisher’s exact test for 805-924 versus 925-992: p = .22 probability that data are significant: 78% χ2 for 925-992 versus 993-1066: 6.744 with 2 degrees of freedom probability that data are significant: 99% michael drout 44 table 2a: comparison by gender of testator, women versus men & couples: numbers of wills mentioning ancestors’ souls gender of testators mention ancestors’ souls do not mention ancestors’ souls totals % mentioning ancestors’ souls women 4 7 11 36.60 men & couples 12 36 48 25.00 totals 16 43 59 27.12 fisher’s exact test for women versus men & couples: p = .21 probability that data are significant: 79% table 2b: comparison by gender of testator, women & couples versus men: numbers of wills mentioning ancestors’ souls gender of testators mention ancestors’ souls do not mention ancestors ’ souls totals % mentioning ancestors’ souls women & couples 5 11 16 31.25 men 11 32 43 25.58 totals 16 43 59 27.12 fisher’s exact test for women & couples versus men: p = .23 probability that data are significant: 77% anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 45 appendix 1: list of the wills used in this study legend: number used in figures / date of will / name of testator / sawyer number underlined wills mention ancestors’ souls; italicized wills may be ambiguous and are discussed in detail in the text. 1 / 805 to 832 / æthelnoth / s 1500 2 / 833 to 839 / abba, reeve / s 1482 3 / 845 to 853 / badanoth beotting / s 1510 4 / 855 / dunn / s 1514 5 / 871 to 889 / alfred ealdorman / s 1508 6 / 873 to 888 / king alfred / s 1507 7 / 900 / ceolwynn / s 1513 8 / 900 ? / ordnoth / s 1524 9 / 931 to 939 / wulfgar / s 1533 10 / 932 to 939 / alfred thegn / s 1509 11 / 942 to 951 / theodred / s 1526 12 / 946-947 / earl æthelwold / s 1504 13 / 946 to 951 / ælfgar / s 1483 14 / 950 / wynflæd / s 1539 15 / 950 to 1025 / wills of siflæd / s 1525 16 / 951 to 955 / eadred / s 1515 17 / 955 to 958 / ælfsige / s 1491 18 / 957 to 958 / æthelgeard / s 1496 michael drout 46 19 / 958 / æthelwyrd / s 1506 20 / 961-995 / æthelric / s 1501 21 / 962 to 991 / æthelflæd / s 1494 22 / 964 to 980 / brihtric grim / s 1512 23 / 966 to 975 / ælfgifu / s 1484 24 / 968 to 971 / ælfheah / s 1485 25 / 971 to 983 / æthelmær / s 1498 26 / 973 to 987 / brihtric and ælfswith / s 1511 27 / 975 to 1016 / ælfhelm / s 1487 28/ 978-1016 / ærnketel and wulfrun / s 1493 29 / 980-990/ æthelgifu / s 1497 30 / 984 to 1016 / wulfwaru / s 1538 31 / c. 986 / æ∂elstan mannesson / s 1503a 32 / 987 / æthelwold / s 1505 33 / 998 / leofwine / s 1522 34 / 1000 / wulfgeat / s 1534 35 / 1000 to 1002 / ælfflæd / s 1486 36 / 1002 to 1004 / wulfric / s 1536 37 / 1003 to 1004 / ælfric archbishop / s 1488 38 / 1004 to 1014 / æthelflæd to st. paul’s / s 1495 39 / 1007 / godric / s 1518 40 / 1008 to 1012 / ælfwold / s 1492 41 / 1015 / athelstan ætheling / s 1503 42 / 1017 to 1035 / leofflad / s 1520 43 / 1017 to 1035 manat the anchorite / s 1523 anglo-saxon wills and the inheritance of tradition 47 44 / 1020 and after / thurketel heyng / s 1528 45 / 1022 to 1043 / wulfsige / s 1537 46 / 1035 to 1040 / ælfric bishop / s 1489 47 / 1035 to 1044 / leofgifu / s 1521 48 / 1038 or before / thurketel / s 1527 49 / 1042 to 1043 / ælfric modercope / s 1490 50 / 1042 to 1043 / thurstan / s 1530 51 / 1042 to 1053 / wulfgyth / s 1535 52 / 1042-1066 / ulf / s 1532 53 / 1043 to 1045 / thurstan son of wine / s 1531 54 / 1047 to 1070 / æthelmær bishop / s 1499 55 / c. 1050 / eadwine / s 1516 56 / 1050 / æthelric bigga / s 1502 57 / c. 1050 / thurkil and æthelgyth / s 1529 58 / 1052 to 1066 / ketel / s 1519 59 / 1053 / eadwine of caddington / s 1517 works cited birch, w. d. g. ed. 1885-93: cartularium saxonicum. whiting, 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111-39. yorke, b. ed. 1988: bishop æthelwold: his career and influence. boydell, woodbridge. * † * katarzyna stadnik, selim 23 (2018): 87–114. issn 1132-631x chaucer’s legend of dido: negotiating worldviews through narrative fiction katarzyna stadnik maria curie-sklodowska university the paper centres on the ways in which cognitive linguistic analytical tools can be employed to analyse changing worldviews in historical narratives. the linguistic material used in the analysis comes from geoffrey chaucer’s legend of dido, a cautionary tale about how imprudent trust may lead to tarnished reputation. the paper explores the problem of how narrative can serve as a cognitive tool for shaping worldviews held within cultural communities. in particular, it sets out to discuss the cognitive-cultural underpinnings of the poet’s strategies used to tell a fragmentary version of the ancient narrative about dido and aeneas. the article investigates how the author’s epistemic stance influences the expression of selected social-cultural categories in the story. finally, the paper delineates potential contributions of cognitive-cultural research into the field of narrative studies, urging for a more comprehensive recognition of the human factor in both linguistic and literary scholarship. keywords: cognitive-diachronic approach to narratives; epistemic perspective; morality; narrative gaps; perspective-taking; worldview 1. the diachronic study of narrative in light of cognitive linguistics one of the central tenets of cognitive linguistics (cl) holds that linguistic structure emerges from usage. the usage-based thesis implies that language acquisition occurs through cultural transmission. in this way, community members tend to share a specific worldview, broadly defined as a particular way of constructing reality, which presupposes common origins of the 88 katarzyna stadnik community’s knowledge distributed not only across individual minds, but also stored in various material resources. to claim that a worldview entails a historical continuity is to argue that the diachronic dimension implies the evolution of the community’s conceptual order, negotiated across space and time. hence, connected with the notion of the worldview is the idea of the common ground, which is rendered in terms of beliefs and assumptions (presumably) shared between individuals engaged in an act of communication. natural language is most prominent among cultural tools for imparting knowledge. often linguistic communication depends on the use of other, complementary means of storing and conveying information, as, for instance, the reliance on the gesture of pointing in everyday situations. however, some resources (sometimes also referred to as material anchors or memory carriers) may be used as repositories of knowledge. whether linguistic or imagistic in nature, such tools share the propensity for telling stories about the community’s past, a capacity conducive to the sustenance of collective memory, identity, and worldview. the problem of methodology is one important issue pertinent to a cognitive-linguistic analysis of historical narratives. in a cognitively-informed, diachronic approach to narratives, the researcher may rely on a methodology safeguarding against the imposition of present-day conceptual frames onto a past worldview. at issue is how to avoid the dangers of skewing former conceptual order by (unknowingly) bending it to fit modern outlooks. as a set of theoretical approaches to language, cl is based on the methodological principle of convergent evidence, which implies that cognitive-linguistic models should be consistent with what is known about the human mind in cognitive science, including cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience (see also evans & green 2006). although not entirely without reservations (see gibbs 2007), it is generally assumed that cl offers analytical tools that satisfy the requirement of maintaining the psychological reality of linguistic phenomena under study. this opens unique vistas on research problems potentially relevant to a cognitively-based, diachronic analysis of narratives such as, for instance, categorisation in the realm of social cognition. over the recent years, there have been calls for the adoption of cognitivelinguistic tools not only in the domain of diachronic research (see winters 2010), but also in the field of broadly defined narrative theory. 1 as albert & 1 cl is an umbrella term for a loosely-knit cluster of theories. some approaches and analytical tools from cl have been used extensively in literature studies. the chaucer’s legend of dido 89 olson (2018: 2) point out, in the case of narratology this tendency derives from fludernik’s idea of experientiality, “the quasi-mimetic evocation of ‘reallife experience’” (fludernik 1996: 12, in albert & olson 2017: 2). it is posited that the common denominator for the historically-oriented, cognitivelyinformed linguistic and narrative studies is the need to account for the human factor behind linguistic structures. what the study of historical narratives should not ignore is the lived experience of the individual and how it may influence the construal of conceptual content by the author, as well as the ways in which it may impact meaning construction on the part of the reader. it is the embodied, socio-culturally embedded nature of human experience that foregrounds the problem shared by the two approaches: the issue of the psychological plausibility of claims concerning historical narratives. the large and ever-increasing body of empirical research into cognitive underpinnings of language (see bergen 2012, barsalou 2017) demonstrates that language is not an autonomous module in the human mind. since language is integral to cognition, meaning construction may be viewed as a matter of conceptual processes. as prompts for meaning construction, linguistic units should not be regarded as “containers” or “vessels” carrying semantic features. in cl, meaning construction is equated with conceptualisation, which, in turn, underscores the dynamic, context-dependent nature of narrative interpretation. as fauconnier has it, language, along with other aspects of expression and contextual framing, serves as a powerful means of prompting dynamic on-line constructions of meaning that go far beyond anything explicitly provided by the lexical and grammatical forms. this is not a matter of vagueness or ambiguity; it is in the very nature of our systems of thought. […] what we are conscious of, to a high degree, is language form on one hand, and experiencing ‘meaning’ on the other. the effect is magical; as soon as we have form, we also have meaning, with no awareness of the intervening cognition. (fauconnier 2014: 230) it is important to note that a great deal of what is expressed linguistically is underspecified. typically, when interlocutors construct meaning, they also rely on what constitutes the relevant common ground. taylor (2012: 168) observes development of cognitive poetics testifies to the depth of the influence of cl on literary theorising. the (ongoing) emergence of cognitive/cognitivist narratology also hints at the importance of cognitively-informed research. 90 katarzyna stadnik that “[w]ord meanings are the creations of context, where the ‘context’ ranges over conceptual structure, the linguistic environment, and embodied cultural practices”. importantly, in some research strands of cognitive science cognition is viewed as grounded, not merely embodied. barsalou explains that “[t]he crux of the grounded approach is understanding how the modalities, the physical environment, the social environment, and the body contribute to cognition, playing central roles in the diverse forms it takes” (2016: 1124, original italics). considering mental activity as grounded implies that cognition and culture are mutually constitutive. while the bond entails that our minds are shaped culturally, it is equally important that individuals mentally construct the world and negotiate their conceptualisations in interaction occurring in particular socio-cultural milieu, which contributes to the emergence of an intersubjective conceptual order. therefore, in a cognitive-diachronic analysis of a narrative, it is indispensable to consider the socio-cultural context in which meaning construction is embedded. to conclude the introductory section, it must be reminded that the scope of the paper is limited. therefore, the paper cannot embrace all the potentially relevant theoretical issues and examples. the paper focuses on some selected problems and excerpts from chaucer’s legend of dido, which are deemed most pertinent to the present study. of utmost importance is the research question of whether, and, if so, how, an individual can contribute to the negotiation of a collective worldview. 2. chaucer’s legend of dido: narrative in the nexus of the mind, language, and culture the further one looks into the past, the more opaque it transpires. where sufficient and reliable information about the dim and distant, if not mythical, past cannot be found, human imagination may come to the rescue, filling in the blank spaces with fictional scenarios. in such cases, narratives of ancient origin could serve as building blocks used in the construction of collective worldviews best tailored to the needs of the day. in the middle ages, the production of a new version of an old tale in the vernacular often entailed the translation and/or adaptation of the source text. from a cognitive-linguistic perspective, the translation of an older text might be regarded as a usage event, “actual instance of language use, in the full detail of its contextual understanding” (langacker 2014: 30; see also halverson chaucer’s legend of dido 91 2013). with the dawn of early humanism in europe, ancient stories such as ovid’s heroides were recovered as sources of narratives which could be used to discuss the moral and ethical questions of the time (collette 2014). from a cognitively-based perspective, the palimpsests of meanings retrievable from the medieval versions of ancient texts consist of layers of intermingling older and newer conceptualisations. from a cognitive-linguistic viewpoint, what occurred during the translational usage events could be described as the conceptual integration of ancient and medieval ideas, which gave rise to an altered view of old notions. 2 the resulting re-conceptualisation of the old was contextualised in the space-time of a local culture. chaucer’s legend of good women seems to be a good example of the process. the re-conceptualisation might involve the negotiation of old ideas so that they could permit the re-categorisation of some aspects of the contemporaneous social world. the somewhat bizarre selection of the heroines in the legend of good women might have been designed to serve that purpose. in choosing the figures as diverse as dido, lucretia, medea, and cleopatra, the poet could create an ad-hoc category serving the purposes of his storytelling. an ad-hoc category is 2 in cl the problem of how concepts combine can be approached from the viewpoint of the theory of mental spaces and conceptual blending. although the scope of the paper does not allow to provide a fuller treatment of mental spaces and conceptual integration, it seems worth explaining that mental spaces are “small conceptual packets constructed as we think and talk, for purposes of local understanding and action” (fauconnier 2014: 231), while conceptual integration “consists in setting up networks of mental spaces that map onto each other and blend into new spaces in various ways” (2014: 247). for illustration, one might think of the cognitive-linguistic classic example this surgeon is a butcher, indicating that at the conceptual level a new blended structure emerges such that allows us to conclude that the surgeon must be incompetent. other examples include sentences such as max thinks harry’s name is joe, in which “even though harry is the appropriate name in one [mental] space, it can be used to access the corresponding element in another space, where another name is appropriate” (2014: 233). to a large extent, the outcome of conceptual integration depends on the cognitive resources on the interpreter. a more recent account of the approaches to mental spaces and blending can be found in birdsell (2015) or turner (2015). 92 katarzyna stadnik a novel category constructed spontaneously to achieve a goal relevant in the current situation (e.g., constructing tourist activities to perform in beijing while planning a vacation). these categories are novel because they typically have not been entertained previously. they are constructed spontaneously because they do not reside as knowledge structures in long-term memory waiting to be retrieved. [...] ad hoc categories constitute a subset of role categories, where roles provide arguments for verbs, relations, and schemata. some role categories are so familiar that they become lexicalized (e.g. seller, buyer, merchandise, and payment name the agent, recipient, theme, and instrument roles of buy). when the conceptualization of a role is novel, however, an ad hoc category results (e.g. potential sellers of gypsy jazz guitars). pursuing goals requires the constant specification and instantiation of roles necessary for achieving them. when a well-established category for a role doesn’t exist, an ad hoc category is constructed to represent it. (barsalou 2010: 86) although chaucer’s true entente may not be entirely clear, we know that the theme interconnecting the stories is the notion of good women. subsuming under the same umbrella term lucretia, dido, and medea might have been a creative device employed to show the moral relativity of social evaluations. the poet’s reliance on the common ground of his day might go unnoticed. indeed, it may seem veiled to the extent that one is tempted to assert that in virgil’s, ovid’s, and chaucer’s versions of the story about the queen of carthage, “dido is the same dido: the point of reference is always the same (pseudo-historical) figure” (van contzen 2018: 81). however, the problem is much more intricate than may seem at first glance. first, in the words of bernárdez (2013: 334), who comments on the role of culture in translation, “[p]utting language in direct relation to cognition without the intermediary of culture can lead to unsolvable problems”; he continues: “[a]ssumming a priori the universality of processes, concepts, etc., is a serious danger for translators” (2013: 335). second, as colette has it, the age in which chaucer wrote, with its recurrent descriptions of translatio studii as the transfer of learned classical culture to the european west, cited classical texts as representatives of a different and not entirely familiar culture, and valued them for what they might offer the present, particularly in regard to moral and ethical conduct. (colette 2014: 156) boundaries between cultural communities often prove to be porous, and the conceptualisations resulting from interaction across the borders via different chaucer’s legend of dido 93 vehicles such as narratives may be conceptual blends. although the figure of dido-elissa was a reference point for the many versions of the story, which did ensure a sense of its continuity over time, one of the crucial differences between ancient and late medieval approaches to the tale inheres in the contents of category knowledge necessary for making sense of the narrative. without category knowledge supported by structures such as exemplars, prototypes, or schemata human life would consist of a chaotic flux of experience depriving us of the ability to form expectations about the world and pursue goals. in cognitive science, barsalou (2007: 181) argues for a dynamic representation of knowledge, “the ability of the cognitive system to construct, and call on as necessary many different representations of a category, each emphasizing the category knowledge currently most relevant” (ibid.). as barsalou further explains, [w]hen processing the concept of water in the context of a norwegian pond during winter, the property of freezes becomes active, although it would not become active normally (e.g. in the context of drinking water in a norwegian restaurant). in other cases, varying content appears to originate in background situations […]. when conceptualizing chair, for example, people might include chairs as occurring in offices. similarly, when conceptualizing truth, people might represent truth as it occurs in courts of law. in general, considerable amounts of information in conceptual representations appear to originate in the background situation in which a concept is currently represented, including the setting, related objects, other agents, actions, and variety of internal states (e.g. goals, evaluations, affect, motivation, reward, mentalizing). (barsalou 2017: 13) thus, conceptual, and by implication, language change may result from the dynamic nature of the coupling between the mind and the world. with changing individual and collective experience, the encyclopaedic knowledge of a community member changes as well. as category knowledge is prone to change across space and time, chaucer’s dido is inevitably different from virgil’s or ovid’s queen of carthage. in troilus and criseyde, chaucer famously remarks “ye knowe ek that in forme of speche is change” (book ii, l. 22). the statement itself seems surprisingly consistent with the implications following from the assumption of the usage-based thesis, whereby language use is seen as the source of linguistic evolution. bybee (2010: 6) poses the question “[whether] the processes that give us linguistic structure [are] specific to language or […] also apply in other 94 katarzyna stadnik cognitive domains”. the processes include categorisation, chunking, and analogy, which gives emphasis to the cognitive foundations of changing worldviews. arguing for a socially enriched pragmatic onomasiological approach to language change, geeraerts contends that [l]inguistic changes are always mediated through onomasiological choices made on the level of actual language use. words and constructions die out because speakers refuse to choose them, and expressions are added to the inventory of a language because some speakers introduce them and others imitate these speakers; similarly, expressions change their value within the language because people start using them in different circumstances. (geeraerts 2010: 350) however, it seems that, despite playing a pivotal role in promoting language change, the frequency of usage is not the ultimate answer to the question of why (and how) worldviews change. human communication cannot be reduced to speakers’ onomasiological choices that express intended categorisations. the ability to construct stretches of narrative discourse arises, in part, from the development of the grammar of sharing, or “fancy syntax” (tomasello 2008: 282–284). a cognitive-diachronic study of historical narratives should duly account for relevant linguistic phenomena. however, seeking answers to the problem of changing worldviews cannot be restricted to the exploration of linguistic structures insofar as the approach does not explain the experiential reasons for linguistic change: why “people start using [expressions] “in different circumstances” (ibid., citing geeraerts 2010: 350) in the first place. focusing squarely on linguistic structures, we can ignore the obvious: the lived experience of a particular individual that motivates his/her linguistic choices. the intended conceptualisation might not be (fully) verbalised due to the availability of the cultural common ground, “an epistemic dimension of shared skills, knowledge, and beliefs” (tomasello 2016: 93). a lot may be left unsaid, which nevertheless will not impede communication as long as the interlocutors share sufficient knowledge how to fill in the gaps. attending either to the cognitive underpinnings of changing worldviews or their linguistic aspect cannot fully explain the problem of how individuals may contribute to the re-negotiation of collective views of the world. specifically, the cognitive-linguistic usage-based account of language structure implies that “all units are learned through interaction in a physical, social, cultural, and discourse context. in this respect, all aspects of language structure have a cultural basis” (langacker 2014: 30). to use langacker’s idea of domain, defined by taylor as “any coherent network of knowledge which provides the chaucer’s legend of dido 95 necessary background for understanding a concept” (2012: 158), it may be argued that in the middle ages the proper noun dido might have profiled cognitive domains different from the domains that could have been central for ancient audiences. the salience of specific domains could change over time. for instance, chaucer repeatedly describes dido as sely, with the adjective meaning embracing, as the middle english dictionary (med) specifies, the senses of ‘holy’, ‘innocent’, but also ‘foolish’, ‘defenceless’, and ‘unfortunate’ or ‘miserable’. what the semantic evolution of the middle english lexeme sely > present-day english silly indicates is that semantic change is not random, but follows certain conceptualisation pathways. narratives can be used as powerful weapons of spreading ideologies. as we read in hagedorn, [dido’s] narrative resembles that of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other women in literature —not to mention in real life. […] [t]he sense of pain and loss that abandoned women pour out in their laments offers a challenge to traditional social structures, values, and even poetic genres that enshrine and celebrate male dominance and male exploits. the voice of the abandoned women, left behind and left out, calls attention to the darker side of these social and poetic traditions, just as virgil’s story of dido casts a shadow on the martial exploits of his hero aeneas. (hagedorn 2004: 9) narrating an alternate version of a story can be viewed as a site for the exploration of what has been excluded from the mainstream worldview that dominates various discourses in a community. the point raises the question of the moral foundations of fostering specific worldviews. in particular, at stake is what chaucer explicitly verbalises in his tale of dido, as well as what the poet omits to mention, and why he chooses to do so. the issue of human morality is fraught with “complexity and perhaps even unavoidable contradictions” (tomasello 2016: 128). “human beings”, tomasello says, “enter into each and every social interaction with selfish me-motives, sympathetic you-motives, egalitarian motives, group-minded we-motives, and a tendency to follow whatever cultural norms are in effect” (ibid.). storytelling can foster the ability to adopt the other’s viewpoint, encouraging empathy by creating a “we-centric” (mentally shared) space, a “self-other space” (gallese & cuccio 2015). herman (2013: 13) observes that narratives used as a means for making sense “do not merely evoke worlds but also intervene in a field of discourse, a range of representational strategies, a constellation of ways of seeing”. following the construction of multiple 96 katarzyna stadnik viewpoints co-existing in a narrative, we can learn about the social costs of our actions, which saves us from seeking answers to moral dilemmas by trial-anderror. along these lines, chaucer’s legend of good women could be seen as a collection of cautionary tales, created for a similar, “didactic” purpose. 3. the legend of dido: insights from the dialogue between narrative research and cognitive linguistics the current state-of-research in cognitive science, embracing cl and its akin fields of study, allows to explore narratives from a wide array of disciplinary perspectives, each with its own interest. it is argued that not only narrative scholarship, but also cl can benefit from an even closer co-operation. hence, we set out to build on the burgeoning cross-disciplinary dialogue. following herman (2013), one can distinguish the processes of worlding the story, whereby narrative is considered as a target of interpretation, and storying the world, whereby narrative is regarded as a means for interpreting experience. the conception of a two-way relation seems significant in that it encourages a more balanced collaboration, in which cognitive linguists not only contribute to narrative enquiry, but also draw on insights from the scholarship. in cognitively-based research into events and narratives, it is often said that narratives help organise the flux of experience into manageable chunks by carving our spatial-temporal units, events and situations, featuring entities such as participants and the relations between them. narratives are also believed to foster human reasoning about the social world, for instance, by construing different versions of causal chains related to the same event. as tools for thinking, narratives help us modify how we make sense of experience inasmuch as storytelling permits the manipulation of various perspectives on events: spatial, temporal, or epistemic (“who knew enough to tell the story in this way, a crucial consideration with respect to the embedded novel”, dancygier 2012: 48). one important process is viewpoint compression, which enables the author to give more salience to the selected aspects of the story, with “the specific compression choices [leading] to narratives of different kind” (dancygier 2012: 59). compression makes the multitude of information manageable by allowing the author to leave out some of it. lexical-grammatical aspects of narrative are unquestionably important. the cognitive-linguistic notion of construal (imagery) explains why our linguistic choices can shape the conceptual content we want to express. grammar is chaucer’s legend of dido 97 symbolic (meaningful) in nature, although its meaning is schematic. attempts to link tools from langacker’s theory of construal in terms of focal adjustment (fa) have been made. one of the most recent approaches, herman (2013) correlates the idea of focalisation with the three fa parameters: selection (the scope of predication), perspective (figure-ground alignment, viewpoint, deixis, subjectivity/objectivity of construal), and abstraction (granularity, or the degree to which meaning is schematic). in the paper, the subjective-objective construal will be used to explain the positioning of the narrator and some of the characters relative to the ground, or the situation of the utterance. how does chaucer use language so as to construct his own version of the tale about dido? from the opening lines of legend the reader learns that it is the god of love that, at alceste’s request, assigns the poet-narrator the task of writing about “good women”. hence, chaucer effectively compresses the mentally calibrated spatial-temporal distance between the poet-narrator and his predecessors. the format of story-within-story introduces a specific epistemic viewpoint, whereby the reader knows well in advance how the events will unfold. the main question remains how they are going to be told. chaucer’s selection of linguistic techniques enables him to guide the reader’s attention, and thus activate the relevant background knowledge, as the need arises. the compression may seemingly align chaucer’s version with the stories of virgil and ovid. this may give rise to a belief that “[o]nce the text becomes a shared cultural artifact, it participates in the system of distributed cognition and is no longer treated as one speaker’s communicative contribution” (dancygier 2012: 18). however, the conception of collective, distributed cognition does not preclude person-level cognition. isn’t chaucer’s story about the queen of carthage indicative of his own evaluation of the culture of the time? the perspective is important in that it helps account for the role of chaucer’s story about dido in the transmission of the abandoned woman figure. in chaucer’s case, the point seems to be his authorial freedom from the sources: 3 3 all quotations concerning chaucer’s work are taken from the riverside chaucer (1987). 98 katarzyna stadnik but natheles, oure autour telleth us, that cupido, that is the god of love, at preyere of his moder hye above, hadde the liknesse of the child ytake, this noble queen enamored to make on eneas; but, as of that scripture, be as be may, i take of it no cure. ld, ll. 1139–1145 the poet-narrator makes it clear that the sources appear patchy as well, and thus he cannot be blamed for an incomplete account of dido’s love affair, as in the case of the cave scene: and shortly, from the tempest hire to save, she fledde hireself into a litel cave, and with hire wente this eneas also. i not, with hem if there wente any mo; the autour maketh of it no mencioun. ld, ll. 1224–1228 in the poet’s version of dido’s story narrative gaps result partially from his use of the literary device known as occupatio/occultatio (whereby the author draws attention to what he leaves out by saying that he takes shortcuts). this indicates the extent of chaucer’s reliance on the cultural common ground. however, some other places of indeterminacy are the result of the underspecified nature of linguistic structures, used as prompts for meaning construction. this also implicates how deeply the narrative was embedded in the context of the time. to conclude, it is precisely because the individual minds are grounded in the body, the physical reality, as well as the socialcultural world that knowledge can circulate within the cognitive system of a broader community. on our account, concepts are viewed as situated, tailored to the specific demands of the context. therefore, the paper explores the possibility that narratives provide situational constraints on the conceptual content to be represented. culturally-embedded templates of such event sequences are recyclable, which makes them malleable to cross-generational transfer. significantly, in the case of chaucer’s legend of dido, it seems ancient stories offer schematic background situations that, on the one hand, promote conceptual continuity, but, on the other, do not preclude the existence of chaucer’s legend of dido 99 narrative gaps, which can be completed according to the current needs of the members of a given society. the key to this balance lies in the vast space left for the chunking of human experience into tellable events such that they carry the weight of the social import. our claim is that it is the epistemic stance of the author that tells him where to delineate the (fine or coarse) boundaries of the narrated events (see tversky & zacks 2013), and what to leave out of the storyline. it is the author who decides which perspective to opt for: that of selfish me-motives, sympathetic you-motives, egalitarian motives, groupminded we-motives. it is also the author’s experience that tells him which of the perspectives might be most useful in negotiating those aspects of the worldview that he finds inadequate. the problem entails the tug-of-war between the lived experience of an individual and the authority of the received view of the world. 4. morality and worldview: chaucerian trouthe how do the issues discussed so far converge and inform the discussion of negotiating worldviews via narratives? to the extent that worldviews are translatable into social norms, they are bound up with morality. tomasello (2016) differentiates natural (second-personal) morality from cultural (“objective”) morality. the scholar offers some invaluable insights that shed light onto how being part of a cultural community may affect the selection of the epistemic stance and its expression in a narrative. first, the researcher hints at the need for a proper contextualisation of social norms vis-à-vis morality: [b]y themselves, social norms are not moral. many conventional norms have nothing to do with morality directly. but they may, in the appropriate circumstance, be moralized precisely by being connected to natural morality. […] along these same lines, it is important that many social norms considered as moral by their practitioners are considered immoral by members of other cultures. this is due in most cases to different perceptions of what the dictates of natural morality require in particular circumstances. (tomasello 2016: 126) does this mean that norms are fixed forever? tomasello’s answer is clear and self-explanatory: 100 katarzyna stadnik the cultural sense of good and right is what ‘we’ consider to be the ways of treating others with sympathy and fairness within our cultural contexts. this cultural morality, as all culturally transmitted things, is mostly conservative. but there is cultural creation as well. as new circumstances arise, cultural groups adapt by conventionalizing new social norms and formalizing new institutions. (tomasello 2016: 127) on this account, the issue of negotiating the worldview is inextricably linked to the question of human morality. the opening lines of the legend of good women offer humorous musings over the relation between experience and authority, helping us to glean a late medieval understanding of how they are correlated with morality: a thousand tymes have i herd men telle that ther ys joy in hevene and peyne in helle, and i acorde wel that it ys so; but, natheles, yet wot i wel also that ther nis noon dwellyng in this contree that eyther hath in hevene or helle ybe, ne may of hit noon other weyes witen but as he hath herd seyd or founde it writen; for by assay ther may no man it preve. but god forbede but men shulde leve wel more thing than men han seen with ye! men shal not wenen every thing a lye but yf himself yt seeth or elles dooth. for, god wot, thing is never the lasse sooth, thogh every wight ne may it nat ysee. prologue f, ll. 1–15 chaucer’s text forms part of the chain transmitting “the figure of the forsaken woman during the middle ages” (hagedorn 2004: 10). aware of the tradition, the poet does not promise to tell a ‘true’ version of the story about dido. not only does he lack any direct experience, but also the narrative itself is part of the larger body of cultural legacy, mediated through olde bookes, the keys to remembraunce (‘reflection’, ‘consideration’, ‘the present consciousness of a past event’, and ‘recollection’). chaucerian bibliophilia situates him in courtly circles, and thus indicates a specific kind of readership/audiences he might have had in mind while composing his legend of good women, and simultaneously the kind of knowledge necessary for meaning construction. chaucer’s legend of dido 101 it might be argued that chaucer purposefully compresses the temporal viewpoint at the higher-level of the story’s structure by a straightforward identification of his two sources: virgil and ovid. the specification provided at the beginning of the tale helps foster the emergence of a new, blended figure of dido, where the characterisation of the queen owes a lot to the ancient stories, glorye and honour, virgil mantoan, be to thy name! and i shal, as i can, folwe thy lanterne, as thow gost byforn, how eneas to dido was forsworn. in thyn eneyde and naso wol i take the tenor, and the grete effectes make. ld, ll. 924–929 however, chaucer’s dido is not “the same dido”. this has been already implied by the use of the story-within-story format. to some extent, leaving out the sources entails downplaying their importance, which can be gleaned from chaucer’s version of dido’s letter to aeneas. the poet cuts it off sharply, which could imply that his dido is his own artistic creation, and thus he will not deal with the unnecessary details provided in ovid’s story: ‘i may wel lese on yow a word or letter, al be it that i shal ben nevere the better; for thilke wynd that blew youre ship awey, the same wynd hath blowe awey youre fey.’ but who wol al this letter have in mynde, rede ovyde, and in hym he shal it fynde. ld, ll. 1362–1367 as the title of chaucer’s legend of good women suggests, the poem is an example of the legend genre, the term subsuming accounts of stories about saints’ lives. implicit in this spiritually-minded conception of the poet’s work is an evaluation of morality sustaining the late medieval cultural milieu of the poet’s day. to say that it is concerned with christian beliefs and norms shaping chaucer’s epistemic stance that shows through the narrative’s (linguistic) structures is to oversimplify the point. yet, marking the epistemic distance between himself and his predecessors, the poet seems to hint at the faulty morality of the ancient culture as well. to a large extent, the motives 102 katarzyna stadnik underlying human moral behaviour are derivative of social cognition, or “how people make sense of other people and themselves in order to coordinate with their social world” (taylor & fiske 2017: 17). the point is that people are “activated actors, influenced by their social environments” (2017: 17). perhaps, the (un)saintly heroines of the ancient world indicate the kind of virtues that could be expected of non-christian role models. the irony might be turned against the tradition set by heroides and similar works. in short, the ancient stories of the heroines provide the late medieval audiences with a distorting mirror, in which good is excessively magnified, whereas evil is stunted. given the popularity of his philosophy at the time, aristotle’s ideas of the mean and moderation (colette 2014) could thus be explored by telling stories about the excess of both good and evil. if so, what can we learn from chaucer’s legend of dido about the degree of the moral responsibility for the other? at stake is the fundamental problem of the truth in the social world. in the poet’s œuvre, the question of the truth is often intertwined with other issues from the realm of social relations, where individuals either mistakenly ascribe intentions to the other (e.g. merchant’s tale) or fall victim to their own pledges (e.g. clerk’s tale). hence, since at stake are moral aspects of linguistic behaviour, and human responsibility for their conduct, the area of our investigation is not delineated by the bi-polar relation between the notions of truth and falsity, as they are understood today. to adopt a medieval lens, let us consider how the med defines the notion of trouthe. as it tells us, treuth/trouth, etc. (n.) can be defined thus: 1. (a) fidelity to one’s country, kin, friends, etc., loyalty; allegiance; also, genuine friendship; also, faithfulness; (b) fidelity or constancy in love, devotion; also person.; sincerity in love; also, genuine love; (d) faithfulness to god, piety; 2. (a) a promise; an undertaking; a commitment; a pledge of loyalty; also, an oath, esp. of fealty; also, a covenant; (b) a marriage or betrothal vow; a promise of marriage; (c) a concrete token of a promise; also, ?a written pledge; 3. (a) honor, integrity; adherence to one’s plighted word; also, nobility of character, knightly honor, adherence to the chivalric ideal; also used metonymically for a person of honor [quot. a1500]; 4. (a) honesty in the conduct of one’s business, work, etc.; the practice of honesty in one’s occupation, etc.; also person; also, honest dealing; (b) integrity in the performance of an office or a task; 5. (a) a vaguely specified but implicitly comprehensive virtue: goodness or rectitude of character; fidelity to principle chaucer’s legend of dido 103 or moral law; integrity, (b) a vaguely specified social virtue entailing constancy, trustworthiness, and decency toward others. (med s.v. treuth) the degree of conceptual intricacy is high, and the definition seems to suggest that the situational, predominantly social, constraints are vital for an apt construal of trouthe. thus, what falls within the ambit of the paper is the poet’s conception of trouthe, one of the core notions in chaucer’s literary pursuits. clearly, the med definition indicates that there used to be a tight connection between the truth and moral behaviour, as construed in the english culture of the late middle ages. at issue is the perspective from which chaucer constructs the notion of truth, and hence the aspects of the truth which could receive increased attention of medieval audiences. 5. chaucer’s legend of dido: a cognitive-linguistic analysis this section combines a cognitive-linguistic analysis of selected examples from chaucer’s legend of dido with a simultaneous overview of some theoretical problems that arise when the use of the selected cognitive-linguistic tools is considered in light of recent research in cognitive science. 5.1. the reading mind and the emergence of meaning in a storytelling context commenting on the patchy nature of narratives in general, auyoung (2013) underlines the cognitive aspects of reading. as in our everyday lives, where we draw inferences on the basis of limited, often minimal, cues, the reader fills in gaps in narratives without too much effort. naturally, the reader’s knowledge and experience are called on each time no explicit information is available (bernaerts et al. 2013). since a lot of what narratives tell us about concerns other people, it stands to reason to suggest that the reader’s mind derives from social cognition. no attempt is made to differentiate between the individual’s mind and the social mind. from a grounded cognition perspective, the human mind forms a unity. one of the crucial problems in social cognition research pertains to the distinction between humans and objects. other people are a challenge for us in that, although social cognition is mutual cognition (the other is more similar to you than any object), we often do poorly with respect to the accuracy with 104 katarzyna stadnik which we predict other people’s motivation and behaviour (taylor & fiske 2017). what conceptual structures may underlie social cognition in reading fictional narratives? as already explained, these will include the same kind of structures as people employ in their everyday, real-life interactions with others. one of the key notions is the self-concept. viewed as an abstract notion, the self can be conceptualised differently, many of the conceptualisations taking the form of conceptual metaphors, founded on the mappings between concrete and abstract domains. hence, in cognitive-linguistic research, it is commonplace to discuss the notion of the self in terms of the metaphors the self is a physical object (don’t be too hard on yourself, you are now comparing your efforts with the work of skilled professionals!, british national corpus, 31 december 2017). the self can be regarded as a container (he was so beside himself she had to laugh, british national corpus, 31 december 2017). likewise, personal relations can be understood metaphorically. in the legend of dido, the feminine self inheres in the projection onto the domain of container (the self is a container for emotions: o sely wemen, ful of innocence, ful of pite, of trouthe and conscience, ll. 1254–1255). in chaucer’s work, love is presented as an object to be shared between lovers (e.g. the depe affeccioun betwixe hem two, ll. 1229–1230). often, mental states can be constructed metaphorically, as in chaucer’s lines from dido’s letter (mental states are movable objects: for thilke wynd that blew youre ship awey, the same wynd hath blowe awey youre fey, ll. 1364–1365). the pending question that deserves a separate treatment is whether the diverse metaphors related to the same concept may be indicative of the situated nature of the notion. if yes, to what extent could this be conducive to the argument that the physical situation constrains the represented conceptual content (see barsalou 2017)? 5.2. medieval trouthe as a conceptual prism: epistemic stance, morality, and changing worldviews in the legend of dido in this section, we explore how chaucer shapes the epistemic viewpoint in the legend of dido so as to conjure up in the reader’s mind the desired conceptual frames against which meaning construction should occur. as already mentioned, the format of story-within-story shapes the epistemic stance affecting how the whole narrative about dido is told. the poet-narrator indicates that it is he who is in control of the events in the narrative. he does chaucer’s legend of dido 105 so by manipulating the story’s spatial and temporal dimensions, often speeding up the pace of narration or zooming in on specific events he wishes to make salient. this is indicated by the relatively frequent appearance of the poetnarrator ‘on-stage’. langacker’s notion of objective construal involves the idea that by a direct linguistic reference to an entity one puts it ‘on-stage’, i.e. renders it conceptually salient. this phenomenon can be exemplified using lines from the prologue, in which the poet-narrator refers to himself using the personal pronouns i and me, as well as the determiner my: allas, that i ne had englyssh, ryme or prose, suffisant this flour to preyse aryght! but helpeth, ye that han konnyng and myght, ye lovers that kan make of sentement; in this cas oghte ye be diligent to forthren me somwhat in my labour, whethir ye ben with the leef or with the flour prologue f, ll. 66–72 interestingly, the poet-narrator plucks out his implied audiences from the ground by using the polite form ye. he is implying even more, given the use of ye lovers, providing hints as to who might be interested in the subject of the story. at a glance chaucer steers clear of signalling reliance on any christian truths and moral norms of christianity. following herman (2013) on his idea that humans make sense of narratives by ascribing intentions to the authors of stories, it is argued that the salience was a signal for the late medieval reader that the authorial choice had to be meaningful. in this way, the audiences could actively participate in the co-construction of the world presented in the narrative. this implies that it was not only chaucer’s sense of morality that was at stake. that is, the negotiation of meaning occurred in the ‘we-centric’ space, mediated by the story’s linguistic structures. the significance of the meaning of the truth in the social world for the analysis of chaucerian story about the queen of carthage can be readily grasped from the excerpt, showing the parting of the lovers. importantly, direct speech is used for the expression of aeneas’s and dido’s thoughts. aeneas’s glib excuses can hardly conceal his falsity and intended deception (e.g. certes, brosten is myn herte). he also makes some assertions based on the presumed will of some remote gods (e.g. that nedes to the conquest of ytayle / my destine is sone for to sayle, ll. 1298–1299). yet, the epistemic viewpoint is 106 katarzyna stadnik founded rather poorly, on some visions and dreams aeneas presumably had: no-one can assert he is telling the truth. in contrast, dido’s utterances are full of innermost love, sorrow, and disbelief (e.g. “is that in ernest?” quod she; “wole ye so?, l. 1303). the swift shifts between the private and public spheres in her argument reveal dido’s frantic efforts to keep aeneas by her side. knowing his intent to leave her, dido pleads with aeneas for mercy, as she fears she and her unborn child might die as a result of human malice when he is gone. ‘certes,’ quod he, ‘this nyght my faderes gost hath in my slep so sore me tormented, and ek mercurye his message hath presented, that nedes to the conquest of ytayle my destine is sone for to sayle; for which, me thynketh, brosten is myn herte!’ therwith his false teres out they sterte, and taketh hire withinne his armes two. ‘is that in ernest?’ quod she; ‘wole ye so? have ye nat sworn to wyve me to take? allas, what woman wole ye of me make? i am a gentil woman and a queen. ye wole nat from youre wif thus foule fleen? that i was born, allas! what shal i do?’ […] and seyth, ‘have mercy; let me with yow ryde! these lordes, which that wonen me besyde, wole me distroyen only for youre sake. and, so ye wole me now to wive take, as ye han sworn, thanne wol i yeve yow leve to slen me with youre swerd now sone at eve! for thanne yit shal i deyen as youre wif. i am with childe, and yeve my child his lyf! mercy, lord! have pite in youre thought!’ ld, ll. 1295–1324 the scene is viewed in close-up, or seen in the high granularity of the details provided by the poet-narrator (e.g. therwith his false teres out they sterte, / and taketh hire withinne his armes two, l. 1301). thanks to the capacity for mental imagery (including the capacity for simulation), the reader is given a quasiequivalent of modern films telling us tragic love stories. the high granularity of the scene captures the reader’s attention, thus activates the operation of chaucer’s legend of dido 107 mental imagery, and makes him/her ponder over the conflict of motivations on both sides. in the excerpt, a few conceptual metaphors for the self can be discerned. these (presumably) include: the social self is a threedimensional object that can be reshaped (what woman wole ye of me make?, 1305), social roles are the perceivable outside parts of the object (i am a gentil woman and a queen, l. 1306), the self is a physical object that can be destroyed (these lordes, which that wonen me beside, / wole me distroyen only for youre sake, ll. 1317–1318). the langacker’s notions of subjective/objective construal are useful in explaining the kind of morality, hence the aspect of the truth, chaucer may have had in mind when composing these lines. it seems that the deictic use of firstand second-person pronouns puts dido and aeneas on stage, i.e. turns both into the objects of conception, hinting at natural (second-person) morality (as ye han sworn, thanne wol i yeve yow leve / to slen me with youre swerd now sone at eve! / for thanne yit shal i deyen as youre wif, ll. 1320–1322). dido’s words i am with childe profile the domain of male social responsibilities, all the more pressing in the case of an unborn child. dido’s innocence is thus twofold: at stake is not only her own life, but also the life of the innocent child. presumably, no cultural norms can make the man shed the responsibility for the life of his offspring. interestingly, the recurring use of wol(e) in the excerpt seems to signal the significance of free will underlying moral choices, whether made within the realm of personal/intimate relations or the domain of public life. is chaucer’s dido a character the author imbued with moral authority? the analysis of the excerpt below resumes the point discussed earlier, and permits an attempt at addressing this question. as argued by schmid (2018: 73), fictional minds are not identical with real ones inasmuch as they are expressions of a certain artistic design. indeed, the recurrent phrase sely dido appears in the narrative in different contexts. the first occurrence contextualises the use of sely in the domain of desyr ‘longing for something’, ‘yearning’, ‘pleasure’, but also ‘physical desire’, ‘lust’. not irrelevant is the air of mystery and novelty surrounding aeneas, dido’s new guest. driven by emotions she does not fully understand, the queen cannot suppress them, falling into the trap the gods have prepared for her. thus, the sely (‘helpless, defenseless’) dido is unable to escape her destiny: 108 katarzyna stadnik that sely dido hath now swich desyr with eneas, hire newe gest, to dele ld, ll. 1157–1158 the second occurrence implicates a consequence of misguided trust. blinded by love, dido falls victim to her own gullibility, a conduct unbecoming to the queen: and as a fals lovere so wel can pleyne, that sely dido rewede on his peyne ld, ll. 1236–1237 the third occurrence appears to imply the woeful end of the sely (‘unfortunate’) dido. not fully responsible for the love kindled in her heart by the gods, the queen was driven by emotions much stronger than her free will: a cloth he lafte, and ek his swerd stondynge, whan he from dido stal in hire slepynge ryght at hire beddes hed, so gan he hie, whan that he stal awey to his navye; which cloth, whan sely dido gan awake, she hath it kyst ful ofte for his sake ld, ll. 1332–1137 what links the three occurrences of sely dido is a certain conceptualisation pattern, in which the individual cannot fully account for his/her deeds. in this construal, an element of an overpowering, external force overwhelming the queen can be detected. indeed, this conceptualisation stems in part from the earlier versions of the story. virgil tells us that dido “was dying a death not fated or deserved, no, tormented, before her day, in a blaze of passion” (virgil/fragles 2006: 152). as in chaucer’s clerk’s tale, where walter played with griselda’s emotions, dido was a toy in the hands of aeneas and the gods. why could this point be relevant to the problem of negotiating worldviews? given the correspondences constructed mentally by the reader, the story might be a site for the exploration of the relation between god’s providence and the degree to which humans could exercise their free will. in the middle ages, the issue caused a lot of philosophical debates, and recurs in chaucer’s works, with boece, knight’s tale, and troilus having pride of place. chaucer’s legend of dido 109 a careful consideration of the lines opening the prologue may offer revealing insights. the prologue opens with the poet-narrator’s direct reference to the christian belief in the existence of heaven and hell, which invokes the domain of christian morality. hence, the epistemic viewpoint assumed by the poet-narrator is one that is fixed in the reality of the late medieval christendom. it is from this epistemic perspective that chaucer considers all of the stories in the good women collection, including the narrative about dido. the reference to heaven and hell is significant inasmuch as it establishes a set of correspondences between the storyworld of dido’s tale and the poetnarrator’s christian world. while mentally configuring the narrative world, the medieval reader could follow the parallels at various levels, including the characters’ motivations, and evaluate their moral choices. to the extent that the argument of the correspondences between the ancient and the medieval worlds holds true, chaucer seems to be saying that the morality of his present-day, christian world is equally rotten. not because the values, whether ancient or medieval, are to blame for the corruption and moral decay. rather, conformity in following social norms has superseded natural morality, inclined towards the other. dido did conform to the social norms, as instantiated by her ardent welcome extended to aeneas the guest and showering him with gifts. still, it was his faked reciprocity, combined with the gods’ intent to use her as a tool to achieve their goals, that ultimately led dido astray. chaucer’s construal of the events gives a great deal of emphasis to his own epistemic stance, which presumably means that the story should be constructed against the conceptual frames of his day. this gives the reader an opportunity to consider the various epistemic viewpoints within the story, and rethink the motivations guiding the particular characters. the linguistic structures mediate in the process, but in themselves are insufficient for the fully contextualised meaning construction. what helps fill in various narrative gaps is the careful consideration of the social-cultural aspects of linguistic choices. 6. conclusions the paper has addressed the usefulness of cognitive-linguistic theoretical models and methodological tools in the analysis of historical narratives. the cognitively-oriented research has contributed many helpful ideas that may well contribute to the further advances in the field of the broadly defined narrative 110 katarzyna stadnik study, particularly the research oriented towards the exploration of the interplay between narrative and the mind. a cognitive-diachronic approach to narratives is a challenge in that the researcher’s role goes beyond the typically linguistic endeavour. what can foster such analyses is a closer co-operation between the sciences of the mind, including cl, and narrative study. in particular, both parties must view the co-operation as mutually beneficial. to be so, cl and cognitively-oriented narrative research should care more about the empirical foundations of their theories. ultimately, this involves the strengthening of the capacity to account for the human factor underlying the linguistic expression of an individual’s conceptualisations. significantly, new horizons for mutual support have opened up in the realm of multimodal narratives. increased attention has been devoted to the embedding of cognitivelinguistic tools in recent findings in cognitive science. among the cognitivelinguistic theories invoked in the paper is langacker’s cognitive grammar, but some references to the theories of mental spaces and conceptual blending have been made as well. it seems that all of the approaches need a stronger empirical basis. for instance, it is easy to notice that the phenomenon of perspective-taking in cl can be rendered in terms of mental imagery and simulation, and langacker (2008) has acknowledged this fact. still, cognitive grammar might benefit from adopting a broader definition of cognition, not only as embodied, but as grounded (see also barsalou 2008). this could facilitate a shift in research perspective in that langacker usually analyses relatively isolated examples, for instance, they’re looking for a smart woman with a phd, not one with just a masters vis-à-vis a smart woman with a phd is happier than a brilliant one with just a masters (discussed relative to the problem of non-prototypical constructions in langacker 2009: 16–28). yet, these sentences are narratives in miniature, and what might be useful for a more comprehensive linguistic analysis is the embedding of such examples in longer stretches of real discourse. as to cognitive-linguistic approaches to narrative phenomena, one distinctive account is dancygier (2012), in which the scholar uses the conception of mental spaces and conceptual blending. the author says “it would seem unreasonable to assume that all cognitive work on literary texts has to be supported with in-depth considerations of their historical context” (2012: 9). indeed, dancygier’s (2012) approach to narratives pays little attention to the sociocultural embedding of the stories under study inasmuch as centres on the mental construction of storyworlds on the basis of linguistic cues. we, however, indicate that narrative studies can provide chaucer’s legend of dido 111 cognitive linguists with eye-opening research findings, as well as excellent sites for seeking new challenges to the cognitive enterprise and the subsequent refining of the already existing theoretical models. grounded cognition is an ever-developing field, trying to find the most accurate and most plausible solutions to the questions concerning the human mind. it does not claim that it offers the ultimate answers. all scholars involved in cognitively-oriented studies should remain alert to the possibility of redefining their research problems. finally, the investigation of the ways in which the worldview can be negotiated through narratives has shown that human morality is a research area that should receive a much more thorough treatment in cl. it is not enough to subsume it under the umbrella term of ideology insofar as this kind of cognitive-linguistic strain leads us back to the answers offered by conceptual metaphor research and speakers’ onomasiological choices (see also koller 2014). these ideas, however, are not fully grounded in empirical findings from cognitive science. besides, human morality is not synonymous with ideology, even though they may have a lot in common. in sum, the paper shows that linguistic choices are made in specific spatialtemporal contexts. literary and linguistic scholars must not cease to update their theoretical models so as to account for the individual’s lived experience behind language use in the most comprehensive way possible, or else we run the risk of glossing over the human factor in humanistic studies. references albert, j. & olson, g. 2018: monika fludernik and the invitation to do things with narrative. in j. albert & g. olson eds. how to do things with narrative. cognitive and diachronic perspectives. berlin, de gruyter: 1–13. auyoung, e. 2013: partial 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cognitive linguistics. berlin & new york, de gruyter mouton: 3–27. author’s address maria curie-sklodowska university pl. m. curie-skłodowskiej 5 20–31 lublin, poland received: 8 january 2018 e-mail: katarzyna.stadnik@poczta.umcs.lublin.pl revised version accepted: 20 march 2018 niamh kehoe, selim 23 (2018): 1–26. issn 1132-631x the importance of being foolish: reconstruction of the pagan and the saint in ælfric’s life of st cecilia1 niamh kehoe university college cork the pagan in early martyr lives is a familiar figure, and is often portrayed as an object of scorn by both the saint and the audience of the life. this article explores the ways in which the figures of the saint and pagan antagonist are translated in late anglosaxon england. ælfric’s translation of the life of st cecilia is examined alongside his latin source text, discussing alterations ælfric made concerning the portrayal of the pagan. in its focus on ælfric’s omissions and alterations from his latin source, this article considers whether ælfric considered it particularly important to translate the pagan as foolish in order to guide the audience towards a correct interpretation of the events of the life. in order to identify humour in both the latin source and ælfric’s translation, this article engages with theories of humour, namely superiority and incongruity, discussing how the expectations of the genre make these texts particularly amenable to the application of these theories. ultimately this article argues that humour had a serious function in hagiography. keywords: hagiography, ælfric; humour theory; translation 1. introduction the virgin martyr and his or her pagan opponent are familiar figures in medieval hagiography, a genre which is built upon patterns and expectations. one of these expectations is the foolish rendering of the pagan antagonist. 1 i would like to express my thanks to dr tomas birkett who offered invaluable help in the editing of this article, and to dr francis leneghan for his welcome suggestions for further reading. 2 niamh kehoe this article discusses the translation of the pagan character from the latin into the vernacular, and considers the purpose and effect of such a foolish depiction when measured against the expectations of genre. in doing so, this article presents a platform on which to discuss the function of humour in hagiography, establishing the paradigms for identifying humour in medieval texts, as well as the types of humour at play. it illuminates how utilising humour for a serious purpose in hagiographic texts need not be regarded as unorthodox or that it necessarily undermines their purpose; humour may have been used to convey complex ideas to the laity, elucidating both the religious message of certain texts as well as perhaps resonating politically and socially with a contemporary audience. 2 for the purpose of this article, i use as a case study ælfric’s translation of the pagan and saint from the latin passio sancte cecilie virginis included in his lives of saints collection. 3 in its focus on ælfric’s omissions and alterations of his latin source, this article demonstrates that ælfric translated these figures in a way which seems to have purposefully adapted the disparaging humour present in the life for his particular audience. this analysis entails focusing on the specific terms chosen to describe the saint and pagan, the rhetorical construction of their speeches, and of course any omissions and alterations made by ælfric. focusing on the life of st cecilia as a case study allows for greater depth of analysis than a consideration of a collection of lives as a whole would afford, and will also demonstrate the benefits of close examination of vernacular translations alongside their source 2 in focusing on humour to guide audience interpretation, i am building on shari horner’s work, which argues that humour had “strategic and didactic uses […] in texts intended for monastic and non-monastic audiences alike” (2000: 128). for humour in saints’ lives this article is indebted to both horner’s and magennis’ chapters in wilcox’s (2000) edited collection humour in anglo-saxon literature. for anglo-saxon humour in general, see wilcox (1994a) and also wilcox (forthcoming). 3 all quotes from the latin passio are from the ‘cotton-corpus’ copy found in the twelfth century manuscript hereford, cathedral library p. vii.6.ff. 73v–80r; page and line numbers refer to robert upchurch’s edited and translated version in his book ælfric’s lives of the virgin spouses. while upchurch identifies this version as “imperfectly preserv[ing] the textual tradition that underlies ælfric’s immediate source”, it does “account fully for the type of text ælfric must have used”, and is closer in tradition than other surviving ‘cotton-corpus’ versions (2007: 30). quotes in old english are from skeat’s lives of saints, edited from british library cotton julius e vii; page and line numbers refer to his edition, translations are my own. for a good introduction to ælfric and comprehensive bibliography, see magennis & swan (2009). the pagan and the saint in life of st cecilia 3 text. 4 by focusing on how the figures of the saint and her pagan antagonist were translated into the vernacular, it is possible to gain a better understanding of how disparaging humour was used to guide, or influence, an anglo-saxon audience’s interpretation of the doctrinal message of the text, particularly clarifying the purpose of violence within a martyr’s life such as cecilia’s. this article also considers how prose hagiographic texts, by virtue of their homogenous narrative patterns, can act as blueprints by which to identify humour, as well as perhaps offering a means for the translator to subtly comment upon contemporary socio-political events. 2. humour in hagiography as far back as 1948, ernst curtius stated that “[h]umoristic elements [...] are a part of the style of the medieval vita sancti” (1953: 428), here referring to the corpus of latin lives. christopher crane has also argued for the presence of humour in medieval religious instructional works, supporting curtius in his assessment that “the mixture of jest and earnest was among the stylistic norms which were known and practised by the medieval poet, even if he perhaps found them nowhere expressly formatted” (2007: 58). while there have been advancements made, most notably crane’s chapter in medieval english comedy published in 2007, and jonathan wilcox’s edited collection humour in anglosaxon literature published in 2000, humour’s presence in old english texts is often still noted cautiously: gregory sadlek, for example, has claimed that where humour is found it is necessary to ask “is [it] appropriate or [… does …] it [break] hagiographic decorum” (1991: 45). martha bayless adds that where it is identified in old english texts, humour is “defended […] only by lengthy arguments buttressed with numerous footnotes” (2007: 13). indeed hugh magennis, while rightly observing that humour from such a distant time is difficult to detect, is particularly hesitant to acknowledge the presence of humour in old english saints’ lives. 5 while magennis accepts (but does not discuss) “tendentious humor disparaging the enemies of the saint”, he appears 4 for a useful guide to identifying a latin source life, see whatley (1996). 5 there is no denying the difficulty of identifying past humour. formulating a working vocabulary with which to help identify past humour can go some way towards overcoming such a difficulty, however, as well as examining modern humour theories, and contextualising the texts within their socio-political background. 4 niamh kehoe reluctant to allow for other types of humour in saints’ lives, which he states “could easily be a bathetic distraction” from the proper response to saints’ lives —that of wonder and reverence (2000: 141). he argues that incongruity was intended to provoke wonder rather than humour, humour being in magennis’ opinion a modern interpretation of the incongruities found within saints’ lives (2000: 141); i will return to this important consideration later in the article. while this article is not the place for a detailed discussion on all possible types of humour in saints’ lives and how they function, it is clear that one form of humour then is widely, if at times cautiously, accepted —disparaging humour borne from superiority directed against the pagans, or devils. indeed, in his brief discussion of humour curtius focuses specifically on the depiction of the “pagans, the devils, the men of evil” and how “the saint reduces them ad absurdum” (1953: 428). 6 this manifestation of humour is well known and acknowledged by other scholars besides curtius, crane, sadlek, and magennis, including shari horner and oliver pickering. 7 while this article agrees with the arguments put forward by these scholars on several important points, it departs both in terms of its objectives —that is, to determine whether ælfric intentionally adapted the humour from his latin source, by focusing on the alterations made in his translation— and by engaging with humour theories in more depth than has hitherto been afforded them, in order to establish a foundation for identifying humour within medieval hagiographic texts. 8 in doing so, this article aims to further the argument that humour, and not solely tendentious humour, had a place in old english vernacular hagiography. 6 for the relation between disparaging humour and cognitive-resolution theory, see suls (1977). 7 see horner (2000). for pickering’s brief discussion, see his chapter ‘black humour in the south english legendary’ (2011), especially p. 435. 8 this article does not claim to be the first to use humour theories when examining medieval humour. amongst those who have looked at humour in hagiographic texts, magennis has discussed theories of incongruity, see in particular his work ‘humorous incongruity’ for a full list (2000: 137). he also notes, but does not engage with, theories on cognition (ibid.). shari horner also discusses theories of incongruity, as well as those of superiority, and how they can be effectively applied to saints’ lives. horner devotes just a page at the end of her article however, and magennis explains incongruity’s meaning at the beginning of his article, before proceeding to identify incongruity in a selection of lives, which he believes to be wondrous rather than humorous. for later medieval religious works, crane (2007) has looked at superiorityincongruity comic theories, applying them convincingly. the pagan and the saint in life of st cecilia 5 an effective model for the analysis of literary humour, particularly useful for this study, has been suggested by n. j. lowe and can be charted simply through the following process: social frame  cognitive mechanism  affective response  physiological expression this process for analysis is based on salvatore attardo’s 1994 metacritical overview of the major categories of humour theory (lowe 2007: 7–8). 9 not all the steps of lowe’s model are relevant to this study: an examination of the physiological expressions of the readers’ and/or listeners’ is, due to lack of evidence for audience response, near impossible; examinations of their affective responses will be restricted to where such responses have been recorded by ælfric. this study will rely mostly then on the social aspects of humour (particularly of the disparaging and superior variety), and cognitive (incongruous) aspects of humour, placed within their historical context. 10 it is perhaps useful first to briefly explain these theories before applying them to the life of st cecilia. superiority theories are integral to understanding saints’ lives. 11 patricia keith-spiegel claims that “according to the principle of superiority, mockery, ridicule, and laughter at the foolish actions of others are central to the humour experience” (1972: 6). jerry m. suls also explains, quoting zillmann and cantor, that humour “appreciation should be maximal when our friends humiliate our enemies, and minimal when our enemies manage to get the upper hand over our friends” (1977: 41). bergson in 1911 furthered the theory by describing it as a type of social corrective, later developed of course by bakhtin, whose “theory of carnival misrule to describe medieval comedy” has 9 see attardo (1994), especially p. 47, for the metacritical overview upon which lowe has based his model. 10 while suls suggests that “disparagement theory can be incorporated into the broader incongruity-resolution model”, he also concedes that “it is conceivable that disparagement and incongruity-resolution are parallel processes each having separate influences on humour appreciation” (1977: 42–44). this study regards them in this specific case, as working in tandem. 11 for a general introduction as to how superiority theory functions in christian literature see crane (2007). for an introduction to the theory itself, see goldstein & mcghee (1972), especially pp. 6–7. 6 niamh kehoe since been criticised by crane for “not account[ing] for some of the orthodox rhetorical aims of humor” (2007: 32). disparaging humour falls under this category of superiority; the superiority of the saint, and subsequently of the audience, can be described as both a cause and effect of disparaging humour directed at the pagan antagonist. 12 in terms of incongruity theories, according to kant, the basic premise is that laughter is an “affectation arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing” (1987: 203). 13 in 1911 bergson added that “a situation is invariably comic when it belongs simultaneously to two altogether independent series of events and is capable of being interpreted in two entirely different meanings at the same time” (1914: 52). 14 as we shall see, bergson’s statement can be applied to the word-play between saint and torturer: the saint often speaks figuratively, while the pagan understands literally. 15 in an observation particularly pertinent to this study of medieval saints’ lives, bergson states that “any incident is comic that calls our attention to the physical in a person, when it is the moral side that is concerned” (1914: 31). as we shall see, this is useful for understanding humour in saints’ lives, with crane commenting that: both superiority and incongruity theory are essential to the comedy of a poetics seeking to teach and delight while remaining ever conscious to the fundamental tension between god and man. the juxtaposition of the mechanical with the living, body with the soul, letter with spirit, provide the foundation of medieval religious comedy. (crane 2007: 39) it is not difficult to see how incongruity can be applied to saints’ lives: indeed, it could be argued that incongruity often arises from the paradox inherent in 12 while superiority theory has in recent years come under a certain amount of criticism —notably hobbes’ theory put forward in his leviathan— for being too simplistic, i believe that a cautious application of this theory while being aware of its limitations remains a valid approach for identifying certain types of humour. particularly so in the genre of hagiography, where a sense of superiority over the saint’s antagonist is, as we shall see, consciously encouraged. 13 for the other major proponents of incongruity theory, again see kant (1987: 7–9). 14 for how we can categorise bergson’s work as incongruity theory, see crane (2007: 38). 15 horner (2000) discusses the literal understanding of the pagan versus the figurative understanding of the saint. the pagan and the saint in life of st cecilia 7 christian doctrine. christ himself was a paradox, neither man nor god, and the miracles he performed also centred on paradoxes. as god’s representatives on earth, saints, particularly martyr saints, were centres of such paradox: they survive unblemished and unhurt after suffering horrendous torture at the hands of pagans, they are neither mortal nor immortal whilst alive, they die when deemed ready by god, and not as a result of the torments they endure. a point of contention appears to be whether such incongruity produces humour. as shall be demonstrated below, the audience of such lives surely would have found pleasure in such an incongruity, from the “transformation of a strained expectation into nothing” (kant 1987: 203); furthermore, they may have expected such pleasure. related to incongruity theories are configurational theories, the final to be considered here. according to keith-spiegel, the difference between the two theories is where the humour emerges. she claims that “in incongruity theories, it is the perception of ‘disjointedness’ that somehow amuses” whereas “in configurational theories it is the ‘falling into place’ or ‘insight’ that leads to amusement” (1972: 11). keith-spiegel cites the proponents of this theory, quintilian and hegel, who “viewed the growing intelligibility of a situation, unintelligible at first sight, as a primary ingredient in the comic situation” (1972: 11–12). this description is similar to suls’ “incongruity-resolution” theory, the slight difference being that suls describes the humour arising from the sudden resolution of the incongruity “which is then made congruous” (1972: 82). the implication of configurational and incongruity-resolution theories in relation to saints’ lives, with their links to theories of superiority and dramatic irony, is that while incongruity may have led to a sense of wonder —as argued by magennis— configurational and incongruityresolution theories may help explain the cause for amusement. these theories shall be returned to later in this article, when discussing the effect of ælfric’s translation of his latin source on the interpretation of humour. of course, for the aforementioned theories of humour to function the audience must be made aware that what they are being told is to be interpreted, or could be interpreted, as humorous; for this, cues for humour must be provided (berlyne 1972: 55). daniel e. berlyne has argued that for acts to be interpreted as humorous “it is recognised that the events are somehow cut off from the main body of life, which has to be taken seriously”, further stating that for this to occur “humour takes place […] within a frame […] accompanied by discriminative cues” (1972: 55–56). the fact that early martyr lives were heard or read, the historical and geographical distance of the 8 niamh kehoe saint from an anglo-saxon audience, the saint’s ability to withstand horrendous torture, and the miracles often performed within the lives would have rendered them “cut off from the main body of life” for an anglo-saxon (and indeed modern) audience (berlyne 1972: 55). the saints themselves are of course known for leading extra-ordinary lives —it is that which marks them as saints. when an event is perceived as within a frame, as opposed to happening within everyday life, we interpret and react to it differently, as berlyne notes when he states that “the ways in which we might react to the same events in the absence of these cues become inappropriate and must be withheld” (1972: 56). 16 the children’s cartoon tom and jerry may here serve as a (perhaps surprising) example for comparison. while the cartoon itself is quite violent, it is also amusing; the fact that tom and jerry is a cartoon and not real life, and that the events are taking place on a screen, are cues. 17 familiarity with the cartoon is also a factor; the audience know that the cat will never catch the mouse. similar to a martyr’s life then, the cartoon is cutoff from everyday life, the resolution is predetermined; the cartoon can thus be enjoyed. berlyne’s theory is important for allowing for the possibility of humour within saints’ lives. it could be that for early martyrs’ lives the category of text itself signified to the audience to expect humour. this expectation would have been borne from audience familiarisation with the narrative pattern of martyr lives: familiarity itself serves as a cue. stanley schachter has further argued that familiarity can constitute the cognitive framework necessary to interpret what follows as humorous, stating that “cognitions arising from the immediate situation as interpreted by past experience provide the framework within which one understands and labels his feelings” (cited in mcghee 1972: 64). in the case of martyr lives, the homogenous pattern may have served as a cue for humour at the structural level. thus it can be said that it is the expectations of such a life that help to create the particular framework in order for humour to be acceptable. the prerequisite that the saint will be martyred, resulting in a positive outcome for the saint and subsequently negative outcome for the persecutor, presumably was known and anticipated by a late anglo-saxon christianised audience. the homogeneity of saints’ lives would have ensured that the audience also knew torture would be welcomed by the saint. any violence enacted upon the saint 16 see also suls (1977: 42). 17 related to this is the concept of fantasy versus reality assimilation; see mcghee (1972). the pagan and the saint in life of st cecilia 9 would not have been regarded by the audience as a cause for concern, as they knew that the saint could often not feel pain, and that torture was a necessary process for the saint to achieve sainthood and ascend to heaven. therefore the saint’s death constituted a happy ending. 18 it could even be argued that the threat of violence may have been a cue for humour: if the audience knew that violence was necessary, this allowed them to enjoy the violence. 19 the expectations borne from familiarity with the narrative pattern of martyrs’ lives then allows for humour to function within them —particularly tendentious humour at the expense of the pagan, who is always one step behind both the saint and the audience. 3. ælfric’s translation of humour superiority and incongruity theories provide a good framework for close analysis of ælfric’s translation of the life of st cecilia, focusing on how he adapted the saint and the pagan from the latin passio for his anglo-saxon audience, in order to adapt the tendentious humour for his anglo-saxon audience. this leads to a consideration of the effects of such a translation, and the role that humour plays in hagiography beyond simply disparaging the pagan in order to elevate the saint. cecilia of rome, whose feast day is the 22 nd of november, is described in her life as being an early roman martyr and a virgin spouse. 20 cecilia converts her husband valerian to christianity on their wedding night, who in turn converts his brother tiburtius. together they preach christianity to the pagans, converting many people, before cecilia engages in a debate with almachius the pagan prefect of rome, after which she is martyred. ælfric’s life of st cecilia is found within the early eleventh-century manuscript british library, cotton julius e vii, and is thought to have been composed in the 18 for a discussion on the comedic structure of saints’ lives, see newhauser (2009). 19 this brings voyeurism and wish-fulfilment into question, topics much discussed particularly in relation to female martyr lives. while there is no room to discuss these topics here, for a general introduction, see gravdal (1991). for a discussion against reading female martyr lives as ‘pornographic’, see mills (2005). for ælfric and voyeurism, see trilling (2013). 20 for information on her lives, see under ‘cecilia’ in sources of anglo-saxon literary culture (biggs et al. 2001). 10 niamh kehoe late-tenth century. 21 the life forms part of ælfric’s work known as the lives of saints, which he composed for ealdorman æthelweard and his son æthelmær. elements of her life adhere to the conventional patterns of early female martyrs: cecilia is of noble birth and a christian since childhood, and she is verbally bold in the face of torture. as we shall see, in translating the life from the latin passio, ælfric abbreviated or omitted much of the direct speech, while also introducing emotive language to describe both cecilia and almachius: such alterations are typical of his style, and both impact upon how we interpret cecilia and almachius (magennis 1986). 22 there is far less emotive directing in the passio in comparison to ælfric’s translation, particularly of almachius. in the passio, cecilia’s character is referred to just three times, as uirgo clarissima (‘most illustrious virgin’; 174, l. 45), beata cecilia (‘blessed cecilia’; 176, l. 74), and uirgo deuotissima (‘most devoted virgin’; 178, l. 108). the only references to almachius, on the other hand, are more focused upon his actions and reactions rather than whether he is good or bad: when he is first introduced the audience are told that he fortiter laniabat (‘violently butchered’) christians in rome (194, ll. 343–344); directly before he tortures valerian and tiburtius we are told that he becomes iratus (‘enraged’; 200, l. 454), and finally before he tortures cecilia, we are told that he becomes iratus vehementer (‘violently angry’; 214, l. 651). he is never referred to directly as being wicked, or evil, as he is in ælfric’s translation — although this is of course inferred from his actions. ælfric’s emotive directing is noteworthy by comparison. for example, words used to describe cecilia include æðele (‘noble’; 356, l. 1), snoter (‘wise’; 356, l. 29), anræd (‘steadfast’; 364, l. 177), halgan mædene (‘holy maiden’; 360, l. 71), seo eadige (‘blessed’; 370, l. 253), and deorwurðe mædon (‘precious maiden’; 370, l. 257). these descriptions help to develop her character as a strong teacher of christianity and a chaste wife, an image firmly established by the time almachius is introduced. almachius, typical for ælfric’s martyr lives, is at once identified as 21 for the cult of st cecilia in anglo-saxon england, and the treatment of her life by earlier writers, see upchurch (2007: 3–19). for upchurch’s discussion on ælfric’s translation of his latin source in particular, see pp. 23–24. upchurch focuses on how ælfric recast cecilia as bearing spiritual children through conversion, and how he may have intended her as a model for married lay folk, nuns, monks, and priests. 22 on ælfric’s prose style, see momma (2003). for ælfric’s developing style, see clemoes (1970) and also clemoes (1966). for a response to clemoes, see mitchell (2005). the pagan and the saint in life of st cecilia 11 the villain by the use of phrases such as reðe cwellere (‘cruel murderer’; 366, l. 196), se arleasan ehtere (‘the wicked persecutor’; 368, l. 203), and man-fulla (‘wicked man’; 368, l. 201). such “emotive insertions, guiding the response of the audience”, are, as mentioned, characteristic of ælfric’s style (magennis 1986: 319). the binary opposition that ælfric sets out to establish between saint and pagan is perhaps epitomised in the line “almachius se arleasa het þa ardlice gefeccan þa eadigan cecilian” (‘then the wicked almachius ordered the blessed cecilia to be fetched quickly’; 374, ll. 308–309). by comparison, this line in the passio simply reads, “almachius ceciliam sibi presentari iubet” (‘almachius ordered cecilia to be presented to him’; 208, ll. 568–569). this difference of style is also evident in the manner which direct speech is conveyed in both versions. dialogue in the passio is reported quite matter-offactly, as can be witnessed in the debate between cecilia and almachius in which … almachius dixit … cecilia dixit … is repeated no less than thirty-three times, with one instance of cecilia respondit (‘cecilia responded’; 212, l. 614), and another of ridens beata cecilia dixit (‘laughing, blessed cecilia said’; 212, l. 607). ælfric, by comparison, varies his reporting of direct speech. rather than following the passio, he sometimes modifies the interrogative with such phrases as “cwæð cecilia sona mid ge-byld” (‘cecilia said immediately with boldness’; 364, l. 137), “cecilia þa aras and mid anrædnysse cwæð” (‘cecilia then arose and with steadfastness said’; 364, l. 156), “[h]wæt þa cecilia him snoterlice andwyrde” 23 (‘so, then cecilia wisely answered him’; 366, l. 177), and “cecilia clypode and cwæð to him eallum” (‘cecilia called and said to them all’; 370, l. 258). such variation is perhaps an attempt to make the life less monotonous if being read aloud —testament to ælfric’s aim for “effective storytelling” as dorothy bethurum has noted and magennis has reiterated (1986: 319). it also of course contributes to cecilia’s characterisation as wise, steadfast, and bold in the face of danger. the most striking aspect of ælfric’s translation however, are his alterations to, and omissions of, the speeches found in the source passio. perhaps the most interesting indicator of how ælfric set out to direct his audiences’ understanding of the protagonists is not the alterations to the debate between cecilia and almachius (as shall be discussed later), but the omission of the exchange between almachius and cecilia’s husband, valerian, and her brother-in-law, tiburtius. while it is true that ælfric most likely omitted this particular dialogue to “[remove] the rhetorical extravagance of his [source]”, 23 magennis (1986) discusses ælfric’s use of clauses. 12 niamh kehoe and so produce a clearer, more succinct text, which is typical of his style, he may have also done so to present a more simple —and more foolish— almachius to his audience (magennis 1986: 319). by removing almachius’ interrogation of valerian and tiburtius, ælfric omits 104 lines of direct speech. he perhaps worried that this particular episode might evoke an undesirable response from the audience due to the characterisation of almachius. within this episode, almachius’ retorts to valerian and tiburtius may have entertained an unlearned audience, with the danger that this entertainment would be at the expense of the saints. despite valerian and tiburtius emerging triumphant from the debate in the passio, ælfric perhaps saw too much scope for an unlearned audience appreciating almachius’ retorts —particularly if they themselves were confused by the saints’ responses. for example, when telling almachius that earthly joys will result in torment, and earthly suffering will result in heavenly joys, almachius appears to ask seemingly genuine questions: “[q]uid est quod uidetur esse et non est?” (‘what is it that seems to exist but does not?’; 194, l. 359), and “[q]uid est quod uidetur non esse et est?” (‘what is it that seems not to exist but does?’; 194, l. 362). tiburtius replies in an intentionally circuitous, elaborate manner, culminating in almachius responding with “[n]on puto quod mente tua loquaris” (‘i do not think that you speak with your mind’; 196, l. 368). tiburtius’ reply is for the benefit of the learned reader or listener, rather, it seems, than to enlighten almachius: “[n]on mea mente loquor sed eius quem in uisceribus mentis accepi” (‘i do not speak with my mind, but of his which i received in the innermost mind’; 196, l. 369–370). such a response serves to confuse almachius further, as he asks “[n]unquid tu ipse scis quid loquaris?” (‘do you yourself know what you are saying?’; 196, l. 371). the saints do return like for like, with valerian responding, “[a]uditus tuus errorem patitur quia uim sermonis nostri non potes intueri” (‘your hearing suffers an error, as you are not able to consider the power of our words’; 196, ll. 380–381). it can be argued then that in the passio, almachius does not respond in the manner that an audience familiar with ælfric’s lives would expect —he does not become immediately foolishly frustrated, nor does he straight-away resort to violence when his authority and his gods are questioned. rather, he appears to offer a genuine attempt to understand the saints’ explanations, and, when he ultimately fails in this endeavour, he somewhat coolly questions, “[e]rgo omnis mundus errat, et tu cum fratre tuo uerum ‘deum’ nosti?” (‘so, the whole world is wrong, and you with your brother know the true ‘god’?’; 200, ll. 449–450). indeed, it is only after 100 the pagan and the saint in life of st cecilia 13 lines of questioning that he becomes angry, arguably justifiably so, in response to the indirect answers given by the saints. if an audience of the passio were learned in christian doctrine, and therefore understood the saints’ explanations, then no doubt the humour would have been interpreted as being directed against almachius, who is here depicted as foolish for not understanding the saints’ replies. as the passio was composed in latin, one can assume that the reader or listener would have been educated to a certain degree, and would have therefore understood valerian and tiburtius’ rhetorical replies. superiority theory can be applied here —the audience, understanding the saints’ explanations, could laugh at the foolish responses of almachius: humour is a result of their superior understanding of the saints’ words. indeed, valerian and tiburtius appear to tease almachius with their rhetorically elaborate replies —almachius, with no knowledge of christian doctrine, really has no hope of understanding their explanations. this is confirmed when, after dismissing tiburtius and asking valerian to explain, almachius says, “[s]apienter quidem te uideo prosecutum, sed non ad interrogationem meam uideris dedisse responsum” (‘i see that you at least wisely pursued my inquiry, but seem not to have given an answer’; 198, ll. 414–415). for a learned audience almachius’ response would have appeared foolish, as they would have understood that both tiburtius and valerian had answered almachius’ questions —he just had not understood. it is in such an exchange that we can also see incongruity at play. as mentioned above, “a situation is invariably comic when it belongs simultaneously to two altogether independent series of events and is capable of being interpreted in two entirely different meanings at the same time” (bergson 1914: 52). thus, while almachius and the audience (or readership) of the passio both hear the same explanations from the saints, they interpret the explanations differently — while almachius does not understand, the audience does, and furthermore are aware that almachius is interpreting incorrectly. pleasure is increased because of their correct understanding, and the disparaging humour against the pagan distances him from the audience, discouraging any sympathy with him. if ælfric intended his work to be dispersed to a wider, unlearned, audience beyond the direct recipients of his translation (ealdorman æthelweard and his son æthelmær), there is a danger that the saints’ replies may have confused such an audience, as they confuse almachius. 24 in this instance the superiority 24 we know that ælfric’s patron, æthelweard, was learned as he translated the anglosaxon chronicle into latin (wilcox 1994b: 9). he also requested a translation of the 14 niamh kehoe of understanding (or resolution of the saints’ speeches) necessary for regarding almachius as foolish would be missing. this can be supported by humour theory. suls has claimed that “if the information or rule needed for the incongruity resolution is too challenging or complex then humour appreciation declines […] and […] when resolution is made easier by making the joke material salient, appreciation of the humour stimulus increases” (1977: 41). the elaborate speeches of the passio may have confused an unlearned audience, and as a result almachius may not have been regarded as a foolish figure —instead his retorts may have been found amusing. there is a risk that the audience may have identified more with almachius’ confusion, thus deriving a sort of pleasure from his defensive insults, rather than finding pleasure in the saints’ elaborate answers. this of course would have been problematic for ælfric. everything we know of his style tells us that he would not have desired to elevate the pagan even momentarily, and he certainly would not have wanted to confuse those reading or listening to his works, to which his repeated concerns regarding the translation and circulation of his works are testament. 25 ælfric resolves any possible confusion then by completely omitting the elaborate exchange between almachius and valerian and tiburtius, thereby presenting a much more clear-cut good versus evil dichotomy between his protagonists. while ælfric does retain disparaging humour against the antagonist, he had to tailor it for his audience: he achieves this by simplifying both the direct speech and the characterisation of almachius himself. for the humour to function in favour of the saint, and for an anglo-saxon audience, ælfric had to recast almachius in a more obviously foolish light. as well as inserting emotive cues to clearly identify almachius as the villain for the audience, removing any ambiguity of interpretation, ælfric also dramatically reduces the episodes in which almachius speaks rationally, resulting in him appearing angry almost immediately. in terms of the content of his interrogation of cecilia, ælfric omits the rather tit-for-tat exchange that occurs at the beginning in the passio (including cecilia’s elaborate replies), instead directly relaying the core message of cecilia’s argument: that almachius’ earthly might is of no real subsequence. first half of genesis, which ælfric did only reluctantly, as is evident from his preface to the piece (whatley 2002: 161–162). 25 for a discussion on ælfric’s cautiousness in translating, see whatley (2002), and also wilcox (1994b). the pagan and the saint in life of st cecilia 15 this reduction of direct speech is again distinctive to ælfric’s style. ælfric sums up much of the material found in his latin source by saying simply that “hi motodon lange oþþæt þam deman ofþuhte hyre drystig-nyss” (‘they disputed for a long time until her boldness insulted the judge’; 374, ll. 310–311). in reducing almachius’ direct speech, ælfric presents him as appearing more pigheaded and dense in his lack of patience than his latin counterpart. the first sentence he utters to cecilia (indeed, the first example of direct speech from him in the entire life) is “[n]ast þu mine mihte?” (‘do you not know my might?’; 374, l. 313). such careful editing on ælfric’s part sets almachius up for an immediate fall, one which perhaps the audience were expecting. cecilia, along with the audience, do know almachius’ might (or lack thereof), and perhaps derived pleasure from cecilia’s cutting reply: ic secge gif þu hætst hwilce mihte þu hæfst, ælces mannes might þe on modignysse færð is soðlice þam gelic swilce man siwige ane bytte, and blawe hi fulle windes, and wyrce siððan an þyrl þonne heo to-þunden bið on hire greatnysse þonne togæð seo miht … (374, ll. 314–319) ‘if you urge me, i will speak of the kind of might that you have. each man’s might who goes in pride is truly like if someone had sewn up a bladder, blown it full of wind, and then afterwards, when it was swollen, to work a hole into it; then the might, in its greatness, goes away …’ in the passio almachius’ might is likened to an inflated wineskin —a bladder would have no doubt been a more amusing image. ælfric does not allow almachius to rationally refute cecilia statements, rather he is immediately and without ambiguity reduced, as curtius has noted, ad absurdum. that it is a physically weaker young woman who ridicules and reduces his earthly ‘might’ perhaps added to the humorous incongruity. disparaging humour is clearly present also. suls, in his consideration of this type of humour (although in a different context), discusses gutman and priest’s observations of a “verbal aggressor and a victim who [gets] squelched in a punchline” (1977: 43). he notes that when the aggressor’s behaviour is viewed as socially acceptable, and if the ‘good guy’ squelches a ‘bad guy’, the humour is at its highest, as it is justifiable (1977: 43). humour is then perhaps multiplied in this instance, due to the incongruity of the victim (as almachius views her) gaining the upper hand, and also of the confirmation of the audiences’ expectations that the saint will get the upper hand of her antagonist (in this instance by way of a witty 16 niamh kehoe jibe). almachius’ foolish characterisation continues; he does not understand cecilia’s message of the insignificance of earthly power, instead believing her to be the one in need of pity and teaching: “[h]wæt þu ungesælige, nast þu þæt me is geseald anweald to ofsleanne and to edcucigenne” (‘ah! you unhappy one, do you not know that authority is given to me to kill and to give life?’; 374, ll. 321–322). cecilia once again rebuffs his claim, explaining that while he can condemn men to death, he does not have to power to give life as he claims to have —such power lies with god alone. she reveals him to be foolish in his presumed power, “… ic cwæðe þæt þu miht þa cucan adydan and þam deadan þu ne miht eft lif forgifan, ac þu lyhst openlice” (‘… i say that you might kill the living, but you cannot give life back to the dead, you lie openly’; 374, ll. 329–331). perhaps ironically, almachius does not recognise his own presumptions, rather advising cecilia to put aside her dyrstignysse (‘presumption’; 374, l. 333), and offer sacrifice to his gods. when she refuses, he straight away becomes deoflice (sic) gram (‘fiendishly furious’), and orders that she be submerged in boiling water. almachius does not, nor will he, understand that because of this action he is in fact the victim, and cecilia the victor. not only does almachius not understand cecilia’s simplified and shortened responses, the omissions ælfric makes result in almachius growing angry almost immediately. such a characterisation of almachius is achieved by also making omissions to cecilia’s dialogue during their debate, which serve to recast her as more measured and calm than she is in the latin passio. this serves to underline almachius’ foolish nature as he cannot control his emotions, as cecilia does. cecilia’s speeches in the old english life are arguably more toned-down than in the passio, in which she is portrayed as more audacious, and even perhaps ruder than in ælfric’s translation. for instance, when almachius orders cecilia to worship the pagan idols, in ælfric’s translation she responds by telling him to: … cunna mid grapunge hwæðer hi stanas synd, and stænene anlicnysse þa þe þu godas gecigst begotene mid leade, and þu miht swa witan gewislice mid grapunge gif ðu geseon ne miht þæt hi synd stanas … (374–376, ll. 334–338) ‘… know whether they are stones and stony images by touching those [idols] covered in lead which you call gods, so that you might certainly know by touching, if you might not see that they are stones.’ the pagan and the saint in life of st cecilia 17 compare this with her response in the passio, in which before advising him to “[m]itte manum tuam et tangendo disce saxum esse si uidendo non nosti” (‘put out your hand and learn by touching that it is stone, if you don’t know by seeing’; 214, ll. 645–646), she first baldly states, “[n]escio ubi tu oculos amiseris” (‘i don’t know where you lost your eyes’; 214, l. 637). this is just one of many rather brazen retaliations that ælfric omits in his translation — again characteristic of his style to abbreviate and cut direct speech. it also serves to present cecilia as perhaps more modest and measured, further emphasising the stark difference in character between her and almachius. almachius’ lack of understanding of cecilia’s teaching allows us to identify humorous incongruity, as their discourse can be “interpreted in two entirely different meanings at the same time” —just as it could be in the passio for a learned reader, perhaps suggesting a sophisticated translation of humorous rhetoric by ælfric. it could also be argued that the torture of cecilia (being boiled alive then beheaded unsuccessfully), could be interpreted as an “altogether independent series of events”; for cecilia, torture is her way to prove her love for god and to gain entry to heaven; for almachius, torture is simply a way to obtain what he desires, and he presumes at the outset that he will be successful. configurational and incongruity-resolution theories can be applied to the debate between cecilia and almachius, and cecilia’s subsequent torture. the audience, along with cecilia, either suddenly become aware of the outcome of the debate, and of the purpose of the martyrdom, or can claim a growing intelligibility —almachius cannot, thus eliciting a humorous response from the audience. familiarity with the plot of martyrs’ lives both encourages and confirms a correct interpretation. the pleasure experienced by the audience from their superior understanding may have been intended to subsequently strengthen their faith, thus humour is utilised for a serious purpose. it is perhaps then their realisation of the purpose of cecilia’s martyrdom and debate, rather than the incongruity of her martyrdom, which causes pleasure. in this way pleasure is used to teach rather than merely to delight, as augustine of hippo advocated, and whose guide to teaching shall be returned to at the close of this article. in recasting the dialogue in this manner, ælfric leaves no room for an audience to identify with the pagan, even in a shared laugh. it can be argued that these alterations have the effect of reducing almachius’ dimension as a character; he is depicted by ælfric as much more one-dimensional than he appears in the passio, and is certainly a recognisable figure in the context of 18 niamh kehoe ælfric’s other martyr lives, indeed in the lives of saints as a whole. ælfric’s omissions, abbreviations, and emotive directing render almachius more emotionally stunted, more hot-headed and rash, and more foolish in his cruelty and lack of understanding —or, rather, lack of effort to understand— cecilia’s message, and by extension of course, that of christianity. it is reasonable to believe that the effects of ælfric’s translation of almachius’ character were intentional, rather than accidental, due to his fears that an audience may misconstrue the message of the text. such fears are evident in the latin preface to the lives of saints series, in which he states, referring to his old english translations, “[n]ec tamen plura promitto me scripturum hac lingua, quia nec convenit huic sermocinationi plura inseri, ne forte despectui habeantur margarite christi” (‘[n]evertheless, i promise not to write more in this language because it is not fitting to introduce more in this language, lest, perhaps, the pearls of christ be held in disrespect’; wilcox 1994b: 119, 131). 26 it was perhaps important then that the pagan appear unambiguously foolish in ælfric’s translation in order to adapt for an unlearned audience the tendentious humour present in the passio, leaving no room for misinterpretation of the dialogue. by clearing the path (as it were) of any ambiguities resulting from almachius’ characterisation, his probing questions, and his defensive insults as found in the passio, ælfric’s simplified translation guides the audience towards a proper understanding of cecilia’s messages concerning heavenly might’s power over earthly might; adapting the humour present in the passio was an important part of this process. the foolish depiction of almachius thus plays a serious pedagogical role in guiding an anglo-saxon audience towards a correct understanding of the message of the life. by being encouraged to ridicule almachius, the audience are encouraged by ælfric to also ridicule the earthly pleasures that almachius loves and represents, and to instead uphold the christian ideal of salvation through suffering. seriousness and humour then need not be regarded as necessarily distinct from one another: humour can play a serious role in hagiographic texts. in addition to helping guide the audience towards understanding the meaning of cecilia’s martyrdom, disparaging humour directed at the pagan may have served a further purpose in martyr lives such as cecilia’s. there has been much scholarship on the perceived voyeuristic pleasure associated with the torture of female martyrs. while the limits of this article do not allow for 26 both the latin and the translation are from wilcox (1994b). the pagan and the saint in life of st cecilia 19 a full discussion, a few preliminary remarks can be made: by emphasising the tendentious humour and foolish nature of the pagan, ælfric may have been attempting to direct the (presumed male) audience away from sexualising female martyrdom. if an audience viewed the tortures of female saints in a sexualised manner, this perhaps meant aligning their interpretation with that of the pagan’s; portraying the pagan as foolish, animalistic, and damned, may have been a way to discourage such an alignment, as in doing so the audience may have felt as foolish as the pagan. this possible attempt to guide the audience away from such an understanding fits in with what renée trilling has described as “ælfric’s reluctance to engage with the erotics of sanctity inherent in narratives of martrydom” (2013: 272–273). such reluctance is perhaps also reflected in the fact that more male martyrs are stripped in his lives of saints series than female. 27 indeed, this reluctance also ties in with ælfric’s concern that the purpose of violence in saints’ lives be understood correctly (that is, understood for its underlying message, not the erotics of torture). we know that he was anxious about the interpretation of martyrdom, as he states in his nativity of st clement the martyr from his catholic homilies series that: … oft hwonlice gelyfede men smeagað mid heora stuntum gesceade hwi se ælmihtiga god æfre geþafian wolde þæt ða hæðenan his halgan mid gehwylcum tintregum acwellan moston … (502, ll. 148–150) ‘… often men of little belief question with their foolish debates, why the god almighty always desired to allow the heathens to destroy his saints with all types of torments …’ it is possible that ælfric’s anxiety concerning a correct interpretation of violence within the lives betrays an anxiety that the violence might be sexualised. ælfric’s approach to the use of humour to guide an audience’s understanding of the violence of martyrdom might then engage with his 27 of the saints that are stripped in lives of saints, four are male (chrysanthus, abdon and sennes, denis and his companions, and the saints in the forty soldiers). st benedict is described as stripping himself (for baptism). compare this to the two female saints that are stripped, agnes and agatha. st eugenia strips herself, and we are not explicitly told that st lucy and st cecilia are stripped. due to the nature of their deaths their nakedness is perhaps implied (lucy was disembowelled and cecilia was put into a hot bath), but if arguing for an intentional voyeuristic element in the female lives, this implicitness would hardly strengthen such an argument. 20 niamh kehoe approach to sexuality: just as disparaging humour influences an audience’s interpretation on the true purpose of violence, so too it may have discouraged sexualisation of violent martyrdoms. such an interpretation of this possible additional use for humour would need further investigation, however, considering varied audiences, and is beyond the scope of this article. 4. conclusions while we must always be cautious of applying modern theories to past texts and patterns of thought, examining classical writings on laughter brings us closer to modern theories of humour than one might expect. m. a. screech claims that “quintilian held that laughter was never far from derision”, and that “cicero probed deeply into the causes of laughter when he held that laughter arises from our perception of deformity and ugliness” claiming, however, that “[t]here is a proviso: that ugliness must be made to appear trivial and unthreatening […] [p]ity has to be kept well away, since pity dries up the springs of laughter” (1997: 56–57). of course, this is reminiscent of superiority theory (or rather this theory is reminiscent of cicero’s thinking on the subject). for humour to thrive, the audience’s beliefs must be suspended somehow to set aside pity, whilst being made to feel superior in some way to whom or what they are laughing at. as we have seen, this is evident in martyr lives, where persecutors are made to look foolish, perhaps to allow for laughter. this laughter in turn serves to highlight the wrongness of the persecutors’ beliefs, and makes them appear less threatening. this indicates that laughter was intentionally utilised at particular moments and for particular effect. 28 indeed, augustine, whom we know ælfric read, cites cicero, claiming that “the eloquent should speak in such a way as to instruct, delight, and move their listeners” (2007: 117). augustine advocates that there are many benefits for the use of delight, not least that it may be needed to keep an audience’s attention: “it may be necessary to make it attractive, and so implant it in the mind” (2007: 117). he claims this is particularly so with listeners who are not desirous to learn: “the disdainful kind of person […] is not satisfied by the truth presented anyhow, but accepts it only if expressed in such a way that the discourse also gives pleasure, delight has been given an 28 for a study of performative laughter within texts, see magennis (1992). the pagan and the saint in life of st cecilia 21 important role in eloquence” (2007: 119). augustine affixes a warning however to this, that if delight is needed for this purpose, that “it should be done with restraint, to prevent boredom” (2007: 117). this brevity and controlled use of delight (or humour), certainly accords well with ælfric’s own style. it would seem then that humour, or delight, was an accepted rhetorical device for its mnemonic purposes: “a hearer must be delighted so that he can be gripped and made to listen, and moved so that he can be impelled to action” (2007: 118). augustine does warn however that while delighting the audience is acceptable, delight should not be used to just delight. he claims that it is not the truths within christian doctrine alone that produce delight but the act of revealing them: “the truths themselves, as they are revealed, do produce delight by virtue of being true” (2007: 118). this, along with statement that “the more opaque they seem, because of their use of metaphor, the greater the reader’s pleasure when the meaning becomes clear”, bears strikingly similarity to configurational theory, which suggest that it is exactly this process of enlightenment that produces humour (2007: 111). also akin in a way to superiority theories, augustine states that “[s]imilarly the exposure and refutation of falsehoods generally give delight. they do not give delight because they are false, but because it is true that they are false delight is given by the words in which the truth is demonstrated” (2007: 119). perhaps this was what ælfric had in mind in his depiction of the pagans — that their roles in the narrative should be to reveal the truth of christian doctrine. this ties in with horner’s theory that it is the pagans’ literal understanding of the saints’ words that aid in revealing the truth to the audience (2000). it perhaps then seems not unlikely that ælfric may have utilised such a restrained use of ‘delight’, or humour, in his own works, a restraint which certainly accords well with his own style of writing. while the words ‘humour’ and ‘ælfric’ in the same sentence may appear incongruous in itself, there is no reason to believe that he would not have utilised humour in a controlled manner for a particular effect. indeed, we have evidence from his works that audiences may not have regarded saints’ lives, or the liturgy, as solemnly as modern audiences may believe. in his prayer of moses, ælfric despairs that “nu doð men swa-þeah dyslice foroft, þæt hi willað wacian and wodlice drincan binnan godes huse and bysmorlice plegan, and mid gegafspræcum godes hus gefylan” (‘now men still act foolishly very often, that they 22 niamh kehoe wish to watch and madly drink within god’s house and disgracefully play, and to defile god’s house with lewd speech’; 288, ll. 75–78). 29 interestingly, he goes on to reference saints’ lives, “seþe wylle wacian and wurðian godes halgan, wacie mid stilnysse and ne wyrcan nan gehlyd” (‘he who desires to watch and worship god’s saints, watch with stillness and do not make any observation’; 288, ll. 81–82). the need to include this admonishment in his sermon signifies that it was more than a one-off occurrence. it can be inferred from this that audiences may have expected to be entertained as well as edified —or at the least some audiences did not revere god’s house as solemnly as might be expected. the manner in which ælfric recasts almachius may have been an attempt to limit any undesired responses, or sympathies, from his audience. ælfric may have also had another reason for wanting to adapt the humour directed at the pagan from his latin sources. it is well known that the end of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh centuries was a time that saw more sophisticated viking attacks intent on conquest (cubitt 2014: 352). malcolm godden states that ælfric “did see a close parallel between the times of the early martyrs and the troubles of his own time with the viking[s]” (1985: 96). he also comments that lives of saints was intended to be read “as providing important political and ethical lessons for the present” (1985: 94). godden argues that ælfric may have translated the saints’ lives within lives of saints in order to bolster people’s faith during a particularly intense period of viking raids. while godden mostly focuses upon how the miracles within the lives would have achieved this, the foolish depiction of the pagans themselves may have also contributed, as an audience saw a similarity between the “barbarian” pagans and the invading vikings. increased viking attacks thus perhaps influenced ælfric’s decision as to which material to include, and exclude, within his series. 30 ælfric may have also adapted the tendentious humour at this particular moment in time, recasting his pagans in a more unambiguously foolish manner than their latin counterparts, to further the cause of strengthening people’s faith by ‘othering’ the opposition. aligning the vikings with the foolish pagans may have served to render them less threatening — whether this worked or not, it is impossible to know. 29 it is not clear who ælfric is talking about here, monastics or secular audiences. while many texts within the lives of saints were not traditionally for secular consumption, ælfric did translate them for a secular audience. either way, his admonishments reveal a level of merriment perhaps unexpected. 30 gretsch (2005: 57) has discussed the political influences on ælfric’s writings. the pagan and the saint in life of st cecilia 23 what is clear, however, is that in translating his latin source, ælfric has adapted the disparaging humour present in the passio by recasting almachius, through emotive cues, and omissions and alterations of his speeches, as a more unambiguously foolish character for his anglo-saxon audience. in making these alterations, ælfric was able to aid in guiding his audience towards a correct understanding of the martyrdom in the life, by making obvious how earthly might is of no consequence. through a close examination of ælfric’s translation alongside his latin source then, it is possible to say that ælfric did engage with the humorous rhetoric that he found in the passio, and in quite a sophisticated manner. rather than removing all humour during the process of translating, ælfric instead adapts it so that the humour is recognisable to an anglo-saxon audience. furthermore, his controlled translation of humour fits well with his overall careful style of translation. ælfric makes sure that the humour serves a strict purpose, and he leaves little room for uncertainty as to what, or whom, the audience ought to find amusing. by discussing the translation of humour, this article has shown that humour’s presence need not be regarded as undermining to the message of hagiography —it can serve a serious purpose in educating the laity. 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9). durham, durham medieval texts, department of english studies. wilcox, j. forthcoming: the proper and the incongruous: humour in the literature of anglo-saxon england. in v. westbrook & s. chao eds. humour in the arts: new perspectives. routledge. international society for cultural history series. author’s address school of english/ scoil an bhéarla o’rahilly building university college cork cork, ireland received: 24 february 2017 e-mail: n.kehoe@umail.ucc.ie revised version accepted: 14 september 2017 selim08.doc jesus l. serrano selim 8 (1998): 193—203 the chaucers in spain: from the wedding to the funeral chaucer life -records1 was the culmination of the extraordinary labours to attempt to cover chaucer's biography. this handsome volume will be for many years the point of departure of any work on the poet's life. since this excellent work was published in 1966, some books and articles have been published on this subject. although there are significant and important contributions among them, such as chaucer and his world (1978) by derek brewer, chaucer: his life, his works, his world (1981) by howard2, and the life of geoffrey chaucer (1993) by derek pearsall3 some questions naturally still re main: the exact day of the poet's birth, his activity from 1360 to 1366 and nearly everything about his domestic life. "the problems of writ ing a life of chaucer" 4 cannot lead us to the frustration of a natural wish to know everything about his life. we know that, as derek pearsall (1993: 2) says in answer to the question as whether it is worth writing a new biography of the poet: 1 i am chiefly grateful to professor martin m. crow whose opinion on the most important results of this paper, after reading some of my works on chaucer and spain, has encouraged me. all quotations are from crow martin m. & calir c. olson c., chaucer life-records (oxford: clarendon press, 1966). all quotations are from this edition and the references to this volume will be incorporated into the text, under the abbreviation life-records. 2 d. r. howard, chaucer: his life, his works, his world. new york: e.p. dutton, 1981. i am very grateful to martha s. waller, retired professor of butler university, for sending me howard's references to philippa chaucer from this book, and for her advice and corrections on this article. 3 i do not know how to express my gratitude to both these great scholars for their correspondece connected with some of my research on this subject. i have been greatly inspired by d. pearsall’s the life of geoffrey chaucer (oxford: blackwell, 1993), and d. brewer’s chaucer and his world (suffolk: boydell & brewer, 1978). 4 this is the title of derek pearsall's paper in the vii selim. (spanish society for mediaeval english language and literature), conference held in cáceres, 1994. jesús l . serrano 190 there are many who would think not, arguing one or more of the following: that it cannot be done, that it is not worth doing and that it has been done. many aspects of chaucer's biography can give controversy such as the identify of the real father of thomas chaucer1, the existence of two philippas 2 or, even, the existence of two chaucers 3, although, so far as i know, his identity has never seriously been questioned. it is not the intention in this paper to invent a part of a biography, unsupported by real evidence, in order to fill some gaps in the poet's biography. this paper is concerned with chaucer's marriage and the connection between the chaucers and spain. i will try to show how there were two important years for chaucer's marriage: in 1366 the poet was in spain and this was also the year of the wedding; in 1387 philippa chaucer was in spain and it was 1387, the year she died. i am going to support my work on historical data from two sources: chaucer life -records and ayala's chronicles4. the results of this verification will not provide the unanswerable documentary evidence but, i hope, they can be a contribution to a new starting point which can lead us to a better knowledge of chaucer's life. i.1366: chaucer was in spain and married philippa the publication of a short article by suzanne honoré -duvergé5 revealing that chaucer visited spain with a safe -conduct, granted by the king of navarre, cast some light on the obscurity of the period from october 1360 to 1 for a biography and discussion see k. b. mcfarlane, "henry v, bishop beaufort and the red hat, 1417-1421", ehr 60 (1945), pp. 316-348, 332-337; j. a. f. thomson, "john de la pole, duke of suffolk," speculum, 54 (1979), pp. 528-42; e. a. greening lamborn, "the arms on the chaucer tomb at ewelme", oxoniensia, 5 (1940), pp. 78-93. 2 for this possibility, see d. pearsall, op. ct., p. 35. 3 for this possibility, see, a. c. baugh, "chaucer the man", companion to chaucer studies, edited by beryl rowland. london: o.u.p, 1968, p. 1. 4 j. l. martín, ed., pero lópez de ayala. crónicas ( barcelona: planeta, 1991). all quotations are from this edition. the references to this book will be incorporated in the text under the abbreviation crónicas. 5 s. honoré-duvergé, "chaucer en espagne? (1366)", recueil de travaux offert & m. clovis brunel , ii (paris: 1955), pp. 9-13. the chaucers in spain 191 june 1366. but, we cannot deduce (from this document) any clear reason for his journey. several possible explanations have been suggested. suzanne honoré duvergé believes "that chaucer may have joined the forces of trastamara and taken part in the military campaign"1 there is a mistake in this opinion, as was pointed out by thomas garbaty in his important article "chaucer in spain, 1366: soldier of fortune or agent of the crown".2 if it can be accepted that one can accept that chaucer came to spain to take part in that campaign, he did so, of course, on the side of peter, the cruel, who was allied with edward iii whose military forces were led by his son the black prince. another possibility was offered by crow and olson suggesting that chaucer was an ordinary pilgrim to the shrine of st. james. baugh however,(1968: 56) rejects both possibilities and when, referring to the second one, he states that "english pilgrims to compostela habitually went to la coruña, in galicia, by sea." 3 this argument is not strong enough to reject crow and olson's opinion: pilgrims also went to galicia by the "french route"4. chaucer may have been sent on a diplomatic mission: to negotiate with the king of navarre, charles ii, the passage of the english military forces through his territory, but this was quite unlikely. the safe-conduct was valid from february 22 to may 24 of 1366, and the agreement with the king of navarre was in 1367.5 1 albert c. baugh, op. ct., p. 56 2 i cannot sufficiently express my gratitude to professor thomas j. garbaty, who sent me his article published in mln, 5, (1967) and encouraged me to work on this subject. 3 albert c. baugh, chaucer the man", companion to chaucer studies, ed. beryl rowland (london: oup, 1968). 4 see vázquez de parga, j. m. lacarra, & uria, peregrinaciones a santiago, (madrid: 1948). 5 "…el rey de navarra fuese para pamplona, e estovo allí, e fizo otros tratos con el rey don pedro e con el príncipe de gales en esta manera: que el rey de navarra les diese el paso por el puerto de roncesvalles," (crónicas, p. 331) "the king of navarre went to pamplona and stayed there and made other treaties with king peter and with the prince of wales as follows: that the king of navarre would allow them free entry to enter through the mountain pass of rouncesval." jesús l . serrano 192 none of the above possibilities is supported by historical documents. however, this is my hypothesis: chaucer went to spain to persuade the english knights to abandon henry of trastamara so that the english military forces would fight on the side of king peter. baugh (1968: 69) and pearsall (1993: 53) suggest the same idea but with no document to support it. and baugh even casts doubt on chaucer's success in his mission: his misssion was a last minute attempt to make contact with the gascon knights and seek to detach them from the enterprise. whether he ever caught up with them is doubtful. if we follow the steps of hugh of calveley, the most important english knight in the companies on the side of henry of trastamara, in ayala's chronicles, we can find the answer. calveley had been a decisive help for the english victory in the struggle for brittany and had begun to invade castile on march 13661. ayala (1991: 331-333) tells how henry of trastamara, who had invaded castile and was proclaimed king of castile, was aware of the black prince's proposals: "… que avía ya nuevas del príncipe de gales como venía a ayudar al rey don pedro… e esto fue en el mes de febrero deste año." 2 peter, the cruel, had fled from seville to galicia and finally to bayonne asking for the black prince's help. it is significant that the period which covered chaucer's safe -conduct was from february 22 to may 24, and in february henry of trastamara had news about the black prince's departure to cas tile. calveley had been successful in his attack on calahorra in "early march". was chaucer’s mission successful? ayala (1991: 341) answers the question: … mosen hugo de caureley, que era un caballero inglés con quatrocientos de caballo de su compaña, que tenía consigo de 1 "early in march calveley opened the attack by turning north and following the course of the ebro, passed through the southern tip of navarre, and reached alfaro in castilian territory. when the town refused to surrender he pushed on to calahorra." baugh, "chaucer the man" , p. 65. 2 " they had heard about how the prince of wales was coming to help king peter.… and this happened in february of that year." the chaucers in spain 193 inglaterra, partió del rey don enrique, e fuese para navarra, por quanto su señor el príncipe de gales venía de la otra parte, e non podía ser contra el. e el rey don enrique, como quier que sopo que el dicho mosén hugo partía del, e le pudiera facer algun enojo, non lo quiso facer, teniendo que el dicho caballero facía su debdo en se ir a servir a su señor el príncipe, que era fijo de su señor el rey de inglaterra.1 chaucer's arguments convinced not only sir calveley but henry of trastamara himself. and ayala's chronicles reafirm this success: sir calveley not only abandoned henry of trastamara but also he took part in the battle of nájera against him2, and some days after the victory of nájera he, as a reliable person at the black prince's service, was sent as a messanger to the king of aragon3. chaucer's success is beyond all doubt. was philippa one of chaucer's three companions, "not separately identified" who went with him to spain in 1366? there is no record to prove it, we only can deduce a positive answer from other historical data. we know that philippa is named as chaucer's wife in a transaction on the receipt roll under 21 december 1381 (life-records, p. 77). crow and olson (1966: 68) say that:" 1 (crónicas, p. 341) " the knight hugo of carvely, who was an english knight with four hundred cavalrymen from england, abandoned king henry, and went to navarre because his lord, the prince of wales was coming from the other direction and he could not fight against him. and when king henry knew that this hugo had left him, and he could have done him some harm, nevertheless he did not wish to do so, considering that this knight was doing his duty by his lord the prince, who was the son of the king of england." 2 "de la parte del rey don pedro fue ordenada la batalla en esta guisa. todos vinieron a pie, e en la avanguardia venía el duque de alencastre, hermano del príncipe, que decían don juan, e mosén juan chandós, que era condestable de guiana por el príncip e, e mosén raúl camois, e mosén hugo de caureley, e mosén oliver, señor de clison, e otros muchos caballeros e escuderos de inglaterra e de bretaña." (crónicas, 344). "on the side of king peter the battle was planned as follows: everyone was on foot, and the duke of lancaster, who was called john, the prince's brother, was in the vanguard with the knight john of chandos, who had been ap pointed by the prince the military chief of guiana, and raul camois, and hugo of calveley, and oliver, lord of clison, and many other knights and squires from england and brittany." 3 "otrosí el príncipe de gales envió luego al rey de aragón por mensajero a mosén hugo de caureley, un caballero de inglaterra a tratar con él sus amistades," (crónicas, 360). "and afterwards the prince of wales sent hugo of calveley, a knight from england, as a messanger to the king of aragon to draw up a treaty of friendship with him." jesús l . serrano 194 the recipient of these annuity payments of 1381 had borne the name philippa chaucer when the annuity was granted on 12 september 1366." we know that one " philippa chaucer una domicellarum camere philippe regine anglie" (life-records, p. 67) received an annuity of ten marks on 12 september 1366. so, as pearsall (1993: 50): says " she was given her husband's surname ". and once again crow and olson (1966: 68) provide a valuable clue to support my hypothesis: the maiden name of the wife occurs so frequentley in grants and payments made soon after marriage as to suggest that philippa chaucer had been married long enough by 12 sep. 1366 to be already identified in the court as geoffrey chaucer's wife. if "chaucer had been married long enough by 12 sep. 1366", was he married in the period of his safe -conduct (february 22 to may 24)? there are only three months from june to september. was this period of time "long enough as to be identified in the court as geoffrey chaucer's wife? if we think that a positive answer to these two questions is a reasonable argument, the possibility that philippa chaucer's was in spain in 1366 becomes more plausible. in any case, i belive, as crow and olson (1966: 68) that "chaucer must have married her on or before 12 september 1366 unless her maiden name was chaucer". this 1366 was the year of chaucer's stay in spain and the year of his wedding: an important year in his life. ii.1386-87: philippa chaucer was in spain and died of pestilence this conflict was to be the origin of john of gaunt's claim to the crown of castile and leon because, as it is well known, he married constance of castile, pedro's daughter in 1371, and this was his most important link to spain. his efforts to realise succeed in this clain would last sixteen years. the history of this period of time is included in ayala's chronicles. the last attempt was in 1386 when the duke arrived at galicia on 25 july, with his family: dende a pocos días llegáronle nuevas al maestre davis cómo el duque de alencastre era aportado con pieza de navíos e de gentes en la villa de la coruña, que es en galicia, día de santiago, e cómo the chaucers in spain 195 tomara y algunas galeas que falló del rey de castilla, e que la gente que el dicho duque traía eran mil e quinientas lanzas, e otros tantos archeros, e todo de muy buena gente. e traía consigo su mu jer doña constanza, que era fija del rey don pedro, e una fija que avía della, que decían doña catalina. e traía otras dos fijas que el duque oviera primero de otra mujer con quien fuera casado antes, fija de otro duque de alencastre e conde de dervi que fuera antes que dél, e a la mayor decían doña phelipa, la cual casó entonce con el maestre davis que se llamaba rey de portugal, segund adelante diremos, e a la otra decían doña isabel, la cual casó entonce con un caballero que venía con el duque, que decían mosén juan de holanda, que fuera hijo de la princesa e de mosén thomas de holanda, e era entonce mosén juan de holanda en esa cabalgada, e el duque de alencastre fízole su condestable.1 if philippa was in constance's service, she ought to have been at her service in galicia in 1386. her husband's daughters were to marry important men and her own daughter catherine would marry henry iii of castile. constance's need of household chores might be important enough to get rid of philippa, who was not only granted but highly esteemed by her as crow and olson (1966: 86) clarify when they explain that the term "` nostre bien ame damoysele' is applied elsewhere in the register of john of gaunt to ladies in immediate attendance upon the duchess constance. 2 furthermore, her son thomas chaucer was probably of the party. 1 (crónicas, p. 614) "the grand master davis had news a few days previously of how the duke of lancaster had arrived with ships and militarymen in the town of la coruña, which is in galicia, the day on st. james, and how he took some ships of the king of castile, and among the soldiers there were 1500 lancers and a like number of archers and all of them were good. and he brought with him his wife constance, who was the daughter of king peter and a daughter who had been born of her, who was called catherine, and he brought two other daughters the duke had of another woman whom he had previously married, who was the daugther of the former duke of lancaster and earl of derby; the elder daugther was called philippa, who married the grand master davis, who was called king of portugal, as we shall tell later on, and the other daughter was called elisabeth, who then married a knight who came with the duke, who was called john of holland, who was son of the princess and thomas of holland, because the duke of lancaster had made him his military chief." 2 for further clarification, see the reference to the annuity of ten pounds granted to philippa chaucer on 30 august 1372 in chaucer life-records, pp. 85-86. jesús l . serrano 196 there is no record to prove that the duke of lancaster was chaucer's patron1 but there some records to demonstrate a close connection between the chaucers and john of gaunt: * philippa chaucer received an annuity on 30 august 1372 for attendance upon the duchess constance and some gifts from 1373 to 1382. * geoffrey chaucer and his wife received an annuity from gaunt on 13 june 1374. i agree with derek pearsall (1993: 83) when he comments on the chaucers' annuity from gaunt, in 1374, and says that "the annuity most probably continued to be paid until gaunt's death in 1399". although it is true, as he says, that "there is no documentary evidence of any futher personal connection between the poet and the prince", i think that, if there is anything, we would find it connected with the duke of lancaster's intervention in spain. we know that there are no records of ga unt's grants to philippa after the gift on 6 may 1382 because, indeed, there are no records of any kind of gaunt's household expenses since the register broke off in 1383. i think it is important to focus attention on the last and most important record concerning philippa chaucer's connection with the lancaster house: her admission to the fraternity of lincoln cathedral. this admission does not only imply her relationship with her nephews (john beaufort and thomas swynford), as it seems natural, but the imp ortance of a " bien ame damoysele" (life-records, p. 86) in gaunt's household. this important ceremony was held on 19 february 1386. regarding gaunt's campaign in spain in 1386 derek pearsall (1993: 142) thinks that "philippa was not of the party. in 1386 she was probably residing more permanently with her sister in lincolshire." 1 john of gaunt styled himself "roy de castille et de leon duc de lancastre" in all documents from 1372 to 1388 and as i will try to show in a forthcoming article in the chaucer review, chaucer supports this claim in the book of the duchess when he defines him as "this kyng" (1314). the chaucers in spain 197 where was philippa chaucer? i consider that the strong negative "was not of the party", in pearsall's opinion, is weakened by the uncertainty of "probably residing…" we know that her sister katherine swynford some times dwelt at her manor in kettlethorpe and that some of her payments were received in lincolshire by a sheriff (life-records, p.77) in 1379. i believe that her relationship with gaunt's mistress does not imply a relief of her duties in connexion with her "immediate attendance upon the duchess constance" just when gaunt was very much interested in using his wife as a coin of exchange. it is well known, however, that john of gaunt lost interest in constance of castile after returning from spain in 1389. pearsall (1993: 142), himself, says that, during the early 1380s, philippa probably shared her life between the household of her husband and that of the duchess constance, who spent more time with her husband now that his hopes of a throne in spain were his main political ambition. can 1386 be included in these "early 1380s" taking into account that gaunt's "hopes of a throne in spain" were supported now by the king and by a subsidy of parliament? on the other hand, "in june 1386, geoffrey and philippa received an assignment upon william barwell, who had been sheriff of worcestershire in 1383," (life-records, p. 335) but this does not imply that philippa chaucer was there. it is not significant that, the fact that: after june 1386 chaucer's payments were always in cash drawn at the exchequer by his own hands until, after the surrender of his annuity to john scalby, he received a pro rata payment in february 1389 by the hands of scalby. (life-records, p. 335) gaunt and the king of portugal decided that they would stay in galicia from 25 july 1386 until the following summer. but instead of increasing their power by making preparations for the attack they were defeated, before fighting, by the worst enemy: "pestilence". therefore they did not wait until the summer, and in march 1387 they invaded castile. ayala narrates the sit uation jesús l . serrano 198 después que entró en castilla, siempre ovo grand mortandad en sus compañas, en guisa que perdió muchas gentes de las suyas; e segund se sopo por cie rto, morieron trescientos caballeros e escuderos, e muchos archeros e otras gentes.1 philippa chaucer might have been among these " otras gentes", and probably died in spain or portugal of " pestilence". we do not have any record of her death but if, as pearsall (1993: 25) says as regrads those who died of plague, " there were not enough living to bury the dead, and there were certainly not enough priests to give all the dying the last sacraments" it would be very difficult to find any record, mainly knowing how elusive chaucer was about autobiographical references in his poetry. martin m. crow and clair c. olson (1966: 84) conclude that: because for several terms philippa chaucer had drawn her annuity through her husband and because geoffrey chaucer drew only his own michaelmas instalments on 7 november 1387, it would appear that her death ocurred sometime between 18 june 1387, when she drew her last payment, and 7 november of that year. i hope that the new information drawn from our conclusion would help from now on in future research concerning this subject.2 jesús luis serrano reyes university of córdoba bibliography baugh, a. c. 1968: chaucer the man. companion to chaucer studies, ed. beryl rowland. london: oup. 1 (crónicas, p. 627) " after entering castile, there was a large number of victims among his entourage, so that he lost many of his people, and as it was well known, three hundred knights and squires and many archers and other people died." 2 i am preparing a new article with the valuable help of professor william askins, who has provide new and important data to complete this research. the most striking and convincing data may be the finding of a record to support the hypothesis of philippa's death in spain. the chaucers in spain 199 brewer, d. 1978: chaucer and his world. suffolk: boydell & brewer. crow, m. m. & clair olson, eds. 1966: chaucer life -records. oxford: clarendon press. garbaty, t. j. 1967: chaucer in spain, 1366: soldier of fortune or agent of the crown? modern language notes 5: 81-87. honoré -duvergé, s. 1955: chaucer en espagne? (1366). recueil de travaux offert a m. clovis brunel 2: 9-13. howard, d. r. 1981: chaucer: his life, his works, his world. new york: e. p. dutton. martín, j. l. ed. 1991: pero lópez de ayala. crónicas. barcelona: planeta. pearsall, d. 1993: the life of geoffrey chaucer. oxford: blackwell. * † * microsoft word 6. notes. cossio.docx andoni cossio, selim27 (2022): 166–176. issn 1132-631x / issn-l 2792-3878 / https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.27.2022.166-176 further notes on j. r. r. tolkien’s photostats of the equatorie of the planetis (ms peterhouse 75.i)1 andoni cossio university of the basque country (upv/ehu) andoni cossio proposes in a recent article the addition of the equatorie of the planetis (c. 1393) in ms peterhouse 75.i to “section a” of oronzo cilli’s tolkien’s library: an annotated checklist (2019). however, cossio fails to specify the folios of ms peterhouse 75.i to which the photostats in tolkien vc 277 correspond. a detailed descriptive list of the photostats that j. r. r. tolkien received from derek j. price could be useful in the understanding of the type of assistance tolkien offered to price and r. m. wilson at the time they were preparing an edition of the equatorie of the planetis (1955). this note will supply that missing information as well as speculate about the nature of tolkien’s contribution to the project and its implications. tolkien devoted considerable attention to the study of geoffrey chaucer’s language, and he may have been aware, after careful examination of the equatorie of the planetis, that its attribution to chaucer rested on inconclusive evidence. this view of course would have challenged price and wilson’s assumptions and it may explain why we know so little about tolkien’s involvement. keywords: j. r. r. tolkien; the equatorie of the planetis; ms peterhouse 75.i; derek j. price; geoffrey chaucer; middle english; latin 1 i would like to express my gratitude to catherine mcilwaine (tolkien archivist at the bodleian libraries, university of oxford), rafael j. pascual, julian reid, seb falk and douglas a. anderson for their generous assistance. i would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their enlightening suggestions. this note was completed under the auspices of the pre-doctoral funding (pre_2017_1_0210 mod.:a), financed by the basque government, and rewest research group (it 1026-16), funded by both the basque government and the university of the basque country (upv/ehu). further notes on j. r. r. tolkien’s photostats 167 andoni cossio proposes in a recent article (2021: 1–3) the addition of the equatorie of the planetis (c. 1393) in ms peterhouse 75.i to “section a” of oronzo cilli’s tolkien’s library: an annotated checklist (2019: 1– 326).2 cossio also provides the following information to be incorporated into the entry: notes: twenty-five large photostats of individual pages of the manuscript which belonged to tolkien are preserved at special collections of the weston library, bodleian libraries, university of oxford (tolkien vc 277). eight pages are tables, fifteen pages contain text, in some cases interspersed by circular diagrams, one contains a single line at the bottom and another is possibly a cover. (2021: 1) however, cossio fails to specify the folios of ms peterhouse 75.i to which the photostats in tolkien vc 277 correspond.3 a detailed 2 an equatorium (pl. equatoria) is a medieval device that can roughly calculate, in a ptolemaic conception of the universe that places earth in its center, the positions of the sun, the moon and five planets known at the time when the treatise of the equatorie of the planetis (c. 1393) was written, those being mercury, venus, mars, jupiter and saturn. the particularity of this ms is that although it is a scientific treatise, it is written in english, not latin. see seb falk for the reasons behind this authorial decision (2019: 329–60). see derek j. price for a historical account of the instrument (1955a: 119–33). falk provides in a blog post a succinct and accessible list of differences between this device and an astrolabe, often confused with an equatorium: https://www.sebfalk.com/post/what-s-the-difference-between-an-astrolabe-and-anequatorium. 3 there are two other points discussed in cossio’s article about which i wish to provide further insights. the first concerns the following speculation regarding j. r. r. tolkien’s books that christopher tolkien gave to eric christiansen before he left the united kingdom for france: “the author of this paper conjectures that christopher passed them on to christiansen when he left his rooms because he thought them of standard value and of no future use to him” (cossio 2021: 4). douglas a. anderson suggests, based on his recollections of a conversation with christopher tolkien, that tolkien’s son had parted with duplicate copies of his and his father’s scholarly books before the permanent departure to france, which may explain the provenance of some of the volumes christiansen received (2021: unpaginated), though it does not clarify why christopher tolkien gave them as gifts to a friend who would not use them. the second point is tied to the time when christiansen sold j. r. r. tolkien’s books. cossio reports that “christiansen is known to have sold the remainder at some unspecified date” (2021: 6). a recent email conversation with rafael j. pascual (junior research fellow at new college) made pascual recollect a more specific date for the sale of the books: “eric retired at the end of the 2001–2 academic year—i.e. sept. 2002. he got rid of the books when he was clearing out his room. so sometime in 2002, probably 168 andoni cossio descriptive list of the photostats that j. r. r. tolkien received from derek j. price could be useful, i believe, in the understanding of the type of assistance tolkien offered to price and r. m. wilson at the time they were preparing an edition of the manuscript published in 1955.4 this note will supply that missing information as well as speculate about the nature of tolkien’s contribution to the project and its implications. the university of cambridge has recently digitized ms peterhouse 75.i, thus offering unrestricted access to its contents (<cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/ms-peterhouse-00075-00001/1>).5 this has allowed me to add, as readers will see below, the page numbers of the digital manuscript [dm] in square brackets for easy browsing on the university of cambridge digital library website. i hereby provide ms peterhouse 75.i folios, page numbers of its digitized form, descriptions of the content and annotations, if any, of each of the twenty-five photostats contained in tolkien vc 277, which are further classified by sizes and languages: *twenty-three photostats (24.5cm x 19.5cm [the measurements are approximate as there are millimetric variations among them]). there are no annotations by tolkien either front or back of the photostats, and all inscriptions on the back are probably in price’s hand, which are limited to the manuscript’s foliation for tolkien’s reference. with regard to the manuscript itself, the computational section, which comprises tables supplemented by brief inscriptions,6 is written in latin and the treatise on the equatorium in middle english. summer, is when he sold the books. that might possibly help in your search for them” (2021: unpaginated). after numerous enquiries, the dealer or private individual who purchased the batch of books, or part of it, remains unknown, though it is certain now, or at least according to their respective databases, that the volumes were not sold to st philips books (oxford), blackwells (oxford) or bennett & kerr books (abingdon). 4 see falk for a comprehensive biographical account of price and his discovery of the equatorie of the planetis (2014: 114–17). 5 even though tolkien’s photostats are in black and white, they reproduce ms peterhouse 75.i’s details better than the online digitization. perhaps the reason behind this is the contrast employed for the photography. 6 tables are, in a few cases, calendars. see “table 1.” in falk for detailed descriptions of the contents of each of the ff. of ms peterhouse 75.i (2016c: 10). further notes on j. r. r. tolkien’s photostats 169 mostly latin7: (1) f. 5v [dm p. 12], tables and the ‘radix chaucer’ inscription that price employed as supporting evidence for his hypothesis that the ms was a holograph of chaucer (“5v” written on the back). (2) f. 7r [dm p. 15], tables. (3) f. 30v [dm p. 62], tables (“30v” written on the back). (4) f. 38v [dm p. 78], tables (“38v” written on the back). (5) f. 62v [dm p. 126], tables (“62v” written on the back). (6) f. 63v [dm p. 128], tables (“63v” written on the back). (7) f. 64r [dm p. 129], tables. (8) f. 64v [dm p. 130], long inscription and diagram (“64v” written on the back). (9) f. 65r [dm p. 131], table. mostly middle english8: (10) f. 71v [dm p. 144], text (“71v” written on the back). (11) f. 72r [dm p. 145], text. (12) f. 72v [dm p. 146], text (“72v” written on the back). (13) f. 73r [dm p. 147], text (“/3” written on the back, the top stroke of ‘7’ cut off). (14) f. 73v [dm p. 148], text and diagram (“73v” written on the back). (15) f. 74r [dm p. 149], text and diagrams. (16) f. 75r [dm p. 151], text. (17) f. 75v [dm p. 152], text (“/5 75v” written on the back, the top stroke of the topmost ‘7’ cut off). (18) f. 76r [dm p. 153], text. (19) f. 76v [dm p. 154], text (“/6v 76v” written on the back, the top stroke of the topmost ‘7’ cut off). (20) f. 77r [dm p. 155], text. (21) f. 77v [dm p. 156], text (“//v” written on the back, the top stroke of both ‘7’ cut off). (22) f. 78r [dm p. 157], text. (23) f. 78v [dm p. 158], text (“78v” written on the back). 7 some inscriptions coded in cipher are in middle english with some technical terms in latin. 8 latin can be found within the treatise and some technical terms in middle english are translated into latin directly on the ms ff. 170 andoni cossio *one photostat (15.3cm x 11.1cm) middle english: (1) f. 74v [dm p. 150], blank folio with a single line inscription. *one photostat (19.7 cm x 15.6 cm) (1) f. 79r [dm p. 159], no writing on it, some diffuse patterns imitate an equatorium, possibly the back of the original back cover of the ms. the descriptions of the photostats confirm (as one may have suspected) that tolkien’s contribution to price and wilson’s edition of the equatorie of the planetis was of a linguistic nature. tolkien was a former classicist and, at the time the edition was in the works (c. 1952– 1955), the merton professor of english language and literature (1945– 1959), lecturing on middle english. this, coupled with his well-known expertise in fourteenth-century english, would have made price and wilson think of him as an obvious advisor.9 it is thus no surprise that the photostats of the folios price sent him contain some of the longest inscriptions in latin together with the middle english treatise in full. kari anne rand debunked their hypothesis in 2014 proving the manuscript is in john westwyk’s hand (2014: 15–35),10 but, at the time (c. 1952–1955), price and wilson wished to demonstrate that the 9 in 1931, richard middlewood wilson (1908–1995) completed an ma dissertation at the university of leeds under the supervision of tolkien’s friend and former colleague e. v. gordon (wilson 1931; 1938: xliv). it is possible that wilson first learned about tolkien’s philological prowess from gordon during their meetings. in any case, wilson acknowledged that the quotations used from the ancrene wisse manuscript to supplement his edition of sawles warde were extracted from reproductions borrowed from tolkien (1938: xliv). wilson also cites tolkien’s middle english scholarly works several times in the edition (1938: xxv, xxxvii–xxxviii, xlvi, 53, 60, 75). moreover, wilson’s professional career as a philologist began in 1931 when the university of leeds appointed him as assistant lecturer (university of leeds 1931: 81), and it seems likely that wilson and tolkien had continued to read each other, met in person or exchanged more letters until the early 50s given the decreasing number of philologists in the british isles. 10 however, the tables in ff. 14r–62r were produced by a different scribe and other ff. contain additional material in a different hand, see falk (2016c: 10). further notes on j. r. r. tolkien’s photostats 171 equatorie of the planetis was a holograph of geoffrey chaucer.11 it is therefore unsurprising that tolkien’s name appears in the acknowledgments of price and wilson’s edition (price 1955b: xvi). given tolkien’s expertise and interest in the finding of the manuscript, motivated by the eventual discovery of chaucer’s own handwriting (cossio 2021: 2), he was meant to get in touch with the editors at some point or another. although tolkien was not best-known for having extensive knowledge of chaucer,12 price and wilson must have known about his landmark essay “chaucer as a philologist: the reeve’s tale” (1934),13 and they could have been cognizant of the fact that he lectured on the medieval author at oxford (cilli 2019: 366–68). even if they were unaware of these facts, it is likely that they were referred to tolkien to aid them with linguistic matters by “the librarian and the society of merton college” given that both are mentioned in the acknowledgements of price and wilson’s edition (price 1955b: xv). it may also be possible that tolkien was the one to approach price and wilson in the first place, considering his fascination with the discovery (cossio 2021: 1–2). 11 had price and wilson proven this, the equatorie of the planetis would have become the first holograph of a chaucerian work ever to emerge. sadly, to this day, scholars can only rely on scribal copies. to understand the importance and implications of such discovery for our fragmentary knowledge of chaucer’s language and spelling see simon horobin (2003: 36–59). 12 tolkien and george s. gordon’s selections from chaucer’s poetry and prose was never finished, though john m. bowers argues that even if the volume had been completed and published, its impact on the field would have been minimal (2019: 13). tolkien’s acclaimed recitations of the nun’s priest’s tale in 1938 and the reeve’s tale in 1939 at the oxford summer diversions, and the abridged edition he prepared for the 1939 performance, were soon forgotten with the coming of the second world war (tolkien 2008: 173). 13 see horobin for a response to tolkien’s essay (2001: 97–105): “study of chaucer’s representation of northern dialect in the reeve’s tale suggests that tolkien’s assumption that inconsistencies were due to the ‘negligence and rape’ of chaucer’s earliest scribes is unlikely, especially given the general accuracy of the hg [hengwrt] manuscript, and the widespread preservation of many of the northern dialect features across the manuscript tradition. it seems more likely that chaucer was concerned with imposing a flavour of the northern dialect on the students’ speech rather than achieving absolute philological accuracy or consistency” (2001: 104). see also horobin for the relevance of tolkien’s essay for modern scholarship and a summary of the essay’s main points and theoretical flaws (2007: 93–94). 172 andoni cossio on a side note, there were several reasons for tolkien to believe that the equatorie of the planetis was an autograph of chaucer initially.14 of all the oxford colleges, merton was the one with which chaucer was most closely associated, and it is precisely there where the oldest surviving equatorium from the middle ages has been kept (price 1955a: 129; falk 2016a: 123).15 moreover, tolkien’s fellow inkling j. a. w. bennett, in a book published in 1974, espoused the view that the equatorie of the planetis was chaucer’s on the grounds of other treaties on astronomy stored at merton (1974: 72–73). as seb falk explains, the belief that chaucer was the author of the equatorie of the planetis also rested on the fact that he had written c. 1391 a treatise on the astrolabe (2016c: 7). allan chapman dates to c. 1350 the making of merton’s equatorium, which can be found on the back of an astrolabe preserved at merton college (1992: 93–94; price 1955a: 129; falk 2016a: 121).16 it is not known with certainty when the artifact was brought into the college,17 but the astrolabe on the other side of the equatorium was designed to be used in the geographical position of oxford in the years ranging from 1350 to 1450, which points towards a local maker and early local use possibly by fellows of merton (chapman 1992: 94).18 14 tolkien’s former student, fellow philologist and friend, s. t. r. o. d’ardenne, held a similar belief in 1954 based on what price had disclosed so far: “the evidence is becoming stronger that the newly discovered equatorie of the planetes [sic] is a holograph (after 1392) of chaucer. however, that is still sub judice and the book on it not yet published” (1954: 6). tolkien may have espoused a similar cautious stance. 15 incidentally, this is a further reason that may have prompted price to contact tolkien as the main medievalist at merton. on 22 may 1952, price borrowed this device from merton for his talk on the instrument described in the equatorie of the planetis for a conversazione, a gathering where new discoveries were presented or showcased, held at the royal society in london (falk 2014: 120–21). a reproduction of the equatorium preserved at merton college serves as the frontispiece to price and wilson’s edition. see falk’s dphil dissertation for a high-resolution photograph of the merton equatorium (2016b: 63, fig.19). 16 for a description of this instrument see falk (2016b: 57–66). 17 see falk for a plausible hypothesis of the donation of the equatorium to the college by the merton fellow william rede c. 1374 (2016a: 125–26). 18 by the early 50s, it was widely accepted that ‘philosophical strode,’ one of the dedicatees of chaucer’s troilus and criseyde (c. 1380), was the merton fellow ralph strode (gollancz 1949: 332), a fact that further strengthened the chaucer-merton-equatorium connection. further notes on j. r. r. tolkien’s photostats 173 in the light of these considerations, tolkien may have thought at first that the equatorie of the planetis was chaucer’s autograph. the tables of the the equatorie of the planetis contain references to oxford though its connection with london is greater (falk 2016c: 14, 18), and the size of the equatorium described in the manuscript is six feet in diameter, but the equatorium at merton has a diameter of just 14.25 inches (chapman 1992: 93). notwithstanding, during tolkien’s time, the association of the instrument with chaucer was a natural one: “all that we can say is that if he [chaucer] . . . did spend any time at oxford, merton must have been his mecca” (bennett 1974: 69) and “thus one by one every astronomical trail in chaucer leads us to oxford, and in oxford to merton” (1974: 75). this and additional contemporary evidence would doubtless make tolkien connect the device and the equatorie of the planetis with chaucer, at least until he had had a closer look at the manuscript. although, as it has been said earlier, chaucerian scholarship was not the hallmark of professor tolkien, he devoted considerable time to the study of chaucer’s language in “chaucer as a philologist: the reeve’s tale” (1934), “the reeve’s tale: version prepared for recitation at the ‘summer diversions’” (1939), extensive lecture notes for the years 1947–1956 and the unfinished selections from chaucer’s poetry and prose.19 what characterizes tolkien’s scholarly work on chaucer is the scrupulous attention devoted to specific linguistic points. thus, he may have been aware, after careful examination of the equatorie of the planetis, that its attribution to chaucer rested on inconclusive evidence. this view of course would have challenged price and wilson’s assumptions and it may explain why we know so little about tolkien’s involvement.20 given price and wilson’s commitment to the hypothesis of chaucerian authorship, it is reasonable to assume that tolkien would have preferred to limit his participation in the project. 19 d’ardenne confirms that tolkien had profound knowledge of chaucer (1979: 36). see bowers for tolkien’s linguistic work in selections from chaucer’s poetry and prose when preparing the texts and glossary (2019: 79–103). the files tolkien vc pamph (10), ms tolkien a 13/2, ms tolkien a 38/2 (ff. 96–126) and ms tolkien a 39, preserved at the weston library, bodleian libraries (university of oxford), contain a vast array of tolkien’s philological notes on chaucer’s language. 20 price could just have asked tolkien about some minor language points, but this seems unlikely given he gifted twenty-five high-quality photostats, which would have been quite expensive in the 1950s, to the oxonian professor. 174 andoni cossio it would be valuable to know more about tolkien’s contribution to price and wilson’s edition of the equatorie of the planetis and his thoughts on the language of the manuscript, as during tolkien’s lifetime, price and wilson’s claims were never unequivocally disproved and the debate around the manuscript’s authorship was never settled. unfortunately, until additional documents come to light, such as correspondence between tolkien and price, this matter is likely to remain unresolved. references anderson, douglas a. 2021: re: books owned by tolkien. personal communication. bennett, j. a. w. 1974: chaucer at oxford and at cambridge. oxford, oxford university press. bowers, john m. 2019: tolkien’s lost chaucer. oxford, oxford university press. chapman, allan 1992: merton college and its astrolabes. postmaster and the merton record: 88–100. cilli, oronzo 2019: tolkien’s library: an annotated checklist. edinburgh, luna press publishing. cossio, andoni 2021: addenda: one middle english manuscript and four editions of medieval works known to j. r. r. tolkien and what they reveal. anq: a quarterly journal of short articles, notes and reviews, advance online publication: 1–8. doi:10.1080/0895769x.2021.1932406. d’ardenne, s. t. r. o. 1954. on middle english textual criticism. études anglaises, 7: 6–21. d’ardenne, s. t. r. o. 1979: the man and the scholar. in mary salu and robert t. farrell eds. j. r. r. tolkien, scholar and storyteller: essays in memoriam. ithaca and london, cornell university press: 33–37. falk, seb 2014: the scholar as craftsman: derek de solla price and the reconstruction of a medieval instrument. notes & records: the royal society journal of the history of science, 68.2: 111–34. falk, seb 2016a: a merton college equatorium: text, translation, commentary. sciamvs: sources and commentaries in exact sciences, 17: 121–59. further notes on j. r. r. tolkien’s photostats 175 falk, seb 2016b: improving instruments: equatoria, astrolabes, and the practices of monastic astronomy in late medieval england. university of cambridge, dphil dissertation. doi:10.17863/cam.87. falk, seb 2016c: learning medieval astronomy through tables: the case of the equatorie of the planetis. centaurus: an international journal of the history of science and its cultural aspects, 58.1–2: 6–25. falk, seb 2019: vernacular craft and science in the equatorie of the planetis. medium ævum, 88.2: 329–60. gollancz, sir israel 1949. pearl, cleaness, patience and sir gawayne. in a. w. ward and a. r. waller eds. the cambridge history of english literature i: from the beginnings to the cycles of romance. cambridge, cambridge university press: 320–34. horobin, simon 2001. j. r. r. tolkien as a philologist: a reconsideration of the northernisms in chaucer’s reeve’s tale. english studies, 82.2: 97–105. horobin, simon 2003. the language of the chaucer tradition. cambridge, d. s. brewer. horobin, simon 2007. chaucer as philologist: the reeve’s tale. in michael d. c. drout ed. j. r. r. tolkien encyclopedia: scholarship and critical assessment. new york and london, routledge: 93–94. pascual, rafael j. 2021: re: article and query. personal communication. price, derek j. 1955a: history of the planetary equatorium. in derek j. price and r. m. wilson eds. the equatorie of the planetis: edited from peterhouse ms. 75. i. cambridge, cambridge university press: 119–33. price, derek j. 1955b: preface. in derek j. price and r. m. wilson eds. the equatorie of the planetis: edited from peterhouse ms. 75. i. cambridge, cambridge university press: xiii–xvi. rand, kari anne 2015: the authorship of the equatorie of the planetis revisited. studia neophilologica, 87: 15–35. tolkien, j. r. r. ed. 2008: the reeve’s tale: version prepared for recitation at the ‘summer diversions’ oxford: 1939. tolkien studies, 5: 173–83. university of leeds 1931. university of leeds calendar, 1931–1932. leeds, jowett and sowry ltd. university of leeds archive, https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/56003. [accessed 4 april 2022] wilson, r. m. ed. 1931: an edition of the middle english homily sawles warde: with notes, glossary and full critical and textual apparatus. university of leeds, ma dissertation. 176 andoni cossio wilson, r. m. ed. 1938: sawles warde: an early middle english homily, edited from the bodley, royal and cotton mss. leeds, the school of english language, university of leeds. author’s address department of english, german, and translation and interpreting university of the basque country (upv/ehu), vitoria-gasteiz, spain c/ paseo de la universidad, 5 01006 vitoria-gasteiz (españa) received: 17 january 2022 e-mail: andoni.cossio@ehu.eus revised version accepted: 11 april 2022 microsoft word 2021article_1_jones.docx jasmine jones, selim26 (2021): 1–23. issn 1132-631x / issn-l 2792-3878 / https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.26.2021.1-23 the lady and the letter: two ecclesiastical analogies in the old english soliloquies1 jasmine jones lady margaret hall, university of oxford this article analyses two ecclesiastical analogies in the old english soliloquies: the analogy of the lady and the analogy of the letter. it argues for a more nuanced and practical interpretation of alfred’s analogies in the old english soliloquies than has previously been put forward. the analogies original to alfred as well as those derived from augustine’s soliloquia, which he manipulates and omits, are designed to be useful, with practical implications for anglo-saxon society. since his prose preface to pastoral care suggests that the demise of the angelcynn is contingent on the demise of the english church, alfred’s analogies in soliloquies prompt the reintegration of these two infrastructures, church and state, to reconsolidate the angelcynn and recover its sacred and secular ar (‘favour with god’ and ‘cultural capital’). by encouraging responses in the individual reader —recourse to the sacramental church and renewed commitment to reading and prayer— alfred’s analogies, particularly of the lady and the letter, seek to cultivate the gregorian “mixed life”. alfred thus aims to revive the terrestrial and celestial favour of the angelcynn by fusing the concerns of ecclesia and state, heaven and earth, contemplative, and active. keywords: anglo-saxon literature; augustine; king alfred the great; old english prose 1 i would like to thank francis leneghan for his helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. 2 jasmine jones 1. introduction analogies in alfredian texts have long been studied by scholars. commonly analysed are the pitcher in the verse epilogue to the old english pastoral care (irvine & godden 2012: 412–413) and the wagon wheel in the boethius (godden & irvine 2009: 521–522).2 however, receiving less attention are the analogies in the soliloquies, the text which arguably contains more analogies than any other text of the alfredian canon.3 in the latin soliloquia and the vernacular soliloquies, analogies punctuate the discourse between the characters of augustine and reason, underpinning the key tenets of their philosophical discussion. analogy, like simile, is the “[i]llustration of an idea by means of a more familiar idea that is similar” (baldick 2015: 14).4 however, in the soliloquies, analogy often merges into allegory: a visual image which establishes “a continuous parallel between two (or more) levels of meaning” (baldick 2015: 8). alfred’s often unclear distinction between these two literary devices is suggestive of his experimental attempt to convert a latinate metaphorical tradition into vernacular english for the first time. critical opinions tend either to emphasise the epistemology of alfred’s analogies in the soliloquies, reducing them to nebulous abstractions which advocate an ascetic rejection of worldliness in order to pursue the divine (wilcox 2006, heuchan 2007), or conversely, they interpret alfred’s analogies as his means to replace augustine’s spiritual preoccupations with a king’s more earthly, socio-political concerns (ganze 2011). the imagery of the preface to the soliloquies has been extensively studied (sayers 2008, irvine 2014: 164–166, treschow 2017) but less studied are the analogies within the text itself. exceptions to this are ruth waterhouse’s (1986) study of the ship, the lover, and the king, miranda wilcox’s (2006) analysis of the “eyes of the mind” metaphor, and paul szarmach’s (2014) survey of wisdom, health, and friendship 2 on the pitcher, see whobrey (1991) and irvine (2014: 158–161); on the wheel, see pratt (2017: 299–301). 3 for an overview of the debate on the authorship of the alfredian canon, see discenza & szarmach (2014: 397–415). 4 hereafter, the augustinian text will be referred to as the soliloquia and the alfredian text as the soliloquies. this study, like most critics other than godden (2007), assumes alfred as the author of the soliloquies. alfred is identified as such in a colophon and the text is closely related to the old english boethius which features prose and verse prefaces also identifying alfred as author. two ecclesiastic analogies in soliloquies 3 as analogies. this article refines these previous studies by focusing on two specific analogies —the lady and the letter— and relating them to broader alfredian concerns. since, according to the prose preface to the old english pastoral care (sweet 1871: 3), it is partly due to the separation of church and state that the angelcynn has decayed (oðfeallenu), alfred aims to re-establish the link between ecclesia and angelcynn through the use of analogies in the soliloquies, persuading his reader that the restoration of church and angelcynn fuses as one and the same issue.5 the two key analogies of the lady and the letter are contextualised by other ecclesiastical images in the text to prompt the reader’s recourse to the sacramental church and to a renewed commitment to reading and prayer. these analogies encourage the enactment of cræft: man’s “proper function” with which, employing the necessary material tools and graces from god, he is able to contribute to the proper ordering of society (hitch 1986–1987: 144). complementing hitch’s understanding of any exterior cræft as “centred on the most important of cræfts, the pursuit of the knowledge of god” (1986–1987: 145), alfred injects augustine’s analogies with an emphasis on “usefulness” and “deeds” to stimulate both practical productivity and piety in the reader, thereby strengthening the church body politic.6 not only would the church sanctify the individual, but it would also channel the divine wisdom necessary for the entire angelcynn’s revival of learning.7 the reader’s proactive response will thus 5 all references to the old english pastoral care (hatton ms) are cited by page number from sweet (1871). s.v. angel-cynn: ‘english race’ (bosworth & toller 2010). for a detailed study of the origins and meaning of angelcynn, see foot (1996). just as alfred prioritises historical exegesis in the old english prose psalms to render the text immediately applicable to his anglo-saxon reader (o’neill 2016), he undertakes a similar contemporising of soliloquia by turning augustinian analogies “earthwards” (pratt 2017: 336). 6 the church body politic is the collective entity of individual christians who constitute the church. see 1 corinthians 12:27–28. all references to the bible are to the vulgate, www.latinvulgate.com (27 february 2020). 7 members of the church are responsible for the educational revival of the angelcynn. the prose preface to the pastoral care is addressed to alfred’s bishops and cites the archbishop plegmund and the monks asser, grimbald and the priest john as alfred’s scholarly delegates, helping with the translation programme. the purposeful translation of religious texts —the dialogues, boethius, and the prose psalms as well as the soliloquies— will bring the angelcynn devotionally closer to god, and will simultaneously 4 jasmine jones guarantee their own soul’s favourable judgement after death, a restoration of the state’s ar (‘honour’) through cultural revival, and god’s imminent ar (‘mercy’) in alleviating the angelcynn of their recent affliction by the vikings (ganze 2011: 31).8 alfred thus adapts augustine’s analogies —and invents his own— to advocate the “mixed life”. pioneered by gregory the great and reinforced by bede, this “mixed life” synthesised active labour in the public world with contemplative personal prayer.9 although it has been argued that the “mixed life” was only practised by the laity “towards the end of the fourteenth century” (carey 1987: 361), the circulation of devotional and theological texts in the vernacular as part of alfred’s translation programme suggests that, from the ninth century, laypeople as well as ecclesiastics were encouraged to conflate their commitment to sacred and secular duties. it is by analysing two key analogies of the lady and the letter that this alfredian agenda of reintegrating church and state becomes evident. renew the state’s cultural reputation which previously attracted men utanbordes (‘from abroad’, sweet 1871: 3, 7). 8 doe s.v. ār, āre (21 occurrences); the dual secular and sacred meanings of this noun include ‘honour, distinction (as received, gained, held or enjoyed); dignity, glory; token of respect, temporal dignity’ [sense a.1.c.], ‘mercy, grace, favour, help’ [sense b], ‘forgiveness (of sins gen.)’ [sense b.1.a.], ‘grace, favour granted by god; salvation’ [sense b.2.], ‘temporal prosperity, good fortune, benefit [sense b.4.], property, possession(s), goods, resources’ [sense c]. 9 see watson (2016: 6) for gregory’s preface to the dialogi, in which, “weighed down with too many troubles of certain worldly affairs” (nimiis quorundam sclarium tumultibus depressus), gregory seeks “a solitary place” (secretum locum). see hecht (1965: 1) for the prose preface to werfeth’s old english dialogues, in which alfred paraphrases gregory’s pursuit of the “mixed life” by declaring that there is “seo mæste ðearf, þæt we hwilon ure mod betwix þas eorþlican ymbhigdoo geleoðigen and gebigen to ðam godcundan and þam gastlice rihte” (‘the greatest need, that at times during these earthly anxieties we yield and bend our minds to divine and spiritual duties’). see hurst (1983: 274–275) for bede’s definition of the church body politic as constituted by those “qui in serenitate uitae temporalis psalmis ieiuniis […] orationibus et elemosinis […] domino seruire cupiunt” (‘who in temporal life’s serenity desire to serve the lord with psalms, fasts, prayers and alms’). gregory, bede, and alfred thus all encourage their reader’s dedication to god through both spiritual and physical labour. all latin and old english translations are my own. two ecclesiastic analogies in soliloquies 5 2. the lady in his recent study, szarmach describes the interaction of lady wisdom and her lover as “[c]ertainly the most startling metaphor in soliloquies” (2014: 242). szarmach agrees with waterhouse that alfred’s more “sensuous and emotive” adaptation of the latin “crowds out the literal level of intellectual desire, ignoring logical problems (such as wisdom’s relationship back to the lover) in the immediate appeal to erotic experience” (2014: 243). however, if the lady wisdom is understood in its original biblical context as a figuration of god, the omniscient source of all knowledge, then there is no “logical problem” in wisdom reciprocating the lover’s advances: it is a doctrinal given that god can respond by returning grace (ar) to the faithful christian who pursues him. moreover, by reading the analogy within the context of the biblical solomonic books and the theological development of dionysian mysticism, we can better appreciate how intellectual desire is intensified rather than “crowded out” by alfred’s eroticising of the latin text. throughout the solomonic books of the bible, wisdom is personified as a lady with whom man greatly desires nuptial union, signifying the all-consuming desire of man to be one with god and the limitless knowledge he epitomises. in proverbs 31:10, wisdom is extolled as the ideal wife, the mulierem fortem (‘valiant woman’), whilst in wisdom 6:21 solomon asserts that “concupiscentia itaque sapientiae deducet ad regnum perpetuum” (‘the desire of wisdom thus leads to the everlasting kingdom’). likewise, in wisdom 8:2 and 8:4 he declares, hanc amavi et exquisivi a iuventute mea et quaesivi sponsam mihi adsumere et amator factus sum formae illius […] doctrix est enim disciplinae dei et electrix operum illius ‘i have loved her and sought her out since my youth and i have desired to take her for my bride and i have become a lover of her beauty […] for she is the teacher of god’s instruction and the chooser of his works’ given the importance of king solomon as a model for royal wisdom in early medieval kingship, alfred’s incorporation of solomonic tropes —particularly the lady wisdom in the old english boethius and in the soliloquies— enhances the authority of his regal public image.10 however, the latin text is primarily 10 on the kingship of alfred and solomon, see abels (1998: 219–257), pratt (2007: 75– 78, 133, 151–178). 6 jasmine jones concerned with the behaviour of the lover, insisting that he must be pure in his pursuit of wisdom, free from any other claims on his attention. the old english text instead focuses on the purity of wisdom herself and urges the lover to only engage with her unadulterated form, undiluted by any intermediaries. to stress this point, alfred injects the analogy with much greater sensuousness than it has in the more spiritualising soliloquia. in book one of soliloquia, reason enquires of augustine what kind of lover of wisdom he is (qualis sis amator sapientiae, p. 54), and reason encourages augustine’s chaste love for wisdom.11 the relationship between man and wisdom is emphatically characterised as truly chaste and without any defilement (vere casta est et sine ulla contaminatione coniunctio, p. 56), despite man’s desire to see and hold wisdom naked with no intermediary garment dividing them. the analogy’s main message is that augustine should concentrate on wisdom as his sole pursuit (solam, p. 56), with no other distractions, just as a lady demands her lover’s undivided attention. the latin text characterises wisdom as the agent of the relationship, as it is she who decides when to show herself (se […] demonstrabit, p. 56) and give herself (se […] daret, p. 56) to those very few and highest chosen of her lovers (paucissimis et electissimis amatoribus suis, pp. 54–56).12 as a chaste union, contact with wisdom functions nebulously as an ethereal illumination of the spirit with [l]ux est quaedam ineffabilis et incomprehensibilis mentium (‘the light of our minds, that which is ineffable and incomprehensible’, p. 56). this metaphysical union will edify (doceat, p. 56) man as wisdom provides a microcosmic insight to the macrocosmic brightness of the beatific union which lies ahead. augustine’s soliloquia thus situates wisdom within a cosmic context as she endows her lover with an incremental comprehension of the universe and its creator. wisdom enables man’s mind to escalate from terrestrial reflections of god’s radiance —the material glimmer of gold and silver which is the starting point (effulget, ut argentum, aurum et similia, p. 56)— to the more profound celestial insight derived from mystical contemplation of the stars, moon, and splendour of the dawn (sidera, deinde luna, deinde aurorae fulgor, p. 56). 11 all references to the soliloquia are cited by page number from watson (1990). 12 although waterhouse (1986: 70) asserts that a reciprocal relationship with man is “something wisdom can hardly do, further separating the literal and figurative levels”, these reflexive verbal constructions in the latin source indicate wisdom’s considerable agency in her interactions with man. two ecclesiastic analogies in soliloquies 7 in alfred’s more tangible terms, reason explains to augustine that he should unite himself to wisdom as completely as a man does with his lady, touching and kissing her bare body directly rather than through the obstruction of clothes (þaccian and cyssan ðone oðerne on bær lic, þonne þer þær claðas beotweona beoð, p. 75).13 whereas the latin text only makes passing reference to wisdom’s nakedness and the absence of any intervening garments (nullo interposito velamento quasi nudam, p. 54), the nudity of wisdom and the tactility with which she should be handled is a more vivid and repeated preoccupation of the old english text. alfred’s text goes on to assert that wisdom cannot be held with gloved hands (mid geglofedum handum, p. 76), suggesting that wisdom cannot be properly grasped if one only tries to contact her through intermediaries. alfred’s more tactile language recalls that of proverbs 3:18–19, where adprehenderint implies a vigorous ‘seizing hold of’ and tenuerit suggests a ‘holding onto’ the bride wisdom: “lignum vitae est his qui adprehenderint eam et qui tenuerit eam beatus” (‘she is a tree of life to those who seize hold of her and blessed is he who holds onto her’). augustine’s latin text also attributes wisdom with greater agency, leaving the lover dependent on the passive receipt of grace, whereas the old english text shifts emphasis to the action required on the part of the lover. reason orders augustine to put his own bare body up against wisdom in order to feel her ([ð]u scealt æac don bær lic ongean, p. 76) and reason prompts augustine to be an active pursuer of wisdom by questioning what he would do if she were to flee from him: “heo ðonne þe fluge […] þæt þu woldest ælce oðer lufe aletan for hyre anre lufe, woldest þu þonne swa don swa heo wylnode?” (‘suppose she fled from you […] that you would abandon every other love for love of her alone, would you then do just as she wanted?’, p. 76). alfred thus enhances the eroticism of the lady analogy so as to emphasise the importance of engaging man’s entire soul and body in striving to attain knowledge of the divine. i would suggest that alfred’s intensified emphasis of the physical union of man and lady especially recalls the sensuousness central to the song of solomon: the biblical book in which, according to exegetical tradition, the collective church, as christ’s bride (sponsa), yearns for union with christ. particularly resonant is the first verse of the text, in which the bride commands “let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth” (osculetur me osculo oris).14 in bede’s commentary in cantica canticorum, with which alfred was possibly familiar, 13 all references to soliloquies are cited by page number from carnicelli (1969). 14 see song of solomon 1:1. the synagogue is a type of the christian church. 8 jasmine jones this verse is interpreted as the bride’s wish for christ to instruct her directly himself (holder 2011: 38).15 bede’s understanding is probably informed by origen’s interpretation of the bride’s prayer as the church’s yearning for direct knowledge of god through divine revelation (edwards 2018: 84). for alfred, the moral and material dilapidation of the church meant that the ecclesia anglorum was likewise in need of a revitalisation of holiness and a restoration by god’s grace, as he articulates in the prose preface to the pastoral care. it is possible then that alfred adapts augustine so that the soliloquies more closely resembles the song of solomon. his text’s echoing of the song of solomon would thus further his own political agenda of promoting the revival of church and state. analogous to the song’s “kiss of the mouth” is alfred’s yearning for “gloveless”, unmediated contact with wisdom, implying his aspiration to revive the anglo-saxon church’s pure oneness with christ so as to retrieve the angelcynn’s temporal and eternal prosperity.16 alfred’s more bodily perception of lady wisdom encourages a more immersive, physical engagement with christ. the early teachings of christian mysticism were known to the anglo-saxons —likely through the translations of eriugena— as early as the eighth century; for example, a citation of pseudo-dionysius features in bede’s commentary on mark (rutherford 1980: 221).17 central to these teachings is what rutherford calls jenseitssehnsucht, a longing for the other-world, yearning for mystical union with christ (p. 226). contrary to waterhouse’s statement that the “graphic detail” of this encounter “swamps” the intellectual layer of the argument in the soliloquies (1986: 69), alfred’s addition of erotic imagery does not obstruct but rather illuminates his intellectual point: the importance of striving for this personal union with god through the pursuit of wisdom in learning and devotion. alfred’s sophisticated analogy of the lover of wisdom thus describes a transcendent experience of mystical divine union through the erotic imagery, which is a commonplace of the middle english mystics such as margery kempe. 15 for further echoes of the song of songs in alfredian writing, see pratt (2007: 153) and o’neill (2001: 90). there is no evidence for the direct influence of bede’s commentary on alfred but even if he was not exposed to this specific commentary, he would likely have known about interpretations of the song of solomon from listening to homilies, devotion to the psalms and praying the liturgy of hours (pratt 2007: 242). 16 this is similar to the old english boethius in which “the journey towards god is presented as a consequence of the ever-closer relationship between wisdom and boethius/mod”, unlike in de consolatione philosophiae (brooks 2018: 529). 17 on anglo-saxon mysticism, see flight (2016). two ecclesiastic analogies in soliloquies 9 the specifically manual emphasis of alfred’s analogy may prompt the reader to directly grasp in their own hands scripture, a patristic text, or even an alfredian translation from which god’s divine wisdom can be derived. this emphasis on tactility links to the alfred jewel, which a reader may have held as a pointer or bookmark whilst reading the old english pastoral care, the text which it accompanied. since the figure depicted within the crystal inset of the alfred jewel has been identified as wisdom, the reader physically holds wisdom whilst practising the exterior cræft of reading as well as mentally holding the wisdom they acquire from what they read, the interior cræft of knowing god (hitch 1986–1987: 144–145). alfred’s dual cræft of providing both leadership to his state and pastoral care to the english church as a pious christian ruler — following the examples of charlemagne, louis the pious, and charles the bald— is complemented by the song of solomon’s pun on the bridegroom’s identity as both a king (rex) and a shepherd with flocks (greges).18 the allegory of lady wisdom thus goes some way to promote alfred’s societal reform: he encourages each individual’s integration of their intrapersonal sacred and interpersonal secular activity by pursuing, holding onto and acting upon divine wisdom.19 the aim is to reunite the collective ecclesiastical and state body politics, advancing the angelcynn in divine wisdom, cultural capital, and salvation. alfred’s “materialising” of augustine’s more metaphysical metaphor of the lady wisdom is the king’s means of tethering his adaptation to its immediate context of the anglo-saxon ecclesiastical and societal reforms. this interpretation of the lady analogy is reinforced by an analogy just before it. in this earlier analogy, alfred adapts augustine’s text to remind the reader of god’s immanence in the church’s prayer and learning and the need for a renewed awareness of this divine intimacy in rebuilding the angelcynn. in the latin text, god’s activity is figured cosmologically as he works, per menses incrementis decrementisque lunaribus, […] per lustra perfectione cursus solaris, per magnos orbes recursu in ortus suos siderum […] (p. 26) ‘through the months with the waxing and waning of the moon, […] through the lustra with the completion of the course of the sun, through the great cycles with the return of the stars to their beginnings […]’ 18 see song of solomon 1:3 and 1:6. 19 for bede on wisdom, acts of charity and the song of solomon, see holder (2006: 169–188). 10 jasmine jones the intricacy with which god orders the solar system —even the minutiae of the moon’s motion— suggests his close involvement with creation. yet the augustinian god operates more remotely from mankind than the alfredian god, just as the augustinian lady exists more metaphysically than the more tangible alfredian lady. the configuration of natural cycles by alfred’s god is thus grounded within the proximity of humans on earth rather than the loftiness of the universe: þa ylcan eft ne cumæð þær ðær hy er weron, eallunga swa swa hy er weron. ac cumað oðre for hy, swa swa leaf on treowum; and æpla, (and) gears [sic], and wyrtan, […] and swa eall nytenu and fugelas […] (p. 53) ‘the same come not again there where they formerly were, completely just as they were before. but others come in their stead, as leaves on trees; and apples, grass, and plants [….] and likewise all beasts and fowls […]’ the passage of seasons and ageing of livestock are thus more effective analogies with which to bolster alfred’s “homely” agenda of reconsolidating the angelcynn. these rustic images encourage the reader to use their immediate earthly life for growth in divine wisdom just as god uses his worldly immanence to manifest graces. it is this same earthly usefulness which is promoted to the reader by the practical hunting (huntigan), fowling (fuglian), and fishing (fiscian) which the temporary cottage (lænan stoclife) facilitates in the preface to soliloquies (p. 48). the ageing bodies of the nytenu (‘beasts’) and fugelas (‘fowls’) not only indicate the transience of earthly life and thus man’s need to prepare for eternity through prayer, but they also accentuate man’s superiority over these animals due to his divine intellect. although men’s bodies eventually decay like those of animals, alfred emphasises that it is because of men’s rationality that “swa swa hy ær wurðlicor lybbað þonne treowu oðþe oðre nytenu, swa hy eac weorðfulicor arisað on domes dæge” (‘just as they live[d] before [while on earth] more worthily than trees or other creatures, so shall they also arise more worthily on doomsday’, p. 53). since reason teaches authoritatively throughout soliloquies, alfred hints that this particular text in his translation programme is indispensable for the salvific wisdom it imparts to the angelcynn, as it is man’s reason that warrants him an afterlife superior to that of animals. by highlighting that man is privileged by his imago dei intellect, alfred encourages the reader to use their elevated reason as a tool while on earth, just as alfred’s lady analogy two ecclesiastic analogies in soliloquies 11 promotes the mind and body’s zealous pursuit of and firm hold of wisdom.20 man should acquire divine wisdom from the church and through reading and prayer to earn god’s immediate favour for the angelcynn and the merits of heavenly glory which are reserved for the rational human soul. 3. the letter it is likewise the pursuit of divine wisdom by use of the rational soul which alfred promotes in another analogy in soliloquies. alfred adds the analogy of a thane obeying the contents of a letter he has received from his lord to book one, in which reason answers augustine’s question of how he can attain virtues and forsake material attachments so as to trust more wholly in god: geþenc nu gyf ðines hlafordes ærendegewrit and hys insegel to ðe cymð, hwæðer þu mæge cweðan þæt ðu hine be ðam ongytan ne mægæ, ne hys willan þær-on gecnawan ne mæge. gyf þu ðonne cwyst þæt þu hys willan ðer-on gecnawan mage, cweð þonne hweðer þe rihtra þince þe þus hys willan folgie, þe þu folgie þam welam þe he ðe er forgeaf to-eacan hys freondscype (p. 62) ‘consider now if a letter from your lord with his seal should come to you, whether you would say that you cannot understand him by that, nor recognise his will therein? if you then say that you cannot recognise his will therein, say then whether it seems more proper that you follow his will, or that you follow the wealth that he previously gave you over and beyond his friendship’ encouraging the gregorian “mixed life” and contemporising augustine’s soliloquia is alfred’s original analogy of the anglo-saxon comitatus. obedience to one’s “lord” simultaneously signifies loyalty to king alfred and the state as well as to the lord god and his church, thus prompting the reader’s conformity to both. alfred encourages the reintegration of sacred and secular duty through analogical ambiguity in order to restore stability the angelcynn. the synthesis of sacred and secular meanings in this analogy is anticipated by the analogy which directly precedes it, an analogy in which the directness of 20 the human soul as man’s divine imprint is an especially augustinian idea articulated in his commentary on genesis, with which alfred was probably familiar (migne 1841– 1855a: col. 0331): “scilicet rationales mentes, in quo genere homo factus est ad imaginem dei” (‘that is to say, rational minds, in which kind man was made in the image of god’). 12 jasmine jones a ship’s connection to its cable parallels the immediacy of an individual’s mental access to god.21 reason articulates this nautical analogy thus: for ðam þingum is ðearf þæt þu rihte hawie mid modes ængum to gode, swa rihte swa swa scipes ancer streng byð aþenæd on gerihte fram þam scype to þam ancræ; and gefastna þa eagan þines modes on gode swa se ancer byd gefastnoð on ðære eorðan. þeah þæt scyp si ute on ðære sæ on þam ydum[sic], hyt byð gesund [and] untoslegen, gyf se streng aþolað; forðam hys byd se oðer ende fast on þære eorðan and se oðer on ðam scype (pp. 61–62) ‘therefore it is necessary that you look properly with the mind’s eyes towards god, just as the anchor-cable of a ship is stretched directly from the ship to the anchor; and fasten the eyes of your mind on god as the anchor is fastened in the earth. though the ship is out at sea on the waves, it is sound [and] not broken to pieces if the cable endures; because one end of it is fastened to the earth and the other to the ship’ reason then explains that the mind’s eye is reason, and that the anchors enabling reason to fixate on god are the virtues, including wisdom, humility, and prudence. the ship is then identified as the individual mind —“ship of the mind” (scyp […] modes, p. 62). scholars have been critical of this analogy, arguing that the shift in the ship’s symbolism lacks rationale and that the analogy’s meaning is overwhelmed by its logical problems (waterhouse 1986: 68). however, in focusing on the mechanics of alfred’s analogy, critics have overlooked the larger theological tradition from which alfred is drawing in order to communicate his message. just as bede defines the ecclesiastical body politic as constituted by “every elect soul” (anima quaeque electa, hurst 1983: 210), so alfred’s ship of the mind could be a microcosm of the larger church body politic (scyp) of which it is a member. the earliest nautical figuration of the church is by tertullian: “avicula illa figuram ecclesiae praeferebat quod in mari, id est in saeculo, fluctibus id est persecutionibus et temptationibus inquietetur” (‘[t]hat little ship presented a figure of the church because on the sea, that is, in the present age, it is being troubled by the waves of persecutions and trials’, evans 1964: 29). such an interpretation of the ship would suitably describe the struggling anglo-saxon mind and church, both of which have been traumatised by the viking invasions and their effects. given the patristic precedent for allegorising the church as a 21 on “eyes of the mind”, see waterhouse (1986: 64–68); on “ship of the mind”, see wilcox (2006: 179–217). two ecclesiastic analogies in soliloquies 13 ship then, the ship in soliloquies may be understood as a figure of the church, the conduit of divine graces to which the reader should have recourse through its sacraments and scripture, especially during times of political turbulence. the lord issuing the letter in the subsequent analogy, then, strongly evokes god issuing his commandments in scripture. he expects each of his christian thanes and the collective church comitatus to obey these decrees after unsealing the letter: this could literally mean after opening the bible and reading its contents so as to “know” (ongytan) god, yet this could metaphorically mean after “unsealing” god’s word through exegesis (p. 62).22 carnicelli (1969: 100) has also identified an “implicit appeal to scriptural authority” in this analogy, but he interprets the analogy as arguing for the “contrast between god and an earthly lord” (italics mine). since it was common for kings to communicate their will to their subjects through vernacular letters and writs (abels 1998: 231), the more secular interpretation of this multivalent analogy is that it advocates the submission of alfred’s subjects, the state body politic, to his decrees as king (waterhouse 1986: 72). i would suggest, however, that rather than perceiving obedience to secular and sacred lordships as conflicting principles, the analogy promotes their assimilation. in addition to this interpretation of the letter as the bible, the lord’s letter could also correspond more specifically to alfred’s own writings. alfred’s prose preface to the pastoral care is literally a letter from a lord as he addresses the bishops with spiritual and temporal authority, demanding their support in reforming church and state. similarly alfred’s book of law codes, the domboc, synthesises christian and anglo-saxon laws to advance the angelcynn’s unity of church and state through obedience to the concurrent lordships of god and alfred.23 this preface frames alfred’s laws as direct descendants of the divine laws revealed to moses in the old testament (dryhten was sprecende ðas word to moyse, p. 26).24 alfred’s laws are aligned with those of christ, as both the alfredian and the new testament christian laws seek to bring forth (geecenne) rather than annul the mosaic covenant with god. particularly promoting simultaneous obedience to the divine lord and the earthly lord alfred is the 22 the metaphorical “unsealing” of the bible pertains to the gebedmen and those studying for holy orders who are described as alfred’s target audience in the prose preface to pastoral care (sweet 1871: 7). the soliloquies is likely aimed at those who can disseminate scriptural exegesis to congregations through homilies. 23 on the domboc, see preston (2012). 24 all quotations from the domboc are cited by page number from liebermann (1903). 14 jasmine jones emphasis on christ’s mercy, which both operates through and is bestowed upon weoruldhlafordas (‘secular lords’, p. 44) according to the law codes’ preface. the preface strategically changes christ’s command to love one’s neighbour as oneself (illi diliges proximum tuum tamquam te ipsum, mark 12:31) to loving one’s lord as the lord himself: “he bebead þone hlaford lufian swa hine” (p. 46). the analogy of the lord’s letter in soliloquies similarly equates obedience to god with obedience to the king, and this intertwining of earthly and heavenly duty is thus promoted to the reader across the wider alfredian corpus. the interpretation of the lord’s letter (ærendgewrit) as a metaphor for scripture, encouraging the reader’s devotion to the church’s textual tradition and to god’s will as communicated therein, is supported by alfred’s subsequent promotion of reading to acquire divine wisdom. after the letter analogy, in book three of the soliloquies, alfred increases the urgency to acquire divine wisdom through the church’s written tradition by supplying an analogous reference to the parable of dives, abraham, and lazarus. whereas in luke 16:29 it is the study of and belief in moses and the prophets (mosen et prophetas) which will save the relatives of dives from his same hellish fate, in soliloquies it is instead their study of and belief in patristic texts —the haligra fedra bec (‘books of the holy fathers’, p. 95)— which will save them from damnation. alfred thus adapts christ’s parable to implicitly coerce his reader —who is vicariously addressed by the imperatives [l]eorniæn þa on, and gelyfan þam (‘[l]et them study them and believe them’, p. 95)— to read and believe in the patristic texts translated as part of the alfredian reform programme —such as gregory’s dialogi and regula pastoralis and augustine’s soliloquia— in an effort to rebuild the english church and state with divine wisdom.25 as well as alfred’s biblical analogy of dives, abraham, and lazarus encouraging the reader —and the angelcynn they synecdochise— to advance in divine wisdom via contemplative reading, it also prompts their conversion of this contemplation into action by performing good deeds, since it was for neglecting to show charity towards lazarus that dives was damned. reading, prayer, and practice is intended to privately save the reader’s soul and publicly improve the cohesion of the angelcynn. alfred thus reasserts that it is by each individual —including himself— living a “mixed life”, integrating contemplative spiritual duties with 25 the preface to the soliloquies, with its imagery of the author building a cottage in the woods, may itself serve as an allegory for, among other things, the building of the english church. two ecclesiastic analogies in soliloquies 15 active societal duties, that the angelcynn will doubly recover its sacred and secular ar. alfred also supplies the analogy of the king’s house to accentuate the need of simultaneous allegiance to both regal authority and divine authority. in soliloquia, the various paths to god’s wisdom are described in vague epistemological abstractions: “quippe pro sua quisque sanitate ac firmitate comprehendit illud singulare ac verissmium bonum” (‘indeed everyone embraces that unique and truest good in accordance with his own health and stamina’, p. 56). alfred adapts augustine’s philosophical tone to add the more practical analogy of attaining god’s wisdom by journeying on various paths to the king’s home: geðenc nu hweðer awiht mani mann cynges ham sece þer ðær he ðonne on tune byde, oððe hys gemot, oððe hys fird, oððe hweðer ðe ðe ðince þæt hi æalle on anne weig þeder cumen. ic wene þeah cume on swiðe manige wegas: sume cumað swiðe feorran, and habbað swiðe læ[n]gne […] sume habbað swiðe langne and swiðe rihtne and swiðe godne. sume habbað swiðe sceortne […] ælc þara þe hys wilnað and þe hys geornful byt, he hym mæg cuman to and on hys hyrede wunian […] swa swa ælces cynges hama beoð sume on bure, sume on healle, […] and lybbað þeah æalle be anes hlafordes are […] (p. 77) ‘think now whether any man seeks there the king’s home where he is town, or his court, or his army, or whether it seems to you that they all must come there by the same road. conversely, i think they come by very many paths: some come very far, and have a very long path […] some have a very long and very proper and very good path. some have a very short path […] each of those who desire and eagerly pray for it, he can come to and live in its household […] just so is every king’s home, some live in cottages, some in halls, […] and they nevertheless all live by the favour of one lord’ the anaphoric “sume” (‘some’) combined with the extensive list of available paths en route to and dwellings in proximity to the king’s house implies the vast means of revering the king and benefitting from his favour, as exemplified by the three estates of the fighters (ferdmen), labourers (weorcmen), and religious men (gebedmen) mentioned in the old english boethius (godden & irvine 2009: 421). alfred thus contemporises augustine’s soliloquia to prompt the reader to persevere in honouring the king by contributing to anglo-saxon society and thus restoring stability to the angelcynn. however, the extensive listing of possible paths to guaranteeing anes hlafordes are (‘the favour of one lord’) particularly recalls the monotheistic focus of 16 jasmine jones striving to attain the favour of god, especially by contributing to his church. the repetition of quosdam and alios in ephesians 4:10–12 is very similar to the aforementioned sume anaphora in the old english text, as this scriptural passage likewise demonstrates the diverse means by which god’s wisdom and favour can be attained: qui descendit ipse est et qui ascendit super omnes caelos ut impleret omnia et ipse dedit quosdam quidem apostolos quosdam autem prophetas alios vero evangelistas alios autem pastores et doctores ad consummationem sanctorum in opus ministerii in aedificationem corporis christi. ‘he who descended is he who ascended above all the heavens in order to fill all things and he himself gave some apostles, and some prophets, and others some evangelists, and others some pastors and doctors for the perfecting of saints in the work of ministry in building up the body of christ.’ it is therefore by living out a vast range of vocations, whether as apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and doctors even in the face of difficulty, that the church militant can be strengthened. not only will these roles reinforce the societal infrastructure of peoples while on earth, but it will enable them to reach the church triumphant, gaining the spiritual graces with which god fills all things (impleret omnia). alfred thus equates his kingship with that of christ in his analogy of persevering on the paths to wisdom, although some paths may demand harder efforts than others: “sume habbað swiðe langne […]. sume habbað swiðe sceortne” (‘some have a very long path […]. some have a very short path’, p. 77). alfred thus prompts the reader to commit purposefully to their pursuit of his favour and the favour of the angelcynn which he represents, just as members of the church undertake their christian vocations to help the ecclesiastical body politic coalesce and to merit temporal and eternal graces from the king at its head. alfred’s promotion of the angelcynn’s restoration by active recourse to the church’s textual tradition is also amplified by its echoing of augustine’s distaste for the passive receipt of wisdom as articulated in soliloquia: “exspectamus, ecquid nobis librorum alienorum in manus incidat” (‘we are waiting, should something from other people’s books fall into our hands’, p. 106). augustine insists that the truth which was written in these books during a more prosperous era should no longer be concealed from the present reader. this is echoed in the alfredian attempt to revive the anglo-saxon golden age of learning by rendering universally accessible the latin theological tradition in two ecclesiastic analogies in soliloquies 17 the vernacular.26 it is hoped that the angelcynn will conform more fervently to the church and its belief system by reading the theological and devotional texts translated as part of alfred’s reform programme, just as augustine epiphanically converted to christianity by fulfilling the command to “pick up and read” (tolle, lege) the bible, according to his confessions (hamond 2014: 408–409). alfred’s translations will also restore the angelcynn’s cultural reputation, as suggested by the æstel, the luxurious book-pointer, with which pastoral care was likely accompanied.27 4. conclusion previous scholars have attempted sweeping surveys of the analogies in alfred’s soliloquies with a narrow, practical criticism-type focus. however, this current study has instead honed in on the analogies of the lady and the letter to argue for their coherence when understood within their theological and historical contexts and their significant purpose in realising the alfredian agenda, the “[m]aking of the angelcynn” (foot 1996: 29). just as hitch (1986–1987: 145) argues that the performance of any practical cræft —whether ruling as a king or working as a builder— is synonymous with the spiritual cræft of pursuing divine wisdom, this essay argues for the usefulness of alfred’s analogies in promoting the synthesised rebuilding of state and church, with the restoration of the secular polity contingent on the restoration of the sacred. since the prose preface to the pastoral care equates the devastated english churches with the dilapidated angelcynn, alfred encourages the reader’s renewed devotion to the sacramental church, and their renewed commitment to spiritual reading and prayer through the analogies of the lady and the letter.28 by switching the latin text’s focus from the constancy of the lover to the purity of 26 see sweet (1871: 2–9). 27 see sweet (1871: 9) for the æstel, which symbolised the twofold wealth —terrestrial treasure and celestial graces— which the angelcynn would acquire through renewed learning. the alfred jewel —probably an æstel— is inscribed ælfred mec heht gewyrcan (‘alfred ordered me to be made’). alfred is thus glorified for his revival of both types of wealth by attempting to reintegrate church and state. 28 the churches are deprived of the treasures and books with which they were filled just as the state has, “lost both the wealth and the wisdom” (“ægðer forlæten ge ðone welan ge ðone wisdom”, p. 5). 18 jasmine jones wisdom herself and by recalling the song of solomon and dionysian mysticism in his eroticised account of lady wisdom, alfred promotes the church as harbouring the purity of divine wisdom on earth in its sacraments and scripture. alfred grounds augustine’s cosmic analogies within a local context to emphasise god’s immanence in the world, the operation of his grace through secular as well as sacred polities, and the material accessibility of god’s presence while on earth. the analogy of the letter advocates adherence to the church’s textual tradition as well as to the temporal law codes, fusing the importance of obedience to alfred as earthly king and god as heavenly king. complementing this, the analogy of the paths to the king’s court promotes the manifold means of contributing to the state and the vast vocations by which one belongs to the church. the intertwining of the secular and sacred interpretations in the lady, the letter and the surrounding analogies by which they are contextualised thus prompt the strengthening of the ecclesiastical body politic and the reinforcement of the angelcynn’s identity as a united “english people” (foot 1996: 29). according to alfred’s prose preface to pastoral care, it was when obedience to god bound king and cleric that sibbe (‘peace’), siodo (‘morality’), and onweald (‘power’) were enjoyed by the angelcynn and when maðma (‘treasures’) and boca (‘books’) filled the churches (1996: 5). the more secular interpretations elicited from alfred’s royal analogies thus do not undermine ecclesiastical interpretations of them. the coexistence of both hermeneutic possibilities accentuates the alfredian agenda of merging church and state to restore the past golden age. as augustine argues in de doctrina christiana, analogies can be enjoyed for their intellectual stimulation as well as being valued for their utility as a spiritual exercise in advancing the soul towards a clearer understanding of god.29 alfred’s analogies thus serve a mnemonic function: a familiar key image lodges in the reader’s memory, prompting their understanding of an unfamiliar spiritual concept, which is then converted into the wilful execution of a corresponding 29 see green (1995: 14): “res ergo aliae sunt quibus fruendum est, aliae quibus utendum, aliae quae fruuntur et utuntur. […] istis quibus utendum est tendentes ad beatitudinem adiuvamur et quasi adminiculamur, ut ad illas quae nos beatos faciunt pervenire atque his inhaerere possimus” (‘there are some things therefore which are to be enjoyed, some which are to be used, some which are for enjoyment and for use […] those which are for use help and so to speak, prop us up while we are striving towards blessedness, so that we can reach and adhere to those things which make us blessed’). two ecclesiastic analogies in soliloquies 19 earthly action.30 this intertwining of metaphysical and physical practice is likewise promoted in the verse preface to the old english dialogues, a translation of gregory’s dialogi undertaken by bishop wærferth at the king’s instigation: one should not only trust in the saints’ intercession (haligra helpe geliefeð) but also carry out their example (hiora bisene fulgað, p. 404).31 nicole guenther discenza’s comment that alfred’s boethius “never forgets that the rise to heaven begins here on earth” (2014: 217) thus pertains even more to the soliloquies. as a text preoccupied with providence, augustine’s analogies are adapted by alfred to initiate an impulse to the “mixed life”. the analogies of the lady and the letter emphasise that it is by each individual living out their simultaneous duties to the church and state that the anglo-saxon society of which they are a microcosm will be structurally reintegrated. this reintegration will see secular and sacred ar restored to the angelcynn, protecting them from future viking invasion and enhancing their temporal and eternal prosperity. references primary sources carnicelli, t. ed. 1969: king alfred’s version of st. augustine’s soliloquies. massachusetts, harvard university press. evans, e. c. ed. 1964: septimii florentis tertulliani: de baptismo liber. london, the society for promoting christian knowledge. http://www.tertullian.org/articles/ evans_bapt/evans_bapt_text_trans.htm [accessed 25 march 2020]. godden, m. & s. irvine eds. 2009: the old english boethius: an edition of the old english versions of boethius’s ‘de consolatione philosophiae’. vol. 1. new york, oxford university press. green, r. p. h. ed. 1995: de doctrina christiana. oxford, oxford university press. hammond, c. j.-b. trans. 2014: confessions. vol. 1. massachusetts, harvard university press. hammond, c. j.-b. trans. 2016: confessions. vol. 2. massachusetts, harvard university press. hargrove, h. l. ed. 1902: king alfred’s old english version of st. augustine’s ‘soliloquies’. new york, henry holt and company. 30 on the augustinian trinity of memory, understanding, and will, see teske (2001a). 31 all references to the alfredian verse prologues and epilogues are cited by page number from irvine & godden (2012: 404–415). 20 jasmine jones hargrove, h. l. trans. 1904: king alfred’s old english version of st. augustine’s ‘soliloquies’ turned into modern english. new york, henry holt and company. hecht, h. ed. 1965: bischof wærferths von worcester übersetzung der dialoge gregors des grossen. darmstadt, wissenschaftliche buchgesellschaf. hurst, d. ed. 1983: in cantica canticorum. turnhout, brepols. irvine, s. & m. godden ed. and trans. 2012: the old english boethius with verse prologues and epilogues associated with king alfred. harvard, harvard university press. leslie, r. f. ed. 1966: the wanderer. manchester, manchester university press. liebermann, f. 1903: die gesetze der angelsachsen. halle a. s., max niemeyer. migne, j. p. ed. 1841–1855a: s. aurelii augustini hipponensis episcopi: de genesi ad litteram libri duodecim (patrologiae cursus completes. series (latina) prima, 34). paris, garnier frères. migne, j. p. ed. 1841–1855b: sancti gregorii papae i: opera omnia (patrologiae cursus completes. series (latina) prima, 77). paris, garnier frères. o’neill, p. p. ed. and trans. 2016: old english psalms. massachusetts, harvard university press. swanton, m. ed. 1970: the dream of the rood. manchester, manchester university press. sweet, h. ed. and trans. 1871: king alfred’s west-saxon version of gregory’s pastoral care. london, kegan paul. watson, g. trans. 1990: saint augustine: soliloquies and immortality of the soul. warminster, aris & phillips ltd. watson, j. e. 2016: an edition of gregory the great’s dialogi based on five early medieval manuscripts of english provenance. 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cambridge, cambridge university press: 116– 123. thomas, r. 1988: the binding force of friendship in king alfred’s consolation and soliloquies. ball state university forum 29.1: 5–20. https://dmr.bsu.edu/digital/ collection/frm/id/58/rec/1 [accessed 25 march 2020]. treschow, m. 2017: wisdom’s land: king alfred’s imagery in his preface to his translation of augustine’s soliloquies. in m. treschow, w. otten & w. hannam eds. divine creation in ancient, medieval, and early modern thought: essays presented to the rev’d dr robert d. crouse. leiden, brill: 257–284. waterhouse, r. 1986: tone in alfred’s version of augustine’s soliloquies. in p. e. szarmach ed. studies in earlier old english prose. albany, state university of new york press: 47–86. whobrey, w. t. 1991: king alfred’s metrical epilogue to the pastoral care. the journal of germanic and english philology 90.2: 175–186. wilcox, m. 2006: alfred’s epistemological metaphors: eagan modes and scip modes. anglo-saxon england 35: 179–217. author’s address lady margaret hall, university of oxford faculty of english language and literature st cross building, manor road oxford, ox1 3ul received: 23 august 2020 e-mail: jasmine.jones@lmh.ox.ac.uk revised version accepted: 14 october 2020 selim08.doc ricardo sola, selim 8 (1998): 77—90 landscape and description of the natural world in chaucer for patricia shaw so spoke the sage in his heart; he sat apart in though t. good is he who keeps faith: nor should care too fast be out of man’s breast before he first know the cure: a warrior fights on bravely. well is it for him who seeks forgiveness, the heavenly father’s solace, in whom all our fastness stands. (the wanderer) i in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth. (gen 1:1). then god separated light from darkness, day from night, heaven from earth. waters were gathered together in one place and the dry land appeared. and in the earth god put vegetation, fruit trees, living creatures according to their kinds. in the waters he put great sea monsters and living creatures according to their kind and birds which fly above the earth and the sea. in the firmament made two lights, a great light to rule the day and a lesser light to rule the night, and signs for seasons and for days and years. and god saw that it was good ( gen 1: 1-25), and he created the landscape. then god said, "let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." (gen 1:26). so god ricardo so la 74 created man in his own image, in the image of god he created him; male and female he created them. (gen 1:27).1 at this step we realise two things, and i presume it is more or less the same in other books dealing with the creation of the world, for instance ovid’s metamorphosis. first that god created from chaos an ordered world, a world which has all the basic elements of any landscape. this opposition between chaos and order is sometimes represented by philosophers, historians and literary writers with different landscape archetypes ( uncultivated versus cultivated, court and forest, etc.) second that once landscape was cre ated man and woman were created too and put in it to dominate and take profit of it, but , at the same time, to belong to it. both this landscape and man/woman are universal emblems for the world and for humankind, and drawing an analogy we reach the conclusion that any one of us is linked to, belongs to and is identified by a specific landscape. so the starting point is this distinction between an ideal universal landscape and the personal landscape of our natural world. we need a landscape to write our private and sin gular narrative and although the description in genesis can be read as alle gorical it is also real, it is the landscape, we see in front of our eyes and are partially part of it. the book of genesis goes on and it says: “and the lord god planted a garden in eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed (gen 2:8). a river flowed out of eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. (gen 2:10). but god forbade man and woman to eat from the tree of life. they did not obey the commandment and ate from that tree and therefore “the lord god sent him forth from the garden of eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. (gen 3:23). here we are in front of a different landscape, we are in front of a religious landscape and all the actions, reactions, sins and punishments refer to this symbolic way of life. from now on in the bible we will find these two different perspectives in landscape, the real, natural, even historical journey of man/woman through visible with our senses landscape, and the allegorical, symbolic, inner landscape. all our lives are divided between these two visions of a landscape, be 1 the quotations from the bible are taken from the revised version. landscape and description of the natural world in chaucer 75 tween a promised land “flowing with milk and honey”. (deut 11:9), to which we want to return, or “forty years in the wilderness” to test us and to know what is in or heart (deut 8:2), and our daily, hard life of work and suffering in the natural world, in the natural landscape. there are many other landscapes in the old and new testaments which in an allegorical, spiritual manner refer to different steps in religious life, though they are not relevant now to our approach, nevertheless we should bear in mind. let us go now a step further and take some classical references. we can clearly state that greek and latin literature have a due point of reference in landscape, and with landscape classical writers show their permanent rela tionship between man/poet and known and unknown world. the homeric poems, yet having a clear tone as songs to the greatness of a given economic and social class, the nobility, contain landscape elements that denote the importance that the greek man gives to his environment. those elements are evident and strong in odysseia (the odyssey) , the voyage of ulysses in search of his homeland which includes a series of wonderful elements and the special conditions of the marine world, but also in ilias (the iliad), where a struggle between the prime elements, the water, the wind, the fire, the earth, represented by the hellenic divinities will serve the first greek philosophers to explain the operation of nature. hesiod, especially in labores et dies (works and days) , brings a first break with homer’s grandiose and epic world. the individualism burs ts out for the first time in the literary world, and the natural environment is described as a source, not only of inspiration for the man serving the gods, but also for the man serving the land. one of the writers who developed an archetypal description of the ideal and bucolic landscape was theocritus. in his idyllia (idyls) are framed the basic elements of pastoral poetry which have been widely imitated and emulated in western literature: shepherds, goatherds, places of tranquillity and infinite silence, linked with his sentimental and material worries. theocritus will be followed by the great latin masters, horace, tibullus, propertius, virgil and ovid and landscape acquires a central role in their works emphasising the mixture of an objective scene and the expression of their inner feelings. as we know latin writers during august era suffered great political hard ships and strict censorship on the part of the emperor. ricardo so la 76 in corpus tibullianum, attributed to tibullus, the topic of love and disillusion is seen adorned by a singular landscape, simple and free from worries and wealth. horace describes in his love poems the topic of the locus amoenus, a place in which his feelings, marked by the change of the seasons, are extreme when he sings to the beloved one. two particular examples i will like to mention are virgil and ovid. virgil was on the point of being expro priated of his lands to be given to the soldiers in reward for the war. ovid was actually expropriated and banned out of rome; he lived part of his lifetime on exile. in virgil and ovid we see the two opposite faces of landscape as a reflection of the political and personal situation at that time. virgil, in spite of the confiscation of lands after the civil wars, thanks the prince august for not taking his properties and expresses in a happy and bucolic landscape his new personal situation. in the other side ovid represents in his elegies the sadness of the exile and his terrible and dark description of the black sea expresses the fear that produces to him to live in so a different territory from his beloved rome. virgil and ovid see their individual state of affairs expressing their feelings and fears in the eclogues1, the former and in tristium2, the latter. 1 meliboeus: “tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi / siluestrem tenui musam meditaris auena: / nos patriae finis et dulcia linquimus arua. / nos patriam fugimus: tu,tityre, lentus in umbra / formosan resonare doces amaryllida siluas.” (you, tityrus, 'neath a broad beech-canopy, reclining, on the slender oat rehearse your silvan ditties. i from my sweet fields, and home's familiar bounds, even now depart. exiled from home am i; while, tityrus, you sit careless in the shade, and, at your call,"fair amaryllis" bid the woods resound.) 2 tristium. liber primus iv: “tingitur oceano custos erymanthidos ursae / aequoreasque suo sidere turbat aquas; / nos tamen ionium non nostra findimus aequor / sponte, sed audaces cogimur esse metu. / me miserum! quantis increscunt aequora uentis, / erutaque ex imis feruet arena uadis! / monte nec inferior prorae puppique recuruae / insilit et pictos uerberat unda deos. / pinea texta sonant, pulsu stridore rudentes, / ingemit et nostris ipsa carina malis. / nauita confessus gelidum pallore timorem, / iam sequitur uictus, non regit arte ratem. / vtque parum ualidus non proficientia rector / ceruicis rigidae frena remittit equo, / sic, non quo uoluit, sed quo rapit impetus undae, / aurigam uideo uela dedisse rati.” (the guardian of the erimanthy bear bathes in the ocean and with its influx agitates the waters of the sea. we, however, sail the jonic sea and not by our will, but fear compels us to be bold. unhappy of me! how with impetuous winds grow the waters and even the extracted sand from the deepest abysses boils! a wave, curled as a mountain, as saults the prow and the bent stern and flogs the images of the gods represented in her. resound the beaten pine flanks of the vessel and we hear the tackles crunching, and the same vessel groans to our misfortunes. the pilot, revealing the panic in his pallor face, relinquishes expired the impulse of the ship and with his skill cannot landscape and description of the natural world in chaucer 77 in both writers we appreciate two different perspectives which express “real world” in two different levels: the daily life and the fictional, “literary” level. consequently we have two different landscapes, or we may say two different views of the same landscape. the physical description which have all the elements we saw in the book of genesis, the forest, the birds, the cattle, the sea, the storm, the light, the darkness, etc., and the psychological description full of happiness and beatitude in virgil and full of anxiety and fear in ovid. in fact both quotations build up a literary pattern of landscape to which we can refer, and indeed do it, when we want to define, in literature, character, plot and mood, among other things. ii so we see how both in the bible and in the classical references the archetypal landscape is a way and means of interpreting life, but also litera ture and art. but what is more important the study of the literature and its re lationship to landscape and nature must take into account those references that present not only recognition, but also mediation. every literary expres sion is a response to some needs and social conditions, individual and historical of the era in which appears and the form that adopts reflects, in some way, the form that the society, the indiv idual and the historical propose for their own consolidation. the ideological critique unveils the ways in which the use of the landscape masks or forgets social and political aspects. on the other hand the intellectual history has sought the property of various forms of landscape to express a given historical period. when these periods are critical the writers and artists favour or are opposed to the renovations or to the revolutions using landscape to show the effects in the social scene. art that can be “read” through reference to a body of shared iconographical knowledge whose meanings are no longer public but arise from a private encounter between the viewer and the work of scene. we build up a sympathy and preference or a rejection, we adopt a positive or a negative attitude in front of specific, real, landscapes. we describe the landscape “as we see it” not “as it is”. but, sometimes, even this perception that we believe personal govern it yet. and as a auriga intimidated abandons the reins, that no longer serve him, on the hard cervix of the horse, thus i see the untied sails of the ship go, not where he wants, but where the pulse of the waves drags them.) ricardo so la 78 and subjective is also mediated by given conventions and perspectives. literary, artistic genre is one of those conventional perspectives. literary genre has its conventions and rules, and forces us to accept as plausible and adequate to the genre specific landscapes. deviation from those generic rules produces either a reinterpretation or a rejection of that genre. from the period of the invasions landscape is presented as a vital reality that adopts different ways in different literary expressions. if we had to establish a brief taxonomy we would talk of three groups: a. the epic and lyric poetry b. the chronicles and histories c. the travel and exploration reports. in the epic or lyric poetry, either of religious or pagan character, given to the importance of the presence of christian feeling and thought in it, we can see the influence of the biblical archetype and the description of the landscapes is strongly shaded by the values of good and evil, purity and sin, loneliness and pardon, the idea of life as a pilgrimage full with obstacles that one must surpass to reach the celestial jerusalem, as we read in the seafarer, the wanderer, bewoulf, st andreas, juliana, judith, etc. on the other hand, we see how poetry shares the personal attitudes expressed by virgil and ovid when they describe landscape as an image of individual fate and destiny. if we except the historia by bede, most of the chronicles written in the old english period reflect the vital hardships of the peoples who conquer and invade unknown lands. in this sense there is no evident influence of the archetypes mentioned above, though it would be worth checking the degree of similarity and/or difference with greek and roman histories and chronicles. the description of the landscape corresponds, then, to the vital tour that the invading hosts take along the conquered land, introducing occasionally supernatural or magic aspects close to the epic vision. in the case of bede, his historia, in many cases is written shaded by the religious feeling that impregnates it and so the influence of the biblical archetype is clear. much more interesting are the exploration and travel reports since they come from the traveller or reporter’s personal point of view, that is to say landscape and description of the natural world in chaucer 79 from a subject. brevity and accuracy are rules in these pieces of prose and they must offer a synthesis of what is seen and heard, using some conventional standard patterns, or formulas as in poetry, that will allow the receiver of the report a tight comprehension and perception of what is being described to him. an excellent example of this sensibility in front of an unknown land is othere’s report to king alfred in which othere describes his experiences and impressions in his trip to the north sea. if we look at it briefly, the first thing we find is a axial coincidence between space and time describing geographically the visited coasts, so that the traveller’s references are always the cardinal direction in which they are and the time elapsed in travelling them. the second descriptive criterion uses waters and winds, seen as positive or negative elements according to if they favour or not the traveller and explorer’s way through. here we realise how the medieval archetype of the “homo via tor” is appearing and, consequently the confrontation between movement and settlement, between enclosed and open spaces, between court, town and country. nevertheless the reporter, othere, emphasises the oppositional patterns: deserted, bare land versus cultivated hunting versus agriculture non linguistic communities versus linguistic primitive versus civilised since ohthere’s aim is to inform alfred about his forbears’ place of origin, the final social evaluation, about possession and dispossession, transforms landscape into a field and forest ready to be manipulated and used by man and so the reporter offers us a “marked” vision of that landscape. this is also the case, for instance, of the 12th century trip chronicle written by gerald of cambriae, topographiae hibernicae, in which gerald uses this same opposition, primitive/civilised, this time with a political value, since making of ireland a primitive and uncivilised country that fact justifies the english invasion lead by henry ii as an invaluable benefit in the education and culture of that land. ricardo so la 80 the norman invasion and the medievalization of the literature and culture of the islands stress also the codification of the elements that build them up, and among these elements is the landscape. two characteristics prevail and are pre-eminent in the use of the landscape as a "pattern" in medieval literature. in the first place the link of a specific landscape model with the motive or topic that governs the literary form, either be it lyric or narrative. while courtly literature calls to mind life at court, the forest is an archetypal landscape in which the knight’s adventure is validated emphasising the unknown and unrefined1. as relevant examples we may mention, the topic of love, the topic of the adventure and the dream-vision motive. in second place the alternation and contraposition of landscapes with given spaces, that is to say the contraposition, for example of the closed space, the castle, and the open space, the forest. as an example we may mention the landscapes in sir orfeo, sir gawain and the green knight, piers the plowman and pearl. in all those cases landscape is made into a formula or group of formulas that favour or contribute to frame the tension, the atmosphere, and even define the properly said literary genre. but, also, in all those cases landscape has an objective quality and be what they might be its situational modification can be defined and recognised as literary “patterns”, narrative or lyric, that very rarely express a subjective pose and attitude. nevertheless we accept corinne’s stand that in sir gawain and the green knight there is a move to social and moral realism and the forest is both real and fantastic, “ a fictional landscape poised midway between ernest and game”(155). in the 14th century due to the economic and social change, a change in the artistic taste and literary perception happens. "gothic" realism and naturalism together with the appearance of the economic subject give way to the literary subject. in this situation the writers of the period reinforce their literary creations with necessary doses of subjectivy. almost unimportant in john gower and in the pearl-poet. scarce in piers the plowman where the sleeper and dreamer when he awakes is identified with a real family and place, it is no doubt in the prose of john of mandeville and john of trevisa, in 1 corinne j. saunders in her book the forest in medieval romance: avernus, borceliande, arden. cambridge: d. s. brewer, 1993, examines the development of this landscape as an instrument of revelation of the human psyche in romance literature in medieval and renaissance periods. landscape and description of the natural world in chaucer 81 theatre in prima and secunda pastorum and in chaucer mainly in the canterbury tales where the use of landscape acquires its modern function. in chaucer the treatment of landscape undergoes the customary review of all the literary material affected by the characteristic realistic pose in this medieval author. it is true, that this progressive "simplification" of landscape towards an expression of it in relation to the "modernisation" of the narrative character and of the narrative itself is not exclusive of chaucer. the search for a greater reflection of reality or "mimesis" in romance as well as in the briton lay or in lyric poetry deprives landscape of its pattern connotations or arquetypic marks and endows it with a particularity that only affects to a character, to a situation or to a narrative. however, the change is not absolute, but partial and is mixed with the traditional uses known. in this way we observe that the descriptive standards of landscape are kept in the book of the duchess, the house of fame and troilus and criseyde. in the first, since it is an allegorical romance with an elegiac tone, the forest and the hunt are the landscape settings that point to the literary genre, but the use of a “real” dog -also a deviation from the bestiary tradition as a guide that leads the poet through the forest and the realistic final strokes that wake up the dreamer and reminds the reader/listener of the time of the day, consequently, of the medieval felling of the passing of time, are innovative elements in the use of natural world. in the house of fame we see a double "deviation" of landscape pattern in one of the best known literary conventions: the dram-vision". here the dreamer is not “cotextualised” by the usual spring setting, but by desert and, furthermore, the desert here is not presented as place of retirement and pray, according to the biblical model, neither as the untilled land according to the romance model. here the desert and the winter issues the difficulty that surrounds the road towards the unknown and ephemeral: fame. in troilus and criseyde with its mixing of trojanisation, medievalisation and gothicism the innovation is much weaker, and the author focuses his attention on the renewal of characters and their psychological study. there are, nevertheless, details that confirm a will of realistic use of the landscape, but it is in the central sequence, that in which criseyde is cheated and seduced, where chaucer incorporates an element of landscape, rain, as a singular and specific part of this n arrative. ricardo so la 82 the variety in way and function is much more evident in the canterbury tales and also absence or minimalism. the interest is centred on the subject, to whom is given frequently a proper name and who is usually identified with profession, craft and trade. except for the presence of landscape in its traditional way in rare instances as in the "opening" of the general prologue, in the "fairy tale" told by the wife of bath, in the oak where death is leaning in the pardoner’s tale, in most of the colle ction landscape has modern, realistic function. for instance as a body metaphor in the description of the squire in the general prologue: embrouded was he, as it were a meede al ful of fresshe floures, whyte and reede syngynge he was, or floytynge, al the day; he was as fressh as is the month of may (gp 89-92)1 or in the miller's tale when alisoun is compared to a pearl-tree (mt 3248) or that she “…koude skippe and make a game,/as any kyde or kalf folwynge his dame.” (mt 3259-60). sometimes landscape is used as a definition of craft, profession and trade: the yeoman was “a forster”, (gp 117) a man of the forest; the shipman “knew alle the havenes” (gp 407), and the miller “ther gooth a brook, and over that a brigge,/upon the whiche brook ther stant a melle;” (rt 3922-23). other times landscape describes the “personal habitat” of a character placing her or him in social rank and status: the maunciple was living in a house “…ful faire upon an heeth;/ with grene trees shadwed was his place”. (gp 606-607); or at the beginning of the nun’s priest’ tale when we read that an old and poor widow “was whilom dwellyng in a narwe cotage,/biside a grove, stodyng in a dale. (npt 2822-23). as knowledge of nature and natural phenomena, as the poor scholar of the miller’s tale that could foresee if being asked at certain times “whan that men sholde have droghte or elles shoures,”(mt 3196) or the host using all these ele ments as a time reference and break of the travel. the sun si getting down. it is late and the host knows that because landscape shadows are changing oure hooste saugh wel that the brighte sonne 1 all references have been taken from larry d. benson, ed. the riverside chaucer. oxford: oup, 1989. landscape and description of the natural world in chaucer 83 the ark of his artificial day hath ronne the ferthe part, and half an houre and moore, and though he were nat depe ystert in loore, he wiste it was the eightetethe day of aprill, that is messager to may; and saugh wel that the shadwe of every tree was as in lengthe the same quantitee that was the body erect that caused it. and therfore by the shadwe he took his wit that phebus, which that shoon so clere and brighte, degrees was fyve and fourty clombe on highte, and for that day, as in that latitude, it was ten of the clokke, he gan conclude, and sodeynly he plighte his hors aboute. (ml’s prologue 1-15) or it can be used as a place for pleasure and relax opposite to town. we realise that if we listen to the wife of bath’s words: and so bifel that ones in a lente so often tymes i to my gossyb wente, for evere yet i loved to be gay, and for to walke in march, averill, and may, fro hous to hous, to heere sondry talys- that lankyn clerk, and my gossyb dame alys, and i myself, into the feeldes wente. (wt 543-549) or opposite to norm and discipline the monk was “an outridere, that lovede venerie,”(gp 166). there are more examples, but i would like to finish with an image in the knight’s tale that in some way is emblematic of this new function that landscape is acquiring to chaucer’s modern eyes. the scene describes the funeral pyre in which arcite’s corpse is going to be burn. to build up the pyre the “medieval” forest is destroyed an so is the archetype. the duke theseus willing to honour arcite is looking for the right place to build the funeral pyre and finally he reaches the conclusion that the best place is the place in the forest in which palamon and arcite first fought each other for emily’s love: and at the laste he took conclusioun that ther as first arcite and palamoun ricardo so la 84 hadden for love the bataille hem bitwene, that in that selve grove, swoote and grene, ther as he hadde his amorouse desires, his compleynte, and for love his hoote fires, he wolde make a fyr in which the office funeral he myghte al accomplice. (kt 2857-2864) he orders to cut down the old oaks -the romantic, “knightly” oak of the book of the duchessand make of them wood to feed the fire: and leet comande anon to hakke and hewe the okes olde, and leye hem on a rewe. in colpons wel arrayed for to brenne. his officers with swifte feet they renne and ryde anon at his comandement. (kt 2865-2869) a few lines further the destruction of the archetypal landscape is fully accomplished and all kinds of trees and plants are cut down and thrown into the fire, so many in quantity and kind that the author decides not to count them all: heigh labour and ful greet apparaillynge was at the service and the fyr-makynge, that with his grene top the hevene raughte; and twenty fadme of brede the armes straughte- this is to seyn, the bowes weren so brode. of stree first ther was leyd ful many a lode. but how the fyr was maked upon highte, ne eek the names that t he trees highte, as ook, firre, birch, aspe, alder, holm, popler, wylugh, elm, plane, assh, box, chasteyn, lynde, laurer, mapul, thorn, bech, basel, ew, whippeltree- how they weren feld shal nat be toold for me; (kt 2913-2924) and the gods of the forests, the nymphs and the fawns, and the beasts and the birds are expelled from paradise, from that romantic world, and the bare ground turns pale under the bright and burning sunlight, the light of modernity: ne hou the goddes ronnen up and doun, landscape and description of the natural world in chaucer 85 disherited of hire habitacioun, in which they woneden in reste and pees, nymphes, fawnes and amadrides; ne hou the beestes and the briddes alle fledden for fere, whan the wode was falle; ne how the ground agast was of the light, that was nat wont to seen the sonne bright; (kt 2925-2932) in conclusion, the description of landscape and natural world in anglo saxon poetry is impersonal, the sea, the cliffs, the rocks, the forests are the suitable setting for the story or the epic narrative. yet in the elegiac poetry we appreciate a slight reference and connection between the mood of the first person speaker and the weather, the rough sea, etc., described in the poem. these two ornamental functions, let us say, in the description of landscape and natural world still persist in medieval poetry at large but when we get to the 14th century, landscape is part of character and characterization, a feature that allows us to identify the author and, consequently, his work, his pose and his style. landscape identifies the narrativ e and the narrative materials, identifies real places through which the incidents of the characters occur, marks the tempo and tone of the story. sometimes landscape has the function of showing the traditional uses mentioned above in which pattern was more important than authorial originality, but also contributes to highlight the fact that mediation on the part of the author and reception on the part of the reader is more effective and relevant. landscape is an instrument of meaning and very frequently we do not see it as it is but as “he” wants us to see it. and, finally, landscape is a reference which marks evolution and change in form, subject, theme and purpose. ricardo j. sola buil universidad de alcalá references bieler, l. 1992: historia de la literatura romana. biblioteca universitaria gredos. i. manuales, 5 . berlín: walter de gruyter & co., 1965. madrid: ed. gredos. ricardo so la 86 corinne j. saunders 1993: the forest of medieval romance: avernus, broceliande, arden. cambridge: d. s. brewer. horacio 1990: odas y épodos. eds. & trans. manuel fernández-galiano & vicente cristóbal. madrid: cátedra. -––– 1996: odas y épodos. ed. & trans. vicente cristóbal. colección el libro de bolsillo. madrid: alianza editorial. francisco r. adrados, ed. & trans. 1990: líricos griegos. elegíacos y yambógrafos arcaicos (siglos vii-v a. c.) . vols. i & ii. 3rd. ed. colección alma mater de autores griegos y latinos. madrid: csic. ovide 1968: tristes. ed. & trans. jacques andré. collection des universités de france. paris: société d´édition les belles lettres. ––– 1992: tristes. pónticas. ed. & trans. josé gonzález vázquez. biblioteca clásica gredos, 165. madrid: ed. gredos. theocritus 1986: idyllia. ed. & trans. a. s. f. gow. v. i. cambridge: cup. vergili maronis, p. 1983: opera. ed. r. a. b. mynors. scriptorum classsicorum bibliotheca oxoniensis. oxford: oup. virgilio marón, p. 1990: bucólicas. geórgicas. apéndice virgiliano. eds. & trans. j. l. vidal, tomás de la ascensión recio garcía & arturo soler ruiz. biblioteca clásica gredos, 1 41. madrid: ed. gredos. zumthor, paul 1993: la medida del mundo. la representación del espacio en la edad media. madrid: cátedra, 1994. trad. del francés la mesure du monde.représentation de l'espace au moyen âge. seuil. * † * selim08.doc angeles ruiz, selim 8 (1998): 239—258 compound nouns in the old english period: functional and pragmatic approaches in ælfric’s lives of saints1 compound nouns, which by definition imply a condensation of in formation, seem to be particularly important at the stage of the old english period, because the predominant synthetic tendencies of the language and the comparative scarcity of prepositions may have fostered such formations. together with this primarily syntactic phenomenon, an additional but not less important factor in the development of compounds can also be found. they are cognitively or functionally grounded, and their use has to do as well with the evolution of the english language, which progressively tends to reflect more complex ideas and thoughts. all this can be analysed under functional approaches, whose overall framework is the study of language as a means of communication, as well as under the perspectives opened by relevance theory, based upon the study of the existing relationships between communicative efforts and effects. in this paper, the issue of compound nouns during the old english period will be developed on the basis of two of ælfric’s lives of saints. 1. introduction. the state of the art . compound nouns in the perspective of functional grammar functional grammar has opened new approaches to the study of communication, precisely because, in clear opposition to the previous tradition of formal grammars, it concentrates upon the study of communication: language is thus 1 originally, this paper was part of a research project, "compound nouns in a functional grammar of english", directed by dr. javier martín arista and financed by the university of zaragoza. an earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1995 edition of the annual international conference of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. angeles ruiz 234 regarded as a fundamental tool of social interaction, and consequently, it is studied in the actual settings where it is produced. moreover, it is not a self contained, formal and abstract entity, but an organised system devised to achieve its main purpose: communication. in the same way, language is not regarded as an autonomous system, but one of its main functions is to reflect and influence the particular cosmovision shared by its speakers. language refers to the world, and any linguistic item is used to refer to a corresponding entity of the real world with which this unity is correlated. at this stage, it may be worth remembering that dik’s grammar is basically founded upon the assumption that language is an instrument of social interaction, and that the study of the language system must depart from and start with the framework of language use. grammar, then, aims to explain the functioning of the language as it is used in communication. in the perspective of functional grammar, reference acquires a central importance because the ultimate end of linguistic expressions is to describe a certain state of affairs. language represents a possible way of codification, among many, of the ways in which the real world or cognitive environment is perceived and conceptualised by speakers. this accounts for the fact that the core of the syntactic functions expressed in and above the sentence is in fact constituted by semantic functions. in other words, the syntactic organisation of the message conveys a certain meaning to which it is subdued. syntax gives a certain structure to a basic material that is in fact the root of any communicative act, a certain content. moreover, this content has to be placed under the wider contexts where it is produced. the noun plays a very important role in the organisation of the perception of reality, as it refers to "those aspects of our experience which we perceive as things or entities." (downing, a. & p. locke, 1992: 406). it is probably the most important lexical item to define the main focus of the communicative interaction. if communication is aimed to be effective, it will be relevant for its participants, with a view to achieving the maximum possible commu nicative effects with the least, minimum processing efforts. (sperber, d. & d. wilson, 1986). the information offered in the act of communication is intended by the speaker to be easily processed by the listener, and to achieve this, the former compound nouns in the o e period 235 estimates "the addressee’s antecedent capacities for identify ing the intended referent." (dik, 1978: 55). stated in terms of relevance, and assuming conditions of optimal rele vance,1 this implies that the speaker conveys his / her message in such a way that the listener can receive it with the least possible effort, and that the mes sage will achieve the maximum possible communicative effects. in any case, the information provided in communication is directly and strongly related to the participants' interests and assumptions of one another, and it can be doubted whether the success or failure of communication is to be charged exclusively to the communicator, as these authors seem to claim. concretely, sperber and wilson point out the following: … communication is an asymmetrical process anyhow. (…) it is left to the communicator to make correct assumptions about the codes and contextual information that the audience will have accessible and be likely to use in the comprehension process. the re sponsibility for avoiding misunderstandings also lies within the speaker, so that all the hearer has to do is go ahead and use whatever code and contextual information come most easily to hand. (sperber and wilson, 1995: 43). as for compound nouns, they imply, by definition, a condensation of the information, because the procedure of the formation of compound nouns entails the suppression of superfluous elements, such as prepositions, which do not add any significant information. this is the main reason why many authors establish the difference between content words and formal words. in terms of relevance theory, it might be stated that the use of compound nouns aims at maximal relevance, because the information processed will be the 1 the presumption of optimal relevance may be said to be a condition of the principle of relevance. the latter states that "every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance". (sperber and wilson, 1995: 158). as for the presumption of optimal relevance, it may be said to be a consequence of the responsibility of the speaker for the success of communication, which these authors also assume, creating thus a controversial asymmetry of the communicative process. it goes as follows: "(a): the set of assumptions i which the communicator intends to make manifest to the addressee is relevant enough to make it worth the addressee's while to process the ostensive stimulus. b) the ostensive stimulus is the most relevant one the communicator the communicator could have used to communicate i". (sperber and wilson, 1995: 158). angeles ruiz 236 highest possible, and this will be achieved with the lowest possible number of elements. due to the complexity that this construction may acquire if there is a lot of premodification, it may require further processing efforts. compound nouns are particularly important as a part of the more general issue of word formation. old english, as a synthetic language, indicates the relationship between words not with prepositions, but by means of inflections. the scarcity of prepositions may foster the tendency towards the formation of compounds, and more concretely, of compound nouns, which could be expanded through these prepositions. in a functional grammar such as dik’s work, (1978), the status of the noun is closely linked to the aspects of reference. thus, a term is defined as “any expression which can be used to refer to an entity or set of entities in some world." (1978: 55); (1989: 89).. this definition clearly reflects dik’s view of language as a means to refer to the world, and not being an autonomous, self-contained unit: “the semantic functions which characterize the argument positions of a predicate frame have been devised in such a way as to correlate partially with the typology of soas”. (1989: 89). besides, it will be the actual context that will define the reference of a definite expres sion, as a term has a set of potential referents, from which only some are re ferred to in a communication act. the analysis of compounds put forward by dik rejects a reductionistic approach in which the meaning of a compound can be explained as the sum of the meaning of its parts. (1978: 56 ff.). this further allows us to account for the fact that not always will a compound be open to several interpretations, but the meaning of the terms that form it will constrain the actual interpretation which the expression may acquire in a certain context. the actual instance given by dik, pregnant women, (1978: 56), clearly rejects a summatory analysis of "pregnant" + "women": it is only women that can be pregnant, and therefore, an explanation such as "persons who are pregnant and female" would be clearly redundant. however, the same is not applied to a second possible interpretation, "persons who are fe male and pregnant": it is only women that can be pregnant, but obviously, not all women are pregnant; the latter would only be a subset. this further shows that the meaning of a compound expression cannot be expressed as the atomistic sum of the meaning of its parts. on the contrary, the combination of several significant units constructs a new meaning, which is formed on the basis of each of them, and yet is different either from each of compound nouns in the o e period 237 them or all of them together. among each of the members a close relationship of meaning can be established, by which the head and the modifiers located nearer to it offer the most significant information. there seems to be a functional, cognitive reason for the tendency towards the formation of compounds, which would apply for compound nouns. this has to be included within the general search for relevance, and for the easiest wa y to process the information. as dik points out, it is easier to perceive, process and store complex information when this information is presented in chunks of increasing internal complexity. (1978: 212)1 the formation of compound nouns may foster an easier processing of in formation, because thanks to the avoidance of superfluous elements, the latter tends to be stored in internally complex groups. moreover, this perspective has advanced many present day approaches, of the eighties and the nineties, o n discourse processing. thus, the treatment given by downing & locke (1992), to compound nouns relates them to the classifiers, which are characterised as those ele ments which restrict "the class of entity named by the head noun to a subclass". (1992: 453). as these authors point out, most of them are nouns, and in those cases "when the semantic relation between a classifier and a noun is very cohesive, they are sometimes fused as a compound denoting a single referent". (ibid.). in these cases, the clas sifier is regarded as fused with the entity. furthermore, these authors regard compound nouns as a relationship of degree, which will depend on how close the relationship between the ele ments that form it may be (1992: 478). this entails that the link established between both entities may oscillate between either a subclassification, or being both terms a class in their own right. in any case, this will mean that there does not seem to be a sharp, discrete distinction compound versus not com 1 this assumption will be highly influential in most models of cognitive linguistics, and relevance is no exception here: the concept of encyclopaedic entry, which refers to "information about the extension / denotation of a concept", contains factual assumptions and also assumption schemas, "which an adequate context may convert into full fledged assumptions". (p. 88). angeles ruiz 238 pound, but, on the contrary, as the authors say, "compounding (…) constitutes a cline of associations and degrees of semantic cohesiveness." (ibid.). the definition of compounds entails then an aspect of gradation or degree, which would be influenced by the way in which they are perceived by language users. much of the theory of downing & locke can be said to be based upon halliday’s work, as the authors themselves state. in fact, halliday’s functional grammar has been acknowledgedly influential. thus, the term of classifier is firstly distinguished by this author in the experiential structure of the nominal group. (1985: 161). it may either be an adjective or a noun. in the latter case, it gives way to the compound noun. from the point of view of the logical macrofunction, which represents the logic semantic relations encoded in reality, the modifiers of the noun may antecede it or else be postponed. if they are forming a compound with the nucleus or head, they both will admit modification that affects them all. indeed, the general relationship established by the members of a compound noun can be said to be one of classification. thus, the second element is classified in terms of the first (quirk et al, 1985: 1568), in such a way that the second constituent is thematic and bears the main significative content as well as the main stress. these same tendencies can be applied to the formation of compounds in the old english period. in fact, the present day formation of compounds draws back to the origins of the language, and confers a certain uniformity to language evolution itself, in the sense that the modern english formation continues the tendencies of the past. in any case, the formation of compounds constitutes an important source for the improvement of re sourcefulness of vocabulary. what is characteristic about compounds is that in many ways they function as a single word. in a compound, the first component receives the main stress. semantically, the meaning of the compound is different from the sum of each of the parts forming it. the relationship established between the members of a compound can be very varied, but the most commonly implied relations tend to be of resemblance, function, purpose or finality, instrument, etc. compounding is moreover one of the most productive resources of lexi compound nouns in the o e period 239 cal formation in english, which is maintained throughout its history, and which can also be found in other germanic languages. 2. the formation of compounds in the old english period. in contrast to what happened fro m the middle english period onwards, during the stage of old english the expression of new concepts and ideas was expressed having recourse to the already existing resources in the language. the introduction of words from other languages was but scarce, and it was even preferred to apply old words to new concepts. as albert c. baugh and thomas cable put it, the language in this stage shows great flexibility, a capacity for bending old words to new uses. by means of prefixes and suffixes a single root is ma de to yield a variety of derivatives, and the range of these is greatly extended by the ease with which compounds are formed. (1951: 64) (…) the remarkable capacity of old english for derivation and word formation, and what variety and flexibility of expression it possessed. it was more resourceful in utilizing its native material than modern english, which has come to rely to a large extent on its facility in borrowing and assimilating elements from other languages. (1951: 65). this tendency towards the formation of compounds seems to be characteristic of germanic languages, as it is present not only in old english, but also in modern german, for instance. in any case, the use of compounds conferred the language a wide range of expression. in the case of old english, the language could testify and name the new objects, concepts and ideas through native expressions, although the former were being introduced precisely as a result of the contacts of the anglo saxons with the peoples that successively came to inhabit the island: as a result of this capacity, old english seems never to have been at a loss for a word to express even the abstractions of science, theology and metaphysics, which it came to know through contact angeles ruiz 240 with the church and latin culture. (baugh, a. c. & t. cable: 1951: 65). another factor which contributed to the formation of compounds during the old english period was the synthetic character of the language, although the analytic tendencies of the use of prepositions were already present. (fernández, f., 1982: 209). in any case, the abundance of inflections is considered definitory of the old english period, to the extent that it can also be known as the period of full inflections. in this sense, as it will be seen in the analysis of the corpus, some compounds in old english are formed precisely through the absence of prepositions. moreover, this tendency still continues in the present times, although instances of constructions of old english can be found, which are formed by n + n and which may be expressed through prepositions later on. in compound nouns, both a main and a secondary accent can be distin guished. there is a main word, which, at least in modern english, tends to be located at the end of the nominal group. this feature would need further testing to establish whether this is also the case in the old english period. in any case, it seems clear that in either stage of the development of the language the grammatical function and the semantic category of the group is provided b y the nucleus of the construction, which tends to be located at the end. in the same way, in a complex noun phrase, those words which have a closer relationship with the nucleus tend to be located in the nearest possible position to it. sometimes, the relationship established between the words forming a compound noun may become so close that they are regarded as a single word. the relationship between the words forming the compound is not fixed or equally established for all compounds; on the contrary, this link is open to definition: thus, for example, the members of a compound may be equivalent in meaning to a relation of addition: "ab" = a + b, although this will not always be the case: for instance, wur? mynte = weor? + mynte, worth + mind, although the meaning that it has is "honour, dignity". the actual meaning is somehow related to the words that form it: the connotations are positive, in both cases they refer to a positive attitude or quality of behaviour and feelings; and yet the meaning of the comp ound adds peculiar shades of meaning, or even develops new connotations that are not offered compound nouns in the o e period 241 by the separate parts themselves. the " new " meaning may even be completely different altogether: ex: flotmen, literally, it would mean something like "the men of the sea”. however, in the text where it is found its meaning is rather "the pirates”. of course, in addition to this feature of the nature of compounds, the contextual factors which exert influence upon the meaning and usage of an expression should also be taken into account. fernández (1982: 515) remarks that the composition of words as a lexical process, by means of the combination of forms or elements already existing in the language, is very frequent since the old english period. the commonest ways or procedures to form compound nouns during this period, accord ing to the above mentioned author, are: noun + noun adjective + noun adverb + noun in any case, in any of these formations, as well as those other formations of words giving way to categories such as adjectives or adverbs this lexical procedure tends to follow the principles inherited from the germanic language. the latter is even still felt nowadays not only in english, but in languages such as german. as we have already remarked, the second element or that located at the right hand side of the group is the most important one, both lexically and syntactically. 3. towards a typology of the compound noun in the old english period: ælfric‘s st. oswald, king and martyr and st. edmund, king and martyr before going into the analysis of the compound nouns that appear in the texts under analysis, with a view to establishing a possible typology of the compound noun in the old english period, let us synthesise the main features of the compound noun, according to what has been discussed in the previous section. a compound noun is a construction that involves two nouns, in a special relation of modification, characterised by the fact that this combination of angeles ruiz 242 words functions in many respects like a single word. in contrast to what happens with other noun phrases, the compound is treated as a single word, and the first component receives the main stress. semantically, compounds are treated as single units, and not just as the sum of some units or contents. in this way, they are different from other relations of modification. it can be assumed that the parts forming a compound cannot be separated, that is, that the possible addition of other modifiers will affect all the members of the compound as a whole. thus, another possible way to recognise a compound will be its semantic unity and its distributional cohesiveness. all these assumptions about compound nouns will be next applied to old english, on the basis of the corpus formed by ælfric's st. oswald and st. edmund. after the detailed analysis of both works, the following constructions will be discussed: noun + suffix, adjective + suffix noun + noun noun + noun in apposition determiner + adjective + noun genitive + noun prefix + noun. instances of each of these constructions, found in the above mentioned texts, and analysed in this paper, are given in appendix i. 4. analysis and discussion of these constructions a) noun + noun as can be observed from the words found in the text, an important part of this group is formed by words which designate place names (toponyms) and names of peoples associated with these places. some instances are: scotlande, norphymbra, englalande, dorcanceaster,…. in many cases these words compound nouns in the o e period 243 have only undergone slight variations in their evolution towards the modern english period. the names are interesting, because these place names constitute today a sign, or even a relic, of the various peoples that in habited the british isles, and tell us about them. in some of them a foreign element can also be appreciated: ex.: wintanceastre, from latin castra orum. this further shows that the loanwords taken by the language may also become affected by the processes undergone by the latter. these words really come to form part of the language, and so, they are subjected, at least potentially, to all the changes and transformations that the words in the language may undergo. this also shows that the flexibility of english to accept new words that become fully incorporated to the language is already present in the earliest stages of its development, even though during the old english period the most widespread tendencies are based on composition and derivation. similarly to what happens in modern english, where the most widely spread tendency is that the nucleus of the compound noun phrase tends to be displaced towards the end of the group, the situation is also present in the old english period. many instances where this occurs can be given as examples, such as: wintanceastre, maserfelda, angelcynn, etc. sometimes, the meaning of the compound is related to the meanings of the units forming it. thus, for example, romebyrig (the city of rome). however, in some other occasions a new meaning is created altogether: pa mynstermenn (the monks), pa flotmen (the privates). the forms adopted by the modern english counterparts are varied, and not always do they coincide with the corresponding old english forms. the following may be given as examples: old english form modern english form ælmihtigan pronoun + adjective almighty pronoun + adjective woruldcara noun + noun wordly cares adjective + noun bisceopstole noun + noun episcopal see bishopric adjective + noun noun + suffix,derivation godes lof genitive + noun love of god divine love of construction adjective + noun angeles ruiz 244 godes willan genitive+ noun will of god divine will of construction adjective + noun as it can be noticed, in the last two examples at least two possible modern english constructions come easily to mind. therefore, these two constructions seem to appear in complementary distribution. in some cases, the corresponding modern english evolution of the old english compounds has given way to the consideration of one of the present forms as either a prefix or a suffix. this is the case of ceaster, present here in words such as dorcanceaster or wintanceastre. in any case, either formation has been very productive in the history of the language. sometimes, processes of derivation are also present. this is the case of words such as: godnysse, yfelnysse, wodnysse, cynedom, etc. this formation is also present in the modern english period. strictly speaking, it is not a case of composition, but rather of derivation, because it implies a change in the morphological category of the word. in this case, an adjective is added a suffix, by means of which a noun is formed. however, the resulting noun is a complex unit, because it is the outcome of some definite semantic processes. the use of both saxon and loan forms combined in compounds is also noticeable. an example may be halig sanct. this further shows that even at this stage the english language showed a great flexibility. these forms may appear in complementary distribution. b) adjective + noun in both texts an important number of constructions formed by a noun and an adjective can be found. it can be assumed that the possible relationships es tablished between a noun and an adjective are not fixed or constant, there is not a constant relationship between both, but, on the contrary, instances can be found where the adjective conveys a lexical meaning which is important for the predication given by the noun. cases such as sum swipe gelµred munuc, halige rædinge, pam læwedum folc, heofonan rice or la idanus se æpela bisceop, show a very close relationship between the adjective and the noun. it can be noted that in all compound nouns in the o e period 245 these examples the adjective carries a heavy significative content, without which the predication held by the noun is far from complete. the adjectives, in cases such as these, offer a meaning which is necessary to understand and recognise the precise, concrete reference that the noun has in that particular context. moreover, the qualities or features predicated by the adjective are felt as permanent. therefore, the adjective in cases such as these does not qualify the content expressed by the noun, but helps to define its content, in such a way that the meaning of the noun cannot be properly understood without the adjective. all these features point to a gradation in the lexical relationship between the adjective and the noun that form the nominal group, from those cases in which the adjective expresses intrinsic features of the noun to those in which the information provided by the adjective is merely additive. therefore, the syntactic construction of noun + noun can be considered to comprise both compound nouns and expressions which would not be regarded as such, and further shows that syntax cannot be studied as a self contained unit, independently of the other linguistic aspects. among these, the semantic and pragmatic layers influence the way in which syntax is organised. this is probably the ultimate reason that accounts for the above fact, which more over contradicts those approaches for which it is the function of the word that determines its form. c) noun + noun in apposition in this structure, a nominal group is modified by another nominal group. both of them tend to be co referential. however, this structure is different from compound nouns in some and important ways. thus, in some contexts one of the nominal groups could be eliminated, and as long as the reference can be clearly identified, no significant changes in meaning would be pro duced. moreover, some modifiers could be added, and only affect one of the nominal groups, but not the other. therefore, it can be concluded that this structure is different from that of compound nouns. d) genitive + noun by definition, the genitive is the case which is used to modify the noun, thus forming a group. however, although in some contexts, they function in ways angeles ruiz 246 similar to compound nouns, the referents of both words may be different. moreover, either of the words of the genitive construction may accept modification which d oes not refer to the whole group. e) prefix + noun although it works in a similar way to the formation of compound nouns, this construction is not really a compound noun, because there is only just one possible concept, and not two concepts or ideas which are co referential, as is the case in compound nouns. conclusions in the analysis which has just been carried out, we have tried to test the hypothesis that compound nouns are important in the old english period because they offer a great condensation of the information to be processed, and they also allow the suppression of superfluous elements, such as prepositions or conjunctions. the structure of the language during this period also fosters the formation of compound nouns. the authors consulted, inscribed all of them in the trends of functional grammar or pragmatics, seem to coincide on the idea, which we have tried to follow, that there cannot be a sharp distinction between compounds and not compounds. it seems more reasonable, then, to speak of a gradation in the constructions. furthermore, as it will be further commented below, compound nouns (and, by extension, any other grammatical category or phenomenon ) cannot be adequately studied by the exclusive basis of syntax. from the analysis carried out in this work, we assume that a compound as a linguistic structure is mainly defined by the actual meaning that it has for the language users in the context where it can be located. the fact that there is not a one to one correspondence between the compound noun in the old english period with the possible meanings that it expresses, and that several forms may be distinguished, demonstrates that syntax alone is unable and insufficient to account for the relationships established between words. all these relationships are semantically motivated, depending on the relationship that is expressed, and refer to the external, obcompound nouns in the o e period 247 jective world, which, on the one hand, defines and shapes language, and on the other hand, is defined and shaped by it. furthermo re, the relationships expressed by compound nouns are also pragmatically motivated, in the sense that language users refer by means of them to a variety of states and relationships between these states. the achievement of an economic, as well as productive expression is probably the point at issue here. in any case, both the codification and de codification of these expressions call for strategies of the processing of information, such as those referred by brown & yule (1983) as bottom up and top down processing. these techniques, which have been adapted from the computational modelling of language understanding, refer to the ways in which words relate to the context in which they appear, and how this influences meaning is processed and understood. as these authors point out: we can think of our processing of incoming discourse as the combination of (at least) two activities. in one part of the processing, we work out the meanings of the words and structure of a sentence and build up a composite meaning for the sentence. (i. e. bottom up processing). at the same time, we are predicting, on the basis of the context plus the composite meaning of the sentences already processed, what the next sentence is most like to mean. (i.e. top down processing). (1983: 234, bold types as in original) these two models can be applied to compound nouns, insofar as they are designing entities or categories which are sensitive to be processed mentally by language users. if we think about the bottom up processing of compound nouns, we think about the way they are formed up by several nouns or other categories which contribute with their meanings to the formation and outcome of a new, different meaning altogether. but at the same time, a compound noun has an internal meaning, contained by the units it has, and is further specified by the group that it forms; its meaning is also contained by the discourse context which creates expectations relating to discourse content. this is so because in the functional approach that is being followed in the present work, the linguistic elements are angeles ruiz 248 not considered in isolation, but related to one another, to the context and sit uation and to the linguistic users. thus, the meaning of a compound is bound to modify and at the same time be motivated by the context in which it is found. but in the same way, we may assume that the compound noun, because of its structure, is also likely to call for a specific processing. the compound noun entails a condensation, in some way a package of information that is stored and de codified: we would like to refer again to the above commented assumption already introduced by dik in 1978: it is easier to perceive, process and store complex information when this information is presented in chunks of increasing internal complexity. (1978: 212). as we referred above, this assumption has been crucial in the development of theories dealing with the processing and storing of information. in the case of compound nouns, when finding one in a text, we would firstly try to recognise it as a complex structure on the basis of our previous experience of such unities, or, in any case, by contrasting it with simpler units. even an intuitive perception of it would recognise a certain complexity. we would also recur to our background or world knowledge. the final conclusion that can be reached is that compound nouns call for a specific organisation of the information, which may be characterised by “the left branching“ of the decodification of information. this is present in old english, and still continues throughout the history of the language. however, this tendency is particularly reinforced by the inflected nature of the language at this stage. in the texts under analysis, this is especially manifest in toponyms, and words of highly symbolic content. we assume that the same is true of the old english period as a whole. it is also remarkably interesting how the procedures of noun compound formation are applied not only to original, genuine anglo saxon words, but the process often involves some of the comparatively few loanwords that can be found in the language. this already shows the perhaps at this stage still incipient receptivity of the english language to foreign words. compound nouns in the o e period 249 mª ángeles ruíz moneva university of zaragoza references alexander, l. g. 1988: longman english grammar. longman, london. baugh, a. & t. cable. 1951: a history of the english language. routledge & kegan paul, london. brown, b. & b. yule. 1983: discourse analysis. cambridge university press, cambridge. dik, s. c. 1978: functional grammar. foris publications, dordrecht. dik, s. c. 1989: the theory of functional grammar. part i. the structure of the clause. foris publications, dordrecht. downing, a. & p. locke. 1992: a university course in english grammar. prentice hall, hertfordshire. drosdovski, g. 1984: duden. die grammatik . dudenverlag, mannheim. fernández, f. 1982: historia de la lengua inglesa . gredos, madrid. garcía arranz, a. 1986: manual de gramática inglesa comparada. edi 6, madrid. halliday, m. a. k. 1985: an introduction to functional grammar. edward arnold, london. martín arista, j. 1994: estudios de gramática funcional. mira editores, zaragoza. needham, g. i. ed. 1966: ælfric’s lives of the english saints. methuen, london. quirk, r. et al. 1985: a comprehensive grammar of the english language. longman, london. quirk, r. et al. 1989: a university grammar of english . longman, london. seymour, m. c. 1974: translations from the old english . econoprint, ltd., edinbourgh. sperber, d. & d. wilson. 1995 (1986): relevance. communication and cognition. blackwell, london. skeat, walter. ed.1966: ælfric’s lives of saints. oxford university press, oxford. sweet, h. 1976: the student's dictionary of anglo saxon. the clarendon press, oxford. angeles ruiz 250 appendix i list of the instances found in the text analysed which exemplify each kind of compound formation st. oswald 1. noun + suffix, adjective + suffix yfelnysse, ecnysse, forhaefednysse, gesceadwisnysse, cynedom, wodnysse, godnysse, untrumnysse. 2. noun + noun englalande, norphymbra, scotlande, æftergengan (preposition + noun), wurpmynte, almihtigan, heofonfeld, pa heafodmenn, woruldcara, wipersaece, wealhstod, easterdaege, norphymbra land, norphymbriscum, heofonan rice, uhtsange, hwilwend, handbredum, romebyrig, bisceopstole, dorcanceaster, wintanceastre, maserfelda, myrcena folc, se hæpena cyning, norphymbra rice, his bropor heafod, bebbanbyrig, pa mynstermenn, for menniscum gedwylde, sunnbeam, wæter wanhalum, wealweode, maessepre ost, myrcena la nde, gleawceaster. 3. noun + noun in apposition eadwine his eam, norphymbra cyning brytta cyninge, cedwalla geciged sum bisceop fram romebyrig, birinus gehaten penda, myrcena cyning 4. (determiner) + adjective + noun sum æpele cyning, pysne re pan cyning, oswold se eadiga, pone modigan feond, wip pysne re pan cyning, pone walhreowan cyning, compound nouns in the o e period 251 pone modigan feond, haele rædinge, pam læwedum folce, pam lifigendan gode, pam gesæligan cyninge, munuclicre drohtnunga, mid welwillendum mode, pam wipersæce, se geleaffulla cyning, mid blipum mode, pam læwedum folce, aidanus se æpela bisceop, pes gebletsode swy pra hand, se ælmihtiga gode, pa hwilwedlican gepincpu, ealle westsexena land, se geleaffulla oswold, pam halgan birine, pa oswold cyning, pam halgan birine, pam halgan oswolde, halig sanct, heofonlic leoht, healic sunnbeam, sum wegfarende mann, of pam halgan duste pæaere deorwurpan stowe, pæaet halige dust, pam hælende criste, sum halig cyning, pæs halgan reliquium, on halig wæter, pam halgan treowe, halgum weorcum, alip gode, pone halgan wer. 5. genitive + noun godes willan, pæs papan raede, pæs haelendes naman, godes lof, his lifes geendunge, oswoldes slege, sancte petres mynstre, godes aenglas. 6. prefix + noun geferum st. edmund 1. noun + suffix, adjective + suffix gereccednysse, welwillendnysse, rihtwisnysse, waelhreownysse. 2. noun + noun swurdbora, eadmod, norphymbra lande, heafodmen, eadmod, easenglum, manrµdene, se ærendraca, wintersetl, goldhordas, uderkyning (prep + noun), landleoda, flo tmen, heretogan, hælende criste, se flothere, pæaet landfolc, pam gebædhuse, haligdome, romebyrig, on folclicre spræce, god ælmihtig, on domesdæge peowdome, angelcynn, on englalanda, ælmihtig god, pam halgan gaste. 3. noun + noun in apposition angeles ruiz 252 eadmund se ædiga eastengla cyning hingwar, se arlease flotman 4. (determiner) + adjective + noun sum swype gelæred munuc, sancte benedictes stowe, dunstane aercebisceope, eadmund se eadiga, mid æpelum peawum, pone ælmihtigan god, to bysmorfollum leahtrum, pa deniscan leode, pe westsexena cyning, pa unwittigan cild, pa fyrmestan heafodmen, beotlic ærende, pine digelan goldhordas, pam repan hingware, for pam faerlican gelimpe, pas earman landleoda, ful cene, æfter minum leofum pegnum, for minum agenum earde, pinum repan hlaforde, haepenum heretogan, to hælende criste, pone waelhre owan hinguar, pone geleaffullan cyning, to anum erpfæstum tre owe, mid sopan geleafan, se anrædum geleafan, pæt heafod pæs halgan eadmundes, pone halgan lichaman, pone heofonlican god, pæs ecan wuldres, se mildheorta god, ungesælige peofas, pam arwurpan halgan, yfelum deape, for pam wurpfullan halgan, on pone lifigendan crist, his heofonlican fæder. 5. genitive + noun eadmundes swurdbora, sancte benedictes stowe, on æpelredes cyninges dæge, for pæs cyninges life, cristes gebysnungum, heora hlafordes lic, purh godes wissunge, cristes peowdome, drihtness halgena. * † * selim07 (2).pdf maría josé álvarez faedo, selim 7 (2000, for 1997): 181—192 the role of the church in the incipient medieval drama: from street theatre to morality plays although the early church had decided to suppress any vestige of drama the roman civilisation had left in england, up to 1000 ad, some forms of theatrical activity still persisted, and gave rise to a native drama performed by minstrels, strolling players, story tellers and entertainers of any kind, in processions, pageants, tournaments and mummings. this paper will study the paradoxical role the church played in the incipient medieval drama “paradoxical” because if, ironically, the church had tried to suppress it at the beginning, later on, as time went by, the church realised that street drama was a very powerful means of communication, and chose to use it in order to teach people the scriptures, thus encouraging a new and far more vigorous theatre. in order to understand to what an extent the church played a key role in the incipient medieval drama, it would be worth going back in time and presenting a brief history of the origins of western theatre. it is known that, from earliest times, man has sought to understand the cycle of nature, the progression from birth to death, and the forces that drive him. therefore, although the lack of documentary evidence makes it impossible to determine exactly how theatre began, it is generally believed to have evolved from religious rituals, created symbolically to act out natural events, thereby bringing them down to human scale and making the unknown more easily accessible. people would probably express themselves through rhythmic movement, using some kind of adornment to depersonalize the ____________________________________________________________________ 182 body.1 “the natural elements were given personalities, which were in turn abstracted as spirits and gods. by wearing masks and moving in certain patterns, individuals could impersonate these deities. sacred dances were performed to influence the course of nature to bring rain, to facilitate a good harvest or a hunt, and to drive out evil.” (gwinn 1990: 531). a different theory proposes that theatre evolved from shamanistic rituals. their main achievement was that they manifested to the audience a supernatural presence, rather than just giving a symbolic representation of it: the shaman, both as actor and priest at the same time, was able to put himself into a trance and become a medium with the other world. according to what has been stated up to now, we can affirm that religion was an essential and omnipresent element in the origins of drama. all these ritual elements gave rise to what is known as “the demon play”, i.e. a primitive dance drama in which the force of good exorcises the force of evil.2 an interesting component of this sort of play, which also occurs in later western theatre, is the use of clowns (usually deformed) to parody the more serious characters. nevertheless, having said all this, the first time theatre truly freed itself from religious ritual to become an art form was in greece, in the 6th century bc when the dithyramb a form of choral song chanted at festivals in honour of dionysus3 was developed.4 according to greek tradition, the actor and playwright thespis invented the drama when he added a single actor to the chorus of the dithiramb, making him wear masks to portray several different chara cters. besides, with the possibility of dialogue between the actor and the chorus, more complex themes and types of storytelling could be developed. 1 according to the new encyclopaedia britannica, the earliest known evidence of this is “in the cave paintings and engravings at les trois frères in southern france. dating from the late palaeolithic period (about 40,000-10,000 ac.), these ancient manifestations of art depict half-human, half-animal figures in animated poses. the figures appear to be dancers wearing the heads and skins of animals, suggesting the early use of mask and costume.” (gwinn, 1990:531). 2 the demon play is still performed in parts of asia. 3 the god of wine, fruitfulness, and vegetation. 4 originally, it celebrated his rejuvenation of the earth; later, it drew on homeric legends for its subject matter. ____________________________________________________________________ 183 the earliest surviving texts of plays are seven tragedies 1 by aeschylus dating from the first half of the 5th century bc. he added a second actor and reduced the chorus from 50 to 12, which would be the foundation for an aesthetics of drama that was to influence subsequent plays, even nowadays. in aeschylus times it was considered that tragedy should deal wit h illustrious figures and significant events, whereas the plays, which were based on legends or remote history, were interpreted so as to convey some religious, moral, or political meaning. “the entire cosmos was depicted in the drama, represented on a vertical structure: above was the seat of the gods, below was the place of exile and punishment, and in the middle was the flat circle of the earth, represented by the circular stage, where the action unfolded.” (gwinn 1990: 532). according to this, it is obvious that the greeks were still fond of religion, the primeval motif of drama, and they got inspiration from it both for the structure and plots of their plays. the characteristic of greek drama that emphasizes its universal scale is the interaction between chorus and protagonist. the function of the chorus was to generalize the particular events by observing and interpreting the action of the play as a kind of ideal spectator. the visual aspect of greek tragedy was very important, and that fact, unfortunately, is easily forgotten nowadays, as only the words survive. sophocles refined the conventions developed by aeschylus: he brought the chorus up to 15 and added a third actor, thereby making possible a much larger number of characters. euripides, on his part, brought greater realism to characterization and strengthened dramatic action by reducing the role of the chorus. the dramatic unities of time, place, and action were usually observed in greek tragedy by attempting to make the action complete in itself, without superfluities, within a single circuit of the sun, and in one location. the lack of scene change and the limited number of actors available meant that much of the action, particu1 the word tragedy derives from the greek  meaning "goat"; the term tragedy may have referred to a goat as the prize or as an animal sacrifice made at the festival. ____________________________________________________________________ 184 larly murders and other deaths, took place offstage. (gwinn 1990: 533) as time went by, the masks worn by the actors and the chorus became more expressive, and their conventionalized representation of character types meant that each character was instantly recognizable when he entered. besides, the masks also helped to make the portrayal of female characters by male actors more plausible, as well as to make the facial features clearly dis cernible by the large audience. comedy1 appeared in athens in 486 bc, fusing earlier traditions of popular entertainment, mime, phallic rites, and revelry in honour of dionysus, as well as ancient shamanistic ceremonies. aristophanes was the chief exponent of old comedy, which was highly satirical.2 thus, even comedy found part of its source of inspiration in religious rites of one type or another. the decline of tragedy after euripides' death in 406 bc meant an increase in the popularity of comedy, which evolved from the transitional middle comedy to the new comedy. only fragments by one writer, menander, survive from that period (about 320 bc), and they indicate a swing away from mythological subjects toward a comedy of manners, concentrating on the erotic adventure of young athenians and on urban family life.the boisterousness, the religious influence, and the long choruses of the earlier drama were gone, to give way to a new, gentler style, reflected in the use of more realistic costumes and masks and in the increasing use of scenery. vulgarized public taste and a complete lack of originality were the most serious illnesses of roman plays, which were, nearly all, imitations or translations of greek dramas, to the extent that they were even performed in greek costume. it seemed that, after 400 years of entertaining people with chariot races, gladiatorial fights to the death, and the sad spectacle of crimi nals and 1 the word comedy comes from greek meaning "revel". 2 widely imaginative material, in which the chorus might represent birds, frogs, wasps, or clouds, was blended with a grotesque, vulgar, and witty tone, which could still accommodate poetry of great lyrical beauty. as in a tragedy, masks are worn, though exaggerated for comic effect. obscenity was emphasized by the actors' costumes, which featured jerkins with padded stomachs and large phalli. ____________________________________________________________________ 185 christians being torn apart by wild animals, theatre had come to an apparent end. among the factors which must be taken into account in explaining why this happened, perhaps the main reason lays in the political cynicism with which roman authorities used circuses and public games, at which theatrical performances took place, to divert the public from economic and political dissatisfaction. besides, the number of official festivals proliferated, and, being most of them secular, theatre soon lost its close ties with religious rit ual, degenerating into theatricality and mere spectacle for its own sake. that is, the decadence of theatre occurred when it drew apart from religion. leaving aside the lack of originality shown by dramatists, there were a number of native comic traditions,1 and burlesque plays of mythology and daily life (phlyax), as well as a long tradition of farces, parodies, and political satires influenced by greek models (fabula atellana) that played an important role in the shaping of the style of roman comedy, whose most important writers were plautus and terence, in the 2nd century bc.2 unfortunately, little by little, the stages became trivial and degrading, to the extent that serious people avoided the theatres and writers were alienated from them. intellectuals reacted reading tragedies aloud in select gatherings, 1 “the fescennine verses (fescennia locatio) were bawdy, improvised exchanges sung by clowns at local harvest festival and marriage ceremonies. there are thought to have combined with a tradition of performances by masked dancers and musicians from etruria to form saturae, medleys consisting of jests, slapstick, and songs. the historian livy says that in 364 bc these players were summoned to rome at a time of pestilence to appease the gods with dancing and music.” (gwinn 1990: 533). 2 a literary genre also related to satire and mischievous intentions is the "fabliaux", which, in a way, as it has been suggested by gabriela garcía teruel, is one of the precedents of drama: "la intriga constituye una parte fundamental de los "fabliaux". va emparejada claramente con el engaño. pero subrayar esto no es el mayor mérito de esta definición. nykrog se detiene a describir los 'fabliaux' desde el punto de vista formal: van escritos en verso, pareados de ocho sílabas, y en ello está de acuerdo con los demás críticos citados hasta el momento; pero, además, expone su carácter eminetemente narrativo (cuentan una acción, no son piezas puramente descriptivas ni contienen elementos líricos) y nos pone en guardia sobre la presencia de diálogos. en efecto, la esencia de los "fabliaus" se resume en las intervenciones de los personajes de los mismos y en las del propio narrador ante un publico, incluso se cree que el empleo de voces diferentes por parte del narrador para introducir a los distintos personajes en la historia podría resultar un antecedente de la aparición de varios actores en las escenificaciones teatrales." (garcía-teruel 1990-91: 12). ____________________________________________________________________ 186 and that might have been the purpose behind the tragedies of seneca, since there is no record of any of his works being produced. eventually, the old roman empire was christianised and split into two: one based in rome, and the other in constantinople. at that time, semitheatrical religious festivals, magnificent rituals, and processions became, once more, the principal means of community celebration, because there was no other outlet for the expression of the supernatural and the cycle of the seasons. meanwhile the mimes dispersed. although the church did its best to pro hibit them through the middle ages, they managed to carry on their intriguing art illicitly, finding audiences wherever they could. mime, therefore, preserves the only dramatic continuity between the classical world and modern europe. gabriela garcía teruel (1991: 53) insists on this attitude1 the church originally manifested against theatre: unido a la decadencia natural del género teatral por falta de cultivadores en los primeros siglos de nuestra era, los ataques de los más importantes pensadores cristianos (tertuliano en de spectaculis, san agustín en de civitate dei) contribuyeron al total abandono de este arte literario. nevertheless, she goes on to comment on the paradoxical role the church played in the incipient medieval drama “que no se recuperó hasta que, de la mano de la misma iglesia que lo había condenado seis o siete siglos antes, renace en forma de drama litúrgico en los siglos xi y xii, orientado hacia la expresión popular de los misterios y episodios bíb licos.” 1 "this hostile attitude of the rulers of the church is not quite explained by anything in the poetry of the scôpas, so far as it is left to us. this had very readily exchanged its pagan for a christian colouring: it cannot be fairly accused of immorality or even coarseness, and the christian sentiment of the time is not likely to have been much offended by the prevailing theme of battle and deeds of blood. the probable explanation is a double one. there is the ascetic tendency to regard even harmless forms of secular amusement as barely compatible with the religious life. and there is the fact, which the language of the prohibitions themselves makes plain, that a degeneration of the old teutonic gleemen had set in. to singing and harping were now added novel and far less desirable arts." (chambers, 1967[1903]: 32-33). ____________________________________________________________________ 187 in the middle ages, theatre began a new cycle of development that paralleled the emergence of the theatre from ritual activity in the early greek period: if the greek theatre had grown out of dionysian worship, the medieval theatre originated as an expression of the christian religion. between the classical and the medieval periods, theatre 1 was kept alive by the popular entertainers who had dispersed to wander, alone or in small groups, throughout europe: mimes, acrobats, dancers, animal trainers, jugglers, wrestlers, minstrels, and storytellers.2 in the mummers plays that emerged during the late middle ages both rit ual and mimetic dance came together. the plot was always about some kind of combat in which one of the fighters was killed, and then revived by a healer or doctor. the cycle of death and rebirth suggested they might be in spired in christ's resurrection, but that is also a subject which may indicate that the origin of those plays could be much older. when christianity spread through europe, missionaries had great difficulty discouraging the wealth of local folk traditions that flourished in rural communities. eventually, the reforming bishops decided that it was better to regulate than to prohibit them, so the roman catholic church3 began incor1 “a further, though minor, influence on the development of theatre was the folk play. this dramatic form had two main sources. one was the symbolic ritual dramas of the seasons such as the plow monday play (english midlands), in which a plow was decorated and pulled around the village (thought to have originally been a fertility god carried around the fields on a plow), or the european folk drama of the wild man of the woods, in which a figure covered with leaves, representing winter, was ritually hunted and killed. the other source was the mimetic elements in dances held at village feasts." (gwinn 1990: 535). 2 gabriela garcía teruel (1990-91: 53) points out that: "las figuras de los mimos e histriones, cantantes y bailarines, supervivientes y continuadores de los cómicos clásicos, también influyen decisivamente en el desarrollo posterior del género, asegurando la continuidad de una vía alternativa al drama religioso. el juglar, 'fingidor' encargado de 'recitar', y, en algunos casos, de 'representar' el texto con escasísimos o contados medios, se convierte en factor fundamental de la evolución del teatro profano en este periodo de la edad media." 3 "the church stood at the centre of life in the middle ages, like the church building itself in town or village. it spoke for the community, and only through the church might the people know something of music and painting, literature and drama. it is a matter of great importance for the history of the english stage that the church recognized drama as a force to be harnessed and chose to use it to teach the people about the scriptures and to glorify god. it is a pleasant irony that the very institution that had stamped out the vestiges of drama left by the roman occupation was ____________________________________________________________________ 188 porating pagan festivals into its own liturgical calendar and remythologising local rituals: for example, the spring cycle of festivities based on fertility rit uals, or the rebirth of summer was adapted to the christian version of death and resurrection, while christmas absorbed celebrations around the winter solstice such as the saturnalia. christian churches were built on the sites of pagan temples, and folk plays were even organized as part of the village church activities. folk theatre was not a literary genre; its prime concern was to fulfill a communal function in the village. however, its significance in the development of the theatre was that, being a style with which everyone was familiar, it could provide a rich stimulus for the more serious theatre that supplanted it. many farcical scenes from folk dramas were included as interludes in the later religious plays, making them more vigorous and balancing entertain ment with didacticism. divorced from their validating mythology by the domination of christian myths, the pagan celebrations soon began to lose their primary function, and eventually their true meaning was forgotten. a consequence of the roman catholic church's choice of latin as the language of the liturgy was that classical texts continued to be read, and terence, whose moral tone made him the least offensive of the roman rama tists, acquired new popularity among a small scholarly elite. the tradition of medieval religious theatre stems directly from the mass itself, a complex ritual containing many theatrical elements in its function as a visible reflection of the invisible world. it was believed that harmony expressed religious values, thus, from the 9th century, an attempt was made to increase the musical effectiveness of the plainsong of the roman catholic church by developing antiphonal singing in which the choir was divided into two parts. from this came the trope, a musical addition or embellishment to certain parts of the liturgy, as, for example, to the final syllable of the alleluia. it was precisely in the trope of the easter mass, recorded in a 10th-century manuscript from the monastery of st. gall in switzerland, that the union of action, impersonation, and dialogue originated. taken from various sources in the bible, that trope dramatizes the visit of the three marys to the tomb itself to encourage a new, popular and far more vigorous theatre." (styan, 1996: 78). ____________________________________________________________________ 189 where christ's body had been buried. the three ladies find the sepulchre empty and an angel guarding it. one section of the choir, representing the angel, asks, “quem quaeritis?”,1 to which the other half responds, and a short dialogue follows. in later versions the angel was represented by the priest in white robes and the marys by three choirboys. directions were added, dictating particular actions, and precisely how the performers should move. in turn, a spice merchant (the first secular character, who was strikingly similar to the doctor figure of mummers plays and folk dramas) was added to haggle with the three marys about the price of the ointment. the quem quaeritis? soon spread throughout europe (more than 400 versions survive), and by the end of the 10th century it had become a self-contained liturgical drama. from then onwards, during the 11th and 12th centuries, the nativity, along with other bib lical themes, received similar treatment. therefore, the playing areas had to be extended from the altar to various locations throughout the church to accommodate these dramas. sometimes scenes were suggested by raised platforms, and machinery was developed to facilitate special effects, such as angels ascending and descending. the clergy's intention of making the key episodes of the liturgy as vivid and accessible as possible to an illiterate congregation was so successfully carried out that by the end of the 12th century the plays incorporated spoken dialogue, partly in the vernacular language, and were moved outside in front of the church to be performed independently of the liturgical service. one of the first of those plays was adam, performed before a french cathedral about 1170. it is worth pointing out that, once the theatre had been moved outside the church,2 production of the plays was gradually taken over by the laity, and performances were given entirely in the vernacular. consequently, the number of short plays proliferated until they were organized into great cycles covering the whole bib lical story from the creation to the last judgement, though centring on the passion and designed to express the humanity as well as the divinity of christ. in england, they become known as mystery plays later mystery cycles. comprising up to 50 short plays, these cycles were 1 “whom do you seek?”. 2 liturgical dramas, however, continued to be presented inside the church until the 16th century. ____________________________________________________________________ 190 sometimes performed over two or three days. in england the cycles of york, wakefield, coventry, and chester survive. as the presentation of these plays grew more elaborate, and special organization took over their staging. each guild would take responsibility for a particular play, usually related to its work: the shipwrights, for example, would stage the building of noah's ark. church vestments were replaced by appropriate contemporary costumes, and, because many of the plays called for complex and realistic effects e.g. appearances from hell's mouth sophisticated properties and machinery were devised to achieve them. paradoxically, after the earthy humour and simple devotion of the mystery cycles, the morality plays that appeared during the 15th century show theatre taking what at first seems to be a step backward. these plays, however, re flect the dark worldview of a people that had experiences recurrent plagues and had begun to regard human destiny as “worm's meat”, presenting the ske leton figure of death as a potent emblem, which, by the way, was also constantly alluded to in sermons. morality plays were virtually sermons dra matized through allegory. they portrayed the span of human life in abstract terms, i.e. mankind setting out on a pilgrimage in which he encountered a whole range of vices and virtues such as, for example, ignorance, humility, and the seven deadly sins who contended for possession of his soul. to conclude with, and after all which has been alleged, we can state that religion has been nearly omnipresent in the history of drama, from its very beginning, and that the church, especially, played an essential, though also paradoxical, role in the incipient medieval drama, to the extent that it went on exerting its influence until the end of the 16th century, when, at the height of their aesthetic achievement, morality plays were suppressed in england, mainly because religious drama was beginning to degenerate into an instru ment of politico-religious propaganda under successive roman catholic and protestant governments. maría josé álvarez-faedo university of oviedo ____________________________________________________________________ 191 references bennett, j. a. w. & gray, d. 1986: middle english literature. oxford: clarendon press. burrow, j. a. 1982: medieval writers and their work. oxford: oup. daiches, d. 1983: a critical history of english literature. 2nd ed., vol. 1, london: secker & warburg. dickins, b. & wilson, r. m. 1964: early middle english texts. cambridge: bowes & bowes. dyson, e. ed. 1984: medieval english drama. london: macmillan. chambers, e. k. 1967 [1903]: the mediaeval stage. 2 vols, oxford: oup. garcía-teruel, m. g. 1991: los fabliaux: análisis contrastivo de algunos ejemplos. trabajo de investigación xerografiado, oviedo: universidad de oviedo. gwinn, r. p., norton, p. b. & goetz, p. w. 1990 [1768]: the new encyclopaedia britannica. vol. 28, london: encyclopaedia britannica, inc. sola, r. et al. 1988: historia de la literatura inglesa i. madrid: taurus. stanton, s. & banham, m. 1996: cambridge paperback guide to theatre. cambridge: cup styan, j. l. 1996: the english stage. cambridge: cup. taylor, j. & nelson, alan h. 1972: medieval english drama. essays critical and contextual patterns of literary criticism. chicago: the university of chicago press. valdeón, j. 1987: la baja edad media. madrid: anaya. young, k. 1967 [1933]: the drama of the english church. 2 vols, oxford: clarendon press. * † * book reviews book reviews, selim 22 (2017): 129–141. issn 1132-631x j. r. r. tolkien. 2016. a secret vice: tolkien on invented languages. london: harper collins publishers. ed. by dimitra fimi & andrew higgins. isbn 9780008131395. reviewed by adriana taboada, university of vigo it is not surprising to see how during the last few years an increasing interest in j.r.r. tolkien’s works from outside the middle-earth has led to a considerable number of reviews and re-editions of his no longer hidden gems. although christopher tolkien has always played an excellent role in compiling his father’s more and less known writings (proof of this is the recent recognition he received from the bodleian library, the bodley medal) 1 authors like verlyn flieger or dimitra fimi are making a – successful – effort to put these texts back in the spotlight and add other less known works to the list. dimitra fimi and andrew higgins’s a secret vice: tolkien on invented languages (2016) is part of this new wave that begun with christopher tolkien’s edition of the fall of arthur in 2013 and has recently welcome flieger’s edition of the lay of aotrou & itroun (2016). “a secret vice” had already been edited and published in 1983 by christopher tolkien as part of the essay collection the monsters and the critics and other essays; however, fimi and higgin’s recent “extended edition” (p. vii) offers a more extensive approach to it, being it the focal point of their work. this new edition of the original text “with minimal editorial intrusion” (p. viii) allows the editors to keep the manuscript’s shape as far as possible so the reader can get a better sense of the way in which tolkien wrote, proofread, and corrected his works; something less evident in its former edition. moreover, the inclusion of a section dedicated to “the manuscripts” plays without any doubt a crucial part in this matter. the format of this edition is, however, far to be new: verlyn fliegger had already published tolkien on fairy stories (2008) using this helpful structure to complete the original essay “on fairy stories” that had also been part of christopher tolkien’s collection. in contrast to the title of the text, tolkien’s interest and enjoyment in inventing languages is no longer a secret, although it had remained a hidden hobby for most people until this same paper was delivered at the johnson 1 more information on the reward can be found at the bodleian website: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/news/2016/nov-03 130 book reviews society, pembroke college, oxford. the later publications of the hobbit and the lord of the rings were the final evidence of what he used to call his “vice”. in fact, the publication of both the original text and the novels has led to a great variety of studies of the author’s invented languages, as arden r. smith does in his article “invented languages and writing systems” (2014). in “a secret vice” tolkien publicly recognizes the “practice of this art” (p. 11) and makes a rather exhaustive analysis of its different aspects through some autobiographical examples. one of the most important ones is that “the making of language and mythology are related functions” (p. 24) – idea that would later be revisited in “on fairy-stories” when the author explains that “to ask what is the origin of stories (however qualified) is to ask what is the origin of language and of the mind” (tree and leaf, p. 17). however, the best example of the cruciality of this aspect for the author is his own creation of the elvish tongues and their mythology portrayed all along his works on the middle-earth, that, as he explains in one of his letters to the houghton mifflin company, “were made rather to provide a world for the language than the reverse” (letters, p. 219). in another letter to one mr thompson (an unidentified reader), tolkien goes even further by stating that “volapük, esperanto, ido, novial &c &c are dead […] because their authors never invented any esperanto legends” (letters, p. 231). on the other hand, another fundamental characteristic of language invention is that these creations must sound “aesthetically pleasing” (p. xv); for him “in these invented languages the pleasure is more keen than it can be even in learning a new language” (p. 16). editors dimitra fimi and andrew higgins have made an outstanding work in portraying the ideas of one of the best-known authors of the 20 th century. their publication includes some extra elements such as a third part (the first one being the essay that gives name to the publication and the second one the “essay on phonetic symbolism”) entitled “the manuscripts” that includes notes from the author related to both essays, and a coda entitled “the reception and legacy of tolkien’s invented languages”. these are very helpful sections that provide a better background for those less familiar readers with tolkien’s academic works. their extensive introduction to the essays is another great source of information. the authors make a thorough analysis not only on the subject matter of the texts but also on their immediate and larger contexts, giving more importance, however, to “a secret vice” than to the other two works. this is nevertheless understandable, for once the reader goes through the “essay on phonetic symbolism”, even if it remains clear that it is an book reviews 131 independent work, it seems to successfully compliment the former essay and tackle all those questions that were “related to, but not central in, his paper” (p. 63). throughout this introduction, the authors make a rather compelling reflection on the impact of language invention in tolkien’s work and life. both academics and fans of the middle-earth work will find especially engaging fimi and higgins’s comment on how tolkien developed “his theoretical ideas on imaginary languages” (p. xxviii) by creating quenya and noldorin, which includes a short review of the evolution of both languages. the following sections of the book are devoted to the transcription of three of tolkien’s manuscripts, each of them keeping the original annotations and changes made by the author. in contrast to the first edition of “a secret vice”, the new editors of these works have added a larger number of footnotes which cover a wide range of knowledge, running from comments on some basic general information (footnote 3 of “a secret vice” explains what esperanto is, p. 36) to footnotes dealing with specific information about the author’s biography and his invented languages, although these seem to take a backseat when compared to the former. in this way, both the structure and comments on the texts make them more accessible to readers from different backgrounds and help in the task of making tolkien’s academic works open to a wider audience. by this point, all kinds of readers will be fully aware of the influence of tolkien’s invented languages not only in his own work but also in later creations by different authors. therefore, it is reasonable to find at the end of the main body of the book the coda that reviews the author’s legacy and the reception of his work. the first part of this section deals with the way in which those languages became increasingly accessible to the readers, who went from “gathering up the information on the languages that could be gleaned from what tolkien included in the lord of the rings” (p. 122) to the publication of linguist analysis and glossaries of the author’s productions. the second part reflects on how the creation of these languages inspired other authors in the construction of their own worlds and languages that eventually led to further research and linguist analysis of these new works from their fans. however, it is very difficult not to see this new generation as a mere shadow of tolkien’s masterpiece. as it is common in this type of publication, the appendix occupies the end of the volume. in this case, apart from the usual list of abbreviations, the reader will come across a quite useful chronology that sets the time of creation of these manuscripts. again, this information might be of especial relevance to 132 book reviews those new readers on the subject, although it will also stand as a good reminder of the specific context for the specialized audience. readers of a secret vice will find in this volume a valuable tool to approach tolkien’s ideas on invented languages as well as a hint of the author’s working method. nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that this volume is a reedition of an already published essay; therefore specialized audiences will find it hard to come across any completely new information on the subject matter. that being said, the three manuscripts and added sections complement each other in a more than satisfactory way. without any doubt, fimi and higgins’s volume will certainly be considered as a “must have” for any tolkien admirers, however specialized they are. references smith, arden r. 2014. invented languages and writing systems. in stuart lee ed. a companion to j. r. r. tolkien. oxford, wiley blackwell. tolkien, j. r. r. 1983. a secret vice [christopher tolkien ed. 2006: the monsters and the critics and other essays]. london, harper collins publishers. tolkien, j. r. r. 1981. the letters of j.r.r. tolkien [humphrey carpenter & christopher tolkien eds. 2006]. london, harper collins publishers. tolkien, j. r. r. 2001 [1964]. tree and leaf. london, harper collins publishers. tolkien, j. r. r. tolkien on fairy stories [verlyn flieger & douglas a. anderson eds. 2008]. london, harper collins publishers. reviewer’s address department of english, french and german university of vigo lagoas-marcosende campus praza das cantigas s/n e-36310 vigo (spain) e-mail: adritg@gmail.com book reviews 133 richard barber. 2017: the prince in splendour. court festivals of medieval europe. london: the folio society. xix + 258 pp. slipcased hardback. no isbn stated. 48 €. reviewed by jorge l. bueno alonso, university of vigo since its foundation in 1947 as a society to publish “carefully crafted editions of the world’s finest literature” in “a form worthy of their contents”,2 the folio society has always been a frequent publisher of medieval-related books, both covering the english and the continental middle ages. the variety of materials presented so far has ranged from reprints of classical anglo-saxon – beowulf (heaney 2009), bede (sherley-price 2010)– and medieval literary authors and texts –sir gawain (armitage 2008), chaucer (coghill 1956), langland (robertson & shepherd 2014), julian of norwich (windeatt 2017), geoffrey of monmouth (thorpe 2010), margery kempe (windeatt 2004), william of malmesbury (mynors 2014), boethius (watts 2001)– to studies on history (barber 2009, clanchy 2001, hunter-blair 2001, hicks & lemagnen 2016, weir 2015), culture (frugoni 2007, henderson 2004, mortimer 2013) and literature (brewer 2012), not forgetting limited collectors’ editions –such as eric gill’s canterbury tales or the facsimilar reproduction of the pearl manuscript– and thematic anthologies3, which have always been placed among their bestselling books. although the publication of reprints prevails, in most of the cases the new volumes offer emendations, new prologues by relevant scholars and writers and in many cases illustrations and other artwork, like calligraphy, done by british artists;4 there are also instances in which the final 2 promotional statement at the society’s webpage: http://www.foliosociety.com/pages/aboutus-welcome 3 thematic anthologies are collections of texts with a clear thematic organization. in many cases they tend to include texts that have been previously published individually but never integrating similar volumes. for instance, richard barber’s chronicles of the dark ages was a three-volume anthology of texts connected with anglo-saxon literature and culture that included extracts and complete texts from more than 50 different sources. his british myths and legends also presented a similar array of contents but with a wider medieval perspective. 4 it has to be stated, though, that every published volume makes reference to its editorial story, scrupulously indicated in a detailed note usually placed at the beginning of the book. just to offer an example, bloch’s 2012 folio society edition stated the 134 book reviews volume offers a new book different from the original source(s).5 as far as literary and cultural studies the editorial policy of the society combines the reprinting of classic essays, hard to find or out of stock,6 with newly commissioned volumes (mathews 2008). our reviewed book falls into the latter category. richard barber, a most reputed medieval historian who has served as editor and compiler for some of the most acclaimed medieval anthologies published by the society (barber 2005a, b, c, d; 2008a, b, c), offers a new transversal and quite necessary study that “examines the elaborate pomp and ceremony of the medieval court festival, revealing as he does so its wider cultural and political importance”.7 it is transversal in its approach, as it covers history, literature, and culture by using a wide array of sources and materials to develop the analysis; it is quite necessary, especially in our post-brexit europe, as it presents a pan-european perspective, covering medieval europe as whole, signalling differences but also the very many similarities held by medieval rulers europewide.8 as barber himself states in the prefatory pages: “the court following: “la société féodale was first published by albin michel, in two volumes, in 1939 and 1940. the english translation by l. a. manyon was first published by routledge & kegan paul in 1961. the text of this edition follows that of the second (1962) edition of the translation, with minor emendations, and contains the supplement to the bibliography (1962 to 1989) by t. s. brown included in the 1989 reprint”. thus, readers are always aware of the text held in their hands. 5 a recent example of this is hicks & lemagnen (2016). the editorial note reads: “the bayeaux tapestry: the life story of a masterpiece was first published in great britain by chatto & windus. this edition follows the text of the 2007 vintage edition with minor emendations. the ‘scene-by-scene commentary’ was first published in france in 2015 by orep editions under the title the bayeaux tapestry: a step-by-step discovery. this edition follows the english text of the first edition, with minor emendations”. so, this volume constitutes a new creation that goes beyond the sum of its parts. 6 just to mention the most relevant ones, the studies by power were originally published in 1924 and 1975, bloch’s feudal society dates from 1939–1940 in french and 1961 and 1989 in english, and le goff’s medieval civilization goes back originally to 1964 and in translation to 1988 and 1990. 7 marketing description at the book’s webpage at http://www.foliosociety.com/book/cfm/the-prince-in-splendour 8 this ‘pan-europeanism’ is as tricky as the term middle ages itself. historians like miri rubin (2014: 1–2) reminds us that, although the middle ages are “a european book reviews 135 culture of the period, and even the fashion, is truly pan-european, and i make no apology for taking the reader from portugal to saxony or from london to palermo in the space of a few lines (xix)”. after this brief preface (p. xvii–xix) that explains concisely the aim of the volume, the study opens symphony-like with a “prelude: the festival at mainz” (3–10), in which barber elaborates the main thesis of his book by using as an example the events that took place in 1184 at the imperial council summoned by frederick barbarossa, held at mainz to celebrate whitsun. this feast was “an example of the kind of festival which was to be typical of european courts for the next three centuries” (6), and through it barber sets the tone for the volume, which pretends to be a story about the feasts, the tournaments, the royal entries these celebrations were made of, their political agendas, their symbols and signification, and with this to build “a story which ranges geographically across the whole europe and historically across the five centuries that we now call medieval (10)”. the rest of the study is quite aptly organized in eight chapters and an epilogue. chapter 1, “the medieval court and court culture” (11–30) offers the background to the splendour mentioned in the title by providing a description of the different courts (that of charlemagne, the courts of provence, the court of henry ii and the kingdom of sicily) and the figures and ideas that made the court the centre of the medieval world, i.e. the troubadours, chrétien de troyes, the courtiers and their ways at the court. after this, the volume turns to look “at the occasions for which these feasts were held and their function as part of religious, dynastic or political agendas (30)”; hence, chapter 2, “feast days and festivals” (31–72) defines the concept of feast in the middle ages and describes the moments in which they took place: weddings, coronations, concept” that defines “a long period of european history, ranging from around 500 to around 1500”, we cannot forget that “even the word europe is far from fixed”. barber uses ‘medieval europe’ as rubin (2014: 2) defines: “i shall use it to describe the westernmost part of a vast continental mass, an area in which a shared christian culture came to prevail among an ever growing group of polities and their people, and whose genealogy is linked to the later roman empire. its kingdoms and peoples formed an interlocking commonwealth based on an integrated economy, a universal framework for religious life, with an intellectual elite that communicated in latin, and a secular elite bound by marriage, diplomacy, war and lifestyle”. 136 book reviews crown-wearings, knighting, churching9 and some popular festivals celebrated at court, i.e. maying (springtime folk rituals connected with this month) and new year. abundant cross-european examples are given of every category, so barber builds a well-documented description of why feasts took place with a very vivid style. the next two chapters refer to two important actions around which feasts were organized: tournaments and the entry of rulers into cities. chapter 3, “tournaments” (73–95) is a short essay on the evolution of tournaments and jousting in medieval europe all through the period and their political implications, with precise and numerous examples, too many to mention here, that paved the way to chapter 4, “the court and the city” (96–120), an accurate description of “the entry of a ruler into a city [as a] moment of political tension, when the superiority of a king or emperor had to be acknowledged and at the same time the freedom of the city –limited though it was– had to be recognised” (96). to exemplify such tensions the chapter revises royal entries into london and paris to offer examples of the behaviour of kings and courts of these ‘two mighty monarchies’ of the period. otto iv, king john, edward ii, edward prince of wales, richard ii, henry v returning from agincourt or charles vi are just some of the rulers whose entrances barber revises in this detailed analysis. if these feasts were mainly a display of power, how you attended these festivals and who provided the best entertainment to enhance such power are two capital spheres for analysis in a volume like this. the next two chapters provide the reader with such deep revisions. chapter 5, “dress and display” (121–141) fully tackles with clothing as a mark of status and how it evolved through the period. numerous examples of this evolution, with reference to contemporary sources and authors (such as orderic vitalis, the brut, john of reading, jean de venette, giovanni villani florence or christine de pisan) are offered, together with a description of materials, ornaments, embroidery and colours, as elements of great symbolic meaning when it came to signal splendour. how you were dressed leads to who were you and what you did in festivals, so chapter 6, “poets, musicians, games and entertainments” (142– 163) deals with those attending and providing high-quality amusement. so 9 barber defines this as “the ritual which was both a thanksgiving for the queen’s recovery from childbirth and an acknowledgment of the ancient taboo on women who had just given birth attending church” (65). ceremonies like this were held forty days after the birth of a new baby to the royal couples all over the european courts. book reviews 137 both the people (minstrels, musicians, acrobats, painters, bufoons and tregetours10) and the activities (games, masking, disguises and dancing) are fully revised again with abundant examples and sources both historical and literary, as many of these situations were described by chroniclers and poets alike. barber displays similar level of accuracy and detail in the last two chapters of the volume, which covered food and logistics, aspects without which you cannot celebrate a festivity in any period. using the entry ‘on feasts’ from bartholomew the englishman’s encyclopedia (c. 1235), chapter 7, “feasts and feasting” (164–187), deals with food consumption in the context of medieval festivities and in the widest of senses, as the chapter covers medieval cookery at large: food, recipes, dishes, consumption, table serving and arrangements, ingredients, etc. literary and historical sources are also used, paying barber special attention to medieval recipe collections in general and to master chiquart’s book of recipes in particular.11 the chapter offers in its final pages a wonderful and succinct account of the evolution of ‘entremets’; originally conceived as dishes or delicacies served at the end of a section of the feast, they evolve into food put on the table in specific custom-built serving devices, to end up being just a form of entertainment that separated sections of the meal in which the wrapping subtleties were as important as the food itself; this then allows for the introduction of mechanical marvels, dumb shows and more elaborated artistic and dramatic presentations. chapter 8, “organising the festivals” (188–215), closes the volume analysing the massive degree of organization and financial resources these festivals implied in logistic terms. the analysis is aptly divided into selfexplanatory subsections devoted to preliminary arrangements (‘devising the festival’), administrative preparations (‘the officers of the household’), general logistics (‘buying and making clothes for festivals’, ‘food for the feast’) and procedure (‘the reception of guests’, ‘the serving of the meal’, ‘kings of minstrels and heralds; organising the music and entertainments’, ‘a tournament manual’, ‘housing the festival’). it is one of the most complete and detailed chapters of the volume and acts as a vey convenient 10 barber uses the standard concept of tregetour as defined by the oxford english dictionary: “a conjuror, a juggler, a magician”. 11 a complete subsection is devoted to chiquart’s book written in 1420 at amadeus viii of savoy’s request. 138 book reviews conclusion; all chapters in the book lead to this final one in which the ‘actual’ feast is explained and analyzed from every possible angle. if barber began his account using the festival at mainz from 1184, he closes it with an epilogue12 (217–223) describing the feast held by one of the dukes of burgundy in 1454, the “most magnificent and eccentric festival of the medieval period” (217). this serves barber as the proper way to summarize all the points made in his book on the importance these festivities had from cultural and political points of view. in a superb paragraph with modern resonances for our very own crisis-driven europe in search again of a lost common ground (or market, or union, as you like it; and if there is such a thing) barber (222–223) states that just as the spectacular closing ceremonies of the olympic games today proclaim the power and ambitions of modern nations, so the medieval court festivals proclaimed the power and ambition of the medieval ruler. the cultural world of late medieval europe was relatively coherent, with its basis in christianity and the inheritance of rome, and this to some extant accounts for the strong similarities between feasts and festivals from portugal to poland. the underlying rituals of the feast in particular, the serving of the meal, the seating of the guests, and the use of entremets, are almost identical across europe. the common ground shared by european princes also makes the competition between them all sharper, since a courtier from warsaw would instantly comprehend the quality of the display offered at a festival in lisbon. indeed, in the fifteenth century knights such as pero niño, the chevalier bayard and jacques de lalaing travelled widely through europe and jousted at such occasions, rather as international sportsmen would do today, in a way which strengthened the links between the courts of different rulers. the audience for a festival was therefore international, and its effect reached far beyond the ruler’s own territories. the combination of lavish expenditure and prodigious displays of wealth and artistry in a magnificent setting was all the more dramatic in a medieval context, where only a handful of courtiers and city-dwellers could ever experience such an occasion and where the contrast with the drab everyday world was immediate and unavoidable. and within the court itself the festivals reinforced both its social hierarchies and the sense of belonging to that court: an essential reminder of the ordered society in which the ruler was the key figure to which the medieval world aspire. 12 the volume contains some materials at the end (223–258): a chronology of rulers and events from 800 to 1471, the notes to every chapter with the sources of quotations, a further reading section and an index. book reviews 139 whether you are interested in history, literature or material culture, this book will serve you well. richard barber’s monumental pan-european book demanded a cross-disciplinary approach that exemplifies excellently well how in medieval studies any serious analysis requires elements from the different fields that build the discipline: language, literature, history, philology and culture are needed to develop premises and results as nicely built as those presented in this volume. in our academic world volumes like this one, which shows intellectual expertise with readable and fluent writing, are not only most necessary to understand our discipline, they are mandatory if we want it to survive in the entangled and perilous forest of our post-bologna european higher-education area. references 2010: facsimilar edition of the canterbury tales by geoffrey chaucer with wood engravings by eric gill, printed and published at the golden cockerell press at waltham saint lawrence in berkshire, mcmxxix. 2016: facsimilar edition of the pearl manuscript. british library ms cotton nero a.x [with a complementary volume by malcolm andrew and ronald waldron with the parallel text and notes]. armitage, simon. trans. 2008: sir gawain and the knight. london, the folio society [with illustrations by diam sudyka]. barber, peter. 2009: king henry’s map of the british isles, bl cotton ms augustus i i 9. commentary. london, the folio society. barber, richard. ed. 2005a: epics of the middle ages. london, the folio society. barber, richard. ed. 2005b. british myths and legends: marvels and magic. london, the folio society [with illustrations by john vernon lord]. barber, richard. ed. 2005c. british myths and legends: heroes and saints. london, the folio society [with illustrations by john vernon lord]. barber, richard. ed. 2005d. british myths and legends: history and romance. london, the folio society [with illustrations by john vernon lord]. barber, richard. ed. 2008a: chronicles of the dark ages: the coming of the anglosaxons. london, the folio society. barber, richard. ed. 2008b: chronicles of the dark ages: anglo-saxon lore and learning. london, the folio society. barber, richard. ed. 2008c: chronicles of the dark ages: the fall of the anglo-saxon kingdoms. london, the folio society. 140 book reviews bloch, marc. 2012: feudal society. london, the folio society [translated from the french by l. a. manyon, with a preface by jacques le goff]. brewer, derek. 2012: medieval comic tales. london, the folio society [preface by peter ackroyd with illustrations by becca thorne]. clanchy, m. t. 2001: early medieval england. london, the folio society. coghill, neville. trans. 1956: geoffrey chaucer. the canterbury tales. london, the folio society [in two volumes, with woodcuts by edna white]. frugoni, chiara. 2007: inventions of the middle ages. london, the folio society [translated by william mccuaig with a foreword by adam hart-davis]. heaney, seamus. trans. 2010: beowulf. london, the folio society [with illustrations by becca thorne]. henderson, george. 2004: early medieval art and civilization. london, the folio society. hicks, carola & sylvette lemagnen. 2016: the bayeux tapestry. london, the folio society. hunter-blair, peter. 2001: anglo-saxon england. london, the folio society. le goff, jacques. 2011: medieval civilization 400–1500. london, the folio society [translated by julia barrow with an introduction by umberto eco]. mathews, john and caitlín. 2008: king arthur. history & legend. london, the folio society. mortimer, ian. 2013: the time traveller’s guide to medieval england. a handbook for visitors to the fourteenth century. london, the folio society [with a foreword by christopher dyer and illustrations by robert venables]. mynors, r. a. b. ed & trans. 2014: william of malmesbury. the deeds of the english kings. london: the folio society [completed by r. m. thomson and m. winterbottom, and an introduction by peter ackroyd]. power, eileen. 2001a: medieval people. london, the folio society [with an introduction by emmanuel le roy ladurie]. power, eileen. 2001b: medieval women. london, the folio society [edited by m. m. postan, with a foreword by emmanuel le roy ladurie and an introduction by maxime berg]. robertson, elizabeth & stephen h. a. shepherd. eds. 2014: william langland. the vision of piers the plowman. middle english text with the donaldson translation. london, the folio society [introduced by bernard o’donoghue with illistrations by harry brockway]. rubin, miri. 2014: the middle ages. a very short introduction. oxford, oxford university press. seward, desmond. 2000: the monks of war: the military orders. london, the folio society. book reviews 141 sherley-price, leo. trans. 2010: bede. history of the english church and people. london, the folio society [revised by r. e. latham with and introduction by melvyn bragg]. thorpe, lewis. trans. 2010: geoffrey of monmouth. the history of the kings of britain. london, the folio society [with a preface by richard barber]. watts, v. e. trans. 2001: boethius. the consolation of philosophy. london, the folio society [with a preface by brian keenan]. weir, alison. 2015: eleanor of aquitaine, by the wrath of god, queen of england. london, the folio society [with an introduction by richard barber]. windeatt, barry. ed. 2004: the book of margery kempe. a woman’s life in the middle ages. london, the folio society [with a preface by alice thomas ellis and illustrations by chris daunt]. windeatt, barry. trans. 2017: julian of norwich. revelations of divine love. london, the folio society [with and introduction by graham james and calligraphy by gemma black]. reviewer’s address department of english, french and german university of vigo lagoas-marcosende campus praza das cantigas s/n e-36310 vigo (spain) e-mail: jlbueno@uvigo.es selim07 (2).pdf xavier campos, selim 7 (2000, for 1997): 97—124 the latin sources of one of ælfric’s old english homilies on saint stephen1 to james e. cross (july 20, 1920 — december 18, 1996), in memoriam. 0. introduction it seems that ælfric of eynsham (who died c.1012 a.d.), perhaps the most prolific writer of west saxon prose of his time, wrote at least two homi lies on saint stephen.2 the first of these ælfrician homilies about saint stephen (thorpe ed. 1843: i, 44-57)3 bears the title of passio beati stephani, protomartyris, 4 deals with what its latin title announces and seems to have been drawn mainly from chapters six and seven of the acts of the apostles. the second one (godden ed. 1979: 12-18),5 written in 992 a.d. (clemoes 1959: 244) and entitled natali sancti stephani protomartyris, deals with the miracles attributed to the re lics and places of worship to the martyr in north africa, and closely matches material in chapters eight and nine of the twenty1 this research has been possible thanks to financial support from fundació caixa castelló, bancaixa. 2 one of the seven deacons first chosen by the apostles (acts 6, 5) and later stoned to death by the jews (acts 7, 54-60). 3 ms. cambridge university library gg. 3. 28, ff 3-7. (ker 1957: 13) 4 written in 989 ad. (clemoes 1959: 244) 5 ms. cambridge university library gg. 3. 28, ff 138-140v. (ker 1957: 16) ____________________________________________________________________ 98 second book of augustine of hippo’s de civitate dei.1 (morán ed. 1965: 713-722) the present paper deals with the second of these homilies, supplies data revealing its augustinian sources and yields some brief descriptions of the main translating and composing techniques ælfric seems to have used. 0.1. how to first approach ælfric of eynsham ’s latin sources in the latin praefatio to his catholicorum sermonum anglice (thorpe ed. 1843: i, 1), ælfric himself reveals the main sources to his collection of homi lies: […] hos namque auctores in hac explanatione sumus sequuti, videlicet augustinum hipponensem, hieronimum, bedam, gregorium, smaragdum, et aliquando haymonem. 2 later, in the old english praefatio to his liber sermonum catholicorum in anno secundo, ælfric writes not so exp licitly as before that ic hi genám of halgum godspellum, and æfter geíungenra láreowa trahtnungum hi asmeade. ? æra láreowa naman ic awrát on íære ærran béc. on íære ledenan fore spræce […].3 (godden ed. 1979: 1-2) the reach of ælfric’s knowledge and latin input, however, goes far further than the few names above. a general map of the authors ælfric knew and used in the composition of his own writings should include at least the names of abbo of fleury,4 æíelwold of winchester,5 alcuin of york,1 amalarius,2 1 on the one hand, gneuss (1981: 17, 37) reports the existence of two manuscripts containing dcd, one in the durham cathedral library and another in the bodleian library, oxford; on the other hand, lapidge (1985: 77, 83) says that one late anglosaxon copy of augustinus de ciuitate dei was owned by the monastic library at peterborough. 2 “indeed we have followed these authors in this writing, that is to say, augustine of hippo, jerome, bede, gregory, smaragdus and sometimes haymo [of auxerre]”. 3 “i took them [the homilies] from the holy gospels, and looked closely into them after the writings of the pious teachers. i wrote the name of the teachers in the latin introduction in the first book”. 4 an author that has no contributor in the project that is called sources of anglosaxon literary culture (saslc from now on). (biggs et al. eds. 1990: 221) 5 an outstanding figure in anglo-latin learning such as æíelwold of winchester is also lacking an saslc contributor. (biggs et al. eds. 1990: 221) ____________________________________________________________________ 99 ambrose,3 augustine of hippo,4 basil,5 bede,6 cassian,7 cassiodorus,8 caesarius of arles,9 chrysostom, 10 fulgentius the mythographer,11 gregory,12 haymo of auxerre,13 hericus of auxerre,14 hilary of poitiers,15 hrabanus maurus,16 isidore of seville,17 jerome,18 julian of toledo,19 martin of braga,20 origen,21 paul the deacon,22 petrus chrysologus,23 quodvulteus of carthage,24 ratramnus of corbie,25 rufinus,26 sedulius scottus,27 smaragdus,1 and surius2 (skeat ed. 1966: ii, xliv-l; pope ed. 1967: i, 1 alcuin of york is being studied in the saslc project by d. bullough, p. szarmach, v. law, f. biggs and t. mackay. (biggs et al. eds. 1990: 221-2) 2 amalarius has no saslc contributor. 3 l. swift is ambrose’s saslc contributor. (biggs et al. eds. 1990: 222) 4 j. kelly and j. cavadini are the scholars with the responsability to study the presence of augustine in the written culture of the anglo-saxons. (biggs et al. eds. 1990: 223) 5 w. stoneman is basil’s saslc contributor. (biggs et al. 1990: 223) 6 g. brown is venerable bede’s saslc contributor. (biggs et al.1990: 223) 7 cassian is being studied by d. nodes. (biggs et al.eds. 1990: 224) 8 j. halporn is saslc scholar devoted to the study of cassiodorus. (biggs et al.eds. 1990: 224) 9 j. trahern is caesarius’s saslc contributor. (biggs et al. eds. 1990: 224) 10 chrysostom has no saslc contributor. 11 hans sauer is fulgentius’s saslc contributor. (biggs et al.1990: 227) 12 the study of the presence of pope gregory the great’s writings in the culture of the anglo-saxons is the responsability of m.mcc. gatch. (biggs et al. eds. 1990: 228) 13 haymo of auxerre is being studied by f.biggs. (biggs et al. eds. 1990: 228) 14 hericus of auxerre has been forgotten in the saslc project. 15 an author with no saslc contributor. (biggs et al.eds. 1990: 228) 16 william schipper is hrabanus maurus’s saslc contributor. (biggs et al.eds. 1990: 229) 17 m. herren is isidore’s saslc contributor. (biggs et al. eds. 1990: 229) 18 t. amos is jerome’s saslc scholar. (biggs et al.eds. 1990: 229) 19 julian of toledo is studied by f. biggs et alii. (biggs et. al. eds. 1990: 230) 20 paul szarmach is martin of braga’s saslc contributor. (biggs et al. 1990: 231) 21 origen is being studied by d. nodes. (biggs et al.eds. 1990: 232) 22 james cross was studying paul the deacon for the project. (biggs et al. 1990: 233) jimmy –as professor cross enjoyed being calleddied on december 18th, 1996, aged 76. 23 d. sprunger is chrysologus’s saslc contributor. (biggs et al. 1990: 233) 24 t. hall is quodvulteus’s saslc contributor. (biggs et al. 1990: 234) 25 who is being studied by t. leinbaugh. (biggs et al. 1990: 234) 26 p. jackson is rufinus’s saslc contributor. (biggs et al. 1990: 234) 27 sedulius scottus seems to have been forgotten in the project. ____________________________________________________________________ 100 1967: i, 150-177, and passim), together with a number of books from the bible and anonymous latin works. however, as grundy (1991: 4) says, ælfric treats these authorities “with a degree of freedom, substituting and rearranging where necessary […] in order to present an orthodox viewpoint […]”. some of this “degree of freedom” is also explored here. 0.2. augustine of hippo within ælfric of eynsham needless to say, completeness is far from our present interest and possibilities. let us only point out, on the one hand, that po pe (1967: i, 165-6) has identified longer or shorter excerpts from at least nine different books of augustine3 in seventeen of the thirty ælfrician homilies he edited. on the other hand, augustine is also visible in a number of places in the edition by godden (1979: 12, 56, 225, and passim). it is reasonable to admit with grundy (1991: 7) that “it is not exaggeration to say that almost all the ideas contained within ælfric’s sermons are to be found in augustine”. 1. natale sancti stephani protomartyris the printed text here sourced4 is a transcription mainly from cambridge university library ms.gg. 3. 28 (ff. 138r-140v) collated with london british library ms. cotton vitellius d. xvii (ff. 140v-144r), in which “lines 38-87 [are] lost, and text defective at edges of leaves”. (godden ed. 1979: 12) apart from a) the introduction (lines 1-7), in which augustine’s first-person voice is offered to the receiver of the text, augustinus se wisa biscop spræc to his folce […] and pus cwæí; […]5 (godden ed. 1979: 12), b) a short 1 smaragdus is being studied by j. hill. (biggs et al. 1990: 235) 2 surius’s name does not occur in the saslc list. 3 none of them dcd. 4 godden ed. 1979: 12-18. 5 “augustine the wise bishop spoke to his people […] and thus said; […]” ____________________________________________________________________ 101 persuasive fragment (lines 74-78) stating that the miracles reported are only a few out of those many attributable to the martyr, and c) the final doxology (lines 177-217), mainly a scissors-and-glue mixture of common places from the new testament, the homily describes twelve miracles all of them derived from augustine’s dcd 1xxii, 8: 8, 10, 12-22, together with two short sentences from what morán edited as the beginning of the ninth chapter of book xxii, all included in his edition. (morán ed. 1965: 713-722) despite the popularity of many of these augustinian tales, later contained in the 13 th -century latin legenda aurea, and despite the impeccable intro duction and useful notes by professor godden (1979: ix-xcvi, 346-380), the ælfrician homily dealt with here remains so far unsourced. indeed, the editor states that “in assessing the authenticity of the variant readings i have taken into account manuscript distribution, scribal tendencies, the latin sources […]”. yet the latin sources are not ma de known. 1.1. first miracle. the healing of the insane girl sum yponiencsis mæden wearí deofolseoc. ? a gesmyrode sum mæssepreost hí mid ele pæs halgan cyíeres stephanes, and heo pærrihte wearí gewittig;2 (godden ed. 1979: 12) derives from dcd xxii, 8, 8, hipponiensem quandam virginem scio, cum se oleo perunxisset, cui pro illa orans presbyter instillaverat lacrymas suas, mox a daemonio fuisse sanatam.3 (morán ed. 1965: 713) augustine’s tale has been altered in the ælfrician text by the addition of this miracle that does not belong to the stephen series in dcd. what is more, in augustine it is the insane girl who annoints herself with the oil cui pro illa orans presbyter instillaverat lacrymas suas. in ælfric it is a priest that annoints the virgin mid ele pæs halgan cyíeres stephanes. 1 dcd = augustine of hippo’s de civitate dei. 2 “a certain maiden from hippo was possessed by a devil. then a priest annointed her with oil of stephen the holy martyr and she returned immediately in her wits”. 3 “i know a certain maiden from hippo who having annointed herself with the oil into which the priest that prayed for her had poured his tears, was immediately released from the devil”. ____________________________________________________________________ 102 the case means a curious addition including an alteration that will become the strong base in the homily of further references to the martyr’s healing oil. however, the miracle as told by ælfric has nothing to do with the original stephen story in augustine’s dcd. 1.2. second miracle. the healing of the blind woman sum blind wif com to pære halgan cyrcan pe wæs on wurímynte pises eadigan weres gehalgod. and hí gebæd. and pærrihte geseah; heo ía gewende ongean blissigende. buton latteowe. seo íe ær blind pider gelæd wæs 1 (godden ed. 1979: 12) derives from dcd xxii.8.10, ad aquas tibilitanas episcopo afferente praiecto reliquias martyris gloriosissimi stephani, ad eius memoriam veniebat magnae multidinis concursus et occursus. ibi caeca mulier, ut ad episcopum portantem duceretur, oravit: flores quos ferebat dedit: recepit, oculis admovit, protinus vidit. stupentibus qui aderant, praeibat exsultans, viam carpens, et viae ducem ulterius non requirens.2 (morán ed. 1965: 714) ælfric seems to have omitted some original material and added some new one absent from dcd but necessary to the new isotopy of his narrative. thus, in augustine it is a blind woman who comes up to bishop praiectus bearing the re lics of stephen. after getting her eyes in touch with some flowers she had previously offered to the bishop, the blind woman is able to see again. in ælfric it is a blind woman who goes to a church dedicated to stephen’s memory in which she will be healed after her praying. obviously, ælfric is avoiding the place-name in the augustinian miracle, the name of the bishop and the flowers. however, a new and solid reference in the ælfrician homily has been created, seo halge cyrcan pe wæs on wurímynte pises 1 “a certain blind woman went to the holy church that was consacrated to the honour of the holy man and she asked for him and she immediatly saw; so, she who first had been led blind to that place, was coming back happily without a guide”. 2 “as bishop praeiectus was carrying the relics of the most glorious martyr saint stephen to the baths in tibilis, a large crowd joined and went with him. a blind woman from the neighbourhood asked to be led up to the bishop that carried the relics. she gave some flowers she had: (the bishop) received them, placed them near her eyes and she suddenly could see. all the present admired, she went before the crowd leaping happily. she then took her way without requiring a guide”. ____________________________________________________________________ 103 eadigan weres gehalgod [=“the holy church that was consacrated to the honour of this holy man”]. 1.3. third miracle. the resurrection of eucharius eucharius hatte sum mæssepreost on pam lande pe is geháten his pania. se wæs íearle geswenct mid lansumum broce. ía gebrohte se bisop possidius. sum íing lytles of íære foresædan cyrcan pæs eadigan stephanes. and se preost purh pæt wearí gehæled; eft syíían him becom oíer untrumnys. ? æt hé foríferde. and his lic bewunden læg. ac him man lede onuppab his agene tunican. íe wæs gebroht fram pære cyrcan pæs eadigan cyíeres. and hé of deaíe aras 1; (godden ed. 1979: 12) seems to draw from dcd xxii.8.12, eucharius est presbyter ex hispania, calamae habitat, veteri morbo calculi laborabat; per memoriam supradicti martyris, quam possidius illo advexit episcopus, salvus factus est. idem ipse postea morboalio praevalescente, mortuus sic iacebat, ut ei iam pollices ligarentur; opitulatione memorati martyris, cum de memo ria eius reportata fuisset et super iacentis corpus missa ipsius pres byteri tunica, suscitatus est.2 (morán ed. 1965: 714-715) ælfric follows the kernel of the augustinian message but seems to have been pushed to take some decisions that slightly alter the original latin hue. 1.3.1. new unimportant information is added a) to explain the anglo saxon receiver the nature of an exotic place-name in the story, hispania, pæt land pe is geháten hispania, and b) to link the present story to the 1 “eucharius was called a certain priest from the land that is named hispania who was severely troubled by a long disease. then bishop possidius brought a relic from the aforesaid church of the holy stephen and the priest was healed with that. later again another disease went to him so that he died, and his corpse was laid wrapped, but someone covered it with his own tunic that had been brought from the church of the holy martyr, and he from death arose”. 2 “eucharius is a priest from hispania, a dweller of calama, who suffered from gallstones for a long time. he was healed by the relic of the same martyr, that bishop possidius had brought. this same priest, once again, having suffered from another disease, was laying dead so that his thumbs had already been tied, resurrected thanks to the grace of the mentioned martyr. the priest’s tunic was carried to touch the relic of the saint, then the body was covered with it so that the priest suddenly came back into life”. ____________________________________________________________________ 104 preceeding one, the healing of the blind woman, in which an element absent from dcd is introduced with the aim of setting up a strong reference to shape new isotopy; that is to say, seo halige cyrcan pe wæs on wurímynte pises eadigan weres gehalgod. in ælfric it is bishop possidius who carries the re lic of íære foresædan cyrcan pæs eadigan stephanes. however, there is no “aforesaid church” in augustine since the name of the place possidius has taken the re lic from is not mentioned at all. 1.3.2. some original material had been altered at least twice: a) morbus calculi (=“sickness of the stone”) has lost its original referential accuracy turned into an old english umbrella-word, broc, a neuter noun meaning “affliction”, “trouble”, “malady”, “sickness”, etc. (bosworth and toller 1983: 126), and b) the translator’s mediation has been required to repair a deep cultural gap between augustine’s early -christian numidia and ælfric’s anglo -saxon oxfordshire. indeed, according to augustine’s account, romanized numidians used to tie together the thumbs of a corpse to provide it with some symmetry and dignity. so, when eucharius dies ei iam pollices ligarentur [=“his thumbs had already been tied”], something exotic to an anglo saxon mind. the gap had been fittingly filled in by means of a cultural change, his lic bewunden læg [=“his body was laid wrapped”]. 1.3.3. the name of possidius’s episcopal city, calama, is avoided not to puzzle the anglo -saxon audience with useless information. 1.4. fourth miracle. the conversion of martial. a case of greek anagnorisis imported martialis hatte sum hæíen wer. on wintrum geripod. hé onscunode micclum cristenra manna eawfæstnysse. ? a wæs his dohtor cristen swiíe gelyfed. and hire wer wæs on íam ylcan geare gefullod […] nyste hé peah ær pæt se eadiga wer stephanus on his írowunge swa clypode. ac íurh his íingunge hé wearí to fulluhte. and to íam wordum onbryd 1(godden ed. 1979) is a rendering from 1 “martial was called a heathen man many years old that hated greatly the religion of the christians. his daughter was a christian that much believed and her husband had been baptized that same year […] however he did not know before that the ____________________________________________________________________ 105 augustine’s dcd xxii.8.13, fuit ibi vir in ordine suo primarius, nomine martialis, aevo iam gravis, et multum a religione abhorrens christiana. habebat sane fidelem filiam, et generum eodem anno baptizatum […] cum haec verba beatissimi stephani, quando lapidatus est a iudaeis, ultima fuisse nesciret: quae huic quoque ultima fuerunt: nam non multo post etiam ipse defunctus est.1 (morán ed. 1965: 714-715) an abstract of the augustinian story may come as follows: martial, a powerful anti-christian nobleman is very sick and about to die. both his daughter and son-in-law, however, are christian. they ask him to believe in god before dying, but martial ignores them. the son-in-law goes to pray to saint stephen’s church, where he takes some flowers from the altar. then, the son-in-law places the flowers ad caput of his unbelieving father-in-law. before dawn martial requires the presence of the local bishop, who was out apud hipponem. instead, some priests come up to him. surprisingly, martial states to believe and is baptized anon. then, just before his death, martial miraculously utters the same last words saint stephen had uttered before dying after stoned by the jews, criste, accipe spiritum meum.2 (acts 7: 58) indeed, anagnorisis 3, often used as literary resource in sacred biography4, is a technique from greek drama. (heffernan 1992: 115-117) apart from a pair of grammatical noises and a threefold level of translating changes produced, unavoidable in this kind of textual interaction, the narrative structure of the augustinian tale remains basically the same in the ælfrician rendering. holy man stephen had said so in his martyrdom. yet thanks to his intercession he was baptized and inspired with those words”. 1 “in that place there was a man called martial, a most important man in his society, already an old man, that greatly hated the christian religion. actually he had a believing daughter and his son-in-law had been baptized in the same year […] he did not know that these had been the last words of the glorious stephen when stoned by the jews. these had been too his last words for shortly after he passed away”. 2 “christ, receive my soul”. 3 anagnorisis as a greek word means “recognition”. 4 good examples of anagnorisis in old english literature are given in the ninth-century mercian old english martyrology, particularly the notice on saint eugenia (herzfeld ed. 1900: 4-6), and in ælfric’s lifes of saints, especifically the accounts on saint eugenia (skeat ed. 1966: i, 25-51), saint euphrosyne (skeat ed. 1966: ii, 334-355) and saint eustace. (skeat ed. 1966: ii, 190-219) ____________________________________________________________________ 106 the fact of ælfric’s using a name under its genitive shape, martialis, as the grammar subject of the first sentence in the tale does not alter the hue of the source message; however, to change the original value of a little preposition into another’s in the target text can easily vary the original message from the source text, as it happens when the latin preposition ad (=“near”, “by the side of”) is turned into old english under (=“under”, “beneath”). seemingly, this is a minor change. however, if considerd together with some other alterations and additions, it confirms itself as a part in the technique ælfric used t o emphasize the idea of an immediate healing effect from the flowers ad (=“under”?) martial’s head. 1.4.1. different ways to reach the same reference? first; martial, vir in ordine suo primarius (=“a most important man in his society”) becomes sum hæíen wer (=“a heathen man”); second, the latin noun gener (=“son-in-law”) has become old english hire wer (=“her husband” = “martial’s daughter’s husband”), and third, the latin prepositional phrase ante diculum (=“before dawn”) has been enlarged into on pære ylcan nihte æfter his frumslæpe [=“in that same night after his (martial’s) first sleep”]. the first alteration emphasizes the evil-natured condition of martial before his miraculous conversion. the second alteration is absolutely meaningless. the third one, however, is another agent in ælfric’s exaggerating technique if considered both as an alteration, on pære ylcan nihte, and an addition, æfter his frumslæpe. ælfric is evidently shortening the span between the laying of the flowers under martial’s head and his sudden claiming for the bishop. 1.4.2. so, two minor additions shape up a clearer target message. one, ut christianus fieret (=“so that he became a christian”) has been enlarged into pæt he cristen wurde ær his ende (=“so that he became a christian before his end”), and two, ad capud (=“near the head”) grown into under pæs hæíenan heafod (=“under the head of the heathen”), a double phenomenon within the same one phrase: a preposition changed and a noun postmodification added. ____________________________________________________________________ 107 1.4.3. the elisions observed also imply the formation of a new target (ælfrician) isotopy. first, quando lapidatus est a iudaeis (=“when stoned by the jews”) has been reduced to on his ende (=“in his end”), thus avoiding the anglo -saxon receiver an unpleasant, exotic and unnecessary remark. second, the elision of a whole relative clause postmodificating episcopum1 prevents the anglo -saxon receiver from the effects of a disturbing first-person personal pronoun2, and strengthens the new isotopy for it comes apparent to the anglo -saxon audience that all the miracles happen in one same place, which is not the case in dcd. 1.5. fifth miracle. the healing of the three gouty men pær wæron eac gehælede pry fótadlige men purh íone halgan cyíere. twegen landes men. and an ælíeodig; pa landes me wurdon pærrihte gehælede. and íam ælíeodigan wearí geswutelod hwæt he to his fotum lecgan sceolde. and he swa dyde swa him geswutelod wæs. and seo seocnys pærrihte geswác3 (godden ed. 1979: 13) seems a rendering from augustine’s dcd xxii.8.14, sanati sunt illic per eundem martyrem etiam podagri duo, unus civis, peregrinus unus; sed civis omni modo: peregrinus autem per revelationem quid adhiberet quando doleret, audivit; et cum hoc fecerit, dolor continuo conquiescit.4 (morán ed. 1965: 715-716) this short tale in the homiliy contains a good example of ælfric’s exaggerating points of view. as seen, augustine tells the story of podagri duo (=“two gouty men”). ælfric writes of pry fótadlige men (=“three gouty men”). 1 qui mecum forte tunc erat apud hipponem [=”who was perhaps with me (augustine) at hippo”]. 2 augustine’s own voice. let that initial augustinus […] cwæí be remembered. 3 “there three gouty men were also healed thanks to the martyr. two men of this country and one foreigner. the men of this country were immediately healed. the foreigner was told what he should do to his feet. he did as told and the sickness disappeared anon”. 4 “two gouty men were also healed in the same place by the same martyr, one citizen and one foreigner. the citizen was thoroughly cured and the foreigner heard a revelation showing the remedy to be applied when pain came. he applied the remedy and pain was instantly calmed”. ____________________________________________________________________ 108 1.6. sixth miracle. the resurrection of the child a cart run over sum cild plegode gymeleaslice and bearn under anum yrnendum hweole. and wearí to deaíe tocwysed; seo moder pa dreorig bær pæs cildes lic to pam foresædum gemynde pæs halgan stephanes. and hit sona deedcucode and andsund æteowode1 (godden ed. 1979: 13) has been drawn from augustine’s dcd xxii.8.15, audurus nomen est fundi, ubi ecclesia est, et in ea memoria stephani martyris. puerum quemdam parvulum, cum in area luderet, exorbitantes boves qui vehiculum trahebant, rota obtriverunt, et confestim palpitavit expirans. hunc mater arreptum ad eamdem memoriam posuit; et non solum revixit, verum etiam illaesus apparuit.2 (morán ed. 1965: 716) as it often happens chez ælfric, the name of the place in which the miracle happens, audurus in this case, is strategically avoided. the anglo -saxon receiver is not disturbed with superfluous information and, what is more, new isotopy reinforcing the idea that all the miracles take place at one single place can be seen at work. a minor case of elision can be also observed in the translating of this tale. in dcd, the vehicle running over the child is drawn by an exp licit grammar subject, exorbitantes boves (=“runaway oxen”). in ælfric, however, it is the boy who bearn under anum yrnendem hweole (=“ran under one running wheel”), with no mention to those augustinian runaway oxen. the latin message, nevertheless, has been basically kept. 1 “a certain child was playing carelessly and went under a running wheel so that he was killed. the mother then frightfully took the child’s body to the aforesaid memory of holy stephen and it resurrected very soon and could go sound”. 2 “audurus is the name of a rural estate in which there is one church, and in the church there is a memory to saint stephen. one day, a little boy was playing in a threshing floor and some runaway oxen killed him with the wheel of the cart they were pulling. the mother took the body and placed it upon the very memory and the boy not only resurrected but came out without harm”. ____________________________________________________________________ 109 1.7. seventh miracle. the resurrection of t he nun an éawfæst mynecenu læg swiíe geswenct. órwene ælcere edwyrpinge; pa asende man hire tunecan to pære halgan cyrcan. ac heo gewát ær se ærendreca ongean come; hire magas íeah oferbræddon pæt lic mid pære tunecan. and heo sona cucu aras 1 (godden ed. 1979: 13) seems a shortened version of dcd xxii.8.16, sanctimonialis quaedam in vicina possessione, quae caspaliana dicitur, cum aegritudine laboraret, ac desperaretur, ad eamdem memoriam tunica eius allata est: quae antequan revocaretur, illa defuncta est. hac tamen tunica operuerunt cadaver eius pareentes, et recepto s piritu salva facta est. 2 (morán ed. 1965: 716) elision is once more the only phenomenon worth looking at, the augustinian vicina possessio, quae caspaliana dicitur (=“a nearby rural es tate called caspaliana”) has been dropped out in the translating process. 1.8. eighth miracle. the resurrection of the believing man’s daughter sum gelyfed man gebæd æt pære cyrcan for his adligan dehter. and hire reaf pider abær. efne ía ía he hám gecyrde. ? a urnon his híwan him togeanes. and hire forís ií him gecyddon; he ía mid pam reafe pæt lic oferwreah. and seo dohtor pærrihte to lífe aras3 (godden ed. 1979: 13-14) seems a shortened version from dcd xxii.8.17, apud hipponem bassus quidam syrus, ad memoriam eiusdem martyris orabat pro aegrotante et periclitante filia, eoque secum vestem eius attulerat: cum ecce pueri de domo cucurrerunt, qui ei 1 “a pious nun laid greatly afflicted, hopeless of any recovery. then her tunic was sent to the holy church but she died before the messenger came back home. her relatives, however, wrapped the corpse with the tunic and she soon arose alive”. 2 “the tunic of a pious woman who lived in a nearby estate called caspaliana, as she was severely ill and hopeless, was carried to the same memory. yet the pious woman died before the arriving of the tunic that had been touched. her parents, however, covered the corpse with that tunic and she regained her ghost and was saved”. 3 “a certain believing man asked in that church for his ill daughter and a garment of hers he carried there. just then he returned home. then his servants came running up to him and informed of his daughter’s death. he then with the garment wrapped the body up and the daughter immediately arose into life”. ____________________________________________________________________ 110 mortuam nuntiarent. sed cum, orante illo, ab amicis eius exciperentur, prohiberunt eos illi dicere, ne per publicum plangeret. qui cum domum redisset iam suorum eiulatibus personantem, et vestem filiae quam ferebat, super eam proiecisset, reddita est vitae.1 (morán ed. 1965: 716) on the one hand, ælfric avoids names and surnames in the augustinian tale: hippo, an episcopal city in numidia (roman north africa); bassus, the name of the believing father, and syrus [=“from syria”], a denominal surname 2 to bassus. on the other hand, ælfric omitts sed cum, orante illo, ab amicis eius exciperentur, prohiberunt eos illi dicere, ne per publicum plangeret [=“yet, as he was praying, his friends stopped the servants and forbade them to inform him so that he did not mourn in public”], what pushes ælfric to change the original design augustine had originally made. indeed, in the old english tale, the servants inform the father as he is going home. 1.9. ninth miracle. the resurrection of another man’s son eft sumes oíres mannes sunu purh untrumnysse gewát. ac ía ía his frynd pa lícíenunge gearcodon. ? a tihte heora sum pæt man pæs cnapan líc smyrian sceolde mid ele pæs halgan stephanes; hí swa dydon. and hé geedcucode3 (godden ed. 1979: 14) had been taken out from dcd xxii.8. 18, rursus ibidem apud nos irenaei, cuiusdam collectarii filius, aegritudine exstinctus est. cumque ccorpus iaceret exanime, atque a lugentibus et lamentatibus exsequiae pararentur, amicorum eius quidam inter aliorum consolantium 1 “in hippo, a certain syrian called bassus was praying at the memory of the same martyr for a daughter of his who was severely ill. he had taken with him one of the girl’s garments. suddenly his servants came up running to him with the tidings of her death. yet, as he was praying, his friends stopped the servants and forbade them to inform him so that he did not mourn in public. he came back home and – when nothing but weeping could be heard thereincovered her daughter’s body with the garment he had taken and she came back into life”. 3 “similarly another man’s son died due to sickness, but when his friends had already made ready the funeral, one of them suggested that the body of the boy had to be annointed with the oil of holy stephen. they did so and he resurrected”. ____________________________________________________________________ 111 verba suggestit, ut eiusdem martyris oleo perungeretur. factum est, et revixit.1 (morán ed. 1965: 716) almost as expected, ælfric had omitted the only name in this tale, irinaeus, some circumstances around it, and some minor prepositional phrases in the inferior level of the syntax hierarchy. 1.10. tenth miracle. the resurrection of t he nobleman’s son eft sum pegen brohte his suna lic to íam foresædan gemynde pæs halgan cyíeres. and mid micclum wope hine gebæd. and æfter his gebede he ahof pæt cild up geedcucod asund 2 (godden ed. 1979: 14) seems to have been taken from dcd xxii.8.19, itemque apud nos vir tribunitius eleusinus super memoriam martyris, quae in suburbano eius est, aegritudine examinatum posuit infantulum filium: et post orationem, quam cum multis lacrymis ibi fudit, viventem levavit. 3 (morán ed. 1965: 717) the elision of a) the name and social condition of eleusinus, and b) the relative clause postmodificating the noun nucleus memoriam, greatly short ens the ælfrician rendering. 1.11. the persuasive fragment gif we wyllaí ealla ía wundra. and hælía awritan. ? e we oncneowon gefremode purh íone wuldorfullan cyíere stephanum. íonne wyrce we manega béc. ær ían íe we hí ealle gegaderion. and íeah hí 1 “the son of a certain tax-collector called irinaeus died here near us. as the funeral was being prepared all among weeping and tears and the body laying ghostless, one the father’s friends suggested to annoint the body of the son with the oil of the same martyr. it was done and the boy resurrected”. 2 “actually, a certain nobleman brought the body of his son into the aforesaid memory of the holy martyr and with great weeping prayed to him. after his praying he lifted up the boy soundly resurrected”. 3 “eleusinus, a noble man near us, placed one son of his who had died of sickness upon the memory of the martyr, which is in the suburb he used to live in. after having prayed and poured many tears, he lifted the boy up alive”. ____________________________________________________________________ 112 ne magon beon ealle gegaderode; sind peah sume pe ic forsuwian ne mæg 1 (godden ed. 1979: 14) has the aspect of being a severe shortening from dcd xxii.8.20, […] si enim miracula sanitatum, ut alia taceam, ea tantummodo velim scribere, quae per hunc martyrem, id est, gloriosissimum stephanum, facta sunt in colonia calamensi, et in nostra, plurimi conficiendi sunt libri: nec tamen omnia colligi poterunt […] 2 (morán ed. 1965: 717) 1.12. eleventh miracle. the noble woman’s ring a n æpelboren wíf wearí micclum geswenct mid langsumere untrumnysse. and hire ne mihte nán læcecræft fremian; pa lærde hi sum iudeisc man pæt heo name ænne wernægel of sumes oxan hricge. and becnytte to anum hringe mid hire snode. and mid pam hí to nacedum lice begyrde; pa ferde heo swa begyrd to pæs halgan cyíeres cyrcan. ? æt heo íær hire hæle abæde; pa wicode heo be wege wií pære éá pe is gehaten bragade. and on ærneme rien s iíode swa swa heo gemynt hæfde; pa geseah heo licgan íone hring on íam wege ætforan hire foton mid snode mid ealle. and pæs micclum wundrode; pa wende heo pæt se hring toburste. oííe seo snód toslupe; ac ía ía heo afunde pone hring gehalne. and pa snóde mid eallum cnottum swa fæste gewriíen swa heo ær wæs. ía undestod heo pæt pæt wundor gelámp purh íæs halgan mihte. íe heo to fundode. and micclum truwode híre hæle toweard íurh his geearnungum. and wearp íone hring mid pam bendum into íam flowendum streame; heo ferde ía mid bliíum mode to íære halgan cyrcan. and íær hire hæle gefette. ? urh íæs halgan cyíeres íingunge; 3 (godden ed. 1979: 14), apart from the long addition 1 “if we wanted to write down all the miracles and healings that we know stephen the miraculous martyr accomplished, we should make many books before gathering them and they can not be put together; however, here are some i can not pass over”. 2 “if i wanted to refer only to the miraculous healings that the glorious martyr stephen accomplished in calama and here in hippo –just to pass over some othersi would write many volumes. and so i would be unable to gather them all […]” 3 a woman of noble birth was very troubled with a long malady and medicine could do no good to her. then she knew a certain jew who gave her a stone from the loins of an ox, tied it to a ring together with a hair-band or snood of hers and girded her naked body with it. later, so girded she went to the church of the holy martyr to ask for her health. she stopped by the side of a way near the river that is called bragade and in early morning she set forth as she had decided. then she saw the ____________________________________________________________________ 113 dealing with the devil, derives from dcd xxii. 8. 21, uzali etiam, quae colonia uticae vicina est, multa praeclara per eundem martyrem facta cognovimus: cuius ibi memoria longe prius quan apud nos, ad episcopo evodio constituta est. sed libellorum dandorum ibi consuetudo non est, vel potius non fuit: nam fortasse nunc esse iam coepit. cum enim nuper illic essemus, petroniam, clarissimam feminam, quae ibi mirabiliter ex magno atque diuturno, in quo medicorum adiutoria cuncta defecerant, languore sanata est, hortati sumus volente supradicto loci episcopo, ut libellum daret, qui recitaretur in populo; et obedientissime paruit. in quo posuit etiam, quod hic reticere non possum, quamvis ad ea quae hoc opus urgent, festinare compellar. a quodam iudaeo dixit sibi fuisset persuasum, ut annulum capillatio cingulo insereret, quod sub omni veste ad nuda corporis cingeretur; qui annulus haberet sub gemma lapidem in renibus inventum bovis. hoc alligata quasi remedio ad sancti martyris limina veniebat. sed pro fecta a carthagine, cum in confinio fluminis bagradae in sua possessione mansisset, surgens ut iter perageret, ante pedes suos illum iacentem annulum vidit, et capillatiam zonam qua fuerat alligatus, mirata tentavit. quam cum omnino suis nodis firmissimis, sicut fuerat, comperisset, adstrictam, crepuisse atque exsiluisse annulum suspicata est: qui etiam ipse cum integerrimus fuisset iventus, fu turae salutis quodammodo pignus de tanto miraculo se accepisse praesumpsit, atque illud vinculum solvens, simul cum eodem annulo, proiecit in flumen. 1 (morán ed. 1965: 717-718) ring laying on the way before her feet with all the snoods and she wondered at this. then she thought that the ring had been broken or the snood dissolved, yet she had found the ring entire and the snood with all the knots so firmly bound as before. then she understood that the wonder had happened through the power of the saint she asp ired to and greatly trusted her health upon his merits and then she threw the ring with the bands into the flowing river. then she went to the church with a happy attitude and there she regained her health through the intervention of the holy martyr”. 1 “we also know that in uzala –a colony near uticamany wonders have happened through the intercession of this martyr. its [uzala’s] bishop evodius had carried there his [stephen’s] relics long before bringing them to us [in hippo], but in that place [uzala] the practice of reeporting the stories does not exist; better, it did not exist for the practice has been now started already. not long ago, when we [augustine] were there, petronia, a wealthy woman who had been miraculously cured of a severe malady that had exhausted all the resources of the physicians, was encouraged with the licence of the local bishop to report it so that it [her miraculous healing] could be known to the people, and she obediently did so. she said something in her report that i cannot conceal here, although it pushes me to ____________________________________________________________________ 114 as usual, ælfric made his audience to miss the name of the noble woman, petronia; the name of the place where the action happened, uzala (which reinforces the new spatial isotopy in the west saxon text); the name of evodius, the bishop who encouraged petronia to report her miraculous healing; petronia’s reported speech (which implies a change of the original narrative structure ), and some augustine’s first-person occurrences. however, ælfric’s translation respects augustine’s kernel message. 1.13. twelfth miracle. the healing of paulus and palladia an wundorlic tacn gelamp æt pæs halgan gemynde. swa wídmare ic wene pæt feawa wæron on pære neawiste pe pæt ne gesawe. o ííe ne gehyrde; seofon gebro íu wæron. and íreo geswustra. anre wydenan cild. on íære byrig cappadocia. æíelborenre mægíe; pa wearí seo modor biterlice gegremod.æfter hire weres forís iíe. fram hire anum cilde to ían s wiíe. ? æt heo on eastertide eode to cyrcan. and wolde íone sunu pe hi getírigde mid wyriunum gebindan; pa gemette heo ænne deofol on mannes híwe. se befrán hwider heo wolde; pæt earme wif andwyrde and cwæí. ? æt heo wolde to cyrcan gán. and pone sunu íe hí tirigde awyran; pa andwyrde se deofol on pam menniscum híwe; riht íu dest and wel. gif íu ealle íine cild tosomne wyrigst. for ían íe hí ealle on andwerdnysse stodon ía ía se án íe tynde. and noldon pe ealgian wií heora bre íer. ne hí íinne teonan ne besargodon. wyrig hí ealle togædere; pæt earme wif gelyfde his wælhreowum geíeahte. and wearí mid maran wódnysse astyrod. eode pa to íam fantfæte. and tolysde hire feax. and bedypte on íam fante. and mid micelre hatheortnysse ealle hire bearn mánfullice wirigde; æfter pisum gecyrde hám. and gemette ealle hire bearn mid ormætre cwylminge. cwacigende eallum limum; accelerate the end of this work. she said that a jew had persuaded her to wear under her robes, in touch with her naked body, a snood with a ring in which a stone found in the loins of an ox had been set. thus girded with the snood, the lady used to go to the holy martyr’s church. one day, however, she left carthage and moved to live in a estate by the side of river bragada. when she got up to start he journey, the lady saw the ring laying before her feet. she touched her waist to check her being girded and, as she found herself perfectly girded, she thought that the ring had broken and come off. she examined the ring, saw that it was right and she then understood this wonder as a sign of her future healing. then she undid the snood and threw it into the river together with the ring”. ____________________________________________________________________ 115 pa wearí heo mid micelre sarnysse íurhslegen. ? æt heo swa micel mán gefremode. eode ía and hí sylfe on grine ahéng. ? æt heo fotum span; witodlice se ylc a deofol íe hí tihte ær to íære mánfullican wyriunge. se hí eft siíían to hire agenre hengene gelærde; pa earman bearn ne mihton ía léng for sceame on pære byrig aíolian. for íære atelican cwacunge. ac ferdon wórigende geond eallum romaniscum ymbhwyrfte; twegen pissera becomon to ús. bro íer. and swuster. paulus. and palladia. wídcuíe íurh heora yrmíe; hí comon twám wucan ær eastron. and dæghwomlice geneosodon ía halgan cyrcan on pære íe wæs pæs wuldorfullan stephanes gemynd. bid dende pæt he him god gegladode. and him ía ærran hæle forgeafe; pa on íam easterdæge eodon hí swa hí gewunode wæron to pære cyrcan. and se bro íor hine gebæd æt pam halgum reliquium; pa wearí hé færlice astreht. and slapendum gelicost læg. na swa íeah cwacigende swa swa him on slæpe gewunelic wæs; efne ía hé aras and nateshwon ne cwacode. for ían íe hé wæs gehæled and stod gesúnd. sceawigende pa pe hine sceawodon; eornostlice hwá mihte ía ía forsuwian godes herunge; soílice seo cyrce wearí mid clypungum íæs blissigendan folces. and hí urnon to me án æfter anum íær ic inne sæt ía gearo to gánne; ælc æfter oírum cydde me pæt wundorlice godes tacn. and ic íæs micclum gode íancode; pa æt nextan stop inn se gehæleda cniht. and hine to minum cneowum gebígde. and ic hine to minum cosse arærde; ic eode ía to godes íenunge. and pæt folc gebletsode. and him godes gerihtu dyde; ic gela íode pone gehæledan cniht to urum gereorde. and he us rehte ealle his broíerlicere and moderlicere yrmíe racu; on íam íriddan easterlicum dæge. ic hét standan pone gehæledan bro íer ætforan íam folce. and his swuster samod. and ic him rehte ía race be endebyrdnysse; pæt folc beheold pone bro íer standan buton átelicere cwácunge. and seo swuster eallum limum egeslice cwacode; pa íe hine ær ne gesawon. and nyston fram hwilcere yrmíe godes mildheortnys hine gehælde. hí mihton tocnawan on íære swuster bifunge; pa het ic æfter íære gereccednysse hí hwæthwega ufor gán. and ic ongann be íam cuían intingan hwæthwega georn licor smeagan; efne ía færlice wurdon gehyrede oíre clypunga níwre blisse of pæs martyres gemynde. and pæt folc beah íyderweard; seo cwacigende swuster eode of íam stæpum pe heo on astód to íam halgan cyíere wolde hí gebiddan. and heo íærrihte swa heo pæt gesceot hrépode læg swilce heo mid slæpe fornumen wære. and arás siíían hál; pæt folc ía mid miclere fægnunge and singalre herunge hí gelæddon to íære stowe pær heo lytle ær cwacigende stód. and micclum ____________________________________________________________________ 116 fægnodon. ? æt heo wæs pam breíer gelic. íam íe heo hwene ær íurh ía eges lican bifunge ungelíc wæs; hwæt ía ealle samod blissodon on godes herungum. swa micclum pæt ure earan earfoílice mihton heora stemne aræfnian; hwæt wæs on íæra blissigendra heortan buton godes geleafa. for ían pe stephanes blod agoten wæs?1 1 “a wonderful token befell in the memory of the saint. i think it was so famous that those in the neighbourhood who neither saw it nor heard of it were but a few. in the city of cappadocia, a young widow in a family of noble birth had seven sons and three daughters. then the mother became so much bitterly irritated after her husband’s death by one of her children that she went to the church in paschal time and desired the son that had annoyed her bound with cursings. she then met a devil under the aspect of a man. the devil asked what she wanted. the pitiful woman answered and said that she wanted to go to the church and curse the son that had troubled her. then the devil under human hue said: ‘you will do right and well if you do evil to all your children together, for they were all present when that one vexed you, they did not want to defend you against their brother and did not comfort your pain. curse them all together.’ the pitiful woman believed his cruel thought and was stirred with more anger. she then went to the font for baptism, undid her hair, dipped in the font and with great rage she wickedly cursed all her offsprings. after that she returned home and found all her sons with severe sufferings, all their limbs quaking. then she was struck by great sorrow so that she accomplished a great wickedness, she then went and hanged herself on a rope so that she moved her feet convulsively. indeed, the same devil that had previously brought to her mind the terrible cruelties, had now induced her to her own hanging. the pitiful children could no longer endure for shame to stay in the city due to their dire trembling; however, they went wandering beyond all the roman boundaries. two of these came to us, one brother and one sister, paulus and palladia, widely known due to their misery. they arrived two weeks before easter and everyday they visited the holy church that contained the memory of miraculous stephen asking god for their gladdening and their previous health restored. on easterday they went to the church as it was their wont, and the brother asked for himself to the holy relics. then he was suddenly postrated and lay like those who sleep without quaking, however, as he was accostumed in his sleep. he just then arose and quaked by no means because he had been healed and stood looking at those who looked at him. who could then, indeed, pass over the praising of god? truly, the church was full with the cries of the blessing people, that there ran to me one after one up to the place i was sitting ready to go. all of them told me the wonderful token of god and i greatly thanked god for that. then, shortly after, the healed boy came up to me, bowed down before my knees and i made him stand with one kiss of mine. i then went to the service of god, blessed the people and did the rites of god to them. i summoned the healed boy to our refection and he told us the explanation of the evil from his brothers and mother. on the third day of easter i ordered the healed brother to stand before the people together with his sister and i told them the explanation in an orderly way. the people beheld the brother standing without the dire quaking, yet the sister was shaking all her limbs fearfully. those who could not see him before and did not know the misery that the mercy of god had taken him out from, could now know the sister’s quaking. after the reporting, i ordered them ____________________________________________________________________ 117 (godden ed. 1978: 15-16) has been enlarged from augustine’s dcd xxii, 8, 22 (morán ed. 1965: 719-721): unum est apud nos factum, non maius quam illa quae dixi, sed tam clarum atque illustre miraculum, ut nullum arbitrer esse hipponiensium, qui hoc non vel viderit, vel didicerit, nullum qui oblivisci ulla ratione potuerit. decem quidam fratres (quorum septem sunt mares, tres feminae) de caesarea cappadociae suorum civium non ignobiles, maledicto matris recenti, patris eorum obitu destitutae, quae iniuriam sibi ad eis factam acerbissime tulit, tali poena sunt divinitus coerciti, ut horribiliter quaterentur omnes tremore membrorum: in qua foedissima specie oculos suorum civium non ferentes, quaquaversum cuique ire visum est, toto pene vagabantur orbe romano. ex his etiam ad nos venerunt duo, frater et soror, paulus et palladia, multis aliis locis misera diffamante iam cogniti. venerunt autem ante pascha ferme dies quindecim, ecclesiam quotidie, et in ea memoriam gloriosissimi stephani frequentabant, orantes ut iam sibi placaretur deus, et salutem pristinam redderet. et illic, et quacumque ibant, convertebant in se civitatis aspectum. nonnulli qui eos alibi viderant, causamque tremoris eorum noverant, aliis, ut cuique poterant, indicabant. venit et pascha, atque ipso die dominico mane, cum iam frequens populu s praesens esset, et loci sancti cancellos, ubi, ubi martyrium erat, idem iuvenis orans teneret, repente postratus est, et dormienti simillimus iacuit: non tamen tremens, sicut etiam per somnum solebat. stupentibus qui aderant, atque aliis paventibus, aliis dolentibus, cum eum quidam veellent erigere, nonnulli prohiberunt, et potius exitum exspectandum esse dixerunt. et ecce surrexit, et non tremebat, quoniam sanatus erat, et stabat incolumis, intuens intuentes. quis ergo se tenit a laudibus dei? clamantiu m gratulantiumque vocibus ecclesia usquequaque completa est. inde ad me to place themselves a bit higher and i began to inquire on this known affair a little more zealously. just then, suddenly, more cries of new blessing were heard from the martyr’s memory and the people turned their way in that direction. the quaking sister had gone from the steps she was standing on up to the holy martyr she wanted to pray and, as she dealt with the shaking, she lay as taken by sleep and then she arose perfectly hale. with great rejoicing and perpetual praise, the people led them to the place which little before she had stood quaking on, and greatly exulted that she were like her brother was, she who previously was not like him due to her fearful trembling. all those rejoiced together in praising god so loudly that our ears could hardly listen to their voices. what there was in their blessing hearts but the faith of god, whom stephen’s blood had been poured out for?” ____________________________________________________________________ 118 corritur, ubi sedebam iam processurus: irruit alter quisque post alterum, omnis posterior quasi novum, quod alius prior dixerat, nuntiantes: meque gaudente et apud me gratias deo agente, ingreditur etiam ipse cum pluribus, inclinatur ad genua mea, erigitu ad osculum meum. procedimus ad populum, plena erat ecclesia, pernosabat vocibus gaudiorum. deo gratias! deo laudes! nemine tacente, hinc atque inde clamantium. salutavi populum, et rursus eadem ferventiore voce clamabant. facto tandem silentio, scripturarum divinarum sunt lecta solemnia. ubi autem ventum est ad mei sermonis locum, dixi pauca pro tempore et pro illius iucunditate laetitiae. magis enim eos in opere divino quamdan dei eloquentiam, non audire, sed considerare permisi. nobiscum homo prandit, et diligenter nobis omnem suae ac maternae fraternaeque calamitatis indicavit historiam. sequenti itaque die, post sermonem redditum, narrationis eius libellum in crastinum populo recitandum promisi. quod cum ex dominico paschae die tertio fieret in gradibus exe drae, in qua de superiore loquebar loco, feci stare ambos fratres, cum eorum legeretur libellus. intuebar populus universus sexus utriusque, unum stantem sine deformi motu, alteram membris omnibus contrementem. et qui ipsum non viderant, quid in eo div inae misericordiae factum esset, in eius sorore cernebant. videbant enim quid in eo gratulandum, quid pro illa esset orandum. inter haec recitato eorum libello, de conspectu populi abire eos praecepi; et de tota ipsa causa aliquanto diligentius coeperam dis putare, cum ecce, me disputante, voces aliae de memoria martyris novae congratulationis audiuntur. conversi sunt eo qui me audiebant, coeperuntque concurrere. illa enim ubi de gradibus descendit, in quibus steterat, ad sanctum martyrem orare perrexerat. quae mox ut cancellos attigit, collapsa similiter velut in somnum, sana surrexit. dum ergo requereremus quid factum fuerit, unde iste strepitus laetus exstiterit, ingressi sunt cum illa in basilicam, ubi eramus, adducentes eam sanam de martyris loco. tum vero tantus ab utroque sexu admirationis clamor exortus est, ut vox continuata cum lacrymis non videretur posse finiri. perducta est ad eum locum, ubi paulo ante steterat tremens. exsultabant eam similem fratri, cui doluerant remansisse dissimilem: et nondum fusas pre ces suas pro illa, iam tamen praeviam voluntatem tam cito exauditam esse cernebant. exsultabant in dei laudem voce sine verbis, tanto sonitu, quantum aures nostrae ferre vix possent. quid erat in ____________________________________________________________________ 119 cordibus exsultantium, nisi fides christi, pro qua stephani sanguis effusus est? 1 (morán ed. 1965: 719-721) 1 “one miracle, not greater than those i have spoken of, but so clear and bright that there are many witnesses among the people of hippo having seen it there or having heard about it, a miracle that will be never forgotten, has happened here near us. ten noble brothers (seven boys and three girls) from caesarea of cappadocia that had been recently cursed by their mother due to an insult they had done to her after their father’s death, were punished by divine will with a pain consisting of a terrible quaking of their limbs. not able to bear being looked up and down, they left in different ways wandering almost all the roman empire. two of these, two brothers, paulus and palladia, arrived in our city when they were already known elsewhere thanks to the fame of their misery. they arrived some fifteen days before easter. everyday they used to visit the church and the memory in it of the most glorious stephen, praying god so that he should pity them and give their health back to them. those who had previously seen them and knew the cause of their trembling told the others in their own way. easter came and, on sunday morning, when a large croud was filling the church, the boy, siezed to the iron gate of the holy place with the martyr’s relics, suddenly fell down and lay as if he wereee leeping. however, he did not quake as he previously used to. some were shocked by pain, others by fear. some wanted to raise him up, yet some forbade them to do so saying that it was better to wait for the outcome. yet the young one arose without trembling for he had been healed so that he stood entirely sound looking at those who were looking. who then did not praise god? the church was filled with clamour and thanking voices. then, when i was ready to go, many ran to me. they came up one after the other, the last one telling the same that the first had previously told. overjoyed and thanking god deep inside myself, i saw how the lucky one had arrived surrounded by the crowd. he cast down to my feet. i embraced him and made him stand up. we addressed to the people. the church was overcrowded. rejoicing voices went forth and only the following words could there be heard: ‘thanks to god, blessed be god!’ i greeted the people and a new clamour even more fervent could be heard. finally, already in silence, the lessons in the divine writings were read. when the portion of my sermon arrived, i addressed some words according to the time and greatness of that joy, for i preferred them to enjoy god’s eloquence in such great a work than to listen to my words. the man lunched with us and told us with full details the story of his misery together with his mother’s and brothers’. next day after the sermon i promised the people to read the account of the event. three days after easter sunday, when i was reading what had been previously promised, i made the brother and the sister to place themselves on the steps of the pulpit from which i used to speak. everybody looked at them attentively. he was perfectly quiet yet she was trembling from head to feet. those who had not seen them before could now see in the sister what the divine mercy had done in the brother. they saw what there was in him to be thanked for and what they had to pray for her. when the reading of the lesson was over, i made them retire from the presence of the people. i had started to utter some thoughts about this story when, together with my own words, we coud hear new rejoicing voices coming out from the martyr’s memory. then, those who heard them turned towards that place in crowds. the young girl had come down from the steps and gone to pray to the martyr. just when she touched the gates, she fell as in sleep and then arose thoroughly sound. as we were asking what had happened and which was the cause of that happy crying, already ____________________________________________________________________ 120 1.13.1. the long addition ælfric makes up. the first part of the story, at least as told by augustine, is based upon a weak rationale. indeed, the curse the ten brothers are victims of is justified by the latin adverb divinitus [=“due to divine will”]; that is, the active curse is the visible outcome of an angry widow’s praying, something with the necessary strength to provoke severe convulsions to ten people. ælfric reshapes the story with the inclusion with a well-known agent of evil, deofol on mannes hiwe [= “a devil with the aspect of a man”], an expected character to a medieval mind. indeed, in the tale by augustine, where no devils go forth exp licitly, all the children are victims of their mother’s cursing. in ælfric, however, the mother wants to curse only one of them but the devil advices her to curse all of them. as it is known, the ælfrician mother, horrified at her own deeds, hangs herself, a lesson added by the west saxon writer. 1.14. the joining of two chapters as previously observed, the end of dcd xxii.8.22 is an interrogative sentence, quid erat in cordibus exsultantium, nisi fides christi pro qua stephani sanguis effusus est?1 (morán ed. 1965: 721), conveniently translated by ælfric, hwæt wæs on íæra blissigendra heortan buton godes geleafa. for ían pe stephanes blod agoten wæs? 2, a common message where the latin genitive christi [“of christ”] turned into old english godes [“of god”] has been the only alteration observed. healed in the martyr’s tomb, she was led in to the basilica. an outburst of happiness went forth from the mouths of men and women. their voices, half joy half tears, went on indefinitely. she was led to the place short ly ere she had been quaking in. those who previously had pitied her, were now overjoyed. they praised god because he had listened to their prayers even before their praying. they did not praise god with words but with meaningless voices, so loudly that our ears could hardly stand by with them. what was there in the hearts of this happy people but the faith to christ whom saint stephen had poured out his blood for?” 1 “what was there in the hearts of this happy people but the faith of christ whom saint stephen had poured out his blood for?” 2 “what was there in the hearts of those blessing but the faith of god for which stephen had poured out his blood?” ____________________________________________________________________ 121 ælfric goes beyond the stephen “stuff” in chapter eight and enters the first sentences heading dcd xxii.9, which are the source to one of his teaching gists; thus, hwæne mærsiaí pas wundra mid heora seíunge. buton crist pe on so íre menniscnysse geboren wæs. and mid flæsce of deaíe aras. and mid flæsce to heofenum astah? witodlice íes halga cyíere. and mid æftergengan wæron gewitan pyses geleafan. and íisum geleafan hí cyddon gecyínysse oferswiíende pisne feondlican middaneard. na ongean feohtende ac sweltende; 1 (godden ed. 1979: 16-7) is a shortened rendering from cui, nisi huic fidei attestantur ista miracula, in qua praedicatur christus resurrexisse in carne, et in caelum ascendisse cum carne? quia et ipsi martyres huius fidei martyres, id est, huius fidei testes fuerunt, huic fidei testimonium perhibentes mundum inimicissimum et crudelissimum pertulerunt; eumque, non repugnando, sed moriendo vicerunt. (morán ed. 1965: 722)2 1.15. the biblical skeleton of the rest of the homily when the augustinian source is no longer translated, there it comes a fragment that seems the product of ælfric’s own memory and “creative” method (cross 1969); that is, a text not deriving from a single author/ text but a kind of intertextual meeting point containing a number of definable commonplaces, echoes, allusions and reminiscences mainly from the two testaments. thus, our aim here is to make known the bib lical origin of the main ideas ælfric is dealing with and to organise them under the following four items: a) christ and stephen compared. as expected, the ælfrician stephen is also the first martyr following cristes fotswaíum [“christ’s foot-traces”]. both christ and stephen’s last speeches are quoted: min drihten, miltsa him nyton hi hwæt hi doí, from luke 23, 24 (“my lord, forgive 1 “what do these wonders proclaim with their evidence but christ that was born in true human nature and arose in flesh from death and in flesh went up to heavens? certainly, these holy witnesses together with their followers knew this faith and they call this faith the testimony that overcomes this hostile world, not fighting but dying.” 2 “what do these miracles testify but the faith that preaches christ having resurrected and gone up to heaven in flesh and soul? martyrs have been martyrs, that is, witnesses of this thruth for which they had endured a most cruel hostile world, overcoming it not by means of fighting but of dying.” ____________________________________________________________________ 122 them for they know not what they do”), and drihten min, ne sete pu him ías dæda to synne, from acts 7, 60 (“my lord, do not hold these deeds as a sin against them”). b) dangers of cursing. one of ælfric’s final arguments, pæt ía wyrigendan godes rice ne geagniaí is clearly taken from 1corinth 6, 9 (“so that revilers will not inherit the kingdom og god”). indeed, the tale of the widow who cursed her children was read to the anglo -saxon audience as a good model showing both the dangers of cursing and the paranormal capacities of the new faith. c) mutual respect between parents and children. this new testament-oriented fragment is suddenly shaken by echoes from echoes from leviticus 20, 9 ne fæder ne moder mid teonan ne getyrion to heora wyriungum, and one “easy” quotation from exodus 20, 12 arwuría pinne fæder and pine moder. ? æt pu lang líf ofer eorían wunie 1, followed by reminiscences from psalms 34, 1, ure tunge is gesceapen to godes herungum, 2 and psalms 62, 4, ne magon we mid anum mu íe bletsian and wyrian.3 d) the christian message par excellence. the end of the text here sourced is a quotation from both luke 6, 27, he cwæí lufiaí eowre fynd, doí pam tela íe eow hatia í, 4 and matthew 5, 44-45, gebiddaí for eowerum ehterum and tynendum. ? æt ge beon eowres fæder bearn se íe on heofenum is.5 xavier campos vilanova universitat jaume i, castelló, spain references 1 “honour your father and your mother, so that you live a long life on earth”) 2 “our tongue has been made to the praise of god.” 3 “we cannot bless and curse with one mouth.” 4 “he said love your enemies do good to those who hate you.” 5 “ask for those who persecute you so that you may be son of the father who is in heaven.” ____________________________________________________________________ 123 biggs, f. m., t. d. hill, p. e. szarmach, eds. with the assistance of k. hammond 1990: sources of anglo-saxon literary culture: a trial version, center for medieval and early renaissance studies, state university of new york at binghamton, ny. bosworth, j. and t. n. toller 1898, 1983: an anglo-saxon dictionary, oxford university press, oxford. clemoes, p. 1959: the chronology of ælfric’s works. peter clemoes ed. the anglo-saxons. studies in some aspects of their history and culture presented to bruce dickins, bowes & bowes, london. cross, j. e. 1969: ælfric-mainly on memory and creative method in two catholic homilies, studia neophilologica 61. diccionario latino-español, 1965. editorial luis vives s.a., zaragoza. godden, m., ed. 1979: ælfric’s catholic homilies, the second series, early english text society, oxford. gneuss, h. 1981: a preliminary list of manuscripts written or owned in england up to 1100, anglo-saxon england 9. grundy, l. 1991: books and grace. ælfric’s theology, king’s college london, centre for late antique and medieval studies, london. heffernan, th. j. 1992: sacred biography: saints and their biographers in the middle ages, oxford university press, new york. herzfeld, g. 1900: an old english martyrology, early english text society, london. ker, n. r., 1957: catalogue of manuscripts containing anglo-saxon, clarendon press, oxford. lapidge, m. 1985: surviving booklists from anglo -saxon england. m. lapidge and h. gneuss eds. learning and literature in anglo-saxon england. studies presented to peter clemoes, cambridge university press, cambridge. morán, j. ed. 1965: obras de san agustín, biblioteca de autores cristianos, madrid. ____________________________________________________________________ 124 pope, j. c. ed. 1967: homilies of ælfric. a supplementary collection, 2 vols., early english text society, oxford. skeat, w.w. ed. 1966: ælfric’s lives of saints, 2 vols., early english text society, oxford. thorpe, b., ed. 1843: the homilies of ælfric, vol. 1, richard & john e. taylor, london. * † * selim07 (2).pdf purificación ribes, selim 7 (2000, for 1997): 33—49 guenevere speaks: from malory to mnookin a number of authors, from the middle ages up to the end of the twentieth century, have felt attracted to the mystery which has always surrounded the final years of queen guenevere’s life, from the moment she entered the convent of almesbury after her relationship with lancelot was discovered. keeping our study within the bounds of english speaking authors, we will take malory’s morte darthur as a point of departure for our analysis, since the beautiful description that we find in the last book of his work has been a constant source of reference for an important number of authors, particularly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.1 our interest centres on wendy m. mnookin’s poem “guenever speaks” (1987), written five centuries after malory’s work, but still heavily dependant upon it. it expressely makes use of certain passages which mnookin versifies and adapts, transforming them into the frame of reference for her own interpretation of guenevere’s mysterious life within the convent walls. she 1 editorial aspects regarding the printing of malory’s work are of importance when considering what edition poets from different ages have used. since, in the case of mnookin’s reelaboration of malory’s text it is logical that she has benefited from the most authoritative text, that is, the one carefully edited by eugene vinaver in 1947 (and later often reprinted and enlarged), based on the winchester manuscript, discovered in 1934. however, it cannot be forgotten that the text edited by w. caxton in 1485 (cfr. lawlor, j. & cowen, j. 1969) not only was reprinted five times after its first publication (1498, 1529, 1559, 1582, 1634), but served as the basis for other editions, such as the 1816 and 1817, and even for the more scholarly ones of 1891, as well as for vinaver’s first edition of 1929, previous to the discovery of the winchester manuscript. it must therefore be born in mind that most literary works derived from malory’s morte darthur previous to the 1947 edition are indebted to the text rendered by caxton. of special interest for our study is southey’s 1817 edition which was in all certainty employed by william morris for the defence of guenevere and other poems, as well as by algernon charles swinburne for his the day before the trial (1860). cfr. on this matter a. s. g. edwards, 1996: 241-253 as well as james douglas merryman, 1973, and david staines, 1973: 439-64 and 1982. ____________________________________________________________________ 34 allows us to hear her own voice, which, speaking in the first person, enables us to enter her private world. as we survey the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the echoes of guinevere’s words reach us in a v ariety of ways. at times she sounds feeble and weak, as in the case of mnookin, whereas on other occasions her voice is clear and daring, or even, at times, firm and balanced. it is even possible that the same author depicts her in two antithetical ways. this is the case with william morris “defence of guinevere” and “king arthur’s tomb”, both published in 1858.1 since, whereas in the first poem, guenevere is self-sufficient to face a jury before whom she doesn’t regret her past behaviour, but whom she indicts and boldly threatens, (…) she stood right up, and never shrunk, but spoke on bravely, glorious lady fair! (…) nevertheless you, o sir gawaine, lie, whatever may have happened through these years (…) let god’s justice work! gawaine, i say, see me hew down your proofs. (…) therefore, my lords, take heed lest you be blent with all this wickedness; say no rash word against me. in “king arthur’s tomb” she looks terror-stricken and shows clear signs of mental confusion, (…) she went slow, as one walks to be slain, her eyes did lack half her old glory, yea, alas! the glow had left her face and hands (…) “i am not mad, but i am sick; they cling, 1 cfr. on these poems dennis r. balch, 1975: 61-70; and, on the possibilities of interpreting the justification which guenevere offers for her past and present behaviour before the jury regarding the difficulty of judging fairly from the appearance of things, cfr. james p. carley, 1990: 20-22. in his article, carley reconsiders the interpretation of the example which guenevere provides to explain her situation. she argues that she chooses the blue piece of cloth because of its celestial implications, but the angel informs her that, against all predictions, it means hell, whereas the red cloth, surprisingly, leads to salvation. ____________________________________________________________________ 35 god’s curses, unto such as i am” which reveals itself in contradictory and incongrous attitudes on her part towards lancelot, who exclaims: “yea, she is mad: thy heavy law, o lord, is very tight about her now, and grips her poor heart.” unlike morris, john masefield’s portrait of guenevere in the two poems he publishes in 1928 “gwenivere tells” and “the death of lancelot as told by gwenivere”, insists on the same side of her character, which in both cases appears self-confident and well-balanced. these two poems constitute, in my opinion, the best homage to the memory of this mythic character who, without raising her voice against anyone or feeling anguished at the idea of the uknown or at the closeness of death, nevertheless adopts a constant attitude towards the beloved one, that neither old age nor death ever lessens: now he lay dead, old, old, with silver hair, i had not ever thought of him as old… … i went to search for flowers for him dead, my king of men. (…) myself shall follow when it be god’s will; but whatsoe’er my death be, good or ill, surely my love will burn within me still. (…) death cannot make so great a fire drowse. neither phantasmagoric visions1 nor feelings of oppressive blame or a struggle against the wish to see the beloved are to be found in this poem. all bonds, not only conjugal but also religious and kingly, are broken for love’s sake without ever showing a sign or regret: what though i broke both nun’s and marriage vows? april will out, however hard the boughs. 1 in “king arthur’s tomb” we are told: “… a spasm took / her face and all her frame / … terribly she shook.” ____________________________________________________________________ 36 the tone of guenevere in these poems is clearly different from the plain tive and interested voice which resounds in the text “guenevere”(1911) by the american author sara teasdale. there she painfully regrets the loss of her queenly privileges, which she contrasts with the fleeting and painful pleasure she derives from her relationship with lancelot,1 which in no mo ment proves completely satisfactory: i was a queen, and he who loved me best made me a woman for a night and day and now i go unqueened for ever more. even though we could have been led to believe that the figure of the king would have received greater emphasis in this poem, guenevere hastens to state that her rights to the crown are hereditary: i was a queen, the daughter of a king. and it is therefore unnecessary to stress her relationship with king arthur, who, however, had been a central figure in a. tennyson’s emblematic poem “guinevere” (1859).2 there the most intimate feelings of a martial king had been shown in all its intensity, for after having made guenevere realize the degree of her sin (which, according to the king, had given rise to the kingdom’s instability, including the death of numberless knights as well as mordred’s treason and the saxon attacks): bear with me for the last time while i show, ev’n for thy sake, the sin which thou hast sinned. he nevertheless felt deeply touched by a slight movement his wife made when, fallen upon her knees, she came an inch closer to him: he paused, and in the pause she crept 1 these are guenevere’s words: “…i was weak, / and in my breast i felt a wild, sick pain. / quickly he came behind me, caught my arms, / that ached behind his touch… / all this grows bitter that once was so sweet.” 2 cfr. j. philip eggers, 1971 and maureen fries, 1991: 44-55. ____________________________________________________________________ 37 an inch nearer, and laid her hands about his feet. (…) arthur then admitted that he still loved her: (…) my doom is, i love thee still. let no man dream but that i love thee still. and revealed the strong attraction that he felt for her (he tenderly recalled the past when he played with guenevere’s hair and let her know how pas sionately her imperial beauty still moved him). but how to take last leave of all i loved? o golden hair, with which i used to play not knowing! o imperial-moulded form, and beauty such as never woman wore. these words on the part of the king elicit guenevere’s reaction when she is left by herself after the king’s farewell. we then hear her exclaim that she also loves him, even though he may never be aware of it since he has promised never to see guenevere again: is there none will tell the king i love him tho’ so late? guenevere’s response to arthur’s words of love in tennyson’s poem looks very different from her reaction in algernon charles swinburne’s the day before the trial (1860), where arthur’s most humane portrayal is to be found. he repeatedly says: “my wife, that loves not me”, while calling guenevere’s beauty and her cold look to mind. for all these years she grew more fair, (…) but ever as i looked on her her face seemed fierce and thin. this king who, like tennyson’s,1 is jealous of lancelot: 1 these are king arthur’s words: “i am thine husband, not a smaller soul, / nor lancelot, nor another.” ____________________________________________________________________ 38 down to my hands the blood went hot in a dull hate of launcelot for all the praise of her he got. unlike him, places his love for guenevere before his kingly duties. he complains of the weight of the crown upon his head: … and on my head the gold crown seemed not gold but lead while referring to guenevere, not as queen but as wife: i had the name of king to bear, and watch the eyes of guenevere, my wife, who loves not me. and, above all, he expresses his anguis h and fear before the imminence of guenevere’s trial: king arthur says being alone now the day comes near and near i feel its hot breath, and see it clear, how strange it is and full of fear, and i grow old waiting here, grow sick with pain of guenevere. which sharply contrasts with the king’s attitude in other texts where he is usually depicted as cold 1 and distant.2 1 guenevere’s recollections on his first encounter with arthur in the text by tennyson is eloquent: “and moving thro’ the past unconsciously, / came to that point where first she saw the / king / … glanced at him, thought / him cold / high, self-contain’d, and passionless.” and, later on, when she is visited by him in almesbury, his sternness is stressed: “… then came silence, then a / voice / monotonous and hollow like a ghost’s / denouncing judgement, but tho’ changed, / the king’s.” 2 the qualities that morris’s guenevere isolates in arthur are most telling: “… i was bought / by arthur’s great name and his little love.” ____________________________________________________________________ 39 in swinburne’s poem, 1 however, the lover’s characteristic weakness and vulnerability are attributed to the king (“i felt half sick”), who contrasts sharply with guenevere’s callousness (“her face seemed fierce and thin”). after this general survey of the main texts which for a period of five centuries have paid attention to the love which guenevere feels and awakens, we return to wendy m. mnookin’s recent poem “guenever speaks”, where she reproduces -in a slightly modified formfragments by malory, placing them at the beginning and the end of her poem. these fragments, which she versifies, follow the pattern of a quotation and mention their source. the first fragment is preceded by the heading “guenevere learns of arthur’s death” and it almost literally reproduces the final part of book xxi, section iv of morte darthur “the day of destiny”. mnookin in this way reminds the reader that guenevere, after the king’s death, retreated to almesbury, where she lived in prayer and penitence, arising the people’s admiration at her virtuous change. mnookin introduces a change into the quotation which is apparently a minor one, although when retrospectively considered, it acquires fuller sense. i am referring to the substitution of “slay” for “die” at the beginning of the poem. mnookin writes: and when queen guenever understood king arthur was slain where malory said: and whan quene gwenyver undirstood that kynge arthure was dede. the ensuing effect is the anticipation of guenevere’s feeling of guilt which is all pervasive in the poem. her obsession with the weight of her guilt will lead her to a prolonged vigil which might avoid the recurring nightmare s which present before her in all its poignancy the deaths that her attraction for lancelot has originated. she has no wish to contemplate again how gaheris 1 cfr. david staines, 1978: 53-70. ____________________________________________________________________ 40 gareth is killed by lancelot when he rescues her1 and neither does she want to see king arthur dead after fighting against lancelot, for, like “crazy anne”, she feels responsible for it. the parallelism between “crazy anne”, who killed her husband and lives entombed in a house of stone, and guenevere, who is kept secluded in almesbury, is increased by the yuxtaposition of this image to that of lancelot fighting arthur dead. this, in turn, leads to guenevere’s refusal to shut her eyes, even though they are so irritated by the lack of rest that the air when touching them is compared to pieces of broken glass. the nuns return from morning prayers to sleep. three hours until prime. three hours to lie awake. entombed a stone house built around her: crazy anne: killed her husband eyes closed i see you fighting arthur lying dead air cuts my eyes like broken glass. i will not close my eyes. in the fourth and last section of mnookin’s poem: “the sisters tell lancelot of guenevere’s last words”, she reproduces with certain changes the text of malory’s morte darthur.2 mnookin goes as far as to maintain archaisms, such as the plural form of “eye”, “eyen”, in order to make the quotation sound authentic. it is a way of driving attention away from an important and deliberate omission introduced by her to further develop the subject of the poem. 1 this allusion to gaheris gareth, although elliptical, transmits the weight which the death of this knight at the hands of lancelot had in the text by malory, and, specifically, in the section “the vengeance of gawain” (book xx, section ii, 685700), where this character, enraged at the death of his brother, rejected all explanations given by lancelot, and declined all offers of reconciliation on his part. 2 book xxi, section v, ‘the dolorous death and departing out of this world of sir launcelot and queen guinevere’, thomas malory, works, eugène vinaver (ed), 1977 (2nd ed.): 718-725 ____________________________________________________________________ 41 mnookin almost literally quotes malory as follows: thither he cometh as fast as he may, wherefore i beseech almighty god: may i never have the power to see lancelot with my worldly eyen. and thus was ever her prayer these two days, till she was dead. whereas malory’s text reads as follows: “and hyder he cometh as faste as he may to fetch my cors, and besyde my lord kyng arthur he shal berye me.” wherefore the quene sayd in heryng of hem al, “i beseche almyghty god that i may never have power to see syr launcelot wyth my worldly eyen”. “and thus”, said al the ladyes, “was ever hir prayer these two dayes tyl she was dede”. mnookin explicitly omits malory’s allusion to lancelot’s reason for visit ing guenevere in the convent. it is not merely a lover’s visit but that of a saintly character who has spent his last years in prayer and fasting, to the point that by means of a vision he has been announced guenevere’s agony, and commanded to give her saintly burial by her legitimate husband, king arthur. guenevere, whose sins have also been redeemed by a life of prayer and penitence, nevertheless fears a last meeting with lancelot, aware that she still loves him, and therefore insistently craves god to spare her that encounter which could hinder her everlasting peace. the two modifications introduced in malory’s text by mnookin,that is to say, the substitution of “slay” for “die” in the first versified fragment, as well as the omission of the allusion to guenevere’s imminent death and to the aim of lancelot’s visit to the convent in the second, have important consequences for the portrayal of guenevere. both her feeling of self guilt is intensified and her inner tension is increased, as the result of an unattainable love which excludes the idea of eternal rest by the legitimate husband, as well ____________________________________________________________________ 42 as the re pentant attitude of a lover that in malory consumes himself praying over their mutual grave. there is, however, an important feature of malory’s depiction of lancelot which is carefully reproduced by mnookin in her poem, although with a sig nificant change: i am referring to lancelot’s physical deterioration which takes place during the six weeks that mediate between guenevere’s death and his own. the difference lays in the fact that mnookin transfers these characteristics to another character, significantly to guenevere. in her poem, she, like lancelot in malory, loses her appetite, and, even though the nuns insist that she should eat (the bishop behaved in a similar way with lancelot) she, like lancelot, refuses to do so, visibly losing weig ht before been taken seriously ill, and finally expiring. malory describes lancelot’s final days in the following terms: thenne syr launcelot never after ete but lytel mete, nor dranke, tyl he was dede, for than he seekened more and more and dryed and dwyned awaye. for the bysshop nor none of his fellowes myght not make hym to ete and lytel he dranke, and he was waxen by a kybbet shorter than he was, that the peple coude not knowe hym. for evermore, day and night, he prayed … ever he was lyeng grovelyng on the tombe of kyng arthur and quene guenever, and there was no comforte … soo wythin syx wekys after, syr launcelot fyl seek and laye in his bedde… so whan syr bors and his felowes came to his bedde they founde hym starke dede; and he laye as he had smyled. this last image of lancelot’s smile is also present in mnookin’s depiction of guenevere, although in her poem it serves a different purpose. it is not employed, as in the case of lancelot, to convey the idea of beatific happiness achieved by someone after a life of self-denial and sacrifice, but, on the contrary, it completes the characterization of guenevere’s increasing mental feebleness. the religious interpretation of lancelot’s smile is supported by the visionary dream experienced by the bishop, which takes place at the same time as lancelot’s death. he contemplates lancelot’s triumphant entrance in ____________________________________________________________________ 43 heaven, surrounded by angels. this is a means of sanctioning in a positive way lancelot’s extremely rigorous behaviour with himself during the last six weeks of his life when he didn’t get any food or sleep. this positive sanction of lancelot’s final days is completely absent from mnookin’s depiction of guenevere’s progressive physical deterioration in the convent where the weight of her sins weaken her to the point that she swoons at vespers. a single stroke on the part of mnookin eloquently portrays guenevere’s attitude when the nuns urge her to eat: i move the food around and smile. this smile is far from connoting spiritual peace, as in the case of malory’s description of lancelot, but rather suggest an increasing mental in stability, which is about to collapse, as it was the case with “crazy anne, who killed her husband”. what leads her to take some food, with the only hope of remaining awake, is precisely the dread she has of recalling her own husband’s death, that assaults her whenever she closes her eyes: i must eat some bread. a little bread so i won’t swoon. so i can stay awake. the result of such prolonged vigil and fasting is, as with lancelot, a visible thinness. if, according to malory, lancelot “was waxen by a kybbet shorter”, to the point that “people coude not knowe hym”, mnookin’s description of guenevere brings to mind anorexia nervosa in its terminal phase: lying in bed hip bones push against skin. that anorexic thinness together with the smile on her face when she plays with the food complete a characterization which has been unfolded along section 2, “guenever retreats to almesbury”, where mnookin has invited us to have a close look at the inside of the convent, while scrutinizing the words he borrowed from malory regarding guenevere’s behaviour: ____________________________________________________________________ 44 she lived in fasting, prayers and alm-deeds. never creature could make her merry. all manner of people marvelled how virtuously she was changed. that she fasted -maybe too strenuously -, we doubt not, in the same way as we are persuaded of her unvarying sadness, although its cause lies not unlike in malory’s accountin his penitent efforts to achieve heaven, but rather in the weight of her sin that she cannot stand, as well as in the obses sive presence of lancelot, whom she cannot remove for a single moment from her mind. this is so to such an extent that when she partakes of community tasks, such as the recollection of aromatic herbs or the reading of devotional books, lancelot’s presence becomes so powerful that she feels deeply disturbed. but this is guenevere’s secret, and we are allowed to share it by means of the inner monologue that she mentally addresses lancelot. in it she contrasts her apparent obedience to the instructions she receives from the nuns: the sisters say walk, walk in the garden, so i do. i work in the garden … the sisters say read, why don’t you read? the sisters say rest, get some sleep … with her inner rebelliousness. she walks in the garden, works in it, seeks some rest, whenever she is told to do so. but, no matter her occupation, everyhing makes her think of lancelot: the intense smell of the herbs she recollects (thyme, basil, cinnamon, sage, ming), however strong and able to make her dizzy, nevertheless cannot remove the smell of lancelot, which guenevere retains in her fingers: smell makes me dizzy … fingers smell rich … spice fingers … i save the smell of you on fingers. ____________________________________________________________________ 45 neither does the reading of devotional books succeed in bringing her peace or in removing lancelot from her mind because she keeps inside it the letter which he sent guenevere urging her to join him: guenevere, in you i have my earthly joy, leave almesbury now and be with me. letters move and she tries to follow them but, unable to do so, she shuts the book: words tilt on the page. i turn my head to follow them scramble up down. i snap the book shut to keep the words still. this image, together with the description of her diziness when she collects aromatic herbs (smell makes me dizzy. i hold my head) are in line with the extreme situation of physical and mental weakness that result from her prolonged fasting and vigil. but guenevere’s voice won’t be publicly heard until the fo llowing section (“guenever speaks”) where sister margaret, helping her take her daily walk, hears the sound of her voice, a distant voice which guenevere doesn’t recognize as her own: a voice from far away a voice i do not recognize the message she transmits is brief: i will stay at almesbury till i die. ____________________________________________________________________ 46 she has decided to remain in almesbury for ever, even though the thought of lancelot and his message haunt her. the cause of her decision is stated in a concise and efficient manner: i cannot look at lancelot’s face again. i cannot lose him again. she doesn’t feel strong enough to endure the pain of parting from him again. the fear of damnation is completely absent from the pain guenevere feels. she is exclusively anguished at the idea of losing lancelot again. these words again remind us of malory’s passage where guenevere, when visited by lancelot at the convent, insistently craves him never to look her in the eyes again. mnookin introduces the following change: guenevere doesn’t address these words to lancelot but utters them to herself, being overheard by sister margaret. guenevere’s plea in malory: “i requyre the and beseche the hartily, for all the love that ever was betwyxt us, that thou never se me no more in the visauge, (and i commaunde the, on goddis behalff, that thou forsake my company)” has been transformed into: i cannot look at lancelot’s face. the pain behind the second sentence, where she explains the cause of her decision: i cannot lose him again ____________________________________________________________________ 47 is also present in malory’s descrip tion of the pain which ensues from their parting: there was lamentacyon as they had be stungyn wyth sperys, and many tymes they swouned. but in spite of all the similarities, there are marked differences between mnookin’s and malory’s descriptions of the couple. one of them lies in the effect produced by the attribution to guenevere of characteristics which in the source text belonged to lancelot, particularly his physical deterioration, which was the consequence of his prolonged fasting and sleeplessness. at the same time, mnookin endows lancelot with a self-assuredness and authority which are completely absent from malory.1 these two changes, as well as the addition of elements which point to guenevere’s mental instability result in the loss of the balance between both characters which was present in the source text. there, although guenevere agonized asking god never to see lancelot again because she still felt a strong attraction for him (the quotation which mnookin places at the end of her poem), lancelo t was nevertheless equally devoted to her. even though he keeps the word given guenevere of never meeting her again, and although he, like her, leads a life of penitence and prayer, after her beloved’s death, he abandons himself to his own sorrowness and spends the final days of his life moaning over the tomb where guenevere’s body lies by that of her husband. in mnookin’s poem, however, all kind of religious comfort is suppressed as well as any possible allusion to the wish of final reconciliation with arthur. at the same time, lancelot is depicted as a stronger character, which makes guenevere’s inner conflict more acute. its result is her physical and mental weakness, the issue of her obsession with her own guilt, and, above all, the consequence of her inability to forget lancelot, whom she misses every day of her life, within the convent walls. 1 she seems to reverse precisely the change which malory deliberatedly introduced in the final books of his work, where the self-contained attitude of knights and the traditional feminine silence on the subject of love are transformed into an undistinguishable language which is used by men and women alike, and where the characteristic malorian restraint is loosened. cfr. on this aspect elizabeth edwards, 1996: 51-52. ____________________________________________________________________ 48 purificación ribes universidad de valencia references balch, d. r. 1975: guenevere’s fidelity to arthur in ‘the defence of guenevere’ and ‘king arthur’s tomb’. victorian poetry 13.3-4: 61-70. carley, j. p. 1990: ‘heaven’s colour, the blue’: morris’s guenevere and the choosing cloths reread. the journal of the william morris society 9.1: 20-22. edwards, a. s. g. 1996: the reception of malory’s morte darthur. arthurian studies xxxvii. a companion to malory. ed. archibald, e. & edwards, a. s. g. d. s. brewer, cambridge, 241-253. edwards, e. 1996: the place of women in the morte darthur. arthurian studies xxxvii. a companion to malory. ed. archibald, e. & edwards a. s. g. d. s. brewer, cambridge, 37-55. eggers, j. p. 1971: king arthur’s laureate: a study of tennyson’s idylls of the king. new york university press, new york fries, m. 1991: what tennyson really did to malory’s women. quondam et futurus: a journal of arthurian interpretations 1: 44-55. lupack, a. (ed.) 1992: modern arthurian literature. an anthology of english and american arthuriana from the renaissance to the present. garland publishing, new york. malory, t. 1976: the winchester malory. a facsimile. english text society. supplementary series, nº 4, london. malory, t. le morte d’arthur. ed. lawlor, j. &cowen, j. 1969: penguin, harmondsworth. (based on caxton’s 1485 edition). malory, t., works. ed. vinaver, e. 1977 (2nd ed.): oxford university press, oxford. merriman, j. d. 1973: the flower of kings: a study of the arthurian legend in england between 1485 and 1835. lawrence, kansas. ____________________________________________________________________ 49 morris, w. ed. lourie, m. a. 1981: the defence of guenevere and other poems. garland english texts, n. york. staines, d. 1973: morris’ treatment of his medieval sources in the defence of guenevere and other poems. studies in philology 79: 439-64. staines, d. 1978: swinburne’s arthurian world: swinburne’s arthurian poetry and its medieval sources. studia neophilologica 50: 53-70. staines, d. 1982: tennyson’s camelot: the idylls of the king and its medieval sources. wilfrid laurier university press, waterloo, ontario. tennyson, a. ed. warren, t. h. 1971: poems and plays. oxford university press, oxford. * † * microsoft word review 3_2023.docx selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. 28 (2023): 113–119. issn: 1132-631x doi: 10.17811/selim.28.2023.113-119 © ediuno. ediciones de la universidad de oviedo. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. guzmán gonzález, trinidad. 2022. espejo del arte de cocina. de la corte del rey ricardo, el segundo de inglaterra tras la conquista. folia medievalia, 8. león: servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de león-inst. estudios medievales. pp. 211. isbn 9788418490552. reviewed by j. camilo conde silvestre university of murcia forme of cury (“the correct manner of cookery”) is the well-known catchphrase in two late-medieval english manuscripts: university of manchester, john rylands library ms english 7 and london, british library, additional ms 5016. the former is a ninety-onefolio vellum codex written in anglicana formata, possibly around 1390 or earlier (53; see also hieatt 1988; archives hub, forme of cury n.d.). the latter is a vellum roll—one of the only three that survive from medieval europe (51); it contains eight membranes written in gothic script around 1420 (51; british library, digitised manuscripts n.d.). both manuscripts contain a brief preface, with very similar wording: [the] forme of cury was compiled of the chef maister cokes of kyng richard the se[cu]nde kyng of [en]glond aftir the conquest ⸱ the which was accounted þe best and ryallest vyanund[ier] of alle cristen [k]ynges. and it was compiled by assent and auysement of maisters of phisik and of philosophie þat dwellid in his court. first it techiþ man for to make commune potages and commune mettis for howshold as þey shold be made craftly and holsomely. aftirwa[rd] it techiþ for to make curious potages & meetes and sotiltees for alle manere of states both h[y]e and lowe. and the techyng of the fourme of makyng of potages & of meetes bot[he] of flessh and of fissh ⸱ buth yssete here by noumbre and by ordre ⸱ so þis litle table [he]re sewyng wole teche a man with oute taryyng: to fynde what meete þat hym lust for to haue. (hieatt and butler 1985, 20). este espejo del arte de cocina es una compilación del cocinero mayor del rey ricardo, el segundo de inglaterra tras la conquista, del cual se contaba que fue el mejor anfitrión real de entre todos los reyes cristianos. fue recopilado con la aprobación y el consejo de los doctores en medicina y en filosofía que habitaban en su corte. en primer lugar, enseña a preparar potajes y comidas ordinarias para el hogar, tal y como deberían hacerse, con oficio y saludables. después, enseña a hacer potajes y comidas suntuosas, y sutilezas, para toda clase de estamentos, altos y bajos. y la enseñanza del modo de preparar potajes y comidas tanto a base de carne como de pescado se presenta aquí organizada por número y orden, de modo que esta pequeña tabla que sigue sirva de guía para, sin demora, encontrar el plato que apetezca tomar (67–8). a numbered table of recipes (up to 195 in ms add. 5016) follows. owners of ms english 7 include a “dominus iohannes walsh” in the sixteenth century, lord crawford in the nineteenth and mrs. enriqueta rylands in the early twentieth (archives hub, forme of cury n.d.). the holders of ms add. 5016 were, among others, baron edward stafford https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6985-0036 book reviews 114 (1535–1603) who presented the roll to queen elizabeth i in 1586; thence the first and second earls of oxford and mortimer, robert harley (1661–1724) and edward harley (1689–1741), as well as the antiquaries james west (1703–1772) and gustavus brander (1719/20–1787). in the eighteenth century, copies of the roll were made by thomas hearne in 1727 (oxford, bodleian library ms rawlison d 194) and by samuel pegge in 1780, who added a number of contemporary recipes from oxford, bodleian library ms douce 257, ff. 86r-96v (c. 1381) (pegge [1780] 2005). pegge’s text was reprinted by richard warner with the title antiquitates culinariae: tracts on culinary affairs of the old english (1791). the text, together with four contemporary collections, was edited by constance b. hieatt and sharon butler for the early english text society in 1985.1 the introductory words above point to some special characteristics of this collection. on the one hand, it was originally composed during the reign of king richard ii, between 1377 and 1399. its author, albeit anonymous, was no other than “the chef maister cokes” of the king, although he was generally “auyse[d] of maisters of phisik and of philosophie þat dwellid in his court.” this is a clue to the close links between medieval cookery and medicine, to such an extent that doctors often advised cooks as to what dishes suited kings best and on how to prepare them in proper hippocratic terms, i.e. to better improve the balance of humours.2 in the preface, a clear distinction is also made between “commune potages and commune mettis for howshold” and “curious potages & meetes and sotiltees”, which directly points to the wide range of recipes comprised: from basic foodstuff for the everyday table ― grounden benes (“para hacer habas partidas,” no. 1), caboches in potage (“sopa de repollo,” no. 4), tredure (“sopa de pan rallado,” no. 15), perrey of pesoun (“puré de guisantes,” no. 69) or fenkel in soppes (“sopas de hinojo,” no. 76) ― to more elaborate dishes involving all types of meats and fish available: roo broth (“estofado de corzo,” no. 14), capouns in councy (“capones en pepitoria,” no. 22), hares in papdele (“liebres sobre pappardelle,” no. 24), pygges in sawse sawge (“lechones en salsa de salvia,” no. 29), peiouns ystewed (“pichones estofados,” no. 47), congur in sawse (“congrio en salsa,” no. 103), cawdel of saumon (“caldereta de salmón,” no. 110) or porpeys in broth (“marsopa en caldo,” no. 132), to name but a few. there are also recipes for desserts ― cawdel ferry (“dulce de vino quemado,” no. 41), payn ragoun (“turrón de piñones,” no. 66), peres in confy (“peras al vino,” no. 131), letelorye (“flan de huevo,” no. 80) and the famous ypocras (“hipocrás,” no. 190) with medieval literary resonances. at the end of the codices a number of “sotiltées” are described: these were illusory recipes (“trampantojos”), sources of entertainment as well 1 this edition does not include the codex ms english 7 at john rylands, but collates ms add. 5016 with seven other witnesses, all of them produced later than english 7, in the fifteenth century: durham, university library cosin ms v. iii. 11; london, british library cotton ms julius d viii; london, british library harley ms 1605; london, british library, arundel ms 33414; new york, pierpont morgan library, bühler ms 36; new york, public library, whitney ms 114 and aberystwyth, national library of wales, peniarth ms 394d. 2 it is not unexpected, in this sense, that medieval recipes are frequently scattered in miscellaneous manuscripts or in herbals and collections of medical recipes as attested by london, british library, ms sloane 374 and oxford, bodleian library ms c.c.c. f 291 (hieatt and butler 1985, 18, fn. 1). special treatises on the “hygiene” of eating started to be published from the late fifteenth century, like theobaldus anguilbertus’s mensa philosophica (1509), edited in 1936 by michael scot and arthur s. way with the catchy title the science of dining, mensa philosophica: a medieval treatise on the hygiene of the table and the laws of health. book reviews 115 as nourishment for very special occasions at court which “intentan engañar al ojo del comensal, presentándole un alimento como si fuera otro” (181) (“intended to cheat the diners’ eyes by giving some foodstuff the shape of another”― my translation), like cokagrys (“cotagres,” no. 174), with the shape of the mythological basiliscus, made by sewing the head and chest of a roasted rooster to the lower hinds of a piglet, or chastletes (no. 188): a small castle with different towers made of gode past (“buena masa”) variously stuffed with “a fars of pork with gode poudour & ayren rawe wiþ salt & […] with safroun […] fars of fyges, of raysouns, of apples, of peeres” all cooked in the oven (hieatt and butler 1985, 143) (“una farsa de cerdo hecha con buena carne, huevo crudo y sal […] con azafrán […] una farsa de higos, pasas, manzanas y peras” [151]). four brief notes on how to quarter the “[l]oyne of the pork” (no. 54) and to slice “[f]yletes” (no. 55) and on the best ways to season “[c]ranes and herouns” (no. 145) or “[p]okok and pertruch” (no. 146) (“el pavo real y la perdiz”) are interspersed among the recipes. the implicit reference in this prelude to the universal social status of its intended audience—“for alle manere of states both h[y]e and lowe”—is not to be understood to the letter, mainly because the conspicuous social gaps between members of the upper and lower ranks impinged on their respective access to some or other raw products of better or worse quality: meats and especially fowl were served on festive occasions and only at the higher tables, while fruits, particularly citrus ones, were difficult to get.3 as regards condiments, herbs—persel (“perejil”), coriandre (“cilantro”), basyle (“albahaca”), cyuys (“cebollino”), sawge (“salvia”), mynt (“menta”), saueray (“ajedrea”), rosemarye (“romero”), etc.—were favoured over the more expensive spices by the common people; the cheapest spices were peper and gynger, otherwise sugur (“azúcar”), saundres (“sándalo [for colouring]”), anese (“anís blanco”), safroun (“azafrán”), clowes (“clavos”), canell (“canela”), macys (“macís”), cardamum (“cardamomo”), alkenet (“onoquiles”) or galyngale (“galanga”), among others, were used only in noble households and at the court, as splendidly named in the manuscript. interestingly, it was this social polarisation in culinary terms at a time of intense social mobility, ambitions and aspirations after the mid-fourteenth century crisis, that contributed to make cookery books flourish all throughout europe:4 … son la expresión escrita del ascenso social de una profesión cuya élite eran los responsables de las cocinas reales y de la alta nobleza. los más y menos poderosos se miraban en estos espejos en lo que tocaba a arquitectura, vestido, ocio, etc. y mantener una buena mesa, tanto en lo privado como en lo público, era parte de este mismo juego (46). 3 “when eleanor of castile, homesick of the fruits of her native spain, sent a ship to bring her some in 1289, the total citrus cargo consisted of 17 lemons and 7 oranges” (hieatt and butler 1985, 12). 4 patently, the five guildsmen in chaucer’s canterbury tales—haberdasher, carpenter, weaver, dyer and tapestry maker—all of them members of the middle ranks, are the only characters travelling in the company of a professional cook, who was well able to “boille the chickres with the mary (46, fn. 23; see also shaw fairman 1991). incidentally, chaucer’s cook was able to prepare some of the recipes listed in forme of cury, like “poudre-marchant tart and galynngale”—“polvo merchant” (178) and “galantina” (170)—(“general prologue”, line 381; benson ed. 1988, 29). book reviews 116 “they are the written expression of the social promotion of a profession at the top of which were those in charge of royal and high nobility kitchens. the powerful and the notso-powerful looked at themselves in these mirrors, as regards architecture, clothing, entertainment, etc. and providing for a good table, both privately and in public, was part of the same sport” (my translation) nevertheless, this claim for universality was probably a mere mannerism and the most likely intended audience was made of “personal cualificado y con responsabilidades del servicio de unas mansiones, que sabrían leer” (46) (“highly qualified and literate personnel with responsibility in the service of stately homes and mansions”—my translation). hints leading to this conclusion are the lack of specific instructions— measures, cooking times, ingredients in ground preparations—as well as the roll format of the manuscript itself, easier to handle at the kitchen dependencies than a thick volume, in addition to the well-arranged numbered index of recipes at the beginning “to fynde what meete þat hym lust for to haue.” trinidad guzmán gonzález has translated forme of cury into spanish for the series folia medievalia, published by the institute of medieval studies at the university of león. guzmán gonzález is a senior lecturer at the department of modern languages, with a renown scholarly career as a specialist in english philology and historical linguistics. some references in the volume to her personal and practical interest in cooking make her a most suitable mediator to introduce medieval english cookery in our country. in this sense, qualifying the volume as a mere translation is certainly inappropriate. in fact, the spanish version comprises only one hundred pages out of 257 (57–155), the rest of the volume is an encyclopedic exercise of contextualisation of the two manuscripts ― except for a brief preface by julio césar santoyo (15–6), who highlights the author’s philological vocation, and a prologue by santiago g. fernándezcorugedo where some spanish analogues are discussed, from the medieval arte cisoria by enrique de villena (1423) to the present-day ubiquitous 1080 recetas de cocina by simone ortega (1972). an introductory section (“estudio preliminar”, 33–55) thoroughly deals with the historical, textual and linguistic backgrounds of the recipe books. among other aspects, the historical context from the norman conquest to the fourteenth century and the figure of king richard ii (1367–1400) are discussed. the social background, training and functions of “the chef master cokes” (“maese cocinero”) are also explored, highlighting his connections with a team of stewards and doctors at court, but also with other skilled labourers and apprentices: “asadores, potajeros, salseros, panaderos, reposteros, pinches, despenseros, etc.” (43) (“roasters, potage and sauce makers, bakers, confectioners, scullions, cellarers, etc.”—my translation). some practicalities of medieval cookery are also touched upon in this introduction, from its close association with medicine, to the ingredients employed and their social connotations, through the diplomatic and political functions of big, ostentatious banquets: their preparation, arrangement of services and courses, and the entertainments (“entremeses”) performed during the long periods involved, not disregarding the rich and varied presentation of some dishes as sotiltées. a thorough analysis of the anglo-norman and middle english traditions behind forme of cury (thirteenth and fourteenth centuries) is also undertaken, together with some parallels in latin and french collections, such as liber de coquina ubi diuersitates cibarum docentur (c. 1300–1309) or le viandier de book reviews 117 taillerent (c. 1300) (see hieatt 2002) and in later english volumes, like the fifteenthcentury a boke of kokery (c. 1449) or john russel’s book of nurture (1460–1470) (see austin 1888). the introduction also discusses the manuscript tradition of forme of cury, particularly focusing on pegge’s eighteenth-century copy and on the two witnesses translated ― british library, additional ms 5016 and john rylands library, ms english 7. finally, guzmán gonzález briefly touches on the language of the originals, mainly regarding norman and french vocabulary, since other linguistic dimensions are considered unnecessary for the purposes of the volume. while the introduction clearly addresses the historical, cultural, manuscript and textual backgrounds, a commented glossary (“glosario comentado”) (157–83), in addition to the recipes themselves, satiate the reader’s hunger for the gastronomical background. this is an alphabetical list of over forty technical terms and expressions recurring in several recipes. the list includes simple ingredients—“almidón” (me amidoun), “agraz” (me verjuice), “azúcar” (me sugur), “conejo” (me connyng), “el mejor pan blanco” (me payndemayn), among others—as well as complex ones, such as “buen caldo” (me gode broth), “salsa de cebollino” (me civet) and ground condiments based on mixed spices and herbs: “polvo dulce” (me powdour douce), “polvo fuerte” (me powdour fort), “polvo merchant” (me powdour marchant), etc. all of them are fully described in terms of preparation (for complex ingredients), origins and use in medieval cookery. other items in this glossary refer to utensils—“cedazo” (me sarce), “estameña” (me straynour cloth)—and even liturgical issues, thus emphasising the dependency of medieval daily customs, like fasting, on church decisions: “témporas” (me ymbre day), “días de carne” (me fleissh day) or “días de pescado” (me fyssh day). the precise information given by the translator on how to cook each of these ground preparations contrasts with the lack of attention paid to basic procedures by the author(s) of the medieval collection; this is another clue that the vellum roll was intended for well-trained specialists, as an assortment of annotations for internal purposes. highlighted across both sections is the french groundwork of medieval english cookery, together with the mediterranean and eastern (mainly arabic) influences “traída[s] no sólo por los cruzados, sino también filtrada por la cocina andalusí, la italiana, la catalana, muy entremezcladas con el reino normando de sicilia” (42) (“imported not only by the crusaders, but also filtered through andalusian cuisine, italian, catalan, mixed together with practices from the norman kingdom of sicily” ― my translation), mainly as regards “the aesthetics of the table, an accent on certain traditional exotic ingredients and a bias towards rich, sweet flavors” (fernándezarmesto 2002, 181; see also adamson 2004, 98–130). mediterranean influence is clearly reflected in norman-based ― blank desorree (no. 37), mounchelet (“monchelet,” no. 16), bukkenade (no. 17) ― italian ― papdele (“pappardele,” no. 24), raphioles (“raffyols,” no. 152), makerouns (“macarrones,” no. 91) ― sirian and persian ― mawmenee (no. 20), egurdouce (“escabeche,” no. 132) ― and spanish-arabic recipes: nysebek (“porras,” no. 172), spynoches yfried (“espinacas fritas,” no. 179), payn puff (“tarta de hojaldre,” no. 195) or sawse sarzyne (“salsa a la sarracena,” no. 83), among many others. the brevity and lack of context, the fragmentary nature and the absence of a direct description of some basic preparations, together with the existence of several hapax legomena, pose serious difficulties for the spanish translator. despite these problems, guzmán gonzález is successful in this enterprise, assisted by a plethora of historical book reviews 118 dictionaries and present-day reference works, by her acquaintance with parallel contemporary and later recipe books (not all of them published, but available in manuscript format), as well as by a philological rigour, which occasionally result in corrections to previous editions and even emendations to the manuscript sources. stylistically, some decisions have helped her to convey a sense of foreignness and distance in time: keeping the original recipe titles when no direct translation into spanish exists and directly rendering the medieval designations for some generic preparations, often repeated. the author’s encyclopedic zeal is also reflected in the 301 footnotes that accompany both the introduction, the translation and the commented glossary. they range from the purely philological (etymology, interpretation of the original terminology) and paleographical ones, to the bibliographical, including contemporary treatises and analogues, through gastronomical issues like the existing parallels with continental food and with exotic mediterranean and eastern preparations and ingredients. quite a few of these footnotes are personal reflections of the author, whose own practical experience of cooking is often applied to figure out ambiguous or difficult references in the original manuscripts. in the same vein, the volume closes with a complete list of references (185– 97) subdivided into six sections ― primary sources, recipe books, dictionaries, corpus and reference works, literary texts and general bibliography ― and an index (199–211) of personal and place names, historical events, ingredients, techniques and utensils. finally, it is worth emphasising that this espejo, like its medieval ancestors, is lavishly illustrated with eighty images, drawn from illuminations of fourteenth and fifteenth-century manuscripts mainly of english and norman origin, but also german, italian and spanish. this selection of fully-coloured pictures from herbals, bestiaries, psalters and book of hours, among others, punctuate the cultural references in the preliminary section and the glossary, as well as visually depicting the animals, vegetables, ingredients, utensils and everyday activities performed in a medieval english kitchen. this is another asset for a very valuable volume, which is a must for the shelves of spanish medievalists, philologists as well as cooks, both amateur and professional. references adamson, melitta weiss. 2004. food in medieval times. london: greenwood press. archives hub, n.d.: forme of cury. accessed december 24, 2022. https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb133-engms7. austin, thomas, ed. 1888. two fifteenth-century cookery-books. london: early english text society / n. trübner and co. benson, larry d., ed. 1988. the riverside chaucer. oxford: oxford university press. british library. digitised manuscripts n.d.: add. ms 5016. accessed december 24, 2022. https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/fulldisplay.aspx?ref=add_ms_5016. fernández-armesto, felipe. 2002. near a thousand tables. a history of food. new york: free press. hieatt, constance b. 1988. “further notes on the forme of cury et al.: additions and corrections.” bulletin of the john rylands university library of manchester 70 (1): 45–52. book reviews 119 hieatt, constance b. 2002. “medieval england.” in regional cuisines of medieval europe, edited by melitta weiss adamson, 19–46. london: routledge. hieatt, constance b., and sharon butler. 1985. curye on inglysch: english culinary manuscripts of the fourteenth century (including the forme of cury) (early english text society, supplementary series 8). oxford: oxford university press. pegge, samuel. (1780) 2005. the forme of cury. a roll of ancient english cookery compiled, about a.d. 1390. london 1780 / project gutenberg. accessed november 24, 2022. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8102. scott, michael, and arthur s. way. 1936. the science of dining, mensa philosophica: a medieval treatise on the hygiene of the table and the laws of health. london: macmillan and co. shaw fairman, patricia. 1991. “‘of fish and flesh and tender breede / of win both white and rede’: eating and drinking in middle english narrative texts.” selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature 1 (1): 7–28. warner, richard. 1791. antiquitates culinariae: tracts on culinary affairs of the old english. london. (received 11/01/2023) selim carmen guarddon, selim 11 (2001-2002): 117—145 the locative uses of the preposition at in the old english version of bede’s ecclesiastical history of the english people. a cognitive approach 1. introduction we have chosen the old english version of bede’s ecclesiastical history as a source to construct our corpus of spatial expressions containing the preposition at because it offers obvious advantages. as a historical work it is remarkably long, which allows us to obtain a reasonable number of examples. furthermore, its narrative character provides broad contexts against which to draw generalisations, specifically concerning the alternation of different prepositions in expressions which are apparently alike. this factor is particularly relevant when taking into account that preposition alternation usually responds to “unexpected context dependencies” (herskovits 1986: 15). these context dependencies are connected with the speaker’s – in this case the translator’s – viewpoint of a scene or situation. since the internal structure of this category affects its distribution with the other basic topological prepositions in and on, the use of the latter will also be considered in our analysis. we have used miller’s 1890 edition, as it is regarded as the most complete. this edition constitutes almost in its entirety a reproduction of the tanner manuscript (t.). this manuscript is kept in the bodleian library, oxford, and was written by five scribes in the first half of the tenth century. miller has resorted to the following manuscripts to supplement the defects from t.; they are presented in order of preference: c. = ms cotton otho b. xi. british museum. 0. = ms corpus christi college, cambridge. ca. = ms kk. cambridge university library. carmen guarddon 118 the t and c manuscripts are noticeably consistent, thus they are said to resemble the archetype. however, it is still hard to locate this archetype. miller (1890) explains that although traditionally the translation has been assigned to alfred there is no trace of a west-saxon original. the fact is that it is hard to reconcile the alfredian origin of this version with the mercian dialect of the text (cassidy and ringler 1971: 107; miller 1890: xxxiii). on the methodological level, we have included all the occurrences of the preposition at with a number of objects that refer to a varied range of spatial categories. for the sake of contextualising the spatial expressions at issue, the whole sentence where the expression occurs has been included in our corpus. the greater attention is paid to the objects of the preposition, as will be seen in the following section, they are principally responsible for segmenting prepositional senses. an analysis of the preposition at in old english is not as complex as an analysis of the prepositions in and on. in fact, a description of the structure at in this period shows that its usage is quite similar to that of present-day english. in contrast, the prepositions in and on behave quite differently in old english. this has led some scholars to conclude that their variation responds to local usage (cf. hols 1971; miller 1890). the conclusions reached in this analysis serve as a basis for further research into the categorisation of the preposition at in other texts, but we consistently speak of the usage of the preposition at in a particular literary work: the old english version of bede’s ecclesiastical history of the english people (henceforth: eh). nevertheless, in order to test to which extent our conclusions can be applied to the use of at in old english in general, our findings contrast with the analyses of the preposition at in old and middle english carried out by lundskaer-nielsen (1993) and lindkvist (1978). lundskaer-nielsen attempted to shed some light on the behaviour of the preposition at in old english and middle english. in old english his conclusions derive from an analysis of two extracts of the anglo-saxon chronicle. his initial work covers the years 892-900 and his follow-up covers the second continuation of the peterborough chronicle 1122-54. therefore, considering the time-span that separates both sections, his analysis has a diachronic dimension, whereas lindkvist identifies a great number of occurrences of the preposition at from old and middle english texts and compares them with identical uses of its gothic cognate. some of the locative uses of the preposition <at> in the oe version of bede's ehep 119 our theoretical claims will be backed up with data based on lundskaernielsen and lindkvist’s analyses. 2. spatial cognition and the semantics of prepositions the advent of cognitive linguistics has brought about a remarkable interest in the semantic properties of prepositions. linguists have focused on the ability of these lexical elements to categorise situations over a wide range of domains (space, time, cause, feelings, mental states, etc.). decades before cognitive linguistics came onto the stage, some grammarians had already verified the spatial origin of prepositions (brøndal 1950). cognitive linguists have taken a step further in this direction and argue that prepositional polysemy constitutes solid evidence of the metaphorical operations that underlie human categorisation.1 specifically, lakoff and johnson (1980) showed that spatial metaphors are derived from the bodily basis of experience, and organise our knowledge in other domains. the common categorisation in distinct domains is grounded on the existence of image-schemata (johnson 1987). image-schemata are a means of structuring particular experiences, in order to endow our perceptions and conceptualisations with connectedness. the internal structures of imageschemata show a high degree of abstraction; this fact is consistent with the object idealisations involved in the spatial relationships encoded by prepositions. it must be borne in mind that image-schemata are abstract constructs that extrapolate rich patterns of experience. this is demonstrated by johnson himself when he proposes a representation of the containment schema that underlies the uses of the preposition in, both locative and abstract: figure 1. the image-schema underlying the uses of the preposition in according to johnson (1987: 23) 1 there also exist results from neuroscientific research that prove that language was originally aimed at expressing spatial relationships (o’keefe & nadel 1978). x carmen guarddon 120 this idealisation motivates the use of the same preposition in a number of related but distinct ways, as suggested by herskovits (1986). herskovits defines the meaning of prepositions according to an ideal meaning and a number of use-types. the ideal meaning herskovits suggests for the preposition at is ‘a point that coincides with another’. the word “point” in the ideal meaning of the preposition at indicates, herskovits explains, that the categorisation of spatial relations responds to geometric conceptualisations of both the subject and the object of the preposition. therefore, terms that denote an entity that cannot be viewed as a point cannot be the subject of this preposition: * “the road is at the park.” the subject and object of the prepositions are syntactic notions that mirror the order that the relevant entities occupy with respect to these elements; the subject precedes whereas the object follows the preposition.2 nevertheless, in this paper we will use the terms introduced in langacker’s (1987) cognitive grammar, trajector and landmark. these notions denote perceptual features that are pivotal to the conceptualisation of spatial relations. the trajector is movable and of small size, when compared to the landmark, whose position is stable and larger. the trajector is the entity whose location is specified. on the other hand, the landmark constitutes a very salient reference; it is the background against which to locate the trajector, which receives the higher focus of attention. these two notions can also be paralleled with the figure and ground distinction advanced by talmy (1978). 3. the preposition at: the state of affairs in present-day english the preposition at is an example of what is called in pertinent literature a topological preposition. topology is a concept from the field of geometry that refers to the relations that are preserved under certain deformations such as bending and stretching. even though, in principle, topological prepositions can be treated as conceptually simple; there are degrees of complexity within this group, some code axial properties or other intrinsic 2 with the exception of the phenomenon known as preposition stranding: “this is the bed henry viii slept in”. the locative uses of the preposition <at> in the oe version of bede's ehep 121 properties of the landmark configuration. thus levinson (2002: 72) points out that a topological preposition such as under involves the vertical absolute dimension. this is not the case with at, which can be considered as a prototypical topological preposition; it does not express any information from euclidean geometry. the topological relation that defines the preposition at is ‘coincidence’. this definition corresponds to herskovits’ (1986) notion of ideal meaning. as sketched briefly above, the ideal meaning of a preposition is the result of a geometric abstraction of the elements related by the preposition. this geometric abstraction can be inferred from the different senses of the preposition, which herskovits designates “use-types”. some of these use-types show that by using the preposition at, the speaker takes a remote perspective of the scene being described. it is precisely this fact that favours the conceptualisation of the trajector and the landmark as points. there exist contrasting pairs that reflect different viewpoints of apparently similiar situation. consider the following locative expressions: (1) a. mary is at the shop b. mary is in the shop the expression 1a. is less specific than 1b. by uttering “mary is at the shop” the speaker does not fully commit to the location of mary within the physical boundaries of the shop. maybe, she is still on her way to the shop, or she could already be on her way back from the shop. the speaker may not even know the exact reference of the shop, and by uttering that expression, she may simply be implying that mary is engaged in the activity of shopping. we agree with herskovits (1986) that in examples like this one can clearly predict that neither the speaker nor the interlocutor are in the shop. on the other hand, 1b. would be uttered in a context where the speaker has visual access to the situation described by the expression, or at the least, the speaker and her interlocutor are both in the shop. the use of these two prepositions in these pairs is modulated by the view that the speaker has of a certain scene. this contrast also holds between at and other prepositions such as on, next to, or near and can be expressed in terms of a remote versus a close-up perspective of a scene. the remote view associated with the preposition at is consistent with other conditions that its landmarks must satisfy, i.e. they should not be very large entities. carmen guarddon 122 while herskovits has established a number of use-types for the topological prepositions, offering a polysemic view of the semantics of prepositions, the structuralist bennet (1975) postulates the existence of a single meaning for the preposition at which is modulated by contextual influences. he argues that the feature that defines all the uses of at is ‘locative’. therefore, according to bennet (1975: 66) the at of “arrive at” or “throw at” or “gwyneth is at the supermarket” are all realisations of the element ‘locative’. one of the factors that distances bennet from most cognitive linguists is his reluctance to ascribe geometric dimensions to the meanings of prepositions.3 following this line, bennet does not concede a relevant role to the speakers’ ability to abstract from the real characteristics of the entities that take part in a spatial relationship nor to their capacity to conceptualise in terms of geometric idealisations: “from a mathematical point of view, the touch-line running the length of a football field is no doubt one-dimensional, but no one has ever seen a one-dimensional touchline. to be visible a touchline (sic) needs to have width as well as length” (1975: 71). other linguists agree with herskovits in associating the relationship ‘coincidence’ with the preposition at, for instance, boggess (1978). boggess also points out that at has many of the special contextual conditions of the preposition to, although they are differentiated by the fact that at is not used to express motion. she argues that both prepositions can be used in order to refer to scenarios. scenarios like 1a. evoke the characteristic that the specific place is not relevant but the connotations associated with it are. thus, if one says “john is at the doctor’s” or “john must go to the doctor’s”, what is at issue is that john is in a situation that forces him to use the services of a doctor and not his potential location. we contend that there is a further feature which associates to and at. both prepositions can encode the goal of a trajectory; this is intrinsic to the preposition to because it is a path preposition, and it is a characteristic acquired by the preposition at depending on the compositional sentence processes in which it participates. in other words, we adhere to a current school of thought that holds that 3 despite not being a cognitive but a structuralist linguist, leech (1969) pioneered the description of prepositional meaning using geometric features of dimensionality. the locative uses of the preposition <at> in the oe version of bede's ehep meaning is not contained within a single lexical item but is distributed over all the elements that compose a sentence (cf. levinson 1991). in the particular case of relational elements that do not have direct referents, such as prepositions or verbs, it is their argument structure that is fully responsible for constraining their semantic potential. for instance, the preposition at introduces the end-point of the trajectory when it collocates with projection verbs such as “look” or “throw”. projection verbs should not be confused with motion verbs; it must be noted that in present-day english the preposition at does not occur in combination with the latter. the following examples can be rated as ungrammatical: (2) a. *he came at home b. *mary went at the doctor’s nevertheless, in old english, even though infrequent, there are examples where the preposition at occurs with motion verbs (cf. belden 1897; lindkvist 1950): (3) a. ic eow cleopode ær to me, ac ge me noldon æt cuman (king alfred’s west-saxon version of gregory’s pastoral care: 247). b. ñæt hie næfre noldon æt ham cuman ær hie òæt gewrecen hæfden (king alfred’s orosius: 122). the fact that this colocation is no longer grammatical may be interpreted as evidence of a limitation of the field of spatial relationships that the preposition at covers. this view is supported by the work of lundskærnielsen (1993: 84). we believe that this pattern has been partially inherited by the present-day use of this preposition, as it shows its capacity to occur with verbs that focus on the end-point of a path, such as “arrive at” or the projection verbs mentioned above. however, the evolution of this preposition does not necessarily respond to a limitation of its categorisation field. there were also temporal extensions of the semantic range of the preposition at that did not survive to present-day english. for example, in his classification of the middle english uses of this preposition, lindkvist showed that it occurred in examples of location in a country: “an interesting combination of first extension and then limitation of the application of at is found in its use in middle english and early modern english with complements denoting countries and similar large areas” (1978: 27). 123 carmen guarddon 124 furthermore, conventionally allowed deviations from the ideal meaning are a constant source for extensions in the use of the category. the time that these extensions will remain within the language use can be relatively short as lindkvist example shows, however this is something almost impossible to predict on the ground of the data available to a linguist. lindkvist (1950) also carried out a classification of the uses of the preposition at in present-day english. he left open the question of whether all spatial uses of a preposition can be accounted for in terms of a single sense. he does not take into consideration questions of abstraction in the conceptualisation of spatial relations. lindkvist sets up a classification of the uses of at by studying a large corpus formed by the occurrences of this preposition in a huge number of english literary works. his classification includes the following uses: i. location in close proximity to an object; ii. location within an area or space or on a surface apprehended as a point; iii. relative position; iv. location close to or within a body, surface or area thought of as being used to serve a certain purpose; v. motion and direction. finally, there is a use of the preposition at which cannot be explained without recourse to functionality; such as the cases in which the trajector presents the feature [+human] and the landmark is an artifact that the trajector is using, i.e. “mary is at her desk, john is at the piano; eloise is at her computer...” the pivotal question in these expressions is that the relationship of physical coincidence that holds between the trajector and the landmark allows the first to use the second. however, this coincidence is not enough for that relationship to qualify as a case of at. if john happens to be sitting on the upper surface of the piano, the relationship between them would have to be encoded by a preposition other than at – most probably on. the different positions or postures of the trajectors when using a certain artifact must be inferred pragmatically. this use is defined by herskovits as ‘person using artifact’ (1986: 135) and by lindkvist as ‘activity close to an object’ (1950: 165). 4. the preposition at in the old english version of bede’s ecclesiastical history of the english people the locative uses of the preposition <at> in the oe version of bede's ehep 125 the english preposition at is cognate with the latin ad “to, at”. even though, in old english it governs the dative only, the texts examined by belden (1897) present the preposition at followed by the accusative in one case, the phrase æt òysne andweardan dæg “at this present day”. one of the main reasons for choosing eh to create our corpus is that being quite long – it is made up of five books – we have found enough occurrences of the preposition at to spot certain tendencies in the use of this preposition. second, the three main topological prepositions, in, on and at, which have a rather restricted distribution, are well represented in the text. this allows us to establish the selection restrictions governing the distribution of the preposition at in eh, which can also be extrapolated to other old english texts. in fact, lundskaer-nielsen’s (1993) asserts that at presents quite a stable usage over texts from different dialectal areas. this estability is also attested by lindkvist (1978), who examined the usage of the preposition at in old english across several texts of this period (beowulf, the anglo-saxon chronicle, the old english version of bede’s ecclesiastical history, alfred’s translation of gregory’s cura pastoralis, etc.) (cf. hols 1971). we have examined the behaviour of at in relation to a number of spatial entities. there is a widespread assumption that prepositions are highly polysemous words and thus form extremely complex lexical classes. their polysemy is based on their capacity to categorise domains other than the spatial. therefore, the semantic description of a preposition is not complete if no reference is made to the temporal and abstract relationships that it can establish. however, these relations lie beyond the scope of the present paper. at any rate, due to their ontological priviledged status, the spatial uses of a preposition should be described in the first place in order to determine the metaphorical and metonymical operations that have led to further extensions of the category in other domains. the landmarks selected for the purposes of our analysis stand for a wide range of spatial categories: large geographic entities, small geographic entities, general geographic designations, buildings, containers, body parts, means of transport and imaginary places. the table below shows the catalogue of landmarks that have been used to build up our corpus: table 1. physical landmarks from eh. carmen guarddon 126 1. briten “britain” 8. gallia “gaul” 15. mynster “monastery” 2. burg “town, city” 9. hand “hand” 16.neorxenawang “paradise” 3. cirice “church” 10. heofon “heaven” 17. ríce “kingdom” 4. cyst “coffin, 11. hús “house” 18. rom “rome” 5. eòel “country, 12. land “land, country” 19. scíp “ship” 6. fót “foot” 13. mægð “province, tribe” 20. stow “spot, place” 7. fyr “fire” 14. mór “moors” 21. ðruh “coffin” it must be noted that with some of these landmarks we have found no examples using the preposition at, but they have been kept because, we claim, that for the semantic description of a preposition, indicating the type of landmark it collocates with is as relevant as enumerating the type of relationships that it cannot establish. at this point, it must be noted that eh is the translation of a latin original and one could argue about the possibility of latin influence in the prepositional usage of the old english translation. to check whether such dependence has biased the use of at, we have compared all the expressions that compose our corpus with their latin equivalents and we have not found any repeated synchronicity in this sense, for example, the latin preposition ad motivating the presence of at in the old english text. in his study of the case values governed by prepositions in old english belden (1897) also confirmed that the latin work had not determined the choice of prepositions in eh. in the next section, we show the usage potential of the preposition at in the physical domain, and how this potential can be subsumed under a classification of use-types. our main interest is to establish the extent to which these use-types coincide with the present-day usage of this preposition. 4.1 examination of corpus and results unless special contextual circumstances co-occur, for instance the landmark is part of the case frame of a certain verb, the entities that belong to the same type of spatial category should collocate with the same topological preposition. this is the state of affairs in present-day english; the locative uses of the preposition <at> in the oe version of bede's ehep 127 differences in this sense should point at the diachronic evolution of the preposition at. as expected, no examples of the preposition at have been found with large geographic entities (briten, eðel, gallia, mægð, ríce), even though, as noted above, lindkvist (1978) provides evidence that demonstrates that in middle english at was used to express location in a country. however, this was only a temporal extension of the usage of the preposition. the next spatial category analysed is ‘small geographic entities’ such as burg, and rom. the location in burg is not expressed in a uniform way; the three topological prepositions, in, on and at, precede this landmark.4 there are 12 expressions that use the preposition in, 3 with on and 2 with at. concerning rom we find a similar situation. there are 6 locative expressions where rom occurs with the prepositions in question; there are 3 cases with the preposition in, one with on, and 2 with at. after checking that this distribution does not respond to restrictions imposed by the subcategorisation frames of the verbal predicates of the sentences, we have examined the content of these expressions. it is necessary, first of all, to consider how the preposition at functions in present-day english. as argued in herskovist (1986), the preposition at in present-day english only occurs with small towns. this is consistent with the two expressions in which at collocates with burg (1, 2). the landmark in both of them is coldingham; most probably this town was not at the time as well known to the britons as other cities mentioned in eh, such as canterbury, london or rome. one of those expressions (2) presents the particularity that the preposition has become part of the name of the town. the prepositional phrase serves to refer to the name of a monastery, which is at coldingham. this indicates the strong association existing between a trajector and the place where it is situated: ðæt mynster, þæt mon nemneð æt coludes burg (2). according to lindkvist (1978: 12), the preposition at should not be translated in these cases, since the whole prepositional phrase is understood as a place name. he also points out that these prepositional phrases function as a predicate instead of as an adverbial or an adjunct. 4 the examples with the preposition at are listed in an appendix at the end of this article. when referred to or partially quoted, these examples are identified with a number that corresponds to the sentences listed in the appendix. miller’s translations are also provided. carmen guarddon 128 the explanation provided above for the collocation of at and burg falls in contradiction with the two expressions where this preposition occurs with rom. in fact, rom was already at the time of the translation a large and important city. as nothing in the semantic content of the sentence where the first of these expressions (3) appears sheds any light on the factors motivating the presence of at, we have looked at its broader context. we could observe that this case occurred when the author steps off the narrative line and digresses in order to relate the biography of a specific character. in biographies, the relevant aspects are the character’s deeds and achievements, dates and places usually play a lesser role. this factor motivates a minor involvement of the speaker with the locative expressions at issue, which is consistent with a remote perspective.5 regarding the second example (4), the reasons for the occurrence of the preposition at were found in the neighbouring context. a sequence of events, the consecration of two bishops, is enumerated with the different places where the events happen, one of those places is briten, preceded by the preposition on, and the second is rom, preceded by the preposition at. a mental map of the places is needed to account for the different conceptualisations of these spatial entities. the occurrence of these two prepositions serves to emphasise the smaller size of rom in comparison to briten: ðæt se arwurða wer swiðbyrht on breotone, wilbrord æt rome biscopas wæron fresna ðeode gehalgode “that the venerable swithberht in britain and wilbrord at rome were consecrated as bishops for friesland” (eh: 22). it must be noted that lundskær-nielsen (1993) found out that the codification of location in a town is one of the most frequent locative uses of at in the section of the anglo saxon chronicle that covers the years 892-900: æt middeltune, æt beamfleote, æt cwatbrycge, etc. interestingly enough, in this section there are three instances of towns that collocate with the preposition on and these are remarkably more important and larger than the ones mentioned above: lundenne, hrofesceastre and wintenceastre. in fact, these three cities had been endowed with a bishopric in that time. 5 we would like to thank one of our anonymous reviewers for noticing that the use of this preposition with larger landmarks in old english can anticipate this use of at in middle english. in fact, lindkvist has found several middle english cases in which this preposition collocates with important cities: “the heved is at parys. maundev.2.; he was at jerusalem in tho dayes. wycl. lucke 23. 7.” (1978: 13). the locative uses of the preposition <at> in the oe version of bede's ehep 129 the third category we have set up in relation with the landmarks from table 1 is ‘general geographic designations’. under this category we include places that vary in size and are not conceptualised as bounded. in our corpus there are three: land, stow and mór. land occurs 23 times in eh, in 15 cases it occurs with the preposition in; there are 7 examples with the preposition on, and, finally, only one with the preposition at. in principle, land refers to an area, therefore it may seem difficult to explain how an extension in space can be conceptualised as a point. however, the only case where at precedes land is inserted in a very specific context: ðurh ðone smyltestan sae usic æt londe gebrohte (5). here land does not refer to an extension, instead it is part of the opposition sea versus land. thus when one speaks of travellers reaching land after a long journey in a ship, “at land” is said to indicate the point where the travellers arrive in a different medium. it can also be viewed as the goal of a path through the sea; this idea is consistent with the consideration of the landmarks of at as points. lindkvist (1950: 134) pointed out that the preposition at occurred with the noun land in early modern english and even later “to indicate situation on the solid surface of the earth in contrast to the sea”. but as we can see this usage of at has antecedents in old english. with regard to stow, it is even more general than land; this flexibility may account for the large number of occurrences of this noun in eh. we have found 74 expressions with the preposition in; 18 with the preposition on, and 3 with the preposition at. the expressions occurring with the preposition at are those that refer to “the holy places of the apostles” (6, 7, 8). from the context, we learn that those places are situated in rome; this helps to establish a remote perspective on the landmarks as they are not even situated in britain. there is one more factor motivating a remote perspective of these places: there is no information about them, we do not know whether they are buildings, or other types of location: þæt he wolde to rome feran þær æt þam halgum stowum his lif geendigan (6). the third geographic entity examined, mór, resembles the former in the sense that it may refer to an extension of variable size and it does not have salient boundaries. the location specified in the two expressions found in eh is effected by the preposition in. the presence of in in the two examples reflect the close view of the narrator, as the landmark is preceded by an adjective describing the carmen guarddon 130 moors internally and the facts that take place there are known, i.e. in heaum morum “high up upon the moors” (eh: 364). the fourth category is ‘buildings’. in our corpus we have included cirice, hús, and mynster. we support herskovit’s (1986) and bennet’s (1975) semantic treatments, which claim that the preposition at does not profile any part or subdivision of the landmarks. bennet (1975: 68) states this fact explicitly: “whereas on and in are ascribed a ‘part’ component, no such component is attributed to the meaning of at.” as noted above, herskovits defined the categorisation labour effected by at as ‘coincidence’. we claim that the conceptualisation of physical location in buildings as coincidence is in principle improbable, because buildings are not likely to be idealised geometrically as a point. human beings have an active bodily and visual interaction with buildings. we are aware of being enclosed by their walls and ceilings, and are able to have a full visual picture of their exterior. however, the relation between the trajector and the building may be not so much one of location, but, instead, the speaker implies that the trajector is engaged in the activities normally performed in that building. in this case, in present-day english, the preposition at is preferred with a large number of landmarks. concerning the examples analysed here, we have not found any case of collocation of the preposition at with any of the buildings considered, despite the fact that these landmarks are notably represented in eh; there are 68 examples of cirice, 16 examples of hús and 76 of mynster being preceded by the preposition in and on. this seems logical in the case of hús because no activities are specifically associated with this landmark. on the other hand, with cirice and mynster we expected to find some examples with at. in fact, lindkvist’s (1978) findings show that old-english at was used to express somebody’s location in connection with the activities typically developed in a building. for example, in present-day english church may be preceded by the preposition at when the church is not referred to as a specific physical entity, i.e. a building, but as the institution where religious activities are held. it must be noted that in these cases the noun is not preceded by any modifier, which emphasises that it does not have a specific referent. in our corpus, there are expressions where church is not accompanied by any modifier either, thus we may infer that the institution and not the building is referred to. the locative uses of the preposition <at> in the oe version of bede's ehep 131 we have examined these examples more closely in order to check whether any other factor was preventing the occurrence of at in these prepositional phrases. in fact, a close examination of the cases where cirice is mentioned as an institution shows that many of them describe the circumstances under which a person should not enter a church, because trespassing on its grounds would be regarded as a sin, for example menstruating women: ne sceal heo bewered beon þæt heo mote in circan gongan “it is not right that she should be cut off from entering god’s church” (eh: 78). thus, even though not a specific church, but a space clearly delineated is being referred to, enclosure within that space becomes salient, since being in or keeping ourselves out determine whether one has committed a sin. the salience acquired by the physical limits of the landmark motivate the presence of the preposition in in these expressions. finally, as an additional factor to be taken into account, it must be noted that the translators are clerics, which means that they are very familiar with the interior and the activities developed in places such as a church or a monastery. this fact prevents the translators from having a remote perspective of these locations. the following category is ‘containers’. in this respect we have analysed the spatial expressions that occur with cyst and ðruh. the entities within this category belong to the class of objects that have an inherent interior. consistently with the state of affairs in present-day english, no cases with the preposition at have been found to express containment in relation to these landmarks. in the unlikely case the preposition at appeared with these objects, it would express spatial coincidence, or proximity. in present-day english it is frequent to see parts of the body preceded by the preposition at. most of these expressions have a figurative meaning (“i will always be at your feet”) but we contend that they started as literal expressions. some of the examples found in eh confirm this hypothesis. there are 15 locative expressions with “hand”, 3 collocate with the preposition at. two of them present a literal meaning of “at hand” (9, 10); they refer to an individual involved in the story who does not have something he needs at that moment, a possession that is usually wielded in one’s hands. for instance: næfde he scyld æt honda (10), where one of the king’s attendants cannot find a shield. this type of expression may be at the carmen guarddon 132 origin of those already used in old english and still in present-day english, where the prepositional phrase “at hand” refers to something that is not available, it does not matter if it is something that can be held or not: “sorry, i cannot pick you up now, i have no car at hand.” in the third example (11), in contrast with the other two, the hands are preceded by a noun in the genitive case, this modifies significantly the meaning of the prepositional phrase. it no longer refers to whether something is or not easily accessible. by mentioning specifically the person whose hands are being referred to by the landmarks, the actor of an action is alluded. this new semantic content of the locative expression may be motivated by the fact that the hands are the part of our body with which we act most often. the prepositional phrase in question, æt þaes biscopes honda, refers to the bishop that gives holy communion to one of the characters of the narration. we claim that this expression also highlights the proximity that there must obtain between the agent and the patient, which is also connected with the postulated coincidence between cause and effect. wood argues that this use can be identified in present-day english in expressions such as “the captive suffered much harsh treatment at the hands of his jailers” (1967: 285). the next body part we have examined is fót, there is only one case preceded by the preposition at (12). this example is not part of a figurative expression of admiration or respect, the feet in question belong to an individual lying in bed while another person is standing close to the foot of the bed: oðer æt minum fotum (12). in conformity with the meaning of the preposition at, although the spatial relation is actually of proximity, it is conceived of as coincidence. the literature on english prepositions generally define one use of the preposition at as being “activity close to an object”. the trajector presents in most cases the feature [+ human] while the landmark is an object with which the trajector interacts. this interaction requires the physical coincidence between them. in eh we have examined the locative expressions containing fyr and the preposition at. one must be close to, or be physically coincident with, the fire in order to get warmer or cook food. the relevant fact in such a relationship is the physical coincidence between both trajector and landmark. another reason for preferring the preposition at in this case is that no part of the landmark is profiled as being the exact location of the trajector. there are the locative uses of the preposition <at> in the oe version of bede's ehep 133 only two prepositional phrases where fyr is the landmark of one of the topological prepositions; one of the examples presents on and the other presents at (13). this expression, as expected, includes the sense of functionality that we have mentioned above: gestód æt þam fýre hine wyrmde mid his þegnum. as this sentence shows, the purpose of the trajector by standing close to the fire is to warm himself. this usage has not changed over time and it is highly productive in present-day english, as lindkvist put it: “at is used with complements denoting different things which according to their nature are the objects or centres of special activitites, to indicate that the activity connected with such a thing is carried on close to the thing” (1950: 165). when it comes to means of transport, we have examined the prepositional phrases with the word scip and have found 5 cases with the preposition in and 3 with the preposition on; there is not a single occurrence of this word preceded by the preposition at. the reasons for this absence can be attributed to the way human beings interact with the means of transport that resemble a container, such as scip. sometimes, it is quite similar to the way we interact with prototypical closures such as buildings in the sense that we are aware of being situated within their limits; this type of location motivates the use of the preposition in. on the other hand, in other cases, the horizontal surface that supports the travellers is the part of the landmark that obtains a maximum salience from the cognitive point of view, this relationship is encoded by the preposition on. in contrast, the preposition at would not profile the interaction of the traveller with any of the parts of the means of transport. finally, we have examined locative categories that human beings have not experienced physically, places such as heofon and neorxenawang. we have a culturally-built mental image of these places, and of what one can find in their interior. this mental image is commonly shared due to the contribution of art, specifically painting, and descriptions in religious writings i.e. the phoenix. before the search, we advanced the hypothesis that the relatively deep knowledge that scribes had of what the interior of these regions should be like precluded the occurrence of at with these landmarks. furthermore, their exact situation does not rely on the principles that human beings resort to when locating, i.e. distance, the points of the carmen guarddon 134 compass, and map conventions in general. therefore, speakers cannot be said to have a remote perception of its position in space either, which is one of the main features of the preposition at. this hypothesis is confirmed after examining the data; there are 4 locative expressions with heofon, 3 with the preposition in and one with the preposition on. another text highlights the scarce possibilities of finding the preposition at preceding landmarks of this nature. for instance, we have also examined satan in hell, inserted in the section of genesis known as genesis b (vickrey 1960). there heofon appears on 7 occasions and in all of them is preceded by the preposition on. in the same text, the word hell, which belongs to the same category of landmark, occurs 6 times, all of them preceded by the preposition on. it must be noted that the preposition at appears in this text in combination with other landmarks. regarding neorxenawang, it occurs just once preceded by a topological preposition, which as we predicted is not at but in in eh. this word occurs twice in ælfric’s fragment from the book of genesis known as the fall of man (mitchell and robinson 1992), in both cases it is preceded by the preposition on. it is worth noticing that in the same text we have found the latin word paradąsum, also preceded by the preposition on. 5. discussion of results the question we want to address in this section may be formulated like this: does the allegedly ideal meaning of at apply to all the uses of the preposition that have been attested in our analysis? in the first place, the examination of the landmarks selected with the preposition at in this anglosaxon document shows that, in contrast with in and on, the usage of the preposition at in this period is highly consistent with present-day english. therefore, it could be claimed that the ideal meaning proposed for this preposition according to its usage in present-day english, ‘location at a point’, applies in general to the way it is used in old english. this is supported by lindkvist’s claim that “with very few exceptions […] the use of at in middle english is identical with that of æt in old english” (1978: 13). this indicates the existence of a continuity in the usage of this preposition. but this is not a strong position; the question is whether ‘location at a point’ is a suitable definition for the totality of the senses of at. we contend that map conventions to a large extent resemble the way we the locative uses of the preposition <at> in the oe version of bede's ehep 135 think of spatial entities and this is shown by the data examined. for instance, no case of location in a country has been found with at in eh. in fact, large entities tend to be excluded from the set of likely landmarks of this preposition because they are hard to conceptualise as points. with smaller geographical entities such as towns, the expressions with at in eh are appropriate under special contextual conditions. maps are also flexible concerning the representation of towns, depending on the scale, they can be represented as areas or points. herskovits (1986) also pointed out that in present-day english the size or the importance of the city determines the distribution of in and at. in our corpus, only small distant towns occur with the preposition at, with the exception of rom, which is linked on two occasions with this preposition. but in the two cases the location in rom appears as secondary information, no close-up view of the town is taken and the knowledge of the position of the facts narrated with respect to the landmark is rather imprecise. thus, these examples show that the feature ‘remote perspective’ was already probably active in old english in determining the distribution of this preposition. with generic geographic designations, it is possible for the landmark to be conceptualised as a point, which controls the use of at; otherwise, any other preposition, in or on, should precede the landmark. for example, as noted above, land, infrequently, can be conceptualised as a point. this indicates that the determinant factor to decide whether an expression with a preposition is appropriate is not simply the type of spatial entity it occurs with but the contextual conditions as well. diachronically, contextual conditions as a factor affecting the behaviour of prepositions has declined, although it is still active (consider “at the market” versus “in the market”; “at the bridge” versus “on the bridge”). it seems obvious that the distribution of these prepositions in present-day english is more constrained by the spatial properties of the landmark. regarding the occurrence of prepositions with buildings, two different situations may hold. on the one hand, locations in buildings usually profile their interior, but the preposition at implies a global conceptualisation of the landmarks. when a speaker uses at she does not commit to the exact position of the trajector with respect to the landmark, whereas by expressing location in a building most often a relation of enclosure is stated. on the carmen guarddon 136 other hand, the noun may refer to a scenario rather than to a building. this use has on the whole remained unchanged since old english. the data examined shows examples where cirice was not referred to as a specific building, but as an institution; in these examples the noun is usually not preceded by any modifier. even though our data does not include any case of collocation of at with a building in reference to a scenario, lindkvist provides examples from various old english literary works that prove that this use was already consolidated in old english (1978: 13-4). again, in this case, contextual dependencies determine the selection of a preposition and the rejection of another. these contextual dependencies are responsible for the way a particular relation is conceptualised. in the previous section, we observed the absence of at with cirice when location in a particular scenario was being expressed in eh. so the presence or absence of at in old english was not entirely predictable with buildings, when denoting the trajector’s engagement in a specific activity connected with the building. perhaps this instability is responsible for some alternations of the prepositions at and in in present-day english with no difference in meaning: “in/at church” (swan 1995). the examples examined above mainly show that when the landmark cannot be idealised into a point, because its interior plays a major role in the locative expression, at is not a likely option. the salience of the interior of a landmark is also associated with visual perception. when the speakers have visual information of the interior of the landmark, other prepositions rather than at are used, instead in is preferred if a relationship of enclosure holds. this was the situation of the examples in the corpus that express location in imaginary places like heofon or neorxenawang. the fact that these landmarks have just one single referent, i.e. in the christian tradition there are not several “heavens” or “paradises”, prevents that a sense of indefiniteness may be involved in these landmarks, which is another factor accompanying the preposition at. visual perceptual access to a scene or situation is a relevant factor modulating the presence of at versus in, since visual perception allows the speaker to verify that enclosure within a space actually takes place. with landmarks that sometimes are not apprehended visually, such as some buildings or geographic entities, the preposition at then may be used. the locative uses of the preposition <at> in the oe version of bede's ehep 137 however, human beings have a recurrent visual and physical interaction with containers; this is reinforced by the action of physically placing objects into them.6 this precludes the preposition at from occurring with nouns denoting small containers and it is also an explanation for the absence of the preposition at with means of transport that contain people. from the uses of the preposition at proposed above it seems quite straightforward that the characteristic ‘coincidence’ that most linguists ascribe to the category at has to be defined in relation to one basic modality in conceptualising space: map images. for instance, the location in small geographic entities of which we have a remote perspective is conceptualised through an idealised geometric conceptualisation of both trajector and landmark. but this fact does not apply to the cases that are conceptualised from the information obtained through a different modality: visual perception. we mean the situations where the spatial coincidence is perceived visually, for example when the trajector, usually human, performs some function associated with the landmark. herskovits (1986: 82) claims that a spatial relation like “maggie is at her desk” is viewed as coincidence between two points. but it must be noted that the selection restrictions that determine the correct use of at in such a context determine the distribution of at versus near or of at versus close to in the same context. we believe these selection restrictions are too specific to be abstracted away in a geometric conceptualisation where the trajector as well as the landmarks are viewed as points. there are two examples in the data where the relation between the trajector and the landmark responds to specificities that are apprehended visually and that the listener must reconstruct through a visual image in order to make sense of it. for instance, oðer æt minum fotum (12), where the position of a person with respect to somebody’s bed is stated. this does not simply imply a relation of coincidence, there are other relationships involved here that are apprehended visually and that are recovered in the codification and decodification of the spatial relationship connected with this scene; as an example, the form of beds and the way we interact with them. a similar 6 for a thorough description of how the action of introducing things into our own mouth when we are babies ingrains the notion of containment by deeply entrenching it into our minds, while obtaining a pre-conceptual status see lakoff & johnson (1999). carmen guarddon 138 interpretation can be made of the expression with fyr, gestód æt þam fýre hine wyrmde mid his þegnum (13); when somebody is said to be located at the fire, he is assumed to be there for a certain purpose, usually for warmth. in order to suit this purpose, the trajector must fulfill certain conditions: he should be placed at a certain distance, neither too close nor too far, he usually does not show his back to the fire, etc. probably this functional use of at was already active long before the time the extant documents were written. in fact, lindkvist attests this specific use in different texts, which led him to affirm: “æt further occurred in old english in such cases of practical connection where somebody is present close to, or in contact with, an object which is used for some purpose connected with the object” (1978: 18). thus we cannot have evidence of the contexts where this use emerged. neither can we know whether these expressions entered the language before those derived from mental maps. however, one thing seems to be clear: the treatment of the expressions with at where functional factors concur cannot be reduced to the statement of mere coincidence between two points. 6. concluding remarks the advent of cognitive linguistics with its emphasis on the speakers’ fundamental role in the organisation of spatial relations has brought the study of prepositions into a new light. factors that were not even considered within the standard linguistic machinery have acquired an active role in the description of the semantic content of these lexical items; for instance, speakers’ perception, their interaction with space and subsequent conceptualisation of the spatial relations. this means that when it comes to a diachronic study of prepositions dialectal factors or stylistic variance depending on the author are to be considered, but they are not the only conditions when it comes to explaining apparently random uses. the study we have carried out of the preposition at in eh and its comparison with lindkvist (1978) and lundskær-nielsen’s (1993) analyses of the same preposition provides us with a quite comprehensive picture of the usage of this preposition in old english. some extrapolations can be made on the basis of the findings exposed here. for example, the use of this preposition has remained quite stable over time and no major changes have taken place, or they have been temporal, as the use of at to express location the locative uses of the preposition <at> in the oe version of bede's ehep 139 in a country, as put forward by lindkvist. it seems that the system of topological prepositions in old english was more flexible in order to encode the speakers’ point of view of a locative relations, as the cases where rom was preceded by at show. for instance, in present-day english, the perspective that the speaker takes of a certain scene is not echoed in the selection restrictions of some prepositions, i.e. at cannot occur with terms denoting large important cities. we can see here two distinct parameters in a continuum competing to determine the use of prepositions: on the one hand the speakers’ perspective of a situation and, on the other hand, the physical objective characteristics of the landmark. the freedom speakers have to choose a preposition according to the perspective they take of a scene is directly proportional to the flexibility of some prepositions to alternate with specific landmarks. in present-day english, this flexibility has diminished due to the fact that more strict collocations between prepositions and landmarks occur. for this reason, the preposition at is more constrained by the type of landmarks it collocates with. this was maybe intuitively realised by lundskaer-nielsen when he stated “that later changes in the use of æt are more often limitations in the semantic range that it had in oe than extensions of it” (1993: 84). we, cognitive linguists, in our attempt to demonstrate that even the lowliest grammatical morpheme is meaningful, usually posit multiple senses for these items and treat them as complex lexical categories. the reaction to this situation is to establish a single sense or core from which all the other senses of the category originated, this core sense is called by herskovits (1986) “ideal meaning.” the french linguist vandeloise (1984) introduces diachronic aspects in this core sense that he calls “impulsion.” according to vandeloise, the impulsion is diachronically the primary sense of the category, and linguists should aim at establishing it. vandeloise makes the point that arguing for the polysemic character of a preposition is a relatively straight point, the hard part comes when ones tries to set up the impulsion of the category. there is no doubt that the notion of impulsion has a high heuristic value. however, concerning a synchronic description of a preposition, we are inclined to regard the establishment of a single definition that suits all its uses, in some cases, as being too artificial. therefore, as we have argued in the previous section some relationships are naturally carmen guarddon 140 conceptualised as geometric idealisations, as our familiarity with the use of maps shows. on the other hand, other relations are apprehended visually and understood in a context where several factors converge, for instance, functional landmarks. the data analysed shows that in old english as well as in present-day english a single definition is not able to cover all the attested senses of at. finally, taking the results of our study as a starting point, we envisage two directions for future research. first, we have strictly focused on spatial uses but it would be interesting to verify that the stability of the categorisation of at between old and present-day english in the spatial domain can be attested in other non-spatial domains, for example time. second, the same spatial categories proposed here can be analysed in middle english texts to determine the specific variations that have taken place over these two periods. carmen guarddon anelo universidad nacional de educación a distancia appendix: occurrences of the preposition at in old english version of bede’s ecclesiastical history of the english people with the landmarks selected (1) bedehead 4 20.23 xxiiii. hwilc gesihð sumum godes were ætywde, ær þam þe þæt mynster æt coludes byrig mid bryne fornumen waere. xxiv. the vision which appeared to a man of god, before the monastery at coldingham was destroyed by fire. (2) 4 26.348.27 ðissum tidum ðæt mynster, þæt mon nemneð æt coludes burg, þæs we beforan gemyndgodon, þurh ungemænne synne fyre lege wæs fornumen. the locative uses of the preposition <at> in the oe version of bede's ehep 141 at this time the monastery called coldingham, already mentioned, was destroyed by fire and flame, through the sin of carelessness. (3) bedehead 5 22.32 xi. ðæt se arwurða wer swiðbyrht on breotone, wilbrord æt rome biscopas wæron fresna ðeode gehalgode. xi. that the venerable swithberht in britain and wilbrord at rome were consecrated as bishops for friesland. (4) 5 8.406.18 ða wæs ðy nehstan geare, æfter ðam ðe ceadwala æt rome forðfered wæs, þætte ðære eadgan gemynde þeodor ercebiscop ald dagena full forðfered wæs, then next year, after the death of ceadwalla at rome, archbishop theodore of blessed memory died, old and full days, that is, when he was eighty-eight years of age. (5) 5 1.386.11 ond mid ðy he ða ðæt gebed gefylde, he þa somod ætgædre ge þone aðundnan sae gesmylte ge ðone storm gestilde, to þon ðætte þurh all sio roeðnis ðæs stormes wæs blinnende gesyndge windas ðurh ðone smyltestan sae usic æt londe gebrohte. and when he had ended the prayer, he then at the same time calmed the swollen sea and stilled the storm, so that altogether the fury of the storm ceased and favouring breezes carried us to the land over the calmest of seas. (6) 4 5.274.29 þæt gif he from þære untrymnesse gehæled wære, þæt he wolde to rome feran þær æt þam halgum stowum his lif geendigan, ond wilferð biscop bæd, þæt he him þæs siiðfætes latteow wære, that, if he had been cured of this disorder, he intended to proceed to rome and there end his life at those holy places, and he begged bishop wilfrid to be his guide on the journey, carmen guarddon 142 (7) 5 7.404.16 þæt he æt stowe þara apostola mid þa wællan fullwihte bæthes athwegen wære, in tham anum he geleornode monna cynne ingong geopenian þæs heofonlican lifes. in the home of the apostles, whereby alone he had learnt that entrance into the kingdom of heaven is opened to mankind. (8) 5 17.448.23 forðon he com to rome, þaer scire onfeng munuc wæs geworden on constantines tidum þaes papa: æt þara apostola stowe on gebedum on fæstenum on ælmesdaedumawunade oð þone ytemestan dæg. for he went to rome and there received the tonsure, and became a monk in the time of pope constantine; and continued in the home of the apostles, praying and fasting and giving alms, up to his last day. (9) 2 8.122.19 ða þæt þa lilla geseah, se cyninges þegn him se holdesta, næfde he scyld æt honda, now when lilla saw this, who was the most devoted of the king’s attendants, having no shield at hand, (10) 3 1.156.27 ða sæt he æt beode, næfde þa æt honda hwær þæt brohte lac gehealdan scolde; as he sat at table, he had nothing at hand to keep the proffered gift in; (11) 3 5.168.5 ða onfeng he him nom æt fulwihte bæðe æt þaes biscopes honda þære godcundan þegnunge him to godsuna. and he received and took him as godson at the font, after the sacred administration by the bishop’s hands. the locative uses of the preposition <at> in the oe version of bede's ehep 143 (12) 5 14.438.21 ær hwene ðu come, eode inn on þis hus to me twegen geonge men fægre beorhte, gesæton æt me, oðer æt minum heafde, oðer æt minum fotum. a little before you came, there came in to me in this house two young men fair and bright, and sat down by me, one at my head, the other at my feet. (13) 3 12.196.25 se cyning þonne, forðon he of huntað cwom, gestód æt þam fýre hine wyrmde mid his þegnum. then the king, having just come from hunting, stood at the fire and warmed himself, among his attendants. references belden, m. 1897: the prepositions in, on, to, for, fore, and æt in anglosaxon prose. a study of case values in old english. friedenwald, baltimore. bennet, d. 1975: spatial and temporal uses of english prepositions – an essay in stratificational semantics. longman, london. boggess, l. 1978: computational interpretation of english spatial prepositions. university of illinois, ph.d. dissertation. brøndal, v. 1950: theorie des prepositions. introduction à une sémantique rationnelle. ejnar munksgaard, copenhague. cassidy f. g. & r. ringler 1981: bright’s old english grammar and reader. harcourt brace jovanovich college publishers, toronto. herskovits, a. 1986: language and spatial cognition. an interdisciplinary study of the prepositions in english. cambridge university press, cambridge. carmen guarddon 144 hols, e. j. 1971: grammatical roles of three sets of prepositions in beowulf and king horn. university of iowa, ph.d. dissertation. johnson, m. 1987: the body in the mind. the bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. university of chicago press, chicago. lakoff, g. & m. johnson 1980: metaphors we live by. university of chicago press, chicago. lakoff, g. & m. johnson 1999: philosophy in the flesh. basic books, new york. langacker, r. 1987: foundations of a cognitive grammar. vol. 1, theoretical prerequisites. stanford university press, stanford. leech, g. 1969: towards a semantic description of english. longman, london. levinson, s. 1991: relativity in spatial conception and description. cognitive anthropology research group at the max-planck institute for psycholinguistics working paper 1, nijmegen. levinson, s. 2002: space in language and cognition. cambridge university press, cambridge. lindkvist, k. 1950: studies on the local sense of the prepositions in, at, on, and to in modern english. munksgaard, lund. lindkvist, k. 1978: at versus on, in, by: on the early history of spatial at and certain primary ideas distinguishing at from on, in, by. almquist & wiksell international, stockholm. lundskær-nielsen, t. 1993: prepositions in old and middle english. a study of prepositional syntax and the semantics of at, in and on in some old and middle english texts. odense university press, odense. miller, t. ed. 1990[1890]: the old english version of bede’s ecclesiastical history of the english people. kraus reprint, new york. o’keefe j., & l. nadel. 1978: the hippocampus as a cognitive map. clarendon press, oxford. swan, m. 1995: practical english usage. oxford university press, oxford. the locative uses of the preposition <at> in the oe version of bede's ehep 145 sweet, h. 1871-2: king alfred’s west-saxon version of gregory’s pastoral care. [e.e.t.s.], london. sweet, h. 1883: king’s alfred’s orosius. [e.e.t.s.], london. talmy, l. 1978: figure and ground in complex sentences. in universals of human language. vol. 4, j. h. greenberg, ed., syntax, 625-649. stanford university press, stanford. vandeloise, c. 1984: description of space in french. university of california at san diego, ph.d. dissertation. vickrey, f. 1960: genesis b: a new analysis and edition. indiana. university, ph.d. dissertation. wood, f. 1967: english prepositional idioms. st martin’s press, new york. * † * selim12.doc andy orchard, selim 12 (2003-2004): 49—81 reading beowulf now and then beowulf is undoubtedly one of the most famous english poems, if not, perhaps, one of the most read. perhaps it was ever thus: a recent commentator observes that more people read beowulf now than can ever in the anglo-saxon period have had access to the fire-damaged ruin that the sole manuscript-witness remains (anlezark 2003: 320). moreover, beowulf’s begrudged place at the head of the canon of english literature looks increasingly precarious, constantly threatened as a result of its difficulty and strangeness, and the fact that throughout its 3,182 lines not a single englishman is mentioned, not a single place in england is described, and for many english majors in universities throughout the world who are forced to read the stuff (often against their will), the language of the poem seems barely english at all.1 modern readers have the “benefit” of a bewildering myriad of translations and interpretations, including that of seamus heaney (2000),2 as well as comic-books, cartoons, and several versions for the big screen,3 but the purpose of this paper is rather to survey a limited range of readers and readings from the past thousand years or so, to see how far such earlier efforts help or hinder us in our interpretations of beowulf today. in focusing in turn on the problems faced by the scribes who wrote the single surviving manuscript, on the inaccuracies of the earliest modern edition, as well as on the poorly regarded translation of the text made by 1 typical is the tongue-in-cheek diatribe by brigid brophy that beowulf is “boring and unattractive as a story, pointlessly bloodthirsty” (1967: 1); see further orchard 2003: 238–64, who argues that the multiplicity of perspectives offered by modern interpreters is implicit in the original text. 2 liuzza 2000 appeared the same year as heaney’s celebrated version, but offers a useful corrective, as well as providing brief extracts of some twenty other translations for comparison (212–31). 3 osborn 1997. the icelandic-canadian director sturla gunnarsson was filming beowulf and grendel in iceland when this paper was delivered at the 16th selim conference in seville. andy orchard 50 william morris more than a century ago, this discussion will illustrate the poignant fact that we all read beowulf through a number of distorting and distancing lenses, and that even the mightiest modern interpreters of the text may well seem quaint and misguided in years to come. those of us who through reading or writing or teaching try to grapple with beowulf according to the heroic triad of thought, and word, and deed (recall hrothgar’s admiring words to beowulf: þu eart mægenes strang ond on mode frod, wis wordcwida [‘you are strong in might, wise in your mind, clever in speaking words’; 1844–45a]),4 would do well to remember that however many monstrous misreadings of the past we confront and quell, we are all in danger from the dragon of misinterpretation. the good news is that even as we fail, there is always another wiglaf waiting in the wings, keen to take up the task of interpretation for a new generation. beowulf is undoubtedly a difficult text, whether read in the original, with its baffling range of unique forms and linguistic pyrotechnics (orchard 2003: 57–78), or through the warped perspective of translation, or the still more warped perspective of hollywood. there are many signs that it has seemed difficult to many, for more than a millennium, though many have kept the faith, transmitting, translating, and transubstantiating a text that likely seemed old even when it was first set down (niles 1997; orchard 2003: 5–8 and 20– 4). many generations of readers have been more or less perplexed by beowulf, even though it must be admitted that the main plot is simple to the point of banality: a young monster-slayer grows old, and dies slaying one monster too many.5 but in the process, a bewildering number of characters are introduced: more than seventy appear, although half of them are named only once (orchard 2003: 169–73). the action (such as it is) is a curiously stop-start affair, with a panoramic sweep from creation, through the flood, via a range of events from germanic myth and legend, to the main action of the poem, which takes place over just a few days on either side of a gap of more than half a century, before looking ahead to the sad fate that will await beowulf’s nation, that fate having taken place, we understand, several 4 on the “thought, word, and deed” triad, see orchard 2003: 55, 73, 123, 146, 218, and 255. 5 still the best starting point for the appreciation of the literary qualities of the poem is tolkien 1936. reading beowulf now and then 51 centuries before the poem was set down (frank 1982). the poem begins and ends with a funeral, and the poet seems to have taken great care to structure his text in other ways (owen-crocker 2000). critics still argue whether the poem is essentially bipartite or tripartite in structure: clearly the poem focuses on two periods in beowulf’s life, fighting grendel and his mother as a young man in denmark, and battling a dragon as an old man at home in the land of the geats, but the poem just as clearly contains three monster-fights.6 the distinction between beowulf and the monsters he fights, moreover, is blurred, and the fights show an evident connection and progression (hrothgar, grendel’s mother, and beowulf all rule their individual realms for 50 years before being invaded by grendel, beowulf, and the dragon respectively; beowulf’s armament and difficulty in defeating the monsters increases with each fight), but quite what the poet intends by all these parallels is a matter of hot debate. and heat has been a problem in more ways than one. as has often been noted, the text survives in a single manuscript alongside what seems to be a simple collection of monster-texts.7 the manuscript itself has suffered grievously, after some bright spark had the idea of storing it alongside the rest of sir robert cotton’s library in the ominously named ashburnham house, which duly did (burn to ashes, that is), on saturday, october 23, 1731, damaging or destroying around 200 items. the text itself is problematic, having been copied by two scribes (imaginatively called scribe a and scribe b by anglo-saxonists), with the changeover occurring in mid-sentence, midline, and indeed mid-half-line, leading leonard boyle to propose his infamous “heart-attack” theory of beowulf scribal performance (1981). since scribe b is evidently senior (having the older style of script), an alternative might be the “give me that bloody pen you young whipper-snapper” theory: certainly, there are signs that scribe b later went through and corrected scribe a’s work. other interesting physical damage to the manuscript first led kevin kiernan to propose that part of the text had been rubbed out and 6 for a range of views about the structure of beowulf, see (for example) sisam 1965, orchard 2003: 78–97, and shippey 1997. 7 the case was first made by sisam 1953: 65–96; see too orchard 1995. andy orchard 52 rewritten, leading him to suggest that scribe b should in effect be viewed as the author of beowulf as we have it.8 inevitably, then, we all see at least part of beowulf through the scribes’ eyes, even though it seems clear that they are both copying from at least one earlier exemplar of unknown date, and perhaps itself the copy of a copy of a copy.9 both scribes dramatically increase their rate of writing towards the end of their stint, so testifying to the fact that they were working within a predetermined and limited amount of space (orchard 2003: 20–1); and both attempt to correct their work: i count seventy-five corrections made by scribe a to his stint (just under one a page), fifty-seven made by scribe b to his stint (just over one a page), as well as thirteen made by scribe b to scribe a’s stint; a preliminary list of such scribal emendations is given below as an appendix.10 the corrections are, generally speaking, of the usual sort made to mechanical copying-errors, such as the confusion of individual letter-forms (so-called translitteratio or metacharakterismos), the omission of individual words, perhaps through eye-skip or haplography (the copying of one letter or form for two), dittography (the copying of two letters or forms for one), and metathesis (the transposition of letters or forms).11 these are all common symptoms of what might be called textually transmitted diseases. the scribes’ evident care (especially scribe b) may attest to beowulf’s difficulty or antiquity or status (or some combination of the three), but nevertheless both scribes maintain strict spelling-patterns of their own, so showing at first glance either that scribe a is updating his text, or scribe b is (to use the parlance of antique-fakers) distressing it. consider the spelling of 8 see the repeated arguments in kiernan 1991, 1994, 1995, and 1996; repeated rebuttals are found in (for example) dumville 1988 and 1998, and in gerritsen 1989 and 1991. kiernan (2000) has done a signal service to anglo-saxon scholarship in making available a low-cost cd-rom version not only of the beowulf-manuscript itself, but also importantly of conybeare’s copy of thorkelin (as owned by william morris: see below), but also of madden’s marked-up edition (see further below). 9 see the fascinating argument put forward by lapidge 2000 that some version of beowulf must have existed in written form before 750. 10 the corrections made by scribe b to scribe a’s stint are given as a3, a5, a20, a23, a25, a30, a52, a55, a58, a70, a74, a78, and a87. 11 for a list of examples of all four such mechanical copying errors, see orchard 2003: 44–6. reading beowulf now and then 53 our hero’s name (among other variants) in the most formulaic and repeated line in the poem: scribe a beowulf maþelode bearn ecgþeowes 529 scribe a beowulf maþelode bearn ecgþeowes 631 scribe a beowulf maþelode bearn ecþeowes 957 scribe a beowulf maþelode bearn ecgþeowes 1383 scribe a beowulf maðelode bearn ecgþeowes 1473 scribe a beowulf maþelode bearn ecgþeowes 1651 scribe a beowulf maþelode bearn ecgþeowes 1817 scribe b biowulf maðelode bearn ecgðioes 1999 scribe b biowulf maþelade bearn ecgðeowes 2425 as a general rule, one can observe a consistency in scribe a’s stint, with –eo– and –þ– spellings (although an –ð– spelling is witnessed in line 1473a, and a presumably aberrant ecfor ecgspelling is found in line 957b), while scribe b prefers –io– and –ð– spellings (with exceptions in line 2425). sisam’s analysis of –io– spellings in the manuscript as a whole strongly suggests that they are the remnants of “a manuscript in which io often occurred for late west saxon eo of all origins” (1953: 67), and again highlights the fact that the younger scribe a, using a more modern form of script, apparently updated spellings as well as scribal forms. what is equally important to stress, however, is that despite their best efforts, both scribes still let other similar copying errors through: every single subsequent editor of beowulf (and it seems reasonable to think of scribes a and b as the first) has made changes to the transmitted text of beowulf on precisely the same four grounds (translitteratio, haplography, dittography, and metathesis), among others.12 it should be noted that these mechanical copying-errors evidently occurred in the work of both scribes, and amply support the view that each was copying from an exemplar. other emendations universally accepted suggest that scribes a and b sometimes transmitted readings that they knew did not make sense, presumably out of 12 invaluable for tracing the subsequent editorial development of beowulf is the work by kelly (1982 & 1983), who demonstrates the high level of conservatism that has characterized the editing of beowulf over the years. andy orchard 54 some sort of respect for the text; many of the most obvious of these were detected by the earliest modern editors, and more recent attempts to defend at all costs the transmitted text are often unconvincing or require special pleading (orchard 2003: 42–56). in some cases, the transmitted text evidently offers a christian gloss on the text about pagan heroes, an effect which modern editors have unfortunately masked. so, in line 1816a, the form helle (‘hell’) is clearly visible, although editors in general prefer hæle (‘warriors’); in line 2250b, the form fyrena (‘crimes’, ‘sins’) is mostly emended to fyra (‘fires’); and in line 1983a scribe b has first written hæðnum (‘heathens’), then the –ðhas been erased, and most editors prefer to emend to hæleðum (‘warriors’, ‘heroes’). parallels for this kind of “christianizing scribe” can be found outside beowulf, of course, in the vercelli book, where andreas contains no fewer than three cases (lines 393a, 1508a, 1585b) where alliteration and context make it evident that what was clearly intended as a form of the poetic noun geofon (‘sea’) has been copied as heofon (‘heaven), by a scribe presumably more used to writing the latter; the same phenomenon is found in the junius manuscript in the opening lines of christ and satan (line 10a). a still more striking example is found in the exeter book, where in christ b (line 485a) the scribe has clearly written heofenum (‘heavens’) in a place where hæþnum (‘heathens’) is, as generations of editors have agreed, far more appropriate. but none of the other surviving anglo-saxon manuscripts seems to contain anything like the number of scribal corrections as are found in the beowulfmanuscript, even if individual poems (notably exodus) clearly exercised their scribes. so, it seems that even then reading beowulf would have required a good deal of work on behalf of its reader, and would likely have presented problems to even the best-read contemporary native speaker; but whose beowulf are we reading now? modern beowulf-scholarship dates from 1815, when the first complete edition (with a handy facing-page translation in latin) was produced by the icelander grímur jónsson thorkelin; even at this early date, the rot had already set in. it is important to note that even the most conservative editions of beowulf have tacitly altered the text in a number of significant ways from what is found in the manuscript: modern lineation, capitalization, worddivision, and punctuation have been all introduced, and abbreviations have reading beowulf now and then 55 been expanded. modern anglo-saxonists are able in kevin kiernan’s electronic facsimile (2000) to consider that first edition of beowulf alongside the manuscript, in the actual copy of thorkelin’s text owned and heavily corrected by john josias conybeare (1779–1824), the third (and extremely youthful) rawlinson professor of anglo-saxon at the university of oxford (1808–1812), as presented to him by his brother, william, for his 38th birthday in 1817.13 conybeare checked thorkelin’s readings, and found many wanting; ditto with his latin translations, as can be seen from any representative page. we are back to the young turk model of evolving readings of beowulf, itself foreshadowed in the poem in the way in which the aging beowulf is replaced by wiglaf, and in manuscript by the clearly different attitudes expressed by scribes a and b. conybeare saw early that thorkelin would not do: he determined to produce an improved version, published posthumously by his brother william daniel conybeare, dean of llandaff (conybeare 1826), the relationship of which to his own copy of thorkelin can readily be seen, since it largely represents a selected printing of extracts of the corrected text.14 at this point in the story, and as a warning that even young turks grow old, enter frederic (later sir frederic) madden (1801–1873), who first encountered conybeare in 1824; madden was then just 23 years old, conybeare 20 years older: the latter, however, had just five months to live (he died on 11th of june 1824).15 conybeare generously gave madden (whom he presumably wished to employ as a proof-reader for his as yet unpublished book) his marked-up copy of thorkelin’s text, the corrections from which the young whipper-snapper madden duly entered into his own copy of thorkelin,16 noting with undisguised glee that conybeare had made many 13 see further malone 1968 and bolton 1974, neither of whom has a high opinion of conybeare’s contribution. an electronic facsimile of the volume in question can be found in kiernan 2000; see n. 8 above. 14 i have in my possession an interesting copy of conybeare 1826, signed by william daniel conybeare, dated 1852, and dedicated to his grandson henry thomas conybeare; bound into the volume after p. xcvi are thorpe 1834: 121–44, representing all the old english poetry from that work. 15 dnb 2004: 13.69–70; for a detailed description of the collaboration (to which my own account is indebted), see kiernan 1998. 16 an electronic facsimile of the volume in question can be found in kiernan 2000; see n. 8 above. andy orchard 56 errors of his own. conybeare was buried on 20th june 1824 at batheaston; the very next day madden was, according to his diary, busy collating beowulf from the manuscript (the shelf-mark of which he was wrongly to record as cotton vespasian a. xv on several occasions [kiernan 1986]), noting conybeare’s errors and writing in his diary “now conybeare is dead i am at perfect liberty to publish it in any way i please.”17 conybeare, worn out after long service to beowulf, wrote at the end of the text that his efforts between 1817 and 1819 had been not so much a pleasure as a taedium trienne (‘three years of boredom’). cruelly, madden stole even that sad line for his own copy of thorkelin, taking the phrase down verbatim, before adding a vicious gloss: for him, apparently, the task of checking and correcting conybeare’s work had merely been taedium quattuor hebdomadum (‘four weeks’ boredom’).18 needless to say, madden did not offer assistance to william, who published his brother’s uncorrected work, but neither did madden publish his “own” beowulf, apparently realizing that a gift for accurate transcription is not enough: he did not at that point know enough old english to translate the text beyond conybeare’s improved latin version of thorkelin’s latin. we leave madden, who went on to become for almost 30 years keeper of manuscripts (including the beowulf-manuscript) at the british museum, and was later knighted for his services to scholarship (though not, we note, to scholars). but what of conybeare’s crucially marked-up copy of thorkelin? it eventually fell into the hands of an interested party, as a book-plate on the inside of the front board makes clear.19 william morris (1834–96) was a 17 madden’s diary is a delight, recording not only his numerous adventures with prostitutes and other affairs, but also his withering contempt for others: in his journal for the 10th of november 1852, for example, he describes sir henry ellis, principal librarian of the british museum, as “always an ass; always a bully; always a time-serving, lick-spittle booby and blockhead” (dnb 2004: 36.67). on madden in general, see further ackerman & ackerman 1979. 18 see further kiernan 1998: 122. 19 i am grateful to william j. whitla of york university for pointing out to me that the number 227 that appears with a description of the book below morris’s bookplate, and which has puzzled previous commentators, derives from the posthumous auction of morris’s library (catalogue 1898); the same catalogue records that at his death morris also owned copies of heyne 1873 (lot 26), wyatt 1894 (lot 27), and an uncut copy of conybeare 1826 (lot 221). these, together with conybeare’s thorkelin, comprise the only volumes relating to beowulf. reading beowulf now and then 57 giant in his day: poet, translator of icelandic sagas, designer, socialist, artist, and publisher, but his own translation of beowulf (in its day every bit as famous as the recent one of seamus heaney [2000]) has attracted relatively little attention in the 109 years since it was first produced, and the opinions that have been expressed are radically polarized. few of morris’s biographers, especially in recent years, have viewed the venture in a positive light; thompson is the most forthcoming (1991: 163): “it is perhaps the worst thing he ever wrote, quite incomprehensible without a glossary, in effect a parody in english gibberish.” contemporary reaction to morris’s beowulf, however, at least in some cases, was much less harsh. theodore watts, writing in the athenaeum, gave morris in effect a rave review, noting that: “if the business of the translator of an ancient poem is to pour the old wine into the new bottles with as little loss as possible of its original aroma, mr morris’s efforts have been crowned with entire success.”20 how are we to reconcile such conflicting views? it is important to remember that when his version of beowulf appeared in 1895, morris (who was to die the following year) already had a long and successful career behind him of translations from a variety of languages, notably icelandic: many of the sagas he translated with eiríkur magnússon had been published more than twenty years earlier.21 the translation of beowulf itself seems very much to have been a labour of love for morris: he speaks glowingly of the work in a sequence of letters and lectures dating from many years before he made the attempt. speaking on “early england” in hammersmith on 12th december 1886, morris enthuses that: “the epic of beowulf is worthy of a great people for its sincerity of language and beauty of expression, and nowhere lacks the epic quality of putting clear pictures before the readers’ eyes; nor is there anything in it coarse, ignoble, or degrading; on the contrary it breathes the very spirit of courageous freedom: to live is good and to die is good if you are valiant and faithful and if you reckon great deeds and the fair fame that comes of them of more account than a few more short years of a trembler’s life upon the earth” (lemire 1969: 163). in an earlier lecture on “the gothic revival”‘ on 3rd march 1884, he had spoken equally warmly of 20 watts 1895, reprinted in faulkner 1973: 385–7. 21 on the collaboration in general, see, for example, quirk 1953–5, harris 1975, and whitla 2001. andy orchard 58 “the noble poem of beowulf, unsurpassed for simplicity and strength by any poem of our later tongue” (lemire 1969: 57). apparently he liked it.22 there survives a series of letters to a. j. wyatt of christ’s college, cambridge, his collaborator on the translation of beowulf. the first, dated 28 august 1892, makes it clear that the initial impetus for their collaboration came in fact from the younger man (those whipper-snappers again!), who had perhaps been inspired to write by morris’s ongoing collaboration with the icelander eiríkur magnússon, then working at cambridge university library; morris begins: ‘thank you for your letter. i should be very pleased to work with you if we could hit upon some plan together’. wyatt was certainly the man for the job: he had published a glossary to ælfric’s homilies (cowritten with henry h. johnson) in 1891, and was hard at work on an edition of beowulf itself that would appear the year before morris’s translation. but it is also important to stress the different quality of his collaboration with morris from that which the latter had enjoyed (and that is the right word) with eiríkur magnússon. eiríkur was a native speaker of icelandic, for whom the language of the sagas was little removed from his everyday language; wyatt was a much younger man (aged 31 at the time of their first meeting; morris was 26 years his senior), a professional scholar, for whom old english in general (and beowulf in particular) was to be approached primarily as a philological exercise. the difference in method had an important bearing on the way morris was able to handle the text. six months after his initial letter to wyatt, morris records in his rough diary for 25 february 1893 that he: “finished the first lot of beo: about 100 lines. wrote wyatt.”23 he did indeed write to wyatt (the letter is dated 26 february 1893) fulsomely to express his pleasure: ‘i have rhymed up the lines of beowulf which you sent me. i should be very much obliged if you could send me some more as soon as possible as i want to get the book out quickly’ (henderson 1967: 353). an extract from a now-lost letter to jane morris, apparently written 12 march 1893, has been taken to refer to his translation of beowulf, which was certainly occupying much of his time at the 22 in fact, beowulf made morris’s list of 100 most important works; the whole list is discussed in baylen 1976. 23 henderson 1967: 341; cf. maccarthy 1994: 649, who likely through a misreading of morris’s somewhat flamboyant hand gives the unbelievable figure of 700 lines. reading beowulf now and then 59 period; morris simply says: ‘[i] relish it hugely’ (kelvin 1996: v.23). by the summer he was regularly reading his beowulf translation to burne-jones on sunday mornings.24 by the autumn, the arrangement with wyatt himself has clearly become more businesslike; on 8th october 1893, morris is writing to ask for the return of corrected copy, having (as he puts it) “roughed out about 1450 lines, & ... cleared up and fair copied within about a hundred lines of that.” on 31st march 1894, morris writes a brief note to arrange a meeting for ‘about april 10th’ (kelvin 1996: v.146); cockerell, morris’s secretary, in his diary for 10th april 1894, notes that: “w.m. finished beowulf”; a later entry for 23th june 1894 reads: “wyatt at k.h. with w.m. revising beowulf.” more than a year later, writing again to wyatt, the tone of morris’s correspondence changes, as the collaborators evidently clash over the necessity and form of a glossary. writing on 10th november 1894, exactly two months before final publication, morris notes that: “almost all in the glossary i should not hesitate to use in a poem of my own, you see: and i don’t think it would need a glossary.” the closing lines set the working relationship between the two men into sharp focus: “with these remarks i return you your paper to reconsider. i am anxious for your notes on the obscure passages” (henderson 1967: 362). one might suppose that wyatt had drafted a glossary, and morris had rejected it, but a glossary did indeed appear in the published work. there still survives in cambridge university library a set of marked-up proofs for beowulf, with no glossary, but with a series of tetchy comments in morris’s hand which emphasizes the rift between himself and his junior academic collaborator, the poignant gift by the mother of the bibliographer robert collier procter (1863–1903), who had in 1901 become one of the trustees under morris’s will, and who died young on a glacier in the austrian tyrol. at one point, where the word “mightyful” is queried (on the reasonable ground that it appears to mean “full of mighty”), morris explodes, writing firmly stet, and commenting “i can’t have my best lines spoiled!” the line in question reads “with mightyful words. with mead-skinking turned”; one doubts whether it can really be counted one of morris’s “best lines”: the venerable poet seems merely to be flexing his muscles, and putting the 24 henderson: 341; cf. kelvin 1996: iii.437. andy orchard 60 whipper-snapper in his place. two points arise from this spat, however: first, the extent to which morris’s translation matches precisely the syntax of the original (meaglum wordum meoduscencum hwearf [line 1980]), and, second, the fact that the line appeared without emendation in the final version, a mute witness to morris’s seniority and stubbornness. the glossary itself as finally printed contains only seventy-eight items. many commentators have noted its inadequacy (cf. liuzza 2002: 292): some words are undoubtedly the common stock of medieval terminology, and scarcely seem worth glossing at all (atheling; byrny); many of the words glossed appear only once (although the words they are glossed by appear more frequently; by contrast, many other words that appear only once in the text are not glossed at all (see further tilling 1981). one of the words in the glossary, moreover (ealdor) in fact never occurs in the final version of the translation, though its old english equivalent (spelt the same) occurs nine times as a simplex and twice more as a compound in beowulf itself.25 likewise, the glossing commentary on warths (“shores, still in use in wick st. lawrence, in somerset”) seems to have been misplaced from wick, which follows. such indications of insouciance and sloppiness are extremely uncharacteristic of morris, and appear to be indications of morris’s extreme reluctance to include such a glossary at all. it appears that he included it on the insistence of his collaborator (recall that wyatt himself, who was a stickler for such things, made his name as a glossator of ælfric [1891], and that neither in the notes and glossary for his own edition nor in any of his published translations does he exhibit any fondness whatsoever for using the archaisms, compounds, and nonce-formulations so characteristic of morris himself). by including a glossary at all morris seems to have paid a high price for professional advice; by including one at once so shoddy and inadequate, morris effectively condemned his work to critical oblivion. morris finally completed the book by writing a brief “argument” or summary of the poem, which he finished on 10th december 1894, exactly a month after his testy letter to wyatt. the kelmscott edition of beowulf was published in a limited edition of 300 paper and 8 vellum copies on 2nd february 1895 (the date given is 10th january 1895, a mere month after 25 lines 56a, 346a, 369b, 392a, 592b, 668a, 1644b, 1848b, and 2920a; lines 15b (aldorleas) and 1308a (aldorþegn). reading beowulf now and then 61 completion; there are evidently advantages to owning a press). copies of the work have turned up in various likely and unlikely places: at his death, t. e. lawrence (a great admirer of morris, and a fellow-translator of the odyssey) had a copy in his library at cloud’s hill, a presentation-copy from the celebrated process engraver and typographer emery walker (1851–1933), who worked with both morris and lawrence (lawrence 1937: 478–79),26 and another fine and largely untouched copy can still be found in the pratt library of victoria university in the university of toronto.27 morris’s beowulf is undoubtedly a beautiful book, and still perhaps somewhat misunderstood. what spurred wyatt to write in the first place, and morris to propose their collaboration on beowulf? morris’s version is in fact the ninth english translation to be published (sharon turner and john josias conybeare had also published english extracts in 1805 and 1826 respectively), and by 1892, when morris first wrote to wyatt, there also existed five german and two danish translations, as well as versions in latin, french, italian, and swedish, as table 1 below makes clear:28 table 1: renderings of beowulf up to 1895 turner’s english extracts 1805 thorkelin’s edition and translation [1st latin version] 1815 grundtvig’s translation [1st danish version] 1820 conybeare’s latin and english extracts 1826 kemble’s edition and translation [1st english version] 1833, 1835, 1837 ettmüller’s translation [1st german version] 1840 26 this copy is now in the pierpont morgan library, which also houses a number of other items relating to morris’s translation, including an early version in morris’s hand, and early drafts of a prose translation by wyatt. 27 the same library contains no fewer than twenty-one beowulf-related items dating from before 1900, including all three editions of kemble, and a copy of thorkelin’s beowulf signed by thorkelin itself. 28 in compiling this list, i have made extensive use of the invaluable work of tinker 1974. andy orchard 62 schaldemose’s translation [2nd danish version] 1847 wackerbarth’s translation [2nd english version] 1849 thorpe’s edition and translation [3rd english version] 1855 grein’s translation [2nd german version] 1857 simrock’s translation [3rd german version] 1859 heyne’s translation [4th german version] 1863 von wolzogen’s translation [5th german version ] 1872? arnold’s edition and translation [4th english version] 1876 botkine’s translation [1st french version] 1877 lumsden’s translation [5th english version] 1881 garnett’s translation [6th english version] 1882 grion’s translation [1st italian version] 1883 wickberg’s translation [1st swedish version] 1889 earle’s translation [7th english version] 1892 hall’s translation [8th english version] 1892 hoffmann’s translation [6th german version] 1893? morris and wyatt’s translation [9th english version] 1895 a possible impetus for the initial exchange between morris and wyatt was the publication earlier in 1892 of the seventh and eighth english translations of beowulf. the then rawlinson professor of anglo-saxon at oxford, john earle, published his prose rendering in february, and across the atlantic john lesslie hall of johns hopkins university published his version in imitative measures and archaic style in may of the same year. likewise published in 1892 was the third edition of a celebrated translation (the sixth in english) in imitative metres by james m. garnett, first produced in st john’s college, maryland. the year before, in 1891, garnett has also published a lengthy and sensitive discussion on “the translation of anglosaxon poetry,” in which he analyzed a number of existing translations of beowulf, and, like morris, largely found them wanting.29 but what is 29 it is interesting to note how often discussions of the best way to translate old english took place shortly after morris’s version was published: see, for example, reading beowulf now and then 63 curiously prophetic in this context is the fact that, a year before morris himself should have conceived a plan to translate beowulf through the repeated use of obsolete or unfamiliar words, garnett should have suggested that would-be translators of the text would do well to follow morris’s model as exhibited in others of his works. as garnett puts it: “william morris has revived many old words that we should not willingly let die, and there is no fitter place for them than in the translation of our oldest poetry” (garnett 1891: 104–5). garnett was a little less gracious when morris’s translation did indeed appear, noting bitchily of the list of “some words not commonly used now” (morris’s title for his glossary): “this is putting it mildly, for it is very doubtful whether some of them ever were used” (garnett 1903: 448). although garnett did acknowledge that morris’s fame and status would likely bring new readers to the poem, he nonetheless speaks of the “excess, bordering on unintelligibility, of mr william morris” (garnett 1903: 448). garnett’s criticism, like that of so many others, ignores the fact that morris went to great pains to keep his translation as close to the original old english as possible, and appears to have reveled in the antiquity and difficulty of the language so produced. an interlinear version of morris’s rendering with wyatt’s old english edition illustrates the point. morris describes grendel’s approach to heorot (beowulf 702–27) as follows: 702 com on wanre niht now by wan night there came, 703 scriðan sceadugenga. sceotend swæfon, there strode in the shade-goer; slept there the shooters, 704 þa þæt hornreced healdan scoldon, they who that horn-house should be a-holding, 705 ealle buton anum. þæt wæs yldum cuþ all men but one man: to men was that known, 706 þæt hie ne moste, þa metod nolde, that them indeed might not, since will’d not the maker, 707 se synscaþa under sceadu bregdan; the scather unceasing drag off ‘neath the shadow; 708 ac he wæccende wraþum on andan but he ever watching in wrath ‘gainst the wroth one frye 1897, fulton 1898, and gummere 1910; the last is useful for the way it contextualizes gummere’s own translation, which appeared in 1909. andy orchard 64 709 bad bolgenmod beadwa geþinges. mood-swollen abided the battle-mote ever. 710 ða com of more under misthleoþum came then from the moor-land, all under the mist-bents, 711 grendel gongan, godes yrre bær; grendel a-going there, bearing god’s anger. 712 mynte se manscaða manna cynnes the scather the ill one was minded of mankind 713 sumne besyrwan in sele þam hean. to have one in his toils from the high hall aloft. 714 wod under wolcnum to þæs þe he winreced, ‘neath the welkin he waded, to the place whence the winehouse, 715 goldsele gumena, gearwost wisse, the gold-hall of men, most yarely he wist 716 fættum fahne; ne wæs þæt forma sið, with gold-plates fair colour’d; nor was it the first time 717 þæt he hroþgares ham gesohte. that he unto hrothgar’s high home had betook him. 718 næfre he on aldordagum ær ne siþðan never he in his life-days, either erst or there-after, 719 heardran hæle, healðegnas fand. of warriors more hardy or hall-thanes had found. 720 com þa to recede rinc siðian came then to the house the wight on his ways, 721 dreamum bedæled; duru sona onarn, of all joys bereft; and soon sprang the door open, 722 fyrbendum fæst, syþðan he hire folmum hran; with fire-bands made fast, when with hand he had touch’d it; 723 onbræd þa bealohydig, ða he gebolgen wæs, brake the bale-heedy, he with wrath bollen, 724 recedes muþan. raþe æfter þon the mouth of the house there, and early there-after 725 on fagne flor feond treddode, on the shiny-fleck’d floor thereof trod forth the fiend; 726 eode yrremod; him of eagum stod on went he then mood-wroth, and out from his eyes stood 727 ligge gelicost leoht unfæger. likest to fire-flame light full unfair. reading beowulf now and then 65 the syntactical and lexical faithfulness with which morris renders the old english text is self-evident, and is particularly clear with regard to the compounds. in no fewer than eleven cases, a compound in the old english is precisely rendered as such in morris’s version, however quaint such formulations must have seemed to victorian ears: ‘shade-goer’ (703), ‘hornhouse’ (704), ‘mood-swollen’ (709), ‘mist-bents’ (710), ‘wine-house’ (714), ‘gold-hall’ (715), ‘life-days’ (718), ‘hall-thanes’ (719), ‘fire-bands’ (722), ‘bale-heedy’ (723), and ‘mood-wroth’ (726). indeed, morris goes even further than his original in his use of compound coinages, and includes five further compounds where the old english has only simplex forms: ‘battlemote’ (709), ‘moor-land’ (710), ‘gold-plates’ (716), ‘shiny-fleck’d’ (725), and ‘fire-flame’ (727).30 only twice in this passage does morris fail to render a compound present in the original, and even here he translates se synscaþa (707) as ‘the scather unceasing’ and se manscaða (712) as ‘the scather the ill one’, so preserving the parallelism present in the old english. one might note too that several of the most archaic and bizarre-looking simplex forms in morris’s rendering derive directly from their source: the old-fashioned ‘welkin’ (714) and ‘most yarely’ (715) equate to wolcnum and gearwost respectively. likewise antiquated seem the two forms ‘a-holding’ (704) and ‘a-going’ (711), although both simply translate infinitive forms following other verbs. here again morris shows throughout his version a commendable consistency that many other translators have failed to demonstrate, however, however much his frequent recourse to such forms may offend.31 it is also worth stressing the extent to which morris (again, in contradistinction to many other translators of beowulf) varies the tone and texture of his translation, as can be seen, for example, in his quiet and dignified rendering of beowulf’s last lines: 30 i have not counted the two uses of ‘there-after’ (718 and 724) in the tally, since they seem qualitatively different. 31 a fuller list of such forms would include: a-banning, a-bearing, a-booting, abowing, a-bringing, a-crashing, a-doing, a-drinking, a-driving, a-faring, a-framing, a-ganging, a-giving, a-gushing, a-kenning, a-leaning, a-leaving, a-lying, a-making, a-quaking, a-resting, a-riding, a-saying, a-seeking, a-serving, a-shining, a-sitting, asleeping, a-spoiling, a-spying, a-standing, a-stirring, a-streaming, a-striding, aswimming, a-treading, a-wailing, a-warding, a-watching, a-waxing, a-welling, awending, a-winding, a-wonning, and a-working. andy orchard 66 3169 þa ymbe hlæw riodan hildedeore, then round the howe rode the deer of battle, 3170 æþelinga bearn, ealra twelfa, the bairns of the athelings, twelve were they in all 3171 woldon ceare cwiðan kyning mænan, their care would they mourn and bemoan them their king, 3172 wordgyd wrecan ond ymb wer sprecan; the word-lay would they utter and over the man speak 3173 eahtodan eorlscipe ond his ellenweorc they accounted his carlship and mighty deeds done, 3174 duguðum demdon, swa hit gedefe bið and doughtily deem’d them; as due as it is 3175 þæt mon his winedryhten wordum herge, that each one his friend-lord with words should belaud, 3176 ferhðum freoge, þonne he forð scile and love in his heart, whenas forth shall he 3177 of lichaman læne weorðan. away from the body be fleeting at last. 3178 swa begnornodon geata leode in such wise they grieved, the folk of the geats, 3179 hlafordes hryre, heorðgeneatas, for the fall of their lord, e’en they his hearth-fellows; 3180 cwædon þæt he wære wyruldcyning quoth they that he was a world-king forsooth, 3181 manna mildust ond monðwærust, the mildest of all men, unto men kindest, 3182 leodum liðost ond lofgeornost. to his folk the most gentlest, most yearning of fame. while, taken out of context, the formulation ‘deer of battle’ (3169, referring to warriors), might seem alarming, it is in fact morris’s normal (and very consistent) rendering of the compound hildedeor, and appears on no fewer than eight earlier occasions (312, 688, 772, 834, 1646, 2107, 2183, and 3111).32 but there is little else that seems particularly striking beyond 32 it is worth noting that in beowulf itself, the term hildedeor only appears eight times, and that a closely related term heaþodeor occurs twice. morris translates nine out of the ten occurrences consistently as ‘deer of battle’ (again, a rather more consistent strike-rate than most other translators), and only fails to register a single occurrence of hildedeor at 1816. reading beowulf now and then 67 morris’s customary fidelity with regard to compounds (‘word-lay’ [3172], ‘friend-lord’ [3175], ‘hearth-fellows’ [3179], and ‘world-king’ [3180]), and fondness for antique forms in specific instances (such as ‘howe’ [3169] or ‘bairns’ [3170]). overall, however, morris seems to capture quite well the simple and solemn spirit of the original. how then, fairly to assess the success of morris’s translation? to borrow the phrasing of the final lines of beowulf, it might well be described as one of the most faithful, one of the most honest in its transmission of the difficulties of the text, one of the bravest in attempting to convey its complexities. beowulf is not easy: it is a multi-layered response to secular standards and heroic stories by a sympathetic author steeped in christian concepts and values. both the beowulf-poet and william morris were artists of a high order, keen to preserve treasured aspects of the past, and to reinterpret ancient wonders for their own age. evidently, they would have understood each other. in seeking to read beowulf through old and even antique eyes, we give ourselves license to read it anew, and to seek fresh insights in its ancient words and themes. such seems certainly to have been the case with the original scribes, with conybeare, and with morris. the fact that scribe b shares with both morris and conybeare the distinction (and the distraction) of working with much younger colleagues is itself a testament to the continuing appeal of a poem that in the future and in ways we cannot imagine now will likely still be read. and in reading beowulf now and then, one is left in sheer admiration of this deeply layered and textured work, the resonances of which remain long after it is read or heard read, preferably, as sisam suggested, “in a place far from libraries”, and “for pleasure” (1965: 1): it is not so much perhaps that beowulf is or was or will be beyond understanding now or then (in the past) or then (in the future), but as successive generations of readers have apparently found for more than a millennium, any allembracing solution to the poem’s mysteries remains for now beyond reach.33 33 i am grateful to the organizers of the 16th selim conference in seville, especially maría josé gómez calderón, julia fernández cuesta, mercedes salvador bello, and maría josé mora. i should also like to thank samantha zacher for her useful comments and suggestions. andy orchard 68 andy orchard centre for medieval studies university of toronto appendix: scribal corrections to the manuscript-text of beowulf [note: the foliation follows that of kiernan 2000, as does the lineation indicated [k]; the standard lineation is given first] 6fuleh�$¶v�vwlqw� qr�� � iro��>.@��olqh� olqh�>.@�fruu��wr�� fruu��iurp� uhpdunv� a1 129r10 10a 10a hronrade hrone rade dittography; context; morphology a2 130v19 90b 90b sægde sæde g added later a3 132r13 106a 106a scyppend scyppen n for nd [corr. by scribe b] a4 132r15 107a 107a caines cames minims a5 133r20 158a 158a beorhtre beortre h superscript [corr. by scribe b] a6 133r20 158a 158a bote to b overwrites t a7 134r9 189b 189b healfdenes healfdes immediate change; en suspension a8 134r19 201b 201b þearf þerf immediate change a9 135v11 263b 263b ecgþeow ecþeow c for cg a10 135v15 267a 267a hige hine dittography; context a11 135v15 267b 267b hlaford hlaford hlaford dittography (2nd crossed out) a12 136v6 303a 303a fæst fæft f for s a13 137r14 331b 331b wlonc wlocn metathesis a14 138r17 375b 375b his þis h for þ a15 138r18 376b 376b holdne holdre n for r a16 138v20 401a 400a heaðoreaf heaðo rof omission (e superscript) reading beowulf now and then 69 a17 139r5 407a 406a wæs wære r for s a18 139v2 424b 423b sceal scealt context a19 139v13 437b 436b sidne si?ne omission (d overwritten) a20 140v14 479a 478a dolsceaðan dol scaðan e superscript [corr. by scribe b] a21 140v19 484a 483a medoheal medo sæl dittography; context; synonyms a22 141r20 503b 502b man man man dittography (v. unclear) a23 142r13 537a 536a on o n superscript [corr. by scribe b] a24 143v15 603b 602b eft ef omission (t superscript) a25 144r5 612b 611b wealhþeow wealhþeo [corr. by scribe b] a26 146v3 721b 720b sona sona s dittography; context a27 146v5 722b 721b hran hram m for n a28 147a(131)r6 747a 746a ræste ræste he on dittography; context [copies line below] a29 147a(131)r15 756b 755b his him morphology a30 147r11 793b 792b ænigum ængum [corr. by scribe b] a31 147r14 796b 795b feorh feorhie meahte dittography; context [copies line below] a32 147v1 805a 804a gehwylcre gehwylre omission (c superscript) a33 148v16 867a 866a cuðe cuðne or cuðre unclear a34 149r6 879a 878a fyrena fyrene context (a superscript; e not erased); andy orchard 70 formulaic usage a35 149r20 894b 893b moste moste moste dittography a36 151r20 for v1 986b 985b hilde hilde hilde dittography over page-break (unchanged) a37 152r14 1024b 1023b beowulf feowulf dittography; context [copies line below] a38 153v5 1079b 1078b mæste moste æ for o a39 153v7 1081b 1080b feaum fea ū superscript a40 154r11 1109a 1108a beado bedo omission (a superscript); context a41 154r12–13 1109b 1108b on bæl gearu deleted dittography (cf. context) a42 154v17 1135b 1134b bewitiað gewitiað change (b superscript) a43 155v9 1165b 1165b hunferþ hunferþe context a44 156v13 1209b 1211b he under under omission (on superscript) a45 157r5 1223a 1225a side wide context; formulaic usage a46 157r10 1229b 1231b hol heol hol [for hold?; kiernan thinks for hleo (metathesis)] a47 157v3 1245a 1247a -steapa steappa dittography a48 158r16–17 1282b 1284b gryre gryrre dittography a49 158r19 1285a 1287a þonne þone minims (suspension) a50 158r19 1285a 1287a bunden bumden m for n a51 158v14 1301a 1303a maþðum maþðum. punctuation a52 158v15 1302a 1304a in on [corr. by scribe b] a53 158v17 1304a 1306a worden wordun context a54 159v14 1344a 1346a welhwylca welhwylcra later superscript reading beowulf now and then 71 [not a or b] a55 160r17 1372a 1374a hafelan hafelan [mark] [marked for corr. by scribe b] a56 160v2 1378b 1380b findan findaan dittography a57 160v12 1388b 1390b guman gumen e for a a58 160v14 1391b 1393b gang gan g superscript [corr. by scribe b] a59 161v2 1424b 1426b gesæt geseah crossed out and superscript; context a60 162v11 1481a 1483a gesellum gellan omission (se superscript); haplography a61 163v12 1531a 1533a wearp weap omission (r superscript) a62 163v13 1531a 1533a wundel mæl mæg g crossed out; l superscript a63 164r1 1542b 1544b togeanes togenes omission (a superscript) a64 165r12 1604b 1606b drihten drihte n added later; context a65 165v3 1618b 1620b sæcce sæce omission (c overwritten) a66 166v6 1668a 1670a heaþo he þo omission (a superscript) a67 167r22 1707b 1710b weorþan weorðþan dittophone a68 167v3 1711a 1714a geweox gweox omission (e superscript); haplography a69 167v5–6 1714a 1717a eaxlgesteallan eaxlgeasteallan context a70 167v10 1718b 1715b ferhþe ferþe [corr. by scribe b] a71 167v10 1719a 1722a breost brost omission (e superscript) a72 168r3 1734a 1737a unsnyttrum snyttrum omission (un superscript) a73 168v2 1753a 1756a ende ende ende dittography andy orchard 72 (v. unclear) a74 168v3 1755b 1758b fehð feh omission; ð superscript [corr. by scribe b] a75 168v21 1775a 1778a gyrn gyr omission (n superscript) a76 169r12 1789b 1792b geswearc geswe?c unclear a77 169r12 1790a 1793a dryht dryt omission (h overwritten) a78 169r19 1797b 1800b dogore dogor [corr. by scribe b] a79 169v11 1815a 1818a to to to dittography a80 169v18 1821a 1824a wenede werede n for r a81 170r5 1830b 1833b wat wac c for t; context a82 170r19 1846a 1849a  [crossed þ] ƿ [wynn] ƿ [wynn] for  [crossed þ] a83 170v11 1862a 1865a sceal sceall dittography a84 170v20 1872a 1875a be b e superscript; context [b for h] a85 171r8–9 1882a 1885a hremig hremi g added later a86 171v17 1910a 1913a stefna stefne context (a superscript; e not erased) a87 171v20 1914a 1917a hraþe hreþe [corr. by scribe b] a88 172v3 1939a 1942a sceaden sceaðen d for ð 6fuleh�%¶v�vwlqw qr�� � iro��>.@�olqh� olqh�>.@�fruu��wr�� fruu��iurp� uhpdunv� b1 172v8 1944a 1947a onhohsnod on hoh nod s added b2 173v4 1981a 1984a side reced reced omission; side superscript (metre?) b3 173v5 1983a 1986a hænum hæðnū deletion of ð b4 173v11 1989a 1992a sæcce sacce a for æ b5 174r5 2004a 2007a dingum dungum i for u b6 175v2 2064a 2067a sweord sweorð context; d for ð b7 176r6 2091a 2094a manigra manigra dittography (?) reading beowulf now and then 73 manigra b8 176v14 2120b 2123b unhyre hunhyre? omission (immediately corrected); context b9 176v19 2126a 2129a bronde bronde bronde dittography b10 176v20 2126b 2129b hladan blædan context; a for æ; b for h b11 177v13 2159a 2162a scyldunga scununga immediately overwritten b12 179r9 2217a 2220a fah fac h superscript b13 180v8 2283a 2284a sinne sine n superscript b14 181r14 2310a 2311a leodum leod[ū] leodū dittography b15 181v7 2322b 2323b getruwode gegetruwode dittography (immediately corrected) b16 182r3–4 2342b 2343b gebidan geb bidan dittography (?) b17 182v16 2378b 2379b he he he dittography (immediately corrected) b18 182v19 2381a 2382a forhealden forgolden context; alliteration b19 183r17 2400a 2401a wyrme wyme omission (immediately corrected) b20 184r8 2435b 2436b ungedefelice ungefelice context; haplography (immediately corrected) b21 184r19 2448a 2449a hroðre hrore ð superscript b22 184v16 2466a 2467a heaðorinc heaðo ric nasal (n superscript) b23 185v2 2498a 2499a ana an a superscript b24 186r3 2522a 2523a ac ic ðær ac ðær ic superscript; haplography b25 186v21 2564a 2565a glaw gleaw deletion of e [kiernan disagrees] b26 187r3 2568b 2569b searwum seawum r superscript andy orchard 74 b27 187r13 2579b 2580b hæfde hefde a for æ correction b28 187r14 2580b 2581b weard wearð context; d for ð b29 187v2 2592a 2593a aglæcean aglægcean deletion of g b30 188v13 2646b 2647b se dæg cuman se cuman dæg superscript b31 188v19 2652b 2653b fæðmie faðmie a for æ b32 189a(197)r4 2659b 2660b urum sceal urū sweord sceal in margin; sweord insertion marked by ð b33 189a(197)r5 2661a 2662a wælrec wælric e for i b34 189a(197)r13 2671a 2672a fyrwylmum fyr wyrmū l for r; context b35 189a(197)v19 2676b 2677b his his his dittography b36 189r19 2728a 2729a dogorgerimes dogor gerime morphology b37 189v16 2751b 2752a þone [þonne] dittography b38 190r18 2777b 2778b bill bil haplography b39 190r21 2781a 2782a horde hogode g erased; o overwritten; forhogode b40 190v4 2785b 2786b gemette gemete haplography b41 192v2 2885b 2886b eowrum cynne eowrū cynne deletion; repeated superscript b42 192v6 2890a 2891a dæd dæl l underdotted; d added b43 192v7 2891b 2892b edwitlif ewitlif d superscript b44 192v16 2902a 2903a wælreste wæl bennū reste r overwrites s; context; eye-skip b45 192v18 2905a 2906a aglæcean aglægean c for g b46 193r6 2916a 2917a hetware het wære a for æ b47 193r10 2921 2922 merewioingas mere wio inga s added a–b a–b milts milts b48 193r11 2923a 2924a wihte ne wene wihte ne wene superscript b49 193v9 2948b 2949b fæhðe fæðe h superscript b50 193v20 2961a 2962a gen þiow gen þio ƿ [wynn] added b51 194v3 2993b 2994b maðmum maðma a for ū b52 194v15 3007a 3009a efnde esnde f for s (caroline f reading beowulf now and then 75 overwritten) b53 195r2 3016b 3018b mægð mæð g superscript b54 196v6 3100a 3102a burh þurh b for þ; context b55 196v19 3117b 3119b strengum stren gū superscript; context b56 198r9 3133b 3135b hyrde hyde hyrde dittography b57 198r11 3136b 3138b to to to dittography (?) works cited ackerman, r. w. & g. p. ackerman 1979: sir frederic madden: a biographical sketch and bibliography. garland, new york. anlezark, d. 2003: review of orchard 2003. medium ævum 72: 320–21. arnold, t. 1876: beowulf: a heroic poem of the eighth century. london, longman’s. baylen, j. o. 1976: william morris and the victorians’ “best hundred books.” victorian institute journal 5: 61–67. bjork, r. e. & j. d. niles, ed. 1997: a ‘beowulf’ handbook. university of nebraska press, lincoln. boenig, r. 1997: the importance of morris’s beowulf. the journal of the william morris society 12: 7–13. bolton, w. f. 1974: the conybeare copy of thorkelin. english studies 55: 97–107. botkine, l. 1877: beowulf, épopée anglo-saxonne. lepelleier, le havre. boyle, l. e. 1998 [1981]: the nowell codex and the dating of beowulf. in the dating of ‘beowulf’. ed. c. chase. university of toronto press, toronto. 23–32. brophy, b., m. levey & c. osborne 1967: fifty works of english (and american) literature we could do without. rapp & carroll, london. [no author] 1898: catalogue of a portion of the valuable collection of manuscripts, early printed books, &c. of the late william morris of andy orchard 76 kelmscott house, hammersmith. sotheby, wilkinson & hodge, london. conybeare, j. j. 1826: illustrations of anglo-saxon poetry. ed. w. d. conybeare. harding and lepard, london. dnb 2004: oxford dictionary of national biography. ed. h. c. g. matthew. 60 vols. oxford university press, oxford. dumville, d. n. 1988: beowulf come lately. some notes on the palaeography of the nowell codex. archiv für das studium der neueren sprache und literatur 225: 49–63. dumville, d. n. 1998: the beowulf-manuscript and how not to date it. medieval english studies newsletter 39: 21–27. earle, j. 1892: the deeds of beowulf: an english epic of the eighth century. clarendon, oxford. ettmüller, l. 1840: beowulf. heldengedicht des achten jahrhunderts. zum ersten male aus dem angelsächsischen in das neuhochdeutsche stabreimend übersetzt und mit einleitung und anmerkungen versehen. meyer & zeller, zürich. faulkner, p. 1973: william morris: the critical heritage. routledge, london. frank, r. 1982: the beowulf poet’s sense of history. in the wisdom of poetry: essays in early english literature in honor of morton w. bloomfield. ed. l. d. benson & s. wenzel. western michigan university publications, kalamazoo. 53–65. frye, p. h. 1897: the translation of beowulf. modern language notes 12: 79–82. fulton, e. 1898: on translating anglo-saxon poetry. publications of the modern language association 13: 286–96. garnett, j. m. 1882: beowulf: an anglo–saxon poem, and the fight at finnsburg. ginn, heath & co, boston. garnett, j. m. 1891: the translation of anglo-saxon poetry. publications of the modern language association 6: 95–105. reading beowulf now and then 77 garnett, j. m. 1903: recent translations of old english poetry. publications of the modern language association 18: 445–58. gerritsen, j. 1989: have with you to lexington! the beowulf manuscript and beowulf. in in other words: transcultural studies in philology, translation and lexicography presented to hans heinrich meier. ed. j. lachlan mackenzie & r. todd. foris, dordrecht. 15–34. gerritsen, j. 1991: a reply to dr kiernan’s ‘footnote’. english studies 72: 497–500. grein, c. w. m. 1857: dichtungen der angelsächsen. wignad, göttingen. 22–308. grion, g. 1883: beowulf: poema epico anglosassone del vii secolo. atti della real accademia lucchese di science, littere ed arti 22: 197–379. grundtvig, n. f. s. 1820: bjowulfs drape: et gothisk helte-digt. andreas seidelin, copenhagen. gummere, f. b. 1909: the oldest english epic: beowulf, finnsburg, waldere, deor, widsith, and the german hildebrand. macmillan, new york. gummere, f. b. 1910: translation of old english verse. modern language notes 25: 61–3. hall, j. l. 1892: beowulf, an a-s epic poem, translated from the heyne-socin text. heath, boston. harris, r. l. 1975: william morris, eiríkur magnússon, and iceland: a survey of correspondence. victorian poetry 13: 119–30. heaney, s. 2000: beowulf: a new translation. farrar, strauss, and giroux, new york. henderson, p. 1967: william morris: his life, works, and friends. thames & hudson, new york. heyne, m. 1863: beowulf: angelsächsisches heldengedicht. schöningh, paderborn. heyne, m. 1873: beowulf, mit glossar. schöningh, paderborn. andy orchard 78 hoffmann, p. 1893?: beowulf: aeltestes deutsches heldengedicht. liebich, zullichau. kelly, b. 1982: the formative stages of beowulf textual scholarship: part i. anglo-saxon england 11: 247–74. kelly, b. 1983: the formative stages of beowulf textual scholarship: part ii. anglo-saxon england 12: 239–75. kelvin, n. 1996: the collected letters of william morris. 4 vols. in 5. princeton university press, princeton. kemble, j. m. 1833: the anglo-saxon poems of beowulf, the travellers song, and the battle of finnesburh. pickering, london. 2nd ed. 1835 kemble, j. m. 1837: a translation of the anglo-saxon poem of beowulf, with a copious glossary, preface, and philological notes. pickering, london. kiernan, k. s. 1986: madden, thorkelin, and ms vitellius/vespasian a xv. the library, 6th ser., 8.2: 127–32. kiernan, k. s. 1991: a long footnote for j. gerritsen’s “supplementary” description of bl cotton ms vitellius a.xv. english studies 72: 489–96. kiernan, k. s. 1994: the eleventh-century origin of beowulf and the beowulf manuscript. in anglo-saxon manuscripts. ed. m. p. richards. basic readings in anglo-saxon england 2. garland, new york. 277–99. kiernan, k. s. 1995: the legacy of wiglaf: saving a wounded beowulf. in ‘beowulf’: basic readings. ed. p. s. baker. basic readings in anglosaxon england 1. garland, new york. 195–218. kiernan, k. s. 1996: ‘beowulf’ and the ‘beowulf’ manuscript. university of michigan press, ann arbor. kiernan, k. s. 1998: the conybeare–madden collation of thorkelin’s beowulf. in anglo-saxon manuscripts and their heritage. ed. p. pulsiano & e. m. treharne, ashgate, aldershot. 117–36. kiernan, k. s. et al. ed., 2000: electronic beowulf, 2 cds. british library, london. reading beowulf now and then 79 lapidge, m. 2000: the archetype of beowulf. anglo-saxon england 29: 5– 41. lawrence, a. w. 1937: books at clouds hill. in t. e. lawrence by his friends. ed. a. w. lawrence. jonathan cape, london. 476–510. lemire, e. d. ed. 1969: the unpublished lectures of william morris. wayne state university press, detroit. liuzza, r. m. 2000: beowulf: a new verse translation. broadview, peterborough. liuzza, r. m. 2002: lost in translation: some versions of beowulf in the nineteenth century. english studies 83: 281–95. lumsden, h. w. 1881: beowulf: an old english poem. kegan paul, london. maccarthy, f. 1994: william morris: a life for our time. faber & faber, london. malone, k. 1968: conybeare and thorkelin. english studies 49: i–xi. morris, w. & a. j. wyatt 1895: the tale of beowulf, sometime king of the weder geats. kelmscott press, hammersmith. niles, j. d. 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4_2023.docx selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. 28 (2023): 121–123. issn: 1132-631x doi: 10.17811/selim.28.2023.121-123 © ediuno. ediciones de la universidad de oviedo. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. knox, philip. 2022. the romance of the rose and the making of fourteenth-century english literature. oxford: oxford university press. pp. xv + 296. isbn 9780192847171. reviewed by koichi kano meiji university the romance of the rose (hereafter the rose) had an enormous influence on medieval english literature. the rose has a very complex genesis: there were two separate authors, and they were from different periods. therefore, the ideas and thoughts contained in the rose must have been influenced by the prevailing conditions of each time, and even within the rose it had undergone the various changes in manuscript contexts throughout its history. knox is, however, aware that the rose is not a unified entity. knox’s challenge, then, is to reveal how different kinds of “readers and writers came together, and how they imagined themselves and their connections to the rose” (29–30). it seems significant that, because of the complexity of the rose, its history ‘cannot be wholly grasped in synchronic perspective’, and knox ‘eschews an author-centred approach, and makes no attempt an exhaustive account’ of what the rose meant for particular authors (30). the book is divided into three parts, following the introduction, and finally the conclusion, with an appendix, bibliography, and index. in chapter 1, knox explores how the text as a platform, which was used in a specific courtly reaction, contributed to establish or challenge shared literary value within the community. clear discussions are demonstrated through examples such as the complete opposite way of reading the rose between oton de granson and geoffrey chaucer, and the literary controversy between l’epistre au dieu d’amours of christine de pizan and thomas hoccleve, who translated christine’s work. knox’s argument in chapter 2 concentrates on how english writers were able to engage in an intellectual and philosophical exploration of the rose in different ways, through the gradual and intricate evolution of diverse readerships and their changing expectations. this was particularly noticeable in english works, such as gower’s confessio amantis, langland’s piers ploughman, chaucer’s canterbury tales and cleanness of the gawain-poet, in the ways in which they delved into traditional depictions of nature and (sexual) desire. the central purpose of the third chapter, “being a poet”, is to disentangle the prevalent medieval notions concerning authorship, poetry, and fame, which the rose subsumes. in the last segment of this chapter particular emphasis is placed on the section “dead poets: the house of fame” in terms of that the trace of the rose’s generative afterlife in chaucer’s house of fame is observable. in the final chapter, knox concludes that the rose includes a wide range of knowledge that “allowed readers and writers to examine how readerly communities [...] create the meaning and value of texts”, and that “the rose in fourteenth-century england https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0353-019x book reviews 122 was [...] a vital force in the literary experiments that made the writing of this period so rich and so plural” (214). while in many ways compelling, knox’s overarching claim that the rose maintained (and is responsible for) literary networks all over europe is something of an overstatement. certainly, the rose has a very high number of extant manuscripts, which is indicative of its popularity and wide transmission, and is unquestionably one of the sources that was frequently cited by numerous fourteenth-century english writers. it is misleading for knox to assert, however, that traces of the rose can be found throughout medieval english literature, or that the rose is the fons et origo of them. dream visions (visio), for example, while clearly present in the rose, are part of an ancient and unbroken literary tradition: cicero’s somnium scipionis, boethius’ de consolatio philosophiae, macrobius’ commentarii in somnium scipionis, alain de lille’s de planctu naturae, to name but a few. in addition, there is a genealogical view of women that appears in the second part of the rose, which takes a “misogynist” or “antimarriageist” position, regarding women as descendants of the tempter/seducer “eve” and abhors them. these include st hieronymus’ epistola adversus jovinianum, liber de (aureolus) nuptiis attributed to theophrastus, and walter mapp’s epistola dissuasionis varerii ad rufinum philosophum, ne uxorem ducat. it is perhaps more appropriate to consider that chaucer’s having alisoun talk about perversely misogynistic and anti-maritalism in his wife of bath’s prologue follows such a genealogical tradition of women, rather than being indirectly influenced by the rose. the direct influence of the italian poets, especially on chaucer’s works, should not be overlooked, although this underrating is particularly evident in chapters 3 and elsewhere. there is no doubt that the rose was significant in many aspects of fourteenthcentury english literature. although the above discussion gives the impression that the rose was foundational for everything, the impact of earlier sources should not be underestimated. moreover, literary works written after the rose cannot all be derived from the rose when they are closely related to other vernacular works, even though these works themselves are of course connected to the rose. the section on “dante and the rose” (201–04), while acknowledging the major influence of dante’s la divina commedia in chaucer’s house of fame and other works, emphasises chaucer’s ambivalent attitude towards dante as a result of recent research. but chaucer’s attitude toward italian literature in terms of his equivocality is not at all surprising, because his consistent attitude, especially as regards to authority, is fundamentally a detached one. this book is filled with extraordinarily dense arguments. it is a treatise of eloquence; the language is constantly refined, and the style is occasionally complex, but regularly rich in rhetorical devices in an attempt to carefully unravel and explain difficult concepts, ideas, and intricate thoughts (and therefore may be less comprehensible to an uninitiated non-anglophone such as myself). as knox makes clear, it is precisely because the rose is not a unified body that it is able to be incorporated in so many different ways and in so many different genres. it could be seen as the result of empowering one vernacular, i.e. the rose, which is then emulated in other vernaculars. in this sense, the book excellently represents the essence of the rose and the way it relates to the social and literary-cultural communal structures of fourteenth-century england that received and transformed it. the greatest importance of this volume is, i imagine, that it shows how medieval vernacular literature became a kind of authority and how it was diffused, while also book reviews 123 unveiling the possibilities and the limits of the rose and its english conveyers of the tradition in the fourteenth century. (received 01/06/2023) selim 15.indb mauricio gotti, selim 13 (2005-2006): 115—146 the middle english chapter of the ‘modal story’ abstract the development of the english modals has been variously interpreted either as a whole series of changes taking place simultaneously in the 16th century or as a result of gradual, related changes originating already in old english and taking place mainly in the middle and early modern english periods. this second view is also the one that will be maintained in this paper, and evidence in its support will be drawn from our analysis of the third section (m3) of the middle english part of the helsinki corpus of english texts (1350-1420). it will be shown that the evolution of the english verbal modal system has taken place in a progression of stages strictly related to one another, all of which play a relevant role in determining the system as it is now. our analysis will mainly focus on the middle english period, which constitutes a fundamental stage in the transitional process of auxiliation (kuteva 2001) of english modal verbs. keywords: middle english, early modern english, modal, verb, development, helsinki corpus, gradual, related, changes resumen el surgimiento de los verbos modales ingleses ha sido interpretado, bien como una serie de cambios ocurridos simultáneamente durante el siglo xvi, bien como el resultado de cambios graduales interrelacionados, cuyo origen está en el inglés antiguo, y desarrollados principalmente en inglés medio e inglés moderno temprano. este artículo se orienta en esta segunda línea, fundamentándose en el análisis de la sección tercera (m3) de la parte dedicada al inglés medio del helsinki corpus of english texts (1350-1420). se mostrará cómo la evolución del sistema de los verbos modales ingleses ha tenido lugar mediante una progresión de etapas estrictamente relacionadas entre sí, y todas ellas con un papel crucial en la construcción del sistema tal y como es hoy en día. el análisis se centra en el período del inglés medio, que constituye un estadio fundamental en el proceso de transición denominado “auxiliarización” (kuteva 2001) de los verbos modales ingleses. palabras clave: inglés medio, inglés moderno temprano, modal, verbo, desarrollo, corpus helsinki, gradual, relacionado, cambios. the development of the english modals has been interpreted in more or less radical terms. in particular, it was david lightfoot (1974, 1979) who considered the evolutions in the verbal modal system as a whole series of changes taking place simultaneously in the 16th century. a different interpretation is instead offered by those (e.g. aitchison 1980, plank 1984, warner 1993, fischer 2003) who see this evolution as a result of gradual, related changes originating already in old english and taking place mainly in the middle and early modern english periods. this second view is also the mauricio gotti 118 one that will be maintained in this paper, and evidence in its support will be drawn from our analysis1 of the third section (m3) of the middle english part of the helsinki corpus of english texts (1350-1420).2 it will be shown that the evolution of the english verbal modal system has taken place in a progression of stages strictly related to one another, all of which play a relevant role in determining the system as it is now. our analysis will mainly focus on the middle english period, which constitutes a fundamental stage in the transitional process of auxiliation (kuteva 2001) of english modal verbs. our investigation, which will be limited to central modal verbs, will take into consideration four main aspects of this grammaticalisation (hopper / traugott 1993) process, concerning not only syntactic features, but also semantic and pragmatic ones: 1. loss of morphological and syntactic traits; 2. periphrastic subjunctive forms; 3. new markers for the tense system; 4. development of epistemic meanings. although dialectal variants played an important role in middle english, our analysis will not take into consideration issues of a diatopic nature, not only for a question of space, but also because the major syntactic changes in this period do not generally find their origin in dialectal variation but are the result of developments common to all middle english dialects (fischer 1992: 208). 1 the analysis presented here derives from a research project entitled aspects of variation in linguistic modality in late middle english and early modern english, funded by the italian ministry for university research. some of the results of the project are presented in gotti & al. (2002) and hart (2003). 2 detailed information about the the helsinki corpus of english texts can be found in its manual (cf. kytö 1996). the me chaper on the ‘modal story’ 119 1. loss of morphological and syntactic traits some of the morphological traits of pre-modal3 verbs (such as infinitival and participial forms) are unattested in the old english texts that have come down to us. this might be due to the scarcity of the texts that have survived, because some of the forms that seem to be missing in this period are attested in middle english: (1) but i desire gretly that [...] schrewes weren despoyled of mowynge to don yvel (boethch: 446.c2, gotti & al. 2002: 83) (2) yif so be that it be wrecchidnesse to wilne to doon yvel, thanne is it more wrecchidnesse to mowe don yvel (boethch: 446.c2, gotti & al. 2002: 97) in the middle english period pre-modal verbs largely lost their infinitival, present participle and past participle forms and evolved in their auxiliation process through the following steps: they lost the ability to take direct objects; their past tense forms no longer signalled past time reference; they took a bare infinitive, while all other verbs started taking to-infinitives; they stopped occurring in combination.4 in this way, they started differentiating themselves into an independent class with their own morphological and syntactic features. this evolution, however, has been much more gradual than lightfoot has presented it. for example, past tense pre-modals could already be used to express present time reference in old english, while modals with a direct 3 in their old english usage these verbs are usually called ‘pre-modals’ because they lack many of the properties associated with present-day modals. the nature of these verbs has been greatly debated: some scholars (e.g. lightfoot 1979) mainly consider them full verbs; others (e.g. van kemenade 1989, traugott 1992, denison, 1993, warner 1993) have shown how pre-modals were already distinct from full verbs for some particular syntactic and semantic features, which somehow associated them at times with the class of auxiliaries. 4 this feature has remained in some dialects or varieties of english (e.g. modern scots). mauricio gotti 120 object have been found as late as 1652 with can5 (visser 1963-73: §551), 1685 with would (gotti & al. 2002: 303) and even 1862 with will (visser 1963-73: §§557-8). indeed, in middle english many of these verbs still show non-modal usage. however, the evolution towards the auxiliary function is not uniform, as can be seen from table 1 (based on m3 data). this shows that the process of grammaticalisation was completed earlier in the case of may, might, must, shall and should which present no main verb usage in the period taken into consideration (1350-1420). on the other hand, some of them – such as can, could, will and would – still had a relevant main verbal function. compared to all other modals, can and could appear to lag behind in the pace of grammaticalisation, since in m3 up to 27% of can-occurrences and 28% of could still feature main verb values. can 27 could 28 may 0,14 might 0 must 0 shall 0 should 0,4 will 10 would 12 table 1. occurrences of modals as main verbal forms in the corpus expressed in percentage (after gotti & al. 2002: 329). double modal constructions were frequent in middle english, where syntactic units like shall may, should may, shall will, may can and shall can were possible.6 here are a few examples found in our corpus: 5 throughout the text, capitals will be used to denote the lexemes (e.g. shall and will), while italics will be used for their graphic variants (such as shall, shalt, shan’t, will, wilt, etc.). 6 for discussions and bibliographical references concerning the origin, history, and development of modal combinations, see butters (1991), nagle (1993, 1994, 1995, 1997), de la cruz (1994, 1995), battistella (1995) and fennell / butters (1996), inter al. the me chaper on the ‘modal story’ 121 (3) bot now it is so blendid wiþ þe original synne þat it may not kon worche þis werk bot it it be illuminid by grace. (cloud: 116, gotti & al. 2002: 54) (4) it may not be after þe cours of kynde ne of comoun grace, þat i schuld mowe kepe or elles make aseeþ to any mo tymes þan to þoo þat ben for to come. (cloud: 21, gotti & al. 2002: 241) the most frequent occurrences that have been found in our analysis of the m3 corpus include the auxiliary shall, with 4 cases of shall + may and 2 of shall + can: (5) the whiche thinges yif that any wyght loketh wel in his thought the strengthe of that oon and of that oothir, he schal lyghtly mowen seen that thise two thinges ben dyvers. (boethch: 451. c1, gotti & al. 2002: 196) (6) do þis werk euermore wiþ-outyn cesyng & wiþ-outyn discrecion, and þou schalt wel kun beginne & ceese in alle þin oþer werkes wiþ a grete discrecion. (cloud: 81, gotti & al. 2002: 197) the prevalent futural usage of the shall-forms in these modal combinations has led de la cruz (1994) to hypothesize a possible medieval influence of french on the english language, based on calques of future forms of pouvoir and vouloir. nagle, instead, explains the appearance of these combinations with the more widespread early use of shall as a marker indicating futurity and the less advanced progress of may and can in their loss of lexical-verb features: shall even in the late oe had begun to undergo auxiliarization and by me was advanced in the process. may and can on the other hand, were late in becoming full auxiliaries, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries respectively. therefore, shall was a natural candidate to precede the two others, which could be both auxiliaries and main verbs throughout me. (nagle 1993: 367) the instances we have found seem to confirm nagle’s hypothesis. mauricio gotti 122 as regards the non-use of the particle to before the infinitive form, already in old english pre-modals were normally followed by the bare infinitive. in middle english the particle to marking the infinitive started to be used more and more frequently, but never followed the modal verb to strengthen the close relation between a modal and its infinitive. indeed, the few cases found in middle english texts in which an infinitive preceded by to is dependent on a modal are not very clear. for example, in the following quotation the infinitive to kon (still used with its main verbal meaning of ‘to know’) dependent on may appears some distance from it: (7) for of alle oþer creatures and þeire werkes – he, and of þe werkes of god self – may a man þorou grace haue fulheed o knowing, and wel to kon þinke on hem. (cloud: 26, gotti & al. 2002: 46) also in the following early modern english example, the use of a toinfinitive in collocation with can may be accounted for by the peculiar syntactic structure of the sentence itself, its main verb being at the very beginning, thus partly losing the direct dependency on the modal: (8) you saw him within four or five days after at tixhall? lord aston. to name particular days, i cannot; but that i saw him several days at tixhall, i am sure. (oates: iv.75.c2, gotti & al. 2002: 53) the analysis of our corpus has also shown cases in which modal verbs are followed by be + ing-form, a structure which was still rare in middle english (cf. visser 1963-73: 2413, strang 1970: 208, denison 1993: 407). in the middle english instances found, however, the ing-form seems to have prevalently an adjectival function. indeed, in the first of the following m3 quotations the ing-form precedes shall and could serve as an appositional phrase to the noun it follows, while in the second, the ing-form might have an adjectival function: (9) and ech fleisch schal no more be slayn of the watris of the greet flood, neither the greet flood distriynge al erthe schal be more. (wycold: ix.1g, gotti & al. 2002: 198) the me chaper on the ‘modal story’ 123 [neither the greet flood schal be distriynge al erthe more / neither the greet flood, distriynge al erthe (= destroying all the earth / which destroys all the earth), schal be more] (10) breþren, we schulen be wytinge þat our is now us to ryse from sleepe (wserm1: i. 475, gotti & al. 2002: 198) 2. periphrastic subjunctive forms there is no doubt that the uses of the subjunctive are a part of modality in the broad sense.7 the closeness of the subjunctive and the modality of modal auxiliaries is shown by the fact that old english subjunctive use is partly replaced by later use of modal verbs. indeed, already in old english synthetic subjunctive forms started becoming opaque, due to syncretism with indicative forms. this phenomenon, which became more evident in the middle english period, was accompanied by the increase in the use of pre-modal verbs – such as cunnan, sceal and magan – to express this mood. the periphrastic construction, which was already in use in old english, became more and more popular in middle english: mustanoja (1960: 453) estimates that by the end of the 15th century the ratio between the periphrastic and inflectional subjunctive was nine to one in non-dependent clauses. this rise was favoured by the fact that pre-modal verbs in the subjunctive were often used in old english to strengthen the main verb, as in the following example: (11) a forþon us is nydþearf, þæt þa mynstru of þære stowe moten [subj] beon gecyrrede to oþre stowe therefore us is need that the monasteries from that place must be changed to other place [it is necessary therefore that the monasteries will be moved from that place to another] (gd 2 (c)5.112.24, fischer 2003: 22) 7 for visser (1963-73: §834) the explicitly marked subjunctive (the ‘modally-marked form’) is associated with “a modality of non-fact (wish, imagination, contingency, doubt, diffidence, uncertainty, supposition, potentiality, non-reality, etc.)”. mauricio gotti 124 the frequent use of pre-modals in subjunctive forms proved to be an excellent substitute when the verbal morpheme indicating the subjunctive mood gradually weakened and in the end disappeared. the auxiliaries most frequently found in subjunctive clauses are may / might, must, should and would. may replaced the earlier subjunctive in middle english in the expression of exhortations, wishes and in clauses of purpose (mustanoja 1960: 453). subjunctive-like may is often found in noun clauses after verbs of direct petition like pray and beseech with firstperson subjects: (12) we prayen [...] that the statut [...] mowe stonde in strengthe (pet3: 197, gotti & al. 2002: 122) and also after other verbs that similarly refer to a desirable action or event in the future, such as wish and hope (notice the clearly subjunctive be in the coordinated clause): (13) þe kyngus wille is, þat […] þe ordre of knyghthode, […] be al brouht to nouht […] and þat alle may take ensample by þe, her lord aftirward trewely forto serue (brut: 227, gotti & al. 2002: 123) similarly, may-forms in clauses introduced by but (‘unless’) have an explicit subjunctive function: (14) it schal be payd, but he mowe fynde a verrey encheson (ret: 55, gotti & al. 2002: 123) the m3 corpus also contains cases of final clauses (some purpose, some result) with explicitly-subjunctive may: (15) let þer be fair peynture […] þat þe fayrnesse of o vertu […] mowe make þe mor brit in schynyngge [so that the fairness of one virtue [...] make / may make you more bright] (aelr3: 33, gotti & al. 2002: 124) an apparent case of may used as a subjunctive substitute in a temporal clause has been found in the following quotation: the me chaper on the ‘modal story’ 125 (16) þei [...] gon be see & be londe .xj. monethes or .xij. or more sumtyme or þei may come to the yle of cathay (mand: 140, gotti & al. 2002: 126) we know that old english år “prefers the subjunctive” (mitchell / robinson 1964/1986: §174) and this seems to be a middle english preference for a periphrastic subjunctive in the same syntactic context. the justification for this marking of ‘unreality’ would be that the time in the subordinate clause does not yet exist from the point-of-view of the earlier time in the main clause.8 a confirmation of the use of a subjunctive-like may after ere comes from the following: (17) so hid þai sines foul and rogh, als stinkand cors es vnder throgh, or þai may mene men sins sertaine ðat beres þe saule to endles paine. (nhom: iii.135, gotti & al. 2002: 126) the periphrastic subjunctive (or ‘subjunctive equivalent’ use) with might is found in similar contexts (except that the temporal collocation is past) to those for periphrastic subjunctive may: in subclauses after verbs of requesting, commanding, wishing, hoping, fearing and believing; also as a ‘hypothetical past’ in unreal conditional clauses, as well as in concessive, temporal and purpose clauses. the modal, however, may retain its ‘modal auxiliary meaning’ in all these environments. we find might in subclauses after past forms of verbs of petition, desire or emotion (and related nouns in a past context): (18) he […] prayed with-alle þat a drope of calde water mught falle til his tung (prick: 84, gotti & al. 2002: 154) in the m3 corpus also must-variants have been found to be part of periphrastic present subjunctives clearly expressing desire or wish: 8 cf. shakespeare, romeo & juliet i.2.iii.10-11: “let two more summers wither in their pride / ere we may think her ripe to be a bride”. fischer (1992: 356) says that a subjunctive in a middle english temporal clause can indicate uncertainty, a non-fact or a prospective event. mauricio gotti 126 (19) with wild thonder-dynt and firy levene / moote thy welke nekke be tobroke! (ctbath 108.c2, gotti & al. 2002: 168) m3 noun clauses containing should frequently convey reported speech acts concerning future actions or states (such as promises, requests, or predictions). in these cases should often has a bleached, generically subjunctive meaning. however, the modal can often be interpreted as retaining some of its semantic value in relation to harmonic elements in the context:9 (20) william bisshop of hely demede þat monkes schulde be putte awey from coventre (trevisa: viii.93, gotti & al. 2002: 240) we also find should in subordinate clauses introduced by lest (possibly reinforced by such harmonic items as peradventure, for fear, dread), expressing feared outcomes to be guarded against by the action in the superordinate clause: (21) and þis i do for feerde lest þou schuldest conseyue bodily þat þat is mente goostly. (cloud: 121, gotti & al. 2002: 261) the use of should in concessive clauses normally signals the remoteness of the hypothesis – again, this kind of usage could be described as periphrastic subjunctive: (22) þogh we suld never helle se, ne for syn suld never punyst be, in purgatory ne in helle, ne in þis werld whar we duelle, yhit suld we luf god […] right swa þe face of god alle-myghty, sal be shewed in heven appertely, tille alle þe men þat þider sal wende, þogh som suld duelle at þe ferrest ende. (prick: 248, gotti & al. 2002: 261) 3. new markers for the tense system 9 on this point coates argues: “where should functions as a pure quasi-subjunctive, it is semantically empty. but in many contexts, where the preceding adjective or verb is not incompatible with the sense of weak obligation expressed by root should, we have merger […]. that is, it is not clear which of the two uses the speaker / writer intended, as both are possible […] [and] the two meanings are not mutually exclusive” (1983: 68). the me chaper on the ‘modal story’ 127 3.1. new markers for the future tense one of the main functions of shall and will in present-day english is their use to indicate futurity. this usage started in the old english period, although at that time the prevalent form for the expression of future actions was the present tense. however, also in that period shall and, less frequently, will were used to indicate futurity. these dynamic10 values were a development of the deontic ones that characterised their original full verbal meaning. indeed, from the semantic point of view, old english *sculan first evolved from the narrow scope of pecuniary obligation or indebtedness to wider moral obligation and command laid down by an external superior authority, including the interventions of nature, gods and fate. from this it was only a small step to reach the fully-fledged meaning of futurity, since commands necessarily have a future time reference. when it simply indicated futurity, shall frequently occurred either with the infinitive form of the following verb or with some other words in the sentence like weorþan, clarifying the futurity of the event. consequently, the idea of futurity was established as an integral part of the semantic value of this auxiliary, although the verb also maintained its meaning of obligation and of the speaker’s certainty about the necessity or the actualization of the event. similar meanings, but less defined, were expressed by willan,11 which mainly conveyed the deontic value of wish or intention,12 corresponding to the current verbs ‘to want’, ‘to wish’, as in the following quotation: 10 the distinction into deontic, epistemic and dynamic is mainly derived from palmer (1986 / 2001). 11 in oe there were three different lexical verbs expressing ‘will’ or ‘desire’: wilnian, willian, and willan; the first two were regular weak verbs and are represented by the modern to will; the verb willan is the origin of the modern english modal auxiliary. although in old english the three verbs could not be confused due to their different endings, their forms coalesced in the following centuries, on account of the loss of inflections which occurred in late old english and middle english. 12 mitchell (1985) also points out a second general use of willan, which the oed classes as “natural disposition to do something, and hence habitual action.” mauricio gotti 128 (23) he æt sumum cirre wolde fandian hu… [he at one time wanted to discover how…] (traugott 1972: 69) in the rare non-deontic cases, willan was mainly employed to express the predictability value that we still find in ‘oil will float on water’ and which is identified by jespersen (1949) in terms of ‘power’, as testified to by the following example: (24) elpendes hyd wile drincan wætan. [elephant’s hide will drink wet = elephant’s hide will absorb water] (traugott 1972: 69). such cases occurred at first only when willan was employed with inanimate subjects, consequently with no hint at volition. later, used with animate subjects, it is hard to determine “how far willan had gone along the road to simple futurity” (mitchell 1985: 1/115), yet a number of occurrences testify to the strong undertones of dynamic futurity carried by old english willan in a variety of contexts: (25) wen is, þæt hi us lifigende lungre wyllen sniome forsweolgan [expectation is that they us living quickly intend at-once swallow-up = it is likely that they will swallow us up at once] (denison 1993: 299) therefore, shall is more frequently found in commands, instructions and prophecies where a sense of obligation is present, while will occurs more commonly with first person pronoun subjects in contexts more closely connected with desire or willingness on the part of the speaker or writer such as promises, resolutions or wishes. at first this use of shall and will represented a sort of ‘double marking’ of futurity, in the sense that the expression of obligation and volition pragmatically implied the prediction of a future action. the original weak value of futurity gradually became stronger and stronger, also favoured by the absence of this tense marker in english, a gap which could lead to ambiguity and misinterpretation. the use of the present tense to express a future action continued in the middle english the me chaper on the ‘modal story’ 129 period but became less and less frequent in comparison to the great increase in the use of shall and (less frequently) will as a marker of this tense. shall was less and less commonly used to express deontic necessity; this loss was compensated for by an increase in the use of must to express the same pragmatic function. the increasing use of these verbs as markers of the future tense may have been favoured by the overlapping of the pragmatic functions expressed by them. as can be seen in the quotations below, they show cases of hypothetical phrases of the ‘if you will’ type; in such phrases, the overlapping of dynamic prediction and deontic volition present in these speech acts may have favoured the use of this modal auxiliary for the expression of prediction. (26) hif þu wylt, as þe book seiþ, adden goldene hemmys, certes, þenne þu hast a garnement wel iweue adoun to þi foot, in whiche þyn husbounde crist wil haue gret lykyngge to fynde þe icloþed in. (aelr3: 34, gotti & al. 2002: 297) (27) and hf þou wilte besily trauayle as i bid þee, i triste in his mercy þat þou schalt come þer-to. (cloud: 17, gotti & al. 2002: 297) this overlapping of pragmatic functions is also visible in a few instances of shall, in which the predictive speech act takes on some deontic shades of meaning. the following quotation, for example, apart from predicting what the reader will find in the fifth part, may also prompt the interlocutor to refer to that section: (28) in whiche fifthe partie shalt thou fynden tables of equaciouns of houses after the latitude of oxenforde; and tables of dignitees of planetes, and other notefull thinges, (astr 663: c2, gotti & al. 2002: 227) the following quotation, instead, does not only convey a predictive value but also an epistemic meaning, as it involves a statement of the speaker’s attitude towards the truth of the proposition; indeed, the schal be mentioned could be paraphrased by the expression can/will be considered: mauricio gotti 130 (29) þerfore .4. þyngus þou schalt loke in an hors. & þat þei faile no=t. ffurste þe schap of an hors þat þou schalt wite þat he be of good heythe to suche trauaile as þou nedest & þat he be þicke & wel i-growe to his heythe & strongliche i-made. longe sydes & fleyschful. & grete boddockes. & rounde. & brod brest bi-fore. & al þe bodi knette with wreþes of brawn. drie bon & hole þat schal his bodi bere & þat schal be a good hors. (horses: 85, gotti & al. 2002: 227) in middle english, shall remained definitely more frequent than will, especially in predictive contexts. wycliffe, in his translation of the vulgate, used shall regularly to translate the latin future tense, while will was employed to gloss the latin verb velle. in late middle english the idea of futurity inherent in shall strongly increased at the expense of the sense of obligation which was steadily weakened, up to shakespeare’s time, when the two auxiliary verbs had almost reached the present pattern. by the end of the 15th century, the idea of futurity latent in the notion of volition became predominant in the use of will, with the result that this too came to be used as an auxiliary expressing futurity. from a quantitative point of view, our data, based on the comparison between the shalland willforms in the m3 part of the helsinki corpus, confirms the higher frequency of the former, not only in absolute numbers (729 vs 128, cf. table 2) but also in normalised figures, i.e. in the relative numbers of such forms compared to the total number of words of the texts analysed (40 vs 7 per 10,000 words). text type shall will documents 12 [2] 4 [1] handbooks 36 [2] 19 [3] science 1 philosophy 18 [1] 9 [3] homilies 36 [3] 14 [2] sermons 38 [3] 2 rules 25 [2] 7 [1] religious treatises 321 [8] 54 [5] history 57 [2] 3 travelogues 10 [1] 3 [1] the me chaper on the ‘modal story’ 131 fiction 52 [2] 10 [2] letters 13 1 bible 110 [6] 2 all texts 729 [31] 128 [18] table 2 normalised occurrences of shalland willforms expressing prediction according to text type (figures in square brackets indicate indeterminate or ambiguous cases). as can be seen from table 2, prediction (or ‘pure future’, as this category is often referred to in the literature) occurs in almost all the text types included in the corpus. for the expression of this pragmatic function shall is much more frequently used than will (the ratio is 5 to 1). however, this ratio is not uniform. in particular, in biblical texts the prevalent use of shall depends on the translator’s choice to use this modal auxiliary for the rendering of future verbal forms. as regards a possible correlation between medium and choice of modal verb, the data do not seem to confirm it. indeed, comparing the data of table 2, we can see that shall-forms occur below average not only in the main speech-based text types (i.e. homilies and sermons), but also in several non-speech-based ones, such as scientific texts, philosophical works, travelogues and correspondence. as regards willforms, their behaviour in speech-based text types is extremely inconsistent, ranging from a very high frequency in homilies to a very rare presence in sermons. shall is also the auxiliary typically expressing the prophetic function; indeed of the 81 cases of prophecy found in the corpus 80 include a shall-form, versus a single case of will. in the corpus taken into consideration there are various cases of alternation between shall and will in the same context; the analysis of these texts confirms the previous remarks, besides leading to further interpretations of their different uses. for example, in the following quotation, shall is used in the main clause, thus pointing to a preference of will for secondary clauses; indeed, in the same sentence there are two occurrences of will: the first in a qualifying relative clause (who-so wil loke denis bookes), the second in mauricio gotti 132 the noun clause serving as the object of the main clause (þat his wordes wilen cleerly aferme). (30) and trewly, who-so wil loke denis bookes, he schal fynde þat his wordes wilen cleerly aferme al þat i haue seyde (cloud: 125, gotti & al. 2002: 297) the same explanation may apply to the following case, in which will occurs in the qualifying clause and shall in the main clause: (31) whoso wole have sapience shal no man dispreyse (ctmel 220: c2, gotti & al. 2002: 228) the following quotation, instead, confirms the preference for the use of will to express volition and of shall for the conveyance of the pragmatic function of prediction: (32) and of this matere seith moyses by the devel in this manere: “the feend seith, ‘i wole chace and pursue the man by wikked suggestioun, and i wole hente hym by moevynge or stirynge of synne. and i wol departe my prise or my praye by deliberacioun, and my lust shall been acompliced in delit. […]’” (ctpars 298: c1, gotti & al. 2002: 227) in some cases, however, the reason for the alternation is less clearly deducible; for instance, in the following quotation the use of different modal auxiliaries in two co-ordinated main clauses may be attributed to stylistic reasons,13 i.e. in the willingness to avoid lexical repetition: (33) whoso that dooth to thee oother good or harm, haste thee nat to quiten it, for in this wise thy freend wole abyde and thyn enemy shal the lenger lyve in drede. (ctmel 220: c1, gotti & al. 2002: 227) 3.2. new markers for the conditional tense 13 similar variations depending on stylistic reasons have been found also by other researchers; cf. for example, ono (2002), who points out several examples of alternation in the use of shall and will in different manuscripts of chaucer’s works. the me chaper on the ‘modal story’ 133 already in old english the past forms of pre-modals were used in nonpast contexts with hypothetical and tentative meanings (molencki 1999: 135136). this usage was particularly frequent with should and would, commonly used to express remote possibility or predictive uses in narrative contexts taking place in the past, as can be seen in the following quotations: (34) hu wolde þe nu licien gif… how would to-thee now please if … [how would it please you if …] (bo 41.142.2, traugott 1992: 197) (35) þa darius geseah þæt he oferwunnen beon wolde, …, when darius saw that he overcome be would, … [when darius saw that he would be defeated, …] ( or 3 9.128.5, traugott 1992: 196) the latter example is indicative of how the predictive function still combines with a stronger meaning of modal necessity (‘would be overcome’). should and would continued to be used in the middle english period to report a prediction in a hypothetical/tentative way and to express present counterfactuals. from a semantic point of view, a distinction ought to be made between reported predictions and hypotheses; both are expressed by should/would-forms and both convey future time reference, but the former generally occur in the context of narratives set in the past, as shown in the following quotations: (36) and herfore repreuede crist ypocrisye of ordres, for he wiste wel þat þey schulden after do more harm in þe world. (wserm: i.314, gotti & al. 2002: 259) (37) me trowed þat þe kyng wolde nevere come ahen hom. (trevisa: viii.89, gotti & al. 2002: 321) in the case of hypotheses, the possibility of the predication ever becoming factual depends on an action or factor expressed by means of a conditional clause. the following quotations exemplify two m3 cases: mauricio gotti 134 (38) and þerfore and i miht gete a wakyng and a besi beholdyng to þis goostly werk wiþ-inne in my soule, i wolde þan haue a rechelesnes in […] alle myn outward doynges. (cloud: 81, gotti & al. 2002: 321) (39) if any childe of hir were þine i woulde holde hit as for mine. (cursor mundi 2601, molencki 2000: 316) several m3 occurrences express a predictable result or refer to the purpose of an action; in these cases an additional deontic meaning of volition may also be detected, introduced by superordinate nouns like entent: (40) for he kyde he & hys felawe wolde kepe the dores that day, to that entent that ther sholde non haue kome jn but only that wolde haue chose john norhampton to be mair; (usk: 27, gotti & al. 2002: 260) the hypothetical result may have been presented as an alternative to a different scenario, in which case the modal was introduced by else: (41) “thanne ben thei none membres,” quod sche, “for elles it schulde seme that blisfulnesse were conjoyned al of o membre allone; […]” (boethch: 433.c2, gotti & al. 2002: 261) in the expression of past counterfactuality the old english preterite subjunctive was commonly replaced by the pluperfect or by a modal periphrasis consisting of should or would followed by a perfect infinitive. in counterfactual constructions the replacement of the preterite subjunctive by a periphrastic construction containing a (pre)modal had started taking place in old english dialects, particularly in the north of england, where the subjunctive/indicative contrast was first lost (molencki 2000: 3167). in middle english it became more and more frequent to find cases in which the pluperfect in the apodosis was replaced by the combination of a bleached modal (most commonly would, but sometimes should) and the perfect infinitive for the expression of the non-realization of an action (equivalent to latin irrealis forms), as shown in the following examples: (42) nad it be for drede of our lord the kyng, i wot wel eueri man sholde haue be in others top (usk: 28, gotti & al. 2002: 260) the me chaper on the ‘modal story’ 135 (43) &, truly, had noght the aldermen kome to trete, […] they wolde haue go to a newe eleccion, & in that hete haue slayn hym that wolde haue letted it, yf they had myght. (usk: 28-29, gotti & al. 2002: 309) moreover, should and would did not only occur in the protasis, but also in the apodosis: (44) as hif a lond wolde bere good corn wiþowte tylyng an donghyng þerof, it were but ydel to traueyle þerfore, whonne it encressuþ not þe fruyt. (wycliffe sermons p i.588 a.1425, molencki 2000: 321) there is a very strong tendency to preserve parallelism between the verbal forms of the apodosis and protasis. indeed, when the should/wouldperiphrasis occurs in the apodosis, it is often followed by the use of should/would in the protasis: (45) & if þer schold be don mynyscoun of þe cardiaca, þere scholde be mad mor febelynge (phleb: 45, gotti & al. 2002: 260) (46) & [=if] he wolde not a followed me, i wolde have retourned ageyn (earl rivers the cordyal 79.12 c1479, molencki 2000: 321) 4. development of epistemic meanings right from the old english period, proto-modals and pre-modals have been the most frequent conveyors of the concepts of permission, obligation, wish, will, and mental capability, which can be subsumed under the general labels of deontic and dynamic modality. in contrast, it is only in middle english that the concepts of ‘probability’, ‘possibility’ and ‘certainty’ – currently subsumed under the term ‘epistemic modality’ – are fully conveyed by may/might and must and it is not until early modern english that such values are acquired by can/could, will/would and should. epistemic values have been shown to have evolved from deontic or dynamic ones, through a process of subjectification by means of which some modal verbs have gradually moved from the propositional domain to the expressive one (cf. traugott 1989, sweetser 1990, bybee / pagliuca / perkins 1994). indeed, the modal verbs that mauricio gotti 136 nowadays express epistemic meanings seem to have originated with a deontic or dynamic function. very few of the pre-modals had an epistemic function in old english. however, some examples of this usage have been pointed out:14 (47) & to þam pentecosten wæs gesewen […] blod weallan of eorþan. swa swa mænige sæden þe hit and at that pentecost was seen […] blood to-well-up from earth. as as many said pt it geseon sceoldan see should [and at the pentecost … blood was seen welling up from the ground, as many said who supposedly saw it] (chron e (plummer) 1100.4, traugott 1992: 195) (48) eastewerd hit [se mor] mæg bion syxtig mila brad oþþe hwene brædre eastwards it [the moor] can be sixty of-miles broad or somewhat broader [toward the east it may be sixty miles wide or a little wider] (or 1 1.15.26, fischer 2003: 23) the epistemic use of may particularly develops in middle english, although it is still less common than the use to indicate dynamic possibility. as regards the meaning of ability, it was current until the 16th century; then the use of may to indicate dynamic possibility became prevalent, and the gap was filled by the use of can to indicate ability. the closeness between may expressing dynamic ability and the emerging similar function of can is shown by the occurrence of the two verbs in the formulaic phrase may or can often found in formal contexts lacking in any distinctive meaning between its elements: (49) in as meke wyse and lowely maner as any symple officers and pouuere lieges best may or can ymagine and diuise (llet: 72, gotti & al. 2002: 98) 14 for more examples, cf. traugott (1989: 42) and denison (1993: 298-302). the me chaper on the ‘modal story’ 137 here, in the context of ‘binomial phrases’ (meeke wyse and lowely maner, officers and lieges, imagine and deuise), the paired modal verbs form part of a politeness strategy via prolixity. the same features can be used to suggest a need to make careful legal distinctions: (50) be it further enacted that [...] it shall and may be lawfull to and for the gaugers [...] to turne any cock or cocks to try and examine whether such pipe or other conveyance may or can convey any wash (stat7: viii.457, gotti & al. 2002: 99) the semantic shift of may from objective to subjective possibility meanings is undoubtedly one of the most interesting episodes in the modal story. in our analysis we have found statistic confirmation of this evolution, with a decline of dynamic uses from 80% in m3 to 45% in e3, associated with the rise of other uses: epistemic, from 3% to 17%; deontic, from 3% to 13%; and periphrastic subjunctive uses from 8% to 17%. this semantic evolution is particularly evident in all those cases in which may combines with inanimate subjects and stative verbs to express epistemic necessity, as shown in the following examples: (51) ðat may be ment on þis manere (nhom: iii.137, gotti & al. 2002: 91) (52) thow seyst we wyves wol oure vices hide / til we be fast, and thanne we wol hem shewe / wel may that be a proverbe of a shrewe! (ctbath: 108.c2, gotti & al. 2002: 102) [that has to be the proverb of a wicked man!] as dynamic possibility may evolved into epistemic possibility may, many examples are ‘mergers’ (coates 1983), ambiguous to both interlocutor and linguistic observer (indeed, it is this ambiguity that allowed the evolution). for nuyts (2001: 181-2) this would be because the epistemic meaning began as an invited inference from a dynamic meaning. visser (1963-73: 1756) sees the matter more in terms of strict observer ‘ambiguity’ (ideally distinguishable, though often not so) when he says: “since this shift in meaning [from objective to subjective possibility] is not formally expressed, the correct mauricio gotti 138 interpretation of quite a number [i.e. a substantial number] of the later quotations is problematic, and the placing of them in this section [1654, objective possibility] instead of in section 1663 [subjective possibility] is purely arbitrary”. in our analysis too, where the meaning seemed ‘merged’ or so ambiguous as to make a clear assignment ‘purely arbitrary’, we have preferred to assign the example to a small mixed dynamic/epistemic category.15 here are a couple of typical examples: (53) whanne scripture speketh oonly bi counceil, men moun be sauid, thouh thei do not the counceil (wycprol: i.56, gotti & al. 2002: 114) [it is possible for men to be saved though they do not follow the advice / it is possible that men will be saved though they do not follow the advice] (54) a sharp wit may find something in the wisest man whereby to expose him to the contempt of injudicious people (tillots: ii.ii 428, gotti & al. 2002: 114) [it is possible for a sharp wit to find something / it is possible that a sharp wit will find something] verbs like happen (befall, fall, chance) focus attention on the uncertain reality of events. though such ‘eventualities’ can be presented as objectively as possible, they are inevitably open to interpretation as having the possibility of happening according to the speaker. the evolution can be seen in the way may + hap and may + be come to have an adverbial meaning of ‘perhaps’ (with the first oed quotation for the former dated at 1300); even the word (h)appen itself is used adverbially in modern northern dialects to mean ‘perhaps’. we should not be surprised, therefore, to find these verbs associated with epistemic may, as in the following example: (55) þa er veniel synnes þat may falle, bathe grete and smale (prick: 87, gotti & al. 2002: 108) 15 equivalent to kytö’s ‘indeterminate’ possibility category (1987: 150). ambiguity may well be normal in this area of modality: nuyts (2001: 189) finds over 70% of his dutch and german epistemic examples of kunnen and können are ambiguously dynamic / epistemic. the me chaper on the ‘modal story’ 139 it is possible that the evolution of epistemic may was aided by accompanying adverbs that originally meant the top point on a scale or a high point on it (amplifiers) but then lost their ‘impact’ over time. one of the most common adverbs associated with this modal in m3 is well (in 19 examples, 5 of them with epistemic may), which functions originally as an amplifier but then is “used to denote the possibility or the likelihood of an occurence or fact” (oed, well 9b, with citations from c1400). here are some examples with epistemic may: (56) it [concupiscence] may wel wexe fieble and faille by vertu of baptesme and by the grace of god thurgh penitence, but fully ne shal it nevere quenche (ctpars: 297.c2, gotti & al. 2002: 112) (57) but lat us graunten, i pose, that som man may wel demen or knowen the good folk and the badde (boethch: 452.c2, gotti & al. 2002: 112) other m3 adverbials that accompany and reinforce an epistemic modal are: in maner (‘to some extent’), by som cause (‘for some reason’), lihtli (‘probably’), perauenture (‘perhaps’). might seems to have had a longer association with epistemic meanings than may: its use with an (originally) implied conditional clause, with various meanings (including counterfactual dynamic and counterfactual epistemic), dates from the old english period, before the year 1000 (visser 1963-73 §1672, 1673; oed: may 6b, 6c). in contrast, the earliest occurrences of epistemic may go back no further than 1200 (1205 for both visser and the oed). in addition, final clauses in old english can refer to actual result or an eventuality (which will tend to be subjectively-viewed) and might lends itself to use as a metaphorically remote reference to indicate the latter. in our corpus, epistemic might is slightly more frequent than epistemic may: 6% of cases in m3, compared with 3% for may; 25% in e3, against 17% for may. epistemic uses may have spread especially where might has a nonnarrative-past meaning, since, in most cases, any original objective possibility can easily be reinterpreted as subjective if the possibility is imaginary (the step mauricio gotti 140 from an imaginary objective possibility to an imaginary subjective possibility is a short one, since the foregrounding of imagination suggests a subjective view). the naturalness of an epistemic interpretation of fugitive eventualities has already been noted above for may. in the m3 sub-corpus, also epistemic might is followed by a verb like happen, always in a non-past context where the hypothetical meaning further encourages a subjective interpretation: (58) grete meschiefs that mighten by swiche wrongful cleymes: falle and turne to gret preiudice to the kyng (pet3: 24, gotti & al. 2002: 146) (59) but crist denyeþ þis to hem for harm þat myhte come (wserm: i.375, gotti & al. 2002: 146) (60) we wile þat [...] þe maystres to non of hem, as it mihte falle in cas for mede or be senguler profit, falle in affinite (ret: 57, gotti & al. 2002: 146) perhaps might came with a built-in epistemic appropriateness in nonpast contexts, so did not require the support of an adverbial as much as may did. in the following example, the epistemic adverb possibly in the first part of the sentence apparently does not need to be repeated in the parallel second part with might: (61) it would but give us a fear of him, and possibly compel us to treat him so as i should be very loth to behold: that is, it might occasion his confinement (behn: 193, gotti & al. 2002: 148) in the corpus we have analysed there is only one example which could be interpreted as expressing epistemic possibility. this hypothesis is supported by skeat’s transposition in modern english (1952: 172), which goes: ‘or else he may be telling what’s untrue’. it occurs in chaucer’s fiction: (62) or ellis he moot telle his tale untrewe, or feyne thyng, or fynde wordes newe. (ctprol 35.c1, gotti & al. 2002: 148) the me chaper on the ‘modal story’ 141 also the epistemic use of must emerges in middle english, especially to express speaker’s/writer’s inference or logical conclusion.16 for example, unambiguous examples of epistemic must are quite frequent in chaucer’s boethius. they follow the logic of the deductive reasoning of philosophical discourse. this is clearly shown by the constant combination with needs, and the frequent presence of the adverb then and of coordinating conjunctions such as so, for and the like. the use of epistemic must in generic sentences combined with needs played a key role in its semanticization.17 here follow some instances with neutral it, where the modal collocates always with the verb be and the adverb satellite by which the encoder strengthens his own assertion: (63) thanne moot it nedis be that verray blisfulnesse is set in sovereyn god. (boethch 432.c1, gotti & al. 2002: 181) (64) the whiche destynal causes, whan thei passen out fro the bygynnynges of the unmoevable purveaunce, it moot nedes be that thei ne be nat mutable. (boethch 452.c1, gotti & al. 2002: 182) the following is an example introduced by existential there: (65) and herof cometh it that in every thing general, yif that men seen any thing that is imparfit, certes in thilke general ther moot ben som thing that is parfit. (boethch 431.c2, gotti & al. 2002: 182) 16 this point requires some discussion. the oed does not attest instances of epistemic must earlier than 1652. however, visser argues that the notion ‘inferred or presumed probability that borders on certainty’ is to be taken in a wider sense than is done in oed. starting from the following example ‘that must be the prince’ (i conclude or infer from his behaviour (manner of speaking, etc.) that this is the prince’, he shows that “this illative must has been of frequent use from the last part of the fourteenth century’ and points out that ‘a noteworthy fact is the preponderance of the colligation of must with the verb to be.’ (visser 1963-73 §1708: 1810) 17 “if a speaker explicitly states that some event is necessarily obliged or compelled to occur in the future, especially if the source is god’s authority, law, spiritual awareness or logic, the inference is readily invited that the state of affairs represented in the proposition not only will be true in the future but is virtually present” (traugott / dasher 2002: 128) mauricio gotti 142 even if to a lesser extent, instances with animate subjects also convey epistemic meanings: (66) for yf that schrewednesse makith wrecches, than mot he nedes ben moost wrecchide that lengest is a schrewe. (boethch 447.c1, gotti & al. 2002: 182) (67) he þat fayluþ to helpe oon, mut nedys fayle ahenys hem alle. (wserm 11 i: 522, gotti & al. 2002: 183) the following is the only instance found in chaucer’s fiction: (68) so buxom and so vertuous is she, / they moste nedes lyve in unitee. (ctmerch 155.c1, gotti & al. 2002: 183) in m3 could has been found to express only dynamic modality, while epistemic and deontic values start to emerge in e3. as regards should, in very few m3 cases has a should-form been found to express a reasonable conclusion deriving from previous predications; in one instance the subjectivity of the remark is emphasized by a content-oriented booster such as certes: (69) for certes somthing possessyng in itself parfyt good schulde be more worthy than god, and it scholde semen that thilke thing were first and eldere than god. (boethch: 432.c1, gotti & al. 2002: 264) [if something possessed perfect good, people would infer that it is more worthy than god and that it seems to precede god] instances in which would-forms have been found to express the encoder’s deductions concerning a counterfactual predication are more numerous in the e3 section of the corpus. in m3 texts the subjectivity of the point of view is frequently strengthened by the co-occurrence of an epistemic adverb like certes: (70) for certes, sire, oure lord jhesu crist wolde nevere have descended to be born of a womman, if alle wommen hadden been wikke. [and] if that wommen were nat goode, and hir conseils goode and profitable, oure lord the me chaper on the ‘modal story’ 143 god of hevene wolde nevere han wroght hem, ne called hem help of man, but rather confusioun of man. (ctmel: 221.c2, gotti & al. 2002: 323) (71) for certes, if ther ne hadde be no synne in clothyng, crist wolde nat so soone have noted and spoken of the clothyng of thilke riche man in the gospel. (ctpars: 300.c2, gotti & al. 2002: 324) the following m3 occurrence was found to express the encoder’s subjective perception of a possible event: (72) wher anoþer man wolde bid þee gader þi mihtes & þi wittes holiche wiþinne þi-self, […]hit for feerde of disseite & bodely conceyuyng of his wordes, me list not byd þee do so (cloud: 121, gotti & al. 2002: 323) [while it is possible that another man could bid thee gather thy strength and thy wits within thyself […] yet, fearing deceipt and an earthly understanding of his words, i wouldn’t bid thee do so.] only one case of epistemic will has been found in the m3 subsection of our corpus; it expresses a deduction made by the locutor: (73) scabbe wol brede in þe necke. […] & þat wol come of superfluyte of blod. or of oþer wicked humourr. (horses: 103, gotti & al. 2002: 293) 5. conclusion the middle english period was a period of great morpho-syntactic changes (fischer 1992, lass 1992). as has been seen, great innovations took place also in the meanings and uses of the category of pre-modal verbs. however, these changes were not accidental or unrelated; they were gradual and related to one another. as this paper has shown, the process analysed is a dynamic one, which can only be interpreted in a diachronic perspective. indeed, very often adjustments and modifications took place to fill gaps existing in the system. this can be seen, for example, in the development of the uses of can to denote dynamic ability. the rise of the epistemic use of may, particularly in middle english, and its increase to indicate dynamic mauricio gotti 144 possibility, determined a loss for the expression of the meaning of ability, with the result that this gap was filled by the use of can to indicate ability. the closeness between may expressing dynamic ability and the emerging similar function of can favoured this shift. the great changes analysed (e.g,. the expression of the subjunctive mood or the future tense) have often been shown to have started in the form of double marking. for example, at first shall and will represented a sort of ‘double marking’ of futurity, in the sense that the expression of obligation and volition pragmatically implied the prediction of a future action. the original weak value of futurity gradually became stronger and stronger, also favoured by the absence of this tense marker in english, a gap which could lead to ambiguity and misinterpretation. as has been seen, there was no sudden change and the old forms usually coexisted with the new ones for a long period of transition (e.g. the full-lexical usage and the auxiliary usage of these verbs) giving rise to frequent cases of overlapping of an old form with the modal one. a clear example has been noticed in the evolution of dynamic possibility may into epistemic possibility may, as many of the instances found in the corpus analysed are ‘mergers’, ambiguous to both interlocutor and linguistic observer. it can safely be deduced that, indeed, it is this ambiguity which allowed the evolution of the process. the data found in the corpus thus enable us to conclude that in the middle english period all central modals have made considerable progress in their evolution from full predicates to auxiliary predicates, many of them becoming predicate operators for tenses such as the future and the conditional, or for moods such as the subjunctive. the progress followed thus confirms the one pointed out in functional grammar terms by goossens (1987: 118) in this scale: full predicates > predicate formation > predicate operators the me chaper on the ‘modal story’ 145 however, it is important to point out that this evolutionary process cannot be explained in mere syntactic terms, but requires semantic and pragmatic interpretations. moreover, the picture we obtain from our analysis of the corpus clearly indicates that modal forms do not seem to have developed in strict synchronicity. although the grammaticalisation trend is similar for all of them, the evolutionary process of each central modal takes place in different stages and in different periods. this process, however, is a global one, in the sense that the changes of each central modal verb often depend on – and give rise to – the changes of the others. maurizio gotti università di bergamo references aitchison, jean 1980: review of principles of diachronic syntax by d. lightfoot. linguistics 18, 137-146. battistella, edwin l. 1995: the syntax of the double modal construction. linguistica atlantica 17, 19-44. blake, norman (ed.) 1992: the cambridge history of the english language, vol. 2: 1066-1476. cambridge: cambridge university press. butters, ronald 1991: multiple modals in united states black english: synchronic and diachronic aspects. in edwards, f. / winford, d. 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an historical syntax of the english language. 3 vols. leiden: brill. warner, anthony 1993: english auxiliaries. structures and history. cambridge: cambridge university press. * † * microsoft word 2021article_4_mateo.docx raquel mateo mendaza, selim26 (2021): 85–107. issn 1132-631x / issn-l 2792-3878 / https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.26.2021.85-107 identifying the old english exponent for the semantic prime live1 raquel mateo mendaza university of la rioja the aim of this article is to identify the old english exponent for the semantic prime live following the principles of the natural semantic metalanguage theory (wierzbicka 1996, goddard & wierzbicka 2002, goddard 2011). the methodology applied in the study is based on previous research in old english semantic primes. in these terms, a search for those old english words conveying the meaning of the semantic prime live is made. this search selects the verbs (ge)buan, drohtian, (ge)eardian, (ge)libban, and wunian as candidate words for prime exponent. then, these verbs are analysed in terms of morphological, textual, semantic, and syntactic criteria. with this purpose, relevant information on these words has been gathered from different lexicographical and textual sources in old english, such as the dictionary of old english, the dictionary of old english corpus, and the lexical database of old english nerthus. after the analysis of these verbs, the conclusion is drawn that the old english verb (ge)libban is selected as prime exponent, as it satisfies the requirements proposed by each criterion. keywords: natural semantic metalanguage; old english; semantic primes 1. introduction the main aim of the natural semantic metalanguage research programme (hereafter nsm; wierzbicka 1996; goddard 2002, 2011; goddard & wierzbicka 2002) is to identify a shared core of terms present in all natural languages, by 1 this research has been funded by the grant ffi2017-83360p, which is gratefully acknowledged. 86 raquel mateo mendaza means of which complex concepts can be explained in terms of simpler or more intelligible ones. for nearly thirty years, nsm researchers have been investigating different languages and cultures to find and classify the set of words or expressions —semantic primes— that can be considered universal. with this purpose, an inventory of primes has been established for several living languages. a complementary avenue of research is searching a historical language such as old english (henceforth oe) for semantic primes. recent studies in oe semantic primes have dealt with the category actions, events, movement, contact by establishing the oe exponents for do, happen, move, and touch (mateo mendaza 2013, 2016a, 2016b, 2020).2 along with the search for prime exponents, a methodology has been devised to apply to historical languages in general, with which various candidates for prime have been examined and accurate results from different convergent perspectives have been obtained. against this background, the aim of this article is to identify the oe exponent of the semantic prime live, included within the category life and death. the article is organised as follows. section 2 summarises the main basis of the nsm theory and the progress on the identification of oe exponents that has been made so far. section 3 makes a descriptive analysis of the semantic prime live within the nsm theory. then, section 4 focuses on the selection of candidates for prime exponent among the list of verbs with the meaning ‘to live’ that can be found in the lexicographical sources. with these data, section 5 presents the results of the assessment of the candidates as to four different criteria. finally, the main conclusions and the future lines of research are summarised in section 6. 2. the natural semantic metalanguage model and its application to historical languages the nsm is a linguistic model that focuses on meaning to understand the basis of a given language. in contrast to other formal models, anna wierzbicka developed the idea that all concepts in a language can be explained in a simpler way by means of other more basic concepts. since 1972, the main aim of the nsm community has been to identify those basic concepts —semantic 2 the primes included in this category have been rearranged and, currently, this category is labelled actions, events, movement. the prime touch is now included within the category place. the semantic prime live 87 primes— present in all languages, to define their inner meaning and to delimit the contexts in which these words are found cross linguistically. in this seminal study, wierzbicka proposed an inventory consisting of fourteen semantic primes. nowadays, the updated list of semantic primes has been enlarged to sixty-five elements divided into different categories, as described in the natural semantic metalanguage homepage (hereafter nsm homepage,3 see figure 3). along with the universal description of the lexicon, semantic primes are also associated with universal syntax. each prime has a basic configuration — minimal frame— established by its basic syntactic requirements. for example, do asks for an obligatory agent slot and a complement. however, there are other alternative valency options related to each prime that fill out some aspects implied by the predicate (goddard 2008: 13). in the case of do, additional arguments may refer to the patient, the instrument, or the comitative case. these valency options are also inherent to the prime and, thus, found crosslinguistically. this can be seen in table 1. table 1. minimal frame and valency options for do (goddard 2008: 13) someone does something [minimal frame] someone does something to someone/something [patient] someone does something to someone/something with something [instrument] someone does something with someone [comitative] regarding semantic analysis, semantic primes combine with each other in explanations, where complex meanings are decomposed in simpler terms to avoid obscurity and circularity. for some complex concepts further information is needed. with this purpose, the nsm theory introduced the term semantic molecules [m], defined as language dependent terms that cannot be directly decomposed into primes and that function as conceptual building blocks in the meaning structure of other more complex words (goddard 2011: 71). table 2 shows how explications work within the english language and the need for semantic molecules to describe complex concepts. 3 https://intranet.secure.griffith.edu.au/schools-departments/natural-semanticmetalanguage 88 raquel mateo mendaza table 2. explanation of head, including an example of a semantic molecule [m] (goddard 2008: 23) head (someone’s head) a. one part of someone’s body b. this part is above all other parts of this someone’s body c. this part is round [m] to check the universality of this theory as a tool of semantic analysis, the nsm model has been applied to several languages such as polish, chinese, finnish, italian, spanish, cree, lao, or arabic, among others. the first studies on these languages were based on the identification of prime exponents crosslinguistically. the advances made on the nsm theory led to new studies based on detailed descriptions of complex concepts by means of explications that analyse the components involved within the meaning of emotions, speech act verbs, motion, or mental states, for instance. this theory has recently been expanded and implemented in related disciplines such as language acquisition, lexicography, and language teaching. on the side of the application of the nsm to historical languages, semantic studies in the history of some cultural keywords have been carried out by wierzbicka (2006), while other studies have been conducted that engage in meaning descriptions in middle english and old norse-icelandic, as well as prime identification in oe.4 the latter focus on the oe exponents of the primes included in the categories substantives, determiners, quantifiers (martín arista & martín de la rosa 2006) and descriptors (de la cruz cabanillas 2007); on the semantic analysis of compound adpositions (guarddon anelo 2009); and on the sematic primes touch, happen, move, and do (mateo mendaza 2013, 2016a, 2016b, 2020). the studies on touch, happen, move, and do have devised a detailed methodology for the identification of semantic prime exponents in historical languages. it comprises the whole process involved in prime identification, from the selection of possible candidates for prime exponent to their assessment as to exponency. in this sense, possible candidates for prime exponent are selected after checking various lexicographical sources, such as historical thesauri and dictionaries. these lexicographical sources confirm that the prime candidate was used during the oe period to convey the 4 readers are referred to the nsm-approach webpage for further information (https://nsm-approach.net/). the semantic prime live 89 meaning under analysis. finally, prime candidates are assessed as to criteria of four types: morphological, textual, semantic, and syntactic. the selection of these criteria is based on the notion of markedness, as proposed by croft (1991), as it is closely related to the principle of reductive paraphrase that is central to the nsm theory. in this sense, unmarked concepts in a language would be less complex, more frequent and more iconic than marked ones. therefore, the former would be used to explain the latter in the same way as semantic primes are used to describe the meaning of complex words. bearing this idea in mind, the morphological criterion analyses the inheritance relations of the candidate words by examining the lexical paradigm in which these candidates are included. according to this criterion, primitives of lexical derivation are preferred as they are the words around which the whole derivational paradigm is gathered. indeed, the productivity of the paradigm is also measured not only in quantitative terms, but also in qualitative ones. that is to say, the different word formation processes that have given rise to the derivational paradigm and the lexical categories of the derivatives will be also seen as conclusive features. in terms of textual frequency, this criterion counts up the number of types and tokens found for the given candidate within the oe available texts. a high number of textual types and tokens is associated with the frequency of the candidate. as just said, unmarked concepts are more frequent than marked ones. this relates to the nsm principle that states that complex words can be explained in terms of simpler and more accessible words. if the candidate word repeatedly appears in the corpus, that would mean that it is highly available for the speaker to be used within a language. thus, that word can be considered a good candidate for semantic prime exponent. regarding semantics and syntax, these criteria stipulate that the candidate resembles as much as possible the prototype. in this sense, the exponent should display the meaning of the semantic prime, as established by the nsm theory, as its primary or core meaning. furthermore, when the exponent is used with this meaning, its complementation patterns would also conform to the ones selected by the semantic prime. at this point, the valency options associated with the semantic prime are also studied, since identifying instances of the exponents within the different syntactic alternations associated with the prime would also determine their suitability as prime exponent. this said, table 3 shows the updated inventory of primes proposed by the nsm approach along with the oe exponents identified to date. 90 raquel mateo mendaza table 3. inventory of semantic primes and oe exponents (in bold) i~me=ic, you=ðu, someone=man, something=hwæt~ðing, people=folc/leode, body=bodig substantives kinds, parts relational substantives this=ðes, the same=ilca/self, other~else=oðer determiners one=an, two=twegen, some=sum, all=eall, much~many=micel~fela, little~few quantifiers good, bad, big=micel, small=lytel evaluators, descriptors know, think, want, don’t want, feel, see, hear mental predicates say, words, true speech do=(ge)don, happen=(ge)limpan, move=(ge)styrian actions, events, movement be (somewhere), there is, be (someone/something), (is) mine location, existence, specification, possession live, die life and death when~time, now, before, after, a long time, a short time, for some time, moment time where~place, here, above, below, far, near, side, inside, touch=(ge)hrinan space not, maybe, can, because, if, very, more, like~as logical concepts 3. the semantic prime live the inclusion of live into the nsm inventory of primes has not been a straightforward question. the semantic prime live was not considered in the first set of primes proposed by wierzbicka in 1972. later on, the inventory was expanded and new primitives were added. among others, live, along with the the semantic prime live 91 prime be (there is/are), was included in this new list within the category existence and life (wierzbicka 1996: 124). subsequent rearrangement of the inventory of primes has led to new categories, and currently live belongs to the category life and death, where it appears together with the prime die. it was difficult for the nsm team to define live, as philosophers throughout history have found it hard to define what ‘life’ is. however, nsm linguists realise that ‘life’ is an irreducible term that applies to the definition of other complex concepts and, as such, should be considered a semantic prime (wierzbicka 1996: 86, goddard & peeters 2006: 19) the meaning of the prime live has not been fully described in the nsm theory. rather, nsm researchers have been focused on establishing arguments required by the prime and the contexts in which its use is considered universal, in contradistinction to language dependent uses. in general terms, live is described as an existential prime that defines the meaning of being alive as opposed to death. for this reason, it is attributed exclusively to living things, this is to say, to those things that can ‘have life’, in contrast to non-living things. if we think about living things, the terms humans, animals, and plants come to our minds. however, it should be recalled, as wierzbicka (1996: 87) explains, that within the nsm model, living things are defined as ‘creatures’ that can feel something and do something. in this sense, humans and animals can be considered living things, but plants cannot, as they are unable to feel or do anything. this explanation for living things is related to the linguistic concept of animacy. live is a predicate prime whose basic configuration calls for an obligatory substantive complement in subject position. however, this substantive complement is restricted to an animate substantive represented by the primitive someone (in contrast to other predicate primes that also allow something as substantive complement in subject position, e.g. someone/something moved). in some contexts, someone can be replaced by specific (people) or deictic (i, you) substantive complements (goddard 2008: 71). all things considered, the resulting basic expression or minimal frame for live would be someone lives. semantic primes also display specific properties that are inherent to each prime. in the case of live, it is an imperfective verb —in contrast to ‘die’, which is perfective— and, consequently, it is intrinsically durational (wierzbicka 2002: 106, goddard 2008: 72). this means that living is a time dependent activity and as such, it can occur with durative phrases such as for a long time, at the same time, at that time, etc. acting as 92 raquel mateo mendaza temporal adjuncts. apart from this aspectual property, the manner property is also related to live in the sense that it allows for variation in manner (goddard 2008: 72). therefore, the expression with the manner adjunct someone lives like this (=in this way) is also found cross-linguistically. there are other optional syntactic configurations associated with live. these configurations are called valency options within the nsm framework. as has been explained above, apart from the basic configuration of each prime — its minimal frame— there are other optional arguments that can be used in order to complete some situational aspects expressed by the predicate prime. the combinatorial possibilities found for live are available from the nsm homepage. the labels are assigned according to standard semantic roles. table 4. combinatorial possibilities for live in terms of the nsm grammar along with their semantic roles someone lives for a long time [time] many people live in this place [place] this someone lives with someone else [comitative] it is good if someone lives like this [manner-evaluator] the time and manner valency options are connected to the durational and manner properties inherent to the prime live. in the example provided, the manner frame is extended into a more complex one by a sentence that evaluates the way of living. in table 4, the sample sentence evaluates this living as something positive by means of the prime good; conversely, the same sentence with the evaluator bad would also be well-formed. this is an illustrative example of how and to what extent semantic primes can combine with one other to define more complex meanings. the comitative alternation is also possible universally, since we can talk about sharing life with others. it is important to consider that live with is an ‘interpersonal’ valency. this is so because it is constrained to personal substantives. as stated by goddard, live is “inherently more ‘social’ than other primes” (2008: 71) and this valency option is only possible if both the obligatory and the extra personal argument are personal substantives, this is to say, if they imply that someone lives with someone else. the opposite —someone lives with something else— is not accepted. finally, the question of location deserves further attention. the semantic prime live can also occur with a locational adjunct. however, it is important to bear in mind that not all the various meanings conveyed by the english word the semantic prime live 93 live are found cross-linguistically and, therefore, they are not part of the nsm framework. in english, the verb live is polysemic, as it makes reference both to the sense ‘to be alive’ but also to that of ‘to live in a place’. the latter meaning can be understood from two different perspectives. ‘living in a place’ can be described in terms of permanent living conditions —fish live in water— or referring to a residential or temporal meaning —i live in canberra. in terms of the nsm model, the semantic prime live is described as localisable along with other semantic primes such as happen, move, touch, or be. however, in contrast to the latter primes, live does not allow for a locus argument (somewhere). thus, sentences like someone lives somewhere, corresponding to the residential or temporal meaning described above, are not relevant for this theory as they are not considered universal. on the other hand, live allows for a domain argument which is expressed with the nsm construction kind of place (goddard 2008). this meaning refers to the example fish live in water, which expresses locational domain and can be found in every natural language resulting in sentences like someone lives in a kind of place. to summarise, only those contexts in which the english word live refers to permanent living conditions are considered universal and, as such, relevant for the nsm studies (wierzbicka 1996: 126, goddard & wierzbicka 2002: 54, peeters et al. 2006: 132, goddard 2008: 79). in order to enrich and compare the conclusions on different meanings related to live, this question has been addressed in applications of the nsm to languages other than english. in some languages, such as german, spanish, or polish, among others, locational meanings are expressed by means of two different words (leben – wohnen, vivir – habitar, żyć – miesȥkać, respectively). in these languages, the word selected as prime exponent (the first one in each pair) expresses the universal meaning, whereas a different word (the second one for each pair) is preferred to talk about inhabiting or dwelling in a certain place (a street, town…) (peeters et al. 2006). other languages are similar to english and a single word presents both meanings, as in korean, amharic (ethiopia), or bunuba (australia) (goddard 2008). it is important to take into account that, as goddard points out, within the identification of exponents “[t]he exponent of live need not be the same verb which expresses the meaning ‘reside, live in a (particular) place’, ‘dwell’, or ‘inhabit’” (2012: 54), as is the case with english. the requirements for prime identification estipulate that the word selected as prime exponent should be the one that, in terms of localisation, gives preference to domain argument, regardless of its secondary temporal meanings, if any. 94 raquel mateo mendaza 4. selecting candidates for prime exponent the discussion of the semantic-syntactic features of the semantic prime live within the nsm framework must be prior to exponent identification, since the verbs selected as possible candidates should convey the meaning components considered in section 3. as pointed out in previous research (mateo mendaza 2020: 132), the studies in prime identification are purely synchronic and the suitability of candidates must be gauged within the limits of the oe period. following the methodological steps described in section 2, several lexicographical sources of oe have been consulted in order to select candidates for prime exponent. firstly, we have looked up the historical thesaurus of the oxford english dictionary (hereafter htoed, kay et al. 2009), which provides ten oe verbs under the heading ‘01.02.00 (vi) live’, namely, beon, gebidan, (ge)blawan, lifes/feores neotan, geseon, wesan, alibban, gelifian, wunian, and (ge)libban.5 to contrast these data, the lexical database of oe nerthus (martín arista et al. 2009) has been accessed. this database contains more than 30,000 entries based on the information retrieved from clark hall’s (1996), bosworth-toller’s (1973, hereafter bosworth-toller), and sweet’s (1973) dictionaries. a search launched for verbs conveying the meaning ‘to live’ yields eight oe verbs, namely, ālibban, cwiclifian, drohtian, (ge)bīdan, (ge)buan, (ge)eardian, libban, and wunian. it is noteworthy that only the verbs (ge)bīdan, ālibban, (ge)libban, and wunian are found in both sources. in the case of the htoed, this source does not define the specific meaning of the verbs included within each category. therefore, it is important to revise in detail the semantics of each candidate in order to decide whether they should be considered part of the subsequent analysis for prime exponent or they should be removed from the list. with this purpose, the meaning of the non-concurrent verbs has been checked against the dictionary of old english (hereafter doe, healey et al. 2018). this source selects citations from its corpus and gives meaning definitions ordered by hyponymy. as the doe has only published entries for headwords starting with the letters a–i, the meaning of the rest of the words have been checked against bosworthtoller. this search indicates that the verbs presented in table 5 do not convey the meaning ‘to live’ in a straightforward way. 5 note that the htoed makes no distinction of vowel length. the semantic prime live 95 table 5. definitions of some oe verbs found in the doe (a–i) and bosworth-toller wesan: ‘to be, exist, live’ beon: ‘to be, exist, happen, become’ (ge)blawan: ‘to blow, inflate, breath’ geseon: ‘to see, look, observe’ lifes/feores neotan: ‘to enjoy life’ neotan: ‘to enjoy, have the benefit of, make use of’ these definitions suggest that, on the one hand, beon and wesan are purely existential verbs and they do not exactly denote the sense of ‘living’. on the other hand, the verbs (ge)blawan and geseon refer to the meaning ‘to live’ in a figurative sense. as regards lifes/feores neotan, this collocation is frequently found in oe; however, the verb neotan can be used with many other nouns in the genitive, and thus it is not restricted to the term live. consequently, these verbs have been removed from the list of candidates. after this revision, the list of candidates is reduced to the verbs ālibban, (ge)bīdan, (ge)buan, cwiclifian, drohtian, (ge)eardian, (ge)libban, gelifian, and wunian. nevertheless, this selection of verbs requires further examination. first of all, the verb gelifian is found in lexicographical sources as an alternative spelling of the verb (ge)libban and not as a verb on its own. thus, these words would be studied together. besides, the doe does not provide an entry for cwiclifian, but for its present participle form cwiclifiende. this source evidences that only two occurrences are found for this participle form and, moreover, they are found exclusively in poetry. the same information is provided when cwiclifian is looked up in bosworth-toller. although this dictionary does provide an entry for cwicfilian, only the meaning for its past participle form is presented. with these data, the verb cwiclifian has been removed from the list of candidates. in the case of (ge)bīdan, a first look at this verb suggests that it is directly related to the present-day english (hereafter pde) verb abide, whose meaning is clearly far from the semantic prime under analysis, as explained in section 3. a search in etymological sources confirms this statement. orel (2003: 46) relates bīdan to the proto-germanic form *bīđanan and defines its meaning as ‘to bide, to abide, to continue, to wait’. skeat (1993: 38) studies etymology from the pde perspective and also associates the pde verb bide (close to the meaning ‘to await, to wait’) with the anglo-saxon form bīdan. on the semantic side, mitchell claims that “bidan is felt to be a verb of ‘rest’” (1985: 476) in contrast 96 raquel mateo mendaza to the dynamic and durational meaning associated with live. given this evidence, (ge)bīdan has not been considered as a candidate for prime exponent. regarding ālibban, this verb is a morphological derivative of libban. although it appears as an independent entry in the different sources that have been consulted, it is important to study this verb in detail. on the one hand, the meanings provided for ālibban in the dictionaries (‘to be alive, have life; to remain alive (after risk of death), to survive; to spend (one’s days), live (one’s life)’) are included within the meanings proposed for (ge)libban. in this respect, kastovsky (1992) points out that the prefix a-, among other verbal prefixes, shows no change in meaning when attached to a simplex form. kastovsky (1992: 377) stresses that “in subsequent copies of one and the same text prefixes are often omitted, added or exchanged for other prefixes without any apparent semantic effect. this points to a considerable weakening of the meanings of these prefixes”. this effect is considered by hiltunen (1983: 54) as a lack of expressive content of this kind of prefixes and this reveals their incipient decline within the oe language.6 these points are confirmed by quantitative considerations, since the doe indicates that ālibban shows a remarkable low frequency within the corpus, with only twelve occurrences, including all its inflected forms. for these reasons, we can conclude that ālibban should not be part of this investigation as an independent candidate. to recapitulate, the list of candidates is reduced to five oe verbs, namely, (ge)buan, drohtian, (ge)eardian, (ge)libban, and wunian, which, according to the available sources, display the meaning ‘to live’. of these candidates, (ge)libban is etymologically related (orel 2003, kroonen 2013) to the label of the prime live. ringe & taylor (2014: 34) find the etymon in the proto-germanic form *libai*libja‘live’ corresponding to gothic and old norse lifa, oe libban. 5. assessing prime candidates from different perspectives once the different candidates for prime exponent are selected, the next step of analysis calls for the study of these verbs under the four criteria described in section 2, namely the morphological, textual, semantic, and syntactic criteria. this section discusses the results thrown by each criterion and selects the candidate that best fulfils the requirements of the oe exponent for the semantic prime live. 6 see martín arista (2012a) for a panchronic perspective on the question. the semantic prime live 97 regarding morphology, the information on the inheritance relations of each candidate has been retrieved from the lexical database of oe nerthus. as pointed out above, the morphological criterion considers both the hierarchical position of the candidate word within its paradigm, as well as its productivity, understood as frequency and combinability as base of derivation. in terms of its status, words representing the primitive of the paradigm are preferred as they are the words around which the whole derivational paradigm is gathered.7 in this case, only the verb (ge)buan is the primitive word of its lexical paradigm. the rest of candidates —(ge)libban, (ge)eardian, wunian, drohtian— are created by means of zero derivation and they derived directly from the nouns līf, eard, (ge)wuna, and the verb (ge)drēogan, respectively. as regards productivity, the number of derivatives as well as the different word formation processes applied and the category of the resulting derivatives are also relevant for exponent selection. in this line, (ge)buan displays a small paradigm, with only nine derivatives, mainly nouns and adjectives, created by means of prefixation, suffixation and zero derivation. on the other hand, the verb libban belongs to a much larger lexical paradigm comprising sixty derivatives. in contrast to the paradigm of (ge)buan, the paradigm of līf also includes compound words and several nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. it is remarkable in this respect that nine out of the sixty derivatives in this paradigm directly derive from the candidate verb libban instead of deriving from the lexical primitive. this is the case with the derivatives ālibban, belibban 1, eftlibban, lifiende, midlifiend, mislybban, oferlibban, unlifigende, and wellibbende. therefore, (ge)buan and libban show the same number of derivatives of their own (see figure 1). the rest of candidates are not as productive as gelibban and gebuan and thus, they do not match the requirements of the morphological criterion. in terms of textual frequency, each candidate has been ascribed to the different types —unlemmatised forms of the verb under analysis— and tokens —occurrences recorded for each type— found in the dictionary of old english corpus (henceforth doec, healey et al. 2009). this analysis concludes that the verb (ge)libban clearly outnumbers the rest of the candidates, with 218 types and 6,635 tokens, against the figures displayed by the rest of candidates, which do not reach half of its occurrences (wunian: 87 types and 2,462 tokens; (ge)eardian: 99 types and 976 tokens; (ge)buan: 45 types and 296 tokens; drohtian: 22 types 7 the relationship between paradigmatic morphology and oe word-formation is discussed in martín arista (2012b, 2013). 98 raquel mateo mendaza figure 1. lexical paradigms of the candidates (ge)buan and (ge)libban (candidate words are displayed in bold) the semantic prime live 99 and 83 tokens). hence, the verb (ge)libban is considered the best candidate word for prime exponent in terms of textual frequency. at this point, it is important to bear in mind that, as explained in previous research (mateo mendaza 2016a), the textual criterion can be affected by some linguistic phenomena such as polysemy or homonymy, which may alter the counting of types and tokens. in the case of (ge)libban, homonymy may appear between some verbal and nominal forms such as leofa, libbe, and lybbe, among others. the same happens to the rest of candidates. for example, the forms eardas and eardiende can be attributed to the candidate verb or to the nouns eard and eardiend, respectively; and some homonym words are found within the inflectional forms of (ge)buan and those of the verb (ge)būgan. as regards polysemy, all these candidates have secondary meanings, as detailed below, so that some of their occurrences may not be directly linked to the meaning ‘to live’. although the textual criterion is considered the less conclusive one due to the reasons just mentioned, (ge)libban stands out from the rest of candidates. therefore, this verb is still considered the most suitable candidate word for prime exponent (see table 6). moving on to the semantic and syntactic criteria, the information required to study the different candidates has been gathered primarily from the doe and completed by consulting bosworth-toller. dealing with semantics, an outline of the semantic-syntactic features of the semantic prime live and the distinctions found between the english verb live and the nsm approach on this term has already been pointed out in section 3. semantically, the selection of an oe exponent for live calls for an intransitive existential verb whose primary meaning refers to live in the sense of ‘being alive’. within the nsm theory, the residential meaning ‘to dwell’ is not considered universal and, therefore, does not define the semantic prime live. for this reason, candidates presenting the existential meaning of live as their core meaning will be selected as prime exponent. in this respect, the verbs (ge)eardian and (ge)buan are discarded since they do not conform to the prototype. both the doe and bosworth-toller refer to (ge)eardian mainly as a residential verb. only the simplex form eardian is found with the existential meaning in a secondary entry and exclusively in bosworthtoller. in the case of (ge)buan, the existential meaning is not considered at all in either of the sources consulted. bosworth-toller indicates that the verb wunian also gives preference to the residential meaning, whereas the existential 100 raquel mateo mendaza table 6. types and tokens of (ge)libban found in the doec (ge)libban life (1,641), lifes (1,288), leof (358), leofað (307), leofan (229), libban (163), leofa (148), lyfte (140), leofode (135), libbe (104), lifigende (93), lybban (90), lifde (89), lifigendan (87), leofe (80), libbað (79), lybbað (74), libbende (62), leofast (54), lifgende (53), lybbende (50), lybbe (47), leofaþ (46), lyfde (42), lifiende (41), lifigendra (38), lyfað (37), leofodon (37), lyfigendan (35), lyfe (33), lifige (30), lifgendra (29), liofað (28), lifdon (27), lifigendum (27), lifian (26), lifiað (24), lyfes (20), lifge (19), lifgan (19), leofest (17), lifiendan (17), lyfode (16), libbendum (16), lifgendan (16), lyfiendan (14), lyfigende (13), libbendra (13), leofæð (13), lifeð (13), lybbendra (12), leofeð (11), libben (11), lifgendum (11), libbon (11), lifgean (10), leofede (10), lifigenda (10), lyfedon (9), lifigan (9), libbaþ (9), lifiaþ (9), lyfige (9), leofedon (8), leofæ (8), lifode (8), lyfan (8), lybbendum (8), lifiendra (8), lifigendne (7), lifede (7), lifgað (7), lybbon (7), lifiendum (7), lifigenne (7), libbanne (7), lifedon (7), lifia (7), lifie (7), lybbendan (6), lyfdon (6), lybbenne (6), libbendes (6), lifæs (6), lyfian (6), lifigeað (5), lifgen (5), leofodan (5), libbæð (5), libbendne (5), libbenne (5), lyfede (5), lifigean (5), lifigen (5), libbendan (5), lyfiað (5), lifiendne (5), lyfigendra (5), lifgeað (4), libbeð (4), liofost (4), lifiendes (4), lifgendne (4), liofa (4), lifiga (4), lyfigenda (4), lyfge (4), lybbendre (3), libbæþ (3), lyfedan (3), lybben (3), lybbanne (3), lifgiað (3), lybbendes (3), lifgaþ (3), libbæn (3), lyftum (3), lyfigendes (3), lyfgyndra (3), lybbynde (3), lifæþ (3), lyfdest (2), lifigendon (2), leofdon (2), lyfgendum (2), lifden (2), lifgenne (2), libbad (2), lyfod (2), liofast (2), libbendu (2), lifigað (2), lifigiend (2), libb (2), leofde (2), libbendre (2), lifgenda (2), lyfgean (2), lifgeaþ (2), lyfgendan (2), lifiendre (2), lyfed (2), lifias (2), lifigiende (2), lifen (2), leofad (2), lybbyndra (2), leofoð (2), lifed (2), libbenda (2), leofod (2), lifiendræ (2), lifaþ (2), lybbaþ (2), lyfigan (1), lyfiendes (1), lyfodon (1), lybbæþ (1), lifigenden (1), leofoden (1), lybbenda (1), lyfigeanne (1), lifigendre (1), lyfgan (1), leofen (1), lyfie (1), libbinde (1), lifien (1), lyfon (1), lifð (1), lifast (1), lyfiendum (1), lyfiende (1), lifigiendra (1), lybb (1), lyfeð (1), lifgiaþ (1), leofedan (1), leofæþ (1), lyfen (1), lyfene (1), lifæ (1), lybbæn (1), lifianne (1), lifienne (1), leofge (1), lyfenne (1), lyfigean (1), liofeð (1), liofæð (1), lifgendre (1), liofan (1), lybbendne (1), leofedæ (1), lyfigenden (1), lyfigenne (1), lifigendes (1), lyfiendne (1), lifeþ (1), lifd (1), lyfigynde (1), lifigendæ (1), lyfgyndan (1), libbynde (1), lyfigyndne (1), lyfygyndra (1), liofæþ (1), lifiendæn (1), lifiendæ (1), liofæd (1), lifgendræ (1), liofaþ (1), lybbede (1), libbeþ (1), leofgife (1), leofæst (1), lybbene (1), lyfigendre (1) types 218 tokens 6,635 the semantic prime live 101 one is found as a secondary meaning of this highly polysemic verb. as for drohtian, whereas bosworth-toller refers to a more figurative meaning of live, the existential meaning appears within the doe definition along with the residential one. finally, the verb (ge)libban, both in its simplex and complex form, is defined with the prototypical sense ‘to be alive, have life’. therefore, both drohtian and (ge)libban display the core meaning required by the nsm theory and, thus, they are the most suitable candidates for prime exponent in terms of semantics. syntactically speaking, the basic configuration of the prime live opens an obligatory substantive subject slot which must be essentially animate (someone lives). as previously explained, the prime live entails the aspectual property of implying duration (for some time), as well as implying variation in manner (like this). for those verbs conveying the meaning at stake, that is, drohtian and (ge)libban, the syntax is examined in terms of the information given by the dictionaries. as expected by the nsm theory requirements, both verbs open for a substantive subject slot, but its animacy is not described in the sources consulted. the aspectual property of duration and variation in manner is explicitly associated with (ge)libban and drohtian. the entry of libban defines duration as ‘to continue in life, be alive for a longer or shorter time, have one’s life prolonged’, and manner as ‘to pass life in a specified fashion, indicated by an adv., adverbial phrase, or adj. or complementary subst.’ (bosworth-toller). similarly, drohtian refers to ‘to live in an indefinite length of time/ to live a stated length of time’, and also allows for variation in manner: ‘to live in a certain state or condition, to conduct one’s life/ to live in a certain manner, to conduct one’s life’ (doe). therefore, both (ge)libban and drohtian concur with the syntactic patterns described by the nsm theory for the semantic prime live. the semantic and syntactic information found for these two verbs is summarised in table 7. given the results obtained from the application of the four criteria for prime exponency, it can be stated that only the verb (ge)libban fulfils the requirements proposed in terms of morphology, frequency, semantics, and syntax and, therefore, it should be considered the oe exponent of live. it remains to look for evidence of the exponent word with the valency options associated with the prime under investigation. as described in section 3, live is connected to the temporal, locational, comitative, and mannerevaluator configurations. it must be borne in mind that the locational 102 raquel mateo mendaza alternation is only referred to a domain argument (kind of place), since the simpler locus expression live somewhere is not considered universal. table 7. semantic information of drohtian and (ge)libban retrieved from the doe and bosworth-toller entry meaning in the doe (a–i) meaning in bosworth-toller8 drohtian 1. to live, dwell 1a. in collocation with other verbs similar in meaning (eardian, libban) 1b. to live in an indefinite length of time 1c. to live a stated length of time 1d. lif drohtnian / drohtian lif ‘to live a/one’s life’ 2. to live, dwell in a place 2ai. transferred: to dwell in a person as in a place 2aii. figuratively: to dwell in one’s heart 2b. to live under 2c. to live with 3. to live in a certain state or condition, to conduct one’s life 4. to live in a certain manner, to conduct one’s life 5. to live according to a rule, a teaching a will or purpose 6. to engage in, spend life in i. to converse, dwell or keep company with, pass life, live 8 for bosworth-toller, the information provided by the main volume and the supplement is summarised in a single entry. the semantic prime live 103 entry meaning in bosworth-toller libban to live i. to be alive, have life a. to remain alive after risk of death b. fig. of things ii. to supply oneself with food, feed, subsist (lit. or fig.) iii. to procure oneself the means of subsistence iv. to pass life in a specified fashion with regard to conduct with regard to personal conditions with adv. or adv. phrase with adj. or compl. sbst. with regard to the rule or principle v. with cognate object vi. to continue in life, be alive for a longer or shorter time, have one’s life prolonged; said of deity and spirits vii. to continue in the memory of men viii. to make one’s abode, reside gelibban to live i. to be alive iii. to escape spiritual death iv. trans. 1. to have as part of one’s life, to experience 2. to get by living, to live to do a search in the doec provides examples of (ge)libban within all these configurations, as exemplified below: (1) a. temporal [bede 3 060600 (19.244.11)] hwæt se æðelhun þær nehstan neahte forðferde; & ecgberht hine þære aðle getrumade, & micle tide æfter þon lifde & biscophade onfeng, & þone had mid efenweorðum dædum frætwade. ‘well then æthelhun died next night; and ecgberht recovered from the illness, and lived long after this and became a bishop and adorned his office with corresponding conduct.’ (miller 1959: 245) 104 raquel mateo mendaza b. locational [æchom i, 28 006000 (415.143)] to eorðan heo bið astreht þurh hyre scylda oncnawennysse. þonne se lichama þe heo on leofode to duste bið formolsnod. ‘to earth it shall be prostrated by a knowledge of its sins, when the body in which it lived shall be rotted to dust.’ (thorpe 1844: 411) c. comitative [æchom i, 9 009200 (255.189)] seofon gear heo lyfode mid hire were & syððan heo wæs wuniende on wuduwan hade: oð feower & hundeahtatig geara. ‘seven years she had lived with her husband, and was afterwards continuing in widowhood eighty-four years.’ (thorpe 1844: 147) d. manner [æchom i, 6 003600 (227.91)] gif ge willað æfter menniscum gesceade lybban, þonne sind ge gastlice ymbsnidene; ‘if ye will live according to human reason, then are ye spiritually circumcised;’ (thorpe 1844: 372) these instances confirm that the uses of (ge)libban coincide with those proposed by the nsm theory for the semantic prime live. consequently, the results provided by (ge)libban in terms of the different criteria under analysis, as well as the valency options associated with this verb, lead us to the conclusion that the verb (ge)libban should be considered the oe exponent for the semantic prime live. 6. concluding remarks this research continues the research line opened on the study of oe semantic primes by identifying the oe exponent for the semantic prime live. in this sense, a list of candidate verbs conveying the meaning ‘to live’ has been analysed and the conclusion drawn from this analysis is that the oe verb (ge)libban is selected as prime exponent. the methodology applied in this study is based on previous research on semantic primes identification in historical languages and it relies on morphological, textual, semantic, and syntactic data to reach solid conclusions. the semantic prime live 105 apart from the analysis of candidates from these four perspectives, the gathering of evidence for the standard uses of the verb (ge)libban with the syntactic complementation patterns —valency options— associated with the prime has been instrumental when assessing the accuracy of the initial proposal for prime exponent. after establishing (ge)libban as the oe exponent of live, further research calls for the identification of the exponent of die to complete the category life and death, thus enlarging the inventory of primes in oe. these advances are likely to lead to a refinement of the methodology proposed for the identification of semantic primes in historical languages. references bosworth, j. & t. n. toller 1973 [1898]: an anglo-saxon dictionary. oxford, oxford university press. http://www.bosworthtoller.com croft, w. 1991: syntactic categories and grammatical relations. chicago, university of chicago press. de la cruz cabanillas, i. 2007: semantic primes in old english: a preliminary study of descriptors. selim 14: 37–58. goddard, c. 2002: the search for the shared semantic core of all languages. in c. goddard & a. wierzbicka eds. meaning and universal grammar. theory and empirical findings. vol. i. amsterdam, john benjamins: 5–40. goddard, c. ed. 2008: cross-linguistics semantics. amsterdam & philadelphia, john benjamins. goddard, c. 2011: semantic analysis: a practical introduction. new york, oxford university press. goddard, c. 2012: semantic primes, semantic molecules, semantic templates: key concepts in the nsm approach to lexical typology. linguistics 50.3: 711–743. goddard, c. & b. peeters 2006: the natural semantic metalanguage (nsm) approach: an overview with reference to the most important romance languages. in b. peeters ed. semantic primes and universal grammar: empirical evidence from the romance languages. amsterdam, john benjamins: 13–38. goddard, c. & a. wierzbicka 2002: semantic primes and universal grammar. in c. goddard & a. wierzbicka eds. meaning and universal grammar. theory and empirical findings. vol. i. amsterdam, john benjamins: 41–85. guarddon anelo, m. c. 2009: un análisis de las propiedades combinatorias de los primitivos semánticos a través de las adposiciones complejas en inglés antiguo. revista española de lingüística 39.2: 93–122. 106 raquel mateo mendaza hall, j. r. c. 1996: a concise anglo-saxon dictionary. toronto, toronto university press. healey dipaolo, a. ed. with john price wilkin & xin xiang 2009: the dictionary of old english web corpus. toronto. dictionary of old english project. http://www.doe. utoronto.ca/pub/webcorpus.htm healey dipaolo, a., a. cameron, a. crandell amos et al. eds. 2018: dictionary of old english: a to g online. toronto, dictionary of old english project. hiltunen, r. 1983: the decline of the prefixes and the beginnings of the english phrasal verb. turku, turun yliopisto. kastovsky, d. 1992: semantics and vocabulary. in r. hogg ed. the cambridge history of the english language. vol. i: the beginnings to 1066. cambridge, cambridge university press: 290–408. kay, c., j. roberts, m. samuels & i. wotherspoon 2009: the historical thesaurus of the oxford english dictionary. university of glasgow, oxford university press. kroonen, g. 2013: etymological dictionary of proto-germanic. leiden, brill. martín arista, j. 2012a: the old english prefix ge-: a panchronic reappraisal. australian journal of linguistics 32.4: 411–433. martín arista, j. 2012b: lexical database, 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linguistics 36.4: 542–555. mateo mendaza, r. 2020: semantic primes in historical languages. the identification of the old english exponent for do. journal of english studies 18: 125–152. https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.4467 miller, t. 1959: bede’s ecclesiastical history of the english people. part i, 2. london & new york & toronto, oxford university press. mitchell, b. 1985: old english syntax. vol. i. oxford, oxford university press. orel, v. 2003: a handbook of germanic etymology. leiden, brill. the semantic prime live 107 peeters, b., m.-o. junker, p. farrel, p. perini-santos & b. maher 2006: nsm exponents and universal grammar in romance: speech; actions, events and movement; existence and possession; life and death. in b. peeters ed. semantic primes and universal grammar: empirical evidence from the romance languages. amsterdam, john benjamins: 111–136. ringe, d. & a. taylor 2014: the development of old english. oxford, oxford university press. skeat, w. 1993: the concise dictionary of english etymology. great britain, wordsworth edition ltd. sweet, h. 1973 [1897]: the student’s dictionary of anglo-saxon. new york & london, the macmillan company. thorpe, b. 1844: the homilies of the anglo-saxon church. london, printed for the ælfric society. wierzbicka, a. 1996: semantics. primes and universals. oxford, oxford university press. wierzbicka. a. 2002: semantic primes and universal grammar in polish. in c. goddard & a. wierzbicka eds. meaning and universal grammar. theory and empirical findings. vol. ii. amsterdam, john benjamins: 65–144. wierzbicka, a. 2006: english: meaning and culture. new york, oxford university press. author’s address departamento de filologías modernas universidad de la rioja edificio de filologías c/ san josé de calasanz, 33 26004 logroño, la rioja (españa) received: 10 february 2021 e-mail: raquel.mateo@unirioja.es revised version accepted: 10 march 2021 selim teresa moralejo, selim 10 (2000): 123—143 the semantics of middle english composite predicates1 1. introduction. aims and scope the goal of this paper is to classify the composite predicates2 formed with the light verbs maken, don, haven, taken, yeven and nimen extracted from the middle english section of the helsinki corpus of english texts, diachronic and dialectal,3 on the basis of the semantic content they express. after describing the main semantic groups into which the composite predicates in our data may be subdivided, the prevailing semantic categories with each light verb studied are analysed. finally, composite predicates which consist of the same deverbal object and different light verb are considered. composite predicates (henceforth, cps), are structures which consist of a verb phrase followed by a nominal object. the syntactically main verb, usually do, have, give, make or take, is partially delexicalized and has accordingly been called a light or support verb. it acts as a basis to which the grammatical features of tense, person and number are attached. the nominal object carries the lexical content, acting as a non-verbal predicate. sentence (1) below contains an example of a prototypical present-day english cp, have a look: (1) he told me to have a look at the report. 1 i would like to thank dr. luis iglesias rábade for his helpful comments and suggestions. the research which is here reported on has been funded by the spanish ministry of education and science through its dirección general de investigación grant number pff20000492. this grant is hereby gratefully acknowledged. 2 the term composite predicate ultimately goes back to cattel (1984) and has been more recently adopted by akimoto and brinton (1999a), matsumoto (1999), kytö (1999) and tanabe (1999). 3 further information on the helsinki corpus may be found in kytö (1993) and in rissanen, kytö and palandercollin (1993). teresa moralejo 104 different semantic classifications of present-day english cps have been put forward by nickel (1968: 8), akimoto (1990), stein (1991), dixon (1991: 354 ff.) or quirk and stein (1991). stein (1991: 23) establishes the following semantic groups for cps with give, have and take: perception, mental activity, verbal activity, consumption, bodily care, contact activity, physical action, involuntary reaction, potentially voluntary reaction and voluntary reaction, while quirk and stein (1991: 1989) replace voluntary reaction with tentative action. nickel (1968: 8) distinguishes six semantic subclasses of nouns which combine with give, have, make and take. these are nouns denoting movement or rest, vision, the action of speaking, sounds, the action of cleaning and, finally, nouns denoting the action of drinking. claridge (2000: 142 ff.) has classified the nouns that enter in combinations with light verbs into the following categories: entity, state, verbal activity, concrete activity, abstract activity and mental/emotional process. focusing on the semantics of the deverbals rather than on the combinations themselves, akimoto (1990) differentiates several semantic categories of nouns with which give, have, make and take tend to combine. in view of the data extracted from the me section of the helsinki corpus, we propose the following tentative classification of middle english (henceforth, me) cps, based on the dominant semantic categories in our data (groups with more than ten tokens). due to the difficulties in establishing watertight compartments, it may be possible to ascribe some of the combinations to more than one group, and in addition, subgroups have been distinguished within some categories. 1. feelings and emotions. this group consists of structures which express the entertaining of a certain sentiment, being in a particular frame of mind, experiencing a certain sensation or emotion. 2. offensive action. cps which express a hostile action, an action which implies some sort of physical or psychological damage make up this group. middle english composite predicates 105 3. mental action. a wide number of combinations indicate the action or process of thinking, some sort of mental action or activity in general. the deverbals in this group can be further subdivided into nouns which express an action of guarding, of paying careful attention, care, or regard, deverbals which express the mental action of trusting, confiding, relying on a person or thing, and deverbals which express the formation of an opinion or notion concerning something by exercising the mind upon it. 4. speech. cps which express an action which involves the uttering or pronouncing of words or articulating sounds also occur in our data. 5. redress. the reparation, amendment or correction of an error or fault is the semantic content indicated by a number of the structures analysed. 6. judgement. some of the units in our data indicate the action of taking legal steps to establish a claim or obtain judicial remedy, a legal process, or the taking of a judicial decision. 7. endearment. a notable part of the structures recorded express the manifestation of good disposition or some sort of affection for someone or something. 8. motion. a subset of cps refers to actions which involve changing place or position, the process of moving. 9. agreement. combinations which denote the action of coming to an accord or an arrangement between two or more persons as to a course of action, a mutual understanding, a covenant, or treaty also occur in our data. 10. homage. cps that indicate the acknowledgement of respect, reverence, dutiful respect, or honour, estimation or appreciation make up this subgroup. 11. trade. several structures indicate the action of carrying on trade, buying and selling, of having commercial dealings with someone. teresa moralejo 106 2. analysis of the data after describing the major categories in our data, we next review the type of actions expressed by each of the light verbs analysed in this paper. for each verb, the groups are presented in order of decreasing frequency of occurrence. 2.1. doncps doncps tend to fall into the following semantic subgroups in our data: 2.1.1. offensive action this is the most numerous category. it contains combinations with deverbals such as bismer, damage, despite, disese, guilerie, harm, hurt, inconvenience, justice, loth, offense, outrake, peine, persecucioun, punishment, qued, sanchip, scathe, shame, shond, sorwe, unese, unresoun, unright, vengeaunce, vileinie, wene, wo, wough, wrake, wreche or wrong. sentence (160) below contains a cp which belongs to this semantic group, don offense: (2) (^ (\tercia mulier.\) ^) ye false traitours! vnto god ye do grett offens, to sle and mordere yong children þat in þer cradelle slumber! (me4: cmdigby, 106)1 2.1.2. redress combinations with nouns such as almesdede, amend, amendment, alms, andetnysse, charite, dedbote, lak, penaunce, penitence, remedie, sacrifice, shrift, or reowsunge, as in (161) below, occur: 1 all the examples quoted have been extracted from the me section of the helsinki corpus. each quotation contains information on the subperiod to which it belongs, namely me1 (from 1150 to 1250), me2 (from 1250 to 1350), me3 (from 1350 to 1420) or me4 (from 1420 to 1500), the abbreviated title of the text from which it has been extracted and the page number where it can be found. the full titles of the texts as well as more information on them may be found in kytö (1993). middle english composite predicates 107 (3) be þare þe hælend on his godspelle cwæð, ‘doð reowsunge, for þam ðe heofene rice neahlæcð’. (me1: cmbodle, 42) 2.1.3. endearment cps with ese, esinesse, favour, godnesse, god, grace, kindenesse, love, merci, milce, plesaunce, thanking or thanks belong to this category, exemplified with don ese in sentence (162) below: (4) sche is agreyd to speke wyth me, and sche hopythe to doo me ease, as sche saythe. (me4: cmpriv, 441) 2.1.4. homage combinations with buxomnesse, feute, homage, honour, manred, worship or reverence, as in example (163) below, make up this subgroup. (5) for certes, namoore reverence shal be doon there to a kyng than to a knave. (me3: ctpros, 291 c.2) 2.2. havencps cps usually belong to the semantic fields which follow. 2.2.1. feelings and emotions this is the most numerous group with haven. akimoto (1990: 869) also distinguishes this category of nouns in combination with haven as a light verb, and tanabe (1999: 105) points out the tendency of haven to combine with nouns expressing emotions. different feelings and emotions, such as pleasure, as in haven liking in (6), scorn, as in haven disdein in (7) or suffering, as in haven care in (8), may be expressed with havencps: (6) ah þuncheð ham softe & habbeð mare delit þrin; þen ei oðer habbe i licunge of þe worlt. (me1: cmhali, 131) (7) certes, wel oghte a man have desdayn of synne and withdrawe hym from that thraldom and vileynye. (me3: cmctpros, 290 c.2) teresa moralejo 108 (8) (^mercy.^) i haue moche care for yow, my own frende. (me4: cmmankin, 163) abhominacioun, affecioun, appetite, aue, blisse, comfort, compassioun, charite, deth, defaut, deinte, delectacioun, delice, deliting, desire, despite, devocioun, disport, drede, drednesse, embethanc, enclinaunce, envie, favour, feeling, fere, fervour, game, gladnesse, grevaunce, grure, hevinesse, jelosie, joy, liking, longing, love, loving, lust, merci, merveille, milce, mirth, morning, nede, nith, ofthinking, onde, ore, overhohe, peine, pite, pleie, plesaunce, pride, reuth, reuthnes, scorn, shame, sorinesse, sorwe, swetenesse, tene, torment, tribulacioun, win, wleatunge, wo, wough, wonder, wrong, yerning and zele also belong to this category. 2.2.2. mental action this is a numerous class which includes units that may express belief, as in haven confidence in (9) below, attention, as in haven hed in (10), or opinion, as in haven estimacioun in (11) below: (9) the preste, hauyng confidens in hys promysse, was wel content, (me4: cmkempe, i 57) (10) uor he ne heþ none hede of longe ryote of tales y−slyked / ne y−rymed. (me2: cmayenbi, i 99) (11) "thou hast," quod sche, "the ryght estimacion of this”. (me3: cmboeth, 447 c.1) also in this category are cps formed with belief, bisinesse, confidence, cure, deliberacioun, diligence, dreme, durstinesse, feith, forthinking, hope, ileve, keping, knouing, knouleche, knouleching, kunning, meditacioun, memorie, mind, mistrouing, opinioun, penaunce, premeditacioun, remorse, repentaunce, regard, suspect, suspecioun, sweuening, thought, trust, understanding, ward and witing. 2.2.3. motion fal, cours, passage, climbing, or fare, as in (170) below, are nouns which express an action which involves movement and which have been found in combination with haven in our corpus. middle english composite predicates 109 (12) na for þam þt þe deofel hæfde æni… fare to ure hælende oðer his mæð wære þt he him ahwær on neawste come, if he hit for ure lufe |p98 ne eðafede. (me1: cmbodle, 9698) 2.2.4. speech communicacioun, langage, speche, word or talking, as in (171) below, are examples of this category. (13) thei graunted his peticioun, and broute him forth to þe castel of flynt, where þe duk and he had but a smal talkyng, and þan rydyn to þe castell of chestir. (me4: cmcapchr, 213) 2.3. makencps deverbals from the semantic fields which follow have been recorded forming cps with maken in me. 2.3.1. speech a variety of makencps indicate the production or articulation of sounds. this is the case with declaracioun, in (172) below, as well as with answere, avaunt, bere, bost, compleint, crie, lesing, mencioun, mind, mon, morne, morning, notice, pleint, preier, proclamacioun, prophecie, protestacioun, questioun, rehersaille, relacioun, rem, replicacioun, sermoun, site, song, sorwe, weilawei or warning. (14) wherfore me semeth convenyent, syth that i speke of the ascendent, to make of it speciall declaracioun. (me3: cmastro, 670 c2) 2.3.2. offensive action deverbals in this subgroup include breking, care, faisithe, manace, wasting, or, as in (173) below, perturbacioun and troubling: (15) he scholde be more feblid & more perturbacioun or troblyng schulde be made in hym. me3: cmphlebo, 47) a number of cps expresses the action of contending in battle, of striving for victory or struggling. this is the case with afray, conquest, debate, teresa moralejo 110 defense, enarminges, justes, resistence, strife, werre or assault, as in the following example: (16) and also þe friday folwynge in þe same woke of estarne, in þe same er of owre lord þe kyng xvj=e=, thomas bradle, john spaldyng, william schyngilwode, preest, & richard langeford, with other mo vne−knowen, in þe feld of stebenythe, vp−on þe land of john ereld by−syde schordych, with force & armes, bowes & arwes, swerdes & bokelers & other wepene, & þere asawt madyn to þe sone of john ereld and to þe omen of schordych. (me3: cmdocu3, 233) 2.3.3. agreement accord, alliaunce, appointment, bargain, bond, composicioun, conspiracie, convencioun, covenaunt, covin, forme, saughte, treue or foreward, as in (175) below, frequently occur in our data. (17) the seide bysshop dean and chapiter that tyme beyng hadde lycence to enclose the cimitary ther as hit more pleynly apperyth yn a composicion ther of made. (me4: cmdocu4, 84) 2.3.4. judgement maken combines with nouns such as arbitrement, award, dom, jugement, proces, rightfulness, serche, testament, sute, or statut and ordinaunce, as in (176). (18) also þat þer schal non wardeins make non newe statut… ne newe ordinance with−oute assent of alle þe bretherhede, & þat it be don on on of þe foure dayes afor seid. (me3: cmdocu3, 53) 2.3.5. redress combinations with alms, amendes, amendment, aseth, offring, offrende, reformacioun, relef, restitucioun, sacrifice, shrift or penitence, illustrated in (177) below, belong to this subgroup. (19) þe blake cros limpeð to þeo þe makieði þe worlt hare penitence for ladliche sunnen. (me1: cmancre, 30) 2.3.6. trade middle english composite predicates 111 alienacioun, dispense, feffment, fyn, marchaundie, paiement, raunson, sale, transmutacioun, yielding and assessing and levy, as in (178) below, form cps in combination with maken. (20) assessyng and levy was made amonge the sayde bysshoppis tenantis of ij dymes. (me4: cmdocu4, 81) 2.3.7. motion coming, departing, haste, lepis, pilgrimage, stiring, wei, or, as in (179) below, breid, express actions which involve movement in combination with maken. (21) and ate laste i make abreid, caste up myn hed and loke aboute, riht as a man that were in doute and wot noght wher he schal become. (me3: cmgower, i 317) 2.3.8. mental action this category gathers deverbals such as comparisoun, disencioun, division, eleccioun, estimacioun, force, strength, thought or beþenchinge and memorie, reflected in (180) below. (22) þet is to alle guode herten / þet eche daye zueteliche be zoþe loue makeþ memorie / and beþenchinge of his passion. (me2: cmayenbi, i 112) 2.4. takencps taken favours combinations with deverbals belonging to the following semantic subgroups. 2.4.1. mental action this category includes combinations with deverbals such as avis, avisement, counseil, cure, direccioun, force, gome, hed, high, kep, red, repentaunce, regard, tent, thought, witnesse, yeme or attendaunce, illustrated in (181) below: teresa moralejo 112 (23) and all for lacke of our maysters and nouryces all wrapped in neclygence taketh none attendaunce to us. (me4: cminnoce, 6) 2.4.2. feelings and emotions care, compassioun, conscience, displesure, displesaunce, herte, joy, lust, merci, mon, pite, shame, sorwe or talent express feelings in combination with taken, whether pleasure, as is the case with taken lust, or suffering, as in taken displesure, in (182) below: (24) also i praye yow feele my lady off norffolkys dysposicion to me wardys, and whethyre she toke any dysplesure at my langage, ore mokkyd ore dysdeyned my wordys whyche i hadd to hyre. (me4: cmpriv, 449) 2.4.3. motion taken in combination with gate, pilgrimage, sauf passage, viage, wei or trace, as in the following sample, denotes actions in this category. (25) alisaunder and candace to chaumber token her trace, (me2: cmalisau, i 422) 2.4.4. redress cps with bote, discipline, penaunce, shrift or right, as in (184) below, enter into this category. (26) bute ðu neme riht of ðe seluen of ðe misdades ðe ðu mis−dest, mid fasten, oððer mid wake. (me1: cmvices1, 125) 2.4.5. agreement this group includes combinations with appointment, treue, accord, agrement or forme, shown in the following sample: (27) so þat þer was bituene hom . god fourme inome . hou sir edward mi…te best . out of warde come. (me2: cmrobglo, 756) middle english composite predicates 113 2.5. yevencps most yevencps in our data belong to the following semantic classes: 2.5.1. endearment aid, benisoun, blessinge, grace, greting, hereword, love, merci, ore, pardoun, queming, thanking, thanks, and comfort and delite, which occur in (28) below, combine with yeven in our data. (28) [^20.^] that is, he |p383 gafe thaim comforte and delite in his worde. and swa he toke thaim fra corupcioun of thoght. that has na sauoure in swete thynge. and of this. (me4: cmrollps, 383384) 2.5.2. speech answere, answering, grone, hete, malisoun, song, voice, warning, word, or speche, as in (29) below, belong to this category. (29) he said, "nai, nai goddote, moght i not be sua light o fote." wit þis gaue ysaac a grane. (me3: cmcursor, 220) 2.5.3. offensive action with yeven, deverbals in this subgroup express the action of striking a blow (cf. akimoto 1990: 869) as is the case with buffet, clout, deth, stroke, tripet or dint, in (30) below. (30) so harde dent he hire …af, þe brein cleuede on is staf. (me2: cmbevis, 81) nouns such as accusing, bale or mischaunce also belong to this category. 2.5.4. mental action the units in this subgroup may express opinion, as is the case of yeven assent in (31) below, belief, as in yeven truth in (32) or attention, as in yeven force in (33): (31) the king therto yaf his assent, demetrius was put in hold, wherof that perseus was bold. (me3: cmgower, i 175) teresa moralejo 114 (32) alswa in þis commandemente es forbodyn to gyffe trouthe till socerye or till dyuynynge… by sternys, or by dremys, or by any swylke thynges. (me4: cmrolltr, 10) (33) …yf þou forgete or ouersyttes tyme of housel, þat þou weyl wytes, lytel fors of hym þou yues, þou louest hym nat þat þou by lyues, and ouer alle þyng he loueþ þe beste, and þou ne wylt, a ny tys geste, lete hym herber yn hys hous. (me3: cmhansyn, 320) other deverbals in this subgroup include attendaunce, credence, entent, feith, kep, regard or tent. 2.5.5. judgement jugement, dom, right, sentence or veredict belong to this subgroup. the multiple deverbals dom and sentence in (34) below exemplify this semantic subtype: (34) (^phariseus^) herke sere prophete we all ow pray to gyff trewe dom and just sentence vpon þis woman which þis same day in synfull advowtery hath don offense. (me4: cmludus, 206) 2.5.6. homage servise, glorie, honour, laude, worship or truage, as in (35) below, form yevencps in me: (35) horn makede arnoldin þare king, after king aylmare, of al westernesse, for his meoknesse. þe king and his homage euen arnoldin trewage. (me2: cmhorn, 68) 3. deverbals combined with several light verbs the previous classification of cps has evinced that the same deverbal may be combined with more than one light verb and that the resulting cps may be synonymous or different in meaning. we now concentrate on cps formed with the same deverbal but different light verb in our data, to unveil systematic similarities and differences in meaning that are obtained between them. middle english composite predicates 115 scholars disagree in their interpretation of the contribution that the verbal and the nominal element in the cp makes to the structure as a whole. in this sense, live (1973: 31) has noted that the first part is almost devoid of lexical meaning but embodies the associated grammatical information, being the bearer of the inflectional endings (thus indicating tense, number and person). the second part carries the lexical load, conveying verblike meaning, although its form is not that of a verb; 1 the role played by the verbal element in the cp structure has been limited to that of a “copula” with a transitive value (curme 1935: 69). jespersen (1942: 117) calls it a “light verb”, and points out that its serves as a basis “to which the marks of person and tense are attached”, and halliday (1967: 60) maintains that it only indicates “that there is a process involved”. likewise, renský (1964: 290) emphasises the “relative semantic emptiness or total absence of the finite verb”, which müller (1978: 9) qualifies as “inhaltsarmen”, or poor in content. cattell (1984: 2) argues that the verbal element is “semantically very ‘light’[…]” and it is used “to mean very little more than a verbal action occurred […]” and it does “only a little more than provide the verbfunction and carry the signification of tense and number”. sciullo and rosen (1990) seem to share this view and consider these verbs to be “(semi)light” or “empty”. kytö (1999: 168), brinton and akimoto (1999a: 2), and tanabe (1999: 98), follow quirk et al. (1985: 750), who describe the verbal element as being one of “general meaning”, thus agreeing with algeo (1995: 204).2 1 live (1973: 33) goes on to state that the light verb “bears considerable resemblance to an auxiliary. it is weakly stressed, while the deverbal gets secondary or even primary stress. its characteristic lexical meaning is eroded […]” hiltunen (1999: 136), who follows koskenniemi (1977), agrees with the identification between the verb in cps and copular verbs. 2 algeo (1995: 204) affirms that the verb is semantically general while the object is semantically specific. teresa moralejo 116 in contrast, the nominal element, referred to as “deverbal object” (live 1973), “eventive object” (quirk et al. 1985: 750),1 or “agentive object” (matsumoto 1999: 60), is thought to be “the really important idea […]” (jespersen 1942: 117), and so “the action is spelt out […]” in it (cattell 1984: 2), and it carries the bulk of the meaning (hiltunen 1999: 136). although the commonest belief is that the semantic load of the combination falls on the nominal object while the verb is practically devoid of meaning, some scholars are of a different opinion. wierzbicka (1982: 759)2 and dixon (1991: 340, 346354)3 emphasise the semantic contribution of the cp to the sentence as a whole and stein (1991: 15) rejects “the idea of have, give, take being mere ‘connectives’ or ‘light’ verbs. […] each of the verbs have, give, take, etc. brings its specific meaning to the particular construction […]” in this sense, the perusal of our data has revealed that, even though it is true that some stylistic or emphatic meaning difference may be involved, pairs consisting of the same deverbals but different light verb are often synonymous. this is the case with combinations of maken and taken with nouns from the semantic category agreement, such as maken treue and taken treue4 in (36) and (37) below: (36) it ys expressely ageinis the trieux and appointement made & take betwix (youre rea)mes landes and subgiettes of the oon parties. (me4: cmdocu4, 268) (37) þis ere, aboute seynt donstones day and feste, edward kyng of engelond toke trewes wiþ þe kyng of fraunce, in hope of pees. (me3: cmpolych, viii 351) 1 quirk et al. (1985: 750) refer to it as eventive object. it “is semantically an extension of the verb and bears the major part of the meaning”. algeo (1995: 204) and kytö (1999: 168) follow quirk et al. (1985). 2 wierzbicka (1982: 759) maintains that “the have a v construction is agentive, experienceroriented, antidurative, atelic, and reiterative”. 3 according to dixon (1991: 340) “each of have a, give a and take a adds a special semantic element to the basic sentence”. 4 med treue 6. peace, amity, accord; used esp. of relations between god and man; a covenant; an accommodation, a settlement; also, a reconciliation; taken (maken). middle english composite predicates 117 synonymous cps result from deverbals denoting mental actions, such as attendaunce1 combined with taken and yeven, or force2 in combination with maken, taken or yeven, as in (38), (39) and (40) below: (38) i take no force though i have both theire hedis: for he slew my brothir, a good knyght and a trew. (me4: cmmalory, 48) (39) sche, takyng lityl heed of her wordys, let it passyn forth as sche had mad no fors tyl he wolde comyn & preyin for grace hys−self. (me4: cmkempe, i 222) (40) (^new gyse.^) i gyff no force, by sent tanne! (^nowadays.^) leppe about lyuely! þou art a wyght man. (me4: cmmankin, 156) the same is true with other deverbals, such as repentaunce3 in combination with haven and taken, or taken and yeven combined with kep4 or, as illustrated in (41) and (42) below, with tent:5 (41) the fooles þat faithe is fallen fra take tente to me nowe, or ye ga. (me4: cmyork, 69) (42) y rede ow alle, eueþ gode tent, whederward þat pers ys went. (me3: cmhansyn, 192) verbal actions may be expressed by cps formed with different light verbs. don preier and maken preier,6 are synonymous expressions, as is the case with maken answere and yeven answere, in (43) and (44): (43) not wolnyng other wise yanne as before trete ner conclude / but yf yay haue other in commandement from yaire souueraines / 1 med attendaunce 1(a) the act of paying attention, concentrating, or devoting oneself; maken, taken, yeven. 2 med force 10b don (haven, maken, taken, yeven), to pay attention to (something). 3 med repentaunce (a) repentance, penitence, sorrow for sin or wrongdoing; contrition; also person.; ben in (of), haven (taken). 4 med kep 1(a); taken (nimen, yeven), to take notice, take heed;(b) yeven, keep track of (sth.); 2(b) yeven to (unto), to be concerned about (sth.), have concern for, bother about. 3(a) yeven on, protect (sth.). 5 med tent(e 2, 1(a); taken (nimen, yeven), to take notice, take heed;(b) yeven, keep track of (sth.); 2(b) yeven to (unto), to be concerned about (sth.), have concern for, bother about. 3(a) yeven on, protect (sth.); 6 med preier 2a(e) maken (don, bidden, seien), to say (one’s) prayer(s or devotions; pray; holden preieres upon, senden preieres on, say prayers over (a sacrificial animal); med answere 1 a reply to an inquiry or request; maken, yeven (ayain), to reply, give an explanation; teresa moralejo 118 the answar may be wel maad yat til yai be ful thorogh wiy vs / yat yay shal no thyng haue but were. (me3: cmoffic3, 121) (44) butt iff þatt drihhtin be wiþþ himm all opennlike onn erþe. & ure laferrd jesu crist himm aff anndswere & se de. (me1: cmorm, ii 225) actions which fall into the semantic category homage,1 such as don honour and maken honour or don homage in (45) and maken homage in (46) below, provide further examples of synonymous cps: (45) [}homage}] whan a freman schall do his homage to his chef lord þat he halt of his chef tenement, he schal holden his handys togedyr. (me4: cmreynes, 145) (46) certys he dede grete outrage, to make þe deuyl so moche omage. (me3: cmhansyn, 8) in the semantic category redress, don amendes and maken amendes, as in (47) and (48) below, or combinations of the deverbal shrift with the light verbs don, maken and taken in (49), (50) and (51), are further examples of semantically equivalent cps2 (47) by men of cipres. þerfore kyng richard chasede þe kyng of |pviii,109 þe lond, þat wolde nou t doo amendes, from citee to citee, for to þe kyng alde hym to kyng richard. (me3: cmpolych, viii 108109) (48) he haue restored of alle maner |p57 dettes touching þe breþerhede, & make amendes of his trespas, vp þe ordinance of þe foure wardeyns. (me3: cmdocu3, 5657) 1 med homage 2 in phrases: (a) beren (don, maken, yelden, yeven), to acknowledge one’s allegiance (to sb.), pay homage; also fig. med honour 1(b) beren (don), beren (don, yelden, yeven) to, yeven unto, to honor (sb. or sth.); don, perform (one’s) devotions, worship. 2 med amendes 1 (a) reparation, retribution, amends (as for an offense or crime, or for harm done); don, maken, paien, make amends, compensate;  often with of phrase. med shrift 1 a) confession to a priest, auricular confession; also person; in (o, of, with) mouth; wind, oral confession; soth (sothfast, verrei); haven on herte, to intend to confess; maken o (of) mouth; penance imposed by the priest after confession; chiefly in phr. as to take, nim shrift; to do shrift; to give shrift. med shrift 2(a) an instance or act of confession to a priest; to his, at his confession; (b) don (rehersen, sheuen, tellen), to make (one’s) confession; […] maken, make (one’s) confession; also, make (one’s) confession (to god); med nimen 7b nim shrift, confess one’s sins, receive penance from a confessor, do penance for sin. middle english composite predicates 119 (49) eft we findeð on ða hali writt ðat ðe cniht ðe weapne berð unlawliche, ne chapmann ðe beið and selð mid unri[{h{]twisnesse, ne mu en neure soðe scrifte don, ðare [{h{]wile ðe hie ðese wike befeleð. (me1: cmvices1, 121) (50) schrift schal beon ofte i maket. for þi is i þe sawter. (me1: cmancre, 165) (51) ‘nimeð scrifte of ewer sennes, hit neiheð heuene riche’. (me1: cmvices1, 121) haven, maken and yeven may be combined with various deverbals to express actions included in the group judgement. this is the case with structures such as or dom1 with yeven and maken, or maken sute2 and haven sute in (52) and (53) below. the resulting cps are once again equivalent in meaning: (52) and i can nought beleue þat in þis cas þe same john myght by yowr lawe any swich sute haue ageyn me as yowr lettre specifieth. (me4: cmoffic4, 6) (53) þe entent of þe seyd walter in a sute þat he made ageyn þe seyd priour of a voweson of þe chyrche of sprouston (me4: cmoffic4, 12) synonymous structures with don and yeven and the same deverbal from the category endearment have been recorded. by means of example, see don and yeven combined with grace3 in (54) and (55) below: (54) for as bi þe lawes of emperoures,whan a gret lord haþ no child, he may chese a pore mannes sone, if he wole, and make of hym his eir bi adopcioun, þat is to seye bi auowerie, so þat men holdeþ it as for his sone and auowed to bere his heritage. þis grace dide vs god þe fadre, nou t for oure deseruyng, as seynt poule seiþ. (me4: cmvices4, 100) (55) he schal haue eueri wyke of þe box to his sustinance xiiij d, til god iue hym grace of recouerance, he to preye & bidde for alle breþeren & alle cristne. (me3: cmdocu3, 54) 1 med dom 2 (a) a judicial decision, a sentence at law; right, wrangwis; yeven (maken), to pass sentence. 2 med sute 6alaw. (a) a lawsuit; a legal action undertaken to redress a wrong; haven (taken) ayen, taken ayenes, to bring a lawsuit against (sb.); maken (seuen), bring a lawsuit. 3 med grace 4(c) don, yeven to, to grant (sb.) a favor, do a favor. teresa moralejo 120 synonymity between pairs of cps with the same deverbal but different light verb in the subgroup labelled fight1 is attested by structures such as don bataille, yeven bataille and taken bataille, or, as exemplified in (56) and (57) below, haven werre and maken werre: (56) afftir the deth of uther regned arthure, hys son, which had grete warre in hys dayes for to gete all inglonde into hys honde. (me4: cmmalory, 44) (57) alle so hyt ys accordyd that hangyng thys presentte trety and appoyntement noo maner of warre shalle be made by−twyne hem ande the oste of oure soverayne lorde the kyng of inglonde. (me4: cmgregor, 120) differences in meaning between combinations consisting of the same deverbal but different light verb are often due to the fact that different semantic connotations of the deverbal involved intervene in each combination. this is the case with pairs such as haven memorie2 vs. maken memorie3 or don bote4 vs. taken bote,5 exemplified in (58) through (61) below: (58) worschypfull souerence, i haue wretyn here the gloryuse remembrance of my nobyll condycyon. to haue remos and memory of mysylff þus wretyn yt ys, to defende me from all superstycyus charmys. (me4: cmmankin, 164) (59) for euery messe makeþ memorye of soules þat are yn purgatorye. (me3: cmhansyn, 321) 1 med werre 1b d haven werre(s, wage war(s; holden, engage in warfare, carry on war; maintenen werre(s, carry on or manage a war (wars) [see also maintenen v. 6.(b)]; also, pay for or sustain a war; maken (a), usen, make war, wage (a) war. med bataille 1(b); (b) don (fongen, taken), engage in combat; […] 2a(a) yeven a, engage (an enemy). med taken 37b(a) join battle, engage in combat, make war. 2 med memorie 2(a) memory or recollection (of sb. or sth.); awareness or consciousness (of sb. or sth.); state of mind [quot.: orch.syon]; […] (c) haven, to remember (sth.); intend (to do sth.). 3 med memorie (a) a memorial; deed, edifice, etc., in commemoration of somebody or something; also, keepsake, commemorative gift or token [quot.: ?a1439]; reminder [quot.: ?c1425]; for (a, the), in, into the, as a memorial (to sb. or sth.), in memory or commemoration (of sb. or sth.); maken of, to commemorate (sb. or sth.). 4 med niman 7(b)to make amends for one’s sin. 5 med bote 1(a) don, do (sb.) good, aid, be profitable to. middle english composite predicates 121 (60) hit falleþ þe kyng of fraunce bittrore þen þe sote, bote he þe raþere þer−of welle do bote, wel sore hit shal hym rewe. (me2: cmpoemh, 13) (61) and for þene mon þet hit er ahte. and þa et nime bote to criste. (me1: cmlambet, 31) more revealing seem the differences that are obtained between combinations with certain nouns grouped under the headings endearment, offensive action and feeling. the same deverbal combined with don or yeven tends to express an action, whether positive or negative, hostile or beneficial, performed by an agentive subject, and whose recipient is different from its agent, while when combined with haven or taken, the subject tends to be an experiencer subject.1 the above made remark is supported by pairs such as haven comfort and yeven comfort2 in (62) and (63) below, or don despite and haven despite3 in (64) and (65): (62) yf þu woldist verily trostyn in me & no−thyng dowtyn, þu maist han gret comfort in þi−self & mythist comfortyn al thy felaschep wher e ben now alle in gret drede & heuynes. (me4: cmkempe, i 230) (63) seint eadmund him af confort: ant tolde him wat it were. (me2: cmseleg, 437) (64) than had the kynge and all the barownes grete mervayle that balyne had done that aventure; many knyghtes had grete despite at hym. (me4: cmmalory, 47) (65) dauid þan said, "drightin for−bede þat þou suld thinc to do suilk a dede, or euer him do despit or scam, þat drightin smerld has in his nam”. (me3: cmcursor, 446) 1 note, however, that combinations of don and taken with vengance, med vengeaunce 1(d) taken (don, nimen, yeven), exact retribution, carry out revenge, are synonymous. 2 med comfort (a) pleasure, delight, gratification; cacchen, haven, enjoy (sth.); don, amuse (sb.). 3 med despite 3 an act designed to humiliate, insult, or harm someone; humiliation, insult, injury, outrage, or an instance of it; don, to humiliate, insult, or injure (sb.), disparage (sth.), commit an outrage. 4 (a) injured feeling, resentment, grudging; haven in, haven of (at), holden of, to feel resentful about, bear a grudge against. teresa moralejo 122 combinations of sorwe1 with don, haven, maken and taken occur in (66) through (69) below: (66) and þer he dyde myche sowrrov for he my t not synke. (me4: cmsiege, 91) (67) sire, i schal al one, wiþute more ymone, wiþ mi swerd wel eþe bringe hem þre to deþe." þe kyng aros a more e, þat hadde muchel sor e. (me2: cmhorn, 38) (68) on boþe half þe mayne gentes wen[{n{]ten hom to her tentes, and token rest al forto amorowe, makande wel grete sorowe for her lordes, for her ken, |pi,223 þat layen yslawe in þe fen. (me2: cmalisau, i 222223) (69) and as the booke seyth, whan sir launcelot was departed she toke suche sorow that she deyde within a fourtenyte. (me4: cmmalory, 204) the preceding examples show that while the combination with maken expresses an action in the category speech, the structure with don falls into the field of hostile actions. the compounds with haven and taken denote feelings and emotions. 4. conclusion the analysis of the semantics of cps has exposed the most salient semantic contents expressed by cps in me. the different light verbs have been seen to favour combinations from certain semantic fields, which hints at the verb’s capability to impose restrictions on the range of nouns with which it may combine (cf. akimoto 1990; hiltunen 1999: 146). in addition, our survey has evinced the semantic weakness of the light verbs studied, as attested by a number of synonymous combinations of the same deverbal with different verbal elements. finally, our enquiry has brought to light the existence of predictable differences in meaning between cps consisting of the same light verb and different deverbal noun. 1 med sorwe 1(d) an expression of sorrow, lamentation, weeping; […] lamentation; maken, to lament, mourn. 1(g) haven (up, to be (very) sad, suffer (great) grief; […] nimen (taken), become sad, be sad. 2(d) (d) harm, damage, injury; also, an injury; don (maken), to do harm, cause trouble. middle english composite predicates 123 in our opinion, those cases of synonymous cps with the same object but which differ in their verbal element evince the decrease in the lexical meaning of the verbal predicate. it is true that the verb tends to carry a general actional meaning but it may be the case the lexical load provided by the verbal element may be a heavier or lighter one depending on each particular combination. therefore, there is likely to be a gradient in the semantic load of the verbal elements of cps.1 the following table visually summarises the semantic categories which prevail in our data. the semantic categories are listed in order of decreasing frequency in the global corpus. numbered cells indicate semantic categories which predominate with each light verb. the number in the cells represents the order of frequency, from highest to lowest, with which they appear with a given light verb. table 1: cps: semantic classification don haven maken taken yeven feelings and emotions  1  2  offensive action 1  8  2 mental action  2 7 1 3 speech  4 1  4 redress 2  4 3  judgement   3  5 endearment 3    1 motion  3 6 4  1 algeo (1995: 206) is of the opinion that “semantic generality or specifity is, to be sure, a continuum. yet it is possible to recognize degrees along that cline”. teresa moralejo 124 agreement   2 5  homage 4    6 trade   5   teresa moralejo gárate university of murcia 6. references akimoto, m. 1990: collocational restrictions of deverbal nouns. in bahner, w., schildt, j. and viehweger d. eds. proceedings of the xivth international congress of linguists, berlin 10−5 august 1987, i−i, 868−70. berlin, akademie verlag. algeo, j. 1995: having a look at the expanded predicate. in aarts, b. & ch. f. meyer.eds. the verb in contemporary english: theory and practice, 203−17. cambridge, cambridge university press. brinton, l. j. & m. akimoto 1999a: collocational and idiomatic aspects of composite predicates in the history of english. amsterdam and philadelphia, john benjamins. brinton, l. j. & m. akimoto 1999b: the origin of composite predicates in old english. in brinton and akimoto eds. 21−8. cattell, r. 1984: composite predicates in english. academic press, newcastle (australia). claridge, c. 2000: multiword verbs in early modern english: a corpus−based study. amsterdam (atlanta), rodopi. curme, g. o. 1935: parts of speech and accidence. boston, d. c. heath. dixon, r. m. w. 1991: a new approach to english grammar on semantic principles. oxford, clarendon press. halliday, m. a. k. 1967: notes on transitivity and theme in english i and ii. journal of english linguistics 3, 37−81 and 177−274. middle english composite predicates 125 hiltunen, r. 1999: verbal phrases and phrasal verbs in early modern english. in brinton and akimoto eds. 133−165. jespersen, o. 1942: a modern english grammar on historical principles. copenhagen, ejnar munksgaard. kytö, m. (compiler), 1993 [1991]: manual to the diachronic part of the helsinki corpus of english texts. coding conventions and lists of source texts. helsinki, department of english, university of helsinki. kytö, m. 1999: collocational and idiomatic aspects of verbs in early modern english. in brinton and akimoto (eds.), 167−206. live, a.h. 1973: the take−have phrasal in english. linguistics 95, 3151. matsumoto, m. 1999: composite predicates in middle english. in brinton and akimoto (eds.), 59−96. middle english dictionary online. http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/m./med. müller, e. a. 1978: funktionsverbgefüge vom typ ‘give a smile’ und änhliche konstruktionen. frankfurt, lang. nickel, g. 1968: complex verbal structures in english. international review of applied linguistics vi/1, 1−21. nickel, g. 1978: complex verbal structures in english. in nehls, d. ed. studies in descriptive linguistics, 63−83. heidelberg, julius gross. quirk, r., s. greenbaum, g. leech & j. svartvik 1985: a comprehensive grammar of the english language. london and new york, longman. renský, m. 1964: english verbo−nominal phrases. travaux linguistiques de prague 1, 289−299. rissanen, m., m. kytö, m & m. palander−collin eds. 1993: early english in the computer age: explorations through the helsinki corpus. berlin and new york, mouton de gruyter. sciullo, a.m. di, & s. t. rosen 1990: light and semi light verb constructions. in dziwirek, k., p. farrell & e. mejias eds. grammatical relations: a cross theoretical perspective, 109−125. stanford, ca, center for study of language & information. http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/m./med teresa moralejo 126 stein, g. & r. quirk 1997: on having a look in a corpus. in aijmer, k. & b. altenberg (eds. english corpus linguistics: studies in honour of jan svartvik, 197−203. london, longman. stein, g. 1991: the phrasal verb type ‘to have a look’ in modern english. international review of applied linguistics 39, 1−29. tanabe, h. 1999: composite predicates and phrasal verbs in the paston letters. in brinton and akimoto eds. 97−132. wierzbicka, a. 1982: why can you have a drink when you can’t have an eat? language 58.4, 733−799. * † * microsoft word review 7_2023.docx selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. 28 (2023): 135–136. issn: 1132-631x doi: 10.17811/selim.28.2023.135-136 © ediuno. ediciones de la universidad de oviedo. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. ruskiewicz, dominika. 2021. love and virtue in middle english and middle scots poetry. studies in medieval language and literature, 58. berlin: peter lang. pp. 221. isbn 9783631861738. reviewed by nicola royan university of nottingham this monograph explores the ways in which love is addressed in older scots texts, from the kingis quair through to the thrissil and the rois. its methodology is to bring older scots material into discussion with specific chaucerian texts. that is of course not a new project: the texts selected for discussion are some of the most familiar older scots poems, and also the most overt about their engagement with chaucer and chaucerian material. most of the pairings are not new either—the most original is the parliament of fowls with the thrissil and the rois—although the extended discussion of the boethian tradition has not been done in quite this way. moreover, the richness of the intertextual relationships offers opportunities for reconsideration, particularly through the thematic approach ruskiewicz outlines, namely the balance between love and virtue, and the way in which it is used to examine the relationship between natural law and divine law. chapter 1 provides the long context for ruskiewicz’s arguments. she carefully works through ways in which love and virtue have been addressed in western european literature, through both vernacular writing and through latin writing, notably boethius. she concludes this discussion with an account of the interplay between classical and christian attitudes, and the ways in which this plays out firstly in chaucer’s works, and then in the older scots material, all of which acknowledges chaucer directly. in chapter 2, ruskiewicz brings together her first pairing, chaucer’s the romaunt of the rose and dunbar’s the goldyn targe, to examine the representation of reason in managing both love and virtue. reason is the method of distinguishing between natural virtuous love and unnatural, sterile overwhelming desire, where courtly love becomes an end in itself rather than a means of self-improvement. in the golden targe in particular, reason is identified with divine order, and love as a violent impediment to true vision; the conclusion of the chapter, that the intellect is not enough to support salvation, and that reason must encompass more, offers an intelligent reading of a difficult poem. this argument is developed in chapter 3 through a comparison of chaucer’s boethian poems and the kingis quair. she convincingly argues that the quair demonstrates a deeper engagement with boethian writing than is sometimes perceived, and goes on to suggest the poems demonstrate that virtue can be developed as an active response to inevitable change. the chapter notes the difference between chaucer’s use of ancient settings as a mean of critiquing limited knowledge and james’s engagement with the present. ruskiewicz argues convincingly that the quair does not posit the familiar choice between spiritual and earthly love, but rather outlines ways in which a king and a man might seek to embody christian virtues in his earthly relationships. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4185-1560 book reviews 136 the subjects of chapter 4, chaucer’s the house of fame and gavin douglas’s the palice of honoure, are an obvious pairing, both dream poems directly concerned with the nature of honour, virtue and the relationship between them. ruskiewicz identifies a key difference: where chaucer locates fame as earth-bound and its transmission as transitory, douglas sees honour as part of exemplary order. she goes on to explore the ways in which chaucer’s presentation interacts with models of chivalry, from the quality of the individual knight to the preferences of the sovereign, and how this contrasts with douglas’s view of good government in the palice. for douglas, she argues, honour lies “in the exercise of the virtues and responsibilities which man has to accept” (136). the identification of the sovereign as the arbiter of honour is extended in chapter 5, where the comparison of the parliament of fowls and the thrissil and the rois underlines a concern for harmony whether in the natural or the political world, articulated through the law of kind. ruskiewicz compares the treatments of rank and the value given to nonnoble voices, and the ways in which gender roles are given power. this includes an extended discussion of the overlap between language used to address margaret tudor and marian devotional verse, and how it is used to outline the queen’s role as a model of mercy in contrast to the king’s role as judge and rule-maker. the final chapter addresses the relationship between troilus and criseyde and the testament of cresseid. although this relationship has been explored many times, ruskiewicz offers an interesting reading, focusing on the embodiment of divine virtue and christ-like attributes. her most striking contrast is henryson’s allocation of christlike qualities to cresseid, as she recognises a significance of her earthly suffering, opposed to chaucer’s elevation of troilus above mortal suffering. in both cases, the poems speak to a boethian conception of virtue as divine and the need to understand how best to live. ruskiewicz’s closing arguments trace a continuity in older scots writing between the kingis quair and the thrissill and the rois, where minerva’s prescription of virtuous life and experience as a means of enduring the uncertainties of mortal existence becomes embedded as an understanding of the human condition. a few minor quibbles. the textual editions used are perhaps a slightly odd choice, particularly for henryson and douglas: denton fox’s 1981 oxford edition is still standard, and priscilla bawcutt’s shorter poems of gavin douglas was revised in 2002. kendal’s edition of the eneados is idiosyncratically modernised, although in fairness accessing coldwell’s earlier scottish text society edition has been difficult. problems of access might also account for the focus on well-known and fairly well-discussed material: since the comparisons with gilbert hay’s translations added a great deal to contextualise the scottish aspects of the argument, it would have been interesting to see the same kind of analysis applied to less familiar (but arguably just as chaucerian) material, such as hary’s wallace. however, these quibbles should not detract unduly from such a thoroughly and carefully argued engagement that brings a fresh perspective on the material and its boethian underpinnings and new insights into the texts it discusses. (received 04/08/2022) nicola blake, selim 21 (2015–2016): 25–55. issn 1132-631x dress rehearsal: word play and narrative construction in the assembly of ladies nicola blake stella and charles guttman community college, new york in the erotics of theater, words are (theoretically) corporeal. they are up there for public scrutiny. the mind’s eye echoes the mind’s ear. words act. they are elements of the scenic investiture affecting, synesthetically, light space rhythm pattern sound, but they also resound at the deepest level of the mise-en-scène, through self time memory consciousness as well. mere words, true. problematic to the last breath of being. the material elements of theater – like the body itself – situate us. 1 keywords: dream vision; narrative structure; performance theory; dream narrators; gender; collective voice the few critics who have addressed the anonymous fifteenth-century poem the assembly of ladies have largely limited their inquiry to intriguing, but overly simplified, ultimately unanswerable questions: is the author male or female? is the text “feminist”? can its genre be defined as chaucerian? is the poem’s primary concern with judiciary procedures or domestic courtly decorum? my conjectures to the above inquiries: likely female, and if so, “a remarkable woman”; 2 reflecting women’s writing, and after the influence of christine de pizan; appropriated as chaucerian, though most probably not; 3 1 herbert blau, “prescriptions of theater: words, presence, time out of mind”, new literary history, 12:1 (1980), 128, emphasis mine. 2 c.s. lewis, the allegory of love: a study in medieval tradition, (new york: oxford university press, (1963), 249–250. 3 jane chance, “christine de pizan as literary mother: women’s authority and subjectivity in ‘the floure and the leafe’ and ‘the assembly of ladies’”, in european 26 nicola blake eruditely focused on the details of both, giving an “admirable picture of manners”, in the words of c.s. lewis. in fact, he alleges that “the detail of the poem shows powers akin to genius”. 4 but these reflections only set the stage for the discussion below. like several other critics, bradford fletcher notes that the assembly is not particularly well written. fletcher asserts that the poem “is representative of a class of late medieval courtly love poems composed by writers who, for want of a better term, might be called amateurs”. though it does not qualify as “great poetry”, fletcher praises “its evident fascination with the details of court behavior and its frequent flashes of verbal sprightliness”. 5 c.s. lewis also locates the poem’s redeeming qualities in the author’s focus in “the stir and bustle of an actual court”, cleverly using the terminology of dress to highlight his contention that “the poet […] has no better vocation to allegory than fashion”. 6 though lewis is underwhelmed by the author’s use of allegory, he admires how the detail and “realism” of the language makes the reader “soon forget that it is a dream, or an allegory”. 7 clarifying the legitimacy of serious scholarship on this text, ann mcmillan asserts that the assembly is unusual among all the dream-visions and garden of love poems from which it derives because it has a female narrator. she astutely summarizes this important phenomenon: whole studies of dream and garden poetry use the collective pronoun ‘he’ for their dream-narrators without any need for qualification [...] whatever the topic, women narrators simply do not appear in the secular dream-visions – except for those in the […] assembly of ladies [...] by contrast; rather than male sexuality and seduction, [the poem deals] with female sexuality and chastity. 8 cultures: the city of scholars: new approaches to christine de pizan, eds. margarete zimmermann & dina de rentiis, (meuchen, deu: walter de gruyter, 2010), 248, 249. web 26/06/2014. 4 lewis, the allegory of love, 249–250. 5 bradford y. fletcher, “the assembly of ladies: text and context”, papers of the bibliographical society of america, 82:2 (1988), 230. 6 lewis, the allegory of love, 249, 232. 7 ibid. 250. 8 ann mcmillan, ‘“fayre sisters al”’: the flower and the leaf and the assembly of ladies”, tulsa studies in women’s literature, 1:1 (1982), 29. word play and narrative construction 27 building on many of these insights, though in a departure from those criticisms of the text for lacking proper aesthetics, or being too depressingly patriarchal, this analysis will apply performance theory to more thoroughly engage how the fluidity of the dreamscape in the assembly of ladies creates a theatrical medium that accentuates the corporeality of language. in other words, as the dreamer lies still, words float, act, take shape, and ultimately, clothe the participants involved. a public act of speech and writing, telling and retelling, performing, allows the female narrator to partially transgress the boundaries of male authority of which she tells and writes, this poem leads me to read it as if it were enacted on a stage, with roles played, and therefore mutable. in my analysis, i take into account the following themes that have emerged from my reflection on scholarship and the text itself: the oral frame and its interplay with the written word, gendered conventions, and sociohistorical context; the dream vision genre and its transgressive narrator; the all-female allegorical cast of characters occupying, performing male roles in typically male-dominated spaces; the fragmented nature of and composition of narrative; the allegorical and physical emphasis on costume; and the veil of allegory. the corporeality of how this “booke” wrestles to come into being expresses female authorship and female performance. through fragmented characterization, the use of “mottoes”, and a self-conscious, complex, female narrator, the assembly takes shape as an assemblage of female parts into a readable text. when the narrator instructs amidst the calling of ‘voices’ to “rede wele my dreame”, she presents an assemblage, a narrative that shows the readers its parts before a single subjectivity emerges (l. 756). though she is mostly estranged from her “fellowship”, a physical separation and discomfort reinforced by the geography of the garden, the narrator weaves together a “collective narrative”, concluding it with the synecdochical joining of the sleeves. “[e]che of us toke other by the sleve, / and furth withal, as we shuld take oure leve” (ll. 734–735). not only does this image show how the women come together physically, but also points to the linking of their words. as i discuss, the allegory of clothing not only enacts the performative nature of the court proceedings, but also bears the very words, or “mottoes” that define the complaints and traits of the allegorical figures at play. 28 nicola blake 1. unraveling the spatial and gender role maze the narrator, identifying herself as a woman, or as simone marshall writes, “asserting her gender as a significant factor in her narration”, describes the setting of the poem as one september afternoon. 9 ladies are strolling the maze in a garden according to their fancy, walking two by two. they are evidently in the company of knights and squires. instantly, readers align the high status of the knights with the ladies; one infers that the ladies are all of worthy character and part of the aristocracy. marshall alludes to the spatial and temporal elements already presented, remarking that “the maze in a location for abrupt shifts in time” and that “autumn is specifically associated with transition”, not courtly love. 10 as this paper makes apparent, this is not the only rupture with tradition. for jane chance, the timing spells contemplation and “the maze symbolizes the problem of female difference, women’s subjectivity”, namely “their confusion over direction [...] and over their social role”. 11 when one of the knights questions the narrator’s presence in the garden, he asserts that this maze is a closed space, invoking social status and gender. like others in the poem, the knight mentions the narrator’s pallor as setting her apart, and questions whom she is seeking. she responds: “i seyde ageyne, as it fil in my thought: / ‘to walke aboute the mase, in certeynte, / as a womman that nothyng rought’” (ll. 16–18). 12 in her reply, she not only recognizes his efforts to define the space as exclusive, but also cleverly appeases him by refusing to adopt a hierarchical position. she performs an unassuming role, a feminized one, setting the stage for her performance of the tale. having disarmed his protectiveness over the typically patriarchal, male-dominated maze, she beckons the knight to abide and listen to the “playne of this matiere” (l. 28), a tale of women, told by women. colleen donnelly recognizes 9 simone celine marshall, the female voice in the assembly of ladies: text and context in fifteenth century england (newcastle, england: cambridge scholars publishing, 2008), 12. 10 ibid. 20. 11 chance, “christine de pizan as literary mother”, 256. 12 all quotations and notes will be taken from, derek pearsall (ed.), the floure and the leaf, the assembly of ladies, the isles of ladies (new york: thomas nelson and sons, ltd., 1963). word play and narrative construction 29 that the “poet has appropriated a patriarchal form to tell of her own experience”. 13 2. dreamscape: subverting the patriarchal dream what ensues after the exchange with the knight marks the narrator’s ultimate separation from the group through wandering in the garden, and falling into the dream state where she envisions the journey to the court and the presentation of the bills. she describes her state as she initially reaches a secure and hidden spot in the garden: and as they sought hem self thus to and fro i gate my self a litel avauntage; al for-weyred, i myght no further go, though i had wonne right grete for my viage; so come i forth in to a streyte passage, whiche brought me to an herber feyre and grene made with benchis ful craftily and clene. (ll. 43–49) for mcmillan, the narrator’s exhaustion and separation connect to the uneven and inconclusive nature of the poem, its fragmentation; what’s more, her uneasiness is explained as a reaction to the hardships experienced by contemporary women, which beset and overwhelm the narrator. 14 in a curious contrast to this sense of bearing the psychological weight of the fellowship, the narrator does not engage directly with her fellows, who are equally bewildered by this “earthly paradise” of “sunlight”, “trees, a flowery meadow, rich fragrances and colors, birds’ songs, breezes, and water in the form of a fountain or spring”. 15 instead, she retreats, allowing the design of the maze to inspire and direct self-reflection once she reaches its center. 16 marshall “suggest[s] that the maze is a purely literary construct”, not a real place. if the maze is indeed an 13 donnelly, colleen. “‘withoute wordes’: the medieval lady dreams in the assembly of ladies”, journal of the rocky mountain medieval & renaissance association 15 (1994), 38. 14 mcmillan, “‘fayre sisters al’”, 33. 15 ibid. 28. 16 marshall, the female voice, 19. 30 nicola blake allegorical space, the narrator “reaches the centre before her companions [in order to] signif[y] for us [readers] a focus on literature and how women participate in literature”. 17 this sets her apart for her authorial role, perceiving the narrative through dreaming, while performing in the dream-vision, and as narrator upon waking. by both embracing and challenging her difference from her companions in the garden, the narrator forms and performs her authorial perspective, shifting time and state of consciousness: a litel while thus was i alone beholdying wele this delectable place; my felawshyp were comyng everichone so must me nede abide as for a space, remembryng of many dyvers cace of tyme past, musyng with sighes depe, i set me downe and there fil in slepe. (ll. 71–77) in these lines, the narrator speaks of a fellowship, but she is distant from it; not only does she precede the other women, creating a physical place and occupying it figuratively through her relationship to literature, but most importantly, she enters her dream state. in the context of the dream, the narrator introduces the allegorical figure perseverance, describing the fictive woman in clothing embroidered with “remember me’s”, the same flower as in her garden of retreat, while mindfully enacting the roles of both dreamer and the performer-narrator. the flowers recall the function of memory in the telling and retelling of stories, as well as the interpretation of dreams, and point to the narrator’s intentional reconstruction of her dream-vision. the characterization of perseverance as “sad”, “demure”, and like the narrator, on her own, helps to distract the reader from how the narrator shapes her own role as author and participant: and as i slept me thought ther com to me a gentil womman metely of stature; of grete worship she semed for to be, atired wele, nat hye but bi mesure, hir countenaunce ful sad and ful demure, hir colours blewe, al that she had upon; theyr com no mo but hir silf alon. (ll. 78–84) 17 ibid. 18, 19. word play and narrative construction 31 the dreamscape in the assembly gives the narrator’s subjectivity a theatrical platform, where female lived experience is elevated, and expressed as a feminized linguistic performance that interrupts assumptions of male vocality and authority. 3. wakeful dreamscape: rehearsing and performing memory upon waking from her dream, the narrator follows suit with her authorial role: she begins to write, or in her words, “rehearse” what she has seen and performed in her dream. as chance underscores, she does so immediately, without delay. 18 in order not to forget, she recreates memories through speech and writing. the fluidity of forms, which relates to the simultaneous focus on writing and performing builds on the use of the word “rehersyng”. the definition of rehersyng in the middle english dictionary includes narrating or to give account. the narrator writes: ‘wher am i now?’ thought i, ‘al this is goon’, al amased; and up i gan to looke. with that anon i went and made this booke, thus symply rehersyng the substaunce because it shuld nat out of remebraunce, (ll. 738–742, emphasis mine) the narrator reports that the fellowship “thought we had out travel spent/ in suche wise as we hielde us content” (ll. 732–733). moreover, she has communicated her tale of performance to the listening knight, in itself a role reversal, and another transgression on her part. woman as narrator, transmitter of the oral frame used to present the bills themselves, self-inserted author, specifically, writer – these are all fairly overt challenges to the traditional depiction or invisibility of female characters in fifteenth-century poetry, even in the wake of christine de pizan’s cité des dames, where she “determine[s] that writing, inventing, and artisty are no longer a masculine or clerical preserve”. 19 thus, as chance argues, women write, but in the assembly 18 chance, “christine de pizan as literary mother”, 256. 19 ibid. 250. 32 nicola blake of ladies, they “write” through dress, handsewn “mottoes” or “words”, and embroidery, the oral delivery of their charges, and written individual complaints, feminizing the act of writing by expanding it to include skills relegated to women through law, force, and tradition. the interplay with poetics and performance and pushing the boundaries of women’s roles through acts of narrating, orating and writing is transgressive. notably, the meeting between the narrator and the knight is neither sexual nor hostile. instead, their exchange represents the coming together of the two sexes on a platform resembling mutual respect; the frame of the poem permits a knight, a male figure who is an insider to the labyrinthine garden, to listen quietly to a woman’s words, moreover ones reporting of injustices done to women. though the narrator proceeds with her tale, she positions herself as a naïve female, instead of aggressively displaying the authority and agency with she might be viewed. this is a conscious, tactical act, a sign of a savvy author: by appearing feeble and diminished, the narrator can disguise her transgression against roles, and as a result, to better perform them. for instance, when the narrator asks perseverance whether men will accompany “them” on their journey, she says that ‘“nat one [...] may come among yow alle’” (l. 147). the narrator reacts almost in disbelief and questions why, although her own complaints against men contribute to the pallor and exhaustion (l. 20) remarked by the knight. when she has finished, the knight applauds the tale’s worthiness, asks its name, and without exhibiting more concern, excuses himself from further encumbering the progress of its transcription, its assemblage from the narrator’s memory. mcmillan notes that, “dreams not understood, even by their own dreamers, are a staple of chaucer’s dream-visions. the disturbing nature of the dream, especially of its commentary on relationships between men and women, seems to have escaped her male listener”. 20 though she remarks that the knight’s response shows his failure to comprehend what he has heard, the performative platform the poem creates is itself a gesture that begs to be decoded. in a sense, the knight performs an audience member’s role, providing a frame for the show, leaving the scene at the show’s end, possibly to process what has unfolded before him – the narrator’s performance of her experience – or to give way to the creation of the written script. 20 mcmillan, 41. here, mcmillan indirectly attributes authorship to chaucer, putting her in the “chaucerian” camp of the debate about the identity of the poet. word play and narrative construction 33 4. acting the part: performance theory and the reinterpretation of roles in its circular nature, reflected even in the shape of the arbor, 21 the dream vision genre as used in the assembly of ladies is similar to performance because they both hinge on the ability of language to represent things seen, unseen, and lost through multiplicity, simultaneity, and in a fluid space. herbert blau, in his analysis of performance, comments that “the theatre remembers [...] whether that other thing exists or not. [it is] only a dream remembered”. 22 the crux of the dream poet’s work, then, lies in the construction, the weaving of this memory. as the events in the assembly of ladies unfold, the narrator is present, only transferring them upon waking from her dream state, writing from memory. like theater, the actualizing force of the dream vision violates and confuses time and reality. how the play of words in a text is received by its audience is affected by the setting, the time and place of its occurrence, just as for the audience of a theatrical performance. like narrators, viewers and readers are merely “constituents of the shifting, vulnerable to time”. blau asks, regarding “the reality we refer to in theater, does it exist before or after the fact made present? in the performance? [...] and did we put it there in the act of perceiving? or was it there before we looked, hiding or withdrawn”. 23 on stage, as words are voiced, that which is out of sight becomes embodied and manifest. this is reminiscent of the oral frame of communication, used in the assembly. the voice transforms itself to an image manifested from writing, which, in this space, precedes speech. history is preserved or recreated through imitation, rehearsal, and improvisation on stage, which amplifies the social and political involvement in poetics. blau notes that, “from the beginning, theatre has been concerned with the action of memory trying to remember a beginning”. this bears a significant relationship to the role of the narrator in either pulling apart or threading and reinforcing the seams of history or past narratives with their words through narrative means, permanently etching him or herself as a commentator, one of the “auctorities” of language’s past and future. like the actor, the narrator is 21 chance, “christine de pizan as literary mother”, 250. 22 blau, “prescriptions of theatre”, 136. 23 ibid. 132. 34 nicola blake thus able to embody self, time, memory, consciousness, and desire. in this act of “improvisation”, the unwritten is spoken or written, while the physical and spatial expression of memory is less focused on the past, and more on where to begin anew. in blau’s words, “memory is the desire of the not-accomplished, the reflex of desire itself, which is located on the stage of being at the limits of consciousness – the theatre in which all things come to be, dreaming still”. 24 the dream vision genre creates a similar rupture in time and space where narrative “improvisation” takes place: past and present stand still in this moment between consciousness and sleep, when the dream narrator questions, highlights, rearticulates, redefines, and ultimately makes social commentary. 25 christine chism traces a similar merger between past and present to alliterative romances that dramatize a revived past suspended “between a historic connection and catastrophic rupture”. 26 although my focus is on how this dream narrator imbues meaning in such a suspended rift, it is interesting to see how the ambidexterity of alliterative romances “energize contemporary issues by projecting them into […] distant, vast, and spectacular historical theaters”, much like the fluid landscape of the middle english dream visions. chism argues that the alliterative romances “explore a matrix of interests both local and national, both historic and contemporary, both political and transcendental, both conservative and innovative”. 27 the work of the romances, how they seize historical rupture and continuity, resonates with the work of the dream visions identified in this analysis. both genres enact what chism calls “socially interrogative forces” to reconstitute specific binary rifts. in order to do so, the narrator’s performance of her role engages, challenges, and attempts to subvert social dichotomies. 5. enacting the court the assembly, and its inability to adjudicate or even fully articulate the bills of complaint presented before the court, is particularly valuable for its focus on 24 ibid. 141. 25 for a longer discussion, see christine chism, alliterative revivals (philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 2002). 26 christine chism, alliterative revivals (philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 2002), 7. 27 ibid. 9. word play and narrative construction 35 the very physical nature of narrative construction, to use c.s. lewis’ words, “put into the mouth of a woman”. 28 significantly, this story not only originates in women’s speech, but also flows from the hand of a woman through writing. women gather as a collective to plead their cases in a symbolic court; the presiding lady loiaulte has charged the “felawes” “everichon” to come to her dressed in blue, and promised to hear their bills of complaint. in this way, she expects to appease the suffering of the women presenting them. in fact, the courtly exchanges in the assembly engage the development of female discourse and present the opportunity to interrupt male authority through female enactment of roles usually filled by men. as chance states, “it is legislature and justice, feminized”. 29 according to donnelly, it would not be unusual for the eight allegorical figures who guide the narrator’s journey 30 to have a role in legal courts, and that actually, all the named figures have a servile place in royal households: the figures’ station in relation to the dream narrator positions them in roles of servitude […] such role reversal is unusual in dream poems, where dreamers are generally presented as subservient to their allegorical teachers. in contrast to that tradition, the allegorical personages of this poem are not teachers but attendants, employed in loiaulte’s household and court of justice. 31 while this reading supports my argument for the transgression of the text in depicting the roles of women, the fact that women perform every role, from “chaunceler” to “secretarye” to the judge, lady loiaulte herself, requires further examination. in derek pearsall’s explanatory notes to the 1962 edition of the assembly of the birds, “chaunceler” is defined as “the usher in law courts whose station was the ad cancellos, the bars separating the public from the judges”, 32 while the “secretarye” in the assembly performed “administrative and clerical [tasks.] the closest parallel [to this role] is a legal one [...] with the work of the clerk of the king’s council”, a position of relative importance and visibility. 33 like the king’s council, “the court of lady loyalty was conceived of in rather vague and general terms, and was approached by suitors as ‘the 28 lewis, the allegory of love, 249. 29 chance, “christine de pizan as literary mother”, 257. 30 mcmillan, “‘fayre sisters al’”, 39. 31 donnelly, “‘withoute wordes’”, 40. 32 pearsall, 165, 507n. 33 ibid. 162, 337n. 36 nicola blake supreme authority of the state, superior to the ordinary law and able to right wrongs of every kind’”. 34 this understanding helps frame, if not fully explain, both the structure of the court, its representation by the narrator, and ultimately, the failure to deliver judgment that would openly dispute systems of patriarchy and female oppression. each bill, “a statement of complaint and a prayer for redress [...] was the initiatory action and the distinguishing feature of all procedure in equity; it is only semi-legal in form [and] tends to be vague in point of fact but vehement in presenting the enormity of the offence (as in al)”. 35 according to pearsall, the use of “semi-legal parlance, [...] loosely related participles, [...] the same choked and circuitous movement and convoluted syntax”, all point to the poet’s familiarity with “the stricter legal sense” of a bill, and his or her “attempt to imitate legal procedure”. 36 for c.s. lewis, the assembly of ladies is a “realistic presentation, in some degree satiric, of the contemporary legal world”, like john roland’s the court of venus. 37 the bills themselves lack cohesion, aside from their general demonstration of women’s woes in the period as delivered through feminized speech: broken hearts, unfulfilled promises, unrewarded virtue, sadness, instability, ungratefulness, and labor in vain. 38 one complaint illustrates the double entendre of the loosely legal framework through which women perform the courtly roles of petitioners: “c’est sanz dire”, “it goes without saying”, or “my case speaks for itself” (l. 627). 39 this can serve as an encompassing summary of the burdens of women and reiterate women’s authority; conversely, its lack of precision can mask the details of the problem, and prevent it from being fully articulated, or addressed. through the narrator exerts such effort to maintain the judicial allegory, which is successful to an extent, the magnitude of women’s problems and concerns are only alluded to, rather than emphatically represented. marshall comments on “the deliberate ambiguity in the meaning of the complaints, emphasising the indistinct characteristics of the female speakers [...] [t]his ambiguity is then replicated in the narrator’s unusual behaviour in 34 ibid. 161, 325n. 35 ibid. 161, 325n. 36 ibid, 161–162, 325n. see also, marshall, the female voice, and chance, “christine de pizan as literary mother”. 37 lewis, the allegory of love, 293. 38 chance, “christine de pizan as literary mother”, 257. 39 pearsall, 168, 627n. word play and narrative construction 37 the assembly”. 40 through lack of resolution, a delay in judgment, the legal framework does not resolve the bills, which stymies the completion of the transgression made possible by the assembly itself, and its proactive, differentiated narrator. besides depicting the legal procedure in a manner quite historically accurate, the narrator also obscures the ladies’ complaints to promote the transition between courtly poetry’s traditional encyclopedic approach to the female-male encounter, and the narrator’s feminized innovation: a selfauthored, individual confrontation capturing the vast social concerns of women. by turning female denigration into condensed, encyclopedic templates, delivered in a repetitive manner, with the same phrasing, the poet makes readers want to simply subsume all these stories into one, if that. the listener and reader are discouraged by the actual complaints, in a manner that marshall argues is the result of self-conscious female authorship: “the women’s bills are shown to be repetitive and unoriginal [and while they] signify the female voice, that does not fit into the boundaries of masculine literary conventions”. 41 nonetheless, the history entailed in these encyclopedic versions is important, as it marks a visible point in the development of the female written voice and content, in the tradition of christine de pizan. 42 6. solitude, fragmentation, and the weaving of “assembly” perseveraunce, one of eight allegorical figures who guide the narrator’s journey to the castle of pleasant regarde, 43 highlights the solitary nature of the narrator’s quest in several instances. she gives her an escort, a woman of wise and discreet conduct, diligence. it is diligence, not other “felawes”, who provides the narrator with companionship and direction when perseverance leaves the narrator “al alone” (l. 190). perseverance’s reason for leaving is to inform the other women of the plan of action, “to yeve warnyng in many dyvers place to youre felawes”, something that the narrator herself might have done herself (ll. 142–143). a third allegorical character, countenance, voices 40 marshall, the female voice, 62. 41 marshall, the female voice, 63. 42 chance, “christine de pizan as literary mother”, 248. 43 mcmillan, “‘fayre sisters al’”, 39. 38 nicola blake the concern of the knight, openly asking “‘yowre felawship, where bien they now?’” (l. 296), to which the narrator answers: ‘forsoth,’ quod i, ‘they bien comyng echeone, but in certeyne i knowe nat where they be. at this wyndow whan they come ye may se; here wil i stande awaityng ever among, for wele i wote they wil nat now be long.’ (ll. 297–301) aware that others are coming to the court, but not knowing exactly where they are, she stays cautious, preferring to wait. as the tale unfolds, the narrator relies on the allegorical remembraunce and avisenesse to provide the opening for the entrance of the ladies and gentlewomen. instead of forthcoming interaction with other female characters throughout the poem, the narrator distances herself from the society of her peers, her “felawes”, and thus, performs her narrative role while questioning the possibilities for social conglomeration. in the dreamscape, the narrator partially overcomes her sense of isolation by speaking to other women, contravening her difference and separation from them while continuing to articulate the storyline. in so doing, the anonymous female narrator creatively reassembles the narrative, yet the reader is part of the collective that interprets and explores its meaning. these participants receive, “read”, and cocreate the allegorical presentation; authorship includes readers as coauthors. through this “collective narrative”, the text extends far beyond the class of ladies and gentlewomen whose complaints are accounted for in the bills delivered to the lady of loiaulte. in fact, this democratization of narrative construction begins with the characterization of the narrator and her transgressive agency in the poem: even though she is distinguished as an outsider, does not bear a motto, and herself presents no bill, it is she who not only bears the petition, but is also briefed on the organization of the court. this emphasizes the protest of the narrator against social norms and structures, perhaps the legal system itself, even while she performs her own role in the text. not only does she participate in the court, transcribe its proceedings from memory, but in so doing, also enables this important “collective narrative”. the poem enhances the narrative’s communal value and the ease with which it can be appropriated and expanded by inviting the reader into a habitable space, a stage for the narrative. engaging a productive energy, this word play and narrative construction 39 galvanizes interpretive activism by the reader and audience. likewise, the dream narrator also navigates the wastelands, the abyss of meaning that such a narrative creates. this fragmentation thus characterizes the “collective narrative”: the synecdochical parts referred to in this analysis represent disintegrated allegorical pieces, forever estranged from a transitory past. 44 however, these fleeting versions of the past also point to possibilities where narrative construction questions or reaffirms memories through performance. by assembling self and society through participation in authorship, even through disappointingly unclear bills, the audience mirrors the processes and vulnerabilities involved in mining a complete narrative from fragmented visions. the narrator’s multiple roles – her ability to walk actively, and maintain both a bird’s-eye and an interior view of her fellowship – actually facilitates the unification of the images presented. the narrator “mediates our experience of the text, but resists interpretation through a single lens, because she does not function as a unified character”. 45 this dispersion of viewpoint not only complicates the narrative, and highlights the particularly transgressive role and actions of the anonymous female narrator; it also is an appropriation of the typically male dream narrator role and a move toward individuated authorship. her mediation of the dream allows the reader to move across narrative frames. the creation of the “booke” becomes the mimetic vehicle where readers can partake of the dream vision through the very process of its writing, its passing from the oral frame to the written. this passage from orality to textuality takes place during “an historical period in which written and oral agreements co-existed”, with neither considered the superior or more authoritative, though the written was “innately masculine in nature”. 46 the instructions for proper womanhood are transmitted orally in how the good wife taught her daughter, to be discussed shortly. the assembly, on the other hand, utilizes orality to express displeasure while figuring as more provocative the gesture of a specifically textual connection, as seen from the literal joining of sleeves as the women depart. i read the individual sleeves as symbolizing the words of the poem, conjoined to form phrases, sentences, stanzas, and finally the complete poem, which challenges male textual authority by dressing this 44 chance, “christine de pizan as literary mother”, 258. 45 wendy a. matlock, “‘and long to sue it is a wery thing’: legal commentary in the assembly of ladies”, studies in philology 101:1 (winter 2004), 22. 46 marshall, the female voice, 62. 40 nicola blake authorial process in the guise of fashion and uses female actors to perform it. further complicating the landscape of linguistic traditions and choices, marshall goes on to comment: “the poet demonstrates that both legal and poetic language have cause to utilise empirical and emotional modes of communication in different circumstances”. 47 in the assembly, the social agency of language, as expressed through the reading of the bills, reinforces the idea of the “collective narrative”, while providing a natural link to performance theory, and its application to the dreamscape and the use of allegory. the magnitude of words, how they act, attempts to capture a collective identity – in this case, one of veiled suffering expressed by individual or allegorical entities – retold from the fragments of memories belonging to a single narrator. the telling of the tale, mediated through the dream vision, serves to provide a performative platform where a lady is able to present her thoughts in a non-threatening way to a male figure. the poem purports to address the theme of truth and loyalty of women and the neglect and unfaithfulness of men. though “the trappings of allegory are retained [...] the true interest of the poets lies elsewhere, sometimes in satire, sometimes in amorous dialectic, and often in mere rhetoric and style”. 48 this allegory is placed in the framework of a dream, where justice takes on a womanly shape. 49 the five ladies and four gentlewomen who seek redress at the court of lady loyalty, voice their collective distress, then deliver their particular complaints in writing, and in ways that reveal the gendered nature of this performance, in sewing, embroidery, and fashion. considering dresses as text, a reading of these women is imperative to how readers surmise narrative opportunities offered through speaking garments, to again evoke the image of the women’s connected sleeves. 7. dressing the part the maiden petitioners are represented via their mottoes, which could be read to expose the injustices committed against them, but are ultimately too pliable to be read either as affirmation of independence and autonomy, or alignment to male misogyny. most notable about them is that they enable the airing of 47 ibid. 48 lewis, the allegory of love, 251. 49 chance, “christine de pizan as literary mother”, 257. word play and narrative construction 41 women’s complaints through “words”, as they are alternately called. their open-endedness provides the narrative space where an everywoman’s story could be written – a universal tale more focused on construction than resolution. contrasted by more ambiguous mottoes such as “une sans chaungier”, and “c’est sanz dire”, others briefly state virtues that women must adhere to if they be chaste, silent, and obedient, for instance, “entierment vostre”, “en dieu est”, “sejour ensure”, and “bien monest”. 50 the fourteenth-century poem, what the good wife taught her daughter, is an illustration of the expected behavior and attributes of contemporary women. marshall indicates that the idealized masculine rules and virtues the poem contains actually resemble the names of the women who inhabit pleasant regarde and partially comprise the assembly of ladies. these names act as a “series of masculine regulations to be imposed upon women in which rules of external behavior are prescribed to impact upon the internal state of mind”. 51 since, in poetry of the period, masculine expectations for women’s behavior are also projected onto their thinking, the instructions for proper womanhood are often delivered and modeled by female figures. the matriarchal figure in how the good wife taught her daughter, the latest translation of the codex ashmole 61 version of what the good wife taught her daughter, is one such example. occupying 209 lines of the text, the matriarch provides binding instructions for how wives can be in servitude to their husbands, and more generally, good citizens: treat the poor with kindness, attend church, and stay away from practices of ageism or idleness. she asserts: my dere doughter, of this take kepe. if any man profer thee to wede, a curtas ansuer to hym be seyde, and schew hym to thy frendys alle. for anything that may befawle, syt not by hym, ne stand thou nought in sych place ther synne mey be wroght. what man that thee doth wedde with rynge, 50 pearsall, notes. “one without changing”, “it needs no words”, “entirely yours”, “in god is (my trust)”, “rest assured”, “well advised”. 51 simone marshall, “interiors, exteriors, and the veiling of cupid’s martyrs: gendered space in the assembly of ladies”, philological quarterly 84:2 (spring 2005), 169. 42 nicola blake loke thou hym love aboven all thinge. if that it forteyn thus with thee, that he be wroth and angery be, loke thou meekly ansuer hym, and meve hymn other lyth ne lymme, and that schall sclake hym of hys mode; thank schall thou be hys derlyng gode. (ll. 26–40, emphasis mine) 52 these directives premise wifehood as the defining characteristic of a virtuous woman, as conceived in its sociohistorical context. although the allegorical companions share the names of patriarchal virtues – discrecioun, remembraunce, attemperaunce, to name several – the assembly subtly criticizes this compartmentalization of female behavior and traits by presenting synecdochical virtues – splintered women walking to and fro (l. 43). most of their mottoes reasonably suit the rules of being a good woman; conceptually, a woman might figure as only one of the virtues, but is not sufficient for an authentic female character, especially not one of such high social standing and “trowthfulness” as the ladies assembled in the lady of loiaulte’s court. thus, it is quite possible that each woman is not “real”, but represents a single feminine virtue, performing it in the theater of the court. much like costume in the theater, clothing acts as allegory, stitching meaning by way of visual articulation through synecdochical significance. like allegory, costume has the ability to become a metonymic disguise or a fully articulated text. an actor’s clothing or lack thereof is integral to demarcating meaning in a performance. clothing, a physical gesture, speaks. susan crane argues that “[a] chronicle’s account of a courtier’s disguising offers only mediated access to a historical moment, but its very mediations – its explanations of the behavior, its economy of representation, its judgments – constitute a generically shaped discourse of identity”. 53 using a study of the performance’s “material register”, where identity and clothing reflect how selfconception intersects with self-presentation, she traces the uses of clothing in the courts of the hundred years war. in embroidered mottoes and other heraldic marks of identity, crane explains that “talking garments” functioned both to conceal the body and to reveal a character, an ambiguity that both 52 all quotes will be taken from “how the good wife taught her daughter”, ed., george shuffelton in codex ashmole 61: a compilation of popular middle english verse (kalamazoo, michigan: medieval institute publications, 2008). 53 crane, the performance of self, 1. emphasis mine. word play and narrative construction 43 draws attention to the corporeal function of language and parallels the content of the bills presented in the assembly. 54 8. unity and discord: women’s work and women’s words to present before the lady of loiaulte, the women are asked to dress all in blue, each with a motto on her sleeve. this monochromatic attire masks the differentiation among the women based on individuality, supporting the notion that the women in the garden are performing the roles of women, or virtues, rather than being authentic women. although she wears blue, a symbol of truthfulness, fidelity, or chastity, depending on the source, the narrator does not wear a motto. 55 this constitutes one of her transgressive acts, and denotes a characteristic that steps outside of the traditional female roles within courtly love poetry and the dream-vision genre. mcmillan argues that the narrator’s refusal to wear a motto indicates “her sense of differentness and apartness from the other” allegorical women in the text. 56 though she agrees that the narrator may so object to the masculine values the mottoes express, marshall also sees this act as contravening the “architectural and social boundaries of pleasaunt regarde”, 57 leading to her exclusion and distancing from a means of communication. 58 wendy matlock also views the narrator’s refusal as a transgressive move, but for her the narrator’s motivation is that she is unwilling to comply with the court’s prescribed rules. 59 i concur with the identification of transgression, best framed by marshall: “pleasaunt regarde emphasises exclusion rather than inclusion”, involving “a series of boundary transgressions”. it is specifically “her willingness to transgress [that] causes her to be isolated from the inhabitants of the castle and from her companions”. 60 while these scholars examine the narrator’s transgression, their analysis differs most notably in that matlock suggests the connection to the written word and its use as a mode of expression within this constructed 54 ibid. 1–28. 55 evans, 42. see also, pearsall 170. 56 mcmillan, “‘fayre sisters al’”, 39. 57 marshall, “interiors, exteriors”, 171. also, marshall, the female voice, 49. 58 marshall, the female voice, 48. 59 matlock, “‘and long to sue’”, 31. matlock also argues that her refusal could also be a criticism of wealth and refinement displayed at court. 60 marshall, the female voice, 34. 44 nicola blake narrative, while marshall claims that because the narrator cannot represent herself using a feminine voice, the possibilities for self-expression within the narrative are limited. 61 evans and johnson also note the restrictions placed on the women by the device of the mottoes, but they assert that, the function of the mottoes is also ideological, in that they emblematise, in stark terms, the codes of conduct which shape these women’s lives and the limited positions available to aristocratic women in a dominant male culture. […] the subjectivity of the narrator, then, becomes a focus for the (mild) questioning of a particular form of late medieval femininity which is simultaneously constructed with the text and exposed as a construction. 62 notably, donnelly contends that the narrator “will take up the pen rather than a needle to record her experience and make a book, thereby adopting for female uses a normally masculine mode of expression”. 63 this reading highlights the narrator’s act of refusal, aligning it with the reversal of gendered roles through the choice to write. here, again, the narrator challenges, rather than limits narrative scope, specifically through exploring linguistic corporeality. to build on the common ground of scholarship, while underscoring evans and johnson’s point about the particular transgressive agency exemplified by the narrator, i argue that the choice not to wear a motto relates to her earlier efforts at maintaining solitude, carving out an individualized space for reflection and creation. for donnelly, the motto’s absence is an attempt at anonymity, which opens up the space of “authorship”. through refusing to wear a motto, the narrator asserts that despite her separation, she is part of the collective: the blue costume worn by women regardless of their social standing serves to blur the identities of the ladies and gentlewomen. barrat, chance, and marshall agree that “the narrator, without a motto, is [...] identity-less”, a choice performed on the courtly stage, and then again, in the narrative’s reconstruction. she manipulates her own persona as narrator – facing exclusion and imposing self-exclusion. 64 simultaneously, she crafts the 61 marshall, “interiors, exteriors”, 179. 62 evans and johnson, “the assembly of ladies: a maze”, 188. 63 donnelly, “‘withoute wordes’”, 51. 64 marshall, the female voice, 48. word play and narrative construction 45 narrative itself, probing the possibilities of female narrative through a presentation that enables the “universality of her voice and dream”. 65 the fact that the women are not clearly described as they enter the court of lady loiaulte reinforces the narrator’s separation from them. her depictions of them are nondescript – she traces their movements through their feet: jumping rails, walking inward and outward, pictured far behind, far forward, and walking in all directions at once, in pairs: som went inward and went they had gon oute, som stode amyddis and loked al aboute; and soth to sey som were ful fer behynde and right anon as ferforth as the best; other there were, so mased in theyr mynde, al weys were goode for hem, both est and west. thus went they furth and had but litel rest, and som theyr corage dide theym so assaile for verray wrath they stept over the rayle. (ll. 34–42) the particular choice of words reflects the women’s individual frames of mind, literally multi-faceted and fragmented. they are introduced individually and thoroughly using the mottoes, but only once “perseveraunce has shifted her narrative sufficiently into the interior of her castle, suggesting a further, interior, psychological space has been entered into. furthermore”, marshall comments, “the presence of women in the interior space of pleasant regarde specifically equates spatial interiority with femininity”. 66 it is important to note that the medieval organization of households, roles, and power relied on strict hierarchy, with titles for each station denoting associated duties. according to this, women were charged with the inner, or local, the loosely framed private realm, while men ruled the outer household, its scope, affairs with other entities, in other words, the public stage. many of the legal roles in the text have counterparts within the household: position of “chaunceler”, for instance, also existed in the domestic sphere, where he “supervised the running of the household and the estate”. 67 marshall asserts that “the concept of the ‘inner household’ being the exclusive domain of 65 donnelly, “‘withoute wordes’”, 46. 66 marshall, the female voice, 35. 67 pearsall, 165, 507n. 46 nicola blake women is particularly present” in the assembly. she goes on to suggest that “female spaces, both lay and religious, are both subject to the same masculine authoritative conventions”. 68 the male control mentioned even stretched to the definition of women’s work: “masculine authority deems embroidery and tapestry to be female activities, thus by practising such activities, the women condone masculine authority”. 69 interestingly, mª beatriz hernández pérez links embroidery to effective writing. although she eventually finds that the delay in judgment shows women acquiescing to male authority, part of her argument also supports the transgressive power of women’s work, even as constructed by men and the patriarchal authority over means of communication. she states: embroidery occupied precisely that category of the external and material. indeed, it not only concealed meaning, as letters could do, but furthermore, it amplified and embellished any surface. embroidery magnified and exaggerated the superficial excellence of the material and the visual; it was the surface of surfaces, the top of the costume, the ultimate outer layer displaying its own formal beauty and accuracy as a unique and essential value, belittling any other virtue. 70 the narrator views embroidery, like the wearing of a motto, symbols of captivity that she does not engage. despite her choice not to engage these means of communication, and thus exclude herself from full participation, the narrator details with painstaking attention the dress, symbols, mottoes – the “words” the women wear – emphasizing the utmost importance of these elements in the recreation of the court and to its proceedings. 71 however, even in interaction with the women’s words, complete access to their meaning is complicated by language’s indefinite representation of the sign and the signified. spoken word and meaning as represented by the bills is disparate because “the voiced self […] is already an image, worded, before it is heard; that is, subject to the interior ‘writing”’. 72 the narrator’s role, then, articulates interiority, what she is hearing and “writing” as the poem unfolds. 68 marshall, the female voice, 42–43. 69 ibid. 48. 70 mª beatriz hernández pérez, “distortions of the chaucerian tradition in the assembly of ladies”, selim: journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature, 11 (2001–2002), 38. 71 marshall, the female voice, 47. 72 blau, “prescriptions of theatre”, 129. word play and narrative construction 47 discerning the significance of the object or motto on clothing is all the more involved. the visibility of signs situates identity, but that visibility is made complex because the wearer’s desires – although placed on the physical surface for public use and consumption – are partial (a mystery), thereby resistant to full disclosure or scrutiny. 73 as crane shows, if emblematic clothing can be read as an assemblage of experiences, some chronicled, others not, then complete readings are dependent on survival of the text in full, like a manuscript. at the same time, recalling the function of the “collective narrative”, meaning is also made from the narrator’s, then the reader’s interpretation of visual representations. if one’s identity, the assemblage or gathering of one’s experience, is tied to articles of clothing, it is imperative to link the “text” of dress and fashion with that of narrative performance and construction, especially when the narrative attempts to question or draw attention to the status quo, as the assembly so clearly does. 74 9. under the veil: the dubious success of allegory unlike chaucer’s male narrator in the house of fame, who attempts to manipulate historical narrative, the woman relating the assembly does so as though they are mere stereotypes, allegorical figures. the narrator in the assembly negotiates the formulaic depictions of age-old tales through a veil. the women’s tales are partially hidden by a “fyne umple”, allowing for them to become fragmented references to the stories that came before, templates for authors and readers, or as i argue, calls to cowrite their newly edited versions. chaucer repeatedly delves into and gets caught in long-winded narratives in anelida and arcite and the legend of good women. in a nod to authorial tradition, the poet of the assembly begins in a similar manner, but ultimately truncates, fragments, and shortens it, providing a synecdoche of grievance in this excerpt: wheron was graven of storyes many oon: first how phillis of wommanly pite deyd pitously for the love of demephon; next after was the story of thesbe, 73 crane, the performance of self, 17–20. also evans, dress in mediaeval france. 74 joan evans, dress in mediaeval france (london: oxford university press, 1952), 42. 48 nicola blake how she slowe hir self under a tre; yit sawe i more how in pitous case for antony was slayne cleopatrace; that other syde was how melusene untriewly was disceyved in hir bayne; ther was also anelada the quene upon arcite how sore she did complayne; al these storyes wer graven ther certayne and many mo than i reherce yow here – it were to long to telle yow al in feere. and bicause the wallis shone so bright with fyne umple they were al over-spredde to that entent folk shuld nat hurt theyr sight, and thurgh that the storyes myght be redde. (ll. 456–473) the narrator admits that more stories were shared, “many mo than i reherce yow here”, but time is limited. the narrator has other concerns: she seeks to document the process of seeking justice. the assembly’s veil of allegory, its duality and elusiveness, forces the narrator to encounter the images of forlorn women of the early romances. the collage of stories on lady loiaulte’s wall-of-women-deceived mimics the assemblage of women who present their case to the court. in other words, the women depicted as victims of love on the wall echo the nine women in the hall, a cunning method through which the narrator creates allegorical selves for the allegorical characters within the poem itself. the narrative she reconstructs then becomes representative of other women as a synecdoche of their lives. writing on the wall serves a similar purpose in chaucer’s house of fame, showing how these subtexts bear relevance to the creation of new narratives and innovating in methods of composition. in the house of fame, in the temple of venus, the narrator recounts the story of dido and aeneas. both the ovidian and virgilian interpretations of the tale are evoked. the male narrator questions the authority of both texts as he chooses language to reinterpret and posit his artistic literary truth. by calling attention to the “mediation of the observer/transcriber and the text he claims as his source”, word play and narrative construction 49 the narrator “assumes [some] authorial privileges”. 75 jacqueline t. miller acknowledges that “[t]he wavering and ambivalence that characterize the narrator’s efforts to assume full authorial rights over the text also restrain and betray that effort; and they indicate that such a position is as untenable as subservience to an outside source seems to be”. 76 as i propose, however, piercing the veil and baring the mystery is not the assembly’s trajectory. instead, the narrator questions the status quo and formulates a narrative, both calling attention to and offering possibilities for a narrative performance that provides context and makes an experience textual. marshall asserts that the veil of umple demonstrates an awareness of the veil of allegory, but it is not the same thing as integumentum. the purpose of integumentum is to discover the truth of a text; it is a means of interpretation that allows one to reveal what lies underneath the narrative. yet the umple veil does the exact opposite. it is, in every way possible, a feminine version of integumentum, except in its resulting effect. the umple conceals the stories beneath it, it does not reveal them. 77 to capture meaning from this narrative, i suggest focusing on the narrator’s choices, their sociohistorical context, and their performative nature in terms of a process, versus the resolution of complaints or completion of the assembly. as donnelly states, the poem offers “veiled commentary on and criticism of the events, powers, and ideologies of the day”. 78 her investment in the legal process, then, does not mean that she is only invested in a sort of legal redemption. let us remember that she delivers no bill of her own, however voices her personal reflection on the process in the following lines: nothyng so lief as death to come to me for fynal end of my sorwes and peyne; what shuld i more desire, as seme ye – and ye knewe al aforne it for certeyne i wote ye wold, and for to telle yow pleyne, 75 jacqueline t. miller, “the writing on the wall: authority and authorship in chaucer’s house of fame”, the chaucer review: a journal of medieval studies and literary criticism, 17:2 (fall 1982), 107. 76 miller, “the writing on the wall”, 108. 77 marshall, “interiors, exteriors”, 181. 78 donnelly, “‘withoute wordes’”, 37. 50 nicola blake without hir help that hath al thyng in cure i can nat thynk that it may long endure; and for my trouth, preved it hath bien wele – to sey the soth, it can be no more – of ful long tyme, and suffred every dele in pacience and kept it al in store; of hir goodenesse besechyng hir therfor that i myght have my thank in suche wise as my desert deservith of justice. (ll. 694–707) once the bills are each read, lady loiaulte answers the “felawes” collectively, in a conventional, nearly dismissive reply: she recognizes that these complaints are a mere synecdoche of a larger unrest and dissatisfaction, but “she thought it to moche in hir entent” to reply to the “felawes” individually (l. 711). this indicates that the poet does not use the poem to directly challenge male and female roles by delivering judgment. instead, the poem’s fragmentation attempts to put these roles in conversation with each other, in the narrator’s conversation with the knight, the conversations among women, and the proceeding of the court. evans and johnson see the possibilities in this “new” narrative although it offers little vindication. they argue that attention to the historical contexts of the assembly of ladies – to its writers, readers, literary traditions, shaping circumstances – realigns the text and offers us a work which hovers on the edge of critique, which is cautious [...] about its position but which opens up a distinctively female space for the exploration of gender relations. the equivocal authorial voice allows for the deconstruction of historical and ideological categories, revealing the possibility that courtly women are not ‘naturally’ submissive, uncomplaining or incapable of protest at the strictures of their social world. 79 through the process documented, lady loiaulte does not vindicate the wrongs to which the women testified, however incompletely; she notes that their complaints are valid, but delays justice: 79 evans and johnson, “the assembly of ladies: a maze”, 190. word play and narrative construction 51 we have wele sen youre billis by and by and som of hem ful pitous for to here. we wil therfor ye knowen this al in feere: withyn short tyme oure court of parlement here shal be holde in oure paleys present, and in al this wherin ye fynde yow greved there shal ye fynde an open remedy, in suche wise as ye shul be releved of al that ye reherce heere triewly. as of the date ye shal knowe verily, than ye may have a space in your comyng, for diligence shall bryng it yow bi writyng. (ll. 717–728) matlock argues that the delay in judgment offered within this poem has historical context, and that the “inept” and “uncooperative narrator” is a reflection of the legal system. she argues: when the poem’s irresolution is considered in conjunction with the contemporary legal system’s delays – a problem of real-life petitioners in actual courts – it becomes clear that fictional court suffers the same imperfection. in this context, the disjunction between the idealized presentation of the court and its failure to dispense justice is jarring, and the poem leaves the discontinuity unresolved. lady loiaulte’s justice is as burdensome and ineffective as her fifteenth-century counterparts’; the fantasy court is no more successful than real ones. 80 this points both to irony and to realism, as used by the poet, as well to the ultimate weakness of the allegory of the court. interestingly, matlock sees delay as a necessary evil as it establishes a system of petitions that offered litigants an opportunity to repeatedly engage with the legal system, decreasing the likelihood of violence between both parties. 81 the poem’s weaknesses limit outright narrative conflict, yet the women receive catharsis from lodging their complaints and contribute to a narrative more substantial than that of historical victims etched on a wall. 82 some readers tread through this awkward, fragmented dream, yet receive little or no reprieve for the negative they have taken in as a participating 80 matlock, “‘and long to sue’”, 22. 81 legal delays are discussed at length in matlock, who cites the whilton dispute as an example. see matlock 24–27. 82 donnelly, “‘withoute wordes’”, 51. 52 nicola blake audience. certainly, the delay in judgment, although realistic, is a blow to the transgressive potential of the court, maybe a disguised critique of the legal system, and potentially represents the compliance with the patriarchal and male order of power. what is also substantial and unfortunately overlooked, is one argument to the contrary: that a female narrator partakes in the courtly process, seeks justice through her participation in it, and recreates orally and textually all of the roles those real life processes entail – her performance in her role. the collection of words, whether expressed through sheaths of cloth or leaves of a manuscript, and however ineptly “embodying” the injustices committed against them, can be used to give voice to the voiceless. 83 the skilled and complex female narrator recreates her experience and her dream not for her own use, but for “her feyre sustres al” (l. 370). this, as well as the title itself, “la semble de damea”, creates a locus of female fellowship, a woman-centered universality, where pen and needle, the public and domestic, are given some leverage as a corporeal language. rather than focusing on the irresolution of the text, its allegorical vacuity, its stereotyped narrative, i reiterate that it is indeed replete with possibilities, rather than inept. in response to spatial, temporal, and sociohistorical location within patriarchal frameworks, transgression defines the narrator’s actions. initially, she presents herself as narrator; second, she maintains her separation from the ladies and gentlewomen attending the court of loyalty until her dream state, and even then some, arguably to get authorial distance and “hang” the veil of allegory; next, she enters pleasant regarde, reaching the final destination ahead of her companions; fourth, she conspicuously does not wear a motto, or formally present a complaint; and lastly, she consciously recreates and performs the narrative by writing it upon waking. through exploring physicality, performance, and investment in self-preservation orally and textually, this poem engages ideas of female writing itself as a form of protest. in the words of marshall, “the narrator’s frustration lies in the fact that, as a woman, femininity should not be a constraint” to her participation, performance, or retelling of the journey. 84 she weaves together words, and the “words” of others, intersecting self-conception with self-presentation and selfarticulation, exposing the concerns and suffering of women, and transgressing her restrictions. her oral rehearsal of her “booke” for the knight is a dress rehearsal for word play – narrative construction that enables the creation of a 83 marshall, the female voice, 48. 84 ibid. 48. word play and narrative construction 53 female literary space, written and woven, etched both on fabric and paper. it acknowledges the tradition of its literary precursors – the encyclopedic attempts to document the stories of forlorn women, such as chaucer’s legend of good women – but suggests that these accounts unwittingly celebrate the disempowerment of women. a marked contrast, the assembly gives readers an insight into the performative role of female narration, opening the space to conscious selfinsertion and fragmented authorship. this newly woven space outside of social norms can admit, hear, and eventually offer visions of social justice that more profoundly engage women’s agency and needs. while it shows that authorship enlists a communal response and often promises social implications, such as the capacity to create new means and forums of expression, more conducive to the aims, experiences, and voices of the narrative’s creators, the public act of writing as protest can emerge from an individual narrative, a single voice speaking on behalf of many. though justice is not served, the court of lady loiaulte is to be reread, relived, and performed anew, searching for new textual ruptures and the possibilities for articulated, feminist social change. references barratt, alexandra a.t. “‘the flower and the leaf’ and ‘the assembly of ladies’: is there a (sexual) difference?” philological quarterly 66.1 (1987): 1–24. blau, herbert. “prescriptions of theatre: words, presence, time out of mind”. new literary history vol. 12:1 (1980): 127–145. chance, jane. “christine de pizan as literary mother: women’s authority and subjectivity in ‘the floure and the leafe’ and ‘the assembly of ladies’”. european cultures: the city of scholars: new approaches to christine de pizan, zimmermann, margarete (ed.); de rentiis, dina (ed.). meuchen, deu: walter de gruyter, (2010), 245–259. web 26/06/2014. crane, susan. the performance of self: ritual, clothing, and identity during the hundred years war. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 2002. chism, christine. alliterative revivals. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 2002. de france, marie. the lais of marie de france. trans. robert hanning & joan ferrante. new york: e.p. dutton, 1978. de france, marie. les lais de marie de france. ed. j. rychner. paris: champion, 1966. de man, paul. allegories of reading: figural language in rousseau, nietzsche, rilke, and proust. new haven: yale university press, 1979. 54 nicola blake donnelly, colleen. “‘withoute wordes’: the medieval lady dreams in the assembly of ladies”. journal of the rocky mountain medieval & renaissance association 15 (1994): 35–55. evans, joan. dress in mediaeval france. london: oxford university press, 1952. evans, ruth & lesley johnson. “the assembly of ladies: a maze of feminist signreading?” in feminist criticism: theory and practice. sellers, susan (ed.); hutcheon, linda (ed.); perron, paul (ed.). toronto: university of toronto press, (1991), 171–196. fletcher, bradford y. “the assembly of ladies: text and context”. papers of the bibliographical society of america 82:2 (1988): 229–234. justice, steven. writing and rebellion: england in 1381. berkeley: university of california press, 1996. kruger, steven f. dreaming in the middle ages. new york: cambridge university press, 1992. lewis, c.s. the allegory of love: a study in medieval tradition. new york: oxford university press, 1963. marshall, simone. “interiors, exteriors, and the veiling of cupid’s martyrs: gendered space in the assembly of ladies”. philological quarterly 84.2 (2005): 161–187. marshall, simone. the female voice in the assembly of ladies: text and context in fifteenth century england. newcastle: cambridge scholars publishing, 2008. matlock, wendy a. “‘and long to sue it is a wery thing’: legal commentary in the assembly of ladies”. studies in philology 101.1 (2004): 20–37. mcmillan, ann. “‘fayre sisters al’: the flower and the leaf and the assembly of ladies”. tulsa studies in women’s literature 1.1 (1982): 41. miller, jacqueline t. “the writing on the wall: authority and authorship in chaucer’s house of fame”. the chaucer review: a journal of medieval studies and literary criticism 17:2 (1982): 106–107. pearsall, derek. ed. the floure and the leafe and the assembly of ladies. new york: thomas nelson and sons, ltd., 1963. hernández pérez, ma beatriz. “distortions of the chaucerian tradition in the assembly of ladies”. selim: journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature 11 (2001–2002): 27–49. shuffelton, george. ed. “how the good wife taught her daughter”, in codex ashmole 61: a compilation of popular middle english verse. (kalamazoo, michigan: medieval institute publications, 2008). stephens, john. “the questioning of love in the assembly of ladies”. review of english studies: a quarterly journal of english literature and the english language 24.94 (1973): 129–140. word play and narrative construction 55 author’s address stella and charles guttman community college city university of new york 50 west 40th street, new york received: 6 july 2015 e-mail: nicola.blake@guttman.cuny.edu revised version accepted: 25 january 2016 book reviews book reviews, selim 23 (2018): 187–203. issn 1132-631x julia fernández-cuesta, sara m. pons-sanz. eds. 2016. the old english gloss to the lindisfarne gospels. language, author and context. (anglia book series vol. 51.) berlin: de gruyter. pp. 432. 978-3-11-043856-7. reviewed by francisco j. álvarez-lópez, university of exeter in 2012, julia fernández cuesta and sara pons-sanz organised a two-day workshop at the university of westminster on the old english gloss entered between the lines of the lindisfarne gospels in the middle of the tenth century. an autographed colophon attributes this to a certain aldred, who skilfully sets himself against the background of his predecessors in the building of such a monumental manuscript. another colophon tells us about his work in the so-called durham ritual or collectar (durham, cathedral library, a.iv.19), where he glosses bede’s commentary on proverbs. this collection of essays is the product of that workshop, and in their introduction the editors set out to “offer the reader a fresh approach to the lindisfarne gloss, one that stresses the importance of interdisciplinary work” (p. 9). in truth, volume 51 of de gruyter’s anglia book series does that. this is a splendid compilation of studies on aldred’s vernacular gloss to the lindisfarne gospels and its cultural environment. evidence is put forward from multiple angles including his glossing strategy, linguistic abilities, palaeographical features and his work in related manuscripts. the volume’s sixteen essays fall into three sections, each grouping studies under the headings ‘the gloss in context’, ‘the language of the gloss’, and ‘glossing practice’. given the multidisciplinary nature of this publication, its division allows the reader to focus on their area of interest with ease. thus, part i will attract the attention of readers with an interest in the cultural and historical background of aldred as a scholar, as well as on his palaeographical features and ultimate purpose(s). part ii will cater for those interested in linguistic assessments of aldred’s old northumbrian dialect and the extent to which those features anticipate the changes that will develop during the early middle english period. finally, part iii offers papers focusing on the methodology behind aldred’s work both in the lindisfarne gospels as in the durham collectar. similarly, some further light is shed on the glossing practices of other glossators traditionally related to aldred. the book opens with studies by two giant figures of anglo-saxon studies. in the first, michelle brown explores aldred’s agenda and his purposes in 188 book reviews producing his gloss. she highlights the importance of framing his work within the wider context of the cultural and political developments in tenth-century northumbria and the ongoing efforts to establish a unified english nation. she concludes that aldred is following an educational agenda with a distinctive emphasis on the vernacular, with particular reference to dialectal variation from northumbria. similarly, she reaffirms her belief on the authenticity of aldred’s colophon. the paper by jane roberts immediately follows with a more detailed reassessment of the colophon as well as an examination of other linguistic features found in the glosses and of aldred’s connection with some additions to the durham collectar. in the case of the often-discussed “account of the book’s early history” (p. 39), roberts discusses her discovery of an older poem embedded within its lines and arrives again at the conclusion that “aldred was not the fabricator of the book’s history, but its inheritor” (p. 41). moreover, she concludes that aldred not only used that inherited tradition to reflect the book’s history, but he also wrote himself into it by adding his name to the list of those who had played a part in the making of the book before him (p. 48). she explores some surprising differences between aldred’s english in his gloss to john’s gospel and the other three (such as the use of the possessive adjective sin). she believes that such specificities may result from using earlier materials amongst which john’s gospel was missing. finally, she briefly assesses the evidence to reconstruct the library to which aldred had access at chester-le-street. philip rusche looks south of the humber in an attempt to assess the importance of the benedictine reform on aldred’s work and to establish potential similarities between his methodology and that seen in southumbrian glosses. the results are disappointing and very little evidence is found. out of the five main features that rusche identifies in southern glossators (reliance on early english glossaries, reliance on isidore, replacement of latin glosses with old english, grammatical glossing, and morphemic glossing), aldred shows none of the first three, and in the case of the last two, the evidence is not solid enough. in a similar vein, paul cavill revisits the topic of the influence of the benedictine movement with regard to aldred’s marginalia on the beatitudes in matthew’s gospel. his reassessment of these marginal additions considers both their form (the use of maxims and wisdom literature) and content before concluding that the annotations reflect aldred’s reforming nature and more specifically his concern with simony. incidentally, within the development of this conclusion cavill offers a reinterpretation of aldred’s colophon hidden in a series of footnotes (pp. 98–99) where he emphasises book reviews 189 aldred’s concern with simony and the payment of money to the community such as the episode that brought about the dismissal of abbot seaxhelm. the last paper in part i is by stewart brookes and concentrates on the peculiar choices of script made by aldred throughout his glossing work. through a meticulous study of aldred’s letterforms we are confronted with a surprising degree of variation that challenges the image of aldred as the epitome of northumbrian writing practices in the mid-tenth century and proves that he was aware of scribal fashions south of the humber. brookes provides a wide range of evidence (see his appendices, pp. 123–150) that shows aldred practising different styles, from square minuscule to caroline minuscule, scribal fashions often believed not to have reached northumbria. the article also provides a successful and enlightening example of the use of new digital technologies (here, digipal) applied to palaeographical study. in part ii, the volume turns towards a set of studies on the language of the gloss which opens with the work of robert mccoll millar. the author provides a morphological study of the noun phrase in the linsfarne gloss as a precursor of the profound changes to come in late old english and early middle english. the paper provides a very good range of evidence even if aldred’s gloss is but a starting point for the study rather than its core. next, marcelle cole offers an exploration of linguistic variation across the gloss in order to test whether this may have been the work of a single individual, namely aldred. her unsurprising conclusion confirms the results of previous studies in that it is very likely that “aldred relied on a variety of different sources from which he copied the variant forms as well as incorporating his own forms” (p. 187). cole’s evidence stems from a corpus including “every instance of a plural and third singular present form with an -s and -ð ending” (p. 181). similarly, she leaves open the possibility (discarded by brookes, for example) that various hands were involved in the copying of the gloss. finally, cole highlights the variations found between matthew’s gospel and john’s gospel, while acknowledging the lack of conclusive evidence. luisa garcíagarcía considers all causative jan-forms in an attempt to explore whether the lindisfarne gloss shows innovative or conservative traits in derivational morphology. she offers a detailed analysis of all deverbal jan-verbs, although the article remains slightly inconclusive despite establishing a neat difference between derivational morphology and inflectional morphology. this is also seen in other papers in the volume (e.g. millar, cole, and rodríguezledesma). 190 book reviews in a similar fashion, maría nieves rodríguez-ledesma offers a quantitative study of the genitive constructions in the gloss and confirms that aldred’s language is certainly innovative in terms of morphology but more conservative in syntax. the author notes the uniqueness of matthew’s gospel with regard to certain features such as the genitive singular forms of kinship nouns or “the distribution and frequency of the various inflections used for the genitive singular of the proper noun israel” (p. 238). rodríguez-ledesma concludes that many of the features noted in her study will become characteristic of the northumbrian dialect in later periods. george walkden’s contribution studies the use of null subjects in the gloss as a form of syntactic variation that sets aldred’s northumbrian dialect apart from west saxon texts. therefore, the paper advances a new front in the quest for new evidence in the study of old english dialectology, with particular emphasis on syntax. walkden reveals important new evidence regarding the presence of null subjects in the gloss against the background of other northwest germanic languages (such as old saxon and old high german). his promising results definitely strengthen the case for a northumbrian author of the gloss. the first of the articles by the editors of the volume closes part ii. the topic chosen by julia fernández-cuesta does not fit quite neatly with the preceding five contributions in this second section. however, that does not make it any less appropriate and necessary. her premise is simple but often overlooked by modern scholarship: it is essential to go back to the manuscript for any adequate linguistic study of aldred’s gloss to the lindisfarne gospels. fernández-cuesta provides a critical and detailed discussion of the shortcomings in walter skeat’s nineteenth-century edition of the text, which she justifies claiming that “the transcription […] does indeed contain a significant number of errors […], which effectively render [it] useless for linguistic analysis” (p. 258). the author shows particular concern with skeat’s lack of information regarding scribal emendation (as well as punctuation and word-division and spacing) and what that might indicate about skeat’s linguistic skills. fernández-cuesta highlights the need to report back to the original source in order to avoid inconsistencies that may obscure any attempted study of the text. her approach is indeed welcome, and the results are obvious, for instance, in the contribution by sara pons-sanz later in the collection. finally, part iii offers five further contributions concerned with the glossing practice and purposes of aldred. the closing section opens with the work by christine bolze. she closely studies multiple glosses with present book reviews 191 tense forms of oe beon ‘to be’ and highlights aldred’s semantic awareness of the latin text and his efforts to render the vernacular translation as close as possible. likewise, she challenges the idea of a one-to-one gloss by showing how aldred’s multiple glosses provide contextual information that allow a better rendering of the original text into old english. in a similar vein, sara pons-sanz, the second editor of the volume, also tackles the issue of aldred’s multiple glosses somehow supplementing the previous paper. from a mostly lexical stand, the author attempts to further explore aldred’s behaviour with her previous work and that of others as starting point, especially tadashi kotake. although some light is shed on aldred’s preferences and ordering practices (he favours placing the interpretamentum that renders the latin lemmata more commonly first), his overall lack of consistency remains difficult to overcome. the appendix provided for the multiple lexical glosses in mark’s gospel is a very useful and thorough resource. patrizia lendinara interestingly considers the number and distribution of the latin words which were left unglossed. she provides a useful comparison with the omitted words in the rushworth gospels and consequently provides further insight into the potential connections (or lack of them) between the work of aldred and that of owun and farman. besides establishing a set of categories in which those unglossed words fall (proper names, loanwords, etc.), lendinara also provides individual commentary of certain words which remain mostly unglossed (e.g. centurio, contubernium, scorpio, etc.). the paper concludes that aldred’s decision to leave certain terms without a gloss (or indeed glossed with an abbreviation) has more to do with “an attempt to introduce a general economy of the page” than with any “shortcomings in either latin or biblical competence on aldred’s part” (p. 359). the last two contributions to the volume take the reader away from the lindisfarne gospels to consider two other manuscripts (arguably) closely related to aldred. first, karen jolly looks at his work in durham, cathedral library, ms a.iv.19, otherwise known as the durham ritual or durham collectar, both of which jolly rightly considers misleading titles (p. 361). jolly places great emphasis on orality and bilingualism behind the glossing practice, as she looks beyond the act of writing the glosses on the page while trying to draw attention to the context in which those glosses were produced. in the end, she concludes that aldred’s glosses had three main purposes: “writing instruction, vocabulary study, and spiritual reflection” (p. 372). a highly useful codicological map of durham, cathedral library, ms a.iv.19 is provided as an appendix. the final paper on the volume visits another ‘satellite’ manuscript 192 book reviews often related to the lindisfarne gospels, the rushworth gospels, which contain an old english gloss which is assumed to derive partially from aldred’s. tadashi kotake furthers some of his previous, ground-breaking work by challenging the assumption that owun, the second glossator of the rushworth gospels, copied his text from aldred’s. although tentative in his conclusions, kotake reveals important patches of evidence that seriously question that assumption. a number of hypothetical conclusions are put forward (mostly regarding the use of intervening manuscripts by owun) before calling for the relevance of the wider context of textual and manuscript transmission when studying the relation between the works of aldred and owun. alongside the previous article by jolly, kotake’s sits slightly awkwardly in the volume as aldred and his lindisfarne gloss become secondary here. nevertheless, both papers offer valuable contributions to the study of aldred’s gloss beyond the lindisfarne gospels. the volume closes with a valuable list of references (pp. 397–421) which is in effect a full and updated bibliography on aldred’s gloss and which proves most necessary for any up-to-date scholarly approach to his work and historical context. a remarkable effort was made to showcase frequent interconnections between the different studies in this volume as constant references can be found drawing the reader’s attention to the work of other scholars in the collection. this gives the overall product a certain sense of unity and heightens its academic value, especially when the references include differing views such as those shown by rodríguez-ledesma (p. 226) on lendinara (on page 337 and not 335, as the text reads). all in all, and despite minor editorial hiccups, both fernández-cuesta and pons-sanz have produced a worthy collection that combines some of the latest views on aldred’s gloss from a range of scholastic perspectives. nevertheless, the intended interdisciplinarity of the collection is undermined by the fact that most contributions come from the field of linguistics, which opens a noticeable gap for similar contributions from areas such as cultural and historical studies that would help contextualise the northumbria in which aldred was working. similarly, further work on textual and manuscript transmission in monastic libraries (such as chester-le-street) would be very welcome to attain a better understanding of the type and number of sources that aldred and his contemporaries had at their disposal. book reviews 193 reviewer’s address foreign language centre, college of humanities university of exeter queen’s building, queen’s drive exeter ex4 4qh uk e-mail: f.j.alvarez-lopez@exeter.ac.uk leonard neidorf. 2017. the transmission of beowulf: language, culture, and scribal behavior. (myth and poetics ii.) ithaca and london: cornell university press. pp. xx + 200. 978-1-50170-828-2. reviewed by andrew breeze, university of navarre in forty years, this reviewer has never read a more brilliant and compelling account of beowulf than the one here. he thinks it more helpful than tolkien’s (1936) lecture ‘beowulf: the monsters and the critics’; as regards other old english texts, the transmission of beowulf is (in his opinion) excelled only by kenneth sisam’s studies in the history of old english literature (oxford, 1953). sisam has prior place because the advances which he set out were his own, whereas professor neidorf presents advances made by others, particularly r. d. fulk of cornell university. for its contribution to learning, then, the transmission of beowulf deserves classic status. its author is a new star rising in the firmament of anglo-saxon scholarship. his book, offering resounding proofs for beowulf as a mercian text composed in the years about 700, also provides an x-ray of the strange things said by anglo-saxonists since the 1970s. it was then that some scholars came to regard beowulf as a late work, perhaps hardly older than the manuscript of about the year 1000 in which it survives. a new and fashionable relativism, with a failure to understand arguments of exact philology and metrics, was in the air. how neidorf exposes its defects makes for exhilarating and even entertaining reading. on this subject he quotes the poet and textual scholar a. e. housman (1859–1936) for textual scholarship as an art which requires consequent reasoning and coherent thought. these qualities ever being rare, neidorf’s study is a powerful 194 book reviews weapon against irrationalism. it tells the truths on matters other than old english. again and again, neidorf shows beowulf as an early work, containing narrative, verbal, and metrical archaisms which confused the scribes who copied it in the early eleventh century (or else their predecessors). through no fault of their own, they lacked knowledge of eighth-century english prosody, language, and heroic tradition, on which scholars of the twenty-first century often know more than they did. hence the presence of corruptions; hence, too, the insistence of weak and conservative critics that what we find in the manuscript is not wrong (as a rational person might think), but perfectly sound and not to be changed. neidorf and his authorities are, fortunately, made of sterner stuff. let us give instances of what they say. in line 18, which editors understand as ‘beow was renowned, his fame sprang wide’, the scribe wrote “beowulf”. early genealogies name beow as scyld’s son; the form beowulf also ruins the metre. wise critics hence conclude that a copyist substituted famous beowulf for obscure beow as a lectio facilior. less intelligent ones defend the manuscript reading on the grounds that the poet perhaps knew “an alternative tradition” or “invented details of danish history”, as neidorf notes (p. 74). who is correct should be evident. lines 902–903 tell of heremod’s fate: “among the jutes he was betrayed into the hands of enemies”. but the manuscript reads eotenum ‘giants’ and not eotum ‘jutes’. implication: a scribe, knowing nothing of this ancient germanic people, altered eotum, which he did not understand, to eotenum, which he did. that ‘jutes’ makes good sense and ‘giants’ very little was of no concern. as neidorf observes, to him “there simply were no jutes in beowulf, only giants” (p. 85). in lines 2920–2921 (“the good will of the merovingian was ever afterward unobtainable for us”), the manuscript has meaningless mere wio ingas. that has long been restored as merewioingas ‘merovingian’. the scribe plainly failed to recognise this name for the frankish people. we are luckier. we can close spaces and restore an archaic form, which neidorf notes (p. 89) as coming from “native vernacular tradition” and not any late written latin source, as claimants for a late beowulf would have us believe. the scope of this volume, and what it succeeds in doing, will now be clear. it is a book to use as an introduction to the practice of textual scholarship as a whole, and not just old english. it has a surprise at the end. after many pages of most satisfying analysis, neidorf has an appendix on tolkien’s translation of and commentary on beowulf, published at last in 2014. tolkien’s learning was book reviews 195 great and it is good to find that his posthumous publication puts him on the side of the angels, both for beowulf as an early old english poem, and as the work of one poet and not two or more (an older philological dragon, rightly slain by tolkien in his 1936 paper). in the anarchy of modern academic discourse, one greets the transmission of beowulf as one might a doctor in a lunatic asylum. there are lessons here for all. leonard neidorf has performed a supreme service for the academy. he defends rationality against its perennial enemies; he gives heart to those who love the objective and dispassionate analysis of our texts. what he says should be taken very seriously indeed by anglo-saxon scholars all over the world. reviewer’s address departamento de filología lenguas modernas universidad de navarra campus universitario, s/n 31009 pamplona, spain email: abreeze@unav.es tim william machan. ed. 2016. imagining medieval english. language structures and theories, 500–1500. cambridge: cambridge university press. pp. xiii + 320. 978-1-107-05859-0. reviewed by juan camilo conde-silvestre, universidad de murcia 1 imagining medieval english is, in the title-words of the introduction by its editor, tim william machan, a book about “[t]he metaphysics of medieval english” (pp. 3–12) and the processes of “categorization” behind its study. these two labels make better sense when they are seen in the context of two commonly held premises in historical linguistics. the first one is the well 1 financial support for this research has been provided by fundación séneca, the murcian agency for science and technology, programas de apoyo a la investigación (19331-phcs-14). 196 book reviews known need for researchers to “make the best use of bad data” (labov 1994: 11). the ‘bad-data problem’ is now a wide-encompassing notion which refers both to the “limited set of written documents from the past at the disposal of linguists” and also to the skewed nature of this evidence, with a majority of texts “produced by well-educated males, from the upper or professional ranks by means of a highly standardised variety” in the formal styles and registers (tuten & tejedo 2011: 287–288). 2 in the cultural-philological context of the book, ‘bad-data’ also applies to the manuscript format in which the medieval textual materials are preserved and the difficulties of researchers to have access to the original documents except through scholarly editions which may consciously or unconsciously, by emendation or critical commentary, precondition both reconstruction and interpretation. it goes without saying that historical linguists have made their best to overcome the ‘bad-data problem’ and have developed epistemological and methodological strategies with this aim: from the application of the ‘uniformitarian principle’ to the use of corpus linguistics and the quantitative approach. moreover, computing and internet resources are making digitised versions of manuscripts available online for the community of scholars. nevertheless, the notion of ‘bad-data’ still endures in so far as “[t]he historical record, for the most part, is partial and not created to prove the point” (p. 7). the other interesting assumption —not so widely held— in the context of “categorization” and “metaphysics” applied to medieval english is the construction of many of the foundations of the history of the english language on myths: “communally shared narratives told in the construction of an idelological set of beliefs” (watts 2011: 10), affecting, in this case, the 2 in the case of historical sociolinguistics, the limitations of data also impinge on the stylistic, social, and demographic information available: the impossibility of having access to the social and communicative contexts in which language was produced and received and to the characteristics of the society where the relevant speech acts were produced, as well as the lack of knowledge on the socio-demographic background of informants —age, gender, education, social status, social networks— which often remains hidden behind the anonimity of texts. the significance of the ‘bad-data problem’ varies, however, from one period to another in connection with purely contingent circumstances and with the impending weight of time-depth: the further back in time research is to be undertaken, the greater the scarcity of data at the disposal of researchers (nevalainen & raumolin-brumberg 2003: 26–28; condesilvestre 2007: 35–37, 2016: [n.p.]). book reviews 197 common understanding of the structure of language, its functional uses and its development in the course of time. as richard watts has recently shown in language myths and the history of english (2011), the discipline, from its inception in the nineteenth century, has been built on a range of myths, such as “the longevity of english myth”, “the ancient language myth”, “the unbroken tradition myth”, “the myth of linguistic homogeneity”, “the legitimate language myth”, etc. these are “at the basis of a dominant discourse on what modern english is and on how the history of the language should be taught” (2011: 288–289). watts represents this approach to the history of the language with the symbol of the funnel, “in which a number of varieties are poured in the wide top” along the old english (oe) and middle english (me) periods, and “standard english comes out of the narrow neck” (2011: 291) from early modern english (emode) onwards. many of the chapters in imagining medieval english share in this new tendency to challenge the “myths” on which the history of the english language is constructed. in this context, “categorization” draws into how the object of research known as medieval english is recognised, differentiated and understood, i.e. “constructed through interpretation and classification of the linguistic record by means of varying practical and theoretical concerns” (p. 7). “metaphysics” goes a step beyond and involves “not only the language’s structural traits, but also the sociolinguistic and theoretical expectations that frame them and make them real” (p. 4). instances of “categorization” are the application of labels by researchers which may precondition the interpretation of the (available) data, or the tendency to pigeonhole the existing records into periods —the question of periodisation being a recurrent issue in several chaptes. the “metaphysics” of medieval english touches on the way we modern scholars think about the language of the period 500–1500 and “simply through the process of thinking about it give substance to an array of phenomena, including grammar, usage, variation, change, regional dialects, sociolects [...] and even language itself”, as stated in the book’s sleeve. these are recurrent topics throughout the thirteen chapters in the volume, which are organised into five sections. after the ‘introduction’ —section i— the three chapters in section ii — ‘organizing ideas’— explore how the medieval english record is categorised. seth lerer in ‘what was medieval english?’ (pp. 15–33) deals with the fuzzy borders imposed by periodisation as well as with its philological, ideological and pedagogical raisons-d’être. in order to relativise the efforts to pigeonholing texts into periods, the author highlights multilingualism and inherent variation as the natural locus of medieval english, which is “not an 198 book reviews absolute or essential category but a relational term” (p. 20); in the editor’s words: “a social condition of people living with competing vernaculars, synchronically differing dialects and an awareness of ongoing diachronic change” (p. 10). jeremy smith in ‘the evolution of old and middle english texts: linguistic form and practices of literacy’ (pp. 34–53) advocates a “new new-philology”, a revival of the late twentieth-century return to the rigorous philological analysis of texts in their manuscript context proposed by stephen g. nichols and others in the well-known 1990 issue of speculum (volume 65.1). the complete analysis of texts —their “grammar, vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, paleographical characteristics and lay-out” (p. 10)— is a way to access “the socio-cultural contexts in which [...] [they] existed” (p. 52). the insightful analysis of some of the few early medieval texts with more that one surviving witness —laɜamon’s brut or ancrene riwle— allows smith to philologically test how texts were reinterpreted and refashioned, which, incidentally, entails the relativisation of the overexposed concept of “authenticity”. the section closes with tim william machan’s chapter on ‘snakes, ladders and standard english’ (pp. 54–77), where the metaphor drawn from the popular children’s board game is applied to the vicissitudes of the many different “candidates” chronologically conceived as standards in the context of medieval english —from the language of the oe mercian gloss and king alfred’s early west-saxon, to the four types proposed by samuels (1963), including the extensively discussed lollard and chancery englishes, through some earlier me schriftsprachen like orm’s or the midland’s ab language. machan shows that the initial “triumph” of each of these forms in the way to becoming proper standards was systematically thwarted in the historical narrative. this circumstance leads the author to question some of the tenets in the study of medieval english standardisation —variant focusing, sociolinguistic stratification, diffusion or acceptance— as clear instances of “categorization” and as “chapters” —“myths”?— in “the master narrrative” (p. 10) of the history of english and its institutionalisation: “[t]he identification of medieval standards is a way to impose retroactively a teleology on the history of the language; it is a way to construct a narrative of inevitable progress to the present” (p. 73). section iii —“on the continuities of language”— deals with how different varieties of medieval english related to one another, i.e. it approaches the metaphysics of language contact and variation. chapter 5, ‘‘þæt is on englisc’: performing multilingualism in anglo-saxon england’ (pp. 81–99), by christopher m. cain, is a discursive and cultural approach to languages in book reviews 199 contact in anglo-saxon england which transcends the discussion of borrowings to focus on texts “as [...] location[s] where languages meet, where differences between languages are negotiated, and where language relationships are established” (p. 83). this is exemplified with the analysis of the functions of english and latin in preaching contexts and the way oral performance before mixed audiences of learned and illiterate people helped construct “linguistic consciousness” or “metalinguistic thought” (p. 93), leading — through the sociolinguistic associations of each code— to the construction of identities and ideologies (p. 88). the chapter closes with the study of discourse markers and code-switching in ælfric’s catholic homilies. focusing on me, in chapter 7, ad putter adopts a sociolinguistic methodology to study ‘the linguistic repertoire of medieval england, 1100–1500’ (pp. 126–144). the author pays attention to the reconstruction of attitudes towards the range of languages used in medieval england —english, latin, french, scandinavian and celtic— and particularly to the language shifts from one language to another, norse and french to english, as the possible reasons behind some processes of borrowing in the period (see also ingham 2012). the “metaphysics” of geolectal variation is the aim of chapter 6, merja stenroos’s ‘regional language and culture: the geography of me linguistic variation’ (pp. 100–125). stenroos offers a complete critical overview of the methods used for the reconstruction of me dialects —including the “fit technique” as developed for the linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english (lalme, mcintosh, samuels & benskin 1986). 3 she then discusses the benefits of documentary texts, often discarded due to their being short and repetitive. texts of this genre necessarily make reference to date and spatial location. this means that they are connected to real time and real physical spaces on the map, which, ideally, may allow researchers to reconstruct both a “regular dialect continuum” for late medieval england as well as the different discourse and text communities around which texts and their dialects gravitate — manors, monastic houses, guilds, municipalities, educational institutions, etc. this means that the connections of variation patterns with their social and cultural contexts can be traced and that the actual diffusion of innovations — changes in progres— along certain routes can be located, with interesting implications for standardisation. this methodology has proved successful in the middle english scribal texts programme (mest) developed at the 3 see <http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/elalme/elalme.html> for an electronic version of a linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english (accessed 24/11/2017). 200 book reviews university of stavanger, some of whose results, challenging traditional assumptions in the study of me dialects, are here pointed out. 4 the chapters in section iv —‘the discontinuities of english’— move from the wider range of medieval languages and varieties to the “grammatical and stylistic peculiarities [...] concealed beneath the label ‘medieval english’” (p. 11). simon horobin delves into the ‘bad-data problem’ in connection to ‘the nature of material evidence’ (pp. 147–165), particularly highlighting the restriction to research posited by the non-autograph nature of many surviving manuscripts, which are often scribal copies based on exemplars that no longer survive. in line with the new new-philology advocated by smith in chapter 2, horobin points to some commonly accepted tenets which careful paleographical analyses should challenge. in this sense, contrary to accepted tradition, the author contemplates the possibility that scribes could have changed their spelling practices and switched from one variant to another, depending on the texts they were transmitting, the quality of the manuscript being produced, or the idiolectal peculiarities of the individuals dictating to them. this point of view questions the commonly-assumed idea that scribes were repositories of coherent, idiosyncratic and personal traits, which necessarily impinges on the study of variation and standardisation in medieval english. the manuscript context is also considered by cynthia l. allen in her chapter on ‘sifting through the evidence: principles and pitfalls’ (pp. 166– 187). her main interest is grammaticality in diachronic english syntax — another instance of “categorization”— and the difficulties to reconstruct it in a context where linguists cannot have had access to native speakers. to compensate, she proposes some maxims which may help make the best use of the available data: know your manuscript, know the edition, use parsed corpora, and check out all unusual examples (p. 185). they are all tested with examples from ælfric’s grammar and catholic homilies. stylistic issues are considered in the next two chapters in this section. colette moore surveys the existing written evidence to theorise on and reconstruct ‘everyday english in late medieval england’ (pp. 188–209). this is an interesting exercise illustrating how “to make the best use of all available data”: from etymology to genre study, through direct (quoted) speech, and the display of interpersonal content and speech-like elements in texts. the possibilities offered by this range of sources are tested in a selection of letters from the middle english 4 see <http://www.uis.no/research/history-languages-and-literature/the-mestprogramme/> (accessed on 24/11/2017). book reviews 201 grammar corpus (meg-c) —also compiled at the university of stavanger (stenroos, mäkinen, horobin & smith 2011)— and in william caxton’s dialogues in french and english (c. 1483). the “metaphysics” of medieval english literature— its language and scope— is the subject of ‘imagining the literary in medieval english’ (pp. 210–237) by andrew galloway. the author surveys the difficulties of measuring the “literariness” of many medieval texts through the standards established by twentieth-century literary theory. galloway delves into some of the peculiarities of medieval texts that challenge present-day assumptions on what counts as literature and what does not — aesthetic vs. functional purpose, fictional vs. historical, prose vs. poetry, etc.— and exemplifies with the close reading of relevant and updated secondary sources on this issue. a final (fifth) section on ‘retrospection’ (pp. 241–280) looks back at a landmark in the “categorization” or “imagining” of medieval english: the establishment of the discipline itself . the two chapters in this section follow each other in chronological terms. helen cooper in ‘the most excellent creatures are not ever born perfect: early moden attitudes to middle english’ (pp. 241–260) deals with the awareness of earlier forms of english in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries. she traces the different attitudes towards oe and me texts often grounded not only on the well-known nationalistic, political and theological issues —the case for the antiquity of the english church and the stability of early political and legal institutions— but also on stylistic reasons: the language of me texts —which still circulated in the sixteenth century— was becoming archaic and unfamiliar and was felt as lacking eloquence in contrast to the antiquity and purity associated to the arcane oe documents that cropped up after the dissolution of monasteries. this is an early deployment of “the ancient language myth” proposed by watts (2011: 32–38). david matthews, in turn, approaches the prevalent ‘ideas of medieval english in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’ (pp. 261–280). he engages with cooper’s arguments on the different destinies of oe and me in the early modern period, and pays attention to the coining of descriptive labels referring to the language of texts from c. 1100 to c. 1500. special attention is given to the vicissitudes of the name “semi-saxon” proposed by george hickes in institutiones grammaticæ anglo-saxonicæ et mæso-gothicæ (1689) and linguarum veterum septentrionalium thesaurus grammaticocriticus et archaelogicus (1705): a label that persevered in highlighting the corrupted nature of me in contrast to the purity of anglo-saxon, and which survived well into the victorian period, even after german comparative 202 book reviews philologists had already spread the tripartite division of the history of languages into “old”, “middle” and “modern”. all the chapters in this volume challenge some of the traditional assumptions on which the study of medieval english have been sustained and, in some cases, expose the myths behind the received views on the history of the language. in this sense, they are all interesting food for thought. their common aim, however, transcends the mere shattering of these presuppositions; on the contrary, by pointing to the multilingual and multilectal realities of oe and me, by anchoring the analysis of texts in their manuscript and cultural contexts and by often taking advantage of corpus methods, they teach how the best philological use of the available data can be successfully made. references conde-silvestre, j. c. 2007: sociolingüística histórica. madrid, gredos. conde-silvestre, j. c. 2016: historical sociolinguistics. in j-o. östman & j. veschueren ed. handbook of pragmatics. 2016 installment. amsterdam & philadelphia, john benjamins: 1–23. ingham, r. p. 2012: the transmission of anglo-norman: language history and language acquisition. amsterdam & philadelphia, john benjamins. labov, w. 1994: principles of linguistic change: internal factors. oxford & malden, wiley-blackwell. lalme: a linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english. 1986: a. mcintosh, m. l. samuels & m. benskin comps., with the assistance of m. laing & k. williamson. aberdeen, aberdeen university press. meg-c: the middle english grammar corpus. 2011: m. stenroos, m. mäkinen, s. horobin & j. smith comps. version 2011.1. university of stavanger. http://www.uis.no/category.php?categoryid=3678 (accessed 24/11/2017). nevalainen, t. & h. raumolin-brunberg 2003: historical sociolinguistics. language change in tudor and stuart england. london, longman/pearson education. samuels, m. l. 1963: some applications of middle english dialectology. english studies 44: 81–94. tuten, d. n. & f. tejedo-herrero 2011: the relationship between historical linguistics and sociolinguistics. in m. díaz campos ed. the handbook of hispanic sociolinguistics. oxforf & malden, wiley-blackwell: 283–302. watts, r. j. 2011: language myths and the history of english. oxford & new york, oxford university press. book reviews 203 reviewer’s address departamento de filología inglesa facultad de letras universidad de murcia 30071-murcia, spain e-mail: jcconde@um.es simon c. thomson, selim 21 (2015–2016): 105–154. issn 1132-631x the two artists of the nowell codex wonders of the east simon c. thomson ruhr-universität bochum the version of wonders of the east contained in the nowell codex has long been seen as a relatively weak, low-grade production. the text has not been well received: even the edition produced specifically to represent the texts of the codex uses another manuscript version as a base text (fulk 2012). the thirty-one images are frequently called “crude”, and even more pejorative adjectives have been deployed, including “absurd” and “ludicrous” (rypins 1924; sisam 1953: 78; james 1929: 55, 58). some studies, including the most recent discussion of the manuscript, find a “chaotic vibrancy” in the strangeness, darkness, and lack of clarity found in the images (mittman & kim 2013, ford 2009: 222). all assume that the lack of technical control points to the scribe of the text having drawn the images despite a lack of expertise in drawing. what has not been recognised before is that there are at least two hands at work in the images of the text. a number of images show doubled figures, where there is a clear distinction between the work of a controlled and skilful draughtsman and the imitative work of a weaker contemporary. other images can be attributed with more or less confidence to one artist or the other. one of the most interesting images also seems to show interference from a later ‘doodler’. this paper will demonstrate the existence of these two hands. it will point to some moments in the text where scribe and draughtsmen seem to be in conflict. this will in turn lead to the brief consideration of some implications for our understanding of the construction of the codex and the value invested in its production. keywords: manuscript; exemplar; artist; frame; monstrous; wonders of the east; eleventh century; beowulf 106 simon c. thomson 1. wonders of the east in the nowell codex the version of wonders of the east in the nowell codex (london, british library, cotton ms vitellius a. xv, second part) is one witness to an enormously popular medieval text, recounting a sequence of remarkable animals, plants, and peoples in distant lands. it has a complex history, being witnessed in three insular manuscripts and a host of continental copies, between which there are considerable differences. 1 along with nowell’s version which has just the old english text are london, british library, cotton ms tiberius b. v, a canterbury manuscript from the early eleventh century, and oxford, bodleian library, bodley ms 614, dated to the twelfth century. bodley is entirely in latin; tiberius in latin followed by old english section by section. there are numerous versions of a similar text across the continent exclusively in latin. the text’s original epistolary frame was lost or discarded relatively early, which gives the text that survives a sense of briefly cataloguing or listing the marvels it describes rather than forming any sort of narrative. 2 there are a number of editions of the text of wonders, most of which privilege the fuller tiberius version (orchard 1995, fulk 2012). the nowell wonders was transcribed by stanley rypins along with the other prose texts of the manuscript in 1924. 3 more recently, elaine treharne included it along with beowulf and judith from the same manuscript in her anthology of old and middle english texts, and asa mittman and susan kim produced a beautiful edition, with translation, edition, transcription, and facsimile (treharne 2009, mittman & kim 2013). facsimiles of the whole manuscript are also readily available: kemp malone’s edition for the early english 1 temple notes these three manuscripts as evidence for the popularity of the text (1976: 22). 2 an authoritative account of the interrelationship of these insular versions and of the various continental witnesses, as well as derivative texts such as the liber monstrorum, is given by knock (1981: 21–46); she gives a more concise overview of the complex picture in mcgurk et al. (1983: 88–95). a preçis, particularly focused on the translation process, is in knock (1997: 121–126). these update kenneth sisam’s more straightforward but now outdated textual history (1953: 74–80). 3 joe mcgowan is currently working to produce an updated version of this edition, based on his work and that of the late phillip pulsiano. professor mcgowan has been extremely generous in sharing notes and discussing details of the prose texts and the manuscript with me. the two artists in wonders of the east 107 manuscripts in facsimile series has been supplanted by kevin kiernan’s electronic ‘beowulf’, now into a third edition with a fourth on the horizon; kiernan’s images (though not his apparatus) have been superseded by the british library’s ‘digitised manuscripts’ online edition, from which i have taken all of my images (malone 1963, kiernan 2011, british library 2013). 4 because they are illustrated, there are also facsimiles specifically of the three insular wonders. the english manuscripts in facsimile edition of the tiberius text (which includes full images of bodley and nowell) produced by a team led by patrick mcgurk builds on and replaces montague rhodes james’ ‘reproduction’ of the three english versions (mcgurk et al. 1983, james 1929). mittman & kim’s (2013) is probably now the standard edition, but they make some questionable and inconsistent editorial choices, and sidestep the difficulties of page numbers in the nowell codex by introducing a new foliation which i find very unhelpful. so readings here are my transcriptions from the manuscript, with my own translations. and, as i have discussed elsewhere, i follow kiernan’s foliation system (thomson 2015). 5 2. the nowell codex images the quality of the images in nowell has been much disparaged. james is an extreme but representative example, calling them a “collection of absurdities which i am rescuing from perhaps merited oblivion” (1929: 9). this weakness has resulted in a universal assumption that the scribe of the text (nowell codex scribe a) drew the images, copying them direct from the exemplar, relying on sisam’s analysis that “[u]nless he found them in his original, a scribe so incompetent in drawing would hardly have ventured on illustrations” 4 images used here by kind permission of the british library and are all © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. i am also grateful to julian harrison, cillian o’hogan, and andrea clarke for enabling my physical examination of the manuscript on 18/03/2015. 5 kiernan discusses the complexities of the foliation in full, and gives a succinct explanation of this numbering system (kiernan 1996: 85–109, 103–104); orchard provides a concordance to the foliation of beowulf (2003: appendix 1, 268–273); mittman & kim give an overview of foliations of wonders (2013: 38). where editors do not discuss foliation, they generally follow the 1884 system used by the british library which, following kiernan and orchard, is included in brackets in my referencing. 108 simon c. thomson (1953: 78). reading the images as weak and impromptu copies of those in a more refined exemplar led sisam and others to conclude that there was no possibility of deriving any information about the production process or of the exemplars from them. it has also contributed to the general finding that the manuscript containing beowulf, even though it has colour illustrations, was a low-grade and poorly regarded production in its own time, contributing to a general privileging of postulated earlier iterations of the poem and a desire to reject this manuscript’s incarnation (e.g. lapidge 2000, neidorf 2014). 6 the more recent critiques are more toned down than earlier commentators: james’ “absurd” and sisam’s “ludicrous” have become mcgurk’s “crude” (an often used adjective in this context, sisam 1953: 78, mcgurk et al. 1983: regularly throughout 88–95, knock 1981: 60, ford 2009: 222). mary olson has argued for the playfulness and challenge of the nowell images (2003: 133), with some support from alun ford who allows them a “chaotic vibrancy” (2009: 222). more recently, in a number of studies and in their edition, susan kim and asa mittman focused on its images and the interplay between images and text and found much to value (kim 1997; mittman & kim 2008, 2009, 2010, 2013), but general opinion is clear. certainly, there are some images that, while they may not merit such disdain, are “hardly refined” (kim 1997: 51). 7 lack of colour is not intrinsically a mark of low quality in the period, as shown by the extremely high grade, beautiful and austere, image of cnut and emma presenting a cross in the frontispiece of winchester new minster’s liber vitae shown in figure 1. 8 but the odd gesture towards coloured outline on the “unclean woman” of 102 (bl105)v, §27, the lower image in figure 2, using the same colour as her frame and giving up after outlining her arms and blotching her chin is untidy and 6 there are of course exceptions to this approach, led by kiernan (1996), with recent arguments for the value of this manuscript’s presentation of beowulf from bredehoft (2014), damico (2015). 7 although it is worth noting in this context sally dormer’s (2012) observation that “[d]rawing is an unforgiving technique”, and it is thus easier to find ink drawings wanting than illuminated images. 8 the liber vitae is contained in london, british library, stowe ms 944, 6–61v. the image prefaces the codex proper, and is on 6r. as part of the british library’s digitised manuscripts project, a high-resolution image can be viewed at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/viewer.aspx?ref=stowe_ms_944_f006r. the two artists in wonders of the east 109 confusing. 9 only about a half of the frame is coloured, and a small section of it next to the branch held in her left hand diminishes to a line rather than continuing as a solid bar for her to break. the draughtsmanship of this image is also poor, with attempts to show her “eoseles teð” and “eofores teð” (“asses’ teeth” and “boar’s tusks”) barely sustained. 10 what are presumably intended to be her breasts are added in far too low down, presumably to ensure they could be seen, as she is explicitly unclothed in the text and her right arm covers their natural position. in the context of the page she appears even weaker: an impoverished repetition of the more interesting, but still relatively unsuccessful, image of the bearded hunting woman above. 11 other images, while perhaps not so poorly executed, are puzzling and seem to have almost no reference to the text. as shown in figure 3, the example of the sigelwara (‘ethiopian’) who ends the text on 103 (bl106)v, §32, has a masklike face, appears to be wearing some form of textured all-in-one robe tunic with legs, and extends his left arm behind him to a much smaller figure who appears to be a naked woman. 12 the seated man on 103 (bl106)r shown 9 given the variance between manuscripts and editions, i seek here to use as full a reference system as possible for the sections and images. each has a page number and a sectional number referring to where it comes in the text; my sectional numbering is the same as that used in orchard (1995). a full list of the images, by textual section and page, in the nowell wonders is included as an appendix. 10 as sisam observes, nowell is the only version which includes both bestial features – and it may seem a little unfair to expect an artist to be capable of illustrating this overwhelming combination (1953: footnote, 79). 11 olson (2003) tends to read repetition in design as part of a rhythm that works to construct meaning; but here it seems merely imitative. 12 although note that, mittman & kim aside, all earlier readers of the manuscript have seen this as a man; see olson (2003: 143), who counts only three women in the manuscript where i see four, and the detailed account of the illustrative scheme given by knock, with this figure described as a “man on right outside frame” (mcgurk et al. 1983: 103). the shapes on its chest seem to me to resemble the simplistic breast archetype used for naked women elsewhere in the text, and the dark shape at its crotch seems more triangular than phallic to me. however, it is no more explicable as a woman than a man and the distinction is merely an academic one here. this puzzling image’s use of two figures, one of which is outside the frame, is a little reminiscent of jacob walking out of his frame in the old english hexateuch (london, british library, cotton ms claudius b. iv) on 42v, or the angel coming to help st peter in the caligula troper (london, british library, cotton ms claudius a. xiv) on 22r. the former can be seen in dodwell & clemoes (1974); the latter backhouse (1984: plate 157). 110 simon c. thomson in figure 4 and the council on 102 (bl105)r, §28 or 29, shown in figure 5, are similarly baffling, requiring a great deal of work from the reader to fit the text cleanly. all these discrepancies and weaknesses contribute to a sense that the artistry is second-rate or even worse. however, there are stronger images in the text than the ones just noted. by my judgement, the first ten illustrations at least are well-executed and coloured. 13 other images later in the manuscript are also far from “crude”: i would include in this list of reasonably well-executed work all or part of the images on 100(96) (bl103)v, §19, of the precious tree (the first image in figure 6), the panotus on 101 (bl104)r, §21, the first catinos on 103 (bl106)r, §28 and 29 (discussed in more detail below and shown in figure 7), and the traveller carrying away a woman on 103 (bl106)v, §30 (the second image in figure 8): in my view, fourteen of the thirty-one images do not deserve to be called “absurd” on any criteria. it is not possible, of course, fully to resurrect an eleventh-century aesthetic but along with the controlled use of colour noted above, there is a clear interest in images and text as reflexes of one another. 14 this is evident in, for instance, the bury psalter’s elegant interactions which have been widely admired (wormald 1952: 47–49; gameson 1995: 39). 15 while the nowell images cannot be placed on the same pedestal, they certainly engage with the same dynamic as in, for instance, the two-headed snake shown in figure 9. unlike the bury psalter’s lovely cervus, which drinks from its own name on 54r, this snake hisses aggressively at the generic name deor (‘beast’) of a rival creature, a line from whose description seems to have invaded its own space through the scribe’s lack of control. 16 13 i have included here the gold-digging ants cycle on 98(100) (bl101)r and the olfenda on the verso, both of which i argue below to be fundamentally effective drawings which have been diminished by the presence of a weaker hand (the late doodler and draughtsman b respectively). 14 farr (2013) gives a useful discussion of progress and challenges in our current understanding of text and image interactions. barajas (2013) gives an ambitious discussion of some possible roles of the images in wonders, primarily focused on those in tiberius. 15 the bury psalter is vatican, biblioteca aposotolica, reg. lat. ms 12. artist f’s work in the harley psalter (bl harley 603) is another celebrated example of “a more intimate relationship between word and image”; see gameson (1995: 112, n.40, cf. 40). 16 gameson (1995: 39) cites the cervus image in the context of interaction between image and text. this, and many other delicate drawings from the bury psalter, can be seen in ohlgren (1992). the two artists in wonders of the east 111 their weakness and poor critical reception aside, i will suggest that the images can tell us a great deal about how demanding the making of the manuscript was and the expertise that went into its compilation. contra all previous readings of the text, it seems certain that more than one hand worked on the images, and this has interesting implications for the circumstances in which this manuscript was made and indeed for the process of manuscript production in late anglo-saxon england more widely. 3. the two artists of the nowell wonders it is well-known that the two scribes of the nowell codex take place abruptly, mid-poetic line in beowulf on 172 (bl175)v, shown in figure 10. in an intriguing analogy, the images on 98(100) (bl101)v, §10, and 103 (bl106)r, §28, shown in figures 11 and 7 respectively, clearly show the work of two different draughtsmen. 17 they exhibit similar patterns. the first shows two camels (old english olfendas) against a red background. 18 the first is picked out neatly, even elegantly. the second shows clear indications of an attempt to draw an identical animal: it copies details such as the vertical lines inside the first camel’s ears and the tooth projecting down from the back of its mouth. but it is drawn altogether more roughly, with less subtlety of line and sense of proportion. the eye looks manic rather than intelligent, and the snout more lumpen than deft. where it passes behind the first camel, this second draughtsmen did not realize that parts of it should still be visible between its companion’s tail and rump, and beneath its belly. it is clearly drawn by a much less skilled and practised hand. it was also clearly an original element of the drawing, as both camels are blank parchment figures against a red background; no background colour has been erased to make space for it at some later date. the same pattern can be observed in the second of these examples on the penultimate page of wonders. two animals, called catinii in the text, stand one behind the other, baying up at the writing before them. the first figure is again elegant, with layered curls and muscle curvature showing the strains to its mouth and body. it is not quite absurd to compare the control exerted in its execution with animals from the bury psalter, such as those at the foot of 17 i am deeply indebted to c.l. fawson, who first suggested two different draughtsmen to me when looking at the image of hens, §3, 96(98) (bl99)r. 18 tiberius and bodley have ylpendas (‘elephants’) in text and images here. 112 simon c. thomson fol. 36. however, the second animal, while mostly lost to manuscript damage, is clearly in no way comparable. there is no variation in the weight and thickness of line used to draw it; the first creature’s pert nose becomes a beak; muscle definition becomes random lines more akin to scars. it is beyond reasonable doubt that there were two draughtsmen at work on these two images: i will here call the more skilled hand draughtsman a and the less skilled draughtsman b. once they have been identified, the possibility is opened up of seeing them throughout the text and attempting to attribute the other images to one hand or another. there are, for instance, three very similar illustrations of trees in the text, all shown in figure 6. on the basis of its controlled design and elegant terminal buds, the first, on 100(96) (bl103)v, §19, can be confidently attributed to draughtsman a. by contrast, on the basis of its lack of control and unambitious triangular buds, the second on 102 (bl105)r, §24, is clearly the work of draughtsman b. the third, on 103 (bl106)v, §31, is less weak than the second, but does not exhibit draughtsman a’s sense of design and (relative) ambition: it is probably the work of draughtsman b, and may perhaps indicate him developing his skill. it is possible to speculate further on both the other doubled images in the text and on some of the more or less skilled productions, but there is no space to do so here. in the hope that it will support further interrogation of my findings and research into the making of this manuscript and artistic practice in the period generally, a list of the images and their frames, and my cautious attributions to the different hands, is included as an appendix. however, in this context it is worth briefly noting that i see yet another hand at work in the images of wonders, and this to be more of a doodler than a draughtsman. on 98(100) (bl101)r, §9, the text’s largest image elegantly tells the story of how gold can be stolen from giant ants using three camels as shown in figure 12. parts of the execution are clearly by draughtsman a: the camels, which are closer to his catinos than his camel in the images discussed above; the tree to which the young camel is tethered, which is similar to the first tree of figure 6; given its sophistication, perhaps the overall design was his. the image is not a masterpiece: the man with his gold is rigid rather than beautiful; the device used to load gold onto the female camel’s back is graphically interesting rather than convincing or even particularly clear. the argument here is not that draughtsman a was a great artist, just that he was a competent one with significantly more control than his colleague. at least two parts of this picture, however, are entirely extraneous and very poorly executed. a crude ink sketch of one of the massive ants curls around the two artists in wonders of the east 113 the scribe’s writing on the first line of the page. it seems to be drawn in imitation of the most elegant ant which crouches immediately below it, but misses a front paw because that would cross the word. beside it is a similarly crude sketch of an animal’s head. to my eyes, it looks most like an emu; given its placement it was probably an imitation of the male camel’s head, which has been lost to fire damage but was probably similar to the female camel’s head on the other side of the image. unlike draughtsman b’s imitative drawings which fill the frame by doubling animals, these sketches are pre-conceived of as incomplete. and where b is an unsophisticated draughtsman lacking fine control of line and form, this hand is genuinely weak: the roughness of the incomplete ant and camel head exceeds the weakness of draughtsman b’s to at least the same extent as his exceeds that of draughtsman a. it seems likely, then, that these doodles were made by a later reader who admired the drawings and sought to imitate them: it could perhaps be linked with the partial middle english gloss on 99(95) (bl102)v in two or three hands, partially shown in figure 13, but there are so many stages of unidentified interaction with the nowell codex that such a specific connection is unsafe at best. 19 this analysis does not undermine mittman and kim’s finding that, as it stands, the image is destabilising and dramatic, confronting and encompassing the text. but it is clear that any such reading is of the codex as it now stands, not as it was first designed. it is worth noting that in other documents of the period artists do share work, but that there is usually both a clear hierarchy and clear separation of artists. a well-known instance is the early eleventh-century harley psalter, probably produced at christ church, canterbury, in which six different artistic hands have been identified and there may be more (gameson 1995: 18; noel 1995: 94–96, 137–140; cf. heslop 1990: 175). each worked on a different quire and some at different times: here, the variant hands are most likely connected to a minimisation of time to be taken and control of the burden given to each individual, as well as with the development of an artefact over time. as far as i know, there is no known anglo-saxon instance of two artists 19 in addition to the facsimiles cited above, the glossed page is shown in roberts (2005: 63). i am grateful to profs. winfried rudolf and linne moody and to dr estelle stubbs for discussing the gloss with me. the gloss is not widely discussed, but see leake (1962), malone (1963: 37), and kiernan (1996: n.53, 143), all of whom see two hands. 114 simon c. thomson working in the same quire, let alone the same page – and let alone again the same image. 20 in nowell, it seems to be the case that a less capable artist was given space to shadow the work of a stronger hand, and that this secondary artist was then given some illustrations to work on independently. clearly, this can be placed in parallel to the “younger” and “older” hands of the manuscript as a whole (scribes a and b respectively), although the relationship of those two is still entirely unclear. we could be witnessing apprenticeship in action, though it would require considerably more evidence to build any certainty in such a conclusion. the variation in quality can also be placed in the known context of artists who travelled to minor houses from the powerful centres: possibly a resident of a smaller scriptorium is learning from an itinerant professional. 21 pat conner has argued that scribes working together sought to match their hands in a performance of their spiritual communality (conner 2013: 46–49). the shared drawing of an image could be read as an extreme version of this kind of performative unity, only partially undermined by failure to successfully match style. 4. frames and colours now it is clear that earlier assumptions about the unthinking reproduction of the images were wrong, it is important to reconsider the processes that went into their making. if the images are the result of teamwork rather than scribe a incompetently scrawling his exemplar’s images as he went along, then the making of the nowell codex was a more complex and larger affair than has been previously assumed and the images not necessarily taken direct from an exemplar. i will therefore briefly discuss some other features of these images: first their framing and colouration; and then placement and design, to attempt to clarify this communal process of production. i hope to be able to reinforce 20 the winchester bible is a twelfth-century example of artists working together, with one of the hands sometimes sketching designs for another to add details and colour; see donovan (1993). i am grateful to richard gameson for pointing this out to me. 21 temple (1976: 17) notes the itinerant nature of some scribes; dormer (2012) adds artists to this and suggests that some may have been professional members of the laity, with which gameson (2012d: 281) agrees; brownrigg (1978: 240) suggests that major centres may have sent out their artists on an irregular basis, and that many books which seem incomplete “may have been waiting in vain for a travelling artist”. the two artists in wonders of the east 115 the idea of a collective effort to make the images, and to suggest that the impression of ‘absurdity’ or ‘crudeness’ they give is at least partly a result of the project proving to be more creatively challenging than its executors were equipped to handle, rather than due to pure incompetence. while it is not possible to identify any consistent movement in the type or quality of frame used for images, it is clear that the artist made no attempt at any point to produce an elaborate frame of the type being regularly used at some of the great centres of textual production during this period, and which are sometimes regarded as characterising the ‘winchester’ style. 22 it is possible to conclude from this that the framing artist was spectacularly unskilled or ignorant, working entirely inconsistently and with no sensitivity for how his material was presented; or that his copy text had no frames, or simple lines, and he was instructed to add them at too late a stage. however, given the clear attempts to decorate some of the frames in different ways, and the number of instances where an active decision has been taken to leave off one or more framing edges or to cross frame and image, it seems more reasonable to conclude that we have here an active exploration of framing possibilities. 23 in general, the frames can consistently be seen to be adapting themselves to images and text. where there is no space for a frame, as with the ant-camel image, it is simply left out. where a frame can have four solid bars, as with the two-headed man on 98(100) (bl101)v, §11, figure 14, it does. where an edge of a frame cannot be a solid bar because the text comes too close to the image, it becomes a single ink line, as with the left hand line in the image of camels (figure 12) discussed above, or the top edge to the second image of sheep on 22 gameson (1995: 193, 195–208) notes that frames of any degree of elaboration were rarely used for drawings (as opposed to paintings or illuminations), and discusses some types of decorated frame. on the basis of its lack of winchester borders, temple (1976: 75) places pierpoint morgan library ms 869 into the “utrecht school”, but this rigid distinction is probably not entirely tenable – and certainly not applicable by the mid-eleventh century. arguing from individual characteristics to identify a school of origin could equally well suggest that the focus on individual animals with plant ornament is a feature of ringerike style, which is plainly not the case here (see hicks 1993: 246–248 for a straightforward description of ringerike.) friedman (1986: 334) argues that not using ornate frames could have been an intentional act in tiberius, as the plain borders there “helps to focus our attention on parts of the monstrous anatomy which protrude from pictorial space”; cf. barajas’ discussion of the frames and their implications (2013: 252). 23 i cannot account for barajas’ finding that the frames in this manuscript are always “a solid boundary separating the reader from the wonder” (2013: 252). 116 simon c. thomson 95(97) (bl98)v, §2, figure 15. or it is left off altogether, as with both images on 96(98) (bl99)r, §3 and 4, figure 16. the framer did not lack ambition: he adds decoration to the corners of his very first frame (the first image in figure 15), some decorative bars to frames, 24 and he was perhaps responsible for the elegance of the frame shaped like an architectural arch on 103 (bl106)r, §28 or 29, figure 4. but the space occupied by text and images simply did not give him enough room to do more in most instances. in some instances, the framer is given a choice between drawing his frame through the text or through the image: he can be seen to change his mind in figure 17, where a line is extended for the frame at the foot of the image, but the vertical bar is drawn an inch or so inside that, so that two thirds of the frame’s bar is not covered by the man’s arm. given the occasional ambition of the frames, he may have been identical with draughtsman a, but this does not seem likely given the lack of concern for framing shown by the draughtsman in his execution of images such as this one. given that some difficulties encountered in framing result from the placement of text, scribe a is not likely to have been the framer either; it is plausible that this was a third hand brought in to finish the text off, perhaps with frames and colour. it is also possible that draughtsman a, having completed his images, was then asked to add frames in. this minimises the hands involved in execution, and also explains the lack of preparation for framing in the execution of images. either way – with a third hand coming in to frame, or an external pair of eyes critiquing the lack of frames – the process of production is complex. there are a number of instances, including those noted above, where the violation of framed boundaries in the nowell wonders makes the celebrated intrusion into frames employed by the anglo-saxon psychomachia, where, for instance, the excesses of luxuria’s dancing are emphasised by her hands and feet entering the bars of the frame, appear rather tame and feeble. 25 this may 24 on 96(98) (bl99)v, 101 (bl104)v and 102 (b105)v. mittman & kim (2013) note the variation in frames, discussing it in detail pp.137–181, see especially pp.144–147; they list the different frame types as appendix b, pp.241–244. 25 broderick (1982: 40) identifies frame-violation as a particularly anglo-saxon trait. friedman (1986: 324) regards nowell’s frame-violations as comparable with the various manuscripts of prudentius’ psychomachia, but i go further than him: where luxuria and superbia, for instance, merely enter the bar of their frames, most of the nowell images crash through the whole of their frames and enter the text-space. susan kim (1997: 40) is, i think, correct when she identifies the nowell images as “characterised by their aggressive and persistent movement outside their frames”. the two artists in wonders of the east 117 represent part of a movement towards the unframed freedom epitomised by the utrecht psalter and its insular imitators. 26 it could also be read as part of the same impulse towards violation and eruption that, so it has been argued, the tiberius illustrations use (again, comparatively tamely) to suggest the wildness and danger of the marvels. 27 a number of tiberius’ images seem to emphasise the scale of figures by showing them straining against framed boundaries, but this is plainly nothing like as extreme as nowell’s giant man on 99(95) (bl102)r, §12 or 13, shown in figure 17, whose fist explodes out of the withdrawn frame noted above. as with the use of colour, on its own terms and in the context of the eleventh century, the nowell wonders seems at least adequate and – compared with the admired breaking in psychomachia – radical and exciting in its aesthetic impact. this is not to claim extreme sophistication. one of the most widely discussed and admired images in tiberius is that of the blemmya, who grips his frame and stares out at the viewer, a level of dimensional play never present in nowell. colours were added after the images and frames were drawn. in places, the colourist misunderstands what draughtsman a has drawn: he paints the front camel’s leg in as background in the image shown in figure 11; he confuses the clothes of a shepherd and the extended ears of its sheep-like beast on 99(95) (bl102)r, §14, figure 18. as often in this codex, errors may be revealing: it follows that the colourist was probably not draughtsman a, but he could have been draughtsman b, or the scribe, or the framer, or all three. as discussed above, colour is inconsistently applied, in general moving from rich and glowing early images to stripped back, bare images later in the text. it may perhaps be the case that the colours simply ran out, leaving the colourist with the choice of highlighting with red or doing nothing in the last few pages. prudentius’ psychomachia is in london, british library, additional ms 24199, and the images are discussed most thoroughly in wieland (1997). 26 the utrecht psalter (utrecht, universiteitsbibliotheek, bibl. rhenotraiectinae ms i nr 32) is discussed in a number of places. see for instance wormald (1952: 21). the style it inspired is usually called the “utrecht style” and is distinguished from the “winchester school”. wormald (1952) describes these styles in detail, and friedman sees the nowell images as “very like those of the earliest ‘winchester school’” (1986: 322). i see no particular reason to assign them to one ‘school’ or the other: not least because, if there ever were any clear distinctions they were breaking down by the early eleventh century, and are only readily identifiable in very fine work where style can be easily discerned. 27 violation of frames is frequently discussed – see for instance wormald (1952: 28). 118 simon c. thomson this easy process is a little disrupted by the tree on the final page, but it is just possible that the three trees were coloured at the same time. the impression of a set amount of red/orange pigment being produced for this project is reinforced by the opportunistic colouring of some capital letters early in alexander’s letter to aristotle, which follows wonders in the manuscript, as shown in figure 19. 28 a limited amount of colour, produced specifically for this manuscript and used with injudicious excess in the early images, continues to make it seem as though this copy of wonders was produced in a scriptorium with ambitions somewhat in excess of its experience and capacity. all of the difficulties in planning text, image, frames, and colours also make it likely that the exemplar was not being exactly reproduced as the various hands seem to have a clear idea of the general direction of their work without knowing precisely what they are producing. i will therefore move on to briefly consider the planning of the images in the text before a final consideration of exemplars. 5. the planning and control of the images the image spaces were certainly pre-planned: on occasion, scribe a assumes space is needed for an illustration which is then not used. in the image of the giant man noted above on 99(95) (bl102)r, §13, figure 17, for instance, five of the nine lines of text to the left of the first drawing all end with relatively large amounts of space. the scribe is clearly concerned about having enough space for text, as he starts a new section with a marginal capital on the very last line of the page. he could have saved at least a manuscript line by utilizing these gaps, and certainly had no qualms about text abutting and even, occasionally, crossing into an image. but he leaves the space, expecting it to be filled. the draughtsmen did not need the whole space, and the framer chose to bring the left edge of his frame close in to the image, so a gap is left. on occasion, details of the images are so well designed to fill the space coincidentally left by letter shapes that they must have been drawn second: protruding feet on 100(96) (bl103)v, §20, and 101 (bl104)r, §21, figure 20, for instance, neatly occupy the spaces left by letters without ascenders. 28 four initials are coloured: the first large h, a marginal c, and a mid-line o on 104 (bl107)r.1, 8 & 13 respectively, and then, less explicably, a mid-line o on (bl108)v.2, ten capitals later. the two artists in wonders of the east 119 it is equally clear that the text was not always written before the image. the unframed ant-camel image (figure 12) discussed above was drawn before the text underneath it was written. there are five ruled lines beneath it. however, draughtsman a seems here not to have understood that a ruled line of text needs a fairly significant amount of space above it to be used for writing. the feet of his stylized tree (more like a tripod) extend very close to the ruled line. as shown in figure 21, when he wrote below it, scribe a had to compress the d of londbunis which is much smaller and closer to bilinear than his usual, taller and concave-down, allograph. that some images were drawn before the text and some after strongly suggests that scribe a and the two draughtsmen were working in the same place and at more or less the same time: the draughtsman worked on some pages while the scribe worked on others. it cannot usually be deduced which came first of image and text, but it is useful to have conclusive evidence that both sequences took place at different times. it is suggestive that the ant-camel image is the only one certainly drawn before the scribe worked on the page. possibly, this was the only time this sequence held. if so, this may have been because the image was an innovation, a possibility i will go on to consider in due course. it is also worth noting that scribe a’s regard for image space is not consistent. as in the two-headed snake example, his text seems to spill over the ends of pages and into what should be image spaces, certainly at 96(98) (bl99)r and 98(100) (bl101)r as shown in figure 16 and figure 12, and to some degree elsewhere. given that the scribe and draughtsman were working together, at the same time and place, it is possible that the scribe worked on these pages and handed them over, that draughtsman a complained about the interference with his image space, and that the scribe subsequently worked harder to maintain the boundaries (which, as it turns out, the draughtsmen did not always need after all). such a sequence of events is clearly merely a speculative reconstruction, but makes sense of the shifts in behaviour indicated by the evidence. to return to the main thread, given that the image spaces were preplanned, it would be understandable if there were a relatively consistent plan and layout. the text gestures towards this. each section starts on a new line and with a marginal capital, and the most frequent layout is to place two wonders on each page, each with an accompanying image, surrounded on 120 simon c. thomson three sides by text, as shown in figure 22. 29 however, this ‘default’ design only appears on seven of the seventeen sides of wonders. the variation mostly results from significant variation in both the size of images and the length of the text’s sections, 30 with the added complication that some sections describe more than one wonder requiring illustration. as a result, three pages add an extra image between my spaces i and ii; two pages enlarge one of the images to occupy the full width of the page; three have only one illustration and two consecutive pages are completely anomalous, with 97(99) (bl100)v having no images at all and with 98(100) (bl101)r having one large picture which occupies almost all the page, which does mean that the open book resembles the ‘default’ layout, with an image to the right of the text. 31 sometimes, textspace is reduced because the images are larger, or laid out portrait rather than landscape. the most striking example of this is on 102 (bl105)v, figure 2, where the two images of women leave so little space that only one line of text can cross the full width of the page. 6. variant styles; multiple exemplars there are a number of indications that at least some of the images did not come directly from an exemplar. first, there are two illustrations for one wonder: the generous men who give visitors women (§30) to take away are shown on recto and verso of 103 (bl106), figure 8. the first image shows two men saying farewell; the second shows a man, presumably a visitor, carrying a woman away with him. even with the top of the second image and the right hand side of the first missing, it is clear that they are drawn in strikingly different styles. the first has a divided frame, like that deployed for the bearded woman and her hunting animals (the upper image in figure 2), shod feet, and elegant draping, recognisably anglo-saxon clothes including pointed shoes that seem to curl up at the tip. in style, the figures are close to 29 i am following gameson’s (2012b: figure 2.17, 69) presentation of page layout. of the schemes he identifies, nowell is closest to his ‘c’, which he describes as “less complicated” but also “less popular” (2012b: 70). 30 as noted by olson (2003: 133), “there is little consistency in the size of the illustrations”. 31 knock (1983: 96) also notes this repeated break down of the planned sequence in vitellius. the two artists in wonders of the east 121 the third man in the council on the mountain on 102 (bl105)r, and to the priest in his temple on 101 (bl104)v, both shown in figure 23. the second image of the generous men narrative, showing a visitor carrying the woman he has been given, uses an uncoloured linear design suggestive of decorated clothes rather than the flowing garments of the previous image. rocks provide a floor for the man to stand on, and both are unshod. what can be seen of the woman’s face is drawn in the same style as the preceding image. the first has coloured clothes with blank parchment background; the second a lightly tinted background and no colour for the clothes. in short, as well as unnecessarily providing two images for one section, the two images have quite different illustrative styles, although i would (cautiously) attribute them both to draughtsman a. the variation in style persists throughout the text. 32 the council on the mountain, §25, noted above and shown in full in figure 5, gives three different men. at the right of the stylized table is the figure noted above and shown in figure 23, whose face is made of straight lines and angles; in the centre and on the left, as shown in figure 23, are two more figures drawn completely differently. they share the elongated nose, bulging chin, and prominent eyebrows also given to the bearded huntress on 101 (bl105)v, §26 and the shepherd on 99(95) (bl102)r, §14. indeed, in this second image, the shepherd’s face is utterly at odds with that of the hostes it faces. it is expressionistic and dominated by a single eye; lines continue from its clothing into its neck, suggesting gaunt, stretched flesh. 33 other details, such as the crook, the hand holding it, and both feet, seem clumsily, rapidly drawn in to supplement this craning head. he seems to be dressed in a simple belted tunic, with lines showing the bulge of his belly. the figure facing it across the frame wears a full-length black robe, with no apparent texturing to the material. the fat sausages which form the shepherd’s fingers are a world away from the hostes’ elegantly shaped outstretched right hand and the left hand, just about visible where it holds a human leg, has a realistic grasp which could hardly be less like the crook, drawn in around the shepherd’s hand with no particular interest in showing how the two are linked. his face is from another school. gone are the shepherd’s distorted, 32 though this is not as remarkable as might be thought: as gameson notes, “variant styles [...] regularly coexist”, in ‘anglo-saxon scribes and scriptoria’, gameson, ed., history of the book (2012): 94–120, 111. 33 james (1929: 55) calls him “[a]n absurd man, with a staff”. 122 simon c. thomson expressive features, replaced by a small, neat face on a clean and upright throat. the animal between them shows a third style. it is one of the “wildeor þa hatton lertices” (‘wild animals that are called lertices’). coloured a uniform golden yellow (apart from, as noted above, its ears which the colourist assumed to be part of the shepherd’s clothing), with pen markings showing the texture of its wool, the animal feels like a moment from a tapestry; something static and two-dimensional placed into a frame. the attempt at huge talons adds to this sense of flat illustration. 34 possibly the variations in style could be linked with the variations in quality discussed above, and attributed to different artists: if so, the two hands collaborated on a large number of images. this composite image comes at the end of a two-page spread, shown in full in figure 25, which is thoroughly confused in layout. the mistakes, and the rather drastic steps taken to ameliorate them, are further evidence that the image scheme was being freshly created for this copy of the text (cf. mcgurk et al. 1983: 96, n.20, 96). as noted above, the clear intention in wonders is to connect text with the relevant image. this was already difficult by the end of the second page, with a full manuscript line at the end of §4 having to be moved to the first line of 96(98) (bl99)v, intruding in the planned image space as partially shown in figure 9. however, by the start of the double spread of 98(100) (bl100)v and 99(95) (bl100)r, the alignment of text and image space has fallen apart completely and only comes back into line through some artistic innovation. on the first side, two image spaces illustrate §10 and §11, neatly beside the text for §11 and §12, respectively. the next page contains the rest of §12, the whole of §13 and §14, and the start of §15. next to §13, which describes the cannibalistic hostes, is an illustration of a longhaired naked man holding a piece of foliage of some sort (the giant man of figure 18). this may be an attempt to illustrate §12, given the statement that the people are “monu swa leona heafdu” (‘maned like lions’ heads’); possibly the foliage is a response to the text’s obscure “hy habbað micelne muð swa fon” (‘they have a great mouth like a fan’): illustrating the fan rather than the mouth. on the other hand, the man has seven lines beneath his prominent breasts, which could be a response to the “sidan mid breostum seofon / fota lange” (‘sides with breasts seven / feet long’) attributed to the hostes in §13 34 this is one of not many examples that i can find to support friedman’s (1986: 324) estimation of the illustrations as “like curious statues on display”. the image is actually very similar, apart from the length of ears, to the lertex in tiberius, on 82r. the two artists in wonders of the east 123 which is beside the image. it is perhaps possible that the manuscript line break after the number may have inspired the seven lines of “breast”. the same set of line recurs in the long eared panotus, §21, on 101 (bl104)r, so it may just be an archetype for nakedness, possibly showing ribs, available to the draughtsman. or the image may in fact be a creative attempt to bring in features of both of these alarming giant men. 35 as noted above, the hostes is certainly shown in the second picture on the page: a dark figure with a bestial head, holding a human leg to demonstrate its cannibalism. 36 here, it has been integrated into the image for §14, the sheeplike lertex. perhaps in order to balance the humanoid figure towering over the animal which is after all the subject of the text, the expressive shepherd discussed above, which has no textual basis, is included. it is quite likely that this second, dark-clothed hostes was based on that in an exemplar, because the detail of its blackness is omitted from the nowell text and so the colourist cannot have worked out how to colour it without an exemplar or a fortunate coincidence. the draughtsmen of the nowell wonders, in order to rebalance the confused image scheme, seem to have integrated the illustrations for §12 and §13, and those for §13 and §14; then to have recognised the aesthetic imbalance this created in §14 and added an additional figure. that the extratextual shepherd is drawn from a different archetype than the hostes suggests that it was either from a different exemplar altogether, or from the artist’s mind; either conclusion places it alongside the similarly conceived figures which appear elsewhere in the text as not from the same exemplar as the hostes and related figures. and that such confusion in the alignment of text and image occurs on this double page is interesting. it comes immediately after the large ant-camel image which is, as noted above, the only image in wonders certainly drawn before the text was written, has no analogue in the other versions of the text, and may well be original to nowell. 35 compare tiberius 81v, where the separate images are side by side and very similar. the image has confused most readers; see for instance mcgurk et al. (1983: n.20, 96). 36 a human leg is also used to emblematise the cannibalism of the donestre, §20, on 100(96) (bl103)v. 124 simon c. thomson 7. suggestions far from “ludicrous” or even “crude”, the images in wonders are, at worst, interesting and informative. their modern reception has suffered by comparison with the more polished and colourful versions of the text in tiberius and bodley; when considered in isolation, on their own merit, or in comparison with some other significant artistic achievements of the period, there is a great deal to admire even without going as far as olson or mittman and kim in a modern re-envisioning of anglo-saxon manuscript art as engaged with instability and uncertainty. there was clearly more than one hand at work on the text, and that matters. it demonstrates the communal nature of the project that made the nowell codex, and the investment of time, energy, and resources that it required. the planning of images can reasonably be described as sophisticated, but in some senses in excess of the capacity of the scribe and draughtsmen. the mistakes the team made in executing the design seem generally to indicate some areas of significance for understanding of the codex as a whole. first, that there is a second artist working with less skill and operating sometimes literally behind the main artist provides an intriguing (though not precise) parallel with the two scribes and is suggestive of a relatively large scriptorium where there were enough resources to produce a secular text in the vernacular with full-colour illustrations and, moreover, to use it to some extent as a training ground; or, perhaps, a secular house which carefully planned and assembled the human and material resources for this project. second, scribe a, who writes a relatively new hand with confidence, exhibits a degree of inexperience in shaping his text around the planned image spaces and seems to vary his behaviour based, perhaps, on feedback, which may indicate uncertainty or naïvety. third, there are some indications that this copy of wonders was making innovations with its source materials and that these innovations caused the challenges in its production. we are given a strong impression of a piece of work conceived with ambition and executed to the best of its producers’ abilities. in turn, this is suggestive of possible experimentation, an over-ambitious commissioner, or a project designed as a learning experience. the evidence for two artists working together in the nowell codex wonders of the east has implications for our reading of beowulf the two artists in wonders of the east 125 in its manuscript context, and for future research into the processes of commissioning and producing manuscripts in the anglo-saxon period. 37 references backhouse, janet 1984: the golden age of anglo-saxon art, london, british museum press. barajas, courtney catherine 2013: ‘reframing the monstrous: visions of desire and a unified christendom in 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the cotton vitellius a. xv ‘wonders of the east”’, in l.a.j.r. houwen, ed. animals and the symbolic in medieval art and literature, mediaevalia groninga 20, groningen, egbert forsten, 38–51. knock, ann 1997: ‘analysis of a translator: the old english wonders of the east’, in jane roberts & janet l. nelson with malcolm godden eds. alfred the wise: studies in honour of janet bately on the occasion of her sixty-fifth birthday, cambridge: d.s. brewer, 121–126. knock, ann, 1981: ‘wonders of the east’: a synoptic edition of ‘the letter of pharasamanes’ and the old english and old picard translations, university of london phd thesis, unpublished. the two artists in wonders of the east 127 lapidge, michael 2000: ‘the archetype of beowulf’, anglo-saxon england 29: 5–41. leake, jane a. 1962: ‘middle english glosses in the beowulf-codex’, modern language quarterly 23: 229–232. malone, kemp ed. 1963: the nowell codex (british museum cotton vitellius a. xv. second ms), eemf 12, copenhagen, 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1924: three old english prose texts in ms cotton vitellius a. xv: ‘letter of alexander the great’, ‘wonders of the east’, ‘life of st. christopher’, eets 161, london, oxford university press. 128 simon c. thomson sisam, kenneth 1953: ‘the compilation of the beowulf-manuscript’, in kenneth sisam ed. studies in the history of old english literature, oxford, clarendon press, 1953, 65–96. temple, elźbieta 1976: anglo-saxon manuscripts 900–1066. a survey of manuscripts illuminated in the british isles volume 2, london, harvey-miller. thomson, s.c. 2015: ‘manuscript stability and literary corruption: our failure to understand the beowulf manuscript’, quaestio insularis 15: 54–71. treharne elaine ed. 2009: old and middle english c. 890–c. 1450: an anthology, oxford, wiley-blackwell, 3 rd edition. wieland, gernot r. 1997: ‘the origin and development of the anglo-saxon psychomachia illustrations’, anglo-saxon england 26: 169–186. wormald, francis 1952: english drawings of the tenth and eleventh centuries, london, faber & faber. manuscripts london, british library, additional ms 24199 london, british library, cotton ms claudius a.xiv london, british library, cotton ms claudius b.iv london, british library, cotton ms tiberius b.v london, british library, cotton ms vitellius a.xv london, british library, harley ms 603 london, british library, stowe ms 944 oxford, bodleian library, bodley ms 614 new york, pierpoint morgan library ms 869 utrecht, universiteitsbibliotheek, bibl. rhenotraiectinae ms i nr 32 vatican, biblioteca apostolica, reg. lat. ms 12 the two artists in wonders of the east 129 appendix: images and colours used in wonders of the east # page sect contents of image frame colours used probable artist 1 95(97) (bl98)v 1 single ram standing on rocks looking to right away from text. four solid bars, floreate decorations in each corner. blue, yellow, black, (parchment) a 2 95(97) (bl98)v 2 two rams standing on rocks looking left and down to text. three solid bars, line across top yellow, orange, (parchment) a 3 96(98) (bl99)r 3 two hens, one (cockerel?) with left wing outstretched. three black lines, open to text on left. yellow, orange, black a 4 96(98) (bl99)r 4 two-headed eightlegged animal with lolling tongues and wide eyes looking left at text. solid bars at top and bottom, open to text at left; right side lost to damage: probably originally three sided. yellow, black, (parchment) a & b 5 96(98) (bl99)v 5 two-headed patterned snake across page with ‘hiss’ lines towards text. unframed. red, yellow, blue, black, (parchment) a 6 96(98) (bl99)r 6 two animals as if from above, vertical in frame: on left a patterned snake; on right a reptilian creature with horns and a bushy tail. four solid bars, decoration to three edges. yellow, black, red, blue a 130 simon c. thomson 7 97(99) (bl100)r 7 dog-headed man dressed in anglosaxon robes with ?leggings and shoes. four solid bars. red, blue, brown, yellow, black a 8 98(100) (bl101)r 9 baby camel tied to a tree; man in anglosaxon dress with female camel loaded with gold pieces in a harness on rocks; across a river, large ants around pieces of gold; male camel chained around the neck being bitten by two ants. unframed. black, red, yellow, light blue, (parchment) a (and later additions) 9 98(100) (bl101)v 10 two camels facing left towards text on rocks. bars at top and bottom; possible bar to right but lost to damage; waving black line as fourth bar separating from text. red, yellow, orange, (parchment) a & b 10 98(100) (bl101)v 11 man with two faces (one facing left, the other right) holding a horn in right hand and foliate sceptre in left. four solid bars. light blue, black, orange, yellow, (parchment) a 11 99(95) (bl102)r ?12 (or 13) ?naked man with long hair facing left towards text and holding upside-down foliate sceptre in right hand next to text. four solid bars. red, yellow, (parchment) b & a the two artists in wonders of the east 131 12 99(95) (bl102)r 13 & 14 sheep-like lertex with long ears and talons on feet, facing old shepherd with crook on left of frame; beastheaded figure dressed in black on right of frame holding a leg in left hand and with right hand outstretched. three thickly drawn black lines, probable fourth on right lost to damage. black, yellow, light blue, (parchment) a 13 99(95) (bl102)v 15 headless man with moustachioed face in his chest, in anglosaxon dress and leggings standing on rocks. four solid bars. red, yellow, (parchment) a 14 99(95) (bl102)v 16 two striped snakes, entwined, across the width of the page, with bearded chins. unframed, though boxed in with a thin line on the right of the page. light blue, yellow (parchment) a 15 99(95) (bl102)v 17 a man’s torso with arms outstretched and a bracelet on each wrist, possibly singing and facing the text, on a dokey’s body, standing on rocks. bar on the left side, another half way up on the right and a short one from that into the body. possibly a bar at the bottom lost to damage. black, yellow, orange, red, (parchment) b 132 simon c. thomson 16 100(96) (bl103)r 18 two circles each with hubs, a set of spokes set in a greek cross, and a thin set of spokes set in an x. four solid bars. orange, red, black, (parchment) a? 17 100(96) (bl103)v 19 a tree with three trunks rising out of entwined roots with a canopy of leaves and three flowers. unframed, with thin line at bottom. blue, yellow, orange, red, a washed out red, (parchment) a 18 100(96) (bl103)v 20 on left, a humanoid figure with a reptilian head, naked with exposed phallus, holding a leg; on right, a woman with long hair and dress with flowing skirts apparently held up to expose legs, one foot cut off at the ankle. four solid bars, thinner on the right and at the top where it gives way to writing. red, (parchment) b? 19 101 (bl104)r 21 a man, possibly naked and drawn in the same style as §11, facing away from the text, with large, trumpetlike ears and holding a small bow or possibly harp, with foliage in the bottom right corner. three solid bars, probable fourth on the right lost to damage. red, (parchment) b & a 20 101 (bl104)v 22 man in anglo-saxon dress with leggings and long hair, top half of face lost to damage. three solid bars, probable fourth at top lost to damage. red, blue, orange, yellow, (parchment) a the two artists in wonders of the east 133 21 101 (bl104)v 23 an elaborate building with main central tower and two flanking towers, image of a sun on low wall at centre bottom, with head and shoulders of a robed man above it. three solid bars, with bottom bar formed of three bars making the building's foundation. red, yellow, orange, blue, (parchment) a 22 102 (bl105)r 24 a tree with three trunks rising out of entwined roots, two prongs emerging with buds on the ends, top lost to damage. no frame visible. blue, red, yellow, (parchment) b 23 102 (bl105)r 25 a ?table stretching across the page formed of five large circles, possibly shields, piled together, with three layers of pedestal emerging to the left, with three men sat behind it, heads and shoulders visible, two apparently in conversation. no frame, though bar across bottom could be partial frame or part of image. blue, orange, yellow, red, black, (parchment) b & a 134 simon c. thomson 24 102 (bl105)v 26 a woman with long hair and beard, facing away from the text and holding an hourglass shaped club in her left hand; right hand third of the image is separated with a straight line and has a dog-like animal at right angles to the woman and apparently on rocks. solid bars, one with decoration, around three sides, open to right away from text. orange, brown, (parchment) b 25 102 (bl105)v 27 a naked woman, facing away from the text, with long hair and perhaps a tail, with the lower curve of breasts visible beneath her right arm, and left arm holding a sceptre. four solid bars, one on right becoming a thin line at the top. orange, (parchment) b 26 103 (bl106)r 28 or 29 a man facing away from the text and sitting on a cushion inside a decorated arch, with left hand (possibly holding something) lost to damage. decorated arch within which figure sits forms frame. yellow, red, (parchment) b 27 103 (bl106)r 28 & 29 two cat like animals baying towards the text. no frame. (parchment) a & b the two artists in wonders of the east 135 28 103 (bl106)r 30 image space divided in half by a straight line, with a man in the left side in anglo-saxon dress carrying a crook and seemingly waving to the other man, who is mostly lost to damage but what remains looks near identical to the first. three solid bars, possibly fourth on right lost to damage. orange, yellow, brown, blue, (parchment) a 29 103 (bl106)v 30 man carrying a woman with long red hair, both clothed, standing on rocks. both faces lost to damage. three solid bars, possibly fourth at top lost to damage. red, yellow, (parchment) a 30 103 (bl106)v 31 a tree with four trunks rising out of a bed of earth with a canopy of leaves and two buds. no frame, but line at bottom. red, yellow, blue b 31 103 (bl106)v 32 man with mask-like face and perhaps a circular hat, holding a foliate sceptre towards text in his right hand, with trailing left hand reaching to small figure, possibly a naked woman. four solid bars around main figure. orange, (parchment) b 136 simon c. thomson figure 1. frontispiece to liber vitae, london, british library, stowe ms 944, 6r. © the british library board, stowe 944. the two artists in wonders of the east 137 figure 2. two women of 102 (bl105)v, §26 & 27. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. 138 simon c. thomson figure 3. sigelwara who ends the text on 103 (bl106)v, §32. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. the two artists in wonders of the east 139 figure 4. seated man on 103 (bl106)r, §28 or 29. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. figure 5. the council on 102 (bl105)r, §25. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. 140 simon c. thomson figure 6. the three trees 100(96) (bl103)v, §19; 102 (bl105)r, §24; 103 (bl106)v, §31. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. figure 7. catinii drawn by two different hands on 103 (bl106)r §28. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a.xv the two artists in wonders of the east 141 figure 8. the two illustrations of generous men on 103 (bl106)r & v, §30. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. figure 9. the two-headed snake and detail on 96(98) (bl99)v, §5. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. 142 simon c. thomson figure 10. scribal handover on 172 (bl175)v.1–5. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. figure 11. two camels drawn by different hands on 98(100) (bl101)v, §10. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. the two artists in wonders of the east 143 figure 12. large illustration of stealing gold from ants with camels and detail of doodles on 98(100) (bl101)r, §9. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. 144 simon c. thomson figure 13. part of the middle english gloss on 99(95) (bl102)v.1–7. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. the two artists in wonders of the east 145 figure 14. the two-headed man on 98(100) (bl101)v, §11. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. 146 simon c. thomson figure 15. two images of sheep on 95(97) (bl98)v, §1 and §2. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. the two artists in wonders of the east 147 figure 16. hens and eight-legged wilddeor on 96(98) (bl99)r, §3 and 4. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. 148 simon c. thomson figure 17. giant with withdrawn frame 99(95) (bl102)r, §12 or 13. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. figure 18. lertex with shepherd and hostes on 99(95) (bl102)r, §13 and 14. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. the two artists in wonders of the east 149 figure 19. opening of alexander’s letter, 104 (bl107)r. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. 150 simon c. thomson figure 20. protruding feet of figures on 100(96) (bl103)v, §20, and 101 (bl104)r, §21. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. figure 21. letters shaped around a detail from 98(100) (bl101)r, §9. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. the two artists in wonders of the east 151 figure 22. regular plan for page layout. 152 simon c. thomson figure 23. examples of one face type, shown on 101 (bl104)v (priest in his temple, §22) and 102 (bl105)r (third figure in the council, §25). © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. figure 24. examples of another face type, shown on 102 (bl105)r (first two figures in the council, §25) and bearded huntress 101 (bl105)v, §26. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. figure 25. two page spread, 98(100) (bl101)v british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. the two artists in wonders of the east two page spread, 98(100) (bl101)v – 99 (95) (bl102)r, §10-14. © the british library board, cotton vitellius a. xv. 153 14. © the 154 simon c. thomson author’s address englisches seminar ruhr-universität bochum d-44780 bochum, germany received: 9 december 2015 e-mail: simon.thomson@rub.de revised version accepted: 15 june 2016 microsoft word 2. lawhorn.docx connor lawhorn, selim27 (2022): 28–48. issn 1132-631x / issn-l 2792-3878 / https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.27.2022.28-48 what does herebeald have to do with christ? the apposition of christian and pagan myth in beowulf1 connor lawhorn independent scholar the first half of beowulf’s speech before the dragon fight (lines 2425-2471) has often been referred to as the most pagan part of the poem, possibly containing an allusion to the god odin and his sons hothr and baldr. this article, however, proposes a new christian context for this passage, identifying, in beowulf’s description of a hanged son on the gallows, a hitherto unnoticed allusion to christ’s passion, evinced by a verbal association between the gallows and christ in old english poetry, and a broader syncretism between odin, baldr, and christ in viking-age anglo-scandinavian culture. this allusion is consistent with other christological references throughout beowulf, subtly preserving the conceit of the characters’ pagan world while ironically accenting, in the minds of a christian audience, the characters’ pathetic ignorance of christ. keywords: beowulf, christ, hanging, gallows, woden/odin, baldr 1. introduction before his fatal encounter with the dragon, beowulf utters a long and peculiar speech to his twelve companions (lines 2425-2471). whereas the warrior of fifty years ago would have scorned morose oration in favor of immediate action (lines 1384-85), the older beowulf instead reminisces, on the brink of battle, about an unfortunate accident that took place in his childhood between his foster-uncles, herebeald and 1 i am grateful to dr. francis leneghan for his encouragement and guidance in writing this article. the apposition of christian and pagan myth in beowulf 29 hæthcyn, in which hæthcyn unintentionally slew his older brother, herebeald, with a hornbow. beowulf likens king hrethel’s subsequent grief, and inability to requite the wrongful death of his son, to that of an old man who has lived to see his only child hang on the gallows: biowulf maþelade, bearn ecgðeowes: ‘fela ic on giogoðe guðræsa genæs, orleghwila; ic þæt eall gemon. ic wæs syfanwintre þa mec sinca baldor, freawine folca æt minum fæder genam; heold mec ond hæfde hreðel cyning, geaf me sinc ond symbel, sibbe gemunde; næs ic him to life laðra owihte, beorn in burgum, þonne his bearna hwylc, herebeald ond hæðcyn oððe hygelac min. wæs þam yldestan ungedefelice mæges dædum morþorbed stred, syððan hyne hæðcyn of hornbogan, his freawine flane geswencte, miste mercelses ond his mæg ofscet, broðor oðerne blodigan gare. þæt wæs feohleas gefeoht, fyrenum gesyngad, hreðre hygemeðe; sceold hwæðre swa þeah æðeling unwrecen ealdres linnan. swa bið geomorlic gomelum ceorle to gebidanne, þæt his byre ride giong on galgan. þonne he gyd wrece, sarigne sang, þonne his sunu hangað hrefne to hroðre, ond he him helpe ne mæg eald ond infrod ænige gefremman (fulk & bjork & niles 2008: 83-84) [beowulf, son of ecgtheow, made a speech: “many a battle-rush i survived in youth and many times of strife. i remember all that. i was seven-winters old when the lord of treasure, the friendly ruler of the people, took me from my father. he reared and kept me, king hrethel, gave me treasure, feasts, was mindful of kinship. nor was i ever more hateful a whit to him, the 30 connor lawhorn warrior in the fort, than any of his children: herebeald, haethcyn, or my hygelac. for the eldest a murderbed was unfittingly spread by a kinsman’s deed, when haethcyn, with a hornbow, his lord-friend struck with an arrow. he missed his mark, and shot his kinsman, one brother to another, with a bloody spear. that was a fight that could not be atoned for with payment, wickedly sinned, the breast mind-weary; nevertheless, the prince had to lose his life unavenged. it was like the sorrow of an old man who endures that his son should ride young on the gallows. then he keens a lament, a sad song, when his son hangs, a joy to the raven, and, although old and wise, he may not perform any help for him.] recent scholarship has focused on how this speech seems to undermine the poem’s earlier celebration of valour (georgianna 1987), identifying, in beowulf, at this moment, a complex hamlet-like psychology (de looze 1984), while also providing a poignant variation on the melancholy of old age (porck 2014: 200, 205). the father’s lament has drawn linguistic comparison to the prologue of the poem (leneghan 2020: 90), as well as to depictions of grief in the wanderer and egils saga (wehlau 1998), while also prompting debate about the legal aspects of anglo-saxon executions and feuds (whitelock 1939). more relevant to this discussion, however, are the speech’s subtle allusions to norse myth. joseph harris (1994) identifies a link between the hypothetical old man—the gomel ceorl—who grieves for his hanged son, and the god odin (oe woden), often referred to in old norse as a “gamall karl”. the presence of ravens, hanging, and spearwounds in beowulf’s speech (“hrefne”, 2448a; “gealgan”, 2446a; “blodigan gare”, 2440b) fortifies the association with odin, who is often depicted in religious iconography alongside ravens, or hanged from a tree and impaled with a spear.2 these associations can be traced to myths preserved in the icelandic poetic edda and prose edda, both transcribed in thirteenth century manuscripts that postdate the copying of beowulf (c.1000) but whose origins lie in earlier oral 2 see kopár (2013: 64, 72, 98, 112, 120) for discussion of the depiction of odin on the gosforth cross, the thorwald’s cross, the cross fragments of kirkbymoorside and billingham, in addition to the slab of jurby and larbro st hammars i. the apposition of christian and pagan myth in beowulf 31 composition.3 in these myths, odin is often portrayed as a “raven-god”, surveilling the world through vigilant birds (gylfaginning 38 (faulkes 1987: 33)), and also as a hanging god, who, in a remarkable episode, pierces himself with a spear and hangs himself from the world tree yggdrasil (hávamál 138 (orchard 2011: 35)). the connection between hrethel, the gomel ceorl, and odin might seem tenuous were it not for the fact that the names of hrethel’s sons, “here-beald” and “hæth-cyn”, are cognates with those of the old norse gods “baldr” and “hothr”, two sons of odin involved in a similar fatal accident with a projectile (o’donoghue 2003: 84). in one version of the myth, baldr, the best and most beautiful of the gods, is, by loki’s contrivance, slain with a spear of mistletoe at the hand of his blind brother, hothr. all beings weep for the universally beloved baldr, but his death grieves odin in particular, for he knows it heralds ragnarok, the doom of the gods: hǫðr tók mistiltein ok skaut at baldri at tilvísun loka. flaug skotit í gǫgnum hann ok fell hann daður til jarðar, ok hefir þat mest óhapp verit unnit með goðum ok mǫnnum. þá er baldr var fallinn þá fellusk ǫllum ásum orðtǫk ok svá hendr at taka til hans, ok sá hverr til annars, ok váru allir með einum hug til þess er unnit hafði verkit. en engi mátti hefna, þar var svá mikill griðastaðr. en þá er æsirnir freistuðu at mæla þá var hitt þó fyrr at grátrinn kom upp svá at engi mátti ǫðrum segja með orðunum frá sínum harmi. en óðinn bar þeim mun verst þenna skaða sem hann kunni mesta skyn hversu mikil aftaka ok missa ásunum var í fráfalli baldrs. (faulkes 2005: 46) [hod took the mistletoe and shot at baldr at loki’s direction. the missile flew through him and he fell dead to the ground, and this was the unluckiest deed ever done among gods and men. when baldr had fallen, then all the æsir’s tongues failed them, as did their hands for lifting him up, and they all looked at each other and were of one mind towards the one who had done the deed. but no one could take vengeance, it was a place of such sanctuary. when the æsir tried to speak then what happened first was that weeping came out, so that none could tell another in words of his 3 on date and compilation of the beowulf-manuscript, see most recently thompson (2018). for a range of arguments on dating of the composition of the poem, from the seventh to eleventh centuries, see chase (1987). for exponents of an early date, see fulk (1992) and neidorf (2014). 32 connor lawhorn grief. but it was odin who took this injury the hardest in that he had the best idea what great deprivation and loss the death of baldr would cause the æsir.] (faulkes 1987: 48-51) despite the obvious differences in the beowulf poet’s version of the story, the essential scenario of an accidental, unrequitable fratricide by missile, combined with the similarity of the characters’ cognomens, has been used to argue persuasively that the beowulf poet intentionally euhemerized the myth of baldr and hothr.4 the beowulf poet’s familiarity with other odin-adjacent figures from germanic myth, such as sigemund (lines 875-79) and heremod (lines 901, 1709), lends further support to this hypothesis, as well as the fact that herebeald and haethcyn—unlike their historically well-attested brother hygelac—do not appear in any source outside of beowulf: they are quite possibly the poet’s confection.5 a few theories have been put forward to explain the subtle allusion to odin and baldr at this particular moment of the poem. andy orchard (2003: 119) suggests the poet is “somehow sanctifying his appeal to the figures of pre-christian myth and legend”, while ursula dronke (1969) suggests a thematic link between the fall of the æsir and that of the geats. i would like to propose, however, a new christian context for beowulf’s parable of the old man and his hanged son: namely, a typological allusion to christ’s passion. to my knowledge, only one other scholar has ever proposed a biblical parallel for this particular passage: in 1959, a. c. bouman compared hrethel’s grief for herebeald to king david’s grief for his son, absalom. absalom is, like herebeald, slain with a dart, but he is also, like the hanged son, snagged in a tree (2 samuel 1:18). king david further resembles both hrethel and the anonymous old man, the gomel ceorl, since he is unable to avenge his son’s death: absalom, as an 4 ursula dronke (1969: 323) writes: “the discrepancies are considerable, but if the christian poet intended to euhemerize the myth of baldr’s death, could he have done it more effectively?” in agreement with tolkien (1963: 70-74), dronke cites similarities between thor and beowulf, and between the eschatology of ragnarok and the ending of the poem that further support this euhemerization hypothesis. 5 hygelac’s invasion of gaul is reported by gregory of tours c. 575. hygelac is also mentioned in the liber monstrorum, c. 650, as well as in three scandinavian texts c.1200 (leneghan 2020: 4245; north 2006: 199-202). the apposition of christian and pagan myth in beowulf 33 insurgent, was justifiably executed.6 although this link to david and absalom is evocative, i shall argue that a closer and more meaningful parallel, and indeed possible source, for beowulf’s analogy between a spear-wounded son and a son hanged on the gallows is the passion of the spear-wounded, gallows-hanged christ. the allusions to odin and baldr in the speech actually support my thesis: odin and baldr were counterparts of christ in the anglo-scandinavian imagination, across a range of literary and material contexts. the apposition of these equivalent mythological figures, christian and pagan, in beowulf’s speech is entirely consistent with the “double perspective” maintained throughout the poem (best elucidated by fred c. robinson in his 1985 book beowulf and the appositive style) in which the reader simultaneously experiences the pagan view of the characters and the larger christian perspective of the poet: a dual view that endows the pagan characters with vicarious christian virtue while also underscoring their poignant ignorance of christianity. moreover, as we shall see, christ’s crucifixion was typically viewed as a hanging on a gallows in old english literature. it is therefore not improbable that the audience of beowulf might have thought not only of the myth of baldr but of the sacrifice of god’s only son at this moment in the poem, as the hero approaches his own death. 2. odin, baldr, and christ odin and baldr were connected with christ in the anglo-scandinavian imagination, as demonstrated in a range of literary and material contexts. they were both, in fact, counterparts to christ. the elder edda’s hávamál describes odin in terms plainly evocative of the christian god: veit et, at ek hekk vindga meiði á nætr allar níu, geiri undaðr 6 for parallels between king david (who is, himself, a type of christ) and beowulf, see orchard (2003: 142-45). 34 connor lawhorn ok gefinn óðni, sjálfr sjálfum mér, á þeim meiði er manngi veit hvers hann af rótum renn. (evans 1986: 68) [“i know that i hung on that windy tree spear-wounded, nine full nights, given to odin, myself to myself on that tree that rose from roots that no man ever knows.”] (orchard 2011: 35) a spear-wounded god sacrificing himself to himself on a tree is certainly highly reminiscent of christ’s death on the cross (north 2006: 199-202). the extraordinary parallels may account for the otherwise inexplicable juxtaposition of odin and christ in old english poems, such as the nine herbs charm, which concludes by extolling the healing powers of christ but begins with a puzzling reference to woden (on odin) that is immediately followed by a description of the lord hanging in heaven: wyrm com snican, toslat he man; ða genam woden nigo wuldor tanas sloh ða þa næddran, þæt heo on nigon tofleah. þær geændade æppel and attor þæt heo næfre ne wolde on hus bugan. fille and finule, fela mihtigu twa, þa wyrte gesceop witig drihten halig on heofonum þa he hongode. (bjork 2014: 196) [“a serpent came crawling, it tore apart a person; then woden took nine glory twigs, then struck the adder so that it fled away in nine. there apple and poison brought it about that it never wanted to enter a house. chervil and fennel, two very effective ones, the wise lord, holy in the heavens, made when he hung”.] (bjork 2014: 197) the apposition of christian and pagan myth in beowulf 35 in the context of a charm concerned with healing, it is unclear whether the wise lord hanging in heaven is woden or christ, since both are powerful healers who were hanged. baldr similarly cuts a christlike figure as a god who dies but who is then, after ragnarok, resurrected, as told in gylfaginning 53 (faulkes 1987: 56). arthur mosher (1983: 313) has argued that snorri sturluson may have constructed his version of the edda myths precisely in order to depict baldr as a type of christ: “a heathen type of the story of the crucifixion”. did the beowulf poet have something similar in mind when he euhemerized baldr as herebeald and compared him to a son hanged on the gallows? in another version of the baldr myth, told in the older völuspá, baldr is intentionally sacrificed by his father odin so that he may later be resurrected—an even more christian account of the myth (dronke 1997: 97; o’donoghue 2003: 88; hill 2012: 217-218). other links between baldr and christ abound: the weeping of all beings for baldr in gylfaginning has an old english christian parallel in line 55 of the dream of the rood—when christ is on the cross, “weop eal gesceaft” (swanson 1996: 97) [“all creation wept”] (dronke 1997). lilla kopár (2013: 102-103) identifies an echo of baldr’s dart-ridden death in line 62 of the rood’s lament: “eall ic wæs mid strælum forwundod” [“i was all severely wounded with darts”].7 heather o’donoghue identifies a further parallel between baldr and christ in jewish apocrypha: just as all worldly things in gylfaginning promised not to harm baldr—with the exception of the flimsy, unassuming mistletoe—so all trees refused to participate in christ's crucifixion, except a meek stalk of cabbage (o’donoghue 2003: 84). another link between baldr and christ can be found through hothr, baldr’s spearwielding, blind brother. just as hothr is blind, so too is longinus, the man who, in christian apocrypha, pierced jesus’s side with a spear (dronke 1997: 96-97).8 this last connection with longinus is especially suggestive, in terms of beowulf, given the peculiar transmutation of the 7 kopár writes: “the function of possible references to baldr in a christian poem might have been to enrich the christian story by bringing the tragedy of christ’s death closer to the contemporary audience and to generate empathy.” 8 dronke notes that longinus’ blindness is first mentioned in poems of blathmac c. 750-70, and is illustrated in an irish gospel book c. 800. see also o’donoghue (2003: 98). 36 connor lawhorn arrow that kills herebeald, the “flane” (2438b), only two lines later, into a bloody spear (“blodigan gare”). it is not only old english and old norse literature that links odin and baldr with christ: the associations are written in rock. in a recent study of anglo-scandinavian viking-age monuments, kopár cites examples from architecture that further exhibit this syncretic mythology, blending aspects of the gods odin, baldr, and thor with christ, noting: “in the conversion period, thor became one of the chief pagan counterparts of christ … together with odin and balder, all of whom shared certain characteristics of the ‘new’ christian deity” (kopár, 2013: 61).9 for instance, thorwald’s cross, c. 950 a.d., on the isle of man, depicts a triumphant christ, trampling snakes, opposite odin, who is ignominiously being wolfed down by fenrir. the juxtaposition of christ’s ascendency with odin’s death might have been meant to “suggest the superiority of christianity over the old religion” (kopár 2013: 72). the gosforth cross of st mary’s, c. 950 a.d., depicts a crucifixion amidst a variety of scenes from ragnarok, in which an ambiguous figure on the cross can be interpreted either as christ or baldr, and such ambiguity may have been the artist’s intention (kopár 2013: 98). scholars have also noted the possible presence of odin on cross fragments from billingham and kirkbymoorside, the latter depicting odin hanging on yggdrasil, the world tree of norse mythology, but with his arms outstretched in a pose suggestive of crucifixion (kopár 2013: 112, 120). that these pagan and christian stories exist side-byside on the same monuments, and are reflected in the same old english and old norse texts, however uneasily, testifies to the affinity these myths would have had in the minds of many anglo-saxons, at least in the viking-age. although it is clear a cult of woden existed in some form in anglosaxon england before the conversion to christianity, there is little evidence for an odinic cult comparable to the ones attested by the old 9 for comparisons between beowulf and thor, see dronke (1969: 313-316, 322). the apposition of christian and pagan myth in beowulf 37 norse sources until the viking age.10,11 nonetheless, versions of the myths of odin, baldr, and hothr were in circulation well before the viking age, and a similar atmosphere of religious syncretism could have lingered for some time after the anglo-saxons’ conversion (c. 600), during which they, like the irish before them, undertook the “synchronisation of traditional myths” with biblical ones (yorke 2015: 167). while the association of herebeald and the hanged son with odin, baldr, and christ proposed here might therefore lend support to arguments in favour of viking-age composition, as dronke notes, such syncretism could have also taken place at a much earlier date in the aftermath of conversion.12 10 for the existence of a cult of woden in anglo-saxon england, see ryan (1963). ryan cites odin’s appearance in metalwork, numerous place-names, the day of the week “wednesday”, and oe poetry, including here in beowulf’s speech. for a more skeptical view, see meaney (1966). for more recent discussion, see kopár (2013: 106-108): “an earlier, originally continental manifestation of the god …was certainly known in the british isles under the name woden and venerated among the early anglo-saxons …woden seems to have enjoyed great popularity among the early anglo-saxons.” 11 the apposition of christ, odin, and baldr in beowulf proposed in this article may therefore have implications for the dating of the poem, providing further evidence for the resonance of the poem, or at least this particular passage, in the anglo-scandinavian period (frank 1997). the possibility of viking-age composition, however, no longer seems likely on account of linguistic, metrical, and other factors (fulk 1992; neidorf & pascual 2019). 12 as ursula dronke reasons, “if heathen myths survived in norse poetry at least two centuries after the conversion of iceland before any of them were recorded in writing, might now some at least of the greater myths have survived also in anglo-saxon memory until the end of the eighth century, the latest date commonly considered likely for the composition of beowulf?” (dronke 1969: 303-304). 38 connor lawhorn 3. the hanging of christ in old english poetry readers today disassociate the concepts of crucifixion and death by hanging, but to the original audience of beowulf, the two would have been synonymous. to early anglo-saxons unacquainted with the roman method of execution, christ was hanged on a tree. the word for “gallows” in old english (gealga, galga)—used of the hanged son in line 2446a—nearly always occurs in old english poetry in reference to the crucifixion of christ, or one of his martyrs, demonstrated in lines 10, 40, and 146 of the dream of the rood (swanson 1996: 93, 95, 100), lines 966, 1327, 1409 of andreas (clayton 2013: 248, 272, 276), lines 179, 480, 719 of elene (gradon 1996: 34, 44, 53), lines 22 and 40 of fates of the apostles (brooks 1961: 56, 57), lines 310 and 482 of juliana (woolf 1955: 35, 43), line 86 of menologium (dobbie 1942: 51), line 28 of creed (dobbie 1942: 79) and lines 509 and 548 of christ and satan (clayton 2013: 336, 338). indeed, christ’s description of his own crucifixion in christ and satan combines the gallows with a spearwound: the apposition of christian and pagan myth in beowulf 39 ic eow þingade þa me on beame beornas sticedon garum on galgum (507b-509a). [“i suffered for you when warriors stabbed me on the cross, with spears on the gallows.”] an even more striking conflation of a gallows-hanging and a crucifixion occurs in exeter riddle 51. the riddle challenges the reader to discover the identity of an enigmatic beam, a word which can mean “tree”, “timber”, or “beam of light”, but whose specific identity, hinted at in the course of the riddle, is ambiguous: the beam is either the plain gallows of a criminal or the holy cross of a martyr. riddle 51 thereby plays on the close association of these two concepts in anglo-saxon thought: ic seah on bearwe beam hlifian tanum torhtne. þæt treow wæs on wynne, wudu weaxende. wæter hine ond eorþe feddan fægre, oþþæt he frod dagum on oþrum wearð aglac-hade, deope gedolgod, dumb in bendum, wriþen ofer wunda, wonnum hyrstum foran gefrætwed. nu he fæcnum wæg þurh his heafdes mægen hilde-giest oþrum rymeð; oft hy an yst strudon hord ætgædre; hræd wæs ond unlæt se æftera, gif se ærra fær genamnan in nearowe neþan moste. (orchard 2021: 370) [“i saw a tree trunk tower in a grove, bright with branches. that tree was joyful, wood growing. water and soil nourished it beautifully, until, experienced in days, it fell into a monstrous state, deeply injured, dumb in bonds, its wounds wrapped round, adorned in front with dark trappings. 40 connor lawhorn now for another hostile battle-guest, it creates a path through the power of its head; often in the tumult they plundered hoards together; swift and unslack the one who follows, if the one in front was able to brave danger for a comrade in distress.”] (orchard 2021: 371) the solution “cross” was first proposed by f. h. whitman (1977), who noted many similar motifs between the beam of riddle 51 and christ's cross as described in other old english poems like the dream of the rood: a tree, once joyous in a grove, is tortured, wounded, adorned with ornaments, and then becomes an instrument for clearing a path to salvation—a spiritual battering-ram of sorts that can even harrow hell and raid its hoard for souls. wilcox (1990), however, later argued that, although riddle 51 initially implies “cross” as its solution, the word fæcnum in line 8 (“deceit” or “wickedness”) suggests instead the gallows of a wrongdoer. more important to this discussion than determining the riddle’s one “true” solution is to note the proximity between the notions of a cross and a gallows in the riddle’s associative play. indeed, in a recent edition of the exeter riddles, orchard solves riddle 51 as gealga: “gallows, cross” (2021: 426), holding both solutions in apposition. the suggestive ambiguity and appositive possibilities of gealga, on display in riddle 51, could well have been familiar to the audience of beowulf, especially since, as fulk (1992: 408) notes, the exeter riddles “seem close in date to beowulf”.13 of the eighteen references to gallows in old english poetry outside of beowulf, only one allusion in lines 33-36 of the the fortunes of mortals bears no explicit connection to christ or his saints: sum sceal on geapum galgan ridan seomian æt swylte, oþþæt sawl hord, ban-cofa blodig abrocen weorþeð. þær him hrefn nimeþ heafod-syne (bjork 2014: 58) [one must ride the broad gallows, sway in death until the soulholder, the bloody bone casket, becomes broken. there the raven plucks out the eyes.] (bjork 2014: 59) the apposition of christian and pagan myth in beowulf 41 many, however, have noted the odinic echoes of the hanging, the raven, the loss of an eye, and, elsewhere in the text, the presence of a wolf and a hawk (ryan 1963: 471; swenson 1991: 127; isaacs 1975: 363). it has been argued that the fortunes of mortals remains “a didactic christian poem unified through a complex artistry” in which “the second and third sections, descriptions apparently pagan in nature depicting the whims of fate, are subordinate to the fourth section’s primary christian theme” (dammers 1976). if it could be shown that the odinic allusion to the gallows is not subordinate to, but rather serves the poem’s ultimate christian theme by implying christ’s sacrifice, then every single reference to gallows in old english poetry, outside of beowulf, would refer to christ or one of his martyrs. the association of the gallows with christ and his saints is also ubiquitous in old english prose. of the roughly sixty-six references to gallows in the old english corpus, at least fifty-three refer directly to christ’s crucifixion, or that of christ-like martyrs (healey & wilkin & xiang 2009).14 although the word “gallows” is never used in the west saxon gospels, christ’s crucifixion is often referred to as a hanging, using variant forms of the verbs ahangian, hangian, ahon.15 the frequent use of the verb “hangian”, in particular, to describe christ’s crucifixion has drawn the attention of lexicographers, who define “hangian” as “specifically of a person: to hang, be suspended on a gallows or cross as a form of execution (esp. of christ’s crucifixion)”.16 this christological connection is salient since “hangian” is the same word used to describe the hanged son—“sunu hangað” (line 2447b)— in beowulf’s speech. 13 fulk (1992: 390) dates beowulf early, no later than c. 725 if mercian in origin, c. 825 if northumbrian. 14 i exclude from my count references to galgmod, which does not refer to a substantive gallows, but rather to the psychological state of being “gallows-minded”, i.e., “vengeful”. 15 for example: matthew 27:23, 27:22, 27:23, 27:26, 27:31, 27:35, 27:38, 27:44; mark 15:13, 15:14, 15:20, 15:24, 15:25, 15:27, 15:32; luke 23:21, 23:23, 23:33; john 19:6, 19:10, 19:15, 19:16, 19:18, 19:20, 19:32, 19:41 (liuzza 1994). 16 cameron, a. & a. c. amos & a. healey et al. eds. 2018 dictionary of old english: a to i online. toronto, dictionary of old english project: s.v. “hangian 1b”. connor lawhorn, selim27 (2022): 28–48. issn 1132-631x / issn-l 2792-3878 / https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.27.2022.28-48 4. christological allusions in beowulf while this association in old english prose and verse between the gallows, hanging, and christ is suggestive, it is insufficient to demonstrate that beowulf’s parable of the hanged son is a christological allusion. due to the milieu in which old english literature was copied, many old english words only occur in christian context. further support for a christological reading of this passage, however, can be found in the moments surrounding beowulf’s speech. klaeber (1950: 212) detects in beowulf’s mental state before his remarkable address—“him was geomor sefa,/ wæfre ond wælfus” (lines 2419b2420a) [he was sad at heart, wavering and slaughter-ready]—an echo of christ’s agony in the garden of gethsemane (mark 14:33).17 many critics have objected, of course, that it is somewhat fanciful to figuratively read the pagan beowulf as christ (or as a christ-like figure).18 certainly i do not mean to suggest that beowulf is a christfigure, any more than is the hanged son. i would argue, rather, that the whole point of hinting at christ’s story, however obliquely, by means of the story of the hanged son, and beowulf’s final acts, is to emphasize the absence of christ to the pagans in the poem. beowulf is, after all, a poem populated by pagans who are seemingly unaware of the christian overtones to their words and actions, overtones that the christian poet uses to lend dignity, in the ears of his audience, to otherwise damnable pagans, while also underscoring their tragic ignorance. as robinson comments, the characters “are circumscribed by the pagan world in which they live and when at times their speeches seem to have a christian resonance, the audience is supposed to recognize that these are but coincidences of similar elements in two alien cultures, 17 the connection seems to be accepted by the editors of klaeber’s beowulf, 4th edition (2008: 244) as well as by hoops (1932: 276) and rauer (2000: 37, 77-78). see also orchard (2003: 148). 18 as klaeber (1950: cxx-cxxi) notes: “now it would clearly be going too far to say that the author set out with the deliberate purpose of writing an allegorical poem with christ himself as its true hero. but it is not deemed a reckless supposition that in recounting the life and portraying the character of the exemplary leader, he was almost inevitably reminded of the person of the savior, the self-sacrificing king, the prototype of supreme perfection.” the apposition of christian and pagan myth in beowulf 43 coincidences which inevitably give dignity to the old heroes as viewed by christian eyes but which betray no christian revelation in heathen minds” (robinson 1985: 32-33). for instance, when king hrothgar praises beowulf’s mother in terms that recall the praise of the virgin mary in luke 11:27 (lines 942-946), or when he unwittingly echoes scripture in his “sermon” to beowulf (lines 1700-1784), the christian audience “would be regretfully aware that he was musing on matters which were ultimately beyond his understanding, since he lacks the theological framework and vocabulary necessary for dealing with them definitively, and, like other pagans, he stands beyond the reach of christ’s redemption” (robinson 1985: 33). when hrothgar beholds the runes on the giants’ sword-hilt depicting the flood of genesis (lines 1687-1690), he has no idea what they mean, but the audience does. he and other characters can only conceptualize the monsters of the poem in terms of pagan demonology; the audience, meanwhile, is aware of grendel’s biblical pedigree, traced back to cain (line 107). when beowulf, submerged in grendel’s mere, is presumed dead at the ninth hour before arising again, alive (line 1600), only the audience can be aware of the irony that christ died at the ninth hour to rise again. even the dragon fight operates on this double perspective: “it is on one level of perception like the dragon that sigemund slew; on another it has those connotations of satanic evil with which bible and commentary had long invested it” (robinson 1985: 32). indeed, christine rauer (2000) has shown how the dragon fight in beowulf more closely resembles the dragon fights recounted in christian hagiography than those in pagan tales. the christian significance is always there, throughout beowulf: a contrapuntal melody the characters cannot hear, but the reader can. alternatively, these and other christian allusions in beowulf may be unconscious reflexes of the poet’s background rather than intentional references to biblical tales. 44 connor lawhorn none of this christian counterpoint, however, amounts to allegory. it is important to the poet’s vision that the characters, and their world, are thoroughly pagan. they live, tragically, in a society that has not yet learned of the new dispensation. in their world, therefore, as hannah bailey notes, “types generate types, but they are never resolved by antitypes. history repeats itself but is not redeemed or fulfilled—at least not within the limits of the characters’ knowledge, which is bounded by their experience and cultural contexts” (bailey 2017: 286).19 thus, beowulf’s death, however evocative of christ’s, only exposes his kingdom to perdition. in the same way, the gomel ceorl cannot make the death of his hanged son a meaningful sacrifice: unlike christ, there can be no repair, no redemption, no resurrection. when wiglaf sprinkles the dying beowulf with water (lines 27202724), a christian audience might recall the rite of baptism, but, as daniel anlezark (2006: 353) suggests, it is ultimately futile: “he does not and cannot baptize him.” these are all failures made more pathetic by the characters’ ironic ignorance of their similarity to christian acts. a christian audience, hearing such a tale about characters who, in their ignorance of god, resemble their own pagan ancestors, might be moved to profound pity (bailey 2017: 284). thus, in the image of a hanged son on the gallows, before beowulf’s own death, the poem's audience could hold in apposition the frail succession of earthly kingdoms, in which an heir may futilely perish, with the security of christ’s succession: christ is the son who can be hanged on the gallows and rise again, stronger than ever. it may be objected that the hanged son of beowulf’s speech cannot possibly contain such significance because beowulf does not linger upon the hanged son, but instead elaborates at some length upon the grief of the father, the gomel ceorl. first of all, a focus on the father does not mean the son has no significance. consider the story of abraham and isaac as told in genesis 22: 1-18. the focus of the story is almost entirely on abraham, on his obedience to god, and his reward for that obedience, yet this does not prevent christians from creating a typology where isaac’s passive, unsung role suggests a type of christ. 19 this concept of “unfulfilled typology”, applied to beowulf, in which types that foreshadow the culmination of salvation history are not resolved by anti-types, finds support among a number of scholars (anlezark 2006: 350; hodges 2004; bailey 2017; leneghan 2020: 30, 36). the apposition of christian and pagan myth in beowulf 45 furthermore, even in beowulf’s elaboration of the father’s grief, the poet continues to deploy images that are oddly evocative of the myth of the christ-like baldr. for example, richard north has argued that the image of “ridend swefað, hæleð in hoðman” [the riders sleep, the warriors in darkness] in lines 2457-58, used to embellish the emptiness of the hall after the hanged son’s death, “not only … capture[s] the story of baldr and other dead, closely followed by hermothr, riding through dokkva dala ok djupa (‘dark and deep valleys’) towards hel in gylfaginning” but it also shows the poet leaving “his audience with the thought of the destination of all subterranean horsemen who had lived without christ” (north 2006: 201-202). if thoughts of the spear-wounded baldr can persist this far afield into a section ostensibly devoted only to the grief of the gomel ceorl, why may thoughts of baldr’s counterpart, the hanged son, not be far behind? in short, to insist that only one half of beowulf’s analogy matters, and that beowulf is only speaking about the suffering of three old men (beowulf/hrethel/the gomel ceorl) neglects the other half of his analogy, in which the hanged son plays a crucial role, apposed with the spear-wounded death of herebeald and, ultimately, the imminent death of beowulf himself. 5. conclusion in a 1984 article, laurence n. de looze showed that beowulf’s story of the old man and the hanged son occurs at the center of a chiastic structure in the poem’s second half, and is therefore no mere digression or aside, but rather nested at the core of all other stories— the dragon fight, the swedish-geatish wars, and beowulf’s childhood. it is the heart of the poem’s latter half. while de looze provides a compelling psychological explanation for this central structure, this article proposes a concomitant mythological explanation: the story of the hanged son contains a cue of the core christian story—an intimation of christ’s sacrifice, albeit poignantly unfulfilled. the admittedly submerged—and perhaps even subconscious—gesture toward christ is a gesture towards irony, rather than allegory, and would occur naturally to a typologically sensitive christian, to whom all of history, even that of his pagan ancestors, would contain types 46 connor lawhorn imperfectly prefiguring christ. the echoes of odin and baldr detected in the passage, far from precluding this christian allusion, are actually syncretic with it, as many others have noted literary and material links between odin, baldr, and christ in anglo-scandinavian culture. the old english verbal association between the gallows, hanging, and christ’s passion, and a clear arc of christological allusions in the surrounding passages, further corroborates the hanged son as a hitherto unnoticed christological reference. this reference can be cited, as one among many, to counter scholars who continue to doubt the essential christianity of beowulf.20 at the same time, i hope the identification of interwound allusions to christ, odin, and baldr in beowulf will further vindicate the readings of scholars like j. r. r. tolkien and fred c. robinson, who have held the poem’s christian and pagan parts in measured apposition, never sacrificing one upon the altar of the other.21 references anlezark, d. 2006: water and fire: the myth of the flood in anglo-saxon england. new york, manchester university press. bailey, h. m. 2017: typology and subjectivity in faulkner and beowulf. in t. stubbs & d. haynes eds. navigating the transnational in modern american literature and culture. united states, taylor & francis: 272–290. bjork, r. e. ed. 2014: old english shorter poems vol. ii. cambridge, harvard university press. bloom, h. 1987: beowulf. new york, chelsea house. bouman, a. c. 1959: beowulf’s song of sorrow. mélanges de linguistique et de philologie. fernand mossé, in memoriam: 41–43. brooks, k. r. ed. 1961: andreas and the fates of the apostles. oxford, oxford university press. 20 even in 1987, harold bloom wrote, “if beowulf is to be considered a christian poem, we must ask, can there be christianity without the figure of jesus christ, and without the presence of the new testament?” bloom went on to cite e. talbot donaldson: “there is no reference to the new testament—to christ and his sacrifice which are the real bases of christianity in any intelligible sense of the term.” 21 even robinson, however, says the beowulf poet “never alludes to the crucifixion” (robinson 1985: 40). the apposition of christian and pagan myth in beowulf 47 cabannis, a. 1955: ‘beowulf’ and the liturgy. the journal of english and germanic philology 54: 195–201. cavill, p. 2004: christianity and theology in beowulf. in p. cavill ed. the christian tradition in anglo-saxon england: 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1997: skaldic verse and the date of beowulf. in c. chase ed. the dating of beowulf. toronto, university of toronto press: 123–149. fulk, r. d. 1992: a history of old english meter. philadelphia, university of philadelphia press. fulk, r. d., r. e. bjork & j. d. niles eds. 2008: klaeber’s beowulf and the fight at finnsburg. 4th ed. toronto, university of toronto press. georgianna, l. 1987: king hrethel’s sorrow and the limits of heroic action in beowulf. speculum 62: 829–850. godden, m. 2013: biblical literature: the old testament. in m. godden & m. lapidge eds. the cambridge companion to old english literature. cambridge, cambridge university press: 214–233. graden, p. o. e. ed. 1996: cynewulf’s ‘elene’. united kingdom, liverpool university press. harris, j. 1994: a nativist approach to beowulf: the case of germanic elegy. in h. aertsen & r. h. bremmer eds. companion to old english poetry. amsterdam, vu press: 45–62. 48 connor lawhorn healey, a., j. p. wilkin & x. xiang 2009: dictionary of old english web corpus. toronto, dictionary of old english project. hill, t. d. 2012: hæthcyn, herebeald, and archery’s laws: ‘beowulf’ and the ‘leges henrici primi’. medium ævum 81: 210–221. hill, t. d. 2019: on fæder bearme: beowulf, line 21. notes and queries 66: 2– 5. hodges, h. j. 2004: praeparatio evangelium: beowulf as antetype of christ. medieval and early modern english studies 12: 307–339. hoops, j. 1932: beowulf zum kommentar. heidelberg, winter. isaacs, n. d. 1975: up a tree: to see the fates of men. in l. e. nicholson & d. w. frese eds. anglo-saxon poetry: essays in appreciation. for john c. mcgalliard. indiana, university of notre dame press: 363–375. klaeber, f. 1911-1912: die christlichen elemente im beowulf. anglia 35: 111136, 249-270, 453-482; anglia 36: 169-199; trans. by p. battles 1996: the christian elements in beowulf. kalamazoo, medieval institute publications. klaeber, f. 1950: beowulf and the fight at finnsburg. 3rd ed. lexington, d.c. heath and company. kopár, l. 2013: gods and settlers: the iconography of norse mythology in anglo-scandinavian sculpture. turnhout, brepols publishers. leneghan, f. 2020: the dynastic drama of beowulf. cambridge, d. s. brewer. liuzza, r. m. 1994: the old english version of the gospels. oxford, oxford university press. mcnamee, m. b. 1960: ‘beowulf’: an allegory of salvation? the journal of english and germanic philology 59: 190–207. meaney, a. l. 1966: woden in england: a reconsideration of the evidence. folklore 77: 105–115. mosher, a. d. 1983: the story of baldr’s death: the inadequacy of myth in the light of christian faith. scandinavian studies 55: 305–315. neidorf, l. ed. 2014: the dating of beowulf: a reassessment. cambridge, d. s. brewer. neidorf, l. & r. j. pascual 2019: old norse influence on the language of beowulf: a reassessment. journal of germanic linguistics 31: 298–322. north, r. 2006: the origins of beowulf: from vergil to wiglaf. new york, oxford university press. o’donoghue, h. 2003: what has baldr to do with lamech? the lethal shot of a blind man in old norse myth and jewish exegetical traditions. medium ævum 72: 82–107. orchard, a. 2003: a critical companion to beowulf. cambridge, d. s. brewer. the apposition of christian and pagan myth in beowulf 49 orchard, a. ed. and trans. 2011: elder edda. london, penguin group. orchard, a. ed. 2021: the old english and anglo-latin riddle tradition. cambridge, harvard university press. porck, t. 2019: old age in early medieval england: a cultural history. cambridge, d. s. brewer. rauer, c. 2000: beowulf and the dragon: parallels and analogues. cambridge, d. s. brewer. robinson, f. c. 1985: beowulf and the appositive style. knoxville, university of tennessee press. ryan, j. s. 1963: othin in england: evidence from the poetry for a cult of woden in anglo-saxon england. folklore 74: 460–480. swanson, m. 1996: the dream of the rood. liverpool, liverpool university press. swenson, k. 1991: death appropriated in ‘the fates of men’. studies in philology 88: 123–193. thompson, s. c. 2018: communal creativity in the making of the ‘beowulf’ manuscript: towards a history of reception for the norwell codex. leiden, brill. tolkien, j. r. r. 1963: beowulf: the monsters and the critics. in l. e. nicholson ed. an anthology of beowulf criticism. indiana, university of notre dame press: 51–103. wehlau, r. 1998: ‘seeds of sorrow’: landscapes of despair in the wanderer, beowulf’s story of hrethel, and sonatorrek. parergon 15: 1–17. whitelock, d. 1939: beowulf 2444-2471. medium ævum 8: 198–204. wilcox, j. 1990: new solutions to old english riddles 17 and 53. philological quarterly 69: 393–408. woolf, r. ed. 1955: juliana. london, butler and tanner. yorke, b. 2015: the fate of otherworldly beings after the conversion of the anglo-saxons. in c. ruhmann & v. brieske eds. dying gods—religious beliefs in northern and eastern europe in the time of christianisation. stuttgart, konrad theiss verlag: 167–176. author’s address 2121 ala wai blvd. #2705 honolulu, hi 96815 (united states) received: 21 march 2022 e-mail: connorlawhorn@gmail.com revised version accepted: 16 may 2022 selim 15.indb edurne garrido-anes, selim 13 (2005-2006): 201—226 manuscript relations through form and content in the middle english circa instans1 abstract this article aims at contributing to the history of the transmission of the circa instans in england. taking form and content as two important linking criteria among the extant middle english exemplars of this wellknown medieval medical work, we offer here a classification and description of the different text-types and english versions of the treatise that have been identified so far. this study intends to give some insight into individual manuscript appearance and status in order to provide the reader with the necessary point of departure that will later allow for further and more detailed analyses of the relationships among the copies, such as for the future establishment of possible genealogical relations. keywords: manuscripts, textual transmission, middle english, circa instans, medieval medicine. resumen con este artículo se pretende aportar una contribución a la historia de la transmisión del circa instans en inglaterra. ofrecemos aquí una clasificación y descripción de la tipología textual y de las distintas versiones inglesas identificadas hasta ahora, tomando forma y contenido como dos criterios relevantes de relación entre los manuscritos que se han conservado de este tratado médico medieval en inglés medio. este estudio trata de aproximarnos a la apariencia y estatus de cada una de las copias, con el fin de ofrecer al lector el punto de partida necesario para futuros análisis detallados de las relaciones textuales y genealógicas entre ellas. palabras clave: manuscritos, transmisión textual, inglés medio, circa instans, medicina medieval. 1.introduction about the mid-twelfth century, the celebrated school of medicine of salerno was witness to the composition of a medical treatise of encyclopaedic layout, which dealt with the healing virtues of the plant, animal, and mineral drugs traditionally called ‘simples.’ its entries were alphabetically arranged, albeit loosely, with only first initials following the expected order. this liber de simplici medicina –attributed to the teaching physician matthaeus platearius2– 1 grateful acknowledgement is here made to peter m. jones and juan l. carrillo, who kindly read earlier drafts of this article. 2 johannes platearius is mentioned in incunabula and renaissance editions. some confusion developed among the critics with johannes and matthaeus platearius. on the authorship of the ci, see l. choulant (1841: 291edurne garrido-anes 202 is more commonly known as circa instans (ci), from the opening words of its prologue. the work originally described all its simples, beginning with their complexion, and following with the ailments for which they were prescribed, together with their method of administration. besides, it supplied a variety of additional information concerning, for instance, the harvest time, the place of origin, the different types of the plant, animal, or mineral in question, and warnings against adulteration by fraudulent apothecaries. although born in an academic context, de simplici medicina had an essentially practical and domestic purpose, which made it different from other scholarly products that exclusively discussed medicine from the speculative principles of natural philosophy. thus, true as it may be that the ci was an authoritative reference work based on both the classical doctrine of the humours and the medieval theory of the medicinal degrees,3 the theoretical dimension was not prioritised. the importance and long-lasting influence of the work is now unequivocal. many translations and adaptations have survived in latin and a good number of other languages.4 these manuscripts and early printed books containing texts derived from de simplici medicina clearly evince that, during its process of diffusion and vernacularization, the salernitan treatise underwent manifold changes both in its formal appearance and textual organisation, and in the selection of its contents. notwithstanding that variation, its exemplars still constitute several relatively homogeneous groups that result from the diverse intentions with which every new witness of the work was written. linguistic and extra-linguistic evidence have already confirmed the circulation 292), who attributed the ci to matthaeus; s. renzi (1852: 152); g. camus (1886: 50-52); p. dorveaux (1913: v-x); g. a. l. sarton (1931: 241-242). 3 on these two doctrines, see respectively p. laín entralgo (1970) and m. r. mcvaugh (1975). on the classical sources of the ci, see f. h. holler (1940). 4 for a more exhaustive compilation of the relevant related bibliography concerning the ci in latin and the medieval versions of french, german, dutch, catalan, hebrew and other languages, see a. cuna (1993) and e. garrido-anes (2005a). the middle english circa instans mss 203 of the ci all over england in both academic and non-academic circles from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century (garrido-anes 2005b). the present article develops from a preliminary approach to its extant middle english (me) manuscripts (garrido-anes 2004),5 all of which have been roughly dated to the fifteenth century (voigts & kurtz 2000). including a few more texts and fragments identified with posteriority (garrido-anes 2005a), i now endeavour to offer a classification of all the known me ci copies. the immediate purpose of this analysis is to give an overview of the different texttypes and versions that exist within the english branch of the work. the grouping and description of the copies, which are here arranged into different classes according to origin, form, content and function, intends to offer –from direct observationsome insight into individual manuscript appearance and status, and to contribute to the history of the transmission of the ci in england. taking form and content as two important linking criteria among the exemplars, this study is also expected to provide with the necessary point of departure for further and more detailed analyses of the relationships among the copies, such as for the future establishment of genealogical relations. some suspicion of close associations among specific manuscripts within each group has evolved from this approach. nevertheless, any firm statement about it does require a further and much more minute analysis, a task which is outside the scope and aim of the present article. 2.the middle english manuscripts for the time being, we know of twenty-seven me manuscripts6 that can be associated with the book on simple medicines in question.7 they are here 5 i am thankful to the fundación uriach de la historia de la medicina for encouraging me to build upon my 2004 article with further texts and more detailed descriptions of the manuscripts, the result of which i present here. 6 of all the consulted catalogues, l. e. voigts & p. d. kurtz’s (2000) has been the most helpful tool for the compilation of ci copies. for a few other ci manuscripts or fragments identified later, see e. garrido-anes (2005a: 145-146). edurne garrido-anes 204 divided into different types or classes that correspond to the epigraphs below. they have been assigned to one group among several within each type depending on their formal disposition and on their contents. in addition, the manuscripts are identified with a translation from which they have presumably derived (see table). comparison with the latin work seems to reveal the existence of three distinct english translations or compilations of the treatise.8 the three english renderings differ from each other in both style and diction, and in their treatment of the salernitan core.9 one of these translations is represented by twenty-five out of the twenty-seven hitherto known manuscripts. despite the abridgements or expansions that vary from one exemplar to the other, they all maintain the latin ci as their main basis. a second translation10 survives in only one known manuscript, and has the 7 all these me texts lack the salernitan prologue which is found in other languages: latin: “circa instans negotium de simplicibus medicinis nostrum versatur propositum […].” (platearius 1525: 223) french: “en ceste presente besogne est notre propos et intention de traicter des simples medecines […].” (esposito 1919: 209) german: “in disseme keghenwertigen tractatu so habe wir willen zu redene von den eynveldigen arztyen […].” (damm 1939: 21) dutch: “circa instans meninghe ghaet in simplen medicinen […].” (london, bl, additional 70515, fol. 124) 8 for the twenty-nine latin manuscripts consulted, see e. garrido-anes’s list (2005a: 144). the early printed editions of the latin ci there cited (2005a: 141) have also been checked, due to their similarity with two of the english translations and with the starkenstein manuscripts with which the printed texts have been associated (anderson 1978). all latin references have been taken from the lyons 1525 edition. 9 for an explanation of the concept of salernitan kernel, see f. h. holler (1940). for references to studies on the different versions of the latin ci, see e. garrido-anes (2004: 5-6; 2005a: 141). 10 compare these two small fragments of translation 1 and 2 respectively: aloe hath vertu to purge flewme and colore and hit clensith malenkoly, and hit comfortyth membres that beth senewy, þat hath mony senewis, ouþer beth of the kynd of senewis. also, hit is good aǟeyn the superfluyte of kold humers þat beth in the stomake, and releuyþ þe hed of ache þat comyth of smoke of þe stomake. (cul ee. 1. 13, fol. 1r) aloes purgys flewme and colore and clennys malencoly. yt comfortis membrys þat be full of synus. it distrois superfluite of humors in þe stomak and helpis þe ache of þe hede. (gonville & caius 609/340, fol. 20r) the middle english circa instans mss 205 salernitan book as its most important referent. a third english compilation11 is likewise found in a single copy, which merges platearius’s work with some others, offering a de simplici medicina less easily recognizable. 2.1.the me circa instans as a vernacular medical manual six of the english manuscripts,12 whose incipit is “aloe is hot and dry,” present their text in a way that very much resembles the latin treatise:13 11 compare these two small fragments of translation 1 and 3 respectively. <arnoglossa, i. plauntayn or warbrode is c. and d. in 2 g. hit is gode to clanse and drie woundes with. hit confortiþ þe liuer, and lettiþ þe sengles to goon aboute þe body. and hit is gode for þe emeroydes. hit koliþ brennyng of fuir and abatiþ akyng. hit is gode for hem þat han nose bledyng or dissenterie and for wymmen þat haue her termes to muche and to ofte, and for hem þat han þe emeroydes. and hit heliþ þe woundes of þe liǟt. þe rote of plauntayn soþen in water aswagiþ ake of teþ if þe mouþ be wassche þerwiþ. þe iuce of plauntayn is gode for opilacon of þe reynys, and hit duþ away blake spottes and tiles. but þe sede stompid is best þerto. for a wounde þat is neǟe þe nose or þe yen, do þerin wolle wet in þe iuce of plaunteyn and þe herbe stompid with swynys grece heliþ grene woundes. (londres, bl sloane 105, fol. 73v)>. <arnoglossa. wegebreyde. arnoglossa or planteyn yt ys colde and drye in the iide degre and yt be .ii. spyces of them […] they be good to drye wondes & clense the stinking corrupcion yf you take the iuss mengeld wyth a littil aleopatic in puder. and yt confort the hert with water of endyff be soden inne. and put sugre therto, for yt ys a gentil manis drink in an hote cause, and the iusse of her with watter of endyff yf yt be stryketh vpon the region of the lyuer in like wyse, and yt don reproche the sacer ignis þat summe men called seynt antony ffyre […] also yt ys good ayenste the emoroydes yf ye take the iusse of planteyn and þe puder of the rottys of aaron, and so yt don halle maner of hurttys that cumme hert and bernnyg […] also, yt ys good for them that haue the passion þat ys called dyssenteria, and the fluxe of the belly and also ayenste the fluxe menstrual […] as pandecta, platearius. (londres, bl sloane 404, fols. 37v-38r)>. 12 see table, group a. 13 a typical entry of the ci as it was composed at salerno would be like this: “de aloe. [name]. aloes calidum et siccum complexionis est in .ii. gradu. [complexion]. aloes ex succo herbe fit. que herba suo nomine aloen appellatur. hec autem herba non solum in india, persia, et grecia, verum etiam in apulia repertitur. aloes tria sunt genera: cicotrinum, epaticum, caballinum […]. sophisticatur autem aloe hoc modo […]. [additional information]. aloen vero habet purgare coleram et flegmam et mundificat melancoliam. habet etiam virtutem confortandi membra neruosa, vnde valet contra superfluitatem frigidorum humorum […]. stomachum confortat, caput a dolore eleuat […]. nota optimus aloe cum vino albo et aqua rosata confectus et in oculis iniectus pruriginem oculorum omnino aufert […]. [virtues, recipe and method of administration].” (platearius 1525: 223-224) edurne garrido-anes 206 london, bl, sloane 105, fols. 66r-100v is a small quarto volume written on paper in anglicana script with no decoration. some of its entries (asara baccara, altea, cerefolium, atriplex) do not appear in the printed latin versions of the work, but they can be found in the longer ci of the breslau codex (see g. camus 1886: 54). the text of this english manuscript looks very much like that of the salernitan kernel, of which it is quite a literal and direct translation.14 this exemplar follows the latin ci very closely, as far as internal organization and contents are concerned. except for the suppression of references to authors and other minor omissions, there is not much editorial work by the translator or compiler of this version, which is unfortunately incomplete. the first part of the opening simple is missing, and the text ends abruptly in mirtus. bl, egerton 2433, fols. 49r-54v is a large octavo on paper, written in a mixed type of anglicana and secretary scripts, with decorated initials and some paragraph marks in red. it presents the same translation as the previous one, and it also follows the scheme of subjects announced in the latin prologue: name and nature of the medicine, quality, other features, and healing properties.15 however, it includes fewer simples under each letter, and it only reproduces extracts from each of them. the peculiarity of this version resides in that, as we read further on, the information for each simple becomes increasingly sketchy. it is also preserved incomplete, only up to laudanum. sloane 770, fols. 45v-48v, a small quarto written on paper in a hybrid form of anglicana and secretary with red initials, offers a text with the same scheme and translation as the exemplars just described, covering only from 14 see table, translation 1. 15 circa instans negocium […]. in tractatione vniuscuiusque medicine simplicis complexio rerum primo est intendenda consequenter vtrum sit arbor, an frutex, herba, radix, an flos, an semen, an folium, an lapis, an succus, an aliquid aliud postmodum quot sunt ipsius maneries, et qualiter fiant et in quo loco inueniantur, que etiam maneries sit melior, qualiter sophisticantur et sophisticate cognoscantur, et qualiter res conseruari possunt, et quas virtutes habeant, et qualiter debent exhiberi. (platearius 1525: 223) the middle english circa instans mss 207 pome garnetis to zucarium, and omitting some simples beginning with p, all the r-and-s simples and some others that start with t and u. cambridge, gonville and caius college 609/340, fols. 20r-45v is a small folio on paper, written in a combination of anglicana and secretary features, and is the only known text offering this english rendering.16 the manuscript is not decorated, and has many additions by other scribes. its last pages are damaged and partly torn, so the text is also incomplete. it remains legible from aloe to verreyn, but it seems to end in zeduary. its last pages are much torn and difficult to read. this text –entitled circa instans according to a marginal annotation in its initial page– is largely based on the salernitan treatise, which is often explicitly cited and followed word by word in the parts taken from it. this exemplar sometimes inserts untranslated sentences in latin. it also omits fragments from the salernitan work, which are nonetheless kept in other versions, and it includes new material in their stead. many of these additions do not appear in the manuscripts with the first translation, but some are similar, though not identical, to fragments from the third one and from the latin and french ci texts that came to be known as tractatus de herbis.17 sloane 404, fols. 2r-243r; 294r-319v is a small quarto on paper, copied in a secretary hand. paragraph marks are highlighted in red. it is the only known surviving english manuscript representative of this third translation and compilation.18 even though the core of this compendium seems to be the ci, this manuscript offers much interpolated information from other sources, to which the text often alludes in the course of the chapters (pandecta, avicenna and serapion). its prologue and indexes inform of a classification of the 16 see table, translation 2. 17 this illustrated tractatus de herbis was known in french as arbolayre (besançon: peter melinger, 1486, 1487, 1488), (paris: pierre le caron, ca. 1492, ca. 1498, 1550?); or as grand herbier (paris: alain latrian & danis janot, 1500, 1545); it was ultimately translated into english as the grete herball (london: peter treveris, 1526, 1529), (london: thomas gybson, 1539), (london: john kynge, 1561). 18 see table, translation 3. edurne garrido-anes 208 simples into seven great parts, depending on whether they are: herbs in general; laxative or astringent herbs; aromatic spices; fruits, seeds, or roots; gums; salts, minerals or stones; and animals. this formal disposition is substantially different from the other english ci manuscripts but, to a certain extent, it reminds of the organization of one of the french branches of the work, which divides the text into five sections: herbs and flowers; trees and gums; metals and minerals; animal-derived medicines; and others (see m. collins 2000: 283). however, sloane 404 does not literally follow any of the french and latin models with which it has been compared. it seems, rather, a different translation and, at the same time, a new rewriting or compilation (by itself, or copied from an unidentified manuscript) resulting from a great fusion of the ci with fragments from other works. this manuscript has not been preserved complete. the sixth, the seventh, and more than half of the fifth part are missing, but we know of their previous existence thanks to an index of chapters. it is interesting to highlight the fact that the first three parts of this compilation (herbs; laxative and astringent herbs; and aromatic spices) coincide with the plant classification given by the lists sometimes included in a tractatus virtutibus herbarum attributed to arnald of villanova (mackinney 1938: 258-259).19 finally, leeds, brotherton library, ripon cathedral xviii. h. 1[2] fols. h6r-h6v has been here associated with the sloane 105 translation. but even if it shares with it the theoretical description, it does not provide us with any therapeutic information. in fact, it consists only of two very small extracts taken from the very beginning of the chapters devoted to aloe and to aloe þe tre. they were very carelessly handwritten in the margins of the incunabulum of pietro of crescenzi’s ruralia commoda, printed by peter drach in 1493. 19 the work mackinney refers to may well be macer floridus’s, which often circulated under the name of arnald of villanova in renaissance editions. i am grateful to p. gil sotres and j. a. paniagua for their helpful comments on this matter. the middle english circa instans mss 209 once medical compendia had been vernacularized, they were taken a step forward towards popularisation. when latin was abandoned, those compilations became readily accessible to a larger number of people. the ci versions just mentioned provided a systematic description of the quality and degree of each simple, and this made them helpful handbooks for the personal use of university-trained physicians, especially when they began to work as medical practitioners. however, apart from them and the “poor scholars” (getz 1990), the category of potential new readers would have also admitted laypeople in need of taking care of a sick person, like midwives, nuns or women from the upper classes. for all kinds of recipients, these copies would have served as self-help manuals or how-to books from which they could extract easy-to-prepare remedies.20 nevertheless, the practical utility of the ci within the sphere of domestic medicine made the treatise prone to further simplification in the course of its transmission. the increasing simplicity that it achieved did not only consist in the translation of the work into different vernacular languages, thus enlarging the corpus of an incipient non-latin fachliteratur.21 it was also the result of a reorganization and reconsideration of its contents in the endeavour to make the work more functional and more accessible, so that it could be used in an effective, quick, and simple way. 2.2.the me circa instans as a remedy book the ci-treatise or handbook in which these me texts –like the latin models– presented theory and practice together under each of the simples was no more than one of the possible ways in which the teachings of the 20 this charitable and domestic function is very clearly expressed in the prologue of the ci in bl sloane 404, which is different from the salernitan one: the prayours of gret nombre of povre peple that hade not thing to help them self, and be cause of that pouerte, the apotecariis reffuse them, and be cause […] suche medicins that longe to a seke body […] be ffound in priue places, as in gardyns wildernes and medowys […] any man that wil helpe him selff may haue help with smale expenses ayenst of hall manere of sekenes […]. (fols. 2r-2v) 21 prose associated with a technical or specialised register. see j. stannard (1982). edurne garrido-anes 210 salernitan work were transmitted. a ci-remedy book also resulted from a reorganization of its contents. the text morphology and the information selected for transmission are also indicative parameters of the compilers and the scribes’ intention. another series of me manuscripts22 goes a step further towards simplicity, exclusively maintaining the most practical information, and removing all references to theory, authors and sources from the body of the text. sometimes, this theoretical content was expunged from the work at once. this made the ci adopt the appearance of a remedy book, turning the work into a useful recipe collection not only for the apothecary responsible for providing the patients with medicines, but also for those who needed selfmedication. on other occasions, however, the compilers moved that theoretical basis from the main text to auxiliary ones. that is why those copies would still have been of interest to the doctor and apothecary needing the theoretical knowledge, even when the abridgement of the chapters put more emphasis on the practical content. “aloe is hot and dry” is the incipit shared by a few of these manuscripts:23 sloane 706, fols. 21r-89v, a small quarto on paper, written in a mixed type of anglicana and secretary script, with decorated red initials and paragraph marks highlighted in red; sloane 1764, fols. 49r-112v, a small quarto on paper, displaying a combination of anglicana and secretary features, decorated with red initials; the names of the simples, given as chapter headings, appear in a more formal textura script; cambridge, jesus college q. d. 1, fols. 75v-121r, another small quarto on paper, written in an anglicana hand, and containing decorated red initials; and cambridge, trinity college, r. 14. 32, fols. 128r129v, 8r-8v, 10v-11r, 18r-18v, 19r, 28r, 61r-64r. its foliation is not a modern one, which suggests that the manuscript circulated like this from early times. it is an octavo on paper in an anglicana hand. first-initials decoration seems to have been intended, but never accomplished. 22 see table, groups b and c. 23 see table, group b. the middle english circa instans mss 211 all these manuscripts begin with the name of the simple aloe followed by its quality, degree, some extra information, and the sicknesses it cures. however, this scheme is considerably simplified from the second simple onwards. thus, the remaining chapters deal exclusively with the purely therapeutic information, omitting most of the other details that appeared, as a medical lesson, in the latin and in the previously described models. the decision to reduce the amount of information found in the source treatise, and to copy only the practical details in all but the first simple, could have been made after the first entry was entirely written. given the absence of platearius’s prologue in the english manuscripts, this might simply be interpreted as an identifying strategy. that is, by copying the first entry, or at least its initial lines as found in the model, the scribes could have been highlighting the difference between this and other alphabetical books of simples. this would have allowed the association of the english versions with the ci and the salernitan tradition in spite of the changes and alterations inherent to every new copy. these four manuscripts, which highlight the curative power of the simples by withdrawing the fragments dealing with medical theory, are very similar to another series of copies derived from the same translation. the main substantial difference between the former and those belonging to this new group24 is the fact that the latter directly and exclusively present the medicopractical content from the very first article. therefore, “aloe hath virtue to purge phlegm and choler” is the common incipit to: cambridge, cul ee.1.13, fols. 1r-91v. the scribe’s handwriting of this octavo on paper is a combination of anglicana and secretary scripts, and initials are decorated in blue; oxford, bodleian library, ashmole 1477, fols. 114r-195v is a small folio on paper. it was written in a secretary hand with some anglicana features, and it includes red initials and occasional red paragraph marks or letters; wellcome library, london medical society 131, fols. 3r-56v is a small octavo on paper, with no 24 see table, group c. edurne garrido-anes 212 decoration or illustrative matter, and written in a kind of debased textura script, which was a typical university book hand; bl, additional 29301, fols. 64v-89r, copied in a semi-quadrata formata textura script, is a beautiful folio volume, on vellum, with a few illuminated borders, blue initials and red ornaments. the ci text of these manuscripts is basically the same as the one offered by the previous set of copies, differing from them only in their beginning. this last set of manuscripts places its emphasis on the sicknesses against which those medicines are effective. any sporadic allusion to qualities and degrees in the text of any simple appears to be the result of the compiler or of the scribe’s inadvertency rather than a conscious inclusion of that specific piece of information, which is otherwise systematically removed throughout the work. another four manuscripts also belong to this category of ci as a remedy book. however, they have not been assigned by their incipit to any of the two former groups,25 either because they are acephalous texts, or because they begin with a simple different from aloe. they are: sloane 635, fols. 35r-69v. this manuscript, much damaged by damp, is a small oblong folio written on paper. the body of the text was copied in an anglicana script alongside textura chapter headings; sloane 1088, fols. 1a-60b is a small quarto on vellum written in a semi-quadrata textura script with no decoration; ashmole 1481 is a small folio on vellum, copied in a mixed type of anglicana and secretary scripts. space was left for decorated initials, but the task was never finished. the ci text appears in the manuscript in two separately bound sections: one going from ciclamen to ruibarbarum (fols. 64r-83v); and the other, from the final lines of ruibarbarum and the beginning of rubea maior to zuccarum (fols. 44r-49r). this same manuscript contains also a list of sicknesses based on the ci (fols. 54r-63v). a fourth manuscript, sloane 297, fols. 72r-78v26 presents isolated recipes that reproduce only extracts from the ci. it is a small folio, on 25 see table, group ‘b or c.’ 26 see table, group d. the middle english circa instans mss 213 paper, written in a secretary script with some anglicana features. space was left for decorated initials. when the me copies did not offer those theoretical contents, they changed the ci, though only formally, from being an example of technical specialized literature in the vernacular into a remedy book, which is a format generally associated with the concept of rezeptliteratur.27 however, educated and well-instructed readers would still have recognized the academic origin of these medical recipes. the explanation for the removal of the theoretical information can be found in some of those same manuscripts. it becomes apparent that their medieval compilers or scribes had decided to subtract that information from the body of the text in order to present it, more conveniently, before or after the remedies, or even to transmit it independently of them in the manner of indexes, tables and concordances. 2.3.the me circa instans for quick and easy reference the most obvious technique used by scribes and compilers to make the information more easily available to readers was the alphabetical display of the simples. the majority of the consulted latin manuscripts also include tables of contents that list all the medicines later dealt with in the treatise, allowing for quick finding. instead of presenting them all together from a to z, these ci copies usually have fragmented indexes. that is, each set of simples with the same initial is preceded by its own index, which consists exclusively of the articles beginning with that letter. this organization is shared by the printed latin editions and by some of the ci versions in other languages. as an alternative to these separate tables of contents distributed all throughout the work, certain ci copies have only one complete list from a to z at the very beginning or at the very end of the work. thus, some manuscripts include a chapter index: “here begynneth the chyapitre of herbes 27 in opposition to fachliteratur. see j. stannard (1982); f. alonso-almeida & r. carroll (2003). edurne garrido-anes 214 be ordor after the alphabet” (sloane 404, fol. 3v). others attach three different kinds of auxiliary texts: tables of complexions (alphabeti or tabula nominorum, which give the latin name of the simple plus its translation into english, and sometimes other vernacular synonyms); tables of remedies; and tables of concordances. these aiding tools appear also in some of the edited french and dutch manuscripts, and there are a few examples among the examined latin exemplars: there is a de simplicibus medicinalibus cum tabula in sloane 420, fols. 184a-247b; and cambridge, trinity college o.9.10, fols. 137r-140v is a table of degrees and virtues kept separately from the treatise. bl add. 29301 and sloane 706 include all the possible forms in which the information contained in the ci was reorganized and distributed in its me versions. the former begins with a tabula nominorum that precedes the presentation of the ci as an easy-to-use remedy book. this tabula provides the name of the simples, together with their degree of heat or moistness (fols. 55r-58v): “argentum uiuum. quick siluer is hote and m. in þe .i. degree” (fol. 55r). after that, there comes a table of remedies, in which the simples are followed by the diseases they cure (fols. 58v-64v): “argentum uiuum. ffor lysse and for scabbe” (fol. 58v). in the case of sloane 706, a table of concordances comes right after the remedies to help the reader to find quickly the simples or sicknesses in the pages where they are discussed: “a concordance of þe book aforseyd” (fols. 89v-91v). after this, there is a table of complexions: “a tabyle after þe abece of dyuers erbis and certayne gummes and some of metalles and of stones whos vertues in yt þai seruen to medecynes. here þai be declarede in þe booke and here compleccions be sette here for redynes” (fols. 91v-93v). sloane 1764 offers a very similar structure. its me ci text is likewise followed by the concordances (fols. 113r-114v), but the table of complexions comes before the medical recipes: “here begynneth a table after þe abece of diuerse herbes and certeyn gummes and some of metalles and of stones whos vertues in þat þey the middle english circa instans mss 215 seruen to medicines. here þey ben declared in þe book followynge. and here complecions ben sette here for redynesse” (fols. 47r-49r). these quick-reference tables sometimes served as a complement to the text from which the information provided in them had been subtracted. on those occasions, the theoretical basis was not lost, but only moved from the main text to auxiliary ones. for practical reasons, the contents were arranged in a different way. other times, however, the extracted parts were transmitted independently. this is the case of another group of manuscripts. in them, the ci, reduced to tables of complexions, does not include any therapeutic information. their text supplies no more than a very brief description of the simple, which is preceded by its latin term, by its vernacular equivalent, and, occasionally, by other synonyms, serving thus the function of a glossary or dictionary. the me manuscripts belonging to this group differ from one another in the number of simples and in the formal disposition of the text on the page. according to this, they can be further divided into several subgroups. the first one28 consists of london, wellcome library 397, fols. 71r-86r; glasgow, university library, hunter 95 (t. 4.12), fols. 158r-163v; hunter 307 (u. 7. 1), fols. 167r-172v; and “a table of the exposyssion of names” in bodleian library, bodley 178, fols. 152r-155v. the simples in these manuscripts are presented in lists of entries, which are arranged in two columns and separated by changes of paragraph. the second subgroup29 includes cul kk. 6. 33, iii, fols. 12r-12v; sloane 71, fols. 86r-109v; and new york academy of medicine 13, fols. 189v-194v. these manuscripts provide a linear enumeration of the simples highlighting every new entry with some textual mark, be it by means of underlining, be it by changing the ink colour, but not necessarily with a change of paragraph. 28 see table, group e (1). 29 see table, group e (2). edurne garrido-anes 216 the lists in these manuscripts occupy the entire page or column width. in addition, they all coincide in form and content with the initial tables in bl add. 29301, sloane 706, and sloane 1764, except for ashmole 1443, pp. 87190,30 which begins in absinthium and not in aloe, and which develops further the text of some simples. the only simple to which all these copies devote more space is, again, aloe. its description, as opposed to most others, always includes the information from the latin versions concerning complexion, place of provenance, and types, up to “the lasse bitter it is and the swetter sauoure that it hath, the better it ys” (wellcome 397, fol. 71r). this seems to support the hypothesis that the longer text for aloe is an identifying strategy. the rest of the entries are as simplified as the one that follows: “aurum is gold, most temperat of all metalles. asa fetida is hoote and drye in the first degree and yt ys the gumme of a tre. and the moore yt stinkiþ, the better yt is” (wellcome 397, fol. 71r). sloane 297, fols. 14r-23v31 also distributed the information in the manner of lists. the me ci in this exemplar was copied, read, and very much worked upon. like some of the previously mentioned manuscripts, it consisted initially of an index from a to z, where the names of the simples and their complexions filled the entire page width. in different ink, although in the same hand, the therapeutic properties that appear in between lines, in the margins, or wherever there was space, seem to have been added later. the manuscript text in this copy starts with a list from a to z (fols. 14r-19r), after which we can read a few remedies based on simples that begin with the letter c (caparus, camedreos, cuminum). then, the list is copied again from the very beginning, but this time in a more orderly way, producing, as a result, a table of complexions that ends in passule (fols. 20r-23v), and which is completed with later additions on the curative effects of the simples. this manuscript, written in an informal secretary hand with some anglicana features, may have 30 see table, group e (3). 31 see table, group e (4). the middle english circa instans mss 217 been a student or a doctor’s notebook. it appears to be a disorderly copy by somebody working, at the same time, with a ci table of complexions and a ci remedy book. all these annotations –written horizontally and vertically throughout the pages– give the manuscript quite an untidy aspect, which reminds us of the working drafts of someone who, while studying with the help of an outline, adds to the corresponding points the ideas that he remembers or wants to remember. the indexes, tables, and concordances that result from the de simplici medicina bring us closer to the origin of these kinds of tools that helped the reader in the use and the study of the scientific information contained in the work. with a didactic and clarifying function, especially as far as technical terms of greek and latin origin were concerned, they were very much used in medical compendia as well as in all sorts of practical reference works. like other contemporary and later compendia of the same kind, the ci became a very widely used scientific dictionary. the independent transmission of these complementary texts, also in different hands and formats, may have been quite common, and would have been especially helpful. the lists of synonyms played an important conciliatory role between medicine and pharmacy.32 physicians, doctors, apothecaries, and less educated readers used them in the hope of minimizing the confusions caused by the different names by which the same simple was known. some of these lists also served as summaries or epitomes of the ci theoretical basis. 3.conclusions the ci teachings were rooted in classical medicine and in the practical doctrines of the prestigious school of salerno. like john of gaddesden’s rosa 32 other glossaries were: the salernitan alphita, mirfield’s synonyma bartholomei (end of 14thc.), and the antebalumina galieni or quid pro quo, where alternative replacements for certain simples could be found (mackinney 1938: 260-266). for more information about the diffusion of salernitan botany in england, see j. stannard (1964: 357). edurne garrido-anes 218 anglica and other medical compendia, this treatise on simple medicines intended to reach both academic and non-academic spheres: “gaddesden wrote his book in latin, and directed it explicitly to surgeons and physicians, both poor and rich. this is in itself interesting. surgery was not taught formally at oxford or cambridge and this suggests that gaddesden was addressing an audience in latin outside the formal teaching of the university” (getz 1998: 42). by the end of the fourteenth century, the london priest john of mirfield compiled in latin his breviarium bartholomei, aiming at allowing “readers to medicate themselves, especially in the case of those diseases that were curable and not too serious” (getz 1998: 51), an intention that coincides with that of the ci prologue in sloane 404. if “medieval medical practice embraced men and women, serfs and free people, christians and nonchristians, academics and tradespeople, the wealthy and the poor, the educated and those ignorant of formal learning” (1998: 5), the copies of medical works in vernacular languages must, then, have enjoyed a very wide acceptance as self-help books: not only among physicians and medical practitioners in general –who would have found the english versions useful even if they had been trained at university and knew latin–, but also among a larger readership not necessarily expert. indeed, the basic ability to read and write, not latin but the vernacular, was already quite common in virtually all the social spheres in fifteenth-century england (orme 1973, 1989; clanchy 1993). apart from the obvious interest that these medico-botanical works provoked in physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, and churchmen,33 brodin stated: “if we may judge from the evidence in literature, it seems probable nuns and women of the upper classes were among those who used these herbals” (1950: 11). we know that the ci was in the hands of noblemen and noblewomen in france,34 33 for more specific references to the owners of these manuscripts, see e. garrido-anes (2005b) and p. m. jones (forthcoming). 34 see m. collins (2000) and j. m. lópez piñero & al. (2000 & 2001). the middle english circa instans mss 219 and the illuminated bl add. 29301 codex points to the fact that that was also the case in england (garrido-anes 2004: 13).35 its popularity and domestic character would have made it possible for it to reach also a non-aristocratic female audience: “all women were expected to know something of family medicine, and it is noticeable that there existed various treatises on diseases of women specially written or translated for their use, with the plain assumption that they will be able to read” (power 1975: 78). the presence in the community of a single person able to read english would have allowed even the illiterati to become familiar with these translations by means of oral transmission. the prologues of romances and of all other sorts of popular works in prose and verse often encouraged oral delivery with the real or rhetorical purpose of reaching and instructing the poor and the uneducated. this happened also with works that dealt with science and medicine: “[because] women of our tongue do better read and understand this language than any other, and every women lettered read it to other unlettered and help them and counsel them in their maladies withouten showing their disease to man, i have this drawn and written in english” (power 1975: 788).36 we cannot assess the exact extent to which these exhortations -like that in prologue of the me ci in sloane 404to reach the poor and the least instructed men and women were actually put in practice. it is nonetheless possible to confirm that the chances for this to take place increased with vernacularization. as it had already happened with wyclif’s translation of the bible, “maad that alle puples schulden knowe it” (forshall & madden 1850: 56), early translators “expressed misgivings about bringing physic to the wider audience that a vernacular readership implied. but they also expressed the belief that learned medicine itself would be helpful to a large number of people” (getz 1990: 8-9). 35 in this manuscript, we can read that “þe countesse of hennawd […] che send þe copy to here douter (philippa) qwen of england” (fol. 94r). 36 see this prologue to the me translation of the text attributed to trotula (“the knowing of woman’s kind in childing”), in j. wogan-browne & al. (1999: 157-159). edurne garrido-anes 220 it seems, then, that the functions performed by the ci manuscripts in england were not completely disconnected from the docere, movere and delectare associated with medieval rhetoric. we can speak of docere, because of their clear didactic purpose concerning the healing properties of the simples. the ci and other translated medical works had, as expressed by the fourteenth-century dominican henry daniel, a benevolent and charitable intention: “‘the more openly taught something is, the more people will take it seriously.’ english, for daniel and for other vernacular translators, was not only a tool for teaching and openness, but also a rhetorical aid to persuade the reader of the usefulness of this type of medicine” (getz 1998: 86). this persuasive function (movere) is also present in the ci manuscripts that contain remedies to alleviate and heal, in which imperative formulas and efficacy phrases were often used to convince the reader of the benefit of the simples.37 finally, delectare, though obviously not intended by platearius or by any of the early compilers, became a purpose that many later decorated and illuminated manuscripts of the ci aimed to achieve. they were authentic works of art that caught the noblemen’s attention at court, and that have continued to please everyone who looks at them.38 on its long journey from salerno to england and other parts of the continent, the extraordinarily dynamic character of the diffusion of the liber de simplici medicina – with its different forms and uses – shows its recipients’ active implication during the whole course of its transmission. judging from 37 some examples are: “[filipendula] it is a souerayne medicine” (cul, ee.1.13, fol. 41v); “a suppositorie mad of klen sal gemme worchiþ wonderlich” (fol. 86r). 38 as stated by k. m. reeds (1991: 145), it was not very likely to find university teachers or students owning or working with illustrated botanical treatises. on the one hand, because most of the plant drawings included, which had earlier appeared with a didactic purpose, progressively turned into decorative items of little or no help at all for plan identification. on the other hand, because the pecia system of massive transmission of books made it impossible and extremely costly to include many illuminated capitals and illustrations. only bibliophiles from the upper classes would have been able to afford such exemplars, which they kept as works of art. for the description of some illustrated and illuminated ci manuscripts in languages other than english, see m. collins (2000). the middle english circa instans mss 221 the many and varied exemplars preserved, its popularity in england was not at all inferior to that attained in other places. an overview of all its known me texts shows how their different forms did indeed contribute to perpetuate, complete, condense and transmit platearius’s ci. given the simplicity with which contents were explained and organized, the me ci texts, with their ability to summarize the most important information, certainly complied with all the requisites to be regarded as excellent manuals of their time. the english ci also exerted a direct or indirect influence upon other contemporary compilations like a small medical book preserved in london, bl, sloane 3866, which “conflated excerpts from the middle english macer that was edited by gösta frisk in 1949, and a version of the unedited vernacular translation of circa instans.” (see g. r. keiser 1996: 37). the salernitan ci was born in the south of what today constitutes the italian peninsula. aided by the for a long time uninterrupted labour of translators, copyists and readers, this work succeeded in expanding its influence over a wide geographical area throughout which it kept on changing and taking up different shapes over the course of the centuries. the me ci books were found not only in practical octavo or quarto volumes, which could be easily carried as vade mecum, but also in larger formats to be used on desks. similarly, they were written in both anglicana and secretary hands, which allowed for speed and ease of writing and which were used for cheaper books, as well as in more calligraphic and elaborate textura scripts for more costly exemplars (see m. b. parkes 1969). as the work drew material from further sources, and as it kept being copied for one purpose or another, the liber de simplici medicina – sometimes with a clear functional intention, sometimes with a more decorative and artistic character – adopted a great variety of forms and sizes. this, however, did not erase the trace of its origin, and thus, we are still able to find a clear bond among all the texts here referred, and can certainly call them the heirs of platearius’s ci. edurne garrido-anes 222 edurne garrido-anes university of huelva the middle english circa instans mss 223 4. table of manuscripts translation 1 translation 2 translation 3 type group sloane 105, fols. 66r-100v. gonville and caius 609/340, fols. 20r45v sloane 404, fols. 2r-243r; 294r319v. egerton 2433, fols. 49r54v. sloane 770, fols. 45v-48v. ripon cathedral xviii. h. 1 [2] fol. h6r-h6v. treatise/ manual a sloane 706, fols. 21r-89v. sloane 1764, fols. 49r112v. cambridge, jesus college, q.d.1, fols. 75v-121r. cambridge, trinity coll. r. 14. 32, fols. 128r-129v, 8r, 8v, 10v, 11r, 18r, 18v, 19r, 28r, 61r-64r. b cul ee. 1.13, fols. 1-91v ashmole 1477, fols. 114r195v. wellcome, med. soc. 131, fols. 3r-56v. bl add. 29301, fols. 64vb-89r. c sloane 635, fols. 35r-69v. sloane 1088, fols. 1a-60b. ashmole 1481, fols. 64r83v; 44r-49r; 54r-63v. b ó c sloane 297, fols. 72r-78v. remedy book d wellcome 397, fols. 71r86r hunter 95, t.4-12, fols. 158r-163v. hunter 307, u.7.1, fols. 167r-172v. bodley 178, fols. 152r155v. e bl add. 29.301, fols. 55r58va; 58vb-64vb. sloane 706, fols. 89v-91v; 91v-93v. sloane 1764, fols. 47r-49r; 113r-114v. cul kk.6.33, iii, fols. 12r-12v. sloane 71, fols. 86r-109v. new york academy of medicine 13, fols. 189v194v. f ashmole 1443, pp. 87190. g sloane 297, fols. 14r-23v. tables h edurne garrido-anes 224 references alonso almeida, f. & r. carroll 2003: popular or learned? noch einmal the question of tradition and indexing of medieval english medical recipes. paper delivered at selim xv. universidad de murcia, 2-4 october, 2003. anderson, f. j. 1978: new light on circa instans. pharmacy in history 20/2: 65-68. brodin, g. 1950: agnus castus. a middle english herbal reconstructed from various manuscripts. uppsala: almqvist & wiksells. camus, g. 1886: l’opera salernitana “circa instans” ed il testo primitivo del “grant herbier en francoys” secondo due codici del secolo xv, conservati nella regia biblioteca estense. modena: accademia di scienze, lettere ed arti, società tipografica. choulant, l. 1841: geschichte und literatur der älteren medizin. handbuch der bücherkunde für die ältere medizin. leipzig: leopold voss. clanchy, m. t. 1993: from memory to written record. england 1066-1307. oxford: blackwell. collins, m. 2000: medieval herbals: the illustrative traditions. london: the british library; 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(leipzig, universitätsbibliothek nr. 1224). diss. berlin. hamburg: a. preilipper. dorveaux, p. 1913: le livre des simples médecines: traduction française du liber de simplici medicina dictus circa instans de platearius tirée d’un manuscrit the middle english circa instans mss 225 du xiiie siècle (ms 3113 de la bibliothèque ste. geneviève de paris et publiée pour la première fois). paris: société française d’histoire de la médecine. esposito, m. 1919: the ‘secrets of salerno’: an ancient french manuscript. proceedings of the royal academy 35/c/3: 208-213. forshall, j. & f. madden. 1850: the holy bible containing the old and new testaments, with the apocryphal books, in the earliest english versions made from the latin vulgate by john wycliffe and his followers. vol. 1, cap. xv. oxford: oup. garrido-anes, e. 2004: transmisión, vernacularización y usos del liber de simplici medicina: las versiones del circa instans en inglés medio. medicina e historia 2, cuarta época: 1-15. garrido-anes, e. 2005a: addenda al listado de manuscritos del circa instans preservados en bibliotecas británicas. cronos: cuadernos valencianos de historia de la medicina y de la ciencia 8: 139-146 garrido-anes, e. 2005b: geographical and dialectal distribution of platearius’s liber de simplici medicina in england. international journal of english studies (ijes) 5/2: 93-114. getz, f. m. 1998: medicine in the english middle ages. princeton: princeton university press. getz, f. m. 1990: charity, translation and the language of medical learning in medieval england. bulletin of the history of medicine 64: 117. holler, f. h. 1940: das arzneidrogenbuch in der salernitanischen handschrift der breslauer stadtbibliothek (nr. 1302). würzburg: k. triltsch. jones, p. m. forthcoming: herbs and the medieval surgeon. health and healing in the medieval garden. eds. p. dendle & a. touwaide. woodbridge: boydell & brewer. edurne garrido-anes 226 keiser, g. r. 1996: reconstructing robert thornton’s herbal. medium aevum 65/1: 35-53. laín entralgo, p. 1970: la medicina hipocrática. madrid: revista de occidente. lópez piñero, j. m., n. elaguina, c. miranda garcía & m. l. lópez terrada. 2000: matthaeus platearius. le livre des herbes et de tous arbres, et les mides et metans, les pierres et bestes. barcelona: m. moleiro. lópez piñero, j. m., n. elaguina, c. miranda garcía & m. l. lópez terrada. 2001: le livre des simples médecines. trad. al inglés de a. barton de mayor. barcelona: m. moleiro. mackinney, l. 1938: medieval medical dictionaries and glossaries. medieval and historiographical essays in honor of james wetfall thompson. eds. j.l. cate & e.n. anderson. chicago: the university of chicago press. mcvaugh, m. r. 1975: the development of medieval pharmaceutical theory. arnaldi de villanova. opera medica omnia ii. aphorismi de gradibus. granada & barcelona: tobella: 1-136. orme, n. 1973: english schools in the middle ages. london: methuen. orme, n. 1989: education and society in medieval and renaissance england. london & ronceverte: hambledon press. parkes, m. b. 1969: english cursive book hands 1250-1500. oxford: clarendon press. platearius, matthaeus 1525: liber de simplici medicina secundum platearium dictus circa instans. cum yuhanna ibn serapion. practica io. serapionis dicta breviarium. lugduni (lyons): per iacobum myt. power, e. 1975: medieval women. ed. m. m. postan. cambridge: cup. the middle english circa instans mss 227 reeds, k. m. 1991: botany in medieval and renaissance universities. new york & london: garland. renzi, s. 1852: collectio salernitana: ossia documenti inediti e tratatti di medicina appartenenti alla scuola medica salernitana. napoli: filiatresebezio. sarton, g. a. l. 1931: introduction to the history of science. vol. 2.1. baltimore: williams & wilkins co., for the carnegie institution of washington. stannard, j. 1964: a fifteenth-century botanical glossary. isis 55/3: 353-367. stannard, j. 1982: rezeptliteratur as fachliteratur. studies on medieval fachliteratur. scripta 6: 59-73. (brussels: omirel) voigts, l. e. & kurtz, p. d. 2000: scientific and medical writings in old and middle english: an electronic reference. ann arbor: university of michigan press. wogan-browne, j., watson, n., taylor, a. & r. evans. 1999: the idea of the vernacular. an anthology of middle english literary theory. university park (pa): the pennsylvania state university press. * † * selim12.doc marta gonzález orta, selim 12 (2003-2004): 33—48 the old english verbs of smell perception and emission: analysis of the interface of their semantic and syntactic representation1 � � 1. introduction the aim of this paper is to provide the information necessary to establish the interaction of meaning and syntax in the set of verbs designating smell perception and emission in old english. as a result of the analysis of these verbal predicates, a lexical template will be proposed for each lexical subclass. following the lexical grammar model, a lexical template encodes the semantic description of a lexical (sub-)class in a formal system of representation which will allow us to explain the syntactic and morphological phenomena within a given lexical (sub-)class. in consonance with this, this theory puts forward a procedure of lexical representation by means of an inventory of lexical templates and lexical mapping rules which will enable us to account for the syntactic configuration of a given predicate. this analysis has been applied to the verbal predicates bladesian, eðian, (ge)stincan, geswæccan, hrenian, recelsian, reocan, steran, and (to)stincan, which according to a thesaurus of old english express the faculty of smell in old english.2 we posit that these lexemes will show basically the same morphological and syntactic behaviour, except for certain particularities which may arise in a detailed description of these lexical units, as this paper will point out. in order to exemplify this research, the old english 1 this paper is part of the research projects ex2003-0118 and bff2002-00659, funded by the state university office with social european funds, and the spanish ministry of science and technology, respectively. besides, my thanks to drs. francisco cortés and ricardo mairal for generous assistance. 2 the predicate æþmian, though primarily included by roberts and kay within this group, has been excluded since in the lexicographic sources below this lexeme appears defined as to raise vapour, boil, or to be heated. likewise, we have not obtained examples for the predicates gewyrtian, besmocian, and drincan, sharing the meaning to perfume. marta gonzález orta 34 dictionaries by bosworth & toller (b&t) and toller & campbell (t&c) and the helsinki corpus of english texts (hsk) will supply us with the contexts in which these lexemes appear. 2. the concept of lexical template: semantic decompositions enriching role and reference grammar logical structures within the lexical grammar model, lexical templates are conceived as lexical representations which include syntactic and semantic information within the same format, supplying role and reference grammar logical structures with a semantic decomposition which will define different lexical classes (cf. cortés & mairal 2001; mairal & cortés forthcoming; mairal & faber 2002; mairal & van valin 2001). van valin & lapolla (1997)’s logical structures are based on the classification of predicates attending to their aktionsart, making reference to the inherent properties of the events that the predicates designate. this classification implies a way to capture syntactic and morphological phenomena, such as the combinatory possibilities of predicates and case assignment, characteristic of the different verbal classes. thus, within role and reference grammar four classes of verbal predicates are distinguished: states [+static, -telic, -punctual], activities [-static, -telic, -punctual], achievements [-static, +telic, +punctual], and accomplishments (or active accomplishments) [-static, +telic, -punctual], together with their causative counterparts. these are the lexical representations corresponding to the verbal classes mentioned above (van valin & lapolla 1997: 109): the oe verbs of smell perception and emission 35 9hue�fodvv� /rjlfdo�vwuxfwxuh� state suhglfdwh� (x) or (x, y) activity gr� (x, [suhglfdwh´ (x) or (x, y)]) achievement ingr suhglfdwh� (x) or (x, y), or ingr gr� (x, [suhglfdwh´ (x) or (x, y)]) accomplishment become suhglfdwh� (x) or (x, y), or become gr� (x, [suhglfdwh´ (x) or (x, y)]) active accomplishment gr� (x, [suhglfdwh�´ (x, (y))]) & become suhglfdwh�� (z, x) or (y) causative a causes b where a, b are ls of any type table 1: lexical representations for aktionsart classes as the chart above shows, logical structures follow the conventions of formal semantics. constants, in boldface followed by a prime, are part of the semantic metalanguage and will be applied to any language. however, variables in normal typeface are filled by lexical items from the language under study. finally, the elements in capitals, such as ingr, become or cause, will modify the predicate (cf. van valin & lapolla 1997: 102). however, more information is required for a detailed description of lexical units, since logical structures lack the semantic information characteristic of lexical classes. this is achieved by incorporating the semantic and syntactic features (internal variables and semantic primitives and external variables, respectively) which are common to the set of verbs which belong to the same lexical class into one unified representation. thus, in order to construct a lexical template, logical structures will be complemented by a semantic decomposition in terms of ontological constants or internal variables and semantic primitives corresponding to the different lexical classes. the result will be a procedure of lexical representation where meaning description is encapsulated and interacts with the syntactic behaviour of lexical units. accordingly, mairal & faber (2002: 54) describe lexical templates in the following way: marta gonzález orta 36 lexical templates conflate both syntactic information (those aspects of the meaning of a word which are grammatically relevant) and semantic information (those aspects which act as distinctive parameters within a whole lexical class) into one unified representation. 3. the lexical class of smell verbs in old english taking into account the information provided by the lexicographic sources mentioned in the introduction of this paper, one interesting feature of the architecture of the lexical class of smell verbs is that it appears divided into two major subclasses: a first one corresponding to the verbs that express the apprehension of things through the sense of smell, and a second one, integrated by those verbal predicates that do not denote any activity in terms of which a smell is perceived, but merely encode the emission of a smell. therefore, two general (or canonical) lexical templates must be posited: a) smell perception: [[gr´ (x, [xvh´ (x, qrvh�)])] cause [kdyh�dlu�lq�oxqjv� (x)]] cause [ingr ihho´ (x, z)] this lexical representation involves two subevents where an effector (x) participates in the activity of breathing in, which has been further decomposed in the first subevent [[gr´ (x, [xvh´ (x, qrvh�)])] cause [kdyh�dlu�lq�oxqjv� (x)]], causing the second subevent [ingr ihho´ (x, z)], where the effector perceives (z). besides, the operator ingr (ingressive) stands for a punctual state of affairs, as encoded in this terminal subevent. this template, thus, contains the logical structure of a causative active accomplishment showing two external variables (x) and (z), or external argument positions, marked in roman letters, which will have a syntactic representation. moreover, the internal variable and instrument qrvh� can have a syntactic realisation, as will be shown in the instrument construction below. b) smell emission: [kdyh.vphoo�,�[eh��(smell��[�xq�sohdvdqw�])] (x)] the oe verbs of smell perception and emission 37 this second template codifies mainly the emission of a smell (pleasant or unpleasant, depending on the constructions), with no specification of the source of such smell or of any causing entity or activity. 4. from lexical templates to morpho-syntactic structures: the linking algorithm within the lexical grammar model the two general lexical templates proposed above not only include the semantic information corresponding to the set of verbs of smell perception and emission in old english, respectively, but also will allow us to explain the morpho-syntactic structures and alternations shown by these verbal predicates. then, the linking system entails two phases: the first phase of linking will depart from the general lexical templates in order to provide an adequate description of the semantics of the constructions where the lexical class of smell verbs participate. the second phase of linking, on the other hand, will make use of a set of morpho-syntactic rules in order to describe the morphological and syntactic structure of the constituents in the different constructions. in consonance with this, the first phase of the linking algorithm attempts to apply the lexical template modeling process, which by means of an inventory of lexical mapping rules proposed by mairal & cortés (forthcoming) will enable us to account for the mapping between the general lexical template and the semantic constructions shown by the members of each lexical subclass, together with their corresponding construction-based templates, that is, transitive construction, instrument construction, and unspecified object construction within the lexical subclass of smell perception, and stimulus subject construction and resultative stative construction in the subclass of smell emission. the lexical template modeling process has been summarised by mairal & faber (2002: 87) as follows: lexical templates can be modeled by suppressing external variables, instantiating internal variables, eliminating operators (e.g. cause), or else, by introducing elements resulting from the fusion with other templates iff there is a compatibility between the marta gonzález orta 38 features in the lexical template and the syntactic construction under scrutiny. with regard to the second phase of linking, the macrorole assignment principles will motivate the syntactic and morphological behaviour of these verbal predicates from their semantic structure. they concern the assignment of the macroroles actor and undergoer, which are “generalizations across the argument-types found with particular verbs which have significant grammatical consequences” (cf. van valin & lapolla 1997: 139). thus, the actor macrorole comprises those arguments whose nature is closer to that of an agent and the undergoer subsumes those arguments closer to a patient. macroroles are only assigned to core arguments, that is, arguments with no morphological marking as in present-day english or marked by a grammatical case as in old english,3 in opposition to oblique arguments, which are introduced by prepositions. according to van valin & lapolla’s macrorole assignment principles (1997: 152-53), the first argument of verbs of smell perception designating an activity will take the macrorole actor and the second argument undergoer, whereas in the case of smell emission these predicates involve a state where the first argument becomes undergoer. moreover, case assignment is also predicted by the assignment of macroroles: nominative will be assigned to the actor and undergoer in the events encoded in the subclasses of smell perception and smell emission, respectively, and accusative to the undergoer in the subclass of smell perception, except when syntactically realised by a complex structure, as will be shown below.4 3 for a detailed discussion of the old english grammatical case, see allen 1995, denison 1993, fischer et al. 2000, mclaughlin 1983, and mitchell 1985. 4 for an exhaustive treatment of old english syntax from the rrg perspective, with special attention to the relationship between arguments, macroroles and grammatical cases, see martín 2001, martín & caballero 2002, and roberts 1995. the oe verbs of smell perception and emission 39 5. from the lexical template of verbs of smell perception to their semantic constructions we will now turn our attention to the semantic constructions where the set of verbs of smell perception participate. the old english predicates which express the perception of a smell are eðian, (ge)stincan, geswæccan, hrenian, and (to)stincan. 5.1. transitive construction (1) ðonne ge ða swetan stencas jhvwlqfdì, ‘when you smell the sweet odours’ (b&t: blickl. homl. 59, 3) (2) æfæst næfre win kuhqljh, ‘the religious never smells the wine’ (t&c: scint. 106, 5) properties [[gr´ (x, [xvh´ (x, qrvh�)])] cause [kdyh�dlu�lq�oxqjv� (x)]] cause [ingr ihho´ (x, z)] x nominative actor z accusative undergoer comments the first construction under study is the transitive construction. as the lexical template modeling process stipulates, the corresponding construction-based template above which provides a semantic representation of this construction and the general lexical template codified by this lexical subclass meet the lexical mapping rule “full matching”, introduced by mairal & cortés (forthcoming), according to which there exists an identification of variables, subevents and operators between both the general lexical template and the constructional template. therefore, this constructional template coincides entirely with the general template above. moreover, applying the macrorole assignment principles, the variable (x) takes the macrorole actor and nominative case and the variable (z) takes the undergoer macrorole and accusative. marta gonzález orta 40 5.2. instrument construction (3) we oft jhvwlqfdè mid urum nosum ðæt we mid urum eagum gesion ne magon, ‘we usually smell with our noses what we cannot see with our eyes’ (t&c: past. 433, 20) (4) hy mid nosan ne magon naht jhvz ffdq, ‘they cannot smell anything with the nose’ (t&c: dom. l. 207) (5) ðurh ða nosu we wrvwlqfdì, hwæt clæne biþ, hwæt�ful, ‘through the nose we smell what is clean and what is dirty’ (b&t: homl. th. ii. 372, 30)�� properties [[gr´ (x, [xvh´ (x, qrvh�)])] cause [kdyh�dlu�lq�oxqjv� (x)]] cause [ingr ihho´ (x, z)] x nominative actor z accusative / clausal subordination undergoer qrvh´ mid/ ðurh + dative/accusative argument-adjunct comments the second construction to be analysed is the instrument construction. the corresponding constructional template and the general lexical template also meet the lexical mapping rule “full matching”. as observed in this constructional template, not only the two external variables (x) and (z) have a syntactic realisation, but also the internal variable and instrument qrvh´, as opposed to the previous semantic construction. taking into account the first subevent in the constructional template, [gr´ (x, [xvh´ (x, qrvh´)])], where according to mairal & cortés (forthcoming) “the potential instrument is part of a causal chain and the argument of an implement predicate like xvh´”, if (x) is chosen as actor, then the instrument qrvh´ will be introduced by the old english prepositions mid or ðurh. according to jolly (1991)’s description of prepositional phrases, both adjunct prepositions and argument-adjunct prepositions are predicates “in their own right,” but the difference between them is that the former “introduce an np into the clause and head pps which are peripheral (adjunct) modifiers of the core,” whereas the latter “introduce an argument into the the oe verbs of smell perception and emission 41 clause and share it with the ls of the core, rather than taking the ls of the core as an argument” (van valin & lapolla 1997: 159). in order to account for the argument-adjunct prepositions combined with smell verbs, we must apply van valin (2004)’s lexical rule, which says: assign with [old english mid, ðurh] to a non-mr argument which is a possible actor […] but which is not selected as a mr. applying the macrorole assignment principles, the variable (x) takes the macrorole actor and nominative case, qrvh´ as an argument-adjunct will be assigned the prepositions mid or ðurh, and (z) takes the undergoer macrorole and accusative, except in the case of being syntactically realised by complex structures. within role and reference grammar, complex structures are the result of combining the theory of juncture and the theory of nexus. the theory of juncture deals with the types of units involved in complex constructions derived from the layered structure of the clause, that is, nuclear, core, clausal, or sentential. the theory of nexus, on the other hand, takes into account the type of relationship among the units in complex constructions: coordination, cosubordination or subordination. the difference between subordinate and non-subordinate junctures lies in the fact that only the former function as arguments of the main verb, since they may be clefted and occur as privileged syntactic arguments in a passive construction (cf. van valin & lapolla 1997: 461-62). thus, as the properties in this construction illustrate, clausal subordinations will take the macrorole undergoer. 5.3. unspecified object construction (6) habbaþ opene nose, ne magon hèldq, ‘they have open noses, but they cannot smell’ (b&t: ps. 113) (7) sume magon gehiran, sume jhvwlqfdq, ‘some can hear, some can smell’ (b&t: bt. 41, 5; fox 252, 24) properties [[gr´ (x, [xvh´ (x, qrvh�)])] cause [kdyh�dlu�lq�oxqjv� (x)]] cause [ingr ihho´ (x, ø)] marta gonzález orta 42 x nominative actor comments the last construction to be explained within this lexical subclass is the unspecified object construction. levin (1993: 33) posits that this construction “is manifested with a wide range of activity verbs. […] the verb in this variant is understood to have as object something that qualifies as a typical object of the verb”. the corresponding constructional template and the general lexical template meet the lexical mapping rule “suppression of variables”, according to which “canonical lt variables can be suppressed iff the basic interpretation of the canonical lt is not violated” (cf. mairal & cortés forthcoming). therefore, in this constructional template there will be only a macrorole actor corresponding to the variable (x) and taking nominative case, since the external variable (z) is not lexically filled. as a conclusion from the above discussion, it should be pointed out that taking into account the lexical iconicity principle-beta reading (cf. cortés & mairal 2002: 20), which says that the syntactic variability of a lexeme is connected with its higher position within the semantic hierarchy of a given (sub-)class, the predicate stincan (together with its variables gestincan and tostincan) seems to codify a generic meaning within the lexical subclass of smell perception since it participates in all the semantic constructions described above (cf. examples in (1), (3), (5), and (7)), whereas the predicates eðian, geswæccan, and hrenian, which only take part in a semantic construction, the unspecified object construction, the instrument construction, and the transitive construction, respectively (cf. (6), (4), and (2)), can be regarded as more specific. 6. from the lexical template of verbs of smell emission to their semantic constructions the old english predicates which express the emission of a smell are bladesian, recelsian, reocan, steran, and stincan. the semantic constructions under this lexical subclass are presented below: 6.1. stimulus subject construction a.1. (8) %odghvldè, ‘they smell (pleasantly)’ (t&c: an. ox. 554) the oe verbs of smell perception and emission 43 a.2. (9) nu he vwlqjè, ‘now he smells (unpleasantly)’ (hsk: cowsgosp <r 11.39>) (10) he u\fì, ‘he smells (very strongly)’ (b&t: lchdm, i. 260, 8) (11) ond se lichoma vwdqf ond þæt heafod swa swote swa rosan blostma ond lilian, ‘and the body and the head smelt as sweaty as roses and lilies’ (hsk: comartyr <r 2373>) (12) ond ic fulre eom þonne þis fen swearte þæt her yfle adelan vwlqfhè, ‘and i am more unclean than this dark dirt that here smells like evil dirt’ (hsk: coriddle <r 27>) properties a.1. [kdyh.vphoo�,�[eh��(smell��[sohdvdqw�])] (x)] x nominative undergoer a.2. [kdyh.vphoo�,�[eh��(smell��[xqsohdvdqw�])] (x)] x nominative undergoer comments the first construction under study within the lexical subclass of smell emission is the stimulus subject construction. as levin (1993: 188) points out, these predicates “do not take the perceiver as their subject”, as in the subclass of smell perception. “rather, these verbs take the stimulus as their subject and express the perceiver in a to prepositional phrase. in addition, these verbs take an adjective phrase complement predicated of the stimulus”, (cf. (11) and (12)). however, in opposition to present-day english, the old english predicates in the stimulus subject construction do not express lexically the perceiver. thus, in this constructional template there will be only a macrorole undergoer corresponding to the emitter of a pleasant (in a.1) or unpleasant (in a.2) smell, that is, the variable (x), which takes nominative case since the state of affairs in this constructional template denotes a stative logical structure. marta gonzález orta 44 6.2. resultative stative construction a.1. (13) 6whu hyne mid ðære wyrte, ‘perfume him with the herb’ (b&t: lchdm. i. 98, 19: 206, 2) a.2. (14) 5hfhovd hine, ‘perfume it (with incense)’ (b&t: lchdm. ii. 344, 18) properties a.1. [gr´ (w, [xvh´ (w, y)])] cause [kdyh.vphoo�,� [eh�� (smell�� [sohdvdqw�])] (x)] w nominative actor y mid + dative argument-adjunct x accusative undergoer a.2. [gr´ (w, [xvh´ (w, ø)])] cause [kdyh.vphoo�,� [eh�� (smell�� [sohdvdqw�])] (x)] w nominative actor x accusative undergoer comments the last construction to be explained is the resultative stative construction. this constructional template and the general lexical template above meet the lexical mapping rule “predicate integration condition”, according to which “the constructional template may introduce a new predicate into the canonical lexical template if the semantics of the added predicate is compatible with the semantic content of the lexical template. a case in point is the middle, the caused motion and the resultative construction” (cf. mairal & cortés forthcoming). that is the case of the constructional templates in (a.1) and (a.2), in which a new subevent is introduced, [gr´ (w, [xvh´ (w, y)])] and [gr´ (w, [xvh´ (w, ø)])], respectively. in these constructional templates the external variable (w) acts as effector using the instrument (y) in order to cause the emission of a pleasant smell. thus, (w) functions as actor and takes nominative case, the variable (y) when lexically filled, as already described in the instrument the oe verbs of smell perception and emission 45 construction, will be introduced by the preposition mid, and finally (x) will take the undergoer macrorole and accusative case. finally, it is important to note that, unlike the subclass of smell perception, the results obtained for the lexical subclass of smell emission have proved that it is quite impossible to distinguish a lexical unit showing a more generic or prototypical nature in terms of the lexical iconicity principle-beta reading; in fact, as illustrated above (cf. examples in (8-14)), the predicates which participate in the stimulus subject construction, that is, bladesian, reocan, and stincan, do not take part in the resultative stative construction (in which recelsian and steran do), and vice versa. 7. conclusion the notion of lexical template has been integrated in the lexical grammar model framework for lexical analysis as a way of representing the interaction between syntax and semantics within lexical classes. thus, lexical templates enrich the logical structures as developed by van valin & lapolla (1997) with a semantic decomposition which allows for the capture of generalisations within verbal classes, reducing the information to be included in the lexical entries. therefore, this paper has accounted for the interaction between the semantic structure of the set of verbs conforming the lexical subclasses of smell perception and emission in old english and their syntactic behaviour, together with the morphological marking of the constituents in the sentences where they appear. thus, our proposal of a general lexical template for these two verbal subclasses and a set of linking mechanisms between the constructional templates and the morphological and syntactic patterning exhibited by their members implies a way to capture the interrelation of the 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english1 michiko ogura chiba university when old english appeared in a written form for the first time, it had already lost inflections like optative, hortative, perfective, passive, etc. making up for these morphological forms, it started, again before it was written and preserved, using periphrastic expressions with modal auxiliaries, habban, beon/wesan, utan, ongan, etc. without having middle voice, it used ‘impersonal’ and ‘reflexive’ constructions (the single quotes mean that they included quasi-impersonals and quasi-reflexives in the real sense of the words). in this paper i focus on some such verbs as lician, lystan, sceamian, þyncan and wer(g)ian with their native and/or loan synonyms like (dis)plesen, joien, remembren, repenten, semen, etc. and their constructions used in old and middle english so as to maintain that their peculiar features reflect compensatory devices of the lost function before the appearance of old english. keywords: impersonal; reflexive; old english; early middle english 1. my definitions ‘impersonal’ constructions are those which occur with the dative/accusative of person, like me licaþ and him þinceþ, with or without (h)it, so that they make a distinction from the real impersonal like it rains and it snows, which never turn into personal constructions. ‘reflexive’ constructions are those which occur with a coreferential 1 this is the revised version of the plenary paper given in icell11 web conference in june 2021. michiko ogura, selim27 (2022): 49–80. issn 1132-631x / issn-l 2792-3878 / https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.27.2022.49-80 50 michiko ogura pronoun, like he him ondred and he gewat him, with or without self-, so that they make a distinction from the real reflexive, which is found in modern english behave yourself and he said to himself. 2. a diachronic tendency tables 1a, 1b and 1c give the number of occurrences of ‘impersonal’ and ‘reflexive’ constructions in some old and middle english texts. numbers of both constructions differ, according to the length of each text and owing to some stylistic preferences, but no clear tendency of diachronic decrease in the number of occurrences in three tables.2 table 1a. gospels in comparison ‘impersonal’ ‘reflexive’ wscp 183 187 wyc(ev) 185 187 table 1b. homilies in comparison ‘impersonal’ ‘reflexive’ blhom 72 126 æchom 276 637 æhom 175 306 whom 153 150 vespd.hom 147 210 bodhom 66 115 lambhom 61 62 trinhom 70 141 table 1c. major texts in comparison ‘impersonal’ ‘reflexive’ oe poetry 442 665 cp(h) 447 483 or 95 223 bo 287 154 gd(c) 583 483 2 tables are based on ogura (2003: 539, 541, 545 and 548). ‘impersonal’ and ‘reflexive’ constructions 51 bede 201 167 chrone 49 45 orm 111 214 ancrw 90 226 laʒ(c) 247 345 laʒ(o) 146 211 as long as these constructions were kept in use during the medieval period, it would be better to examine if the same verb was used continuously or if the replacement among synonyms, including loan verbs, took place. 3. verbs used continuously some old english verbs, which showed ‘impersonal’ and/or ‘reflexive’ constructions could be kept in use in medieval contexts. in this section i pick out examples from oed3, doe, doec and med and exemplify the lexical continuity of these verbs. 3 verbs which show phoneticmorphological-syntactic-semantic mergers from old to middle english periods are particularly on focus. 3.1. oe sceamian > me shamen this is one of the verbs of emotion used ‘impersonally’ and ‘reflexively’ throughout the medieval period. examples are so many that i try to choose a few from both old and middle english. ‘impersonal’: (1) cp 21.165.5 hwa bið medtrum, ðæt ic ne sie eac for his ðingum seoc? oððe hwa bið gescended, ðæt me forðæm ne scamige? 3 i have checked those examples i found in my previous studies, in which i used earlier editions of medieval texts. i also consult bt and see if the examples quoted there are attested in the doe(c). here in this paper i try to follow dictionary quotations as faithfully as possible. boldface in examples is mine to highlight the verb and construction. 52 michiko ogura ‘who is weak and i am not weak; or who is shamed and i am not ashamed of it?’ (tr. based on sweet) cf. cp 16.101.4 (personal in a similar context) hwa bið geuntrumod ðæt ic ne sie eac geuntrumod; oððe hwa bið gesciended ðæt ic eac ðæs ne scamige? ‘who is infirm, and i am not sick on his account? or who is shamed, and i am not ashamed because of it?’ (tr. based on sweet) (2) lambhom 35.34 for-þi betere eow is þet eow sceamie biforen þam preoste ane; þenne on domes-dei biforen criste. ‘therefore it is better for you to shame yourself before the priest alone than on doomsday before christ.’ ‘reflexive’: the coreferential pronoun takes either the genitive or the dative. (3) cp 52.409.33-34 ðios sæ cwið ðæt ðu ðin scamige, sidón. swelce sio burg ða wære ðurh ðæs sæs stemne to scame geworden. ‘the sea says that you should be ashamed of yourself, sidon, as if the city were ashamed at the sea’s voice.’ (4) gdpref and 4(c) 33.308.23 he scamode his wiþ men, gif he ne eode in to cyrcan in swa halgan dæge þara eastrena, gif he þonne þider eode, þonne ondred he him þone godes dom. ‘he was ashamed of himself against men, if he did not go into the church on such a holy day of easter; then if he went there, he was afraid of the judgement of god.’ (5) æls (ashwed) 167 ne sceamige nanum men þæt he anum lareowe his gyltas cyðe. ‘let no man be ashamed to make known his sins to a teacher.’ (6) vespd.xiv 104.14-15 ‘impersonal’ and ‘reflexive’ constructions 53 se þe him scamige, ꝥ he beforen mannen egen synegie, swyðer him sceal scamigen, ꝥ he beforen godes egen ænig unriht wyrcð. ‘he who would be ashamed of committing sins before men’s eyes must be very much ashamed of doing anything wrong before god’s eyes.’ (7) owl & n (o) 161 schomye þe vor þine vnrede. vn wryen is þi swikehede. ‘shame on you for your bad counsel. your treachery is revealed.’ concerning this verb (and similar verbs of emotion), the ‘be + past participle’ construction is also important, now that participles function as predicative adjective. (8) cursor 636 g: þai were noght schamed par ma fay. t: ashamed were þei not certeyn. 3.2. oe þyncan > me thinken this verb shows ‘impersonal’, ‘reflexive’ and ‘be + past participle’ constructions throughout the medieval period. in example (9) we see ‘impersonal’ and personal reflexive constructions, in (10) ‘be + past participle’ for lindisfarne (obviously a faithful rendering of uidetur) and west saxon corpus christi but ‘impersonal’ in rushworth 1, in (11) ‘be + past participle’, in (12) ‘impersonal’, and in (13) personal and ‘impersonal’. (9) cp 17.113.10-12 æresð him ðuhte selfum ðæt ðæt he wære suiðe unmedeme, ac siððan he understungen ד awreðed wæs mid ðys hwilendlican onwalde, he ðuhte him selfum suiðe unlytel ד suiðe medeme. ‘at first he thought himself too incompetent, but when he was supported by this transitory authority, he considered himself very great and competent.’ 54 michiko ogura (10) mt 18.12 [quid uobis uidetur si fuerint alicui centum oues et errauerit una ex eis] li: huæt iuh is gesene ł <geðence> gif he biðon ł weron ængum hundrað scipa ד geduologia an of ðæm ru1: hwæt ðincaþ eow gif hæbbe hwa hundteontig scipa ד gedwalige an of ðara wscp: hwæt ys eow geþuht gyf hwylc mann hæfð hund sceapa ד him losað an of þam av: how thinke yee? if a man haue an hundred sheepe, nd one of them be gone astray4 (11) chrone 1106 se steorra ætywde innon þet suðwest; he wæs litel geþuht and deorc. ‘the star appeared in the southwest; it seemed small and dark.’ (12) vspd.hom xiv 83.38 .ic eam swa unroth, ꝥ me þincð sar min lif, ꝥ ic forneh dead eam ד ‘and i am so sad that my life seems to me painful, that i am nearly dead’ (13) ancr (nero) 85.6 alle heo þuncheð wouh; ד nout wunne. ancr (nero) 86.22 auh us þuncheð gretture fleshliche temptaciuns. 3.2.1. oe forþencan > me forthinken5 here we see an obvious mixture of oe -þencan and -þyncan, personal and ‘impersonal’ verbs, most probably based on the morphological merger of preterite and past participle forms of both verbs. syntactically, ‘reflexive’ constructions may continue, while ‘impersonal’ 4 old english versions are quoted from skeat (rpt. 1970). the authorized version is given as an early modern translation. 5 the med has the headword forthinken only, though in the following explanation it refers to the apparent mixture of oe forþencan and unattested *forþyncan. the doe has for-þencan only. ‘impersonal’ and ‘reflexive’ constructions 55 ones seem the result of the merger, when no example of the ‘impersonal’ was attested in old english. in example (14) sceamian also appears twice in ‘impersonal’ and ‘reflexive’. example (17) is quoted in the med under 1 (b) refl., but i take it as an ‘impersonal’ construction. ‘reflexive’ and ‘be + past participle’: (14) bo 8.19.29 ꝥ is nu giet þinre unrihtwisnesse ꝥ ðu eart fulneah forþoht. ac ic nolde ꝥ þu þe forþohte, ac ic wolde ꝥ ðe sceamode swelces gedwolan; forðæm se se ðe hine forþencð se bið ormod, ac se se hine sceamað se bið on hreowsunga. ‘that is still part of your wrongfulness that you are almost completely in despair. but i wanted you to be ashamed of such folly, because one who despairs is dispirited, but one who is ashamed is penitent.’ (tr. godden & irvine) (15) ayenb. (arun 57) 29.18 þet is huanne man ordayneþ ine his herte þet he him ne ssel naʒt uorþenche his zenne. ‘that is when a man conforms in his heart that he shall not regret himself of his sin.’ (16) cursor (c) 24786 of þis tiþand he him for-thoght ‘about this tiding he displeased himself’ ‘impersonal’: (17) pmor (dgb 4) st. 131 þo þet vorþuhte ham here sennen and here misdeden. ‘then their sins and their misdeeds were regrettable for them.’ cf. pmor (lamb 487) 131 .mon. of þinchþ his mis-dede. ‘one repented of his misdeed.’ (18) cursor 20642 c: bot þat him forthinc sar, o quatkin sinn it euer be, g: bot þat him of sin reu sare, of quatkin sin it euer be, ‘but that repents him sorely of what kind of sin it ever be.’ 56 michiko ogura (19) ppl.c 20.92 sore hit me forthenketh; of þe dede þat y haue do y do me in ʒoure grace. ‘it repents me sorely; of the deed that i have done i betake myself in your grace.’ 3.2.2. oe ofþyncan > me athinken this verb shows ‘impersonal’ constructions throughout medieval english. ‘impersonal’: (20) bo 35.98.33 ;þa <sceolde> þæm gigantum ofþincan þæt he hæfde hiera rice ד ‘and then it must be displeasing for giants at his having their kingdom’ (21) homu 45 (nap56) 7-9 ofðincð þe alles þæs, þe ðu to yfele hafst iðoht and icwæden and iworht? gea leof, al hit me ofðincð. ‘does it repent you of all this, which you have thought and said and made too evil? yeah, dear, it all repents me.’ (22) laʒbrut 3364 c: for ofte hit ilimpð; þat eft hit him of-þincheð. o: for hofte hit bi-falleþ; þat eft hit him aþincheþ. ‘for often it befalls that again it repents him’ (23) wyc(ev) gen 6.7 it othenkith [var. athinkith; lv repentith] me to haue maad hem. ‘it repents me to have made them.’ cf. hept gen: me ofðingð soðlice ðæt ic hi worhte. ‘impersonal’ and ‘reflexive’ constructions 57 3.3. oe becuman > me becomen verbs of happening like gelimpan and becuman are likely to show ‘impersonal’ constructions. becuman may have reflexive constructions occasionally and contextually, and later becomen and (be)fallen can be used in the ‘be + past participle’ as the perfective. ‘impersonal’: (24) æls (fortysoldiers) 324 yfele wæron þa ehteras and þa arleasan cwelleras þe ða martyras ofslogon, ac swa þeah hit becom ðam halgum to wuldre and to ecum wyrðmynte, ‘evil were the persecutors and the impious murderers who slew the martyrs, but nevertheless it became glory and everlasting worship to the saints’ (25) ls5(inventcrossnap) 120 (= hrood) sonæ swa heo on þa gyrde bisægen ða bicom heom feringa on ane tid dæges þær heo stoden þæt heoræ naðor nan word cwæðen ne mihte. ‘as soon as they looked on the rods, it came upon them suddenly where they stood, during one hour of the day, that neither of them could utter a word.’ ‘reflexive’: (26) æls (fortysoldiers) 348 þæt þæt ðu þe sylfum nelt on þinum life becuman, ne do ðu þæt oðrum men. þis cwæð drihten sylf. ‘you should not do to another man what you do not wish to befall to yourself in your life, this said the lord himself’ ‘be + past participle’: (27) cursor (g) 13748 “womman,” he said, “quar es bicomen cf. (c) “womman,” he said, “quar ar þai cummen (t) wommon he seide where beþ bicomen (28) exodus (coverdale) 32.1 58 michiko ogura we can not tell what is become of this man moses. cf. hept: we nyton hwæt moyses gefaren hafð wycev: to this man moyses … we known not what is fallyn [lv: befelde] 3.3.1. oe cuman > me cumen the non-prefixed synonym cuman can also be used, though not so frequently, in ‘impersonal’ and ‘be + past participle’ constructions. ‘impersonal’: (29) homs 41 73 hit is swiðe unþæslice and pleolic þæt we on godes huse idele spellunga and hlacerunga began, forði þe hit cymð us to mycelan hearme; ‘it is very inappropriate and dangerous for us to do idle speech and unseemly behaviour, because it becomes as great pain for us.’ (30) orm 9897 for þa wass cumenn to, þatt crist þa shollde cumenn newenn, ‘for it has arrived (= the time has come) that then christ should come again.’ cf. orm 12842 þatt ta wass cumenn time to þatt men þa sholldenn blinnenn, ‘personal’ i.e. with the dative of person and the nominative of thing: (31) vices &v(1)(stw 34) 29/6-7 ðanne ðe cumþ eft sum euel oðer sum unʒelimp, an hwilche(s) kennes wise ðe hit æure cumþ, ne ʒelief ðu naht al swa sume, ðe naure wel ne ʒeliefden, seggeð þat hie imetten euel fot, priest oðer munec; ‘when again some evil or some mishap comes to you, inwhatever way it comes, do not believe as some, who have never believed well, say that they met evil foot, priest or monk.’ ‘impersonal’ and ‘reflexive’ constructions 59 3.4. oe (a)grisan > me (a)grisen only a few examples are found in old english texts: whom 10c 182 ondræde man domdæg ד for helle agrise ‘let one fear for doomsday and dread of hell’, homu 5.3 16 þe heom sore grulde, þet ham gros þe agan ‘(anger) which annoyed them so much that they shuddered at you’. the ‘impersonal’ construction seen in homu 5.3 continues and ‘reflexive’ and ‘be + past participle’ constructions are also found in the thirteenth century texts. ‘impersonal’: (32) trinhom 165 of swilch mai grisen men þe ani god cunnen. ‘to men who know any good it may be afraid of such.’ (33) laʒ 13328 c: þer uore me a-griseð o: her vore me agriseþ ‘therefore it fears me’ ‘reflexive’: (34) laʒ 11976 c: haʒel & ræin þer aræs; þe hit i-seh him agras. o: reyn and hawel þar a-ros; þat hit iseh sore a-gros. ‘hail and rain there arose, whoever saw it became afraid’ 3.5. oe hreowan > me reuen6 these ‘impersonal’ verbs are not frequently used in old english but, as some verbs of the same feature, their occurrences grow from early middle english. ‘impersonal’: 6 oe hreowsian > me reusen, a synonym, occurs in the present participle: cp 49.379.22 hreowsigende hine selfne tælde and vices &v.(1) 63/26 riewsiende ðe seluen to helpe. reflexives found in these contexts go with tælan and helpen respectively. 60 michiko ogura (35) genb 819b swa me nu hreowan mæg æfre to alder þæt ic þe minum eagum geseah. ‘so now i have cause to regret forever and ever that i looked upon you with my eyes.’ (36) cp 52.411.3 ,oft ða, ða ðe on clænnesse hiora lichoman gehealdenne habbað ד swa swa hi læsse ongietad ón him selfum ðæs ðe him hreowan ðylfe, swa swa hie swiður wenað ðæt him genog sie ón hira lifes clænnesse, ‘and often, those who have kept their bodies in purity, the less they perceive in themselves of what they need repent, the more they expect that the purity of their life will suffice them’ (37) orm 5576 himm reoweþþ þatt he dwelleþþ her ‘it repents him that he dwells here’ (38) vices &v. (1) 65/3 ðanne ðe wile sare rewen ðat tu ðe seluen ne haddest betere iholpen ðare hwile ðe ðu mihtest. ‘then you will sorely repent that you have not helped yourself better while you could.’ (39) laʒ (c) 16049 ich þe wulle suggen; ah æuere hit wule þe reouen ‘i will say to you, but it will ever rue you’ 3.6. oe lician > me liken, oe mislician > me misliken oe lician can be called the representative of medieval ‘impersonal’ verbs, although it often occurs with the nominative of thing. oe gelician and mislician show the same feature.7 ‘impersonal’: 7 mislician often occurs in the same context, as seen in examples (41), (46) and (47), while gelician is often used in the psalter glosses as a rendering of conplacere. ‘impersonal’ and ‘reflexive’ constructions 61 (40) cp 21.165.13 forðam nu ða recceras ætiewað sua strang[ne] andan ðy hie wiellað ðæt hie hiene eft hæbben ob ðæm ecan life betux him ד hiera hieremonnum to isernum wealle, ðæt is to gewitnesse ðæt hit him ne licode, ðeah he hit gebetan ne meahte. ‘because the rulers show such severe zeal now, since they wish to have it afterwards in eternal life as an iron wall between themselves and their subjects, to show that they did not approve of it, although they could not reform it.’ (tr. by sweet) (41) cp 54.425.6 ðeah we næbre eft swa ne don, gif we ðæt gedone mid nanum ðingum ne betað ne ne hreowsiað, ne bio we no ðæs sicore, gif us ðæt ne mislicað ðæt us ær licode, ‘even if we never do so again, unless we somehow atone for and repent of what we have done, we are not sure, unless we are displeased with what had pleased us,’ ‘impersonal’ emphasised by self(innian is used ‘reflexively’): (42) chrone 1048.22 þa hi þider common, þa woldon hi innian hi þær heom sylfan gelicode. ‘when they arrived thither, they wished to dwell where they pleased.’ (43) orm 17584 þær þær he shapeþþ sawle off nohht, all alls him sellfenn likeþþ; ‘where he creates soul from nothing, all as it pleases him,’ (44) laʒ (c) 22511 likien swa me liken; nulle ich þe nauere swiken. ‘be pleased as i am pleased; i will never betray you.’ (45) gawain 2307 no meruayle þaʒ hym myslyke, þat hoped of no rescowe ‘no wonder though he should be displeased, who had no hope of escape’ 62 michiko ogura ‘reflexive’: (46) cp 32.209.14 ac ðæm lareowe is swiðe smealice to underseceanne be ðæm weorcum ðara ofertruwedena, ðæt hie him gecyðen ðætte on ðam ðingum ðe hie him selfum sua suiðe licigað, ðæt hie gode misliciað. ‘but the teacher must very narrowly investigate the works of the presumptuous, that they may show them that in the things wherein they please themselves so much they displease god.’ (tr. by sweet) (47) bede 5 14.436.24 ac swa swiðe swa he for ðære utran geornfulnesse weoruldlicra dæda þam cynge wæs liciende, swa swiðe he for ðære innlican gemeleasnesse godes herenisse him seolfum mislicade. ‘but in proportion as he was acceptable to the king for his external zeal in worldly things, so he was, because of his inward carelessness in obeying god, unacceptable to himself.’ (48) cursor (c) 28336 i ha me liked ai vm-quile in vnnait words, lath and vile, ‘i have pleased myself frequently in useless words, evil and idle’ (49) cleanness 435 bot quen þe lord of þe lyfte liked hymselven for to mynne on his mon his meth that abydez, ‘but when the lord of the sky pleased himself to remember his servant who awaits for his mercy.’ 3.6.1. oe lystan > me listen, lusten like oe lician, lystan is used denoting ‘to please’ in ‘impersonal’ constructions. as for the me form lusten, the oed3 explains from a dialectal feature, which represents west midland [ü] pronunciation, while the med states from the development of a noun lust + lystan. (see oed3 list v2. and lust v., and med listen v. (1), lusten v., and lust n.) ‘impersonal’: (50) homs 14 (blhom 4) 218 ‘impersonal’ and ‘reflexive’ constructions 63 hwæt æghwylc mon wile þæt him drihten selle ealle his þearfe, ד hine ne lyst his willan wyrcean þæt he on his naman dæle þæt he him ær dealde. ‘lo! everyone desires that the lord should give him all that is needed, and it does not please him to do his will by dividing on his will what he had given him.’ (51) lambhom 103.28 þeo sixte is ihaten. desidia. þet is slewðe on englisc þenne þan mon ne lust on his liue nan god don. and bið eure unʒearu to elchere duʒeðe. ‘the sixth is called desidia, that is, sloth in english; when the man desires not to do any good in his life, and is ever unready for any good deed.’ (52) orm 8119 seʒʒde þatt him lisste þa ד wel etenn off an appell; ‘and said that then it should please him well to eat of an apple’ (53) laʒ (c) 30253 þam kinge luste slepe; þe riche weoren at rede. ‘it was pleased for the king to sleep; the nobles were at counsel.’ (54) cursor (t) 226018 no creature shal luste [c, g, f: list] play, seint petur shal be doumbe þat day. ‘to no creature it should be pleased to play, st. peter shall be dumb that day.’ ‘reflexive’: (55) fates 97a her mæg findan foreþances gleaw, se ðe hine lysteð leoðgiddunga, hwa þas fitte fegde. 8 see oed3 lust, v. †3.a.: “in the first quotation the verb may be impersonal: cf. list v.1 1.” 64 michiko ogura ‘here the person clever at deduction, and who takes pleasure in the recitation of lays, can find out who composed this poem.’ (56) ayenb. 246 þer he him uetteþ. þer he him losteþ. þer he him resteþ. þer he him slepþ. ‘there he feeds himself, there he pleases himself, there he rests himself.’ ‘be + past participle’: (57) nv psalter (vsp d.7) 76.3 i was mined of god with me, and i am lusted [l delectatus sum]. 3.6.2. oe cweman > me quemen in old english cweman is a personal verb in contrast with lician, although they sometimes can be used in pairs (e.g. cp 19.147.20 ic wilnige on eallum ðingum ðæt ic monnum cueme ד licige [l. placeo].). in the fourteenth century texts the med finds ‘impersonal’ constructions, probably due to the rivalry in the preceding period. personal: (58) laʒ (o) 254929 þorh waweyn was modread; manne wel þe leauere. and arthur þe kene; fole wel him cwemde. ‘through gawain modred was well the more beloved by men, and arthur the keen was pleased with him very well.’ ‘impersonal’: (59) gower ca (frf 3) 3.902 and loke how wel it scholde hem qweme to hinder a man that loveth sore. (60) floris (eg 2862) 945 or we hem to deth deme, lat vs hem see, ӡif it þe queeme. 9 this is quoted in the med under “quemen v. 1c. in impersonal constructions.” ‘impersonal’ and ‘reflexive’ constructions 65 3.7. oe mænan > me menen bt has three headwords for oe mænan: ‘to mean’, ‘to tell’ and ‘to lament, complain’. the oed3 puts the first two under mean v.1 and the last under mean v.2 the med gives menen v. (1) ‘to mean; to remember’ and menen v. (2) ‘to complain.’ some editors, however, give their own opinions. ‘reflexive’: ‘to mean’ (61) æchom i,40 529.140 we þe lybbað: ne mænde he hine sylfne mid þam worde, ac þa ðe on life þurhwuniað oð geendunge þyssere worulde. ‘we who live: he did not mean himself with those words but those who live through in life till the ending of this world.’ (62) mannyng chron.pt.1 (lamb 131) 3493 in þer resting, þey gan hem mene, a parlement made þem bitwene. ‘there in the resting place they began to take counsel, made a parliament between them’ ‘impersonal’: ‘to mean’ (63) ppl.c (cmb ff5.35) 6.53 more-ouer now me meeneth wel. ‘moreover now it seems to me well.’ ‘reflexive’: ‘to remember’ (med menen v. (2) ‘to complain’) (64) pmor (lamb 487) 168 ne scal him na mon mene þer of strengþe ne of wronge. ‘no man shall remind him (god) there of violence nor of wrong.’ (tr. by morris) ‘impersonal’: ‘to remember’ (65) cursor (c) 16889 vs meins quils he was in lijf þat we herd him sai ‘we remember while he was in life that we heard him say’ ‘reflexive’: ‘to complain’ (66) lambhom 17.7 66 michiko ogura men þe to halie chirche. þet is to þan preoste and to þan folke. ‘complain yourself to holy church, that is to the priest and to the congregation.’ (67) laʒ (c) 31481 and heo gunnen wenden; to þan kinge pendan. and menden heom to pendan; of oswy þan kinge. ‘and they began to proceed to the king penda, and complained (themselves) to penda about the king oswy.’ (68) cursor (c) 15118 bituix þam, þaa cursed men, mened þam þair care. ‘between them, those cursed men, complained themselves their grief.’ ‘be + past participle’: ‘to lament’ (69) willam of palerne 1490 & whan hit was wist in rome þat william was sek, mochel was he mened of more & of lasse; ‘and when it was known in rome that william was sick, he was pitied much by everyone;’ ‘impersonal’: ‘to lament’ (70) guy of warwick (auch) 433 sore me meneþ, for me smert. ‘it grieves me sorely, for it causes me pain.’ 3.8. oe wendan, windan and turnian two verbs of motion, oe wendan ‘to turn, go’ and oe windan ‘to move quickly, wind’ show merger, mixture, or alternative uses in late old english through the transitional period, leaving their forms in the preterite form of go and mne wind [waınd]. they can also be used in parallel or in pairs with me turnen (oe turnian + of to(u)rner) (e.g. (73)). ‘impersonal’ and ‘reflexive’ constructions 67 3.8.1. oe wendan > me wenden ‘impersonal’: (71) bo 39.125.7 ac ic wundrie swiðe swiðlice forhwi hit swa went swa hit <nu> oft deð, ‘but i wonder very much why it so turns around as it now often does’ ‘reflexive’: (72) æchom i,28 417.212 he wende hine to wage þær hi him æt wæron. he wende eft ongean þær he hi funde. ‘he turned himself to the wall where they were present to him; he turned back again where he found them.’ (73) bodhom 26/33 ðá ilyfde þe king þæs hælendes prǽce, ד wende him hamweard, ד hopode to þám. ‘then the king believed the saviour’s words, and turned home, and trusted in them.’ (74) orm 11396 himm wennde aweʒʒ þe deofell, ד enngless comenn sone anan ‘the devil went away, and angels came immediately’ ‘be + past participle’: (75) gen & ex 1429 eliezer is went his wei. and haueð hem boden godun dai. ‘eliezer has gone his way and has bid them good day.’ 3.8.2. oe windan > me winden ‘reflexive’: (76) cursor (c) 6540 ne he ne wist queþer it bettur war to turn or winde [ g: wend] him forþar mare. ‘he did not know whether it would be better to turn or wind his way furthermore.’ 68 michiko ogura (77) trev. barth. (add 27944) 218/24 bestes þat fooldiþ and wyndiþ himself round as a ring hauen none necke distinguid fram þe body. ‘beasts that fold and wind themselves round as a ring have no neck separated from the body.’ ‘be + past participle’: (78) nicod (1) 833 we ne wate how he es wonden oway. ‘we do not know how he has gone away.’ 3.8.3. oe turnian + of to(u)rner > me turnen ‘reflexive’: (79) cursor (c) 2391 abram turned him to þe south, to see þat land was him vn-cuth, ‘abram turned himself to the south to see that the land was unknown to him.’ (80) wyc (bod 959) prov. 26.15 as a dore is turned in his heenge, so a slow man in his little bed. 3.9. oe gamenian > me gamen according to the doe there are only six occurrences of oe gamenian, which do not show the constructions under investigation, but in the med examples are attested. ‘impersonal’: (81) st. marg. (bod 34) 24/34 me gomeneð & gleadeð al of gasteliche murhden. ‘i rejoice all of spiritual joy.’ ‘reflexive’: (82) laʒ (c) 4587 godlac hauede a god scip; ne gomede him no with. ‘godlac had a good ship; he was not merry at all.’ ‘impersonal’ and ‘reflexive’ constructions 69 (83) cursor (c) 4210 might na man gamen him no gleu. ‘no one could make entertainment at all.’ 3.10. oe gramian > me gramen there are only two instances according to the doe, although a synonym gremman or gremian has 150 occurrences (e.g. cp 28.189.23 ne gremigen ge eowre bearn). in the transitional period we find ‘impersonal’ constructions. the verb shows a tendency to make a pair with shamen in a negative sentence. ‘impersonal’: (84) pmor (lamb 487) 165 for him ne scameþ ne ne gromeð þe sculen bon iborʒen. ‘for to him who shall be saved it neither is shamed nor troubled.’ (85) trinhom 69 þanne ne þarf us noðer gramien. ne shamien. ‘then it is not necessary for us to be irritated or shamed.’ (86) laʒ (c) 25216 ful swiðe us mæi scomien; and ful swiðe us mæi gromien. ‘very greatly it may shame us and very greatly it may anger us.’ 3.11. oe wergian > me werien according to bt and the doec, this verb is found in bede twice in the infinitive as a rendering of lassescere (bede 1 16.78.21 wærigian and bede 3 7.178.19 wergian), and once in the lives of saints in ‘be + past participle’, as in (87). (87) ls 8 (eust) 34 witodlice þurh godes fore-stihtunge, ne hors ne he sylf gewergod wæs. ‘verily through god’s predestination neither his horse nor he himself was tired.’ 70 michiko ogura but after the transitional period it occurs in ‘reflexive’ and ‘impersonal’ as well as ‘be + past participle’. ‘reflexive’: (88) st. marg (bod34) 42/27 þu swenchest te swiðe, ד ne spedest nawiht for te wurchen on me, meiden an þet ich am; ah wergest þe seoluen. ‘you trouble too much, and do not succeed to work on me, maiden alone that i am, but weary yourself.’ (89) ayenb. (arun59) 99/13 he wolde þet hit were ssort / uor þet non ne ssolde him werye: hit uor to lyerny. ‘he (= god) intended that it (= the prayer) should be short, because no one should be wearied to learn it.’ ‘impersonal’: (90) chaucer ct.cy (manly-rickert) g.1304 it werieth me to telle of his falsnesse. ‘be + past participle’: (91) pdidax. (hrl 6258b) 43/25 he byþ on ælce lime ʒwerʒi. ‘he is weary on each limb.’ 3.12. oe werian > me weren this is a verb often used reflexively in old and middle english. there is morphological similarity between this and the previous verbs throughout the medieval period, but they differ syntactically, that is, taking the dative for the previous one and the accusative for this verb. ‘reflexive’: (92) beo 541a wit unc wið hronfiras werian þohton ‘we intended to protect ourselves against whales’ ‘impersonal’ and ‘reflexive’ constructions 71 (93) chrona 755.13 þa unheanlice ד he on þa duru eode ד þa ongeat se cyning þæt ד hine werede [e: werode] ‘and then the king perceived that and he went to the door and then gallantly defended himself’ (94) orm 1406 acc þu mihht werenn þe fra þeʒʒm þurrh rihhte læfe o criste. ‘but you cannot protect yourself from them through right belief on christ.’ (95) ancr (c) 152/14 ʒef þu þurh þi ʒemeles werest te earst wacliche. ד ʒeuest to þe feond inʒong to forð iþe frumðe ‘if through your negligence you first defend yourself weakly and make the devil going in too far at the beginning’ 3.13. oe ofdrædan > me ofdreden oe ondrædan occurs frequently in ‘reflexive’ constructions and in late old english is contracted morphologically into adrædan, while ofdrædan is mostly used in the past participle. the verb shows various constructions in middle english. ‘be + past participle’: (96) æchom ii,39.1 290.67 ða befran se seaða þe hine onsundron heold hwæt he manna wære. oððe wære ofdræd. ‘then the robber, who held him apart, asked him which of men he were or (he) were afraid.’ (97) peterb.chron. 1135.4 wurþen men suiðe ofuundred ד ofdred, ‘men were greatly astonished and afraid,’ ‘reflexive’: 72 michiko ogura (98) pmor (trin) 159 þar we muʒen ben sore offerd and harde us ofdrade. ‘there we should be very much terrified and afraid greatly.’ (99) horn (c) 307 sore ihc me ofdrede he wolde horn misread. ‘i was very much afraid. he intended to misread horn.’ ‘impersonal’: (100) horn (l) 1250 wel sore hyre of dradde þat horn child ded were, ‘she was so much afraid that horn child were dead.’ (101) reinbrun (auch) p. 656 me of-drede sore þe kniʒt him haue take ‘i was very much afraid the knight to have taken him’ 4. verbs borrowed in the middle english period old english has many synonyms in each semantic field. verbs used in ‘impersonal’ and/or ‘reflexive’ constructions in the old english period can be used continuously into the next period, as seen in section 3. verbs which are used infrequently in these constructions sometimes show frequent uses in middle english, as a result of semantic rivalry which may or may not be traced in written documents. in addition, synonyms can be borrowed from old norse or old french (or anglonorman french in earlier days) and used either alternatively, with slightly different nuances, or with a force of replacement. here in this section i choose some verbs typically used in middle english contexts and survived into modern english. 4.1. me semen > mne seem according to the oed3, on sǿma is borrowed c. 1175 and used as a semantic-syntactic rival of þinken/þenken in ‘impersonal’ constructions. ‘impersonal’: ‘impersonal’ and ‘reflexive’ constructions 73 (102) orm ded. 66 ,te bitæche icc off þiss boc ד heh wikenn alls itt semeþþ, all to þurrhsekenn illc an ferrs, ‘and i entrust you of this book, as it seems a noble charge, all to seek through each verse,’ (103) wohunge i.271 for he þurh þe þat wisdom art al þis world wrahte and dihteð hit and dealeð as hit best semeð. ‘for he, through you, who are wisdom, created all this world and orders it and divides it, as it seems best.’ (104) gen & ex 2169 it semet wel ðat ge spies ben, and in-to ðis lond cumen to sen. ‘it seems well that you are spies, and come into this land to see.’ (105) cursor (c) 3284 þe formast was vnlaghter milde, hir semed na wight to be wilde. ‘the first was not prone to laughter, she seemed not at all to be wild.’ ‘reflexive’: ‘to make oneself appear’ (106) cursor (c) 26386 sua dos mast þis ypocrites þat wald ai wrenk þair aun wites, for to sem þam-self god and lele, ‘as most these hypocrites do, who would always twist their own thoughts, to make themselves appear good and virtuous.’ 4.2. me plesen > mne please an plaiser, with various forms borrowed c1350, become a rival of oe lician and is used in similar contexts, ‘impersonally’, ‘reflexively’ and in ‘be + past participle’. plesen is often found in the bible, especially in the wycliffite, to render complacere; in some examples the dative of person is governed by the preposition to.10 it seems curious to see that 10 for the use of ‘to + dative’ in the earlier version of the wycliffite bible, see ogura (2019). 74 michiko ogura the med used ‘impersonal’ under the headword plesen, while the oed3 does not use the term for both please and displease. ‘impersonal’: (107) wyc esth.1.19 if it please to þee, go þer out a maundement fro þi face. ‘if it pleases you, let there go a commandment from your face.’ (108) mppsalter (add 17376) 39.18 please it, lord, to þe [l. complaceat tibi domine], þat þou defende me. ‘be pleased, lord, to protect me.’ (109) wars alex (ashm 44) 4368 bot quen vs pleses to play, we passe & we rede of þe actis of oure auncestours & of þaire athill thewis. ‘but when it pleases us to play, we move on and study of the acts of our ancestors and of their noble qualities.’ ‘reflexive’: (110) wyc (dc 369(2)) 2 cor.12.10 i please to me [wb(2): y am plesid; l. placeo mihi] in myn infirmitees, ‘i take pleasure in infirmities.’ ‘be + past participle’: (111) wyc (bod 959) exod. 32.14 þe lord was pleisid [l. placates], þat he dyde not þe harme þat he speke aʒeinst his people. ‘the lord was pleased that he did no harm of speaking against his people.’ (112) wyc ecclus. 25.1 in þre thingis plesid is [l. placitum est] to my spirit. ‘in three things it is pleased to my spirit.’ ‘impersonal’ and ‘reflexive’ constructions 75 4.2.1. me displesen > mne displease of desplaisir, borrowed c. 1374, is used ‘reflexively’ or in ‘be + past participle’ constructions, but often used intransitively (according to the oed3 definitions. in example (115), the med defines the use as ‘reflexive’, while gordon/davis (1930, 1972) considers it as ‘impersonal’.11 intransitive: (113) pearl 422 “blysful,” quoth i, “may þis be trwe, dysplesez not if i speke errour.” ‘“blissful,” says i, “could this be true? do not be displeased if i say what is wrong.”’ (114) patience 1 patience is a point, þaʒ hit displease ofte. ‘patience is a virtue, though it would often displease.’ ‘reflexive’: (115) gawain 1839 and þerfore, i pray yow, displese yow noʒt! ‘and therefore, i pray you, let it not be displeased to you!’ (116) gawain 243912 bot on i wolde yow pray, displeses yow neuer: ‘but one thing i would pray you, do never be offended’ ‘be + past participle’: (117) chaucer ct. cy 457 beeth no thing displesed, i yow preye. (118) chaucer ct. mel. b.2888 dame, i pray yow that ye be not displesed of thynges that i seye. 11 for this discussion see ogura (1991). 12 this is not quoted either in oed3 or med. gordon/davis takes this form the imperative plural. 76 michiko ogura 4.3. me remembren > mne remember an remembrir in various forms is borrowed c. 1350, replacing oe geþencan, beþencan, and munan. ‘reflexive’: (119) apocalypse st. john: a version (harl. 874) 42 þe seuen holy gostes lowen hem whan þai remembren hem of [v.r. how] þat iesus crist suffred. ‘be + past participle’: (120) wyc ev (douce 369(1)) psalms 77.35 thei be remembrid [lv: thei bithouʒten that; l. rememorati sunt quia] god is ther helpere. ‘impersonal’: (121) chaucer ct.pars (hengwrt) § 85 at euery tyme þ’ me remenbreth of the day of dome, i quake. 4.4. me repenten > mne repent an & of repenter is borrowed c. 1300 and used in various contexts. ‘reflexive’: (122) sleg. (ldmisc 108) 52/173 of hire misdedes heo repented hire sore. ‘of her misdeeds she repented herself sorely.’ (123) shoreham poems 39 for so may man repenti hym, þat þer uolʒeþ no peyne. ‘for a man can repent himself so that there no pain will follow.’ (124) cursor (c) 7308 ful sore yee sal repent yow. ‘be + past participle’: (125) glo. chron. a (clga.11) 7194 of þe sunne þat hii inne beþ repenti mowe. ‘impersonal’ and ‘reflexive’ constructions 77 ‘of the sin that they should be repented.’ ‘impersonal’: (126) pearl 662 grace innogh þe mon may haue þat synnez þenne new, ʒif him repente. ‘sufficient grace the man can have, who sins then anew, if he would repent.’ 4.5. me anoien > mne annoy of anuier, enuier, or the like, comes in rather early, c. 1250. ‘be + past participle’: (127) laʒ (o) 2259 corineus was anued [c: un-eðe]; and wo on his mode. ‘corineus was uneasy, and sorrowful in his mind.’ (128) sleg.becket (ldmisc 108) 1003: forthinchen is used ‘impersonally’. ӡe beoth a-nuyd, and þat us for-þinchez sore; ‘you are annoyed, and that is very regrettable for us.’ ‘impersonal’: (129) elde makiþ me (hrl 913) p. 170 moch me anueþ þat mi dribil druiþ and mi wrot wet. ‘it annoys me so much that my saliva dries and my nose wet.’ ‘reflexive’: (130) wpal. (kc 13) 4373 anoie þe na more. ne need schalt þou haue, ne to hire do no duress. as þou me derli louest. ‘be not feel offended any more, you shall have no need, or do no harm to her, as you love me dearly.’ 4.5. me paien > mne pay in middle english contexts this verb means ‘to appease, satisfy’, borrowed from an paier or of paiier, as early as a 1200. 78 michiko ogura ‘be + past participle’: (131) trinhom 179.12 and giet ne wile þe louerd ben paid mid his rihete mol. ‘and yet the lord will not be pleased with his just portion.’ (132) ancr (nero) 127/7 sulement luue is god. beo wel ipaied [c: wilcweme] ד gled þerof. ‘only love is good; be well pleased and glad of it.’ ‘impersonal’: (133) laʒ 10535: contexts differ in two manuscripts c: þis ihærde cyrian; speken þene swikeful mon. o: þis ihorde þe kaiser; and him paide swiþe wel. ‘the emperor heard this, and it pleased him very well.’ (134) pearl 1177 me payed full ille to be outfleme ‘i was ill content to be dispossessed’ ‘reflexive’: (135) sleg.becket 1577 do he al-so aʒen me nouþe, and ich me paiʒe wel i-novʒ. ‘let him also do instead of me now, and i am pleased very much.’ 5．summary i have given examples of ‘impersonal’, ‘reflexive’, and ‘be + past participle’ constructions concerning the verbs in old and (early) middle english, although many are left unillustrated due to the space. there are three points to be noted: 1) synonyms may have the same or similar syntactic environments by affecting one another. oe lician and lystan are used ‘impersonally’, for instance, in contrast with personal cweman, while me quemen shows an ‘impersonal’ use. changes of syntactic environments are found among the synonyms from old to middle english. ‘impersonal’ and ‘reflexive’ constructions 79 2) morphological merger becomes obvious towards late old english. me listen and lusten, wenden and winden, forthenken and forthinken, menen ‘to remember’ and menen ‘to complain’ are those examples. formal and semantic resemblances may lead to syntactic shifts, and as a result, ‘impersonal’ and ‘reflexive’ constructions continue. since past participles function adjectivally, ‘be + past participle’ constructions can be seen with verbs used intransitively or ‘impersonally’13 and syntactically considered as ‘be + adjective’; thus ‘him wearies’ and ‘he is wearied’ are equal to ‘he is weary’. 3) loan verbs join in the rivalry between old english synonyms and start to share syntactic environments. me plesen takes part in the semantic-syntactic conflict between oe lician and lystan, becomes used alternatively, and partly replaces the ‘impersonal’ use of lician. me semen comes in, shares the ‘impersonal’ use with oe þyncan, which has conflicts with personal þencan, and finally survives into mne seem with personal and ‘impersonal’ uses. we cannot exemplify middle voice in the history of english, but these three constructions, ‘impersonal’, ‘reflexive’, and ‘be + past participle’ constructions are devices of english syntax to show semantic-syntactic differences in the course of rendering latin texts. in the transitional period onwards it becomes obvious that written and spoken varieties of english come closer, with the co-operation of old norse and anglonorman or old french loan verbs. references bosworth, j. & t. n. toller 1898 [rpt. 1929, 1954, 1972]: an anglo-saxon dictionary. london, oxford university press. [doe =] cameron, a., a. crandell amos, a. dipaolo healey et al. eds. 2018: dictionary of old english: a to i online. toronto: dictionary of old english project, centre for medieval studies, university of toronto. 13 for the discussion of ‘be + past participle’ constructions with ‘impersonal’ verbs, see ogura (1986). 80 michiko ogura [doec =] dipaolo healey, a. et al. eds. 2009–: dictionary of old english web corpus. toronto, university of toronto press. http://www.doe.utoronto.ca. godden, m. & s. irvine. eds. 2009: the old english boethius. 2 vols. oxford, oxford university press. the holy bible, 1611 edition, king james version. 1993: nashville, thomas nelson publishers. [med =] kurath, h, s. m. kuhn, j. reidy & r. e. lewis eds. 1952-2001: middle english dictionary. ann arbor, university of michigan press. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med [oed3 =] proffitt, m. ed: 2000–: the oxford english dictionary online. oxford, oxford university press. http://www.oed.com ogura, m. 1986: old english ‘impersonal periphrasis’, or the construction ‘copula + past participle’ of ‘impersonal’ verbs. poetica, 23: 16-52. ogura, m. 1991: displese yow and displeses yow: oe and me verbs used both ‘impersonally’ and reflexively. poetica, 34: 75–87. ogura, m. 2003: ‘reflexive’ and ‘impersonal’ constructions in medieval english. anglia, 121.4: 535–556. ogura, m. 2019: indirect object or ex-dative with or without to in the earlier and later versions of the wycliffite bible. in m. stenroos, et al eds. current explorations in middle english. frankfurt am main, peter lang: 193–206. skeat, w. w. ed. 1887, 1871, 1874, 1878 [rpt. 1970]: the gospel according to saint matthew, saint mark, saint luke and saint john. darmstadt, wissenschaftliche buch-gesellschaft. sweet, h. ed. 1871–72: king alfred’s west-saxon version of gregory’s pastoral care. eets, o.s. 45 and 50. london, oxford university press. author’s address 5-39-20 honcho 184-0004 koganei-shi, tokyo (japan) received: 26 july 2021 e-mail:ogura.dainagon@jcom.home.ne.jp revised version accepted: 8 november 2021 selim mª beatriz hernández, selim 11 (2001-2002): 27—49 distortions of the chaucerian tradition in the assembly of ladies the evolution of the role of the poet in late medieval literature has recently been depicted as one which moves towards a gradually new pervasive figure: that of the learned and genteel courtly poet.1 from the fourteenth century onwards, the perception of the poetic task became associated with that of royal courtiers who, as efficient composers, turn to the poetic practice as a clear sign of personal proficiency and fitness for courtly governmental duties. it seems logical that most courtly poets at this time showed great willingness to depict themselves as devoted writers at work. on most occasions literary pieces would be shared by members of an audience who could equally boast some command of the poetic skills; therefore, the reaction to the constant challenge posed by audiences made up of courtly educated companions required these poets to exercise the art of composure and control over any anxieties that this might cause. thus, authors resorted to all kinds of masks and rhetorical devices to show their ability to cope with the delicate personal situation writing might put them in. composition turned into a demanding form of introspection but at the same time required these poets to sustain some theoretical coolness that could only be securely brought to the literary surface with the help of some distancing techniques.2 1 gervase mathew has characterised the “international court culture” of the late middle ages as connected with the corresponding decline in popularity of oldfashioned minstrelsy, and with the rise of a new concept of the social role of monarchy. 2 j. a. burrow (1971: 39) refers to this particular attitude as representative of ricardian literature: “it means that the poet is not, in the last resort, directly committed to his work, as we feel dante to be. he reserves for himself, as it were, the right to say ‘but that is will (or geoffrey) speaking, not me’. more positively, it leaves the poet free to exploit possibilities in the contemporary vernacular which he might otherwise have found it difficult, as an educated man acquainted with polite languages, to come to terms with.” the same author (1982: 40) later emphasised how these attitudes derived from medieval ones rather than from modern italian stances: “the origins of autobiographic and personal writing in this period lie nearer home, in the literary traditions of the middle ages. surprisingly mª beatriz hernández pérez 28 writing became a kind of self-revelation not only of poetic skills but of the writers’ personal capacities for the courtly behaviour expected of those daring to share their views with that exquisite community. as firth green (1980: 112) says: “[...] irony, allegory, the conventions of the dream vision, and the use of personae all contribute to a sense of obliqueness in much of the love poetry of the late middle ages [...]. it is almost as if literary etiquette demanded that the poet should conceal his own personality behind a series of socially acceptable masks.” the sense of close surveillance and of constant judgement could not be ignored or eluded by writers, whose elegant response to the personal challenge was that of humble superiority, often achieved by anticipating their attitude before the final verdict uttered by some audience. one of the genres that best reflects and even symbolises this challenge is debate poetry. debate became not only a major tendency for courtly edification but also a means by which poets could in fact deviate the focus of attention from their own inner strife to that of the subject matter under discussion and, simultaneously, shrewdly hint at the implicit courtly pressure they are under, ameliorating it through just such suggestion.3 the very nature of debate poetry requires equanimous presentation of the parts and therefore, by presenting any subject in the controversial manner, these poets precluded their own commitment to any of the causes brought to the dispute. no wonder irresolution has become almost a defining trait of this genre, reflecting not only the didactic origins of this literary trend but also its enough, in fact, the authors of this period continue to present themselves in the old petitionary attitudes. the image of the writer becomes fuller and more intimate, but its outlines are most often unchanged.” 3 john w. conlee (1991: xiv-xv) describes the evolution of narrative frames for latin debates: “among the important earlier innovations was the introduction of a firstperson narrator, who served as the auditor and reporter of the debate that he had overheard. this innovation, which was probably introduced during the eleventh century, was accompanied by a tendency to elaborate the framing materials used to surround the debate component of the poem. the result of these two developments was greater structural complexity and a more extensive narrative element. yet another significant development among the later latin poems was the introduction of the dream-vision. used first in poems of serious didactic import such as the visio fulberti, an important latin prototype for the vernacular body and soul debates, the dream-vision soon became the vehicle for goliardic whimsy in poems such as the goliae dialogus in aquam et vinum [...]”. chaucerian distortions in the assembly of ladies 29 undeniable parliamentary uses, where delay and indefiniteness become essential attributes of real causes brought to court.4 thus, debate poetry encapsulates two salient and celebrated features of courtly poets: appreciation for their ability to artfully move the strings so as to avoid personal concessions and at the same time confirmation of their total command over the unpredictable coiling of the issue under debate, thus prefiguring their role as wise counsellors for princes in the future. a particularly relevant concern in medieval debates had been precisely the case of women. blamires (1992) tracks the long tradition of defence of women up to christine de pizan’s final vindication.5 some of chaucer’s works could be regarded from the perspective of this late-medieval zeal for debate as a training technique for mastering the art of discretion and equanimity. by entangling his poetic persona as witness in a debate the way he does, for instance, in the parliament of fowls, or by recording someone else’s remarks about an ongoing debate, as in alice of bath’s response to misogynous tenets, he makes explicit and underscores the debatable nature of the attitudes towards love and women. he epitomises the sort of author who is implicitly involved in debates dealing with women but who still refuses to give his “final word”. the weight placed on the reception of his poems reflects the anxiety of the poet who is required to play the role of the calm, confident courtier, able to laugh at himself through his self-imposed worldly detachment and, thus having to deny himself any definite position in this debate. 4 see, for instance, thomas reed, jr. (1990), and the parallelisms between law and literature as described by howard bloch (1977), where, again irresolution becomes characteristic of these activities. the training process at school did involve such dichotomous and parallel distribution of contents and the university and courtly disputations depended largely on techniques to delay the ultimate decision. 5 among the historians, eileen power (1979: 19) refers to the duality in the ecclesiastical depiction of women by talking of them as some sort of two-faced janus. blamires (1997: 4) remarks that “it is inevitable that, within such a patriarchal culture, many medieval profeminine texts do indeed rehearse a male point of view” due, among other reasons, to the exclusive male readers these early profeminine authors would be most probably addressing. therefore, in these early authors the very tone may decry the disavowal of the object of defence, in this case, women. mª beatriz hernández pérez 30 chaucer’s legend of good women6, for instance, is supposedly written as a penitential response for his having disparaged them in troilus and criseyde, and is handled by the poet within a recreational atmosphere which allows this penance to coexist with his predominantly ironic pose.7 still, the poem has been traditionally regarded as profeminine. if many current feminist critics are ready to give “chaucer his due”, it seems that fourteenth and fifteenth century readers were also willing to accept his ambiguity as part of the conventional detached pose of the author, ultimately hearing his protestations of being a defender of women as sincere. even his place within the canonical configuration of english literature, acclaimed as founding father, met the resistance of some of his earliest followers, who questioned such exclusive paternity in this sense. jennifer summit points out that gavin douglas perceived how chaucer took the female side and criticised him “for he was evir, wemenis frend”.8 but gavin douglas was not alone in noticing chaucer’s profeminine attitude: there is another phenomenon which suggests a view of chaucer, originally, almost as “a brother” for some sort of (ghost) female literary tradition apparently championed in the legend of good women. that phenomenon is the transmission of the great bulk of the so-called “chaucerian verse” of the fifteenth century. under this label, a heterogeneous group of occasional texts, many of them anonymous and devoted mainly to love and debates in the form of allegorical dream visions and lyrics, was assembled and attributed chaucerian authorship.9 among 6 it was lydgate who in his the fall of princes states that chaucer “wrot, at request off the queen, /a legende of parfit holynesse off goode women” (l. 1330-32). according to florence percival (1998: 1) he follows the model of the palinode: the ancient literary tradition concerned with the relative merits and demerits of women and men, first appeared in greek literature as defence of women and love in response as reply to the slandering of women as represented firstly by helen of troy. two poems likely to have influenced chaucer’s legend are also considered palinodes: book iii of the ars amatoria by ovid and le jugement dou roy de navarre by guillaume de machaut. thus all of these poems would participate somehow in the debate over the “war of the sexes”. 7 see, for instance, r. w. frank, jr., janet m. cowen, elizabeth d. harvey, r. m. lumiansky, elaine tuttle hansen, and nicole mcdonald. 8 first preface of the translation of aeneid of 1513 pointed out by jennifer summitt (23). 9 by the early sixteenth-century, in richard pynson’s 1526 edition of the three volume chaucerian production, we can find christine de pizan’s morale proverbs chaucerian distortions in the assembly of ladies 31 them we find the late fifteenth-century the floure and the leaf and also the assembly of ladies, allegorical pieces that present a female character as narrator.10 both were celebrated as chaucerian poems and their female narrator was thence taken for one of those distancing masks chaucer would wear in order to enhance the depth of the debate and ensure his authorial dispensations.11 only by the late eighteenth century were these two pieces finally excluded from the chaucerian canon.12 since then, scholars have determined that their divergent style points to different authorship for the poems and the main remaining question now is whether they echo a male or a female voice. since debate about this issue has resulted in a sort of endless medieval disputation,13 i would like at least to stress the assembly of ladies’s chaucerian vocation as well as the intention of the author to highlight some poetic concerns as specifically female. the question of its possible female authorship has become a key issue concerning the rise of a or richard ross’s translation of alain chartier’s la belle dame sans mercy under the heading “the booke of fame, made by geffray chaucer: with dyvers other of his workes”. about these chaucerian attributions see j. summitt, h. s. bennett, derek pearsall, paul strohm, julia boffey and julia boffey & john j. thompson. 10 it seems therefore that to the fifteenth-century editorial and reading mind it was definitely the partaking of a certain literary trend rather than the alleged identification between author and narrator in a poem that decided the lot of these anonymous pieces. 11 in fact, we might draw a line linking chaucerian female complaint poetry to the apocryphal the assembly of ladies, as the miscellaneous collections may attest. of the three late fifteenth-century manuscripts containing the assembly of ladies, the earliest of them, and model for pearsall’s first edition (1962), is british library ms addit. 34360, which happens to be preceded by chaucer’s pity as well as other short complaint poems and by the craft of lovers. ms longleat 258 includes lydgate’s temple of glass and chaucer’s anelida and arcite and the parlement of foules, as well as la belle dame sans merci. as for the third manuscript, trinity college cambridge ms r.3.19, it includes the legend of good women and the parlement of foules, as well as several lyrics by other authors. in 1532 william thynne produced an early print of the assembly of ladies, still as part of chaucer’s collected works. the original title, le samble des dames, is first rendered in english by him as part of this phenomenon of chaucerian appropriation of other works. 12 thus, thomas tyrwhitt, in his “account of the works of chaucer” (1775-78), opened the way to skeat’s interpretation of both poems as written by one and the same author, a woman. 13 this issue has been debated for some years now. see w. w. skeat, a. barratt, j. stephens and mainly r. evans and l. johnson’s illuminating contribution. i have used derek pearsall’s 1990 edition of “the assembly of ladies”, which follows british library ms addit. 34360, often referred to as “a”. mª beatriz hernández pérez 32 proto-feminist consciousness in english courtly culture.14 the significance of embroidery in the poem as well as the distortion of some chaucerian stances will be read as specific signs of female awareness and as a response to the courtly debate about women, to which chaucer had contributed. the poem, a dream vision, suggests the debate in its variant of the legendary courts of love, where, typically, bills, petitions and individual complaints of love were presented and debated in a courtly session by a judicial assembly that arbitrated the cases rigorously, on a specific day, according to the rules of love.15 while in a garden, a lady tells the knight, 14 georges duby (1998:19-57) already referred to the role of keeping alive the memory of the dead traditionally granted to women. this means that they were acknowledged as natural narrators, although they would hardly be endowed with the auctoritas men had always been credited with. alexandra barratt (1992: 7-16) mentions the three main different strategies medieval women would resort to in order to overcome these limitations; among them, anonymity would sometimes be used to guarantee the circulation of her works. feminist criticism has focussed on these anonymous writings and tried to detect some sort of essential female style in them, only to find out no plausible proof of female authorship. however, the effort has been worthwhile, since it has fostered a different approach to these texts, thus enriching them. regarding our text, laurie finke remarks (1999: 95): “since it seems unlikely that there will ever be sufficient evidence to determine whether the authors of these two female-voiced poems were male or female, perhaps it would be more useful to stop looking through the sexual ambiguity in these works �trying to resolve it� and instead look at it. unlike the female-voiced lyrics examined above, we might speak of the authors of floure and leafe and assemly of ladies as ‘epicene writers’, establishing a third term which is not a category or sex in itself, but a space of possibility that puts sexual identity into play. in these poems, the epicene is not simply the result of our own lack of information about the author’s identity; rather it constitutes the characteristic poetics of these two texts. these poems present us with a conundrum of textual sexuality.” 15 french literary topics such as this one of the cour amoureuse, largely celebrated by fourteenth-century french and english poetry, have been defended as historical instances of the rising power of the female presence in these refined and educated courts. however, although their existence has not been totally dismissed by historians, the most specific recorded data cannot possibly refer to real ceremonies of this kind. régine pernoud (1995: 153) refers to them: “no se trata sino de juegos de ingenio, deleite de una sociedad letrada a la que nada apasionaba tanto como el análisis de los matices del amor, y por modo de juego se celebraban sobre casos propuestos juicios semejantes en su forma a los que se celebraban con ocasión de los juicios orales feudales de las cortes señoriales ante las cuales se fallaban los pleitos”. the 1400 charter of the cour amoureuse attributed to charles vi, with its exact imitation of the literary ones, and which includes the participation of important known members of french courtly life, has been revealed as chronologically incorrect. according to j. wimsatt (1993: 279): “the conception of the court evidently was in part the fantasy of isabelle of bavaria and her entourage; notwithstanding, the documents witness the strong influence of the civic chaucerian distortions in the assembly of ladies 33 who has asked the cause of her present paleness, about a dream she had. in it, she and her eight female friends are summoned by lady loyalty to meet at her palace and asked to take their bills and complaints to court.16 the narrator is the first one to be visited by perseverance, who brings lady loyalty’s command, and she starts her journey right away, accompanied by diligence. she is the first to reach lady loyalty’s palace, called pleasant regard, and is escorted to her chamber by the porter, countenance, who answers her questions about the way this court works. countenance tells her about their sisterhood and the legal representatives at the place, the steward being largesse, the marshal of the hall bealchiere, discrecioun being the chief purveyor, aqueyntance the lodgings-officer, remembrance the chamberlain, avisenesse the secretary, perseverance the usher, and temperance the chancellor. meanwhile, the narrator’s eight friends arrive, and after getting properly dressed, they all witness the appearance in procession of a multitude of women heading for the main hall in order to present their bills to lady loyalty. with the help of perseverance, these nine friends cross the crowded space and are able to present their petitions, only to be told later that the resolution of all the bills presented that day would be dictated some other time.17 thus, having departed from pleasant regard puys on the literary ideas of the nobility. the numerous membership list of the cour amoureuse was not confined to the nobility; names from the bourgeoisie, especially from the north of france, appear on the rolls”. see also d. burnley (1998) and s. jaeger (1999). 16 spearing (1976: 5) described the centrality of the dreamer in dream-vision: “[...] the dream-framework inevitably brings the poet into his poem, not merely as the reteller of a story which has its origin elsewhere, but as the person who experiences the whole substance of the poem”. this is precisely what happens to this dreamer: she is the first to be summoned, the first to arrive in pleasant regard and the only one who, among the friends, resists or ignores allegorical authority. her questions and thoughts lead us through this dream. 17 reed (1990: 93) recalls the frustration of supplicants in most of the causes taken to political parliamentary debate at that time: “[...] although both lords and commons were required to give their ‘answers’ to the king’s points before the parliamentary session ended, virtually none of the petitions they presented would have been ruled on by the time they themselves were dismissed. instead, committees of the king’s council sifted through the various petitions (500 of them in 1305) over a period of weeks or months, answering some of the most important or difficult yet merely initiation action on the vast majority.” the poem would reflect perfectly that lack of hope in a solution for love complaints, leaving thus these ladies by themselves, dispersed as they are found at the beginning of the poem, roaming about some maze justice cannot unravel and compensate for. delay, mª beatriz hernández pérez 34 without any redress, the dreamer wakes up and the narration ends when the knight, who has listened with keen interest, utters his positive verdict on the dream and she gives a title to it, presenting the story now as a book. their conversation and the poem itself end when friends call her back. the poem presents some anomalies that account for its having been regarded, in pearsall’s words, as “lifelessly handled”, betraying “a touch of the busy bureaucrat” (1966: 229). it certainly does lack the main ingredient expected in one of those amorous courts: the debate itself. the most active characters, with the exception of the narrator, happen to be eleven allegorical ladies who might stand for the different attitudes and temperaments of women aggrieved because of love, and thus, they have been judged as conventionally dull and uninteresting. as for the real characters in the story, they are individualized although they are never given proper names or any distinctive agency. however, a clear difference among them may be sensed from the very beginning. the narrator introduces them as they walk through the cross alleys of the garden labyrinth, surrounded by knights and squires, stressing that while four of them were gentle women, the other five were ladies.18 later on, before she starts telling the curious knight her dream, the narrator refers to her friends as they rambled through the garden labyrinth both in justice and in this labyrinth, becomes thence the normal condition these dissatisfied ladies have grown used to. 18 about the relevance of the maze as symbol for the possible feminist interpretation of the text see evans and johnson’s article, which blends outstandingly penelope reed doob’s and carolyn dinshaw’s interpretations of the role of the labyrinth in medieval culture. as for the difference between ladies and genteel women, such distinction was perceived mainly by the sumptuary laws, of which this poem seems to be a perfect document. according to p. coss (p. 53) when referring to the great sumptuary act of 1363, the ‘statute concerning diet and apparel’: “knights and ladies were placed in a separate social category from ‘squires and all manner of gentle men (gentils gens) below the estate of knight’. within these categories, however, there was to be further differentiation according to income. knights and ladies with an income from rent and land of between 400 marks and £ 1,000 per annum could wear more or less what they wished except ermine and ‘letuse’ and apparel embroidered with precious stones, apart from their headdresses. knights with less than £200 per year were forbidden to use cloths valued at more than 6 marks and to use cloth of gold, gowns furred with ermine or miniver and apparel embroidered with precious stones. this was to apply to their wives and daughters, except again that they might use precious stones in their headdresses, and to their male children.” chaucerian distortions in the assembly of ladies 35 one afternoon, reacting differently to the bends and errors the maze presented them: there were ladyes walkyng, as was the wone, foure in nombre, as to my mynde doth falle, and i the fift, symplest of alle. of gentil wymmen foure ther were also, disportyng hem everiche after theyr guyse, in crosse aleys walkyng be two and two, and som alone after theyr fantasyes. thus occupied we were in dyvers wise, and yit in trowth we were nat alone: theyr were knyghtis and squyers many one. (a 5-14) to passe oure tyme in to this mase we went and toke oure weyes yche aftyr other entent: some went inward and wen they had gon oute, some stode amyddis and loked al about; and soth to sey some were ful fer behynde and right anon as ferforth as the best; others there were, so mased in theyr mynde, al weys were goode for hem, both est and west. thus went they furth and had but litel rest, and som theyr corage dide theym so assaile for verray wrath they stept over the rayle. (a 32-42) this scene conveys wonderfully the variety of womanly responses and capacities with no sign of disdain for what might have been otherwise presented as a multiple portrait of characteristically female fickleness. female diversity and individuality will be later confirmed in the dream when each of these women presents her particular written petition in court. the narrator’s own impressions reveal very soon that her priority is not the new landscape but mainly the ladies’ garments and ornaments.19 it is 19 it is worth recalling c. s. lewis’s (1936: 249-50) final dismissal of the poem on these grounds: “what the writer really wants to describe is no inner drama with loyalty as its heroine, but the stir and bustle of an actual court, the whispered consultations, the putting on of clothes, and the important comings and going. she is moved, by a purely naturalistic impulse, to present the detail of everyday life; and if her poem were not hampered by being still attached �as with an umbilical mª beatriz hernández pérez 36 through her eyes that we first notice that the allegorical sisters are clad in luxurious attire embroidered with distinctive french mottoes. perseverance’s dress characterizes her by the motto: “bien loialment” (very loyally), countenance by “a moi que je voi” (to me what i see), remembrance by “plus ne purroy” (i couldn’t do more) and diligence by “taunt que je puis” (as much as i can). when perseverance pays her visit to the narrator she states clearly lady loyalty’s command that they all wear blue dresses and that their petitions be embroidered on their sleeves: “al youre felawes and ye must com in blewe,/ everiche yowre matier for to sewe,/ with more, whiche i pray yow thynk upon,/ yowre wordes on yowre slevis everichon.” (a 116-19) of course, not only these personified characters but even the impressive cloth of state covering lady loyalty’s throne is described as follows: “above ther was a riche cloth of state/ wrought with the nedil ful straungely,/ hir worde theron, and thus it sayde triewly:/ a endurer, to telle in wordis fewe,/ with grete lettres, the better for to shewe.” (a 486-89). it is this particular fragment that highlights the role of embroidery: “to last”. the visual quality of these threads strangely intertwined by the needle to form the capital letters gives lasting power to the piece of cloth, itself emblematic of loyalty’s nature. the poem has been criticized for its incoherence and ambiguity, since neither from the allegorical side nor from the complaining women does the principle of psychomachia really develop. when the friends come to present their case, all of them look equally enigmatic: their mottoes are “sanz que jamais” (without ever giving cause), “une sans chaungier” (one without changing), “oncques puis lever” (i can never rise), “entierment vostre” (entirely yours), “c’est sans dire” (it needs no words), “en dieu” (in god is my trust), “sejour ensure” (rest assured) and “bien monest” (well advised). it is the narrator’s role to explain the reasons for these mottoes, but she is so discrete in recounting these women’s love mishaps that the mottoes retain their suggestive power and fascination. reading these messages created by cord� to the allegorical form, it would be an admirable picture of manners. [...] to read it is to learn why some critics hate allegory; for here the significacio is �what some suppose it to be in all allegories� a chilling and irrelevant addition to the story.” chaucerian distortions in the assembly of ladies 37 the embroidered stitches on the sleeves causes one and the same effect: namely, wonder at the enigmatic emblems and interest in their superficial and static qualities, in the face of such incomprehension. thus the narrator seems to ignore any need for textual insight and instead goes on stressing her attraction to the magnificence of garments, themselves made, like loyalty’s, to hold their own unchangeable significance. if there is any appeal to understanding, it is through the spontaneous remembrance caused by the visual effect of those threads. through those colours and the presence of a few french words, reminiscent of love and of grandeur, the poet appeals to any high audience the poem might address. thus, it is the visual dimension, the outer message conveyed by the blue color as well as the individual characterization of each of the embroidered mottoes that contain and encircle the ultimate purpose of the text. the significance of veiling is enhanced through the poem’s overt tribute to chaucer. when depicting the walls of the great hall at pleasant regard, the narrator recalls how the stories of chaucer’s good women and some other sad cases were carved on the shining stone. she mentions phillis, thesbe, cleopatra, melusine and anelida, emulating chaucer’s wanderings in his dream visions as she reads the messages on the walls. however, here these carved legends happen to be covered with a veil to avoid the blinding brilliance of the material they are engraved on. the narrator says: “and bicause the wallis shone so bright/ with fyne umple they were al overspredde/ to that entent folk shuld nat hurt theyr sight,/ and thurgh that the storyes myght be redde” (a 470-73). this comment about the fragility of women’s eyes seems ironic here. the tradition of female susceptibility in front of unseemly stories, a common concern in courtly literature, suggests in this context the possibility of self imposed blinkers, since the veiled stories are about women themselves. although, from the poet’s point of view, not even these emblematic tragic legends of female suffering should ever be read as a naked text: reading cannot dispense with the ultimate outer veil, and this need for some covering is bound to the symbolic use of embroidery in the poem. the epistemological place assigned to needlework is usually connected to the ornamental quality of this activity, to its merely decorative goal. its value derives from the technical expertise required and the manual labor mª beatriz hernández pérez 38 invested in it, mainly associated with female hands.20 for the medieval tradition, one that cherished the duality between the hidden spiritual content and surface matter, and that assumed the need to transcend or remove the latter in order to reach any ultimate message, embroidery occupied precisely that category of the external and material. indeed, it not only concealed meaning, as letters could do, but furthermore, it amplified and embellished any surface. embroidery magnified and exaggerated the superficial excellence of the material and the visual; it was the surface of surfaces, the top of the costume, the ultimate outer layer displaying its own formal beauty and accuracy as a unique and essential value, belittling any other virtue.21 needlework and tapestries have traditionally been related to the quality work of quality women.22 however, this activity still betrayed the stigma of its nonintellectual nature, whereas writing could boast just the opposite. notwithstanding this basic dichotomy, chaucer had dared to acknowledge the potential of the needle to tell stories and make the truth prevail over treason and lies, thus binding it to the aspirations of writing. it is precisely in the legend of good women where, narrating philomela’s tragedy, he explains: she coude eek rede and wel ynow endyte, but with a penne coude she nat wryte. 20 about the development of this art in england and the social and general implications of embroidery, see r. parker, a. g. i. christie or s. m. newton, among others. 21 despite this, however, rich embroidery may also herald the beauty of the object wrapped in it; a box, a book, any sort of case may be covered by an embroidered piece to proclaim the richness of the gems or the message inside. thus, its aim is to declare from the outside the inner quality of the object it covers. but this is a secondary analogical use; originally the embroidery would surpass the beauty of the dresses or cloths it decorated, being the surplus piece projected out of any other surface. 22 as some pieces gallantly embroidered by nuns and queens from anglo-saxon times and the spread of the opus anglicanum technique may attest. however, by the late middle ages, the guild system allowed the massive entrance of men in the ranks of embroiderers. notwithstanding this, noble women still held embroidery as a primary occupation associated with their elevated status and the psychological disposition this craft demanded: that of patience and dedication. again, the attitude required had to do with perseverance and constant waiting as self-imposed defining traits. chaucerian distortions in the assembly of ladies 39 but letters can she weve to and fro., so that, by that the yer was al ago, she hadde ywoven in a stamyn large how she was brought from athenes in a barge, and in a cave how that she was brought; and al the thyng that tereus hath wrought, she waf it wel, and wrot the storye above. (f 2356-2364) in this passage, chaucer accounts for female ignorance of writing techniques, here portrayed as some male skill; he nevertheless allows embroidery to denounce the male capacity to silence women.23 in her analysis of female hagiography, wogan-browne (2001: 34) accounts for the practice of embroidery by linking it to the theme of enclosure: “in showing the heroine as a reader and embroidery as both her text and her occupation, treatises and saint’ lives reveal their agenda of image-making. women’s time in enclosure is constructed as repetitive stasis, in which women are at once producers of images and icons themselves.” also among these good women, embroidery becomes the ancient thread through which they perceive themselves as separated, isolated from the active world and able to generate, therefore, interpersonal female bonds. philomela’s message is meant for the one who not only can read but who has also learnt the art of embroidery, her 23 although philomela had not been trained to use the stylus, her legendary betrayed sisters did in fact write not with the needle but with a pen. in the assembly of ladies the offended friends bring their petitions to court and complain of having to present them in a written form, not only in the embroidered thread. they resent using the pen; not so the narrator, who is proud of it and emphasises her friends’ uneasiness to use it. it is also interesting to relate the opposite relationship between writing and sewing in both poems: in philomela’s case, embroidery acts as the final ornament of what has already been advanced and explained by the narrator, although it is precisely this embroidered account of past events that reveals itself as decisive for the denouement of the story; in the assembly of ladies, instead, the narrator explains the meanings of the embroidered mottoes only after we have had the chance to read and perceive them as enigmatic. she enlarges and enhances their meaning by giving her own point of view about the friends’ pain, leading us into a labyrinth where we are abandoned. thus, our experience of female solidarity and pain derives from intellectual ground more than from sentimentality. whereas chaucer achieved sympathy for the prisoner whose story he had previously recounted, the narrator of the assembly of ladies prefers keeping readers at some distance from her friends. female space is never completely occupied or disturbed by male explanation. mª beatriz hernández pérez 40 sister,24 whereas in the assembly of ladies all of these noble women perceive this activity as defining their particular feelings as well as bringing them together as friends. their condition of embroiderers suggests not only their female condition but also companionship and group feeling, according to which they act as a unit. consequently, the poet underlines the duality of writing with the needle or with the pen in order to reinforce the notion of writing in ink as a technique that guarantees the connection with the male world, whereas embroidery remains somehow the symbol of captivity and eternal delay for women, to which they seem to acquiesce. in the dream, most of these female friends show their uneasiness with writing, as we can see in these two examples: moche more ther was wherof she shuld compleyne but she thought it to grete encombraunce so moche to write, and therfor, in certayne, in god and hir she put hir affiaunce. (a 652-55) for as me thought she felt grete displesaunce� one might wele perceyve bi hir chiere, and no wonder, it sat hir passyn neere; yit loth she was to put it in writyng, but neede wil have his cours in every thyng. sejour ensure this was hir worde certeiyne, and thus she wrote but in litel space. (a 661-67) needlework remains the communal activity that keeps women together and their identity secure from curious eyes. however, the most advanced woman among the ladies, the one who happens to have first found her way through the intricate paths of the labyrinth, and therefore deserving the dream vision, illustrates her command over the writing technique when asserting in the following lines: hir gowne was bliew, this wote i verily, 24 although philomela’s use of the needle is undeniably the result of her confinement it does paradoxically bring about her liberation and homecoming to procne. chaucerian distortions in the assembly of ladies 41 of goode facion and furred wele with gray; upon hir sleve hir worde, this is no nay, the whiche saide thus, as my penne can endite, a moy que je voy, writen with lettres white. (a 304-8) with that anon i went and made this booke, thus symply rehersyng the substaunce because it shuld nat out of remembraunce (a 740-42) by turning her dream experience into a book, la samble des dames, this narrator becomes an author in the chaucerian vein. although the book, the story she dedicates to none other than a curious knight, is merely a vehicle, a means with which to participate in the male writing tradition, her control over the technique actually spells breaking with what was considered conventional. the narrative frame she employs inverts the traditional motives found in chaucerian dream visions. for instance, the dreamer here displays her own peculiar, highly assertive personality.25 she does not comply with the image of the rather dull dreamer that happily accepts his incapacity to cope with the new scenery or to understand its inhabitants. on the contrary, she effectively manages the impressive landscape and defiantly refuses to show her motto in front of the allegorical female court. when talking to perseveraunce in the hall, we notice her reluctance to identify herself through words: “whan they begynne to opyn their matier/ there shal ye knowe her wordis, by and by./ but as for me i have none verily/ and so i told to countenaunce here afore;/ al myn array is bliew, what nedith more?” (409-13). when telling the knight about the moment in which lady loyalty finally demands some explanation from her, he suddenly interrupts her account26 in order to urge her on, and only then does she finally disclose the content of the bill she read in front of the assembly of ladies: 25 in the dream she shows herself confident enough to even complain when talking to perseveraunce about the endless tarrying at the hall: “the rather spede the sonner may we go./ grete cost alwey tere is in taryeng,/ and long to sue it is a wery thyng.” (418-20). 26 some readers have attributed these first words to lady loyalty, but the tone may correspond to that in the conversation between the narrator and the curious knight from the very beginning of the story. as for the reference to a female character in line 699, scholars give her different names �lady fortune, the virgin, lady loyalty or the female friend the narrator might be in love with, as alexandra mª beatriz hernández pérez 42 “now, goode, telle on, i hate yow, be saynt jame.” “abide a while, it is nat yit my wil; yet must ye wite, bi reason and bi skil, sith ye knowe al that hath be done afore.” and thus it sayde, without any more: “nothyng so lief as death to come to me for fynal end of my sorwes and peyne; what shuld i more desire, as seme ye� and ye knewe al aforne it for certeyne i wote ye wold; and for to telle yow pleyne, without hir help that hath al thyng in cure i can nat thynk that it may long endure; and for my trouth, preved it hath bien wele� to sey the soth, it can be no more� of ful long tyme, and suffred every dele in pacience and kept it al in store; of hir goodenesse besechyng hir therfor that i myght have my thank in suche wise as my desert deservith of justice.” (a 689-707) if this lady has dared to reveal her complaint to the curious knight, one may suspect a confession of love to him who asked about the causes of her paleness at the beginning of the poem. that possibility seems less than likely when we see the knight in the light of chaucerian categories. in order to reveal her feelings �her suffering concealed for so long� she resorts to reading the bill (and to the composition of the book). writing is then sustained as the method to bring the hidden, the dream itself as well as love, to the surface, and thus, as the proper way to communicate with men, since it is they who have always acted as interpreters. but just the same, this knight fails to recognize the depth of her pain or to demonstrate sympathy with her suffering. he, not the dreaming lady, embodies the chaucerian type of the dull naive character who cannot understand the profound feelings of those barratt has suggested (1987: 19). another, maybe too far-fetched, possibility could be that of the narrator being in love with this curious knight, thus confessing her feelings to him in an oblique way, as she talks to lady loyalty, implicitly addressing the contents of the bill to him. the fact that the knight does not respond to this possible confession would make her love even more unbearably hopeless, just as she presents it in her bill. chaucerian distortions in the assembly of ladies 43 met in their ramblings.27 therefore, no tragic feelings accompany the lady’s departure. even though readers themselves may feel a strange discomfort after having heard her secret and having observed the knight’s inability to be touched or moved by it, the fact is that she does not need further attention or interpretation from the knight. she gaily returns to her friends, always present in the poem as the first and only group to which the lady belongs. the title she gives to her book pays homage to the centrality and constancy of female friendship as a basic a priori bond underlying any subsequent individual love relationship: as for this booke, to sey yow verray right and of the name to tel the certeynte, ‘la semble de dames’, thus it hight; how thynk ye that the name is?’ ‘goode, parde!’ ‘now go, farwele, for they cal after me, my felawes al, and i must after sone.’ rede wele my dreame, for now my tale is done. (a 750-56) while she reveals her own feelings to this knight, she continues to avoid any disclosure of the qualities of the art of embroidery, rejecting any use of written words to reveal the meaning of each woman’s identity and tragic story. although the poet endows her with the capacity to explain in depth the meaning of the mottoes, she actually refuses to fully carry out the exegetic task. in fact, she heightens the ambiguity of the story by deliberately underlining marginal details �furs, fabrics, jewels� that enhance the surface quality of her own text, avoiding any thorough explanation about her friends’ petitions and names. instead of rehearsing the chaucerian model of the letter of grievances found in the legend of good women, the poem articulates its author’s reluctance to reach deeper than the embroidered mottoes allow and further than female dignity requires. the cases of these women are not available for discussion nor offered as material for tragedy. and loyalty, which in the chaucerian legend of good women was 27this male character remains outside the limits of female dreams and passions, and since the knight shows little evolution from his initial solicitousness about her wan face, one can only suggest an intensification of pain if, indeed, the dreaming lady had the illusion of mutual affection. but this seems too remote a possibility. mª beatriz hernández pérez 44 associated with women only at the expense of their demonstrated public abandonment, anguish and death, is instead celebrated here as a major stately figure, manifest in the discretion and prudent behavior of these ladies in their evocative embroidered words.28 chaucer’s attempt to distance himself from the demanding expectations of his audience with the set of narrative devices displayed in the legend of good women possibly led to him being credited as a decorous courtly poet. as such, he was able to skillfully evade responsibilities. but, of course, his astute evasion meant the traumatic exposure of his good women. almost a hundred years later, the author of the assembly of ladies stitched each and every word of the poem in his or her aspiration to suture against debates that spelled yet another occasion for female grief. this author claimed a female narrator’s determination to defend the rhetorical value of embroidery and poetry and to distance herself from the pressure to turn women into a matter of discussion. in writing her vision, the narrator defended the quality of the enigmatic sewing of words to define her friends against any narrative unveiling of their cases, challenging the view of women as constituting a problematic, controversial, common29 issue. in so doing, the author favored 28 if on the one hand, this enigmatic quality might result in the reinforcement of the perception of women as inextricable “others”, on the other hand the recourse to the courtly authorities endows them with the political proximity and with credentials to consider them as legitimated “citizens”. however, the danger of essentialism, that is, the possibility of objectifying them as incomprehensible and mysterious, is really strong in the poem, thus resulting in the basic misogynist principle that h. bloch (1991: 5) defines: “whether good or bad, laudatory or deprecatory, the reduction of woman to a category implies in our culture �and this because of a historic real imbalance of possessory power� an appropriation that is not present when identical generalizing statements are applied to man or men. i propose, then, a definition of misogyny as a speech act in which woman is the subject of the sentence and the predicate a more general term; or, alternatively, as the use of the substantive woman or women with a capital w. [...] for the effect of a speech act such that woman is the subject of the sentence and the predicate a more general term, that effect which dwells in the zone where the use of words produces the most basic elements of thought �and thought authorizes action, is to make of woman an essence, which, as essence, is eliminated from the world historical stage. this is precisely why the discourse of misogyny seems so repetitive, is so culturally constant, and seems to lack an internal history.” 29 evans and johnson (1991: 177) hint at the elitist character of the poem: “[...] in many ways the values espoused in the assembly of ladies are highly conservative. it is a work which is indebted to, and in its turn contributes to, a long-standing prestigious courtly literary tradition, which promotes the court as the idealised arena for the illustration of a moral code and legitimates the élite social position of chaucerian distortions in the assembly of ladies 45 the subtlety of imaginative suggestion over the vicissitudes of open debate; and thus insisted on women and literary authors being allowed to remain unveiled. mª beatriz hernández pérez universidad de la laguna works cited barratt, a. 1987: ‘the flower and the leaf’ and ‘the assembly of ladies’: is there a (sexual) difference?. philological quarterly 66.1, 1-23. barratt, a. ed. 1992: women’s writing in middle english. london & new york, longman. bennett, h. s. 1947: chaucer and the fifteenth century. oxford, clarendon. benson, l. ed. 1988: the riverside chaucer. oxford university press. oxford. bergen, h. ed. 1923: john lydgate: the fall of princes. eets es 121-3, london, oxford university press. blamires, a. ed. 1992: woman defamed and woman defended. an anthology of medieval texts. oxford, clarendon. blamires, a. 1997: the case for women in medieval culture. oxford, clarendon. bloch, h. 1977: medieval french literature and law. berkeley, university of california press. its members”. this aspect cannot be avoided since the narrator is always aware of the social implications of her descriptions. at this stage the dramatic exposure of chaucer’s good women would probably no longer seem appropriate as model for these late fifteenth-century ladies, whose feelings were restrained by law and discretion, courtly values that would distinguish theirs from individual and spontaneous displays of suffering, and perhaps perceived as “vulgar”. thus, social concerns would possibly condition the generic perspective in the poem. mª beatriz hernández pérez 46 bloch, h. 1991: medieval misogyny and the invention of western romantic love. chicago & london, university of chicago press. boffey, j. & j. j. thompson 1989: anthologies and miscellanies: production and choice of texts. in j. griffiths & d. pearsall, eds. book production and publishing in britain. cambridge, cambridge university press, 279-315. boffey, j. 1993: the reputation and circulation of chaucer’s lyrics in the fifteenth century. the chaucer review 28.1, 23-40. burnley, d. 1998: courtliness and literature in medieval england. singapore, longman. burrow, j. a. 1971: ricardian poetry: chaucer, gower, langland and the gawain poet. london, rouledge & kegan paul. burrow, j. a. 1982: medieval writers and their work: middle english literature and its background 1100-1500. oxford, oxford university press. christie, a. g. 1938: english medieval embroidery. oxford, oxford university press. coldwell, d. ed. 1957-64: virgil’s “aeneid” translated into scottish verse by gavin douglas, sts, 3rd series, 25, 28, 30, edinburgh & london, blackwood and sons. conlee, j. w. 1991: middle english debate poetry, a critical anthology. woodbridge, boydell & brewer. coss, p. 1998: the lady in medieval england, 1000-1500. strond, sutton. cowen, j. m. 1985: chaucer’s legend of good women: structure and tone. studies in philology 82, 416-36. dinshaw, c. 1989. chaucer’s sexual poetics. madison, university of wisconsin press. doob, p. r. 1992: the labyrinth in art and literature. in c. c. morse, p. doob & m. c. woody, eds. the uses of manuscripts in literary studies. essays in honour of judson boyce allen. kalamazoo, western michigan institute, 59-80. chaucerian distortions in the assembly of ladies 47 duby, g. 1998: damas del siglo xii: el recuerdo de las abuelas. madrid, alianza (1st ed. 1995, gallimard). evans, r. & l. johnson 1991: ‘the assembly of ladies’: a maze of feminist sign-reading?” in s. sellers, ed. feminist criticism: theory and practice. toronto, university of toronto press, 171-98. finke, l. a. 1999: women’s writing in english: medieval england. london & new york, longman. frank, r. w. 1972: chaucer and the “legend of good women”. cambridge, ma, harvard university press. green, r. f. 1980: poets and princepleasers: literature and the english court in the late middle ages. toronto, university of toronto press. hansen, e. t. 1983: irony and the antifeminist narrator in chaucer’s legend of good women. journal of english and germanic philology 82, 11-31. harvey, e. d. 1989: speaking of tongues: the poetics of the feminine voice in chaucer’s legend of good women. in e. e. dubruck, ed. new images of medieval women: essays toward a cultural anthropology. lewiston, mellen, 49-63. jaeger, c. s. 1999: ennobling love. in search of a lost sensibility. philadelphia, university of pennsylvania press. lewis, c. s. 1936: the allegory of love. a study in medieval tradition. oxford, oxford university press. lumiansky, r. m. 1947: chaucer and the idea of unfaithful men. modern language notes 62, 560-62. mathew, g. 1968: the court of richard ii. london, john murray. mcdonald, n. 2000: chaucer’s legend of good women, ladies at court and the female reader. the chaucer review 35.1, 22-42. newton, s. m. 1980: fashion in the age of the black prince. woodbridge, boydell. parker, r. 1996: the subversive stitch: embroidery and the making of the feminine. london, women’s press. mª beatriz hernández pérez 48 pearsall, d. 1966: the english chaucerians. in d. s. brewer, ed. chaucer and chaucerians: critical studies in middle english literature. london, thomas nelson, 201-39. pearsall, d. ed. 1980: the floure and the leafe and the assembly of ladies, manchester, manchester university press. pearsall, d. ed. 1990: the floure and the leafe, the assembly of ladies, the isle of ladies. medieval institute publications, western michigan university. kalamazoo. percival, f. 1998: chaucer’s legendary good women. cambridge, cambridge university press. pernoud, r. 1995: leonor de aquitania. barcelona, salvat (1st ed. albin michel, 1965). power, e. 1979 mujeres medievales. madrid, encuentro (1st ed. cambridge university press, 1975). reed, t. 1990: middle english debate poetry and the aesthetics of irresolution. columbia & london, university of missouri press. skeat, w. w. 1894-97: the complete works of geoffrey chaucer. 7 vols. oxfod, clarendon, vol. 7. skeat, w. w. 1900: the chaucer canon. oxford, clarendon. skeat, w. w. 1900: the authoress of the flour and the flower and the leaf. modern language quarterly 3, 111-12. spearing, a. c. 1976: medieval dream-poetry. cambridge, cambridge university press. stephens, j. 1973: the questioning of love in the assembly of ladies. review of english studies new series 24, 129-40. strohm, p. 1982: chaucer’s fifteenth-century audience and the narrowing of the ‘chaucer tradition’. studies in the age of chaucer 4, 3-32. summitt, j. 2000: lost property: the woman writer and english literary history, 1380-1589. chicago & london, university of chicago press. wimsatt, j. 1993. chaucer and his french contemporaries: natural music in the fourteenth century. toronto, university of toronto press. chaucerian distortions in the assembly of ladies 49 wogan-browne, j. 2001: saint’s lives and women’s literary culture c. 1150-1300: virginity and its authorizations. oxford, oxford university press. * † * microsoft word review 10_2023.docx selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. 28 (2023): 153–156. issn: 1132-631x doi: 10.17811/selim.28.2023.153-156 © ediuno. ediciones de la universidad de oviedo. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. treharne, elaine. 2021. perceptions of medieval manuscripts: the phenomenal book. oxford: oxford university press. pp. xiv + 248. isbn 9780192843814. reviewed by laura esteban-segura university of málaga in this insightful and thought-provoking piece of work, elaine treharne takes us through a fascinating journey into the history of the handwritten book, from the medieval period to the present day. as she posits in the preface, every manuscript “was a thing to be read […] but also a thing written, sourced, shaped, and tooled by its creators; held, admired, perhaps caressed, neglected, or spurned by successive owners and handlers” (v). the book assesses the form and function of manuscripts, by taking into consideration british examples, through a holistic approach emphasising dynamic architextuality. the term architextuality emerges from literary theory1 and is applied here to the arena of manuscript research to denote the different stages through which books go, from production to use. in addition to the preface, acknowledgements, lists of contents and illustrations, bibliography (divided into websites and printed sources), index of manuscripts and index, the book contains ten chapters, in which the information is presented in a clear and orderly manner, often supported by illustrative images of folios of the manuscripts under discussion. the first chapter, entitled “‘a profit to people’: introduction” (1–17), sets out the premise of the work under review by comparing the handwritten book to an edifice and examining all the agents involved in such a structure. the investigation is influenced by merleau-ponty’s phenomenological philosophy (1958, 1964) in that the book as a thing and/or object partakes in the real world and may be consciously and physically perceived and experienced; thus, the book is investigated as it exists in the world. all the senses come into play and are significant, but the author is “most concerned to highlight the importance of touch in a book’s manifold functions” (6). a distinction is made between the perceptions of medieval readers-viewers and those of modern audiences, who are digitally focused and might, therefore, find it difficult to recreate earlier responses to the materiality of the book. this chapter closes by emphasising the individuality of the book and the importance of all its component parts in order to fully understand the whole text. blankness and other invisible features in a manuscript are of equal significance, but their analysis has often been neglected in scholarship. in the second chapter, “‘fingers folded me’: making the book” (18–39), old english riddles are examined to elucidate the creation and reception of an illuminated religious book. the author takes into account for the purpose riddle 26,2 held in the exeter book 1 according to gérard genette, architextuality refers to “the entire set of general or transcendent categories […] from which emerges each singular text” (1997, 1). 2 all the chapter headings in the book are, in fact, quotations taken from this riddle. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7721-2210 book reviews 154 (exeter, cathedral library, ms 3501), which dates from the tenth century. the codex contains over 120 english poems, among which more than ninety are riddles; some of these have to do with books. the solution to riddle 26, for example, is ‘book’ or ‘gospelbook’ (18). treharne skilfully explains the stages of the manufacture of the medieval manuscript, from animal’s skin to leaf, through the words contained in this riddle, which appeal to the senses, as she contends: “to work effectively and fully, [the riddle] is truly dependent on the listener-reader’s senses and imagination” (22). to further her argument, the author alludes to other works, such as the old english poem the dream of the rood, and to contemporary events. finally, lexis describing the early medieval manuscript is commented on. the third chapter, “‘covered me with tracks’: writing the book” (40–61), also revolves around the old english riddles to illustrate the writing process. together with riddle 26, the author resorts to riddle 51, which has been solved as referring to a ‘quill pen’ and to riddle 88, solved as ‘inkhorn’, among other riddles. the discussion is imbued with interesting facts and images from other manuscripts, not only about writing materials but also about ruling, scribal practice, scriptoria, etc., which help the reader to envision the richness of the topic at hand. chapter four, “‘people will use me’: book as archive” (62–87), moves on to explore the book as ‘inhabited’, that is, as an object that has been created, read and inscribed by a number of different people throughout its life. the handwritten book thus becomes a repository of information and experiences —an archive— and acquires a “memorializing function” (62). it is thanks to the enduring quality of manuscripts that some letters and charters have survived, such as the reculver charter, held in london, british library, cotton ms augustus ii. 2 and dating back to 679 (63). the permanent nature of the book is linked to the values of christian religion and so the manuscript was given the status of a “relic, sacralized artefact” (65). gospel-books were sometimes vehicles for recording matters related to territory and law (by means of annotations and additions) and the author offers extensive evidence of this double function—divine and historical—present in several manuscripts (64–79). the chapter finishes with a reflection on the immanence of the book, illustrated by st cuthbert gospel, housed in london, british library, additional ms 89000, and its audience’s experiences throughout time. in chapter five, “‘my name is famous’: presence in the book” (88–114), the focus is, as the title suggests, on names appearing in manuscripts, which can have been inscribed by owners and readers. the information that names provide is crucial “as evidence for the localization or provenance of a book” (88). they can also supply valuable data on date and ownership as well as on the social and cultural aspects of the time. the author draws from her extensive knowledge of early english manuscripts to showcase instances of interventions and traces in books, such as the colophon added by aldred at the end of the gospel of st john in the exceptional lindisfarne gospels (london, british library, cotton ms nero d. iv). such interactions can shift the function of a given manuscript, as treharne minutely argues throughout this chapter. questions of multilingualism in the manuscript context and women as users and owners of medieval volumes are also tackled. the unseen emerges as a central part of chapter six, “‘in spirit the wiser’: invisible things in the book” (115–45), that is, the imperceptible features of the medieval manuscript. to wholly comprehend the meaning of a book, the author claims, it is of vital book reviews 155 importance to appreciate what cannot be seen in its physical form together with what can be perceived (122). these characteristics may refer to the heaviness of the volume or to gold illumination, for instance, and what they can convey depending on the situation in which the book is used. accordingly, medieval books had (and have) the potential to trigger emotions and responses in their viewers. in the specific case of religious codices, they may also “phenomenologically provide an intense spiritual connection with god” (128). one must not forget the importance of religion in the medieval past, exemplified by overt allusions to the divine within medieval manuscripts or documents of different sorts and genres. blank spaces and margins, on the other hand, “reveal the interpretative potential of the inhabited manuscript” (136), since they encourage “the reader-user to participate in the book” (137). they are invisible spaces that go unnoticed until some kind of intervention has been made. but scribes and illuminators could also engage with space by means of embellishments, flourishes, etc., hinting at, according to the author, “the visible delight these craftspeople felt in their work” (145). chapter seven, “‘covered with protecting boards’: representing the book” (146–67), deals with the representation of manuscripts through images and illustrations contained therein. one case in point is that of a covered or veiled hand holding the book, which “emphatically connotes the holiness of the object thus treated” (148). again, the author turns to several manuscripts to support her discussion, such as london, british library, additional ms 33241, which contains a frontispiece depicting a scene in which the enthroned queen emma receives the book from its author, who props it with veiled hands; these add a symbolic value to the volume. it is interesting to note how the book is represented in images found in manuscripts and other sources, such as paintings and sculptures. in this regard, treharne puts forward a taxonomy with five broad categories depending on whether the book is open or closed, held or placed, blank or with content, etc. in fact, content can be, on occasion, asemic and thus the reader has to fill in the meaning (155). the usual portrayal of manuscripts with bindings suggests that they were conceived of as whole, well-formed objects (156). the chapter finishes with a special emphasis on the hapticity or touchability of the book, highlighting the view of “the manuscript codex as a hefty, weighty, and spiritually laden artefact” (167). in chapter eight, “‘cut by the edge of the knife’: libricide and the modern book trade” (168–94), the focus is shifted to the present day and to how the wholeness of a considerable number of manuscripts has been put at risk as a result of commercial trade, since they are “broken up intentionally and sold piecemeal” (171). the author details (and condemns) actions of biblioclasm or libricide, which involve dismembering the book and selling its parts (via auction sites such as ebay). then, she looks back at the past and addresses the deliberate destruction of books during the reformation in the sixteenth century as well as book vandalism in subsequent periods. on this matter, the publication of leaf books by the society of foliophiles in the twentieth century constitutes an example of the practices of fragmentation of manuscripts and early printed books, since leaf books were composed of folios and leaves excised from complete volumes. the impact of bookbreaking is such that “thousands of books have been lost in the last century because of the vandalism of dealers and art connoisseurs” (187). moreover, a new emerging field, fragmentology, is concerned with the study of fragments and attempts to trace—and supply data on—manuscripts and broken books. this pursuit is shared by several book reviews 156 projects, including the broken books project, whose aim is “to document and virtually reassemble books across repositories” (188). the digital environment is key to chapter nine, entitled “‘more true and better’: the digital book and its frameworks of understanding” (195–212). whilst treharne claims that “representations of the manuscript online fragment and flatten”, these transformations should not be viewed as something negative, since “they create a new object” (196), which can be easily accessed. she then goes on to mention digital reconstructive work for damaged manuscripts. one of the main flaws of digital browsers and editions is that they may fail to embody the entirety or wholeness of manuscripts, thus providing only a fragmentary and decontextualised view. as the author points out regarding the text technological transition from the print to the digital environment, we are witnessing the onset, “a period of adjustment for users of new forms, tools, and devices (200). the last chapter, “bookending ‘þa wuldorgesteald’: the wondrous edifice” (213– 15), is the shortest of all, functioning as a wrap-up of the previous ones. the author has exposed that “the past and present are intertwined within the medieval manuscript, such that they exist in the simultaneity of the book and readers’ or listeners’ experiences with that book” (213) and has highlighted the wholeness of the medieval book. this final chapter is followed by a comprehensive bibliography, which is complemented by the rich footnotes in every chapter furnishing additional information as well as useful links to manuscript images, press news, etc. elaine treharne shows her unparalleled expertise in manuscript research, early textuality and other related areas in perceptions of medieval manuscripts. the volume’s wide ambit testifies to it being the product of long reflection and work. in it, the best scholarship is combined with a straightforward and informative prose style that makes reading easy and enjoyable. all in all, this volume stresses the unity of the medieval manuscript and provides a holistic and complete picture of it from its inception until the present day. hence, it is an outstanding and welcome contribution to the ample field of medieval studies and will be of interest not only to scholars and students but also to general readers, who may feel curious to peruse inspiring academic books like the one reviewed here. references genette, gérard. 1997. palimpsests: literature in the second degree. translated by channa newman and claude doubinsky. lincoln and london: university of nebraska press. merleau-ponty, maurice. 1958. phenomenology of perception. translated by colin smith. london: routledge. merleau-ponty, maurice. 1964. the primacy of perception. northwestern university studies in phenomenology and existential philosophy. edited by james m. edie. evanston: northwestern university press. (received 21/12/2022) selim08.doc isabel de la cruz, selim 8 (1998): 147—156 studies in the language of some manuscripts of rolle’s ego dormio1 introduction ego dormio was written by richard rolle of hampole, a hermit in yorkshire, who was born about the year 1300 at thornton dale, near pickering. he lived, then, between c. 1300-1349 and is particularly known because of his various religious writings. no extant copy of his writings goes back farther than the last quarter of the fourteenth century. ego dormio was allegedly written for the spiritual enhancement of a lady. in some of the manuscripts the text is addressed to a friend or a nun, but in others there is no addressee. although we are ignorant of who the recipient of this treatise could be, recently it has been suggested it might have been written for a secular lady, possibly margaret of kirby (ogilvie -thomson, 1988: lxvii & watson, 1991: 330). there are several extant manuscripts of ego dormio of which the most relevant ones are kept in: 1. london, the british library: arundel 507 additional 22283 (simeon ms) additional 37790 2. cambridge: cambridge university library dd v 64 magdalene college, pepysian 2125 3. oxford, the bodleian library: 1 m y t hanks to dr jeremy smith, from the university of glasgow, who read a draft of this paper and improved it with useful suggestions. any shortcomings, of course, remain my own. isabel de la cruz 144 rawlinson a 389 which contains two different versions of the same text, usually known as rawlinson 1 and rawlinson 2 english poet a 1 (vernon ms) there are some others in: the library of the marquess of bath: longleat 29 dublin, trinity college dublin: ms 155 london, westminster school: ms 3 paris, bibliotheque sainte geniève: ms 3390 tokyo: takamiya 66. this manuscript, which is referred to by allen (1931) as the gurney ms, because it was owned by hudson gurney of keswick hall in the 19th century, was on extended loan to the fitzwilliam museum in cambridge and was then known as bradfer-lawrence 10 (e.g. in amassian 1979, amassian & lynch 1981 and ogilvie-thomson 1988 appears with this name). however, it is now in the possession of professor takamiya from university of tokyo, so we will refer to it as takamiya 66. all these texts are written in english. there is just one latin translation of ego dormio which is extant in manuscript gonville and caius college 140/180. many of the english texts have much in common, as some of the most important works by rolle can be found in the same manuscript. the text in cambridge university library dd v 64 has often been considered the most authoritative. in fact, it is the most widely used for editions: allen (1931: 61-72) used it emended with reference to rawlinson 1; horstmann (1895: 50-61), which used the same manuscripts as allen, but also emended with rawlinson 2, bodleian english poet a 1, and british library arundel 507; ogilvie-thomson (1988: 26-33), transcribed the manuscript longleat 29, though. apart from the publications mentioned above, no editions have been made from the other manuscripts in the british library, magdalene college, trinity college dublin, westminster school (london), bibliotheque sainte geniève (paris) or tokyo (takamiya 66). studies in the language of some mss of rolle’s e go dormio 145 for the latin text amassian and lynch (1981) used the only extant manuscript in latin and compared it with the edition made by allen based on cambridge university library dd v 64. a modernized version of the text can be read for instance in heseltine (1930: 89-100) and colledge (1962: 143-154). in this article i will concentrate on three of the english manuscripts: cambridge university library dd v 64, longleat 29 and trinity college dublin 155. the last differs from the others in a very significant way. although the question of source manuscript has not been completely solved, in most manuscripts the text is basically the same with minor textual variations. the ones which modify the original text considerably are: trinity colleg dublin 155, takamiya 66 and pepysian 2125 slightly. we cannot date ego dormio exactly but, as rolle seemed to have died in 1349, the text must have been written sometime before. allen considers the approximate date could be 1343 when rolle used alliteration for his gastly gladnesse (1931: 60). the manuscripts i am going to deal with were either copied in the late 14th century: cambridge university library dd v 64; beginning of the 15th: trinity college dublin ms 155 or some time later in the 15th century (second quarter of the century): longleat 29. since the span of time from the first to the last one is not so wide, one should not expect the text to differ, but for the local varieties used by the different scribes who copied them. in this way, linguistic variation between them is likely to reflect the choice of different regional forms by scribes coming from several parts of the country. as laing (1992: 568) has suggested “texts surviving from the same period in more than one version can be of great help to the historical dialectologist”, since the comparison of different copies of a single text turns out to be an excellent way of identifying dialectal discriminants. the more parallel texts there are available, the better, as they are likely to help in supplying a full range of dialectal discriminants. however, in addition to the language, which i will be referring to later, the trinity college dublin ms 155 diverges from the others in a number of ways. apart from some passages which are obviously deviant, like the omis sion of some lines appearing in the other manuscripts, the lyrics also show differences: the first lyric is divided into two, a new lyric is inserted almost at the end of the text and the second lyric is omitted altogether, so the text ends before the others. and what is unique about trinity college dublin ms 155 is isabel de la cruz 146 that the text departs in such a way from the others that it cannot be consid ered just a copy, but a version of the original one. the meaning is preserved, but there are many omissions, interpolations and unique variants. the reasons adduced by ogilvie -thomson for this alteration is that it seems to be an attempt to adapt it for a male person. so, there are many masculine pronouns in the expansions, and the details of women´s clothing and the referencies to wooing, marriage or virginity have been either modified or eliminated (ogilviethomson 1988: lxx). that explains why syster, which appears in cambridge university library dd v 64 and longleat 29, is replaced with frend in trinity college dublin 155. methodology the text in trinity college dublin ms 155 has been read from the original manuscript, photocopies and microfilm and the other two from enlarged mi crofilm-prints. reliable printed editions have also been used, such as the one made for the early english text society by ogilvie-thomson from ms longleat 29 and allen’s edition from cambridge university library ddv64. the methodology follows the original guidelines established by mcintosh and samuels in conjunction with the production of a linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english (1986: i, 7). this way, several items are selected to collect the different forms. the chosen items comprise four classes of evidence: 1) purely graphological, like the use of thorn or th in words like thai/pai; 2) phonological, to examine some specific features like velarization versus palatalization as in whilk /which; 3) morphological, where the ending for the third person singular can be in thorn or -th/-s, as in hath/has and 4) lexical: poison/venym. (the latter feature is not so much represented in the text, as being such a short passage it shows not many different synonyms for the same concept). as mentioned in the introduction, rolle was born in the north of england, so the typical features of the northern dialect should be expected in his writings, such as the use of scandinavian pronouns for the third person plural, ending -and in present participles, preservation of old english long a, -s ending for the inflection of verbs in the third person singular and plural, etc. however, by reading, editing and analysing the language contained in the three manuscripts, it soon became clear the fact that the features in some studies in the language of some mss of rolle’s e go dormio 147 of the texts were far from the northern origin of the author. thus, not taking anything for granted, i tried to find the answer to questions like: what kind of distributions are we going to find for the reflexes of old english /y(:)/, u, i or e? or do the h-forms occur for the third person pronoun? it is widely accepted now the existence of mischsprache, which is characterised by the combinations of forms for the same item. according to the the group of edinburgh and glasgow universities working on the middle english dialect project, who were the first to realize how medieval scribes treated the language of their originals, one of the three things may happen (benskin & laing 1981: 56, mcintosh & samuels 1986: i, 13): a) the scribe makes a literatim copy, that is to say, he may leave the language as it appears in the original manuscript without making any alterations. b) he converts the language into his own dialect. c) he makes something between a and b. they pointed out how infrequent the first case was, so one can well imagine a scribe copying ego dormio and adding a few dialectal forms into the original, as scribes were used to translating between one variety into another. subsequently, medieval scribes preserved some of the original forms of the manuscript, while they converted or translated others into the dialect to that part of the country they came from or they were working in. i seek to explain why the scribes of these manuscripts made the spelling choices that they did and to attain this purpose, it was useful to select some functional words, like: as, if, when, the, though, through, etc., but also other lexical units that can provide useful data from which to deduce which variety of middle english the scribe is using. thus, verb s in the third person singular, present participles and other words which can determine the dialect, such as the presence of velarization versus palatalization in words like mykel versus much, the reflexes of old english long a, as in holy and other items which can be productive, such as sal versus shall, etc. are used as test items. by focusing on those features that are dialectally distinctive and that are essential to tell the difference between one middle english variety from another, i tried to investigate the spelling practices of these three medieval copyists of ego dormio to discover the individual scribal practices of each of them and see whether any conclusions about the provenance of the scribe could be drawn. isabel de la cruz 148 findings it is a well-known fact that the demand for some books during the fourteenth century (and late thirteenth century) was such that the old scriptorium system was unable to cope with a wider readership. outside workers had to be hired to increase the speed of copying texts and thes e scribes produced manuscripts with their own spelling systems, carrying out a scribal translation from one dialect into another. there is evidence that such scribal translations became more and more common as the middle english period progressed. the reason given by smith (1992: 55) is that “literacy in the vernacular was becoming much more widespread in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. in such circumstances, the old monastic orthography and the discipline associated with it must have been impossible to sustain. new spelling systems, based upon practices developed in individual schools and parishes rather than on those of a few monastic centres, came into use”. however, there is still no spelling norm to imitate, which explains the spelling variants found in the different areas. by reading the text it soon became evident that scribal translations increased, as the middle english period progressed and the old scriptoriumsystem broke down (benskin & laing 1981: 88-91). regional orthographies exerted influence because there was no fixed spelling-norm to imitate, and the standardisation of written english in the modern sense did not arrive until printers provide a normative model in the sixteenth century. some of the scribal spelling practices can be perceived in the following table, where the modern english equivalent is given next to the form which appears in the manuscript. the first form reflects the most common spelling found while the frequency of the other forms varies from just one instance to several. the items were selected according to the criteria established before, so we could have evidence of every feature (graphological, phonological and grammatical): item cul dd v 64 longleat 29 tcd 155 self self self selfe as als as as if if if, jf ?if both bath bothe, both bope but bot bot but studies in the language of some mss of rolle’s e go dormio 149 the pe pe, the pe it it hit hit (it) his/him hys/hym his/hym his/hym, him they pai pai, pay, pei pei them pam ham hem their peir, pair har her thy pi, py(n) pi, thi, py(n) pi some some sum some when when, whan when when, whan though tho though pou? through thorow progh, throgh pour?, poru? which whilk whiche, whoche whoche such swilk suche suche much mykel mich, mych(e) muche(l), michel, myche church kyrke chirch churche flesh flesch(e) flesche, fleishe flesche shall sal shal schal present participles -and/ing byrnande, feland, havand, liftand, suffrand, praying, thynkyng, syngyng, etc. brennynge, standyng, sittynge, goynge, doynge, dremynge, etc. breininge /brennynge, sit tynge, goynge, doynge, etc. 3rd person sg. -s/th haldes holdeth aske°, knowe p (exception are: holdes, schewes) holy haly holy hol(l)y love lufe, lofe loue luf(e), loue evil evel, evyl euel yuel (euel) busy/busyness bisy/bisynesse, bysy besy/besyness, bisy, bisiness bisy, bysy, bysynesse mirth myrth myrth, mirth myrpe, mur pe lust lyst lust(e) lust give gif(e) gif, gyf, yif ?if, ?efe thing thing thyng(e), pynge ping, pyng concluding remarks isabel de la cruz 150 obviously, all these characteristics demonstrate that the language of some of the texts is far from being that of yorkshire. the team of the linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english analysed some folios belonging to these manuscripts: in the case of trinity college dublin 155 they reached the conclusion that because of the linguistic features of the text, it was copied in staffordshire. regarding longleat 29, they did not analyse this piece, but many others by rolle and decided it was copied according to the style in ireland. previously mcintosh and samuels (1968) had suggested that the language was anglo -irish. ogilvie-thomson (1988: xxxiv), however, argues that the language shows some of the typical characteristics of this kind of language but many others are absent. for this reason, she concludes that “the sum of these features points out to the standard fifteenth-century literary language based on the east midland dialect(s), with sprinkling of south-eastern form. the scribe’s flexibility in all but a few anglo -irish criteria suggests that he had left his native country some time before, retaining only traces of his original linguistic habits” (1988: xxxv). in respect with cambridge university library dd v 64 ms, which is in one hand but variable in language, they did not analyse this specific text, but just the translation by richard misyn of rolle’s incendium amoris and emendatio vitae. this manuscript seems to preserve northern forms better than the others. regarding the other two manuscripts jeremy smith from the university of glasgow, in personal communication, let me know a different possibility: according to him, these variable forms may indicate the emergence of a colourless language. even if colourless language is a concept that has not been clearly defined so far, it refers to a usage that, although it is not a standard, is not particularly distinctive in regional terms, that is, forms which are not regionally specific. to conclude we can well claim, as ogilvie-thomson (1988: lxxiv) had suggested, trinity college dublin 155 and longleat 29 could have been copied from a common ancestor, because both show the same deviant expression and because they seem to share more features, linguistically speaking, than cambridge university library dd v 64 does, such as: 1) the palatalization of some groups (church, whoche, such, much) versus the velarization found in cambridge university library dd v 64 (kyrke, whilk , swilk , mykel); studies in the language of some mss of rolle’s e go dormio 151 2) the rounding of old english long a into o (holy, hold) versus the preservation of <a> in the other manuscript; 3) the use of old english pronouns reflexes for the third person plural in the possessive and object form (ham, hem and har, her), while this feature is not present in the cambridge university library dd v 64; 4) present participles always in -ing, rather than -and: breninge, sitting; although cambridge university library dd v 64 shows both, the number of and forms is superior to that of -ing forms; 5) verbs in the third person singular in -th, rather than -s: like in contenes (with two exceptions in trinity college dublin ms: holdes and schewes). apart from the similarities found between trinity college dublin and longleat manuscripts, there are also some differences between the two, both textually and linguistically, like the reflexes of old english /y(:)/ in words like lust, mirth, evil and others. however, they seem to have more features in common, which are not shared by the other manuscript, as i have tried to demonstrate above. isabel de la cruz cabanillas universidad de alcalá references allen, h. e. 1927: writings ascribed to richard rolle, hermit of hampole and materials for his biography. heath and co., new york & oxford university press, london. allen, h.e. 1931: english writings of richard rolle. alan sutton, gloucester. amassian, m. g. 1979: the rolle material in bradfer-lawrence ms 10 and its relationship to other rolle manuscripts. manuscripta, 23, 6778. amassian, m. g. & lynch, d. 1981: the ego dormio of richard rolle in gonville and caius ms. 140/80. medieval studies, 43, 218249. isabel de la cruz 152 benskin, m. & laing, m. 1981: translations and mischsprachen in middle english manuscripts, benskin, m. & samuels, m. l. eds. so meny people longages and tongues. philological essays in scots and mediaeval english presented to angus mcintosh . middle english dialect project, edinburgh, 55-106. colledge, e. 1962: the mediaeval mystics of england. john murray, london. gilmour, j. 1956: notes on the vocabulary of richard rolle. notes and queries, 201, 94-95. heseltine, g. c. 1930: selected works of richard rolle, hermit. longmans, london. horstman, c. 1895: yorkshire writers: richard rolle of hampole and his followers. swan sonnenschein & co., london. 2 vol. laing, m. 1992: a linguistic atlas of early middle english: the value of texts surviving in more than one version. rissanen, m. et al. eds. history of englishes. new methods and interpretations in historical linguistics. mouton de gruyter, berlin, 566-581. mcintosh, a. & samuels, m. l. 1968: prolegomena to a study of medieval anglo -irish. medium aevum, xxxvii, 1-11. mcintosh, a.; m. l. samuels et al. 1986: linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english (lalme) aberdeen university press, aberdeen. 4 vol. ogilvie-thomson, s. j. 1988: richard rolle: prose and verse edited from ms longleat 29 and related manuscripts. [eets.], oxford university press, oxford. smith, j. j. 1992: the use of english: language contact, dialect variation, and written standardisation during the middle english period. machan, t. w. & scott, ch. t. eds. english in its social contexts. essays in historical sociolinguistics. oxford university press, oxford, 47-68. watson, n. 1991: richard rolle and the invention of authority. cambridge university press, cambridge. * † * selim08.doc juan camilo conde, selim 8 (1998): 91—100 spanish words in medieval english lexicon: sources and problems1 the cultural and economic importance of the spanish-arabic community throughout the middle ages is reflected in the number of loan-words which, mainly through french and latin, entered the western european languages in this period. some of these words also found their way into the linguistic varieties used in england between the years 1000 and 1500.2 in spite of this impact, there are relatively few studies devoted to tracing the lexical relationship between medieval england and spain, probably due to both, the indirect 1 this is an updated version of a paper read at the fifth international conference of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature (león, september 1992). i appreciate and acknowledge the comments by some colleagues who were present at the talk, particularly dr andrew breeze and the late professor patricia shaw. in addition to the latter’s well-known contributions to english and comparative literature, professor shaw had always a keen interest in diverse as pects of the cultural history of the english language. in the panels that she chaired at selim and aedean conferences she was always alert to lectures and papers on this subject and very often raised interesting questions and topics for discussion. throughout her publications on medieval and renaissance english literature she regularly pointed to linguistic aspects of the texts she shrewdly analysed. in addition, she thoroughly studied the influence of the spanish language on seventeenth century english (1979) and, in a recent article (“the presence of spain in middle english literature”, 1992), pointed to the literary, historical and linguistic connections between both countries in the period from 1150 to 1485. 2 see taylor (1934) where, together with a long list of place and personal names, other common words of spanish, arabic or spanish-arabic etymology are mentioned, among others: acton (1300), admiral (1205), alchemy (1362), alchitram (1325), alconde (1486), alcoran (1366), algorism (1340), alembic (1374), aliade (1450), alkali (1386), alkanet (1326), almacantar (1391), almagest (1386), almanac (1388), almury (1391), amber (1398), azimuth (1391), barbican (1300), beduin (1400), bezoar (1477), borage (1265), borax (1386), brazil (1386), buckram (1340), cable (1205), caliph (1393), camphor (1313), caraway (1390), cipher (1399), cotton (1381), dragoman (1300), elixir (1386), fustian (1200), garble (1393), jazerant (1400), lemon (1400), mancus (799), maravedi (1430), marcasite (1425), marzipan (1494), nadir (1391), olibanum (1398), quintal (1401), realgar (1386), saffran (1200), soldan (1297), syrup (1398), taffeta (1373), tartar (1386), zenith (1387), etc see also: serjeantson (1935), steiger (1963) and breeze (1991). juan cami lo conde 88 nature of this relationship and the problems which the analysis of linguistic borrowings in a medieval context are likely to raise. among these words, cordwain and cork stand out because they deriv e from one of the earliest ro mance varieties which survived in the central areas of the iberian peninsula populated by the arabs: this language was known as musta'rib by the moslems and, later on, ‘mozárabe’ in castilian romance. it is the aim of this article to trace the origin, development and introduction of these ‘mozárabe’ words into middle english, and to illustrate some of the problems which affect the study of medieval lexicon. lexical borrowing in a medieval context is not merely a process whereby gaps in the overall vocabulary of a language are filled, nor simply the result of the whims and desires for prestige, snobbism or exoticism by some members of a speech community (rothwell 1980: 118; hoad 1987: 51). the scholar who studies medieval lexicology and, particularly, the exchange of words from one language to another, must face a threefold problem. firstly, the number of unpublished and undiscovered manuscripts impinges on the usefulness of etymological dictionaries, which, by definition, are as useful as their source material allows them to be. secondly, the absence of sources and the lack of information on the kind of text where some words might have occurred makes it difficult to trace their chronological, geographical and stylis tic distribution. finally, it is obvious that the linguistic circumstances of the medieval world cannot be properly understood nowadays, when we still tend to make all the information available fit into pre -established categories, which sometimes may not reflect accurate historical situations: for instance, the equation of language and nationality did not wholly prevail in the middle ages, and the neogrammarian tenet which grounds the study of borrowing on the behaviour of bilingual speakers, must be extended into the domain of social multilingualism prevalent throughout europe in the period (haugen 1950: 210). such complications are reflected in the history of the two words we are dealing with. the romance world where they come from must be viewed as a vast linguistic area where new varieties kept arising out of, at least, three different sources: a latin substratum, common to all of them, substrata and adstrata particularly related to each variety such as arabic in the case of the romance languages of spain and, finally, the influence of the "dialects" on one another, which functioned, therefore, as superstrata in a sort of interacspanish words in medieval e nglish lexicon: sources and problems 89 tive relationship (baldinger 1963: 62-91; iordan and manoliu 1972: 144-145). the process leading to the formation of the spanish-arabic word corcho/corcha, where english cork comes from, clearly illustrates the abovementioned issue. the connection of corcho to ‘mozárabe’ seems to be proved by the palatal articulation in vulgar latin, [p], of an original velar plosive (< cortice) (galmes de fuentes 1983: 325). but the common usage of this word in spain was preceded by the substitution of the etruscan suber, applied globally to the cork tree, by the synonyms cortex or quercus in those communities, which, linked to the roman empire, esteemed the bark of that tree as a source of economic profit (bertoldi 1947: 132-140). moreover, the relation of corcho and latin cortex is not direct. corominas and pascual (1980: s.v.) state that the romance word derives ultimately from the short indoeuropean root * ker(t); this vocalic quantity should have favoured a process of diphthongization in mozárabe, which did not take place. the appearance of a monophthong [o] has led them to think of the influence of the arabic adstratum in its final shape. rohlfs does not seem to agree with them when he states that the origin of corcho is the metathesis of latin quercus into vulgar latin * cerquus, and that the interference of another word, probably cortex, favoured the velarization of the root vowel from [e] to [o] (1979: 204-207). as a final instance of the linguistic mixing which defines the ro mance world in medieval times it is worth mentioning the hybrid form alcorque, where the arabic article is combined with the evolution of the blended pair * cerquus cortex in castilian. a further problem which complicates the study of medieval lexicon is the natural fact that it is constantly affected by semantic changes which extend or simplify the original meaning. thus, the initial reference of cordoban/cordouan to "… someone or something from cordoba" is reduced after a process of metonymy to ‘leather’ and, particularly, the skin of goats tanned and manufactured in that town (corominas and pascual 1980: s.v.). the later use of this material by shoeand harn ess-makers and its collocation in the thirteenth century with the noun çapatos/çapatas (texts 1 and 2) favoured in the fourteenth another process of metonymy which restricted its meaning from the material to the object (text 3). juan cami lo conde 90 (1) 1252: çapatos de cordobán entallados et a cuerda vi pares por i mr. los meiores (cortes de sevilla, 127). (2) 1351: por el par de los çapatos de calça de buen cordonan et bien solados dos mrs. (cortes de valladolid, ii. 82). (3) 1386: la doçena de los cordouanes doze mrs. (cortes de jerez, i.71)1 the study of the introduction of these two words from arabic spain into norman britain seems to be methodologically founded on the concepts of cultural and linguistic contact between speech communities. however, these notions must be handled with care when they are applied to medieval lexi con. neither political and economic, nor cultural and scientific relations worked on a one-to-one basis between two groups of people, but should be included in an international context. it is sufficie nt to mention, in order to prove the point, that the commercial exchange of spanish oil, dyes, salt and wine with english wool and cloth depended on the maritime routes that linked the mediterranean and the north sea through andalusia and were under the control of genoese and venetian seafarers (childs 1978). at the cultural and scientific levels, it is also interesting to notice the role the santiago route played in spreading french loanwords in the romance dialects of castile, aragon and la rioja. corcho and cordoban/cordovan were not, however, words which could have found their way into english as a result of scientific or humanistic and cultural contacts. since they were linked to very specific goods, they probably entered middle english thanks to the indirect trade relations between spain and england through france and barcelona. both products were part of arabic commerce from the beginning of its expansion in the eighth century. cordoban was exported from al-andalus to europe as a luxury good used in the manufacture of shoes. corcho, at first also an item of luxury, seems to be linked to the trade of glass commodities which reached northern europe from the syrian coasts. the french markets would have particularly helped to introduce these products and the words referring to 1 medieval spanish texts are taken from castro (1921: 343) and corominas and pascual (1980). the abbreviations used by these authors to identify each original text are also supplied after the quote. spanish words in medieval e nglish lexicon: sources and problems 91 them into england, together with the norman variety used as official language after the conquest in 1066. in spite of the initially "exotic" nature of these products,1 the application to historical linguistics of subjective labels such as prestigious or exotic must be cautious. the ideas put forward by hope in his article "loanwords as cultural and lexical symbols" (1962) are worth mentioning in connection with this. the author diminishes the function of the explanations which account for "psychological climates of borrowing" and defends a purely linguistic study of vocabulary, assuming that there are cultural and commercial rela tions between two communities of different importance, and concentrating on how the new contexts of usage mould and change the original meaning of words in the recipient language. there are three different entries in the oxford english dictionary for the words related to mozárabe cordoban: cordovan (with a number of orthographical variants such as corduban, cordovant and cordevan), cordwain (cordewane, cordewayne, cordwane, etc) and the agentive noun cordwainer (cordewaner, cordewenere, corduener, cordeweyner, cordwiner, etc). even though the first one is the most directly related to the spanish roma nce, it is not attes ted in writing until the late sixteenth century, in percivall's spanish dictionary (1591) (murray, et al eds. 1933: s.v). it is interesting to point out, however, that percivall uses cordouan to define the word taperados ("the in side of a cordouan skin turned outwards") and this may suggest either that the word already possessed this form years before its inclusion in the dictio nary, or else, as i think, show the influence of castilian on the author: he knew the language and, in the context of a bilingual spanish-english dictionary, reshaped the original word cordwain so as to link it to its proper etymology. the forms cordwain and cordwainer are documented in england from the beginning of the thirteenth century. although the first evidence is provided by official texts, like lists of goods and prices, as well as population censuses 1 in fact, as professor shaw remarked in the above-mentioned article, the word cordwane in middle english texts always had the connotation of a luxurious, exotic product ‘the very finest leather’ this seems to be confirmed in texts (8) and (14) of the brief corpus offered in this article, where cordwain shoes are respectively used by bishops and by the knight sir thopas in consonance with their social position and, in the second case, with “the rest of his costly rear” (shaw 1992: 44). juan cami lo conde 92 written in an extremely concise style, there are some determiners and prepositions of french origin (le and de) which allow the scholar to conclude that for more than two centuries up to 1380 none of them had broken with the original norman french context expected in these documents (texts 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8). (4) 1281: barth, le cordewaner (fransson surn . 130). (5) 1310: in 12 pellibus de cordewain empt., 13s. 6d. (account rolls of the abbey of durham). (6) 1312: coreum de cordewan viiij d. (wills and inventories from the registry of durham). (7) 1359: de chescune dozeyne de cordewane (ipswich domesday (1), 188). (8) 1380: bischopes wole kepe her feet cleene wií sccarlett and cordewanere (cursor mundi, 21975).1 the form that the word cork adapts in middle english reflects a process of contamination of the original mozárabe corcho with the spanish-arabic hybrid alcorque and the latin etymon quercus. this word is also documented in anglo -norman and latin texts until the end of the fourteenth century (texts 9, 10 and 11) (kurath and kuhn, 1956: s.v.): (9) 1303: de arnaldo pro bord et cork (gras. eng. syst. 216) (10) 1342: navis carcatat erat in eisdem partibus cum sale et cork (chancery inquis, file 148 (22)). (11) 1417: in diuersis peciis maeremii, peciis de corke (for. acc. 8 hen. v d/1 dorso). 1 medieval texts in anglo-norman and middle english are taken from kurath and kuhn (1956 s.v.) and murray et al. (eds. 1933: s.v.). the abbreviations used by these authors to identify each original text are also supplied after the quote. spanish words in medieval e nglish lexicon: sources and problems 93 an important landmark in the history of these words in middle english is that they appeared as individual entries in the first english-latin dictionary published in england: the promptorium parvulorum. the popularity of this work can be inferred from its preservation in six manuscripts since 1440 and from the fact that it was printed at least five times during the first quarter of the sixteenth century. the dictionary answered the demand for a list of english words with their latin equivalents and grammatical information on gender and case by the parvulii novices who started to learn latin (way ed. 1843: 12). thus, the “ad lectorem” of one of the issues printed by winkyn de worde (1510) explains: … thys boke is thus ordened for to fynde a laten after any maner of worde in englysshe for them that wyl lerne to wryte or speke latyn, and because that no man or chylde herafter have any diffy culte more to serche for any latyn or englysshe worde (starnes 1954: 5). in column 425 of the promptorium there is the english entry sowtare, to which the synonym cordynare is added; both words are equated to the latin masculine nouns sutor/sutoris (shoemaker) and allutarius/allutarij (shoemaker). column number 94 includes the synonyms cordwayn and ledder which are explained by the feminine latin noun alluta/allutæ (fine leather) and again cordwar, equivalent to allutarius/allutarii. as far as cork is concerned, this word appears in column 95 in the compounds cork -tre and cork -bark ; the former is explained by the feminine latin noun suberies/suberietis [sic] (cork tree), while the latter is equated to cortex/corticis (cork bark) (mayhew ed. 1908). an apparent reason which may lie behind the appearance of these two words as specific entries in the promptorium parvulorum is that they were widely used in english at all communicative levels before the year 1400. this hypothesis can be supported by the use of the word cordewan in the coventry cycle of mystery plays (1400) (text 12) and of cordwaners in the york one (1415) (text 13) (kurath and kuhn, 1956: s.v.): juan cami lo conde 94 (12) 1400: off ffyne cordewan a goodly peyre of long pekyd schon (coventry mystery plays, 241). (13) 1415: cordwaners (york mystery plays, introd. 243) (14) 1390: sir thopas, his schoon of cordewane (sir thopas, 21). if we believe that mystery plays reflect the colloquial levels of communication in middle english, we may understand that these words were already widely used at oral levels late in the period. however, there is also evidence that these could still be qualified as learned words, restricted to formal or official contexts: this is suggested by the necessity for the compiler of the promptorium to clarify their meaning by means of the synonyms ledder and sowtare, or by the widespread idea that the entries of the dictionary have their origin in those of previous latin -english glossaries which were re versed without any regard as to their real usage in the english language. the dilemma is far more complicated in the case of cork . cordwain is attested in literary works such as the poem cursor mundi (1380) (text 8) or the romance sir thopas (1390) (text 14), which may point to the way the word followed from latin or norman-french to middle english; but the first writ ten evidence of cork is the promptorium parvulorum itself. nevertheless, it is used in compound words in the dictionary and by 1450 it had alre ady changed its meaning to refer to objects manufactured with that material (texts 15 and 16) (kurath and kuhn 1956: s.v.) this process may confirm that cork was already widely used years before the edition of the promptorium. (15) 1450: ye schall make your flotes in thys wise; take a feyr corke yat ys clene with oute many hoolys (treat fish., 16; bk. st. albans). (16) 1463: that no marchaunt bryng into this reame … tawed bootes, schoen, galoches or corkes (r. parl. 5, 507a). it seems, finally, that the conclusions which may be drawn from the data contained in etymological dictionaries are sometimes misleading when his torical linguists try to evaluate the extension of usage of a linguistic borrowing spanish words in medieval e nglish lexicon: sources and problems 95 in the medieval period. this can be so in the case of cordwain and cork , which may be qualified both as learned words restricted to some levels of communication and as common ones used in everyday conversation; there is proof to support both options. the lack of some manuscripts which could confirm one possibility or the other, the multilingual context in which the words were used, and the vague assessment of the concepts contact, prestige, formality and informality in the period are some of the problems which impinge on the study of medieval lexicon and, therefore, complicate their exact description. juan camilo conde silvestre university of murcia references baldinger, k. 1963: la formación de los dominios lingüísticos de la península ibérica, gredos, madrid. bertoldi, b. 1947: la iberia en el sustrato étnico-lingüístico del mediterráneo occidental. nueva revista de filología hispánica, 1: 128-140. breeze, a. 1991: old english ealfara , pack horse: a spanish-arabic loanword. notes and queries, 38: 15-17. castro, a. 1921: unos aranceles de aduanas del siglo xiii. revista de filología española, viii: 1-29, 325-356. childs, w. r. 1978: anglo-castilian trade in the late middle ages, manchester university press, manchester. corominas, j. and j. a. pascual 1980: diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, gredos, madrid. galmes de fuentes, a. 1983: dialectología mozárabe, gredos, madrid. haugen, e. 1950: the analysis of linguistic borrowing. language, 26: 210-231. juan cami lo conde 96 hoad t. f. 1987: developing and using lexicographical resources in old and middle english. in dictionaries of english (ed. r. w. bailey), cambridge university press, cambridge. hope, t. e. 1962-63: loanwords as cultural and lexical symbols. archivum linguisticum, 14: 111-121; 15: 29-42. iordan, i. and m. manoliu 1972: manual de lingüística románica, gredos, madrid. kurath, h. and s. m. kuhn 1956-1992: middle english dictionary, university of michigan press, ann arbor. mayhew, a. l. ed. 1908: the promptorium parvulorum. the first english latin dictionary, kegan paul, london. murray, j. a. h. et al. eds 1933: the oxford english dictionary (13 vols.), clarendon press, oxford. rohlfs, g. 1979: estudios sobre el léxico románico, gredos, madrid. rothwell, w. 1980: lexical borrowing in a medieval context. bulletin of the john rylands university library of manchester, 63: 118-143. serjeantson, m. s. 1935: a history of foreign words in english , routledge and kegan paul, london. shaw, p. 1979: noticias y conocimientos de la lengua española en la inglaterra del siglo xvii. in estudios ofrecidos a emilio alarcos llorach (vol. iv) , servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de oviedo, oviedo, 325-347. shaw, p. 1992: the presence of spain in middle english literature. archiv fur das studium der neueren sprachen und literaturen, 229.1: 41-54. starnes, t.d. 1954: renaissance dictionaries. english -latin, latin-english , university of texas press, austin. steiger, a. 1963: the origin and spread of oriental words in european languages, new york. taylor, w. 1934: etymological list of arabic words in english , nouri press, cairo. way, a. ed. 1843-1865: the promptorium parvulorum, the camden society, london. * † * microsoft word review 5_2023.docx selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. 28 (2023): 125–129. issn: 1132-631x doi: 10.17811/selim.28.2023.125-129 © ediuno. ediciones de la universidad de oviedo. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. neidorf, leonard, ed. 2021. epic and romance: a guide to medieval european literature. nanjing: nanjing university press. pp. 444. isbn 9787305251276. reviewed by janika bischof university of münster epic and romance: a guide to medieval european literature, edited by leonard neidorf is a substantial volume, which “originated in part in a conference held at nanjing university on june 16 to 18, 2017” (2). as the introduction by neidorf and yang liu explains, this volume is a reconsideration of the topics and questions raised by w. p. ker in his seminal volume epic and romance: essays on medieval literature, first published in 1897 and again in a revised edition in 1908. at the heart of the volume is the consideration that the broad themes, topics and texts discussed by ker from a philological and comparative basis still hold relevance today and indeed should be studied more carefully to supplement the highly specialised research currently widespread in medieval studies. the twenty-two contributions cover a wide range of works from across medieval europe, although as in ker’s original volume, there is a strong focus on the literatures of britain, iceland, and france. but there are also considerations of what it means to apply ker’s foci and theories on celtic and less studied texts from the germanic and romancelanguage areas. opening the volume is a broad survey of the history of scholarship on the genres closest to ker’s heart. in “epic, romance, lay and ballad”, tom shippey considers the role ker played in the development the study of these genres experienced throughout the late nineteenth and the twentieth century. he points to the nationalistic tendencies emerging with romantic nationalism and later hardened by the wars of the twentieth century, which underpin the change towards narrower focus. the philological and comparative approach championed by ker and others at the turn of the century loses ground as a consequence, though it never quite disappeared, as shippey concludes. and there is hope, he says, for a renewed interest in these broader areas of medieval studies, in the new “open frontiers” such as metrics and archaeology, as well as in comparative studies, which never quite disappeared but are now experiencing new interest. the second essay by geoffrey russom also takes a more general approach to the topic, asking “what can we learn from epics and romances?” he begins by highlighting the gender(and, to a degree, class-) based opposition of the genres of epic and romance so prominently promoted by ker and then discusses how ker’s biases can obscure his still valuable insights. in particular, russom focuses on how the supposed feminine “turn” of the romances was in fact due to an influx of patriarchal ideas while the mythical and “romantic” plots owe more to celtic tradition. in “epic and romance in welsh and irish”, andrew breeze considers what ker’s thoughts might have been on the irish and welsh tradition, and what effect this can have https://orcid.org/0009-0005-8734-7115 book reviews 126 on scholarly analysis of these texts, in particularly concerning dating works such as the mabinogion. in fact, dating (and misdating) of texts is the main focus of breeze’s essay as he runs us through numerous editors and editions of the main texts extant, and it becomes somewhat tedious as he repeatedly dismisses or lauds editors for their respective opinions regarding the dating of the texts under discussion, depending on whether they agree or disagree with his own deductions. in conclusion, he suggests that analysis of material culture and historical place names will prove ker’s judgements on epic and romance correct. catherine m. jones asks whether the distinction between the genres as stipulated by ker needs to be absolute in her essay “the hybrid chansons de geste: an epic-romance compromise?” she suggests that, in fact, far from the “simplicity” of the epic being replaced by the “degenerate” and “decadent” romance, these “two text-types coexisted and competed throughout the middle ages” (68). she observes and shows at length that the two traditions interacted and that influences of the romance tradition in particular can be shown to have affected and been integrated into chansons de geste throughout the supposed heyday of the romance. in his essay “beginnings and endings in the elegiac poetry of the early medieval north”, joseph harris goes beyond generic boundaries to consider the underlying “literary unity” of elegiac expression in germanic poetry, and old norse in particular. focusing on both verbal and thematic links, he shows that there are clear connections between texts belonging to the same elegiac group, with elements of “pastness” and the “common end” (be it “ragnarök or christian eschatology”, 104) emerging as defining features. in “the icelandic family sagas: w. p. ker and interpreting the historical elements, a post-colonial struggle”, jesse l. byock makes the argument that it is worth reviving ker’s view of the family sagas as important sources with their “historical elements”, which have been all but ignored due to the specific circumstances of postcolonial iceland in the twentieth century. looking at the sagas with fresh eyes, byock finds them to be “a social ethnography” worth studying and makes the plea to study them again with ker’s insights about the genre in mind. helen fulton investigates concepts of geography and the concepts of town and town walls and their meanings for epic and romance in “the dialogic town in the arthurian romances of chrétien de troyes”. she points out the social systems that are specific to towns within medieval society and discusses how the “feminine” sphere of the town is used effectively in chivalric literature and deployed as a “strategy in [the feudal nobility’s] power struggle with the monarchy” (154). “middle english romance: the strange tale of the english axemen and the norman knights” by yin liu takes issue with the rather curious fact that ker, in his discussion of epic and romance, used english literature for the former but then, while disparaging the detrimental effect of “the norman knights” (158), continues his discussion of the latter with focus on french romances while largely ignoring the substantial corpus of middle english romances. liu’s essay attempts to amend this oversight by making a very good case for a less clear opposition within english literary history than posited by ker, concluding “i suspect that what really concerned the makers and readers of middle english romance was […] simply the desire for a rattling good story” (170). book reviews 127 jonathan b. himes also discusses geographical issues in “the epic scale of heroic geographies: beowulf, waldere, and waltharius”, but in epic poetry predominantly, particularly the old english texts of beowulf and waldere. himes’s focus is on the landscape in the three epic poems he discusses, and how the descriptions of the surroundings affect both their moods and their “affinities as epic poems” (175). while he notes differences in the overall trajectory of the two main texts, he concludes that “romantic landscapes, scenery, and mood can be legitimate […] elements of epic literature” (189). in “the queens of beowulf: gender, violence and community,” andrea nagy looks at the question of whether ker’s perceived “lack of unity” in beowulf is justified criticism and suggests that in fact there is a through line of questions of “community” and their fragility throughout the epic that belies ker’s judgement (190). the question of whether eddic poetry ever achieved the fullest expression of the epic form is at the heart of brittany schorn’s essay "‘mythology within bounds’: heroic narrative in eddic poetry.” she suggests that it is time to “reconsider the cultural terms in which [old norse poetry] is framed” (202) and proposes that while ker’s account is “ambitious […] in scope”, it is primarily a “reminder […] of what eddic poetry is not” (215). the challenge then is, schorn suggests, to “explain what it is, and why” (215). “the narrative plan of njál's saga” by george clark is a detailed overview and play by play summary of this saga which ker judged to be “the greatest of all sagas” (quoted by clark 2021, 220). the focus lies in recounting the order of events as presented in the saga and pointing out how the narrative mode changes throughout the text. in “the nibelungenlied, kudrun, biterolf und dietleib: some observations on the concept of the heroic and the ‘genre’ of medieval german heroic epic,” winder mcconnell discusses generic terminology and whether it makes sense to “lump together” the works mentioned in the title. in particular, mcconnell focuses on the “held”, the hero of these epics, and discusses at length the similarities and differences between their manifestations in the texts. he concludes that the nibelungenlied is indeed a class apart and suggests filing it as “the sole medieval german ‘tragic heroic epic’ or ‘heroic epic tragedy’” (259). looking at the future of german medieval studies, albrecht classen suggests in “the nibelungenlied and w. p. ker: older philology and the future of medieval studies” that the time has come to return to “ker’s insights and to consider them within the broader context of the nibelungenlied” as the field has turned towards “more global perspectives, emphasizing strongly comparative approaches” (267) much like those pursued by ker and his contemporaries. the question of what effect “[t]he arrival of medieval romance literature in the north” (270) had is pursued by claudia bornholdt in “the persistence of the heroic ideal in post-heroic age scandinavian romance literature”. looking at chivalric texts produced in iceland and norway at the start of the thirteenth century, bornholdt comes to the conclusion that, far from being mere translations which completely replace “the indigenous germanic epic tradition,” romances in scandinavia are unique in their “genre fluidity and boundary crossing and [their] cultural adaptation” (285), so that they prove to be a link between the old and the new for the entertainment of their audiences. the lone contribution to the volume dealing with explicitly mediterranean texts of the non-french tradition, “mediterranean border epics: frontier ethos in cantar de book reviews 128 mio cid and digenes akrites” by alberto montaner & ganna goncharova focuses on the topic of liminal spaces and the particular subgenre of the border or frontier epic. the emphasis is on the conception of the border not as a delimiting space but as an area of contact and freedom, something the authors call “frontier ethos” and which is particularly common in eastern mediterranean epics. huiyi bao takes a closer look at “representing the sensorium in medieval romance: sir gawain and the green knight and other texts”. while the human senses have long had a negative reputation in christian doctrine, they also represent one of outstanding “features or advantages of medieval romance” (314). the essay by bao shows that in sir gawain and the green knight, the sensorium is “constantly engaging with the ideology of christian chivalry” (314) and that touch, widely regarded as the lowest in the hierarchy of the senses, “can be the pathway leading to and deviating from faith” in equal measure (330). in “mixture and mischief in a medieval irish heroic tale”, joseph falaky nagy picks out an example from irish medieval literature to examine whether there might be something in it to redeem it from ker’s judgement as “chronically addicted to ‘romance and fantasy’” (334). the chosen text, mesca ulad, is discussed in detail with focus on elements of realism and “the pragmatic world-view, ethos and aesthetics that ker considered necessary” (334) and in discussing the texts and the historical reality it is based on, the author provides a cohesive argument for a reconsideration of these works from a kersian perspective. the following essay by matthieu boyd looks at the “celtic influence on french romance.” starting from bodel’s famous quote about the “three subjects that matter: britain, rome, and france” (346), boyd suggests that britain, that is, celtic matter, had far more influence on french romance than has been given credit. this is tied to the interconnections between norman and british territories alongside the diverging trajectories of anglo-norman and continental french traditions. the turning point is clearly chrétien de troyes, but there are traces before and after, which the author suggests may be worthy of closer attention beyond the scope of this essay. turning towards a detailed study of a specific motif across the dominant genres, mario martín botero garcía pays close attention to heroes “fighting the giant in french epic and romance.” ranging from the middle of the twelfth to the first half of the thirteenth century, the giants under discussion show a wide variety of traits and behaviours, which contribute to establishing this motif as “one of the knight’s most important achievements”, which confirms his status as “civilizing hero” (374). as the analysis shows, “[f]rom epic to romance […] there is little change in the hero’s treatment […] as a giant killer” (395). an interesting look at two of the major protagonists from epic and romance in french literature is “arthur meets charlemagne: echoes of chansons de geste in french verse romances from chrétien de troyes to escanor” by michelle szkilnik. while each of these heroes is considered as the outstanding hero of the respective genres, szkilnik shows that interestingly, whereas arthur does occasionally warrant mention in the epic chansons de geste, the reverse cannot be shown. this suggests that while arthur may have had some cachet within historical genres, epic characters had no place in the company of arthurian ones. book reviews 129 in the final essay, jennifer goodman wollock gives us “a view from the printshop: malory, caxton, and medieval narrative form”. looking at the medieval texts printed by caxton during the early days of printing in england, she shows the “hybridization” at work “within and between the works on caxton’s list” (433). at the same time, the major english authors of the medieval period retain their clear distinction from the later works and translations charting the future of literature with their hybrid character. in caxton’s printshop, they coexist and intermingle to “capture the flavor of caxton’s moment, the fluidity of medieval narrative form on the move” (434). overall, the collection gathers together a broad variety of pieces on the topics of epic and romance, which show the breadth and depth of medieval studies on these genres while inviting for more research to be done in the spirit of ker. (received 29/09/2022) microsoft word 2. proofs_allen.docx selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. 28 (2023): 19–38. issn: 1132-631x doi: 10.17811/selim.28.2023.19-38 © ediuno. ediciones de la universidad de oviedo. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. what did(n’t) happen to english? a re-evaluation of some contact explanations in early english cynthia l. allen anu college of arts and social sciences (received 19 may 2023; revised 21 july 2023) mcwhorter (2002) argued that contact with norse caused simplifications in english grammar that set english apart from other germanic languages. this paper focuses on one of the losses mcwhorter attributed to the linguistic impact of the scandinavian invasions, external possessors. an investigation of electronic old and early middle english corpora reveals that the construction was already on the decline in the old english period, and that norse contact cannot explain the early middle english data. there is no support for the view that the loss of the construction spread from the scandinavianized areas southwards. the facts are consistent with the view that while celtic influence did not cause the loss of the construction in old english, celtic speakers shifting to english may have played a role in triggering the initial decline of the construction. study of non-standard variants of other germanic languages is needed to increase our understanding of the history of external possessor constructions in those languages.1 keywords: external possessor; language contact; norse; celtic; germanic languages 1. introduction in 2002, john mcwhorter published a thought-provoking article with the title “what happened to english?”. mcwhorter’s basic thesis was that the scandinavian invasions that took place in england caused a general simplifying trend in english grammar setting it apart from all other germanic languages. the language the scandinavian invaders spoke was not very differentiated at this time, and this paper will follow common usage in referring to it as norse and use “norse hypothesis” for the idea that it was contact with norse that caused these simplifications. since there have been significant developments in our understanding of the history of english in the twenty years since mcwhorter’s article was published, it is worth re-evaluating mcwhorter’s ideas about what happened to english. such a re-evaluation must rely on detailed case studies of the individual features like those that mcwhorter looked at, making use of electronic resources that were either very new or non-existent when mcwhorter’s article was published, and which did not play a role in his presentation of the facts. this paper looks in detail at the loss of one of mcwhorter’s features, the external possessor construction. before the discussion of this construction, section 2 makes some brief comments about developments since the publication of mcwhorter’s article that justify new scrutiny of the conclusions presented there. section 3 summarizes 1 i am grateful to george walkden for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. the usual disclaimers apply. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1904-4666 cynthia allen 20 mcwhorter’s paper. following the introduction to external possessors in section 4, section 5 looks in more detail at the norse hypothesis, and section 6 evaluates this hypothesis in light of old and early middle english data. section 7 considers an alternative explanation for the loss of the external possessor construction that mcwhorter dismissed. some further observations and concluding remarks are made in section 8. 2. recent developments two recent developments that have deepened our understanding of what happened to english are the explosion of digital resources and the increased scholarship in contact linguistics. an example of how digital resources have played a central role in upending widely held assumptions about the impact of norse on english comes from the history of the plural personal pronouns. until recently, it was nearly universally assumed that they, their, and them are borrowings from norse. for example, in mentioning that these pronouns had not yet spread into the southwest midlands in the period covered by his scholarly and careful investigation of scandinavian influence in the southwest midlands, richard dance indicates without comment that they derives from old norse þeir (2003, 308–9). this widely-assumed etymology has been used as evidence of very intimate degree of contact between the scandinavian and english linguistic communities. however, it has long been recognized that the vocalism of some forms of the pronouns that are found in middle english texts is hard to explain by this etymology, and cole (2018) makes a convincing case for a native origin in northumbrian: a merger of the personal pronouns starting with hand the demonstrative pronouns starting with a dental fricative. a digital resource covering many texts not in print, laing’s (2013–) linguistic atlas of early middle english (laeme), enabled cole to make a major empirical contribution by carrying out the most extensive study to date of the diffusion of the they forms across the focal areas of anglo-scandinavian contact. cole’s conclusion is that this pattern of diffusion is highly problematic for the assumption of the norse origin of these pronouns. it is fair to say that we no longer “know” one of the things that we thought we knew about norse effects on english. at the least, the publication of this paper in a highly regarded journal necessitates some reconsideration of this tenet. a native source for these pronouns would not by itself mean that there was not intimate contact between the scandinavians and the english. there is no reason to doubt a significant amount of intermarriage, which would be expected to affect the language of the children; see for example trudgill (2011), and for archaeological evidence see kershaw and røyrvik (2016). the point is simply that recent research, aided by digital resources, has caused a re-evaluation of one of the things that everyone used to think they knew had happened to english, but may well not have happened. a second development, theoretical advances in the area of language contact, has opened up new interpretations to the findings of earlier studies. in particular, until fairly recently, the idea that contact with celtic languages had any syntactic effects was rejected by most linguists, including mcwhorter (2002, 252). however, what is known as the celtic hypothesis has since then become one that can no longer be ignored. it should be noted that mcwhorter (2009) abandons this stance and credits celtic influence with playing a role in some syntactic changes in english, specifically in the use of the auxiliary do. however, in this later paper he maintains his view that norse contact was responsible what did(n’t) happen to english? 21 for the loss of features, whereas the new uses of do represents an instance of elaboration, not simplification. mcwhorter’s paper does not specify what model of contact linguistics he is assuming. any discussion of language contact effects is best embedded in a theoretical framework, however, and this paper assumes the model of contact effects of van coetsem (1995) and (2000). this model focuses on the role of speakers in the transmission of contact phenomena, as opposed to older models that tend to focus on overall changes within societies. one important point about this model is that it sharpens the distinction between borrowing and other types of transmissions. in van coetsem’s model, borrowing refers only to changes initiated by speakers of the recipient language, for example when english speakers borrowed words from french into their native language. in contrast to this recipient language agentivity we have source language agentivity when speakers import features of their native language into a language they are learning. this is termed imposition. if norse or celtic speakers brought features of their native language into old english, that would be imposition. in earlier theories, “borrowing” has tended to be used for any importation of a feature from one language into another, regardless of who initiated it. van coetsem does not assume that these are the only type of contact effects. of particular relevance here is his assumption that language-internal changes may be triggered by contact by resulting in simplification in the grammar that may not be the direct result of either imposition or borrowing. these are changes made possible by the nature of the system, for example the smoothing out of irregularities in paradigms, and are not part of the transfer proper. an instance of paradigm levelling in early middle english that is likely to have been promoted by contact happened with the determiner se. in most oe dialects, the paradigm for this determiner was irregular in that the initial consonant was an alveolar fricative in the nominative singular masculine and feminine se and seo, respectively, but an interdental fricative in the rest of the paradigm, for example masculine accusative singular þone. in early middle english, the interdental fricative was leveled out through the paradigm, resulting in þe and þeo before the category distinctions of gender, case and number were lost. as is well known, the new forms with the interdental fricative were first found in northern areas, so contact is likely to have played some sort of role in this development. however, this could not have been imposition by norse speakers learning english, because old norse had the same irregularity in its paradigm in the singular, as illustrated in table 1: table 1. old norse determiner paradigm (after gordon and taylor 1957, §109, §111). si ng ul ar masculine feminine neuter nominative sá sú þæt accusative þann þá þæt genitive þess þeir(r)ar þess dative þeim þeir(r)i þ(v)i pl ur al masculine feminine neuter nominative þeir þær þau accusative þá þær þau genitive þeir(r)a þeir(r)a þeir(r)a dative þeim þeim þeim cynthia allen 22 norse speakers should have had no trouble with an irregularity that paralleled their own language. but this sort of regularization, which mirrors the regularization that children attempt when acquiring their native language, is the sort of thing that happens when the enforcement of norms is weakened. as milroy and llamas (2013) note, contact situations typically result in weaker social ties, and weaker social ties weaken linguistic norms and promote language change. mcwhorter (2002, 266) comments that it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the timing of the simplifications in english was due to poor language learning abilities on the part of adults. however, if these changes are to be attributed to norse contact, mcwhorter’s arguments seem more in line with an explanation in terms of one of contact-induced internal simplification than with poor adult language-learning, as we shall see. let us turn now to a summary of mcwhorter’s paper before considering in detail one of the constructions he discusses. 3. mcwhorter (2002) mcwhorter’s (2002) basic thesis is that language change can generally be classified as either complexification or simplification, with scandinavian contact being responsible for the loss in english of a number of morphosyntactic features inherited from common germanic by all early germanic languages. mcwhorter supplies a table of 10 such features. in this table, the shaded cells represent the retention of a given feature in a language, and a white cell indicates the loss of that feature. the table indicates that english has lost every one of these features, losses that mcwhorter views as simplifications. table 2. losses in english compared to other germanic languages (mcwhorter 2002 table 3, copied by permission).2 as mcwhorter notes, english comes out as having lost more of these germanic features than afrikaans, widely considered a “semi-creole”, but which he nevertheless 2 key to abbreviations for languages: g=german, du=dutch, y=yiddish, fr=frisian, s=swedish, n=norwegian, da=danish, i=icelandic, a=afrikaans, oe=old english, e=(modern) english. g du y fr s n da i fa a oe e inherent reflexives external possessors gender beyond noun loss of prefixes directional adverbs be-perfect passive become verb v2 singular you indefinite pronoun what did(n’t) happen to english? 23 deems a “well-behaved” germanic language compared with english on the basis of its retention of more of these features. mcwhorter (2002, 265) makes the sweeping claim that “where a subset of germanic languages have departed sharply from the original germanic ‘typology’, english never fails to be a member”. however, in this comparison, mcwhorter fails to mention one distinctively germanic feature that afrikaans has lost but english has retained, namely the distinction between strong and weak verbs (donaldson 1994, 495). as donaldson notes, this change is also found in some other germanic varieties, including yiddish and pennsylvania german. english is thus more typically germanic than these languages in this respect. 4. (dative) external possessors it is beyond the scope of this paper to comment on all of mcwhorter’s features, and i will focus on the results of an extensive corpus-based investigation of the loss of external possessors (eps). the west germanic type of ep discussed by mcwhorter is generally known as the dative external possessor (dep), e.g. by haspelmath (1999). this term is used here except when including other types of eps in the discussion. as will be discussed in section 5, north germanic languages also have an ep, but of a different type. the old english dep is particularly interesting because both norse and celtic contact have been argued to have been responsible for its loss. first, what are deps? this construction in german is illustrated in (1): (1) die königin schlug dem könig den kopf ab the queen:nom cut the:dat king:dat the:acc head:acc off ‘the queen cut off the king’s head’ (vennemann 2002, 206, ex. 1) here, the possessor of the head is in the dative case, so the dative part of the dep is obvious. the external part is less obvious. the idea is that the possessor könig is an argument external to the phase that contains the possessum den kopf. this contrasts with the internal possessor (ip) found in the english translation, where the king’s and head are dominated by the same phrase. the difference is illustrated schematically in (2): (2) a. dep (german) b. ip (modern english) these trees do not represent a proper analysis of the two constructions, the details of which differ greatly on the syntactic theory employed, but give an overall picture of the main difference between the two constructions. triangles cover the internal structure of the noun phrases. as mcwhorter (2002) reports, old english had such a construction: cynthia allen 24 (3) seo cwen het þa ðæm cyninge þæt heafod of aceorfan the queen ordered then the:dat king:dat the:acc head:acc off cut ‘the queen then ordered the king’s head cut off’ (coorosiu,or 2:4.45.6.852) this example is parallel to the german example in having an ep in the dative case. it is also parallel in that the possessum is the direct object of the verb, in the accusative case. deps are also found with subject possessa: (4) ac him ða eagan of his heafde ascuton but him:dat the:nom eyes:nom from his head out.shot ‘but then his eyes shot out of his head’ (cobede,bede_1:7.40.7.332) the discussion in this paper will be restricted to (nominative) subject and (accusative) object possessa. deps were also found in examples in which the possessum played the role of object of a preposition, parallel to modern english fixed expressions like look x in the eye and stare x in the face, but this construction was not subject to the affectedness restriction that will be discussed presently. statements made here about old english deps should therefore be interpreted as limited to subject and object possessa. the discussion will also be restricted to body part possessa, as these were by far the most common possessa in deps.3 i make the usual assumption that, however it is to be analysed, the old english dep was structurally parallel to the modern german one. it was also parallel in putting the focus on the effect on the possessor of the body part of an action, rather than just on what was done to the body part. however, the evidence of the texts indicates two important differences in the use of the dep in the two languages. first, the use of the dep in old english with subject and object possessa was nearly completely limited to negative effects on the possessor, as in (3) and (4). my investigation only found one example where a positive effect on the possessor is clear, involving a body “lightening” or becoming relieved of pain after a treatment, and one example describing someone’s hair growing, where an effect is not clear.4 in modern german, in contrast, deps are freely used to describe actions resulting in beneficial effects, such as rubbing someone’s back (lee-schoenfeld 2006, 108). the near-total lack of deps of this type cannot be a data gap, because examples of ips in which the effect of the possessor is clearly positive are easy to find:5 3for a discussion of possessa in the role of object of preposition as well as possessa referring to the mind or soul, see allen (2019). 4 space does not allow for a presentation of the examples, but for a discussion see allen (2019, 74–5). 5 in examples with ips, the genitive components are generally clear without glossing of inflectional features, and these features are only glossed in this paper when such glossing is likely to be helpful in understanding the syntax of the sentence, as in this example. in contrast, fuller glossing is given in examples of deps. the dep equivalent of (5) would be … þæt we gefyllon þæm þearfan þa wambe. what did(n’t) happen to english? 25 (5) … þæt we gefyllon þæs þearfan wambe … that we fill the:masc.gen.sg poor:masc.gen.sg belly:(f).acc.sg mid urum godum? with our:dat.pl riches:dat.pl ‘… that we fill the poor man’s belly with our riches?’ (coblick,homs_14_[blhom_4]:39.19.521) the second important difference is that even in situations that most favoured the dep in old english, i.e. with negatively affected possessors, that construction was in variation with the ip. in the same text in which (3) is found, we find (6):6 (6) hie het gebindan, & … mid æxsum heora heafda of them:acc ordered bind and with axes their heads off aceorfan cut ‘(he) ordered them to be bound, and …their heads to be cut off with axes’ (coorosiu,or 2:3.40.18.766) this is not the case in modern german, according to theo vennemann, a native speaker of german, who states that “the dative is obligatory for affected possessors in german” (2002, 208). the use of an ip in modern german gives a clinical account of an effect to a body part without indicating that the possessor of that body part was affected. the situation in modern german is clearly different from earlier german as described by havers (1911), whose examples show that both the ip and the dep were used in old high german to express possessors who were clearly affected, and that in fact this variation is ancient in the indo-european languages. the two constructions did not express different situations, but gave a rather different perspective on them. both english and german have changed from what seems to have been the earlier situation: while english has changed by dropping a construction that was in variation with another, german has changed by sharpening the distinction between the two constructions. summing up so far, the dep in old english can be seen as a marked way of expressing possession, especially of body parts, since ips were the normal way of expressing adnominal possession in old english generally. the dep was an option to use to highlight the negative effect on the possessor. with this basic background information on the dep in old english, we can turn our attention to explanations for the loss of this construction, starting with the hypothesis that this development was caused by contact with norse. 5. the norse hypothesis let us begin looking at how the mechanics of what i will call the norse hypothesis might work. mcwhorter attributes the loss of the ep in english to the disparity between the type of ep that old english inherited from west germanic with the scandinavian ep. as discussed above, in the old english type, the possessor was in the dative case. in the 6 this is not to suggest that the constructions were equally common in similar situations. the mention of a beheading in particular nearly always brought on dep; the ip of (6) is a bit unusual, but as will be discussed, ips were by no means rare overall with negatively affected possessors. cynthia allen 26 modern scandinavian languages, the possessor is typically encoded in a locative phrase, as in the norwegian example given in (7): (7) jeg brekker armen på ham i break arm.def on him ‘i break his arm’ (lødrup 2019, ex. 15) as mcwhorter mentions, an apparent stumbling block to the norse hypothesis is the fact that old norse already had this type of ep: (8) hvé þar á herkju hendr sviþnuþu how there on herkja hands:nom.pl burned ‘how herkja’s hands burned there’ (gþr. iii 10, 2 as cited in havers 1911, 269) assuming with mcwhorter that the norse speakers learning old english had this construction in their grammars, we might expect that they would impose their own ep construction on their english, with the result that modern english speakers would be saying things like i broke the arm on him instead of i broke his arm. mcwhorter argues that this is not really a problem for the norse hypothesis: faced with the disjunction between external possessor encoding in the two languages, scandinavians may have taken the choice of eliminating the distinction altogether, given that it was not vital to the expression of the relevant concepts. (mcwhorter 2002, 257–8) using van coetsem’s terminology, it is clear that norse speakers did not impose this construction on english, and indeed the contact situation between norse and english speakers would not lead us to expect such a development. imposition is typical of language shift, especially rapid shift, that is accompanied by poor language acquisition, and in arguing against the norse hypothesis, peter trudgill (2011, 53) notes that the adstratal contact situation with old english and norse should not have resulted in poor acquisition assumed by mcwhorter. it should also be noted that simple imposition would not have resulted in the loss of the dep, since old norse had a dep just like that of old english, e.g. (9): (9) hrafnar skulu þer … slíta sjónir ór ravens shall thee:dat tear eyes:acc.pl out ‘ravens shall tear your eyes out’ (fj. 45,1 as cited in havers 1911, 268) if scandinavians who were learning old english had this construction in their language, there is no reason why they could not have used the construction in their english. however, it is certainly possible that in the early contact period before the norse speakers had such intensive contact with old english speakers, the speakers of both languages might have simplified their interactions by limiting themselves to the default possessive construction in both languages, namely the ip. then we could imagine that what did(n’t) happen to english? 27 old english speakers generally were exposed to a reduced frequency of deps and reduced that frequency further, with the construction eventually dying out in the heavily scandinavianized areas. this would be a type of internal simplification of english grammar. a problem arises, however, when we try to imagine how this norsified syntax supposedly spread to the dialects further south that became the basis for standard british english. there is no evidence whatsoever of such a spread of a dep-less grammar. with these considerations in mind, we turn to the corpus-based investigation of the dep and ip in early middle english. 6. the data the data presented here are a slightly modified subset of the data resulting from the corpus-based investigation of allen (2019). it is first necessary to describe the study briefly. since ips were the normal way of expressing possession generally in old english, as in other languages that also have deps, it would not be illuminating simply to compare the overall numbers of the two constructions. instead, the focus needed to be on collecting deps in the circumstances where they are most likely to be found, in order to see how the frequency of deps compared with that of ips in those circumstances. this focus of the study on body parts is justified by the fact that payne and barshi (1999) place body parts at the top of the hierarchy of accessibility of possessa to eps, as well as by initial observation of the texts. the list of body forms referring to body parts used in the investigation was drawn up using lexicon queries run on the york-helsinki parsed corpus of old english prose (ycoe, taylor et al. 2003), the york poetry corpus (pintzuk and plug 2001), and the penn-helsinki parsed corpus of middle english 2 (ppcme2, kroch and taylor 2000).7 since the deps found in searches using these words were nearly completely confined to descriptions of events with negative effects on the possessors, the next step was to compile a list of transitive verbs describing an action that would usually have a such a negative effect, such as cutting and stabbing. another list of intransitive verbs that described a negative state or action was used for subject possessa. queries were then run on the three corpora to collect examples of deps and ips. the results for object possessa in old english are given in table 3. table 3. ips and deps in old english texts: object possessa with highly affecting verbs. ip dep blended poetry total 11 7 0 ews 9 12 1 other early 0 2 1 9thc(oe) 22 13 3 general oe 45 11 1 lws 80 4 0 lws(late) 29 3 0 prose total 185 45 6 7 see the appendix for the texts included in the study. supplementary online resources used include the thesaurus of old english (roberts et al. 2017), an anglo-saxon dictionary online (bosworth et al. 2014), and the middle english dictionary (kurath and kuhn 1956). cynthia allen 28 some explanations are needed here. ip and dep have already been explained, but the rightmost column is for a third type not yet mentioned, which is traditionally seen as a blend between the two, exemplified in (10), where the dative leone is blended with the possessive his. (10) her romane leone þæm papan his tungon forcurfon & here romans leo:dat the:dat pope:dat his tongue:acc cut and his eagan astungon, his eyes:acc stabbed ‘in this year the romans cut out pope leo’s tongue and put out his eyes’ (cochrona-1,chrona_[plummer]:797.1.597) nothing more will be said about this construction here, except to record numbers. i will use dep to refer to the pure dep type with only a dative, but ep to cover both the pure dep construction and the blended type. the text types of the table also need some explanation. these types are groupings of the texts included in the ycoe according to time and dialect, where possible. it should also be mentioned that the study excluded some texts that are included in the ycoe but are based on editions completely or largely based on copies of much earlier compositions, and also some texts that were actually composed in the twelfth century, which should actually be treated as early middle english rather than late old english. the bulk of the old english texts are in a west saxon dialect, and the labels ews and lws stand for early and late west saxon, respectively. the ews group comprises only the west saxon texts that are agreed to have been written by the early tenth century, meaning that for the anglo-saxon chronicle, only the annals up to 924 are included. texts agreed to have been composed in early west saxon but found only in much later manuscripts are excluded. lws(late) means that the text was composed in late west saxon (primarily by ælfric or wulfstan), but is now found only in a manuscript from considerably later. the reason for this division of the late west saxon texts, as with the exclusions, is to try to keep the data as clean as possible. the label “poetry” is clear, but it should be mentioned that the york poetry corpus does not include all old english poetry and is not exhaustive for all the poems that it contains parts of. i have therefore supplemented it with my own reading to make the coverage of the larger poems complete. “other early” includes texts from up to the ews period but not in the west saxon dialect. “9thc(oe)” includes alfred’s laws as well as the leechbook and the two versions of gregory’s dialogues, which were presumably composed in the late ninth century in alfred’s court but are only found in manuscripts that are dated considerably later but before the third quarter of the eleventh century. “general oe” comprises two main types of writings: those that cannot be dated very precisely but are found in manuscripts from before the same deadline and some that can be dated precisely as late old english, but are mixed as to dialect, such as cnut’s laws.8 in some instances, i have split the ycoe files up and put the contents into different categories because the editions of the texts use different manuscripts. for example, part of the translation of bede’s ecclesiastical history goes into the other early category because it is from an early manuscript, while the remainder goes into the general oe 8 ycoe files colaw1cn.o3 and colaw2cn.o3. the ycoe gives the dialect of both these sets of laws as west saxon/x. what did(n’t) happen to english? 29 category because it is found only in later manuscripts. similarly, some of ælfric’s homilies found in pope’s (1967) edition of supplementary homilies go into lws, while i have put others in the lws(late) category. this may seem overly fussy, and the lag between composition and manuscript dates may not be important for the syntax under investigation, but such exclusions reduce as much noise in the data as possible. looking at the figures in table 3, we see that ips outnumbered deps except in the two earlier prose categories, where numbers are not overwhelming. note that ips were slightly more common than deps in the poetry. this is important because the syntax of this traditional germanic genre is the least likely to be affected by contact phenomena. there is a sharp decline in the incidence of deps in the late west saxon period. a caveat is necessary, however, because we are not dealing with random samples here. in particular, the lws texts are dominated by the works of ælfric. it is not impossible that ælfric’s preference for ips was a personal one that does not reflect a general decline in the late old english period. however, the decline in lws hardly comes out of the blue. as noted, the dep is less frequent than the ip with object possessa in all earlier text types except ews. dominant patterns tend to become more so, and it is plausible that the dep had become a marked construction in late old english and was reserved for particularly drastic effects. turning to subject possessa, the occurrence of ips, deps, and blended constructions is given in table 4. one salient fact is that subject possessa, in any construction, were less common than object possessa. the second thing to notice is that when compared to ips, deps were proportionally more common with subject possessa than with object possessa, all through the old english period, although there is again a big drop in the incidence of deps in lws. table 4. subject possessa with highly affecting verbs. ip dep blended poetry total 6 5 0 ews 4 4 0 other early 1 1 0 9thc(oe) 8 17 2 general oe 24 18 2 lws 39 5 1 lws(late) 2 4 2 oe prose total 78 49 7 note that deps actually outnumber ips in the lws(late) category. this is not likely to be because scribes who were copying works by ælfric or wulfstan were changing ips in the original into deps. it is more likely to be due to an accident of the nature of the examples. it so happens that three of the four deps in lws(late) and both blended examples are accounts of people’s bowels falling out, either as a punishment from god or the result of a disembowelment: (11) swa þæt him aeode ut eall his innoð togædere so that him:dat went out all his innards together ‘so that his bowels all fell out together’ (coaelhom,æhom_10:159.1490) cynthia allen 30 that is, five out of the six examples of eps found in the latest texts are possessors who have lost their bowels. one of ælfric’s few examples of a dep in his texts in my lws category is similar to (11). combining ælfric’s works in the two text categories, we find six examples describing people losing their bowels, and all six have a dative, in either a pure dep or a blend. this may or may not be significant, but it illustrates how a small number of examples may influence the picture; it is likely that eps were used more commonly in descriptions of some drastic effects than others. at any rate, the numbers in the lws(late) category are too small to give any evidence of a trend. summing up, we see that these tables suggest a marked decrease in the use of deps by late old english in the texts available to us from the dialect least likely to be influenced by norse. this decline cannot be due to norse contact. now let us consider the facts available from early middle english. unfortunately, after the norman conquest, original english texts become sparse until the thirteenth century. “original texts” refers to texts composed for the first time in english. texts written in english are not scarce in the twelfth century, but with a few precious exceptions, they are copies or adaptations of texts composed in the old english period. it is possible that these scribes might not have updated syntax that was a bit old-fashioned but still possible and perfectly comprehensible. for this reason, apart from a few comments on later texts, this study is restricted to texts in the ppcme2 assigned to their m1 period, 1150-1250 and which are known or generally thought to have been composed after the middle of the eleventh century; it does not cover texts designated by the ppcme2 as mx1. the results are set out in table 5. in this table, ips are only reported for highly affecting verbs; deps were only found with such verbs in these texts.9 the texts are separated into a broad division between more and less scandinavianized dialects (northern and eastern versus southern and western, respectively). the reason for this is that, as mcwhorter mentions, the norse hypothesis predicts that the dep would last longest in the least scandinavianized areas. unfortunately, texts from the north and northeast are sparse in the earliest middle english period. table 5. deps (all) vs. ips (highly affecting verbs only), body words, m1 period. 9 although it is no simple matter to determine whether these texts all retained a distinct dative case category, these eps are treated as dative here because they continue to appear in the positions of eps in old english. affected obj ip dep blended total affected subj ip dat blended total cmancriw-1.m1 4 2 1 7 cmancriw-1.m1 1 0 0 1 cmancriw-2.m1 1 0 0 1 cmancriw-2.m1 3 0 0 3 cmhali.m1 2 0 0 2 cmhali.m1 6 0 1 7 cmjulia.m1 2 2 0 4 cmjulia.m1 2 0 0 2 cmkathe.m1 5 2 0 7 cmkathe.m1 0 0 0 0 cmkentho.m1 1 0 0 1 cmkentho.m1 0 0 0 0 cmlamb1.m1 0 0 0 0 cmlamb1.m1 0 0 0 0 cmmarga.m1 5 1 0 6 cmmarga.m1 5 0 0 5 cmsawles.m1 0 2 0 2 cmsawles.m1 0 0 0 0 cmvices1.m1 1 0 0 1 cmvices1.m1 1 0 0 1 total south 21 9 1 31 total south 18 0 1 19 cmorm.po.m1 6 0 1 7 cmorm.po.m1 1 1 0 2 what did(n’t) happen to english? 31 at first glance, the prediction that deps have nearly disappeared in the scandinavianized areas seems to hold. in the ppcme2 sample (53,182 words) of the ormulum of around 1150, which can be precisely located to bourne, south lincolnshire, the queries only found one example of a pure dep: (12) & all himm wærenn fet & þeos tobollenn & toblawenn. and all him were feet and thighs puffed.up and swollen ‘and his feet and thighs were all puffed up and swollen’ (cmorm,i,280.2293) there is also a blended example, not presented here. but this small number of eps tells us nothing about the frequency of ips and deps in the ormulum, because the combination of highly affecting verbs and body parts was very small. the continuations of the peterborough chronicle yield one subject possessum dep and no ips. so we cannot say that eps are not in a minority in this small sample, and example (12) does not seem like a fixed expression. turning to non-scandinavianized areas, the texts that offer the largest number of relevant examples are from the southwest midlands dialect ab; this is due not only to the much larger size of the corpus in this dialect but also to the fact that several of the texts are martyrologies. here, we have eleven examples of eps, when we combine the pure dep and the blended construction, and there can be little doubt that deps had some productivity. two examples are given in (13) and (14): (13) ha duluen me þe fet & þe honden they dug me the feet and the hands ‘they dug into my feet and hands’ (cmancriw-1,ii.215.3101) (14) & swipte hire of þt heaued and swept her off the head ‘and swept her head off’ (cmkathe,52.533) with subject possessa, however, a decline from old english is very apparent. while eps were used at a higher rate with subject possessa (42.65 per cent) than with object possessa (21.61 per cent) in old english prose overall, they are used in only 5.26 percent of the southern m1 examples. there is also a striking disparity between the object and subject possessa in m1—if eps were used for object and subject possessa, we would expect four examples of eps with subject possessa.10 this disparity goes against the norse hypothesis—why should norse speakers be able to learn to use deps with objects and not with subjects? a differential decline of this sort seems more consistent with a continuation of the reduced popularity of the dep with subject possessa already evident 10 the numbers are small but large enough for a fisher’s exact test, which yields a p-value of 0.03515, meaning that we can reject the hypothesis that the difference is due to chance. cmpeterb.m1 0 0 0 0 cmpeterb.m1 0 1 0 1 total north 6 0 1 7 total north 1 2 1 3 cynthia allen 32 within the old english period. a plausible explanation for the faster decline of deps with subject possessa than with object possessa comes from the fact that early old english word order was more flexible in response to pragmatic conditions than was true later. with subject possessa, a dative argument is typically placed at the front of the sentence, and such flexibility was greatly reduced by the early middle english period. while the topicalization of contrastive objects has remained into present day english, the fronting of non-contrasting objects was greatly reduced in the dialect ab texts (allen 1995, 247), and this may have led to less frequent sentence-initial dative possessors. in contrast, with object possessa, both external and internal possessors were in positions typical of objects, making it possible to use the dep to emphasise the effect on the possessor without resorting to unusual word order. whatever the explanation for the disparity between subject and object possessa deps, by the m2 period (1250-1350), deps of subject and object body parts are limited to fixed expressions in the ppcme2 texts. although it is not possible to be certain exactly how quickly eps died out in english, there is no evidence whatsoever that their loss had any relationship to the amount of contact with norse in a given dialect.11 finally, it is difficult to explain the mechanics of how this supposedly northern and north midlands syntactic innovation would have spread south into standard english. so one of the things that seems not to have happened to english is that contact with norse speakers triggered the loss of eps in english. 7. celtic we turn now to contact with celtic speakers as a possible explanation for the disappearance of the dep. the idea that a celtic substratum had profound effects on old english grammar is not a new one, and the specific suggestion that the sole use of the ip in english is due to celtic influence goes back as far as pokorny (1927, 253). the reason why celtic influence has some plausibility for this development is that the brythonic celtic languages welsh and breton lack deps, using only ips. however, until this century the celtic hypothesis did not really enter the linguistic mainstream, mainly because of the paucity of celtic loanwords in the old english period and also because of the general belief that the celts mostly fled or were wiped out during the anglo-saxon invasion, leaving their numbers too few to affect english. more recent evidence points to a much greater celtic presence in england and it is also now better understood that a conquered population forced to shift to a new language is likely to impose much of their grammar but unlikely to bring much vocabulary into their new language. publications including by tristram (2004), filppula and associates (filppula, klemola, and paulasto 2008; filppula, klemola, and pitkänen 2002) and lutz (2009, 2011) have presented a case for the celtic hypothesis that at least deserves serious 11 it is also worth mentioning that when a text appears in versions in different dialects, we might expect, by the norse hypothesis, that the more northern versions would have ips where southern versions have deps. this does not seem to be the case. for example, the ancrene riwle in the ppcme2 is from the southwest midlands manuscript cotton cleopatra c vi, but a more northerly version is found in cotton titus d xviii, which laeme identifies as being penned in a northwest midlands dialect. as indicated in 5 the southwest midlands version found in the ppcme2 has three examples of eps (one of which is presented in (13)). the titus text, which is not included in the ppcme2 but was edited by mack (1963) has the same syntax in its version of all three examples. what did(n’t) happen to english? 33 attention. there is no single version of the celtic hypothesis, but whatever version is adopted, the loss of the dep is one of the grammatical changes that adherents of this hypothesis point to as at least possibly caused by celtic influence. one apparent problem for the celtic hypothesis generally is that most of the syntactic changes that are attributed to celtic contact only show up in middle english, much later than we might expect. but a possible counter to this objection has been around for a long time. tolkien (1963, 184) observed that writing was mainly learned or aristocratic and it is not until the old english period is over that we get “a glimpse of what is going on beneath the cultivated surface”. more recently, contemporary adherents of the celtic hypothesis generally adopt the idea that celticisms were suppressed in old english writing because this was controlled by an anglo-saxon elite that suppressed a “brittonic” english that arose through language shift and was spoken by the majority of the population. when the norman invasion smashed the west saxon standard, early middle english scribes were free to write more as they spoke. i will refer to this idea as the “suppression hypothesis”. the contact scenario that fits best with this hypothesis is rapid language shift by celtic speakers who had poor access to english as they were acquiring their new language. the suppression hypothesis warrants serious consideration, not least because it poses a challenge to the study of syntactic change in early middle english that the norse hypothesis does not. we can argue about whether a particular syntactic change was caused by contact with norse, but no one imagines that such influence seriously distorts what is found in the old english texts. with the brittonic english suppression hypothesis, however, we can no longer assume that syntactic changes found in early middle english reflect changes made to their grammars by language learners, as is typically done in generative grammar, because the assumption is that the early middle english texts do not continue the history of the language spoken in the old english period, but represent an entirely new language. the suppression hypothesis as applied to possessive constructions goes like this: the general populace used only ips, and this had become the old english of all but a small number of germanic elites. but these elites controlled the production of texts, resulting in the use of deps in writing. with the norman invasion, the dep disappeared with the rest of the west saxon standard. the most detailed presentation of this idea is by vennemann (2002), who comments that his impression is that the “genitival’ construction” (that is, the ip), is “relatively rare” in “earlier old english”. he assumes that the dep was the usual germanic construction, and his explanation for why the ip sometimes showed up in old english writing at all is that it occasionally slipped through because of social mobility in the church (2002, 220). in other words, vennemann is assuming that the celts imposed their grammar on the english they learned, since he is assuming, incorrectly as we have seen, that the more purely germanic dep was the dominant construction with affected possessors. vennemann also has to assume that the ip would be a stigmatised celticism. however, there is no reason why this should be. as has been discussed, the variation between deps and ips in the indo-european languages, including the early germanic languages generally, is ancient. this means that the ip expressing affected possessors was in a very different category from some other constructions that have been proposed as due to celtic influence, for example periphrastic do. supposing that celts had imposed something like periphrastic do on their old english, it would have stuck out as a celticism, and might well have been suppressed by a germanic-controlled scribal cynthia allen 34 tradition. however, if a scribe who spoke a brittonic english used only ips, that would hardly be likely to be noticed and “corrected”. to reiterate, tables 3 and 4 prove that the ip was clearly not suppressed in old english, even in poetry, the most germanic of genres, or in the works of ælfric, who made corrections on the manuscripts from his scriptorium to improve the consistency of case marking (kitson 1993, 5). it is also clear that the dep did not simply disappear from the scene once the west saxon standard was no longer enforced, since it was apparently reasonably productive with object possessa in dialect ab. the continued presence of the dep in dialect ab much later than expected by the suppression hypothesis is particularly problematic for the celtic hypothesis, given the evidence that is available for the contact situation in the west midlands. gelling (1992, 70), on the basis of the scarcity of celtic place names in this area generally, concludes that welsh speech must have disappeared in most of this area by the end of the ninth century. if that is correct, we are looking at a fairly rapid language shift in the west midlands generally, but gelling points to herefordshire, the area long associated with dialect ab, as being exceptional and argues for the continuation of welsh in this area all through the anglo-saxon period. this suggests a more gradual shift to english in this dialect area, but whether the shift was gradual or sudden, there is no reason to suppose that the ab scribes, long freed from any shackles of the west saxon standard, did not represent the language of the general populace, insofar as written language ever represents spoken language, in the use of deps. so it seems that another of the things that did not happen to english is that celtic learners of old english simply failed to learn the dep and imposed their celtic possessive construction on spoken old english. however, there is more than one way that celtic speakers might have led to the ultimate demise of the dep. markku filppula includes the loss of the dep in his 2008 discussion of grammatical effects of contact with celtic on english. like vennemann, filppula incorrectly states that the dep was the prevailing construction in earlier english. unlike vennemann, however, he concludes that there is no timing problem for the celtic hypothesis to overcome in this instance. he does not exclude the possibility of “mutually reinforcing adstratal influences” in the centuries following initial contact, leading to the unusualness of both languages compared with other european languages (2008, 39). it is not implausible that celtic speakers shifting to old english did not simply fail to learn the construction, but affected old english by reducing its range. how might this happen? these people may well have picked up on the fact that the dep was a marked, special use construction, with the result that in their english they reserved it for the situations that were at the core of its use, namely with affected possessors. since the effect on a possessor that was most likely to call for empathy with the possessor was a negative one, they would have restricted the range of deps to negatively affected possessors. if the english of these speakers affected the wider community, and made its way into writing, it could account for the absence of deps representing beneficially affected possessors in most of the texts. this reduced range would be the beginning of the end for deps. some sort of influence of celtic on possessor constructions like this seems plausible, although not provable. what did(n’t) happen to english? 35 8. final observations and conclusions in the twenty years elapsing between the publication of both mcwhorter’s and vennemann’s papers, there has been an explosion in the tools linguists have available for studying the history of english and related languages. this article has attempted to illustrate by way of a case study that a picture painted with broad brush strokes about what happened in english may look appealing when viewed from a distance, but serious flaws with the picture may become apparent when we take the closer look that is made possible with the use of digital corpora. specifically, it has focused on how two strikingly different claims about what brought about the disappearance of one construction in english fare in the face of more detailed empirical data. the evidence leads to the conclusion that we can discard the idea that it was contact with norse that led to the loss of this construction. the idea that contact with celtic played some sort of role comes out looking more plausible, but it is clear that this role was not simply the imposition of celtic grammar on old english in the course of language shift. this case study says nothing about the other losses of germanic grammar that involve simplification, other than to say that they all need closer scrutiny. to understand what happened to english, we also need further research on what happened in other germanic languages, especially non-standard dialects. note that mcwhorter’s list of features is only for codified varieties of the languages in his table. we need to look at non-literary dialects of these languages to see whether they have undergone some changes similar to those mcwhorter listed as making english unique in the family. a case in point is the fact that mcwhorter’s classification of dutch as a language that has retained eps is open to challenge. different scholars have given different answers about the grammaticality of eps in dutch; for example, vandeweghe (1987) found that the construction was not productive with subject and object possessa. one problem is how productive a construction has to be before we classify it as one that is generally grammatical rather than one that is limited to some fixed expressions. more recent and extensive research into dutch dialects by scholten (2018) shows that while the dep can be considered productive in some dialects, it is so limited in southern and western dialects that it can be said to have been lost to at least as great an extent as it apparently was in early middle english. interestingly, scholten found that the dialects where the dep has the greatest productivity are those in contact with german. in the case of dutch, contact with a language that makes substantial use of deps has led to a retention of a construction inherited from germanic in some dialects in contrast to a loss of it in dialects with less contact of this sort. what are we to make of the dutch dialects where the construction has diminished? i am not aware of any suggested contact explanation for the disinclination to use the dep in flemish,12 and neither norse nor celtic explanations seem plausible. but what is clear enough is that no variety of any germanic language can be assumed to reflect exactly the use of eps in an earlier common germanic stage. this is presumably also true of the other constructions on mcwhorter’s list. in short, to understand what happened to english, we need to know more about what happened to related languages. 12 according to dankert and haegeman (2013), an ep construction does exist in colloquial west flemish; however, it does not use a determiner, but requires a possessive pronoun, similar to the “blended” construction in oe. i view west flemish therefore as having lost the dep. cynthia allen 36 references ahlgren, arthur. 1946. on the use of the definite article with ‘nouns of possession’ in english. uppsala: appelbergs boktryckeriaktiebolag. allen, cynthia l. 1995. case-marking and reanalysis: grammatical relations from old to early modern english. oxford: clarendon. allen, cynthia l. 2019. dative external possessors in early english. oxford: oxford university press. bosworth, joseph, t. northcote toller, sean christ, and ondřej tichy. 2014. an anglosaxon dictionary online. prague: faculty of arts, charles university. coetsem, frans van. 1995. “outlining a model of the transmission phenomenon in language contact.” leuvense bijdragen 84: 63–85. coetsem, frans van. 2000. a general and unified theory of the transmission process in language contact. heidelberg: winter. cole, marcelle. 2018. “a native origin for present-day english they, their, them.” diachronica 35: 165–209. dance, richard. 2003. words derived from old norse in early middle english: studies in the vocabulary of the south-west midland texts. tempe, arizona: arizona center for medieval and renaissance studies. dankert, lieven, and liliane haegeman. 2013. “multiple subjects in flemish: the external possessor.” in irish network in formal linguistics, proceedings, edited by alison henry, catrin s. rhys, and iosad pavel, 2–21. newcastle upon tyne: cambridge scholars publishing. donaldson, bruce. 1994. “afrikaans.” in the germanic languages, edited by ekkehard könig, and johan van der auwera, 478–504. london and new york: routledge. filppula, markku. 2008. “the linguistic outcomes of the early contact.” in markku filppula et al., 24–132. new york: routledge. filppula, markku, juhani klemola, and heli paulasto. 2008. english and celtic in contact. new york: routledge. filppula, markku, juhani klemola, and heli pitkänen, eds. 2002. the celtic roots of english. joensuu, finland: university of joensuu, faculty of humanities. gelling, margaret. 1992. the west midlands in the early middle ages. leicester: leicester university press. gordon, e.v., and a.r. taylor. 1957. an introduction to old norse, 2nd edn. oxford: clarendon press. haspelmath, martin. 1999. “external possession in a european areal perspective.” in external possession, edited by doris l. payne, and immanuel barshi, 109–35. amsterdam and philadelphia: benjamins. havers, wilhelm. 1911. untersuchungen zur kasussyntax der indogermanischen sprachen. strassburg: karl j. trübner. kershaw, jane, and ellen c. røyrvik. 2016. “the ‘people of the british isles’ project and viking settlement in england.” antiquity 90: 1670–680. kitson, peter. 1993. “geographical variation in old english prepositions and the location of ælfric's and other literary dialects.” english studies 74: 1–50. kroch, anthony, and ann taylor. 2000. the penn-helsinki parsed corpus of middle english 2. york: department of language and linguistic science, university of york. kurath, hans, and sherman kuhn, eds. 1956. middle english dictionary. ann arbor: university of michigan press. what did(n’t) happen to english? 37 kytö, merja. 1996. manual to the diachronic part of the helsinki corpus of english texts, 3 edn. helsinki: department of english, university of helsinki. laing, margaret. 2013–. “a linguistic atlas of early middle english, 1150–1325, version 3.2.” accessed july 20, 2023. http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme2/laeme2.html. lee-schoenfeld, vera. 2006. “german possessor datives: raised and affected.” journal of comparative germanic linguistics 9: 101–42. lødrup, helge. 2019. “the accusative external possessor with norwegian unergatives.” argumentum 15: 561–74. lutz, angelika. 2009. “celtic influence on old english and west germanic.” english language and linguistics 13: 227–49. lutz, angelika. 2011. “why is west-saxon english different from old saxon?” in anglosaxon england and the continent, edited by hans sauer, and johanna story, 113– 38. tempe: arizona center for medieval and renaissance studies. mack, frances m., ed. 1963. the english text of the ancrene riwle edited from cotton ms titus d. xviii (early english text society 252). london: oxford university press. mcwhorter, john. 2002. “what happened to english?” diachronica 19: 217–72. mcwhorter, john. 2009. “what else happened to english? a brief for the celtic hypothesis.” english language and linguistics 13 (2): 163–91. payne, doris l., and immanuel barshi. 1999. “external possession: what, where, how, and why.” in external possession, edited by doris l. payne, and immanuel barshi, 3–29. amsterdam and philadelphia: benjamins. pintzuk, susan, and leendert plug. 2001. “the york-helsinki parsed corpus of old english poetry.” accessed july 20, 2023. https://wwwusers.york.ac.uk/~lang18/pcorpus.html. pokorny, julius. 1927. “das nicht-indogermanische substrat im irischen.” zeitschrift für celtische philologie 16: 95–144, 231–66, 363–94. pope, john collins, ed. 1967. homilies of ælfric: a supplementary collection (early english text society 259). london: oxford university press. roberts, jane, christian kay, and lynne grundy. 2017. “a thesaurus of old english.” accessed july 20, 2023. http://oldenglishthesaurus.arts.gla.ac.uk/. scholten, jolien. 2018. the ins and outs of external possession: a micro-comparative perspective. utrecht: lot. taylor, ann, anthony warner, susan pintzuk, and frank beths. 2003. “the yorktoronto-helsinki parsed corpus of old english prose (ycoe).” york: department of linguistics, university of york. accessed july 20, 2023. http://wwwusers.york.ac.uk/~lang22/ycoehome1.htm. tolkien, j. r. r. 1963. “english and welsh.” in angles and britons. the o’donnell lectures, edited by henry lewis, 1–41. cardiff: university of wales press. tristram, hildegard. 2004. “diglossia in anglo-saxon england, or what was spoken old english like?” studia anglica posnaniensia 40: 87–110. trudgill, peter. 2011. sociolinguistic typology: social determinants of linguistic complexity. oxford and new york: oxford university press. vandeweghe, willy. 1987. “the possessive dative in dutch: syntactic reanalysis and predicate formation.” in ins and outs of predication, edited by johan van der auwera, and louis goossens, 137–51. dordrecht: foris. vennemann, theo. 2002. “on the rise of ‘celtic’ syntax in middle english.” in middle english from tongue to text: selected papers from the third international cynthia allen 38 conference on middle english: language and text, held at dublin, ireland, 1-4 july, edited by peter j. lucas, and angela m. lucas, 205–34. bern: peter lang. appendix. note on texts used. information on the presumed dates and dialects of all texts included in the ycoe can be found at https://www-users.york.ac.uk/~lang22/ycoe/info/ycoetextinfo.htm. the ycoe’s information is based on that given in the manual to the helsinki corpus compiled by kytö (1996). this manual is available at http://korpus.uib.no/icame/manuals/hc/index.htm. the excluded west saxon texts mentioned in section 6 are coboetho2.psd, colawine.ox2.psd, coprefsolilo.psd, and cosolil.psd. the ycoe texts excluded as composed later than my cut-off date of the third quarter of the eleventh century or from editions completely or substantially based on manuscripts dating from the twelfth century are cochrone.o34, coleofri.o4, comargac.o34, coneot, conicoda, and covinsal. similar-looking examples occurring in my data when the ycoe texts present different versions of the same basic text have only been counted once. information on the texts in the york poetry corpus it to be found at https://wwwusers.york.ac.uk/~lang18/ptext-list.html. information about the ppcme texts can be found at https://www.ling.upenn.edu/histcorpora/ppcme2-release-4/index.html. for further philological discussion of the texts, see appendix a of allen (2019). selim12.doc rubén valdés miyares, selim 12 (2003-2004): 143—159 sturdy stories: medieval narrative into popular ballad1 some medieval english romances, lays and tales have close corresponding versions in popular and broadside balladry. this paper aims to study such correspondences in order to characterise the transformation of medieval literature into the popular texts of ballads. we shall analyse seven examples, then consider some remarkable cases that were excluded from our analysis (stories by chaucer, langland, the gawain-poet and malory that were turned into minstrel ballads, but did not survive in the tradition of popular ballads), and finally generalise some characteristics which, taken together, suggest how the medieval texts were transformed into postmedieval popular culture.2 our seven ballads with indisputable medieval analogues are all represented in child’s english and scottish popular ballads:3 “king orfeo” [19], “fair annie” [62], “hynd horn” [17], “thomas the rhymer” [37], “sir hugh” [155], “child waters” and “king henry.” 1 an early version of this work was presented at the i international conference on popular texts, almagro, universidad de castilla la mancha, 1998. it is also partly based on the research done for three previous articles in the selim journal (see references section), extending their conclusions to a wider field. 2 a ground-breaking article which explains why medieval literary scholars have tended to leave the study of the ballad to folklorists and musicologists, while arguing a strong case in favour of their return to it is green’s, which is a fitting part of a tribute to gray (1989), as he is the great exception to that rule, together with knight (1993). green (1997: 179) admits that, while an 18th popular ballad offers little as a witness to reconstruct a related medieval romance, it nevertheless has, for the student of medieval culture, a “potential for preserving clues, however opaque and dispersed, to unofficial attitudes and beliefs that might otherwise have disappeared from view.” 3 the number that child assigned to each ballad is cited in square brackets. rubén valdés miyares 144 though child’s editing criteria have been criticised in a number of ways,4 some of his textual readings need revision, and we should bear in mind significant variants he did not include in his collection, to which a few ballads might also be added; his work remains the most general source to approach the medieval roots of popular ballads.5 he duly summarised likely sources, together with their european, particularly scandinavian analogues, in his introduction to each ballad, providing us with the starting point for the general study of ballad development. child, however, never defined theoretically what he meant by a ballad, let alone what medieval texts were more likely to become popular ballads. the latter is also true even of fowler, whose history of the ballad remains the standard text of its kind. child and fowler’s identification of ballad sources has not been challenged by later scholarship in a definite way, and it is here assumed to be generally correct. we will therefore refer to the development of each of those seven ballads in an attempt to find out which aspects of the medieval stories made them succeed later as ballads. the ballad of “king orfeo” was collected from oral tradition in the shetlands between the 1880s and the 1920s. but the story it tells may be traced back to the ancient myth of orpheus by means of the scottish romance of king orphius, the lay of sir orfeo and a lost twelfth-century lai d’orphey, in addition to boethius’ rendering of the classical myth, the old english translation of boethius in alfred’s day, and a number of other influences (friedman 146-210). the question is why this story should prove so enduring. its appeal probably derives from its virtually timeless theme of tragic loss and marvellous recovery through artistic skill and sensitivity,6 a 4 the main academic as well as the ideological objections to child’s work are discussed by harker 1985: 101-20. 5 there is now a re-edition of child’s english and scottish popular ballads underway (the first of its five volumes came out in 2002) corrected and prepared by mark heiman and laura saxton heiman for loomis house press. this is evidence of the fact that child’s work has not been totally superseded, and perhaps of a renewed interest in ballad scholarship. another symptom is lyle, e. et al. 2002. the song repertoire of amelia and jane harris. the scottish text society, edinburgh, which completes and revises a small part of child’s work. 6 the barest version of “king orfeo” to our knowledge, collected from the singing of john stickle in baltasound, unst, april 28, 1947, is just a dozen lines long and its story is extremely eroded, but it still contains the idea of the music "which might a made a sick heart heal". see bronson, vol. 1, p. 75: "sir orfeo", 1. sturdy stories: medieval narrative into popular ballad 145 poetic subject that could be easily transformed from a classical into a medieval frame of mind (garcía gual). in addition, the lay of sir orfeo had a typical folktale structure, as we have tried to show elsewhere (valdés miyares 1993), which secured its transmission and survival beyond the middle ages. several other articles have demonstrated the usefulness of vladimir propp’s morphology (1985) in baring the folktale form of popular ballads (beatie 1978; buchan 1991; valdés miyares 1998). cutting out rhetoric, poetic ornamentation, and descriptive detail, the sturdy structure of the story allowed it to survive. our next case in point has similar medieval roots, being also traceable both to the twelfth-century anglo-norman context and to the auchinleck manuscript (c. 1330). the ballad of “fair annie” is related to mary de france’s lai le freine as well as to the fourteenth-century english version known by the same name. besides the phonic proximity of french “freine” and english “faire-annie”, lay and ballad share the old motif of the twins separated at birth (cf. the spanish “romance de espinelo”), and the longsuffering mistress who even has to prepare the bridal bed for her lord/lover’s wife, who turns out to be the heroine’s own sister. the story is somewhat related to that of griselda, which we shall be discussing below. besides, the structural and thematic relations between the various tales and ballads in this tradition has been dealt with in another article (valdés miyares 1998). suffice it to say now that the similarity between the lai le freine and “fair annie” is significant, since the ballad retains all the drama and emotion that first made the lay popular. the narrow narrative scope of the lays made their transformation into ballads a direct and somewhat natural process. both genres also shared a thematic affinity, since many lays dealt with stories of (often tragic) love and magic. the medieval versions of our next two examples are not brief lays like the former two, but extended romances, which therefore appear severely reduced in the ballads. the first of these romances demands a more detailed attention, not least because its relation to the ballads has seldom been analysed. king horn (c. 1250) is not only reputed to be the oldest english romance, but it has also been said to gather all archetypal-romance motifs compressed to their essentials (sands 15), which makes its further reduction to the limits of a particularly short ballad a feat of poetic synthesis. the twenty-four or so rubén valdés miyares 146 episodes that might be distinguished in the romance are reduced to three in the ballad of “hynd horn”, and stripped of all detail. in the various ballad versions, always shorter than 70 lines, the action tends to be limited to three episodes: 1) horn’s exile with his lady’s ring, 2) his return dressed up as a beggar, and 3) his recognition at his lady’s wedding by dropping the ring into a glass. for example, a variant [child 17c] noted down by motherwell in 1825 from the singing of agnes lyle, in spite of being very brief, includes a great deal of formulaic repetition, particularly in the dramatic exchange of riches for rags between hyn horn and the beggar, which suggests that the story might originally have been spread by humble pedlars rather than courtly minstrels, and that it might have been influenced by other ballads about beggars or gypsies eloping with young ladies. the feudal context of land rule, fealty and betrayal, combat and marriage treaties, which is so carefully integrated in the romance plot, is replaced by an exclusive attention to the most emotive circumstances, while the many feudal characters (horn’s brother, kings, retainers, the steward, irish knights, etc.) are reduced to the main couple and the beggar (their messenger) of whom horn borrows his disguise; the lady’s father and her bridegroom are scarcely mentioned. thus the narrative concentrates on what can be regarded as the emotional core of the story: the pathos of separation, the adventure of rescue at the wedding, and the happy denouement. the ring’s magic quality, which in the romance just has the knightly virtue of freeing the hero from fear in combat by reminding him of his lady, is greatly enhanced, since in the ballad its precious stones, by turning pale, warn horn of the risk of losing her, perhaps replacing the romance’s foreboding dreams. furthermore, in the ballad she gives him another gift, a wand, which is in fact a sceptre to rule over scotland, or, in another version not collected by child, “a birdie sweet singin” which flew home “as soon as your love loves a man.”7 the blowing of the horn to summon troops and the drinking horn of the romance, which were probably related to the hero’s name, appear in some variants of the 7 see buchan, d. ed.. 1973: 143-44, stanzas 7-12. sturdy stories: medieval narrative into popular ballad 147 ballad, but the first (when mentioned) is called “trumpet”, and the drinking horn, though remaining essential as a narrative function in all versions, is a “glass”, “cup”, or “can.”8 the heroine rymenhild, when she has a proper name at all in the ballads, is known more popularly as “jean(ie).” the other popular ballad which is related to a comparatively much longer and complex romance is “thomas the rhymer”, but whether it actually originated in the romance of thomas of erceldoune, as editors like child or murray usually took for granted, was seriously questioned by lyle. the doubt may of course be extended to all the cases under our scrutiny. but the fact that the ballads perhaps stem from versions of their story which were very different from the extant medieval texts, and that some old version of the ballad, possibly a lay, may have been the origin of the fifteenth-century thomas of erceldoune, rather than the other way round, should not deter us from comparing the medieval romance to the cognate ballad, even if there is no written evidence of the latter before the eighteenth century. besides the date, the romance has a better claim to antiquity because it includes many more details of the old legend on which the ballad also seems to be based.9 thomas of erceldoune is supposed to have lived in the scottish borders in the thirteenth century, and was well-known as a prophet by the time john barbour mentioned him in the bruce (c. 1375, book ii, lines 86-90). the romance is structured in three fits: the first narrates thomas’ encounter with a queen of fairy and his journey into her land, and the other two present the historical prophecies he made through the gift he got in the land of fairy. the ballad, as usual, excises the whole ornamental descriptio, as well as some circumstances like the lady’s transformation into a loathly dame, and it finishes when thomas leaves fairyland having obtained his “tongue that can never lie.” the story survived as a ballad well into the nineteenth century by 8 this would be a variant of the recognition function (q) in vladimir propp’s morphology of the folktale, and it is indeed a common motif in folktales. see thompson 1977: 127. 9 with such arcane subjects and motifs as those of thomas of erceldoune and “thomas the rhymer” it is always possible to produce different interpretations. for example, they have been read as based on the life in some monastic house in the eildon area in the thirteenth century by moffat, b. 1988: true thomas: the strange case of thomas the rhymer. cencrastus, 31: 29-36. alternatively, it can be studied within a broader mythological, rather than historical, background, as in valdés miyares, r. 2002: sir gawain and the great goddess. english studies: a journal of english language and literature. 83.3: 185-206. rubén valdés miyares 148 concentrating on the romantic and magic episode of the encounter with an otherworldly lady who becomes the hero’s guide, and doing without the obscure prophetic element, which, however, continued an independent life of its own in other sorts of publications of various prophecies attributed to thomas (see murray’s appendixes). as in the former case, the connection between chaucer’s prioress’ tale and “sir hugh, or the jew’s daughter” may be that both were based on the same legend, rather than the ballad being based on the medieval tale. the legend of a boy who was killed by the jews of lincoln might date back to the late twelfth century, and its origins may be assumed to be prior to the expulsion of the jews from england in 1290, though chaucer’s version was composed much later, possibly on the occasion of richard ii’ visit to that city in 1387. the anti-semitic tale was widespread in medieval europe, sometimes involving a miracle of the virgin, who makes the murdered child accuse the jews. its revival in ballad form proves the continuity of such prejudice in the modern age. three parts may be distinguished in the prioress’ tale: 1) the child is killed in the jewish quarter of an asian town, for singing a hymn to the virgin; 2) his mother prays to find him, which she does when they hear him singing from his grave, and, 3) after murderers are quartered and hanged, at his own funeral the child explains the miracle, and the narrator refers to hugh of lincoln as an analogous story (“o younge hugh of lyncoln, slayn also / with cursed jewes ... / ... / preye eek for us ...”, the prioress tale, in the riverside chaucer, lines 684-687). in this case, apparently, the ballad derives more directly from the legend, since the ballad hero is called “hugh” (whereas in chaucer’s tale he remains unnamed), and sometimes associated with lincoln.10 three parts may also be separated in the ballad, though their contents differ from the medieval tale: 10 in mrs brown of falkland’s version [child 155a] the location is lincoln, though she, or the women who handed down the song to her, probably knew the legend independently from the ballad, and might have introduced the name of the town in her own rendering of the ballad text. in the percy folio version [child 155b], over sturdy stories: medieval narrative into popular ballad 149 1) the murder acquires sexual and misogynist connotations from the biblical genesis, in addition to the anti-semitic, as the child is tempted by a jewish girl with an apple to enter the garden of the jew’s castle, and then murdered in a ritualistic, even cannibalistic form. 2) the second part is more similar to the prioress’ tale: the mother looks for the child, until he calls her from the well where his body had been thrown. 3) finally, the child tells his mother to fetch his winding sheet and bury him, for he is dead. in mrs brown of falkland’s version, which child privileged as his “a” variant, there is a suspiciously contrived closing stanza which stresses the eerie nature of the event by adding other ghostly occurrences following on dead hugh’s words in “merry lincoln”, such as “bells rung without men’s hands” and “books read without men’s tongue.”11 thus in the ballad the pious element becomes irrelevant, as the supernatural events acquire a rather superstitious or neo-gothic quality. the virgin is only mentioned in some variants, and merely because hugh is thrown into “our lady’s draw well” [child 155a]. this is hardly surprising, since protestantism had long prevailed in england when the ballad was copied down, and the marian cult was not very popular there (indeed, mrs brown was married to a presbyterian minister). it is more remarkable that the murder should not be punished in the ballad. thus the religious legend of a martyr and divine retribution was turned into a horror story of crime and a revenant, probably more chauvinistic but with no explicit doctrinal purpose. our last two examples of medieval stories turned into ballads are also represented in the canterbury tales. both of them also have marked folktale features. the story of patient griselda on which chaucer based the clerk’s tale came from written sources, such as the final story of boccaccio´s one century earlier, the setting is called “mirry-land toune”, which as bishop thomas percy suggested, may be a corrupiton of “merry lincoln”. cited by fowler 1968: 259. 11 though child used mrs brown as his most reliable informant, her variants providing him with most of the a texts of his “popular” ballads, she is easily suspect of introducing literary influences from her own readings in her rendering of ballad texts, for example the gothic touch in her “sir hugh”. fowler 1968: 266. rubén valdés miyares 150 decameron and a close french translation of petrarch’s latin version of it in epistola seniles. yet it appears to keep the form of the original folktale (bettridge & utley). in english balladry it is possible to find two kinds of versions, the broadsides of “patient grissel”, and a far freer version circulated in oral variants, often known as “child waters.” the written versions, both chaucer’s and the broadsides, fall into five parts: 1) description of walter and his agreement with his subjects to marry; 2) description of griselde, her pledge of obedience to him as her social superior and husband, and their wedding; parts 3) and 4) tell how walter tests her patience by kidnapping the daughter and son she had of him, pretending he has killed them, and finally 5) griselde herself is cast off and must act as a servant at walter’s new wedding to a rich lady. as the heroine reacts with her proverbial patience even to that ultimate humiliation, he decides to put an end to her ordeals. this last part includes the family’s denouement and is similar to the ballad of “fair annie”, though the new bride turns out to be griselde’s own daughter, not her sister; besides, the tale lacks the motif of the twins separated at birth, and its drama is more centred on the morganatic wedding: the heroine’s predicament in marrying her feudal lord.12 in “child waters” ellen also suffers from social inequality but of a more general kind: she is pregnant of him and elopes with him in the hope that he will care for her and the infant, but child waters tests her patience nearly as cruelly as walter did, by treating her as his footman and making her run (on foot and in her advanced state of pregnancy) after him, who is riding a horse, for miles and across the river clyde . in this case much of the drama lies in her having to face motherhood alone, until this is discovered by waters’ mother, whose mediation makes him accept ellen as his bride. through its dramatic concentration the ballad tightens up the tension between the disadvantaged woman and her cruel man, perhaps exhibiting more plainly the social problem affecting women with unrecognised children in traditional patriarchy. the folktale element of the 12 the relation between the stories of rival sisters and patient wives and some of their cultural connotations are discussed in valdés miyares 1998. sturdy stories: medieval narrative into popular ballad 151 quasi-demonic testing of an innocent, common to all versions, is also stressed by brevity in “child waters.” the medieval analogue of our final example is not easily identifiable at once. the ballad of “king henry” [child 32] is about a king who goes out hunting and meets a female monster who forces him to feed her and to admit he will do all her will. the most familiar medieval version today is chaucer’s wife of bath’s tale, but this lacks the key topic of the captured man having to feed the bossy hag, a subversion of the social role of women who had to serve food to their old men. the same happens with john gower’s version, the tale of florent. in fact the closest medieval analogue of “king henry” is the comic romance the wedding of sir gawain and dame ragnell, where gawain not only has to marry the loathly lady but also to suffer the public humiliation of her awful table manners and outrageous appetite at their wedding banquet. thus the variant that survived in popular ballad form is far removed from the relatively polite versions of chaucer and gower, but one that, in its humorous description of the ugly lady’s body and her banqueting, matches neatly bakhtin’s conception of the grotesque in medieval popular culture. like the previous six popular ballads we have considered, “king henry” shows how certain medieval topics remained attractive for a wide audience far beyond the middle ages.13 once we have sampled the kinds of medieval stories that became popular texts of ballads, we should briefly examine the exclusion of some well-known medieval stories from the popular ballad repertory. some of these stories were probably popular in their own age, and received enough appreciation to be copied in manuscripts, included in collections like the canterbury tales, edited and printed by caxton, and even turned into minstrel ballads in the seventeenth century, but they never became part of the living oral and broadside traditions for long enough to survive into the eighteenth century. of the four cases chosen for discussion, which are perhaps the most 13 the cultural significance of the subject of "king henry" is discussed in the light of m. bakhtin’s rabelais and his world (1965) in valdés miyares 1999. ballad audiences are of course best understood in their local specificity, as buchan does for the richest popular ballad area in britain, the north-east of scotland. but it is also possible to generalise about the kind of traditional societies were folktales as well as popular ballads would flourish, like vladimir propp did in his study of the historical roots of the folktale. rubén valdés miyares 152 representative narratives in the middle english literary canon, the first is chaucer’s works in general, and the other three come from the percy folio manuscript14 and they look like readers’ digests of such well-known works as sir gawain and the green knight, piers plowman, and le morte darthur, which perhaps tried to profit from their well-established reputation, but failed to get any lasting popularity beyond their initial literate public. as for chaucer, we have already pointed to three of his tales that also lived on as popular ballads. chaucer was perhaps the most popular (in the sense of widely appreciated and imitated) medieval poet then as now. but the aspect of his work that his immediate followers (lydgate, hoccleve, henryson, dunbar, gavin douglas, …) most admired and emulated was the courtly refinement of the book and the duchess, troilus and cryseide, and even the inflated style of the monk’s tale, rather than the more apparently straightforward and down-to-earth canterbury tales, such as the miller’s tale or the nun’s priest’s tale. the latter are more widely enjoyed by students and general readers today, yet in early modern popular culture even these seem to have been too complex (not the least because of their framework, the canterbury tales) to become successful ballads. therefore no versions of any of chaucer’s works survived as popular texts, except in cases like the tale of griselda, hugh of lincoln or the knight and loathly lady, which are far more likely to have derived from folktales than from the actual chaucerian versions. another interesting case we may mention in passing is chaucer’s tale of constance (the man of law’s tale), which, besides a version by gower, exists as a medieval lay or short romance called emaré (ed. by mills 1973: 46-74), which is closer to a folktale in structure. it is hard to guess why the well-known adventures of the strong-willed constance or emaré did not have its ballad version. length and number of episodes were not in themselves a hindrance, as the case of king horn suggests. the existence of emaré shows that it was possible to concentrate 14 the reliable scholarly edition of the percy folio, which is the most important single document in the history of the ballad, was not done by percy himself, whose antiquarian methods in his reliques of ancient english poetry would not be admitted as scholarly today, but by j.w. hales and f.j. furnivall (1967-68). modern re-editions of percy’s reliques (such as percy 1996) however, contain notes on what percy adapted according to his own taste and interest, and the poems from percy’s reliques we discuss in the present article were also in his folio, except for "the jew’s daughter." sturdy stories: medieval narrative into popular ballad 153 the novelistic hagiography of constance on the simple story the determined sufferance of the heroine and her magic mantle, so that there just remained one step to turn it into a ballad.15 some attempts to turn multi-layered medieval stories into plain ballads necessarily foundered. sir gawain and the green knight was turned into a tail-rhyme poem of “the greene knight” by some minstrel, but this crude version preserved in the percy folio only succeeds in exemplifying the impossibility of translating an elaborated romance into a more popular format which could in turn become a traditional ballad. taken out of its original chivalric context and reduced to its basic story-line, the romance loses all interest. much of the appeal of sir gawain and the green knight, leaving aside its language and style, is in the narrator’s skill to sustain an atmosphere of mystery. the minstrel who concocted “the greene knight” spoils it all by explaining away too soon (lines 37-72) who that green knight is, and why he challenges gawain: sir bredbeddle (bertilak in the medieval poem) is transformed into the greene knight by his mother-in-law agostes (morgan le fay, a-ghostess, or argante?) to teach gawaine a lesson because her daughter was in love with him: all was for her daughers sake, that which she soe sadlye spake to her sonne-in-law the knight: because sir gawaine was bold and hardye, and thereto full of curtesye, to bring him into her sight (55-60).16 such premature unravelling of the plot that the medieval romance keeps in mesmeric suspense to the very end, and even remains suggestively ambivalent, does not do any good to the story. if the tale of the green knight 15 we may just venture the argument that the story did not have much love interest, as the male characters are dwarfed in comparison to the formidable saintly heroine, who is perhaps too self-centred in her direct relation to god and fate to be a typical ballad heroine: ballads often portray strong-willed, dominant women, but they are seldom shown independently from any some sort of amorous story that is central to the plot. 16 quoted from the internet edition of thomas hahn, ed. 1995: sir gawain: eleven romances and tales. western michigan university for teams, kalamazoo. rubén valdés miyares 154 was ever to become a ballad, this was not the right path, for one of the defining characteristics of the ballad is precisely that it does not like to explain motivations for the action it narrates.17 in the same folio there is another minstrel composition about malory’s last tale, which bishop thomas percy published as “king arthur’s death (a fragment).” if william caxton chose to print malory’s various tales (as they turned out to be in the winchester manuscript of malory’s works) under a unified, more marketable title, le morte darthur, it was because he knew that it would become popular at least among the literate classes, and the title would be appealing and representative enough. malory’s prose was far more straightforward and engaging than, say, the gawain-poet’s idiom and texture (let alone the dialect). but malory’s works could hardly be reduced or abstracted in any intelligible way either, without sacrificing their peculiar atmosphere and effect. the author of the minstrel poem followed on caxton’s idea of choosing the final tragedy of arthur’s death as not only the culminating but also the central tale of malory’s works as a whole. but in separating it from the other tales of which it is a climax, the minstrel marred its poignancy. in addition, it would have been unlikely for a popular-ballad audience of, say, scottish labourers in a nineteenth-century farmtoun as described by buchan (1972) to grasp and enjoy from their own experience the pathos of the break-up of an aristocratic round table and of the fabulous king’s last days. our last case from the percy folio is a version of william langland’s piers plowman, which had its chance of becoming a popular text under the title “the complaint of conscience.” failing to find a way to sum up such an encyclopaedic spiritual quest, due both to its length and multiple allegorical meaning, the ballad-monger was again forced to select an episode he 17 this was noted by practically every attempt to define the popular ballad after child. thus, "in order to get it told effectively, non-essentials have to be eliminated", for "vivid and emotionally arresting as are the momentary glimpses or the cumulative speeches out of which the narrative is built up, they furnish little opportunity for explanation" (gerould 1932: 87 and 89); "this avoidance of circumstantial detail, the broadest generalization of motif, situation, and character, is a leading characteristic of ballad poetry and essential to its traditional preservation" (entwistle 1939: 27); in short, "the main end of the ballads is to present the story dramatically, and therefore explanation, moralist comment, and even original phraseology are suppressed" (hodgart 1962: 31). sturdy stories: medieval narrative into popular ballad 155 regarded as the most significant. he chose part of the first few passus (ii to iv), the episodes dealing with lady meed and the knight conscience, which is a moral satire on the corruption of the royal court. the narrative consists in conscience’s self-account of how he has been expelled from court, and from the company of westminster lawyers and london merchants. much like langland’s passus iv ends with the king recognising the way in which mede prevents the fair exercise of law, the “complaint” also has an optimistic end with a plea for england to banish pride and restore good administration. thus it recaptures some of langland’s tone and spirit, though the narrative is just very loosely based on a small fraction of the medieval poem. it curiously departs from langland in using a chaucerian stanza instead of alliteration, therefore choosing a relatively sophisticated poetic metre. more importantly, the rather abstract, intellectual and moral meaning of langland’s work made it unsuitable to gain any popular currency beyond the middle ages. turning medieval texts into popular ballads was, of course, not the purpose of the compiler of the percy folio. the manuscript was rather a kind of minstrel’s commonplace-book which actually “marks the end of the period of minstrel influence on the evolution of balladry” (fowler 1968: 133). as such, the percy folio was a watershed in the evolution of the ballad. several of the poems it contained would also become very widespread popular ballads, like “child waters.” many others remained curious, belated minstrel versions of medieval stories. this process of, as it were, natural selection of the fittest tales to survive as ballads depended on several factors, or conditions under which medieval stories became popular texts. we may sum up them up as follows. i. sturdy folktale structures, rather than minstrels’ re-elaborations, survived best. in practical terms, “ballads are schematic story-containers sturdy enough to retain their basic shape despite repeated usage by different people” (bold 1979: 15). ballads such as those of orfeo and horn, stripped bare of the ornamentation and detail of their romance counterparts, were able to subsist for seven centuries of oral transmission.18 18 in the case of some medieval texts, it was unfortunate that they did not become popular texts, as they had certain ingredients that might have helped them in the process. for example, sir gawain and the green knight has been found to contain rubén valdés miyares 156 ii. emotion and pathos become intensified by brevity. this was probably the cause for the failure of ballad versions that could not retain, in concentrated form, the emotional effect of the original story. “child waters”, for example, is able to preserve griselda’s kind of suffering, whereas “the death of arthur” in the percy folio has none of malory’s intensity. iii. certain themes were more favoured by popular taste: the musings of a knight called conscience or the epic tragedy of arthur’s death did not seem to make much sense to a popular ballad audience, who preferred naturalistic or romanticised stories about relations between man and woman. the amorous theme appears in all our examples of long-lasting ballads, though in extremely different forms. iv. the symbolic order prevails over mimetic realism.19 even when the story has realistic social echoes, like in the treatment of women in the le freine and griselda stories, the ballad’s concentration stylises the symbolic drama of patience and resistance. farytales like those of orfeo and thomas of erceldoune are favourites thanks to their dream-world setting, and “sir hugh” adds eerie details to the legend in order to highlight its symbolic representation of men’s fear of the other (whether that other is represented by jews or women). v. women’s concerns become more focused. not only does popular taste eschew warriors’ stories or priestly moral reflections like those in piers plowman, but in all cases it tends to bring to the fore women’s situations, in the ballad’s symbolic representation of either their social disadvantages, or of their socially-unacceptable (in traditional society) ascendancy over men, like in “king henry” and its role reversal making a sheepish king feed a loathly lady.20 in sum, the reasons why some well-known medieval stories never became popular ballads (in the sense that child implied) can only be hinted at, as folktale elements (luttrell 1988), but the minstrel version we have of it missed that popularising potential altogether. 19 this psychological point is elaborated by knight (1993) in order to explain the popularity of the ballad of “lady isabel and the elf-knight.” 20 mary ellen brown’s article counts itself among the "preliminary attempts to begin the process of looking at women and ballads with gender as a central lens and focus" (brown 1997: 56). sturdy stories: medieval narrative into popular ballad 157 they are highly conjectural. we have nonetheless speculated on the stylistic complexity and medieval sophistication of some stories which seem to have come close to popular ballad forms, particularly those which appear in the percy folio, a manuscript that is regarded as the most important document for the development of the popular ballad. the minstrels that, according to fowler, would have been determinant in the transition from medieval narrative to early modern popular poetry, failed to fit the old stories to the new culture. on the other hand, we have found it easier to see why certain other medieval stories lived on as ballads. they were folktales that probably existed in oral tradition quite apart from the extant medieval texts, emotive, amorous, symbolic stories, and chiefly told from a female perspective. rubén valdés miyares universidad de oviedo references beatie, b.a. 1978: traditional structures and the structure of tradition: a functional system of ballad classification. ballads and ballad research. ed. p. conroy. university of washington, seattle. 210-220. bettridge, w.e. & f.l. utley 1971-72: new light on the origin of the griselda story. texas studies in literature and language 13: 153208. bold, a. 1979: the ballad. methuen, london. bronson, b.h. ed. 1959-72: the traditional tunes of the child ballads, 4 vols. princeton university press, princeton, n.j. brown, m.e. 1997: old singing women and the canons of scottish balladry and song. a history of scottish women’s writing. ed. d. gifford & d. mcmillan. edinburgh university press, edinburgh. 44-57. buchan, d. 1972: the ballad and the folk. routledge & kegan paul, london. rubén valdés miyares 158 buchan, d. 1991: talerole analysis and child’s supernatural ballads. the ballad and oral literature. ed. j. harris. harvard university press, cambridge, mass. 60-77. child, f.j. ed. 1965 (1882-98): the english and scottish popular ballads. 5 vols. dover, new york. entwistle, w.j. 1939: european balladry. the clarendon press, oxford. fowler, d.c. 1968: a literary history of the popular ballad. duke university press, durham, n.c. friedman, j.b. 2000 (1970): orpheus in the middle ages. syracuse university press, syracuse. garcía gual, c. 1996 (1981): ‘sir orfeo’: en la confluencia de dos mitologías. mitos, viajes y héroes. taurus, madrid: 249-283. gerould, g.h. 1932: the ballad of tradition. the clarendon press, oxford. gray, d. 1989: medieval english ballads. articles and papers of the first international conference of the spanish society for english medieval language and literature. servicio de publicaciones de la universidad, oviedo: 129-154. green, r.f. 1997: the ballad and the middle ages. the long fifteenth century. essays for douglas gray. ed. h. cooper & s. mapstone. clarendon press, oxford: 163-184. hales, j.w. & f.j. furnivall, eds. 1867-68: bishop percy folio’s manuscript. 3 vols. london. harker, d. 1985: fakesong: the manufacture of british “folksong”, 1700 to the present day. open university press, milton keynes. hodgart, m.j.c. 1962: the ballads. hutchinson university press, london. knight, s. 1993: why was ‘lady isabel and the elf-knight’ the most popular ballad in europe? medieval english poetry. ed. s. trigg. longman, london: 272-288. luttrel, c. 1988: the folk-tale element in sir gawain and the green knight. studies in medieval romances. ed. d. brewer. d.s. brewer, woodbridge: 92-112. sturdy stories: medieval narrative into popular ballad 159 lyle, e.b. 1970: the relationship between thomas the rhymer and thomas of erceldoune. leeds studies in english (new series) 4: 23-30. mills, m. ed. 1973: six middle english romances. dent, london. moffat, b. 1988: true thomas: the strange case of thomas the rhymer. cencrastus, 31: 29-36. murray, j.a. ed. 1875: the romance and prophecies of thomas of erceldoune. trübner / the early english text society, london. percy, t. ed. 1996 (1765): reliques of ancient english poetry. routledge, london. propp, v. 1985 (1928): morfología del cuento. trans. j. díez del corral. akal, madrid. sands, d.b. ed. 1986: middle english verse romances. exeter universtiy press, exeter. thompson, s. 1977: the folktale. university of california press, berkeley. valdés miyares, r. 1993: the wonder tale pattern of sir orfeo. selim journal 3: 117-148. valdés miyares, r. 1998: griselda’s sisters: wifely patience and sisterly rivalry in english tales and ballads. selim journal 8: 101-115. valdés miyares, r. 1999: dame ragnell’s culture: the voracious loathly lady. selim journal 9: 197-204. valdés miyares, r. 2002: sir gawain and the great goddess. english studies: a journal of english language and literature. 83.3: 185206. * † * microsoft word 2021notes_3_bueno.docx jorge l. bueno alonso, selim26 (2021): 151–166. issn 1132-631x / issn-l 2792-3878 / https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.26.2021.151-166 beowulf (2013 [2020]) as a graphic novel: an interview with santiago garcía and david rubín1 jorge l. bueno alonso university of vigo visualizing beowulf has always been problematic, which is a paradox in itself taking into account the highly visual power the old english epic poem holds. as far as films are concerned, we are still waiting for “a full-length beowulf film that actually sticks pretty closely to the poem” (haydock & risden 2013: 186). we have been pretty much luckier in the realm of graphic novels; as stephen e. tabachnik (2017: 2) has very properly pointed out, graphic novel adaptation of literary texts is another area in which the new form has proven itself. there are superb adaptations of homer, beowulf, shakespeare, poe, moby dick, the picture of dorian gray, conrad, proust, kafka, among many, many others. the use of such adaptations in the classroom along with the originals prompts enthusiastic discussion of what, if anything, has been changed or not changed in the adaption, and what such adaptation can bring to the interpretation of the original texts. beowulf never ceased to attract the attention of many talented graphic and visual artists that wanted to put the beowulf tale back in its oral context, though these days that context belongs to the new visual orality of our early 21st-century mass culture, this “new civilization of the vision similar to the one experienced by medieval people when contemplating the images at their cathedrals (eco 1999: 332)”. after a very highly hypersexualized mainstream beginning (bueno 2021: 1 research made to write this interview was funded by the galician autonomous goverment (plan de axudas para a consolidación e estruturación de grupos de referencia competitiva do sistema universitario galego, grant number ed431c 2021/52). this grant is hereby gratefully acknowledged. 152 jorge l. bueno alonso 55–57), i have recently stated (bueno 2020, 2021) how there is a great deal of critical consensus in signaling out two graphic novels as the best beowulfian adaptations produced so far: hinds (2007) and garcía & rubín (2013). originally published in spanish by astiberri in 2013, the english translation by image comics in 2016 really boosted the worldwide praise of this great graphic novel, which is a real feast for the senses and made beowulf available to many readers for the first time. it received an eisner award nomination for best adaptation from another medium in 2018.2 with the recent publication of the graphic novel’s third edition (2020), i approached garcía and rubin for an interview about their wonderful and inspiring take on beowulf, which they heartily embraced. the interview was pandemically conducted through a questionnaire i devised and several online conversations through twitter between november 2020 and may 2021. they had liberty to interrupt or complement each other and to address issues or eschew questions at will. what follows is a transcription of our discussion, edited for publication. how did the project come out? what idea did you have in mind? santiago garcía (sg): in my case the project arises in childhood. my uncle had an illustrated book called myths and legends, in which anne terry white3 glossed stories from all cultures, from pandora’s box or icarus to roncesvalles or the nibelungs. beowulf was among them and it always fascinated me. the magnificent illustrations by alice and martin provensen were even more important to me. when i started making adult comics, beowulf was one of the stories that i had dragged on for the longest time. in fact, one of my first projects 2 to see a real example that highlights tabachnik’s aforementioned statement, “another medium” that year meant “literature”, as all nominees were adaptations from literary works: beowulf, adapted by santiago garcía & david rubín (image); h. p. lovecraft’s the hound and other stories, adapted by gou tanabe, translated by zack davisson (dark horse); herman melville’s moby dick, adapted by christophe chabouté, translated by laure dupont (dark horse); and kindred, by octavia butler, adapted by damian duffy & john jennings (abrams comicarts), which won the award. 3 santiago garcía refers to the spanish translation of the golden treasury of myths and legends, adapted from the world’s great classics by anne terry white. illustrated by a. & m. provensen. 164 pp. new york, golden press, 1959. in spanish it was published as mitos y leyendas. el gran libro de oro. valencia, ediciones gaisa s.l., 1968. beowulf (2013 [2020]) as a graphic novel 153 was to make beowulf with javier olivares. we were working on it for years until we finally gave up. when i publicly announced that we had abandoned that endeavor, david rubín immediately offered to take it up again. we put the whole project back together with david and started over. david’s arrival not only saved beowulf; it was an injection of vitality and a boost that helped me a lot in my career. david rubín (dr): in my case, it was when santiago announced that he and javier olivares were leaving their beowulf project, after ten years working on it. it was a poem that i had been wanting to read for years, so it annoyed me quite a bit to see that all this was going to come to nothing and, without giving it much thought, i contacted santiago and suggested that i could draw it. what is the reason, in your opinion, of the graphic novel’s great reception? three editions are uncommon for such a topic. it was not an excessively popular subject matter when the first edition came out in the usa, and in spain the main american versions were virtually unknown and remained untranslated. was this ‘ignorance’ something that your work benefitted from? was it a kind of success that spread through the reading public by word of mouth due to the power of your take on the story? sg: david’s work was spectacular and broke the mold at the time. it was an easy-to-read, very visually enjoyable comic and our audience needed something like that to confirm that the spanish graphic novel, which was beginning to consolidate itself at that time, had more breadth and scope than some thought. dr: when our beowulf came out, at the end of 2013, there was nothing in the world of comics remotely similar to it. it is a work with some sword & sorcery elements but it does not belong to such genre. it shows rawness with no frills, no flourish, no pretty armor and magic swords. it is epic, but it does not drink from traditions of the genre such as heavy metal music and its aesthetics, conan, the lord of the rings or game of thrones; many people who liked that kind of thing enjoyed our beowulf for that reason. at the same time, readers who would never read a conan comic book, even with a gun to their heads, enjoyed our graphic novel because it offered new approaches that other works, more faithful to the canons established by the sword & sorcery genre, could never provide. preparing the promotion of the work well in advance (more than a year or so) also helped a lot in its positive reception. we showed snippets of 154 jorge l. bueno alonso the work in progress and kept a growing mass of readers interested in its development. that was increasing the hype, and it really exploded when beowulf reached bookstores and people found the volume (which in itself as an object oozed epic character) standing out on the shelves. to develop the script, you freely worked on the text to capture your vision of the story. textually speaking, you mentioned heaney’s translation (1999) as a starting point. how much of heaney structure-wise is contained in your own text? have you read or consulted any other translation/version? sg: as i said earlier, what i really wanted to do was a version of the beowulf story from myths and legends. to me, that was the story, with the decisions and selections previously made by anne terry white. from then on, i used versions like seamus heaney’s to complete, expand and adapt on my own, as well as to get closer to the language more directly. this was something of special interest to me, as i was highly influenced by jorge luis borges’ take on the icelandic sagas i read as a teenager. dr: scriptwise, santiago and i talked a lot before we started producing the work. there was a huge pre-production stage to lay the foundations for the new approach we wanted to give to our beowulf. the only condition i demanded from santiago when i accepted the project was that i wanted him to rewrite it. i didn’t want it to be “santiago garcía’s and javier olivares’ beowulf”, drawn by david rubín. i wanted the story to be our own: garcía & rubín’s. as far as the standard threefold division of the poem is concerned, i particularly enjoyed the fact that you avoided the “monster, mother, dragon” classic commonplace to present a much more interesting “a monster, mother, another monster”. was this always clear for you both? what was your intention, if any? sg: to me, the dragon has always been a repetition, like the coda in a poem that is there to remind you that the monster you thought to have slain is still alive. it may be a different monster altogether, but the fight will never be over until our death. and even so, remembrances will remain and the story will be there to be retold. i mean, i am not interested in the peculiarities that make beowulf (2013 [2020]) as a graphic novel 155 grendel, his mother, and the dragon different monsters; i am way more into signaling out what makes them a similar thing from beowulf’s perspective. dr: in my opinion, this approach we took was a total success. it makes everything wilder, more direct. visually speaking, how would you frame your own work in the overall context of beowulf and graphic novels? i always thought that your proposal, genuine as it is, is closer to gareth hinds’ and very far away from more standard (storrie & randall 2008) or neonoir/neogothic approaches (stern & steininger 2007). it is a 100% garcía & rubin. sg: david creates his own universe. the book is filled with original visual findings. i know david did not revise prior versions of beowulf. his points of reference were more linked to certain videogames or specific films, like nicolas winding refn’s valhalla rising (2009). this only means he used these references to get his own inspiration when creating the aesthetic frame he looks for. there are no specific things taken from these works. dr: i haven’t seen much of prior adaptations of the story, but i liked what i have seen so far. i never had those versions in mind, though, nor did i consider the sword & sorcery genre, the stories of conan, or similar stuff. in fact, as i hinted before, i think our beowulf do not belong to the sword & sorcery genre, or to fantasy as such. i have always considered beowulf as a kind of western, a ‘death of the old west’ kind of story, with heroes mourning a way of life that fades never to return; heroes and monsters, anyhow. as santiago mentioned, my main inspirational sources were nicolas winding refn’s valhalla rising (2009), hidetaka miyazaki’s demon’s souls videogame (2009, from software), and the pictorial style of jackson pollock and francis bacon. you have used a wide variety of panel dispositions, playing wildly with the scene as a whole and constant close-up details —as in beowulf’s arrival to heorot, the feast with unferth’s provocation, or grendel’s entrance at heorot (figure 1)— or with two parallel actions (as in the breca / beowulf digression or beowulf’s funeral). did you have these visual cues clear beforehand? to me this technique gave you a magnificent way of translating very effectively the narrative complexity of the poem without abandoning your own signature style. there are things from ether (with matt kindt, 2017, 2019, 2020) or the hero (2011, 2012) that would fit here. 156 jorge l. bueno alonso figure 1. grendel’s entrance in heorot4 sg: i think david never stopped developing his style from his early days onwards. every new project took him several steps ahead. in beowulf there are elements he already added to the hero, and it is also normal to find in later works —such as ether— things he began using in beowulf. david, as an author, never adjusted to one single functional style. he is in constant evolution. dr: how you tell a story is always the key aspect to me. every story requires a specific, singular approach. the hero is a very pop graphic novel, almost a comic book version of a rock opera. ether is a sci-fi / fantasy story, but very pop 4 all excerpts from beowulf © by santiago garcía and david rubín are reproduced by permission of the authors. beowulf (2013 [2020]) as a graphic novel 157 too. every work demands a reshaping of the way you understand and implement your work depending on where you want to get at with the story. in beowulf i tried to go directly to the heart of the matter, to reach the marrow in a single stroke; it was a much drier and harder approach, more forceful and less reminiscent or supported by winks to other genres or works that may have influenced you as an artist; it is written and drawn with the guts. in each new work i try to experience new things with a double aim in mind: the reader has to enjoy it more, and i don’t want to get bored doing it. here the challenge i accepted was to play with the narrative to be able to show different moments in different time or space, in an overlapping structure, but when reading it, readers had to read it in succession, without asking questions that hinder their reading. i think the great success of our beowulf is that it is a tremendously complex comic to execute, but very simple and natural when it comes to reading it. in terms of character composition, i love the way you picture grendel (figure 2) and that phenomenal idea of his seeing the victims he will devour as figures made of flesh, muscles, and tendons. how did you visualize it? were there several steps or was it a visual idea you got quickly? sg: david is quite quick in everything. grendel’s original design almost got unmodified to the final page. the idea of how grendel sees his victims is totally david’s. dr: everything was quite quick. i don’t like to burn a lot energy before starting a project; i rather prefer to put all my energy on its implementation. i made a design of grendel, with a bunch of ideas jotted down by it. i handed it to santiago and he loved it; that was the guide to follow, without further previous revision. i wanted to picture monsters as just that: monsters. entities of pure evil, not humanized beasts or evil humans. monsters frighten us because we do not know their aims or the motivations of their deeds. and this ranges from grendel and ridley scott’s and h. r. giger’s alien, to the primeval fear children have of monsters in the closet or under the bed. showing how monsters see us is something that boosts such a feeling. their gaze is devoid of any trace of humanity, empathy, or morals. we are only objects to them, things to play with, have sex with, or be eaten; or all at once. only that. nobody suffers when treading on an ant; that is the feeling i wanted to capture, highlight, and show with the “monster vision” in beowulf. 158 jorge l. bueno alonso figure 2. grendel grendel’s mother is also free from the typical female monster cliché. visually, she resembles grendel a great deal, a fact that is absent from many versions. is this a conscious visual union of both characters? grendel’s mother also sees beowulf as nothing but a bunch of flesh, muscles, and tendons. sg: if you go to my original source, the version of the tale in anne terry white’s myths and legends, you’ll see how the provensen represent the mother with grendel’s exact features, adding only some items to denote the prototypical feminine shape, like clothing, and long hair. i think david and i saw grendel and his mother as a doppelgänger, a twin monster you have to kill in two steps. like a tumor you have to remove in a double surgery. you think one operation was enough, and then you discover later that some cancerous cells are still there. beowulf (2013 [2020]) as a graphic novel 159 what fight was more difficult to present from a conceptual perspective? grendel’s? or the underwater fight with his mother? sg: that’s a question for david. dr: the idea was to set the three fights (dragon included) in a crescendo, with each fight being more spectacular than the previous one. each has its own tempo, its own narrative games to play. this is similar to the way you play the final sections in videogames: each stage has to be more difficult than the previous you already passed; you have to adopt a different strategy to solve every step. this is what makes you to keep on playing the game and having fun with it. with this idea in mind i designed the fight scenes as set pieces. the transition from beowulf as a young victorious man to his being an old king is also phenomenal. jumping from “their monster is gone” to “yet monsters remain” constitutes a wonderful way of visualizing the fantastic fifty-year ellipsis the poem is so famous for. your transition highlights the idea of the permanence of monstrosity, of monsters among us all the time, right? sg: yes, that was the idea. we also wanted to keep the narrative monumental character of the poem. in a certain way, we wanted to update it without making it too modern, if you know what i mean. there is a manner of narration in beowulf that has nothing to do whatsoever with contemporary narrative concepts. instead of considering this a handicap and dodging the difference, we preferred to embrace it as an essential feature of the poem, as something productive we could enjoy. dr: to me, reading the original poem is like watching an etruscan statue. very few are kept in one piece; but you see a fraction of a foot, of a torso, of a head, and you imagine the monumental character of the statue as a whole, the feeling of power it had to transmit to those who gazed on it in awe. we planned our work with this idea in mind. this idea of inner monsters is also present in the cover (figure 3). a very clear combination of both faces, human and monstrous, almost like a filmic freeze-frame of a dissolve between two shots. 160 jorge l. bueno alonso figure 3. cover sg: yes, the cover is one of the most brilliant designs david ever made. beowulf and grendel overlapping… it is a visual shock, full of meaning. dr: yes, it is simple and overwhelming. it is more a drawn idea than a cover with an embellishing or decorative function. that’s why i think it worked so well. in france, our publishers (casterman bande dessinée) insisted on replacing it and used something else. from the many countries in which the graphic novel was sold, france was the only one in which beowulf didn’t sell well. i rest my case… beowulf (2013 [2020]) as a graphic novel 161 one of my favorite scenes from the end is that banquet presented with extreme closeups of our hero devouring some cherries wildly as he speaks with the poet about everlasting fame and the future remembrance of heroic deeds. visually it is a great solution to picture the mundane and the heroic at the same time. was it a clear visual solution for you too? sg: it was an interpretation david made of the script, quite a successful one in my opinion, as it not only gives the text a cinematic quality but also strengthens it by presenting a close-up of beowulf’s fierce voracity; our hero, the one who will face the monster, is also a devouring monster himself. dr: what santiago says is exactly the reason why i wanted to avoid presenting beowulf as “the knight who fights the dragon”. i wanted to depict him as a decadent hero, more monster than heroic figure, someone who perceives his days are over and feels a demi-animal sense of extinction in the forthcoming battle, which he knows will be his last. besides, it gives the sequence a very suitable sense of rhythm and tension. following this banquet scene, we see old man beowulf trying to put his old coat of mail again, not without effort. this is a very clear visual topos of the classic superhero putting his/her suit back on after a long while. was it intentional? it is an image the reader immediately acknowledges. was it a simple and effective way of combining both literary worlds, mythology, and superheroes? all in all, every superhero story belongs to this adventure/mythological narrative tradition. sg: sure, beowulf is a superhero; it is very easy to read the tale in such a way from our perspective. both of us grew up with superhero comic books, so it is very easy for us to shed that light on any narrative we work with. dr: that’s exactly it. i recall we discussed the way to approach some scenes with a sentence like “we have to do something marvel like, but without the marvel thing”. 162 jorge l. bueno alonso i enjoyed the way you also depart from more standard and overused habits when visualizing the dragon. it is very much visually connected with grendel and his mother, an idea which reinforces the monstrous in every creature, right? was this departure from prototypical dragons intentional? i think it was a total success, as it matched your style of re-storytelling the tale completely. sg: i guess david can give a better answer to this. dr: yes, that was the idea, precisely: to offer a stylistic melt of all monsters. it is just like they all belong to the same race or species we can call, say, the “monster race”, and inside such a race we had diversity in size, physiological features, and so on, according to each monster and its function in the scheme of things. if i have to select only one section as an example of your beowulf, i will undoubtedly choose the final eleven pages, which i recently revised with some detail (bueno 2020: 127–128). wiglaf states the ominous fate of the geats as a consequence of beowulf’s death, and signals how they could disappear into oblivion. however, at the same time, the lower panel of the split page offers the sequence of the funeral pyre, with the first verses in old english of the poem being recited as a background for the funeral (figure 4). so, in a (almost cinematic) parallel structure, a rich density of visual content is shown: wiglaf laments their fate, and beowulf’s body is burnt while the poem is sung. with the verses fresh in the air, a final solitary piece of ash vanishes into a pitch-black page, a very clear symbol of oblivion. did you have this approach clear in your minds from the start? that pitch black double page is such a symbol. did you have to fight hard for it with the publishers? sg: the publishers always supported us in every detail, we never had to fight hard for anything, really. half-way in the production process we decided to change the format and they went for it without discussion. so placing two pitch black double pages was not a problem. the ending tries to reproduce that funeral dirge feeling the poem transmits by using visual motifs. it is true that this parallel narrative appears at the beginning of our graphic novel, so the laws of symmetry favored an ending that was similar to the way we started our narrative. beowulf (2013 [2020]) as a graphic novel 163 figure 4. beowulf’s funeral on the next page we see how oblivion is defeated as beowulf’s keenness for fame and remembrance finally triumphs. in a series of panels we see how the song and the verses sung at the funeral have survived in a manuscript, written by someone who remembers the deeds, and how from that manuscript a whole tradition of printed materials moves forward: manuscript, translation in printed form, script of a graphic novel, blackand-white sketches of that script, the finished colored page, the printing and binding of the graphic novel volumes, and, finally, in a wonderfully self-conscious metareference, a new reader grabbing a volume and reading the beowulf story once again in this new format. it is such a perfect way to end the story. was this ending something clear from the beginning, with this way of connecting the graphic novel form with the literary tradition that goes back to the original poem by acknowledging the importance of visual translation and adaptation, and adding the reader to that ongoing link? 164 jorge l. bueno alonso sg: not at all. the whole sequence of the transformation of the poem into modern texts and into our own graphic novel was entirely david’s idea. in fact, i was against that in the beginning. to me the ending lay just on the morphing of the funeral pyre into a sort of infinite bereavement. but david fought for the coda he really believed in, and we ended up by including it. these years have shown that this part is the best of the final section for many readers, so i have to prove him right in the end. i have always thought that this tale of beowulf has survived through many retellings and yours is one more in such a tradition, a new link in the storytelling trade. graphic novels based on classic literature function like literary translations, as both belong to the same artistic effort to keep the story of beowulf for contemporary audiences. what role do graphic novels play to get the reader hooked on reading similar literary texts or similar graphic novels? do readers who have their first contact with beowulf through your graphic novel tell you about reading the original story or other graphic novels of yours? sg: in a case in which the original source is as remote as beowulf (which by the way keeps on being adapted more or less accurately in contemporary media), i do not think we have a clear movement from the graphic novel to the old text. let’s say that beowulf has transcended its original textual form and has turned into one of those myths one knows even without having read it, like troy or the flood story from the bible. and precisely that is one of the most interesting aspects of the poem we wanted to deal with in our graphic novel: the movement from a mythical to a temporal tale, and how beowulf is a liminal story at the crossroads of history and myth. stephen tabachnik (2017: 2) said that graphic novels are “a form for all seasons”, due to the richness of their narrative tools. in our case, in the classroom, students get immensely motivated when we teachers use graphic novels as an element for literary analysis/comparison. in recent years, i had students who made their final ba or ma dissertations on topics based on frank miller, neil gaiman, lovecraft-inspired videogames, and their links with other ways of narrating stories. we have to fight hard for these topics in the academia because there are colleagues who still regard these works as ‘minor art forms’. do we really need to keep on defending graphic novels as a ‘respected’ form of artistic narrative? is it not clear yet after all these past decades? beowulf (2013 [2020]) as a graphic novel 165 sg: no, it is not clear because cultural customs and traditions change very slowly. tastes and trends move in centuries. roughly speaking, our society still accepts some values from the 19th century as if they were still natural two hundred years later. there are “long history” cycles that take too much to be extinguished. this does not mean that there are no alternative trends which are more alive and could have the possibility of being hegemonic in the future. the way graphic novels are socially seen, perceived, and considered will change, and although the situation is much better than when david and i were kids there is still a lot of work to be done. i do not want to conclude this interview without asking you about future work. is there any literary-based new project ahead? i know dr is collaborating in the ongoing graphic novel series based on neil gaiman’s norse mythology (dark horse, #1 2020). any future joint project you might advance to our readers? if you had carte blanche and enough time, which literary classic would you like to adapt? sg: more than carte blanche, which i always had when working on my graphic novels, what i would need is definitely more time and energy. there are tales from classical and germanic mythology i have always been fond of, like those of the minotaur, icarus, or siegfried. it is no surprise if i tell you that these were also included in anne terry white’s myths and legends. besides, one of my most recent works deals with such issues: la cólera (2020), which i did with javier olivares, presents the figure of achilles through the iliad and the odyssey. references bueno, j. l. 2020: the monsters, the translators, and the artists: lofgeornost and the challenges of translating beowulf. in d. clark ed. beowulf in contemporary culture. newcastle, cambridge scholars publishing: 111–133. bueno, j. l. 2021: “retelling old stories for new audiences”: shaping and visualizing beowulf through gareth hinds’ graphic novels [the collected beowulf (2003) and beowulf (2007)]. in s. c. thomson ed. medieval stories and storytelling: multimedia and multi-temporal perspectives (medieval narratives in transmission series, 2). turnhout, brepols publishers: 53–70. eco, u. 1999: apocalípticos e integrados. barcelona, lumen. garcía, s. & j. olivares 2020: la cólera. bilbao, astiberri ediciones. 166 jorge l. bueno alonso garcía, s. & d. rubín 2013: beowulf. bilbao, astiberri ediciones. [2016, berkeley, ca, image comics, inc., 3rd ed., 2020] haydock, n. & e. l. risden 2013: beowulf on film: adaptations and variations. jefferson, nc, mcfarland & company publishers, inc. heaney, s. trans. 1999: beowulf: a verse translation. london, faber and faber. hinds, g. 2007: beowulf. cambridge, ma, candlewick press. kindt, m. & d. rubín 2017: ether 1. death of the last golden blaze. milwaukie, or, dark horse comics [la muerte de la última llama dorada. bilbao, astiberri ediciones]. kindt, m. & d. rubín 2019: ether 2. the copper golems. milwaukie, or, dark horse comics [los golems de cobre. bilbao, astiberri ediciones]. kindt, m. & d. rubín 2020: ether 3. the dissappearance of violet bell. milwaukie, or, dark horse comics [la desaparición de violeta campana. bilbao, astiberri ediciones]. rubín, d. 2011: el héroe. libro 1. bilbao, astiberri ediciones. [2015: the hero. book 1. milwaukie, or, dark horse comics] rubín, d. 2012: el héroe. libro 2. bilbao, astiberri ediciones. [2015: the hero. book 2. milwaukie, or, dark horse comics] stern, s. l. & c. steininger 2007: beowulf: the graphic novel. barnet, hertfordshire, markosia enterprises. storrie, p. d. & r. randall 2008: beowulf, monster slayer. a british legend. minneapolis, mn, graphic universe (lerner publishing group). tabachnik, s. e. 2017: the cambridge companion to the graphic novel. cambridge, cambridge university press. author’s address department of english, french and german university of vigo lagoas-marcosende campus praza das cantigas, s/n e36310 vigo (spain) received: 30 may 2021 e-mail: jlbueno@uvigo.es revised version accepted: 15 june 2021 selim mª auxiliadora martín, selim 10 (2000): 101—109 old english eo in middle kentish place-names1 1. middle kentish and place-name studies the middle english period is characterised by its great dialectal diversity and has as one of its most peculiar varieties the dialect of kent, kentish, also called south-eastern variety. those who have traditionally searched for the regional features reflected in anchor texts from kent have regarded this variety as a middle english dialect in which sound changes have an unconventional behaviour. complementary to these traditional textual analyses is the onomastic approach developed within the field of medieval dialectology during the 20th century. following this approach, names are regarded as true informants of phonological change, and place-names, in particular, as “the material which has so far proved most profitable for the investigation of oe and me dialects” (kristensson 1967: xii). the inherent condition of place-names as accurate locators of dialectal variants and their importance in providing sometimes the only evidence of specific sound developments has produced works such as serjeantson (1922, 1924, 1927a, 1927b), ekwall (1931), smith (1956), and ek (1972, 1975). this onomastic approach to medieval dialectology received a further boost in the 1950s when kristensson decided to embark on a survey of the middle english dialects. so far, this project has given place to four volumes kristensson (1967, 1987, 1995, 2001). this research project, still in progress, aims to investigate the dialects of middle english through the formal study of place-names and surnames from c. 1290-1350 and has as its primary source the lay subsidy rolls, the official documents that more faithfully seem to reflect the local uses. the last volume published by kristensson (2001) has an obvious interest for those concerned with kentish 1 this paper is part of a research project titled “diccionario nuclear sintáctico de base semántica del léxico del inglés antiguo”, funded by the gobierno autónomo de canarias (no. pi 1999/136). mª auxiliadora martín 56 matters since it deals with vowels (except diphthongs) in the southern counties (the dialect of kent included). the main intention behind this research paper is to participate of this onomastic perspective and contribute to kristensson’s investigation by doing a formal analysis of oe eo (a diphthong that has traditionally been regarded as dialectally relevant in middle kentish) in medieval place-names of kent. this analysis, for both the first (or unique), and the second constituent of a kentish compound noun,1 will be done by checking our early middle english material against the data assembled for late middle english, that is name-forms from the 12th and 14th cc. respectively. with this time-span in mind, we cannot limit ourselves to take the above mentioned subsidy rolls as our single primary source, mainly because these rolls date back only to the second half of the 12th c., this being a period when they had not even been regularly and consistently established. on the other hand, there are authors who consider other documents to be equally valid to these as medieval dialectal sources. arngart, for example, claims that the assize rolls have “a nearly equal right with the subsidy rolls of being described as local documents” (1949: 26-27). kentish registers from, among others, these two sources (the subsidy rolls and the assize rolls) also comprise wallenberg’s the place-names of kent (1934) —henceforth pnk—, which is regarded up to now as the most important compilation to carry out research on the medieval place-names of kent.2 we will consequently take as a main source for the data gathering of this piece of research wallenberg’s pnk3, where the author, after scrutinising the most relevant english documents, shows the reader the written name-records of every single farm, village, parish and hundred of medieval kent. these records, besides their corresponding source 1 the intention behind this lies in checking whether the position of this oe sound in a stressed or in an unstressed syllable affects its me development. ek (1972: 66) claims that this fact does not affect the me development of this oe variable. 2 ek (1975) also uses, as a basis for his kentish data, wallenberg’s place names of kent. 3 apart from other secondary sources: anderson (1934-1939), cameron (1961), reany (1964), copley (1968) and ekwall (1980). old elglish eo in middle kentish place-names 57 references, include an etymological definition that served as a basis for the data gathering. the authors of a linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english (mcintosh et al. 1986) —henceforth lalme— following an evidently geographical perspective but still adopting a new methodology (that of applying systematically a strict questionnaire of linguistic items to a heterogeneous selection of texts), get to draw a more approximate picture of the dialectal variation of late medieval english (c. 1350–1450). although the intention behind the authors of this atlas may have been different, the scarcity of medieval sources also allows us to profit from the formal diversity captured in the 14 kentish linguistic profiles generated thanks to the fit-technique. lalme therefore will also constitute a potential frame, among others, with which to compare our 14th c. data. 2. general distribution1 we centre upon the study of the evolution of oe eo firstly because in kentish “the long diphthongs underwent a separate development” (hogg 1992: §5.210), and secondly because “it is only the long oe diphthong that is of interest. oe eo did not undergo any particularly kentish development” (ek 1972: 8). the origin of oe eo is the germanic diphthong *eu. this diphthong seems to have passed into primitive old english preserving the second element -u, although it does appear as eo already in early texts. during the middle english period, we will see however how the historical evolution of eo, at least in the dialect of kent, is intimately connected with the development of another germanic diphthong, *iu. this long diphthong, in a first stage of old english, also preserves the second element -u, but will soon develop into io (luick 1914/1941: §191; campbell 1959: §297; jordancrook 1974: §§84-85; hogg 1992: §5.160). 1 variables and variants will be generally represented in italics. we only use “< >” or “[ ]” when spellings or sounds, respectively, are meant explicitly. in order to conform to this convention, some illustrative quotations had to be slightly modified, that is, adapting the original format to this one. mª auxiliadora martín 58 the degree of interrelation between both diphthongs is such that wyld (1921), campbell (1959), hogg (1992) or ek (1972), among others, consider that, in kentish, both of them (either long or short) are confused and, as regards the long one, io seems to be more common than eo. in kentish documents from, according to campbell (1959: §297) and hogg (1992: §§ 5.155-5.162), the 9th c. and, according to ek (1972: 13), the 7th c., we notice a marked tendency to raise the point of articulation of the first element of the diphthongs eo and eo (although this tendency seems to be less evident in the second one). besides, we can infer from the kentish glosses (kg) that the diphthongs eo and io coalesced into one long diphthong io (or ia),1 while short eo and io coalesced, on the other hand, into eo in west saxon, mercian and kentish (hogg 1992: §§5.155-5.160). these conclusions, based on the kg, are confirmed by the middle english developments observed, for example, by jordan-crook (1974: §§84-85), or luick (1914/1941: §§260261) (for the latter, the change eo > io is first registered in kent in the 7th c. and finally generalised in the 10th c.). leaving kent aside, it seems to be the case that already at the end of old english the diphthong eo is monophthongised to e in essex and suffolk. this smoothing process that, at the end of the 12th c. and the beginning of the 13th c., will affect the southwest, the central and west midlands, the territory of london and its adjacent counties (except kent), changes eo into a rounded [ö:]. this [ö:] is generally unrounded during the 13th c., except in the southwest and the west midlands, and progressively changes to an e, represented with either the typical spellings of the time, that is <e, ee, ei, ey>2, or the anglo-norman spelling convention <ie>. as far as the west midlands and the south-western counties are concerned, the process of unrounding does not take place until much later (14th 15th cc.), and therefore it is here where it will keep on being spelt with the original <eo>3 1 “it will be observed that the first element of eo tends to be raised in kt., producing io, or, with unrounding of the second element, ia” (campbell 1959: §280 (n. 3)). 2 “ ‘e is often written <ei, ey>, esp. in the south […] this spelling is probably nothing but a graphic symbol for e’ (thuresson 1950: 251; see also kristensson 1967: 172.)” (ek 1972: 95). 3 this distribution coincides with that offered by jordan-crook in the dialectal map adapted from moore, meech, and whitehall (1935), in which we single out that “line f represents the eastern and northern limit for oe eo retained as a front round vowel /ø:/ spelled <eo, o, oe, u, ue>” (1974: § 84 (remark 5)). old elglish eo in middle kentish place-names 59 for a longer time. while preserving its roundness this sound may gradually raise to [y] and be represented with the anglo-norman spelling conventions <o, u, ue, ui, uy, oe, eu> (wyld 1921: 129-34; 1927: §168-69; mossé 1952: §30; campbell 1959: §329 (2); ek 1972: 12-13; and jordan-crook 1974: §84-85). in south-eastern texts, particularly in kentish, the old diphthong eo is frequently spelt <ie, io, ye>. these digraphs are however inconsistent (wyld 1927: §169) because we can occasionally find in kentish spellings such as <ia, ee, oe, eo, e, i, y> (wyld 1921: 12; campbell 1959: §297; jordan-crook 1974: §85; hogg 1992; §5.160). campbell (1959: §329 (2)) and jordancrook (1974: §85 (2)) have argued that <ie, ye>, typically kentish digraphs, could represent a diphthongal pronunciation (with a rising diphthong) and suggest that in kentish the monophthongisation process of oe eo may not have existed. for wyld (1927: §169) and brook (1965: 70-71) this is extremely improbable since <ie> (and maybe also <ye> in kentish) is an anglo-norman representation frequently used in middle english as an expression for [e:]. for ek (1972: 108 and 119-120), however, the traditional development ie evidenced in kentish texts and place-names is not due to the anglo-norman orthographic influence but it merely represents a variant of a diphthongal development that might have been smoothed to i in a subsequent stage. he bases this inference on the following solid premises: (i.) the diphthongal character that forms with ye show; (ii.) the presence of forms with ie before 1350, when the anglo-norman convention was used only occasionally; (iii.) the possible ambiguity that could have been created with the e-development of oe y in this south-eastern side of the country; (iv.) the absence of forms with ie or ye in counties like bedfordshire, buckinghamshire or huntingdonshire (ek 1972: 108 and 119-120). 3. distribution of oe eo in twelfth-century kent 3.1. first element mª auxiliadora martín 60 20 kentish localities from the 12th c. have a first or unique element that derives from oe eo. these middle kentish developments alternate fundamentally between variants with e and alternatives with i. as regards the e-variant only beckenham and greatness present in the 12th c. an exclusive e-development (see table 1). other four localities present a predominant e-development alternating with diverse minor variants (see bensted, greet, chelsfield and leaveland in table 1). in five of them the development is mixed, either <e/i> (see ridley, newchurch and tudeley in table 1), <e/ea> (see grain in table 1 below), or <e/io> (see lewisham in table 1). finally, in other four localities, newenden (selbrittenden hd.), newington (milton hd.), newnham and preston (see table 1: 12th c. kentish place-name forms with e in the first or unique element), the e-variant appears as a non-predominant development. with respect to the i-variant ifield, twinney creek, and newington (folkestone hd.) (see table 2: 12th c. kentish place-name forms with i in the first or unique element) present exclusive developments. in newington (milton hd.), newnham and newenden (selbrittenden hd.) <i> is the predominant development (see table 2). as we saw earlier on, in ridley, newchurch and tudeley the development is a mixed <e/i> (see table 2). finally, in chelsfield and leaveland (see table 2) <i> is in a nonpredominant distribution. we also have a relative high percentage of digraphs in the first element of these 12th c. place-names. these traditionally kentish forms are <ea> in bensted and grain (see both of them in table 1); <eo> in lydden (folkestone hd.) (hleodaena c. 1100 dom mon); <ie> in greet, leaveland (see both of them in table 1), lewsome (de lieurechestune 1176 facs) and lydden (folkestone hd.) (liedenne 1176 bm facs); and <io> in leaveland (see table 1). in agreement with ek, we can only admit those place-name forms with <ie> as standing for a real diphthongal pronunciation.1 ek (1972) distinguishes in his analysis, as so do jordan-crook (1974: §109), among: (i.) a diphthong eo + w; (ii.) a diphthong eo unaccompanied by w; and (iii.) a diphthong eo before consonantal groups with a homorganic 1 see above ek’s considerations in this respect (ek 1972: 108 and 119-120). old elglish eo in middle kentish place-names 61 voiced consonant causing lengthening. the first category applies to oe neowe and eow that appear as first constituents of our place-name forms in the 12th c. the rest of our constituents belong to the second category, whereas there are no candidates for the third one. oe neowe and eow are in this sense worth being analysed in detail because in both of them we have to consider the possible particular evolution of the diphthong eo when in the vicinity of w. ek reminds us that jordan (1974: §109) and luick (1914/1941: §399) claim that, as a consequence of the vocalisation of the semivowel, eo + w will give place to a diphthong [eu] that will in turn become [iu], but “luick also says that in spite of a development [eu] > [iu] the writing <ew> was still kept in most cases” (ek 1972: 113). it is precisely this argument that ek uses to highlight as special those forms with <i> in their orthography. we registered five localities with the lexical term neowe as first constituent in twelfth-century kent. in all of them, except newchurch, where we have a mixed development <e/i>, the variant, exclusive in the case of newington (folkestone hd.), and predominant in the case of newington (milton hd.), newenden (selbrittenden hd.) and newnham, is <i> (see table 2). we also registered one case with oe eow in ifield (see table 2) where the i-development is exclusive. maybe these i-reflexes from the 12th c. are equally special to those analysed by ek (1972) because in them eo + w > iw is the rule. discarding the place-name forms compounded in their first element by a first constituent in which eo is combined with w,1 what clearly predominates in our 12th c. material is the e-development, even though some iand ieforms are still around as possible witnesses of their original diphthongal nature.2 3.2. second element 1 this change also happens on one occasion in which w precedes the diphthong in question (cf. twineneia, tuinenea, tuinega, tuinga for the locality of twinney creek). 2 see section 2 for an explanation to the formal diversity of old english eo in kentish. mª auxiliadora martín 62 only one kentish locality, tollingtrough green, was registered for the 12th c. with a second element that derives from an old english term with eo, that is, oe treow ‘tree’, a lexical element that corresponds with ek’s first category. this locality is in the north-western quarter of kent and its behaviour is the predominant mixed development <e/o> that alternates with a rare <ui> (tolte(n)trui c. 1100 dom mon; toltintro 1178-9 p; totingetre 1187-8 p).1 4. distribution of oe eo in fourteenth-century kent 4.1. first element 34 kentish localities with oe eo in the first element were registered for the 14th c. out of them, 27 present an e-development: 22 exclusively; only tudeley and new hythe in a predominant way; and finally †redemeregge, deerton st. and lymbridge green with a non-predominant distribution (see table 3: 14th c. kentish place-name forms with e in the first or unique element). the abundant realisations with <e> (a variant that is even present in name-forms going back to oe neowe) contrast with the behaviour observed in the first (or unique) constituent of other seven 14th c. localities showing an i-reflex. five of these localities have an exclusive <i> and only in lymbridge green and new hythe is this development predominant or rare (see table 4: 14th c. kentish place-name forms with i in the first or unique element). the presence of digraphs is as follows: <ay> and <ey> in deerton st. (see table 3); and <ye> in tudeley (see table 3) and lydden (folkestone hd.) (lyedene 1304 ass; lyeden’ 1313 ass.). in my opinion again, we can only admit forms with <ye> as standing for a real diphthongal pronunciation.2 1 we do not really know whether to attribute the variants ui and o for tollingtrough green, as ek (1972: 95) and jordan-crook (1974: §109 (2)) do, to a “shifting of stress in oe”, or to the fact that, according to reany, they may be an evidence of a possible rounding of eo in kent (1925: 343ff.). in any case, the same criterion we use here must also be applied to the oand u-reflexes of †redemeregge (see table 3). 2 see above ek’s considerations in this respect (ek 1972: 108 and 119-120). old elglish eo in middle kentish place-names 63 with respect to oe neowe, we have 11 kentish localities of the 14th c. compounded in their first (or unique) element by this anglo-saxon lexical constituent. as opposed to what happened in our place-name forms of the 12th c., and obviously coinciding with luick’s opinion,1 the most frequent development in them is e. the only exceptions are nizel’s heath and new hythe with an exclusive and a rare i-development respectively (see table 4). the preponderance of the e-variant is therefore much more significant in the 14th c. than in the 12th c., even though we keep on having examples in this century where a certain number of i-forms show their definite reluctance to disappear, and some very sporadic digraphs (in particular the presumably diphthongal <ye>) are still present. 4.2. second element we only registered one kentish locality, ebbsfleet, for the 14th c. with a second constituent deriving from an old english lexical element with eo (oe fleot ‘fleet’). its behaviour is that of an exclusive digraph <eo> (hyppelesfleot 1308 th) for which we can not assure a diphthongal pronunciation. 5. comparative analysis generally, there exists a clear difference between the registers corresponding to early middle english and those of the 14th c. when comparing our kentish place-names with oe eo in the first element. in agreement with ek’s statement about the i-forms being much more expected in the early material (1972: 114), we find that the frequency of e and i is similar for the 12th c., whereas for the 14th c., although some localities with i are still documented, the predominant development is e. besides, whereas in the 12th c. we register some varied alternatives (mainly digraphs) with a certain regularity, the end of the middle english period is characterised only by their very sporadic presence. on the other 1.see ek’s quotation on luick cited above, where despite the development [eu] > [iu], luick considers that <ew>was still kept in most cases (ek 1972: 113). mª auxiliadora martín 64 hand, the scarcity of registers (only one locality per century was registered) for the second constituent does not allow us to establish conclusive comparisons. this fact should not however underestimate the validity of our analysis since “the position in stressed or unstressed syllable of the word or word-element, containing the oe eo does not affect the development of this sound.” (ek 1972: 66). likewise, with respect to the behaviour of oe eo + w in our place-name forms, we observe here a similar tendency to the one observed in the general analysis, that is, a much more abundant presence of the i-development in the 12th c than in the 14th c. material. ek concludes his south-eastern analysis claiming that in kent “eo […] became io […]. this stage seems to have been reached at the latest in late oe. in very early me the io developed into ie.” (1972: 122). his general table (1972: 94) seems to contradict, however, this conclusion since of all the forms recorded in it only 15.7 % present an i-development. this inconsistency is stressed when we centre upon the registers corresponding to the period 1300-1500 where the percentage of i-forms only reaches 7%. our results do coincide with ek’s table, and therefore also contradict in part his own conclusion, since in our analysis the predominance the evariants predominate over the i-variants. the only coincidence here lies in the fact that the i-variant appears with a higher frequency in the 12th c. than in the 14th c., a fact that is directly connected with the peculiar development observed for the place-name forms compounded by oe neowe. the material lalme offers for oe eo is practically non-existent since, of all the items recorded in the corresponding kentish linguistic profiles, only one, the anglo-saxon feminine pronoun heo corresponding to mode she, contains in its etymology the diphthong in question. this pronominal item has traditionally been regarded as a controversial element among english historical linguists because of the lack of unanimity on ascertaining its true etymology.1 this fact does not make of oe heo precisely the most adequate term with which to contrast the results provided by our analysis of eo. 1 the hypotheses that at present try to explain the modern development of an initial palatal make reference to the nature of the original diphthong and to the peculiar developments that this could have undergone in the northern territories, old elglish eo in middle kentish place-names 65 however, this paper is part of a dissertation in which other oe variables were analysed and their behaviour correspondingly contrasted with the formal diversity shown by those items of lalme that originally contained such a variable1. consequently, it is coherent to analyse here also the evidence, although scanty in this case, for oe eo in lalme’s items, that is, in she (< oe heo). forms with an i-variant (i.e., <i, y, ye>)2 in this atlas (pre)dominate in lps 5890, 5900, 5940, 5960, 6050 and 9380, that is, those located in the northern and north-eastern areas of the county. the lps in which e (i.e., <e, ee>) is exclusive are 5881, 5970, 5980, 5990 and 9470, that is, those that gather around the central and western areas of the county.3 we have to pay heed to the fact that these registers correspond to a late middle english stage and, yet, we still observe in them, with all the reservations its etymological origin may produce, a certain abundance of forms with i (<i, y, ye>). it is therefore evident that the results provided by this atlas do not precisely coincide with those obtained here. 6. conclusion the most outstanding fact that we can draw as a conclusion to this paper is that, as opposed to what we could expect, we do not seem to have among our place-name forms the digraphs and/or diphthongs <ie, io, ye> with the necessary frequency as to consider such realisations as characteristic of middle english kent. in other words, they are very infrequent in our sources and in this sense we can say that our corpus-data does not endorse the traditional view. in fact, had it not been for the frequency, specially in the 12th c., of placename constituents with oe eo + w (for which jordan-crook and ek already 1 this is, in fact, my phd dissertation, titled dialectología y toponimia del kéntico bajomedieval (universidad de la laguna, 1999; unpublished). 2 we interpret this digraph according to ek (1972: 95). 3 it is worth noticing the coincidence between forms with e and the palatal character of the previous consonant (i.e., sche, schee, she), and those in which the i-reflex combines with a previous aspirated h (i.e., hi, hy, hie). it is only occasionally that the form he appears (lps 5900 and 5960). mª auxiliadora martín 66 claim a special i-development), the predominance of a ‘regular’ e-variant would have been much more significant, relegating to a second place those digraphs/diphthongs that have traditionally been regarded as typically kentish. maría auxiliadora martín university of la laguna old elglish eo in middle kentish place-names 67 table 1: 12th c. kentish place-name formswith e in the first or unique element oe *beoga ‘bent; submissive’ beckenham becceham c. 1100 text roff. oe beonet ‘long and thick grass’ bensted bedenestede c. 1100 dom mon; beantesteda c. 1100 text roff; de bentested’ 1199 finer. oe *greon ‘grain’ grain grean c. 1100 text roff; gren 1189 reg roff greatness gretenersce c. 1100 text roff (arch c 44, 53) oe greot ‘sand, gravel’ greet de grete 1327, 1334, 1346, 1347,1348 subs; griete 1304 ass. oe hreod ‘reed’ ridley redlege 11 dm; riddelee 1198 ff. newchurch niwancirc 11 dm, newechirche 1198 ff. newenden (selbrittenden hd.) niuuende, niwendenne, niuuendene c. 1100 dom mon; newendenna 1157 staug; niwendeñ 1165-6 p; niwedeñ 1166-7 p. newington (milton hd.) niwantun(e), niuuentune c. 1100 dommon; newton 1172-3 p; niweton’ 1175-6 p. oe neowe ‘new’ newnham newenham 1177 reg roff; niwenham 1182-4 ib oe preosta ‘priests’ preston prestetune c. 1100 dom mon; p’stune, p’st’ 1154-89 subs. oe *þeof ‘thief’ tudeley tiuedele c. 1100 dom mon; theudelei c. 1100 text roff. oe ceol pers. n. chelsfield cilesfeld c. 1100 text roff; de chelefeld 1176-7 p; chelesfeld mª auxiliadora martín 68 1185-1214 reg roff; 1198 ff; chelefeld’ 1194 cur oe leofa pers. n. leaveland liofeland, lieveland(e) c. 1100 dom mon; levelande c. 1175 archc 4, 211; leveland c. 1180 ib., 215; de liveland’ 1199 cur. oe *leowsa / leofsa pers. n. lewisham liofesham 11 dm; leueseham c. 1100 textroff old elglish eo in middle kentish place-names 69 table 2: 12th c. kentish place-name forms with i in the first or unique element oe betweonum ‘between’ twinney creek twineneia 1166-7 p; tuinenea 1190 p; tuinega 1191, 1192 p; tuinga 1194 p. oe eow ‘yew-tree’ ifield iuelda c. 1100 text roff; yfeld 1174-84, 1177 reg roff. oe hreod ‘reed’ ridley redlege 11 dm; riddelee 1198 ff. newchurch niwancirc 11 dm, newechirche 1198 ff. newenden (selbrittenden hd.) niuuende, niwendenne, niuuendene c. 1100 dom mon; newendenna 1157 staug; niwendeñ 1165-6 p; niwedeñ 1166-7 p. newington (folkestone hd.) niwan tune c. 1100 dom mon. newington (milton hd.) niwantun(e), niuuentune c. 1100 dommon; newton 1172-3 p; niweton’1175-6 p. oe neowe ‘new’ newnham newenham 1177 reg roff; niwenham 1182-4 ib. oe *þeof ‘thief’ tudeley tiuedele c. 1100 dom mon; theudelei c. 1100 text roff. oe ceol pers. n. chelsfield cilesfeld c. 1100 text roff; de chelefeld 1176-7 p; chelesfeld 11851214 reg roff; 1198 ff; chelefeld’ 1194 cur oe leofa pers. n. leaveland liofeland, lieveland(e) c. 1100 dom mon; levelande c. 1175 archc 4, 211; leveland c. 1180 ib., 215; de liveland’ 1199 cur. mª auxiliadora martín 70 table 3: 14th c. kentish place-name forms with e in the first or unique element bensted bentestede 1312 ff; bentsted 1316 ipm, etc. bentham hill de benthame 1327 subs; de bent hamme 1332, 1338 subs; de benehamme 1334 subs; bentham (p.) 1348 subs. oe beonet ‘long and thick grass’ benchill fm cf. phps. will. de benteleye 1301 ff. brishing wd., b. court bresyng 1346 fa; bresynge 1362 cl; bressing’ 1368 cl; bressinge ipm. ia breosa ‘horsefly’ brissenden bresindenn’ 1346 subs; bresyndenne 1327, 1334 subs; bresynden’ 1338, 1347 subs; de bresyndenn’ 1346subs; de bresindene 1348 subs. deptford depeford’ 1351 ff; depford’ 1313 ff; deppeford’ 1314 ff; depford 1334 fine; depeforde 1344 ff. oe deop ‘deep’ dibden de depedene 1310 ff; 1332 subs; de depeden’ 1315 ff; de depedene 1327 subs; depedenn’ 1334 subs; de depedenne 1338 subs; depinden’, depe(n)den’ (p.) 1348 subs. dargets wd. de dergate (s. horsted 116 e 2) 1313 ass. dargate de dergate 1348 subs. oe deor ‘deer’ deerton st. de dertone 1334 subs; de deyr-, drayton’ 1338 subs; de dy(e)r-, draytone 1346 subs; de dyerr-, drayton’ 1347 subs; de dertone, drayton’ 1348 subs. oe hleo ‘shelter’ lydden ledene 13 staug. old elglish eo in middle kentish place-names 71 (ringslow hd.) oe hreod ‘reed’ †redemeregge redmeregge 1301 subs; rodmeregge 1323 ff; 1396 pat; 1398 ipm; rodmeresregg’ 1332 subs; rude-merigge, rodemerigge 1343 cl; rodmerugg 1344 cl; redmergge 1369 cl; rodemerigge 1374 ff; red-marerugg 1376 pat; rodmerugge 1379 cl. newbury neuburgh 1342 ipm; newburgh’ 1348 subs; newebourgh 1349 ipm; newburgh 1357, 1395 bm i. newcourt wd. newecourt 1327 subs; 1343-4 ass; 1343-4 ass; de neweco(u)rt 1332, 1334, 1338 subs; newecourt 1346 fa. newenden neuyn-, newyndenn’ 1313 ass; de newyndenne 1332 subs; de newyndñ 1334 subs, etc. new hythe niwehethe 1316 cl; newehethe 1320 ff; neuheth 1323 cl; newehethe 1325 inq. newland (calehill hd.) de la newland 1313-4 seld 24, 195; ate newelonde 1327 subs, etc. newland (port of new romney) newelandeswall 1351pat. newlands atte newelonde 1327, 1332, 1334, 1347 subs. newnham fm. de newenham 1332 subs. newsole fm. de newesole 1304 ass; 1327, 1332, 1334 subs, etc. oe neowe ‘new’ newstreet fm. neustrete 1327 subs; de newestrete 1347 subs. preston fm., hill preston’ 1377 ff; preston 1325 cl; 1330 ipm; de prestone 1332 subs; de preston’ 1334 subs; preston 1346 fa; 1372 cl. oe preosta ‘priests’ preston fm. de preston’ 1348. mª auxiliadora martín 72 priestwood, p. green de prestwode 1327, 1332, 1338 subs. oe *þeof ‘thief tudeley teudele 1316, 1320 ff; 1324-5 bm i; 1324 cl; 1327 ipm; thewdele 1313 ass; tewedale 1316 fa; teu-, tyedele, tyendale 1353 ff, etc. oe leofmær pers. n. lymbridge green de lymeryng’ 1316-28 ass; 1327 subs; de lemeryng’ 1334 subs. old elglish eo in middle kentish place-names 73 table 4: 14th c. kentish place-name forms with i in the first or unique element oe hleo ‘shelter’ lydden valley lhydene 1313 ass. new hythe niwehethe 1316 cl; newehethe 1320 ff; neuheth 1323 cl; newehethe 1325 inq. oe neowe ‘new’ nizel’s heath nigheselle 1327 subs; nys(h)ell’ 1332 subs; nyselle 1346 subs; ny-, niselle 1347 subs; niselle (p.) 1348 subs; nisell’ 1380 ff. oe heopwell pers. n. ebbsfleet hyppelesfleot 1308 th. oe leofwynn pers. n. lyddendane fm. de lyuenedane 1327 subs; de lyuyndan’ 1347, 1348 subs. oe leofa/leofwine pers. n. †lymborough bottom de lymb’gh’ 1327, 1332, 1346 subs; de lymbergh’ 1332 subs; limberghe 1334 subs, etc. oe leofmær pers. n. lymbridge green de lymeryng’ 1316-28 ass; 1327 subs; de lemeryng’ 1334 subs. mª auxiliadora martín 74 works cited arngart, olof s. (anderson) 1934-39: the english hundred-names. vols. 13. gleerup, lund. arngart, olof s. (anderson) 1949: middle english dialects. studier i modern sprakvetenskap 17: 1729. brook, george leslie 1965 (1958): english dialects. andre deutsch, london. cameron, kenneth 1961: english place-names. batsford, london. campbell, alistair 1959: old english grammar. clarendon press, oxford. copley, g. j. 1968: english place-names and their origins. david & charles, devon. ek, karl-gustav 1972: the development of oe y and eo in south-eastern middle english. gleerup, lund. ek, karl-gustav 1975: the development of oe æ (i-mutated a) before nasal and oe æ in south-eastern middle english. gleerup, lund. ekwall, eilert 1931: studies on english placeand personal names. gleerup, lund. ekwall, eilert 1980: the concise oxford dictionary of english placenames. oxford university press, oxford. hogg, richard m. 1992: a grammar of old english. vol. i: phonology. blackwell, oxford. jordan, richard 1974: handbook of middle english grammar: phonology. [translated and revised by eugene j. crook]. mouton, the hague. kristensson, gillis 1967: a survey of middle english dialects 1290-1350: the six northern counties and lincolnshire. gleerup, lund. kristensson, gillis 1987: a survey of middle english dialects 1290-1350: the west midland counties. gleerup, lund. kristensson, gillis 1995: a survey of middle english dialects 1290-1350: the east midland counties. wallin & dalholm boktr ab, lund. old elglish eo in middle kentish place-names 75 kristensson, gillis 2001: a survey of middle english dialects 1290-1350. the southern counties. i. vowels (except diphthongs). lund university press, lund. luick, karl 1914/1941: historische grammatik der englischen sprache. tauchnitz, stuttgart. mcintosh, angus, michael l. samuels, michael benskin, margaret laing and keith williamson 1986: a linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english. 4 vols. aberdeen university press, aberdeen. moore, samuel, sandford b. meech and harold whitehall 1935: middle english dialect characteristics and dialect boundaries. language and literature. university of michigan publications, ann arbor. mossé, fernand 1952: a handbook of middle english. [tr. j.a. walker]. the johns hopkins university press, baltimore. reany, percy h. 1925: on certain phonological features of the dialect of london in the twelfth century. englische studien 59: 321-45. reany, percy h. 1964. the origin of english place-names. london: routledge & kegan paul. serjeantson, mary s. 1922: the dialectal distribution of certain phonological features in middle english. english studies 4: 93-109, 191-98. serjeantson, mary s. 1924: distributions of dialect characters in middle english. amsterdam [no indication of publisher] serjeantson, mary s. 1927a: the dialects of the west midlands in middle english. review of english studies 3: 54-67, 186-203, 319-31. serjeantson, mary s. 1927b: the development of old english eag, eah in middle english. journal of english and germanic philology 26: 198225 and 350-400. smith, a. h. 1956: english place-name elements. 2 vols. cambridge university press, cambridge. thuresson, bertil. 1950: middle english occupational terms. lund university press, lund. mª auxiliadora martín 76 wallenberg, j. k. 1934: the place-names of kent. appelbergs boktryckerei aktiebolag, uppsala. wyld, henry c. 1921: south-eastern and south-east midland dialects in middle english. essays and studies 6: 112-145. wyld, henry c. 1927: a short history of english (3rd edn.). john murray, london. * † * microsoft word 2020notes_2_wade.docx erik wade, selim25 (2020): 187–192. issn 1132-631x / doi: https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.25.2020.187-192 the pig’s doom: animal butchery, gender relations, and a new solution for durham proverb 10 erik wade universität bonn the old english and latin durham proverbs are famously obscure. durham proverb 10 describes a man sitting on a pig; the man jokes that what happens next is up to the pig. scholars have read this as a possible marital joke, since the man is called a ceorl or maritus ‘husband’, yet this article suggests that the context is that of pig butchery. medieval art frequently shows pigs being butchered by a man sitting on top of them to hold them down. moreover, they often show the butchery performed by a man and a woman, suggesting that this proverb was a reference to an activity that a couple performed together, rather than a sexist commentary on marriage. keywords: durham proverbs; gender; old english; pigs the durham proverbs are a set of forty-six latin proverbs, each followed by an old english version. they are preserved in an eleventh-century manuscript, but the dating of their composition is uncertain (arngart 1956: 3, arngart 1981: 289). scholars have debated both their meaning and whether the latin or old english came first (arngart 1956: 6). these proverbs have received scant attention, and many of their meanings remain deeply enigmatic. one such troublesome proverb is durham proverb 10: nunc in iudicio porci dixit maritus sedens in apro. nu hit ys on swines dome, cwæð se ceorl sæt on eoferes hricge. [“now it’s up to the pig’s judgment!” said the churl who sat on the boar’s back.]1 1 latin and old english quoted from arngart (1981: 292). translation mine, from the old english. 188 erik wade a remarkably early example of the middle english “quoth he who” proverb form, these cryptic lines have never been properly explained (arngart 1981: 289). in 1948, the oxford dictionary of english proverbs claimed this proverb exemplified “the freakish humour so often expressed in the gargoyles and grotesques of medieval sculpture and illumination” (quoted in arngart 1981: 296). since then, proverb 10 has been afforded only a few scholarly guesses. richard marsden proposed that it may be a “joke about the perils of marriage”, since ceorl can mean both ‘peasant/yeoman’ and ‘husband’, while the latin maritus means ‘husband’ (2004: 306, n.10). olaf arngart (1956: 5) simply remarked that the proverb reflects a “coarser strain” of humor and also translates ceorl as ‘husband’, suggesting that he may even see it as a sexual joke. i suggest that the image of riding a pig comes from a less metaphorical activity: a butchering one. post-conquest manuscript art has many examples of this theme: a man astride a pig, feet usually planted on the ground, either cutting its throat or stabbing it (see figure 1).2 this art appears particularly in books of hours to mark december, the month when pigs were butchered. examples of this appear across manuscripts, mostly with the butcher actually astride the pig.3 other manuscripts have the butcher standing with one foot planted on the pig as the butcher swings an ax (as in bodleian library ms. liturg. 396, fol. 006r) or standing just behind the pig, with feet planted on either side, as they prepare to butcher it (as in bodleian library ms. douce 24, folio 006r). 2 even marsden (2004: 306, n.10) notes that two thirteenth-century stone carvings in the chapter house of york minster “depict a man precarious astride a pig”. 3 see morgan library ms m189, folio 006v; morgan library ms m511, folio 006v; morgan library ms m174, folio 012r; morgan library ms m197, folio 006r. see also bodleian library ms. auct. d. 4. 2, folio 009v; bodleian library ms. douce 12, folios 012v–013r; bodleian library ms. douce 5, folio 006v–007r. others can be found in other major collections, such as the farmer standing astride a pig and swinging an ax in ms 76 f 13 (folio 12v) from the koninklijke bibliotheek collection. durham proverb 10 189 figure 1. bodleian library ms. auct. d. 4. 2, folio 009v. photo: bodleian libraries, university of oxford 2020. https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/inquire/p/79410aaa-310d-49ec-a39e-4a8e97e0436f certainly, there are other contexts for figures astride pigs, but these are the exception to the butchering trope. a monkey dressed in bright colored clothes rides a pig backwards in ms m282 (folio 077r) from the morgan library, suggesting a theme of anarchy. a personification of gluttony rides a pig in ms m1001 (folio 094r) from the morgan library. a barefoot man in colorful clothes rides a pig in the margins of bodleian library ms. laud misc. 302 (folio 123r). the majority of depictions, however, are of butchering. pig-keeping was one of the earliest forms of animal husbandry in medieval england. starting in the fifth and sixth centuries, archaeological evidence 190 erik wade indicates an increase in animal husbandry in east anglia, including “an increasing proportion of pigs and sheep, in contrast to more specialized meat cattle production at earlier sites in the region” (lewit 2009: 80). it is possible that, after this early period of colonization, pig-keeping decreased, while cattle and sheep farming increased (crabtree 1989: 205). nonetheless, medieval art demonstrates that pig keeping never went out of style. so, if the proverb refers to pig butchering, what does the line about it being “on swines dome” [‘in the swine’s judgment’] mean? two possible solutions present themselves: firstly, there may be a play on the word dome [‘doom/judgment/sentence’]. in other words, the lines could mean it is now the pig’s doom/sentence, not that is in the pig’s judgment what happens next. the primary meaning of dom is not ‘judgment’ as in ‘choice’ but ‘judgment’ as in ‘judicial sentence’ (bosworth 1898: 207). certainly, “the pig’s sentence” would be an unusual reading of the construction, as the genitive in most comparable sentences almost always refers to the person passing the sentence (i.e. ‘the lord’s doom’, etc.). but the word-play would be audible. the second solution is that “on swines dome” refers to the pig’s choice, and that this refers to the unpredictability of a semi-domesticated, strong animal being sat upon and held down to be slaughtered. this solution accepts the usual reading of “in the swine’s choice”, but provides the historical context in which it would be most easily understood: the barnyard in wintertime, when farmers wrestled with pigs unwilling to die and pinned them with their thighs and their own weight. much medieval art shows the butcher clearly struggling to restrain or pin the pig.4 karl steel (2011: 181–184) notes medieval pigs were only partially domesticated; they “led quasi-feral lives for most of the year” and records describe their frequent violence, as they often killed or injured people. durham proverb 10 seems like an account of pigs’ unpredictability and potential struggles when they were slaughtered in the winter. one can easily imagine such a colloquial saying producing knowing chuckles. as a metaphor, the difficulty of restraining a pig for slaughter would be versatile and could easily be applied for many other situations, including possibly the marital situations suggested by other scholars. the connotations of the slaughter season would lend any marital version of this saying a certain grim violence. 4 see, for example, morgan library ms m189, folio 006v; morgan library ms m511, folio 006v; and morgan library ms m174, folio 012r. durham proverb 10 191 nonetheless, the context of the slaughter means that the proverb likely was not a marital joke but a reflection that both men and women participated in butchering. many artistic representations show a man straddling the pig to kill it, and a woman holding out a basin to catch the blood jetting from the pig’s neck.5 such scenes suggest that the word ceorl or maritus mean ‘husband’ but do not necessarily imply that this is a sexist riddle where the wife plays the part of a troublesome swine. it may reflect the simple fact that farming couples often did the butchering: the husband astride the pig, and the wife holding out a pan for the blood (see figure 2). seen in this light, durham proverb 10 need not be a commentary on marriage at all, but instead the sort of joke a husband might make to his waiting wife as he seated himself on the pig and raised the knife. figure 2. bodleian library ms. douce 12, folio 013r. photo: bodleian libraries, university of oxford 2020. https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/inquire/p/b71476c7-ba67-40e5-b9ca7cd5230cc024 references arnart, o. 1956: the durham proverbs. lund, c. w. k. leerup. arnggart, o. 1981: the durham proverbs. speculum 56.2: 288–300. bosworth, j. 1898: dóm. in t. n. toller ed. an anglo-saxon dictionary: based on the manuscript collections of the late joseph bosworth. oxford, clarendon press: 207. crabtree, j. 1989: sheep, horses, swine, and kine: a zooarchaeological perspective on the anglo-saxon settlement of england. journal of field archaeology 16.2: 205-213. 5 examples include bodleian library ms. douce 12, folios 012v–013r; morgan library ms morgan m64, folio 12r; and morgan library ms m174, folio 012r. 192 erik wade lewit, t. 2009: pigs, presses and pastoralism: farming in the fifth to sixth centuries ad. early medieval europe 17.1: 77–91. marsden, r. 2004: the cambridge old english reader. cambridge, cambridge university press. steel, k. 2011: how to make a human: animals & violence in the middle ages. columbus (oh), ohio state university press. author’s address department of english american and celtic studies universität bonn regina-pacis-weg 5 53113 bonn germany received: 5 june 2020 e-mail: ewade@uni-bonn.de revised version accepted: 28 july 2020 microsoft word 6. proofs_cossio.docx selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. 28 (2023): 97–106. issn: 1132-631x doi: 10.17811/selim.28.2023.97-106 © ediuno. ediciones de la universidad de oviedo. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. the missing letters j. r. r. tolkien received from derek j. price and r. m. wilson: addendum to “further notes on j. r. r. tolkien’s photostats of the equatorie of the planetis (ms peterhouse 75.i)” andoni cossio university of the basque country (upv/ehu) / university of glasgow (received 8 february 2023; revised 23 april 2023) in 2021, andoni cossio suggested cataloguing the equatorie of the planetis (ms peterhouse 75.i, c. 1393) under “section a” in tolkien’s library: an annotated checklist, by oronzo cilli. one year later, cossio unearthed the exact list of ms peterhouse 75.i folios j. r. r. tolkien had once owned in the form of photostats (2022). in this second article, cossio alludes to the existence of correspondence that tolkien exchanged with derek j. price and r. m. wilson during the preparation phase of price and wilson’s edition of the equatorie of the planetis (1955). new evidence, gathered from maggs bros. ltd.’s private archive (1991b), as well as auction (phillips 1988; sotheby’s 1995) and sales (maggs bros. ltd. 1991a) catalogues, demonstrates the existence of epistles and other material tolkien received from price and wilson, though the brief, and often inaccurate, descriptions of the lots and items do not determine tolkien’s exact contributions to their edition. however, the catalogues provide additional information about the timeline of tolkien’s participation in this project, and disclose that price was the one to approach tolkien in the first place. this note will elucidate those aspects and complement cossio’s (2022) article in other ways.1 keywords: j. r. r. tolkien; the equatorie of the planetis; ms peterhouse 75.i; derek j. price; r. m. wilson; c. t. onions; geoffrey chaucer; merton college; middle english; latin in 2021, andoni cossio suggested cataloguing the equatorie of the planetis (ms peterhouse 75.i, c. 1393) under “section a” in tolkien’s library: an annotated checklist, by oronzo cilli (2019, 1–326).2 one year later, cossio unearthed the exact list 1 i would like to express my gratitude to wayne g. hammond, christina scull, dimitra fimi, and julian reid for their generous assistance. i would also like to thank the warden and fellows of merton college (oxford) for granting me permission to reproduce the archival material in the appendix. this note was completed under the auspices of a next generation eu margarita salas postdoctoral grant (marsa22/19), financed by the ministry of universities (government of spain) and the european union, and by the research group rewest (it-1565-22), funded by the basque government and upv/ehu. 2 cilli’s (2019, 1–326) “section a, tolkien’s library, is composed of 2599 items and brings together the books, works [including manuscripts and pamphlets], and offprints the professor read, knew of, owned or bought as presents throughout his lifetime” (cossio 2020, 197). in the second revised and expanded edition, cilli has divided the original section a into “section a: primary sources” (2023, 1–347) with 2681 items “we know with absolute certainty tolkien read, consulted, bought or borrowed” (2023, xxxvi), and “section b: secondary sources” (2023, 348– 84) with 342 items “he read as cited by scholars in some of their works” (2023, xxxvi). the equatorie of the planetis (ms peterhouse 75.i) is now catalogued as no. a 2540 (cilli 2023, 328), and price and wilson’s edition of that same work as a 1914 (cilli 2023, 248). https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2745-5104 andoni cossio 98 of ms peterhouse 75.i folios j. r. r. tolkien had once owned in the form of photostats (2022, 168–70).3 in this second article, cossio alludes to the existence of correspondence that tolkien exchanged with derek j. price and r. m. wilson during the preparation phase of price and wilson’s 1955 edition of the equatorie of the planetis (2022, 170 and 174). in cossio’s view, these letters are important because they could reveal: tolkien’s contribution to price and wilson’s edition of the equatorie of the planetis and his thoughts on the language of the manuscript, as during tolkien’s lifetime, price and wilson’s claims were never unequivocally disproved and the debate around the manuscript’s authorship was never settled.4 (2022, 174) new evidence, gathered from the private archive of maggs bros. ltd. antiquarian booksellers (1991b) as well as auction (phillips 1988; sotheby’s 1995) and sales (maggs bros. ltd. 1991a) catalogues, demonstrates the existence of epistles and other material tolkien received from price and wilson, though the brief, and often inaccurate, descriptions of the lots and items do not determine tolkien’s exact contributions to their edition.5 however, the catalogues provide additional information about the timeline of tolkien’s participation in the project, and disclose that price was the one to approach tolkien in the first place. this note will elucidate those aspects and complement cossio’s (2022) article in other ways. incidentally, it will also call attention to the worth for literary research of auction catalogues, sources crammed with nuggets which tend to be disregarded. 3 cilli has classified the photostats as no. a 630 (cilli 2023, 89). john m. bowers was the first to write about the existence of tolkien’s photostats (2019, 214), and to give reasons why tolkien would have been inclined to accept the language of the equatorie of the planetis as chaucer’s: “peterhouse’s mingling of dialects matches tolkien’s sense of northern intrusions, and linguistic analysis by r. m. wilson echoed his own long-held views on chaucer’s language: ‘if he lived in an area of mixed dialect, such as that of london, he might well be familiar with a variety of forms, any of which he could use when necessary for the sake of rhyme’ (p. 146). the equatorie’s inclusion of [the preposition] overthwart [ms f. 73r ouerthwart and f. 77v ou[er]thwart ‘across’] would certainly have caught tolkien’s attention as the distinctive chaucerian word [overthwart/overthwert] for which he had supplied an especially long note on its appearance in the book of the duchess [c. 1370]” (2019, 215; see 108–109 for the long note). see cossio for other non-linguistic rationale (2022, 172–73). additional contemporary evidence could have further strengthened tolkien’s belief; see price and wilson for a “number of words which, before their appearance in this text [the equatorie of the planetis], are recorded elsewhere in middle english only in the works of chaucer, and more particularly in his treatise on the astrolabe [c. 1391]” (1955, 137; see also 146–48). 4 kari anne rand has attributed the equatorie of the planetis to john westwyk (2015, 15–35). price and wilson’s claims were contested but never disproved in their lifetimes. see price for a succinct list of their supporting evidence (1953, 224). see also price (1952d, 158 and 160–64), and price and wilson (1955, 141 and 145–66). 5 price acknowledges the help of “professor j. r. r. tolkien,” but tolkien’s name appears among a long list of scholars thanked for their assistance with a rather generic “for other requests” (1955, xv–xvi). the list is ordered alphabetically, and therefore tolkien’s position cannot determine the amount of help provided. unfortunately, the new evidence does not confirm or deny cossio’s most intriguing conjecture: “what characterizes tolkien’s scholarly work on chaucer is the scrupulous attention devoted to specific linguistic points. thus, he may have been aware, after careful examination of the equatorie of the planetis, that its attribution to chaucer rested on inconclusive evidence. this view of course would have challenged price and wilson’s assumptions and it may explain why we know so little about tolkien’s involvement. given price and wilson’s commitment to the hypothesis of chaucerian authorship, it is reasonable to assume that tolkien would have preferred to limit his participation in the project” (2022, 173). the missing letters tolkien received from d. j. prince and r. m. wilson 99 it is best to present the bare evidence first, unfettered from conjectures and observations, so that readers can judge objectively the value of the analysis and hypotheses formulated throughout the paper. the following pages present the dates and locations in which the letters and other materials were on sale, together with the sellers’ descriptions of the items in chronological order. it is surprising to learn that the epistles first emerged in oxford, as most major auction activity in the united kingdom occurs in london. the description of lot 43 of an auction catalogue of phillips, oxford, from 20 october 1988 reads (phillips, unpaginated): [tolkien ephemera]: 3-page typed letter signed from derek price to t., 1952; and 2pp. typed letter and typed article from r. m. wilson signed with relative offprints and an als from sir lionel whitby, master of downing college to tolkien, 1950; and a number of signed pamphlets, etc. e £20–306 the next time the location of the letters was made public, these were housed in london, which takes us to another catalogue. in 1991, maggs bros. ltd. (1991a, unpaginated) advertised the sale of the following lot: [708] tolkien (j.r.r.) a collection of philiological (sic) and literary offprints from j.r.r. tolkien’s working library. being three hundred and ninety-two items, all with tolkien’s library label,7 a large proportion inscribed to him by the respective authors, and a number additionally annotated by tolkien himself. 1883 to 1972. £50008 the description runs on without any reference to the letters, but such a large number of items required a proper list. maggs bros. ltd. invited any curious inquirer to browse through its contents indeed: “a detailed catalogue of the material is available on request” (1991a, unpaginated). the inventory contained two familiar items disclosed earlier in 1988 plus some additional surprises: [326] price (derek j.) interesting and lengthy typed letter signed to prof. tolkien on a possible chaucer holograph. 3pp. royston, herts, 1952. [327] price (derek). the equatorie of the planetis. reprint from the tls.9 with his calling card attached.10 illustrated. see under wilson for a reply to this article. with the printing of this article in bulletin of the british society for the history of science.11> london, the tls, 1952. (maggs bros. ltd. 1991b, 23) 6 typos in quotations from catalogues have been silently corrected except for the typo in ‘philiological’ (sic), which is highlighted in bold (maggs bros. ltd. 1991a; sotheby’s 1995). all capitalisation, italics, and brackets also in the originals. 7 for a scan of the label and a brief explanation on its origin see: <https://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/2018/05/05/from-tolkiens-library/>. 8 i do not quote the rest of the description of the lot because a synthesised and equally informative one is included in the excerpt from sotheby’s catalogue (1995) below. 9 see price for the full reference (1952a; 1952b). tolkien had at least two copies of each (price 1952a; 1952b) because his clippings remain in oxford (cossio 2021, 1–2). 10 see the appendix for a reproduction of price’s contact card found clipped to the front of offprint/mms/d3/7 at merton college library (oxford). offprint/mms/d3/7 is an offprint of price 1952d that the author presented to merton college. 11 price must have forwarded this article a year later (1953) than the two times literary supplement contributions (price 1952a; 1952b) because this piece saw the light of day when the edition of the equatorie of the planetis was finished in july 1953. see price for the full reference (1953). andoni cossio 100 [383] wilson (r.m.) tls to prof. tolkien. 2pp. with c. 30pp carbon typescript of his analysis of the prose language of chaucer’s equatorie. see under price for the article which stimulated this. sheffield, 1953. (maggs bros. ltd. 1991b, 27) it appears that no buyer was interested (£5000 was an excessive price, even considering the great number of items, for the year 1991). four years elapsed and the lot found its way into a sotheby’s auction on 18 december while still in london. there is no mention of the letters, though it is obvious from the number of items, title, and information that both lots advertised are the exact same undivided bundle which belonged to an identical seller (cf. maggs bros. ltd. 1991a and sotheby’s 1995). further proof of this is the typo in “philiological” which is directly (and uncritically) borrowed and reprinted in sotheby’s catalogue in the lot’s title but corrected in the description (cf. maggs bros. ltd. 1991a and sotheby’s 1995). it is here included in full with the interest of other scholars in mind, in particular for the unproven literary inspirations: 356 tolkien (j.r.r.) a collection of philiological (sic) and literary offprints from the author’s working library, all with tolkien’s library label, a large number inscribed to him by respective authors (including a.c. baugh, a.j. bliss, norman davis, henry sweet, c.l. wrenn and others), 56 works additionally annotated by tolkien, a total of 392 offprints, 1883 to 1972 [chiefly 1940s and 1950s] the varied subject matter chiefly concerns philological problems of early and middle english, with many references to the extant texts, many (including beowulf, sir gawain and the green knight, etc) re-edited and re-translated by tolkien himself. pamphlets such as h.e. allen’s influence of superstition on vocabulary (1935) and r.g. haliburton’s survival of dwarf races in the new world (1894) can be seen to relate not only to tolkien’s academic work, but also to his popular fiction.12 £1,000–1,500 (sotheby’s 1995, unpaginated) the price was more reasonable this time, but no sales records are available, provided that the lot sold, and the letters are since that sale hidden to this day from the public eye.13 there is no more information available about the letters, and it is now time to turn our attention to the importance of the quotations above. maggs bros. ltd. dates the letter from price to 1952 and wilson’s to 1953 (1991b, 23 and 27), and the reprint of the times literary supplement with the calling card and the “article in bulletin of the british society for the history of science” are said to be from 1952 (1991b, 23). the article from the bulletin, as indicated in footnote no. 7, is from july 1953, and this suggests that price wrote to tolkien at least twice during the collaboration period, an assistance which for reasons provided below can be restricted to the following interval: january 1952–july 1953. in light of the new evidence, it becomes apparent that cossio overlooked minor, though essential, bits of information which made him adopt a conservative stance about 12 both allen’s and haliburton’s were missing in cilli’s (2019) first edition. these have been included cilli’s second edition, allen as no. a 20 (2023, 8), haliburton as a 906 (2023, 122), though the latter is out of alphabetical order, it should be renumbered a 897 (2023, 121). 13 nothing is known about tolkien’s replies either, and these are not among the almost 10000 catalogued items of the largest collection of price’s papers, preserved at caphés: centre d’archives en philosophie, histoire et édition des sciences (paris). there are no replies from tolkien either at christ’s college (cambridge), needham research institute (university of cambridge), parker library (corpus christi college, cambridge), perne library (peterhouse college, cambridge), r. m. wilson memorial collection (special collections, university of sheffield), and whipple museum of the history of science (university of cambridge). the missing letters tolkien received from d. j. prince and r. m. wilson 101 the dates: “tolkien offered his assistance [to price and wilson] between c. 1951–1955” (2021, 1). the discovery of the equatorie of the planetis and price’s work on the manuscript already narrows down the dates. price found the equatorie of the planetis in his own words “at the beginning of december 1951,” and shortly after at some unspecified time sought permission from peterhouse college to unbind it to read some of its hidden content (1955, xiv).14 price notes that “the detailed study of the manuscript has been made much easier for me by the kindness of the syndics of the cambridge university press, who provided a set of photographs taken while the quires of the volume lay detached from their former tight binding” (1955, xvi). the photostats price sent to tolkien are copies of those original photographs. the manuscript was rebound before 22 may 1952 (see falk 2014, 121), and therefore it was photographed between late december 1951 and early may 1952. price may have ordered or sent the photostats later than 22 may 1952, though quite earlier than july 1953, the date when he signed the preface of the by then completed edition of the equatorie of the planetis (1955, xvi).15 an informed guess would assume that most correspondence occurred during 1952. this can be explained by several factors. by late december/early january, cambridge university press had accepted price’s proposal of an edition of the equatorie of the planetis and its connection to geoffrey chaucer (falk 2014, 116–117 and 131), and price was allowed to change the topic of his phd on 9 may 1952, abandoning the history of crafting scientific instruments, and embracing his wish to edit the equatorie of the planetis (falk 2014, 122 and 132). given that price was a living embodiment of determination,16 he would not have waited long to have the photographs taken and copies made, and to duly begin contacting experts in various fields, including chaucerians of course, and sending them the reproductions with queries. this probably happened before 22 may 1952, the day on which he shared his findings and a similar instrument to the one described in the equatorie of the planetis with the scientific community at a royal society event.17 this takes us to oxford and therefore to tolkien once again. price borrowed an equatorium from merton college, oxford, to illustrate his presentation at the royal society conversazione in london. the merton college governing body approved the loan of the item on 17 march 1952 (falk 2014, 132): “9. that an astrolabe [with an equatorium on its back] (circa 1350) in the college library be loaned to the royal society for a conversazione in may 1952, the instrument to be insured for £500” (merton college governing body 1952, unpaginated). tolkien was present during that 14 this enabled price to confirm that an inscription reads “chaucer” on f. 5v of the ms (1952a, 164; 1952d, 160; 1955, xiv). reproductions of the inscription can be found on page 12 of the digitised ms and in the accompanying article on university of cambridge digital library website: <cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/ms-peterhouse-00075-00001/1>. 15 two letters from price to the perne librarian (peterhouse college), dated 15 february 1954 and 6 april 1954, confirm that he revised the edition’s proofs during those dates. in the 15 february 1954 letter, price announced that the edition was scheduled to be published in autumn of that year, though no reason for the delay has been found among his papers. the letters are stored at the perne library, peterhouse college, cambridge (perne library mss enquiries. mss 1–100). it is possible, though unlikely, that price contacted tolkien again during those months. 16 see seb falk for illustrative examples of price’s personality (2014, 114–17). see also silvio a. bedini (1984, 95–100) and eri yagi, lawrence badash, and donald de b. beaver (1996, 65–74). 17 see falk for the importance of this scientific gathering and the coverage price’s discovery received (2014, 111, 120–22 and 127). andoni cossio 102 meeting (scull and hammond 2017a, 405), which means that the request was placed before and that tolkien was aware of price’s dealings with the college at an earlier point.18 the question remains whether it was price’s idea to contact tolkien or if this thought was prompted by someone else. cossio points at wilson’s referral (cossio 2022, 170), but is it possible that the liaison was part of tolkien’s social circle? this enquiry directs us to the history of the discovery once more. until the manuscript was disbound, price was not quite convinced that the equatorie of the planetis could be chaucer’s or even chaucer’s holograph. the quires were removed from their binding at best by late december 1951 after permission was granted by peterhouse college (price 1955, xiv). however, it was not until the end of january 1952, after comparing his finding with other manuscripts, that price felt confident and began to advertise his discovery (1955, xiv–xv; falk 2014, 116 and 131).19 on 7 march 1952, c. t. onions published a letter in response to a fragment of the beginning of the middle english treatise in the equatorie of the planetis (f. 71v) that had appeared a week earlier in the times (173).20 in this letter, onions provided philological evidence from the fragment to argue that regardless of the authorship of the manuscript, the south-eastern middle english enches (variant of inches, which replaces the old english ‘y’ for ‘e’) and “such south-eastern forms are found in chaucer’s canonical works” (1952, 173).21 this kind of expertise was invaluable to price, and onions was in turn consulted and thanked (price 1955, xvi). onions takes us back to tolkien through another route, since a file among tolkien’s papers (tolkien vc 277) contains a newspaper clipping of onions’s letter (cossio 2021, 1).22 it is plausible that tolkien discussed this enticing philological observation with his friend onions shortly after,23 and this may have prompted onions to direct price to tolkien. the “calling card” price attached to the “reprint from the tls” (maggs bros. ltd. 1991b, 23) mostly overrules the possibility that tolkien contacted him first. either price knew about tolkien’s expertise,24 or tolkien was recommended by “the librarian and [/or other members of] the society of merton college” (price 1955, xv), onions, or wilson. price partnered with wilson at an unspecified date, but this happened soon 18 however, that had to be after the 17 january and 13 february monthly meetings of the governing body in which price’s request was not discussed (merton college governing body 1952, unpaginated). 19 an anonymous article was printed in cambridge university newspaper varsity (“chaucer holograph found in library,” 23 feb. 1952) and another in the times (“possible chaucer manuscript: discovery at cambridge,” 28 feb. 1952, 6). see price for the articles under his name that ensued (1952a, 1952b, 1952d). the anonymous report in the times summarises in brief price 1952a and 1952b. see price for another two pieces he wrote on the equatorie of the planetis before the edition was published (1952c, 1953). see bedini for all related works published by price until 1955 (1984, 102–03). also in yagi, badash, and beaver (1996, 77). 20 see note 19 for reference. see j. a. w. bennett for onions’s short biography and philological expertise (2009, unpaginated). 21 in fact, the south-eastern form enche(s) is used consistently throughout the ms. however, as price and wilson admit, chaucer’s “e-forms for oe. y seem to be much less frequent in his prose than in his verse” (1955, 146). 22 tolkien vc 277 is kept at special collections, weston library, bodleian libraries, university of oxford. 23 onions was a stipendiary fellow from 1923 until 1965 at magdalen college, oxford, and the college librarian during 1940–1955 (bennett 2009, unpaginated). tolkien was then the merton professor of english language and literature (1945–1959), and merton is less than 5 minutes away from magdalen. see christina scull and wayne g. hammond for the onion-tolkien relation (2017b, 907–08). 24 see cossio (2022, 171 and 173). in hilary term 1952 (jan.–mar.), tolkien was lecturing on chaucer’s pardoner’s tale (scull and hammond 2017a, 404). the missing letters tolkien received from d. j. prince and r. m. wilson 103 enough and earlier than december 1952 (price 1952d, 155),25 because price needed a philologist to help him work on the manuscript’s language: it was also fortunate that mr r. m. wilson, m.a., consented to act as adviser on the linguistic side. in addition to writing chapter x and compiling the glossary, he has also provided the section on punctuation in chapter ix, and we have collaborated in the translation of the text. throughout the preparation of this edition we have had frequent consultations. (price 1955, xiii) wilson could have been the liaison between price and tolkien, but, unfortunately, the information in the catalogue does little to clarify such detail. maggs bros. ltd. catalogue errs in suggesting that the times literary supplement article “stimulated” a “30pp carbon typescript of his analysis of the prose language of chaucer’s equatorie” (1991b, 27), since that article in two parts contains scanty linguistic samples to work with (1952a, 1952b). in the letter (maggs bros. ltd. 1991b, 27), wilson may mean that the article sparked his curiosity instead, and the wordy carbon typescript seems, by the date and length, a draft of the translation, linguistic analysis, and related materials to be submitted to cambridge university press. this proves that tolkien was, at least once, still queried and his opinions taken into consideration in 1953 as well. at any rate, by 1953, it is certain tolkien had almost no time to further assist price and wilson with their requests. in late 1951, most of 1952, and until july 1953 (and beyond), tolkien was preoccupied with his legendarium, the publication of the lord of the rings (written between 1937 and 1949, revised until c. 1955, and published in three parts during 1954–1955) and the silmarillion (1977),26 and endless administrative, academic, and social obligations (scull and hammond 2017a, 401–25). in mid 1952, tolkien’s complaints about the lack of free time were frequent (scull and hammond 2017a, 407 and 410), but all leisure was about to vanish. on 10 november 1952, allen & unwin accepted the lord of the rings for publication (scull and hammond 2017a, 414). this would leave, from then onwards, no time for tolkien to spare on anything else that were not official duties and unavoidable social activities, because he then proceeded to create complementary material, rewrite, and revise a work of more than half a million words thoroughly. it is thus reasonable to expect that tolkien’s participation in the project was mainly limited to the first half of 1952, when he was, in all likelihood, first contacted by price. some biographical details point towards possible further assistance, but these are sparse and far between. tolkien travelled to cambridge during 11–18 august 1952 to continue preparing his long-due and delayed 1962 edition of ancrene wisse (scull and hammond 2017a, 409), edited from ms cambridge corpus christi college 402, housed at the parker library.27 he stayed at peterhouse college when alone, and at the garden house hotel when edith and priscila tolkien joined him (scull and hammond 2017a, 409).28 25 see the publication’s (price 1952d) cover for the month. 26 the silmarillion never reached a final form in tolkien’s lifetime, and it was published posthumously by his son, christopher tolkien, with the assistance of guy gavriel kay. 27 on 12–14, 16 and 18 august 1952, in order to gain access to ms cambridge corpus christi college 402, tolkien signed the visitors book for the parker library, stored at corpus christi college, cambridge (ref. q-1-20). 28 the garden house hotel burnt down on 23 april 1972. the graduate cambridge hotel, with the ‘garden house’ restaurant within, stands on the same location: granta place, mill lane, cambridge cb2 1rt. andoni cossio 104 tolkien returned to cambridge to resume his study of the manuscript between late october and early november 1952 (scull and hammond 2017a, 413).29 it is not unlikely that he met price briefly during his stays, perhaps even at peterhouse, but then the exchange would have occurred, perforce, without a written record. despite tolkien’s interest, it also seems, owing to his duties and literary endeavours, that he lacked spare hours to prioritise an external project in which he was only an advisor. this note has provided a few new certainties and fresh hypotheses concerning academic interconnections and tolkien’s contribution to price and wilson’s edition of the equatorie of the planetis, and has highlighted the value of often neglected auction catalogues for literary research. that is not comparable, of course, to the facts that the emergence of the actual letters, carbon typescript, reprints and related material would uncover, but with no better substitutes, the information that tolkien was involved in earnest both in 1952 and 1953 is still valuable. at any rate, there is a large body of items in the tolkien family papers at the weston library (oxford) not accessible to researchers, there are still scores of tolkien’s personal documents in france, which christopher kept at hand while he was working on his books, and, then, there are many letters in private hands; time will tell but we may learn more about the exchange between tolkien, and price and wilson before long. references bedini, silvio a. 1984. “éloge: derek j. desolla price (1922–1961).”30 annali dell’istituto e museo di storia della scienza di firenze 9 (1): 95–115. https://doi.org/10.1163/221058784x02092. bennett, j. a. w. 2009. “onions, charles talbut (1873–1965).” in oxford dictionary of national biography. oxford: oxford university press. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/35316. bowers, john m. 2019. tolkien’s lost chaucer. oxford: oxford university press. cilli, oronzo. 2019. tolkien’s library: an annotated checklist. edinburgh: luna press publishing. cilli, oronzo. 2023. tolkien’s library: an annotated checklist (second revised and expanded ed.). edinburgh: luna press publishing. cossio, andoni. 2020. “tolkien’s library: an annotated checklist, by oronzo cilli.” mythlore: a journal of j. r. r. tolkien, c. s. lewis, charles williams, and mythopoeic literature 38 (2): 195–204. cossio, andoni. 2021. “addenda: one middle english manuscript and four editions of medieval works known to j. r. r. tolkien and what they reveal.” anq: a quarterly journal of short articles, notes and reviews [advance online publication]: 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/0895769x.2021.1932406. 29 tolkien did not sign the visitors book for the parker library in either october or november 1952. it is therefore possible he had ms cambridge corpus christi college 402 sent to cambridge university library for consultation. such minutiae are beyond the scope of this paper, but the records, if extant, might be found in two sources stored at special collections, cambridge university library: “registers, completed by staff, of readers of manuscripts and ‘select’ books, 1929–1957” (volumes 44–45, ua ulib 8/1/8), and “name index to the librarian’s correspondence” (box 20, ua ulib 6/6/3). 30 the correct dates are 1922–1983 and the correct spelling is “de solla.” the missing letters tolkien received from d. j. prince and r. m. wilson 105 cossio, andoni. 2022. “further notes on j. r. r. tolkien’s photostats of the equatorie of the planetis (ms peterhouse 75.i).” selim: journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature 27: 166–76. https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.27.2022.166-176. falk, seb. 2014. “the scholar as craftsman: derek de solla price and the reconstruction of a medieval instrument.” notes & records: the royal society journal of the history of science 68 (2): 111–34. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2013.0062. maggs bros. ltd. 1991a. a becket to zola: 19th and 20th century literature. sales catalogue, no. 1133, summer. london: maggs bros. ltd. maggs bros. ltd. 1991b. unnamed document [contents of lot no. 708 (maggs bros. ltd. 1991 sales catalogue, no. 1133): 392 items from j. r. r. tolkien’s library, 28pp.]. maggs bros. ltd.’s private archive. london: maggs bros. ltd. merton college governing body. 1952. minutes of the governing body: 1947–1955. merton college library (mcr 1.5d): merton college, oxford. onions, c. t. 1952, mar. 7. “the equatorie of the planetis.” the times literary supplement 2614: 173. phillips. 1988. printed books: sale no. 1359. auction catalogue, oct. 20. oxford: phillips inc. brooks. price, derek j. 1952a, feb. 29. “the equatorie of the planetis–i.” the times literary supplement 2613: 164. price, derek j. 1952b, mar. 7. “the equatorie of the planetis–ii.” the times literary supplement 2614: 180. price, derek j. 1952c, sept. 20. “chaucer’s astronomy.” nature 170 (4325): 474–75. https://doi.org/10.1038/170474a0. price, derek j. 1952d, dec. “the equatorie of the planetis.” journal of the south-west essex technical college and school of art 3 (3): 154–69. price, derek j. 1953, july. “the equatorie of the planetis.” bulletin of the british society for the history of science 9 (1): 223–26. https://doi:10.1017/s095056360000083x. price, derek j. 1955. “preface.” in the equatorie of the planetis: edited from peterhouse ms. 75. i, edited by derek j. price and r. m. wilson, xiii–xvi. cambridge: cambridge university press. price, derek j., and r. m. wilson, eds. 1955. the equatorie of the planetis: edited from peterhouse ms. 75. i. cambridge: cambridge university press. rand, kari anne. 2015. “the authorship of the equatorie of the planetis revisited.” studia neophilologica 87 (1): 15–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/00393274.2014.982355. scull, christina, and wayne g. hammond. 2017a. the j. r. r. tolkien companion and guide: chronology (revised and expanded ed.). london: harper collins publishers. scull, christina, and wayne g. hammond. 2017b. the j. r. r. tolkien companion and guide: reader’s guide, part ii (revised and expanded ed.). london: harper collins publishers. sotheby’s. 1995. english literature and history and a collection of continental incunables. auction catalogue, dec. 18. london: sotheby’s. yagi, eri, lawrence badash, and donald de b. beaver. 1996. “derek j. de s. price (1922– 83): historian of science and herald of scientometrics.” interdisciplinary science reviews 21 (1): 64–84. https://doi.org/10.1179/isr.1996.21.1.64. andoni cossio 106 appendix. derek j. price’s business card. card clipped to the front of offprint/mms/d3/7, merton college library, oxford. by permission of the warden and fellows of merton college, oxford. microsoft word review 8_2023.docx selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. 28 (2023): 137–140. issn: 1132-631x doi: 10.17811/selim.28.2023.137-140 © ediuno. ediciones de la universidad de oviedo. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. shippey, tom. 2022. beowulf and the north before the vikings. leeds: arc humanities. pp. 127. isbn 9781802700138. reviewed by dennis cronan university of nevada although this book examines the historical contexts of the old english poem beowulf from a variety of perspectives, it is directed not toward historians (although they are surely part of the book’s broader audience) but primarily toward students and scholars of beowulf. the arguments of the book are presented in a very readable, accessible style, so it is also directed toward a general audience that is interested in either beowulf or early scandinavian history, or both. through its examination of so much of the internal and external history of the poem, it reminds us of what an extraordinary, complex creation beowulf is, and i hope that its publication will encourage us to engage more fully with this complexity. despite all the fictional elements in the poem —which embrace everything to do with the hero and his adventures—much of the remainder of the work emerges as faithful a record of the scandinavian past as an early anglo-saxon poet relying entirely upon oral sources could possibly achieve. the poet placed his fictional hero and his fantastic adventures firmly—and, as shippey stresses, carefully—within the tradition of the heroic legends he inherited from his sources. in addition to discussing beowulf itself as history and asserting its value as a historical source, this book also explores the historical contexts of the poem: both the period of its setting in migrationage scandinavia, and the possible connections between england and scandinavia that may have led to the composition of the poem in england. shippey argues in conclusion that more of the sixth-century invaders of england came from scandinavia than we have so far recognized, and that the original audience of the poem would have viewed the history the poem presents as their own history as well. although few today would accept these heroic legends as history, they were shaped in response to historical events, and they would have been accepted as history by the original audience of the poem. oral poems and poems derived from oral tradition such as beowulf provided the only information about the scandinavian past that this audience possessed. prof. shippey presents this book as a challenge to the scholarly consensus which emerged in response to tolkien’s british academy lecture published as beowulf: the monsters and the critics in 1936 (vii). tolkien was reacting against the earlier tendency among scholars to overlook the actual story of the poem in favor of the heroic history and legends that surround the hero’s adventures. by ridiculing this approach and arguing that the poem should be accepted on the merits of the story it presents, tolkien initiated a new consensus that has viewed the poem primarily as a work of art that needs to be interpreted and evaluated in terms of its own literary virtues. although this consensus has been highly productive, an unfortunate side-effect has been the neglect of the historical elements of the work. everyone, of course, accepts that the repeated references to hygelac’s ill-fated expedition to frisia are based upon a historical event recorded in book 3, ch. 3 of gregory of tours, the history of the franks, and elsewhere. but by and https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2971-6929 book reviews 138 large the other potential historical connections of the poem have received little attention since the middle of the last century. shippey reminds us that tolkien himself continued to take the historical and legendary side of the poem seriously, as can be seen in the notes from his lectures on the finn story and beowulf published as finn and hengest (ed. alan bliss) and beowulf: a translation and commentary (ed. christopher tolkien). indeed, he cites tolkien’s chronologies in these two books when he presents his own, somewhat broader chronology of events on 117–19. tolkien presented his british academy lecture as a correction of what he saw as an over-emphasis on legendary history to the detriment of the poem as poem. perhaps, if we are fortunate, shippey’s book will contribute to a similar correction and return the historical dimensions of the poem to the center of our critical concerns. to this end, he explores these dimensions from as many perspectives as possible. there is, first of all, the question of the value of beowulf for the study of history. here, as elsewhere in his discussion, shippey has the advantage of writing during a period of extensive archaeological excavations in denmark and sweden. the best-known excavations among students of beowulf are those at lejre, the probable site of heorot, which confirm the importance of the site, and thus of the scyldings, during the sixth century. less wellknown are the implications of a brief passage at the beginning of the poem: oft scyld scefing sceaþena þreatum, monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah . . . (lines 4-5) “scyld sceafing often deprived troops of enemies, many tribes, of mead-seats”. the meodosetla are a synecdoche for the hall and for the reciprocal relationship between a leader and his retainers. along with the immediately following lines (6–10), these verses summarize scyld’s expansion of his kingdom and the resulting displacement of warriors and their allegiance from other leaders and their halls to his own, a process which ultimately culminates in hroðgar’s construction of heorot. shippey connects the lines above to the archaeological traces of “smashed halls”, a phenomenon which was quite common throughout southern scandinavia, and which appears to be evidence of political conquest and expansion as opposed to economic raids carried out for cattle and other plunder. he further correlates the scylding expansion with a conclusion by prof. ulf näsman based on archaeological excavations: through warfare and diplomatic marriage the danes had achieved by the year 500 hegemony over the eastern north sea basin and the southwestern baltic. the opening lines of the poem, up until the first appearance of grendel, present a clear account of legendary history that corresponds quite closely with the archaeological record. if we put the eponymous, mythical scyld (“shield son of sheaf”) and his son beow (“barley”) to one side, and take healfdene as a probable founder of the scylding line, as shippey suggests, then we have a passage which appears to be reasonably close to the historical sequence as it is reconstructed through archaeology. with the appearance of grendel (line 86), of course, we first encounter the fantastic elements of the poem, and shortly after that the fiction of the hero himself. as shippey emphasizes, the actual fights between the hero and grendel, where fantasy and fiction merge, account for only some 30% of the narrative. however, his estimate of the portion devoted to the historical background at 70% strikes me as a bit high. true, the finnsburg book reviews 139 episode and the hero’s prophecy of the reawakening of feud between the danes and the heaðobeards do belong to the historical background, but a good portion of the sequences apart from the actual fights involve either beowulf’s conversation with others, the preparations for his funeral, or other fantastic or fictional content such as the dragon’s occupation of the barrow, the lament of the last survivor and the passage about the curse on the treasure. nonetheless, the point the author makes is important: the background of heroic legend and history against which the poem presents beowulf’s deeds is a substantial and an essential part of the poem. i find myself less in tune with some of shippey’s arguments than with others, but this is mainly because i am skeptical of some of the central aspects of the rather pessimistic consensus view of the poem that he accepts. so, for example, i view the interpretation of hroþulf as a traitor in-waiting as a construction of twentieth-century criticism. it is true, as shippey emphasizes, that beowulf frequently relies on hints and allusions to evoke stories of the heroic world, but this tendency strikes me as a reason for the exercise of caution when we interpret such passages. especially in this case: unlike hroðgar’s two sons, hroþulf fits the anglo-saxon qualifications for kingship very well. he is a mature warrior of royal blood and his seat next to the king indicates that he already shares, in some unspecified degree, the royal power and responsibilities. indeed, the poem refers to hroðgar and hroþulf as a single unit: þær þa godan twegen sæton suhtergefædran “where the two good ones sat, nephew and paternal uncle” (lines 1164– 1165), and like widsith (lines 45–46), it emphasizes how faithful and loyal they are to each other. i am similarly skeptical of the reading of the messenger’s speech as a prediction of the conquest of the geats by the swedes. the geats do face a much harsher future, since the return of warfare with their neighbors the swedes is all but certain now that beowulf is gone. but the centerpiece of this speech is the battle of ravenswood, an especially bloody and horrific struggle in which two kings perish, one from each kingdom, and yet both kingdoms continue as before. moreover, if the stories of the geats and their kings in part ii are reliably based on historical legend, as both shippey and i believe, then the presentation of a story from the distant past to convey the hardships of the approaching future of the geats instead of one that actually addresses the supposed coming fall of the kingdom strongly suggests that the poet did not know of any such event or story. in any case, taking the account of the battle of ravenswood as a prediction of the destruction of the geats is to respond only to the strong affective (i.e. emotional) elements of the narrative while overlooking the text itself. the future of the geats is left open at the end of the poem. although this future is clearly not going to be as good or secure as the long years of beowulf’s rule, wiglaf’s exercise of authority in the poem after the hero’s death provides a reason for optimism, since he is presented as an embodiment of beowulf’s heroic virtues transposed down into a more human, realistic scale. thus, although i am fascinated by shippey’s account of the migration-period crisis in scandinavia in chapter 3, i do not see an immediate connection to the poem, in part because i do not anticipate, as he does, an impending fall of the geats. but i also have trouble understanding how the impact of an economic collapse in scandinavia beginning in the middle of the sixth century would have been transmitted through the heroic legends that the poet inherited and reworked. on the other hand, i am impressed by his argument that the opening lines of the messenger’s speech addressing the hostility of the book reviews 140 franks and frisians toward the geats (lines 2911–2921) reflect the way the frankish kings controlled and often cut off the flow of gold to the north. but i am not convinced, primarily because this passage begins with the lines nu ys leodum wen / orleghwile “now i expect a time of war for [our] people” (lines 2911–2912)—as if the speaker is expecting the franks to mount a naval expedition against them! nonetheless, shippey’s argument is the best explanation for taking this peculiar passage seriously that i have yet encountered. returning to broader issues of the book, i think it would have been helpful if prof. shippey had distinguished more sharply between what we today are willing to accept as history and what the poet and his original audience would have accepted, for we are talking about two very different kinds of history here: our modern notion of history, on the one hand, and on the other the heroic, legendary history that has been passed down in the poetic tradition. given the correspondences between the poem’s genealogies of the scylding and the scylfing dynasties and those that can be reconstructed from saxo and early norse sources, we can view the poem’s presentation as a solid record of heroic legend, and we can therefore have a fair amount of confidence in the genealogy and history, such as it is, of the kings of the geats, which are unrecorded elsewhere. but the relationship between the heroic history we encounter in the poem and the actual course of historical events seems to me to be general enough for historians to be cautious in using the poem as an entirely reliable source, although it is their own loss when they dismiss it entirely. but it is a different matter for those of us who are students of literature: because the poem presents itself as a record of legendary history that stretches well over half a century, we need to unite this historical perspective with the more obvious fantastic and fictional elements in our interpretations and understanding of the poem. what, precisely, is this work that combines fiction, fantasy, and a conscientious recording of heroic history into a single work? ignoring the fantasy and fiction in favor of the heroic history, as so many of tolkien’s predecessors did, is to ignore the poet’s creation, but treating the entire poem as a fictional work silently assimilates it to our modern notions of historical fiction. fortunately, no one (or at least no one that i have encountered) has argued for the poem as a forerunner of the historical novel. but what then is beowulf? what can the remarkable mixture of fantasy, fiction and legend in the poem tell us about the possible purposes and goals of the poet when he composed this work? and what guidance, if any, does the presence of this mixture give us in our readings of the poem? (received 11/05/2023) daniel schreier, milan marković & saša petković, selim 23 (2018): 115–136. issn 1132-631x i sall synge in haboundance of gastly softne: /h/ insertion in middle english — methodology, data mining and some first interpretations1 daniel schreier, milan marković & saša petković university of zurich this paper discusses some of the methodological challenges for a first corpus-based analysis of so-called /h/ insertion in english, a feature that has been widely observed yet not analysed empirically so far. we survey the existing literature and present what is known about historical variation and change, before describing our data-driven approach in the helsinki corpus and the corpus of early english correspondence and presenting some first results on internal conditioning, restriction to word type, and overall frequency. we show that /h/ was inserted on english as well as french loanwords, nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and numerals, and that there was a positive match of identical lexical items in the two corpora (able, am, it, and itself), making this a historically robust feature. keywords: /h/ insertion; corpus analysis; historical variation and change; helsinki corpus; corpus of early english correspondence 1 this paper was delivered as a plenary talk at the 2017 conference of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature (selim), held at the university of málaga on 21–23 september 2017. we wish to acknowledge the feedback and contributions from the audience present. a number of colleagues shared data and experience, commented on earlier drafts of the manuscript and pointed our interest to relevant issues, and our thanks go to: rhona alcorn, jorge luis bueno-alonso, javier calle-martín, juan camilo conde-silvestre, ray hickey, jesús romero-barranco, olga timofeeva, and christine wallis. any remaining mistakes are our own. 116 daniel schreier, milan marković & saša petković 1. introduction it is perhaps not exaggerated to say that /h/ insertion (in words that receive initial stress and begin with a vowel, island, abundance, it, etc.) is one of the least understood variables in the history of the english language. it is reported in overviews of english historical phonology (lass 1992, milroy 1992) and can be traced back to early middle english. milroy (1992) has shown that the norfolk gilds (late 14 th century) or the paston letters (late 15 th century) exhibit variable use of <h> spellings, namely both absence (in alpenie ‘halfpenny’) and un-etymological insertion (in hoke lewes ‘oak leaves’). it is frequently used as a stylistic device in charles dickens’ renderings of working-class london english (“gas microscopes with hextra power”, in the pickwick papers), and historical corpora (such as the linguistic atlas of early middle english, laeme) provide evidence also. notwithstanding, inserted /h/ has very near to extinction in present-day british english (surviving in cases of occasional hypercorrection, such as in the letter <h>, pronounced /heit∫/) but has been maintained in several post-colonial english varieties around the world (such as tristan da cunha english; see schreier forthc.). all in all, /h/ insertion is well-known and mentioned in the literature, yet always on a descriptive level, and quantitative analyses are lacking. so far, it has not yet been studied from a standpoint of variationist sociolinguistics or (with the exception of milroy 1992) historical sociolinguistics. this paper goes some way of redressing this imbalance and reports on a first attempt to reconstruct historical variation in /h/ insertion in two corpora, namely the helsinki corpus (hc) and the corpus of early english correspondence sampler (ceecs). a prime concern of our focus is methodology and we will detail our data mining procedures in detail here, in the hope that /h/ insertion is studied in other historical corpora as well. we will also provide some information on the lexical dimension of /h/ variation and compare the two corpora with the aim of uncovering parallel patterns of /h/ insertion in earlier forms of english. we begin with a general discussion of /h/ insertion in english and present what is known about this variable, based on existing sources. following the general discussion, we detail the methodology developed for our research project, describe the two corpora used (hc, ceecs), present our findings, and end with a conclusion and an assessment of future research on the variable. /h/ insertion in middle english 117 2. /h/ insertion in english: what we know so far one problem with assessing the historical validity of /h/ insertion is that the comments are sporadic, non-representative, and selective. the high degree of awareness of this variable somewhat contrasts with the sources for which it is reported, and over the last two centuries, commentators (such as jespersen 1949) focus on very few sources where it is mentioned. to give an example: one of the most widely used 19 th -century sources is the direct speech of working-class london english as reported in charles dickens’ novels. indeed, /h/ variation is a rather prominent feature here: adam bede:  mr casson, a butler, talks to a traveler. “he’ll be comin’ of hage this ‘ay‘arvest” nicholas nickleby:  “this is the hend, is it? continued miss squeers, who being excited aspirated her h’s strongly!” (p. 518) great expectations:  pip writes to joe: “mi deer jo i ope u r krwite well i ope i shal son b habell 4 2 teedge u jo” (i, p. 98) the pickwick papers:  “if they wos a pair o’ patent double million magnifyin’ gas microscopes of hextra power, p’raps i might be able to see through a flight o’ stairs and a deal door” (chapter 34) previous studies on variation and change of english dialect features in dialect contact scenarios overseas (such as the /v–w/ merger, trudgill et al. 2003) have readily used dickens as a resource and taken dialect reports of this kind as prima facie evidence of working-class london english (assuming that it was brought to overseas areas). this is not unproblematic, however. from a standpoint of english historical linguistics, there is no warranty that the direct speech reported in a source is an adequate reflection of how londoners used to speak at the time (this, of course, goes for all historical sources, chaucer, shakespeare, etc.), let alone that london english served as a donor variety, which is a considerable conundrum. playwrights have always taken liberties 118 daniel schreier, milan marković & saša petković when creating their characters; reported dialogues at odds with adequate (or authentic) renderings of speech and may in fact be nothing more than literary artefacts, not to be taken at face value. mugglestone reminds historical linguists that dickens’s lower-class characters are, correspondingly, often depicted as being seemingly incapable of pronouncing hand other than as and, hungry other than as ungry, or, conversely, under other than as hunder. such systematic patterns are, in real terms, fictions just as much as the characters themselves. (mugglestone 1995: 137) the same observation, albeit stronger, is found in jespersen: many novelists would have us believe, that people who drop their aspirates place false aspirates before every vowel that should have no [h]; such systematic perversion is not, however, in human nature. but they sometimes inadvertently put a [h] between two vowels (rarely after a consonant), especially when the word is to receive extra emphasis, and of course, without any regard to whether the word ‘ought to’ have [h] or not. the observer […] is struck with the instances of disagreement, deducing from them the impression of a systematic perversion (‘am an’ heggs’). (jespersen 1949: 378) both mugglestone and jespersen call for a cautious interpretation of historical materials (of which dickens’ novels are just one source, of course, even though a rather widely quoted one). however, this is not to refute their validity. jespersen himself discusses /h/ variation in the history of english (1949: 378–390) and quotes other sources, such as james elphinston’s (1787) principles of english grammar: “e 1787 (vol 2.254 ff.) complains of exactly the same errors in this respect as are met with nowadays: ils, ouzes, eariing the owls in the hevening, orse, art, arm, etc.”; john walker’s (1791) critical pronouncing dictionary: “w 1791 speaks of the ‘fault of the londoners: not sounding h where it ought to be sounded, and inversely’.”; and thomas batchelor’s (1809) orthoëpical analysis: “b 1809 p. 29 says: ‘the aspirate h […] is often used improperly, and is as frequently omitted where it should be used. give my orse some hoats has been given as an example of these opposite errors from the cockney dialect’.” additional evidence comes from regional dialectology. the survey of english dialects (sed, luick 1964) reports fieldwork data of so-called norm (non-mobile older rural male) speakers throughout england. fieldworkers /h/ insertion in middle english 119 were instructed to elicit data via questionnaires and to transcribe the responses. with regard to /h/ insertion, luick concludes that anm. 1. dass h nicht gänzlich geschwunden ist (so wright, dial. gram. 254), ergibt sich aus den aufzeichnungen bei ellis (vgl. güning 3ff) und neueren einzeluntersuchungen. danach würde heute in kendal im nördlichen cumberland und in suffolk h zumeist richtig gesprochen (hirst 12, 111, brilioth 93, kökeritz 106) und ware in penrith und süd-durham bei manchen sprechern oder in gewissen orten regelmässig vorhanden (reaney 133, orton 6, 141). für in der emphase falsch angefügtes h bieten beispiele: hackness (cowling 101), adlington (hargreaves 73), pewsey (kjederqvist 113), west-somerset (kruisinga 93), stokesley (klein 76), oldham (schilling 107). (luick 1964: 1093, emphasis added) ‘obs. 1: the fact that h has not entirely disappeared (cf. wright, dial. gram. 254), can be seen in the notes of ellis (cf. güning 3ff) and some more recent case studies. accordingly, in kendal in northern cumberland and in suffolk h was pronounced correctly most of the time (hirst 12, 111, brilioth 93, kökeritz 106) and it was regularly found in some speakers and certain localities in penrith and south-durham (reaney 133, orton 6, 141). examples for h that are added incorrectly in emphatic positions: hackness (cowling 101), adlington (hargreaves 73), pewsey (kjederqvist 113), west-somerset (kruisinga 93), stokesley (klein 76), oldham (schilling 107).’ this suggests that /h/ insertion was well and alive in the mid-20 th century (at least in older speakers of traditional dialects) and that it was rather widespread regionally. this is confirmed in late middle english, where milroy’s (1992) analysis of the linguistic atlas of late medieval english (lalme) provides evidence in texts from the east midlands, east anglia and the south (in c. 1190–1320, the feature was attested in a region from lincolnshire and norfolk to the southern counties but “the instability seems to be greatest in the east midlands”, milroy 1992: 140). milroy also finds that /h/ insertion was attested in the norfolk gilds (late 14 th century) and the paston letters (late 15 th century; alpenie ‘halfpenny’ and hoke lewes ‘oak leaves’). alcorn (personal communication, august 2016) reports even earlier evidence of /h/ insertion in laeme, where a search surfaced multiple examples in multiple laeme texts from multiple counties, including gloucestershire, kent, lincolnshire, norfolk, suffolk, and worcestershire. adj[ective] examples include: holde ‘old’, hiuel ‘evil, hunkinde ‘unkind’. adv[erb] examples include: heuere ‘ever’, hinne ‘in’, hout ‘out’. 120 daniel schreier, milan marković & saša petković conj[unction] examples include: hif ‘if’, her ‘ere’, has ‘as’. prep[osition] examples include: huntil ‘until’, hafter ‘after’, hat ‘at’. alcorn informs us that /h/ insertion is widespread, both externally in terms of region, and internally in all parts of speech (which is noteworthy, as most of the later examples come from nouns; see below). like other sources, milroy emphasises that there is a relationship between /h/ dropping and /h/ insertion, though he is more sociolinguistically sensitive to the variable nature of the two processes than scholars such as jespersen are. milroy (1992) finds that /h/ variation, e.g. ate for ‘hate’ and om for ‘home’, halle for ‘alle’ and his for ‘is’, has a complex sociolinguistic history: many early m[iddle] e[nglish] sources exhibit variable use of the letter h in syllable-initial positions before vowels (that is, in such words as hate, hopper). sometimes it is omitted where it is historically expected to be present, and sometimes it is added where it is not expected. (milroy 1992: 140) milroy offers a historical-sociolinguistic explanation for /h/ variation, namely that there was linguistic insecurity as to when to pronounce /h/. one of the most openly stigmatised sociolinguistic variables in the history of english is /h/ dropping, and milroy suggests that instability in /h/ usage leads to hyper-correction and insertion of /h/ where it is not etymological. speakers, in other words, over-compensate in order to avoid using stigmatised innovations —which would explain why one and the same speaker would have both dropping and insertion at the same time (which, of course, makes it very noticeable). a similar explanation was offered by christine wallis (unpublished ms.), who studied the monasteriales indicia, a short description of sign language in a monastery during times of silence (commonly used items to do with liturgy, eating and drinking, clothing, and people in the abbey) and was dated to canterbury, c. mid-11 th century. in this text, wallis noted both deletion (is ‘his’, abban ‘to have’) and insertion (hunlocan ‘unlock’, his ‘is’, halban ‘alb’) and concluded that “the scribe is inconsistent in his use of <h> […] ‘overcompensating’ in speech for h-dropping. therefore, the text would reflect the writer’s speech. alternatively, it could be a written feature reflecting only h-lessness in speech.” of course, one problem with such an approach is that one would expect the variable to be above the sociolinguistic radar. if stigmatised features are ‘corrected’, then they would have to be noticeable and subject to open /h/ insertion in middle english 121 comments and discourse, particularly in the usage guides and orthoepic treatises of the 18 th century. however, there are “few comments on ‘[h]dropping’ (and [h] insertion) before 1800. the very few comments also refer to cockney, or london english” (milroy 1992: 138). this is also reflected in jespersen’s discussion (see above). linguistic insecurity is questioned by others as well: until the beginning of the sixteenth century, there was no evidence of association between h-dropping and social or educational status, but the attitudes began to shift in the seventeenth century, and by the eighteenth century [h]-lessness was stigmatized in both native and borrowed words. (minkova 2013: 107; cf. mugglestone 2006) still, compared with the situation in the following century, any adverse sociophonetic consequences of [h]-dropping and adding are, if anything, relatively unstressed by late-eighteenth-century observers. (jones 2006: 257) to substantiate these claims, we checked a selection of grammar books and usage guides published in the second half of the 18 th century (see table 1), and it is striking that not a single one of them listed /h/ insertion. this, in our view, is evidence that the feature was not in the public eye and underneath the sociolinguistic radar (discussion in schreier forthc.), making milroy’s explanation difficult to uphold. the three sources quoted by jespersen (1949) and reproduced in other publications seem to be the only ones that make explicit reference to the feature. to sum up this very short overview of what we know about the history of /h/ insertion in british english: the evidence we have at present is anecdotal and sporadic at best. /h/ deletion and insertion are commonly discussed hand in hand and considered as a manifestation of /h/ variation in general. the earliest reports we could locate come from the mid-11 th century (monasteriales indicia), then inserted /h/ is reported throughout the middle english and early modern english periods (norfolk gilds, late 14 th century; paston letters, late 15 th century; and also in historical dialect corpora: laeme, lalme). 122 daniel schreier, milan marković & saša petković table 1. 18 th -/19 th -century usage guides checked for comments on /h/ insertion year author title 1726 n. bailey an introduction to the english tongue: being a spelling book 1750 s. hammond a new introduction to learning; or, a sure guide to the english pronunciation and orthography 1762 g. sharp a short treatise on the english tongue: being an attempt to render the reading and pronunciation of the same more easy to foreigners 1764 a. johnston pronouncing and spelling dictionary 1773 w. kenrick a new dictionary of the english language 1781 t. sheridan a rhetorical grammar of the english language. calculated solely for the purposes of teaching propriety of pronunciation, and justness of delivery, in that tongue, by the organs of speech 1784 r. nares elements of orthoepy 1786 w. scott a new spelling, pronouncing, and explanatory dictionary of the english language 1791 j. walker a critical pronouncing dictionary and expositor of the english language 1792 w. fogg elementa anglicana; or, the principles of english grammar displayed and exemplified 1793 w. perry the royal standard english dictionary 1795 w. smith an attempt to render the pronunciation of the english language more easy to foreigners 1799 j. adams the pronunciation of the english language vindicated from imputed anomaly & caprice as for insights from regional dialectology and historical sociolinguistics, ellis (1889: 1) reports the feature in “uneducated people, speaking an inherited language, in all parts of great britain where english is the ordinary medium of communication between peasant and peasant”, and it is found in a broad range of diverse areas, including yorkshire, lancashire, wiltshire, and somerset. following milroy, there was a regional concentration in the southeast and the midlands, and by the late 19 th century it had developed a strong association with working-class london english (cockney). this no doubt fuelled its prominent usage in the literature (as in dickens’ novels), where it was portrayed (perhaps even stereotyped) as an east london feature. later on, it was all but lost from british english; whereas dialect atlases such as the sed still report it as common (at least in the speech of older non-mobile men in /h/ insertion in middle english 123 the countryside), it became obsolescent from the 1950s onwards and is now very near extinction (or already extinct). as quantitative evidence is lacking, the present study is a first attempt to develop a methodology that allows us to retrace historical variation with regard to /h/ variation. we would like to present some first historical data to explore that variable nature of /h/ and also get a better understanding of its frequency and internal conditioning in middle and early modern english. with this aim, we selected two corpora, the hc and the ceecs, and searched for cases of /h/ insertion. in a next step, we detail the methodology we employed before we go on to present some first findings. 3. /h/ insertion in middle english: methodology and some first findings while certainly not the largest of the historical corpora available today, the helsinki corpus and the corpus of early english correspondence (ceec) are particularly well-suited for diachronic investigation of /h/ insertion, since they were both designed and compiled along principles of historical sociolinguistics. these two collections of written language represent a proverbial ‘window into the past’, as they provide a very good opportunity to extend the analysis of /h/ insertion into the domain of english historical linguistics and to assess patterns of variation and change. the hc (rissanen et al. 1991) is comprised of two major components: a diachronic and a dialectal one. the diachronic component of the hc was released in 1991 and includes a selection of texts that span the period from around 730 to 1710 (thus almost one thousand years). these texts are organised into three large sections, which correspond to the old, middle and early modern english periods. in total, the hc includes c. 450 texts and 1,572,800 words. the old english section contains 413,300 words, the middle english section 608,600 words, and the early modern english section 551,000 words. the representativeness of the language included in the corpus is described by kytö, who notes: [t]he selectional criteria adopted for including a text […] reflect the principles of socio-historical variation analysis […] periodization has been of primary importance […] but attention has also been paid to geographical dialect, type and register of writing (text type, relationship to spoken language, setting on 124 daniel schreier, milan marković & saša petković formal-informal axis) and sociolinguistic variation (different author-related parameters such as gender, age, social rank). (kytö 1996) however, even though the corpus covers nearly an entire millennium in the history of the english language, only its middle and early modern english components, which together span the period from 1150 to 1710, were included for the present investigation. its old english component, on the other hand, which covers the period from 730 to 1150, was not taken into consideration. in a similar vein, the original purpose of the ceec (nevalainen et al. 1998) was to examine the ways in which a methodology employed for modern sociolinguistic research can be applied to historical data. this was made possible by including “an extensive database containing background information about letter writers” (nevalainen et al. 1998) into the corpus metadata. the original version of the ceec was released in 1998 and covers the time period between 1410 and 1681. it is comprised of around 5,961 letters and amounts to more than 2.5 million words. the ceecs, its publiclyavailable version, was released in the same year (nevalainen et al. 1998), and it is this version of the corpus that we used for the purposes of the present paper. the sampler itself covers the period between 1418 and 1680 and contains 1,147 letters from 194 individual writers, amounting to around 450,000 words in total. it is worth mentioning that this sampler represents a “fairly accurate small-scale copy of the full ceec” as it provides very “similar results for many linguistic phenomena” (nevalainen et al. 1998). as mentioned previously, so far very few attempts have been made to account for /h/ insertion in quantitative terms. as a result, we set out to devise a universal, reliable and robust set of criteria, which would allow us to accurately track the usage of this sociolinguistic variable over long periods of time (and that would be general enough so that it could be applied to other corpora as well). our methodological procedure, which is essentially an extension of the methodology first employed to investigate /h/ insertion in tristan da cunha english (see schreier forthc.), is described in detail in the passages below, in the hope that it will help advance further quantitative analyses of /h/ variation in the domain of english historical linguistics. during the initial stage of the analysis, it was necessary to identify and extract all the instances of /h/ insertion from the two corpora in order to get some first understanding of its use. this presented us with a first major obstacle. specifically, while this procedure would have been a relatively /h/ insertion in middle english 125 straightforward task when dealing with a smaller, specialised corpus, where the feature investigated is usually marked via some type of notation in order to facilitate its searchability and recall, the same does not apply when dealing with large, general-purpose corpora, such as the hc and the ceec, which strive for universality and where the level of non-standardness in terms of notation is reduced to a bare minimum. to make matters more complicated, upon running some of our preliminary searches, we also encountered a number of ambiguous word forms, a variety of different spelling realisations for the same form as well as forms carrying inflectional suffixes which have long disappeared from usage in the english language. this is illustrated in table 2, which shows the complete list of word forms attested in the hc data for the lexical units ask and abide. this, as a consequence, rendered looking for any underlying patterns, which could facilitate the retrieval of /h/ tokens, a virtually impossible task. table 2. list of word forms for ask and abide attested in the helsinki corpus of english texts lexeme word form ask ask, asks, asking, asked, ask’d, askande, askede, askeden, askeing, askeinge, asken, askes, askest, asket, asketh, askeyd, askeþ, askid, askis, askist, askit, askith, askt, askte, askus, askyd, askyde, askyn, askyng, askynge, askynges, askys, askyth, axing, akseþ, aksy, axande, axe, axed, axede, axeden, axeing, axeinge, axes, axelyne, axest, axet, axen, axeth, axeyd, axeþ, axid, axis, axist, axit, axith, axt, axte, axus, axyd, axyde, axyn, axyng, axynge, axynges, axys, axyth, hasked, haske abide abide, abiding, abidað, abidæn, abidan, abidand, abidas, abiddan, abide, abideð, abiden, abideth, abideþ, abiding, abidiþ, abidon, abidyng, abidynge, abyd, abydand, abyde, abyden, abydest, abydeth, abydith, abydyn, abydyng, abydynge, abydyth, abydythe, habyde, habydynge hence, in order to substantially limit the scope of our investigation and bring it to a somewhat more manageable level, we first extracted every single word form which starts with the letter h. this procedure was carried out using corpus query language; however, the same result can also be achieved with the use of regular expression syntax. unsurprisingly, running a search of such general scope resulted in an extremely high number of hits in both the hc and the ceecs (n=109,920 and n=27,335, respectively). the concordanced results were then exported as a comma separated file (.csv) and imported into an excel spreadsheet for further analysis. 126 daniel schreier, milan marković & saša petković during the next stage, each of the hits was manually inspected for the presence of a potential /h/ prefix. only those cases where /h/ insertion was positively attested were retained in the tabulations, while the rest of the data was discarded. as a result, we managed to identify a total of 1,661 instances of /h/ insertion in the hc and 520 instances of /h/ insertion in the ceecs. nevertheless, upon closer examination of the results, we noticed two distinct types of tokens with an /h/ prefix in the hc data. the first type was comprised of word forms such as habilite (ability), hable (able), haboundance (abundance), haske (ask), hevere (every), hit (it), etc. these instances of /h/ insertion ‘proper’ were retained in the analysis. on the other hand, we also noticed a number of tokens occurring in the middle english component of the hc (1150–1350, specifically), which were transformed into whwords over time. this type consisted of word forms such as huanne (when), huere (where), huet (what), huich (which), hwile (while), etc. we treated these instances as members of the ‘don’t count’ class and removed them entirely from the scope of our investigation. with the exclusion of these word forms, the total number of /h/ tokens in the hc data was reduced from the original 1,661 to a somewhat lower value of 1,309. in the next step, we categorised each of the /h/ tokens obtained from the two corpora according to their corresponding lexical values. upon the completion of this process, we managed to identify nineteen unique lexical items in each of the two corpora. these lexemes were then used to find the corresponding word forms where /h/ insertion could but did not occur. this step was crucial in order to ensure that our method remains in compliance with labov’s (1982:30) ‘principle of accountability’. specifically, the method which was employed to extract the /h/ variation data was the following. first, the entire inflectional paradigm was reconstructed for each of the lexemes by adding all the possible suffixes, depending on its part of speech membership (e.g. ability: ability, abilities; allow: allow, allows, allowing, allowed; able: able, abler, ablest). next, /h/ prefixed equivalents were created for each of the word forms obtained from the above procedure. finally, all the prefixed and non-prefixed word forms were combined to create a list in order to extract both realisations of the dependent variable. however, while this procedure works very well with the data from the modern english period (see schreier forthc.), it alone is not sufficient when earlier forms of english are taken into account, due to the variability in form and spelling mentioned earlier. hence, in order for our procedure to be /h/ insertion in middle english 127 considered methodologically robust, the word list needed to be expanded with all the archaic realisations of the lexemes as well. these were identified with the help of two major middle english resources: laeme (laing 2013) and the middle english dictionary (med, lewis 1959). in the last step, all the archaic word forms attested in our subsequent searches were included in the final list. an illustrative sample of such a list, which was used to extract the /h/ variation data from the hc, is presented in table 3. table 3. sample of the list used for extraction of ø and /h/ tokens in the helsinki corpus of english texts lexeme ø /h/ ability (n) ability hability abilities habilities abilite habilite abilitie habilitie abilitys habilitys allow (v) allow hallow allows hallows allowing hallowing allowed hallowed allow’d hallow’d allowd hallowd allowe hallowe allowes hallowes alloweþ halloweþ able (adj) able hable abler habler ablest hablest abel habel abil habil abill habill abyl habyl abyll habyll abundantly (adv) abundantly habundantly abundauntly habundauntly aboundantlie haboundantlie aboundantly haboundantly 128 daniel schreier, milan marković & saša petković 3.1 the helsinki corpus of english texts as shown in table 4, the initial results of the analysis on the hc show quantitative evidence of /h/ insertion in the middle english varieties. even though only at 3.8 per cent, the overall insertion rate in texts ranging from 1150 to 1710 stems from a relatively high token count of 1,309 (34,507 in total). considering that these tokens are extracted from the records of written language when only the educated and the nobility were literate, a substantial number of /h/ prefixed instances such as this warrants further investigation. table 4. helsinki corpus of english texts: overall /h/ insertion rate ø (n) /h/ (n) total (n) /h/ (%) 33,198 1,309 34,507 3.8 categorised into periods ranging from seventy to one hundred years in length, the analysis of /h/ insertion rates reveals a drastic decrease and eventual loss of this feature over time. texts from the earliest period between 1150 and 1250 show a very high /h/ insertion rate amounting to 41.1 per cent (527 out of 1282), which very noticeably contrasts with the results from the other periods. even though the periods from 1250 to 1710 are above the overall insertion rate, they exhibit very low insertion rates in comparison. specifically, the periods from 1250 to 1350 and 1420 to 1500 display /h/ insertion rates of 6.6 per cent and 7.4 per cent, respectively. the remaining periods show a substantial decrease in insertion rates, dropping to 1.7 per cent between 1350 and 1420, then to 0.9 per cent between 1500 and 1570, and finally to 0.3 per cent between 1570 and 1640. there are no occurrences of /h/ insertion in the text records from the period between 1640 and 1710. this is an indication that the feature was lost, or at the very least, that there was a considerable decline of /h/ insertion in written language, as seen in figure 1. on the lexical level, the hc results show a varied distribution of /h/ insertion rates. these findings are presented in table 5. due to their low token counts, the lexemes ability, abound, and abundantly will not be discussed further. the adjective abundant is one of the exceptions since it presents a very interesting case, as does the reflexive pronoun itself in connection to the pronoun it. further investigation shows that eight out of sixteen remaining lexemes display low insertion rates. in the case of abide, only one example of /h/ insertion out of 171 total tokens was discovered, which points to a 0.6 per cent insertion rate. similarly, the lexeme in appears only twice with the /h/ /h/ insertion in middle english 129 prefix out of 18,357 total tokens. the lexemes old (n=563), up (n=519), and upon (n=755) have high total token counts but the number of their prefixed tokens is low, so that their insertion rates range from 0.3 per cent to 0.6 per cent. these appear to be actual instances of /h/ insertion; nevertheless, they should be examined further on a larger data sample before drawing any conclusions here. the lexeme ask, on the other hand, is only minimally more reliable with four /h/ prefixed tokens out of 536, producing a 0.7 per cent insertion rate, which is identical to the lexeme every with six out of 902 total figure 1. helsinki corpus of english texts: /h/ insertion rates across different time periods tokens. likewise, the possessive pronoun our, displays a conclusively low insertion rate of 0.7 per cent with eleven /h/ inserted tokens out of 1,623 in total. moving on to lexemes with higher insertion rates, the verb allow with thirty-five total tokens appears only twice in the examined data sample (insertion rate 5.7%). similarly, with a total token count of fifty-two, the preposition/conjunction until also appears only twice in the corpus yielding a 3.8 per cent insertion rate. the lexeme able appears prefixed by /h/ four times out of the total 153 tokens with an insertion rate of 2.6 per cent. nevertheless, these lexemes require further research on a larger data sample in order to 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 1150-1250 1250-1350 1350-1420 1420-1500 1500-1570 1570-1640 1640-1710 130 daniel schreier, milan marković & saša petković verify the reliability of these results. the first person singular verb am on the other hand provides a much clearer picture of its insertion rate (twenty-one out of 920, or 2.3 per cent). furthermore, the remaining lexemes are all examples of substantially higher /h/ insertion rates, which warrants closer examination. the adjective abundant, although low in total token count, appears almost categorically with the /h/ prefix in the data sample. with table 5. helsinki corpus of english texts: /h/ insertion rates per lexeme lexeme /h/ (n) ø (n) total (n) /h/ (%) abide 1 170 171 0.6 ability 4 7 11 36.4 able 4 149 153 2.6 abound 1 14 15 6.7 abundance 12 22 34 35.3 abundant 12 1 13 92.3 abundantly 1 13 14 7.1 allow 2 33 35 5.7 am 21 899 920 2.3 ask 4 532 536 0.7 every 6 896 902 0.7 in 2 18,355 18,357 0.01 it 1,214 8,601 9,815 12.4 itself 4 15 19 21.1 old 3 560 563 0.5 our 11 1,612 1,623 0.7 until 2 50 52 3.8 up 3 516 519 0.6 upon 2 753 755 0.3 total 1,309 33,198 34,507 3.8 /h/ insertion in middle english 131 twelve insertion examples out of the total thirteen tokens, its insertion rate amounts to 92.3 per cent. correspondingly, perhaps in line with the previous result, the noun abundance, with twelve examples of /h/ insertion out of thirty-four total tokens, produces an insertion rate of 35.3 per cent. the most interesting finding in the data sample, however, is the personal pronoun it. with 1,214 occurrences of /h/ insertion out of the total 9,815 tokens, this lexeme has an insertion rate of 12.4 per cent. its insertion rate is not as high as that of the previous two lexemes, nevertheless, with such a large number of /h/ inserted occurrences (92.7% of all the /h/ tokens in the hc), the pronoun it is a perfect candidate for further study of the underlying linguistic constraints which condition /h/ insertion. similarly, although the reflexive pronoun itself has a low total token count (n=19), with four occurrences of /h/ insertion it produces the insertion rate of 21.1 per cent and merits additional research on a larger data sample, if only in connection with the pronoun it. 3.2 the corpus of early english correspondence sampler although much smaller in size, the ceecs shows an overall insertion rate of 2.7 per cent, which is very close to the hc rate of 3.8 per cent (see table 6). out of 19036 total tokens, 520 have the inserted /h/ and, considering that the ceec sampler version is less than half the size of the selected data sample from the hc, these results promise to be reliable, comparable and generalisable. table 6. corpus of early english correspondence sampler: overall /h/ insertion rate ø (n) /h/ (n) total (n) /h/ (%) 18,516 520 19,036 2.7 investigating the insertion rates in the ceecs on the lexemic level reveals the interesting fact that both corpora produce the total of nineteen unique lexemes prefixed with /h/ in written records (see table 7). of those nineteen only four appear in both data samples: able, am, it, itself. again, out of the nineteen lexemes three (abandon, ache, ale) will not be discussed due to their low total token numbers. out of the remaining sixteen, seven lexemes (answer, as, at, one, order, over, us) have high total token counts but appear only once or twice with the /h/ prefix in the corpus so they will also be disregarded as 132 daniel schreier, milan marković & saša petković possible hapax legomena. the reflexive pronoun itself will only be mentioned in connection to the lexeme it due to its very low number of occurrences (n=10). first of all, the lexeme all produces the insertion rate of 0.2 per cent appearing four times with the /h/ prefix out of the total 2,314 tokens, as does the lexeme any, occurring three times out of 1,322. the adjective/pronoun other appears four times out of 832 tokens and produces an insertion rate of 0.5 per cent. table 7. corpus of early english correspondence sampler: /h/ insertion rates per lexeme lexeme /h/ (n) ø (n) total /h/ (%) abandon 1 2 3 33.3 able 25 155 180 13.9 ache 1 1 2 50.0 ale 2 5 7 28.6 all 4 2,310 2,314 0.2 am 14 1,062 1,076 1.3 answer 1 336 337 0.3 any 3 1,319 1,322 0.2 arms 2 26 28 7.1 as 1 4,652 4,653 0.02 at 2 2,326 2,328 0.1 it 450 3,797 4,247 10.6 itself 1 9 10 10.0 one 2 707 709 0.3 order 2 169 171 1.2 other 4 828 832 0.5 over 1 238 239 0.4 uncle 2 22 24 8.3 us 2 552 554 0.4 total 520 18,516 19,036 2.7 /h/ insertion in middle english 133 two of the lexemes, arms occurring with the /h/ prefix two out of twentyeight times, and uncle, two out of twenty-four times, produce higher insertion rates (7.1% and 8.3%, respectively). however, these lexemes require further research on a larger data sample in order establish how robust and frequent this insertion process occurs. regarding the lexemes that appear in both data samples, the verb form am shows an insertion rate of 1.3 per cent (occurring fourteen out of 1,076 times), one per cent less frequently than in the hc (2.3%). the adjective able, on the other hand, produces very high insertion rate of 13.9 per cent (appearing twenty-five out of 180 times), which is considerably higher than the 2.3 per cent rate from the hc results. although the two corpora show some similarities as well as differences in both lexeme choice and insertion rates, the most interesting finding in both data samples is the case of the pronoun it (see table 8). in the ceecs, this lexeme appears prefixed by /h/ 450 times out of the total 4,247 tokens, yielding an insertion rate of 10.6 per cent. the pronoun accounts 86.5 per cent of all /h/ prefixed occurrences in the sampler corpus. in the hc, the pronoun it has a 12.4 per cent insertion rate (occurring 1,214 out of 9,815 times). even though the occurrences, token numbers and the size of the examined data samples are 50-60 per cent smaller for the ceecs compared to the hc, the results are similar, and the extracted word form variants are nearly identical. the personal pronoun it is definitely a promising candidate for further and more granular research as it produces consistent results across two very different data samples. moreover, the reflexive pronoun itself may also provide some insight if examined in more detail on a larger corpus. table 8. it: /h/ insertion rates across the corpora corpus /h/ (n) ø (n) total /h/ (%) ceecs 450 3,797 4,247 10.6 hc 1,214 8,601 9,815 12.4 4. conclusion: what we know and need to know our analysis of inserted /h/ in two historical corpora has provided some first evidence of historical variation and change. we found that /h/ insertion operated on a limited set of lexical items only. the comparison of the hc and the ceec suggests that there are some parallels. first of all, the overall 134 daniel schreier, milan marković & saša petković insertion rate is low yet similar in the two corpora, second, /h/ insertion is reported in identical lexical items (which in our view attests to the robustness of the process), and third, there are similarities regarding the diachronic manifestation, particularly when it comes to obsolescence. for one, based on the criteria selected here, we show that /h/ was inserted on english as well as french loanwords, nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and numerals, and that there was a positive match of identical lexical items in the two corpora (able, am, it, itself). however, the overall token count was low (in fact even lower had we disregarded it, which deserves special mention) so we could not carry out a detailed variationist analysis and can (for the moment) only provide a superficial understanding of the internal and external factors that correlate with variation. as for timing, our analysis indicates that there was ongoing obsolescence of the feature, as the earlier periods (1250–1350 and 1420–1500) display higher /h/ insertion rates, whereas there is a substantial decrease during the periods between 1350 and 1640. this supports existing claims (e.g. milroy 1992) and suggests that /h/ insertion became less frequent from the early middle english period onwards. there are a few desiderata for future research in historical sociolinguistics. for one, one would need to apply this methodological framework for the analysis of other corpora. given that our findings indicate a decline in the 14 th century, laeme would be an ideal starting point. not only would this allow us to push the timeframe back by about 150 years, but such a study would also bring to light considerably higher numbers of tokens. this ideally would enable us to conduct a variationist analysis so that we can take a further step in order to unwrap the envelope of variation. such knowledge would help us to contextualise synchronic findings, namely data from present-day varieties of english where inserted /h/ has survived (tristan da cunha in the south atlantic, palmerston island in the pacific, various caribbean settings) in order to locate founder processes and, though this may be a long shot, contactinduced innovation mechanisms that operate in the formation of englishes around the globe. finally, scrutinising lexical variation throughout the history of english may provide us with more information on the possible origins of /h/ insertion in english (i.e. whether this originated as a contact-induced phenomenon with french or whether it was present already in old english, which would point to earlier origins or perhaps even feature legacy from the germanic dialects that served as inputs to old english). we hope that this paper provides a further stepping stone for these research questions. /h/ insertion in middle english 135 references batchelor, t. 1809: an orthoëpical analysis of the english language. ceec: corpus of early english correspondence. 1998: t. nevalainen, h. raumolinbrunberg, j. keränen, m. nevala, a. nurmi & m. palander-collin comps. helsinki, department of modern languages, university of helsinki. ellis, a. 1889: on early english pronunciation. part v. london, truebner and co. hc: helsinki corpus of english texts. 1991: m. rissanen, m. kytö, l. kahlas-tarkka, m. kilpiö, s. nevanlinna, i. taavitsainen, t. nevalainen & h. raumolinbrunberg comps. helsinki, department of modern languages, university of helsinki. jespersen, o. 1949: a modern english grammar on historical principles. vol. i: sounds and spellings. london, allen and unwin. jones, c. 2006: english pronunciation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. basingstoke, palgrave macmillan. kytö, m. ed. 1996: manual to the diachronic part of the helsinki corpus of english texts: coding conventions and lists of source texts. 3rd ed. helsinki, department of english, university of helsinki. labov, w. 1982: building on empirical foundations. in w. p. lehmann & y. malkiel eds. perspectives on historical linguistics. amsterdam & philadelphia, john benjamins: 17–92. laeme: a linguistic atlas of early middle english, 1150–1325. 2013–: m. laing comp. version 3.2. edinburgh, the university of edinburgh. http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme2/laeme2.html. lass, r. 1992: phonology and morphology. in n. blake ed. the cambridge history of the english language. vol. ii: 1066–1476. cambridge, cambridge university press: 23–155. luick, k. 1964: historische grammatik der englischen sprache. oxford, blackwell. med: middle english dictionary. 1959: r. e. lewis, ed. ann arbor, university of michigan press. milroy, j. 1992: linguistic variation and change: on the historical sociolinguistics of english (language in society 19). oxford & cambridge, blackwell. minkova, d. 2013: a historical phonology of english. edinburgh, edinburgh university press. mugglestone, l. c. 1995: “talking proper”: the rise of accent as social symbol. oxford, clarendon press. mugglestone, l. c. 2006: english in the nineteenth century. in l. c. mugglestone ed. the oxford history of english. oxford, oxford university press: 274–304. schreier, d. forthcoming: tracking language change via dialect transplantation: 1,200 years of /h/ insertion in english. 136 daniel schreier, milan marković & saša petković trudgill, p., d. schreier, d. long & j. p. williams 2003: on the reversibility of mergers: /w/, /v/ and evidence from lesser-known englishes. folia linguistica historica 37 (issue historica vol. 24.1–2): 23–46. walker, j. 1791: a critical pronouncing dictionary (r. c. alston, english linguistics 1500-1800 117). menston, the scolar press. wallis, c. <h> in old english. (unpublished ms.) author’s address english department university of zurich plattenstrasse 47 ch-8032 zürich switzerland e-mail: schreier@es.uzh.ch, milan.markovic2@uzh.ch, sasa.petrovic@uzh.ch received: 15 march 2018 revised version accepted: 5 april 2018 javier martín-arista & ana elvira ojanguren-lópez, selim 23 (2018): 27–53. issn 1132-631x the adjectival and verbal participle with bēon in old english — a morpho-syntactic analysis1 javier martín-arista & ana elvira ojanguren-lópez university of la rioja this article analyses the inflectional morphology of the present and the past participle of old english, in adjectival function as well as in verbal function with bēon ‘to be’. the aim of the analysis is to determine whether or not the attachment of adjectival inflection depends on the function performed by the participle. the study is based on the evidence provided by the york corpus of old english. the role of latin in the growing importance of the participle in old english may be confirmed by the fact that in a selection of texts on the grounds of the absolute number of participles, four, out of ten, are translations from latin. on the other hand, the results of the analysis indicate that translations from latin present the lowest frequency of inflected participles, while the highest is found in ælfrician texts. the main conclusion of this article is that the frequency of full inflection depends on the function of the participle. whereas practically all adjectival participles are inflected for adjectival morphology, only one third of verbal participles receive adjectival inflection. keywords: old english; participle; inflection; syntactic function 1. introduction as lass (1992: 144) remarks, the non-finite forms of the verb in old english are the uninflected infinitive (wrītan ‘to write’), the inflected infinitive (to wrītanne ‘to write’), the present participle (wrītende ‘writing’), and the past 1 this research has been funded through the grant ffi2014-59110, which is thankfully acknowledged. we would like to thank susan pintzuk for her assistance with the searches on the york corpus of old english (ycoe). 28 javier martín-arista & ana elvira ojanguren-lópez participle (gewritten ‘written’), in such a way that in old english the infinitive and the participle can be inflected or not. the following example illustrates the topic of this research, which focuses on the inflected and uninflected participles, both with adjectival and verbal function. (1) a. apol. (2, 8) þa gyrnde hyre maenig maere man micele maerða beodende. ‘then, many a famous man desired her, offering many wonderful things.’ b. apol. (10, 16) swa hwilc man swa me apollonium lifigendne to gebringð... ‘whoever brings apollonius to me alive...’ c. apol. (8, 4–5) ...se waes thaliarcus gehaten. ‘...who was called thaliarcus.’ d. apol. (18, 6) gemiltsa me, þu ealda man, sy þaet þu sy; gemildsa me nacodum, forlidenum, naes na of earmlicum birdum geborenum. ‘have pity on me, old man, whoever you may be; have pity on me, naked, shipwrecked, and not born from poor origins.’ (from wedel 1978: 395–396) as is shown in (1), the participle can perform an adjectival function, as in micele maerða beodende ‘offering many things, who offered many things’, and a verbal function, as a lexical verb with bēon ‘to be’ in both active and passive constructions, like se waes thaliarcus gehaten ‘who was called thaliarcus’. at the same time, the participle gets both verbal and adjectival inflection in instances like lifigendne ‘living’ and geborenum ‘born’, so that the present participle agrees in case, number, and gender with the noun in apposition (apollonium lifigendne ‘apollonius alive’) or with the nominal antecedent (man micele maerða beodende ‘men who offered many wonderful things’). the participle presents verbal inflection only in instances like beodende ‘offering’ and gehaten ‘was called’, which show exclusively the canonical inflectional endings for the present and the past participle, respectively -ende and -en (strong verbs). the starting point of this research is mitchell’s (1985: 409) remark that “there is no work which gives a complete treatment of the old english adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 29 participles”. in general, previous research attributes the increase of the use of the participles during the old english period to latin influence (callaway 1901, wedel 1978, mitchell 1985, ogura 2009). the distinction made in this article between the two main functions of the participle draws on authors like callaway, mitchell, and visser. callaway (1901) concentrates on the appositive participle, which he defines as “the participle that is equivalent to an adjectival clause as well as that which is equal to an adverbial clause. the uses of the appositive participle correspond closely to those of the subordinate adverbial clause” (1901: 149). mitchell (1985) also deals with the functions of the participle and distinguishes between its adjectival and verbal uses, which he relates to syntactic behaviour. for visser, who pays heed to the different functions of the participle too, “in old english the past participle appears with flexional endings; these gradually disappear in middle english, so that subsequently the zero form is the normal one” (visser 1966: 2.ii.1280). on the diachronic axis, the adjectival segment of the inflection of the participle disappeared during the generalised loss of inflectional endings, whereas the verbal part has been kept. for example, in (1d) the inflected participle geborenum would eventually yield way to geboren, so that the former shows verbal (-en) and adjectival (-um) endings, whereas the latter presents the verbal part only (-en). this is related to the fact that, as traugott (1992: 190) explains, the origin of the syntactic passive is to be found in adjectival predications with a copulative verb and a fully inflected adjectival form of the participle. this can be seen in (2), in which the first instance presents an inflected participle and the second an uninflected one. on this question, traugott (1992: 190) points out that “the number of inflected constructions became less frequent during the old english period”, although the -e plural inflection (as in afliemde ‘banished’ in (2a) is frequent in this period. (2) a. or 1 10 44.24 on ðære ilcan tide wurdon twegen æðelingas afliemde of sciððian. ‘at that same time two noblemen were banished from scythia.’ b. or head 64.10 & hu ii aðelingas wurdon afliemed of sciððium. ‘and how two noblemen were banished from scythia.’ (from traugott 1992: 199) wojtyś (2009: 48) dates the loss of the past participle suffixes -n and -d to the thirteenth century and points out that “the suffixal marking in old 30 javier martín-arista & ana elvira ojanguren-lópez english needs to be regarded as regular”. fischer (1992) holds in this respect that in the late old english and early middle english periods, the inflectional endings of some forms, including the present participle, began to be confused, which also led to syntactic confusion. ogura (2009), in the same line, finds that, due to their phonemic resemblance, the endings -ende and -enne became interchangeable as variant forms in late old english (eleventh century). overall, the works reviewed in section 1 agree on the loss of the inflection of the participle and the approximate dating of the change, while proposing several causes for the change. however, the loss of the adjectival morphology has not been quantified so far, neither has it been related to the functions of the participle. the remainder of this article deals with these questions, with a view to determining whether or not the function performed by the participle plays any role in the attachment of adjectival inflection. the scope of the article is restricted to non-verbal (adjectival) uses and verbal (with bēon ‘to be’) uses of the participle. the reasons for restricting the scope in this way are both empirical and descriptive. for empirical reasons, the amount of data of the non-verbal and verbal participle with bēon ‘to be’ advises to put aside the participles with habban ‘to have’. for descriptive reasons, the adjectival participle and the verbal participle with bēon ‘to be’ constitute a relatively unified phenomenon from a diachronic point of view. as traugott explains, the development of the auxiliaries may be related to the disappearance of the inflected participles, as the participles were reanalysed from adjectives into verbs: the inflected participial construction with be was probably truly adjectival in proe. by old english, however, it appears to have been reanalyzed as a verbal complex (as happened to habban during the old english period), or at least to have been partially reanalyzed. the evidence for reanalysis is that the participle is typically uninflected. (traugott 1992: 192–193) within the scope of the adjectival participle and the verbal participle with bēon ‘to be’, present and past participles are taken into account, including their uninflected forms as well as the various inflections for case (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental), gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and number (singular, plural). this article is organised as follows. section 2 describes the methodology of research, which is applied to the corpus in section 3 (morphological analysis) adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 31 and section 4 (syntactic and textual analysis). then, section 5 draws the main conclusions of this study. 2. method this study in the participle of old english is based on the textual evidence available from the york-toronto-helsinki parsed corpus of old english prose (ycoe) and the york-helsinki parsed corpus of old english poetry (ycoep). ycoe is a 1.5 million word syntactically-annotated corpus. for its part, ycoep is a selection of poetic texts from the old english section of the helsinki corpus of english texts (hc) that contains 71,490 words. as in its prose counterpart, the texts are syntactically and morphologically annotated. the prose and the poetry corpus together are referred to in the remainder of this paper as ycoe. the set in (3) presents the tags that have been searched for in the ycoe in order to analyse the form and the function of the old english participles. these include the present and the past participle of all verbs and the special verbs bēon ‘to be’ and habban ‘to have’. (3) the initial set of the ycoe morphological tags for the participle the verb be bag present participle ben perfect participle the verb have hag present participle hvn perfect participle all other verbs vag present participle vbn perfect participle the verbal and adjectival uses of the present and past participles are not distinguished in the ycoe morphological analysis, both being tagged as van or vag, as can be seen in (3). the ycoe parsing makes no distinction in the tag for the auxiliary and the main verb use of bēon ‘to be’. in the parsing, the auxiliary forms of bēon can be distinguished from main verb forms by the presence of a present or a past participle. at the syntactic level, therefore, it is 32 javier martín-arista & ana elvira ojanguren-lópez necessary to define the search with respect to the nodes ip (inflectional phrase) and ptp (participle phrase) and specify the following conditions: that the copulative verb and the past participle are immediately dominated by an inflectional phrase or that the past participle is immediately dominated by a participle phrase, in such a way that the copula is shared with the verb phrase and immediately dominated by an inflectional phrase. this can be seen in (4). (4) query string for the past participle with bēon ‘to be’ node: ip*|ptp* query: ((ip* idoms bed*|bep*) and (ip* idoms *vbn^*|*hvn^*|*ben^*)) or (ptp* idoms *vbn^*|*hvn^*|*ben^*) as shown in (5), the adjectival function of the participle holds when there is agreement in case, gender, and number with the head of the noun phrase in which the participle functions as modifier. in the query language of the ycoe, a noun phrase immediately dominates a present or a past participle. this is the case with lyfiendan gast ‘living spirit’ in (5). 2 (5) syntactic parsing of the participle as adjective in the ycoe ( (ip-mat (conj &) (np-nom (pro^n hi) (q^n ealle)) (vbd geliff+aste) (pp (p +turh) (np-acc (d^a +tone) (vag^a lyfiendan) (n^a gast))) (. :)) (id coaelhom,+ahom_1:70.49)) 2 clauses in the ycoe are labelled ip with an additional label to indicate type, such as ip-mat for declarative matrix ips. the tags in figure 2 and figure 3 stand for the following categories and features: syntactic categories: np (noun phrase); lexical categories: n (noun), nr (proper name), adj (adjective), vb (verb), be (the verb bēon ‘to be’), adv (adverb), d (determiner), num (numeral), p (preposition), conj (conjunction); morphological case at word level: ^n (nominative), ^a (accusative), ^g (genitive), ^d (dative); morphological case at phrase level: -nom (nominative), acc (accusative), -gen (genitive), -dat (dative); tense: p (present); mode: i (indicative), s (subjunctive); non-finite forms: n (past participle). adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 33 the verbal function of the participle is the case when there is agreement in person and number with bēon ‘to be’, while the agreement in case, gender, and number with the subject is not necessarily explicit. this is shown in (6), in which the nominative plural subject heofonas ‘heavens’ agrees in number with the copulative verb synd ‘are’, and in case, gender, and number with the nominative plural gefæstnode ‘fastened’. (6) the syntactic parsing of the participle as verb in the ycoe: ip ( (ip-mat (np-nom (n^n heofonas)) (bepi synd) (vbn^n gef+astnode) (pp (p +turh) (np-acc (d^a +t+at) (adj^a halige) (np-gen (nr^g godes)) (n^a word))) (. ,)) (id coaelhom,+ahom_1:79.54)) as shown in (6), when the participle functions as a verb, the query language of the ycoe indicates that an inflectional phrase (a clause) immediately dominates a present or a past participle. there are other instances, however, in which more than one participle is immediately dominated by the same inflectional phrase. in these cases, the second participle is analysed as giving rise to a participle phrase. in other words, the second copulative verb is considered to be omitted in the ycoe syntactic parsing. consider a fragment like ic fram cildhade wæs apollonius genemnod, on tirum geboren ‘i was called apollonius from my childhood, [i was] born in tirum’; the parsing in terms of a participle np is presented in (7). as can be seen in (7), the past participle genemnod ‘named’ belongs, along with the copulative verb, in the verb phrase wæs genemnod ‘was called’ and, therefore, constitutes an instance of participle with verbal function. the same applies to geboren ‘born’. even though it is not sister-dominated along with a form of bēon ‘to be’ by an inflectional phase, the parsing involves a coordinated construction that omits the second copula. this is done on the basis of a participle phrase which avoids ambiguity with participles that cannot be linked to a verb phrase containing the copulative verb and, as such, are considered to perform the adjectival function in this analysis. 34 javier martín-arista & ana elvira ojanguren-lópez (7) syntactic parsing of the participle as verb in the ycoe: ptp (ip-mat-spe (np-nom (pro^n ic)) (pp (p fram) (np-dat (n^d cildhade))) (bedi w+as) (np-nom-prd (nr^n apollonius)) (vbn genemnod) (, ,) (ptp-nom (pp (p on) (np (nr tirum))) (vbn^n geboren))) for the adjectival and the verbal functions of the participle, the morphological cases nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and instrumental have been searched and quantified, together with the forms without adjectival inflection. in the ycoe morphological tagging, participles formally ambiguous as to case, as well as zero marked cases, count as uninflected participles. the whole set of tags can be seen in (8), in which the columns correspond, respectively, to the present participle of general verbs, habban and bēon; and the past participle of general verbs, habban and bēon. (8) final set of the ycoe morphological tags for the participle vag hag bag vbn hvn ben vag^n hag^n bag^n vbn^n hvn^n ben^n vag^a hag^a bag^a vbn^a hvn^a ben^a vag^g hag^g bag^g vbn^g hvn^g ben^g vag^d hag^d bag^d vbn^d hvn^d ben^d vag^i hag^i bag^i vbn^i hvn^i ben^i with the searches on the ycoe just defined, two types of analysis are carried out. in the first place, the morphological questions of the undertaking are addressed, including the variables of inflected vs. uninflected participle, morphological case of inflected participles, present vs. past participle, and prose vs. poetry. the data for the morphological analysis include the whole ycoe, both its prose and its poetry segments. this part of the analysis intends to offer an overall picture of the morphology of the participle in old english prose and poetry. secondly, the form of the participle is analysed with respect to its function. the data for this part of the study have been extracted from the ten texts that evince the highest number of participles, all of which adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 35 are written in prose (see appendix): coaelhom (ælfric, supplemental homilies), coaelive (ælfric’s lives of saints), cobede (bede’s history of the english church), cocathom (ælfric’s catholic homilies), cochron (anglo-saxon chronicle), cocura (cura pastoralis), cogregd (gregory’s dialogues), coorosiu (orosius), coverhom (vercelli homilies), and cowsgosp (west-saxon gospels). with this selection, the number of participles per text ranges between 947 and 3,379. the variables of this part of the analysis are both syntactic and textual. on the syntactic side, the adjectival and the verbal functions of the participle are distinguished, while, on the textual side, quantification by text (and type of text) has explanatory purposes. 3. morphological analysis this section presents the morphological side of the analysis, which revolves around the questions of the inflected vs. uninflected participle, morphological case of inflected participles, present vs. past participle, and prose vs. poetry. as just said, the data for the morphological analysis include the prose and the poetry segments of the ycoe, in order to provide an overall assessment of the morphology of the participle in old english. the total figure or instances of the participle in the ycoe, both prose and poetry, is 35,241: 6,811 of the present participle and 28,430 of the past participle. by text type, 33,655 appear in prose texts and 1,586 in poetry texts. it may be useful at this point to take into account the size of the prose and the poetry parts of the ycoe. if these absolute figures are normalised per 1,000 words, it turns out that the relative importance of the participle is much higher in the poetry than in the prose texts. the poetry texts in the corpus have 30.7 participles per 1,000 words, while the prose texts present 22.4 participles per 1,000 words. of the 35,241 participles, 20,256 are uninflected, and 14,985 are inflected for the five morphological cases; that is, only 42.5 per cent of the participles in the corpus are inflected. beginning with the present participle, a total of 6,811 textual forms have been identified. of these, 6,612 correspond to prose texts whereas 199 have been found in poetry texts. in prose texts, a total of 2,241 present participles are not inflected, as opposed to 4,371 inflected present participles. in percentual terms, 66.1 per cent of the present participles in prose texts are inflected, with the corresponding 33.9 per cent of uninflected participles. the nominative case clearly stands out (60.2% of inflected participles in prose texts 36 javier martín-arista & ana elvira ojanguren-lópez are inflected for the nominative), although the dative and the accusative also present a considerable number of occurrences. in poetry, out of 199 instances, 105 are inflected (57.2%) and ninety-four uninflected (47.3%). the nominative and the accusative stand out with respect to the other cases in poetry texts. as is the case with the prose, the nominative is by far the most frequent case (58% of inflected participles are marked for this case). the instrumental, which is negligible in prose, does not have any occurrences in poetry. these figures have been tabulated in table 1. table 1. present participle by morphological case and text type in the ycoe prose poetry total nominative 2,631 61 2,422 accusative 542 13 555 genitive 312 17 329 dative 885 14 899 instrumental 1 -1 inflected total 4,371 105 4,476 uninflected total 2,241 94 2,335 grand total 6,612 199 6,811 turning to the past participle, the corpus evinces a total of 28,430. this total represents more than four times as much as the total of the present participle. of the 28,430 past participles, 27,043 have been extracted from prose texts, with poetry texts containing the much lower figure of 1,387. in prose texts, the number of uninflected past participles is 17,062, a much higher figure than that of the inflected past participles, 9,981. in terms of percentages, the uninflected past participle represents 63 per cent whereas the inflected past participle reaches 37 per cent only. in poetry, 859 past participles do not show adjectival inflection (62%) while 528 do (38%). by case, the nominative stands out in prose and poetry (68.6% of past participles in prose and 80% of past participles in poetry are inflected for the nominative), although the accusative also turns out significant figures. these results are in accordance with kilpiö’s (1989: 134) remark that “towards the late oe period the inflection of the past participle in passive constructions, already simpler adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 37 than that of the adjective in early oe, underwent further simplification so that basically only two forms occurred: an endingless participle in the singular and one ending in -e in the plural”. the results corresponding to the past participle by case and text type are presented in table 2. table 2. past participle by morphological case and text type in the ycoe prose poetry total nominative 6,852 423 7,275 accusative 1,617 82 1,699 genitive 335 13 348 dative 1,171 10 1,781 instrumental 6 -6 inflected total 9,981 528 10,509 uninflected total 17,062 859 17,921 grand total 27,043 1,387 28,430 textually, the past participle is far more frequent than the present participle. this is the case with prose and poetry texts, but the gap is wider in poetry than in prose. although these aspects require further research, from a diachronic perspective this may mean that, whereas the periphrasis of copulative verb plus past participle is well established in the language, the periphrasis involving a present participle is not fixed yet. as denison (1993: 380) states, “in old english the progressive is unevenly distributed, its overall frequency low but in certain texts (notably orosius) remarkably high”. denison (1993: 380) illustrates the point with examples like the ones in (9). (9) a. or 100.20 þætte se consul wæs wenende þæt eall þæt folc wære gind þæt lond tobræd, & þiderweard farende wæs... ‘so that the consul assumed wrongly that the army was all scattered throughout the country, and he was heading there...’ b. or 123.2 hit wæs þa swiþe oþþyncende þam oþrum consulum... ‘then it displeased the other consuls greatly...’ 38 javier martín-arista & ana elvira ojanguren-lópez synchronically, the higher frequency of appearance of the past participle may be interpreted as the result of the existence of numerous passive constructions, including syntactic passives like (2a) and (2b). 4. syntactic and textual analysis this section analyses the form of the participle with respect to its adjectival and verbal function with bēon ‘to be’. the data for this part of the analysis comprise the ten texts with the highest figures of participles. as a matter of fact, the ten are written in prose. the present participle is practically always inflected when it performs the adjectival function (97.1% of the participles functioning as adjectives display adjectival case marking). this contrasts with the inflection of the present participle as verb, which is inflected in approximately two thirds of the cases (64.3% is the exact figure). if a closer view is taken of the verbal function, the results indicate that ælfrician texts (ælfric’s homilies, lives of saints, catholic homilies) show over 80 per cent of inflected present participles in the verbal function. the present participle total largely reflects the results of the verbal function because the present participle is widely inflected in its adjectival function and, consequently, differences among texts arise as to the verbal function, not the adjectival function. considering the total figures of the present participle, the abovementioned texts by ælfric turn out the highest figures of inflection and, at the opposite end, anglo-saxon chronicle and some translations from latin (bede’s ecclesiastical history and orosius) contain the lowest number of inflected participles. these aspects are tabulated in table 3. as in the following tables, the quantification in table 3 shows the figure of inflected participles by function with respect to the total of participles in verbal and adjectival function. as regards the past participle, in its adjectival function it is inflected even more frequently than the present participle, which nears the total (97.6% of the past participles in the corpus show adjectival inflection when functioning as adjectives). in its verbal function, the past participle is slightly less inflective than the present participle (only 30.2% of the instances present adjectival inflection). considering these two aspects, the gap between the inflection of the adjectival function and the verbal function is wider in the past participle adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 39 table 3. present participle in adjectival and verbal function by text in the ycoe text adjectival function verbal function present participle total coaelhom 75 / 79 132 / 162 207 / 241 coaelive 151 / 156 328 / 375 479 / 531 cobede 127 / 130 161 / 469 288 / 599 cocathom 264 / 270 605 / 745 869 / 1,015 cochron 10 / 14 30 / 90 40 / 104 cocura 82 / 82 58 / 97 140 / 179 cogregd 183 / 187 432 / 663 615 / 850 coorosiu 15 / 15 29 / 241 44 / 256 coverhom 72 / 74 23 / 73 95 / 147 cowsgosp 40 / 42 293 / 334 333 / 376 category total (%) 1,019 / 1,049 (97.1%) 2,091 / 3,249 (64.3%) 3,110 / 4,298 (72.3%) than in the present participle. remarkable differences appear, though, when the results are analysed text by text. whereas the texts by ælfric (homilies, lives of saints, catholic homilies) show over 80 per cent of inflected present participles in the verbal function, they evince percentages of inflection of the past participle in the same function below 40 per cent. this percentage of inflection is still higher than the percentage displayed by some translations from latin. bede’s ecclesiastical history, orosius, and cura pastoralis throw percentages of inflected past participles in the verbal function under 20 per cent. other latin translations, such as gregory’s dialogues and west-saxon gospels, turn out higher percentages but still around 30 per cent. the data on the past participle are tabulated in table 4. table 5 summarises the data on the adjectival and the verbal functions of the participle in the corpus and offers absolute as well as relative totals by text. as shown, the selection of ten prose texts from the ycoe comprises a total of 20,023 participles, of which 2,743 function as adjectives and 17,280 perform the verbal function with bēon ‘to be’. with respect to inflectional morphology, the vast majority of participles with adjectival function display, together with the verbal ending, the adjectival inflectional endings. on the other hand, when the function performed by the participle is verbal with bēon ‘to be’, around one 40 javier martín-arista & ana elvira ojanguren-lópez table 4. past participle in adjectival and verbal function by text in the ycoe text adjectival function verbal function past participle total coaelhom 104 / 110 271 / 700 375 / 810 coaelive 184 / 187 541 / 1,431 725 / 1,618 cobede 174 / 176 399 / 1,645 573 / 1,821 cocathom 449 / 465 1,138 / 3,219 1,587 / 3,684 cochron 56 / 58 205 / 1,166 261 / 1,224 cocura 184 / 189 307 / 1,114 491 / 1,303 cogregd 339 / 341 692 / 2,188 1,031 / 2,529 coorosiu 16 / 16 120 / 650 136 / 666 coverhom 90 / 91 226 / 679 316 / 770 cowsgosp 58 / 61 328 / 1,059 386 / 1,120 category total (%) 1,654 / 1,694 (97.6%) 4,227 / 13,951 (30.2%) 5,881 / 15,545 (37.8%) third of the participles present adjectival inflection. by text, the count of inflected participles is around one half of the total (ranging between 42% in cura pastoralis and 56% in lives of saints), except in three texts: bede’s ecclesiastical history, anglo-saxon chronicle, and orosius, which evince about 35 per cent, 22 per cent and 15 per cent of inflected participles, respectively. on the other hand, religious prose as represented by ælfric’s homilies, catholic homilies, and lives of saints, shows over 55 per cent of inflected participles. in other words, leaving anglo-saxon chronicle aside, the translations from latin throw figures below 50 per cent of inflected participles, thus gregory’s dialogues (48%), west-saxon gospels (48%), cura pastoralis (42%), bede’s ecclesiastical history (35%), and orosius (15%). although the total of inflected participles in gregory’s dialogues and cura pastoralis is similar to those in vercelli homilies (44%), bede’s ecclesiastical history (35% of inflected participles), and orosius (15%) confirm the tendency of old english translations to present fewer inflected participles than the religious prose. adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 41 table 5. verbal and adjectival function of the participles by text in the ycoe text adjectival function verbal function text total coaelhom 179 / 189 403 / 862 582 / 1,051 (55.3%) coaelive 335 / 343 869 / 1,806 1,204 / 2,149 (56.0%) cobede 301 / 306 560 / 2,114 861 / 2,420 (35.0%) cocathom 713 / 735 1,743 / 3,874 2,456 / 4,609 (53.2%) cochron 66 / 72 235 / 1,256 301 / 1,328 (22.6%) cocura 266 / 271 365 / 1,211 631 / 1,482 (42.5%) cogregd 522 / 528 1,124 / 2,851 1,646 / 3,379 (48.7%) coorosiu 31 / 31 149 / 1,161 180 / 1,192 (15.1%) coverhom 162 / 165 249 / 752 411 / 917 (44.8%) cowsgosp 98 / 103 621 / 1,393 719 / 1,496 (48%) category total (%) 2673 / 2,743 (97.4%) 6,318 / 17,280 (36.5%) 8,991 / 20,023 (44.5%) interestingly, the translations from latin show fewer inflected participles while containing more participles than the other texts. as can be seen in table 6, the translations have at least two participles per 100 words (which amounts to approximately 20,000 words per million, wpm), while presenting lower figures of inflected participles. the word count seems to support the view that the translations from latin opt for rendering the present and the past participle undeclined even though it is declined as an adjective in the source language. 42 javier martín-arista & ana elvira ojanguren-lópez table 6. textual frequency of the participle in the ycoe text word count text total % coaelhom 62,669 1,051 1.6% coaelive 100,193 2,149 2.1% cobede 80,767 2,420 2.9% cocathom 204,756 4,609 2.2% cochron 104,201 1,328 1.2% cocura 70,675 1,482 2% cogregd 117,146 3,379 2.8% coorosiu 51,020 1,192 2.3% coverhom 52,123 917 1.7% cowsgosp 71,104 1,496 2.1% this higher textual frequency of the participle in the old english translations from latin may confirm the role played by latin influence in the increase in the use of the participle (callaway 1901, wedel 1978, mitchell 1985, ogura 2009), although lamont (2015: 351) finds 1,511 latin present participles in the four gospels, as opposed to the 453 present participles used to render them in old english. as regards the adjectival inflection of the participle, the data discussed above do not indicate direct influence from latin. as has already been said, the translations from latin show lower frequencies of inflected participles than vernacular texts, with the exception of the anglo-saxon chronicle. on the other hand, the texts by ælfric show the highest rates of inflected participles, particularly with the verbal function. on the question, sato (2009: 4) holds that latin influenced ælfric’s syntax to such an extent that he adopted syntactic constructions from the latin language, including the absolute participle. furthermore, sato (2009: 4) goes on to say that ælfric could use absolute participles with and without their direct latin counterparts and “skillfully modified the syntax of the latin source, inventing a more sophisticated style in his vernacular language than the style of his latin sources. thus, ælfric’s use of this loan syntax should not be dismissed as such a direct latin influence”. in a similar line, lamont remarks: adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 43 the translators of both the oe genesis and the old english gospels use old english present participles even when the latin does not. there is always the possibility that the latin exemplar(s) differed from the extant versions of the vulgate, but it also appears possible that the oe present participle was somewhat idiomatic for the translators of both parts of genesis and all four old english gospels […] while scholars have argued that the oe present participle and progressive developed as reactions to latin, they do not appear to observe that these unattested participles in the translations suggest more than a reaction to latin, but perhaps a native idiom, albeit in late old english. (lamont 2015: 352) the results of this study are in accordance with this view. considering the unattested participles noted by sato (2009) and lamont (2015), as well as the low level of participial inflection in the translations from latin, which inflects the participle for case, number and gender on a regular basis, it may be the case that the inflection of the participle in ælfric is a matter of grammatical purism rather than direct influence from latin. with respect to anglo-saxon chronicle, it is relatively predictable that a highly narrative text has less adjectival modification than more descriptive texts like the ones from the religious prose. although this question deserves more attention, the narrative style of anglo-saxon chronicle could explain the low count of participles performing the adjectival function (where, as shown above, inflection is much more frequent) and, ultimately, the low level of adjectival inflection of the participle. 5. conclusions this article has analysed the inflectional morphology of the present and the past participle of old english, both in adjectival and in verbal function with bēon ‘to be’, in order to answer the question whether or not the function performed by the participle determines the presence of adjectival inflection to the right of verbal inflection. the data, extracted from the york-toronto-helsinki parsed corpus of old english prose and the york-helsinki parsed corpus of old english poetry, indicate that the verbal function is performed by the participle far more frequently than the adjectival function. with respect to the relation between the function and the inflection of the participle, the analysis of the corpus leads to the conclusion that the adjectival segment in the inflection of the 44 javier martín-arista & ana elvira ojanguren-lópez participle is functionally motivated. indeed, nearly all participles with adjectival function are inflected for adjectival morphology, whereas only around one third of participles with verbal function get both verbal and adjectival inflection. some authors cited in this paper attribute the growing importance of the participle in old english to latin influence. this may be confirmed by the fact that in a selection of texts from the corpus made on the basis of the absolute number of participles, four are translations from latin, out of a total of ten texts. however, the results of the analysis show that the translations from latin present the lowest frequency of inflected participles. on the other hand, religious prose, as represented by ælfric’s homilies, catholic homilies, and lives of saints, shows the highest rates of inflected participles. it remains for further research to determine whether other texts originally written in the vernacular language also opt for the inflected participle in a number of cases comparable to ælfrician texts. references callaway, m. 1901: the appositive participle in anglo-saxon. baltimore, publications of the modern language association of america. denison, d. 1993: english historical syntax: verbal constructions. london, longman. fischer, o. 1992: syntax. in n. blake ed. the cambridge history of the english language. vol. ii: 1066–1476. cambridge, cambridge university press: 207–408. kilpiö, m. 1989: passive constructions in old english translations from latin. with special reference to the oe bede and the pastoral care. helsinki, société néophilologique. lamont, g. j. m. 2015: the present participle as a marker of style and authorship in old english biblical translation. (ph.d. dissertation.) centre for medieval studies, university of toronto. lass, r. 1992: phonology and morphology. in n. blake ed. the cambridge history of the english language. vol. ii: 1066–1476. cambridge, cambridge university press: 23–155. mitchell, b. 1985: old english syntax. concord, the parts of speech and the sentence. vol. 1. oxford, oxford university press. ogura, m. 2009: the interchangeability of the endings -ende and -enne in old and early middle english. english studies 90.6: 721–734. sato, k. 2009: the absolute participle construction in old english: ælfric’s exploitation of the latinate syntax in his vernacular prose. english studies 90.1: 2–16. adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 45 traugott, e. c. 1992: syntax. in r. m. hogg ed. the cambridge history of the english language. vol. i: the beginnings to 1066. cambridge, cambridge university press: 186–201. visser, f. t. 1984 [1966]: a historical syntax of the english language. part two (vol. ii): syntactical units with one verb (continued). leiden, e. j. brill. wedel, a. r. 1978: participial construction in high german and west saxon of the eleventh and twelfth centuries: latin and germanic differences. the journal of english and germanic philology 77.3: 383–397. wojtyś, a. 2009: suffixal past participle marking in mediaeval english. anglica 18: 45–68. ycoe: the york-helsinki parsed corpus of old english poetry. 2001: a. taylor, a. warner, s. pintzuk, f. beths & l. plug comps. department of language and linguistic science, university of york. http://wwwusers.york.ac.uk/~lang18/pcorpus.html. ycoep: the york-toronto-helsinki parsed corpus of old english prose. 2003: a. taylor, a. warner, s. pintzuk & f. beths comps. department of language and linguistic science, university of york. 46 javier martín-arista & ana elvira ojanguren-lópez appendix. information on texts from the ycoe source: http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~lang22/ycoe/info/ycoetextinfo.html coaelhom.o3 text name ælfric’s homilies supplemental file name coaelhom.o3 doe short title æhom cameron number b1.4 manuscript various, see edition dialect west saxon genre homilies latin translation no word count 62,669 edition pope, j.c. 1968. homilies of ælfric, a supplementary collection. early english text society, 260. london: oup. coaelive.o3 text name ælfric’s lives of saints file name coaelive.o3 doe short title æls cameron number b1.3.2 b1.3.35 manuscript london, british museum, cotton julius e.vii manuscript date s. xi in. dialect west saxon genre biography, lives latin translation no word count 100,193 edition skeat, walter william. 1966 (1881-1900). ælfric’s lives of saints. eets 76, 82, 94, 114. london: oup. cobede.o2 text name bede’s history of the english church file name cobede.o2 doe short title bede cameron number b9.6 manuscript cambridge, university library kk.3.18 adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 47 manuscript date s. xi dialect west saxon/anglian genre history latin translation yes word count 80,767 edition miller, thomas. 1959-1963 (1890-1898). the old english version of “bede’s ecclesiastical history of the english people”. eets 95, 96, 110, 111. london: oup. cocathom1.o3 text name ælfric’s catholic homilies i file name cocathom1.o3 doe short title æchom i cameron number b1.1.2 b1.1.42 manuscript cambridge, university library, gg.3.28 manuscript date s. x/xi dialect west saxon genre homilies latin translation no word count 106,173 edition clemoes, p. 1997. ælfric’s catholic homilies: the first series. eets s.s. 17. oxford: oup. cocathom2.o3 text name ælfric’s catholic homilies ii file name cocathom2.o3 doe short title æchom ii cameron number b1.2.2 b1.2.49 manuscript cambridge, university library, gg.3.28 manuscript date s. x/xi dialect west saxon genre homilies latin translation no word count 98,583 edition godden, m. 1979. ælfric’s catholic homilies: the second series. eets s.s. 5. london: oup. 48 javier martín-arista & ana elvira ojanguren-lópez cochrona.o23 text name anglo-saxon chronicle a file name cochrona.o23 doe short title chrona cameron number b17.1 manuscript cambridge, corpus christi college, 173 manuscript date s. ix/x-x 2 dialect west saxon genre history latin translation no word count 14,583 edition plummer, charles. 1965 (1892-1899). two of the saxon chronicles parallel. oxford: clarendon press. reissued d. whitelock, oxford 1952. cochronc text name anglo-saxon chronicle c file name cochronc doe short title chronc cameron number b17.7 manuscript london, british museum, cotton tiberius b.i manuscript date s. xi 1 xi 2 genre history latin translation ? word count 22,463 edition rositzke, h.a. 1967 (1940). the c-text of the old english chronicles. bochum-langendreer: beitræge zur englischen philologie 34. cochrond text name anglo-saxon chronicle d file name cochrond doe short title chrond cameron number b17.8 manuscript london, british museum, cotton tiberius b.iv manuscript date s. xi med. xi 2 genre history latin translation ? adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 49 word count 26,691 edition classen, e. and f.e. harmer, eds. 1926. an anglosaxon chronicle. manchester: manchester university press. cochrone.o34 text name anglo-saxon chronicle e (peterborough chronicle) file name cochrone.o34 doe short title chrone cameron number b17.9 manuscript oxford, bodleian, laud misc. 636 manuscript date s. xii 1 , xii med. dialect west saxon/x genre history latin translation ? word count 40,641 edition plummer, charles. 1965 (1892-1899). two of the saxon chronicles parallel. oxford: clarendon press. reissued d. whitelock, oxford 1952. cocura.o2 text name cura pastoralis file name cocura.o2 doe short title cp cameron number b9.1.2, b9.1.3 manuscript oxford, bodleian, hatton 20 manuscript date s. ix ex. dialect west saxon genre religious treatise latin translation yes word count 68,556 edition sweet, henry. 1958 (1871). king alfred’s west-saxon version of gregory’s pastoral care. eets 45, 50. london: oup. cocurac text name cura pastoralis file name cocurac 50 javier martín-arista & ana elvira ojanguren-lópez doe short title cp (cotton) cameron number b9.1.3.1 manuscript london, british museum, cotton tiberius b.xi manuscript date s. ix ex. genre religious treatise latin translation yes word count 2,119 edition sweet, henry. 1958 (1871). king alfred’s west-saxon version of gregory’s pastoral care. eets 45, 50. london: oup. cogregdc.o24 text name gregory’s dialogues file name cogregdc.o24 doe short title gd (c) cameron number b9.5.1 9.5.6 manuscript cambridge, corpus christi college, 322 manuscript date s. xi 2 dialect west saxon/anglian mercian genre biography, lives latin translation yes word count 91,553 edition hecht, hans. 1965 (1900–1907). bischof wærferth von worcester übersetzung der dialoge gregors des grossen. bibliothek der angelsaechsischen prosa, v. darmstadt: wissenschaftliche buchgesellschaft. cogregdh.o23 text name gregory’s dialogues file name cogregdh.o23 doe short title gd (h) cameron number b9.5.7, b9.5.10 manuscript oxford, bodleian, hatton 76 manuscript date s. xi 1 dialect west saxon genre biography, lives latin translation yes word count 25,593 adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 51 edition hecht, hans. 1965 (1900-1907). bischof wærferth von worcester übersetzung der dialoge gregors des grossen. bibliothek der angelsaechsischen prosa, v. darmstadt: wissenschaftliche buchgesellschaft. coorosiu.o2 text name orosius file name coorosiu.o2 doe short title or cameron number b9.2.1 b9.2.7 manuscript london, british museum, add. 47967 manuscript date s. x 1 dialect west saxon genre history latin translation yes word count 51,020 edition bately, janet. 1980.the old english orosius. eets s.s. 6. london: oup. coverhom text name vercelli homilies file name coverhom doe short title homs (scraggverc 1, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 19, 20) homu (scraggverc 2, 4, 6, 7, 15, 22) homm (scraggverc 14, 21) ls (scraggverc 17, 18) cameron number homs: b3.2.1, b3.2.2, b3.2.3, b3.2.4, b3.2.11.5, b3.2.24, b3.2.34, b3.2.36, b3.2.38, b3.2.39, b3.2.40.6, b3.2.43 homu: b3.3.6, b3.4.7, b3.4.8, b3.4.9, b3.4.10, b3.4.11 homm: b3.5.11, b3.5.13 ls: b3.3.17.3, b3.3.19 manuscript vercelli, biblioteca capitolare, cxvii manuscript date s. x 2 genre homs: homilies homu: homilies 52 javier martín-arista & ana elvira ojanguren-lópez ls: biography, lives latin translation ? word count 45,674 edition scragg, d.g. 1992. the vercelli homilies and related texts. eets 300. oxford: oup. coverhome text name vercelli homilies, homily i file name coverhome doe short title homs 24.1 (scragg) cameron number b3.2.24.1 manuscript oxford, bodleian, bodley 340 and 342 manuscript date s. xi in. genre homilies latin translation ? word count 4,463 edition scragg, d.g. 1992.the vercelli homilies and related texts. eets 300. oxford: oup. coverhoml text name vercelli homilies, homily ix file name coverhoml doe short title homu 15.1 (scragg) cameron number b3.4.15.1 manuscript oxford, bodleian, hatton 115 manuscript date s. xi 2 genre homilies latin translation ? word count 1,986 edition scragg, d.g. 1992. the vercelli homilies and related texts. eets 300. oxford: oup. cowsgosp.o3 text name west-saxon gospels file name cowsgosp.o3 doe short title mt (wscp), mk (wscp), lk (wscp), jn (wscp) cameron number b8.4.3.1, b8.4.3.2, b8.4.3.3, b8.4.3.4 manuscript cambridge, corpus christi college, 140 adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 53 manuscript date s. xi 1 dialect west saxon genre bible latin translation yes word count 71,104 edition skeat, walter william. 1871-1887. the four gospels in anglo-saxon, northumbrian and old mercian versions. cambridge: cup. reprinted darmstadt 1970. authors’ address departamento de filologías modernas universidad de la rioja edificio de filologías c/ san josé de calasanz, 33 26004 logroño, spain e-mail: javier.martin@unirioja.es, ana-elvira.ojanguren@unirioja.es revised version accepted: 15 november 2017 received: 11 december 2017 microsoft word review 11_2023.docx selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. 28 (2023): 157–160. issn: 1132-631x doi: 10.17811/selim.28.2023.157-160 © ediuno. ediciones de la universidad de oviedo. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. weikert, katherine, and elena woodacre, eds. 2021. medieval intersections: gender and status in europe in the middle ages. new york and oxford: berghahn. pp. 132. isbn 9781800731547. reviewed by maría beatriz hernández university of la laguna in its 1995 edition, maggie humm’s dictionary of feminist theory did not yet include the term intersectionality, which, coined by kimberlé crenshaw in 1989, has in the last decades become an essential component of much third wave feminist research and activism. crenshaw presented it as a phenomenon whereby individuals may experience discrimination as they partake of multiple social categories in different degrees. in such intersection, distinct forms of oppression or privilege are generated. notions such as those of race, social class, sexual orientation or religion, the most widely wielded, are added to the gender condition so as to outline a complex overlapping process which leads to multiple forms of identity. on the same page of the dictionary, other related terms do appear: interdisciplinary, intersubjectivity, intertextuality. these three entries do share with the missing one some basic semantic features, like the sense of adjustment, inclusion, reciprocity, or communication. they have also been intensely used in gender studies and proved most efficient in other disciplines and critical approaches. the crossing of borders and sharing of categories is being clearly suggested not only through the common prefix, but further on by the notions of subjectivity or textuality, major cruxes in the development of contemporary research fields. along with intersectionality, all of these terms suggest, therefore, a basic dialectic relationship between at least two parties that get interconnected, and out of which a constant movement of re-adjustment seems to be generated. this ongoing process may be projected and transferred from a synchronic perspective into a diachronic one. many are the scholarly fields that have accepted such diachronic challenge, among them, that of medieval studies, which in the last decades has also faced the archival turn. this demanded further attention to the power dynamics involved in the selection, preservation, and interpretation of archival contents, out of which medieval narratives and identities may be shaped and constructed. with these scholarly concerns in mind, medieval intersections: gender and status in europe in the middle ages, edited by katherine weikert and elena woodacre, stands as a courageous attempt to bring into contact the disciplinary methodological tools of medieval and gender studies. from a 21st century standpoint, the handling of the intersection category to refer to medieval contexts entails a singular effort of speculation concerning the very diversity within the medieval timespan, as well as of its categorization as a historical media aetas period. heir to ancient classical, biblical, and local traditions, medieval culture has been conceived of as one in which orality and writing nourish and legitimize each other. the development of writing gives rise to a gradual distance between the cultured and the popular, to new attitudes towards the old forms of interpretation and transmission, and https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1739-9161 book reviews 158 to a different perception of the past. the deployment of writing also alters the subjective notion of being—which gets deferred and externalized in the articulated norms of writing: births, deaths, baptisms, marriages, contracts of all kinds... begin to have their written counterpart—, thus entailing increasing structuring and abstraction. the way this general transformation affects women or men differently and the trace they can leave as historical subjects is not easy to discern. the processes that this book tries to describe are precisely immersed in this long-lasting cultural transformation, and this makes the interpretive effort of each of its chapters all the more deserving. weikert and woodacre privilege an interdisciplinary approach that encompasses different kinds of documents and data, ranging from the written personal letter and other archival records to archaeological vestiges or else to early and late medieval literary texts and images. each individual chapter not only includes its own referential and methodological patterns, but also extends its analysis to other disciplines, trying to outline the complex map of gender relationships during these centuries. such resourcefulness is the product of these contents having been previously exposed to dialogue and contribution from other fields, since they derive from the gender and medieval studies conference held at the university of winchester in 2014. this guarantees a versatile final product that may surprise those readers expecting more orthodox or single proposals. the title itself makes clear their essential goal, that of better grasping the complexity of gender within the medieval social uses and analysing how such notions and practices might be re-shaped or reconfigured. wisely, the second term in the title is none other than status. by providing a sound justification which suits medieval social codification, the editors do not choose to discriminate among the different categories, but instead to include under the umbrella term all those which interact with gender issues. in all, the volume contains nine contributions: alison creber’s “mirror for margraves. peter damian’s models for male and female rulers” dwells on letter writing techniques and biblical models in order to discern those points where gender issues, in conflict with the duality between the secular and the religious status, must be redefined. peter damian’s view of the differentiated duties of male or female rulers—in this case, godfrey’s, margrave of tuscany, and adelaide’s, ruler of the mark of turi—to their subjects is an illuminating inquiry on how damian could simultaneously articulate and defend seemingly contradictory principles in a paradoxical way, thus revealing a multifaceted regard on gender. linda d. brown’s “inaudito exemplo. the abduction of romsey’s abbess” charts the uneven existence of king stephen and queen matilda’s daughter marie. drawing on lexicographical research, and in the wake of duby’s research on female cases, brown revisits the topos of the woman torn between duty and desire in order to tell a different story: having become an abbess, marie is abducted and forced to marry. her change of status is analysed in the light of a complex political background, in order to discern how aristocratic women could adapt their female condition to several discourses according to their needs. if this historical episode was widely known, although ignored by some contemporary sources, another chapter in the book considers the visibility of noble women in anglosaxon society, not through the written records, but precisely through the material items that symbolize that very visibility: their jewellery. frank battaglia’s “wrist clasps and patriliny: a hypothesis” considers the displacement of matrilineal tribal identities by book reviews 159 patrilineal ones in anglo-saxon england, leaning on anthropological theories which study the evolution of matrilineality from the neolithic period up to that of early medieval north european tribes. to prove his theory, battaglia resorts not only to the study of funerary practices, but also to the re-interpretation of some of the passages in a key text in anglo-saxon insular culture, the poem beowulf, which is most aptly restored to its original commitment with the history of these early medieval centuries. other literary works in the book surprisingly illustrate gender aspects which so far had gone unnoticed. addressing these sources from the perspective of masculinity studies involves an effort that turns fruitful in the reassessment of gender as an “identity machine” (cohen) that runs smoothly within the homosocial circles of young noblemen who tried to acquire full social acceptance. this is what rachel e. moss’s “and much more i am soryat for my good knyghts: fainting, homosociality, and elite male culture in middle english romance”, offers: a journey through a number of arthurian late medieval romances in which the theme of male fainting proves the existence of a homosocial knightly code that helped reinforce a sense of belonging not only on account of gender, but also on that of status. the chapter points out the performative element in such code of conduct and stresses this particular male bonding as culturally created and intended for the male elite recipients of these texts. with the same precision and acumen, mcglynn’s “pueri sunt pueri: machismo, chivalry, and the aggressive pastimes of the medieval male youth” depicts chivalric values, and the male devotion for the lady as a mere security posture which screens, through the alleged contrast with peasants’ “beastly” games, the violent undercurrent pervading knighthood culture. this thorough study of male games and sports in late medieval english society reveals a tendency to favour violent ones as a means of training boys in war tactics. another group of texts belonging to the same tradition is scrutinized in elizabeth s. leet’s “objectification, empowerment, and the male gaze in the lanval corpus”. lanval’s figure is studied from its inception in marie de france’s lays to the late medieval middle english sir landevale and sir launfal. leet insists on the visual component of the medieval cultural tradition and on the importance of the individual and the communal gaze in the creation of a sense of subjectivity. laura mulvey’s inspirational theory on the existence of a male gaze which projects itself from movie screens into society is invoked so as to propose the rise of a medieval female gaze and subject. lees detects, though, that throughout the textual corpus of these poems, also the female characters get redefined and objectified according to their different conditions. the fairy character brings into question female human behaviour, whereas the queen character, from a public high-status position, threats the knight’s heterosexual identity. in distinguishing marie de france’s anglo-norman french lay from those in middle english, lees also invites further revision of the adaptation process entailed in medieval translation, suggesting the comparison between visual and textual colonization. another layer of meaning that clearly interacts with gender is that of the married/single status. natalie hanna’s “‘to take a wyf’: marriage, status, and moral conduct in ‘the merchant’s tale’” points out the male misogamous obsession with marriage and its power to transform male and female identity. old january married to young may, and duke walter married to poor griselda, from their respective literary genres in the canterbury tales, represent the class/gender/age oppressions through book reviews 160 which hanna reflects on the female way to deal with impositions through a range of lowfrequency responses, far from the “wife of bath’s” loud demand for sovereignty. the chapter shows chaucer denouncing male anxieties over the exercise of power, as these husbands imagine and experience the different senses of “taking a wife”. illnesses too posed a constant threat to medieval populations and were codified accordingly. among them, leper was especially stigmatized. christina welch and rohan brown’s “from villainous letch and sinful outcast, to ‘especially beloved of god’: complicating the medieval leper through gender and social status” offers a picture of the threat hovering not only over the bodies, but over the souls of the community too. a sign of moral corruption associated to lust, and especially to men, from the 12th century onwards, it was also increasingly found among the destitute and landless poor, whose bodily liminality was symbolized by the building of leprosaria on town outskirts. the chapter not only describes the type of oppression they were subject to, but registers as well the subtle change in the consideration of these living dead, who, associated to spiritual healing through carnal suffering, could paradoxically become signs of redemption. a thought-provoking and most original chapter is mercedes pérez vidal’s “the corpus christi devotion: gender, liturgy, and authority among dominican nuns in castile in the middle ages”. on the one hand, pérez vidal studies the theological treatises and canonical legislation regarding the visibility of the corpus christi, as well as the right of the faithful —in particular, of religious women— to access sacramental or ritual objects as part of the liturgies of the ecclesiastical year. on the other hand, she closely analyses architectural instances of castilian dominican nunneries, identifying the active role of aristocratic or royal inmates and patrons, who would contravene the initial rules and ignore the ordered interior designs of nunneries. the chapter demonstrates that, in spite of age-old attempts to keep women apart from the administration of the sacred, by the late middle ages some of them had achieved a certain degree of independence. as is well known, the notion of inequality was deeply ingrained in the social and economic structures of medieval society, the feudal system being the main referent in this sense. that same system is also a metaphor for the principle of interdependence. the chapters in medieval intersections: gender and status in europe in the middle ages perfectly illustrate the co-existence of different types of hierarchies and the overlap of the foundational concepts they lean on. through the study of the cases of certain individuals or communities, gender is considered in combination and interdependence with other aspects, so as to convey the set of nuances that each particular situation breeds. the final picture is as insightful as it is suggestive, one that keeps inviting research and passion for the middle ages. (received 29/05/2023) microsoft word review 6_2023.docx selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. 28 (2023): 131–133. issn: 1132-631x doi: 10.17811/selim.28.2023.131-133 © ediuno. ediciones de la universidad de oviedo. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. parker, eleanor. 2022. winters in the world: a journey through the anglo-saxon year. london: reaktion books. pp. 240. isbn 9781789146721. reviewed by maría del carmen muñoz rodríguez university of seville winters in the world: a journey through the anglo-saxon year, written by eleanor parker and published in 2022, is one of the first volumes dedicated to exploring the cycle of the year as it was conceived in anglo-saxon times. the passing of the seasons was a topic of major importance in early medieval england, for the different changes occurring in nature had a strong impact on the functioning of the human world. this influence is reflected in the texts of the period, as shown by the considerable number of works in which the role of the always-changing nature is of an unquestionable relevance for the understanding of the rhythms of anglo-saxon life. however, despite the importance this topic seemed to have for this civilization, there have been few previous attempts to approach its research in its full cultural dimension. examples of this endeavour would be the origin of the liturgical year by t. j. talley (1986), which offers an analysis of this subject from the very specific angle of christian practices, and p. s. langeslag’s seasons in the literatures of the medieval north (2015), whose specific focus is set on interpreting the symbolic functions played by the seasons in medieval literature. on its part, parker’s winters in the world offers a more ample approach to the matter. as it is remarked in its preface, this book was conceived as an introduction to the anglo-saxon year and, by extension, to the literature of the period too (7). actually, parker draws on a huge and varied range of textual sources encapsulating the sense of time. thus, by interweaving the analysis of famous pieces of the literary corpus with other less known texts documenting a large variety of cultural traditions and social practices, this volume manages to provide a complete and vivid understanding of the cares of the year as experienced by the inhabitants of early medieval england. considering the wider and presumably non-specialised readership addressed by this publication, parker’s writing style is accessible yet precise, without sacrificing scholarly accuracy for the sake of approachability. in this sense, the etymological explanations provided are suitable for the better interpretation of an entire set of medieval traditions which are deeply interrelated with the turn of seasons, rendering their presentation both informative and amusing. in terms of structure, the information encoded in this volume has been divided into four different chapters, one per season. this is how the readers are to be submerged in a wonderful journey through the progression of the year as they read its pages. interestingly, the order followed by this study is not the expected one, as it neither begins with the month of january nor starts with the renewal of the natural cycle in springtime. in fact, the departing point of this volume is the chapter entitled “winter”, dedicated to the coldest period of the year. this choice is not aleatory at all, for winter’s presence in anglo-saxon literature is https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6376-150x book reviews 132 meaningful. parker carefully explains how many of the texts describing the world in this specific season do not just take pleasure in the physical representation of the hostile weather outside, but also build an encompassing and powerful metaphor of the unknown, this is, of the vast unknowable lying beyond human control. this time of the year is equally associated with feelings of misery and grief, as it was also conceived in some of these ancient texts as an oppressive force or, in the author’s own words, as an “invading warrior” (41) that humans must fight back. thus winter, or rather, surviving winter, is interpreted as a symbol of human gaining of knowledge, endurance, and experience. the author also provides readers with instances of the anglo-saxons’ positive appreciation of this season, for the snows of winter are presented in some contemporary writings as necessary for the blossoming of nature to come afterwards. in this same line, the importance attributed to this process of transition among the seasons is equally put on show by parker’s highlighting of the spiritual relevance of the vernal equinox, marking a peak in the religious festivals of both the ancient pagan germanic and christian traditions on which the hybridized anglo-saxon culture relies. in the chapter entitled “spring”, the notions of renovation and freedom conventionally associated with this time of the year are studied in connection with some canonical texts like the seafarer, guthlac a or the husband’s message. some pages are similarly devoted to exploring the bittersweet character of this season by pointing out at the chaos it used to bring about, for spring was often the time in which the anglo-saxons started their war campaigns. as it is explained, the outburst of different armed conflicts was equated in the collective imaginary to the energy of the disturbing storms and winds through which nature was submitted to changes and, ultimately, renovated. in a similar way, the author explores in this chapter the religious nuances of spring as the season clearly dominated by the celebration of easter and how the anglo-saxons had adopted the catholic church tradition of placing the dates of the passion, death, and resurrection of christ in the liturgical calendar in such a way as to conform to the perfect circle of nature. the chapter “summer” is in turn devoted to the study of the benign character of the months involved. considering the harshness of winter and the havoc and turmoil of spring, parker explores how summer was regarded by the anglo-saxons as a peaceful interval in which communal joy was at its utmost. in fact, as the estival season was the period in which more hours of light were enjoyed through the day, there was an implied parallel between nature’s serenity and safety and the social tranquillity and cheerfulness this brought in for humans. the author illustrates with textual evidence the way in which this idea, extensively exploited in literature, crystalizes in the poetic motif of the bright summer landscape evoking notions of well-being, peace, and sheer happiness at this time of the year. likewise, she elaborates on the origin and symbology of some important festivities connected with the notions of accomplishment, abundance, and gratitude— such as rogationtide, ascension day and whitsuntide—and which were equally celebrated in this warmest season. the final chapter of this volume, “autumn”, is reserved to the period of the year whose perception has changed the most all through the centuries. parker first explores the relevance of the proverbial harvest time and the atavistic fascination with the invisible power making crops grow, enthusiastically reflected on the imagery of medieval texts. she also points out how, paradoxically, the anglo-saxons equally related autumn book reviews 133 to decline and decay. in a similar way, the human body was symbolically read as a natural creation which gradually shrivels until reaching the “winter” of old age. besides resorting to this universal cliché, autumn is, on the other hand, attested as a time for intense spiritual activity, concentrating on the advent weeks in preparation for the great feast of christmas. interestingly, the volume closes by linking this fourth season to the norman conquest of england in the year 1066, a traumatic event marking a new beginning in the history of the nation and which parker, echoing classic medieval studies, explicitly terms as the “autumn of anglo-saxon england” (228). winters in the world: a journey through the anglo-saxon year completely fulfills the promise made in its introduction since, without simplifying the subject in question, it succeeds in rendering the study of the cycle of seasons in anglo-saxon england enjoyable by all kinds of readers. parker’s compelling analysis of the understanding of the passing of the seasons according to the anglo-saxon mindset cleverly combines elements of literary analysis and cultural studies. in a certain way, it could be argued that this insight even incorporates some appreciations belonging in the critical paradigm of modern ecocriticism, as its pages re-examine the effects of the seasons on the natural scenarios of anglo-saxon writings. as parker herself claims, the complex perception of the passing of time and the transience of life is at the core of all civilizations’ concerns since, despite the number of centuries gone by, “the cycle of the seasons, to which poets have so often turned as a reminder that nothing in this world is stable, is in fact one of the great constants in life” (232). engaging and thoroughly well-researched, this book definitely makes a substantial contribution to the study of the cultural heritage of early medieval england. (received 29/03/2023) darragh greene, selim 22 (2017): 77–99. issn 1132-631x “mysse-masche, dryff-draff”: wittgenstein’s languagegames, nonsense, and the grammar of the soul in mankind1 darragh greene university of college dublin in this essay, i explore the fifteenth-century english morality play mankind through a wittgensteinian lens. the play’s remarkable emphasis on and play with language, the fact that the vices’ manipulation and degradation of grammar proves to be the hinge into mankind’s soul, aligns with and is illuminated by ideas central to ludwig wittgenstein’s late philosophy of language. in particular, i apply his key ideas of language-games, nonsense, and forms of life to an analysis of how the play’s vices under the rule of the devil, titivillus, mangle grammar and words in order to sever mankind from his essential human nature. the central argument is that the vices distort language because it is constitutive of human nature. by drawing mankind into the nonsense of their perverse, topsy-turvy language-games, the vices lure him from a human form of life to that of an inarticulate beast, lost and on the brink of damnation. keywords: wittgenstein; language-game; form of life; human nature; nonsense; grammar 1. introduction “don’t for heavens sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! only don’t fail to pay attention to your nonsense”. — ludwig wittgenstein, culture and value2 1 i would like to thank dr edel semple and dr danielle magnusson for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay. thanks are due also to prof. alan j. fletcher for his comments on the original paper delivered at a seminar in ucd from which this essay developed. 78 darragh greene “stow, statt, stow!” in these harsh, monosyllabic cries, mankind —the title character of the late-medieval morality play mankind (c. 1465–1470) —stands degraded.3 in a local tavern, which ought to be a space of communal goodwill, the collapse of the human form of life is staged in disturbing aspect. what should be mankind’s noblest faculty, language, is reduced to the most basic articulations of insult and imperative. the former diminishes the value of the ethical other, who is, in this case, a barmaid; the latter exacerbates the former by treating her as a mere functionary, which is simply an instrument for the satisfaction of mankind’s desires. how did the universal representative of humankind come to such a pass? the answer lies in the play’s implied account of the grammar of the human soul. while mankind’s overt principal vice and virtue are sloth and labor, respectively, there is an additional subtle discourse, operating at a level accessible to a contemporary lered or clerkly spectator, which is focused on the 2 ludwig wittgenstein, culture and value, ed. g. h. von wright, rev. ed. (oxford: blackwell, 1998), 64e. 3 all quotations from mankind are taken from medieval drama: an anthology, ed. greg walker (oxford: blackwell, 2000; repr. 2004), 258–279. thorn and yogh have been converted throughout. in writing this essay, i have consulted also the arden edition of the play in everyman and mankind, ed. douglas bruster and eric rasmussen (london: methuen, 2009) and the teams online edition, ed. kathleen m. ashley and gerard necastro (kalamazoo, michigan: medieval institute publications, 2010). mankind, along with the castle of perseverance and wisdom, survives in one manuscript of likely east anglian provenance, the so-called macro manuscript (because once owned by an eighteenth-century antiquarian book collector, the reverend cox macro), which is today housed in the folger shakespeare library, washington, dc, as ms v.a.354. from internal evidence (in particular, the references to new coins and king edward at lines 465–466 and 690–694), the play has been dated to the reign of edward iv, sometime between 1465–1470. for more on this, see donald c. baker, “the date of mankind”, philological quarterly 42 (1963): 90–91. however, john marshall makes a case for precisely dating the play’s first performance to saturday, 23 february 1471, in “‘o ye souerns that sytt and ye brothern that stonde ryght wppe’: addressing the audience of mankind”, european medieval drama 1 (1997): 189-202. see also jessica brantley and thomas fulton, “mankind in a year without kings”, the journal of medieval and early modern studies 36 (spring 2006): 321–354, who argue that the play was produced during the period of edward iv’s dethronement, 1469–1471, at 327–331. “mysse-masche, dryff-draff” 79 centrality of language to the human being.4 however, mankind himself is no philosopher; indeed, he has been described with some justice as something of an “earnest dullard”.5 for this reason, titivillus —the medieval devil whose special office is to record corruptions of language— and his band of vices eschew argument and the smooth manipulations of rhetoric. instead, they sport with the texture of language and send their uncouth words out on a spree. the target of their attack is the very ground of communication, namely, grammar. in this way, mankind stages a decidedly linguistic route to the damnation of its eponymous lead character. although there exists already a number of critical essays on some aspects of the treatment of language in mankind,6 none so far has developed a reading that considers exclusively the philosophical dimension of corrupted words. in this essay, i shall show how mankind’s fall is tracked through his gradual conversion to perverse language-games and immoral forms of life, the chaos of which drives him ultimately to despair and attempted suicide. my use of the terms ‘language-game’ and ‘form of life’ are taken from the philosophy of ludwig wittgenstein. in what follows, i will situate my reading of the play in relation to his late philosophical work, specifically his thinking concerning language, which he termed his grammatical investigations.7 there is, i believe, 4 for a classic reading of mankind as a morality play that explores the vice of acedia or sloth, see siegfried wenzel, the sin of sloth: acedia in medieval thought and literature (chapel hill, nc: university of carolina press, 1967), 149–154. see also pamela m. king, “morality plays”, in the cambridge companion to medieval english theatre, ed. by richard beadle and alan j. fletcher, 2nd ed. (cambridge, u.k.: cambridge university press, 2008), 235–262, at 244–245, who makes the point that “[t]he play’s use of latin, not just as translated tags but exploited wittily and dynamically within the text, also suggests that the play was written for a sophisticated audience” (245). 5 king, “morality plays”, 243. 6 such studies include paula neuss, “active and idle language: dramatic images in mankind”, in medieval drama, ed. neville denny (london: edward arnold, 1973), 41–67; kathleen m. ashley, “titivillus and the battle of words in mankind”, annuale mediaevale 16 (1975): 128–150; lynn forest-hill, transgressive language in medieval english drama: signs of challenge and change (aldershot, hampshire: ashgate, 2000), 85–107; and janette dillon, language and stage in medieval and renaissance england (cambridge university press, 2006), 51–69. 7 see ludwig wittgenstein, philosophical investigations, ed. g. e. m. anscombe and rush rhees, trans. g. e. m. anscombe, 3rd ed. (oxford: blackwell, 2001), i, § 90. in 80 darragh greene an illuminating affinity between his descriptions of how language works and the ideas about language implicit in the play. in other words, both medieval playwright and modern philosopher have hit on equivalent insights regarding the complex interrelationships between our language, our world, and our lives lived through and in both. moreover, wittgenstein’s philosophy of language is neither synchronic nor diachronic. what counts is the specific form of life underpinning this or that use of language, and that form of life may be, for instance, present-day or medieval. for this reason, wittgenstein’s philosophy of language is, by its own lights, readily applicable to the study of medieval texts, such as mankind. 2. grammatical investigations anne middleton writes of the medieval conception of grammar that “[it] reflects the structure of the mind, but, more important, the relation of concepts in the human mind corresponds to relationships of real entities in the universe, to what eternally is”.8 before moving on to discuss general and specific features of wittgenstein’s philosophy of language relevant to this essay, i sketch briefly here the broad outlines of the tradition of language study that underpins both middleton’s statement and the mankind playwright’s sensitivity to the importance of grammar. in the middle ages, studia grammatica, the first art of the trivium, was fundamental to education.9 the division of the seven liberal arts into the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and quadrivium (music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy) dates back to martianus cappella’s de nuptiis philologiae et mercurii at the beginning of the fifth century and isidore of seville’s etymologiae in the early seventh, with the latter devoting the first books of his encyclopedic work to them. in the twelfth century, john of salisbury writes the metalogicon (1159) as a defense of the trivium. in it, he asserts boldly that this essay, all quotations from philosophical investigations are taken from this edition and designate numbered sections. 8 anne middleton, “two infinities: grammatical metaphor in piers plowman”, elh (1972): 185, quoted in john m. fyler, language and the declining world in chaucer, dante, and jean de meun (cambridge university press, 2010), 43. 9 see nicholas orme, medieval schools: from roman britain to renaissance england (new haven and london: yale university press, 2006), 86–127, esp. 105–118. “mysse-masche, dryff-draff” 81 grammar, which is the basis and root of scientific knowledge, implants, as it were, the seed [of virtue] in nature’s furrow after grace has readied the ground. this seed, provided again that cooperating grace is present, increases in substance and strength until it becomes solid virtue, and it grows in manifold respects until it fructifies in good works, wherefore men are called and actually are ‘good’.10 in other words, grammar is the bedrock of the perfection of human nature. from the thirteenth century, students in medieval grammar schools furthered their studies in latin via the liber catonianus, which compiled a number of different texts, including the first one, the disticha catonis, after which the whole collection is named.11 on the whole, then, the anonymous author of mankind, who was almost certainly university educated, conceived and composed his play as heir to a rich cultural encyclopedia that dwelt critically on the relation of language to world, and which emphasized the fundamental role of grammar in mediating or capturing that relation. in the twentieth century, wittgenstein settled on language as the proper object of philosophical investigation because of a conviction that attention paid to language and its uses clears up the kinds of confusions we are liable to fall prey to about both ourselves and the world when we become curious about what lies beneath or beyond the surface of our words. for instance, we may say, “she’s a good friend”; “what’s the good of complaining”; or “we’re making good time on this bus”. reviewing these different uses of the word “good”, we may wonder what underpins or unites them, and this may lead us to ask the question, what is the good? this wittgenstein considers an error, which leads invariably to nonsense metaphysics. for this reason, he contends, “philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language” (i.109). in the case of mankind, titivillus and the vices precisely endeavor to bewitch mankind’s wit by means of nonsensical language-games. 10 john of salibury, the metalogicon, book i, chapter 23, in the metalogicon of john of salisbury: a twelfth-century defense of the verbal and logical arts of the trivium, trans. daniel d. mcgarry (berkeley and los angeles: university of california press, 1962), 65. see book i, chapters 13–25 for the account and defense of grammar. 11 for an account of the liber catonianus, see marjorie curry and rita copeland, “classroom and confession”, in the cambridge history of medieval english literature (cambridge university press, 1999), 376–406, at 380–385. for the distichs, see cato, disticha catonis, ed. marcus boas and henricus johannes botschuyer (amsterdam: north holland, 1952). 82 darragh greene their attack on the purity of language is not casual; rather, it opens up a dangerous cleavage within mankind’s soul, between his specifically human and basely animal natures.12 wittgenstein’s various grammatical investigations do not offer an ordered or structuralist theory of language like, for instance, that of saussurean linguistics, but, rather, a description of dynamic language. in other words, he aims to show how we actually use language. in this connection, he writes: “philosophy [and by this, wittgenstein means his grammatical investigations] may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it. for it cannot give it any foundation either. it leaves everything as it is” (i.122–224). to use a terminology not his own, his functional linguistics offers a pragmatic and/or sociolinguistic account of language. at this point, i want to focus particularly on the idea of the language-game because this is key in my analysis of the vices’ operations in the play. wittgenstein considers language to be the vehicle of thought (i.329), so he turns his critical attention to the “use of language [...] and the whole process of using words”, which he calls “language-games” (i.7). by doing so, he seeks to show both the diverse uses we put our words to, and how such uses are indivisibly bound to our particular forms of life —our forms of life being those activities proper to human beings. as he puts it, “to imagine a language means to imagine a life-form” (i.19). hence, our form of life and language-games are inextricably linked. in this view, the meaning of a word is not some thing it refers to or names; instead, the meaning of a word is its use, and the uses of words are multiple: but how many kinds of sentence are there? say assertion, question, and command? —there are countless kinds: countless different kinds of use of what we call ‘symbols’, ‘words’, ‘sentences’. and this multiplicity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new types of language, new language-games, as we may say, come into existence, and others become obsolete and get forgotten [...] here the term ‘language-game’ is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a life-form. (i.23) 12 in aristotelian philosophical anthropology, human nature is an animal nature, but it is distinguished from all other animal natures by the addition and exercise of those distinctly human activities that are made possible by the faculty of reason. “mysse-masche, dryff-draff” 83 thus, language-games are performed by communities of users who play them according to agreed rules. in other words, language-games are a natural, and not merely or only cultural, form of life of human beings. this means that the ground of language, which is the answer to the question, “what is language?”, is just that the speaking of language is a proper activity of human beings, used for all kinds of different purposes. some of these are outlined in the list wittgenstein provides in philosophical investigations: giving orders, and obeying them — describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements — constructing an object from a description (a drawing) — reporting an event — speculating about the event — forming and testing a hypothesis — presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams — making up a story; and reading it — play-acting — singing catches — guessing riddles — making a joke; telling it — solving a problem in practical arithmetic — translating from one language to into another — requesting, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying. (i.23) to be understood, therefore, is to share a form of life with someone else —to be related to another and so to belong. as herbert mccabe, following wittgenstein, puts it: “meanings [...] are ways of entering into social life, ways of being with each other. the kind of meanings available in the language of a society —taking ‘language’ in its widest extent to include all conventionally determined signs and symbols— constitute the way in which people are with each other in that community”.13 in order to play the multiplicity of languagegames well, one must play them according to the rules and therefore be, so to speak, a team player. and what happens if one does not play according to the agreed rules? in this case, wittgenstein imagines a ball game: “it is as though there were a custom among certain people to throw someone a ball, which he is supposed to catch and throw back; but certain people might not throw it 13 herbert mccabe, law, love and language (london: continuum, 2003), 84. 84 darragh greene back, but put it in their pocket instead”.14 i will return to this analogy in the discussion of the vices’ grammatical tactics in mankind. indeed, i wish to apply now wittgenstein’s ideas concerning language outlined above to an examination of the play. 3. sin and solecism on the subject of language in medieval morality plays, janette dillon observes, “most [...] tend [...] to set up a dialectic between a relatively formal, latinate dialect for [...] holy speakers and a colloquial, sometimes obscene or nonsensical, vernacular dialect for the figure of the vice and his counterparts”.15 in mankind, mischief and the other vices work assiduously to uproot mankind from the ground of his essential human being. to achieve this they launch a concerted attack on the purity of his language, by breaking his and the audience’s agreed rules of grammar. in wittgenstein’s terms, they corrupt the conventional uses of language-games. the vices’ first target is mercy himself, whose dignified form of speech provides the paradigm for mankind’s own initial fluent and ordered use of language (in lines 186–216). mercy represents allegorically god’s mercy, but the details of his personification imply that he is also a priest with the requisite learning and authority to teach sound doctrine. when he opens the play, mercy employs the devices and schemes of rhetoric to persuade the audience of his teaching. his eloquence is magisterial because his smooth manipulation of language is allied to propositions that are true. he appeals directly to the audience in high style, which is rich in latinate vocabulary. it is worth quoting the peroration of his speech in full in order to appreciate its mouth-filling grandiloquence: o ye soverens that sytt and ye brothern that stoned ryght uppe, pryke not yowr felycytes in thyngys transytorye. beholde not the erth, but lyfte yowr ey wppe. se how the hede the members dayly do magnyfye, who ys the hede forsoth i xall yow certyfye: i mene owr savyowr, that was lykynnyde to a lambe; 14 wittgenstein, culture and value, 95e. for more on wittgenstein’s language-games, see anthony kenny, wittgenstein, rev. ed. (oxford: blackwell, 2006), 126–140. 15 dillon, language and stage in medieval and renaissance england, 51. “mysse-masche, dryff-draff” 85 and hys sayntys be the members that dayly he doth satysfye wyth the precyose rever that runnyth from hys wombe. ther ys non such foode, be water nor by londe, so precyouse, so gloryouse, so nedefull to owr entent, for yt hath dyssolvyde mankynde from the bytter bonde of the mortall enmye, that vemynousse serpente, from the wyche gode preserve yow all at the last judgment! for sekyrly ther xall be a streyt examynacyon, the corn xall be savyde, the chaffe xall be brente. i besech yow hertyly, have this premedytacyon. (29–44) how are the vices to tackle such a euphonious and sententious speech? mankind, when he first speaks with mercy, says, “o, yowr lovely wordys to my soull are swetere then hony” (225), referring also to its “mellyfluose doctrine” (313). the vices know that they cannot match the artful oratory of one whom they acknowledge to be a “stronge cunnyng clerke” (128). they will not present mercy, mankind, or the audience with clear arguments in favor of their form of life. (for the sake of contrast, think of mephistopheles, in christopher marlowe’s doctor faustus (c. 1589), who employs rhetoric to persuade faustus of his position; in effect, mephistopheles argues with faustus.) instead, the vices ask a series of impudent questions, but they do not argue with either mercy or mankind (in, for instance, lines 129–138). their verbal attacks are unexpected, oblique, indirect, and subtle; by them, they prize open and burst the very words that constitute the audience’s and mankind’s world and, what mercy calls, their “goode condycyons” (28). in this way, they remove the possibility of reasonable discussion, by turning the medium of such, which is the proper use of words according to agreed rules, into a mishmash of nonsense and non sequiturs. furthermore, they cannot hope to utter words as aureate, sweet, or true as mercy’s, and so they attack the structure of his verbal medium through its foundation, namely, grammar. by interrupting the flow of his “talkyng delectable” (65), and by breaking apart its rhetoric and transmuting its golden, honeyed sentence into base babbling, they introduce confusion —linguistic and moral— into the play. at this point, wittgenstein’s analogy of the ball game is relevant when, in effect, mischief catches mercy’s ball, puts it in his pocket, and walks off with it: 86 darragh greene i beseche yow hertyly, leve yowr calcacyon. leve yowr chaffe, leve yowr corn, leve yowr dalyacyon. yowr wytt ys lytyll, yowr hede ys mekyll, ye are full of predycacyon. but, ser, i prey this questyon to claryfye: mysse-masche, dryff-draff. sume was corn and sum was chaffe, my dame seyde my name was raffe; onschett yowr lokke and taken an halpenye. (45–52) note how mischief’s first line of verse parallels mercy’s last by the anaphora of the phrase, “i besech yow hertyly”, and through the rhyming of “premedytacyon” and “calcacyon”. mischief appropriates and echoes the diction, structure, and meter of mercy’s speech only to swerve and hammer home his rejection of it by some further anaphora of his own: “leve yowr chaffe, leve yowr corn, leve yowr dalyacyon”. in fact, “dalyacyon” is itself an ambiguous term that means both “serious discourse” and “idle chattering”, depending on context and, of course, use.16 the oxymoronic dual senses of “dalyacyon” — at once reasonable discussion and idle chatter —guide the vices in their flip-flopping grammatical assaults on meaning. mischief happily exploits this ambiguity in order to conflate both senses in a comic and scornful dismissal of what he caricatures as mercy’s witless, big-headed preaching. when he then asks mercy to resolve his quodlibetal puzzle —the diction, structure, and meter of which is suddenly and wholly opposed to mercy’s— it turns out to be the key illustration of his method: mysse-masche, dryff-draff. sume was corn and sume was chafe, my dame seyde my name was raffe; onschett yowr lokke and taken an halpenye. by what rules is mischief using words here? moreover, what form of life do such uses presuppose? according to wittgenstein, “the rules of grammar may be called ‘arbitrary’, if that is to mean that the aim of the grammar is nothing but that of language” (i.497). but the aim of language is necessarily human. that is, it is human agents who agree on the rules of grammar with respect to 16 med, s.v. dalien (v.), 1. (a): “to converse politely, leisurely or intimately; talk, chat, jest [...] (b) to speak in a serious, edifying, or solemn manner”. “mysse-masche, dryff-draff” 87 human aims. by contrast, the vices’ arbitrary “rules” of grammar are inherently non-human and, thus, disturb the human form of life. when the minor vices, new gyse, nowadays, and nought, enter the scene, they dance rings around, trip up, and jostle mercy; and they do so too by their play with and on words. they interrupt him and deliberately do not cooperate with his proper use of words, drowning him out with the rapid-fire assaults of their “ydyll language” (147). in frustration, mercy pleads for: “few wordys, few and well sett!” (102). but he is roundly opposed by new gyse who stipulates new rules for language: ser, yt ys the new gyse and the new jett, many wordys and schortely sett, thys ys the new gyse, every-dele. (103–105) on one level, new gyse refers here to the vulgar register of demotic vocabulary and speedy delivery that is characteristic of the vices’ speech pattern. on the other hand, his rejection of “well sett” words implies the concerted attack on grammar, vocabulary, and syntax, which underpins the vices’ most memorable, humorous and perplexing speeches.17 in addition, his insistence on the “new gyse and the new jett” points the vices’ overturning of the customs, conventions, and agreed rules of language. while mercy castigates them for their “ydyll language”, they invert his diction and judgment, by referring to their own “eloquence” (150). these reversals are the hallmark of their all-out assault on meaning; such is the “new gyse” of their topsy-turvy language-games. 4. implicating the audience in his early philosophy, wittgenstein wrote, “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world”,18 a position that he continued to maintain in his later thinking. in other words, the number and extent of one’s language-games define the scope of one’s world. the vices’ assault on language, through their 17 see john of salisbury, the metalogicon, i, 18, for john’s emphasis on and account of the key principles of writing and speaking in a correct manner. 18 ludwig wittgenstein, tractatus logico-philosophicus, trans. d. f. pears and b. f. mcguinness (london: routledge, 2001), 5.6. 88 darragh greene idle and sing-song speech, is effectively an attack on the audience’s world. their bamboozling tactics are designed to destabilize the audience’s worldview and to insert confusion and chaos into their proper form of life. while it is true that audience expectations at the time would have been conditioned —via vernacular sermons, mystery plays, mummers’ plays, and, above all, other morality plays— to expect and even demand lewd, scatological, and profane activities from the vices, nonetheless, such activities are, of course, from the vantage point of christian morality and theology potentially deadly to the soul. indeed, as some members of the original audience would have been aware, there is scriptural admonition regarding the vices’ verbal project: “profana autem inaniloquia devita multum enim proficient ad impietatem / et sermo eorum ut cancer serpit” (“but shun profane and vain babblings: for they grow much towards ungodliness. / and their speech spreadeth like a canker”).19 in bastardizing and perverting mercy and mankind’s use of language, which is the vernacular shared by the multi-tiered audience, the vices throw human life itself into confusion. furthermore, by their grammatical caperings, they aim to disturb the members of the audience from their habitual use of words, by delighting them in the distortion and destruction of mercy’s words in order to drive a wedge between them and his message.20 in wittgenstein’s view, to understand a language is to grasp a form of life. the vices endeavor to corrupt language in order to pervert life. when they target mercy’s high style, they fasten on his latinate vocabulary, which new guise disparagingly calls “englysch laten” (124). to attack it they produce their own rival low style of barbarism and soraismus, in which english words are yoked to latin case endings: bredibus, horsibus, fyrybusque, etc. (57). the result is an adulteration of the prestige vocabulary of high style, which travesties the ethical poetic of deploying language for the purpose of moral development. moreover, the vices’ conflation of english words and latin case endings parodies by reversal the appropriation of latin words into english, a 19 2 timothy 2:16–17, quoted from the vulgate and douay-rheims translation, online editions, www.drbo.org. 20 neuss maintains in “active and idle language” that the audience loses interest in mercy’s opening sermon-like speech just in time for the arrival of distraction in the form of mischief, only to learn the lesson of the value of mercy’s words by the end of the play, and so listen more intently to his longer closing speech. “mysse-masche, dryff-draff” 89 process that gathered steam in the fifteenth century.21 in lines 129–134, nowadays parodies grammar schoolroom translation exercises, such as those done in connection with the liber catonianus, by asking mercy to translate an obscene english rhyme into latin. however, the vices’ true target is neither latin nor english, but language itself. they blur boundaries between languages in order to reduce all articulate speech to babbling. mercy says of the vices, “in language thei be large” (296), and the extent of their fast-andloose language-games serves to stretch and destabilize the limits of coherent speech. in this vein, the vices teach the audience new, impure language-games such as the scatological christmas song that concludes with the suggestive chorus: “holyke, holyke, holyke, etc.” (344) in parody of “holy, holy holy”.22 thus, by profaning the sacred through the degradation of grammar, the vices strive to loosen the audience —or a suggestible portion of it— from both its customary and ideal forms of life. as stanton b. garner jr writes, “to an extent unusual even for the moralities, the play has drawn the audience into its entertaining middle and implicated them in its action”.23 in particular, the audience becomes implicated in raising the devil, titivillus, by paying for him to appear and destroy mankind, its stand-in on stage: “gyf ws rede reyallys yf ye wyll se hys abhomynabull presens” (466). on the one hand, the shrewd playwright and players profit from the audience’s appetite for spectacle. on the other, the invitation to participate in the play’s performance constructs an audience that does not feel stupid or passive but knowing and superior —for they are in on the joke of mankind’s being bamboozled by titivillus and the vices. indeed, titivillus especially invites and involves them in the attack on mankind.24 they collude in the attack by keeping quiet for him while he works invisibly 21 see philip durkin, borrowed words: a history of loanwords in english (oxford university press, 2014), 223–297. 22 see revelation 4.8. this christmas song, together with allusions to the ash wednesday liturgy at lines 320–323, has prompted critics to identify mankind as a shrovetide play. see king, “morality plays”, 245 and thomas pettitt, “mankind: an english fastnachtspiel?”, in festive drama, ed. meg twycross (cambridge: d. s. brewer, 1996), 190–202. 23 stanton b. garner jr, “theatricality in mankind and everyman”, studies in philology 84 (1987): 279–280. 24 see meg twycross and sarah carpenter, masks and masking in medieval and early tudor england (aldershot, hampshire: ashgate, 2002), 253. 90 darragh greene on his mark: “for me kepe now your silence; / not a worde, i charge yow” (589-90). this metatheatrical device is designed to defuse the prospect of moral opposition by the audience as titivillus and the other vices feign ironic self-mockery. they feign, however, because they do have a serious goal: the damnation of mankind. in these ways, titivillus and his troupe of vices play on the audience’s appetite for spectacle and entertainment, maneuvering it into paying for its own vicarious temptation and damnation: such are the confusions opened up by attacking the ground of human being, our language and the rules of its games. while mankind was written in the vernacular, which implies its accessibility to a lewed or unlearned audience, as was discussed above the vices do make use of latin, by parodying and distorting its forms and sounds, and sometimes blending it with english. this raises a question: does this complex linguistic play not imply a section of the audience that would share the learning of the playwright and so appreciate his sophisticated linguistic play? in some cases, such as the line, “vita hominis est milicia super terram” (228), the latin is not subsequently translated. it seems reasonable to infer, then, that the play was presented at some point in its production history before a university audience25 —and maybe even a cambridge one given its likely provenance.26 thus, while the playtext addresses a broad audience and was likely staged before all kinds of empirical audiences,27 its sophisticated play with grammar would have been particularly appropriate for a university audience. such spectators would have relished first and foremost the englishlatin grammatical jokes. second, they would enjoy the humor of condescension in relation to an uncultured and laboring peasant such as mankind. nevertheless, some educated spectators likely would recognize that horace’s question and answer, “quid rides? mutato nomine de te / fabula 25 pettitt argues that references in the play imply an “indoor performance, perhaps in the great hall of a domestic or institutional residence”, in “mankind: an english fastnachtspiel?”, 191. 26 dillon argues for a clerical audience of the play in language and stage in medieval and renaissance england, 57–59. 27 according to david m. bevington, mankind constitutes the most exemplary portable morality play, ideal for the repertory of a travelling troupe of players and staging before all kinds of audiences, in from mankind to marlowe: growth of structure in the popular drama of tudor england (cambridge, mass: harvard university press, 1962), 8–25. “mysse-masche, dryff-draff” 91 narratur”, would apply to them, for mankind with his spade is also a type of adam, who after the fall dug the earth for his living.28 hence, in respect of one aspect of mankind’s character, educated members of the audience could enjoy a sense of superiority, but in another they would recognize themselves to be equally skewered. of course, the late-medieval society addressed by such a subversive morality play was a highly codified one, alert to a host of complex and carefully defined social conventions —or in wittgenstein’s terms, forms of life. on special licensed occasions, such as shrove tuesday, this would make it almost necessary to entertain the opposite of everyday social norms and morality. in this way, mischief and the other vices represent the upturning of order that is the essence of play and carnival.29 indeed, mankind brilliantly stages diametrically opposed viewpoints: confirmation of religious authority and its subversion and parody. the crux of such a delicately poised balance between the two, the spiritual and the corporeal, comes when mankind kneels on stage praying, and titivillus makes him need to “shit” (568). yet the juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane is itself contained by the restitution of the sacred and the comic triumph of divine grace at the play’s conclusion.30 bearing this in mind, it seems that by its formal structure —mercy’s last-minute rescue of mankind and the concluding didactic speech— the play does not endorse its subversions beyond the bounds of its performance. even so, the formal 28 see horace, satires, i.1.69, in horace, satires, epistles and ars poetica, trans. h. r. fairclough, rev. ed. (london: william heinemann, 1929), 8–10. in medieval art, adam was often portrayed with a spade; for more on this, see michael camille, “‘when adam delved’: laboring on the land in english medieval art”, in agriculture in the middle ages: technology, practice, and representation, ed. del sweeney (philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 1995), 247–276. mark chambers argues that mankind’s spade should be read as a symbolic link to adam in “weapons of conversion: mankind and medieval stage properties”, philological quarterly 83 (2004): 1–11, at 2. 29 for more on this, see anthony gash, “carnival against lent: the ambivalence of medieval drama”, in medieval literature: criticism, ideology, and history, ed. david aers (new york: st. martins press, 1986), 74–98, and victor i. scherb, staging faith: east anglian drama in the later middle ages (madison, n.j.: fairleigh dickinson university press, 2001), 109–111. 30 compare the practice of the wakefield-master who similarly produces a parody of a sacred event, the nativity, in the story of mak and gil and the stolen sheep, but who concludes the play with a staging of the authentic nativity. 92 darragh greene structure does not guarantee what the audience takes away from the performance. for when the play has concluded, individual audience members are free to recall its many scenes of staged transgression and, perhaps, repeat to themselves some of its catchiest subversive lines.31 joerg o. fichte writes, “the unity of actors, play and audience was much more strongly realized in the staging of the moral interludes than is true for the other medieval dramatic genres. the physicality of the theater as well as the medium’s close proximity to the audience generally reduced the aesthetic distance between performance and reception”.32 hence, there is inherent and dynamic tension between the play’s form and content and, moreover, between its form and the individual playgoer’s reception of the performance. 5. language and the devil titivillus is an appropriate figure to oversee the grammatical attack on mankind, for in medieval lore, he is the devil tasked with, on the one hand, collecting instances of idle chattering in church by inattentive mass-goers and, on the other, any mangling of the latin liturgy by the officiating priest. he was supposed to gather such instances in a sack that he would open again in evidence against souls at the last judgment, and this indeed is his function in the towneley cycle play on that subject.33 he is a demonic prescriptive 31 laura kendrick, in “‘in bourde and in pleye’: mankind and the problem of comic derision in medieval english religious plays”, études anglaises 58 (2005): 261–275, argues that the comic derisions and diversions of the play are finally curtailed by mercy’s closing sermon. in his reading of the play, michael t. peterson argues that it fails to authorize any of its competing discourses, including mercy’s, and so ultimately god’s authority as secure guarantor of meaning is undermined, in “fragmina verborum: the vices’ use of language in the macro plays”, florilegium 9 (1987): 155–167. 32 joerg o. fichte, “the presentation of sin as verbal action in the moral interludes”, anglia 103 (1985): 31. 33 for more on this, see the towneley judicum or play xxx, ll. 249–252. titivillus also features in a series of exempla in the sermon collection jacob’s well. for a history of this devil in literature, see margaret m. jennings, “tutivillus: the literary career of the recording demon”, studies in philology 74 (1977): 1–95. see also neuss, “active and idle language”, 55–64, and paula l. presley, “the revenge of titivillus”, in books have their own destiny: essays in honor of robert v. schnucker, ed. robin “mysse-masche, dryff-draff” 93 grammarian of correct language use, who is eager to fasten on barbarism and corruption of language as the index of a corrupt soul. for all intents and purposes, then, he is the patron devil of solecisms, a perverse philologist —a kakologist.34 in the tempter’s voice, eric jager explores saint augustine’s idea that it was the devil who asked the first question, and by it he sowed the seeds of semiotic difference in eve’s mind and then adam’s.35 for augustine, the origin of the fall is rooted in the introduction of a new grammatical mood into the perfect adamic language of eden, namely, the interrogative mood. by this device, the devil creates the conditions by which the divinely instituted order of things may be doubted, and thereby a gap is opened between the signifier and signified. first eve and then adam no longer understand god’s injunction against eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. in other words, error creeps into their hermeneutics. in augustine’s view, the fall is semiotic, and its consequences pervade human nature because human beings are, by their rational nature, language-using creatures.36 further, he asserts, “spirits who wish to deceive someone devise appropriate signs for each individual to match those in which they see him caught up through [...] the conventions he accepts”.37 in other words, grammar is the via regia to human damnation. in mankind, titivillus and the vices exploit the susceptibility of language to breakdown and confusion in order to isolate mankind and make him question and doubt his nature. furthermore, they aim to separate him from his home language and community so as to reduce him to silent despair, self-inflicted death, and ultimately damnation. bruce barnes, robert kolb, and paula l. presley (kirksville, mo: truman state university press, 1998), 111–120. 34 the change in the pronunciation (and so spelling) of the devil’s name, from tutivillus to titivillus, if deliberate, may be the playwright’s own sly joke at the expense of a devil charged with recording mispronunciations of latin words, such as his own name. 35 see eric jager, the tempter’s voice: language and the fall in medieval literature (ithaca and london: cornell university press, 1993), 3. 36 see ibid., 51–98. 37 saint augustine, on christian teaching, trans. r. p. h. green (oxford university press, 1997), 52. 94 darragh greene wittgenstein was an assiduous and habitual reader of augustine’s confessions,38 and in on certainty, he investigates the nature of doubt and certainty, including the logical conditions for asking conceptually coherent questions. his analysis both complements and deepens that of augustine’s outlined above, for the devil’s teasing, philosophically skeptical first question was of the nonsensical and destructive kind that wittgenstein regarded as inimical to a true appreciation of the human form of life in the world. for wittgenstein, to ask metaphysical questions presupposes or is grounded in shared forms of life, which comprehend just those kinds of activities that are distinctive of language-using human beings. as he writes, “the questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which we turn [...] my life consists in my being content to accept many things”.39 in addition, he asserts, “you must bear in mind that the language-game is so to say something unpredictable. i mean: it is not based on grounds. it is not reasonable (or unreasonable). it is there —like our life”.40 thus, our language-games are open to change, but not to just any change. whatever changes we do make and accept come into play in the context of a shared form of life, which is learned and not open to endless questioning, for as he contends: “a doubt without an end is not even a doubt”.41 if these ideas are applied to the play, then the exigent question for mankind is: will his doubts incline him to a vicious form of life, which is essentially inhuman, shared with mischief and the rest? after titivillus whispers in the sleeping mankind’s ear that mercy is dead, he awakes with the monosyllabic ejaculations of “whoop! ho!” (607). these are the cries of a soul losing its hold on reason. when he has fallen fully in the thrall of the vices, he can only repeat his lame acquiescence, “i wyll, ser” (707, 711, 714, and 719), to all the clauses of their profession of vice, which is a value system of the self that embraces lust, greed, sloth, and violent wrath. to be cut off from the community of language-users entails the end of the 38 see brian mcguinness, young ludwig: wittgenstein’s life 1889–1921 (oxford: clarendon press, 2005), 224, and ray monk, ludwig wittgenstein: the duty of genius (london: vintage, 1991), 282. 39 ludwig wittgenstein, on certainty, ed. g. e. m. anscombe and g. h. von wright, trans. denis paul and g. e. m. anscombe (new york: harper & row, 1972), §§ 341 and 344. 40 ibid., § 559. 41 ibid., § 625. “mysse-masche, dryff-draff” 95 articulate use of words, a use that stretches the limits of one’s world while maintaining relation with others. after mankind’s professed alliance to vice, he is reduced further to monosyllabic shouting in the tavern: “a tapster, a tapster! stow, statt, stow!” (730). these coarse utterances mark the nadir of mankind’s linguistic fall, and this is confirmed and reinforced by the echo and rhyme of new gyse’s “whoppe whow! anow, anow, anow, anow!” (734). now mankind is one of the devil’s party, and the inhuman vices constitute his unsocial linguistic community. in the broken staccato of his repeated imperative, “stow”, the other person is addressed in the reductive terms of function, “tapster”, and degrading insult, “statt”. mankind has forgotten his own “kind”, that is, his nature, the social essence of human being. he is slipping to the level of a brute. at this point, mercy, who is appalled at mankind’s fall, recognizes that his current state is unnatural. “man onkynde” (743), he calls him, which recalls his earlier injunction to mankind to consider and ever keep in mind his nature: “thynke well in yow hert, yowr name ys mankynde; / be not wnkynde to gode” (279–280). this is the moral challenge highlighted by the play, namely, the necessity of adhering to one’s human nature in its relation to others and god. one should recall john of salisbury’s words regarding the moral dimension of grammar: “grammar, which is the basis and root of scientific knowledge, implants, as it were, the seed [of virtue] in nature’s furrow after grace has readied the ground. this seed, provided again that cooperating grace is present, increases in substance and strength until it becomes solid virtue, and it grows in manifold respects until it fructifies in good works, wherefore men are called and actually are ‘good’”. for mankind to be true to his nature, all his actions must be underpinned by right grammar, which together with divine mercy makes a man perfect in nature or good. the confounding of language and the scattering of human beings over the face of the earth, the story in genesis 11 (especially, 11:5–8) of the tower of babel, that is, of the second fall and rupturing of language is relevant here. as discussed above, in augustine’s eyes, the original fall was itself, among other things, linguistic. man was cut off from direct communication with god, having been exiled into a region of dissimilitude, as he termed it in his confessions, the reality of which can only be discussed figuratively.42 hence, there is the medieval predilection for allegory and analogy in discussing metaphysics and theology; so, too, the choice of mode for this play. in 42 see augustine, confessions, vii, x. 96 darragh greene breaking the foundation of language, the vices seek to wholly remove mankind from his world, throwing him down into the state of total alienation that is hell. in this connection, one thinks of dante’s conception of a lucifer whose pride and fall led to silent mindlessness, deformed being, teetering on the brink of non-existence in the icy darkness of the inferno.43 the church fathers understood the fracturing of humankind at babel into diverse linguistic communities to be a divinely sanctioned punishment for overweening pride, consisting in a scorn for the limits of human nature.44 the play implies that it is always narcissism that separates the individual from his or her native form of life, and so from the linguistic community that institutes the rules for the meaningful use of words. mankind’s fall is a kind of grammatical declension into self-annihilating solipsism. the problem of solipsism was one that exercised wittgenstein throughout his life.45 many readers of philosophical investigations, such as anthony kenny, lars hertzberg, and terry eagleton, hold that wittgenstein argues that a private language is impossible because language requires public criteria of use.46 terry eagleton makes the point thus: 43 see dante, inferno, xxxiv. 44 see umberto eco, the search for the perfect language, trans. james fentress (london: fontana press, 1997), 8–11, and fyler, language and the declining world, 35–44. 45 for an interesting essay which gives an account of wittgenstein’s thoughts on solipsism and applies them to readings of autobiographical writing, by rousseau, frederick douglas and siegfried sassoon among others, see garry l. hagberg, “autobiographical consciousness: wittgenstein, private experience, and the ‘inner picture’”, in the literary wittgenstein, ed. john gibson and wolfgang huemer (london: routledge, 2004), 228–250. 46 see anthony kenny, wittgenstein, rev. ed. (oxford: blackwell, 2006), 141–159, and lars hertzberg, “language-games and private language”, in wittgenstein: key concepts, ed. kelly dean jolley (durham: acumen, 2010), 41–50. for a famous and idiosyncratic book-length study, see saul a. kripke, wittgenstein: on rules and private language (oxford: blackwell, 1982), esp. 107–109. “mysse-masche, dryff-draff” 97 meaning belongs to language, and language distils the sense we collectively make of our world. it is not free-floating. rather, it is bound up with the ways we go to work on reality — with a society’s values, traditions, assumptions, institutions and material conditions. in the end, we speak as we do because of the things we do.47 in effect, the very nature of language requires cooperation between languageusers, and so it both presupposes community and preserves it.48 by contrast, mankind in the tavern, which is ideally a social space, does not wish to converse with others. instead, he uses the bare minimum of linguistic resources available to him merely to order and insult. beyond this point, there is no private language by which the socially, and that is to say, the existentially isolated self can speak of or know itself. at the end of the play, indeed, mankind refers back to himself at this point as having been “bestyally dysposyde” (814). in other words, his disordered actions reduced him to the state of a brute animal, bent on unthinking self-gratification, which is alien to proper human nature. in this way, he became dumb.49 from that state of inarticulate silence, there remains only the collapse of being, which is the selfabnegation of suicide and perdition. (in dante’s inferno, the suicides forfeit human form and are reduced to an ignoble vegetal nature.)50 mankind’s final, terse utterance, before mercy’s saving intervention, is: “a rope, a rope, a rope! i am not worthy” (801). after this, he is instructed by new gyse to imitate his example as the vice shows him what to do: “lo, mankynde! do as i do; this is thi new gyse. / gyff the roppe just to [thy] neke” (805–806). thus, in despairing silence at the limit and end of language, mankind is urged to copy the vice’s actions and in mute, unthinking imitation damn himself. at this point, however, mankind is rescued by the sudden intervention of the representative of divine grace. where the vices outmaneuvered mercy earlier in the play, by interrupting him and turning his words to mishmash, he now interrupts them, by scourging their throats with a whip. first, they are reduced to bestial cries and exclamations: “qweke, qweke, qweke! alass, my 47 terry eagleton, how to read literature (new haven and london: yale university press, 2014), 145. 48 augustine holds the same opinion in on christian teaching, 36–37. 49 see wittgenstein, philosophical investigations, i.25. 50 see dante, inferno, xiii. 98 darragh greene thrott!... / …alasse, my wesant!” (809–811).51 next, they are silenced, and so, finally, they are thwarted. here, in the end, mercy takes up a violent argumentum ad baculum, in this case a flagellum dei, and turns it against vice in order to save mankind’s soul.52 his intervention restores the institution of language to its proper order and end, which is cooperation and community. hence, mankind is enabled to rejoin humanity and thereby relate properly to himself, his neighbor, and god. 6. conclusion mankind is a slick and uproarious entertainment, which is a sophisticated mix of sermon and game, verbal wit and bravura. at the same time, it is an existential drama that emphasizes man’s moral responsibility in a dangerous, fallen world. along with john of salisbury and other medieval thinkers, the mankind playwright recognizes the central role language plays in the proper exercise of human nature. the human being is both a rule-making and rulefollowing animal, and grammar —the codification of communally agreed rules for the use of words— constitutes the fundamental hinge into the human soul. by looking through the lens of wittgenstein’s late philosophy, in particular, the concepts of the language-game and form of life, i have shown how the medieval playwright describes the grammar of the human soul in the fall and redemption of mankind. the vices’ attack on grammar in the play, which is supervised by the devil of mangled words, titivillus, thickens and dislocates language. their verbal exuberance and excess both dazzles and encourages mankind to follow their example in action and speech. thereby he is led away from the pure and prestige register of mercy to the vulgar, monosyllabic ejaculations of the tavern, “stow, statt, stow!”, to the desolate silence of despair, which is the life of a dumb and destroyed beast. since it is a faculty proper to human beings, language proves both a target for and signifier of vice and so dehumanization. to break the rules of our language-games, that 51 compare chaucer’s onomatopoeic imitations of the calls of the goose, cuckoo and duck, respectively, in the parliament of fowls: “‘kek kek! kokkow! quek! quek!’” (l. 499), in the riverside chaucer, ed. larry d. benson, 3rd ed. (boston: houghton mifflin, 1987). 52 for a discussion of mercy’s violent attack on the vices and the significance of his bales or scourge, see chambers, “weapons of conversion”, 2–8. “mysse-masche, dryff-draff” 99 is, to fall into loose and idle language, is to renounce membership of human community —the bedrock form of life of gregarious human being. by his breaking of those rules, mankind falls into wordless silence and the brink of both physical and spiritual death. hence, the philological lesson of the play looms large, and it is one that wittgenstein would no doubt endorse as the epigraph to this essay makes clear: if you blithely embrace nonsense, and thereby fall into unclarity and confusion, then, as mercy warns from the very beginning, “thys idyll language ye xall repent” (147). author’s address the school of english, drama and film the college of arts and celtic studies newman building university college dublin belfield, dublin 4 received: 19 september 2016 e-mail: darragh.greene@ucd.ie revised version accepted: 26 january 2017 bator & sylwanowicz, selim 21 (2015–2016): 1–23. issn 1132-631x recipe, receipt and prescription in the history of english1 magdalena bator & marta sylwanowicz university of social sciences, warsaw nowadays, the term recipe is immediately associated with the kitchen, various spice cupboards and cookbooks. very few people realize that the word (with relation to cookery) appeared only in 1631 (oed: s.v. recipe). earlier, since 1400s, recipe was a common term used by physicians and apothecaries. hence, it was recorded mainly in medical writings as the heading of medical formulas. in the field of cookery, it was the term receipt which was used on everyday basis to denote the culinary instruction. additionally, in the late sixteenth century, the term prescription began to be used with reference to doctors’ written instructions and was slowly replacing the term recipe in the context of medical prescription. the main aim of this paper is an analysis of the rivalry between the three terms, recipe, receipt and prescription, and the examination of their distribution in the history of english. particular attention will be paid to various uses of the terms and their semantic development. also, a causal link between the semasiological and onomasiological changes will be considered. moreover, the fate of the few old english synonyms (e.g. læcecræft, gesetednes) will be traced. the conclusions concerning the present topic are drawn on the basis of a corpus study. the data have been selected from a number of electronic text corpora including dictionary of old english, innsbruck corpus of middle english prose, the middle english dictionary, helsinki corpus, middle english medical texts, early modern english medical texts, and lampeter corpus of early modern english tracts. keywords: recipe; prescription; receipt; semantics 1 project financed by the national science centre. decision number: dec2013/11/b/hs2/02504. 2 magdalena bator & marta sylwanowicz 1. introduction the recipe has already been widely discussed in various contexts. some of the studies which deserve to be mentioned dealt with: (i) the analysis of the recipe as a text type (for instance görlach 1992, 2004; carroll 1999; taavitsainen 2001; alonso-almeida 2014); (ii) the investigation of the particular features of the recipe (e.g. massam & roberge 1989; culy 1996; jones 1998; mäkinen 2004, 2006; quintana-toledo 2009), (iii) the issue of synonymy and word rivalry within recipes (e.g. sylwanowicz 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014; bator 2013a, 2013b), or (iv) translation techniques within medical texts (e.g. voigts & mcvaugh 1984, wallner 1987, jones 1989, pahta 1998) and the strategies used in the process of vernacularization of medical treatises (articles in taavitsainen & pahta 2004). the bulk of previous studies deals with the medical recipe, and is based on the electronic corpora prepared by the scholars established in finland (e.g. taavitsainen, pahta, mäkinen). 2 the present paper aims at a more general discussion of the term recipe and its synonyms in the history of english. the term recipe is immediately associated with the kitchen, various spice cupboards and cookbooks. very few people realize that the word (with relation to cookery) appeared only in 1631 (oed: s.v. recipe). earlier, since 1400s, recipe was a common term used by physicians and apothecaries, and it was recorded mainly in medical writings as the heading of medical formulas. in the field of cookery, it was the term receipt which was used on everyday basis to denote the culinary instruction. nowadays, the terms recipe and receipt have distinctive meanings and no one uses them interchangeably. however, they have a common origin. both were derived from post-classical latin. the earlier one, receipt, stems partly from anglo-norman (an) recipte, receite, receyte, resceite and partly from an receipt, recet, recept, reset, resset. in anglo-norman it was used with the following senses: “receptacle; receipt, receiving; collection (of money); money received; receipt (document); right of admission into a court; reception; act of accepting; jurisdiction; recipe (medical)” (and: s.v. receite 1 ). the word was present in english from the fourteenth century. the first record of receipt with the sense which is of interest for the present study comes from trevisa (1398) and is purely medical. the term referred to “a statement of the ingredients and 2 for a comparison of the typological features of the culinary and medical recipes, see bator & sylwanowicz (forthc.). recipe, receipt and prescription in the history of english 3 procedure necessary for making a medicinal preparation, a prescription; also a medicine made according to such a prescription” (oed: s.v. receipt n. iv.12.a). the first culinary reference of receipt comes from the end of the sixteenth century (1595), from widowes treasure, in which it was used as “a statement of the ingredients and procedure required for making a dish or an item of food or drink”, see (1), (oed: s.v. receipt n.iv.14). (1) a notable receite to make ipocras (widowes treasure, 1595) the noun recipe occurred in english later than receipt, in the sixteenth century (see (2)). it was derived from post-classical latin recipe “formula for the composition or use of a medicine”, also “a medicine prepared according to such a formula, a remedy” (oed). a century later, the sense “a statement of the ingredients and procedure required for making something, esp. a dish in cookery” was added, see (3). (2) this phisition whan i was wrytinge these thynges, and takyng my iourney from frankeford, wher he was wrytynge his recipe, was asked [...] what he thought of guaiacum. (t. paynell, de morbo gallico, 1533) (3) thou art rude, and dost not know the spanish composition [...] what is the recipe? name the ingredients. (b. jonson, new inne, 1631) however, it should be mentioned that the form recipe was known much earlier, since the verb recipe, borrowed from classical latin recipe, was present in english from 1300. it was used in medical writings, at the beginning of a medical prescription to denote ‘take’, see for instance (4). its traces can be found also in culinary writings, e.g. (5). 3 the verb became obsolete in the seventeenth century. (4) recipe alisaundir-rote, persil-rote [...] simul terantur et coquantur in dulcidrio, anglice wrt, et fiat inde cervisia et bibatur. (t. hunt, pop.med.13 th cent. eng., 1300) 3 for a discussion on the verb recipe in culinary texts, see bator (2014: 177–182). 4 magdalena bator & marta sylwanowicz (5) paste ryall. recipe your sugour clene claryfyede & put yt in a clene panne & seth yt softlye unto þe hyeghe aforseyde of your quynces, þen set yt from þe fyere uppon a hedles vesell & with a rownde staffe fast stere it tyll he be whyqte as snowe. þen put þerto fyne pouder gynger & put yt in bokes, & þen set hym in stewes & fiat. (a gathering of medieval english recipes, emus cs 17, paste ryall, 1495) additionally, the term prescription appeared in english with reference to medicine in the late sixteenth century and was slowly replacing the term recipe in the context of medical instruction. earlier it was used with reference to law (from the beginning of the fifteenth century). the term was derived from anglo-norman prescripcioun, prescriptioun and denoted (among others) “a doctor’s instruction, usually in writing, for the composition and use of a medicine; the action of prescribing a medicine; and a medicine prescribed” (oed: s.v. prescription, n.1 ii.5.a) (see (6)). table 1 presents the medical and culinary senses of the analyzed terms together with their origin and date of appearance in english. (6) quhairin i am constrynit of necessitie to vse the prescriptioun of sum medicinis in latine. (g. skeyne, breve descr.pest in tracts, 1568) table 1. the culinary and medical references of the analyzed lexemes. lexeme sense origin introduced (oed) receipt medical: a statement of the ingredients and procedure necessary for making a medicinal preparation, a formula; also a medicine made according to such a formula. an < lat. 1398 culinary: a statement of the ingredients and procedure required for making a dish or an item of food or drink. 1595 recipe medical: formula for the composition or use of a medicine. lat. 1533 recipe, receipt and prescription in the history of english 5 culinary: a statement of the ingredients and procedure required for making something, esp. a dish in cookery. 1631 prescription medical: a doctor’s instruction, usually in writing, for the composition and use of a medicine; the action of prescribing a medicine; and a medicine prescribed. an 1568 the main aim of the present paper is to present the co-existence or rivalry between the three terms – recipe, receipt, prescription – and to examine their distribution in the history of english. special attention will be paid to the medical and culinary uses of the terms and their semantic development. moreover, we shall begin with the presentation of the fate of the few old english synonyms (e.g. læcecræft, gesetednes) which disappeared after the introduction of the romance terms. the material used for the research comes from various corpora including dictionary of old english (doe), helsinki corpus (hc), innsbruck corpus of middle english prose (ic), middle english dictionary (med), middle english medical texts (memt), early modern english medical texts (ememt), lampeter corpus of early modern english tracts (lc), and a corpus of medieval culinary recipes (bator 2014). 2. the medical context in the old english period all the vocabulary items referring to ‘medicine’ were formed from the base leech, which referred to “a physician, one who practises the healing art” (oed: s.v. leech n.1). leech was extremely productive in forming compounds and derivatives expressing various medical senses, such as leechbook, leechcraft, leechdom, leeching, etc., but also senses less directly connected with medicine, as for instance leechwort which referred to a plant or herb (see for instance (7)–(8)). 4 the total number of occurrences of the leechterms found in the analyzed corpora has been shown in table 2. 4 for a detailed discussion of the term leech and its middle english synonyms, see sylwanowicz (2003). 6 magdalena bator & marta sylwanowicz (7) lychanis stephanice = lecevyrt. (doe, latin-old english glossaries: von lindheim 1941) (8) quinqueneruia = leciuyrt (doe, latin-old english glossaries: pheifer 1974) table 2. the number of occurrences of the leech-terms in the analyzed corpora. lexeme sense old english middle english early modern english leechbook ‘a collection of (med.) recipes’ 14 leechcraft ‘(prescribed) medicine’ 29 1 ‘medical science’ 30 18 leechdom ‘(prescribed) medicine’ 281 ‘(med.) recipe / medical formula’ 1 leechery ‘medical science’ 3 leeching ‘(med.) recipe / medical formula’ 5 ‘medical care / healing’ 8 10 total 368 29 3 leechbook “a collection of (med.) recipes” seems to have been a clearly defined term, which is evidenced by examples (9) and (10). the term leechbook is usually found in titles and in fragments where the author directs the reader to a collection of recipes and/or medicines, or refers to a particular recipe collection (see (10)). recipe, receipt and prescription in the history of english 7 (9) læcedomas gif omihtre blod yfele wætan on þam milte syn þindende, þonne sceal him mon blod lætan on þas wisan þe þeos læceboc segþ be þæs blodes hiwe. (doe, cockayne, bald’s leechbook) (10) læcedomas wiþ wifa gecyndum forsetenum eallum wifa tydernessum, gif wif bearn ne mæge geberan oþþe gif bearn weorþe deadon wifes innoþe oððe gif hio cennan ne mæge do on hire gyrdels þas gebedo swa on þisum læcebocum segþ; (doe, cockayne, bald’s leechbook) the remaining three lexemes (leechcraft, leechdom and leeching) could have referred to at least two senses, which were very often close to one another. for instance, a number of occurrences of leechdom do not clearly indicate the exact meaning of the word (the context may suggest two senses, i.e. ‘a prescribed medicine’ or ‘a medical formula/instruction’), see (11)–(13). (11) læcedomas gif men yrne blod of nebbe, eft blodsetena ge onto bindanne ge on eare to donne ge horse ge men, (doe, cockayne, bald’s leechbook) (12) læcedom wiþ gesnote wiþ geposum. (doe, cockayne, bald’s leechbook) (13) læcedomas wiþ sarum weolorum. (doe, cockayne, bald’s leechbook) in most cases when the old english text was accompanied by its latin translation, leechdom was translated as lat. remedia ‘cure, remedy’, e.g. (14). however, in a number of examples it was translated as medicina ‘medical art, treatment’, see (15), which serves as evidence for the two senses of the noun. (14) benedic domine creaturam istam ut sit remedium salutare generi humano presta per inuocationem nominis tui quicumque ex ea sumpserit corporis sanitatem et anime tutelam percipiat per [...] bloesta driht’ giscæft ðas þætte sie lecedom halvoende cynnes mennisc’ gionn ðerh ongiceigingnome’ ðines se ðe suahvoelc of ðær onfoe lichomes hælo savles scildnisse onfoe. (doe, liturgical texts, durham ritual: thompson and lindel[ouml]f_1927) 8 magdalena bator & marta sylwanowicz (15) medicina per te quem diligere super omnia appetit quo est professa custodiat ut et ostem anticum deuincat et uitiorum squalores expurget quatenus centesimi fructus dono uirginitas decorari uirtutumque lampadibus exornari et electarum tuarum uirginum consortium te donante mereatur uniri per [...] lecedome ðerh ðec þæt gilvfia of’ alle giviga ðona is ondetenda gihalda þætte fiond se halda of’cyme scylda’ fvlnisso giclænsiga oð þæt hvnteantiges wæstmes’ gefe hehstaldhad þætte giwlitgega ðec mægna æc ðæccillvm þætte ðv sie gihrinad gicorenra ðinra hehstaldra gihlytto ðec gefende giearniga þætte gimoete. (doe, liturgical texts, durham ritual: thompson and lindel[ouml]f_1927) although, following the data, we see that it was the term leechdom which dominated the semantic field in the old english period, the middle english corpora do not show any records of the term, though, according to med, leechdom was still present in the early middle english period with a range of senses, see (16)–(19). (16) ‘a medicine, remedy’ raphaæl bitacneþþ uss [...] drihhtiness hallqhe læchedom & sawless eqhesallfe [...] he wollde himm senndenn wiþþ heofennlike læchedom to læchenn tobess eqhne. (med, orm_1200) (17) ‘a medical treatment’ þisne læcedon do þan manne, þa hym beoð on hyra brosten nearuwe [...] do hyne into þan huse, þe beo nærþer [read: næþer] ne to hæt ne to ceald, [etc.]. (med, pdidax_1150) (18) ‘medicinal use’ þeos wyrt [...] dweorqe-dwosle [...] hæfed mid hire læcedomes, þeah hi feala man ne cunna. (med, hrl.hapul._1150) (19) ‘the art or science of medicine’ þet mon gistas underuo [...] oðer unhalne lechnað qif he lechedom con. (med, lamb.hom._1225) a similar confusion occurs in the case of a much less frequent leechcraft. this lexeme is a combination of leech ‘healer, leech’ and craft ‘skill, expertise’, which suggests the senses ‘ability to heal/to apply medicinal leeches’ or ‘art of recipe, receipt and prescription in the history of english 9 healing’. however, the thesaurus of old english (toe) and the oed ascribe it two senses: (i) ‘art of healing/medical science’ and (ii) ‘remedy/medicine, medical formula/instruction’. the former is easy to deduce as the term usually occurs in a context in which leechcraft is identified as a learned, acquired, trained or practiced skill, see (20)–(23). (20) he him tæhte þone mæran læcecræft þe hine swa mihtelice gehealde. (doe, saint sebastian) (21) and het hine þæt he him getæhte ælcne læcecræft. (doe, saint pantaleon) (22) hine mon lærde ælcne læcecræft. (doe, saint pantaleon) (23) witodlice þær wæs sum munuc, þam wæs namaiustus, se wæs gelæred on læcecræfte, (doe, gregory the great, dialogues) as we can see the term is accompanied by such verbs as: tæhte, getæhte ‘taught’, (ge)lærde ‘instructed, taught’, which identify leechcraft as a learned skill. the latter sense (‘remedy/medicine, medical formula/instruction’) shows that even the editors of the dictionaries found it difficult to deduce the real sense of the term, especially the difference between medicine/remedy ‘a drug/treatment’ and prescription ‘a written formula’. when confronted with particular quotations this difficulty becomes apparent, see (24)–(25). (24) on þissum ærestan læcecræftum gewritene sint læcedomas wið eallum heafdes untrymnessum. (doe, cockayne, bald’s leechbook) (25) genim geoluwne stan salt stan pipor weh onwæge drif þurh clað do ealra gelice micel do eal togædere drif eft þurh linene clað. þis is afandan læcecræft. (doe, cockayne, recipes) there are a couple of records of the term which could as well refer to the sense ‘medical formula’, see (26)–(27). however, one may say that these two examples could as well be translated as ‘remedy/medicine’. (26) þanne ys se læcecræft þarto: nim sumne dæl of heortes hyde and anne niwne croccan and do wæter on and seoþ swa swyþe, þæt hit þriwa wylle, swa swyðe swa wæterflæsc. (doe, cockayne, medical recipes) 10 magdalena bator & marta sylwanowicz (27) þis ys þe læcecræft: sule hym supan gebræddan hrere ægeran and hunig to and do hym bryð of meolce gemaced, and syle hym ceruillan etan and fæt flæsc, þæt beo wel gesoden, etan, and he byd sona hal. (doe, cockayne, medical recipes) the third term, leeching, is underrepresented and probably did not have any significant influence on the development of the analyzed concept. it occurred only thirteen times in the old english corpora, however, apart from its medical sense (see (28)), it could also refer to religion, suggesting the general sense ‘treatment’, see for instance (29). (28) gif þonne sio yfele wæte of þære wambe oferyrneþ ealne þone lichoman þæs mon sceal mid maran lacnunge tilian, hwilum him mon sceal of ædran blod lætan gif þæs blodes to fela þince & þære yflan wætan, & eac wyrtdrenc sellan, ac ærest mon sceal blod lætan æfter þon wyrtdrenc sellan. (hc, laecebok) (29) gif he sweðunga gegearwode and godcundra myngunga sealfunga, haligra gewrita lacnunga, and æt nyhstan amansumunge bærnet and swingella wita þurhteah (hc, the benedictine rule) additionally, following the historical thesaurus of english (hte), the term gesetednes was used throughout the old english period with the sense ‘recipe’. however, such a sense of the term has not been found in any other dictionary. the analyzed corpora contain the term exclusively with legal and religious reference, i.e. “a constitution, law, ceremony” (cf. bosworth & toller). the only record of gesetednes with its possible medical sense is found in the following fragment (30). however, its strict medical sense ‘medical formula/instruction/recipe’ seems dubious and it is possible that the compiler used the term to emphasize the fact that one should follow some rule/formula. (30) eac ure ealdras cwædon sædun þæt ðeos gesetednys healicost fremade. (doe, cockayne, bald’s leechbook) although the anglo-saxons possessed sufficient resources of their own to represent various medical ideas, soon after the norman conquest, english recipe, receipt and prescription in the history of english 11 assimilated thousands of words borrowed from norman french, which resulted in both the reduction and the loss of old english heritage. 5 the old english terms leechdom and leechcraft were being steadily replaced by at least five romance items (medicine, remedy, pharmacy, antidote, receipt) which stood for ‘some curative substance’ or ‘medical treatment’, as in (31)– (35). (31) skabbe is curable wiþ metisines þat [...] clensiþ wiþinne & wiþoute. (med, a1398 *trev. barth.(add 27944) 99a/a) (32) comyn [...] acordiþ to many medicynes and remedyes and namely of þe stomak. (med, a1398 *trev. barth.(add 27944) 220a/b) (33) formacie [vr. ffarmasye], þat is laxatiuis purgynge þe colere & brent humouris. (med, a1400 lanfranc (ashm 1396) 83/19) (34) þe first doctrine is of vniuersale antidotez or helpyngez. (med, ?a1425 *chauliac(1) (ny 12) 6b/b) (35) this receyte [vrr. ressaite, resceyte, receiht] ys boght of non apothecary. (med, c1450(a1449) lydg. diet.(sln 3534) 78) out of the five romance synonyms of leechdom and leechcraft, receipt deserves our attention as this noun was also used with the sense ‘medical written formula’. the earliest occurrences of the term date back to the second half of the fourteenth century, when it was used with the senses ‘formula, statement of ingredients’ and ‘amount of received money’, e.g. (36)–(37). (36) what schal this receyt coste? telleth now. (oed, c1386 chaucer can. yeom. prol. & t. 800) (37) þenk also [...] þat longe hast lyued and muche reseiued..hou þou hast spendet þat reseit. (oed, c1390 mirror st.edm.(1) (vrn) 145) in the fifteenth-century records we find the noun in a medical context, usually as ‘medicine/remedy’ (see (38)–(39)) or ‘a medical formula’ (see (40)–(41)). 5 see sylwanowicz (2007, 2009) for her discussion of old and middle english synonyms of sickness nouns and names of medicines. 12 magdalena bator & marta sylwanowicz the compilers/translators of these texts, unlike the old english ones, are quite consistent in the use of the lexeme and there is no confusion in identifying a particular sense (‘medicine’ or ‘written formula’). (38) what may helpen þe stomak or þe hed [...] any receyt or confeccioun, herbe or stoon, or al þat leches knowe, whan þat a cors is leied in erþe lowe. (med, c1425(a1420) lydg. tb (aug a.4) 1.3630) (39) do of that pouder in mylke and hit sleys fleys that light ther on; and that resyte castith oute wekyd humers þrowe vomyte and olde evillis. (med, ?a1425(1373) *lelamour macer (sln 5) 83b) (40) þe firste is ane oynement of maister anselm of jene, of þe whiche he solde þe resseit to kynge philip of ffraunce for a grete soumme of golde. (med, ?a1425 *ms htrn.95 (htrn 95) 170a/a) (41) þe receites schal be founden in þe antitodarye. (med, ?c1425 chauliac(2) (paris angl.25) 307/9) the use of receipt, instead of the anglo-saxon heritage (leechdom, leechcraft), might be explained by the fact that middle english medical texts (especially the fifteenth-century works) were mostly translations of french and latin originals. thus, the introduction of the term, which might have already been familiar to medical practitioners, seemed an obvious choice. also, the foreign term might have been perceived as more learned and prestigious, whereas leech-terms were regarded as the remains of popular/folk medicine. although receipt is found in reduplications, this does not have to indicate that the term was unknown. rather, this strategy might have been used to state precisely the actual sense of the term in a given context, see for instance (42)– (43). (42) in alle goode resceytes and medicyns amomum is ofte y-do. (med, a1398 *trev. barth.(add 27944) 214b/a) (43) yf thou take any medycyne or receyte, that it be made of a certeyn weight and mesure as the sekenesse may require. (med, c1475 abbrev.trip.ssecr.(uc 85) 330/1) recipe, receipt and prescription in the history of english 13 in middle english medical texts we also find the first occurrences of the lexeme recipe. however, recipe is used exclusively as a head word in physicians’ prescriptions and it stands for latin imperative second person verb form, meaning ‘to take’, as in (44)–(45). (44) also be þer made suche a vntment þat is riqt mitigatiue. recipe: tame comon malueq m. i or m. ij, & brisse þam in a morter, and put þam in a quart of oyle of olyueq and lat þam putrifie þerin 7 dayes or 9. (memt, arderne, fistula) (45) and to þe same entensioun auicen enditeþ þis medecyne expert, & brune graunteþ it: recipe draganti rubei z/+q j, calcis viue, alum, corticis granatorum ana .+q. .6., thuris, gallarum ana +q 4, cere, olei ana þat sufficeþ, be þer made vnguentum. (memt, chauliac, ulcers) the verb was so frequent that it was often replaced by the symbol rx (see example (46)), a pharmacy symbol found nowadays in most medical prescriptions. today, this symbol is the only indicator of the original sense of recipe. (46) brother leches haue a queynt maner writyng and hard for to rede in makyng of hir medicynes. brother when ye seeth in bookes of phisique thes writynges that is comynly the begynnyng of hir medicines ye shul vnderstond recipe that is to say take. (memt, thesaurus pauperum) in early modern english medical texts the following terms referring to ‘written formula’ are used: receipt, recipe and prescription. as shown in table 3, receipt is the most frequent term used with reference to ‘prescription’, which is not surprising as the term was used with this sense already in the medieval medical context. we can also observe the emergence of two nouns: recipe (formerly used only as a verb) and prescription, which became serious “rivals” for receipt, which later stopped being used in the medical context. as stated earlier, receipt entered english lexicon early and became a commonly used term in the medical context. although first recognized as a general term for ‘some formula or statement of ingredients’, it soon narrowed its sense to ‘prescribed medicine’ and ‘medical formula’, which is exemplified by examples (47)–(49). 14 magdalena bator & marta sylwanowicz (47) [}a receipt to restore strength, in them that arr brought low with long sicknesse. chapter. xxxix.}] take of the brawne of a fesant or partridge, and of a capon. (ememt, 1573, partridge, treasurie of commodious conceits) (48) that most of men do very readily take upon trust any remedies or receipts, that are confidently recommended to them, can scarce be contradicted; and their fond passion in the inconsiderate belief of ‘em is so great, that without any loss of time, they are to be registred in their book of receipts. (ememt,1700, harvey, vanities of philosophy and physick) (49) it is true, sir robert talbor did not always observe the directions prescribed in his receipt, touching the time of the infusion of quinquina; (ememt, 1682, talbor, english remedy) table 3. the number of occurrences of the analyzed terms of romance origin. lexeme sense middle english early modern english receipt ‘(prescribed) medicine’ 5 49 ‘medical instruction’ 3 86 recipe ‘(prescribed) medicine’ 1 ‘medical instruction’ 8 11 prescript(ion) ‘(prescribed) medicine’ 10 ‘medical instruction’ 49 total 16 206 a thorough analysis of the occurrences of receipt in medical texts reveals that it is not always clear whether the term refers to ‘prescribed medicine’ or ‘medical formula/instruction’. for instance, in example (47), does receipt stand for ‘a medicament/remedy’ or ‘a medical formula/instruction’? recipe, receipt and prescription in the history of english 15 another problem encountered while analyzing the data concerns the use of receipt as a derivative of another latin loanword meaning ‘act of receiving’, see (50)–(51). (50) of decumbiture, or for the time of any strong fit (if any be) or upon the receipt of the urin, or time of the first visitation of the patient, (ememt, 1671, blagrave, astrological practice of physick) (51) and truely if nothing else should make one out of fancie with the vse of tabacco, it might be sufficient for an equall iudge to thinck with himself how vnnaturall a thing it is to peruert the naturall vse & offices of the parts of the bodie, for by the force of tabacco the mouth, throte, and stomacke, (appointed by nature for the receipt of food & nourishment for the whole body) are made emunctuary clensing places and sincks, (supplying heerein the office of the most abiect and basest part) for the filth and superfluous excrements of the whole body. (ememt, 1602, philaretes, work for chimny-sweepers) thus, it may be concluded here that receipt and its various senses (including also the non-medical sense ‘received amount of money, etc.’) made it prone to be soon replaced by other equivalent terms. recipe, being seemingly the best candidate to take the place of receipt as it has been present in medical remedy-books since the earliest middle ages, as a noun did not gain sufficient attention of medical writers. the noun is found mostly in the titles of some compilations or in general statements, which refer to some treatises being collections of recipes, see for instance (52). we have also found one example in which it is used as an explicatory term for ‘medical formula/instruction’, see (53). (52) pharmacopoeia bateana: or bate’s dispensatory. translated from the last edition of the latin copy, published by mr. james shipton. containing his choice and select recipe’s, their names, compositions, preparations, vertues, uses, and doses, as they are applicable to the whole practice of physick and chirurgery. (ememt, 1700, salmon, pharmacopoeia bateana) (53) some recipeis or prescriptions in some remedies may be used instead of one another, as a conserve for the syrrop of the same simple whether of fruit, flower or root […] (ememt, 1649, rondelet, countreymans apothecary) 16 magdalena bator & marta sylwanowicz the reason for such a limited use of recipe as a noun in the medical context might be explained by a high frequency of its verbal form, which became a fixed part of a traditional formula giving ingredients for a medical preparation, see (54)–(55). (54) the second intention is the vse of breaking, attenuating, mundifying & opening medicaments; as are these remedies now following. viz. recipe. rad, ireos. cort. sambucj. (ememt, 1602, clowes, cure of struma) (55) also, many learned men, of a certaine knowledge and sound vnderstanding, haue in their bookes greatly commended a playster made thus: recipe. olde dryed goates dung, hony and uineger, being decocted at an easie fire, to the consistence of a playster. (ememt, 1602, clowes, cure of struma) in addition, in the texts studied we found 682 occurrences of the symbol rx, which pigeonholed recipe as a verb used as a head word of prescriptions, see (56)–(58). (56) +r of the roots of the hearb dogstooth, of sperage, of parsly ana, +o i. of sage leaues, of betony leaues. (ememt, 1632, bruele, praxis medicinae) (57) she was purged with the following, +r sena +o j. agarick +q iij. rubarb +q ii. cinnamon +o i +s. (ememt, 1679, hall, select observations) (58) you may make an excellent injection for a virulent gonorrhea with this water, thus; +r of this lime water +o x. mercurius dulcis levigated +o j. mix, and shake them so long together, till the mercurius dulcis precipitates down to the bottom of a black colour. (ememt, 1700, salmon, pharmacopoeia bateana) this leaves us with the third noun, prescription, which entered the medical realm in the late sixteenth century, as in (59)–(61). (59) eating [...] raw app[es and things contrary to the prescription of physicke. (oed, 1579 fenton guicciard. x. (1599) 413) (60) phisitians, by whose directions and prescriptions such medecines are to be ministred, […] (ememt, 1603, lodge, treatise of the plague) recipe, receipt and prescription in the history of english 17 (61) because that prescriptions never mention the regulation of the decoction, nor the degrees of fire, nor the length of time requisite for the decoction, which is all left to the prudence of the apothecary. (ememt, 1678, charas, royal pharmacopoea) the noun prescription had only two senses: (i) ‘a written formula’, and the later sense (ii) ‘a medical formula/instruction’. in addition, it coexisted with its verbal form prescribe ‘to write down directions’ (263 occurrences in ememt), which must have strengthened the position of the noun as the ‘right’ term for ‘a medical formula’. (62) for suppose the remedie be hotte or cold, a purger of flegme, melancholy, or choler: it is the worke of inuention, the cause and kind of the disease being considered, to dispose the remedy in a iust quantity: to prescribe the same in a conuenient form, (ememt, 1609, pomarius, enchiridion medicum) (63) for a fume was prescribed the following: +r frankinsence, mastich, each +q i +s. brimstone +q ii +s. juniper +q ii. storax +q i. (ememt, 1679, hall, select observations) (64) or it may be prescribed thus: +r of this water +o iij. syrup of violets +o i+s. (ememt, 1700, salmon, pharmacopoeia bateana) (65) these are the medicins i prescrib’d him (ememt, 1697, cockburn, continuation of the account of distempers) (66) he being called vnto her prescribed such remedies as are vsuall in this case, and within few dayes recouered her, to the great admiration of the beholders. (ememt, 1603, suffocation of the mother) as seen in the examples above, the verb prescribe co-occurs with the symbol rx (meaning ‘recipe’), which partly confirms the previously stated assumption that recipe was restricted to a very formulaic context. 18 magdalena bator & marta sylwanowicz 3. the culinary context when it comes to the culinary terms in the old english period, not only did the anglo-saxons leave no cookbooks, which would help us understand the anglo-saxon culinary tradition, but also it seems that none of the terms for ‘recipe’ carried the culinary sense. the earliest culinary reference was found in a fifteenth-century text, in which the term receipt was applied to a set of instructions how to prepare a certain dish (see (67)). even though the lexeme was used as a heading, it proves an earlier use of receipt with the culinary sense than indicated in the dictionaries (according to which receipt with the sense “a statement of the ingredients and procedure required for making a dish or an item of food or drink” was first introduced at the end of the sixteenth century (oed). (67) a receipt +ge must take wurte, and barly, and comyn, and hony, and a lytyll curtesy of salte, and sethe them in a potte togedyr tyl the barly be brostyn. and sythen, caste it abowte in +te hows wheras dowys ben vsyng etc. (hc, reynes, the commonplace book) the electronic corpora analyzed for the present study have shown the first appearance of receipt, other than as a heading, only in 1701, see example (68). but its reference is not clearly culinary, it could as well be medical. it should be mentioned, however, that a closer look at some culinary collections (not included in any of the electronic corpora used for the present study) reveals even earlier records of receipt with a purely culinary sense, i.e. ‘the instructions to prepare a particular dish’. the compleat cook, for instance, which is a collection of culinary recipes published in the middle of the seventeenth century, contains seven records of the noun: six of them included in the headings and one within the body of a recipe, see example (69). (68) the cook, confectioner or perfumer have as much pretence to learning, or the knowledge of the uses of what they prepare. have not our servants the skill to make up all our domestick collections of receits, which are many of them the same with theirs? (lc, the present state of physick & surgery in london_1701) (69) the lord conway his lordships receipt for the making of amber puddings. recipe, receipt and prescription in the history of english 19 first take the guts of a young hog, and wash them very clean, and then take two pound of the best hogs fat, and a pound and a halfe of the best jurden almonds, the which being blancht, take one half of them, & beat them very small, and the other halfe reserve whole unbeaten, then take a pound and a halfe of fine sugar and four white loaves, and grate the loaves over the former composition, and mingle them well together in a bason having so done, put to it halfe an ounce of ambergreece, the which must be scrapt very small over the said composition, take halfe a quarter of an ounce of levant musk and bruise it in a marble morter, with a quarter of a pint of orange flower water, then mingle these all very well together, and having so done, fill the said guts therwith, this receipt was given his lordship by an italian for a great rariety, and has been found so to be by those ladies of honour to whom his lordship has imparted the said reception. (the compleat cook, 1658) the term recipe, whose culinary reference is said to have been introduced in the seventeenth century (cf. oed), was found once at the end of the fifteenth century. similarly to receipt, this first nominal attestation of recipe was used in a heading to a culinary formula, see example (70). (70) for to make floure of rys, recipe. tak rys and pyke hem clene and wasshe hem, and þenne druye hem a lyte ageyn þe sonne, and affter bete hem in a morter small and þen sarse hem, and þenne druye hem wel agayn þe sonne and put hit in a vescell and sture hit offte for mustyng. (a gathering of medieval english recipes, tcc_115_1490) additionally, recipe was found in the fifteenth-century culinary collections as a verb, meaning ‘to take’, ninety times, see for instance (71). (71) recipe your sugour clene claryfyede & put yt in a clene panne & seth yt [...] (a gathering of medieval english recipes, emus_cs_17_1495) following the oed, the verb was used at the beginning of medical instructions from 1300. its presence in the culinary material might serve as evidence that the boundary between medical and culinary formulas was 20 magdalena bator & marta sylwanowicz blurred. 6 on the other hand, taking into account that ninety percent of its occurrences were found in the same collection (ms harley 5401), we may assume that it was used due to the writer’s misinterpretation of the recipes. 4. conclusions the study has shown that the anglo-saxon vocabulary has been completely replaced in the middle english period. in fact the small number of middle english occurrences of the analyzed terms (see table 2) shows that it was the period of transition from the germanic word-stock to vocabulary derived from anglo-norman. the former are clearly on their way to disappear, whilst the latter are only making their way into the lexicon. another striking conclusion is that the culinary reference of the analyzed items has been highly underrepresented, which might be accounted for by the fact that the culinary issues were of a lower status than the medical ones. in case of the medical reference, the presented examples reveal that the early anglo-saxons did not have a clearly defined term for what we understand today as ‘a medical prescription/recipe’. surely, they must have realized that there were some formulas to be followed whenever a given substance was prepared. but, instead of coining a term for that they made use of the already existing lexemes, which partly reflected the sense ‘written formula’. this also throws a light on their understanding of medicine/remedy, which was not only ‘a drug/a healing substance’ but rather ‘a substance made according to some formula’, hence the lack of a separate lexeme. in the early modern english period we can observe how the multimeaningful lexemes became arranged within the semantic field. thus, the term recipe gained dominance with the culinary reference, prescription became the medical term, and receipt was rejected from either of these, denoting ‘a statement confirming the reception of something’. 6 very often medical and culinary recipes were found in the same manuscripts, which may suggest that they might have been perceived by the contemporary reader/writer as one and the same text type. on the other hand, a detailed comparative study of the two reveals a number of differences (cf. bator & sylwanowicz forthc.). recipe, receipt and prescription in the history of english 21 references alonso almeida, f. 2014: a middle english medical remedy book (edited from glasgow university library ms hunter 185). heidelberg, universitätsverlag winter. and: anglo-norman dictionary online. online: http://www.anglo-norman.net. bator, m. 2013a: verbs of cooking in middle english: fry, roast and bake. in: j. fisiak & m. bator eds. historical english word-formation and semantics. frankfurt, peter lang, 123–136. bator, m. 2013b: boil vs. seethe in middle english, medieval english mirror 9: 27–40. bator, m. 2014: culinary verbs in middle english. frankfurt, peter lang. bator, m. & m. sylwanowicz. (forthc.): the typology of medieval recipes – culinary vs. medical. in: j. fisiak et al. eds. essays and studies in middle english. frankfurt, peter lang. bosworth, j. & t.n. toller. eds. an anglo-saxon dictionary. online: http://bosworth.ff.cuni.cz. carroll, r. 1999: the middle english recipe as a text-type, neuphilologische mitteilungen 100: 27–42. culy, ch. 1996: null objects in english recipes, language variation and change 8.1: 91–124. doe: dictionary of old english (on cd-rom). university of toronto. ememt: taavitsainen, i. & p. pahta eds. 2010: early modern english medical texts. amsterdam/philadelphia, john benjamins. görlach, m. 1992: text-types and language history: the cookery recipe. in: m. rissanen et al. eds. history of englishes: new methods and interpretations in historical linguistics. berlin, mouton de gruyter, 736–761. görlach, m. 2004: text types and the history of english. berlin/new york, mouton de gruyter. hc: rissanen, m. et al. eds. 1991: the helsinki corpus of english texts: diachronic and dialectal. helsinki, university of helsinki. hte: kay, ch. et al. eds. 2009: historical thesaurus of english. oxford, oxford university press. ic: markus, m. ed. 2008: the innsbruck corpus of middle english prose. (full version 2.3). university of innsbruck. jones, c. 1998: formula and formulation: ‘efficacy phrases’ in medieval english medical manuscripts, neuphilologische mitteilungen 99: 199–209. jones, p.m. 1989: four middle english translations of john arderne. in: a.j. minnis ed., latin and vernacular: studies in late-medieval texts and manuscripts, cambridge, d.s. brewer, 61–89. lc: schmied, j., c. claridge & r. siemund eds. 1999: the lampeter corpus of early modern english tracts. online: http://www.ota.ox.ac.uk/headers/2400.xml. 22 magdalena bator & marta sylwanowicz massam, d. & y. roberge. 1989: recipe context null objects in english, linguistic inquiry 20.1: 134–139. mäkinen, m. 2004: herbal recipes and recipes in herbals – intertextuality in early english medical writing. in: i. taavitsainen & p. pahta eds., medical and scientific writing in late medieval english. cambridge, cambridge university press, 144– 173. mäkinen, m. 2006: between herbals et alia: intertextuality in medieval english herbals. doctoral dissertation. university of helsinki, faculty of arts, department of english and the research unit for variation, contacts and change in english. med: the middle english dictionary. online: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med. memt: taavitsainen, i., p. pahta & m. mäkinen eds. 2005: middle english medical texts. (cd-rom with memt presenter software by raymond hickey). amsterdam/philadelphia, john benjamins. oed: oxford english dictionary. online: www.oed.com. pahta, p. 1998: medieval embryology in the vernacular: the case of de spermate. helsinki, societe neophilologique. quintana-toledo, e. 2009: middle english medical recipes: a metadiscursive approach, studia anglica posnaniensia 45.2: 21–38. sylwanowicz, m. 2003: leech, doctor, physician: on the loss of prototypical meanings, anglica 13: 151–164. sylwanowicz, m. 2006: medieval madness: the anglo-saxon terminology of mental diseases, anglica 15: 117–129. sylwanowicz, m. 2007: old and middle english sickness-nouns in historical perspective: a lexico-semantic analysis. [warsaw studies in english historical linguistics 1.] warsaw, warsaw university, institute of english studies. sylwanowicz, m. 2009: it is to be heled with medicines...: names of medicines in late middle english medical texts, kwartalnik neofilologiczny lvi.3: 349–362. sylwanowicz, m. 2011: and this is wonderful instrument...: names of surgical instruments in late middle english medical texts. in: j. fisiak & m. bator eds. historical english word formation and semantics. frankfurt, peter lang, 231–240. sylwanowicz, m. 2014: ‘here begynnyth and tellyth howe a man schal make hys salves, oynementes and vnguentys’. towards standard medical terminology in middle english, kwartalnik neofilologiczny lxi.3: 559–567. taavitsainen, i. 2001: middle english recipes: genre characteristics, text type features and underlying traditions of writing, journal of historical pragmatics 2: 85–113. taavitsainen, i. & p. pahta eds. 2004: medical and scientific writing in late medieval english. cambridge, cambridge university press. the compleat cook. 1658. www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10520/pg10520.html. toe: thesaurus of old english. online: http://oldenglishthesaurus.arts.gla.ac.uk. voigts, l. & m.r. mcvaugh. 1984: a latin technical phlebotomy and its middle english translation, transactions of american philosophical society 74.2: 1–69. recipe, receipt and prescription in the history of english 23 wallner, b. 1987: on the .i. periphrasis in the n.y. chauliac, neuphilologische mitteilungen 88: 286–294. author’s address school of english university of social sciences 00-842 warsaw, poland received: 15 september 2015 e-mail: mbator@spoleczna.pl revised version accepted: 20 february 2016 microsoft word 1. proofs_fidalgo.docx selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. 28 (2023): 1–17. issn: 1132-631x doi: 10.17811/selim.28.2023.1-17 © ediuno. ediciones de la universidad de oviedo. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. semantic inheritance in the lexical paradigms of old english strong verbs luisa fidalgo allo university of la rioja (received 19 january 2022; revised 20 july 2022) this work delves into the semantics of old english lexical paradigms based on strong verbs. its aim is to describe the patterns of semantic inheritance that exist in these paradigms, which present morphologically related words sharing the form and meaning of the base of derivation. the analysis undertaken enables semantic derivation in these old english lexical paradigms to be categorized into the lexical entailment relations of troponymy, -troponymy, backward presupposition and cause, and the semantic relations of synonymy and opposition. the research data has been retrieved from the lexical database nerthus (martín arista et al. 2016). on the theoretical side, this examination follows the english lexical database wordnet (princeton 2010). this research unfolds a systematic methodology that is thoroughly described and illustrated by means of the paradigm (ge)berstan. it has not only been possible to circumscribe semantic derivation into the six semantic relations mentioned, but also to determine how frequently they occur in the paradigms under analysis, which indicates that synonymy and troponymy are the most recurrent semantic relations. keywords: old english; verbs; lexical paradigm; lexical entailment; semantic inheritance 1. introduction this article presents a hitherto unseen examination of old english lexical paradigms, which goes a step further with respect to the observation of lexical semantic relatedness. in this sense, it allows us to identify not only how new meanings of derived verbs diverge from the original meaning of a primitive verb, but also what the nature of the divergence is regarding meaning specification with respect to more basic verbs. the corpus for analysis consists of all the 328 lexical paradigms of old english strong verbs and, therefore, it focuses on the lexical category of the verb. the analysis data, which has been thoroughly revised and updated, has been obtained from the lexical database of old english nerthus (martin arista et. al 2016). a total of 1,509 verbs have been examined, to wit, 328 lexical primes and 1,181 derived verbs. with respect to lexical entailment, this article follows wordnet (princeton university 2010), a lexical database of the english language which is based on a defined number of conceptual-semantic and lexical relations, and links the grammatical categories of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs into semantic networks. in this sense, the conducted analysis reveals that together with the four lexical entailment relations of troponymy, -troponymy, backward presupposition and cause, the semantic relations of synonymy and opposition are also central and necessary to determine the processes of meaning derivation of these old english lexical paradigms. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2694-7433 luisa fidalgo allo 2 the concept of lexical paradigm is based on martín arista (2012, 2013), who describes the derivational paradigm as consisting of a primitive of derivation and its derivatives, that is, “all the lexical items that can be related to the primitive on the basis of both form and meaning” (martín arista 2019, 170). the steps of analysis and the methodology are described in detail and illustrated by means of the lexical paradigm (ge)berstan. the research produces a semantic network for each of the 328 lexical paradigms of old english strong verbs where the semantic relations held in the lexical paradigms have been clearly identified and scrutinized. accordingly, this research intends to be a contribution to the research avenue in the semantics and syntax of old english pursued, to cite some recent works, by garcía garcía (2019), lacalle palacios (2021a, 2021b), martín arista (2019, 2020, 2022) and ojanguren lópez (2020, 2021). the article is organized as follows. after a review of previous literature on the architecture of wordnet (section 2), the research methodology is described and completely illustrated in section 3. the results of the analysis are presented in section 4. then, section 5 discusses the problems found in the development of the analysis as well as the solutions adopted. the main conclusions derived from this examination are presented in section 6. 2. semantic relations and wordnet semantic relations provide important contributions to meaning and need to be understood as conceptual units in themselves. as seen in green et al. (2002), comprehension of the world depends on our natural capacity to recognize and describe the relationships that exist between concepts: conceptual structuring relationships are thus an integral part of the very foundation on which we build and organise our knowledge and understanding of the world in which we live. if concepts are seen as the basic building blocks of conceptual structure, then relationships are the mortar that holds it together. (green et al. 2002, viii) a significant advance in this direction is the english lexical database wordnet, which constitutes “a network of meaningfully related words and concepts” (princeton university, 2010). wordnet gathers nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs based on their meanings, and determines the conceptual and semantic relationships that link them together. it arranges these semantic categories into groups of unordered cognitive synonyms (synsets), each of which express a distinct concept. wordnet displays a total of 117,000 synsets (princeton university, 2010), including their corresponding definition and one or more sentences to illustrate their use. all of the members of a given synset refer to the same concept and are normally interchangeable in any context. therefore, the main semantic relation established in wordnet is synonymy. according to miller et al. (1993, 7), “synonymy is understood as one end of a continuum along which similarity of meaning can be graded. […] [the synonymy] relation is symmetric: if x is similar to y, then y is equally similar to x”. however, as fellbaum (1990) indicates, few absolutely synonymous verbs such as shut and close are found in the lexicon. most of the relationships in wordnet are between words belonging to the same part of speech. consequently, it comprises four sub-nets, from the four parts of speech considered in the lexical database. focusing on the part of speech of the verb, which is semantic inheritance in the lexical paradigms of oe strong verbs 3 the target of this research, wordnet consists of 25,047 verb word-sense pairs, 11,529 of which are unique strings and 13,767 word meanings (synsets). verbs are classified into fifteen files, mainly in terms of semantic criteria. fourteen of these files correspond to semantic domains and denote events or actions: “verbs of bodily care and functions, change, cognition, communication, competition, consumption, contact, creation, emotion, motion, perception, possession, social interaction, and weather verbs” (fellbaum 1990, 279). another file comprises verbs denoting states. verbs in this latter category refer to states which do not share semantic properties and do not conform to a semantic domain. this classification illustrates the division found in jackendoff’s (1983, 170) and dowty’s (1979, 55) analyses between the major conceptual categories event and state. in relational semantic analyses such as the one carried out by wordnet, lexical items (instead of the meaning atoms used in lexical decomposition) are the smallest unit of analysis. verb synsets are arranged into hierarchies and organized according to several entailment relations: troponymy, backward entailment, presupposition, and cause (fellbaum and miller 1990; fellbaum 1998). regarding entailment, “a proposition p entails a proposition q if and only if there is no conceivable state of affairs that could make p true and q false” (fellbaum 1990, 283). the term can be generalized to deal with the relationship established between two verbs v1 and v2 “when the sentence someone v1 logically implies the sentence someone v2” (fellbaum 1990, 283). lexical entailment is a unilateral relation: “if a verb v1 entails another verb v2, then it cannot be that case that v2 entails v1”. nevertheless, there is an exception when the relationship established is one of synonymy, since both verbs share the same sense and, therefore, are mutually entailing. troponymy, the most prevalent of these entailment relations, represents a special case of entailment where pairs are temporally co-extensive. it links synset pairs in which one member denotes a particular manner of the other and conforms to the formula “to v1 is to v2 in some particular manner” (fellbaum 1990, 285). troponymy constructs hierarchies of different levels of specificity as in {communicate}-{talk}-{whisper}. as one goes down a verb hierarchy, the range of nouns that the verbs can take as potential arguments on a specific level decrease. “this seems to be a function of the increasing elaboration and meaning specificity of the verb” (fellbaum 1990, 287). conversely, when verb pairs are related by a lexical entailment relationship in which there is proper temporal inclusion, as in snore and sleep, they are associated by troponymy. in this sense, snore entails sleep and is included in sleep. however, it is not possible to say that sleep entails snore. after synonymy and troponymy, opposition is the most frequent semantic relation coded in wordnet. as fellbaum (1990) explains, numerous verb pairs in a relationship of opposition share an entailed verb. for instance, in the pair ‘hit/miss’, both verbs entail ‘aim’. ‘aim’ is a prerequisite to both ‘hit’ or ‘miss’. thus, these activities take place sequentially: the activity described by the entailed verb (‘aim’) precedes the activity described by the entailing verb (‘hit’ or ‘miss’). this kind of entailment, which does not present temporal inclusion, is known as backward presupposition and also occurs between some verb pairs associated by a result or purpose relationship, like ‘fatten-feed’. as fellbaum (1990, 289) remarks, “a verb v1 that is entailed by another verb v2 via backward presupposition cannot be said to be a part of v2. part-whole statements between verbs are possible only when a temporal inclusion relation holds between these verbs”. luisa fidalgo allo 4 focusing on the causal relation, according to fellbaum, one of the two verb concepts involved in a causative relation is the causative (such as ‘give’), while the other is called the resultative (such as ‘have’). the causative verb is naturally transitive and its subject differs from that of the resultative. the subject of the resultative verb is an object of the causative. this relation is inherited by the synonyms of the members in a pair and, therefore, it remains between the whole concept instead of between individual word forms. for instance, “the synonyms {teach, instruct, educate} [...] are all causatives of the concept {learn, acquire knowledge}” (1990, 291). nevertheless, in contrast to entailment, the troponyms of each of these concepts do not inherit the causation relation. fellbaum (1990, 291) remarks that “causative verbs have the sense of ‘cause to be/ become/ happen/ have or cause to do’. that is to say, they relate transitive verbs to either states or actions”. in this sense, the verb ‘give’ is connected to the stative verb ‘have’, while ‘raise’ is connected to the action described by ‘rise’. in both examples, causation is seen as a sort of change. numerous verbs have the semantics of a causative change like these; however, if they do not constitute lexicalized causative-resultative pairs, they are not recognized in wordnet. in english, many verbs present both a causative and an anticausative use. the great majority of them are verbs of change, which present both a transitive causative and intransitive anticausative form. similarly, this causative relation appears systematically among the verbs of motion. causation is a particular kind of entailment: “if v1 necessarily causes v2, then v1 also entails v2” (carter 1976 in fellbaum 1990, 291). in this case, carter notes that verbs such as ‘bequeath’ and ‘own’ display a kind of entailment also characterized by the lack of temporal inclusion. moreover, it presents a unidirectional relation; that is, for somebody to ‘have’ something does not imply that he or she was ‘given’ it. to recapitulate, the four different types of lexical entailment coded in wordnet can be classified in terms of temporal inclusion into two mutually exclusive categories. this is represented in figure 1. figure 1. types of verb entailment (fellbaum 1990, 292). semantic inheritance in the lexical paradigms of oe strong verbs 5 a deeper examination of these lexicalized concepts brings to light systematic divergences which can be described in terms of similarities or contrasts. these differences among concepts are referred to as semantic relations. as explained above, wordnet depicts word meanings based on a limited number of conceptual-semantic and lexical relations. it clusters verbs into semantically linked groups, each of them denoting a variety of elaborations of one core concept. as fellbaum puts it, “subsets of particular kinds of manners tend to cluster within a given semantic field, where the semantic feature is part of most verbs’ semantic make-up, but is present to a varying degree in the related verbs” (2002, 26). moreover, it has been observed that apart from being semantically linked, the members of each group tend to share syntactic properties and selectional restrictions. 3. terminological remarks, data and steps of analysis although the relations discussed in this study are based on wordnet, their application to this research requires some explanation. as regards entailment, fellbaum (1990, 283) notes that in strict implication “a proposition p entails a proposition q if and only if there is no conceivable state of affairs that could make p true and q false”. however, this study has preferred a more general definition of entailment described as the relation found between two verbs v1 and v2 “when the sentence someone v1 logically entails the sentence someone v2” (fellbaum 1990, 283). the reason for this choice has to do with the fact that neither mental associations nor semantic worlds can be described with such a confining or limited definition as the former. the analysis data consist of 328 lexical paradigms of old english strong verbs, including 328 lexical primes and 1,181 derived verbs. this information has been obtained from the lexical database of old english nerthus (martín arista et al. 2016). all in all, 1,509 verbs have been examined; this corresponds to all strong verb lexical primes of old english and about 1/5 of the verbs contained in nerthus. most of the derived verbs are strong verbs derived from strong verbs, as in the group of derivatives of drīfan ‘to drive’, which covers the strong verbs ādrīfan ‘to drive’, bedrīfan ‘to beat’, eftādrīfan ‘to reject’, eftfordrīfan ‘to drive away’, fordrīfan ‘to sweep away’, framādrīfan ‘to remove’, framādrȳfan ‘to drive away’, indrīfan ‘to ejaculate’, oferdrīfan ‘to overcome’, onwegādrīfan ‘to drive away’, tōdrīfan ‘to scatter’, ðurhdrīfan ‘to drive through’, ūtādrīfan ‘to drive out’, ūtdrīfan ‘to expel’ and wiðdrīfan ‘to repel’. on the other hand, weak verbs are derived from adjectives (eald ‘old’ > ieldan ‘to delay’) and nouns (as in cuss ‘kiss’ > cyssan ‘to kiss’) and, consequently, since they pertain to the lexical paradigms of these categories they are not considered in this analysis. nevertheless, if there is the case that a weak verb comes from the strong verb itself or from adjectives or nouns based on strong verbs, they are included in the paradigms under examination. this can be illustrated by the group of class 1 weak verbs ādrǣfan ‘to drive away’, fordrǣfan ‘to compel’, tōdrǣfan ‘to scatter’, ūtādrǣfan ‘to drive out’, which derive from the class 1 weak verb drǣfan ‘to drive’, which, in turn, derives from the noun drāf ‘action of driving’ which, ultimately, derives from the strong verb drīfan. after retrieving the data, all the 328 lexical paradigms have been revised and updated. first, members of non-verbal classes have been put aside for the analysis. then, the verbal meanings rendered by nerthus have been verified with the advantage of the revised meaning definitions of the old english lexicon provided by martín arista and luisa fidalgo allo 6 mateo mendaza (2013) and the studies in homonymy by vea escarza and tío sáenz (2014) and tío sáenz and vea escarza (2015). once the paradigms have been reviewed and validated, the primitive verb for each paradigm has been selected along with all its different meanings. the various meanings have been organized into synsets or sets of cognitive synonyms (cruse 1986). next, the meanings of the derived verbs of every prime have been identified and equally organized into synsets. finally, the resulting synsets of each lexical paradigm have been mapped by means of the previously described conceptual relationships of troponymy, -troponymy, backward presupposition, cause, synonymy and opposition. throughout the analysis, this study has come across a number of cases where a pair of synsets can be linked by means of opposition as well as backward presupposition, such as ‘tie/untie’, ‘roll/unroll’ or ‘sleep/awake’. in this case, since it signals the direction of entailment, the more detailed relationship of backward presupposition has been adopted. the lexical paradigm (ge)berstan illustrates this methodology. table 1 presents the primitive and derived verbs belonging to this paradigm once the different meanings of every verb have been identified. table 1. the lexical paradigm (ge)berstan. (ge)berstan (ge)berstan (primitive) ‘to dash, crash; to burst; to resound; to escape; to fail; to fall; to break, crack’. āberstan ‘to burst; to burst out, break out; to be broken; to break away, escape’. forberstan ‘to break; to burst asunder; to vanish; to fail; to let go by default’. forðberstan ‘to burst; to break forth’. tōberstan ‘to go to pieces, shatter; to break in two; to be rent asunder; to burst apart; to cause to burst apart; to break out’. in the table above, the distinct meanings of the verbs in the paradigm are separated by means of a semicolon. in order to proceed with the analysis, it has been necessary to organize the meanings of the verbs of the paradigm into sets of cognitive synonyms. in the first place, the synsets of the primitive verb have been identified. if any of the derived verbs includes an identical meaning, this is included into the synset of the primitive. then, the synsets resulting from the meanings of the derivative verbs are sorted out. table 2 shows the lexical paradigm (ge)berstan organized into synsets. table 2. the lexical paradigm (ge)berstan organized into synsets. (ge)berstan (primitive) ‘to dash, crash’. (ge)berstan (primitive), āberstan ‘to burst’. (ge)berstan (primitive) ‘to resound’. (ge)berstan (primitive), āberstan ‘to escape’. (ge)berstan (primitive), forberstan ‘to fail’. (ge)berstan (primitive) ‘to fall’. (ge)berstan (primitive), forberstan ‘to break, crack’. āberstan, forðberstan, tōberstan ‘to burst forth, break forth, burst out, break out’. forberstan, tōberstan ‘to burst apart, burst asunder’. āberstan ‘to break away’. forberstan ‘to let go by default’. forberstan ‘to vanish’. tōberstan ‘to break in two’. tōberstan ‘to go to pieces, shatter’. semantic inheritance in the lexical paradigms of oe strong verbs 7 āberstan ‘to be broken’. tōberstan ‘to be rent asunder’. tōberstan ‘to cause to burst apart; to break out’. the analysis of the lexical paradigm (ge)berstan provides seventeen different synsets, seven of which belong to the primitive verb. the following step associates the synsets of the primitive verb with those of the derived verbs by means of the conceptual relationships of troponymy, -troponymy, backward presupposition, cause, synonymy and opposition. in the paradigm under analysis, all the synsets belonging to the derivative verbs except for tōberstan ‘to cause to burst apart; to break out’ are linked to a synset of the primitive verb. then, the final step is to link the remaining synset to one of the synsets of the derivative verbs. the resulting paradigm can be seen in table 3. table 3. conceptual semantic relationships in the lexical paradigm of (ge)berstan. (ge)berstan (primitive) ‘to dash, crash’ (ge)berstan (primitive), āberstan ‘to burst’ ¬ āberstan, forðberstan, tōberstan ‘to burst forth, break forth, burst out, break out’ ¬ forberstan, tōberstan ‘to burst apart, burst asunder’ tōberstan ‘to cause to burst apart; to break out’ (ge)berstan (primitive) ‘to resound’ (ge)berstan (primitive), āberstan ‘to escape’ « āberstan ‘to break away’ forberstan ‘to let go by default’ (ge)berstan (primitive), forberstan ‘to fail’ « forberstan ‘to vanish’ (ge)berstan (primitive) ‘to fall’ (ge)berstan (primitive), forberstan ‘to break, crack’ ¬ tōberstan ‘to break in two’ ¬ tōberstan ‘to go to pieces, shatter’ āberstan ‘to be broken’ tōberstan ‘to be rent asunder’ key troponymy: entailing synset ® entailed synset -troponymy: entailing synset ⇢ entailed synset backward presupposition: entailing synset entailed synset cause: entailing synset entailed synset synonymy: entailing synset « entailed synset opposition: entailing synset entailing synset the table above represents the conceptual semantic relationships that exist in the lexical paradigm (ge)berstan. these include the lexical entailment relations of troponymy, -troponymy, backward presupposition and cause, as well as the semantic relations of synonymy and opposition. as can be seen, all of the synsets of the derived verbs can be linked either to the synsets of the prime verb or to any of the synsets belonging to the derived verbs. meaning derivation is perfectly cleared up. in this sense, the entailing synset (ge)berstan (primitive), āberstan ‘to burst’ entails by means of troponymy the synsets āberstan, forðberstan, tōberstan ‘to burst forth, break forth, burst out, break out’ and forberstan, tōberstan ‘to burst apart, burst asunder’. the latter, luisa fidalgo allo 8 in turn, is entailed via the relationship of cause by the synset tōberstan ‘to cause to burst apart; to break out’. then, the synset (ge)berstan (primitive), āberstan ‘to escape’ is related by the mutually entailing relationship of synonymy to the synset āberstan ‘to break away’, as well as entailed through the relation of cause by forberstan ‘to let go by default’. then, the synset (ge)berstan (primitive), forberstan ‘to fail’, is related by means of synonymy to forberstan ‘to vanish’. finally, (ge)berstan (primitive), forberstan ‘to break, crack’ gives way to two different troponymy relations with tōberstan ‘to break in two’ and tōberstan ‘to go to pieces, shatter’ and two backward presupposition relations with āberstan ‘to be broken’ and tōberstan ‘to be rent asunder’. 4. results in this section, the results of the analysis are presented, discussed by semantic relation (troponymy, -troponymy, backward presupposition, cause, synonymy, and opposition) and considered from the perspective of semantic inheritance. the relationships resulting from this analysis produce a semantic network for each of the 328 lexical paradigms of old english strong verbs. morphologically related words pertaining to the same lexical paradigm share the form and meaning of the base of derivation and are semantically related. however, the type of semantic relations present in the lexical paradigms had not yet been identified. the analysis carried out in this research allows us to take a step further with respect to the observation of semantic relatedness in the lexical paradigms. it has made it possible to determine not only how new meanings deviate from the original meaning, but also the nature of the divergence as regards meaning specification with respect to more basic verbs. to carry out this task, meanings have been assembled into synsets. a total of 2,239 relationships have been established among the synsets resulting from the 328 lexical paradigms. the lexical entailment relations established (troponymy, -troponymy, backward presupposition and cause) amount to 1,222. on the other hand, the semantic relations of synonymy and opposition present a total of 1,017 associations. in the remainder of this section, the lexical entailment relations presenting temporal inclusion (troponymy and -troponymy) are considered first. then, the results obtained in those lacking temporal inclusion (presupposition and cause) are discussed. finally, the results of the analysis regarding the mutually entailing relations of synonymy and opposition are presented. as far as troponymy is concerned, it constitutes a specific case of entailment where synsets are temporally co-extensive. troponymy links synset pairs in which one refers to a particular manner of the other. that is, a synset s1 denotes a specific manner of a more general synset s2. the analysis shows that a total number of 739 pairs of synsets are associated via troponymy. the examples in (1) illustrate this point: (1) āgan: (ge)āgnian ‘to inherit’ ® āgan ‘to obtain’; biddan: ābǣdan ‘to force out’ ® ābǣdan, (ge)bǣdan ‘to force, compel, press, constrain’; biddan: ābǣdan, bādian ‘to take by way of a pledge or fine, to take a toll’® ābiddan ‘to obtain’; semantic inheritance in the lexical paradigms of oe strong verbs 9 brūcan: ðurhbrūcan ‘to enjoy thoroughly’ ® brūcan, (ge)brȳcian, (ge)brȳcsian ‘to enjoy’; cweðan: wiðercwiddian ‘to murmur’ ® (ge)cweðan, cwiddian ‘to speak’; ðurfan: (ge)ðearfan ‘to starve’ ® ðurfan ‘to want, be needy’; ðwēan: āðwēan ‘to baptise’® (ge)ðwēan, āðwēan ‘to cleanse’; (ge)līðan: (ge)lǣdan ‘to lift’® (ge)lǣdan ‘to cause to move’; swingan: sypian 1 ‘to scourge to death’® wingan, āswingan ‘to ship, scourge, swinge, flog’. the complex structure of some of the old english verbs found in the paradigms of the strong verbs results in atypical troponymy associations as in bēatan: ofbēatan ‘to beat to death’ ® (ge)bēatan, ābēatan ‘to beat, strike, pound, dash’; bītan: ābītan, forbītan ‘to bite to pieces, to bite in pieces, destroy by beating’® (ge)bītan ‘to bite’;’ delfan: fordelfan ‘to destroy by digging’® delfan, ādelfan, fordelfan ‘to delve, dig, excavate, burrow’; hnītan: ofhnītan ‘to kill by butting, gore to death’® hnītan ‘to gore’; rīdan: gerīdan ‘to seize, take possession of, reach or obtain by riding’® rīdan, ārīan, gerīdan ‘to ride’; and weorpan: ofweorpan, ofworpian ‘to kill by casting (stones, missiles, etc.)’ ® (ge)weorpan 1, āweorpan, forweorpan, worpian ‘to cast, throw, fling’. these pairs of synsets linked by troponymy do not represent archetypical cases of troponymy. due to the complexity of certain old english verbs, it is necessary to contextualize them before conducting the analysis. furthermore, syntax may occasionally make the identification of a given semantic association more complicated. whereas bēatan: ofbēatan ‘to beat to death’ is readily identifiable as a particular manner of (ge)bēatan, ābēatan ‘to beat, strike, pound, dash’, the recognition of delfan: fordelfan ‘to destroy by digging’ as a troponym of delfan, ādelfan, fordelfan ‘to delve, dig, excavate, burrow’ may be not so instantaneous. in effect, fordelfan ‘to destroy by digging’ is not so different from ‘to dig to destruction’. throughout this research i have also come across three examples in which the semantic proximity both between active accomplishments of consumption and causative accomplishments of destruction, and between active accomplishments of creation and causative accomplishments of formation or configuration is noticeable. this can be seen in (2): (2) brucan: forbrīcan ‘to consume, use up’® forbrīcan ‘to destroy’; ðicgan: (ge)ðicgan, āðecgan, ðecgan ‘to consume’® ofðecgan ‘to destroy’; scierpan: (ge)scieppan ‘to change, transform, deform’® (ge)scieppan, āscieppan ‘to make, create, form’. in this sense, we can say that ‘to consume something’ is a particular manner of ‘putting an end to, extinguish, or doing away with something’. likewise, ‘to change, transform, deform’ is a particular manner of ‘forming something’. finally, figurative meanings can also give rise to particular troponymic associations. the analysis shows two instances: sēon: ðurhsēon ‘to see into, penetrate with the sight’® ðurhsēon ‘to penetrate’ and lūtan: gelūtan ‘to entreat’®(ge)lūtan ‘to stoop’. not unlike troponymy, -troponymy involves temporal inclusion. however, pairs of synsets associated by -troponymy involve proper temporal inclusion rather than co luisa fidalgo allo 10 extensiveness. besides which, -troponymy permits entailment in either direction. this relation has turned out to be the second least frequent in the paradigms under analysis. the total number of pairs of synsets associated via -troponymy amounts to 73. examples are presented in (3): (3) drēosan: ādrēogan ‘to pass or spend time’ ⇢ (ge)drēogan ‘to pass life, lead (a certain) life’; faran: offaran ‘to overtake (an enemy)’ ⇢ fyrdian ‘to be at war’; fēogan: gefēogan ‘to persecute’⇢ fīgan ‘to be at enmity’; gieldan: angildan 1, ongieldan ‘to atone for’⇢ forgieldan ‘to make good’. iernan: ofirnan ‘to tire with the running’ ⇢ (ge)iernan 1, (ge)ærnan 1 ‘to run’; plegan: plegan ‘to play’⇢ plēon ‘to adventure oneself’; rǣdan: radian ‘to hasten’⇢ radian ‘to be quick’; sacan: andsacian, forsacan, onsacan ‘to object to, gainsay, contradict’ ⇢ sacan ‘to disagree’; slǣpan: āslǣpan ‘to dream’⇢ (ge)slǣpan, onslǣpan, slēpan ‘to sleep’; swerian: ofswerian ‘to abjure, deny an oath’ ⇢ swerian, āswerian ‘to swear, make or take an oath’. considering wordnet classification as well as jackendoff’s (1983) and dowty’s (1979) division between the categories event and state, it is noteworthy to mention that the relationship of -troponymy is predominantly established between two synsets displaying events. only a 31% of the pairs of synsets associated by -troponymy present, at least, one state, and just a 2,7% of the pairs associated by -troponymy involve two states. regarding the latter, two examples have been found in the analysis: drēosan: ādrēogan ‘to pass or spend time’ ⇢ (ge)drēogan ‘to pass life, lead (a certain) life’ and slīdan: āslīdan ‘to be hurt or destroyed’ ⇢ slīdan ‘to be transitory, unstable or perishable’. concerning backward presupposition, the verbs associated do not exhibit temporal inclusion. this relation presents a special type of association in which the entailed synset precedes the entailing synset in time. that is, two synsets (or rather the states or events that they refer to) occur sequentially. the total number of pairs of synsets associated by this conceptual-semantic relationship is 186. regarding jackendoff’s (1983) and dowty’s (1979) division between the categories of event and state, the analysis has shown that this semantic relationship normally involves state or change of state types. it is important to note that, out of the 186 pairs of synsets associated by means of backward presupposition, 168 involve at least one state or change of state; that is a 90.32% of the total number. some examples are shown in (4): (4) brēoðan: ābrēoðan ‘to come to nought’ ābrēoðan ‘to fall away, fail’; cunnan: (ge)cūðian ‘to regard (ge)cunnan, oncunnan ‘to know, be acquainted with’; drēogan: (ge)drēogan ‘to take part in’ drohtian ‘to dwell or keep company with, associate with’; findan: āfandian, (ge)fandian, oferfindan ‘to try, attempt, tempt, test, prove, put to the proof, make trial of’ fundian ‘to desire, with for, aspire to’; semantic inheritance in the lexical paradigms of oe strong verbs 11 hrēowan: (ge)hrēowsian ‘to do penance’ (ge)hrēowan, hrēowian ‘to rue, repent, be penitent’; sacan: wiðersacian ‘to be apostate’ wiðersacian ‘to become apostate’; standan: onstandan ‘to consist of or in’ (ge)standan ‘to be, exist’; (ge)tēon 11: tīeman, (ge)tīeman ‘to call as witness, vouch to warranty’ (ge)tācnian ‘to witness’. regarding the lexical entailment relation of cause, one of the two synset concepts involved is the causative, while the other is called the resultative. as in backward presupposition, this conceptual-semantic relationship is unidirectional and characterized by the lack of temporal inclusion. 224 pairs of synsets are associated with this conceptual-semantic relationship. examples can be found in (5): (5) berstan: forberstan ‘to let go by default’ (ge)berstan, āberstan ‘to escape’; blīcan: āblycgan ‘to make afraid’ āblycgan ‘to get affected by fear, get dismayed’; findan: (ge)findan ‘to inform, show’ onfindan 1 ‘to be aware of’; flēotan tōflēotan ‘to carry away by a flood’ floterian ‘to be carried or tossed by waves’; hlimman: hlemman ‘to cause to sound’ hlimman ‘to sound’; (ge)liðan: ālǣdan, (ge)lǣdan ‘to lead’ (ge)lǣdan ‘to lead (life); (ge)līðan: forðgelǣdan ‘to cause to grow’ ālǣdan, (ge)lǣdan ‘to grow, spread’; rīnan: regnian 1 ‘to cause rain to fall’ rīnan, regnian 1 ‘to rain’; sēoðan: (ge)sēoðan, āsēoðan ‘to boil, seethe’ āsēoðan ‘to refine, purify’. typically, this relationship is initiated by means of a causative synset; nevertheless, this study evinces six cases in which a spontaneous verb gives rise to a cause relationship. this represents a 2,67% of the total number of synsets associated by means of the semantic relationship of cause. all the instances are listed in (6): (6) ēacan: (ge)ēacnian ‘to conceive, become pregnant’ ēacan, (ge)ēacnian ‘to be increased, enlarged, augmented’; rǣdan: (ge)rǣdan ‘to advice, counsel’ ārǣdan ‘to take counsel’; rīnan: gerīnan ‘to rain on’ gerīnan ‘to wet with rain’; (ge)rīsan: ārǣran, rǣran ‘to erect, set up, establish, build’ (ge)rīsan, ārīsan ‘to rise’; (ge)rīsan ārǣran, rǣran ‘to create, do’ (ge)rīsan, ārīsan ‘to rise’; seođan: (ge)sēoðan ‘to cook in a liquid’ āsēoðan ‘to whither, scorch’. turning to the mutually entailing relations, synonymy proves to be the most repeated relationship established between two pairs of synsets. the total amount of synsets related by synonymy is 948. some instances are presented in (7): 1 in this study, as in the lexical database nerthus, numbered predicates point to different morphological classes or variants for otherwise equal predicates. luisa fidalgo allo 12 (7) beran: (ge)beran ‘to extend’ « tōberan ‘to swell’; biddan: biddan, ābiddan ‘to entreat, beseech’ « bedecian, gebiddan ‘to beg’; drǣdan: drǣdan, ondrǣdan ‘to fear, dread’ « ondrǣdan ‘to be afraid’; drēopan: (ge)drēopan, ādrēopan, drēopian, drȳpan ‘to drop’ « drȳpan ‘to cause to fall in drops’; dwīnan: dwīnan ‘to disappear’ « ādwīnan, fordwīnan ‘to vanish, vanish away’; findan: (ge)findan, onfindan 1 ‘to meet with, to come upon’ « onfindan ‘to come across’; hnīgan: hnīgan, āhnīgan, (ge)hnǣgan 1 ‘to bow down’ « onhnīgan, (ge)hnigian ‘to bow, bend down, bow or bend down (the head)’; lǣtan: (ge)lettan ‘to cause to be slow, impede’ « (ge)lettan ‘to delay’; swelgan: swolgettan ‘to gargle’ « swolgettan ‘to wash the throat’; weaxan ‘to prosper, flourish’« forweaxan ‘to progress’. swelgan, in the example above, deserves special attention. it presents a case in which the syntactic structure of the meaning definition or the perspective of interpretation may blur the identification of the relationship. however, both meaning definitions refer to the same action. as stated in wordnet (princeton, 2010), opposition relations are psychologically salient for verbs. followed by synonymy and troponymy, opposition is the most recurring relation in this lexical database. however, given that this work examines the semantic relationships established in the lexical paradigms of old english verbs, the significance of the distinct semantic relationships is different. as a result, opposition is the least frequent of the six conceptual-semantic relationships under analysis. thus, only 69 pairs of synsets are linked by means of opposition. some examples can be seen in (8). (8) āgan: āgan ‘to give’ āgnettan, (ge)āgnian ‘to arrogate, appropiate, usurp’; bēodan: (ge)bēodan, ābēodan ‘to offer’ forbēodan ‘to refuse’; cweðan: (ge)cweðan ‘to order, give orders’ tōcweðan, wiðcweðan ‘to forbid, not allow, prohibit, interdict’; faran: (ge)faran, gefēran ‘to obtain, succeed, get on’ forfaran ‘to lose’; gangan: forgangan, forgān 1 ‘to lose’ gegangan, gegān, ofgān ‘to acquire, obtain, get, gain, attain’; rinnan: tōrinnan ‘to disperse’ gerinnan 1 ‘to come together’; sprecan: (ge)sprecan, gesprecan ‘to agree’ forsprecan, wiðsprecan ‘to deny, contradict, gainsay’; springan: (ge)springan ‘to grow’ āspringan ‘to diminish, dwindle, fail’; standan: forstandan ‘to be equal to’ tōstandan ‘to differ, be different, be discordant’; swefan: swefian ‘to move’ swefan ‘to cease’; weorðan: (ge)unweorðian ‘to slight, treat with contempt’ (ge)weorðian ‘to praise, exalt, worship, adore, venerate, celebrate, treat with reverence or respect’. semantic inheritance in the lexical paradigms of oe strong verbs 13 in wordnet, most of the antonymous verbs refer to stative or change-of-state verbs. similarly, this examination has evidenced that 79.71% of the 69 pairs of synsets linked by opposition involve at least one state or change-of-state type. the statistics resulting from the analysis show that the most recurrent semantic relation is synonymy (43%), followed by troponymy (33%) and cause (10%). backward presupposition (8%), -troponymy (3%) and opposition (3%) are the least frequent relations found in the analysis. this is pictured in figure 2. figure 2. percentage of occurrence of the semantic relationships in the lexical paradigms of old english strong verbs. 5. discussion this study has carried out a detailed examination of all of the 328 lexical paradigms of old english strong verbs, in which the nature and patterns of the underlying semantic relationships have been identified. moreover, it has been proved that semantic inheritance in these paradigms can be classified by six conceptual semantic relationships, namely: troponymy, -troponymy, backward presupposition, cause, synonymy and opposition. nevertheless, several issues have arisen from this analysis. to begin with, the theoretical literature that has been reviewed focuses on present day english and, therefore, no provision is made for old english. likewise, the instances of semantic relations presented by the literature at our disposal do not cover the full range of the verbal lexicon selected as the analysis corpus for this research. for example, the old english verbal lexicon includes verbs that express very complex meanings, which are far from the clear-cut instances contemplated in the literature: ābannan ‘to summon to battle’; ofbēatan ‘to beat to death’; ofbēatan, tōbēatan ‘to destroy by beating’; beorcan ‘to make a sharp and explosive sound’; forberstan ‘to let go by default’; abǣdan, bādian ‘to take by way of a pledge or fine, to take a toll’; ābedecian, ābiddan ‘to get by asking’; giftian ‘to give a woman in marriage’; tōbrȳtan ‘crush with feelings of sorrow’; and ābītan ‘to lacerate with the teeth’. also, verbs under analysis such as the above mentioned giftian ‘to give a woman in marriage’ need to be understood against the background of old english. similarly, the verbal paradigm blōtan includes the verbs onblōtan ‘to kill a victim’; onblōtan ‘to offer’; (ge)blētsian ‘to bless, consecrate, hallow, call holy’ and (ge)blētsian ‘to adore, luisa fidalgo allo 14 extol’ and, therefore, the meaning of the verbs blōtan, onblōtan ‘to sacrifice’ need to be understood with respect to the framework of ‘killing a person or animal in a religious ceremony as an offering to please a god’ (merriam-webster definition). likewise, obsolete meanings and variants need to be considered in order to classify the verbs in this corpus. for instance, lesan ‘to lease’ needs to be seen as ‘to glean, gather, collect’ and āspēdan ‘to scape’ as the archaic variant of ‘to escape’. regarding the conceptual-semantic relations, the examination of the old english verbal paradigms reveals that verbs such as (ge)bēatan ‘to beat, strike, pound, dash’ present derived verbs such as ofbēatan ‘to beat to death’ and ofbēatan, tōbēatan ‘to beat to pieces, destroy by beating’; (ge)berstan ‘to break, crack’ derive in verbs such as tōberstan ‘to break in two’ and (ge)feallan ‘to fall’ derive in verbs such as forfeallan ‘to destroy by falling’ and tōfeallan ‘to fall or break to pieces’. due to the intrinsic complexity of the old english vocabulary and especially of the verbs analyzed, these derivations need to be contemplated from the angle of troponymy. it is important to note that it has been necessary to divide some of the synsets assembled in the lexical paradigms. this is due to the fact that relations are sometimes established with only some of the verbs in a given synset. to illustrate this point, ārǣran, rǣran ‘to raise’ belonging to the paradigm rīsan, may have been included in the synset ārǣran, rǣran ‘to lift up, elevate, move from a lower to a higher position’, but also in the synset ārǣran, rǣran ‘to stir up, arouse, rouse, excite’. nonetheless, these synsets cannot be semantically linked by the relations considered in this study. conversely, the relation between them emerges from the polysemy of the verb ārǣran, rǣran ‘to raise’. in order to account for this semantic derivation, a separate synset has been created for this verb, giving way to a synonymy relation with the other two synsets. likewise, the verb ongietan ‘to seize, grasp’, belonging to the paradigm gietan, may have been incorporated into the synset ongietan ‘to see, perceive, understand’, but this would have excluded a troponymy relation between the synsets gietan ‘to get, obtain, take’ and ongietan ‘to seize, grasp’. another instance has been detected in the paradigm hebban, where the verb (ge)hefigian ‘to aggravate’ may have been incorporated into āhefegian, (ge)hefigian ‘to make sad or heavy, to make heavy, burden, weigh down, grieve, oppress, vex, afflict, weary’, although this would have prevented a relationship of cause between the synsets (ge)hefigian ‘to aggravate’ and (ge)hefigian ‘to grow worse’. in this manner, although synsets are unordered sets of cognitive synonyms, the intrinsic polysemy of some of the verbs permit an additional relation with a different synset. next, in order to overcome the ambiguities arising from polysemy and to attribute the correct meaning to each verb, it has been necessary to verify every verb meaning against the context of the paradigm it pertains to. in other words, the semantic analysis cannot be separated from the patterns of semantic inheritance issued from the lexical paradigm. to illustrate this point, the paradigm rēotan includes the synsets rēotan ‘to weep, shed tears’; rēotan ‘to wail’; and rēotan ‘to mourn, lament’. whereas the latter means ‘to feel or show sorrow or sadness’ and makes reference to a state, the first two synsets point to activities. consequently, the general pattern of semantic inheritance indicates what is preferable in case of doubt. furthermore, if it is not possible to disambiguate the meaning of a verb in the previous steps, the next move is to study the etymology of the word. the paradigm lesan above illustrates this point. eventually, this study follows visser (1963–1973) in the cases in which it is not possible to determine if a given verb or lexical paradigm is transitive or intransitive. by way of illustration, the paradigm greosan only includes the verb semantic inheritance in the lexical paradigms of oe strong verbs 15 grēosan ‘to frighten’ and, therefore, it can be defined as ‘to become afraid’ or ‘to cause someone to become afraid’. similarly, the paradigm hrimpan only consists of the verb hrimpan ‘to wrinkle, rumple; to twist, coil; to contract’. in this sense, since visser highlights the process of transitivization by which intransitive verbs go on the diachronic axis, from old to present day english, when a meaning has been in doubt, the intransitive has been preferred over the transitive. 6. conclusion this work has analyzed all of the 328 lexical paradigms of old english primitive strong verbs and determined the semantic relationships underlying their configuration. this study has demonstrated that meaning derivation in these paradigms basically consists of six conceptual semantic relationships: on the one hand, the lexical entailment relations of troponymy, -troponymy, backward presupposition and cause; on the other hand, the mutually entailing relations of synonymy and opposition. after reviewing the architecture of wordnet, section 3 has addressed the question of the implementation of the theory considered into the 328 lexical paradigms of old english. the starting point of the analysis has been the identification and updating of the lexical paradigms under study; then, the analytical model has been applied to the lexical paradigms of old english strong verbs. section 3 has included a complete description of the lexical paradigm (ge)berstan to illustrate the methodology adopted in this study. section 4 has offered the results of the study, which have been discussed with regard to semantic relation and considered from the semantic inheritance perspective. section 5 has also presented the problems found in the analysis. the main issues that have arisen were the recurrent polysemy detected in most of the verbs as well as the complexity of the old english verbs. the solutions adopted include the design and implementation of a systematic and homogeneous methodology which allows us to track the meaning of each of the verbs under analysis. this study has revealed the semantic relations that exist in the lexical paradigm, giving way to a network of semantic inheritance, in which it is possible to distinguish how derived meanings deviate from the original meaning as well as what sort of meaning specification is originated with regard to more basic verbs. in this sense, the synsets deriving from the primitive have been regarded as the base of each paradigm. the synsets resulting from the different meanings of the derived verbs have been linked to those of the primitive and among them, by means of the conceptual-semantic relations of troponymy, -troponymy, synonymy, backward presupposition, cause and opposition. the results have shown that, followed by troponymy and cause, synonymy is the most recurrent semantic relation in the old english lexical paradigms based on strong verbs. backward presupposition, -troponymy and opposition are shown to be the least frequent relations. similarly, the highest semantic similarity was found in verbs related by synonymy and troponymy, whereas pairs linked by backward presupposition, opposition and -troponymy present a higher semantic divergence as regards meaning specification. the lesson that can be learned in this respect is that there is a higher semantic divergence in pairs of backward presupposition, opposition and -troponymy than in pairs linked by synonymy and troponymy. in this analysis, such semantic divergence has been couched in terms of meaning specification. it is also worth remarking that state or change-of-state types correlate with pairs of synsets related by the relation of opposition. this probably means that opposition tends to hold between static verbs. similarly, the luisa fidalgo allo 16 results indicate that semantic relatedness may imply syntactic closeness. nevertheless, more research is needed in these two questions. references cruse, david a. 1986. lexical semantics. cambridge: cambridge university press. dowty, david. 1979. word meaning and montague grammar. dordrecht: reidel. fellbaum, christiane. 1990. “english verbs as a semantic net.” international journal of lexicography 3 (4): 278–301. fellbaum, christiane, and george a. miller. 1990. “folk psychology or semantic entailment?: a reply to rips and conrad.” psychological review 97: 565–70. fellbaum, christiane. 1998. “a semantic network of english verbs.” in wordnet: an electronic lexical database, edited by christiane fellbaum, 69–104. cambridge: mit press. garcía garcía, luisa. 2019. “the basic valency orientation of old english and the causative ja-formation: a synchronic and diachronic approach.” english language and linguistics 24 (1): 153–77. green, rebecca, carol. a. bean, and sung. h. myaeng. 2002. the semantics of relationships. an interdisciplinary perspective. vol. 3. dordrecht: kluwer academic publishers. jackendoff, ray. s. 1983. semantics and cognition. cambridge: mit press. lacalle palacios, miguel. 2021a. “old english verbs of depriving: the semantics and syntax of possession transfer.” studia neophilologica 94 (1): 1–27. lacalle palacios, miguel. 2021b. “old english verbs of learning: information and knowledge acquisition.” selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature 26 (1): 25–56. martín arista, javier. 2012. “lexical database, derivational map and 3d representation.” resla-revista española de lingüística aplicada 1: 119–44. martín arista, javier. 2013. “recursivity, derivational depth and the search for old english lexical primes.” studia neophilologica 85 (1): 1–21. martín arista, javier. 2019. “another look at old english zero derivation and alternations.” atlantis 41 (1): 163–82. martín arista, javier. 2020. “old english rejoice verbs. derivation, grammatical behaviour and class membership.” poetica 93: 133–53. martín arista, javier. 2022. “the syntax and semantics of the old english predicative construction.” in language change and linguistic theory in the 21st century, edited by nikolaos lavidas, and kiki nikiforidou, 102–132. amsterdam: brill. martín arista, javier, and raquel mateo mendaza. 2013. “outline of a lexicon of old english.” working papers in early english lexicology and lexicography 3: 1–1996. martín arista, javier. ed., laura garcía fernández, miguel lacalle palacios, ana e. ojanguren lópez, and esaúl ruiz narbona. 2016. “nerthusv3. online lexical database of old english. nerthus project. universidad de la rioja.” accessed january 1, 2021. https://nerthusproject.com. merriam webster. 2022. “an encyclopaedia britannica company.” accessed january 1, 2021. https://www.merriam-webster.com/. semantic inheritance in the lexical paradigms of oe strong verbs 17 miller, george a., richard beckwith, christiane fellbaum, derek gross, and katherine miller. 1993. “introduction to wordnet: an on-line lexical database.” accessed july 1, 2015. https://wordnetcode.princeton.edu/5papers.pdf. ojanguren lópez, ana e. 2020. “the semantics and syntax of old english end verbs.” atlantis 42 (1): 163–88. ojanguren lópez, ana e. 2021. “interclausal relations with old english verbs of inaction. synchronic variation and diachronic change.” resla-revista española de lingüística aplicada 34 (2): 555–84. princeton university. 2010. “about wordnet.” accessed january 1, 2021. http://wordnet.princeton.edu. tío sáenz, marta, and raquel vea escarza. 2015. “intercategorial homonymy in old english.” working papers in early english lexicology and lexicography 5: 1–61. vea escarza, raquel, and marta tío sáenz. 2014. “intracategorial homonymy in old english.” working papers in early english lexicology and lexicography 4: 1–46. visser, fredericus t. 1963–1973. an historical syntax of the english language. vol. i: syntactical units with one verb. leiden: e. j. brill. acknowledgement this research has been funded through the grant pid2020-119200gb-100 (ministerio de ciencia e innovación, agencia estatal de investigación), which is gratefully acknowledged. microsoft word 2021article_5_cabanillas.docx isabel de la cruz-cabanillas, selim26 (2021): 109–128. issn 1132-631x / issn-l 2792-3878 / https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.26.2021.109-128 verbal magic and healing charms in glasgow university library ferguson ms 147 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas university of alcalá manuscript ferguson ms 147, a fifteenth-century volume written in middle english and housed in glasgow university library, contains a copy of the antidotarium nicholai, a sarum calendar and a medical compilation which includes medical recipes, prognostic texts, and healing charms. our interest is placed on the charms in the medical recipe collection found in folios 63r–159v. following earlier studies on the charm genre, we will characterise the medical charms found in ferguson ms 147 from a linguistic standpoint. this touches upon the use of language and other technical features, such as the presence of code-switching, the use of specialised symbols and characters, and the terminology used by the scribe to refer to the genre, among others. concerning textual tradition, we also aim to examine whether the healing charms present variation, even if small, with earlier described charms. from a methodological point of view, the comparison includes contrasting our material with other edited compilations of charms. keywords: charms; ferguson ms 147; middle english; medical manuscripts 1. introduction the present study explores a number of healing charms inserted in a collection of medical recipes in ferguson ms 147 housed in glasgow university library. the manuscript forms part of the collection of john ferguson, former student and chemistry professor at glasgow university from 1874 to 1915. ferguson’s personal library was extensive, containing approximately 18,000 volumes. after his death, an important part of his collection was purchased by glasgow university in 1921 (weston 2004). 110 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas glasgow university library ferguson ms 147 dates to the beginning of the fifteenth century and comprises 159 folios on paper and parchment, mainly devoted to medical recipes in middle english. the focus here is on the medical recipe collection found in folios 63r–159v. the compilation contains mostly medical recipes for different diseases, but prognostic texts and charms are also included in this miscellany. apart from the recipe compilation, the manuscript contains the following items: a translation of the alphabetically arranged antidotarium nicholai or antidotary of nicholas (folios 1r–55v) and a sarum calendar in latin (folios 57r–62v). the text presents some annotations after the antidotarium nicholai as well as on both sides of folio 91, where some recipes were added in a sixteenth century hand. likewise, at the end of the manuscript a sixteenth-century hand added some recipes for conserves and two charms on the flyleaves (one on folio 158v and another one on folio 159v). manuscript ferguson ms 147 is of interest, first, for containing a considerable number of diverse latin and middle english charms compared to other recipe collections of the same period and, second, for being an unexplored collection thus far. the article is structured as follows: after the brief introduction to the manuscript under consideration, the methodology adopted is explained. both a classification according to the purpose or the disease and another according to contents, method, and discursive strategies following hunt’s taxonomy of charms are provided. afterwards, the analysis of the charms found in the middle english recipe compilation and their linguistic features, as well as the results of the comparison with the same charms in other middle english manuscripts, are discussed. then, the findings drawn from the investigation are summarised in the conclusions. finally, the references for the presentation are supplied in the corresponding section. 2. healing charms in ferguson ms 147 the oxford english dictionary defines charm as “the chanting or recitation of a verse supposed to possess magic power or occult influence; incantation, enchantment; hence, any action, process, verse, sentence, word, or material thing, credited with such properties; a magic spell; a talisman, etc.”. despite the definition, charms in middle english manuscripts are not always in verse and appear usually along recipes and prognostic texts. smallwood emphasises the fact that “the innumerable collections of brief remedies produced in the same period in england show without any doubt that verbal magic and healing charms 111 highly literate men (if they were all men) regarded charms as being, potentially, as useful as the physical or pseudopharmaceutical prescriptions and treatments among which they were collected” (2009: 87–88). the tradition of regarding charms as useful medical remedies goes back to old english, when numerous charms have been attested. while charms could be used for other purposes, such as to keep thieves away, the charms in ferguson ms 147 are exclusively for healing purposes. according to olsan, not every medical condition was to be cured by means of charms and prayers: “most of the problems for which charms or prayers are prescribed in these texts are chronically remitting or episodic conditions whose recurrence a sufferer would want to take steps to prevent. such are toothache, migraine, fevers, seeing ‘spots’, spasms, cramps and temporary paralysis, nosebleeds (and other intermittent bleeding), insomnia, epileptic seizure, and gout” (olsan 2003: 358). on the same page, she adds that “acute conditions can also be found. these include bleeding, difficult childbirth, certain fevers, a seizure in progress, poisonous bites, and puncture wounds” (ibid.). as happens in other cases, medieval charms in ferguson ms 147 are “devotedly christian” (smallwood 2009: 88). subsequently, plenty of religious references are to be found. in ferguson ms 147, charms appear intermingled with recipes with no mark acknowledging their specific nature. all medieval charms,1 even one recommended for insomnia that was crossed out on folio 81r, are taken into consideration for the present analysis. thus, a corpus of thirteen charms has been collected, four of which are in latin and nine in middle english, including some dubious cases related to the use of the herb vervain. this combination of latin versions alongside middle english ones is usually documented throughout the period (olsan 2018: 11). the diseases covered can be seen in table 1. 1 the charm added in the sixteenth century for toothache has not been included in the analysis (f. 159v), which concentrates on medieval charms. no medieval versions of this specific incantation have been found thus far. 112 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas table 1. medical condition and corresponding medieval charm in ferguson ms 147 medical condition middle english latin child delivery beata anna peperit sanctam mariam verginem (with a title in me, ff. 66v–67r) to stop bleeding whan oure lorde ihesu cryste … come longeus (f. 66v) cryste was bornn at bedelym & yfollyd in flom iurdan (f. 69v) wryte aboue þe place þat bledyþ in a man beronix and in womman beronixa (f. 76r) longius miles (with a title in me ff. 75v–76r) te per eum sanguis exiunt coperfidus occidit agnus (with a title in me, f. 76r) for a cough kyryeleyson xristeleyson (f. 73r) to make a man slepe take & wryt þese wordys (f. 81r) epilepsy pro morbo caducoo (with a title in latin, ff. 124v–125r) tertian fever ffor the feuer tercyan (f. 140r) toothache christus vincit + christus regnat + christus imperat (f. 158v) foretell whether a man will live or die and others to know were a syke man schal lyue or dye (f. 69r) also who so bereþ verueyne vpon (f. 100r) hunt (1990: 78–82), following payne (1904), classifies charms into six groups, taking into consideration their contents, method, and discursive strategies. this is the taxonomy adopted for the present study, which includes the following types: verbal magic and healing charms 113 i) prayers invocations and other verbal formulae addressed to the herbs. ii) prayers and mystical words repeated over the patient, or written or applied to some part of his body as an amulet. iii) direct conjurations or exorcisms addressed to diseases. iv) narrative charms. v) material magic. vi) transference of disease by a verbal formula, or a ceremony, to some animal or material object. thus, the ferguson ms 147 charms will be analysed according to the previously mentioned classification. i) prayers invocations and other verbal formulae addressed to the herbs. this category contains directions on how to gather the medicinal herbs. olsan (2003: 359) illustrates this type with a charm from harley 2558 that includes the propitious moment to collect the herbs. no charm of this kind has been found in ferguson ms 147. (1) whan th[o]u gederest ane herbe to mannes helpe, go thryes aboute hym and sey this: ‘y take the herbe yn the name of the fader and the sone and the holy gost. and y pray to my lord god that thys herbe be god and virtues to the medicine that y have ordyned hym to.’ and sey thre pater nosters & iii ave marias. and whan thou hast gedred thyn herbys al the yer or a sesonne, gyfe this blessynge upon hem and sey thus. ii) prayers and mystical words repeated over the patient, or written or applied to some part of his body as an amulet. the indications refer to the formulae and words that should be mentioned to overcome the disease. the words may be written on parchments to be placed around the patient’s neck or on the affected body part. the examples from ferguson ms 147 are the following: (2) anothur seye kyryeleyson xristeleyson & gape vp warde & ley þi hondys to þi þrote & hold a whyle þi brethe as longe as þou mayste. (f. 73r) (3) alle so wryte aboue þe place þat bledyþ in a man beronix and in womman beronixa yt schal stanche þe blode. (f. 76r) 114 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas the latter refers to saint veronica’s figure, who wiped jesus christ’s sweat with her veil when he was carrying the cross. even if this passage is not found in the bible, it is part of the christian tradition. in fact, mitchell (2011: 146–147) acknowledges the veronica’s reference in manuscript ashmole 1435 with almost the same formulation in latin: “fac crucem in fronte et scribe berenix et si sit femina beren<ice>” (‘make the sign of the cross on the forehead and write berenix and if it is a woman berenice’). other samples give instructions on “how to make a man slepe” (4) and “how to cure a tertian fever” (5), as well as example (6) for morbo caduco (‘epilepsy’): (4) take & wryt þese wordys & ley hem vndur his hed þat he whete noȝt þer ismaell conniure te per angellum mychaell vt sopetur homo yste. (f. 81r)2 (5) ffor the feuer tercyan ffor þe ffeuer tercyan take the branches of wey brede aftur the sonne ys down & sey iij pater noster & iij aue & poune hem wel togedur & temper hem with holy watur & make hym to drynke þer of whan yt takeþ hym. (f. 140r) (6) pro morbo caducoo take blode of þe lytul fynggur of the ryght honde þat is syke & wryte þese iij namus in parchement with þe blod of the man þese byn the wordus iespar + melchisor + melchior + balchiȝar + and lete close yt & hange yt abowte his necke þat is syke & ar þou close yt put þer yn gold & myrre & franckyn sense of eche a lytille & bynde hym whan he ryseþ of his bed ilke a day with þese iij namus & sey for her sowlus iij pater noster & iij aues & ilke a daye of a monthe drynke þe rote of the pyenyȝe with stale ale & he schal be hole sycurly & ȝef yt be a childe ynnocent drawe blode of the same fyngger þat is before seyde & wryte þee kyngus namus on a masere with the blode & waysche yt with ale oþer mylke & late the childe drynke yt & sanabitur. (ff. 124v–125r)3 2 this charm has been crossed out in ferguson ms 147. as a result, some letters cannot be properly identified. a version occurs in pahta (2004: 89) and reads “exmael exmael aiuro te angelum michaelem ut soporet homo ille”. in turn, olsan (2004: 66) uses the formula “ismael + ismael”. although only the title is given, presumably it must be the same formulation, since it is for the same purpose. finally, alonso-almeida (2014: 107) records a variant where ismael is not mentioned, but the final part is similar to the text in pahta above, “adiuro te per angelum mychaelium vt soporet homo iste”. 3 forbes (1971: 305) refers to this charm gathered from peter levens’ in a right profitable booke for all disseases, and mitchell (2011: 190) discusses it in the version included in san marino, huntington library 1336. verbal magic and healing charms 115 similarly, another instance of a charm containing well-known formulae is found on folio 158v. this invocation to christ was added on a sixteenth-century hand, but the wording of the charm is well rooted in the medieval tradition (olsan 2018: 13). the secretarial handwriting is hardly legible and the paper was cut out at some point, which makes the reading even more complex, but the middle part reads: (7) + christus vincit + christus regnat + christus imperat + christus qual locum et sum familium ab onum malo protegat et defendat amen et dic evady sancti iohannes et dic vij pater amen v aves et thre credo. (f. 158v)4 the purpose of this charm is unclear, but other similar charms, such as those in hindley’s and olsan’s compilations, are not. on the one hand, hindley records this formula in charms for toothache; namely bl, add 33996 f. 138v, british library wolley ch iv 68, and cambridge, corpus christi college ms 308 p. 17.5 on the other, olsan (2018: 13) presents examples where the invocation is used for diverse kinds of fever. iii) direct conjurations or exorcisms addressed to diseases. the functions of these charms are to expel the disease or cause of the medical disorder. according to payne (1904: 127), “charms of this particular kind do no often appear in medieval books”. in ferguson ms 147 the following are found: (8) medicyn for to staunche blode ffyrste þou moste yn wote the mannys name & than go to churche & sey þis scharme & loke þou seye yt for no beste bot for man or for womman this charme iij the daruoȝtryche weþer yt be for man or for womman but þat þou knowe his name & sey þus ¶ whan oure lorde ihesu cryste was don on þe rode or was don on þe crosse þan come longeus & stonge hym with his spere yn his syde bloode & watur come. ouȝt at his wownde he wyped hys yȝen & seye a none þoroȝ þat holy vertu that god. dyed thare y coniure the blode þat þou com noȝt ouȝt of þis crystyn man & nemny his ss in nomine patris & filij & spiritus sancti amen verum est. (f. 66v) 4 i am grateful to dr ivalla ortega for helping decipher this difficult passage. errors are obviously my responsibility. 5 my thanks to dr katherine hindley for sharing these samples from her collection with me. 116 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas (9) sey þis cryste was bornn at bedelym & y follyd in flom iurdan also þe flom stode & also stonde þi blode in nomine patris & filij. (f. 69v) (10) te per eum sanguis exiunt coperfidus occidit agnus et sangris cuius per erum sancti fuit huius ad iutocessa nunc vena vale que repressa ter dicatur. (f. 76r) regarding example (10), it is worth mentioning that the scribe may not have been conversant with latin, as forbes (1971: 299) records this charm and translates it as “thou from whom flowed the blood by which the treacherous serpent dies, & whose sanguis cuius precium seculi fuit huius, adiuro cessa, nunc vena valeque repressa”. in ferguson ms 147 the word used is not anguis ‘serpent’ but agnus. the latter appears with an ending -us abbreviated as a superscript resembling number 9 and the only hesitation would be how to interpret the minims after <g>. they could be rendered as <u> producing a form like aguus, which makes no sense in latin, or as agnus. likewise, other words do not seem to have been interpreted correctly by the scribe or he may be quoting from a corrupted source, which results in non-existent latin forms. iv) narrative charms. usually these are the commonest type of charms (hunt 1990: 81). this category resorts to stories, mainly from the christian tradition. the invocation of these holy people is supposed to make the sick person heal. it is very often used for the staunching of blood. thus, we usually find different versions of how the lance of longinus pierced christ’s side and more specific details about how the blood and water flowed from the wound are described. in ferguson ms 147 one reads: (11) a scharme for to stanche blode longius miles lancea latus domini perforauit et ocius exiuit sanguis et aqua sanguis redempcionis aqua baptismatis in nomine patris restet sanguis in nomine filij restet sangris in nomine sancti restet sangris & ampliuus ab hac vena ut ab hac plaga non exeat sangris in nomine patris et filij et spiritus sancti amen. (ff. 75v– 76r) also in latin, a charm for a difficult delivery with an english title another is found in ferguson ms 147. here a series of biblical figures drawn from the new testament are mentioned. thus, beginning with beata anna, who gave birth to virgin mary, jesus christ’s mother, along with the apostles and all saint verbal magic and healing charms 117 men and all saint confessors as well as all saint virgins are invoked to help deliver the baby: (12) beata anna peperit sanctam mariam verginem matrem dium nostri ihesu xristi et sancta maria peperit filium dei per istam nativitiatem ego credo istud quod omnes ypinam amorte et ali omni periculo possit liberari sancta maria dei genitrix & omnes sancti apostoli et omnes sancti vertures et omnes sancti confesores & omnes sancti vergines intercedant pro famula tua ss amen. (ff. 66v–67r) this is one of the most widely spread charms in the middle ages. braekman elaborates on the procedure explaining that a periapt should be laid on the woman’s womb. this is “a long strip of parchment bearing latin text which says that mary brought forth the child jesus who save mankind free through the shedding of his blood” (1986: 122). related charms are documented in henslow (1899: 32–33) and ogden (1938: 57). v) material magic. in this category, plants, stones or parts of animals are attributed some magical powers. here we find several examples in ferguson ms 147, where vervain is said to have magical powers, so that it can predict whether a patient will live or die, as in (13), or will grant the person who carries it love and grace, as in (14): (13) to know were a syke man schal lyue or dye take verueyne & bere yt in þinne honde & come to syke man & sey to hym þus sq how ys yt with the & ȝef he answere & sey wele he schal lyue & ȝef he sey euell of or suche a þinge he schal dye. (f. 69r) (14) also who so bereþ verueyne vpon hym he schal haue loue & grace of grete maysteris & þei schul grawnte al his askynge that is good & skylfulle & noȝt refuse his askynge be no maner wey. (f. 100r) the examples in (13) and (14) are on the border of the category of charms. for the first, olsan (2009: 219) provides example (15) whereby the vervain should be held in the right hand: 118 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas (15) for to weten if a sik man nogt wounded schal leue or deye also. take fiue croppes of verveyne with þi rigt hand & ley in þi lefte & sey ouer hem .v. pater noster in þe worschip of þe .v. woundes of crist & sey þus: i coniure yow fiue croppes in þe vertu of þe .v. woundes þat + crist suffred on þe rode tre forto bye mannis soule out of thraldom þat þe sik man n[ame] telle me þe sothe þoru þe vertu of god and of yow wheter he schal leue or deye of þat siknesse. & bless hem .v. times & ley hem in þin rigt hand agen. & tak þe sik be his rigt hand so þat he wete nogt of þe erbes. & what þu axest he schal telle soth of his stat. (ff. 43v–44v) the main difference lies in the fact that after that, other identifiable elements can be read in olsan’s passage, namely references to christ, the verb sey, and some prayers like the pater noster. apart from the formula sey to hym, all the other elements are absent in the ferguson ms 147 example. subsequently, in ferguson ms 147 it seems to be a diagnostic text rather than a charm, since there is no magic in the procedure. all in all, holthausen (1897: 77) presents a similar charm lacking the above-mentioned elements, as can be read in (16): (16) to wetyii ȝif a man [s]chal deye. ¶ also ȝif þi good frend be seke, take þis erbe in þi rythand and take his rythand in þi rythand, and lete þe erbe be betwene, þat he wot not, and aske qhow he faryth and qhow he hopith of hym-self? and ȝif he say, he schal leue and fare wel, he schal leue; and ȝif he say, he wot well certayn þat he schal deyin, he schal be ded of þat seknesse. finally, mitchell (2011: 189) gathers the charm in san marino, huntington library 1336 whose resemblance to the charm in ferguson ms 147 is remarkable: (17) for to knowe wheþer a seke man schal lyue or deye. nyme verueyne and bere yt yn þyn hond and come to þe seek man and sey to hym þus scilicet ‘how ys yt wyt þe’ and ȝyf he answer and sey ‘wel’ he schal lyue and ȝyf he sey ‘euyle’ or ony sweche þyng he schal deye. the examples in ferguson ms 147, (13)–(14), clearly follow the tradition of attributing vervain magical powers. the presence of the herb would cause the patient to speak his or her fate truthfully, offering the physician an accurate prognosis, but in (14) the mere fact of his carrying of the herb seems to supply the man with love and grace. verbal magic and healing charms 119 a similar example where it is not clear whether a herb will work as an amulet is an instance where peony is recommended for epilepsy. it looks like a recipe where the herb is to be eaten and drunk with wine, but there are also instructions to hang it around the patient’s neck which makes us think it could work as an amulet to cure him from epilepsy: (18) ffor the fallynge yuel ete yt & drynke yt with wyne & also hange þe rote abowt his necke & yt schal saue hym withyn xv dayes. (f. 95r) vi) transference of disease by a verbal formula, or a ceremony, to some animal or material object. no examples of this kind has been registered in ferguson ms 147, but alonso-almeida (2008: 13) includes one from glasgow university library, hunter 185: (19) for to stonche blod of þe nose or of wat place yt be of a man. lat hym drynke þe jus of ache & ley of þe pounynge to ys forhed aȝenes þe cros of ys nose, or wryt þese leters in two leues of perchemyne. bynd yt betwene þy þyys &, ȝif þou leuestd naȝht me, tak & wryt hem vp on a knyf. þerwyþ steke a swyn & þe rennynge of þe man schal be muche þe lasse. þes beþ þe letris: + p + g + c + p + e +u + o + t + a + ges + ij + u + iiij + etc. +arisme cladauis ++ + +arisme cladauis +++ + arisme cladauis +++ 3. linguistic features charms present recurrent topics which will be organised in a particular sequence and will be realised by specific language. as for the contents, smallwood (2009: 88) refers to the fact that “the typical healing charm consists of a brief sacred narrative (usually taken from the life of christ, much less commonly from a saint’s legend) or some statement of sacred truth, followed by words saying or implying ‘as surely as this is true […]’ or ‘in the same way […]’ and an appeal for help or cure. this makes them close to set prayers, which by long christian tradition can also contain charm-like invocation of familiar sacred truth”. the charms in ferguson ms 147 tend to conform to the contents mentioned above. in turn, olsan (2004: 61) focuses on the structure of charms: 120 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas a) the heading or tag indicating the purpose of the charm; b) a short ritual formula, such as in nomine + patris filii et spiritus sancti or amen; c) the incantation proper or operative words which may take a variety of linguistic patterns; d) directions for performance of the incantation (such as to say it a certain number of times or write it); e) application to the patient, including accompanying prayers, ritual actions, or herbal remedies; f) an affirmation of effectiveness. in the same vein, alonso-almeida (2008) has defined charms as a genre and has subsequently described the main linguistic features found in this text type. he argues that the generic structure will follow the sequence below, where the parentheses represent optional stages and the circumflex shows fixed order, whereas an asterisk implies variable position within the text: (mn-marginal note) ^ (tt-tittle) ^ (dad-direct address to disease) ^ (hg-herb gathering) ^ (p-preparation) * (a-application) * (rl-ritual language) * (d-duration) ^ (e-evaluation) (alonso-almeida 2008: 17) in ferguson ms 147 there are no marginal notes to signal the medieval charms, but most charms follow this structure, since they present several of these stages. they are usually introduced by a title that may be in latin or middle english. thus, some latin charms have their title in middle english, namely the two charms for the staunching of blood. likewise, an english charm may have its title in latin, as is the case of pro morbo caduco for epilepsy. the phenomenon of code-switching is very common in medical texts. the influence of latin on english medical texts has been evaluated by pahta (2004) and others. the scribe often integrates latin within the english text in a very subtle way. as this is not a compulsory stage in the structure, the charm may have no title or it can be something like a charme for, a medicine for, or simply another, as happens in the case of beata anna maria peperit and sey kyryeleyson xristeleyson. according to alonso-almeida (2008: 22), the pronoun another has a cohesive function and works as “an anaphoric device and the reader must look backwards in the text for reference”. thus, the beata maria peperit charm is immediately preceded by a remedy to make a man schal nouȝt blede and the kyryeleyson xristeleyson charm verbal magic and healing charms 121 by a remedy entitled medycyn for ȝoxynge. the use of the word charm to introduce the procedure is important in genre terms, because it reveals the scribes’ awareness of the type of texts they were copying. in fact, they are four instances of the word in three different charms. the next optional stage is direct address to the disease, whose function is to exhort the disease to leave the patient’s body. it may be present in the form of performative verbs, such as coniure when the charm is in latin. these verbs appear in the imperative mood, often accompanied by a second person pronoun, as in one of the charms for staunching blood “y coniure the blode þat þou com noȝt ouȝt of þis crystyn man” (f. 66v). the performer is conjuring christ’s blood on the rood and recites the charm, so that it will have the desired effect. the presence of pronouns in the first and second person, both in subject position, is another aspect of this specific example. the herb gathering stage contains information related to when and how a given herb should be gathered to maintain its powers, but this stage is absent in our corpus of charms. the function of the preparation stage can be any of the following: (i) to show how to perform a ritualistic action, (ii) to describe how a remedy must be elaborated, or (iii) to give the ingredients needed to produce a remedy (alonso-almeida 2008: 24). the verbs used in this stage will also be in the imperative mood; for instance, in the charm against epilepsy: “take blode of þe lytul fynggur of the ryght honde þat is syke & wryte” (f. 124v). as in recipes, the instruction often involves the use of the verb to take, but the difference with the recipe text lies in the fact that charm verbs, such as to say or to write, are essential components of the charm genre, since the words will work the miracle along with the other ingredients usually found in recipes; here namely blood. words are the main healers in charms along with the process that must be performed in a particular way. thus, in one of the charms to staunch blood, it is specified that some words must be written on the patient’s body: “wryte aboue þe place þat bledyþ in a man beronix and in womman beronixa” (f. 76r). the writing of the letters will work as the remedy, since placing the letters above the bleeding part will have a performative effect: to stop bleeding. afterwards, the application stage shows how to perform the ritual action and how the product should be administered. the linguistic constituents will be (i) use of verbs in imperative, (ii) presence of verbs with coercive meaning, and (iii) use of personal pronouns both in subject and object position (alonsoalmeida 2008: 27). direct commands are seen in “seye þis ouer þe womman that traueyleþ” (f. 66v), while the use of pronouns has already been mentioned above. 122 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas then comes the ritual language stage which serves to give the words and prayers required for the implementation of the charm. the presence of classical languages is common at this stage, as described by pahta (2004: 88): some latin prefabricated utterances act as performatives, and have a ‘doing-itby-saying-it’ effect. as the performatives in the texts are connected with medicinal powers, they can also be seen as part of the special language of contemporary medical practice. like in prayers, the function of the code is to enhance the power and efficacy of the words. pahta adds that “a related group of switches contains instances of latin, sometimes combined with transliterated greek or hebrew, in religious charms for medical purposes”. the study of charms in languages other than english are equally important for the study of the english language, since, regardless of the language of the incantation, the instructions are given in middle english (keiser 1998: 3670). the instructions are often conveyed through religious vocabulary, so we find formulae such as kyryeleison xristeleison (f. 73r) or in nomine patris et filij et spiritus sancti (f. 66v). other words are also common: aue (maria), pater noster, amen, sancta, dei, in latin, but also churche, rode, lord ieshu, flom iurdan, bedelym, wownde, in english. the duration stage may be present, such as in the charm against epilepsy, where the charm is prescribed each day for a month: “whan he ryseþ of his bed ilke a daye with þese iij namus & sey for her sowlus iij pater noster & iij aues & ylke a daye of a monthe” (f. 125r). finally, the evaluation stage can be found as well. its purpose is to assure the reader the efficacy of the process. it can be conveyed through latin, as it happens in recipes, with the formula sanabitur or verum est. as in recipes, the charm may finish with the english sentence he schall be hole (f. 125r) or a reformulation of the title as in yt schal stanche þe blode (f. 76r), or simply shows no proof of its efficacy. to conclude this section, we could adopt jucker & taavitsainen’s words for whom “genres show different realisations in different periods, but more prototypical features may remain constant in a long diachronic perspective” (2013: 147). the fact that the main basic constituents remain implies that there are few variations in the formulation of charms either in latin or in english. thus, similar elements are found in the latin-based tradition of charms and in those either coined or translated into english. verbal magic and healing charms 123 4. comparison with other middle english charm compilations as roper (2009: xiv) has observed, most charms “were to be found all over europe”. as a result, it is expected that the charms present in ferguson ms 147 can be located in other middle english manuscripts and possibly in other textual traditions. focusing on britain, smallwood (2009: 87) specifies that “in england in particular, in the fourteenth, fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, charms were not the arcane material of personal performance, but rather something to be shared, often in writing”. thus, the textual tradition of this genre must have been recorded in writing and parallel texts are likely to be found in other medical treatises or recipe compilations. in fact, some of the charms in ferguson ms 147 are widely spread and its dissemination process presents the reader with linguistic variation, although the essence of the charms remains untouched. smallwood (2004: 15) estimates that between 1370 and 1540 there are three hundred copies of charms in english, half of which correspond to versions of flum jordan and longinus motifs. thus, these two charms are the most likely to be found in other compilations. for comparison, the following charm collections have been searched due to the extensive number of texts included: holthausen (1897), payne (1904), forbes (1971), hunt (1990), olsan (2003, 2004, 2009), and braekman (1986), also included in the charm section of the middle english medical texts (2005). the results can be seen in table 2, which shows whether the charm is present for the same purpose. it is worth noting that, while olsan (2003) has gathered numerous examples from different sources, the text of the charm is not offered, and, as a result, the specific words used cannot be checked; the index provided, where charms are classified according to their purpose, has been used nonetheless. on the contrary, holthausen (1897) and forbes (1971) include the text of the charms. as can be deduced from the table, the most widely spread charms are beata anna maria peperit, longinus miles, flum jordan, whan oure lord, and iasper + melchior + baltasar, which are documented from four to seven times in the eight sources, while the beronix charm appears in three sources. two compilations record the charm to make a man sleep and the vervain used to predict whether a patient will live or die, whereas not a single instance has been found thus far of the following two charms: the vervain to get love and grace, and the kyrylieson xristielyson formula for coughing. nevertheless, katherine hindley kindly let me know that the formula kyrylieson xristielyson is found for coughing in her compilation at least on three occasions, for which see (20), (21), and (22). 124 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas table 2. motifs in ferguson ms 147 compared to other charm compilations ferguson ms 147 holthausen payne forbes braekman hunt olsan 1897 1904 1971 1986 1990 2003 2004 2009 beata anna peperit + + + + + + longinus miles + + +6 + + + + per eum sanguis + whan oure lord7 + + + + + flum iordan + + + + + beronix + + + kyryeleyson xristielyson ismael + + + iasper + melchior + baltasar + + + + feuer tercyan cristus regnat + + +8 vervain to live or die + + vervain for other purposes (20) an oþer sey . kyriel . xre.l . hyrl . | 7 hold þy hed upwarde 7 þi honde by fore þey þrote 7 holde | so þi bre?th inne . also longe ast þu mayst. (cambridge, magdalene college, pepys ms 878, p. 68) 6 longeus appears in the charm of tre boni fratres or the three good brothers. 7 whan oure lord is also found in manuscript wellcome 406. 8 the charm in hunt is for staunching blood (1990: 95) and not for toothache. verbal magic and healing charms 125 (21) ffor hym þat yesketh [...] anoþer / seye kyrie / | leyson / xreleyson / kyrieleyson / 7 hold þy mowþ | upward and þyne handys before þy þrote 7 | hold so þy breeþ as longe as þu myght and it | wole staunche // (bl sloane ms 1764, f. 23v) (22) [ffor hym þat | ȝiskes] [margin: an oþer] say kyrieleison . xreleison . kyrieleison . 7 hald thyn heued vpwarde (lincoln cathedral library ms 91, f. 288r) finally, regarding the charm for tertian fever in (5) above, it is not found in any of the consulted sources. however, a close one is found in the latter compilation in leechbook for the quartan fever (ff. 36v–37r): “for þe feuer quartayn. nim þe plauntes of waybrode [{b{]e for þat þe sonne go doune and say þre pater noster and tempre hit wit holy water and ȝif hit him to drinke wanne he quakit.” similarly, the christus vincit charm is found both in forbes (1971) and braekman (1986) for childbirth as part of the beata anna peperit formula, and mentioned in olsan (2004: 66) for the same purpose. our findings agree with those recorded in other studies. thus, keiser (1998: 3670–3671) claims that the flum iordan charm “may be the most widespread of all middle english charms. verse and prose versions of it reputedly occur in well over 100 manuscripts from all regions. apparently derived from latin antecedents extending back to the ninth and tenth centuries”. he also attests the popularity of other charms present in ferguson ms 147, such as the longinus charm, lord that hangs upon the rood, the magi charm, and the maria peperit christum charm. 5. conclusions the present study on the charms in glasgow university library ferguson ms 147 is relevant to academia, since the charms in the recipe collection have never been explored thus far. apart from proper medical recipes and prognostic texts, thirteen medieval medical charms have been identified. the corpus includes both latin and english charms, out of which nine are written in english, although code-switching is especially remarkable in the titles. likewise, the four latin charms are often introduced by a title in english. evidently, the compiler, as well as practitioners and readers, viewed the charms as another form of therapy equivalent to the herbal remedies. the medical problems that the charms relieved or prevented in this specific 126 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas manuscript are mainly limited to these: bleeding, insomnia, epilepsy, the labour of childbirth, fever, and coughing. in terms of the analysis of the charms recorded in ferguson ms 147, hunt’s taxonomy (1990) was adopted to classify the corpus. the results show that no instances are found of the first category, namely: (i) prayers invocations and other verbal formulae addressed to the herbs. on the contrary, out of the thirteen recorded charms, the category that ranks higher is number (ii) prayers and words repeated over the patient, where six instances are attested. the corpus also records three charms in category (iii) direct conjuration or exorcism addressed to the disease. two more charms belong to category (iv) narrative charms, and two more are included within number (v) material magic. a dubious case here is another instance prescribing the intake of peony, which suggests the hanging of the plant around patient’s neck that could act as an amulet. regarding (vi) transference of disease by a verbal formula, or a ceremony, to some animal or material object, no instances are documented in the manuscript. concerning the linguistic features of the charms, we can conclude that most of them follow the usual pattern established by previous researchers, whereby a title is followed by a direct address to the disease. after that, the reader can usually find the preparation and application stages which precede the ritual language and the duration the treatment is meant for. finally, certain charms may present an evaluation phrase showing their efficacy. as far as the textual transmission is concerned, it can be concluded that some charms, like beata anna maria peperit, longinus miles, flum jordan, whan oure lord, and iasper + melchior + baltasar, were firmly rooted in the sources and widely spread. others are not so common but definitely feature that devoutly christian flavour, which allowed them to be transmitted from generation to generation. the main conclusion drawn from the analysis is that the samples in ferguson ms 147 are clear instances of the charm genre. charms may have been the last resort, but they clearly pursued a distinguishable aim in the medieval culture in which they were inserted: the healing of the sick person through the power of words as a result of ritualistic processes and ritual language. the title of the article verbal magic and healing charms can never be said to be more appropriate. when medical remedies did not work, medieval people resorted to words that will heal the patient magically. verbal magic and healing charms 127 references alonso-almeida, f. 2008: the middle english medical charm: register, genre and text type variables. neuphilologische mitteilungen 109.1: 9–38. alonso-almeida, f. 2009: stance marking and register in middle english charms. studia anglica posnaniensia 45: 13–29. alonso-almeida, f. 2014: a middle english medical remedy book from glasgow university library ms hunter 185 (middle english texts, 50). heidelberg, carl winter. braekman, w. l. 1986: a collection of medicinal recipes and charms. studies on alchemy, diet, medicine and prognostication in middle english, scripta 22, brussels, omirel: 113–143. forbes, t. r. 1971: verbal charms in british folk medicine. proceedings of the american philological society 115: 293–316. henslow, g. 1899: medical works of the fourteenth century: together with a list of plants recorded in contemporary writings, with their identifications. london, chapman & hall. holthausen, f. 1897: rezepte, segen und zaubersprüche aus zwei stockholmer handschriften. anglia 19: 77–85. hunt, t. 1990: popular medicine in thirteenth-century england: introduction and texts. cambridge, d. s. brewer. jucker, h. a. & i. taavitsainen 2013: english historical pragmatics. edinburgh, edinburgh university press. keiser, g. 1998: a manual of the writings in middle english, 1050–1500. vol. x. new haven, the connecticut academy of arts and sciences. mitchel, l. t. 2011: cultural uses of magic in fifteenth-century england. (ph.d. dissertation.) toronto, university of toronto. ogden, m. s. 1938: the “liber de diversis medicines” in the thornton manuscript (ms. lincoln cathedral a.5.2) (e.e.t.s., o.s. 207). oxford, oxford university press. olsan, l. 1992: latin charms of medieval england: verbal healing in a christian oral tradition. oral tradition 7.1: 116–142. olsan, l. 2003: charms and prayers in medieval medical theory and practice. social history of medicine 16.3: 343–366. olsan, l. 2004: charms in medieval memory. in j. roper ed. charms and charming in europe. london, palgrave: 59–88. olsan, l. 2005: the language of charms in a middle english recipe collection. american notes & queries 18.3: 29–35. olsan, l. 2009: the corpus of charms in the middle english leechcraft remedy books. in j. roper ed. charms, charmers and charming. london, palgrave: 214– 237. 128 isabel de la cruz-cabanillas olsan, l. 2018: writing on the hand in ink: a late medieval innovation in fever charms in england. incantatio 7: 9–45. oxford english dictionary (oed). www.oed.com pahta, p. 2004: code-switching in medieval medical writing. in i. taavitsainen & p. pahta eds. medical and scientific writing in late medieval english. cambridge, cambridge university press: 73–99. payne, j. f. 1904: english medicine in anglo-saxon times. oxford, clarendon press. roper, j. ed. 2004: charms and charming in europe. london, palgrave. roper, j. 2009: introduction: unity and diversity in charm studies. in j. roper ed. charms, charmers and charming. london, palgrave: xiv–xxvii. roper, j. ed. 2009: charms, charmers and charming. london, palgrave. smallwood, t. m. 2004: the transmission of charms in english, medieval and modern. in j. roper ed. charms and charming in europe. london, palgrave: 11– 31. smallwood, t. m. 2009: conformity and originality in middle english charms. in j. roper ed. charms, charmers and charming. london, palgrave: 87–99. taavitsainen, i., p. pahta & m. mäkinen. 2005: middle english medical texts. cdrom. amsterdam & philadephia, john benjamins. weston, d. 2004: ferguson, john (1838–1916). in oxford dictionary of national biography, online edition by l. goldman. oxford, oxford university press. http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.lib.gla.ac.uk/view/article/53857 author’s address departamento de filología moderna university of alcalá c/ trinidad, 3 28801 alcalá de henares madrid (spain) received: 12 november 2020 e-mail: isabel.cruz@uah.es revised version accepted: 10 february 2021 antonio sanna, selim 22 (2017): 1–15. issn 1132-631x fire and light: breaking the boundaries of dichotomy in the beowulf poem antonio sanna independent scholar, italy many critical readings of the anglo-saxon poem beowulf emphasize its dualistic vision, its several binomials and oppositions. in this paper, i shall argue that dichotomies such as those of light and darkness, of human and nonhuman, of human society and anarchic nature, and of pagan and christian beliefs are both strengthened and reversed by the representation of light and fire, which acts as a counteracting theme that negates such binomials and provides a bridge between them. firstly, i shall examine the various dichotomous readings hitherto offered by critics such as fred c. robinson and bruce mitchell. secondly, i shall specifically analyse in detail the presence of light in the various descriptions of dawns, in the characterization of grendel’s eyes, and shall then link it to the representation of fire given in the poem. my argument shall therefore establish that there need not be a strictly demarcated vision of the poem, but opposite elements coexist with equal representation. keywords: beowulf; fire; light; dichotomies; grendel in its capacity to allow for multiple (and often contrasting) interpretations, the anglo-saxon poem beowulf has been seen as essentially ambiguous. as carol braun pasternack has specifically pointed out, structuralist and poststructuralist studies of the text have attempted to identify the central, fundamental and underlying oppositional differences of the poem (1997: 172). these oppositions are primarily used by the narrator to emphasize the difference between the good characters and the villains, between the different settings such characters come from and reside in (staver 2005: 114) as well as 2 antonio sanna between pagan and christian beliefs. 1 in the studies conducted by herbert g. wright, bernard f. huppé, jerome mandel and bruce a. rosenberg, and joyce tally lionarons, beowulf has been read as characterized by a dualistic vision. lionarons, for example, considers the narrative as characterized by “an unresolved semantic dialogue” between the two separate discourses of heroic poetry and christian orthodoxy (1998: 47). on the other hand, critics such as ward parks, andy orchard and alvin a. lee have evidenced that such binomials are not necessarily dichotomous and do not therefore imply readings of the poem that mutually exclude each other. these interpretations, based on the different translations of the anglo-saxon terms and on a study of the characters or of the primary sources of influence and inspiration (such as biblical and/or classical literature), have not hitherto analysed in detail the narrative’s representation of fire and light. i shall specifically affirm that such a representation both sustains and annihilates the binomials of the poem such as human/nonhuman, light/darkness, hospitable/hostile environments and pagan/christian beliefs. a reading of beowulf as a poem characterized by binomials had been initially suggested by j. r. r. tolkien when focusing on the representation of the monsters and on the “deadly seriousness” of the text’s themes (1936: 260). tolkien classified grendel, grendel’s mother and the dragon as enemies of all humanity and god, and not merely of the people of heorot and beowulf (1936: 259). subsequently, the contraposition of grendel, grendel’s mother and the dragon to the human community living in heorot and specifically to the hero beowulf has been a point of major discussion among critics, who categorize the villains of this narrative according to the resemblance of their actions to (or difference from) the behaviour of the human beings. such dichotomous critical readings are primarily due to the fact that grendel and his mother are never described in detail in the poem. specifically, there are no clear indications of grendel’s physical appearance that could help the reader’s visual perception of him (lapidge 1993: 382–383). his “shapelessness” (sandner 1999: 163) does not allow the reader and the critic to ultimately establish whether he is a monster or a human individual. in this way, 1 the opposition between pagan and christian beliefs reflects what joyce hill has defined as the ‘germania’ and ‘latina’ approaches, “the two extreme positions from which scholars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have approached” anglosaxon texts (2002: 1). hill specifically deals with poems in the junius ms, but his argument could be applied to the beowulf text as well. breaking the boundaries of dichotomy in beowulf 3 categorizing him as a human or nonhuman being rather depends on the interpretation of his actions and motives. on the one hand, ward parks ascribes him a nonhuman behaviour because of his cannibalistic practices, his predatory violence and his “outright disdain for the symbols and ceremonies of human order” (1993: 6). on the other hand, andy orchard (2003: 36) argues that grendel is a sentient human being because he has a soul. according to orchard, this is demonstrated by the fact that, after returning to his own lair after being mortally wounded by beowulf, grendel in fenfreoðo feorh āleġde, hæþene sāwle; þær him hel onfēng. þanon eft ġewiton ealdġesīðas, 2 delightless laid down his life and his heathen soul in the fen-fastness where hell engulfed him. (851–853) 3 this argument is maintained also by johann köberl, who affirms that the anglo-saxon terms utilized by the poet in order to describe grendel are those used in old english poetry for the themes of exile and outlawry (2002: 96). according to this interpretation, grendel is actually a human being who is seen a priori as monstrous by the people of heorot because of his refusal to remain in exile. in this sense, the first adversary of beowulf can be dichotomously read as either monstrous or human. such a dualistic reading has been also offered for grendel’s unnamed mother, the main female character represented in the story. on the one hand, critics such as paul acker read her as “a kind of feminine antitype” (2006: 704), as behaving according to a vengeful, destructive and aggressive manner which, within the specific context of beowulf itself, would have characterized only the behaviour of men and particularly of male warriors. the predatory conduct of grendel’s mother is interpreted as monstrous because it is irrespective of her sex, and because she enacts a behaviour which would have been appropriate only to male avengers, to those fathers, brothers and sons deprived of a relative. according to gillian r. overing, she can be seen as a 2 all references to beowulf are from klaeber’s beowulf, 4 th edition. 3 all translations are from edwin morgan. 4 antonio sanna feminine antitype if we consider also that, contrary to the women depicted in the tale who “have no space to occupy, to claim, to speak from” (1990: 72), grendel’s mother has her own dwelling. she then attacks and endangers the male-dominated reign of heorot, or, as acker specifies, “the whole system of male dominance” (2006: 708). on the other hand, parks instead argues that grendel’s mother “exhibit[s] human life habits and [...] ha[s] mastered certain human arts” (1993: 9), such as living in a hall and owning an heirloom sword. considering the fact that “a large part of her reputed monstrosity lies [...] in grendel himself” (alfano 1992: 12), grendel’s mother could actually be seen as a female human being who attacks the people of heorot exclusively with the noble purpose of avenging the death of her only child and heir. 4 according to the critics of the poem, grendel’s mother can then be seen as either respecting or disrupting conventional gender stereotypes, as either a monstrous and bloodthirsty being or a female warrior who is forced to ġegān wolde / sorhfulne sīð, sunu dēoð wrecan (set out / on a journey of death to avenge her son’s death; 1277–1278). it is a matter of interpretation and translation to establish an ultimate reading of such a character, to prove as final only one of the dichotomous readings which can be given of her. however, as we shall see later in detail, the possibility to read both grendel and his mother as human or non-human is further sustained by their connection with the representation of light and fire. another dualistic opposition which defines the monsters of beowulf is based on the classification of beowulf’s adversaries as either pagan or christian enemies. on the one hand, marijane osborn (1995: 116) and fred c. robinson (1993: 66) argue that grendel and his mother represent the adversaries of all christians because of their descent from cain’s progeny. similarly, in robert l. schichler’s view (2000: 102), these hostile beings embody the christian conception of sin and, consequently, they represent the 4 keith p. taylor and christine alfano suggest that defining the behaviour of grendel’s mother as feminine or masculine rather depends on the translation of the terms which describe and define her. indeed, taylor (2004: 15) and alfano (1992: 12) argue that the first term which characterizes her —the word aglæewif (1259)— should be translated as ‘female warrior woman’, and not as ‘monstrous woman’. according to this translation, grendel’s mother is not a monstrous creature, but a female warrior. her murderous behaviour can therefore be considered as appropriate for a woman who is forced to avenge the death of her only son because of the absence of a male partner or father. breaking the boundaries of dichotomy in beowulf 5 enemies of the christian god. according to these readings of the poem, grendel and his mother are defeated by the hero beowulf in order for the right divine order of things to be restored. beowulf and the heathen people of heorot are therefore inscribed in a christian design intended to restore the rightness of god and to obliterate evil from the world. consequently, beowulf’s battles become a metaphor for the struggle of each individual against the malignity of the devil, against all the evil present in the world. the pagan hero becomes, according to bruce mitchell & fred c. robinson, “an unwitting allay of the christian forces arrayed against evil as embodied in cain” (2000: 21). an interpretation of beowulf as a christian allegorical tale is validated also by the poet’s choice of the dragon as beowulf’s adversary in the third part of the narrative. according to bill griffiths (1996: 21, 26) and joyce tally lionarons (1998: 18), indeed, the presence of such a creature is due to a christian influence because of its association with satan and the fires of hell in the new testament. together with grendel and his mother, the dragon as well would then represent an enemy of christianity in the perennial battle of all human beings against the devil and creatures from hell. on the other hand, grendel, his mother and the dragon can instead be read as a representation of a pagan world, the world of the heathen people of heorot, who are explicitly described as making heathen vows and wīġweorþunga (sacrifices to their idols; 176). in this way, the story of beowulf is not necessarily to be read as a christian allegory. this is due to the fact that, first of all, the description of grendel as a specific adversary of the pagan or christian people largely depends on the translation of the terms utilized to describe and refer to him. according to michael lapidge, for instance, the name grendel is a reference to the draugr, the ‘undead man’, ‘ghost’, or ‘zombie’ often present in the old norse sagas (1993: 375). a similar argument is maintained also by trubshaw (1998: 1) and griffiths (1996: 4), who affirm that the dragon is depicted in terms which evidently reproduce a pagan vision of monsters. indeed, beowulf’s third adversary is present as the divinity’s or hero’s antagonist in many northern sagas (trubshaw 1998: 11), where it is pictured as a legless serpent, such as could be imagined according to its description in beowulf. the three major enemies of beowulf can all be alternatively read as either pagan or christian adversaries. secondly, beowulf is not necessarily to be read as a christian allegory because the poem’s narrator never makes any explicit references to the great dogmas of christianity or any mention of christ himself, as mitchell & 6 antonio sanna robinson have pointed out (2000: 33). the christian poet’s mentions of god can be then considered merely as an attempt to create distance between the past age in which the story is set and the present act of narration as a means of framing the narrative according to a set of religious beliefs which are closer to those of the poet’s contemporary audience. human or nonhuman, a behaviour which either respects or contradicts the female sex, a christian allegorical tale or a narrative about the pagan past: these are but some of the oppositions that critics have extrapolated from beowulf. another dichotomy that can be traced in the anglo-saxon text is the opposition between light and darkness, which also strengthens the dichotomies of human versus nonhuman and natural world versus human society. indeed, the opposition between light and darkness has been seen by the critics as identifying the two main locations of the tale: heorot and grendel’s lair. the former has been repeatedly read as a setting characterized by the presence of light as well as epitomizing luminosity itself. for example, david sandner affirms that “the hall itself is the center and the light” (1999: 171). in fact, heorot is explicitly compared to līxte se lēoma ofer landa fela (a lantern illuminating many lands; 311): the hall of the danes, the residence of humankind, is depicted as itself illuminating the surrounding lands, as a lantern visible by the mariners and the foreigners coming from the sea. the various adjectives used by the poet to describe the hall —such as fætum fāhne (gold-panelled and glittering; 716) and beorhte (shining; 997)— definitely characterize it as a luminous building which is a symbol of joy as well as a metaphor for the value of the warriors living in it. by contrast, after grendel’s murderous assaults, light itself cannot shine anymore for human beings in the hall, which is left īdel ond unnyt, siððan æfenlēoht / under heofenes haðor beholen weorþeð (void and unused when the light of evening / has been hidden under the hood of heaven; 413–414). before the hero’s arrival and after the attacks of the two evil creatures, the dark of the night is made to correspond with the emptiness of the hall, with the absence of the danes from heorot and the end of the celebrations for the value of warriors in battle. light is therefore associated with the hall of heorot, whereas darkness apparently characterizes the residence of the poem’s villains. in fact, the enemies of the people of heorot (grendel and his mother) live in a dyġel (uncouth; 1357) region, at the bottom of a lake which is shadowed (and rendered, therefore, dark) by a wudu wyrtum fæst (deep-rooted wood; 1364). such a hēoru (unholy; 1372) place is located very far from the light of breaking the boundaries of dichotomy in beowulf 7 heorot as well as it is depicted as the opposite of the joyous atmosphere of the human hall, especially if we consider that the forest around the lake is specifically defined as wynlēasne (joyless; 1416). the places surrounding the dwelling of grendel and his mother, places in which the people of heorot do not dare to venture, are definitely characterized as dark. darkness seems also to characterize the path to these creatures’ residence. this seems to be confirmed by the fact that the end of the journey of beowulf through the dark waters of the lake towards the enemy’s den is established by light. in fact, it is precisely when beowulf reaches his destination at the bottom of the lake that the light of the sun shines on the surface (1495). 5 as soon as the hero defeats the hostile creatures living in the lake and manages to ær hē þone grundwong onġytan mehte (make out of the field of floods; 1496), light shines over the 5 this interpretation would be consistent with the translation of the poem’s verse 1495 given by fred c. robinson, who interprets beowulf’s underwater journey towards grendel’s lair as lasting until daylight and not, as other translators have argued, as long as a whole day (22–25). furthermore, according to alvin a. lee, in this passage there is an “unspoken identification of beowulf with christ in his descent into hell, conquest and return to earth” (1998: 397). this could be specifically evidenced by the passage of ‘the descent into hell’ which clearly associates christ’s arrival in hell with the rising of light: geseah þa iohannis sigebearn godes mid þy cyneþrymme cuman to helle, ongeat þa geomormod godes sylfes sið. geseah he helle duru hædre scinan, þa þe longe ær bilocen wæron, john then saw the victorious son of god come with kingly majesty to hell; the man of sorrowing heart then recognized the coming of god’s own self. he saw the doors of hell brilliantly gleaming which long since had been locked and shrouded in darkness. (50–55) [the translation is from s.a.j. bradley.] this has been noted as well by ruth johnston staver (2005: 86) and andy orchard (2003: 42), who point out the evident similarity between the depiction of grendel’s mere and the description of the entrance to hell in the christian tenth-century sermon ‘blicking homily 17’, an entrance which is surrounded by a forest and a lake. 8 antonio sanna waters and seems to decree beowulf’s first success over the natural world and nonhumanity. the presence of light is then indicative of the strength and power of beowulf in battle. later in the narrative, light confirms the victory of the hero over grendel’s mother. indeed, immediately after the death of beowulf’s female adversary, līxte se lēoma, lēoht inne stōd, afne swā of hefene hādre scīneð rodores candel. radiance flashed out, the light sprang within, twin to the candle of heaven as in clearness it shines from the sky. (1570–1572) the value of the hero, his success in defeating an enemy of heorot is concomitant to the sudden appearance of light. one could also argue that in this case light is a metaphor for god’s presence and approval, because the light that unexpectedly illuminates the subterranean mere is explicitly compared and is equal in intensity to that of the sun, to rodores candel (the candle of heaven; 1572). the shining light can be metaphorically interpreted as representing the sudden appearance of god before the victorious hero: god is thankful for the vanquishing of cain’s progeny. this argument seems to be corroborated by the religious references present in the text of beowulf which associate the divine with the appearance of light. in fact, in the poem god is initially mentioned in the context of the creation song, and particularly when referring to the creation of light: se ælmihtịga [...] / ġesette siġehrēþiġ sunnan ond mōnan, / lēoman tō lēohte landbūendum (the almighty [...] / set exulting sun and moon / as lamps for the light of living men; 92, 94–95). light is associated with the divine and with god’s approval of human actions. the dichotomies of this poem thus characterize also the very landscape surrounding the characters. this has been recognized by robinson (1993: 62), who underlines the fact that, in the poem, nature is described almost exclusively as a set of anarchic forces and elements such as storms and fire which are set against the civilized community of human beings who reside in heorot. the natural world is composed of wætereġesan (terrible streams; 1260) and wynlēasne wudu (a joyless forest; 1416), and it is populated by voracious animals such as wolves and hostile creatures such as grendel, his mother and the dragon. nature is thus presented by the poet as characterized by places breaking the boundaries of dichotomy in beowulf 9 where terrible creatures live and endanger human life and where, contrary to heorot, no joy resides. indeed, heorot is a place where happiness reigns, and this joy resounds even in the adjacent territories. this is confirmed by the fact that grendel himself, though living in a subterranean chamber very remote from the hall, is said to suffer the joy felt in the hall: ðā se ellengæst earfoðlīċe, þrāge ġeþolode, sē þe in þystrum bād, þæt hē dōgora ġehwām drēam ġehyrde hlūdne in healle. but the outcast spirit haunting darkness began to suffer bitter sorrow when day after day he heard the happiness of the hall resounding. (86–89) nature and the human community are thus the two terms of an opposition which further connotes grendel, grendel’s mother and the dragon as nonhuman creatures because they are associated with an environment that is hostile to human beings. it is interesting to note, however, that, apart from being directly set against the community of human beings, the natural landscape pictured in the beowulf tale is also characterized by elements and locations which themselves are or can be easily read as dichotomous. according to köberl, grendel’s lair is a “place characterized by opposites” (2002: 125) such as fire and frost, opposites which are rendered evident by the very physical union of the two elements of the water of the lake and the fyr on flōde (blaze on the stream; 1366) that can be seen at night. 6 the mere of grendel and his mother is depicted as definitely 6 such a description of grendel’s mere is also very similar to the depiction of hell given in the anglo-saxon version of ‘genesis’ as a place characterized by opposites þær hæbbað heo on æfyn ungemet lange, ealra feonda gehwilc, fyr edneowe, þonne cymð on uhtan easterne wind, forst fyrnum cald. symble fyr oððe gar, sum heard geswinc habban sceoldon. 10 antonio sanna not fit for human beings. we could even argue that it is the union of opposite elements and the impossibility for human beings to explain and understand it —if we specifically consider that the presence of fire on the water is defined as nīðwundor (a strange horror; 1365)— that characterizes such a setting as inappropriate for human presence and life. furthermore, the union of water and fire establishes an association between grendel and his own dwelling. according to felicia jean steele (2001: 2), the name of beowulf’s first opponent is derived from the term *grandil, which means ‘bottom of a body of water’ rather than ‘water-sprite’ or ‘water-demon’, as other translators have suggested. in this way, the character of grendel can be interpreted as representing the very place he comes from, a place which, within the poem, is made of the opposites of water and fire. indeed, grendel himself is made of such oppositions. the poet specifies that, during his nocturnal attacks against the people of heorot, grendel’s eyes emit a liġġe ġelīcost lēoht unfæġer (unlovely light in the very form of fire; 727). the poet explains that the villain wōd under wol(c)num tō þæs þe hē wīnreċed, / goldsele gumena ġearwost wisse (moved through the night till with perfect clearness / he could see the banquet-building, treasure-home of men; 714–715). in this way, the figure of grendel includes both the water his name derives from and the fire of his eyes in the same respect that the creature’s mere is located in a place where a fire can be seen at night over the waters of the lake. these opposite elements are coupled also in the place from which the third and final adversary of beowulf comes. in fact, the cave of the fire-breathing dragon is located in front of a watercourse with heaðofyrum hāt (killing flames; 2547). both grendel’s mere and the dragon’s cave include fire and water as much as they both host creatures which are able to emit fire, respectively through their eyes (grendel) and mouth (the dragon). nevertheless, the fact that grendel is capable of emitting light from his eyes invalidates his classification as a creature exclusively epitomizing and belonging to darkness. this occurs also during grendel’s attack inside the hall of heorot, when he is about to kill thirty human beings. as the poet specifies, there during nights inordinately long they endure, each and every one of those fiends, ever-replenished fire, then with the dawn comes an east wind and frost intensely cold. fire or piercing cold, they constantly had to endure some harsh wringing torment. (313–317) [the translation is from s.a.j. bradley.] breaking the boundaries of dichotomy in beowulf 11 grendel ēode yrremōd; him of ēagum stōd / liġġe ġelīcost lēoht unfæġer (moved with fury: there started from his eyes / unlovely light in the very form of fire; 726–727). the reference to a light (which is explicitly compared to a fire) thus characterizes grendel as both human and nonhuman: such a dichotomy is both strengthened and broken. in fact, no human being would be capable of emitting such an “unlovely” light from his/her eyes. this occurs precisely when a murderous action is being accomplished, when grendel is following a conduct completely contrary to the laws and values of the human community. however, grendel cannot be considered as exclusively belonging to the realm of darkness —to nature and nonhumanity— precisely because light is part of his body: the light which shines in the moments of celebration of beowulf’s strength as well as the light which characterizes the glorious hall of men are indeed part of this hostile creature’s body too. the boundaries of the dichotomy of light and darkness, although often utilized by the poet in order to sustain oppositions such as human and nonhuman or nature against society, are further broken by references to light as belonging to both terms of such oppositions. the binomials of human and nonhuman are partly negated also by the fact that it is when the light of the sun is shining that the value in battle of grendel and his mother as well —the fact that only a very powerful being could have caused such a violent carnage of men— is recognized by the entire community of individuals of heorot. indeed, ðā wæs on ūhtan mid ærdæġe / grendles gūðcræft gumum undyrne (when the dawn broke and day began grendel’s battle-strength filled men’s eyes; 126–127). furthermore, we should consider that grendel’s movements as well as those of his mother are precisely directed at those places where there is a fire. in fact, both of these monstrous beings move from the vaulted chamber illuminated by fire, which is their own dwelling, through the lake’s waters, in which a flame is present at night, towards the luminous “lantern,” which is heorot. fire also represents the hostile creatures’ wanderings themselves. in fact, grendel’s movements towards the hall are described as unpredictable and not straightforward, as are those of the flames. before reaching heorot during the night, grendel moves erratically like the flames of a fire, which do not exist except in motion and similarly causes destruction and brings death when he reaches heorot. in the same respect, as guillemette bolens has noted (2001: 122), the dragon provides fire for the illumination of its own path, for its homicidal actions and its circling and unpredictable movements reproduce those of the flames. indeed, the poet says that, after its escape from the burial 12 antonio sanna ground in which it had been resting, the fire-breathing creature hāt ond hrēohmōd hlæw oft ymbehwearf (circled and circled in his flames, savage; 2296). the movements of the dragon’s wanderings —which alternate between the hall of heorot and a cave whose entrance has a þære burnan wælm / heaðofyrum hāt (boiling watercourse with killing flames; 2546–2547)— are associated with those of the luminous flames such a creature is able to emit. it is interesting to note that grendel and the dragon are rendered similar also by the fact that they both emit light and fire precisely when motivated by a feeling of hostility against the human beings. indeed, fire is mentioned in reference to grendel’s eyes in the precise moment in which the monster ēode yrremōd (moved with fury; 726) against the warriors in heorot. in the same respect, the dragon is specifically defined as hrēohmōd (savage; 2296) during its nocturnal peregrinations and when assaulting the people of the shining hall. the association of the flames with a feeling of hostility is made again in the following verses of the poem which narrate that the dragon wæs ðā ġebolgen beorges hyrde, wolde se lāða līġe forġyldan drinċfæt dyre. found his rage, his hateful purpose to have the price in fire of the precious drinking-cup; (2304–2306) in all of these examples, fire is linked to the idea of the cruelty and savagery of the monsters against the human beings. nevertheless, the movements of beowulf as well are described as alternating between those places where light and fire are present. indeed, the peregrinations of the hero after his arrival at heorot reflect those of his adversaries. beowulf retraces the steps of his enemies in order to find and kill them. therefore, he directs his movements from the luminous “lantern” of heorot towards the light and fire present in grendel’s and the dragon’s dwellings. fire is depicted in the destinations of the journeys of both the hero and his adversaries as well as it characterizes the murderous intentions of all of them. we should remember, in fact, that beowulf and his three adversaries are all set on what the poet (when specifically referring to grendel’s mother) defines as a sorhfulne sīð (journey of death; 1278). i think we can relate this specific phrase to the journeys of grendel, of the dragon and of beowulf as well. in fact, grendel travels between the fires of his lair and those of heorot breaking the boundaries of dichotomy in beowulf 13 in order to kill the human beings who make him suffer with their joy. grendel’s mother begins a “journey of death” with the evil intention of avenging her son’s death; likewise, the dragon moves towards the light and fire of heorot in order to avenge the theft of the precious cup stolen from its own treasure. similarly, beowulf begins a “journey of death” towards grendel’s lair and the dragon’s cave with the intention of killing his adversaries. all of these characters are therefore motivated by the feelings of rage or revenge precisely when their movements are directed to the places where a fire is burning. the representation of fire too associates beowulf with all of his adversaries, thus invalidating some of the boundaries of the poem’s dichotomies. many of the binomials present in the text of beowulf are therefore complicated through the imagery of light and fire. these are pictured as the elements which characterize heorot as well as grendel’s and the dragon’s dwellings. in this way, they can be interpreted as blurring the boundaries between the binomials of human/nonhuman and nature/society. in addition, light and fire are utilized to characterize some physical details of the monsters (the eyes of grendel and the breath of the dragon) as well as their movements. the contraposition of the murderous intentions of such monsters with the civility of the actions of the human beings is strengthened by means of light and fire being shown as fundamental in those moments in which the human community of heorot recognizes the value and strength of a warrior. however, such a contraposition is negated by the fact that light is shining also when the strength of the monsters who have committed a carnage of human beings is acknowledged. it is in this respect that we can argue that fire and light can be interpreted as allowing the coexistence of opposites in the text of beowulf. references acker, paul. 2006: horror and the maternal in beowulf. pmla 121.3: 702–716. alfano, christine. 1992: the issue of female monstrosity: a reevaluation of grendel’s mother. comitatus: a journal of medieval and renaissance studies 23: 1– 16. bolens, guillemette. 2001: the limits of textuality: mobility and fire production in homer and in beowulf. oral tradition 16.1: 107–128. bradley, s. a. j. trans. 1995: anglo-saxon poetry. london, everyman. griffiths, bill. 1996: meet the dragon: an introduction to beowulf’s adversary. loughborough, uk, heart of albion press. 14 antonio sanna hill, joyce. 2002: confronting germania latina: changing responses to old english biblical verse. in r. m. liuzza ed. the poems of ms junius 11: basic readings. london, routledge: 1–19. huppé, bernard f. 1984: the hero in the earthly city: a reading of beowulf. binghamton, ny, state university of new york. fulk, r. d., robert e. bjork & john d. niles eds. 2009: klaeber’s beowulf, 4 th edition. toronto, university of toronto press. köberl, johann. 2002: the indeterminacy of beowulf. lanham, md, university press of america. lapidge, michael. 1993: beowulf and the psychology of terror. in helen damico & john leyerle eds. heroic poetry in the anglo-saxon period: studies in honor of jess b. bessinger, jr. kalamazoo, mi, western michigan university: 373–402. lee, alvin a. 1998: gold-hall and earth-dragon: beowulf as metaphor. toronto, university of toronto press. lionarons, joyce tally. 1998: the medieval dragon: the nature of the beast in germanic literature. enfield lock, uk, hisarlik press. mandel, jerome & bruce a. rosenberg eds. 1970: medieval literature and folklore studies. new brunswick, nj, rutgers university press. mitchell, bruce & fred c. robinson. 2000: beowulf: an edition with relevant shorter texts. oxford, blackwell. morgan, edwin trans. 2002: beowulf. manchester, carcanet press. orchard, andy. 2003: pride and prodigies: studies in the monsters of the beowulf manuscript. london, university of toronto press. osborn, marijane. 1995: the great feud: scriptural history and strife in beowulf. in peter s. baker ed. beowulf: basic readings. london, garland: 111–125. overing, gillian r. 1990: language, sign, and gender in beowulf. carbondale, il, southern illinois university press. parks, ward. 1993: prey tell: how heroes perceive monsters in beowulf. journal of english and germanic philology 92.1: 1-16. pasternack, carol braun. 1997: post-structuralist theories: the subject and the text. in katherine o’brien o’keeffe ed. reading old english texts. cambridge, cambridge university press: 170–191. robinson, fred. c. 1993: history, religion, culture: the background necessary for teaching beowulf. in fred c. robinson ed. the tomb of beowulf and other essays. oxford, blackwell: 36–51. sandner, david. 1999: tracking grendel: the uncanny in beowulf. extrapolation 40.2: 162–176. schichler, robert l. 2000: understanding the outsider: grendel, geisel, and the grinch. popular culture review 11.1: 99–105. staver, ruth johnston. 2005: a companion to beowulf. london, greenwood press. breaking the boundaries of dichotomy in beowulf 15 steele, felicia jean. 2001: grendel: another dip into the etymological mere. english language notes 40.3: 1–13. taylor, keith p. 2004: beowulf 1259a: the inherent nobility of grendel’s mother. english language notes 31.3: 13–25. tolkien, j.r.r. 1936: beowulf: the monsters and the critics. proceedings of the british academy 22: 245–295. trubshaw, bob. 1998: dragon-slaying myths ancient and modern. london, dragon’s head press. wright, herbert g. 1957: good & evil; light & darkness; joy & sorrow in beowulf. the review of english studies 8:29: 1–11. author’s address independent scholar, italy received: 10 march 2016 e-mail: isonisanna@hotmail.com revised version accepted: 19 october 2016 selim robert rouse, selim 10 (2000): 123—143 expectation vs. experience: encountering the saracen other in middle english romance the representation of the saracen in medieval literature is an issue that has attracted a great deal of attention from literary scholars. early interest concentrated upon the representation, or perhaps more correctly the misrepresentation, of islamic culture within the medieval west. dorothee metlitzki’s seminal 1977 study the matter of araby in medieval england provides a useful summary of the ways in which images of the saracens were constructed in middle english. by the time of romances such as beues of hamtoun and the sowdone of babylone the saracen can be seen to have been most often represented in one of four ways: ‘the enamored muslim princess; the converted saracen; the defeated emir or sultan; and the archetypal saracen giant.’1 in recent years critical attention has increasingly concentrated upon developing an understanding of the function of the saracen within the process of medieval identity formation. as the antithesis of the christian west, the image of the saracen provides a powerful racial, cultural and religious other during the later middle ages. making use of psychoanalytic theory, scholars such as jeffrey jerome cohen read medieval images of the saracen as acting to simplify the inherent complexities of individual and national identity.2 by adhering to the binary paradigm of christian as good and saracen as evil, the oppositional model of identity formation produces a 1 metlitzki, d. 1977. the matter of araby in medieval england. yale university press, new haven: 161. metlitzki provides a useful discussion and summary of the four stock saracens: 160 – 197. 2 cohen, j.j. 2000. of giants: sex, monsters, and the middle ages. minnesota university press, minneapolis: 132 – 3. robert rouse 128 construction of identity that, while reductive, allows a clearer and less problematic definition of self and nation. however, not all representations of the saracen are as uncomplicated as this paradigm suggests. this paper investigates the construction of the saracen other in two romances, the middle english guy of warwick and beues of hamtoun.1 these two narratives present constructions of the saracen other that bear useful comparison, highlighting both the mechanisms of difference and the subjective nature of difference itself. by examining how these romances represent the dissimilarity of east and west i hope to shed some light upon the processes that are involved in their construction of difference. dorothee metlitzki, commenting upon the depiction of the arab world in beues of hamtoun, concludes that: ‘sir beues tells us what the average englishman in hall and marketplace knew or imagined about the saracens.’2 by traveling into the lands of the east, beues and similar heroes such as guy of warwick are depicted as encountering one of the constituent elements in the process of identity formation – the other. this experiencing of the racial and religious other provides for the heroes themselves, and vicariously for their audiences, an important element in the construction of identity. through the medium of the romance, the cultural process of otherness is given shape in the form of the saracen world, enabling both the literary hero and the literate audience to ‘encounter’ the other. the cross-cultural experience as represented in the romance of guy of warwick produces what one might imagine to be an image typical of 1 this paper deals expressly with the middle english versions of the beues and guy narratives, not their anglo-norman antecedents. as such it represents a synchronic as opposed to a diachronic study of these romances. this approach privileges the concerns of the audience of these texts over those of their ‘authors’, a key tenet of the reception theory approach to literature. by examining the middle english versions of these romances as texts in their own right, regardless of their degree of indebtedness to their anglo-norman antecedents, we can move closer to an understanding of these texts as they may have been read and understood by their contemporary audiences. cf. cohen: 91. 2 metlitzki: 120. the saracen other in me romances 129 medieval orientalism.1 in a manner analogous to the historical crusader experience, the islamic world is characterized by hostile territorial ambition. making use of traditional romance generic conventions such as heathen sultans, treacherous stewards, wrongly imprisoned knights and devilish giants, the saracen other is constructed through contrasting archetypes of religion, honour and physical appearance. guy’s first encounter with the saracen world occurs after he has already established his reputation as a renowned knight. guy’s early career, prompted largely by his desire to win the heart of felice, the earl of warwick’s daughter, is spent in tournaments in normandy, spain, and germany, and in numerous wars in italy and elsewhere on the continent.2 while at the emperor reyner’s court in germany, guy and his companion herhaud encounter foreign merchants arrived from the east and bearing momentous news. the merchants tell of the dire need of ernis, emperor of constantinople, who is besieged by a saracen host led by the sultan of coyne. this second-hand report of the saracen other provokes the desire to confront it. equipped by the emperor with a company of one hundred german knights, the two englishmen travel to constantinople and put themselves at ernis’s command. from the very start, this aventure has a markedly different tone to those that guy has undertaken thus far. guy wishes to aid the emperor against the sultan’s forces, who þat lond destrud & men aqueld, / & cristendom þai han michel afeld (2853 – 4). here guy’s motive seems to be one of christian solidarity, although herhaud does add the corollary: y graunt it be / miche worþschipe it worþ to þe (2855 – 6). once in constantinople, guy is recognized by the emperor as a powerful ally, and is soon thrown into battle against the sultan’s forces. it is here that guy encounters for the first time the saracen other – in the person of the 1 in this paper i will be referring to the fourteenth-century middle english version of the guy of warwick narrative, as found in the auchinleck ms (ms advocates 19.2.1). zupitza, j. 1883 – 91. guy of warwick. [eets] kegan paul, london. 2 felice, a particularly demanding romance objet d’amour, repeatedly rejects guy’s advances, compelling him to undertake increasingly dangerous and timeconsuming journeys to win her love. it is ironic then, that when she does finally agree to marry guy, he has reached a stage in his life when his mind has begun to turn to more spiritual matters, and he soon leaves her to pursue a spiritual quest as a pilgrim. robert rouse 130 sultan’s nephew, þe amiral costdram (2905). this initial image of a saracen warrior is presented in surprisingly complimentary terms: so strong he is, & of so gret mi t, in world y wene no better kni t; for þer nis man no kni t non þat wiþ wretþe dar loken him on. his armes alle avenimed beþ: þat venim is strong so þe deþ: in þis world nis man þat he take mi t þat he ne schuld dye anon ri t. (guy of warwick, 2907 – 14). costdram is a knight of great strength, without peer, upon whom other men fear to look. however, the envenomed nature of costdram’s weapons mark him out as other, casting doubt upon his honour and differentiating him from christian knights such as guy, to whom the use of such weapons is both unknown and unthinkable. costdram here represents an image of a knightly other, unheimlich in comparison with the normative values of guy’s own western conception of knighthood. costdram’s role as a doppelganger figure in relation to guy is emphasized by the way in which the battle is structured. each of guy’s knights are involved in individual combats within the wider melee, pairing off with named opponents – herhaud slays the king of turkey (2943), the french knight tebaud kills helmadan (2949), while the german gauter strikes down redmadan (2955). this initial encounter with the saracen other establishes a comparative paradigm for guy’s subsequent experiences. while guy and his knights see off this first assault with some ease, the sultan’s host, and the saracen other that it represents, is not so easily dealt with. they are soon once more at the gates of the city. after seeing his first sortie beaten off, the sultan personally leads the next attack, one that leads him into direct conflict with guy. the sultan strikes first, after which the following exchange occurs: wiþ gret hete he smot to gij, opon his helme, sikerly, þat he feld þat o quarter. to gij he seyd a bismer: the saracen other in me romances 131 ‘y-sestow, lord? bi apolin, þat was a strok of a sarrazin!’ gij to þe soudan smot þo, his helme no was him worþ a slo: resares euen forþ þe breyn helme & flesse he carf wiþ meyn. þan he seyd to him a bismer: ‘mahoun halp þe litel þer! bodi & soule no nou t þer-of no is nou t worþ a lekes clof. hou so it go of mi wounde, of mahoun þou hast litel help y-founde. er þou scorndest me, of mi wounde þou madest þi gle: leche gode schal ich haue, þat mi wounde schal to hele drawe; þou hast a croun schauen to þe bon; tomorwe þou mi t sing anon. wele þou þou test to ben a prest, when þou of swiche a bischop order berst!’ now biginneþ þat gret fi t (guy of warwick, 3631 – 55) the sultan exalts in his blow: bi apolin, / þat was a strok of a sarrazin! however, guy returns the buffet with some interest, slicing through the sultan’s helmet and across the top of his scalp. guy points out that mahoun has been of little help to the sultan, and interprets this lack of martial aid as a sign of the inferiority of the saracen religion, which, in guy’s opinion is nou3t worþ a lekes clof.1 the sultan’s lack of fortune with his blow to guy’s helmet is understood by guy as representing the weakness of the saracen faith, while guy’s all-together more effective blow is given christian meaning through guy’s tonsorial taunt: þou hast a croun schauen to þe bon; / tomorwe þou mi3t sing anon. / wele þou þou3test to ben a prest. guy’s martial exegesis interprets the difference between the two sword-blows as demonstrating the relative worth of the christian and saracen faiths. 1 mahoun (mohammed), along with apolin and ternagaunt, is one of the unholy trinity of deities commonly ascribed to islam during the middle ages. robert rouse 132 this demonstration of christianity’s superiority undermines the sultan’s belief in his gods, and this leads to a remarkable renunciation of the saracen triumvirate. after retreating injured from the battle, the sultan is approached by an amiral who reports their battlefield losses. the amiral tells him that due to their misfortune, his troops have turned away from their gods: our godes ous hateþ, for soþe to sigge (3678). the sultan has the idols of their gods brought before him, and publicly berates them: fy, fy,’ he seyd, ‘on [þe], apolin! þou schalt haue wel iuel fin, & þou, ternagaunt, also: michel schame schal com ou to; & þou, mahoun, her alder lord, þou nart nou t worþ a tord! (guy of warwick, 3699 – 704). he then physically attacks the idols, breaking them to pieces with a stave.1 this internal crisis of faith corresponds with the breaking of the saracen lines, and they retreat from constantinople once more. amidst the warfare, guy also finds time to become embroiled in the subterfuges of the emperor’s steward, morgadour. after repeated attempts to incriminate guy in relation to the emperor’s daughter clarice, the treacherous steward manipulates guy into volunteering for the near-suicidal task of acting as an envoy to the sultan.2 upon arriving at the saracen camp, guy enters the sultan’s pavilion and addresses the sultan with the following speech: þan seyd gij þe englisse, ‘vnderstond to mi speche: 1 this is a common motif that is also found in, amongst others, the early-fourteenthcentury middle english otuel and roland, where the saracen king garcy destroys his own idols after his champion clarel is defeated by otuel. o’sullivan, m. 1935. otuel and roland. [eets] oxford university press, oxford. 2 the nature of constantinople itself, as a liminal space between orient and occident, is particularly interesting with regards to the history of east-west contact in the middle ages. as the site of cultural hybridity, where cultural norms such as honour are mutable, the city operates as both the object of violent contest and the location of cultural contact. the saracen other in me romances 133 þilke lord þat woneþ an heye, þat al þing walt fer & neye, & in þe rode lete him pini, al cristen men to saui, & in þe se made þe sturioun, so if ou alle his malisoun, & alle þilk þat ich here se, þat mis-bileued men be; & þe at þe first, sir soudan, cristes wreche þe come opan! yuel fure breninde fast þe opon, & cleue þi brest doun to þi ton! for icham gij e mow wel se, yuel mot e alle y-the! vnder-stond, treitour, mi resoun: haue þou cristes malisoun, & alle þilke forþ mitt te, þat ich her about þe se. þe heye god þat is ful of miyt binim ou our limes & our si t! bi me þe sent word þemperour garioun, þat mi ti men haþ in his bandoun, þurch wham þou art y-brou t to schond, & hoteþ þe wende out of his lond. (guy of warwick, 3889 – 914). guy then proposes that the saracens find themselves a champion to fight him, and that this single combat will determine who shall rule the land.1 this offer is rebuffed after sultan discovers the envoy to be none other than guy, the slayer of the sultan’s nephew costdram, and the sultan orders him to be seized and thrown into his dungeon. guy responds to this by decapitating the sultan and fleeing the camp, pursed by a host of saracens. guy’s first encounter with the saracen other constructs a cultural opposition that leaves no room for compromise or co-existence.2 his speech to the 1 a proposal that prefigures guy’s most memorable moment – his legendary final combat with the giant danish champion colbrond at winchester. 2 this is in contrast to a speech made in similar circumstances by beues of hamtoun, which will be discussed later in this paper. robert rouse 134 sultan is notable for the uncompromising attitude of religious intolerance towards the saracens, an attitude that is characteristic of the whole romance. guy defines himself as one of the cristen men, who have god’s grace, in opposition to the mis-bileued saracens, highlighting the binary nature of difference in this romance’s construction of the saracen other. guy’s second major encounter with the east takes place after he has returned home to england and married his liege’s daughter felice. once he has won the hand of his lady, guy comes to the realization that all his great deeds thus far in his life have been for temporal ends. seized by a spiritual passion, guy determines to leave his newly won bride and wander the world as a pilgrim doing the lord’s work: y schal walk for mi sinne / barfot bi doun & dale. / þat ich haue wiþ mi bodi wrou3t / wiþ mi bodi it schal be bou3t, / to bote me of þat bale (29: 8 – 12). guy travels to jerusalem and bethlehem, before eventually arriving in antioch, where he encounters jonas, the christian earl of durras. jonas tells him a long tale of misfortune, which has resulted in jonas being sent to search for guy in order for him to champion the saracen king triamour in a judicial combat.1 guy, moved by jonas’s claims that king triamour will kill his sons if jonas fails to find guy, keeps his identity hidden but offers to fight in guy’s stead. the two then set out for alexandria to face the combat and to save jonas’s sons from the axe. this judicial combat, against the sultan’s giant champion amoraunt, highlights two important elements of the saracen other: gigantism and honour. the first of these, the trope of the saracen giant, is evident in the initial description of amoraunt: þan dede he com forþ a sarrazine, 1 a long and complicated tale, in which jonas and his sons defend jerusalem from the saracens, but then make the fatal mistake of following them into their own lands where they are captured by the saracen king triamour. sometime later, triamour’s son inadvertently slays the sultan of alexandria’s son following an argument over a game of chess, which leads to triamour’s accusation by the sultan and his committal to the judicial duel. triamour, faced with the prospect of fighting armoraunt, seeks the advice of his christian prisoners who inform him of the renown of guy and heraud, which leads to the king offering jonas his freedom if he can find guy. the saracen other in me romances 135 haue he cristes curs & mine wiþ boke & eke wiþ belle. out of egypt he was y-come, michel & griselich was þat gome wiþ ani god man to duelle. he is so michel & vnrede, of his si3t a man may drede, wiþ tong as y þe telle. as blac he is as brodes brend: he semes as it were a fende, þat comen were out of helle. (guy of warwick, 62: 1 – 12). the excess of the saracen other, previously alluded to in guy’s experiences at constantinople, is here manifested in the body of the giant amoraunt. this avatar of bodily excess, the conquering of which is so important to the process of the physical and spiritual maturation of the romance hero, combines the other of the giant with the other of the saracen, creating a potent synthesis of these two elements of identity formation.1 the saracen giant embodies all those things that the romance hero by necessity approaches, but must not become: he is michel & unrede, huge and uncontrolled – an image of unrestrained masculine power, which western heroes such as guy must seek to control and sublimate within chivalric codes of behavior and honour. this uncontrolled masculinity is given demonic form in the figure of the saracen giant, characterized by the blackness of the fiend, the western archetypal construction of the uncontrolled nature of the african. guy’s judicial combat with amoraunt also provides an opportune moment to illustrate a third point of saracen otherness – the lack of chivalric honour possessed by the denizens of the east. after a long and fierce period of fighting, the giant amoraunt is stricken by a great thirst and offers guy the following bargain: ac lete me drink a litel wi t 1 much has been written on the role of giants regarding identity formation, most recently and engagingly by jeffrey jerome cohen in his study of giants: sex, monsters, and the middle ages. robert rouse 136 for þi lordes loue ful of mi t þat þou louest wiþ wille, & y þe hot bi mi lay, 3if þou haue ani þrest to-day, þou shalt drink al þi fille. (guy of warwick, 114: 7 – 12). guy, constrained by the chivalric code of honour, allows his opponent the time to refresh himself, and when amoraunt has done so, their battle resumes. however, when in turn guy requires water, amoraunt reneges on his promise and replaces it with a conditional one: he will allow his opponent to drink only once he has revealed his name to him. sorely oppressed by both the heat and his thirst, guy declares his name and requests once more that the giant allow him to drink. amoraunt, upon discovering that his foe is none other than the hated guy, again refuses to allow his adversary to slake his thirst, and attacks him in the water when guy attempts to drink without leave. the untrustworthy nature of the saracen comes to the fore once more in the unequal exchange of drinks, and guy’s condemnation of the giant seems to characterize all those saracens with whom he has experience: ‘amoraunt,’ þan seyd gij, ‘þou art ful fals, sikerly, & ful-filt of tresoun. no more wil y trust to þe for no bihest þou hotest me: þou art a fals glotoun.’ (guy of warwick, 130: 7 – 12). fals is one of the most damning condemnations used by guy within the poem. of the nine occurrences within the poem, eight are used to describe guy’s traitorous enemies, and it is fitting that amoraunt’s double falsehood receives two of these.1 guy of warwick constructs the saracen other in a manner that provides a clear contrast between east and west. this representation is materialized in 1 the ninth occurrence is reserved for condemnation of the saracen trinity. the saracen other in me romances 137 the form of amoraunt, whose untrustworthy nature is exceeded only by the demonic origin of his grossly oversized body, and who represents a religion and culture that is worthy only of martial resistance and opposition. for guy, and his audience, the saracen other is defined by its binary opposition to the west, and his encounters with this other merely reinforce and illustrate the difference that is expected. in contrast to this, beues of hamtoun presents a more complex image of the saracen other that in many ways questions the construction present in guy. in this romance, similar to guy in that it is again ostensibly set in the time of anglo-saxon england, beues is exposed to the east when only a child, and in many ways becomes a type of cultural hybrid figure, lacking the preconceptions regarding the east that guy exhibits. beues problematizes the three points of difference that i have highlighted in guy of warwick: religion, honour, and physical appearance. beues’s initial encounter with the saracen other occurs when he is sold by his mother’s knights to merchants. he is taken over the sea to armenia and arrives in the land of king ermyn. the king, highly impressed by the well-built and beautiful child, asks him his name and story. beues tells all, and the king, being widowed and with only his fair daughter josian, offers to marry beues to his daughter and make him the heir to the kingdom if he will convert to the worship of apolyn. beues declines however, due to his love of christ. beues’s first experience of the other is constructed in the form of a threatening conversion narrative, where the christian beues must withstand temptation and reaffirm his own christian, and english, identity. however, beues’s christian faith, once established, is permitted by king ermyn, implying a degree of religious tolerance foreign to the east as constructed in the guy narrative. despite having reaffirmed his faith in christ, beues has missed much of the christian upbringing that constitutes guy’s character – a lack that is illustrated in his first experience of religious conflict. while out riding with the king’s men, beues is told by a saracen knight that it is christmas, which men in beues’s country make great bliss in, and that beues should honour his god as the saracen honours his own. despite the saracen knight’s robert rouse 138 framing of christmas in terms of religious tolerance, the reference to the christian holy day has an opposite effect on beues: beues to þat sarasin said: ‘of cristendom it ichaue a-braid, ichaue seie on þis dai ri t armed mani a gentil kni t, torneande ri t in þe feld with helmes bri t and mani scheld; and were ich alse stiþ in plas, ase euer gii, me fader, was, ich wolde for me lordes loue, þat sit hi in heuene aboue, fi te wiþ ow euerichon. er þan ich wolde hennes gon!’ (beues of hamtoun, 607 – 18).1 beues associates christmas not with the mass or with religious observance, but rather with the tournaments that he remembers witnessing in his childhood.2 this martial remembrance stirs the boastful youth to declare that he could defeat all fifty of ermyn’s knights if he had the mind to, for the love of his god. the saracen takes offense at beues’s boasting, and mocks him in front of the other knights, who look to teach þe 3onge cristene hounde (621) a lesson. beues fights back and slays all fifty of ermyn’s knights. beues’s first fight is contrived through an opposition in religion, a point that is emphasized by its setting on christmas day. beues seeks to compensate for his lack of knowledge about christianity through a bloody martial baptism. denied the community of fellow christians, his performance of the christian faith is facilitated through the only means he has available to him – violent conflict with the religious other. what makes this more remarkable is that it follows the saracen knight’s demonstration of religious tolerance: anoure þe god, so i schel myn / boþe mahoun and 1 all quotations are from kölbing, e. 1894. the romance of sir beves of hamtoun. [eets] kegan paul, london. 2 the practice of christmas tournaments is also mentioned in sir gawain and the green knight. ‘þis kyng lay at camylot vpon krystmasse… / …þer tournayed tulkes by tymez ful mony, / justed ful jolilé þise gentyle kni3tes,’ ll. 37, 41 – 42. tolkien, j. r. r. and e. v. gordon, 2nd ed. davis, n. 1967. sir gawain and the green knight. oxford university press, oxford: 2. the saracen other in me romances 139 apolyn! (605 – 606). it seems that for the audience of the fourteenth-century beues, the only good saracen is a dead saracen. however, after this conventional beginning to the construction of the saracen other in beues, things become less straightforward. beues, exposed from such an early age to religious tolerance from his saracen hosts, seems willing to contemplate a reciprocal tolerance towards the saracen religion. however, this tendency is never fully realized and leads to beues exhibiting what amounts to at times an almost schizophrenic attitude towards the saracens. after being made a knight by king ermyn, and having proved himself by slaying a notorious wild boar, beues is implicated by the jealous royal chamberlain in a tryst with the king’s daughter josian. unaware of ermyn’s displeasure, beues agrees to carry a letter, in the manner of hamlet, to the king’s erstwhile enemy brademond.1 on arriving at brademond’s city of damascus, beues witnesses a number of saracens leaving a mosque (mameri) after prayers. he is so incensed by this sight that he rushes into the mosque and slays the heathen priest. he then throws the mosque’s idols into a nearby fen.2 after this impulsive act of iconoclasm, beues enters brademond’s hall and greets him thus: ‘god, þat made þis world al ronde þe saue, sire king brademond, and ek alle þine fere, þat i se now here, and if þat ilche blessing likeþ þe ri t noþing, mahoun, þat is god þin, teruagaunt & apolin, þe blessi and di te be alle here mi te! (beues of hamtoun, 1373 – 82). 1 however, unlike the prince of denmark, the naïve beues declines the opportunity of reading the letter en route, once again exhibiting a misplaced trust in his saracen hosts. 2 beues’s iconoclastic act illustrates another common medieval misapprehension regarding islam, which of course as a religion prohibits the use of images. robert rouse 140 beues exhibits in his speech a religious tolerance that is in conflict with his earlier impulsive actions. he first offers a christian blessing, but concedes that if brademond prefers, he may be blessed by his own gods instead. beues’s tolerance of the religious other, albeit only on an intellectual level, is in stark contrast to the condemnation of the saracen religion found within the speech that guy makes in similar circumstances. however, while beues seems to have come to an intellectual acceptance of the saracen religious other, he is still unable to countenance its physical manifestation. beues’s tolerance also applies to the untrustworthiness of the saracens. he repeatedly encounters their lack of honour, but much to his own disadvantage, refuses to draw any general conclusions based on this experience. it is not until he has been deceived by king ermyn, his chamberlain, and king brademond that he learns to distrust saracens. after slaying the giant brother of king grander, beues enters the giant’s castle and makes the giant’s lady feed him, but having finally learned the untrustworthiness of the saracens, he makes her eat and drink a bit of everything first, in order to avoid being poisoned. beues, having been raised within the east, seems unable to view the actions of the saracens with the discerning view of an outsider, as guy does, and is thus condemned to take a much harder route to an understanding of the nature of the saracen other. the third aspect of the saracen other, so central to the construction that we find in guy, is that of the giant. in beues, we again find this stereotype undermined in the form of ascopard, beues’s giant page. beues first encounters ascopard after he has absconded with josian from the court of mombraunt. the giant has been sent by the sorcerer-king garcy to reclaim josian for his master king ivor. ascopard is a curious giant, who claims that in his own land he was taunted and bullied by the other giants for being so small: eueri man me wolde smite; / ich was so lite & so meruy, / eueri man me clepede dweruy (2524 – 26). beues duly defeats ascopard, but spares him his life at the urging of josian, and instead accepts the giant as his page. after escaping from the east, josian is baptized by the bishop of cologne, but ascopard refuses, claiming that he does not wish to be drowned, and declares that icham to meche te be cristine! (2596). despite his benign the saracen other in me romances 141 conduct, ascopard remains the immutable and unconvertible other, and in the end proves ultimately untrustworthy by reverting to the service of his original master and abducting josian. the characteristics of the saracen other operate in a different manner in beues of hamtoun compared to guy of warwick. while saracens do in the end turn out to be perfidious, giants devilish, and the saracen religion damnable, beues has great difficulty in identifying these aspects of the east. in comparison to guy, beues has not been exposed to the preconceptions that identify these elements of the east, and is forced to discover them for himself. beues’s experience with the saracen other is one of discovery, whereas guy’s experience is simply one of expectation and reinforcement. beues’s status as a cultural hybrid comes into clear focus upon his eventual return to england. having lived for so long in close contact with the saracen other, and with a giant, an armenian wife, and amazing horse in tow, he attracts trouble and is forced to leave again. eventually he returns to the east where he becomes the king of the newly christian kingdom of mombraunt. beues’s incompatibility with the west marks him out as a hybrid figure, caught between two cultures and two worlds. despite the narrative’s affirmation of the western image of the saracen other, beues can be seen to only partially share this evaluation. beues becomes a hybrid figure who has the ability to convert the east, rather then guy, who can only confront it. beues’s inability to clearly define himself against the saracen other raises a number of problems concerning the nature of difference in these two texts. the other in guy of warwick is constructed in terms of simple difference, while in beues, difference and identity can be seen to be much more complex. the following episode in beues illustrates this point nicely. after delivering the treacherous letter, beues is imprisoned by king brademond in a pit full of snakes. here he languishes for some seven years, finally escaping by deceiving the second of his two gaolers by impersonating the first: þo queþ beues wiþ reuful speche: ‘for þe loue of sein mahoun, be þe rop glid bliue adoun robert rouse 142 and help, þat þis þef wer ded!’ (beues of hamtoun, 1624 – 27). beues’s ruse, if one can call it that, is accomplished merely by asking for aid by ‘þe loue of sein mahoun’, and if this is all that is required from him to masquerade as a saracen then the difference between beues and the other is narrow and complex indeed. one wonders what effect this may have had upon the audience of the text – if the other is so easily impersonated, does this make it less threatening, and therefore less of a ready target for the purposes of identity formation. the construction of the saracen other in these two romances provides an interesting insight into the way in which fourteenth-century england imagined the east. while guy of warwick represents the paradigm of simple differentiation between christian and saracen that is typical of many medieval texts, beues of hamtoun presents an all-together more complex situation. subjected to the acculturation experienced by all intercultural travelers, beues is caught between the expectations of western christian society and the experiences that he undergoes. this becomes problematic for both beues and his audience when he encounters saracens who do not conform to the cultural and generic expectations of middle english romance. it is due to this complex construction of the nature of medieval otherness that beues stands out as a romance of considerable interest to scholars of cultural identity. robert rouse university of bristol * † * microsoft word review 1_2023.docx selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. 28 (2023): 107–110. issn: 1132-631x doi: 10.17811/selim.28.2023.107-110 © ediuno. ediciones de la universidad de oviedo. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. bueno alonso, jorge luis, ed. 2022. tolkien in the 21st century: reading, reception, and reinterpretation. cambridge: cambridge scholars publishing. pp. 175. isbn 9781527583955. reviewed by jon alkorta martiartu university of the basque country it is an undeniable fact that, since peter jackson’s the lord of the rings (2001–2003) film trilogy came out at the beginning of the present century, the public’s interest in the work of j.r.r. tolkien has grown considerably. indeed, making a list that includes every single product derived from tolkien’s the lord of the rings or the hobbit—be it in the form of research, books, films, videogames or merchandise, to name but a few—would be an arduous task for anyone. even now, and leaving all controversy aside, amazon’s series on the history of the rings of power and middle-earth’s second age adds up to this never-ending list. thus, we could say that tolkien and his work have managed to obtain and hold on to a position of certain centrality in the cultural stage of the last two decades. the book in hand is precisely a collection of essays that studies the current reception of tolkien’s works in a variety of formats, such as literary, film, or videogames. according to the editor, the aim of the present collection is to address the reception and reinterpretation of the work of this british author at this point in the 21st century. hence, this collection of articles presents an analysis of both tolkien’s literary works and other renderings of his work in formats that are not necessarily literary. the topics covered are very varied and, some of them, we must say, rather innovative, or at least, not as common. these address issues like illustrations, linguistics, the quality of tolkien’s writing, race, oral tradition, or the literary and experiential sources of tolkien’s work, as well as offering a commentary on more modern renderings of it. in the same line, all the authors that contribute to this work share an interest in tolkien, although they come from a wide variety of backgrounds ranging from tolkien’s literature, medieval and arthurian literature, cultural studies, linguistics or adaptation studies. the acknowledgements, presentation of the contributors and a general introductory section are followed by the nine articles that form this volume. the opening article, under the title “‘one visible form’: illustrating middle-earth”, is constructed around a topic that stands out as rather uncommon. here, although adriana taboada gonzález focuses on tolkien’s well-known facet as an artist or illustrator, she aims at establishing a relationship between his drawings and those of prominent tolkien-illustrator alan lee, while asserting the latter’s suitability for the task. the author argues, quite convincingly, that alan lee’s illustrations for tolkien’s literature, as well as his work for peter jackson’s film adaptations, follow tolkien’s ideal regarding the relationship between a literary work and its illustrations, in the sense that the latter should accompany and help the former and never impose a defined view on the reader, but rather allow for their own interpretation. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4533-3709 book reviews 108 tom birkett’s essay, “tolkien’s runes and their legacy”, studies the origin of the runes that tolkien designed for his legendarium, as well as their presence in his literature and more modern adaptations like peter jackson’s film adaptations of the lord of the rings and the hobbit. digging in tolkien’s linguistic facet, birkett establishes that the runes devised by tolkien, contrary to his claims, did derive from older sources, at least appearance-wise. in regard to their use, the author finds it strange that, given all the work that went into their devising, they are granted such a marginal presence in his literature. this clashes with the centrality that they have gained in the film adaptations and in the fantasy genre in general, since, although not functional as tolkien would have originally wished, they are central to their aesthetics. next, jorge luis bueno-alonso, with his paper “‘maldon in the middle’: j.r.r. tolkien’s the homecoming of beorhtnoth as a guide to translate “for his ofermode” (line 89), with a new bilingual proposal”, dives into the topic of old english and looks at a work that, even if it does not belong to tolkien’s middle-earth stories, gives a meaningful insight into tolkien as a linguist. apart from tolkien’s own translation, bueno alonso presents an overview of the other most important translations and interpretations of lines 89–90 of the old english poem the battle of maldon, pointing at the strengths and weaknesses of those translations, considering, first, the word “ofermode” in isolation and, then, as part of its context. he finally moves on to offering his own proposal for what would be an appropriate translation into spanish—“pronto”— and galician—“arroutada”—, which reads more as an absolute truth than as a proposal. the fourth chapter consists of stuart d. lee’s essay “‘where many paths and errands meet’: a close reading of the lord of the rings (rk, v, iv, 1083-1085)”. one of the lengthiest chapters in the book, lee’s aims to prove wrong those who claim tolkien’s style to be dull and overdone, especially fellow writer michael moorcock and burton raffel, and portray tolkien as someone who took his art very seriously. as he suggests in the title, lee tries to do so by focusing on a specific passage of the chapter “the siege of gondor” from the return of the king. indeed, by means of an extensive analysis of said passage where the setting, characterisation, and the style, as well as other elements of world-building are taken into account, lee manages to highlight the richness of this author’s writing and proves that tolkien “at his best, … was a master of narrative” (52). jonathan lench’s essay “endings and beginnings: tolkien’s world and the question of race” works around a topic that has haunted tolkien scholarship over the years. this is the representation of race in tolkien’s middle-earth, one that, as lench comments, has sadly been adopted and flagged by right-wing movements, making tolkien a herald of their baseless claims. lench’s aim in this paper is precisely to show how, as a consequence of a social and personal evolution in terms of racial representation, tolkien’s oeuvre works towards a situation of cooperation and integration among the different races that inhabit his imagined world, stemming from individual characters ridding themselves of inherited cultural and racial stereotypes and embracing those that are different to them. among the many literary traditions, themes and figures around which tolkien’s legendarium is constructed, andoni cossío’s article “oral tradition in the lord of the rings” vindicates the central position that oral tradition, so far rather overlooked by tolkien academics, has in the structure and development of this author’s middle-earth stories. in his paper, cossío focuses on several passages from the lord of the rings book reviews 109 where the singing of songs, the recitation of poems and the telling of stories work as a means of keeping alive cultural knowledge and tradition. after offering a definition of oral literature, cossío moves on to studying some examples of orality in the main races that inhabit tolkien’s universe, that is, hobbits, men and elves. his analysis certainly shows that the passages that he selects fulfill the function ascribed to oral literature, in addition to sharing many of its characteristics, such as mutability, didacticism, common themes or generational development, to name but a few. chapter seven presents “finding a mythology: from tolkien’s reality to middleearth” by sergio lópez martinez. this essay sets off from a challenging premise, namely digging into the relationship between tolkien’s life experiences and academic interests and his middle-earth work. as a topic that has been already worked on so extensively, with seminal works by the likes of carpenter, shippey or garth, it can be complicated to find crevices from which to obtain fresh perspectives and lines of study about it. and this is precisely the main problem with this article, since it reads as a compilation and summary of those sources. the truth is that lópez martinez does present two or three ideas that could perhaps be developed and studied further, but they are merely mentioned, with no more than a few lines devoted to them. following this, we find an article that studies the figure of the dragon in tolkien’s work, analysing its historical and literary sources and its more contemporary renderings in the form of film and videogame adaptations. in “concerning smaug: origins, development and afterlives of a literary dragon”, ibai adrián goldaraz studies draconian precedents such as those featuring in works like beowulf, the völsunga saga or the edda to establish connections between these and tolkien’s smaug regarding their ability to speak, knowledge, wrath or episodes where there is a dialogue between the dragon and the hero. after this, and making use of the theory provided by adaptation studies and genette’s idea of “transtextualism,” adrián goldaraz offers an analysis of smaug’s representation in peter jackson’s the hobbit film trilogy and inevitable entertainment’s 2003 videogame adaptation of the same work to conclude that, although still showcasing some traditional medieval characteristics, these more modern renderings have prioritised a more villainous, violent and visually striking version of smaug. laura gálvez gómez’s article “fairy women in j.r.r. tolkien’s the lord of the rings and their arthurian counterparts” brings the compilation to an end. as the title indicates, gálvez gómez proposes a study of the literary roots of three of the most powerful feminine figures in tolkien’s masterpiece: goldberry, galadriel and arwen. by means of quite a detailed analysis, the author is able to establish several connections between these characters and those fairy queens—such as olwen, morgan le fay, the lady of shalott or the lady of the lake—found in pre-medieval and medieval traditions or in works by authors like shakespeare, spenser and tennyson. the similarities that the author finds between both parties are based on those elements or characteristics to which these figures have been related, as can be nature, sorcery, beauty, or the power to heal and prophesy. as can be seen, the fact that the contributors of the different papers come from different academic backgrounds and have different interests—something that the editor of the volume acknowledges to be deliberate—makes for a compilation that shows tolkien’s work in all its richness of topics and themes, while granting at the same time book reviews 110 insights into the myriad lines of study that it can offer. linked to this, another aspect that is worthy of praise is that, among the nine essays that comprise the present compilation, the reader will find those which offer a more specific and, to a degree, personal reading or interpretation of tolkien’s work, alongside others that make more explicit reference to aspects of middle-earth with which the general public can be more familiar, as the film or videogame adaptations that are studied in some of the chapters. concerning those aspects of the book that could be improved, it must be said that, even though they do not affect the reading of the text in any serious manner, the edition lacks uniformity all throughout. for example, while in most chapters the citation of both direct or indirect quotations runs within the text, there are other cases where these are referenced in the footnotes. in addition, not all of the essays are structured in the same manner. all authors except for one have opted for structuring their texts in different sections, each of them with a heading, but there is one essay that has not been divided into sections. last, there is also a lack of uniformity when it comes to presenting the cited works. while most essays refer to them as “bibliography”, one of them uses the term “references”. again, these are minor issues that do not affect the reading experience, but taking into account the price of the book, one would expect the edition to be more consistent, if only for the sake of uniformity. all in all, this is a volume that offers some serious and well-done research on j.r.r. tolkien’s literary creation, be it related to middle-earth or not. the already mentioned variety that the text offers with regard to the type of authors included and themes that it touches upon is one of its strongest points, and it might constitute a factor that attracts a more general readership, as opposed to other works that only address scholars and do not seek to appeal to the interest of a wider public. (received 22/12/2022) selim anunciación carrera & mª josé carrera, selim 11 (2001-2002): 147—165 philip perry's manuscript sketch of british history (c. 1770): editing a vallisoletan historical record of early britain for at least 25 years now, anglists and historians of the university of valladolid have kept a scientific and humanistic interest in the english college of saint alban in valladolid, an institution that holds bibliographical and documentary sources of an exceptional wealth. in this article, we intend to give notice of the constitution of a team of researchers in the english department of the university of valladolid devoted to the study of such documentary funds. the group is currently working on the edition of one of the manuscripts kept in the college archive —sketch of british history, an ecclesiastical history of early britain written in the 18th century by former college rector philip perry. this article is a preliminary note on a work in progress. the royal english college of st. alban, valladolid the english college of valladolid was founded in the 16th century, when english seminaries were established on the continent for the training of priests that would serve "the english mission" during the persecution of catholics in england and wales.1 the colleges in france and italy being beset by political and economic troubles, spain began to be seen as the best alternative to found a new seminary. in 1589, father robert persons was granted king philip ii's authority to found a new training-college in 1 the first of those was the english college at douai, france, founded in 1568 by cardinal william allen to educate young catholics not allowed to practice their religion under elizabeth i (1558-1603). the college flourished for two centuries and sent dozens of priests into england as missionaries. the new hazards that the french revolution brought to the catholic church threatened the college's survival. in 1793, it was moved from france back into england and became st. edmund’s college, a small catholic boarding school in ware. anunciación carrera & mª josé carrera 148 valladolid, with st. alban, the english protomartyr, as patron saint.2 in the lead of this castilian college, the seminary of st gregory was established in seville three years later and in 1610 the college of st. george in madrid. the three seminaries were under the administration of the jesuits and when these were expelled from spain in 1767 and the colleges mistakenly thought to be their properties, they were confiscated —only to be returned to the english clergy soon afterwards. dr. philip perry, a secular priest and author of the manuscript we are presenting here, was appointed the first english rector of the united colleges in 1768. the three english colleges in spain had all merged into the valladolid institution. perry had a difficult work ahead bringing together their books, rents and foundations. so important is what he accomplished, that michael williams —the scholar that has published more consistently on st. alban's college— considers philip perry its second founder (1986: 107). we today are fortunate to have within easy reach the two magnificent libraries that perry's efforts helped to conform and preserve3 and the college archive that he reorganized, extremely valuable document repositories that have attracted the interest of a number of scholars.4 2 needless to say, queen elizabeth i saw these seminaries as a breeding-place of traitors: «the king of spaine, for furthering of other intentions against englande, has dealt with cardinal allen and father persons to gather together with great labour uppon his charges a multitude of dissolute youthes to begin this seminary of valladolid and others in spaine» [proclamation against seminary priests and jesuits issued by queen elizabeth i (1591:2)]. 3 the 'pigskin' library with 2,883 volumes bound in vellum, comprising the original library at st. alban's and the acquisitions from st. george's in madrid and other jesuit houses; and the old library, with 6,765 volumes. an important number of volumes are, for obvious historical reasons, books of controversies � passionate defences of the catholic orthodoxy then assaulted by a number of heretic reforms. the jesuit spirituality is also manifest in the sheer abundance of volumes by jesuit theologians such as francisco suárez, together with books on law, history, astronomy, grammar, etc. and an important number of texts related to the city of valladolid. 4 these investigative efforts are particularly evident in the period that spans from 1977 to 1990, when the english department review, es, published a number of articles by the late professor ruiz ruiz, among others, who wrote on the founder of the college —the english jesuit robert persons (1546-1610)— and other early college figures, and began to call attention on some of the historical documents kept in the college archives. philip perry's manuscript sketch of british history (c.1770) 149 the san albano research group in 2001, a research team was constituted in the department of english of the university of valladolid, with dr. carlos herrero quirós as director. the san albano research group —as the eight members have chosen to call themselves (www.uva.es/sanalbano)— began their work with a broad motivation: to help establish an academic forum dedicated to the study of the college's rich documentary and bibliographical funds; more specifically, the group has undertaken the creation of a deposit of microfilms of medieval and modern documentary sources on the ecclesiastical history of great britain and ireland, as well as the acquisition of bibliographical resources on ecclesiastical history, particularly that dealing with the medieval and modern periods �both deposits being an offshoot of their two years' background research on one of rector perry's manuscripts held in the college archive: an ecclesiastical history of early britain whose critical edition is currently in active preparation. philip perry's medievalist interests and output to better understand the particulars of this interesting autograph ecclesiastical history, we will benefit from an overview of the author's personality as a committed bibliophile and a tireless writer of historical and devotional works. although not exclusively interested in the medieval era, philip perry nevertheless disclosed a particular interest in it, both in the books he chose to bring to the library and those he wrote. a vast number of volumes in the college old library that were his own revolve around the medieval era. asser's ninth century life of king alfred or de alfredi rebus gestis (839),5 william dugdale's monasticon anglicanum (1655-73),6 james ussher's britannicarum ecclesiarum antiquitates (1639),7 henry 5 in william camden’s anglica, normannica, hibernica, cambrica a veteribus scripta. perry’s personal copy was printed in germany (frankfurt, 1603) [st. alb. big lib. 3466]. 6 or, the history of the ancient abbies and other monasteries, hospitals, cathedrals and collegiate churches in england and wales. perry’s signed twovolume copy was printed in london (1693) [st. alb. big lib. 3812, 3813]. 7 perry’s copy (dublin, 1639) [st. alb. big lib. 5149]. ussher’s antiquities of the british church seems to influence the sketch’s general plan to such a degree that it can be argued that perry’s text may be an abridged english version of ussher’s latin work. an attempt to unearth their intricate connection remains to be made. anunciación carrera & mª josé carrera 150 wharton's anglia sacra (1691),8 thomas innes's essay on the ancient inhabitants of scotland (1729),9 or collections of classical and medieval sources like thomas gale's scriptores historiae britannicae, saxonicae, anglo-danicae (1687),10 to name but a few, are invaluable sources on medieval english history that perry's interests have left for our enjoyment today. not only did he read, buy and collect books �he also wrote. a true scholar, perry has left us many autograph manuscripts: to this day, the college archive holds eighteen voluminous bundles containing his writings. these bundles are representative of the rector's many interests; the medieval period stands out among them. hagiography is one of perry's favourites as shown by his lives of british and english saints; together with the lives of martyrs and holy persons, they testify to the rector's interest in biography in general, particularly evident in his life of bishop robert grosseteste. reformation figures and the reformation period in general are also looked into, as is british history, in the form of loose papers and, of course, in our bundle of three manuscripts, containing a continuation of bede's history and two versions of sketch of british history.11 8 philip perry’s personal copy (1691) [st. alb. big lib. 3602, de archiepiscopis et episcopis ecclesiarum cathedralium; 3603, plures antiquas de vitis and rebus gestis præsulum anglicorum historias]. 9 innes’s two first-edition volumes, printed in london, in 1729, are signed by philip perry [st. alb. big lib. 5157 and 5158]. 10 it contains the works of gildas, nennius, william of malmesbury, john fordun, among others, and chronicles like annales waverleienses. perry’s personal copy is in two volumes (1684, 1691) [st. alb. big lib. 3600, 3601]. 11 the perry manuscripts kept in the archive of san albano and their bundle numbers are: [151] old testament lives; [152] lives of british saints; [153] lives of various english saints (incomplete); [154] english martyrs and lives of saints and holy persons (foreign); [155] continuation of bede's history; [156] life of grosseteste (ms); [157] life of fisher (incomplete); [158] various writings on john fisher; [159] life of erasmus (incomplete); [160] various writings on erasmus; [161] reformation figures e.g. colet, more, crammer, luter (copied); [162] loose quaternions on reformation period. including transcriptions; [163] loose papers on theological subjects and loose papers on british history; [164] liturgical notes: sermons: instructions on the blessed sacrament; [165] sheperd's letters to perry; [s/n] perry's catalogue of archives; perry's travels; a collection of notes for historical studies; [s/n] perry correspondence 1768-73. sheperd correspondence. sheperd vv. catholic committee; [s/n] perry's mss. (history & research). we have used the title that michael williams wrote on each bundle and, if absent, the content summary written on the box that contains each bundle. philip perry's manuscript sketch of british history (c.1770) 151 but perry's output was even larger than this. on finding out a concomitance in the title of the first manuscript in our chosen bundle — continuation of bede's history— with that of a perry manuscript held in the scottish catholic archives,12 two members of the group travelled to edinburgh to examine the link between both texts. the scottish archives hold ten manuscript volumes by philip perry, all but one of which coincide either in title or in subject matter with the valladolid texts.13 the parallelism between the valladolid and the edinburgh papers is one we are currently examining, but this early we are almost certain that the edinburgh versions of the texts with similar title kept in valladolid are the final versions of the san albano drafts.14 in any case, michael williams gives some evidence as to how the works could have reached scotland: john geddes, rector of the scots college in valladolid and a friend of perry's with similar bibliophile interests, would have mediated after the english rector's death to have the books transferred to the isles since he thought that those revised final versions merited publication (1983: 94-95).15 the sketch of british history, 12 in 1957, the scottish bishops bought a house in edinburgh —columba house— where the scottish church archives, housed in blairs college (aberdeen) could be transferred and thus be more accessible to researchers in general. the archives represent catholic life in scotland from the 16th century down to the late 19th century, when the scottish catholic hierarchy was re-established and each diocese began to maintain its own archives. see david mcroberts (1977): 125-28. 13 these are the philip perry manuscripts held in the scottish catholic archives: [p5.1] vita christi, companion volume to introduction to the lives of the saints; [p5.2] introduction to the lives of the saints; [p5.3] a chronological catalogue of british, irish and scotch saints and holy persons; [p5.4] continuation of bede's civil and ecclesiastical history down to the norman conquest, in four volumes (vol. 1); [p5.5] succession of the kings of mercia (vol. 2); [p5.6] king egbert, king of the west saxons and first monarch of england (vol. 3); [p5.7] succession of kings of the third period (vol. 4); [p5.8] life of john fisher, in two volumes (vol. 1); [p5.9] life of john fisher (vol. 2); [p5.10] essay on the life and manners of the venerable robert grosseteste, bishop of lincoln. 14 except for the life of grosseteste, that would have been written in england before perry left for valladolid. see williams (1983: 94). 15 john geddes was the scottish agent sent to madrid by the scottish bishops — urged by philip perry— to prevent the loss of the scots college in madrid after the expulsion of the jesuits, who had run the institution until then. the madrid foundation had been joined to the alcalá irish college. geddes was given the college library but neither a college nor secure endowment. he wanted the madrid and seville foundations to be amalgamated and transferred to valladolid. philip perry's influence was used. the king finally agreed to geddes's desires and in 1771 the jesuit college of san ambrosio in valladolid —unoccupied since the anunciación carrera & mª josé carrera 152 both in its draft form and its clean-up version, remained in valladolid. but perry surely would have liked to bring it to public notice —a task that we are aiming to fulfil, even if two hundred years late. before dealing with the problems involved in preparing a version of perry’s work for presentation to a reading public, it will be useful to provide some brief identification and description of the manuscript, along with a fuller sketch of its contents, with the understanding that the information advanced here should be supplemented by consultation of our first appendix. the legajo [bundle] ‘san albano, valladolid, 155’ the bundle is number 155 of michael williams's reorganization of the archive of st. alban’s college's documents and papers.16 this legajo stores three independent manuscripts. ms. 1 comprises methodical notes for the future composition of the four-volume work on the english church history after bede’s time that is kept in the scottish catholic archives. ms. 2 is the government confiscation in 1767— became the new scots college in spain, placed under royal patronage; the real colegio de escoceses would be a university college of valladolid until the early 19th century when the universities became secularized. 16 john guest is responsible for the first classification in 1855 of the 25 legajos that then existed in the archive of saint alban’s college. at the turn of the 20th century, about 1906, joseph kelly subdivided and reorganised all the legajos. in 1920 he formed an index of the archives, where each individual document was numbered under divisions i-vii and a-h. his indice de los archivos del colegio de los ingleses, valladolid collects three inventories. the earlier one (pp. 1-94) was compiled before 1767 and is now outdated and useless; the second one (ser. i, pp. 101-220; ser. ii, pp. 237-69) is his own compilation (c. 1920) and is still useful today; the third inventory (seville, pp. 297-369) lists the collections in the archivos del colegio de san gregorio in seville. in pages 205-07 kelly registered the sketch as belonging to one of the 11 legajos under letra g, in serie ii, legajo 3º and his hand set down a location number for it on its front card-cover, which read “san albano, valladolid, serie ii, legajo 3º”. kelly’s legajos were kept virtually intact when edwin henson broke many of them up in the year 1940. most were bounded in leather, while a group of them (mainly fragments and loose correspondence items, some unclassified, a good many unread) remained loose until the time of michael williams’s undertakings in the mid-1960s. his studious activity is liable for the renumbering of kelly’s legajos in the manuscript inventory archive of st. alban’s college, valladolid. compiled by michael williams in 1965, this inventory was completed in 1988. it includes the madrid, seville and valladolid holdings, these last comprising manuscripts, transcripts, legajos, and bound books. perry’s bundle is registered in page 71. his catalogue still needs updating, though. philip perry's manuscript sketch of british history (c.1770) 153 sketch of british history our research group has prepared for editing �in fact it is only a preliminary draft of a final version that follows it, making ms. no. 3 in the collected bundle. because this revised version is incomplete (only the first 15 quires are kept), to prepare our edition we have had to make do with the first uncorrected document in ms. 2. blotted words, crossed-out paragraphs and excised leaves have come in our way, but the value and singularity of this piece of work was all too inviting. manuscript description the sketch's draft makes up a total number of 192 leaves. its 96 halfsheets are of watermarked, laid paper, their size being in quarto. the sheets were cut, folded once and stitched making up 45 gatherings or quires of four leaves each �with a few rare exceptions. as can be seen from the sample digital copy of fol. 6:3r appended below [fig.1], the author included no foliation, except for the numbering of each gathering on the right upper corner of every first recto. one should note the presence of several excised leaves and loose leaves that perry added by way of emendation. contents of the sketch of british history, by philip perry (1720-1774) its full title, as proposed on its first folio, is sketch of british history, chiefly with regard to church affairs, from its first conversion to christianity, down to the conversion of the saxons. perry’s history discloses the text’s direct dependence on this heading. the first part of the title reveals perry’s plan of content organization. thus, the words ‘sketch of british history, chiefly with regard to church affairs’ announce that the text will alternate successively the narration of the landmarks of civil history with those concerning the ecclesiastical affairs of the period described immediately before. the second part of the title points more specifically to the time-span to be covered. it reads ‘from its first conversion to christianity, down to the conversion of the saxons’ and accordingly, perry’s civil and church history opens with the landing of the romans on the island in julius caesar’s time and the subsequent arrival of the first christians, and extends to saint columba’s mission in the sixth century, after the saxon settlements. anunciación carrera & mª josé carrera 154 careful reading allows us to distinguish five stages �preceded by an introductory passage� in perry's account of these events. 1. introduction [f. 1:1r] perry’s history is introduced by a short description of the isle of britain, an explanation of the mythical and historical origin of its name and celtic inhabitants, a relation of the main cities they peopled and a vivid report of their customs and druidic practices. one could say this makes nothing original, simply an echo of past historizing manners. but perry lent it its distinct character. at these early stages in the narration, the author exhibits, as he will invariably do throughout his sketch, an abundance of ancient, medieval and modern sources, a profusion which gives his writing an ‘illustrated’, encyclopaedic character of sorts.17 a case in point of such erudition, on sources ancient or contemporary, is this extract on the possible origin of the name ‘britannia’ (1:2r): the ancient name of the island, as appears from aristotle1 and ptolomey2, was albion. it was called britannia, by way of epithet or description, from some property either of the country or its inhabitants. it has since been called absolutely britannia, from the welch word brethck and the celtic word tannia. bretha, according to camden, signifies 'painted', and tannia, according to pezron, signifies 'country', and both together signify 'the country of a people that painted their bodies'. 1lib. de mundo, cap.3. 2apud gale 17 we would need further discussion to clarify our understanding of ‘illustrated’ as applied to perry, but in principle, his documenting practices should be more logically considered as a product of his natural fondness for the historical records of the english catholic past. also, perry’s antiquarian use of sources can be interpreted �in view of d.r. woolf’s statement that especially after the reformation those interested in medieval antiquities had to worry about the charge of adhering to popery (1992: 11-16)� as a catholic priest’s deliberate commitment to the religious counter-reformation of his nation through the presentation of reliable documentary evidence of the roman catholic foundational origins of her religious culture. philip perry's manuscript sketch of british history (c.1770) 155 2. first-century britain: from julius caesar to the first planters of the gospel [f. 3:3r] in the opening section of his sketch perry details the series of events pertaining to the early roman province of britannia, progressively romanized along the first century under a number of governors —aulus plautius, ostorius scapula, quintus veranius, suetonius paulinus, follow in succession, and so does the account of their reduction of the trinovantes, the brigantes, the silures, or the iceni and queen boadicea. is there a purpose in presenting all these events other than mere chronicling? a sequence of transitional passages at the end of this section suggests a possible trajectory of interpretation of perry’s stand as a christian historian: firstly, that the work of god drew on the political and cultural grandeur of the roman empire with an aim to erase the superstitious religious practices of the britons and thus favour the propagation of the gospel, and secondly, that only after that, the true christian faith was allowed to shine on the british nation through the works and miracles of those saintly men that lived after the roman retreat and before the germanic invasions.18 here is one of those intermediary sections that encapsulate perry’s twofold thesis: now as the reduction of britain under the roman empire had opened the road to the first planters of the gospel, so this extirpation of the supports of idolatry, which followed so close upon the confessed destruction of their own venerated demons, contributed no doubt, to render the propagation of the gospel more successful. (6:1v)19 18 in reading such passages, we found another interpretative path that could be applied to the text’s general content plan, not in the least in confrontation with the five divisions here proposed. the text could be divided into two basic sections: a first one (which includes divisions 2 and 3) would revolve around the roman extirpation of pagan and druidic practices; a following section (developing along divisions 4 to 5) would then focus on the gradual strengthening of the islanders’ christian character. these considerations on content distribution will be duly taken into account when setting divisions in our final edited document. 19 stronger evidence makes such a reading sustainable, for the same twofold argument opens the sketch in its very first paragraph: «it’s an observation of ecclesiastic writers, no less judicious than christian, that almighty god, in sending his son into the world, united the whole universe under one sole roman empire, anunciación carrera & mª josé carrera 156 3. second-century britain: king lucius and the rise of the british ecclesiastical order [f. 6:3r] thus opens a second historical sequence. on this occasion, perry dwells on the conversion of the celtic chieftain lucius,20 which he still gives credit for, as happening around a.d. 175, during pope eleutherius's pontificate. it is interesting the way in which he now details how the bishop of rome promoted the constitution of an official british church hierarchy, as represented by the consecration of the first suffragan bishops of london, york and caerleon, but his focus unexpectedly, though not unjustifiably, turns somewhere else. perry informs us that these were the days of formation of the first dogmas, rites and liturgy of the roman church, which leads him to review at length the works of saint justin and other apologists of the 2nd century. why he enlarges on their treatises to paraphrase their defence of the eucharist, for instance, or their attacks against heresies, can be properly explained through his claim that circumstances remain unchanged. perry would have gladly applied their teachings to his own time, given the persistent anti-catholic sentiment that his fellow priests had been facing back in england. it is only natural, then, that he chooses to close this second section with the exemplary portraits of fagan and deruvian, the first two native christian apostles. 4. fourth-century britain: roman persecutions of christians and first british martyrs [f. 10:2v] the next stage in the narration is concerned with the third century. severus and caracalla’s campaigns and diocletian’s persecutions allow perry to depict the staunch faith of the britons. to prove their firmness, he for the more easy propagation of his saving gospel amongst mankind. this same conduct his providence held in a palpable manner with regard to our britains: his wisdom not only made use of the roman power to subdue and unite britain to the rest of the empire, but on their humanity to remove the two chief obstacles to the reception of the gospel, by taming the barbarity of the nation and extirpating the cruel superstitions of their druidish doctors» (1:1r). 20 incidentally, st. alban's college houses a collection of portraits of seven kings of england by velázquez's master francisco pacheco (1564-1644) �six of them are saints, beginning with lucius, the christian king of the britons; the others are ethelbert, st. sebbi, st. edmund, st. edward iii, st. richard i and st. edward ii. philip perry's manuscript sketch of british history (c.1770) 157 dwells on the shedding of st. alban’s and the first british martyrs’ blood; to enhance their influential capacity, he highlights the attendance of native prelates to the main contemporary continental church councils; to illustrate the devotion of the britons, he tells of their travels and peregrination to the holy land, syria or rome. 5. fourth-century britain: roman retreat and attacks of the caledonians [f. 18:1r] at this point, the narration traces the history of britain in the 4th century: a succinct retrospective of the political instabilities in the island caused by the progressive retreat of roman legions and garrisons after constantine’s days. perry relates how the picts and scots routed the britons, as perry puts it, after bede’s style, «no otherwise than as ravenous wolves, whose hunger, increased by the good watch of the shepherds, falls with more greediness and cruelty on the abandoned flock» (19:4v). according to perry, the virtual extermination of «the flower of the british youth», to use those days’ cherished phrase, at the hands of both the romans and the caledonians, culminated in a truce. this exceptional circumstance perry attributes to the miraculous converting labours of st. ninian among the northern picts and st. patrick among the irish (scots). he offers detailed accounts of their missions to open the next section and to conclude the sketch. 6. fifth-century britain: the golden age of celtic christianity and the germanic invasions [f. 26:3v] this final section culminates with the germanic peoples reaching the coasts of britain. perry reasons this is a consequence of the period of moral dissipation that followed king arthur’s time, a period of corrupt leadership among the british chieftains and church representatives. in fact, his focus is on wales now, to depict the lives and miracles of those holy men that lived among the dissolute. a contrast is set through biographical sketches like those of st. winwaloc, st. john of chinon, st. carantock, st. gundlaus, st. cadoc, st. dubricius, st. david, st. thelian or st. oudoceus, who appear among many other representatives of the golden age of celtic christianity. anunciación carrera & mª josé carrera 158 the final leaves are reserved for st. columba, the apostle of the northern picts, the last discernible date in the manuscript being a.d. 607. columba’s detailed sketch finishes abruptly with the words «his successors in the abbeys of hy» (45:4v). it would therefore appear that those words are not the definitive ending of the sketch. we may speculate that a couple of leaves are missing, but this accident does not prevent the text from covering fully the time-span and content that the title promised. our edition:21 to prepare a version of perry’s work for presentation to a reading public was our task and it is with this task and with the decisions and problems attending it that this article will conclude. the first major decision we made was that our edition was to be critical. we would attempt to establish a text based upon the type of research proposed by the principles of textual criticism. the chosen copy-text for such a scholarly edition was to be ms. 2 in bundle 155 of the archive of st. alban’s, given that the more perfected version of it that follows in the bundle was incomplete. an edition of ms. 3 was to be appended after it. these decisions were taken after a series of considerations. to establish the text, the group first attempted a diplomatic transcript edition of its 45 gatherings. we began by microfilming the entire bundle, and printing paper copies from which to start transcribing. paper copies were in any case no substitute for the examination of the manuscript itself, for our original intention was to reproduce in a modern typeface as many of the features of the manuscript and as much of its physical appearance as possible. we needed clear and consistent principles. a decision was made not to observe exact lineation, though; the degree of fidelity to the document need not make a type facsimile, since there was neither intended plan nor editorial interest in facing our transcript pages with image reproductions of the folios. the transcript would neither take any regard of special lettershapes like long s or round s, except for æ or ß. in turn, our transcript should concentrate on the textual content of perry’s manuscript, not only reproduce 21 for textual practice, philip gaskell (1972) and d.c. greetham (1994) are still to be recommended. philip perry's manuscript sketch of british history (c.1770) 159 original spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, but also unexpanded abbreviations and superscripts [fig. 2]. our future editorial conjectures could then rest upon this transcript and critical choices could depend on the evidence available in it. a second major decision came soon after completing the transcript of ms. 2 and ms. 3: our critical edition need not just be a separate typesetting of the text. g. thomas tanselle notes that the editor should distinguish between treating documents intended for publication and those which are more of a private nature (correspondence, notebooks, etc.): he suggests he should transcribe the latter as they are and not attempt to normalize them (greetham 1994: 350-51). but the problem was that our sketch shared those two identities: clearly a preliminary draft, there seemed to be evidence to prove, however, that it had been intendedly written for publication. take for instance the existence of perry’s corrected version of the sketch, though unfinished, or likewise the above-mentioned fact that his revised histories and biographies were brought to scotland by one of his contemporaries to be published there. consequently, some degree of normalization would be pertinent, away from absolute, scrupulus fidelity to appearance. from here, the next possible step we envisaged was to attempt an eclectic clear-text edition of perry’s british history, a practice much dominant in anglo-american textual criticism over the last half-century. we could embark on the production of a clear-text reading version by selecting variants from the two different states of the text in ms. 2 and 3, in an attempt to reconstruct perry’s final text as he intended it to be published. the trouble was, on the one hand, that ms. 3 was not complete, and on the other, that we were aware of tanselle’s warnings against a critic’s capacity to judge the author’s intention and of the complex editorial work involved (greetham 1994: 336-37). how possible then was to make our edited text bear features from those two witnesses, and how recommendable was it to make it become a text that never was? we considered that ms. 2 could stand on its own as a reliable testimony to the sketch’s textual entity. ms. 3 could not be regarded as more than an unfinished rewriting project. given that a single copy-text was to be used, the best choice seemed to be a clear-text reading version [fig. 3]. the textanunciación carrera & mª josé carrera 160 page would be entirely free of signs of editorial intervention, providing a clear reading text separate from the various types of apparatus, in such a way that unless the reader specifically looked into the apparatus, there would be no sign of changes made by the editors. in similar fashion, textual notes should be necessarily simplified, given that no variants would be put into play. instead, our textual introduction would present the principles used in the editing process in full. there we would offer a complete discussion on any degree of normalization or modernization applied, with regard to punctuation, for instance, a record of any transcriptional changes put into use, our handling of word-division, expanded abbreviations, and the introduction of any emendations. finally, again for the sake of clarity, explanatory and historical annotations, glossary and indexes of persons, places and topics would be taken particular care of. conclusion we would like to conclude by admitting that, in truth, the materials in the archive of saint alban’s college would be of special interest to renaissance and modern historians, particularly those intrigued by anglo-hispanic political and religious relations. however, we trust that adequate cataloguing may bring out the archive’s wealth of contents in full, and unveil the interest they have for medievalists too. the college old library, for its part, is rich enough to interest them. philip perry’s sketch and his extensive use of sources are certainly an instance of how the library's rare book holdings can be a source for historians of early britain, anglo-saxonists and medievalists. the eventual publication of perry’s sketch of british history by the research group may hopefully become a threshold to both documentary deposits. our research group will work to publicize the college’s open possibilities of promising research. medievalists may be glad to know that the group's next project is to edit perry’s continuation of bede’s history, and that the authors of this article are personally undertaking the cataloguing of those rare books for the study of early britain and medieval england which are housed at the old library of the college. it is our hope that in the future all selim members can benefit from the results of our work. philip perry's manuscript sketch of british history (c.1770) 161 anunciación carrera & mª josé carrera universidad de valladolid appendix i: manuscript description archivo del colegio de los ingleses, valladolid: ms. 2, bundle 155. ff. 192. paper, good condition, slightly damped. 215 x 155 mm. frame 115 x 200 mm., containing 23 lines. abundant notes on margins. e 20th-c. fastened cardboard covers. collation: 1-88, 916,178 (loose leaf), 18-268, 2716 (wants 1, 13, 15), 28-338, 3410 (loose leaf), 35-408, 4112, 42-458. contents: perry, sketch of british history chiefly with regard to church affairs from their first conversion to christianity down to the conversion of the saxons (c. 1770). lacks final quire, misplaced? f. 1:1r introduction: a description of the island, origin of its name and inhabitants, their main cities, customs and religious practices. f. 3:3r 1st-century britain: from julius caesar’s expeditions to the british resistance and the landing of the first planters of the gospel (joseph the just?). f. 6:3r 2nd-century britain: king lucius and the establishment of regular ecclesiastical order in london, york and caerleon. f. 10:2v 3rd-century britain: roman persecutions of christians and first british martyrs (st. alban, †209?). f. 18:1r 4th-century britain: roman retreat and attacks of picts, attacotti and irish (scots) on british towns. f. 26:3v 5th-century britain: the golden age of celtic christianity and the germanic invasions. anunciación carrera & mª josé carrera 162 hand: perry. ligatures, long -s. written in valladolid, probably after 1770. wholly in english, barring notes or citations in latin. frequent blotted words and crossed-out paragraphs. history: first draft. incomplete revised version follows after in the bundle. notices: kelly, index, c. 1920, pp. 205-07. williams, archive, 198788, p. 71. appendix ii: a folio of the sketch illustrated, transcribed, edited fig. 1. fol. 6:3r of perry’s sketch of british history (c. 1770): manuscript copy written by philip perry in black ink, c. 1770. ms. 2, bundle 155, archivo colegio san albano, valladolid. digital image. philip perry's manuscript sketch of british history (c.1770) 163 fig. 2. diplomatic transcript edition of perry’s sketch of british history (c. 1770), fol. 6:3r, by grupo de investigación san albano (2002), observing original lineation. †monast.anglic. đ.3 p.188 ‡angl. sacr: đ:2: p.667. tributary he was: be this as it may; it was under these two last= =mentioned emperors, and the pontificate of pope eleutherius, who sat the thirteenth in s. peters chair: from an 177 to 192, that k. lucius, profiting of the general liberty lately allowd by marcus aurelius, sent an embassy to s: eleutherius as to the common father of xtians, in order to obtain instructors both for himself & people; there were at this time, flourishing churches of xtians, in the neighburhood of britain, both in gaul & spain, as is testified by iræneus & tertullian, both contemporary authors, yet to neither of these did lucius make application, but the more distant bp of rome, as to ye acknowledg'd head of the christian church. the old book of landaff, published by dugdale†, and in part by wharton‡, and esteemed by collier to contain the original traditions of the british church, relates the matter thus, very conformably to bede, tho somewhat more particularly: «lucius k. of the britains, sent his embaßadors «elvan, and meduin to eleutherius, the twelfth pope anunciación carrera & mª josé carrera 164 fig. 3. clear-text edition: perry, sketch of british history (c. 1770), fol. 6:3r. grupo de investigación san albano’s proposal (2003). subject to revision. [6:3r] tributary he was. be this as it may, it was under these two last-mentioned emperors, and the pontificate of pope eleutherius, who sat the thirteenth in st. peter's chair, from anno 177 to 192, that king lucius, profiting of the general liberty lately allowed by marcus aurelius, sent an embassy to st. eleutherius, as to the common father of christians, in order to obtain instructors both for himself and [his] people. there were at this time flourishing churches of christians in the neighbourhood of britain, both in gaul and spain, as is testified by iraeneus and tertullian, both contemporary authors. yet to neither of these did lucius make application, but [to] the more distant bishop of rome, as to the acknowledged head of the christian church. the old book of landaff, published by dugdale†, and in part by wharton‡, and esteemed by collier to contain the original traditions of the british church, relates the matter thus, very conformably to bede, though somewhat more particularly: «lucius, king of the britains, sent his embassadors elvan and meduin to eleutherius, the twelfth pope [6:3v] †monasticon anglicanum 3, p. 188. ‡anglia sacra 2, p. 667. references gaskell, philip 1995 [1972]: a new introduction to bibliography. st. paul’s bibliographies, winchester. greetham, d.c. 1994 [1992]: textual scholarship: an introduction. garland reference library for the humanities 1417. garland, new york. grupo de investigación san albano 2003: documentación inédita de la biblioteca de san albano de valladolid: hacia una edición crítica de sketch of the ancient british history de philip perry (1720-1774). pilar abad & josé ramón fernández. eds. estudios de filología philip perry's manuscript sketch of british history (c.1770) 165 inglesa: homenaje al prof. josé mª ruiz. servicio de publicaciones de la uva, valladolid: 321-35. kelly, joseph c. 1920: índice de los archivos del colegio de los ingleses, valladolid. three manuscript inventories bound in one volume, kept at the archivo del colegio de los ingleses, valladolid. mcroberts, david 1977: columba house. the innes review. the scottish catholic archives 1560-1978, vol. 28: no. 2: 125-28. perry, philip c. 1770: sketch of british history, chiefly with regard to church affairs, from its first conversion to christianity, down to the conversion of the saxons. ms 2, legajo 155. archivo del colegio de los ingleses, valladolid. proclamation by elizabeth i 1591: by the queene. a declaration of great troubles pretended against the realme by a number of seminarie priests and jesuits … with a provision very necessary for remedy thereof, etc. (18 oct. 1591). b.l., deputies of c. baker, london. williams, michael 1983: english manuscripts in scottish archives: the legacy of an eighteenth-century friendship. the innes review, vol. 34: 93-96. williams, michael 1986: st. alban's college, valladolid: four centuries of english catholic presence in spain. hurst, london. williams, michael. completed c. 1988: archive of st. alban’s college, valladolid, compiled in 1965. bound manuscript volume kept at the archivo del colegio de los ingleses, valladolid. woolf, d.r. 1992: the dawn of the artifact: the antiquarian impulse in england, 1500-1730. medievalism in england, ed. leslie j. workman [studies in medievalism iv]. d.s. brewer, cambridge. * † * microsoft word 4. proofs_ogura.docx selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. 28 (2023): 57–77. issn: 1132-631x doi: 10.17811/selim.28.2023.57-77 © ediuno. ediciones de la universidad de oviedo. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. verbs and expressions of calling a person/place/thing in old and early middle english chronicles and homilies michiko ogura chiba university (received 11 november 2021; revised 25 january 2022) there were many ways of calling or naming a person, a place, or other things in old english: se wæs noe gehaten ‘he is called noah’, ioppe hatte sum burh ‘a city was called joppa’, æt þæm beorge þe mon athlans nemneð ‘at the mountain which they name (precisely, one names) atlas’, þe grecas nemnað paralysis. and we cweðað lyftadl ‘which the greeks call paralysis, and we call palsy’, his nama is iohannes ‘his name is john’, etc. a clear difference in the use of these verbs and expressions of calling is found between chronicles and homilies. also, when the contents that describe the same object or theme like false god or the deadly sins, lexical variations or flexible uses of verbs can further become obvious. the aim of this study is to exemplify a variety of expressions of calling found in old and early middle english texts, especially in chronicles and homilies, which show syntactic and stylistic continuity with some morphological and lexical alterations. tables are given to show the choice of each verb form used in each text. keywords: old english; early middle english; verbs of calling or naming; chronicles; homilies 1. introduction old english verbs of calling show a variety of synonyms and synonymous expressions. hatan is a special verb, which has a simple form hatte with passive meaning ‘is/was called;’1 the verb also has usual active forms as well as the periphrastic passive form, i.e. beon/wesan (ge)haten. in addition, the indefinite pronoun man is used in man hateð ‘one call (i.e. they call).’ other verbs, (ge)cigan, (ge)cleopian, (ge)cweðan, (ge)namnian and (ge)nemnan, are used in the active and in the periphrastic passive, together with the man-periphrasis. (his/hwæs) nama is/wæs can be added as a synonymous expression. the semantic field of calling a name of a person, a place, a thing, etc. has not been studied for these decades. strite (1989) has collected and classified papers of various fields, especially those of nouns, but there are comparatively small number of studies on verbs and other parts of speech. modern english call was borrowed from on kalla, but oe ceallian appeared only once in an old english poem.2 oe hatan had many meanings 1 see oed hight, v.1, etymology, and med hōten v. (1) etymology. a typical use of the old form hatte is found in a famous b-verse formula in old english riddles: saga hwæt ic hatte in rid 3.72b, 10.11b, 12.13b, 19.9b, 23.16b, 62.9b, 73.29b, 80.11b, 83.14b, 86.7b, and frige hwæt ic hatte in rid 14.19b, 16.10b, 27.15b), while the passive sense ‘is/was called’ becomes obscure during the middle english period. 2 battle of maldon 91 (doe, s.v. ceallian). for the form of this verb as a scandinavian loan word see campbell (1959, §566). michiko ogura 58 and functions, among which the causative function is discussed by mitchell (1985, §679), competing with lætan ‘to let’ and don ‘to do’.3 synonyms of the verb of calling, therefore, seem worthy of investigation. the texts which should include many examples are chronicles and homilies. in chronicles, expressions for calling persons, places, and special things, dates, etc. can be expected. in homilies, especially saints, clergymen, both men and women in episodes, etc. may appear, as well as abstract nouns personified in contexts. to get statistical results and to find some features particular to each text, editions are used, but the data in the doe should be checked to see if the examples are attested as reliable. early middle english texts are included to see historical changes in the choice of verbs. the texts chosen in this study are parker chronicle, peterborough chronicle, laʒamon’s brut (mss cotton caligular a. ix and cotton otho c. xiii) for chronicles, including orosius as a text related to chronicles; for homilies, vercelli homilies, blickling homilies, ælfric’s catholic homilies, ælfric’s homilies (pope’s edition), homilies of wulfstan, lambeth homiles, trinity homilies, ancrene wisse (ms cccc 402) and ancrene riwle (ms cotton nero a. xiv), together with bede (a text which includes stories between a chronicle and homily) and ælfric’s lives of saints. 2. chronicles examples should be given to see the choice of verbs and verbal expressions in old and early middle english contexts. examples (1) to (4) are from parker chronicle. in example (1) the place (stowe) is called by is gecueden, (2) is a man-periphrasis with nemnan, (3) has the subject we with hatan, and (4) appears in the coronation of edgar, where the special day is named by a pair of the verbs of calling, nemnan and cigan (with nalliteration).4 (1) chrona 455.1 her hengest & horsa fuhton wiþ wyrtgeorne þam cyninge, in þære stowe þe is gecueden agęlesþrep, & his broþur horsan man ofslog; ‘in this year hengest and horsa fought against king vortigern at a place which is called agælesþrep, and his brother horsa was slain.’ (2) chrona 584.1 her ceawlin ד cuþa fuhton wiþ brettas, in þam stede þe mon nemneþ feþan leag, .cuþan mon ofslog ד ‘in this year ceawlin and cutha fought against the britons at the place called feþanleag, and cutha was slain.’ (3) chrona 892.6 3 oe hatan kept its multiple senses through the medieval period. see kaita (2020). 4 texts and abbreviations are quoted from the doe(c). in longer quotations, editions are constantly referred to as well as the web corpus, because the doe(c) data are partly based on manuscripts and partly based on editions. the editions i examined are listed under references. the verb or expression in each question is highlighted in boldface. modern english translations are based on garmonsway (1953), madden (rpt. 1970) nicholson (1991), salu (1955) and eets editions as far as there are translations. verbs and expressions of calling a person/place/thing 59 se muþa is on easteweardre cent æt þæs miclam wuda eastende þe we andred hatað. ‘the estuary is in east kent, at the east end of great forest which we call andred.’ (4) cedg 5 (= chrona 973) þær wæs blis micel on þam eadgan dæge eallum geworden, <þone> niða bearn nemnað and cigað pentecostenes dæg. ‘on that blessed day, called and named whit sunday by the children of men, there was great rejoicing by all.’ from peterborough chronicle i give three examples which have no corresponding contexts in parker chronicle. example (5) has two examples of man-periphrasis with cleopian. example (6) shows hatan in the active and in the periphrastic passive, while (7) has a periphrastic passive and hatte. (5) chrone 963.27 and ic gife þone tun þe man cleopeð vndela mid eall þet þærto lið, þet is þet man cleopeð eahtehundred & market & toll, ‘and i give the village called oundle with all that belong to it, that is, the eight hundreds and market and toll’ (6) chrone 963.62-64 & he macode first þa wealle abutan þone mynstre, geaf hit þa to nama burch þe ær het medeshamstede; … þa cæs man oðer abbot of þe silue minstre þe wæs gehaten ælfsi; se ælfsi wæs þa abbot syððon fiftig wintre. ‘he first built the wall around the monastery, and then gave it the name burch, which was formarly called medeshamstede. … then another abbot named ælfsige was elected from the same monastery; this ælfsige was abbot afterwards for fifty years.’ (7) chrone 1123.31 ða cusen hi an clerc, willelm of curboil wæs gehaten, he was canonie of an mynstre cicc hatte, ‘then they chose a cleric called william of curbeil; he was a canon from a monastery called st. osyth’s’ orosius shares the feature of chronicle and is expected to contain examples of calling or naming a person or a place using similar varieties of expressions. example (8) has two instances of man-periphrasis, one with nemnan and the other with hatan. in (9) man hæt appears four times in succession. hatan is also used in the following two examples: (10) wæs haten for a place and (11) hatte for a person. (8) or 1 1.9.15 & hire rihtwestende is æt þæm beorge þe mon athlans nemneð & æt þæm iglande þe mon hæt fortunatus. ‘and its right western boundary is at the mountain called atlas, and at the island called the fortunate’ michiko ogura 60 (9) or 1 1.18.24 þa land þe man hæt gallia bellica, be eastan þæm is sio ea þe man hæt rin, & be suðan þa beorgas þe man hæt alpis, & be westansuðan se garsecg þe man hæt brittanisca, & be norðan on oðre healfe þæs garsegges earme is brittannia þæt land. ‘the land which is called gallia belgic, to the east of which is the river called the rhine, and to the south the mountains which are called the alps, and to the southwest the sea which is called british, and to the north on the other side of the sea’s arm is the land of britain.’ (10) or 2 5.46.8 þa wæs mid him an wræccea of læcedamania, creca byrg, se wæs haten damerað, ‘then with him was an exile from lacedaemon, greek city, which was called demaratus’ (11) or 3 6.60.14 raþe æfter þæm on þara twegea consula dæge, claudius, þe oðre noman hatte marcellus, & ualerius, þe oðre noman hatte flaccus, þa gewearð hit, ‘immediately after that in the day of these two consuls, claudius, who was called marcellus by the other name, and valerins, who was called flaccus by the other name, it happened then’ example (12) shows how to call lammas day. ælfric’s catholic homilies also has a description, where the same verb is used. orosius, therefore, as well as bede, shares the features of chronicles and homilies in its text and context. (12) or 5 13.130.3 þæt <wæs> on þære tide calendas agustus, & on þæm dæge þe we hatað hlafmæsse. ‘that was in the time kalends of august, and on the day which we call lemmas.’ cf. æchom ii,28 222.50 næs swa ðeah ðis gedon on ðisum andwerdan dæge. ac we hit healdað on ðære nihte. þe ge hatað hlafmæsse; ‘this was not done, however, on this present day, but we observe it on the night which you call lemmas.’ laʒamon’s brut is added from the thirteenth century, which also shares the feature of chronicle, though verse and influenced by anglo-french. two manuscripts, cotton caligula a. ix and cotton otho c. xiii, which are said to be written in the vicinity of west midland to the southwestern around 1250 to 1275,5 show similar choice of verbs and expressions in this survey. spellings show contrasts as seen in (c) wes ihaten and (o) was ihote. cleopian and nemnan often appears, referring to a person or a place, both in the active and in the passive. in most instances they use the same verb or expressions, but in 20 contexts their choices differ, as listed in (13). 5 for dialects and dates of the manuscripts i follow laing (1993). verbs and expressions of calling a person/place/thing 61 (13) differences in the manuscripts of laʒmon’s brut laʒ (c) laʒ(o) 1953 he wes ihaten brutus he was brutus ihote 1954 þis lond he clepede brutaine þat lond brutaine 1976 & his folc wes ihaten sexuns and cleopede his men saxuns 2038 & trinouant heo nemneden and trineavant hine hehte 2113 þat æfter him locres wes icleped (2114) locris was ihote 2355 þe trinouant wes ihaten þat trinouand was inemdid (inemnid?) 2572 ebrauc he wes i-cleped ebrac was ihote 2673 ӡeorc heo ihæhten ӡorc hine cleope 4078 his nome wes ihote þus his name was icleoped þus 6051 & heo inemned kaer-usc and hit cleopede kair-uske 6309 bruttes nemneden þa laʒen bruttus cleopede þe laʒe 6312 þe laʒe hehte marciane þa laʒe hatte marciene 7023 ældolf men cleopeden þene king deldol was i-hote 7101 & hehten heo kær-lud and cleopede hine kay[r]lud 7117 and nemneden heo lundres and hehte hit lundres 9144 & þa tscolde beon i-haten hælend and he solde hete 9145 & helpen his freondes worlene helare 11150 þe ældeste hæhte leonin þat þus were i-hote 11151 trahern & marin traharn marin and leonin 11188 heo hehten hine forð right anan þat child was i-hote 11189 þene hæʒe maximian maximian þe gode 14244 & lane-castel hine hæhten and leane-castel hine cleopede 14690 þe men nemneð darewente þat darwent his ihote 14830 ich hatte vortimer ich hote vortimer 14831 mi broðer hatte catimer 26185 þat water hehte able þat water hatte aube 30449 he hehte gille patric he was icleoped gillopart 3. homilies the notable stylistic distinction between chronicles and homilies concerning the expression in question is that, while chronicles tell names mostly in a straightforward way, homilies often explain the origin and meaning of the names based on biblical michiko ogura 62 records. when the names of saints, foreign places, abstract nouns (especially sins), foreign gods, days to be commemorated, flora and fauna, etc. are to be mentioned, these verbs and expressions are used not only in the meaning ‘to call’ or ‘to name’ but in the sense ‘to signify’ or ‘to translate’ in homiletic contexts. 3.1. angels, christ, disciples, etc. most of the examples of this kind are found in ælfric’s catholic homilies. example (14) is about cherubim and seraphim; (15) and (16) are for christ, in similar contexts but with a variation of verbs chosen in naming. (14) æchomi, 24 374.95-976 cherubim is gecweden gefyllednyss ingehides, oððe gewittes hi sind afyllede mid gewitte swa micele swiþor. swa hi gehendran beoð heora scyppende þurh wurðscipe heora geearnunga; seraphim sind gecwedene byrnende oððe onælende hi sind swa micele swiðor byrnende on godes lufe. swa micclum swa hi sind to him geþeodde ‘cherubim are interpreted fullness of knowledge or understanding; they are filled with so much the more understanding as they are nearer to their creator through the worthiness of their deserts. seraphim are interpreted burning or inflaming; they are so much the more burning in love of god as they are associated with him.’ (15) æchomi, 25 384.138-146 crist is manegum naman genemned he is wisdom gehaten. for þan ðe se fæder ealle gesceafta þurh hine geworhte; he is word gecweden for þan ðe word is wisdomes geswutelung … he is lamb gehaten for þære unscæððignysse lambes gecyndes. … he is leo geciged of iudan mæigðe. dauides wyrtruma … ‘christ is named by many names. he is called wisdom, because the father wrought all things through him. he is called word, because a word is the manifestation of wisdom. … he is called lamb, from the innocence of the lamb’s nature. … he is called the lion of the tribe of judah, the root of david, …’ (16) æchomii,15 152.94-101 he is gecweden hláf þurh getacnunge. and lamb. and leo. and gehú ells; he is hlaf geháten. for ðan ðe hé is ure líf. and engla; he is lamb gecweden. for his unscæððignysse; leo for ðære strencðe. þe he oferswiðde þone strangan feofol. … hwí is ðonne þæt halige husel gecweden cristes lichama. oþþe his blód. gif hit nis soðlice þæt þæt hit gehaten is; ‘he is called bread typically, and lamb, and lion, and whatever else. he is called bread, because he is life of us and of angels; he is called a lamb for his innocence; a lion for the strength wherewith he overcame the strong devil. … why then is the holy housel called christ’s body or his blood, if it is not truly that which it is called?’ examples (17) and (18) show the naming process of peter in similar contexts with different verbs and expressions. 6 modern english translations of æchom i and ii are based on thorpe (1844[1983]). verbs and expressions of calling a person/place/thing 63 (17) æchomi,38 512.156-157 petrus wæs geciged symon. ær his gecyrrednysse ac crist hine gehet petrus. ꝥ getacnað oncnawende ‘peter was called simon before his conversion, but christ called him peter, which signifies ‘acknowledging’’ (18) æchomii,28 226.163-168 ær ðan fyrste wæs his nama simon. ac drihten him gesette þisne naman petrus. þæt is stænen. to ði þæt he hæfde getacnunge cristes gelaðunge; crist is gecweden petra. þæt is stán. and of ðam naman is gecweden petrus. eal cristen folc; ‘before that time his name was simon, but the lord appointed him this name, petrus, that is, of stone, to the end that he might be typical of christ’s church. christ is called ‘petra’, that is, stone, and from that name the whole christian people is called ‘petrus.’’ example (19) shows the naming process of john the baptist, with four different expressions of calling the name. (19) æchomi,25 379.12-13, 380.29-33 þu gecigst his naman iohannes. … se ealde cynnystre wiðcwæð þam magum ac ד beo he geciged iohannes; hi andwyrdon; hwi wiðcwyst þu urum geþeahtum? nis nan man on þinre mæigðe iohannes gehaten; hi þa bicnodon þam dumban fæder hwæt him be þam geþuhte; se fæder þa awrat his nama is iohannes; ‘and you call his name john. … the old mother spoke against the kinsmen and (said that) he should be called john. they answered, “do you speak against our counsel? no one in your family is called john.” then they beckoned the dumb father what it seemed to him about it. the father then wrote: his name is john.’ an ex-angel is named lucifer and the meaning of the name is interpreted. in most instances the signification is expressed by be gereht, as in example (20). (20) homs 34 (verc 19) 13 ,þone þe he foremærostne hæfde ofer ealle þa oðre englas þe lucifer wæs haten ד þæt ys on ure geþeode leohtberend gereht, ‘and him whom he considered foremost over all the other angels, who was called lucifer, that (name) is reckoned in our language “light-bearer,”’ it is a notable feature of wulfstan’s holimies that namnian is used instead of nemnan, as illustrated in (21). (21) whom 8b 59 ealswa bealdlice se þeowa clypað ד namað on his pater noster his drihten him to fæder swa se hlaford, ד seo wylen eallswa wel swa seo hlæfdige. ‘the servant also boldly calls and names in his paternoster his lord as his father as the lord, and the female servant as well as the lady. michiko ogura 64 in middle english, ancrene wisse and ancrene riwle keep using traditional expressions with morphological alterations and at the same time accept new members. example (22) shows the use of be icleopet and (23) a new member spe(a)len. (22) aw 3.329-332 (f. 39r) for-þi is ancre ‘ancre’ icleopet, … alswa al hali chirche (þet is schip icleopet) schal ancrin o þe ancre, ‘it is for this reason that an anchoress is called an anchoress, … so all holy church, which is called a ship, shall be anchored to the anchoress’ cf. ar (nero) 63.2-5 (f. 36-36v) for þi is ancre icleoped an-cre. … also al holi chirche ðet is schip icleoped. schal ד ancren oðer ancre. (23) aw 141.377 (f. 101v) ant tis þridde bitternesse is understonden bi marie salomee, þe þridde marie, for ‘salome’ spealeð ‘pes’; ‘and this third bitterness is signified by mary salome, the third mary, for salome means ‘peace’’ cf. ar (nero) 170.24 (f. 103) and þeos bitternesse is understonden bi marie salome þe þridde marie. vor salome speleð peis. 3.2. false gods greek and roman gods as well as the northern gods are treated as false gods in contrast to christian god. examples are (24) to (27), in which (24) and (25) are in the same context with different choice of verbs and expressions, especially namnian in whom.7 (26) and (27) are comparatively short and fragmental. (24) æhom 22 99-180 án man wæs eardiende on þam ílande creta, saturnus geháten, swiðlic and wælhreow,… he læfde swaþeah ænne to l[i]fe … se wæs iouis geháten, hetol and þrymlic. … se iouis wæs swa swiðe gál, þæt he on hys swustor gewífod; seo wæs geháten iuno, swiðe healic gyden. … and he hatte þór betwux sumum þeodum, þone þa deniscan leoda lufiað swiðost. his sunu hatte mars, se macede æfre saca, … sum man wæs gehaten mercurius on lífe, se wæs swiðe facenfull and swicol on dædum. … ðes god wæs [a]rwyrðe betwyx eallum hæþenum, and he is óðon geháten oðrum naman on denisc. nu secgað þa deniscan on heora gedwylde þæt se iouis wære, þe hi þór hátað, mercuries sunu, þe hi oðon hatað; … sum wif hatte uen[us], seo wæs ioues dohter, … ðone sixtan dæg hi gesetton þære sceamleasan gyldenan uen[us] gehaten, and fric[g] on denisc. ‘a man was living in the land of crete, called saturnus, violent and fierce, …yet he left one alive … he was called jove, hostile and powerful, … jove was so very wanton 7 texts are quoted from: de falsis diis in æhom 21 (pope 1968, 677–712) and de falsis dies in whom 12 (bethurum 1957, 221–24). verbs and expressions of calling a person/place/thing 65 that he married with his sister; she was called juno, very haughty goddess … and he was called thor among his people, whom the danish men loved most. his son was called mars, who behaved in pursuit of war, … a man was called mercurius in the lifetime, who was very deceitful and false in deeds, … this god was worshipped among all heathens, and he is called odin by another name in danish. now the danish say in their heresy that it would be jove whom they call thor, son of mercurius whom they call odin; a woman was called venus, who was jove’s daughter, … they assigned the sixth day to the shameless goddess called venus, and frigg in danish.’ (25) whom 12 35-80 an man wæs on geardagum eardiende on þam iglande þe creata hatte se wæs saturnus gehaten, …he læfde swaþeah uneaðe ænne to life, … ד se wæs iouis gehaten, ד se wearð hetol feond. he aflymde his agene fæder eft of ðam ylcan foresædan iglande þe creta hatte … ד se iouis wearð swa swyðe gal þæt he on his agenre swyster gewifode, seo wæs genamod iuno, … and he hatte þor oðrum naman betwux sumum þeodum; … his sunu hatte mars, se macode æfre gewinn ד wrohte, … sum man eac wæs gehaten mercurius on life, se wæs swyðe facenfull … ðes gedwolgod wæs arwurðe eac betwux eallum hæðenum on þam dagum, ד he is oðon gehaten oðrum naman on denisce wisan. nu secgað sume þa denisce men on heora gedwylde þæt se iouis wære þe hy þor hatað, mercurius sunu, þe hi oðon namiað, … and sum wif hatte uenus seo wæs ioues dohtor, ד seo wæs swa ful ד swa fracod on galnysse … . ‘a man was living in the days of yore in an island called crete, who was called saturnus, … yet he left one alive unwillingly … and he was called jove, and he became a hostile fiend. he put his own father to flight again from the aforesaid island called crete … and jove was so very wanton that he married with his own sister who was named juno, … and he was called thor in other name among some people; … his son was called mars, who always fought and made war …a man was also called mercurius in the lifetime, who was very deceitful … this false god was also venerable among all heathens in that days, and he is called odin in other name in a danish way. now some danish men say in their heresy that he was jove whom they call thor, son of mercurius whom they name odin … and a woman called venus who was jove’s daughter, and she was so foul and so wicked in wantonness … . (26) æls (martin) 710-718 mid þusend searo-cræftum wolde se swicola deofol þone halgan wer on sume wisan beswican. and hine ge-sewen-licne on manegum scin-hiwum þam halgan æteowde. on þæra hæþenra goda hiwe. hwilon on ioues hiwe. þe is ge-haten þór. hwilon on mercuries. þe men hatað oþon. hwilon on ueneris þære fulan gyden. þe men hatað fricg. and on manegum oþrum hiwum. hine bræd se deofol on þæs bisceopes gesihþe. ‘with a thousand wily arts the treacherous devil would deceive the holy man in some way, and he showed himself visible in diverse phantasms to the saint, in the appearance of gods of the heathen; sometimes in jove’s form, who is called thor, sometimes in that of mercury whom men call odin, sometimes in that of venus, michiko ogura 66 the foul goddess, whom men call frigg; and into many other shapes the devil transformed himself in the bishop’s sight.’ (27) bede 1 12.52.11 hi wæron wihtgylses suna, þæs fæder wæs witta haten, þæs fæder wæs wihta haten ד þæs wihta fæder wæs woden nemned, of ðæs strynde monigra mægða cyningcynn fruman lædde. ‘they (hengest and horsa) were sons of wihtgils, whose father was called witta, whose father was called wihta, and the father of wihta was named woden, from whose race the royal families of many tribes sprouted forth.’ 3.3. the angles the famous episode of pope gregory at the slave market is found in examples (28) and (29). the context is much the same, but bede prefers forms of the past participle without the prefix ge-. (28) æchomii,9 74.66-77 eft hé axode hu ðære ðeode nama wære, þe hí of comon; him wæs geandwyrd. þæt hi angle genemnode wæron; þa cwæð he. rihtlice hí sind angle gehátene. for ðan ðe hí engla wlite habbað. … gyt ða gregorius befrán. hu ðære scire nama wære. þe ða cnapan of alædde wæron; him man sæde. þæt ða scírmen wæron dere gehatene; gregorius andwyrde. wel hi sind dere gehatene. for ðan ðe hi sind fram graman generode. and to cristes mildheortnysse gecygede; gyt ða he befrán. hu is ðære leode cyning gehaten? him wæs geandswarod þæt se cyning ælle geháten wære; ‘again he asked what the name of the nation was, whence they came. he was answered that they were named angles. then he said, “rightly they are called angles, for they have the beauty of angels …” gregory yet inquired what the name of the shire was, from which the youths had been brought. they said to him that the shiremen were called dere. gregory answered, “well are they called dere (deira), for they are saved from wrath, and called to christ’s mercy.” he yet inquired, “how is the king of that country called?” he was answered that the king was called ælle.’ (29) bede 2 1.96.21-31 eft he frægn, hwæt seo þeod nemned wære, þe heo of common. ondswarede him mon þæt heo ongle nemde wæron. cwæð he: wel þæt swa mæg: forðon heo ænlice onsyne habbað. … þa gyt he furðor frægn ד cwæð: hwæt hatte seo mægð, þe þa cneohtas hider of lædde wæron. þa ondswarede him mon ד cwæð, þæt heo dere nemde wæron. cwæð he: wel þæt is cweden dere, de ira eruti; heo sculon of godes yrre beon abrogdene, ד to cristes mildheortnesse gecegde. ða gyt he ahsode hwæt heora cyning haten wære: ד him mon ondswarade ד cwæð, þætte he æll haten wære. ‘again he asked what the people was called from which they came; they answered that they were called english. he said, “that may well be; for their look is angelical, …” then he further asked and said, “what is the people called, from which the youths were brought here?” they answered him and said that they were named verbs and expressions of calling a person/place/thing 67 deiri. he said, “deiri is well said, de ira eruti; they shall be rescued from god’s wrath and called to the mercy of christ.” further he asked their king’s name; and they answered and said that he was called ælle.’ (tr. by miller) 3.4. eight deadly sins8 seven or eight deadly sins are listed fully or partially with the expression ‘is called’ or just ‘is’ without the past participle. examples are (30) to (33); in examples (30) to (32) is gecweden/icweden is used instead of is gereht even when it means ‘is rendered’ (cf. (20), while is gehaten/ihaten is widely chosen. (30) æls (memory of saints) 267-311 nu syndon eahta heafod-leahtras. þe us onwinnað swiðe. an is gecwæden gula. þæt is gyfernysse on englisc. … se oðer leahtor is forligr and unge-metegod galnyss. se is gehaten fornication. and he befylð þone mann. … se sixte leather is accidia gehaten. þæt is asolcennyss oþþe slæwð on englisc. ... se seofoða leather is iactantia gecweden. þæt is ydel gylp on ængliscre spræce … seo eahteoðe leather is superbia gehaten. þæt is on ænglisc modignyss gecweden. ‘now there are eight chief sins, which sorely fight against us: one is called gula, that is, gluttony in english, … the second sin is adultery and unbridled lust; it is called fornicatio, and it defiles the man, … the sixth sin is called accidia, that is, in english, idleness or sloth, … the seventh sin is called jactantia, that is in english speech, vain boasting, …’ (tr. by skeat) (31) homs 38 (verc 20) 61a -125a se forma heafodleahtor ys ofermodignes, seo ys gecweden cwen eallra yfela. … þonne ys se oðer heafodleahter gecweden gifernes, … ðonne ys se þridda heafodleahter gecweden forlyr, … þonne ys se feorðe heafodleahtor gecweden gytsung, … þonne ys se fifta heafodleahter gecweden yrre, … þonne ys se syxta heafodleahtor gecweden sleacnes, … þonne ys se seofeða heafodleahter gecweden unrotnes. … ðonne ys se eahtoða heafodleahter gecweden idelwuldor. ‘the first capital sin is pride, which is called the queen of all evils. …then the second capital sin is called gluttony … then the third capital sin is called adultery … then the fourth capital sin is called avarice … then the fifth capital sin is called anger … then the sixth capital sin is called sloth (slackness) … then the seventh capital sin is called sadness … then the eighth capital sin is called vainglory.’ (tr. by nicholson) (32) lambhom 103.4-34 nu beoð .viii. heofod sunnan þe rixað on us to swiðe. on is icweðen. gula. þet is ʒifernesse on englisc. … þa oðer sunne … þet is ihaten fornication. … þe þridde sunne is. auaricia. … þeo feorð[e] sunne is ihatan. ira. … þeo fifte sunne is. tristicia. … þeo sixte is ihaten. desidia. … þe seofeðe sunne is icweden. iactancia. … þe ehtuðe sunne is ihatan. superbia. ‘now there are eight cardinal sins that reign very powerfully in us. one is called gula, that is, greediness in english … the second sin … which is called fornicatio. 8 for “eight” instead of “seven” see ogura (2013, chapter 4, esp. 92–99). michiko ogura 68 … the third sin is avaritia … the fourth sin is called ira … the fifth sin is tristitia … the sixth sin is called desidia …. the seventh sin is called jactantia … the eighth sin is called superbia.’ (33) aw 75.245 (f. 52v) þe liun of prude haueð swiðe monie hwelpes, ant ich chulle nempni summe. vana gloria: … þe fifte hwelp hatte inobedience … ‘the lion of pride has many young cubs, and i will name some of them. vainglory … the fifth cub is called disobedience …’ cf. ar (nero) 87.33 (f. 51v) þe liun of prude haueð swuðe monie hwelpes, ד ich chulle nemmen summe. vana gloria hette þe forme. … oþer hweolp hette indignatio. … þe vifte hweolp hette inobedience. 3.5. places names of places are more frequently written in chronicles than in homilies. here i give five examples, (34) to (38), three of which are from bede, the text that show both features. (34) homs2 (verc 16) 64 iordan is haten seo ea þe hælend on gefulwad wæs. ‘jordan is called that river which the saviour was baptised in.’ (35) homs21(blhom 6) 254 he hie gereceþ to eallum godum, and he hie gelædeþ on sibbe gesyhþe; forþon þære burge nama þe is nemned gerusalem is gereht sibbe gesyht, forþon þe halige saula þær restaþ. ‘he will direct them to all good things and will bring them into the sight of peace; for the name of the city, which is called jerusalem, signifies ‘sight of peace’, because the holy souls rest there.’ (36) bede 4 7.282.9-12 tu æðele mynster he getimbrede, … him he getimbrade in súðrigna lande bi temese streame in stowe, seo is geceged ceortes eig, his sweoster, in eastseaxna mægðe in stowe seo is nemned in bercingum, ‘he built two noble monasteries, … for himself he built (one) in surry by the river thames, at the place called chertsey, (the other) for his sister, among the east saxons at a place called barking.’ (37) bede 4 18.308.8-11 ða ceadwalla se cyning mid þy here in þæt ealond for, þa flugon þa cneohtas út of þæm ealonde, ד wæron gelædde in þa neahmægðe, seo is geceged eota lond, in sume stowe seo is nemned æt stane. ‘when king ceadwalla landed on the island with his force, the princes fled out of the island and were conveyed to the neighbouring province, which is called the land of the jutes, to a spot called stoneham.’ verbs and expressions of calling a person/place/thing 69 (38) bede 5 12.422.5-8 salde him ד forgeaf piipin biscopseðl in his þere meran byrig, sio alde worde þere þiode is nemned wiltaburg; galleas nemnað traiectum; we cweðað ættreocum. ‘pippin gave and assigned to him a bishop’s seat in the famous town which is called wiltaburg, an old appellation among this people; the gauls call (it) traiectum; we call (it) utrecht.’ 3.5.1. places and names sometimes the name of a person is explained by the name of the place where the one has come. expressions used for a person and a place tend to be altered stylistically. examples are (39) to (42); (41) has a manuscript variant. (39) æchomi,34 465.8 ðær eardode sum þurhspedig man garganus gehaten: of his gelimpe wearð seo dun swa geciged: ‘there dwelt a very rich man called garganus: from his adventure the mountain was so named:’ (40) æchomii,2 12.14 eucharius hatte sum mæssepreost on þam lande þe is gehaten hispania. ‘a mass-priest is named eucharius in the land which is called spain.’ (41) æls (peter’s chair) 53-55 ioppe hatte sum burh. gehende þære liddan. on þære wæs an wydewe. wel gelyfed thabitas geciged [b. í-háten]. and swyþe ælmes-georn ‘there was a city called joppa, near at hand to lydda, wherein was a widow, a true believer, called tabitha, very diligent in alms-deeds’ (42) homs21(blhom 6) 45 hælendes þegna sum þa wæs swyþe gebolgen, se wæs haten iudas se scariothisca; forþon he com of þæm tune þe scariot hatte; ‘one of the saviour’s disciples named judas iscariot, because he came from the town called scariot, was then exceedingly angry.’ 3.6. days and months names of days and months can be commemorated and translated from latin into english. examples are (43) to (45); (45) has a variant reading. (43) æhom 12 94, 171 on ðam feowertegoðan dæge fram his acennednysse, þe we cweðað on englisc candelmæssedæg. … eft ðæs embe tyn niht on urum ðeowdome we mærsiað þone dæg mid mærlicum wyrðmynte þe we hatað pentecosten. michiko ogura 70 ‘on the fourteenth day from his birth, which we call in english candlemas day. … again after ten nights on our slavery we celebrate the day with great dignity, which we call pentecost.’ (44) homs 47 (blhom 12) 37 mid þon dæge wæs gefylled se dæg þe is nemned pentecosten ymb fiftig nihta æfter þære gecyþan ærist, ‘with that day, the day which is named pentecost was fulfilled about fifty nights after kinship’s resurrection’ (45) æls (peter’s chair) 1-4 we cweðaþ on gerím-cræfte cathedra sancti petri seofon nihton er þam monðe þe we martius hatað. nu synd sume men þe nyton hwæt se nama ge-tacnað. carhedra is ge-reht [b. í-cwæden.] bisceop-stól on englisc. ‘we commemorate in the calendar ‘cathedra sancti petri’ seven days before the month which we call march. now there are some men who do not know what this name signifies. cathedra is interpreted ‘bishop’s throne’ in english.’ 3.7. miscellanies: cross, book, tears, and jewel only a few examples are given as the last subclassification: (46) for christ’s cross and for the gospel, (47) kinds of tears, in which lambhom and trinhom share the content of the text with regular use of is nemned in the former and with slight variation in the latter, and (48) for agate. (46) homs 39 (verc 12) 16-18 we sculon beran usse reliquias ymb ure land, þa medeman cristes rodetacen þe ד we cristes mæl nemnað, on þam he sylfa þrowode for mancynnes alysnesse. swelce we sculon beran ða bec þe man hateð godspel, on þam syndon awritene þa halgan ד þa godcundan geryno. ‘and we must bear around our land our relics and the worthy sign of christ’s cross, that we call the sign of christ, on which he himself suffered for mankind’s ransom. also we must bear those books which one calls the gospels, in which are written those holy and divine mysteries.’ (47) lambhom 159.4-20 þe tere þet mon wepð for his aʒen sunne is alse salt water. and þer fore hit is inemned see water. … þe ter þet .mon. schet for his em-cristenes sunne is inemned snaw water for hit melt of þe neche horte swa deð þe snaw to-ʒeines þe sunne. … þe ter þet .mon. wept for laðe of þisse liue is inemned welle water. for he welleð of þe horte swa doð water of welle. … þe ter þet .mon. wept for longing to heouene is inemned deu water for alswa se þe sunne drach up þene deu. and makeð þer of kume reines … ‘the tear that a man weeps for his own sin is as salt water, and therefore it is named sea-water. … the tear that a man sheds for the sin of his fellow-christian is called snow-water, for it melts from the tender heart as does the snow against the sun. … the tear that a man weeps for loathing of this world is called well-water, for it wells verbs and expressions of calling a person/place/thing 71 from the heart as does water from the well. … the tear that a man weeps through longing for heaven is called dew-water, for as the sun draws up the dew and makes thereof the rains to come …’ cf. trinhom 151.4-22 ðe wop þe man wepeð for his agene sinne is swiðe biter alse saltwater. and þerefore is nemned se water. … ðe wop þe man wepeð for his emcristenes wowe. cumeð of þe wlache heorte. alse þe sunne hete þe snow. þat he hit for-melteð to watere. … þe teares þe man wepeð. for þat him wo beð. þat he wunie shal on loðe erde⸵ ben nemmed welle water. for þat hie walleð of þe heorte rotes⸵ swo water doð of welle. … þe teares þe man wepeð for longenge to heuene ben cleped rein water. oðer deu water. for þat alse þe sunne teð water fram eorðe up to þe wolcne and þer-offe cumeð reines. ‘the weeping that a man weeps for his own sins is very bitter, like salt water, and is therefore called sea-water. … the weeping that a man weeps for his fellow christians’ woe comes from the warm heart as the sun heats the snow and melts it to water. … the tears that a man weeps because he is sorry that he must dwell in hateful abode, are names well-water, for they well (flow) from the heart’s roots as water does from the well. … the tears that a man weeps for longing to heaven are called rain-water or dew-water; for as the sun draws water from the earth up to the clouds and thereof comes rain, …’ (48) aw 54.234-236 (f. 37r) þe earn deð in his nest a deorewurðe ʒimstan, achate hatte, for nan attri þing ne mei þe stan nahhin, ‘the eagle places in his nest a precious jewel called agate, because no venomous thing can come near it.’ cf. ar (nero) 59.29-31 (f. 34v) þe earn deð in his neste enne deorewurðe ʒimston ðet hette achate. vor non attri þinc ne mei ðene ston neihen. 4. summary and conclusion examples quoted from my data and tables at the end of this article show that the verbs and expressions of calling someone or something vary from text to text. the distinction between chronicles and homilies is clear, though bede stands in between. some diachronic tendencies have been made manifest through the investigation. among various verbs and expressions each text chooses certain types and shows it preference. chrona uses be (ge)cweden and be (ge)nemned for calling a place, while chrone chooses be (ge)haten in most instances. or has be (ge)haten for a person and man hateð for a place. laʒ (c) and (o) choose be (ge)haten and inflected forms of hatan, be (ge)cleped and inflected forms of clipian. bede uses be haten and nama is/wæs for a person but be nemned, be geciged and be cweden for a place. æchomi chooses be gehaten, be geciged and be gecweden, while æchomii and æhom use be gehaten and x gehaten. æls(p) has not so many examples to show its liking, while æls(v) chooses x (ge)haten, be gehaten and hatte. whom has hatte, be genamod and be gehaten. verchom uses be (ge)nemned, nemnan and be (ge)cweden, while blhom has be michiko ogura 72 (ge)nemned and nama is/wæs. in the transitional period, lambhom uses be ihaten and be (i)cleped, and trinhom especially chooses be (i)cleped. aw and ar(nero) use inflected forms of cleopien, be cleopet and nempnin. along with these preferences, each text shows a variety of choices. here are some concluding remarks: (i) various morphological types of hatan, i.e. we hatað, is/wæs haten, hatte, man/me hateð, etc. had been used in old and early middle english. cweðan and be gecweden, nemnan and be genemned, gecigan and be geciged (be represents all possible forms of beon and wesan with a limited number of weorðan) were used with different numbers of occurrences. be gereht is used in the sense ‘be translated’ or ‘be signified’ in homiletic context especially ælfric’s. clepan and be (i)cleopet are used in the homilies of the transitional period. the use of namnian and be genamod is obvious in wulfstan’s homilies. spe(a)len and be ispe(a)let are preferred in ancrene wisse and ancrene riwle. comparisons of the same context, especially examples (24) and (25), (28) and (29), (47) (lambhom and trinhom), show that there has been no strict rule of choosing the same verb for the same object. (ii) ælfric’s homilies often use periphrastic forms be gehaten, be gecweden and be geciged. hatte is chosen at times, but in the verse part of æls it is preferred as well as the ‘x gehaten’ type. in verchom and blhom, be (ge)nemned and nemnan, i.e. in the passive (‘x is called’) and in the active (‘we call x’), are visible. verchom also likes be (ge)cweden. (one’s) nama is/wæs appears in æchomi (especially for person), and in other homilies at times. notable is the feature of whom, where be genamod and namnian are chosen, while be genemned occurs only once.9 ancrene wisse and ancrene riwle show the choice of be icleopet and cleopian as well as be ispe(a)let and spe(a)len; seggen and nempnin in both active and passive constructions also occur. when bede is compared, having features of both homily and chronicle, be haten is preferred for naming persons, while be cweden, be geciged and be nemned are used for calling places. hatte and man-periphrasis appear throughout the old and middle english periods. tables are given to show the results of the investigation. (“other” in tables includes examples in subdivisions 3.4, 3.6, and 3.7.) (iii) in earlier texts the choice was found among be gecieged, be gecweden and be (ge)cleped, the last of which survived into middle english, while be (ge)haten and be (ge)nemned were kept in use throughout the medieval period. the choice of verbs and expressions continued, even though be called showed the first appearance in the transitional period: a1250 wooing of our lord 271.28 nis nan wisere þen þu þat art wisedom cald of þi fader in heuene ‘there is none wiser than thou that art called wisdom of thy father in heaven.’10 references dictionaries doe(c) = dipaolo healey, antonette, et al. 2009–. dictionary of old english web corpus. eds. toronto: university of toronto press. accessed november 11, 2021. http://www.doe.utoronto.ca. 9 the oed (name, v. under etymology) tells that “[i]n old english the prefixed form genamnian, genomnian are also attested; … however, the usual word in old and middle english is nemn (v.). cf. †nemn, v.” 10 oed call, v. and med callen. verbs and expressions of calling a person/place/thing 73 med = kurath, hans , sherman m. kuhn, john reidy, and robert e. lewis, eds. 1952– 2001. middle english dictionary. ann arbor: university of michigan press. accessed november 11, 2021. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary. oed = proffitt, michael, ed. 1990–in progress. the oxford english dictionary, 3rd ed. oxford: oxford university press. accessed november 11, 2021. http://www.oed.com. editions bately, janet, ed. 1980. the old english orosius. eets, s.s. 6. london: oxford university press. bately, janet, ed. 1986. the anglo-saxon chronicle. a collaborative edition. vol.3. ms a. cambridge: d. s. brewer. bethurum, dorothy, ed. 1957. the homilies of wulfstan. oxford: clarendon press. clemoes, peter, ed. 1997. ælfric’s catholic homilies, the first series. eets, s.s. 17. oxford: oxford university press. day, mabel, ed. 1952. the english text of the ancrene riwle edited from cotton nero a. xiv. eets, o.s. 225. london: oxford university press. godden, malcolm, ed. 1979. ælfric’s catholic homilies, the second series, eets, s.s. 5. london: oxford university press. irvine, susan, ed. 2004. the anglo-saxon chronicle. a collaborative edition. vol. 7. ms e. cambridge: d. s. brewer. madden, frederic, ed. 1847; rpt. 1970. laʒamon’s brut, or chronicle of britain. 3 vols. london: the society of antiquaries; new york: ams. miller, thomas, ed. 1891; rpt. 1959. the old english version of bede’s ecclesiastical history of the english people, eets o.s. 95, 96. london: oxford university press. millett, bella, ed. 2005–2006. ancrene wisse: a corrected edition of the text in cambridge, corpus christi college, ms 402, with variants from other manuscripts. eets, o.s. 325, 326. oxford: oxford university press. morris, richard, ed. 1868. old english homilies and homiletic treatises of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. first series. eets, o.s. 29. rpt. new york: kraus reprint, 1988. morris, richard, ed. 1873. old english homilies of the twelfth century. second series. eets, o.s. 53. rpt. new york: kraus reprint, 1981. morris, richard, ed. 1967. the blickling homilies. eets, o.s. 58, 63 and 73 in one volume. london: oxford university press. plummer, charles, ed. 1892. two of the saxon chronicles parallel. 2 vols. rpt. oxford: clarendon press. pope, john c, ed. 1967–1968. homilies of ælfric. a supplementary collection. 2 vols. eets, o.s. 259, 260. london: oxford university press. scragg, donald g., ed. 1992. the vercelli homilies and related texts. eets, o.s. 300. oxford: oxford university press. skeat, walter w., ed. 1966. ælfric’s lives of saints. eets, o.s. 76 and 82 (vol. i), 94 and 114 (vol. ii). london: oxford university press. thorpe, benjamin, ed. 1844. aelfric. sermones catholici in the original anglo-saxon with an english version. 2 vols. rpt. [1983] hildesheim/zürich/new york: georg olms. translations garmonsway, g. n. 1953. the anglo-saxon chronicle. london: dent & sons. michiko ogura 74 nicholson, lewis e. 1991. the vercelli book homilies. translations from the anglosaxon. lanham: university press of america. salu, mary b. 1955. the ancrene riwle (the corpus ms.: ancrene wisse). london: burns & oats. studies campbell, alistair. 1959. old english grammar. oxford: clarendon press. kaita, kousuke. 2020. “emergence of middle english hōten, meaning ‘to promise’.” the bulletin of art and science 549: 1–20. laing, margaret. 1993. catalogue of sources for a linguistic atlas of early medieval english. cambridge: d. s. brewer. mitchell, bruce. 1985. old english syntax, 2 vols. oxford: clarendon press. ogura, michiko. 2013. words and expressions of emotion in medieval english (studies in english medieval language and literature 39). frankfurt am main: peter lang. strite, vic. 1989. old english semantic-field studies. new york: peter lang. appendix. tables for summarising the results of the investigation of verbs and expressions of calling. table 1. chronicles a and e, orosius, laʒamon (c) and (o). chrona chrone or laʒ(c) laʒ(o) person place other person place other person place other person place other person place other be (ge)haten 3 2 45 7 39 12 1 129 32 4 93 23 3 hatan 1 1 10 2 1 93 27 1 57 12 2 hatte 5 7 8 7 10 13 1 11 15 1 man hateð 1 9 79 2 1 1 be (ge)cweden 6 6 be (ge)cleped 11 6 1 8 1 1 clipian 12 18 1 14 18 man cleopeð 8 1 2 be (ge)nemn ed 7 5 3 2 1 2 nemnan 1 1 5 6 1 3 man nemneð 1 3 1 1 be nama 1 1 be (ge)ciged 1 nemnan & cigan 1 verbs and expressions of calling a person/place/thing 75 table 2. ælfric’s catholic homilies i and ii, and homilies of ælfric. æchomi æchomii æhom person place other person place other person place other be gehaten 33 15 11 22 21 8 31 2 1 hatan 4 2 2 4 8 3 hatte 6 5 2 8 x gehaten 1 11 14 2 1 be gecweden 13 5 1 7 5 3 2 1 1 cweðan 1 1 2 be geciged 21 1 3 3 2 2 1 1 gecigan 4 x geciged 1 be genemned 3 be gereht 6 1 1 1 be gereht & gehaten 1 nama is/wæs 12 3 table 3. ælfric’s lives of saints (prose part and verse part). æls(p) æls(v) person place other person place other be gehaten 3 1 1 33 7 3 hatan 1 5 1 2 mon hateð hatte 2 1 25 x (ge)haten 45 14 be (ge)cweden 4 cweðan be (ge)ciged 1 9 gecigan 1 x geciged 5 be (ge)nemned 4 2 nemnan 1 1 mon nemneð 3 nama is/wæs 3 be gereht 1 michiko ogura 76 table 4.1. lambeth homilies and trinity homilies. table 4.2. vercelli homilies and blickling homilies. table 5. ancrene wisse and ancrene riwle (nero) aw ar (nero) person place other person place other be ihaten 3 5 haten 1 1 me hateð 2 hatte 3 3 be icleopet 3 1 3 2 5 cleopien 3 2 7 7 10 me cleopeð 2 4 be iseid 2 seggen 1 1 2 5 me seið 1 2 be inempnet 1 2 nempnin 4 8 me nempneð 1 be ispe(a)let 2 1 spe(a)len 2 11 2 lambhom trinhom person place other person place other be ihaten 5 1 10 1 haten 1 me hat 2 be (i)cleped 4 2 6 13 2 17 clepen 3 1 be nemned 4 1 nemnen 1 1 5 be icweðen 1 2 verchom blhom person place other person place other be (ge)haten 5 4 1 2 hatte 1 3 1 5 hatan 1 man hateð 1 be (ge)nemned 12 5 2 3 4 2 nemnan 2 8 3 nama is/wæs 4 2 4 1 be (ge)cweden 2 8 1 be gereht 1 1 verbs and expressions of calling a person/place/thing 77 table 6. homilies of wulfstan. whom person place other be gehaten 4 hatte 8 hatan 1 be genemned 1 be genamod 5 1 namnian 1 clypian ד namnian 1 table 7. bede. bede person place other be haten 44 3 mon hateð 1 3 hatte 6 5 x haten 4 be cweden 1 14 cweðan 1 1 be geciged 1 18 be nemned 8 36 1 nemnan 2 1 1 mon nemneð 4 nama is/wæs 33 3 selim07 (2).pdf antonio león, selim 7 (2000, for 1997): 125—151 discourse and community in the late 14th century introduction the title of this article attempts to fit, at least in intention, the topic of study proposed in it as a general framework to develop a methodological approach to a better knowledge of geoffrey chaucer. as the title: “discourse and community in the late 14th century”, at first instance, seems too general, i have taken different options in order to make it more concrete thus enabling me to provide something to be discussed. i have thus decided, as a first choice, to pay attention to a particular subject matter: love. love is a topic beyond time and space. this means that love was an interesting subject for people living in late 14th century london as it is still a fascinating and valid subject for us, humans of our more or less united finisecular europe. as is well known, geoffrey chaucer was a prolific author. from all his numerous works i have centered my study on troilus & criseyde, a poem written in late 14th century london. for many critics and also for me, this poem is the best medieval literary work dealing with love. according to c. david benson (1991:vii) it was “chaucer's only completed masterpiece and the greatest poem on sexual love in english”. my second optional step is, then, related to the way i shall deal with this subject matter. my didactic approach will consist of analysing several texts from a systemic functional perspective. thus, through discourse analysis, using the traditional terminology of the three systemic functional parameters: field, tenor & mode, i have tried to discover how the author, chaucer, endeavours to change or to improve the mentality of his community on matters of love. ____________________________________________________________________ 126 so before proceeding to the actual analysis, i would like to, first, establish a brief commentary of the poem in order to refresh the memory of its plot; and, second, outline the general social attitudes on love, i.e. the accepted doctrine of love that was current in the literary works of the middle ages now commonly called 'courtly love'. troilus and criseyde the poem, probably written in the 1380's, contains five books, some 8.200 lines of rhyme -royal. it is a retelling of the story of troy highlighting a central love affair between troilus and criseyde. according to pearsall (1992:170-1), the poem also demonstrates chaucer's now complete mastery of the rhyme royal stanza, and his power of exploiting it for every variety of poetic narrative and expression. he shows an exemplum of this command commenting on the stanza in which the poet refers to the framework of his poem: the matter of troy, in the following manner: yt is wel wist how that the grekes stronge in armes with a thousand shippes wente to troiewardes, and the cite longe assegeden, neigh ten yer er they stente, and in diverse wise and oon entente, the ravysshyng to wreken of eleyne, by paris don, they wroughten al hir peyne. (i, 57-63) the majestic surge of the first four lines, with their striking enjambment, and the ending delays, inversions and enclosures of the last three almost embody in themselves the essence of the heroic story. the poem deals with love in flesh and bones; it is a romance, a story, a straight narration easy to follow, in which the main characters are: the narrator, according to shepherd (1970:88), “the only one figure who reacts and changes with the sequence of the events narrated”, who is in permanent connection with the reader; troilus, the protagonist, trojan hero only second ____________________________________________________________________ 127 after hector, he is an extreme idealist. criseyde, daughter of the traitor calkas, in my opinion the first feminist figure in english literature; pandarus, troilus's friend and criseyde's uncle, their real, expedient, practical gobetween; diomede, the greek warrior, criseyde's lover at the end of the story. rowe (1976: 57) comments with reference to the different characters of this poem: what has for the most part fascinated the critics of the poem's characters is their complex psychology and the realism with which chaucer has portrayed them, as though in its characterization the poem were only the prototype of the psychological novel. shoaf (1989:xxvi) gives us a general comment about this work in the conclusion of the introduction of his edition of the poem, signalling its complexity and involution1. the love of troilus and criseyde is not unique; it is presented as an illustration of love's wonderful works. we should not forget that most of the crit ics will agree on the predominant didactic aspect of all the french love-visions and many medieval literary works. this didactic element, also with respect to love, appears in this poem embedded in the nature of things, as we can see in the first book: for evere it was, and evere it shal byfalle, that love is he that alle thing may bynde, for may no man fordon the lawe of kynde. (i, 236-8). in this same line, bethurum (1971:225) comments: 1 troilus and criseyde is a long, learned poem --part epic, part tragedy, part comedy, part romance-in which chaucer draws on all of his wide learning to examine human relationships, primarily erotic relationships, in a context dominated by the idea of worldly mutability, and against the historical backdrop of the trojan war: fin'amors is the code or discourse that supplies the primary vocabulary of the poem; the matter of troy is the source of the poem's major historical events; and boethian philosophy is the intellectual structure within which chaucer develops his main ideas and eventually arrives at his principal conclusions --and these number among them, but are by no means restricted to, a sober conviction of the short -term untrustworthiness of the world, a healthy scepticism toward idealism and pragmatism alike, and a profound belief, all the same, in the ennobling virtues of human love, its near kinship to divine love. ____________________________________________________________________ 128 if troilus and criseyde are illustrations of love's power, their short happiness is also an illustration of the mutability that marks all earthly life. not for nothing did chaucer give them their universal role. just to end this brief and general commentary on the poem let us remember mehl's (1986:65) words1, in which he emphasizes the “challenging and often surprising experience” that the reading of the poem implies. courtly love it seems unquestionable that in the middle ages most literary works had a foreground frame on love matters which was called “fin'amour” with the meaning of sublime love and which has, not so long ago, been called “courtly love”. for a long time it was a kind of scholarly axiom that the poets of the european middle ages had created a widely accepted doctrine of courtly love, an elaborate set of rules, rooted firmly in the feudal structure of society, which regulated in detail and with the authority of a religious system every aspect of behaviour in the service of love, that is, in devotion to one's chosen lady. didactic works, like the roman de la rose or andreas capellanus' treatise de amore (whose claim to be a serious authority or manual of courtly love has often been grossly overstated), seem to support this theory. as a matter of fact, in the first fifty lines of this poem, chaucer's narrator openly assumes that love is a religion, a kind of worship. thus, we can observe the religious terminology used by the author in the two following stanzas: and biddeth ek for hem that ben at ese, 1 there is no english poem before chaucer of equal size which is comparable to tr & cr in its careful construction, its variety and wealth of stylistic devices and its intellectual stature. the poem has been associated with the classical epic, it has been described as a medieval romance, and interpreted as a predecessor of the modern novel. this variety of interpretation alone suggests that it is not strictly modelled on any particular conventional genre but attempts something new: an ambitious and rhetorically heightened but in no way exclusive presentation of a classical story which allows discussion of almost all the fundamental problems of courtly lovepoetry that occupy such a prominent position in chaucer's early poetry. the intellectual richness and variety of this work make every fresh reading a challenging and often surprising experience, and this explains, too, why the critical debate about the poem is not likely ever to be concluded. ____________________________________________________________________ 129 that god hem graunte ay good perseveraunce, and sende hem myght hire ladies so to plese that it to love be worship and plesaunce. for so hope i my sowle best avaunce, to prey for hem that loves servauntz be, and write hire wo, and lyve in charite, and for to have of hem compassioun, as though i were hire owne brother dere. now herkneth with a good entencioun, for now wil i gon streght to my matere, in which ye may the double sorwes here of troilus, in lovynge of criseyde, and how that she forsook hym er she deyde. (i, 43 56) without any doubt, shoaf (1989:xxii) is right when stating: “fin'amors was a kind of code, a discourse for governing and expressing relations among the sexes”. according to bethurum (1971:228): courtly love was probably the purest form of sexual love the western world has known, being unmixed with social ambition, pride, desire of wealth, or even the laudable interests of family. all the sources 1 chaucer had at hand for his poem pointed to the neoplatonic idea of the ladder of love, that is, the love of man leads to the love of god. this belief is present in the thought of the 14th century commu nity and it is our belief and our hypothesis here that chaucer through his dis course tries to make his contemporaries think the unthinkable, i.e., that human love is of sufficient worth by itself. on the other hand, what chaucer thought about love is always present all through his other works. thus, his definition of love is found in the first two stanzas of his poem the parliament of fowls: 1 among the most important ones are the following: [alain de lille's anticlaudianus, de planctu naturae; macrobius's treatment of cicero's somnium scipionis ; boecius' de consolatione philosophiae; guillaume de lorris & jean de meung's roman de la rose; dante's comedy; benoît de sainte-maure's roman de troie; guido delle colonne's historia destructionis troiae; boccaccio's teseida, and his direct and principal source il filostrato]. ____________________________________________________________________ 130 the lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne, th'assay so hard , so sharp the conquerynge, the dredful joye, alwey that slit so yerne: al this mene i by love, that my felynge astonyeth with his wonderful werkynge so sore, iwis, that whan i on hym thynke, nat wot i wel wher that i flete or synke. for al be that i knowe nat love in dede, ne wot how that he quiteth folk here hyre, yit happeth me ful ofte in bokes reede of his myrakles and his crewel yre. there rede i wel he wol be lord and syre; i dar nat seyn, his strokes been so sore, but “god save swich a lord!” --i can na moore. it is precisely here, in this definition, that an important element of dis agreement on chaucer's part with the courtly love tradition can be observed, right in the first line of the second stanza quoted: for al be that i knowe nat love in dede,. this element highlights the fact that chaucer, in his own opinion about love, emphatically contrasts with most medieval and classical authors' opinions about love. he presents himself (or through his narrator) as being ignorant about amorous matters. thus, in the first book of this poem the author exclaims: for i, that god of loves servantz serve, ne dar to love, for myn unliklynesse, preyen for speed, al sholde i therfore sterve, so fer am i from his help in derknesse. but natheles, if this may don gladnesse to any lovere, and his cause availle, have he my thonk, and myn be this travaille! (i, 15-21) let us remember that the convention exemplified in the love visions of machaut, froissard and other lyrical poets mainly consists of the fact that the narrator of the events or sentiments is himself imp licated in them and he is writing from experience. thus, the tradition handed down not merely from the troubadours, but also from ovid, who himself boasts in the ars amatoria that he is a 'magister' (ii, 744) and 'doctus'(iii, 18) in that art, meaning a lyric ____________________________________________________________________ 131 tradition, with the poet expressing his own feelings. chaucer, on the contrary, always tries to be outside the game --either through his ignorant narra tor (a comic figure himself) or by means of the reiteration of his passive role as a translator--, identifying the reader with the lover. this aim, to try to identify the reader with the lover, is, in my opinion, the reason why chaucer openly differs from courtly love tradition in this aspect. as will be shown in the analysis, in this poem, chaucer, through persuasive discourse, tries to in fluence his community on matters concerning the nature of human love. corpus for analysis our corpus for analysis is composed of some fifty texts, all of them taken from the five books that constitute this poem1. i have only given here the analysis of the most relevant texts (just only sixteen) for obvious reasons of time and space. text one: book i. lines 267-80: [falling in love] withinne the temple he wente hym forth pleyinge, this troilus, of every wight aboute, on this lady, and now on that, lokynge, wher so she were of town or of withoute; and upon cas bifel that thorugh a route his eye percede, and so depe it wente, til on criseyde it smot, and ther it stente. and sodeynly he wax therwith astoned, and gan hir bet biholde in thrifty wise. “o mercy, god”, thoughte he, “wher hastow woned, that art so feyr and goodly to devise?” therwith his herte gan to sprede and rise, and softe sighed, lest men myghte hym here, and caught ayeyn his firste pleyinge chere. 1 all the texts quoted in this article have been taken from the edition of the poem edited by r. a. shoaf, 1989. ____________________________________________________________________ 132 field: description of troilus's becoming enamoured of criseyde. in this text we find an action, an event, a change of state and processes of sensing and saying. in this description there are expressions of place [withinne the temple, a concrete and sacred place which conceals the interior of troilus where the action takes place], manner [ of every wight aboute, on this…on that, of town or of withoute, and upon cas, thorough a route: all these adverbs of manner give the impression of coincidence, hazard], and means [his eye, his herte, rhetorical self-questioning], as circumstances associated with what is going on.the author is here conceptualising the experience of falling in love in accordance with the courtly love tenets. tenor: contrastive style between external appearance and internal change of attitude. plain style, almost cold except in his thought which at that moment is exclamatory, absolutely and intensely involved. declarative mood and external modality. see lines 276-7. mode: here we look for the way the author has organized his message by means of the units of information with which he reaches his communicative significance. we find a circumstantial adjunct of place as a marked theme (line 267) at the beginning of the text, whose function seems to be to prepare the scene by setting up an external framework of place indicating by contrast that the act of falling in love always takes place within oneself. we shall point out the discoursal themes of line 276 (exclamatory) and 278 (consequential) which connect their clauses to the previous part of the text. the rheme of line 279 formed by a finite subordinate clause expressing a meaning of finality connects the interior state of the elliptical subject of the main clause (troilus) with his external appearance: this topic will enhance the message in the last line in which, through the fronting of a finite verb in a paratactic clause emphasis is given to the external aspect to try to conceal the internal upheaval suffered by troilus because of his falling in love. we see that the presuppositions involved in the thematic structures of this text are appropriate --from the point of view of creating a coherent whole with the event narrated. let us remember that falling in love was a personal action in which secrecy was an important condition. text two: ____________________________________________________________________ 133 book ii lines 22-8: [variety in language and love] ye knowe ek that in forme of speche is chaunge withinne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho that hadden pris, now wonder nyce and straunge us thinketh hem, and yet thei spake hem so, and spedde as wel in love as men now do; ek for to wynnen love in sondry ages, in sondry londes, sondry ben usages. field: commentary on the similarity between love and language pointing out that, although there is a common characteristic element in both, that is, their great variety throughout the ages, people manage to go on communicating and loving eternally. the text establishes, with its chilvaric terminology, that love has different and diverse aspects and concepts by means of the use of mental processes [ knowe, thinketh ] which have an experiential foundation through material processes in the text [ change, spake, spedde, do, wynnen]. tenor: the narrator is speaking directly to the listener/ reader. the style is direct, familiar and provocative assuming a common opinion and the same background knowledge on linguistic and amorous matters. mode: the repetition of words such as 'ek', & 'soundry' try to obtain the reader's awareness and acceptance of the multip licity of concepts about love: there is no single way of understanding love. the organisation of this text seeks an agreement to the variety of love on the part of the audience. so love is not only what books say about it but one also must take into consideration personal experience. here the author is acting upon his community preparing them for the possibility of changing the cliché, stereotypic thoughts they have about courtly love. text three: book ii. lines 407-27: [criseyde's claim] with this he stynte, and caste adown the heed, ____________________________________________________________________ 134 and she began to breste a-wepe anoon, and seyde, “allas, for wo! why nere i deed? for of this world the feyth is al agoon. allas! what sholden straunge to me doon, when he, that for my beste frend i wende, ret me to love, and sholde it me defende? “allas! i wolde han trusted, douteles, that if that i, thorugh my disaventure, hadde loved outher hym or achilles, ector, or any mannes creature, ye nolde han had no mercy ne mesure on me, but alwey had me in repreve. this false world, allas! who may it leve? “what! is this al the joye and al the feste? is this youre reed? is this my blisful cas? is this the verray mede of youre byheeste? is al this paynted proces seyd, allas! right for this fyn? o lady myn, pallas! thow in this dredful cas for me purveye, for so atoned am i that i deye”. field: the situation here is to present, by means of a didactic and ironic answer, criseyde's position strongly claiming and protesting against pandarus's 'demand d'amour' on behalf of troilus. it seems to be a kind of feminist rebuke to pandarus, her dear uncle, for his 'male chauvinist' conception of courtly love. tenor: the speaker here is criseyde once she has exactly found out pandarus's revelation. she is complaining in a very ironic, realistic tone against pandarus's intention by means of several inquisitive rhetorical ques tions, exclamations and the use of modals [sholden, sholde, wolde, nolde, may]. at the same time, we observe that her answer is not a wholly negative one, which was probably impossible in that social framework. in any case, she is free and clever enough to denounce in a very subtle way the contradic tory behaviour and attitudes on love matters of her medieval society. mode: the organisation of this text, through her exclamations, her rhetorical questions, her invocation to pallas for help, has the effect on the ____________________________________________________________________ 135 audience of casting some doubts on the general acceptance of courtly love as such. let us remember that 'fin ' amour' was an invention of men, conceived as a game to win a lady. text four: book ii. lines 498-504: [criseyde's curiosity] tho fillen they in other tales glade, tyl at the laste, “o good em,” quod she tho, “for his love, which that us bothe made, tel me how first ye wisten of his wo. woot noon of it but ye?” --he seyde, “no”.-“kan he wel speke of love?” quod she; “i preye tel me, for i the bet me shal purveye”. field: through a dialogue the author enhances the idea that love and speech go together hand in hand. also, concealment seems to be an important element of courtly love. tenor: in this text two actants are carrying out a dialogue. in a very casual way, criseyde asks pandarus two questions about love which seem fundamental for their conception of love. the first one is 'how many people know about troilus's amorous suffering'? and about his ability as a lover, that is to say if he properly knows how to speak of love. her eager interest greatly contrasts with her previous rebuke, although she gives as an excuse a desire to better prepare herself. the term she employs 'purveye' is the same one she used for/ in her invocation to pallas. mode: the expression 'til at the laste' used as theme gives the reader the apparent impression that these questions seem to be casuistic, as by chance, but the reader is well aware that the questions are important ones, although put in a very subtle, feministic way. in fact, in the following line after this text, the narrator comments how pandarus himself smiles in a very special way: “tho pandarus a litel gan to smyle,” to which every reader will also smile. ____________________________________________________________________ 136 text five: book ii. lines 771-84: [criseyde's thoughts about love] that thought was this: “allas! syn i am free, sholde i now love, and put in jupartie my sikernesse, and thrallen libertee? allas! how dorst i thenken that folie? may i naught wel in other folk aspie hire dredfull joye, hire constreinte, and hire peyne? ther loveth noon, that she nath why to pleyne. “for love is yet the mooste stormy lyf, right of hymself, that evere was bigonne; for evere som mystrust or nice strif ther is in love, som cloude is over that sonne. therto we wrecched wommen nothing konne, whan us is wo, but wepe and sitte and thinke; oure wrecche is this, our owen wo to drynke. field: the text is a soliloquy from criseyde putting her thoughts about love into words. those thoughts portray in a realistic way the common belief of that society about courtly love in which women were the loser. waiting, worrying and weeping was a woman's lot in love, and nobody was there to succour her. this feeling, i think, would be quite general and extended among medieval women. tenor: the style is serious, sobre, ironic and dynamic through excla mations, an abundant / recurrent use of modality and several rhetorical ques tions. by me ans of her own reflections, criseyde is trying to question the current ideas about courtly love. mode: in the last two lines there are two marked themes highlighting that for women woe was an essential characteristic of love. the expectation implied in the rheme is if women would always agree to continue to wallow in their own misery. text six: ____________________________________________________________________ 137 book iii. lines 128-47: [troilus's intention] “what that i mene, o swete herte deere?” quod troilus, “o goodly, fresshe free, that with the stremes of youre eyen cleere ye wolde somtyme frendly on me see, and thanne agreen that i may ben he, withouten braunche of vice on any wise, in trouthe alwey to don yow my servise, “as to my lady right and chief resort, with al my wit and al my diligence; and i to han, right as yow list, comfort, under yowre yerde, egal to myn offence, as deth, if that i breke youre deffence; and that ye deigne me so muche honoure, me to comanden aught in any houre; “and i to ben youre verray humble trewe, secret, and in my paynes pacient, and evere mo desiren fresshly newe to serve, and ben ay ylike diligent, an with good herte al holly youre talent receyven wel, how sore that me smerte, -lo, this mene i, myn owen swete herte.” field: proclamation of troilus' good intention as a lover according to the tenets of courtly love. several aspects in the text, that constitute courtly love, should be highlighted here: asking her for permission to accept his service. his service means the exclusion of any vice. it also implies honesty and hard work with intelligence and diligence. the infidelity of it means death. to be at her disposal at any time. to be a humble, discreet, patient, exclusive, diligent, joyful servant and put up with any necessary suffering. ____________________________________________________________________ 138 tenor: there is a dialogue between troilus and criseyde. he is speaking to her about his good intentions. the tone is familiar serious, clear, pre cise and true, although quite direct, and expresses deep feelings.(see first and last lines of the text). the use of modality here is appro priate to the fact that troilus is asking her to accept his service. mode: in my view, in this text there is a complete cohesive knot formed by the first and the last lines with the same not only meaning but the same communicative significance. the reader is fully aware of his good intentions, which, on the other hand, completely fit in with the exemplary, hagiographic, didactic aim of courtly love. text seven: book iii. lines 1086-1106: [troilus's swoon] therwith the sorwe so his herte shette, that from his eyen fil ther nought a tere, and every spirit his vigour in -knette, so they astoned or oppressed were. the felyng of his sorwe, or of his fere, or of aught elles, fled was out of towne; and down he fel al sodeynly aswowne. this was no litel sorwe for to se; but al was hust, and pandare up as faste,-“o nece, pes, or we be lost!” quod he, “beth naught agast!” but certeyn, at the laste, for this or that, he into bed hym caste, and seyde, “o thef, is this a mannes herte?” and of he rente al to his abre s herte; and seyde, “nece, but ye helpe us now, allas, youre owen troilus is lorn!” “iwis, so wolde i, and i wiste how, ful fayn,” quod she; “allas, that i was born!” “yee, nece, wol ye pullen out the thorn that stiketh in his herte,” quod pandare, “sey 'al foryeve', and stynt is al this fare!” ____________________________________________________________________ 139 field: narration of the situation in which the lovers go to bed for the first time. first, there is a preliminary introduction made by the narrator where the audience attends in shocked surprise to troilus' swoon. after this surprise there follows a dialogue between pandarus and criseyde full of exciting action. tenor: there are three participants: the narrator, pandarus and criseyde. they talk and act about troilus' swoon. the style is at first solemn and calm, but is followed by a rapid dialogue, abrupt, intense and surprising, not exempt from irony through rhetorical questions, exclamations and use of modals. mode: there is a cohesive nexus present as the audience knows that the reason for troilus' swoon is pandaru s' lie and at the same time it serves in the last line to develop the following action. there is an excellent balance between the action and the words from an ironic point of view which makes the reader smile. text eight: book iii. lines 1205-11: [criseyde's acquiescence] this troilus in armes gan hire streyne, and seyde, “o swete, as evere mot i gon, now be ye kaught, now is ther but we tweyne! now yeldeth yow, for other bote is non!” to that criseyde answerde thus anon, “ne hadde i er now, my swete herte deere, ben yold, ywis, i were now nought heere!”. field: the situation is that one in which both lovers are in bed together. a little dialogue between them indicates that they make love physically. apparently, the situation portrays the real winning of the lady according to courtly love tenets, but it also implies an active role on the part of the woman which is original and important to chaucer, in order to influence the concept of love of his audience which comprised his own community and subsequent readers. ____________________________________________________________________ 140 tenor: although the vocabulary is chivalric, its meaning is quite realistic and feminist as it shows the power of decision assigned to women in the supreme situation of two lovers. the style is direct, familiar and far reaching, and expressed by means of exclamations. mode: the brisk and direct answer of criseyde to the common, generally accepted, male chauvinist power in love matters makes a strong impres sion on the reader because of its force and reality. the sentence 'ne hadde i er now' as theme of the clause is the point of departure of the situation. it means that for any real love situation the willingness of the two partners is required. text nine: book iii. two excerpts: a) lines 1744-50: [cosmic love] “love, that of erthe and se hath governaunce, love, that his hestes hath in hevenes hye, love, that with an holson alliaunce halt peples joyned, as hym lest hem gye, love, that knetteth lawe of compaignie, and couples doth in vertu for to dwelle, bynd this acord, that i have told and telle. b) lines 1772-8: [internal love] in alle nedes, for the townes werre, he was, and ay, the first in armes dyght, and certeynly, but if that bokes erre, save ector most ydred of any wight; and this encres of hardynesse and myght com hym of love, his ladies thank to wynne, that altered his spirit so withinne. field: the exposition of these two texts show how cosmic love and in ternal love are the same. they show the power of love, which is something generally accepted by all. ____________________________________________________________________ 141 tenor: in the first text troilus is speaking. through this boethian song he testifies to the grandeur and power of love which is able to govern every thing and unite opposites. through this cosmic vision, troilus is enhancing his love for criseyde. his tone is solemn and balanced. in the second text we hear the voice of the narrator who is witnessing the effects of love in troilus's valiant behaviour. the narrator insists on the fact that, although the source of love is within troilus, the effects are socially beneficial for the whole o f the the troye town at war. mode: several relative clauses of 'that' serve as a cohesive tie to the two texts magnifying the effects of love which is inside troilus. it is important to note that love effects are positive and good in themselves, from a human point of view. the idea is ever present in the message that the author wishes to pass on to his audience. text ten: book iv. two excerpts: a) lines 400-6: [pandarus's alternative] “and over al this, as thow wel woost thiselve, this town is ful of ladys al aboute; and, to my doom, fairer than swiche twelve as evere she was, shal i fynde in som route, yee, on or two, withouten any doute. forthi be glad, myn own deere brother! if she be lost, we shal recovere an other. b) lines 435-48: [troilus's answer] but at the laste heanswerde, and seyde, “frend, this lechecraft, or heeled thus to be, were wel sittyng, if that i were a fend, to traysen hir that trewe is unto me! i pray god lat this counseil nevere ythe; but do me rather sterve anon-right here, er i thus do as thow me woldest leere! ____________________________________________________________________ 142 “she that i serve, iwis, what so thow seye, to whom myn herte enhabit is by right, shal han me holly hires til that i deye. for, pandarus, syn i have trouthe hire hight, i wol nat ben untrewe for no wight; but as hire man i wol ay lyve and sterve, and nevere other creature serve. field: in these two texts there is both a contrastive idea and contrastive behaviour of two characters confronted by the same situation: criseyde has to leave for the greek camp. on one hand, pandarus's alternative is to look for another one, 'on or two'. this alternative is seen to be very practical and positive as far as behaviour is concerned. on the other hand, troilus's answer is clear-cut: he will never admit to serve any other lady, even if that signifies death. this position is a very idealistic one and corresponds to the best ideal way of love in courtly love texts. tenor: there is a brisk contrastive dialogue. in the first text, pandarus tries to convince troilus of the easy possibility o f finding somebody else. in the second text, troilus establishes and reaffirms his total fidelity only to criseyde. the style is familiar, although clear and serious. mode: the communicative significance here consists of making exp licit two possible solutions to the same problem of someone being in love. one is easier and more practical, the other is more coherent with one's own decision. in troilus's speech the declarative statements maintain a serene, calm way of exposition which create the expectation t hat he is going to be true to criseyde whatever cost may be involved. text eleven: book iv. lines 1667-80: [crisyede's words to troilus] “for trusteth wel, that youre estat roial, ne veyn delit, nor only worthinesse of yow in verre or torney marcial, ne pompe, array, nobleye, or ek richesse ne made me to rewe on youre destresse; but moral vertu, grounded upon trouthe, ____________________________________________________________________ 143 that was the cause i first hadde on yow routhe! “eke gentil herte and manhod that ye hadde, and that ye hadde, as me thoughte, in despit every thyng that souned into badde, as rudenesse and poeplissh appetit, and that youre resoun bridlede youre delit; this made, aboven every creature, that i was youre, and shal while i may dure. field: criseyde is stating the reason why she fell in love with troilus pointing out his moral virtue as the main cause. the fact that neither royal blood, worthiness or riches were the main reasons fit perfectly with the most profound concept of courtly love. mode: criseyde uses a direct but not a familiar style with a recurrent use of formal chivalric terms. mode: the organisation of the two stanzas of this text constitutes a coherent whole with the message that the author wants his audience to receive. criseyde is trying to convince troilus of her fidelity (last line) as she fell in love with him mainly because of his moral virtue (1672) and this moral virtue made him more self-controlled (1678). the author acts upon the reader in two different ways: although he and we are aware of her betrayal he seeks the reader's involvement in accepting her good intentions. on the other hand, he points to the excellence of love whose beginning and end should lie in moral virtue beyond every circumstance or any other element. text twelve: book v. lines 92-105: [diomede as donjuan] this diomede, that ledde hire by the bridel, whan that he saugh the folke of troie aweye, thoughte, “al my labour shal nat ben on ydel, if that i may, for somwhat shal i seye. for at the werste it may yet shorte oure weye. i have herd seyd ek tymes twyes twelve, 'he is a fool that wole foryete hymselve'“. ____________________________________________________________________ 144 but natheles, this thoughte he wel ynough, that, “certeynlich i am about nought, if that i speke of love, or make it tough; for douteles, if she have in hire thought hym that i gesse, he may nat ben ybrought so soon awey; but i shal fynde a meene, that she naught wite as yet shal what i mene”. field: diomede's soliloquy about his own strategy to try to win criseyde. his thought concerns the nature of courtly love. the whole text is framed in a mental process in which the determining element is a material process: [to speke of love] with the finality of wooing her. although there seems to be a great similarity between speaking and loving, the main component in love seems to be in the intention. tenor: the expression of his own thought is clearly stated in the first singular person. his intention of winning her as a way of getting “another female scalp for his collection” in jill mann's words is reinforced by the use of modality as a cautious strategy, by the use of hypotactical clauses following the current of pros & cons in his thought, and by citing a popular saying. mode: the impression of the reader is that diomede is convinced of having a hard and difficult task. he and we know that he has nothing to lose and a lot to win. courtly love was a masculine game, not an easy one but a valid and worthy one. diomede appears as a real 'donjuan', a real sportsman ready to play a challenging game. text thirteen: book v. lines 939-45: [diomede's declaration] “but herte myn, syn that i am youre man, -and ben the first of whom i seche grace,-to serve yow as hertely as i kan, and evere shal, whil i to lyve have space, so, er that i departe out of this place, ye wol me graunte that i may to-morwe, at bettre leyser, tellen yow my sorwe.” ____________________________________________________________________ 145 field: diomede's petition to criseyde asking to be taken to her service. his words create a perfect atmosphere of a real situation of courtly love. tenor: the vocabulary used [herte, ben the first, seche grace, hertly, serve, graunte, tellen sorwe] completely fits the courtly love setting. chilvaric tone through use of familiar and distinguished terms, as well as modals used for a prudent approach. mode: the organisation of the text (only one sentence with many hypotactic clauses) tries to convince the reader, together with criseyde, of the convenience of accepting him as her servant. in fact, the author is looking for a similar situation of courtly love between diomede and criseyde as it was between troilus and criseyde. text fourteen: book v. lines 974-87: [criseyde's lie] “but as to speke of love, ywis,” she seyde, “i hadde a lord, to whom i wedde was, the whos myn herte al was, til that he deyde; and other love, as help me now pallas, ther in myn herte nys, ne nevere was. and that ye ben of noble and heigh kynrede, i have wel herd it tellen, out of drede. “and that doth me to han so gret a wonder, that ye wol scornen any womman so. ek, god woot, love and i ben fer ysonder! i am disposed bet, so mot i go, unto my deth, to p leyne and maken wo. what i shal after don, i kan nat seye; but trewelich, as yet me list nat pleye. field: this is a very curious situation in which the surprised reader dis covers how criseyde openly lies about her love. she mentions her husband saying that in her heart there did not exist any other love (lines 977-8). ____________________________________________________________________ 146 apparently she is in a quite disinterested mood concerning love, which in duces us to think that she is provoking diomede. tenor: criseyde is speaking, her tone is direct, descriptive and plain. the only exclamation made shows her lack of interest in love. her vocabulary is totally in agreement with the courtly love tenets. her intention is openly expressed (line 985) “unto my deth, to pleyne and maken wo”. it would seem that her clear disposition to suffer --and not to play diomede's game -might be interpreted as provoking his eagerness. mode: the most striking feature of this text for the reader is criseyde's omission of troilus. perhaps she is placing diomede's affair and her own marriage to her dead husband on the same level, leaving troilus out of the game. for her, troilus comes before diomede and before her husband. this could be taken as a solid, concealed clue to prepare the reader to think the unthinkable. text fifteen: book v. lines 1044-71: [narrator's confession and criseyde's own confession] i fynde ek in the stories elleswhere, whan thorugh the body hurt was diomede of troilus, tho wepte she many a teere, whan that she saugh his wyde wowndes blede; and that she took, to kepen hym, good hede; and for to helen hym of his sorwes smerte, men seyn --i not-that she yaf hym hire herte. but trewely, the storie telleth us, ther made nevere woman moore wo than she, whan that she falsed troilus. she seyde, “allas! for now is clene ago my name of trouthe in love, for everemo! for i have falsed oon the gentileste that evere was, and oon the worthieste! “allas! of me, unto the worldes ende, ____________________________________________________________________ 147 shal neyther be ywriten nor ysonge no good word, for thise bokes wol me shende. o, rolled shal i ben on many a tonge! thorughout the world my belle shal be ronge! and wommen moost ol haten me of alle. allas, that swich a cas me sholde falle! “thei wol seyn, in as muche as in me is, i have hem don dishonour, weylaway! al be i nat the first that dide amys, what helpeth that to don my blame awey? but syn i se ther is no bettre way, and that to late is now for me to rewe, to diomede algate i wol be trewe. field: narrator's commentary about criseyde's betrayal and her own confession. the whole frame is carried out by a verbal process of saying which could be a clear indication that, whether or not there existed a real betrayal, what matters is fame --a different goddess and reality from love. the fact that the narrator insists on avoiding any responsibility for this discourse implies a certain degree of doubt about a real betrayal. tenor: two participants are present in this text. the omniscient narra tor and criseyde. the narrator's style seems to be descriptive, objective and factual. criseyde's words, highlighted by exclamations, transmit a kind of easily contagious sorrow, which has to do with fame. mode: the organisation of this text emphasises the term 'falsed' repeated twice (lines 1053 & 56) in the second stanza. it was evident for the listener/ reader that criseyde could not come back to troye and this can be interpreted as 'falsed' to her promise of returning in ten days. the real ques tion that the author is insinuating to his audience is that if criseyde was re ally 'falsed' to troilus in her heart. for that, a new conception of courtly love was necessary. the conception that bases love on fidelity, first and above all, to oneself, even if that oneself is a female. let us remember that the promise made by a man to a woman did not have the same value and force as a promise made by a man to a man. and courtly love was in its beginning a masculine invention, a male game. so perhaps what the author was looking for was the possibility of understanding that she could be false to him (by ____________________________________________________________________ 148 not returning) but that did not at all mean that she could not continue loving troilus even in diomede's arms. evidently, this represented the unthinkable in courtly love terms. text sixteen: book v. lines 183548: [narrator's commentary] o yonge, fresshe folkes, he or she, in which that love up groweth with youre age, repeyreth hom fro worldly vanyte, and of youre herte up casteth the visage to thilke god that after his ymage yow made, and thynketh al nys but a faire this world, that passeth soone as floures faire. and loveth hym, the which that right for love upon a crois, oure soules for to beye, first starf, and roos, and sit in hevene above; for he nyl falsen no wight, dar i seye, that wol his herte al holly on hym leye. and syn he best to love is, and most meke, what nedeth feyned loves for to seke? field: in the final harengue to his audience the narrator's commentary about the nature of love from a cosmic and human point of view makes men and women equal. so, courtly love should not be taken as a masculine invention to play around with, above all in this short, frail, material and natural world. the narrator tells us that love is the greatest thing, valid for its own worth, and should be taken as it comes and that one cannot interpret the mes sage as a suggestion that all young people should take monastic vows. tenor: the speaker, the narrator, has a persuasive style, clear, plain, thought-provoking and intimate. the rhetorical question he throws open is what is the significance of 'feyned loves'. the author, although exalting and enhancing divine love, is not in any way proscribing human love. in fact, he is casting a doubt on the logical sequence, common in courtly love, about its conception as a ladder. ____________________________________________________________________ 149 mode: the cohesive exhortatory appearance of the distribution of the text permits the audience to ask if human love really is the ladder to divine love or if human love is in itself noble enough as not to be 'feigne love'. it probably depends on the nature of the person who is in love and on his faithfulness to himself / herself. conclusion i have analysed some sections of the poem in terms of the register variables “field, tenor & mode”, showing how chaucer uses persuasive dis course to convince his audience (and later audiences) of the relevance of love. we see, in our analysis, how the linguistic choices change as the poem proceeds towards its final moral, displyaing how some discourses carry their functional importance throughout centuries to the various reader communities. in any case, the results of the study carried out on the corpus of analysis suggest the following three statements, as a kind of conclusion: * chaucer was the first great feminist in english literature. * his concept of love was based on faithfulness to oneself (including one's own circumstances) and on a respect for the uniqueness of the beloved. * he endeavoured to make his audience think what was virtually unthinkable for them in the middle ages as far as love matters were concerned. antonio r. león sendra universidad de córdoba ____________________________________________________________________ 150 references bethurum, d. 1971: chaucer's point of view as narrator in the love poems.chaucer criticism vol ii, edited by r. j. schoeck & j. taylor, university of notre dame press. david benson, c. ed. 1991: critical essays on chaucer's troilus and criseyde and his major early poems, open university press, london. dodd, w. g. 1971: the system of courtly love. chaucer criticism vol ii, edited by r. j. schoeck & j. taylor, university of notre dame press. downing, a. & ph. locke, 1992: a university course in english grammar. prentice hall, london. duby, g. & m. perrot 1992: el modelo cortés. historia de las mujeres, vol 2. taurus, madrid. halliday, m. a. k. 1985: an introduction to functional grammar. e. arnold, london. jordan, r. m. 1987: chaucer's poetics and the modern reader. university of california press. león sendra, a. r. 1985: troilo y criseida, (traducción de troilus and criseyde). servicio de publicaciones. universidad de córdoba, córdoba. meech, s. b. 1959: design in chaucer's troilus. greenwood press, new york. mehl, d. 1986: geoffrey chaucer: an introduction to his narrative. cup, cambridge. pearsall, d. 1992: the life of geoffrey chaucer. blackwell, oxford. rowe, d. w. 1976: o love o charite! contraries harmonized in chaucer's troilus. southern illinois university press. shepherd, g. t. 1970: the narrator in troilus & criseyde. critics on chaucer edited by sheila sullivan, london. shoaf, r. a ed. 1989: troilus and criseyde. colleagues press, east lansing. ____________________________________________________________________ 151 steadman, j. m. 1968: courtly love' as a proble m of style. chaucer und seine zeit, max niemeyer verlag tübingen. * † * microsoft word reviews 2022.docx book reviews, selim27 (2022): 177–189. issn 1132-631x / issn-l 2792-3878 / https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.27.2022.177-189 arvind thomas. 2019: piers plowman and the reinvention of church law in the middle ages. toronto, university of toronto press. pp. 288. isbn 978-1487502461. reviewed by margaret kim, national tsing hua university piers plowman and the reinvention of church law in the late middle ages is a work of great learning and intellectual sophistication on canon law and langland’s engagement with it. canon law itself is a vast subject, and arvind thomas’ specific focus in this book is on penance, an area of canon law that receives more attention than others from langland (p. 19). analyzing the way langland deploys, critiques, and conceptualizes canon law on the tradition and regulation of penitential procedures in the medieval church, thomas argues that canon law is central to langland’s poetics. not only does langland draw on canon law in piers plowman, but he also reinvents and in turn enriches and reinvigorates it as a church institution in the poem. while thomas’ study of canon law attends to both the band c-text and it characterizes the relation between b and c as a development that culminates in a reinvigorated poetics of canon law in c, it is with the c-text that thomas seems most comfortable, as it best illustrates langland’s imaginative powers in engaging with and recreating canon law as a spiritually vital and organic institution (e.g., pp. 20–21, 207). besides the introductory chapter and an epilogue, the five chapters that make up the analysis proper of piers plowman in thomas’ book are organized around traditional precepts and practices of penance. chapter one introduces readers to the penitential procedure that begins with contrition and confession. chapter two’s focus on langland’s treatment of usury, mainly in the c-text, sets up thomas’ discussion of socio-economic activities regulated under canon law and langland’s reinvention of canon law as a spiritually restorative means of proper relations. from this note on righting the wrongs of socioeconomic abuses thomas moves on to restitution in chapter three to book reviews 178 suggest that langland’s vision of law and justice is one beyond powerful individuals who make and execute law. satisfaction is the theme of discussion in the following chapter, where thomas continues to argue that langland’s criticism of clerical neglect and abuse serves to strengthen and reform canon law as an institution beyond the whims of church personnel. the next and final chapter makes a systematic demonstration of langland’s commitment to canon law and its enduring relevance for the church by tying together the poet’s notions of the penitential process as a coherent poetics of allegory in piers plowman. law has long been a major topic of investigation in the study of piers plowman. one easily recalls influential works by richard firth green (a crisis of truth) and emily steiner (documentary culture and the making of medieval english literature) that have shown readers the way law served as a system of thought and knowledge in medieval writing and culture. piers plowman and the reinvention of church law follows such influential scholarship in its focus on canon law as pertains to the penitential tradition (another vast area of medieval/langland studies), and it exhibits many of the same virtues as the earlier scholarship in its engagement with the discursive dimensions of law, in this case, canon law. not only does thomas’ book offer an impressive reading of piers plowman, but what it has to say on canon law also represents a learned contribution to the field of canon law itself. scholarship on canon law predominantly focuses on the earlier middle ages, and so the book’s comments on canon law in piers plowman in the context of the late middle ages represent a notable study of late medieval canon law. moreover, its emphasis on institutional reform marks an innovative way of conceptualizing canon law. the strength of thomas’ book, in my opinion, lies in its brilliant ability to demonstrate canon law’s enduring relevance and the extent to which it is vital to langland’s imagination of individual behavior, social relations, and institutional arrangements. contrition is a performance of “dramatic actions,” and it is the “postures and gestures” before the confessor that condemn mede as lacking in contrition (pp. 30, 31). the spiritual nature of justice, beyond the king’s court, is illustrated in reason’s lesson of penitential satisfaction for the king’s confessor (pp. 179–80). not only do allegorical characters illustrate precepts and practices of canon law, but they also enact the dynamic book reviews 179 debates on institutional reform and ecclesiastical order, debates that, according to thomas, langland reshaped church governance and contributed to its prestige and strength as well. as thomas himself indicates in the beginning of the book, the vitality of canon law in langland’s critical and creative imagination of church and society as he sees it in piers plowman challenges david aers’ reading of piers plowman as an anti-constantinian poem committed to a church beyond a princely prelacy and its worldly possessions and powers (p. 24). whereas scholars such as wendy scase see langland’s anticlericalism as a challenge to the church hierarchy (pp. 146–47), thomas diffuses much of the full force of what langland scholars have traditionally perceived as the poet’s unmistakable attack on the princes and clergy of the post-constantinian church, by explaining social satire and political criticism in piers plowman as a highly effective strategy to strengthen the prestige and vitality of church governance under canon law beyond the personal conditions of ecclesiastical lords and clergy. the debate over langland’s stance on the post-constantinian church will continue in the field, but thomas’ book has raised an important question that langland scholars must address henceforth when they consider this issue. to what extent did the practices and configurations of the post-constantinian church inform and continue to inform the institutional imagination of governance and socio-ethical conduct in the late middle ages and even beyond? reviewer’s address department of foreign languages and literature national tsing hua university 30013 hsinchu (taiwan) e-mail: kim@mx.nthu.edu.tw book reviews 180 francis leneghan. 2020: the dynastic drama of beowulf. cambridge, d. s. brewer. pp. 323. isbn 978-1-84384-551-5. reviewed by andrew breeze, university of navarre, pamplona beowulf studies are booming. long the bête noire of those who did it as a set text (and hated it), beowulf is now described as a masterpiece, a 'work of rare sophistication and supreme artistry' and 'the subject of countless translations' (p. viii). here noting the 594 items in (for example) hans sauer's 205 years of 'beowulf' translations and adaptations (2011), one sees popularity increasing apace. the poem has much to offer. hence dr leneghan's book. its focus is original and intriguing. while many critics have taken beowulf (after tolkien's 1936 lecture on 'the monsters and the critics') as a poem about youth and age, with dangerous beasts in the foreground, dr leneghan regards it instead as about kingship and governance. the approach has a huge advantage. it means that the 'digressions' (as in adrien bonjour's 1950 oxford monograph), often considered as tedious interruptions of the story, actually belong to its central theme. the dynastic drama of 'beowulf' is thus a work of rehabilitation. it retrieves a mass of stuff from the junk-room and shows it as fit for use. fail to perceive that and we shall not grasp what the poet was trying to say. beowulf is, then (in the author's brilliant phrase), a 'book of kings' (p. 1). he expands the hypothesis in four chapters sandwiched between introduction and conclusion (themselves substantial). chapter one takes on questions of poetic structure and the nature of government in the post-roman world (when, as expected, monarchy underwent major political and religious adjustment). chapter two moves us on to the artistic possibilities of kingship. they are as fundamental to beowulf as they are to hamlet or macbeth or henry v. the third chapter brings us to the monsters, hardly swept out of the way, but found in a new perspective. rather than being at the narrative's core, they are now devices enabling commentary on (and testing of) royal power. after that, a final chapter on kingship and the bible, a book with special significance for early english dynasties (as also german and merovingian ones), because bishops and theologians then found themselves having to accommodate a teutonic institution to the book reviews 181 christian scheme of things (or vice versa). in all the above, the author makes copious and up-to-date reference to the poem's bibliography, itself a troublesome monster. his book is thus worth buying merely as a guide to publications on beowulf. yet it of course takes us farther. those ever-mystified by allusions to scyld and offa and thryth and sigurd here find illuminating answers. with kingship offered as the poet's overriding concern (whether the ruler be good or bad), so much at once becomes intelligible. this is the case not merely for ancient continental leaders (for most of us, semi-legendary characters out in some baltic mist), but for ones in england itself. dr leneghan is careful to take on board the views of leonard neidorf and others for the poet as a mercian of the early eighth century. that unknown genius knew on the one hand of kings and battles previous to his time: æthelfrith at 'degsastan' (west of peebles, scotland) in 603; oswald as rowley burn (near hexham) in 633 and maserfelth (south of welshpool) in 642; ecgfrith at nechtansmere (east of forfar, scotland) in 685. a poet at or near eighth-century lichfield (with its clerics) and tamworth (with its lords and ladies) would 'have had ample opportunity to reflect' on dynastic triumph and disaster (p. 239). on the other hand, beowulf (as a literary classic) was itself read by later generations. its lessons on royal leadership did not grow old. that brings us to alfred and theories of kingship in his translation of boethius, as well as to the alfredian orosius, its translator (not alfred, but an unknown cornish cleric dictating to a west saxon scribe) having plenty to say on rulers noble or evil (p. 241). thereafter we come to the years about 1000, with england again under attack, so that a venerable poem was thought worth copying into what is now the british library's nowell codex. this kind of analysis (dynamic and not static) is something truly refreshing to read. it makes the dynastic drama of 'beowulf' a rich and rewarding study, a book to come back to, and one destined for long use. one hopes that newcomers to beowulf studies will not feel swamped by its profuse referencing, the result occasionally being pages on which a few lines of text float secure (like noah in his ark) upon a bibliographical flood. those students should persist, thereby encountering ideas which deepen understanding not only of beowulf but of other old english texts, some of them not here mentioned, including the battle of brunanburh, by a clerical author (who was, according to sarah foot and book reviews 182 a. e. redgate, perhaps bishop cynwald of worcester) taking joshua 10:1-27 as his source (as observed long ago by brandl and klaeber and dobbie). he equated athelstan with joshua, northumbria with gibeon, godes condel with the bible's motionless sun, and the five kings slain with the five amorite kings 'scornfully used and hanged' by joshua. apply the dynastic drama of 'beowulf' to brunanburh, and yet more will be revealed on kingship and old english poetry. as for advanced researchers, the dynastic drama of 'beowulf' will of course be fundamental, not just for anglo-saxonists, but for all who work on early medieval britain. much has been said (by scholars including helen fulton of bristol and catherine mckenna of harvard) on saga and the like as fürstenspiegel, including texts (like the twelfthcentury four branches of the mabinogi) with emphasis upon realities of government: negotiation, organization in peace and war, relations with foreign rulers, settlement of disputes, redress of grievances, punishment of offenders, granting of estates. in this respect beowulf gains from comparison with such specula principum, even comparatively late ones. so we end with a salute. the dynastic drama of 'beowulf' is a welcome arrival. it will be a volume widely noticed; quoted in hundreds of books and articles; cherished by its publisher and admired by its readers; it will have lasting impact. reviewer’s address departamento de filología universidad de navarra pamplona 31009 (spain) e-mail: abreeze@unav.es book reviews 183 rory naismith. 2021: early medieval britain, c. 500-1000. cambridge, cambridge university press. pp. 490. isbn 978-1108-42444-8. reviewed by andrew breeze, university of navarre, pamplona dr naismith's volume for the cambridge history of britain has an introduction and three parts. the first of the latter takes on britain's early identities; its relation to the rest of europe; legend and history (beowulf, bede, geoffrey of monmouth); and the survival of evidence, whether in manuscript or archaeological or other form. part two is chronological. it starts with britain in 500; then the 'age of tyrants' up to 650 (with gildas a crucial witness); the period 650-850, of picts, anglo-saxon kingdoms, and the first vikings; and 850-1000, an age of crisis wherein the new kingdoms of england and scotia were forged. part three is a survey of society: kingship, religion, lords, slaves, women, land, trade, towns, language. so there is plenty to keep one busy. not, however, in a way intended by dr naismith. his study, alas, relays only too accurately the confusions and shortcomings of twentieth-century historians. it is thus massively out of date. in nearly fifty years, this writer has never reviewed a book with more errors and omissions than this one. here are thirty of them, plus corrections and the like from historians better-informed than dr naismith. although a review is no place for a full bibliography, readers may be assured that all twenty-seven points relate to material in print, as shown by publications cited. 1. the loidun (p. 3) whence the scottish pilgrim cathróe of metz was taken to meet erik bloodaxe (d. 954) at york cannot be 'penrith in the leath ward of cumberland'. it will have been leeds (with a celtic tribal name 'ardent (warriors)' related to welsh llawd 'fervour'). penrith was not in erik's kingdom. leeds was. naismith completely misunderstands what appears in volume one of d. n. dumville, celtic essays 2001-2007 (aberdeen, 2007) (p. 166). 2. statements (p. 22) on britain's 'twenty-eight cities' as listed in historia brittonum are misleading. most were not 'cities' on the roman model, but monastic and other locations (in south-east wales, cornwall, strathclyde) such as dinas powys, monmouth, much dewchurch, trevelgue, dumbarton. the list's many corruptions are book reviews 184 emendable after authorities including wendy davies, the llandaff charters (aberystwyth, 1979). 3. that the rulers attending edgar at chester in 973 were all 'kings from elsewhere in britain' (p. 28) is untrue. two were neither kings nor from britain, being the breton counts hywel and iuchil. see t. m. charles-edwards, wales and the britons 350-1064 (oxford, 2013) (p. 544), his scepticism notwithstanding. 4. that the location of brunanburh in 937 has 'never been satisfactorily identified' (p. 31; also pp. 32, 34, 229), is also false. it was evidently eight miles west of durham, by the roman burh or fort of lanchester, above the river brune or browney, as indicated by the battle of brunanburh, ed. alistair campbell (london, 1938) (p. 61, fn.2). 5. now for an omission. in discussion of the battle of brunanburh (pp. 32-3) is no reference to cenwald (bishop of worcester 929-58), surely its author. see a. e. redgate, religion, politics, and society in britain 800-1066 (london, 2014) (pp. 46, 87). nor do we hear of how its clerical author based his poem on chapter ten of the book of joshua, with king athelstan redeeming northumbria from scottish and viking rulers just as joshua redeemed gibeon from kings of the amorites, as noted in the anglo-saxon minor poems, ed. e. v. k. dobbie (new york, 1942) (p. xl). 6. the dating of the bloodthirsty welsh poem armes prydein 'the prophecy of britain' to the 'tenth century' (p. 32) is inadequate. its allusion to arlego and lego (legorensis or leicester) shows it as of late 940, immediately after an ignominious west saxon capitulation there to the vikings. a welsh bard saw england's humiliation in 940 as wales's opportunity for 941. hence his call to arms. see the book of taliesin, tr. gwyneth lewis and rowamn williams (london, 2019) (p. 213). 7. caer weir in the same poem, where welsh anglophobes wanted to send the english, is not 'durham' (p. 33). it was a pictish stronghold in caithness, near the gweir ('bend') of duncansby head, known to ptolemy as virvedrum ('great bend'). compare a. l. f. rivet and colin smith, the place-names of roman britain (princeton, 1979) (p. 507). the welsh war party of 940 wanted to pack the english off to john o' groats or beyond. 8. a reference to 'ports on the baltic' (p. 57) visited by the navigator wulfstan in the 890s is too vague. the town of truso described by wulfstan (in an addition to the old english orosius) was tczew (german book reviews 185 dirschau) on the lower vistula, and nowhere else, despite what it claimed. see stanislaw rospond, slownik etymologiczny miast i gmin prl (wroclaw, 1984) (p. 395). 9. the british hero arthur is consistently made out (pp. 86, 88, 89) as 'legendary'. readers never learn that he really existed, fought his battles in north britain, and was killed at camboglanna or camlan or castlesteads (not birdoswald) on hadrian's wall in 537, the data being set out in rachel bromwich, trioedd ynys prydain, 2nd edn (cardiff, 1978) (p. 160). arthur died probably on a cattle-raid during the terrible famine of 536-7 (years of a world-wide 'volcanic winter'), which is mentioned with arthur in a welsh-latin annal for 537. 10. that the date of beowulf is 'a matter of hot debate' (p. 90) is not so. no reference is made to leonard neidorf, the tranmission of 'beowulf' (ithaca, 2017), proving beyond doubt that beowulf is a mercian work of the early seventh century. 11. one reads with surprise that south-west scotland might 'always have been irish-speaking' (p. 120), because the earliest place-names of the region are british, not irish. they include even a minor one like ptolemy's abravannus 'very weak (stream)' or piltanton burn (not water of luce), site of a beach-market near stranraer. see g. r. isaac, 'scotland', in new approaches to place-names, ed. javier de hoz, e. r. luján, patrick sims-williams (madrid, 2005) (pp. 189-214) (where dr isaac misidentifies the stream and misinterprets its name). 12. 'durotriges' for a british people of the dorset region (p. 151) is a ghost-form. patrick sims-williams, ancient celtic place-names in europe and asia minor (oxford, 2006) (p. 309), cites the correct reading durotrages 'swift attackers from the stronghold'. 13. st patrick's birthplace is given (p. 154) as 'bannavem taburnae' (an impossible form) and called 'unidentified' (an untrue statement). on the toponym, read (after the austro-irish scholar ludwig bieler) bannaventa tabernae 'market-place by a hill and with a tavern'. it denotes banwell, north somerset, situated in a romanized area near bath, but (unfortunately for patrick) also near a low-lying coast open to irish pirates. the identification was first made in harry jelley, 'the origins of st patrick', irish studies review, xii (1995) (pp. 31-6): a paper routinely ignored by professional scholars. 14. the british ruler coroticus addressed by patrick will not have been of the 'late fifth century' (p. 160), but its middle years, as is clear book reviews 186 from the time-scale of his genealogy. see ben guy, medieval welsh genealogy (woodbridge, 2020) (p. 334). patrick thus died in or around 461, not 493 (as some argue). 15. the bernicians of northumbria certainly had a 'brittonic' name (p. 167). yet nothing is said on its bellicose sense 'stormers of a battleline gap' (not 'dwellers in mountain passes'), the evidence being assembled in joseph vendryes, lexique étymologique de l'ancien irlandais: lettre b (paris, 1980) (p. 41). 16. as for deirans living to the south of bernicia, their name cannot be 'related to the river derwent in yorkshire' (p. 167), as dr naismith imagines. the link is not with a river of oak trees (derw in welsh), but with welsh dewr 'brave', the meaning being 'brave ones, heroes'. compare k. h. jackson, the gododdin: the oldest scottish poem (edinburgh, 1969) (pp. 80-1). 17. that king oswald's death in battle at maserfelth in 642 was in shropshire and 'most likely at oswestry' (p. 162) is out of the question, as proved by margaret gelling, signposts to the past (london, 1978) (p. 187). it was instead on the roman road east of forden, powys, with maserfelth representing the welsh district-name meisyr, as pointed out by the german scholars förster and holthausen, whose proposal is cited in three lives of english saints, ed. g. i. needham (london, 1966) (p. 36). 18. the scottish 'army that attempted (unsuccessfully)' (p. 176) to invade northumbria in 603 figures without mention of 'degsastan' where it was wiped out by the english; or of the correct reading deguistan 'stone of dewi'); or its location west of dawyck 'dewi's settlement' on the upper river tweed, scotland. the stan or stone of dewi or david is still there, providing a cover-illustration for andrew breeze, british battles 493-937: mount badon to brunanburh (london, 2020). 19. that gildas 'gives no precise indication of when he wrote' (p. 178; cf. pp. 180, 277) is unfounded. david woods of cork proved in 2010 that gildas was working in the spring or summer of 536, as shown by his allusion to the volcanic cloud which covered europe from march of that year, and his failure to mention the crop failure and famine which it produced. because gildas put the battle of mount 'badon' forty-three years previous to the time of writing, it will have been in 493; the very year given independently by bede. see n. j. higham, king arthur: the book reviews 187 making of the legend (new haven, 2018) (p. 156), despite his attempt to dismiss these arguments. 20. the battle of 'badon hill' is not 'at an unknown location' (p. 179). it was at the hillfort of ringsbury east of braydon, wiltshire. see n. j. higham, king arthur (new haven, 2018) (p. 192). meaningless 'badonicus' in the text of gildas is a scribal error for bradonicus, as demonstrated by welsh brad 'treason, betrayal' (applied to woods where robbers waylaid travellers). bradonicus denotes a hill above braydon forest and by the roman road to cirencester: a city that in 493 was the capital of the britons and an obvious target for west saxon aggression. 21. in stating that many early british monasteries lay on the coasts and rivers 'of what is now south-west england' (p. 183), no mention is made of the most important of these, old kew, on the fal estuary south of truro, cornwall. it was the 'rosnat' or alba or magnum monasterium famous for educating sixth-century welsh and irish saints. see the first volume of a. w. haddan and william stubbs, councils and ecclesiastical documents (oxford, 1869-78) (p. 120) (where, despite assertions, it cannot be whithorn, scotland), and, for 'rosnat' and alba, bewnans ke: the life of st kea, ed. graham thomas and nicholas williams (exeter, 2007) (p. xxxviii). 22. that the 'exact borders' of the viking kingdom of york are 'not known' (p. 227) is inexact. at one place we can be very exact. penyghent is a yorkshire hill with a cumbric name meaning 'summit of the gentiles' or vikings; compare discussion of welsh gynt 'vikings' in armes prydein, ed. ifor williams (dublin, 1972) (p. 56). the mountain overlooked the frontier between cumbrians and vikings, to this day the border between cumbria and yorkshire. nothing of this in early medieval britain, however. 23. the old english orosius is certainly 'not the work of alfred' (p. 265); but there is silence on its real translator, a briton dictating to a west saxon scribe who unwittingly reproduced his pronunciation of toponyms and personal names. the anonymous british translator is discussed by the old english orosius, ed. janet bately (oxford, 1980) (p. cxii); his consistent use of old cornish ercol 'hercules' (instead of old welsh ercul) proves further that he was a cornishman, not (as some assert) a welshman. 24. on a map of major churches in early britain (p. 305), old kew book reviews 188 does not appear, despite its fame as magnum monasterium. nor does the monastery of (emended) uagnalaech, which figures in book three of bede's history and will have been wawne, near beverley, yorkshire. what is included (wrongly) is dunwich, suffolk, even though its name 'dune-settlement' is english, so that it cannot be domnoc in book two of bede's history. domnoc will instead have been (vanished) walton castle, a roman fort near felixstowe, suffolk. wawne and dunwich are discussed by richard coates in his co-authored celtic voices, english places (stamford, 2000) (pp. 176-7, 234-40), which dr naismith cannot have read, even though he lists it in his bibliography. 25. mention of 'the battle-site of heavenfield' (p. 317) repeats a common error, avoided by historians like stenton or hunter blair, who were both the very opposite of incompetent. 'heavenfield' (its first element nothing to do with providence, as bede makes out, but representing caelestis, the name of some romanized briton) was where oswald assembled his troops. his actual defeat of welsh invaders occurred nine miles to the south, at denisesburn or rowley water, as bede narrates in book three of his history. 26. reproduced from a manuscript (now in a cambridge college library) of bede's life of st cuthbert is a picture of athelstan, presenting the volume to the saint (p. 321). yet there is no word on how the manuscript, prepared by wessex scribes, was given to monks of chester-le-street in 937 during celebrations for the triumph of brunanburh, eight miles from the monastery, with the victory attributed to the saint's intercession: information deducible from n. r. ker, catalogue of manuscripts containing anglo-saxon (oxford, 1957) (pp. 64-5). 27. despite some wavering, the eighth-century anglo-latin life of st gregory (with its familiar story of anglian slaves at rome) is described as 'by an anonymous monk of whitby' (p. 323). we hear nothing on it as surely by a woman, as noted in colin ireland, 'some irish characteristics of the whitby life of gregory the great', in early medieval ireland and europe, ed. pátraic moran and immo warntjes (turnhout, 2015) (pp. 139-78). on pp. 339-45 of early medieval britain is a complete section on women in this period. yet england's earliest female author is not thought worth mention there, despite her unique perceptions on male domination. 28. the exeter book riddles figure (p. 347) with attention exclusively book reviews 189 on lewd ones, which is a pity. other riddles, one may think, tell us more about anglo-saxon life: 4 (door of a city gate); 30 (glass-blowing); 39 (hope); 43 (guardian angel); 48 and 59 (ciborium); 74 (ovid's king ceyx and queen alcyone); 95 (instruction in wisdom). clues for these solutions occur in mercedes salvador-bello, isidorean perceptions of order (morgantown, 2015); riddles at work in the early medieval tradition, ed. megan cavell and jennifer neville (manchester, 2020); and jorge l. bueno alonso, adiviñas medievais do exeter book (cangas do morrazo, 2021). 29. the welsh monks whose massacre after the battle of chester (in 616) is narrated by bede did not belong to 'bangor (gwynedd)' (p. 396). their house was at bangor iscoed or bangor-on-dee, near wrexham. see j. e. lloyd, a history of wales (london, 1911) (p. 195). 30. as for the names of thames, severn, trent, they are not merely 'pre-english' (p. 418) but celtic, as shown respectively by welsh tafell 'slice', berw 'seething', chwant 'desire'. the thames is the 'cutter', making its powerful way through landscape; severn is 'she of waters seething together' (those of the severn bore); trent is 'much-loved one' (the goddess of the river). sources here are indicated by alexander falileyev, dictionary of continental celtic place-names (aberystwyth, 2010). our conclusion is melancholy. early medieval britain, like dr naismith's co-edited writing battles: new perspectives on warfare and memory in medieval europe (london, 2020), calls for a reproof and a warning. the book contains not merely simple errors, but something worse: a bizarre unawareness of fundamental advance in historical knowledge over the last twenty-five years. one may be scathing. it is not a book in which cambridge university press can take any pride. it will for all time demonstrate how low the writing of early british history had sunk in the early twenty-first century. reviewer’s address departamento de filología universidad de navarra pamplona 31009 (spain) e-mail: abreeze@unav.es microsoft word 2021article_2_lacalle.docx miguel lacalle palacios, selim26 (2021): 25–56. issn 1132-631x / issn-l 2792-3878 / https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.26.2021.25-56 old english verbs of learning: information and knowledge acquisition1 miguel lacalle palacios university of la rioja the aim of this article is to provide an inventory of old english verbs belonging to the class of learning on the grounds of their common semantic components and shared grammatical behavior. the framework of verb classes and alternations and role and reference grammar provide the theoretical basis for this study. both textual and lexicographical sources have been used to select the data for the analysis of the linking between semantics and syntax with these verbs. the main conclusion of the article is that, considering the constructions and alternations in which they are found in old english, the verbs (ge)frignan, (ge)leornian, ofācsian, and onfindan are the best candidates for membership of the class of verbs of learning. keywords: alternations; constructions; old english; verbs of learning 1. introduction this article is intended to contribute to the study of the semantics and syntax of old english. more specifically, it focuses on verbs of learning, which are defined in the present work as verbs that belong to states of affairs comprising a cognizer who learns some content, as in steve learned how to cook an omelet; or an effector that causes a cognizer to get to know some content, as in steve learned how to cook an omelet thanks to the chef’s teachings. the article addresses the question of the class membership of verbs of learning by assessing its consistency as to meaning components and grammatical behavior. the line is 1 this research has been funded through the grant ffi2017-83360p, which is gratefully acknowledged. 26 miguel lacalle palacios taken that for verbs to belong to a certain class they must convey similar meaning components (described by means of aktionsart types and thematic roles) and show similar grammatical behavior (understood as the morphosyntactic realization of arguments). in other words, the inventory of old english verbs of learning must not be based on notional definitions of meaning but rather on semantically motivated grammatical convergences. this avenue of research, therefore, contributes to a synchronic organization of the old english lexicon that takes the syntactic range of verbs into account. the article is structured as follows. the previous studies in the verbal classes of old english are reviewed in section 2. then, section 3 presents the theoretical basis of the research, which draws on the framework of verbal classes and alternations as well as on role and reference grammar (henceforth rrg). the sources, methodological stages, and data of this study are explained in section 4. section 5 makes some semantic distinctions relevant for the terminology and scope of the present study by considering additional evidence from present-day english verbs of learning. section 6 examines the predication from a semantic viewpoint and describes the linking semantics-syntax. section 7 deals with the morpho-syntactic constructions and alternations found with verbs of learning. finally, section 8 summarizes the results of this study and draws the main conclusions. 2. review of previous research most studies in the neighboring areas of old english semantics and syntax concentrate on syntax (for instance, visser 1963–1973, mclaughlin 1983, mitchell 1985, campbell 1987, traugott 1992, denison 1993, quirk & wrenn 1994, hogg & fulk 2011). semantics has drawn less attention and has usually been considered in isolation from syntax (weman 1933, kastovsky 1992, martín arista 2018). with respect to the avenues of research just outlined, an exception is found in the studies on verbal classes. among the studies more directly related to semantics, the major contributions analyze verbs of sensory perception (penttilä 1956), movement (weman 1933, ogura 2002), knowledge (ono 1989), thinking (ogura 1986b), sentiment (ogura 2013), taste (ogura 2008), and impersonal verbs (ogura 1986a, möhlig-falke 2012). other studies of semantic import, but more geared towards syntax, deal with constructions with self (ogura 1989), verbal complementation (molencki 1991, denison 1993), oblique oe verbs of learning 27 case marking (allen 1995), non-finite constructions (timofeeva 2010), and periphrastic constructions (ogura 2018). further advances have been made by scholars who delve into the semantic motivation of old english syntax on an up-to-date theoretical basis. the internal aspect of old english verbs in terms of the aktionsart types of rrg (van valin & lapolla 1997) has been analyzed by martín arista (2000a, 2000b). besides, the lexematic functional approach has proposed a catalogue of lexical templates and mapping principles that relies on the method of lexical representation of rrg. the lexematic functional approach has been applied to some old english verbal classes; verbs of feeling (c. garcía pacheco 2013) and verbs of existence (l. garcía pacheco 2013), among others, have been discussed within this framework. with a view to reconsidering the structure of the verbal lexicon of old english, some recent studies assess the consistency of verbal classes according to semantic and syntactic principles couched in terms of aktionsart types, logical structures, constructions, and alternations. so far, this line includes inaction verbs (ojanguren lópez 2019a, forthc.), verbs of prohibition (ojanguren lópez 2019b), end verbs (ojanguren lópez 2020), and rejoice verbs (martín arista 2020). the present study intends to follow in these tracks. it concentrates on verbs of learning because they have not been discussed in previous literature or they have been mentioned in passing (visser 1963–1973, mclaughlin 1983, mitchell 1985). 3. theoretical foundations the framework of verb classes and alternations developed by levin (1993) and the functional approach of rrg (foley & van valin 1984; van valin & lapolla 1997; van valin 2005, 2014) constitute the theoretical basis of this article. the semantic and syntactic characteristics of english verbs are stressed by levin (1993) by remarking that “the behavior of a verb, particularly with respect to the expression and interpretation of its arguments, is to a large extent determined by its meaning. thus, verb behavior can be used effectively to probe for linguistically relevant pertinent aspects of verb meaning” (levin 1993: 1). verbal class and alternations are the key concepts in this model since they “are manifested across languages by verbs of the same semantic types” (levin 1993: 10). regarding argument realization, the meaning components of a particular verb restrict their grammatical behavior or, put in another way, “verbs that fall 28 miguel lacalle palacios into classes according to shared behavior would be expected to show shared meaning components” (levin 1993: 5). while the semantics motivates the syntax of a given verb within a certain class, morpho-syntactic alternations result, for instance, from diathesis variants (levin 1993: 22). alternations are classified according to the partaking morphosyntactic realizations. consequently, distinctions are made between alternations depending on transitivity, arguments included in the verb phrase, oblique subjects, reflexivity, passivization, and other types of constructions. for example, give verbs (levin 1993: 138), which include feed, give, lease, lend, loan, pass, pay, peddle, refund, render, rent, repay, sell, serve, and trade, participate in the dative alternation illustrated in (1): (1) dative alternation (levin 1993: 138) they lent a bicycle to me. they lent me a bicycle. these verbs “display the dative alternation, though there may be some differences of opinion concerning whether some of these verbs actually are found in the double object construction”, according to levin (1993: 138). hence, generalizations across different verb classes can be made on the basis of alternations. several issues may arise when this framework is applied to a former stage of the language because of the diachronic changes undergone by english throughout its evolution. some of the most important aspects couched in terms of the argument realizations and alternations described by levin (1993), including case marking, transitivization, prepositional government, and even lexical choice differentiate old english from present-day english. in other words, it cannot be claimed that morpho-syntactic realizations and alternations have diachronic continuity. in fact, the radical changes to the form and structure of english in the past millennium point in the opposite direction. for this reason, the theoretical basis of the present study is comprised not only of the framework of verb classes and alternations, but also of an extensive theory of the association between semantics and syntax such as rrg. as ojanguren lópez (2019a: 8) points out, while an alternation describes a change to the realisation of the arguments of one or more verb classes, the aktionsart classes of role and reference grammar convey more general contrasts and, moreover, they account for contrasts that depend less on order and prepositional government than alternations. oe verbs of learning 29 the aspects of the theory of rrg relevant for this discussion are reviewed in the remainder of this section. semantic representations are proposed in rrg that are based on the four aktionsart classes distinguished by vendler (1967): states, achievements, accomplishments, and activities. the inventory of rrg aktionsart types has been expanded to include active accomplishments and the causative version of all aktionsart types (van valin & lapolla 1997) as well as semelfactives (van valin 2005), both causative and non-causative. aktionsart classes and their causative counterparts are shown in table 1. table 1. examples of aktionsart types in rrg (van valin 2005: 34) a. state: the boy is afraid. a’. causative state: the dog frightens/scares the boy. b. achievement: the balloon popped. b’. causative achievement: the cat popped the balloon. c. semelfactive: the pencil tapped on the table. c’ causative semelfactive: the teacher tapped the pencil on the table. d. accomplishment: the ice melted. d’. causative accomplishment: the hot water melted the ice. e. activity: the soldiers marched in the park. e’. causative activity: the sergeant marched the soldiers in the park. f. active accomplishment: the soldiers marched to the park. f’. causative active accomplishment: the sergeant marched the soldiers to the park. the projection from clausal semantics onto clausal syntax is guaranteed by logical structures that determine the semantics-syntax and the syntax-semantics linking (van valin & lapolla 1997: 102). stative (predicate´) and non-stative (do´) variants are distinguished in logical structures, in which x, y, and z represent variables of the verbal arguments. ingr(essive), sem(e)l(factive), become, and cause are metalinguistic predicates that mark, respectively, ingressives, semelfactives, accomplishments, and causatives. the logical structure corresponding to each aktionsart type can be seen in table 2. the semantic analysis of rrg revolves around the generalized semantic macroroles of actor and undergoer, which make grammatical generalizations across sets of thematic roles (van valin & lapolla 1997: 141). the actor is the first argument of an agentive verb, while the undergoer is the second argument of a transitive verb as well as the first argument of a stative verb. the relation 30 miguel lacalle palacios table 2. lexical representations for aktionsart classes (van valin 2005: 45) aktionsart class logical structure state predicate´ (x) or (x, y) activity do´ (x, [predicate´ (x) or (x, y)]) achievement ingr predicate´ (x) or (x, y), or ingr do´ (x, [predicate´ (x) or (x, y)]) semelfactive seml predicate´ (x) or (x, y), or seml do´ (x, [predicate´ (x) or (x, y)]) accomplishment become predicate´ (x) or (x, y), or become do´ (x, [predicate´ (x) or (x, y)]) active accomplishemnt do´ (x, [predicate1´ (x, (y))]) & become predicate2´ (z, x) or (y) causative α cause β, where α, β are logical structures of any type between argument position and macrorole is established in the actorundergoer hierarchy, which specifies that the actor will be the leftmost argument in the hierarchy whilst the undergoer will be the rightmost one. the number of explicit macroroles that a predicate may take is determined by its macrorole transitivity (van valin & lapolla 1997: 150–151), which distinguishes three types: transitive (2 macroroles), intransitive (1 macrorole), and atransitive (0 macroroles). in rrg, the grammatical concepts of subject and object are not regarded as universal. the concept of privileged syntactic argument (psa) is used instead. the first argument is psa in active constructions, but the second argument becomes psa in passive constructions. the psa controls agreement with finite verbs. any other clause involves either direct core arguments or oblique core arguments (marked by the oblique morphological cases genitive and dative or by prepositional government). linking, or the relation between semantics and syntax, is defined in both directions: from semantics to syntax (production) and from syntax to semantics (comprehension). this concept of linking ultimately guarantees that what is devised in the semantics is coded in the syntax of the clause. crucial components of linking include verb agreement, case assignment, and prepositional government. their interaction can be summarised as follows. in accusative languages such as english, the highest-ranking core macrorole is the controller of finite verb agreement. in terms of morphological case, in accusative languages oe verbs of learning 31 such as english the argument receiving the highest-ranking core macrorole is case-marked nominative, while the other core macrorole argument selects the accusative case, and non-macrorole direct core arguments take the dative case (van valin & lapolla 1997: 325). finally, the projection of clausal semantics onto clausal syntax is described by means of the layered structure of the clause (van valin & lapolla 1997: 26–29). the layered structure of the clause is a hierarchical structure that consists of several semantic layers, which are necessary to suitably reflect the scope of operators (grammatical features including, among others, tense, aspect, and modality). the layered structure comprises the clause, the core (a verbal nucleus with its arguments and argument-adjuncts, as in tom drank a glass of wine and they went to the cinema, respectively), and the periphery, which is associated to the core, as in the girls were dancing in the dark. one or more than one units of clause level form the sentence, as in peter wanted to become a pilot and his family bought him a helicopter. 4. sources, data, and steps of analysis this article has textual and lexicographical sources. on the one hand, the dictionary of old english corpus (henceforward doec), the york-torontohelsinki parsed corpus of old english poetry and the york-toronto-helsinki parsed corpus of old english prose (hereafter, ycoe refers to both york corpora) are the textual sources. the doec has provided the textual excerpts and numbers whereas the parsing in the ycoe, when it was available for the fragment in question, has guided the morpho-syntactic analysis. on the other hand, both paper and electronic dictionaries, thesauri, and lexical databases constitute the lexicographical sources of the present study. the old english dictionaries listed in the reference section have been checked, together with the dictionary of old english (hereafter doe) for the verbs beginning with the letters a–i. the meanings and senses of the verbs at stake have been consulted in the thesaurus of old english and the historical thesaurus of the oxford english dictionary. finally, the lexical and morphological data from the lexical database of old english nerthus, which contains approximately 32,000 entries, have been examined in order to make fine-grained distinctions of meaning. the two steps adopted in the methodology of this work are the following. firstly, a sub-corpus of old english verbs of learning has been created. secondly, the analysis of the linking semantics-syntax, constructions, and alternations 32 miguel lacalle palacios presented by these verbs has been carried out. the second step also comprises the search of the texts for the attested inflectional forms of each verb. the organization of lexical domains by faber & mairal (1999), which takes internal aspect into account and considers notions such as negation and causativity, guides the creation of the sub-corpus. the lexical domain of verbs of learning is ‘cognition (to become aware through one’s mind)’, and the lexical subdomains include ‘to come to know something’ and ‘to cause somebody to learn’ (faber & mairal 1999: 286). these subdomains are the starting point of the compilation of candidates for the verbal class of learning, which are then checked with the thesaurus of old english and the lexical database nerthus. the initial twenty-six verbs have been reduced to fourteen after having rejected polysemic verbs that do not convey ‘learn’ as their primary meaning. the remaining ones present the primary meaning ‘to become aware through one’s mind’, and belong to the lexical subdomains ‘to come to know something’ and ‘to cause somebody to learn’. the relevant doe citations of the verbs beginning with the letters a–i have been searched in the doec. for their part, by drawing on the morphological paradigms found in campbell (1987) and hogg & fulk (2011), the canonical inflections of the verbs beginning with the letters l–y have been searched in the doec. this has raised the issue of the lack of textual occurrences of the canonical inflectional forms of some verbs in the doec. eventually, it has been necessary to consult the lemmatized lists provided by metola rodríguez (2015), garcía fernández (2018), and tío sáenz (2019), and to carry out some manual revision. the resulting sub-corpus for this study is comprised of seven verbs, specifically (ge)cneordlǣcan, gefrāgian, (ge)fricgan, (ge)frignan, (ge)leornian, ofācsian, and onfindan. all in all, 715 textual attestations (tokens) have been gathered and analyzed. the appendix contains the inventory of verbs, as well as their inflectional forms and number of attestations. the analysis in section 6 and section 7 relies on the doec, as shown in figure 1; and the morphological classification and syntactic parsing of the ycoe, which is illustrated in figure 2. present-day english translations draw on the references provided. oe verbs of learning 33 [cp 004600 (2.31.3)] ðonne hi ðone godcundan wisdom leorniað. ‘when they learn the divine wisdom.’ (sweet 1871: 30) figure 1. the arrangement of examples presented in the analysis figure 2. the syntactic description of an example in the ycoe2 5. further theoretical and terminological questions some further theoretical and terminological questions arise when present-day english verbs of learning, for which much more evidence is available, are taken into account. these questions are addressed in this section. levin (1993: 144) proposes the class of learn verbs, which “describe the acquisition of information” and comprise acquire, cram, glean, learn, memorize, read, and study. according to van valin & lapolla (1997: 92), verbs of learning belong to the aktionsart of accomplishments. these authors, therefore, do not make two semantic distinctions that are relevant for this study. firstly, they do not draw any difference between durative and punctual verbs. secondly, they do not distinguish clearly verbs of learning from verbs of teaching. these questions are discussed below, including the consequences for the analysis that is carried out in the following sections. 2 this article uses the following abbreviations for categories and features. syntactic categories: cp-adv (adverbial clause), np (noun phrase); lexical categories: adj (adjective), adv (adverb), d (determiner), n (noun), p (preposition), pro (personal pronoun), vbpi (verb, present indicative); morphological case at word level: ^a (accusative), ^n (nominative); morphological case at phrase level: -acc (accusative), -nom (nominative). 34 miguel lacalle palacios the acquisition of knowledge is a durative change of state, whereas the acquisition of information often constitutes a punctual change of state. two different verbal classes can be considered in this respect: verbs found in states of affairs that represent a learning process and imply knowledge acquisition, like learn, memorize, and study, and those which involve information acquisition without a prior learning process, such as realize, discover, find out, and get to know. the acquisition of knowledge conveys a durative process of change of state, which is accounted for in rrg by means of the aktionsart type of the accomplishment. the acquisition of information, on the other hand, is more suitably represented by means of the aktionsart type of the achievement. the logical structures, based on van valin & lapolla (1997: 105), and two illustrative examples can be seen in (2). (2) a. mary learned french. become know´ (mary, french) b. mary discovered the truth. ingr discover´ (mary, the truth) a further semantic distinction between learning and teaching verbs related to the first participant can be drawn. the causative version of verbs of learning selects the thematic role effector for the first argument of the causing predication, thus reflecting the fact that the focus of the process is on the learner, as in pythagoras learned masonry from the egyptians; and, moreover, that the causer of the transfer of knowledge may not be human or volitive, as in i realized from her paintings that blue was her favorite color. verbs of teaching, which emphasize the role of the causer of the transfer of knowledge, can be decomposed as to cause someone to learn and, consequently, involve a prototypical agent, as in the headmaster taught us russian. at this point, the analysis of pythagoras learned masonry from the egyptians as a causative accomplishment calls for an explanation. if the focus of the analysis is put on syntax, a constituent like from the egyptians may be considered optional and, as such, should not be analyzed as a constituent of the verb. this is incompatible with the causative accomplishment aktionsart, which requires a first argument coding the initiator of the learning process. on the other hand, if semantics is prioritized in the analysis, the participant the egyptians constitutes the point of departure of the learning analysis and the participant the egyptians can be analyzed as the first argument of the causing predication. in order to oe verbs of learning 35 distinguish the logical structure from teaching verbs, the thematic role effector is preferred over agent, which is put aside for verbs of teaching. while the oblique marking of from the egyptians is an argument against this analysis, the presence of nominalizations from verbal predications in the first position of the causing predication constitutes further evidence in favor of the causative accomplishment version. this is the case with predications like she learned oratory from the pastor’s praying, which can be paraphrased as the pastor’s praying caused her to learn oratory and, ultimately, rendered as the fact that the pastor prayed caused her to learn oratory. all factors considered, the causative analysis of oblique first arguments of causing predications like from her paintings, from the egyptians, or from the pastor’s praying emphasizes the semantics of the phenomenon and is compatible with the general orientation of rrg. bearing these questions in mind, the analysis of old english verbs puts aside teaching verbs and discusses the transfer of both knowledge and information, or, in other words, deals with the achievement and accomplishment variants of the verbs in question, including the non-causative and the causative versions. 6. the linking semantics-syntax in old english verbs of learning this section describes the aktionsart types and logical structures of old english verbs of learning. the particular characteristics of the linking semantics-syntax, explicitly the thematic roles, the semantic properties of the participants, semantic macroroles, and psa are included as well. four types of aktionsart, including accomplishments, achievements, and their correspondent causative versions, are presented by old english verbs of learning. accomplishments describe states of affairs in which an experiencer, typically human, learns a content, while in the states of affairs of achievements the experiencer becomes aware of a content. figure 3 represents the logical structure of accomplishments and achievements. become know´ (x, y) ingr discover´ (x, y) figure 3. the logical structures of accomplishments and achievements with verbs of learning 36 miguel lacalle palacios most of the old english verbs of learning examined show the logical structures of accomplishments and achievements in figure 3, which are exemplified by (3a) and (3b). (3) a. [or 1 022600 (5.23.27)] þa sæde he pompeius þæt he þær drycræftas geleornode. ‘pompeius then said that he there learned magic.’ (bately 1980: 267) become know´ (he, drycræftas) b. [bede 5 013900 (7.404.16)] in ðam anum he geleornode monna cynne ingong geopenian ðæs heofonlican lifes. ‘whereby alone he had learnt that entrance into the kingdom of heaven is opened to mankind.’ (miller 1959: 405) ingr discover´ (he, monna cynne ingong geopenian ðæs heofonlican lifes) on the other hand, in causative accomplishments a most frequently human initiator makes the experiencer learn the content, whereas in causative achievements the initiator causes the experiencer to become aware of the content. figure 4 gives the logical structures of causative accomplishments and causative achievements. [do´ (x)] cause [become know´ (y, z)] [do´ (x)] cause [ingr discover´ (y, z)] figure 4. the logical structures of causative accomplishments and causative achievements with verbs of learning the logical structures of causative accomplishments and causative achievements in figure 4 are illustrated by means of the fragments in (4a) and (4b) respectively. (4) a. [homs 40.3 (scraggverc 10) 003400 (89)] æt me hie leornodon scondword & lease brægdas. ‘from me they learned blasphemous language and false deceits [or crafts].’ (nicholson 1991: 75) [do´ (me)] cause [become know´ (hie, scondword & lease brægdas)] oe verbs of learning 37 b. [bede 5 035500 (14.442.6)] þis spell ic leornade fram pehthelme ðæm arwyrðan biscope. ‘i heard this story from the venerable bishop pehthelm.’ (miller 1959: 443) [do´ (pehthelme)] cause [ingr discover´ (ic, þis spell)] the thematic role cognizer is selected in accomplishments and achievements for the argument x and for the argument y in their causative versions. cognizers experiment a state of cognition through which they learn the content in accomplishments or get to know it in achievements, such as he ‘he’ in (3a) and (3b). the state of cognition may be externally motivated by an initiator that plays the thematic role effector in causative accomplishments, like me ‘me’ in (4a), and in causative achievements, such as pehthelme ‘pehthelm’ in (4b). finally, the thematic role content is played by the second argument (y) in accomplishments, like drycræftas ‘magic’ in (3a), and in achievements, such as monna cynne ingong geopenian ðæs heofonlican lifes ‘entrance into the kingdom of heaven is opened to mankind’ in (3b); and by the third argument (z) in causative accomplishments, such as scondword & lease brægdas ‘blasphemous language and false deceits’ in (4a), and in causative achievements, such as þis spell ‘this story’ in (4b). cognizers are human participants expresed by arguments that can be realized in the predication by personal pronouns (ic, ðu, he, hēo, git, we, gē, or hīe), proper names (ælfred, ælfstan, almachius, arbatus, basilius, benedictus, chrisantus, daria, gregorius, ioseph, iudith, lucas, rodbeard, ðeodric, or þeotimus), or demonyms (angle ‘the angles or english’, crēcas ‘the greeks’, gota ‘goth’, or rōmāne ‘the romans’). a remarkable number of instances of the thematic role cognizer make reference to common nouns, such as bearn ‘child’, būend ‘dweller, inhabitant’, cild ‘child’, eardiend ‘dweller, inhabitant’, folc ‘people, folk, nation’, foldbūend ‘man, earth-dweller’, hæleð ‘man’, mann ‘person (male or female), man’, ðēod ‘people, nation’, or wer ‘man, male person’. moreover, concrete nouns that refer to titles, occupations, or professions are also frequently used to express the cognizer, including bisceop ‘bishop’, byrele ‘cup-bearer’, cāsere ‘cæsar, emperor’, cyning ‘king, ruler, emperor’, dōmere ‘judge’, eorl ‘brave man, warrior’, ēhtere ‘persecutor’, fæder ‘father’, gefēra ‘companion’, giest ‘guest’, hierde ‘keeper, protector, guard’, hlāford ‘ruler, master, lord’, lǣce ‘doctor’, landweard ‘guard of a country’, lārēow ‘teacher, master, preacher’, leorningcild ‘student, scholar, pupil, disciple’, prēost ’priest’, ðēoden ‘prince, king’, ðegn ‘thane’, or wiga ‘warrior’, among others. on the other hand, non-human entities, e.g. ǣmette ‘ant’, and 38 miguel lacalle palacios abstract nouns, like cniht ‘youth’ and laga ‘law’, are seldom expressed by the cognizer. in the same way as the cognizer, the realizations of the effector tend to make reference to human participants. these may be personal pronouns, proper names (alexandre, crisantus, crīst, gregorius, or paulini), concrete nouns like bōcere ‘learned man, scholar’, fyrngewrit ‘old writing or scripture’, lārēow ‘teacher, master, preacher’, or ūðwita ‘scholar, sage’, but also abstract nouns such as bodung ‘message, preaching’, gāst ‘holy ghost’, gebǣre ‘voice, cry’, geoguð ‘youth’, (ge)segen ‘saying, statement, conversation’, (ge)smēaung ‘investigation’, gesiht ‘sight, vision’, instruction’, lārspell ‘discourse, sermon’, onwrigennes ‘revelation’, or scēad ‘understanding, discernment’. the thematic role content distinguishes between information and knowledge acquisition, as described in section 5. thus, this thematic role is typically assigned to constituents that make reference to abstract nouns like ǣ ‘law’, bebod ‘command’, bōc ‘writing’, cræft ‘art’, dǣd ‘action, deed’, ēaðmōdnes ‘humility’, (ge)lēafa ‘belief, faith’, (ge)writ ‘scripture’, grēcisc ‘greek’, lār ‘teaching’, rǣding ‘reading’, sang ‘song’, spell ‘story’, ðēaw ‘custom’, ðing ‘thing’, or wīsdōm ‘wisdom, knowledge’. the assignment of semantic macroroles with verbs of learning depends on the corresponding aktionsart type. the accomplishment and the achievement present macrorole transitivity 1, whereas the macrorole transitivity of the causative accomplishment and the causative achievement is 2. the argument x in the accomplishment and the achievement gets the macrorole undergoer, while in the causative accomplishment and the causative achievement x gets the actor and the argument y is the undergoer. a non-macrorole core argument is also present in all four aktionsart types that can receive the undergoer macrorole when the cognizer is not present in the state of affairs. this is illustrated by the achievement in (5a), where ic ‘i’ is the undergoer and heardran feohtan ‘a more difficult contest’ constitutes a non-macrorole core argument. on the other hand, in the causative achievement in (5b), þæs wifes gebærum ‘the woman’s cries’ receives the macrorole of actor, þæs cyninges þegnas ‘the king’s thanes’ fulfils the undergoer macrorole, and þa unstilnesse ‘the disturbance’ is the non-macrorole core argument. oe verbs of learning 39 (5) a. [beo 015900 (575)] no ic on niht gefrægn under heofones hwealf heardran feohtan. ‘never have i learned under the vault of heaven of a more difficult contest in the night.’ (hostetter 2015a) ingr discover´ (ic, heardran feohtan) b. [chrona (bately) 025200 (755.13)] & þa on þæs wifes gebærum onfundon þæs cyninges þegnas þa unstilnesse. ‘and then from the woman’s cries the king’s thanes became aware of the disturbance.’ (garmonsway 1975: 48) [do´ (þæs wifes gebærum)] cause [ingr discover´ (þæs cyninges þegnas, þa unstilnesse)] figure 5 summarizes the most important characteristics of old english verbs of learning with respect to aktionsart type, the assignment of thematic role and macrorole, and the resulting logical structure. become know´ (x, y) or ingr discover´ (x, y) where: x (cognizer) = undergoer; y (content) = non-macrorole core argument; undergoer [do´ (x)] cause [become know´ (y, z)] or [do´ (x)] cause [ingr discover´ (y, z)] where: x (effector) = actor; y (cognizer) = undergoer; z (content) = non-macrorole core argument; undergoer figure 5. logical structures, thematic roles, and macrorole assignment the assignment of psa depends on aktionsart type, argument realization, and passivization. with the accomplishment and achievement aktionsart types, the psa is assigned to the undergoer, typically the cognizer, as the tree diagram in (6) illustrates. however, when the cognizer is not expressed in the state of affairs (passivization is often involved), the constituent that realizes the thematic role content receives the macrorole undergoer and subsequently gets psa. causative accomplishment and causative achievement types assign psa to the undergoer in the majority of the instances since the effector is governed by a preposition, as shown in (7). furthermore, when the cognizer is not expressed in the state of affairs, the constituent that plays the thematic role content gets the macrorole undergoer and is assigned the psa of the construction. if the content is absent from the state of affairs, the psa is assigned to the constituent that gets the macrorole actor. 40 miguel lacalle palacios (6) [or 1 022600 (5.23.27)] sentence clause core nuc arg arg comp clause core arg arg nuc pred pred v np np np v þa sæde he pompeius þæt he þær drycræftas geleornode nom acc then said pompeius that he there magic learned psa non‐macrorole argument active voice become know´ (he, drycræftas) periphery undergoer periphery oe verbs of learning 41 (7) 7. morphological case, constructions, and alternations this section goes through the morphological cases that the different participants in old english verbs of learning take along with the different kinds of semantic-syntactic linking they present. afterwards, the constructions and morpho-syntactic alternations found with these verbs, specifically the causative alternation, the reflexive alternation, the effector prepositional government alternation, and the content prepositional government alternation are considered. [bede 5 035500 (14.442.6)] sentence clause core arg arg nuc arg pred np np v pp þis spell ic leornade acc nom this story i heard non‐macrorole argument psa undergoer actor active voice [do´ (pehthelme)] cause [ingr discover´ (ic, þis spell)] fram pehthelme ðæm arwyrðan biscope from the venerable bishop pehthelm                           dat 42 miguel lacalle palacios cognizers involved in accomplishments and achievements present macrorole undergoer, licensing nominative in the great majority of instances, as exemplified by (8). still, they can take accusative and dative as well. the verbs (ge)cneordlǣcan, gefrāgian, (ge)fricgan, (ge)frignan, (ge)leornian, ofācsian, and onfindan select the nominative case for the cognizer; (ge)leornian takes the accusative case; and (ge)cneordlǣcan and (ge)leornian receive a dative cognizer. (8) [ch 1467 (rob 91) 001000 (33)] þa ælfstan abbod þis ofaxode þa com he to eadsige arcebiscop. nom ‘when abbot ælfstan was informed of this, he came to archbishop eadsige.’ (thorpe 1865: 340) effectors in causative accomplishments and causative achievements perform the macrorole of actor and usually license the dative case, although the accusative case may also be selected. both cases are prepositionally governed by æt, be, from, mid, of, on, or þurh. the dative case is taken by gefrāgian, (ge)fricgan, (ge)frignan, (ge)leornian, ofācsian, and onfindan, as in (9a); whereas only the effectors of (ge)leornian and onfindan receive the accusative, as (9b) shows. (9) a. [or 3 037200 (11.82.25)] þa wæs seo sibb & seo mildheortnes geendad þe hie æt alexandre geleornedon. dat ‘then that peace and mercy which they had learned from alexander, were ended.’ (bately 1980: 379) b. [bede 3 060400 (19.244.8)] forðon he þurh gesyhð geleornade, ge hwæs he god bæd & to him wilnade. acc ‘for by a vision he had learnt, both what he prayed god and desired.’ (miller 1959: 245) conversely, the cognizers of causative accomplishments and causative achievements play the macrorole of undergoer and are inflected for the nominative case exclusively when they are realized in the states of affairs. the verbs gefrāgian, (ge)fricgan, (ge)frignan, (ge)leornian, ofācsian, and onfindan opt for the nominative, as (10) illustrates. oe verbs of learning 43 (10) [æ ls (chrysanthus) 002200 (75)] þa cwæð sum rædbora þæt chrisantus leornode drycræft æt þam cristenum. nom ‘then said a certain counsellor, that chrysanthus had learnt magic from the christians.’ (skeat 1966b: 383) contents in the four aktionsart types are non-macrorole core arguments although they can perform the undergoer macrorole when cognizers are not realized in the states of affairs. the accusative case is preferred, but contents can also receive nominative, genitive, or dative; the accusative and the dative may be prepositionally governed. additionally, clauses can also perform the thematic role content, including direct and indirect questions, that-clauses, and infinitival clauses. the verbs (ge)fricgan, (ge)frignan, (ge)leornian, ofācsian, and onfindan take the accusative case, as illustrated by (11a); the nominative is selected by (ge)fricgan, (ge)leornian, and onfindan; the genitive is licensed by (ge)fricgan, (ge)frignan, and (ge)leornian; whereas the verbs (ge)cneordlǣcan, (ge)frignan, and (ge)leornian opt for the dative case; (ge)cneordlǣcan, (ge)fricgan, (ge)leornian, ofācsian, and onfindan realize content through a clause (direct and indirect questions), as can be seen in (11b); the verbs (ge)cneordlǣcan, (ge)fricgan, (ge)frignan, (ge)leornian, ofācsian, and onfindan present a clause as content, as in (11c), which is also represented as a tree diagram in (12); finally, (ge)fricgan, (ge)frignan, (ge)leornian, and onfindan take a content core (infinitival clause), as shown in (11d). (11) a. [men 004400 (189)] we þa æþelingas fyrn gefrunan þæt hy foremære. acc ‘then we have learned about those noblemen of old.’ (hostetter 2015b) b. [æ ls (mark) 004200 (147)] ac he leornode swaðeah of petres bodunge hu he ða boc gesette. clause ‘but he learned, nevertheless, from peter’s preaching, how he should write the book.’ (skeat 1966a: 331) 44 miguel lacalle palacios c. [æchom i, 5 008200 (222.172)] ða gefran ioseph þæt archelaus rixode on iudea lande æfter his fæder herode. clause ‘then joseph learned that archelaus reigned in judaea after herod his father.’ (thorpe 1844: 89) d. [and 033900 (1093)] ða ic lungre gefrægn leode tosomne burgwaru bannan. core ‘then, as i have heard, a gathering of the townsmen was proclaimed.’ (root 1899: 35) (12) table 3 below shows the linking of thematic role and morphological case and the corresponding distribution among old english verbs of learning. [æchom i, 5 008200 (222.172)] sentence clause periphery core nuc arg pred comp v np ða gefran ioseph þæt archelaus rixode on iudea lande æfter his fæder herode nom then learned  joseph that    archelaus reigned in judaea after herod his father psa undergoer active voice ingr discover´ (ioseph, archelaus rixode on iudea lande æfter his fæder herode) non‐macrorole argument     clause     arg oe verbs of learning 45 table 3. linking with old english verbs of learning eff ec tor da t da t da t ac c da t co gn ize rn om no m no m no m no m ø no m no m ø no m no m no m no m ø ø co nte nt ac c cp ‐th t ac c ip‐ in f cp ‐q ue no m ø cp ‐th t ac c da t ge n ac c cp ‐q ue cp ‐q ue cp ‐th t (ge )cn eo rdl ǣc an 5 1 1 7 16 ge frā gia n 1 1 1 (ge )fr icg an 2 3 2 2 1 2 4 1 17 19 (ge )fr ign an 17 6 3 11 1 1 2 4 45 50 (ge )le orn ian 20 8 61 38 14 22 7 19 17 8 6 2 5 5 2 3 41 7 48 2 ofā csi an 19 6 1 1 2 1 30 33 on fin da n 52 25 5 2 1 16 2 1 10 4 11 4 to tal 29 8 10 6 49 29 26 24 20 19 11 9 8 6 6 6 4 62 1 71 5 lin kin g ve rb to ke ns to tal 46 miguel lacalle palacios in accomplishments and achievements, (ge)cneordlǣcan, (ge)fricgan, (ge)frignan, (ge)leornian, ofācsian, and onfindan assign psa to undergoers depending on semantic macrorole and argument realization. thus, the cognizer he ‘he’ in (13a) receives psa assignment as undergoer, while the content fif hella onlicnessa ‘five images concerned with the horror of hell’ in (13b) is assigned psa as undergoer, since the cognizer has been omitted from the state of affairs. (13) a. [æchom ii, 9 001200 (73.24)] he gecneordlæhte æfter wisra lareowa gebysnungum. ‘he was studious of the examples of wise teachers.’ (thorpe 1846: 119) b. [homu 15.1 (scragg) 002500 (67)] þonne syndon fif hella onlicnessa her on worulde leornode on bocum. ‘wherefore, in books it is learned that in this world there are five images concerned with the horror of hell.’ (nicholson 1991: 67) similarly, the undergoer of gefragian, (ge)fricgan, (ge)frignan, (ge)leornian, ofācsian, and onfindan receives psa in causative accomplishments and causative achievements, as actors are normally governed by preposition. the cognizer he ‘he’ in (14a) is assigned psa and the content þæs ‘this’ in (14b) receives psa assignment as a result of the lack of the cognizer in the state of affairs. (14) a. [æchom ii, 9 008700 (79.220)] for ðan ðe he ofaxode. æt ðam lareowum his hæle þæt cristes ðeowdom ne sceal beon geneadad. ‘for he had been informed by the teachers of his salvation, that christ’s service should not be forced.’ (thorpe 1846: 131) b. [homs 24 (scraggverc 1) 002700 (37)] frin þæs þæs þa men þe min word & mine lare gehyrdon. ‘ask this of those men who heard my word and my lesson.’ (nicholson 1991: 19) turning to grammatical voice, (ge)fricgan, (ge)leornian, and onfindan take part in both options, but (ge)cneordlǣcan, gefrāgian, (ge)frignan, and ofācsian show the active voice only. voice diathesis with (ge)leornian is illustrated in (15). oe verbs of learning 47 (15) a. [pps 123200 (118.125)] syle andgit, þæt ic þine gewitnesse wel leornige. ‘grant me understanding, so that i may thoroughly learn your revelation.’ (o’neill 2016: 503) b. [homu 15.1 (scragg) 001100 (34)] ðonne syndon þreo deaþas leornode on bocum. ‘there are three deaths learned about in the books.’ (nicholson 1991: 66) concerning constructions, the verbs which make the distinction between information and knowledge acquisition described in section 5 and which include examples of both aktionsart variants are (ge)cneordlǣcan, (ge)fricgan, (ge)frignan, (ge)leornian, ofācsian, and onfindan, as can be seen in (16) with respect to onfindan. for its part, gefrāgian appears in one occurrence only, which depicts a causative achievement. (16) a. [pps 070200 (93.8)] onfindað þæt and ongeotað þe on folce nu unwiseste ealra syndon. ‘let those who are the most foolish of all among the people learn and recognize now.’ (o’neill 2016: 369) become know´ (þe on folce unwiseste ealra syndon, þæt) b. [beo 063400 (2300)] he þæt sona onfand ðæt hæfde gumena sum goldes gefandod, heahgestreona. ‘he discovered at once that some human had tampered with the hightreasures, the gold.’ (hostetter 2015a) ingr discover´ (he, ðæt hæfde gumena sum goldes gefandod) table 4 presents the findings that have been previously discussed. 48 miguel lacalle palacios table 4. old english verbs of learning: linking and constructions ac c da t no m ac c da t no m ac c ge n da t cp ‐q ue cp ‐th t ip‐ inf (ge )cn eo rdl ǣc an x x x x x x x x ge frā gia n x x x x (ge )fr icg an x x x x x x x x x x x x x x (ge )fr ign an x x x x x x x x x x x (ge )le orn ian x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x ofā csi an x x x x x x x x x x on fin da n x x x x x x x x x x x x x pa ssi ve ac tiv e co nte nt vo ice eff ect or th em ati c r ole co gn ize r ac com pli shm en t ca usa tiv e ac com pli shm en t ac hie ve me nt ak tio nsa rt ca usa tiv e ac hie ve me nt oe verbs of learning 49 concerning alternations, (ge)fricgan, (ge)frignan, (ge)leornian, ofācsian, and onfindan take part in the causative alternation, as shown by ofācsian in (17). on the other hand, (ge)cneordlǣcan is only found in accomplishments and achievements, while gefrāgian presents a causative achievement only. (17) a. [chrond (cubbin) 071000 (1016.86)] þær he ofaxade þæt se cyning wæs eadmund. ‘where he had learned that king eadmund was.’ (thorpe 1861: 124) ingr discover´ (he, þæt se cyning wæs eadmund) b. [æ ls (martin) 000200 (1)] and he wrat þa be him þa ðing þe he ofaxode, oððe æt him sylfum, oððe æt oþrum mannum. ‘and he therefore wrote concerning him the things which he had learned, either from himself or from other men.’ (skeat 1966b: 219) [do´ (him sylfum oððe oþrum mannum)] cause [become know´ (he, þa ðing)] the reflexive alternation involves causative accomplishments and causative achievements in which cognizers learn or get to know the content from themselves. in other words, the cognizer and the effector are the same entity. the effector takes a personal pronoun in either the accusative or the dative case and the particle self, as happens to (ge)leornian in (18b) compared with the non-reflexive alternation of the same verb represented in (18a). the verbs that partake in this alternation are (ge)leornian, ofācsian, and onfindan. (18) a. [mart 5 (kotzor) 065100 (jy 7, b.4)] ond æt þære heo geleornode þæt heo on clænnesse god gelefde. dat nom clause ‘and from her she learned to believe in god with chastity.’ (herzfeld 1973: 115) b. [ch 1500 (rob 3) 000400 (5)] suæ ælmeslice & suæ rehtlice suæ he him seolfa on his wisdome geleornie. nom dat ‘as charitably and as rightly as he of himself in his wisdom may learn.’ (thorpe 1865: 462) the effector in active acccomplishments and causative achievements can take the dative case alternating with the accusative or the dative governed by æt, be, 50 miguel lacalle palacios from, mid, of, on, or þurh. this leads to the effector prepositional government alternation, which can be found with the verbs (ge)frignan and (ge)leornian, illustrated by means of the instances of (ge)leornian in (19). (19) a. [bede 4 027500 (14.296.32)] þæs monungum he gelæred wæs & geleornade, þæt he ða heofonlecan dat nom clause eadignesse gehyhte. ‘by whose admonitions he had been taught and instructed to hope for heavenly bliss.’ (miller 1959: 297) b. [apt 018700 (18.8)] min dohtor girnð þæt heo mote leornian æt ðe ða gesæligan lare ðe þu nom dat acc canst. ‘my daughter desireth that she may learn from thee the happy lore that thou knowest.’ (thorpe 1834: 47) lastly, the content prepositional government alternation includes the alternation of contents in accomplishments and achievements mostly in the accusative case but also in nominative, genitive, and dative with either accusative or dative governed by the prepositions be or of. the verbs (ge)cneordlǣcan, (ge)frignan, and (ge)leornian participate in this alternation, which is illustrated with the examples of (ge)frignan in (20). (20) a. [dream 005000 (75)] hwæðre me þær dryhtnes þegnas, freondas gefrunon. acc nom ‘yet in that place the lord’s thegns, his friends, learned of me.’ (north et al. 2011: 289) b. [alex 027200 (36.19)] lociað nu ealle up & be swa hwylcum þingum swa ge willon frinan þence dat nom on his heortan deagollice. ‘look up, all of you, and think secretly in your heart what you want to know.’ (orchard 1995: 249) table 5 summarizes the alternations examined in this section. oe verbs of learning 51 table 5. alternations displayed by old english verbs of learning the causative alternation the reflexive alternation the effector prepositional government alternation the content prepositional government alternation (ge)cneordlǣcan x gefrāgian (ge)fricgan x (ge)frignan x x x (ge)leornian x x x x ofācsian x x onfindan x x 8. summary and conclusions all things considered, the answer to the research question raised in the present study is as follows. firstly, the verbs (ge)frignan, (ge)leornian, ofācsian, and onfindan are clearly members of the class since they participate in a considerable number of the constructions and alternations that define the class and present a significant number of textual occurrences. secondly, the verb (ge)fricgan, in spite of its comparatively low number of textual occurrences, is considered a good candidate for class membership because it is found in all the constructions. this verb, on the other hand, is found in only one alternation. finally, (ge)cneordlǣcan and gefrāgian are not members of the verbal class of learning. the verb (ge)cneordlǣcan shows both accomplishment and achievement variants and participates in the voice construction but is found in only one alternation and appears in a low number of textual occurrences. for its part, gefrāgian is not found in any construction or alternation as it shows one textual occurrence only. the main conclusion of this study is that, if both meaning components and grammatical behavior are considered, the set of old english verbs of learning cannot be considered a consistent verbal class. on the theoretical side, the causative logical structure has been preferred over the association of a periphery to a core to represent information and knowledge acquisition. although this solution is compatible with the priority given by rrg to semantics, it remains for future research to check this solution with other verbal classes. 52 miguel lacalle palacios references dictionaries and thesauri bosworth, j. & t. n. toller 1973: an anglo-saxon dictionary. oxford, oxford university press. clark hall, j. r. & h. d. meritt 1996: a concise anglo-saxon dictionary. toronto, university of toronto press. healey, a. dipaolo ed. 2018: the dictionary of old english in electronic form a–i. toronto, dictionary of old english project, centre for medieval studies, university of toronto. kay, c., j. roberts, m. samuels & i. wotherspoon eds. 2009: historical thesaurus of the oxford english dictionary. 2 vols. oxford, oxford university press. roberts, j. & c. kay with l. grundy 2000 [1995]: a thesaurus of old english. 2 vols. amsterdam, rodopi. sweet, h. 1987: the student’s dictionary of anglo-saxon. london, macmillan. corpora and databases healey, a. dipaolo ed. with j. price wilkin & x. xiang 2004: the dictionary of old english web corpus. toronto, dictionary of old english project, centre for medieval studies, university of toronto. martín arista, j. ed., l. garcía fernández, m. lacalle palacios, a. e. ojanguren lópez & e. ruiz narbona 2016: nerthusv3. online lexical database of old english. nerthus project. universidad de la rioja. www.nerthusproject.com pintzuk, s. & l. plug 2001: the york-toronto-helsinki parsed corpus of old english poetry. http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~lang18/pcorpus.html taylor, a., a. warner, s. pintzuk & f. beths 2003: the york-toronto-helsinki parsed corpus of old english prose. https://www-users.york.ac.uk/~lang22/ycoehome1.htm secondary sources allen, c. 1995: case marking and reanalysis: grammatical relations from old to early modern english. oxford, clarendon press. bately, j. 1980: the old english orosius (eets s.s. 6). london, oxford university press. campbell, a. 1987: old english grammar. oxford, oxford university press. denison, d. 1993: english historical syntax: verbal constructions. london, longman. faber, p. & r. mairal 1999: constructing a lexicon of english verbs. berlin, mouton. foley, w. & r. van valin 1984: functional syntax and universal grammar. cambridge, cambridge university press. garcía fernández, l. 2018: the lemmatisation of the verbal lexicon of old english on a relational database. preterite-present, contracted, anomalous and strong vii verbs. 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(ph.d. dissertation.) helsinki, university of helsinki. tío sáenz, m. 2019: the lemmatisation of old english weak verbs on a relational database. (ph.d. dissertation.) la rioja, universidad de la rioja. traugott, e. c. 1992: syntax. in r. hogg ed. the cambridge history of the english language. vol. i: the beginnings to 1066. cambridge, cambridge university press: 168–289. van valin, r. 2005: exploring the syntax-semantics interface. cambridge, cambridge university press. van valin, r. 2014: some questions concerning accomplishments. lecture delivered at the 2014 symposium on verbs, clauses and constructions, held at universidad de la rioja. van valin, r. & r. lapolla 1997: syntax: structure, meaning and function. cambridge, cambridge university press. vendler, z. 1967 [1957]: linguistics in philosophy. ithaca, cornell university press. visser, f. 1963–1973: an historical syntax of the english language. 4 vols. leiden, brill. weman, b. 1933: old english semantic analysis and theory: with special reference to verbs denoting locomotion. lund, a.-b. p. lindstedts univ.-bokhandel. 56 miguel lacalle palacios appendix. verbal types and tokens the chosen verbs for this research are shown beneath, including the number of inflectional forms (tokens) of each of the verbs (types) between brackets. (ge)cneordlǣcan (16): cneorðlæcendum (1), gecneordlæcan (1), gecneordlæcaþ (2), gecneordlæce (4), gecneordlæcen (1), gecneordlæcende (1), gecneordlæcon (1), gecneordlæhte (1), gecnyrdlæcað (1), gecnyrdlæce (3). gefrāgian (1): gefragade (1). (ge)fricgan (19): frige (5), gefrægen (7), gefregen (2), gefrigen (5). (ge)frignan (50): fregnan (1), fregnanne (1), frin (3), frinan (1), gefrægn (27), gefran (2), gefregn (1), gefrugnen (3), gefrugnon (1), gefrunan (2), gefrunen (3), gefrunon (5). (ge)leornian (482): geleornad (5), geleornade (21), geleornað (3), geleornedon (5), geleornian (28), geleornianne (1), geleorniað (1), geleornie (1), geleornigan (1), geleornige (17), geleornigen (3), geleornion (1), geleornod (10), geleornode (44), geleornodest (1), geleornodon (20), geliorned (1), geliornod (3), geliornode (2), geliornodon (2), leornade (16), leornað (6), leornde (1), leornedon (9), leornedost (1), leornege (1), leornendum (1), leorneodes (1), leorniæn (2), leornian (57), leornianne (2), leorniað (36), leorniaþ (11), leornie (1), leornienne (5), leornigan (1), leornigað (2), leornige (41), leornigeað (1), leornigeaþ (1), leornigen (6), leornigeð (2), leornion (7), leornod (4), leornodan (3), leornode (58), leornodes (1), leornodest (6), leornodon (21), leornudan (1), liorna (2), liornode (2), liornodest (1), liornodon (2). ofācsian (33): ofacsian (1), ofahsade (1), ofahsian (1), ofahsode (1), ofaxade (1), ofaxian (11), ofaxie (2), ofaxod (2), ofaxode (12), ofaxxie (1). onfindan (114): anfindan (1), anfunde (8), onfand (18), onfindað (2), onfindan (1), onfindaþ (1), onfinde (6), onfindeð (3), onfinden (3), onfindende (3), onfindest (1), onfindeþ (1), onfond (4), onfunde (20), onfunden (20), onfundene (2), onfundon (20). author’s address departamento de filologías modernas universidad de la rioja c/ san josé de calasanz, 33 26004 logroño, la rioja (españa) received: 10 february 2021 e-mail: miguel.lacalle@unirioja.es revised version accepted: 9 march 2021 microsoft word review 12_2023.docx selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. 28 (2023): 161–163. issn: 1132-631x doi: 10.17811/selim.28.2023.161-163 © ediuno. ediciones de la universidad de oviedo. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. whearty, bridget. 2022. digital codicology: medieval books and modern labor. redwood city: stanford university press. pp. 338. isbn 9781503632752. reviewed by mateusz fafinski university of erfurt bridget whearty has written an extraordinary book. to say that this is just a digital humanities monograph is to simplify a complex, multifaceted and extremely timely contribution to the humanities as a whole. while ostensibly the topic of digital codicology describes the process of digitisation and its consequences, whearty has delivered on little over three hundred pages a book on the nature of medieval research, a piece of auto-ethnography, and a pretty decent piece of critical theory. all this in a readable form with a light, approachable style. the book is divided into four chapters preceded by an introduction and followed by a coda and an appendix with a methodological manifesto. even though the monograph forms a coherent whole, each of its parts tackles a distinct subject and manages to maintain subtle differences in style and approach. the introduction provides a sizeable methodological foundation. perhaps the boldest move that whearty offers is to use (late) medieval authors as theoreticians: chaucer, hoccleve, and lydgate. this works astonishingly well and, additionally, is a piece of academic honesty. the texts or objects on which we work also influence, in the form of a feedback loop, our methodologies. nothing is really just a “primary” source. the first chapter is, as whearty admits herself, auto-ethnographical, showcasing her participation in the digitisation process itself. but its main protagonist is astrid smith, the digitisation specialist at the stanford university libraries whose expertise and knowledge is spotlighted in the description of stanford, ms codex m0379. the chapter also happens to be a valuable overview of how the digitisation process itself looked in the late 2010s and early 2020s and gives the readers a peek into how a major institution like stanford structures this process. the second chapter focuses on san marino, huntington library, ms hm 111 and its various copied afterlives. here whearty always keeps the physical in mind, putting the disembodied reproduction process in its bodily context. she makes us see the labour in the digital (but also earlier, analogue) facsimiles. but at the same time, this allows her to talk about the interface between what is seen as valuable and what becomes visible. how does digitisation influence our judgement of authors like hoccleve? for whearty, the digitisation process is not something that appears out of nowhere in the late twentieth century but rather is part of a continuous history that begins with the making of the manuscript itself. the third chapter tackles questions of access and inequalities of the digital. by introducing us to the history of early digitisation projects (and the compromises that had to accompany them), whearty highlights again how nothing that appears on our screens https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1637-8174 book reviews 162 nowadays exists in isolation. we are used to date manuscripts and archaeological artefacts. but how do we date digital copies (or, as the author of this review would say, facsimiles) in the face of inconsistent or missing metadata? whose responsibility is it to date these digital objects? the fourth chapter looks at metadata and interoperability. and here again, whearty shows how every scholarly narrative is also embedded in the biography of the scholars themselves. starting with her own experiences she proceeds to discuss the modern metadata evolution and inconsistencies. this allows for a discussion of the meanings of curation in the digital sphere (and also what kind of necessary losses are connected with it). for whearty, metadata is a balance act between completion and failure. hers is a story of translation between languages of data curation. the coda provides a look at the way errors inform the lives of digitised manuscripts – how these errors in a way mirror scribal errors (and how their corrections exist on a similar plane). this is for whearty a chance to argue for a stricter integration of version control into the workflows of digitisation. finally, the appendix is a seven-point manifesto on how the future of digitisation should look. the theses range from ontological and epistemological to methodological. they remain useful and personal, a fitting ending for the book. as mentioned above, this is not only a scholarly monograph on digitisation. it is also a primary text documenting the labour and the process of creating non-analogue copies in the last decades of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first. just like medieval histories, it not only analyses the past but also documents it. whearty remains in control of registers, presenting the material to the book’s readers in a structured and critical manner. doing digital codicology is a praxis that already influences most of manuscript studies. we are all digital humanists now. therefore, it is our duty to engage with methodological discussions over the matter. whearty’s book is a perfect starting point for that. yes, some parts of it (especially in the discussion of metadata) might seem rather hermetic at a first glance for an uninitiated reader. but there are many points of access for those outside of the field. for those who have been in the field of digital manuscript studies for a longer time already, digital codicology is a timely reminder that the 0s and 1s on our hard drives and servers require specialised manual labour to appear. whearty never lets the digital object disembody. she also aptly shows how our discipline is no longer a newcomer, that it has many decades of history and that we are no longer in the “first cycle.” there is a calm, balanced view on things in this book, far away from the epistemic panic present in many other attempts to understand the impact of the digital. yet another area in which whearty succeeds is in showing how there is no necessary divide between the “digital” and “analog[ue]” methodologies of manuscript studies. her investigations are mostly limited to codicology and archival studies but the same applies to other areas like diplomatics and palaeography. well-executed, the digital and the analogue do not stand in opposition, clutched in mortal combat for the future of hearts and minds. instead, they co-exist propelling each other forward in an increasingly complex world. there is a sense of cautious optimism in this book about where we are and where we can go, even if there are pitfalls on the way. yet, at the same time this is a book written under conditions of late capitalism and these conditions underpin many of book reviews 163 its themes (precarity, invisible labour, non-sustainable practices). our scholarship, whearty shows, can no longer ignore this context. the book will and already has started many productive discussions. whearty’s avoidance of the term “digital facsimile” on the grounds of avoiding the value judgement (37) can be questioned. sometimes, very rarely, shades of positivism can be seen in the discussion of the metadata debate and striving for “more correct” (199) data. the aspect of narrativity underlying the dynamics of digitisation is present but plays a rather limited role. perhaps the greatest absence is ecology and climate: the toll that the push for digitisation takes on the fragile ecosystems. in future editions another, eighth, thesis in the “doing digital codicology” manifesto (235–40) might appear that will address this problem. the impact of medieval manuscript production on ecosystems of the day was an acute concern. so is the impact of making their digital copies today. these points should by no means be seen as errors, rather they are epistemological choices taken inside of a coherent and well-argued narrative. thus, they open the discussion, invite other approaches, make the book connect. whearty’s book will remain a perfect example of this kind of engagement for years to come and should make it to the reading lists of all well-structured manuscript studies modules. she has written a monograph that will shape the field. (received 16/06/2023) microsoft word 1. minaya.docx francisco javier minaya gómez, selim27 (2022): 1–27. issn 1132-631x / issn-l 2792-3878 / https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.27.2022.1-27 wonder, beauty, ability and the natural world: the experience of wonder as a positive aesthetic emotion in old english verse1 francisco javier minaya gómez university of castilla-la mancha drawing on the recent studies on aesthetic emotions and on their recent application to the field of the old english aesthetic emotions, this paper explores one emotion from the emotion family of amazement in the old english poetic corpus, attending to the type of wonder that is typically triggered by objects of beauty, excellent manufacture and by the natural world. the purpose of this paper is to understand better the poetic usage of the old english terms for wonder as well as evidence their role in literary and everyday contexts. through a fine-grained analysis of the above domains, this paper has shown that the wonder implicit in these texts can be triggered by perceptual or cognitive appraisals, but also by a combination of both, highlighting the complexities and particularities of the early medieval english emotion of wonder, as well as its similarity to other emotions like the experience of beauty or awe. keywords: old english; old english poetry; aesthetic emotions; history of emotions; wonder 1 this research was funded by the junta de comunidades de castilla-la mancha (jccm) and the european social fund (fse), with the grant sbply/17/180501/000267. 2 francisco javier minaya gómez 1. introduction after an extensive study of emotions of a utilitarian nature (e.g., anger or fear) on the part of the academic community (e.g., scherer 2005), the attention now has turned to aesthetic emotions. over the last years, several scholars have put forth different theories of aesthetic emotion, like juslin (2013), menninghaus et al. (2019) or fingerhut and prinz (2020). while more general research on utilitarian emotions like anger (for example, kövesces 2010) has resulted in its application to the conceptualisation and expression of these emotions in old english (i.e., gevaert 2007; izdebska 2015), this has not been the case of the old english aesthetic emotions. scattered publications assess individual aesthetic emotion markers (ramey 2017), while others focus on particular aesthetic aspects in specific poems, as is the case of the volume edited by hill (2010). drawing on fingerhut and prinz (2019; 2020) and their research on aesthetic emotions, the aim of this paper is to analyse the emotion of wonder (categorised in their model under emotions of amazement, alongside awe and the experience of the sublime) and its representation in the old english poetic corpus. taking into consideration previous research carried out on positive aesthetic experience (minaya 2021) and on the potentially negative side of wonder (minaya 2022), this paper explores three different and interconnected domains of wonder in old english verse. more specifically, this paper assesses the fundamentally positive dimension of early medieval english poetic wonder, which is manifested in evaluations concerning beauty, manual ability and in the natural world. this will highlight poetic strategies as regards the usage of terms for wonder, but it will also evidence certain relations and expectations from early medieval audiences to this emotion and the phenomena that typically trigger it. 2. wonder from cognitive and literary perspectives contrary to other aesthetic emotions, like the experience of beauty, the emotion of wonder has been analysed in detail. while the points made by certain researchers (scherer 2005; marković 2012; juslin 2013; wonder, beauty, ability and the natural world 3 menninghaus et al. 2019) can certainly illuminate our understanding of this emotion, other academic works delve into its analysis in more detail. in this sense, fingerhut and prinz (2020 and, especially, 2019) make a case for wonder being one of the fundamental human (aesthetic) emotions. while they avoid a straight-forward definition, they analyse wonder alongside different dimensions: core relational themes, action tendencies, expressive behaviours, cognitive styles and valence (fingerhut and prinz 2019), complementing the available information with studies on related emotions, like awe (keltner and haidt 2003). regarding appraisals, that is, evaluations that “precede and elicit emotion” (roseman and smith 2001: 6), fingerhut and prinz (2020: 116) explain that wonder can be analysed in three different dimension: a) cognitively “wonder involves appraisals of perplexity,” referring to things that can be difficult to conceptualise (hence implying some degree of need for accommodation, as keltner and haidt (2003) explain for awe), b) perceptually wonder is triggered by objects that “engage and captivate our senses”, and, finally, c) spiritually “wondrous things are regarded with reverence; we look up to them.” in this paper, the areas analysed will certainly evidence the implicit degree of perplexity and fascination in the passages analysed and in the selected expressions of wonder. two publications that discuss the role of wonder in literary contexts are those by walker (1997) and brewer (2016), who also offer an analysis of the emotion that is applicable to the material analysed here. walker (1997: 3) begins by defining wonder as “a recognition of the singularity and significance of the thing encountered,” explaining that “only that which is really different from the knower can trigger wonder.” however, walker (1997: 7) also remarks that wonder is closely related to “hybrids and monsters also found in the literature of entertainment.” brewer (2016: 5) defines wonder as “a form of positive affect,” while acknowledging that wonder has “‘negative affect’ cousins in fear, dread and horror, as well as awe and reverence, suggesting that it defies strict categorisation as a positive feeling.” indeed, these considerations are consistent with the description of mixed emotional phenomena by menninghaus et al. (2017; 2019) or gonzález et al. (2017), for whom emotions that combine both positive and negative valence are experienced much more intensely. 4 francisco javier minaya gómez the categories that walker (1997) and brewer (2016) proposed for the literary models of wonder were also taken into consideration for the distributions of occurrences from the old english poetic corpus into categories. walker (1997) points out three categories: 1) a theological and philosophical approach to wonder, which is not entirely applicable in the case of old english due to the lack of philosophical writings; 2) wonder in homilies and hagiography; 3) wonder in the literature of entertainment. dailey (2012) further develops these categories and applies them to old english literature. her analysis highlights how the type of wonder that is related to the miracles and supernatural phenomena differs from the more basic wonder that will be discussed in this paper. brewer (2016: 5) similarly points out five distinguishing features that characterise phenomena that elicit wonder, namely that “(1) they are novel; (2) they cause excitement; (3) they are unexplained; (4) they create a desire to understand; and (5) their propensity to induce wonder is dulled with experience.” brewer (2016) explains the evolutionary purpose of wonder, from a strictly utilitarian emotion to an aesthetic one: if wonder transforms a new phenomenon into knowledge, then its function is learning. given that humans are the most intelligent animals on the planet and that intelligence has been a large part of our evolutionary success story, wonder should not be underestimated as a mere aesthetic emotion (brewer 2016: 28). this particular definition and aspect of wonder will be evident in two of the domains analysed in this paper, the contemplation of natural phenomena and the role of wonder in the old english riddles. in dailey’s view (2012: 465), wonder and its evocation through the old english terms for wonder, “initiates the sequence admiratio, questio, investigatio and inventio (wonder, questioning, investigation and discovery), but once knowledge is ‘achieved’, wonder is dissolved and replaced by the discovered form of knowing.” therefore, wonder has to be understood with regards to the role that it plays in human processes of knowledge acquisition as well as in the literary dimension in which it has traditionally been analysed as regards the literature of entertainment. wonder, beauty, ability and the natural world 5 3. wonder and beauty it is not uncommon to find terms for wonder co-occurring alongside other old english aesthetic emotion markers for the experience of beauty, as some of them have been described in minaya (2019; 2020 or 2021). in these cases, appearance, brightness, clothes, ornaments, colours or even engravings are expressed as beautiful by means of the most common poetic terms to designate beauty or beautiful objects and entities, while the terms for wonder assume a secondary role in the aesthetic evaluation, rendering amazement as a result of the preceding aesthetic evaluation, as, for example, excerpts (1) and (2) emphasise: (1) cymeð wundorlic cristes onsyn, æþelcyninges wlite, eastan fram roderum. (christ a,b,c 910)2 ‘the wonderful appearance of christ, the beauty of his countenance, came east from the sky.’3 (2) ac þæt is wundorlic wlite and beorhtnes þe wuhta gehwæs wlite geberhteð. (met 21.31) ‘the wonderful beauty and brightness that every creature has when their countenances are brightened.’ in these examples, among other, terms for wonder flavour the experience of beauty, but they also serve as an introduction to the connection between beauty and wonder, which is the focus of this section. in the examples that will be discussed in this category, contrary to examples (1) and (2), terms for wonder render the foremost aesthetic response. describing material objects, terms for wonder evaluate the excellent material qualities of objects and how they are perceived, without explicitly referring to the idea of beauty: 2 i will follow the practice of placing the main term under discussion in boldface and underline the secondary terms. in these excerpts, which are extracted from the doec, vowel length is not marked. 3 the translation proposed for these extracts is my own. 6 francisco javier minaya gómez (3) þær se beorhta beag, brogden wundrum eorcnanstanum, eadigra gehwam hlifað ofer heafde. (phoen 602) ‘there, the bright crown is cast with wonderful precious stones; it stands out prominently over the heads of the blessed ones.’ in this example, the excellence and appearance of the phoenix’s crown (a metaphor for its halo, referencing the haloes of the blessed souls) causes wonder, and it is experienced with vastness (oe hlifian ‘to tower up, be prominent’), one of the compulsory features of the experience of awe (keltner and haidt 2003). the jewels are indicative and reflective of brightness and this image adds to the positive perception of the halo, which is appreciated in exclusively positive terms as indicative of divinity. in this example, it can also be seen how terms for brightness and light (oe beorht) are often found in positive aesthetic emotion contexts, often acting as emotion markers (minaya 2021). a similar situation as far as the material excellence of oe wundor is concerned can be found in the old english judith: (4) gefrægen ic ða holofernus winhatan wyrcean georne ond eallum wundrum þrymlic girwan up swæsendo. (jud 7) ‘i’ve heard it said that holofernes made an earnest invitation to wine and many wonders, serving glorious meals.’ the food that holofernes serves is a wonder in itself, because of its taste and quality. this is further emphasised by the adjective oe þrymlīc ‘glorious, magnificent’. both these evaluations take place at sensory levels, the visual and the gustatory, indexing the amazement that results from excellence, but without lexically indicating pleasantness, tastiness or appealing appearance. however, in most of the cases, though wonder is the main emotion in a given example, there are also mentions to beauty. in cases (1) and (2), wonder was chiefly rendered by oe wundorlīc, the adjective. therefore, it made reference to additional qualities that modulated the experience of beauty. conversely, in the excerpts in this category, the wonder, beauty, ability and the natural world 7 process is the inverse: the experience of wonder is the core emotional phenomenon, while lexis for beauty contribute to the example’s explanation of what is additionally appealing about this marvel or excellent object. take this example: (5) þonne of þam ade æples gelicnes on þære ascan bið eft gemeted, of þam weaxeð wyrm, wundrum fæger, swylce he of ægerum ut alæde, scir of scylle. (phoen 230) ‘then something similar to an apple is found on the ashes; from it, a worm grows, a beautiful wonder, as it exits the egg, shining from the shell.’ the noun oe wundor is applied to the worm and to its process of rebirth, which takes a new shape from the embers of its funeral pyre. from inside the egg, the worm breaks the shell and this action in itself is said to be a beautiful wonder. this evaluation operates in two levels: in the supernatural causality of the event, which is the cause for wonder and in the aesthetic appeal of the phoenix. the following two excerpts depict this relation between beauty and wonder more directly: (6) ðonne wundriað weras ofer eorþan wlite ond wæstma. (phoen 331) ‘then people on the earth marvel at the beauty and shape [of the phoenix].’ (7) þeoda wlitað, wundrum wafiað, hu seo wilgedryht wildne weorþiað. (phoen 341) ‘people look at them, marvelling at the wonder, how the wild, glad band honour him.’ in the first example, the object of the evaluation is the shape of the bird, which, due to its beauty, causes amazement. in the second example, however, the wonder is not the shape and beauty of the 8 francisco javier minaya gómez phoenix, but the multitude that honours and worships it. both excerpts showcase lexis related to visual perception (oe wlītan) or an emphasis on visual qualities (oe wlite and wæstm). similar remarks to those made in (6) can be found in juliana: (8) duguð wafade on þære fæmnan wlite. (jul 162) ‘the multitude looked with wonder at the woman’s beauty.’ the verb oe wafian is applied to the wonder that juliana’s beauty represents. because her beauty is a moral one, and it is perceived throughout the poem as a luminous sort of beauty, those who look upon her marvel at it. beauty, once again, causes wonder in a strictly positive sense. nevertheless, in this example, the emphasis is placed on wonder, by means of the verb, while beauty is the object that it refers to. brightness and abundance of colour, lexical domains that act as figurative aesthetic emotion markers as minaya (2021) discusses, are similarly applied to objects that cause both wonder and beauty. take these two examples: (9) geher nu an spell be ðæm ofermodum unrihtwisum eorðan cyningum, ða her nu manegum and mislicum wædum wlitebeorhtum wundrum scinað on heahsetlum, hrofe getenge, golde gegerede and gimcynnum, utan ymbestandne mid unrime ðegna and eorla. (met 25.1) ‘hear now a story about proud and unrighteous earthly kings, them who in beauty-bright and variegated clothing shine wondrously on their high throne, near the roof, adorned with gold and precious stones, surrounded by their standing thanes and earls.’ (10) þis leohte beorht cymeð morgna gehwam ofer misthleoþu wadan ofer wægas wundrum gegierwed, ond mid ærdæge eastan snoweð wlitig ond wynsum wera cneorissum. (orw 57) wonder, beauty, ability and the natural world 9 ‘this bright light comes up every morning over the mist-covered hills, going over its way wonderfully dressed, and in the early day it proceeds from the east, beautiful and pleasant for men.’ just as terms for beauty are found in excerpts where the outer, exceedingly pleasant appearance of a given person conceals an unjust and morally deplorable way of acting, so are terms for wonder, as example (9) attests, where oe wundor is used in a positive aesthetic judgment despite making reference to somebody who is not beautiful in a moral sense. in example (10), the figurative usage of terms for wonder is also appreciable, in which the sun is referred to as being dressed wonderfully, oe wundor being used in a personification of the sun, drawing on the usage of wonder-related terms for the description of excellent clothing. this allusion is exclusively sensory and it further stresses the inclusion of wonder-related terms as part of the paradigm of positive aesthetic emotion in old english poetry. all in all, while there are two perspectives to the relation between beauty and wonder, whenever terms for beauty are present alongside terms for wonder, the hierarchy that they establish in semantic terms is based on the predominance of terms for beauty over those for wonder most of the times, and the examples mentioned above are but the exception that further proves the rule. when they co-occur, more often than not, wonder words are relegated to rendering the amazement with which the beautiful object being depicted is met, particularly when oe wundor is used adjectivally, or when oe wundorlīc describes this aesthetic object. notably less frequently, and when oe wundor is used nominally and there are adjectives rendering ‘beautiful’, these adjectives comment on the beauty of a given situation or object that causes wonder, not as a result of its beauty, but as a result of other characteristics that include virtue, supernatural causality, and, above all, ability. this is the focus of the next section, which discusses a group of attestations that evaluate objects as wonders resulting from an evaluation of their beauty or the skill involved in their manufacture, without explicitly alluding to beauty. 10 francisco javier minaya gómez 4. wonder and craft the role between some aesthetic emotion markers and the notions of engraving, intricacy and ornamentation has been discussed before, for example in the adjective oe wrǣtlīc (ramey 2017; minaya 2021). often, this adjective is found in aesthetic evaluations of stonework, jewels and battle gear, referring to the beauty triggered by them and their engraved patterns. terms for wonder similarly evaluate these objects and other manually wrought items and refer to them as a wonder or wonderful thing in an evaluation of the skill that is involved in their creation. regarding stonework, there are three instances in the old english poetic corpus that describe aesthetic objects that are the result of skilled masonry using oe wundor: (11) stondeð nu on laste leofre duguþe weal wundrum heah, wyrmlicum fah. (wan 97) ‘[what’s left of the tribe] is a standing wall of wondrous height, carved with reptilian figures.’ (12) is ðeos burch breome geond breotenrice, steppa gestaðolad, stanas ymbutan wundrum gewæxen (dur 1) ‘this is a famous city in britain, founded in a steep place, the stones around it wondrously produced.’ (13) hygerof gebond weallwalan wirum wundrum togædre (ruin 12) ‘the strong-minded bound the wall’s foundation together wonderfully with ornamental wires.’ in the first example, in the world of desolation that is found in the wanderer, this wall stands out as a cultural reflection of the extinct tribe that left it behind. it is experienced as vast (oe heāh ‘high’), which wonder, beauty, ability and the natural world 11 causes wonder. this is a typical feature of the experience of awe, but in this case the subject does not need to accommodate their mental structures in order to fully comprehend the object standing before them. instead, the pattern in it, wyrmlicu fah, is pointed out as contributing to the wonder that the height and artistry of the wall causes. in the second example, the city of durham’s placement is discussed. it was once built on steep slopes (oe steāp), hinting at sublimity, and enclosed wonderfully with stones. in this case, oe wundor refers to the way in which these stones are carved and placed around the city, the excellent quality of which causes people to regard it with wonder. the last example discusses the creative act as a wonder. in the old english poem exodus, there is mention of the marvellous things that god gives moses as a result of his appreciation for him: (14) [god] mid his sylfes miht gewyrðode, and him wundra fela in æht forgeaf. (ex 8) ‘god, with his might, valued moses, and gave him many wonders in his possession.’ initially, there is no further comment on what these wonders are and, as is the case of most of the instances in the complete poetic corpus, when there is no specific detail as to what these wonders as gifts from god are, they usually refer to fruits of the earth and water. however, several lines ahead, this is further explained: (15) heah wæs þæt handlean and him hold frea, gesealde wæpna geweald wið wraðra gryre (ex 19) ‘lofty was the recompense given by the hand of the gracious lord, he gave [moses] weapons to wield against the terrors of evil.’ these wonders are weapons, which according to ramey’s (2017) and minaya’s (2021) analyses of oe wrǣltīc, are often referred to as objects of beauty and wonder and are evaluated taking into account the craft 12 francisco javier minaya gómez behind their manufacture as well as their physically observable qualities. more detailed depictions of battle gear are found in beowulf: (16) se hwita helm hafelan werede, […] since geweorðad, befongen freawrasnum, swa hine fyrndagum worhte wæpna smið, wundrum teode, besette swinlicum, þæt hine syðþan no brond ne beadomecas bitan ne meahton. (beo 1448) ‘the bright helmet guarded his head […] made worthy with treasure, encircled with noble chains, just like the weapon-smith made it in the olden days, formed wonderfully, set with images of boars, so that no fire-brand or battle-sword would ever bite it.’ (17) ða wæs gylden hilt gamelum rince, harum hildfruman, on hand gyfen, enta ærgeweorc. hit on æht gehwearf æfter deofla hryre denigea frean, wundorsmiþa geweorc. (beo 1677) ‘then the golden hilt was now the possession of the lord of the danes, piece of workmanship of wonderfully skilful smiths, the ancient treasure of giants was hand-given to the old warrior, hoary battle-leader.’ the helmet that beowulf wears is described with all the recurrent early medieval english ornamental elements, oe sinc ‘treasure, gold, silver or jewels’ and oe freāwrāsen ‘noble chains’, and it is decorated with images of boars (besette swinlicum). in the second example, the hilt of the sword is described quite similarly, indexing the idea of wonder in the compound oe wundorsmiþ ‘smith who creates wonderful things’. ultimately, this beauty and appealing visual qualities are all a reflection of the skill with which the weapon-smiths work the helmet and the weapon and turn them into wonderful works of art, even though they are generally perceived as utilitarian objects.4 in short, skill is 4 following on scherer (2005) and juslin (2013) aesthetic emotion is supposed to be triggered after the contemplation and appraisal of objects from a non-pragmatic perspective. that is to say, while these objects serve a function, they are not evaluated in terms of how useful they are, but wonder, beauty, ability and the natural world 13 sometimes a necessary trait to create material objects that trigger wonder. indeed, beowulf is filled with such pieces of jewels, ornaments and woven banners, it being the only poem that takes poetic pleasure in the description of these elements as unlinked from religious or supernatural connotations or without using them in order to reflect on the transience of earthly goods. for example: (18) byrelas sealdon win of wunderfatum. (beo 1160) ‘cup-bearers poured wine from wonderful vessels.’ continuing with different compounds containing oe wundor, this example draws from this term to accomplish two things: maintaining the alliteration in the clause and aesthetically describing the excellence of the wine container. carrying on the alliterative pattern that describes an object aesthetically, the following two excerpts also use oe wundor thus: (19) geseah ða sigehreðig, þa he bi sesse geong, magoþegn modig maððumsigla fealo, gold glitinian grunde getenge, wundur on wealle, ond þæs wyrmes denn, ealdes uhtflogan, orcas stondan. (beo 2756) ‘then, when wiglaf, proud retainer, went triumphant around the seat, he saw many precious treasures, glinting gold near the ground, wonders on the wall, and a pitcher standing on the den of the dragon, the old dawn flier.’ (20) uton nu efstan oðre siðe, seon ond secean searogimma geþræc, wundur under wealle. (beo 3101) with regards to whether they are aesthetically pleasing or not, attending to intrinsic qualities as opposed to pragmatic qualities. 14 francisco javier minaya gómez ‘let us haste once more to see and seek the pile of gems, wonders under the walls.’ when wiglaf goes back to inspect the dragon’s den, he is amazed by the amount of treasure and precious things that it holds, including these wonders on the wall. they are appreciated exclusively because of their beauty, manufacture and worth. in example (20), when wiglaf is making his speech ordering the men to go into the dragon’s den to retrieve jewels for beowulf’s funeral pyre, there is a clear emphasis on the skill that is necessary to shape these jewels, rendered by the first part in the compound searugim, oe searu ‘design, craft, skill’. this idea is more explicitly rendered in the following example, describing a banner that is also found in the dragon’s den: (21) swylce he siomian geseah segn eallgylden heah ofer horde, hondwundra mæst, gelocen leoðocræftum; of ðam leoma stod, þæt he þone grundwong ongitan meahte, wræte giondwlitan. (beo 2767) ‘he saw an all-golden banner, high over the hoard, a great handmade wonder, woven with skill; from it, light extended so he could perceive the floor, look upon the jewels.’ this banner’s beauty is implicit in the references to gold (oe ealgylden) and on the fact that it casts light (oe leōma), but the central idea in its relationship with wonder is the fact that this beauty is a result of manual skill (oe handwundor). skilled creation (implicit in the resulting beautiful object) is the ultimate cause of wonder in those contexts where there is not a religious assessment of reality. such is the case of the usage of terms for wonder in the different old english riddles. the role of wonder in the riddles is explained in more detail by dailey (2012), who explores the pedagogical purpose of describing the objects in the riddles with words of wonder beyond simply creating a veil and an aura of mystery around the objects that prevents the subject from initially identifying them. in the case of some riddles, this experience of wonder is indeed genuine, as nelson (1978: wonder, beauty, ability and the natural world 15 613) explains. however, in other cases, the wonder evoked is merely a stylistic recourse, as is the case of the usage of oe wrǣtlīc in these same riddles: “the riddles […] [invoke] wonder to affect a salutary ordering of the relation of a person (and this person’s mind) to the surrounding world […]. in the riddles, wonder coupled with curiosity becomes a lure for knowing something” (dailey 2012: 468). in the riddles, the usage of oe wrǣtlīc in the alliterative pair wrǣtlīc wiht ‘wondrous creature’ was frequent and it served the purpose of distorting the subject’s perception of the object with these words that evoke an aura of mystery and strangeness that eventually disappears when the solution (or a possible solution) to the riddle is deciphered. oe wundorlīc is similarly applied to oe wiht ‘creature’ with similar aims to progressively describe the object, for instance: (22) ic eom wunderlicu wiht; ne mæg word sprecan, mældan for monnum, þeah ic muþ hæbbe, wide wombe. (rid 18 1) ‘i am a wonderful creature, i cannot speak, converse with men, though i have mouth and a wide womb.’ (23) ic seah wundorlice wiht; wombe hæfde micle þryþum geþrungne. (rid 87 1) ‘i saw a wondrous creature; its great womb was powerfully swollen.’ these creatures and objects of wonder are, in truth, extremely mundane objects, and there is nothing in the process of their creation that could make them equal in any way to the jewels and precious objects described in the preceding pages. solution to (22) is unclear, as is that of example (23), but williamson (2017: 1154 and 1169) proposes an amphora or a similar wine container and bellows, respectively. whatever the case, though wine containers are aesthetically appraised, bellows are not a part of the aesthetic paradigm of early medieval english poetry and, possibly, not even part of the everyday aesthetically appealing objects that, incidentally, were not described as beautiful in poetry. in the riddles, the alliterative pair oe wundorlīc wiht should be 16 francisco javier minaya gómez taken as a poetic recourse that draws from the emotional and evocative force in the root oe wundto create mystery at the very beginning of the riddle. however, in the riddles, other objects that are described as oe wundorlīc or by means of oe wundor are consistent with the preceding descriptions of hand-wrought items. for example: (24) ic wiht geseah on wege feran, seo wæs wrætlice wundrum gegierwed. (rid 36 1) ‘i saw a creature traveling on the way; it was beautifully and wondrously adorned.’ (25) mec se wæta wong, wundrum freorig, of his innaþe ærist cende. (rid 35 1) ‘the wet field, a frozen wonder, from its inside first brought me forth.’ (26) eom ic gumcynnes anga ofer eorþan; is min agen bæc wonn ond wundorlic. (rid 88 17) ‘i am unique among mankind through the earth; my own back is dark and wonderful.’ these three instances describe, respectively, a ship, a coat of mail and an inkpot (williamson 2017: 1158 and 1180). coat of mail and ships are indeed present in other descriptions that feature aesthetic emotion lexis. in the three cases, the possibility that these usages of oe wundor or wundorlīc indicate superb qualities (among which, the necessary skill that creating them entails) that cause amazement is perfectly plausible. all in all, after an analysis of the attestations that feature old english terms for wonder as applied to manual skill and hand-wrought items, it becomes clear that there is a tendency to describe these objects and the ability that is involved in their creation with great poetic attention. while terms for beauty focus on the beauty that results from this ability, terms for wonder render the final emotion felt by the subject after wonder, beauty, ability and the natural world 17 beholding it: in some cases, this emotion is an emotion of amazement, not only at its sensory qualities, but, on a cognitive level, there is some degree of awe and respect implicit in these evaluations. even if some excerpts showcase features that are typical of aesthetic emotions that are more oriented towards the negative spectrum, like vastness in the experience of awe, the usage of the old english terms for wonder as connected with beauty and craft does not contain any negative stimuli that could orient these emotion episodes towards mixed emotional phenomena. 5. wonder in the natural world nature is filled with such beautiful, enigmatic and perplexing objects and circumstances so that it is not uncommon to find terms for wonder evaluating natural phenomena. in old english verse, there are two main perspectives in the aesthetic contemplation of the natural world: one, from a non-religious perspective, where the subject reflects on the nature of the event that they are beholding without linking it to god, and another that connects a given natural wonder with the larger role of god as the ultimate artist and creator. in this section, i will focus on the former, while further publications will discuss the relation between wonder, the miracle and the unknown. most of the excerpts that feature this usage are found in texts that do not have a religious background, chiefly the old english meters of boethius and the riddles. starting with the meters of boethius, the narrator refers to several natural processes, but the emphasis is more prominently placed on the contemplation of the firmament: (27) hwa is moncynnes þæt ne wundrie ymb þas wlitegan tungl, hu hy sume habbað swiðe micle scyrtran ymbehwerft, sume scriðað leng utan ymb eall ðis? (met 28.5) ‘who among mankind does not wonder at the beautiful stars, how some of them have a shorter orbit and some of them have a longer revolution around the earth?’ 18 francisco javier minaya gómez the stars are deemed beautiful (oe wlitig), but this characteristic is not what makes them a wonderful phenomenon, but rather the fact that some of them have shorter orbit (oe ymbhwyrft ‘circular course’) than others. this example does feature some degree of need for accommodation, since the reader needs to alter their mental structures to perceive the vastness and to try to understand the way in which the firmament operates. in this case, the experience of wonder and the implicit flavouring feature of beauty come closer to the experience of awe, though it is not lexically rendered. the fact that the stars do not shine during the day is also a matter of wonder: (28) hwa þegna ne mæge eac wafian ælces stiorran, hwy hi ne scinen scirum wederum beforan ðære sunnan, swa hi symle doð middelnihtum wið þone monan foran, hadrum heofone? (met 28.44) ‘what men do not wonder at every star and why they do not shine in clear weather before the sun, like they always do in the middle of the night against the moon, the light of the skies?’ this natural event causes the narrator in boethius to be perplexed and they express it by means of the verb oe wafian, which refers to aesthetic contemplation, which, in this case, is oriented towards the wonders in the natural world. similar remarks are made as regards the length of the day in the same text: (29) hwæt, ðu, fæder, wercest sumurlange dagas swiðe hate, þæm winterdagum wundrum sceorta tida getiohhast. (met 4.18) ‘so, father, you work summer-long days, so hot, into such wonderfully short winter-days.’ in this example, even though there is an explicit reference to god (oe fæder), the emphasis is on how the course of nature is to move from long and hot summer days (an idea that is recurrently alluded to in the old english corpus by means of the adjective oe sumerlang ‘long as wonder, beauty, ability and the natural world 19 summer days’) to the days in winter the duration of which is so short compared to that of summer days that it becomes a matter of astonishment. these instances remarkably stress the role of wonder in the subject’s acquisition of knowledge, an idea that is emphasised by brewer (2016: 28), who points out that the phenomena that trigger wonder cause a desire to understand. in these cases, the firmament offers more questions than answers, and the narrator can only wonder and wish to understand the dynamics behind these processes. some of the excerpts in meters of boethius also ponder about human nature and its relation to wonder. these two excerpts are the most explicit: (30) hwæt, nu hæleða fela swelces and swelces swiðe wundrað, and ne wundriað þætte wuhta gehwilc, men and netenu, micelne habbað and unnetne andan betweoh him, swiðe singalne. (met 28.49) ‘there are many men that, much in the same way, wonder and do not wonder at every creature, man and beast, and how they have useless envy for each other, without ceasing.’ (31) ne þincð þæt wundor micel monna ænegum þæt he mægge gesion dogora gehwilce, ac ðæt dysie folc þæs hit seldnor gesihð swiðor wundrað, þeah hit wisra gehwæm wundor ðince on his modsefan micle læsse (met 28.64) ‘men do not deem a great wonder that which they can see every day, but these unwise people wonder more at what they seldom see; even if it is a great wonder, their minds think it is much less.’ human contemplation of earthly life and human and animal interaction are areas in which the experience of wonder is often found, as example (30) attests. moreover, example (31) also exemplifies how the appraisal 20 francisco javier minaya gómez of novelty is,5 in certain cases, fundamental to aesthetic experience. it develops the idea that what is novel is more likely to be experienced more intensely than what is familiar, even if the familiar, in given cases, is more of a wonder than the novel. however, the marvels of the natural world (as detached from the religious) are more explicitly developed and expressed with wonder in the riddle format. this idea that is partially developed by dailey (2012), whose paper focuses on wonder as a response to the riddles without necessarily considering or predicting the experience of wonder that these wonder-related terms aim at triggering or rendering. for instance, riddle 47 refers to moths that damaged manuscripts as a wonder and a beautiful event at the same time, but, by far, water, in all its forms, is one of the most recurrent wonders described in the riddles: (32) an wiht is on eorþan wundrum acenned, hreoh ond reþe, hafað ryne strongne, grimme grymetað ond be grunde fareð (rid 84 1) ‘this lonely creature is born from wonders, rough and fierce; it has a strong course, roars grimly and travels around the ground.’ (33) biþ sio moddor mægene eacen, wundrum bewreþed, wistum gehladen, hordum gehroden, hæleþum dyre. (rid 84 21) ‘our mother’s might is eternal, upheld by wonders, laden with food, adorned with hoard, dear to men.’ (34) hrusan bið heardra, hæleþum frodra, geofum bið gearora, gimmum deorra; worulde wlitigað, wæstmum tydreð, firene dwæsceð, oft utan beweorpeð anre þecene, wundrum gewlitegad, geond werþeode, þæt wafiað weras ofer eorþan. (rid 84 36) 5 as it is discussed in minaya (2021), testing whether the appraisal of novelty pointed out by menninghaus et al. (2019) was involved in most aesthetic evaluations or otherwise should be one of the objectives of diachronic research in the expression of aesthetic emotions. wonder, beauty, ability and the natural world 21 ‘it is harder than the earth, more prudent than men, older than mankind, dearer than gems; it beautifies the world, nourishes the fruits, puts out wicked deeds, and often out of one roof it is thrown down, wondrously beautiful across tribes, so that men marvel over the earth.’ water, for all its transformative properties, is referred to in many different ways in this riddle: it is a creature (oe wiht) and a mother (oe mōdor), it is hard (oe heard), rough (oe hreōh) and fierce (oe rēðe), and it roars (oe grymetan); it produces food (oe wist and wæstm) and it plays an important role in baptism, washing away sins (oe firen). all this causes men to be perplexed by these powers and abilities that they try to apprehend, an idea that is rendered by many different attestations of oe wundor and wafian, but also as connected to beauty as the collocation of oe wlitegian alongside wundor attests. yet, the nourishing and powerful qualities of water are not the only features that make it a wonder, but also the fact that it can change states: (35) wundor wearð on wege; wæter wearð to bane. (rid 69 1) ‘the wonder was the wave, water turned into bone.’ the fact that water (oe wǣg ‘wave’ but also ‘water’) can change states from liquid to solid (metaphorically represented by oe bān ‘bone’), as williamson (2017: 1165) explains, is not easily fathomable for the early medieval english mind. other poems also talk about water’s semimiraculous properties, like the meters of boethius: (36) eorðe sio cealde brengð wæstma fela wundorlicra, forðæm hio mid þæm wætere weorðað geþawened. (met 20.100) ‘the cool earth produces many wonderful fruits because it is moistened with water.’ 22 francisco javier minaya gómez in the chapter on positive aesthetic experience, the beauty of this liquid in large bodies of water is emphasised once again. to this depiction of its beauty, the aesthetic emotion markers that render wonder add a more cognitive layer of evaluation that, as is the case of most of the preceding 34 excerpts analysed, is exclusively positive. three more riddles evaluate four additional natural objects that are supposed to induce wonder. riddle 29 focuses on two celestial bodies that, much like water, have an important role in people’s lives, the sun and moon: (37) ic wiht geseah wundorlice hornum bitweonum huþe lædan, lyftfæt leohtlic. (rid 29 1) ‘i saw a wonderful creature, with its treasure between the horns, illuminated aerial vessel.’ (38) ða cwom wundorlicu wiht ofer wealles hrof. (rid 29 7) ‘then came another amazing creature over the roof of the cave.’ the usage of oe wiht is reminiscent of the initial collocation that opens most riddles, combining it with either wrǣtlīc or wundorlīc, and, in this sense, it seems to have, above all, an alliterative and metric function, rather than render lexically a given experience of wonder or aim at triggering one. nevertheless, their usage further emphasises the natural as an avenue for the experience of wonder, which is not limited only to water and heavenly bodies, but also to fire: (39) wiga is on eorþan wundrum acenned dryhtum to nytte, of dumbum twam torht atyhted. (rid 50 1) ‘a warrior is wondrously born on the earth, useful for many, from the mute pair brightly allured.’ wonder, beauty, ability and the natural world 23 fire, like water, is wundrum acenned ‘wondrously conceived’, as the early medieval english mind cannot fully comprehend how it is that they came to be, or how, for example, fire is made from two stones. the experience of wonder, therefore, always includes some degree of unknowability that puzzles the subject. this is further reinforced by the meters of boethius, in which things that are common knowledge or logical for everybody are said not to be a wonder, for example the fact that new-borns come from man and woman in met 17.7 or that a ‘wonder’ that is cold cannot be hot at the same time in met 20.79. all things considered, the experience of wonder in the natural world without religious implications is a notably limited theme in the old english poetic corpus, and it stems from a very precise textual context: the translation of boethius’ de consolatione philosophiae into old english verse and the playful and extremely figurative early medieval english riddles, which are essentially figurative. these natural wonders are limited to heavenly bodies, water, fire, the sun and the moon and, in some cases, they exhibit appraisals like need for accommodation that efface the line between awe and wonder, but, since the appraisal of vastness is not present, nor is there an appreciation of threat or supernatural causality, the experience remains closer to the latter. this group of attestations also shows, in early medieval writings, how aesthetic objects that were novel were more often met with positive aesthetic emotions and these were more intensely experienced. 6. concluding remarks the excerpts analysed in this paper, which are the result of a finegrained categorisation of the existing attestations of the old english terms for wonder evidence that, to a certain extent and pending the assessment of the occurrences for wonder that involve the appraisal of supernatural causality, this emotion stands out as a fundamentally positive one. the poetic strategies at play that can be seen in some of these occurrences draw on the evocation of the emotional responses 24 francisco javier minaya gómez implicit in the old english lexical domain of wonder to involve the audience and readership in a process of aesthetic contemplation and knowledge acquisition. furthermore, this evidences the audience’s relationship with the poems discussed here, ranging from a taste for the appreciation of natural phenomena and objects of excellent manufacture, to the utilitarian role of wonder in the identification of the object described in the riddles. contrasting the excerpts analysed and discussed here with fingerhut and prinz’s (2020: 116) description of wonder, it can be seen how wonder operates along three different axes: perceptually, there is a fascination with objects that are visually appealing; cognitively, a degree of puzzlement and fascination with the manufacture and inner workings of the aesthetic reality that is being contemplated can as well be appreciated; finally, a degree of reverence is also implicit in the ways in which the contemplation of objects of beauty that trigger wonder seems to imply a reverence towards the artist that manufactured it. in this sense, the excerpts that have been analysed here also observer brewer’s (2016: 5) key points as regards the experience of wonder: novel objects do, indeed, trigger wonder more frequently while their repeated experience dulls and diminishes the intensity of the emotion that is felt, as example (31) clearly attested, this wonder commonly results in excitement and perplexity, as well as in a desire to understand. generally speaking, there is a dual potential to the emotion of wonder in these groups analysed here. the most fundamental wonder experience lies at the base of the emotion process: it initiates a process of acquisition of knowledge. more complex is the experience of a wonder that results from the contemplation of an aesthetic reality even if different appraisals are involved in it. as such, the contemplation of nature does feature an even more complex and multi-layered type of wonder, insofar as the appraisals involve an evaluation of its inner workings, but there is also an appraisal of beauty, the experience of which acts as an emotional input. similar to this is the contemplation of these exquisitely manufactured objects: while they are appraised drawing on their apparent beauty, there is a degree of perplexity and reverence towards the skill involved in their creation. wonder, beauty, ability and the natural world 25 in terms of appraisals and sub-emotional component, it can be seen how the experience of wonder is an emotion that does belong to the emotion family of amazement alongside awe. in the selected texts, the emotional experience comes close to the emotion of awe as described by keltner and haidt (2003), with the marked difference that, in some cases, the two mandatory appraisals in the experience of awe (vastness and need for accommodation) are not always present at the same time. it remains to be determined whether the appraisal of supernatural causality (an appraisal that is said to be a flavouring or peripheral one in the experience of awe) can be responsible for turning these fundamentally positive emotions into emotional experiences of a mixed nature. while this will be the focus of further publications, the main conclusion to be derived from this paper is that the experience of wonder in old english texts is an extremely complex and important emotion that not only operates at aesthetic levels but also in utilitarian contexts. like most other aesthetic emotions, this emotion contributes to the description of extremely appealing and fascinating objects and to the creation and description of wonderfully stimulating images and circumstances, in this case, for the sake of aesthetic pleasure in itself. references brewer, k. 2016: wonder and skepticism in the middle ages. london, routledge. dailey, p. 2012: riddles, wonder and responsiveness in anglo-saxon literature. in c. a. lees ed. the cambridge history of early medieval english literature. cambridge, cambridge university press: 451–472. fingerhut, j. & j. prinz. 2019: wonder, appreciation, and the value of art. progress in brain research 237: 107–128. fingerhut, j. & j. prinz. 2020: aesthetic emotions reconsidered. the monist 103.2: 223–239. 26 francisco javier minaya gómez gevaert, c. 2007: the history of anger: the lexical field of anger from old english to early modern english (phd dissertation). leuven, university of leuven. gónzalez, r., j. smith & l. nielsen. 2017: editorial overview: theories, methods, and applications of mixed emotions. current opinion in behavioural sciences 15: iv–vi. hill, j. m. ed. 2010: on the aesthetics of beowulf and other old english poems. toronto, university of toronto press. izdebska, d. w. 2015: the semantic field of anger in old english (phd dissertation). glasgow, university of glasgow. juslin, p. n. 2013: from everyday emotions to aesthetic emotions: toward a unified theory of musical emotions. physics of life reviews 10.3: 235–266. keltner, d. & j. haidt. 2003: approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. cognition & emotion 17.2: 297–314. kövecses, z. 2010: cross-cultural experience of anger: a psycholinguistic analysis. in m. potegal, g. stemmler & c. spielberger eds. international handbook of anger. new york, ny, springer: 157–174. menninghaus, w., v. wagner, j. hanich, e. wassiliwizky, t. jacobsen & s. koelsch. 2017: the distancing-embracing model of the enjoyment of negative emotions in art reception. behavioral and brain sciences 40: 1– 63. menninghaus, w., v. wagner, e. wassiliwizky, i. schindler, j. hanich, t. jacobsen & s. koelsch. 2019: what are aesthetic emotions? psychological review 126.2: 171–195. minaya gómez, f. j. 2019: as beautiful inside, as it is outside: on the connection between beauty and morality in the old english corpus. complutense journal of english studies 27: 205–221. minaya gómez, f. j. 2020: mixing pleasure and beauty: positive aesthetic experience in old english poetry. journal of english studies 18: 153–179. minaya gómez, f. j. 2021: the lexical domain of beauty and its metaphors in the anglo-saxon formulaic style. berlin, peter lang. minaya gómez, f. j. forthcoming: wonder and the supernatural in old english verse: an assessment of wonder as a potentially mixed emotional wonder, beauty, ability and the natural world 27 response. in j. enrique díaz vera & e. m. porter eds. cultural models for emotions in north atlantic vernaculars: 700-1400. turnhout, brepols. nelson, m. 1978: the paradox of silent speech in the exeter book riddles. neophilologus 62: 609–615. ramey, p. 2017: the riddle of beauty: the aesthetics of wrætlic in old english verse. modern philology 114.3: 457–481. scherer, k. r. 2005: what are emotions? and how can they be measured? social science information 44.4: 695–729. walker, c. 1997: wonder. american historical review 102.1: 1–17. williamson, c. 2017: the complete old english poems. philadelphia, university of pennsylvania press. author’s address department of modern philology universidad de castilla-la mancha 13001 ciudad real (españa) received: 23 september 2021 e-mail: francisco.minaya@uclm.es revised version accepted: 20 october 2021 selim 15.indb carmen mª fernández rodríguez selim 13 (2005-2006): 227—250 new contexts for the classics: wanderers and revolutionaries in the tales of the franklin and the clerk.1 abstract this paper attempts to compare the treatment and behaviour of female protagonists in two chaucerian texts with later representations of feminine independence and self-assertion, particularly in fanny burney’s novel the wanderer (1814) and maria edgeworth’s the modern griselda (1805), a rewriting of the clerk’s tale. recent fiminist criticism on chaucer and the early nineteenth-century scene will be taken as references to read some sections of these texts about marriage and female freedom. i will try to show how both doringen and griselda denounced the constraints imposed by patriarchy and lived in a world as debilitating for women as early nineteenth-century engliosh society. keywords: chaucer, canterbury tales, franklin’s tale, clerk’s tale. resumen este artículo pretende comparar el tratamiento y comportamiento de las protagonistas femeninas en dos textos de chaucer con representaciones posteriores de independencia y autoafirmación femenina, en concreto en la novela the wanderer (1814) de fanny burney, y the modern griselda (1805) de maria edgeworth, siendo ésta una reescritura del “cuento del erudito”. tomaremos como referencia a la reciente crítica feminista sobre el matrimonio y la libertad femenina. intentaré demostrar cómo dirigen y griselda denunciaron las restricciones impuestas por el patriarcado y vivieron en un mundo debilitante para las mujeres como la sociedad inglesa del principios del siglo xix. palabras clave: chaucer, cuentos de canterbury, cuento del propietario, cuento del escribano. 1. introduction much has been written about the diverse female protagonists in the canterbury tales since kittredge’s influential and disputable essay “chaucer’s 1 this work was presented at the “seventeenth selim international conference” (universidade da coruña, 29th september1st october 2005) and is based on the unpublished paper “el feminismo de chaucer en el ‘cuento del erudito’” read at “quinto congreso de literatura española contemporánea” (universidade da coruña, 19th -23rd april 2004). i would like to thank rory j. lynch, who kindly revised this paper and helped me to correct some minor mistakes. carmen mª fernández rodríguez 230 marriage group”.2 however, the greatness of a classic writer lies precisely in our ability to perceive a plurality of readings of one’s work and to relate it to other productions. here i will analyse from a feminist perspective the tales of the franklin and the clerk by establishing a provocative dialogue with some british nineteenth-century texts. of course, protest against patriarchy appears in all historical periods, but, as a student of english literature after the french revolution, i wish to focus on the role of women in the two stories. the tales of the franklin and the clerk represent a challenge to traditional female images since their protagonists examine the natural and social order of the world at the same time as they expose injustice. as dinshaw explains, chaucer consciously played with gendered models of literary activity, associating acts of writing and signifying with the masculine (1989: 9). he was also aware of the patriarchal power structures that determine the position occupied by the sexes when they read as a man or as a woman (1989: 12). i will support this view by comparing dorigen’s and griselda’s domestic constraints with the ones depicted by eighteenthand nineteenth-century british female writers who lived surrounded by conduct books and the pernicious cult of sensibility. this ideology was exposed, for example, in james fordyce’s sermons to young women (1766), thomas gisborne’s an enquiry into the duties of the female sex (1797) or dr. john gregory’s a father’s legacy to his daughters (1774), and it insisted on passivity, chastity, sweetness and self-control in females. it was assumed that certain intellectual domains, such as science and philosophy, were masculine, and women were defined as the sister, the daughter or the wife of a man. as we will see, both tales contain subversive protagonists departing from this model and voicing the contradictions of freedom later exposed in feminist fiction by fanny burney, maria edgeworth or mary wollstonecraft, among many others. 2 he includes under this term the franklin’s, the clerk’s, the merchant’s and the wife of bath’s tale. holman objects to this label because it avoids an analysis of the tales themselves (1959: 240, see also reiman 1963: 372). wanderers & revolutionaries in the tales of the franklin & the clerk 231 2. medieval female metaphysics it is important to highlight that neither of chaucer’s tales is original. besides, the narrative frames highly condition our impression and evaluation of characters, especially if we turn to their narrators3and sources.4 in the ambiguous franklin’s tale, chaucer introduces female virtue paradoxically wrestling with and protecting masculine honour, while social appearances and illusions play important roles. 3 spearing explains why the narrative voice in the canterbury tales has attracted criticism so powerfully: kittredge’s ideas appeared when dramatic monologue and the questionable narrator were regarded as crucial elements to study prose fiction and they contributed to new literary interpretations (2005: 104-6). the franklin is a sanguine wealthy epicurean at table while the clerk is a cultivated man, and we find few positive judgements on the franklin. whereas pearsall considers him a quiet person dominated by emotion (1985: 149), and martin highlights his common sense (1990: 129), most criticism focuses on the franklin’s attempt to seduce readers with his personality and story. he wants to imitate the knight, and his egocentric behaviour is comparable with the orleans clerk’s one (mathewson 1983: 35, shoaf 1997: 246). as a proud character merely interested in appearances (robertson 1974: 26), his speech is deliberately made to confound and he does not admit the complexity of human relationships (aers 1980: 163-4). for kittredge, his tale is simply too elegant for him (1976: 210), and carruthers notices that he is an expert in rhetoric (1981: 292). furthermore, chaucer uses the plural, positioning himself at the protagonists’ level, so that the reader identifies himself/herself with the tale (jill 1982: 135). 4 the franklin’s tale surpasses its sources in psychological realism. chaucer took boccaccio’s il filocolo (nineteenth day fifth tale), geoffrey of monmouth’s historia regnun britanniae (where one character is called arviragus and the magic element appears too), breton lays, saint jerome’s adversus jovinianum (particularly the exempla of virgins and martyrs) and kean de meun’s roman de la rose (with an idealistic pact between spouses) (bryan & dempster 1959: 377-97, aers 1980: 162, cooper 1989: 234). chaucer’s is only one rewriting of the prolific griselda’s story, which was very popular and whose transmission has been well traced: boccaccio rescued it from folklore and incorporated it to decameron (tenth day tenth tale), then petrarch translated the story into latin in epistola seniles 17.3. this work and a thirteenth-century anonymous french translation called livre griseldis helped chaucer in the canterbury tales. however, the english writer feminised griselda and added a religious dimension not present in the sources (bryan & dempster 1959: 288-91, dinshaw 1989: 132, cooper 1989: 188-91). the narratives themselves admit their filiation: in the prologue it is stated that the clerk takes his narrative from petrarch (lines 27-31), and the franklin recognises having heard his story in brittany (lines 714-5). carmen mª fernández rodríguez 232 a summary of the story shows how every character makes some sort of mistake. the knight arveragus marries dorigen promising to be “servant in love, lord in mariage” (line 793).5 however, shortly afterwards he departs to england to obtain honours and dorigen becomes disconsolate (“she moorneth, waketh, waileth, fasteth, pleineth;/ desir of his presence hir so destreineth/ that al this wide world she set at noght”, lines 819-21). one morning her admirer aurelius confesses his love to her, who playfully answers that she would lie with him if the rocks of brittany disappeared. aurelius resorts to an orleans clerk who demands a thousand pounds to fulfil his goal, and dorigen despairs when she sees the carefully prepared miracle. arveragus comes back and tells her to fulfil her promise (“‘ye shul youre trouthe holden, by my fay!’”, line 1474). however, aurelius pities dorigen, and, when the clerk sees aurelius’s gesture towards the lady, he has mercy on him. on the one hand, personal ambition masters arveragus, who leaves his reputation in dorigen’s hands after having promised souffrance to her, a concept defined as a “mutual tolerance, a positive and willing embrace of the will of another as a means to the strengthening of the bond of love” (pearsall 1985: 160).6 on the other hand, the fulfilment of aurelius’s selfish desire involves a woman’s adultery. it is dorigen who becomes her own victim, the subject of ‘a culturally sanctioned rape’ (raybin 1992: 76) while, if carefully analysed, her words are far from passive. there are some narrative gaps in the tale (nothing is said about what arveragus was doing in england), and the 5 all citations will be to jill mann’s edition of the canterbury tales. 6 for many critics, arveragus sacrifices the initial equality compromise on behalf of his public persona. when dorigen explains to him the nature of her promise, his ego resents: “the husband who has attempted to initiate mutual and non-coercive love, orders his obedient but unwilling wife to subject herself to another male while he himself displays the unreflexive masculine egotism habitual in the traditional culture” (aers 1980: 166). chaucer parodies a literary convention (phillips 2000: 289) and uses some of its features to comment how men and women transform institutions (holman 1959: 246-7, 249). however, dorigen does not behave like a typical courtly love woman: she wants to remain faithful, and arveragus relies on her (holman 1959: 247-8). wanderers & revolutionaries in the tales of the franklin & the clerk 233 promise between the spouses is never made public (pearsall: 150). for phillips, their union was atypical in medieval england: first, by its very act of questioning and discussing the unequal power relations between husband and wife; second, by its presentation of this as an attitude which men and women share: both sexes, it asserts, naturally desire liberty (268-9), and it is a man here who proposes that the husband’s right to require obedience should not be enforced (745-50); and thirdly, by reformulating the marital relationship as one best regarded as one of love and friendship (2000: 287). for david, characters simply make no sacrifices at all (1976: 190), and few critics defend dorigen, who lacks patience and confuses illusion with reality (pearsall 1985: 154). the tale offers a feminine point of view, and arveragus is to blame for not having stayed at home (thompson 1984: 170, 177). martin thinks that she has the least freedom in the story: “she escapes the hortus conclusus and is excluded rather than enclosed” (1990: 130), whereas raybin turns to the etymological sense of free and considers dorigen as the most generous character. she triumphs over her lover’s vulgarity and her husband’s meanness since she forgives both, and raybin goes further to assert: “queenlike, she rises above the vulgarity of her lover and the pettiness of her husband to lift them with her to a higher moral level...dorigen is true generosity, the true nobility of spirit” (1992: 81). she affirms that she belongs to her husband (“‘ne shal i nevere been untrewe wif/ in word ne werk, as fer as i have wit’”, lines 984-5) and, believing that the rocks will never move, she promises to be aurelius’s lover if he completes a challenge: “ye remoeve alle the rokkes, stoon by stoon,/ that they ne lette ship ne boot to goon” (lines 993-4). her rash promise not only compromises her virtue but also creates some emotional imbalance (mathewson 1983: 31). dorigen is later appalled, and her convictions undermined, when nature, a symbol of the social order in the story, is altered by an illusion. in fact, she believes so strongly in aurelius’s carmen mª fernández rodríguez 234 words that she never goes to the sea to check because she firmly believes him and thinks of committing suicide. like the clerk’s tale, the franklin’s tale is a story about inconstancy and constraints to women’s will epitomised by the bleak breton rock.7 although dorigen lacks philosophic learning,8 her polished rhetoric reveals a lot, as baker points out: “chaucer is able to convey graphically the internal struggle of dorigen, illuminating her character, and at the same time to develop, by the use of these materials, the structure of his tale, epitomising and adumbrating the moral of the franklin” (1961: 64). according to phillips, dorigen’s speech questions society, creation and even the franklin who seems so honourable (2000: 289).9 the sea-coast becomes a locus for self-reflection and it provides the opportunity to attack patriarchal culture. chaucer’s 7 cooper is interested in how this symbol affects characters (1989: 239). dorigen sees in the rocks her marriage’s solidity and firmness (david 1976: 187). they also stand for the fact that “love cannot exist in a cage. to soar, the human spirit requires its liberty. women, as well as men, need the obstacles to freedom, emblematized by the famous rocks of brittany, be removed. indeed, the key to understanding the message of the franklin’s tale lies in the removal of those black rocks, the tale’s central symbolic action. chaucer tells much about love and marriage when he proposes so solid an obstacle to free passage may be made by simple magic to appear or disappear.” (raybin 1992: 79) 8 scholars never agree on dorigen’s erudition. for cooper, she uses philosophic terminology (1989: 243, also sledd 1947: 42). bachman maintains that boethius’s language helps her to pose questions following logic (1977: 56-7) and at the same time to parody the christian philosopher affirming the human side before the ideal world (1977: 60). there are several parallelisms between the franklin’s tale and de consolatione philosophiae: the clerk alters what characters see just like philosophy distracts men, aurelius feels as depressed as the protagonist of boethius’s work and the clerk knows beforehand aurelius’s problem as if he had some superior power (bachman 1977: 62-3). roney openly attacks dorigen’s erudition: because she is a woman, dorigen is apparently not an appropriate object for moral reasoning. yet she is the one who suffers the most, she is the one the authorities would sentence to death or defilement, and, of them all, she is the only real innocent... she is a wimp because, although she is highly educable, she has never learned how to mediate between conflicting ethical claims. the reason she has never learned is that, as a woman, all her life she has been systematically excluded from serious moral reasoning (1999: 24). 9 bloomfield states that “this is the first example in western literature of which i know where the terrible and the frightening aspects of nature lead a spectator to question god’s goodness...there’s no answer to dorigen’s prayer and to the dilemma she faces” (1982: 189). wanderers & revolutionaries in the tales of the franklin & the clerk 235 audience must interpret the indirect criticism of arveragus: dorigen has the mark of consolation impressed on her and wants to know the meaning of evil, facing the senseless rocks symbolising oppression, which, like ideals, war or hunger destroy men in the sea: se ye nat, lord, how mankinde it destroyeth? an hundred thousand bodies of mankinde han rokkes slain, al be they nat in minde; which mankinde is so fair part of thy werk that thow it madest lik to thin owene merk. thanne semed it ye hadde a greet chiertee toward mankinde; but how thanne may it be that ye swich menes make it to destroyen? ؁ whiche menes do no good, but evere anoyen (lines 876-84). she cannot comprehend aurelius’s blind desire and condemns a male sexuality based merely on the satisfaction of lust: “what deintee sholde a man han in his lif/ for to go love another mannes wif,/ that hath hir body whan so that him liketh?’ (lines 1003-5). her long speech to fortune includes exempla on sacrificed virgins and humiliated wives (lines 1355-1456) expressing how she neither wants to sleep with aurelius nor displease her husband. dorigen also realises her mistake: she has gone too far and is at stake between two men. at the same time that she attacks the submission of women and vindicates a space of her own, she casts some doubt on the validity of masculine honour: but nathelees, yet have i levere lese my lif, than of my body have a shame, or knowe myselven fals, or lese my name. and with my deeth i may be quit, ywis. hath ther nat many a noble wif er this, and many a maide, yslain hirself, allas, rather than with hir body doon trespas? (lines 1360-6). carmen mª fernández rodríguez 236 her aware attitude can be related to the dissenter mary wollstonecraft, who denounced in a vindication of the rights of woman (1792),10 the fact that “understanding has been strictly denied to women; and instinct sublimated into wit and cunning, for the purposes of life has been substituted in its stead” (1975: 143). it also resembles mary hays’s views in the memoirs of emma courtney (1796), whose protagonist likewise condemns females strictures: why have i been rendered feeble and delicate by bodily constraint and fastidious by artificial refinement? why are we bound, by habits of society, as with an adamantine chain? why do we suffer ourselves to be confined within a magic circle without claiming, by a magnanimous effort, to disolve [sic] the barbarous spell? (1974: 55). dorigen’s voice is more conservative than it seems and can be interpreted as a parody against rebellious women. in order to explain my view, i wish to refer in particular to fanny burney’s novel, the wanderer (1814), whose coprotagonist, elinor joddrel, parallels dorigen in this sense. the author, fanny burney (1752-1840), appeared in english literature with the anonymous novel evelina (1778) which made her instantly famous and was followed by cecilia (1782) and camilla (1796). her last work, the wanderer, was written after her exile in france and it depicts how a woman secretly married to a brutal officer of the french revolution arrives in england stripped of the protection of a family and social position. juliet holds several jobs (seamstress, milliner and shopkeeper) and pursues self-independence. in england, she meets albert harleigh, a man of true feeling in the sentimental tradition and also pursued by elinor joddrel, juliet’s opponent in the wanderer. this young genuine republican and free-thinker embraces radical politics and openly declares her passion for harleigh facing a refusal on his part. 10 lorenzo’s (2004) perceptive introduction to the galician translation of vindication gives a detailed account of wollstonecraft’s life and works. wanderers & revolutionaries in the tales of the franklin & the clerk 237 burney’s fable on female identity appeared when the female philosopher was in fashion in works such as charlotte smith’s the young philosopher (1798) or elizabeth hamilton’s memoirs of modern philosophers (1800). obviously, this character was much indebted to charlotte lennox’s memorable arabella in the female quixote (1752).11 for many critics, the quixotic elinor refers to mary wollstonecraft, who “provided a model for elinor’s eloquence, penetration, nobility of character and self destructive indulgence in emotion” (rogers 1990: 163).12 elinor is another aspect of the protagonist, the mysterious juliet, who tries to earn her living while concealing her personal story. unlike dorigen, the jacobin elinor is single, she makes efforts to seduce harleigh and attacks the social constraints hindering female freedom: “debility and folly! put aside your prejudices, and forget that you are a dawdling woman, to remember that you are an active human being and your female difficulties will vanish into the vapour of which they are formed” (397). burney’s character denounces the causes and grounds for woman-hating: by the oppressions of their [men’s] own statues and institutions, they render us insignificant; and then speak of us as if we were so born! but what have we tried, in which we have been foiled? they dare not trust us with their own education, and their own opportunities for distinction... woman is left out in the scales of human merit, only because they dare not weigh her! (399). 11 about the translation into spanish, see lorenzo (2006). 12 spacks admits many coincidences between wollstonecraft’s and elinor’s protest, but considers that burney rejects the dissenter’s views and attacks passivity regarding female identity (1976: 183). for brown, elinor represents a point of view never before explicited in burney and centres on the failure of revolutionary hope on a personal level (1986: 36). even if we do not understand elinor as personal parody, wollstonecraft’s ideology cannot be silenced in the novel. carmen mª fernández rodríguez 238 suicide and the intention to erase oneself from the world appear both in dorigen’s long speech and in elinor’s exaggerated attempts to kill herself: “turn harleigh, turn! and see thy willing martyr! ؁behold, perfidious ellis! behold thy victim!” (359), “her! harleigh, here!... ‘tis here you must reciprocate your vows! here is the spot! here stands the altar for the happy; ؁here, the tomb for the hopeless!” (580). in burney, suicide becomes only a thread, a way to obtain harleigh’s heart and to rebel against an imposed role in the world. like dorigen, elinor sometimes seems almost mad and insists on her self, a suspicious attitude permitted only to men in medieval and early nineteenth-century england. the wanderer can be interestingly interpreted in ecocritical terms as an exploration of nature’s darkest side, which reminds us of chaucer’s tale set in brittany. the novel deals with the fragmentation of reality and the human necessity to search for an answer to our alienation in the world. this philosophic approach is admirably materialised in the stonehenge scene paralleling the breton rocks as a solitary prehistoric shelter, where juliet, like a female lear, brings her tragedy to light. she is surrounded by stones, the representatives of female difficulties: this grand, uncouth monument of ancient days had a certain sad, indefinable attraction, more congenial to her distress, than all the polish, taste, and delicacy of modern skill...here, on the contrary, was room for ‘meditation even to madness’, nothing distracted the sight, nothing broke in upon attention, nor varied the ideas. thought, uninterrupted and uncontrouled [sic], was master of the mind (766). on the other hand, elinor deconstructs a literary masculine ideal of benevolent nature in the same way that chaucer mocks the franklin’s hypocritical attitude and the high standards presented in his tale. her excessive positioning is clearly reflected in her view of afterlife through the contemplation of the natural world: wanderers & revolutionaries in the tales of the franklin & the clerk 239 look round the old churchyards! is not every bone the prey, ؁or the disgust,؁ of every animal? how, when scattered, commixed, broken, battered, how shall they ever again be collected, united, arranged, covered and coloured as they appear regenerated? (789). rudat thinks that chaucer supports lasting marriages in the tale (1982: 21), but the author also takes advantage to criticise empty discourse as holman maintains: “both [the merchant’s and the franklin’s tale] certainly are concerned with people caught in the conflict between the demands of matrimony and the courts of love” (1959: 241). the parody of philosophy and rhetoric in the franklin’s tale turns into criticism against benevolence and cambridge platonism in the wanderer. this can be specially observed in elinor and harleigh’s long-winded conversation on the nature of the soul (781-94) and when she asks herself about woman: “‘must every thing [sic] that she does be prescribed by rule? must every thing that she says be limited to what has been said before?’” (177). dorigen shows how female selfperception is conditioned by masculine ideas on women encoded in the medieval courtly love and comparable with sensibility,13 harshly criticised by both conservatives and radicals for its excesses and a cultural opening through which the socially excluded could participate in the world. like dorigen, elinor resembles a solitary wanderer appealing for some social change, but it will be a peasant’s daughter who articulates a more powerful criticism on the subjection of woman. 3. the clerk’s tale or the competition with patriarchy 13 erämetsä points out that this was regarded at the end of the eighteenth century as a “hybrid mixture of thought and feeling ... characterized by extreme innate sensitiveness, which responded to external stimuli with utmost quickness” (1951: 57-8). carmen mª fernández rodríguez 240 the clerk portrays an exemplary woman14who is tested through lies and painful separations in a story about the close relationship between the public and the private life. walter, marquis of saluzzo, hears his countrymen’s appeal and decides to marry with a condition: but i yow pray, and charge upon youre lif, that what wif that i take, ye me assure to worshipe hire whil that hir lif may dure, in word and werk, bothe here and everywhere, as she an emperoures doghter were. and ferthermoore, this shal ye swere: that ye again my chois shal neither grucche ne strive. for sith i shal forgoon my libertee at your requeste, as evere mote i thrive, theras min herte is set, ther wol i wive. and but ye wol assente in swich manere, i pray yow, speketh namoore of this matere (lines 164-75). he chooses a virtuous poor woman called griselda, who lives with her father and is a model of virtues since the clerk describes how “but hye god som time senden can/ his grace into a litel oxes stalle” (lines 206-7). griselda swears total submission to walter: she seide,“lord, undigne and unworthy am i to thilke honour that ye me bede. but as ye wol yourself, right so wol i. and heere i swere that nevere willingly in werk ne thoght, i nil yow disobeye, for to be deed, thogh me were looth to deye” (lines 359-64). 14 from our modern perspective griselda is not an appealing character: “there are few chaucerian tales about which medieval and modern values clash so much as in this tale of husbandly sadism and wifely masochism” (hallisy 1995: 167). wanderers & revolutionaries in the tales of the franklin & the clerk 241 she is soon beloved by everybody; however, walter forces her to separate from her two children (lines 484-90 and 638-41), who are secretly sent to bologna to be educated as noble people. griselda accepts walter’s orders and appeals to love: “deeth may nat make no comparisoun/ unto youre love” (lines 666-7). the heroine is later told to leave her rich dwelling since walter decides to marry another woman and griselda goes back with janicula until walter calls her to prepare his new wife’s arrival. when walter asks her about his new lady, griselda’s courageous answer deserves the regaining of her old position, and walter tells the truth to her. the husband rules his family like god and griselda’s obedience reproduces submission to patriarchy. as reiman argues, “griselda, who possesses more of the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity than does the high-born marquis, misdirects them by submitting patiently and obediently, not to god’s law, but to the arbitrary and evil desires of a ‘mortal man’” (1963: 163). for martin: “her [griselda’s] story can be read as a nostalgic celebration or veiled critique of their [walter’s people] society with its corresponding hierarchies” (1990: 149), and carruthers also sees griselda as walter’s opposite, a woman who neither grew spoilt nor in luxury (1982-3: 225).15 the model wife never questions the legitimacy of walter’s actions up to a certain point. when he tries to substitute her for another woman, griselda sets her passivity aside and makes us listen to the defence of her self as something repressed in the tale: o thing biseke i yow, and warne also, that ye ne prike with no tormentinge this tendre maiden, as ye han don mo; for she is fostred in hir norissinge moore tendrely, and to my supposinge, she koude nat adversitee endure 15 walter is cruel, but not a tyrant according to medieval political beliefs (pearsal 1985: 267 and hallisy 1995: 159). carmen mª fernández rodríguez 242 as koude a povre fostred creature” (lines 1037-43). the message here is not limited to the fact that husbands should not be like walter because women are not griseldas as reiman maintains (1963: 369): she is emphasising her individual worth.16 finally, walter tells the truth and the family happily lives together: “i have thy feith and thy benignitee,/ as wel as evere womman was, assayed,/ in greet estat, and povreliche arrayed./ now knowe i, deere wif, thy stedfastnesse!” (lines 1053-6). the prevailing view at the end of the eighteenth century was that women must submit to being in the shadow of a husband, as hannah more explains in strictures on the modern system of female education: a woman may be knowing, active, witty, and amusing; but without propriety she cannot be amiable... it shows itself by a regular, orderly, undeviating course; and never starts from its sober orbit into any splendid eccentricities; for it would be ashamed of such praise as it might extort by any aberrations from its proper path. it renounces all commendation but what is characteristic (1974, 1: 6-7). maria edgeworth’s the modern griselda17 (1805) is a parodic rewriting of the clerk’s tale as the rational emma granby states: “the situation and understanding of women have been so much improved since his [chaucer’s] days. women were then slaves, now they are free” (429). edgeworth (17681849) cultivated the domestic novel and wrote collections of stories for 16 heffernan states that griselda represents the “commune or common people facing an absolutist tyrant, walter, with passive resistance and freeing him from the tyranny of his own will” (1983: 338). 17 butler, one of edgeworth’s best critics and her biographer, emphasises the novelist’s importance and contribution: “in the first half of belinda, in the modern griselda, émilie de coulanges, and manoeuvring, she pioneered some of the most successful features of jane austen’s novels” (1972: 327). besides, “many of the techniques that jane austen later used so successfully ؁the subtly revealing dialogue, the intelligent principal characters, the relation between the intelligence of those characters and a continuously analytical narrative tone؁ were all to be found first in maria edgeworth” (1972: 328). wanderers & revolutionaries in the tales of the franklin & the clerk 243 children and adults widely read and admired by generations of readers. nowadays she is studied in particular for her chronicles of early nineteenthcentury irish society, in works such as castle rackrent (1800), ennui (1809) and the absentee (1812). the anglo-irish novelist built her story on george ogle’s well-known version of chaucer’s text (1741) and depicts the collapse of a marriage due to a bossy anti-chaucerian wife who erodes her husband’s authority with whims and verbal battles.18 the shrew illustrates how marriage should be based on mutual admiration and respect, which is precisely chaucer’s thesis and a message to infer from the tale. fordyce himself defined untamed women as the nightmare of patriarchy: a woman that affects to dispute, to decide, to dictate on every subject; that watches or makes opportunities of throwing out scraps of literature, or shreds of philosophy, in every company; that engrosses the conversation as if she alone were qualified to entertain; that betrays in short, a boundless intemperance of tongue, together with an inextinguishable passion for shining by the splendour of her supposed talents; such a woman is truly insufferable (1787: 176). edgeworth’s griselda responds to a stereotype and victimises herself before her husband: i know i am your [bolingbroke’s] plaything after all: you cannot consider me for a moment as your equal or your friend ؁ i see that! ؁ you talk of these things to your friend mr. granby ؁ i am not worthy to hear them. ؁ well, i am sure i have no ambition, except to possess the confidence of the man i love (419). 18 martin highlights the difference: “whereas the knight in the wife’s tale is schooled and punished into learning what women want, griselda’s programme is to renounce any individual desire and make her will corfom to walter’s until they are identical” (1990: 146). carmen mª fernández rodríguez 244 do you [bolingbroke] laugh at me? ... when it comes to this, i am wretched indeed! never a man laughed at the woman he loved! as long as you had the slightest remains of love for me, you could not make me an object of derision: ridicule and love are incompatible, absolutely incompatible (421). as tension grows more intense, bolingbroke decides to separate, and griselda feels desperate and powerless: “conflicting passions assailed her heart. all the woman rushed upon her soul; she loved her husband more at this instant than she had ever loved him before. his firmness excited at once her anger and her admiration” (460). challenging females like edgeworth’s griselda are undesirable fictions, images to avoid, and in his work chaucer must be seen as alerting us to the dangers of excessive behaviour by either sex.19 i would like to offer a plausible political interpretation of the clerk’s tale. reiman thinks that chaucer wanted to parody his petrarchian source because he differentiates between walter’s treatment of griselda and god’s treatment of man (1963: 366-8).20 in my view, griselda’s excellent capacities to negotiate and rule when walter is absent constitute a challenge to his authority: even before her marriage she ran the household efficiently and wanted to finish her chores in time to see the new marquise (lines 223-31 and 281-7). chaucer’s griselda turns into a political woman, like dorigen a philosopher, they enter 19 for middleton, who analyses the changes chaucer operated in his sources, the english writer invites us to examine “how woe can be delightful, how ‘ernestful matere’ becomes, through ‘art poetical’, an object of pleasure as well as use” (1980: 122). morse responds to middleton and doubts that chaucer seriously endorses griselda’s example: “his awareness of the interpretative problems readers and listeners have, as well as his sense that griselda places an extraordinary demand on the audience, makes him expect few to imitate her” (1985: 84). hawkins also explains: “if the ways of man to woman in the clerk’s tale are explicitly designed to be symbolic of the ways of god to man, then we remain free to criticize those ways as well” (1975: 356). for ginsberg, the tale is as ambiguous as its teller, who fails of measure up his fiction and thus engages the reader (1978: 322-3). 20 walter is “both a social innovator and arch disbeliever in his own experiment in affording ‘a povre fostred creature’ the opportunity to become a fair lady” (johnson, 1994: 207). wanderers & revolutionaries in the tales of the franklin & the clerk 245 masculine realms, and walter begins to think of destroying her or testing her sweetness, patience and compassion to the limit. however, for pearsall, the point is not to make walter conscious of his excessive pressure on griselda but to “persuade him to a change of heart” (1985: 276). he does not really mind having children with a peasant, but he does mind losing power before an admirable woman, because he is an incompetent spoilt marquis. like the noble wife dorigen, griselda provokes certain suspicion in a powerful man, and sex, not class, destabilises society in the tale. chaucer comes to state, as hansen explains, that “virtue in a woman in fact provokes male aggression and that a woman’s public powers, even if they are divinely sanctioned, matter little to her identity or fate as a female, both of which are shown to be ultimately and utterly under the control of her husband” (1988: 233). griselda’s situation reminds us of the one depicted in mary astell’s some reflections upon marriage: if arbitrary power is evil in it self, and an improper method of governing rational and free agents, it ought not to be practis’d any where; nor is it less, but rather more mischievous in families than in kingdoms, by how much 100,000 tyrants are worse than one. what though a husband can’t deprive a wife of life without being responsible to the law, he may, however, do what is much more grievous to a genrous [sic] mind render life miserable, for which she has no redress, scarce pity which is afforded to every other complainant it being thought a wife’s duty to suffer every thing without complaint. if all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves? (1700: 20). carmen mª fernández rodríguez 246 the heroine has the potential of a revolutionary, and, if walter was previously attracted by her beauty and admirable conduct, now he acknowledges her value, so, like a maniac, he wants to torture her.21 in this analysis it is paradoxical that morality impregnates chaucer’s tales in concepts such as sovereignty and gentilesse. in the franklin’s tale neither sex wants to submit and the narrator even labels arveragus and aurelius as gentyl, a complex idea which covered moral virtue and aristocratic status (sledd 1947: 40) and protected against excessive social flexibility (carruthers 1981: 287). apart from gentilesse, in the clerk’s tale there is another keyword, womanhede, described as feminine essence, either created or endowed and opposing male egotism. as the clerk explains, walter was attracted by this virtue in griselda (“commendynge in his herte hir wommanhede”, line 239), and he finally reveals to her that all the suffering was “t’assaye in thee thy wommanheede’” (line 1075).22 english proper ladies engendered harmony in a society which empowered them to perfection, and griselda is indeed a fourteenth-century sweet and compliant angel in the house, but also a leaf of grass taken from the natural world of saluzzo. her figure reminds us of the good daughter, the good lady and the good wife while walter does as much as possible to frustrate her status as a good mother, and she eventually teaches a nobleman the true meaning of gentilesse as “a consequence of god-given grace that has nothing to do with ancestry” (levy 1977: 309). 21 aers explores the story’s psychological dimension: “chaucer presents walter as an authoritarian personality who fulfils his egotistic lust for dominion under the tyranny of his own sick will” (1980: 171). cooper points out that the tale “call[s] into question the subjection of women that makes walter’s mindless cruelty possible...chaucer’s attack goes rather deeper [than dioneo’s one in decameron], to produce a medieval equivalent to the wrongs of woman” (1989: 199). 22 heninger distinguishes griselda’s constancy from her patience: “under all costs, regardless of change in her position, she has done her duty faithfully and benignly...griselda’s constancy, even in the face of manifestations of mutability, has maintained the natural order of god, in which good is justly rewarded” (1957: 391-2). wanderers & revolutionaries in the tales of the franklin & the clerk 247 4. conclusion in this analysis i have inscribed chaucer’s tales into a different frame of reference, and they have proved to be more complex than they seem. perhaps dorigen and griselda’s treatment is completely ironic; however, the tales of the franklin and the clerk are obviously related: “one lesson to be derived from the clerk’s tale may be that in marriage, as in most human relationships, tyranny can be avoided only when all parties agree to observe the terms of a treatise that reads ‘you be good to me, and i’ll be good to you’” (hawkins 1975: 350). edgeworth’s criticism of the situation of women in the modern griselda greatly differs from the chaucerian text, though the female author also reproduces the war of the sexes. it is clear that chaucer has given his characters a human touch like a gothic sculptor working on scenes for the façade of a cathedral, an attitude already found in the legend of good women (c. 1386). the subject of these tales should not be merely reduced to marriage since the stories affirm the right to express oneself, to question and to defend identity, which implies the respect towards others. female protagonists share something more than sacrifice: “patience is too based upon integrity, the trouthe which persists through the vagaries of passion, and expresses itself as willing generosity, the ability to forgive” (carruthers 1981: 296), a lesson to inculcate to the reader and which does not abound. the tales of the franklin and the clerk are also chronicles 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wollstonecraft, m. 1975[1792]: a vindication of the rights of woman, with strictures on political and moral subjects. ed. miriam brody krammick. penguin, harmondsworth. * † * microsoft word review 2_2023.docx selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. 28 (2023): 111–112. issn: 1132-631x doi: 10.17811/selim.28.2023.111-112 © ediuno. ediciones de la universidad de oviedo. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. fay, jacqueline. 2022. materializing englishness in early medieval texts. oxford textual perspectives. oxford: oxford university press. pp. 224. isbn 9780198757566. reviewed by mercedes salvador bello university of seville in this monograph, jacqueline fay sets out with a very ambitious aim in mind: to reconstruct the materiality of englishness through the study of texts from the early medieval period. the book thus offers an investigation of the conceptualization of english identity as expressed via “lively material interactions” (4) between human beings, artifacts made by them, and elements from the natural landscape (soil, water, plants, metals, and stones). to this end, fay applies new materialism or thing theory, engaging in a fruitful discussion of many passages from works through which the notion of englishness transpires. building on this theoretical approach, she extracts from a series of texts, which are aptly selected, the so-called “fundamental components” (2) of englishness that are not always easily discernible or not openly manifest in the works of this period. in doing so, the monograph provides thought-provoking analyses of excerpts covering a wide range of medieval genres, including hagiography, history, heroic poetry, as well as medical and scientific texts. as expressed by the author, the book aims at demonstrating that englishness reveals itself as “an embodied identity emergent at the frontier of material and textual interactions that serve productively to occlude history, religion, and geography” (4). the approach is undoubtedly novel and brings a fresh look that discloses new perspectives with which early medieval texts can be competently assessed. the book shows a masterly command of primary and secondary sources on the literature of the medieval period, as well as an eminently interdisciplinary approach, as the author makes use of cutting-edge research in other fields such as history, archaeology, paleography, pedology (the scientific study of soil), and parasitology. this monograph comprises four chapters, the first two of which deal with texts ranging from the 8th to the 10th century, while the other two focus primarily on the 11th century. the first chapter examines the concept of soil in early medieval hagiography, as illustrated in works by prominent authors such as bede or in anonymous compilations like the old english martyrology. in this part of the book, the author focuses on the idea of the saint’s corpse being absorbed by the earth and the ways the worshippers variously interact with holy remains and sacred ground. the second chapter centers on stone as a means through which ideas can be perceived through mortuary inscriptions, giving rise to an analysis of the interplay between the materiality of the dead body, the obituary written records, and burial places. among various works used in this section, the anglosaxon chronicle stands out with its necrological references through which englishness often emerges. the third chapter of the book primarily centers on allusions to plants in eleventh-century texts in a way that helps visualize the construction of national identity https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0518-8631 book reviews 112 in the complex period of the scandinavian invasions and subsequent occupation of england. a final fourth chapter shifts the focal point to beowulf, which proves to be an excellent means to investigate ethnicity as perceived in the early eleventh century when this poem was included in the manuscript london, british library, cotton vitellius a. xv. the author also uses this work, whose setting actually is 6th-century scandinavia, to associate references to bodies and bodily parts, such as grendel’s torn arm (lines 833– 836), with the fragmentariness of english national identity, as well as with cultural and political concerns in the context of æthelred ii’s period. taken as a whole, the book is very learned, well-written, and full of thoughtful analyses of texts through which the author shows the ways in which the conceptualization of englishness materialized in the early medieval period. (received 20/06/2023) selim 15.indb maría josé carrillo, selim 13 (2005-2006): 149—179 lexical dialectal items in cursor mundi: contexts of occurrence and geographical distribution1 abstract the analysis of the dialectal lexicon of cursor mundi shows in this paper the current research in me word geography. the existence of several manuscripts of this work, which were copied in dialect areas different from the original one, makes it viable to establish the bases for historical lexical dialectal study. however, to be able to determine whether or not certain terms were used in a restricted regional scope, in a particular time-span i follow an approach combining the detailed study of the vocabulary of a particular work together with the analysis of the cumulative evidence from other sources. furthermore, i show that word geography have some practical applications which might help to carry out a deeper analysis in the textual history of cursor mundi. keywords. medieval english dialectology, diatopic methodology, cursor mundi. resumen el análisis del léxico dialectal de cursor mundi muestra en este artículo el estado de la investigación sobre geografía del léxico del inglés medio. la existencia de varios manuscritos de la obra, copiados en áreas dialectales diferentes a la del texto original, posibilita, en cierta medida, el estudio histórico del léxico dialectal. sin embargo, para determinar si ciertos términos se usaron en un área restringida, en un espacio de tiempo concreto, es necesario llevar a cabo una aproximación que combine el estudio del vocabulario en cada obra en particular junto al análisis de la evidencia acumulativa de otras fuentes. así mismo, el artículo muestra que el estudio de la geografía del léxico del inglés medio tiene aplicaciones prácticas que posibilitan un análisis en profundidad de la historia textual de cursor mundi. palabras clave: dialectología inglesa medieval, metodología diatópica, cursor mundi. 1. introduction: word geography and cursor mundi studies in the dialectal lexicon in middle english are scarce. rolf kaiser’s zur geographie des mittelenglischen wortschatzes (1937) is one of the few works published, so far, on the lexical dialectal material of individual middle english 1 the present paper is part of an ongoing research project edurne garrido anes and i are carrying out on the geographical distribution of lexical items regarded as dialectal. the analysis presented here has been carried out thanks to the funding granted for a research visit to the institute of historical dialectology at the university of edinburgh (may-august 2006) by the ministerio de educación y ciencia (ayudas para la movilidad del profesorado universitario). i am grateful to margaret laing and keith williamson for their close readings of this paper and their suggestions. maría josé carrillo 152 works.2 in this work, kaiser listed around 500 words occurring in cursor mundi which he thought to have had a dialectal nature and which were, according to him, mainly northern words. given the shortage of results in the investigation on lexical dialectal material, this list is an invaluable tool in the field. nevertheless, his work does not reflect the possible distributions of the lexical items, since it is mainly based on the comparative analysis of the existing copies of cursor mundi, which cannot provide a full picture given the small number of dialects represented in the copies. a more thorough study is required to gain this objective. for some years now, my colleague edurne garrido anes and i have been researching middle english word geography. the methodology we have devised for the study of dialectal lexicon in middle english, combines a detailed study of the vocabulary of a particular work together with the analysis of the cumulative evidence from other manuscript sources for each dialectal term.3 the reconstruction of the dialect areas where particular words were commonly used can only be achieved by putting together as much evidence as possible, and extracting it from as many different sources as we can collect. in principle, cursor mundi should offer a good opportunity for the study of dialectal lexicon. the existence of several manuscripts, which were copied in dialect areas different from the original one, makes it viable to establish, as kaiser did, the bases for historical lexical dialectal study, that is to say, it is possible to establish whether or not certain terms were used in a restricted regional scope, in a particular time-span. however, the alterations and substitutions of the original vocabulary in cursor mundi, or of the vocabulary in any other work, may be caused by factors different from the diatopic 2 other works that focus on the analysis of the dialectal vocabulary of individual texts are: mcintosh (1972), hudson (1983), black (1998), horobin (2001) and carrillo linares & garrido anes (2007 and forthcoming, 2008). 3 for further information about the methodology and applications for the study of middle english word geography see carrillo linares & garrido anes (2007 and forthcoming, 2008). lexical dialectal items in cursor mundi 153 variation.4 additionally, very often the rhyming structure of a text makes dialectal substitutions difficult for a scribe. furthermore, in this particular case, all the most southerly copies of the work derive from a common exemplar, which, as i show further on, affects the lexicon in relation to the localization of the existing copies. analysing a single work, even if there are a good number of extant manuscripts, has many limitations. kaiser never intended to establish the distribution of the lexical items he listed, but even so, in order to provide independent triangulation for lexical localizations, the analysis of more than just one work is required. to kaiser’s list, there could be added some other lexical items, which also occur in cursor mundi, but were replaced by lexical equivalents in the southern version only occasionally. nonetheless, our previous study reveals that the distributions of these items seem to be also restricted to certain areas.5 i try to demonstrate that these words are also dialectal and that the analysis of the copies of a single work can lead to conclusions which are not entirely accurate. furthermore, i show that word geography may have some practical applications which might help to carry out a deeper analysis in the textual history of cursor mundi. 2. cursor mundi and its surviving manuscript copies cursor mundi is an originally northern poem, composed sometime after 1325, which survives in several more or less complete forms and in various fragments. j. thomson (1998) considers that there are nine extant manuscripts of the work and several other copies including short fragments inserted in other works related to cursor mundi in some way.6 regarding the 4 other causes of possible variation are the changes introduced in the texts as a consequence of the manuscript transmission itself, the purely individual scribal preferences, or the time factor. 5 see carrillo linares & garrido anes (2007 and forthcoming, 2008). 6 hupè (1893) includes as copies of the cursor mundi, the fragments found in cambridge, university library, g.g 4.27 (2) and in london, bl, additional 10036. thomson (1998) points out that there are other texts related to cursor mundi such as: the extract of the book of penance in london, bl, cotton galba e. ix, oxford, bodleian library, rawlinson poet. 175, and wellesley massachusetts, wellesley college library, ms 8, maría josé carrillo 154 vocabulary of the work, the northern manuscripts of the poem retain most of kaiser’s northern dialectal words.7 the non-northern versions, however, may show lexical variants for those terms that were presumably alien in the dialects of the copying scribes. there are three different groups of non-northern versions of the poem. (1) the family represented by the copy found in oxford, bodleian library, fairfax 14, copied in lancashire. (2) that represented by folios 2r to 75r of göttingen, university library, theo. 107, a linguistically composite text which was copied by one scribe from two different sources, one of them non-northern, and which shows features from south lincolnshire. (3) the family that groups cambridge, trinity college, r.3.8 (henceforth t) and london, college of arms, arundel 57 (henceforth h), both of them associated with the lichfield area in staffordshire, and both copied after the turn of the fifteenth century; london, british library, additional 36983 (henceforth b) associated with bedfordshire, and oxford, bodleian library, laud 416 (henceforth l), certainly non-northern, but whose dialect has not been yet analysed in depth. l is dated on f. 226v, where it reads: ‘scriptus rhodo per johannem newton die 25 octobris 1459.’ b is datable c. 1450. the analysis of some folios from the beginning of the work in l shows a highly standardized language, with only a few forms that are more restricted, or whose occurrences have not been recorded in many places with any frequency in a linguistic atlas of late medieval english (lalme). nevertheless, the occurrences of the forms for the pronouns they, them and their as ‘they’, ‘hem’ and ‘hir’ together with the forms found for the item it, i.e. ‘yt’, ‘((it))’, ‘((hyt))’, and those for the 3rd person present indicative: ‘-yth’, ‘-yþ’, ‘-iþ’, ‘-ith’, ‘-eth’, seems to point towards the midlands. also the texts found in oxford, bodleian library, additional a. 106 and hopton hall ms. in addition, mooney (2003) states that there is also a fragment of cursor mundi in the sutherland collection (313/3633) on deposit in the national library of scotland. 7 the entirely northern copies are found in the manuscripts preserved in edinburgh, royal college of physicians, ff. 37r-50v, 1r-15v london, bl, cotton vespasian a iii, ff. 2r-163r (henceforth c), göttingen, university library, theo. 107, ff. 75r-169v, and london, bl, additional 31042, ff. 3r-32v. lexical dialectal items in cursor mundi 155 the palatalized initial in the forms for the item give, i.e. ‘yaf’ (pret), ‘yeve’ (inf), also seem to restrict the area further, eliminating the most northern counties in the midlands. the spellings for each ‘eche’, any ‘eny’, much ‘muche’, are ‘ar’, ‘are’, ‘arn’, against ‘a-yen’, before ‘to-fore’ together with other spellings not recorded in the lalme sources such as ‘buysy’ for busy, when included in the fitting, seem to point toward staffordshire as the possible area of provenance of the laud ms, but still further analysis of different parts of the text is needed to attempt a more precise and accurate localization. all non-northern versions of this group were copied in the 15th century, but l and b are later copies. thus, the language of l can easily fall into what m. samuels (1981: 44) has called ‘a colourless regional writing’ as a consequence of the incipient standardization, so that ‘the dialectal traits that survive amount to only a small inventory of non-standard forms which even taken in combination, might belong to a number of widely separated districts.’ previous studies show that none of the extant manuscripts of the last group, the one with which i am concerned in this paper, are in direct filial relationship with any other southern copy of the poem, but apparently they all have a common source.8 the dialect of the original source for all these copies is unknown, although horrall (1986: 105) suggests that it could have been ‘made at lichfield for the market in the south of england.’ her claim is not based on any linguistic grounds, only on the supposition that it was written there because lichfield was a centre for the translation and dissemination of northern texts for readers in the southern part of the country. it is indeed true that two of the extant manuscripts deriving from that version are localized there, and that a third one, as i have pointed out before, could belong into staffordshire as well. the remaining copy is, however, localized in 8 horrall (1978) argues that “htlb clearly formed a closely related group” but “the relationships among the manuscripts of this group are not so obvious” t and h seem to derive from a common exemplar, and b and l from another, but they are all ultimately dependent of a common ancestor in which the scribe “consulted two manuscripts while preparing his translation” (eldredge & klinck 2000: 44-50). maría josé carrillo 156 bedfordshire. the consistency in the vocabulary in the different southern manuscripts suggests that most of the lexical changes were made by the original translator of the southern version and not by those of the extant copies. therefore, the vocabulary is not that likely to have been selected when copying from a northern original in the areas where these manuscripts can be localized. these words, nevertheless, when changed for an alternative one, show their restricted use in the area of production of the original southern version. a detailed study of the vocabulary in the different extant texts could help to identify the place of provenance of this version. this is possible because, once the text was translated into a more southern dialect, the scribes for the subsequent copies were not likely to go back from replacement words to the words in the original northern version. 3. some dialectal lexical items in cursor mundi the analysis of the distributions of some words which were not expected to have been translated in some areas could narrow down the localization of this southern original version of cursor mundi. this can be done by comparing the lexical material in the different manuscripts of this work with other material currently being analysed by m. j. carrillo linares and e. garrido anes, and whose distribution is being mapped. i have chosen three words not listed by kaiser in order to illustrate two things: firstly, that these words are also dialectal, and secondly, that the place of origin of this nonnorthern version could be, if not established, at least delimited further, on linguistic grounds. 3.1 mister: contexts of occurrences in cursor mundi and dialectal distribution. lexical dialectal items in cursor mundi 157 the first word to be examined is mister.9 the meaning of the word in the context i am considering is that of ‘need or necessity’. there are 25 occurrences of this item in the lines of the northern versions of the poem comparable with parallel lines in the southern versions. as the poem is mainly written in rhyming couplets, 14 of these occurrences appear in line-final rhyming position. the rest of the occurrences lie in the middle of the line. very frequently, the position of a lexical item within the text is significant when a scribe is copying it into his own dialect. the scribes had three possible strategies: 1.they may leave the word as it is in their exemplar in order not to spoil the rhyme, if the word occurs in rhyming position. in any other position, they may also decide to retain it. 2.they may rearrange the contents of the line so that the lexical equivalent can be put in non-rhyming position and then select a different rhyming word. 3.they may choose to substitute the alien lexical item by a lexical equivalent. if this happens at the end of a line, it may imply a change in the rhyming word as well as the alien term. in any other position there may be no further requirements to keep the line structure. the motivations for leaving an item unaltered can be various. on the one hand, the reasons could be of a linguistic nature, since there might be metrical and/or semantic difficulties in finding an adequate substitute. on the other hand, the scribal behaviour might be psychologically motivated. the scribes’ attitudes towards their copy-texts can be different at different moments in the copying process. in a work like cursor mundi that takes up over 24,000 lines, the scribes might have changed their attitudes multiple times, or even without 9 according to oed the word comes from an mester, mesteer, mestier, mestre, meister, mister, mistier, mystre, maestere, maistier and of mester, mestier, mistier, maistier (mf mestier, f métier (1740)) need, necessity (c1140) < post-classical latin misterium. according to wright (1903: vol. iv) the word was dialectal and the sources in which he recorded it were mainly scottish or from northern england. maría josé carrillo 158 changing it consciously, they might have been less focused on their own output at certain moments. mister in cursor mundi occurs in the northern texts both in the middle and at the end of the line. in the first five instances of the word, which occur between lines 803 and 3247,10 the position of the word is always final. in all the southern texts, the item is avoided in all instances in these lines. the word is not automatically replaced by a lexical equivalent, and the lines in the couplet suffer contents reorganization. the translator’s objective in these lines seems to be to produce a comprehensible poem for english speakers of nonnorthern areas. this objective loosens somehow as the copying process moves on, and he seems to relax slightly, especially when matters of metrics are involved. from line 3000 onwards, there are ten occurrences at the end of the line and nine of them are retained in all the southern copies.11 only in one instance, in line 5144, are the contents of the lines reorganized and the word is replaced.12 a deeper analysis of the lexical choices in the different parts of the work would be required to determine whether this original southern version was in fact the product of more than one scribe; this would be another 10 it occurs in ll. 803, 1526, 1680, 2554, and 3247. e.g. þai cled þam þan in þat mister (l. 803) wit leues brad bath o figer (c) þei hiled hem i telle hit þe with leues of a fige tre (t) þei hullud hem i telle hit þe with leues of a fige tre (h) 11 see ll. 3247, 4469, 5560, 10134, 11840, 14035, 18904 and 20124. 12 þou lighes now, eber pantener! ne er þai noght o þat mister. 5144 (c) þou lyest he seide bi god so dere ar þei no knyǟtis ny knyǟtis fere 5144 (t) þou lyest he seide bi god so dere ar þei no knyǟtis ny knyǟtis fere 5144 (h) lexical dialectal items in cursor mundi 159 possible cause for the changes in choice of translating strategy as the work moves on. in initial position, it occurs once in line 8589, and it is retained in all southern texts (eg. h: mister wymmen were þer twynne) but b, where the corresponding reading is ‘comon’. this could be a misreading by the bedfordshire scribe, or simply a conscious replacement, the term being alien for him. moreover, the bedford manuscript differs in a good number of readings from the other three manuscripts. in mid-position mister occurs six times from lines 4718 to 16277.13 in that context the word in the southern texts is always substituted by a lexical equivalent, not altering, in most of the cases, the wording or structure of the line or couplet. finally, it occurs in mid-position in lines 19042 and 24810, and in these instances, the word is also retained in all the southern texts. therefore, it seems that the linguistic environment conditions the substitutions, but apparently there could be also a psychological component in the process. nevertheless, the fact that the item needs to be replaced in whatever context is, by itself, very revealing, and it suggests that the word was not common in the dialect of the original scribe(s) of the southern version. as the occurrences and avoidances of an item in any particular work can be conditioned by their textual histories as well, it is essential to compare the data extracted from one work with evidence from other sources. for the period between 1360 and 1460,14 mister is a well-attested word occurring in manuscripts of more than 30 works according to the sources for the med. the distribution of the occurrences and avoidances in the manuscripts for the 13 see ll. 4718, 5281, 13141, 13468, 15661, 16277. 14 i have chosen this time-span because it covers the time from the possible date of composition of the original southern version of cursor mundi up to the actual date of composition of the latest extant manuscript of this version. maría josé carrillo 160 works we have analysed so far are shown on map 1.15 according to the distribution on this map, it seems that the word occurs very frequently in texts with some northern, lancashire, cheshire or lincolnshire connection, and only sporadically in texts with a more southern provenance.16 lexical variants, other than those found in cursor mundi for this word, are found in different non-northern manuscripts of the lay folks’ catechism, the northern homily cycle, mandeville’s travels or the siege of troy, all of them originally also 15 in all the maps, the attested occurrences in precise localizations are marked with the symbol (t). the occurrences within a county which represent broad localizations, that is, not precisely to a particular place in that county, are grouped together and the number of texts where they occur are shown with a number in a black circle (e.g. n). if the number of these occurrences in a county is higher than five, the symbol used is (r+). the lexical variants to a precise localization are marked with (v), and the number of entries which represent broad localization of variants within a county is represented by a number in a circle with white background (e.g. c). 16 we have recorded occurrences in the following localized manuscripts containing me works. the abbreviations for the localizations (between brackets) follow the lalme conventions. avowing of arthur princeton, university library, dept. of rare books and special collections, taylor 9, (la). benedictine rule london, bl, lansdowne 378, f. 19v (yks); london, bl, cotton vespasian a.25, f. 109v, (wry). the prose alexander lincoln, cathedral library, 91, f. 25r (nme). ywain and gawain london, bl, cotton galba e.9, ff.13v, 18v, 21r (nme). mandeville’s travels london, bl, egerton 1982, f. 95r (nry); oxford, queen’s college, 383, f. 82r (sw midlands); oxford, bodleian library, e mus. 116, ff. 22rb, 33vb (cam). northern homily cycle edinburgh, royal college of physicians, ff. 16rb, 16va, 25vb, 35ra (nme); london, bl, harley 4196 (nme). patience and cleanness london, bl, cotton nero a.10, f. 87v and f. 61v (chs). the siege of troy london, bl, egerton 2862, f. 125v (sfk). york plays london, bl, additional 35290, ff. 22r, 156r (s yk). cursor mundi london, bl, additional 10036, f. 63va (wrk); göttingen, university library, theo. 107, ff. 23rb, 25va, 33va, 39vb, 46ra, 59vb, etc. (se li/wry); edinburgh, royal college of physicians, ff. 37rb, 39rb, 43vb (wry); london, bl, cotton vespasian a.3 ff. 6rb, 10rb, 11ra, 13vb, 19va, 21ra, 27ra, etc. (wry); oxford, bodleian library, fairfax 14, ff. 11v, 12v, 20v, 27v, 30r, 31r, etc. (la). bevis of hampton cambridge, gonville and caius college, 175/96 (li). lay folks’ catechism york, borthwick institute of historical research r.i.11, f. 296v (wry); london, bl, harley 1022 (wry); cambridge, trinity college, b.10.12 (wry); london, bl, additional 25006, f. 5v (nw yrk); oxford, bodleian library, don. c.13 (wry); oxford, corpus christi college, 155 (nry); lincoln, lincoln cathedral, 91, leaf 216 (wry/li); paris, biblioteque ste. genevive 3390, f. 46v (chs/w dby); nottingham, university library, middleton lm 9, f. 253r (lei); cambridge, sidney sussex college, 55 (nth) cambridge, university library, additional 6686, p. 363 (nt). lexical dialectal items in cursor mundi 161 from the northern area or lincolnshire. in most cases, the commonest lexical variant is nede.17 3.2 yernen: contexts of occurrences in cursor mundi and dialectal distribution the second lexical item i have chosen is yernen,18 a verb with the general meaning of ‘to desire’. it appears 33 times in lines of the northern texts with a parallel southern version, at the end of the line, initially or in the middle. all the southern copies are quite consistent in the selection of the vocabulary. nevertheless, the scribe of l makes some further changes with respect to this item in places where the original southern translator left the word unaltered. in line 2592, where h reads: ‘þat myche þeraftir ǟerned i wis’ (f. 17ra), the corresponding reading in l is ‘longid’ instead of ‘ǟerned’ and in line 10858, where h reads: ‘he ǟerned not to haue no wyf’ (f. 63va), there is a variant in l for ‘ǟerned’ that reads ‘thoght.’ even if the scribe of l leaves many of the occurrences unaltered as well, his substitutions may indicate that he had preferences for other items rather than ‘yernen’. in general, the tendency for this word up to around line 8500 in all southern copies is to change it in mid 17 the localized manuscript copies in which we have recorded variants are the following: mandeville’s travels oxford, balliol college, 239, f. 119r (wrk); variant found: ‘need’; dublin, trinity college, e.5.6, f. 34r (n dby / s yk); variant found: ‘need’; london, bl, additional 33758, f. 34r (dvn); variant found: ‘need’; oxford, bodleian library, rawl. d.100, f. 45r (wor); variant found: ‘need’; oxford, bodleian library, rawl. d.101, f. 59r, (brk); variant found: ‘need’; london, bl, royal 17 b. xliii, f. 68v (hrf); variant found: ‘need’; london, bl, harley 2386, f. 111r (dvn); word omitted; london, bl, harley 3954, f. 36v (nfk); word omitted; london, bl, royal 17 c. xxxviii, f. 39va, (glo?); word omitted. northern homily cycle cambridge, university library, dd.1.1 (ely); variant found: ‘nede’. the siege of troy london, college of arms, arundel 22 (dvn); variant found: ‘nede’. lay folks’ catechism oxford, bodleian library, bodley 789 (glo); variant found: ‘nede’; lambeth palace library, 408, f. 13r (borders nfk, ely and s li); variant found: ‘neede’; hopton hall, f. 5v. (w nfk, ely); variant found: ‘nede’; yale, university library 317, f.33v (nfk/ely/s li), word omitted; london, bl, harley 6615, f. 284v (nfk); variant found: ‘nede’; oxford, bodleian library, rawlinson c. 288 (nfk); variant found: ‘nede’. 18 according to oed from oe, northumb. ƥiorna, mercian ƥeornan, ws ƥiernan, corresponding to os girnean, gernean, on girna), gott gaírnjan, related to oe ƥeorn, goth –gaírns. maría josé carrillo 162 position and to retain it in final position19. from lines 10506 to 20142, there is no consistency at all. in some instances, the word is retained in midposition as well as in final position20, where it occurs only in three instances, two of which show no lexical variant for it21. from line 21249 onwards, the word occurs in the northern versions 10 times22, and it is retained in the southern copies, regardless of the position it occupies within the line23. once more, it seems that for this word the original southern scribe/translator took the trouble to translate a possible alien term far more consistently in the first half of his task, and then only occasionally to end up leaving all the instances as he found them in his exemplar. the geographical distribution of yernen, according to the sources analysed so far, is shown on map 2. most of the works where it occurs are either northern or western in origin, and it is found in manuscripts localized in the northern counties of yorkshire and durham, in the western counties of cheshire, and worcestershire, in the eastern county of lincolnshire, and also in the central midlands in derbyshire.24 lexical variants, other than those 19 see ll. 1, 2592, 6188, 8205, 8298, 8448, where it is retained and ll. 2971, 3290, 3589, 5942, 7984, 8375 and 8399 where it is substituted. 20 see ll. 10506, 10758, 16167, 16185, 17608 and 19027. 21 see ll. 10513, 11475, 14847, 19317 and 20142. 22 see ll. 21249, 21771, 21779, 22340, 23458, 23539, 23542, 23543 and 23588. 23 there is only one instance in this part of the work where there is a slight transformation in the line contents. see l. 23680. 24 occurrences have been recorded in: richard misyn, the fire of love oxford, corpus christi college, 236, f. 33v (li). benedictine rule london, bl, cotton vespasian a.25, f. 76r (wry). the parliament of the three ages london, bl, additional 31042 (nme). piers plowman, c version dublin, trinity college, 212 (d.4.1), f. 63v (nw gl); london, university library, sir louis sterling library v.17 (w wor); london, bl, additional 35157 (copied by a nw wor scribe from a sw worcestershire exemplar); san marino, huntington library, hm 143, f. 73r (sw wor, but with some slight signs of interference typical of a london copying). san marino, huntington library, hm 137 (mon, wales, bordering gl). lay folks mass book london, bl, royal 17.b.17, f. 7r (dby); cambridge, university library, gg.5.31, f. 2v (nme); oxford, corpus christi college, 155, f. 253r (nry). off alle floures oxford, bodleian library, eng. poet. a.1 (vernon), lexical dialectal items in cursor mundi 163 found in cursor mundi, have been found in more southerly copies of texts with a northern origin, localized in norfolk/ely, leicestershire, northamptonshire and gloucestershire.25 3.3 yemen: contexts of occurrences in cursor mundi and dialectal distribution the third lexical item chosen is yemen26 a verb with the meaning of ‘take care of, keep.’ it occurs 16 times in the northern lines that have a parallel southern version. the circumstances for this word are different from the previous one. in all southern texts yemen is always retained at the end of a f. 410v (wor). cursor mundi göttingen, university library, theo. 107, ff. 1va, 6rb, 13rb, 18vb, 26ra, 43vb, 45vb, 53vb, 55vb, 57rb, etc. (se li/wry); edinburgh, royal college of physicians, ff. 43vb, 50rb (wry); london, bl, cotton vespasian a.3, ff. 16rb, 17rb, 18rb, 19vb, 33vb, 35rb, 36vb, 75vb, 80va, etc. (wry); oxford, bodleian library, fairfax 14, ff. 72r, 75v, 83r, 93v, 99v, 100r, etc. (la). york plays london, bl, additional 35290, ff. 93r, 102r (s yk). lay folks’ catechism york, borthwick institute of historical research r.i.11, f. 295v (wry); london, bl, harley 1022 (wry); cambridge, trinity college, b.10.12 (wry); london, bl, additional 25006, ff. 3v, 4r, 4v, 8v (nw yrk); oxford, bodleian library, don. c.13 (nry); oxford, corpus christi college, 155 (nry); lincoln, lincoln cathedral, 91, leafs 215, 218 (wry/li); paris, biblioteque ste. genevive 3390, ff. 42v, 43v, 49r (chs/w dby); oxford, bodleian library, bodley 789 (glo); hopton hall, ff. 3v, 4r, 6r (w nfk, ely); nottingham, nottingham university library, middleton lm 9, ff. 250v, 251r, 254r (lei); london, bl, harley 6615, f. 281v, 288r (nfk); oxford, bodleian library, rawlinson c. 285, f. 62 (nme). 25 lay folks mass book cambridge, newnham college, 900.4 (west midlands?); variant found: ‘desire’; cambridge, gonville and caius college, 84/166 (dby); variant found: ‘for-gyfnes’. lay folks’ catechism oxford, bodleian library, douce 274 (dby); variant found: ‘desires’; oxford, bodleian library, bodley 789 (glo); variant found: ‘desire’; london, lambeth palace library, 408, f.11, (borders of nfk, ely and s li); variants found: ‘coueyte’ and ‘desirys’; yale, university library 317, ff. 31r, 31v (nfk/ely/s li); variants found: ‘asketh’ and ‘coueyte’; nottingham, university library, middleton lm 9, f. 251r. (lei); variant found: ‘coueyten’; london, bl, harley 6615, f. 280v, 281v, 286v (nfk); variant found: ‘coueyte’ and ‘askiþ’; oxford, bodleian library, rawlinson c. 288 (nfk); variants found: ‘asketh’ and ‘coueyt’; cambridge, sidney sussex college, 55 (nth); variants found: ‘desire’ and ‘coveite’; cambridge, university library ff.5.40, f. 118r (nfk); variant found: ‘desireth’. 26 from oe ƥíeman = os gômean to care for, guard, entertain (guests), ohg goumjan, goumôn (mhg goumen) to give heed to, observe, feast, on geyma to heed, watch (sw gďmma to keep, hide, da gjemme to keep, guard, save), goth gaumjan to perceive. maría josé carrillo 164 line in a total number of twelve instances,27 and it is replaced four times by a lexical equivalent (kepen) or omitted in any other position28. nevertheless, in line 9689 there are different readings in both l and b; l reads ‘lepe’ and b reads ‘sett’ in the context of the line ‘but for to kepe pees in londe’ (h: f. 56vb). these alternative readings suggest that the exemplars for both the scribe of l and that of b did not have the commonest replacement for that word, that is, kepen, or if these/this exemplar(s) had it, the word must have been palaeographically problematic. the reading in b makes more sense than that of l, so this was probably an emendation by its scribe, while l retains a probable misreading of an obscure initial <k>. additionally, in line 14638, the item yemen occurs in the context of the line that reads: ‘þar yee war yemed haf i ben’ (c: f. 80va), and in most southern copies the word is changed into ‘saue’ as in ‘aboute to saue ǟow haue i bene’ (h: f. 86ra). it is only the reading in l that is different in this occasion, and it was probably caused by a misreading of the initial <s> or, more likely, by an eye-skip provoked by the ‘haue’ that follows immediately after. the dialectal nature of yemen is, in this case, more difficult to envisage if we take into consideration the occurrences in cursor mundi only. these four replacements could be caused by different sorts of motivations, not related at all with the dialectal nature of the word. nevertheless, if we compare the occurrences and avoidances of yemen in the cursor mundi with those in other works, it seems probable that when the scribe changed it, he did it because the word was alien in his repertoire. map 3 shows the distribution of this lexical item and the places in which we have lexical variants in parallel texts. in this case, the occurrences of yemen are not strictly restricted to the north. the item seems to be also common in the western part of the country extending its scope as far south as 27 it occurs in ll. 2690, 7015, 8585, 9541, 11173, 12446, 17416, 17538, 19129, 19963, 22421 and 23136. there is a variant in line11173 in b, which seems to be a misreading of the original, for this text reads here ‘ǟeue’. 28 see ll. 9689, 9980, 14638 and 16894. lexical dialectal items in cursor mundi 165 the counties of worcestershire, shropshire and herefordshire.29 the variants found for this word appear in parallel manuscripts of works of northern or western origin such as the lay folks’ catechism, the siege of troy or the 14th century version of the ancrene riwle.30 4. further lexical evidence in cursor mundi and conclusions 29 the texts in which we have checked occurrences are: benedictine rule london, bl, landsowne 378, f. 17v, 30r (yks); london, bl, cotton vespasian a.25, ff. 88v, 110v (wry). the gospel of nicodemus london, sion college, arc.l.40.2/e.25, f. 19v (nme); london, bl, additional 32578, f. 122r (la); london, bl, cotton galba e.9, f. 60 (nme); london, bl, harley 4196, f. 208r (nme). life of saint anne minneapolis, university of minnesota library z.822.n.81, f. 214r (nme). metrical version of the old testament oxford, bodleian library, selden supra 52, f. 125r (wry). octovian lincoln, cathedral library, 91, ff. 102va, 109ra (nme). piers plowman, c version london, bl, harley 2376 f. 85r (se hrf near gl border). cursor mundi göttingen, university library, theo. 107, ff. 19va, 49va, 59vb, 66ra, 67ra, 68vb, etc. (se li/nry); edinburgh, royal college of physicians, f. 1ra (wry); london, bl, cotton vespasian a.3, ff. 16vb, 39va, 48ra, 53rb, 53vb, 55vb, 62ra, etc. (wry); oxford, bodleian library, fairfax 14, ff. 17v, 39v, 48ra, 47r, 78r, 94r, 117r, 125v, 155r, 156r, etc. (la). mandeville’s travels london, bl, egerton 1982, f. 51r (nry). wars of alexander oxford, bodleian library, ashmole 44, f. 78r (dur). northern homily cycle edinburgh, royal college of physicians, ff. 16rb, 18rb, 24ra, 29ra, 29ra, 29rb, 33va (nme); oxford, bodleian library, eng. poet. a.1 (wor). cleanness london, bl, cotton nero a.10, f. 67r (chs). havelok the dane cambridge, university library, additional 4407 (nfk). the siege of troy london, bl, egerton 2862, f. 114 (sfk); london, lincoln’s inn, hale 150 (sal). york plays london, bl, additional 35290, f. 134r, 238v (s yk). lay folks’ catechism, york, borthwick institute of historical research r.i.11, f. 297r (wry); london, bl, harley 1022 (wry); cambridge, trinity college, b.10.12 (wry); london, bl, additional 25006, f. 7v (nw yrk); oxford, bodleian library, don. c.13 (nry); oxford, corpus christi college, 155 (nry); lincoln, lincoln cathedral, 91, leaf 217 (wry/li); paris, biblioteque ste. genevive 3390, f 49r (chs/w dby). 30 ancrene riwle oxford, bodleian library, eng. poet. a.1, f. 388ra (wor); the siege of troy london, college of arms, arundel 22 (dvn); variant found: ‘keped’. lay folks’ catechism oxford, bodleian library, bodley 789 (glo); variant found: ‘kepith fro’; london, lambeth palace library, 408, f.16 (borders of nfk, ely and s li); variant found: ‘kepys fro’; hopton hall, f. 6r (w nfk / ely); variant found: ‘kepith fro’; yale, university library 317, f.33v, (nfk / ely / s li), word omitted; nottingham, university library, middleton lm 9, f. 254r (lei); variant found: ‘kepeþ from’; london, bl, harley 6615, f. 286v (nfk); variant found: ‘kepiþ fro’; oxford, bodleian library, rawlinson c. 288 (nfk); variant found: ‘kepeth fro’; cambridge, sidney sussex college, 55 (nth); variant found: ‘kepith’. maría josé carrillo 166 all this evidence seems to show that these three lexical items were also dialectal, even if they were not included in kaiser’s list. nevertheless, the study of the distributions of three lexical items in isolation cannot provide sufficient support to us to be able to make accurate statements about the provenance of the original southern version. a thorough study of the dialectal lexicon as a whole is required for this purpose. in the present state of word geography studies in middle english, this cannot be done. a pre-requisite to carry out a study of this sort is to map the distributions of the dialectal lexical items. our present study is based on 40 lexical items and the distributions of the occurrences of all the items is not complete yet, since the potential occurrences of these items are scattered in more than 400 me works in over 1000 manuscript copies. we have covered so far around 100 of these works and for some items the distributions are quite accurate. other lexical items occurring also in cursor mundi that we consider also to be dialectal, and whose distributions have been mapped are: sere, alkin, samen and tholen31. their possible distributions in the time-span selected (13601460) are shown on maps 4 to 7. the distribution of the item sere on map 4 seems to be almost entirely restricted to the most northern areas of the country, where it is well attested. we have recorded occurrences as far south as the eastern part of cheshire and northern derbyshire and also in south lincolnshire. an original northern sere is substituted by lexical equivalents such as many or diverse in 31 the etymologies of these words according to the oed are: sere: from on: cp. oi sõr, dat. of sik refl.pron. alkin: from oe ealra cynna [?] samen: from oe. *samen, somen (with prep. æt somne) = ofris. samin, semin, to-semine, to saminen, os. saman, at-samna, to samne (mlg. sam(m)ene, to samene), mdu. samen, te-samen (du. tezamen), ohg. saman, zi samane (mlg. zesamene, mod.g. zusammen), on. saman, til samans (sw. samman, tilsamman(s, da. sammen, tilsammen), goth. samana. tholen: from oe. þolian = os. tholôn, tholian, ohg. dolôn, dolên (mhg. dolen, doln), on. þola (da. taale, sw. tåla), goth. þulan, f. oteut. stem *þul-. lexical dialectal items in cursor mundi 167 parallel non-northern texts of works where sere occurs.32 map 5 shows the distribution of alkin. its occurrences are also well attested in the north, but its southern limits seem to be further southwards than those for sere, and they spread out as well to south-west midland areas. variants or omissions in parallel texts have been found in copies scattered throughout many counties. the commonest variants found are all, all manner and each. map 6 represents the distribution of the item samen. although this seems to be a predominantly northern term, there are several occurrences in some copies of piers plowman localized in the sw midlands. the commonest variant for samen is together. the distribution of tholen is shown on map 7. it seems to occur consistently in the northern areas and in the west, and there are avoidances of this item in records from a larger number of counties. the lexical variant found for tholen is almost always suffer. by displaying together on maps the distribution for some of the items we have analysed, and that have been substituted in the southern version, we obtain a picture that provides the global areas in which the lexical equivalents would not be the first option for a scribe, and therefore, a replacement should not be expected in those areas. the remaining areas would be either those for which we have found lexical variants, or the areas for which we have no evidence. if this process cannot provide the possible area of composition of the southern version of cursor mundi, it could, at least, eliminate the areas of occurrences of the items that have a lexical equivalent in the cursor mundi manuscripts. unfortunately, we have not yet recorded instances for occurrence or avoidance of any of the items in staffordshire. the only evidence for this county is that extracted from the cursor mundi manuscripts, and this is very uncertain, as i have pointed out before. map 8 represents the areas of coexistence of the lexical items analysed. the counties of durham, yorkshire, 32 most of the records of occurrences are from texts that seem to have been originally composed in northern areas. the avoidances we have recorded here are found in the most southern copies of originally northern works. maría josé carrillo 168 nottinghamshire, derbyshire, cheshire, and probably lincolnshire, in which sere is commonly used, would not be likely to have been the original place of composition of the southern version, since the item is substituted. other replaced terms analysed can also eliminate with more certainty some areas of lincolnshire and worcestershire (alkin); the western counties of lancashire, shropshire and herefordshire can be disregarded as well (yemen), and likewise the county of gloucestershire (tholen). the more items we add, the closer we can get and the narrower the limits are going to be. as stated earlier on, the present state of research in middle english word geography does not allow for a much deeper study. after putting together the evidence for dialectal terms we have collected, we cannot be very precise about the place of origin of the version from which the extant southern manuscripts of cursor mundi derive. horrall’s claim about lichfield being the place of composition of the original southern version cannot be disregarded taking into consideration the linguistic data. nevertheless, having no evidence for staffordshire, the closest we can get is by looking at the evidence in the surrounding counties. some of these items certainly occurred in most of the counties surrounding staffordshire to the north, west and south. lichfield is located in the south-eastern part of the county, and replacements and avoidances of several items have been recorded in the nearby counties of warwickshire and leicestershire, to the east and south of lichfield. it is feasible that the scribe of the original southern version was copying it, or was himself from that area or further south or east. the more data we accumulate for each lexical item, the more precise we could be about the localization of the place of composition of the southern version of cursor mundi. the analysis carried out in these pages shows a practical application of the research on middle english word geography. with this example, i would like to emphasize the importance of carrying on a research line on the dialectal lexical material in middle english, which as well as being a topic worthy in its own lexical dialectal items in cursor mundi 169 right, can additionally have many other more specific or practical applications of great interest for other kind of studies. mª josé carrillo linares university of huelva references black, m. 2000: putting words in their place: an approach to middle english word geography. r. bermudez-otero, d. denison, r. m. hogg & c. b. mccully (eds). generative theory and corpus studies: a dialogue from 10 icehl. (pp. 455-479). mounton de gruyter, berlin, new york. carrillo linares, m. j. & garrido anes, e. 2007: middle english lexical distributions: two instances from the lay folks’ catechism. g. mazzon (ed.), studies in middle english forms and meanings. (pp. 85100). peter lang, frankfurt. carrillo linares, m. j. & garrido anes, e. forthcoming, 2008: middle english word geography: methodology and applications illustrated. proceedings of the fourteenth international conference on english historical linguistics (14 icehl), university of bergamo, 21-25 august 2006. eldredge, l. m. & klinck, a. l. 2000: the southern version of cursor mundi. vol. v. university of ottawa press, ottawa. fisiak, j. 2004: some remarks on middle english word geography. poetica 62: 1-15. fowler, r. 1990: the southern version of cursor mundi. vol. ii. university of ottawa press, ottawa. maría josé carrillo 170 horrall, sarah m. 1978: the southern version of cursor mundi. vol. i. university of ottawa press, ottawa. horobin, s. 2001: j. r. r. tolkien as a philologist: a reconsideration of the northernisms in chaucer’s reeve’s tale. english studies 82:2: 97-105. horobin, s. 2004: southern copies of the prick of conscience and the study of middle english word geography. poetica 62: 89-101. hudson, a. 1983: observations on a northerner’s vocabulary. in e.g. stanley & d. gray (eds.). five hundred years of words and sounds. d.s. brewer, cambridge. 74-83. hupe, h. 1893: essay on the manuscripts and dialect. in r. morris cursor mundi. eets 101. trübner, london. kaiser, r. 1937: zur geographie des mittelenglischen wortchatzes. palestra 205. leipzig: mayer & müller. med = kurath, h. & al. 1952-2001: middle english dictionary. university of michigan press, ann arbor. lewis, r. 1992: sources and techniques for the study of middle english word geography. in m. laing & k. williamson. speaking in our tongues. (pp. 205-214). d.s. brewer, cambridge. mcintosh, a. 1972: some words in the northern homily collection. neophilologische mitteilungen lxxiii: 196-208. mcintosh, a. 1973: word geography in the lexicography of medieval english. annals of the new york academy of sciences ccxi: 55-66. reprinted in m. laing (1989) pp. 86-97. mcintosh, a. 1978: middle english word geography: its potential role in the study of the long-term impact of the scandinavian settlements upon english. the vikings, proceedings of the symposium of the faculty of arts of uppsala university, june 6-9. reprinted in m. laing (1989) pp. 98-105. lexical dialectal items in cursor mundi 171 lalme = mcintosh, a., samuels, m. l. & benskin, m. [with the assistance of m. laing and k. williamson]. 1986: linguistic atlas of late medieval english. aberdeen university press, aberdeen. morris, r. 1874, 1875, 1876, 1877, 1878, 1893: cursor mundi. eets 57, 59, 62, 66, 68, 99, 101. trübner, london. mooney, l. 2003: a fragment of the cursor mundi in the sutherland collection on deposit in the national library of scotland. journal of the early book society 6: 143-47. mous, peter h. j. 1986: the southern version of cursor mundi. vol. iv. university of ottawa press, ottawa. oed = murray, j. & alii 1989: the oxford english dictionary. clarendon press, oxford. samuels, m. l. 1981: spelling and dialect in the late and post-middle english periods. in m. benskin & m. l. samuels (eds.), so meny people, longages and tonges: philological essays in scots and medieval english presented to angus mcintosh. middle english dialect project, edinburgh. 43-54. stauffenberg, h. j. 1985: the southern version of cursor mundi. vol. iii. university of ottawa press, ottawa. thompson, j. j. 1998: the cursor mundi: poem, texts and contexts. the society for the study of medieval languages and literature. medium aevum monographs, oxford. wright, j. 1898-1905: the english dialect dictionary. oxford university press, london. maría josé carrillo 172 lexical dialectal items in cursor mundi 173 maría josé carrillo 174 lexical dialectal items in cursor mundi 175 maría josé carrillo 176 lexical dialectal items in cursor mundi 177 maría josé carrillo 178 lexical dialectal items in cursor mundi 179 * † * alison elizabeth killilea, selim 21 (2015–2016): 57–80. issn 1132-631x smash the matriarchy!: fear of feminine power structures in beowulf adaptations alison elizabeth killilea university college cork just as the antagonists of beowulf may be read as symbolic of those problems which pervaded the heroic society in which the poem is set, so too can they be viewed as having deeper allegorical meaning in the modern adaptations of the anglo-saxon poem. these adaptations may be seen both to react to and engage with the poem as a means to express contemporary concerns about modern society. one such concern on which beowulf adaptations have especially focused is that of the gendered power structures that appear in the poem, in particular the tension between the patriarchal world of heorot and the matriarchal mere and its female occupant, grendel’s mother. through the employment of the theoretical frameworks put forward by julia kristeva and sherry b. ortner, this article will examine how patriarchal societies are depicted in three beowulf adaptations: gareth hind’s graphic novel the collected beowulf, john gardner’s novel grendel, and robert zemeckis’s film beowulf. keywords: beowulf; adaptation; feminist theory; reception history w.h. canaway’s narrative adaptation, the ring givers, published in 1958, is one of the first in a line of modern creative retellings of the beowulf story which would be followed by numerous narrative, comic, and cinematic explorations of the poem, reaching a peak in the late 1990s and 2000s. there is often the temptation among scholars to write off many of these modern adaptations of the poem (especially those of the film variety) as uninformed pieces of pop culture, yet more often than not on closer inspection they reveal a surprisingly deep level of critical engagement with the anglo-saxon poem itself, as well as with contemporary scholarly trends and academic debate. furthermore, these adaptations demonstrate that there is something in 58 alison elizabeth killilea beowulf which makes it relevant to modern audiences, the ideal blueprint on which to lay out contemporary anxieties and social concerns. one of the more obvious examples of this is john gardner’s grendel, a manifestation of the increasing anxieties surrounding the vietnam war (1955–1975), and consequently the increasing distrust of the government and the traditional image of the hero, a case study which will be discussed in further detail later in this article. it is typically through antagonistic figures that social anxieties and concerns are expressed in literature and film. this can be seen, for instance, in mary shelley’s frankenstein, where frankenstein’s monster can be read as a representation of the fear of scientific discovery in the georgian period in england. similarly, it is primarily through grendel and grendel’s mother (as well as the dragon) that such concerns are expressed in beowulf; these characters can be read as symbolic of problematic aspects of heroic society. as is the case with the original poem, beowulf adaptations use these figures to express contemporary societal concerns and anxieties. although many of these concerns inevitably change over the course of time, one issue that the majority of these adaptations seem to have in common is the conflict between masculine and feminine power structures present in the poem. this paper aims to explore the depictions of these gendered power structures in a number of modern beowulf adaptations through the theories of julia kristeva and sherry b. ortner (specifically those of abjection and of binary opposition, respectively). using these theoretical models, the imagery and dialogue of three adaptations (gareth hinds’s the collected beowulf, john gardner’s grendel, and robert zemeckis’s beowulf) will be examined, focusing on the representation of both matriarchal and patriarchal power structures. kristevan theory has, in the past, been applied fruitfully to the anglosaxon poem: james hala, followed by paul acker and renée trilling, have read beowulf in terms of kristeva’s theory of abjection. julia kristeva’s theory (simplified for the purposes of this article), set forth in powers of horror: an essay on abjection, deals with the human reaction to the abject, i.e. those aspects of life which threaten a breakdown in society or which lead to the loss of the distinction between subject and object. those things that remind us of our own materiality (“defilement, sewage, and muck [...] the skin on a surface of milk, [...] the corpse”, kristeva 1982: 2–3) we exclude and reject, and therefore make abject. the abject is associated with the primal and that which precedes the symbolic order (the social world of linguistic communication, law and ideology) and therefore is often associated with the fear of feminine power structures in beowulf adaptations 59 maternal, the mother being the one the child must move away from in order to develop subjectivity. symbolic order is thus associated with the paternal, and is achieved through what lacan called the name-of-the-father, i.e. the laws which control the child’s desire (and most notably its oedipal complex) and allow it to enter a community of others (lacan 2006: 278). beowulf may be read in these kristevan terms if we are to view heorot and hrothgar’s realm as a civilised patriarchal society, the symbolic order which has separated itself from the other1 and the primitive maternal through the acquisition of culture, laws, and language. this is comparable to the way in which the child (through the name-of-the-father) separates itself from the maternal body in an attempt to become a separate subject. in order for society to do this, it must expunge that which is abject, that which reminds us of death and materiality, or that which is a risk to civilisation, usually through the formation of laws or taboos. in this kristevan reading, grendel’s mother may be seen as a manifestation of the maternal and also as the abject, a female figure who transgresses gender roles and therefore reveals a weakness in a society which presumes and requires women to be passive. grendel, then, may be seen as a figure who (without a father or means of entrance into the symbolic order) has not managed to separate himself from the maternal or the abject, a figure who has not gained language or culture; as james hala notes, he is the deject, the agent by which confrontation with the abject is brought about, as outlined by julia kristeva: the one by whom the abject exists is thus a deject who places (himself), separates (himself), situates (himself), and therefore strays instead of getting his bearings, desiring, belonging, or refusing [...] the deject is in short a stray. he is on a journey, during the night, the end of which keeps receding. (kristeva 1982: 8) grendel travels to heorot, bringing death and reminding the danes of the fragility of their society. beowulf’s killing of both grendel and grendel’s mother, then, may be viewed as the society’s final expulsion of the abject and its full separation from the maternal. 1 the concept of “the other”, that which is different, has often been associated with the feminine (as well as with natives in relation to colonialism). simone de beauvoir states that “[woman] is determined and differentiated in relation to man, while he is not in relation to her; she is the inessential in front of the essential. he is the subject; he is the absolute. she is the other” (2010: 26). 60 alison elizabeth killilea of course it is impossible to say whether or not the original poet, or poets, had any such intentions in mind, and applying modern theory to an ancient poem is extremely problematic. for the modern adaptations, however, which exist in a post-freudian and post-lacanian, and, for the most part, a postkristevan era, the relevance of such theories can be explored with more confidence. david marshall, in his article “getting reel with grendel’s mother: the abject maternal and social critique”, explores a number of beowulf film adaptations, such as mctiernan’s (1999) the 13th warrior, gunnarsson’s (2005) beowulf and grendel, and zemeckis’s (2007) beowulf. marshall analyses the kristevan imagery evident in these films and more specifically these films’ responses to the threat of grendel’s mother, an argument which i will both build on and also depart from in this article.2 in addition to kristeva’s theory of abjection, i will also make reference to the socio-cultural theory set forth by sherry b. ortner in her article “is female to male as nature is to culture” (1974). in essence, ortner’s theory revolves around the idea that woman is identified with, and symbolic of, “something that every culture devalues, something that every culture defines as being of a lower existence than itself”, that “something” being “nature” (1974: 72). man, on the other hand, is associated with “culture”, his physiology freeing him from the functions of nature, such as pregnancy, child-rearing, and menstruation. ortner argues that, in almost every society, there comes a point in a child’s, and more specifically a boy’s life where his socialisation is transferred to the hands of men; the male being the only one who can enter him into the fully human world of culture (1974: 80). this idea is reflected in the theories of lacan and kristeva, with the patriarchal concept of the nameof-the-father allowing the child to enter the symbolic order. ortner’s theory may also be applied (again, with caution) to the original text of beowulf: the patriarchal society of the danes is depicted as culturally more sophisticated and central than what may be described as the more maternal, and arguably matriarchal world of the grendel-kin. hrothgar’s kingdom is associated with culture and language, as displayed through the importance placed on the scop. this can be contrasted with the mere, surrounded by and engulfed in nature, and inhabited by two characters who 2 for a recent study which focuses on modern representations of grendel’s mother (including zemeckis’s), see pilar peña gil’s “the witch, the ogress, and the temptress: defining grendel’s mother in beowulf and film adaptations”, selim 18 (2011): 49–75. fear of feminine power structures in beowulf adaptations 61 never speak in the poem. as with the kristevan reading of grendel, unable to reach the symbolic order without a father figure, grendel’s lack of language, and his inability to enter “fully human status”, can also be seen in terms of ortner’s theory. due to the lack of a male figure to fully socialise and acculturate him, grendel can never successfully enter the fully human world of the dominant culture. our lack of knowledge pertaining to the socio-cultural and psychological world of the anglo-saxons, especially that of anglo-saxon women, again makes the application of such a theory to beowulf itself problematic. however, i would argue that ortner provides a useful context for assessing gender in modern versions of beowulf. beginning with the analysis of one of the lesser known adaptations, gareth hinds’s graphic novel the collected beowulf (2000), i will then go on to explore one of the most popular retellings, john gardner’s novel grendel (1971), before concluding with one of the more complex re-tellings, robert zemeckis’s (2007) film, beowulf. gareth hind’s the collected beowulf, originally a set of three self-published books, dedicated to each of the three antagonists of the poem, is arguably one of the more artistically successful adaptations of the old english poem. significantly, its three-part structure demonstrates a sensitivity to the importance of grendel’s mother that is not evident in many of the other adaptations of beowulf, and indeed in a large proportion of scholarship. approaches which favour a two-part structure focusing on the two stages of the hero’s life tend to reduce (or excise) the role of grendel’s mother. these adaptations are often directly or indirectly influenced by j.r.r. tolkien’s beowulf: the monsters and the critics (1936), which despite its focus on the monsters almost entirely overlooked her presence in the poem, thus “erroneously [creating] an exclusively male anglo-saxon world for a presumably all-male audience, then and now” (lees, cited in bennett 2012: 55).3 numerous modern retellings and adaptations show equally little interest in her character, often viewing her as a mere structural device whose main function is to serve as a transition, or filler, between beowulf’s battles with grendel and with the dragon. this approach is demonstrated in works such as gunnarsson’s (2005) beowulf and grendel and john gardner’s grendel which, for a novel which focuses entirely on her son, devotes remarkably little space to grendel’s mother compared to the original poem. hinds’s choice to 3 the commentary in tolkien’s beowulf: a translation and commentary, published in 2014, also excludes grendel’s mother from more detailed analysis. 62 alison elizabeth killilea dedicate an entire book to her part in the story therefore emphasises her figure far more prominently than many other versions, adaptations or interpretations. in the collected version of this graphic novel, which contains all three publications in one book, the three-part structure is still evident, as each of beowulf’s encounters features a subtly different style of artwork. the grendel section is drawn with extremely dark contrasts, and notably less refined black outlines, with blotches of ink appearing in many frames. the next section, dealing with grendel’s mother, by contrast exhibits more neutral tones, with hinds focusing on earthy browns and reds; for this section, technical pen, watercolours and acrylics were used on wood panels (hinds 2012a), with more attention-to-detail and fine lines than the previous section. finally, the third section, which centres around beowulf’s fight with the dragon, shows fine detail and definite outline, while using the same ink as grendel’s section. unlike the previous two parts of the graphic novel, the final section consists of only blacks and greys, setting the mood for the final scenes and beowulf’s death. the section of hinds’s novel dealing with grendel’s mother is of most importance for this study. its earthy tones serve to create a softer and perhaps less-threatening atmosphere than the darker inks used of the other two sections, especially the chaotic and blotchy ink used of grendel’s section. the tones used in grendel’s mother’s cave may also be described as fleshy, the colours perhaps more suggestive of feminine imagery; indeed, the cave can be described as womblike. this apparent association between the cave and the female can be linked both to kristeva’s and ortner’s theories, the cave, evocative of the womb and therefore the repressive maternal, and the female’s perceived closeness to nature. john mctiernan’s the 13th warrior associates the cave from which the northmen escape through a series of constricted tunnels with the birth canal, thereby implying “a final separation from the maternal figure” (marshall 2010: 141). similarly, hinds’s the collected beowulf portrays (in this case a lone) beowulf escaping and emerging from the womblike cave. indeed, the maternal imagery here is even more suggestive than that of mctiernan’s film, with the water of the cave a deep red, bloodied from the death of grendel’s mother (61–63). beowulf’s emergence from the mere, covered in red gore, therefore evokes both images of childbirth and menstruation.4 beowulf appears here as a christ-like figure: the hilt of the 4 the image that appears on page 45, which shows the danes’ and geats’ approach to the mere, is once again, evocative of female anatomy, and unlike in the majority of the fear of feminine power structures in beowulf adaptations 63 giant-sword which he bears is evocative of a crucifix, and is surrounded by and emitting rays of light. beowulf’s separation from the maternal here can therefore be interpreted in light of lacan’s conception of the name-of-thefather, an idea also present in kristeva’s theory of the abject: the hero, freed from the mother and surrounded by the paternal imagery of god, can now enter the symbolic order and go on to be king. at the centre of hinds’s text is the complex figure of grendel’s mother herself. described by the author in a personal communication as “frog-like, but with skeletal face and hands” (hinds 2012b), she has yellow reptilian eyes, and her large sagging breasts and lack of clothes suggest a vaguely human (and vaguely female), yet wholly uncivilised being. in hinds’s view, grendel’s mother “symbolises a twisted, repressed, vision of female sexuality [...] she is meant to be somewhat reminiscent of the venus of willendorf and similar figures. but with claws” (2012b). we find similar imagery in michael crichton’s eaters of the dead, a fabricated “found manuscript” based on the historical account of ahmed ibn fadlan and his experience among the volga vikings, as well as its film adaptation, the 13th warrior, in which grendel’s mother is symbolised by a “crude and ugly” figurine found at a raided camp with “no head, no arms, and no legs; only the torso with a greatly swollen belly and, above that, two pendulous swollen breasts” (crichton 1977: 92). an appendix to crichton’s novel featuring fictitious notes confirms that this stone ornament is indeed meant to be reminiscent of the willendorf venus or the venus of hohle fels. the inclusion of the venus image to represent grendel’s mother in both eaters of the dead and hinds’s the collected beowulf is both complex and culturally charged. the venus of willendorf (c. 28,000-25,000 bce), also known as the woman of willendorf, has multifaceted interpretations, from fertility icon, to symbol of wealth and security, to direct representation of a female deity or mother goddess. probably one of the most common interpretations, and the one most relevant to these two works, is that this figure is representative of prehistoric matriarchal societies. the willendorf venus’s now-disputed name is itself a study in male-female power relations: the term vénus impudique, “immodest” or perhaps “indecent” venus, coined by preceding pages which take place in and are dominated by images of heorot, here we are suddenly introduced to images of nature. once again, this imagery of the natural words resonates with sherry ortner’s theory of the female traditionally being seen as closer to nature. 64 alison elizabeth killilea the marquis de vibraye in 1864 on his discovery of another such figure (conkey 2005: 185), was arguably intended as an ironic and derisive title, playing on the venus pudica, the “modest” or “chaste” venus, of classical and renaissance art (e.g. sandro botticelli’s birth of venus, c. 1484–1486). unlike the restrained and “civilised” image of the classical venus, the venus of willendorf exhibits an unrestrained and unselfconscious sexuality associated with prehistory and the uncivilised. hinds’s presentation of grendel’s mother as uncivilised and uncultured is evident in the first image we see of her (40). she appears deep below the earth in a chaotic tangle of tree roots, far beneath the civilisation of heorot and the mapped-out sky. the named constellations are a sure sign of the civilised culture above, emblematic of the symbolic order. this image shows the abject maternal as a threatening and lurking force, before it is fully expunged from society, in sharp contrast to the later image of beowulf emerging righteous and christ-like from the mere. the symbolic order, the universal structure involving language, ideologies, law and social structure, is expressed in the collected beowulf through the mapped-out sky, the intricate artwork within heorot, and rituals such as wealhtheow’s passing of the cup (16). the polarity between the symbolic order and the abject, or masculine and feminine power systems, is made even clearer in john gardner’s (1971) novel grendel (and its own adaptation grendel grendel grendel, directed by alexander stitt in 1981). in grendel, the symbolic order can be seen in the danes’ politics, notably their obsession with religion and philosophy, and in the privileged position of the scop, referred to by grendel as “the shaper”. once again, this male-centred world is clearly contrasted with the maternal mere, itself reminiscent of the womb and closely associated with nature. unlike most other adaptations of beowulf, with the notable exception of sturla gunnarsson’s beowulf and grendel, in gardner’s novel it is grendel, rather than beowulf (or more generally the danish community) who attempts to separate himself from the maternal. in contrast to beowulf, who is able to join the symbolic order through the name-of-the-father with the help of both hygelac and later hrothgar (both of whom may be seen as adoptive father figures), grendel, in the absence of a father, struggles to become a separate subject from his mother and from nature.5 gardner’s grendel thereby 5 the struggle to separate from the maternal, due to the absence of a father (or father figure) is a common theme in horror texts, as can be seen in robert bloch’s psycho fear of feminine power structures in beowulf adaptations 65 differs from the collected beowulf and eaters of the dead in its treatment of both matriarchal and patriarchal power structures. while the latter two works take a relatively straightforward stance towards the perceived power of the masculine-orientated ruling system, grendel questions its validity and its superiority. this aspect of gardner’s novel may reflect increasing anxieties surrounding conflict and the establishment in the aftermath of wwii and midway through the vietnam war, and consequently the increasing distrust of both the government and the traditional image of the “hero”.6 instead, the post-wwii era gave rise to the “anti-hero”, evident in other protagonists of the time, ranging from billy pilgrim of kurt vonnegut’s slaughterhouse 5 (1969) to randle mcmurphy of ken kesey’s one flew over the cuckoo’s nest (1961). these characters, along with gardner’s grendel may be viewed as being ideologically at odds with “the system”, or indeed the prevailing symbolic order. perhaps unlike these other examples of post-war anti-heroes, grendel is attempting to join the symbolic order (and ultimately fails), while the others appear more actively opposed to the governing systems, especially the figure of randle mcmurphy. it may be argued that grendel’s persistence in trying to access the symbolic order is evocative of the blindness with which some young americans glorified war and the patriarchal system of the us. similarly, the image of beowulf as “insane” in gardner’s novel, almost as monstrous as grendel himself, appears to be a comment on the american government’s exploitation of soldiers during the vietnam war through the notion of hero worship. while the novel is on one level certainly a criticism of this patriarchal system, we are nevertheless still shown grendel’s mother and the maternal as abject and primitive – not necessarily a desirable alternative to hrothgar’s kingdom. the mere, once again, associated with the abject, is filled with creatures unseen to the civilised world, such as the “fire-snakes [...] grey as old ashes; faceless, eyeless” (gardner 1971: 8), beasts which conjure up feelings of disgust, much like the defilement, sewage and much described in kristeva’s own words. the mere, whilst being reminiscent of the womb, is (1959) and stephen king’s carrie (1974). in these novels, along with their film adaptations, the mother figure is constructed as the “monstrous feminine” (creed 2002: 72). 6 see catherine a.m. clarke’s “re-placing masculinity: the dc comics beowulf series and its context, 1975–1976” in anglo-saxon culture and the modern imagination (ed. clark & perkins), for a discussion on post-war masculinity in the dc comic series of beowulf. 66 alison elizabeth killilea simultaneously described in natural terms, as a “shark-toothed chamber”, grendel describing the “black tentacles of [his] mother’s cave” (8). grendel’s mother herself is a “life-bloated, baffled, long-suffering hag” (5), and his attempt to make the thetic break, the separation from the maternal and the development of a new self, is hinted at in the language surrounding his experience with his mother. for example, grendel’s mother tries to “clutch at [him] in her sleep as if to crush [him]” but he “break[s] away” (5);7 as grendel himself states, “she stares at me as if to consume me [...] i was her creation. we were one thing [...] she would smash me to her fat, limp breast as if to make me a part of her flesh again” (9); “she reaches out as if some current is tearing us apart” (17). the repetition of such imagery seems to make clear that what gardner is referring to here is the oneness of the mother and child and the child’s attempts to separate himself from her in order to become his own individual self. more kristevan imagery can be detected in grendel’s mother’s inability to speak – “she’d forgotten all language long ago, or maybe had never known any. i’d never heard her speak to the other shapes” (17). in kristeva’s view, language is associated with the symbolic order, and this is exemplified here in the scop’s, or “the shaper’s”, high status in heorot: “he reshapes the world [...] and turns dry sticks to gold” (32). unlike the maternal, which produces merely perishable items (ortner 1974: 75), the shaper, and the masculine, produces items of cultural value, enduring pieces of art.8 the kristevan association of language with both the symbolic order and culture is further 7 gardner’s description of grendel’s mother “clutching” at her son is an echo of lines 747–749; ræhte ongean feond mid folme; he onfeng hraþe inwit-þancum ond wið earm gesæt, “the monster [grendel] reached out towards him with his hands – he quickly grabbed him with evil intent, and sat up against his arm” (liuzza). it may also be read as an inversion of beowulf’s “grim grip” (line 765) on grendel, which is the ultimate cause of grendel’s death. 8 simone de beauvoir in her seminal piece the second sex argues that this is because the female “is more enslaved to the species than the male” (2010: 317). because, historically, woman’s physiology means that more of her time is devoted to the natural processes surrounding reproduction, less of her time is spent in cultural production – “to give birth and to breast-feed are not activities but natural functions; they do not involve a project, which is why the woman finds no motive there to claim a higher meaning for her existence [...] man’s case is radically different. he does not provide for the group in the way worker bees do, by a simple vital process, but rather by acts that transcend his animal condition [...] the human male shapes the face of the earth, creates new instruments, invents and forges the future” (2010: 98–99). fear of feminine power structures in beowulf adaptations 67 demonstrated through the linguistic progression of gardner’s grendel. as he moves away from the maternal towards civilisation and culture, he uses the formats of poetry and drama to convey his story, arguably more eloquent and “cultured” forms of writing than the prose format of the novel. furthermore, while gardner associates the patriarchy, in particular the danes, with civilisation, science, religion and art, his main matriarchal figure does not “think” or “ponder” or “dissect” the “dirty mechanical bits of her miserable life’s curse” (5); for gardner the matriarchy is associated with primitivism, lives by instinct and does not better itself with science. grendel’s separation from his mother has already begun at the commencement of the novel; he has already “played [his] way farther out into the world” (8), in an image reminiscent of birth, and has at this stage also encountered the dragon, the philosophy-debating creature who begins his “civilisation” as a type of father figure. grendel’s introduction to the name-of-the-father, the laws and conventions through which the symbolic order is achieved, is evident in his criticism of his mother’s primitivism and animalism. he also exhibits a general disgust with nature, for instance in the first chapter, when he asks why the mating goats cannot discover a little dignity (2). once again, these undignified goats, and the animals which “see all life without observing it”, are much like his mother who fails to “dissect or ponder”. whilst the maternal and natural is treated with disgust at the beginning of gardner’s novel, as the story progresses, and as grendel becomes more “civilised”, we gradually begin to see hints of criticism of the patriarchal society ruled over by hrothgar. for example, as grendel becomes more like the men in the novel, he also begins to see the absurdity of their society and its obsession with religion, philosophy and general “betterment”. this appears at odds with how the danish men actually act, especially when they are drunk and their base desires come to the fore. the third chapter, in particular, critiques this male-orientated society and its treatment of both women and nature. hence grendel notes that “no wolf was so vicious to other wolves” (20); the men seem to senselessly kill members of other tribes simply in order to be able to return to their camps and “tell wild tales of what happened” (12). in battle they would shout: terrible threats [...] things about their fathers’ fathers, things about justice and honour and lawful revenge – their throats swollen, their eyes rolling like a newborn colt’s, sweat running down their shoulders [...] all they killed – cows, horses, men – they left to rot or burn. (23) 68 alison elizabeth killilea throughout this third chapter the hypocrisy of patriarchal society is highlighted; the warriors’ reasons for fighting (“justice”) appear to act simply as cover-up for their real, base animalistic needs and their desire for bloodshed and power. we also begin to see here the danes’ lack of respect for women (“no one getting hurt except maybe some female who was asking for it”, 21) and nature, exemplified in their mistreatment of their own oxen and horses, “first stripping off the saddle and bridle and the handsomely decorated harness”, before killing them (25). there is the implication that nature is an object for the danes to colonise – nature is viewed by the danes as subordinate to their will, and as with women and animals, it is treated with little respect. much as the matriarchal was seen as a destructive power to be reckoned with in the collected beowulf, in gardner’s grendel this violent patriarchal system is now presented as a threatening and unstoppable force – “there was nothing to stop the advance of man” (26). we might compare this view of the beowulfian patriarchy with howard mccain’s (2008) sciencefiction adaptation outlander, in which the suggestively-named kainan (a stand-in for beowulf) recalls the colonisation and destruction of the moorwen (a species of whom the last remaining seeks revenge on kainan, much like grendel’s mother does in seeking out the killer of her son). the moral centre of this film, however, is unclear: does kainan regret the genocide of the moorwen, or rather his failure to kill the last one remaining, whom we discover is responsible for the death of his family? whilst outlander never seems to take a clear stance on this moral dilemma, the novel grendel clearly does in condemning the transgressions of the patriarchal societies which it depicts. the violence of this supposedly civilised and cultured order is further exemplified in the figure of grendel himself in the novel. the more he pushes away from his mother, becoming in the process more civilised, “human” and cultured, the more monstrous and violent he becomes. ironically, this process of grendel’s civilisation leads him to become more depraved and corrupt, and ultimately leads to his death at the hands of beowulf, who himself is presented as a bloodthirsty figure. the flaws of the patriarchal system are further highlighted in gardner’s novel through the figure of the dragon. in other beowulf adaptations, and arguably in the original poem itself, the dragon symbolises dangers which threaten heroic society itself. in grendel, however, the dragon appears to symbolise the father, or the symbolic order as a whole. while in beowulf itself, greed (such as that displayed by heremod) is a negative aspect of heroic fear of feminine power structures in beowulf adaptations 69 society to be avoided by the hero, in gardner’s grendel obsession with material things is presented as something inherent in and inseparable from heroic society. the dragon, who acts as a father-figure to grendel, educating him through the name-of-the-father, is described as being “serpent to the core” (41), an allusion to the fall of man. here, the dragon, and by extension the patriarchal system, is viewed as a malevolent and devious force. read within a contemporary context this may reflect gardner’s sense of the us government’s deceitfulness and exploitation of soldiers in sending them to war in vietnam. the government’s utilisation of the concept of heroism in order to draw in recruits for the vietnam war can be compared with the serpent’s promise to adam and eve that they would “be as gods, knowing good and evil” (gen 3: 5). gardner’s grendel, a figure separated too late from the mother, and therefore only partly civilised, provides a painful reminder to the danes of that which is abject and that which has been expunged from society. because of his protean state he remains as the deject, the agent by which confrontation with the abject is brought about. like grendel’s character in sturla gunnarsson’s (2005) beowulf and grendel, he is, as it were, in a state of evolution, and because of his failure to join the symbolic order, he is killed. there may also be the implication here that, although grendel has become very much like the men of heorot, physically he remains the same, and he is therefore rejected by society; his deformation and otherness once again inspires disgust among the danes, reminding them of their own mortality. in grendel’s social context, this may well be another criticism of contemporary attitudes towards war, and the intolerance of those who appear as different or other, a criticism of the overtly patriotic, and at times xenophobic, culture of the us in the 1960s and 1970s. to sum up, then, gardner’s grendel displays a more complex view of these traditional feminine and masculine power structures than hinds’s the collected beowulf. although the maternal here is simple and primitive, far from the cultured world of the patriarchy of heorot which is filled with language and art, it is also safe, relatively unburdened by the violence which characterises the world of the patriarchy. the maternal is also seen by gardner as more wholesome and genuine, unlike the hypocritical civilisation of heorot which, despite its interest in the arts and religion, remains fundamentally violent. in gardner’s novel, we can detect a yearning for a more primitive and simple life, one more harmonious with nature and the maternal. 70 alison elizabeth killilea another adaptation which complicates the power structures of beowulf, and the last to be explored in this article, is robert zemeckis’s (2007) film adaptation of the same name. this retelling of the anglo-saxon poem is no doubt the most well-known of all cinematic adaptations. despite its sensational, hollywood approach to the old english poem, it is also arguably one of the most engaged with the text itself as well as attendant literary criticism. moreover, zemeckis’s film also deals in intresting ways with both the gendered power structures of the poem and the idea of the abject. david marshall’s analysis of zemeckis’s film explores the base desires which drive the patriarchal system of heorot in opposition to the more rational and discerning matriarchal system of the mere. far from the sombre hall we are confronted with in the collected beowulf and most other adaptations, here we are faced from the outset with a hall-culture based around crude physicality and hedonistic pleasure, preoccupied with “merriment, joy, and fornication” (beowulf 2007). as marshall argues, “the power exhibited in the warrior’s display, led by hrothgar, amounts to an unconstrained freedom to act on terms of not reason and civilisation, but base physical desire” (marshall 2010: 141). for example, beowulf’s passionate exclamation during his fight with grendel – “mine is strength and lust and power – i am beowulf!” – stands in stark contrast to the more sober presentation of female characters in the film, notably wealhtheow, who refuses to be intimate with the drunken hrothgar, and most importantly, grendel’s mother, who consistently shows a great deal more rational thought than the men of heorot. as noted by marshall, the concept of the abject is transparent in zemeckis’s film – for example, the opening of the film depicts beowulf exclaiming, “the sea is my mother! she will never take me back into her murky womb!”, hinting at major plot developments to come. while gardner had focused on grendel’s relationship with his mother, the 2007 beowulf film once again returns to the theme of beowulf’s separation from the womb. however, the hero’s separation from the maternal also appears here to reflect that of all heorot, including hrothgar, making this film also appear to deal with the progress of heroic civilisation as a whole.9 kristevan imagery is certainly evident within zemeckis’s adaptation: the extremely patriarchal and masculine area of the hall is contrasted with the scenes of the mere; once again, the cave is shrouded in nature, surrounded by wildly-grown trees whose 9 it is worth noting that beowulf’s identity as a geat is largely absent from the film, allowing beowulf to more clearly symbolise heorot as a whole. fear of feminine power structures in beowulf adaptations 71 growth has not been restrained. much like in hinds’s the collected beowulf, the cave entrance appears reminiscent of the vaginal opening,10 the scattered bones outside showing its destructive and primal nature,11 perhaps reflecting woman’s ability to create “only perishables” (ortner 1974: 75). the cave entrance leads into a chamber, which again, is reminiscent of female anatomy. most importantly, however, the confrontation between beowulf and grendel’s mother does not take place here, but rather in a skull-type area, which both reinforces the cave’s structure of female anatomy, and brings to mind images of ymir, the giant of old norse mythology whose body was fashioned into the earth. primarily, however, this part of the cave, where we see grendel’s mother clearly for the first time, reinforces the idea that her character’s power lies first and foremost in the mind, rather than the instinctual and irrational area of the womb, as is the case with both the collected beowulf and grendel. it is at this point that we begin to see the contrast between the two power structures: the masculine which here is associated with uncontrollable base desire, and the feminine, associated with calculating, rational thought. the 2007 film’s sexualised vision of grendel’s mother is radically different to hinds’s and gardner’s adaptations, both of which present her as a primitive mother figure. perhaps taking inspiration from graham baker’s (1999) film beowulf, in which former playboy bunny layla roberts is cast as the second antagonist of the poem, in zemeckis’s beowulf grendel’s mother appears as a “voluptuous, gold and buxom” (marshall 2010: 135) woman played by angelina jolie. while baker’s beowulf presented grendel as the child of grendel’s mother and hrothgar, zemeckis’s beowulf takes this one step further: as well as casting hrothgar as the unwilling father of grendel, we also witness beowulf’s own submission to the oedipal fantasy, following in hrothgar’s footsteps and fathering the dragon with grendel’s mother. in 10 the appearance of the cave as reminiscent of female anatomy is intentional and an exaggerated vision can be seen in its concept art in mark cotta vaz and steve starkey’s the art of beowulf (2007). 11 the mother and woman has long had an association with death, as can be seen in pliny the elder’s natural history: “(mother) of god, even so is she of men. she it is that taketh us when we are coming into the world, nourisheth us when we are new born : and once being come abroad, ever sustaineth us: and at the last, when we are rejected of all the world besides, she embraceth us: then most of all, like a kind mother, she covereth us all over in her bosom” (1847: 100). similar imagery may also be seen in shakespeare’s romeo and juliet: “the earth, that’s nature’s mother, is her tomb./ what is her burying, grave that is her womb” (2.3.5–6). 72 alison elizabeth killilea addition to heorot’s drunken brawling, beowulf’s relationship with grendel’s mother appears as further evidence of the patriarchy’s inability to control its own base desires, and while marshall views the hero’s actions as serving as a critique of the patriarchal structure (which ultimately fails), they may also be seen as a destructive result of a society which has not fully expunged the maternal. hence marshall argues that the film “tries to suggest power, coded in masculine terms, is corrupted by a misdirected will, one that loves the self unduly” (148). however, the film can also be read as displaying the inhibiting effect of the maternal on society: heorot (epitomised by both hrothgar and beowulf) has not managed to fully enter the symbolic order due to its failure to reject the mother. the maternal is viewed as a threatening and manipulative force, with female sexuality seen as something to be feared, and as bill schipper notes, “nothing terrifies a male audience more than a physically and sexually powerful woman” (schipper 2011: 425). like the dragon in grendel, grendel’s mother here is a snake-like and manipulative force, the embodiment of temptation. her true form, a lizard-type being evocative of ridley scott’s aliens, furthers this sense of her serpentine nature. her promises of glory, legacy and riches again echo the serpent’s promise to adam and eve, while beowulf’s submission to temptation is a source of death and destruction for heorot, much as adam and eve’s is for the world. through beowulf’s refusal to embrace christianity, and through his surrendering to temptation, heorot cannot move forward to become an ideal society. beowulf’s submission to the snake-like grendel’s mother banishes heorot from the eden of the symbolic order. a further link between the primitive and grendel’s mother is suggested by her appearance. although conceived in a different manner, zemeckis’s beowulf shares with both eaters of the dead and the collected beowulf in reimagining grendel’s mother as an ancient matriarchal and goddess-type figure. however, as zemeckis’s adaptation is very much catering towards its main target audience – young men – the crude image of the willendorf venus is replaced with that of a goddess from germanic cosmology, gefion, a danish form of anglian nerthus and scandinavian freyja, whom h.m. chadwick notes are “local forms of the chthonic deity [...] whose cult was known to all teutonic peoples” (chadwick 1907: 263). frank battaglia argues that the appearance of gefion in beowulf “highlight[s] the championing of a new order antagonistic fear of feminine power structures in beowulf adaptations 73 to goddess worship [...] grendel and his mother may stand as types of earlier, matrilineal tribes” (battaglia 1991: 415).12 the depiction of grendel’s mother as a naked, voluptuous woman is an example of what the popular-culture critic anita sarkeesian calls the modern trope of the “evil demon seductress”: a supernatural creature usually a demon, robot, alien, vampire most often disguised as a sexy human female. she uses her sexuality and sexual wiles to manipulate, seduce, and kill, and often eat, poor hapless men, by luring them into her evil web. (“tropes vs. women #4”) this trope can be seen in various films contemporary with zemeckis’s beowulf, such as transformers: revenge of the fallen (bay 2009), where isabel lucas plays an alien robot disguised as an attractive college student; in jennifer’s body (kusama 2009), in which megan fox plays a man-eating demon; and more recently, although to a different effect, in under the skin (glazer 2012), where we see scarlett johannsson portraying an alien who seduces men in order to eat them.13 probably one of the closest parallels is with louis letterier’s 12 frank battaglia, in “the germanic earth goddess in beowulf?”, argues that there are five “gefion passages” in beowulf, in the form of the strong neuter noun geofon, where it refers to the sea as well as the goddess who has power over it. battaglia notes that geofon is an old english word for “ocean”, creating a link between her and grendel’s mother, whose figure is overwhelmingly associated with water (in words like brimwylf and merewif). her association with water is seemingly exaggerated in zemeckis’s film, in her appearance to beowulf during his fight with the sea-monsters, in her appearance to wiglaf from the ocean, and in beowulf’s exclamation at the beginning of the film: “the sea is my mother! she will never take me back into her murky womb!”. the influence of battaglia’s work appears more evident in the novelisation of the film, beowulf, by caitlín kiernan, based on the screenplay written by neil gaiman and roger avary. grendel’s mother is said to place her son’s body on “a shrine built by men to honour a forgotten goddess of a forgotten people” (kiernan 2007: 155), and tells of how “[l]ong before the coming of the danes, there were men in this land who named her hertha and nerthus, and they worshipped her in secret groves and still lakes and secret grottoes as the earth’s mother, as nerpuz and sometimes as njördr of the ásynja, wife of njörd and goddess of the sea” (2007: 156), hertha, nerpuz (nerþuz) and njördr, all possible forms of nerthus. 13 even more recently, we see a backlash to this trope with alex garland’s (2015) ex machina, where ava (alicia vikander), an a.i., seduces caleb (domhnall gleeson) as a means to escape her abusive creator. 74 alison elizabeth killilea (2010) remake of clash of the titans, itself influenced by the original beowulf in its structure. while in davis’s original clash of the titans (1982) medusa is characterised as a repulsive figure, leterrier’s remake chooses to sexualise her character, turning her into an attractive seductress-type figure played by russian model natalia vodianova. with so many instances of the “evil demon seductress” appearing in film around the 1990s and early 2000s, both baker’s and zemeckis’s films can be viewed as products of their time, in which fears of female sexuality and sexual liberation evidently still ran high. the 1990s also saw the rise of so-called “raunch culture”, or “lad culture”, a backlash against feminism which saw an increase in the objectification of women, and also encouraged women to objectify themselves and one another. as ariel levy argues in female chauvinist pigs: women and the rise of raunch culture, “some version of a sexy, scantily clad temptress has been around through the ages [...] but this was once a guilty pleasure on the margins” (levy 2006: 34). the sexually objectified woman is a common sight in the media of the late 1990s and 2000s, in music videos, magazines, film and even restaurants, such as hooters. while this objectification was (and still is) disguised as female empowerment, these forms of media still reflect latent fears of female sexuality, when this sexuality is in the power of women. sarkeesian argues that the “evil demon seductress” allows audiences to objectify women while also perpetrating negative stereotypes regarding female sexuality – in both baker’s and zemeckis’s interpretations, grendel’s mother is not empowered, but rather serves as a vehicle to demonise female sexuality and depict autonomous women as manipulative and untrustworthy. this trope of female characters appears to be based on a misconception regarding praying mantises’ mating rituals put forward by leland ossian howard in 1886, who argued that the female of the species will eat the male’s head either during or after intercourse (howard, as cited in brown 1986: 421). the depiction of grendel’s mother in baker’s beowulf certainly fits this mould, as her character indeed transforms into a praying mantis-type being in the latter half of the film. although grendel’s mother plays a larger (and, importantly, a speaking role), and in general is presented as a more powerful and dignified creature, both zemeckis’s and baker’s films still demonise women in a way that the poem does not, and in a way that differs from other adaptations. in its depiction of her character, the zemeckis film chooses to portray women as manipulative and controlling, using sex to fulfil ulterior motives, in this case the birth of a child, an arguably “maternal” and therefore primitive motive. fear of feminine power structures in beowulf adaptations 75 we see further images of the threatening maternal in beowulf’s encounter with grendel’s mother, and particularly in the image of the sword. this scene may be influenced by jane chance’s article, “the structural unity of beowulf: the problem of grendel’s mother”, which explores the sexual undertones apparent in this passage, or indeed directly from the exeter book’s riddle 20, which describes a sword in phallic terms: me bið ford witod, gif ic frean hyre, guþe fremme, swa ic gien dyde minum þeodne on þonc, þæt ic þolian sceal bearngestreona, ic wiþ bryde ne mot hæmed habban, ac me þæs hyhtplegan geno wyrneð, se mec geara on bende legde; forþon ic brucan sceal on hagostealde hæleþa gestreona. oft ic wirum dol wife abelge, wonie hyre illan; heo me wom spreceð, floceð hyre folmun, firenaþ mec wordum, ungod gæleð. ic ne gyme þæs compes (it is ordained for me henceforth, if i obey my master, wage war as i have hitherto done, according to lord’s pleasure, that i must forego the procreation of children. i may not have sexual intercourse with a bride; [...] often, reckless in my wireornaments, i enrage a woman, diminish her desire; she speaks shame/injury to me, curses (me) with her hands, reviles me with words, screams evil. i pay no heed to battle. (trans. tanke 2000: 410–411) the phallic undertones in riddle 20 are exaggerated in zemeckis’s beowulf; we see grendel’s mother gently caressing beowulf’s sword, seducing him with riches and fame, and finally, when he has succumbed, she disintegrates it with her hands. this melting of beowulf’s sword is interpreted by chris jones as a “post-ejaculative waning of manhood”, connected to line 1606 of the poem, where þæt sweord ongan æfter heaþoswate hildegicelum, wigbil wanian, “then the sword began, that blade, to dissolve away in battle-icicles” (liuzza) once beowulf has completed his visit to the mere (jones 2010: 23). this scene, as well as evoking a “waning of manhood”, also brings to mind the more threatening castration motif, prevalent in horror films such as lichtenstein’s (2007) teeth and zarchi’s (1978) i spit on your grave, both of which serve to 76 alison elizabeth killilea terrify a male audience with images of female revenge and power.14 as with these films, zemeckis’s beowulf also depicts female-led sexual encounters as dangerous and as literally emasculating. although marshall argues that it is the masculine rather than the feminine power structures which the film aims to criticise, the depiction of grendel’s mother suggests otherwise. as we have seen, zemeckis’s beowulf emphasises the destructive power of female sexuality. whilst grendel’s mother is viewed as more rational than other figures in the poem, she uses this to achieve natural and “primitive” goals, for the sake of having a child, with whom she will cause further destruction. as opposed to the film being a critique of patriarchal structures, it appears instead to show a society which has not fully matured, which is still controlled by the maternal.15 the repressive maternal appears quite differently in these three modern beowulf adaptations: hinds’s graphic novel is the most straightforward, in which the monstrous form of grendel’s mother is clearly a primitive and negative force. zemeckis’s beowulf also presents female power as destructive in its repressive hold over heorot – while the image of grendel’s mother is modified, from the venus of willendorf-type figure of the collected beowulf to 14 lichtenstein himself notes, in an interview for emanuellevy, how the castrationmotif, and more specifically the vagina dentate myth, is a metaphor for male fear of women: “most she-monsters can be seen as representations for the toothed vagina, itself already a metaphor for male fear of women. this additional remove is what i always found disturbing because it masks the original fear, assuring that it never be resolved and allowing monstrous qualities to continue to be attributed to women” (levy 2008). 15 it is also worth noting other works by that of author neil gaiman, who, alongside roger avary, wrote the script for zemeckis’s beowulf. the monstrous feminine materialises also in his novels american gods, in the figure of bilquis, who ingests her partners during intercourse, and in coraline in the form of the “other mother”, who incarnates all that we need to set aside in order to live, but which will continue to shadow us, and which, indeed, can at times seem appealing [...] coraline spends the rest of the book trying to re-establish a distance, to rebuild the fantasmatic screen that allows her to function in the world. (rudd 2008: 166–167) in other words, the “other mother” represents the abject maternal, and as with imagery found in beowulf adaptations, coraline escapes through a “hot and wet” passage back to her parents’ house, which as rudd states, is reminiscent of the birth canal. fear of feminine power structures in beowulf adaptations 77 the beautiful and seductive angelina jolie, the implication remains the same. john gardner’s grendel is the only work of these three which criticises the symbolic order and the patriarchal power system. this being said, gardner’s novel does not necessarily extoll the maternal as a desirable alternative; although it is portrayed as more peaceful, it is also primitive and uninspiring. consideration of the influence of contemporary social contexts allows us to examine gender power relations in more detail. as linda hutcheon notes, “an adaptation, like the work it adapts, is always framed in a context – a time and a place, a society and a culture; it does not exist in a vacuum [...] context can modify meaning, no matter where or when” (hutcheon 2006: 142–147). by observing the employment of common tropes, such as sarkeesian’s “evil demon seductress”, we can situate zemeckis’s beowulf within the culture of contemporary horror movies. similarly, gardner’s novel can be seen as a manifestation of the growing concerns with the traditionally patriarchal system in the us in the 1960s and 1970s. by drawing on the psychoanalytical and socio-cultural frameworks set forth by julia kristeva and sherry ortner we can also view these adaptations on a deeper level. as a result of viewing beowulf and its adaptations through the use of these theories of abjection and cultural binaries, we come into contact with age-old imagery and symbolism; although the application of these methodologies to ancient texts is itself problematic, it serves as a useful and legitimate tool for exploring modern adaptations themselves influenced by contemporary ideas about psychology and society. in particular, we can identify kristeva’s concept of the maternal abject versus the symbolic order, and ortner’s association of the female with nature and of the male with culture, as a common thread in these adaptations: heorot is often seen as the cultural and civilised centre (with the exception of zemeckis’s beowulf), and the cave and grendel’s mother is typically imagined as a primordial site which must be expunged in order for civilisation to continue. each modern beowulf adaptation treats the abject to different effect, and while the majority of these adaptations figure the maternal as a negative and repressive force, not all show the civilised patriarchy as the ideal. ultimately, these retellings use the story of beowulf as a means by which to express their own culture’s social anxieties about sex and gendered power structures.16 16 i would like to acknowledge dr. tom birkett and dr. francis leneghan who offered invaluable help in the editing of this article. 78 alison elizabeth killilea references acker, p. 2006: “horror and the maternal in beowulf”. pmla, 121.3: 702–716. acker, p. 2014. “beowulf at the movies”. howell chickering, allen j. frantzen & r.f. yeager (eds.). teaching beowulf in the twenty-first century. arizona, arizona center for medieval and renaissance studies. 39–44. battaglia, f. 1991. “the germanic earth goddess in beowulf?”. the mankind quarterly. 31: 415–446. bennett, h.t. 1994. “exile and semiosis of gender in old english elegies”. britton j. harwood & gillian overing (eds.). class and gender in early english literature: intersections. indiana, indiana university press. 43–58. beowulf. 1999. graham baker. dir. miramax. beowulf. 2007: robert zemeckis. dir. warner bros. beowulf and grendel. 2005: sturla gunnarsson. dir. truly indie. bloch, r. 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[1818] 1995. frankenstein. hampshire: macmillan. 80 alison elizabeth killilea teeth. 2007. mitchell lichtenstein. dir. roadside attractions. the 13th warrior. 1999: john mctiernan. dir. touchstone films. tolkien, j.r.r. [1936] 1983. the monsters and the critics: and other essays. chistopher tolkien. ed. london, allen & unwin. transformers: revenge of the fallen. 2009. michael bay. dir. paramount pictures. trilling, r.r. 2007: “beyond abjection: the problem with grendel’s mother again” parergron, 24.1: 1–20. under the skin. 2013. jonathan glazer. dir. studio canal. vonnegut, k. [1969] 2000. slaughterhouse 5. london, vintage. the vulgate bible: douay-rheims translation. 2010. swift edgar. ed. cambridge, massachusetts, harvard university press. author’s address school of english university college cork o’rahilly building, cork, ireland received: 8 january 2016 e-mail: ali.killilea@gmail.com revised version accepted: 10 july 2016 selim12.doc samantha zacher, selim 12 (2003-2004): 83—108 the rewards of poetry: “homiletic” verse in cambridge, corpus christi college 201 cambridge, corpus christi college 201 is a very busy manuscript, matching in its intermixture of religious poetry and homilies the earlier and better known tenth-century vercelli book (vercelli, biblioteca capitolare cxvii).1 the compilation as it now stands comprises two distinct eleventhcentury collections, probably from winchester and exeter, which were bound together by archbishop parker in the sixteenth century.2 in part i alone, the compilation contains 58 independently rubricated items spanning 178 pages, copied out in fits and starts by at least four different scribes.3 though the collection is perhaps best known for its numerous wulfstan and wulfstanrelated items,4 these comprise only a portion of what can tentatively be described as a multi-generic miscellany of law codes, homilies, liturgical items, lists, poems, and even the well-known old english prose romance, apollonius of tyre, whose place as a secular narrative in the manuscript has seemed generally puzzling.5 1 for a description of the contents and layout of cambridge, corpus christi college 201, see especially james 1912: 485–91; ker 1957: 82–90, no. 49; budny 1997: 475–86, and wormald 1999: 204–11. 2 several changes were made to the order and content of the manuscript over time. for a concise discussion of the alterations by archbishop parker in the sixteenth century (including erasures and the removal of text), see wormald 1999: 204. for a treatment of the manuscript’s rebinding, as well as a list of scholarly annotations made to the manuscript, see budny 1997: 479–81. 3 for a list of the changes between scribal hands, see especially wormald 1999: 204– 5 at table 4.3. as can be seen from wormald’s chart, the constant changing of scribes may account for some of the repetition between items in the manuscript (see below, n.37). 4 see, for example, wormald 1999: 330–45, and lawson 1994. on the wider question of generic influences within wulfstan’s prose, see further orchard 1992. 5 typical of criticism on the apollonius of tyre is the comment by fulk & cain (2003: 46), which states that “it is … peculiar that the text is found wedged between a selection from wulfstan’s institutes of polity ii and a list of saints.” the issue is completely ignored by goolden in his brief description of the manuscript (1958: xxxii–xxxiv). samantha zacher 84 although the seemingly haphazard arrangement of the items in the collection has presented difficulty for scholars and editors alike who have sought to determine its underlying purpose, the study of generic influences within the collection has proved to be a useful strategy for illuminating some of the thematic connections between discrete items.6 yet while the majority of the critical focus has tended to rest upon the fairly homogenous clusters of either poetry or wulfstanian prose within the manuscript, this paper seeks to take a different approach in focusing on a single poem, namely the rewards of piety, so chosen precisely because of its complex intermixture of generic influences found in both old english poetry and homiletic prose. as we shall see, this poem demonstrates clear verbal and stylistic parallels with surrounding texts in the manuscript both in prose and verse and therefore offers a useful index to the aims and methods of the compiler. moreover, as a piece of homiletic verse with readily identifiable prosaic vocabulary, it stands as a metaphor for the mixed signals and genres of the manuscript as a whole. the rewards of piety stands second in a series of four poems, being preceded by judgment day ii and followed by the lord’s prayer ii and gloria i. fred robinson (1989) was among the first to seize upon the detail that all four poems in cccc 201 are grouped together in one cluster (despite the change of scribes after the first two poems) and without the usual markers of division (such as a green capital or a space). robinson’s reexamination of the manuscript context led him to put forward the convincing argument that the items labeled separately in the anglo-saxon poetic records as an exhortation to christian living and a summons to prayer are in fact part of a single poem that he re-titled rewards of piety (a title i adopt here).7 also stressing the importance of analyzing the text’s mise en page, graham caie (drawing upon grein’s earlier edition of the poetry) likewise demonstrated the importance of manuscript context as a means of discerning thematic and verbal continuity between rewards and the preceding judgment day ii (caie 6 for a discussion of the various genres in cccc 201, see caie 2000: 1–24. 7 see, however, bredehoft 1998, which reexamines some of robinson’s claims about the manuscript layout. bredehoft suggests that the symmetry of the manuscript layout may ultimately be the result of a misinterpretation by the rubricator. for a somewhat outmoded edition and translation of the poem, see lumby 1964 [1876]: 29–35. the rewards of poetry: "homiletic” verse in cccc 201 85 2000: 1-24). both these scholars have importantly situated individual poems within their wider manuscript context. but while the poetry is clustered together within one self-contained section of the manuscript, the poems themselves demonstrate significant and widespread connections with prose located both within and beyond the compilation itself. such connectedness suggests that modern-day distinctions between poetry and prose are not as rigidly adhered to in the manuscript. for example, ure’s comparison of the poems the lord’s prayer ii and gloria i in cccc 201 with their variant texts in oxford, bodleian library, junius 121, has shed light upon the arrangement of cccc 201 itself (ure 1957: 124). in cccc 201 these two poems are cut off by some eleven items from the benedictine office, while in junius 121 variant versions of these poems are embedded within the benedictine office itself. ure’s finding importantly shows that in at least one other manuscript, poems for the lord’s prayer and the gloria are tightly interwoven with prose. moreover, leslie whitbread and don scragg have argued for a textual connection between the first fifteen lines of rewards and variants for these lines occurring in the prose napier homily 30 and vercelli homily xxi.8 this connection shows that although the two homilies overall contain more “prosaic” words, all three variants are in many cases so close that “irregularities” in rewards can sometimes be emended by reference to the homiletic texts.9 vercelli xxi is also notable for its connections with other cccc 201 poems, in particular judgment day ii, since the vercelli homily contains a portion of the poem’s doomsday catalogue, in addition to parts of two otherwise unattested poems identified by angus mcintosh and charles d. wright.10 these occurrences of embedded verse within prose texts 8 see whitbread 1963 and scragg 1977. while scragg opposes whitbread’s earlier claim that napier 29 and 30 were by the same author, he argues a close if not direct textual connection between napier 29 and cccc 201 in the adaptation of lines shared with rewards. 9 see wright (2003: 252) for his discussion of the features in vercelli xxi used to emend perceived “corruptions” in the rewards 1–15. 10 see mcintosh 1949: 14. mcintosh was the first to identify what he considered to be an example of classical verse in vercelli xxi.128–31, and of “debased” or alliterative prose in vercelli xxi.132–41, both apparently derived from lost old english source(s). see also wright 2003, who has made a strong case for the presence of an embedded poem in vercelli xxi.141–49, revisiting an earlier theory samantha zacher 86 highlight an important paradox with regard to modern-day perceptions of old english genres: whereas verse influenced by prose has been characterized as “adulterated,” prose homilies, such as vercelli xxi and napier 30, which incorporate elements of verse, have not been similarly denigrated. clearly, what these studies reveal is the remarkable evidence for significant literary borrowing between individual texts, without apparent regard for modern distinctions normally imposed upon poetry and prose, not to mention between latin and vernacular texts. this chimerical nature of several of the poems in cccc 201 illuminates further the ways in which modern biases concerning generic distinctions differ from anglo-saxon perceptions. and yet, apart from the foundations laid by graham caie (1994 and 2000) with respect to judgment day ii, there has been no systematic analysis of the ways in which the poems demonstrate close verbal and stylistic parallels with the prose texts that surround them. the following discussion will attempt to lay the groundwork for this much larger project by analyzing the confluence of generic influences within a single poem in cccc 201, in this case the rewards of piety. the poem has not received significant literary attention since an initial flurry of articles published by leslie whitbread.11 while the trend since has been to view rewards as a type of spiritualized “wisdom” poem, aligning it on the one hand with secular works like precepts, vainglory, and the fortunes of men, and also with religious works, such as instruction for christians, the seasons for fasting, and the menologium, the analogy on its own has been insufficient to account for many of the structural and thematic aspects of rewards.12 the following discussion will develop a thesis first proposed by whitbread (but never substantially tested) that the rewards of piety (in his words) “in particular shows little if any traces of the older verse vocabulary” and that its “diction links up with the homiletic output of the tenth and put forward by mcintosh that these lines presented a looser two-stressed rhythm in a style similar to that later adapted by wulfstan. 11 see whitbread 1947–8, 1949, 1951, 1957, 1963, 1966, and 1967. 12 the link between rewards and old english wisdom poetry has been copiously argued. see, for example, shippey’s brief classification of the poem within this genre (1976), as well as the much more in-depth study by hansen (1988: 100–125). the rewards of poetry: "homiletic” verse in cccc 201 87 eleventh centuries.”13 in order better to assess whitbread’s claim, dorothy bethurum’s contention that rewards contains patterns of scansion and alliteration that are “far more like that of the heroic poetry” will likewise be considered.14 using rewards as a test case for analyzing formal features such as the use of compounds, set phrases, elements of register, and distinctive patterns of alliteration, it seems possible to generate a more specific description of what makes this poem seem more “homiletic,” or, to put it another way, generally more susceptible to generic influences normally associated with prose. one of the most salient features of rewards is its emphatically didactic composition. the poem itself (of which a full edition and translation appears in the appendix) is comprised mainly of a series of recommendations, presented in list form, for implementing pious and upstanding behavior. the speaker of the poem appears to be a religious teacher of sorts, perhaps even a confessor figure, while the addressee arguably shifts from a more generalized christian audience to an individual penitent. the poem’s structure can roughly be divided into four main portions that outline a guide for spiritual development and the ultimate attainment of the “blossoming kingdom” (blowende rice, line 2) of heaven. the first two sections, for example, speak generally about the need to engage actively in righteous behaviors: lines 1–20 prescribe acts of piety such as prayer, contemplation, and almsgiving, while lines 21–56 prohibit actions that promote sin and damnation (such as gluttony, drunkenness, and fornication). by contrast, the final two sections of the poem appear to be aimed at a specific penitent (though in fact the shift in address may well be primarily rhetorical): lines 57–82 present a personal address to a har hilderinc (“grey warrior,” line 57), exhorting him to follow the religious strategies outlines by the speaker of the poem, while lines 83– 112 urge an unnamed .n. (here used for the insertion of a personal name, or latin nomen), to plea for mercy and salvation. this latter portion of the 13 fulk (1992: 264) echoes this point of view from a metrical standpoint, showing rewards to contain “metrical faults” that are characteristic of late old english verse. 14 in her assessment, bethurum (1957: 48) lumps rewards together with the other poems on the gloria, pater noster, and creed associated elsewhere with the wulfstan canon. while we shall see examples of some heroic diction in the following analysis of rewards (see below, pp. 89–91), the overwhelming evidence does not support this claim. samantha zacher 88 poem, from lines 86–112, contains a series of macaronic verses in both latin and old english that teach the penitent to pray for his own soul.� this last section of the poem marks an important structural shift within the poem between exhortation and prayer, enshrined in the original editorial presentation of rewards as two distinct poems previously called an exhortation to christian living and summons to prayer respectively.� the forms of address in the poem likewise show a mix of generic influences. for example, while the address to the singular leofne (“dear man,” line 1) seems reminiscent of the homiletic men þa leofestan (“dearest men”), the use of the .n. in þænne gemiltsað þe, .n. (“then he will have mercy on you, n”; line 83) seems rather more evocative of the dynamic between confessor and penitent.15� the penitential mood appears to be reinforced by the reference to a har hilderinc, the “grey warrior” of line 57, whose advanced age presumably quickens his need for penance. this address, however, seems closer to models found in wisdom poetry: consider, for example, the almost inverse relationship in the exeter book poem precepts between the frod fæder (“old” or “experienced father”; line 1a) who teaches proper modes of conduct to his freobearn (“gentle-born son”; 1b). the structure of the exhortations in rewards also apparently owes in part to the dual influences of wisdom poetry and homiletic or penitential literature: from its opening phrase nu lære ic þe (“now i will teach you”), the speaker uses a string of imperatives that stress both action and discipline in body and mind. for the first half of the poem, these occur exclusively in the a-line, forming the daunting sequence: wyrc (“do”; line 16), hafa (“have”; 17), ceapa (“buy [as in salvation]”; 34), warna (“be cautious”; 41), and ondræd (“fear”; 52). by contrast, in the closing macaronic portion of the poem (lines 83–112), the imperatives appear in both half-lines (and indeed in both old english and latin) as if to drive home an urgent need for penance: see for example, fo (“receive”; 90), uoca (“call”; 94), bide (“bid”; 95), and roga (“bid” again; 101). while this type of hortatory structure is readily apparent in old english homilies,16 a fitting parallel can once again be drawn 15 see whitbread 1957: 126, and caie 2000: 16–17. both argue verbal and thematic connections with the confessional of egbert. 16 a particularly vibrant example of this feature in homilies can be found in the vercelli vii, which makes emphatic use of a string of imperatives that urge the the rewards of poetry: "homiletic” verse in cccc 201 89 with regard to secular wisdom poetry, which characteristically makes use of gnomes emphasizing wisdom and learning in addition to heroic and feudal behavior. if the overall structure of the poem seems indebted to a wide range of influences in both poetry and prose, perhaps what is needed is a more nuanced analysis of lexis, syntax, and prosody. a characteristic feature of classical old english poetry is the occurrence of compounds comprised of two free morphemes. and yet, an analysis of such compounds in rewards does not seem to reflect this general supposition. the following presents a list of all of such adjective and noun compounds in rewards together with their distribution in poetry; those compounds appearing ten or more times in prose are marked with an asterisk, while items appearing only in poetry are indicated by an obelisk:17 line 3 eadmod*� genesis, line 2283b;� daniel, 396a; andreas, 270b; dream of the rood, 60a; christ a, 255a; christ b, 786b; guthlac a, 525a and 599a; guthlac b 1301a; seafarer 107a; vainglory 68b and 78a; fortunes of men, 91b; paris psalter 73.19; paris psalter 137.6; lord’s prayer ii, 57a; a prayer, 59a, instructions for christians, 231b.�� line 3 ælmesgeorn* gifts of men, 67b. line 9 ælmessylen* [none] audience to comprehend the message of the homilist: “understand”; (ongitað; section 7), “think” (geþencað; sections 8, 13, 20, and 22), “remember” (gemunað; sections 9, 10, 19, 21 [preceded by and], 25, and 26), and “hear” (gehyrað; section 28). for a further discussion of the form and source for this homily, see zacher [2005]. 17 the list omits soðfæst (“righteous”; lines 14, 89, and 101), which occurs over 180 times in poetry, over 500 times in prose, and over 900 times in glossed texts. also omitted are adverbial forms of the listed adjectives. translations for the above compounds can be rendered as follows: “humble-minded” (line 3); “willing with alms” (line 3); “giving of alms” (9); “secret fornication” (44); “going to church” (48); “protector” (51); “sinful desire” (54); “warrior” (57); “native country” (75); “gluttony” (77); “dwelling” (78); “glorious king” (84); “gentle-minded” (104). samantha zacher 90 line 44 dyrnegeligere* [none] line 48 cyricsocn* [none] line 51 mundbora* christ a, 28a; guthlac a, 542a, 695a, and 787a; juliana, 156a and 213a; riddle 17, 1a; resignation, 109a; descent into hell, 75a; beowulf, 1480a and 2779b, paris psalter 120. 5; capture of the five boroughs, 2a. line 54 synlust* christ a, 269a. line 57 hilderinc† dream of the rood, 61b and 72a; elene, 263a; beowulf, 986b, 1307a,1495a, 1576a, 3124a, 3136a; battle of maldon, 169a; battle of brunanburh 39a. line 75 eþelrice† andreas, 120a and 432b; christ c, 1461a; solomon and saturn, 105b. line 77 oferfyll* [none] line 78 eardwic† fates of the apostles, 93a; guthlac b, 853b; phoenix, 431b; partridge, 15b. line 84 þrymcyningc† elene, 494b; vainglory, 62a; meters of boethius 20, 205a. line 104 bliðmod genesis b, 1468b and 1800a; daniel, 252a and 712a; death of edward, 15a. as one can see, four of the compounds in rewards, namely almessylen (“giving of alms”), dyrnegeligere (“secret fornication”), cyricsocn (“going to church”), and oferfyll (“gluttony”), do not occur elsewhere in old english poetry, though they are common in prose. this is not surprising, given that their initial morphemes (with the marked exception of ofer-) rarely occur in poetic compounds. thus, the initial element dyrneis never attested in poetry, while compounds containing “alms” appear three times,18 and ciric 18 other instances in poetry of the compound element ælm(e)sinclude ælmesdæd (“the performance of alms”) in the seasons for fasting, lines 41a and 191a, and the rewards of poetry: "homiletic” verse in cccc 201 91 only once.19 by contrast, the solely poetic compounds found in the list are predominantly heroic, a rather strange phenomenon given the generally hortatory feel of the poem: the aforementioned hilderinc (“warrior”) occurs 11 times in poetry, with the same alliterative half-line har hilderinc (“grey warrior”) occurring a further four times in beowulf (lines 1306 and 3134), maldon (line 168), and brunanburh (line 37). a similar case could be made for the evidently secular terms emphasizing kingship and homeland, such as eþelric (“native country”), eardwic (“dwelling”), and þrymcyning (“glorious king”). although these three terms appear exclusively in poetry, their individual compound elements are more ambivalent in terms of their classification: for example, the þrym(“glory”) element appears elsewhere in poetry seventeen times while in prose fifty-eight. such statistics seem to show (as whitbread earlier argued) the preponderance of “prosaic” forms in rewards. in exploring these prosaic connections, it is perhaps worth noting that while several are very widely attested in prose of all kinds, many of these compound-forms occur not only in wulfstan-related texts in the corpus as a whole, but also in such texts within cccc 201 itself. consider the distribution of the same nominal and adjectival compounds within the following illustrative sample (and it is intended as no more than that) of legal codes and homilies written by or associated with wulfstan, where asterisks denote texts found in cccc 201: line 3 eadmod *bethurum xc, lines 69 and 130; *bethurum xiii, 21; bethurum xv, 42 and 69; *napier 30, 145/34; napier 49, 261/21; napier 57, 294/26; *polity 2.1.1, line 27; *polity 2.1.2., 19. perhaps also ælmesman(“almsman”) in the metrical charms 1, line 46, although in the latter case the word in question occurs in a prose portion of the charm. 19 the compound ciricnytt(“church-service”) appears once in the gifts of men (91b). samantha zacher 92 line 3 ælmesgeorn bethurum xa, 21; *bethurum xiii, 20; *napier 30, 145/34; napier 56, 290/7. line 9 ælmessylen *napier 30, 146/4; polity 2.2.1, 7. line 44 dyrnegeligere napier 56, 290/30. line 48 cyricsocn *bethurum xiii, 67; bethurum xviii, 106; *napier 30, 150/13; *napier 35, 171/20; napier 44, 223/15; polity 2.2.1, 7; *viia æthelred 5, 1. line 51 mundbora *bethurum xix, 58; *viii æthelred, 33; *ii cnut, 40; edward and guthrum, 12. line 54 synlust bethurum ix, 130; napier 29, 138/13; *napier 40, 182/13. line 77 oferfyll bethurum viiic, 165; *bethurum xc, 104; bethurum xiv, 27; *bethurum xxc, 185; napier 46, 236/11, 242/2, and 242/3; napier 47, 245/16; napier 57, 297/30; *v æthelred, line 24; vi æthelred 28, 2. though it would be premature to argue for any direct wulfstanian connection with regard to rewards (pending a more exhaustive survey), the degree of general overlap is nonetheless striking. indeed, precisely such a connection to wulfstan has previously been argued with regard to versions of several poems in cccc 201, namely gloria i and the lord’s prayer ii, with some going so far as to ascribe authorship to wulfstan for these poems.20 more concrete parallels have likewise been drawn between the content of cccc 201 and those “wulfstan handbooks” that demonstrate clear and direct connections to either worcester or york.21 though the circumstantial 20 feiler (1966 [1901]: 42–53) was among the first to advance this argument for wulfstan’s authorship of the poetry. bethurum (1957: 48), by contrast, has argued strenuously that wulfstan could not have composed them, since they exemplify forms that are uncharacteristic of his diction and vocabulary. 21 for a list of the manuscripts most commonly associated with these “wulfstan handbooks,” see sauer 2000 [1980], and also bethurum 1942. for a comparison of the items in cccc 201 with that found in oxford, bodleian library, junius 121, the rewards of poetry: "homiletic” verse in cccc 201 93 evidence surrounding the provenance of cccc 201 has not been strong enough to allow for a definitive link to this group,22 cccc 201 nevertheless displays important textual overlappings with these more “canonical” manuscripts, and indeed on occasion bears the sole surviving witness to wulfstanian materials.23 the various legal, homiletic, and penitential influences of the sort found in these handbooks can also be detected with regard to several set phrases in rewards. consider, for example, lines 20–21, which cite the coming of doomsday as an impetus for quick repentance: þeos woruld is æt ende, and we synd wædlan gyt/ heofena rices; þæt is hefig byrden (“this world is at its end, and we are still destitute of the kingdom of heaven; that is a heavy burden”). though the sentiment of worldly transience is not unfamiliar to poetry,24 the structure, particularly of the half-line þeos woruld is æt ende (which is echoed with variation in line 22) is rare in verse, but is found regularly in homiletic prose.25 likewise, lines 16–17 demonstrate see ure 1957, and especially his table of contents for the latter manuscript on pp. 3–5. 22 bethurum (1957: 2) demonstrates that the strongest textual connections are between cccc 201 and oxford, bodleian library, hatton 113 and oxford, bodleian library, junius 121. the best case for manuscript links to wulfstan are made on the basis of alleged examples containing wulfstan’s own handwriting. for a discussion of manuscripts containing wulfstan’s handwriting, see ker 1971. for facsimiles of some of these examples, see loyn 1971. the manuscripts alleged to contain wulfstan’s handwriting include: oxford, bodleian library, hatton 402 (s.c. 4117) (brittany, s. ix2; france, s. x); london, british library, cotton claudius a. iii (s. x/xi1), fols. 31–86 and 106–50; cambridge, corpus christi college 190, pt 1 (s. xi1), pp. iii–xii and 1–294; copenhagen, kongelige bibliotek, gamle konglige sammlung 1595 4o (s. xi1), fols. 48r, 65v–66v, and 81r; london, british library, harley 55 (s. xi1), fols. 1–4; oxford, bodleian library, hatton 20 (s.c. 4113) (890–7); london, british library, cotton vespasian a. xiv (worcester or york, s. xi1), fols. 114–79; london, british library, add. 38651 (s. xiin), fols. 57–8; london, british library, cotton nero a. i (worcester or york, s. xiin), fols. 70–177; london, british library, cotton tiberius a. xiii (worcester, s. xi1-xiex), fols. 1–118; rouen, bibliothèque municipale 1382 (u109), fols. 173r–198v; york, minster library, add. 1 (s. xi1– s. xi2). 23 the manuscript contains, for example, a portion of the only extant version of wulfstan’s first pastoral letter (pp. 19–20). for a recent discussion of wulfstan’s letter, and its worcester connections see hill 1992: 113–14. 24 cf., for example, the ubi sunt passage in the wanderer 91–109, or the dream of the rood 135b–144a. 25 a comparable phrase in poetry can be found in the paris psalter 118. 96, ic soð geseah and swylce wat, ealre þysse worulde wurðeð ende (“i saw the truth and also knew, that all this world will come to an end.”) samantha zacher 94 connections with extant prose: the phrase wyrc þæt þu wyrce (translated as “whatever you do… have”) has wider parallels in legal expression, and may even present something of a signature-phrase within alfredian prose.26 the prosaic sense of this passage carries over to line 17, in the command to hafa metodes ege on gemang symle (“have the fear of the creator continually about you”), which contains a biblical parallel with the theme of timor domini found in proverbs i.7. these prosaic expressions exemplify several explicitly homiletic features discernible within rewards. an evaluation of syntactic patterns in rewards reveals additional formal connections with prose. for example, a quick scan of the poem reveals an abundance of adverbs, the proliferation of which is relatively rare in “classical” old english verse. specifically, there is an unusually high occurrence of alliteration on a single adverbial element in the a-line (a feature which in this poem never occurs in the b-line). consider, for example, the following self-contained half-lines comprised solely of adverbs ending in – lice: digolice (“secretly”; line 33), eadmodlice (“humbly”; 49), earfoðlice (“shamefully”; 55), and digollice (“secretly”; 71). one might even add to the list the adverbial phrase embe þæt (“about that”; in line 67), which is similarly stressed. in fact, a consideration of all similarly stressed alliterative lines in the extant old english corpus reveals that the proportional ratio in rewards is far greater than in most any other old english poem; a high ratio also occurs in the meters of boethius, another text with demonstrable prosaic connections.27 though it cannot be ruled out that the preponderance 26 while the phrase wyrc þæt þu wyrce has been explained by grein as the protasis of a conditional statement perhaps best translated as “whatever you do... have,” whitbread has noted parallels with legal expression (for both examples, see whitbread 1949: 181). more instances are also to be found in alfredian prose, since similar phrases occur in the old english dialogues of gregory the great, for example, at cambridge, corpus christi college 12, book 4, 58.346.16 (wyrc þæt þu wyrcest); cambridge, corpus christi college 12, book 2, 6.114.18 (wyrc þin weorc); oxford, bodleian library hatton 76 part 1, book 2, 6.114.17 (wyrc þin worc).� 27 a survey of just the a-lines containing alliteration on a single adverbial element ending in –lice produces the following results: beowulf [total of 3,182 lines], lines 1556 (yðelice), 1636 (earfoðlice), 1657 (earfoðlice), 1756 (se þe unmurnlice), 2122 (ellenlice), 2303 (earfoðlice), 2822 (earfoðlice); christ a [439 lines], lines 340 (anmodlice), 433 (ond geornlicost); christ c [797 lines], line 898 (ungelice); elene [1,321 lines], lines 99 (heht þa onlice), 746 (singallice), 1140 (ondweardlice) 1158 (ond deorlicost), 1307 (ungelice); genesis a [2,320 lines], lines 1519 (unarlice), 2252 (unarlice), 2461 (unscomlice), 2690 (unfreondlice); gifts of men [113 lines], the rewards of poetry: "homiletic” verse in cccc 201 95 of this feature in rewards is merely a stylistic feature characteristic of late verse, it may also relate to potent parallels with homiletic prose, where the emphasis upon pious behavior seems characteristically to employ adverbs of manner. an investigation of patterns of alliteration in rewards is also helpful, especially in instances of irregular patterns in prosody. there are a surprisingly large number of verses within this relatively short poem, for example, that do not contain “classical” forms of alliteration (according to the types identified by sievers [1893]or mcintosh [1949: 110] for example): line 2 gif þu wille þæt blowende rice gestigan line 9 godes and manna and seo ælmessylen line 11 þæt he þine synna adwæscan wylle line 25 ne mihtu mid þæm eallum sauwle þine line 56 gyltas þine swiðe bemurnan line 66 sauwle þine a hi winnað line 73 hu þu þæt ece leoht æfre begytan mæge line 94 and þurh þæne halgan gast uoca frequenter line 95 bide helpes hine clemens deus though in old english poetry it is relatively common to find subsidiary types of linking or ornamental alliteration that compensate for irregularly line 28 (missenlice); judgment day ii [306 lines], line 167 (and biterlice); judith [349 lines], line 100 (bysmerlice); juliana [731 lines], line 50 (unwaclice); lord’s prayer ii [123 lines], line 69 (dæghwamlice); maldon [325 lines], line 308 (unwaclice); menologium [231 lines], line 94 (mænifealdlice); meters of boethius 1 [84 lines], line 64 (degelice); meters of boethius 5 [45 lines], line 14 (and gereclice); meters of boethius 7 [54 lines], line 46 (singallice); meters of boethius 13 [80 lines], line 5 (wundorlice); meters of boethius 20 [281 lines], lines 5 (wundorlice), 68 (gesiblice); meters of boethius 22 [65 lines], line 2 (inweardlice); meters of boethius 31 [23 lines], line 2 (þætte mislice); metrical solomon and saturn [506 lines], line 29 (bismorlice); paris psalter [5040 lines], ps 104.27 (and gleawlice); ps 118. 463 (and cuðlice); ps 52. 2 (ungleawlice); ps 68. 16 (unrihtlice); ps 77.56 (and geornlice); ps 77. 58 (and gramlice); ps 83. 7 (and tidlice); ps 91. 2 (and neodlice); precepts [94 lines], line 87 (ond gemetlice); riddle 67 [16 lines], line 12 (missenlice); seasons for fasting [230 lines], lines 185 (dæghwamlice), 199 (dæghwamlice); soul and body i [166 lines], line 38 (earfoðlice); soul and body ii [121lines], line 35 (earfoðlice). samantha zacher 96 stressed lines, rewards omits even these ancillary devices. this pattern contrasts starkly with that found elsewhere in cccc 201, particularly in the poem judgment day ii, which as graham caie (2000: 56) has shown, uses rhyme and homoeoteleuton (sharing the same grammatical ending) to compensate for the lack of alliteration in at least three cases: þær þa wæterburnan swegdon and urnon (“where the water-streams swayed and ran”; line 3); hate of hleorum, recene to tearum (“hot from cheeks, quickly to tears”; line 28); and ne biþ þær wædl ne lyre ne deaðes gryre (“nor is there any destitution, nor loss, nor the terror of death”; line 267). while many editors emend most of the alliteratively “defective” lines in rewards to create more “correct” poetry, such a revision perhaps misrepresents the very real blurring of boundaries between poetry and prose found in the compilation of cccc 201. a similar case can be made for the half-lines in rewards that appear to be missing b-lines (or, of course, a-lines; they seem at least incomplete as they stand), and a full list of these according to the edition in the anglo-saxon poetic records is as follows: line 12 (and eac oþera fela; “and also many others”); line 39 (gif he him god ne ondræt; “if he does not fear god”); line 46 (þa man mæg mid fæstenum; “which with fasting … one is able”); line 67 (embe þæt; “about that”); line 85 (a butan ende; “always without end”); line 86 (saule þinre; “your soul”). this list cannot be definitive, however, since it is ultimately unclear whether these lines should be read as hypermetric or hypometric verse;28 the ambiguity arises from the fact that these lines may be taken either as widowed half-lines, or (as bliss [1971] has argued in relation to gnomic verse) as extensions of the surrounding “regular” verse. without rekindling the debate over “debased verse” (argued most notably by sievers and mcintosh)29 it seems sufficient to point out that in none of the six examples listed above do the perceived “omissions” of half-lines damage the sense of the passage, even though many editors tend to subtract, add, or 28 for a discussion of patterns of alliteration in hypermetric verse, see further hieatt 1974. 29 by “debased verse” i am referring to those verses that contain half-lines joined together by alliteration or rhyme or both, but which do not follow the “standard” rules for “classical verse” as discussed by mcintosh 1949: 110. for a general treatment of this debate and a consideration of this feature as it applies to rewards, see wright 2003: 247. the rewards of poetry: "homiletic” verse in cccc 201 97 otherwise change these verses to create more classically perfect verse. the ambiguity, then, cannot be resolved without deeper consultation of the manuscript evidence: while it is often the habit of scribe b to correct himself with regard to both spelling and omissions,30 there are no parallel signs of self-perceived error with regard to these half-lines. in fact, both the manuscript punctuation and spacing continue normally throughout these lines in every case but line 12 (containing the “irregular” line and eac oþera fela [“and also many others”]), where the punctus denoting a new half-line may either be missing or attached to the following “g” of godra worca (“of good works”) in line 13. this practice stands in sharp contrast with the distinctly long and metrically odd b-line þu scealt glædlice swiðe swincan (“you must greatly labor gladly”; line 74) where the scribe inserts what may seem an extra punctus, perhaps to highlight this very irregularity. on the basis of the punctuation, then, there does not seem to be a perceived lack in prosody for these half-lines. syntactical evidence could likewise be called upon to demonstrate the scribe’s treatment of these halflines. here again, an examination of what we might call “compensatory features” is illuminating: in the case of the aforementioned isolated half-line and eac oþera fela (of line 12), it could be argued that the internal rhyme that follows in glengað and bringað (“adorn and bring”; line 13) acts as a correcting linking device that balances out this “irregularity.” likewise, in the case of the stray half-line þa man mæg mid fæstenum (in line 46), the use of the near-alliterating forhæfdnessum (“[with] self-restraint”) in the following line 47b may serve the double duty of alliterating both forwards and backwards through ornamental alliteration with both fæstenum (“with fasting”; line 46) and heonan (“away”; 47b). though it cannot be said for certain whether these half-lines represent interpolations or omissions (if either), the manuscript evidence does not betray any perceived error with regard to these truncated lines. moreover, in at least one instance it seems plausible that text has been added (rather than lost through transmission): the 30 see, for example, the scribe’s apparent self-corrections for line 13b bringað (with b altered from þ), line 21b byrden (ms byr dæn; with the a of æ dotted beneath for deletion); line 34b gelyfð (ms belyfð; with b dotted beneath for deletion and g written above); line 47a forhæfdnessum (with the d added above the line); line 58b ongyte (with y written on an erasure); line 80b gebindan (ms gebinde; with the letters ge added above the line); line 102a bidde (added above the line in the same hand); line 102a friclo (ms fricolo with the first o dotted beneath for deletion). samantha zacher 98 a butan ende in line 85 functions like a standard homiletic close in order to cap off the preceding benediction. perhaps, then, as in the case of line 85, it is not unfeasible to imagine that some of the half-lines could have been included to make the poetry seem more homiletic (rather than that the homiletic text has been altered to make it seem more poetic). the types of questions raised so far with respect to genre are not limited solely to distinctions between poetry and prose. a parallel cross-pollination can be discerned in the closing macaronic section of the poem, which combines two languages, namely latin and old english, even as it straddles the line between prayer and exhortation. this section of the poem has often been compared to the macaronic portions of the phoenix and aldhelm, strictly on account of their formal and metrical similarities.31 given the prayer-like language of this section, further contextual parallels may be sought elsewhere: a potent analogy might be made, for example, with regard to the four runic signatures by cynewulf in fates of the apostles, elene, christ b and juliana, since these cynewulfian texts not only combine runes with latin letters, but also present a mixture of self-reflection, exhortation and prayer, sometimes in terms not unlike those presented here.32 while in rewards neither the interwoven latin nor the old english has been traced to a single source, some of the latin verses echo widely known liturgical texts (such as the supplex rogo formula which resembles the supplices rogamus formula of the canon for the mass),33 while others arguably translate portions of text found in the three surrounding poems in cccc 201. the argument that some of these lines present translations from latin materials is 31 see especially robinson 1989: 195–6. 32 the four runically signed poems attributed to cynewulf are fates of the apostles and elene in the vercelli book (vercelli, biblioteca capitolare cxvii), and christ b and juliana in the exeter book (exeter, cathedral library 3501). a further comparison may also be made with devotional literature associated with the virgin mary, since not only is she glorified in rewards, lines 91–94, but there seems to be an incorporation of the standard pun on mæra (“famous”; line 88) and marian (“mary”; 93), even though mæra here appears specifically in association with christ. i am grateful to professor mercedes salvador for sharing this latter analogue with me. 33 one would like to emend the aspr vi reading rogo (“i ask”; line 101) to the imperative roga (“[you] ask”) in keeping with the run of imperatives in the macaronic section. though it may be that the scribe was influenced by the surrounding uiuendo (“in living”) and friclo (“aid”), the transmitted form may just as well reflect an earlier first-person benediction. the rewards of poetry: "homiletic” verse in cccc 201 99 strengthened by the fact that running some of these phrases (such as alta polorum and the oddly ungrammatical luce perhennem) through databases like the pl or cetedoc do not turn up many latin matches. since both of these phrases present acceptable hexameter cadences, however, they may ultimately derive from latin poetry: thus while alta polorum is first witnessed in a ninth-century poem by sedulius scottus, the clearly related alta poli is made popular by aldhelm, just as luce perenni appears in the poetry of alcuin. whether or not further latin parallels can be produced for all the phrases in the macaronic section, the majority of the lines here are nevertheless demonstrably formulaic: for example, in lines 86–93 there is a sequence of sometimes synonymous genitives all modifying the glory of christ. many of these seemingly formulaic latin phrases also form direct parallels with the contiguous old english verse: for example, the pacis of line 86 is followed in the next line by the synonymous old english sibbe (both meaning “peace”), just as supplex (“supplicant”) in line 101 is answered by the semantically related fultumes (“aid”) in 102. � another feature of the macaronic verse that shows signs of deliberate generic admixture can be found in examples of bilingual double alliteration, as in the following lines (the alliterative segments are in bold, while the latin text is underlined): line 84 èeoda ìrymcyningc wkronum sedentem line 87 vibbe gevælða valus mundi line 88 petod se pæra pagna uirtute line 90 io on iultum iactor cosmi line 92 flæne afenned &hristus in orbem line 93 petod þurh parian pundi redemptor line 98 þa geeyrd eodade eona uoluntate line 104 eliðmod eidde eeatus et iustus line 106 ìingian to ìeodne wkronum regentem line 109 onio ireolice iactor aeternus in two of these cases, the author has recognized that both “ð” and “þ” alliterate with the latin “th” in èeoda ìrymcyningc wkronum sedentem (line samantha zacher 100 84), and again in ìingian to ìeodne wkronum regentem (line 107). by the same token, the author has assumed that a vowel can alliterate with the latin “u or v” in both se of  þelre wæs xirginis partu (line 91) and in þæt hi hdlle þe xnica xoce (line 105). one must wonder too whether there is a play on the latin “u or v” as a fricative in iultumes bidde iriclo xirginem almum (line 102). to add to these effects, we might include the presence of linking alliteration as a type of ornamental effect between lines 99 and 100 with the repeated “c” in fennan, &hristum, fyninga, fyningc, and fasta, where from a visual standpoint the “ch” of christ is comfortably paired with velar “c.” these impressive aural and visual effects foreground the mixture of genres and languages in the macaronic portions of the poem, and indeed, represent only a small portion of the same in the poem as a whole. as can be seen from the foregoing analysis, the poem rewards in many ways presents a model in miniature of the type of generic hybridization seen throughout cccc 201. the influence of different kinds of poetic and prosaic diction, style, and formulae can be felt at work here, even if the overall sensibility is classifiably different from earlier poetic compositions. the detailed study of this individual poem also, perhaps, reveals the need for a new edition of cccc 201 as whole, since no small part of the difficulty in assessing how the various texts and genres in cccc 201 are linked is that one is forced to consult an array of editions all produced to very different standards, with very different intentions, and sometimes with a radically different sequencing of texts.34 complicating matters further is the fact that there are significant portions of cccc 201 that are not officially part of the old english corpus at all, as they do not appear in the massive assemblage of canonical texts compiled for the dictionary of old english, which serves for most anglo-saxonists as their first port of call.35 these portions of cccc 201 have been omitted either because they appear in the critical apparatus of the main editions and have therefore been ignored,36 or else because they are 34 see, for example bethurum 1957; napier 1967 [1883]; jost 1959; ure 1957; liebermann 1960; and dobbie 1942. 35 healey, et al. 2000 (last accessed 27 february 2005). 36 bethurum’s edition in particular has been criticized for this tendency; see mcdougall 1995: 3–4; franzen 1991: 32–33; and orchard 2003. andy orchard is also currently undertaking a new edition of wulfstan’s homilies that aims accurately to report all manuscript variants for these texts. the rewards of poetry: "homiletic” verse in cccc 201 101 assumed to present close variants of material that has already been anthologized, even when upon further inspection the variants do not appear very close at all.37 while an edition meeting all these needs would offer the ideal solution, the current plan to digitize cccc 201 (along with all the other manuscripts held at the parker library at cambridge, corpus christi college) marks the first significant step in redressing this need.38�� at all events, it is hoped that this brief analysis of rewards has demonstrated the potential benefits of a more manuscript-based therefore necessarily cross-generic view in seeking to situate rewards in its literary and cultural context. though the poem has so often been overlooked for its almost bland and predictable message, perhaps the interest of this humble piece is more to be found in its manipulation of genre, language, and form. in its own small way, the rewards of piety teaches us a lesson or two about the rewards of poetry, no matter how prosaic those rewards may sometimes seem.39 samantha zacher vassar college 37 in fact, one need not even go beyond the pale of the manuscript to look for variants: at least eight substantial examples of intertextual repetition can be located within cccc 201. the repetition of discrete items within cccc 201 can be seen with reference to ker (1957: 82–90), no. 49, between the following: items 13 and 41 (of portions of napier 34 [cf. bethurum xxi]); items 18 and 42 (of portions of polity 23); items 19 and 42 (of portions of polity 22); items 20 and 42 (of portions of polity 25); items 24 and 42 (of portions of polity 24); items 25 and 29 (of portions napier 10 (2nd prg.) [cf. bethurum xc.20–38]); between items 26 and 27 and 29 (of portions of napier 10 [cf. bethurum xc.62-71; out of order]); items 50 and 58 (of portions of de confessione i–xi). for an in-depth account of some of these repetitions, see further orchard (2003: 311–40), who documents the double occurrence within cccc 201 of what we know as bethurum xxi. there is still much work to be done, for example, on the various repetitions of parts of bethurum xc. 38 see the description of the parker library project at http://parkerweb.stanford.edu/about/project.jsp. 39 i would very much like to thank andy orchard for his helpful suggestions in writing this article. i would also like to thank the national endowment for the humanities, whose sponsored 2004 summer institute on anglo-saxon england in cambridge gave me the opportunity to spend time at the parker library studying cccc 201. i am grateful too to paul szarmach, the director of the neh institute, and emily thornbury, the intern on that program, for their stimulating comments about the paper. http://parkerweb.stanford.edu/about/project.jsp samantha zacher 102 appendix: text and translation of the rewards of piety (text is adapted from aspr vi) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 nu lære ic þe swa man leofne sceal. gif þu wille þæt blowende rice gestigan, þænne beo þu eadmod and ælmesgeorn, wis on wordum, and wæccan lufa on hyge halgum on þas hwilwendan tid, bliðe mode, and gebedum filige oftost symle þær þu ana sy. forðan þæt halige gebed and seo hluttre lufu godes and manna and seo ælmessylen and se miccla hopa to þinum hælende, þæt he þine synna adwæscan wylle, and eac oþera fela godra weorca glengað and bringað þa soðfæstan sauwle to reste on þa uplican eadignesse. wyrc þæt þu wyrce, word oððe dæda, hafa metodes ege on gemang symle; þæt is witodlice wisdomes ord, þæt þu þæt ece leoht eal ne forleose. þeos woruld is æt ende, and we synd wædlan gyt heofena rices; þæt is hefig byrden. and þeah þu æfter þinum ende eall gesylle þæt þu on eorðan ær gestryndes goda gehwylces, wylle gode cweman, ne mihtu mid þæm eallum sauwle þine ut alysan, gif heo inne wyrð feondum befangen, frofre bedæled, welena forwyrned; ac þu wuldres god, ece ælmihtigne, ealninga bidde þæt he þe ne forlæte laðum to handa, feondum to frofre, ac þu fleoh þanan, syle ælmessan oft and gelome digolice; þæt bið drihtnes lar gumena gehwylces þe on god gelyfð. ceapa þe mid æhtum eces leohtes, þy læs þu forweorðe, þænne þu hyra geweald nafast to syllanne. hit bið swiðe yfel manna gehwilcum þæt he micel age, gif he him god ne ondræt swiðor micle þonne his sylfes gewil. warna þe georne wið þære wambe fylle, forþan heo þa unþeawas ealle gesomnað þe þære saule swiðost deriað, þæt is druncennes and dyrnegeligere, ungemet wilnung ætes and slæpes; þa man mæg mid fæstenum and forhæfdnessum heonon adrifan, and mid cyricsocnum cealdum wederum eadmodlice ealluncga biddan now i will teach you, as one must a dear man. if you wish to ascend to that blossoming kingdom, then be humble-minded, and willing with alms, wise in words, and love vigils in holy contemplation in this transitory time with a cheerful heart, and pursue [your] prayers, most often continually, where you are alone. because holy prayer, and pure love of god and men, and the giving of alms, and the great hope in your savior that he will extinguish your sins, and also many others of good works will adorn and bring the righteous soul to rest in that heavenly blessedness. whatever you do in word or deeds have the fear of the creator continually about you; that is certainly the origin of wisdom, so that you might not entirely lose that eternal light. this world is at its end, and we are still destitute of the kingdom of heaven; that is a heavy burden. and although after your end you [will] give all that you before hoarded on earth of every good thing, you [will] wish to please god, you might not with all of that release your soul, if within it has become ensnared by fiends, deprived of comfort bereft of wealth; but you must continually pray the god of glory, the eternal almighty, that he does not abandon you to the hands of foes, as a comfort for fiends, but you must flee thence, give alms, often and repeatedly, secretly; that is the lord’s teaching for each man who believes in god. buy with your possessions the eternal light lest you perish when you have no control over them to give. it is very bad for each man that he possess much if he does not fear god much more greatly than his own will. be fully cautious against filling your stomach because it gathers all those vices which most greatly harm the soul, that is drunkenness and secret fornication, immoderate desire for food and sleep, which with fasting and self-restraint one is able to drive away, and with going to church in cold weather always humbly to pray the rewards of poetry: "homiletic” verse in cccc 201 103 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 heofena drihten þæt he þe hæl gife, milde mundbora, swa him gemet þince. and ondræd þu ðe dihle wisan, nearwe geþancas, þe on niht becumað, synlustas foroft swiðe fremman earfoðlice, þy þu earhlice scealt gyltas þine swiðe bemurnan, har hilderinc; hefie þe ðincaþ synna þine. forþam þu sylf ongyte þæt þu alætan scealt læne staþelas, eard and eþel. uncuð bið þe þænne tohwan þe þin drihten gedon wille, þænne þu lengc ne most lifes brucan, eardes on eþle, swa þu ær dydest, blissum hremi. nu þu ðe beorgan scealt, and wið feonda gehwæne fæste healdan sauwle þine; a hi winnað embe þæt dæges and nihtes ongean drihtnes lif. þu miht hy gefleman, gif þu filian wilt larum minum, swa ic lære þe digollice þæt þu on dægred oft ymbe þinre sauwle ræd swiðe smeage, hu þu þæt ece leoht æfre begytan mæge, siðe gesecan. þu scealt glædlice swiðe swincan wið þæs uplican eþelrices dæges and nihtes, þu scealt druncen fleon and þa oferfylle ealle forlætan. gif þu wilt þa upplican eardwic ceosan, þænne scealt þu hit on eorðan ær geþencan, and þu þe sylfne swiðe gebindan and þa unþeawas ealle forlætan þe þu on þis life ær lufedest and feddest. þænne gemiltsað þe, .n., mundum qui regit, ðeoda þrymcyningc thronum sedentem a butan ende saule þinre. geunne þe on life auctor pacis sibbe gesælða, salus mundi, metod se mæra magna uirtute, and se soðfæsta summi filius fo on fultum, factor cosmi, se of æþelre wæs uirginis partu clæne acenned christus in orbem, metod þurh marian, mundi redemptor, and þurh þæne halgan gast. uoca frequenter bide helpes hine, clemens deus, se onsended wæs summo de throno and þære clænan clara uoce þa gebyrd bodade bona uoluntate þæt heo scolde cennan christum regem, ealra cyninga cyningc, casta uiuendo. and þu þa soðfæstan supplex roga, fultumes bidde friclo uirginem almum, and þæræfter to omnes sancti bliðmod bidde, beatus et iustus, the lord of the heavens that he give you health the gentle protector, as seems fitting for him. and fear the secret customs, narrow thoughts, which come in the night very often painfully to produce sinful desires [since] afterwards shamefully you must greatly mourn for your sins, grey warrior; heavy to you will seem your sins. wherefore you yourself perceive that you must abandon transitory estates, land and country. unknown it will be to you then what your lord will do to you when you no longer must enjoy life, the land in [your] country, as you once did, exulting in joys. now you must protect yourself and against every fiend hold fast your soul; they always fight about that day and night, against the life of a lord. you can set them to flight, if you wish to follow my teachings, just as i teach you secretly that you in the early dawn often consider greatly about your soul’s remedy, how you ever may acquire that eternal light, seek the journey. you must gladly labor greatly after the heavenly native country day and night, you must flee drunkenness and abandon all gluttony. if you wish to choose that heavenly dwelling, then you must consider it before on earth and greatly bind yourself and abandon all those vices which you before loved and cherished in this life. then he will have mercy on you, n, who rules the world the glorious king of nations, sitting on the throne always without end, for your soul. may he grant you in life, the author of peace the joys of peace, [who is] the world’s salvation, the famous creator, by his great strength, and the righteous son of the most high receive [you] in comfort, the maker of the world, who was from the birth of the noble maid, purely born, christ into the world, the creator through mary, the world’s redeemer and through the holy spirit. call frequently, pray him for help, the clement lord who was sent from the highest throne and to the pure one with clear voice heralded the birth, with good will, that she must give birth to christ the king, the king of all kings, by living chaste. and you, as a suppliant pray the righteous one, pray eagerly for aid the gracious virgin, and thereafter all the saints; gentle-minded pray, blessed and just, samantha zacher 104 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 þæt hie alle þe unica uoce þingian to þeodne thronum regentem, æcum drihtne, alta polorum, þæt he þine saule, summus iudex, onfo freolice, factor aeternus, and he gelæde luce perhennem, þær eadige animæ sanctæ rice restað regna caelorum. that they all for you with one voice intercede to the prince ruling the throne, the eternal lord, [ruling] the heights of heaven, that he your soul, the highest judge, receive freely, the eternal creator, and lead into eternal light, where blessed the holy souls rest in the kingdom, the kingdom of heaven. references bethurum, d. 1942: archbishop wulfstan’s commonplace book. publications of the modern language association 57: 916–29. bethurum, d. ed. 1957: the homilies of wulfstan. clarendon press, oxford. bliss, a. j. 1971: single half-lines in old english poetry. notes and queries 18: 442–49. bredehoft, t. a. 1998: a note on robinson’s rewards of piety. notes and queries 45.1: 5–8. budny, m. 1997: insular, anglo-saxon, and early anglo-norman manuscript art at corpus christi college, cambridge: an illustrated catalogue. medieval institute publications, kalamazoo, michigan. caie, g. d. 1994: text and context in editing old english: the case of the poetry in cambridge, corpus christi college 201. in the editing of old english: papers from the 1990 manchester conference. ed. d. scragg & p. szarmach. d. s. brewer, cambridge. 155–62. caie, g. d. ed. 2000: the old english poem judgment day ii: a critical edition. d. s. brewer, cambridge. dobbie, e. v. k. ed. 1942: the anglo-saxon minor poems, aspr, vol. 6. columbia university press, new york. feiler, e. 1966 [1901]: das benediktiner-offizium, ein altenglisches brevier aus dem 11. jahrhundert; ein beitrag zur wulfstanfrage. swets & zeitlinger, amsterdam. franzen, c. 1991: the tremulous hand of worcester: a study of old english in the thirteenth century. clarendon press, oxford. the rewards of poetry: "homiletic” verse in cccc 201 105 fulk r. d. 1992: a history of old english meter. university of pennsylvania, philadelphia. fulk r. d. & c. m. cain 2003: a history of old english literature. blackwell, oxford. goolden, p. ed. 1958: the old english apollonius of tyre. oxford university press, oxford. hansen, e. t.. 1988: the solomon complex: reading wisdom in old english poetry. university of toronto press, toronto. healey, a. dip., et al. 2000: the dictionary of old english on-line old english corpus. http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/o/oec/. hieatt, c. b. 1974: alliterative patterns in the hypermetric lines of old english verse. modern philology 71: 237–42. hill, j. 1992: monastic reform and the secular church. in england in the eleventh century. ed. c. hicks. paul watkins, stamford. 103-17. james, m. r. 1912: a descriptive catalogue of the manuscripts in the library of corpus christi college. cambridge university press, cambridge. jost, k. 1959: die institutes of polity, civil and ecclesiastical. swiss studies in english 47. francke, bern. ker, n. 1957: a catalogue of manuscripts containing anglo-saxon. clarendon press, oxford. ker, n. 1971: the handwriting of archbishop wulfstan. in england before the conquest: studies in the primary sources presented to dorothy whitelock. ed. p. clemoes & k. hughes. cambridge university press, cambridge. 315–31. lawson, m. k. 1994: archbishop wulfstan and the homiletic element in the laws of æthelred ii and cnut. in the reign of cnut, king of england, denmark, and norway. ed. alexander rumble. leicester university press, london. 141–64. liebermann, f. ed. 1960 [1903–16]: die gesetze der angelsachsen, 3 vols. scientia, aalen. http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/o/oec/ samantha zacher 106 loyn, h. r. ed. 1971: a wulfstan manuscript containing institutes, laws and homilies (british museum cotton nero a.i). early english manuscripts in facsimile 17. rosenkilde and bagger, copenhagen. lumby, j. r. ed. 1964 [1876]: be domes dæge. de die iudicii: an old english version of the latin poem ascribed to bede, [eets 65]. oxford university press, oxford. mcdougall, i. 1995: some remarks on dorothy bethurum’s treatment of glosses in ms. bodleian hatton 113. american notes and queries 8: 3–4. mcintosh, a. 1949: wulfstan’s prose. proceedings of the british academy 35: 109–42. napier, a. ed. 1967 [1883] wulfstan: sammlung der ihm zugeschreibenen homilien nebst untersuchungen über ihre echtheit. max niehans, dublin. orchard, a. 1992: crying wolf: oral style and the sermones lupi. anglosaxon england 21: 239–64. orchard, a. 2003: on editing wulfstan. in treharne & rosser 2003: 311– 40. robinson, f. c. 1989: the rewards of piety: two old english poems in their manuscript context. in hermeneutics and medieval culture. ed. p. j. gallacher & h. damico. state university of new york press, albany, new york. 193–200. sauer, h. 2000 [1980] the transmission and structure of archbishop wulfstan’s ‘commonplace book.’ in old english prose: basic readings. ed. p. e. szarmach. garland, new york. 339–94. scragg d. g. 1977: napier’s ‘wulfstan’ homily xxx: its sources, its relationship to the vercelli book and its style. anglo-saxon england 6: 197–211. shippey, t.a. 1976: poems of wisdom and learning in old english. d. s. brewer, cambridge. sievers, e. 1893: altgermanische metrik. niemeyer, halle. the rewards of poetry: "homiletic” verse in cccc 201 107 stanley, e. g. 1985: the judgment of the damned, from corpus christi college cambridge 201 and other manuscripts, and the definition of old english verse. in learning and literature in anglo-saxon england: studies presented to peter clemoes on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday. ed. m. lapidge & h. gneuss. cambridge university press, cambridge. 363–91. treharne, e. & s. rosser ed. 2003: early medieval texts and interpretations: studies presented to donald g. scragg. mrts, tempe, arizona. ure, j. 1953: the benedictine office and the metrical paraphrase of the lord’s prayer in ms. c.c.c.c. 201. review of english studies 16: 354–56. ure, j. ed. 1957: the benedictine office: an old english text. edinburgh, university press, edinburgh. whitbread, l. 1947–8: two notes on minor old english poems. studia neophilologica 20: 192–98. whitbread, l. 1949: the old english exhortation to christian living: some textual problems. modern language review 44: 178–83. whitbread, l. 1951: notes on the old english exhortation to christian living. studia neophilologica 23: 96–102. whitbread, l. 1957: notes on two minor old english poems. studia neophilologica 29: 123–29. whitbread, l. 1963: ‘wulfstan’ homilies xxix, xxx and some related texts. anglia 81: 347–64. whitbread, l. 1966: the old english poem judgment day ii and its latin source. philological quarterly 45: 635–56. whitbread, l. 1967: text-notes on the old english poem judgment day ii. english studies 48: 531–33. wright, c. d. 2003: more old english poetry in vercelli homily xxi. in treharne & rosser 2003: 245–62. wormald, p. 1999: the making of english law: king alfred to the twelfth century. volume i: legislation and its limits. oxford university press, oxford. samantha zacher 108 zacher, s. [forthcoming 2005]: the source of vercelli vii: an address to women. in new readings on the vercelli book. ed. s. zacher & a. orchard. university of toronto press, toronto. * † * selim07 (2).pdf jorge luis bueno, selim 7 (2000, for 1997): 51—81 new trends, old paths or vice versa: a literary anthropological approach to wulf and eadwacer 0. introduction for some time now, the study of old english literature has been facing an open discussion about its future, a debate spinning around diverse attitudes. in a rather recent article, roy michael liuzza (1994: 103-147) made a sort of joke about the critics' persistance in studying a fixed number of topics once and again because of the reconsideration made upon them due to the publication of critical articles on those fixed topics themselves; in other words, he ironically mentioned the existance of a sort of metathematic (re)criticism, which fed itself with counterpapers that had on their titles -with some exceptionsa very reduced number of customary expressions such as “second thoughts”, “reappraisal”, “revisited” or “reconsidered”. there has been also another group of critics -like w. m. calder (1981: 242)who have stated quite the contrary, that is: the uselessness of any kind of study about classical, ancient or medieval literature, arguing that there is nothing new to be said. i like to bring both stances face to face -metathematic recriticism vs. “exhausted topic” schoolwith a clever turning of the screw to say that me dieval (ancient or classical) literature is very far from being exhausted because we can go back to the same topics with new theoretical perspectives, which help us either to admit or reject what we already know, or to open new paths for research that we had never considered to tread on. liuzza's view totally shared by myselfwas not pessimistic despite his being ironic, because a great part of the advances made on literary criticism come up from the reconsideration of traditional topics from innovatory perspectives. the ongoing new theories of literary criticism -like, say, pragmatics, discourse ____________________________________________________________________ 52 analysis, (inter)textual criticism, relevance theory, etcand their analytical principles are given to the scholar devoted to medieval matters as new tools for carrying out those aforementioned reconsiderations. although directed at first to the study of the immediate -i.e, contemporary or xixth century literature, at the most-, the use of these new theories to the study of classical or medieval literature can be a good way both to shed some light on old topics and to validate the efficiency of such theories/ methodologies for the analysis of literary texts, regardless of their century of origin. from these modern theories i have chosen literary anthropology -or, more accurately, “literary anthropolo gical hermenutics” as i have recently tried to prove (bueno 1997b)-, and in previous studies i have been offering different attempts to analyse the old english elegiac discourse with its methodology for textual analysis (bueno 1997a, forthcoming a & b). to study old english elegiac poetry i have been adopting a literary anthropological approach because i think that such a perspective is the best to offer us a taxonomy of the parametres which build the old english elegiac discourse. in my previous studies t he introductory condition prevailed over the exhaustive research, because my idea was to offer different extracts of greater and more comprehensive analysis with the aim of providing the academic community with the practical and theoretical functioning of literary anthropology and its application to the study of old english poetry. now that this approach has been conveniently presented in the aforementioned studies, it is my aim -in the present article to offer a complete literary anthropological analysis of wulf and eadwacer as a sample that will show how much can this method of textual analysis contribute to the thorough study of old english poetry. what was presented in previous analysis will have to be added to what is going to be described here. basically, the literary anthropological method of textual analysis sets forth the study of the linguistic, symbolic and conceptual bases of the selected text by means of a threefold approach1: a)study of the linguistic and para linguistic bases of the poem, where a lexical, grammatical and textual analysis is carried out (ritual level); b) from the abstraction of the data obtained in the 1 i do not describe here the operative devices of literary anthropology due to the existance of a good number of articles and theoretical treatises that state the matter, basically poyatos 1979, 1988, escobedo & caramés 1994, caramés 1978 & 1980, bueno 1996 & 1997b. ____________________________________________________________________ 53 previous level, a symbolic study of the text is developed (symbolic level). this study is based on the application of a series of analytical devices, which will unveil the contextual system upon which the conceptual world of the poem will be established; and c) deep analysis of the intelligible cultural systems, which come up from the text and set the bases of its conceptual world (conceptual or thought-world level). in the following lines it is my in tention to offer the application of these three levels of analysis to wulf and edwacer. 1. the ritual level in w & e: verbal analysis 1.1. study of the lexicon:vocabulary and its semantics as a previous step to the application of the analytical devices characteris tic of this method, we must divide the poem in all its constituent parts, revis ing the lexicon in order to study its richness. i offer next the complete vocabulary list of wulf and eadwacer (as it is edited in krapp & dobbie 1936: 179180), pointing out the number of times a given word is repeated: apecgan: 2 beaducafa bilegde bireí biworpen bogum cymeí: 2 dogode eac eadwacer earne eape eglond fæst fenne geador gedydon gehyrest gesomnad giedd gif: 2 gife he: 2 him hine: 2 hit hwæpre hwelp hy: 2 ic: 3 iege ige is: 5 lac laí leodum me: 3 mec meteliste min mines minum mod mon: 2 murnende nales næfre operre on ond renig reotugu sæt s e seldcymas seoce sindon swylce to: 2 tosliteí pær pæt: 2 pætte pine: 2 pon ponne: 2 preat: 2 pu uncer uncerne ungelic ungelice ____________________________________________________________________ 54 us: 2 wælreowe wæs: 4 weder wena wenum weras widlastum willaí: 2 wuda wulf wulf: 3 wulfes wyn the previous table indicates that wulf and eadwacer is formed by a complete lexicon (cl) of 117 words; 50 of them appear several times (rw), and 67 are never repeated (nrw). the frequency index (fi) obtained from these data is the following: _______________________ fi = cl/nrw = 117/67 = 1,7. _______________________ as it is known, the utopic index would be 1, so we can say that this poem upholds a reasonable richness of vocabulary. besides, we have to highlight the existance of conscious repetition in the lexicon that is more frequently repeated. thus, exception made of the preposition “on” -appearing five times , the words whose appearance is more prominent are “is” / ”wæs” -five and four times each(past and present forms of “beon”, which emphasize certain space/ time opposition), “ic”/ ”me” -three times (focusing on the personal style of the discourse) and “wulf” -three times (personal noun, evidently relevant for being one of the characters mentioned in the text). as we have seen, repetition has a clear aim within the poem's general framework and follows explicit thematic reasons, which will be developed later on. this vocabulary usage is even more conscious when the poet has the possibility of repeating a lexical item and does not do it. instead, he introduces alternative forms as it is case of the pronouns “uncer” and “uncerne” -”our”, “of us two”and the adjectives “ungelic”/ ”ungelice” -”different”-1 in the sentence that appears in the irregular lines 3 and 8, whose structural symmetry is enriched with such a lexical non-semantic formal variation.2 1 some critics (e.g. aertesen 1994: 137) see a change of category (adverb "ungelice"/ adjective "ungelic"). however, the reasons posed for that change are not very clear, and the vast majority of critics argue for an scribal mistake or for the existance of the same adjectival category in both cases, as it is my opinion. 2 the conditional sentence "willaí hy hine ap_ecgan, gif he on preat_ cymeí" -"they will wish to capture him if he comes with a troop (hamer 1970: 85)"is also repeated twice (lines 2 and 8) in a conscious way due to formulaic and thematic ____________________________________________________________________ 55 thus, there is a clear intention of using a diverse vocabulary -sometimes enigmatic and ambiguous-1, mainly in those words holding lexical content. as it will be seen more deeply when dealing with the grammatical analysis, the 62'3 % of the vocabulary is based on nouns, verbs and adjectives, being these categories the ones in which repetition is hardly found, and when it is found, it is totally conscious. so, from the words holding a lexical content, only those previously mentioned could be considered as “main words” due to the reasons already presented. however, just as it happend in some other elegiac poetry analysed (bueno 1997a, forthcoming a), the metrical form, the semantic fields and the rhythmic structure will play relevant roles for the poem's thematic building. to begin with the analysis of the rhythmic structure of wulf and eadwacer, the study of the word size is going to be very useful. the obtained data present the following percentages: 1 syllable words = 58 (49,5 %) 2 syllable words = 38 (32,4 %) 3 syllable words = 18 (15,3 %) 4 syllable words = 3 (2,5 %) cl = 117 words x syllable (58 x 1 = 58) words x syllable (38 x 2 = 76) words x syllable (18 x 3 = 54) words x syllable (3 x 4 = 12) word x syllable total = 200 total wxs% = total wxs/ cl = 200/ 117 = 1'7 reasons, emphasizing the main character's fear that something could happen to her lover. i coincide with anne klinck (1984: 134-135) when she said that in wulf and eadwacer "the theme of the speaker's separation from and anxiety for her lover, an enemy of her tribe, is emphasized by the repetition of two consecutive lines". 1 if in every anglo-saxon text, choosing a translation means to select a particular interpretation of it, wulf and eadwacer is the model of that thought. following the words of marijane osborn (1983: 182): "the ambiguities in the diction of wulf and eadwacer are of three kinds: words of clear but ambivalent meaning (lac, _preat), words of uncertain meaning (a_pecgan, dogode and later earne) and words that translate readily into modern english but may be complicated by a figurative meaning, like the name wulf itself, and hwelp, bogum, wudu, giedd". ____________________________________________________________________ 56 exception made of three four-syllable words -”beaducafa”, “meteliste”, and “ungelice”-1, the figures indicate a clear majority of monosyllabic and disyllabic words (81,9 %), which is the old english average word size. so, the anglo -saxon style of composition is clearly marked, and the word x syllable percentage of 1'7 validates this statement. as the word syllabic difference is not great, we can point out that the lexicon is used in a very regular way within a highly rhythmical compositive model. when studying the rhythmic structure of a poem, the second step consists in carrying out an analysis of the word size by counting the letters that form every word. this kind of analysis will give us new data to describe both the rhythm of the poem -external or internaland the distribution of the phonetic units -with or without a fixed order-. we count the letters that form every word and calculate afterwards their difference line by line: 4 3 1 3 0 0 1 6 2 5 6 3 3 3 4 leodum is minum swylce him mon lac gife; _________________________________________________________ 4 2 3 4 1 0 3 0 6 2 4 7 3 2 2 5 5 willaí hy hine apecgan, gif he on preat cymeí. _________________________________________________________ 5 0 7 2 2 ungelic is us. _________________________________________________________ 2 0 2 2 0 4 4 2 2 4 2 2 6 wulf is on iege, ic on operre. _________________________________________________________ 1 "warlike man, bold warrior", "want of food, lack of food", "different". together with bosworth & toller 1972 i have used giles' (1981: 408) and hamer's (1970: 84-85) translations. all the translations of isolated meanings made in this article are referred to these references. if it is not indicated otherwise, the translations of the poem come from hamer's edition. ____________________________________________________________________ 57 2 1 3 1 3 4 2 3 6 5 8 fæst is pæt eglond, fenne biworpen. _________________________________________________________ 2 3 2 1 1 6 8 5 3 2 3 sindon wælreowe weras pær on ige; _________________________________________________________ 4 2 3 4 1 0 3 0 6 2 4 7 3 2 2 5 5 willaí hy hine apecgan, gif he on preat cymeí. _________________________________________________________ 6 0 8 2 2 ungelice is us. _________________________________________________________ 4 3 4 4 1 6 2 5 9 5 6 wulfes ic mines widlastum wenum dogode; _________________________________________________________ 2 0 2 0 2 1 5 4 5 3 3 5 5 3 2 7 3 ponne hit wæs renig weder ond ic reotugu sæt, _________________________________________________________ 2 1 7 4 2 5 3 2 9 5 7 ponne mec se beaducafa bogum bilegde, _________________________________________________________ 1 1 1 1 0 1 4 3 0 3 2 3 2 3 3 2 6 3 3 wæs me wyn to pon, wæs me hwæpre eac la í. _________________________________________________________ 1 1 0 2 2 4 3 4 4 2 4 ____________________________________________________________________ 58 wulf, min wulf, wena me pine _________________________________________________________ 2 3 5 5 7 4 9 seoce gedydon, pine seldcymas, _________________________________________________________ 5 2 4 8 3 5 9 murnende mod, nales meteliste. _________________________________________________________ 6 6 1 2 0 8 2 8 7 5 5 gehyrest pu, eadwacer? uncerne earne hwelp _________________________________________________________ 1 2 2 5 4 2 4 bireí wulf to wuda. _________________________________________________________ 0 1 4 3 0 3 5 3 3 4 8 5 5 8 3 pæt mon eape tosliteí pætte næfre gesomnad wæs, _________________________________________________________ 0 1 5 5 6 uncer giedd geador. _________________________________________________________ when we divide the total amount of the differences (210) by the complete lexicon (117) we obtain a general promedium of 1'79. it seems, thus, that there is not a given continuity in the distribution of the phonetic units; so the absence of differential rhythm is clearly marked. the rhythmic structure will be marked by the different metrical patterns and by alliteration. the prevailing rhythmic structure consists of lines lacking differential rhythm and pre senting perfect metrical patterns: ____________________________________________________________________ 59 2 3 2 1 1 6 8 5 3 2 3 sindon wælreowe weras pær on ige; / x / ‘ x / x x / x da sindon wælreowe weras pær on ige a x a a x 2 3 5 5 7 4 9 seoce gedydon, pine seldcymas, / x x / x x / / x a seoce gedydon, pine seldcymas, c a x a x 5 2 4 8 3 5 9 murnende mod, nales meteliste. / ‘ x / x / x / x e murnende mod, nales meteliste. a a a a x 68'5 percent of the lines display this structure. only in six lines (31,5 %) we have differential rhythm appearing together with a metrical pattern. however, in the last two instances of the examples given below, the rhythm is broken at the end of the line: 2 0 2 2 0 4 4 2 2 4 2 2 6 wulf is on iege, ic on operre. / x x / x / x / x a wulf is on iege, ic on operre. a x a a x 2 1 3 1 3 4 2 3 6 5 8 fæst is pæt eglond, fenne biworpen. / x x / x / x x / x a fæst is pæt eglond, fenne biworpen. a a x a x 1 1 0 2 2 4 3 4 4 2 4 wulf, min wulf, wena me pine / x / (x) / x x / x a wulf, min wulf, wena me pine a a a a x it is also very interesting to mention the distribution of the metrical patterns appearing in wulf and eadwacer: patterns percentages tipe a 58,8 % ____________________________________________________________________ 60 tipe b 8,8 % tipe c 17,6 % tipe da 11,7 % tipe db 0 % tipe e 2,9 % the results obtained from these data contradict the traditional tendency (bueno forthcoming a). from the 34 half-lines 1 wulf and eadwacer is made of, the pattern that appears in a prevalent way is type a (58,8 %). this indicates that the poem holds a very clear active/narrative style. this feature will have to be collated with the data that will be obtained by analysing the grammatical categories of the poem later on. an analysis of the different types of vocabulary used in this poem indicates that, basically, the lexicon of wulf and eadwacer belongs to two semantic fields. placed in a prevailing thematic position and showing a rate of appearance higher than the other semantic field i'll mention next, we find a high number of words and groups of words devoted to express certain feeling of uneasiness, of suffering, of mental anxiety, in the poetic persona of the text. so, terms such as “wælreowe”, “dogode”, “widlastum wenum”, “reotugu sæt”, “wæs me wyn to pon, wæs me hwæ pre eac laí”, “seoce”, “murnende mod”, “earmne”2 or even the closing sentence “pæt mon eape tosliteí pætte næfre gesomnad wæs, uncer giedd geador” 3, are elements, which hold not only the presence of physical pain but also the proximity of certain spiritual affliction that distresses the poetic narrator. in different moments throughout the text there are terms referred to the natural world: “iege”, “eglond”, “ige”, “fenne”, “renig weder”, “wulf”, “wuda”4 or even the name of one of the main characters because, on the one hand, it could be used as a proper name or as a nickname, and, on the other, it 1i n the consulted edition the text is divided in 19 lines and offers four verses of a single half-line (3, 8, 17 y 19); thus, 19 x 2 = 38 4 = 34. 2 "cruel, murderous", "suffered, grieved", "far-wandering hope, distant longings", "sat mournful", "that was joy to me and that was also pain to me", "ill/ sick", "grieving heart", "wretched". 3 trans: "men very easily may put asunder/ that which was never joined, our song together (op. cit. p. 85)". 4 "island", "island", "island","fens", "rainy weather", "wolf", "woods". ____________________________________________________________________ 61 could be playing with the metaphorical meaning of “wulf” as a wild creature, as an animal. there is a very clear tendency towards synonymy, towards the expression of a semantic style with a wide variety of lexicon1, which contains “a high concentration of hapax legomena, rare words and enigmatic imaginery (tasioulas 1996: 1)”. both semantic fields hold a direct interrelation -i.e. the natural environment supplies the background for the mental uneasiness of the poetic persona and contribute to build the symbolic/ conceptual world of the poem. 1.2. grammatical analysi s it is now time to analyse the distribution and combination of the different grammatical categories that shape the text. after dividing the text in the categories that form it, the following data are obtained: nouns = 30 (25,6 %) pronouns = 23 (19'6%) adjectives = 14 (11,9 %) prepositions = 7 (5,9 %) verbs = 26 (22,2 %) conjunctions = 4 (3,4 %) adverbs = 9 (7,6 %) demonstratives = 4 (3,4 %) cl = 117 a series of relevant combinations are also appreciated: a) noun / not noun = 30 / 87 b) verb / not verb = 26 / 91 c) noun / verb = 30 / 26 d) noun + verb / adjective + adverb = 30 + 26 / 14 + 9 = 56 / 23 1 this is especially clear for the word "island". the poet uses consciuosly three different synonyms, "iege", "eglond", "ige". ____________________________________________________________________ 62 e) noun + verb + adjective + adverb / conjunction + preposition = 30 + 26 + 14 + 9 / 4 + 7 = 79 / 11 these combinations -together with the data previously exposedreveal that 47'8 % of the lexicon is formed b y nominal and verbal categories. we can deduce from this fact that the text presents a very clear narrative/ evolu tive style, and offers the narrator's direct judgement about his inner and outer world, a judgement that constitutes the expression of his mental experience. these results are supported by the data obtained when examining the high percentage of metrical type a patterns found in the text. it seems that there is a certain stylistic connection between the high number of a half-lines -which indicates a fluent narrative style and the use of a high percentage of verbs and nouns -which indicates practically the same thing-. the use of 11'9 % of adjectives points out that in some combinations there is a certain impression of sensory modulation on the experience, but the general tendency indicates a greater degree of direct/ objective judgement, which shows the experience of his thought, of his pondering about the mental distress the poetic narrator is going through. ____________________________________________________________________ 63 1.3. textual analysis the tense usage employed in the text reveal a very clear absence of modality -no modal auxiliaries1 are found and there is a very reduced number of adverbs (only 7'6 %)-. thus, the poet's main function is clearly expressed, his judgements are very properly defined and his statements about reality are objectively clear and real. the existance of a clear majority of verbal forms in the present tense -mainly in lines 2b/8 & 16/19together with the insertion of some past tense forms -in lines 1, 9/15and some brief future prospection -2a, 7aprovide the text with a certain sense of dramatic tension, with a slightly cyclic temporal asymmetry. so, from a narrative present tense, the poetic narrator describe her present state and what happened to her from the past to the very moment of narration, going back to the present time in the final lines of the poem as a sort of cyclic ending for her thoughts. the combination of both temporal perspectives enhances the dramatic style. in wulf and eadwacer there are no worth mentioning figures of speech2, and the traditional elements of anglo -saxon poetic diction -”kenningar”, “fixed formulæ”, etcare nonexistent. only the half-line”fenne biworpen (5b)” -”surrounded by fens”could be understood as a fixed formula as it is a des cription that has been found in many anglo -saxon texts (bravo 1984: 23). nevertheless, the presence of two sentences repeated as a sort of refrain is worth mentioning: “ungelic is us”/ ”ungelice is us” (3, 8) and “willa í hy hine apecgan, gif he on preat cyme í” (2, 7). this is an stylistic fact, which only appears in this poem and in deor. its meaning is both puzzling (tasioulas 1996, jones 1985) and coherent with the general sense of mysterious ambiguity that covers the text from beguinning to end. 2. the ritual level in w & e: nonverbal analysis after having finished the study of the verbal aspect, i am going to focus next on the analysis of the nonverbal features that are built upon the distinction between the perception/ influence of the surrounding background, the 1 for a treatment of modal auxiliaries within a literary anthropological analysis of an old english elegy see bueno 1998: 160. 2 i use this term in a literary anthropological way. see the aforementioned bibliographical references to enhance any theoretical doubt. ____________________________________________________________________ 64 relations we establish with it -sensible world and the synchronic/ diachronic viewpoints the text presents -intelligible world-. within the sensible world we'll try to find the presence of certain literary categories -i.e. realisms-, which are responsible for the setting of a given communicative line. in wulf and eadwacer, this communicative line is developed through the presence of a wide number of elements that belong to the psychological realism, modulated once by an element from the physical realism. the text widely describes the psychological features of the poetic narrator -i.e. her suffering, her anguish, the pains and fears she is going through because of wulf, etc.-, building thus a feeling of mental distress by using a good number of terms related to this particular semantic field -as i have pre viously explained-, which are basically enclosed in the following lines: wulfes ic mines widlastum wenum dogode; ponne hit wæs renig weder ond ic reotugu sæt, ponne mec se beaducafa bogum bilegde, wæs me wyn to pon, wæs me hwæ pre eac la í. wulf, min wulf, wena me pine seoce gedydon, pine seldcymas, murnende mod, nales meteliste.1 (9-15) besides, in line 10 this psychological expression is connected with a part icular physical feature, with the background. this background -rainy, cold, clas sical in a wayhas an influence over the feelings of the poetic narrator who suffers, waits and ponders “ponne hit wæs renig weder ond ic reotugu sæt”.2 albeit brief in length, it is worth mentioning that the environment had a certain influence over the psychological aspects, particularly in a short poem, which has been thematically built around the psychological expression of the narrator's feelings. among the basic topics of the intelligible world we'll have space and time: the synchronic/ diachronic approach the text reveals. the space/ time 1 trans: "grieved have i for my wulf with distant longings./ then was it rainy weather, and i sad,/ when the bold warrior laid his arms about me./ i took delight in that and also pain./ o, wulf, my wulf, my longing for your coming/ has made me ill, the rareness of your visits,/ my grieving spirit, not the lack of food (ibid. p. 85)". 2 "when it was rainy weather and i sat mourning (giles 1981: 468)". my italics. ____________________________________________________________________ 65 perspective offered by wulf and eadwacer 's poet is again twofold (bueno forthcoming a & b). the synchronic perspective appears when we are told about the narrator's present situation, about her current personal experiences in her most immediate context. the diachronic perspective is revealed through the description of past facts, through the recalling of certain events that have a direct influence over her present time -controlling it in a wayand cast some doubts upon the future -briefly mentioned twice in lines 2 and 7-. that's how we come back to the present at the end of the poem, with a sort of structure that places the reader at the departure temporal point. the space is only one, so we move again within a single unidirectional spatial/ contextual reality upon which a bidirectional temporal line is developed. thus, in the narrative space, different past events are narrated from that pre sent time to be back to the present space/ time in the last lines of the poem (16-19). 3. the symbolic level of w & e the analysis of the symbolic world comes from the abstraction of all the different parts the ritual level is ma de of. for such an aim, we'll have to use a series of analytical devices, which will be very useful to begin with the unveiling of the hidden symbols that smooth out the way to the final study of the conceptual world. 3.1. somatic system for the analysis of the somatic system we'll have to center on the bio phys ical and psychological features, which are held by the characters appearing in a given text. in wulf and eadwacer we are faced with different characters who can be classified as direct or indirect as regards the degree of their being involved in the narration. the poetic narrator is the direct character, as she is the main voice of the text and develops the narrative discourse with her narration and her acts. the male characters who are mentioned by the poetic narrator could bear the indirect label: i.e, wulf and eadwacer.1 1 two other indirect characters are also briefly mentioned: the cruel men from verse 6 –"wælreowe weras"-, presenting no physical description and showing only psychological characterization regarding their cruelty and their not very positive ____________________________________________________________________ 66 we have no trace whatsoever of the latter's physical or psychological description. the poetic narrator gives us their names, although modulating the degree of affection she feels for them. eadwacer is mentioned only once in line 16 and he is both object of a question and addressee of the final lines whose content suggest that we are facing a sort of relationship -marriage, perhaps, as we'll see later on-, which has been neither good nor lasting, bec a u s e “pæt mon eape tosliteí pætte næfre gesomnad wæs, uncer giedd geador”.1 as far as wulf is concerned, her affections are more explicitly stated because she always connects his name with the first person singular of the personal pronoun in the genitive case “min(es)”; thus, wulf is always “min wulf (13)”, “wulfes mines (9)”, that is to say, “my wulf”. so, the poetic narrator establishes a much more personal, direct and sentimentally in volved relationship with wulf -probably, they are lovers than with eadwacer (jones 1985: 326). no physical features of the poetic narrator are described at all. however, the use of psychological information is plentiful as it happened in other poems of the kind (bueno forthcoming a & b). this fact makes me think that the narrative development is again subject to the poetic narrator's psychological expression, to the expression of her distress, of her pain, just as the main part of the poem (lines 9-15) states. the physical features are irerelevant, and all we are told about the poetic narrator come through psychological factors. i believe that such a focusing on the psychological is again (bueno forthcoming b) an element that gives a universal condition to the experiences and the feelings that have been narrated and transmited through the poem. 3.2. kynesic system the kynesic system -which joins all the elements related to the active world of the characters, to gestures, sounds, and visiondoes not reveal too much. kynesic behaviour is hardly found in wulf and eadwacer. the only kinesic instance that is worth mentioning is the verb “cyme í” (2b, 7b) and the attitudes towards wulf -"willaí hy hine apecgan, gif he on preat cymeí"-; and the brave warrior -"beaducafa"from 11a, under whose face wulf is hidden. 1 trans: "men very easily may put asunder/ that which was never joined, our song together (op. cit: p. 85)". ____________________________________________________________________ 67 brief reference to the fact of sitting down, mentioned by the poetic narra tor ”sæt”(10b), more connected with a psychological element (“reotugu”) than with something kynesic -. these are very few references to consider ky nesics as something relevant in the poem. however, there is a relevant use of the space, related to present spaces -without wulfand absent ones -with wulf-, which is defined with the present and past forms of “beon” as i mentioned before. 3.3. paralinguistic system something similar happens with the paralinguistic system, because there is only one brief, albeit important, paralinguistic reference in wulf and eadwacer. in the fo llowing lines we can read: ponne mec se beaducafa bogum bilegde, wæs me wyn to pon, wæs me hwæ pre eac la í.1 (11-12) the act of hugging is the only reference to gestures in all the poem. in these lines, the poetic narrator recalls wulf's hugs as something pleasant and pain ful at the same time, so she connects a gesture with a psychological ele ment, just as the kynesic expression of “sæt” was connected with a psychological behaviour. i think this very brief paralinguistic feature is important in spite of its brevity, because i do not consider it as something placed at random by the poet; it was consciuosly placed to keep on making a preference gradation towards both female figures, i.e. she mentions the hug -something that brings closenessconnected wth wulf and states that her relationship with eadwacer is very easily separable as it was never well established (1819). thus, her being close to wulf -what is always joinedand being apart from eadwacer -what is always disunitedare very cle arly stated by means of a metaphor in which a paralinguistic element plays an important role. 3.4. contextual system 1 trans: "when the bold warrior laid his arms about me./ i took delight in that and also pain (op. cit: p. 85)". ____________________________________________________________________ 68 as far as the relations with the environment, with the immediate context, are concerned, the only contextual system present in wulf and eadwacer is related to the natural background. society is completely absent1 from this poem -at least, in a direct way-, and the things we are told take place within nature, inside a non-social environment, which is free from conditionings, maybe due to the characteristics of the relationships between the poetic narrator and both male figures -lover and husband, the latter set inside the social sphere and the former totally outside it 2-. i think that this can set off the importance of the personal as oppossed to the social behaviours 3. thus, the explicit absence of social environment would remark not only the condition of the poetic narrator as someone who lives on the edge of society (tasioulas;1996: 14), but also her “exiled” condition. the previously mentioned references to isles, fens, weather, wolves and woods4 -connected with a given psychological statehighlight the interest that the poet has in expressing the narration of certain facts in an almost neuter enviroment, which is only defined by natural parametres (gameson; 1996: 464), to remark the importance of the psychological expression, of certain personal relationships outside society, whose ideological aims would have to be dealt with deeply in the next stage of this analysis. 4. the conceptual level in w & e 1 "leodum" -"people"and "beaducafa" -"warlike man, bold warrior" are the two only words that belong to the semantic field of the anglo-saxon social sphere and are directly mentioned. 2 marriage and the poetic narrator's relationships outside marriage are topics that have been dealt with in several articles. to mention some interesting ones, gameson 1996: 463, whitbread 1941, luecke 1983 and rivers 1991. 3 regarding this, what hugh magennis (1996: 114-115) points out is very interesting: "wulf and eadwacer illustrates strikingly the conflict between prescribed social norms and the impulsion of personal emotion, a recurrent theme throughout literature, though one not generally associated with old english. wulf evidently has his existance outside society (…) and the speaker in her longing for wulf also sets herself apart from society (…) the relationship with wulf may or may not be adulterous but it is certainly one carried on at odds with the expectations of society". again, the social/ personal dichotomy sets clear the relevance of individual feelings in a communal society. 4 that is to say, "iege", "eglond", "ige", "fenne", "renig weder", "wulf", "wuda". ____________________________________________________________________ 69 i will proceed now with the identification and analysis of the intelligible cultural systems that appear in the text and spin around several parametres, which build its weltanschauung. i offer next the study of the parametres found in wulf and eadwacer. 4.1. the personal/psychological expression of the female 'ic' following the ideas that i have been developing in the previous analytical stages, i think that the main thematic core of wulf and eadwacer is composed by the personal expression of a very intense and passional psychological/ mental state, which is revealed through the female voice of the poetic narrator.1 the relevance of the psychological/ personal element is going to appear not only as the main thematic crux of the text, but also as the only topic that could be directly deduced from it. the other parametres found -as we'll seeare going to be based on the psychological element as well. basically, the poem shows how a woman expresses both her love feelings for an absent man and t he anxiety she feels due to his being away2: leodum is minum swylce him mon lac gife; willaí hy hine apecgan, gif he on preat cyme í. ungelic is us. wulf is on iege, ic on o perre. fæst is pæt eglond, fenne biworpen. sindon wælreowe weras pær on ige; willaí hy hine apecgan, gif he on preat cyme í. ungelice is us.3 (1-8) 1 although there is total agreement in this, there are always differing voices which have never been conclusive (mainly eliason 1974 and his senseless interpretation, which has been properly answered by desmond 1990, and more recently, by aert sen 1994 and gameson 1996). i argue for a female poetic narrator not only because of the coherence of the story that is being narrated but also due to the existance of some grammatical facts: "it is the grammar that tells us so, because the adjectives reotugu and seoce have femenine inflectional endings (aertsen 1994: 121)". curiously enough, both adjectives belong to the psychological semantic field. 2 my interpretation of the poem assumes that the most clearly inferable relationship between the main characters is the following: the female poetic narrator is wulf's lover and eadwacer's wife. moreover, this has been adopted as the main interpretation by a wide number of critics. 3 trans: "it is as though my people had been given/ a present. they will wish to capture him/ if he comes with a troop. we are apart./ wulf is on one isle, i am on ____________________________________________________________________ 70 these lines display a situation full of distress and anxiety, because she is afraid of his being away and of what could happen to him at the hands of the “waelreowe weras” who dwell in the island, perhaps due to the adverse reaction wulf causes upon the “leodum minum” of the poetic narrator. certainly, the conscious repetition of the “willa í” sentence emphasizes her psychological anxiety and her fear of what is to come. all this situation of distress forces her to remember how that mental suffering comes from the past. in the following lines the poetic narrator offers a very deep expression of her past feelings: wulfes ic mines widlastum wenum dogode; ponne hit wæs renig weder ond ic reotugu sæt, ponne mec se beaducafa bogum bilegde, wæs me wyn to pon, wæs me hwæ pre eac la í.1 (9-12) here, the poetic narrator shows her feelings and her thoughts with deep emotion by means of a wide number of psychological expressions: personal suffering -”ic dogode”2due to an anxious waiting -”widlastum wenum” within a melancholic environment in which her sadness -”reotugu”is conanother./ fast is that island set among the fens./ murderous are the people who inhabit/ that island. they will wish to capture him/ if he comes with a troop. we are apart (op. cit: p. 85)". for "ungelic is us" hamer's translation is somewhat strange to me. for different reasons i prefer "it is different with us", which has been the most adopted translation, with some variants in several cases. 1 trans: "grieved have i for my wulf with distant longings./ then was it rainy weather, and i sad,/ when the bold warrior laid his arms about me./ i took delight in that and also pain (op. cit: p. 85)". i do not understand at all the translation of "ic reotugu sæt" as "i sad", when it should read "i sat mourning/ in a sad mood, etc", which agrees more with the original text. 2 i admit the ms hapax legomenon "dogode" and reject the amendment to "hogode" just as most critics do (f.i. whitbread 1941: 152, gameson 1996, hamer 1970: 8485). for different reasons, i think it would be rare, although there are a few critics who keep on doubting this without offering an alternative solution (f.i. aertsen 1994: 137, baker 1981). however, most of those who accept "dogode" translate it as "pursued, followed" (gameson 1996: 458), or even keep the translation of the amendment and melt both terms, rendering it as "thought about" -which would be the translation for "hogode"but keeping "dogode" in their editions (aertsen 1994, baker 1981). i understand the verb as "suffered" (just as giles 1981 or hamer 1970 who translates "grieved"), being this meaning supported by bosworth & toller (1972: 206): "dógian; p. ode, pp. od, to bear, suffer; -ic dogode i suffered, exon, 100b; th. 380, 17; rä, 1, 9." ____________________________________________________________________ 71 nected with an adverse natural background -”renig weder” and the past mo ments of tenderness with the “beaducafa” are remembered. this point has been very controversial for the critics who have devoted some of their time to the study of wulf and eadwacer. the identity of the brave warrior mentioned in these lines -”beaducafa”has been multifarious. as it always happens with controvertial issues, this fact depends on the personal interpretation of each critic. some of them state that he is her husband eadwacer, hence the ambiguity of line 12 (aertsen 1994, baker 1981, jones 1985); there are other who defend that he is wulf (greenfield 1986, kerling 1980); and finally there is a constant growing number of them who state -very accurately, i thinkthat we have not enough clues to define it clearly, so he could be both.1 i explain this ambiguity interpreting “beaducafa” as wulf, because of the aformentioned paralinguistic reasons and to mantain certain thematic coherence with what the text says and my own interpretation. thus, with these two lines (11 y 12), the poetic narrator remebers wulf's hugs as some thing evidently pleasant and painful, because their relationship, being secret, has to be brief perforce. this is something which can be very easily deduced from the psychological condition of the poem -which, by the way, is very coherent with the text -, being thus resolved, in my opinion, the ambivalence of the personal expression in these lines.2 after this, the poetic narrator re turns to her current psychological expression: 1 fiona and richard gameson (1996: 459) are right in their explanation: "line 11 se beaducafa: 'the battle-brave one'. the issue here is the identity of the individual in question: wulf or eadwacer?. it is genuinely difficult to be certain. in support of wulf is the fact that he seems an active figure, thus fitting such an epithet, and that the embrace was a single event in the past; while in favour of eadwacer is the circumstance that the speaker seems to be in close proximity to him and thus he presumably had greater opportunity to embrace her". 2 regarding this, it is very convenient to choose an interpretation that is coherent with the general context of the overall interpretation, as i think i have made. we all should be modest in defending our views, allowing for the rest of them, because, as fiona and richard jameson said -ibidit is difficult to be completely sure. aertsen's opinion (1994: 138) is also worth mentioning here: "others think it is a reference to wulf, but this is unlikely, perhaps even impossible, (…) and why in that case should the speaker dislike the embraces if it was wulf who laid his arms around her? greenfield believes that the embraces are wulf's all right, (…) and he explains the speaker's ambivalent feelings of line 12 as resulting from 'the peril and brevity of their time together', an explanation i find improbable in the light of what follows". greenfield's (1986: 12) view is very coherent and coincides with my own. perhaps, aertsen is very rigid when stating the impossibility of such an explanation, bearing in mind that the reasons he posed for such impossibility are just another inter____________________________________________________________________ 72 wulf, min wulf, wena me pine seoce gedydon, pine seldcymas, murnende mod, nales meteliste. gehyrest pu, eadwacer? uncerne earne hwelp bireí wulf to wuda. pæt mon eape tosliteí pætte næfre gesomnad wæs, uncer giedd geador.1 (13-19) the poetic narrator states thus the anxiety of her mental state. the expression of suffering is again mental/ psychological, not physical, because neither the wish for food -”meteliste”nor her state of loneliness is what worries the poetic narrator, being both logical situations due to her nonsocial behaviour2. it is her being away from wulf the source of all her concerns (1315). in her only mention of eadwacer, the poetic narrator addresses him with a final statement of individuality and negation. these lines are also controversial and subjec to many interpretations. my interpretation is, again, coherent with the overall vision i'm offering. henk aertsen (1994: 139) summarises very properly the ambiguity of lines 16-17: her threat is full of ambiguities, some of which may be intentional, as double entendres designed to conceal the truth from eadwacer: who are the referents of the possesive uncerne? what is the meaning of earne? who or what is the hwelp? who or what is the wulf? pretation, as worth mentioning as the rest. it is very risky to say that something is totally impossible, specially when studying such a text as wulf and eadwacer. 1 "o wulf, my wulf, my longing for your coming/ has made me ill, the rareness of your visits,/ my grieving spirit , not the lack of food./ eadwacer, do you hear me?. for a wolf/ shall carry to the woods our wretched whelp. / men very easily may put asunder/ that which was never joined, our song together (op. cit: p. 85)". 2 p. j. frankis (1962: 172, note 32) states this possibilty: "line 15b is best interpreted not as an arbitrary comparision, but as an implication that the woman had actually been compelled by her circumstances to go short of food". ____________________________________________________________________ 73 i agree with the possible conscious ambiguity of these final lines 1, and my interpretation could be framed within the metaphoric vision defended by many critics, although with some variants 2. thus, i understand the following: “uncerne” = “we (eadwacer and the poetic narrator)”, “hwelp” = “the rela tionship existing between eadwacer and the poetic narrator”, “wulf” = “a metaphor hiding the name of her lover wulf” and “bire í to wuda” = 'will carry to the woods', being this a sort of idiomatic expression (gameson 1996: 459, keough 1976: 559), which means “to destroy, to finish, to end with”. this connects very well with the expression of the final lines 18-19, in which “uncer giedd geador” would stand for the relationship that exists between eadwacer and the female poetic narrator; so, under “hwelp” and “giedd” the same idea is enclosed. schematically and gloss-like, i understand that the poetic narrator tries to say the following in lines 16-19: “do you hear, eadwacer? wulf will destroy what exists between you and me, if it is possible to des troy what has never existed, really”. the final lines of the poem are a very ambiguous and cryptic way of closing the expression of her mental/ psychological state, declaring a) the uselessness of a socially admitted relationship with eadwacer, b) her distressing but supposedly reward ing relationship with wulf, and c) the relevance of the expression of her personal feelings. the psychological expression is the thematic and conceptual centre of wulf and eadwacer. the poem also reveals the presence of a very conscious individuality by emphasizing the personal psychological expression, which comes from the relationship with wulf.3 so, the poetic narrator underlines that the emotions focused on herself and wulf are personal psychological 1 practically in almost all the works cited in this article -and i refer the reader to them, there is a different interpretation of these lines. "uncerne" has been understood as "ours, wulf's and the poetic narrator's" and "ours, eadwacer's and the poetic narrator's"; "hwelp" has been interpreted as "their son, wulf's and the poetic narrator's" and "their son, eadwacer's and the poetic narrator's". as regards "earn", differnt meanings with and without amendments to the ms are offered, being "wretched", "poor" and "coward" the most frequent. as i have explained before, there is also a metaphoric school, which is the one i have followed. 2 thus, "uncerne hwelp" is understood as a metaphor for the relationship between eadwacer and the poetic narrator, by fanagan 1976, or between wulf and the poetic narrator, by greenfield 1986 and aertsen 1994. 3 i have already mentioned the importance of the repetition of the personal pronoun in a few lines -"ic: 3", "me: 3", "me, mec, min, mines, minum"and of the repetition of wulf, connected with possesive pronouns, pointing out a sort of preferential gradation that establishes the poetic narrator's stronger link with wulf. ____________________________________________________________________ 74 expressions (gameson; 1996: 463), which have manifested the importance of the personal/ psychological element as the thematic binder of the conceptual world shown in this poem. 4.2. space and ti m e: the absent and the present as i began to expose previously, wulf and eadwacer opens a connection between the past facts and the present situation, which is subject to the aforementioned psychological expression and describes the present to move to the past and to be back to the poetic narrator's present time again (giles;1981: 470). so, it seems that there is some insistance in contrasting the present and the absent: wulf is on iege, ic on o perre. fæst is pæt eglond, fenne biworpen. sindon wælreowe weras pær on ige; willaí hy hine apecgan, gif he on preat cyme í. ungelice is us. wulfes ic mines widlastum wenum dogode; ponne hit wæs renig weder ond ic reotugu sæt, ponne mec se beaducafa bogum bilegde, wæs me wyn to pon, wæs me hwæpre eac laí.1 (4-12) thus, the use of the verbs “is/ sindon” and “wæs” -past and present forms of “beon”points out that the poetic narrator is conscious of what exists in her present time -distance between both lovers 2 who are in different and isolated spacial positions, so the poetic narrator and wulf are in the same 1 trans: "wulf is on one isle, i am on another./ fast is that island set among the fens./ murderous are the people who inhabit/ that island. they will wish to capture him/ if he comes with a troop. we are apart./ grieved have i for my wulf with distant longings./ then was it rainy weather, and i sad,/ when the bold warrior laid his arms about me./ i took delight in that and also pain (op. cit: p. 85)". 2 although the reason of their being away from each other is not directly stated, i suppose it has been due to a sort of clandestine situation. however, the critics do not agree in deciding whether wulf belongs to the narrator's tribe or not. maybe, the first lines shed some light in favour of their belonging to different tribes; this is more coherent with the narrator's fear. even though, some critics (f.i., bravo 1984: 22) point out that exile is the reason of their being appart; an exile i suppose motivated by a secret and nonsocial relationship. ____________________________________________________________________ 75 time but in different spaces and forces her mind to remember a past space/ time in which both were together. her imagination offers a very powerful emo tional recreation of the absent facts, and her comeback to reality in the following lines (13-15) emphasizes the space/ time distance fro m those facts, pointing out that the distressing past conditions her current distressing situation.1 so, space and time in wulf and eadwacer -its definition, its usageis subject to -or serves as a coherent backgroundthe psychological expression of the poetic narrator. 4.3. the influence of the natural environment as context when pointing out the presence of several terms refered to the natural world, i began to state that the natural background played an important role as the only contextual system, which is directly mentioned in the text, and as an element that conditions the poetic narrator's mood. thus, two islands -natural background, a classical symbol standing for loneliness and isolationconstitute the background where the narration is developed. the poetic narrator gives no description of her island, of her most immediate context, but she does describe the island in which her lover is forced to dwell. this description is highly negative, and in it she uses a series of descriptive elements that are frequently used in old english poetry to define the adverse condition of nature (bravo 1984: 23): wulf is on iege, ic on o perre. fæst is pæt eglond, fenne biworpen. sindon wælreowe weras pær on ige;2 (4-6) the poetic narrator is mentally absent from the environtment in which she is immersed, being this a feature that emphasizes the introspective intens ity of what is being told in the poem. so, the use in variatio of the word “is land” -”iege, eglond, ige”is a symbol of her own private isolation, of her need for 1 some critics have seen in this abrupt return to the real world a sort of parallelism with the dream scene of the wanderer, 45-50 (f.i. shippey;1972: 73). 2 trans: "wulf is on one isle, i am on another./ fast is that island set among the fens./ murderous are the people who inhabit/ that island (op. cit: p. 85)". ____________________________________________________________________ 76 inward thinking, of the island every human being is inside himself or herself. and in that very personal island, the psychological is connected with an adverse nature only once: “wulfes ic mines widlastum wenum dogode;/ ponne hit wæs renig weder ond ic reotugu sæt (9-10)”.1 in spite of being a brief reference, i think that connecting her suffering, -”dogode”-, her sadness and her anxious state of mind -”reotugu”with rainy weather has not been made by chance, and it could be used just as it was used in the seafarer, the wanderer and the wife's lament: as the conditioning background of a psychological expression (bueno 1998: 192-194, 261-265, 385-388). although another two elements belonging to nature 2 are also mentioned, and some critics have seen hints of sea voyages 3 and of a certain kind of natural symbolic use, which is not clear in my opinion4, i think that the most re levant feature to take into account when studying the natural environment and its influence in wulf and eadwacer is both the mention of the isle as a meaningful background and the connection of the psychological with the natural element. 5. conclusion in 1842 benjamin thorpe, the first editor of theexeter book , was also the first critic to state the immense complexity of wulf and eadwacer and the extreme difficulty of its interpretation. this intertwining of complexity and difficulty has been kept through the ages, as h. aertsen (1994: 119) points out: the first editor of the exeter book, benjamin thorpe, wrote in 1842 in a note to what he considered to be the first of the exeter book riddles: “of this i can make no sense, nor am i able to arrange the 1 trans: "i suffered far-wandering hope of my wulf,/ when it was rainy weather and i sat mourning (giles;1981: p. 468)". 2 "wulf" and "wuda", which i have already explained before. 3 bravo (1984: 22): " el viaje por mar sólo se insinúa cuando se menciona hasta tres veces la isla en la que se encuentra wulf y ello implica que wulf tuvo que hacer un viaje por mar desde su patria". 4 as regards l. 11 peter clemoes (1995: 177) points out: "se beaducafa (11a) in combination with the woman weeping in rainy weather, his arms like boughs or bows, acts as a symbol of masculinity free of any particularities of identity". this symbolic use is not so clear as the previous ones, refered to the isle or even to wulf. ____________________________________________________________________ 77 verses” (…). a hundred years later kemp malone wrote that “eadwacer is one of the most obscure poems in the english language. we make no attempt to interpret it. bearing in mind the difficulty with which the text is endowed before hand, the critics are constantly tempted to suggest different interpretations, which have been classified by aertsen hims elf (1994: 121) as inner or outter interpretations, if they are based on data taken from the poem or on mythological situations in which to insert the text. the text has been understood as a rid dle, a fragment from a longer dramatic soliloquy, a charm, a dialogue about a hunting scene, a love story whose main characters are dogs, a frauenlied,1 a mother's lament for her son (osborn 1983, tasioulas 1996, lücke 1983), or as a cryptic conversation between two poets (eliason 1974). all this multifariousness has forced some critics to think that the poem is incoherent, incomplete or subject to an old story the audience knew and we have not been able to identify yet2. perhaps, this diversity of interpretations could mean that the ambiguity is consciously aimed at by the poet (davidson 1974). so, i think there are basically two ways of approaching wulf and eadwacer: either admitting the existance of unknown sources, which were widely known by the poem's audience, or assuming that the darkness of the text could be overcome by having a look at the psychological expression that is directly observed and narrated. i have ascribed myself to the latter, because i have understood the text as a poem in which there are a series of psychological, emotional and introspective implications, which set its thematic foundations. using fanagan's words (1976: 138): “no interpretation can go far wrong if we stay within the bounds of the human emotions depicted therein”. my interpretation of the text makes me think that we literary critics should understand the poem as psychological expression, which is the thematic core 1 aertsen 1994 and giles 1981 make a good summary of these interpretations. i recommend their reading to get a complete bibliographical reference. 2 many sources have been suggested, but none of them have been conveniently proved. giles (1981: 469) offers a good summary of the main ones: "some suggestions have been: and old norse source; a story found in certain introductory chapters of the volsungasaga; a story found in the hildebrandslied; an account of the historical eadwacer; a rendition of the wolfdietrich b story; a story from the volundkarviía; and a story from the frankish dietrich legend". calder et al (1983: 61-62) mention a new one in an irish poem from the ixth century called it é saigte gona súain, which they translate as créide's lament for dínertach. ____________________________________________________________________ 78 of my own understanding of wulf and eadwacer. the crux of the poem is the psychological element, the expression of what is emotional, of a feeling that could be universally shared by all the readers and hearers who have faced the text through the ages. although i defend a particular interpretation of wulf and eadwacer, there could be many other different viewpoints as valid as mine. however, i think that the interpretation offered in this article -together with my previously quoted studies contributes to identify the psychological element as one of the possible foundations of an inclusive elegiac poetic discourse.1 jorge luis bueno alonso university of oviedo works cited aertsen, h. 1994: wulf and eadwacer: a woman's cri de coeurfor whom?, for what? companion to old english poetry. eds. h. aertsen & r. h. bremer. amsterdam: vrije university press. 119-144. baker, p. s. 1981: the ambiguity of wulf and eadwacer. studies in philology 78.5: 39-51. bosworth, j. & toller, n. 1972: an anglo-saxon dictionary. oxford: oxford university press. bravo, a. 1984: wulf and eadwacer: ¿el primer poema de amor de la literatura inglesa? el amor en la literatura inglesa: symposium. cadiz: university of cadiz press. 17-26. 1 the development of a complete taxonomy of that inclusive elegiac poetic discourse, from a literary anthropological theoretical assumption, has been the main aim of my ph. d. dissertation (bueno 1998). after offering this essay and the previously mentioned studies as an advance of my investigation in progress, it is my aim now to publish forthcomingly a volume to provide the academic community with the definitive results of my research. ____________________________________________________________________ 79 bueno alonso, j. l. 1996: la lingüística estilístico-estadística como base del estudio antropológico del texto. lenguajes naturales y lenguajes formales xii. ed. carlos martín vide. barcelona: ppu. 401-406. bueno alonso, j. l. 1997a: anthropology and old english: linguistic, symbolic and conceptual bases of the wanderer. proceedings of the ixth international conference of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. eds. m. giménez bon & v. olsen. zarautz-zaragoza: itxaropena-pórtico. 32-41. bueno alonso, j. l. 1997b: introducción a la hermenéutica literaria: bases contextuales para el estudio antropológico-literario de la poesía elegíaca en inglés antiguo. university of oviedo, res earch thesis. bueno alonso, j. l. 1998: aportaciones a la hermenéutica antropológicoliteraria: bases lingüísticas, simbólicas y contextuales de la poesía elegíaca del inglés antiguo. university of oviedo, ph. d. dissertation. bueno alonso, j. l. forthcoming a: verbal and nonverbal communication in the seafarer. proceedings of the xth international conference of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. eds. p. navarro & a. hornero. zaragoza: university of zaragoza press. bueno alonso, j. l. forthcoming b: proxemics, chronemics, passing of time and the psychological expression of the self ('ic') as key elements of the seafarer's thought-world: a literary anthropological reappraisal. proceedings of the xith international conference of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. eds. e. varela et. al. vigo: university of vigo press. calder, d. g, biork, r. e, ford, p. k. & melia, d. eds. 1983: sources and analogues of old english poetry ii: the major germanic and celtic texts in translation. cambridge: d. s. brewer. 23-70. calder, w. m. iii. 1981: research opportunities in the modern history of classical scholarship. classical world 74: 241-251. caramés, j. l. 1978: la antropología poética: aproximación no cerrada al análisis de la poesía. arbor 389: 61-69. caramés, j. l. 1980: para una antropología poética: el totemismo en la poesía de ted hughes. salamanca: almar. ____________________________________________________________________ 80 clemoes, p. 1995: interactions of thought and language in old english poetry. cambridge: cambridge university press. davidson, a. e. 1974: interpreting wulf and eadwacer. annuale medievale 16: 24-32. desmond, m. 1990: the voice of exile: feminist literary history and the anonymous anglo -saxon elegy. critical inquiry 16: 572-590. eliason, n. e. 1974: on wulf and eadwacer. old english studies in honour of john c.pope. eds. r. b. burlin & e. b. irving jr. toronto: university of toronto press. 225-234. escobedo, c. & caramés, j, l. 1994: el comentario de textos antropológicoliterario. oviedo: university of ovie do press. fanagan, j. m. 1976: wulf and eadwacer: a solution to the critics' riddle. neophilologus 60: 137-175. frankis, p. j. 1962: deor and wulf and eadwacer: some conjectures. medium aevum 31: 161-175. gameson, f. & r. 1996: wulf and eadwacer, the wife's lament and the dis covery of the individual in old english verse. studies in english language and literature: 'doubt wisely'. papers in honour of e. g. stanley. m. j. toswell & e. m. tyler. london: routledge. 457-474. giles, r. f. 1981: wulf and eadwacer: a new reading. neophilologus 65: 468-471. greenfield, s. b. 1986: wulf and eadwacer. all passion pent. anglo-saxon england 15: 5-14. hamer, r. 1970: a choice of anglo-saxon verse. london: faber & faber. 8485. jones, f. 1985: a note on the interpretation of wulf and eadwacer. neuphilologische mitteilungen 86: 323-327. keough, t. 1976: the tension of separation in wulf and eadwacer. neuphilologische mitteilungen 77: 552-560. kerling, j. 1980: another solution to the critics' riddle: wulf and eadwacer revisited. neophilologus 64: 140-143. ____________________________________________________________________ 81 klinck, a. l. 1984: the old english elegy as a genre. english studies in canada 10: 129-140. krapp, g. & dobbie, e. v. k. eds. 1936: the anglo-saxon poetic records iii: the exeter book . new york: columbia university press. liuzza, r. m. 1994: the return of the repressed: old and new theories in old english literary criticism. old english shorter poems: basic readings. ed. katherine o'brien o'keefe. ny: garland. 103-147. luecke, j. 1983: wulf and eadwacer: hints for readin g bewoulf and anthropology. the old english elegies: new essays in criticism and research. ed. m. green. rutherford: fairleigh dickinson university press. 190-203. magennis, h. 1996: images of community in old english poetry. cambridge: cambridge university press. osborn, m. 1983: the text and context of wulf and eadwacer. the old english elegies: new essays in criticism and research. ed. m. green. rutherford: fairleigh dickinson university press. 174-189. poyatos, f. 1979: literary anthropology: a new interdisciplinary perspective of man. man and life 5. 3 & 4: 127-149. poyatos, f. 1988: literary anthropology: toward a new interdisciplinary area. literary anthropology: a new interdisciplinary approach to people, signs and literature. ed. f. poyatos. amsterdam: john benjamins. 3-49. rivers, t. j. 1991: adultery in early anglo -saxon society. anglo-saxon england 20: 19-25. shippey, t. a. 1972: old english verse. london: hutchinson. 53-79. tasioulas, j. 1996: the mother's lament: wulf and eadwacer reconsidered. medium aevum 65, 1: 1-18. whitbread, l. 1941: a note in wulf and eadwacer. medium aevum 10: 150154. * † * microsoft word review 9_2023.docx selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. 28 (2023): 141–151. issn: 1132-631x doi: 10.17811/selim.28.2023.141-151 © ediuno. ediciones de la universidad de oviedo. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. timofeeva, olga. 2022. sociolinguistic variation in old english. records of communities of people. advances in historical sociolinguistics. amsterdam: john benjamins. pp. xv + 204. isbn 9789027211347. reviewed by julia fernández cuesta university of seville since the publication of lalme (1986), there have been discussions about the feasibility of the study of old english dialects (hogg 1988; lowe 2001) and attempts to apply the methods of contemporary dialectology (the fit technique developed by angus mcintosh and associates) to old english texts (kitson 1990, 1993, 1995, 1996). in a similar way, old english scholars have long considered approaching the linguistic variation in old english from a sociolinguistic perspective and with sociolinguistic methods of analysis (the work of toon [1983, 1992] is a good example). olga timofeeva’s new book on sociolinguistic variation in old english sets out to demonstrate that old english sociolinguistics is not an impossibility in spite of the skewed nature of the evidence that has survived and the fact that the texts were written, for the most part, by individuals of the same rank: middle-aged, educated, catholic men. according to the author, despite these obvious drawbacks, the rich old english corpus still “awaits its full sociolinguistic appreciation” (timofeeva 2022, 3). the book is divided into eight chapters, without introduction and with a short epilogue by way of conclusion. although there are cross-references between chapters, the book reads more like a collection of papers on the topic of communities of practice in old english and anglo-latin (chapter 7 is a study of the language of william i’s chancery) than a monograph on old english sociolinguistics. the subtitle, “records of communities and people” actually reflects more accurately the contents of the monograph. although there are references to mercian, kentish and other dialects (see the chapter on diplomas (82–85) and the case study on wills (115–23)), the book focuses mainly on west-saxon. “northumbrian” and “kentish” do not appear in the subject index. the first chapter (“sociolinguistic approaches to the study of old english”) offers a literature review of what has been done in the field along the lines of nevalainen (2012) and (2015). incidentally, the latter is not mentioned, although it is relevant to the study of communities of practice since it discusses the interaction between macroand microsociolinguistic levels of analysis and recognises the relevance of the data provided by identifiable individuals and groups of people in a given period for studying real-time sociolinguistic variation and change (nevalainen 2015, 246). timofeeva briefly mentions the work done on language contact between old english and norse and between old english and brythonic (the celtic hypothesis) and how the development of the west saxon literary standard may have played a role in a supposed “delayed effect”, which would have been responsible for the fact that some structures alleged to be of celtic https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1075-0465 book reviews 142 origin did not show in the language until much later, in the middle english period. on page 6 she refers to the “prescriptive role of the late west saxon standard” and also to the mercian literary language associated with the language of the vespasian psalter, which is—in my view—somewhat anachronistic, since there is no evidence that the scribes of the winchester school had any intention of imposing a standard of any kind (any more than did chancery clerks in the 15th century). the west saxon literary standard was certainly influential (toon 1983, 1992) and may even have reached the north (jolly 2012; fernández cuesta and langmuir 2019), but it was not a standard in the milroyan sense of the term. in the section on social dialectology, reference is made to research on both old english sociolinguistics and other periods of the language. there are also sections on old english text types and their suitability for sociolinguistic analysis and a brief but worthwhile and informative section on research done in the field so far. the only section that i find somewhat incomplete is the one on glosses. there is no mention of the work by pons-sanz on norse-derived words in the northumbrian glosses (2000, 2004), by kotake on mercian glosses (2010, 2012), or recent work on various aspects of the northumbrian glosses by cole (2014), fernández cuesta and pons (2016) and fernández cuesta and rodríguez ledesma (2020). cole (2014) is not mentioned, even though it is a quantitative/statistical work that is carried out employing variationist methods. there are also some errors. on page 14 we read that aldred’s earlier gloss was “used by two other scribes, farmon and owun, to produce an interlinear translation of the rushworth gospels… into the mercian dialect.” aside from the fact that kotake (2016) has recently questioned that the rushworth gospels was a copy of lindisfarne, there are actually two distinct sections in the rushworth glosses, one in the mercian dialect (rushworth1) and another in a variety of old northumbrian (rushworth2; see fernández cuesta and ponssanz [2016, 1, 6]). the last section of chapter 1 is on social networks, which is the focus of the monograph. timofeeva discusses previous research on the subject, notably lenker (2000) and refers to her own publications on communities of practice in old english (timofeeva 2013, 2018). missing here—to my mind—is perhaps a more thorough description of the contents of the monograph (the seven chapters that follow) and how they are related to one another. we are told that the book is about old english genres and registers in relation to communities and individuals, where possible, and that it deals with sociology of language and social dialectology, more concretely with correlational and interactional sociolinguistics (4). we are also informed that the book, following previous research on the alfredian circle, is about communities that specialised “in a limited number of genres” and that each chapter deals with one genre. on page 10 we are told that “the first chapter analyses the emergence of several lexical norms in vernacular statutory and nonimaginary-narration texts… in the late ninth century and their complex association with the circle of scholars and a scribal office at the court of king alfred” (i suppose that timofeeva means the second chapter on “social networks at the court of king alfred”). then, surprisingly, she refers to “the rest of the book” without specifying the contents of the six remaining chapters: “the rest of the book focuses on legal genres (charters, writs, and wills) and explores their correlation with professional and lay communities within the context of such institutions as the church [sic], local courts, and the royal chancery” (10–11). book reviews 143 chapter 2 (“social networks at the court of king alfred”) is a revised version of a previously published paper. it aims to describe king alfred’s community of practice, composed by a cluster of mercian scholars, in order to assess whether it throws some light on “alfred’s authorship.” perhaps a better way to express it would have been “alfred’s influence,” as alfred was not really an author but a translator of works like the pastoral care. the case study comprises two lexical features originating in the alfredian network (angelcynn and here) and then disseminating to other areas of the country. chapter 3 (“legal old english and its communities”) analyses legal documents from a sociolinguistic perspective. its aim is to reconstruct social networks between legal practitioners in the old english period. it is argued that, in the absence of letters and other genres that might reflect individual usage, legal texts such as charters can be used, since they represent oral practices “even though these practices are highly ritualised” (52). this chapter also offers information about databases that can be useful for sociolinguistic research. based on the information provided by the prosopography of anglo-saxon england (pase), timofeeva analyses the distribution of names, occupations and gender in the database (53–58) and offers an example of how it can be used to assess the involvement (or lack of it) of scholars like ælfric in legal matters (59). she also describes other databases which can be employed for sociolinguistic analysis (the anglo-saxon charters project, the electronic sawyer and the dictionary of old english web corpus). in this chapter (63) we are also given a brief summary of the four chapters that follow: chapter 4 on diplomas; chapter 5 on vernacular writs and the emergence of a proto-chancery community at the west-saxon royal court; chapter 6 on wills and chapter 7 on a latin corpus of charters from the reign of william the conqueror. i just wonder whether it might have been clearer to place the summary of every chapter in an introduction. chapter 4 analyses diplomas, which are in latin for the most part, but contain english words or phrases in the boundary clauses and some are summaries in english. the aim is to reconstruct the social practices of legal communities. the study is mostly descriptive, i.e. it tells us about the elements that are characteristic of these documents (invocation, dating, donor, proem, etc.). as in the case of wills, timofeeva highlights the variation found in these formulae, for example the various dispositive verbs used, and tries to determine some conditioning factors of their use. she states that “with vernacular documents … the overall protocol remains very similar, even though the individual formulations of the component parts differ significantly” (68). as an example, she gives charter s33 from the reign of æthelberht of wessex. one of the findings is that in the middle of the ninth century, at the time of the expansion of west saxon influence, latin templates of the west saxon diplomatic seem to be spreading and that by the beginning of alfred’s reign (871), they can be found in documents preserved in various archives (winchester, shaftesbury, sherborne, abingdon, and glastonbury), suggesting that there was a monopoly of the production of royal charters by a kind of “central agency” (70). the influence of mercian scholars and advisors at the time of king alfred is also found in the charters from that period. one of the most interesting contributions of this chapter is the reconstruction of the social networks involved in the production of documents from the alfredian period and how, from the witness lists, it is possible to reconstruct social networks (the king, bishops, dukes, lay nobility), in this case with west-saxon affiliations (73). although book reviews 144 hardly new, this is interesting from a sociological point of view. yet it would have been useful if we were told in what way “the elevation of priests from the royal household to high ecclesiastical positions” may have “promoted the social practices (including linguistic ones) of the winchester court, both in wessex and beyond” (74). this may have been the case, but without a comparative study of such linguistic practices (before and after the alfredian reform) this assertion is no more than a supposition, as the author herself recognises: “since most of the property transactions were recorded in latin, the medium controlled almost exclusively by the clergy, it is more difficult to reconstruct the language competence of secular participants” (80). the case study on dispositive verbs, which concludes this chapter (81–85) offers a statistical analysis of the frequency of latin dispositive verbs (dono, largior, do, condedo, etc.) by region. the conclusion is that the overwhelming majority of charters use the first person singular, about 9% the first-person plural, some alternate between the two and only 3% use the third person (mostly in the singular). this is interesting, not only in itself, but also for comparative analysis with the language of legal documents from other periods (spedding 2010 and probert 2022 on old english manumissions). the distribution by rank is also telling: the first-person plural is employed by the king and sometimes bishops, although it is not common before the conquest (84) and there is also variation according to region and archive, which leads the author to conclude that “there are significant regional differences between the diplomatic traditions of anglo-saxon kingdoms at around 900” (84). chapter 5 on writs sets out to show how standardised features were disseminated from professional clerks to common court members and how “writs maintained old english etiquette norms and social hierarchies” (87). the corpus for this study is formed from writs taken from harmer’s edition of anglo-saxon writs (1952) and uses bates (1998) for post-conquest writs in latin. we are given the distribution of writs according to language and status. i do not quite understand why the two writs of queen ælfthryth and queen edith, who were crowned and anointed as queens, are classified as “nonroyal.” even though ælfthryth’s will was issued during the reign of her son and edith’s writs were issued during her husband’s lifetime and during her widowhood, the two ladies were certainly of royal status and there seems no doubt about the authenticity of the texts. i think that parameters for inclusion/exclusion should have been given. as in the previous chapter on diplomas, this chapter describes the protocol elements that are characteristic of this genre: salutation, addressees, notification clause, main announcement, prohibition clause, valediction. a case study on the salutation-notification template follows, which (we are told in a footnote) is a revised version of a previously published article (timofeeva 2019). the linguistic variables considered in the study are the adverb that follows the salutation verb (eadmodlice, freondlice), the switch from first to third person, and the use of the honorific leof. timofeeva starts by analysing these formulaic expressions in alfred’s letter to bishop wærferð in the preface to the pastoral care to show how the same protocol (the use in the salutation of adverbs that are dependent on the status of the addressee, eadmodlice to superiors and freondlice to equals) was later adopted in writs. this is illustrated by letters from ælfric to his superiors (patrons), where he uses eadmodlice, and to west saxon thegns, who are addressed by him with formulae containing freondlice (94). this case study is interesting, but i wonder whether analysis book reviews 145 of the distribution of this feature (and of the replacement of ealdorman by earl) is enough evidence of the “standardization of linguistic practices in official correspondence and for the application of a distinctive protocol, correlated with the status of senders and receivers to each other” (98). section 5.4.4. (“writs by other social leaders” 98–101) analyses examples of writs made on behalf of queens in order to assess whether these documents follow “the protocols and conventions established in male legal correspondence.” the writ of queen edith contains all the expected formulae, as does that of queen ælfthryth (100). the only difference is the choice of adverb (eadmodlice instead of freondlice), which is interpreted tentatively as a change in diplomatic etiquette due to the fact that the queen’s status has changed from that of queen consort to dowager queen (100). this is of course anecdotal. the motives could have been to show respect to one of the recipients of the letter (archbishop ælfric) on the part of a woman who was now spending most of her time at a nunnery. section 5.4.5 has the suggestive title “the incredible stability of royal writs” (103). yet, shouldn’t we expect legal language to be stable and formulae to be adapted accurately from one language (in this case old english) to another one (latin and anglo norman), particularly in a period of transition? initial formulae, which are the elements analysed in this chapter, tend to be relatively stable, whereas variation is generally found in the body of the will before the general acceptance of more standard forms. the function of these formulae is precisely to provide textual stability and avoid ambiguity. the idea is to possess a stable record of the legal act in question, as people need to trust that the text will be understood in the future. as kopaczyk (2013, 184–85) states, “the requirements of legal discourse prevent lexical creativity and promote stability in order to inhibit manifold interpretations of the text.” one of my criticisms of this chapter is that some of the conclusions do not follow from the evidence provided in the study. from the analysis of opening formulae in writs of royalty and ecclesiastics, timofeeva concludes with a series of suppositions, which might contain elements of truth, but for which no evidence is given: “the emerging administrative channels would disseminate verbal and non-verbal practices of this small community of royal scribes to their colleagues down the chain of authority, from kings to chief magnates to smaller landowners to shires to hundreds. eventually, the scribes at the royal court and at local assemblies would constitute a discourse community. without necessarily knowing each other, they would know of each other and of the shared accepted practices within the community of scribes… the community would also include lay peripheral members….” (106, emphasis mine) in the coda to chapter 5, we are told that anglo-saxon bureaucratic structures proved very resilient after the norman conquest, which is not surprising. they continued to be used because the incomers recognised them, and they were available as a readymade bureaucracy. we are also told that “official notices switched to english (now for good) in the first decades of the fifteenth century, as the royal chancery had abandoned the latin medium although the new english template took some time to achieve a standard form” (107)1. yet benskin’s study (2004), founded on an extensive and detailed 1 it is not clear what the author is referring to by official notices (writs?). the term covers so many different kinds of texts as to be almost vacuous. book reviews 146 survey of the sources, demonstrated that chancery was nowhere near abandoning latin in the fifteenth century. fisher et al. (1984) may have been the source of the error, but their flaws were exposed by benskin (2004), as has also been recognised by later scholarship (corrie 2006; sobecki 2020, 256 n. 17). chapter 6 (“wills: variation by archive and gender”) is a study of anglo-saxon wills that correlates linguistic variation in this text-type with the variables region and gender. this chapter is an earlier version of timofeeva (2022), recently published in studia anglica posnaniensia (in the reference section of the monograph it appears as “forthcoming”). although there is a small number of wills made on behalf of women from this period (seven in total, which renders the gender variable susceptible of sociolinguistic analysis), caution should be exercised. in the anglo-saxon period wills were intended to be records of an oral act and we have no way of knowing whether they were written down after the fact or written ahead of time to be read out. none were written by the testators and, while oral traces persist, it would be hard to state categorically that they represent the actual words the testator spoke. although testators would have been intimately involved in the content of their testaments, we need to take into account the various linguistic layers in this text-type, where testators, legal professionals, and copyists might all have been involved to a greater or lesser extent (moore 2002; fernández cuesta 2014). this is particularly relevant in a period where, as the author says, “only twenty-two wills (about a third of the surviving corpus) are preserved in manuscripts written before 1066, with many among them being copies of earlier documents. the majority are even later copies, surviving in cartularies, whose contents are abbreviated, and witness lists truncated” (109). in the following pages (112–14) we are offered a description of the types and protocol of wills. section 6.5 is a case study on the distribution of dispositive verbs, their complementation patterns, and the adverbial phrases æfter poss dæge vs. ofer poss dæg (“after his/her death”) (115) in wills before and after 900, considering the “archive” where they are kept.2 the conclusion is that bury st edmunds stands out by showing a great deal of variation between individual wills and also within the same will. the results, when considering the variation of dispositive verbs by region, are interesting and show in a statistically significant way that ge(unnan) is characteristic of legal texts, whereas sellan is mostly found in other genres such as poetry and religious language (119). the distribution of unnan + genitive and innovative unnan + accusative shows that there is a preference for the older construction with genitive in the archives of christ church, canterbury, whereas in bury st edmunds we find the newer construction with accusative as early as 942. yet, it should be taken into account that if the will referred to is that of bishop theodred (whitelock 2011 [1930], 2), the date of 942 is based on the date when one of the estates mentioned in the text was granted to him by the king. theodred’s last signature occurs in 951, and pase has his death at 951x953, so while the will must clearly have been written between 942 and 953, the date of 942 should at least be qualified and not relied upon to underpin suppositions about dates of language change. moreover, this 2 it is worth noting that the right translation is “after his/her day” rather than the often used, but less accurate “after his /her death,” which is the one used by whitelock (2011 [1930]). in “the art of dying” (2022) timofeeva alternates between “death” and “day” (“after one’s death” / “after my/his/her day” (122)) without explanation. book reviews 147 will is preserved in the sacrist’s register (14th century). timofeeva concludes that “this bury innovation is quite remarkable given that legal texts tend to be very stable in their use of grammar and vocabulary… and it may be the case that here regional innovation overrides genre convention” (120). yet, the question remains whether the later copying of wills may be responsible for the choice of construction (i think that the possibility should at least be mentioned). furthermore, timofeeva states that the new construction with accusative probably originated in the spoken language, which might have been the case, although wills are not the only legal documents that originated as testimonies of oral pronouncements. on the other hand, the idea that this feature may have been perceived as a west-saxonism and as such rejected by the scribes of other dialectal regions (122) is more far-fetched (is there any evidence?). similarly, one should be careful in concluding that women’s wills tend to favour the innovative construction, as the results are not statistically significant (123). as regards section 6.6. (“variation by gender,” 123–26), it is concluded that women’s wills are characterised by the use of formulae that request royal protection, and that they make use of more positive politeness strategies (humility formulae and the modal motan). the author hypothesizes the “[e]xistence of a template (probably also an oral one) … in female wills, at least in wessex, that reflected contemporary expectations of social hierarchy, gender roles, and politic behaviour” (126). i wonder whether there is enough evidence to suggest this. since 38% of the male wills also included a plea for support or protection, then it was not a gendered characteristic, but had more to do with the absence of an executorial function or a formal probate process, although it cannot be denied that the complications of women’s land holding and the property laws of the day made it practically expedient for women to have the backing of both king and church, and more so than for men. comparison with studies of wills and testaments from the middle english period (in latin, french and english) would have been welcome here (see spedding 2010). similarly, it is also claimed that the reason why anathemas and the use of stronger and more emotional language are more elaborate in women’s than in men’s wills may be due to the fact that women felt that they were more vulnerable and had to protect the rights of their children against those who might try to violate their last decisions and post-mortem arrangements. although it is certainly a possibility, i think that the sample is too small, a fact that the author acknowledges in timofeeva’s “the art of dying” (2022, 127). unless a number of wills and these and other parameters are taken into account, the interpretation (women were more insecure about having their rights respected than men) is no more than a plausible hypothesis. it also assumes that women were responsible for the way in which their wills were drafted or that there was a template especially devised for women (see above). as timofeeva herself states, curses become more numerous in wills of the eleventh century, so that it is possible that the wills analysed are following that trend. without a study that considers other variables and, especially a time dimension, we simply do not know. the chapter on wills finishes with a brief case study (“sociolinguistic outliers”, 134– 38) which analyses two wills that do not conform to the norms and conventions of the genre and “can, arguably, be called sociolinguistic outliers” (134). the will of leofgifu in favour of bury-st edmund is addressed to a queen, possibly emma, as hyre leuedi (135) and uses other unconventional formulae that are associated with writs rather than with wills. according to timofeeva, the reason that the donor violated the norms of the genre book reviews 148 in this case may have been her close relation with queen emma (she might have been in her service) at a time when the queen, now a dowager, was in a more vulnerable position (136). yet a simpler reason might be that whoever wrote the will was used to writing writs, not wills. this case study shows the importance of considering the sociohistorical context in the interpretation of the choice of linguistic features used in texts and, in this sense, it could be considered a case study in “textual/literary pragmatics or discourse analysis” rather than a “sociolinguistic case study.” and the same applies to the analysis of mantat’s will. “sociolinguistics” is frequently used as a cover term for various disciplines such as discourse analysis, ethnography of speaking, geolinguistics, etc. (trudgill 2003, 123), but it is important to make clear which approach and method is being used in each case. the last chapter (“mixed-language practices of william i’s chancery”) aims at documenting the changes in the royal chancery and the local courts during the first two decades after the norman conquest. it analyses the result of the involvement of norman scribes in the english administration by studying the office of chancellor between the 1060s and 1100. timofeeva’s corpus comprises sixty latin writs produced in england between 1070 and 1087. the documents are written in latin, which could lead one to question the suitability of this study in a monograph entitled old english sociolinguistics. the justification may reside in the interest of examining the multilingual situation in england in the late 11th century (a transition period) and the fact that half of these documents contain at least one english (or french) term (143). the case study (“english terms in latin acta of william i,” 143–52) is the revised version of a published paper (timofeeva 2017). an interesting result, something that is also relevant for old english, is that these anglo-latin documents contain lexemes that are not attested (or are very rare) in the old english record (144). there is also a discussion about whether certain terms from english should be considered loanwords or instances of code-switching between latin and old english. timofeeva analyses the degree of integration of the lexical items in the recipient language, i.e. whether they take the latin case endings/gender or the english ones (148), as well as the possible reason for borrowing from old english (150), aside from filling lexical gaps. in sum, this is in many ways an informative monograph and definitely worth reading. the main problem is that it reads more as a collection of papers with a common thread than a work that has been planned as a monograph from the beginning. in the same way that there is no proper introduction explaining how the various chapters are connected, there is no conclusion. in chapter 8 (“epilogue”) we should have been offered a summary of the main findings, but instead timofeeva discusses the methodology that should be employed when approaching old english from a sociolinguistic perspective (175). this information should perhaps have been placed in an introduction (or in the first chapter), after the literature review rather than in the epilogue. in addition, some of the conclusions are quite obvious: “[t]he episodes of political centralisation were correlated with linguistic focusing and supralocalisation. conversely, the times of political fragmentation and instability were correlated with divergence of common linguistic practices” (175). there are also various references to works which, again, would be better placed in the section on literature review (176). finally, the epilogue (three pages) ends too abruptly, and i wonder if the final paragraph about ælfric’s lexical development is an appropriate one with which to conclude the book. book reviews 149 references benskin, michael. 2004. “chancery standard.” in new perspectives on english historical linguistics, vol. 2, lexis and transmission, edited by christian kay, carole hough, and irené wotherspoon, 1–40. amsterdam: john benjamins. cole, marcelle. 2014. verbal morphosyntax in old northumbrian and the (northern) subject rule (nowele supplement series). amsterdam/ philadelphia: john benjamins. corrie, marilyn. 2006. “middle english: dialects and diversity.” in the oxford history of english, edited by lynda mugglestone, 106–46. oxford: oxford university press. fernández cuesta, julia. 2014. “the voice of the dead: analyzing sociolinguistic variation in early modern english wills and testaments.” journal of english linguistics 42 (4): 330–58. fernández cuesta, julia, and christopher langmuir. 2019. “verbal morphology in the old english gloss to the durham collectar.” north-western european language evolution 72 (2): 134–64. fernández cuesta, julia, and sara m. pons-sanz, eds. 2016. the old english glosses to the lindisfarne gospels: language, author, and context. berlin: de gruyter. fernández cuesta, julia, and nieves rodríguez ledesma. 2020. “reduced forms in the nominal morphology of the lindisfarne gospel gloss. a case of accusative /dative syncretism?” folia linguistica historica 41 (1): 37–65. hogg, richard. 1988. “on the impossibility of old english dialectology.” in luick revisited: papers read at the luick-symposium at schlofi liechtenstein, edited by dieter kastovsky and gero bauer, 183–203. tübingen: gunter narr. jolly, karen l. 2012. the community of st. cuthbert in the late tenth century: the chester-le-street additions to durham cathedral library a.iv.19. columbus, oh: ohio state university press. kitson, peter. 1990. “old english dialects and the stages of the transition to middle english.” folia linguistica historica 11: 27–87. kitson, peter. 1993. “geographical variation in old english prepositions and the location of ælfric’s and other literary dialects”. english studies 74 (1): 1–50. kitson, peter. 1995. “the nature of old english dialect distributions, mainly as exhibited in charter boundaries, part 1: vocabulary.” in medieval dialectology, edited by jacek fisiak, 43–135. berlin: mouton de gruyter. kitson, peter. 1996. “the dialect position of the old english orosius.” studia anglica posnaniensia 30: 3–35. kopaczyk, joanna. 2013. the legal language of scottish burghs: standardization and lexical bundles. oxford: oxford university press. kotake, tadashi. 2010. “farman’s changing syntax: a linguistic and palaeographical survey.” in aspects of the history of english language and literature: selected papers read at shell 2009, hiroshima, edited by osamu imahayashi, yoshiyuki nakao, and michiko ogura, 239–56. frankfurt am main: peter lang. kotake, tadashi. 2012. ”lindisfarne and rushworth one reconsidered.” notes and queries 257: 14–19. book reviews 150 kotake, tadashi. 2016. “did owun really copy from the lindisfarne gospels? reconsideration of his source manuscript(s).” in the old english glosses to the lindisfarne gospels: language, author, and context, edited by julia fernández cuesta, and sara m. pons-sanz, 377–95. berlin: de gruyter. lalme = mcintosh, angus, m. l. samuels, and michael benskin. 1986. a linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english. 4 vols. aberdeen: aberdeen university press. lenker, ursula. 2000. “the monasteries of the benedictine reform and the ‘winchester school’: model cases of social networks in anglo-saxon england?” european journal of english studies 4 (3): 225–38. lowe, kathryn a. 2001. “on the plausibility of old english dialectology: the ninth century kentish charter material.” folia linguistica historica 22 (1-2): 67–102. moore, colette. 2002. “writing good southerne: local and supralocal norms in the plumpton letter collection.” language variation and change 14: 1–17. nevalainen, terttu. 2012. “new perspectives, theories and methods: historical sociolinguistics.” in english historical linguistics: an international handbook, edited by alexander bergs, and laurel j. brinton, 1438–57. berlin/boston: de gruyter mouton. nevalainen, terttu. 2015. “what are historical sociolinguistics?” journal of historical sociolinguistics 2015 (1-2): 243–69. pons-sanz, sara. 2000. analysis of the scandinavian loanwords in the aldredian glosses to the lindisfarne gospels. studies in english language and linguistics. valencia: universitat de valència. pons-sanz, sara. 2004. “a sociolinguistic approach to the norse-derived words in the glosses to the lindisfarne and rushworth gospels.” in new perspectives on english historical linguistics: selected papers from 12 icehl, glasgow, 21-26 august 2002, edited by christian kay, carole hough, and irené wotherspoon, 177–92. amsterdam: john benjamins. probert, duncan. 2022. “manumissions: performance and practicalities.” in names, texts and landscapes in the middle ages: a memorial volume for duncan probert, edited by steven basset, and alison j. spedding, 39–61. donington: shaun tyas. sobecki, sebastian. 2020. “the handwriting of fifteenth-century privy seal and council clerks.” the review of english studies 72 (304): 253–279. spedding, alison j. 2010. “my testament in englisshe tonge: a study in the use of the vernacular in medieval wills.” phd diss., university of birmingham. timofeeva, olga. 2013. “anglo-latin and old english: a case for integrated bilingual corpus studies of anglo-saxon registers.” in new methods in historical corpora, edited by paul bennett, martin durrell, silke scheible, and richard j. whitt, 195– 204. tübingen: narr. timofeeva, olga. 2018. “aelfred mec heht gewyrcan: sociolinguistic concepts in the study of alfredian english.” english language and linguistics 22 (1): 123–48. timofeeva, olga. 2019. “chancery norms before chancery english: templates in royal writs from alfred the great to william the conqueror.” journal of pragmatics 20 (1): 51–77. timofeeva, olga. 2022. “the art of dying. making a will in old english and its sociolinguistic context.” studia anglica posnaniensia 57: 109–129. book reviews 151 toon, thomas e. 1983. the politics of early old english sound change. new york and london: academic press. toon, thomas e. 1992. “old english dialects.” in the cambridge history of the english language. vol. i. the beginnings to 1066, edited by richard hogg, 409–51. cambridge: cambridge university press. whitelock, dorothy, ed. 2011 [1930]. anglo-saxon wills. cambridge: cambridge university press. (received 22/11/2022) microsoft word 2021notes_1_breeze-truso.docx andrew breeze, selim26 (2021): 129–136. issn 1132-631x / issn-l 2792-3878 / https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.26.2021.129-136 truso in the old english orosius and tczew, poland andrew breeze university of navarre wulfstan’s description of his voyage to the baltic is an addition to the old english orosius. it contains a notorious crux, as follows. wulfstan (otherwise unknown) sailed to truso, a trading-place near the mouth of the vistula. anglo-saxonists and others have long identified truso as somewhere on lake drużno, near elbląg, poland. but in 1985 the polish philologist stanisław rospond disproved that. he regarded truso as tczew on the lower vistula. tczew (in german, dirschau) is attested in early documents with forms (trsow, trssew, treseu) that are compatible with truso. those for drausensee or lake drużno (recorded in 1233 as drusin) are not compatible with truso. they start with the wrong letter and have an internal <n> absent from spellings of tczew. his conclusions have nevertheless been ignored, despite their implications for english history and polish or viking archaeology. let us set the out the story in detail. in the year 891 or so, a mariner called wulfstan made a journey to the baltic. wulfstan’s account of his travels (surviving as an addition to the old english orosius) has had an unusual history. it was printed as early as 1598, when richard hakluyt included a translation of it in one edition of his voyages. it is still read in old english courses at conservative universities. yet problems remain. before we consider those, readers might obtain a map of the gdańsk region. failing that, they should keep in their mind’s eye this image. as it nears the baltic, the vistula divides into branches. three of them concern us here. on the left bank of the westernmost branch is the port of gdańsk. south-southeast of it is the town of tczew, on the west bank of the vistula’s main channel. it is located on a headland at a major crossing-point, sixteen miles from where this channel meets the baltic. between tczew and the sea was once a huge marshland, impassable on foot, making the dry ground of its site (where the 130 andrew breeze vistula leaves hill country to enter its delta) an obvious place for settlement. east of tczew is the nogat, easternmost of the vistula’s three branches. while the other two reach the baltic directly, the nogat flows into zalew wisłany, a coastal lagoon or sea known until 1945 as frisches haff. three miles east of the nogat is the town of elbląg, five miles inland from zalew wisłany. it is situated on the right bank of the river elbląg, which passes through lake drużno before reaching the town, and then enters zalew wisłany via its own estuary. sixty miles east of elbląg, in territory of the russian federation, is kaliningrad, formerly königsberg, close to zalew wisłany’s eastern limit. such is the vistula’s delta now. in the ninth century (as we shall see), there were major differences. these points in mind, we turn to estmere in bosworth’s dictionary, which offers this passage and translation: seo wisle liþ ut of weonodlande, and liþ in estmere; and se estmere is huru fiftene mila brad. þonne cymeþ ilfing eastan in estmere of ðæm mere, ðe truso standeþ in staðe. ‘the vistula flows out of weonodland and runs into the frische haff [estmere]; and the frische haff is, at least, fifteen miles broad. then the elbing comes from the east into the frische haff, out of the lake [drausen] on the shore of which truso stands.’ with the above is commentary on estmere as frisches haff, a lake “about sixty miles long, and from six to fifteen broad” which is “separated by a chain of sandbanks from the baltic sea”. for this information the compiler thanks a dr bell, “who matriculated at the university of königsberg, near the west end of the haff” (bosworth 1898: 259). if, however, dr bell thought that königsberg was by the west end of frisches haff and not its east, he can have noticed little of his surroundings. now for some of the forms given by wulfstan. his weonodland is the territory of the wends, a people who “pressed forward into the lands between the elbe and the vistula vacated by the germans, where wulfstan found them in the ninth century” (chambers 1912: 209). wyatt took things further, citing henry sweet’s identification in 1883 of truso as drausen. knowing of no such town, he considered it “clear that ‘the lake on whose shore truso stands’ is drausen see between e. and w. prussia”; the mysterious town of truso may thus have been elbing/elbląg, drausensee perhaps once having “extended to its walls”. for the phrase after that on the ilfing (or river elbląg), which the vistula “wickedly deprived of its name”, wyatt (1919: 210) suggested that in wulfstan’s day the “ilfing was then a tributary of wisle”. truso and tczew 131 so wyatt in 1919. forty-two years later, labuda (1961: 71, 82, 302) surveyed the question with reference to prussian and other scholarship, beginning with ferdinand neumann’s analysis of 1854. labuda, while assuming that the “passage is clear” (opis jest jasny) and required no emendation, admitted that the location of truso was unknown to us (jest nam nieznane), although it must have been near lake drużno, formerly bigger and with shores beyond its present ones. in a résumé, he restated belief in truso as a port “auprès de la cité médiévale d’elbląg”. soon after, jacek fisiak (1962: 78–89) published on the question (at łódź) his first academic paper. it has been noticed in poland but not beyond. in english, remarks of the following kind are typical. a discussion of overseas trade includes mention of how wulfstan (“probably an englishman”) traded with “a port near the modern danzig” (loyn 1962: 90). elsewhere is reference to truso “at the mouth of the vistula” (kirby 1967: 269). dorothy whitelock (1967: 230, 231) echoed henry sweet on truso as “a lost town, possibly elbing, on the drausen see, which preserves the name”, with estmere as frisches haff and ilfing as the river elbing. a specialist history has more information. wulfstan (“a norwegian?”) sailed to zalew wisłany and to truso, taken as elbląg, if without confidence; for “to the present no true town has been found and excavated. instead there have been finds of norse weapons, and there is a large viking age cemetery near the modern town’s railway station” (jones 1968: 110, 247). hence stenton’s (1971: 274) description of truso merely as a “port” near “the mouth of the vistula”. even in poland, truso was still regarded as a port “in the vicinity of present-day elbląg” (zins 1974: 9). dorothy whitelock, seeing “no reason to deny english nationality” (1974: 124) to wulfstan, whose name was english, merely referred to frisches haff without further details. a full translation of the entire passage followed (swanton 1975: 36): the vistula is a very great river, and it separates wit-land and wend-land; and wit-land belongs to the ests; and the vistula flows out of wend-land and flows into the zalew wisłany; and the zalew wisłany is at least fifteen miles broad. then the elbing comes from the east into the zalew wisłany from the lake on whose shore stands truso; and there come out together into the zalew wisłany: the elbing from the east out of estonia, and the vistula from the south out of wend-land. and then the vistula gives its name to the elbing and flows west and north from that lake into the sea; therefore it is called vistula-mouth. 132 andrew breeze a remark of witold ostrowski (1976: 209–231), on how wulfstan’s text has a “geopolitical” aspect, reminds one how (after danish wars) alfred had military reasons to inform himself on baltic topography. but ostrowski followed labuda for truso as near elbląg. an official history of poland has mention of wulfstan’s visit to truso, “an active buying and selling centre” near modern elbląg (gieysztor 1979: 23–141). in 1980 appeared janet bately’s edition (1980: 198) of this text, where she showed herself less certain than earlier writers. she quoted foote & wilson for “the lake on the shore of which truso stands” as lake drużno (formerly drausensee), but also their comment on how truso itself could be “anywhere between danzig and kaliningrad” and how identification with elbląg is “inconclusive”. she further noted the difficulties of its initial <t>, relating it to questions of dictation, and cited a 1977 paper by e. g. stanley on how the ilfing or elbląg was “wickedly deprived of its name” by the vistula, with the suggestion that the ilfing (not vistula) may here be the subject. some of this is illogical. if truso was near gdańsk or kaliningrad, it was not by lake drużno; as regards spelling, the question of dictation appears irrelevant, for the passage is not by the translator (surely a cornishman, despite what is claimed) dictating to a west saxon scribe, as janet bately well knows. in another official history, labuda (1980: 33–217) again referred to truso as “in the nogat delta” (w delcie nogatu). from the same year come maps of the region in the ninth century and in about 1300, with the first showing truso as on the site of elbląg, north of which the nogat flows into a lake drużno nine times its present size (zbierski & jasinski 1980: 69–336). so a branch of the vistula would have joined the river elbląg, even though the book’s main text offers no evidence to locate truso at elbląg. there is a further implication. truso was a trading city of international fame. yet nothing in the archaeological and historical record puts it at elbląg. in contrast is tczew, situated on a hill at the last point before the vistula reached its delta, once a vast fenland. the volume on gdańsk here cited has a wealth of reference to tczew’s past from prehistoric and roman times onwards. why this silence on truso, when we have an abundance of material on ancient and medieval tczew? before offering a reason, we note how keynes & lapidge (1983: 258) remarked that it is “not certain” that wulfstan addressed king alfred, unlike the arctic voyager ohthere, whose account come before his. for all commentators, 1985 was a year of an unnoticed revolution accomplished by stanisław rospond (1985: 395). he was a great scholar, a philologist and historian of the polish language (especially in silesia), whose truso and tczew 133 work should be better known than it is. his observations on truso, in a long entry on tczew, are epoch-making. he said this. the site, on a headland above the vistula, was inhabited in the bronze age and roman period; in the early middle ages it lay on a great trade-route for amber. rospond regarded tczew as probably the truso of wulfstan’s account, tending to reject a connection with drausensee or lake drużno (recorded in 1233 as drusin), thirty miles to the east. tczew (in german, dirschau) is attested in 1193 as trsow, in 1263 as trssew, in 1277 as treseu; the form can be linked with early polish treść ‘reed, rush, bulrush’ (appropriate for a site above marshes). tczew, to this day an important railway junction, has bridges across the vistula giving it vital strategic significance in both world wars (leading to its devastation in the latter). once truso is taken as tczew, many problems vanish. wulfstan’s truso is readily aligned with the trsow of 1193 and other forms. a connection with lake drużno can be ruled out in the light of drusin from 1243. initial <d> and final <n> cannot be reconciled with truso. yet maps provided with a textbook still show truso at elbląg; another map, of the vistula’s delta in about 1300, demonstrates how its channels and sea-outlets have changed greatly. both show as well tczew’s site on high ground by the vistula’s main stream (samsonowicz 1985: 11). janet bately (1991: 71–87) thereafter referred to wulfstan as reaching “the mouth of the vistula”. else roesdahl (1991: 280) thinks that truso “presumably lay at elbing”. this is at least better than a statement on wulfstan’s voyage “to estonia”, as if he approached finland (smyth 1995: 539). professor stanley (1996: 258–259), adding a german reference of 1764 to others on wulfstan’s voyage, explained “out of the lake [mere] on the shore of which truso stands” as “from the haff on the shore of which truso stands”; which puts truso on zalew wisłany and not on inland waters. a handbook has a passing allusion to wulfstan’s “expanded descriptions” on what he saw (sheppard 1999: 346–347). elsewhere is mention of ohthere as evidence for the translation of orosius as “prepared in collaboration” with alfred (stanton 2008: 116–125). hiatt (2010: 649–676) quotes research of 1984 by christina fell and 2002 by mathew townend for wulfstan as an anglian, not a west saxon. despite that, professor magennis (2011: 61) thinks him “perhaps a dane”. professor godden (2016: 345), translating the old english orosius into modern english, now thinks truso perhaps a “significant trading town on a lake or inland separated from the baltic itself by an area of sandbank”. here “significant trading town” is correct. the “lake or inland sea” is not. professor godden, basing his ideas on sweet’s erroneous identification, here as elsewhere displays misplaced assurance. 134 andrew breeze our conclusions are clear. tczew (the kingdom of prussia’s dirschau) appears in medieval documents as trsow, trssew, treseu. rospond can be vindicated on taking it as wulfstan’s truso. the town, on the main channel of the vistula, has been a communications and trading centre from the bronze age to the present, although gdańsk eclipsed it in the later middle ages, when changes in the vistula’s course gave gdańsk access to its main channel. truso being tczew, the details of wulfstan’s geography can now be deduced from maps of the vistula’s delta already mentioned (where historical topographers should not be misled by previous translations of orosius). anglo-saxonists may now co-operate with tczew’s archaeologists on their town’s illustrious past, when it had contacts even with england, where wulfstan perhaps showed tczew amber to alfred and his court. polish anglicists may similarly feel pride in tczew as a town in poland known in england as early as the ninth century. as for sweet’s views on lake drużno, they can be dismissed. they are an error repeated too long in books on alfred and his age. since the above was submitted for publication, the writer has received a referee’s report providing important updating on archaeology. it casts new light on wulfstan’s account of his voyage, which (it may be said again) is an addition to the translation. it is an interpolation within the main text, which was seemingly dictated by a cornishman to a west saxon scribe. (the pronunciation of truso hence owes nothing to any british translator.) the referee drew attention to fundamental work by polish archaeologists, the results of their excavations being summed up in two recent books. the former (on which this writer thanks the referee) concerns tczew and its early medieval archaeology (kleingärtner 2014). it should be used by all researchers concerned with the genuine truso. the latter volume is more curious. it shows how rospond’s work has had no impact, for one of its contributors declares that “the remains of the town of truso were finally successfully identified in 1982 by the polish archaeologist marek jagodziński”, before giving details of his excavations at a site by lake drużno (gardela 2015: 213–214). the upshort of these recent books is clear. rospond’s case is still ignored, even in poland. those concerned with the archaeology of the vikings on polish soil are therefore strongly recommended to consult the studies by kleingärtner and gardela cited here. as soon as that is done, progress for students of early english-viking-polish relations is bound to come. truso and tczew 135 references bately, j. ed. 1980: the old english orosius. oxford, oxford university press. bately, j. 1991: the nature of old english prose. in m. godden & m. lapidge eds. the cambridge companion to old english literature. cambridge, cambridge university press: 71–87. bosworth, j. 1898: an anglo-saxon dictionary. oxford, oxford university press. chambers, r. w. 1912: widsith: a study in old english heroic legend. cambridge, cambridge university press. gardela, l. 2015: vikings in poland: a critical overview. in m. h. ericksen, u. pedersen, b. rundberget, i. axelsen & h. berg eds. viking worlds. oxford, oxbow books: 213–234. gieysztor, a. 1979: medieval poland. in s. kieniewicz ed. history of poland. 2nd ed. warszawa, państwowe wydawnictwo naukowe: 23–141. fisiak, j. 1962: emendacje polskiego przekładu tekstów staroangielskich. rozprawy komisji językowej łtn 8: 78–89. godden, m. ed. 2016: the old english history of the world. cambridge & massachusetts, harvard university press. hiatt, a. 2010: maps and margins. in e. treharne & g. walker eds. the oxford handbook of medieval literature in english. oxford, oxford university press: 649– 676. jones, g. 1968: a history of the vikings. london, oxford university press. keynes, s. & m. lapidge 1983: alfred the great. harmondsworth, penguin. kirby, d. p. 1967: the making of early england. london, batsford. kleingärtner, s. 2014: die frühe phase der urbanisierung an der südlichen ostseeküste im ersten nachchristlichen jahrtausend. neumünster, wachholtz verlaf. labuda, g. 1961: źródła, sagi i legendy do najdawniejszych dziejów polski. warszawa, panstwowe wydawnictwo naukowe. labuda, g. 1980: diplomacja polska wczesnego feudalizmu (wiek x – 1306r.). in m. biskup ed. historia diplomacji polskiej. warszawa, państwowe wydawnictwo naukowe: 33–217. loyn, h. r. 1962: anglo-saxon england and the norman conquest. london, longman. magennis, h. 2011: the cambridge introduction to anglo-saxon literature. cambridge, cambridge university press. ostrowski, w. 1976: literatura staropolska a literatura angielska. in t. michalłowska & j. śląski eds. literatura staropolska w kontekscie europejskim. wrocław, zakład narodowy imięnia ossolińskich: 209–231. roesdahl, e. 1991: the vikings. london, allen lane. rospond, s. 1984: słownik etymologiczny miast i gmin prl. wrocław, zakład narodowy im. ossolińskich. 136 andrew breeze samsonowicz, h. 1990: historia polski do roku 1795. 5th ed. warszawa, wydawnictwa szkolne i pedagogiczne. sheppard, a. 1999: orosius. in m. lapidge, j. blair, s. keynes & d. scragg eds. the blackwell encyclopedia of anglo-saxon england. oxford, blackwell: 346–347. stanley, e. g. 1996: how the elbing deprives the vistula of its name: an unnoticed reference. notes and queries 241: 258–259. stanton, r. 2008: king alfred. in r. ellis ed. the oxford history of literary translation in english: to 1500. oxford, oxford university press: 116–125. stenton, f. m. 1971: anglo-saxon england. 3rd ed. oxford, clarendon press. smyth, a. p. 1995: king alfred the great. oxford, oxford university press. swanton, m. j. trans. 1975: anglo-saxon prose. london, dent. whitelock, d. ed. 1967: sweet’s anglo-saxon reader. 15th ed. oxford, clarendon press. whitelock, d. 1974: the beginnings of english society. rev. ed. harmondsworth, penguin. wyatt, a. j. ed. 1919: an anglo-saxon reader. cambridge, cambridge university press. zbierski, a. & j. kazimierz. 1980: gdańsk w okresie panowania królow polskich i ksiązat pomorskich (od ix w. do xiii w.). in e. cieslak ed. historia gdańska: tom i do roku 1454. gdańsk, wydawnictwo morksie: 69–336. zins, h. 1974: polska w oczach anglików. warszawa, państwowy instytut wydawniczy. author’s address departamento de filología universidad de navarra pamplona 31009 (spain) received: 16 march 2021 e-mail: abreeze@unav.es revised version accepted: 12 april 2021 microsoft word 3. ruiz narbona.docx selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. 28 (2023): 39–55. issn: 1132-631x doi: 10.17811/selim.28.2023.39-55 © ediuno. ediciones de la universidad de oviedo. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. the inflection of latin feminine proper names in the old english martyrology esaúl ruiz narbona university of seville (received 24 march 2023; revised 7 june 2023) this paper focuses on the inflections of latin feminine names in old english. whereas most latin loanwords are perfectly integrated and behave like old english words as far as their morphology is concerned, like scientific loans, names can take inflectional endings from both latin and old english. ruiz narbona (2023) has shown that, in the case of masculine names, the distribution of both types of inflections followed certain clear patterns. following the model of that study, the analysis of the 125 tokens from the old english martyrology shows that certain rules can also be established in the case of feminine names. in general terms, the inflections of these names are modelled after old english weak n-stems, although nominative inflections are invariably latin. the case with the more widespread variation is the genitive, where both old english and latin inflections are consistently used. the latter, however, are heavily restricted to introductory sections and function solely as post-modifiers. keywords: inflectional morphology; proper names; latin loanwords; old english; latin; variation 1. introduction this paper concentrates on feminine proper names that entered old english via latin, independently of their ultimate origin, be it greek, as in the case of eugenia, or latin, as in the case of lucia. the fact that these names are foreign entails some linguistic peculiarities with regard to their morphology. as in any language with a relatively rich nominal morphological system, names of anglo-saxon origin follow the same morphological rules as common nouns in old english. thus, their inflectional endings are modelled after one of the different declensional types available in old english. see colman (2014) and okasha (2011) for a detailed account. the same is the case with latin. names such as livia or octavius follow the inflectional paradigm of the declension they belong to, in this case 1st and 2nd, respectively, just as common names like porta ‘door’ or dominus ‘lord, master’. however, when they function in old english, the morphology of these latin names poses some difficulties. the most remarkable one is that, as campbell (1959, 219) puts it, they may retain their original latin inflectional endings, although not necessarily in all grammatical cases and in all contexts. consequently, it is possible to find a given latin name that has a latin inflection in one attestation, but an old english one in another. for example, the genitive forms of felicitas have a latin inflection -is in (1) but an old english one, -an in (2). https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9394-8882 esaúl ruiz narbona 40 (1) on ðone seofoðan dæg ðæs monðes bið ðara haligra on the.acc seventh day the.gen month.gen is the.gen holy.gen wifa gemynd sancta perpetuan ond women.gen commemoration.nom saint.gen perpetua.gen and sancta felicitatis saint.gen felicitas.gen ‘on the seventh day of the month is the commemoration of the holy women st. perpetua and st. felicitas’ [mart.039.001.016]1 (2) hi wæron ðære mæran wudewan suna sancta they were of.gen noble.gen widow.gen sons.nom saint.gen felicitan felicitas.gen ‘they were sons of the noble widow st. felicitas’ [mart.125.002.008] although latin influence on old english vocabulary features prominently in major studies, latin proper names are rarely discussed in any depth. even if some studies, such as baker (1998, 198) and rodríguez ledesma (2016), do take them into account, some of the most relevant works on vocabulary tend not to refer to them (kastovsky 1992, 2006; gneuss 1993). in some other cases, authors prefer to discard them given their specific idiosyncrasy (durkin 2014, 11 and fn7). this paper follows the main lines established in ruiz narbona (2023) and endeavours to provide an analysis of the inflectional system featured by latin feminine proper names in the old english martyrology. the main objective of this paper is to clarify how these names are adapted into the old english system, if they are adapted at all. this leads to a better understanding of the dynamics of noun morphology at this stage and how both the latin and old english systems interact. additionally, the analysis in this paper casts light on wider issues related to nominal morphology in old english such as the drastic decline of productive declensions (hogg 1992, 124 and 137–38). the rest of this paper is divided into four main sections. section 2 presents the theoretical background and discusses previous works on latin loanwords and their morphology in old english. section 3 focuses on methodological issues. it provides a general outline of the old english martyrology and explains the design of the corpus. section 4 concentrates on the main results of the study. finally, section 5 gathers the main conclusions and considers possible further research. 2. latin loanwords in old english one of the major concerns of scholarly works on latin loanwords in old english has been chronological in nature. three periods are usually distinguished: 1) the continental period, 2) the anglo-saxon settlement period and 3) christianization (see cole and laker 2022, 6–7, with references). other authors such as campbell (1959, 200), wollmann (1990) or durkin (2014, 105) prefer to distinguish two periods only: early and late, with christianization as its boundary. 1 this number makes reference to the parcor number of the name in question. this number identifies every register in parcoroe: the parallel corpus of old english-english (martín arista et al. 2021). see section 3.2 below. latin feminine proper names in the old english martyrology 41 even if the threefold system is favoured, christianization marks the clearest limit as far as the nature of loans is concerned (kastosvsky 1992, 305). the church, with its rituals and organization becomes the primary source of latin words into old english from its introduction onwards. eventually, more of these borrowings enter old english via the written rather than the oral medium, and consequently, from classical rather than vulgar latin. this tendency becomes especially strong after the benedictine reform (late 9th–early 10th century), which is considered a sub-grouping within the wider christianization period by kastovsky (1992, 307; 2006, 221–22). the most representative loans of this period are scientific and scholarly words that are not integrated into the old english morphological system as seamlessly as previous ones (see funke 1914; strang 1970, 314; durkin 2014, 103). in inflectional languages loanwords tend to adopt the inflectional endings of one the different paradigms available in the target language (gneuss 1996, 3–4). old english is no exception to this rule (durkin 2014, 123–24). despite the wide range of noun declension types in old english (see campbell 1959, 222–60), three major inflectional types dominate its nominal inflectional system, as hogg explains (1992, 137–38). these are the so-called a-stems, ō-stems and n-stems, exemplified in table 1. the predominance of these declensions is not based solely on the fact that most old english nouns follow one of these paradigms. more importantly, they attracted nouns that previously took different minor declensions, while transfer from these declensions to others was rare. as gneuss (1996, 4) points out, a good indicator of the relative dominance of certain noun paradigms is its ability to incorporate loanwords. this is one of the characteristics of these three declensions, since apart from the names of certain nations (see campbell 1959, 208; brunner 1965, 215), loanwords in old english follow the paradigms presented below as shown in körber’s figures (1982, 149–51). table 1. singular paradigm of the a-stem hlāf ‘loaf’, the ō-stem giefu ‘gift’ and n-stem tunge ‘tongue’. a-stem hlāf ō-stem giefu n-stem tunge nominative hlāf giefu tunge accusative hlāf giefe tungan genitive hlāfes giefe tungan dative hlāfe giefe tungan campbell (1959, 208–9 and 218–19) and gneuss (1996) give detailed information concerning the morphological adaptation of latin loanwords into the old english inflectional system. generally, 1st declension feminine nouns are adapted as ōstems, for example strǣt ‘street’ (cp. latin (via) strata; or as n-stems as carte ‘document’ (cp. latin charta). as the period progresses, n-stems take over as the preferred model for these loans (gneus 1996, 7). most 2nd declension nouns, mainly masculine nouns, although with some feminine nouns among them, appeared as a-stems in old english regardless of their gender, as exemplified by disc ‘dish’ (cp. latin discus, masculine), and seonoþ ‘synod’ (cp. latin synodus, feminine). independently of their gender or their origin, whether consonantal stems or i-stems, 3rd declension nouns are assimilated as a-stems too: e.g. munt ‘mount’ (cp. latin mons), or torr ‘tower’ (cp. latin turris). however, latin n-stems, such as pavo ‘peacock’ (genitive pavonis), normally follow the n-stem model in old english (cp. pāwa ‘peacock’). esaúl ruiz narbona 42 the rules described above apply generally. nevertheless, scholars such as pogatscher (1888, 154–65), funke (1914, 131–34) and campbell (1959, 207–10) draw attention to the fact that a-stems can attract all type of loans independently of their original class in latin, a phenomenon that is not exclusive of old english, as explained by welna (1978, 1980). in fact, this predominance affected old english words as well, since a-stems ended up becoming the main declension type in later periods (hogg 1992, 137–38). although the majority of latin loans from the 7th century onwards tend to follow these patterns, some loanwords need to be treated independently, as they pose certain problems with regard to their morphological adaption. i refer specifically to the approximately 150 scholarly and scientific loans that began to enter old english during the benedictine reform era (see strang 1970, 314); they normally keep their latin inflections. funke (1914) investigated these loans thoroughly. he made a distinction between scholarly words, with latin morphology, which he called fremdwörter ‘foreignisms’, and lehnwörter ‘loanwords’, whose morphology follows native old english patterns. with this distinction in mind, words such as acolitus ‘acolyte’, which has latin inflectional endings in all of its attestations, would be classified as a ‘foreignism’. this word type is of special interest for the purpose of this study and raises several relevant questions. durkin (2014, 124–27), for example, calls into question their status as old english words, arguing instead that they could be regarded as an example of codeswitching. thus, these so-called loanwords could be better described as latin words embedded into old english sentences, as is frequently the case with scientific greek words in latin texts. additionally, these words are often accompanied by meta-textual indications of their meaning, or by a close old english equivalent (see (3) and (4) below, from durkin (2014, 125)). this seems to highlight the fact that they are not an integral part of old english native vocabulary. (3) acolitus is seþe tapor byrd æt godes þenungum ‘an acolyte is one who bears a light at god’s services’ ælet 2 (wulfstan 1) [0099 (100)] (4) sanctus siluester cwæð: ne sceal nan acolitus, þæt is huslþen, forsecgan nanne subdeacon; ‘st. silvester said: ‘no acolyte, that is to say, assistant at the administration of the sacrament, shall accuse a subdeacon’’ chrodr 2 [0001 (83.1)] the classification of a loan as a ‘foreignism’ on the basis of its inflectional endings, however, is not as straightforward as it may seem. some of these words do not always display their original latin endings in all attestations. they may also take old english ones. this group of mixed loans is acknowledged by funke (1914, 144), who specifies that a number of loans may present latin nominative inflections but old english ones in the rest of grammatical cases. however, as durkin (2014, 127–28) demonstrates, the paradigm of these mixed forms is not as orderly or consistent as implied by funke. the word cometa ‘comet’ serves to illustrate this point. whereas it is true that its nominative form is always latin-like, cometa, and that its oblique forms tend to have the -an ending latin feminine proper names in the old english martyrology 43 typical of n-stems, its nominative plural form can take either the latin inflection -e as in ætemp [0212 (9.13)] or the old english -an as in chrond [0089 (729.1)]2. the inflections of latin personal names have similarities with this group of mixed loans in that they too can retain their latin inflections in whole or in part (campbell 1959, 219). ruiz narbona (2023) analysed the inflections of latin masculine names in the old english martyrology and concluded that, although basically modelled after astems, the inflections of these names are a result of the combination of the latin and old english systems. whereas one language dominates certain case inflections, latin the nominative and old english the dative, the dominant genitive inflection consisting of a thematic vowel + -s results from the fusion of inflections in both languages, on the one hand, latin 3rd declension -is and 2nd declension -us3, and on the other, the old english genitive inflection -es. additionally, although accusatives may take unmarked nominative-like inflections as old english a-stems, or latin -m forms, names in the accusative are consistently distinguished from their nominative counterparts through syntactic means, namely by the old english determiners ðone and ðisne. 3. data and methodology 3.1 the old english martyrology the source of the names under study in this paper is the old english martyrology. the result of a remarkable effort of abridgment, compilation, and adaptation of hundreds of latin texts (rauer 2003; 2013, 3), the martyrology contains the narratives of the lives and miracles of hundreds of saints and martyrs throughout christendom following a calendrical arrangement. given the large number of saints it presents, this text stands out as a major source of information on latin proper names. most notably, contrary to what is the case with lists of kings and similar sources, names appear in a variety of different syntactic contexts, thus offering insightful information to researchers. this lateninth-century text survives in seven different manuscripts, abcc*def (herzfeld 1900, xxxii and rauer 2013, 2–3). of these, c* is an early modern copy. taken together, they cover martyrs from practically the entire year, except for a gap extending over a month— 25th january to 27th february. there is a significant variation in the length of manuscripts, though. manuscripts b and c are the lengthiest and include most of the year. b is normally regarded as closer to the original text and, therefore, is the basis of most modern editions, such as herzfeld (1900), kotzor (1981) and rauer (2013). alternative readings, corrections, and amendments in c, however, are often included and commented upon in these editions too. in contrast, a and e are made up of some short extracts; and d and f, though longer, were fragmented during transmission. as for the language of the text, kotzor (1981) was the first scholar that offered a systematic and thorough analysis of the text, even if previous studies had been carried out by sievers (1884) and herzfeld (1900). kotzor (1981) described the text as predominantly anglian from a dialectal perspective, with traces of kentish and westsaxon. however, the dominating role of this variety in the later part of the old english period became patent in more modern copies, as illustrated by manuscript c, copied 2 references given according to the dictionary of old english web corpus (dipaolo et al., 2009). 3 the canonical latin inflection for 2nd declension latin genitive singular is -i. however, nominative -us features prominently as a 2nd declension genitive inflection in proper names (see baker 1998, 195–6, 198; ruiz narbona 2023, 16). esaúl ruiz narbona 44 during the 11th century and manifestly west-saxon as far as dialectal variation is concerned. despite all the linguistic studies on the martyrology, however, more work needs to be done in order to determine the definite place of composition and dialect of the text as pointed out by kotzor (1981, 445–46). 3.2 corpus design and analysis of the data the data analysed in this study were compiled using parcoroe, the parallel corpus of old english-english (martín arista et al. 2021). this tool compiled at the university of la rioja and available openly online, consists of an annotated corpus of 109,985 words. among its texts one can find the most widely known exemplars of old english prose— such as herzfeld’s (1900) edition of the old english martyrology. the text is not available in its entirety, however. therefore, the examples of feminine names from the 16th of september onwards were collected manually from herzfeld’s (1900) text. the complete sample of examples is made up of 125 tokens, 71 different names. as for the analysis, nine categories have been considered. the majority of these categories are available in the aforementioned corpus. these six categories are: the lemma of the name, the form of the name in the attestation in question, the fragment where the token is found, the present-day english translation of the fragment, and finally, references. additionally, i accounted for information on three parameters that are not directly accessible through parcoroe, namely, information regarding the inflectional ending of each token, data concerning possible alternative inflections in other manuscripts—this was taken from herzfeld (1900) and rauer (2013)—, and also the original latin class these names belong to. when the data in the martyrology did not allow for an unambiguous classification, i consulted other texts, especially bede’s martyrology, in the library of latin texts online. example (5) below serves to illustrate the information of each of the nine categories in the sole attestation of the name simphorosa. (5) lemma: simphorosa word form: simphorosan case: genitive inflectional ending: -an. old english weak declension alternative inflectional ending: no latin declension: 1st fragment: on ðone eahtategeðan dæg ðæs monðes bið ðære wudewan tid sancte simphorosan, seo ðrowade martyrdom for criste mid heora seofon sunum. fragment translation: on the eighteenth day of the month is the festival of the widow st. symphorosa, who suffered martyrdom for christ with her seven sons. references: mart.131.001.012 latin feminine proper names in the old english martyrology 45 4. results of the analysis 4.1 nominative the nominative case is the most widely attested one in the corpus with a total number of 65 tokens and 47 types. most names are attested only once, although nine of them appear multiple times. these are the following: affra (2x), anna (2x), basilla (2x), cristina (2x), eua (4x), maria (8x), marina (2x), natalia (2x) and theodota (2x). the great majority of names in the nominative case belong to the latin 1st declension. this group is made up of 61 tokens and 44 types. as far as their inflectional endings are concerned, 1st declension feminine names in the martyrology present three possibilities, namely, -a, -e and -æ. the ending -a is by far the most common one. 52 different tokens and 35 types have this inflectional ending, including anna, eusebia, romana, or valeria to name but a few. see (6) below for an example in context. this is to be expected, given that this is the most common latin 1st declension nominative inflection. thus, in general terms, nominative 1st declension feminine names seem to follow the latin model. (6) ða wæs sancta marina for criste beheafdad; then was saint marina.nom for crist.dat beheaded ‘then st. marina was beheaded for christ’s sake’ [mart.124.021.004] there are eight exceptions to this general rule, though. seven tokens in the corpus present the inflectional ending -e. these are columbe, cyriade, darie, eufenisse, eugenie, maximille and tecle. notice also that theodota (mart.147.001.016) also has the -e ending, theodote, in manuscript c, though not in b. this inflection is common in post-classical latin 1st declension nouns in the genitive and dative cases (baker 1998, 196), but not in the nominative. this choice of ending might seem puzzling at first. however, a close look at the contexts where these names appear offers interesting insights. four of the seven tokens are found in contexts where there is either a possessive or a neighbouring genitive phrase, as in (7) below. as baker (1998, 195) points out, these morphological genitives in places where a nominative is expected are not uncommon in martyrologies and calendars. he suggests that the frequent use of introductory formulae such as the one in (7) may have influenced the scribe’s choice. these formulae may have led scribes to perceive that these genitives are the ‘unmarked’, nominative forms. this phenomenon is also detected in masculine names (ruiz narbona 2023, 10). if baker’s hypothesis is correct, and -e forms might be taken as unmarked, we would also expect to find -e nominatives outside these restricted contexts. this is confirmed by three names: columbe, eugenie and tecle, which appear in contexts with no nearby genitives, for example (8). (7) ond ðæs egeas broðor, se wæs on naman and the.gen egeas.gen brother.nom he.nom was in name.dat stratohles, ond egeas wyf, ðære nama stratohles.nom and egeas.gen wife.nom the.gen name.nom wæs maximille […] was maximille.nom esaúl ruiz narbona 46 ‘the brother of this egeas, stratocles by name, and the wife of egeas whose name was maximilla […]’ (herzfeld 1900, 214-216) (8) tecle wæs swa myhtigu fæmne ðæt […] tecla.nom was so powerful.nom woman.nom that ‘thecla was such a powerful woman that […]’ (herzfeld 1900, 176) lastly, the remaining 1st declension nominative name, anthiæ, has the classical latin genitive -æ ending. as several of the names discussed above, anthiæ [mart.065.001.021] is close to a genitive phrase, which seems to have influenced it. in this case the scribe opted for the classical ending, rather than the post-classical one. notice, however, that the scribe in manuscript c, preferred to use -e (rauer 2013, 82). in addition to latin 1st declension nouns the corpus includes two 3rd declension names, e.g. felicitas (2x) and virgo, and an indeclinable one, namely, zoe. the latter keeps its latin form in old english (mart.120.001.018). as for the 3rd declension names, virgo has the expected latin nominative form. felicitas, however, is attested twice, as felicitas (mart.039.004.004) and as felicita in (herzfeld 1900, 210). the former is the corresponding latin form. as for the latter, it could correspond to an analogical form modelled after the 1st declension nominative ending -a. it could also be taken as a mistake—although see baker (1998, 195) with regard to mistakes—since evidence shows that felicita is a 3rd declension name, as suggested by its inflectional ending -is, felicitatis, a few lines above in the text (mart.039.001.016). all in all, the analysis of the nominative data show that, in general terms, scribes in the martyrology follow latin models. the only major variation to this pattern, the ending -e, can be explained through the influence of nearby genitives, as baker (1998, 195) proposed. 4.2 accusative feminine names in the accusative case are barely attested in the martyrology. the whole text only includes four names, all of which belong to the latin 1st declension. these are chonie (mart.059.008.013), agapan (mart.059.008.011), marian (mart.159.003.015) and marinan (9). (9) ða ferde olibrius se gerefa to antiochia then went olibrius.nom the.nom prefect.nom to antiochia.dat ceastre; ða geseah he marinan ðæt mægden. town.dat; then saw he.nom marina.acc the.acc girl.acc ‘when the prefect olybrius passed on his way to the town of antioch, he saw the girl marina’ [mart.124.005.012] with the exception of chonie, the names in this group have the inflectional ending an. this is the typical accusative marker of the old english weak -n declension, which includes native words such as cirice ‘church’ as well as many latin loans (see section 2 above). contrary to the nominative case, which followed latin models, names in the accusative seem to have been adapted to a native old english pattern. however, due to the scarcity of the data, general conclusions must remain tentative. latin feminine proper names in the old english martyrology 47 as for chonie, there are several hypotheses that may explain this unexpected ending. firstly, -e could be taken as an example of the latin dative inflection. as baker points out (1998, 188), the use of a latin dative inflection where an accusative inflection is expected, or vice versa, is not uncommon in old english, even in the case of reputed scholars such as ælfric. the fact that the other accusative attestations and all dative ones except elizabeth (see 4.3 below) follow the weak declension pattern does not make this explanation attractive. secondly, -e might be a reflection of the accusative ending of the old english ō-stem declension, as in lufu (nominative), lufe (accusative, genitive and dative). evidence in the martyrology, however, suggests that this is not the case. none of the names under study seems to follow this declension. more importantly, chonie is adapted to the weak declension elsewhere in the text as the genitive form chonian (mart.061.004.022) implies4. thirdly, a close examination of the context where the accusative chonie appears offers insights with regard to the -e ending (10). as shown in the discussion of nominative examples, syntactic context seems to play a relevant role in the choice of inflection in the martyrology. chonie is the only accusative attestation that appears as a second element of a coordinated noun phrase. notice, also, that the first name, agapan, is morphologically marked as an accusative. if as discussed above, names ending in -e could be used as unmarked forms, it might be the case that in a coordinated noun phrase where the first element is overtly marked as accusative, the scribe saw no need to mark the second element and preferred an unmarked form. this hypothesis is supported by several examples of masculine names in the martyrology, like (11), where the first name in the coordinated noun phrase is overtly marked as genitive, simonis, while the second name, also a genitive, syntactically speaking, has an unmarked nominative form, thaddeus. (10) ðyssa fæmnena twa sissinius se gesið these.gen women.gen two.acc sissinius.nom the.nom prefect.nom het sendan on fyr, agapan ond chonie, […] ordered send to fire.acc agape.acc and chonia.acc ‘two of these virgins, agape and chionia, the thane sisinnius ordered to be thrown into the fire […]’ [mart.059.008.013] (11) on ðone eahta ond twentegðan dæg ðæs monðes on the.acc eighth and twentieth.acc day.acc the.gen month.gen bið ðara apostola tid simonis ond thaddeus. is the.gen apostles.gen time.nom simon.gen and thaddeus.gen ‘on the twenty-eighth day of the month is the festival of the apostles simon and thaddeus’ (herzfeld 1900, 196–97) by way of summary, evidence suggests that, as far as the accusative is concerned, latin feminine names have been adapted into the old english system and get native inflectional endings, particularly from the weak declension. additionally, exceptions such as chonie, apparently influenced by context, cannot be ruled out. however, these results should be taken with caution due to the scarcity of the data. 4 this name is also attested with the genitive form chonie (mart.059.001.020). the inflection e in the genitive is dealt with in the corresponding section 4.4. esaúl ruiz narbona 48 4.3 dative the dative data are very similar to the accusative ones both from the quantitative and qualitative point of view. five names are attested in the dative case: agnan (12), faustan (mart.192.002.018), marian (mart.009.008.007) and (mart.055.001.016), perpetuan (039.002.002) and elizabethe (mart.111.007.015). (12) […] seo wæs afeded mid sancte agnan, ðære she.nom was raised with saint.dat agnes.dat the.dat halgan fæmnan, holy.dat woman.dat ‘[…] she was brought up with st. agnes, the holy virgin’ [mart.032.001.019] except for elizabethe, all names are 1st declension names in latin. as was the case in the accusative, all of them have the inflectional ending -an typical of the old english weak declension. even if the data is scarce, the consistency of these results, as well as the ones discussed above, support the fact that latin 1st declension names are well integrated into the old english morphological system, at least as far as oblique cases are concerned. as with the accusative chonie, exceptions to this general pattern can be found. elizabethe (13) has a dative -e inflection. this ending may be taken as a reflection of the post-classical latin 1st declension dative inflection -e. however, elizabeth is an indeclinable name in latin and preserves this form throughout its paradigm. it is difficult then to think that scribes in the martyrology chose to use this ending based on latin morphology. another possibility, which i find more attractive, is that scribes are creating a morphologically marked dative form for elizabeth modelled after ō-stems such as lufe ‘love’. the fact that, with very few exceptions, masculine names in the martyrology invariably have the native old english dative inflection -e, rather than latin inflectional endings, (ruiz narbona 2023, 14) seems to support this view, since this would show that old english was the only source of nominal inflections as far as the dative case is concerned. (13) […] ða sancta maria eode in […] then saint.nom mary.nom went in to his meder elizabethe; to his mother.dat elizabeth.dat ‘[…] when st. mary came in to his mother elizabeth’ [mart.111.007.015] in conclusion, data show that the dative forms of feminine names in the martyrology are dominated by old english inflections. while the weak declension paradigm is clearly the preferred one, as supported also by the accusative data, the strong ō-declension seems to have served as a model in one of the examples under study. 4.4 genitive together with names in the nominative, names in the genitive are the most widely attested in my corpus. they are also the most heterogeneous group as far as morphology latin feminine proper names in the old english martyrology 49 is concerned, since it is the only grammatical case in which there is a clear alternation between latin and old english inflectional endings. all in all, the group of genitive examples is made up of 50 tokens and 34 types. the majority of the names in this group, 48 tokens and 33 types, are originally 1st declension names, for example cecilian (herzfeld 1900, 208), marinan (mart.124.001.011), petronellan (mart.095.001.011), anastasie (mart.002.001.011) or fausta (herzfeld 1900, 172), to name but a few. most of these names are attested just once, except for agnan (2x), eugenian (3x), lucian (3x) and marian (9x). the two remaining tokens, felicitan (mart.125.002.008) and felicitatis (mart.039.001.016), are two instances of the same 3rd declension name felicitas. the above examples offer a quick overview of the different genitive inflections that latin feminine names may take in the martyrology. overall, names in the genitive can be divided into two classes: on the one hand, the old english inflection -an and on the other, latin inflections -e and -a, as well as -is. (14) on ðone teoðan dæg ðæs monðes byð on the.acc tenth.acc day.acc the.gen month.gen is sancta eulalian ðrowung ðære fæmnan, saint.gen eulalia.gen passion.nom the.gen woman.gen ‘on the tenth day of the month is the passion of the virgin st. eulalia’ (herzfeld 1900, 216) the old english inflection -an is the most commonly attested one. 36 out of the 50 tokens under study, e.g. basillan (mart.091.001.009), coronan (mart.088.001.015) or eulalian (14), take this genitive ending. these results are in line with the accusative and dative data. the fact that -an is the most widespread inflection in the genitive too, seems to reinforce the idea that feminine names behave just like native old english feminine weak nouns with regard to their morphology. even if this is the case, the relatively high appearance of latin inflectional endings in the genitive calls for an explanation. a total of 14 tokens in the corpus, 28% of all attestations, take a latin genitive inflection rather than the old english weak ending. not all of these follow the same pattern. latin genitive inflections can be divided into two groups. the first one consists of names that show their corresponding latin genitive inflectional ending, namely -e in the case of 1st declension names and -is in the case of 3rd declension ones. nine different tokens belong to this group. these are: agape (mart.059.001.017), anastasie (mart.002.001.011), chonie (mart.059.001.020), emerentiane (mart.032.001.013), prisce (mart.024.001.011), rubine (mart.127.001.011), sabine (mart.172.001.010), secunde (mart.127.001.014), and felicitatis (mart.039.001.016). in contrast, five tokens take the inflection -a, typical of the nominative case, even if they are clearly functioning as genitives from a syntactic point of view as, in (15) below. these are alexandrea (mart.071.001.15), eufemia (15), fausta (herzfeld 1900, 172), hirena (mart.059.001.023) and trifonia (herzfeld 1900, 188). (15) on ðone sextegðan dæg ðæs monðes bið on the.acc sixteenth.acc day.acc the.gen month.gen is ðære fæmnan ðrowung sancta eufemia, the.gen woman.gen passion.nom saint.gen eufemia.gen esaúl ruiz narbona 50 ‘on the sixteenth day of the month is the martyrdom of the virgin st. eufemia’ [mart.190.001.012] once these data have been presented, and before attempting to give an explanation for the old english and latin variation, variation within latin genitive endings will be commented on. bearing in mind that, as discussed in the introduction, latin names in old english can retain their original inflections in whole or in part, it is not surprising to find examples such as anastasie or emerentiane mentioned above. however, genitive a endings seem anomalous in such contexts. baker (1998, 195 and 198) offers two insightful hypotheses that help to clarify this. firstly, he mentions that latin nominative forms in contexts where other grammatical cases would be expected are not rare in old english. as he puts it, they seem to work as a kind of default form that can work in a variety of syntactic contexts. this is supported as well by the results in ruiz narbona (2023, 12), where nominative forms in -us were found in practically any syntactic function. secondly, baker (1998, 198) offers a phonological explanation for this variation. he argues that scribes may have felt that the spelling -a was a more faithful rendering of the sound represented by latin -æ than the spelling -e which may have had similar qualities to the vowel schwa. as for the old english versus latin variation in the genitive, the data in the martyrology offer sufficient evidence to determine the rules that underlie this apparent free choice between the two systems. one of the working hypotheses of this paper was that the use of one specific inflection might be name dependent. the data show this not to be the case. several of the names in this study may appear with the old english -an inflection in one passage of the text and with the corresponding latin inflection in another. such is the case with agapa and chonia, for example. they take the latin inflection -e in (16), but the old english ending -an in (17). (16) on ðone ðriddan dæg ðæs monðes bið on the.acc third.acc day.acc the.gen month.gen is ðara haligra fæmnena gemynd […] sancta the.gen holy.gen women.gen commemoration.nom […] saint.gen agape ond sancta chonie ond sancta hirena. agape.gen and saint.gen chonia.gen and saint.gen irene.gen ‘on the third day of the month is the commemoration of the holy virgins […] st. agape and st. chionia and st. irene’ [mart.059.001.020] (17) ond hire lichoma resteð on thessalonica ðære ceastre, and her body.nom rests in thessalonica.dat the.dat town.dat ðær hire swestra lichoman sindon, where her.gen sisters.gen bodies.nom are agapan ond chonian agape.gen and chonia.gen ‘and her body rests in the town of thessalonica, where the bodies of her sisters agape and chonia are’ [mart.061.004.022] once the name dependency factor has been ruled out as an explanation for variation, a close analysis of all genitives names with latin inflectional endings reveals that they all latin feminine proper names in the old english martyrology 51 share a common feature, namely, the context they appear in. all latin inflected genitives in this study are exclusively attested in the introductory passages of each section, where a given martyr or saint is introduced, as in (18). thus, the use of latin inflections in genitive names in the martyrology could be described as formulaic and only suitable for a very restricted context. as expected, these results agree with those presented in ruiz narbona (2023, 15–16), which showed that the same restrictions apply to masculine names. (18) on ðone eahtateoðan dæg bið ðære halgan on the.acc eighteenth.acc day.acc is the.gen holy.gen fæmnan tid sancte prisce; woman.gen time.nom saint.gen prisca.gen ‘on the eighteenth day of the month is the festival of the holy virgin st. prisca’ [mart.024.001.011] it is important to note, however, that although latin genitives are confined to introductory sections, martyrs’ names in these contexts do not necessarily take latin inflections. old english -an genitives can indeed appear in such contexts, as can be seen in (19) below, where st. lucia is introduced for the first time in the text. (19) on ðone fif and twentigoðan dæg ðæs monðes on the.acc five and twentieth.acc day.acc the.gen month.gen bið sancta lucian tid is saint.gen lucia.gen time.nom ‘on the twenty-fifth day of the month is the festival of st. lucia’ [mart.113.001.011] the in-depth analysis of these introductory sections demonstrates that the use of latin inflection is not solely related to context but is also connected to syntactic restrictions. although both latin and old english genitive inflections may feature in introductory contexts, the former are preferred when the genitive name functions as a postmodifier, as in (18), where sancta prisca is found after the name it modifies, namely tid. old english genitives, on the contrary, are favoured when they premodify the head of its np as in (19). the sole exception to this rule in the whole corpus is anastasie in (20) below. (20) […] godes circean arweorðiað sancte anastasie […] god.gen churches.nom celebrate saint.gen anastasia.gen gebyrd ðæs halegan gesiðwifes, birth.acc the.gen holy.gen lady.gen ‘[…] the churches of god celebrate the birth of st. anastasia the holy lady’ [mart.002.001.011] in general terms, the genitive data support what has been shown throughout this paper, that is, that feminine latin names in the martyrology are well integrated into the old english system and behave like other native weak nouns. the situation in the genitive is more complex, in that latin inflections are also common. these were shown esaúl ruiz narbona 52 to be quite restricted, however. firstly, they can only appear in introductory sections and could, thus, be described as formulaic. secondly, they are also restricted from a syntactic point view, as they only feature in postmodifying position. 5. conclusions and further research in this paper i have analysed the morphology of latin feminine names in the old english martyrology. the aim was to establish the underlying rules that govern the seemingly chaotic mixture of latin and old english inflections that these names display. the evidence discussed throughout this investigation shows that, for the most part, latin feminine names in the martyrology are rather close to funke’s (1914) model of a prototypical mixed loanword, as far as their morphology is concerned. this means that, normally, they have a latin nominative inflection, but old english inflectional endings in oblique cases. concerning the names under study, with only one exception, oblique cases are modelled after the old english weak declension, which has the ending -an in the accusative, dative and genitive. even if the above-mentioned pattern is clearly predominant, matters are not so simple, and there are certain deviations from this model that call for explanation. the most outstanding anomaly from this pattern has to do with the genitive case. though not as widespread as attestations with old english -an, a substantial number of names in the genitive feature latin inflectional endings, especially post-classical -e. it was demonstrated that this variation is not a result of free variation, but is limited by contextual constraints, since latin genitive inflections only appear when a martyr is being introduced, and therefore, it could be considered as formulaic. additionally, syntactic restrictions also play a role with regard to this choice of inflectional ending. while names in introductory sections can show either old english or latin inflections, the latter, with just one exception, can only postmodify their heads. context is also relevant concerning another exception in the prototypical paradigm described above. this involves the use of the latin genitive inflection -e in contexts where the name in question is functioning as a subject. as the evidence suggests, this seems to be a consequence of the influence of neighbouring genitives, common in the introductory sections of texts such as the martyrology, as explained by baker (1998, 195). another remarkable departure from the main rule concerns the extensive use of names featuring a latin nominative inflection, mostly -a, where another grammatical case would be expected. this was particularly well attested in connection with the genitive case, although the accusative form chonie poses a similar problem. as baker (1998, 195, 198) points out, however, strange as it may seem at first sight, this is a common occurrence throughout the entire old english corpus. evidence suggests that latin nominatives seem to have worked as a kind of default unmarked form that could be used in a myriad of syntactic contexts. additionally, phonological or spelling criteria could also be invoked as an explanation for the widespread use of -a as a genitive marker, as put forth by baker (1998, 198). the paragraphs above offer a concise overview of the morphological variation that can be found in latin feminine names in the martyrology. these general conclusions are also relevant in as much as they provide insights into how the old english nominal inflectional system works. if, as gneuss (1996, 4) proposes, loanwords may serve to assess the dominant status of a given declensional type in a language, together with the latin feminine proper names in the old english martyrology 53 strong -a declension, the weak -n declension is in a prevalent position. results in this paper showed that, with almost no exception, already in an early text such as the martyrology, feminine names can only be integrated into this class. thus, bearing in mind the conclusions in ruiz narbona (2023, 17–9), as far as latin loanwords are concerned, it is clear that already in the early old english period, we find only two declension types that are dominant enough so as to attract loans. the general distribution of these names is likewise straightforward: while masculine names—mostly original latin 2nd declension names—are integrated following the strong declension pattern, the paradigm of feminine names—predominantly from the latin 1st declension— is modelled after the weak declension. the adaptation of 3rd declension names, however, are based on gender. this preference for a system with two dominant declensions already in the early old english period seems to anticipate later stages of the language in which these two declensional types will be the only available ones (lass 2006, 71). furthermore, this paper also set out to provide evidence with regard to the interaction of both the old english and latin inflectional systems. to a large extent, it was shown that interaction between both systems is practically non-existent as opposed to the case of masculine names (ruiz narbona 2023, 17–9). there are no examples of inflections that result from the mixture of endings in both languages or anything similar. likewise, a syntactic interaction between accusative unmarked names and the compulsory use of determiners was not attested in this study. although feminine names can take inflections from both languages, the slot that each of them occupies is clear and does not induce any fusions of any kind. it must be born in mind too that the results discussed above are based on one text only. although the number of tokens is not small, and the main tendencies of the morphology of names are apparent, some categories such as names in the accusative or dative cases are underrepresented. additionally, similar studies such as baker (1998, 190) show that alternatives to the system described above are possible. for example, the latin inflection -am is common in his corpus for the accusative and the dative. anomalous cases such as elizabethe are also difficult to account for given the circumstances. further research might fill in these gaps and could help to identify different scribal practices or alternative inflectional systems. as proposed by baker (1998, 198), texts that feature a high number of names such as the translations of historia ecclesiastica or historia adversus paganos could be interesting starting points. it would also be insightful to study later authors such as ælfric since his texts might shed light on the later evolution of the morphology of latin proper names. the widespread adjective sanctus also seems to feature a mixed latin-old english inflectional system. a thorough study of its inflectional behaviour may also serve to better understand how these mixed inflectional systems work. besides, further research on common nouns, particularly scholarly loanwords, could be useful in increasing our knowledge of how latin-old english mixed morphological systems operated. references baker, peter s. 1998. “the inflection of latin nouns in old english texts.” in words and works: studies in medieval english language and literature in honour of fred c. robinson, edited by peter s. baker, and nicholas howe, 187–206. toronto: university of toronto press. esaúl ruiz narbona 54 brunner, karl. 1965. altenglische grammatik nach der angelsächsischen grammatik von eduard sievers (3rd edition). tübingen: niemeyer. campbell, alistair. 1959. old english grammar. oxford: oxford university press. cole, marcelle, and stephen laker. 2022. “the contact history of english.” in oxford research encyclopedia of linguistics, edited by mark aronoff, 1–28. oxford: oxford university press. colman, fran. 2014. the grammar of names in anglo-saxon england: the linguistics and culture of the old english onomasticon. oxford: oxford university press. dipaolo healey, antonette, john price wilkin, and xin xiang, comp. 2009. dictionary of old english web corpus. toronto: university of toronto. durkin, philip. 2014. borrowed words: a history of loanwords in english. oxford: oxford university press. funke, otto. 1914. die gelehrten lateinischen lehnund fremdwörter in der altenglischen literatur von der mitte des x. jahrhunderts bis um das jahr 1066. halle: niemeyer. gneuss, helmut. 1993. “anglicae linguae interpretatio: language contact, lexical borrowing and glossing in anglo-saxon england.” proceedings of the british academy 82: 107–48. gneuss, helmut. 1996. “latin loans in old english: a note on their inflexional morphology.” in language and history in early england (variorum collected studies series), edited by helmut gneuss, section vi, 1–12. aldershot: ashgate. herzfeld, georg, ed. 1900. an old english martyrology. london: early english text society. hogg, richard, ed. 1992. the cambridge history of the english language. vol. i: the beginnings to 1066. cambridge: cambridge university press. hogg, richard. 1992. “phonology and morphology.” in hogg 1992, 67–167. hogg, richard and david denison, eds. 2006. a history of the english language. cambridge: cambridge university press. kastovsky, dieter. 1992. “semantics and vocabulary.” in hogg 1992, 290–408. kastovsky, dieter. 2006. “vocabulary.” in hogg and denison 2006, 199–270. cambridge: cambridge university press. körber, elisabeth. 1982. “die übernahme der lateinischen substantiva in das altenglische deklinationssystem unter berücksichtigung des genus.” phd diss., university of munich. kotzor, g., ed. 1981. das altenglische martyrologium (2 vols.). abhandlungen der bayerischen akademie der wissenschaften: munich. lass, roger. 2006. “phonology and morphology.” in hogg and denison 2006, 199–270. cambridge: cambridge university press. library of latin texts online. 2022. brepols publishing. accessed february 18, 2022. http://clt.brepolis.net.us.debiblio.com/llta/pages/search.aspx. martín arista, javier, ed., sara domínguez barragán, laura garcía fernández, esaúl ruiz narbona, roberto torre alonso, and raquel vea escarza, comps. 2021. parcoroev2. an open access annotated parallel corpus old english-english. nerthus project. universidad de la rioja. okasha, elisabeth. 2011. women’s names in old english. london: routledge. pogatscher, alois. 1888. zur lautlehre der griechischen, lateinischen und romanischen lehnwörter in altenglischen. strassburg: trübner. latin feminine proper names in the old english martyrology 55 rauer, christine. 2003. “the sources of the old english martyrology.” anglo-saxon england 32: 89–109. rauer, christine, ed. 2013. the old english martyrology: edition, translation and commentary. cambridge: d.s. brewer. rodríguez ledesma, maría nieves. 2016. “dauides sunu vs. filii david: the genitive in the gloss to the lindisfarne gospels.” in the old english gloss to the lindisfarne gospels: language, author and context, edited by julia fernández cuesta, and sara m. pons-sanz, 213–38. berlin: de gruyter. ruiz narbona, esaúl. 2023. “the inflection of latin masculine proper names in the old english martyrology.” north-western european language evolution (nowele) 76 (1): 1–22. sievers, eduard. 1884. “miscellen zur angelsächsischen grammatik.” beiträge zur geschichte der deutschen sprache und literatur 9: 197–300. strang, barbara m. h. 1970. a history of english. london: routledge. welna, jerzy. 1978. “complex gender in old english loanwords.” acta philologica 7: 143–64. welna, jerzy. 1980. “on gender change in linguistic borrowing (old english).” in historical morphology (trends in linguistics 17), edited by jacek fisiak, 399–420. the hague: mouton. wollmann, alfred. 1990. untersuchungen zu den frühen lehnwörter im altenglischen: phonologie und datierung (texte und untersuchungen zur englischen philologie 15). munich: fink. acknowledgments i would like to thank jordi sánchez martí, amanda roig marín and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on previous versions of this paper. any errors or inaccuracies are, of course, my own. funding grant pid 2020-119200gb-100, funded by mcin/aei/10.13039/501100011033. flint f. johnson, selim 22 (2017): 103–118. issn 1132-631x placing ‘the once and future king’ flint f. johnson independent scholar, usa this article is a survey of the sites normally associated with arthur followed by an exploration as to why they were originally connected with him. it begins with the arthurian battles listed in historia brittonum. following is a discussion on camlann. after that, the sites commonly associated with arthur’s capital are listed and their political, literary, or religious reason for first being linked with arthur are given. southern wales, somerset, caerleon, celliwig, winchester, and carlisle are all explored in the essay. keywords: arthur; arthurian location; arthurian sites; historia brittonum; annales cambriae; y gododdin a recent series of lectures and articles by dr andrew breeze has reignited the longstanding debate about where the legendary arthur might have called home (breeze 2015: 158–181, 2016: 161–172). as the present author sees it, answering that question requires only a knowledgeable use of the arthurian sources followed by a detailed history of the ‘arthurian’ sites. the most readily available information comes from the historia brittonum, where arthur’s battles up through badon are listed. however, there are two clear problems with using that particular history to locate arthur. one is that the relevant section, chapter 56, was probably written around 616x650 (johnson forthcoming), around a hundred years after arthur died and well beyond living memory. this means that the material was kept in an oral environment well after its context was forgotten. given the nature of bards to reassociate events and people, it is very possible that one or more of them were not historically connected with arthur. 104 flint f. johnson two and even more significant, the battle list is likely to be a composite of several chieftains’ battles. there are four main reasons for this. first, the battle list includes twelve engagements placed in nine sites (both important symbolic numbers among the celts). second, several battles are easily located,1 but are to be found on the far ends of the island at a time when armies could not have been so mobile and politics were still local in scale (johnson 2014: 96–99, johnson forthcoming).2 traditionally most convincing, the rhyming schemes found in the list suggests the compiler might have taken the battles from several kings’ praise poems (lloyd 1911: 126 fn. 6, chadwick & chadwick 1932: 155, crawford 1935: 279, jackson 1959: 78, bromwich 1976: 169). beyond that, fighting twelve major engagements would have been quite a feat at the time. certainly napoleon, hannibal, and a host of other generals have managed it throughout history, but these were people with tens of thousands of soldiers at their command. arthur, even if he was the most powerful man on the island (which is no certainty), could not have had a thousand warriors. the economics of agriculture, the lack of communications, and fractured political structure of the island would have rendered that number fantastic. a more likely number is a couple hundred; around a hundred in his hall and up to hundred that could be summoned among his vassals. with numbers like that two or three major battles would have strained his resources —as it did british and english chieftains of a later era.3 1 badon, for instance, is generally located in the southwest. coed celyddon is generally connected with scotland. any paper attempting to locate all the battles in one practical area (say a thirty mile radius in the year 500) needs to make a special argument for one or the other engagement. professor breeze has done this (breeze 2016: 163) by arguing that badon was probably not fought by arthur. however, that solution subverts his hypothesis. badon and possibly tribruit are the only other battles that are elsewhere connected to arthur so that if badon was not his battle then very likely several other of the battles listed in historia brittonum also were not. 2 the ability to travel from one end of britain to another is not in dispute. in y gododdin gereint travels from cornwall to participate in the battle of catraeth. the trouble is that kingdoms of around 500 were clearly small and in flux. with relative safety a chieftain could leave his kingdom for a day raid, but to leave it undefended while traveling across several kingdoms would have been extremely tenuous. 3 the later sixth and seventh centuries are much better recorded, and even the best known chieftains only fought in a handful of major battles. placing ‘the once and future king’ 105 even if historia brittonum was older or its source material more reliable than it is, or if an older and more reliable source of information emerged (for instance something like pa gur?, which has a more ancient form of tribruit in tryfrwyd (roberts 1992b: xxxv), there would still be the serious problem of linguistics in locating the battles. the last time a major celtic specialist attempted to locate the battles using the historia brittonum list was seventy years ago (jackson 1945: 44–57). his conclusions were that several of the site names were too damaged to locate an original, others were too vague to locate at all, and the sites that were locatable were too far apart to have been fought by one man during the late fifth and early sixth century. he also suggested that several of the recognizable sites were so obvious they might have been later additions. in short, the only way to make more sense out of the arthurian battle list was best put by dr. thomas clancy —“… to make names the same that are just a little bit like each other”. the problem is, as he put it, “but proper place-name scholarship does not do this” (hannan 2015). the historia brittonum list does not come from a contemporary source, cannot be historically valid, and is largely incomprehensible from a linguistic standpoint. so what other information is to be found? well, arthur is located at badon and camlan in annales cambriae, but that source probably took its information from the same origin point as historia brittonum, the northern memorandum (hughes 1975: 233–258). that means the material there was also written down well beyond living memory. that fact that the badon entry strays from the annals’ normally terse wording, adding unnecessary details about arthur’s bravery, suggests it was added after arthur’s legend was welldeveloped.4 on the other hand, the camlan entry is short and fits in well with the rest of the annals notices. the only real trouble with camlan is that 575 marks annales cambriae’s historical horizon, the date from which chronology becomes reliable for the document (dumville 1977: 345–354, hughes 1975: 233–258). that makes 537 an undependable date, even if its historicity and the connection of arthur with camlan seem to be almost universally accepted (breeze 2016: 168).5 more significantly and beginning with o.g.s. crawford, 4 christopher gidlow has alternatively suggested that the entry might be historical and the extra information was added later. 5 higham is of the opinion that camlan may have been a fictional battle but this is highly unlikely. the entry is terse, like the others in annales cambriae, and there are 106 flint f. johnson over the last eighty years a consensus has developed that camlan was camboglanna, a roman fort along hadrian’s wall known as modern castleheads (crawford 1935: 277–291, collingwood & myres 1937: 324, jackson 1953: 437, bromwich 1954: 83–136, koch 2007: 97, moffat 2011: 116–117).6 at this point it is necessary to mention a recent article by professor andrew breeze, ‘arthur’s battles and the volcanic winter of 536–537’. this article is presented as supplementary evidence of arthur’s existence, his location in the north, and his obit around 537. the article is well-researched, reasonably argued, and written by one of the more prominent arthurian scholars in the world. it is, however, based on two flawed foundations. first, that if all the ‘arthurian’ battles can be placed in the same broad area it is proof that arthur existed. second, the article presumes that the battle of camlan was a result of the volcanic activity of 535 and the crop failure and plague that followed. the battle list first. while it is true that if the twelve ‘arthurian’ battles could not be placed in the same area it would be evidence that they were not fought by the same individual the reverse is not the case. in fact, any bard collating battles into a list would be more likely to borrow mainly from local history where the information would be more readily available as supplements to more prominent battles such as badon. not that this flaw really changes anything. as mentioned above, neither professor breeze nor anyone else has ever been able to prove where all the battles were located; the linguistic evidence is too difficult for any reasonable degree of certainty which is why there are so many proposed sites for most of the battles in the historia brittonum list. no known fictional or mythological characters from the northern memorandum section in particular or this portion of the annal in general. 6 several recent scholars have argued that the battle is unhistorical or the site unknowable (charles-edwards 2013: 579; padell 2013: 9; halsall 2013: 20, 73–74; hunt 2012: 211–216; jankulak 2010: 72; aurell 2007: 87; higham 2002: 199, 208– 209). however, the terseness of the entry and the strictly historical context of surrounding entries put the burden of proof on anyone suggesting the event is unhistorical. that accepted, the fact that so many linguists have been willing to agree on castleheads as the correct site suggests that castlesheads should be accepted unless some linguistic or compelling alternative evidence can be presented. to date it has not. placing ‘the once and future king’ 107 second, while it is definitely possible that the volcanic activity of 535, which by professor breeze’s research clearly affected life all over the planet, was a cause of the battle of camlan, there is no direct evidence of that connection. if an historian 1500 years in the future did not have access to exact dates they might very well link the bombs of hiroshima and nagasaki with the cause of world war ii. such, clearly, would not be the case even though that connection, too, would probably seem reasonable to our hypothetical scholar. the historia brittonum list and camlan are just two pieces of evidence though, and we must not forget that they come from a source well beyond the living memory of any participants. no argument about arthur’s location can be considered valid without explaining first why other possibilities are wrong and providing alternative supporting evidence. so then, the welsh stories put arthur’s main hall mainly in southern wales, somerset, caerleon, and celliwig while the english place him at winchester, and carlisle. arthur is also placed in several regions and sites only once. perhaps that is the best place to start. arthur was in corn gafallt and ercing according to the mirabilia section of historia brittonum, but there are two problems with that association. first and foremost, neither location is called arthur’s home or capital. second, the mirabilia portion of the historia focuses on the miraculous and seems to feed the growing arthurian legend. in the british legends both northern and cornish heroes were transferred to medieval wales. lambert of st. omer (1120) named arthur’s o’on near stirling as the site of arthur’s palace. we now know that it was a circular temple built during the roman period and destroyed in 1743. there is no evidence of early medieval occupation and no scholar or local legend linked the site to arthur before 1120. it could be argued that arthur’s o’on led to the development of the round table legend, but the round table was not mentioned before wace in 1155. it would not have been practical for any british king; post-roman kingship was based on a symbolic marriage between kingdom and king (o’rahilly 1946: 7–28, maccana 1955: 356–413). a table where everyone was equal would have undermined that fundamental part of british kingship. saints’ lives, or vitae, placed arthur all over southern britain and into france. his home was in southeastern wales according to the vita cadoci of lifris (pre-1086 llancarfan), vita illtudi (c. 1140 llaniltud), and vita padarni (llanbadarn fawr), somerset and cornwall according to the vita carantoci, 108 flint f. johnson somerset alone in caradoc’s vita gildae, and brittany according to the vitae of goeznou and eufflam. saint’s lives were patronized by monasteries in the hope of enhancing their sanctity. they were filled with stories about miracles. the most potent of these tales involved local chieftains. more famous kings occasionally replaced them, and arthur was the most famous of them all. knowing that, and knowing also that no breton histories or frankish histories claimed that arthur was a breton, we can immediately dispose of the goeznou and eufflam vitae. the testimony of the other four saint’s lives is a little more complicated. it begins in 1066, when at the battle of hastings duke william of normandy became the king of england. as the founder of a new dynasty coming from a foreign region, william installed friends and family into key positions throughout britain kingdom —both political and ecclesiastical. within the next four years he would establish three of his closest followers as lords of the welsh marches, essentially southern wales. he held a series of ecclesiastic councils around 1070 and used his power there to install normans as english abbots and bishops as well (bates 2001: 106–107, barlow 1979: 59). in southern wales the change in political power and the movement toward norman ecclesiastical leaders put the remaining celtic houses in jeopardy. they found several different ways to strengthen themselves and survive. cadoc’s life, written in llancarfan before 1086, introduced arthur into its story to provide a testimonial to the monstery’s age and holiness. the effort failed though, and the monastery was closed in 1086. beginning in or after 1115, bishop urban of glamorgan began editing the llandaff charters to show that llandaff had rights to monasteries claimed by st. david and hereford, had always been independent of st. david’s archbisopric, and that its own archbishopric had been serving canterbury ever since its foundation (brooke 1986: 16–38). urban’s work helped llandaff to develop into one of the most powerful welsh monasteries. still other religious houses were assimilated into the new order through intelligent vitae writing. we know that llanilltud was one of the most prestigious british monasteries during the early middle ages because of the seventh-century testimony of the vita samsoni (rep. 2007: chapters 26 and 27, duine 1912: 332–356, davies 1981: 515, wright 1984: 199 fn. 25, sharpe 1984: 193 fn. 25, flobert 1997). it was destroyed in 987 by the vikings and again in the late eleventh century by the normans. llaniltud was a functioning monastery again by 1111. in around 1130 it became the property of placing ‘the once and future king’ 109 tewkesbury abbey, which likely commissioned a work on the monastery’s founder illtud. in the vitae illtud is the son of a breton prince and a cousin to arthur, effectively making llanilltud’s founder a blend between the established welsh population and the norman-allied bretons and making his monastery an ally of the normans even before william conquered england. somerset, and mainly glastonbury, was even more successful than the welsh monasteries. it began using the same tools as other monasteries, including arthur in the vita carantoci and caradoc’s vita gildae. the latter work was the first time arthur was placed in somerset, and the connection stuck. arthur was again placed in the region for the vita carantoci at some point in the twelfth century. by then, though, it was an accepted link; the dialogue between arthur and gwenhwyfar, written decades later, places arthur there and shows no influence from geoffrey of monmouth’s historia regum britanniae (1136). on the contrary melwas, the would-be kidnapper, is called the lord of the “isle of glass”, an unmistakably glastonbury influence (williams 38: ln a2). perlesvaus, written at the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century, was patronized by glastonbury and also placed arthur nearby. however, saints’ lives and even literature were just the beginning for glastonbury. in 1191 the monastery was crippled by a major fire. as luck would have it 1191, found henry ii in the middle of his campaigns against the welsh. this was the same henry who had with eleanor of aquitaine once held courts of romance and patronized stories about arthur, so he would have understood that arthur’s return to protect them was a central theme in welsh beliefs. when glastonbury’s monks “discovered” the graves of arthur and guinevere, they undermined the welsh legend and gave a henry a significant psychological edge over his enemies.7 in return, henry gave glastonbury the funding it needed to rebuild. what allowed the monastery to make such outrageous claims was its ability to give each one traction. arthur was only its most popular subject, he was neither the earliest nor the most prestigious. as the middle ages continued, glastonbury would claim that patrick and then christ himself had founded glastonbury even though the site was not a monastery until the eighth century (foot 1991: 167, 169; finberg 1967: 346). as the result of her claims, 7 for a simple essay on glastonbury’s manipulation of the arthurian legend for its own benefit see johnson (2014: 82–86). the most complete work on the subject to date is abrams & carley (1991). 110 flint f. johnson and her ability to make them believed, the only religious institution in britain more powerful would be canterbury itself. glastonbury’s efforts would become the genesis of a tradition that arthur was a somerset hero. as has been seen above, dialogue between arthur and gwenhwyfar would both place him there and was clearly influenced by glastonbury. centuries later cadbury, the site of leslie alcock’s famous archaeological dig, would also be connected to arthur with john leland’s 1542 itinerary (leland 1907: 1.151). the vita carantoci, was noted above as placing arthur in somerset, but also located him in cornwall. in fact several sources, most notably the bardic triads, often put him in celliwig, which the welsh traditionally located in cornwall. a little linguistics, though, puts that connection in doubt. celliwig breaks down as celli=grove and gwig=forest. considering that most of early medieval britain was forest, celliwig would have been an appropriate name for locations all over britain. richards came across a second celliwig in gwynedd decades ago (richards 1969: 265), and logically there were many others in medieval celtic regions during the fifth and sixth centuries. it is true that the welsh triads placed celliwig specifically in cornwall, but the preeminent scholar on that collection, rachel bromwich, believed that the bards who had formed and kept the triads considered celliwig a vague place that could be associated with any celtic region (bromwich & evans 1992: 92). as such, celliwig could have been more the name of arthur’s capital than the location of his hall. in the continental romances and several welsh stories, caerleon is one of the more common sites for arthur’s capital. however, it too was not connected to arthur until 1136, when geoffrey of monmouth named it as arthur’s capital in historia regum britanniae for reasons of his own.8 not that geoffrey chose caerleon completely at random. he might actually have thought the area had been arthur’s capital based on a composition of circumstantial evidence. for instance, one of the ‘arthurian’ battles in the historia brittonum was the city of the legion, normally connected with cair lion or modern caerleon. geoffrey could not have known, as we do, that the battles on the list were not all or even mostly arthur’s. instead he probably noticed that caerleon was the only battle site that was also listed as one of the 8 tatlock’s main work was in showing how geoffrey incorporated contemporary placenames into his story along with whatever traditional information he had (tatlock 1950). placing ‘the once and future king’ 111 thirty-three civitates of medieval britain in the same work (1980: chapter 66). geoffrey would have also read that arthur was a dux bellorum, and would have known that caerleon had been a roman fort; it might have been a simple matter of connecting the man with the roman title to one of the surviving roman cities where one of his battles had taken place. modern scholarship has demonstrated that each piece of his detective work is wrong, but geoffrey would have had no reason to discount it. alternatively monmouth, where he wrote, is only twenty miles from caerleon. it is reasonable that he had been there and thought it would have made a suitable home for his main hero with or without any historical evidence to support it. edward i, grandson of henry ii and eleanor of aquitaine, also made his mark on arthuriana by offering his own arthurian site as an avid enthusiast in his own right (morris 2009: 164–166, prestwich 1997: 121–122). edward was well known by contemporaries for his interest in the subject, being compared to arthur (prestwich 1953: 125–127), and emulating him in creating his own round table at winchester. it only made sense that contemporary english writers and those who followed would place arthur’s home at winchester in honor of him. winchester makes no historical sense, though. the most conservative estimates of the germanic conquest of britain put the entire area firmly under their control well before 500, which is roughly when arthur was active. local legends have also been used to connect arthur with scotland, wales, cornwall, cumberland, and brittany while the macarthur clan of the highlands claims descent from him. however, there is no record that many of these stories existed until centuries after geoffrey of monmouths’ book had made arthur a universally popular figure that people throughout britain were claiming for their own. our brief survey leaves us with only carlisle, which stood as the western anchor of hadrian’s wall during the roman period, as a possible arthurian location. granted, carlisle was first named specifically by chrétien only in the twelfth century (chrétien de troyes 1989a: 281, chrétien de troyes 1989b: 378), but it had already been suggested in historia brittonum when arthur had been connected with rome when he was named a dux bellorum (1980: chapter 56). in several welsh tales arthur is located at the intersection of roman roads. caerleon, the most commonly used welsh site, had five. only carlisle and a few other legionary fortresses (like york and chester) and the economic center of london could boast as many (margary 1967: 316, 359). none of these other places have ever been connected with arthur. 112 flint f. johnson all of the other sites discussed above either served a personal or monastic purpose from the very beginning of that their connection with arthur or their association with arthur was made centuries after geoffrey of monmouth’s work of 1136. carlisle has neither of those issues. no known patron would have benefited from carlisle between the years 800 and 1200, meaning that there was no political, economic, or personal reason for it to be named as arthur’s capital during the time frame when it was being connected to arthur by welshmen and continentals using british sources. carlisle is named early in arthurian development, and is suggested centuries earlier. however, there is much more. the classic reason to place him in the north is that arthur is mentioned as a model of warrior prowess in y gododdin (1997: b2–38). the original poem possibly dates to the sixth century,9 and features mainly northern persons and northern geography. there have been scholars who have argued against the passage being part of the original poem (charles-edwards 1991: 15), but the person most intimately familiar with it, john t. koch, had no linguistic qualms with the idea. the main issue is that the poet did not locate arthur for us and the other individuals named in the poem are not exclusively from the north; cadwal son of sywno fought against gwynedd men during his career (1997: a–19), gwanannon spent his career in gwynedd, and gereint is from the south (1997: a–84). though the vast majority of the people named there were from the north, in all fairness it is possible that arthur could have been from the south too. realistically, y gododdin is more of a suggestion that arthur was northern than a point proving he was from carlisle. what seems to this scholar more telling are the characters that arthur is early and often associated with, or at least people he is consistently linked with. mabon son of modron is originally named in the early poem pa gur?.10 he is later found in culhwch ac olwen and the beddau stanzas. in all these pieces of literature he is either not located or his activities placed in wales, but historically mabon son of modron was a god specifically of the hadrian’s wall area and france (ross 1967: 368–370). as arthurian associations to figures 9 john t. koch’s reconstruction of the two (he says three) extant versions into one possible original represents the most thorough examination of the language to date, but several scholars have commented that the poem itself might not have been written at the same period as the battle of catterick which it celebrates. 10 marged haycock has placed the date of composition, by internal evidence, to no later than 950 (haycock 1984: 52–77). placing ‘the once and future king’ 113 outside of britain did not occur until after geoffrey of monmouth’s historia regum britanniae made arthur an international celebrity, it is a safe assumption that the modron from hadrian’s wall is the one that was attracted to the arthurian orbit. the figure beli is also named in culhwch ac olwen’s court list (1992a: 224). it would be easy to assume this is the beli mawr who is credited with founding many of the welsh dynasties but he is not given the epithet “mawr”, or hunter. he is probably not the british/gallic god belenus (delamarre 2003: 70–72), or the gallic chieftain belgius/bolgios (koch 2006: 200), either. belenus was a solar deity, and we are given no indications that the beli in the court list is. it is feasible that he might have been a gallic chieftain, but that theory would involve first demonstrating that belgius/bolgios was known in pre-roman british culture. what seems more likely is that beli represents belatacudros/belatucadros (johnson 2012: 94–95), a british fertility god (webster 1986: 74–75, irbymassie 1999: 104). the theory accepts the name as given in the list and requires less pleading than a foreign king. beli in other forms is to be found throughout arthuriana, and in most cases is associated with fertility. more specifically, beli is associated with the grail, which has been shown to be a symbol of the british fertility cults (johnson 2012: 75–136); pelles was the keeper of the grail, pellam was his brother, and pellinore was pelles’ nephew and the father of perceval. interestingly, belatacudros was a god of northern britain and especially cumberland and westmoreland. arthur is also consistently tied to five individuals who were roughly contemporaries: hueil, urien, his son owain, peredur, and myrddin.11 these are also consistent in placing arthur. hueil is mentioned in the vita gildae and a pair of old stories involving arthur. he is also found independently in a genealogy. all of them place him in the north and most name hueil as a pict. urien is the reged king from historia brittonum and the taliesin poems who led the northern british against the germanic peoples. he is also named in 11 in evidence of arthur the author also noted drutwas son of tryffin, from dyfed, fit into this category (johnson 2014: 50–53). having had more time to ponder him, the author realizes now that there is a significant difference between the drutwas story on one hand and the tales involving hueil, urien, owain, peredur, and myrddin on the other. there is a great deal of the fantastic with drutwas’ extraordinary bird, whereas the stories surrounding the five mentioned here contain none of that in the earliest stories. 114 flint f. johnson several local legends as arthur’s enemy. his son and successor is remembered for fighting the germanic tribes but is also in culhwch ac olwen and figures in many later romances. reged has never been precisely located but was broadly in cumbria, dumfries, and/or galloway. peredur is associated with the york area and participated in several major northern battles. he was also a later addition to the arthurian orbit, first appearing in peredur somewhere in the twelfth century. myrddin first appears as a wandering madman who survived the battle of arfderyð and wandered the forests of strathclyde. he later transformed into arthur’s wizard merlin with geoffrey of monmouth. what is important here is that all four historical near-contemporaries were from the north; one from pictland, two from rheged (northern england or southern scotland), one from york, and one from strathclyde. interestingly, the characters from rheged and pictland seem to have been the earliest of the group. the simple fact that arthur is connected to materials coming from the northern memorandum in historia brittonum and annales cambriae is interesting for locating arthur as well.12 the arthurian battles listed in chapter 56 of historia brittonum might not have been fought by arthur but they are associated with him and the chapter they are in is considered part of the northern memorandum, strongly suggesting that arthur was also a northern figure. similarly, both badon and camlann in annales cambriae are inserted at the beginning of a section devoted almost exclusively to northern materials, where the only interruptions are for churchmen and the death of maelgwn. over two decades ago, kenneth dark made his mark on arthurian studies with a simple article that suggested one extremely powerful chief or an alliance of chiefs were operating around hadrian’s wall in 500 (dark 1992: 111–120). 12 see bromwich (1975–1976: 175–176), bruce (1923: 9), thurneysen (1896: 85, 87). jackson opposed the inclusion of this text in the northern history on the basis of beulon’s request that the anglo-saxon genealogies (meaning also the northern history) be omitted from his copy. this was done to his satisfaction, though arthuriana was left intact. therefore, so the reasoning goes, arthuriana is not a part of the northern history. the author believes it more accurate to say that beulon did not believe that arthuriana was a part of the northern history. his opinion carries no more weight than that of a modern historian. most probably, he understood it less well than modern scholarship. dumville has debated the point of creation for the northern materials but not its contents (1977: 345–354). placing ‘the once and future king’ 115 his reasoning was simple and compelling; the archeology supported the claim that several forts were reoccupied around that period and no major reoccupation of roman forts occurred in any other region during that same time frame. his conclusions have serious ramifications. in 500, control over hadrian’s wall would have made a person one of the most powerful kings on the island, if not the dominant power. arthur is the most likely person there at that time (johnson 2012: 137–178), so if dark was right would have been a unique figure of the period. his position would have made him all the more inspiring among the bards of his time. it may even have been the reason why he was the most famous king of the british heroic age. in fairness, none of the above evidence provides concrete proof that arthur was a northern figure. on the other hand, the other possibilities are based on poor foundations; either they used arthur’s fame to strengthen a monastery’s standing, to please a ruler, or are the result of an honest confusion of facts and details. on the other hand, locating arthur in the north, and specifically carlisle, served no political or monastic purpose. nor is there any fortunate connection of unrelated facts and details that would have suggested carlisle to a medieval writer. in short, carlisle is far and away the most reasonable place to locate the “once and future king”. references 1980: historia brittonum. nennius: british history and the welsh annals. ed. and trans. john morris. london, phillimore and co. ltd. 1988: aneirin, aneirin: y gododdin – britain oldest heroic poem. trans. and ed. alfred owen hughes jarman. llandysul, gwasg gomer. 1992a: culhwch ac olwen: an edition and study of the oldest arthurian tale. trans. and ed. rachel bromwich & d. simon evans. cardiff, university of wales press. 1992b: pa gur?. trans. and ed. brinley f. roberts. culhwch ac olwen: an edition and study of the earliest arthurian tale. ed. and trans. d. simon evans. cardiff, university of wales press: xxxv. 1997: the gododdin of aneirin. trans. and ed. john t. koch. cardiff, university of wales press. rep. 2007: the life of st samson of dol. trans and ed. thomas taylor. whitefish, kessinger, llc. 116 flint f. johnson abrams, l. & j. p. carley (eds.) 1991: the archaeology and history of glastonbury abbey: essays in honour of the ninetieth birthday of c. a. ralegh radford. woodbridge, boydell press. aurell, m. 2007: la légende du roi arthur 550–1250. paris, university of paris. barlow, f. 1979: the english church, 1066–1154: a history of the anglo-norman church. new york, longman. bates, d. 2001: william the conqueror. london, g. philip. breeze, a. 2015: the historical arthur and sixth-century scotland. northern history 52.2: 158–181. breeze, a. 2016: arthur’s battles and the volcanic winter of 536–537. northern history 53.2: 161–172. bromwich, r. 1954: the character of the early welsh tradition. in n. chadwick ed. studies in early british history. cambridge, cambridge university press: 83–136. bromwich, r. 1976: concepts of arthur. studia celtica 10/11: 163–181. bromwich, r. 1992: culhwch ac olwen: an edition and study of the oldest arthurian tale. cardiff, university of wales press. brooke, n. j. 1986. the church and the welsh border in the central middle ages. woodbridge, boydell press: 16–38. bruce, j. d. 1923: the evolution of arthurian romance, from the beginnings down to the year 1300. gottingen, vandenhoeck & ruprecht. chadwick, h. & n. chadwick 1932–1940: the growth of literature. cambridge, university of cambridge press. charles-edwards, t. m. 1991: the arthur of history. in rachel bromwich, alfred o.h. jarman & brynley f. roberts eds. the arthur of the welsh. cardiff, university of wales press: 15-32. charles-edwards, t. m. 2013: wales and the britons 350–1066. oxford, oxford university press. thomas clancy quote in m. hannan, academia up in arms over king arthur’s glasgow roots. the national. glasgow: march 6, 2015. chrétien de troyes 1989: yvain. arthurian romances. trans. and ed. d. d. r. owen. london, j. m. dent & sons, ltd: 281–373. chrétien de troyes 1989: le conte du graal. arthurian romances. trans. and ed. d. d. r. owen. london, j. m. dent & sons, ltd: 374–496. collingwood, r. g. & o. g. s. crawford 1937: roman britain and the english settlements. oxford, oxford university press. crawford, o. g. s. 1935: arthur and his battles. antiquity 9: 277–291. dark, k. r. 1992: a sub-roman re-defense of hadrian’s wall. britannia 23: 111– 120. davies, w. 1981. property rights and property claims in welsh “vitae” of the eleventh century. in evelyne patlagean & pierre riché eds. hagiographie, cultures, et sociétés ive-xiie siécles. paris, university of paris: 515–533. placing ‘the once and future king’ 117 delamarre, x. dictionnaire de la langue gauloise. paris, errance. duine, f. m. 1912–1913: la vie de s. samson, à propos d’un ouvrage recent. annales de bretagne 28: 332–356. dumville, d. n. 1977. on the north british section of the historia brittonum. welsh history review 8: 345–354. finberg, h. p. r. 1967: st. patrick at glastonbury. irish ecclesiastical record 107.5: 345–361. flobert, p. (trans. and ed.) 1997: la vie ancienne de saint samson de dol. paris, cnrs. foot, s. 1991: glastonbury’s early abbots. in leslie abrams & james p. carley eds. the archaeology and history of glastonbury abbey. woodbridge, boydell press: 163– 190. halsall, g. 2013: worlds of arthur: facts and fictions of the dark ages. oxford, oxford university press. haycock, m. 1984: ‘preiddeu annwn’ and the figure of taliesin. studia celtica 14– 15: 52–77. higham, n. j. 2007: king arthur: mythmaking and history. london, routledge. hughes, k. 1975. the welsh latin chronicles: annales cambriae and related texts. proceedings of the british academy 59: 233–258. hunt, a. 2012. the arthur of history: a reinterpretation of the evidence. createspace independent publishing platform, charleston. irby-massie, g. 1999: military religion in roman britain. boston, brill. jackson, k. h. 1945: once again arthur’s battles. modern philology 43: 44–57. jackson, k. h. 1953: language and history in early britain. edinburgh, university of edinburgh press. jackson, k. h. 1959: the arthur of history. in roger s. loomis ed. arthurian literature in the middle ages. chicago, university of chicago press: 1–11. jackson, k. h. (ed.) 1969: the gododdin: the oldest scottish poem. edinburgh, university of edinburgh press. jankulak, k. 2010: writers of wales: geoffrey of monmouth. cardiff, university of wales press. johnson, f. f. 2012: origins of arthurian romances. madison, mcfarland and co., inc., publishing. johnson, f. f. 2014a: evidence of arthur. madison, mcfarland and co., inc., publishing. johnson, f. f. 2014b: hengest, gwrtheyrn, and the chronology of post-roman britain. madison, mcfarland and co., inc., publishing. johnson, f. f. forthcoming: a history of britain from the fourth to the seventh centuries. madison, mcfarland and co., inc., publishing. koch, j. t. 2006: celtic culture: a historical encyclopedia. santa barbara, abc-clio. koch, j. t. 2007: an atlas for modern studies. oxford, university of oxford. 118 flint f. johnson leland, j. 1907: leland’s itinerary. ed. lucy toulmin smith. vol. 1. london, g. bell and sons. lloyd, j. e. 1911: the history of wales. cardiff, university of wales press. loomis, r. s. 1953: edward i, arthurian enthusiast. speculum 28: 114–117. maccana, p. 1955: aspects of the theme of the king and goddess. étude celtique 6: 356–413. margary, i. d. rev. 1967: roman roads in britain. london, john baker. moffat, a. 2011: the faded map – lost kingdoms of scotland. edinburgh, birlinn ltd. morris, m. 2009: a great and terrible king: edward i and the forging of britain. london, pegasus. o’rahilly, t. f. 1946: on the origins of the names érainn and ériu. ériu 14: 7–28. padel, o. j. 2013: arthur in medieval welsh literature. cardiff, university of wales press. prestwich, m. 1997: edward i. new haven, yale university press. richards, m. 1969: arthurian onomastics. transactions of the honourable society of cymmrodorion: 265. ross, a. 1967: pagan celtic britain. new york, columbia university press. sharpe, r. 1984: gildas as father of the church. in david n. dumville & michael lapidge eds. gildas: new approaches. woodbridge, boydell press: 193–205. sims-williams, p. 1991: the arthur of history. in rachel bromwich, alfred o. h. jarman, & brynley f. roberts eds. the arthur of the welsh. cardiff, university of wales press: 33–72. tatlock, j. s. p. 1950: the legendary history of britain: geoffrey of monmouth’s historia regum britanniae and its early vernacular versions. berkeley, university of california press. thurneysen, r. 1896: zimmer, nennius vindicates. zeitschrift für deutsche philologie 28: 80–113. webster, g. 1986: the pagan celts and their gods under rome. london, batsford. williams, m. 1938. an early ritual poem in welsh. speculum 13: 38–51. wright, n. 1984: gildas’s geographical perspective: some problems. david n. dumville & michael lapidge eds. gildas: new approaches. woodbridge, boydell press: 85–105. author’s address independent scholar, usa e-mail: tallhwch@yahoo.com received: 19 march 2016 revised version accepted: 16 march 2017 microsoft word 2020bookrevs.docx book reviews, selim25 (2020): 193–220. issn 1132-631x david scott-macnab. ed. 2019. a sporting lexicon of the fifteenth century: the ‘j. b. treatise’, 2nd ed. (medium aevum monographs 23.) oxford: the society for the study of medieval languages and literature. pp. xvii + 379. isbn 9780907570752. reviewed by andrew breeze, university of navarre hearty congratulations on this volume are due to its editor, who teaches at north-west university, potchefstroom, south africa. he takes on one of the knottiest of medieval texts and sorts out its kinks. what he calls the j. b. treatise is a miscellany of tracts (including jests and proverbs and lists of collective nouns) upon varied subjects (such as hunting, heraldry, wine, hounds, the carving of meat). older authorities called it the book of hawking, hunting, and blasing of arms or the book of st albans (where it was first printed in 1486); they further ascribed it to dame juliana berners or barnes (b. 1388?), prioress of sopwell, hertfordshire. she is the pope joan of english literature. modern scholars believe that she never existed. (that does not prevent outdated feminists from writing on her even now as a ‘pioneer female author’.) the difficulty of his task was worsened by a second printed version (of 1496), with a treatise on angling added to it, and twenty-two early manuscripts. for the last may be mentioned a witness appearing since the editor published his first edition in 2003. the labour of dealing with variants (as also questions of scribal hands, sources, vocabulary, etymology) was one requiring a scholarly resolution and application of almost heroic proportions. dr scott-macnab has spent years looking at manuscripts and reference books to produce his edited text and notes upon falconry or heraldry or cooking. his reward is rich. by presenting information on subjects dear to fifteenth-century gentlemen, he offers glimpses of a world that is lost, especially for modern academics, almost none of whom knows anything about (for example) hunting. much learned nonsense is the result. here are two examples. in chaucer’s troilus and criseyde, the expression ‘bere the belle’ (pp. iii, 198), applied to a debate of high-ranking ladies on the subject of love, is constantly misunderstood by editors. they refer it to sheep, asserting that the lady who speaks best of love resembles a bellwether, a (usually castrated) ram leading the flock and with a bell on its neck. dr scott-macnab makes the correct interpretation clear. it is to a falcon, fastened to a small bell (often elaborate) in case it escaped its owner. hence his quotation from fr john gerard (describing 194 book reviews a perilous mission to elizabethan england) on the ‘bell tinkling’ of a ‘stray hawk’ as it flew around (p. 104). scott-macnab’s reference shows chaucer’s allusion as one to pre-eminence of a noble falcon or lady (not an ignoble sheep, as dr barry windeatt and others foolishly imagine). second, sir gawain and the green knight. its author had a passion for the chase, even including reference to the ‘brittling’ of a deer, when the slain beast was expertly dismembered by huntsmen. the literary intellectuals who edit the text almost invariably ignore this, making the author out as a monk or cleric or chaplain or londoner instead of the cheshire landowner which he (rather obviously) was. he is thus called a ‘cleric’ in ‘minor orders’ in the works of the ‘gawain’ poet, ed. myra stokes & ad putter (london, 2004: xv). reading a sporting lexicon of the fifteenth century cures one of this delusion. it is from the world of sir gawain and the green knight, one of magnates and gentry who delighted in hunting, its stench and sweatiness notwithstanding. these are two reasons why dr scott-macnab’s edition is required reading for medievalists. here are two more. it has miscellaneous lists which linger in the mind and inform us on popular learning, as (for example) with collective nouns: exaltations of larks, unkindnesses of ravens, prides of lions, skulks of foxes, eloquences of lawyers, blasts of hunters. second, its catalogue of wines includes forms from continental europe, many still unidentified. spaniards will be interested to read (pp. 158–159) of robedore from ribadeo (lugo) or bilbowe from bilbao (vizcaya) or lepe from lepe (huelva); but what were the origins of cavelence, cherow, rennca, tromyn, mownterose, mamorant, gemerant, arphax, cosderam, cayser? some of these obscure forms may conceal spanish toponyms. so here is a job for researchers in spain or beyond. dr scott-macnab’s book opens one’s eyes to the english country gentlemen and ladies who have read (sometimes written) much english poetry. with copious material on the food eaten, wine drunk, or jokes cracked after those men and women returned from business or horse and hound, he brings us altogether closer to their world. reviewer’s address departamento de filología universidad de navarra 31009 pamplona spain e-mail: abreeze@unav.es book reviews 195 john m. bowers. 2019. tolkien’s lost chaucer. oxford: oxford university press. pp. xiv + 258. hardback. isbn 9780198842675. 30€. reviewed by jorge l. bueno alonso, university of vigo our dear long-standing selim member tom shippey (2014: 41) stated quite recently that “tolkien’s conception of his professional role centered, not on criticism and interpretation, but on editing, with translation as a more personal by-product of his editorial work”. however, just by having a look at what tolkien professionally edited, the number of his works is somewhat reduced and had different outcomes (shippey 2014: 44). the story of tolkien’s works has always been one of finished accomplishments and projects sketched on a constant process of revision and rewriting, of discarded notes and manuscripts stored and shelved for future use. tolkien’s fiction has been enriched with a plethora of posthumous publications, edited mostly —but not only— by his son christopher tolkien, whose editorial task in curating and publishing his father’s works has been paramount to understand the complexity and depth of tolkien’s legendarium. his non-fiction has also suffered from the same process of posthumous (re)discovery, as a simple gaze at the list of his academic publications well attest (honegger 2014). among those who share a combined passion for tolkien’s works and medieval studies, all his translations and editions for in-class teaching at oxford have always been something like the holy grail of medieval tolkeniana. his translation of beowulf (tolkien 2014) was a landmark on this unveiling of supposedly lost or incomplete sources, and other instances such as his expert take on the wanderer or the battle of maldon —as recently analysed by stuart d. lee (2009, forthcoming)— exert a fascination on us tolkienian medievalists that leave us craving for more, perhaps in the form of a singlevolume edition of all his class-notes and scattered translations. anyone wishing to accomplish this task knows it to be an enta geweorc indeed, considering the state of some of these tolkienian manuscripts (lee 2014). that is why we were all thrilled when, in the aforementioned study, tom shippey (2014: 44) made us aware of the discovery of what has always been considered tolkien’s most famous abandoned project, the ‘clarendon chaucer’: but while this present volume [lee’s companion] was in preparation, and thanks to the persistence of john m. bowers, all tolkien’s materials for this project have been rediscovered: page proofs corrected by tolkien, notes by tolkien, proofs of 196 book reviews tolkien’s glossary and notes on language, and testimonials for the ‘introduction’ by tolkien’s co-editor george gordon. five years after shippey’s announcement, oxford university press has finally published john m. bowers’ wonderful account of the history of how tolkien’s clarendon chaucer never came to be, was almost lost and thought to have been pulped, and was rediscovered in some archival boxes at oup. all these materials are thoroughly analysed and commented with philological mastery by john m. bowers in tolkien’s lost chaucer. using his own analogy (p. 37), reading this book makes us feel like entering the archives of minas tirith to read isildur’s unread scroll on the ring.1 the present volume is very adequately structured in eight sections, plus the customary list of illustrations, abbreviations, works cited, a couple of appendixes, and an index for cross-reference. the first section functions as an introductory chapter —“1. prologue: concerning chaucer”, pp. 1–13—, where the author not only explains the different sections of the book with great clarity but also manages to tell his own personal story in relation to tolkien in general and this very project in particular. this personal touch is most appreciated by this humble reviewer, as it clearly signals the author’s credentials and enthusiasm to develop the project. the core content as such begins with the next section —“2. unexpected journeys”, pp. 13–40—, where bowers describes with precision the story of what we knew so far about the clarendon chaucer since it was first commissioned in the 1920s to its definitive closure by oup in 1960. a final subsection contained in this chapter, titled (as several other sections), in a very tolkienian fashion ‘the shadow of the past’, describes how these materials for tolkien’s clarendon chaucer came to light in 2012 in an oxford basement. bowers narrates this moment with a mixture of awe and reverence, shared indeed by the reader, that makes it feel like the written academic version of a youtube unboxing video for its enthusiastic writing and academic rigour. 1 in fr ii/2, gandalf says: “and yet there lie in his hoards many records that few even of the lore-masters now can read, for their scripts and tongues have become dark to later men […] there lies in minas tirith still, unread, i guess, by any save saruman and myself since the kings failed, a scroll that isildur made himself”. this well-known episode describes quite well the feeling of finding a lost source or text in an archive, the thrill of reading it as you have the formal qualifications to do it, leaving it at the archives where you found it after the consultation. book reviews 197 before the found materials are dealt with, the next chapter —“3. four chaucerians: walter w. skeat, kenneth sisam, george s. gordon, c. s. lewis”, pp. 41–78— establishes a halt in the analysis by offering a depiction of the four scholars of medieval literature mentioned in the title, as they all played various roles to understand the history of tolkien’s clarendon chaucer, which was meant to be released as selections from chaucer’s poetry and prose. four independent sections follow devoted to each scholar and his role: skeat, whose texts from a previous nineteenth-century edition were to be used to save time and money as the basis for the edition, and received severe criticism from tolkien who wanted to add corrections and emendations; sisam, tolkien’s mentor, who commissioned tolkien the glossary for his own clarendon fourteenth century verse and prose (1921) and, as a result of this fruitful collaboration,2 thought about him to have an important editorial role on the chaucer volume; gordon, set to be tolkien’s collaborator in the volume with the task of writing the introductory materials, drafts of which appeared in the clarendon chaucer box; and lewis, an expert medievalist, chaucerian and longlasting friend and supporter of tolkien’s writings academic and fictional, who saw the need for better editions of chaucerian materials and had for sure many conversations on the matter that infused tolkien with eagerness. the next section —“4. tolkien as editor: text and glossary”, pp. 79–104— begins with a very clear caveat (p. 79): 2 this middle english vocabulary tolkien made for sisam’s volume not only inspired sisam’s confidence in him for future endeavors but also gave him access to middle english texts that were capital for tolkien’s legendarium. as bowers (p. 55) indicates: “glossary-making for verse and prose set the agenda for much of tolkien’s later work starting with gawain and gave him close knowledge of the breton lay sir orfeo which served as his chief source for medieval fairy lore. like the wood-elves in the hobbit, these fairies ventured into the forest but lived deep inside a mountain realm; like bilbo reciting poetry for lord elrond’s court, sir orfeo performed songs for the fairy king’s court. this indebtedness was typical of tolkien’s imaginative economy. he wasted little. what he learned while glossing pieces for sisam’s anthology —even from the short song the maid of the moor— would find their ways into his fantasy novels. the same would be true for his own editorial work on chaucer”. one of the great merits of bowers’ volume is that it is filled with references to the influence these medieval works exerted on his fiction. 198 book reviews as a study of editorial practices and lexicography, this chapter might be brainnumbingly dull for general readers, even for today’s chaucer specialists no longer routinely trained in textual criticism and historical linguistics,3 if not for the fact that it allows us to watch tolkien in his role as a scholar and catch glimpses of the future author of the lord of the rings. bowers is perhaps judging himself rather severely. the section delivers what it promises, a deep study of the text and glossary materials found in the box, but with a clear and amusing style. it is not an easy task to read over these materials, but bowers manages to explain the content quite clearly (p. 81): the mystery of the grey box begins to unfold. tolkien used proof 1, copy 1 as his working copy and kept it for future reference. he transferred his edits to copy 2 before sending it to gordon and thence to sisam. proof 2, copies 1 and 2 were sent to tolkien who used both of them for recording minor changes. proof 2, copy 3 shows no tinkering by tolkien and seems never to have been in his possession —which tallies with his letter to davin. after this, bowers describes and analyses with great detail all those sets of galleys, proofs and copies and the glossary, by paying close attention to the editorial debates and lexicographical decisions tolkien posed, his heavy corrections of skeat’s punctuation, editorial decisions and glossing —which sometimes, as in the case of the word ‘aventure’ (p. 99), led to wonderful reflections on tolkien’s themes and ideas influencing his fiction—, and his approach to glossary compilation. the following section —“5. the chaucerian incubus: the notes”, pp. 105– 186— is perhaps one of the most revealing in the book and reminds the reader of the commentary section of tolkien’s beowulf (2014). here bowers revises the 160-page commentary tolkien was instructed to shorten and was not able to do 3 this statement really constitutes a very sad truth in the academia of our times, where syllabi are reduced, subjects are cut to almost nothing, and whole sections on philological studies just vanish without a trace. where they still survive medieval subjects do so in a very introductory and reduced way, no longer offering the degree of (post) graduate training in reading old english and middle english needed for textual criticism and analysis. to have a closer picture at what happened in the spanish academia concerning medieval studies, readers can consult bueno (2011). though that piece covered the situation up to 2011, i am afraid that things have not improved in this last decade and that analysis and reflection is still valid. book reviews 199 so. thanks to this impossibility, these notes, as bowers states most correctly (p. 105), “have considerable value for revealing the range of [tolkien’s] linguistic, historical and aesthetic engagements with chaucer”. after explaining the state of the notes and his methodological approach to revise them (pp. 105–109), bowers proceeds to describe in detail these wonderful mini-lectures in separate sections for the chaucerian texts annotated: the romaunt of the rose (pp. 109– 116), compleinte unto pité (pp. 116–120), the book of the duchess (pp. 120–124), the parlement of foules (pp. 124–129), the former age (pp. 129–134), merciles beauté (pp. 134–135), to rosemounde (p. 135), truth (pp. 135–136), gentilesse (pp. 136–137), lak of stedfastnesse (pp. 138–139), compleint to his empty purse (pp. 139–143), boethius de consolatione philosophiae (pp. 143–148), the prologue to the legend of good women (pp. 148–154), the legend of cleopatra (pp. 154–160), the astrolabe (pp. 161–163), and the prologue to the canterbury tales (pp. 163–186). the materials from the box end here, with just nine pages of notes on the reeve’s tale. it is precisely this issue what bowers deals with in the next chapter of his volume (p. 186): “[tolkien’s] faltering engagements with the reeve’s tale [which] elicited important responses from tolkien as scholar and storyteller over the next two decades”. exploring those faltering engagements is the aim of this section —“6. tolkien as a chaucerian: the reeve’s tale”, pp. 187–222—, which begins with the thorough revision of those nine pages of notes (‘the reeve’s tale in the clarendon chaucer’, pp. 188–195) and the many editorial corrections and emendations he made on skeat’s text, especially regarding dialectal issues. precisely those issues on dialectology constitute the core of the next subsection (‘chaucer as a philologist, the reeve’s tale’, pp. 195–207), which draws on tolkien’s famous 1934 [2008] paper of the same title; bowers especially highlights the importance the paper had for chaucerian criticism on language and tolkien’s painstaking attempts at reconstructing an edition of the tale that signals dialectal marks, giving some instances of tolkien’s restored text as compared with skeat’s. something similar takes place in the next subsection (‘oxford summer diversions 1939’, pp. 207–216), which describes in detail tolkien’s edited text of the reeve’s tale that was handed in during tolkien’s performance of the tale in the summer festival that gives name to this subsection.4 though this text was already known, bowers states quite surprisingly how this edition shows tolkien’s constant process of reworking and 4 the programme and the text were reprinted in tolkien studies (2008), but these editorial issues were not mentioned. 200 book reviews correcting, as there are several differences between this reeve’s tale and the one from 1934. how the tale remained central to tolkien’s attention and how it influenced his fiction is the core of the final subsection (‘flotsam and jetsam’, pp. 216–221). bowers explains this fact quite convincingly with a load of textual evidence as he demonstrates how “tolkien set about transforming chaucer’s story of two students fist-fighting in a bedroom to the far more heroic vision of two hobbits joining with the entish army in an assault upon isengard” (p. 217). a fascinating chapter indeed. next section follows the ending of the previous one —“7. chaucer in middle-earth”, pp. 223–268—, as it goes deeper into the chaucerian elements influencing tolkien’s world. bowers states that “if readers have not previously detected troilus and the canterbury tales in tolkien’s middle-earth, it is because nobody was alert for noticing these ingredients” (p. 226). the whole chapter aims at correcting this by revising such influence in four richly documented subsections that range from the general biographic and thematic perspective (‘chaucer and tolkien: affinities’, pp. 226–242, and ‘chaucer in the soup’, pp. 242–249) to the specific usage of given sources (‘the wife of bath’s tale’, pp. 249–254, and ‘the pardoner’s tale’, pp. 254–267). in a previous study, bowers (2007) proposed chaucer’s son thomas as the person responsible for posthumous publication of his father’s unfinished canterbury tales, much as christopher tolkien took charge of his father’s silmarillion (p. 12). bowers signals how “[both] authors had sons who served as literary executors sorting through their literary remains and overseeing posthumous publications” (p. 269) and traces in the final chapter of his study —“8. coda: fathers and sons”, pp. 269–278— how this pure coincidence in their biographies provides a fitting ending for the book. bowers shows how christopher’s early philological work represented a warm-up exercise for future endeavours. the book includes two appendixes that contain tolkien’s draft preface to his notes (appendix i, ‘an introduction on language’, pp. 279–282) and his description of glossary contents (appendix ii, pp. 283–284). the complete list of works cited and the index close the volume (pp. 285–310). when tom shippey announced bower’s discoveries, he then said (2014: 44) that “[m]uch of this material will no doubt eventually be published, but it will now inevitably function as a coda to tolkien studies, not, as intended, a stimulus to chaucer studies”. after reading tolkien’s lost chaucer the reader has the overwhelming impression that this extraordinary volume will serve both fields of study alike. in the humble opinion of this reviewer, bowers’ book is not only book reviews 201 the best one of the year on tolkienian matters5 but it is also one of the best on chaucer.6 by combining both subjects bowers has written one of the best volumes of the decade, especially for us medievalists who, as the author himself stated, are “potentially tolkien’s best-equipped readers” (p. 9). when bower started his description of tolkien’s work on the reeve’s tale (pp. 187–188) he stated that: tolkien had lamented in his 1927 year’s work in english that editors could only go so far in reconstructing a past poet’s original achievement: ‘it is of the nature of things that the skeleton lasts longest. palaeontology rescues rather bones than flesh, it give us little information concerning the cry of the tyrannosaurus; the history of language recovers for us many word-forms whose full richness of tones and of meanings escapes us —it can hardly hope to drag back much of the syntax and the idiom of the lost past’. unable as a philologist to give full voice to the lost past in deeds as well as words, tolkien would seek this recovery in his fantasy writings. whether you are interested in chaucer, tolkien, philology, or literature, this book will serve you well. john m. bowers’ monumental book demands from the reader a cross-disciplinary approach that exemplifies excellently well how in tolkien studies any serious analysis requires elements from the different fields that build medieval studies as a discipline. if tolkien himself did not separate his fiction from his academic work, we should follow his example and consider his works as a wonderful single but multifarious entity. bowers has done so in this excellent volume. 5 in fact, bowers was nominated for the tolkien society awards 2020 in the category of best book, together with cilli (2019) and brennan croft & röttinger (2019). it was cilli’s book the one that eventually won the prize. i still consider bowers’ the best book of 2019, though, and i voted for him in consequence. to advance the list, i have no doubt that john garth’s (2020) recent volume will be the best of this bizarre and pandemic 2020. stuart d. lee is currently writing a review due to appear in selim 26 (2021). 6 there is no discussion in considering marion turner’s (2019) impressive new take on chaucer’s life the best book on chaucer written last year. it will surely be one of the decade’s chaucerian best volumes too. 202 book reviews references bowers, j. m. 2007: chaucer and langland: the antagonistic tradition. notre dame, university of notre dame press. brennan croft, j. & a. röttinger eds. 2019: “something has gone crack”: new perspectives on j. r. r. tolkien in the great war (cormarë series no. 41). zurich & jena, walking tree publishers. bueno alonso, j. l. 2011: hwilum ic me reste; he sceal rinnan forð: dos décadas de estudios medievales ingleses en la universidad española (1991–2011) con la mirada puesta en el futuro. cuadernos del cemyr 19: 11–37. https://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/12017 cilli, o. 2019: tolkien’s library: an annotated checklist. edinburgh, luna press. garth, j. 2020: the worlds of j. r. r. tolkien: the places that inspired middle-earth. london, frances lincoln. honegger, t. 2014: academic writings. in s. d. lee ed. a companion to j. r. r. tolkien. oxford, wiley-blackwell: 27–40. lee, s. d. 2009: j. r. r. tolkien and the wanderer: from edition to application. tolkien studies 6: 189–211. doi:10.1353/tks.0.0060. lee, s. d. 2014: manuscripts: use, and using. in s. d. lee ed. a companion to j. r. r. tolkien. oxford, wiley-blackwell, 56–76. lee, s. d. forthcoming. ‘lagustreamas’: the changing waters surrounding j. r. r. tolkien and the battle of maldon. in e. j. christie ed. the wisdom of exeter. anglosaxon studies in honor of patrick w. conner (richard rawlinson center series for anglo-saxon studies). berlin, degruyter. shippey, t. 2014: tolkien as editor. in s. d. lee ed. a companion to j. r. r. tolkien. oxford, wiley-blackwell: 41–55. tolkien, j. r. r. 1934: chaucer as a philologist: the reeve’s tale. transactions of the philological society 33.1: 1–70. [reprinted with the author’s corrections in tolkien studies 5 (2008): 109–171. doi:10.1353/tks.0.0011.] tolkien, j. r. r. 2008: the reeve’s tale: version prepared for recitation at the ‘summer diversions’ oxford: 1939. tolkien studies 5: 173–183. doi:10.1353/tks.0.0014. tolkien, j. r. r. 2014: beowulf. a translation and commentary, together with sellic spell. c. tolkien ed. london, harpercollins. turner, m. 2019: chaucer: a european life. princeton (nj), princeton university press. reviewer’s address department of english, french and german university of vigo lagoas-marcosende campus praza das cantigas, s/n e36310 vigo (spain) e-mail: jlbueno@uvigo.es book reviews 203 rodrigo pérez lorido. 2019. coordinación y elipsis en inglés antiguo. oviedo: servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de oviedo. pp. 211. isbn 9788416343812. 15.38€. reviewed by maría josé esteve ramos, universitat jaume i old english syntax is a deeply specialized field of research. considering the studies of mitchell (1964) or allen (1980) and the more recent work by taylor & pintzuk (2014, 2015, 2018) or pérez-lorido himself (2009), the study of old english coordination and ellipsis has been the subject of different controversies. this publication is a product which reflects the outstanding long contribution of the author to the field of old english syntax. the structure of the book is deployed in six chapters. the main objective is to study the interaction of syntax, pragmatics, and mind processing in the study of order in old english. it is fair to say that all the concepts are developed with great clarity and the accurate and wise handling of the examples makes it easy to follow, even when the subject gets deep into complex theoretical issues. this present work aims at representing a step forward, challenging the traditional hypothesis dealing with the structural complexity of the old english language, in which problems of language processing are considered the trigger of the split coordination structure. data gathered in this analysis shows that communicative and pragmatic factors are more decisive in order to explain the split coordination in old english than the structural complexity itself. another conclusion is that style is a paramount factor affecting split coordination. aspects such as authorship, genre, or literary style will show a direct impact in the use of this structure in the examples and data conducted hereby. this result seems to contradict traditional claims by authors such as mitchell & robinson (1964), which agree to the idea that split coordination is basically a structural, linguistic fact. as we continue with the introduction, the author makes a very intensive and thorough review about the state of the art related to the subject, as expected. old english syntax has been studied following two different assumptions: the first is that it has structural and syntactic restrictions, and the second that it has a more pragmatic orientation controlled by communicative factors. following the first assumption, an interesting debate related to the sov-svo order is explained. an interesting question that arises is related to the double-base hypothesis in which the two competing structures sov-svo would appear in the base of the language. also, and together with the position of the 204 book reviews constituents, heaviness becomes another central aspect, as it is directly related to the structural complexity in the old english word order. although this will be developed further in chapter 4, a brief introduction concerning the debate around these complex structures is introduced. this discussion will be central to the author, showing a real interest and painstaking work carried out with the data to demonstrate the main conclusions that can be read in chapter 6. following with the processing of heavy structures, the main idea is that these —especially those with heavy objects in preverbal position— could have been difficult to process, deriving in a series of adjustments —mainly by pushing the constituents to the right— that led to the change ov to vo in middle english. one of the linguistic phenomena considered, ellipsis, could be fundamental to provide some relevant keys in order to better understand the grammatical nature of old english. the potential of ellipsis as a method of diagnosis will help to establish new evidence about unsolved matters. prof. pérez-lorido gives a very thorough state of the art in this section and writes that one of the major problems found in the revised literature is that studies are based mostly on theoretical reflections, which show little support on quantitative analysis and very limited corpora. gapping has been thoroughly studied from the varied linguistic perspectives (specially the generativist) and many of the discussions around this phenomenon are directly applicable to old english. in this section, the author explores the idea that old english speakers had a great capacity of memory storage in order to process the syntactic constituents presented in complex structures. this could allow them to store items (verbs in this case) with all the vivid lexical storage in their memory, so as to “download” the necessary ones when the communicative situation may demand them. the only requisite before activating them in the memory would be that these items should appear in the precedent discourse. an important aspect related to this idea is that this memory storage would be cumulative, in such a way that not only the verbal nucleus may be stored, but all the predicate elements of the first cluster would be recoverable at any time in the second part. this would not impede that other permitted elements may also appear in the second part with the objective of adding some relevant information. all this reflects the high capacity of processing and storing in the memory by the old english speakers, something that had been systematically denied in the literature on old english syntax. this idea is going to be fully developed in chapters 4 and 5. the last part of the introduction is the longest, providing an abundance of examples which is a highlight to the chapter. book reviews 205 chapter 2 deals in depth with the theoretical framework. generativism is probably the theoretical school that has better studied the processes of coordination and ellipsis. however, in this work the author uses an eclectic approach to have a broader perspective of the linguistic phenomena under study. in this chapter, we also find an introductory description of the corpus — comprising more than 530,000 words— and of the challenges of its compilation. among those, when examples proved to be a challenge or difficult to interpret, the provided solution was to have them revised in the original copy (in case of translations), or also crossed comparison in the different manuscripts had to be undertaken. a theoretical model assumed by the author is the integrative model by newmeyer (1998), which places linguistics within a neuro-psychological theory of the mind-brain, in which syntax and pragmatics interact within a system ruled by the general cognitive capacities. the fundamental objective of this work is therefore to study the interaction of the different modules of language in the old english word order, stemming from data provided by coordination and elision. this aims at contributing to the debate about the underlying order of old english, svo, sov, or both, from a new perspective. the work also aims at precisely defining the contexts of application of gapping and split coordination in old english. further, it aims at setting a division between early old english and late old english from a syntactic perspective. finally, the work also contributes to bringing up evidence on the importance of authorship and the different genres and text types on the old english syntax production. concerning methodology, this chapter discusses different issues. the lack of living informants is one of them, as it is for any study involving historical texts. in order to accomplish this, the author will resort to the study of frequencies. studying frequencies of a specific construction is considered hereby a good method of control in the acceptance of such structure, more so if the statistical treatment is based on a wide, representative, and varied corpus of texts of the language under study. another important strategy is the comparative method. it is common to stablish comparisons with other germanic languages from the continent, such as dutch and german, with which old english is genetically related and with which it shares evident features. this comparison is undertaken in chapter 4, after the comparison between old and contemporary english being studied in chapter 3. also, the texts used for the study have been compared to their latin counterparts and with the different versions of the same manuscript. some other methodological problems may be related to punctuation. it was generally agreed that punctuation had a rhetorical function, but studies such as conducted by calle206 book reviews martín & miranda-garcía (2005) have shown that a certain connection can be found between the syntactic order of some types of clauses and the punctuation marks used by the scribe of the anglo-saxon prose of the eleventh century. having revised the theoretical trends involved in the study, the author devotes a part of this chapter to reviewing the existing electronic corpora. these corpora are tagged, such as the brooklyn-geneva-amsterdam-helsinki parsed corpus of old english or the york-toronto-helsinki parsed corpus of old english prose. after describing them briefly, it is important to point out that the existing corpora were not appropriate for this type of study, nor were they available at the beginning of this investigation. in this way, the option selected was the manual search of information and examples based on existing editions. the corpus is formed by nine works in prose, copies or manuscript originals covering a time span that runs from the end of the ninth century to the beginning of the twelve century, also dividing the period into two, early (until the year 1000) and late old english. among those texts we find wulfstan’s homilies or ælfric’s lives of saints, representing a variety of genres and text types. the selected material covers narrative, descriptive, and argumentative texts and also encompasses an appropriate diachronic time span. as to the date selected for the timeline of the texts, the author has rightfully considered the date of the available copy. this does not undermine —according to many experts— the significance of the examples thereof obtained, in relation to the validity of the linguistic structures. in the case of the anglo-saxon chronicle, it has a special status as it is rightly considered a complex text; in fact, as the author states, “a multiple text”, a text which is the result of the sum of many texts. another interesting debate which is included in this section is if old english syntax in texts which are copied from latin is affected by the original, and therefore “contaminated” by latin structures. it seems that there is consensus —says the author— that the majority of translations from latin do not represent transliterations of the original, but that the translators copied the original with a good degree of freedom, producing original structures and going away from verbatim translations. having reached this point, i do coincide with prof. pérez-lorido in the estimation that the anglo-saxon chronicle is a crucial text in the corpus, and that the language reflected in this specific text, far from having any stylistic pretensions, would be very much reflecting real use of old english syntactic structures. we move to chapter 3, where gapping is the main topic. this structure is generally characterised by the no-realization of the lexical part of the verb in coordinated structures with identical verbs. in this chapter the author examines book reviews 207 the phenomenon of gapping in contemporary english. here we find reviews all the different studies that have tackled this issue, which started at/in the end of the 60s and the 70s. this section refers to those elliptical constructions of the corpus where the basic principle of coordinate structure constraint of schahter is not fulfilled. gapping has generally been considered as a rule of orational scope but, after an extensive analysis based on examples extracted from the corpus, the author concludes that in old english gapping may not be open to the same restrictions on adjacency that operate in contemporary english, behaving more as an anaphoric process. this fact points to —from the author’s point of view— its pragmatic nature. in the corpus gathered for this study, sixty-three out of the 258 examples of gapping (24.4%) correspond to the type defined as pragmatically controlled, in two cases: because they present ellipsis in coordinated non-adjacent structures, or in both, which is remarkable. this percentage is found in texts with a simple narrative style: the anglo-saxon chronicle and orosius. if chapter 3 analyses contemporary english examples, in chapter 4 we find an analysis of word order taking as a basis the directionality constraint by john r. ross and comparing data from old english with other occidental germanic languages such as german or modern dutch. we know that gapping operated forward and backward and the chapter discusses evidence from the corpus. from a diachronic point of view, percentages of presence of the verb in final position decrease when we pass from early old english as in bede, orosius, boethius, cura pastoralis, and parker chronicle with a 28.1 per cent, to late old english, as in the anglo-saxon chronicle, ælfric, and wulfstan’s homilies with a 10.5 per cent. the svo pattern gives the results of a 71.8 per cent in early old english switching to an 89.4 per cent in late old english. these numbers coincide with other recent studies about the change sov-svo in english and suggest that there is a clear shift from sov to svo already within the old english period. chapter 5 is devoted to split coordination, defined as a structure in which the first and second conjuncts of a coordinated sequence are separated by non-related material. this construction is one of the most characteristic of the syntax of old english. among other questions, this chapter studies heaviness and two associated concepts: length and complexity. the heavy subjects abound in the corpus and the author considers that the position of the structures may be relevant when interpreting emphasis. heavy structures at the end are more emphatic. another issue discussed in this section is the nature of the afterthought. some works are highlighted, as the one carried out by acuñafariña (1996), which emphasizes the pragmatic nature of the right-dislocation 208 book reviews phenomena, in which the afterthought is included. the majority of authors consider the afterthought as a process that goes beyond syntax, and which role or function is to complement, clarify, or add something to what has already been said in the sentence. among the different conclusions of the corpus examples and their analysis reached by the author, it can be said that the phenomenon of split coordination is very much conditioned by the style, at least as far as subjects is concerned. split coordination does not seem to essentially depend on the conditions about the structural size of the constituents, given that the data of the corpus show that sometimes light coordinated subjects are split and, on the contrary, long and heavy subjects remain together. the discursive relevance and the semantics of the elements involved in the coordination of the subjects in old english seems to have much more importance in this process than the size of it. in this sense, the author says to have confirmed that split coordination of the subject in old english was used consistently as a mechanism of organization of the discourse, allowing a hierarchy of the elements in communication, more important to the left, less important to the right. this is demonstrated by the distribution and relative incidence of this phenomenon in the different types of text in the corpus: in the narrative and analytical texts in the corpus, in which more clear and precise specification and sequencing of the participants in the action is needed. in these contexts, the presence of the split subjects is much higher. the last chapter summarizes the general conclusions and begins with a reminder of the primary objective: the study of the interaction of syntax, pragmatics, and processing in the old english word order. these conclusions conform a radical revision of the concepts that had been handled until now in the analysis of split coordination in old english. the author firmly states that split coordination is strongly conditioned by style. questions such as authorship, genre, and literary style influence decisively in its occurrence. heaviness does not play a relevant role in the generation of split coordination structures in old english. we have already mentioned that coordinated and non-coordinated split subjects have approximately the same average in length. also due to the fact that very light subjects quite often are split and, on the contrary, very complex subjects tend not to split very often. the author attempts to show that the split subject was used in old english as a conscious mechanism of foregrounding and of organization of the discourse, allowing a hierarchic disposition of the elements in the communicative flux, which were disposed as more relevant (to the left) or less relevant (to the right). book reviews 209 this has a clear parallelism in the types of texts in the corpus: in the more analytical and narrative texts, in which it is necessary to clearly specify who are the participants of the action and place the facts in time more precisely, the incidence of split coordination of the subject is much higher than in the rest of the works in the corpus. as for the diachronic evolution, the author claims to have found clear percentual differences between early old english and late old english in the study of most of the processes considered in this research, which suggests a process of change in progress. in this sense, the presence of gapping pragmatically controlled shows higher evidence in early old english (58.7%) than in late old english (41.2%) as already mentioned, the study of the corpus in the book shows that style, genre, and authorship may be determining factors in the generation of some syntactic structures in old english and, therefore, these variables must necessarily be considered when making any statement about old english syntax. as to the influence of latin in the generation of these structures, the study and results from the corpus reinforce the theory that, in general, translations of latin texts into old english did not copy the syntactic structures of the original. the author concludes that the data obtained in this work reinforce the validity of ellipsis as a tool of linguistic diagnosis and its importance when verifying the different hypothesis about the nature of the languages, being either syntactic or pragmatic. this validates the primary objective of the book. this revision of old english coordination and ellipsis structures is a very welcome contribution as it is rigorous, well-structured, and based on a good selection of old english key texts, providing a balanced proportion between theory and practical examples. this work is a must-read for all those interested in old english syntax and linguistics in general. i am certain it will be a landmark for further academic publications on this subject, where prof. pérez-lorido has excelled. he has provided the academic community with a rigorous work that we hope will encourage future historical linguists to pursue new endeavours. references acuña-fariña, j. c. 1996: right-dislocation, “dislocation-to-the-right” and other related issues. revista canaria de estudios ingleses 32/33: 19–31. calle-martín, j. & a. miranda-garcía 2005: aspects of punctuation in the old english apollonius of tyre. folia linguistica historica 26: 45–64. mitchell, b. & f. robinson 1964: a guide to old english. oxford, blackwell. 210 book reviews newmeyer, f. j. 1998: language, form, and language function. cambridge (mass), mit press. pérez-lorido, r. 2009. reconsidering the role of syntactic “heaviness” in old english split coordination. studia anglica posnaniensia 45: 31–56. taylor, a. & s. pintzuk 2014: testing the theory: information structure in old english. in k. bech & k. g. eide eds. information structure and syntactic change in germanic and romance languages. amsterdam, john benjamins: 53–78. taylor, a. & s. pintzuk 2015: verb order, object position, and information status in old english. in t. biberauer & g. walkden eds. syntax over time: lexical, morphological, and information-structural interactions. oxford, oxford university press: 318–335. taylor, a. & s. pintzuk 2018: split coordination in english: why we need parsed corpora. diachronica. international journal for historical linguistics 35.3: 310–337. reviewer’s address departamento de estudios ingleses facultad de ciencias humanas y sociales, campus de ríu sec universitat jaume i 12071 castelló de la plana spain e-mail: resteve@uji.es dimitra fimi & thomas honegger. eds. 2019. sub-creating arda: world-building in j. r. r. tolkien’s world, its precursors, and its legacies. zurich & jena: walking tree publishers. pp. 401. isbn 9783905703405. £40. reviewed by adriana taboada gonzález, university of vigo in a time in which streaming platforms seem to have the need to adapt every fantasy book ever written, the eternal question of how an author is able to (sub)create such worlds and the interest in the process behind those creations are becoming even more relevant amongst the general audience. this has opened up a space both for academics and people outside academia to explore the oftenforgotten field of fantastic literature from new perspectives that diverge from those more traditional ones which would almost exclusively consider fantasy as book reviews 211 a children-only kind of literature. one of the authors whose work never ceases to enchant old and new readers is j. r. r. tolkien, who keeps awakening their thirst for knowing everything that has to do with the creative process —or with anything they find relevant in the stories— thus allowing researchers to exploit the never-ending goldmine that the tolkien studies have become. this, however, comes with a risk: there is a very fine line between works directed to the general audience and those directed to academics, the boundaries between which are getting narrower every day in fields such as that of fantastic literature. researchers of the tolkeniana, for instance, often find themselves navigating the dichotomy between work and pleasure through the tolkien societies around the globe and the events they organize to commemorate the author. these societies and events are a good chance for young scholars to make their debut presenting their works before a keen audience in a more relaxed atmosphere; on the other hand, they might work as a double-edged sword, for the majority of their members are interested in the author and his books merely as a hobby. a good example of this double-edge is the oxonmoot, an event in which a programme of talks and papers, “some serious, others less so”,7 take place at the very same time as craft rooms and workshops where one can learn how to make their own dwarf beard, among other skills. for the last twenty-three years, walking tree publishers have been offering their readers a tolkien-based collection, cormarë series, which counts to date with forty-four books covering different aspects of the author’s work, such as the role of music in the creation of arda, its connections with religion, or its representation of nature. the volume reviewed in these pages fits in this series as an analysis of the very basis of every invented world, that is, how it comes to live, using tolkien’s world as a liaison between the more general aspects of sub-creation and world-building, and some specific examples outside of the tolkenian sphere —indeed, fimi & honegger divide the twenty essays that comprise this volume into three “large categories” (theoretical aspects, tolkien’s work, and other authors), even though the said division is only made explicit throughout their introduction (p. ii). having included a second difference, this time regarding the board of advisors (“academic advisors” and “general readers”), the book seems to be another example of the already mentioned paradox that makes one wonder who the target audience might be between those very different groups, represented also in the list of contributors, that ranges from well-known scholars in the field (john garth, tom shippey) to young 7 personal communication with the tolkien society by email, 3rd june 2020. 212 book reviews researchers and other writers whose careers are in principle far from the tolkien studies. it goes without saying that belonging to any of these circles should not and does not have any implications over the quality of their work, but it does help blur the aforementioned line between them, especially when it comes to addressing the target readers. as it can be foreseen through the title, sub-creation and world-building are the two main concepts that will shape the narrative of the volume, however similar or dissimilar each author considers them to be. for the editors, the former is directly related to the art of “creating a ‘secondary world’ […] as a natural artistic imitation of god’s demiurgic act in creating our primary world” (p. i), while the latter focuses on the “harmony between the laws by which the new world has begun to exist”, as quoted from macdonald’s “the fantastic imagination” (pp. 314–315). considering wolf’s building imaginary worlds: the theory and history of subcreation as a key piece of work in the field for the importance it gives to the “often paratextual” elements of world-building that go beyond the narrative (p. ii) —and not without a reason, for all the papers from the first category and most papers of the volume reference wolf’s work— fimi & honegger give what they call the “pride of place for the opening paper” to mark wolf (“concerning the “sub” in “subcreation”: the act of creating under”, pp. 1–15), an essay that sets the general theoretical background for the rest of the compilation (p. ii). following wolf’s path, although narrowing it down to tolkien’s works and specific techniques, the next four essays set what can be considered as a second theoretical background of the book, each in its own way. turner (“one pair of eyes: focalisation and worldbuilding”, pp. 17–29) and brierly’s (“worldbuilding design patterns in the works of j. r. r. tolkien”, pp. 93– 116) contributions deal with two specific techniques of world-building: focalisation and design patterns. turner provides a rather interesting analysis of the implications of focalisation as a “literary technique in the creation of a credible world that is unfamiliar” not only through the hobbit or the lord of the rings but also in two historical novels by sir walter scott, waverly and rob roy (p. 28). the use of language and point of view of each character make it possible for the reader to place themselves in the secondary world without much effort, what makes this resource fundamental for any narrative. on the other hand, izzo (“worldbuilding and mythopoeia in tolkien and post-tolkienian fantasy literature”, pp. 31–55) and makai (“beyond fantastic self-indulgence: aesthetic limits to world-building”, pp. 57–92) stay in the more general picture of world-building and sub-creation, the former being the book reviews 213 one that serves as a bridge between wolf’s work and the rest, for he goes into more detail about tolkien’s own ways for both concepts, which for izzo has managed to balance, and gives a rather exhaustive list of examples of post tolkienian fantasy authors that fail to do the same. one of the things that might impress the general audience about tolkien is the number of biographical studies that have been published (hammond & scull 2000, carpenter 2002, garth 2004, mcilwaine 2018), including a detailed chronology by scull & hammond (2006) and a non-authorized biopic (karukoski 2019). it should therefore not come as a surprise that one of the most remarkable essays of this volume is garth’s study of the role of music in tolkien’s creation myth (“ilu’s music: the creation of tolkien’s creation myth”, pp. 117–151) and the debate he opens about the dates in which arda was created for the first time, which was long believed to have been by the end of the first world war and instead he now argues it might have been created in 1917, since a new source of inspiration for the music of the ainur was found by “a very particular person with a very particular set of interests”, peter gilliver (p. 129). the said source is the company of heaven, by benjamin britten’s, in which the singing is “interspersed with spoken readings” in which, for instance, some paragraphs read almost exactly the same as tolkien’s work, what led gilliver to think the author might have been working on a rewriting of the creation myth, the same way he had done with the story of kullervo (p. 129). the other compelling study of this category is hausmann’s “lyrics on lost lands: constructing lost places through poetry in j. r. r. tolkien’s the lord of the rings” (pp. 261–284), in which she analyses the depth which poems can infuse to world-building using as an example three poems that mention the lost lands. these texts talk about a past history of arda, which is new information not only for the readers but also for most of the characters in the hobbit and the lord of the rings, since “except for the itsari and some of the high-elves […] they lack prior knowledge or even personal memory of these places” (p. 267). moreover, these poems are far from mere decorations, since in them there is a new process of sub-creation, not by the poets but by the audiences, who create their own images of the lost lands based on the words of the few characters that actually hold memories about them (p. 268). this idea of the way in which references to the past of arda help the readers, and even tolkien, “connect the dots” (p. 179) within the history of middle-earth is also explored in vink’s “tolkien the tinkerer: world-building versus story-telling” (pp. 177– 197). 214 book reviews the last essay that completes this second section is the one by lothmann, heilman & hintzen, “then smaug spoke: on constructing the fantastic via dialogue in tolkien’s story cosmos” (pp. 313–334), where they analyse the decisive role dialogues have in the world-building process not only in tolkien’s works but in fantasy and fictional literature in general, classifying them into four types (bantering, personalising, story-propelling, and historizicing), and ending in a rather positive note with expectations to continue their study by incorporating experimental methods such as eye-tracking to analyze the “different sets of reading behaviour” for each of the four dialogue types. within the third category readers can find a comparison of various authors, such as the bröntes (mann, “artefacts and immersion in the worldbuilding of tolkien and the brontës”, pp. 335–358) or swanwick (shippey, “the fäerie world of michael swanwick”, pp. 415–429) with tolkien’s work. higgins’s analysis of paratextual texts in austin tappan wright, ursula k. le guin, and tolkien (“more than narrative: the role of paratexts in the world-building of austin tappan wright, j. r. r. tolkien and ursula k. le guin”, pp. 395–413) is the perfect practical example of the theoretical background provided in the first section; in it, higgins studies the different ways in which the three authors elaborate their own worlds through the use not only of maps and appendices but also of invented languages, therefore creating worlds that “readers wanted to both visit and explore”, serving as a mediator between author and reader (p. 410). larsen’s and neubauer’s articles (“a mythology for poland: andrzej sapkowski’s witcher fantasy series as a tolkienian subcreation”, pp. 371–394, and “absence of gods vs. absence of god: the spiritual landscapes of j. r. r. tolkien’s middle-earth and george r. r. martin’s westeros”, pp. 431–464, respectively) explore the worlds of the witcher, by andrzej sapkowski, and game of thrones, by george r. r. martin, two worlds than have been taken to the screens, the first one first as a videogame and recently as a netflix adaption of both the books and games, and the second one mainly as hbo’s goose that —used to— lay the golden eggs. if larsen’s interest lies in a broader topic, namely if sapkowski succeeded in creating a mythology for poland, neubauer tackles a more specific subject, comparing the way in which tolkien and martin reflect —or not— their catholic background throughout the representation of different deities in their works. one of the aims the editors claimed for this volume was to “illuminate hitherto neglected aspects of [tolkien’s] sub-creation” (p. ii) and themes such as the application of an etnotopographic analysis to the peoples of middle-earth, studied by williams in “mountain people in middle-earth: ecology and the book reviews 215 primitive” (pp. 285–311), the way in which water shapes the narrative in arda as described by auer in “sundering seas and watchers in the water: water as a subversive element in middle-earth” (pp. 237–259), and nagy’s new perspective of the use, or better put, and contrary to what most people might initially think of middle-earth, no-use of magic in tolkien (“on no magic in tolkien: resisting the representational criteria of realism”, pp. 153–175) certainly help to make of this volume a fine collection of original essays that offer new approaches to the field of tolkien studies. however, the inclusion of certain aspects such as how the author thought of his stories as dynamic (nauman, “composition as exploration: fictional development in j. r. r. tolkien’s the lord of the rings”, pp. 199–216), the use of maps as key elements for the narration and creation of his texts (explained in previous works regarding tolkien’s illustrative skills, such as in mcilwaine 2018 or hammond & scull 2000 [1995] and taken up by behrooz in this volume in “temporal topographies: mapping the geological and anthropological effects of time in j. r. r. tolkien’s legendarium”, pp. 217–236), or the enumeration of authors that may or may not have influenced tolkien (eden, “sub-creation by any other name: the artist and god in the early twentieth century”, pp. 359–369), without really diving a bit deeper into those unquestionably engaging topics, makes one wonder yet again to what side has that fine line been crossed. maybe the inclusion of works differing from the mainstream and providing examples of the presumable flaws (if any) within tolkien’s sub-creation would have made this volume a more complete collection. this volume has proven to be a great inviting reading for those less familiarized not with tolkien’s works but with the bibliography about them, at the same time as including a few hidden gems that will make the wonders of those more experienced in the field. finally, the inclusion of young researchers in the list of contributors gives, without a hint of doubt, a very much needed breeze of fresh air into the tolkien studies. references carpenter, h. 2002: j. r. r. tolkien: a biography. london, harpercollins. garth, j. 2004: tolkien and the great world: the threshold of middle-earth. boston & new york, houghton mifflin. hammond, w. g. & c. scull eds. 2000 [1995]: j. r. r. tolkien artist & illustrator. boston & new york, houghton mifflin. 216 book reviews karukoski, d. dir. 2019: tolkien. fox searchlight pictures and chernin entertainment. macdonald, g. 1893: a dish of orts: chiefly papers on the imagination, and of shakespeare. london, low. mcilwaine, c. ed. 2018: tolkien: maker of middle-earth. oxford, bodleian library, university of oxford. scull, c. & w. g. hammond 2006: the j. r. r. tolkien companion & guide. 2 vols. [1. chronology, 2. reader’s guide]. london, harpercollins. wolf, m. j. 2012: building imaginary worlds: the theory and history of subcreation. new york, routledge. reviewer’s address department of english, french and german university of vigo lagoas-marcosende campus praza das cantigas s/n e36310 vigo (spain) e-mail: ataboada@uvigo.es geoff wilson. 2019. robin hood – the new evidence. london: austin macauley publishers ltd. pp. 236. isbn 9781788484466. reviewed by julio rubén valdés miyares, university of oviedo here is a rare volume among the many written about the most celebrated english outlaw in the course of time. its author, a civil engineer by profession, adopts an unscholarly, down-to-earth approach that one might imagine closer to the mentality of robin hood himself, and quite removed from the historical and literary academia. this very english sort of empiricism is also more akin to a common-sense scientific view of the subject than the humanities usually are; and, most importantly, informed by the first-hand knowledge of someone who not just grew up watching robin hood movies (p. 11), like many generations have now been, but who, like robin hood, “in barnsdale stood” literally, since the author’s own home and office has “a wide view over barnsdale” (p. 13), the wooded area which, as his book amply demonstrates, was the hero’s abode and original setting of most of his activities, rather than sherwood forest. book reviews 217 the monograph consists of seven chapters plus ancient maps and a lavish collection of photographs of the locations and buildings which are carefully described in the text. an appendix incorporates an edition of the gest of robin hood, the ballad on which the geographical, cultural, and historical analysis is mostly focused. the bibliographical references are scanty, and include popular handbooks such as simon schama’s history of britain or roy strong’s story of britain, and just a few of the robin hood monographs, particularly j. c. holt’s classic history, whose views are significantly contested by geoff wilson. the geography, which is the most valuable aspect of this study, seems to be based on direct experience and analysis, interpretation of maps, and a couple of books on geography, stamp’s (whose publication date is variously given as 1946 on p. 12 and 1948 on p. 31) and hindle’s (2013). chapter 1, “the quest”, states that the aim of the book is to search some of the “other sources” for the “scanty” information that holt found about robin hood (p. 15). wilson initially admits that “it is true that he cannot be identified as a person” (p. 16), by which he means a historical personage, because the author later asserts that “he was a real, living, and well-known person” (p. 25). wilson also asserts ironically that “the inclusion of no less than four robin hoods in the 2014 electoral roll for west yorkshire is no evidence that the medieval outlaw is currently alive and well” (p. 17). however, one might add that the same can be said of the inclusion of various ‘robynhods’ in medieval documents: they are no evidence that there was a historical robin hood in medieval england, as suggested by one of the influential robin hood books not referred to by the present one (dobson & taylor 1989: 12). after announcing the use of historical, topographical, and cartographic evidence to question holt’s “accepted ‘truths’”, this introductory chapter concludes by stating that the present book is unique in paying attention to two catastrophes in relation to robin hood’s life: the great famine of 1315 and the black death of 1349. the references include a list of the four ancient maps to be used (mathew paris’s, the gough map, ogilvy’s atlas, and jeoffrey’s yorkshire map), and two historical robin hood studies besides holt’s: bellamy’s and baldwin’s. chapter 2, “landscape”, opens impressively by claiming that robin’s story begins in the carboniferous period, and proceeds to explain how geological and climate changes shaped the area where the outlaw would live his exploits, up to the medieval delimitation and naming of the various geographical boundaries, and beyond, to their appearance in the latest 1/25,000 ordnance survey explorer map. the author posits personal experience as a source of topographical authority: “the description of the topography given here is based on living for 218 book reviews over forty years within three miles of wentbridge and many hours walking in the area known as barnsdale”. his championing of barnsdale comes up against widespread skepticism, for example, knight’s (1994: 29) statement that “barnsdale in yorkshire, though always cited as a robin hood terrain, because the gest says so, is actually a good deal less secure than many might think as the real bases of some real robin hood. the most locally well-advised of the historical commentators, dobson & taylor, say it presents ‘a baffling problem’ (1976: 20). it was never much of a forest, nor was it ever royal, as is clearly the case in the gest”. nor does wilson refer to pollard (2004), who argues that “no forest in england was an impenetrable wilderness” (2004: 58) and that, since “almost all the surviving english references to the stories of robin hood were by southern authors”, robin hood’s stone, to which wilson (p. 24) attaches much significance, “may equally have been named by travellers from the south, who were aware of the connection between the area and the fictional outlaw, or by locals proud of the legendary association” (2004: 64). however, a consistent picture of the gest map begins to emerge through wilson’s accumulation of topographical details, for example in the description of the sayles and the nearby castle hill, an ancient iron age settlement which surely could have become a strategic point for the outlaws (p. 28). chapter 3, “medieval history”, deals with the social context and historical individuals and circumstances, such as the great famine and subsequent rise in the cost of living which would have “led to a corresponding increase in crime and anti-social behaviour” (p. 37), a key economic factor which indeed few studies of robin hood ever mention. it is when the author selects actual details that his choice might be more controversial, as he points to the robin hood who took part in the earl of lancaster rebellion against edward ii, and also links him even more specifically to a five-roomed house in wakefied which was confiscated to one of the rebels (p. 38). all this theory about robin’s identity is stated without taking into account any of the many controversies about such construal of facts. finally, the chapter broaches more general topics, and therefore less controversial, such as the 14th-century religious crisis reflected in robin’s practically exclusive robbery of clergymen. chapter 4, “maps and routes”, searches the oldest maps of the area for traces of the place names in the robin hood ballads. therefore chapter 5, “the ballads”, complements the road map with the identification of specific points along it. the author’s spirit is asserted in leaving for “experts in medieval literature to analyse them [the ballads] in detail”, and in concentrating instead on “such information as considered useful in establishing the true facts” (p. 66). book reviews 219 and those “true facts” are established with surprising confidence, especially in the identification of the knight whom robin befriends, sir richard at the lee, as richard fitzalan, and his “fayre castell” as conisbrogh, as well as the “st mary’s” in the gest as a norman church dedicated to st mary magdalene at campsall in barnsdale. it is suggested that robin and his men would have collaborated in the 14th-century reform of that church, and further argued that this is where his grave might be, and not in kirklees as the ballad has it. three other early ballads are very briefly considered, but they are found to scarcely add anything to the accurate geography of the gest. chapter 6, “location”, is meant to expand on the facts about the already specified places, and so it does to some extent, though it tends to repeat much of what was established in the four previous chapters. for example, the ballad description of the castle says it is walled, “by the rode”, and wilson suggests that this may be an allusion to a rood, i.e. an anglo-saxon cross (p. 74), which actually used to stand near the castle, and not a road, like baldwin translates (p. 114), but, as wilson admitted earlier (p. 84), the common formula might just have been added to suit the metre and rhyme with wode. precisely this word (meaning a wooded area) is importantly distinguished from forest, which would refer to a royal forest (as in sherwood) even if there were scarcely any trees: “‘forest’ in medieval english referred to an area subject to forest laws and was in no way related to vegetation” (pp. 112–113). as wilson’s previous geological and botanical contrast between sherwood and barnsdale proved, only the latter could really resemble the leafy “grene wode” where the outlaws hid. where the book becomes most hesitant is with the number of “merry men” in robin’s gang. this chapter mentions they numbered “up to 300 at various times and they [the ballads] also contain accounts of his men getting married” (p. 129), which, if one also counted children, would involve a population of one thousand hiding the forest, which would defy logic. however, the concluding chapter admits that only one later ballad (“robin hood and the old man”) mentions those three hundred (p. 45), and that, indeed, any high number “presents a problem when considering robin’s activities as a highway robber” (p. 154). the concluding chapter, “the religious outlaw” stresses particularly the hero’s anti-clerical stance, relating it to the famine and the religious crisis. the perceived abuses of the church would move him to aim at taking their wealth, mostly obtained from tithes and rents, and redistribute it in the local community. it also adds some further insights and speculations. the wildest of them is the possible identification of robin hood with the mystic writer richard rolle, who led a hermit’s life at hampole priory, also in the barnsdale 220 book reviews area, and who died of the plague, as our hero probably did according to this book. all in all, robin hood – the new evidence, is no mean contribution to the literature on the subject. as with other historical accounts of the legend, it tends to mix empiricism with imagination, but it does so in an exciting way, imbuing the old stories with new life, and dispelling some glaring mistakes of historians. but what makes it most special is its vivid local color, as the work of an author who persuades us that he has walked the paths robin trod, and seen the vault of a church robin may have helped rebuild (p. 84), where he might have got married (p. 128), and then was buried (p. 89). a precious guide for whoever may wish to follow robin hood’s trail personally. references baldwin, d. 2010: robin hood: the english outlaw unmasked. chalford (glouc), amberley publishing. dobson, r. b. & j. taylor 1989 [1976]: rymes of robin hood: an introduction to the english outlaw. stroud (glouc), sutton publishing. hindle, p. 2013: medieval roads and tracks. princes risborough (buck), shire publications. holt, j. c. 2011: robin hood, 3rd ed. london, thames & hudson. knight, s. 1994: robin hood: a complete study of the english outlaw. oxford, blackwell. pollard, a. j. 2004: imagining robin hood: the late medieval stories in historical context. london, routledge. stamp, l. d. 1946: britain’s structure and scenery. london, collins. reviewer’s address departamento de filología inglesa, francesa y alemana facultad de filosofía y letras universidad de oviedo campus de humanidades ‘el milán’ c/ amparo pedregal, 5 33001 oviedo spain e-mail: rvaldes@uniovi.es david navarrete, selim 23 (2018): 139–162. issn 1132-631x agostes in the greene knight: widow, mother, and witch sole1 david navarrete university of oviedo following a linear textual approach, and set in the context of late medieval and early modern ideas on witchcraft as portrayed in popular literature and culture, this article will discuss the character of agostes in the ballad the greene knight. this study will look at her in relation to her nature as mother and witch sole: an old woman, usually a widow or a mother-in-law, who is not under husband escort and therefore performs and works on her own terms. agostes is the unifying cause, the starter of the femaledesire plot, and the main concocter of events in the ballad. first, this article will seek to illuminate her relationship to the rest of the characters in the narrative, particularly her daughter. second, it will shed light on her narrative function, identity, and characterisation, providing an exploration of the ambiguities and problematics that she ostensibly poses. for example, i seek to demonstrate that she is a peculiar variation of the archetype of the wicked stepmother-witch. for my analysis, i have particularly drawn on heidi breuer’s (2009) analysis of late medieval and early modern witches in english literature. i have also considered diane purkiss’s (2005) discussion of the figure of the witch in stories (with some references to history) in elizabethan england. the present study is relevant for the understanding of agostes’s agency in the text, as well as her explicit raison d’être as opposed to morgan le fay’s obscure role in the gawain-poet’s chivalric romance. keywords: late medieval and early modern english witchcraft; witch sole; mother; widow; magic; desire 1 i am very thankful to dr rubén valdés miyares for his comments and suggestions at all the stages in the process of writing this article. 140 david navarrete 1. introduction the greene knight (gk henceforward) is a “late fifteenth-century balladic romance” (matthews 1994: 301) found in the percy folio, an early modern manuscript written around 1650. 2 gk was written to be recited, that is, it was meant to be orally performed (hahn 1995: 309). just like its medieval counterpart sir gawain and the green knight (sggk henceforward), this ballad deals with the opposition between the already known, the orthodox, and the familiar; and the mysterious or ‘other’, having a witch’s machinations at its very core. gk has been mostly received negatively by scholars, who are all agreed on its lack of stylistic beauty and literary refinement. such unfavourable view is chiefly due to the comparisons made between the ballad and its highly 2 there are different interpretations about the nature and origins of gk. for example, it is considered to be a derivation of sggk but with some elements from a wellknown, oral version added by the ballad’s author (hulbert 1916: 702). another hypothesis is that gk is likely to be a translation of another text which might or might not be the gawain-poet’s well-known alliterative work (matthews 1994: 303). other scholars believe the ballad “might well be a written record of the sort of recital mentioned by robert laneham in a letter describing festivities put on for queen elizabeth at kenilworth in 1575” (hahn 1995: 309). hahn’s hypothesis is a probable origin for the text, and one that makes sense to me considering the popularity of ballads among people of all social ranks (also the aristocracy) at the end of the english middle ages and the early modern period. hahn goes on to say that laneham offers an account of captain cox, a performance artist ‘hardy as gawain’, who acts, sings, recites, and professes ‘philosophy both morall and naturall.’ cox possesses [...] within his memory and ready for recital on demand a vast repertoire of stories, including ballads, songs, perhaps plays, and romances [...] just which gawain romance this was is not specified, for the percy folio manuscript (where the greene knight occurs) makes clear that such popular performances provided the precise milieu where the surviving poem was produced. (hahn 1995: 309–310) i think the previous quotation is worth including at full length because it reflects the popular, oral nature that ballads such as gk would have had at the time, hence their general public appeal. such literary works would not be received by audiences as refined courtly romances meant to be read. agostes in the greene knight 141 acclaimed predecessor, sggk. the transformation of the fourteenth century literary masterpiece into a ballad provoked a very strong reaction on the part of scholars, who have considerably neglected the latter. for example, there are some hints regarding matters of literary style and genre that suggest that gk is placed outside the medieval tradition of courtly love, consequently losing a great deal of the literary and allegorical beauty that its medieval counterpart displays. first, as it is well-known among scholars, the ballad has been mostly quoted marginally in diverse critical studies for its unattractive style and low level of detail, exacerbated by the fact that sggk (with which the ballad has very often been compared) is considered one of the most brilliant, sophisticated arthurian romances in english literature. second, besides not showing any signs of refinement in the use of language, the undistinguished scribe (or “uninspired author”, using the words of cory james rushton 2009: 177) omitted the scenes of courtly conversation among the lady and the knight, perhaps because the ballad format does not allow space for such delicacies, usually expressed through intricate rhetoric figures, similes, and metaphors in medieval courtly love romance. 3 nonetheless, taking into consideration all the information that the ballad provides concerning the relationship between the lady and gawain (as well as her husband), one can certainly argue that gk is actually not situated outside of this tradition. the trope of the (married) lady’s impossible, unrequited love for a knight is one of the most characteristic traits of courtly romance (both in medieval and renaissance english love lyrics). moreover, her identity as ‘the lady of the castle’ and her role as infatuated woman are undoubtedly shaped according to the code of fin’amor. therefore, gk turns out to be a ballad which partially represents a literary tradition which, even though found itself in a state of decadence at the time, was still very influent in elizabethan and tudor england, as we can observe, for example, in the adoration of gloriana, the faerie queen, in edmund spenser’s eponymous poem. 4 3 let us remember that, in sggk, courtly love is central to the seduction scenes, where we find all the speech from the lady of hautdesert. 4 after the publication of sir thomas malory’s fifteenth-century le morte d’arthur, courtly love lost a lot of literary prestige and influence. for example, john huizinga argued in 1922 that the sudden change in fifteenth-century allegory revealed an “artistic decadence” (using helen cooney’s words), a view which, however, has been seen as anachronistic (cooney 2006: 139). for more information about this literary tradition in medieval english literature, see lewis (1936), in which the author also 142 david navarrete gk is a ballad based on a story from a romance (sgkk) that deals with the deeds of one of the most distinguished knights of king arthur: sir gawain. stories, romances, and tales of the knights of the round table were highly popular in the european middle ages until they became unfashionable and disappeared from the literary scene. (some of them were transformed into ballads and gained a lot of popularity, but such is not the case for gk.) being a chivalric text at its heart, gk is actually a hybrid of traditions and genres: it has motifs from medieval arthurian romance but the structure and style of popular ballads. 5 more interestingly, it provides an interesting character shaped according to representations of witches, mothers, and widows in late medieval and early modern england. the ballad bears a remarkable resemblance to sggk but, as mentioned above in a footnote, matthews (1994) argues that the former is not based on the romance but on another text whose plot derives from that of the fourteenth-century poem. so far as i am aware, matthews’s study is the only one which offers a thorough analysis of the ballad and the characters in it. unlike him, the vast majority of scholars have considered the text a debasement of its predecessor, ignoring everything that gk has to say. however, matthews (1994: 301-303) considers the ballad independently of sggk and pays special attention to its motifs, ideology, narratorial authority, and characters’ respective narrative function. gk tells the story of sir bredbeddle, “a man of mickele might / and lord of great bewtye” (ll. 41–24) who is sent by her mother-in-law (the witch agostes) to carlisle in order to bring gawain to her daughter (the lady of hutton) at hutton castle. 6 the lady (sir bredbeddle’s wife) is in love with gawain and wants to meet him, so her mother concocts a plan to fulfil her discusses several early modern english texts, such as spenser’s the faerie queene, and cooney (2006). 5 matthews points out that “[c]omposed at the end of the middle ages, it is poised between two eras: it looks back to the fourteenth century’s use of the arthurian legend as cultural legitimation, while in its form it signals the disappearance of arthur into popular song and ballad, and the end of medieval romance” (1994: 312–313). 6 all the line numbers belong to thomas hahn’s (1995) edition of gk in sir gawain: eleven romances and tales. depending on the scholar, the spelling of the green knight’s name varies. the same occurs with the way they address the lady. i have chosen to refer to her as ‘the lady of hutton’. like in sggk, she is nameless in the ballad, too. agostes in the greene knight 143 daughter’s desire. sir bredbeddle obeys agostes’s command, but takes advantage of the situation and offers king arthur’s court a challenge (the socalled and well-known ‘beheading game’ from sggk) aimed at gawain, who fearlessly takes it up. therefore, two different plots can be discerned in the ballad. the female-plot, concerned with the realisation of the lady’s desire (and the focus of the present article); and the male-plot, which deals with the deeds and political aspirations of the two knights. the character of agostes, the focal point of my study, has been generally ignored by scholars over the decades. except for matthews, who published an article on the greene knight in 1994 in which he makes some interesting remarks about her, critics have paid very little (if at all) attention to the witch. whereas matthews’s work is concerned with different aspects and characters in the narrative, mine will solely be focused on agostes. 7 7 though the present article is by no means an anthroponomical study, the name of agostes definitely sheds light on her character. thomas hahn argues in a footnote as follows: “so far as i know, this name does not occur elsewhere in arthurian literature, though the connection between her supernatural powers of witchcraft and the consonance of agostes with ‘ghostly’ is striking. agostes’ counterpart in sir gawain and the green knight, morgan le fay, is called ‘argante’ in layamon’s brut” (hahn 1994: 330). rubén valdés miyares implicitly suggests that agostes’s true identity is a matter of ambiguity, wondering whether or not the greene knight’s mother-in-law is actually morgan le fay, a-ghostess, or argante (valdés miyares 2003–2004: 153). i endorse the view that she is the counterpart of morgan le fay in gk, yet her identity is somewhat changed in the ballad, and therefore, she is actually a different character and should be considered as such. both of the aforementioned scholars seem to have found an etymological connection between ‘argante’ (or ‘agostes’) and ‘ghostliness’, but they only put forward said connection and did not explore the witch’s name. according to the shorter oxford english dictionary the adjective august from old french auguste and latin augustus (‘consecrated’, ‘venerable’) has two senses: 1) inspiring reverence and admiration; solemnly grand, stately; and 2) venerable by birth, status, or reputation; eminent, dignified; (sometimes as an honorific). in my opinion, agostes fits the two senses of the word: she is, like alison of bath, “a sort of magistra amoris, a mock-serious authority on matters of human desire” (cooney 2006: 100). kittredge refers to her as a “procuress [...] whose eccentric name [is] doubtless a corruption for something or other” (1916: 134). the late middle english adjective aghast, meaning ‘terrified; struck with amazement’; and the noun aghastness (‘horror’) are also reminiscent of the witch’s name. both seem to be indicative of agostes’s eerie, shadowy identity. 144 david navarrete 2. introducing agostes unlike morgan le fay in the gawain-poet’s romance, agostes has a voice of her own and enjoys a more active role than the powerful sorceress in the fourteenth-century poem. whereas both have a pivotal role in the poems in which they appear, morgan le fay is moved by her malice and hatred for her kinship, but agostes is driven by her love or care for her daughter. therefore, these two women represent two opposing characters: one seeks to destroy or harm her family, and the other wants to help them. another difference between the two old women is that the gawain-poet accounts for a lengthy description of morgan le fay’s clothes, facial features, and body, whose ugliness makes a sharp contrast with the lady of hautdesert’s outstanding beauty (“ho watz þe fayrest in felle […] wener þen wenore”, ll. 943–945). 8 on the contrary, the ballad’s author does not describe agostes’s physicality at all, even though considering that she is an old witch, it is extremely hard to imagine her as good-looking or having an attractive figure. she must indeed resemble the loathly lady from geoffrey chaucer’s the wife of bath’s tale or allisson gross from the eponymous ballad. moreover, her speech (like her name) is suggestive of authority over the two male figures in the ballad, and functions as one of her most distinctive features, as shall be discussed below. agostes appears or is alluded to in three different passages throughout the ballad. first, she is introduced at the very beginning of the text, shortly afterwards we know of her daughter’s longing for her paramour (ll. 43–48) and the witch’s command that her son-in-law go to carlisle for gawain (ll. 58– 66). second, the narrator mentions the witch’s black magic powers when gawain beheads sir bredbeddle/the green knight, who afterwards picks up his own head, speaks, and takes off to his castle. such a gruesome, unnatural act is attributed to agostes’s dark magic (“all this was done by enchantment / that the old witch had wrought”, ll. 212–213). third, when gawain arrives at hutton castle, agostes takes her daughter to gawain’s bedroom, tells the knight to wake up, and (implicitly) commands him to engage in sexual intercourse with her daughter (ll. 363–376). 9 however, as will be discussed below, she only enjoys relevance in the first half of the ballad. 8 line numbers belong to tolkien & gordon’s (1967) edition of sggk. 9 the respective discussions and details of these three passages will be provided in the subsequent sections. agostes in the greene knight 145 the three aforementioned passages reveal a significant agency in the figure of agostes, the ultimate authority in the ballad and the character with the hardest task to complete. moreover, it should be highlighted that the female plot that she unleashes is not (unlike in sggk) residual or dependent on the green knight’s narrative role and motivations. there is a clear disconnection between the male and the female storylines in the ballad. 3. agostes’s machinations agostes’s motives are clear from the beginning of the text. she does not explicitly mention that her son-in-law’s journey is actually a search for bringing gawain to her daughter at hutton castle, but the audience is obviously aware of her true intentions because of the information provided in the text. everything that she does is to realise her daughter’s longing. matthews rightly argues that in the grene knight the main threat is refocused; what remains threateningly unfamiliar in the narrative is woman. femininity is recreated as the necessary other to feudal, political order, for in a much more obvious way than in sir gawain, the plot of the later poem is motivated by feminine transgressions: bredbeddle’s lady falls in love with gawaine’s reputation; her mother then arranges to procure the knight for her by manipulating her husband; agostes is of course a witch. bredbeddle, unlike bertilak, is the apparently unknowing victim of her plot. (matthews 1994: 310) the information above is crucial to understand the role of women in the narrative. more importantly, i do not read agostes as ill-intentioned or threatening to the men in the narrative. instead, i look at her as a mother willing and eager to help her daughter. apparently prompted by honourable reasons, she is intervening kindly in a family affair. the following lines are very relevant for the understanding of the ballad’s plot and agostes’s interest in gawain: all was for her daughters sake, that which she soe sadlye spake to her sonne-in-law the knight: because sir gawaine was bold and hardye, 146 david navarrete and therto full of curtesye, to bring him into her sight. (ll. 61–66) fulfilling her daughter’s desire is manifestly a matter of importance for her, as her earnestness makes clear in line 62. she wishes to bring gawain to the lady because he is bold, strong, and courteous. he is a good party, exemplary, probably the knight who any lady would have wanted for herself, and the man who any mother would have wished for her daughter, in a medieval romance. fulfilling the lady of hutton’s desire (which might as well be a fantasy or need) is the backbone of the story and the only concern of the witch, to whom sir bredbeddle quickly responds that he will do so “for to praise thee [i.e. agostes] right, / and to prove gawaines points three” (ll. 69–70). line 70 suggests (as mentioned in the introduction) that not only is he going to stick to agostes’s orders, but he is also going to test gawain’s renown to verify whether the hero is the knight that everyone says he is. at this point in the narrative, the story is split in two different plots: a male (the testing of gawain) and a female one (the pleasing of the lady of hutton). as the ballad advances, we become increasingly aware that sir bredbeddle is more concerned with the former plot (the challenge of the renown knight), but the interest of agostes (and the lady) is the fruition of female desire. 4. female desire in sggk, the plot seems to be limited to the testing of gawain’s renown, whereas female interests seem to remain secondary. but gk differs here. agostes is a far more outspoken female figure than morgan le fay in her articulation of desire. 10 in fact, i believe that gk is clearly concerned with 10 the concept of female desire in renaissance literature has been widely explored by scholars through psychoanalytical and feminist theory. one case in point is finucci & schwartz (1994). also, deleuze & guattari (1983) have explored the concept of desire in capitalist societies in their book anti-oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia, in which they introduce the term ‘anti-oedipal’: the rejection of the family, religion, and territory because of the coercive nature that these have on individuals. most importantly for the purposes of the present article, deleuze & guattari put forward a definition of desire understood not as lack (in the case of agostes, her daughter’s apparent uneasiness or unhappiness because of her unrequited love for gawain) but as agostes in the greene knight 147 women’s longings and ambitions as well as their ways of making these come true. in relation to the notion of the fulfilment of women’s wishes, also known as the motif of the realisation of desire, agostes’s apparent anxiety (which shall be discussed below) is suggestive of a mother’s concern with the fulfillment of her maternal duties towards her daughter. even though the witch does not seem to be under pressure, she has a great responsibility in the ballad: if her scheme does not go as planned, it means that her daughter’s desire will not be met. 11 considering the arguments put forward hitherto, i believe that agostes in gk is more resolute than morgan le fay in sggk for several reasons. firstly, let us remember that she does not seem to have evil intentions (“all was for her daughters sake” l. 61) despite the fact that she is implicitly addressed to an old woman with bizarre magic powers (“shee cold transpose knights and swaine / like as in battaile they were slaine, / wounded in lim and light”, ll. 52–54). secondly, unlike morgan le fay, who machinates on the margins of the plot, agostes takes part in it, literally taking the lady of hutton to gawain once he has arrived at the castle. she is not thoroughly passive: she has her son-in-law do part of the job, but she also gets involved in it. agostes is defined in relation to a woman (her daughter) rather than a man. more importantly for studies of women’s agency, she operates freely something that is actually beneficial or productive for the individual in question: agostes is working towards her daughter’s well-being by creating a system or strategy (i.e. her plot to bring gawain to hutton castle) through which her desire can be fulfilled (1983: 48). 11 heide breuer argues that some medieval and early modern english make-over romances, such as ‘the tale of florent’, the wedding of sir gawain and dame ragnelle, sggk, and gk, [...] respond to the newly-developed possibilities for female economic and legal agency; they mitigate an anxiety about the effect of increased economic power on the traditional family position of women as mothers [...] in early modern england, when the population was faced with a living example of strong, capable, and (perhaps most importantly) non-maternal female power, as embodied by the unmarried and childless queen elizabeth i, the anxiety was surely even more intense, a fact that has received no small amount of attention in early modern studies. (breuer 2009a: 94) see section 6 for a more detailed explanation of the idea of anxiety in agostes. 148 david navarrete towards her goal by using sir bredbeddle in her own interests. judging by lines 46–66 of the ballad (mentioned above), it might be readily deduced that both mother and daughter are cooperating, agostes being the head of the operation. gk is, in my view, a narrative clearly concerned with the relationship among a mother, her daughter, and her son-in-law, as well as with the desires and aspirations of the family’s members. (it would be mistaken to call this ballad a “family narrative”, though.) but this relationship is quite peculiar (to say the least): the witch uses his son-in-law as a tool for her own daughter’s adultery and he is compliant and aware of it all from the outset. 12 half of the ballad’s plot revolves around the interests of women, however marginalised they are in the narrative: out of 515, only twenty verses are devoted to agostes’s traits, dialogue, and actions, thirteen of which are her own speech. both women enjoy the same number of spoken lines in the ballad, which is anyway a very small sum. it is evident that their voices are repressed, but whereas the lady of hutton’s words are not particularly relevant to the plot, agostes’s clearly are. she might not speak too much, but what she says is crucial: her words are the vehicle through which the entire ballad comes to being. she commands sir bredbeddle to go to carlisle and bring gawain to her daughter, and once he has done so, it is time for agostes to exercise her influence, which she also does through her speech. her determination (embodied by her speech) and magic powers are her only weapons, both of which render her a figure of agency. once gawain has arrived at hutton castle, agostes emerges —in kittredge’s (1916: 135)— as “mistress of the situation”, that is, the one in charge of handling the relationship between her daughter and gawain. 12 sir bredbeddle does not raise any objection to his wife’s infidelity, maybe because he knew that sir gawain would never get involved in an amorous or sexual relationship with a married woman, or perhaps because had he refused agostes’s orders, he would have had to pay a very high cost because of his refusal to obey a witch. just like he was turned into a green knight, so could he have suffered the witch’s gruesome powers as punishment if he had not done as told. in my view, agostes does not come across as compassionate to anyone but her daughter. agostes in the greene knight 149 5. mother-daughter bond agostes is above anything else a witch-mother defined in terms of motherhood and concerned with her daughter’s contentment. the witch is introduced as the lady of hutton’s mother who, through “witchcraft and noe other”, (l. 40) “dealt with all” (l. 51). in ballads, mothers-in-law are powerful figures with influence over the rest of the characters. in the context of early modern women’s depositions in witchcraft cases and fantasies regarding witches, purkiss argues that the identity of the witch as mother is “central to understanding the stories that are told [...] the role of [the] mother [...] was even more central to early modern notions of maternal identity [than it is nowadays]” (2005: 99). purkiss addresses stories of mothers as providers of food for their children and the household (2005: 99). seen in this light, i believe that there is a clear connection with the relationship between agostes and her daughter: the former literally “provides” (i.e. gawain) and the latter is metaphorically “fed” (with the knight’s company). breuer (2009b: 12) argues that the witches in texts such as gk and ‘the tale of florent’ exemplify an “extreme anxiety over maternity” in the context of sixteenth-century england. whereas breuer supports part of her arguments drawing on the economic situation of english women at the time, i simply read agostes as a mother who is anxious over accomplishing her daughter’s desire. interestingly enough, purkiss points out that “early modern women saw witches as inverted mothers, and [...] in some cases the death of the mother was the result of the witch’s usurpation” (2005: 107). witches were feared and seen as anti-maternal, embodying all that is bad about motherhood. however, agostes is not the case. whereas she is certainly portrayed as stereotyped in the way that she behaves (as explained above), she is not a degraded maternal figure, hence the subversion of the popular characterisation of witches as destructive. breuer rightly argues that [t]he wicked witches of the [late medieval] make-over narratives are mothers, but not birth mothers: they are step-mothers and mother-in-law. while mothers-in-law might be married, they might also be widows. indeed, agostes, the mother-in-law in greene, operates as a witch sole, working her magic without the nuisance of a husband; as she has a daughter, the implication is that she’s a widow. (breuer 2009b: 3) 150 david navarrete in literature, witches and widows are two of the most well-known archetypes with negative connotations of authority, power, and free choice, as particularly reflected in early modern english texts. the degree of agency is doubled when the character in question is both a witch and a widow, as agostes. in terms of mother-daughter relationships, agostes operates as two sides of the same coin. she wants to help the lady, but doing so means having her daughter commit adultery and what this transgression entails: “undermin[ing] the foundation of christian marriage” (breuer 2009a: 86) and ostensibly risking his son-in-law’s life. 13 also, it could be argued that agostes is actually committing a transgression by heading a plot against her son-in-law for the benefit of the lady of hutton. 14 but, for the purposes of this article, it should be emphasised that her characterisation, actions, and speech render her a figure worthy of evaluation in terms of late medieval and early modern ideas of the realisation of female desire and motherhood. as breuer points out, “agostes attempts to provide her daughter access to a famous knight, in effect side-stepping the aristocratic reliance on patriarchal marriage, in which female desire is unimportant” (2009a: 86). in gk, women’s aspirations are certainly far from being insignificant. agostes, who commiserates only with her daughter, acts against gender expectations and violates those rules that hinder her from accomplishing her goal. 13 she is not preoccupied with the hardships to which sir bredbeddle is going to be exposed throughout his journey, fraught with numerous dangers, all the way to carlisle, far away from hutton castle. perhaps, she trusts that his son-in-law has, like gawain, prowess in battle and is not going to have any sort of trouble. 14 sir bredbeddle’s revelation at the end of the ballad that he was aware of his wife’s feelings is problematic. he eventually confesses that he knew of her wife’s love for gawain all the time, which raises two hypotheses: either the scribe misunderstood the plot (sir bredbeddle is not supposed to know anything about the female plot, as it is signalled in the text) or the greene knight pretended not to be aware of it. he is thankful that gawain did not engage in sexual intercourse with her out of respect for him (ll. 486–488). agostes in the greene knight 151 6. agostes in action one of the defining features of agostes is her noticeable anxiety. when sir bredbeddle goes out hunting and sir gawain is still asleep, “up rose the old witche with hast throwe / and to her dauhter can shee goe / and said, ‘be not adread!’” (ll. 363–365). 15 then, to her daughter can shee say, ‘the man that thou hast wisht many a day, of him thou maist be sped, for sir gawaine, that curteous knight, is lodged in this hall all night.’ she brought her to his bedd. (ll. 366–371) shee saith, ‘gentle knight, awake! and for this faire ladies sake, that hath loved thee so deere, take her boldly in thine armes. there is noe man shall doe thee harme.’ now beene they both heere. (ll. 372–377) as we can observe in these lines, she runs to her daughter and tells her not to be afraid. the hero is finally at the castle and it is time for agostes to do her task. in my view, these lines evoke a clear feeling of anxiety. an old witch running in a rush —“with all haste” (hahn 1995: 324) and/or “eager” (hales & furnivall 1868: 56)— towards her daughter makes up a peculiar image. the witch seems anxious and even more enthusiastic than her daughter, who is a rather passive character, about bringing the lady to gawain, most likely 15 line 365 (quoted above) is rather intriguing: when agostes runs in a hurry towards her daughter, knowing that gawain is alone in his chamber, she tells the lady not to be afraid. why agostes says so remains a mystery to me unless her daughter is actually scared of committing adultery (whether or not she has her husband’s consent to sleep with another man), she is bashful about it, she is inexperienced in matters of love, or maybe she has just changed her mind about the idea of having a lover. be that as it may, agostes is determined to doing as designed. in this context, it is interesting to note that the passiveness of the lady, added to her apparent reservedness, build an image of her sharply different from the uninhibited lady of hautdesert in sggk. 152 david navarrete because realising her daughter’s yearning is a matter of concern for her, as stated before. the idea of anxiety is represented only superficially but i believe it is indeed revealed in the character of agostes, as the lines above show. the concept of anxiety in middle english and early modern texts has been vastly explored by scholars, mostly in the portrayals of boisterous, noisy, and unruly women. 16 two cases in point are sggk or the wife of bath’s tale, narratives clearly concerned with men’s anxiety about female power. but many of these texts are not directly concerned with maternal commitment, whereas gk is. agostes’s notorious agency throughout the female-plot can only be understood in relationship with her magic powers and, most importantly, her daughter’s desire. the fulfillment of the lady’s desire is the trigger of the witch’s anxiety. the fact that agostes is more active (most of the weight of the female-plot lies on her) suggests that not only the concept of desire is represented differently on the male than in the female characters, it also operates discordantly in the two women. the characterisation of agostes as an old witch skilled in the magic arts might be the reason why she comes across as more confident: elderliness goes hand in hand with experience and knowledge. lines 367 and 374 (quoted above) reassert the lady’s strong, passionate desire and love for gawain; 17 but most importantly, they reveal an important trait of agostes’s character. when the witch confidently takes the lady to gawain’s bed, she commits a transgression or boundary-breaking: she literally crosses the imaginary line that separates the private (gawain’s alcove) from the rest of the space in the castle. in other words, she enters a personal place in which she should not be, a supposedly intimate place not to be trespassed, least of all with the witch’s intentions. therefore, her intrusion into gawain’s bedroom consequently identifies her with an obtrusive, obscene character. 16 scholarship on anxiety over agency in later middle english literature is too vast to be noted here, but one case that i consider especially relevant is l’estrange & more (2012). 17 it appears as if she is truly in love with the renowned knight of the round table, but either there is something that hinders her from going by herself to gawain (perhaps she is too inexperienced or young and does not know how to act under such circumstances) or her mother is domineering or overbearing and decides to guide her daughter through the plan that she devised. agostes in the greene knight 153 discussing some early modern cases of witchcraft at the popular and domestic level, purkiss argues from a gender perspective that the threshold, as the name implies, is a liminal space, the boundary between inside and outside [...] it is the association of female identity with maintaining the boundaries of and order in the house which makes the witch a fearful fantasy if what can happen when those bounds are transgressed. (purkiss 2005: 98) 18 purkiss’s analysis can help illuminate my discussion of agostes’s inadequate behaviour before one of the finest and most courteous knights of medieval romance. (in the case of hutton, we are dealing here with a castle and a witch instead of a house and a housewife, though.) agostes actually opposes purkiss’ idea of maintenance of order and what this implies, such as peace and tranquillity. in this passage, she functions as a disturber of harmony and perpetrator of disorder; she operates as a sort of (using purkiss’s terms) “grotesque presence” (2005: 224). 19 even though she is not a grotesque character in its own right, she does present some traits of grotesqueness, not understood as monstrosity, freakishness or deformity, but as a deviation from the norm; in this case, from the courtly etiquette, as manifested in her impropriety. i believe agostes is a grotesque character because she is a mother who is intervening good-heartedly in a family affair and is prompted by honourable reasons, but, at the same time, she carries out her manoeuvre through the employment of apparently disquieting, threatening means. this 18 purkiss points out that “whereas most historians see the witch as the church’s other, or as man’s other, i’m suggesting here that early modern women could also represent the witch as their other, that female anxieties, fears and self-fashioning could also shape the notion of ‘witch’ at popular level” (2005: 97). in the context of women’s witnesses depositions at witch-trials, she goes on to argue that “some women’s stories of witchcraft constituted a powerful fantasy which enabled women to negotiate the fears and anxieties of […] motherhood” (2005: 93). whereas i do not read the character of agostes in the context of witch-trials or as a threat to her daughter, i do view her as suggestive of women’s anxiety about motherhood, just as breuer does. 19 purkiss uses the term ‘grotesque presence’ in a different context, but i think it can be equally applied to the character at hand. 154 david navarrete ambiguity leaves her in a liminal position, the epitomic characteristic of the grotesque. 20 indeed, misrule and misbehaviour are one of the main traits of witches, just like they were in several medieval and early modern popular festivities. stuart clark argues that [t]hroughout the late medieval and renaissance period ritual inversion was a characteristic element of village folk-rites, religious and educational ludi, urban carnivals and court entertainments. such festive occasions shared a calendrical licence to disorderly behaviour or ‘misrule’ based on the temporary but complete reversal of customary priorities of status and value. (clark 1980: 101) agostes displays some traits of witches from late medieval and renaissance rituals and spectacles of inversion, but in a different context from the one that clark suggests above. in the passage at play, not only does agostes trespass and cause chaos, but she also takes the liberty to give gawain orders (or, at least, that is what can be inferred from lines 372–377, quoted above). she uses the word “gentle” to refer to gawain, but her bold speech and unflinching determination are suggestive of a more discourteous conduct. gawain holds a very high social rank (he is one of the knights of the round table and king arthur’s nephew), an elevated position of authority, and notorious refined manners, all of which makes a sharp contrast with agostes’s inhospitable attitude and demeanour. the witch’s lack of courtliness and sophistication towards the knight further reinforce the uncourtly atmosphere that she creates. more importantly, they are suggestive of the stereotypical configuration of witches as misbehaving women. 20 the grotesque is one of the most subjective and flexible literary genres or pictorial forms. it “defies the notion of categorization altogether” (harpham 1976: 464) and its features are not fixed. even though there is no one definition of the term but many, there is something common to all of them: the grotesque is chiefly characterised by the split against the ordinary, the common, and the familiar, always represented through threatening bizarre or monstrous characters and ludicrous situations (1976: 462–463). but most importantly, this term is defined as liminality or ambiguity. i believe that agostes definitely displays some grotesque trait for the reasons explained above. my definition of the grotesque is based on bakhtin (1984), russo (1994), edwards & graulund (2013), and danow (1995). agostes in the greene knight 155 7. magic powers and witchy skills another point worth exploring in the character of agostes is her power: what kind of magic she knows and what this can disclose about her agency and identity as a witch. even though we have almost no information at all about her in the ballad, what we know about her suffices to explore her dark witching skills. we only witness her powers in the narrative twice. first, when she transforms sir bredbeddle into the green knight (even though the scribe’s clumsiness in the depiction of the green knight reveals that he is only wearing green-coloured clothes but is not green himself, hence his lack of supernaturalness). second, when the green knight is beheaded and immediately afterwards grabs his head and starts talking. he does not bleed to death, which can only be explained by magic. these two events in the narrative come from the powers of agostes, as we are informed by the ballad’s author. her agency is emphasised by the narrator’s insight into her magic skills in lines 52–54 (see section 4 above), in which we can read that, through her powers, she can make people look as if they had been harmed in battle. also, in lines 55–57 (“she taught her sonne the knight alsoe / in transposed likenesse he shold goe / both by fell and frythe”), we read that she is the one who teaches sir bredbeddle his knowledge of witchcraft. her son-in-law would perhaps be helpless without her because he owes his magic to the witch. 21 the previous passages reveal the kind of magic that agostes knows: transformative power, which consists in the ability to manipulate and change 21 sir bredbeddle is “a venterous knight” (l. 345) who “works by witchcraft day and night, / with many a great furley” (ll. 346–347). judging by these two lines, it could be argued that we are dealing here with a case of male witchcraft, yet unfortunately we do not have any information at all about what his powers consist in any more than about his nature as witch. in fact, rather than a witch, he merely seems to be the passive subject through whom agostes’s witchcraft works. let us remember that it is her who functions as the only performer of the magic events. the ballad’s author gave no importance at all to the green knight as a figure of supernaturalness; on the contrary, his magic powers are only a reflection or expansion of those of the powerful female figure behind them. male witches were common, especially before the fifteenth century, such as in froissart’s chronicles, in which we have the story of a man condemned for witchcraft; but this is not the case for sir bredbeddle, who might just be an instrument of magic, like the green knight in sggk. 156 david navarrete the appearance of people and things. heidi breuer argues that gk “explicitly designates ‘witchcraft’ as transformative, transferable power —witches like agostes can make things appear different than they are, and they can pass their magical knowledge on to others” (2009a: 86). shape shifting and illusion making are the most common attributes of this kind of power, which is probably one of the greatest instances of supernatural magic as it entails the radical transformation of a being into another. in order to grasp the character of agostes more thoroughly, we should ask what kind of witch she is. there are several types of magical figures (whose powers come from different practices and beliefs) in late medieval and early modern england. among others, breuer mentions occultists, herbalists, alchemists, healers, necromancers, demonologists, prophets, and sorcerers. concerning feminine magic, three of the most common images in late middle english literature (particularly arthurian romance) are the witch, the sorceress, and the loathly lady (2009b: 9–11). 22 she argues that the 22 breuer’s points on the representation and role of magical figures in this literary tradition are crucial for the understanding of late medieval and early modern english witches. she argues that whether represented negatively or positively, magical figures are by definition different from the norm; they function as others against which normative conventions can be defined. in particular, describing and interpreting the gendering of magical figures allows us to configure normative gender conventions by delineating their boundaries, those liminal spaces where humanity fades into monstrosity. (breuer 2009b: 7) the previous definition further emphasises the grotesque element on the character of agostes. in the present article, i read the character of agostes neither as negatively nor positively characterised, but i do see her as ‘the other’ who (as explained above) functions as a boundary crosser. breuer goes on to argue that “the power to transform one thing into another is so important and so rare that it demands to be treated with the utmost reverence. transformative power is what makes magic so useful to our understanding of medieval and early modern society, precisely because of its position as other” (2009b: 7). it is agostes’s transformative powers that unquestionably render her a powerful magical figure. for more information about late medieval and early modern witchcraft in english literature, breuer (2009b) offers a good analysis of matters such as agency, maternity, and magic in several fictional representations of witches. agostes in the greene knight 157 “beautiful temptress’ and the ‘crone hag’ are the two most frequent archetypes of the wicked witch in thomas malory’s morte darthur, edmund spenser’s the faerie queene, and william shakespeare’s a midsummer night’s dream, macbeth, and the tempest. most importantly, she points out that “[t]he juxtaposition of these two figures creates a construction of femininity that indicts both the overtly alluring and the grotesque” (2009: 12). whereas agostes would likely fit into the category of the ‘crone hag’, this label actually falls short for her raison d’être in the text, as shall be discussed right below. she is one more of the many fictional representations of witches, but not a typical one. 8. the lady of hutton the lady of hutton’s desire is strongly tied to agostes’s. whereas the former’s wish is to meet gawain, her mother’s is to make this possible. therefore, the two desires are interconnected and both women need one another in order to succeed. however, both suddenly disappear from the plot when sir bredbeddle chooses to fulfil his wish to join the community of the round table. consequently, the realisation of female desire proves a problematic situation: the female plot becomes secondary (a sub-text), neglected to the benefit of the male story about the green knight and sir gawain. still, importantly enough, the passage of the lady of hutton’s dialogue exposes one more desire in her: she wants to save gawain’s life. in the context of the giving of the girdle, matthews argues that the offer of the magical lace is made purely because of the lady’s concern for gawaine, not because of a pre-arranged conspiracy with her husband and mother, as is the implication in sir gawain. given that the lady loves gawaine, she would not be part of a plot involving his possible destruction. (matthews 1994: 305) in line with the interpretation that the lady is seriously in love with gawain (as she reveals) and has nothing to do with her husband’s testing of the hero, there is no reason to think that she would seek to hurt the knight. in fact, judging by lines 391–401 (see quotation below), it can be inferred that the lady wants to help him by soothing his anxiety and, what is more, saving his 158 david navarrete life through her magic-charged white lace. 23 in my view, in this context, the lady of hutton comes across as the saviour of king arthur’s nephew, whereas sir bredbeddle becomes his potential challenger and murderer. right after gawain leaves hutton castle, the narrator employs the adjectives “gaye” as well as “curteous and sheene” (ll. 434, 440) to refer to her. gawain accepted her lace, so the lady’s glowing happiness might be interpreted as if she was happy that gawain, her “paramour”, is going to make it out of the greene chappell alive. all the interaction between the lady of hutton and gawain is limited to three kisses and a very brief conversation in which she confesses her feelings for the knight. 24 whether or not the lady’s attempt of enjoying an extramarital relationship is frustrated is open to interpretation. when she says “without i have the love of thee, / my life standeth in dere” (ll. 379–380), she 23 even though colour symbolism is not the concern of this article and does not have much to add to my study, it is interesting to remark that lady of hutton’s lace is white and her retinue of maidens in waiting is dressed in purple. concerning the contrast that these two colours make, louis adrian montrose (in a different context) points out: the change suffered by the flower —from the whiteness of milk to the purple wound of love— juxtaposes maternal nurturance and erotic violence. to an elizabethan audience, the metamorphosis may have suggested not only the blood of defloration but also the blood of menstruation —and, perhaps, the menarche, which manifests the sexual maturity of the female, the advent of womanhood and potential motherhood. (montrose 1983: 92) white and purple colours are metaphorically reminiscent of two extremes of womanhood and femininity: purity and sexual intercourse. (this allegory for menstruation further harks back to the irish hag from the ecthtra-poem who, after her transformation into a lady, wears a purple mantle and has snow-white skin; irslinger forthc.: 5–6]). seen in this light, it seems like these two colours are suggestive of female sexuality in full bloom in the lady of hutton. 24 gerald morgan has argued that the lady of hautdesert, from sggk, is unhappily married to lord bertilak of hautdesert (2002: 159), yet i do not find his interpretation very believable given the circumstances: she is pretending to love gawain, as required by morgan le fay’s machinations. in contrast, the lady of hutton can be seen in my view as a young woman in love who wishes to free herself temporarily from her marital and wifely duties to sir bredbeddle. agostes in the greene knight 159 lets both the audience and gawain know about the gravity of the situation: her life would be wrecked if gawain, her paramour, refused her love. 25 to her misfortune, the knight does so out of honour and courtesy towards his host and because of the pressure under which he finds himself (ll. 381–389). however, gawain’s rejection of her love does not erase her concern for him. after gawain’s refusal, then spake that ladye gay, saith, ‘tell me some of your journey; your succour i may bee. if itt be poynt of any war, there shall noe man doe you noe darr and yee wil be governed by mee. (ll. 391–395) for heere i have a lace of silke: it is as white as any milke, and of a great value.’ she saith, ‘i dare safelye sweare there shall noe man doe you deere when you have it upon you.’ (ll. 396–401) therefore, even though the lady of hutton is neglected, she does not fulfil the role of the evil temptress determined to bringing down the male protagonist. on the contrary, she operates as the only help for the knight, whether or not this also requires jeopardising gawain’s trouthe. 26 her narrative role and identity are in turn closer to that of protector rather than antagonist of the hero. 25 this is a convention in courtly and romantic love (the medieval motif of the lovesick lady), which seems to point to the presence of some courtly love culture in the ballad. 26 the fact that the lady of hutton wants to save gawain’s life out of love and respect for the honoured knight definitely establishes her difference from the lady of hautdesert, who turns out to be a mere seductress who offers the hero her girdle more to compromise his honour than to save his life. 160 david navarrete 9. conclusion in this article, i have put forward a reading of agostes that highlights her role as a witch sole and renders her an independent, self-sufficient woman with a considerable degree of agency who does as she pleases in the face of prevailing social patriarchal conventions. agostes’s narrative function in the narrative is crystal clear, and she never deviates from her goal. most importantly, she operates on her own terms, functions as a mediator among her family and gawain, and does not live up to the portrayal of witches as anti-maternal. i believe these traits are evocative of female autonomy and construct an interesting, specific witch figure, rendering agostes a character worthy of analysis for scholars of witchcraft. the question of whether or not both women realise their desire is central to the present article. whereas agostes does her maternal duties and carries out her task, she (or, perhaps more accurately, her daughter) does not ultimately accomplish her goal. however, if bringing gawain for her daughter in order to satisfy the lady’s amorous and/or sexual demands is all that they wanted, then they have partly succeeded. but it is hard to believe that the lady might have been satisfied with that. the author deprives women of the apparent notoriety that they enjoy in the text when he shifts the plot’s action from agostes’s and the lady of hutton’s actions and interests to sir bredbeddle’s: his testing of gawain and intention to join the community of the knights of the round table. such change has actually a negative impact on the two women: from this point afterwards, they do not appear again. however, the main authority in the ballad still resides at the top, in the character of agostes. louis adrian montrose explores the notions of gender and power in william shakespeare’s a midsummer night’s dream “within a specifically elizabethan context of cultural production [...] in which authority is everywhere invested in men — everywhere, that is, except at the top” (montrose 1983: 61). whereas gk presents several characters of outstanding agency in the arthurian tradition (sir bredbeddle/the green knight, sir gawain, king arthur), it has women at the very top. agostes’s agency might not suffice to assert that she enjoys an undisputable position of influence or control (unlike, for example, queen elizabeth), but i believe that her role, character, and actions make a decent role model for women, particularly mothers and witches, who try to operate unchallenged by men. agostes in the greene knight 161 the arguments put forward in this article have sought to shed light on the witch agostes, and hopefully i have succeeded in illuminating this unusual yet widely ignored character. i also hope that i have clarified her relationship to the rest of the characters in the ballad, particularly her daughter. agostes stands for the archetype of the witch/ mother, a motif charged with negative connotations in medieval, modern, and contemporary popular culture (e.g. the wicked step-mother in cinderella). still, as agostes demonstrates, a witch can also function as a vehicle for the fulfilment of good causes, such as helping one’s child. whereas she could certainly be read as an evil woman, i feel more inclined to look at her a mother who intervenes kindly in a family affair through her voice and power. her concern for the lady turns her into a woman who subverts the stereotype that the witch/(step-)mother is always necessarily evil. all in all, as i have demonstrated in this study, agostes has a lot to offer to scholarship on literary representations of witches and mothers and has something that morgan le fay, despite the great scholarly interest that the priestess from avalon has aroused among sggk-scholars, did not offer in the enormously popular and influential fourteenth-century romance. references bakhtin, m. 1984: rebelais and his world [h. iswolsky trans. 1968]. bloomington, indiana university press. breuer, h. 2009a: from rags to riches, or the step-mother’s revenge: transformative power in late medieval arthurian romances. in h. breuer ed. crafting the witch: gendering magic in late medieval and early modern england. london, routledge: 52–95. breuer, h. ed. 2009b: crafting the witch: gendering magic in late medieval and early modern england. london, routledge. cooney, h. ed. 2006: wirings on love in the english middle ages. new york & england, palgrave macmillan. danow, d. k. 1995: the spirit of carnival: magical realism and the grotesque. lexington, the university press of kentucky. deleuze, g. & f. guattari 1983: anti-oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia. minneapolis, university of minnesota press. edwards, j. d. & r. graulund 2013: grotesque: the new critical idiom. london & new york, routledge. finucci, v. & r. schwartz 1994: desire in the renaissance: psychoanalysis and literature. princeton, princeton university press. 162 david navarrete hahn, t. 1995: the greene knight. in t. hahn ed. sir gawain: eleven romances and tales (teams middle english texts). kalamazoo, medieval institute publications: 309–335. hales, j. w. & f. j. furnivall eds. 1868: the grene knight. in bishop percy’s folio manuscript: ballads and romances. london, n. trübner and company: 56–77. harpham, g. 1976: the grotesque: first principles. the journal of aesthetics and art criticism 34.4: 461–468. hulbert, j. r. 1916: syr gawayn and the grene knyzt —concluded. modern philology 13.12: 689–730. irslinger, b. forthcoming: aldhelm’s de virginitate, flaithius and the loathly lady motif. in j. zeidler & s. junges eds. first european symposium in celtic studies, 59 august 2013, universität trier, forum celtic studies. kittredge, g. l. 1916: a study of gawain and the green knight. cambridge, harvard university press. l’estrange, e. & a. more 2012: representing medieval genders and sexualities in europe: construction, transformation, and subversion, 600–1530. farnham, ashgate. lewis, c. s. 1936: the allegory of love: a study in medieval tradition. london, oxford university press. matthews, d. 1994: ‘a shadow of itself’?: narrative and ideology in the grene knight. neophilologus 78: 301–314. montrose, l. a. 1983: ‘shaping fantasies’: figurations of gender and power in elizabethan culture. representations 2: 61–94. morgan, g. 2002: medieval misogyny and gawain’s outburst against women in sir gawain and the green knight. the modern language review 97.2: 265–278. oed: shorter oxford english dictionary. 2007. 6th ed. oxford, oxford university press. purkiss, d. 2005 [1996]: the witch in history: early modern and twentieth-century representations. london, routledge. rushton, c. j. 2009: modern and academic reception of the popular romance. in r. l. radulescu & c. j. rushton eds. a companion to medieval popular romance. bury st. edmunds, d. s. brewer: 165–179. russo, m. 1994: the female grotesque: risk, excess and modernity. new york & london, routledge. tolkien, j. r. r. & e. v. gordon eds. 1967: sir gawain and the green knight. oxford, oxford university press. author’s address facultad de filosofía y letras campus el milán, c/ amparo pedregal e-33011 oviedo, spain received: 3 october 2017 e-mail: uo261990@uniovi.es revised version accepted: 20 march 2018 microsoft word 2021bookrevs_x5.docx book reviews, selim26 (2021): 167–198. issn 1132-631x / issn-l 2792-3878 / https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.26.2021.167-198 catherine e. karkov, anna kłosowska & vincent w. j. van gerven oei eds. 2020: disturbing times: medieval pasts, reimagined futures. california, punctum books. pp. 384. isbn 9781950192755. reviewed by erik wade, universität bonn as this marvelous new collection from punctum demonstrates, disturbance does not need to be negative, especially when aimed at the ossified hierarchies within medieval studies and the sexist, colonialist, and racist misuses of medieval narratives. the medieval field has finally begun to wrestle with its exclusion of scholars of color and its protection of sexual predators (a matter this collection addresses head on, criticizing the “continuing tolerance of senior academics such as andy orchard, who are known harassers of their students” in its first few pages) (p. 17). in the last few years, scholars in medieval studies have confronted a bevy of issues that once seemed a fixture in the field’s landscape: from racist jokes, to conferences that engage in colonialism, to the use of the term anglo saxon (commonly a synonym for white) as a designation for both old english literature and early medieval english people, to the continued scholarly use of saracen, an islamophobic medieval term, instead of muslim.1 disturbing times turns towards the problems within global pre-modern studies, a welcome decentering of medieval english studies, which has dominated these recent discussions. as vincent w. j. van geren oei recently argued, there is an “urgent need, especially for those identifying as medievalists 1 the book’s introduction does an excellent job of summarizing many of these issues (pp. 15–20). see also s. lomuto, “public medievalism and the rigor of anti-racist critique”, in the middle: peace love & the middle ages (blog), 4 april 2019, https://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/2019/04/public-medievalism-and-rigor-of-anti .html; a. miyashiro, “decolonizing anglo-saxon studies: a response to isas in honolulu”, in the medieval middle, 29 july 2017, http://www.inthemedievalmiddle. com/2017/07/decolonizing-anglo-saxon-studies.html; s. rajabzadeh (2019) “the depoliticized saracen and muslim erasure”, literature compass 16.9–10; m. rambaranolm, “anglo-saxon studies [early english studies], academia and white supremacy”, medium, 27 june 2018, https://medium.com/@mrambaranolm/anglo-saxon-studiesacademia-and-white-supremacy-17c87b360bf3; m. rambaran-olm, “misnaming the medieval: rejecting ‘anglo-saxon’ studies”, history workshop, 2 november 2019, https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/misnaming-the-medieval-rejecting-anglo-saxonstudies/ 168 book reviews of color but certainly not only, to shift away from the canonical, western topics and languages in medieval studies and turn their attention to the rest of the world”.2 the anthology is a rare instance in medieval studies of true interdisciplinarity: it assembles scholars from old nubian studies, medieval african art history, medievalisms, literary studies, history, art history, byzantine studies, and more. the topics range from the middle ages to the sciencefictional future, but all concern narratives about the medieval. the anthology has few generalizable claims beyond its commitment to examining and disturbing the racist histories of medieval studies and medievalisms. indeed, to borrow a phrase from anna kłosowska’s essay, the anthology returns again and again to the framework of a “pointillist approach” that emphasizes local context as the best guide (p. 172). andrea myers achi and seeta chaganti, for instance, push for museums to label african artworks with their specific points of origin, while eva frojmovic demonstrates the violence of severing a hebrew manuscript from its original context and origins (pp. 98–99). the book begins with vincent w. j. van gerven oei’s haunting essay on nubiologist gerald m. browne’s death by suicide. van gerven oei meditates on browne’s scholarly oeuvre as an example of scholarship as autobiography, tracing a current of loneliness through browne’s work. van gerven oei poignantly points out that browne received a single critical engagement by another scholar in his lifetime, leaving browne to act as his own audience and interlocutor: issuing corrections and criticisms of his own previous scholarship and even inventing his own interlocutors in the form of his “stufflings”, a set of stuffed animals who he claimed dictated essays to him in their own scholarly specialties (p. 50). van gerven oei draws out the various layers of browne’s claim that old nubian studies “needed” him, leading van gerven oei to highlight the political nature of the mental health crisis in academia, both in the general form of the neo-liberal university and the specific pressures of old nubian studies (pp. 33– 34, 61–63). van gerven oei concludes with an account of the old nubian scholarly community’s pretended neutrality, even as it participates in state violence in egypt and the sudan (pp. 62–66). van gerven oei critiques old nubian scholars’ willingness to cooperate in colonial violence against contemporary nubian populations in order to “rescue” old nubian artifacts from destruction. van gerven oei argues that the purpose of old nubian studies 2 v. w. j. van gerven oei 2020: finding old nubian, or, why we should divest from western tongues. postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 11.2–3: 301–309, at p. 304. book reviews 169 (and medieval studies in general) is not simply to (in browne’s words) “extend the limits of human thought” but —in van gerven oei’s words— “also to expand the possibilities of human life”, and to recognize that the field “scrutinizes the past that we might imagine a future” (p. 63). in the second essay, art historian andrea myers achi and literary scholar seeta chaganti draw on the theories of w. e. b. du bois to argue that recent american art museum exhibits on medieval african art performed epistemological and racial violence by severing northern african art from western and sub-saharan african art, presenting “african heritage viewed through colonial eyes” (pp. 81–85). art from medieval egypt and ethiopia appears in the “medieval” sections of these museums, aligned with the byzantine empire and divorced from its african context (p. 79). achi & chaganti draw upon du bois’ writing on african diaspora in order to argue for returning their objects to their context through detailed labels that situate them as being “from” africa and “of” byzantium (pp. 96–99). du bois provides a temporal framework for the authors through his ideas of pan-africanism and temporality; as achi & chaganti argue, “[h]e compels us to ask how focusing on the cultures of african countries might contribute to the creation of” a new world, “a meaningfully new, racially just, and anticolonial world” (p. 75). ultimately, achi & chaganti provide a detailed, thoughtful roadmap for how art museums can begin to “dismantle the structures of dispossession around us” (p. 87). the third essay shows the deep roots of orientalism and racism in western academic practice: eva frojmovic argues that narratives extolling early modern christian hebrew scholars for saving hebrew manuscripts from the flames ignore the violence of their collecting projects. christians who “saved” or copied hebrew manuscripts rarely did so in order to preserve jewish people. instead, as frojmovic ably shows, christian hebraists studied judaism in order to refute it and to convert jewish people to christianity (p. 114). moreover, frojmovic argues that the present-day archives where these texts reside continue this violence. the archives label arabic, hebrew, and ge’ez manuscripts “oriental” (even if they are european) and separate them from christian “occidental” manuscripts: “in this way, the classification system denies that hebrew and yiddish (as well as arabic, of course) have historically been among european languages” (p. 137). the orientalization of european manuscripts and religions reproduces the violence of seemingly neutral christian hebraists’ orientalism. as frojmovic notes, “by questioning traditional library classification categories, i hope to disrupt invocations and political (populist; extreme right wing) mobilizations of ‘judeo-christian civilization’” (p. 109). such insights have 170 book reviews implications for many fields, as “oriental” studies often overlapped with fields such as old english. seventeenth-century scholar abraham wheelock, for instance, was a professor of arabic paid specifically to do work towards converting the “easterne[sic] nations”, and his pioneering work on old english was paid at least in part by sponsors eager to throw “a stone at the forehead of mahomet that grand imposter”.3 in the fourth essay, anna kłosowska examines the persistence of slavery in medieval europe and considers its terminology. moving between arabic, french, italian, latin, and slavic, kłosowska shows that non-slavic words for the slavs almost always also designated both literal and metaphorical enslavement. in the course of this detailed, virtuosic (though at times dense) analysis, kłosowska contests the dominant narrative of serfdom replacing slavery in europe after 1100. this argument is not new: cedric robinson, for instance, famously made it in his 1983 book black marxism, stating that “[n]either feudal serfdom, nor capitalism had as their result the elimination or curtailment of slavery. at the very most (it is argued by some), their organization served to relocate it”.4 nonetheless, kłosowska makes an important elaboration of this argument as a medieval specialist who ties the myth’s persistence to gendered narratives. kłosowska argues that scholars have failed to recognize that slavery continued throughout late medieval europe because they focused on changes in the status of medieval men; late-medieval women were more likely to be enslaved, while men were predominantly serfs. moreover, by the time variations of the word slave entered european languages, its connotations of slavery were already metaphorical, used most commonly from one lover’s enslavement to another, rather than referencing the actual ongoing slavery still at work in europe. in this way, kłosowska suggests that there was a “continuity of the practice of unfreedom” throughout medieval european history into the early modern period, and thus the transatlantic trade in enslaved africans —rather than a return to an ancient sin— represented a continuation of a process that never entirely went away: the “opening of the transatlantic slave trade […was] prepared by the medieval slave trade” (p. 191). roland betancourt’s essay seeks to examine and argue for the byzantine-ness of black artist kehinde wiley’s iconic series. wiley draws on medieval byzantine 3 m. murphy & e. barrett 1985: abraham wheelock, arabist and saxonist. biography 8.2: 163–185; quotes at p. 166 and p. 169. 4 c. j. robinson 1983: black marxism: the making of the black radical tradition. chapel hill, nc, the university of north carolina press, at p. 12. book reviews 171 portraiture conventions when depicting black subjects. while betancourt’s desire to claim the label byzantine for these artworks —and for a series of global artworks ranging from medieval ethiopian to eight-century mayan— verges on imperial, betancourt subtly undoes byzantine as a category by showing that wiley’s byzantium is a global one: wiley cites paintings and tropes from byzantine colonies and from byzantine-influenced art in a much larger global world, rather than from within a bounded empire called byzantium. betancourt thus follows wiley in decentering the byzantine and also challenging the “history of racialized erasure that wiley confronts” (p. 235). betancourt’s desire to label a wide variety of global artwork byzantine would benefit from further engagement with the problems achi & chaganti raise about how museums’ labeling of african art as “byzantine” divorces african art from its context in an act of racial violence. while betancourt describes how wiley’s medievalisms do anti-racial work, joshua davies argues that the white architects of the “confederate gothic” conjure medievalisms to entrench racial hierarchy. davies situates the confederate gothic’s pseudo-medieval revival architectural style in the american south alongside racist confederate narratives of the “lost cause” that seek to erase the centrality of slavery to the confederacy: “medievalist aesthetics was a means of generating an imprecise sense of historicity. a diversion tactic. confederate gothic was a means of not thinking about history” (pp. 265–269, quote at p. 269). davies shows that the medievalisms of confederate gothic are part of the legacy of museums and universities in the us, particularly the smithsonian, on whose board of regents jefferson davis had sat prior to the civil war (pp. 257–267). ultimately, drawing on sylvia wynter’s work, davies argues that “the european middle ages has been and continues to be overrepresented as white and male”, describing contemporary medievalism as a politics of white male overrepresentation (p. 273). similarly, alison elizabeth killilea’s essay reminds us of the conservative reaganite use of the medieval in service of a colonial and sexist agenda.5 killilea examines larry niven & jerry pournell’s (1987) science-fiction novel the legacy 5 one slight point of confusion emerges here, since the book’s backcover states that it includes discussion of “reagan’s aids policies”, while the introduction states that killilea’s essay “explores the anti-women and anti-gay politics of the aids crisis period” (p. 24). yet i can discern no reference to reagan’s aids policies or anti-gay politics. this is not a criticism of killilea’s excellent, intersectional essay, but instead seems to be an infelicity of the book’s editing. 172 book reviews of heorot, in which niven & pournell repurpose the beowulf story and arthurian legend as a kind of “western frontier novel” in which humans must wrestle control of a planet away from its inhabitants, called the grendels (p. 292). killilea points out that niven & pournell feminize the grendels in a continuation of long-standing colonial tropes of indigenous peoples being “feminized and emasculated” (p. 296). killilea shows how the novel also reproduces white supremacist ideas about white women’s roles in perpetuating “their race”: after the death of many men in the novel, the remaining men argue that they must return to traditional gender roles to keep their “race” alive, reducing the women to second-class citizens whose sole job is to have children (pp. 297–298, 302). helen young and medievalpoc have written about the similarities between the recent conservative backlash in the science fiction community, and a similar backlash in the medievalist community.6 killilea’s scholarship shows that these are more than parallels: the recent resurgence of conservatism in the science fiction community has roots in medievalism and has always been dangerously close to the halls of power. niven & pournell advised the reagan administration on the theoretical creation of a military force in space (pp. 305–306). their imagined extension of american imperialism is now coming true in trump’s “space force”, a reminder of the importance of killilea’s work. the next section consists of the collected papers from a 2018 leeds international medieval congress roundtable on how “anglo-saxon studies” has changed since the first imc conference in 1994. the result is a series of short meditations on the changing roles of the digital, the non-human, non-canonical old english texts, feminism, intersectionality, and the white supremacist appropriation of medieval runes. editor catherine clarke chose to leave the contributors’ pieces unchanged, rather than update their arguments and terminology to reflect the field’s subsequent progress, so that they could serve as a snapshot of a conversation the field was having (pp. 317–321). two particular highlights are the pieces by adam miyashiro and diane watt. miyashiro contextualizes white supremacist movements’ ongoing appropriation of medieval runes in the light of ongoing colonialism in the americas and the 6 h. young, “where do we go from here?”, in the medieval middle: peace, love, and the middle ages, 28 september 2017, https://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/ 2017/09/where-do-we-go-from-here.html; medievalpoc, “the dumpster summer of racism in medieval studies”, people of color in european art history, https://medievalpoc.tumblr.com/post/164827417508/the-dumpster-summer-ofracism-in-medieval-studies book reviews 173 south pacific (p. 322). white supremacists appropriate the language of indigenous struggle by positing a pseudo-medieval paganism as the authentic, indigenous european religion and culture, all in service of a racist and colonialist enterprise against actual indigenous peoples (pp. 323–324). watt reads the forgotten histories of intersectional feminism within early medieval english studies, demonstrating how the field has largely chosen to forget how some feminist medievalists have been examining the interlocking systems of race, gender, and sexuality for decades (pp. 339–341). carla maría thomas’ concluding essay aims to provide a tutorial on classroom practice. thomas argues for an intersectional pedagogy that recognizes the interwoven nature of systems of oppression and that meets our students (and ourselves) where they are, in all of their complicated particularity. she provides examples of her inclusion statements and sample classroom exercises, in which students work in pairs to produce creative translations of medieval english texts into modern languages. encouraging them to write from their own positionality, thomas helps her students become comfortable translating medieval literature into their own languages or into others. all of the described student translations are into colonial languages like spanish, french, and english, however, and the essay would benefit from further unpacking of the role of colonization in american language heritage issues. colonists often invoked medieval european literature as proof of european linguistic superiority in order to justify violently suppressing indigenous languages. this makes the medieval classroom an important space to address the brutality of colonialism past and present.7 the essay could also do more work examining the differences between how the erasure of linguistic heritage affects white students versus black and brown ones, but thomas’ suggestion that “our bodies do not tell the whole story about who we are” is an excellent reminder of how the assumed monolinguistic nature of us classrooms disappears certain parts of students’ backgrounds (p. 363). 7 on this, see k. biddick 1988: the shock of medievalism. durham, nc, duke university press; a. jahanara kabir 2005: analogy in translation: imperial rome, medieval england, and british india. in a. j. kabir & d. williams eds. postcolonial approaches to the european middle ages: translating cultures. cambridge, cambridge university press: 183–204; m. warren 2003: post-philology. in p. c. ingham & m. r. warren eds. postcolonial moves: medieval through modern. london & new york, palgrave: 19–45, especially pp. 31–34. 174 book reviews while disturbing times generally deserves praise for its fearless tackling of racist narratives, a few moments in its troubling of medieval studies strike an uneasy note. in daniel thomas’ essay in the “anglo-saxon studies” cluster, he suggests that senior scholars advise young scholars not to propose certain topics for conference panels, since they may not be chosen as quickly as “popular” suggestions (p. 329). editor clarke —despite noting that she wishes the essays to remain unedited to preserve the conversation— responds to this suggestion of conference bias with a footnoted rebuttal: it should be noted here that this is a misapprehension, and there is no policy of preference or noticeable bias towards particular topics or areas of scholarship in the paper selection and programming process at the imc — catherine clarke. (p. 329) this overt editorial interjection sounds a discordant note of institutional refutation in a book about disturbing and questioning institutional narratives. another such discordant note occurs in how the book treats the women of color who have done much of the work of pushing conversations on the field forward. disturbing times repeatedly names and praises mary rambaran-olm’s important work in the field, yet often treats her as a symbol for the field’s progress, rather than as an actual scholar and critic to be engaged with (pp. 15, 317). both clarke and the introduction mention rambaran-olm’s name, but never quote or address her actual critiques. this is hardly unique to disturbing times, as several recent books by white authors—such as donna beth ellard’s anglo-saxon(ist) pasts, postsaxon futures and the collection dating beowulf (edited by dan remien & erica weaver) have invoked rambaran-olm’s name as a figure for the field’s ongoing work while confining her work to footnotes.8 as scholars of color continue to drive the necessary changes to our field, scholars all must do the work of actually engaging with them and treating their interventions the same way we treat white scholarly interventions. similar small moments in several of the other essay —such as a reference to renaissance orientalism’s “dark face”— trouble the otherwise excellent work that the pieces are doing (p. 142). 8 see, for instance, the citations of rambaran-olm in d. b. ellard 2019: anglo-saxon(ist) pasts, postsaxon futures. california, punctum books, at pp. 16.n2, 54, 254.n31, 338– 339.n3; d. c. remein & e. weaver eds. 2020: dating beowulf: studies in intimacy, manchester, manchester university press, at pp. xii, 26–27.n48. the prevalence of footnotes among these citations illustrates the problem. book reviews 175 ultimately, however, disturbing times does the job it sets out to do and does it well. as its title evokes, its methodological disruption of periodization pushes us to see the revolutionary potential in disturbing disciplinary and temporal boundaries. karkov, kłosowska, and van gerven oei have carefully edited the print and digital version, with the attention to detail and aesthetic that has become a hallmark of punctum books. the collection is flush with copious illustrations (in gorgeous color in the digital version) that make the book a pleasure for the eyes as well as the mind. its availability in open-access digital format will make the book’s important interventions easily available for scholarship and teaching. punctum continues to set the high watermark in terms of accessibility, scholarship that actually pushes the intellectual envelope, and work that centers marginalized voices. it avoids the blinding whiteness of many other recent anthologies that purport to be doing boundary-pushing work. the collection should be a must-read for anyone interested in contemporary medievalisms, the history of the discipline, or the urgent work of transforming the discipline. it is rare for a collection of medieval scholarship to be “timely”, but disturbing times arrives at just the right moment. we should all have it on our shelves, to disturb us —and our fields— for years to come. reviewer’s address department of english american and celtic studies universität bonn regina-pacis-weg 5 53113 bonn germany e-mail: ewade@uni-bonn.de 176 book reviews rory naismith, máire ní mhaonaigh & elizabeth ashman rowe eds. 2020: writing battles: new perspectives on warfare and memory in medieval europe. london, bloomsbury academic. pp. 266. isbn 9781788316743. reviewed by andrew breeze, university of navarre battles are dangerous things, in which violence is used to obtain power. books, another (if less dangerous) means to power, may likewise end in triumph or disaster. which of these is writing battles? before answering the question, we list contributors and subjects. robert bartlett begins with the naming of battles in the middle ages, a subject more practical than he realizes. toponyms may actually locate engagements (as with degsastan in 603 or maserfelth in 642 or the uinued in 655 or brunanburh in 937). jenny benham writes on monuments to conflicts. matthew strickland, in the book’s longest piece, attends to anglo-saxon battles. rory naismith discusses london’s defences and the events of 1066. elizabeth rowe turns us to medieval scandinavia; máire ní mhaonaigh, to medieval ireland. natalia petrovskaia explains how the crusades influenced insular and nordic warnarratives. the three editors then offer a joint account of stamford bridge in 1066. two final chapters bring us to modern times. tony pollard indicates how directors (eisenstein, laurence olivier, mel gibson) have represented medieval battles in their films; robert tombs considers memories of the great war. now for a verdict. the essays fall into three classes. some of them, concentrating on the twentieth century, hardly concern medievalists, as with tony pollard, who is illuminating on modern attitudes but says almost nothing on the middle ages themselves. others rehearse familiar themes without offering anything novel. (examples: robert bartlett, elizabeth rowe, máire ní mhaonaigh.) despite the advertiser’s claim of ‘new’ perspectives, medievalists will find nothing very new in this book. in the third class are papers with serious defects, both of errors and of failure to cite research by others. by far the worst offender is matthew strickland of glasgow. most of his previous work is on the post-norman period, where he may well speak with authority. but he now deals with the pre-norman period and the results are disastrous. in the following list of the volume’s inaccuracies and omissions, he is conspicuous. it starts with jenny benham. she discusses (p. 28) brunanburh in 937 with no word on its whereabouts, which was certainly near durham, on the river book reviews 177 brune or browney. see alistair campbell’s the battle of brunanburh (1938: 61.n2). professor strickland similarly refers to “the unknown location of brunanburh” (p. 41), when it is perfectly well known. he thereafter speaks of how king alfred saw parallels “to his own wars” (p. 44) in the old english translation of orosius. he is unaware that alfred’s authorship of this text was discredited decades ago. see janet bately’s the old english orosius (1980: lxxv), an edition replacing the antiquated one of 1883 cited by professor strickland. he then speaks of arthur as “a legendary figure” (p. 51), when arthur was completely historical: a north british warrior killed at camlan (near carlisle) in 537, as stated by welsh annals. worse follows. in a single paragraph (on p. 52) we find this. mount “badon” is dated to about “500”, even though david woods of cork proved in 2010 that the year is 493, the site being above braydon forest, wiltshire. arthur’s “twelve battles” then figure, with nothing on eleven of them as in north britain. the welsh poem armes prydein (its title misspelt) “the prophecy of britain” is dated to “937–950”, when it has long been dated to late 940, immediately after the west saxon capitulation to vikings at leicester (alluded to in its text). all this is well understood by others. on the date and site of “badon”, see nick higham’s king arthur (2018: 155–158, 288); on arthur’s battles, the same at higham (2018: 225, 287–288); on armes prydein and 940, gwyneth lewis & rowan williams’ the book of taliesin (2019: 215). although professor strickland thanks his colleague professor t. o. clancy (p. 70) for advice on matters celtic, that advice was clearly defective. we continue. professor strickland, after referring to deira as “diera” (p. 53), confuses denisburne or rowley water, where welsh invaders were massacred in 634, with the english camp of hefenfeld twelve kilometres north of it, by hadrian’s wall. nor is hefenfeld “heavenfield” a name “afterwards” given to the site. bede proves the opposite. stating that it predated the battle, being “an omen of future happenings”, bede imposed religious implications on a (demonstrably secular) form. compare julia barrow’s “oswald and the strong man arned” in the land of the english kin: studies in wessex and anglo-saxon england in honour of professor barbara yorke (2020: 183–196). however, professor strickland cannot be accused of carelessness when he refers “degsastan” in 603 to a nearby landmark, a “stone which gave the place its name” (p. 56). he had no reason to know that the stone is still there. it is a monolith in meadows by the river tweed, eleven kilometres west of the town of peebles (and is shown on the cover of the reviewer’s recent british battles 493–937). this standing stone proves that english troops laid in wait for scots 178 book reviews and irish invaders as they advanced down tweeddale. professor strickland is yet quite misleading when he goes on (p. 57) to link king oswald’s defeat at maserfelth in 642 with oswestry, shropshire. the place-name scholar margaret gelling was categorical that king oswald and maserfelth had no link with oswestry, as in her signposts to the past (1978: 187). maserfelth will have been further south, on the roman road through meisir, a region north the river severn upstream from welshpool, powys, as one deduces from comments in jenny rowland’s early welsh saga poetry (1990: 589). other omissions include the following. the anonymous whitby life of st gregory is mentioned by professor strickland (p. 58), but with nothing on it as the work of a woman. on her, england’s earliest female author, compare colin ireland’s “some irish characteristics of the whitby life” in early medieval ireland and europe: chronology, contacts, scholarship (2015: 139–178). the battle of the uinued in 655 figures (p. 56) with no word on its site, by the river went near doncaster, yorkshire, as correctly stated in thomas charlesedwards’ wales and the britons 350–1064 (2013: 394). a further remark on brunanburh, on how “no record survives” of the victory’s celebration by “religious foundations” (p. 61), is unfounded. north of durham and its nearby battlefield is chester-le-street, its monks richly rewarded by king athelstan after his triumph. this is proved by records of his “many and diverse” gifts to them, including a life of st cuthbert which is now ms 183 in the library of corpus christi college, cambridge. see a. e. redgate’s religion, politics, and society in britain 800–1066 (2014: 84–85). but professor strickland pays no attention to that. compared with the scarlet of the above, other contributors are white as snow; it is yet strange that robert tombs writes of “crowds of mourners” at “douglas haig’s funeral in 1922” when that famed warrior survived until 1928. so this is not a book to recommend. its best contributions add nothing substantial to historical knowledge. its worst ones confuse and mislead. it is not an “outstanding” volume (as claimed on its cover) but a rather poor one. far from being “on the reading lists of students and scholars” (as prophesied), it should not be used. true, an important-sounding title and attractive design may delude some into buying writing war: medieval literary responses to warfare. if so, one knows what will happen. it will soon be lingering on the shelves, unread and forgotten, like all the ill-researched and unnecessary books that come a reviewer’s way. book reviews 179 reviewer’s address departamento de filología universidad de navarra pamplona 31009 (spain) e-mail: abreeze@unav.es edurne garrido-anes ed. 2020: a middle english version of the circa instans, edited from cambridge, cul, ms ee.1.13. (middle english texts series, 59). heildelberg, universitätsverlag winter. pp. lvi + 209. isbn 9783825347666. €70.00. reviewed by j. camilo conde-silvestre, university of murcia in 2020 universitätsverlag winter celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the collection “middle english texts”. currently edited by margaret connolly, william marx and hans sauer, it was established in 1975 by manfred görlach and oliver pickering to publish middle english texts hitherto unedited or to improve on existing editions. fifty-nine volumes have been published since then, “both poetry and prose, including religious prose, historical writing, and scientific and medical texts” (middle english text series, n.d.(a): n.p.). despite this comprehensive outlook, some areas are obviously privileged and medicine is not one of them, with only three of the volumes printed so far covering the field: a middle english version of william of saliceto’s anatomia edited by christian heimerl (2008); a collection of medical recipes based on glasgow university library ms hunter 185 by francisco alonso almeida (2014), who is a professor at the university of las palmas de gran canaria; and this version of the circa instans in charge of edurne garrido-anes, a senior lecturer in english at the university of huelva. the fact that two out of three of these mediaeval medical texts are edited by spanish scholars attests to an enduring interest in middle english fachsprosa among english philologists from our country.9 9 at the university of huelva, maría josé carrillo linares has edited middle english versions of the antidotarium nicolai (1997). in las palmas, further editions of middle english medical texts have been carried out by vega déniz (2009), litzler jerman (2011), and alonso almeida himself (2020). at the jaume i university, maría josé 180 book reviews the circa instans was undoubtedly one of the mediaeval medical texts with the widest circulation. the abbreviated title stems from the first words of the prologue to the liber de simplici medicina: a latin treatise composed at the medical school of salerno in the mid-twelfth century, attributed to matthaeus platearius. due to its privileged geographical position in the south of italy, the salernian school was instrumental in the transmission of both the grecobyzantine galenic and dioscoridean principles of medicine and of arabic and north-african advances in the field. the practical application of these medical essentials was based on the operation of simples: vegetable, animal, or mineral elements found “as they were produced by nature” with “allegedly curative esteve ramos has also worked extensively on mediaeval english ophthalmological treatises (2003). in this spanish context, the compilation of the málaga corpus of late middle english scientific prose has to be highlighted (2007–). this funded project, involving scholars from jaén, glasgow, málaga, oviedo, and murcia, has resulted in an online repository of twenty-eight middle english manuscripts dealing with medicine and pharmacopoeia both from the hunter collection at glasgow university library and from the wellcome library in london. diplomatic editions based on digitised images of the manuscripts (also available on the webpage) are provided, together with an annotated corpus based on this material. some of the editions have also been been printed, either as ph.d. dissertations (marqués aguado 2008, obegi gallardo 2012, carmona cejudo 2019) or in book format at international publishing houses like the university of liverpool press —where javier calle-martín, the project coordinator, has just edited an early fifteenth-century version of john arderon’s de jucidiis urinarum (2020)— or peter lang, where five middle english medical texts have been edited so far: benvenutus grassus’s practica oculorum & de probatissima arte oculorum (mirandagarcía & gonzález fernández-corugedo 2012; see also marqués aguado, miranda garcía & gonzález 2008), de viribus herbarum (calle-martín & miranda garcía 2011), system of physic (esteban segura 2012), lelamour herbal (moreno olalla 2018), and a remedy book from wellcome library ms 542 (calle-martín & castaño-gil 2013). the scope of the project has extended to early modern english scientific prose and editions of twenty additional manuscripts from the same collections have been published online, relying on the same methodology and with the same aims (the málaga corpus of early modern english scientific prose, 2012–). in this same vein, incipient research is being conducted at the university of alcalá on mediaeval medical, astrological, and alchemical materials at the ferguson and hunter collections of glasgow university library. to the best of my knowledge, an edition of the middle english pseudo-hippocratic text in gul hunter ms 513 has been accomplished by irene diego rodríguez (2020) and work on gul ferguson 147 is well advanced (de la cruz cabanillas 2017). book reviews 181 virtues” (p. xiv). collections of remedies using these simples were gathered in pharmacopoeic compilations. as such, the latin circa instans by platearius, which was directly inspired by dioscorides’ (c. 40 – c. 90) vulgaris and de materia medica, contains between 400 (in the longest surviving version) and 273–276 entries, with information about “complexion, provenance, location […] the best harvest time and the different existing species”, the diseases for which they were prescribed, the “appropriate dosage”, and “other aspects that explained how to use […] them effectively” (p. xiv). such a comprehensive treatment of simples made of circa instans a most popular textbook for over four centuries: from the twelfth to the sixteenth, when paracelsus (1493–1541) introduced (al)chemical remedies and early manuscripts were ousted by the increase of printed editions of new herbals, with realistic plant illustrations. the latin text was popular both in academic spheres, among apothecaries and medical practitioners, as well as among the aristocracy and royal family members. this popularity is also attested by the high number of translations and adaptations preserved in many european vernacular languages —english, german, dutch, danish, french, catalan, hispanoprovençal— as well as in hebrew. once translated, possibly by the doctors and surgeons themselves, the vernacularised versions definitely reached a wider reading public which included “experienced and young doctors, poor scholars, travelling practitioners and also […] lay people such as nuns, upper-class women and […] anyone caring for the sick” (p. xxxi, fn.69). only in england, for instance, nearly sixty manuscripts containing the circa instans are preserved, both in latin and middle english —a complete list is given on pages ix and x (see also garrido-anes 2005, 2005–2006). despite this popularity, no recent edition of the middle english text is available, which certainly justifies the urgency of this undertaking.10 a comprehensive “introduction” (pp. xiii–lvi) precedes the edited text. garrido-anes deals with a varied range of topics, from the origins of the circa instans within the salernitan school, its sources, and analogues to the codicological, palaeographic, and even linguistic descriptions of both codex and text. a substantial part of the “introduction” is devoted to the presence of the circa instans in england, especially to the middle english versions. garrido 10 an exception is the abridged version from glasgow university library ms hunter 307 edited by laura esteban segura in manuscripta (2015). comprehensive catalogues of scientific and medical texts in mediaeval english, with information on editions, are offered by voigts & kurtz (2000, 2006). 182 book reviews anes organises all the existing texts into three groups on the evidence of their relation to the latin original and, in this operation, she emphasises the dynamic transmission of the text in england and the textual processes used by scribes and compilers, who “often added or removed information and even arranged the contents according to the intended use of each particular copy” (p. xxviii). the elimination of references to sources and the omission of medical theory to concentrate on remedies undoubtedly contributed to its popularisation as a practical guide in the context of domestic health care (p. xxxii, fn.74). the edition is based on cambridge, cul, ms ee. 1.13, a composite manuscript whose 151 folios contain, in addition to the circa instans (ff. 1r– 91v), thirteen minor collections of recipes copied by at least seven different scribes; all the texts were possibly gathered together in the late sixteenth century. garrido-anes points to the possible ownership by a landowner or ploughmen, even a yeoman, rather than by a trained physician or a professional practitioner: the absence of references to authorities and of theoretical materials and the inclusion of recommendations for other household tasks —dying cloths, working with plants in the fields, etc.— are convincing arguments in this respect. the editor explains her reasons for choosing this witness: “it presents the complete series of simples, […] contains the greatest number of chapters and is one of the best preserved and less damaged extant manuscripts” (p. xxxii). nevertheless, she does not rely exclusively on this copy, but collates it with three contemporary clearly related versions, which were probably based on the same latin source: oxford, bodleian library, ms ahsmole 1477 (ff. 114r–195v), london, british library, additional 29301 (ff. 55r–89r), and london, medical society, ms 131 (ff. 3r–56v). incidentally, garrido-anes concludes that none of the twenty-nine latin copies preserved in england can be ascertained as the original, which is either lost or has to be found elsewhere. the descriptions of both codex and manuscript are comprehensive (pp. xxxiv-xlvi) both in codicological —cover, binding, physical characteristics, decoration, annotations, and marginalia— and palaeographical terms: the script showing a mixture of anglicana and secretary, which garrido-anes dates to the second half of the fifteenth century (p. xxxvi). a sizeable section is concerned with linguistic matters, touching on both punctuation practices and dialect localisation (pp. xlvi–liii). in undertaking this, garrido-anes follows the methodology developed for the linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english project (mcintoh, samuels & benskin 1986; see also e-lalme). she compiles a complete linguistic profile of the whole text (152 items) and then applies the fit technique. this confirms the existence of an east anglian layer —as already book reviews 183 advanced in lalme on the evidence of the first fifteen folios— and, at the same time, shows ample evidence of southwestern influence and relics of northern origin. garrido-anes makes her best to make sense of this dialectal disarray by assuming that “a southwestern scribe may have been using a suffolk source text with a previous northern, though not immediate antecedent” (p. liii). an account of “editorial policy” follows (pp. liv–lvi). in this section, garrido-anes closely follows the “guidelines for editors” demanded by winter universitätsverlag. these guidelines are devised with the final aim of representing “the scribe’s final intention” (middle english texts series, n.d.(b): 5), or, as the editor puts it, “presenting the […] version […] as it was read and perceived by its medieval readers” (p. liv). most of the decisions adopted contribute to this aim: respect for the original spelling, avoidance of editorial emendations except in very obvious cases, etc. however, the “guidelines” are adamant (and the editor must adhere to them) in advising “to introduce modern capitalization, punctuation and word division, and to expand contractions and abbreviations silently (with the exception of &, which is normally left unaltered” (middle english texts series, n.d.(b): 4). in my opinion, these and other recommendations —like transcribing long <y> and short <i> as <i>, lowering superscript letters <þt>, <þe>, <ht>, or <wt> to the line, etc.— do not seem to respect the scribe’s original practices and, in this way, they may hinder —in being silently implemented and left unmarked in the text— future linguistic and orthographical analyses. this obviously benefits access to the text by nonlinguists or non-philologists, particularly literary scholars, historians of medicine or science, and book archaeologists. one can only wonder why, at a time when word processing techniques are highly advanced, diplomatic critical editions are still the exception. the edited text in middle english (pp. 1–89) comprises 257 entries arranged in alphabetical order —from aloen to zvcarium— with the latin headwords occasionally translated when a name for the simple existed in the vernacular. as stated, this version of the circa instans is devoid of information on authorities and theory, but pointedly concentrates on the elements themselves — complexion, origin, diseases for which they are prescribed, etc.— and on how to apply them effectively. the edition based on cambridge, cul, ms ee. 1.13 (ff. 1r–91v) is accompanied by textual footnotes based on the collation with the three related manuscripts mentioned above: bodleian ashmole 1477, bl additional 29301, and medical society 131. as a critical edition, the book also includes a thorough “commentary” (pp. 90–123). garrido-anes offers a well184 book reviews informed and comprehensive critical apparatus with more than 350 notes on diverse issues, ranging from the explanation of words and concepts of special interest or difficulty and the justification of editorial decisions, to remarks on purely linguistic matters: spelling, morphology, syntax, dialect, vocabulary (particularly middle english words unregistered in the canonical historical dictionaries), and even translation techniques used by the scribe. the range of topics addressed by the editor is wide and attests to her professional training in both philology and the history of english. quite a number of notes refer to the background and cultural context of the circa instans and this allows garridoanes to display her erudition and expertise in the history of both classical and mediaeval medicine. the edition is accompanied by a “glossary” (pp. 124–175): “a comprehensive compilation of the anatomical, medical and botanical terminology […] and of words of a less specialised nature when the meaning may not be obvious from the spelling or the context” (p. xxxiv). the editor’s background in english historical linguistics is also displayed at its best in an introductory note, where the vernacularisation of vocabulary in this middle english circa instans is briefly analysed by contrasting the deployment of latin and french borrowings with the use of native resources: derivational strategies based on germanic vocabulary, loan translations, and renditions or explanations of concepts using the vernacular. two appendices close the volume. the first one is a table comparing the entries in the latin version with those in cul ee. 1.13 and the other three related manuscripts (pp. 176–180). the second is a complete description of the marginalia (pp. 181–195). finally, a bibliography of relevant literature is added at the end (pp. 196–209), including “early printed editions” (from 1486 to 1688), “modern editions and secondary sources”, and “theses and dissertations”. one must necessarily conclude this review by congratulating winter universitätsverlag on the editorial decision to publish this valuable text and on the choice of edurne garrido-anes as the scholar in charge of the neat, careful, and well-informed edition: another outstanding contribution to the history of mediaeval english medicine by an english philologist from spain. book reviews 185 references alonso almeida, f. ed. 2014: a middle english medical remedy book. edited from glasgow university library ms hunter 185 (middle english texts series, 50). heildelberg, universitätsverlag winter. alonso almeida, f. 2020: a middle english text on phlebotomy. revista canaria de estudios ingleses 80: 29–49. calle-martín, j. ed. 2020: john arderon’s de judiciis urinarum. a middle english commentary on giles of corbeil’s carmen de urinis in glasgow university library, ms hunter 328 and manchester university library, ms rylands eng. 1310 (exeter medieval texts and studies). liverpool, liverpool university press. calle-martín, j. & m. a. castaño-gil eds. 2013: a late middle english remedy-book (ms wellcome 542, ff. 1r–20v). a scholarly edition (middle and early modern english texts, 5). frankfurt am main, peter lang. calle-martín, j. & a. miranda garcía eds. 2011: the middle english version of “de viribus herbarum” (gul ms hunter 497, ff. 1r–92r). edition and philological study. (middle and early modern english texts, 2). frankfurt am main, peter lang. carmona cejudo, j. 2019: london, british library, sloane ms 770: a semi-diplomatic edition. (ph.d. dissertation.) málaga, universidad de málaga. carrillo linares, m. j. 1997: edición de una versión en inglés medio del antidotarium nicolai. (ph.d. dissertation.) sevilla, universidad de sevilla. de la cruz cabanillas, i. 2017: editing the medical recipes in the glasgow university library ferguson collection. in p. boot et al. eds. advances in digital scholarly editing. papers presented at the dixit conferences in the hague, cologne, and antwerp. leiden, sidestone press: 103–108. diego rodríguez, i. 2020: a linguistic study of pseudo-hippocratic zodiacal lunaries in late middle english manuscripts. (ph.d. dissertation.) alcalá de henares, universidad de alcalá. e-lalme 2013–: an electronic version of a linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english. a. mcintosh et al. eds. edinburgh, angus mcintosh centre for historical linguistics / the university of edinburgh. http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/elalme/ elalme.html [accessed 21 january 2021]. esteban segura, l. ed. 2012: system of physic (gul ms hunter 509, ff. 1r–167v). a compedium of mediaeval medicine including the middle english gilbertus anglicus (middle and early modern english texts, 3). frankfurt am main, peter lang. esteban segura, l. 2015: the middle english circa instans: a pharmacopoeia from gul ms hunter 307. manuscripta 59.1: 29–60. esteve ramos, m. j. 2003: from eye illnesses to ocular diseases: the progressive shift to latin medical terminology in ophthalmology (11th–20th centuries). (ph.d. dissertation.) castelló, universitat jaume i. 186 book reviews garrido-anes, e. 2005: geographical and dialectal distribution of platearius’s liber de simplici medicina in england. international journal of english studies (editing middle english in the 21st century) 5.2: 93–114. garrido-anes, e. 2005–2006: manuscript relations through form and content in the middle english circa instans. selim 13: 199–224. heimerl, christia ed. 2008: the middle english version of william of saliceto’s anatomia. a critical edition. based on cambridge, trinity college ms r. 14.41 with a parallel text of the medieval latin anatomia. edited from leipzig, universitätsbibliothek ms 1177 (middle english texts series, 39). heildelberg, universitätsverlag winter. litzler jerman, m. f. 2011: a corpus of middle english prologues in the sloane collection of the british library. (ph.d. dissertation.) las palmas, universidad de las palmas de gran canaria. marqués aguado, t. 2008: edition and philological study of g.u.l. ms hunter 513 (ff. 37v–96r). (ph.d. dissertation.) málaga, universidad de málaga. marqués aguado, t., a. miranda garcía & s. gonzález eds. 2008: the middle english ophthalmic treatise on the use of the eye in g.u.l. ms hunter 513 (ff. 1r–37r). málaga, servicio de publicaciones de la universidad de málaga. mcintosh, a., m. l. samuels & m. benskin, with the assistance of k. williamson & m. laing 1986: a linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english. aberdeen, aberdeen university press. middle english text series n.d.(a): about the series. st andrews, university of st andrews. https://met.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/ [accessed 21 january 2021]. middle english text series n.d.(b): guidelines for editors. st andrews, university of st andrews. http://met.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/files/2018/06/guidelines_for_editors. pdf [accessed 21 january 2021]. miranda garcía, a. & s. gonzález fernández-corugedo eds. 2012: benvenutus grassus’ on the well-proven art of the eye. practica oculorum & de probatissima arte oculorum. synoptic edition and philological studies (middle and early modern english texts, 1). frankfurt am main, peter lang. moreno ollala, d. ed. 2018: lelamour herbal (ms sloane 5, ff. 13r–57r). an annotated critical edition (middle and early modern english texts, 6). frankfurt am main, peter lang. obegi gallardo, n. 2012: estudio y edición de book of operation contenido en g.u.l. ms hunter 95, ff. 82r–155v (t.4.12). (ph.d. dissertation). málaga, universidad de málaga. the málaga corpus of late middle english scientific prose 2007–: about project. málaga, universidad de málaga. hunter.uma.es [accessed 21 january 2021]. the málaga corpus of early modern english scientific prose 2012–: the project. málaga, universidad de málaga. modernmss.uma.es [accessed 21 january 2021]. book reviews 187 vega déniz, a. m. 2009: a critical edition of glasgow university library, ms hunter 307 (ff. 149r–165v), with notes and glossary. (ph.d. dissertation.) las palmas, universidad de las palmas de gran canaria. voigts, l. e. & p. d. kurtz 2000: scientific and medical writings in old and middle english: an electronic reference – evk. ann arbor, university of michigan press. voigts, l. e. & p. d. kurtz 2006: scientific and medical writings in old and middle english: an electronic reference – evk2. ann arbor, university of michigan press. reviewer’s address departamento de filología inglesa facultad de letras universidad de murcia 30071 murcia (spain) e-mail: jcconde@um.es john garth 2020: the worlds of j. r. r. tolkien: the places that inspired middle-earth. london, frances lincoln. pp. 208. hardback. isbn 9780711241275. reviewed by stuart d. lee, university of oxford john garth is a well-established figure in the field of tolkien studies. he is probably best known for his seminal study of the writer’s early life and how these experiences helped shaped his mythology (tolkien and the great war: the threshold of middle-earth, 2004) but, in addition, has also published several articles on tolkien, not least his complementary study on tolkien’s time at exeter college as a student. understandably, then, when the announcement did the rounds on social media that he was soon to produce a book on tolkien’s ‘worlds’, there was considerable expectation —thankfully, we were not to be disappointed. the title of the book, however, poses an immediate question – what ‘worlds’ (notably plural) are being referred to? is this the world of arda, the host to tolkien’s middle-earth, and all the geographical changes it goes through during the development of the legendarium? is it the real world that we, and tolkien, inhabit? is it the historical events he witnessed or lived through —the 188 book reviews twentieth-century world that moved from edwardian to georgian and through two world wars? or is it the realms across which his imagination and scholarly work roamed —the ‘north’, or to be more exact, the ‘north-west of europe’ in the middle ages with all of its languages and literature and myths that tolkien encountered in his studies and reading? the answer, as the reader discovers, is all of these. the book opens by quoting tolkien’s objection that many people did not realise that his arda is in fact our own planet (and ‘heavens’). this immediately makes it clear that the thrust of the book will be a comparison of here (earth) and there (mainly middle-earth). garth seeks then to intertwine tolkien’s sub-created world with the real world and real world events (often those tolkien personally witnessed). in addition, it is the real world as seen in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but also that of the medieval (and classical) world, and the changing landscape over the millennia. this, then, is not a simple travel guide that takes us through south africa, sarehole, leeds, and oxford. instead it is a detailed and enlightening tapestry of ideas —some undeniable, some suggested as possibilities— that traverses time, and the boundaries between history and myth. the dominating theme of the book is ‘place’, and at its core are key topographical features. the first chapter, “england to the shire”, in part gives us some biographical details of tolkien’s childhood, but in so doing sets the message of the book by positioning us immediately in the fictional shire and looking out beyond its boundaries, but also in the shires of england. whilst the village of sarehole and countryside of warwickshire where tolkien grew up dominated his vision for the hobbits’ shire, this is not the whole story, and we are taken by garth to 1923, with tom bombadil’s emergence, to see how oxfordshire, through a simple but effective analysis of placenames, also blended with these early influences to produce the topography of that area of middleearth. as with the rest of the book, ideas leap off the page at the reader. for example, we are asked to consider how similar might the hobbit-holes be to icelandic turf-houses? or could ‘the hill’ in the shire be influenced by popular images from a contemporary advertising campaign for shell? chapter two, “four winds”, uses the intriguing framework of the north, south, west, east winds to show the influences of the ‘blow-in’ myths from the germanic world, the classical world, the celtic world, and the middle east respectively. chapter three, “the land of lúthien: from faërie to britain”, allows garth to engage with the complex changes in tolkien’s thinking around the links between the geographical features of middle-earth and europe (as the book reviews 189 former morphs to the latter), the history of tol eressëa (the island of the elves), and the interweaving with anglo-saxon history. garth utilises a simple, but very effective method here to illustrate the argument: that of overlaying maps of middle-earth (notably eriador) on those of north-west europe and britain to show how one became the other. it is an excellent example of how a concept (in this case one which many readers struggle to imagine) can be made more understandable by the use of a simple graphic. the next four chapters focus on elements in the natural world and parallels with tolkien’s created landscapes. we move from “the shore and the sea”, to “roots of the mountains”, “rivers, lakes and waterlands”, and conclude with “tree-woven lands”. the key points one would expect are all here, but in addition garth poses (and answers) all kinds of questions (e.g. the location of the mythical dorwinion, or the origin of the name radagast). again intriguing ideas are raised: for example, could tolkien’s glimpse of tenerife as a boy have been an inspiration for other volcano-centred islands in his mythology? moving on from the natural world, we engage with the man-made landscape through four chapters —“ancient imprints”, “watch and ward”, “places of war”, and “craft and industry”. space does not allow a thorough review of each chapter so i will simply focus on one of these: “ancient imprints”. the chapter opens with a quote from tolkien on the joys of walking through ancient archaeological sites and the “alliance of philologia and archaeologia”. we then move quickly to a brief discussion of the placename fawler that tolkien encountered and his joy in discovering its roots in the old english fág flór. we are then presented with one of tolkien’s early illustrations —“before” (1911– 1912)— reminding us that tolkien was an accomplished artist, an area that often, alongside his poetry, is overshadowed by his fiction. this depicted a stylised trilithon entrance, which garth proposes were influenced either by illustrations in rider haggard’s ayesha –the return of she, or by images of the barrows at uley and west kennet. noting that folklore often suggested fairies lived in such barrows, garth uses this to lead into a discussion of tolkien’s engagement with earlier theories around a “pygmy” race of ancient people that first inhabited the british isles —a theory garth suggests tolkien quite rightly dismissed and indeed parodied with his hobbits. a good example of the way the author handles suggested influences emerges with his discussion of lake-town. noting a real-life ‘lake-town fever’ in the mid-nineteenth century that possibly rippled down later on to tolkien through artistic impressions of discoveries in switzerland, garth observes that models of these recovered villages were on display both in the swiss national museum 190 book reviews during tolkien’s visit in 1911 (citing bridoux) but also (possibly) in the ashmolean in oxford around the time when the hobbit (which features the settlement) was beginning to take shape. we then progress to a detailed analysis of the barrow-wights that appear in the lord of the rings and the links with the discoveries in maiden castle in dorset; and the chapter is completed with discussions of the influences that possibly led to the giant stone sculptures of tolkien’s argonath, and what impact the real-life white horse of uffington may have had on the writer. the style and feel of the book may come as a surprise to those more used to monographs with very few images and denser prose. the typesetting is more spaced, and the book is replete with wonderful illustrations throughout (nearly no page goes without a photograph, painting, or map). however, one should not be deceived into thinking this is in any way a less serious piece of scholarship. as noted earlier, the engagement with source material and the apparatus and further reading attest to the rigour here. furthermore, it is clear that the subject matter (place) and tone (accessible) lend themselves to a less formal style. the successful making of comparisons, explanation of complex points, and suggesting influences (the modus operandi of the book) through the use of a carefully selected graphic is demonstrated amply throughout. moreover, the style of the book allows the author to use ‘pop-outs’ (small separate windows of texts) where a point may have been more difficult to weave succinctly into the main narrative. in the chapter discussed above, a good example of this is the insert on “doom-rings”. in a standard monograph this may have been relegated to a footnote (and thus overlooked), but here it is highlighted by a different shaded box and the reader’s eye is drawn instinctively towards it. as a result they are then rewarded with a discussion of doom/moot-rings, as seen both in icelandic sagas and also in the wanderings of húrin. this is an impressive book that will be read and reread by both tolkien scholars and interested members of the public alike. the production value is second-to-none and it now sits on my bookshelf alongside the equally impressive catalogues from the recent exhibitions on tolkien in oxford and paris. reviewer’s address faculty of english language & literature st cross building, manor road oxford, ox1 3ul (uk) e-mail: stuart.lee@ell.ox.ac.uk book reviews 191 maria dahvana headley 2020: beowulf: a new translation. new york, mcd x fsg originals. pp. xxxiv + 140. isbn: 9780374110031. £9.99. reviewed by alison e. killilea, independent scholar in the course of beowulf’s translation history, we have seen hundreds of translations of the early medieval poem, from john kemble’s first translation in 1837 to one of the most recent offerings by maria dahvana headley. of course, while headley’s iteration is one of among hundreds of translations of beowulf, it is one of only a handful of translations by women. the history of beowulf translation by female scholars and poets began in 1899 with clara linklater thomson’s abridged version of the poem; since then, we have seen translations by constance hieatt, marijane osborn, ruth lehmann, and meghan purvis, among others. the addition to this small tradition is very welcome, especially one that has really captured the popular imagination with rave reviews in publications like the new yorker and by authors such as neil gaiman and margaret atwood. in a field that has been dominated by male scholars and poets (mclemore 2021), headley’s success may hopefully stir encouragement in more women to pursue beowulf as a topic of research. headley’s translation begins as it means to go on; bold and daring in its use of modern slang and internet-culture language: “bro! tell me we still know how to speak of kings!”. she displays a confidence in her work that bursts through the lines of verse and which is also particularly evident in her introduction, where she tells us of her love affair with beowulf, which, like my own, started with grendel’s mother, a character who fascinated headley enough to go on to write the much-acclaimed the mere wife in 2018. the introduction succinctly and successfully describes the complexity of a poem that appears simple at first glance: “an intricate treatise on morality, masculinity, flexibility, and failure” in which “old men try to plot out how to retire in a world that offers no retirement”, “[q]ueens negotiate for the survival of their sons, attempt to save their children by marrying themselves to warriors, and, in one case, battle for vengeance on their son’s murderers” (pp. viii-ix). headley also argues the point that beowulf is not just a poem of the past, but it is one whose message and meaning are relevant in the twenty-first century: “the poem, is after all, a poem about wilfully blinkered privilege, about the shock and horror of experiencing discomfort when one feels entitled to luxury” (p. x). headley is correct in expressing the fact that some of the messages in beowulf are relevant even today, although the idea of privilege and “shock and horror when one feels entitled to 192 book reviews luxury” may be somewhat overstated and anachronistic, given that this is a society which frequently experiences discomfort in terms of various conflicts. it is important to note that translation is subjective and a matter of re-interpretation. this is iterated by headley, who notes that “what the translated text says is a matter of study, interpretation, and poetic leaps of faith. every translator translates this poem differently” (p. xv). we must also remember both the crucial relevance of audience and particulars of who translations are aimed at. it is important therefore to pay attention to both the potential audience of the reading culture and the author’s intended audience. john crane provides a sort of rubric for categorising types of translations in “to thwack or be thwacked” (1970–1971), outlining four different categories of translation: those intended for general readers, those for the non-specialist student, translations intended for the specialist with a background in old english, and lastly, those that are produced as a new work of art, for example those by edwin morgan and thomas meyer. headley’s translation, i believe, fits somewhere between the first and fourth categories, intended for the general reader and also as a new work of art; praise by those like margaret atwood, kelly link, and carmen maria nachado suggest that this is a text to be enjoyed by the casual reader, and the bold cover art also suggests a less scholarly and more artistic intended audience. as crane (1970–1971: 339) also notes, “most current translations of beowulf have some merit, as long as the merit is realised within the terms established for it by the translator himself”, or indeed herself or themself. in this regard, headley’s aim was to render the story “continuously and clearly, while also creating a text that feels as bloody and juicy as [she thought] it ought to be” (p. xvi). in a manner that may be described as more instinctual than academic, headley says that she spent “a lot of time imagining the narrator as an old-timer at the end of the bar, periodically pounding his glass and demanding another” (p. xvi). headley’s aims, then, are “poetic voice and communicative clarity” (p. xx) and these she achieves, with a translation that is easy to digest for those both familiar and unfamiliar with the poem and one that, for the most part, captures the reader with beautifully rendered alliterative imagery. consider, for example, headley’s translation of lines 157–162: ringless, grendel’s fingers, kingless, his country. be it wizened vizier or beardless boy, he hunted them across foggy moors, an owl book reviews 193 mist-diving for mice, grist-grinding their tails in his teeth. a hellion’s home is anywhere good men fear to tread; who knows the dread this marauder mapped? this is a translation of the old english: ac se æglaca ehtende wæs, deorc deaþ-scua, duguþe ond geogoþe seomade ond syrede; sin-nihte heold, mistige moras; men ne cunnon hwyder hel-runan hwyrftum scriþað (ll. 159–163) there is no doubt some looseness to the translation here with the addition of “ringless, grendel’s fingers, kingless, his country” and the detail concerning the owl, but headley is not the first to expand on the old english, and indeed, it is not aimed as a direct, scholarly edition. we see this throughout beowulf’s translation history, such as burton raffel’s addition of “dripping claws” to grendel’s mother (2008: ll. 1294–1295) or heaney’s addition of “powerless” in a scene describing grendel (2002: ll. 962–965). of course, there are sections here, as in other translations, where additions to the text arguably change the intention of the poem, or are inserted with a specific agenda; for example, we see the addition of one line after l. 52 of the old english text, where headley includes “but the poor are plentiful, and somebody got lucky”, and the addition of two full lines after l. 125 of the old english text, after grendel has seized thirty men before returning to his home. headley includes “for the danes had slept sweetly in a world that had woken him, benefited from bounty, even as they’d broken him” (p. 8). these lines are no doubt a reflection of headley’s view of the poem being about “wilfully blinkered privilege” (p. x), or as the backmatter claims, “a tale of entitlement and encroachment”, and the second addition here holds the suggestion of a post-colonial reading, reminiscent of heaney’s translation which casts the grendel-kin as the dispossessed irish. indeed, headley makes reference to colonialism in the context of her own us homeland, as well as the everincreasing plight of refugees who are claimed by the current day heremods to be “criminals, monsters” (p. xxxi), in a clear parallel to the grendel-kin. this is no doubt a beowulf for the twenty-first century, and one which seeks, as do the majority of translations and adaptations, to use the old english poem as a 194 book reviews foundation on which to lay down criticisms and anxieties surrounding the society, politics, and culture of our current day. we see also some additions to the text and some arguably very free translation when it comes to the character of beowulf himself; along the lines of meghan purvis’s (2013) translation, beowulf is cast as somewhat of a “fratbro” and an epitome of toxic masculinity. in l. 1268 we see his strength, the “gimfæste gife ðe him god sealed” (‘the ample gift that god had given him’), rendered as “beowulf saw himself as god’s gift”. similarly, “beowulf […] nalles for ealdre mearn” (l. 1442, ‘beowulf […] worried not for his life’) is translated by headley as “meanwhile, beowulf gave zero shits”. nowhere is this more evident than in his first beot, or boast, to hrothgar —“[…] because where i’m from? i’m the strongest and the boldest, and the bravest and the best […] anyone who fucks with the geats? bro, they have to fuck with me” (ll. 416–421). while these lines are not an exact translation of the old english text, they do sum up the general feeling often felt by students of the poem who are unused to the function of the ritualised boast. to a twenty-first century ear, the beot sounds an overly wrought and ridiculous expression of arrogance, and one that many may associate with the performative toxicity of masculine behaviour, such as mma (mixed martial arts) trash-talking. while the beot may not have been composed in a satirical fashion by the poet, there are some hints that beowulf’s, and indeed heorot’s, patriarchal response to threat is subtly criticised in the repeated allusions to future failures and feuds and arguably in the danes’ response to grendel’s mother (see trilling 2007). headley’s construction therefore, is not without licence, albeit for some may be a bit excessive and unsubtle. this brings us to the opening of the translation, and a big selling point for headley’s beowulf, her translation of hwæt: “bro!”. as headley notes herself in her introduction, “bro” is used to keep us thinking about “the ways that men can afford (or deny) one another power and safety by using coded language, and erase women from power structures by speaking collegially only to other men” (p. xxi). of course, this is also a way of “satirizing a certain form of inflated, overconfident, aggressive male behaviour”. some confusion arises in the use of “bro” and the voices that wield this word and similar language —while it makes sense for beowulf and the thanes to use this coded language, i am not so confident in its use by a narrator who, in headley’s translation, is critical of these characters and their privilege, and who is openly sympathetic towards the grendel-kin. the use of “bro” would work better if its use was restricted only to the more problematic and hyper-masculine characters of the poem, as there book reviews 195 appears to be a confusion between the narrator and headley as it currently stands. while the use of slang and internet-culture language created much hype on platforms like twitter, when passages of the translation were initially released, this, for some readers, may also be its weak point. the majority of the poem is composed in beautiful language that evokes a solemn and transient feel embodied by so many old english poems that other translations often fail at achieving, but the occasional “bro”, “shit-season”, “zero shits”, “daddy”,11 and “hashtag: blessed”, is jarring for the reader. for example, the passages following grendel’s mother’s attack on heorot are filled with some of the most atmospheric language in the translation: it’s not far from here, the mere but it’s a world away, a forest frosted even in green months, old wood, wicked and well-rooted. water reflects trees like tangled teeth, a gaping maw that, at night, is lit with flames in the flood. no one’s ever touched the bottom. no one born of man, anyway. men can’t go in. even animals, a heath-hopping hart, held to mere’s edge by hounds, would sooner spin on hooves and fight, lower horns, and ready itself for death than step upon that stinking sod and dive into the dark. this is a bad place. waves roil, and taste the sky’s edge, winds gust, clouds spit and spark, and when it storms, mere mixes with mist, geysers up, and heaven moans. (ll. 1361–1374) this is followed soon after by the description of the mere-creatures, slung by a bowman’s arrow: this monster they could control. they cornered it, clubbed it, tugged it onto the rocks, stillbirthed it from its mere-mother, deemed it damned, and made of it a miscarriage. they examined its entrails, awed and aggrieved. (ll. 1436–1440) 11 the use of “daddy” throughout the translation is confusing. given that much of the slang reflects 2000s internet culture, “daddy” often has a sexual connotation, popular in “e-girl” terminology and pornography. in headley’s translation it is referring to fatherhood. 196 book reviews this is followed in the next line by “meanwhile, beowulf gave zero shits”, quite an unsettling sentence compared to the atmospheric description of the mere leading up to it. this has a rather abrasive effect while reading, and the flow of the more elegiac, yet still extremely engaging and readable, passages is pulled from under us. the fact that some of these phrases only appear every few pages only exacerbates the jolting effect they have on the text. of course, this may be a purposeful effect, never allowing the reader to fully feel comfortable in this text, which encompasses an uncomfortable and complex world. however, i feel that the translation would have been stronger if headley committed more wholeheartedly to the use of slang, or left it out altogether. what drew headley to beowulf in the first place was the alluring character of grendel’s mother, and much of the focus in the introduction is on her character and on the disservice done to her by previous translations. headley questions some of these choices, such as the translation of aglæca and brimwylf, and no doubt these are some of the terms which led to her “unearth[ing] significant shifts in the understanding of the poem over the centuries, discovering lost nuances and long-ignored dynamics”, as is asserted on the blurb. headley correctly asserts that aglæca is more likely to mean “formidable” (or, “formidable one” even more correctly, given that it is a noun), and that ides aglæc-wif is more accurate as “formidable noblewoman”.12 while the blurb notes that this is a “radical new verse translation of the epic poem, which brings to light elements that have never before been rendered into modern english”, i fail to easily find these elements never before translated — while grendel and grendel’s mother have historically been translated unfairly, john mitchell kemble’s (1837) translation may be described as just as humanising as headley’s.13 the only exceptions appear to be in terms like atolan clommum (l. 1503a), translated by kemble as “foul claws”, but untranslated by headley, and grundhyrde gryrelice (l. 2136), which by kemble is rendered “savage abyss-keeper of the mere”, but once more, left ignored by headley. another term that is treated questionably by headley is grundwyrgen[ne] (l. 1518b), often 12 this is most notably argued by sherman kuhn (1979), who asserted that it should be translated as “female warrior”. 13 it is of course pertinent to mention kemble’s role in the nationalisation of the poem. as catherine karkov (2019) notes, “john mitchell kemble, the first to translate beowulf into modern english, saw the poem as a direct link back to ‘our’ ancestors, and used his translation to cast the poem as a national narrative and reimagined the nation in the image of the poem”. book reviews 197 translated in monstrous terms, but which i would argue has the translation of “outlaw of the earth”.14 this is translated by headley as “reclusive night-queen”. as a feminist translation, which claims to uncover new elements, the avoidance and mistranslation of terms concerning grendel’s mother is somewhat misleading and rather disappointing. this brings us to the question of whether or not maria dahvana headley’s translation is worth the hype: yes, but not for the reasons it has gained such momentum online, rather for the phrasing and imagery that intersperse the instances of slang. her verse constantly captures the reader with pleasant and often perturbing language and certainly outshines many translations of the poem in this regard. while i would not agree that this should be used in a scholarly setting as a main text, i think it would serve excellently in a class focused on translation theory. in conclusion, headley offers us an exciting and engaging poetic translation of beowulf, which is unfortunately let down in parts by its use of internet slang. while there are moments of unfaithfulness to the poem, perhaps rendering this a “reading” rather than a “translation”, it is of course necessary to accept that numerous translations also stray from the old english text quite substantially, and this, as ever, can be disappointing. in describing how she did not want to apply a false metre to beowulf, headley says that she does not want “to graft peach branches to a cactus”. however, to riff on this metaphor, headley’s translation unfortunately feels like a peach which has been bristled by the cactus pricks of modern slang, which at times makes unpleasant an otherwise juicy and substantial translation. nevertheless, it is worth a read to experience headley’s poetic rendering of the language, which is truly captivating. references crane, j. k. 1970–1971: “to thwack or be thwacked”: an evaluation of available translations and editions of beowulf. college english 32: 3321–3340. 14 grundwygen[ne] is a combination of grund, ‘ground’, and wyrgenne, a derivation of the verb wirgan or wyrgan. wirgan and wyrgan are both from proto-germanic *wurgjan, ‘to strangle’ (kroonen). wyrgan is linked by skeat to the noun wearg (or werg, wearh), ‘i. of human beings, a villain, felon, scoundrel, criminal … ii. of other creatures, a monster, malignant being, evil spirit’. 198 book reviews heaney, s. trans. 2002. beowulf: a verse translation. london & new york: w. w. norton. karkov, c. 2019: post ‘anglo-saxon’ melancholia. medium https://medium.com/@ catherinekarkov/post-anglo-saxon-melancholia-ca73955717d3 (10 december). kemble, j. m. 1833: a translation of the anglo-saxon poems of beowulf, the travellers song and the battle of finnesburg. london, william pickering. kroonen, g. 2009: etymological dictionary of proto-germanic. brill online dictionaries, http://dictionaries.brillonline.com/proto-germanic kuhn, s. m. 1979: old english aglaeca-middle irish oclach. in i. rauch & g. f. car eds. linguistic method: essays in honor of herbert penzl. berlin, mouton: 213–230. mclemore, e. 2021: grendel’s mother eats man, woman inherits the epic: why women should continue teaching beowulf. medieval studies research blog, university of notre dame (28 april 2021). raffel, b. trans. 2008: beowulf. london, signet. trilling, r. 2007: the problem with grendel’s mother again. paregron 24.1: 1–20. reviewer’s address independent scholar e-mail: ali.killilea@gmail.com olga timofeeva, selim 23 (2018): 55–85. issn 1132-631x mid ðare soðe luue ðe is icleped karite: pastoral care and lexical innovation in the thirteenth century olga timofeeva university of zurich the religious life of western europe around 1200 saw a remarkable re-orientation towards greater emphasis on moral instruction of the laity, especially, following the decisions of the fourth lateran council (1215) and the spread of the mendicant orders from the 1220s onwards (d’avray 1985: 13–16). it was now obligatory that the christians of both sexes confessed their sins and received the communion at least once a year (jones 2011: 2–3). obliged to preach, instruct, receive confessions, and perform other spiritual ministrations in the vernacular, the clergy had to approach these tasks with an arsenal of english religious terminology that could name and explain the persons of the trinity, the main points of the creed, the seven deadly sins, the sacraments, the ten commandments, the formulas used in confession and baptism, and so on. in one of the key subdomains of the religious lexis —terminology for vices and virtues— a peculiar division of vocabulary along etymological lines was taking shape: english-based lexemes were used to denote sins (greediness, lust, sloth, wrath), whereas lexemes to denote virtues were predominantly french in origin (charity, chastity, diligence, humility, patience, temperance). whether these distributions have a sociolinguistic dimension is addressed in this paper. in particular, i aim at establishing the patterns that have determined survival and loss of old (english) lexemes and adoption of new (french) ones. i take into account frequencies of individual old english terms (if available) in the dictionary of old english web corpus (doec) and track geographic distributions of old and new terms in early middle english, by means of a linguistic atlas of early middle english (laeme) mapping function. as in my previous study (timofeeva 2018), lexical change in the religious domain is reconstructed against the social changes within the church, such as the new ways of pastoral instruction and preaching, by examining the specificity of social networks within the clergy and between the clergy and secular communities. 56 olga timofeeva keywords: old english; middle english; anglo-norman; latin; avarice; greed; charity; social networks; receptive competence 1. introduction the pastoral care and devotional practices in england began to change already in the last decades of the twelfth century. the religious life of western europe around 1200 in general saw a remarkable re-orientation towards greater emphasis on moral instruction of the laity, especially, following the decisions of the fourth lateran council (1215) and the spread of the mendicant orders from the 1220s onwards (d’avray 1985: 13–16). it was now obligatory that the christians of both sexes confessed their sins and received the communion at least once a year (jones 2011: 2–3). they were commonly required “to know and be examined on the creeds, the pater noster, the commandments and the deadly sins, sometimes supplemented by the sacraments and later joined by the ave maria” (gillespie 2004: 129). the duty of pastoral instruction in these matters and the explanation of the key christian concepts fell on parish priests, cathedral clergy in cities, monks and friars in both urban and rural communities (jones 2011: 4–5). although there is evidence of vernacular preaching even before 1200, e.g. accounts about bishops and abbots undertaking “preaching tours”, and although parish priests were expected to perform sermons on a weekly basis, the growing demand for large-scale popular preaching was answered in particular by the mendicant orders (d’avray 1985: 16). both the dominicans (established in england in 1221) and the franciscans (in 1224) saw preaching as central to their mission: from the earliest years, friars travelled extensively throughout christendom and far beyond it, preaching wherever opportunity arose […] both orders rapidly established an impressive network of schools to train men for preaching and other pastoral work, and members of both orders played a leading role in devising and producing aids for preachers. (jones 2011: 5) unlike parish priests and the majority of traditional monks, who were bound to their local and monastic communities and seldom travelled outside them, the mendicant orders encouraged and expected their brothers to be mobile both for the sake of their own education and for the edification of others (o’carroll 1980). in terms of linguistic norms this difference would suggest pastoral care and lexical innovation 57 that traditional clergy was characterised by strong ties within local communities and, hence, by more conservative professional terminology. the friars, on the other hand, surpassing all other orders and secular clergy in their geographical and social adjustability would have to be characterised by weak ties and, hence, by more innovative lexis and more potential to spread to it among the uneducated classes (ingham 2018, timofeeva 2018). these tendencies were probably more pronounced in the early decades of the thirteenth-century reforms. as university education was expanding to incorporate wider ecclesiastical layers and city schools were getting increasingly more accessible to the laity (orme 2006: 189–217), the routes of introduction and the patterns of diffusion of new french-based vocabulary were also becoming more complex. that french was indeed a more common source of religious vocabulary may look counterintuitive —after all latin was the universal language of the church in the west, including the most basic level of common prayers and the mass— and requires some explanation. firstly, the predominance of french as a source language in this domain is in line with general accounts of lexical growth through borrowing in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which register a much greater portion of french loans than loans from any other language up to around 1400 (dekeyser 1986, chase 1988, coleman 1995, durkin 2014). secondly, when we take the preachers’ perspective, we have to bear in mind that french was used as a vehicle language for grammar-school teaching in england throughout the thirteenth century and probably until c. 1375 (ingham 2012, 2015). functional command of french was thus typical for all clerics who had completed at least the trivium (orme 1973: 71–78; ingham 2012, 2015) and would still be useful during the study of the upper liberal arts, philosophy and theology, especially, if one was educated at a clerical university like oxford or paris, where french was presumably used as a lingua franca between the nations. paris was typically also the centre from which friars reached england and from which sermon collections and other preaching aids diffused all across europe. although these collections were transmitted predominantly in latin, it is not uncommon for sermon manuscripts to also include material in continental french, anglo-norman, and english (fletcher 2009: 11–31), reflecting the multilingual settings, in which preaching aids were produced and in which preachers had to perform, switching between different languages and layers of society. thirdly, when we take the audience’s perspective, we also have to acknowledge that preachers specifically targeted urban communities, where people, money for alms, and 58 olga timofeeva sins concentrated. the demand for good preachers in cities, whose populations of educated layfolk —primarily merchants and lawyer— were gradually increasing, was also high (d’avray 1985: 30–32). lay education, again, presupposed french proficiency sufficient to follow instruction in grammar schools and more than acceptable to attend sermons delivered in english with some francophone lexis. obliged to preach, instruct, receive confessions, and perform other spiritual ministrations in the vernacular, the clergy had to approach these tasks with an arsenal of english religious terminology that could name and explain the persons of the trinity, the main points of the creed, the seven deadly sins, the sacraments, the ten commandments, the formulas used in confession and baptism, and so on. in many cases established english terms were already available, e.g. father, son, holy ghost, god, almighty; others were getting obsolete, e.g. drihten ‘lord’, sheppend ‘creator’, helend ‘jesus; saviour’ (timofeeva 2018); yet others were being borrowed from french, e.g. deliverer, saveour, persone, seint. a predilection to romance lexis, already observable in the thirteenth century, develops further, especially, during the reformation, and into the later periods. the peak of lexical growth (and obsolescence), however, is recorded in the seventeenth century, together with a surge of devotional and theological writing, leading to a kind of standardisation of religious vocabulary and relative stability in the eighteenth. the last peak of the nineteenth century is less relevant here, as it reflects the growth of semantic fields associated with secular spirituality, atheism and religious traditions outside the christianity (chase 1988: 485–497). in one of its key subdomains (terminology for vices and virtues) this standardisation leads to a peculiar division of lexis along etymological lines: in modern english, lexemes that denote sins are predominantly english —greed (1609), lust (c. 888), sloth (c. 1175), wrath (c. 900)—, whereas those that denote virtues are predominantly french —charity (1154, but see below), chastity (c. 1225), diligence (1340), humility (c. 1315), patience (c. 1225), temperance (1340).1 moreover, while with sin-lexemes there is a lot of variation and competition between middle english (me) terms within the individual subdomains (e.g. ‘wrath’ can be expressed by erre, wemodnesse, mod, grame, gramcundnesse, wraþþe, wraþhede, 1 the dates of the first attestations are taken from the oxford english dictionary (oed), although these may often be at variance with the middle english dictionary (med), corpora, and secondary literature. pastoral care and lexical innovation 59 braþþe, etc., cf. also htoed anger 02.04.12 n.) and between english and french terms (ire and erour), which continues into the later periods, the first attestation dates of virtue-lexemes suggest that the french terms became relatively established already in the early me period. whether these distributions have a sociolinguistic dimension is addressed in the following sections. the processes of lexical resilience, obsolescence, and replacement, as i am going to argue, were far from random. this study attempts to establish the patterns that have determined survival and loss of old lexemes and adoption of new ones. it takes into account frequencies of individual old english (oe) terms (if available) in the dictionary of old english web corpus (doec) and tracks geographic distributions of old and new terms in early me, by means of the linguistics atlas of early middle english (laeme) mapping function. as in my previous study (timofeeva 2018), lexical change in the religious domain is reconstructed against the social changes within the church, such as the new ways of pastoral instruction and preaching, by examining the specificity of social networks within the clergy and between the clergy and secular communities. i consider one subdomain of religious vocabulary closely: terms that have to do with the deadly sin of greed and its theological opposite, the virtue of charity, by listing all available lexemes between oe and 1325 (the end point of laeme) registered by the historical thesaurus of english (htoed) and the thesaurus of old english (toe), and checking their individual entries in the dictionary of old english (doe), middle english dictionary (med), oxford english dictionary (oed), and the anglo-norman dictionary online (and). i then relate my lists to previous diachronic studies of religious lexis (käsmann 1961, chase 1988) and offer a sociolinguistic reconstruction of lexical conservatism or innovation and diffusion within the chosen semantic fields. although the deadly sins (and their respective virtues) had been important topoi in moral theology since the early days of christianity (bloomfield 1967, wenzel 1968, newhauser 2000, newhauser & ridyard 2012), in the period between around 1130 to 1275, they become the central theme of scholastic psychology and “the most widely used scheme according to which a priest was taught to ask about the sins of his penitent, or a christian, to examine his conscience” (wenzel 1968: 13). the most prominent theologians of this period —hugh of st. victor (1096–1141), robert grosseteste (c. 1170–1253), alexander of hales (c. 1185–1245), john of la rochelle (c. 1200–1245), albertus magnus (c. 1200–1280), bonaventure (1221–1274), and thomas 60 olga timofeeva aquinas (1225–1274), most of them either franciscans or dominicans— were trying to establish the concatenation (order and kinship) of the sins and their opposites, the psychological rationale for the corruption of the soul in relation to the body, reason and will, and the symbolic rationale that connected the vices and virtues to physiology, elements of the body and planets (wenzel 1968: 4–12). echoes of these intellectual debates can be heard in the early history of me. many treatises, e.g. the vices and virtues or the ayenbite of inwyt, deal explicitly with the terminology for the vices and virtues, their definitions, hierarchies, and categories, while homilies, saints’ lives, and many narrative genres, from the ormulum to the cursor mundi, discuss the vices and virtues in their own right and as part of exempla and anecdotes (newhauser 1993: 142–150). with various religious genres and bible translations and commentaries constituting over 500,000 words, or 79 per cent of the laeme corpus (gardner 2014: 44–45), the history of these concepts is largely representative of the major trends in lexical change in the surviving record of early me. moreover, the history of the terminology for sins and vices, in particular, gives us important insights into the circulation of these lexemes among the uneducated classes, for, although those were not the immediate audience of the major treatises, confession and penance were regular practices for all social strata, and the lexemes that are used as unflagged and unmarked in the texts must be generally representative of common linguistic competence, at least at its receptive end. the choice of the individual concepts for this study, in turn, is conditioned by their emblematic development within the greater semantic field of vices and virtues. charity has a typical story of a french term that comes to replace an older and established oe lexeme. it is also one of the earliest french loans among virtue-terms. sin-lexemes, on the other hand, tend to be germanic, and, if there is variation between an english word like greediness and a romance word like avarice, it is typically that of register and productive vs. receptive competence of english speakers. the two theological opposites are, furthermore, central to the history of medieval moral thought, for just like charity was heralded as the greatest of the three virtues (faith, hope, and charity) by st paul (1 cor 13.13) and st augustine (enchiridion 31.117), greed was condemned as the root of all evil (1 tim 6.10) and from the fourth century to the end of the early middle ages continued to head the list of vices, especially for those authors “who were engaged in the task of converting the newly european aristocracy from pagan materialism to christian pastoral care and lexical innovation 61 spirituality” (newhauser 2000: xiv, 99–100). the rejection of possessions by the dominicans and franciscans in the early thirteenth century brought avarice and charity once more to the fore of theological moral debate and required vernacular preachers to develop new rhetorical and linguistic ways of dealing with the two antipodes. 2. analysis 2.1. charity in patristic sources, following st paul’s nunc autem manet fides, spes, caritas tria haec; maior autem his est caritas (1 cor 13.13), the term caritas emerges as prototypical for the ‘love for god’. although for authors like augustine of hippo (354–430) and benedict of nursia (c. 480–550) it is often interchangeable with amor and dilectio (weigand 2011), caritas becomes standard in the nomenclature of virtues, that undergoes codification at about the same time, and is an established term among the theologians of the anglo-saxon period (zöckler 1904: 124–129). caritas dei had a redemptive role for the christian soul and allowed it to prevail over excessive love for worldly pleasures and possessions, typically expressed by cupiditas (see below). in the history of english, love, charity has had several names, whose emergence, replacement, and obsolescence between oe and 1325 is traced in this section. in the htoed, we find charity in all three main categories: 01 the world, 02 the mind, and 03 society. while today we mainly associate charity with benevolent behaviour towards the needy or suffering (category 03), and it is indeed in the context of alms-diving that the lexeme charity is attested for the first time in the peterborough chronicle around 1154 (see below), in the middle ages, charity is also a more abstract notion, a theological virtue of ‘man’s love of god and his neighbour’, which in the modern categorisation of the htoed places charity somewhere among the social manifestations of the mind in its relation to the physical world. accordingly, charity is also part of 02.04 emotion > 02.04.13 love > 02.04.13.17 christian love, whose subfields 17.03 man’s love of god and his neighbour and 17.04 christian love of fellow men are covered exclusively by the latin caritas 1862 —and its french reflexes charity c. 1175— and karité c. 1200. in category 01 the world > 01.15 62 olga timofeeva action/operation > 01.15.21 behaviour, charity is included in one of the subcategories of kindness — 01.15.21.04.02.06 loving-kindness, represented by soþlufu oe, charity a1225–, and loving-kindness 1535–. in the toe, charity is a subfield in its own right, placed in 16 religion > 16.02.01 faith > 16.02.01.12 spirituality > 16.02.01.12.04 a cardinal virtue > 16.02.01.12.04.01.01 charity. this subfield features two lexemes: siblufu ‘peace-love’ and sōþlufu ‘true-love’. of these the former compound occurs exclusively in poetry and only in alliterating positions (4 occurrences), while the latter is attested mostly in glosses (10 out of 13 occurrences, but see also (seo) soþ(e) lufu as phrase below). the emotional aspect of charity is classified under 08 emotion > 08.01.02 disposition towards others > 08.01.02.02 love, affection, care > 08.01.02.02.04 love, caritas, with lexemes brōþorlufu ‘brotherly-love’, lufu, and sibgeornes ‘peace-eagerness’. of these <broðerlvfv> is restricted to glosses in the durham ritual (2 occurrences), while <sybgeornes> has a single attestation in one of the homilies by wulfstan (whom 10c). of the five oe lexemes recorded in the toe, only lufu has continuity in me, and also beyond; soþlufu survives in me as a phrase (the) soþ(e) luue rather than an univerbated noun. more frequent phrasal equivalents of caritas, however, are not included in the two thesauri. it is to their analysis in oe and me that i now turn. sermons on the vices and virtues were by no means an entirely new genre in the thirteenth century. english expositions on this subject are known from at least the time of ælfric (c. 950–c. 1010), while the beginning of the ‘codification’ of the vices and virtues in the christian west can be dated to the psychomachia by prudentius (348–413), an allegorical battle between vices and virtues (bloomfield 1967: 64–67). for many vernacular texts, it is typical to introduce the terms in latin, gloss them in english, and then provide an exposition. ælfric’s definition of the virtue of charity in his homily on the memory of saints is reminiscent of st paul: (1) nu synd ðreo heahmægnu, ðe menn sceolan habban, fides, spes, caritas, þæt is geleafa and hiht and seo soðe lufu […] þæt is seo soðe lufv, þæt man his scyppend lufige mid unametenre lufe, and ða menn þe wel willað, swa swa hine sylfne on soðfæstnysse æfre. for godes lufon we sceolon eac lufian ure fynd, swa þæt we ðone man lufian, and his misdæda onscunian. (æls (memory of saints) ll. 246–257) pastoral care and lexical innovation 63 ‘now there are three main-virtues, which men must have, fides, spes, caritas, that is, faith, and hope, and true love […] this is true love, when a man loves his creator with unmeasured love, and those people who wish [him] well, even as [he loves] himself, in sincerity forever. for god’s love we shall also love our enemies, so that we love the man, but hate his misdeeds.’ (based on translation by skeat 1966: 353, 355) ælfric goes on to introduce the deadly sins and other virtues with whose help the vices can be overcome. each time he repeats the same procedure: a latin term, its english gloss, and exposition. this homily appears in the lives of saints commissioned by and dedicated to ealdorman æthelweard and accompanied also by a latin preface, which suggests both secular aristocratic, secular clerical, but also monastic audiences who might have studied the work siue legendo, siue audiendo (stephenson 2015). in this potentially mixed reception context, ælfric still deems it necessary to introduce the latin terms first, if only to replace them with english equivalents later on. seo soþe lufu (or soþ lufu) ‘true love’ is a frequent equivalent for caritas in the oe glossatorial tradition, occurring a total of 140 times in the c text category (interlinear glosses) of the doec. the phrase is almost equally frequent in the homiletic texts —137 occurrences, of these ninety in ælfric. the rest of the doec contains a further eighty-seven occurrences, giving a total of 364, or 120 tokens per one million words. another semantic equivalent for caritas in oe is lufu godes and manna (seventeen occurrences) or soþ lufu godes and manna (twenty occurrences) ‘(true) love of god and men’. both phrases and soþ lufu can be traced back to de doctrina christiana, enarrationes in psalmos and homilies by st augustine, where their latin prototypes are introduced and explained: amor/caritas/dilectio dei et proximi and caritas/dilectio vera/perfecta (cross & hill 1982: 149–150). in the early me period the reliance of the patristic definitions of caritas and, especially, their oe equivalents is strongly present up to around 1300. many authors still use me reflexes of the oe phrases luue godes & mannes and soþ luue alongside the french loan charite. to demonstrate these tendencies, i have extracted statistics on charity-lexemes from käsmann’s discussion in (1961: 247–249) and arranged them chronologically (based on laeme datings) in table 1. 64 olga timofeeva table 1. distributions of ‘charity’ terms in individual texts in early me (based on discussion in käsmann 1961: 247ff) luue soþ luue soþfast luue luue godes & mannes charite totals homilies in bodley 343 4 7 4 15 trinity homilies 11 9 20 ormulum 4 27 4 6 41 lambeth homilies 1 1 2 6 10 vices & virtues 1 5 11 23 40 cotton vespasian homilies 1 1 winteney regula s. benedicti 1 13 1 15 hali meidenhad 1 1 ureisun of ure louerde 2 2 ancrene riwle 4 2 1 6 13 duty of christians 5 5 lyrics xiii 1 1 ayenbite 4 2 43 49 totals 19 50 27 33 84 213 although the first attestation of charite is in the peterborough chronicle dated to c. 1154, it is not included in the table, contextual evidence suggesting that the chronicler uses this lexeme in the sense ‘hospitality’ (käsmann 1961: 248; cf. oed s.v. charity 4.b). we can observe that the earliest two texts —homily collections in bodley 343 and trinity 335, dated to the last quarter of the twelfth century and well-known for their strong association with the preconquest homiletic tradition— use luue godes & mannes and soþ luue in addition to luue on its own. the ormulum (c. 1200), notorious for its idiosyncrasies, shows a clear preference for a ‘true love’ expression soþfast luue, unattested in other sources (käsmann 1961: 248). the same text also records ones of the first instances of charite in the sense ‘charity’. the roughly contemporary vices and virtues prefers charite to all other native-based words or phrases taken together. the same tendency is true in ancrene riwle (ms nero a.xiv, 1240s), although two other ab-language texts (hali meidenhad and ureisun of ure louerde) employ only soþ luue. a thirteenth-century redaction of the oe regula s. benedicti is unsurprisingly conservative in its pastoral care and lexical innovation 65 lexis (cf. gretsch 1978), and so are the two short poetic texts from the middle of the thirteenth century. it is only in the much later ayenbite of inwit (1340) that the dominance of charite becomes almost complete. more generally, table 1 suggests that whenever there is variation between charite and older expressions within the same texts, it is the former whose relative frequencies are higher. as shown in figure 1, by the early fourteenth century, charite is attested in all localities that possess any significant record of religious texts, including the south english legendary and cursor mundi in the north.2 one of the texts that displays lexical variation in the chosen domain, vices and virtues (vv), a prose dialogue between the penitent soul and reason, surviving uniquely in bl stowe 34, produced in c. 1175–1225 in essex (gunn 2012, pelle 2015), deserves closer attention, for it demonstrates both how virtue-concepts were tackled in contemporary devotional literature and sermon-like settings and how particular terms associated within them could be introduced and explained. (2) of charite. caritas is swiðe hali, forðan ðe godd self is icleped karitas, þat is, godes luue and mannes. alle ðe habbeð ðese halie luue, godd wuneð inne hem, and hie inne gode. (vices & virtues 35.15–17) ‘of charity. caritas is very holy, because god himself is called caritas, that is, love of god and man. god dwells within all who have this holy love, and they within god.’ (trans. holthausen 1888: 34, emphasis added) this passage opens with a french-based rubric of charite, switches into latin caritas, showing spelling variation between <c> and <k>, provides an english gloss godes luue and mannes, and goes on to the exposition. in itself the procedure is very similar to the one that we have observed in ælfric (example (1) above), but the rubric and the use of the french lexeme later in the text indicate that code-switching routines had become quite different in the meantime. in the course of the sermon the concept of charity is mentioned twenty-seven times: four in latin (including two biblical quotations), twelve in french, and eleven in english (seven instances of godes luue and mannes, three of soð luue, and one of luue). in six cases, the english expressions occur 2 phrasal equivalents of caritas, unfortunately, cannot be mapped by means of laeme. 66 olga timofeeva in the immediate proximity of charite, either expanding (example (3)) or glossing it (examples (4) and (5); cf. example (2)). figure 1. regional distributions of charite (laeme) (3) gif ðu na þing ne luuest on ðare woreld ðurh hwat ðu miht forliesen godes luue oðer mannes … ðanne ðu ðus dest, ðanne hafst ðu charite mid ðe and iwis godes luue and mannes. (vices & virtues 39.31–41.2) ‘if thou lovest nothing in the world by which thou mayst lose god’s love or man’s … if thou doest thus, then thou hast charity in thee and assuredly god’s love and man’s’. (trans. holthausen 1888: 38, 40, emphasis added) pastoral care and lexical innovation 67 (4) gif ðu luuest ðat ilke þing ðe godd fastliche ðe forbett, hu miht ðu ðanne wunizen on karite, þat is, luue of gode and of mannen? (vices & virtues 37.23–25) ‘if thou lovest the same thing that god firmly forbids thee, how canst thou then abide in charity, that is, love of god and of men.’ (trans. holthausen 1888: 36, emphasis added) (5) ðe bieð ibroiden mid þrie strænges, of rihte ileaue and of faste hope te gode and of ðare soðe luue ðe is ihoten carite. (vices & virtues 45.14– 16) ‘which [the ropes of the boat of the holy church] are woven of three strings, of right belief and of firm hope in god and of the true love which is called charity.’ (trans. holthausen 1888: 44, emphasis added) i have quoted these examples at length to demonstrate how the author is flagging a potentially problematic term. his persistent use of the english equivalents next to charite seems to suggest that, on the one hand, it was a convenient and established term in his professional variety of english and, on the other, he was conscientious enough to highlight and explain it to his audience both as a theological concept and as a foreign word. further, the spellings of the french lexeme in examples (3)–(5) and the whole section of charite display remarkable variation: <carite> two occurrences, <charite> five, and <karite> five (elsewhere in the vv text <cariteð> and <kariteð> are also attested; cf. käsmann 1961: 249). the same variation of the initial consonant is also present in latin: <caritas> one, <karitas> two, <charitas> one. this is in sharp contrast to the english equivalents: <luue>, <soð luue> and <godes luue & mannes>, which are stable both in their spellings and abbreviations (ampersand and <nn>). these discrepancies may point to an author/scribe who was more used to writing in english than in anglo-norman. yet, at the same time, he was a fluent speaker of the second vernacular, to the extent that it even contaminated his latin. his glossing of the romance terms in english, employed throughout the work, forms a stylistic pattern and a helpful mnemonic device. such ‘macaronic doublets’,3 as we have seen, were also used 3 for siegfried wenzel, these are primarily “structures of coordination in which a single thought is expressed twice by elements taken from different etymological backgrounds or […] from different languages” (wenzel 1994: 86). i suggest that this definition could be extended to bilingual contexts in sermon and sermon-like texts in which other syntactic structures than coordination are involved. 68 olga timofeeva by preachers of the earlier period, and continued to be common place in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (wenzel 1994: 86–87). through the circulation of devotional works and, especially, of popular oral sermons, terms like charite, glossed by their macaronic doublets, could reach uneducated monolingual english speakers in urban and rural parishes. among the many virtues discussed in vv, charity is the only one to be introduced by a french loanword in the rubric and to be verbalised as french charite rather than an english equivalent most consistently (see table 1). why? käsmann suggests the following language-internal reasons: lufu was too polysemous and unspecific, and phrasal equivalents were too long or inconvenient (käsmann 1961: 35). to these i would like to add a few pragmatic considerations. the non-specificity of lufu should not necessarily be viewed as a factor that could have precluded its continuity as a term for ‘charity’. non-specific linguistic features generally have a higher survival rate, and this is also true for borrowed lexis, including semantic loans (timofeeva 2018). in modern and present-day english, love is used as ‘charity, charitable love’, which points to a later semantic re-borrowing (or continuity; see the triad faith, hope, and love in modern translations of 1 cor 13.13; cf. oed s.v. love n.2). on the other hand, historical semanticists observe that vocabulary at the level of greater specificity is, in general, more heavily weighted towards loanwords (kay & allan 2015: 98–99, sylvester 2018), that is: the more specific a concept, the more likely it is to be expressed by a borrowed lexeme. thus, the non-specificity of lufu could have determined the reason why lufu was not selected as a good-enough equivalent in the oe period. the compound soþlufu and phrasal (seo) soþ(e) lufu were favoured instead. common in glosses to latin caritas and in the west saxon homiletic tradition, the phrase was still in use in the early me period and until 1340. in the new preaching contexts, however, it was probably perceived as slightly oldfashioned and belonging to the old monastic tradition. coming to england from france, the mendicant tradition, which, by definition, relied on alms and charity, was more likely to promote charite both as a word and concept. the use of par charite as an exclamation that can express a variety of emotional attitudes, as already observed by käsmann (1961: 249), could have contributed to the diffusion of the noun, speeding up its acceptance as a prototypical term ahead of other french lexemes for virtues. pastoral care and lexical innovation 69 2.2 greed in the western christian tradition, a variety of lexemes is used to denote the deadly sin of greed: avaritia, cupiditas, cupido, philargyria, pleonexia, and quite a few other contextual terms and terms for subtypes of greed. among these, avaritia eventually becomes prototypical, although many authors continue to use avaritia and cupiditas largely interchangeably (for two very detailed accounts of greed and the deadly sins, see bloomfield 1967 and newhauser 2000). avaritia is derived through avarus ‘greedy’ from the verb aveo ‘to crave’, and unlike such specific terms as the greek loan philargyria ‘love for money’, “stresses the forcefulness of yearning more than the object of desire” (newhauser 2000: xii). although cupiditas originally means ‘passionate, immoderate desire’, it is often more specific than avaritia, becoming the preferred term for ‘the desire of possessions’ (käsmann 1961: 283). in the htoed, greed-lexemes are found under category 02 the mind > 02.05 will > 02.05.03.03 desire > 02.05.03.03.05|03 (n.) inordinate desire of possessions, which lists a total of thirty-seven items, of which i reproduce only those that are attested before 1325: deofolgitsung oe, feohgitsung oe, feohgyfernes oe, gifernes oe, gitsiendnes oe, nahtgitsung oe, unrihtgitsung oe, woruldgitsung oe, woruldwilnung oe, yissing < gitsung oe–a1400, greediness < grædignes oe–, greedilaik c. 1200, covetise 1297–a1652, avarice a1300–, winninghead c. 1315, and coveting c. 1315–. these lexemes represent one side of greed, desire to acquire wealth and money; the other side, unwillingness to part with wealth and money, is niggardliness. this subcategory is part of 02 the mind > 02.06. possession > 02.06.10 retaining > 02.06.10.02 (n.) niggardliness/meanness. the htoed contains fity-seven words at this level, those up to 1325 being: forhæfednes oe, gneadnes oe, gneaþlicnes oe, hneawnes oe, minsung oe, uncyst oe, fastship a1225, nithinghead a1300, and scarceness a1300–1509. although the two concepts are kept distinct in the htoed, the meanings of the individual lexemes, especially hapax legomena, are often ambiguous (see also toe list below), and the acquiring vs. retaining divide fuzzy. niggardliness-lexemes are, therefore, kept in the pool of terms that, at least partly, intersect with greedlexemes (see appendix). in the toe, covetousness, avarice is a subcategory of parsimony, niggardliness: 10 possession > 10.03 giving > 10.03.09 moderation in expenditure > 10.03.09.01 (n.) parsimony, niggardliness > 10.03.09.01.01 (n.) covetousness, avarice and includes feohgeornes (o), 70 olga timofeeva feohgītsung, feohg:ferness (o g), feohlufu (q), gīfernes, gītsiendnes (o), gītsung, grǣdignes, and uncyst. the superordinate parsimony, niggardliness lists fæsthafolnes, forhæfednes, gnēadnes, gnēaþlicnes (g), hēamolscipe (o), hnēawnes, minsung (g). because of the different classification principles of the two thesauri, some of the lexemes compactly listed in the htoed under 02.05.03.03.05.03 inordinate desire of possessions are somewhat more scattered in the toe, e.g. woruldgītsung is part of 06 mental faculties > 06.02.05 strong liking for, devotion to > 06.02.05.01|01.04 (n.) earthly desire, while dēofolgītsung is classified as 12 social interaction > 12.08 principle character > 12.08.07 immoderation, excess > 12.08.07|03 (n.) devil-like greed. in spite if these discrepancies, the oe greed-lexemes can be divided into morphological categories: derivatives that denote ‘desire, longing’ and compounds that specify a particular desire (of wealth and money feohcompounds, an immoral desire deofol-, naht-, unriht compounds). niggardliness-lexemes, on the other hand, often derive from adjectives meaning ‘stingy’ and deverbal stems meaning ‘holding fast, gripping hard’. although the word lists look extensive, especially compared to the charity-lexemes, the portion of rare words and hapax legomena on them is high.4 i have merged the two thesauri lists, additional information from individual word entries in doe, med, and oed, and the lexemes discussed by kasmänn (1961) in the appendix, where the information on attested frequencies can also be found. here, more general observations and a discussion of the most frequent terms will suffice. the lexemes that are attested in laeme appear in figure 2. among the nine terms that can potentially be used to express parsimony, niggardliness in oe, only forhæfednes ‘abstinence, restraint’ > ‘excessive restraint, parsimony’ has a substantial record of c. 225 occurrences. nevertheless, the derived sense is not very frequent and tends to be associated mostly with glosses to the latin parsimonia, which is itself polysemous — ‘parsimony’ and ‘temperance, abstinence’ (doe). forhæfednes is still attested in the early me period up to c. 1200 in the meaning ‘abstinence; esp., abstaining from food or drink’. a virtue rather than a sin, it occurs in homily collections and recipes derived from the oe tradition (med). 4 as also indicated by the distribution flags in the toe: ‘o’ —occurs once or infrequently; ‘g’ —occurs in glosses/glossaries; ‘q’ —existence is uncertain (for details, see http://oldenglishthesaurus.arts.gla.ac.uk/flags/). pastoral care and lexical innovation 71 in the early fourteenth century, scarceness (a1300–1509) emerges as one of the dominant terms for ‘niggardliness, stinginess’ (med, oed). derived from the anglo-norman adjective (e)sc(h)ars ‘insufficient; stingy’ it joins the most productive deadjectival suffixation pattern of the early me period in -ness (gardner 2014: 73–76). scarceness features frequently in rhyming juxtaposition with largesse ‘largesse, generosity’, which may have contributed to the preference of the -ness derivative over the direct loan scarcity, attested only a few decades later than scarceness (oed, med). it is the proximity of largesse and its inclusion among the seven deadly sins that makes the interpretation of scarceness as ‘greed, avarice’ most likely in the following example from the ayenbite of inwyt (1340) and confirms the possibility of overlap between greed and parsimony. (6) þe bozes of þise trawe: byeþ þe zeuen principals uirtues / þet ansuerieþ to þe zeue vices. ase deþ bozsamnesse a-ye prede. loue: a-ye enuye. mildenesse: a-ye felhede. prouesse: a-ye slacnesse. largesse: a-ye scarsnesse. chasteté: a-ye lecherie. sobreté a-ye glotounye. (ayenb. (arun 57) 159.34) ‘the boughs of this tree [of rightfulness] are the seven principal virtues that correspond to the seven vices, as does obedience to pride, love to envy, mildness to cruelty/wrath, prowess to slackness, largesse to scarceness/avarice, chastity to lechery, sobriety to gluttony.’5 that avarice can be subdivided into the desire to gain and the desire to keep is emphasised earlier in the same text. here, again, the unwillingness to part with wealth and money is expressed by an adverb derived from scars. (7) þet vifte heaued / of þe beste / beuore y-zed. is the zenne / of auarice / and of couaytyse / þet is rote / of alle kueade … auarice / is disordene loue. zuo disordene / him sseweþ / in þri maneres generalliche. ine wynnynge: boldeliche. ine ofhealdinge: streytliche. ine spendinge: scarsliche. (ayenb. (arun 57) 34.19) ‘the fifth head of the beast mentioned before is the sin of avarice and of covetousness, that is the root of all evil … avarice is disorderly love, which generally shows itself in three ways: in seizing boldly, in holding tightly, in spending scarcely/stingily.’ 5 all translations from example (6) on are my own, emphasis added. 72 olga timofeeva although for dan michel the derivatives of scars do belong to the semantic field of greed, the lexemes that he prefers for the core meaning ‘greed, avarice’ are avarice (twenty-nine occurrences) and coveitise (thirty-three occurrences). among the english terms for ‘greed’ that have a solid record in oe and continue into the me period, one should name gifernes, with c. 115 occurrences in doe, mainly in sense 1 ‘gluttony’ (example (8)), but also 2 ‘greediness for possessions / gain: covetousness, cupidity, avarice’. both senses survive into the late me period, the oed last attestations being a1400. the most frequent term in oe is, however, gītsung ‘desire, longing; greed, avarice’ with c. 300 occurrences. it can translate and gloss a variety of latin terms, including those denoting ‘desire or greed for food’: appetitus, avaritia, cupiditas, cupido, desiderium, gula, philargyria, usura (doe). in the early me period gitsung is the default english term for ‘avarice, covetousness’. (8) seððen comen to ðe ða werzede gastes of giuernesse, of drunkenesse, of galnesse, of ȝitsinge, and manie oðre, alles to fele, and þe habbeð iwelt after here azene wille on here þewdome æure to longe. (vices & virtues 23.26–28) ‘afterwards came to thee the cursed sprits of gluttony, drunkenness, lust, greed, and many others, all too many, and have ruled thee after their own will in their bondage ever too long.’6 the only oe term that survives into the present day is greediness < grǣdignes ‘greediness for food; carnal pleasures; wealth’. this lexeme is attested about forty-five times in oe, as equivalent to latin avaritia, aviditas, cupido, cupiditas (doe). it is the most general term for ‘greed’, which, especially when augmented by a prepositional phrase, can be extended to mean a variety of vices: ‘gluttony’, ‘drunkenness’, ‘covetousness’, ‘lust’, ‘importunity’, ‘ferocity’ (med). another generic term is uncyst ‘vice, fault’ but also ‘avarice; niggardliness’ (bt). although it has a reasonable record in oe —eighty-four occurrences in doec— in me uncyst becomes obsolescent by around 1150, lingering exclusively in redactions of pre-conquest homilies (med). 6 holthausen (1888: 22) translates: “the cursed sprits of greed, of drunkenness, of lechery, of covetousness…”, but i do not think that the order of sins bears this out. the tautology “of greed, … of covetousness” is unwarranted in the context. pastoral care and lexical innovation 73 at about 1300, three french lexemes enter the semantic field of greed: coveitise 1297–a1652 ‘covetousness, greed’ (med, oed; see figure 2), a closely related verbal noun coveting c. 1315– (med), and avarice a1300– (med). the former two are reflexes of the latin cupiditas and cupido, whose semantic structure includes the extension ‘love, desire’ > ‘excessive desire’ > ‘greed’, paralleled very closely by the oe gitsung and gitsian. for the scribe of cursor mundi (as preserved in ms cotton vespasian a.iii), the sin of greed is called couaitise, while gredines and nithinghede are its subtypes, the unwillingness to share (example (9)). (9) þe first sin es o couaitise … o þis cumes … gredines and nithinghede, to be o goddes gyft to gnede. (cursor (vsp a.3) 27842) ‘the first sin is that of avarice … from this comes … greediness and niggardliness, to be too stingy about giving goods.’ in this northern text of c. 1300, couaitise is the prototypical term for ‘avarice’, while a hundred years earlier in the west and many parts of the midlands it was still gitsung (see also figure 2). the difference between the native icinge (< gitsung) (one occurrence) and the two french terms, postulated in the ayenbite of inwyt, is instructive (example (10)). (10) þet uerste heaued / of þe beste of helle: ys prede. þet oþer / is enuie. þe þridde / wreþe. þe uerþe / sleauþe / þet me clepeþ / ine clergie: accidye. þe vifte / icinge. in cle[r]gie / auarice. oþer couaytise. þe zixte / glotounye. þe zeuende lecherie / oþer luxurie. (ayenb. (arun 57) 16.2) ‘the first head of the beast of hell is pride, the second is envy, the third is wrath, the forth is sloth, that we call in learned speech accidie, the fifth is greed, in learned speech avarice or covetousness, the sixth is gluttony, the seventh is lechery or luxury.’ accidye, auarice, and couaytise are associated with clerical and learned usage. although they are habitual for dan michel, a benedictine monk and, not unlikely, a preacher himself, and although in his translation of the somme le roi many of the occurrences of these lexemes are influenced by the source language (generally avarice, but also covoitise), this metalinguistic comment makes it clear that the difference between icinge and auarice or couaytise is not of the semantic kind but that of register, very similar to the difference 74 olga timofeeva between greed and avarice in present-day english.7 while sermons certainly introduced the learned terms for the deadly sins to common believers, glossing and explaining them in english, these lexemes probably remained restricted to the higher registers of english and to the receptive competence of uneducated speakers. when their productive competence was summoned at the time of confession, they were much more likely to define their sins as gitsung or grædignes, although the appendix also suggests that there were many other local and shorter-lived terms. 7 although the first comment, on accidie, is prompted by the original, the second comment, on the distinction between icinge and auarice or couaytise, is dan michel’s own: ‘li premiers chiez de la beste est orgueuz, li seconz est envie, li tierz ire, li quarz peresce —qu’en apele en clergois accide—, li quinz avarice, [b] li sisiesmes gloutenie, li septieme luxure’ (somme le roi 32.2–3). pastoral care and lexical innovation 75 figure 2. regional distributions of ‘greed’ (laeme) summing up me developments, as in the earlier period, greed-lexemes are more numerous than charity-lexemes, they may serve different registers, and the rate of innovation and obsolescence in their semantic field is probably much higher. the oe term gitsung is dominant for most of the early me period up to c. 1300, after which date covetise gradually becomes more prominent and ousts gitsung by a1400 (med). geographically (figure 28), the old term is stronger in the west midlands and the south, although there are also attestations in the east midlands: # 64 (vices & virtues, c13a1, sw essex), # 150 (the bestiary, c13b2-c14a1, w norfolk), and # 155 (genesis and exodus, c14a1, w norfolk). in the north only covetise is used, although this is likely to reflect the imbalance of geographical coverage in laeme — the west midlands constitute the majority of the corpus (c. 43%) and are covered well until c. 1310, while textual evidence from the north is mostly limited to the subperiod after 1310 (gardner 2014: 40–43). there is little lexical variation within individual texts. we have seen that only the ayenbite of inwyt (example (10)) uses three terms, also reflected on the map in figure 2 (# 291, c14a2, canterbury). there is one more text —# 140 (lyrics, c14a1, salisbury)— that displays variation between gitsung and covetise. further, the digby scribe of # 2002 (digby 86, c13b2, nw gloucestershire) employs overfastness (a hapax legomenon) and covetise, one time each; and the scribe of the lambeth homilies (# 2000, c. 1200, nw worcestershire) alternates between gitsung (six occurrences) and grediness (two occurrences). 3. discussion in this section, i concentrate on major similarities and differences between the oe and early me charity/greed lexicons and try to account for them as socially-motivated linguistic developments. both periods display a quantitative disproportion between the sizes of the respective lexicons. in oe, we can count as many as twenty-three greed-terms (see appendix and section 2.2) but only six charity-terms (phrasal equivalents included and all variants of soþ-lufu counted as one; see section 2.1). in early me, nine new terms for greed are attested but only two new terms for charity (the two reflexes of 8 the term fastship (# 119) is not placed in laeme. 76 olga timofeeva caritas counted as one, plus soþfast luue in ormulum). thus, during its early history, the greed lexicon is about four times bigger than the charity lexicon. in itself this finding is not surprising at all. cognitive linguists have long noticed the fact that negatively-evaluated words show on average a 15–20 per cent higher type richness than positively-evaluated words (even though the proportion is reversed if we look at token frequencies; see nöth 1992, esp. 80– 85, and references therein, but also diller 2014: 112–118). the underlexicalisation of charity, though, probably has an additional explanation. it reflects the foreign status of the christian concept, especially, if compared to the rich semantic fields of the anglo-saxon aristocratic virtues of courage, loyalty and generosity (wormald 2006: 68; see htoed and toe). in the early medieval period, charity-terms are cultural loans, technically, semantic extensions or loan translations, that are introduced into english as part of the general christian innovation (timofeeva 2017). although charity featured prominently in sermons and other situations of moral instruction and was a recognisable concept, spreading in the educational settings within monastic communities as well as, to an extent, from the clerics to common believers, it was not accepted too readily by the aristocratic warrior culture, and the lexemes associated with it were probably not part of active vocabulary among average speakers of oe. moreover, such terms as sib-lufu or sib-geornes appear as geographically-limited technical glosses. the phrasal terms that survive into me —soþ luue and luue godes & mannes— continued to be transparent but also had a strong connection with the old pre-conquest tradition, which was to be transformed in the course of the thirteenth century. the main difference between the charity and greed lexicons, apart from their sizes, is that the greed terms define a social transgression which is not necessarily associated with the christianity. hence the terms that are promoted by the professional religious community introduce pragmatic and stylistic distinctions within the existing semantic field rather than create an entirely new semantic field. within this field, there are many technical glosses, hapax legomena, and many profane terms for greed, avarice, from the mass of which only gitsung emerges as a lexical norm selected and accepted by the religious community at large. it is possible that, as soþ-lufu, gitsung remains restricted to the receptive competence of english speakers or, at least, carries a strong association with the elevated style and religious usage. as lexemes at the level of greater specificity —‘a special kind of religious love’, ‘a special kind of unchristian greed’— they would be more prone to (re)borrowing in the me period. in this process, oe religious terms were often discarded and replaced pastoral care and lexical innovation 77 with french loans (timofeeva 2018). the early adoption of charity (c. 1200) and covetise (1297) bears out this prediction. although the number of lexemes associated with greed continues to expand in the me period, native formations (with the exception of greediness) remain regionor author-specific. thus, in oe we have two native-based professional terms, soþ-lufu and gitsung, which are replaced, respectively, by french-based charity and covetise/avarice in the course of the thirteenth to early fourteenth century. how exactly and why this happens? towards 1000, in the wake of the benedictine reforms, west saxon religious vocabulary becomes increasingly standardised and is disseminated, together with influential texts, to other dialectal areas. homiletic materials, especially ælfrician, continue to be copied well into the me period in the south, but also in the east and west midlands (treharne 2012). in worcester priory, old texts are studied particularly closely by a scribe known to us as the tremulous hand, possibly in order to compile an english glossary (franzen 1991, 2003), not unlikely for a preaching aid within a franciscan setting (david johnson, personal communication). in the late twelfth–early thirteenth centuries, however, anglo-norman becomes a much wider used vernacular in monastic communities and in mixed (clerical and lay) educational environments (legge 1950, wogan-browne et al. 2009). as a written code, it is certainly less standardised than latin, but as a spoken language it possesses an immense advantage over english —it has no dialects (legge 1950: 90). similarly, religious vocabulary borrowed from anglonorman is much more functional, much more universal than either old monastic norms or new english-based formations (cf. the richness of new english terms for greed attested in the me period, with their low frequencies and geographical restrictedness, in appendix). the circle is repeated: post-lateran iv reforms result, among other things, in standardisation of professional terminology. for the new terminology to spread outside professional bilingual (and multilingual) communities (monasteries and cathedral schools), social mobility and widespread lay bilingualism are required. just these two conditions are facilitated by the rapid urbanisation of the thirteenth century. towns, about fifty of those having 2,000 or more inhabitants by c. 1300, were places where the concentration of the clergy could reach 5 per cent of the townfolk. about a third of new cities grew around monasteries and friaries (dyer 2002: 187–227). in these urban environments, the clergy were in daily contact with other inhabitants, both in the workshops and market squares and in schools and churches, teaching and performing spiritual ministrations (ingham 2018, timofeeva 2018). among 78 olga timofeeva these later functions, preaching and receiving confessions were especially important for the diffusion of vices-and-virtues vocabulary with which the present study is concerned. these two occasions activated the linguistic competence of the laity in two different ways. while during sermons, lay participation was mostly passive and required only reception, at confession, everyone was prompted to talk about their sins and, hence, had to develop productive lexical competence in this field. clearly, different social groups had different productive competences, and francophone lexis probably featured more often in confessions made by the literate middling classes, those further down the social ladder were more likely to employ everyday english terms. 4. conclusions my conclusions fall into three categories: those that have to do with 1) lexicography and historical semantics, 2) language competence, and 3) diffusion of religious lexis and social networks. first of all, a close examination of the two antipodes —charity and greed and their semantic fields— revealed a marked imbalance between the sizes of those fields. the domain of greed is not only larger,9 but also more varied in terms of region and register. this is also where the rate of innovation and obsolescence is high in all periods in the history of english (see appendix, htoed, toe). secondly, in the religious domain, these tendencies, in turn, were intensified by and included into the processes of social innovation. in the thirteenth century, wider and wider groups of people were reached by popular preaching and exposed to religious terminology used to explain the basic christian concepts, including that for the vices and virtues. although both semantic domains feature prominently in surviving sermons, treatises and preaching manuals, the lexical competences in common believers were very much defined by the sociolinguistic settings in which the vices and virtues were activated —the vices more often during confession and penance vs. virtues more often during sermons and religious instruction. in other words, while everyone was expected to confess their sins and, hence, to be able to describe them in suitable words, the virtues, being rather less human and not confessable, did not require productive competence and remained confined to the higher 9 this lexical richness has a parallel in anglo-norman: avarice; coveiter, coveitie, coveitise; cupidité; guluser, gulusie, gulusité. pastoral care and lexical innovation 79 registers and more educated speakers. thirdly, the adoption and diffusion of such romance lexemes as avarice, charite, and coveitise, were clearly top-down developments, which would, on the one hand, spread from high clergy to low clergy via schooling, preaching and the circulation of manuals, and, on the other hand, from the clergy to the laity within the groups of similar social standing via preaching and other religious ministrations. although we do not have texts written by parish priests for common believers, we can confidently assume that throughout the me period both lower-class groups were much more likely to verbalise their avarice as gitsung and grediness and to talk about charity as a kind of luue. the obsolescence of the oe viceand, especially, virtue-lexicons and the adoption of romance terms was conditioned by the changing patterns of education (increasing literacy among the nobility, gentry and the urban middle classes, and the introduction of french as vehicle language at schools) and the greater reach of religious instruction (more emphasis on the edification of the laity through confession, explanation of the doctrines, and preaching in general). here, the universality of mendicant preaching played an important role for the diffusion of new lexemes across regions and social strata. as the old native-based monastic terms were getting marginalised and obsolete, the new ones expanded and shaped receptive competences of 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• fæst-hafolnes ‘hard-gripping-ness, parsimony, niggardliness’: 3 occurrences in jday ii (232), sedgl 2.1 (11) and 3 (75), translating latin cupido and glossing tenacitas (doe); • fæstnes ‘steadfastness; niggardliness’: 1 occurrence <fæstnysse> in ms cul ii.2.4 of cp (60.453.28) (see hnēawnes below) (doe); • feoh-geornes ‘wealth-eagerness, avarice, greed’: 1 occurrence <feohgyrnesse> in lawswer (4) (doe); • feoh-gītsung ‘wealth-desire, avarice, greed’: 2 occurrences in bede 2 (9.130.31), rendering amore pecuniae by a binomial phrase feagitsunge & feohlufan, and cp (20.149.4), rendering largitas (doe); • feoh-gyfernes: 1 occurrence <feohgyfernes> in arprgl 1 (42.21), glossing philargyria (doe); • feoh-lufe ‘wealth-love, love for money’: 1 occurrence <feohlufan>, see feohgītsung above (doe); • forhæfednes ‘abstinence, restraint’: c. 225 occurrences, used as equivalent to latin abstinentia, continentia, parcitas, parsimonia (doe); • gifernes: c. 115 occurrences, mainly in sense 1 ‘gluttony’, but also 2 ‘greediness for possessions / gain: covetousness, cupidity, avarice’, often glossing and translating ambitio, avaritia, cupiditas, gastrimargia, gula, ingluvies, philargyria (doe); • gītsiendnes ‘longing, desire, greed’: 1 occurrence <gitsiendnes> in homu 32 (b) (121) (doe); • yissing < gītsung ‘desire, longing; greed, avarice’: c. 300 occurrences, also translating and glossing latin appetitus, avaritia, cupiditas, cupido, desiderium, gula, philargyria, usura (doe); • gnēadnes ‘frugality; scarcity’: 5 occurrences, glossing frugalitas (with temperantia) and parsimonia (with abstinentia) (doe); • gnēaþlicnes ‘frugality, parsimony’: 3 occurrences in glosses to aldhelm as equivalent to latin frugalitas (with temperantia) (doe); 10 the list is arranged alphabetically for oe lexemes and alphabetically and by date for me lexemes. the numbers of occurrences are derived from the doec for the letters d to h and from the doe for the letters m to w. me occurrences are only recorded if this information is retrievable from the med. 84 olga timofeeva • greediness < grædignes ‘greediness for food; carnal pleasures; wealth’: c. 45 occurrences, equivalent to latin avaritia, aviditas, cupido, cupiditas (doe); • hēamolscipe ‘miserliness, niggardliness’: 1 occurrence <heamolscipas> in homu 8 (verc 2) (69); • hnēawnes ‘niggardliness, stinginess’: 2 occurrences in cp (20.149.4) and (60.453.28), replaced in one of the mss (cul ii.2.4) by uncystignysse and fæstnysse (doe); • minsung ‘parsimony’: 2 occurrences in glosses to aldhelm as equivalent to latin abstinentia (bt, doec); • naht-gītsung ‘wicked avarice’: 1 occurrence <nawhtgitsunga> in cp (44.333.4) (bt, doec); • unriht-gītsung ‘unlawful desire, greed’: 10 occurrences including glosses of avaritia (bt, doec); • uncyst: 84 occurrences, generally ‘vice, fault’ but also ‘avarice; niggardliness’ (bt, doec) • uncystignes ‘niggardliness, stinginess’: 1 occurrence <uncystignysse> in ms cul ii.2.4 of cp (20.149.4) (see hnēawnes above) (doe); • woruld-gītsung ‘world-desire, greed for this world’s goods’: 2 occurrences in bo (7.15.7) and met (7.11) (bt, doec); • woruld-wilnung ‘world-desire’: 3 occurrences in cp (51.399.20), benr (4.17.4), and benr (i*) (4.124.14) (bt, doec); • greedilaik (?c. 1200): 3 occurrences <gredizlezzc> in ormulum 3994, 4560, and 4648 (all within the same chapter, luke vii) (med); • fastship (a1225) ‘niggardliness, parsimony’: 2 occurrences in ancrene riwle (bl cotton titus d.xviii) and 1 occurrence in ar (bl cotton nero a.xiv) (käsmann 1961: 285, med); • covetise (1297–a1652) ‘covetousness, greed’: (med, oed; see figure 2); • avarice (a1300–): (med); • nithinghead (a1300) ‘niggardliness, miserliness’: 1 occurrence cursor (vsp a.3) 27842 (med; see example (9)); • overfastness (?a1300) ‘over-steadfastness, niggardliness’: 1 occurrence <ouerfastnesse> in sayings st. bede (dgb 86) (73) (käsmann 1961: 285; med translates this term ‘?the sin of sloth’); • scarceness (a1300–1509) ‘niggardliness, stinginess’: plenty of attestations, especially in the fourteenth century (med, oed); • coveting (c. 1315–) ‘covetousness’ (med). pastoral care and lexical innovation 85 • winninghead (c. 1350(a1333)) ‘disposition to get gain, covetousness’: 1 occurrence <wymynghede> in shoreham poems (add 17376) (95.286) (med); author’s address english department university of zurich plattenstrasse 47 ch-8032 zürich switzerland received: 19 october 2017 e-mail: olga.timofeeva@es.uzh.ch revised version accepted: 29 november 2017 michiko ogura, selim 21 (2015–2016): 81–104. issn 1132-631x oe god, hlaford and drihten michiko ogura tokyo woman’s christian university when a word is used in a new meaning without a formal alteration, how people perceive the semantic change? in this paper, an investigation is made on oe god, which was used for both pagan and christian god in some prose texts and interlinear glosses, with its synonyms drihten and hlaford. the result will show the flexibility in the choice of renderings and semantic overlap of these words in biblical contexts. keywords: old english; god; synonyms; latin; gospels; interlinear glosses 1. introduction the english tongue is so flexible in nature that it has accepted historically a great number of foreign words into its vocabulary from various languages. as an international language in the medieval period, latin has been borrowed incessantly into english throughout the time before the anglo-saxons came into britain and after they made their settlements there. after the arrival of christianity, latin loan words became numerous. 1 because of the thirty-odd year gap of the northern and southern routes of the arrival of christian 1 some latin borrowings which concepts are foreign to the anglo-saxons found in psalter glosses are studied in ogura (2006). for the vocabulary of the liturgical year, see joyce hill, “naming the liturgical year: reflections on vernacular practice”, in m. hosaka et al. (eds.), phases of the history of english (frankfurt am main: peter lang, 2013), 25–45. for the christianisation of some ordinary old english words, see ogura (2013). the htoed is a useful tool for finding old english synonyms, but doe and bt(s) are also necessary to specify the quotations that contain actual examples. 82 michiko ogura missionaries in the latter half of the sixth century, 2 native words found their way to be christianised in their senses, as god being a typical example. in this paper i investigate god as a christianised anglo-saxon word, together with its synonyms. verse lines give us more alternative words and expressions than prose, owing to the stylistic features of alliteration, variation and formulaic phrases. in bede’s ecclesiastical history the latin-english correspondence is more clearly found than other prose texts and moreover verse is included, which is example (1), a series of the epithets or variations of “god” found in cædmon’s hymn. 3 (1) bede 4 24.344.6–14 [nunc laudare debemus auctorem regni caelestis, potentiam creatoris et consilium illius, facta patris gloriae: quomodo ille, cum sit aeternus deus, omnium miraculorum auctor extitit, qui primo filiis hominum caelum pro culmine tecti, dehinc terram custos humani generis omnipotens creauit.] nu sculon herigean heofonrices weard, meotodes meahte ד his modgeþanc, weorc wuldorfæder, swa he wundra gehwæs, éce drihten, ór onstealde. he ærest sceop eorðan bearnum heofon to hrofe halig scyppend; þa middangeard monncynnes weard, éce drihten, æfter teode, firum foldan, frea ælmihtig. ‘now should we praise the guardian of the heavenly kingdom, the power of the creator and the counsel of his mind, the works of the father of glory, how he, the eternal lord, originated every marvel. he the holy creator first created the heaven, as a roof for the children of the earth; then the eternal lord, guardian of the human race, the almighty ruler, afterwards fashioned the world as a soil for men.’ (tr. by miller) 2 see baugh & cable (1993), especially pp.82–83. macgillivray (1902) is a pioneering work on this theme, and focuses on the church history and the vocabulary seen from that side. 3 the old english data are based on the doe web corpus with abbreviated titles, though i often use quotations directly from the eets editions, skeat (1970), kuhn (1965), roeder (1904), lindelöf (1909), and from bt(s). oe god, hlaford and drihten 83 as seen by highlighted words and word groups, christian god as the creator is expressed by heofonrices weard ‘the guardian of the heavenly kingdom’, meotod ‘god (esp. in poetry)’, wuldorfæder ‘the father of glory’, éce drihten ‘the eternal lord’, halig scyppend ‘the holy creator’, monncynnes weard ‘the guardian of mankind’ and frea ælmihtig ‘the almighty lord’. it is true that this kind of variation is highly poetic, describing the important subject from various viewpoints so as to show its feature with alliterating words or the first element of a compound, in a half-line of suitable rhythmic types. when the latin original is consulted, however, it also contains many expressions: auctorem regni caelestis, creatoris, patris, aeternus deus, auctor and custos. what characterises the old english version are the repetition of éce drihten (six times) and the last half-line, frea ælmihtig, that summarises the short poem. there is no use of the word god in this hymn. 2. god and its grammatical gender god is used in the masculine when used as christian god, but in the neuter otherwise. example (2) is cited in the doe as an example of unambiguous neuter forms (and in the plural), although the following lines (example (3)) are not cited together. example (4) is also in the doe and example (5) in bt. (2) bede 2 10.134.18 [nullus enim tuorum studiosius quam ego culturae deorum nostrorum se subdidit;] forðon nænig þinra þegna neodlicor ne gelustfullicor hine sylfne underþeodde to ura goda [b. úre godu; o. ure godo; ca. godas] bigange þonne ic; ‘for none of your followers devoted himself more closely or cheerfully to the worship of our gods than i did.’ (3) bede 2 13.134.21 [si autem dii aliquid ualerent, me potius iuuare uellent, qui illis inpensius seruire curaui.] hwæt ic wat, gif ure godo ænige mihte hæfdon, þonne woldan hie me ma fultumian, forþon ic him geornlicor þeodde ד hyrde. ‘well, i am sure if our gods had any power, they would help me more, for i more zealously served and obeyed them.’ 84 michiko ogura (4) bede 5 11.416.17 [si peruenirent ad satrapam et loquerentur cum illo, auerterent illum a diis suis, et ad nouam christianae fidei religionem transferrent] gif hio to ðem ealdormen bicumen ד mid hine sprecende wæran, ðæt hio hine from hiora godum acerden, ד to ðære niowan aæ þæs cristes geleafan gehwerfde; ‘if they came to the chief and conversed with him, they would turn him away from their gods, and convert him to the new religion of christ’s faith’ (5) or 1 5.24.10–12 for ðon sæde pompeius ד þa egyptiscan bisceopas þæt þa godes wundor þe on hiora landum geworden wæron to þon gedon þæt hi hiora agnum godum getealde wæron, þæt sint diofolgild, nales þam soþan gode, for ðon þe hiora godu syndon drycræfta lareowas. ‘because, said pompeius and the egyptian bishops, that those miracles of god which were performed in their land were done so that they might be ascribed to their own gods, who are devils, not to the true god, because their own gods are teachers of magic.’ the device of the distinction between christian god and heathen gods in grammatical gender becomes obscure through morphological changes, but the plural form tells the difference, and in later periods the use of the big letter g in god. to say that the word god is in the masculine when used as christian god and in the neuter when used as a heathen god is enough for the beginners of old english, but soon we find examples (6), (7) and (8) where the false god is used in the masculine and in the plural, in contrast with the masculine singular form of the true god. the same is true with example (9), where we see the masculine plural forms in the lambeth psalter and john (west saxon corpus christi). (6) ls25 (michael mor) 93 (= blhom 17 201.30) þa on þa ilcan tid þa hæðnan bysmerlice & synlice heora þa leasan godas mid mislicum deofolgeldum hie him laþodan on fultum. ‘then at the same time the heathens shamefully and wickedly invited their false gods with various idols for their help.’ oe god, hlaford and drihten 85 (7) ӕhom 22 77 (de falsis diis) đa þa hi toferdon to fyrlenum landum, and mancynn þa weox, þa wurdon hi bepæhte þurh þone ealdan deofol þa adam ær beswac, swa þæt hi worhton wolice him godas, and þone scyppend forsawon þe hy gesceop to mannum. ‘when they dispersed to the distant lands, and then mankind increased, then they were deceived by the old devil who had betrayed adam, so that they wickedly made gods for themselves, and neglected the creator who made them as men.’ (8) whom 12 12 (de falsis dies) & ða æt nyhstan wurdon hi bepæhte þurh ðone ealdan deofol þe adam iu ær beswac swa þæt hi worhton wolice & gedwollice him hæþene godas, & ðone soðan god & heora agenne scyppend forsawon, þe hy to mannum gesceop & geworhte. ‘and then at last they were deceived by the old devil who had betrayed adam so that they made wrongly and deceptively made heathen gods for them, and despised the true god and their own creator, who made them as men.’ (9) psgli 81.6 [ego dixi dii estis et filli excelsi omnes.] ic sæde godas ge syndon bearn þæs healican & ealle ge ‘i said you are gods, and you all children of the high.’ cf. jn (wscp) 10.34 hu nys hit awriten on eowre æ þæt ic sæde ge synt godas? ‘isn’t it written in your law that i said you are gods?’ here is another example, in which the christian god and heathen gods appear in a contrasting context and the latter is obviously in masculine plural: (10) or 4 4.87.28 ond eac þa diofla þe hie an simbel weorþedon hi amirdon, <toeacan> þæm oþrum monigfealdum bismrum þe hi him lærende wæron, þæt hie ne cuþan angitan þæt hit godes wracu wæs; ac heton þa biscepas þæt hie sædon ðæm folce þæt heora godas him wæron yrre, to þon þæt hie him þa git swiþor ofreden & bloten þonne hie ær dyden. ‘and also the devils, whom they always worshipped, led them astray, in addition to the other manifold scandals, which they were teaching them, so that they could not understand that it was the vengeance of god, but commanded the bishops that they should tell the people that their gods 86 michiko ogura were angry against them, to such an extent that they should offer and sacrifice to them much more frequently than they had done.’ 3. god, drihten, hlaford in interlinear glosses as i put tables in appendix, interlinear glosses provide the readers with good examples that show relationship between the source language and the renderings. here i examined benrgl, libsc, psgla (the vespasian psalter: mercian), psgld (the regius psalter: early west saxon), psgli (the lambeth psalter: late west saxon), li (the lindisfarne gospel: northumbrian), ru (the rushworth 1 and rushworth 2: mercian and northumbrian), and add wscp (the west saxon gospels in ms cccc 140: west saxon) for comparison in the choice of words. 4 as seen in the tables, benrgl shows a regular correspondence of dominus – drihten and deus – god, the only exception being 118a dominus – hlaford. libsc gives ten percent of the total occurrence of hlaford as a rendering of drihten, especially in the dative plural form; godes appears only once for domini (69.4 percent) and once for christi (13.4 percent). in psalter glosses we find a similar correspondence of dominus – drihten and deus – god with some exceptional instances. example (11) is the only instance where hlaford is glossed for dominum in the three glosses, and examples (12), (13) and (14) are those in which the gallican text (for psgli) shows different choice of latin words from that of the roman text (for psgla and d). (11) ps 104.21 [et constituit cum dominum domus suae. et principem omnis possessionis suȩ] a: ד gesette hine hlafard huses his ד aldermon alre aehte his d: ד ȣesette hine hlaford huses his ד aldor eallre æhte his i: he gesette hine hlaford huses his ד ealdor ealre his æhte l. ealles anwealdnesse his av: hee made him lord of his house and ruler of all his substance. (12) ps 46.3 [quoniam deus summus terribilis. et rex magnus super omnes deos] a: for ðon god heh egesful cyning micel ofer alle godas 4 i have examined mss cambridge, corpus christi college 140, bodleian, bodley 441, british museum, cotton nero d. iv and bodleian, auct. d. 2.19. for the detailed description, see ker (1957, 1977). oe god, hlaford and drihten 87 d: heah breȣendlic ד cyninȣ micel ofer ealle ȣodas i: forði þe drihten [dominus] se hehsta [excelsus] egeful cyningc mære ofer ealre eorðan [terram] av: for the lord most high is terrible, he is a great king ouer all the earth. (13) ps 56.3 [clamabo ad deum altissimum. et ad dominum qui benefecit mihi] a: ic cleopiu to dryhtn ðæm hestan ד to dryhtne se wel dyde me d: ic clypiȣe to ȣode to þam hehstan ד to drihtne þe wel dyde me i: [clamabo ad deum altissimum deum qui benefecit mihi] ic clypie to gode þam hyhstan to gode se þe dyde wel me av: i will cry vnto god most high: vnto god that perfourmeth all things for me. (14) ps 99.2 [iubilate deo omnis terra. seruite domino in letitia] a: wynsumiað gode all eorðe ðiowiað dryhtn in blisse s d: drymað ȣode ealle eorðe þeowiað on blisse i: freadremað drihtne [domino] eala eorð þeowiað drihtne on blisse av: make a ioyfull noise vnto the lord, all ye lands. serue the lord with gladnes: lindisfarne and rushworth versions differ in forty-five instances in the choice between god, drihten, hlaford, and hælend. in example (15), dominus and domini are glossed hlaferd and hlafordes in li, while ru1 chooses dryhten and dryhtnes. (15) mt 25.23 [ait illi dominus eius euge bone serue et fidelis quia super pauca fuisti fidelis supra multa te constituam intra in gaudium domini tui] li: cuoeð him hlaferd his wilcymo la ð[e] goda ðegn ד leaffull forðon ofer lytla ðu were leaf-full ofer monigo ðeh ic setto geong in glædnisse hlafordes ðines ru1: cwæþ him to his dryhten wel þec godu esne ד getreowa forþon þu ofer feawum wȩre getreowe ofer monegu ic þe gesete ga in gefea ðines dryhtnes wscp: đa cwæð hys hlaford to hym; geblissa þu goda þeowa ד getrywa. forþam ðe þu wære getrywe. ofer feawa. ofer fela ic ðe gesette. ga on þines hlafordes gefean; av: his lord said vnto him, well done, good and faithfull seruant, thou hast beene faithfull ouer a few things: enter thou into the ioy of thy lord. 88 michiko ogura in (16) two examples of dominus are glossed se drihten and double-glossed drihten ɫ se hlaford in li, but ru2 uses drihten twice. another example of this kind is (17), where both li and ru2 have iesus and dominus (twice), and the glosses for the latter differ in the two versions. these examples show that both hlaford and drihten can be used as glosses for dominus, although ru2 tends to choose drihten more often than hlaford. (16) lk 12.42 [dixit autem dominus quis putas est fidelis dispensator et prudens quem constituet dominus super familiam suam ut det illis in tempore tritici mensuram] li: cuoeð ðonne se drihten huælc woenes ðu is geleaffull sgiiremonn \ fehugeroefa ד hoga ðone gesettes drihten \ se hlaford ofer higo his te sellæ him in tíd huætes hrippe ru2: cwæð ðonne drihten hwelc woenestu is gileof-ful scire-mon \ fehgroefa ד hoga ðone gesetes drihten ofer higo his te selle him on tide hwætes ripes wscp: đa cwæþ drihten hwa wenst þu  sy getrywe ד gleaw dihtnere. þæne se hlaford geset ofer hys hired  he him hwætes gemet on tíman sylle; av: and the lord said, who then is that faithfull and wise steward, whom his lord shall make ruler ouer his household, to giue them their portion of meate in due season? (17) jn 21.7 [dicit ergo discipulus ille quem diligebat iesus petro dominus est simon petrus cum audisset quia dominus est] li: cuæð forðon ðe ðegn ðone lufade se hælend petre ðe hlaferd is simon petrus miððy geherde petrus te ðe hlaferd ueri ru2: cwæð fore ðe ðegn he ðonne lufað ðone hælend [ihesus] drihten [dominus] is simon petrus miððy giherde te hlafard [dominus] is wscp: witodlice se leorning-cniht þe se hælend lufode cwæð to petre. hit ys drihten; đa petrus gehyrde  hit drihten wæs. av: therefore that disciple whome iesus loued, saith vnto peter, it is the lord. in most instances the different choice of old english glosses is based on the difference of latin versions of li and ru. examples are (18), where li has deo but ru domino, (19), where li has domini but ru dei, (20), where li has dominus but ru ihesus, (21), where li has iesus but ru deus, and (22), where li has iesus but ru xps. oe god, hlaford and drihten 89 (18) mt 22.31 [de resurrectione autem mortuorum non legistis quod dictum est a deo dicente uobis] li: of erest soðlice deadra ne leornade gie  gecueden wæs from gode miððy sægde iuuh ru1: bi æriste þonne deadra ah ge ne hreordun  acwæden wæs from dryhtne [domino] cwæþendum to eow wscp: ne rædde ge be deadra manna æryste.  eow fram gode gesæd wæs. av: but as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken vnto you by god, saying, (19) mk 12.14 [nec enim uides in faciem hominis sed in ueritate uiam domini doces] li: ne forðon ðu gesiis on onsione monnes ah in soðfæstnise woeg drihtnes ðu læres ru2: ne forðon ðu gisist on onsione monnes ah in soð-fæstnisse woegas godes [dei] læres wscp: ne besceawast þu manna ansyne. ac þu godes weg lærst on soðfæstnysse; av: for thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest the way of god in truth. (20) lk 22.31 [ait autem dominus simon simon ecce satanas expetiuit uos ut cribraret sicut triticum] li: cuoeð ða drihten simon simon heono se wiðerworda gesohta \ iuih te awoxe \ suæ huæte ru2: cwæð ða ðe hælend [ihesus] symon ðas symon heono ðe wiðerworda ד gisohte iowih te awoxe swa hwæte wscp: đa cwæð drihten. simon simon. nu satanas gyrnde  he eow hridrude swa swa hwǽte; av: and the lord said, simon, simon, behold, satan hath desired to haue you, that he may fift 5 you as wheat: (21) jn 6.64 [sciebat enim ab initio iesus qui essent credentes et quis traditurus esset eum] li: uiste forðon from fruma se hælend ðaðe uoeron gelefendo \ ד hua sellende uere hine 5 i.e. sift. 90 michiko ogura ru2: wiste forðon from fruma god [deus] ðaðe werun gilefende ד hwelc sellende were hine wscp: witodlice se hælend wiste æt fruman. hwæt þa gelyfedan wæron .hwa hine belæwon wolde ד av: for iesus knew from the beginning, who they were that beleeued not, and who should betray him. (22) jn 9.11 [homo qui dicitur iesus lutum fecit et unxit oculos meos] li: monn seðe is acuedon hælend lam worhte ד smiride ego mino ru2: ðe mon seðe cweden crist [xps] lam giworhte ד smiride ego mine wscp: se man þe is genemned hælend worhte fenn ד smyrede mine eagan. av: a man that is called iesus, made clay, and anointed mine eyes, in contrast, (23) shows that li has dominus which is glossed god, while ru2 has deus and also glossed god. (23) lk 18.7 [dominus autem non faciet uindictam electorum suorum clamantium ad se die ac nocte et patientiam habebit in illis] li: god ne doeð  wræcco ðara gecorenra his clioppendra to him dæge ד næht ד geðuild hæfeð on ðæm ru2: god [deus] ða ne doeð ד ða wraco ðara gicorenra hiora cliopendra to him dæg ד nocte [sic] ד giðyld hæfeð in ðæm wscp: soþlice ne deð god his gecorenra wrace clypiendra to him dæges ;he geþyld on him hæfþ ד .nihtes ד av: and shal not god auenge his owne elect, which crie day and night vnto him, thogh he beare long with them? 4. summary a few things can be said in summarizing the results of the investigation. 1. oe god can be used in the masculine and in the neuter. it is not decisively said, however, that god in the masculine is used as christian god but as nonchristian god in the neuter. 2. deus is rendered into god with a few exceptions. god is more often used in the genitive than drihten or hlaford, especially in the gospels. dominus can be oe god, hlaford and drihten 91 rendered by either drihten or hlaford, partly because these two words are polysemous and mean ‘a lord’, ‘a chieftain’, ‘a master’, ‘a husband’, etc., as well as ‘the lord’. dominus deus ‘the lord god’ is often left unglossed in the regius psalter and the lambeth psalter. 3. my investigation on old english prose and interlinear glosses may reveal some unification of the renderings in the gospel of john and the lambeth psalter, that is, at least in late old english. 6 references amos, ashley, antonette dipaolo healey, et al. eds. dictionary of old english. toronto: pontifical institute of medieval studies, university of toronto, 1988–. [a–g on cd-rom, 2008.] bately, janet, ed. the old english orosius. london: oxford university press, 1980. bosworth, joseph & t.n. toller, eds. an anglo-saxon dictionary. 1898; rpt. london: oxford university press, 1972. colgrave, bertram, & r.a.b. mynors, eds. bede’s ecclesiastical history of the english people. oxford: clarendon press, 1969. hofstetter, walter. “winchester and the standardization of old english vocabulary”, anglo-saxon england 17 (1988): 139–161. kay, christian, jane roberts, michael samuels & irené wotherspoon, eds. historical thesaurus of the oxford english dictionary, with additional material from ‘a thesaurus of old english’. oxford: oxford university press, 2009. ker, n.r. catalogue of manuscripts containing anglo-saxon. oxford: clarendon press, 1957, 1977. kuhn, s.m. ed. the vespasian psalter. ann arbor: university of michigan press, 1965. lindelöf, u. ed. der lambeth-psalter, i. text und glossar. acta societatis scientiarum fennicae, tom. 35, no. 1. helsinki, 1909. logeman, h. ed. the rule of s. benet. eets, o.s. 90. 1888; rpt. new york: kraus reprint, 1981. macgillivray, h.s. the influence of christianity on the vocabulary of old english. part i. studien zur englischen philologie viii. halle: max niemeyer, 1902. miller, thomas. ed. the old english version of bede’s ecclesiastical history of the english people. eets, o.s. 95, 96, 110, 111. london: oxford university press, 1959–1963. 6 the gospel of john often shows its peculiarity in contrast with the synoptic gospels. for the so-called “winchester words”, see hofstetter (1988). 92 michiko ogura ogura, michiko. “camel or elephant? how to lexicalise objects foreign to the anglo-saxons”, in guido oebel (ed.), japanische beiträge zu kultur und sprache. studia iaponica wolfgango viereck (münchen: lincom, 2006), 228–245. ogura, michiko. “lexicalisation of christianity, or christianisation of the anglosaxon vocabulary”, in ken nakagawa et al. eds. studies in modern english: the thirtieth anniversary publication of the modern english association (tokyo: eihosha, 2013), 85–100. rhodes, e.w. ed. defensor’s liber scintillarum. eets, o.s. 93. 1889; rpt. new york: kraus reprint, 1987. roeder, f. ed. der altenglische regius-psalter. 1904; rpt. tübingen: niemeyer, 1973. simpson, john & edmund s.c. weiner. eds. the oxford english dictionary, 2 nd ed. oxford: clarendon press, 1989. skeat, w.w. ed. the gospel according to st. matthew, st. mark, st. luke and st. john. 1887, 1871, 1874, 1878; rpt. darmstadt: wissenschaftliche buchgesellschaft, 1970. toller, t.n. ed. an anglo-saxon dictionary. supplement, with revised and enlarged addenda by alistair campbell. 1921; rpt. london: oxford university press, 1973. oe god, hlaford and drihten 93 appendix: dominus, deus, iesus, etc. and their renderings benrgl dominus domini domino dominum domine drihten 2 4 3 drihtne 5 drihtnes 3 hlaford 1 ø 6 2 4 4 3 benrgl deus dei deo deum god 3 1 5 gode 3 2 16 8 godes 23 goda 1 g 1 ø 6 9 6 2 libsc dominus domini domino dominum dominis dominos drihten 68 16 drihtnes 13 drihtne 1 20 3 godes 1 hlaford 1 2 hlafordes 1 hlafordum 7 hlafordas 1 ø 5 libsc deus dei deo deum dei \ deum christi god 75 1 52 godes 121 1 gode 75 33 1 of godes 1 94 michiko ogura psgla dominus domini domino dominum domine dominorum dryht n 213 100 66 68 268 dryhten 13 1 8 11 drihten 2 dryht 2 dryhtnes 8 1 dryhtne 22 3 dryt n 4 1 1 1 dryt n 1 dreyht n 1 ðryht n 1 drȳ 1 dt n t n 1 ðryhten 3 ðryt n 2 ðine 1 to dryht n 7 to dryhtne 1 hlafard 1 hlafarda 3 hlafdian 1 gode 1 ø 2 1 1 8 psgla deus dei deo deum dii deorum diis deos god 283 27 godes 36 goðes 1 gode 1 47 7 go 2 godum 1 2 godas 2 3 goda 2 dō 1 oe god, hlaford and drihten 95 dryht n 3 dryhten 1 ø 3 1 psgld dominus domini domino dominum domine dominorum drihten 32 1 1 18 11 dryhten 3 7 4 drihtnes 30 dryhtnes 8 drihtne 1 34 8 dryhtne 12 1 drihtna 1 hlaford 1 hlaforda 1 hlæfdian 1 god 2 ø 195 69 56 48 280 1 psgld deus dei deo deum dii deorum diis deos god 28 1 12 godd 11 1 godes 17 godas 2 3 gode 26 6 godum 2 goda 2 deus 1 ø 243 21 21 20 psgli dominus domini domino dominum domine dominorum drihten 126 4 39 98 drihtnes 73 drihtnys 9 drihtne 92 16 96 michiko ogura to drihtne 2 1 drihtenna 1 hlaford 1 hlaforda 1 drihtenna l. hlaforda 1 hlæfdian 1 ø 92 24 17 15 162 psgli deus dei deo deum dii deorum diis deos god 139 1 3 19 godes 41 gode 1 43 10 to gode 1 goda 2 godas 2 2 godum 1 1 ø 136 4 5 4 mt(li) dominus domini domino dominum domine drihten 5 3 28 drihtnes 6 drihtne 4 drihtnen 1 drihter 1 hlaferd 12 1 3 hlafard 2 2 hlaferdes 3 hlaferde 1 drihten \ hlaferd 1 oe god, hlaford and drihten 97 mt(li) deus dei deo deum iesus iesum iesu god 10 1 8 godes 27 gode 2 hælend 99 18 4 hælendes 4 hælende 2 2 mt(ru) dominus domini domino dominum domine drihten 2 11 dryhten 14 1 4 20 drihtnes 4 dryhtnes 5 1 drihtne 4 dryhtne 1 to drihtne 1 hlaford 3 laford 1 hlaferd 1 laferd 1 ø 1 mt(ru) deus dei deo deum iesus iesum iesu god 9 1 6 godes 26 1 gode 2 1 dryhtne 1 hælend 88 16 8 hælendes 2 hælende 1 1 helend 4 helende 1 to þæm hælende 1 98 michiko ogura him 1 hine 1 iesus 1 ø 1 5 mt(wscp) dominus domini domino dominum domine drihten 3 2 24 drihtyn 1 1 dryhten 1 dryhtyn 3 drihtnes 7 drihtenes 1 drihtne 5 to drihtne 1 hlaford 11 2 5 hlafurd 5 1 hlafordes 3 hlaforde 1 hælynd 1 mt(wscp) deus dei deo deum iesus iesum iesu god 10 1 6 godes 27 gode 3 2 hælend 71 8 1 hælynd 16 4 hælyn 1 hælendes 2 hælyndes 2 hælende 2 5 2 hælynde 1 he 5 him 1 drihten 1 ø 1 1 1 oe god, hlaford and drihten 99 mk(li) dominus domini domino dominum domine drihten 5 2 1 drihtnes 2 drihtne 3 1 hlaferd 2 mk(li) deus dei deo deum iesus iesum iesu god 14 4 godes 21 goddes 2 hælend 51 5 5 hælendes 2 hælende 3 2 hæ\ 6 1 ø 1 mk(ru) dominus domini domino dominum domine drihten 5 2 1 drihtnes 1 1 drihtne 4 drihtene 1 godes 1 mk(ru) deus dei deo deum iesus iesum iesu god 14 1 4 godes 24 hælend 55 8 2 hælendes 1 hælende 3 1 to ðæm hælende 1 hæ\ 5 1 100 michiko ogura mk(wscp) dominus domini domino dominum domine drihten 4 1 2 1 drihtnes 1 drihtne 3 hlaford 2 hlaforde 1 godes 1 drihten hælend 1 mk(wscp) deus dei deo deum iesus iesum iesu god 13 2 godes 22 gode 2 hælend 53 7 3 hælendes 1 hælyndes 1 hælende 3 3 him 1 ø 1 1 lk(li) dominus domini domino dominum domine dominis drihten 24 1 7 24 drihtnes 20 drihtne 6 4 drihtno 1 hlaford 4 hlaferd 2 hlafard 1 hlaferdes 1 hlaferdas 1 hlaferde 1 hlaferdum 1 drihten \ 1 oe god, hlaford and drihten 101 hlaford god 1 hælende 1 lk(li) deus dei deo deum iesus iesum iesu god 10 1 20 godes 62 goddes 1 gode 9 7 godæ 1 hælend 55 8 8 hælendes 4 hælende 4 1 lk(ru) dominus domini domino dominum domine drihten 23 2 6 19 drihtnes 20 1 drihtne 5 1 drihten god 1 god 1 hlaford 1 hlafard 2 hlafardas 1 hælend 2 hælende 1 lk(ru) deus dei deo deum iesus iesum iesu god 3 1 1 16 godes 1 48 gode 1 8 5 goda 1 drihten 1 1 1 hælend 42 4 4 hælendes 2 102 michiko ogura hælende 2 2 ø 1 1 2 1 1 lk(wscp) dominus domini domino dominum domine dominis drihten 16 1 1 6 19 drihtnes 13 drihtenes 1 drihtne 6 2 drihten god 1 god 1 godes 2 hlaford 7 1 1 8 hlafordes 1 1 hlafordas 1 hlaforde 1 hlafordum 1 hælend 4 hælendes 2 hælende 1 ø 2 lk(wscp) deus dei deo deum iesus iesum iesu god 10 1 15 godes 63 gode 1 7 10 drihten 1 drihtne 1 hælend 55 7 5 hælendes 3 hælende 5 5 ø 1 oe god, hlaford and drihten 103 jn(li) dominus domini domino dominum domine drihten 2 1 3 28 drihtnes 4 drihtne 2 hlaferd 2 1 hlafard 1 hlafærd 1 hlaferde 1 jn(li) deus dei deo deum deos dii iesus iesum iesu god 16 6 godes 28 1 godas 1 gode 17 1 to gode 2 goddo 1 hælend 190 28 1 hælendes 9 hælende 1 2 ðæm 1 jn(ru) dominus domini domino dominum domine drihten 4 1 3 29 drihtnes 4 drihtne 1 gode 1 hlafard 2 1 2 jn(ru) deus dei deo deum deos dii iesus iesum iesu god 14 9 1 1 godes 1 23 gode 1 17 1 godo 1 104 michiko ogura drihten 2 hælend 188 24 2 hælendes 9 hælende 5 1 crist 1 ø 6 jn(wscp) dominus domini domino dominum domine drihten 4 1 5 26 drihtnes 3 drihtne 1 hlaford 2 2 1 leof 1 jn(wscp) deus dei deo deum deos dii iesus iesum iesu god 16 1 5 godes 25 godas 1 1 gode 16 6 hælend 189 20 1 hælendes 10 hælende 7 1 hælynd 1 he 1 ø 1 author’s address school of arts and sciences tokyo woman’s christian university 2-6-1 zempukuji, suginami-ku, tokyo 167-8585, japan received: 8 december 2014 e-mail: ogura.dainagon@jcom.home.ne.jp revised version accepted: 10 june 2016 microsoft word 2021article_3_kirner.docx monika kirner-ludwig, selim26 (2021): 57–84. issn 1132-631x / issn-l 2792-3878 / https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.26.2021.57-84 ‘the wickede secte of saracenys’ – lexico-semantic means of strengthening the english christian self in texts from the middle english period monika kirner-ludwig university of innsbruck this paper focuses on the conceptual category of the saracen as portrayed in medieval english texts, and the semantic potentials of lexical units used to refer to this ethnic and religious out-group. on the basis of references gathered from broader contexts provided by the corpus of middle english prose and verse, both the frequency of usage of relevant referring expressions will be looked into. from a historio-pragmatic perspective, it shall be shown that the selected samples present one of many strategies used to strengthen the image of the christian self by systematically decomposing the image of the ‘misbelieving’ other by means of lexical choice. keywords: christians; historical semantics; historio-pragmatics; identity; middle english; misbelievers; saracens; stereotypes 1. introduction the contents of this paper shall provide some insights into how the medieval english christian was linguistically dealing with the epitome or prototype of both ethnic and religious otherness of their days: the saracen, or —as put in words by the anonymous harley 2261 scribe who translated higden’s polychronicon into middle english sometime in the 15th century— “the wickede secte of saracenys” (i, xv, in babington 1865 [vol. 1]: 129). section 2 of this paper offers a brief historical framing of the investigative object, presenting and discussing the major socio-historical factors that were influencing the stereotypical shape of the saracen from a christian perspective. section 3 focuses on the medieval english conceptual makeup of the saracen 58 monika kirner-ludwig and on how this category of the ‘other’ would be referred to linguistically in texts from the middle english period (c. 1100–1500). the latter question is further deepened in section 4, when frequent and infrequent lexico-semantic modifications used to refer to the saracen are carved out from the data gathered from the corpus of middle english prose and verse (cmepv, url1). the diachronic presentation of lexico-semantic material reflecting the changes in the conceptual makeup of the saracen in medieval england will climax in looking at its semantically broadened status it had reached by the end of the 15th century (see section 5). section 6 will sum up the findings and conclude with a discussion and reassessment of what the lexico-conceptual material on the saracen and its linguistic modifications actually may reveal about the conceptual category of the saracen as perceived and stereotyped by middle english society. 2. the english and the saracen – a brief historical framing of a curious long-distance relationship one certainly does have to set out by pointing out that the matter of saracens and mahomet(ans) as seen from a medieval christian perspective has been a much-disputed one, first and foremost by historians in relation to the crusades (e.g. lock 2006), as well as literary scholars (e.g. tolan 2002). the matter of saracens from a medieval english christian viewpoint, however, has been passed over mostly in scientific studies so far. only a small number of monographs and papers have put their focus on the specifically english role during the crusading period and england’s special relationship with the saracen: amongst these are paull’s (1969, 1972) literary studies on the saracen in middle english texts, metlitzki’s (1977) work discussing the significance of arabic material in medieval english reception, and tyerman’s (1988) extensive compilation of historical as well as political and social aspects of the crusades for england. it is particularly the latter that must be included into any paper dealing with the factors decisive for the shaping of the stereotypical makeup of the saracen in medieval england. more recent are the works by scarfe beckett and calkin, who have both approached the english-saracen matter from their expert stances as literary scholars. scarfe beckett’s work on anglo-saxon perceptions of the islamic world (2003) offers intriguing observations into how the saracen was being conceptualized and treated in literature produced during the old english period, while calkin focuses on the saracen in middle english arthurian texts (2004, strengthening the english christian self 59 2005, 2011, 2012) and, like this paper, reflects on the many correlations between the saracen and the strengthening of english identity (esp. 2004). however, none of these studies have put their focus on linguistic aspects surrounding and concerning the saracen (cf. kirner-ludwig 2015). the fact that so few works have dealt with the english stance and perspective during the crusades at all may be due to england’s part being generally deemed extremely small and hardly relevant. in fact, one cannot even entirely fight the impression that there was a general lack of interest concerning the crusades on the english side —possibly partly due to england’s geographical remoteness. the commitment of english or anglo-norman kings participating actively was more than reserved. mostly lower nobles were sent off to the holy land and, when they went, they did so as representatives rather of france than of england: robert ii ‘curthose’ of normandy for instance took part in the first crusade against the turks from 1096 to 1099, but had to do without being financially sustained by his brother king william ii of england. towards the last decades of the crusading period, around the middle of the 13th century, also king henry iii preferred to send off his brother richard i of cornwall in his place, instead of fighting himself, which he had pledged or even pretended to do on several different occasions.1 one must thus infer that england was mostly acting as a passive observer throughout most of the crusading period. in consequence, also england’s attitude towards the saracen misbeliever, who remained out of grasp and sight, 1 it has been suggested that henry never sincerely intended to take the cross in the first place (tyerman 1988). while this suspicion will most likely never be settled or securely confirmed, it can certainly not be denied that henry and his royal advisors did strategically use the circumstantial frame the crusades provided rather than get actually involved. it was clearly a strategical move that henry, upon his coronation (then only nine years old), declared himself a crusader in order to be entitled to special protection from rome (carpenter 1990: 13). claiming then that his proceedings against the rebels during the first barons’ war (1215–1217) was merely a religious crusade facilitated his victory over them in 1217 (carpenter 1990: 28ff.). after the seventh crusade (1248– 1254), led by louis ix of france, henry declared that he would launch his own crusade to the levant, but never went, being prevented from doing so, amongst other issues, by rebellions in gascony. ironically, fighting down the latter eventually used up all the money initially intended to spend on henry’s planned crusade (carpenter 1990: 123). if henry was at all having any further intents of departing on a crusade, these were surely deadened by his interior and exterior political troubles and his constant money problems throughout the 1250s and 1260s. 60 monika kirner-ludwig must have differed from the one felt by continental countries being in direct face-to-face contact, such as spain or france. the more paradox it is then — and this serves as the actual springboard for this paper— that the saracen was nonetheless one of the most talked-about issues occurring in middle english sources. i shall argue that, despite their geographical and socio-political remoteness from the saracen, the narrative and generally linguistic material of the middle english period display an immense emotional dismay and agitation on the english part. as has been shown by tyerman, this may for one thing be due to the crusading centuries being consistently taken as a good reason for raising taxes and mortgaging lands and properties all over england (1988: 17).2 this atmosphere was certainly complemented by the many stories one was hearing (and that were systematically being spread) about the cruelness and blasphemies of the saracens —mostly via french narratives.3 all this provided a fertile soil for stereotyping and demonizing the saracen. the creative and frequent use of the lexico-semantic item saracen and its manifold derivations reflects upon this concept’s high topicality. this paper will look into the pragmatic use of saracen with the intention of distancing oneself as an english christian from the pagan other. it shall be argued that, by systematically construing the saracen as the evil other of those days, the self of england’s people, united in their faith, was (supposed to be) strengthened. 2 as evans states, the first ‘crusade tax’ was raised in 1166 and remained a permanent feature of taxation thenceforth (murray 2006: 398). later kings, e.g. henry iii, also took the crusades as a legitimate reason for raising taxes. 3 it is more than likely that supposed facts and stereotypical facets about the ethnic category saracen in fact had been entering the awareness of the english from as early as the old english period onwards, mainly via (post)classical sources, for example through translations of pliny the elder’s naturalis historia and isidore’s etymologies (e.g. kirner-ludwig 2015: 390). among the most influential french sources transmitting stereotypical features of the saracen to england are the many english charlemagne romances, many of which continued to be popular until and beyond the 15th century, being amongst those texts which william caxton printed, e.g. his lyf of the noble and crysten prynce, charles the grete). strengthening the english christian self 61 3. sounding out the medieval english concept of the saracen before we tackle the complex makeup of the saracen as a conceptual category in medieval english christian minds, there is still some notional scaffolding to do, which must, for one thing, include the concept of ‘identity’ adhered to in this paper. its complex frame of reference shall be narrowed down to a sociolinguistic one, following riehl, who understands it as a construct built of four major factors, i.e. a common set of basically physical features, a shared geographical allocation, a common religious affiliation, and mutual linguistic intelligibility (2009: 164).4 the conceptual construal of the self versus the other on the basis of these four broad criteria is variously reflected in medieval english sources, with geographical inand exclusion being the most transparent one; the dichotomy between ‘us’ and ‘them’ boils down to what ‘we’ perceive as [+familiar] and [+known] versus what is [+unfamiliar] (i.e. [-familiar]) to ‘us’. it goes without saying that a given geographical distance or an actual distancing from another people will result in (and at the same time will be due to) the fact that ‘we’ do not know ‘them’ well or at all, on the one hand, and of course that ‘we’ do not comprehend ‘their’ language, as it is different from ‘ours’, i.e. the one ‘we’ know. these basic deliberations —which i am giving in the form of intensional semantic features for reasons of simplification, aspiring to provide selective semantic and conceptual cues— have to be taken into account when looking at causes for the english (following the rest of europe in) categorizing the saracen as the ‘other’: their geographical and ethnic otherness (see figure 1, adapted from kirner-ludwig 2015: 493 [figure 5.3a]). the second ground component entailed in the medieval concept of the saracen was their religious ‘misbelief’. it was this characteristic that became the primary feature decisive for the saracen being perceived as irreconcilably different from the english christian. while the mere factors of unfamiliarity and linguistic incomprehensibility (figure 1) on their own would have been enough to glance over to the east with unkind suspicion, it was the issue of 4 similar checklists were made as early as in the 1st and 2nd century ad, for instance by the roman historian p. cornelius tacitus, who studied the germanic tribes in his de origine et situ germanorum liber (aka germania), for example in chapters 27 (“instituta ritusque” [‘facilities and customs’]) and 43 (“sermo cultusque” [‘speech and way of life’], quoted from pohl 1998: 18). 62 monika kirner-ludwig figure 1. conceptual prime features underlying the ethnic distinction between the english self and the saracen other false, i.e. non-christian beliefs they fought for, that made them being perceived as a threat to the christian world —albeit a soothingly remote one, at least from an english point of view. what, however, must have made even the english quail was the idea that this false belief had originally sprung from the christian midst: one popular version included in langland’s piers plowman narrates that it was the ‘heretic’ prophet mahomet, once a christian himself, whose presumptuous5 lust for power and persuasive eloquence led his ignorant followers astray (see (1); also polychronicon v, xiv, in lumby 1876 [vol. 6]: 34–37; the buke of john mandeville, egerton version, in warner 1889: 68). (1) þis makometh was a crystene man and for he moste nouȝte be a pope, / in-to surre he souȝte (‘mahomet was a christian man; when he could not become pope, he proceeded to syria’; b-text, in skeat 1869 [vol. 2]: 276, quoted from cmepv, ll. 391ff.; also ibid. ll. 392, 401 for mahomet’s stealth and slyness) (2) ista videntur impleri sub ultimis temporibus heraclii imperatoris, quando machometus pseudo-propheta persas occupavit, ægyptum et africam subjugavit, nefariamque sectam saracenorum commentavit […] 5 note that wordings such as these do in no instance reflect my own assessment, but my interpretation of the primary texts underlying my study. strengthening the english christian self 63 (‘these things seem to have happened during the lifetime of heraclius the emperor, when mahomet, the false prophet, occupied persia and egypt and also made africa his subject, contriving the wicked sect of saracens […]’; i, xv, in lumby 1865 [vol. 1]: 128) (3) þis doynge semeþ fulfilde in þe laste tyme of heraclius þe emperour, whan þat false prophete machometys occupied persida and made egipte and affrica sogett, and […] brouȝt yn þe false lawe and secte of saracins […] (‘these events culminated during the late time of the emperor heraclius: this was when that false prophet mahomet occupied persia and subjugated egypt and africa and […] infiltrated them with the false law and sect of saracens […]’; translation by trevisa, in lumby 1865 [vol. 1]: 129) the saracens thus were an issue immediately associated with feelings of mistrust and suspicion, being epitomes of betrayal and heresy. this emotional trigger point must be kept in mind as we approach the conceptual sphere surrounding the saracen, and ultimately also the stereotypical associations related to this ‘enemy of the christian faith’ (see figure 2, adapted from kirner-ludwig 2015: 493 [figure 5.3b]). figure 2. conceptually prime features underlying the religious distinction between the english self and the saracen other with respect to ‘stereotypes’, this paper will employ an appropriately broad understanding of this notion, taking stereotypes as resulting from oversimplified conceptual categorizations and classifications that emerge from 64 monika kirner-ludwig constantly reflecting between what distinguishes the self from the other (e.g. van den heuvel 1992). stereotypical characteristics of the saracen, as they appear in the text corpus underlying my analyses, will be encoded as prime semantic features that are recurrently referred to as linguistic representations of cognitive, i.e. conceptual, makeups. in lockstep with classifying the saracen as inherently different on all cultural, linguistic, and particularly religious levels, inevitably came the western understanding that the saracen not only had literally made the wrong choice in following mahomet,6 but was in fact siding with the devil and was thus [+evil] and, just like their wrongly chosen beliefs, [+false] (see figure 3, adapted from kirner-ludwig 2015: 495 [figure 5.3c]). this conception was being expressed and spread widely and consistently by the many voices commissioned by and faithful to the christian church, herself well-established as the epitome of the one [+right] belief and the referee of all that she herself had classified as morally [+good]. numerous texts provide evidence of how creatively these fruitful grounds were salvaged when it came to establishing, strengthening, and further pushing the stereotypical makeup of the saracen, entailing all kinds of ethically bad behavior. examples mostly revolve around the saracens’ physical and mental monstrosity and their abnormal taste for violence and sexual practices condemned as despicable and indisputably intolerable by the church, such as polygyny, homosexuality, and sodomy (cadden 1993, kruger 1993, schibanoff 1993). while figures 1, 2, and 3, in a simplified manner of course, display the layers entailed in the saracen being classified as the prototype of both the ethnic and religious other, the concept of the saracen at the same time has to be seen as one component within the conceptual field of religious misbelievers and other groups of heretics the english were facing and labelling as such in the (late) middle ages. particularly the idea of heresy needs to be rementioned, as it is historio-conceptually and causally linked to the saracens, who were, as already mentioned, regarded as a christian breakaway fraction in the first place.7 6 see isidore’s definition of haeresis ‘heresy’: “haeresis graece ab electione vocatur, quod scilicet unusquisque id sibi eligat quod melius illi esse videtur” (‘heresy is so called in greek from “choice”, doubtless because each person chooses for himself that which seems best to him’; etymologies viii, iii, 1, in lindsay 1911 [vol. 1]; transl. quoted from barney et al. 2008: 174). 7 as such the saracens were even preceding those heretic groupings that began emerging in the early 14th century such as the lollards (howland/lea 1939: 1306–1325), and strengthening the english christian self 65 figure 3. the distinction between the conceptually good christian and the conceptually evil followers of mahomet’s law whereas the array of heretical dissenters, amongst them the saracens, were (perceived as) highly heterogeneous throughout the centuries and thus called and referred to by a vast number and variants of names (kirner-ludwig 2015), another very distinct group of non-christians deserves a mention when putting the saracens into their socio-historical context, i.e. the jews. in england they were being persecuted, massacred, and driven out of england since the late 12th century, e.g. under the reigns of richard i and john ‘lackland’ and thus during the crusades against the saracen enemy of the faith. even when the ‘official’ expulsion of jews from england was announced in 1290 (bauer 2003: 56–62) and respective measures were being taken, antisemitism in england did not cease (e.g. bale 2006). the jew remained the prime enemy and ally of the devil in christian collective memory. 15th-century individuals going down for heresy such as john wyclif, john oldcastle, and reginald pecock. heretic groupings specifically born out of the actual confrontations between christianity and islam, e.g. are the mozarabs (metlitzki 1977: 6). 66 monika kirner-ludwig the role allocation only changed when one’s awareness of the saracen threat grew, and the latter were more and more perceived as just another trial sent to afflict the christians and reunite them in faith.8 as texts from the english middle ages show, the conceptual makeup of the saracen and the jew in fact became assimilated to a high extent, reaching “an equally cohyponymic level of disdain” (kirner-ludwig 2015: ch. 5.4.4). but while it is true that jews were occasionally being referred to as saracens, even invoking mahomet as their god in e.g. medieval mystery plays (chemers 2007), we do not find this appellation the other way round, one reason for which is that saracen had, by the late middle ages, semantically broadened to the extent that it was not only used in reference to people following mahomet, but to anyone [+evil] and [+cruel] (kirner-ludwig 2015: 243). we thus find that the two conceptual categories of the jews and of the saracens were closely associated, but at the same time it was the saracen that conceptually and, in lockstep, semantically emerged to be the prototype of the evil other of his days. 4. means of referring to and modifying the saracen misbeliever in middle english days as already stated, the saracen turns out to have been one of the most frequently addressed topics in middle english literature altogether. i am basing this claim upon numbers from the cmepv gathering all in all 146 texts from throughout the middle english period.9 when browsing the cmepv for saracens via the open cluster sara*, one is faced with 1,353 matches in fifty-eight records;10 when then additionally taking into account the number of relevant matches to sars*, which are much rarer but still appear 156 times in twenty-three records, the number of tokens of saracen containing the clusters sara* or sars* add up to 8 this had been the belief also related to the viking invasions in anglo-saxon england. 9 note that all upcoming token numbers are based on the text editions collected and digitized by the cmepv. despite the fact that most of these are rather aged and that younger and revised editions of these text are available, it is the classic editions i stick to in this paper for retaining coherence with quantitative data retrieved from the corpus. 10 this number is, of course, hardly expressive unless looked at in contrast and relation to other terms of insinuated, christian every-day-relevance. i have picked love and evil as two possible yardsticks: the love* gets 2,758 matches in seventy-five records, evil* counts 152 matches in forty-seven records. strengthening the english christian self 67 1,509 in sixty-five records all in all (after the elimination of identical sources coming up for both clusters; see table 1, adapted from kirner-ludwig 2015: 421 [table 5.17]).11 table 1. tokens responding to sara* and sars* in the cmepv data sara* 1,353 matches in 58 records sars* 156 matches in 23 records total 1,509 matches in 65 records table 2. tokens responding to turk* and arab* in the cmepv data turk* 467 matches in 18 records arab* 65 matches in 11 records it is worth mentioning that the number of word forms containing the cluster crist* in contrast add up to 25,638 matches in 134 records, which makes the numbers of saracens and heathens in the corpus look rather meagre at first glance. what these numbers suggest, however, is that the use of semantically positive terms in order to strengthen one’s own english christian self may have been much more common than the use of semantically negative terms referring to and cutting off the other in order to sustain one’s self. nevertheless, if we include the numbers of mentioning of turks and arabs (see table 2, adapted from kirner-ludwig 2015: 421 [table 5.17]) and particularly take into account that at least another eighteen middle english morphemes forming adjectives and nouns were commonly used to refer to religious misbelievers or nonchristians, amongst them gentile, infidel, heathen, and pagan, the high relevance of the saracen misbeliever is again indisputable.12 when looking at other lexical units within the conceptual and lexicosemantic field of misbelievers and within the cmepv, tokens in {saracen} 11 the number of sixty-five records being referred to here are due to sixteen records containing both sars* and sara* with both numbers counted. 12 these eighteen morphemes or clusters are: {barbar}, {ethn}, {faithless}, {heretic}, {idol}, {misbelief}, {mescreant}, {paien}, {painim}, {profan}, {reprob}, {unbelief}, and {unfaith}. see kirner-ludwig (2015) for more detail. 68 monika kirner-ludwig occur as frequently as formations in {heathen},13 the latter of which had been the vernacularly prototypical choice in referring to non-christians since the old english period and long into the middle english period (kirner-ludwig 2015: ch. 4.1.1, ch. 4.5; also compare g heide ‘heathen’) —rendering these two bases the most frequent morphemes in the overall misbelievers’ picture. by the end of the 13th century, nominal and adjectival formations in {saracen} even gradually challenged and superseded formations in {heathen} and others, so that by the 14th century the saracen had already shifted to the prototype center of misbelievers, and so that forms in {saracen} became hyperonymous in the sense that they could either be used to refer specifically to followers of mahomet’s law, or to all other kinds of religious misbelievers (with the exception of jews). based on these figures as well as on my arguing and socio-historical framing in sections 2 and 3 above, the next step is to tackle the extent and the ways text producers would express their concern with or even strong feelings of hatred regarding the saracen. in fact, from the early middle english period we find rather harsh instances of verbal abuse against the saracens, which suggest a rather high extent of emotional involvement. i have chosen examples compiled in horstmann’s edition of altenglische legenden (1881; cf. (4) and (5), both quoted from cmepv) for respectively strong references: (4) the quene seyde maxent vn-too: / ‘thou false, cursyde sarasyne, / thou schalt haue an euyll synne […]’ (‘the queen said to maxentius: “you false, cursed saracen! you shall suffer evil harm [an evil end]’’’; c. 1420 seynte kateryne [ms. cbr. ff. ii, 38, n. 24], ll. 228–230, in horstmann 1881: 262) (5) [maiden mergrete:] ‘ȝif it be ȝour wille, ȝour angel ȝe me sende! / fram þis foule saraȝins y may me nouȝt defende’ (‘‘‘if it is your will, send me an angel! i cannot defend myself [alone] against those foul saracens’’’; c. 1310 seynt mergrete [ms auchinl. f. 16b], ll. 71ff., in ibid. 227) since the saracen is generally treated as the villain and complementary evil counterpart to the christian self in middle english texts, one could assume for 13 the cmepv is not even exhaustive so that it would indeed have made a difference in the census in favor of saracen-tokens, if works such as the 14th-century king of tars, of arthour and of merlin (e.g. calkin 2004), or the late 14th-/early 15th-century romances sir ferumbras and the sowdone of babylone had been incorporated. strengthening the english christian self 69 most references to saracens to be negatively modified, such as the ones in (4) and (5), or even as the reference used in the title to this paper, i.e. “the wickede secte of saracenys” (harley 2261 scribe, translation of higden’s polychronicon, i, xv, in babington 1865 [vol. 1]: 129). as it turns out, however, these extracts are the actual exception to the rule in medieval english texts.14 much more often than not, saracen occurs without any semantic modifications at all in middle english texts. when we again refer back to the contents provided by the cmepv, only eighty-seven cases out of 1,353 hits in fifty-eight records responding to a browse for sara* (see table 1 above) actually display saracen as being further modified. all others, i.e. 1,266 tokens, present saracen standing on its own. this is particularly striking as binomial phrasings are fairly frequent with other terms referring to and making up the lexico-semantic field of religious misbelievers in the 14th and 15th centuries (kirner-ludwig 2015).15 common combinations, for instance, contain the french-borrowed {mescreant} as a modifier or modifiee with e.g. {paiem}, {misbelief}, {paynym}, {gentil}, or {heresy}, as shown in table 3. the binomial material provided by the oedo, the medo, and the cmepv is rich in both numbers and creativity,16 also revealing a good many phrasings with again other components, such as “al the paganesse and mysbelewynge men”,17 “curste, vnhappy and prophane”,18 “unfeithfully and untruly”,19 and “an vnfeithful or hethen wyf”.20 14 among the very few exceptions also are the following phrasings: “the myscredaunte sarasyns” (c. 1500 robert deuyll in w. j. thoms coll. early prose romances (1828) i. 49; quoted from oedo); “barbaryn ys a sarazyn straunge” (a. 1450(a. 1338) mannyng chron.pt.1 (lamb 131) 16060; quoted from medo); “among sarasyns & oþere vnbelefful” (c. 1380 wyclif wks. (1880) 45; quoted from oedo); see kirner-ludwig (2015: 282). 15 on the concept of binomials and various historio-linguistic perspectives, see e.g. kopaczyk & sauer (forthc.). 16 see kirner-ludwig (2015: ch. 4.5.4) for further examples. 17 stencil: a. 1500(1422) yonge ssecr. (rwl b.490) 199/22 (medo). 18 stencil: c. 1450 three kings cologne (bl add.) 767 in archiv f. das studium der neueren sprachen (1912) 129 67 (oedo). 19 stencil: 1491 act 7 hen. vii c. 22 preamble (oedo). 20 stencil: c. 1384 wbible(1) (dc 369(2)) 1 cor.7.12; 2 cor.6.15 (medo). 70 monika kirner-ludwig table 3. binomial phrasings containing {mescreant} as either a modifier or modifiee binomial phrase approximate date of creation citation stencil retrieved from “mani paiem miscreaunt” c. 1330(?a. 1300) arthour & merlin (auch.) (1973) 5227 oedo “misbeleve and miscreaunce” a. 1450(c. 1410) lovel. grail (corp-c 80) 49.357 medo “paynemes mescreauns” a. 1450(c. 1410) lovel. grail (corp-c 80) 50.197 medo “misscreauntis gentiles” c. 1465 3 kcol.(1) (hrl 1704) 266 medo “heresyes and in myscreaunce” ?1488 caxton tr. laurent ryal bk. sig. cviii oedo apart from the fact that medieval text producers were well aware of the rhetorically persuasive and thus pragmatic power of binomials (or the hendiadyoin), there must have been good reasons for them to create such multifarious and, at first glance, tautological components. this is why there must have been equally good reasons to not deploy this stylistic device with saracen. i strongly believe that, opposed to other lexical units, saracen simply was a lexical cue powerful on its own, bearing semantic contents and triggering common associations strong enough to speak for themselves (kirner-ludwig 2015: 464). this argument will be further deepened in the upcoming section. 5. the saracen carried to their semantic and conceptual extremes in 15th-century middle english arthurian literature with the saracen being conceptualized as inherently strange, ungraspable, and thus monstrous and dangerous, there basically must have been unlimited room for fantastic ideas about their practices and looks. as the stereotypical makeup of the saracen was expanding, the semantic and conceptual shape of saracen and its derivational forms shifted remarkably as well. as forestalled above, saracen broadened its extensional range so immensely that text producers of the 15th century would use the term in reference even to such non-christians that were strengthening the english christian self 71 not followers of mahomet’s law. text samples (4) and (5) above display this anachronistic usage and shall be given here again for the sake of readerfriendliness: (4) the quene seyde maxent vn-too: / ‘thou false, cursyde sarasyne, / thou schalt haue an euyll synne […]’ (‘the queen said to maxentius: “you false, cursed saracen! you shall suffer evil harm [an evil end]”’; c. 1420 seynte kateryne [ms. cbr. ff. ii, 38, n. 24], ll. 228–230, in horstmann 1881: 262) (5) [maiden mergrete:] ‘ȝif it be ȝour wille, ȝour angel ȝe me sende! / fram þis foule saraȝins y may me nouȝt defende’ (‘“if it is your will, send me an angel! i cannot defend myself [alone] against those foul saracens”’; c. 1310 seynt mergrete [ms auchinl. fol. 16b], ll. 71ff., in ibid.: 227) both samples put the saracen into the historical frame of the late roman empire and into the anachronistic position of having both saints catherine and margarete beheaded for refusing their christian faith. these two cases are amongst the 1,509 tokens of {saracen} in sixty-five records contained in the cmepv (also cf. table 1 above). amongst these sixty-five records are eighteenth texts that display fifteen or more tokens of sara* and sars* (cf. table 3), again including those pieces from horstmann’s edition of altenglische legenden (1881) that contain samples (4) and (5). of these eighteen texts, six (in the following labelled as b, f, h, k, o, and q) particularly stand out in not only displaying the anachronistic use of saracen in reference to germanic heathens instead of actual saracens, which i am going to focus on in the course of this last section, but also in sharing a contentual cohesiveness: they all address the arthurian story frame. the metrical chronicle of robert of gloucester (h) and the chronicles of england (o) fall under the category of so-called brut-chronicles, generally reconstructing britain’s history by giving accounts of the earliest to the most recent kings. the other four texts, i.e. jean d’arras (b), merlin or the early history of king arthur (f), le morte darthur by thomas malory (k), and the alliterative morte arthure (q), can be classified as arthurian romances, zeroing in on king arthur and his knights. 72 monika kirner-ludwig table 4. eighteen primary texts contained in the cmepv, all containing fifteen or more tokens of sara*, sare* and sars* (adapted from kirner-ludwig 2015: 422 [table 5.18]) text refs. title of text date of composition matches in full text (cmepv) matches total relevant† a william caxton. lyf of the noble and crysten prynce, charles the grete (ed. herrtage 1880–1881) 1485 sara*: 184 sare*: 2 sars*: 0 184 2 186 b jean, d’arras, trans. melusine. part i. (ed. donald 1895) 1382–1394 sara*: 134 sare*: 0 sars*: 0 134 c polychronicon ranulphi higden maona-chi cestrensis; together with the english translations of john trevisa and of an unknown writer of the fifteenth century (eds. babington/lumby 1865–1886) 15th cent. sara*: 105 sare*: 5 sars*: 24 105-18 = 87 5-1 = 4 24 115 d peter langtoft’s chronicle (ed. hearne 1725) langtoft †1307 sara*: 70 sare*: 2 sars*: 0 70 2-1 = 1 71 e the romance of sir beues of hamtoun (ed. kölbing 1885–1894) c. 1330 (?c. 1300) sara*: 38 sare*: 9 sars*: 20 38 9-2 = 7 20 65 f merlin or the early history of king arthur: a prose romance (ed. wheatley 1899) a. 1500 (?c. 1450) sara*: 64 sare*: 0 sars*: 0 64 strengthening the english christian self 73 g cursor mundi (ed. morris 1874–1893) a. 1400 (1325) sara*: 69 sare*: 430 sars*: 12 69-23 = 46 430-426‡ = 4 12 62 h the metrical chronicle of robert of gloucester (ed. wright 1887) c. 1325 (c. 1300) sara*: 47 sare*: 7 sars*: 0 47 7 54 i the romance of guy of warwick. the second or 15thcentury version (ed. zupitza 1875–1876) 15th cent. sara*: 16 sare*: 12 sars*: 40 16-14= 2 12-12= 0 40 42 j the romance of guy of warwick. the first or 14thcentury version (ed. zupitza 1883–1891) 14th cent. sara*: 40 sare*: 21 sars*: 1 40 21-20†‡ = 1 1 42 k thomas malory. le morte darthur (ed. sommer 1889) 1485 sara*: 32 sare* 2 sars*: 0 32 2 34 l william langland. the vision of william concerning piers the plowman, together with vita de dowel, dobet, et dobest, secundum wit et resoun. a-, b-, and c-texts (ed. skeat 1867–1885) c. 1400 (1378) sara*: 29 sare*: 2 sars*: 3 29 2 3 34 m altenglische legenden (ed. horstmann 1881) a. 1425 (?c. 1375) sara*: 18 sare*: 62 sars*: 3 18-1‡‡ = 17 62-49†‡‡ = 13 3-1‡‡‡ = 2 32 n the right plesaunt and goodly historie of the foure sonnes of aymon (ed. richardson 1884–1885) 1489 sara*: 24 sare*: 0 sars*: 0 24 74 monika kirner-ludwig o the brut, or the chronicles of england (ed. brie 1906–1908) ?a. 1425 (a. 1400) sara*: 22 sare*: 3 sars*: 0 22 3-2 = 1 23 p king horn (ed. hall 1901) c. 1300 (?c. 1225) sara*: 21 sare*: 2 sars*: 0 21 2-2 = 0 21 q the alliterative morte arthure (ed. krishna 1976) early 15th cent. sara*: 17 sare*: 4 sars*: 0 17 4-2†‡‡‡ = 2 19 r william langland. the vision of piers plowman. b-text (ed. schmidt 1978) c. 1400 (1378) sara*: 0 sare*: 0 sars*: 15 15 † irrelevant matches are subtracted. the net effects are printed in bold. ‡ of all 430 matches, 426 respond to “sare”. †‡ 20 matches to “sare” are subtracted. ‡‡ one match responds to the personal name “saraphyne”. †‡‡ mostly matches to “sare” are subtracted. ‡‡‡ the passage “among sarseynes he pleied the lioun” (p. 403/ii, l. 381) from lydgate’s lives of ss edmund and fremund is quoted twice. †‡‡‡ “sare” occurs twice. i want to argue that this anachronistic use of saracen allows for an interpretation on a pragmatic level, i.e. the strategic construction of the positive self versus the wicked other. for reasons of space constraints, my discussion shall focus on texts f (merlin) and k (le morte darthur), which provide varied and intriguing insights into how saracen was deployed a lexico-semantic tool in the late 15th century.21 the middle english prose romance merlin (a. 1500(?c. 1450)) is generally considered “the earliest piece of arthurian literature written in english prose” (url2). in contrast to malory’s morte darthur, which is a compilation of numerous sources and influences, the middle english merlin seems to follow 21 see kirner-ludwig (2015) for discussions of the other texts. also see e.g. calkin (2004), roland (2006), and keita (2006) for literary approaches to saracens in arthurian literature of the english middle ages. strengthening the english christian self 75 one single source, i.e. the merlin section of the old french vulgate cycle (early 13th century). the middle english version, whose creator is unknown to us, contains sixty-four matches in sara* as part of saracen or respective word forms. as the narrative is situated in the 5th and 6th centuries ad, it is not in fact surprising that no single one of these tokens is used in reference to an actual saracen; all sixty-four instances display an anachronistic reference to the saxon invaders of britain. in section 4, i hint to the phenomenon that saracen generally tends to occur without any semantic modifications. this is affirmed in merlin, as no more than three tokens within the sixty-four counts of saracen (<sarazin>) fulfill the syntactic criterion of <head + modification>. thus, sixty-one tokens are unmodified uses of saracen. samples (6), (7), and (8) display the three modified ones (all quoted from cmepv, in wheatley 1899): (6) [king brangore to lordinges:] ‘these vn-trewe and misbelevynge sarazins’ (‘“those faithless and misbelieving saracens”’; xii, in vol. 1, p. 174) (7) gawein slowgh many a sarazin of the saxouns (‘gawein killed many saracens of the saxons’; xiii, in vol. 2, p. 193) (8) [children to seigramor:] ‘these false sarazins’ (‘“those false saracens”’; xvi, p. 260) whereas unmodified uses of saracen do not give away much regarding the conceptual makeup and associative spheres of both term and concept, the few modified references are therefore immensely valuable for deepening the understanding of how the saracen was decked out with stereotypical features. samples (6) and (8) are part of direct speech, which allows for the text producer taking the liberty of adding an extra pinch of emotionality and thus modification. saracen would certainly have conveyed the features [-true] (“vn-trewe”), [+misbelieving] (“misbelevynge”), and [+false] (“false”) all on its own, but explicitly providing these semantic modifiers certainly was the more expressive and emotionally loaded choice. sample (7) clearly is special: it displays saracen as meronym to saxon, most likely meaning it in the sense of ‘villain’, which attests not only the broad extensional scope saracen had been assigned by the 15th century, but also how cognitively rich and effective the concept and mentioning of the saracen must have been deemed —even when explicitly establishing the anachronistic relation to the saxon of the 5th century. 76 monika kirner-ludwig a comparison to the not much younger morte darthur, written by thomas malory and printed by william caxton in 1485, both sustains and exceeds these findings. the morte darthur contains thirty-two tokens responding to sara* in the cmepv. of these, thirteen are used as modifiers or modifiees, which presents an intriguing lexical range that sets malory’s uses of saracen off even against other works. samples (9) to (12) were selected to give a respectively varied display: (9) two honderd sarasyns or infydeles (‘two hundred saracens or infidels’; le morte darthure, v, ii, in sommer 1889: 163, quoted from cmepv) (10) these sarasyns and mysbyleuyng men (‘these saracens and misbelievers’; ibid. v, x, p. 178, quoted from cmepv) (11) there ben many other knyghtes as sir palamydes the sarasyn (‘there were many knights just like sir palomides the saracen’; vii, xiii, in sommer 1889: 232, quoted from cmepv) (12) the mescreaunts sarasyns (‘the misbelieving saracens’; ibid. x, xxxii, p. 465, quoted from cmepv) all in all, we find the extensional potential of saracen in reference to all kinds of misbelievers: both to the actual saracen palomides (cf. (11)), whom malory inserted as an anachronistic character, and to the non-saracen in samples (9), (10), and (12). malory’s application of sarasyn is so broad and unspecific in fact that only the semantic feature [-christian] may be presupposed for sure. still, malory deemed it semantically necessary to insert additional modifiers bearing the sense ‘unbelieving, infidel’, which may speak for the suggestion that saracen had been semantically broadened so much by then that a religious delimitation or the emphasis of this particular feature of otherness was considered relevant (also cf. (7) above). considering my argument above, i.e. that the saracen was being perceived and construed as the prototypical other in texts from the middle english period, it is particularly interesting to briefly attend the character palomides. opposed to the middle english merlin, malory does not only give his readers any misbeliever, but in addition an actual saracen on top. palomides, a saracen knight, can be seen as a strategically implemented, anachronistic character in strengthening the english christian self 77 malory’s version: apparently, the mahometan saracen, embedded in the all-time-favorite arthurian frame, was believed to be making a popular topic in the eyes of both malory and caxton (cf. samples (11), (13), (14), (15)). (13) there ben many other knyghtes as sir palamydes the sarasyn (‘there were many knights just like sir palomides the saracen’; vii, xiii, in sommer 1889: 232, quoted from cmepv) (14) this vnhappy sarasyn palamydes (‘palomides, this unhappy saracen’; viii, xxxi, in sommer 1889: 320, quoted from cmepv) (15) my name is palomydes the sarasyn (‘i am palomides the saracen’; x, liii, in sommer 1889: 504, quoted from cmepv) from his first mentioning onwards, palomides keeps being referred to either by the title sir, which modifies his (and any other knight’s) status as a member of the honorable social category of knights (cf. (13)), or by the ethnic and religious modification saracen. in most instances, the referring noun phrase contains both specifications and reads “syr palamydes the sarasyn” (quoted from book 7, xxvii; cf. also book 8, ix, p. 285; book 10, lxiii, p. 523; ibid. lxx, p. 537). not only is palomides, despite his representing the ‘other’, granted access to the arthurian circle, but he also is given a fair amount of empathy and clemency by the narrator (cf. (14)). twistedly, palomides even uses his own voice to set himself apart as the other: in (15) he gets the label saracen put into his very own mouth to use it against or at least in reference to himself. it is likely not only that a publisher at the turn of the 15th century, without agitation of rejection, could present his readership with a semi-positive saracen he himself considered an asset to his work, but also that the majority of potential recipients would accept or even appreciate this semi-other as a new addition to a cycle of well-known tales and characters embedded in their shared cultural pool of knowledge. still, in comparison to other contemporary handlings of the palomides-issue, malory still seems a bit more reluctant to see the unrestricted ‘good’ in him, but at least does not entirely deny his capability of it either. nevertheless, even this partly appreciative approach towards a saracen would certainly not have affected or changed the clear statement of the text that all non-christians were consistently called saracens and therefore were to be allocated to the ‘other’ side, where also a non-christian knight was to be put, 78 monika kirner-ludwig regardless of his accomplishments —all according to the motto: saracens will be saracens. through the literal and conceptual replacement of the saxons for the sake of saracens and the latter’s anachronistic situating into (mostly fictional) events that happened about a thousand years before caxton decided to print his compilation of stories, the impression is conveyed that the saracens had been fighting the christians forever, even when the “once and future king” ruled in those golden days of britain. and this is right where the pragmatic argument can be picked up once more: by paralleling, reflecting, and highlighting the basic stereotypical features of all misbelievers and specifically the saracen, viz. [-christian], [+cruel], [+enemy (to both faith and life)], [-friendly], [+threatening], etc., and by additionally using the term saracen in several spots throughout the text, the reader was surely meant and persuaded to strengthen their perception of the mahometan saracen as the ‘other’ as well as the ‘villain’ and ‘enemy’ to christian faith. 6. a brief summary as i have demonstrated, the concept of the saracen grew intricately complex during the english middle ages, and so did the lexical unit saracen. this is despite the fact that the extent of emotional involvement and dismay on the english side towards the saracen certainly did not emerge from one’s own sociohistorical experiences with them. the geographical distance from and the hearsay about the saracen must have been what immensely enhanced the semantic broadening saracen had experienced by the 15th century —and thus its potential of extensionally referring to any non-christian regardless of their ethnic or even temporal affiliation. it is well possible that this process is connected to the fact that england’s emotional attitude towards this topic grew more and more, while, on the other hand, the ungraspability of the saracen provided a fruitful soil for its semantic and conceptual malleability. with this being said, linguistic labelling and stereotyping the saracen enemy of the faith came to be an efficient weapon for the english to spread both word and quasi-knowledge about them amongst all members of the christian in-group. shifting the saracen up to the hyperonymous level of misbelievers was one powerful cognitive-pragmatic move to establish diversity. by further blending the heathen saxons of the 5th century ad in arthurian romances on the one hand and the saracens unwilling to convert on the other, strengthening the english christian self 79 or by labelling the old misbelieving germanic tribes with a term representing the epitome of the ‘other’ in malory’s days and earlier, one could linguistically distance the english-christian identity from all that was not christian. the labelling of the ‘villains’ as saracens thereby must have been considered a more than apt and handy device to avoid having to admit that the actual villain in the arthurian stories were the forefathers of the english themselves. having said that, it cannot be stated with certainty whether the celtic heritage of arthur was consciously neglected in the 15th-century brut-chronicles and romances and assigned to the english tradition for both pro-christian as well as common english identity strengthening purposes, but it is highly unlikely that this seizing of quasi-historical tradition happened in fact simply out of ignorance. much more probable is the assumption that text compilers and narrators of the arthurian stuff in the 15th century not only were the ones permanently implementing the villain of their own days into a story frame that every reader would conventionally know, but at the same time also were to satisfy their contemporary readers’ demand for this prototypical villain they all could picture. the saracen was functionalized as exactly that prototype in the high middle ages, representing the non-christian and devilish misbeliever. and with this prototype, the term saracen had been made a highly effective lexico-semantic instrument, used in order to distinguish the ‘bad’ from the ‘good’. references primary sources babington, c. & j. r. lumby eds. 1865–1886: polychronicon ranulphi higden monachi cestrensis. together with the english translations of john trevisa and of an unknown writer of the fifteenth century. 9 vols. 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(ph.d. dissertation.) chapel hill, university of north carolina. paull, m. r. 1972: mahomet and the conversion of the heathen in piers plowman. english language notes 10.1: 1–8. pohl, w. 1998: telling the difference: signs of ethnic identity. in w. pohl & h. reimitz eds. strategies of distinction. the construction of ethnic communities, 300–800. leiden, brill: 17–69. 84 monika kirner-ludwig riehl, c. m. 2009: sprachkontaktforschung. 2nd rev. ed. tübingen, eine einführung (narr studienbücher). roland, m. 2006: arthur and the turks. arthuriana 16.4: 29–42. scarfe beckett, k. 2003: anglo-saxon perceptions of the islamic world (cambridge studies in anglo-saxon england, 33). cambridge, cambridge university press. schibanoff, s. 1993: mohammed, courtly love, and the myth of western heterosexuality. medieval feminist newsletter 16.1: 27–32. simpson, j. & e. weiner eds. 1989: the oxford english dictionary. 20 vols. 2nd ed. oxford, clarendon press. http://www.oed.com/ [last accessed 29 october 2015]. 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[here cited as: url2] tolan, j. v. 2002: saracens. islam in the medieval european imagination. new york, columbia university press. tyerman, c. 1988: england and the crusades 1095–1588. chicago & london, university of chicago press. author’s address department of english university of innsbruck innrain 52d, 40326 (geiwi-turm) 6020 innsbruck, austria received: 10 february 2021 e-mail: monika.kirner-ludwig@uibk.ac.at revised version accepted: 12 april 2021 microsoft word 5. proofs_treharne.docx selim. journal of the spanish society for medieval english language and literature. 28 (2023): 79–96. issn: 1132-631x doi: 10.17811/selim.28.2023.79-96 © ediuno. ediciones de la universidad de oviedo. this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. “terrible letters”: bad handwriting and its implications, 1020–1220 elaine treharne stanford university (received 26 october 2022; revised 12 april 2023) this essay takes as its central point of investigation the modern cliché of “bad handwriting” and investigates this in the contexts of what present-day palaeographers have inherited from their foundational predecessors, and in terms of what the phrase might have indicated in different medieval moments of textual production. the essay opens with a reminder that in preprint western culture the role and practices of the scribe were fundamental to information transfer and the making permanent of knowledge and socio-intellectual aspiration. this reminder comes in the form of the close analysis of a sermon of pope innocent iii, raising the profile of the scribe, which runs counter to some of the ways in which scribal activities have subsequently been described and judged by modern scholars. thinking about what might constitute poor or terrible handwriting leads to analyses of late and early medieval statements on writing from the paston letters and bede’s ecclesiastical history. both sources show a very different understanding of the nature and consequences of bad handwriting.1 keywords: medieval scribes; palaeography; manuscript aesthetics; bede’s ecclesiastical history; the paston letters in a sermon of fundamental significance given in 1215, pope innocent iii opened the fourth lateran council with a call to arms for the salvation of souls. there are multiple troubling and problematic aspects to this sermon that need to be acknowledged, chief among them the demonization of muslims and the instigation of the fifth crusade. the sermon sought to rouse and to motivate, and not just for the reclamation of the eastern lands of the mediterranean, but also for the proper persuasion and mediation of the priestly role. within the sermon, an extended exegesis of ezekiel chapter 9 raises the profile of the late medieval clerical scribe in a passage that discusses the prophecy of the “man dressed in linen” who is to mark a tau on the foreheads of those who will be saved from six retributive men with weapons of destruction in ezekiel’s vision (vause and 1 i am honoured to have had the opportunity to deliver this paper as the inaugural patricia shaw lecture to the selim conference at the universidad de la rioja in logroño in september 2022, organized brilliantly by professor roberto torre alonso. i am thankful to the audience members for their comments, and i am deeply grateful to the two anonymous readers for this journal, whose meticulous and thoughtful comments and suggestions are much appreciated. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3439-2976 elaine treharne 80 frank 2004, 51–63).2 those marked by the “man dressed in linen” are effectively saved from the imminent massacre, and the resonance of this exemplum at a time of crusade would have been significant. innocent further explains to the hundreds of assembled council dignitaries and prelates: the “man dressed in linen, who had the ink-horn of a scribe at his loins,” should be the preacher—a man robust in virtue like the man of whom the scripture says, “there was a man in the land of uz, named job. this man was blameless and upright, fearing god and shunning evil.” “dressed in linen,” that is, dressed with honest habits and good works, as is said in another place, “always see that your garments are dazzling white”; that is, let your works be pure. for the “linen” from which the priestly vestments were made, according to the law, designates cleanliness and honesty because of the radiance to which it is brought by maceration of the flesh, and by contrition. the “scribe,” preeminent and supreme, is the holy spirit, the finger of god, who wrote the tablets of the testament. of him the psalmist says, “my tongue is the pen of a scribe writing swiftly.” the “ink-horn” of this scribe is the gift of knowledge from which the “ink” of doctrine is brought forth by the “pen” of the tongue to be written on the parchment of the heart. the “loins” are the center of our desires. so the lord commands, “gird your loins,” and the psalmist prayed to the lord, “purge my loins and my heart.” this all means that he who has “the ink-horn of a scribe” is the one who, by the gift of knowledge given him by the holy spirit, restrains and moderates the desires of the flesh in himself so that his way of life is not discordant with his teaching, lest it will be said to him, “physician, heal yourself [.]” (vause and gardiner 2004, 51-63)3 this sermon was written into london, british library, harley ms 104, folio 196r, column b, line 44 to folio 196v, column a, line 3 and a version is edited by quaresimo (1639, 379–80). the manuscript itself is a collection of religious texts from england, from the first quarter of the thirteenth century. the sermon exists as the final item copied on a singleton added after a blank verso in script that, in my opinion, is contemporary with or just a little later than the sermon itself. its appearance in harley 104 is unsurprising on the one hand, given the clerical impulse of the manuscript, but also suggests a close relationship between this codex and those whose duty it was to disseminate the principles of the pope and the dicta of the fourth lateran council. there is a focus in the codex on pastoral care, which is comprehensive; it contains gregory’s pastoral care; innocent iii’s de missarum mysteriis; richard of st victor’s allegoriae novi testamenti and de oratione dominica and works of the great english theologian and archbishop of canterbury from 1206—stephen langton, who died in 1228.4 2 now as to the spiritual passover the lord said “to the man dressed in linen, who had the inkhorn of a scribe at his loins, “pass through the center of the city and mark tau on the foreheads of the men who sigh and mourn over all the abominations being committed within it”. then he said to the six men who had the weapons of destruction in their hands, “pass through the city following him, and pierce through and through all on whom you do not find the tau. let your eye spare no one and begin at my sanctuary!”. 3 in my lightly edited form, the latin reads: “scriptor autem egregius et suppremus . / spiritus sanctus est, digitus dei, de quo scripte fuerunt due tabule testa/menti . de quo dicut psalmista [psalm 44]: lingua mea. calamus scribe et cetera [velociter scribentis in edition]. huius scriptoris / atramentarium .est donum scientie, de quo per calamum [lingue] scribe atramentum / doctrine presentium. et in cordis superscribitur percameno . in renibus / autem sedes est desiderii . de quibus dominus precipit dicens: renes / vestros accingetis et psalmista orabat ad dominum . ure renes meos / et cor meum . ille igitur habet atramentum scriptoris, ad renes per donum / [folio 196v, column a] scientie aspum sancto donatum . qui desideria carnis chohibet et restringit, ut vita non discrepet a doctrina, ne sibi dicatur: ‘medice cura teipsum’”. 4 the manuscript in its entirety is digitised on the british library website. “terrible letters”: bad handwriting and its implications, 1020–1220 81 this manuscript is important for many reasons, not the least of which is its clear significance for understanding the renewed emphases on the role of priest as mediator and pastoral guide during the papacy of innocent iii (1198–1216). harley 104 exhibits an overall unity of functions as a book for those caring for souls. it is also a significant codex because its contents and script permit a close dating of production. for those working on script from the earlier thirteenth century, when hands were so varied, harley 104’s internal data provides insight into its compilation between 1206 and 1220. valuable palaeographical evidence for the dating of particular elements of script, such as the crossed tironian nota, barred capitals, and looped ascenders is evident. script and scribal activity are key to this manuscript’s agenda-setting contents. innocent’s sermon emphasises the primary importance of the scribe in transmitting the word of god and that underscores and validates the activities of a scribe as they go about their work. in the sermon, as it is edited, the pope’s allegory of scribal signification, motivation, tools, and activity reads: huius scriptoris atramentarium est donum scientie, de quo per calamum lingue atramentum doctrine presentium et in cordis superscribitur percameno. the “ink-horn” of this scribe is the gift of knowledge from which the “ink” of doctrine is brought forth by the “pen” of the tongue to be written on the parchment of the heart. but at folio 196r of the harley 104 version of the sermon, the scribe’s up-to-the-minute inclusion of innocent’s sermon further promotes the work of writing by means of two lexical variants. here, the passage is rendered in harley 104 as: huius scriptoris / atramentarium est donum scientie, de quo per calamum scribe atramentum / doctrine profertur et in cordis superscribitur percameno. the “ink-horn” of this scribe is the gift of knowledge from which the “ink” of doctrine is to be made public by the “pen” of the scribe and to be written on the parchment of the heart. these unnoticed lexical alterations in the harley 104 sermon—from lingue to scribe and presentium to profertur—may be deliberate nods to the written delivery of the sermon in harley 104, as opposed to the oral delivery of the original sermon by innocent. the occurrence of scribe may also conceivably be dittographic error, but nevertheless it raises the profile of the scribe as the mediator of the message, rather than the preacher, whose evanescent sermonised urgings are not permanent as are the written words of the scribe. it casts the writer as the intercessor and the harbinger of god’s message and this, as is well documented, was the key for innocent iii throughout his career: the emphasis on the priests and prelates of the church being those whose mediation was essential for the proper care of individual souls. this sermon in harley 104, inscribed into a manuscript aimed at those responsible for pastoral care, and with its highlighting of the public role of the scribe, tells us of the volume’s particular relevance in the post-lateran iv decades. the scribe is the mundane instrument of the “finger of god” for innocent iii in his reminder of those whose jobs are to save souls—to preach and hear confession, to warn and encourage. here, the scribe and the priestly intercessor appear as one and the same in the core promulgation of christianity. this essay will focus on the significance of this most fundamental of medieval figures—the scribe, as well as on the products of these writers in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. i shall consider how modern scholarship elaine treharne 82 delineates the work of medieval scribes, often judging their efforts to be clumsy, inexpert, unskilled, and not good. these are some of the definitions of bad handwriting that will be addressed. i shall investigate how scribes and their writing were conceived of in the medieval period—like this early thirteenth-century example in harley 104; and explore briefly how present-day scholarly practices do not always adjudicate early writing practices sensitively, fairly, or convincingly. this matters now in our current age of the digital aspect and in our position between the foundational scholarship we have inherited and the ways we move forward as researchers. “not good handwriting” in his evaluation of script in the twelfth century in his 1957 catalogue of manuscripts, neil ker emphatically declared that: “much writing of the twelfth century in the vernacular is not good” (xxvii). if such handwriting is “not good”, one can presume it to be “bad”. this aesthetic is, as i have shown elsewhere, based on an unspoken assumption that calligraphic principles can be applied to medieval writing. of course, they could be, but there is no explanation about what these principles are for twentiethand twentyfirst-century palaeographers. what, therefore, does it mean to neil ker for writing to be “bad”? one could argue, as i do, that “bad handwriting” can only ever be that which fails to do its job of communication. since medieval scribes are generally legible communicators—especially to the trained eye, how can their writing be thought of as “bad”? the word bad itself is not used by ker, except in the adverbial “badly”, which, almost entirely throughout the 646-page catalogue, refers us to the fire-damaged cotton codices or to those books that have suffered the damage of time and neglect. this is with two exceptions: oxford, bodleian library, bodley ms 708, an inscription from the second half of the eleventh century, “badly written” by the main scribe at the end of a latin pastoral care given by leofric to his cathedral at exeter (ker 1957, 379). we might assume from this that the whole manuscript is badly written, but with his typical terseness, ker does not comment on the latin that forms the majority of handwriting in the codex. the second exception is the eleventh-century oxford, bodleian library, ms eng. bib. c. 2, a fragment of four leaves of the old english gospels, which is written using a “handsome but clumsy script” with “occasionally badly formed high e ligatures” (ker 1957, 322. see also 75 and 217). here, “badly formed” is an opaque description: what does a badly formed high e ligature look like? on the folios of ms eng. bib. c. 2, e is ligatured with r, g, s and n, and is high most often in the old english grapheme ash. it is consistently rounded and clear, so it is difficult to discern to what ker might be referring. in ker’s palaeographical idiolect he generally avoids “bad” as the antonym of “not good”. but, as i have discussed at length, ker and many english-language palaeographers since the later nineteenth century have promulgated an unexplained aesthetic in their description of scribal efforts (treharne 2021, 54–58; treharne 2012, 261–83; treharne 2011, 303-12). it is the imposition of an inherent value judgement where systematicity is absent and subjectivity is explicit but usually inexplicable; and it is very much part of a mode of description that was and is typical in manuscript studies. one such example is ker’s description of oxford, bodleian library, ms auct. f. 4. 32, the famous “classbook of st dunstan” (1957, 355). a quire inserted as folios 10-18 contains an eleventh-century old english account of the invention of the cross and there “terrible letters”: bad handwriting and its implications, 1020–1220 83 are also added lines of old english on folio 47v that ker calls “scribbles”: “her segð hu se halga apostol paulus lærð ælcum mæssepreoste þe godes folce to lare byð gesett / þæt he beo ƿær” (“it says here how the holy apostle paul teaches each mass priest who is appointed for the instruction of god’s people. he should be aware of it.”). as a related aside, “scribbles” is another word that requires attention, because of its contemporary pejorative connotations. recent work by haruko momma helpfully addresses the positive function of short notes: “old english scribbles remind us that intellectual activities, after all, took place in a physical world…[and] invite us, from the distance of a millennium, to join the network of interpretation.” (2019, 10). momma rightly suggests that scribbles are useful and important testimonies to a wide range of activities. i would argue further that the label itself with connotations of carelessness, thoughtlessness, scrawl and haste, demeans the actions of those engaged in literary communities in the medieval and early modern periods, for whom just to scribble entailed quite some effort. indeed, according to the middle english dictionary, the word scriblen was first recorded in the fifteenth century in the paston letters, where it does not seem to have a pejorative connotation at all; rather it is just an acknowledgement of haste and brevity in the composition of letters. there can be no doubt of the negative implication of ker’s description of the hand of the invention of the cross homily in auct. f. 4. 32, though. it is for ker “an ugly angular script”. as if by way of explanation, ker’s typical commentary on key graphic features expands on this brusque judgement, providing the detail that “a and h are caroline in form: round s occurs: descenders curve to the left or are serifed at the ends” (1957, 355). but in looking at the script of the homily itself, which is now available at the bodleian library’s website, it is clear that ker is overemphasizing particular elements of the hand of the homily even though that is the only hand to which he can be referring in his description.5 the hand irregularly employs caroline h, and the a is not a fully-formed caroline; it occasionally has a small stroke upwards from the arguably singlecompartment insular form of a. none of the features could easily be described as “angular”. still, ker’s description intimates that “angularity” is to be collocated with “ugly”, and this value-laden derogation has the potential to mar scholars’ understanding of what they are looking at here—a rounded english vernacular minuscule. at all times in relation to medieval script, it is also helpful to be mindful that the ability to write at all represented lengthy training and access to materials and necessary resources. writing required effort and techne on the scribe’s part, and the knowledge of the hierarchy of textual elements to facilitate the transmission of information. inexplicably negative (and in this case probably erroneous) descriptions like ker’s of this hand, but also more broadly, impact the scholarly reception of manuscripts and their scribes. the ugliness of writing what are the implications of this kind of terminological use? it continues into scholarship now, both by way of unquestioning quotation of neil ker’s conclusions and in the output of early cataloguers; and in the new research of palaeographers who have worked in this same tradition and absorbed it. it is not the findings of the research—the datings, localization, analysis of letterforms, codicological evaluation, and perhaps 5 see the description and images at folios 10-18 of oxford, bodleian library, ms auct. f. 4. 32: https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/783d604c-a873-4d64-967a-8140cc0eafa5/. elaine treharne 84 editing or cultural investigations—that are problematic. it is what the terminology itself implies. what does it mean, for example, to be “without character” as london, british library, cotton ms vitellius c. iii, ff. 11-85, is described (“a round hand, without character,” ker 1957, 285), or to be “small, ill-formed” (london, british library, harley ms 6258b, ker 1957, xix); or, presumably worse, “rough and ill-formed” (london, british library, burney ms 277, fol. 42, ker 1957, 171). what ought we to understand by “rough”, or by “angular”, “stiff”, or “heavy”? if something is “stiff” and “irregular”, as is london, british library, cotton vespasian d. vi, fols 2-77, a mid-tenth-century manuscript possibly from st augustine’s, canterbury (ker 1957, 269) does it imply that “irregular” equates to “uncalligraphic” (the worcester manuscript, cambridge, corpus christi college, ms 265 is “irregular and uncalligraphic”) and so is a hand in london, british library, cotton ms faustina b. iii, from canterbury, christ church (ker 1957, 196–197). the term “stiff” is collocated with “rather ugly” in cambridge, university library, ms kk. 5.16, an eleventh-century manuscript of bede’s historia ecclesiastica, but the hand is not “irregular” in this case; rather, it is “regular, stiff, and rather ugly” (ker 1957, 399). this is the hand of hemming, the well-known worcester cartulary scribe. ker’s scholarship—his remarkable eye and precision, his exceptional palaeographical skill, which is unsurpassed in the field of early english studies—does not mean that his discursive material is beyond question. of course, he does not operate in a vacuum either backward in time or forward. m. r. james, in his descriptions of cambridge corpus christi college, judges hands to be “ugly” more than two dozen times: manuscripts are “in an ugly current hand”; “an ugly and much contracted hand”; “a clear rather ugly hand”; and there’s a whole manuscript that is “a very shabby ugly little book” (james 1909–12). ker’s own mentor, the wonderful and intuitive scholar kenneth sisam, also deployed critical descriptions of “clumsy” or “slovenly” hands (sisam 1959). their close colleague, the palaeographer nöel denholm-young, similarly uses aesthetic terms in his introductory history of script (“southern script in the age of the danish invasion is not beautiful” and “the best examples of insular script are rivalled by the beauty of the invading caroline minuscule”), but denholm-young becomes less subjective in the actual descriptions that accompany plates (1964, 15). other influential proponents of the aesthetically-impelled description are the great early twentieth-century palaeographers, who effectively founded the modern anglophone field—edward maunde thompson and e. a. lowe. to work through their catalogues and handbooks is to experience the sharp eye of the expert and connoisseur at every turn. if this were a declared methodology, understood to be derived from the art-based world of calligraphy and penpersonship, that would be one thing, but it is not usually a clearly stated modus operandi. it is one that present-day scholars must guess alongside, or unfortunately and even unconsciously adopt or repeat (crick 2018, 281–302; coulson and babcock 2020, passim). it is not usually a clearly stated modus operandi. in one or two examples of this genre, the author does make it clear what they are doing, and it is here that epistemologically troubling descriptors emerge. edward maunde thompson, described by his oxford dictionary of national biography biographer, michael borrie, as a founder of the “modern scientific discipline of palaeography” (2010), published his influential an introduction to greek and latin palaeography in 1912, nineteen years after the earlier less extensive version, a handbook of greek and latin palaeography. borrie describes the introduction as “still among the best initiations into the subject”, and it really is. it is possible to use only maunde thompson even now and acquire an excellent start in “terrible letters”: bad handwriting and its implications, 1020–1220 85 palaeography. but, as several following examples show, value judgements abound and must surely be influenced by the aesthetic that had emerged in culture and fine-arts practice during the second half of the nineteenth century (treharne 2012). in his earlier volume, a handbook of greek and latin palaeography, published in 1893, maunde thompson described the hand of london, british library, stowe ms 34, the vices and virtues, as “a rough but strong hand…founded on the charter-hand of the time” (1893, 287–88). in the later, much expanded, and revised introduction to greek and latin palaeography, published by clarendon press in 1912, maunde thompson included, in addition, oxford, bodleian library, junius ms 1—the later twelfth-century orrmulum. in the introduction, it is the orrmulum not stowe 34 that is described as “rough, but strong, and is the work of a writer who could use his pen effectively and with simple uniformity, but without any attempt at beauty”. in this palaeographical volume, stowe 34 is “another example of a strong, unadorned style”, and “again [it] is writing of the charter-hand type and, like the ormulum, displays the virile strength which is so conspicuous in the cursive hands of this period” (maunde thompson 1912, 476). in contrast, the contemporary ancrene wisse, contained in cambridge, corpus christi college, ms 402 (see figure 1), is described on these same pages of the introduction as “pretty and regular” (maunde thompson 1893, 287–88). within the extensive volume, the only occurrence of “pretty” as a descriptor is this: reserved for a competent gothic hand that just happens to be writing a text focused on and written for women. is this a coincidence? it is juxtaposed precisely with the masculinized language describing orrmulum and vices and virtues, where the writing is “strong”, the script “vigorous”, and the hand demonstrates “virile strength” underscoring, quite emphatically, gendered assumptions about scribal personnel and performance that are still completely (and erroneously) embedded in palaeographical description and evaluation. looking back more than a century, it is clear what assumptions contemporary scholarship has inherited. maunde thompson’s influence was felt not just in the foundation of the field through his role as principal librarian at the british museum, founding fellow of the british academy, author, and widely honored scholar, but also as the instigator of the palaeographical society in 1873 with e. a. bond. palaeography could hardly have been taught without the volumes of plates that society and their successors in the new palaeographical society published, but, at the same time, those plates were how scholars learned about manuscripts, how they were taught to conceive of possibilities and categories of scripts, and how generations of students acquired the ability to describe, discern, and identify form, function, and facture. palaeographical evidence was necessarily presented selectively to students, through the supply of plates (which can now be seen not to present the story fully). but it is not just the descriptive terms applied to scribal effort that can often be tested and found wanting. significantly, through the availability of open access digitizations it is possible to recognise how the provision of one or two palaeographical plates skews the available evidence, and especially in the classroom, where simplification is essential to develop skills. in addition to this, though, the consequence of a persistently aesthetic-based approach to manuscripts has been the sustained derogation of the endeavours of scribes who do not make the (modern) grade. innocent iii’s words in his sermon—as well as the actions of senior prelates who were themselves scribes and correctors—demonstrate clearly how important and valued medieval scribes and their endeavours were, yet it seems easy to critique their efforts based on modern criteria that are simply not appropriate. elaine treharne 86 fig. 1. cambridge, corpus christi college, ms 402, fol. 32r. by permission of the parker library, corpus christi college, cambridge. “terrible letters”: bad handwriting and its implications, 1020–1220 87 the implications for how scholars regard the works of scribes are serious in relation to a realistic assessment of their work on their own terms. there may also be negative consequences for scholars of working with hands described as “less good”, “clumsy”, or “uncalligraphic”? do these judgements seep into scholars’ responses to the manuscripts, their texts, the ways in which one imagines institutional resources are given over to the production of texts, to the training and competencies of scribes? present-day scholarship reveals considerable change in some of the fundamental tenets of manuscript studies. this is partly because of the digital possibilities that can have the greatest and most field-altering effect: assessments of script and codicological make-up read alongside the foundational catalogue and guides in the field reveal how necessary is the reevaluation of dating criteria; elements of mise-en-page such as pricking and ruling patterns; and considerations of scribal training and writing practices. there is nothing wrong with raising the issue of calligraphic expertise; but it cannot be used as the basis for description of medieval script. it diminishes the status of the everyday work of scribes—the pragmatic writing that is fundamental to information transmission. scribal work was specialized; much more difficult to access than writing is now; and aspects of skills acquisition—the sliding scale of amateurism to professionalism—are an important and poorly understood area of researching literate communities in the long medieval period. to assess all scribal effort through an unstated aesthetic of “beauty” and to find scribes wanting in comparison with the efforts of, say, the writers of de luxe books is thus the equivalent of adjudicating someone’s painting of a house in the light of the quality and endeavour of pablo picasso. one can paint a house perfectly and with excellent effect, but not be able to put brush to canvas at all. these are different exercises requiring different skills and to different effect. bad handwriting what might a medieval understanding of bad handwriting be? expressions of concern about handwriting seem rare, and especially before the high middle ages. in a paston letter written in 1467, james gresham writing to his cousin symond damme, tells him that (with my translation): cosyn, an noon after this was wretyn, had i knowelage of the massageris comyng to london berar of this, and i had thought to have wretyn the letter above wretyn newe, by cause of the foule wrytyng and interlynyeng, but now i lakke leyser. (gairdner 1904, iv. 282) cousin, immediately after this was written, i found out about the messenger bearing this letter to london, and i had considered writing the above letter out newly again because of the messy writing and interlining, but now i lack the leisure. at this point, in the second-half of the fifteenth century, when a good number of educated gentry like the pastons could write for themselves, alertness to the need for legibility is expressly shown. consideration of the recipient and desire for their good opinion is evinced from this letter, but of greater importance is the exigency of getting the letter sent, despite the “foul writing and interlining”. the letter gresham sends is a layering of his original with additional news that came later. his concern about the appearance of the letter intimates anxiety about how messiness or bad writing is perceived. this preempts later writing manuals, but perhaps a much longer-standing tradition, of elaine treharne 88 conflating bad handwriting, untidy script, or presentation, with a lack of care or a lack of personal standards. it can go further than standards, too. as james’s letter makes clear, the presentation is nothing to do with lack of care or thought and everything to do with practicality and haste. haste is a perennial concern for the pastons and there is a refreshing honesty about the activity and limitations of writing. in margaret paston’s letter to her husband in september 1443, she mentions the pain john is currently in, asking him to write as quickly as he can “if writing is not painful for you”, acknowledging “writing is not easy for you”. for her part, she reveals she does not have time to write even a fraction of what she would say if she could speak with her husband. “haste” and “leisure” are forever in opposition: i pray yow hertely that [ye] wol wochesaf to sende me a letter as hastely as ze may, yf wryhyn be non dysesse to yow, and that ye wollen wochesaf to sende me worde quowe your sor dott. yf i mythe have had my wylle, i xulde a seyne yow er dystyme; i wolde ye wern at hom, yf it wer your ese, and your sor myth ben as wyl lokyth to her as it tys ther ze ben, now lever dan a goune zow it wer of scarlette. i pray yow yf your sor be hol, and so that ze may indur to ryde, wan my fader com to london, that ze wol askyn leve, and com hom wan the hors xul be sentte hom a zeyn, for i hope ze xulde be kepte as tenderly herr as ze ben at london. i may non leyser have to do wrytyn half a quarter so meche as i xulde sey to yow yf i myth speke with yow. i xall sende yow a nothyr letter as hastely as i may. i thanke yow that ze wolde wochesaffe to remember my gyrdyl, and that ze wolde wryte to me at the tyme, for i sopose that wrytyng was non esse for yow. all myth god have yow in his kepyn, and sende yow helth. wretyn at oxenede, in ryth grete hast, on sent mikyllys evyn. (gairdner: ii.56-57) i beseech you heartily that you will guarantee to send me a letter as quickly as you can, if writing is not a pain to you, and that you will guarantee to send me word when your pain diminishes. if i might have had my way, i should have seen you before this point; i wish you were at home, if it were easy for you, and your discomfort would be as well looked after here as it has been there, and i should rather have that than a gown though it were of scarlet. i pray you, if your sickness be healed, and so that you may endure the ride, when my father comes to london, you will ask leave and come home when the horse shall be sent home again, for i hope you should be looked after here as you have been in london. i do not have the leisure to write half a quarter as much as i should say to you if i might speak with you. i shall send you another letter as hastily as i can. i thank you that you would guarantee to remember my girdle and that you would write to me at that time, for i suppose that writing was not easy for you. may almighty god have you in his care and send you health. written at oxford, in really great haste, on saint michael’s eve. while haste becomes something of a motif to excuse brevity or a level of untidiness in the mind of the writer, it emphasizes how much trouble went into writing—both physically as an act of labour and as a means of expressing desire for the conversation of the other. for margaret, haste is also motivational: a means to inspire her to write again. it is the case that while driving the writer forward, it seems preferable as gresham states, to have leisure to write. haste is thus criticized in reginald pecock’s fifteenthcentury reuele of crysten religioun: “bettir it is a man to leerne write slowli and..morously [slowly] in keping þe reulis whiche þe crafte of writing techiþ..þan for..hast to bringe forþ myche lettir of writing” (“it is better for a person to learn to write slowly and deliberately in keeping the rules which the craft of writing teaches than “terrible letters”: bad handwriting and its implications, 1020–1220 89 through haste to produce many letters in writing”) (greet 1927). but here, writing slowly is desirable, particularly while the scribe is learning the rules of the craft. so, when haste is also criticized in present-day medieval scholarship, it seems perhaps unsympathetic to the efforts of medieval writers. the need to focus and concentrate when writing (even in haste) is stated in the late middle english book of sydrac the philosopher (a translation of the thirteenth-century old french livre de la fontaine de toutes sciences). the writer recognizes: “þe moost trauaile þat is…is writing of alle þat be, for he þat writeþ may not see þe while he is aboute writing, ne here to speke…ne þenke, ne listene, ne noght ellis do” (middle english dictionary, 4861–3). daniel wakelin in his excellent study on scribal correction and literary craft is uncomplimentary about haste: disengagement might be suggested by one book for which the quality is poor but which looks like a piece of freelance copying by somebody hard up. it is a scraggy and meagre medical book by a scribe who announces that he is a cambridge student called simon wysbech and that he produced it for one robert taylor of boxford. his carelessness is evident in his very current handwriting, done quickly with many ligatures between letters, varying from moment to moment in spacing and aspect, and with the lines unruled. (2014, 134) here, one might argue that wakelin conflates currency of handwriting and quickness with carelessness and poor quality. speed is equated with a moral failing—carelessness. and this is an interesting comparandum with the “clumsy” or “slovenly” or “ill-trained” hands of scribes that earlier palaeographers decry. this comparison of hasty or untidy writing with thoughtlessness or poor effort really smacks of the emergence of a whole panoply of works that associate less good handwriting with less good moral character. in many writing manuals from the early modern period onwards—indeed, in modern forensic graphology or graphonomy—there is a deliberate linking (a very speculative and tenuous linking) of bad handwriting with psychopathy and sociopathic behaviours. recent studies suggest that “[f]rom a graphologist’s point of view, the writing of a psychopath can generally be described as relatively conformist, rather banal, with little rhythm, stiff, monotonous and abounding in abnormalities” (kowal and gupta 2021, 1052–58; but see gawda 2019). is this what ker means when he describes a hand as “without character”? those of us who cannot maintain writing on a straight axis when working with blank paper show signs of a “lack of moral adjustment, inconsistent attitudes”; while forward-slanting writing indicates (notionally) “hysterical, impulsive, fanatical and obsessive” traits (kowal and gupta 2021, 1054–55). irregular handwriting, overlarge, oversmall, tilted: bad or different handwriting has been judged detrimentally in the last few hundred years from the aesthetic, the so-called forensic, and the moral angles. for the medieval specifically, there can be little more evocative to demonstrate the perils of bad handwriting than a wonderful story in bede’s historia ecclesiastica. it shows a dramatic side to bad handwriting that casts us into an eternity of agony (colgrave and mynors 1969, 501).6 in his account of a vision of a 6 the immediate context in bede’s ecclesiastical history reveals: “it happened quite the contrary with one in the province of the mercians, whose visions and words, and also his behaviour, were neither advantageous to others nor to himself. in the reign of coenred, who succeeded ethelred, there was a layman in a military employment, no less acceptable to the king for his worldly industry than displeasing to him for his private neglect of himself. the king often admonished him to confess and amend, and to forsake his wicked courses, before he should lose all time for elaine treharne 90 mercian soldier and dear friend of king coenred around 706ce, bede tells us that the man had left it too late to repent of his luxurious lifestyle: ac docendum rex intraret, clamabat statim miserabili uoce: “quid uis modo? quid huc uenisti? non enim mihi aliquid utilitatis aut salutis potes ultra conferre”. at ille “noli”, inquit “ita loqui: uide ut sanum sapias”. “non,” inquit, “insanio, sed pessimam mihi scientiam certus prae oculis habeo”. “et quid,” inquit, “hoc est?” “paulo ante”, inquit “intrauerunt domum hanc duo pulcherrimi iuuenes et resederunt circa me, unus ad caput et unus ad pedes; protulitque unus libellum perpulchrum, sed uehementer modicum, ac mihi ad legendum dedit; in quo omnia, quae umquam bona feceram, intuens scripta repperi, et haec erant nimium pauca et modica. receperunt codicem, neque aliquid mihi dicebant. tum subito superuenit exercitus malignorum et horridorum uultu spirituum, domumque hanc et exterius obsedit et intus maxima ex parte residens impleuit. tunc ille, qui et obscuritate tenebrosae faciei et primatu sedis maior esse uidebatur eorum, proferens codicem horrendae uisionis et magnitudinis enormis et ponderis pene inportabilis, iusset uni ex satellitibus suis mihi ad legendum deferre. quem cum legissem, inuenio omnia scelera, non solum quae opere uel uerbo, sed etiam quae tenuissima cogitatione peccaui, manifestissime in eo tetricis esse descripta litteris. dicebatque ad illos, qui mihi adsederant, uiros albatos et praeclaros: “quid hic sedetis scientes certissime quia noster est iste?” responderunt: “verum dicitis; accipite, et in cummulum damnationis uestrae ducite”. quo dicto statim disparuerunt; surgentesque duo nequissimi spiritus, habentes in manibus uomeres, percusserunt me, unus in capite et alius in pede; qui uidelicet modo cum magno tormento inrepunt in interiora corporis mei, moxque ut ad se inuicem perueniunt, moriar, et paratis as rapiendum me daemonibus in inferni claustra pertrahar”. when the king came to visit and teach him, he called out with a miserable voice, “what do you want now? why did you come here? for you cannot do anything more for me or to benefit me beyond this”. [coenred] answered, “do not speak like that; act as if you are a man of sound mind”. “i am not mad”, replied he, “but i certainly have all the worst of my wicked conscience before my eyes”. “and what is that?” asked the king. “a little while ago”, he said, “two very handsome young men came into this room, and sat down by me, one at my head, and the other at my feet. and one of them brought out a beautiful little book, but exceedingly small, and gave it to me to read, in which i found all the good things that i had ever done, and these were very few and trifling. they took back the book and did not say anything to me. then suddenly an army of evil and horrible spirits appeared, encompassing this house outside, and filling it within with the most part. then he, who, by the darkness of his dark face, and his sitting above the rest, seemed to be the most important of them, producing a book of horrible appearance and of enormous size, and of almost unbearable weight, ordered one of his followers to bring it to me to read. when i had read it, i found all the crimes i had ever sinned, not only in word or deed, but even in the slightest thought, within it most clearly inscribed in hideous letters; and he said to those excellent men in white, who sat by me, “why do you sit here, knowing for sure that this man is ours?” they answered, “you speak the truth; take him and bring him to the heap of the damned”. this repentance and amendment by a sudden death. though frequently warned, he despised the words of salvation, and promised he would do penance at some future time. in the meantime, falling sick, he was confined to his bed, and began to feel very severe pains. the king coming to him (for he loved the man), earnestly exhorted him, even then, before death, to repent of his offences. he answered, ‘he would not then confess his sins, but would do it when he was recovered of his sickness, lest his companions should upbraid him of having done that for fear of death, which he had refused to do in health.’ he thought he then spoke very bravely, but it afterwards appeared that he had been miserably deluded by the wiles of the devil”. “terrible letters”: bad handwriting and its implications, 1020–1220 91 said, they immediately disappeared, and two most evil spirits rising up, having daggers in their hands, struck me, one on the head and the other on the foot. these strokes are now creeping into the interior parts of my body with great torment, and as soon as they come together i shall die and as the demons are all ready to carry me off i shall be dragged down into the gates of hell”.7 the “hideous letters”—the bad handwriting—of the devil’s book give rise to the title of this essay. there is considerable significance to this narrative, particularly in relation to books, legibility, and the role of the written word in salvation. sharon rowley’s sensitive reading of part of this scene discusses the use of “uomeres”, which means “ploughshares”, “daggers” (handseax in old english), but also, as rowley notes, through patristic connotation “uomeres” means “a style for writing with”. rowley suggests the possibility that: “bede’s close contemporaries were reading this episode as being about writing and commentary as well as about demons and damnations” (rowley 2009, 172). she further notes that the “vomeres work through the thane’s body as if on a wax tablet, the thane theoretically becomes a text as legible as the books shown by the angels and demons”. similarly, the old english bede is demonstrating the role of writing in salvation: þa cleopode he sona earmlicre stæfne: “hwæt woldest ðu oðþe to hwon come ðu hider? forðon ne meaht ðu me nu ofer ðisne dæg ænige helpe ne geoce gefremman”. cwæð he se cyng: “ne wille ðu swa sprecan; geseoh ðæt ðu teola wite”. cwæð he: “ne wede ic: ah ða wyrrestan ingewitnesse me ic geseo, 7 fore minum eagum hæbbe”. frægn se cyng hiene hwæt ðæt wære. cwæð he: “ær hwene ðu come, eode inn on þis hus to me twegen geonge men fægre 7 beorhte, 7 gesæton æt me, oðer æt minum heafde, oðer æt minum fotum.8 þa teah heora oðer forð fægre boc 7 swiðe medmicle 7 me sealede to rædanne. ða ic ða boc sceawade, þa mette ic ðær awriten ealle ða god ða ic æfre gedyde. ah ða wæron swiðe feawe 7 medmicle. þa noman heo eft ða boc æt me 7 me noht to cwædon. þa com her sæmninga micel weorud werigra gasta, 7 wæron swiðe ongrislicum heowe 7 ondwliotan. 7 ðis hus utan ymbsætan; innan of mæstan dæle sittende gefyldon. þa wæs heora sum þeostran onseone 7 þæm oðrum egeslicran, se wæs setles eldest; 7 me ðuhte 7 gesegen wæs, þæt he heora aldor beon scolde. þa teah he forð boc ongryslicre gesihðe 7 unmættre micelnisse 7 lytesne unaborendlic byrdenne; sealde ða anum his geferena 7 heht me beran to rædanne. mið ðy ic ða þa boc raedde, ða gemette ic on hiere sweartum stafum 7 atolecum sweotole awritene eall ða man ðe ic aefre gefremede; 7 nalæs ðet an þæt ic on weorce 7 on worde, 7 eac hwylce þæt ic on þaem medmestan ge ðohte gesyngode, ealle ða wæron ðær on awritene. 7 ða cwæð se aldor þara wergra gasta to ðam fægran monnum 7 ðam beorhtan ðe me æt sæton: “to hwon sitton ge her? hwæt git cuðlice witon, þæt þis is ure mon. ondswaredon heo: ‘soþ gesæcgað; ah onfoð hiene 7 in heapunge eowerre niðerunge gelædað. ðy cwæde heo instæpe from minre geshihðe geweoton. ond þa wæron arisende twegen ðara atolra gasta; hæfdon hondseax on heora hondum; slogon mec ða, oðer 7 my translation. latin and old english versions are given here because these are, in essence, distinct works. for the use of vomer as a stylus, see lewis and short’s a latin dictionary (1879). isidore, etymologies, book vi, ix: “afterwards it was established that they would write on wax tablets with bones, as atta indicates in his satura, saying (12): ‘let us turn the plowshare and plow in the wax with a point of bone’. the greek term graphium is scriptorium in latin, for [greek letters] is ‘writing’”. 8 one is reminded here, with an ironic twist, of john 20:12, the two angels who sit in christ’s sepulchre after his resurrection: (from london, british library, royal ms 1. a. xiv: “7 geseah twegen ængles sittan mid hwiton reafe. enne æt þam heafde. 7 oðerne æt þam fotum. þær þas hælendes lich aleyd wæs” (“and saw two angels sitting with white clothing, one at the head and the other at the foot there where the saviour’s body had been laid”). elaine treharne 92 in heafod, oðer in fet. 7 ða wunda nu mid micle sare tintrego togædre swicað in ða innoðe mines lichoman; 7 sona ðæs ðe heo togædre cumað, þonne swelte ic; 7 ða dioflu gearwe bidað, hwonne heo mec gegrypen 7 to helle locum gelæde.9 then he immediately cried out in a wretched voice: “what do you want and why did you come here? after this day you cannot give me any help or support”. the king said: “do not speak like that; see that you are in your senses”. he said: “i am not mad; but i see for myself, and have seen before my very eyes, the worst consciousness”. the king asked what that might be. he said: “just before you came, two fair and bright young men came into this house to me, and sat by me, one at my head and the other at my feet. then one of them brought out a fair book—and very small—and gave it to me to read. then when i was showed the book i found written there all the good works i had ever done. but these were very few and slight. then they took the book back from me and said nothing to me. then there suddenly came here a great army of accursed spirits that were of very dreadful shape and appearance. and they surrounded this house outside; and the larger part of them sat down inside and filled the house. one of them had a dark appearance and was more terrible than the rest, who was the chief of those who sat; and it seemed and appeared to me that he was their head. then he drew forth a book of dreadful appearance and monstrous size and almost intolerable weight; this he gave to one of his companions and asked him to bring it to me to read. then as i read the book, i found in it, written clearly in black and terrible letters, all the sins that i ever committed; and not only all my transgressions in deed and in word, but even in my slightest thought, were—every one— written there. then the head of the accursed spirits said to the fair and bright men who sat by me: “why do you sit here? surely you know well that this is our man?” they answered: “you speak the truth; but take him and carry him away to fill up the measure of your damnation”. with these words they vanished at once from my sight. then two of the dreadful spirits rose up, having daggers in their hands; and they smote me, one in the head and the other in the feet. and now the wounds are penetrating me with great pain and torment together and as soon as they unite i shall die; and the devils are waiting, ready for the time to seize me and carry me to the prison of hell”. shortly after this the thane dies in his sins. bede explains the books as being sent by god and reminds his audience that sins “do not flow idly into the wind, but are all reserved for the judgement of the supreme judge, and are shown afterwards to us at the end, either by the friendly angels or by our enemies”. bede closes by saying “þis spell ic leornade from pehthelme ðæm arwyrðan biscope, ond ic hit for þære hælo, ðe hit leornade oðþe geherde, hluttorlice awrat 7 sægde” (“i learned this story from the worthy bishop pehthelme, and for the saving of those who should read it or hear it, i have written it down and related it plainly”). the importance of the book, and especially a book that is effectively a liber vitae— the book of life named in revelation 13:8—is clear in this chapter both in the vision, the exegesis of the vision, and the closing statement by bede, which emphatically highlights the role of his book in the salvation of souls. as the thane’s inscription into the two nonmundane books leads to his inevitable damnation (too little too late) so bede’s book and his bookish “spell” ensure the moral improvement of the reader-listener. for this thane, it is not the act of reading that creates his problem: he is able to overcome the difficulties of size, heft, and form to read, dismally and fatally, his own record of words, thoughts, 9 old english bede: sweet’s bede 440, 5; dictionary of old english: bede 5 14.440.2: “mid ðy ic ða þa boc rædde, ða gemette ic on hiere sweartum stafum & atolecum sweotole awritene eall ða man ðe ic æfre gefremede”. “terrible letters”: bad handwriting and its implications, 1020–1220 93 and deeds—no matter how slight or trivial. the signification of the books, though, especially the overtly visual monstrous liber mortis, emerges through the letterforms, which are themselves the apotheosis of “bad handwriting”: mið ðy ic ða þa boc raedde, ða gemette ic on hiere sweartum stafum 7 atolecum sweotole awritene eall ða man ðe ic aefre gefremede; 7 nalæs ðet an þæt ic on weorce 7 on worde, 7 eac hwylce þæt ic on þaem medmestan ge ðohte gesyngode, ealle ða wæron ðær on awritene. quem cum legissem, inuenio omnia scelera, non solum quae opere uel uerbo, sed etiam quae tenuissima cogitatione peccaui, manifestissime in eo tetricis esse descripta litteris. in the old english, the “tetricis…litteris” of the latin is expanded to “sweartum stafum and atolecum”; that is, “hideous letterforms” become “dark and loathsome” or “dark and deformed” or “letterforms that are dark and terrible to look upon”. here, “bad”, dreadful, sin-filled writing embodies the thane in the body of the book; the immorality of his life is inherent within the letters themselves. he himself becomes a document (rowley 2009, 172)—but one that is simultaneously written from head and foot, like a charter, since charters, and particularly chirographs, have a head and a foot (brooks 2014, 40)—when the knives or styli of the demons pierce him at top and toe, injecting metaphorical ink to penetrate his body that inscribes him into eternal misery and death. the invisibility of the stylus—those daggers that pierce the flesh of the sinner—are as scratch glosses to a manuscript augmenting the visible body of the man-as-text. to what more could this description refer? bede gives up further examples in his writing of “the lying pen” and “wicked writings”. both occur in the letter to egbert: “for how can it be accounted a misdeed, that the unjust decrees of former kings should be set right by the correct judgment of princes better than they? or that the lying pen of unrighteous scribes should be destroyed and nullified by the discreet sentence of wiser priests, according to the example of ancient history…” and wicked writings [of charters given for falsely founding monasteries] “for they not only do not take care to annul such unrighteous decrees by righteous ones, but rather do all in their power to confirm them by their own subscriptions, as we have said before, prompted by the same love of money to confirm those wicked writings, as the purchasers themselves were to buy such monasteries” (giles 1843, 138; shimomura 2006, 49–52). that bede’s concern about the liber vitae/liber mortis had an impact in early england is undoubted. the historia ecclesiastica was very widely known in its latin and its old english manifestations (rowley 2011). in his sermon—de doctrina apostolica, ælfric comments: he het þa ræcan me to rædenne þa boc, and ic þæron geseah mid sweartum stafum awritene ealle mine synna þe ic sið and ær gefremode ... on þære atelican bec. (pope 1967–78, ii. 622–35) he commanded me to fetch and read the book, and i saw therein written with dark letters all my sins that i have done and performed before…in that hideous book. this must surely derive from bede. the passage reinforces the idea of “dark letters” underscoring the terrible sight of a book that lists the sins of the soul about to be judged. it is well known how significant ælfric considered the issue of good writing—accurate and careful copying, and especially of his work. in his preface to his grammar, ælfric hopes his work is not subject to a poor copyist—an unwritere: elaine treharne 94 ic bidde nu on godes naman, gif hwa þas boc awritan wille, þæt he hi gerihte wel be ðære bysne for ðan ðe ic nah geweald; ðeah hi hwa to woge gebringe ðurh lease writeras and hit bið þonne his pleoh na min. micel yfel deð se unwritere, gif he nele his woh gerihtan. (wilcox 1994) i now ask, in god’s name, that if anyone wishes to copy this book, that he rightly corrects it according to the exemplar, for i do not have that power; if someone should bring it to error through inaccurate scribes, it is then his problem, not mine. the un-writer does great evil if he does not correct his error. the unwritere promulgates “micel yfel” if the work is not accurate, giving a very clear idea of what constitutes bad writing. but, as has been discussed throughout this essay, “bad” writing constitutes a variety of modern and medieval responses to script and textual production. the distinction between the “bad”—corrupt, devilish, and eschatalogically significant—writing of the medieval period, and that of the contemporary palaeographer criticizing the rough and ugly hands of scribes with an inappropriate calligraphic aesthetic has, interestingly, a similar outcome. it is to warn readers of the potential sin inherent in the book: either the record of one’s own sins, or the witnessing of poor-quality work. that “less good” hands suffer consequently seems not to be the point—but it should be. those scribes’ efforts might have been the very best that they could do with the training and resources they had to hand, and the individuals whose work we witness might have been the best scribe that an institution could put forward for the required task at hand. as such, our subjective adjudications, unsubstantiated and unsympathetic, should be dispensed with, unless there is a clear statement of calligraphic principle in description. palaeographers and manuscript scholars must engage in a more conscious recognition that our own hyperliteracy simply cannot be usefully applied retrospectively in the way that has been relatively common among manuscript scholars for the last 150 years. for medieval writers, bad writing existed, but it had little to do with a subjective aesthetic, and everything to do with misinformation and representation of sin. 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website. giles, john allen, ed. 1843. the historical writings of the venerable bede. london: bohn. greet, w. c., ed. 1927. the reuele of crysten religioun. early english text society, o.s. 171. oxford: oxford university press; reprint 1987. kowal, durlabh singh, and pradeep k. gupta. 2021. “handwriting analysis: a psychopathic viewpoint.” international journal of indian psychology 9 (1): 1052– 1058. gairdner, james, ed. 1904. the paston letters, 6 vols. london: chatto and windus. gawda, barbara. 2019. “the computational analyses of handwriting in individuals with psychopathic personality disorder.” plos 14 (12): e0225182. accessed april 6, 2023. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc7063674/. ker, neil r. 1957. catalogue of manuscript containing anglo-saxon. oxford: clarendon press; repr. with supplement, 1990. lewis, charlton t. and charles short. 1879. a latin dictionary. founded on andrews’ edition of freund’s latin dictionary. revised, enlarged, and in great part rewritten by charlton t. lewis, ph.d. and. charles short, ll.d. oxford: clarendon press. accessed april 6, 2023. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.04.0059:entry=v omer. london, british library, harley ms 104. accessed april 6, 2023. https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/fulldisplay.aspx?source=browsetitles&letter=f&r ef=harley_ms_104. momma, haruko. 2019. “capturing words with a net of love: 1000-year-old scribbles as a case study.” mla convention, chicago. accessed april 6, 2023. https://www.slideserve.com/anniereyes/capturing-words-with-a-net-of-love-1000year-old-scribbles-as-a-case-study-powerpoint-ppt-presentation. parker on the web digitisation of manuscripts at cambridge, corpus christi college. accessed april 6, 2023. https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/. pope, john collins, ed. 1967–1978. homilies of ælfric: a supplementary collection, 2 vols., eets 259, 260. london: oxford university press. elaine treharne 96 quaresmio, f., ed. 1639. historica theologica et moralis terrae sanctae elucidatio in qua pleraque ad veterem et præsentem ejusdem terræ statum spectantia accurate explicantur (2 fol. vols., pp. xxx, 924–98 and 1014–120, antwerp, 1639); second edition edited by p. cypriano da treviso (4 pts. in 2 fol. vols., venice, 1880–1881). rowley, sharon. 2009. “the role and function of otherworldly visions in bede’s historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum.” in the world of travellers: exploration and imagination, mediaevalia groningana, n.s. 15, edited by kees dekker, karin olsen, and tette hofstra, 163–81. leuven: peeters. shimomura, sachi. 2006. odd bodies and visible ends in medieval literature. london: palgrave. sisam, celia, and kenneth sisam, eds. 1959. the salisbury psalter edited from salisbury cathedral ms 150. early english text society o.s. 242. london: oxford university press. sparks, nicholas a. 2013. “an insular fragment of bede’s historia ecclesiastica.” anglosaxon england 42: 27–50. thompson, edward maunde. 1893. handbook of greek and latin palaeography. the international scientific series lxx. new york: d. appleton. thompson, edward maunde. 1912. introduction to greek and latin palaeography. oxford: clarendon press. treharne, elaine. 2011. “writing the book: cambridge university library, ii. 1. 33.” new medieval literatures 13: 303–12. treharne, elaine. 2012. “‘the good, the bad, the ugly’: old english manuscripts and their physical description.” in the genesis of books: studies in the scribal culture of medieval england in honour of a. n. doane, edited by matthew hussey, and john niles, 261–83. turnhout: brepols. treharne, elaine. 2021. perceptions of medieval manuscripts: the phenomenal book. oxford: oxford university press. treharne, elaine. 2023. “‘miserere, meidens’: abbesses and nuns.” in women and medieval literary culture from the early middle ages to the fifteenth century, edited by corinne saunders, and diane watt, 27–49. cambridge: cambridge university press. vause, corinne j., and frank c. gardiner. 2004. pope innocent iii: between god and man. six sermons on the priestly office. medieval texts in translation. washington: catholic university of america press. wakelin, daniel. 2014. scribal correction and literary craft. cambridge: cambridge university press. wilcox, jonathan, ed. and trans. 1994. ælfric’s prefaces. durham: durham university. selim david arbesú, selim 11 (2001-2002): 51—96 geoffrey chaucer’s parlement of foules: a new codicological stemma of the hammond manuscripts the purpose of this article is to carry out a revision of the stemma for the manuscripts (mss) of geoffrey chaucer’s parlement of foules (pf), established by john koch in 1881 and revised by eleanor p. hammond in 1902. not only is koch-hammond’s stemma the only one that has been proposed for more than a century but, in addition, it has only been subject to one revision (koch’s 1928 edition of the poem, geoffrey chaucers kleinere dichtungen) which, nevertheless, did not alter the substance of the subgroup of mss which later on became known as the “hammond group.” stemmas have been proposed for all of chaucer’s works which derive from various authoritative sources, but the task of elaborating or revising a stemma for the witnesses of a particular text is so arduous and complicated that most of the stemmas proposed for the works of chaucer derive from the studies of one single authority, have been flatly contradicted by another, are incomplete, or have not been revised since their date of publication. for pf, the fifteen manuscript (ms) authorities are, in the order proposed by hammond (1902), the following:1 a group: ms cambridge university library gg. iv.27 (gg), ff. 481r 490v. ms cambridge university library ff. i.6 (ff), ff. 29r 42v. 1 thanks are due to s. g. fernández-corugedo (u. of oviedo) for his guidance, suggestions, and careful examination of the results reached in this analysis. i am also extremely indebted to vincent j. dimarco, editor of the parliament of fowls for the riverside chaucer (benson 1987), for taking so much of his time to revise my analysis and conclusions. david arbesú 52 william caxton’s edition2 of 1477-78 (cx), ff. 1r 16v. ms harley 7333, british library (h), ff. 129v 132r. ms trinity college, cambridge r.iii.19 (r), ff. 17 r 24v. ms arch. selden b.24, bodleian (s), ff. 142r 152r. ms cambridge university library hh.iv.12 (hh), ff. 94r 99v. ms pepys 2006, magdalene college, cambridge (p), ff. 127r -142r ms st. john’s college lvii, oxford (j), ff. 225r 237v. ms laud misc. 416, bodleian (l), ff. 288r 289v. b group: ms fairfax 16, bodleian (f), ff. 120r-129v. ms bodley 638, bodleian (b), ff. 96r 110 r. ms tanner 346, bodleian (t), ff. 120r 131r. ms longleat 258, longleat house, warminster (lt), ff. 85r -101r. ms digby 181, bodleian (d), ff. 44r 52r. hammond’s 1902 article is taken as the base text for the revision of the stemma carried out in this article, since it is her stemma the one that each and every modern editor of chaucer adopts for pf.3 her revision, as ours, 2 even though caxton’s early print is not a manuscript witness, its text is still considered authorial due to the fact that it is based on a ms now considered lost. 3 although the stemma is universally adopted by editors, this does not mean that it is accepted by them. as an example, notice dimarco’s comments on hammond: “group a appears almost certainly to be imaginary, for the ten authorities so classified agree in what appear to be correct readings rather than in readings that are clearly wrong . . . the traditional sub-groupings of fb and of tltd, comprising hammond’s group b, are borne out. as with the readings unique to h r s hh cx p j l, those readings unique to f b t lt d are seldom, if ever, correct” (benson 1987: 1147). geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 53 begins by recalling what had been the canonical stemma until then, the one printed in the globe edition of chaucer’s works (1898) and edited by a. w. pollard and m. h. liddell. about this stemma, hammond states that “in his brief introduction to the poem mr. heath prints the genealogical tree of most of the manuscripts as it was indicated by koch in anglia, iv, anz., p. 97, remarking that he agrees with koch in its construction” (p. 3), and reproduces it as follows:4 hammond continues by stating that a full analysis of the text of pf would basically indicate that koch’s genealogy would have to be modified in detail, that some of the readings elected by heath for his edition are unjustified, and that if the evidence she has obtained is correct, the question of chaucerian metre must be reopened. the examples she gives to argue for or against the variant readings elected by heath are not analysed here, nor do we cope with the genealogy of the mss of group a, since they refer to aspects of the stemma which are not pertinent to this article. the separation of the mss into groups a (comprising ten authorities) and b (comprising five) seems, however, to be supported with enough evidence—hammond (1902: 8-9) gives fifty readings—to allow for the study of one group independently from the other.5 regarding the grouping of mss f, b, t, lt 4 note that the group of mss that i refer to—with modern editors—as “b” is referred to as “c” by hammond so as to not be confused with the “b” representing “ms bodley 638”. 5 it is important to note that hammond has studied all fifteen authorities of the parlement from the chaucer society reprints, while we get our data from the full transcription and collation of ms facsimiles. these were obtained from the bodleian library for all mss except longleat, which is in the posession of the x a c a1 a2 f b gg ff h r jo ld t lt d david arbesú 54 and d into one subgroup (labelled c or b), this is accounted for with enough data in hammond 1902, supported first by koch’s analysis in 1881, then in his revision of hammond in 1928, and also contested by root in 1903. although koch’s revision of 1928 dealt exclusively with group a, he did not argue against the affiliation of the mss of group b, plainly rearranging the mss inside the first group. root, on his part, dealt solely with group b, but his arguments claiming that this group was closer to chaucer’s original— perhaps corrected by chaucer himself—were soon discarded by the scientific community. more importantly to our purposes, he did not tamper with the classification of f, b, t, lt and d into one independent group. before we proceed to the exclusive analysis of group b we must mention one aspect about the mss of group a, for hammond has noted that the text of the a archetype is probably nearer to the ultimate original verbally, due to “the marked decease in group divergences after line 250 [and to] the fact that in several cases the difference of group c [b] from group a is due to an omission by the former archetype” (1902: 9). with these conclusions we do not agree for two reasons: first, hammond never explains what exactly constitutes a variant reading for her,6 arguing that there are forty-one variants between groups a and b before line 250, and only six until the end of the poem. a quick comparison between any two mss of groups a and b, however, shows that there are obviously more than forty-seven variants and, certainly, they do occur in great frequency after line 250. regarding hammond’s statement that “the text of the a archetype was probably nearer to the ultimate original verbally,” she contradicts herself by favouring group marquis of bath. a microfilm of the ms was finally obtained from microform imaging ltd (wakefield, england). although in this article we do not deal with the mss of group a, whenever a reading from this group is needed (i.e. as to argue for its influence on a ms of group b) i have quoted exclusively the readings of ms gg.4.27 (facsimile in parkes 1979-80). 6 variants that are not considered valid evidence for the postulation of the stemma are those that are the result of the physical deterioration of the ms, the different spelling practices of scribes or the different dialects of english. on the other hand, we consider valid evidences those readings which result from additions, repetitions, dittographies, omissions, homeoteleutons, homeoarchies, haplographies, alterations in order, substitutions and trivialisations (lectio facilior). notice that these variant readings are all product of the scribe’s action, be it intentional or not. variants (lines) marked with an asterisk in the article (following hammond) are those considered of special interest for the postulation of the stemma. geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 55 b at the end of the article when she claims that she does not find herself “in full agreement with the valuation of a as the better group. when the tendency of c [b] to omit has been allowed for . . . it will be recognized that the c [b] group offers a set of readings certainly equal in value to those of a” (1902: 24). when dealing with group b itself, hammond begins by differentiating the pair formed by f and b (fb) vs. tltd. however, it remains to be seen why she puts so much emphasis on differentiating fb from tltd, while giving so little importance to the much stronger bond of fbt vs. ltd. according to hammond, the distinction fb can be made on the evidence obtained from seventeen lines [twenty-three for this article],7 from the “explicit” in both mss, and from the presence of the quotation qui bien ayme a tarde oublie, in the place of the roundel present in some of the other mss. our evidence agrees with that presented by hammond, except perhaps for line 303, for which t has the reading of fb of superimposed, and thus may not be considered an omission (as d and lt omit). although hammond’s strong postulation of fb/ tltd seems to be correct, the division of ltd/ fbt is, as we have argued, supported with far more evidences than the other. hammond herself provides thirty variant readings, while our transcriptions show there are, at least, forty-seven examples.8 7 hammond gives lines 56, 106, 108*, 126, 154, 208, 214, 224, 236, 278, 295, 303, 383*, 512*, 612, 623 and 669. our evidences are lines 3, 5, 28, 56, 59, 96, 106, 108*, 126, 139, 154, 165, 204, 208, 214, 224, 236, 278, 295, 303, 383*, 512*, 569, 612, 623 and 669. lines that show a variant, but are not considered as valid evidence for fb/ tltd, are 3, 5 and 165 (for which the text in b is missing) and 569, for which lt also omits. although i only render the line in which a certain variant reading occurs—and not the variant reading itself—the curious reader will find the full transcription of the fifteen authorities of pf in tanaka 1981. the evidences resulting from our transcription and collation of the mss are given next to hammond’s in square brackets throughout the whole article. 8 lines 8, 66, 75, 91, 98, 100, 104, 114, 119, 127, 142*, 152, 156, 158, 161, 167, 190, 191, 192, 209, 233, 277, 282, 296, 297, 306, 312, 322, 346, 375, 387, 417, 440, 457, 468, 472*, 507, 520, 523, 527, 529, 534, 537, 577, 584, 585, 587, 590, 594, 596*, 619, 642, 644, 650 and 677. the alteration in line 75 is in the reading to/ the, but fbd reads comune against ltt comon, and not as hammond points out “fbt and a: to comon profit, dlt: the comon, etc.” (1902: 11). we agree, however, with all the data presented by hammond, resulting in 30 [47] evidences for the union of ltd. we are not counting as evidence (although hammond does for some) lines 8, 158, 161, 167, 190, 191, 192, 196 for not having textual evidence for b, although the reading of b is not as important to postulate the union of ltd/ david arbesú 56 the variant readings exclusive to one ms are also important evidence to consider. they do not help to postulate groupings of mss horizontally, but they are crucial to build the stemma vertically, that is, to establish whether one ms is the source of another or not. hammond gives the following evidence for the independence of f from b, namely lines 27, 63, 140, 206, 313—omissions by b alone—and the misreadings and slight insertions of b not appearing in f: lines 37, 72, 231, 263, 335, 364, 394, 395, 504, 556, 585, 637 an 688. the complete list of variant readings exclusive to b that we have obtained is of twenty-six variant readings.9 for the opposite, the independence of b from f, i agree with hammond in that the evidence is scanty. of the fifteen [twenty-three] evidences she provides, only five should be taken into account,10 although a certain reading not exclusive to f could very well serve as evidence of b’s independence from f. such a coincidence, however, would be, at least, suspicious. there is one question regarding f and b that deserves special consideration. hammond places both mss at the same level based on the evidence given by lines 201*, 476* and 358, since the rest of the examples render no evidence for or against the fbt than for fb/ tltd. line 594 is not taken into account because t also omits, and we do not agree with hammond’s evidence for line 306 (for which she claims an opposition ltd was/ fbt nas, where fbt really read uas, or for line 520 (for which only lt reads loudenesse, as opposed to lewdenesse. hammond also claims that the variant reading which is produced in line 650 belongs to line 652, but this is not so. 9 lines 23, 27, 50, 63, 72, 140, 152, 206, 263, 313, 335, 364, 370, 394, 395, 406, 420, 452, 498, 504, 530, 549, 551, 587, 637 and 644. hammond gives a total of 18 evidences, of which we only accept 13 as valid. apart from missing lines 23, 50, 152, 370, 406, 420, 452, 498, 530, 549, 551, 587, 644 of the total of 26 variant readings exclusive to b that we provide, her analysis of lines 37, 231, 556, 585, 688 is dubious. line 37 reads the same for all five mss, in line 231 it is f who gives the incorrect reading temple of glas for temple of bras, line 556 is also an example of f erring, line 585 can not be considered an insertion by b since it agrees with ltd, and in line 688 the error lies in lt. 10 hammond gives lines 152, 201*, 216, 253, 263, 358, 359, 381, 420, 436, 476*, 551, 590, 637, and 652, whereas our transcription gives 3, 5, 35, 89, 165, 169, 198, 201*, 231, 284, 311, 319, 358, 381, 387, 407, 409, 436, 476*, 524, 556, 584, 587. of these, we do not consider valid evidence lines 3, 5, 165, 169 and 198 due to b missing the text (thus what we consider a variant reading exclusive to f could be evidence of fb), leaving the total number of variants in 18. of the 15 examples quoted by hammond, we only consider valid examples those five in lines 201, 358, 381, 436, and 476. for the rest, lines 152, 263, 420, 551 and 637 are errors in b and not in f; lines 590 and 652 are examples of ft; lines 253 and 359 are examples of different spellings of names; and line 216 only shows an error of lt. geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma derivation of b from f.11 although we agree with hammond that the omissions of f in these lines point to independent transcription of both mss from a common original, we must also mention that her treatment of the evidence is contradictory. on the one hand, the seventeen [twenty-three] common readings of fb that she presents serve as very strong evidence to support their union, while the thirty [forty-four] examples she gives for ltd do not. we do respect, however, hammond’s assumption that f (ca. 1450) is not the source of b (ca. 1450-1500), although the evidence of three lines in a poem of approximately seven hundred is, indeed, very scarce. it would be necessary to transcribe and collate the contents of both mss as a whole to see if f is indeed the source of b. according to seymour (1995: 85-9), all the poems that appear in b can be found in the larger ms f, except for the final order of fools by lydgate, so that f could very well be the model from which b was copying. as regards the text of pf, we do not find evidence for or against b’s derivation from f, but what is clear is the strong textual affiliation—either due to common ancestry or because f is indeed the ancestor of b—of both mss. regarding the three remaining mss—t, lt and d—hammond notes that neither of them can be the source of the other two. this is proved by both her evidences and ours, since she provides thirty-eight [seventy-two] examples of variant readings exclusive to d,12 twenty-seven [forty-two] examples exclusive to t,13 and seventy-eight [one-hundred and nine] 11 hammond (1902: 10) indicates that furnivall postulates f as the source of b. 12 hammond’s evidences are lines 7*, 27, 28, 53, 54, 109, 119, 144, 148, 166, 178*, 202*, 220*, 238*, 244, 245*, 255, 296*, 354*, 375, 377, 389, 391, 426, 438*, 460, 462, 467*, 493, 530, 540, 562, 573, 582*, 587, 644, 659and 666, of which we do not accept l. 27 (error in b) and l. 109 (for which all mss read the same). our exclusive readings of d are lines 7*, 9, 28, 42, 53, 54, 62, 66, 74, 83, 89, 94, 104, 108, 119, 127, 129, 134, 144, 148, 166, 167, 178*, 197, 201, 202*, 217, 220*, 228, 238*, 244, 245*, 255, 269, 296*, 346, 349, 350, 354*, 375, 377, 386, 389, 391, 399, 417, 421, 424, 426, 438*, 460, 462, 467*, 493, 505, 523, 524, 530, 540, 545, 553, 562, 573, 582*, 587, 594, 603, 616, 644, 654, 659 and 666. 13 hammond renders lines 80*, 93, 112, 125*, 169, 170, 177, 187, 189, 274*, 310, 400*, 404, 411, 415, 438, 439*, 448, 454, 461, 511*, 516, 562, 594*, 665*, 672*, 692*, of which we do not consider valid lines 93 (all five mss read the same), 169 (t has no error and b is missing the text), 439* (evidence for td because digby also omits the same word), 562 (it is evidence for d, not for t), and 692* (all 5 mss read the same). our full list of variant readings are lines 7, 10, 47, 54, 80*, 99, 101, 112, 125*, 170, 17, 187, 189, 274*, 310, 318, 335, 400*, 404, 411, 415, 57 david arbesú 58 variants only found in lt.14 of these examples (see note), one deserves to be analysed in detail, for it illustrates hammond’s treatment of her data. the different readings remedys and remedye in line 140, which hammond counts as variant readings, can not be accepted as valid evidence for different readings among the mss since this reading was motivated by the alteration in the order of words in line 139 of ms lt (which, indeed, is a variant reading), provoking the change of the final “-e” to a final “-s” in line 140 to suit the preceding line: there as this fisshe in prison al drye is there as this fysshe in prison is all drie the shouyng is oonly the remedys the shewyng is only the remedie (ms longleat 258, ll. 139-40). (ms digby 181 (and rest), ll. 139-40). the analysis of the variant readings in the mss being complete, it only remains to deduce the position of t in the tree. however, we must first look at another issue on which hammond casts light, and which could be important for the accuracy of the final stemma. on the light of the evidences she presents in her article, there seems to be a supposed influence of one or more mss from group a on ms digby 181. according to hammond, “digby’s omissions are some twelve in number [sixteen], its insertions two [six], and of its some nineteen scribal errors [forty-eight] only one or two can be considered deliberate” (1902: 11). the evidences we have obtained, 424, 438, 448, 454, 461, 471, 494, 511*, 516, 523, 524, 571, 573, 579, 587, 594*, 665*, 672*, 675, 691 and 693. 14 hammond gives lines 1, 5, 17, 25*, 27, 29, 40*, 42, 79, 81, 82, 117, 136, 139*, 140, 156, 158, 175, 183, 203, 225, 228*, 234*, 256, 262*, 286*, 294, 307*, 312, 329, 332, 335*, 336, 348, 351, 352*, 366, 372, 379*, 384, 385, 390, 414*, 417, 422, 428, 431, 436, 449, 462*, 493*, 494*, 504*, 514, 519*, 525*, 533*, 537*, 539, 557-558, 560*, 570, 592, 601, 605, 606, 616, 634, 635, 640, 658*, 669, 670, 676*, 677, 679, 689 and 691, of which we do not accept as valid lines 27 (spelling, dilite vs. delite), 592 (illegible in lt), 634 (spelling, tarsellet vs. tercelet), 689 (all five mss read the same), 691 (error in t) and 140 (discussed in text). our list of variant readings consists of lines 1, 5, 7, 8, 10, 17, 25*, 29, 40*, 42*, 47, 57, 71, 79, 81, 82, 105, 117, 123, 130, 133, 136, 137, 139*, 145, 152, 156, 158, 172, 175, 183, 190, 192, 195, 199, 203, 204, 205, 216, 225, 228*, 234*, 256, 262*, 263, 286*, 287, 290, 294, 307*, 312, 329, 332, 335*, 336, 341, 348, 351, 352*, 362, 366, 372, 379*, 384, 385, 390, 404, 414*, 417, 422, 426, 428, 431, 436, 449, 462*, 493*, 494*, 497, 504*, 514, 519*, 520, 524, 525*, 527, 533*, 537*, 539*, 555, 557, 560*, 570, 601, 605, 606, 608, 616, 635, 637, 640, 658*, 669, 670, 676*, 677, 679, 679, 688 and 693. geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 59 however, show that there are many more variant readings in d than what hammond has stated. nevertheless, she points out that there are a series of a group readings present in d which have apparently been blurred by omission in the rest of the b group mss, namely lines 7*, 53, 62, 244 and 467*, and also points of agreement between d and the a group in lines 28 and 148. this was also koch’s opinion when he postulated his stemma in 1881, stating that this is proved in lines 7, 62, 148, 387, 417, and 460. of all these examples, we can only consider a readings present in d lines 7*, 244 and 467*, the rest having no a reading present in d but rather—if any—on the rest of the mss of group b. i agree with hammond when she states that koch’s evidence to support the influence of a on d is not strong, but when she says that “if these readings prove anything, they prove the possibility of independent but coincident change by various manuscripts . . . i can not find in these examples adequate proof of a influence on d” (1902: 12), i must remark, again, that her treatment of evidence is arbitrary. if we do not admit a direct influence of a on d, then it is impossible to explain how the scribe of d obtained the readings of lines 7* (flete or synke), 467* (eek nature hir silf) and, less importantly, 244 (and eke with out) when the rest of the mss of group b and, therefore, d’s ancestor, omitted them or read otherwise. nevertheless, since three examples are not enough evidence to support the influence of a on d, and since every affiliation between mss always has a number of evidences which may point towards a different stemma, we will accept that d has not been influenced by a, and that the common readings are, as hammond argues, coincidental. regarding her conclusion that lt and t are affiliated with a ms of the fb group for the first seventy-five lines of the poem, however, we can not agree. what she argues is “an alliance dltt versus fb [which] is now sufficiently probable after line 75; anterior to that point the affiliation of tlt is partly also with fb; cf. ll. 7, 53, 62. from about line 75 on, lt adheres to d, while t perhaps had access to an fb codex; cf. ll. 387-90 and colophon” (1902: 14). on the one hand, there is not enough evidence to prove this affiliation and, on the other, hammond does not seem to be aware that she has postulated lt and t as coming from different ancestors, which would make this sudden change in the affiliation of both mss a coincidence too elaborate to be accepted. as root observes, “unless the scribes of tanner and longleat were working from a common david arbesú 60 original, which according to the author’s [hammond] genealogy is not the case, it would be hard to explain why each scribe should have abandoned one exemplar, and taken up another, precisely at line seventy-five” (root 1903: 190). the positioning of t in the tree is, by far, the most problematic one. we have already seen that this ms seems to stand in an intermediate position between the two sub-groups of fb and ltd. hammond’s evidence for placing t in a specific position in the stemma concerns the order in which the three chaucerian poems legend of good women (lgw), pf, and the book of the duchess (bd) are copied in mss f, b and t (1902: 12), although she later places t with lt and d. we shall not examine these evidences now, which, although important, are less relevant than the variant readings in the mss. if the readings in the mss prove a certain position of t in the tree, the order in which the poems are copied can not prove otherwise. the evidence presented by hammond in order to deduce the position of t, namely lines 3*, 8, 56, 59, 78, 119, 149, 154, 437, 466, 512* and 569 is often contradictory and points towards a different positioning of the ms. lines 3*, 56, 59, 154, 512* and 569 indicate tltd kinship, hammond argues. however, b is wanting in line 3* and in line 569 lt goes with fb. of the rest, lines 78, 149, 437 and 466 are proof of ltt; and lines 8 and 119 are examples of ltd, t going here with fb. her evidence of t’s variant readings is, then, scarce, and it does not point towards a positioning of t anywhere in the tree. her conclusion, which we shall examine below, leaves her final stemma for the mss of group b—the “hammond group”—as follows (1902: 14): c c2 c1 c3 lines 1-75 f b t lt d geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 61 after a thorough analysis of this stemma, which—we should remember—has been undisputed for over one-hundred years, we notice that there are a number of questions that need to be taken under consideration, and that the stemma hammond has postulated often lacks the necessary evidence to justify its conclusions. on the one hand, the number of evidences presented to support the stemma is very inferior to the actual variant readings that can be found. one could argue that hammond pays attention only to those variants she considers “important,” the rest being of no value to support a specific position of a ms in the tree. however, hammond never specifies the criteria on which a certain variant is considered significant and another one is not, and often includes examples of “variant spellings” as valuable data (contrary to our evidence) and disregards variants which are due to scribal miscopy, insertion or omission. this indicates two things: that the deduction of her stemma is not the result of a personal transcription and examination of the mss, and also that the criteria on which a specific reading is considered a variant is not clear. comparing her evidences with the examples we have obtained from the transcription of the five mss of group b, the following table can be postulated: hammond 1902 arbesú 2003 difference fb 17 (0 dubious) = 17 27 (4 dubious) = 23 + 6 ltd 30 (7 dubious) = 23 56 (12 dubious) = 44 + 21 f 15 (10 dubious) = 5 23 (5 dubious) = 18 + 13 b 18 (5 dubious) = 13 26 (0 dubious) = 26 + 13 lt 78 (5 dubious) = 73 109 (0 dubious) = 109 + 36 d 38 (2 dubious) = 36 72 (0 dubious) = 72 + 36 t 27 (5 dubious) = 22 42 (0 dubious) = 42 + 20 tota l 223 (34 dubious) = 189 355 (21 dubious) = 334 + 145 the only aspect we need to discuss now is the problematic position of t in the tree. we have already altered the substance of koch-hammond’s stemma considerably by eliminating the affiliation of t and lt with a ms of the fb group for the first 75 lines of the poem and by concluding, with hammond, that d has not been influenced by a. regarding the affiliation of f with b, i find that the important question is their close textual affinity, and david arbesú 62 not whether f is the ancestor or the brother of b, so that, as long as their strong bond is accounted for, the palaeographic stemma will be correct. the main problem that we find to postulate a stemma for the mss of pf comes with the position of t. as we have seen, this ms seems to stand in an intermediate position between the two subgroups of fb and ltd, and this is always the case of t no matter the kind of evidence we examine. if we look at the data obtained from the collation of the mss, we see that t agrees with fb (fbt/ ltd) in forty-four readings and with ltd (ltdt/ fb) in twentythree. this evidence is not enough to postulate the position of t in any of the two main branches of the stemma. nevertheless, if one takes a look at other kinds of evidence, such as the general spelling of the mss (gates/ gatys; birdes/ briddis), spelling of proper names (cupide/ cipride; semiramus/ semyramus; achilles/ hachilles), etc., the result is the same: t agrees with one group for approximately half of the cases, and with the other for the remaining examples. the uncertainty about t’s affiliation comes, however, as no surprise, for it is echoed in every study on pf’s authorities, or even in hammond’s sudden positioning of t with ltd in the tree. editorial conventions go a step further, for modern chaucer editions reproduce what they claim to be hammond’s stemma in a way that makes t’s positioning on the tree even more obscure, i.e. “b: g:fb; h:tltd” (benson 1987: 1147). however, the affiliation of the mss given by seymour is the best example to show how the treatment of t in relation to the rest of the mss of group b is contradictory. according to seymour, fairfax 16 is closely affiliated to bodley 638 and vice-versa, but he also mentions that “tanner 346 is affiliated to fairfax 16 and bodley 638; digby 181 is closely affiliated to longleat 258; and longleat 258 is affiliated to digby 181 and tanner 346” (1995: 29-32). what is one to infer from this classification? the two subgroups of fb and ltd are, again, well differentiated, but the actual relationship of t with the rest of the mss is impossible to see. on the one hand, t is affiliated with fb, and on the other, with lt which, in turn, is affiliated with d (d not being directly affiliated with t). why does hammond, then, postulate t in the branch of ltd, and above these two mss? as we have argued, the evidence in her article for t’s positioning is contradictory and can not prove any affiliation whatsoever. furthermore, she geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 63 often disregards her own evidences which, in the absence of opposing data, point to a positioning of t with fb. her explanation for t’s affiliation with ltd is given in these lines: it is to be noted that elsewhere in the t codex the anelida and lydgate’s black knight are copied in close conjunction; that krausser, in his edition of the latter poem (anglia, xix), finds d and t connected in a group opposed to f and b, and that the koch-heath genealogy of the anelida text places t on the same stem with dlt, above them and opposed with them to fb. assuming these conclusions to be well grounded, we have the possibility that in the parlement of foules t (and lt) worked partly with fb in the first few stanzas as in the poem preceding, but then for some reason deviated to use the copy which they had followed in transcribing the black knight. further it might be remarked that the undetailed genealogy which so far lies before the student for the legend of good women does not preclude the possibility that the difference of t from b may there be one of difference in stem, as here indicated. the freedom of t from fb errors in the former poem, alluded to by mr. pollard, may be because of a difference in stem. (1902: 14) basically, the reasons for the postulation of t with ltd are four: koch’s initial placement of t in that branch, the textual relationships of chaucerian poems other than pf, hammond’s conclusion that “these conclusions [are] well grounded,” and probably, her insistence on the strong—and, it seems, exclusive—bond between f and b. what seems to be the case, however, is that there are many more evidences that point towards a positioning of t with fb than for the opposite, and that neither koch nor hammond have taken them into account. only to be fair, and before we discuss our positioning of t in the tree, we must shed light on a very interesting fact which renders a bi-fold conclusion: that hammond’s positioning of t in the tree in 1902 was not supported with actual evidences, and that critical editions of chaucer in the twentieth century have reproduced, for over a hundred years, a stemma that is incorrect and was later modified by david arbesú hammond herself, although the scientific community has yet to make room for it.15 in 1908, six years after establishing the stemma of the mss for pf, hammond published a book, chaucer: a bibliographical manual, which is still today unsurpassed by any other manual on geoffrey chaucer, and refereed in almost every scholar publication about the author. the interesting fact is that, while the book reproduces the ms affiliations for all chaucerian works, only one of chaucer’s poems deserves the privilege of a stemma. this, of course, could be no other than pf, but on a closer examination of the stemma (which is virtually impossible to find on the pages of the book), one notices that this is not the same hammond has reproduced in 1902. hammond only deals—between the years 1902 and 1908—with the mss of pf in thee brief articles, namely “omissions from the editions of chaucer” (1904), “ms longleat 258—a chaucerian codex” (1905) and finally, “on the editing of chaucer’s minor poems” (1908). none of these propose a new stemma for pf or explain a change in the previous one, nor do we find any explanation in the book about tanner’s sudden change of branch. regarding koch, and leaving aside his 1881 article and his edition of the poem in 1928 already mentioned, he has dealt with the matter again in “das handschriftenverhältnis in chaucers parlement of foules” (1903 and 1904), and in versuch einer kritischen textausgabe von chaucer’s parlement of foules (1904), but his analyses do not alter the substance of our stemma. as it has been argued, chaucerian criticism has never noticed the change made by hammond, for her article in 1902 is taken—for, indeed, it is—as the last piece of scholarship that discusses, proves and renders a valid stemma for the witnesses of chaucer’s poem. to anticipate our conclusion, hammond’s 1908 stemma positions t with us, although she gives no explanation of the change whatsoever or proves it with any evidence at all. in our case, and in 15 as an example of critical editions of pf in the twentieth century we could cite skeat 1900*, capone 1900, lounsbury 1900, koch 1904*, rogers 1904*, skeat 1910*, emerson 1911, tatlock & mackaye 1912, maccracken 1913, drennan 1914*, koch 1928*, robinson 1957 [1933]*, donaldson 1958*, brewer 1972 [1960]*, baugh 1963, fisher 1977, ruggiers 1979, stone 1983 and benson 1987*. editions marked with an asterisk are those of special importance for the establishment of pf’s text, those that have edited the poem on its own, or the ones that have been considered canonical. non-academic editions, as that of penguin, for example, are not listed. 64 geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 65 order to deduce the position of t in the tree, we have considered seven different aspects: -that there are forty-four examples in which t agrees in readings with fb, and only twenty-three in which it does so with ltd. -that the heading of the poem, in which t coincides with lt (the assemble of foules) is not important evidence, since neither fb nor ltd— being so strongly affiliated with each other—agree in this aspect. -that the treatment of the final roundel in pf,16 in which t coincides with lt, can also be disregarded as valid evidence, since d (which is affiliated with lt) includes a version of the roundel, and the inclusion of its title in mss f and b, and not in t, could be an insertion of their immediate ancestor. -that only in the final colophon do the mss agree consistently, being it equal for lt and d (here endith the parlement of fowlis) and for fb and t (explicit tractatus de congregacione volucru(m) die sancti valentini). -that for the text of lgw, and contrary to what hammond claims, t uniquely omits lines 249 and 1378b-9a, and lacks lines 249, 487, 846, 960, 961, 1490, 1643, 1998, 2150b-3a, 2193, 2338 and 2475, also missing in f and b. -that if we examine the chaucerian contents of the mss, t stands again in an intermediate position between fb and ltd but, without a doubt, it seems to be closer to fb:17 fairfax and bodley (anelida and arcite (aa)/ lgw/ pf/ bd/ house of fame (hf)/ abc/ fortune); digby and longleat (aa/ pf); tanner (lgw/ aa/ bd/ pf). 16 there are three variants for the roundel in the mss. either they include a version of it (mss j, d and gg (inserted by a later hand)), they leave a blank space in which the roundel should be inserted (ms h), they do not include it but refer to it with its supposed title, qui bien ayme a tarde oublie (mss r, f, b and cx) or they make no reference to it at all (mss ff, s, t and lt). there are three mss—hh, p and l—for which the final part of the text of pf is lost. 17 the major poems by chaucer, in the order in which they were copied in the mss, have been taken from seymour 1995: 31-32, 83-88. david arbesú 66 -that if we take into account the a readings present in the mss of group b we will see that, whenever an a reading is present in t, it is usually also present in fb.18 for all these reasons, we must first agree with hammond and place t in an intermediate position between the two strong subgroups of fb and ltd. however, we must disagree with her when she postulates the position of t closer to ltd than to fb. therefore, we must position t in the tree in a way that it is not bonded inside neither of the two subgroups and, at the same time, show that it has characteristics of both fb and ltd, but with a much closer bond with the first subgroup.19 the new stemma for the b group mss of pf would be, then, as follows: as colophon to this article, we believe it has been proven with enough evidence that the conclusions of both koch and hammond about the textual relations of pf’s authorities were reached after an incomplete analysis of the 18 for fbta (vs. ltd) there are thirty-five examples, lines 42, 66, 75, 91, 98, 100, 104, 114, 119, 127, 152, 209, 233, 277, 282, 297, 312, 322, 346, 387, 417, 440, 457, 468, 472, 507, 527, 534, 537, 577, 596, 619, 642, 650 and 677, although we could also consider lines 8, 158, 161, 167, 190, 191 and 192 for which b is missing the text. in the case of tltda (vs. fb) there are only ten examples, lines 106, 108, 126, 208, 236, 278, 295, 383, 612 and 623. 19 of course, one can find some lines that do not fit well into this stemma, namely 56, 59, 139, 154, 214, 224 and 512, which show an a reading present in fb not present in t or ltd. however, there is also evidence against the opposite position, t above ltd, which would be a readings present in ltd not present in t or fb, cf. ll. 71, 156, 158, 196, 296, 375, 523. notice that all these evidences have to do with the transmission of a reading from group a down the mss of group b. geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 67 variant readings present in the mss.20 the mere existence of hammond’s 1908 stemma is, however, enough evidence to invalidate the first, which has been the canonical one for more than one hundred years and is, still today, considered the correct genealogical tree for pf. it has now been argued that, sometime between 1902 and 1908, hammond must have realized the erroneous affiliation of t and inserted a revised version of the stemma in chaucer: a bibliographical manual which, nevertheless, passed unnoticed to the virtual totality of chaucerian criticism. a more important conclusion to this article is, however, that we believe it has proven the necessity to carry out a systematic revision of chaucerian codicology. we hope that our modest analysis of the “hammond subgroup” will serve as basis to the study of pf’s complete stemma, and open the way to the reconsideration of all codicological stemmas of chaucer’s works. david arbesú university of massachussets, amherst appendix: variant readings line bodley 638 fairfax 16 tanner 346 longleat 258 digby 181 1 .......... the lyf so short, the crafte so longe to lerne the lif so short the craft so long to lerne the lif so short the craft so long to lere the life so short, the crafte so longe to lerne 3 .......... the slyder ioy, that alwey slyd so yerne the blysful ioy a wey that fleth so yerne the blisful ioy that alwey fleeth so yerne the blisfull ioy awey that fleth so yerne 5 .......... astonyeth soo, with a dredeful worchyng astonyeth so with his dredfull astonyeth so with ø dredefull astonyth so with his dredfull worchyng 20 although our conclusions were drawn from the transcription of facsimile prints, the transcriptions of the chaucer society (furnivall 1868-1880) from which hammond draws her data present a very realiable text of the poem, so that the fault lies in the analysis rather than in the source itself. it could be argued that technological improvements have played a part in the modification of the stemma, but the texts of mss f, b, t, lt and d analysed here were manually transcribed and collated. david arbesú 68 worchyng worchyng 7 .......... nat wote i wel wher that i wake or wynke that wote i wele wher ø i wake or wynke ne wote i wele whether ø i wake or wynke not wote i well wher þat i flete or synke 8 .......... for al be that, i knowe not love in dede for all be that i knowe not loue in dede ø by al that i knowe not loue in dede for by all that i knowe not loue in dede 9 .......... ne wote how he, quyteth folke her hire ne wote how he quyteth folke hire hire ne wote howe he quyteth folke thaire hire ne wote howe she quyteth folke here hyre 10 .......... yet hapeth me in bookes, ofte to rede yit happeth me in bokis oft ø rede yet happith me oft in bokis for to rede yit happeth me in bokes ofte to rede 17 .......... but why that i speke, al this not yore but why þat i speke all þis not yoore but why that i speke of this not yore but why þat i speke all þis,· not yore 23 cometh al the new corne fro yere to yere cometh al this new corne, fro yere to yere comyth al this new corn fro yere to yere cometh al this newe corne from yere to yere comyth all this new corn fro yere to yere 25 comyth all this new scyence that men lere cometh al thys new science, that men lere comyth al þis new science þat men lere cometh al this newe sentence that me lere comyth all þis newe stiens that men lere 27 to rede forth ø gan me so delyte to rede forth hit gan me so delyte to rede forth it gan me so delite to rede forth it gane me so dilite to rede forth it ganne me so delite 28 that all the day thought me but a lyte that al the day, thought me but a lyte that al day thought me but a lyte that al day thought me but a lite that all day it thought me but a lite 29 this booke of which i make mensyon this booke of which, i make mension this boke of which i make mencion this boke whereas i make mencion this book of which i make mencion 35 of his sentence i wull you tell the grete of his sentence, i nul yow tel the grete of his sentence i wol you tell the grete of his sentence i wol you telle the grete of his sentens i woll you tell the grete 40 that was bitwext hem til that was betwixt hem, til the day gan mysse that was betwixt hem tyl the day that was bitwix them till the day þat was bitwix hem, till the day gan geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 69 the day gan mysse gan mysse ø mysse mysse 42 gan on his slepe that nyght to him appere gan on his slepe that nyght to hym appere gan on his slepe that nyght to hym appere gan in his slepe that might ø appere gan on his slepe · that nyght till hym appere · 47 that louyth comune profyte well i thewyd · that loveth comvne profyt, wel y thewede þat louyth comon profit well i thewed that loueth come proffit well i thewde that louyth comune profite well i thewyde 50 tha anskyd he if the folke that here be ded than asked he, yf the folke that here be dede than askid he yif the folke þat here be dede than asked he if the folke that here be dede than asked he if þe folke þat here be dede 53 and oure present worldis lyues space · and oure present worldes, lyves space and oure present worldis lyuys space and our present worlds lyues space and howe oure present worldis lifis space 54 meneth but a maner deth what wey we trace meneth but a maner dethe, what wey we trace menith but a man deth what wey we trace meneth but a manere dethe what wey we trace mernyth but a maner deth what wey we trace 56 to heuen and shewid him the galoxye to hevene and shewed hym, the galoxye to heuyn and shewed hem the galoye to heuen and shewed him the galeye to heuen and shewed hem the galoye 57 then shewid he him the litell erth that here is than shewede he hym, the lytel erthe that here is than shewed he hym the litel erth þat here is than shewed he him a litest erthe that here is than shewed he hym the litle erthe þat here is 59 and aftir shewid he him the nyne sperys and aftir shewed he hym, the nyne speris and after shewid he hy the ix speris and after shewed he him the ix speres and after shewed he hym the ix· speres 62 that welle ys of musyke and melodye that welle ys of musyke, and melodye that wel is of musyk and melodye that well is of musik and melodye that wellis been of musik and melodie 63 in this worlde ø and cause of armonye · in this worlde here, and cause of armonye in þis world here and cause of armony in this worlde here and cause of armonye in this wordle here, and cause of armonye 66 that he ne shulde him in the world delyte that he ne shuld hym, in the worlde delyte that he ne sholde hy in the worlde delite that he ne shuld him in this worlde delite that he ne sholde hym in þis wordle delite david arbesú 70 71 than pried he scipion tell him all than prayed he scipion, tel hym alle þan prayed he scipion tell hym alle than praied he cipion to telle him all than praid he cipion tell hym all 72 they wey to come to heuen blysse the wey to come, to hevene blysse the wey to come to heuen blysse the wey to come to heuen blisse the wey to come to heuen blisse 74 and loke ay besilye thou werke and wysse and loke ay besely, thou werke and wysse and loke ay bisily thou werk and wisse and loke ay besily thou werke and wisse and loke ay bisily thowe werke and wisse 75 to comvne profyte and thou shalt neuyr mysse to comvne profite, and thou shalt never mysse to comon profit and thu shalt neuer mysse the comon proffit and thou shal neuer mysse the comune profite, and þou shalt neuer mysse 78 but brekers of the lawe soth for to seyn but brekers of the lawe, soth for to seyne but brekers of the lawe ø for to seyn but brekers of the lawe ø for to sayne but brekers of the lawe sothe ø to sayn 79 and lecherous folke aftir that thei ben ded and lecherous folke, after that they be dede and leccherous folke after þat they be dede and lecherous folk after ø they be dede and lecherous folk, after þat they been deed 80 shul alwey whirle a boute therth in peyn shul alwey whirle aboute, therthe in peyne shul alwey ø a boute the erth in peyne shull alwey whirle aboute the erthe in payne shull alwey whirle about the erth in payn 81 lines 81-82 in order lines 81-82 in order lines 81-82 in order lines 81-82 reversed lines 81-82 in order 82 and then foryeuyn hem all her wikkyd dede · and than for yeven hem, al hir wikked dede and þan foryeve hem al here wicked dede and than for yeuen them ø thair wikked dede and then for yeue hem all here wicked dede 83 then shull thei come vn to that blisfull place than shul they come, vnto that blysful place than shul they come vn to that blisful place than shal they come vnto that blisful place than shall þei come into that blisfull place 89 fulfilled of thought and besy heuynesse fulfilled of thought, and ø hevenesse fulfilled of thought and besy heuynesse fulfilled of thought and besy heuynesse fulfilled of thought and of besy heuynesse 91 and eke i ne had thinge that and eke i ne had thynge, that i wolde and ek i ne had thing that i wolde and ø i ne hade thing that i wolde and ø i ne hadde thynge ·that i wolde· geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 71 i wolde · 94 tooke reste that made me to slepe faste tooke reste, that made me to slepe faste toke rest, that made me to slepe fast toke rest that made me to slepe fast to rest that made me to slepe fast 96 how anfrikan right in that self aray how anfrikan, ryght in that selfe aray how affrican right in that seluen aray howe anfrican right in that seluen array howe anfrican right in þat seluen aray 98 was comen and stode right at my beddis syde was comen and stoode ryght, at my beddys side was comen and stode right at my beddes side was comen and stode right at the beddes side was comyn and stood right at þe beddis side 99 the wery hunter slepinge in his bed · the wery hunter, slepynge in hys bed the verry hunter sleping in his bedde the wery hunter sleping in his bedde the wery hunter slepyng in his bedde 100 to woode a yein his mynde goth anon to wode ayeine, hys mynde gooth anoon to wode ayen his mynde goth a non to the wode ayein his mynde gooth anoon to the wode a yen, his mynde goth anoon 101 the iuge dremyth how his pleis ben sped · the iuge dremeth, how hys plees ben sped the iuge demeth hou his plees ben spede the iugge dremyth howe is plees ben spede the iuge dremyth howe his plees been spedde 104 the seke metith he drinketh of the tonne the seke meteth, he drynketh of the tonne the seke meteth he drynketh of the tonne the seke dremeth he drinketh of the tonne the seke dremyth howe he drynketh of þe ton 105 the louer metith he hath his ladi wonne the lover meteth, he hath hys lady wonne the louer metith he hath his lady wonne the trewe louer metyth he hath his lady wonne the lover metith he hath his lady won 106 can not i seyn if that the cause were · can not i seyne, yf that the cause were can i not seyn yif that the cause were can i not saien if that the cause were can i not sayn if that the cause were 108 that me to mete that he stode there that me to mete, that he stood there that made me to mete þat he stood there that made me to mete that he stode there that made me to mete ø he stode there 112 that somdell of thi laboure wolde i the that somedel of thy labour, wolde i the quyte that somdele of thy laboure wolde i ø quyte that sumdell of thy labour wol i the quyte þat somdele of thy labour wold i the quyte david arbesú 72 quyte 114 that with thi firye bronde dauntest whom the leste that with thy firy bronde, dauntest who the lest þat with þy firy bronde dantest who the liste that with thy fire brande dauntest who þou list þat with thy firebrond dauntist whom þou list 117 as wislye as i saw the north north weste · as wisly as i sawe the, northe northe west as wisely as i saw the north north west and wissely as i sawe thee north north west as wisly as i sawe the north northwest 119 so yeue me myght to ryme and to endyte · so yeve me myght, to ryme and to endyte so yeue me myght to ryme and to endyte so yeue me myght to ryme and ø endite so yeue me myght to write it and ø endite 123 and ouyr the gate with lettris large i wrought and ouer the gate, with letres large y wroght and ouer the gate with letters large i wrought and ouer the gate with leres large i wrought and ouer the gate with letters large i wrought 125 on eythir halfe of full grete difference · on eyther halfe, of ful grete difference on either half of ful grete reuerence on either half of ful gret difference on eyther half, of full grete differens 126 of which i shall you sey the pleyn sentence · of which i shal yow sey, the pleyn sentence of which i shal now sey the pleyn sentence of whiche i shal nowe say þe plain sentence of which i shall nowe say the playn sentens 127 thorogh me men gon in to that blisfull place · thorgh me men goon, in to that blysful place thorogh me men gon in to that blisfull place thorough me men come into that blisful place through me men come into þat blisfull place 129 thorgh me men gon vn to the welle of grace thorgh me men goon, vnto the welle of grace thorogh me men gon vn to the wel of grace thorough me men goon vnto the well of grace through me men goon vnto þe well of grace 130 there grene and lusty may shall euyr endure there grene and lusty may, shal euer endure there grene and lusty may shal euer endure the grene and lusty may shal euer endure ther grene and lusty may · shall euer endure 133 all opyn am i passe in and hye the faste · al open am i passe in, and hye the faste al open am i · passe in and hye the faste alle open am i passed in and high the fast all open am i passe in and hie the fast geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 73 134 thorgh me men gon then spake þat othir syde · thorgh me men goon, than spake that other side thorogh me men gon than spake þat oþer side thorough me men goon þan spake þat oþer side through me men goon þan spake þat oþir side 136 of which disdayne and daunger ys the gyde · of which disdayne, and daunger is the gyde of which dysdayne and daunger is the gide of whiche disdayne ø daungier is the gide of which disdayn and daungere is the gide 137 there tre shall neuyr frute ne leuys bere · there tree shal neuer frute, ne leves bere þere tre shal neuer frewte ne leues bere the tree shal neuer frute ne leuys bere there tree shall neuer frute ne leves bere 139 there as the fyssh in pryson ys all drye there as the fyssh in prison, is al drye þere as this fissh in prison is all drye there as this fisshe in prison al drye is there as this fysshe in prison is all drie 140 the schewynge ys ø the remedye · the savynge ys only, the remedye the shewing is only the remedye the shouyng is oonly the remedys the shewyng is only the remedie 142 of which i gan a stounde to biholde · of which i gan a stounde, to be holde of which i gan a stounde to be holde of whiche i gan ø stonde to beholde of which i gan ø stonde to beholde 144 and with that othir gan myne herte to bolde · and with that other, gan myn hert to bolde and with þat other gan my hert to bolde and with that other gan myn hert to bolde and with þat othir gan myn hert ø bolde 145 that oon me hette that othir did me colde · that oon me hette, that other did me colde that on me hette that other did me colde that oon me hette that other and me colde that oon me hette, þat othir did me colde 148 ryght as betwix adamaunts twoo ryght as betwix adamauntes twoo right as be twix addemandis two right as bitwix ademauntes twoo for right as bitwix adamauntis two · 149 of euyn myght a pese of iron i sette · of evene myght, a pece of iren y sette of evyn myght apece of iryn is sett of euen might a pece of iron is sette of evyn myght a pece of yron i sette 152 so ferd i that i ne wiste wher that me was bette · ferde i that i ne wiste, wher that me was bette ferd i that i ne wist wher þat me was bette thus fored i that i ne wist where ø me was bette thus ferde i þat i ne wiste, whedir ø me was bette david arbesú 74 154 me hente and shofe ø in at the gatys wyde · me hente and shoofe ø in, at the gates wyde me hente and shoof me in at the gate wide me hent and shoif me in at the gate wide me hent · and shoof me in at þe gate wide 156 thin erroure though thou tell it not me · thyn errour, though thou tel hyt not me thy erroure though thu tel it not me thyn errour though to telle it not to me thyn errour though þou tell it not to me 158 .......... for this writynge, ys no thing ment be the for this wrytyng is no thing ment be the for this writte is noo thing ment by the for this writyng is no thyng ment by the 161 .......... as seke man hath of swete, and bitternesse as seek man hath of swete and bitternesse as a seke man hath of swete and bitternesse as a seke man · hath of swete and bittirnesse 165 .......... yet lyketh hym, at the wrastelynge to be it liketh hym at the wrastlyng to be it liketh him at the wresteling to bee it likith hym att the wrastlyng to bee 166 .......... and demeth yit, whethir he do bet or he and demyth yit wheþer he do bet or he and demyth yet whether he doo bet or he and demyth it, whethir he do bette or hee 167 .......... and yf thou haddest kunnynge, for to endite and yif þou haddest kunnyng for to endite and if thou haddest cunyng ø to endite and if þou haddist comyng ø to endite 169 .......... and with that my honde in hys, he toke anon with that myn honde in his he took a non with that my hande in his he toke anoon with that myn honde in his he toke anon 170 .......... of which i comfort kaught, and went in faste of which i comfort taught and went in fast of whiche i comfort caught and went in fast of whiche i comforte caught and went in fast 172 .......... for ouer al where, i myn eyn caste for ouer all where i myn eyen cast but ouer al where i myn yen cast for ouer all, where i myn eyen cast 175 .......... as emerawde, that ioy was to sene as emeawde þat ioy was to sene as any emeraude that ioy was to sene as emeraude that ioye was to seyn 177 .......... the peler elme, the cofre vn to careyne the pelere elm the coffre vn to the tareyn the piler elme the cofre vnto carayne the peler elme, the cofre vnto careyn geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 75 178 .......... the box pipe tre, holme to whipes lasshe the box pype tre holme to whippes lassh the box pipe tree holme to whippis lasshe the box pipe, the holme to whippes lasshe 183 .......... a gardyn sawh i, ful of blossomed bowis a gardyn saw i ful of blossomed bowis a garden sawe i ful ø blosumed bowes a gardyn sawe i full of blossomyd bowes 187 .......... and colde well stremes, no thinge dede a colde wel stremes nothing dede and colde well stremes noo thing dede and colde well stremys no thyng dede 189 .......... with fynnes rede, and stales syluer bryght with fynys rede and stalis of syluer bryght with fynnes rede and stales syluer bright with fynnes rede · and stales siluer bright 190 .......... on euery bowgh, the briddes herde i synge on euery bough the briddes herde i singe in euery bowe the birdes harde i singe in euery bough the briddes herde i synge 191 .......... with voys of aungel, in her armony with vois of aungel in here armonye with vois of angelles in thair armonye with vois of aungelis · in here armonye 192 .......... that besyed hem, her briddes forthe to brynge þat besied hym her briddes forth to bryng that be side them thair birdes forth to bringe that beside hem hir briddis forth to brynge 195 .......... the dredful roo, the buk the hert and hynde the dredful roo the buk the hert and hinde the dredeful roo the buk the hert the hinde the dredfull roo the buk the hert and hynde 196 .......... squerel and bestis smale, of gentil kynde squerele and bestes smale of gentyl kynde squerells and bestes small of gentil kinde squerellis and bestis smale, of gentill kynde 197 .......... on instrumentes of strynge, in a corde on instruments of stringe in a corde on instruments of strenge in accorde on instrumentis of strength in a corde 198 .......... herde i ø pley, and ravysshinge swetnesse herde i so pley and rauysshinge swetnesse harde i so playe and rauisshing swetnesse herde i so pleie, and raueshyng swetnesse 199 .......... that god that maker ys of al, and lorde that god þat makere is of al and lorde that god that the maker is of al and lorde that god þat maker is of all, and lorde david arbesú 76 201 therwith a wynde vnneth it myght be lesse · there with a wynde, vnnethe hyt myght ø lesse there with a wynde vnneth it myght be lesse there with awynde vnneth it might be lesse þere with a wyndes vneth it myght be lesse 202 made in the leuys grene a noyse softe · made in the leves grene, a noyse softe made in þe leuys grene a noyse softe made in the leuys grene a noise soft made in the leues grene a noise full softe· 203 acordant to the foulys songe on lofte · accordant to the foulys, songe on lofte acordant to the foules songe on lofte according to the foules songe on loft accordaunt to the fowlis songe on lofte 204 the ayre of that place so attempre was the aire of that place, so attempre was the eire of þat place so atempre was the eyre of that place so attempered was the eire of þat place so attempre was · 205 that neuyr was grevance there of hote ne colde · that neuer was grevance therof, hoot ne colde that neuer was greuance þere of hote ne colde that neuer was greunce thereof of hote ne colde þat neuer was greuance there, of hote ne colde 206 there growyn ø euery holsom spice and gras ther growen eke, euery holsome spice and gras ther growen ek euery holsom spice and gras there growen eke euery holsom spice and gras there growen eke, euery holsome spice and gras 208 yet was there more ioy a thousande folde yet was there more ioy, a thousande folde yit was ther ioy more a thousand fold yet was there ioye more a thousand folde yhit was þere ioy more a thousand fold 209 no man kan tell neuyr wolde it nyght no man kan telle, neuer wolde hyt nyght no man can tell neuer wold it nyght noo man can telle neuer wold it be night no man can tell, neuer wold it be nyght 214 and wylle his doughtre temperyd al the while and wille hys doghtre, tempred al the while and while his doughter tempred all þe while and while his doughter tempered al the while and while his doughter temprid all þe while 216 she towchid hem aftir as thei shuld serue she tovched hem, after as they shul serve she touched hem after as they shull serue she couched them after as they shulde serue she touched hem · aftir as þei shold serue 217 som to fle and som to wounde and kerue some to flee, and some to wounde and kerve som to fle and som to wounde and kerue sume to flee and sume to wounde and karue some to slee and some to wounde and kerue geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 77 220 and of the crafte that kan and hath þe myght and of the crafte that kan, and hath the myght and of the craft þat can and hath the myght and of the craft that can and hath the might and of þe crafte þat came and hath þe myght 224 saugh i delyte that stode with gentillesse sawgh i delyte, that stoode with gentilesse saugh i delite that stood with gentilnesse sawe i dilite that stode with gentilnesse saugh i delite that stood with gentilnesse 225 i saugh beaute without eny atyre i sawgh beaute, withoute any atire i sawgh bewtee with oute any atire i sawe beaute withoute any tyre i saugh beaute without any atire 228 massagery mede and othir thre · messagery mede, and other thre messagery mede and other thre massagerye mede and other tree messanger mede and other thre 231 i saugh a temple of bras foundid stronge i sawgh a temple of glas founded stronge i saugh a temple of brasse fonded stronge i sawe a temple of bras founded strong i saugh a temple of bras foundid stronge 233 women i nowe of which som were · women y now, of which some were women i nowe of which some were women ynough of whiche sume were wymen i nowgh of which some were 234 faire of hem self and som of hem gay faire of hem self, and some of hem gay faire of hem self and som of hem gay faire of them self and sume ø gaye faire of hem silf, and some of hem gay · 236 that was hir offyce · alwey fro yere to yere · that was hir office alwey, fro yere to yere þat was here office alwey yere by yere that was thair office alwey yere by yere that was here office alwey yere by yere 238 of dowuys white many a hundryd peyre of dowves white, many a hundred paire of dowues white meny an hundrid peire of doues white many a hundred paire of dowfes ø many an hundred paire 244 and aldirnext within and withoute · and alder next within, and with oute and alther next with in and with oute and alther next within and withoute and alder next within and eke with out 245 beheste and arte and of hir folke a route behest and arte, and of her folke a rowte by hest and art and of here folke a route behest and arte and of thair folke a route bihest and art and ø here folke about david arbesú 78 255 in suche aray as when the asse him shente· in suche array, as whan the asse hym shente in swich array as whan þe asse hym shente in suche array as whan the asse him shend in suche array· as when the asse hym hent 256 with crye be nyght and with his ceptre in honde · with crie be nyght, and with his ceptre in honde with cry by nyght and with his cepter in honde with crye by night and ø his ceptre in honde with crie be nyght, and with his septer in honde 262 that was full noble and hawteyn of hir porte · that was ful noble, and hawteyn of hir porte that was ful noble and hauteyn of hir port that was ful ø and haulteyne of hir port þat was full noble, and haunten of here porte 263 derk was that place and aftirward lyghtnesse · derke was that place, but afterward lyghtnesse derk was that place but afterward lightnesse derke was the place but afterward lightnesse derke was þat place, but aftirward lightnesse 269 and nakid fro the breste vnto the hed and naked fro the brest, vn to the hede and naked fro the brest vn to the hede and naked fro the brest vnto the hede and naked from the breste ø to the hede 274 the place yafe a thousande sauowrys swote · the place yafe a thousande, sauours swoote the place ø a thousand sauores swoote the place yaue a thousande sauours sote the place yaf a thowsand savours sote 277 and as i seide amyddes lay cipride and as i seide, amyddes lay cipride and as i seide amyddes lay cipride and as i saide amyddis lay cupide and as i said amyddes lay cupide 278 to whom on kneis the yonge folkis cryde to whom on knes, the yonge folkes criede to whom on knees two yonge folkes cryde to whom on knees two yonge folke cryde to whom on knees two yong folke cride · 282 full many a bowe i broke henge on the wall ful many a bowe y broke, henge on the walle ful many a bowe i broke henge on the wall ful many a bowe broke hynge on the walle ful many a bowe broke, hynge on the wall 284 in hir seruyse and peynted ouyr all in hir seruise, and peyted ouer alle in hir seruice and peynted ouer all in hir seruice and paynted ouer alle in here seruise, and paynted ouer all geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 79 286 a fewe · as of calixte and athalante · a fewe, as of calixte, and athalante a fewe as of calixte and athalant a felde as of calixte and athelante a fewe, as of calixte, and athalante 287 and many a maide of which the name i wante and many a mayde, of which the name i wante and many a mayde of which þe name i want and of many a mayden of whiche þe name i wante and many a maide of which the name i wante 290 trystam isoude parys and achylles tristram, isoude, paris, and achilles tristram isoude parys and achilles tristram i founde parys and hachilles tristram isaud paris and achilles 294 and all her loue and in what plyte · they dyde and al her loue, and in what plite they dide and al hire loue and in what plyte they dide ø alle there loue and in what plight þey dide and all here love, and in what plite they dide 295 when i was come a yen in to that place · whan i was comen ayen, in to that place whan i was comen ayein in to the place whan i was come ayein into the place when i was comen a yen in to the place 296 that i of spake that was so swote and grene · that i of spake, that was so swoote and grene that i of spak þat was so swote and grene that i of spake that was so sote and grene that i of spake, that ø so soot and grene 297 forth welke i tho my selfe to solace · forth welke i thoo, my selven to solace forth welke i tho my siluen to solace forth walked i thoo my seluen to solace forth walkid i thoo my seluen to solace 303 was sette this noble goddesse of nature · was sette this noble goddesse, of nature was sette þis noble goddes (of) nature was sette this noble goddes ø nature was sette this noble goddes ø nature 306 ne ther uas foule þat comyth of engendure ne ther uas foule, that cometh of engendrure ne there uas foule that comeþ of engendure ne there was foule that comyth of engendure ne ther was fowle that comyth of engendrure 307 that ther ne were preste in hir presence · that there ne were prest, in hir presence that there ne were preest in hir presence that there ne were ø in hir presence that there ne were preste in here presence 310 when euery foule comyth there to chese whan euery foule cometh there, to chese his make whan euery vfoule comth þere to chese hir make whan euery foule comyth there to chese his make when euery fowle comyth þere to chese his make david arbesú 80 his make 311 of euery kynde that men thynke maye on euery kynde, that men thynke may of euery kynde that men thynke may of euery kynde that men thinke may of euery kynde that men thynke may · 312 and that so huge a noyse gan thei make · and that so huge anoyse, gan they make and þat so huge a noyse gan they make and that so huge ø voice gan they make and þat so huge ø noise gan þei make · 313 that erth ø se and tre and euery lake · that erthe and see and tree, and euery lake that erth and se and tre and euery lake that erthe and see and tree and euery lake that erthe and see, and tree and euery lake 318 in such araye men myght hir there fynde · in suche array, men myght hir there fynde in swich array men myght hire there y finde in suche array men might hir there finde in suche aray men myght hir ther fynde 319 this noble emperesse full of grace this noble emperesse, ful of gace this noble empiresse ful of grace this noble emperesse ful of grace this noble empresse, full of grace 322 seynt valentynes day to stondyn there · seynt valentynes day, to stonden there seint valentynes day to stonden there on seint valentyne is day to standen there on seynt valentynes day to stond there 329 and that so fele that wondir was to sene and that so fele, that wonder was to sene and that so fele that wonder was to sene and that so felle that wondre it was to seen and that so fele, that wonder was to sene 332 and othir eglys of a loware kynde · and other egles, of a lower kynde and other egles of a lower kynde and other egles of ø lower kynde and othir egles of a lower kynde 335 and grene · i mene the goshauke that doth pyne · and grey, i mene the goshauke that doth pyne and greyne · i mene the goshauke þat doth pyne the gray goshauke that doth gret pyne and gray, i mene the gooshauke þat doth pyne 336 to briddes · for his outrageouse ravyne to briddes, for his outrageouse ravyne to briddes for his outrageus rauyne to the birds for his outeragious rauyne to briddis · for his owtragis ravyne geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 81 341 there was the dowue with hir yen meke · there was the dowve, with hir eyen meke there was the dowue with here eyghen meke the was the dove with his yen meke ther was the dowfe with here eyen meek 346 the scornynge ·iay· the eglys foo herowne· the scornynge iay, the egles foo heroune the scornyng iay the egles foo heroun the scornyng iay the egles foo the heroune the scornyng iay the egles foo the hairon 348 the stare that the counsell can bewrye · the stare, that the counseylle kan bewrye the staare that þe conseil kan by wrye the stare ø the counseille can bewreye the stare that the councell can biwrie 349 the tame ruddock and the cowarde kyte the tame ruddok, and the cowarde kyte the tame ruddok and the coward kyte the tame ruddok and the coward kite the tame puttok and the coward kite 350 the coke that orlogge is of thropes lyte · the cok, that orlogge ys, of thropes lyte the cok that orlogge is of thropes lyte the cok that orllage is of thropys lite the cok that orloger is of thropis lite 351 the sparow venus sone the nyghtyngale · the sparow, venus sone, the nyghtyngale the sparwe venus sone the nyghtyngale the sparehauke venus soon the nightingale the sparowe venus son the nyghtyngale 352 that clepith forth the fressh leuys newe · that clepeth forth, the fressh leves newe that clepeth forth the fressh leues newe that clepith ø the fresshe leuys newe that clepith forth the fressh leues newe 354 that makyn hony of flowrys fressh of hewe · that maken hony of floures, fressh of hewe that maken hony of floures fressh of hewe that maken hony of floures fresshe of hewe that makyn ø of the floures fresshe and newe 358 the waker gos the cukkow euyr vnkynde the waker goos, ø cukkow euer vnkynde the waker goos the cokkow euer vnkynde the waker goos the cokkowe euer vnkynde the wakir goos the cokkowe euer vnkynde 362 the hote cormeraunte of glotonye the hoote cormeraunte, of glotonye the hote carmerant of glotonye the hote cormeraunt ful of glotenye the hote cormeraunt of glotonye 364 the throstill olde and the frosty feldfare · the throstel olde, the frosty felde fare the throstel oolde the frosty felde fare the thristell olde the frosty felde fare the thrustyll olde the frosty feldfare david arbesú 82 366 that in this world han fethris and stature · that in this worlde, han fetheres and stature that in this worlde han fetheres and stature that is in this worlde han federes or stature that in this wordle haue fethris and stature 370 benyglye to chese or for to take · benyngly to chese, or for to take benignely to chese or for to take benyngly to chese or for to take benyngly to chese, or for to take · 372 but to the poynte natur hild on hir honde but to the poynte nature helde on hir honde but to the point nature held on hir honde but to the point nature helde vp hir hande but to the poynt nature helde on hir honde 375 the moste benigne and goodlyeste · the moste benigne, and goodlyeste the moost benigne and goodlieste the moost benigne and the goodliest the most benyngne, and the most goodliest 377 so ferforth that nature hir self had blisse · so ferforthe, that nature hir selfe had blysse so ferforth þat nature hire self hadde blysse so ferforth that nature hir self had blisse so ferforth þat nature here silf had lisse 379 nature the vikyr of thalmyghty lorde · nature the vyker, of thalmyghty lorde nature the vikere of the almyghty lorde nature the viker of ø almighty god nature the viker of the all myghty lorde 381 hath knytee bi euyn novmbre of acorde · halfe knyt be evene novmbre, of accorde hath knyt by euyne nombre of a corde [ ] knyt by euen nombre of accorde hath knytte by euene nombre of a coord 383 foules take ø of my sentence i prey · foules, take ø of my sentence i prey fowles take hede of my sentence i prey foules take hede of my sentence i praye fowlis take heede of my sentens i praie 384 and for youre ease in furtherynge of youre nede · and for youre ease, in furtherynge of youre nede and for youre ese in fortheryng of youre nede and for your ease in furthering of your mede and for youre ease in forthryng of youre nede 385 as faste as i may speke i wull me spede · as faste as i may speke, i wol me spede as fast as i may speke i wole me spede as fast as i may speke i wol you spede as fast as i may speke i woll me spede geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 83 386 ye know wel how that seynt valentyns day ye knowe wel, how that seynt valentynes day ye know well how þat seint valentynes day ye knowe well howe that seint valentyne is day ye knowen ø how that on seynt valentynes day 387 bi my statute and thorgh my gouernaunce be my statute, and thorgh my gouernaunce by my statut and thorow my gouernance by my statute and thorough myn ordenaunce by my statute and through myn ordenance 389 with youre makis as i prike you with plesaunce · with youre makes, as i prik yow with plesaunce wiþ youre makes as i pryke you with plesance with your makes as i prike you with plesaunce with youre makis as i pryk ø with plesaunce 390 but natheles my rightfull gouernaunce · but natheles, my ryght ful gouernaunce but nathelees my rightful gouernance but natheles by my rightful gouernaunce but natheles my rightfull gouernance 391 may i not lette for al this world to wynne · may i not let, for al this worlde to wynne may i naught lete for all this worlde to wyn may i not lete for al this worlde to wynne may ø not let, for all þis wordle to wynne 394 the foule roial a boue you all in degre · the foule royal, aboven yow in degree the foule royal a bouen you in degree the foule roial abouen you in degree the fowle riall · aboven you in degre · 395 the wise and worthi the secre trew as stele· the wyse and worthy, secre trewe as stele the wise and worthy secree trew as steel the wise and worthy secree trewe as stele the wise and worthy secre true as stele · 399 he shal firste chese and speke in his gyse · he shal first chese, and speken in his gyse he shal first chese and speken in his gise he shal first chese and speken in his gise he shall first chese and speken on his gise· 400 and aftir him bi ordre shul ye chese · and aftir hym by order, shul ye chese and after hym ø ordre shul ye chese and after him by ordre shul ye chese and aftir hym by ordre shull ye chese 404 god sende him hir that soryste for hym siketh god sende hym hyr, that sorest for hym syketh god sende hym hir that sorest of hym siketh god sende him hir that sorest for him sigheth god sende hym hire þat sorest for hy siketh 406 and seid my sone the choys is to the i falle · and seyde my sone, the choys is to the falle and seid my sone the choys is to the fall and saide my sone the choice is to the falle and said my son, the choice is to the fall david arbesú 84 407 but natheles in this condycion but natheles, in thys condicon but nathelees in this condicion but natheles in this condicion but nathelees in this condicion 409 that she agre to his eleccyon that she agree, to hys eleccon that she agree to his eleccion that she aggre to his eleccion that she agree to his eleccion 411 this is oure vsage alwey fro yer to yere · this is oure vsage alwey, fro yere to yere that is oure vsage alwey fro yere to yere this is our vsage alwey fro yere to yere this is oure vsage alwey fro yere to yere · 414 with hed enclyned and with full humble chere · with hed enclyned, and with ful humble chere with heed enclyned and with ful humble cheere with hede enclyned and with ø humble chere with heed enclyned and with full humble chere · 415 this roial tarcell spake and taried nought this real tercel spake, and taried noght thus roiall tercel spak and taried nought this roial tarsell spake and taryed nought this royall tarcell spake, and taried nought 417 i chese and chesse with wille and hert and thought i chese and chesse, with wille and hert and thought i chese and chees with wyl and hert and thought i chese and chese with hert ø will and thought i chees and chese, with will ø hert and thought 420 do what hir luste to do me leue or sterue · doo what hir lyste, to doo me lyve or sterve do what hir lust to do me lyue or sterue doo what hir list to doo me lyue or sterue do what here liste to do me lyve or sterve · 421 besechinge hir of mercy and of grace · besechynge hir of mercy, and of grace bisechyng hir of mercy and of grace beseching hir of mercy and of grace besechyng hir · of mercy and ø grace 422 as she that is my ladi souereigne · as she that ys my lady, souereyne as she that is my lady souereyne as she that is my lady and souueraine as she that is my lady soueraign 424 for certis longe may i not leue in peyne · for certes longe may i not, lyve in peyne for cartes long may i nat lyue in peyne for certis long may i not lyue in payne for certes longe may i not loue in payn 426 hauynge rewarde oonly to my trowth hauynge rewarde oonly, to my trouthe hauynge rewarde oonly to my trouth hauyng regarde oonly to my trouthe hauyng only reward to my trouthe · geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 85 428 and if i be founde to hir vntrew and yf i be founde, to hir vntrewe and if i be founde to hir vn trewe and if it be founde to hir vntrewe and if i be founde to her vntrewe 431 i prey to you this be my iugement i pray to yow, thys be my iugement i pray to you this be my iuggement i pray ø you this be my iuggement i prey to you, this be my iuggement 436 although she neuyr of loue me behete · as thogh she neuer of loue, me be hette all thow she neuer of loue me bi hette and though of loue she me neuer behette all though she neuer of loue me bihete 437 then ought she be myn thorgh hir mercy than oght she be myn, thourgh hir mercy than ought she ø myn thorugh hir mercy than aught she ø myn thorough hir mercy than ought she be myn through her mercy 438 for othir bonde kan i non on hir knette for other bonde kan i noon, on hir knette of other bond kan i noon on hire knette for other bounde can i noon on hir knytte for othir bonde can i noon ø knette 439 for neuyr for no woo ne shall i lette for neuer for no woo, ne shal i lette for neuer for ø woo ne shall i lette for neuer for noo woo ne shal i lette for neuer for ø woo ne shall i lette · 440 to serue hir how ferre so that she wende · to serven hir, how ferre so that she wende to seruen hir how fer so that she wende to seruen hir howe ferre ø that she wende to seruen here, howe ferre ø þat she wende 448 seid doughtre drede you nought i you assure · seyde doghter, drede yow noght i yow assure seide doughter drede not nought i you assure saide doughter drede you nought i you assure seid doughter drede you not, i you assure · 449 an othir tercel egle spake anon another tercel egle, spake anoon a nother tercel egle spak anon and another tersell egle spake anoon an other tarcell egle spake anoon 452 or at ø leste i loue hir as well as ye · or atte lest, i love hyr as wel as ye or at the leste i loue hir as wel as ye or at the lest i loue hir as well as ye or at the laste i loue here as well as ye 454 and if she shuld haue louyd for longe louynge and yf she shulde have loued, for long lovyng and yif ye sholde haue loued for long louynge and if she shulde haue loued for long louyng and if she shold haue loued for long louyng david arbesú 86 457 vnkinde iangler or rebell any wyse · vnkynde iangler, or rebel any wyse vnkynde ianlore or rebel any wise vnkind iangeler or rebell in any wise vnkynde iangeloure or rebell in any wise 460 as well as my witte kan me suffyse as wel as my wytte, kan me suffise as wel as my wyt kan me suffise as well as my witte can me suffice as well as any witt can me suffise · 461 fro poynte to poynte hir honoure for to saue· fro poynt to poynt, hir honour for to save fro point in point hire honore for to saue fro point to point hir honnour for to saue fro poynt to poynt, hir honours for to saue 462 take she my life and all the good i haue · take she my lyfe, and al the good i have take she my lif and al the good i haue take she my lif and ø the good i haue take eke my lif, and all the good i haue 466 forth with his make or with his ladi dere forth with hys make, or with hys lady dere for with his make or with his lady dere for with his make or with his lady dere forth with his make · or with his lady dere 467 and eke hir self ne wull nought here · and eke hir selfe, ne wol nought here and ek hir self ne wol nought here and eke hir self ne wolde nought here and eek nature hir silf ne woll not here 468 for taryenge here nought half that i wold sey for taryinge here noght half, that i wolde sey for tarying here nought half þat i wolde say for tareing here nought half ø i wold saye for tareyng here not half ø i woll seie 471 but as possible is me to dye to day but as possible ys me, to dye to day but as possible is me to dey to day but as possible is me to dye to day but as possible is me to die to day 472 for woo as he þat hath be languysshynge for woo, as he that hath ben langwysshynge for wo as he that hath ben languyssing for woo as they that ø ben languisshing for woo as they that ø been languysshyng 476 then som man doth that hath seruid full yore than some man dooth, that hath serued ø yore than som man dooth that hath serued ful yoore than sume man doith that hath serued ful yore than som man doth þat hath seruid full yore 493 that wel wende i the wode had alto shyueryd that wel wende i, the woode had al to shyuered that wel wende i the wode hadde al to shyuered that wel wende i the wode had ø to sheuerede that well wende i the wordle had all to shevered geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 87 494 come of thei cride allas ye woll vs shende · come of they cride, allas ye wol vs shende com of the cryed allas ye wolde vs shende come of they cried alas ye wol be shende come of they cride allas ye woll vs shende 497 for ye or nay without any prevue · for yee or nay, with outen any preve for ye or nay with outen any preeue for ye and nay withoute any preue for ye or nay with outen any preve · 498 the goos the duke ø the cukkow also the gos the duk, and the cukkowe also the goos the doke and the cokkow also the goos the duk and the cokkowe also the goos the doke · and the cokkowe also 504 for watyr foule who so be glad or blith for watir foule, who so be wrothe or blythe for water foule who so be wroth or blith for water foule who so be lothe or blithe for water fowle who so be wroth or blith 505 and i for wormfoule seyd the fole kuckow · and i for wormefoule, seyde the foole cukkowe and i for wormfowle seid the fool kokkow and i for worme foule saide the fool cokkow and ø for wormefowle said the fole cokkowe · 507 for comvne spede take on me the charge now · for comvne spede, take on me the charge nowe for comune speed take on me the charge now for comen spede take on me the charge nowe for comen spede take on me the charge nowe 508 for to deliueryn vs is grete charite · fore for to delyueren vs, ys grete charite for to delyueren vs is grete charite for to deliueren vs is gret charite for for to delyuer vs, is grete charite 511 a wight may speke him were as good be styll a wyght may speke, hym were as good be stille a wyght may speke hym were as ø be still a wight may speke him were as good be stille awight may speke, hy were as good be still 512 i am a sed foule oon the vnworthiest · i am a sede foule, oon the vnworthieste i am a seedfowle oon of the worthiest i am a sede foule oon the worthyest i am a seed foule oon of the worthiest 514 but bettre is that a wightes tonge reste · but better ys, that a wightys tonge reste but better is that a wightes tonge rest but better is that al wightes tong rest but bettir is that a wighte tunge rest 516 of which he neithir rede kan nor synge · of which he neyther rede kan, nor synge of swich he neither rede kan nor synge of whiche he neither rede can nor syng of which he, neider rede can ne synge david arbesú 88 519 nature which that alway had an ere nature which that alway, had an ere nature which þat alwey hadde an ere ø whiche that alwey had an ere nature which that allwey had an ere · 520 to murmoure of the lewdenesse behinde · to murmour of the lewdenesse behynde to [ ]rme of the lewednesse by hynde to the murmour of the loudenesse byhinde to mormor of the lewdenesse behynd 523 yow for to deliveryn and from this noise vnbynde · yow for to delyueren and from this noyse vnbynde yow for to delyueren ø from þis noyse vnbynde you ø to deliueren and from this noise vnbynde yowe ø to delyueren, and fro the noise vnbynde 524 i iugge of euery folke men shall oon calle · i iugge of euery folle, men shal one calle i iugge of euery flok men shall oon calle i iugge of euery foule me shal oon calle a iuge of euery folke men sholde oon call 525 to seyn the vordit for you foulis alle to seyne the veirdit for yow foules alle to seyn the voirdyt for you fowles alle to say the verdit for you ø alle to seyen the verdite for you fowlis all 527 the briddis al and the foulis of rauyn the briddes alle, and the foules of ravyne þe briddes al and the foules of rauyne that birdis al and ø foules of rauyne that briddis all and þe fowlis of raveyne · 529 the tercelet of the faukon to dyffyne · the tercelet of the faucon, to dyffyne the tercelet of the faucon to defyne the tarselet of the faucon to deuyne the tarcelet of the faucon to dyuyne 530 all her sentence and as him lust to termyne · al her sentence, and as hym lyst to termyne all hir sentence and as hym list to termyne alle hir sentence and as him list to termyne all here sentens ø as hym liste to termyne 533 the tercelet seid then yn this manere the tercelet seyde thanne, in this manere the tercelet seid than in this manere the tarselet saide ø in this manere the tarcellet said than in this manere 534 ful harde were it to preue it bi reson ful harde were hyt, to preven hyt by reson full harde were it to preuen it by reson for harde it were to preuen it by raison ful harde it were to preven it by reason 537 that bi skilles may non be brought a doun that by skylles may non, be broght a don that by skeles may noon be brught a down that ø skyllys ø noon be brought a doon that ø skilles may noon be brought a doon geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 89 539 then semyth it ther moste be bataile · than semeth hit, ther moste be bataylle then semeth it there moste be bataille than semeth it were most by bataille than semyth it there most be bataile · 540 al redi quoth this eglis tercellis tho al redy quod these egles, tercels thoo all redy quod thise egeles tercels tho alle redy quod these egles tarsellys thoo all redy quod thise egles tarcelles two· 545 owrys is the vois that han the charge in honde· oures is the voys, that han the charge in honde oures is the voys þat han the charge in hande oures is the voix that haue the charge in honde oures is the voice, that haue þe charge on honde 549 of knyghthode ø lengist had vsid hitte · of kynghthode, and lengest had vsed hitte of knyghthode and lengest had vsed it of knighthode and longest hade vsed it of knyghthode, and longest had vsed itte 551 were sittynge to hir if that hir lest were syttynge for hir, yf that hir leste were sittyng for hir if that hir lest were sitting for hir if that hir list were sityng for here, if that here liste · 553 which that he be for it is light to know which that he be, for hyt is lyght to knowe which þat he be for it is lyght to knowe whiche that he be for it is light to knowe which that he be, for that is light to knowe · 555 to gedir and of shorte avisement to gedir, and of shorte avysement to gider and of short auysement to gedre and of a short auisement to gedir, and of shorte avisement 556 when euerich had his large golee seyde · whan euerych had hys large, goler seyde whan euerych had his large golee seide whan eueriche hade his large gole saide when euerych hadde his large golee said 557 lines 557-558 in order lines 557-558 in order lines 557-558 in order lines 557-558 reversed lines 557-558 in order 560 shal tell oure tale and preid to god hir spede· shal telle oure tale, and preyde to god hir spede shal tell oure tale and preide to god hire spede shal oure tale telle and pray to god hir spede shall tell oure tale and preid to god here spede · 562 the goos to speke and in hir cakelynge · the goos to speke, and in hir cakelynge the goos to speke and in hir caklyng the goos to speke and in hir cakeling the goos to speke · and in ø kakelyng 569 quoth the sperhauke neuyr mote she the · quod the sperhauke, neuer mote she thee quod tho the sperhauke neuer mote she thee quod the spearehauke neuer mutte she thee quod tho the sperhauke neuer mote she the david arbesú 90 570 lo such it is to haue a tonge loos loo suche hyt ys, to haue a tonge loos loo swich it is to haue a tonge loos loo suche ø is to haue a tonge lose loo suche it is to haue a tunge loos 571 now parde fole yet were it bet for the · now parde foole, yet were hit bet for the now pardee fool yit were it best for the now parde fole yet were it bet for the nowe parde fooll · yit were it bett for the 573 hit lith not in his witte nor in his wylle · hyt lyth not in hys wytte, nor in hys wille it lithe naught in his wit nor in his wyll it lieth not in his witte ner in his wille it lieth nought in thy witte not in thy will 577 the turtyll trew and gan hir to hem calle · the turtel trewe, and gan hir to hem calle þe turtyl trew and gan hire to hem call the turtyll trewe and gan ø to him calle the turtill true and ganne ø to hem call 579 of this matere and askid what she rad · of thys matere, and asked what she radde on this matere and asked what she radde of this matere and asked what she radde of this mater and asked what she radde 582 nay god forbede a louer shuld chaunge · nay god forbede, a lover shulde chaunge nay god forbede a louer shold chaunge nay god forbede a louer shulde chaunge nay god forbede a louer ø chaunge · 584 theigh that his ladi euyrmore be straunge · thought that hys lady, euer more be straunge theigh that his lady euermore be straunge though that his lady euermore be straunge though þat his lady · euermore be straunge · 585 yet lete him serue hir euermore till he be ded· yet let hym serve hir, euer ø tyl he be dede yet lat hym serue hir euer ø tyl he be dede yet lete him serue hir euermore till he be dede yit lete hym serue hir euermore, till he be dede 587 for theigh she deid i wolde non othir make for thoygh she deyed, i wolde noon other make for they she deide i wolde noon oother make for though she died i wold noon othir make for þough she died i wold noon othir take 590 that men shuldin louen alwey causeles that men shulden alwey, louen causeles that men sholde alwey louen causeles that men shulde loue alwey causeless that men shold loue alwey causeles 592 dauncyth he mery that is merthles daunceth he murye, that ys murtheles daunceth he murye þat is murthelees daunceth he [ ] dauncith he mery that is myrthlees 594 ye quek quoth the duk ful wel and faire · ye quek quod the duk, ful wel and faire ye quek ø the dok ful wel and faire ye quake said the duk ful wel and faire ye queke queke said þe doke, full wele and faire geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 91 596 now fye cherle quoth the gentill tercelette now fye cherle, quod the gentil tercelet now fy cherl quod the gentyl turcelete nowe fye churle quod the ø tarselet nowe fye chorle quod the ø tarcellet 601 thi kynde is of so lowe a wrechidnesse · thy kynde ys of so lowe, a wrechednesse thi kinde is of so lowe a wrecchednesse the kinde is of so lowe a wrechednesse thy kynde is of so lowe a wrecchidnesse 603 tho gan the cukkow put him forth in pres thoo gan the cukkow, put hym forth in pres tho gan the cokkow put hym forth in prees tho ganne the cokkowe put him forth in prees thoo gan the cokkowe put hym forth in pees 605 so i quoth he may haue my make in pes so i quod he, may haue my make in pes so i quod he may haue my make in pees so i may haue quod he my make in pees so i quod he may haue, my make in pees 606 i rech not how longe that ye stryue · i reche not how longe, that ye stryve i recch naught how longe þat ye stryue i recche not howe longe ø ye stryue i recche not howe longe that ye stryve · 608 this is my rede syn thei may not acorde this ys my rede, syn they may not acorde this is my rede syn they may nat acorde this is my rede sith they may not accorde this is my rede, syn þei may not accord 612 thou mordrere of ø hay soge on the braunche thou mordrere of ø haysogge, on the braunche þu mortherer of þe heysugge on the braunch thou murtherer of the haisuke on the braunche thowe mortherer of the heisugge, on the braunche 616 goo lewde be thow while the worlde may dure goo lewde be thou, while the worlde may dure go lewde be þou while the worlde may dure goo lewde be thou while the world may endure go lewde be þou, while þe wordle may dure 619 and in effecte yet be we neuyr the nere · and in effecte yet, be we neuer the nere and in effect yet be we neuer the nere for in effect yet be we neuer the nere for in effect yit be we neuer the nere 623 hym that she cheest he shall han hir as swith hym that she cheest, he shal han hir as swithe hym þat she cheest he shal hire han as swith him that she chesith he shal hir haue as swythe hy þat she chest, he shall here han as swith 635 as for the gentillest and moste worthye · as for the gentilest, and moste worthy as for the gentylest and moost worthie and for the gentillest and moost worthy as for the gentilest and most worthy · david arbesú 92 637 that it ought to be to you a suffisaunce · that to yow hyt ought, to ben a suffisaunce that to you it ought to ben a suffisaunce that to you it might to ben a suffisance that to you it ought to ben a suffisaunce · 640 soth is that i am euyr vndir youre yerde · sooth ys that i am euer, vnder youre yerde sooth is þat i am euer vnder youre yerde sith it is that i am euer vndre your yerde soth is þat i am euer, vnder youre yerde 642 and moste be yourys while my life may dure · and moste be youres, while my lyf may dure and moste be youres while my lif may dure and must be youres while my lif may endure and must be yor while my lif may endure 644 and myn entente i shall you seyn right sone · and myn entent, yow wol i sey ryght soone and myn entent þou wol y sey right soone and myn entent i will you say right sone and myn intent i woll you shewe right sone 650 this all and som that i wolde speke and sey thys al and some, that i wolde speke and seye this al and som þat i wolde speke and seye this is al and sume that i wold speke and saye this is all and some, þat i wold speke and saie 652 i wull not serue venus ne cupide · i wolle noght serven venus ne cipride i wol nought seruen venus ne cipride i wol not serue venus nor cupide i woll not seruen venus nor cupide 654 now syn it may non othir weyes betyde · now syn hyt may, noon other weyes betide now syn it may noon othere weies betyde nowe syn it may noon other weye betide nowe syn it may noon othir wise be tyde 658 and seide hem thus as ye shull aftir here · and seyde hem thus, as ye shal after here and seide hem thus as ye shal after here and saied them thus as ye shal ø here and said hem thus as ye shall aftir here · 659 to you speke i ye terceletys quoth nature · to yow speke i, yee terceletys quod nature to you spek i ye terceletts quod nature to you speke i ye tarcelletts quod nature to you speke i the tarcellettis quod nature 664 fro you this yere what aftir so bifall fro yow thys yere, what after so be falle for you this yhere what after so by fall fro you this yere what after so be falle for you þis yere, what aftir so befall 665 this entremesse is dressid fro you all this entremesse ys dressed fro yow alle this entremees ø dressed fro you all this entremesse is dressed fro you alle this entir mese is dressid fro you all geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 93 666 and when this werke al wrought was to an ende · and whan thys werke, al wroght was to an ende and whan þis werke al wrought was to an ende and whan this woorke alwrought was to an ende and when ø werk all wrought was to an ende · 669 a lorde the blisse and ioye that thei make · a lorde the blysse and ioy, that they make and lord the blysse and ioy that they make and lord the blisse and ioy that they made and lorde the blisse and ioye, that they make 670 for ech of hem gan othir in wynges take · for eche of hem gan other, in wynges take for ych of hem gan oother in wynges take for eche of them goon other in his wynges take for eche of hem gan othir in whyngis take 672 thonkynge alwey the noble goddesse of kynde · thonkyng alwey, the noble goddesse of kynde touching alwey the noble goddes of kynde thanking alwey the noble goddesse of kynde thankyng allwey the nouble goddes of kynde · 675 to synge a roundel at her departynge · to synge a roundel, at her departynge to singe a rounde at hir departynge to singe a roundell at hir departing to synge a roundell at hir departynge 676 to do nature honoure and plesaunce · to do nature honour, and plesaunce to do nature honoure and plesance to danne nature honour and pleasaunce to do nature honoure and plesaunce 677 the note i trow makyd was yn fraunce the note i trowe, maked was in fraunce the note i trowe makid was in france the note i trowe was made in fraunce the note i trowe, made was in fraunce · 679 the nexte vers as i now haue in mynde · the nexte vers, as i now haue in mynde the next vers as i now haue in mynde the next vers as ye haue nowe in mynde the next vers · as i nowe haue in mynde · 688 that foulis made at her flight a way that foules made, at her flyght a way that foules made at her flight a way the foules made at thair flight awey that fowlis made, at here flight awey · 691 i hope i wis to rede so som day i hope ywyse, to rede so somday i hope i wis to rede ø som day i hope ywisse to rede so sume day i hope i wis to rede so some day 693 the bet and thus to rede i wull not spare · the bet and thus to rede, i wol not spare the bette and thus to rede i nyl not spare the bette and this to rede i wol not spare the bettir and thus to rede i woll not spare · works cited david arbesú 94 baugh, a.c. ed. 1963: chaucer’s major poetry. meredith, new york. benson, larry d. ed. 1987: the riverside chaucer. oup, oxford. brewer, derek ed. 1972 [1960]: the parlement of foulys. thomas nelson, london. capone, g. ed. 1900: i poemi minori di chaucer. saggio critico, modica. costa palacios, luis ed. 1982: el parlamento de las aves. astur, córdoba. donaldson, e. t. ed. 1958: chaucer’s poetry: an anthology for the modern reader. ronald, new york. drennan, charles m. ed. 1914: the parlement of foules. w. b. clive, london. emerson ed. 1911: poems of chaucer. n.p., london. fisher, john h. ed. 1977: the complete poetry and prose of geoffrey chaucer. holt, rinehart & winston, new york. furnivall, frederick j. 1868-1880: a one-text print of chaucer’s minor poems. chaucer society reprints. trübner, london. hammond, e. p. 1902: on the text of chaucer’s parlement of foules. university of chicago decennial publications, first series, 7: 3-25. hammond, e. p. 1904: omissions from the editions of chaucer. mln 19: 35-38. hammond, e. p. 1905: ms longleat 258-a chaucerian codex. mln 20: 7779. hammond, e. p. 1908: on the editing of chaucer’s minor poems. mln 23: 20-21. hammond, e. p. 1908: chaucer: a bibliographical manual. macmillan, new york. hiraoka, teruaki ed. 1979: translation of the parliament of fowls. tezukayama gakuin daigaku kenkyu ronshu 14: 61-69. koch, john 1881: “die neuesten veröffentlichungen der chaucer-society und die überlieferung der minor poems.”anglia iv, anz, 97: 93-117. geoffrey chaucer's parlement of foules: a new stemma 95 koch, john 1903: “das handschriftenverhältnis in chaucers parlement of foules.” archiv für das studium der neueren sprachen und litteraturen 111: 64-92, 299-315. koch, john 1904: “das handschriftenverhältnis in chaucers parlement of foules.” archiv für das studium der neueren sprachen und litteraturen 112: 46-69. koch, john 1904: versuch einer kritischen textausgabe von chaucer’s parlement of foules. dorotheenstädt realgymnasium, berlin. koch, john 1928: geoffrey chaucers kleinere dichtungen. heidelberg, carl winter. lounsbury, thomas r. ed. 1900: the complete works of geoffrey chaucer. thomas y. crowell, london. maccracken, henry noble ed. 1913: the college chaucer. oup, london. parkes, m. b., & beadle, r. eds. 1979-80: the poetical works of geoffrey chaucer: a facsimile of cambridge university library ms gg.4.27, 3 vols. d. s. brewer, cambridge. pollard, a. w. et al eds. 1898: the works of geoffrey chaucer. works globe edition. shakespeare head p, stratford. robinson, f. n. ed. 1957 [1933]: the complete works of geoffrey chaucer. houghton mifflin, boston. rogers, bruce l. ed. 1904: the parlement of foules. riverside p, boston. root, robert k. 1903: review of e. p. hammond's on the text of chaucer’s parlement of foules. journal of english and germanic philology 5: 189-95. ruggiers, paul g. ed. 1979: a variorum edition of the works of geoffrey chaucer. u of oklahoma p, norman. seymour, m.c. 1993: the manuscripts of chaucer’s parlement of foules. scriptorium 43, 2: 192-204. seymour, m.c. 1995: catalogue of chaucer manuscripts. scholar p, aldershot. david arbesú 96 skeat, walter w. ed. 1900: the complete works of geoffrey chaucer, 3 vol., oup, oxford. skeat, walter w. ed. 1910: the parliament of birds and the house of fame. chatto & windus, london. stone, brian ed. 1983: love visions: the book of the duchess, the house of fame, the parliament of birds, the legend of good women. penguin, harmondsworth. tanaka, sachiho 1981: compared text of chaucer's parlement of foules. chaucer society, london. tatlock, john & mackaye, percy eds. 1912: the complete poetical works of geoffrey chaucer, now first put into modern english. macmillan, new york. * † * microsoft word 4. breeze.docx did sir john stanley write sir gawain and the green knight? andrew breeze university of navarre the gawain poet was the author of sir gawain and the green knight , a fourteenth-century arthurian romance, and perhaps the greatest poem ever written in northern england. its anonymous creator ranks with marvell, wordsworth, and the brontës as amongst the north's supreme literary artists. the question naturally arises as to who he was. in 2004 the present writer gave an answer, publishing (in the us journal arthuriana) an analysis of the poem and its associated works pearl , cleanness, and patience. he there proposed that the unknown poet was sir john stanley (c. 1350-1414), the evidence including dialect, topography, and verbal parallels between the four texts and stanley's correspondence. what follows offers a revised survey of publications before and after 2004, examining whether they strengthen the case for stanley as the gawain poet, weaken it, or demolish it completely. keywords: the gawain poet; sir gawain and the green knight ; pearl ; sir john stanley (d. 1414); robert de vere (1362-92), earl of oxford questions of authorship aside, john stanley is well known. the son of a minor landowner, he rose in a spectacular way through his own skills and marriage to an heiress. he became a provincial magnate, a courtier to richard ii, and the founder of the stanley dynasty, with the present earls of derby as his descendants. he ended his days as knight of the garter, lieutenant of ireland, and king of the isle of man. he was also an expert hunter, responsible for the royal forests of macclesfield, de la mere, and wirral. if, in addition, this remarkable man wrote some of the finest poems in the english language, it will draw further attention to andrew breeze, selim27 (2022): 81–113. issn 1132-631x / issn-l 2792-3878 / https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.27.2022.81-113 82 andrew breeze him and to the lancashire and cheshire of his time, where his estates were located and (it appears) his poems of love, adventure, chivalry, and religion were composed. it will be proof of the sophisticated literary, courtly, and religious civilization which northern england possessed in the later middle ages. it is true that, despite its far-reaching implications, the arthuriana paper has not been much noticed. hence this paper, with its material in two sections. in the first we survey comments on who the gawain poet was; in the second, we look at at what is known of sir john stanley, particularly as regards his language. we start with some facts on sir gawain and the green knight and its related poems. it appears solely in london, british library, ms cotton nero a.x, in a hand of about 1400. the manuscript, with some inferior illustrations, is undistinguished. but the four poems in it are the very opposite. the most important of them tells this story. it begins at the court of arthur, where a new year's feast is interrupted by a green horseman with an axe, who challenges the guests to a beheading contest. gawain accepts the offer and decapitates the stranger. what follows is unexpected. the trunk runs forward and snatches up its head, which opens its eyes and commands gawain to meet him in a year's time for a return blow at the “green chapel”. head in hand, the body gets back in the saddle: horse and rider hasten off through the door. the months pass. gawain begins his journey and, after various adventures (including bedroom ones, where he politely evades an attractive chatelaine's attempts to seduce him), arrives at the green chapel for a second encounter with the green knight (and the axe). he survives with no more than a nick on his neck, and to his amazement and chagrin discovers that the challenger is none other than his host, whose young wife tested his chastity. (had he succumbed to her, he would surely have lost his head.) gawain returns mortally discomfited to camelot, where the other knights regard his trials as a huge joke. in the same dialect and manuscript as sir gawain and the green knight are pearl, patience, and cleanness. the first is an allegory wherein the speaker tells of losing a precious pearl (interpreted as a deceased infant daughter); he thereafter falls asleep to find himself in a garden of exotic beauty, there meeting a mysterious girl in white, who from beyond an uncrossable river speaks to him words of religious consolation. pearl is accompanied by the scriptural poems patience did sir john stanley write sir gawain and the green knight? 83 and cleanness, setting out respectively the stories of jonah and those of noah's flood, the destruction of sodom, and belshazzar's feast. these texts were effectively unknown until modern times, with an edition of sir gawain and the green knight in 1839 and of all four poems in 1864 (wells 1916: 54-57, 578-85, 770). in commentary since then one hears diverse opinions. some show sense on what they say of the poet; others, less so; but critical fashion and personal impulse are frequent. kenneth sisam observed on the romance of gawain that the “descriptions of nature, of armour and dresses, the hunting scenes, and the love-making, are all excellently done”, while the author has “a quiet humour that recalls chaucer”. pearl, on the other hand, is “almost overwrought”, with a richness and luxuriance that at first “seem scarcely english”, and alliteration and rhyme of such intricacy that one wonders how the author sustained “his marvellous technique without completely sacrificing poetry to metrical gymnastics” (sisam 1921: 45, 58-59). another writer maintained that the castle where gawain stayed was based on clitheroe castle, belonging to john of gaunt (oakden 1930: 257-61). but no-one accepts that. better was his later praise of the author, whose “remarkable attitude to nature” reveals “rare gifts” for literary creation, as do his powers of description, whether of the arming of a knight, the pinnacles of a fortress, the hunting of hart, boar, or fox, or “the cutting up of a beast” (oakden 1935: 47). he rightly stressed the poet's pride in hunting and butchery (routinely ignored by critics), which does not flinch from details of a slaughtered deer's windpipe and guts (line 1336). yet oakden was modestly silent on the fur coat (trimmed “ful fyne with felles” or pelts) worn next to the skin of gawain's chatelaine, who (her throat “all naked” and “brest bare before”) enters the knight's bedroom (closing the door behind her) early in the morning, while her husband is away hunting on the moors (lines 1733-49). whether presenting an animal's innards or the blandishments of a femme fatale, the poet demonstrates remarkable powers of observation, as well as easy familiarity with the life of lords and ladies. sir israel gollancz (1863-1930) made unconvincing proposals on the gawain poem as written for an audience in north wales, and a better one for the green chapel as in the rugged country of north-west staffordshire (gollancz 1940: xviii-xx). this area of the peak district was in the forest of macclesfield. we shall use this as a clue to authorship. 84 andrew breeze gervase mathew (1905-76) had careful remarks on the manuscript. it belonged to henry bank (1568-1617) of bank, near halifax in west yorkshire, indicating a northern provenance; two annotations in fifteenth-century hands suggest that its previous ownership was secular, not monastic. on authorship, mathew took similarities between the four poems as pointing to “a single author or a single redactor, perhaps a clerk or esquire in some household” (later critics would reject “redactor”, with its implications of multiple authorship). the manuscript itself is a professional but clumsy effort, the dialect forms perhaps indicating a scribe from chester (later dialectologists would modify this to “south-east cheshire or north-west staffordshire”), whose copy-text had de luxe illustrations and was probably “commissioned by a magnate of wealth not much before 1390”, with his household possibly at “the earl of arundel's castle of holt” near wrexham, wales. mathew also provided analysis of the knightly virtues implicit in the text, the supreme ones being “prowess and loyalty” (mathew 1948: 354-62). there are two points here. mathew's study of the poet's chivalric values is now little read, but deserves attention. mathew was a dominican friar, and so knew much about the religious life. he did not think that gawain was the work of a cleric, his preference being for a layman in a great household. despite concentrating on poem rather than poet, george kane referred to the latter's eye for “gold and silver and the filigree of both, and precious stones, against backgrounds of rich eastern stuffs”; they contrast with “the driving sleet on gawain's journey, the fatigue of his charger, the misery of sleeping out in armour, the brightness of blood on snow”; with the last being at gawain's ordeal by axe (kane 1951: 76). the writer had a genius for detail. e. v. gordon had comments of a different kind. the author was “a man of education”, yet made less parade of learning than did chaucer, gower, or langland. he had “less interest in philosophy” than they did, and more in “the arts and the aristocratic activities of his day”. he may “have had a monastic education” but was hardly “himself a monk”. he might have been “a chaplain in an aristocratic household”. (given his tenderness for a lost daughter, zest for killing animals, and awareness of sexual attraction in near-adultery, “chaplain” here makes little sense.) gordon yet admitted that the poet's interest in theology might be that of a “pious layman” (gordon 1953: xlii). did sir john stanley write sir gawain and the green knight? 85 dorothy everett (1894-1953) had interesting observations. the four poems, which she put in “the last quarter of the fourteenth century”, have “obvious links” with each other in vocabulary, phrasing, and (pearl excepted) metre, as well as less obvious ones in “the doctrine of the beatific vision” and “the pearl as a symbol of perfection”, which point to a single author for all, because two or more writers would hardly possess “this rare and, one would think, inimitable quality”. the poet read widely: in french, the roman de la rose and some arthurian romances; in english, alliterative poetry; in italian (most unusually), dante's divine comedy and boccaccio's olympia; in latin, the bible with its commentaries and interpretations, perhaps indicating “an ecclesiastical education. if so, his independence of mind is the more remarkable.” she quoted menner's 1920 edition of cleanness on his unfettered attitude to “theological doctrine and conventional interpretation”, while “in pearl he employs both in a manner still more individual.” he was yet “sufficiently at home in courtly, or at least aristocratic, society to be able to depict with fidelity its manners, pastimes, and setting”, including details of dress, armour, architecture, and sport (everett 1955: 69). for the poet, religion and the worldly met in unusual combination. her remarks are more thoughtful and helpful than those of john speirs (d. 1979), observing that sir gawain and the green knight “is of course a christian poem. but it is christian rather as some of the medieval christmas carols are, as christmas itself is; christian in harmony with pre-christian nature belief and ritual” (speirs 1957: 22122). this 1950s venture into lay anthropology says much about speirs, little about the poet. preferable are comments of laura loomis. “was he a monk, a minstrel, a learned clerk, an official in some lordly household, or himself a man of rank and wealth? in any case he wrote as one familiar with courtly life, its pleasures, luxuries, arts, and ways” (loomis 1959: 528-40). reflection on the poems will rule out most of these. it is the “man of rank and wealth” whose face we perceive in these texts: a religious man, but with the confidence and independence that status and income supply. laura loomis deserves full credit as the first to regard gawain as the work of a provincial magnate. what she said tallies with perceptions of john h. fisher on the social views of ricardian writers. the gawain poet “wrote about and for the aristocracy”, with none of the “overt questioning of the social changes 86 andrew breeze that troubled langland and gower”; despite supposed criticism of kingship in his calling arthur sumwhat child-gered (line 86) or “boyish, merry”, this “does not mean that the author questioned the aristocratic system”; his “choice of garden paradise or castle put his pieces in the context of the agrarian aristocracy” (unlike langland's london settings, at a far lower social level). the garden of pearl is not that of eden, with “no lords or ladies” (and so a “nascent primitivism” producing “wyclif's communism”), but that of love, where “everyone is a lord or lady”. hence the “courtly maiden” and “humbly suppliant lover”. as for the parable of the vineyard, it contains “the notion of arbitrary authority in the familiar context of lord and laborer”; while the maiden's “explanation of her state in paradise evidently recognizes grades in the hierarchy of heaven”, together with a “heavenly state of equality impossible of attainment in mortal society” owing to man's sinful nature (fisher 1961: 139-57). in short, the poet's attitude to aristocracy is unquestioning and profoundly conservative, even reactionary. fisher's insights are of the first importance. they deserve notice, despite his strange view of the author as a “writer with predominantly theological interests”, glossing over what he says on feasts, jewels, furs, armour, horses, hunts, and illicit love. c. s. lewis dealt firmly with the observations of speirs on supposed pre-christian elements in sir gawain and the green knight (lewis 1962: 219-30). not much has been heard of them since. they led nowhere, unlike the enquiries of john dodgson, place-name scholar. he cited r. w. v. elliott on the landscape of the castle and chapel as like that “around swythamley in north-east staffordshire, near the cheshire border and in the south-western hills of the peak district”, the poet perhaps actually living at swythamley, “a grange of dielacres abbey, near leak, staffordshire”. (yet elliott's belief that the poet was perhaps a monk on a monastic estate must be rejected. there is nothing monastic in the four poems attributed to him.) together with dodgson's words on the wild country of the peak are comments on the “holy hede” from which gawain, having travelled through north wales, crosses into the “wyldrenesse of wyrale” (lines 700-1), where the first can be linked with holywell, flintshire, and where allusion to the wirral peninsula of cheshire indicates a region known to the poet and his audience (dodgson 1963: 19-25). he made clear the poet's knowledge of north-east wales, cheshire, and the peak. did sir john stanley write sir gawain and the green knight? 87 a different approach to the poem was made by the polish-american marxist, margaret schlauch. the text is a “society romance”, showing “an exceptional talent for descriptions of nature” and for dialogue betweeen the characters. readers know no more about gawain's situation or “the true relationship among the characters” than gawain does himself, a technique anticipating the “unity of point of view” employed by henry james and others. the text nevertheless had no influence on later english fiction. for historians of the modern novel, its interest is “largely antiquarian” (schlauch 1963: 23-28). her somewhat perfunctory comments keep the poet at a distance. fisher had had compelling remarks on him as a social arch-conservative, wedded to the cause of aristocracy. if schlauch had developed fisher's ideas on classic marxist lines, she would have provided a study with real insights. dodgson's views on topography were treated positively by john burrow. he observed how “the original audience of sir gawain, in cheshire perhaps, or lancashire”, would know holywell as the shrine of st gwenfrewi or winifred, whose legend tells how a local tyrant had her decapitated, her head being miraculously restored (burrow 1965: 193). topographical allusions show the poem as a cheshire one. derek brewer (1923-2008) offered reflections on the poet and courtesy, which he interpreted as a religious entity relating to personal integrity, beauty, politeness, honour, self-control, courage, and cleanliness. it did not include asceticism, fin amour, or (for example) almsgiving (brewer 1966: 54-85). brewer again removed the quartet of poems from a monastic milieu. like the analyses of mathew and fisher, his essay is now little read. there are acid lessons on how not to read gawain in a paper on heinrich zimmer (1851-1910) of berlin. zimmer was a respected celticist, advancing sound arguments on the british hero arthur (d. 537) as a historical figure. but he was also a jungian, believing in the “mythological archetypes” of the collective unconscious. he thus saw gawain as going through a valley of death to “the aloof and lonely sanctuary of life renewed” where he is duly reborn, having encountered the green knight, who is death, and his wife, who is life, “traditionally death's bride”. even zimmer, recognizing that the poem does not really bear out this interpretation, concluded that its author was unaware of “the meaning that inevitably emerges” (moorman 1966: 209-35). but some may hold that, when what we find does not fit the theory, the 88 andrew breeze latter has to go. zimmer was neither the first nor the last to write absurdities on gawain. patricia kean was here as cautious as zimmer was not. although her study of pearl has much of interest (as on the poet's apparent knowledge of dante), she describes the “old controversy” on whether the text is “biographical or allegorical” as hardly “relevant to the real purpose of the poem”. her conclusion is that the author was “essentially, a christian” (kean 1967: 241-42). this does not help us much. the standard oxford edition of gawain has more perceptive comments, on the poet's consistent “theological concern” and “moral seriousness” (despite this poem's “surface lightheartedness”). he knew much of “the life and etiquette of noble households”; possessed “a detailed, even technical, knowledge of hunting, of castle architecture, and of the armour and gear of a knight. in patience he uses with an air of assurance the right terms for the parts of a ship.” he was deeply read in the vulgate bible; pearl implies some knowledge of patristic theology. he had read widely in french romance. his language, though “strongly provincial”, is yet sophisticated, courtly, and elegant. he had interest in neither “astrology and its associated sciences” nor the “boethian problems of foreknowledge and free will”, unlike chaucer. on date and provenance, the editors are cautious; more so than dorothy everett, whom they quote. the text “cannot be dated precisely”, but must be earlier than the manuscript, itself hardly later than 1400. emphasis on display may “imply a date towards the end of the century”, while dialect and allusions to north wales and the wirral suggest that the poet “was writing not far” from them (tolkien and gordon 1967: xxiv-xxvii). so the poet was familiar with courts, hunting, horses, castles, arms and armour, ships, french romance, the bible, and theology. he had no interest in philosophy, science, astrology, or astronomy. he did not read the latin classics, unlike chaucer. he did, however, know french and perhaps even italian literature of his time. he was not university-trained and lacked chaucer's wide intellectual interests, but had practical experience of foreign travel and military life. his confidence on such matters (as also, we recall from fisher, the administration of justice) points less to laura loomis's “official in some lordly household” than to her “man of rank and wealth”; a devout man, at ease in the court, on the bench, and on campaign, but not an urban intellectual. did sir john stanley write sir gawain and the green knight? 89 with this, contrast views offered by larry benson. he regarded sir gawain as proof of “the scrutiny that older values were undergoing as the middle ages came to an end”. it was a century when “crusades” had “nothing but the name in common” with previous ones; when the “examples of chivalric conduct” admired by froissart are “glaring exceptions in his chronicles of a cruel and greedy era”; when “peasants were asserting themselves in a way that showed clearly that the old feudal order was dying”; when “the great schism and the rise of heresy showed that even the church was not as secure” as supposed; and when “plague and famine threatened the existence even of society itself” (benson 1968: 23-34). true, of course. the gawain poet certainly knew about atrocities, peasant revolts, schism, and epidemics, especially the last, one of which perhaps killed his daughter (as argued below). yet gawain is no polemic on obsolete institutions and beliefs. while benson saw the poet as a doubter, fisher and brewer regarded him as subscribing to the values of medieval chivalry and christianity, even to the point of reaction. the point is fundamental. in a studious account, ian bishop (1927-90) of bristol favoured an autobiographical approach to pearl (while dismissing the extravagances of some critics), quoting norman davis on the line “in crystes dere blessyng and myne” near its close as “an epistolary formula” then “used almost exclusively by parents addressing their children” (bishop 1968: 8, 131). the phrase expresses tender love. with it, a father might bid everlasting farewell to an infant daughter. a mere allegorist would feel no such emotion, one imagines. in the same year gervase mathew published a book which abounds in insights on the english nobility at the time when sir gawain was written. he thus mentioned henry of grosmont (1299?-1361), whose daughter married john of gaunt. henry, duke of lancaster, was an unexpected combination of soldier, magnate, and author; his livre de seyntz medecines of 1354 is a volume of frank confessions. from this and other sources we find in him a man of piety, chivalry, courage, and sexual frailty, who craved honour but also had an “itch to possess more lands”. he was not alone as a devout warrior-nobleman who valued books. thomas of woodstock (1355-97), duke of gloucester, showed “rash courage in the french wars”, but also founded a college of priests at pleshy (his seat in essex) and possessed a magnificent library (with an english bible still extant). mathew showed how military courage, 90 andrew breeze wealth, religious fervour, and a love of books might at this date co-exist in one man. he made a further comment of far-reaching importance. it is this. “i have a theory that sir john stanley was the patron of the gawain poet. the poem ends 'hony soyt qui mal pence', and this suggests that it was written for a knight of the garter; the dialect suggests that it was written in south-west lancashire, and at this period sir john stanley was the only knight of the garter in south-west lancashire. it is also possibly relevant that he was hereditary forester of wirral and had links with the north” (mathew 1968: 109-10, 166). another aspect of the poet was investigated by james oakden, tracing the influence of the liturgy on pearl (oakden 1968: 337-53). there is an insight (its context unexpected) from rosemary woolf. she distinguished between “naturally anonymous and accidentally anonymous” texts. most medieval english lyrics, romances, and mystery plays have a “self-effacing style”. even if we knew who wrote them, it would be “unimportant”, arousing neither “curiosity or excitement”. but pearl and gawain gain from being read in conjunction, “so that here knowledge of authorship would be very valuable”. she cites an instance in lines 345-6 of the former, where the maiden tells the narrator how, even if he should writhe like a doe (daunce as any do), or struggle and bray (braundysch and bray) out his agonies, he is trapped and must endure what happens. the image is of a deer at bay, exhausted and at the mercy of hounds (woolf 1968: 5, 262). it is not the only hunting metaphor in pearl. when the narrator first encounters the maiden, he takes her (line 185) as a spiritual porpose, which has been understood as “quarry, object of a pursuit”. an exquisite sensibility notwithstanding, the poet referred naturally to the ungentle business of tearing animals to bits. he rejoiced in hunting. in his edition of patience, john anderson noted the “sixteen lines of narrative” where the poet described “in generous detail” the preparation of a ship for sea. he gave its date as perhaps after 1357 and before 1390, and possibly before the completion in about 1379 of the b-text of langland's piers plowman, which apparently alludes to patience. on provenance he cited a famous 1963 paper by angus mcintosh of edinburgh, which allocated the dialect of the ms cotton nero a.x scribe (not that of the poet) to “south-east cheshire or northeast staffordshire” (anderson 1969: 11, 20-23). if there are references did sir john stanley write sir gawain and the green knight? 91 to hunting in cheshire forests or on staffordshire moor, others point to experience of shipping on the dee or mersey. although basil cottle (1917-94) is another scholar now little read, he had illuminating remarks on the poet. he gave a picture of a “well-off provincial society, with its classes happily dovetailed and bestowing service and patronage”, which possessed “a noble court of great luxury and taste”, where “due order was observed but nobody groused”. the ritual arming of a knight engaged his attention; so, too, did heraldry (in nearly fifty lines). he said much on courtesy, and not merely of “refined and privileged equals”: the porter is polite to gawain and is “thanked for his services”; grooms are “thanked for stabling gawain's horse”; the boorish intruder at camelot is addressed as if he had been invited; gawain and his host dispute whose presence grants more honour; there are no hard words from the temptress, “even when the seduction fails”; and cottle then analyses at length the poet's scrupulous use of familiar “thee” and formal “you” in the dialogues (cottle 1969: 279-80). so the poet was an expert observer, who saw society from above and not from below. he could be affable, but in no way questioned established order. the point on heraldry is underlined by the scropegrosvenor case of 1386, routinely cited in biographies of chaucer. scrope and grosvenor took to law their quarrel about a certain coat of arms. chaucer, despite giving testimony in court, in his verse gave no space to blazon. the subject did not interest him (just as it interests hardly any modern critic). but it very much interested the gawain poet. it is yet more evidence for him as a provincial grandee. tony spearing in 1970 provided a book-length study of the poet, following gordon in dating him to 1360-95, and angus mcintosh on the dialect of ms cotton nero a.x as that of a scribe from south-east cheshire or north-east staffordshire, differing little from the poet's own dialect. yet spearing, despite copious remarks on the author's attitude to feasting, hunting, court life, the bible, french and latin poetry, and the mystical theology of his day, shied away from defining his identity or social status (spearing 1970: 2-18). despite its title, his book says almost nothing about the poet. his face or image is left blurred or indistinct. in the same year d. j. williams published an able (if conservative) account. stating that there is “no proof that these four poems were written by one man” (which he yet thought probable), he offered no proposals on what kind of person he was. all the same, he 92 andrew breeze had interesting remarks on gawain and chaucer's tale of the knight, especially their contrasts. both narratives are serious and sophisticated, but are “informed by a different spirit”. the former is closer to the twelfth-century romances of chrétien de troyes and is “a more highly developed work”. it was “written to entertain an aristocratic circle”; it embodies “courtly ideals” similar to chrétien's, but “under a closer critical scrutiny”, although they are not “under fire”. the ambivalence here is paralleled by that of jonah's “escapade in the whale” in patience (williams 1970: 107-58). john burrow pointed out the accidents of time. if chester and not london had been england's capital, the gawain poet would “immediately have been acknowledged a national classic, and a northwestern caxton would have rushed his work into print”. instead, he was forgotten for three centuries. his work influenced later alliterative writers (including the author of the awntyrs off arthure, composed in 1425 or so at carlisle or thereabouts) and was still read in the cheshirelancashire region into the sixteenth century. after that, oblivion, until thomas warton (1728-90) showed interest in the texts, to be followed by madden in 1839 and richard morris in 1864. burrow deals more with the poems than the poet, but quotes a 1966 essay by spearing on how all four of them set out “a confrontation between a human being and some more than human power”, the protagonist in each case emerging “humbled by the confrontation” (burrow 1971: 4-5, 102-3). the texts all possessed the hand and voice of one author. it is good to be certain of this when reading interpretations of pearl, with the pearl identified as a eucharistic symbol, a believer's soul, the blessed virgin, and so on (gradon 1971: 192-211). such plurality is welcomely absent from a paper with thorough and decisive views on authorship. while the poet's “analogous phrases, paraphrases for god, methods of introducing a story, stating that something is difficult to describe, and endings that echo beginnings” are elements found in other medieval poems, their frequency in these four poems makes the statistical case for common authorship “overwhelming”. still more important than these five categories are imagery and diction. identical words, often “in special senses that are uniquely the same”, are used to describe the same scenes. above all is the thematic unity of the poems. patience, humility, and purity are the subject of the two homiletic texts: they dominate the two others. “the did sir john stanley write sir gawain and the green knight? 93 pearl-maiden, a symbol of purity, teaches the dreamer the lesson of resignation. gawain, the 'perle of prys', is not perfect” and returns to arthur's court a humbler knight, having failed the test of loyalty (vantuono 1971). awareness of the above puts into context comments by charles muscatine on the author as “a surprisingly uncomplicated moralist, and a conservative one as well”; although he surely noticed the troubles of his time, his response is “oblique”, any crisis being “completely absorbed in his art”, itself perhaps “a defense against crisis” (muscatine 1972: 37, 69). spearing likewise comments on the poet's belief in breeding and cortaysye, the values of an aristocratic elite (spearing 1972: 28-50). they are yet supplemented by other remarks on how in gawain the courtly world of france or “heraldry and books of romance” or pinnacled castles is combined with that “of a countryman from the borders of staffordshire and cheshire, speaking a rough dialect and accustomed to listening to heroic stories” (medcalf 1973: 643-96). the word “countryman” is too hard. nor was the dialect “rough” to those who spoke it. better to say that the poet was “widely read in the most sophisticated literature of the age”, whether religious, secular, english, french, latin, or even italian. he was a provincial with “an intimate knowledge of aristocratic life, architecture, etiquette, hunting, feasting, dress and armour, and the terms of courtly conversation” (as also heraldry). he may have been a “secretary or chaplain” in one of john of gaunt's castles in lancashire, staffordshire, or derbyshire. he was in any case most certainly “a writer of genius” (barron 1974: 3, 4). here correct observations have an illogical conclusion. a chaplain would not know much about flirting or the chase. the poet's familiarity with all the above, including expensive literature in modern languages, indicates an aristocrat with the appropriate income. compare again remarks on the poet as “a man of learning, a superb craftsman with a delight in the world of the senses, and a man with a keen and subtle sense of humour” (a. c. and j. e. spearing 1974: 81). all of this is true, but still (to labour the point) neglects his social conservatism, adherence to chivalric values, profound christian faith, and zeal for hunting. gawain was surely known (despite the doubts of some) to the author of the awntyrs off arthure, perhaps by a carlisle cleric writing in 1425 94 andrew breeze or 1426 (hanna 1974: 38). at the other end of england was chaucer, whose prologue to the legend of good women implies (in tony spearing's opinion) that he had read pearl, and the opening to the squire's tale that he had read gawain (spearing 1976: 111). this is half right. pearl is surely influenced by chaucer, not vice versa. evidence in any case that its author possessed exalted rank and social connections in london. yet anderson would not go beyond the view that the ms cotton nero a.x texts were probably by the same man, who presumably lived in the north-west and read mandeville's travels, written about 1357. anderson thought that any attempt to narrow the dating within the limits of 1357 to 1400 “must be speculative” (anderson 1977: 1). derek pearsall, making no reference to vantuomo's paper of 1971, similarly asserted that we know nothing of the four poems' authorship, “though it has become habitual to attribute them to the same poet” (pearsall 1977: 186). elsewhere is the comment that the audience for alliterative poetry tended to include gentry, knights, franklins, and the clergy rather than “members of the higher nobility” (turville-petre 1977: 35, 47). the critic has not realized that we hear more of the latter (such as the fifteenth-century yorkshire squire robert thornton, who owned a copy of the awntyrs off arthure and other romances) because they outnumbered the nobles, especially in the north. yet the ms cotton nero a.x's illustrations reproduce those of a de luxe original entirely beyond the means of any local landowner or country parson. although the editors of a standard edition comment on the “subjective element” in “judgements of similarity of thought and attitude”, they come down all the same for common authorship, seeing the poet's art as combining “orthodox medieval christianity” with the “chivalric social morality of the high middle ages” (andrew and waldron 1978: 16). that is surely right. even in davenport's study it is not, however, stressed as it should be. despite admission of how the gawain poet's works possess “a range and quality comparable to those of chaucer”, when davenport comments on the northern writer as not “particularly intellectual”, but having “a liking for 'university wit'" in word-play and metrical numerology, he diminishes his subject (davenport 1978: 2, 216). the poet was no mere wordsmith; and “university” is here irrelevant. his education was not scholastic. did sir john stanley write sir gawain and the green knight? 95 new attitudes to gawain were noted and mocked by derek brewer. he ridiculed the view that the poet treated christmas at camelot with “ironically sarcastic criticism of its childishness and irresponsibility”, and how arthur should instead “be at his desk getting on governing the country” (brewer 1980: 73). in his opinion, the author says what he means. his realism was genuine, and his social and religious values were conservative ones (like those of derek brewer himself). now for a digression on clothes. a rare analysis of the green knight's attire, down to his “mantle lined with ermine”, provides the conclusion that his tight tunic was all the rage in 1365, going out by 1370, and passé by 1380 (newton 1980: 64). the implications for dating are novel. taken as they stand, they torpedo the case presented here. john stanley was born, it seems, in about 1350. a date of composition in the 1360s would create insuperable obstacles. yet there is a way round them. because nothing else puts gawain before the late 1380s, it may be that the author deliberately provided the green knight with attire that was good but outmoded. the parallel would be with the time lords or transylvanian counts of modern entertainment. they dress well, but not in today's fashions, thereby acquiring a curious authority. if there is an equivalent for this in gawain, we have a further glimpse of the writer's skill. brewer's attitude to the poem would have been contested by ray barron. he found in it “a complex of interrelating ambiguities which challenge the reader's judgement of meaning and theme and provide a seedbed for ironies which expose chivalric values to his critical scrutiny”, as in the exchange of winnings, wherein gawain fails to surrender the girdle won from the lady (barron 1981: 89-105). many see the author as conservative. barron took him as a radical. the latter may be doubted. comparison with the genuine article brings this out. the real literature of complaint brims with anti-clericalism, pacificism, attacks on government advisers, condemnation of a corrupt knighthood, and criticism of the wealthy, as is demonstrated by one left-wing historian. but nothing of that in gawain, “written for a local magnate with a family and manor in south-west lancashire”. we agree, noting her further comment on a 1978 paper by george kane, with “an amusing summary of the variety of interpretations” of gawain (coleman 1981: 44, 309). conservative and marxian critics hence agree on gawain's ambience as a lay one in england's north-west. 96 andrew breeze derek brewer gave the poet's home as “the hills and moors of derbyshire in the north midlands” (brewer 1983: 155). “derbyshire” is a slip for “staffordshire”. no dialectal or topographical evidence links the writer with derbyshire. nor would he have lived among those hills and moors, though he certainly hunted on them (see turville-petre's 2008 paper on the green chapel and ludchurch, in staffordshire's northern tip). his residence will have been a great hall in the lowlands of the north-west, as indicated by janet coleman. as for his values, anachronistic attitudes to them are identified by john burrow in an essay on honour and shame. he observes that, while gawain is not actually about these qualities, it takes them for granted. it displays “an ingrained familiarity with principles which are, at best, strange to the modern reader, and at worst thoroughly objectionable”, making it hard for such readers to appreciate how gawain's moral self-scrutiny slept until it was woken by a fellow knight's reproaches (burrow 1984: 130). further misunderstanding comes in a comment on the unknown “craftsman who produced these four remarkable texts” (fowler 1984: 171). yet the poet was more than craftsman. he was a supreme artist. as for where he lived, silverstein cited r. w. v. elliott on the relation of “the green chapel to the valley of the river dane” in north-west staffordshire (silverstein 1984: 17). in a chapter on the ms cotton nero poems which abounds with insights, jack bennett (1911-81) echoed stephen medcalf on the contrast between “rich feasts, a castle built in the latest style”, ornamented armour, fashionable furnishings, polite and elegant conversation, elaborate laws and customs of the chase, as also the international french “terms of art that were current at the court of richard ii and in the households of his nobility” and, on the other hand, “wild and rugged country, winter and rough weather, boisterous humour with some grim touches” and “plain-spoken comment”. a singular combination. vantuomo's paper notwithstanding, bennett yet opined that common authorship of the four poems could not “be conclusively proved” (bennett 1986: 202). there are implications here. the familiarity with a king's household indicates a context for the poems altogether grander than a cheshire or lancashire manor-house; on the other hand, no evidence has ever been produced to show that the four poems are not by one man. did sir john stanley write sir gawain and the green knight? 97 paul strohm, expert on medieval literary sociology, offers more doubts. he followed spearing (at a distance) on the opening of chaucer's squire's tale as perhaps showing knowledge of gawain. if so, it suggests a writer with metropolitan contacts. as for his audience, strohm attempts to trash critics who locate it “with equal plausibility in baronial courts, among the country gentry, amongst cheshire servants of richard ii, and in the monastic houses of the south-west midlands” (strohm 1986: 1-18). yet some of these views are more equal than others, even if strohm fails to notice. hunting and attempted seduction are strange fare for the cloister; and the writer evidently walked not with mere gentry, but with magnates and kings. so “cheshire servants of richard ii” may be rather near the mark. despite their interest, further chapters by tony spearing on gawain and cleanness shed no light on their author (spearing 1987: 173-215). felicity riddy repeats the unlikely suggestion that the poet was a “probably a cleric” and perhaps in the employ of a “secular household” (alexander and riddy 1989: 268. this despite the goings-on in gawain, the expressions in pearl of a father's tender love for a child, and (most startling) the enthusiastic praise in cleanness (lines 703-4) of sex: bitwene a male and his make [mate] suche mirthe should come, wel neghe pure paradise myght preve no better. the writer does not sound like a priest. he sounds like a layman, happily married and with children. as for where he wrote, lee patterson (with a nod to fisher's paper of 1961) has a penetrating aside. gawain “is structured by the relationship between a royal and provincial courts. it may even be that the representation of the 'child-gered' [having a child's ways] arthur”, presiding “over an elegantly gamesome court, is meant to reflect richard” (patterson 1992: 7-41). patterson's remark is casual but arresting. because richard ii was born in 1367 and died in 1400, this would put the poem between 1382 (when richard married and attained his majority) and 1400, and no doubt early in that period, when richard was still youthful. patterson's suggestion tends to locate gawain in the late 1380s. it really will be “ricardian poetry”. derek pearsall remarks acutely on hunting as a barrier between us and our ancestors even greater than rhetoric (as c. s. lewis thought). when the gawain poet chose to “parade its language of technical 98 andrew breeze expertise”, hardly any reader today can respond (pearsall 1992: 57). this is well said. because canon law barred clerics from blood sports, the poet's obsession with hunting indicates a lay author. his knowledge of it was authoritative, as shown by his delight in its rituals and protocol. as for what he wrote, scholars who believe in common authorship of the ms cotton nero poems are cited against splitters who believe in multiple authorship (blanch and wasserman 1995: 150). wrangles continue on the integrity of his work, quite unnecessarily. in a paper which repays careful reading, john bowyers follows michael bennett on political links between cheshire and the court of richard ii. despite being “agnostic” on whether the ms cotton nero texts are by one poet or not, he feels some certainty on the date of pearl. he locates it within the mid-1390s, some ten years after gawain. composition about 1395 would come after richard ii's “seven quiet years” (in harold hutchison's phrase) of 1389-96, when english politics were relatively stable (bowyers 1995). we shall see how a paper of 2014, written independently of bowyers, suggests a date in the early 1390s on quite different grounds. as for who the poet was, this brings us to ad putter, who combines wise remarks with ones more contentious. he says this. the poet has long been related to “a small baronial household, hostile to king richard ii's absolutist tendencies and his francophile court”. against this we might say that the original de luxe copy of the poems does not indicate a “small” household; nor are francophobia or hostility to absolutism at all obvious in gawain. putter is, nevertheless, correct is dismissing the negative aspects of “provincial” as applied to the writer. next is his reference to michael bennett's speculation on how, lacking a patron in the north-west, the poet went south in hope of “prospects of patronage by the king” or a cheshire magnate at his court. the lost luxury manuscript is certainly evidence for a “wealthy patron”. against that is the argument that, if the poet were himself a magnate, as shown by his effortless allusions to the ostentation and ceremonies of court life, he needed no patron. he could pay for his own manuscripts. next is the dubious case, after jill mann, for gawain as appealing to “'an audience of sophisticated and wealthy merchants and knights' most easily found in london”. against that are its allusions to north wales, the wirral, and green chapel, of faint interest to those on cheapside or in whitehall. the poem's cheshire associations stare one in the face. did sir john stanley write sir gawain and the green knight? 99 also feeble are the suggestions that the poet's knowledge of italian literature indicates a london base; that “the greene knight” in an inventory of the younger sir john paston was gawain, so that the poet probably worked in london; and that, because richard ii understood his cheshire archers, therefore he would have understood and relished the language of gawain. (against that, a critic cited below observed that richard had no known interest in alliterative poetry.) further unconvincing statements come in the propositions that, while the sources of the poems “suggest a clerical background” (even if their author “does not address his audience as a cleric”), his “ethics of conscientious worldliness” indicates links with merchants. representing the interests of clerics, knights, and merchants, gawain may thus be related to london, “where people from different backgrounds” made up “a textual community” with “the broad social appeal” to be found in gawain (putter 1995: 191-96). one fears that this is not compelling. while the poet surely knew london's sophistication and luxuries, his heart belonged to cheshire and its borders. he placed there the main action of gawain. as for his social views, we observe again how fisher (whose 1961 paper is not mentioned by putter) typified them as aristocratic to the point of reaction. nothing to attract, one might think, the london merchant class. one finds contrasts to the poet's politics in the awntyrs off arthure, perhaps written in about 1425 by a carlisle cleric, and associated with the neville dynasty. its author probably knew gawain, but offered a picture of “the instability of power and wealth” which suits a preacher (allen 1996: 129-42). the later work underlines the point that, while gawain's london connections are weak, its northern ones are strong, like those of its surviving manuscript. they are further developed by michael bennett, taking up gervase mathew's 1968 proposal of a link between gawain and sir john stanley (c. 1350-1414). his family in the 1370s built the hall at storeton in the wirral, a region mentioned in the poem; he himself, “a successful career-soldier”, built a stronghold (demolished in 1819) by the quay at liverpool. in 1389-91 he was justiciar of ireland, acting regularly thereafter as negotiator and raiser of troops for richard ii. so he knew the court well, and bennett cites mathew and edward wilson for him as perhaps the patron of the poet. stanley survived political transition to become a knight of the garter in 100 andrew breeze 1405, the only one in cheshire or south lancashire (m. j. bennett 1997: 71-101). he died in 1414 as king of the isle of man. ray barron, observing that the “enigma of author and audience remains unresolved”, had comments on the latter. it is hard “to believe that such a sophisticated text” as gawain “could have been produced for provincial gentry”, despite the rather scanty evidence for them and “the rising bourgeoisie” as an “audience for romance in english”. the poet was obviously a prodigy. he had an intimate knowledge of literary french, law, theology, dialectic, armour, fortification, architecture, fashion, textiles, and “the refined etiquette of court and hunting field” (barron 1999: 164-83). who could this provincial phenomenon be? one might take his references to royal luxury to show him as (in lady bracknell's phrase) evidently a man of some wealth. his social background was utterly unlike that of any other english romance writer. on the grounds of his sophistication and range of allusion, sheila fisher of connecticut associates the gawain poet “with one of the country courts of edward iii or john of gaunt” in the north-west midlands, a speculation traceable to 1930 and j. p. oakden, who is not here mentioned (s. fisher 2000: 150-64). citing pearsall and hanna on the scriptural poems pearl, cleanness, and patience, david lawton notes that, although “most recent suggestions have focused on the monasteries” for their social context, patience's story of jonah “was a favourite of lay and extra-regular readers well into the reformation” (lawton 2000: 454-87). in contrast is james simpson, uttering 1990s critical fashions, who states that there is no reason why gawain “should not have london or westminster connections”, even though the poem refers to neither place. he adds that the “stanley family in particular at that time constituted the dominant power in lancashire and had close contacts with court”, without saying what this might mean for the ms cotton nero texts (simpson 2000: 114-32). readers must find bewildering these contrasting backgrounds of court and cloister. one of them must be dropped. in a lucid survey of gawain's ambiguities, derek pearsall avoids saying whether our quartet of poems are by one man, but rightly declares him “one of the greatest poets of the english language” whose sole provinciality was his dialect, and assuredly not his “understanding of courtly culture or the conventions of romance” (pearsall 2003: 75). did sir john stanley write sir gawain and the green knight? 101 in 2004 the present writer published a paper taking up the links with sir john stanley indicated by mathew in 1968. he suggested that the gawain poet was not some clerk or chaplain employed by stanley, but stanley himself. hence the confident familiarity with court life and luxury or the rituals of hunting and love, as also the interest in heraldry, armour, military architecture, french romance; the layman's point of view in matters of religion, the love of children (stanley had many), the praise of married love; the practical understanding of shipping; the lack of interest in science, philosophy, or scholasticism; and the reactionary politics. documents by stanley survive, including a letter in french of 1405 to henry iv, using words characteristic of ms cotton nero poems, including honor, comfort, haste, gracious, joie, access, and fortune (breeze 2004). naturally, papers of this kind take a while to be noticed. in the meantime, john anderson dealt with noah's flood and the destruction of sodom and gomorrah in cleanness. he disagreed with muscatine's opinion of 1972 on the writer as “completely absorbed in his art” and indifferent to events in the wider world. cleanness, like patience, is about suffering, and in fourteenth-century england there was plenty of that. (it included plague in 1390-93.) yet anderson did not think this the end of the story. the three shorter poems indicate how “god's love is present” in the world, even if the writer “shows no confidence that people can grasp it” (anderson 2005: 238). on another matter we find tony spearing denying proof of italian influence, stating that “evidence is lacking” for the poet's knowledge of dante (spearing 2005: 172). an important paper on the dialect of the ms cotton nero texts casts doubt on the famous conclusion in angus macintosh's paper of 1963 that the scribe came from “a very small area either in south-east cheshire or just over the border in north-east staffordshire”; its authors, for precise linguistic and metrical reasons, would put both scribe and poet “somewhat north of staffordshire” (putter and stokes 2007). they thereby reinforce the cheshire connections to be inferred from placenames in gawain. helen cooper is cautious and negative. noting how sir john stanley has “increasingly been canvassed” as gawain's patron, she yet finds objections. events which might link stanley with these texts, including “the foresterships in 1403” and “incorporation into the order of the garter in 1405”, occurred “after the composition of the poems” (cooper 102 andrew breeze 2008: ix-xvii). professor cooper has not reflected that stanley, brought up in the forest of wirral (and son of a man who in 1346 claimed its forestership), knew about forests long before 1403. nor would he have been granted authority over forests if he had never felled a tree or killed a stag. nor has she noticed gollancz's view that the garter motto seems to be a later addition to ms cotton nero a.x. her objections may be put aside. a different argument for the poet as a man of cheshire comes from nautical terms. one writer refers to “the extraordinarily meticulous description of the ship's parts” (as also a storm) in patience, here citing robin m. ward's 1991 keele ma thesis on maritime passages in alliterative poetry, where it is taken as showing first-hand experience of navigation (sobecki 2008: 124). the poet had gone to sea and knew much about it. he knew the gear and tackle and trim of ports and sailors. he did not spend his life in an inland county. after mariners, hunters. thorlac turville-petre, after noting patience's factual and specific description of a whale's innards (animal guts figure as well in gawain), discusses ludchurch, a peak district ravine east of the staffordshire-cheshire border, and identified by r. w. v. elliott as the poem's “green chapel” (turville-petre 2008: 320-29). the chasm is remote. yet it lay in the royal forest of the peak, bordering the royal forest of macclesfield. those who hunted there would know it. as for sir john stanley, he continues to gain notice. a study of early cheshire writing has a chapter on him and his family, together with another on gawain, although at no point suggesting any connection between the two (barrett 2009: 133-206). another volume, on the landscape and politics of gawain, refers to him as perhaps the work's patron (hill 2009: 168 n. 53). laura ashe regards the author of gawain as one who exploited romance in order to “betray it”; he “deconstructs the ideology of chivalry from within” so as “to expose the absurdity of its inherited ideals” (ashe 2010: 159-72). her reading of the work is in flat opposition to that of john fisher (whom she does not mention) in 1961. fisher thought the poet a reactionary, laura ashe a subversive. they cannot both be right. nor does she suggest what magnate would finance a work which must (on her reading) have mocked his most cherished beliefs, before paying a scribe to copy it into a sumptuous illuminated manuscript. preferable, in returning us to reality, is lee did sir john stanley write sir gawain and the green knight? 103 patterson's perception (in a revised version of his 1992 article) of gawain as juxtaposing “monarch and nobleman, metropolis and hinterland”, with sir bertilak's court depicted as superior to arthur's, whether in love, honour, courtesy, or hunting. bertilak “understands the meaning of court practices more profoundly than the royal court that thinks itself to be the center of fashion”. patterson considers that such loyalty to the provincial, with scepticism on urban values, together fit well with “origins in the cheshire-shropshire region” (where “shropshire” must be a slip), cheshire being a county palatine that had “very close relations” with richard ii from 1385 onwards. patterson, who cites with approval fisher's paper of 1961, goes on to reject (on the grounds of the poem's “social meaning and lack of royal interest in alliterative poetry”) michael bennett's proposal of one of richard ii's “household clerks” as author (patterson 2010: 71-72, 282). everything in the poem points to a cheshire patriot as its author. despite knowing about life at court, he regarded cheshire as in no way inferior to london, especially on courtly values. with that, the case for an audience of london merchants and the like presented by jill mann and ad putter must collapse. in the same year, thorlac turville-petre republished his conclusions on the green chapel's whereabouts (turville-petre 2010: 594-608). thereafter came further notice of the stanley family's literary interests, and even how “andrew breeze goes so far as to suggest that sir john stanley, rather than being simply the patron, might have been the gawain poet himself” (su fang ng and hodges 2013). the present writer thereafter developed ideas of jean-paul friedl (d. 2002) as set out by his research supervisor, ian kirby of lausanne, in an iaupe conference lecture of 2013 at beijing, china. friedl, noticing the curious repeated use in pearl of the word spot “blemish”, offered a reason for it: that the maiden died of plague. we can go further. in fourteenthcentury england there were five great outbreaks of plague, the last two being in the late 1370s and between 1390 and 1393. we can also say that, if the maiden died (aged under two) of plague, it would have been the bubonic kind, which leaves marks on the skin, and not the more deadly pneumonic variety, which does not. friedl's suggestion hence allows us to place pearl in the early 1390s: the monument of a grieving father to a lost infant child, perhaps called margaret or “pearl” (breeze 2014). 104 andrew breeze in 2014 the “sensational claim” of the arthuriana paper of 2004 was noticed again, this time by michael johnston of purdue university. he admitted its possible truth, but did not consider the subject worth further attention, despite attention to a law suit involving sir john stanley (johnston 2014: 33-34, 216-20). johnston shines, however, in comparison with kristina pérez, who thinks that the “homosexual kisses between gawain and the lord are pitted against the heterosexual adultery of gawain and the lady of hautdesert”; this even though the destruction of sodom in cleanness shows the poet's views on homosexuality; and gawain and the lady do not commit adultery (pérez 2014: 121). johnston is also in advance of putter and myres. in a major edition, for all the poet's unclerical interest in armour, attempted seduction, fashion, fatherhood, heraldry, hunting, jewellery, married love, military architecture, and seafaring, they still think him perhaps “a cleric who could not progress beyond minor orders” (putter and stokes 2014: xv). a century after we began with john wells of beloit, wisconsin, we end with walter wadiak of lafayette college, pennsylvania. in a study citing david aers, georges bataille, pierre bourdieu, helen cooper, andrew cowell, jacques derrida, frederic jameson, stephen knight, jacques lacan, jill mann, karl marx, marcel mauss, james simpson, and a. c. spearing, he agrees with muscatine in regarding gawain as “a response to chivalric decline”. but he does not follow fisher (who is never mentioned) in styling the poet's social attitudes as reactionary. wadiak instead offers, after p. b. taylor, the “marxist view that what the poem is really about is commerce”, as “refined by jill mann, who saw the poem's focus on the value of trewthe [troth, pledged word] as directed towards a mercantile audience concerned with that virtue's role in underwriting financial transactions”, the girdle given by the lady to gawain being “a sign of the relativity and arbitrariness that attaches to any kind of value in a commercial world”, like money itself (wadiak 2017: 90). such opinions do marxism no good. they ignore fisher's conclusion, demonstrated by detailed citation of the texts, that the poet's politics were the outdated ones of a landed ruling class; they ignore as well lee patterson's view that gawain has nothing to do with a london audience, courtly or bourgeois, and that its loving representation of life at hautdesert exalts provincial values against london ones. the poet had the robust right-wing religious and social did sir john stanley write sir gawain and the green knight? 105 beliefs of a provincial magnate. for that and other reasons, the recent case for links with the merchant class of london (or anywhere else) cannot be taken seriously. subsequent to this is david coley, who on the matter of authorship quotes derek pearsall's somewhat disobliging remark that they “are based on such naive and improbable assumptions concerning what constitutes evidence as to bring the study of attribution into disrepute” (coley 2019: 16). with that, we bring to a close the first part of this paper. commentary over a hundred years demonstrates how some opinions fade, such as the author's being a monk; others replace them, such as his writing for the mercantile class; others again obstinately refusing to go, such as his being a clerk or cleric. there is not a shred of evidence for the last. the poet will instead have been a man of wealth and power with superlative social contacts, as proposed by laura loomis back in 1959. one observes a further and general aspect of the above: how time has eroded the influence of careful studies by (for example) mathew, fisher, brewer, or bennett. one remembers john burrow's comment on how the questions of honour or religious belief analysed therein now bewilder younger readers. if changes in mentality poison our comprehension of the past, scholarship will decay. one may see this already happening in much writing of the last twenty years. laura loomis, as noted, thought the poet perhaps a man of wealth and power. her comment in mind, we move to our last part, looking at the life and times of sir john stanley in the light of the above. because they have been set out in the arthuriana paper, using barry coward's study of the stanley family and other sources, we need not go into detail. but we shall add references to three books not at hand in 2004. stanley was born, it seems, in about 1350 (not 1340). he was brought up at storeton in the wirral; his father, william de stanleigh (1311-60), had in 1346 claimed forestership of the wirral. he was a younger son with miserable prospects, as coward makes clear. he inherited from his father nothing but a farm at newton, a hamlet now swallowed up in macclesfield. (it was, however, only eight miles from the gorge of ludchurch, the supposed green chapel.) as with malory, john stanley's early life included crime. in 1369 he was convicted of having attacked thurstaston hall, cheshire; in 1378 he was found guilty of murdering his second cousin, obtaining a pardon only on condition of joining the king's army in aquitaine. in 1385 his fortunes improved dramatically on 106 andrew breeze his marriage to isabel lathom, heiress to lancashire estates at knowsley and lathom. he thereby acquired power and wealth. the next year he was deputy in ireland for robert de vere, the beginning of a long association with irish wars, politics, and financial crisis. amongst the sweeteners coming from his new status was a collar of precious metal given to him in 1387-88 by the future henry iv. it perhaps resembled another collar decorated “with scrolls and a swan in the tiret” for which henry paid over 23 pounds sterling in 1391-92 (fletcher 1997: 191204). john stanley was now clearly accustomed to the favour of the mighty and the good things which they could grant. he became controller of the wardrobe and a trusted member of richard ii's cheshire affinity, there perhaps being in (or addressing?) “the primary audience” of sir gawain and the green knight (michael bennett 1999: 113). in 1405, after receiving many offices, he became king of the isle of man. in january 1414 he died in ireland; his body was brought back for burial at burscough priory, near lathom. storeton hall, where he was brought up, is now a farmhouse, having come down in the world (harding 2002: 184). but the stanleys, earls of derby and still in possession of lands acquired by him as their ancestor, have most certainly come up in it. sir john stanley thus figures in the documents as a housebreaker, murderer, soldier, colonial administrator, politician, master forester, justice (in 1395, of chester), courtier, builder, magnate, ancestor, and king. it is an astonishing story, even if one easily recalls others in history who have risen from obscurity to the heights. to his varied qualities can we therefore add that of littérateur and poet of genius? proof of this is, of course, not possible in our present state of knowledge. but a strong case can be made for it. since it is already rehearsed in the arthuriana paper, we need present a summary only of the factors, some of them linguistic or topographical, some (the more important) involving the point of view which the four poems display: 1. the dialect found in the cotton nero manuscript can be accepted as that of cheshire, that of the scribe differing little from that the author. 2. gawain alludes to places in north wales, wirral, and (as regards ludchurch) staffordshire. the viewpoint is a cheshire one. did sir john stanley write sir gawain and the green knight? 107 3. more subtly, hautdesert is presented to its advantage against the court of arthur in south britain. a provincial author felt in no way inferior in matters of personal integrity or status to those in the metropolis. their social customs are indirectly criticized in the person of gawain. 4. the author had an expert confidence on matters of castle architecture, etiquette, hunting, luxury items, riding, seafaring, sophisticated flirtation, and war. 5. his politics were resolutely conservative; he was neither a subversive nor anticlerical. 6. ms cotton nero a.x is a copy of an original prepared at considerable expense. 7. it bears the motto of the garter, of which john stanley (from 1405) was the sole north-western member at this date. 8. the author complains (patience, lines 34, 46, 528) of poverty. stanley was a younger son, due to inherit little or nothing; a circumstance which must date patience to before 1385. 9. there are strong parallels between the vocabulary of the poems and that of stanley's letter of 30 july 1405 to henry iv. 10. the poet knew french and french romance well. stanley in the 1380s did military service in aquitaine, with opportunities to learn french first-hand. 11. pearl is most simply read as a father's elegy for a daughter who died before her second birthday. references therein to spottes “rashes, blemishes” may indicate the cause as bubonic plague, of which there was an epidemic from 1390 to 1393, as the cause. marrying in 1385, the stanleys might be expected to have had a daughter by them. 12. the allusion to a daughter counts against identification of the poet as a cleric. so, too, do references (pearl 1210, patience 9) to himself not as celebrating mass, but as in the congregation. 13. approving remarks from the mouth of god on the delights of married love (cleanness, lines 697-704) are secular in tone, not clerical. the same is true for the attempted seductions in gawain. 14. there is no evidence for the poems as the work of a professional clerk or scribe. 108 andrew breeze the upshot of the above will be to make the author out as a cheshire and lancashire grandee, with important positions at court and in local administration, who had done military service in france; a religious man, happily married and with children. it also places the poems within a relatively short time-span. gawain could not predate 1385; if its arthur represents richard ii (1367-1400), it may be of the later 1380s. pearl on this basis would be of the very early 1390s. (since this paper was written, however, evidence has come to light in ann astell's argument for ver “spring” in line 866 of gawain as alluding to the flamboyant robert de vere, earl of oxford. her case, put forward in 1999, deserves further notice. it means that the poem must predate his disgrace and exile in december 1387; while the reference in line 678 to gawain's being made a duk “duke” would put it after 13 october 1386, when oxford was made duke of ireland. it was an unprecedented honour. all previous dukes in england were of royal blood. it suggests that sir gawain and the green knight was written sometime in the period october 1386 to december 1387, when duke-making was a topical subject, but before the new duke of ireland fled into political exile. the poem may date from 1387, perhaps being intended as an entertainment for the christmas of that year.) if, of course, sir gawain or pearl could be shown as of before 1386, they could not be by stanley. if critics could prove that they were, the above case would, naturally, collapse. there are other ways in which they could do this, besides that of dating. if stanley could be proved as having anti-clerical or wycliffite opinions, as with the “lollard knights” of the oxford historian bruce mcfarlane (1903-66), this could not be reconciled with the full-blown sacramental catholicism of pearl. again, if a document by him in english could be found, proving his dialect as unlike that of the poet, we must also rule him out. if family records indicate that he never had a daughter (called margaret?) who died in infancy, it would likewise be conclusive. if, however, there is cogency in the above, we may look on sir john stanley as a newcomer to england's literary pantheon. he will join the earl of rochester and lord byron in the (small) band of english aristocratic poets. as the king of man, he could even be included in a still smaller one of those who wore crowns, like james i (1394-1437) of scotland and the kingis quair. if, on the other hand, critics can prove did sir john stanley write sir gawain and the green knight? 109 the case set out here to be ill-judged, baseless, or false, it will offer a permanent lesson on the perils of literary and historical interpretation. postscript: after this paper was accepted for publication, there came to hand ann w. astell, political allegory in late medieval england (ithaca: cornell up, 1999), as a gift to the writer from dr ros field. this book has effectively been ignored by other scholars. yet it contains (astell 1999: 124-6) two observations of epoch-making importance, unfortunately not fully understood by professor astell herself. she there relates line 678 of gawain, on its protagonist as being made a duk or duke, to various dukes, including robert de vere (1362-92), ninth earl of oxford, created duke of ireland on 13 october 1386. she adds that ver or spring, used in line 866 of beautiful clothing given to gawain, is a dig or quiet joke at the expense of de vere, favourite of richard ii and notorious for flamboyant dress. allusions to de vere notwithstanding, she declares (astell 1999: 137) that the romance “must have been written between 1397 and 1400”, despite noting de vere's ruin at the battle of radcot bridge, 20 december 1387 (when he fled into exile). on the contrary, the two lines will date the composition of sir gawain and the green knight to between 13 october 1386, when de vere (as england's first non-royal duke) made dukedoms a topical subject, and 20 december 1387, when disaster at radcot bridge made his luxurious tastes a thing of the past. one may say too that the judicial murders of the merciless parliament (february to may 1388) would thereafter make the theme of sir gawain (decapitation) a risky one. the poem can be dated with some confidence to 1387 (perhaps as entertainment for christmas that year). the evidence also reinforces its links with john stanley, who was de vere's deputy in ireland and must have 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gollancz, i. ed. 1940: sir gawain and the green knight. london, oup. gordon, e. v. ed. 1953: pearl. oxford, clarendon. gradon, p. 1971: form and style in early english literature. london, methuen. hanna, r. ed. 1974: the awntyrs off arthure at the terne wathelyn. manchester, mup. harding, s. 2002: viking mersey. birkenhead, countyvise. hill, o. g. 2009: looking westward. newark, university of delaware press. johnston, m. 2014: romance and the gentry in late medieval england. oxford, oup. kane, g. 1951: middle english literature. london, methuen. kean, p. m. 1967: the pearl: an interpretation. london, routledge. lawton, d. 2000: englishing the bible 1066-1549. in d. lawton ed. the cambridge history of medieval english literature. cambridge, cup. lewis, c. s. 1962: the anthropological approach. in n. davis & c. l. wrenn, eds. english and medieval studies presented to j. r. r. tolkien. london, allen & unwin. loomis, l. h. 1959: sir gawain and the green knight. in r. s. loomis ed. arthurian literature in the middle ages. oxford, clarendon. 112 andrew breeze mathew, g. 1948: ideals of knighthood. in. r. w. hunt, w. a. pantin & r. w. southern eds. studies in medieval history presented to frederick maurice powicke. oxford, clarendon. mathew, g. 1968: the court of richard ii. london, john murray. medcalf, s. 1973: piers plowman and the ricardian age in literature. in d. daiches & a. thorlby eds. the mediaeval world. london, aldus. moorman, j. 1966: myth and mediaeval literature. in r. j. blanch ed. sir gawain and pearl: critical essays. bloomington, indiana up. muscatine, c. 1972: poetry and crisis in the age of chaucer. notre dame, undp. newton, s. m. 1980: fashion in the age of the black prince. woodbridge, boydell. oakden, j. p. 1930: alliterative poetry in middle english: the dialectal and metrical survey. manchester, mup. oakden, j. p. 1935: alliterative poetry in middle english: a survey of the traditions. manchester, mup. oakden, j. p. 1968: the liturgical influence in pearl. in arno esch ed. chaucer und seine zeit: symposium für walter f. schirmer. tübingen, max neimeyer. patterson, l. 1992: court politics and the invention of literature. in david aers ed. culture and history 1350-1600. detroit, detroit up. patterson, l. 2010: acts of recognition. notre dame, undp. pearsall, d. a. 1977: old english and middle english poetry. london, routledge. pearsall, d. a. 1992: the life of geoffrey chaucer. oxford, blackwell. pearsall, d. a. 2003: arthurian romance. oxford, blackwell. pérez, k. 2014: the myth of morgan la fey. basingstoke, palgrave macmillan. putter, a. 1995: “sir gawain and the green knight” and french arthurian romance. oxford, clarendon. putter, a. & m. stokes, 2007: the linguistic atlas and the dialect of the gawain-poems. journal of english and germanic philology 106, 468-91. putter, a. & m. stokes, eds. 2014: the works of the gawain poet. london, penguin. schlauch, m. 1963: antecedents of the english novel 1400-1600. warszawa, pwn. silverstein, t. ed. 1984: sir gawain and the green knight. chicago, university of chicago press. simpson, j. 2000: contemporary english writers. in peter brown ed. a companion to chaucer. oxford, blackwell. did sir john stanley write sir gawain and the green knight? 113 sisam, k. ed. 1921: fourteenth-century verse and prose. oxford, oup. sobecki, s. 2008: the sea and medieval english literature. cambridge, d. s. brewer. spearing, a. c. 1970: the gawain-poet. cambridge, cup. spearing, a. c. 1972: criticism and medieval poetry, 2nd edn. london, edward arnold. spearing, a. c. 1976: medieval dream poetry. cambridge, cup. spearing, a. c. 1987: readings in medieval poetry. cambridge, cup. spearing, a. c. 2005: textual subjectivity. oxford, oup. spearing, a. c. & j. e. spearing, eds. 1974: poetry of the age of chaucer. london, edward arnold. speirs, j. 1957: medieval english poetry. london, faber. strohm, p. 1986: the social and literary scene in england. p. boitani & j. mann eds. the cambridge chaucer companion. cambridge, cup. su fang ng & k. hodges, 2013: saint george, islam, and regional audiences. studies in the age of chaucer 32, 257-94. tolkien, j. r. r. & e. v. gordon, eds. 1967: sir gawain and the green knight, 2nd edn. oxford, clarendon. turville-petre, t. 1977: the alliterative revival. cambridge, d. s. brewer. turville-petre, t. 2008: the green chapel. in o. j. padel & d. n. parsons eds. a commodity of good names. donnington, shaun tyas. turville-petre, t. 2010: places of the imagination. in e. treharne & g. walker eds. the oxford handbook of medieval english literature. oxford, oup. vantuono, w. 1971: patience, cleanness, pearl, and gawain: the case for common authorship. annuale mediaevale 12, 37-69. wells, j. e. 1916: a manual of the writings in middle english. new haven, connecticut academy of arts and sciences. williams, d. j. 1970: alliterative poetry in the fourteenth and fifteen centuries. in w. f. bolton ed. the middle ages. london, sphere. wadiak, w. 2017: savage economy: the returns of middle english romance. notre dame, undp. woolf, r. 1968: the english religious lyric in the middle ages. oxford, clarendon. author’s address departamento de filología universidad de navarra 31009 pamplona (españa) received: 2 september 2021 e-mail: abreeze@unav.es revised version accepted: 19 october 2021 microsoft word 5. garrido.docx from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases: new evidence for refining relations within the prick of conscience group-iv manuscripts1 edurne garrido anes university of huelva the prick of conscience is known to have survived in 97 manuscripts of the main version, 19 of the southern recension, and about 50 short extracts. an initial collation of one lexical item in the 97 extant copies of the main version and subsequent comparison of another 109 items in 54 of these copies allow for identifying parallel variant readings throughout the poem’s almost 10,000 lines. those variants often transcend the word level affecting the line, the couplet, or more extensive passages. this paper contributes to refining textual relations within the group-iv family of the work by showing distinct variance common to dublin, trinity college, 157 (d.4.11) (mv 21), london, sion college, arc. l. 40. 2/e. 25 (mv 49), and shrewsbury, school, iii (mus. iii. 39) (mv 95). apart from unfolding and expanding the extent of the relationship pointed out by lewis & mcintosh (1982), this research also proves that the hitherto unsubclassified london, lambeth palace, 492 (mv 48) is another member of the subgroup. to illustrate how the proposed subset relates to a version closer to the presumed original and other group-iv witnesses, readings from the following london, british library manuscripts are also provided for reference: cotton galba e. ix (mv 27); harley 4196 (mv 34); egerton 657 (mv 29); additional 22283 (mv 40). keywords: prick of conscience; manuscript families; group iv; textual relations; lexical collocations 1 i am very grateful to maría josé carrillo-linares and keith williamson for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. edurne garrido anes, selim27 (2022): 114–165. issn 1132-631x / issn-l 2792-3878 / https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.27.2022.114-165 from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 115 1. the prick of conscience manuscript families the medieval popularity of the fourteenth-century spiritual poem prick of conscience (poc) is attested to by a remarkable number of surviving copies. the revised list provided by hanna & wood (2013: 378–383) includes 97 manuscripts of the so-called main version (mv), 19 of the southern recension (sr), and 49 further copies containing fragments. even though the mv texts have attracted more scholarly attention than the sr ones, more work is still necessary to satisfactorily overcome the multiple research challenges that their genealogical relations continue to present. besides morris’s (1863) first—and, for a long time, only— edition of the poem, some of the most important contributions to our knowledge of the poc are those by britton (1979) and lewis & mcintosh (1982).2 britton (1979: 329) provided a tripartite stemma of the yorkshire manuscripts: (1) the a branch, to which a (mv 44) and w (mv 96) belong, with no known descendants; (2) the b branch, which is that of the general manuscript tradition, with l (mv 46), m (mv 5*), and—lower in the tree—s (mv 49*);3 and (3) the c branch, from which r (mv 83) and d—the exemplar of g (mv 27) and h (mv 34)—derive with no known further ramifications.4 in their updated edition of morris’s work, hanna & wood (2013: lxx) slightly redefined britton’s stemma of the b branch by moving up s (mv 49*) next to m (mv 5*) and by placing them both in a lower position than l (mv 46). thus, b represents the common ancestor of l, e—the archetype of s and m—and f, from which virtually all the other known copies appear to descend. 2 for bibliography of previous studies on the poc, see lewis & mcintosh (1982: vii–xvi), from whom the numeric nomenclature is adopted. the letters follow britton’s sigla (1979). morris’s edition is mostly based on mv 27 (g), but the almost identical mv 34 (h) supplies the missing lines. for an edition of mv 57, see morey (2012). 3 contaminated or conflated manuscripts—as per lewis & mcintosh (1982)—are marked with an asterisk. 4 hanna & wood consider that the absence of known descendants of the ac copies is due to the fact that they “appear to represent ‘private’ versions, relatively close to the author, but of quite local diffusion” (2013: lxvi). 116 edurne garrido anes mcintosh & lewis (1982) improved and corrected earlier classifications based on andreae’s (1888)5 and assigned the mv copies to at least one of four groups. the manuscripts closer to the original text are in group i. these are mv 44 and mv 96 on the one hand; mv 27, mv 34, and mv 83 on the other. a third subgroup within group i includes mv 20, mv 60, and mv 5*,6 the latter being also related to mv 46 and mv 49*.7 the overly similar mv 11 and mv 14 constitute a fourth minor group;8 mv 3, mv 9, mv 10, mv 87, and mv 90*9 form a fifth larger subclass connected with mv 24* in books i and ii.10 mv 52 and the so-called ‘erratic’ mv 13* have not been assigned to any of the subsets mentioned above.11 in group ii, three subclasses are identified. the first one includes mv 7, mv 19, mv 22, mv 53, and mv 85; the second one is the ‘key of knowing’ subgroup, with mv 8, mv 12*,12 mv 33*,13 mv 41, mv 58, mv 64, and mv 86; and the third contains the ‘lollard’ manuscripts: mv 35*,14 mv 51, mv 56, mv 61, and mv 73. in turn, mv 42 and mv 92 present similarities with both the ‘key of knowing’ and the ‘lollard’ texts, whereas a few other group-ii copies—mv 5*, mv 13*, mv 24*, mv 32*,15 mv 39, mv 69 and mv 78*16—remain unsubclassified. 5 andreae’s classification (1888) was based on 18 british library manuscripts. subsequent studies by bülbring (1891a, 1891b, 1897), d’evelyn (1930), and humphreys & lightbown (1952) followed his groupings and added further identified manuscripts. see also mcintosh 1976 (1989). 6 mv 5* is a group-i text, but its book ii begins like the group-ii manuscripts (lewis & mcintosh 1982: 38). 7 mv 49* is a group-i text up to line 2,850 (book iv), where it becomes group iv (lewis & mcintosh 1982: 83). see more about this copy in britton (1979) and hanna & wood (2013: xxx–xxxiii and lxiv). 8 for more information about these two manuscripts, see lewis & mcintosh (1982: 44). 9 lewis & mcintosh define mv 90* as “group i until near the end of the text […]. in epilogue appears to become a sr text, along with mv 76, and ends with a sr explicit” (1982: 123). 10 mv 24* is group iv from book iii onwards (lewis & mcintosh 1982: 56). 11 lewis & mcintosh describe mv 13* as “appearing to shift relationships: group ii in books ii and iv, group i in book v, etc.” (1982: 46). 12 mv 12* appears as a group-ii manuscript in lewis & mcintosh (1982: 44–45), but carrillo-linares (2016) redefines it as mostly group iv. 13 mv 33* is group ii on ff. 23–129, and group iv on ff. 1–22v (lewis & mcintosh 1982: 66). 14 mv 35* is group ii to book iii and group iv thereafter (lewis & mcintosh 1982: 68). 15 mv 32* is group iii but book ii begins like the group-ii manuscripts (lewis & mcintosh 1982: 65). 16 mv 78* is “group iii for hands 1 and 2; group ii for hand 3. no data for the exemplar of the text written by hand 4” (lewis & mcintosh 1982: 112). from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 117 group iii comprises a series of 15 manuscripts never accounted for by preceding scholars. lewis & mcintosh (1982) found resemblance between mv 26 and mv 32* and between mv 17 and mv 38. the rest of the manuscripts in the group are mv 1*,17 mv 15, mv 16, mv 55, mv 66, mv 67, mv 74, mv 75, mv 76*,18 mv 78*, and mv 91. finally, group iv is divided into several subgroups, three of which are very closely interrelated. one includes the vernon and simeon manuscripts—mv 70 and mv 40—as well as mv 18, mv 31, mv 36, mv 59, mv 77, and mv 82. another one is the ‘lichfield subgroup’, which may ultimately derive from mv 31. it includes mv 23, mv 45, mv 54, mv 57, mv 68, mv 88, and mv 89. the vernon subgroup is also the ancestor of a third subdivision composed of mv 4, mv 24*, mv 63, and mv 72. as lewis & mcintosh (1982: 8–9) pointed out: there are a number of other subgroups among the main version manuscripts that have not been studied as carefully […]. all of these subgroups need to be studied more thoroughly, and other new ones will doubtless come to light as scholars investigate the main version manuscript relationships further. although lewis & mcintosh (1982: 45) described mv 12 as a groupii manuscript, carrillo-linares establishes that it is, essentially, a groupiv text, as it is closely related to the copies that she called the ‘northern subgroup’ (mv 28, mv 29, mv 35*, mv 43, mv 62, mv 93, and mv 94); her study concludes that mv 12 only runs parallel to the group-ii ‘key of knowing’ manuscripts in book v (2016: 85), where the ‘northern subgroup’ is similar to mv 40 (lewis & mcintosh 1982: 61). other connections observed—but not developed—are mv 6 with mv 76* and mv 81;19 mv 30 with mv 50; and mv 21 with mv 49* and mv 95 (lewis & mcintosh 1982: 53). mv 1*, mv 25, mv 33*, mv 47, mv 48, mv 65, and mv 71 are also group-iv manuscripts. nevertheless, their relations within the group have not been further explored. the last set of poc copies comprises mv 37, mv 79, mv 80, mv 84, and mv 17 mv1* “has characteristics of both groups iii and iv, perhaps a ms anterior to group iv with additions supplied from a ms of group iii” (lewis & mcintosh 1982: 34). 18 mv 76* appears to be group iv to the beginning of book v. it is group iii in books v–vii; in the epilogue it becomes a sr text, along with mv 90 (lewis & mcintosh 1982: 110). 19 mv 76* is partly a group-iii and partly a group-iv manuscript, which becomes a sr text in its epilogue. this last feature is shared with mv 90 (lewis & mcintosh 1982: 110). 118 edurne garrido anes 97. being just fragments that provide too little evidence, they also remain unclassified. 2. subgroup hypothesis and methodology 2.1. the tls1s2 subgroup the alleged connections between dublin, trinity college, 157 (d.4.11) (mv 21), london, sion college, arc. l. 40. 2/e. 25 (mv 49*), and shrewsbury, school, iii (mus. iii. 39) (mv 95) are here first explored and unfolded through vocabulary collation in the poc’s rhyming couplets. the initial comparison of 11 couplets where the word dole occurs in the poem constitutes the starting point for the contrastive study of these three copies in the context of their manuscript transmission, and especially of group iv.20 from this collation in all the available copies of the work, london, lambeth palace, 492 (mv 48) emerges as a possible addition to the—henceforth tls1s2—subset.21 the subsequent comparison of textual representations of another 109 lexical items in 54 of the manuscripts—ranging from groups i to iv—helps isolate, clarify, and expand the connections between mv 21, mv 49*, and mv 95 mentioned by lewis & mcintosh (1982). 2.2. lexical collation the selection of the lexical items draws from the vocabulary realizations recorded for years for a middle english lexical database at the university of huelva.22 this work in progress includes searchable tables for 120 vocabulary items that were collected on the basis of their potentially dialectal nature, as they often show variation in the multiple extant copies of middle english works. the lay folks’ catechism was the point of departure for collecting the items. the collection was later 20 for a dialectal study of the item dole in the 97 manuscripts of the mv of the prick of conscience, see garrido-anes (2019). 21 named after trinity, lambeth, sion, and shrewsbury. 22 the database, not publicly available, is held at http://phpmyadmin.uhu.es. from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 119 expanded to around 60 works.23 the database now contains more than 66,000 occurrences altogether—including attestations, variants, and item omissions in parallel contexts—and it provides evidence from the different works’ extant manuscripts, most of which are localized on linguistic grounds. the poc database section holds information for 110 items24 so far collected for 54 out of the 97 extant manuscripts.25 the items were selected because they showed variation in the manuscripts of the work, and thus, they became a target for study. although it is possible that, in some cases, the alternations were not dialectally induced, the items have become practical control elements. carrillolinares & garrido-anes’s database allows for identifying lexical variants and omissions throughout the almost 10,000 lines of the poem. apart from its usefulness for the dialectal study of the middle english lexicon, vocabulary collation also brings to light possible textual connections 23 the works are the following: alphabet of tales; ancrene wisse; arthur and merlin; avowing of arthur; babees’ book; benedictine rule; bevis of hampton; castle of perseverance; catholicon anglicum; chester plays; cursor mundi; the destruction of troy; dialogue between vices and virtues; earth upon earth; the feast of tottenham; floris and blaunchefur; gawain poet; genesis and exodus; gesta romanorum; gospel of nicodemus; hali meidenhad; havelok the dane; helle sterne; juliana of cumae; katherine of alexandria; king alexander; king horn; lay folks’ catechism; lay folks’ mass book; life of cuthbert; life of saint anne; mandeville’s travels; the metrical version of the old testament; the mirror of man’s salvation; morte d’arthur; northern homily cycle; octovian; ormulum; the parliament of the three ages; piers plowman; poema morale; prick of conscience; prose alexander; fire of love; sawles warde; seven sages of rome; siege of jerusalem; siege of troy; sir amadace; the owl and the nightingale; thornton’s medical book; towneley plays; wars of alexander; william of palerne; wisdom; york plays; ywayn and gawain; other homilies and lyrics. 24 from the 120 database items, the 110 occuring in the poc are the following: alkin, and (hand), anhede, assethe, ay, banen, biggen, bihing, bilife, bisen, blinen, braiden, casten, clomsen, clot, comly, crag, cribbe, cunning, dale, dalk, dased, deren, dight, din, dingen, dinten, dole, doten, dreghen, droven, eggen, eken, err, fel, fele, felle, felly, ferly, flaien, fliten, fon, forluken, forsaken, fraisten, frett, frount, gilery, glowen, goulen, greten, grisely, helden, henten, hide, housil, ill, irken, kenen, kirk, laiken, lainen, laiten, laken, letten, lifte, lithe, lither, loper, merrryng, mirk, mister, neven, quaintise, raiken, roggen, rosyng, rouken, saghtel, samen, sande, sculken, selcouthe, sere, slaken, slaveren, sleght, smored, sonderen, souchen, stede, swelten, swinken, tharnen, tholen, thrallen, threpen, tite, trowen, ugly, underlout, warn, warnen, wathe, were, wlatsome, wonen, wonyngestede, yemen, yernen. the remaining 10 items are: bilouken, delven, forhouen, fostren, geren, hanken, methe, sundren, thewe, wissen. 25 the manuscripts so far included in the database are followed by (db) in the list given under the heading ‘references’. 120 edurne garrido anes and effectively provides a general overview of the manuscript tradition.26 2.3. expanded collation: significant omissions and paraphrases after retrieving from the database the lines where the aforementioned lexical items occur in the poc, a broader analysis of their parallel realizations—occurrences, omissions, or paraphrases—needs to be performed. mv 21, mv 48, mv 49*, and mv 95 are then carefully examined alongside other group-i and group-iv manuscripts.27 for a more reliable context, the aim is to expand the scope of the study beyond the word, the line, and even the couplet, by comparing the text surrounding the said lexical items. as robinson states, one should initially “consider the manuscripts descending directly from a single node […]. if the manuscripts descended directly from this single node really share a common ancestor below the archetype, then one should be able to identify a set of variants likely to have been introduced into that shared ancestor, and then descending to those manuscripts” (2013: 13). attention must be next drawn to the following types of variants: (1) those present in the copies derived from the shared ancestor; (2) those likely not to have occurred in the archetype; (3) and those rarely found in other manuscripts (robinson 2013: 13). as bordalejo and robinson also indicate: “if we find a number of variants which are present, over and over again, in the same distinctive pattern of witnesses, then those variants are significant […] it is also a crucial tenet […] that we base our 26 on the need to study the middle english lexicon and word geography, see mcintosh 1973. for an extended explanation of the methodology and applications of their lexical database, see carrillo-linares & garrido-anes 2008, 2009, 2012. 27 for granting me access to the manuscripts of the prick of conscience in microfilmed or digitized copies, special thanks are due to the following libraries: edinburgh university library, dublin trinity college library, oxford bodleian library, lambeth palace library, and the british library. from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 121 identification of what patterns of agreement are significant on the most complete collation possible (every word in every witness, or as close as we can manage) rather than any kind of sampling.” (2018: 37–38).28 combining the initial lexical collation with a contextual analysis of the words in question provides solid evidence to support the inclusion of mv 48 into the same subgroup as mv 21, mv 49* and mv 95. due to the massive amount of data recorded while comparing the lines and couplets that emerged from vocabulary collation, this analysis mainly focuses on significant patterns of common textual omissions and their related paraphrases throughout the poem.29 the current study evinces that despite some idiosyncrasies in the hitherto unsubclassified mv 48, it is possible to link this copy to one specific set of manuscripts within the larger group-iv family. the singularities of the tls1s2 subgroup are here illustrated by showing them side by side with mv 40 and mv 29. these two copies serve as examples of two of the larger sets of other group-iv manuscripts: the vernon-simeon manuscripts (vs), on the one hand, and the ‘northern subgroup’ (n) on the other. readings from mv 27 or mv 34—the base and supplementary text for morris’s edition (1863) and hanna & wood’s revision (2013)—are also provided as sample referents for group i and the wider context. dates and manuscript localizations have been updated from e-lalme (benskin, laing, karaiskos & williamson 2013), and line numbers correspond to hanna & wood (2013). 28 as observed by carrillo-linares, “recent research in phylogenetics and cladistics could probably provide the tools to carry out a more systematic classification of the copies of the poc. the task would require a team of specialised researchers in order to encode the transcriptions of all the manuscripts, discriminating and classifying all the possible variant types.” (2016: 81). see also robinson (2016). 29 other shared or unique variants and minor omissions not associated with text abridgement have also been recorded. for reasons of space, though, they will be reserved for future discussion. 122 edurne garrido anes 3. the manuscripts mv 21 is an early fifteenth-century manuscript written in northern middle english. it begins defectively at line 446 and presents an abridged and occasionally paraphrased version. mv 49* is a late fourteenth or early fifteenth-century conflated copy lacking a few leaves (lines 5,321–5,447 and 6,720–7,034). written in three different northern hands, it presents a group-i text to the beginning of book iv (line 2,850) and then becomes group iv. hanna & wood suggest that mv 49* must have drawn from at least “two different exemplars, put to use to allow simultaneous copying of the text by three hands” (2013: xxxiii). the late fifteenth-century mv 95—in the language of northwestern derbyshire—begins some illegible lines before 4,917 and ends prematurely at line 7,539 in a significantly damaged copy. lewis & mcintosh point out that mv 95 provides “little evidence to go on, but [is] probably group iv” and seems “more a revision with lines omitted than a paraphrase” (1982: 128). about mv 21, lewis & mcintosh highlight its “idiosyncratic readings” and its relationship with “mv 49* from line 2,850 on” and “to mv 95 in books vi–vii” (1982: 53). they do not relate mv 48 to any other manuscript and categorize it, in very general terms, as “group iv, though with a number of idiosyncratic readings” (1982: 82). this copy—with lines 5,868 to the end missing— dates from the late fourteenth century and was written in the language of south east norfolk. for reference to the broader tradition, readings from other late fourteenth-century manuscripts are also consistently given: mv 27 is the northern english manuscript used as the base text by morris (1863) and hanna & wood (2013); the also northern mv 34 supplements mv 27 in the transcription of some unexpected missing leaves containing lines 1,538–1,579 and 6,923–9,210. these two group-i witnesses “likely reproduced features from the same exemplar” (hanna & wood 2013: xxi). from group iv, mv 29 is localized to north lincolnshire. this ‘northern subgroup’ text begins at line 608 and ends at 9,138. it is related, in book v, to mv 40—the simeon manuscript—, which was written in the language of north worcestershire. mv 40 belongs to the ‘vernon-simeon’ subgroup, to which the ‘lichfield manuscripts’ and other group-iv texts are also related (lewis & mcintosh 1982: 61). from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 123 4. editorial policy the explanatory abbreviations and symbols below are used in tables 1–5 and in the manuscript quotations: 1. n stands for ‘northern subgroup’; vs is ‘vernon-simeon subgroup’, and ‘tls1s2’ is the new subgroup. the same letter indicates the same reading; a different letter is a variant reading; • next to a letter shows variation within that reading. 2. minor word order changes (‘sall euen be’ vs ‘euen sal be’), minor omissions or additions (i.e. of ‘and’), and lexical equivalents are not considered different readings unless they entail semantic or syntactically relevant implications. 3. n/a stands for ‘comparison non-applicable’ when the manuscript shows a group-i text in that part; ø = ‘lines missing’; oc = ‘omitted couplet’; ol = ‘omitted line’; pc = ‘paraphrased couplet’; pl = ‘paraphrased line’. 4. […] stands for ‘illegible’, ‘damaged’ or ‘blurred part’. 5. bold type is used for the manuscripts of the proposed subset. 6. underlining highlights their shared distinct variants within group iv. 7. in middle english quotations, italics are used to draw attention to the database vocabulary items and their different realizations. italics are also given in latin lines. capitalization means editorial expansion of manuscript abbreviations; 8. single straight marks ` ´ indicate scribal insertion. 9. square brackets […] stand for illegible, damaged or blurred part of the text or blurred manuscript. editorial reconstruction is only provided when the word is not entirely illegible or in case of an obvious spelling error. 10. for mv 27/34, the transcription is faithful to that in hanna and wood (2013); hanna and wood’s punctuation and capitalization are adopted for the rest of the manuscripts. 124 edurne garrido anes 5. analysis 5.1. initial collation an initial collation based on the item dole alone seems to corroborate and expand the extent of the relationship suggested by lewis & mcintosh (1982: 53). mv 21, mv 49*, mv 95, and—as here defended— mv 48 stand out in the whole manuscript tradition by sharing a consistent pattern of particular variant readings and line omissions within group iv. as table 1 shows below, conflation and manuscript damage frequently prevent simultaneous comparison of the four manuscripts. table 1. collation based on dole manuscripts (group-subgroup) lines (book) mv 27/34 (i) mv 29 (iv-n) mv 40 (iv-vs) mv 21 (iv tls1s2) mv 48 (ivtls1s2) mv 49* (i, iv tls1s2) mv 95 (iv tls1s2) 1,166– 1,167 (ii) a a a b oc n/a ø 1,840– 1,841 (iii) a b b oc oc n/a ø 2,922– 2,923 (iv) a a a b b b ø 3,218– 3,219 (iv) a b b a […] a ø 5,382– 5,383 (v) a b b c c• ø c from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 125 6,107– 6,108 (v) a a b a ø a a 6,709– 6,710 (vi) a a a• a ø a a 6,873– 6,874 (vi) a b b c ø ø b• 6,883– 6,884 (vi) a a a• a ø ø a 6,889– 6,890 (vi) a b b• c ø ø c• 7,328– 7,329 (vi) a b b c ø c c• although other witnesses of the work omit larger sections that include lines 1,166–1,167, mv 48 appears to be the only poc copy skipping this couplet alone (mv 27: “and alswa a dyme dulful dale / þat `es´ ful of sorow and bale”). at this point, mv 48 and mv 21 cannot be checked against mv 95, given that its first 4,916 lines are missing. mv 49* is a group-i text up to line 2,850 (see appendix: quote 1). within the known mv transmission of the poc, the omission of the couplet in lines 1,840– 1,841 is exclusively shared by mv 21 and mv 48 (mv 27: “a doleful partyng es þat to telle, / for `þai´ luf ay togyder to duelle”). whereas mv 49* still belongs to group i in this part, the folio that could have contained the couplet is currently lost in mv 95 (see quote 2). lines 2,922–2,923 are part of a leaf that mv 95 lacks (mv 27: “þat þe saul sal hafe wyth dole and care / until þe dome be gyfen, how he sal fare”). mv 21’s deviant reading in this couplet is also present in mv 48 and in mv 49*, which had turned a group-iv manuscript 72 lines before this one (see quote 3). as opposed to the reading shared by the other two group-iv manuscripts, mv 21 and mv 49* do retain the original one in lines 3,218–3,219 (mv 27: “grete dole þay mak somtyme and 126 edurne garrido anes sarowe, / for þai may nathyng begg ne borwe”). due to mv 95’s lost leaves, its relationship with mv 21 from books i to iv and with mv 49* in book iv cannot be described. unfortunately, this part is illegible in mv 48 (see quote 4). in lines 5,382–5,383, mv 21, mv 48, and mv 95 share a particular reading involving the group-iv omission of ‘and dole’, alongside the additional replacement of ‘aght’ with ‘shall’ (mv 27: “what dred and dole aght synful haf þan? / þarfor þos says þe haly man”). mv 49* lacks some leaves in this section. no other manuscript in the whole mv transmission seems to contain this exact reading except for mv 90, a group-i text dated to the early fifteenth century. ‘sent jerome’ is only mentioned in mv 48 (see quote 5). mv 21, mv 49*, and mv 95 agree again in lines 6,107–6,108. their readings and that of mv 27 (“þe day of crying and of duleful dyn, / ‘þe day of sorow þat never sal blyn”) are alike. mv 29 is similar, except for the lexical variant ‘murnynge’, a synonym for the original word. mv 40 reads ‘noyse’ instead of ‘cryynge’; its wording differs from the others in the last half of the couplet’s second line. this section of the work is missing in mv 48, which ended at line 5,868 (see quote 6). these manuscripts are virtually identical in lines 6,709–6,710 (mv 27: “þis es on inglys þus to rede, / þe dede þam sal dolefuly fede”), except for mv 40’s inclusion of a subject pronoun instead of the noun phrase ‘þe dede’. the five group-iv copies additionally share the slightly altered word order (see quote 7). mv 21 provides an idiosyncratic reading in the first half of the couplet in lines 6,873–6,874 (mv 27: “þai sal duleful crying and sorow here, / for saynt austyn says on þis manere”). unfortunately, this wording cannot be compared with the incomplete text of mv 48 or with mv 49*, which lacks three leaves in this section of book vi. thus, it is impossible to determine whether the deviating part in mv 21 is unique or could have been inherited from a shared exemplar with mv 48 and mv 49*. mv 95 is not related here, as it is more similar to mv 29 and mv 40 (see quote 8). in lines 6,883–6,884 (mv 27: “and þe sorow and dule þat þai sal make / sal nevermare þar cees ne slake”), all the readings are alike, except for the word ‘deuel’ in mv 40, which may from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 127 have resulted from misreading the source due to the similarities between the two words (see quote 9). mv 21 and mv 95 are more related to mv 29 than mv 40 in the first line of the couplet in 6,889–6,890 (mv 27: “and þat þat heryng haf of duleful dyn / to eke þair payn for þair sin”). however, the two former deviate from the rest of the manuscripts in their second line. on the one hand, mv 21 and mv 95 share their phrasing of the last part of line 6,890 – “neuer sall blyn”. on the other hand, mv 95 shows a unique reading in the first half: “that ey shall last” (see quote 10). mv 21, mv 49*, and mv 95 differ from mv 34, mv 29, and mv 40 in their almost identical deviant reading of the couplet in lines 7,328–7,329 (mv 34: “in helle salle be þan + dolefull dyn / omang þe synfull þat sall dwell þarein”). inherited or original eyeskip could have caused the omission of full in mv 95 (see quote 11). apart from the fact that mv 49* begins as a group-i text, the missing lines in mv 48, mv 49*, and mv 95 prevent comparison of the dole lines in the four manuscripts simultaneously. however, the collation in groups of two or three out of the four manuscripts suggests that despite some unparalleled readings in mv 21, mv 48, and mv 95, the four manuscripts tend to follow a similar deviating pattern from group i and the other group-iv subgroups. furthermore, mv 95 seems to also share group with the other copies in book v and not only in books vi and vii, as observed by lewis & mcintosh (1982: 128). nevertheless, a more exhaustive contrastive analysis of the four copies is necessary to refine the extent of their relationship and to confirm or discard the inclusion of mv 48 in the subgroup. 5.2. expanded collation following the preliminary approach, the collation of another 109 lexical items—available in the database for 54 of the poc manuscripts—eases the task of identifying potential points of agreement and divergence in the work’s transmission from beginning to end. after moving from the 128 edurne garrido anes word level of the database to that of the line, the couplet, and larger sections of the manuscripts themselves, the parts containing omissions that entail substantial abridgement are placed side-by-side in tables 2–5. as described below, those omissions often involve paraphrasing, which is sometimes used as an additional text reduction strategy. table 2 displays the entire sequence of omissions found from line 1 to 2,850. given that mv 49* is a group-i text in that part of the poem, this copy cannot be considered for the collation of books i, ii, and iii to a portion of book iv. mv 95 is also disregarded for the study of these lines, as it lacks the corresponding leaves. the comparison between mv 21 and mv 48 is generally possible along this section, even if mv 48 is frequently blurred. table 2. books i–book iv (lines 1–2,850) manuscripts (group-subgroup) lines (book) mv 27/34 (i) mv 29 (iv-n) mv 40 (iv-vs) mv 21 (iv tls1s2) mv 48 (ivtls1s2) mv 49* (i, iv tls1s2) mv 95 (iv tls1s2) 632– 633 (i) a a a• oc oc n/a ø 860– 863 (i) a a• b 1 oc + 1 pc 1 oc + 1 pc n/a ø 1,086– 1,091 (ii) a b• b 3 oc 3 oc n/a ø 1,094– 1,095 (ii) a b b• oc oc n/a ø from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 129 1,186– 1,087 (ii) a a a oc oc n/a ø 1,358– 1,361 (ii) a b b 2 oc 2 oc n/a ø 1,472– 1,475 (ii) a b b 2 oc 2 oc n/a ø 1,500– 1,503 (ii) a a b 2 oc 2 oc n/a ø 1,786– 1,789 (iii) a b b 1 oc + 1 pc 1 oc + 1 pc n/a ø 1,804– 1,807 (iii) a a a• 2 oc 2 oc n/a ø 1,808– 1,817 (iii) a b b• 3 pc + 2 oc 3 pc + 2 oc n/a ø 1,820– 1,821 (iii) a b b• oc oc n/a ø 1,844– 1,851 (iii) a a a 4 oc 4 oc n/a ø 1,938– 1,841 (iii) a 1 oc + 1 pc 1 oc + 1 pc 2 oc 2 oc n/a ø 1,974– 1,975 (iii) a a b oc oc n/a ø 130 edurne garrido anes 2,090– 2,099 (iii) a b oc (92–93) b• oc (92–93) 5 oc > 1 pc 5 oc > 1 pc n/a ø 2,206– 2,215 (iii) a a 2 oc (8– 11) > 1 pc+1 oc (14–15) a 2 oc (8– 11) > 1 pc+1 oc (14–15) 5 oc 5 oc n/a ø 2,292– 2,297 (iii) a a 2 oc (92–95) a• 2 oc (92–95) 2 oc + 1 pc 2 oc + 1 pc n/a ø 2,350– 2,351 (iii) a b c oc oc n/a ø 2,430– 2,435 (iii) a a 2 oc (30–33) a• 2 oc (30–33) 2 oc + 1 pc 2 oc + 1 pc n/a ø 2,440– 2,453 (iii) a b 1 oc (44–45) b 2 oc (44–45; 48–49) 5 oc + 2 pc 5 oc + 2 pc n/a ø 2,458– 2,467 (iii) a a• 2 oc (60–61; 66–67) a 2 oc (60–61; 66–67) 5 oc 5 oc n/a ø 2,722– 2,729 (iv) a b 2 oc (22–25) b 2 oc (22–25) b 2 oc (24–27) > 1 pc b• 2 oc (24– 27) > 1 pc n/a ø 2,746– 2,749 (iv) a b b 2 oc > 1 pc 2 oc > 1 pc n/a ø 2,836– 2,837 (iv) a b b 1 oc 1 oc n/a ø from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 131 in lines 860–863, both mv 21 and mv 48 share the omission of the first couplet (mv 27: “als wa say, nathyng es swa ugly / als here es a mans dede body. / and when it es in erth layd lawe, / wormes þan sal it al tognawe”), a lexically idiosyncratic line 862, and the same paraphrasis in line 863. notwithstanding their differing vocabulary variants—‘layer, loken’ vs ‘clay, closid’, which may have been dialectally conditioned— the relationship between the northern mv 21 and mv 48, from norfolk, is evident (see quote 12). another agreement between mv 21 and mv 48 is found in lines 1,786 to 1,789 (mv 27: “of þe dede here men may thynk wonder, / for alle thyng it brestes in sonder / als it sculkes by diverse ways. / þarfor þe haly man in boke þus says”). apart from their common omission of the first couplet, the two copies share the condensed reading by which 1,787 and 1,788 merge. both differ slightly from each other and the rest in their wordings of line 1,789. mv 21 bears some resemblance with mv 27/34, whereas mv 48 omits the reference to the ‘book’ in the manner of mv 29 and mv 40 (see quote 13). from line 1,808 to 1,817 (mv 27: “and als yhe … þat `þan´assayles”), mv 21 and mv 48 present a matching paraphrasis of the first three couplets while excluding the fourth and fifth ones (see quote 14). from 2,090–2,099, whereas mv 29 and mv 40 differ from the group-i version by only omitting lines 2,092 and 2,093, mv 21 and mv 48 display the same significant reduction of the whole section into a single couplet (mv 27: “god visites us … many a dede-thraw”, see quote 15). similarly to mv 29 and mv 40, mv 21 and mv 48 omit the first four lines in 2,292–2,297 (mv 27: “and yhit sen … þai sal apere”). however, they both deviate further from the original and the other group-iv reading by sharing an identical paraphrasis of the last couplet (see quote 16). mv 21 and mv 48 differ from mv 29 and mv 40 in their wording of the only couplet that the group-iv copies preserve from line 2,430 to 2,435 (mv 27: “how þow has … þi tym wrang”). however, judging from the only two neat words in this section in mv 48, its paraphrasis does not seem identical to that in mv 21 (see quote 17). the group-iv manuscripts mv 29 and mv 40 omit the third couplet in the lines 132 edurne garrido anes running from 2,440 to 2,453 (mv 27: “bot when thou ... syns and fele”). mv 40 additionally skips the fifth one. in turn, mv 21 and mv 48 exclude a more significant portion of the text, as they both leave out the first five couplets while offering a paraphrasis of the last two. it is also apparent that mv 21 and mv 48 are alike, even though the latter’s lines are blurry (see quote 18). mv 29 and mv 40 share the omission of the first two couplets in lines 2,722–2,729 (mv 27: “wharfor þe payn … payns of purgatory”). by contrast, mv 21 and mv 48 retain the first two lines but condense the second and third couplets into just one (see quote 19). in lines 2,746– 2,749, whereas mv 29 and mv 40 preserve the original first couplet and share a different reading of the second one (mv 27: “bot in purgatori saules dueles stille / until þai be clensed of alle ille, / and mare payn fele, als i understande, / þan ever feled man here lyfande”), mv 21 and 48 encapsulate the four lines into the same single couplet (see quote 20). from book i to part of book iv, mv 21 and mv 48 present an identical pattern of couplet omission and offer a more abbreviated recension than the northern and vernon-simeon group-iv counterparts. additionally, their idiosyncratic readings often appear to be the same. such systematic coincidences cannot be attributed to mere chance and must have been inherited from a shared exemplar. interestingly, their unshared peculiar readings tend to occur in precisely the same contexts. table 3 exhibits the data extracted from the rest of book iv up to a portion of book v, namely from line 2,850 to 4,911. although mv 95 still lacks this section, mv 49* is now available for comparison, as it had turned a group-iv text in line 2,850. table 3. books iv-v (lines 2850–4,911) manuscripts (group-subgroup) from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 133 lines (book) mv 27/34 (i) mv 29 (iv-n) mv 40 (iv-vs) mv 21 (iv tls1s2) mv 48 (iv-tls1s2 ) mv 49* (i, iv tls1s2) mv 95 (iv tls1s2) 2,878– 2,879 (iv) a a a oc oc oc ø 2,898– 2,899 (iv) a a a oc oc oc ø 2,902– 2,903 (iv) a a a oc oc oc ø 2,910– 2,917 (iv) a b 3 oc (10– 13, 16–17) b 3 oc (10– 13, 16–17) 4 oc 4 oc 4 oc ø 2,920– 2,921 (iv) a b b oc oc oc ø 3,026– 2,943 (iv) a a b 9 oc 9 oc 9 oc ø 3,080– 2,087 (iv) a b b 4 oc 4 oc 4 oc ø 3,222– 3,223 (iv) a a a oc oc oc ø 3,258– 3,263 (iv) a a 2 oc (60– 63) a 2 oc (60– 63) 3 oc > 1 pc 3 oc > 1 pc 3 oc > 1 pc ø 3,276– 3,285 (iv) a b 3 oc (78– 83) b 3 oc (78– 83) 5 oc 5 oc 5 oc ø 3,500– 3,505 (iv) a b b 1 pc + 2 oc 1 pc + 2 oc 1 pc + 2 oc ø 3,648– 3,649 (iv) a oc oc oc oc oc ø 134 edurne garrido anes 3,674– 3,677 (iv) a 2 oc 2 oc 2 oc 2 oc 2 oc ø 3,736– 3,739 (iv) a a a 2 oc 2 oc 2 oc ø 3,746– 3,761 (iv) a a 1 oc (60– 61) a 1 oc (60– 61) 8 oc 8 oc 8 oc ø 3,768– 3,769 (iv) a b a oc oc oc ø 3,908– 3,925 (iv) a a 1 oc (24– 25) a 1 oc (24– 25) 2 oc > 1 pc + 7 oc 2 oc > 1 pc + 7 oc 2 oc > 1 pc + 7 oc ø 4,008– 4,011 (v) a ø a 1 oc + 1 pc 1 oc + 1 pc 1 oc + 1 pc ø 4,027– 4,030 (v) a ø b 2 oc 2 oc 2 oc ø 4,387– 4,388 (v) a a a oc oc oc ø 4,476– 4,477 (v) a a a 2 ol 2 ol ø ø 4,891– 4,892 (v) a a a oc oc oc ø 4,899– 4,912 (v) a a 2 oc (907– 910) a 2 oc (907– 910) 6 oc + 1 pc 6 oc + 1 pc 6 oc + 1 pc ø from line 3,258 to 3,263, mv 29 and mv 40 omit the last two couplets (mv 27: “and with stormes … god may wyn”). in mv 21, mv 48, and mv 49*, however, an identical paraphrasis appears in place of the three original couplets (see quote 21). agreement between mv 21, mv 48, and mv 49* is observed again from line 3,500 to 3,505, where the three from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 135 copies share their deviant reading. not only do they provide the same paraphrasis of the first couplet, but they also coincide in the omission of the other two (mv 27: “þe whilk most … les and mare”, see quote 22). in lines 3,908–3,925 (mv 27: “a party for penance … to pay þarfor”), mv 29 and mv 40 lack only the last couplet. by contrast, mv 21, mv 48, and mv 49* leave out the first two and show a single paraphrased couplet instead. the three manuscripts omit the remaining lines in this section (see quote 23). mv 29 lacks the leaf containing lines 4,008–4,011 (mv 27: “wharfor we shuld make us redy here, / als þe day of dome war command nere / crist disciples, þat yherned haf knawyng / of sum takens agayns his last commyng”) and mv 40 presents some lexical variation. in turn, mv 21, mv 48, and mv 49* omit the first couplet and agree on the paraphrasis of the second one (see quote 24). from line 4,899 to 4,912 (mv 27: “and als god … byfor cristes commyng”), mv 29 and mv 40 skip only two couplets. mv 21, mv 48, and mv 49* share a more shortened rendering, as they omit six out of the seven. these three copies retain the last couplet, whose first deviant line is unsurprisingly common to the whole subset (see quote 25). in the juxtaposed parts of book iv and book v above, line omissions and associated paraphrases reveal a repeated distribution pattern that supports the connection between mv 21 and mv 48 and shows explicit parallelism with mv 49* with which they must have shared a previous exemplar. common deviation from the archetypal group-iv predecessor from which they inherit some but not all their abridgements is also quite apparent. table 4 below presents the handful of lines where the four manuscripts under study can be simultaneously compared, although mv 49* lacks one leaf. in some parts of book v (see 5,001–5,002, 5,048– 5,053, 5,199–5,200, 5,341–5,350 and 5,484–5,487), mv 95 tends to present a less abridged version than mv 21, mv 48, and mv 49*, which suggests that it must have drawn from a somewhat less concise exemplar than the one shared by mv 21, mv 48, and mv 49*. 136 edurne garrido anes table 4. book v (lines 5,048–5,539) manuscripts (group-subgroup) lines (book) mv 27/34 (i) mv 29 (iv-n) mv 40 (ivvs) mv 21 (iv-tlss) mv 48 (iv-tlss) mv 49* (iv-tlss) mv 95 (iv-tlss) 5,001–5,002 (v) a b b 1 oc 1 oc 1 oc b• 5,048–5,053 (v) a b b 3 oc 3 oc 3 oc b• 5,199–5,200 (v) a a a oc oc oc a 5,311–5,312 (v) a oc oc oc oc oc oc 5,341–5,350 (v) a b b• 5 oc 5 oc ø [321– 447] 3 oc (343– 346; 349– 350) 5,368–5,369 (v) a a a oc oc ø [321– 447] oc 5,484–5,487 (v) a a a• 2 oc 2 oc 2 oc a 5,518–5,543 (v) a a a• 2 oc (536– 539) 2 oc (536– 539) 2 oc (536– 539) 13 oc in lines 5,341–5,350 (mv 27: “a, how mikel … never here blyn”), mv 95 leaves out three—instead of five—couplets and represents an intermediate reading between mv 29 and mv 40 on the one hand and mv 21 and mv 48 on the other hand (see quote 26). in lines running from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 137 from 5,518 through to 5,543, mv 95 is the only manuscript with such an extensive omission of 13 couplets, probably due to eyeskip. however, starting a few lines below (from 5,368 to 5,369), textual associations can be established between mv 95, mv 21, mv 48, and mv 49*. identical or related distinct readings were also registered for lines 5,382–5,383 in the collation of dole (see table 1). in table 5, mv 48 is discarded from the comparison, as its poc ends at line 5,868. contrastingly, mv 49* is generally undamaged from the last part of book v to the end of this section, except for three missing leaves. while mv 21, mv 49*, and mv 95 agree on most omissions and nearby paraphrases in this part, mv 95 also shows a few extra omissions. additional eyeskip, but also further intentional text suppression, may have led to occasional dissimilarity. table 5. books v–vi (lines 6,075–7,471) manuscripts (group-subgroup) lines (book) mv 27/34 (i) mv 29 (iv-n) mv 40 (ivvs) mv 21 (iv-tlss) mv 48 (ivtlss) mv 49* (iv-tlss) mv 95 (iv-tlss) 6,075– 6,076 (v) a a a• oc ø oc oc 6,117– 6,120 (v) a b b• 1 oc + 1 lo (120) ø 1 oc + 1 lo (120) 1 oc + 1 lo (120) 6,121– 6,124 (v) a 2 oc 2 oc 2 oc > 1 pl ø 2 oc > 1 pl 2 oc > 1 pl 6,303– 6,308 (v) a a• a• 2 oc > 4 misplaced lines ø 2 oc > 4 misplaced lines 2 oc > 4 misplaced lines 6,309– 6,322 (v) a a• 1 oc (319– 320) a• 1 oc (319– 320) 6 oc +1 oc > 1 pl ø 6 oc +1 oc > 1 pl 6 oc +1 oc > 1 pl 138 edurne garrido anes 6,323– 6,328 (v) a b 2 oc (325– 328) b 2 oc (325– 328) 1 pc+311– 318 misplaced + 2 oc (325– 328) ø 1 pc+311– 318 misplaced + 2 oc (325– 328) 1 pc+311– 318 misplaced + 2 oc (325– 328) 6,367– 6,368 (v) a a a 1 oc ø 1 oc 1 oc 6,389– 6,396 (v) a b 1 oc (395– 396) b• 1 oc (395– 396) 2oc > 1pc +2 oc ø 2oc > 1pc +2 oc 2oc > 1pc +2 oc 6,425– 6,436 (vi) a b b• 2 oc + 1 pc + 1 oc+ 1 pc + 1 oc ø 2 oc + 1 pc + 1 oc+ 1 pc + 1 oc 2 oc + 1 pc + 1 oc+ 1 pc + 1 oc 6,495– 6.496 (vi) a a a 1 oc ø 1 oc 1 oc 6,543– 6,546 (vi) a b b a ø a 2 oc 6,583– 6,584 (vi) a b b 1 oc ø 1 oc 1 oc 6,733– 6,736 (vi) a b b a• (733– 734) +pc (735/36) ø lm [6,716– 7,030] a (733) +pl+1 oc 7,271– 7,291 (vi) a b 1 oc (280– 281) b• 1 oc (280– 281) 2 pc (271– 274) +4 oc (276–283) + b (284– 291) ø 6 oc (271– 283) + b (284– 291) 10 oc (271–291) 7,312– 7,323 (vi) a a 1 oc (312– 313) a• 1 oc (312– 313) 3 oc+ b + 1 oc + 1 pc ø 3 oc + b + 1 oc + 1 pc 5 oc +1 pc 7,324– 7,327 (vi) a a• 1 oc (24–25) a• 1 oc (24– 25) 2 oc > 1 pc ø 2 oc > 1 pc 2 oc > 1 pc from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 139 7,334– 7,335 (vi) a b c 1 oc ø 1 oc 1 oc 7,346– 7,349 (vi) a 2 oc 2 oc 2 oc ø 2 oc 2 oc 7,354– 7,359 (vi) a 3 oc 3 oc 3 oc ø 3 oc 3 oc 7,360– 7,365 (vi) a b b a• ø a• 3 oc 7,378– 7,387 (vi) a a• 2 oc (378– 381) a• 2 oc (378– 381) 1 pl (379) + 4 oc (380–387) ø 1 pl (379) + 4 oc (380–387) 1 pl (379) + 4 oc (380–387) 7,396– 7,401 (vi) a b b• 1 oc + 1 pc+ 1 oc ø 2 pc + 1 oc 1 pc + 2 oc 7,460– 7,471 (vi) a b 3 oc (466– 71) b• 3 oc (466– 71) 6 oc ø 6 oc 6 oc 7,472– 7,491 (vi) a b b• 5 oc (482–491) ø 5 oc (482–491) 10 oc 7,494– 7,505 (vi) a b b• 6 oc ø 6 oc 6 oc 7,524– 7,527 (vi) a b b b• ø b• 2 oc mv 29 and mv 40 omit the two couplets in 6,121–6,124 (mv 27: “bathe gude and ille, mare and lesse; / þan sal noght be done bot rightwysnes. / he sal deme al men of ilka degre / til ioy or payne þat demed sal be”). mv 21, mv 49*, and mv 95 provide, instead, a single line where 6,118 and 6,124 merge, thus resolving the loose line—6,119—that had resulted from the omission of 6,120 (see quote 27). from 6,303 to 6,308 (mv 27: “here may ilk man … fer and nere”), mv 21, mv 49*, and mv 95 display the same distinctive line disposition. in the first place, the 140 edurne garrido anes three copies lack the first two couplets. then, the similarity of lines 6,307 and 6,319—with the words ‘mekill’ and ‘mercy’ in both—must have caused eyeskip in an ancestor common to mv 95 and the exemplar of mv 21, mv 48, and mv 49*. this unintentional movement led to the subsequently shared misplacement of 6,319 and 6,321— merged—followed by 6,322, 6,323, and 6,324 (see quote 28). in the section covering lines 6,309–6,322 (mv 27: “þat alle þe syn … many syns sere”), both mv 29 and mv 40 omit the sixth couplet, whereas mv 21, mv 49* and mv 95 leave out 12 lines. the fact that they also replace the last couplet with a single line suggests that the four manuscripts must have inherited this reading from a shared predecessor (see quote 29). mv 21, mv 49*, and mv 95 coincide with mv 29 and mv 40 in the omission of the last two couplets in lines 6,323–6,328 (mv 27: “als al þe men … þair syn pas”). however, the three manuscripts deviate, once more, from their other two group-iv counterparts. sharing the misplacement of lines 6,311–6,318 right after 6,324 implies that this variant reading was also taken over from a common source (see quote 30). by the end of book v (lines 6,389– 6,396), mv 29 and mv 40 omit the last couplet (mv 27: “ne nathyng sal … sal be oboute”). by contrast, mv 21, mv 49*, and mv 95 merge the first two couplets into an identical paraphrasis while omitting the rest (see quote 31). from line 6,425 to 6,436 (mv 27: “for þe mynde … þat er þare”), the pattern of couplet omission and paraphrasis is recurrent in mv 21, mv 49*, and mv 95. the three copies must have carried it over, from a shared antecedent: the omission of the first two couplets is followed by an identical paraphrasis of the third one, the skipping of the fourth, the paraphrasis of the fifth, and the omission of the last one (see quote 32). however, whereas mv 95 leaves out lines 6,543–6,546 (mv 27: “and yhit many other þat war dede / has bene sumtyme at þat stede /and sene þar many hydus payne / and thurgh miracle turned til lyf agayne”), mv 21 and mv 49* do not. these types of omissions in mv 95 could be compatible with either eyeskip or scribal wish for further condensation. from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 141 they may have first occurred in mv 95 or some unshared source (see quote 33). the leaf where lines 6,733 to 6,736 should have appeared in mv 49* is missing. mv 21 and mv 95 are not only alike in the first half of line 6,733 but also more similar to mv 27 (“bot þe flaume of fire þai sal drynk, / menged with brunstan þat foul sal stynk / and with smoke of fyre and wyndes blast / and with other stormes þat ay sal last”) than to mv 29 and mv 40. in the second half of the line, however, mv 21 and mv 95 differ. mv 95’s paraphrasis offers a peculiar reading, with ‘carion’ (‘corpse’) replacing ‘bronstane’ (‘sulphur’). this unique change may have been original in mv 95 or copied from a non-shared— unidentified or lost—source. the second couplet, paraphrased in mv 21, is omitted in mv 95 (see quote 34). unlike in the first part of book v, mv 95 is now prone to provide a more abridged text than mv 21 and mv 49*. significant condensation occurs in mv 95’s omission of the 10 couplets—plus the latin line—from 7,271 to 7,291. the groupiv copies mv 29 and mv 40 leave out only one couplet, whereas mv 21 and mv 49* omit four (mv 34: “bot þe synfull … hope of mercy”, see quote 35). although text reduction is more extensive in mv 95 from 7,312– 7,323 (mv 34: “þat the synfull ... trey and tene), the similar paraphrasis of line 7,323 in mv 21, mv 49*, and mv 95 evinces textual connections (see quote 36). later on, whereas mv 29 and mv 40 omit the first couplet in lines 7,324–7,327 (mv 34: “þare sall be wantyng of al[le] thyng / in whilk moght be any lykyng / and defaut of all thyng þat gud moght be / and of all þat ill es gret plente”), mv 21, mv 49*, and mv 95 show a closer textual relationship by condensing the two couplets into a similar paraphrased one (see quote 37). in lines 7,378–7,387 (mv 34: “bot þareto sall þai … fra þam oway”). mv 29 and mv 40 omit the first two couplets, whereas mv 21, mv 49*, and mv 95 retain line 7,378, offer a shared variant reading in line 7,379, and do not include the remaining four couplets (see quote 38). additional text reductions not shared with mv 21 and mv 49 occur in mv 95. that is the case of the three omitted couplets from 7,360 to 7,365 (see table 5) and the 142 edurne garrido anes various degrees of text abridgement from 7,396 to 7,401 (mv 34: “and þe tyme ... sall say þus”, see quote 39). in the remaining part of book vi, although mv 21, mv 49*, and mv 95 are still related in their omission of the five couplets from line 7,482 to 7,491 and six other couplets from 7,494 to 7,505. however, mv 95 skips ten additional lines starting in 7,471 and two couplets from 7,524–7,527. book vii (7,528–end). the poc in mv 95 shows a tendency to further condensation as the text progresses and ends abruptly at line 7,539, soon after the beginning of book vii. the relationship between mv 21 and mv 49* continues till the end of their texts. mv 49* finishes at around line 9,217 and mv 21 at 9,471. in this last section, both copies still share most of their couplet omissions, although they occasionally differ in the lines they leave out, probably due to eyeskip. mv 21 is the only one omitting 8,064–8,065; 8,356–8,357; 8,452–8,455; 8,470–8,471; 8,580–8,587; and 8,610–8,631. in turn, mv 49* lacks the folio containing lines 8,418–8,499 and omits 8,580–8,583, 8,608–8,619 and 8,622–8,631. 6. concluding remarks the research here presented builds on carrillo-linares & garrido-anes (2008, 2009). the methodology initially devised for studying the middle english lexicon also proved to have stemmatological applications (carrillo-linares 2016). these can benefit from combining both the practical search options and rapid result-yielding returned by a database with the much slower—but always essential—philological reanalysis of the primary sources. in the attempt to establish manuscript connections, robinson defends the use of database analysis to investigate the distributions of variants across the whole manuscript tradition of a given work. however, he claims that if the data are not carefully scrutinized and the software is “left to itself”, many of the resulting automated associations are unlikely to be accurate (2013: 12–13). thus, bordalejo & robinson (2018:37–38) warn from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 143 about the dangers of sampling and advocate for the most complete study possible of the selected manuscripts. the current paper began with a modest initial collation of one lexical item in all the available extant mv copies of the poc. this first approach was then complemented with the analysis of a previously built database, which led to the retrieval of counterpart vocabulary realizations in multiple manuscripts. lexical comparison throughout the almost 10,000 lines of the poem in as many witnesses as possible allowed to put together a massive amount of parallel data effectively. this process served to identify repeated patterns of divergence across a significant number of copies from the beginning to the end of their texts. the occurrences, variants, and omissions of dole in 11 couplets of the 97 manuscripts brought to light a few distinct lines, suggesting closer ties between a specific set of copies within the group-iv family. lewis & mcintosh (1982) pointed to—but did not develop—a near relationship between mv 21 and mv 49* and between these two and mv 95 in books vi and vii. in the initial dole collation, mv 48— unsubclassified within group iv—appeared to stand out as well together with the other three manuscripts. for further evidence, the next step involved collating another 109 items in the 54 manuscripts of the poc included in the lexical database. once the parallel occurrences, omissions, and paraphrases were retrieved for a total of 110 vocabulary items—including dole—mv 21, mv 49*, and mv 95 stood out once more, and so did mv 48. nevertheless, it is well known that shared variants of lexical items may also be purely coincidental in otherwise unrelated copies. similarly, non-shared vocabulary variants or different word omissions do not always entail the absence of a close textual relationship, for this may have been disguised by dialectal or stylistically conditioned lexical replacements, by the intentional dropping of words, or accidental eyeskip. thus, vocabulary collation was used as the basis for a broader purpose, namely the subsequent detection and alignment of larger parallel segments of the texts that would provide a more global picture 144 edurne garrido anes of systematic agreement and repeated divergent readings. by shifting the analysis from the database back to the manuscripts, the immediate and adjacent contexts of the lexical items retrieved were analysed. as a result, the scope of the study widened from the word level to that of the line, the couplet, and more extensive sections from the beginning to the end of the poem. mv 21, mv 48, mv 49*, and mv 95 unveiled an extraordinary amount of consistent patterns of shared omissions and common variant readings, as opposed to group-i mv 27/34 and the other group-iv copies, mv 29 and mv 40. for reasons of space, the focus was solely laid here on text abridgement. side-by-side comparison of line, couplet, and more extensive text omissions with or without accompanying paraphrases helped to confirm the close connections between mv 21, mv 49*, and mv 95 not only in books vi and vii—as previously thought—but also from around line 5,368 in book v. furthermore, the hitherto unsubclassified mv 48 emerged as an undoubted member of the subgroup. the idiosyncrasies that seemingly defined mv 21 and mv 48 individually happened to be commonly shared by these two manuscripts. as a general rule, both tend to omit the same couplets, and they also provide, systematically, the same or very similar distinctive readings and condensing paraphrases. despite being an earlier manuscript, mv 48 is at times ‘more advanced’ than mv 21 and mv 49*, in the sense that it contains one exclusive omission alongside several peculiar—though still related—readings, together with additional lexical variants, probably aiming to accommodate the language to the scribe’s linguistic repertoire and a likely non-northern audience. by the end of their texts, mv 21 and mv 49* differ more often than in earlier sections in several couplet omissions, but these are still compatible with scribal eyeskip or even with an individual wish for further abridgement in the final sections. in lines 7,396–7,401, mv 49* exceptionally shows a smaller text reduction than mv 21, and it also differs from mv 95, whose abridgement does not match either of the former. the scribe of mv 49* from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 145 could have supplemented some of those lines with another exemplar at hand. the fact that the readings in the other two copies are somewhat divergent may also suggest that their common exemplar could have been illegible in that part. the three different scribes (or those of their sources) appear to have attempted to deal with a difficult-to-decipher section by means of omissions, paraphrasing with individual strategies, or using additional sources. when readings differ in otherwise almost identical manuscripts, a damaged or unclear exemplar containing challenging-to-read parts may have forced their scribes to either skip the passage or to add readings of their own or to copy from additional sources, thereby yielding different results. despite occasional independent initiative or individual eyeskip leading to exceptional dissimilarities, most coincidental deviant readings between mv 21, mv 48 and mv 49* (from line 2,850 onwards) are very unlikely to have resulted by chance. they must have been inherited from a not-very-far-removed exemplar shared by the three copies. this exemplar could be traced back to a less abbreviated ancestor, from which mv 95—or its source—must have also descended. from its beginning at around line 4,917 to about line 6,874, mv 95 seems to offer an intermediate version between mv 29 and mv 40 on the one hand and mv 21, mv 48, and mv 49* on the other. mv 95 shows less condensation than the other three in that part, as it preserves some of the group-iv lines also present in mv 29 and mv 40 that were nonetheless omitted in the other three copies. by the end of its poc text, however, the additional abridgement in mv 95 not common to the other three copies must have been original or carried over from a non-shared source. as carrillo-linares remarked: “the textual complexity of the poem makes it extremely difficult to establish a complete stemma involving all the surviving copies without having computerised assistance of a very specific kind” (2016: 81). the present study contributes to the general picture of the poc by refining some of the manuscript relations within group iv. it may not offer the exact position of each manuscript in the tradition, but it certainly discovers connections never considered 146 edurne garrido anes before. figure 1 below shows a rough presentation of the findings discussed above. the group-iv manuscripts not yet thoroughly examined have been left out of the chart. further research into these and other copies will continue to enhance our knowledge of the work’s transmission. figure 1. manuscript relations within group iv middle english works that survive in a large number of witnesses constitute a vast and complex field of study. they require long years of data collection and analysis, and researchers frequently need to work on segmented approaches that progressively reduce the original massive puzzle into more manageable ones. current studies on the poc undoubtedly owe to invaluable previous research. however, further scholarly work is still needed for a more accurate insight into the work’s versions, groups, subgroups, and numerous individual manuscripts. additional collaborations and funding for further implementing phylogenetics and computational advances into manuscript research would also be desirable to supplement and optimize—though never to replace—philological work. references manuscript sources edurne garrido anes, selim27 (2022): 114–165. issn 1132-631x / issn-l 2792-3878 / https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.27.2022.1-114-165 mv 1: aberystwyth, national library of wales, porkington 20 mv 2: arundel castle, sussex, library of his grace the duke of norfolk, e. m. **mv 3: beeleigh abbey, maldon, essex, foyle ms mv 4 (db): brussels, bibliotèque royal albert i, iv 998 mv 5: cambridge, fitzwilliam museum, mcclean 131 mv 6 (db): cambridge, gonville and caius college, 386 mv 7 (db): cambridge, magdalene college, f.4.18 (18) mv 8 (db): cambridge, st. john’s college, 80 (d.5) mv 9 (db): cambridge, st. john’s college, 137 (e.34) mv 10 (db): cambridge, university library, dd.11.89 mv 11: cambridge, university library, dd.12.69 mv 12 (db): cambridge, university library, ll.2.17 mv 13: cambridge, university library, additional 6693 mv 14: cambridge, massachusetts, harvard university library, english 515 mv 15 (db): canterbury cathedral, lit. d. 13 (66) mv 16 (db): charlottesville, virginia, university of virginia library, hench 10 mv 17: chicago, illinois, newberry library, 32.9 mv 18 (db): chicago, illinois, newberry library, 33 (c. 19169) mv 19 (db): douai abbey, woolhampton, berkshire, 7 mv 20: dublin, trinity college, 156 (d.4.8) mv 21 (db): dublin, trinity college, 157 (d.4.11) mv 22 (db): dublin, trinity college, 158 (d.4.15) mv 23: holkham hall, wells, norfolk, library of the earl of leicester, 668 mv 24 (db): leeds, university library, brotherton 500 mv 25: leeds, university library, brotherton 501 mv 26: london, british library, arundel 140 mv 27 (db) london, british library, cotton galba e. ix mv 28 (db): london, british library, cotton appendix vii mv 29 (db): london, british library, egerton 657 mv 30: london, british library, egerton 3245 mv 31 (db): london, british library, harley 1205 mv 32: london, british library, harley 2377 mv 33 (db): london, british library, harley 2394 mv 34 london british library, harley 4196 mv 35 (db): london, british library, harley 6923 mv 36 (db): mv 40 london, british library, additional 22283 mv 37: london, british library, sloane 1044, item 235 148 edurne garrido anes mv 38: london, british library, sloane 2275 mv 39: london, british library, additional 11304 mv 40: london, british library, additional 22283 mv 41 (db): london, british library, additional 24203 mv 42 (db): london, british library, additional 25013 mv 43 (db): london, british library, additional 32578 mv 44 (db): london, british library, additional 33995 mv 45: london, college of arms, lvii mv 46: london, lambeth palace, 260 mv 47 (db): london, lambeth palace, 491 mv 48 (db): london, lambeth palace, 492 mv 49 (db): london, sion college, arc. l. 40. 2/e. 25 **mv 50: london, society of antiquaries, 288 mv 51: london, society of antiquaries, 687 mv 52 (db): london, longleat, wiltshire, library of the marquis of bath, 31 mv 53 (db): manchester, chetham’s library, mun. a.4.103 (8008) mv 54: manchester, john rylands university library, english 50 mv 55: manchester, john rylands university library, english 51 mv 56: manchester, john rylands university library, english 90 mv 57: new haven, yale university library, osborn a 13 mv 58 (db): new york, pierpont morgan library, bühler 13 mv 59 (db): oxford, bodleian library, ashmole 41 mv 60 (db): oxford, bodleian library, ashmole 52 mv 61 (db): oxford, bodleian library, ashmole 60 mv 62 (db): oxford, bodleian library, bodley 99 mv 63 (db): oxford, bodleian library, digby 14 mv 64 (db): oxford, bodleian library, digby 87 mv 65: oxford, bodleian library, digby 99 mv 66 (db): oxford, bodleian library, douce 126 mv 67: oxford, bodleian library, douce 141 mv 68: oxford, bodleian library, douce 156 mv 69: oxford, bodleian library, douce 157 mv 70 (db): oxford, bodleian library, english poetry a. 1 mv 71 (db): oxford, bodleian library, junius 56 mv 72 (db): oxford, bodleian library, laud miscellaneous 486 mv 73: oxford, bodleian library, e musaeo 76 mv 74: oxford, bodleian library, e musaeo 88 mv 75: oxford, bodleian library, rawlinson a.366 from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 149 mv 76 (db): oxford, bodleian library, rawlinson c.35 mv 77 (db): oxford, bodleian library, rawlinson c.319 mv 78: oxford, bodleian library, rawlinson c.891 mv 79 & mv 80: oxford, bodleian library, rawlinson d.913 mv 81: oxford, bodleian library, rawlinson poetry 138 mv 82 (db): oxford, bodleian library, rawlinson poetry 139 mv 83: oxford, bodleian library, rawlinson poetry 175 mv 84: oxford, bodleian library, selden supra 102 mv 85 (db): oxford, st. john’s college, 57 mv 86 (db): oxford, st. john’s college, 138 mv 87 (db): oxford, trinity college, 15 (e. 15) mv 88 (db): oxford, trinity college, 16a (d. 16a) mv 89 (db): oxford, trinity college, 16b (d. 16b) mv 90 (db): oxford, university college, 142 (d. 142) mv 91: philadelphia, pennsylvania, university of pennsylvania library, english 1 mv 92 (db): philadelphia, pennsylvania, university of pennsylvania library, english 8 **mv 93: princeton, new jersey, princeton university library, taylor ms mv 94 (db): san marino, california, huntington library, hm 139 mv 95 (db): shrewsbury, school, iii (mus. iii. 39) mv 96: wellesley, massachusetts, wellesley college library, 8 mv 97: harfield house, hertfordshire, library of the marquis of salisbury, deeds 59/1, covers secondary sources andreae, p. 1888: die handschriften des pricke of conscience von richard rolle de hampole im britischen museum. berlin: g. bernstein. benskin, m., laing, m. karaiskos, v. & williamson, k. 2013: an electronic version of a linguistic atlas of late mediaeval english. edinburgh. the university of edinburgh. [http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/elalme/elalme.html] bordalejo, b. & robinson, p. m. w. 2018: manuscripts with few significant introduced variants. ecdotica 1: 37–65. 150 edurne garrido anes britton, d. 1979: unnoticed fragments of the prick of conscience. neuphilologische mitteilungen 80: 327–334. bülbring, k. d. 1891a: on twenty-five mss. of richard rolle’s pricke of conscience, eighteen of them in the british museum, four in the library of trinity college, dublin, the corser ms., and two in lichfield cathedral library. transactions of the philological society 1888–1890: 261–283. bülbring, k. d. 1891b: über die handschrift nr. 491 der lambethbibliothek. archiv für das studium der neueren sprachen und litteraturen 86: 383–392. bülbring, k. d. 1897: zu den handschriften von richard rolle’s prick of conscience. englische studien 23: 1–30. carrillo-linares, m. j. 2016: middle english word geography and stemmatological research: a case study in the prick of conscience textual tradition. neuphilologische mitteilungen 117.1: 79–108. carrillo-linares, m. j. & garrido-anes, e. 2008: middle english word geography: methodology and applications illustrated. in m. dossena, r. dury & m. gotti eds., english historical linguistics 2006. geo-historical variation in english. in current issues in linguistic theory 297(3). amsterdam / philadelphia, john benjamins: 67–89. carrillo-linares, m. j. & garrido-anes, e. 2009: middle english word geography: external sources for investigating the field. in m. dossena & r. lass eds. studies in english and european historical dialectology. bern, peter lang: 135–156. carrillo-linares, m. j. & garrido-anes, e. 2012: lexical variation in late middle english: selection and deselection. in r. dance & l. wright eds. the use and development of middle english. in m. bator & j. fisiak eds. studies in english medieval language and literature 38. frankfurt am main, berlin, bern, bruxelles, new york, oxford, wien, peter lang: 145–177. d’evelyn, c. 1930: an east midland recension of the pricke of conscience. pmla 45, 180–200. garrido-anes, e. 2019: variation in word choice in the textual transmission of middle english works: the case of ‘dole’. in m. from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 151 stenroos, m. mäkinen, k. v. thengs & o. m. traxel eds. current explorations in middle english. in m. bator & j. fisiak. studies in english medieval language and literature 56. berlin, bern, bruxelles, new york, oxford, warszawa, wien, peter lang: 83–110. garrido-anes, e. 2022: a lexical comparison of four prick of conscience group-iv manuscripts. neuphilologische mitteilungen 123.1: 79–108. hanna, r. & wood, s. 2013: richard morris’s prick of conscience. a corrected and amplified reading text. oxford: oxford university press (eets). humphreys, k. w & lightbown, j. 1952: two manuscripts of the pricke of conscience in the brotherton collection, university of leeds. leeds studies in english and kindred languages 7-8: 29–38. lewis, r. e. & macintosh, a. 1982: a descriptive guide to the manuscripts of the prick of conscience. medium ævum monographs. new series xii. oxford: the society for the study of mediæval languages and literature. mcintosh, a. 1973: word geography in the lexicography of medieval english. annals of the new york academy of sciences 211: 55–66. mcintosh, a. 1976 (1989): two unnoticed interpolations in four manuscripts of the prick of conscience. neuphilologische mitteilungen 77: 63–78; repr. in m. laing ed. middle english dialectology: essays on some principles and problems. aberdeen, aberdeen university press: 123–135. morey, j. h. 2012: prik of conscience. teams middle english text series. kalamazoo (mi): medieval institute publications. morris, r. 1863: the pricke of conscience (stimulus conscientiae), a northumbrian poem by richard rolle de hampole. berlin: a. asher & co. for the philological society. robinson, p. m. w. 2013: the textual tradition of dante’s commedia and the barbi ‘loci.’ ecdotica 9: 7–38. robinson, p. m. w. 2016: four rules for the application of phylogenetics in the analysis of textual traditions. digital scholarship in the humanities 3.3: 637–651. 152 edurne garrido anes appendix. manuscript quotes (1) mv 29: “and als a dyme and dolefule dale / yat is fule of sorowe and bale,” mv 40: “and a dym deolful dale / þat is ful of serwe and bale,” mv 21: “and alsua a dolefull dale / bus be euer in bale,” (2) mv 29: “[a] dolefull partyng ys yat to telle, / [for] ay wolde yai togedyr duelle.” mv 40: “a delful partyng is þat to telle, / ffor euer þei wolde togeder dwelle.” (3) mv 29: “[yat] ye saule salle haue [w]yth dole and care / [un]tille ye dome be gyuen, how it salle fare.” mv 40: “þat soule schal haue with deol and care / til dom beo ʒiuen, hou hit schal fare.” mv 21: “ye secounde payne is dole and care / to ye dome be gyuen, how it sall fare.” mv 48: “ye secunde peyne is sorow & care / to dome be ʒowene, how he schall ffare.” mv 49*: “ye secunde payne es dole and kare / tyl ye dome be gyuen, how yai sal fare.” (4) mv 29: “grete dole yai make and mykylle sorow, / for yai may nothyng bygge no borow” mv 40: “gret del þei make and muche sorwe, / ffor þei may no þing begge ne borwe” mv 21: “grete dole yai make som tyme & sorow, / ffor yai may na thing beg nor borow” mv 49*: “grete dole yai make some tyme and sorowe, / for yai may na thyng beg ne borowe” (5) mv 29: “[what] drede aght ye synfulle to haue yan? / [yerfor] yus says ye holy man:” mv 40: “what drede ouʒte synfole habbe þon? / þerfore seiþ þe holy mon:” mv 21: “what drede sall synfull man haue yan? / ffor yus sais ye haly man:” mv 48: “what dred schall synful man haf þanne? / as seyth sent jerome ye holy mane:” mv 95: “what drede shall synfull haue than? / for thus says ye holy man:” from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 153 (6) mv 29: “[ye] day of cryynge and of dolefulle dynne, / [ye] day of murnynge yat neuer salle blyne,” mv 40: “þe day of noyse deolful and dyn, / þe day of mournyng withouten blyn,” mv 21: “ye day of criyng and dolefull dyn, / ye day of sorowes yat neuer sall blyn,” mv 49*: “ye day of crying and duleful dyn, / ye day of `sorow´ yat neuer sal blyn,” mv 95: “the day of crying & of delefull dynne, / the day of sorow that neuer shall blynne,” (7) mv 29: “yis es in inglisse yus to rede, / ye dede dulfully sal yaime fede.” mv 40: “þat is on englisch þus to rede, / þey schal deolfoliche hem fede.” mv 21: “yis is on inglis yus to rede, / ye deede dolefully sal yaim fede.” mv 49*: “yis es in inglisse yus to rede, / ye dede dulfully sal yaime fede.” mv 95: “thys ys on yn[g]lyshe thus to rede, / the dethe dulfely shall them fede.” (8) mv 29: “ffulle dolefulle cryyng salle yai here, / als seint austyn says one yis manere:” mv 40: “fful delful cri schal þei here, / as seint austin seiþ on þis manere:” mv 21: “ye deuels sall dolefully make criyng sere, / als saynt austyn sais on yis manere:” mv 95: “a dulfull cryeng shall they here, / as sent austen saise on thys manere:” (9) mv 29: “ye sorow and dole yat yai salle make / salle neuermore yere sese no slake;” mv 40: “þe serwe and þe deuel þat þei schal make / schal neuermore sese nor slake;” mv 21: “and sorow and dole yat yai sall make / sall neuermare yare sees nor slake;” mv 95: “& sorow and dole that they schall make / shall neuermore seesse ne slake;” (10) mv 29: “and haue ay heryng of dolefulle dynne / to eke yaire payne yer for yat synne.” mv 40: “and euere heryng þe deueles dinne / to eche heore peyne of heore sinne.” mv 21: “and haue heryng of dolefull dyn / to eke yaire paynes yat neuer sall blyn.” mv 95: “and haue heryng of dullfull dynne / that ey shall last & neuer shall blyne.” (11) mv 29: “inne helle salle be fulle dolefulle dyne / amonge synfulle and deuylls yereinne,” mv 40: “as helle schal be ful delful dinne / among synful and deueles þerinne,” mv 21: “and yare sall be full dolefull dyn / omange saules yat sall duell yarein,” mv 49*: “and yare sal be fulle dulfulle dyn / omang saules yat sal duelle yarein,” mv 95: “and ther shall be dulfull dyn / among sowles that shall dwell therin,” 154 edurne garrido anes (12) mv 29: “[a]lso he says is noght so vgly / [al]s here is a mans dede body. [a]nd when it is in erth layd lawe, / wormes salle it alle tognawe” mv 40: “no þing is here more grisly / þen is a monnes ded body. whon hit is in eorþe leyd lowe, / wormes hit schal al tognawe” mv 21: “when he in layer is loken lawe, / grisely wormes sall on him gnawe” mv 48: “also in clay is closid fful lawe, / gryssich wormes schall on him knawe” (13) mv 29: “of ye dede may men thynk wondur, /ffor al thyng it brostes in sondyr als it skulkys be diuers wayes. / ffor ye haly man yus says:” mv 40: “of deþ men may þinke wonder, / ffor alle þing hit bersteþ in sonder as hit sculkeþ bi diuerse weis. / þerfore þe holi mon þus seys:” mv 21: “all thyng he wastes be diuerse wayes. / als ye haly mann in his buke sayes:” mv 48: “alle thing he wasteyt be diuerse weye. / as an holy man yus gun seye:” (14) mv 27: “and als yhe may se and wate wele / þat myrknes kyndly es noght to fele, bot overalle whar na light es / þar es properly myrknes, right swa þe dede es noght elles / bot a privyng of lyf, als clerkes telles. for wharswaever þe lyf fayles, / þar es þe dede þat `þan´assayles. þus þe dede þat men dredes mast / when þe lyf fayles, men byhoves tast.” mv 29: “and als men may wyte ryght wele / yat myrkenes is noght kyndely to fele, bot ouer alle where no lyght es / yere is propyrly myrkenes, ryth so dede is no thynge elles / bot pryuyng of lyfe, as clerkys telles. ffor whare so ye lyfe fayles, / yere is dede yat yan assayles. yere is dede yat yai drede maste / when ye lyfe fayles, men behouys to taste.” mv 40: “and as men mai wite wele / merknes is not kuyndely to feele, bot ouer al þer no liht is / þat is propurly merknes, riht so deþ is no þing elles / but pryuing of lyf, clerkes telles. ffor where so þe lyf fayleþ, / þere is deþ þat þus assayleþ. þus deþ þat men driʒe in hast / whon lyf fayleþ, men mot tast.” mv 21: “and als ʒe se and wate full wele / yat myrkenes here may menn noght fele, right sua deede menn may noght se / ne gratthely wit what it sulde be, it is departyng and noght elles / of yis lyffe here als clerkes telles.” mv 48: “and als ʒe se and know fful wele / yat derknes may no man ffele, rythe so deth men may nouth se / ne sykyrly wyten what he may be, [h]it is a partynge and nouʒt elles /off yis liff here as grete clerkys tellys.” (15) mv 27: “god visites us in ilka stede, / whare we may fele takens of dede; and if we couthe understand wele, / ilk day we may takens of dede fele. from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 155 þarfor me thynk alle þis lif here semes / mar dede þan lyf þus wys men demes, for þe boke says, als it beres wyttenes, / þat a man, when he first borne es, bygynnes towarde þe dede to draw / and feles here many a dede-thraw,” mv 29: “godde vysyts vs in many stede, / yare whe may fele takyns of dede; for yi me thynk yat yis lyfe semes / […] yan lyfe as clerkys demes, […] alle so ye boke wytenes, / yat fyrst when a man borne es, […] begynnes he to dede to drawe / and felys many dedys thrawe,” mv 40: “god visyteþ vs in mony stede, / þer we may feele toknes of dede; þerfore me þinkeþ þis lyf seemeþ / more ded þen lyf as clerkes demeþ, ffor as þe bok forsoþe witnes, / þat furst whon a mon boren is, he biginnneþ to deþ drawe / and feeleþ mony a deþes þrawe,” mv 21: “and firste whenn yat a mann is borne, / ffele fayndynges he fyndes him beforne.” mv 48: “[…]ste whane a man is borne, / many ffondynges he fyndeʒt befforne.” (16) mv 27: “and yhit sen god hymself spard noght, / for at his dede þe devel til hym soght in his manhede for swa þan he walde, / als men says þat er gret clerkes calde þan er we certayn, withouten were, / þat at our last ende þai sal apere.” mv 29: “[…] are whe certayn with outen were, / […] yai salle at oure laste ende apere.” mv 40: “þus beo we certeyn out of weere, / þat þei schule at vre ende apeere.” mv 21: “yan may we be full certayn here, / at oure endyng yai sall apere.” mv 48: “yanne may we be fful serten here, / att oure endynge yei schall apere.” (17) mv 27: “how þow has here led þi lyfe, / and how þow has spendyd þi wittes fife, fra þe first day þat [þou] had witte / unto þe last day þow shuld hethen flite. þan sal walaway be þi sang, / for þou here dispended þi tym wrang,” mv 29: “yan salle weleaway be yi sange, / for yow yi tym her spendyd wrange,” mv 40: “weylawey schal be þi song, / ffor þi tyme i spendet wrong,” mv 21: “of sorow yan sall be yi sange, / ffor you despendid yi wittes wrange,” mv 48: “[…] synge, / […] spendynge,” (18) mv 27: “bot when thou sese alle þi trespas, / þan sal þou say ‘allas! allas!’ when alle þi life sal be thurgh-soght / unto þe lest thyng þat ever þou wroght, wheþer þou be lered or lewed, / þi syns sal þan be many shewed þat þow has done here in þi life, / of whilk þou couthe þe never shrife. and þa sal be shewed byfor þe / ful foule and ugly syns to se, of whilk þou sal haf mare drede and awe / þan of þa þat þaou mught here knawe. yhit som dedys þat þe thoght here don wele / þou sal þan se foul syns and fele; ” 156 edurne garrido anes mv 29: “[an]d when yow ses alle yi trespas, / […] salt yow say ‘allas! alas!’ [wh]en alle yi lyfe sal be thurgh-soght / [un]to ye leste thyng yat euer yow wroght, […] thynge yat yow dyde in yi lyue, / ye wylk yow couth ye neuer schryue. […] salle be schewed vnto ye / […] and vgly on to se, […] ye whylk yow salt yan haue more aghe / […] of yat yat yow couthe here knaw. […] sume dedys yat yow thoght done wele / […] synnes yat yow salle yen fele;” mv 40: “and þou seost al þi trespas, / þen schalt þou seye ‘allas! allas!’ whon al þi lyf schal beo þorw souʒt / to þe leste þing þat euer þu wrouʒt, and þing þat þu dudest in þi lyue, / of whuche þu dodest [..] neuer schryue. of whuche þu schalt haue more awe / þen of þo þou coudest euer knawe. and summe dedes þat þe þhouʒte don wele / ffoule synnes þenne þu schalt hem feele;” mv 21: “yne sall be rekened on a rawe / synnes yat yu couthe neuer knawe. and some yat ye thoght here done right / sall be foule synnes yan to yi fight.” mv 48: “in schall be reherced on a [trow] / synnes yat yow […] nouth know. and sume […] rithe / schall […] […]the.’ (19) mv 27: “wharfor þe payn þat þe saul þar hentes / er mare bitter þan alle þe tourmentes þat alle þe marters in erthe tholed / sen god was for us boght and sold. for þe lest payn of þe payns þar sere / es mare þan es þe mast payn here, als says a grete clerk þus shortly / in a buke of þe payns of purgatory:” mv 29: “for ye leste of alle ye paynes sere / es herder yan ye moste payne here, als a grete clerk opunly / spekys of ye payne of purgatory:” mv 40: “ffor þe leste of heore peynes sere / is hardore þen þe moste peyne here, as a gret clerk spekeþ openly / of þe peyne of purgatory:” mv 21: “for yase paynes yat yaim yare hyntes / er mare harde yan ye tormentes, yat martres had in erthe here / sithen god dyed and boght vs dere, als a grete clerk openly / spekys of ye paynes of purgatory:” mv 48: “for ye lestes peyne yar ye saule yer schall hente / is more harder yanne alle ye turment yar marters has in herth here / sen god dyed and nouth vs here, als a grete clerke telleth openly / and seyth yus off ye peyns of purgatory:” (20) mv 29: “[a]nd in purgatory duelle ay stylle / [vnt]ylle yai be clensyd of alle yaire ille, [an]d have in a day als so grete paynes sere, / [as] a man myght haue here in a ʒere.” mv 40: “and in purgatori dwelle þei stille / til þei be clansed of al heore ille, þei han o day as grete peynes sere, / as a mon mihte haue her a ʒere.“ from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 157 mv 21: “in purgatory sall nane be sene / langer yan yai be clensed clene.” mv 48: “in purgatory no man schall ben sene / lenger yan he be clensed clene.” (21) mv 27: “and with stormes of hayle, sharpe and kene; / swylk stormes was never [nane] here sene als þe sauls sal þar [fel]e and se. / þus sal þai on sere wyse pyned be, sum many wynter for þair syn, / ar þai til þe sight of god may wyn.” mv 29: “wyth stormys of hayle, smerte and kene; / [sw]ylk stormes here were neuere sene” mv 40: “with stormes of haul, smart and kene; / such stormes here weor neuer sene” mv 21: “slike stormes here may na man se. / als saules sall yare in pyned be,” mv 48: “swich stormes here may no man se. / als saules schall yere in pyned be,” mv 49: “swylke stormes here may na man se. / als saules sal yare in pynede be,” (22) mv 27: “þe whilk most be fordone clenly, / outher here or in purgatory. þarfor i rede ilk man, whyles he lyffes here, / þat he use þa ten thinges sere þat fordus, als i sayde are, /alle veniel syns, bathe les and mare.” mv 29: “ye wylke behoues be fordone clenly,/ outhyr here or in purgatory. for yi ilk man aght yat lyves here, / vse ilk day yis ten thyngys sere yat for dose as i sayde are, / alle venyal synnes both lese and mare.” mv 40: “whuche mot be for don clanly, / ouþer here or in purgatory. þerfore vche mon ouʒte þat liueþ here, / vse vche day þe ten þinges sere þat for don as i seide ore, / al venial synne lasse and more.” mv 21: “of ye whilke a mann buse be made clere, / outhre in purgatory or elles here.” mv 48: “off which ich mane schalle be mad clere, / outher in purgatory or elles bere.” mv 49: “of whylk a man byhoue[s] be made clere, / outher in purgatory or here.” (23) mv 27: “a party for penance þat enioynt es / and es forgeten thurgh reklesnes. alle þis may be cald þe remenand / of þe dette of payn, als i understand, þe whilk felle to be fulfylled haly, / outher here or in purgatory. bot alle þis dett may þar be qwytt / thurgh large pardon, waswa has itt, in forgyvenes of alle penance soght, / whethir it be here enioynt or noght. for swa mykel pardoun may a man / purches here þat he may þan in purgatory qwyte alle þe dett / þat hym fra blis may tary or lett. for swa large es haly kirkes tresor / þat it es ynogh to pay þarfor and for alle þe paynes þat dett may be / of alle þe men of cristante.” mv 29: “a party for penaunce yat emoyned es / and is for getyn thurgh reklesnes. alle yis may be callede ye remmlande / of ye dette of penaunce, i vndyrstande, 158 edurne garrido anes [ylk] bus be filled haly, / […] here or in purgatory. alle yis dede may be quyte / [..] large penaunce who so haues it, […] mykylle perdoun haues a man / […] here yat he may yan [in pur]gatory quyte alle ye dette / [yat] [h]ym fro blys may tary or lette. […]rge es haly kyrkes tresoure / […] es innogh to pay yerefore” mv 40: “a parti for penaunce þat emoyned is / and forʒeten þorw rechelesnes. al þis may be cald remenaunde / of þe dede of penaunce, i vndurstande, þe whuche mot beo folfuld holly, / oþer here or in purgatori. and al þis dette mai beo quit / þorw lage penaunce hose haþ hit, ffor so muche perdoun may a man / purchase here þat he may þan in purgatorie quite al þe dette / þat him fro blisse may tarie no lette. so large is holi chirche tresore / þat is inouʒ to paye þerfore” mv 21: “or elles for forgetyn for reklesnes / ye remanant of penance yus perdounes.” mv 48: “or elles forʒeten yorow reklesnes / ye resessynge off penaunce yus perdone es.” mv 49: “or els forgeten turgh reklesnes / ye remendande of penaunce yus perdounes.” (24) mv 40: “ffor whi we schulde be war heere, / as þe day of dom weore comynge nere. ffor cristes disciples, wolde haue knowyng / of sum token aʒeyn his laste comyng,” mv 21: “cristes disciples askyd yat thyng / ffor yai walde knawe of his commyng,” mv 48: “crystes [discipulis] askyd yis yinge / ffor yei wolde know off his cumynge,” mv 49: “crystes dyscyples hasked yis thyng / ffor yai wald knawe of hys comyng,” (25) mv 27: “and als god byfor his first commyng / wald here fordo, withouten lettyng, alle þe world thurgh water anly / agayn þe fyre of lychery, right swa byfor his last commyng / he sal of þe world mak endyng thurgh fire þat sal swa brinnand be / agayn þe dasednes of charite. þe wirkyng of þis fire swa brinnand / sal conten[e] þir thre short + tymes passand, þat es bygynnyng, mydward, and ende, / als in þis bok es here contende. first þe fire at þe bygynnyng / sal cum byfor cristes commyng,” mv 29: “[…] godde before hys fyrst comyng / […]lde for do with outen lettyng, […] ye werlde thurgh watyr anly / […]yn ye fyre of lychery, […]ht so before hys laste comyng / […] ye werlde he salle make endyng […]urgh fyre yat salle so byrnnand be / […]gayn ye deffens of charyte. […] yis fyre at ye bygynyng / […]lle come before crystes comyng,” mv 21: “yis fire yat is so vggly thyng / sall come bifore cristes commyng,” from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 159 mv 48: “yat ffire yat is so dredefful thynge / schall cume be fforne crystes cumynge,” mv 49*: “yis fyre yat es so vgly a thyng / sal come byfore crystes comyng,” (26) mv 27: “a, how mikel shenshep sal be / to þe synful þat alle þis sal here and se, þe whilk til hym dus here na gude agayne / þat for þam tholed swa mykel payne. and yhit noght þas þat dos na gud anly, / but oʒer þat er swa ful of felony, þat ay dos yvel ogayn gude, / and ofte dos godes son on [þe] rode in þat þat in þam es thurgh syn, / of whilk þai wille never here blyn.” mv 29: “fulle mykyl schenschyppes salle yis be / to synfulle men yat salle it se, ye wylk to hym dose noght agayne / yat for yem suffyrd so mykylle payne. and noght ya yat dose na gode anly, / bot oyere yat ere of felonny, […] dose ille and no gode, / […] oft dose goddys sone on rode […] at yat in yem es thurgh synne, / […]e wylk yai wille noght here blynne.” mv 40: “muchel schendschipe schal þis be / to synful men þat hit schal se, whuche to him do nouʒt aʒeyne / yat for him suffrede so muche peyne. and not þo þat doþ no good only, / but oþere þat are ful of feleny, þei ay don euele and no goode, / and ofte don godes sone on þe roode in þat þat in hem is wiþ synne,/ of whuche þei wolde neuer blinne.” mv 95: ‘full mykull shamechyp shall yis be / […]o synfull man yat shall ytt see, [y]at ay doth yll & lytull gud / oft doth godson on the roode. (27) mv 21: “on ye setill of his maieste / and ye werlde deme sall he,” mv 49: “on ye settelle of hys maieste / and ye werld yan deme sal hee,” mv 95: “in the seyte of his maieste / all the world than deme schall he,” (28) mv 27: “here may ilk man, if he wille, / ha[f] mercy þat dus þat falles þartille; þoghe he had done never swa mykel syn, / if he amended hym, he myght it wyn. for þe mercy of god es swa mykel here / and reches overalle, bathe fer and nere.” mv 29: “yus may ilk man yf he wylle, / haue mercy and do yar falles yeretylle; if he dyde neuere so mykylle synne, / [and] he amende hym, he may wynne goddys mercy es so mykylle here / it rechys oueralle, both ferre and nere.” mv 40: “þus mai vche mon ʒif he wil, / haue merci and do þat falleþ þertil; þauʒ he dude neuer so muche synne, / and he amende him, he mai hit wynne. godes merci is so muchel here / hit recheþ oueral, boþe fer and nere.” mv 21: “bot ye mercy of god is sua mekill here / yat if a man had done synnes sere als many als in yis werlde er done / all myght his mercy fordo sone.” mv 49*: “botte ye mercy of god es so mykel here / yat if a man had done synnes sere als many als in ye weld es done / alle myght his mercy fordo sone.” 160 edurne garrido anes mv 95 : “butt the mercy of god ys soo mekyll here / that yff a man haue downe synes sere as mony as in the world are done /all myght he fordon sone.” (29) mv 27: “þat alle þe syn þat + man may do, / it myght sleken, and mare þarto. and þarfor says saynt austyn þus / a gude worde þat may comfort us: sicut scintilla igni in medio maris, / ita omnis impietas viri ad misericordiam dei. ‘als a litel spark of fire’, says he, / ‘in mydward þe mykel se, right swa alle a mans wykkednes / unto þe mercy of god es’. here may men se how mykel es mercy / to fordo alle syn and foly, forwhy if a man had done here / als mykel and als many syns sere,” mv 29: “alle ye synne yat man myght do, / may yt slekkyn and mare yereto. and yerfor says seint austyn yus / a gode worde yat may comforte vs: sicut scintilla igni in medio maris, / ita omnis impietas viri ad misericordiam dei. ‘als a spark of fyre’, says he, / ‘in mydwarde of ye mykylle se, ryth swa al mans wykkydnes / vnto ye mercy of godde es’. ffor yi yf a man hade done here / als so grete and als so many synnes sere,” mv 40: “al þe synne þat mon mihte do, / mai hit slaken and more þerto. and þerfore seiþ seynt austin þus / a good word þat mai cumforten vs: sicut scintilla igni in medio maris, / ita omnis impietas viri ad misericordiam dei. ‘as a sparke of fuir’, seiþ he, / ‘in mydeward of þe grete se, riht so al monnes wikkednes / into þe merci of god is’. ffor þi ʒif a mon hedde idon here / as grete and as mony synnes sere,” mv 21: “yat if a man had done synnes sere,” mv 49*: “yat if a man had done synnes sere,” mv 95: “that yff a man haue downe synnis sere,” (30) mv 27: “als al þe men of þe werld has done, / alle myght his mercy fordo sone. and if possibel whare, als es noght, / þat ilk man als mykel syn had wroght, als alle þe men þat in þe werld ever was, / yhit mught his mercy alle þair syn pas.” mv 29: “als alle ye men in ye werld haue done, / alle myght goddes mercy for do sone. mv 40: “as al þe men in þe world haþ done, / al mihte godes merci for done hit sone. mv 21: “als many als in yis werlde er done, / all myght his mercy fordo sone.” mv 49*: “als many als in ye werld es done, / alle myght his mercy fordo sone.” mv 95: “as mony as in the world are done, / all myght he fordone sone.” (31) mv 27: “ne nathyng sal growe þan, gresse ne tre, / ne cragges ne roches sal nan þan be, ne dale ne hille ne mountayne. / for alle erthe sal be þan even and playne from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 161 and be made als clere and fayre and clene / als any cristal þat here es sene. for it sal be purged and fyned withoute, / als alle other elementes sal be oboute,” mv 29: “[þ]en salle growe neyere gyrse no tre, / no hylls no mountayns salle none be, no dales no rochs for certayne. / […] alle erth salle be euen and playne [a]nd be made euen and clene / als any crystalle yat euer ware sene.” mv 40: “þenne schal neuer growe gras nor tre, / ne hulles ne mountaynes schul non be, ne dales ne roches for certeyn. / but al eorþe schal ben euene and pleyn and ben al mad boþe feir and clene / as eny cristal þat euer was sene.” mv 21: “nor nathyng sal growe gresse nor tre, / bot all ye erth sall euen be,” mv 49*: “ne nathyng sal grow gresse ne tre, / botte alle ye erth euen sal be,” mv 95: “ne noo thyng shall groue grasse ne tree / butt all the erthe euen shall be,” (32) mv 27: “for þe mynde of þam myght men feer, / swa bitter and swa horribel þai er. bot forþi þat many knawes noght right / what kyn paynes in helle er dight withouten ende for synful man, / þarfor i wil shewe yhow, als i can, aparty of þa paynes sere, / als yhe may sone aftirward here. bot first i wille shew whare es helle, / als i haf herd som grete clerkes telle, and sythen wille i shew yhow mare, / and speke of þe paynes þat er þare.” mv 29: “and for yat many kennes yat noght ryght / ye paynes yat in helle are dyght withouten for synfulle man, / i salle schewe ʒow, als i kan, aparty of ye paynes sere, /als ʒe aftyrwarde salle here. ffyrst i wille schewe ʒow where es helle, /als i haue herde grete clerks telle, and seyen salle i schew ʒow whare, /and speke of paynes yat ere yare.” mv 40: “and for moni men knowus not riʒt / þe peynes þat in helle are diht wiþouten ende for synful mon, / i schal schewe ʒou summe, as i con, a parti of þe peynes þere, /as ʒe her afturward may here. furst wol i schewe on wher is helle, / as i haue herd grete clerkes telle, and siþen schal i schewen ʒou more, / and speken of peynes þat ben þore.” mv 21: “and i sall schew ʒow, als i can, / what paynes er yare for synfull man. and all thir firste, i will ʒow tell, / whare als clerkes sais es hell.’ mv 49: “and i sal schewe yow, als i can, / what paynes es yare for synful man. and al yer first, i wille yow telle, / whare als clerkes says es helle.” mv 95: “and i shall schue yow, as i can, / what peynis are there for synfull man. also furst, i wyll yow tell, / where al clarkis sayne ys hell.” (33) mv 29: “and many oyer yat were dede / has bene sume tyme in yat stede 162 edurne garrido anes and sene yere many hydous payne / and thurgh myracle turnede agayne.” mv 40: “and mony oþere þat weren dede / han ben sum tyme in þat stede/ and seʒe þer monye hidous peyne / and þorw miracle turned aʒeyne.” mv 21: “and many othir yat war deede / hase bene some tyme in yat stede and sene yare many hidous payne / and thurghe miracle to liffe turne agayne.” mv 49: “and many other yat ware deede / has bene some tyme in yat stede and sene yare many hydouse payne / and thurgh myracle turned to lyue agayne.” (34) mv 29: “[ye] flawme of fyre salle be yere drynk, / [wt] byrnstone of fyre yat ille salle stynk with ryke of fyre and wynds blaste / and with stormys yat ay salle laste,” mv 40: “but [f]leome of fuir schal be heore drynk, / wt brumston þat foule schal stynk with smoke of fuir and wyndes blast / and wt stormes þat euer schal last,” mv 21: “and ye flawme of fire sall yai drynke / menged with bronstane yat it sall stynke with smoke of fire and many a blaste /and with stormes yat ay sall laste mv 95: “and flame of fyre schall they drinke / muche strong then carion shall ytt stynke” (35) mv 34: “bot þe synfull sall ay þare in payne be, / and na ded may þam sla bot ay þem fle, als þe boke openly schewes us, / whare we may fynd wryten þus: mors fugiet ab eis. ‘þe ded’, þat here es strang and hard / ‘sall ay þare fle fra þamward’. þe payns of þe ded þai sall ay dreghe, / bot þai sall nevermare fully deghe; þai sall ay lyf in sorow and stryfe, bot þair lyf sall seme mare ded þan lyfe. þair lyfe inmydward þe ded sall stand, / for þai sall lyfe evermare deghand and degh evermare lyfand withall, / als men dose þat we se in swowne fall. and forþi þat þai here mykell lufed syn / and thurgh over-mykell hope ay lyfed þarin and to leve þair syn had never will, / þarfor it es gud, ryght, and skyll þat þai be ay for þair foly / in hell withouten hope of mercy. mv 29: “ye synfulle salle euer in payne be, / and dede salle ay fro yem fle, als haly wrytte schewes tille vs, / where whe may fynde wryten yus: mors fugiet ab eis. ‘ye dede’, yat here es strange and herd / ‘salle ay fle fro yemwarde’. ye paynes of dede ay salle yai drye, / bot yai salle neuer fully dye; yer lyfe in myddes ye dede salle stand, / ffor yai salle euer lyue dyand and dy euere lyuand withalle, / als men yat sulde inne swonyng falle. and for yai here ay loued synne / and thurgh lyued yere inne and to leue it hade neuer wylle, / ffor yi it es gode, ryght, and skylle from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 163 yat yai be euere for yere foly /in helle with outen hope of mercy.” mv 40: “þe synful schal euere in peyne be, / and deþ schal euere from hem fle, as holy writ scheweþ to vs, / where we mai fynde i write þus: mors fugiet ab eis. ‘deþ’, þat her is st[r]ong and hard / ‘schal euer more fle from hemward’. þe peynes of deþ schul þei euer drie, / but þei schul neuer fully dye; ffor lyf in middes þe deþ schal stande, / ffor þei schul euere liue diande and die euer lyuynge withalle, / as men þat schulde in swouʒnyng falle. and for here þei louede euer synne /and þorw ouer hope liuede þer inne and to leuen hit hedde þei neuer wil, / ffor þi hit is god, riht, and skil þat þei beo euere for heore foly / in helle wiþ oute hope of mercy.” mv 21: “bot ye synfull sall euer in strange payne be / and ye deede sall yai neuer fle als ye buke openly schewes vs / whare we may openly fynde writen yus mors fugiet ab eis. ffor diande euer sall yai liffe all / and liffand euer mare dye yai sall and forthi yat yai here luffed syn / and thurghe euer hope ay liffed yare in and for to leue it had neuer will / fforthi is it gude right and skill yat yai be ay for yaire foly / in hell withouten hope or mercy.” mv 49: “ffor deghand euer sal yai lyue alle / and lyfhand euermare deghe yai salle and for yi yat yai here brised synne / yat thurgh ouer hoope ay lyued yare inne and forto leue it had neuer wille / ffor yi it es gude right and skille yat yai be ay for yaire foly / in helle withouten hope or mercy.” (36) mv 34: “þat the synfull men þat sall wende / till hell sall have withouten ende. þe whilk payns and sorow sall never cees, / for þare sal never be rest ne pees, bot travail and stryfe with sorow and care; / full wa sall þam be þat sall dwell þare. þai sall thynk on nathyng elles / bot on þair payns, als som clerkes telles, and on þair syn þat þai here wroght; / swa sall payns and sorow troble þar thoght. for þare sall be þan herd and sene / alkyn sorow and trey and tene. mv 29: “ye whilk payns salle neuer sese, / for yere salle be neuere reste no pese, b[u]t euer trauayle in sorow and care, / fulle wo is yem yat salle be yare. yai salle thynk on nothyng elles / bot on yere paynes as clerkys telles, and on ye synnes yat yai haue wroght; / so salle ye paynes greue yere thoght. for yer salle be herde and sene / alkyns sorow tray and tene.” mv 40: “þe whuche peynes schal neuer ses, / ffor þer schal neiþer be reste ne pes, but trauayle serwe and care, / fful wo is hem þat schal be þare. þei schal þenke on noþyng elles / but on heore peynes as clerkes telles, and on þe synnes þat þei haue wrought, / so schal heore peynes greue heore 164 edurne garrido anes þouʒt. also þer schal be herd and sene / alle maner serwe and treþe and tene.“ mv 21: “yai sall think on na thyng elles / bot on yaire paynes als clerkes telles / ffor yare sall be bathe herde and sene / alkyn sorowe yat men may mene.” mv 49: “yai sal thynk on na thyng elles / bot on yaire paynes als clerkes telles ffor yare sal be yare herd and sene / alkyn sorowe yat men may mene.” mv 95: “for there shall be hard & seyne / all kynnes peynes that man mey meyne.” (37) mv 29: “and faute of alle yat gode sulde be / and of alle yat ille es grete plente.” mv 40: “and defaute of al þat good schulde be / and of al þat euel is gret plente.” mv 21: “yare sall be of all thyng plente / and defaute of all yat gude shulde be.” mv 49: “yare sal be al `ille´ thyng grete plente / and defaute of alle yat gude sulde be.” mv 95: “there shall be all yll thyng plente / and defaute of all that gud shall be.” (38) mv 34: “bot þareto sall þai haf no myght / for þe ded sall nevermare on þam lyght full fayne þai wald þan ded be / bot þe ded sall ay fra þam fle after þe ded þai sall yherne ilkone / als in þe apocalypse schewes saint iohan: desiderabunt mori, et / mors fugit ab eis. ‘þai sall yherne’ he says, ‘to degh ay’/ and þe ded sall fle fra þam oway.” mv 29: “aftyr ye dede yai salle ʒerne ilkone / als in ye apocalypps schewes seint john. desiderabunt mori, et / mors fuget ab eis. yai salle ʒerne for to dye ay / and dede salle fle fro yem away mv 40: “after þe deþ þei ʒerne vchon / as in þe apocalips witnesseþ seint jon desiderabunt mori, / & mors fugiet ab eis. þei schal ʒerne for to dye ay / and deþ schal fle hem away.” mv 21: “bot yareto sall yai haue na myght / ffor to endelesse dole er yai dyght.” mv 49: “bot yareto sal yai haue na myght / ffor to dule endles er yai dyght.” mv 95: “butt yerto shall they haue no myght / for to peyne end[l]es are they dyght.” (39) mv 34: “and þe tyme þat þou was born allswa, / for þi payne [t]yll me es sorow and wa. it pynes me and greves me sare, / als mykell als myne awen payn or mare, for my payne it ekes and mase mare grevus. / ilkane tyll other þan sall say þus.” mv 29: “and ye tyme yat ʒe were born als so, / for yi payne dose me als so mykylle wo. and pynes me and greuys sore, / as so mykylle as myn oune or more, for my payne it ekes and makys it greuens. / ilkone tille oyer salle say yus. from lexical collation to significant omissions and paraphrases 165 mv 40: “and þe tyme þu weore boren also, / ffor þi peyne doþ me so wo. and pyneþ me and greueþ me sore, / as muche as myn oune and more, and my peyne hit echeþ and greues. / vchone to oþer schal seye þus. mv 21: “it pynes and greues me yi syn als sare, / als dose myne awen and mekill mare, ” mv 49: “and ye tyme yat you was born in syn, / ffor yi payne duse me wa within. it pynes me and greyes me als sare, / als myn awen duse and wele mare,” mv 95: “and ye tyme that thow wast borne in, / ffor thi peyne doth me woo within. author’s address departamento de filología inglesa facultad de humanidades campus "el carmen" universidad de huelva avda. 3 marzo s/n 21071 huelva (españa) received: 24 june 2021 e-mail: edurne.garrido@dfing.uhu.es revised version accepted: 3 september 2021